Gelek Rinpoche

FOUNDATION of ALL PERFECTIONS

A Contemporary Commentary on the Stages of the Spiritual Path

Also by Gelek Rimpoche

Books

Good Life, Good Death

The Tara Box

Transcripts

Cittamani Tara Teachings

Ganden Lha Gyema: the Hundreds of Deities of the Land of Joy

Gateway to the Spiritual Path

Gom: A course in Meditation

Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (8 volumes)

Guru Devotion: How to Integrate the Primordial Mind

Healing and Self Healing through White Tara

Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Principles of the Path

Karma: Actions and their Consequences

Lam Rim Teachings (in Four Volumes)

Lojong: Training of the Mind in Eight Verses

Lojong: Training of the Mind in Seven Points

Love and Compassion Odyssey to Freedom: in Sixty-Four Steps

The Perfection of Wisdom Mantra

The Practice of the Triumphant Ma

Self and Selflessness

Sem: the Nature of Mind

Six Session Guru Yoga

Solitary Hero Yamantaka: Teachings on the Generation Stage

The Four Noble Truths

The Four Mindfulnesses

The Three Principles (Short Commentary)

Three Main Vajrayana Practices

Transforming Negativity into Positive Living

Vajrayogini Teachings

The Wheel of Existence FOUNDATION of ALL PERFECTIONS

A Contemporary Commentary on the Stages of the Spiritual Path

Gelek Rimpoche

Jewel Heart Transcripts are lightly to moderately edited tran- scriptions of the teachings of Kyabje Gelek Rimpoche and others teachers who have taught at Jewel Heart. Their purpose is to provide Rimpoche’s students, as well as all others who are interested, with these extremely valuable teachings in a way that gives one the feeling of being present at the teachings.

JEWEL HEART Tibetan Cultural and Buddhist Center, 1129 Oak Valley Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48108 USA www.jewelheart.org Editor’s Note

This lightly edited transcript is based on Kyabje Gelek Rim- poche’s teachings on Je Tsongkhapa’s shortest lam rim, known as The Foundation of All Perfections. The teachings were given on Thursday evenings at Jewel Heart New York in 2000. Though small groups of Rimpoche’s students were able to connect to the New York City teachings by telephone, most people have never heard this practical and engaging commentary on the stages of the spiritual path, from the importance of the guru to Vajrayana. Filled with stories, examples, and contemporary explanations, Rimpoche provides rich material as well as instructions for meditating on each verse. May this work be of great benefit to everyone who reads it.

Brenda Rosen Chicago, IL August, 2012

FOUNDATION OF all perfections

A petition to the Lineage Gurus for instant realization of the stages on the spiritual path

YÖN TEN KÜN GYI ZHIR GYUR DRIN CHEN JE TSÜL ZHIN TEN PA LAM GYI TSA WA RU LEK PAR THONG NE BE PA DU MA YI GÜ PA CHEN PO TEN PAR JIN GYI LOB

Following a kind master, foundation of all perfections, is the very root and basis of the path. Empower me to see this clearly and to make every effort to follow well.

LEN CHIK NYE PAY DEL WAY TEN ZANG DI SHIN TU NYE KA DON CHEN SHE GYUR NE NYIN TSEN KUN TU NYING PO LEN PAY LO GYUN CHE ME PAR KYE WAR CHIN GYI LOB

Precious human life gained but once has great potential but is easily lost. Empower me to remember this constantly and to think day and night of taking its essence.

1 Gelek Rimpoche

LU SOK YO WA CHU YI CHU BUR ZHIN NYUR DU JIK PAY CHI WA DREN PA DANG SHI WAY JE SU LU DANG DRIP MA ZHIN KAR NAK LE DRE CHI ZHIN DRANG WA LA

I must remember that death is quick to strike, for spirit quivers in flesh like a bubble in water; and after death one’s good and evil deeds trail after one like the shadow trails the body.

NGE PA TEN PO NYE NE NYE PAY TSOK TRA ZHING TRA WA NAM KYANG PONG WA DANG GE TSOK THA DAK DRUP PAR CHE PA LA TAK TU BAK DANG DEN PAR CHIN GYI LOB

Understanding that this most certainly is true, may I discard every level of wrong, and generate an infinite mass of goodness; empower me to be thus continually aware.

CHE PE MI NGOM DUK NGEL KUN GYI GO YI TEN MI RUNG SI PAY PHUN TSOK KYI NYE MIK RIK NE THAR PAY DE WA LA DON NYER CHEN POR KYE WAR CHIN GYI LOB

Sensual gluttony is a gate to suffering and is not worthy of a lucid mind. Empower me to realize the shortcomings of samsara and to give birth to the great wish for blissful freedom.

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NAM DAK SAM PA DE YI DRANG PA YI DREN DANG SHE ZHIN BAK YO CHEN PO YI TEN PAY TSA WA SO SOR THAR PA LA DRUP PA NYING POR CHE PAR CHIN GYI LOB

And empower me that with mindfulness and alertness born from thoughts ultimately pure, I may live in accord with the holy Dharma, the ways leading to personal liberation.

RANG NYI SI TSOR LHUNG WA JI ZHIN DU MAR GYUR DRO WA KUN KYANG DE DRA WAR THONG NE DRO WA DROL WAY KHUR CHER WAY JANG CHUB SEM CHOK JONG PAR CHIN GYI LOB

Just as I myself have fallen into samsara’s waters, so have all other sentient beings. Empower me to see this and really to practice Bodhimind that carries the weight of freeing them.

SEM TSOM KYE KYANG TSUL TRIM NAM SUM LA GOM PA ME NA JANG CHUB MI DRUP PAR LEK PAR THONG NE GYEL SE DOM PA LA TSOM PA DRAK PO LOP PAR CHIN GYI LOB

Yet without habituation in the three higher trainings, thought-training accomplishes no enlightenment. Empower me to know this deeply, and intensely to train in the various ways of the great Bodhisattvas.

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LOK PAY YUL LA YEN PA ZHI CHE CHING YANG DAK DON LA TSUL ZHIN CHO PA YI ZHI NE LAK THONG ZUNG DU DEL WAY LAM NYUR DU GYU LA KYE WAR CHIN GYI LOB

And empower me to pacify distorted mental wanderings and to decipher the ultimate meaning of life, so that I may give birth within my mindstream to the path combining concentration and wisdom.

THUN MONG LAM JANG NO DU GYUR PA NA THEK PA KUN GYI CHOK GYUR DOR JE THEK KEL ZANG KYE WO JUK NGOK DAM PA DER DE LAK NYI DU JUK PAR CHIN GYI LOB

One who trains in these common Mahayana practices becomes a vessel worthy of the supreme vehicle, Vajrayana. Empower me that I may quickly and easily arrive at that portal of fortunate beings.

DE TSE NGO DRUP NAM NYI DRUP PAY ZHI NAM DAK DAM TSIK DOM PAR SUNG PA LA CHO MA MIN PAY NGE PA NYE GYUR NE SOK DANG DO TE SUNG WAR CHIN GYI LOB

The foundation of what then produces the two powers is the guarding of the pledges and commitments of tantric initiation. Bless me so that I may have uncontrived knowledge of this And guard my discipline as I do my very life.

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DE NE GYU DEY NYING PO RIM NYI KYI NE NAM JI ZHIN TOK NE TSON PA YI THUN ZHI NAM JOR CHO LE MI YEL WAR DAM PAY SUNG ZHING DRUP PAR CHIN GYI LOB

And bless me so that I may gain realization of the main practices of the two stages of Vajrayana, essence of the tantric path, and by sitting relentlessly in four daily sessions of yoga, actualize just what the sages have taught.

DE TAR LAM ZANG TON PAY SHE NYEN DANG TSUL ZHIN DRUP PAY DROK NAM ZHAB TEN CHING CHI DANG NANG GI PHAR DU CHO PAY TSOK NYE WAR ZHI WAR CHIN GYI LAB TU SOL

Empower me that the masters who have unfolded the sublime path within me and the spiritual friends who have inspired me may live long, And that the myriad inner and outer interferences be completely and utterly calmed forever.

KYE WA KUN TU YANG DAK LA MA DANG DREL ME CHO KYI PEL LA LONG CHO CHING SA DANG LAM GYI YON TEN RAB DZOK NE DOR JE CHANG GI GO PHANG NYUR THOP SHOK

In all future lives may I never be parted from the perfect lamas or the pure ways of Dharma.

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May I gain every experience of the paths and stages and quickly attain the stage of Vajradhara.

6 INTRODUCTION

We are going to talk about the Foundation of All Perfections. It is extremely short, even shorter than the shortest lam rim, but it gives you the basis for an almost complete training of the mind. You might say that it expresses the essence of Tibetan Buddhism—not as a theory or philosophy, but as a very practical way for one individual person to make a difference in life. It was written by Je Tsongkhapa, the great fourteenth- century Tibetan master and scholar. In very few words he expresses the essence of what he did and what he experienced in his life. That achievement gives you a real understanding of human life and its value. That’s exactly what the Buddha did—try to understand what human life is and what value it has—what is different between human life and other lives, and how you can make best use of such a life.

VERSE 1: THE QUALITIES OF THE GURU

YÖN TEN KÜN GYI ZHIR GYUR DRIN CHEN JE TSÜL ZHIN TEN PA LAM GYI TSA WA RU LEK PAR THONG NE BE PA DU MA YI GÜ PA CHEN PO TEN PAR JIN GYI LOB

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Following a kind master, foundation of all perfections, is the very root and basis of the path. Empower me to see this clearly and to make every effort to follow well.

Is a guru necessary? This verse is about the qualities of the guru. The important first question raised here: Is a guru necessary? The translation we are using refers to the guru as a “kind master.” Maybe the translator thought using the word “guru” was dangerous because the whole guru business has been very controversial in the West. So, it is important for us to figure out if a guru is even necessary. Especially in the late fifties and early sixties and seventies, so many gurus appeared in this country. Many were Hindu or Buddhist, Tibetan and non-Tibetan. When I got to the United States by the late eighties, there was hesitation for people like me to talk about gurus. There have been swamis like Chittananda, Muktananda, and Rajneesh Bhagawan. And Trungpa Rinpoche, who was a great teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, also had a lot of controversy surrounding him. In the West, we have a very superficial knowledge of guru devotional practice. That’s why all these controversies come up. For that reason, a person like me hesitated very much to talk about the guru, because you never know whether that is going to help people or create huge trouble for them. People can develop all kinds of doubts. For a long time, I tried to avoid talking about guru devotion, but I could not avoid talking about it completely, because in the Buddhist tradition and, for

8 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS that matter, in almost all Eastern religions, the subject of guru devotion comes up. In fact, it is the first really important point. Not only that, but as the text says, it is “the root and basis of the path,” in other words, the root of all development. So guru devotion is extremely important and impossible to avoid. Those of us who are on the spiritual path would like to have some accomplishment in our lives other than material gains or professional achievements. Buddhists call this ultimate spiritual goal becoming a Buddha. If we were talking about Buddhist philosophy or about the intellectual points of the Buddha’s experience, we could get around talking about the guru. But since we are talking about benefiting and uplifting the individual, about fundamental principles and developing a proper foundation within the individual in order to grow spiritual qualities, we cannot avoid talking about it. Particularly in Vajrayana, the guru is a very, very important point. In Tibetan Buddhism, there are three yanas or “vehicles.” They are called vehicles because they deliver the individual to liberation. First is the Theravada, traditionally called Hinayana. People following that vehicle don’t like the name “Hinayana” because hina means “small or narrow.” So they changed the name to Theravada, which means “the teaching of the elders” or “the elders’ way.” In addition to the Hinayana, there are the Mahayana, the “great” vehicle or bodhisattva way, and the Vajrayana, the tantra or diamond vehicle. Actually, Vajrayana is part of Mahayana. That may not be the traditional division of Buddhism into three vehicles, but from the individual practitioner’s point

9 Gelek Rimpoche of view, there is nothing wrong with it. It is also okay from the Buddhist philosophical point of view. But let us have a look at the guru business. How is that viewed in these three yanas? In the Theravada tradition, gurus are looked at “as” a Buddha. In other words, practitioners give the same respect to gurus as they give to Buddha. That’s why you notice in the Theravada tradition, when a monk is regarded as a spiritual master, other monks give him respect equivalent to the Buddha. For instance, they bow down. The background for that is the idea of treating the gurus like they would treat Buddha. In the Mahayana, the gurus are treated not only as a Buddha but as “a real Buddha,” and in Vajrayana, the gurus are “inseparable from Buddha.” Guru devotion is a very complicated subject, but to me personally, it is very definitely necessary to have a guru. Without the guru one cannot properly establish one’s spiritual practice. Without a proper guru, people can spend years and put so much time and effort into their spiritual practice but not make any headway towards gaining spiritual development. Can any person who claims to be a guru be your guru? No, very definitely not. The more advertisement, the more publicity and the more self-proclamation someone does, the more you can see it as a sign of weakness. The qualities of a guru must be perceived by individuals who are interested in practicing; they cannot just be projected by the guru. If you are trying to sell commercial goods, then you have to advertise; otherwise you don’t sell anything. The manufacturer, the seller, the shop, all would lose out. But spiritual development is not for sale. So why would you blow your

10 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS own horn? In that case, who loses? Not you; as a matter of fact, you gain. But whoever did not buy, they lose out. So why would you advertise for spiritual things? The more advertisement is done, the more caution I would raise. There is tremendous room for anybody to exploit anything in terms of life, wealth, time, and everything else. The controversies like sexual exploitation and so on are only possible because we don’t know how to handle it. We are not clear about what guru devotion is. On top of all that, advertisement comes up and adds to the confusion. We sort of know that the guru is important, but don’t know exactly what it is, and then advertisement makes it more confusing. In good old Tibet, there was no advertisement; there wasn’t even a newspaper until late in the 1950s. Even then nobody advertised and particularly gurus didn’t advertise. There were no brochures. So how does one find one’s guru? You have to carefully observe the person you think of taking as a guru and then go and buy them. It is you, the individual practitioner, who chooses a guru. It is never the guru who chooses you. A guru may or may not accept you. That’s different. But you are making the first choice. I choose the person to be one of my gurus. Whether that person will accept or not is their individual right. He or she can reject you, saying, “I’m too busy. I don’t have time.” Or, “I do not have interest, maybe later.” We can try any excuse. In the good old Tibetan system, they won’t say, “I am too busy,” but “maybe we can try later.” So in principle, it is the individual practitioner who approaches that other person and asks, “Can I attend your

11 Gelek Rimpoche teaching? Can I follow you? Can I learn from you?” The other person will not say, “Come here, sit down, and I will teach you.” That may happen in very, very exceptional cases, maybe one in a million. On the other hand, everybody will think, “I’m the one in a million,” but that’s not how it works.

Spiritual guides and spiritual role models The second point is the quality of the guru. You don’t choose a guru because he or she is popular or handsome. The guru is perhaps the only role model you have on your spiritual path, so you want to be sure that he or she has good qualities. It is not the question of how he or she dresses or walks or talks, but how he or she handles problems. I’m not talking about economic problems, but rather spiritual problems. Gurus are spiritual guides and spiritual role models. They are not business consultants, definitely not. Nor are they psychological consultants, though psychological issues may come up quite a lot. But gurus are consultants dealing with our negative emotions, like anger, attachment, and hatred. So there may be a gray area with psychological points, but it has nothing to do with business, nothing to do with your professional life, nor with your sexual problems or family problems. The textbooks will tell you to consult the guru for everything and follow exactly what the guru tells you. But we are all human beings. A number of you have met the great spiritual teacher Dagyab Rinpoche, who lives in Germany. He came here [to the United States] and met the Jewel Heart people a couple

12 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS of times. Dagyab Rinpoche has two children, one son and one daughter. The son’s name is Namri Songtsen Dagyab, which is a very unusual Tibetan name these days. It is taken from one of the early Tibetan kings in the seventh century. If you know the Tibetan language, the name is extremely rich and sort of fantastic. It is poetry with a lot of meaning, a lot of historical influences, and very beautiful. Dagyab Rinpoche is very close to Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche and, of course, very close to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. So I thought he had asked either the Dalai Lama or Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche for this name. But Dag- yab Rinpoche said, “Oh no, I didn’t consult with any of them. If I did, [my son’s name] would have ended up being Tenzin. I didn’t want that, so I got this name myself, and then showed it to them, and they said it was very nice.” The Dalai Lama’s personal name is Tenzin Gyatso. So in this period, there are hundreds and thousands of Tenzin’s. That is the Tibetan tradition. Just like that: you don’t consult about everything. You have to know yourself how to deal with things, and it is very important to deal the right way. So when you want to select a spiritual guide or role model, you have to put the person under observation for a long time, so that you can see if you encounter any problems and how that person is going to handle him or her self. These are the points of consideration on which we make corrections or choices. I was in Singapore about ten years ago. It was the same year the Chinese had the problem with students in Tianan- men Square, so it was 1989. I was staying at the house of friends. They were business people. My friend told me a

13 Gelek Rimpoche couple of times that he wanted to buy a big house. He asked me, “Should I buy that house? What do you think?” And I said, “Let me think about it. I will check,” or something like that, but I didn’t do it. That year I stayed for over a month in this friend’s house. One week went by, another went by, and then he asked again. I said, “Oh, well, I will check about it.” So again I postponed it. Then one day he asked me again, just before lunch, when he normally would go to work in the money exchange. I would not see him at all until night, or he might pick me up for lunch or something. But that day around 10:30 in the morning, he came by and said, “I have to make a decision about the house today.” I didn’t know what to tell him. He said that there were two other people making offers on the house, and he had to make a decision that day. So he asked me, “Would you please come?” So I said okay, and I went and I saw the house. It was a very nice house. We went up and down, and I still didn’t know what to tell him. I had no answer—nothing—whether he should buy it or not. I began to have thoughts like, “If Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche were here, he would know what to say.” There were steps leading upstairs. Trijang Rinpoche had an attendant who used to keep his head a little bit up. A couple of American friends know him. They called him “the egghead guy.” While I was walking up one step, I sort of half-hallucinated and half-saw this attendant, and he told me, “Kyabje Rinpoche said if this guy buys this house, there will be no unnecessary problems like illness or troubles from spirits. Otherwise and as far as the business is concerned, he said that’s not your concern.” I realized I had an answer.

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So that’s the role model you look for. I’m sharing that much with you. It was really last minute. There were three other people going in trying to make an offer, and a decision had to be made right there, that minute. I had to have something to tell him about what to do because he was totally looking to me. So I went up those steps into three or four rooms, and then I said, “Well, if you buy this house, I don’t think you will have many problems. As far as the business is concerned or the value, I know nothing about it.” That’s what I told him. Things like that can serve as a role model. But the most important point is how we deal with our anger, attachment, and jealousy, and how to clear our ignorance. For that you are looking for a role model, and that cannot be somebody you worship. It can’t be somebody who will tell you exactly what to do so that you don’t have to take any responsibilities. Americans have a big problem there. You don’t want to deal with your problems. So you go and ask somebody else, and they tell you “yes” or “no” or all kinds of things, and then you say, “So-and-so said so.” But that person probably did not hear even half of what you said, particularly if you had to go through an interpreter who may translate wrongly half the things you said. So the answer you’re going to get is ninety percent incorrect anyway. So why do that? Maybe that’s a job for psychics, astrologers, fortunetellers, or soothsayers, but not for spiritual masters. What I said about this house business is probably a fortuneteller’s or astrologer’s job, but then it just landed on my lap, and I had to deal with it. That happens. It overlaps here and there.

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The ten qualities of a spiritual master But when you’re really looking for the role model of a guru, then the guru who is qualified to be a spiritual master should have ten qualities that are traditionally mentioned.

1. The spiritual master has to have better qualities than you do. He or he has to be a well-behaved person in the sense that he is not under the control of negative emotions. So one of the qualities of a spiritual master you are looking for is whether that person really has the quality of dealing with negative emotions.

2. He or she should be more learned than you are, because you want to learn from that person. If he doesn’t know any more than you do, there is nothing more for you to learn, right? A number of people these days say, “I got this from my personal intuition, blah, blah, blah.” There may be great beings who really can take information off the Akashic records or know from their intuition, but ninety percent of those are phony. Ten percent, maybe yes. But ninety percent are phony. So your spiritual master must be more learned than you and have a better quality than you. The path that Buddha shared with us is totally based on the Buddha’s personal experience. It was put to the test by thousands of followers. They found that if you apply the same methods the Buddha did, it works, and you get the same results, no matter whether you are a man, woman, or whatever you might be. This is called a reliable, solid, grounded path.

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Bottom line, a guru’s knowledge can’t be their half- hallucinated, half-asleep, half-high, half-drunk personal intuitions. Why should we rely on something like that, when we have the solid, tested experience of the Buddha followed by thousands of people in an unbroken lineage? Their experience is further recorded in books. The many books and teachings—all of them—are their statements that they recorded. It is very scientific, very solid. And if you have something like that available, why should you go for some little funny half-hallucinated thing? It is so silly to me. This path is extremely solid. Thousands of people have experienced it, one after another and then they recorded that.

3. and 4. The person should be enthusiastic [enthusiasm for teaching the dharma (3) and delight in doing so (4).]

5. He or she should be rich in sources. If you have a rich knowledge of Buddhist scriptures, you can say, “the Buddha experienced it.” Or, “So-and-so did this and so- and-so did that. They had this difficulty and tried that solution, and this one worked and that one didn’t work.” All of these are the sources from which gurus draw their information. So the spiritual master should be rich in that.

6. 7. and 8. A spiritual master should understand what he or she is talking about. There are a lot of people who read a lot of books and then make very nice, beautiful speeches, but they have no idea what they are talking about. You can see that very often these days. They

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talk about something very profound, but they have no idea what they are talking about. They just know a lot of nice words that they have collected from different books. That is just dry academic information. But for a spiritual master, we need someone who has had experience and has developed [some (6) concentration and (7) wisdom that (8) reduces self-grasping] as a result. Intellectual knowledge is not the most important. What we need is intellectual knowledge verified by personal experience. Do you see the difference?

9. A guru should have the art of presentation. If you don’t have that, then it doesn’t work. Think of Japanese food. They may only have a small quantity of daikon radish, but they shred it in a very artistic way and make it fluffy. Then in the middle of a big plate there is that tiny little daikon radish and maybe one or two pieces of carrot mixed in, and it looks very beautiful. You would rather have just this much daikon radish and this much carrot made in a way that makes you want to eat it than a huge daikon radish that is just chopped and you don’t want to eat it. So the art presentation is absolutely important.

10. The person must be very compassionate. Otherwise, if you are uncaring and uncompassionate, there is big trouble. That means that one should be able to take a little hardship. Otherwise, you have a little cold or cough, and you don’t show up. That won’t work. A guru must have a little endurance.

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According to the Theravada tradition, gurus must have the two qualities of stability and knowledge. In the Mahay- ana there are the ten qualities I just mentioned. In the Vajrayana, there are ten plus ten, or twenty qualities. For all of those qualities, you have to give up to fifty percent discount. They give you an idea on what basis you can make a decision. Some are very important; others, you can give a little discount. You are not going to find anybody perfect everywhere. So when you look for these qualities, you are the judge. You have to make a choice, not that person. I used to say that if anybody calls you and says, “Hey I’m your guru,” run 500 miles and don’t look back. Let them “hear the whistle blow and go 500 miles.” It is you who makes the choice, not the guru. Of course, he also has the right of refusal, very definitely. But these are the criteria and on that basis you choose.

Gurus in dreams and hallucinations Another question is: what about a guru that appears in dreams, a guru that you feel is with you, whose voice you can hear? I’m going to say the same thing: there may be exceptional cases, but for 99.99 percent of the time, you are better off not dealing with those things. In our tradition of teachers, we do not rely on that. Take as an example Je Tsongkhapa, who wrote the Foundation of All Perfections. He lived from 1357 to 1419 and was the founder of the Gelugpa or yellow hat sect. Je Tsongkhapa had a vision of 35 different Buddhas on the peaks of the mountains. He didn’t just run there. He ignored them. He went out of his cave and did his usual business.

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Today, if we have a little hallucination, we go for that straight away, feeling a little bit high and thinking it is so fantastic. Many people have told me, “I have seen stars,” or “I’ve seen the clear light.” When someone tells me these things individually, what can I say except “Oh, nice!” How can I say, “This is nothing.” People won’t like it, so I simply say “Oh nice, nice,” and try to run away from the conversation as fast as I can. But in the group I can say it, because it is not addressing any individual. So this is a nice opportunity. When those 35 Buddhas appeared on the mountaintops and tried to talk to Je Tsongkhapa, he ignored them totally until a solid human messenger from his teacher came and told him, “These are real. Do not ignore them.” Until then he ignored them. Even then, when he began to have a conversation with them, he asked only questions that he knew the answers to. That way he knew whether what they were telling him was right or wrong. Since a person like Je Tsongkhapa went through that, obviously we have a tremendous problem in separating our hallucinations from real visions. Plus if you smoke a couple of joints or have a couple of drinks, it will be a big difference. So the point is reliability. You are better off relying on something that is solid and accountable. If you are dealing with a human being, he or she can be accountable and responsible. If it is not a human being, there is no accountability. Somebody came and told you something, but where is that somebody now? You don’t know. That’s a big problem. I am not denying that there are spirits, but there are equal numbers of good and bad ones, and the chances of

20 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS coming across the really great ones are very small. There- fore it is better to rely on solid human beings who are accountable and responsible rather than on something strange. I still have a number of people who tell me, “You told me this morning ‘blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ Didn’t you tell me?” Then I say, “I don’t know,” and they say, “But I recognized your voice.” Then I say, “Okay, well not that I know of.” What else can you say? I can’t tell them, “You have been hallucinating.” The best thing is not to rely on that kind of thing. And remember, you are the one who is the decision maker. Nobody can push you or make the decision for you.

Why guru devotion is important It is very clear that we need a guru. Even for ordinary daily little things, such as artist’s work or even painting a car, you need some kind of guidance. Nowadays you have owner’s manuals. They can be very helpful, but still you need someone who is there and who can show you and answer your questions, sort of like a living dictionary. That is extremely helpful. According to Buddha and his disciples, a guru is absolutely necessary. I really cannot emphasize enough how important it is. One cannot manage without it. I recall one of the last public teachings that I had from Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, the senior teacher to his Holiness the Dalai Lama. I think it was almost his last public teaching. He gave it under the sponsorship of Tibet House in New Delhi, India. It was a seven-day teaching. The translation is actually available in English. It is based on just four stanzas of a spiritual song by the Seventh Dalai Lama.

21 Gelek Rimpoche

[Gelek Rimpoche gave a teaching on this in 2005–2006, and the edited transcript The Four Mindfulnesses was pub- lished in 2009.] Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, commenting on this text, gave a long teaching on guru devotional practice. I think it was the first and second day. During the break he said to me in his own room, “Why are we afraid of talking about gurus so much? There’s nothing to be afraid of. You have to talk about it, because if you don’t talk, nobody will know, and after a little while, probably guru devotional practice will not be considered important anymore and will not even exist.” That’s true. You cannot be afraid of talking about it, because otherwise there will be a huge gap, and then the danger is that everything becomes an intellectual exercise rather than spiritual. This is a sensitive subject and important, so much so that Je Tsongkhapa chose to call it the “root of all development.” If you want to grow a tree or flower, you need the root. Without the root, it cannot grow, right? So anything without the root cannot grow. Why is guru devotion the root? Because the guru is the link between the enlightened society and ourselves. Traditional teachers will give you the example that the enlightened society is like solar energy— the sun’s rays, the guru is like a magnifying glass, and we are like dust or dried grass. In order for that dry grass to catch fire, you need the magnifying glass to focus the sun- light. That’s the reason why the guru is your supreme field of merit. Mind you, after a little while you have to see that person as inseparable from a truly enlightened Buddha. You must make the decision by yourself. Don’t be quick to

22 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS judge. Take your time—but again, don’t take all the time, or you won’t have time to do anything. In the 1100s, a Chinese emperor invited one of the Sakya lamas from Tibet. He arrived in the Chinese capital, and the emperor said, “I have to observe you to see whether you are fit to be my guru or not.” He put him under observation for twelve years. After twelve years, the court’s decision came that he was fit to be guru to the emperor. So the emperor showed up one day and said, “We have checked you very carefully and found you perfectly suitable. Hereby I appoint you as the emperor’s guru.” Now that guru said, “Well, you have observed me for twelve years; now it is my turn to observe you for twelve years to see whether you’re fit to be a disciple or not.” In between that, he died. After he passed away, the Chinese emperor immediately picked the lama’s nephew, who had accompanied his uncle to China, to be his guru without any observation at all, telling him, “Now you’re the one; you’re the only one.” That’s how it happened. If you read Sino-Tibetan history, you see all these interesting things. So don’t over spend the checking time but don’t be too quick to make a judgment, because this is very important. The Tibetan teachers will normally tell you that even the dogs, if you throw food at them, will smell it first and then decide whether to eat it or leave it alone—unless the dogs totally relies on you and believes you. Then they will eat whatever you throw them. But if you are a stranger, the dog will smell it first and check whether it’s edible or not and then make a decision. We have to be better than the dogs. So you have to make your own decision by using those cri-

23 Gelek Rimpoche teria and observing the person. If you don’t, then all these things can happen that happened in the 60s. Everybody followed everything. There were so many Hare Rama’s and Hare Krishna’s everywhere, at every airport, at every place, also, the Bhagawan Rajneesh’s orange disciples. So if you take it like that and swing so far, then no doubt you’ll have controversies at the end. No wonder all those problems came up later. It’s because at first they did not do any observation. These problems create trouble in your spiritual journey. It is a huge obstacle, not a simple obstacle. It not only creates obstacles for you, but it is a big problem for your circle and associates. How can we avoid that? By being observant right from the beginning and not being so quick to make a decision. Don’t take a whole twelve years to do it, but don’t be so quick to make the decision.

How to teach dharma Many of you are going to be spiritual teachers, no doubt about it. The most important thing is that you have something to teach. You must be better than the person you are going to teach; otherwise you are not fit to be their teacher. Selling yourself is not your purpose. Helping others is your goal and purpose. Helping in whatever way you can is important, but your motivation has to be totally altruistic, nothing else. There should not be any agenda. There should not be any manipulation. These are the fundamental vows that one has to commit oneself to if one wants to follow the Buddha’s path. And don’t chase people. In other words, there is no point in becoming another Jehovah’s Witness—you know what I

24 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS mean? That’s not your job; that’s not your duty; that’s not helping; you must know where to draw the line. When somebody is not interested, don’t push it. That is so important. In Jewel Heart people come and people go. We don’t particularly bother. In the case of those who have been the very core group people, if they are not there, we make one phone call to find out if there’s something wrong. Other than that, it’s the individual’s choice wherever they go. We should never chase a person. If they want to go, let them go. If they come back, welcome them. Be very open. Moreover, if you share [the dharma] with other people, there can be no financial considerations whatsoever. There should be no difference between teaching a person who wants to give you a million dollars and a person who gives you a nickel. This is so important. Otherwise you’ll be totally under manipulation. If somebody very wealthy gives you millions of dollars and then says, “If you don’t do this, I’m out,” then fine, let them go. Never hesitate to let people go; never ever hesitate. Think, “That’s fine. Some- how we’ll figure out how to manage.” These are important points from the guru’s point of view. Another thing: you people are looking up at me and I’m looking down, because I am sitting on a chair on a stage. So I could be thinking, “I’m great today, wow.” That is ego. Never ever think that; always remember impermanence; always remember that the moment when you are looking down and three people are looking up is impermanent. Everything changes. These are the criteria, if you going to be a spiritual teacher. In addition to that the most important thing is that you have something to say, something to share,

25 Gelek Rimpoche something to guide. Instead of talking from the philosophical point of view, talk from the practical point of view. You just say something, and people come and listen. If it’s a lecture, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter. But if it’s a teaching, it’s not fine; it does matter.E very single word you say makes a difference. So you are responsible; it does matter. There- fore you should only be interested in serving and helping people. Never insult anybody. Never insult anybody! In Tibet they will tell you, “Never say no,” but that won’t work in America. In Tibet, the tradition is that if you don’t agree, you just keep your mouth shut and don’t say anything. That doesn’t mean you agree. It actually means you do not agree. In the American tradition if you don’t say anything, you have agreed. In Tibet, it’s the other way around. If you don’t endorse it nicely at first, it means you did not agree. Anyway, never be harsh; always be kind and compassionate; never be manipulative. Sometimes you may have to be harsh to some people for their own benefit or for your personal benefit, too. You need the wisdom to be able to discriminate. These are the qualities one has to possess if one is going to be a spiritual master.

Questions and Answers

Audience: I remember about five or six years after I met you, I happened to be talking to Robert Thurman. I wanted to join a school and find a teacher. So I was interviewing him or something. I said, “By the way, I am looking for a teacher. Can you recommend someone?” He said, “I recommend Gelek Rimpoche,” and I said, “Yes, I know him.

26 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS

He lives in Ann Arbor, but I live in New York.” Then he said that there is this traditional Tibetan saying: “It is good to find a guru who lives three mountains and two valleys away from you.” That gives me the idea that probably there were always some traditional problems with guru relationships, is that right?

Rimpoche: Yes, there is a saying in Tibetan that goes, “The guru is like the sun. Don’t go too close or you will get burned.”

Audience: You are saying the student picks the guru and observes the guru and then the guru can accept or reject the student. Why would a guru in light of some of the qualities, like helping people and being compassionate, reject somebody? Is that common?

Rimpoche: Very common, yes. It is nothing personal. Maybe there is no karmic connection. Maybe it’s not right. There can be hundreds of different reasons. I don’t think any good gurus will give up anybody because that’s breaking their vow, so they won’t. But it might not be the right time yet or whatever the reason may be.

Audience: [What does someone do who has had a bad experience with a guru?]

Rimpoche: It is funny. If you look back today at what happened in the sixties and seventies, then you see all these reports and writings and people’s memories of the guru

27 Gelek Rimpoche abuses that took place. But does anybody really talk of the benefits that they got from having a guru? It seems that those who benefitted are definitely there, but they choose to keep their mouths shut. Looking thirty years back, look at the benefits brought by those swamis like Chittananda and Muktananda and all these other “nandas” and also Bhaga- wan Rajneesh [Osho] and, even closer to home, Trungpa Rinpoche. Not so many people talk about that, but you can read their books, which are available everywhere. They will tell you what happened and what benefits people got and how fantastic it was. I don’t read English much. It is very difficult for me. But you just have to look at Trungpa Rinpoche’s Cutting through Spiritual Materialism and books like that. They made a fantastic contribution. I am not familiar that much with Rajneesh’s work, but his books are there, too. But what we hear are just the stories of abuse. They were there, too. But we have to compare and see how much benefit people got as a society and as individuals and how much abuses were there for society and individuals. We should make a fair judgment now, after looking back thirty, forty years. Yes, there were some terrible experiences. Sometimes these are necessary, and sometimes they are totally abuse and taking advantage. But sometimes it is necessary. Look into Milarepa’s life story. There are now several versions of that available in English, as well as his Hundred Thousand Songs. Then you will know that at least in the case of Mil- arepa, it was necessary. I don’t know about anybody else. I’m not here to defend anything. The judgment has to be made by yourself, rather than anybody else. But the ques-

28 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS tion is also how to heal that [abuse]. That depends on what kind of wound you have. Milarepa got healed because of his understanding, his spiritual development, and his meditation. But everybody is not like Milarepa. It’s very hard to do it that way. There’s a rather rough way of healing it, which all of us Eastern people like to do. It comes from the abuses we experienced from gurus or parents. People would like to swallow it and keep quiet and have respect for the elders and parents and gurus. So they say, “Whatever that person does, let him do it,” and they take it and take it and take it. That’s what the Eastern tradition does. I used to get beaten up terribly during my childhood, all the time, and not only by the teachers but even by the attendants and servants! The servants would beat me up all the time. That is how I was brought up. At that time, I was so small I couldn’t challenge them even if I wanted to, and if I went to my parents and complained, all they would say is, “Oh, the good qualities are on the tip of the whip” or something. So instead of getting sympathy you get additional salt put on your wound. So what else could you do? Noth- ing. So you just take it and take it and hope that the pain you are experiencing will be able to purify all our negativities and illnesses and trouble in this in life and everybody else’s trouble, too. That’s what I used to do. [In the monastery], the disciplinary people including the abbot looked the other way, pretending they didn’t see it. But when I got home, I got beat up, so much so I that at certain times I could not ride a horse. In Tibet, in those days, when you traveled, you had to ride a horse. There

29 Gelek Rimpoche were no cars. When I had been lashed, I was all wounded, so I couldn’t sit on the horse. It would bump so much that I had to stand up in the stirrups rather than sitting. That happened very often, especially between the ages of nine or ten to fourteen or fifteen. Then when I became a little bigger, I didn’t challenge them. However I was strong enough that when they started beating me, I could hold them very tight. They would say, “Aren’t you going to let me go?” and I would say, “No, I am sorry.” I held them so tight that they said they couldn’t breathe. So, you simply say sorry very politely but hold tight until you make sure that person will not hit you anymore. If you don’t take it personally, the physical pain will go away. Then you won’t have mental scars. But if you take it personally, then you’re going to get mentally wounded. You think about it: “Wow, how dare they do this? What am I going to do? How am I going to challenge? Wait till I get bigger,” and you will cook up all kinds of schemes. One advantage I have is that I have a lot less anger. People who know me well know I have very little anger. Even at childhood, I was known among friends as the one who never gets angry. I used to get very scared, but I didn’t get angry. Maybe I’m a wimp. But that has been an advantage for me, and that’s why although I did get a lot of childhood abuses, I do not a have mental scars. But we don’t have to do it that rough Eastern way. It is not in Western culture. Actually, most healing is done by understanding, and I think this is the best way. You need to look carefully. Some gurus are genuine, and some are not. I think you can definitely confront [a guru who does not act

30 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS properly]. I don’t think anything is wrong with that. With a genuine idea and honesty and straightforwardness, you can talk to that person. You can talk privately or publicly, whatever you want. I think definitely you can talk about it and find out how to heal it. The way I was healed was by understanding and by not taking it personally. But when you’re talking about guru abuses here, particularly if it is about sexual abuse, that’s a totally different story. I think it depends on what the nature of the abuse is. One advantage of being a good human being and intelligent person is that you can always find a way to personal healing. That is extremely important. So, can you be angry with that person? That’s a big question. If I have a choice, I will not be angry. Am I sad? Yes. Will I dislike it? Sure. Will I avoid it? Sure. But I don’t want to be angry. Particularly I don’t want to be angry with the guru. If it is guru abuse, then it may be a little bit better, but if you really get angry with that big guru, it is probably one of the heaviest things. You can pull yourself away from enlightenment. So somehow we have to find the healing without getting angry. But you don’t have to appreciate bad behavior either.

Audience: Do you think it’s adequate to have the books as the guru or do you need personal contact with a person?

Rimpoche: According to the Buddha’s teaching, personal contact with the guru is necessary. The Buddha very strongly emphasized that book knowledge cannot substitute for a real guru. And a living guru is considered important for

31 Gelek Rimpoche the individual. It is not that the guru must be alive all the time, but a living guru is necessary. It is emphasized in the Buddha’s tradition.

Audience: In Tricycle magazine, Thurman is interviewing His Holiness, and they are talking about this subject. Thur- man is asking about the doctrine that you have to view the teacher as the Buddha. His Holiness says he thinks that this doctrine has been abused in Tibet.

Rimpoche: Yes, that is what I’m saying right from the beginning. Yes, it has been abused, but can you do without it? Probably not. There are a number of reasons, but the most important one is that not only is the guru a link between the enlightened beings and yourself, but at the point when you become a Buddha—and this may be news to many people—first you become enlightened as the mind part of the Buddha, rather than the physical part of the Buddha. And that happens in the nature of the guru’s mind. That is the Mahamudra business. When you first become enlightened, you do so in the nature of the guru’s mind. That is why one cannot do without that. That’s the bottom line, and that is why it is sensitive and why it’s very important. Truly one cannot do without it. Of course it has been abused, no doubt about it. And a number of people are abusing it all the time. That’s not good. It’s terrible. Is that abuse necessary? Most probably not, unless a person like Milarepa meets a person like Marpa. That’s a different story. Otherwise it’s not necessary. Did I see many guru abuses in Tibet? No, I did not. Yes, I

32 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS got beat up all the time, but they had no agenda of their own. They beat me up because I was naughty; they wanted to improve me, and perhaps they didn’t know any better way of doing it.

Audience: Can you say more about how one gets enlightened in the nature of the guru’s mind?

Rimpoche: First, when you become enlightened you become enlightened in the guru’s mind form. At that level there is no separation between the guru and the Buddha. Buddha is guru and guru is Buddha. That’s why we look at the guru even now as being like a Buddha or as oneness and inseparable from the Buddha. Although the guru devotional practice is introduced as the first step, do you really have to stick with this point and not move on until you have really developed that within you? The answer is no. Not only that, it is recommended not to do it. Otherwise it can take a whole life for somebody to sort it out, and if you cannot do anything else because you’re stuck on that point, it is not good. You can waste your life. So that is why it is recommended to develop the guru devotion simultaneously with the next practices.

VERSE 2: APPRECIATING HUMAN LIFE

LEN CHIK NYE PAY DEL WAY TEN ZANG DI SHIN TU NYE KA DON CHEN SHE GYUR NE NYIN TSEN KUN TU NYING PO LEN PAY LO

33 Gelek Rimpoche

GYUN CHE ME PAR KYE WAR CHIN GYI LOB

Precious human life gained but once has great potential but is easily lost. Empower me to remember this constantly and to think day and night of taking its essence.

The second point is to meditate on your life. This is the second subject after the meditation on the guru or along with meditation on the guru.

What is my life? Life is important. It is not a question of “who am I, and what am I doing?” It is not a question of “where am I going, or where have I come from?” It is a question of “what is my life?” That is the important point. Do I have to be worried? Maybe not. Do I have to be concerned? Yes, I have to be aware. What kind of life is this? The traditional teachers used to call this a life of leisure and endowment. We may not realize this, because we take it for granted. We don’t even bother to think twice about this life. If you really think what kind of life we have, it is a tremendously wonderful life, and not just because it is a human life. I’m talking about you, the individual, your life. You may think it is terrible. You may think, “I have blown all my opportunities.” You may think, “I have wasted my life,” but your life is wonderful and great. A number of people I know, particularly in the West, do not appreciate their life at all. Really, they simply take it for granted. They do not even bother to think about it. As a consequence they think, “I have not done

34 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS this. I have not done that. Everything should be better, but it didn’t happen. It’s going the wrong way; it’s terrible; it’s miserable.” This is how we can get into a lot of trouble, simply because we didn’t think carefully about our life. Je Tsongkhapa called this life “more important than a wish-fulfilling jewel.” We can better understand this in the West by talking about the magic genie lamp. You know, there are kids’ stories of genies in the lamp. You rub the lamp, and Boom! Some spirit comes up that fulfills whatever wishes you have. Even if those stories were true, our life is more important and more valuable than having a magical genie in the lamp!

Leisures and endowments Buddha calls this the life of leisure and endowment. He gives eighteen qualities. I’m not going to count them all here. If you want to read, you can probably read the Odyssey to Freedom or any other lam rim book. If you look in your life, you have them. A human life that is rich in both leisure and opportunity is called a precious human life. [See Gelek Rimpoche, Lam Rim teachings, Volume 2] You have an extraordinary life and you have to meditate on that. Point one for your meditation is the recognition of life itself. A lot of people may think, “Why do I have to recognize my life? I have it. It is with me, and I’m born with it. It is mine until I die. Why should I think about it? It’s there.” But we do have to think about it in order to appreciate it. It is important to meditate here. You have to do both analytical meditation, which I call active meditation, and concentrated meditation, which I call passive meditation. If

35 Gelek Rimpoche you don’t do the active meditation, you won’t understand. You may hear and read about it and even think about it, but you don’t get it. But if you do the active meditation about your life within the framework of the eighteen qualities, then no matter what people say, you will appreciate your life. Someone may say, “This is a degenerated age and terrible.” But you will realize, “For me it has never been as great as today, and for you, too, it has never been as great as today, never ever.” That’s because of the opportunity and capability of this life. Yes, we are very open-minded, and we are happy to talk about it. But if this were the late fifties or even the early sixties, talking like this would not be possible. Even if I had come here, I would not have been able to talk to you the way I do today. It would not have been possible for you to listen and think and talk about it the way you do today, because of the times and the conditions. That is the opportunity and openness we have today. But even if you are completely open, if you don’t have a good path, then your openness can be filled with all kinds of junk, all kinds of worms, and then you have to open the can at your own risk. So you need a great spiritual path to fill up that openness, a spiritual path that may not only make a difference in your life but is also very solid. I’m not doing Buddhist propaganda, believe me, but the path that Buddha shared with us is very solid. Buddha made each and every step that we introduce in the sixty-four steps of the Odyssey to Freedom. Look and see how solid they are, absolutely! Even with guru yoga, which is so controversial and difficult, here in the meditation on the preciousness of human

36 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS life, they give you the quality of good gurus so you have a point of reference as to what is good or bad. You have points by which you can judge. Yes, it is true, you also have a tremendous amount of confusion, and on top of that confusion, some gurus will say, “Well, I know everything very well, and you know nothing about it, so you’d better listen to me.” That adds up more confusion. However, here [in the meditation about precious human life], you have a point of reference. Without that, you almost have to follow everything that the gurus say. If the wind is blowing from the east, all the flags will go ptah ptah ptah to the west. If the wind shifts, then the flag will go ptah ptah ptah to the east. You can’t stand on your own, because you don’t have solidness within you. Your path, your understanding, and your way of observing guru devotional practice are on shaky ground.

Quality and capability Likewise in your recognition of your life, you need solid understanding. With that you look at your quality of life; you look at the capability of your life compared with any other life that you see around. Compare your own life with that of your own cat or dog or snake or pig or horse or bird, whatever you are keeping around. Compare your life with that of the insects and the ghosts, if you can see them. They don’t have the quality of the life we have. Tradition- ally people say, “Even dogs who could hear the dharma are fortunate.” Yes, that may be so. They have the benefit of hearing OM MANI PADME HUM or whatever, but I do not expect the cats and dogs to think and do an active

37 Gelek Rimpoche meditation of analyzing and then a passive meditation of concentration and make this part of their life. They cannot do it, no matter how intelligent they might be, really. We all know that we are different.S o we have to recognize and appreciate that and try to make best use of the importance and capability of this life. When I say “quality of life,” you may get the idea of having a lot of money and comfort, maybe having three or four cars to drive, one or two planes, and a boat on the lake or something. I am not talking about that kind of quality at all. I’m talking about the quality of being able to commu- nicate, to understand. No other life has that quality. It is an extraordinary quality. You may presume that extra-terres- trials or aliens like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Star Trek have better intelligence and better scientific development than we do. You may be surprised. They probably don’t have the spiritual opportunity that we have. I doubt they have it. We will know sooner or later. I don’t expect it will take very long now until we encounter those different people or beings or whatever. We are bound to encounter them. Some are definitely better, but most of them are not. That’s what’s going to happen. So whatever we have is fantastic. We have to recognize that. To be able to understand and think and make a difference in our lives is the most important quality we have. Compare your own life even with that of your friends. You may want the person you love and care about to have some kind of solid spiritual path. You want him or her to read the books. You want him or her to come and listen and observe, but they won’t. They may not object, they may

38 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS tell you that you can do whatever you want to do, but they will say, “Don’t push me; don’t force me to be there.” That is the difference between you and that person. That person did not have the opportunity. Although these opportunities are right in front of them, some people will not and cannot take the opportunity. Maybe they have valid reasons, but whatever the reasons may be, somehow the person can’t link with the karma to be able to have this. It’s really true. That’s how it goes. There are some people who have a very open mind, but are doubtful of everything. You can doubt until you die. Every single thing that you come across is doubtful because you cannot resolve it. But you are not like that. You are very open-minded. You are observing and thinking. You are looking forward to benefiting yourself, and you want to benefit others through this. So you have a better opportunity than those others who may be your roommate or whatever. That’s the important point here. It’s a tiny little thing, but it really shows you that you have the opportunity. You have to appreciate that. You have to recognize that. You have to acknowledge that. It is the opportunity of studying and learning and practicing what Buddha shared and experienced. That is what being a Buddhist is all about. It is not a club that you become a member of and then you get certain membership privileges. If Buddhism were like that, it wouldn’t make a difference. Some people think that because they are Bud- dhist, they have to wear some kind of different costume and a mala around their neck or put their hair up or down or shave it or whatever. That’s not the point. The point really is to be able to take the Buddha’s experience, apply it to our

39 Gelek Rimpoche lives, and see if it makes a difference and helps us. This is the opportunity we have.

We all make mistakes Yes, each and every one of us has made a tremendous number of mistakes in our lives. But who has not? Everybody has, including Buddha and Gandhi. There is no one who did not make mistakes in their lives. But knowing that I made a mistake itself is a great quality. It is not the cause of sadness. It should not be a cause of depression. It should be a cause of happiness. Acknowledging and knowing gives you the opportunity to correct the mistake. What is Enlightenment? It is nothing but mistakes that we have cor- rected. Through doing that, life becomes perfect. How can you become perfect without making a mistake? Each and every one of us has made mistakes, and we constantly go on making mistakes. Some make huge ones, some make little ones, but we all do make mistakes. Do you know the expression “I am a Buddhist, not a Buddha”? It tells you that just making a mistake should not be the cause of going into a depression. The lack of appreciating your life is what causes depressions. You just don’t know what you have. Traditional Chinese teachers used to say, “If you feel you are terrible, take off all your clothes and look in the mirror and see how good you are.” This is a metaphor for seeing the goodness within you and appreciating that. But in our case, no matter how much goodness we have, we keep on ignoring it completely and counting all the bad things. Naturally that will give you a long face. Naturally you will have depression. What else do

40 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS you expect? You are depriving yourself of the opportunity, of the true reality. There is not a single human being who does not have good qualities, no matter how bad they might be. Believe me, even Hitler had good qualities. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been a human being. However, he did not utilize his good qualities but rather his bad qualities. That’s why we have a bad picture of him now. You can easily put little horns on top of his head. We are doing the same thing to ourselves—forgetting the good things we did, and bringing all our bad things up. We curse ourselves and abuse ourselves. Making yourself humble is no problem. But if you abuse yourself, it is terrible. That gives you tremendous problems during your path and during your practice. That’s why this issue is introduced right here [at the beginning]. The first thing you have to do is to make yourself a happy person. If you are not a happy person, then forget about the practice of Buddhism. So look carefully at all these eighteen qualities—the time, the opportunity, the teachings, and so on.

Opportunity for achievements In addition to those, we have the opportunity to do whatever we want to do. There is tremendous scientific and economic development. There is also a tremendous amount of spiritual development. So whatever you want to do, you can do. Look back in history: who with a life as a human being has had an opportunity like we do today? In good old Tibet, yes, we had tremendous opportunity for spiritual development, but we did not have the opportunity to

41 Gelek Rimpoche utilize scientific products. I do remember that the first time I saw a ballpoint pen, I thought it was magic. You didn’t have to poke something into that ink. The ink comes rolled into the ballpoint pen! It was magic to me. That tells you how much scientific development went on in Tibet at that time. We often say that our modern scientific development is a miracle. You can make the room temperature hot or cold. We have beautiful electric lights. It’s a miracle because human beings made it. It is a human achievement. We call its scientific achievement, but it’s a human achievement. The spiritual achievement the Buddha got—or for that matter any other great spiritual being—is a human achievement, too. Buddha was a human being who was able to experience life and see the difficulties and learn how to handle them. He found the answer to suffering, and that is also a human achievement. A human body, a human life has been capable of delivering that. It is the same human life that you and I have. You have to meditate on that. You have to argue with yourself, saying, “No I don’t have it. I’m stupid, I’m uneducated, illiterate, barbarian, backwards, and dirty.” That’s what the Chinese used to say about us Tibetans. They counted five negative qualities. That was not even the Communists, but it was already in Chinese school textbooks in 1901 and 1902. So you can argue with yourself about all that, and find out whether it is true or not. Through your own argument within yourself, you will draw the conclusion that you are a reasonably good person, and when you realize that, then you do a passive meditation on the result of your active meditation: “I am a reasonably good person, and I have that opportunity.”

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In the West you had a great scientific thing going on, however, your spiritual path was lacking. But you look at today, at this time, and you have everything available, scientific development, industrial development, and all spiritual things are available. A city like New York is like a shopping mall for spiritual things. There is everything you want: Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist, and within that Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug—whatever you want. Everything you want is there in between the good, the bad, and the ugly. All of them are available here. The opportunity is there, an opportunity that we never had before. It is there today, in our life. Individual people such as yourself are definitely in contact with the buddha dharma, the Buddhist teacher, the Buddha’s teaching. The Buddha’s teaching is based on the Buddha’s personal development and supported by hundreds and thousands of lineage masters who have gained the same experience and commented on how they did it. You are in contact with such a living tradition, and that tells you it is definitely a great opportunity. That’s why it is important for us to recognize that and not to take it for granted.

Making the best use of life Whether we utilize the great opportunity of this life or not is up to us. Otherwise from this life’s point of view, it is the same life, with the same capability. We have to make best use of it. If we cannot, we are wasting it. How we can make best use of it? First, we have to know that we have it and, second, we deal with laziness, the obsta-

43 Gelek Rimpoche cle to our not making the best use of this life. Traditional Tibetan teachers used to give a funny example here: A person finds a bag full of gold dust. He doesn’t know what it is, but picks it up and carries is around with him. The bag happens to have a hole, so the more he walks, the more gold dust goes out of that hole. By the end, when he reaches his destination and realizes that it was gold dust, the bag is empty. That’s very true in our life. Maybe we do or maybe we don’t recognize the value of this life, but every minute we are spending that precious opportunity. The precious life is dripping out just like the gold dust out of the hole in the bag. We know it goes that way, right? It was not long ago when I was twenty. It was yesterday, right? That itself will tell you. Without our recognizing, life goes down. When I first came to America, I enjoyed watching one of those soap operas called Days of Our Lives. They had that hourglass, the sand in the bottle, and when you turn that upside down, the sand starts going down. That’s how it goes with our life. In addition, Tsongkhapa says, “Precious human life is gained but once.” You don’t always find it. Why once? After our death we don’t necessarily become another human being. There’s no guarantee. Actually this life is extremely expensive, not from the point of view of dollars, but from the point of good karma. It is one of the most expensive lives there are in the circle of lives. It is even more expensive than a samsaric god’s life. Our life of openness is much more expensive than that extreme, closed life. Yes, it is up to your mind if you would like to be open or shut down. But it is not one hundred percent in our hand. Karma makes a big difference. Because of karma, some people sim-

44 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS ply cannot afford to have this life. So the first point is the recognition of this life. You have to meditate on that and observe your life. Do an active meditation on what kind of life you have. This is not about how many lungs you have and how big your body is. That’s not the point. The point is your mind: how intelligent you are, what opportunity you have, what you can you do with this life, what you can achieve. The Buddha gave the answer: there is nothing that you cannot achieve within this life—nothing, materially or spiritually. Then next time when someone tells you that you are not a good person, you know that you actually are. You don’t have to be like a flag changing directions with the wind. You can stand where you are because you have done that active meditation and you have realized and you know it. You have gained experience. That’s why you don’t move to this side or that side, but stand in the middle. Then you add up on top of that. You analyze how expensive this life is, and you ask yourself if you can afford to have another one. And if not, what can you do? It is important to remain within the framework. You have to get the point, so much so that sometimes you can openly see how wrong you have been. When you really see that, you can no longer afford to ignore the opportunity. You have clearly seen it. So the conclusion of this meditation is the last line of this verse: “Empower me to remember this constantly and to think day and night of taking its essence.” You need to remember that conclusion constantly, but just reminding yourself is not enough. You have to adopt it!

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Meditating on precious human life Perfect meditation is the combination of passive and active meditation. Active meditation finds the real essence of the subject on which you meditate, like for example, our life and its opportunity. Passive meditation will make it part of your life, so that whenever you are wasting time, or whenever you feel you are terrible or miserable or a failure in life because you cannot pay your bills, or because you cannot do this or that, or because you think you have neither spiritual nor material development, that passive meditation will tell you, “Hey you have a wonderful life. It is part of you. You have a life that is capable of whatever you want to do. Even if you fail on one single point, you can always start again. You can achieve; you can do right.” The passive meditation on that point will balance you so that you don’t go haywire. This is just giving you one example, but it is the beginning of looking at the spiritual path. Right from here we go up to the Buddha level. At each and every point, we do the perfect meditation, active and passive both. The active will make you understand, and the passive will make it part of your life. That is special; that is why it’s called gold pure. Anyway, that’s a good enough propaganda. Not really propaganda—it is actually true! So you pray, “May I be able to recognize this. May I be able to take advantage of this.” Right now we cannot really do it, so we pray. That’s why you have this prayer at every verse: “May I have the inspiration to make the best use of this life, day and night, and may I be blessed to be able to have that all the time.”

46 VERSE 3: IMPERMANENCE AND INTRODUCING KARMA

LU SOK YO WA CHU YI CHU BUR ZHIN NYUR DU JIK PAY CHI WA DREN PA DANG SHI WAY JE SU LU DANG DRIP MA ZHIN KAR NAK LE DRE CHI ZHIN DRANG WA LA

I must remember that death is quick to strike, for spirit quivers in flesh like a bubble in water; and after death one’s good and evil deeds trail after one like the shadow trails the body.

Death [The first two lines of] this verse really give you the gross state of impermanence—death. No matter how healthy we might be today, no matter how wealthy we might be, death is very definite. We all will go through that. There will be no one who will not die. Let’s say, “A person like Buddha, a completely developed person, what about him?” The truth is, he is not here today. He’s gone. He died. We talk about Buddha and that he said this and did that, as though he has just gone to the bathroom, as though he is going to come back from the bathroom and do something! But the truth is that not only did he die, but he died two thousand five hundred years ago. So even a Buddha of that level, a spiritually developed person, will die. He did die. And we all will die. If you look back in history, there are a tremendous number of highly developed people. And none of them are living today. The

47 Gelek Rimpoche conclusion is that at the end, it’s all gone and dead. I may be wondering, can I do something to live forever through spiritual means? The conclusion here is: “No, because nobody else did it. So how can I? There is no way, not through any power, scientific, military, or whatever. I cannot go on thinking that I can live forever.” We have to go. Our body is such that it has its limitations, and that’s why we have to go. You may call it a “manufacturer’s defect” but it is not made to last three hundred years. Everything is going to fall apart—everything! You can fix a little bit here and there and keep on fixing it, but after a little while, so many things go wrong that you can’t fix it anymore. Not only will we definitely die, but also I think we have to pass a resolution and say, “Yes, we are all subject to death, and I am subject to death—to be dead.” I’m sure a lot of people don’t like this. They don’t want to talk about death. They want to pretend they are going to live forever. But that doesn’t help. It is better that we know. It is better that we convince ourselves. Actually, we all know that we are going to die. There’s been no one who can think, “I am not going to die.” Maybe somebody thinks the scientists may be able to invent something. We may prolong life a little bit, yes, but how long? They may think, forever. But that is not going to happen in our life, at least not in my lifetime. So it is still true: we all definitely do die. So let that strong convincing resolution sink in. If you meditate on this, watch your own mind. You will find that your perspective, the way you look at life, will change. Even now we know we are going to die, but somehow deep down somewhere, we plan to live forever, and we

48 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS function according to that. But when I pass a resolution saying, “I’m going to die,” that it is definite that I am going to die, that will change my perspective and perception of life, my planning, my look at life. You will have a big surprise how differently you will see things.

What is life? Actually, what is life? It is the combination of two identities—the physical identity, our human body, and the mental identity. When these two identities come together, that is the time we are in life. When we lose the mental identity—when the mental identity separates from the physical identity—we are no longer in life. I am thinking here of the endless knot that Tibetans draw. I think it is the diagram of the traveling of the mental identity. The physical identity is running in one direction, and the mental identity is going in another direction. That mental identity crosses the path of the physical identity, which is our body, our genes, the physical body passed from parents to children. That continuation goes in one direction, and the mental identity—the occupying mind— comes from another direction. They are crisscrossing. When they are stuck together, that’s the point where we have life. For us, that life has been enriched by these eighteen qualities and opportunities. When that body goes away, you never know what physical identity that mental identity is going to cross next, what kind of body you’re going to get. It is sort of circling around there—like the endless knot. If you consider all the different pathways, it will show you every possibility of that mental

49 Gelek Rimpoche identity traveling everywhere, and how it can be connected with a dog’s body or a cat’s or a snake’s or a cockroach’s— even with a hell realms being, like the cold hell realms, the hot hell realms, the hungry ghost realms, and so on. The possibilities are endless. Of course, there is also a chance of connecting with a human body. You need the right opportunity, and this is very rare. That’s why a human life is so difficult to find. And whatever life we do have is impermanent. We may have a permanent place to live, a permanent address, even a permanent driver’s license. But even that we have to renew every five years at least. So it is not permanent, definitely not. When we were young, we looked different than how we look now. That tells us we’re not permanent. You may say, “Now I am matured and grown.” But that shows you the impermanence. That’s why you matured and grew, and that’s why you decay. Everything is impermanent, whether it is a place or country or monument or human being. As a matter of fact, we change every minute, actually every second. We live in an ever-changing existence. Even the mind changes. How many times do we say, “I have changed my mind”? We change our body, we change our hairstyle, we change our dress, we change our looks. Even if you don’t do anything at all, you still keep changing all the time. Sometimes we may not even recognize our old photograph. We can only recognize it through a mental acknowledgment. How many times do we show people the photo and say, “That was me!” and the other person says, “That’s you? Wow!” That’s how our physical identity changes. But the biggest change is what we call death. We are all going to go through that.

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There are four impermanent things that are important in our life: every meeting ends in separation; everything that is high must go down; every accumulation ends in exhaustion; and every birth ends in death. Death is the biggest totaling up of your balance sheet. It is the last number you see. The big total of life is death. Whether it is wealth or money or whatever it may be, the conclusion of every accumulation is exhaustion. You have no more left. The conclusion of having a companion is separation. The conclusion of becoming high and big and important is collapsing down. That is true, unfortunately. That is why it’s called samsara. I don’t want to make you feel sad. You can also say it the other way around, you know: the end of death is rebirth; the end of being poor is becoming rich; the end of separation is union; and the end of going down and touching the bottom is that you are going to come up and be happy. That is the reality of existence, not only our life, but all existence. It is true reality. We can intervene and do all kinds of things; we can alter and change and extend it. Everything is possible, but the reality is that that’s the nature of things. That’s why the Buddha says there’s nothing good in samsara. That’s why Buddha says everything is meaningless and those who think there is meaning and value [in impermanent things] are making a mistake.

Like a bubble in water Life itself is actually just like bubble in water. It is there for a very short period. I’m talking from the background of reincarnation. When you look at your life and lives with the background of reincarnation, your perspective of life will

51 Gelek Rimpoche be very different. Without the viewpoint of reincarnation, you are looking only from birth to death—a very narrow scope. But the moment you think of reincarnation, your perspective is extended tremendously. Your way of dealing with life, your way of thinking, your way of practicing, even your way of living changes completely because you’re seeing the bigger picture. One circle, two circles, three circles, four circles, five circles—it goes around. Sometimes at the end of life, one doesn’t say goodbye to the other. You can say, “See you again,” or “So long.” That’s a big difference. So, the life that is between birth and death is really just like a bubble in the water. It’s not going to last very long. When you put effort in, it has to be great effort. Your goal is to make the total water pure and good in quality—drink- able and useful, rather than just trying to make the bubble shine. The bubbles come and go, but the water will remain. That’s why it is important for us to remember that life is like a bubble in the water. It doesn’t last very long. We all will die sooner or later. Death is definite. There is no certainty when we are going to die. These two are most important things to remember in our life when we are wasting our time. Death is definite. Sooner or later it will come.

The Seventh Dalai Lama says:

The moment you are born you do not have the right to remain even for a single minute. We are running like a galloping horse towards death. Though we may call ourselves “living beings,” we are all earmarked to die. How sad it is.

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Gunthang Rinpoche, an Amdo lama, says:

No matter who you look at—the higher people, the rich people, the great monks and lamas, or the poor people, the homeless—no matter who you look at, they may have a slightly different way of moving their physical body, but all of them spend their life with suffering. They are all equal in having suffering.

It’s true. Although we have the impression that if you’re rich, you don’t have much suffering, it’s not true. Actually the rich have more suffering than we do. You and I have to worry about a hundred dollars. They have to worry about millions of dollars. It’s much more, really true! The rich have their own difficulties, and the poor have their own difficulties. The poor people worry where they are going to sleep and where their next meal is coming from. The rich have to worry where they are going to get their next Porsche, and how they are going to pay their bills. This is samsara. Everybody has his or her own suffering. Kids have their own suffering. Teenagers have their own suffering. Grown- up people have their own suffering. The old generation has its own suffering. Maybe it looks nice; everybody makes it looks better. You wear colorful clothes and put on make-up and lipstick, right? You make it look nice because you want to hide; you don’t want to look horrible. You know you’re going to look bad because of all the suffering. That’s why we hide. It’s true.

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Death doesn’t come with a warning We said before that though we take it for granted, our life does not last forever. All of a sudden, something goes wrong. That is reality. There is no pre-announcement, unless you are born in the northern continent. That place exists in the Hindu-Buddhist mythology, or maybe it is reality; who knows? Traditional Buddhist texts divide the universe of existence into four directions: east, south, north, and west. In the center is Mount Meru. All of us in this world are supposed to be on the southern continent called Jambudvipa. Some people will say India is the southern continent, and America is the northern continent. There may be truth in that to certain extent, but I think the reality is that we are all in the southern continent. Vasubhandu mentioned in the Abhidharmakosha, the metaphysical text, that the difference between the southern and northern continents is that whenever it is the middle of the night on one, it is the middle of the day on the other. When the sun rises in one, it sets in the other. That describes America and India almost exactly. It is the exact thing, so maybe there is some truth in that view. However, I don’t think it is really meant that way. We all belong to the southern continent. It is said that in the northern continent, people’s lives are fixed to a lifespan of one thousand years. We are not in that category. Also, at the time of death, there is an announcement coming from somewhere in the air, saying, “So-and-So is going to be sick within the next days and is going to die within a certain period.” That doesn’t apply to us here, so I don’t think we are on the northern continent. Here we don’t get a warning. Actually we do, but we don’t recognize it. We can see

54 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS that our hair starts to get a little gray. Also we may begin to wear glasses or hearing aids and some additional make-up. I think these are the signals, but we either don’t recognize them, or we want to ignore them until it becomes something painful, something we cannot handle. Something suddenly pops up, and then we say it is a fatal disease or something, and that’s how we go. In many cases, there is no certainty. All of a sudden something happens. Still we always have that idea that nothing is going to happen to us now, not at this moment. The earlier teachers used to say, “The mind that thinks ‘I will not die today’ is with everybody, including the person who is on his or her deathbed in the eleventh hour.” Even then they think, “I will not die today.” It is very common for us. We go and visit people in the hospital. We all know that person is going [to die], and that person knows it, too, but they will talk about who is coming to see them next week or next weekend. So that a very important point for us to remember.

Rimpoche: What happened to your foot?

Audience member: I was playing squash during the warm- up and I pulled these tendons.

Rimpoche: Did you get any warnings that this was going to happen? See, that is what we have been talking about here, right this moment.

Audience member: It was like a rubber band snapping.

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Rimpoche: So, a big surprise, like a rubber band snapping. That’s exactly what happens. None of our troubles comes with a warning; particularly death doesn’t come with a warning. You never know when it is going to come, truly. You can see a doctor and have a check-up, and the doctor can say that you are absolutely fine, and then your car gets into a deadly crash. That happens. All of this happens because this is our life in this southern continent. So we don’t want to die; we want we come back and meet everybody with a big smile. But no matter whatever happens, we are going to die. There will be no one left.

The sufferings of death I’m sure I told you a number of times that at death, you are sort of going back to the process where you came from, without control. At death, I don’t have a choice about what my condition will be at that time. I will be like a little feather in the middle of a cyclone. Will I be carried by this huge storm? I have no idea where the storm will drop me. Our mind or consciousness leaves this body. Our body and mind are separating, and we become a formless person. Since we don’t have a physical body, the laws of physics are not applicable to us. It is almost like the dream stage. When we are dreaming, we go everywhere suddenly. Suddenly you flip-flop, and you are in Manhattan. You don’t really need to travel there. That happens all the time in our dreams, as we all know. But death is not a dream. It is real. That’s what’s going to happen. Nothing is certain. Nothing has been pre-planned. There’s no program that we can follow, virtually none. Sometimes that separation of the body and the mind

56 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS is not that easy, because the four elements in our body are disconnecting. The perceptions we go through can be hor- rifying. The sounds we hear can be terrible. I’m not saying it definitely will be horrible, but it can be. I noticed in America many teachers don’t want to talk about the bad things that can happen in the dying process, because people won’t like it. I don’t think that’s the point. Sometimes if we don’t tell what we know about it, we may be doing a dis- service. Yes, we would like to have a good death. We would definitely like everything to be smooth and wonderful, but that doesn’t always happen. Many people die peacefully and wonderfully. But many people die a little violently, yelling, screaming, and kicking. When you see this, you know the perception of that traveling individual is projected by their physical gestures, as long as they can move. Thereafter, we don’t know. We have no way of knowing. Sometimes it can be horrible because of the reverse effect of the four elements. I just mentioned to you that it can feel like being caught in a cyclone. Likewise, it can feel like being caught in the midst of burning fires. There are fires to your right, left, behind, and in front, all directions, and you are right in the middle. Sometimes you are in the middle of some kind of huge body of water. In cyclones there are floods, too. Every sound that you hear, because of it being internal sound, is much more powerful and stronger than external sounds. I’m quite sure at least a couple of people have had that experience while using chemicals. Then you know how much that intensifies the senses. I did have an experience like that when somebody gave me a little bhang without my

57 Gelek Rimpoche knowing. I’m not denying I took it. I am not saying I did not inhale. I did eat it and heard people talking in the other room almost like they were talking inside my ear! And the whites were so white and the greens, so green! It was very much intensified. But sometimes, everything is not so wonderful. Sometimes you perceive bad things, too. You must keep that in your mind, because otherwise mostly you are going to hear that it is all wonderful and beautiful. That’s because people don’t want to talk about bad things. They are afraid people will get upset. One time I remember a few years ago, I did a work- shop with Professor Thurman on the “Art of Dying.” It was in the Crown Plaza Hotel in New York. After one of the talks, a lady came up to me and said, “Until I read Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, I was very happy. But after reading that, I was horrified and have no more peace.” I don’t remember what I told her, some polite thing. But the truth is that people will always talk to you about beautiful stuff, because that’s what you like to hear. But we are here to try to help ourselves. Otherwise, I just say, “You are beautiful,” and you say, “I’m wonderful,” and we clap our hands together and say “Bye, bye.” But that won’t help anybody. So I feel responsible. Sometimes you have to talk about bad things, too. They do happen. I’m not saying it’s going to happen to all of us, hopefully not. But there is a possibility. Don’t ever forget that. Keep it in mind. Try to avoid it as much as you can. Your tomorrow is being shaped and pre- pared by you today. No one has made our future. No one planned it. It is we ourselves who are shaping our future. We

58 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS are shaping it today, and we can make a difference to ourselves. I’m talking about the process alone. I’m not talking about what happens thereafter. So we think and meditate, “This is my situation. I recognize it and pray that I may be able to help myself. Please bless me to be able to do that.”

How to meditate on the points I want to remind you that although we are talking, what we are really doing is giving you meditation material. If you forget that, you are totally losing your grounding. Actually, what we are doing here is giving you an analytical meditation—a way of analyzing to find the essence of each point. I want you to remember that dharma practice is two things: meditating actively to analyze and meditating passively to pick it up as a part of your life. If you don’t do the active meditation, you will not know what to do. Many of the people in the United States are interested in dharma, but they are simply interested in sitting down and closing their eyes and sitting there like lizards. That gets you nowhere. You have to know your subject. You don’t have to be scholar, but you have to know the subject, go into the subject, come to a conclusion. Then take your conclusion and compare it with the conclusions given by the experienced people and see whether it’s right or wrong. If it’s not right, find out where it is wrong. If it is right, do a passive meditation on that so that it becomes part of your life. Je Tsongkhapa gives the points, and we try to get to the same conclusion as Je Tsongkhapa by using our mind, by analyzing and knowing it really well. Then meditating makes a difference. Otherwise you are just sitting and

59 Gelek Rimpoche focusing or you are simply analyzing. If meditating and thinking don’t go together, it will be simply like reading a philosophical book or studying philosophy. So dharma practice is neither philosophy nor simply sitting. We have to do both together. The fundamental principle we are trying to establish within ourselves by this meditation is impermanence. Our body is impermanent. Our life is impermanent. Everything is impermanent. Once you are able to establish that, then the question rises within ourselves: What do I do? Is death the end of everything, or what is it? Also the question will come: When is it going to happen? We begin to give room for these questions to play within our mind, because we are beginning to accept that one day we’re really going to go. Let it be a hundred years from now; that doesn’t matter. Then there is another problem. You may look at your own death like some sort of show or event, like watching a movie. If you look that way, you begin to disconnect from your own death. We have to make sure we don’t do that. If you do, then the benefit of meditating on death will not help you at all. It just becomes another show going on over there. It may be a continuation of Days of Our Lives. I’m the watcher; I’m the everlasting observer. If that happens, the meditation is disconnected and impersonalized, and that’s not good. That will not help at all; it will only create more worry. So, it must be personalized. It is really going to be me dying. You have to establish that within yourself. You may be wondering why are we doing this? What the hell is this for? We have to do this because our laziness is so strong. It comes in so many ways, under so many pretexts, and we

60 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS have no way of handling our laziness. This meditation is the best way to push ourselves strongly, honestly, and deeply in our spiritual practice. There is a little booklet, translated from the Tibetan into English, called Heart Spoon of Impermanence. It is a meditation about what happens at death. It doesn’t have the dying stages as such, but goes through what happens when you get sick and you lie there and can’t move until, at the end, death comes. It gives you a beautiful meditation on death in verse form. If you practice this, I would like to warn you: Do it seriously. Don’t just fool around. If you don’t do it seriously, but just read it as knowledge, it won’t work. It will be impersonalized and then it will not help you. It is as if the best tool has become nothing more than a glass of water. It is like you have been taking antibiotics every day. Then one day there is a big problem: Your immune system has adapted to the antibiotics, and so, you have wasted all the pills you took and wasted your body too, right? Likewise, if you waste the opportunity to meditate on death seriously, then the best tools available have been wasted. The actual problem has not been handled. That’s what I wanted to warn you about. So if you want to meditate on death, don’t fool around. If you do it seriously, you will almost get afraid, thinking, “Oh, am I going to wake up tomorrow morning, or will I be dead?” Very often you will think, “Wow, I woke up! Okay, I am alive. But will I be able to go to bed tonight, or will I be dead before that?” This thought will automatically come in without being triggered by any incident, such as the news that somebody you know well has suddenly died.

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When this idea automatically gets into your head every day, it shows that this meditation is working. When that happens, the power of laziness will be tremendously reduced, and the inspiration to help ourselves will build. That’s what it is. You may think that maybe you are utilizing the fear of dying. But the fear should not be of death itself. For spiritual practitioners, the problem should be the unknown things that are going to happen after death. That is our problem, not death itself. Dying is a natural process, and it lasts only a short period. That’s not the thing to worry about. Death is a transitional point, a changing point, a point where we change our mental and physical identities. Our body fades and so do our usual behavioral and habitual patterns. The worry is what happens thereafter. So in conclusion to this verse: the body and the life are like a bubble in the water. One has to remember that death is definite. One does not know when it’s going to come. What can help me at the time of my death? That is the question. Don’t give me the answer, “Dharma can help.” Maybe that is the right answer, but don’t give me that answer. Why? Because you are simply saying it. You didn’t think; you did not do the active meditation; you just simply learned and threw the answer back. I don’t like that. I’m not interested in that. I want you to think what can help at the time of death. If you come back and tell me, “Nothing can help me,” I will say, “Good, at least you thought about it,” but don’t give me the usual standard answer called, “Dharma will help.” At the end of your meditation on the point, you also say,

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“I pray that I may be able to develop this.” We need to say these words after meditating on every verse, because at this moment, we may be unable to gain that realization.

Introducing Karma In the second half of Verse 3, the question rises: what happens thereafter?

SHI WAY JE SU LU DANG DRIP MA ZHIN KAR NAK LE DRE CHI ZHIN DRANG WA LA and after death one’s good and evil deeds trail after one like the shadow trails the body.

We all go through the death process without any pre- planning. So then what happens? What do we carry with us when we die? Virtually nothing: certainly not the wealth we accumulated, and certainly not the friends we have accumulated. That is definite. We are going to leave even our body behind. I remember the poets Allen Ginsberg and William Bur- roughs calling me on the phone one day. That was not long before William Burroughs passed away. Now they are both gone. William Burroughs said he was worried that having smoked so many joints could affect him after death. My answer was, “It doesn’t matter how much you smoked, because it’s all physical. You are going to leave your body, anyway.” Then it slipped out of my mouth, “But the anger that you carry with you will definitely make a big difference.” I heard Allen giggling on the phone. William Burroughs

63 Gelek Rimpoche then asked me why we carry the mental results but not the physical results. I don’t know what I said then. But the true fact is that we leave every physical thing behind. It is the final departure, the final separation. As I said earlier: the end of birth is death; the end of accumulation is exhaustion; the end of togetherness is separation; and the end of high status is to fall down. One has to remember that all the time. According to Buddha there is nothing that will not conclude in that manner. So death is the final separation of the body and mind. They have been together ever since we were born. Now is the time that I leave everything connected with the body. You may have a beautiful body or an ugly body, an illness or a disease or whatever. All of them you leave. That’s the end of it. But anything mental we carry along. The body is staying; the mind is going on alone. That mind can carry only two things: positive karma and negative karma. Actually, it carries the responsibility for our actions. This exists in the form of imprints of our deeds. You don’t have a physical appearance, but these imprints are there, and they go with the mind. Tsongkhapa says it is “like the shadow trails the body.” You can also say it is like the body and the body’s odor. You don’t have to carry the shadow. It just comes along with you. Likewise, the responsibility for our individual deeds goes with us, and whenever it becomes possible [the conditions are right], it influences what will happen to us. That influence itself is the basis on which we shape our future life. According to the Buddha’s personal experience, it is not that somebody “up there” planned it and gave you this life and told you to take it. No, it is me and me alone who created my life. I use

64 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS the word “created” purposely, because I am responsible for my life. No one else is responsible. But I am not saying I am my own creator. Don’t think that way. But I will never experience anything that I did not create. If I am bald-headed, I created the cause to be bald! I am not saying that the parents or anybody else did not contribute; they definitely did, but my life is my responsibility. If I have a brilliant mind, I created the cause to be brilliant. If I’m stupid, I am responsible. At the time of death, when we change our life, that’s the time when our positive and negative deeds reflect what we have done. That is the time when we literally shape our future and what’s going to happen. In other words, my deeds today make a difference at that time. Life, death, and rebirth are interlinked; not only interlinked, but one creates the other. That is called the circle of lives or samsara. One follows the other. One creates the other. That gives us opportunity to have the melodrama of our life, and within that life, we have the good and bad and ugly!

Karma is very simple Karma is very simple. Whatever we do today makes a difference to what we are going to be in the future. I am responsible for myself. Whatever good I do today will give me a good result. Whatever bad I do today will give me a bad result. That’s karma. There’s nothing else that is karma. We know that very well, but we don’t buy it. We hope something else will happen in between. We hope that some kind of magic click will happen and change everything. That’s what we are all looking for all the time. Actually, that is the

65 Gelek Rimpoche problem of a lack of faith. Traditional Tibetan teachers will tell you on this level that you don’t have to go to any great lama or a fortuneteller to find out what your future will look like. Here you have the point of reference on which you can judge what your future will be: Look at your own positive and negative deeds. The Kadampa lamas used to sit in the evening and review the day’s events, their physical deeds and mental thoughts. For any positive deed or thought, they put a white pebble or stone; for any negative one, they put a black stone. Then at the end they would count the pebbles. So, when you are about to go to bed, see how many pebbles you have, how many positive and negative actions there were. If you have lots of positives and only few negatives, be very happy about it and rejoice. If there are lots of negatives and only a few good ones, then purify. That was the Kadampas’ daily life. It’s not that they had nothing else to do. They had a lot to do in their life. You may think in old Tibet people had nothing to do, so that’s all they did. The truth is they had a lot to do and were extremely busy—on the mental level. Physically, probably they were sitting in one corner the whole day. But mentally they were so busy, so active. When you realize and are convinced that this is how life is functioning, then you will act differently. If you are not convinced, just having some knowledge will not help you. It is the same as what I said about accepting impermanence: unless you’re really convinced, everything is artificial and superficial. But the moment you can convince yourself, you are getting somewhere. That is exactly how the spiritual path works. You have to convince yourself by using logical

66 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS reasons. You are not a fool; you cannot fool yourself. You have to have very strong logical reasons to convince yourself. If there is scientific proof, that’s best. But if not, at least use logical reasoning. Then your understanding will be much stronger and more solid.

Karma has certain characteristics I don’t want to conclude karma today. I am just beginning to introduce it. Karma has certain characteristics of its own. One is that it is definite. It is definite in the sense that if you have created a positive karma, you will definitely have a positive result. There is no doubt about it. You cannot get a negative result from creating a positive karma, nor can you get a positive result from creating a negative karma. It is not going to happen. Not only that. Sometimes we try to create some positive karma over here to cover some negativity over there, thinking, “Let’s square it off; let’s called it equal.” That doesn’t work in karma. Whatever negative you have created, you will get a negative result for; and whatever positive you have done, you will get a positive result for. It is not going to be equalized. The example the traditional teachers give you here is very interesting. They say that if you plant a seed of a mango tree, you are hoping to get a nice sweet mango. But if you don’t want it too sweet, and you are trying to get some sweet-and-sour mango, and therefore plant a lot of jalapeno peppers around the mango seeds, the result will be that those jalapeno peppers will be hot and the mango will be sweet. It is not going to be hot mangoes or sweet jalapeno peppers or a mixture of the two.

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Similarly, a number of people think, “I have done something bad, so let me do something good, and let’s call it even.” But there’s no bargaining. Every karma has its individual result, unless the karma is neutralized. That is possible, because karma is a dependent arising. It is impermanent. There is nothing in this world today or anytime that is not a dependent arising. There may be permanent things, but even the permanent things are dependent arisings. That means these things depend on causes and conditions. When the causes and conditions change, that thing changes. That is actually the main idea of emptiness. You can make up some mystery called emptiness, saying that up there somewhere something is empty, and it’s a mystery. But when you make it simple and look carefully, then everything is a dependent arising, and that is emptiness. Theoretically, maybe I’m wrong if I say that this is emptiness. Any geshe will laugh at me, but really, dependent arising is the essence of emptiness. Because nothing is solid and permanent, it changes because of terms and conditions. That’s why even Einstein’s theory of relativity has to have points of reference. When you have a point of reference, then you can figure out everything. When you’ve lost the point of reference, there’s nothing. That is the most important point. That’s the reason why even in karma, no matter how definite it may be, it can be neutralized. That’s why purification works and why miracles happen. Think about it, really. It is so interesting, so simple. But if you want to make it difficult, it can be so difficult. When you try to make it simple, it’s really here; it all happens that way. That’s why there is a positive karma, and that’s why there

68 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS is a negative karma. That’s why there is suffering, and that’s why there’s pleasure. It’s amazing, if you keep on thinking. That is reality. That’s our life. So make it simple, make it understandable; bring it to your fingertips and work with it, and you can gain control of your life. You can make a difference to your life. You don’t have to depend on anybody. That is called the spiritual path, truly. I don’t think the spiritual path has to be something phony or something holy. It is a matter of simple, straightforward understanding. When you understand this mystery, that path is complete. When the mystery is defused, then you know everything. It’s very simple.

Questions and Answers

Audience: I have a question about karma being definite. Let’s say I have the intention to hit someone, and then I hit that person. I feel good about it. That is a clear-cut negative action. I get a negative result. But, for example, today I bought someone a gift, and I was aware that my motivation was a little bit impure. I wanted a positive result, so it was some kind of manipulation. Since the person then called and was happy and my gift might have had a helpful result in that person’s life, this action was not purely negative. It was somewhat mixed. You said that karma is definite. How will the result be definite if there’s a mixture of self-interest and also maybe some kindness in the motivation? It’s not that clear cut. How is it definite what the result will be like?

Rimpoche: I think we have a very interesting habitual pat-

69 Gelek Rimpoche tern. Many of us would like to get certain things done in a certain way, and we like to force it, no matter what. Even if you have to hit someone, you will try to force it that way, and then you feel bad and you try to make it nice again and bring some more gifts. I guess there are actually two different karmas being created. For the action of hitting, you will have a hitting result. Probably someone is going to hit you back. The karma of generosity? Yes, you going to get that back, too. So there are two separate karmas, even though the actions were done by one person with one thought, even with one motivation. They are two separate actions, and you have two separate karmas, and two separate results are bound to come. I don’t think you can have all the events of a relationship between person A and person B locked in as one karma. Each and every individual action goes separately. Every action will have three different aspects anyway: body, speech, and mind, and in all three things, separate karmas will be involved. You can see it clearly, if you carefully look at the microscopic level. You will find there are ten or fifteen or twenty different karmas combined together, and each one of them is capable of delivering its own little result, and the result may not be little, collectively as well as individually. That’s what it is, what little I know.

Audience: The individual karmas we create and are responsible for, I understand, are dependent arisings. But the existence of the phenomenon of karma at large, doesn’t that exist outside of the essence of emptiness? The phenomenon of karma itself, is that a reality that’s not dependent?

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Rimpoche: I will not say it’s outside of emptiness. I would say it is within emptiness itself. Even the notion of karma or cause and effect as a generality functions within emptiness. Karma is itself a part of emptiness, and it is emptiness, and the result is emptiness, and the result is part of emptiness.

Audience: You were saying you can’t replace a negative karma with a positive one, like the mangoes and the peppers…

Rimpoche: Oh, no, no, no. I did not mean negative karma cannot be replaced by positive karma. I mean negative karma cannot affect positive karma, like making a mango fruit spicy and vice versa.

Audience: Is that different from when you do the four powers of purification and, as part of that, do an antidote practice to get rid of negative karma?

Rimpoche: So, you get rid of negative karma. By getting rid of negative karma, by that action itself, you create positive karma. That doesn’t mean the negative karma has changed into positive karma. I think you get rid of one and create another one. It is not like putting a white cloth into yellow dye, and it becomes yellow. Rather it is like a dirty cloth that you throw out, and then you create another cloth. That’s my understanding.

Audience: Suppose you create a negative karma today. At the time when the result comes, you are not the same person anymore. So results cannot affect you in the same way…

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Rimpoche: No, no, no. It is true that you may not be the same person when the results come. Let’s say you create the cause on Sunday, and you are going to get the result next Saturday. The person who created the cause onS unday is the not the person who experiences the results on the following Saturday. It is no longer the Sunday person, but the next Saturday person. However, that Saturday person is the continuation of the Sunday person. In that way, it is the same person. This is a little complicated. Yesterday’s person does not continue tomorrow, but tomorrow’s person is the continuation of yesterday’s person. It is a little philosophical, but I believe that’s how it is.

Audience: I was just thinking that between Sunday and the next Saturday, maybe I have understood something, or perhaps have become a better person, and therefore the results of the negative karma will no longer affect me?

Rimpoche: I don’t think so, not unless you touched with that karma. If you work with that karma, then you may not have to experience it. If you don’t do anything, even if you become a better person, that particular karma will remain with you. That’s the reason why Buddha showed that he had a backache on the day when many of the Shakya clan people were killed in a war. Another time somebody threw a stone and hit the Buddha’s toe. That’s because of leftover karma that had not been dealt with. Another example is Nagarjuna. He could not be killed by a person who tried to kill him. That person hit Nagar- juna with knives and all kinds of weapons, but could not

72 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS kill him. He said to Nagarjuna, “I have to kill you. What do I do?” Nagarjuna said, “No use throwing weapons at me. Bring a blade of grass, touch it to my throat, and I will die. I have that karma left.” So he died from that. These are the examples to show us what happens if we don’t deal with the karma we create. So even if you become a better person, each karma has its own consequences. That’s why in the general purification, we purify specific karmas and then we purify all the karmas we don’t even know about. We generalize all the time during the purification, and that’s the reason why.

VERSE 4: THE RESPONSIBILITY OF KARMA

NGE PA TEN PO NYE NE NYE PAY TSOK TRA ZHING TRA WA NAM KYANG PONG WA DANG GE TSOK THA DAK DRUP PAR CHE PA LA TAK TU BAK DANG DEN PAR CHIN GYI LOB

Understanding that this most certainly is true, may I discard every level of wrong, and generate an infinite mass of goodness; empower me to be thus continually aware.

In Tibetan the [third and fourth] verses are joined; in English, they are cut it into two separate verses, probably because of the length of the language.

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What helps at the time of death So death is definite. When it is going to come, who knows? Then the question that the Buddha emphasizes is: What will help me at that time? I think that is the spiritual person’s question. Buddha showed us that we first discard our money, our house, our companions, our wealth, our life insurance. Look at each of them. They are not going to help us at all at the time we die. Somebody else will cash in our life insurance policy, not us. My companions, family, friends, teachers, and students, all of them will try to help the best they can, but they are limited. When death comes, they can do nothing. Doctors will try to help you to the best of their ability, whether they are eastern or western doctors, ayurvedic, homeopathic, allopathic, or whatever. But when complications arise, they can do nothing. Buddha himself said that at the time of death, when you really have to die, no matter if even the Medicine Buddha himself comes and give you medical treatment, or even if the long-life Buddhas come and give you a long-life empowerment, or even if Vajrapani comes and protects you from all the obstacles, or even if Tara comes and helps and does whatever is needed, even then you are still going to go. Buddha went out of the way to give these examples to show us that death is definite. You will go one day. Death is nothing but the separation of our physical body or identity or genes from the mind or mental identity or mental gene. Death is nothing more and nothing less than that. We did talk about how you go through the death process and what happens. But the important question is: what’s

74 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS going to help and what’s going to harm us at that time? When we are out of our physical body, we almost get in touch with our original source. We encounter our primordial mind, and then we pop up again, and everything begins to take shape. We touch with primordial mind at a very, very subtle mental level, not at a physical level. When we bounce back in that process, we carry nothing except our responsibilities, which we call karma. Our responsibilities follow the deeds we have done in this life, or even in previous lives. Responsibilities come because of our actions. We get reactions. It is as simple as that.

Like the shadow trails the body We may call it karma, but whatever our actions are, positive or negative, they will follow us like the shadow follows the body. I can see the shadow of my hand here. I put my hand up, and I can see its shadow quite clearly. Just like that, when my hand moves, the shadow moves with it. Whatever I do, the shadow comes along, too. That’s exactly how karma functions. So, if we want to be good and happy and peaceful and free of suffering, it is in our hands. Right now, we don’t have control over what’s happening to us today, but we do have control over what’s going to happen to us tomorrow. This is very strange. We create and do everything, and then we lose control. Once the process of karmic results has started to function, we don’t have control. Even the Bud- dha cannot control it, cannot stop it. That is how powerful karma is. Before karmic results start functioning, we can do everything. We can reshape; we can neutralize; we can increase and decrease everything. We can even try to cancel

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[the karmic result] completely. But once it has started functioning, you can do virtually nothing. That’s why karma is powerful and important. No one can have a karmic result if they did not create the cause, and once we create it, we will go through it. I believe that’s called responsibility. We can make karma into a very mystical thing, something that mysteriously hides. Or we can bring it down here and look at it up and down and from all sides. You can know it in a very simple way. Whatever we do, physically, mentally, and emotionally creates karma, good or bad. Per- haps there is no action that doesn’t create karma for us. Even going to the bathroom and visiting our usual throne, if you face the right direction or wrong direction, that creates karma, as does every single action and every single thought. If you go into that detail, you see that karma maintains a tremendous number of records. Everything you do is maintained on that record. Richard Nixon maintained all his tapes and got into trouble, remember? Karma is even worse. It records all our thoughts, motivations, manipulations, and everything. The result can be much worse than what Nixon went through. I don’t like to say “karmic record,” but apart from that, the closest example they give is the body and its shadow. In one way, because of karma, our life is great and wonderful, and we have the opportunity to end our suffering once for all. On the other hand, because of karma, we also have tremendous danger of creating suffering. When you begin to understand karma, you begin to live your life according to the karmic rules. By that I mean behaving in accordance with karmic functioning. For people who are really practicing dharma, that shift is the beginning of the spiritual path.

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True spiritual practice begins here In Tibetan, the Sanskrit word dharma is translated as chö. That means “change or correction.” In other words, we are changing or correcting our negative addictions into a positive way of functioning. That is true chö. Say you get angry all the time. You try to change that negative addiction into being compassionate and patient. Or, at least you don’t allow that anger to build up by adding more irrita- tion, nervousness, obsession, and jealousy. Anything will pop up to make your anger stronger. That’s because we are addicted to it. Sometimes it’s a little difficult, but it is not impossible. So, when you’re looking into karma, and you see your responsibility, you try to change or correct the anger. Even if you can’t change the anger into compassion, try to develop compassion or even love in addition to the anger. To a certain extent, even ordinary attachment, if used wisely, can reduce anger. In other words, try to have your mind not be totally influenced by anger. Then try to switch it around to compassion. That is beginning of really working with the dharma. I am giving you anger as the example, but it is the same thing with jealousy, attachment, or hatred. The true spiritual practice the Buddha talked about begins here. We might have obtained Vajrayana initiations; we might have done a retreat or all kinds of things, but if that doesn’t affect [our negative emotions], we are still not true dharma practitioners. You may have been meditating for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years, but still you are not truly a dharma practitioner. If you say that to people, they get upset. They will think, “What have I been doing for thirty years?”

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But the reality is that dharma practice really begins here. It is the beginning of helping ourselves, watching ourselves. On our level, we can’t talk about the magical-mystical practices. We are not capable of handling them. That’s why for us, the best, top-level practice of dharma truly is this. The best transformation is transforming negativity. On our level, that is the best way of helping ourselves. Then, when you can help yourself, you can begin to help others. How to help yourself with the Buddha dharma is nothing more than this—nothing more and nothing less. If you listen to scholars, they can tell you all kinds of things. That is a different story. But the true way to help your self is this. That is why I often joke and say that if you sit too long, thinking nothing, it is just lizard meditation. You could chant OM MANI PADME HUM twenty-four hours a day. Some people do that. Particularly in old Tibet, people used to carry their malas around and say the words. But if you’re not thinking, if you’re not watching yourself, if you’re not correcting your own negative emotions, then you are not seriously dealing with the dharma. We may burn a million joss sticks, but true spiritual practice begins here. We may do the whole Ganden lha gyema, including the six preliminaries and mantras and Migtsema, and we may do guru yoga, meditate on the appreciation of life, and think about death and impermanence, but true dharma really begins here. This is the beginning of helping ourselves: seeing our own faults and correcting them and being responsible.

Living according to principles of karma Tsongkhapa described it well by saying that karma is like

78 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS the shadow following the body. When you really realize that and really start doing something about it, you discard the things that create suffering. A lot of people will worry about the bad things they have created in the past. I don’t bother too much about that. The most important thing to do is to not create any new negativities. If you stop the creation of new negativities, then whatever is old we can purify and get rid of. Even if we cannot purify totally, then we can sort of pay a little bit out of that. If there is enough time, that karma can be completely finished off. But if you cannot stop the creation of new negative karma, then no matter how many times you purify the old ones, you will be making new ones constantly and continuously, and there will be no end to it. I believe that’s how we conduct our life according to this principle. What we don’t want is more negativity. It is not that God will punish us. It is the normal process that takes place. After we are born, we grow up, and then eventually, we become old. It’s a normal process. That’s not punishment. Nobody is punishing us to grow up or to be old. Likewise, all these are processes. Because we created the causes, we have to go through with the results. At this level the teachings will tell you stories. There were five hundred women who had obtained the arhat level, which means that they were liberated. They lived in a big palace. This was during the Buddha’s lifetime. People told the Buddha about that, and he explained why it had happened. One of the people in that palace happened to be an attendant or servant, an old lady named Gur Kyob, which means “Crooked One.” She must have been bent over and crooked. So that was her nickname. She was the only per-

79 Gelek Rimpoche son in that palace who had not obtained the arhat level. One day, suddenly there was a huge fire, and the whole building was burning. The 499 women who were arhats flew up into the air, because they had that spiritual power. The crooked old lady could not fly. So she jumped into the toilet! Yes, it is true. Those 499 women tried to fly away. They were already up in the air, but they couldn’t go further. Something pulled them down. One of their leaders said, “If we do not honor our own karma, who else will honor it?” So they all started jumping down into the fire one after another, and they all died. The old lady who had jumped into the toilet managed to get out alive. More recently, about the early seventeenth century, there were already two tantric colleges in Tibet, the lower and the upper tantric colleges. They had this system of moving to different monasteries month to month. When they did that, in one place they had to go by boat. They had these old Tibetan leather boats that turn upside down very often because they’re not well balanced. So this one boat that had lots of monks in it, seven of them highly realized monks, turned upside down. But these seven put their little cushions on the water and sat cross-legged on them and floated over the water. All the others were sinking and drowning, but they were floating across the river. On the other side of the river, the disciplinary monk raised his hands according to a particular lower tantric college rule that means: “You are out.” That gesture is putting the two hands together with palms up. It’s almost like saying “bye, bye.” The moment he raised his hands, the monks floating on the cushions all started sinking down one after another. Soon all seven of

80 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS them were gone. Some from the boat who were struggling were saved. This may be confusing to some people, but that’s what it is. There are a number of reasons. The message of both stories is that karma is so important. No one can alter karma. It is the strongest process that we have operating within our lives. I create my own karma; I am responsible. Moreover, when karmic functioning has started, I have no control over it. That’s why the Dalai Lama says all the time, “Be a nice person with a warm heart. Be a good person. That is more than being somebody.” Truly, there are a number of people who do not claim they are Buddhist, but they do this well. In absolute reality, they are great Buddhists. Technically they are not, because they didn’t take refuge in Buddha, dharma, and sangha; but in absolute reality, they’re good Buddhists, good spiritual practitioners. If somebody like me who claims to be a Buddhist teacher completely ignores karma, that is a disgrace. That’s why they give you the shadow as an example. I have spent a lot of time here talking about this, because this is key, this is key, this is key, okay?

Discard every level of wrong Discard as much negativity as you can. As the text says, “Discard every level of wrong.” But then who knows what is wrong and what is right? That’s another big question. I’ll tell you this much as the bottom-line for ourselves. It is very funny. Talking about good and bad, we Tibetans have a problem with the Communist Chinese. We say that if it is good for the Tibetans, it will be bad for the Communist Chinese. It is bound to be. So then what is right and what is

81 Gelek Rimpoche wrong? We don’t know. What’s good for me can be bad for you, and what’s bad for you can be good for me. So where do you draw the line between good and bad? That is a big question. You have to have some lines drawn; otherwise, you won’t know what to do. You can’t just ignore it and do whatever you want; nor can you sit there being frightened of doing the wrong thing. Sometimes trying to be too righ- teous is not necessarily good. But if you hurt somebody, including yourself, then it’s bad. That action is wrong, and I would like to draw the line there. Even then, we cannot do everything correctly. That is not possible, but we try to do the best we can. So I draw the line between good and bad there. If you have a different way of doing it, great, but if you’re hurting someone, including yourself, it becomes negative. Hurting yourself is one of the very important negativities, particularly if you are a Vajrayana practitioner. If you hurt yourself, it can be the downfall of killing a deity. But then again, if you notice you did that, don’t sit there, crying, “Oh I’m so bad, no one likes me. I’m horrible. I’m going to drag myself down.” You do not have the right to think bad things about yourself either—certainly not! If you can’t hurt yourself, you certainly cannot hurt others. We have no right to do that. I try to draw a clear line on this good/bad, negative/positive business, but then there are a lot of gray areas, too. You can’t have a blan- ket answer, saying this is this and that is that. I think you have to do the best you can but try to discard all wrong doings. Any action that is created by negative emotions such as anger, attachment, jealousy, hatred—those actions

82 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS are bound to hurt someone, and any action that you create by love, compassion, faith, and other positive emotions have a better chance of not hurting anybody. So your deci- sions are not totally baseless. You can judge for yourself. After all, we are educated, intelligent human beings. Even animals know how to judge right and wrong a little bit. We see that all the time. So we are definitely capable. But there are a lot of gray areas we have to think about. I spent time on this because it is important. Even you can’t do much, even if you can’t meditate or do a retreat or say mantras and all that, if you’re careful here, you are okay. Thereafter, it’s all techniques. This is the key. Dharma begins here. The spiritual path begins here. This is how we can help ourselves and harm ourselves. The text says, “Discard every level of wrong and generate an infinite mass of goodness.” That little line has the total message: this is dharma, this is spiritual practice, this is the essence of Buddhism. If you think very carefully, Buddhism or no Buddhism, that’s how it works. Buddha was asked, “What is the essence of your teaching?” He said, “Avoid all negativities, build the positive as much you can, and watch your mind.” So, the last words of the verse are simply praying. Because we are not able to follow Buddha’s advice exactly, we do it through prayer form: “May I be able to do this.” When the bottom line comes, I think this advice is something that we can handle. This is something that we can manage. This is perfectly fit for us. It is not too easy and not too difficult, and what we gain out of doing this is tremendous. I believe this advice is true for almost all human beings. You may be a follower of the

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Judeo-Christian tradition, you may be a Muslim follower, or whatever, but I think this advice is true to all. I’m here to present what the Buddha taught and what little I know on the basis of the traditional Tibetan masters’ writings. So I presented it, and now it is up to you. You can throw these words of advice into the trash, or hold them for consideration, or keep them in your heart and make them a principle of your life. It is up to you. I didn’t say sit down and meditate. I said think about it. Think about it when you are on the train, in the subway. Think about it when you’re having a shower. Think about it when you’re working. Think about it when you are waiting in the parking lot or in the grocery line. You don’t really have to make a separate time called a meditation period. If you can and it’s not difficult, great, but if it’s difficult, utilize the time you do have to think about this point.

We create our own karma Je Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Perfections says, “Spirit quivers in flesh like a bubble in water.” That is impermanence represented by death, and that is joined with karma in one verse [verse 3]. It is absolutely true. We take our life for granted, but we shouldn’t. People have so many accidents. Suddenly something happens from nowhere. Something falls and hits you on your head. A car crashes into you. These accidents pop up all of a sudden. That shows you how impermanent life is. It shows you that we cannot take anything for granted. In our American system, if you can manage for a couple of months or a couple of years, it is taken for granted that

84 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS you can manage forever, because everything is built on that perception. If you’re in business for ten years, you are bound to be in business for another ten years, even if you don’t have any capital, because you are working on credit, right? That’s how the American mind builds it up. We like to take everything for granted and build on that ground. That is a false perception. It is false, because we have Chapter 11 bankruptcy! That tells you our perception is false. We do the same thing when we take our life for granted, thinking that whatever happened for the last year is going to happen for the next year, and hopefully things will get better. But there is nothing to be taken for granted. I remember a few years ago, two friends of mine went to Colombia for a teaching. A brick fell down and hit one of them on the shoulder. She was lucky it didn’t fall on her head. That shows how impermanent life is, how uncertain. Taking life for granted is absolutely wrong. Taking it day by day is a great way of living. Of course, all the economists and everybody will tell you you’re crazy, but that’s the way it is. You will have less worry, fewer problems, and be able to manage better. I was talking last night at the Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor. In my talk I said that people may think that karma is some kind of Buddhist God. If you think about it that way, almost everything is caused by karma, and you can’t do anything about it. Everything is somehow beyond human control. In reality, a lot of people had difficulty accepting the belief that God controls everything, particularly for- mer Catholics. Then they get into Buddhism and suddenly they find out that there is a Buddhist God called “karma”

85 Gelek Rimpoche replacing the other one! That’s not right. If you think that karma is something beyond our control, beyond our ability to manage, that’s absolutely not true. The fact is that each and every one of us is the creator of our own karma. I create my karma; I am the creator of my karma. That will show us karma as something smaller, a little shrunk, rather than as a huge monster over there. It shrinks down because it’s my creation. I made it. It is my product, so I am responsible for it, too. It is important to recognize that karma is not a substitute for God. It is very powerful, and sometimes we cannot handle it, particularly when karmic consequences are underway. Then, you really can’t do anything. No matter what you try to do, you have to wait. You have to close that chapter. Until that happens, you can try to help here and there, but no matter what you do, you cannot really change anything until that period is completely closed and a new period has started. That is the problem with karma. That makes karma powerful and difficult. But before it starts giving results, we can change everything. I want you to remember that karma is not independent. It is a dependent arising. Karma depends on conditions that we provide. We create the karma, then we provide the conditions, and then karma materializes, good or bad. That’s how karma works. So we create the conditions, even if the karma materializes as an accident, like a brick suddenly falling on your head. If you are not careful, then you create the condition and a brick does fall on your head. Then you get a big headache, hopefully for only three months, nothing more. The funny thing is once we have

86 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS created a karma, it functions like a shadow. Wherever your body moves, the shadow is there all the time. You don’t have to carry it. It comes with you all the time. That’s how karma functions.

Questions and Answers

Audience: You talked about the four characteristics of karma: definite, fast growing, always meeting with the result of a past action, and never experiencing something that’s not the result of a past action. I have a question about fast growing. I always took it to mean that if you kill a bug and you don’t purify it, then at the end of your life, you might get squashed by a building falling down or something similar. It’s as if the negative action is like a deposit that earns interest that grows. That didn’t really bother me that much, because I figured I would be aware if I did something negative like that. But earlier tonight you were saying that just thinking something negative generates negative karma, too. On the subway I have almost homicidal thoughts, out of either fear or impatience. Or if someone is walking down the street smoking a cigarette in front of me, that’s very irri- tating. I’m constantly having these negative thoughts arise in my mind, but I don’t act on them. So, if you have a negative thought toward someone, though you don’t act on it, over the course of your life or several lifetimes, could the result be that you are savagely beaten or killed? This quality of karma being fast-growing, does it grow fast evenly, or is there a difference in the way “interest” accrues there?

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Rimpoche: This is an interesting question, and it needs a long explanation. Yes, karma is fast growing; yes, it can you get you the result of being crushed in a human life by some kind of falling building. That’s all possible. However, you also have to think about what kind of karma you have produced. Is it a complete karma or incomplete karma? All these questions have to be sorted out. Is it something bad? Sure. Can it give you a bad result? Sure. Should I try to avoid it? Sure. Should I try to purify what I have already done? Sure. But then, what is it really? Is it complete or incomplete? All these are big questions, and I think it is too complicated to talk about here. It seems if you didn’t act on those thoughts, so the action is incomplete. Yes, there is a thought and a motivation and maybe a desire to punch. Yes, you have created some kind of negative karma, but it is not complete. Even people who keep on thinking, “I’m going to kill you, I am going to kill you, I am going to kill you,” until they actually kill you, they don’t have the karma of killing, but only the karma of having the thought of killing. Karma is very complicated, more complicated than Presi- dent Nixon’s tapes.

Audience: So it is incomplete because I didn’t act on it and I didn’t feel good about it. But I still have one-third of the karma.

Rimpoche: I didn’t say one-third. I said that the negative thought creates its own karmic result. One karmic action involves so many individual karmas. If you punch somebody, the punching itself has its own karma, and hurting the

88 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS person makes it heavier. When you’re satisfied, the karma is stronger. When you have the desire to punch, and the action of punching, and the thought “HAH!”—the complete satisfaction of punching—then you have preliminary, actual, and conclusion. So it becomes perfect bad karma. But when it is missing certain things, like the action and the satisfaction, then although you have some kind of negative karma, you do not have complete punching karma. Maybe only the complete thought of punching karma.

Audience: If you practice Vajrayana without understanding, can it become self-cherishing?

Rimpoche: The self-cherishing habit cannot grow through the practice of Vajrayana. That is not possible, because Vajrayana is based on the ultimate mind of love and compassion. At the level of bodhimind, you have already destroyed self-cherishing. Looking after yourself, helping yourself, I don’t think those are self-cherishing. Entertaining your ego and submitting to your ego’s demands, I think that is self- cherishing. There is a big difference between me and my ego. We talked about that during the lojong teachings.

Audience: When you have preconditioned or pre-pro- grammed knee-jerk reactions that are negative emotions, like flashes of anger that may come from conditioning when you were a child, almost coming along with your DNA, are you creating negative karma, even though you catch yourself and see yourself doing it, but you have already done it?

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Rimpoche: I think you do create some negative karma, no question. It may not be heavy. It may just be light. That’s like the thought of hitting someone. That’s a light karma, but you do create it. That’s the responsibility of our actions, our thoughts, our words. When Atisha was in Tibet, he said, “I get downfalls like snowfall all the time.” So I believe we have that all the time.

Audience: Building on that: if you are struggling with a negative emotion, and you catch yourself, does that create a positive karma?

Rimpoche: Yes, yes, you also create positive karma. When you catch yourself thinking negative things and you try to correct that, that itself becomes positive karma. It goes together. But the creation of that positive karma of catching your bad thought does not cancel out the other karma. That is like the example of the mango tree and the jalapeno pepper. They don’t affect each other. They are two separate karmas from two separate actions, leaving you with two separate responsibilities. One doesn’t cancel out the other. It doesn’t become sweet-and-sour chop suey.

Audience: But you were saying karma can be neutralized?

Rimpoche: That’s right; I did say that. That is because karma is a dependent arising. I definitely said it and I still say it, because it’s true. A karmic result is not some kind of permanent fixture. It all depends on the conditions. When the conditions are right, it materializes. When the condi-

90 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS tions are not right, it doesn’t happen. For example, we may have the karma to get sick or catch a cold or have a stom- ach problem. But when you don’t have the conditions, you won’t get sick, even though the karma is there. The karma cannot materialize because the conditions are not right. So, when you purify, you do it in such a way to make sure the conditions do not arise. Until karma has materialized, we have control. The moment it starts materializing, we begin to lose control. That is the reality.

Audience: When somebody does something, and I feel the anger mounting, what do I do? At the same time, I do not want to repress anger. How do I deal with anger that is coming up but is not expressed?

Rimpoche: I don’t know what you would do. If it were me, I would hit my pillow.

Audience: Is thought an actualized karmic action, if you don’t act on it?

Rimpoche: It is an incomplete karma, but it is capable of giving its incomplete result. Apart from that, even the killing of a human being can be purified. Angulimala killed nine hundred and ninety nine human beings, and he did purify that and became an arhat. So there’s no action that cannot be purified, no matter how heavy it might be. That’s why I don’t agree with the news media when they say that people who have done something wrong have to be punished. I have a right not to agree with that. Who has the right to punish whom?

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Audience: Can I neutralize or purify negative thoughts as they arise? I have done this, but I don’t know how success- fully they have been neutralized and cancelled.

Rimpoche: You just tell them, “I have canceled you; you have been neutralized. Get out of my way.”We have taught the purification part separately. There are lots of systems that explain how to purify and what kind of power is involved. But basically, you use the four powers. I have talked about that on other occasions, and the recordings and transcripts are available. But your thought of catching your wrong thoughts and correcting them and telling them they are cancelled is good. I don’t want to say good enough, but I will say it’s good.

VERSE 5: THE SHORTCOMINGS OF SAMSARA

CHE PE MI NGOM DUK NGEL KUN GYI GO YI TEN MI RUNG SI PAY PHUN TSOK KYI NYE MIK RIK NE THAR PAY DE WA LA DON NYER CHEN POR KYE WAR CHIN GYI LOB

Sensual gluttony is a gate to suffering and is not worthy of a lucid mind. Empower me to realize the shortcomings of samsara and to give birth to the great wish for blissful freedom.

TheFoundation of All Perfections is like a lam rim Basically the Foundation of All Perfections is like a lam rim. The verses can be divided into three categories: common with

92 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS the lower, common with the medium, and the Mahayana path. The common with the lower level presents the principles that Buddha emphasized in the Theravada or Hinayana teachings. Actually, both the common with the lower and the common with the medium levels are principles of the Theravada teaching. Even though we are supposed to be Mahayana and Vajrayana practitioners, we are not. We are nowhere, not even on the level of the Theravada at all. If you don’t have the Theravada principles, you don’t have the ground. You may build a floating castle, but you don’t have the ground. The Theravada principles are the ground zero level for all Buddha’s teachings. So, they are important and a must. According to the Foundations of All Perfections, guru devotional practice, recognizing the preciousness of human life, its importance and difficulty to find, impermanence and death, the karmic principles, and how karma is created are very much part of the Theravada level. The difference between Theravada and Mahayana is that in the Mahayana, love/compassion is more emphasized. At the Theravada level, the focus is on how to help oneself. What can I do for me? How can I help myself? How can I function in this big samsara? I didn’t want to use the word samsara, but it’s that cycle we are traveling or moving through; we touch and go around in samsara for life after life. The Theravada level is about how to manage by ourselves within that cycle, recognizing the problems of samsara, seeing the quality of freedom from samsara— nirvana, and moving from samsara into nirvana. Those are the Theravada principles that we must carry. They are the fundamental ground on which we build our spiritual

93 Gelek Rimpoche practice. We cannot ignore them by saying that because we are Vajrayana and Mahayana practitioners, we are not going to bother much with them. If we think we can ignore the Theravada principles, we are totally mistaken. We get nowhere; we have no foundation; we’re not going to stand on our feet at all. So even though a lam rim teaching like the Foundation of All Perfections is a Mahayana teaching, it begins at this level. It is so important that we have to make note of it. If you are not simply picking up this teaching as information but are practicing the dharma yourself, trying to help yourself through meditation, then you cannot build anything above that without having this ground to stand on. That is so because everything builds on top of these principles. It is so important to pay attention. Guru devotion is important and very important and extremely important. The importance of it will come much later, though it is introduced here. But the dharma path really begins here with recognizing human life and trying to realize its importance, its purpose, and its value, and embracing this life rather than rejecting or undermining it. Our negative emotions would like us to reject and under- mine life. They force us to focus on the difficulties we face. We will experience difficulties as long as we are in samsara, but our negative emotions will make it look like this is some kind of specific difficulty for me at this particular period. That is not true. We may think that any difficulty we go to through in our life and our path is “my suffering, it’s about me, and why is this happening to me?” but it’s not me. It is a lot of people who are having the same thing happening to

94 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS them. Whatever one goes through, whatever sufferings we have, are part and parcel of this existence itself, and many people experience them. But our negative emotions tell us, “This is you, and you and I, and I am the only one who experiences this, because I am no good, I didn’t do something right, and I’m terrible.” Thoughts like these drive you to the point of undermining yourself as best they can. They will take you to the lowest level they can. That is the job of negative emotions. In countering that, it is our job to understand better. Yes, the sufferings that individuals experience are different. Each and every individual will have different suffering that is real and true. Even if it is only emotional or mental, it is genuine suffering for the person. However, it is not only me and my suffering. My suffering is part of samsara itself. That’s why the Buddha says that samsara is suffering. Samsara was suffering, is suffering, and will be suffering forever. Nirvana is peace. That is the division Buddha made. These are Theravada principles.

Refuge The Foundation of All Perfections does not specifically mention refuge. In the lam rim teachings, taking refuge to Buddha, dharma, and sangha comes in at this point. The question rises: Since karma is definite and I cannot do anything when karmic results are manifesting, and then I die or something happens to me, how can I help myself? The answer is: take refuge. Refuge is not specifically mentioned in this text, but normally, it’s there. The reason for taking refuge is to protect ourselves.

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If I cannot purify my negative karma and also keep on continuously producing negative karma, then what do I do? In emergency cases, I take refuge. Yes, taking refuge is sort of a solution. However, it goes back to the same thing. We take refuge in Buddha, dharma, and sangha. Buddha rep- resents the historical Buddha but also includes establishing Buddha nature within ourselves. When I’m talking about Buddha nature within ourselves, I’m not saying that we originally created a Buddha within ourselves. Do not mis- understand that. I noticed when I was teaching in Europe, because of the limitations of the language through translation, while I was talking about buddha nature within ourselves, the message was getting across that there is some kind of already created or established Buddha within ourselves. That is not the case. The buddha nature within ourselves is actually two kinds: the natural buddha nature and the buddha nature that is able to grow. That is another philosophical problem. I don’t want to bring it up right now. Here we are talking about the buddha nature that is like a seed right now. It has the capability to be able to grow and develop. Otherwise you have to say, “I’m already enlightened.” If you accept a naturally pre-established Buddha within you, then you have to say, “I am enlightened.” When I first came to Ann Arbor, I was watching a tele- vision show. A number of New Age people were being interviewed. I saw a couple of ponytailed guys sitting there, and they kept on saying, “I’m already enlightened. I am God.” I wished they had said something more, but now, after ten years, I am beginning to realize that they came to

96 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS that statement because they misunderstood Buddha nature to be an established Buddha within. Then they had to say, “I am already enlightened.” Then you get into trouble, and you have to say, “I am God.” What else can you say? Then probably you become a god who doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute. Or a god who cannot find out what is in the pocket of the person facing you. That is a big problem. That’s not right. Our buddha nature it is not yet developed. We do have the capability to become Buddha. Connecting the buddha nature to the historical Buddha is also taking refuge in the Buddha within. The Buddha within is not a fully matured and fully established Buddha. No, it is only Buddha nature. The historical Buddha comes like a guide or a doctor. The actual medicine is the dharma. So the responsibility bounces back to us. Although we take refuge, the advice is, “Yes, we will help you, but your actual medicine is the dharma.” So it comes back to dharma and karma again. A few years ago I was up at the Omega Institute, and Colleen and I went on a boat on the lake. In another boat was Rabbi Zalman Schachter. We got to talking, and suddenly I saw his oar floating away in the water. I said, “Your oar is going.” So he quickly grabbed the oar back. Then he said, “If I lost this oar, I will be karma without dharma.” In that sense, if we have karma without dharma, we’re stuck here; we can’t move. It is the dharma that moves you again, and then it is you yourself. Taking refuge is a solution, but even that solution comes back to you. Buddha tells us, “I am a guide or doctor, and I can give you the diag- nosis and recommend medicines, but I cannot remove your

97 Gelek Rimpoche pain. Nor can I get inside you and twist it and change it.” That’s also why Buddha said, “Buddhas cannot wash away the negativities by water.” They may sprinkle a lot of holy water, but they cannot wash away our negativities. They cannot remove the sufferings of people by hand, nor they can transfer their spiritual development to another person. Spiritual development is more restricted than the non- transferable American Express card. With that, you can still be on somebody else’s card. So the buddhas can only help you by sharing the truth with you. Although taking refuge is a solution, the responsibility falls on us. If we follow what they share, then we will reduce our negative karma and thus guarantee ourselves a positive life in the future.

The gateway to suffering So, let’s get back to the verse we are discussing:

Sensual gluttony is a gate to suffering and is not worthy of a lucid mind. Empower me to realize the shortcomings of samsara and to give birth to the great wish for blissful freedom.

Rimpoche: Does this say “sexual” gluttony?

Audience: Sensual!

Rimpoche: Thank you. Sexual gluttony may be the gateway of suffering, too. Sensual gluttony is something that will never satisfy us. We enjoy, but no matter how much we experience, we want more and more. We will do any-

98 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS thing for that. This is addiction. We can talk about sexual addictions, too, but I’m talking about all addictions. No matter how much you take, you want more. You are never satisfied. So, it is the gateway to suffering. We look at a person who is addicted to chemical substances and treat them as a little bit less than respectable. That is our automatic attitude, which is very wrong, absolutely wrong. They are just a little worse than us. Their addiction is just a little more vivid than ours. We are also very addicted to our anger, hatred, jealousy, and attachment to everything, even to our way of our life. Just like the addictions we can see directly with our eyes, it is the same with our mind. Physically we can see it, but mentally it is the same thing. What’s happening physically is a threat to this life. If the addiction is happening mentally, what’s threatened is your spiritual life. It affects you life after life. That is the point where we are having trouble. If you have to make a little bit of change in your life, how hard it is! Forget about changing from this life [to the next one], even changing the route you take to get here [to Jewel Heart New York] is hard. We see the person who is addicted to drugs doing everything to get drugs, even to the extent of stealing and robbing. They get into all this extra trouble. Here, we can see how it is a gateway to suffering. We do not have to meditate in order to find this out. We can see it in New York City all the time. Normally people are not going to steal or hurt anybody, but they are forced to do it by their addiction. When addiction pinches, that person will not hesitate to steal or rob. That person may

99 Gelek Rimpoche be your own mother or your own children. The addictions make them do it. It is the same thing with us. We have the knowledge and information that tells us that negative karma creates suffering. But we say, “Well, negative karma may be creating suffering, but right now I need this. No matter what happens, I don’t care.” I know somebody back in Ann Arbor who knows that cigarette smoking creates a lot of trouble, and she does get into a lot of trouble, but continuously, she coughs and puffs together. That is very difficult and painful, but still that person has to smoke cigarettes continuously. That’s the addiction. You know it is wrong; you know it harms you; you know it creates suffering; and still you have to smoke because of the addiction. That is why it is a true gateway to suffering. Not every kind of sensual gluttony is necessarily a negative addiction or something that will cause you trouble, but it will give you dissatisfaction. You always want more. That desire can go to the extent that it kills you.

Setting worthy spiritual goals Our addictions are the negative emotions. They pop up from nowhere. Say you’re having breakfast. You forgot that you have put the toast in, and suddenly it pops up. It is almost the same way with the negative emotions. They pop up like toast in our minds, like toast out of a toaster. That is the addiction problem we have. Every problem, every discomfort, every pain we experience, physically or emotionally, it is coming from there. That is the dissatisfaction, the addiction. What we are addicted to is very unreliable,

100 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS but we think it is worthy. Je Tsongkhapa says:

Sensual gluttony is a gate to suffering and is not worthy of a lucid mind.

We think that whatever we are addicted to is worthy, and we work for that. That is true delusion. We think it is something good. Cutting down these negative emotions is actually how we liberate ourselves. If we are spiritual practitioners, or if we want to help ourselves, whether we are spiritually oriented or not, [we have to deal with them]. So, whether you are spiritually oriented or not, if you want to help yourself to have a better life and be a better person, then there’s no other solution. There’s no other key. I am not saying Buddhism is the only key. Don’t misunder- stand me. Whatever tradition you follow, Hindu-Buddhist, Judeo-Christian, or whatever, they will all tell you the same thing. We want happiness and joy, but we have a different picture of what that means than the Buddhas and other spiritually developed people. That is our delusion. What do we think happiness is? What is our goal? If you seriously want to help yourself, that question is the key. So think about it: what do you think your happiness is? Find out by yourself what kind of picture you get. What is your goal for your life? What do you want to get? Try to get that picture and then think about whether that picture is right or wrong. That’s how you help yourself. If you just want to fool around, that’s okay. We can fool around. We can say these things, nice and high, and nice, good-bye. But you really have to consider very carefully. What do you hope

101 Gelek Rimpoche to get? What is your goal? What is your aim? Is it family, is it money, is it health, or maybe both wealth and health, or what is it? We can help ourselves a lot if we just find that out. This verse presents the problems of samsara and qualities of nirvana according to traditional lam rim teachings. These recommend that we meditate on the eight types of suffering, the sixteen types of suffering, or at the least three types of sufferings in samsara. That’s important, whatever type of life you may have. For example, the human life we have is a great life, particularly a life with material benefits such as we have in developed nations. Our quality of life is much better than in the developing nations. But even though this is supposed to be the best life available, it has a lot of suffering. And even within a life in a developed nation, we have to choose a life with spiritual value. I think spiritual value makes a big difference. But even that depends on what kind of spiritual value you are choos- ing. Some spiritual values are great; some may not be that great. But those of us who try to follow the footsteps of the Buddha and Buddhism, which is nothing other than Buddha’s personal experience of dealing with suffering and getting freedom, I think that is slightly different from other “normal” spiritual practices and paths. Maybe I am blinded because I’m Buddhist, but if you look at it very carefully, the values that Buddha shared with us are very different than the values we normally get. Normally, the values we talk about are whether you are successful in your profession, make a lot of money, or become famous. We consider these as important values.

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Some of the spiritual paths around today are geared towards fulfilling these same wishes or goals, like being materially successful, healthy,wealthy, and so on. Somehow even the spiritual paths today are building that up rather than leading the individual away from the sufferings of samsara in general. People tell you that if you follow their methods, you are going to get a good job, make good money, your business is going to be successful, you will have a long life and no illnesses, all your wishes will be fulfilled, and so on. Somehow many of the spiritual paths, though they are spiritual paths, are being built to achieve those material goals. Though I may be wrong, that’s my feeling. I don’t see much value in that, to be honest. Sure, it’s okay if you make money. You don’t have to run away from that; there is nothing wrong with it. If you are very successful, fine. That’s great, nothing wrong with that. I’m not against these things, but I am against using a spiritual path to achieve those goals. I think it’s a waste. If the spiritual path is used for these purposes, I think it is a little bit, should I say “kooky” or “corny”? Buddha’s experience shows us the difference. The goal the Buddha had is total freedom from suffering. It is not building material benefit. That is not lasting; it is impermanent. The spiritual path has to be absolutely reliable; otherwise, why waste our life, time, and energy? For achieving material goals, we don’t need a spiritual path. A spiritual path should be a little better than that. That’s why I say that what Buddha shared is based on his personal experience, and it aims slightly higher than many other spiritual paths we see. The Buddha saw the suffering that comes along with

103 Gelek Rimpoche achieving material benefit, and he was looking for a way to get out of it. That is a very important point, and unless we recognize this very carefully, we are going to be totally occupied with achieving the material goals that we set. Somebody may set the goal, “I’m going to be the richest man in the world.” Somebody else will set the goal, “I will have the biggest charitable organization in the world.” Though charity is great and wonderful, even then, it is a materialist goal. This is very hard to recognize, very hard. It is easy to recognize that building a business or company is not necessarily a great spiritual thing, but it is harder to see that building a charitable organization is not a spiritual path. That’s because people say, “Well, I’m doing good for a lot of people.” But we forget it is “my” goal, “my” organization, and “my” ego that is building it. So people set the wrong goals, make their life absolutely busy, and do not understand what really needs to be done. Buddha set another goal, totally to free himself and his family, his Shakya caste, his disciples, and every sentient being from suffering, including all three kinds: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and pervasive suffering. He was able to see that and make this his goal. Every effort he put in was to build that goal. We don’t see this, because samsara has lots of picnic spots.

The best path to end our suffering We don’t know what suffering is. To some extent, of course, we do. We have dissatisfaction, and we feel bored. We have all kinds of problems with everything. Somebody told me

104 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS the other day that if you removed all suffering from the world, then people would be bored and unhappy. This came up in a discussion between two scientists. I think that’s really true. That is the problem. First of all, we don’t know what to do with our life if we don’t have pain. That is one of our big problems. If we have pain, we have something to do. We have to solve the problem. Then when there is no pain, it looks like we have nothing to do. So we keep ourselves very busy with our pains, and thereby create other problems. Then we try to solve those problems, too, and make ourselves absolutely busy again. We must keep in mind that there are three kinds of suffering. The suffering of suffering we all know. Changing suffering, more or less, we can understand. But we don’t know about pervasive suffering. Because of that kind of suffering, if we don’t understand what we are doing, every effort we put in—even positive efforts—could create more suffering. For example, we meditate. We sit, we think nothing, we sit with a completely blank mind or try to visualize some kind of space-like total empty nothing, thinking that doing so is wonderful. What result do you expect to get out of that? Will that meditation lead you out of samsara? Certainly not! It will create more samsara. It will create lukewarm numbed forms or formless contemplations like meditating on space. That will lead to rebirth in the space- like formless realms. Blank-mind meditation is exactly the cause for that. You can begin with [space-like concentration], but then you have to immediately inject thoughts and actions and change that passive meditation into active

105 Gelek Rimpoche meditation. If you don’t, you go into these space-like formless realms, which are definitely within samsara. We have a chart about the form and formless realms. There are four formless realms called space-like, mind-like, nothingness, and the tip of samsara. That’s what you are going to get if you keep doing sitting meditation, in which you think nothing except open, space-like feeling. Even though that is positive. It is dharma, but even then, the result is that you are not getting out of samsara. Here comes the difference between Buddha’s experience and other spiritual paths. There was a great Indian scholar and teacher called Chandragomin. He was a great, wonderful non-Buddhist teacher. He was learned and a great scholar and teacher and saint, but he was anti-Buddhist. He wanted to debate with the biggest Buddhist monastery in India. The biggest monasteries at that time were Vikramalashila and Nalanda. He went to Nalanda and knocked on the gate, saying, “I would like to have a debate with you people. I’m going to bring the ruler as witness. The debate will be in public, and if you lose the debate you and the whole monastery have to become my followers. But if I lose, I will shave my hair off and follow you.” The monastery people were so scared that they couldn’t debate with him. Chandragomin locked all the hundreds of learned scholar-monks in the big assembly hall. He let them go out in the morning and come back in the evening and when they went out in the morning he had a little stick and counted their heads, saying, “one baldheaded, two baldheaded, three baldheaded,” etc. Then in the evening when they came back he counted them again, “one baldheaded

106 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS came back, two baldheaded came back,” etc. Then one day, an extra head showed up. That person happened to be Chandrakirti, who had left the monastery and gone to the mountains in south India, and was being sort of a little wild and crazy, a sort of Mahasiddha type. He came back and shaved his head in order to debate Chandragomin. So when Chandragomin asked, “Oh, where does this extra bald head come from?” Chandrakirti replied, “From the neck.” Then Chandragomin knew that Chandrakirti had come to challenge to him. To cut a long story short, Chan- dragomin finally lost the debate. Then he flew into the air. Chandrakirti chased him and got him down and locked him up in sort of a prison. Actually it was a room they used for old copies of books and also incomplete books. So while he was locked in there with all these books, Chandrago- min kept on reading them. He was a very learned person and read lots of them. One day he was sitting on a bunch of books. He happened to pull one piece of paper from underneath his butt and started reading it. He read that Buddha had prophesized that there would come a scholar like Chandragomin. He would debate in one of Buddha’s great monasteries. Then he would switch from his anti- Buddhist viewpoint to become a Buddhist and one of the greatest Buddhist teachers. Chandragomin felt a little funny about it. He left the paper there, but kept thinking about it. And being a great scholar and learned person, he read more and began to realize the difference between his viewpoint and the Buddha’s viewpoint. Later he wrote a praise for Buddha, in which he said:

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The things that I had learned before were about meditation. In that tradition one can meditate and go beyond the desire realm and go beyond that up to the four form realms and the four formless realms and even up to the seventeenth point, the tip of samsara. But after a little while, suffering comes back and samsara is re-established. Those who are following you, the great Buddha, do not go too much for samadhi [meditation]. As long as you get to the level of the preliminary level of the first form realm, you will be able to switch to the wisdom path and you will destroy samsara totally.

So after he lost the debate, Chandragomin became open-minded. He examined the Buddhist teachings and finally drew the conclusion. The beauty of the Buddha’s experience that he shared is that although you may not go to the ultimate level of the sitting meditation, reaching to all these layers of development, without going to the levels of samadhi, you will get rid of the root of samsara by apply- ing wisdom. He saw that as a quality of the Buddha and wrote a book called kye par bar tö, which means “Special Praise to Buddha,” pointing this out as a major quality. So I’m trying to point out here that even great beings can overlook important points. Buddha’s point is that samsara is totally suffering, and every effort has to be put in to try to get out of samsara rather than to get further into it. Whether something is dharma or not dharma begins here. If your efforts are geared towards building samsara, then perhaps it is not dharma, no matter whatever you are doing.

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You may be doing very dharmic things, but it might not be good dharma. But if your purpose is totally geared towards getting out of samsara, then even if you are doing very little, maybe virtually doing nothing, even then it may be very dharmic. I think it is necessary for me to mention this. Today we somehow try to modify and water down every spiritual path, trying to make it suit the desires and ideas of the people. That becomes a problem. That’s why this particular verse about sensual gluttony as gateway to suffering is important. There are a lot of picnic spots in samsara, and we think they are great and perhaps take them as our goals. But as long as we have those picnic spots as our goals, we might not be on a good spiritual path. That is something for you to look into and think about and understand.

VERSE 6: PERSONAL LIBERATION

NAM DAK SAM PA DE YI DRANG PA YI DREN DANG SHE ZHIN BAK YO CHEN PO YI TEN PAY TSA WA SO SOR THAR PA LA DRUP PA NYING POR CHE PAR CHIN GYI LOB

And empower me that with mindfulness and alertness born from thoughts ultimately pure, I may live in accord with the holy Dharma, the ways leading to personal liberation.

Why we want liberation from samsara Samsaric picnic spots are not great because they are not reli-

109 Gelek Rimpoche able. They are always changing. We don’t have to say very much more about that. We all saw what happened last year with the stock market. How many people gained and how many lost? That’s why that particular picnic spot [financial success] is not a worthy goal. That doesn’t mean you can’t have it. If you have it, enjoy it. If you don’t have it, don’t make yourself a slave trying to get it. One of the best gifts of the Buddha is satisfaction. If you are not satisfied, then no matter how much money you have, you are not going to be happy. The lam rim has a story about this crazy beggar who found a bag full of gold. I am sure the story is in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. So, after he found that gold, everybody became his friend. Before that, he was just a beggar; nobody wanted him nearby. Now everybody was his friend. One day he decided that he didn’t need that gold and that he should give it to the poorest person he could find. So he went to a big vil- lage festival and walked up and down with the bag of gold. He looked at everybody. Even the king was there. Finally he looked at the king and said, “You are the poorest person of this kingdom, so I give this gold to you.” The king liked being given the gold, but he didn’t like being called the poorest person. He said, “I am the king. How can you say I am the poorest?” The beggar replied, “You are the poorest person because you are the most greedy.” Dissatisfaction is really the point here. If you don’t know how to be satisfied, then no matter what you have, it is not enough for you. You may be a universal king, the raja or ruler of the total universe, and even then you are poor. So, the unreliability of samsaric things is the biggest reason why

110 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS samsaric picnic spots are not a fit goal for spiritual practitioners. Buddha says that samsara is totally suffering. Even the picnic spots are suffering and the result of suffering and the cause of suffering. They are also the result of negativities, not of perfect virtue. Buddha divided karma into two or three different categories: positive karma, negative karma, and unshakable karma. Unshakable karma is by virtue positive, but it doesn’t really give you the result of getting out of samsara. It leads to taking rebirth in the form and formless realms, which are within samsara. So that’s not necessarily the best dharma available for us. This is hard, but here is where the big difference is between dharma and not dharma. One of the most important points the Buddha made is that samsara is suffering and nirvana is peace. But we don’t know anything about nirvana. That is one of our problems, and that’s why we don’t know what our goal should be. Tibetan Buddhism says that becoming a Buddha should be your goal. What does that mean? It probably doesn’t make sense to you, really. Why do you have to be a Buddha? You have no valid reason. You would like to be a Buddha, sure, why not? But why do you have to be? There is no valid reason why that should be your goal. Why should you put your energy towards becoming a Buddha? You don’t even know whether it is possible actually to do that. It only becomes a valid goal when you enter the Mahayana path. But until then, to become free from suffering is a valid goal. No one wants suffering, none of us. We all would like to enjoy life. That is a valid point of view, no question. But

111 Gelek Rimpoche that’s also why at this moment, our goal is joy and happiness, rather than nirvana or enlightenment. Unless you understand that the whole of samsaric experience is suffering, you will not have a valid reason why you would want to be out of samsara. So, in reality, our goal is very limited. It is happiness and joy and comfort. That is our goal and that is our problem. That is why our spiritual paths are limited— because our goals are limited. So a true spiritual practitioner should really check what goal they should have. Think, “Why should I have interest in a spiritual path? What do I want out of that?” The usual American question is, “What’s in it for me?” I am saying this because I need you to be grounded. You have to have a proper goal at least. Whether you are going to achieve that or not is a different matter, but at least you should be able to set a proper goal. True teachings, particularly Tsongkhapa’s tradition, clearly tell you that until you really understand samsara, the karmic system, and the functioning of nirvana, you are not in dharma. The “common with the lower” level, right from the guru devotional practice to the importance of life and impermanence and even the karmic system, all this is almost like a preliminary for dharma rather than real dharma.

Real dharma begins here The dharma really begins here. One of the earlier five great Sakya lamas wrote about the four renunciations, the four ways of letting go [Tib: zhen pa zhi de]: tsen di la zhen pa chö pa me kor wa la zhen na tar pa me

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If you have attachment [for the pleasures of this life] then you’re not a dharma practitioner. If you have attachment to samsara, you’re not a liberation seeker.

These are true statements based on those great beings’ experience. So dharma really begins here. Without these, no matter what you do, it’s not dharma practice. You may be doing prostrations, or circumambula- tions, but still, it’s not dharma practice. You may be doing a three-year retreat, but still, it’s not dharma practice. You have to see this very clearly. Samsara is suffering; nirvana is peace. When you are moving on that level, when that understanding becomes part of your life, when it becomes included in your daily chores, then you begin dharma. Otherwise nothing. You may be meditating on Yaman- taka the whole day and the whole night and then probably a non-dharmic Yamantaka with horns may be standing there. You may be meditating Vajrajogini and a non-dharmic Vajrayogini may be standing there. That’s the reason why Atisha emphasizes so much that dharma is not what you do, but who is doing the practice. That is a true fact. There were two meditators in retreat on Yamantaka. One of them died and was reborn as a ghost who looked like Yamantaka with horns. He came back to his friend who was still continuing with the retreat asking for food. That guy thought he was having a vision of Yamantaka, but the ghost said, “No, no. It’s me, your friend who died here a few days ago. I have been born as a ghost that looks like this.” Yes, Vajrayana is very profound, and Mahayana is great,

113 Gelek Rimpoche but the profound greatness of both, sutra Mahayana and tantra Mahayana, depends on this understanding. If you don’t get it here, you’re not in dharma, no matter what you are doing. We also say that if you don’t have a good refuge, then no matter what you may be, even the very senior-most monk of the largest Buddhist monastery, even then you are not a Buddhist. Just like that. Here you may be doing the highest, most profound Vajrayana practice, like Heruka or Vajrayogini meditation on emptiness, but no matter what you do, if you are stuck here, you are not a dharma practitioner. You may be meditating for fifteen years or thirty years or sixty years. You are not a dharma practitioner. This is the doorway. It is one of the hardest things to figure out, whether what you are doing is dharma or not. Look carefully at your life; think, “What is my goal, really?” Think very carefully about what you want to achieve, what you hope to get. You can judge from the answers to those questions where you are. Remember, the Buddha told you what the spiritual path should have: [reliability and the best possible result.] There should be no fall back from the result of that path. Earlier I told you about Chandragomin’s praise to Buddha. In it, he talked about the difference between Buddha’s path and others. If you keep on looking for samadhi alone, you can go up to the samsaric peak and remain there for eons without any negative emotional problems or interference. But eventually, the power of that karma will be reduced, so you will have fallback. Some strange thing happens. There is a story about a meditator whose hair had grown four or five times his body size during his meditation. But then he saw a rat

114 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS running around and messing up his hair, and his anger rose. Just like that, you fall back out of that state. Buddha does not recommend going too strongly with focused concentrated meditation. Just go until you become stable. Then switch to [meditation on] wisdom so that you can cut the root of samsara, which is your ego. Right now we can’t even find the difference between “me” and “my ego.” It is very difficult for us to find. That is obvious, because our ego has totally smashed us under his or her control, so completely that the “I” is almost incapable of functioning. That is why we have dualistic perceptions, and that is why we don’t know that samsara’s picnic spots are not our goal. In one way, we can’t blame ourselves, because we’ve never seen nirvana. Not only that, but we have no good role model. We did not see Buddha. We just heard about him. So we project as happiness those picnic spots in samsara. That’s what we pick up as our goal. That’s the best we can see. It’s not our fault, but the fault of our ego. The ego makes us unable to see clearly. We don’t see that these picnic spots are by virtue pervasive suffering and the creation of further suffering, too. That’s the bottom line between dharma and non-dharma. I can’t even say “spiritual path.” I’m only going to say “dharma,” because that’s where the line is drawn. Without that understanding, no matter how much effort we put, no matter what we do, we come back to the same point again and again. As we say, “Back to square one.” Because we can’t make the distinction, we don’t know where our goals should be. When your goals are not clear, then even if you try your best and put in a lot of effort, the result is not going to be

115 Gelek Rimpoche great. I think this is the difference between a Buddhist path and a non-Buddhist path, too.

Motivation, awareness, and alertness Remember what Je Tsongkhapa says here:

And empower me that with mindfulness and alertness born from thoughts ultimately pure, I may live in accord with the holy Dharma, the ways leading to personal liberation.

This is telling you what your motivation should be: to be totally free from samsara. That is recommended here. Why should you have that motivation? You have to find out. That’s what the meditation is for. That’s what your practice is for. The reason is that without that understanding, your path is going to be very unreliable. Do you want to have a spiritual path that is unreliable? Do you want to get to the ground zero level again and again and again and again? A lot of people like that, actually. A lot of people say, “Oh, yes, it was a good learning experience.” But how many times are you going to learn this? So, you have to have a good motivation. Along with that, you have to have alertness and awareness. If you have time, you should read chapter 5 of the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life on “guarding alertness.” Practicing that will lead you to awareness and alertness as well as to perfect morality.

Perfect morality When I say morality, I am not talking about your sexual

116 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS orientation and all that. I’m talking about keeping vows and commitments. Keeping your own commitments and your own vows becomes fundamentally important to your gaining freedom from suffering. The bottom line for the cause of suffering is negative emotions. In this particular text, Tsongkhapa calls morality “ultimately pure.” Keeping your vows—morality—is thus the fundamental basis of Bud- dhism. Perhaps sometimes translators put those words a little too strongly. Morality is a touchy subject. So that’s why, in a very gentle ways of putting it into words, you have to have good morals. Then you have a good foundation. If not, you don’t have a good foundation. Though normal Ameri- can morality is not necessarily what is being talked about. Actually, to keep your own commitments and vows intact as a Buddhist, at least you have to have a refuge vow. Then many of us have bodhisattva vows or Vajrayana vows. The monks and nuns have their own self-liberation vows. Even though we don’t have those, we still have a lot of vows, sometimes more than monks. The bodhisattva vows and Vajrayana vows are stronger than the celibacy vows. They are stronger and more distinct. It is more difficult to maintain Vajrayana vows than to maintain full-fledged monk’s vows.

Review: meditating on the points so far We are giving the greatest performance in the melodrama of our life. But we don’t recognize how fast the time goes. That is one of the important obstacles we have. We cannot take advantage of this important tool, a tool that is almost impossible to get into our hands. Not knowing that and being lazy, those are our problems. So we have to clear the

117 Gelek Rimpoche ignorance of not knowing that we have this opportunity, and we have to clear the laziness. We do that by recognizing the preciousness of life and its importance. The next is focusing on how difficult it is to find such a life. So we pray, “May I be able to recognize and remember that.” Recognizing the life and its value will help a person tremendously not to be depressed, and to realize life’s value and that it is not easy to find. Here I have to talk to you from the background of reincarnation. A lot of people are happy to accept reincarnation, but don’t want to think very carefully, or don’t know what it is all about. Sometimes I wonder why Western people are all so happy to accept reincarnation? Maybe it’s because they don’t want to go away. They want to stay here forever, like these Tibetan incarnate lamas. One after another they come back, sometimes even two incarnations for one person. When you start looking at that reincarnation business, it is quite amazing. Just last week or last month the news about the Kar- mapa came out. Most of us read about that in the New York Times. Then somebody delivered a magazine to my house, called Buddhism Today, issued in America, I believe. I had never seen it before. It’s a very good magazine. On the cover page is a picture of the Karmapa, but not the one who came out from Tibet, but the other one that was recognized by Sharmapa Rinpoche, the one who is already here. There are huge letters over the picture on the front cover: The 17th Karmapa, along with a little photo of Richard Gere stuck on his picture. Then it goes on for page after page, saying that six thousand people attended his teaching in Germany.

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So I began to think, that is interesting. There are two Karmapas now. So I am not even sure that when you come back, whether you get what you had before, or whether somebody else will occupy it? You never know, right? Even those who declare that they are the incarnation of So-and- So might not be able to hold onto their old seat. Then people like you and me—though I have the name of an incarnate lama, but that’s just a name, nothing more than that—when we come back, we are not going to get back to our old seat at all. That’s for sure. But many people think that when we come back we come back as the same good old human being. That’s like in these movies where the person comes back and says, “I’m back!” That’s not going to happen. What really happens is that when you die, all your memory is being removed from your chip—all wiped out. Probably there is a huge magnet wiping everything out. That means you forget completely. Then, actually even way before we die, we close out all our memories. We know that very well. A dying person doesn’t die with full memories and open eyes. People don’t even recognize anybody and they don’t remember their names. And even today we forget what we did yesterday. We forget the name of our best friend, searching for their name in our memory. That is the actual signal, the first alarm. Losing the memories is even happening now. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through Alzheimer’s. People lose their memories without that, too. Then gradually it goes down, and at the end, when the person is on the death bed, people ask, “Did he/she recognize you?” That is the usual conversation, a very common question. That clearly tells us that when

119 Gelek Rimpoche we die, we don’t go with complete memories and alertness. Memory is wiped out. You go through as a very subtle continuation of the individual. Almost all memory, recognition, and awareness is packed—like in a suitcase, but here in the form of imprints. The actual memories are gone, and you have no idea. Then you cross to the other side. You are like one of the leaves during autumn that are blown around by the wind. You are carried by the wind and dropped who knows where. Nei- ther you nor I know. That is our condition. Once the Panchen Lama gave a talk about the precious human life and said that is very rare and hard to obtain. There was a Chinese benefactor in his audience, and he thought that the Panchen Lama didn’t know about China. He got up and said, “With all respect, but you think that human life is rare because you only talk about Tibet, where there are very few people. You have never been to China, because if you go there, there are so many people. Human life is not rare there.” So then the Panchen Lama had to point it out that this wasn’t the point. Anyway, at the end of that, this guy gave a lot of gifts to the Panchen Lama and asked him, “Would you be able to guarantee that I would be able to be reborn as a human being?” The Panchen Lama said, “Yes, I can guarantee that by looking into your karma.” Then the man said, “Can you also guarantee that I will meet with the teachings of Bud- dha?” The Panchen Lama said, “I can also do that.” Then he asked, “Can you guarantee that I will meet with the teachings of Tsongkhapa?” The Panchen Lama said, “No, I cannot guarantee that. You don’t have enough good karma for that.”

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That’s what happened. I just wanted to share that story with you, although you may think it is propaganda. But I said it. I have to say at least a little bit. You know, the traditional teachers will tell you that Tsongkhapa’s teaching and tradition is pure, refined gold, which has no faults on three points: perfect view, perfect behavior, and perfect meditation. “View” here means the understanding of reality. The perfect view is the interdependent nature of every existence. Tsongkhapa praised Buddha in a poem he wrote:

He who speaks on the basis of seeing, This makes him a knower and teacher unexcelled, I bow to you, O Conqueror, you who saw Dependent origination and taught it.

Paraphrased it means: you are the one who saw it and experienced and shared it. That is why you are the greatest teacher. The subject you saw and experienced is the interdependent nature of existence. You are a master without equivalent. That’s why I bow to you. The interdependent nature of existence is one of the most important points. It is absolute truth and absolute reality. If you think in a bad way, sometimes I’m thinking that maybe it is the ultimate atheist viewpoint. The perfect function is good behavior. You don’t see so much crazy wisdom. Crazy wisdom is not necessarily a good way to behave. Don’t let me elaborate.

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Questions and Answers

Audience: This question is for those of us who are having lots of impure thoughts, who aren’t able to generate pure thoughts. In the state of samsara, can you generate, in the very preliminary stages of the path, thoughts that actually come from a pure source?

Rimpoche: Actually, all human thoughts are pure thoughts. The source of all human thoughts is pure. They are coming out of the pure mind, and it is from that angle that we are talking here. For those who have taken vows, at that time, the thought of taking those vows comes out of pure thoughts.

Audience: But can we actually have pure minds in our underdeveloped state?

Rimpoche: We may or may not be able to do that. Most dharma practice for us, honestly speaking, is repeating whatever somebody told us we are supposed to be doing. We begin with that sort of copycatting. Then, somehow, we bring it to certain level where it’s a little more than copy- ing, and then it begins to take its own shape and to take root. So, after a little while, you probably are going beyond copycatting. It’s like the old Tibetan literary school. The kids take four years to copy handwriting. They write on a little piece of wooden slate. First they let the kids hold the pen without any ink and go over the characters again and again.

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So for a year or so, they are actually not writing anything, just going over the movements—copycatting. After a little while the fingers get used to it, so then they begin to give you a little bit of something to write with, probably roasted barley juice, and they make you to write on a slate. This is old-style. It was terrible. People would spend four or five years simply getting to know how to write. They made very good calligraphers, but still didn’t know anything about the literature. They might not even learn grammar. So it’s like that. The teachers will keep on correcting, and you keep on writing, and finally they will let you write on paper. Similarly, on the spiritual path, we are doing a lot of copycatting. After a while, it affects you and becomes better, and then you go beyond that. I think that’s how it begins. That’s how it happens to people. That’s the reason I discourage people from looking for high-level bodhimind or emptiness right from the beginning. I discourage that because we have not established the ground yet. Without that ground, we get nowhere. We build useless ice castles.

Audience: You were saying that our goal shouldn’t be to make money. You also mentioned health as a wrong goal. But aren’t we doing White Tara practice for the sake of healing?

Rimpoche: Ideally, in this case, we are supposed to think that it takes a long time to become enlightened, so we have to be healthy and have a long life. But if the goal simply is to have a healthy life, it’s a little bit . . .

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Audience: Last night I got some news that was a little bit frightening about my health. So this morning I did the long White Tara sadhana and sometimes I do a shorter version. When you were talking tonight I realized that motivation is sort of samsaric, because it’s like I’m trying to heal myself.

Rimpoche: Honestly speaking, it is. But we color it, saying that for the benefit of all beings, we need to become a Bud- dha, which takes a long time and for which we need good, healthy, long lives. We put a color in there, so somehow we twist it. If you just go for health alone, then it becomes a samsaric thing. I have been sort of straightforward today and not quoted much. Now it is for you to think about, and for you to make your own choice and to make up your own mind.

VERSE 7: ULTIMATE LOVE AND COMPASSION

RANG NYI SI TSOR LHUNG WA JI ZHIN DU MAR GYUR DRO WA KUN KYANG DE DRA WAR THONG NE DRO WA DROL WAY KHUR CHER WAY JANG CHUB SEM CHOK JONG PAR CHIN GYI LOB

Just as I myself have fallen into samsara’s waters, so have all other sentient beings. Empower me to see this and really to practice Bodhimind that carries the weight of freeing them.

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First develop love and compassion for yourself To develop bodhimind, ultimate love and ultimate compassion, is a very long and gradual process. I think it’s absolutely impossible to become a bodhisattva overnight. In order to reach the level of ultimate love and ultimate compassion, we have to have good basic love and compassion. That itself is difficult, in my opinion. From what little I know, it is impossible to gain even basic, ordinary compassion without having compassion for ourselves first. In addition, it’s not possible to develop compassion for ourselves unless we develop love for ourselves first. A lot of people don’t like themselves or even hate themselves. It’s terrible. They think, “I’m bad, I’m terrible,” and all this self- hatred comes out. This is because we don’t love ourselves. Why don’t we? Because in one way, we take everything for granted, but when that doesn’t work out, we hate ourselves, saying, “It’s my fault.” How many times do we hear people saying, “It’s all my fault”? I don’t know if people deeply think that, but they use that expression very often. Perhaps that is because of a lack of caring. If we don’t care about ourselves, then developing love for ourselves is out of the question. On top of that, we hear a little bit about ultimate love and compassion for the benefit of all beings, and then we may think, “I’m not the one who has to be taken care of; it is all sentient beings.” But truly speaking, there’s no such person called “all sentient beings.” That’s the reality. So in order to develop this precious mind, it is absolutely necessary to develop compassion for oneself first. I was in Washington until this afternoon to meet a good old friend of mine, Samdhong Rinpoche, who is

125 Gelek Rimpoche right now [2000] something like the speaker of the Tibetan Exile Government’s main assembly. While we were talking, he suddenly said to someone in the room, “Don’t all our prayers begin with, ‘I and all sentient beings take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha until I obtain enlightenment’? The prayers don’t say, ‘All sentient beings take refuge to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, except me.’” It really makes sense. Especially in the West, people somehow think a whole lot about compassion. But they think that every thought that is not for others is somehow a selfish thought or selfish interest, and that all self-interest is bad and boosts the ego. We are trying to be good bodhisattvas without knowing what has to be done prior to becoming bodhisattvas. Even bodhisattvas will say the prayers, “I and all sentient beings…” They never say, “All sentient beings except me take refuge to Buddha Dharma, and Sangha.” Somehow that has been ignored, and the person him or herself has been left out through misconception or over- zealousness about compassion. But the point is that we are never going to have compassion for others—not even for a single person—without having compassion for ourselves. I’m talking about ultimate compassion here. The Buddha told us about the path. On the first path [of the three principles of the path], we actually learn how to take care of ourselves spiritually. We may call that “seeking freedom” or “determination to be free,” but it is really telling you how to take care of yourself and how to develop caring and love for ourselves. So this verse really tells us that the first thing has to be to take care of ourselves. You may worry that this may be build-

126 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS ing up your ego, but I say no. You don’t even know what ego is. I attended the American Buddhist teachers’ conference in California, and there were two hundred Buddhist teachers. I don’t know whether any one of us there knew what ego really is—including myself, maybe with the exception of one or two persons. So why worry about building up the ego, if you don’t even know what it is? I think we have to build the caring and the development of love and compassion on ourselves, and once we are able to build that, we have found some basis on which how we can work.

Then use that love and compassion as an example Once you have done that, then use the love and compassion you have developed for yourself as an example. Think the same thought for other people: “Just as I myself have fallen into samara’s waters.” There is a big “I” there. It doesn’t even say to develop love and compassion for all sentient beings. But the suffering that “I” experience—the compassion and caring that I have for myself—that becomes the example. Then try to develop that same compassion for others. If you don’t have that mind for yourself and you try to develop it for others, it will be only lip service or pretending, almost like being a hypocrite. We don’t have real compassion, not even caring and love for ourselves. Developing greater compassion, ultimate love and ultimate compassion for oneself, is the first step. If you don’t have that, then how are you going to learn? Actually, the verse about “just as I myself have falling into samsara’s waters…” might not be relevant for us until we personally develop compassion and love for ourselves.

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This can only be developed if we feel the fear or suffering in samsara, in the hell realms, and even on the human level. From this point of view, it becomes so relevant to think first about guru devotional practice and the precious human life. It all begins there. Why do they [lam rim texts] talk about impermanence next? Why do they talk about the sufferings in the hell realms? Why do they talk about the sufferings in the hungry ghost, and animal, and human realms, and even the suffering in the demigod and god realms? Why do they talk about suffering in those four stages of the form realms and formless realms? The reason why we would like to develop compassion as a good human being is that when we see somebody suffering, we feel it. We don’t have to work for that. We don’t have to put a lot of effort in. We have that feeling as a human being—unless we are somehow crazy. So we try to use that good human instinct. The suffering we see is also only the emotional and physical pain. We don’t see the real pain beyond the emotions. That is the deeper pain that really causes the emotional pain. But we don’t see it. We don’t even know about it. Why do we have emotional reactions? Because there’s something deeper in there. But we only notice the emotional pain, and of course, we notice the physical pain because it hurts. The real suffering is even deeper than the emotional pain. So, if you don’t have much emotional pain, you don’t have that much of the deeper pain that causes it. As a spiritual person, our first goal is to remove that deep emotional pain within. When we talk about seeking freedom as the first principle [of the path], we really talk and introduce and point out what the deeper pain is. Are we talking about it?

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I doubt it; because there is no way we can give any sort of vivid example. It is very doubtful whether we can express this deeper pain through words. When I was talking in that mall in Washington, somebody asked me, “Where does that pain come from?” I kept on saying, “From me, me, me, me, me, me.” Bob Thurman made a joke, “All your pains are coming from Rimpoche.” So, we human beings naturally have that compassion feeling, and that’s why the Buddhist teachings say that we are pure and wonderful in nature. We say that when there’s smoke, there’s fire, whether it is a huge fire or a tiny stick of incense burning. Whatever it is, it’s a sign, and we try to utilize that. It is naturally given to us, and we try to utilize that compassion with our human intelligence and human mind. Then we build it up and up. That’s why at first we visualize or bring to mind the sufferings a little more viv- idly. Maybe we even exaggerate them a little bit to make them more vivid, so that our mind of caring will become stronger and bigger. That’s also why the first of the Four Noble Truths is given as the Truth of Suffering. That’s not only Buddha’s discovery in his own life, but that’s the way it is. When you see suffering, you care. That caring will become love, and that love brings compassion. So there is no direct instant compassion without going through these steps. Anybody can make a slogan and shout, “I care! I care!” But caring has to come from the heart, not from the mouth. Nor does it come from a banner or cardboard sign, no matter how big. It has to come from the heart. We definitely have the seed for that feeling, but it is not developed. Because of that, it cannot

129 Gelek Rimpoche come out fully developed from the start. So, the order has to be caring for myself first, and then for you afterwards. It’s true. No matter how much we pretend that you are the first one we think about, when the situation really comes, then “I am first, and you are second.” You may call that egocentric or selfish, but it might not be. Caring for oneself is natural. Naturally, it is my priority. Until we’ve seen this, we are not going to develop compassion. It is very easy to talk about love and compassion. Allen Ginsberg called it a “buzzword.” People everywhere talk about love and compassion today, including Pat Rob- ertson and Jerry Falwell and everybody. George Bush called himself a “compassionate conservative.” When you really think about it, it is extremely difficult. You can use beautiful language, and people like it. But that alone doesn’t mean anything. Real compassion moves you from the bottom of your heart. None of us at this moment is capable of being touched by compassion or love. We are only capable of being touched by emotions. Every touch we receive from the great masters or great people touches us at an emotional level only—though compassion and love may be emotions, I don’t know. Right at this moment, we have only been able to touch the difference between the love and hate. That is the easiest level to touch. Talking about compassion and love is easy, but getting it is extremely difficult. So right now, we are at the level where we are supposed to have love and compassion for ourselves. Then we use this as an example and to develop it for others. If you throw caring for yourself away, and then can’t get compassion for others, you are in-between. Actually, you

130 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS are nowhere. Many people, including some in this room, really want to get that ego business out of the way and have real compassion. But then you’re neither here nor there. You fall in between the cracks. That is exactly what happens. Therefore the teachings try to prove to you that if you don’t care for yourself, you can’t care for others. That’s for sure. Similarly, if you don’t love yourself, you are incapable of loving anybody else. If you are incapable of having compassion for yourself, you are equally incapable of having compassion for anybody else. Whatever we pretend to have, it is the “me first” compassion that we need in the beginning. Even a parrot can say “compassion.”

Compassion and emptiness If we have some physical pain, we care, and we do something to relieve the pain. If we know we are going to die, we will care for ourselves because of the fear. Otherwise, I don’t really think we care much for ourselves. Sure, no one wants suffering in their lives, and no one would like to experience pain, but many pains we don’t even recognize as pain. We take them as pleasure. I don’t have to tell you. You know more than I do. You can open an adult magazine and see how pleasure and pain are getting mixed up. You make holes here and there in a few places and pull it. That’s the image I am getting. So that is pain, but then some people take that as pleasure. So, we don’t know what pleasure really is. That gives you a lot of messages. It tells you that pain and pleasure is a matter of how you look at it through your mind. It also tells us that we don’t know what pain is, and we don’t know what pleasure is, and how confused our mind is.

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It also gives you the message that pain and pleasure are emptiness. Just looking at that magazine quite clearly shows you on a variety of different levels how confused our mind is. Secondly, it shows how ignorant we are. And thirdly, it shows that pain and pleasure are concepts that the mind makes up. And because of that, number four: they are emptiness. I am talking about the message of meditation. Since we really don’t know what pain is, we don’t have true compassion for ourselves. That’s why, when we train our minds, we exaggerate the pain, and even visualize that we are falling into hell realms and burning. That’s why we take refuge all the time. That’s how the great teachers try to train our minds so we may be able to wake up and click with it. Once we know how to develop care for ourselves, love and compassion for ourselves follows, and then you can begin to touch and develop that into love and compassion for others. To clarify, first it is “me” and then is “my,” and from that comes all the trouble with “my friends” and “my enemies.” The deeper pain beyond our emotions is actually the “me.” The true “me” right now has been totally crushed by our ego. The true “me” can’t even breathe, because the big fat ego is sitting on it. Right now we are unable to see it. We are totally confused between “me” and “my ego.” Right at this moment, we can’t even separate “me” from “my ego.” That is the source of our confusion and pain. That is the source of our misery, and that is the object of negation. Until we are able to see that, it is very hard to help ourselves. Once you are able to see that, everything is different. Also, everything doesn’t really matter. It is no big deal, whatever it might

132 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS be. There is tremendous freedom. Very interesting. Anyway, I’ve been talking completely nonsense.

Meditation on love and compassion for mother beings Until we have that [understanding], can’t we try to develop compassion? In truth you don’t try to develop compassion until you really have that. However, we have to pretend to have that, and we have to go ahead and superficially develop compassion, caring, and love, one after another. During the lojong teachings, I presented four different ways to develop equanimity. Now is the time for you to utilize those and likewise all the stages of [the meditations on] the development of bodhimind. Mind training has to be utilized, too. During the lojong teachings, we talk about the exchange way of developing ultimate compassion. First and foremost, in order to develop love, you have to like the person. If you don’t like the person, then you can’t develop love for them. If you hate the person, you’re not going to develop love for them—though love and hate go together, very much. In order to like the person, you have to see them from their best side, as someone who is loving and caring. The great teachers recommend that we recognize all sentient beings as one’s mother. You may think, “I don’t particularly care for my mother.” But we are not talking about that. I think we have to look the other way around, from the perspective of you being the mother. Many of you have been a mother, and you know how much you care for your children. It is very different looking from the window of yourself looking at your own mother and looking from

133 Gelek Rimpoche the window of being the mother and giving care and compassion to your children. We have been taking our mother’s love and affection for granted. I don’t mean every mother is wonderful. There are bad mothers, too. But generally, if we look from our window at our mother, we feel it is no big deal, because we have been taking our mother’s caring and love for granted. We almost say that’s her duty. We may even think that way. Sure, it is a duty, but a mother can do all kinds of things. However, she has protected us, saved our lives a number of times, even in a single day. Still, don’t think from this window but from the mother’s angle. If you are a mother, how much do you go out of your way to protect your child? As children we always rely on the mother. When you are afraid of anything, where do you run? You run to your mother, for your body was joined together with hers, and your survival was totally dependent on being fed by your mother. The mother eats food, and you get it, right? The Dalai Lama also said that the child recognizes the mother’s voice first, and that’s why she is the closest example. That’s why Buddha chose to introduce everybody as a mother being in order to develop this care, this compassion, and this love. You may raise a logical objection and say, “You are not my mother.” But just leave that out and recognize and acknowledge every sentient being as one of your closest people, someone who has protected you and cared for you. So then, at least, you don’t feel funny. Once you recognize and establish that, then you remember that person’s kindness. They have shared their life with you, not only carried

134 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS you inside but even outside of the womb as babies. We don’t know anything. If the mother doesn’t take care of us, we are probably dead—unless the hospital takes care of us. Otherwise you die. So the mother is taking care of us, feed- ing us, and protecting our lives many times a day, actually, saving our lives many times a day. As little baby you are going to put your finger in every electrical socket. And even when you are little bigger. . . Mothers always worry about their little infants, whether they are too cold or too hot, or hungry, or uncomfortable, or suffocating. They protect them at every step, up to the level of protecting their finger from going into an electrical socket. Think from the angle of the mother, how much she is going to do to protect her child. You can understand better that way. Then, think how much your mother has done for you. Sometimes you don’t like to acknowledge that; you want to forget about it. In short, each and every mother has saved our lives a number of times, and it’s almost certain we would not have survived without them. Whether somebody did it today or yesterday or last year it doesn’t matter. Whether somebody did it in this life or a previous life or a future life it doesn’t matter. So, which mother are you going to leave out, and which are you going to pick up? You cannot choose. How can we pick one of them over another? They are all great, and there is no valid reason to reject anyone. Each and every one of them has been so kind to us. So, it is my duty to repay a little of that kindness that they have shared with me. Why? It is normal; it is human nature. When somebody has done something good to me, I

135 Gelek Rimpoche have to pay back something. If I don’t, I will be considered a bad person, and I don’t want to be a bad person. I’m a good, kind person, and I like to repay their kindness. And if I don’t do it now, when can I do it? At this moment I have an opportunity. I understand a little bit about good and bad. I understand a little bit about suffering and joy. I know that what they want is joy and happiness, but what they have is misery and suffering. At this moment, if I don’t help, when can I help? At this moment, if I don’t repay their kindness, when can I repay their kindness? It is as if my living mother in this life was blind and walking into a ditch full of fire, and I’m sitting here and watching. If I am a good person, I must go out there, and help her, and make sure she is safe. She should be pulled up and be protected. Likewise, I have to do this for all sentient beings. That’s what I mean by repaying their kindness. Like in the example of the blind mother, all of us at this moment are blind, because we don’t see the difference between “me” and “my ego.” We don’t even see the difference between joy and suffering. The example isPlayboy magazine. The pictures tell us. That’s how you have to think. That’s how you have to meditate. That is how you have to practice. When you have built it up totally in this positive way, then you begin to see the caring. You care for those people, for each and every one of them.

Sentient beings are not nameless, faceless dots There is something very important I forgot to say. Every teaching and every teacher and every book will tell you,

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“I am here with all sentient beings like a little dot, and all these dots are filling up the whole space.” It is true that that is how it is taught and that is how it has been practiced. But this method is not for us. We have to begin with people who have a name and a face. Don’t meditate on nameless faceless dots. That method seems easier, because you can dictate to them; you can tell them, “You’re supposed to think that way; you are supposed to do it that way.” But when you see them with name and face, they say, “No,” and you get a big shock right there and think, “You are not supposed to say that.” That’s what happens. I must warn you here. Many people who are in Bud- dhism fifteen or twenty or thirty years become so arrogant. Instead of helping people to be nice, kind, and compassionate they become arrogant, because too many nameless, faceless dots have been dictated to so many times. Some- times you wonder. These people have been practicing for so many years and so many hours and days and look at their arrogance. It is because of this problem. So it’s definitely important to begin with one person with a name and a face. It is okay. That is not attachment. Begin with your companion. Even if you build a little attachment, it’s okay, really. And then go to two persons, then three, then four. That’s how you expand it. As I said right from the beginning: there is no such person called “all sentient beings”–none. Even the collective of people is not all sentient beings. Maybe I am making a wrong statement, but even then there is no such person called “all collected people.” So if you start with individual people with a name and a face, your care will develop. Then, when your mind gets cleaned and gets used

137 Gelek Rimpoche to it, then love will develop, and that love will bring compassion. The difference between love and compassion is very simple. It is one mind with two aspects. The aspect of love wishes people to be happy, and the aspect of compassion wishes them to be separate from pain, free of pain. When you are without love you cannot have compassion. Without feeling and wishing people to be happy and joyful, how can you develop the wish to remove their pain? Why does the thought to separate them from pain come up? Because you wish people to be happy and joyful. That’s why compassion follows love. Love brings compassion. It is very normal even in our daily lives. We know this.

The seven-step meditation That’s why also in the seven-step method of developing bodhimind, one step brings you to the next.1 Compassion can be focused on one person or a couple of people or a number of people, but for the greater compassion, the object of must be all sentient beings equally—your enemy, friend, everyone equally. That’s why equanimity is important. That’s why recognizing everybody as your closest and dearest mother or father comes next, and that’s why you have remembering their kindness and repaying it. Then the love and compassion that follow will become strong. The reason we have that “mother” business here is because of the difference between compassion and greater compassion. From there, you will then go out of your way, thinking, “I don’t even know what to do, but I’m going to

138 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS commit myself to making them free of pain. I’m going to commit myself to making them happy and bringing joy to them.” That’s the sixth stage. We call this particular thought the “special commitment,” because you are totally committing yourself to fulfilling this goal. This thought can only come up if you have greater compassion. If you have love for one person, compassion can be developed for that person, but that’s not greater compassion. Greater compassion must be for all sentient beings without any exceptions. That means all sentient beings, including insects, snakes, rattlesnakes, cockroaches, ants, and rats. From your mind you think, “How am I going to develop compassion for a rattlesnake or a cobra or cockroach?” It is a little easier for mice. They are cute. But it is hard for rats. That is the ultimate love and compassion. That’s why unconditioned, unlimited love and compassion is not limited to human beings alone. It is not limited to me and my better-half. It is not limited to me and my boyfriend or girlfriend. It is unconditional, without limits. I want to bring total joy to all beings. I want to make them free of all suffering. There are no limits and no conditions. But that’s still not enough. I’m committed to doing this. I want to do it, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to begin. Then the answer comes: “Only if I become a Buddha will I know what to do. If I don’t become a Buddha, I will not know what to do. Until then I have limits.” So, it becomes relevant to become a Buddha. Wanting to become a Buddha begins here—not before. Before that, my goal is to free myself from suffering. Now, at this point, my goal is bringing that joy and freedom to all beings. I

139 Gelek Rimpoche use myself as an example. Right now I don’t know what to do. Therefore, I need to attain the all-knowing awakened state of the Buddha level. I need to become a Buddha. That is called bodhimind, seeking buddhahood with the reason that you are totally committed to the benefit of all sentient beings—that means A-L-L sentient beings. This particular verse will tell you that right now, we don’t have that ability. Therefore we pray: “Empower me to be able to develop that.” Light and liquid comes from the Supreme Field of Merit, washes away all negativities in general and particularly self-interest, selfish thoughts, narrow-mindedness.2 They are all completely washed away from your senses and your consciousness, from your mind and your body—you are completely separated from them. You become pure, and then you think, “I have really developed that state,” even if you haven’t. You sort of visualize for a short period, “I have developed great compassion,” and you can call yourself bodhisattva.

Review: Meditating on the steps so far I think I might have said earlier that from appreciation of life to freeing yourself from suffering, you have the actual steps to practice how to love yourself. Also, when we look back at the “Foundation of Perfections,” the first verse is on guru devotional practice, but let’s not talk about that now. The second level is embracing human life. That can help me to love myself. At that level, what do we focus on? We look in our life very carefully and see the quality and capability of life. This particular life is different than any other life we could have. When you look at the details, you

140 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS begin to appreciate this life. It is different from any other life we encounter. Forget about past and future lives at this moment. They are there, but let’s not worry about it. Let’s worry about whatever other life forms we can see directly. We see birds, fish, and all kinds of other animals. Compare that life to the life you have and see how lucky you are, how good you are. Understanding that should definitely enhance your love for yourself, just because of the quality of the life itself. Take the next step: impermanence. That will give you a sense of urgency. When we have such a capability in our hands, if we don’t do anything now, we will be wasting time. The days come and go; the nights come and go. We go to sleep and get up, and the whole daily chore repeats every day, one after another. Nothing different. It goes on and on like that. Then suddenly one day, there will be a difference. At that time, it is too late for you to do anything for yourself. You can only depend on someone else, and whether someone else can help you or not. It is questionable if at that time you can develop compassion. I don’t even know how to get compassion for myself, let alone talk about love and compassion for others. My love and compassion are actually very shaky at that moment. I begin to realize I don’t know how to have compassion for myself. We can say, “You’re going to die, so think about compassion.” That’s great, but the person may have no idea. Everybody knows the word “compassion,” but when you begin to think about it, you have no idea. It’s not that easy, even when it comes to compassion for oneself. There is a big difference between self-pity and compassion. Do we recog-

141 Gelek Rimpoche nize that? Thinking about impermanence, thinking about death and dying right now, gives us an opportunity to pre- pare ourselves in case death comes. It’s going to come to me for sure, to each and every one of us. I had to go and see somebody this morning in the hospital somewhere in New Jersey, a person who had been helping the Tibetans very much. The US Tibet commit- tee requested me to go and see that person because he is going to die. I told him, “Compassion is the real key for you to think about at the time of dying.” You have to have alternatives that you can share with people who are dying. If you are a Buddhist practitioner, then I can talk about any level of different practices from what little I know. He had been reading Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Liv- ing and Dying. He marked a lot of questions in there. If the person is not a Buddhist I don’t want to impose some kind of fancy Buddhist ideas at that moment. If that person has strong Christian or Jewish or Hindu or Muslim beliefs, then accordingly I can talk about it, if I knew a little bit what to say about it. But that was not the case, so I talked about love and compassion as long as I could stay there. On the way back, I was thinking in the car. Yes, it is easy to talk about love and compassion. But how much understanding of compassion does that person really have? He is a very, very intelligent person. And although he didn’t have much exposure to Buddhism, he did a couple of retreats with the Zen people and things like that, and he understood quite well. Then the person’s understanding about the difference between self-compassion and self-pity is important, and also the difference between love and attachment.

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All those are big funny questions. We can say the words and leave it there, without going much into detail. If that person thinks along those lines, it is going to help. But when the person is extremely intelligent, immediately questions will come up about [the difference between] compassion and self-pity. In other words, compassion for oneself may change into a self-pity feeling because of the condition of that individual person. That’s not necessarily the right compassion working. Love may go into attachment, because you are losing everything. The dying person knows they are going to lose everything. So the point of grasping and attachment are all dangers at that point. So, that’s what I was thinking on the way back. It is very important for us at this moment when we are not yet encountering death to think about impermanence and death. For example, “If death comes today, what can I do for myself? Should I bother, or should I think, or should I not think? If I have to bother, what should I do?” All these are important questions that we should raise to ourselves until we have some idea what we can do at the time of our death. I think these are the points that a spiritually interested person has to look into, particularly one who is looking for future lives and future benefits. This is good preparation to think about. You don’t have to wait till you are about to die. You’re probably not going to die soon, but it is always better to have the preparation done. I shared with you a couple of times when Bakula Rinpoche, the head lama of Ladakh, came to visit us a couple of years ago. One evening he said, “I haven’t done any preparation yet.” I asked what he was

143 Gelek Rimpoche preparing for, and he said, “For my future life.” He meant he had not done his daily practice that day. A person like Bakula Rinpoche may not have to do any preparation for his future life, but he is giving us that message. If you care for yourself and if you care for your future life, you must know at least what you can do and should do in case you die today or tonight. That’s really deep caring for yourself. Then of course next comes taking refuge, which is giving a solution for the individual in case they don’t know anything else they can do. Then you have to rely on someone who can help you. That’s why the refuge business comes in. This path is worked out so well and is so organized and so relevant in our life. It’s very systematic, one step after another. When you are meditating, it will throw you automatically over to the next step, without your having to ask, “What should I be doing now?” It will automatically throw you into that next level. That’s the great system that Ati- sha had worked out. It’s an extremely great system, and it’s extremely helpful. Now at this point you think, “I can now take care of myself, and can even take care of my immediately next life. Is that enough for me?” The answer is that it is certainly not enough, because you’re going to repeat the same thing. You can be a very wonderful yuppie, so probably you think that you will do the same thing in the next life. Or if you are some strange extremist or very conservative, you can be one of them again, and then it’s the same questions, same answers. The same procedure will repeat itself. You come into the life and grow and mature, and then you get old, sick, and die. So the same thing reaches to the level zero again.

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So, what I’m going to do in that case? Then the decision comes: Well, let me not only work for a better future life, but let me take care of myself once and for all. That’s when the question of samsara and nirvana and liberation comes in. That is again concern for myself, taking care of myself and bringing love to myself. I hope I have given you a little more detail. Now you understand that loving myself doesn’t mean “Oh, me, me, me, me, love, love, love!” (Rimpoche makes a kissing sound) I don’t think that’s going to happen, and I don’t think that’s love. So we have to distinguish between love and love, and care and care. They are the same words with different meanings. Spiritual practitioners develop compassion, caring, and love for themselves rather than just saying, “Oh, how pitiful,” or “how wonderful,” or “I like my body, so let me put a little bit of red over here, and little bit a white over here. So perfect, so beautiful!” I don’t think we are talking about that love. I think it is sort of long-time care and solving our problem. Actually taking care of your own spiritual development, caring for yourself, and your wish to be happy and joyful—that is loving yourself. It is not our normal sort of attraction-type love. If you look for that, you may not find it in here.

Something to chew on So, with this I have given you something to chew on. That’s the important point. With these things we are discussing, it is never enough to hear about it once. You have half- understood and half-not understood. You may think, “He has got an accent, and he said something, but I didn’t get

145 Gelek Rimpoche it.” But even if you did, understanding what I said it not enough. You really have to think about it. This is a meditation, and meditation does not necessarily mean sitting with your mind blank. Here what’s needed is meditating on yourself, your needs, and the spiritual path. Medita- tion here means chewing on it, analyzing it, finding out if it is right or wrong, thinking about it, arguing with yourself, and convincing yourself. Once you are able to convince yourself, then you are definitely on the path for a while, and if you don’t convince yourself, then everything is artificially decorated. That is not necessarily going to soak in. We are not a sponge. If you are a sponge, you can soak up any liquid, but we need a little more convincing for the message to soak in. Without soaking in, it will not affect us. It is necessary to think carefully. When you begin to soak it in, you realize that your approach to your life will be different. Whether problems arise or don’t arise, your attitude towards your life will become different, and that will make some difference. Until you see that, no matter how much you sit, or meditate, or think, or read, or say mantras, it is not going to affect you too much. It’s sort of artificially decorated on your consciousness. It is almost like the paintings on the walls here. They look nice, but they are not in the wall’s nature. If you get a good sponge and some detergent you can wash them away. That sort of spiritual thing doesn’t help. It may look nice and serve a purpose—other people will think it looks funny. Again it depends on the individual who looks. To some people it looks nice; to other people it looks funny. Anyway, the

146 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS purpose of the paint is to make it look different and that’s the end of it. But that doesn’t affect the nature of the wall at all, because it is just painted. Likewise, it is the same thing with spiritual practice. You can’t just paint it on yourself. When the Dalai Lama gave that address in the Washington Mall, in the middle of the talk he said, “If some people think, ‘I am great, even better than Buddha’ and sit there looking holy, they are hypocrites.” He just said that all of a sudden, with no other sentence. It didn’t seem to fit into the talk. But that’s what he said. I think it’s a very important point, because spiritual gain really has to affect you. You have to go beyond Buddhist rules. Spiritual gains must affect the soul of the individual and make a dent and a difference. As a Buddhist I am not supposed to say “soul,” but you get the message better. That’s why I’m using it purposely. So, if you don’t get the effect there, then it’s just painted on and doesn’t make much difference. Maybe it looks nice. I don’t know whether you become a hypocrite or not, but it just ends there. I’m sure His Holiness had some thought that came up from somewhere. He just said that out of nowhere. He just threw this one sentence in. But it means something. Many of us do that, right? Many of us are in the habit of sitting, and we try to pretend to be something, or maybe we sincerely think we are. We get into the habit of saying mantras everywhere, not only as part of a commitment practice, like it is sort a nice thing to do when you are on the train, without thinking about it. I don’t know whether that is being a hypocrite or not, but it doesn’t make any dent in the individual’s development. It is just like paint. The spiritual

147 Gelek Rimpoche path should not be paint or decoration. It must be solid and affect the individual.

Bodhimind That brings us to the level of bodhimind. Up to the level of liberating ourselves is what we call “common with the medium level.” The “common with the lower level” ends at the level of refuge. After “common with the medium level” comes the “Mahayana level,” the great vehicle. And it is great. Bodhimind is the doorway to Mahayana. Whether the Mahayana is great or not, that is not what makes the difference. The difference is up to the person. It’s not the practice you do that makes the difference; it is the person who does the practice. It really depends on the person who is doing it. There is a big difference between a bodhisattva who simply gives a piece of food to a dog and me giving a huge piece of steak to ten dogs. From my point of view, my action looks better. I gave a huge steak to ten dogs. Compared to that, the bodhisattva gave very little, but the effect of the bodhisattva’s giving a little piece of bread to one dog is probably a hundred thousand times more than my ten pieces of steak to ten dogs. So, it is not the action itself. The person that does the action makes the difference. Why? Because of the precious mind, bodhimind. The name doesn’t matter, but this is the very specially committed mind. For an ordinary person like me at this moment, it’s sort of almost impossible to develop. Kindness, yes; compassion, yes; good motivation, yes; bodhimind, no. Why not? This is an extraordinary mind. This mind is grown out of not just compassion but greater compassion.

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That is the compassion that sees no difference between all living beings. It sees them as equals, cares equally, and is committed to helping and saving each and every single living being available. Is that possible for me to do at this moment? No. If I see my enemy getting sick, I will probably say, “Well, yes, hmm, maybe you deserve it.” Maybe I don’t say that, but if I see my friend, some really close friend dying or something, I will go all out, almost to the extent that my heart comes out of my body. But if I see my enemy dying, I may not be able to do that. So there is that big difference. If you think for yourself, you will see that you experience the same thing. After all, we are human beings. That’s why we are called ordinary human beings. Extraordinary human beings may not have that distinction, such as Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Mahatma Gandhi. You don’t have to be Buddhist to be a bodhisattva. I don’t think so. To take the bodhisattva vows—yes, you have to take the refuge vow first, because the vows come through Buddhist teachings. They are sort of packaged together. But to be a good bodhisattva, I really don’t think you have to be a Buddhist. A bodhisattva is someone who is capable of loving all sentient beings equally, of having greater compassion, and of committing him or herself to the benefit of all sentient beings. A story is coming up in my head. I don’t know if it will work in English. But I will share it with you and see how it goes. This is a true story. There was a shepherd in Tibet whose name was Sang gye, which in Tibetan means “buddha.” The Tibetans also have a habit of calling all animals sem chen, which means “sentient beings.” So this shepherd

149 Gelek Rimpoche named Buddha was looking after a bunch of sheep. The Sev- enth Dalai Lama happened to be traveling through that area with a big retinue and all that type of thing. So that shepherd left his sheep and walked down to the street to watch the Seventh Dalai Lama pass through. Meanwhile, those sheep walked around and went to an old lady’s field where she was growing food and started eating her barley or wheat. So she got up on the roof of her house and started calling, “Hey Buddha, your job is to look after sentient beings. What are you doing?” TheS eventh Dalai Lama, as he passed through, heard that and said, “It’s true. The job of the Buddha is to look after sentient beings,” and he started crying. So the job of the enlightened beings is to look after and help sentient beings. Why? Because this mind, this particular precious mind makes them committed. They have no other job than to help; they have no other mission than to help all sentient beings. The purpose of becoming a Buddha is to help all sentient beings, with the ALL under- lined. That’s why this mind is so very important. There is a tremendous respect for that mind. Shantideva said in his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life that if you develop this mind, then within that minute, no matter who you are and in what weak condition you may be, you will be known as a child of Buddha and you will be an object that every living being, including samsaric gods, have to worship. That much difference is made by this particular mind. It is the mind that makes the difference, not the money. It is the mind that makes a difference, not the knowledge. It is the quality that makes the difference, not the quantity. That is the bodhimind that we are talking about. It is almost

150 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS impossible for us even to comprehend it, but is it possible to grow it? Yes. If you don’t do anything with it, will that be any use at all? The answer is: certainly not. If you develop the mind, you have to also act on it now. If you say, “I will do it tomorrow, tomorrow,” then everything will be postponed till tomorrow, and that will not do any good.

Questions and Answers

Audience: You talked about having love and compassion for enemies. What should you do if someone threatens you and others?

Rimpoche: You could give them one of those martial arts kicks, but I think the appropriate thing would be to call the police, rather than taking the law into your own hands. You have to protect yourself and run away. We try to train our mind to bring it to that level [of protecting others first], but we are not in that level yet. So we don’t want to be naive bodhisattvas and get ourselves hurt in this way—unless that person is going to kill someone else. Then you have to protect whatever you can. Otherwise, I would be the first person to run away as fast as I can.

Audience: It is confusing to have to choose between self- protection and helping others.

Rimpoche: True, it is confusing. Everybody has a natural instinct to protect oneself and take care of oneself. But when you try to pretend to have compassion—I am purposely

151 Gelek Rimpoche using the word “pretend”—you get more confused, because your natural instinct of protecting and helping yourself is reduced. You haven’t developed the true compassion for all beings, and so you are falling in between the cracks. I don’t mean you personally. Nobody knows what to do. That’s why this particular teaching, from the guru devotional practice to this level, is telling us what to do, how to help ourselves develop up to this level. Beyond this level, the focus is going to be on how to help others, but up to this level, it is on how to help yourself. From here onward, you will say, “The way to help myself is the way to help others,” but before we do that, we must be very well established. How to help yourself starts from the guru devotional practice and goes to up to this level. Even if it is just to reduce our laziness, or to build inspiration, or to find something to hang on to, or to understand a little more. Guru devotional practice has been introduced as the source of inspiration, and as something to hang on to, and to pray to, and to give us something to do. The appreciation of life has been introduced here to build further the source of inspiration. Impermanence has been introduced to cut down laziness. The sufferings in the lower realms have been introduced to build two things: disliking the situation of the samsara and seeking protection from the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. These are the things that teach you how to develop, how to take care of yourself. If you don’t see this, then the practice becomes irrelevant. It will become simply saying prayers or chanting or just believing or just offering. It is

152 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS separated from the mind. That will not reach very far. Why do we talk about the suffering of samsara? Because unless you are out of samsara, there’s always the danger of getting caught in it, without guidance, without information. That is karma without dharma. Remember the story earlier when I met up with Rabbi Zalman Schacter in his boat and his oar almost was carried away by the river. He grabbed it and said, “If I lose this, it will be karma without dharma.” These great people have very interesting things that can give you a lot of meaning and a lot of messages. This is exactly the same [with spiritual development]: the lam rim will be over there, and your daily practice will be over here, and the chanting will be over somewhere else, and the praying will be somewhere, and I will be over here. I’m talking to every one of us. That doesn’t do any good. The Kadampa teachers used to say, “It is so important that there should be no horse galloping between me and my dharma.” It is as if a car can drive in between me and my dharma. It is the separation of the individual human being and the dharma practice. As long as we have that separation, no matter what we do, we may simply gain some kind of benefit because we prayed, because we said the words. The dharma says that you are supposed to get solid development. Instead, it becomes some kind of little fraction of a little piece, and when that becomes the only thing, all you get is some sort of blind faith, and that is very pathetic. We have such a great life and such a great mind. We have such a capacity to understand and such an opportunity and then we just rely on blind faith! It is still better than not having it, but is also not that great.

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VERSE 8: THE WAYS OF THE BODHISATTVAS: MORALITY

SEM TSOM KYE KYANG TSUL TRIM NAM SUM LA GOM PA ME NA JANG CHUB MI DRUP PAR LEK PAR THONG NE GYEL SE DOM PA LA TSOM PA DRAK PO LOP PAR JIN GYI LOB

Yet without habituation in the three moralities, thought-training accomplishes no enlightenment. Empower me to know this deeply, and intensely to train in the various ways of the great Bodhisattvas.

This verse presents a very abbreviated version. So even if I have a good mind, the right goal, good motivation—even the great bodhimind, if I don’t do anything with it, then it’s no good for anybody. Also that mind that I developed will go away. I will lose it, because there is no drive, no commitment. It’s going to be there for just a couple of minutes and then go away. If you are lucky, it may stay for half an hour and then go away. This particular mind is not only committing you to the benefit of all beings, but you are telling yourself, “I want to help and serve everybody, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know where to begin. How can I help? What can I do?” Maybe that’s why people write books with the title, how can I help? That’s a joke. Ram Dass is a great person. Every time I come to this subject, I think of his book, How Can I Help? Actually it is true. I don’t know how to help others, because I don’t even know how to help myself. If you do

154 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS know how to help yourself, then you help others in exactly the same way. When you’re not there, then you don’t know what to do. Even if you know what to do—let’s say you have a little experience from your own development—your condition is completely limited. For that reason you need a limit-less capability and unlimited knowledge—an unlimited level where you can do everything easily without any restrictions. That’s what you need, and that’s why you are looking to becoming a Buddha. That’s the only reason to become a Buddha. There is no other reason to become a Buddha. To make yourself free from suffering, you don’t have to become a Buddha. You can do that by cutting the cause of suffering. It’s very simple. If you cut the cause of suffering, you won’t have suffering as a result. When there’s no cause, how can there be a result? But I need to become a Buddha because I want the limitless resources, the unlimited methods to be able to help not only one, or a few, or some, but all sentient beings. That’s why Buddha’s job is to look after sentient beings. Remember I told you that story? That’s exactly how it works. Without any efforts, if you sit there doing a simple meditation alone, you are not going to become a Buddha at all, not at all. So how do I make myself become a Buddha? That’s the real question. This verse talks about the three higher trainings: training in morality, training in concentration, and training in wisdom.

Perfect Morality Without morality, one cannot become a good human being.

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The moment I say morality, you may have a very different feeling. I’m not thinking of sexual orientation at all. It is not about whether you are gay or heterosexual. I don’t think these are morality issues. At this level, the morality is a much bigger picture. It is concern for all living beings, their future, and the basis of human beings’ existence. We are talking about the Earth itself. The destruction of the human race, the destruction of Earth—these are morality issues. We have to think very carefully. Great scientific development is wonderful, but the question is: how are we going to use it? That is the moral issue to me. We have the great achievement of atomic power, and if you use that for great things, it can be great. But we made a bomb out of it. That is a moral issue. Similarly, human cloning. Using clones for the purpose of harvesting organs or whatever you need is a moral issue. The discovery of the human genome was a great scientific development. But how are we going to use that? Are we going to select the human race from that? Are we going to manufacture human beings in the laboratory? There may be a time when people would like to create the perfect people and decide how tall the person should be, how healthy it should be, what the color of the skin should be. These people may not exactly be produced in a laboratory, but even then, even though the mother gives birth, the genes have been preselected and injected, with some genes taken out and some put it in. If you do this, I think it is a crime against humanity. So that will be a very important ethical issue. I don’t think it is a threat right now, but within the next few years it’s going to be right in front of us. So be aware of it.

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These are moral issues; these are ethical issues—not only for spiritual practitioners, but for us as human beings, we have to see them and think about them. We used the knowledge of physics to make atomic bombs and threw them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How many people did we kill, right? These are big moral issues. And we like to look at somebody else over there who did it, but we also contributed. As an individual person, as a citizen, I have been contributing through paying my taxes to Uncle Sam. I’m not telling you not to pay your taxes, but on the other hand, we have to think about it. As a citizen and as a human being, these are big moral issues, extremely big. Whether you are gay or straight—those are issues of the last century, not this century. There is much more here. Then, of course, our personal conduct. What kind of person am I? A kind person or a mean person? These are very important ethical issues. Only you can check yourself. No one else can. If you find yourself to be a mean person, try to correct that. Then you may say, “I’m going to correct, I am going to correct, I’m correcting, I’m correcting—oh, I failed.” But don’t worry about it. Yes, you may have failed. A number of times people tell me, “I’m trying my best, but I lost it.” All right, you lost it. You can lose it three hundred times a day, but you can correct yourself three hundred times a day, too. That is ethical; that is moral. I don’t think it’s only a Buddhist issue. It’s an issue of every spiritual person. As a matter of fact, for every human being these are the ethical issues. Scientific development is great and wonderful. How easily we can talk about the Buddhist idea of wisdom, of empti-

157 Gelek Rimpoche ness, these days, because of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. That’s really a great contribution. It is knowledge. Buddha is all knowing, so building knowledge is tremendous. But that knowledge is in the hands of human beings who also have a lot of negative emotions. We have anger, hatred, jealousy, and all the ideas of protecting ourselves from others. When these are working at a purely material level, we develop missile defense systems. It seems no big deal to send a few missiles up there. But when you’re doing that, and it has an effect on human life, then it becomes a big deal. Buddha never mentioned these things because, in his time, they were not even an issue. So it is up to us to upgrade ourselves to the level of seeing these questions as moral issues, rather than sticking strictly with what Buddha said or what the New Testament or Old Testament are saying. I think we have to go beyond that and upgrade our moral concerns. The training in morality brings you to that level, but where you make the judgment and on what basis, those are very difficult. I very often told you that it is even difficult to say what is good and what is bad, very difficult. Where are you going to draw the line? The line must be drawn at the point when it is harming someone, including myself. I did tell you that Tibetan Buddhist prayers begin with “I and all sentient beings . . .” They never say, “all sentient beings, except me.” So you are the most important person, and when you make a judgment on whether something is good and bad, it should be on the basis of harming any being including yourself. Hurting them is bad, and when it is not hurting them, it can be good. The line is very gray, but at least you have to draw that much of a line.

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The three moralities, the essence of Buddha’s ethics For that, it is important to have three moralities. From the Buddha’s point of view, when we are talking about morality [Sanskrit: sila; Tibetan: tsultrim], there are three things to do:

1. Not creating negative karma; protecting yourself from engaging in negative karma. Taking individual vows protects the individual from committing negative actions, such as killing and so forth.

2. Creating positive karma; developing positive karma as much as you can. In a short statement, Buddha says that you should not engage in any non-virtuous actions, you should create all positive actions as much as possible, and you should purify your mind. That is the essence of Buddhism. I think it is the essence of the ethical statements that Buddha has given. So here the second part of ethics or morality is creating positive karma as much as possible.

3. Helping and being of service to all sentient beings. One should be able to help as much as possible. But on the other hand, we should also see our limitations and where we must draw the line. We should not be saying that, “I need to do these ethical things, so I am here to help you,” like a Jehovah’s Witness. Earlier, I used to have some regular Jehovah’s Witness visitors, and they used to come all the time. When I was not busy, I enjoyed talking to them. So, three of them came, very nice, but sometimes

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if I was busy, they would insist. But one should not be doing that and instead see one’s limitations.

Keeping morality up to date When Buddha was teaching two thousand five hundred years ago, he very clearly stated that the Vinaya, the rules for the Buddha’s disciples, whether monks and nuns or even lay people to a certain extent, have to be kept updated. He said:

You know the things that I have shared with you during my life. When I’m gone, you have to think that if a new thing goes closely and well with what I permitted to do, you should consider it and you should use it. If it goes against what I permitted and if it’s a bad thing, then one should not consider it and not allow it. Most importantly, these rules should change according to the times and the conditions of the people.

That’s a very clear statement by the Buddha.S o, therefore, we must upgrade our moral and ethical issues all the time. New scientific developments like atomic power and so forth have to be carefully considered. Atomic power could have great use. Although India Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, used to say that India’s nuclear power was for peaceful economic development, that didn’t turn out to be right in the end. India did not use it for peaceful purposes only. They made a nuclear bomb, right? That’s not what Gandhi wanted. Everybody is trying to make bombs out of nuclear power. Likewise, now we have all these biotechno-

160 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS logical developments, and each one of them will raise very important ethical questions. I think it is very important to be aware of it. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Buddhist or not. I don’t think Buddhists should say, “Well, Buddha said this, this, and this, and therefore, these are my concerns. The rest of them Buddha did not say anything about, so it’s okay.” That is not going to work. It is so important to be up with the times, and you have to go accordingly. If you can’t do that, it is not right. But sometimes we can overdo the changes. I’m not sure I heard it right, but apparently in Japan, all the monks can get married now because it’s according to the times. But I think I also heard they made that change two centuries ago. If that’s true, it has been overdone. It is over-changing the “times and conditions” point. Celibates are celibates. You cannot go on changing. If you become non-celibate, you are non-celibate, that’s about it. I don’t think there is give or take here according to times and conditions. But Buddha did say to go according to the times, conditions, and needs of the people.

Two kinds of negativity Also, there are two kinds of negativity with regard to moral issues. One is something that is negative by virtue of what it is. The other is negative simply because it breaks a rule. Buddhist ethics came about because somebody had done something funny, and then everybody went to Buddha and told him, “So-and-so has done this and this; is that okay?” Then Buddha would say, “No, I don’t think it is okay. It was

161 Gelek Rimpoche done this time, so forget it, but in the future you cannot do this.” Just like that, all the two hundred and sixty-four rules for monks and three hundred and fifty-something for nuns came about—all by incidents taking place. The nuns got even more rules than the monks. That is not because they were women and should be more restricted, but because of incidents that took place. There was a monk called Charka. He did all kinds of funny things. He comes in the incarnation lineage of Kyabje Ling Rinpoche. Most of the sexual rules are there because Charka was involved here and there. Buddha really did not sit there and make rules that said, “You can’t do this and that.” The rules are all because of somebody doing something and people coming to Buddha and raising the question. They then had a council meeting and decided that a certain thing was not negative by virtue, so it’s okay, but might not be suitable for a monk or a nun to do. Actually, that’s why there are two types of non-virtue. One is negative by virtue of what it is and the other is only negative because the majority of the Buddha’s disciples at that time wanted it that way and so found that is was is not suitable for monks and nuns. The things that are negative by virtue of what they are, you cannot change. But you can change rules. For example now we have the issue of whether women have equal rights to men in the Buddhist tradition. Can a nun sit alongside the full-fledged bikhus? Can she sit above a bikhu if she’s senior to him? All these questions are according to the times and conditions. You can certainly change those. There is no natural negativity involved. The traditional Indian culture

162 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS was a male chauvinist culture. That’s why the monks sit first and then nuns sit afterward. The senior nuns will still sit below the junior monks. That is the Indian culture, and over here you should change that. I don’t think there is anything wrong with changing that rule, provided the monks and nuns have equal vows. Then they should sit seniority- wise. That’s not only a question of nuns and monks, but a question of the sangha among ourselves. We don’t make such distinctions. We sit all together whoever comes first. That’s what we do and nobody objects to that. Like this there are many things to think about. Ethi- cal questions are not simply whether it’s going against one’s vows or not. One should look into the times and the conditions, where society is now and how it functions, and also whether it’s hurting anybody or not hurting anybody. All these are very important issues, so we really have to think within ourselves; we have to talk about it; we have to think. It is a wonderful thing when more scientific developments come in. At the same time we should be very much alert to the ethical issues. If we are not, society will become funny.

Verse 9: The Ways of the Bodhisattvas: Concentration and Wisdom

LOK PAY YUL LA YEN PA ZHI CHE CHING YANG DAK DON LA TSUL ZHIN CHO PA YI ZHI NE LAK THONG ZUNG DU DEL WAY LAM NYUR DU GYU LA KYE WAR CHIN GYI LOB

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And empower me to pacify distorted mental wanderings and to decipher the ultimate meaning of life, that I may give birth within my mindstream to the path combining concentration and wisdom.

What is concentration? The three ethics of not creating negativity, creating virtue, and helping all sentient beings—aren’t those enough for someone to become enlightened? The Foundation of all Per- fections says no. You need the power of concentration. If you don’t have that, you cannot apply your method and gain wisdom. Whatever you need to apply, you need to concentrate on it. So what is concentration? In Tibetan, concentration is zhi nay; in Sanskrit, shamatha.

Wandering and sinking There are two main obstacles to being able to concentrate perfectly: wandering and sinking. Also sometimes there is a sort of switching between sinking and wandering. The most vivid obstacle among these is the wandering mind. That mind cannot concentrate; it wanders everywhere. Wander- ing is so powerful because we have so much attachment. In our daily lives, attachment is a more immediate concern [when we try to meditate] than ignorance. Ignorance is less of an issue for us, unless we are under the influence of a chemical or alcohol, or we are too tired, and then we probably doze off anyway. If we are tired and go to sleep, that is sinking mind.

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Five mental faculties Let me tell you a little bit about the mind and the mental faculties. How do you make the distinction between mind and mental faculties? If you know that, it will help. Mind is awareness. Mind itself, the principal mind, acknowledges and recognizes. It doesn’t do anything; it simply sees and acknowledges. Along with the mind, mental faculties come up. These are sort of like emotions. There are fifty-one of them. These mental faculties are not necessarily separate from the mind itself. They are activities of the principal mind. Among them are five that accompany every mind. They are the “five omnipresent mental faculties”: feeling/experiencing (tsor ba); discernment/discrimination (du she); mind/intention (sem pa); contact/sensation (reg pa); and attention/mental engagement (yi la che pa). The first one is experience, tsor ba. We sometimes call it “feeling,” but it doesn’t really mean feelings. It means you experienced it—good, bad, joy, misery, whatever. What are you experiencing? The result of your karma. Every single thing we experience is the result of our karma, even good feelings. Even if you have some kind of good sex, even then, it is the result of good karma. If you have bad sex, it is the result of bad karma. I’m joking, but not just joking. In actual reality, it is true. So again, tsor ba, feeling, really means experiencing. It is the activity of the principal mind that makes you feel good or bad. Feelings of happiness and unhappiness really come when you have experienced something and you want it again. That indicates that it’s a happy period. And if, the moment you

165 Gelek Rimpoche meet with something, you don’t want it and you don’t want anything to do with it, that’s a miserable feeling. Sometimes I have to go to that simple level because people take it to such high philosophical mystical spiritual levels that somewhere we lose the basic things. So here when we talk about the mind functioning with the faculties, we have to be at a very, very simple level. That’s why Buddha insists that good and bad feelings are karmic results. The message he is giving us is that our good and bad feelings will not come without any cost. Nor are they created by somebody else. There is no creator who created good and bad feelings, nor are they coming without any cause. The cause is your own deeds. These mental faculties prove that we are responsible to ourselves, not to a second person, nor a third person, neither up there, nor down there. No mystical ghost created something. It is what this mental faculty will do. You have to divide feeling into two: the physical part and the mental part. The physical part is whatever we can see or hear, etc. Enjoying music is a good experience of the physical aspect. It is not part of the mental aspects, although mind is the one who really enjoys it. The second of the five omnipresent mental faculties is “discrimination” (du she). Another term is “discernment.” That’s the same thing. This will bring three things together: the object on which you are focusing, the mind that is focusing, and the sense consciousness, like eye consciousness or ear consciousness, etc. For example, if you are looking at a beautiful body, this mental faculty brings together the eye consciousness and the principal mind that receives that

166 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS message of beauty. Although there are three separate things, this faculty brings them together and then recognizes whatever it is as good and bad. So things like seeing, hearing, and then reasoning or clairvoyant understanding, all of them are made by this particular faculty called discernment or discrimination. The third one is called “mind” or “intention” (sem pa). Actually it is sort of a small mind, not the principal mind. The principal mind itself is just colorless, shapeless, intan- gible. This particular mental faculty is called “mind,” the same name. It forces the mind to focus; it draws the attention and focus and recognition. It forces the mind to act and to function. The example is a magnet. If you carry a magnet anywhere, all the little nails and needles will be picked up by the magnet. Just like that, this particular mental faculty pulls the principal mind to act and function and recognize. Otherwise the principal mind is just pure and stays there and nothing happens. Actually, this is the real karma of mind. In Tibetan it is sem pa yid kyi le yin no, which means “the activity of the mind itself.” Karma means “activity.” We understand karma as something else. But in Sanskrit, karma means activity, functioning. The fourth of these mental faculties is called “contact” (reg pa). What does reg pa really do? It tells the mind, “This is good; this is bad.” It may look the same as discrimination, but they are slightly different. In Sanskrit, I think it’s called spar sha. It can also be “sensation.” The fifth one, “attention” or “mental engagement,” is almost the same as that little mind, the third one. It is very similar. The difference is that in the third one, we generally draw the mind

167 Gelek Rimpoche to focus, no matter on what. This fifth one discriminates further. So there is not so much separation within those five. There is a lot of overlap. It is also part of the mind itself. It is not completely different from the main mind. The mental faculties color the principal mind. I always say that the principal mind is colorless, like a crystal lampshade. Then the mental faculties or emotions act like colored light bulbs—red bulbs or green bulbs, etc. They change the color of the lampshade. We said the principal mind is sort of acknowledging but doesn’t do much. These five omnipresent mental faculties do everything. They remember and acknowledge and like and dislike and experience.

Mental faculties and concentration These five faculties make the mind not only acknowledge, but make distinctions in recognizing, for example, liking, disliking, rejecting, and so on. The principal mind will focus on and recognize the object. If you are meditating on the image of the Buddha, the principle mind will acknowledge that. Then out of the fifty-one mental faculties, another one called memory may pull you out and immediately take you to wherever you were last night or whatever. [Memory or mindfulness (dren pa) is one of the “five object ascertaining faculties.”] Many of the things we wander to come from the attachment side. They take you away from your focal point. That’s why the wandering mind is more powerful than the sinking mind as an obstacle for concentrated meditation. Though wandering will take you away from your focus much more than sinking, sinking is more dangerous. The wandering mind will wander around, but it is okay. You

168 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS can bring it back. Sinking mind has two aspects: gross and subtle. Gross sinking mind is okay, too. You go to sleep and snore, but it’s okay. It is not good meditation, but it doesn’t do any damage. But the subtle sinking mind does do damage. It destroys your intelligence and makes you dull. With that mind, you do not lose your focus, yet you don’t have sharpness in your focus. There is a Chinese kung fu-style example. Imagine that you have to carry a huge bowl totally filled up with water without losing a single drop. You really have to hold tight, and you have to focus completely; otherwise, drops will spill out. If that bowl is only halfway filled, you can easily carry it and walk without putting too much focus on it, because there’s no danger of dripping. When you have the alertness of focusing, it indicates there’s no subtle sinking problem. It is hard to distinguish between a subtle sinking mind and true zhi nay or shamatha. It is said that the difference is as thin as one hair out of a horse’s tail. That’s why subtle sinking mind is dangerous, and why you have to be alert and aware of that. The first line in this verse talks about “distorted mental wanderings.” The translators are translators, but I don’t know if that is the best translation. In Tibetan it is lok pay yul la yen pa zhi che ching. Lok pay yul la means something like “one who has lost focus by going on the wrong subject.” That means you are not thinking about what you are focusing on, but you are thinking something else; or else you’re not thinking. That means you’ve lost the focus. But the bottom line [on concentration] is this: there are two problems, wandering and sinking. Wandering is coming more or less out of the power of attachment, and

169 Gelek Rimpoche sinking is more or less through the power of ignorance. Those are more or less the case, not one hundred percent. If you are too tired or drunk and then you go to sleep, you have a sinking mind. That may be ignorance, but that mind is not necessarily the direct production of ignorance. But the wandering part is definitely coming out of attachment. That’s why we lose our focus very often. That shows the very strong power of attachment. The sinking mind is affecting us because of these mental faculties, particularly the five that make you immediately move. I don’t have a good analogy here, but the principal mind is almost like a good, wise old man who knows everything that’s going on, but doesn’t act, and those mental faculties are like little young ones who say, “Hey, that’s too much” and “That’s not good.” They influence you and drag you here and there and make you move and do things. I know that’s not a good analogy, but I can’t find a better one. Maybe the principal mind is like a flower, nice, pure, wonderful, and white. The mental faculties are like red paint and yellow paint. People dip the flower into the col- ors. Then they get a blue flower, a purple flower, and so on. The analogy you already know is that of the crystal lampshade. Then the mental faculties are the light bulbs of red, green, or yellow color, and they make the lampshade look like it is a green lampshade, or a red lampshade, or a yellow lampshade, and that is how the mind moves. The principal mind is very stable and steady. These mental faculties make it act, and do this, and do that. Particularly five of them are functioning very actively. They make you move and do

170 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS everything, including disliking something, wanting more, rejecting something. Last Tuesday I was teaching from the Guide to the Bod- hisattva’s Way of Life, and the subject was happiness. I asked people, “What do you think happiness is?” There were about two hundred people there, and ten or twelve people gave answers. Each and every one of them had a different answer. When people try to think about happiness, that itself is very difficult. That’s because of these five mental faculties. If you experience something you like, you always want more; and if you experience something you don’t like, you want to get out of there as fast as possible. That is how happiness and misery are presented to the principal mind by those little mental faculties. The moment you experience it, you like it and want more; or the moment you experience it, you don’t want any more. That’s the function of these mental faculties. The principal mind acknowledges and sits there, and these mental faculties do all that. That’s their job. So in concentrated meditation, if you leave the principal mind alone, it will sit there. The mental faculties jump around and pull you here and there. So, you are really dealing with these mental faculties, stopping them from pushing the principal mind around. That is really what concentration is, or what we call zhi nay. In that state, the mental faculties don’t jump around; they let the principal mind be at peace, yet they don’t take away the alertness.

Wisdom Then, when you are free of those distorted wanderings, you focus on the “ultimate meaning of life,” as this verse says.

171 These translators really take some very easy short cuts. Actu- ally the line is talking about wisdom or vipaysana. So, we get the combination of shamatha and vispasyana, or concentration and wisdom. Traditional Indian culture and Sanskrit call this combination vipasyana; in Tibetan it is lhag tong, “special awareness.” It means seeing absolute reality. Here that is called “the meaning of life,” but it is really talking about emptiness. So the meaning of the life is emptiness! I am not sure about that, but emptiness is the ultimate reality. Actually, the purpose of life may be to understand emptiness, but emptiness cannot be the purpose of life. If you have some idea of Buddhism, you might be satisfied with emptiness as the meaning of life, but for others, the meaning of life might be money! So, it is good to think about what is the meaning of life to you. But that’s not my subject today. It came up because of the translation. My subject is wisdom. When you have learned how to focus, then you focus on wisdom. Why? Truly speaking, wisdom is the only thing that can cut the root of samsara. Remember I told you when I was in Wash- ington, talking in that mall, a lady raised a question, “Where is all this suffering coming from?” And I said, “Me, me, me.” And then Thurman said, “Looks like all your sufferings are created by Rimpoche.” But the reason I said, “Me, me, me” is the first verse of Chandrakirti’s commentary on Nagarjuna’s root text, in which he asks, “Why don’t we have control of our lives, and why are we in this spin cycle?” You know, when you wash clothes, at the end they go into the spin cycle? Then Chandrakirti goes on, “The first thing is ‘I and I’ and then it is ‘mine and mine’.” We cannot throw off the “I,” and therefore, we cannot throw off the “mine.” “I” and “my” are attached together. We start spinning because it’s “mine,” and “I” can’t let it go. “This is mine; I want this,” or “I don’t like this”—all those things come up. That’s how we get into this spin cycle. The essence point in Buddha’s experience is cutting out that “me.” That sounds strange. We will easily agree that we would like to cut our ego, but do we know the difference between our ego and “me”? No, we don’t. That is the problem. But it is very simple. I’m not functioning. My ego is functioning. I am totally smashed and totally taken over by my ego. It is like the Chinese emperor sitting there nicely with all his retinues and queens and concubines and also opium and everything. But actually, who is functioning to govern the country? The ministers are functioning. So it is hard for me to make the distinction between my ego and me because I’ve been completely smashed and overpowered and put aside by ego’s functioning. My ego is so touchy and so sensitive. Anything happening, good and bad, is so touchy and so sensitive. That’s why we create negativities. Negative emotions come because of that. Can we be emotion-free? No. As I told you, if you take those five mental faculties away, you will be sort of like a robot, this electrical person, with a little mind that is not intelligent enough. So you can’t be without emotions; you cannot be free of emotions at all. But you can be free of negative emotions. If “I” am functioning, the emotions will be positive ones. The positive emotions won’t function when the ego is in control: only the negative emotions function. That’s because the ego’s object is again the “me, me, me; my, my, my” business.

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In Tibetan we call that dag dzin, “self-grasping.” The Buddha’s way of making himself free is defeating the ego —totally. So it is ego-less-ness. Some people will say selflessness, but I don’t know about that. Ego-less-ness is the important point. When you have the power to concentrate, when you establish shamatha, then the vipasyana should be able to see the ego-less-ness of me and the ego-less-ness of every existence. That’s the reason why it’s called vipasyana, special seeing. The combination of these two together, shamatha and vipasyana, is the recommended vehicle on which you can travel to enlightenment. Without these things, the three moralities plus shamatha and vipasyana, one does not reach enlightenment at all. You have to have these things. This is the abbreviated version of the lam rim. With that we have almost covered the sutra part of the Foundation of Perfections. Next is the tantra part.

Verses 10–14: Vajrayana

THUN MONG LAM JANG NO DU GYUR PA NA THEK PA KUN GYI CHOK GYUR DOR JE THEK KEL ZANG KYE WO JUK NGOK DAM PA DER DE LAK NYI DU JUK PAR CHIN GYI LOB

One who trains in these common Mahayana practices Becomes a vessel worthy of the supreme vehicle, Vajrayana. Empower me that I may quickly and easily arrive at that portal of fortunate beings.

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Entering into Vajrayana When you have all these things in place, then is the time for you to enter into Vajrayana. Everything up to here is Vajray- ana preliminaries, or in Tibetan, ngön dro. Basically, we are supposed to learn every important point, then we enter into the Vajrayana, and then we look back and start learning and practicing and gaining development. So, whatever we have been talking about up to here—the whole lam rim—is the preliminary to Vajrayana. This is Tsongkhapa’s special way of looking at it. When the Sakya, Kagyu, and Nyingma traditions talk about the preliminaries, they probably refer to a hundred thousand Vajrasattva recitations, a hundred thousand prostrations, a hundred thousand mandala offerings, and a hundred thousand guru yoga recitations. But Je Tsongkhapa says that everything up to the initiations are preliminaries. That is because if you sit in an initiation without that, it is not necessarily going to be perfect. That’s why Tsongkhapa chose to call everything up to here the ngön dro or preliminaries. Sure, it is called lam rim, but all lam rims are ngön dro for Vajrayana. So now the very strong recommendation is to enter into Vajrayana. There are a zillion different reasons, but I will give you one simple reason. In Theravada they don’t talk about becoming a Buddha at all. Go and listen to any Theravada teaching. Read the tripitakas [the traditional “three baskets” of the Buddha’s teachings]. Wherever you look, their goal is not to become a Buddha. From their perspective, they are right. There is no reason why any individual has to become a Buddha, if what that person wants is permanent freedom

175 Gelek Rimpoche from suffering and the causes of sufferings. For that you don’t need to become a Buddha; the arhat level [personal liberation] is good enough. In Theravada teachings, the focal point or aim is the arhat level. There are two types of arhats: an arhat that who has some leftover of the First Noble Truth—in other words, a living arhat—and one who has no leftover of the First Noble Truth—one whose body is dead. That is a Theravada principle. When you reach the Mahayana level, your goal shifts to becoming a Buddha. Why? Because you have that special mind that is committed to serving all sentient beings. In order to complete that goal, you need every best possible tool. For that reason, you have to become a Buddha. Though the sutra Mahayana goal is also to become a Buddha, they will talk about it terms of eons. The usual Tibetan traditional teachings will say, “Our great Bud- dha first generated bodhimind, then for three countless eons accumulated merit and did purification, and finally became a Buddha.” In Vajrayana we don’t do that. Vajrayana is very practical. We don’t want to go on for lives and lives. We want to see the result right now when we are in life or at the time of death. We don’t want to go into that life-after-life business. You really want to achieve whatever you can within this very lifetime. Vajrayana is supposed to be capable of that, because it has the speed. It does have tremendous speed. But as much as you have speed, that much danger is also there. It is capable of delivering the goods. It is not talking about eons, but about right now. That is the Vajrayana quality. The downfalls are equally strong. My teachers used to say

176 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS that Vajrayana is like a snake in a hollow bamboo tube. The snake is going to come out either on one end or the other. It can’t come out in between because there are no holes. Vajrayana is the same. Either you are going to become a fully enlightened perfect Buddha, or you are going to go way down somewhere, not necessarily only to a normal hell realm, but the Vajra hell, which is even worse than the normal hell realms. So it’s either up or down, and the chances are 50-50, really. But the opportunity is there, and we have to take the chance. We’ve got to take that chance, because this opportunity does not come very often at all. According to Buddhist mythology, in this eon there will be one thousand official Buddhas. Our time is the time of the fourth Buddha, Shakyamuni. He is supposed to be the first one in this eon to teach Vajrayana; almost all the others don’t teach that. The eleventh Buddha may do so, and the last of the one thousand also may. So out of one thousand official Bud- dhas, only three carry Vajrayana in their portfolio. There is a Hindu mythological story about some kind of fantastic flower that only grows once when the official Buddha comes. When that Buddha dies, the flower also dies. So that’s rare, but to be able to practice Vajrayana is even rarer than that. Only three out of a thousand Buddhas have it. Somehow we are very fortunate to be in this period at this time. In one way, we call it a degenerated, terrible age. The Hindus call itKali yuga. On the other hand, one of the great Kadampa lamas said that whatever the general time might be, this is the best time we have—you and I. It is such a great opportunity. Even if there is a danger, we

177 Gelek Rimpoche should take a chance. We are not going to get the chance again, no question. Sure, we are bound to get downfalls. We are human beings, and we make mistakes. If human beings do not make mistakes, who else can make mistakes?

Vajrayana practice is different There is a tremendous difference between continuing the practice with Vajrayana and without Vajrayana. Once you know how to function within Vajrayana, the practice is very different from Sutrayana [practice based on the Buddha’s non-Vajrayana teachings]. I must say little bit here. Even the way to develop shamatha is very different: In sutrayana, if you analyze a lot, it disturbs your power of concentration. But when you’re dealing with Vajrayana, analyzing does not disturb the development of shamatha. On the contrary, analyzing helps to develop shamatha concentration. Vajrayana is so much openness—much more openness, much less disruption, and you can gain realization quicker in Vajrayana. Within the Vajrayana, when you try to develop shamatha, you do not focus on the image of the Buddha or on the breath. You will probably like to focus either on the small drop at the upper end of the center channel or the drop at the lower end of the center channel—a tiny little light ball, the size of a sesame seed. Within that sesame seed, you’re going to meditate the whole mandala. Then you also meditate on several gross deities, and then without losing the gross deities, you go into the subtle parts of it, meaning those deities on your eyes, ears, nose, and all of these body mandala deities. It is harder to learn, but quicker to develop. So the Vajrayana

178 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS has a special advantage. Quickness is the Vajrayana special- ity. It is sort of a Vajrayana gift. Similarly, from the Vajrayana angle, guru devotional practice is also different from the usual guru devotional practice in sutra. At the Theravada level, you will look at the gurus “like Buddha.” At the Mahayana level, you look at them “as Buddhas.” But at the Vajrayana level, they are “inseparable from Buddha.” There is a difference in depth. Likewise embracing human life. There is a difference between sutra and tantra there. There is also a difference in how to look at impermanence. There is a difference in totally rejecting samsara. There is a difference in developing bodhimind. So these are the Vajrayana qualities. That’s why the verse says:

One who trains in these common Mahayana practices Becomes a vessel worthy of the supreme vehicle, Vajrayana. Empower me that I may quickly and easily arrive at that portal of fortunate beings.

“Portal” means doorway. Normally bodhisattvas are referred to as fortunate beings in Buddhist terminology; however this translator chose to call the Vajrayana people “fortunate,” because the doorway to Vajrayana is entering into initiation. The doorway to being a Buddhist is taking refuge. The doorway to Mahayana is ultimate love and compassion—bodhimind. The Vajrayana doorway is taking initiation.

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Vajrayana wisdom On the other hand, in regard to wisdom, there is no difference between Theravada wisdom, Mahayana wisdom, and Vajrayana wisdom. It is all the same sunyata or emptiness; there is no difference whatsoever. But although it is the same emptiness, the way you develop it is totally different—“totally” may be an exag- geration, but there is a big difference. If you look into emptiness from the Vajrayana point of view and compare it to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, there is no problem at all. But from the pure sutrayana point of view, if you look at Einstein’s theory and then try to find emptiness, I think everybody will laugh at you. But from the Vajrayana angle, it is all possible. That is because the mind that is using emptiness, the mind that is focusing on emptiness, makes a big difference. The quality of Vajrayana is deter- mined with regard to the observer not the observed point or object. It is not that Einstein has become an arya [“special” meditator who has realized emptiness]. Somebody asked me one time, “Do you think Einstein is a fully enlightened Buddha, or a bodhisattva, or something?” I’m not saying that. Both Einstein and the Buddha looked into the nature of reality. Buddha presented the reality that he understood through meditating, and Einstein presented what he understood through scientific ways. They are meeting together at the point of relativity because that is the reality. Buddhist emptiness is based on relativity. I keep on saying all the time, “If you look for empty or zero, you are never going to find emptiness. But if you look for existence, for how

180 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS we exist dependently, collectively, from a point of reference, that is the base on which we will know how empty everything is and how it exists.” [Scientific development] is not spiritual development, but it is the presentation of reality. Buddha understood and experienced and then shared what he experienced because it is true. We can get this understanding much better and faster through Vajrayana. I’ll give you an example. A lot of people say the Yaman- taka sadhana all the time. I tried to point out something a couple times, and nobody seems to be noticing. There is a little verse in the Yamantaka long sadhana, just before the mantra recitation, in the section that talks about the two horns being the two truths and the hands and legs being this and that. It says a bit further down:

To state the meaning of this in brief: The ground to be apprehended is the subject matter of the nine scriptural categories: the illusion-like con- ventional reality and the space-like ultimate reality. The path that leads to comprehending these realities is the thirty-seven elements directed at enlightenment, the principle feature of which is the actual realization of the ultimate reality, insight into the sixteen emptinesses, inseparably conjoined with great bliss as method.

These words tell you that the message of all the teachings of the Buddha boils down to two things: the relative truth, which is like an illusion, and the absolute truth, which is like space. These are the two [important] things, no matter

181 Gelek Rimpoche where you look in any of the Buddha’s teachings. How does one develop these? Through the 37 wings of the Buddha- dharma practice. Mindfulness and all of those are counted among the 37. [See Rimpoche’s transcript 37 Wings of Change: A Commentary on the 37 Wings of Enlightenment.] But the most important of these is understanding absolute truth. There may be sixteen different ways of understanding, but it is all the same truth. This is the absolute essence of Buddha’s teaching, whether sutra or tantra. The last line, “inseparably conjoined with great bliss as method” is talking about Vajrayana. The specialty of the Vajrayana path depends on the subject, the method, and the person who is meditating on absolute reality. That’s where the bliss comes in. The Vajrayana special quality is not from the emptiness point of view, but from the method point of view, the mind point of view, the person’s point of view. If you don’t have bliss and you simply understand emptiness, it is harder to actually encounter emptiness, and even if you do, you will not be able to focus on it, and you will be thrown off immediately. You will not be able to do anything with that insight until you get used to it. [Encountering] emptiness means that you are losing every piece of the earth; everything is going. The little kid is holding that little tree until the line [of Nothingness] comes and picks it up, too. That [the Nothingness depicted in the film The Never Ending Story] is not the Buddha’s emptiness at all. It is just empty. When the Buddha talks about the wisdom of emptiness, you have to know that emptiness is full. Emptiness is not empty. It is fullness. If you look for emptiness, you are not going to find emptiness. If you look

182 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS at how you exist, then you are going to find emptiness. This is very strange. How do we exist? We exist simply because so many conditions are right. All the conditions are together and that’s why we exist. We know this chair stands here, and it is made out of wood. I cannot go through it because it blocks me. Why? I can’t put my finger through the wood because of the many molecules coming together. So existence exists through the combination and collec- tion of conditions. Einstein’s theory of relativity gives you a very good idea of Buddha’s emptiness. It’s the point of reference. Without a point of reference, you cannot even figure out where you going, how fast you are going, and what’s happening. The point of reference is relative truth. The absolute truth is that if you don’t have that, you have nothing to hope for. If you don’t have those molecules here, there is nothing to hold the wood together. If you don’t have your body, your mind, your name or label, and your karma, there would be no you. You exist because of all of them exist together. Buddha talked from the point of view of wisdom, and we made that look something like religion. When Ein- stein discovered the theory of relativity, we call that scientific development. What Einstein really discovered is a small part of what Buddha has already been telling us about absolute truth or absolute reality. Einstein was a Caucasian male, and maybe that is why it becomes scientific. I’m just joking. If Buddha happened to be born in Germany or England, Bud- dhism would have been scientific, too. I have a problem with the translation of wisdom as the “ultimate meaning of life” [in verse 9]. I just would

183 Gelek Rimpoche like to see “absolute reality.” When you gain the shamatha power to focus, you have to focus on that absolute reality. In order to focus on that, you have to understand the working mechanism of existence. You have to understand how it exists. Once you see how it exists, then you begin to see how you do not really exist. You sort of get two projections; you perceive two things. You perceive the relative person as a person with a face, a being you acknowledge, talk to, kiss and hug, and you also see within that and beyond that. Beyond that which you label and physically hold, hug and kiss, you see some kind of . . . Those computers screen savers show you some kind of picture, and then you have something else moving in there. You can see both of them together. That is the reality. It will be like that. Whatever picture you put on the screensaver, you perceive that picture. At the same time, some move- ment comes and something goes round; all these pictures will shake and move, and then [the first picture] will come back. It comes back all the time. You can sort of see two things. The traditional picture that the teachings give you is a mirror. If you stand in front of a mirror, hug somebody, and look into the mirror, it doesn’t really give you that message of there being two realities. So that picture doesn’t work very well. But a screensaver does. I saw yesterday on someone’s computer screen a screensaver of Tara and then something goes around that. I was feeling very uneasy, and I got somebody to stop that. But that’s what gives me the picture to talk to you about today. I am thinking that screensaver would give you two different pictures together. You will see something beyond. You will definitely

184 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS see beyond the face, the name that you hear. You go beyond that. You have to think about emptiness in that way. You don’t think about emptiness in the sense of “I’m here,” but “I should not be here.” That is a very difficult one. In the end it doesn’t matter, whether you recognize the emptiness of one bottle of water or recognize the emptiness of yourself [by meditating] on your mind. It is the same thing. If you see emptiness in one thing you will see emptiness in everything. We divided emptiness into emptiness of self and emptiness of phenomena. That is also subdivided into the sixteen different emptinesses. This is philosophy, and we do need to know at little of that. So in verse 9, instead of saying “ultimate meaning of life,” we should say “absolute reality.” Then focus and concentrate; know and embrace and digest, and let it be part of your mind. Perhaps that is the meaning of life. Perhaps. That’s what this verse is talking about.

Vajrayana is the springboard So, the combination of shamatha and vipasyana is the key to reaching enlightenment, and Vajrayana is the springboard. You know how swimmers jump into the swimming pool from a springboard? Vajrayana is the springboard. Or if you are swimming and you have those big flippers on your feet, Vajrayana does that job. It makes you go faster and sharper, much faster. There’s a danger too, though . . . We make mistakes; no doubt about it. There are always downfalls, always, but every downfall is not permanent. It is impermanent, so we can make it right. We may have to make it right three hundred times, but we can keep cor-

185 Gelek Rimpoche recting it. That is the human quality. That’s how we learn. Before they had those walkers, when babies learned how to walk, how many times did they fall down? Each time they would just get up, fall down, get up, fall down, get up. Finally they learned how to walk without falling down. That is exactly how we work on the spiritual path. That is exactly how we work on the Vajrayana path. Of course, we will make mistakes. Don’t get so worked up. It is because we are human beings. Yes, downfalls are bound to happen. Yes, there’s a danger of going way down there, too. But we also have the opportunity to correct and purify. Even if you don’t do anything in terms of practice, but at least have purified downfalls, then within sixteen lifetimes you will become a fully enlightened Buddha. That is what Buddha guarantees in Vajrayana, not in sutra Mahayana or Theravada. That is another difference that the traditional teachings will point out. With Vajrayana, within three years and three months, one can obtain enlightenment. But then in our teacher’s meeting in San Francisco, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said this is probably propaganda. Maybe it is. I’m going to leave it there. So when you have the common practice grounded, you may become the vessel worthy to use the Vajrayana methods. The doorway to that is to take an initiation. There are a number of different initiations. Probably when you don’t know what you’re doing, you are not initiated at all. There are a number of people who attend initiations and have no idea what an initiation is or what it is all about. They don’t know who is the deity, what is the mandala, who is the vajra master, and how one enters into the mandala. A lot of peo-

186 FOUNDATION OF ALL PERFECTIONS ple don’t know anything about it. They hear the bell ringing and something is being put their head and that’s all. They probably do not really receive the initiation. The initiation really is there to introduce the individual to the mandala. But this is not the time for me to talk about initiation, so I’m going to leave it there.

Guarding pledges and commitments

DE TSE NGO DRUP NAM NYI DRUP PAY ZHI NAM DAK DAM TSIK DOM PAR SUNG PA LA CHO MA MIN PAY NGE PA NYE GYUR NE SOK DANG DO TE SUNG WAR CHIN GYI LOB

Once you get initiated, the first and most important thing for you is not to have a downfall. That means keeping the pledges and commitments. That is the ethics point of view. We talked about ethics earlier. Ethics means honor- ing an individual’s commitments and pledges to become a fully enlightened Buddha to benefit sentient beings. We talked about the three points of morality: avoiding negative actions, accumulating positive actions as much as possible, and helping sentient beings. You have to think about what a negative action is and

187 Gelek Rimpoche how strong it is. These things do change according to the times. You cannot rigidly point to every rule that Buddha made 2500 years ago. The times will change; Buddha himself said that when you change, you have move according to the times and the wishes of the people. But Buddha did not mention anything about cloning other beings and harvesting their organs, or point that out as a negativity, because it never happened during his lifetime. If Buddha were here today, we could ask him. He would definitely say that those are mistakes in ethics. That’s how we have to adapt and adjust. So keeping commitments and pledges is the most important thing in Vajrayana.

The two stages of Vajrayana

DE NE GYU DEY NYING PO RIM NYI KYI NE NAM JI ZHIN TOK NE TSON PA YI THUN ZHI NAM JOR CHO LE MI YEL WAR DAM PAY SUNG ZHING DRUP PAR CHIN GYI LOB

And bless me so that I may gain realization of the main practices of the two stages of Vajrayana, essence of the tantric path; and, by sitting relentlessly in four daily sessions of yoga, actualize just what the sages have taught.

The essence of the tantric path is the two stages. In the lam rim, [Rimpoche’s Odyssey to Freedom], we have so many steps, at least sixty-four, right? In Vajrayana, there are two: the development stage and the completion stage.

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“Development” means building up your mandala, building up your deity. You meditate and learn how to die, how to go through the bardo, and how to take rebirth. That is the essence of the development stage, or kye rim. Dzoh rim or “completion” stage is actualizing whatever you have built. In the development stage, the mandala is only imagi- nation, but in the dzoh rim stage, it becomes actualized. In completion stage practice, whatever you visualize becomes actual. You keep on building it up, and when you have built it up, you try to make it become actual. It becomes reality. When it becomes reality, then your personal nature probably goes beyond the laws of physics. I am quite sure the scientists are going to discover that, too. They will probably find a way to walk through walls. Scientifically they are going to find it. In whatever the form the information is given, spiritually or scientifically, it can develop. Maybe you are not going to become a Buddha, but up to that level [walking through walls], science can also come. Buddha himself said that material development, meaning scientific development, meditative spiritual development, and mantra power are equal. The weakest is mantra power. Whatever becomes actualized through meditative, spiritual development and through scientific, material development are equal; they are at the same level. I bet some scientists will definitely find out how to walk through the wall without breaking the wall. As I told you earlier Vajrayana, is very practical. They don’t want you to sit and think and meditate, and sit and think and meditate for too long! When you meditate, you meditate four times a day as the verse says:

189 Gelek Rimpoche and, by sitting relentlessly in four daily sessions of yoga, actualize just what the sages have taught.

That’s how you do a retreat. If you don’t “actualize what the sages have taught,” if that doesn’t become actual, then something is wrong. Then you have to go back and think about what went wrong. You have to check. It has to become actualized. Otherwise you are just sending good thoughts, thinking about good things, and that becomes just “love and light.” It’s not that great. You have to become actualized. Cutting down negativity and negative emotions has to be actual. Becoming an enlightened Buddha has to become actual and reality. It is not necessary that you develop horns and so on, but actualizing is necessary. If we cannot actualize, then something is wrong, and we have to look back to find out where and what went wrong. You cannot afford to think, “I’m swimming,” when actually you are getting carried away by the river way down for miles. If you still think you are swimming, then you are going to sink one day. Vajrayana is very practical. You have to look into it practically; you have to do everything practically. If it is not becoming practical, then something went wrong somewhere, and you have to look back and correct it. That is the quality of the Vajrayana. It is very much today’s spiritual path. It is the twenty-first century’s spiritual path—like it or not. It will tally completely with scientific development. It will go side-by-side with it. But Vajrayana explanations go a little bit ahead of scientific developments and enable individuals to reach the Buddha level. That is the Vajrayana.

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Praying

DE TAR LAM ZANG TON PAY SHE NYEN DANG TSUL ZHIN DRUP PAY DROK NAM ZHAB TEN CHING CHI DANG NANG GI PHAR DU CHO PAY TSOK NYE WAR ZHI WAR CHIN GYI LAB TU SOL

KYE WA KUN TU YANG DAK LA MA DANG DREL ME CHO KYI PEL LA LONG CHO CHING SA DANG LAM GYI YON TEN RAB DZOK NE DOR JE CHANG GI GO PHANG NYUR THOP SHOK

In all future lives may I never be parted from the perfect lamas or the pure ways of Dharma. May I gain every experience of the paths and stages and quickly attain the stage of Vajradhara.

Now, the last two verses are simply praying for the long life of the individual practitioners, their friends, their lamas and gurus and benefactors, and so forth.

191 Gelek Rimpoche

Buddhism in the palm of your hands Actually if you look back now, I have given you Buddhism in the palm of your hands, all the stages, just very, very briefly. You can read more and understand more. After all, Buddhahood is total knowledge, not total stupidity. It’s called enlightenment, not stupidity. So I guess that’s about it. Thank you and thank you to those who are listening or reading wherever you are.

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End Notes:

1. The 7 steps to developing bodhimind are: (preliminary) equanimity; (1) recognizing all beings as mother beings; (2) remembering their kindness; (3) developing the wish to repay their kindness; (4) love; (5) compassion; (6) special commitment; (7) bodhimind.)

2. The Supreme Field of Merit in this case is most likely Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa and his two disciples from the Ganden Lha Gyema. The Foundation of all Perfec- tions, composed by Je Tsongkhapa himself, is often inserted into the Ganden Lha Gyema. More detail on the Supreme Field of Merit in Gelek Rimpoche’s Ganden Lha Gyema—The Open Teachings, pp. 63 -81.

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