Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life

SHANTIDEVA’S Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life An oral explanation of Chapter 7: Enthusiasm

Kyabje Gelek Rimpoche Teachings 2002 - 2003 Ann Arbor, Michigan

Jewel Heart Transcript

Jewel Heart Transcripts are lightly to moderately edited transcrip- tions of the teachings of Kyabje Gelek Rinpoche 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 1129 Oak Valley Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA Phone (1) 734.994.3387 www.jewelheart.org

Acknowledgements

This book is a moderately edited transcript of oral explana- tions given by Kyabje Gehlek Rimpoche on Chapter Seven of Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Rimpoche gave these teachings on Tuesday nights in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from May 2002 to November 2003. Rimpoche’s teachings on Shantideva’s text have continued to the present; he has now completed Chapter 8. Transcripts of Chapters Nine and Ten will be issued in separate volumes as they are completed. The transcripts on Chapters One through Eight are already available through Jewel Heart. Throughout this transcript, Rimpoche uses the English translation by Stephen Batchelor, published by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. Since Rinpoche frequently makes reference to Tibetan words and phrasing, the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit original is included in Wylie transliteration in Apprendix II. Rinpoche did not introduce a traditional extensive outline in giving this teaching. For those interested, an outline of this sort may be found in Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s Meaningful to Behold. The headings, subheadings and footnotes in this present volume have been added by the editor for ease of reference, and to help delineate changes of topic. A brief bibli- ograpy is included. For a glossary, see the transcript on Chap- ters One through Three in this series. The transcription of these teachings from recordings was done by Hartmut Sagolla.

It has been my great good fortune to be able to work on this volume. Errors in this transcript are solely due to my carelessness or lack of knowledge. Please let me know about any you may find in order that we may improve future editions.

May this work be of great benefit to all who read it or even hear about it!

Jang chub sem chog rin po che May the precious bodhimind Ma kye pa nam kye gyur chig Not yet born arise and grow. Kye pa nyam pa may pa yang May that born have no decline, Gong nay gong du pel war shog But increase forever more.

Anne Warren Cleveland, Ohio June 2008

Contents

I Enthusiasm 1 Verse 1: Why we need Enthusiasm ...... 1 Verse 2: Recognizing Enthusiasm ...... 6 Questions and Answers ...... 27 Verse 3: The Causes of Indolence ...... 28 Verse 4: The Faults of Laziness ...... 30 Verse 5 ...... 35 Verse 6 ...... 37 Verse 7 ...... 43 Verse 8 ...... 45 Verse 9 ...... 46 Verse 10 ...... 54 Verse 11 ...... 57 Verse 12 ...... 60 Verse 13 ...... 66 Verse 14 ...... 70 Questions and Answers ...... 83 Verse 15 ...... 85 Verse 16 ...... 91 Verse 17 ...... 101 Verse 18 ...... 103 Verse 19 ...... 104 Verse 20 ...... 112 Verse 21 ...... 118 Verse 22 ...... 119 Verse 23 ...... 124 Verse 24 ...... 126 Verse 25 ...... 133 Questions and Answers ...... 136 Verse 26 ...... 138 Verse 27 ...... 138 Verse 28 ...... 147 Verse 29 ...... 150 Verse 30 ...... 152 Verse 31: ...... 154

The Four Supports For Enthusiastic Bodhimind .. 154 Verse 32 ...... 155 Verse 33: Aspiration ...... 162 Verse 34 ...... 168 Verse 35 ...... 171 Verse 36 ...... 176 Verse 37 ...... 179 Verse 38 ...... 180 Verse 39 ...... 182 Verse 40 ...... 186 Questions and Answers ...... 188 Verse 42 ...... 196 Verse 43 ...... 199 Verse 44 ...... 205 Verse 45 ...... 206 Verse 46: Self-confidence ...... 221 Verse 47 ...... 227 Verse 48 ...... 228 Verse 49 ...... 228 Verse 50 ...... 229 Verse 51 ...... 235 Verse 52 ...... 237 Verse 53 ...... 237 Verse 54 ...... 238 Verse 55 ...... 243 Verse 56 ...... 245 Verse 57 ...... 251 Verse 58 ...... 259 Verse 59 ...... 261 Verse 60 ...... 262 Verse 61 ...... 269 Verses 62 ...... 269 Questions and Answers ...... 275 Verse 63: Joy...... 278 Verse 64 ...... 289 Verse 65 ...... 290 Verse 66 ...... 291

Verse 67: Determination or Rest ...... 291 Verse 68 ...... 295 Verse 69 ...... 297 Questions and Answers ...... 300 Verse 70 ...... 303 Verse 71 ...... 304 Verse 72 ...... 307 Verse 73 ...... 311 Verse 74 ...... 312 Verse 75 ...... 313 Verse 76 ...... 315

Appendix I Tibetan transliteration, Chapter Seven 317

Appendix II Annotated Bibliography 329

About Gelek Rimpoche 337

About Jewel Heart 338

Jewel Heart Transcripts 339

Gelek Rimpoche

I Enthusiasm

We are starting on a new chapter, the chapter on enthusiasm. I hope we all have great enthusiasm for starting it! I have a question whether the word enthusiasm is really the best for what we are talking about here, but I don’t have a better choice of words.1 I question this because anybody can be enthusiastic about anything. In this particular case, however, being interested in just anything whatsoever doesn’t fall under the category of enthusiasm. What is meant here is more restricted and selective.

VERSE 1: WHY WE NEED ENTHUSIASM Having patience, I should develop enthusiasm, For Awakening will dwell only in those who exert themselves. Just as there is no movement without wind, So merit does not occur without enthusiasm. Earlier we explained how important patience is.2 I have often told you that the patience meant here is not: being willing to wait when your girlfriend dumps you and then calls you to meet her in the middle of nowhere at two in the afternoon and you go and wait there until five or six. No matter how long you are willing to wait, this is not the patience meant here. This kind of patience, or zö pa3 in Tibetan, means helping yourself, protecting yourself from engaging in actions that hurt other people or yourself.

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Verse 1 joins the chapters of patience and enthusiasm together. Anyone who has patience then needs enthusiasm.4 They should exert themselves in order to become a Buddha. Without the kind of patience we have been talking about, working hard is not very useful. You can be very enthusiastic about learning, but you won’t get that much done without patience. It will not serve the purpose. Without patience, enthusiasm is difficult. If you work hard without patience and endurance, it is questionable how far you will get. This empha- sizes patience as the base. Then you may think, ‘All right, if I have patience, I may not need enthusiasm. Patience alone will do.’ Actually, it won’t. The reason is given in the second line of the first verse: For Awakening will dwell only in those who exert themselves. In other words, Buddhahood or full Awakening is only going to be available for those who have enthusiasm. Those who are not prepared to work are not going to get enlightened at all. Patience is fine, but if you don’t have enthusiasm you won’t get anywhere. Just as there is no movement without wind, So merit does not occur without enthusiasm. This tells you that enthusiasm is the cause of two things, not only merit, but actually both merit and wisdom merit.5 I want to make this clear here. Nagarjuna has said in a dedication verse, Ge wa di yi kye wo kün Sö nam ye she tsoh sor ye Sö nam ye she lä jung wai Dam pa ku nyi tob par gyur By this virtue May all beings accumulate the two types of merit, wisdom merit and merit merit. Because of these may they attain the physical and mental aspects of enlightenment. Mental and physical aspects. We always talk about the two kayas or two forms or two aspects, physical and mental. We all have

Gelek Rimpoche both physical and mental aspects. These have to go together: if they don’t, we are not a person. The physical aspect without the mental aspect is just a dead body. If you have the mental aspect without the physical, you are a spirit. Just like that, at the level of enlightenment you will also have physical and mental aspects. These don’t just pop up from nowhere. Even popcorn needs to have the corn first, and a piece of toast popping out from the toaster needs the bread as well as the toaster. It doesn’t pop up out of nowhere. No enlightened being just arises from nowhere. No human being is born out of nowhere. Where do they come from? The easy answer is that they come from the parents’ genes, but do your parents give you a mind, too? No, they give you only the physical genes. Physical genes, without mind, don’t become a person. Most of the millions of sperm cells do not become living beings, even if they actually meet an egg. The reason for that is the presence or [rather the] absence of mind. The physical aspects are provided by the parents and the mental aspects are provided by you, the continuation of you. The combination of that produces life. When you become enlightened, it will be the same thing. Where does the pure body we are talking about so much, come from? I am talking about the body of a fully enlightened being with the 32 major signs and the 80 minor marks. This comes from the merit we have accumulated. What really is merit? The answer I am going to give you is technically not correct, but for the time being, we can think that it is our positive karma, which is capable of giving the Buddha result. Not every positive karma is capable of giving you the body of a Buddha. Within karma, we have positive, negative and immovable karma. Immovable karmas are capable of giving you a good result, but not a spiritually good result. The positive karmas that are capable of giving you a physical result of the Buddha level are called merit. The mind part is [built up] wisdom merit. That is merit that is connected with wisdom. The other merit6 is merit that is not directly connected with wisdom. Remember, in a similar

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE way, bodhimind has relative bodhimind, which is actually the true bodhimind, and then there is the absolute bodhimind,7 which is not the true bodhimind, but is capable of giving you the mind aspects of the Buddha. Relative bodhimind is capable of giving you the physical aspects of the Buddha. This is very similar to how it works with wisdom merit and merit merit. The statement merit does not occur without enthusiasm shows that both merit merit and wisdom merit result from enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm there is no cause. Without cause there is no movement. If no wind is blowing candlelight won’t move or flicker: there is no movement without wind. Our efforts are important. This is telling us that yes, we need patience, but that is not enough. We need to combine that with enthusiasm, with enthusiastic efforts. That is why enthusiasm is called a great virtuous stage. Chandrakirti8 has said, All good qualities follow from enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm you won’t gain good qualities. Merit and wisdom are the causes for enlightenment and both are caused by enthusiasm. A person who doesn’t work will get virtually nothing. You can have a wonderful mind and catch so many things. You can cover up and just manage, if you have quite a brilliant mind, but you won’t achieve much. You have the right mind, but you don’t work. That is why you only just manage to get by. Somebody who has a very good wisdom mind may only put in 45 minutes worth of effort and achieve the same as somebody who puts in 24 hours, but it is not going to be a solid result. You know the subject, you can manage and you are able to cover up. The efforts you have really put in are just too little. When I was young, I knew a rimpoche named Minyang Kujang who was really very brilliant. You couldn’t find a mind more brilliant than that, brilliant at reading and understanding books, good at debate, poetry, drawing and everything. He passed his exams within a very short period. One day he was 4

Gelek Rimpoche talking with Lochö Rimpoche who is also brilliant but worked very hard as well. Kujang Rimpoche said to him, ‘If I were to read books and study like you do, I would already be enlightened by now! You are putting in so many hours of work. If you do two hours I only would put in 2 minutes to get the same result.’ The solidness of the achievement, however, only comes with hard work. That is the difference. A very intelligent person who doesn’t work very hard may know the same thing as another person who got there through a lot of effort, but the value these two gain will be very different. We know that, more or less, though we like to ignore it. It is like that in school, college, research, and any other field, even mathematics. A person who totally has to depend on machines to figure something out and a person who only needs his brain can come to the same conclusion, but the way they got there will be different. Enthusiasm is the cause of all good qualities. Buddha himself said, For those who have good enthusiasm, Buddhahood is not difficult. For those who enjoy being lazy, Buddhahood is very far away. Enthusiasm maintains good qualities and develops further good qualities. Such people will find the treasure of buddhahood. Asanga,9 one of the great Indian masters and one of the founders of the Mahayana, said, The most important, outstanding cause of buddhahood is enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, it is very difficult to get it; with enthusiasm, it is most definite. What kind of enthusiasm are we talking about? What is enthusiasm and what is its opposite? The opposite of east is west. The opposite of virtue is non- virtue. The next verse tells us.

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VERSE 2: RECOGNIZING ENTHUSIASM What is enthusiasm? It is finding joy in what is wholesome. Its opposing factors are explained As laziness, attraction to what is bad And despising oneself out of despondency. The line What is enthusiasm? is not in the Tibetan. The translator must have added it so that the verse makes sense in English. The syllable by syllable translation of tsön dru is something like diligent work. In the context of spiritual practice, it really means the mental faculty that is focused on positive work. If you are very focused on doing something negative, that may be enthusiasm, but not the kind we are talking about here. It has to be focused on the creation of positive karma and its aspect has to be joyful. You have to work happily. If you get burned out, that means you lack enthusiasm. Burnout is not something that is to be encouraged in spiritual practice. Some people are happy to say, ‘I am burned out; everybody is burning out,’ but that is your problem. You shouldn’t create the idea of burnout in the Sangha at all. If you do so, you even create a negative karma, although it may be true. There is no room for burnout in the spiritual path.

The focus and aspect of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, tsön dru has to have two aspects: what it is focused on and what kind of aspect that mind has. In other words: what is this mind looking at and how does this mind feel? This particular mental faculty is focusing on virtuous work. It feels joyful, happy and enthusiastic about it. The moment you lose enthusiasm you lose the urge or the edge in your work. When that happens, you don’t have power. Your work is not forceful. You become like a dead-tired donkey, dragging a heavy load uphill in the Himalayas, the metaphor for being incapable of functioning, of achieving results. Enthusiasm should be focused on positive work and joy. As the verse says, it is finding joy in what is wholesome.

Gelek Rimpoche On the Mahayana path, enthusiasm should not only be focused on just any positive work, but on developing the positive karma that is capable of giving you the Buddha level. The aspect of enthusiasm is joy nature. You are happy to be doing it. In Tibetan this is ge la tro10. That indirectly says that it doesn’t enjoy doing things other than virtuous work. It doesn’t enjoy doing non-virtuous or even neutral things. If you enjoy doing non-virtuous and neutral actions, that is called laziness, which is the opposite of enthusiasm, just like west is the opposite of east. As the verse says, Its opposing factors are explained As laziness, attraction to what is bad And despising oneself out of despondency. In a sutra, Buddha also says: Enthusiasm is the direct opposing factor of laziness What does enthusiasm do? Asanga says that it is about Anything that you are able to complete and accomplish. That tells you clearly that if you are enthusiastic about doing something other than positive work, that is not this particular kind of enthusiasm.11 Buddha said: Those who are engaged in laziness are far away from Buddhahood. Those who are engaged in laziness don’t have the six perfections, from generosity to wisdom. Those who are engaged in laziness don’t accomplish the purpose of others. Those who are engaged in laziness don’t accomplish their own purpose. Buddha’s statements can be quite short and direct, like the good old American language. The Mindfulness Sutra says: The basis of negative emotions is laziness. One who has a lot of laziness has no qualities whatsoever. Without enthusiasm a person is completely controlled

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by laziness and thereby loses all positive karma and all their short-term and long-term goals. It further says: The benefit of enthusiasm makes the individual achieve Buddhahood and goes directly against laziness. Thus you collect tremendous amounts of virtuous, positive karma. It goes on: Every laziness can be destroyed by a single-pointed bullet and that is enthusiasm. If there is complete darkness in a room, as soon as you let light in, all darkness will be completely destroyed. Just like that, the single bullet of enthusiasm will destroy all laziness. In another sutra Buddha says: All the Buddhas have praised enthusiasm, because it capable of clearing the darkness of suffering and the causes of suffering. It destroys the causes of rebirth in lower realms. Whatever the achievements inside or outside of samsara are, they all follow from enthusiasm. If you are not stupid, why be afraid of enthusiasm? One who likes to follow me should not entertain laziness. Do not entertain oversleeping. See it as a fault and always have enthusiasm. This is my suggestion to my followers. In Buddhism we object very strongly to oversleeping. It is a waste of time. You should get as much sleep as necessary for you. It could be four, five, six or seven hours or maybe eight hours. Nine or ten hours is too much and certainly not seven- teen hours! Maitreya Buddha said: Enthusiasm is the best virtue. It is what brings results, joy, and samsaric as well as non-samsaric accomplishments. It will even meet your needs in material life. It will make you pure. It will destroy your fear. It will give you Buddhahood. Buddha said: For one who has great enthusiasm there is nothing that they cannot achieve. There is nothing they cannot

Gelek Rimpoche obtain, nothing they cannot do, nothing they can claim to be incapable of. The commentary has more statements like that, but that should be good enough to make us enthusiastic about enthusiasm! What I have said so far makes it clear that you need enthusiasm for everything you do. From my own personal experience, I can tell you that I do have quite a good, sharp wisdom mind. If I can manage to put in time, I can achieve tremendous results, but I just cannot put in the time; I am so overpowered by laziness. My weakness is enthusiasm, yet I am here talking to you about enthusiasm! That is funny, but it is part of this text. I happen to be the preacher reading the Holy Bible and that talks about enthusiasm! Actually, I am the wrong person to talk about it. I am very good at wasting time. I find any excuse I can get. I can get out of anything, except what I am supposed to do. Laziness will take you away from your achievements. You may enjoy your life, sleep, watch TV, have a drink, and have a good time, then at the end of the day you have hardly any time left to do your commitments, so you just rush through, all the words just mumble-jumble. That is how I waste my life. One of the outstanding 18th century Tibetan masters, the great master Gungtang, Konchog Tenpai Tronme, was asked by his disciples for his biography. He replied that he had nothing to say. They kept on asking and finally he gave in and said, ‘All right, I am going to tell you my biography.’ When he announced that, many people came from everywhere and wanted to hear it. He then said: For the first 20 years of my life I kept on thinking, ‘ I am a kid, I am a kid.’ Then for the next 20 years I kept on thinking, ‘I should do something, I should do something.’ Then the next 20 years I spent on thinking, ‘I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it. That is how I wasted 60 years. That is how I wasted my life. That is my autobiography.

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I don’t think Konchog Tenpai Tronme really had any laziness, since his collected works go into 12 volumes, but that is how he said it and it was probably meant for people like me. There were so many great masters in the 1300s and 1400s, like Tsongkhapa and others. Then fewer and fewer and Konchog Tenpai Tronme was one of the last great masters in the 1700s. Then later, in the 20th century, we had Kyabje Pabongka and KyabjeTrijang Rimpoche and a few others. Years can go by and that is how we can waste our life. La- ziness takes over and lack of enthusiasm makes laziness enjoyable. You sleep a lot and lie down, make yourself fatter than ever and waste all your time. Those who care for themselves, who want to do something useful for themselves and others, should go in the opposite direction. Don’t surrender to laziness. Build up enthusiasm. Never indulge in or entertain the idea of burnout. Nev- er even think about it. When someone starts talking to you about how burned out they are, just say, ‘Shhhh, keep your mouth shut, I don’t want to hear it!’

Patience and enthusiasm must work together. In the previous chapter we talked about how to overcome our addiction to anger and hatred, particularly hatred. Nobody has to teach us how to get angry or how to develop hatred. It happens automatically. Particularly we Americans have this interesting character. Ba- sically we are wonderful human beings, kind and nice. Gener- ally all human beings are like that, but if they are attacked people here get really upset. Look what happened during World War II. The country was divided between those who wanted to get involved and those who didn’t. A big debate went on over whether what was going on in Europe was of any concern to America. Then Pearl Harbor came and everybody was united overnight. The same thing happened with September 11th. Suddenly everybody was ready to say, ‘Go and get Osama bin Laden!’ In a way this is a good human quality. On the other hand it is also some kind of anger that changed into hatred.

Gelek Rimpoche In the Tibetan tradition, as far back as the 7th century, the Tibetan kings said, ‘We will not attack anyone, because we are spiritually oriented people. We don’t want to hurt anybody, but if anyone attacks us we will never let them get away!’ That is the system of temporal rule combined with the spiritual system. Now the Tibetans can only hope and dream, because when the Chinese came we couldn’t really chase them. In America we can. I mentioned a number of times that yes, we have to go and get Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, in order to stop the ag- gression, since otherwise they are continuously going to hurt us and other people. That is a bad thing and we have to stop that. At the same time I also said that each and every one of us has our own Osama bin Laden hiding, not in the mountains of Afghanistan, but in the mountains and caves of our own heart. This is the most important. If we are not going to go after that hatred in our heart, who else is going to? It is our own responsibility. Overcoming this hatred is patience. Patience here is not the kind we normally talk about as just waiting around. Pa- tience has to be oriented at creating positive karma. Likewise patience will pick up enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, patience will just be something forced that will not help. We can force our dead-tired, overloaded donkey to carry a heavy load uphill in the Himalayas. You can drag and push and pull it, but you won’t get very far. What you need is enthusiasm. Yes, you do have an overloaded donkey, but that donkey and driver must have an interest in going forward. Otherwise the donkey will fall down and if you try to pull it up again, it won’t work. The donkey will lie down and simply collapse. That won’t do. Any positive deed we want to create, like generosity, morality, patience and so on, needs enthusiasm. Without that, it will be like paying a tax. You don’t want to, but you have to, because if you don’t, you will get into trouble, the IRS will get you. Without enthusiasm, virtue doesn’t have sharpness or power.

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Natural and developed enthusiasm. Enthusiasm comes in two ways. In one way, you are naturally interested, but that is not very reliable enthusiasm. The one which you develop by yourself is the reliable enthusiasm. We really have to develop the interest and urge for ourselves, otherwise our practice will be lifeless; it will simply be a chore we must do. It is like with cooking. If you are in the mood to prepare a certain dish and you have the materials available, then you are excited and really like to cook well. If you don’t, you just have to eat something and you throw things into the pot and quickly stir-fry something, just to fill up your stomach. That is no fun. Even at your job you need enthusiasm. Let’s say you have a shop and want to sell things. If you are enthusiastic about it, you can sell things better. Your customers will experience it differently. They will feel that there are really attractive things to buy here, wonderful and useful. If someone sells books like this, they can tell people about the books, they will know what it is in them and will even know related subjects. The custom- er may have come to buy one book, but will leave with a dozen. That is enthusiasm. In your own practice you have to do that too. That is why enthusiasm is one of the six paramitas, the transcendental activities which go beyond. You have to go beyond doing things as chores. What makes it interesting, what gives it force, is enthusiasm. We often say, ‘I am losing interest, but I don’t want to give it up.’ That is because of lack of enthusiasm. If you have enthusiasm, the question of losing interest doesn’t even rise. We are human beings who have such a wonderful opportunity in this life. Many of our other lives never had that. This life of ours has 18 special qualities.12 However, this life of opportunity is short-lived. We don’t live forever. If we cannot take advantage of this wonderful life, after losing it, things become extremely difficult. One of the keys to not wasting our life is enthusiasm. That is why it is part of the six perfections. Verse 2 tells us that enthusiasm is finding joy in what is wholesome. Whether we use the word wholesome or not, what we are talking about is positive work, positive karma. We should

Gelek Rimpoche have an interest in that and push for that. That is enthusiasm according to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Generally, enthusiasm itself is something wonderful already. When you receive a new job, how excited you are! You are looking forward to going there. You do well and give it your full energy. That enthusiasm makes it work. Again, enthusiasm here means a tremendously strong interest in the positive work you want to do. What is the focal point of enthusiasm? Positive actions. What aspects does such a mind have? Joy, happiness, excitement. The combination of these, really looking forward to positive work, gives you the meaning of this particular kind of enthusiasm. If your focal point is having interest in non-virtuous actions, that becomes the opposite of this enthusiasm. Your interest has been corrupted and captured by negative actions. Consequently you will spend your time and energy on pursu- ing negative actions, instead of positive ones. Telling you to develop joyful energy for positive actions indirectly tells you, ‘Do not enjoy putting efforts into negative actions.’ That message has to be understood clearly.

The three varieties of laziness. If enthusiasm is defined as enjoying positive work, then what is its opposite? It is, of course, laziness. The Tibetan word le lo does mean laziness, however, there are particular types of laziness.

1. The first kind of laziness is procrastination, thinking, ‘There will still be time to do whatever I want to do. I don’t have to rush, so I will delay.’ We do that very often. With every activity we have to do we think that there is plenty of time so we can do it later. Particularly, if it is about creating some positive karma, we think that we will have time later. That is this particular laziness. Every work, good, bad, important, not important, we like to delay. I find myself doing this all the time. If I have to catch a plane in an hour, I think that there is still time to do this and that. Then, I notice that I have to drive like crazy to get to the

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE airport, hoping and praying that I don’t miss my flight today, because it is important to go. When there is an important deadline to meet and you miss it, then it is terrible. It is the same with our prayers and daily meditation commitments. I don’t want to do it in the morning. I put it off until I have to go to do something important. Then all the activities of the day take place and finally at night, maybe after midnight, I would like to do my practice, but I also want to watch a movie and listen to the news – all three of them together! If you do it like that it will be 3:30 or 4 a.m. in the morning before it gets done. That is what happens to me, because of the kind of laziness that thinks, ‘There is still time to do it later.’ Yes, there is time, if you do it well, but if you want to do three things together, instead of one hour it takes actually three hours, so there is no time to spare. Another similar laziness is this one. ‘I am still young, I am just twenty, I still have time.’ Then it will be, ‘I am quite young, I am thirty, I still have time.’ And then, ‘I am forty, I may still have time later.’ Then, ‘I am fifty, I don’t know if I can still do it.’ Then, ‘I am sixty, I am too old, I can’t do it.’ Remember the story of Konchog Tenpai Tronme! This particular laziness is the key to how we waste our lives. Even if we want to say our prayers, we always want to wait until we have a solid, undisturbed chunk of time like three hours. We are never going to find that. Out of 24 hours, some people sleep 12 hours. Out of the remaining time, 6 hours are spent on gossiping. Another 2 or 3 hours are spent on what we think is strategizing our life, but actually, we are doing all kinds of funny things. We don’t really have a solid three hours. It is better to take whatever time there is. You may have half an hour here, twenty minutes there and so on. Better use that time! You don’t have to say all your prayers together. If you can, it is of course wonderful, but if you can’t, better use what time you have. Everybody has to pay their bills and make money. Then, in the evening, you don’t want to go to bed early. You have to have music, and dance. It is beautiful

Gelek Rimpoche weather, so we want to go walking on Main Street and do something. As a consequence, we won’t be able to get up early tomorrow morning. We stay in bed later, then jump out, take a shower and it is time to go to work. On the way you may pick up a can of coca cola and a sandwich and eat that in the car, on the way to work. That is what we do. In one way, we are very short of time, but on the other hand, we waste a lot of time. So, where is the time for spiritual practice? Where is the time to do something useful, something wholesome? Putting efforts into negative actions actually is a kind of laziness. Then there is intellectual laziness, electronic laziness, and busy-laziness. For me, it is Eastern laziness, sitting on a soft cushion, enjoying a nice view, drinking a beautiful cup of tea and continuing to sit there in the corner, becoming a couch potato. That’s my laziness. In the West, it is different. No one likes to be a couch potato, except a few of us, who carry their weight in front. The rest don’t. Mostly Western laziness is being busy for nothing, running here and there, trying to do this and that. You do everything except what you are supposed to do, right? That is laziness.

2. This laziness goes in the direction of having interest in non- virtuous (or even neutral) activities Attraction to what is harmful. We have a lot of attractions, which are actually more addictions. We are addicted to all kinds of things. We are addicted to gossip. Some people are addicted to smoking joints. All that takes up your time. Some people have an alcohol addiction. Then some people have an addiction to smoking joints as well as drinking alcohol. In addition to that, some people are addicted to rock and roll. You have to spend more time on that. Then, others have an addiction to sex. That takes time too. You have to work for it, prepare for it, do a lot of groundwork. This is the second kind of laziness, which would like to do things other than those that are really useful to us. Not every attraction is bad. Some people like to grow or- ganic food. That’s not bad, but still, it is laziness, if it takes you

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE away from your spiritual work. I am one of the people who don’t recognize growing healthy food as spiritual work. For me, drinking wheat grass juice and eating brown rice is not a spiritual path. Sure, it is healthy, good for you, no doubt, but it is not anything spiritual. There is no holy spirit involved in there. We are addicted to so many things in the name of good work. If you are doing something bad in the name of bad work, at least it is not lying, but if you do something bad in the name of good work, that is worse. It becomes cheating as well. We cheat ourselves and others. Eating good food or growing good food is not necessarily spiritual, unless you have a good motivation and purpose. I can’t say that every instance of growing healthy food is not spiritual work. There are always exceptions, but generally, for me, it is not. Spiritual work needs to be more substantial in the sense of being able to reduce my negative emotions, and thus my negative karma, creating something solid for me that I can carry to my next life. Without that, no matter what you do, it is not spiritual. You can walk on the fire, with bare feet on hot coals, if you like, but that is not spiritual. I actually have a very American attitude to this: I want to see some benefit for me. If there is nothing in it for me, I won’t go for it. Attraction to what is bad. This does not have to be to negative actions. It could be just something that doesn’t give you any positive result. In that case, even if it is something good, the outcome is bad. It is like working very hard on something but not getting any result, neither product nor achievement. It is work, work, work – for what? Really, you want to work for something, and therefore, you need to work smart. You have to gain results. Otherwise, you spend a lot of time and energy but achieve nothing. A lot of people do that. They work and work, sit there for hours and hours and achieve nothing. You could be a writer, but never even come up with one decent sentence in a whole day. Even if write a page one day, the next day you have to correct it ten times. That is not very productive.

Gelek Rimpoche Then, what is positive and virtuous? When you are learning, analyzing, and meditating, if you are lazy, the consequences of that will take you further away from your result, instead of bringing you closer. In the Mindfulness Sutra Buddha says: Laziness is one of the bases of the negative emotions; it helps the delusions to fulfil their desires, which takes you away from the result that you hope to achieve. For a Buddhist, this is getting further away from Buddhahood, and for Christians, being taken away from God. Whoever has laziness, therefore, is never going to have Dharma13 at all. That is what Buddha’s Mindfulness Sutra says.

3. The third kind of laziness is despising oneself out of despondency. This means thinking, ‘I am incapable, I can’t do this, I can’t count, I can’t write, I can’t think, I can’t move, I cannot, I cannot.’ If you think like that, the result will be nothing. Nothing will happen. Sometimes my laziness does that to me. I would like to move a certain article from here to there, but I just sit there and nothing happens. You can’t just say, ‘I want this.’ The article won’t come to you, and if you don’t do anything, you can spend the whole day watching it and nothing will happen. If you keep on thinking, ‘I can’t,’ then that is what is going to happen: you cannot do it. That is underestimating your own capability. The same laziness is at work if you think, ‘How can a person like me achieve Buddhahood? It is impossible.’ If you remain in that frame of mind, there is no way you are going to make progress. Then who is the loser? The individual who thinks that they can’t do it. It is much better to think, ‘I am going to make an attempt.’ There is a saying in Tibet, ‘If you don’t have teeth, bite with your gums! Even if I don’t have hands, I can still hit with my shoulder!’ That should be the attitude of a spiritual practitioner. A spiritual practitioner should never think, ‘I can’t.’ Earlier Kadampa teachers would say,

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If I have another three years to live, I will make sure that I become a Buddha. If it is less than that, I will make sure that I will become an arhat. If I have only a couple of months left, at least I will make sure that my future life will be a good human rebirth or better. This is the attitude Buddha shared with us. Even preliminary meditations tell you, ‘Sit and relax and look far ahead.’ You should have a long view. Don’t hesitate to work for your goal. Even if you don’t achieve it straight away, you will go to a certain extent towards that goal. Otherwise you will forever say, ‘I cannot,’ and you will end up with nothing. Even in usual American life people will say, ‘You have to be positive.’ Nobody will want you to be negative, but we like to be negative. That is our bad habit, our addiction, but we need to be positive. Once I asked Aura, ‘What are these New Age people talking about all the time when they say, ‘Be positive?’’ She told me, ‘Rimpoche, Tibetan Buddhism, especially Vajrayana, is totally positive. You are thinking, ‘I will be a Bud- dha’. What more positive thinking can you have?’ This is true.

A fundamental positive attitude. We have to have a positive outlook as our fundamental attitude. Never underestimate yourself! Buddha calls that laziness. We are all human beings with tremendous, unlimited capabilities. Honestly speaking, the sky is the limit. Buddha himself was a human being, not a superman. Einstein was a human being just like everybody. Perhaps his brain was a little bigger than usual, but not much. Every genius, every artist, scientist or whatever, is a normal human being, not abnormal or superhuman. The capacity we all have is equal. Whether we can use it or not, that is what makes the difference. Let’s talk from the scientific point of view. Scientists say that we human beings don’t use all of our brain capacity. The people we call ‘geniuses’ and everybody else, all have the same brain, the same capacity, but some of us can use it, others can’t. It is just up to us, our determination, our enthusiasm. At 18

Gelek Rimpoche the ultimate enlightenment level we are using our total capacity, but until then we are not. In the Stone Age humans probably used much less of their brain capacity and now we are using a little more, because we are educating ourselves. Some- times people think that education has nothing to do with spirituality. Some think that any material aspect of life has nothing to do with spirituality. Do not make that mistake.

Combining the spiritual and the material. Tibetans are very proud to have achieved the combination of the temporal and the spiritual activities. I used to think that was because His Holi- ness the Dalai Lama is the head of the Tibetan government as well as the spiritual leader, but that is not what it means. What they are proud of is the ability to handle material and spiritual life together. You cannot separate them. Texts may tell you that the material world and the Dhar- ma world are totally different. Yes, it is true. They are totally different, but we have to learn how to handle them together, otherwise you cannot be a good spiritual practitioner today at all. A materially capable person has to be spiritually capable. A spiritually capable person must be also materially capable. If you are not spiritually capable, you will not be materially capable. That is a fact. Otherwise it is like having lost one eye. For example, a one-eyed yak cannot eat all the grass. It will eat the grass on one side and leave the grass on the other side. A number of people are very doubtful about combining material and spiritual life together. Many think, ‘I don’t care about material things. I would like to be very spiritual.’ But when the bill collector knocks on your door, then you will know whether or not you care. You have to care. That is the reality. How did Buddha handle it himself? A lot of his disciples were kings and queens. The public in general was greatly benefited by the generosity of these kings and queens at the time. Buddha did not say, ‘You are a king, you are a queen, get out of here. I only want hippies!’ Neither did he say, ‘You are hippies. I don’t want you, I only want yuppies.’ He worked it together.

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If you are incapable of handling your material life it is very doubtful that you could handle your spiritual life; extremely doubtful. You may like to keep it as a cocoon, saying, ‘Well, materially I am not very successful, I don’t care. I am very spiritual. I go and do retreats and sit in my cocoon.’ In fact, this would be this particular laziness again, thinking you are incapable. Spiritual work is about using your brain, using your wisdom, in order to overcome negativities. People in the material life are not all necessarily bad people. Good people are those who don’t submit themselves to the control of negative emotions, such as hatred or anger, jealousy, obsession. Every person in material life is not necessarily a wicked, crooked politician. Nor is every politician, for that matter. Many really do mean it when they say, ‘By the people, for the people, in service of the people.’ Politicians are more publicly exposed. You can more easily catch them. That is all. Many people around here used to think, ‘I cannot accept anything extra, because I am taking it away from somebody else. I should only have a limited amount of money.’ I think that time is over, except for a few people who are left behind by their own choice. Most of us are on the boat now. So, underestimating yourself is the third laziness. With the first two kinds of laziness you see what you should and could do, but you don’t do it. You think, ‘I can do it tomorrow’, but tomorrow never comes. There is always another tomorrow. The 9th will become the 10th, but tomorrow always is tomorrow. Don’t rely on tomorrow! This third laziness is a very terrible one, thinking, ‘I cannot do it, I am incapable, I will blow it.’ So many people suffer from this and they go further and further down, right into depression. In modern terms this third laziness is almost the same as depression. It is not a new thing. I saw it earlier, even in Tibet. An old friend of mine, one of the richest incarnate lamas in Tibet, called Kundeling Taktsar Rimpoche, was a young man in his thirties when I was a kid. He had his own jeep and truck. His

Gelek Rimpoche labrang14 could compete with the Tibetan government. Who knows, he might have had more money than the Tibetan government, but he was unhappy all the time. He used to blame his manager for being too controlling. He had a beautiful house in the middle of a wonderful monastery garden, a huge house, with glass windows and probably 30 rooms. Every- thing was of good quality, yet he had expensive, heavy curtains and used to close all of them and sit in the dark in a corner, depressed. Finally he went to India, but he wouldn’t take his own jeep. He was angry with the manager and so he wouldn’t talk to him. Instead, he borrowed my family’s jeep and took it to India. He died in Calcutta in 1954. They were the landlords of the British and the Indian diplomatic service in Tibet. They paid their rent in India, after Tibet was lost to China, to both the British and the Indian government. So depression is not a new Western phenomenon. It already existed in Tibet. Where does it come from? From this particular laziness, underestimating your capabilities. Of course you can only bite what you can chew. But don’t forget: even if you don’t have teeth, you can chew with your gums!

A definition of laziness. Can you now give me a definition of laziness? I am going to read from Asanga’s work, one of the early Indian pundits. There are six ornaments of the world and two excellences of the world. They are called the eight outstanding teachers, and Nagarjuna and Asanga are the most outstanding of these. Nagarjuna talks about wisdom and Asanga about everything other than wisdom. So Asanga says, What is laziness? It is the mind that loves to sleep, loves to delay everything, enjoys gossiping and wasting time. All the leisurely ways of doing things are part of ignorance. That makes you unproductive, using any excuse possible. We give lots of excuses. In old Tibet, if we adopted the attitude of making excuses for ourselves, we would get into trouble. As kids, you would get beaten up, even as incarnate lama. They would give us lashes and you were lucky if you only got

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE thirty or forty. Sometimes you would get 200! That was a great antidote to my laziness, but it is the old fashion. You can’t do that in the West, so here we have to find new ways. Not only does laziness cause depression, but for some people it can get so bad that they want to commit suicide. It is all the fault of this laziness. They are too lazy to do anything, but are not too lazy to commit suicide. They say, ‘I cannot bear it, I better end it.’ But do you know what happens if you do that? There is going to be additional suffering, which is much more than the suffering you couldn’t bear in this life. Make it a thousand times more – that is what you are going to have. The minute after you commit suicide, that is what you are going to encounter. Human life is so precious and killing yourself is also killing, an action negative by nature. For me, those beatings were helpful. I don’t know if I was damaged by that. I can’t see any scars on my brain. In the West, people think there must be some damage. There were times when I couldn’t ride a horse because my skin was cut so much. I had to stand in the stirrups, because I couldn’t put my butt down. That is how we were taught. Today I can be talk a lot and have something to share with you because I learned it in that way, the hard way. I don’t mean that you have to go that way. You are educated and can learn how to handle laziness. It is very important not to submit to laziness. What does laziness do? It makes you lose all your positive deeds. Where does it come from? What makes it grow? Nagarjuna says, It is a delusion to think that sitting there and doing nothing is great joy. This is the Eastern laziness. We Easterners have an attachment to being idle. In the West that is not so common. Here, if you have to sit idle, you will be bored and have to get up and run and do something. If you have nothing to do you will even dig a hole in the ground and fill it in again! Westerners are not attracted to idleness, but to being busy for nothing. What you are doing has no value, no purpose, and yet you are frantically active everywhere and all the time. You have to 22

Gelek Rimpoche reach here and then reach here, participate over here, participate over there, and three minutes later you have to go somewhere else and run and drive. That is being busy for nothing, Western laziness. My idea of laziness is sitting quietly, with a nice cup of tea or a glass of wine. That is Eastern laziness. The culture makes the difference here. Instead of running everywhere trying to do everything, you have to concentrate and do the things you really have to do. Do you gain anything from going everywhere, doing everything? Is there any spiritual gain? Is there even any material gain? Do you at least gain some pleasure? If that is the case, at least there is some gain. Otherwise, it is crazy to do that because of this laziness. We don’t just have just one kind of laziness, but a zillion different ones, including the third laziness of despising oneself out of despondency. They constantly pop up every day of our lives. The moment we wake up our laziness takes over. We don’t want to get up and would like to lounge around. That is the beginning of laziness already in the first hour of the day. I was trained in my childhood, the moment I woke up, to say: May my wisdom eye open. May my practice of sutra and tantra be completed. May I be helpful to people and to Buddhism in general. I was trained to say that, and if I didn’t, I would get beaten on my knees with a stick. Now I still lounge, but within the lounging, I have that thought. That is what you should do. You should not completely submit to laziness. Get yourself set up for the day. From the moment you open your eyes, control your laziness a little bit. Try to bring in some positive thinking. In Tibet, they say that if you have a problem at the beginning of the (lunar) month, you will still have that problem at full moon. Therefore, you have to generate enthusiasm right from the beginning. Just do not let laziness take over! Don’t submit to it! Keep the control in your own hands. That will also make you look

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE forward to the day. You will have excitement and interest in your activities in general, particularly your spiritual activities. We have to build up our excitement wherever we can. Otherwise there will always be this thought, ‘I am burned out.’ I have been hearing that for decades and am tired of it. People say that, but to me they are persons, not burned trees or something! Our mind is such that it will make us feel like a burned log that has been taken out of the fireplace, but that is submitting to laziness.

Enthusiasm gives us power, drive and sharpness. I suggest that you make the resolution, ‘I will not get burned out ever again!’ We have to try to overcome every kind of laziness in any possible way and build up our enthusiasm in every possible way. This is our encouragement, really giving us the power to move. Whatever you do, enthusiasm is what gives you the power, the drive, the sharpness. Some time ago in Singapore, a group of bankers who were vice-presidents, came to me and asked, ‘Would you be able to give us some practice to give us back the sharpness that is ready to kill the opposition?’ They were actually losing their enthusiasm. Laziness was beginning to take over and economic disaster was coming. Here we don’t want to let spiritual disaster happen. We don’t want to give it any opportunity. Buddha said in the sutra lhak sam gul wa: The real key to cut suffering and its causes completely and free yourself from lower realms is enthusiasm. It is praised by the Buddhas and one should have it all the time. All great achievement in samsara and beyond is the result of enthusiasm. If you are an intelligent person, why don’t you pick up enthusiasm? What is it that keeps you from becoming Buddhas? Ignorance, sleep and laziness. Why don’t you develop enthusiasm to overcome all your problems?

Gelek Rimpoche Maitreya Buddha said: One of the best virtuous activities is enthusiasm. Because of it you can become a fully enlightened Buddha, you can become an arhat, you can become an arya, a special person. You experience joy and stability. Enthusiasm is the key to all attainments of samsara and non-samsara. It is the key to overcoming your fear. It will deliver Buddhahood to you. We need a practice and for that we need enthusiasm. We need to practice generosity, morality, patience, and meditation. We need to say our sadhanas and mantras. We need to practice the Odyssey to Freedom. To be able to take that journey to freedom, we need to have enthusiasm. If we don’t have that, we will be on an odyssey to nowhere. Enthusiasm makes that much difference. Buddha says furthermore in the Bodhisattva teachings: Bodhisattvas! It is easy to give up your life. It is worthwhile to sacrifice your life to build up enthusiasm. If I die, where is my enthusiasm going to be? Don’t forget that your death is not going to be the end of you: you will continue. We do not just disappear or evaporate in the air. We are not going to be gone with the wind, but we will continue. So even if we lose one life for the sake of building enthusiasm, it is worthwhile, according to Buddha. He specifically mentioned it. Sakya Pandita15 said: Even if you are dying tomorrow, do not lose your interest in the subject you are working on. Even if you do not achieve your goal in this life, in your next life your efforts will be like your own wealth that you take back from someone you have asked to safeguard it for you. Even if nothing great happens for you in this life, and even if you lose your life over it, enthusiasm is worth it. Our next life

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE may not be so far away. If you die today, your next life may be here the minute after, or the next hour, week or month. If you include the nine months of being in the womb, even then, it will be within the next year, so it is not such a big deal. You are not losing that much time, but in return you will have something wonderful. People work for lives and lives to get that. We do have the opportunity now. We really are the most fortunate of the fortunate ones. We happen to have such a rare window of opportunity which has opened in the Midwest at this point in time. If we cannot take advantage of it, we will be gone for eons and eons as lost souls. Then one day, somewhere, sometime, after eons, we may find another window of opportunity. We have already lost our way in the past. Now we happen to be here, experiencing this window of opportunity. We have got to take advantage of it.

We need to work for and earn our enthusiasm. I really want you to think very carefully about that. Enthusiasm is something you have to build for yourself now. If you are a very highly developed person you don’t have to put in any efforts. You are automatically there, but we are not at that point. We have to work for and earn our enthusiasm. This is something you and I and everybody can do. The way to work on that is to focus on the preciousness of human life on the one hand and on its shortness on the other hand, and to remember that the achievement of Buddhahood or Arhatship or at least a positive future life are within our reach. Bring all that together with the six perfections and build up your enthusiasm. Know that if you miss the boat now, you will wait for the next one a very long time. I don’t mind missing the boat that travels to Heaven’s Gate that is hiding behind the Hale Bopp comet! But I do mind missing the boat that would take me to liberation, to the joy that has never known suffering. I am sure that none of us would like to miss that boat. That boat is enthusiasm.

Gelek Rimpoche

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Student: What is the difference between desire and enthusiasm? And what is the difference between opening the wisdom eye and completing one’s practice? Rimpoche: I think enthusiasm is sort of a good desire. I have a problem when people object to any desire. To me, not every desire is bad. I have a very strong desire to become enlightened and I don’t consider that to be bad at all. That goes for every one of us. We all have a very strong desire to be liberated. Otherwise, why spend time coming here? Hot or cold, we always have a room packed with people every time we meet. It is because of our desire to be liberated, to be without suffering, to have the joy that is without suffering. Opening of the wisdom eye and completing one’s practice are two separate things. Opening the wisdom eye means that you gain wisdom. That wisdom will help to become grounded and to understand and to develop. Wisdom is itself an achievement, but it also a tool to achieve Buddhahood or Ar- hatship, to achieve a path.

Student: Can you explain a bit more about the joy has never known suffering? Rimpoche: For us, I think it is a big question whether we have that. It is a wonderful phrase, but we really don’t know what true joy is. I don’t think we have experienced it yet, so many of what are actually just changes become or seem like joy for us. Perhaps one of the best experiences we have is sexual joy. We have all experienced it. It doesn’t matter whichever way it develops, sexual joy is sexual joy. Whether that is really joy or not, though, I am not even sure. I don’t want to say that it is not joy, but I also don’t want to say that it is joy, because it does bring a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. Most of our pains and difficulties are actually the creation of that activity. Our desire that seeks joy in that way cannot be satisfied. The last time we had it was worse than the time before and this time it is even worse. It goes down more and more. It cannot fulfil our desire. Then, in order to try to fulfil that de- 27

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE sire we do all kinds of things. Sometimes we even get mixed up between joy and pain. We volunteer for pain and read it as joy. That is where you get all these leather strips and whips and so on. What else are they for? We can’t figure out the difference between pain and joy, because we don’t know true joy. Joy that has never known suffering really has value and meaning. It is not just change, not just pain, not just a buzz or a kick. It is true joy that gives you harmony, peace and pleasure in the outer body, the inner mind and the secret spiritual development. For that joy, we need to work hard. We need to work much harder than for the joy you get in the clubs. It is worth much more and it will remain forever with the individual in that wonderful nature. That is what we call simultaneous born bliss void. It is not the kind of joy that pops up for two seconds and goes away. It remains with the individual life after life, day in, day out, everywhere. It is something we cannot describe, because we have no experience of anything like it. A lot of people think that sexuality is spiritual. There may be a connection, but sex is sex, and spirituality is spirituality.

Student: Is it something that we already have, but are not connected with? Rimpoche: No, if you don’t know what it is that means that you don’t have it. If I have a hundred dollars in my pocket, I should know. When I don’t know it is as good as not having it. A lot of people will say that they have spiritual development, but they just don’t know it. That is not true. When you don’t know it, you don’t have it. When you have it, you know it.

VERSE 3: THE CAUSES OF INDOLENCE Because of the attachment to the pleasurable taste of idleness, Because of the craving for sleep And because of having no disillusion with the misery of cyclic existence, Laziness grows very strong.

Gelek Rimpoche Some people love to sleep and just sleep a lot, because of the attachment to the pleasurable taste of idleness. Some people say, ‘If I don’t get my 8 or 10 hours of sleep, I can’t function. My body demands that.’ Other people manage on 4 hours of sleep or on 6 hours. To think that you need 10 hours is crazy and is just a cause of laziness. The structure of day and night is such that we could sleep for 12 hours. On the equinox it really is half-half, 12 hours darkness and 12 hours light, but that is too much time for sleep. Imagine if you lived at the North Pole: you would have to sleep for 20 hours a day for a few months! The most important cause of laziness is not having the proper desire for seeking freedom from the sufferings of samsara, having no disillusion with the misery of cyclic existence. That is really the major cause, according to this verse. Where does depression come from? We do not have a proper desire to be free from samsaric suffering. We pray ‘May all beings be free from suffering,’ but we don’t have the desire to be free ourselves! If you are suffering from depression, you don’t really have the desire to be free from suffering. You may have a desire to have more money, but that is not freedom. You want more money, but preferably without extra work. We do have such crazy desires. Is it possible to have more money without working for it? Not unless you enjoy the sky treasury.

Using the teachings. Listening to a talk, or reading transcripts is not meditating, but we should meditate. You have to meditate on what you have heard or read. It is not only for meditation, but should become practice in daily life. Whatever we are talking about here we should apply in our daily life. Even if we can’t do it as much as we are saying here, at least we should work in that direction. In Chapter 6 we talked so much about not getting angry and went through a variety of ways to avoid anger. Even if you do get angry, that shouldn’t become hatred. Listening once or reading this once is not enough. Thinking about it is not enough. It is important not to forget, but carry it with you.

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Even if you cannot completely do it exactly as discussed here, at least try to be better than you used to be. Go in that direction. In other words, make yourself a better person. If you are short-tempered, try to be no longer short-tempered. If you are a person who is very angry, you should no longer remain an angry person. If you are a person who hates themselves, change that and become a person who loves themselves. Just don’t stay a person who hates themselves. The way to get to that point is by thinking about it. That itself is meditation. In our normal thinking, if I say, ‘Meditate,’ it seems to be spiritual. If I say, ‘Think about it,’ that seems to be non- spiritual, but whatever you do should become spiritual. Even if you do business, it should be a good spiritual business. I hope that what we are talking about here won’t just become simply a lecture, or just reading or conducting some kind of service, but that it becomes practice-oriented learning, analyzing and meditating. If I keep on saying that every time, a lot of time will go by, but I want you to think about it and remember it.

VERSE 4: THE FAULTS OF LAZINESS Enmeshed in the snare of disturbing conceptions I have entered the snare of birth. Why am I still not aware That I live in the mouth of the Lord of Death? We are somehow caught in snares, like a net or trap. We have lost control and been caught in a trap of birth because of the disturbing conceptions. You can call them negative emotions, disturbing conceptions, or something else, but this refers to emotions such as anger, hatred, obsession, jealousy and so on. The deepest of all is traditionally called ignorance, or you may call it ego, which is fear-confusion-oriented emotion. Being under the control of that, we somehow continue to take rebirth. I know that for some people the continuation of rebirth is not established. I don’t think those of us here will absolutely

Gelek Rimpoche deny the reality of rebirth. You have no valid reason to deny it, only that you cannot see it or no one has proved it. These are not valid reasons. Scientists have not proved reincarnation, but no one has proven scientifically that there is no reincarnation, either. Whether or not you accept the continuation of rebirth, nobody can deny that we are here in this life. Then we can also not deny that things don’t function exactly the way we want them to, as we know very well. If life was systematic and scientific, everything should function exactly as planned, but it doesn’t. Nobody can deny that. We are caught in this trap. Things may not have gone wrong at our birth, but thereafter, things started to go wrong here and there. We are fortunate to have a good human life, but even then, ever since we were born, things have been going wrong. How many of us here today remember having experienced wrong treatment during their childhood! From there onwards it continues, but still, we are not aware of where it is coming from. We blame everything except the actual point that we should really blame. We are very happy to blame our parents, or the bearded uncle. We can blame certain life styles, conditions and so on. Yes, all of these contribute. Everything does, but the real fault lies somewhere else and we are not aware of that. Ask yourself, Why am I still not aware?’ Not only that. It appears that I am standing at the very mouth of the Lord of Death. I got caught in the snare of birth, the trap of being reborn without knowing, and after taking rebirth, the end of birth is death, nothing else. In one way, we have a wonderful life, a beautiful environment and so on, but on the other hand, our true reality is that we are running towards death. We mention that very often in the lam rim teachings.

The Seventh Dalai Lama says, The moment we are born, we have no freedom to remain for a single second. We are running towards death, like a galloping horse.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

We call ourselves ‘living beings’ but we are ear-marked for death. This is sad indeed. That is the reality. In other words, we should meditate, ‘I have been in the mouth of death many times before and I will continue to go, life after life. Why do I still not wake up?’ The Bodhisattva sutra says, Death is like a demon, following everybody like a shadow. It sits on us, sucking the life strength out of our body. This useful, wonderful life is very soon exhausted and truly, life becomes very short. It looks that some of us live very long, up to 90 or even 100 years old. We think that 80 years is quite long too. Then 60 or 70 is reasonable, but that time is going very fast. We don’t have much time to think that we are old. We don’t get it either. We continue to think, ‘I am young, I am young, I am active, I am still okay, I am healthy.’ While thinking that, suddenly, people die. Since the night that we entered into our mother’s womb we have been traveling on the one road. We don’t leave that road at all and that road leads directly to the end of our life. We do know that, but we don’t want to know. We don’t want to think about it. We have no awareness at all. That is why it is said that we are asleep or drugged. We are drugged by these delusions or disturbing conceptions. The truth is that we don’t want to know. We know that our life is short, but we don’t want to know about it. Even though the time is near that we have to go, we don’t want to think about it. Shantideva says, Don’t be asleep. Wake up, realize how fragile life is, how short. At the same time appreciate how wonderful it is. Also remember: In this life you can do and undo so many things. On this earth, beside human beings, what do we see? Wild and domestic animals. If we happened to be one of them,

Gelek Rimpoche what could we do? We are fortunate not to be one of them, so why are we wasting our time with meaningless things? If you can achieve something materially, that is something. Spiritually, if you achieve something, it is wonderful, but many of us don’t achieve anything even materially. We work so hard, without result. Some of us do nothing, just fly around from here to there. Some people work very smart, but most of us don’t. We waste a lot of time and energy for virtually nothing. We talk a lot and fly here and there. With that I don’t mean flying in an airplane, but you are not grounded. You don’t even get on the ground, neither materially, nor spiritually. It is just talk and running around, without anything getting done. Being busy for nothing, this is one of the biggest most harmful types of laziness. We talk here about impermanence and death. By the time you have to go, you have got to have something. If you have something even materially, it is still better than nothing. We look down on people who have been successful materially, calling them materialistic, but they have achieved something. We try to be better than them and achieve nothing, neither spiritually nor materially. That is a waste of our life. We are wasting our wonderful life. We have already received a couple of invitations from the Lord of Death. When this person who will pick you up is knocking on your bedroom door you will definitely know it is time to go, but then it is too late to make preparations. Then there will be only regret. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Buddha’s teaching reminds us about death very often, so that right now we can help ourselves and do something. When death actually comes, you can do nothing. It is too late. Right now we can make preparations. Remember the saying of the Kadampa lamas, If I have another thre months to live I will make sure that I don’t take rebirth in lower realms. If I have three years to live, I will make sure that I will be free from the samsaric cycle of uncontrolled, miserable lives.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

Use awareness to make daily activities positive. We talk about con- tributions to society, but first we have to make some contribu- tion to ourselves. When you can contribute to your own benefit you actually have contributed to the benefit of society. Likewise, when you contribute to society, you have contributed to yourself. Some of us waste our life, contributing neither here nor there. If you really want to do a spiritual practice, you have to change that. Then every single breath you take makes your life worthwhile. We can do that. We have the methods. We know how to do it, but simply don’t have the awareness. Even if you smoke a cigarette, try to make that worthwhile rather than just choking your lungs. Use the lo jong teaching of tong len. Take in the sufferings of sentient beings. Let your positive karma go out and feel that they benefit from that. You still may hurt yourself physically, but at least it may help you spiritually. I don’t mean that smoking cigarettes will help you spiritually, but if you know what you can do, you do have methods to make even that useful. We all know these methods, but somehow we are unable to apply them to our life, because we are lazy. Our laziness loves to waste time. The way we do that is by making meaningless things very important, rushing from one place to another. We have to go to this party and that party, we have to show our face here and listen to that music over there. I must go and sing here, I must catch up with things there. I must go to that school over there, give that lecture and so on. That is how actually laziness gets in. Yes, you can rush around, but you must go with awareness. Every footstep we take makes it worthwhile. Every word we say makes it to become something helpful. In short, every breath we take has to be worthwhile. In the Praise to Tsong- khapa it says, Even a single one of your breaths is helpful to millions of people. So there can be no doubt about all your other activities. Even if you can’t do that, at least pretend to do it. At least copy that. Everything you do can become useful. Taking a shower can be a very religious experience, very spiritual. Not 34

Gelek Rimpoche only does it wash the smell and dirt from your body, but it also washes away your anger and hatred and obsession, ignorance, jealousy and so on. As long as you know how to work with your mind everything becomes simple. Remember, Mi- larepa said, While I am eating, whatever food I eat becomes tsoh. I have such a method, others don’t. How happy I would be if others could do the same. While I am just sleeping, I meditate. I have such a method, others don’t. How happy I would be if others could do the same. While I am walking, each step becomes meditation, Walking towards enlightenment. I have such a method, others don’t. How happy I would be if others could do the same. This crazy yogi Milarepa, who used to just wear a little cotton robe, living up in the Himalayas at 30 degrees below zero, spoke volumes of such things. Each and every one of us has heard this method many times, but somehow we are unable to put it into practice.

VERSE 5 Do I not see That he is systematically slaughtering my species? Whoever remains soundly asleep (Surely behaves) like a buffalo with a butcher. Death is systematically slaughtering us, one by one. Don’t we see this? Here in the West everything is very efficient, including butchers. In the old days, a butcher would pick a cert ain number of animals to slaughter that day, would tie them up and kill them one by one. Very often, the sheep that were still to be slaughtered saw what was happening and buried the butcher’s knife in the ground. The sheep will know that they are the next.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

These sheep, who are considered to be very stupid, can work out that they are about to die and try to do something, but we don’t. We are being taken one by one. Look at the families of people we know. Somebody’s mother has already gone, someone else’s father, grandmother, grandmother, somebody’s friend, brother, and so on. One by one they are being taken and I am still here, remaining relaxed, planning to live another hundred years. If I am not crazy, who is? We have no fear, no anxiety. We are not even concerned. That is our biggest obstacle, our biggest laziness. Here it is referred to as being soundly asleep. It is not necessary actual sleep, but this total lack of awareness, like a buffalo sleeping, while the butcher is getting ready to kill it. The buffalo still goes to sleep, unaware of what is about to happen. It is almost like taking morphine. Actually, buffalo’s don’t go to sleep when they are about to be killed. They try their best to escape, just like the sheep I told you about. We on the other hand, remain high, up in the air, half numb, half aware, and wasting all our time. Yes, it may be enjoyable for some time and we do have attachment to that enjoyment. We are obsessed with it because it gives us some temporary relief. These are just samsara’s picnic spots, but these picnic spots are like honey on a razor blade. Would anyone like to lick the honey from the razor blade? If you are stupid you may, but it is going to cut your tongue. You can get hurt in two ways. One is being so stupid, not knowing anything, just licking the honey and cutting your tongue, maybe even losing your tongue. The second way is the person who thinks, ‘I can see the danger but I am capable of handling it. I can get around it,’ but that person still gets cut. When you get cut you are cut, whether you have tried to handle it or not. Particularly intelligent persons will in this way gradually lose their intelligence. Day by day it will get less. Remember that. You don’t notice, but you slowly lose your intelligence. Not only that, you lose your wisdom as well. Please remember that.

Gelek Rimpoche Don’t behave like a buffalo that goes to sleep even with the butcher nearby, ready to kill it. That is what we do, though, especially when we overly intoxicate ourselves. That is laziness. Laziness is not only sitting around idle or running around, busy for nothing. It comes in this way too. Drugs can give you the worst laziness. It may not hurt you in your body, but it will hurt you mentally and spiritually, and will especially affect your wisdom. After a while you will be no different than crazy people.

Why should we think about death? Why do Dharma teachers always point out that there is something called Death? They are hoping that we won’t become lazy. Some of those lazinesses may give you a little bit of alertness for a short time, but that is the glue of samsara. I told you many times that attachment is the glue of samsara. If that little bit of happiness weren’t there, you wouldn’t want to stick with it. If everything were just terrible and harsh, who would want to submit themselves to that? There has to be something attractive, some kind of sweetness, alertness, something crispy, clear. That is just a little bit you get temporarily, but after that you lose in a big way.

VERSE 6 When having blocked off every (escape) route, The Lord of Death is looking (for someone to kill), How can I enjoy eating? And likewise, how can I enjoy sleep? We are just like the sheep or buffaloes put in some little cage. They cannot go anywhere. Every possible escape route is totally blocked. Then that killer, the Lord of Death, is coming after us, killing one after another and getting closer and closer to me. How can I just continue to eat, drink, smoke and sleep? At- tachment to these things is really cheating ourselves. The Lam Rim says,

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

There is no place where death cannot reach. Not in space, behind mountains, not under the ocean. When death comes, we have to go. Why should we focus on that? To be prepared when death comes. Usually, we don’t want to talk or even think about it, but the fact is that we have to go, so it is better to be prepared. This is our situation. How can we remain as though nothing is happening? It is like with many of the early Chinese emperors. When people were rebelling outside the city, the emperor only received reports that everything was under control, and that everybody was happy. Then suddenly the revolution came crashing in to his own room and only then did he come to know. If you read Chinese history, you know that it used to happen all the time. Until people were running with weapons into his room, the emperor didn’t know. We are actually doing the same thing with ourselves. Death is going to be here one day and who is it going to take? Death makes no mistake. If it is out to get you, it will. Atisha, the great Indian scholar, came to Tibet in the 1100’s. He told people, Forget about sleep, ignorance, laziness. Remember, bring awareness that you have to die one day. That is spiritual. Sometimes people don’t like it when we talk about a gloomy picture such as this, but it is reality. We have to be aware of both the wonderful things in life and the sad side too. Death is real and can happen any time. Accidents happen every day; unplanned for, they happen to everybody. No one is immune. Life is like that. Remember that and do something beneficial for yourself and for others. Don’t think that you can live forever. No one does.

Meditating on death brings the right kind of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the antidote for laziness. It overpowers laziness. The verses so far tell us what enthusiasm is all about. We shouldn’t forget what it said in the first line of the second verse, What is enthusiasm? It is finding joy in what is wholesome.

Gelek Rimpoche This is not talking about every possible kind of enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm that enjoys creating good karma and collecting merit, performing virtuous actions. It is more than just being excited or anxious to do this and that. We all have a great deal of difficulty getting away from our laziness. We are overpowered by one of the three kinds of laziness. Not only with virtuous actions, but even with things that just makes our life livable, we have difficulty because of laziness. The last few verses use the shortness of this life as a method of overcoming laziness. If you think seriously, it really works. If you just talk too much about it, but don’t take it seriously, then that creates a disservice for ourselves and others. This is one of the methods that Buddha uses to create a sense of urgency for people to really have to be serious. You cannot just fool around day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. We do that but who is fooling whom? We are fooling ourselves, nobody else. The spiritual path is something you have to take very seriously. With that I don’t mean that you have to get all uptight and rig- id. If you do that, you won’t last more than two hours: you will get seriously burned out, busted, fully fried. Again, we will be the loser. Alive or dead, karma makes the difference. Success or no success, it depends on karma. If you don’t have the karma to enjoy a particular result, then no matter what you try to do, whether you work very hard or whatever, you are never going to make it, because you just don’t have the karma. If you have the karma, then just by doing a little bit, you can achieve your goal. You have to work smart, not hard. Everything really depends on karma. Without karma nothing can happen. Some people do so many things, but are never successful, because they just don’t have the necessary karma. We can keep on praying that this or that may happen, and because of the prayer, something actually may happen, but it will be very short-lived. Again, it will slip away, if the individual does not have the karma. That is reality. I am telling you

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE this, because of my own experience and what I have seen happening to people.

We are responsible for our karma. Everything depends on karma, but who creates this karma? We ourselves, nobody else. Those who are fortunate do have the karma to be fortunate. Those of us who are not, for example with regards to finances, whatever we do just doesn’t work out. You can cry, bang your head, roll over, try any monkey tricks or dog tricks or cat tricks, you are not going to make it. First we have to create the karma. If a second or third person could create our karma and hand it out to us, we should be demanding much more than what we are currently getting! Why wouldn’t each and every one of us get the best? It is very interesting to look from the karmic point of view. It actually empowers the individual tremendously. We don’t have to seek anything from anybody. We don’t have to beg anything from anybody. We just simply work and try to make it. At the same time we also have the responsibility for it. We are responsible for creating positive karma as much as possible. When we lack that, we have to cry all the time. That is so important. We have a great mind, we are fantastically intelligent, but the truth is we are also going to go soon. We are not going to live forever and we don’t know when we are going to go. What method can be more powerful to overcome our stubborn, stupid laziness than reflecting on the shortness of our life? That is why all these verses in this chapter remind us that we have to die. We have no escape from death. We are locked into this chamber. All the doors are electronically locked. We don’t have a card, nor a PIN number, and we certainly don’t have the key. There is no escape, and death is coming from all directions, closing in on us. How can we sleep and just watch it happening? In other words, don’t entertain that stubborn laziness! Buddha goes further,

Gelek Rimpoche Those of us, who really like to sleep are tightly controlled by ignorance. Here sleep is not necessarily actual sleep. Daydreaming is also sleep, doing nothing is sleep, wasting time for eating and eating is also sleep in the context of this verse. Then Buddha says, Such a person, even when finding true wisdom, will be very doubtful. Overcome stubborn or lazy doubt. I encourage people not to have blind faith. At the same time, after a little while, you really have to settle on certain points and practices. If you don’t, you will doubt everything until you die. On the day of your death you will still be doubting whether you are actually going to die or not! You can doubt till the cows come home! You can waste all your life doubting. Yes, you have to question. Yes, you shouldn’t have blind faith, but you have to set a limit. You know the usual American saying, Shit or get off the pot. These good old American sayings have a lot of Dharma value. If you don’t ever decide, this is just another kind of laziness. If you keep on refusing to act, think and function, you will lose your intelligence too. That is what Buddha says. One who can’t act, decide or function, is submitting their whole life to doubt. Everything is questionable, but meanwhile time goes by. This doing nothing due to doubt and laziness is also the cause of losing one’s wisdom. If you doubt everything there is no way you can develop a good Dharma practice. You won’t trust anything. You will become a childish person who loses all their qualities and that defeats positive virtuous work and finally you will land in.. you know where. This laziness again has to be overcome by enthusiasm. You have to build this enthusiasm by thinking about impermanence in general and the death and dying situation in particular. Dying is nothing strange. We all go through it sooner or later. I can guarantee that in 200 years time none of us will be

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE here, including the youngest baby, probably even in 100 years none of us will be here. That is the reality we all experience. On the day we go through death, what is our insurance then? What is our arrangement? What is our schedule? Where is our reservation? Which hotel are we aiming to stay in? A 5- star or a 6-star hotel? Or no-star? We are going to be in that situation, without any doubt. We can carry American Express. As they say, ‘Don’t leave home without it.’ Fine, but at that time, can you take it with you? Forget about the Gold Card or the Platinum Card, you can’t even take the Black Card with you! Even if you could carry it, no one is going to accept it. Yama, the Lord of Death, is not interested in it, nor can you use it to bribe the hell realm guards. Who can prepare us for that situation? You and I, while we are alive now can prepare for ourselves. Otherwise we are not going to have anything to help us then. This opportunity is what laziness is taking away from us right now. Remember the story I told you about Bakula Rimpoche, one of my teachers. He kept saying, ‘I almost forgot to make preparations today.’ I asked him, ‘Preparation for what, Rim- poche?’ ‘Oh, preparation for my travel to the future life.’ And he is someone who says prayers all day long! I don’t really think that he had forgotten. Certainly not, but with that he is telling us not to forget to make preparations. We have to make our preparations now, when we are young, handsome, beautiful, alive, when we can think and function. When you are about to die you no longer have the power to do it. Then you have to depend on a second or third person to say prayers for you. Your own empowerment is then lost and is in the hand of others. That is called a waste of life. The great Kadampa lama Geshe Chekawa often prayed to take rebirth in the hell realms for the benefit of people there. That was his wish. Then, when he was close to dying, he called his attendant and said, ‘Please make a good offering quickly. I am about to die. I was hoping to take rebirth in the hell realms, but I am getting all the symptoms of being reborn

Gelek Rimpoche in a Pure Land. Quickly make the offerings and let’s make strong prayers that I may not go to heaven, but to hell!’ That is what is called a true practitioner! We won’t do that. We pray that we may be better off than the next person, quickly, by tomorrow. Do we have a practice? No. Do we say mantras? Yes, we do. But for what? Simply for creating another samsaric life, that’s all. The lam rim, the Bodhisattvacharyavatara and the Prajnapara- mita all tell you this. Whether you go from east to west, you reach this point, whether you go from west to east, you reach the same point. It must be an important point!

VERSE 7 For as long as death is actually approaching Then shall I accumulate merits: Even if I then put a stop to laziness, What will be the use? That is not the time! Once death is close and we stop laziness at that time, what is the use? It is too late. That is not the time. While we are free, when we have all the time to drink, smoke, chit-chat, go and do kar- aoke, gossip, criticize people, get angry, and waste our time, that is the time when we have to practice. When you become sick, old, when you lose your intellectual capacity, or when you become a borderline personality, then it is too late. Here and now is when you have got to do your Dharma practice.

We have all the methods. I can give you a zillion reasons why there is no Dharma superior to Mahayana. Think about it: no other Dharma on the earth will tell you how to become a Buddha, how to become enlightened. Look into any tradition, including the Judeo-Christian tradition and even any Buddhist tradition other than Mahayana. None of them can tell you how to become enlightened. The Judeo-Christian tradition will even tell you that if you try to become God you are crazy. No path other than Mahayana has ever explained how to become enlightened and none ever will. This is the only one.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

That is the main reason for its excellence. That is the reality, not propaganda. Today we have the opportunity to practice this. Some funny karma has collected us together in this little town here. Somehow we got together here, practicing this 2,600 year old tradition that tells you how you can become fully enlightened. It is clearly explained, like a map that tells you to do this and not to do that, how to handle this obstacle and that obstacle, endless obstacles, but also endless methods how to handle them. Some people may find that complicated, but remember how complicated our mind is! Give yourself half an hour and just watch your own mind: how complicated it is! How many thoughts pop up? How many doubts arise? How much laziness will come up, how much ignorance? How much hatred or anger? That shows you how complicated our mind itself is. Since our mind is so complicated we need complicated methods to deal with it. Otherwise we will get nowhere. Without such methods, you will be like a person who smiles even as his temple catches fire, as his offerings are eaten up by cats and dogs. That won’t do any good. You can wait and watch till the cows come home, but the cows won’t come home and suddenly death will be there instead. Then what? Really, we are human beings and not just human beings, but educated, intelligent human beings. Each and every one of you people here are educated. You have wonderful minds. The capacity of our human mind is tremendous. Sci- entists tell us that we only use a limited percentage of our brain capacity. I do know that we are currently unable to use much of our mental capacity. Now somehow we have the opportunity to increase that. When you are fully enlightened you are able to use your full mental capacity. There is no mystery there. You will just simply use the full capacity that you have. Some people, including myself, are doing a little better than others, but that is just because I had the opportunity earlier and because I

Gelek Rimpoche am a little older than you are, so perhaps I am able to use my brain a little better - particularly on the subject of reality. What is really the truth about us? Normally in the West we call it the mystery of life. What is really deep in there? The moment we see through that we will be quite okay, but until then we are not. First of all, we don’t even know how to approach the subject. Then, even if we do know, we still don’t get it. Just learning alone will not work here. Of course, learning is tremendously important. If you don’t learn, you have no idea what to do. Naturally then, you can only sit and wait for something. Honestly speaking, I think that is what is happening in many cases. People long for simplicity and for a practice that is easy to do, so then all is left to do is to sit there and wait. But the cows are not going to come home at all. You need a proper practice of meditation and purification, analysis and so on. Learning, analyzing and meditating, and along with that, purification and practice – all that has to come together, otherwise you will get nowhere. Then, after some time you feel that you have to pretend that you have got somewhere, because so many years have gone by. That’s bad. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know something, just say you don’t know. No one is required to know everything. It is better to say, ‘I don’t know,’ than to pretend to know, because then you are going to mislead somebody else. You will know it, if you have solved the mystery of life. Until then, we are still controlled by ignorance and ego.

VERSE 8 When this has not been done, when this is being done And when this is only half finished, Suddenly the Lord of Death will come. And the thought will occur, ‘Oh no, I am done for!’ If we submit ourselves to laziness, we cannot even begin; our practice has not been done. We have already received the invita- 45

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE tion of the Lord of Death. The moment we are born, we already have received the first invitation. The moment our hair begins to get gray, we have received another invitation. When the power of our eyes and ears decline, it is the next invitation. The invitations are coming constantly, one after another. The final invitation comes when Death is suddenly knocking on the door. Then it is time for you. If at that point we are still struggling with laziness and haven’t done anything, or even if we have done half of what we know we should, if our work is in progress or half finished, all we can say is, ‘Oh no, I am done for!’ Then our wonderful, precious human life has been wasted. You cannot turn the clock back. Until then it is not too late to do something. It is certainly not too late now to do something. Make the superpower meditate – as Allen Ginsberg said.16 It is not too late right now – whether you are 80 years old or 60 years old or whether you are 15 years old, but if you don’t start, the time will come when it is too late.

VERSE 9 Their faces flowing with tears And their eyes red and swollen with sorrow, My relatives will finally lose hope, And I shall behold the vision of the messengers of death. The Tibetan, directly translated, says, My face is flowing with tears, And my eyes are red and swollen with sorrow, My relatives have lost all hope And I shall only look at the face of the killer.17 It is true. Death is a killer, even if you die naturally. There is always a killer. I don’t want to be mystical, but the reality is that when human beings die there are more than one or two beings around, a number of spirits are involved. Otherwise the final disconnection between the consciousness and the

Gelek Rimpoche body cannot take place. These killers are referred to here as messengers of death. The translator could simply have said, You are looking at the face of the killer. You know it is looking with hope and sorrow at the face of the killer. Because of sadness, my eyes are red and dripping with tears. My relatives have lost hope and I am facing the messengers of the Lord of Death. You can be taken by angels, but you can also be taken by Yama, the fearsome Lord of Death. Don’t ever forget that. We like to think that death is nice and beautiful and so on. True, it can be, but you can die differently too. Death is not necessarily either a good or a bad experience. Deepak Chopra, who used to be a medical doctor, told me that something like 60 or 70 per cent of people die with fear and horror, with a tremendous struggle. I was so shocked that I forget the exact percentage. However, if you want to make death a good experience you can. It is in your own hands. You don’t have to beg anybody for it. You can correct it yourself. That is called individual empowerment. As a matter of fact, it is our individual right, if we can take it. If we don’t know how to take it, then, even though it is our individual right, we can’t make use of it, even if you hire a lawyer. I don’t know of any lawyer who can do that for us, when we go. We better learn how to do it ourselves.

Buddha said, Everything in existence is impermanent, like autumn clouds. In autumn there are many clouds and the wind drives them across the sky. It is true, look at our stock market. It zigzags as if it was blown about by the wind. Everything that we regard as reliable is like that. Think about General Motors. It used to be symbolic for our country’s existence, even more stable than the government. Now look at it. It shows you how impermanent everything is. Look at all those powerful corporations. World Com is the latest example. Every existence is like autumn clouds. Life and death is like a drama. Our life is our own melodrama.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

In a drama, the person performing goes back into the dressing room and changes the costumes and masks and comes out, pretending to be somebody else. We do that. We are the same person, pretending to be this and that and meanwhile the time goes. Buddha also said, Our life is like lightning. When there is a thunderstorm, you get lightning. It comes and goes very quickly, some electrical display. Buddha further said, Our life is like water falling from a cliff. The water from a brook going over a cliff falls down very fast. Then Buddha also compares life to a thread that is being woven into a garment. The thread gets used up very quickly and cut off. Nagarjuna says, Our life is like a candle light in a storm. There is no guarantee that it will be there in the next second. Learn to practice, enjoy life and move forward. Should we submit to laziness or should we do something? Now is the time for us to make a decision. This is the time to make a difference to ourselves. It really is the right time now. It is not too early. We are not kids or teenagers who can’t make any decisions. It is not too late. We are not on our deathbed. We are intelligent. We are not crazy, although we may have a couple of screws loose. Some have more than others, but we are not crazy. We can make decisions. That does not mean that you cannot enjoy life. You have to have a practice, you have to work, but at the same time you have to enjoy life. Many people misunderstand that. They think, ‘I have to work, I cannot do anything. I cannot have a good life.’ That is not true. You have to set up your motivation correctly. Spend time to think about it and meditate a little bit. Try to draw some conclusions. Try to move on the spiritual path. That is the se- riousness we need. Don’t buy everything you hear, but on the other hand don’t keep on doubting everything either. That would be wild wisdom. This is one of the biggest obstacles to real wisdom.

Gelek Rimpoche Achievement depends on enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm nothing can really be achieved, even in the material world. If we don’t have the enthusiasm to finish whatever we have started to do, then nothing is achieved. With enthusiasm things get done. It the greatness of America that things get done. I used to live in India where there are a tremendous number of holidays. I was working at a unit for Tibetan language for the government of India. First of all are the 12 scheduled holidays and 24 optional holidays. That makes 36. On top of that people get one month paid leave. If you are pregnant and give birth you can take one month paid holiday before birth and three months paid holiday after giving birth. If you put all that together, it means that for half a year you don’t work. When I first came to America I found out people have only a few days off work each year. That was a big shock for me. However, it also means that things get done through enthusiasm. Whether that is real enthusiasm or whether forced enthusiasm because of the job, things get done because of that. Without enthusiasm, you can take days off all the time, but you have to find another way to pay your bills – unless your government pays you. In the spiritual path, without enthusiasm you can never achieve Buddhahood. You can never achieve any goal, neither a good future life, nor liberation, nor becoming Buddha. By hook or by crook we have to generate enthusiasm. What more powerful way of bringing enthusiasm is there than thinking about impermanence in general and particularly our own death? Here in this chapter, enthusiasm is generated through a sense of urgency. We are going to die one day and we never know when that day is going to be. It could be tonight or tomorrow. Are you prepared or would you still like to waste your time? Do you want to do something and get something done? What more powerful reasons can you sell to your mind than thinking that if you die tonight and you face all kinds of difficulties, what would you do? A danger is that we could think, ‘Yes, the Bodhisattvachar- yavatara says that, but that is just written in that book. When I

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE am reading that, I recognize it, but when I am out of this book, it has nothing to do with me.’ Tibetans have a funny example for that. They use leather as example. No matter how dry leather may be you can apply butter to it and work with it and one day you can make a bag or wallet. You can work with any leather. However, the leather you keep to store butter in, no matter what you do with that, no matter how much butter or oil you apply to that, you cannot make use of that leather. It is already soaked with fat and no longer useful. The danger here is now that you are using the powerful tools like death and dying. If you don’t actually apply that and use it, there is the danger of it simply becoming a buzzword. These words are very much overused and don’t have much meaning any more. Likewise here, if we overuse or misuse these powerful tools, we are doing a disservice to ourselves. You have heard everything and think you know everything. Now there is nothing else that could convince you or motivate you. You will think, ‘Oh, yes, I know that, I have heard that.’ Nothing can be brought in that you don’t know already and what you do know has not affected you. It has just become knowledge and has not translated into quality. Powerful reasoning, when it becomes simply intellectual knowledge, doesn’t affect the individual anymore. You think, ‘I have heard that before, yes. I read that, too. It’s in that book.’ Knowing that it is in a book does not help. It has to be in here, in the mind of the person. I have to warn you of that, because what I am going to read with you here is going to give you more and more of these heavy doses.

Meditating on your own death. You are supposed to meditate here in verses 9 and 10 that you are lying on your deathbed. It is the 11th hour. You are crying. You know you are not going to see your friends and companions any more tomorrow. They are not going to see you and you are not going to see them. It is the last time. You are crying so much that your eyes are red. You are sick, you are sad and you are afraid. You have to

Gelek Rimpoche think, ‘Yes, my family is around, hoping to hold me and keep me, but they have lost hope. I have become hopeless. I am going out of here like a hair is taken from a lump of butter.’ That is a good old Tibetan example that may not make sense in the West. Here you get fully packaged butter. In Tibet it was not like that. Some woman’s hair could get stuck in the butter and you have to remove it. If you take it out, just the hair alone will come out, none of the butter will. Likewise, when I am dying, friends and family surrounding my body may try to hold my feet, my arms and my head. Whatever they may try, my consciousness is getting out of there, like that single hair, without taking anything else with it. And I will be looking at the face of my killer, Yama, because that is the person who is going to guide me now. Where is he going to send me? In which direction is he going to push me? I have to look at his face, with some hope of compassion, some hope of leniency. It is worse than being caught in a war in enemy territory by the enemy forces. Just a few days ago I saw a British documentary, really showing British and American and Australian commandoes in Iraq. Eight of them were parachuted into enemy territory during the Gulf War in Northern Iraq. Three died and the other five were captured and later released. In the documentary you could see them, captured, looking at the face of this mous- tached Iraqi commander. Their faces had cuts and wounds. They were all beaten up, blood dripping, looking at the cap- tors. The commandoes were not giving up, but they were looking intently at these guardians, because they were now the ones who would either beat them, feed them of do whatever they wanted. What were they going to do next? This is exactly the way we will be looking into the face of these messengers of death. That is then the only thing we can do. Now you have to think: why did I get myself into this situation? What did I do wrong? A lot of people don’t like to think that way. They don’t want to think about anything bad or terrible. All they want to think is something nice.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

This reminds me of a panel discussion I was in along with Ram Dass. I mentioned something about bad things happening in life. He said to me afterwards, ‘What is all that talk about bad things?’ I said, ‘Well, bad things do happen to people. For example, your stroke is a bad thing.’ He, of course, looks at it as the blessing of his guru. That is fine for him, but that is different from a lot of the New Age people who don’t want to think about anything bad at all, but claim that everything is good and wonderful. I don’t buy that. Bad things do happen. We had September 11. That’s not a good thing at all, unless you are crazy! Meditate on this. If I am in a situation like that, I can’t do anything, but simply have to look in the face of the messengers of death, with total fear and without the hope that they may guide me to a better place. If I get into that situation I must ask myself, ‘Why did I come to that, what made me reach here?’ You have to think about it, unless you are crazy. Other- wise you will be like the person who thinks everything is fine: even though the temple is on fire and the dogs and cats are eating all the offerings, you just keep on smiling. That won’t do. I call that love and light. That won’t pay your bills. The spiritual path is such a thing that you have to be dead serious about it, otherwise you are not going to make it. Love and light is wonderful to a certain extent, as long as everything is okay, but when the good times run out, you are in trouble. When the messengers of death catch you, no more love and light. They really drag you. You have to ask yourself, ‘What did I do wrong?’ The answer is, ‘You have wasted all your time. First of all, you haven’t been looking at the spiritual path directly at all, or even if you have, you have not been serious about it. You have been either in love and light mode or like a zombie, just sitting there, doing lizard meditation. That is how you get to that pitiful state where you can do nothing but look at the faces of the messengers of death.’ Think: ‘I got into this situation because I wasted my precious life, even though I know that time is money.’ Don’t think of money alone, but about the income of our positive

Gelek Rimpoche virtue, our really good income. That can even be translated into the green dollars as well. They are interchangeable. It doesn’t materialize for us, because although we know that time is money, we do waste it in a variety of ways.

We are not working to capacity. First, we are not interested. Sec- ondly, even if we are interested, it is taken away by doubt, by push and pull and so on. Thirdly, even if we try to do something, it is simply love and light or zombie meditation, not really using the wonderful mind we have. You know, each and every one of us is capable of being a brilliant person. We have that brain capacity and mind capacity. We are not using it, because we are basically happy with our daily chores. It is like knowing how much wood you need, how many nails and where the hammer is and then being satisfied, not looking beyond that. This is how we waste our brilliant life, our mind, our life. Whatever time we put into the spiritual path we also don’t use properly. If you really look at the spiritual path, you find that it is much more complicated and complex, as well as solid – much more than simple, usual business. There is no spiritual path that doesn’t require the use of reasoning. Every single word Buddha shared has reasons that prove it to the individual. That shows you that the spiritual path has a tremendous intellectual component. It is mental work. It is also on the mind level. Enlightenment is total knowledge. Spiritual development is built by the mind working, not by simply sitting. I know it and you know it, but you doubt it. You think it will suddenly pop up from somewhere, by somebody giving it to you. You can wait till the cows come home. You are not going to be enlightened that way, for sure. Spiritual development is a solid build-up, one stage on top of another. It is like creating the solid foundation for a house and building one story on top of the next.

Student: How do you use your mind to develop spiritually, apart from analyzing scriptures, and so on?

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

Rimpoche: Analyzing scriptures is fine, but then you have to meditate or contemplate that. Then you have to draw a conclusion from that meditative level. That is analytical meditation. It is more than sitting and waiting. In analytical meditation you draw a conclusion. When you focus on the result of that, it is concentrated meditation. The combination of that will change your knowledge into quality. That then is spiritual development. Until then it remains on the level of information or study, or analysis. Teachers have to leave it up to the individual, whether they are going to use the information to help themselves or whatever they want to do. From your point of view you have to pick it up and work with it, otherwise you will be in trouble. It will be just another way of wasting time. It is a case of getting all that information and not processing it. If you think spiritual development should be like something suddenly hitting you on the head, it is not going to happen. Sure, you can sit here and I can take a stick and hit you on the head and you get a few bumps, but that’s all. It is not really going to help. Thinking like that is wasting our time and losing our energy for practice. I have even seen spiritual teachers encouraging that. People ask, ‘What should I do?’ and they say, ‘Simply wait.’ But you can wait till the cows come home! I even said that to one of them in a passing re- mark. I don’t know whether they heard it or were upset. You have to analyze and think and train yourself. That is spiritual development. That is why enthusiasm is pushed so much here.

VERSE 10 Tormented by the memory of my wrongdoing, And hearing the sounds of hell, In terror, I shall clothe my body in excrement. What virtue can I do in such a delirious state? As I am dying, I remember all the bad things I have done, how I have been mean, mischievous, harmful to people, not

Gelek Rimpoche helpful, hurting them in order to protect myself, to protect my family. All this I remember clearly; things that I had forgotten for years now pop up in my memory, and I am tormented by the memory of my wrongdoing. We call that a karmic mirror. The metaphor is that Yama holds up a mirror, showing you what you did wrong, but that is just a metaphor for the karmic mirror that shows you all your actions. This is the time where we see the grand total of our life’s incomes, expenditures, investments, and so on. We will see the conclusion of all the good and bad things in our life, whether we have lived for 30, 60, 80, or 100 years. It is the conclusion of the melodrama of this life. However, it is not the total end. It ends with the conclusion for this life, because now the consequences of good and bad deeds will take place. Here is the responsibility of the individual. It is payday, the day you find out where you have a profit or a loss, whether you will get a check or a bill. This is shown in the karmic mirror. The mirror is our own mind, in which the memories which we had forgotten all these years will pop up. Everything will pop up, even when as a kid you pinched someone. The memory of every action is there because we did it. It is never a secret to me what I have done. I know it and one day the memory of it will come up. At that time you will also see the consequences of those actions and that is why you have sadness and sorrow. You already hear the sounds of hell and see other people paying for their deeds in the hell realms in tremendous physical, mental and emotional pain. Actually, their physical pain is so severe that there is no room to entertain emotional and mental pains. Physical torture is so severe, whether it is cold or hot, whether it is hunger or thirst. You see your neighbors, friends, and people you used to work with undergoing suffering in hell. You know that you are not there yet, but the door is already opening. You know where you are going to land. See how miserable that will be!

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

It is like waiting at the doorstep of hell. Yelling, screaming, looking for help, protection, that is what you are hearing. You know that the others are already in there and you are next on the list. It is more than fear. It is terror. So you clothe your body in excrement, and you can only scream. You can do nothing to stop it. At that moment it is too late. When you were in life and in control, you wasted all your time. First you were not even interested. Even if you were, you wasted all your time on meaningless things, instead of doing something that was right for you. Think: ‘If I end up in such a situation, what could I do then?’ You have to meditate like that. This will help you. The word burnout will be out of your vocabulary! It will disappear from the dictionary! What really happens is that during the suffering of death we also lose our mental power. We lose our power, become weak so that even if we want to do something, we can’t. Tra- ditional Indian teachers gave the example: like a frog in the mouth of a cobra. The cobra’s mouth is closing, and whether the frog kicks its legs or not or tries to scream, the cobra swallows it. It is just like that when we reach the point of death. It is going to consume us like the cobra swallows the frog. No matter how much you scream and yell, no one can do anything. You have to go. The Indian master Shri Jakatimitra said to a king, Your Highness, remember the body you have is a loan. You cannot regard it as your possession. You have the use of it for now, because of your previous karma. When there are no illnesses, torture, suffering, aging or death, that is the time to use the body to help yourself. If death, weakness and illness comes, it is too late for you, Your Highness. No one can do anything. Jakatimitra calls the body a loan. I call it a rented apartment. These are powerful meditations for the individual. They have the purpose of convincing you not to waste your time, and to build up your enthusiasm. The only danger is if that you listen

Gelek Rimpoche to this and then do not think about it and don’t follow it and do not change that knowledge into quality, that can become harmful to you. It is like somebody who is taking aspirin. If someone is taking six aspirins a day regularly and then gets a headache, taking one or two is not going to help much.

VERSE 11 If even in this life I shall be gripped with fear Like that of a live fish being rolled (in hot sand), Why even mention the unbearable agonies of hell That will result from my unwholesome deeds? By the time you realize that you are dying, you will be like a live fish on the hot sand. What does such a fish do? Wiggle around in agony and, because it can’t breathe, slowly die. So right at the end of this life, with family and friends around you, you are that afraid. How much more afraid will you be then, when you suddenly find that you are reborn in a hell realm, without family, friends or help of any kind, facing countless, endless sufferings? In this life, even when you think about that, you behave like a live fish in hot sand. When you actually get there, what will be your situation? When we talk about the future life and the hell realms, it sounds like it is way down the road, a hundred years from now. On the other hand, there is really no distance at all. Nagarjuna said, We talk about hell realms and future lives, as though it is hundred years later. But between this life and the next is nothing but that little air we breathe in and out. How close we are! The moment we don’t breathe any more, that’s it. The so-called next life has popped up right there. You don’t need a passport, a visa, or a plane ticket. You don’t even need a car. You don’t even have to go anywhere, it is right there. So don’t think it is very far. The moment you don’t breathe, that is death. No big deal, and that is why some

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE people die very easily. Try to think about the possibility of future suffering. Imag- ine you are about to die. What will you feel if you have a tremendous amount of negative karma built up and not enough positive karma to balance that and no purification done? You will feel like a live fish taken out of the water and thrown on hot desert sand in Iraq. This fish has no alternative but to roll around in agony. I can be in that position on the day I die. If that happens, it will be a really fearful, horrible situation. We don’t have to worry and be afraid of a monster hiding under our bed or in our closet. We are not kids any more. Kids do get scared like that. Daddy will come and reassure them by looking under the bed that there is no monster hiding there, and then the kids can relax and go to sleep. We do get a lot of fear for nothing and sometimes don’t even know what we are afraid of. However, if we are not prepared, then at the time of death the real fear will arise. Let’s say I am on my deathbed. It is the 11th hour and I haven’t cleaned up my negative karma. I have fear and may already have visions of fearful events that we may call hallucinations. In whatever form, you begin to see some fearful creatures, as though they are creatures from Mars, much worse than close encounters of the third kind, not tiny, weak, little creatures, but really fearful, big, strange fellows, with weapons in hand. You also get hallucinations of burning fire, or of huge ice storms, avalanches and so on. Some people do get these visions. It is not a joke. It happens. Some people do get beautiful visions. People hear music, dancing and feel happy. Some- times they even hear great religious music. That can happen. When the time comes and you are on your deathbed experiencing those negative visions, what can you do? You will just be like that fish that has been taken out of the water and put into the hot sand. You are turning and twisting and that is all you can do. If you get to that point, it is very unfortunate and you have failed in your mission. You have wasted your life and your opportunity.

Gelek Rimpoche No one has to come and tell you that you need to do this and don’t need to do that. We are all grown-up people, educated, intelligent human beings, not just simple barbarians. If you are just a kid who doesn’t know any better, people are always telling you what to do and you don’t want to hear it any more. We are not in that position. Occasionally, the teachings and books like the Bodhisatt- vacharyavatara do tell you that this is how Bodhisattvas conduct their lives. By going over these reasonings we can overcome our laziness and do our best to make use of this fantastic opportunity. After that, in case we fall into a hell realm, we have to go. We cannot live forever, although we may pretend we can. We are not going to be here permanently. We should notice that in ourselves. Every year gone by leaves us with a few more wrinkles, a couple more gray or white hairs, some more wrinkles in the cheeks, some more loose teeth. On top of that you add some more ornaments, things like glasses, hearing aids, things like that. All these are invitations, like snow falling on your head and changing the color of your hair. It is an invitation in the form of glasses suddenly sitting on your nose. It is an invitation in form of hearing aids inside your ears. It is an invitation in form of a walking stick or a walker in your hand. It is an invitation in the form of a hospital bed under your body. All these invitations show us that we have got to go. If we don’t prepare ourselves, who else is going to prepare us? No Buddha will come and do our job. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. If they could, they would have done it a long time ago. Buddhism is a very empowering experience. It is up to you to do everything. Buddha is only a servant, a guide, a teacher, or a doctor who gives you medicine. That is all he can do. He doesn’t go into trance, go into our body and mess with our nervous system, trying to correct something. He can’t do that. We have to do our own thing. Buddha cannot come and change our motivation. He cannot grant anything or take away anything, because Buddha did not create our actions, we created them ourselves. We are responsible for our deeds. That is very empowering.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

That is the reason why this life is important and where we can make a difference. If we miss our chance now and submit to laziness then the time will come where we can do nothing. After that, it gets even worse. The pains in this life are nowhere near as bad as the pains in the hell realms which are a zillion times more severe and longer lasting. It is terrible.

VERSE 12 How can I remain at ease like this, When I have committed the actions (that will bear fruit) In my delicate infant’s body encountering boiling acids In the hell of tremendous hear? If I fall into the hot hell, the hell of tremendous heat, the boiling liquid that attacks my body is much more powerful than molten iron, more forceful than pressurized steam. Because of our karma we don’t have a powerful body there like an elephant or a cow, where a little cut doesn’t affect you so badly, but such a delicate body, like a little child. Can you imagine, such an acid, a thousand degrees hot, hitting our body? And yet we don’t die. That is another problem in the hell realm. Some- times the boiling acid eats away all our flesh and skin and we are just a huge skeleton left and still we don’t die. The unfortunate karma of being reborn in a hell does that. Yes, we have to think positive and nice, but the negative is also possible, so you cannot ignore it. If you do so and then you get negative consequences, what are you going to do? It is nice to say that everything is wonderful and beautiful, love and light. We do that in our culture. Even when people die we don’t just leave them as they are. We dress them up, put lip- stick on the corpse. This is our culture. We have to go, and I guarantee you that there is reincarnation. Normally I don’t say that, but it is the reality. We just don’t end when we die. If death was the end of it, where are those 16th century doctors coming from, appearing to people

Gelek Rimpoche in trances, doing healing and so on? They died, but yet they continue. Where are all these disembodied spirits coming from? In reality they are there, deny it or not. We refuse to believe they are there, trying not to see them, but they are there. Spirits do come and talk to people. The families of people that have passed away sometimes get messages via a medium. Not of all these are liars. Where is all that coming from? Where do you think you come from? You think you were like you are from the beginning? No, a tremendous natural process is at work. We are all really old souls. That’s the reality, no matter how young you might be. Where did we learn our interesting habits? Where did we learn our addictions? Where did I get my addiction to sugar? I am sure I brought that along from my previous life. We all do that. And if there are past lives there will be future lives as well. This life is not a dead end. Where will we go? That is most important.

Why we need a spiritual practice. Why do we need a spiritual practice? To make your life happy you don’t need a spiritual practice. You just need money and have to be nice, kind person, that is all. But you do need a spiritual practice because you have to go beyond that door. The other side could be anything. The moment you cross that boundary you could become a deer that is going to be shot in the next hunting sea- son. When you cross the boundary you could be the cockroach that we will spray with RAID. You could also be a nice, sweet, little kid, or you could be a baby that never cries. You have to take that into consideration. The next life is still the same person. We change identity. We will change our body. We will not always have the appearance of a bearded Viking. There is every possibility we could end up as any other life form. How can we sit idle in the face of this prospect? We have created the perfect karma to end up in the hell realm. Why are we so relaxed now? We have had limitless karmas with us right from the beginning and it is continuing. Truly, we should have a great sense of urgency. Even if our

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE hair catches fire, we should to so concerned that we don’t have time to put out that fire. We should be working our butts off that much. Yet, we are here submitting to our laziness. Nagarjuna says, We have all the karma to end up in a hell realm. Right now we are in a position where we can do something about it. Why are we so relaxed at this time? We are not even bothered, but haven’t we seen the depictions of the hell realms? Haven’t we heard the descriptions? Aren’t we scared? We are, but on the other hand, we are not thinking that we ourselves might be in that situation. In all the six realms there is a tremendous amount of pain, but there is no pain like in the hell realm. Let’s say a person is being hit by spears. Their enemy hangs them up on a cross or something, doesn’t let them die and pokes them 300 times a day. How painful will that be! But that is no measure for even just one hour of the pain you have to go through in the hell realms. In such a painful situation you have to remain for a very long time and until you have exhausted all that negative karma you won’t even die. On our human level, if somebody tortures you very badly you die. The body can’t take it anymore and disconnects from the consciousness. The external body and the internal mind separate, but in the hell realm that doesn’t happen. Even if your body is reduced to a skeleton you don’t die. The hell realm is not permanent, but you remain there without break until the karma responsible for it is gone. Some karma may only remain for two seconds, and another can go on for 200 years. It all depends on what we do. Our deeds have consequences; they have disadvantages and also advantages. Buddha had discussions with some of his disciples. One of them asked him, ‘If a human being saw the hell realms, what would happen? They would freak out.’ Buddha said, ‘Actually it would be good for them. Then they would not waste any time. They would see what the reality is.’ We have these difficulties, because we cannot see the hell realms.

Gelek Rimpoche Once a disciple of the Buddha named Kangiki joined the monastic order. The moment he heard about the hell realms, he got a tremendous pain his body, so much that every hair pore started leaking blood. The others asked Buddha why that happened and he said, ‘This fellow was in the hot hell realms for 500 lives. Now, suddenly he has the opportunity to be here as a human being, and when he just hears about the hell realms, the memory of these 500 lives physically affects him.’

Taking responsibility and purifying. These teachings are not meant to make you feel bad, but to make you change your life so that this won’t happen to you. You can make a difference before it happens. You have to do it, take the responsibility. We should purify those causes, neutralize, finish them. Make sure that we are pure. That is the meaning of taking responsibility. Many teachings are available just on how to do purification. We should also include our purification in our daily practice. In the Jewel Heart Prayers, the Seven Limb Prayer has a purification verse. I regret and purify all transgressions Why do we say that? We say some few words in the presence of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha from our mouth. Along with that we think some thoughts, put them together and that will do the purification. You may think purification has to be something like what Milarepa did in his life. Yes, it can be like that, but on the other hand, even this practice will do. That is why we have those Seven Limbs. You need to take the time to think about the meaning of the words, though. Otherwise, even parrots know how to say a few words. Dogs know how to bark, cats know how to meow and we know how to blah blah. That won’t do any good. We say certain powerful words and we have to apply certain powerful thoughts, bringing our physical, mental and emotional faculties all together, then purification can take place. Of course you have to know and apply the four powers of purification. First the knowledge is important, then you ana-

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE lyze and thirdly, you have to be able to do it by yourself. That is the value of being a human being. We can teach some animals how to say, ‘We regret and purify all our transgressions.’ A parrot will be happy to say that if you give it some nice nuts. A dog will do tricks for some biscuits. Geshe Losang Tharchin, from New Jersey, once told me that his little pet dog, a Pekinese or Lhasa Apso, could say OM MANI PADME HUM. I said, ‘No way.’ He said, ‘I will show you.’ He went and got some Jacobson Golden Puff Biscuits and put some cream cheese and some Italian prosciutto on one and put another biscuit on top and then called the dog. The dog got on to his hind legs and made this funny barking noise six times and Geshe-la said, ‘See, he said OM MANI PADME HUM,’ and gave him the biscuits. We are human beings. We have to be better than that. We shouldn’t only say the words but put some thoughts with that together. We have to bring body, speech and mind together, working solidly on one point. That is purification. You can easily do that every day. How long does it take to say that line? But if you don’t do it, it’s your choice. Nobody is standing behind you, ready to hit you with a stick. You are all educated, responsible, mature, brilliant people. If you don’t do it, no one can make you and no one will force you. It is your choice and it can make a huge difference to you. This is why the Seven Limbs are so important. There is no one who cannot do this every day. It takes less than five minutes to say it and think about it nicely. Everything you really need is there provided in words by the earlier masters from Buddha onwards. We are good at simplifying things and making them shorter. Earlier versions ran into many pages. Gradually it has been getting smaller and smaller and now we are down to one line each for the seven limbs! Look at our regular practice. The whole Lama Chöpa is mainly about the Seven Limbs with so many verses. Then, in the Gaden Lha Gyema, there is one verse for each of the Seven Limbs. Our Jewel Heart Prayers have just one line for each. It

Gelek Rimpoche is a ready-made TV dinner for you to eat, so why don’t you eat it? It will make a hell of a difference to you in the lives to come. That is the choice, responsibility and consequence of being a human being.

Changing laziness to enthusiasm. We have been talking about how to overcome laziness. We don’t have to learn how to be lazy. We are very good at it. Perhaps we have accomplished the perfection of laziness! We know how to make use of any possible excuse, in order to avoid doing something. It is the same in the material and the spiritual world. If you don’t want to do a particular thing, you will find a million reasons why you can’t do it and shouldn’t even do it. The reasons can be genuine, but individual people use them for their own purposes. On the other hand, if you look from the other side and ask why you should do it, you will also find a million reasons why you should and how you can do it. Laziness provides you with all the reasons why you can’t do something. Enthusiasm lets you see hundreds of reasons why you can do it. That is a true fact of everyday life, anywhere. Spiritually, it is also true. From the angle of enthusiasm you will find hundreds of reasons why you can do it and how. If you are overpowered by laziness, you will find all the right excuses. ‘I wanted to do it, but I overslept,’ ‘I’d like to do it, but I got so busy.’ We have to think through why we shouldn’t submit to the excuses that tell us why we should not do what we know we need to do. The main reason you cannot afford to submit to all these excuses is that you are going to die. When you are dying it is too late to do anything. One of the most important practices you can do is to remember death and dying. That will make you do something. No one wants to find out at the end of their lives that they have wasted it. Is there anybody here who would like to see their life wasted? If you are intelligent and educated, you will not want to be in that category. Death meditation is not done to create fear, but to let you see that you have to do something about your life now. Some

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE people may think, ‘Well, I couldn’t do much in this life, whatever I tried went wrong and it is better for me do die. But it doesn’t matter, I will get another life, and then I will do better.’ This is wrong. You never know what kind of life you are going to get next. What guarantee do you have that your next life will be better than this? None. Chances are it is going to be worse. Right now, we can think, talk and plan. We can ask people, we have experiences to share. In the next life, who knows whether you can even speak or not. Are you going to talk like a human or will you only be able to meow? If you can only meow you are worse off than you are now, that is for sure. Why take that chance? Some people also think that the possible suffering in future lives is just a threat by religious cults. They say, ‘Give me a break, don’t we have enough suffering?’ We do, but it is not a threat, it is reality. The next life is not likely to be better, so don’t waste what you have now. Remember, this is a precious life.

VERSE 13 Much harm befalls those with little forbearance And those who want results without making any effort. While clasped by death, they shall cry like the gods, ‘Oh no, I am overcome by misery!’ Whether in this or future lives, what we really want is joy, happiness. No one wants misery and sorrow, with the exception of a few. The cause of joy and happiness is virtuous activity. Likewise, non-virtue causes suffering. Those people who would like to have a result but don’t want to make any efforts – does that sound familiar? ‘I want happiness, but I don’t want to work for it.’ ‘I want to have all the money in the world, but I don’t want to work for it.’ We all think that way. We would like others to pay our bills, so that we don’t have to work.

Gelek Rimpoche The Tibetan says tsön me dre bu dö pa18 wanting results without putting in any efforts. Tsön me means without efforts. How can it be possible to get money without doing anything for it? Many of us like to believe that there should be a genie we can just call to fulfil our wishes. We may want to deny it, but our mind is set in that way. Then this verse talks about se re chen19. It refers to someone who cannot bear anything, who does not have any endurance, who has little forbearance. In Tibet we call that a person who is made out of paper. If you are made of paper, two or three drops of water can melt you. If a little wind comes in, you will fly away. If you feel the slightest pain, you scream and fear that the whole world is collapsing. Pain is a reality in all our lives. Our body is made out of flesh and bones. The nerves and veins don’t always fit. Things move around and with every little change there is pain. For example, if I have to turn my head to the right or the left, it gives me pain. I complain about that, so I have become a se re chen! Buddha actually says that those who don’t want to work to achieve results and those who have no endurance have much more suffering than others. The desire alone to get things gives them suffering, then on top of that they cannot bear any pain, but pain comes, so there is much more suffering for them. For example, take two people who have a simple headache. Both have the same condition, but the one who cannot bear anything has much more pain. He will yell, scream, roll on the floor, and experience that pain as severe. The other person may just sit there quietly. Sometimes se re chen is referred to as having a body like an infant that very delicate and cannot take much pain. Our body is mature, so we should be able to take a little more. Babies suffer are much more than us. We suffer less. Any mother can tell you. The babies themselves can’t. Furthermore, this verse says, they shall cry like gods. This refers to the small-g gods. These gods are what we often know as great spirits or angels. They are supposed to live very long,

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE for centuries. They really enjoy their very long lives and never think of dying. They have the most pleasurable lives in all of samsaric existence. Some of them remain almost too high. At the time of their birth as gods they think, ‘Now I am reborn as a god,’ and then they get high and don’t notice much. Then, just before they die, they recognize, ‘Oh, now I am going to die.’ In between that they just remain high, much better than the high you get from using marihuana or anything of that kind, like being stoned for life, and this life lasts for eons. Those gods who are not that high at least don’t experience any mental, emotional or physical suffering. That is why they are known as gods. When these gods get the warning signs that they are going to die in seven days, they become crazy. They think, ‘What can I do now?’ Many of them are born, wearing beautiful flowers that have incredible fragrance and always remain fresh. However, one of the signs of impending death is that these flowers start to become old, get yellow and dry up. That’s when they realize that they will die. Suddenly they worry about where they will be reborn. The gods are also known as Three Timers: that means they understand from which life they have come to the god realms and also where are going to go or in other words, that they can read past, present and future. The tragedy is that although they have that ability, due to being stoned and happy, they don’t care to look. Then, when they see that they are going to die, they realize that they have put in so much effort life after life and because of that have come to have this life of a god. Now all that is wasted and is over. Where are they going to be born next? They now realize that they are going to be reborn as pigs in the slums of Calcutta, the most heavily populated slum in the world. They are really worried now, but it is too late. The suffering that they have for the next seven days is so severe that there is no comparison to any suffering a human can have. After enjoying centuries without any suffering, the signal of dying is here. Your best friends in the god realms

Gelek Rimpoche avoid you, afraid that they may be affected. At best they will find some new flowers, hang them at the end of a stick and throw them towards you. How you would you like to be treated like that by your best friend? Over here, we would di- vorce them immediately! Over there, you can’t.

Do not submit to laziness. This is the example of how you can destroy yourself through laziness. Therefore we should be very much on our guard against it. We must have the will to fight laziness and never submit to the ‘cannot, should not, will not’ attitude. We are human beings. Tell me something that human beings cannot do. There is nothing, neither in the material, the spiritual nor any other field. Buddha was a human being. Einstein was a human being. They were not some superior life form. Buddha himself said so many times, ‘You and I were equal. I happened to get to work and you happened to submit to laziness. Now, today I am a Buddha and you have to look up to me.’ Buddha was not God right from the beginning. He became a Buddha by not submitting to laziness. Laziness comes in so many forms. Most importantly, laziness tells you, ‘I cannot do this,’ ‘This is impossible,’ ‘I don’t have time,’ ‘I don’t have education,’ ‘I don’t have the capability,’ ‘I don’t have friends to help me,’ ‘I don’t have money,’ ‘I don’t have the know-how.’ Even though sometimes these reasons may be true, we should not submit to laziness. It may be real, but reality is also a dependent arising. People can change every reality. Reality is not a permanent, stone structure. Even seemingly solid structures can change quickly. Re- member September 11th. The World Trade Center disap- peared very fast. People can change anything, good or bad. There is no such thing as, ‘This is it.’ Everything is changeable, including our life, the standard of our spiritual development. People just don’t want change. We feel comfortable in the old structure. That is laziness. This is applicable to everything, your family, your household, your business, your country, the

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE whole world. If the world cannot change, what is the United Nations for? Nothing is fixed. If there were something that never changes, you would have found the ‘This is it,’ the end of the Russian dolls, but you are never going to find that. You know about Russian dolls? You open one up and inside there is another and inside of that is another one and so on. Somebody once gave me a nice Clinton doll. When you open it, inside you find first Hil- lary, then a saxophone, then Monica Lewinsky and at the end you find Chelsea. With that one, when you reach Chelsea, it is the end of that Russian doll, but there is no end to the Russian doll of finding the last particle. That is why it is changeable. Stephen Hawking believes that there will be an end to the Russian doll. I say, ‘Good luck to him!’ You can chase the end of the Russian doll till the cows come home. Since there is no final, smallest particle there is nothing fixed, and therefore everything is changeable. It depends on the individual. If you want to be rich you should have the mind of wanting to be rich and keep on developing that, and then one day you will be rich. Every human being has the capability. Particularly people who are educated and have a good brain can certainly make progress on the spiritual path. If you want development in the material and the spiritual field you can get it. It depends on your willingness. You have to maintain that willingness and drive. If you don’t have that, you are going to be the loser, the bum. That is what laziness does to you.

VERSE 14 Relying on the boat of a human (body), Free yourself from the great river of pain! As it is hard to find this boat again, This is not time for sleep, you fool. Buddha says, ‘Hey you fool, this is not the time to sleep! It is 12 noon and not 12 midnight!’ Our sufferings are so many, they are like an ocean, like a great river of pain. We experience them

Gelek Rimpoche every day, from the moment we wake up until we go to bed. We have them when we are walking, sitting, or on the throne. Don’t think that is pleasure. It is suffering. If you think it is pleasure you would be making a mistake. We are in the middle of an ocean of suffering. What kind of boat can we find to get across? Buddha says, ‘You already have the boat. It is your life!’ That is why this verse talks about relying on the boat of the human body. This life, unlike any other life, can make a big difference to us. If you were a cat, how much difference could you really make? The cat’s owner may think that the cat is very intelligent, because he or she loves the cat, that’s all. Everybody thinks that their cat is the most intelligent in the world. They say, ‘My cat is the most intelligent, because when I give her an injection, she knows that it is good for her,’ but you know in reality that is not true. A dog may seem to be so clever, but that is not true. If you think your dog is so intelligent, give him the car keys and let him get the groceries! We may think that spirits and ghosts are great and we are stupid in comparison, but do you know that these spirits are afraid of us? Absolutely every ghost is afraid of every human being. They are happy to avoid human beings. When they happen to come in direct contact with you, they may attack you through fear, almost like an elephant or tiger would.

The mission of our life. Take any life form that you know on earth – none is equal to human intelligence and capability. The most important purpose of human life is to cut through suffering once and for all, not just get over it when it happens. We have to go beyond suffering, to free ourselves from the great river of pain. This life has the capability to do that. This is our mission in life: once and for all cut off all our mental, physical and emotional suffering. How much can be achieved depends on the individual, on how much you submit to laziness and on how much effort you put in. Having said that, when you apply effort you have to apply just the right amount at the right time. If you try to do every-

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE thing at once you will never be able to do it. We are born as human beings and that is a great life, but everything cannot be right. If you are too righteous, you are buying trouble. You need a balanced approach. Everything you encounter can be good, if you know how to balance. Sugar is good for you, if you know how to balance your sugar intake. If you don’t know how to balance, it can be poisonous. Yes, you have to be right, but you cannot be right all the time. That’s impossible. You wouldn’t be human, but superhuman. The verse further reminds us that it is very hard to find such a life again. This is the time when we have to put efforts in, constant and continuous efforts. Every day we should be doing something. We should neither overdo it nor neglect it. Overcooked foods are not good. They lose all their vitamins. Undercooked foods make you sick. You get stomach problems. You have to cook the food just right. With the spiritual work it is exactly the same. You can neither overdo nor under do it. Many people completely ignore the practice. Others are so completely taken by it that they get overwhelmed and actually get nothing done. The point is that if you think you can easily get another body and conditions like this, Buddha said, forget it: it is hard to find this boat again. This life is important. Make the best use of it. Whatever you want to do, materially or spiritually, you are capable, but if you don’t know how to go about it, it will be useless. Then your life is as good as not having it.

Great masters have often used this verse when introducing other teachings. In the old traditional system, every day of a month-long teaching, the lama would start with an introduction, not just about the topic of the day but the introduction to the total course of teaching. They would also quote another verse by Tsongkhapa that talks about human life being more precious than a precious jewel.20 Here, Shantideva compares our human life with a boat. This boat enables us to cut across the ocean of suffering.

Gelek Rimpoche The value and importance of our human lives. Why can the human body do it? What is the big deal about the human life that it is better than any other life form? You all know the answer. As human beings we can achieve anything we want to, because human beings have that kind of mind. Our mind has tremendous capacity and value. It equally has the capacity to help or to destroy. Earlier teachers used to say that this life is the junction from which you can go to a great, positive future or into total suffering. The human capacity makes it such a junction. Let me touch on how a human life is so special. Many of you will know about this, if you have studied the Embracing Life chapter of the Odyssey to Freedom. In case you have not, here is a slightly traditional explanation on the importance of this life. This has two parts: 1. The opportunities of a precious human life 2. The leisures of a precious human life There is leisure because we do have time. Of course, you will say now, ‘I don’t have time,’ but in reality we do find time for the things we want to do. For the things we don’t want to do, we have great difficulty finding the time. Even five minutes becomes a great struggle. We do have time, but if we don’t manage it properly, this time will run out and then you have to rush at the end. It happens to me very often. I take all the time I can and then at the last minute I have to rush. I do that with everything, even with the book I wrote. Deadline after deadline passed. Suddenly there were only three weeks left, so then I thought I had better sit down and do it. That way you find yourself working day and night to finish it. The last sentence was the dedication done while I was driving from Nijmegen to Amsterdam airport, talking on my cell phone to my editor in California and the woman that helped me writing it who was in New York. The dedication was to my parents for giving me this life and to my masters who taught me how to make the best use of it, how to live it.

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE

Material and spiritual time management. We have time to chitchat, gossip, drink tea, watch television, dance at discotheques, and go shopping. We only project that we don’t have the time. We do have plenty of time for everything. The time is there, but we do not manage it well. When you know how to manage time, even though you may carry out heavy responsibilities, it will look as if you have a lot of leisure, as if you were doing nothing. That is time management. That is how it works in the normal material world. The spiritual world is no different. In our tradition we carry some commitments. We can do them in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evening. We have the whole day. Many of us however don’t do it until it gets very late in the evening when it is uncertain whether the next day will come before we finish our prayers. Then you have to extend the deadline up to dawn of the next morning. I’m talking about myself here. The point is, we do have the time, not only time, but the best time. Can you imagine a life other than ours? If you are a parrot, what can you do? You can fly around, talk a little bit, but what else can you do? Perhaps you are a dog that has been taught to say OM MANI PADME HUM! Do you see the limita- tions? Even among human beings there are many distinctions. Many really intelligent business people, lawyers, doctors, and so on, have no interest at all in spirituality. Compare such a person with yourself. That person may have the capacity to make more money than you. After all that is what they are good at, but he or she will have to leave their money behind when they die. They can’t take it with them. They don’t even have control over who is going to get it. The estate managers or lawyers may get it. During their lifetime their bank balance may be getting bigger and bigger, especially if they don’t have to declare your earnings, but what they can use it for and what they can carry with them is very little. You can only consume so much food. On top of that, not everything is good for you. Some foods have too much car-

Gelek Rimpoche bohydrates or too much fat. With all these restrictions, you can really eat only a handful of things. How many clothes can you wear at one time? You can only wear one shirt at a time. You are not going to wear 10 pairs of pants one on top of the other, are you? At the end of life you are only going to carry the positive or negative imprints that you have accumulated. You have produced them knowingly or unknowingly, while making judgments and decisions of how life should be, of how you are going to live as a human being and in some cases, how others are going to live. The scientists in the laboratories, wearing their white coats are making decisions every minute about how human beings will have, what human beings will do 40 or 50 years down the road. They are doing that knowingly or unknowingly. Each and every one of their decisions is having a different effect on human beings on the whole. These effects produce karma for themselves, good or bad, and they may or may not be aware of it. Let’s say somebody produces a new kind of medicine. That is very helpful, and from that angle this person produces tremendous positive karma. From another angle, side effects will come creating tremendous negative karma. If the scientist has a good motivation it’ll be more helpful. If on the other hand, he only wants to be famous or wants to discover something that nobody else has discovered, it is a negative motivation. Compare yourself with such a person. We are perhaps building a little positive karma, probably not a big bank balance, although if we are careful we also can do that. We can create tremendously positive karma, not only for ourselves, but also to benefit future generations and particularly also our own future lives. Think: Who is better off within even one life, let alone many lives to come? Who is going to be wealthi- er, more fortunate? This is all because of the opportunity we have. The opportunity is here, but you can miss it. Things will

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE be going on, under your own nose, but you won’t know what. That is what happens even among human beings. Mind you, from Buddha’s point of view we are extremely fortunate. Somehow we do have now the opportunity to understand what life means, not only from birth to death, but also beyond and before. We have the opportunity to understand who is the traveller, and what happens on the journey. We have the opportunity to make a difference, not only for today or tomorrow, but for lives to come, plus we have the example of what Buddha did in his own life. We know how he changed, how he revolutionized his way of dealing with reality, and how he himself proved that one can become enlightened.

What is enlightenment? Becoming enlightened is something totally different than what many of us would think. Many think that enlightenment is some strange mental, physical or psychic experience. Perhaps most of us have no idea or only a very limited idea about enlightenment. I was talking with some people about it very recently. These people had a great deal of spiritual experience themselves. Some have felt bliss or some kind of internal luminance. You might want to label such an experience as enlightenment, but that is certainly not the case. Enlightenment is something way beyond that, something almost incomprehensible for us. Enlightenment is even far beyond what the Judeo-Christian tradition describes as the state of God, honestly. Let me give you just one sentence: The person who has achieved enlightenment is able to see every single incident that has taken place for every single person and will take place for every single person. They also know what is happening right at this moment for everybody. An enlightened person simultaneously knows all things, without interrupting their thinking, without making them crazy. For example, if there was an enlightened person here in this room who look at all those people here, he or she would know every single thought each of these persons was having and would know every one of their

Gelek Rimpoche past experiences and every single thing that they would be facing in the future. They would know all this simultaneously, without putting any efforts in. They wouldn’t even have to focus, nothing! Multiply that by millions and billions of times. That is the capacity of enlightenment. It is not just some psychic light shooting up into the sky or something. We do see that in the movies these days. Earlier in movies, the psychics would know certain things were happening, but they couldn’t do anything about it. These days the psychics in movies also have the ability to change things. That is definitely much better, because things are impermanent, they are changeable. Enlightened persons can see what changes are taking place and are going to take place, without thinking about it, without focusing. It is incomprehensible. Just imagine trying to figure out what two people you know are thinking about. Your mind would be switching from one person to another all the time. For us, to try to guess what somebody is thinking, we have to look at their face and then some people show no facial expression whatsoever. Then you have to watch their physical gestures and body language. You can do a little of that, but how much effort does go into it? At the enlightened level there is no effort whatsoever in achieving much more than that. Some people might change their thoughts in order to fool a person who is trying to read their thoughts, but the enlightened person would also know that and why they are trying to avoid certain thoughts. They know everything simultaneously. I have just giving you one tiny little example of the qualities of enlightened beings. Human life is capable of delivering that. We are in that line, like it or not. We may or may not get it, but we are aiming at that. We are not just aiming to achieve psychic abilities. It is much more than psychic. To say that our human life is capable of delivering that kind of enlightenment means something. A yuppie with a lot of money has a wonderful kind of lifestyle, but is lacking that great opportunity to achieve ultimate enlightenment. They cannot use their brilliant mind to get that. They cannot reach

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE to that level in this life. We, on the other hand, do have the opportunity. By chance this opportunity has arisen somewhere in a certain area in the middle of nowhere, and we happen to be there, at the right time, at the right place. We may be able to cash in to a certain extent on the potential of the human life. The boat of the human body can do this. This is the opportunity.

The opportunity we have is rare. According to the Buddha this is the right time. If we had been here 3,000 years ago, it would have been the wrong time and perhaps in another hundred years it is also going to be the wrong time. We are in fact at the very far end of the right time period. It somehow doesn’t last that long. Buddha was asked once how long his teaching would last. He divided the ages into two, dark and light ages. According to him, 98% of the time there is a dark age. The light ages only take up 2%. So we happen to be at the right place at the right time. Honestly, it is almost impossible. Earlier Tibetan masters gave the example of a blind turtle, living in the depths of an ocean, who comes to the surface once in 500 years. There is a golden yoke that floats on the surface of this ocean. For the blind turtle to put its neck by chance through the yoke is almost impossible. We are in a similar situation and yet we did it. To do this again would be almost impossible. That’s why this life is so valuable. The opportunity is there, but it’s not accessible to everybody. It’s not that anybody’s blocking anybody, but it is simply that the majority of people don’t have the karma to have access to this. No matter whatever they do, they will not connect with the opportunity. I’m sure many of you have experienced this. You might have tried to drag your best friend, your girlfriend, boyfriend or somebody else to come and listen to a Dharma talk but they won’t come, they will pull the other way as much they can. That is a clear sign that it is not the right time for this person. Perhaps that person will never have the opportunity in this life, perhaps they will.

Gelek Rimpoche The opportunity to become a Buddha, to achieve enlightenment, even within this life is the impossible thing that has become possible for thousands of people, perhaps millions. It is the same opportunity we have. Millions succeeded and millions failed. That’s where we are, and that’s why this life is important. Traditionally, 18 qualities of this life are mentioned, 8 leisures and 10 endowments. Those who are interested can read up on them in any lam rim book, including the transcripts of my own lam rim teachings, but you could also look at your own life and at the possibilities that are available today, and make your own judgment. If you make a mistake here, it would be a big mistake, not because you would be punished, but because you would lose the opportunity. That is why this verse 14 is so important and that is why I have talked so much about it. The second half of the verse says: As it is hard to find this boat again, This is not time for sleep, you fool.

I would like to emphasize again that this body of ours is very hard to find. Many of us think that it is easy to find a similar life again or perhaps we expect our next life to be even better. Many spiritual teachers tell you that things are only getting going to get better and better, that you can never go down. Un- fortunately, according to Buddha, they are absolutely wrong. It is not me who is saying that they are wrong, because I have no authority to say they are wrong or right. Buddha said that if they were right it would go against the karmic principle. Kar- ma includes anything that we have done or are doing. Recently, I taught how the 12 links of interdependent orig- ination function together. That teaching explains how the first link, ignorance, directly leads to the second link, creation. Then this link leads to the third link, imprints on our consciousness. Any action we perform has an effect, even going to the bathroom. Even there we are creating karma. That karma leaves imprints on the causal level of our consciousness. That imprint becomes like an IOU note or a you-owe- me note. That is how we create karma. We are responsible for everything we are doing, good or bad. The consequences of

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE bad actions are that we will have a miserable life. In case of the good actions, we are bound to have a better life. Therefore the theory that any future life will be better than the one we have today is not true. It is not in accordance with natural law, with karmic law. With many things that these spiritual teachers explain I do agree, but with many things I do not agree, especially with New Age teachers. For example they maintain that there is nothing that is bad, but we all know that bad things do happen. There are accidents where people die, wars, terrorism. These things are bad. The terrorist acts on September 11, 2001 in New York and at the Pentagon were bad. You can’t say that this was good. There is good and bad, right and wrong in life. Ethics and morality exist and are absolutely important. That is the reality. We cannot ignore these. If we do, we are the losers.

The importance of morality and discipline. Why is this life of ours so hard to find? Because it depends on perfect morality. This life is expensive, produced by extremely costly morality in a previous life. Therefore, ethical discipline is absolutely necessary. Without it we can never find the boat of a precious human life again. Our actions and thoughts are no secret to us. We know very well whether or not we have maintained good ethics. You can cheat others, but you cannot cheat yourself. When you have created karma and left imprints on your consciousness it is on your own consciousness that they are left, not on someone else’s. Morality is such a fundamental thing. Buddha explained that in the Three Higher Trainings, wisdom, concentration, and morality. Wisdom is based on concentration, and that itself is based on morality. Therefore, we cannot ignore morality. Some people believe that ethical issues are not so important in the context of spirituality. They think that spirituality must be something mystical, but that is very wrong. Spirituality is all based on ethical principles. The three higher trainings are sometimes also called the teachings of the three baskets. The basket of morality contains the basket of concentration, and the basket of concentration itself contains

Gelek Rimpoche the basket of wisdom: they not only fit into each other, but are based on each other. If a precious human life is hard to find again it is because of the ethical issues we have in this life. The sixties were tremendously helpful to us, by opening up wonderful new ideas, and making it possible to have certain experiences in life. What has been described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead can be personally experienced in life. An achievement of the sixties has been to make that clear. At the same time there was also a certain lack of discipline during those years. Discipline, however, is necessary, because without it, nothing can function. We talked about time management earlier. Time management is discipline. Whatever we do in our life, we need discipline to accomplish it. Discipline is an ethical point. Without discipline we won’t achieve anything. We don’t have enough ethical discipline. We lie to ourselves, hide our faults, deny our negativities and don’t purify them. It is no big deal if we do something wrong. Everybody does, but admit it and purify it, then you'll be perfect. There is not a single human being who has not done anything wrong. Otherwise they would have to be super-human! People do make mistakes. We are human beings, and we have ignorance. Remember, ignorance is the first link that pushes the second link, creation. That is already where we make mistakes, but that is not the point. There is nothing to be hidden. It is better to openly admit and to accept that we made a mistake. Accept the responsibility and purify the mistake. Negativities are like clouds in the sky of our humanity. Clouds come and go. Purification is like the wind that drives away the dark clouds. That is the purity we are talking about. The real essence of discipline means to honor your commitments, your vows, and to honor time too. If you make no distinction between morning, afternoon and evening, you get nothing done. When you don’t pay attention, good and bad become the same. When you have discipline, 8 o’ clock in the morning is the time to get up and 10 o’ clock in the evening is the time to go

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE to bed. If you waste your morning, you are going to waste your whole day. If you waste the first day of the week you waste the whole week. If you relax on Monday you will be inclined to relax on Tuesday and Wednesday too. If you are high on Monday, you will probably get high the rest of the week too. All individuals will also have their own ethics. Scientists for example need to pay great attention to ethical issues. Without that they will create tremendous problems for everybody. Business people also have to observe their own ethics. Ad- ministrators need to keep their ethics. We as spiritual persons certainly have to maintain our ethics. One of the reasons why we respect ordained monks and nuns is because of their ethical vows, but not everybody has to be a monk or nun to have good ethics. Laypeople have their own vows: the upasaka vows, bodhisattva vows and vajrayana vows. Those are important, especially the vajrayana vows. Hoping to achieve something with broken vajrayana vows is impossible, like pouring milk into a defective bowl. If the bowl has a crack the milk is going to seep out. Laypeople do take vajrayana vows. As a matter of fact, the vajrayana vows are even more important than the pratimoksha vows. Holders of vajrayana vows have more commitments than the monks and nuns who don’t have vajrayana vows, apart from wearing robes and shaving their heads. Honoring vows and commitments are the real ethics. Scientists need to observe their ethics. The genome project is controversial. Uncovering the genome is a great achievement, but if you use that in order to produce two different classes of human beings then this is ethically wrong. Human beings of the first class will be 6 feet tall, well built, good looking, not pure white, not pure black – Tiger Woods looks good, with a little Asian variation thrown in. That way you can produce the perfect looking human being. It is fine if they make one, two or even a hundred of those, but the danger is that they will try to produce millions. Then automatically, there will be an underclass of imperfect human beings too.

Gelek Rimpoche That means all of us. Some are too short, some too tall, some too yellow, others too white. Some are too dark, too crooked and so on. Two societies are produced that way. It may happen that way. Morally that is wrong. With the advanced science today it is so important to watch our ethics. That doesn’t mean we should judge others, but ourselves. We are not the police watching others. We are our own police. Anybody can criticize others, but first you have to know what is right. It is important to point out what is wrong, but pointing the finger at others, particularly when it is already too late is just too easy. Mostly fools will do that. The wise will check what is wrong with themselves first. Long ago, during the period of a previous Buddha, in past eons, a king had a series of 18 funny dreams. In one of them, a number of monkeys were fighting with each other. One monkey fell into a pit of dung. He climbed out and continued to chase the other monkeys, one of whom had a bit of dirt on the tip of his tail. The first one noticed that and shouted, ‘Look at this monkey, he has some dirt on his tail!’ But he himself was totally soaked in it! After that dream the king got worried. He went to Buddha and said, ‘Does that mean that my princes or somebody is going to blame or attack me?’ Buddha said, ‘It has nothing to do with you. It means that during the period of the next Buddha, Shakyamuni, some of his disciples will be very quick to accuse others. It is a signal.’ This is happening everywhere, not only in the spiritual field. People point the finger at others, but don’t know what is wrong with themselves. That is the problem with being an ethical policeman for others. That is not our job. Our job is to watch ourselves. You have to do right and maintain your ethical principles. Ask yourself what you can do better.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Student: Did you say we could have both material and spiritual development?

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Rimpoche: Yes, and I said that if you want to be wealthy, you have to think, ‘I want wealth.’ Then you will get it. Do you want some mantra for that? I can give you one. Student: But wouldn’t the motivations be contradictory? You would have bodhimind for spiritual purposes and this life’s interest for material development? Unless you had spiritual development first and then somehow got wealthy. Rimpoche: Do you see a contradiction between being spiritually developed and wealthy? Do you think that every spiritually developed person has to be a pauper? Student: Not necessarily. Apparently Vimalakirti was wealthy and spiritually highly developed. But maybe his wealth came as a by-product of his spiritual accumulation of merit. Rimpoche: So you can have both. That much is clear. Now, can you only have one motivation, or could you have two or more? Student: You could have several. Rimpoche: So you can have bodhimind as well as wanting to be wealthy. Student: Perhaps if your motivation to be rich was based on bodhimind, that is to have that wealth in order to benefit others. Rimpoche: That is what we are talking about. The idea that wealth is bad if you want to have spiritual development is wrong. Many people think that if they become wealthy, they take something away from others, but that is not so. You can only become wealthy if you have the karma for that. If you don’t want to become wealthy, although you have the karma for it, you just miss out on cashing in your own karma. To have that wrong perception is one of our setbacks currently. A spiritual practitioner should not be somebody who cannot pay their bills. That would be so pathetic.

Student: How do you judge whether you are really lazy or you are just resting? Rinpoche: That is a very good question. Resting has a time limit on it. I don’t know if there is a time limit on laziness!

Gelek Rimpoche Student: The idea behind wanting to become a Buddha is to help others. It seems that more Buddhas could help better than one Buddha. What is it that a greater number of Buddhas could do better than one? Or, if one Buddha can do what many can, why do we still have to aspire for Buddhahood? Rimpoche: Buddhas are all equal, whether they are male or fe- male or whatever. The moment they become Buddhas they are all equal regarding their capacity, not the way they look. Some Buddhas are tall, others are short. Some live long, some don’t, but their capacity is equal, so there is nothing that one Buddha could not do that many could. One is equal to many and many are equal to one. Each and every individual Buddha is capable of doing whatever they need or want to do. Then why should we become a Buddha too? Because we want to complete the purposes of ourselves and others. To become a Buddha is an opportunity for us to complete our mission, our purpose. That is why we all look towards becoming a Buddha. Yes, there is a need for people to become Buddhas, but on the other hand, if you as an individual don’t become a Buddha, there isn’t anything that has been left out. The only one left out is you, the individual person. The benefit of living beings has not been left out. They will still be liberated sooner or later by any Buddha. The real loser is you, the individual who could have become a Buddha.

VERSE 15 Having rejected the supreme joy of the sacred Dharma, Which is a boundless source of delight, Why am I distracted by the causes for pain? Why do I enjoy frivolous amusements and the like? There is a tremendous variety of causes of joy, of sources for delight. What brings joy to people? What do I do that makes me happy? The most outstanding, extraordinary thing is the practice of Dharma. Buddha says why do you abandon Dharma, a

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE boundless source of delight, but keep yourself busy creating more suffering? Why do you waste your time, doing unimportant things, enjoying frivolous amusements? Why are you lazy all the time? We talked already about the three different kinds of laziness. The kind of laziness talked about here is the one where you do useless things, distracting yourself, trying to have fun. Why do you keep yourself high all the time, following your addictions? Why can’t you give up the things that keep you high all the time? They don’t give you real happiness. You lock yourself in for long time periods to get these things, then you have to adjust to them while you are enjoying them, and finally you have to clear them out of your system. Instead of that you could have done quite a good practice. Why do you try to get high all the time with cocaine? Why do you go back to your marijuana all the time? Why do you keep drinking again and again? I told you about the difference between Western laziness and Asian laziness. If you have Asian laziness you sit in the corner somewhere, making jokes, laughing and drinking tea and doing nothing else. Like that we waste a lot of time and we are addicted to that.

Over the last 2000 years our addictions have changed. It used to be good enough amusement to sit and gossip. Even in the West at the turn of the last century people used to sit in coffee shops and chit chat and do nothing. Now it is different: we are addicted to other things, like watching television. Whenever I have a chance I like to turn on the television and enjoy that. How did I get addicted to that? I began to learn English from the TV, because I never went to proper English lessons. Besides that I learned from talking with friends who corrected me. You may think now that I learned my English from Sesame Street, but I didn’t. Had I done that, perhaps my English would be better today, but I used to watch Days of Our Lives. Now I keep on watching the news and other things. It relaxes me, but it also wastes a lot of time.

Gelek Rimpoche I am addicted, but hopefully it is not as bad as being addicted to other things.

Being productive. This verse is asking us why we get addicted to unproductive work. Whether in the spiritual world or the material world, you have to be productive. Otherwise, no matter how busy you keep yourself, you don’t get much done. At home, in your office, at the work place, if you are productive it is worthwhile. It is too bad if you are attached to doing something that is unproductive, especially in spiritual practice. Gossiping is very unproductive. It gives you nothing, and creates trouble at the same time. It costs you precious time that you could have used for something else. If you are organized and get something done that is fantastic. Recently I was at the center of Domo Geshe Rimpoche, who passed away last year. We consecrated his stupa and did a ritual called ram ne gelek cham poi. I was told that this particular ceremony has never been done before in this country. There were so many different rituals to be done. Luckily I had Sönam there, who was the chanting master of the Upper Tan- tric College for over 15 years. At first he said that we wouldn’t be able to do all the rituals here, but I insisted. Once we started, he was very well organized. I noticed that once we were into it, he did it so well, really professionally. Jamyang, Tubten and Loden. were also very productive, and therefore we accomplished a lot. We only did the necessary parts, nothing that did not need to be done. Each one knew his own responsibilities and exactly what to do. It went very well and I was impressed. If they had not been there, it would have taken four4 days and nobody would have known what was going on. We could have easily got stuck. That is what I mean by effi- ciency. I begin to realize what that saying means: Don’t work hard, work smart.

The same goes for spiritual development. You can do it without spending too much time and energy and without too much struggle by being efficient. We all know that is best to do your

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE work efficiently, but can we always do it? No, we have our problems. What makes you inefficient? Doing something that doesn’t really need doing, spending too long on certain things. All that is categorized as laziness. It is the attraction to unproductive work that takes you away from productive activity. Some people think that in the spiritual world there is no competition, there are no deadlines, that is doesn’t matter if something is done or not. Bad news for you, if you believe that. It is laziness to think like that. It is exactly the same as in the material world. If you are disorganized, you get nothing done. You may be doing a lot, but if you are not disciplined and organized, the results will be very small. No one will accept that, but somehow you do it that way and if someone points it out to you, you become touchy. You will regard that as criticism. That type of laziness has to be abandoned, in the material and in the spiritual world. Nagarjuna says, You have attachment to the way you want to do things. That pulls you down. You can’t make changes because you are so used to what you do. We know that to be true in the working environment. In the spiritual field it is the same. If you don’t do a perfect spiritual practice and have very strong attachment to the do-nothing laziness, just sitting there and watching the walls, that is also laziness. Some think it is meditation, to sit there and watch a spider crawling up the wall. You sit there and observe, ‘Oh, there is a little ant coming now. It is quite busy. I don’t know where it is going.’ That is not meditation. Instead of that you could have thought about impermanence or morality. It would be much more beneficial than to notice that an ant has appeared on the wall and acknowledge everything it is doing. Then, if on top of that your telephone is ringing, you have to acknowledge that too. You may walk slowly over to the phone, bow to it, pick up the receiver and carefully say, ‘Hello.’ By that time the other person probably has hung up! It would be much better to meditate on ethics. This is very important. Nobody ever doubts that wisdom is important, but wisdom comes from concentration power.

Gelek Rimpoche In this regard, the type of practice where you concentrate on one thing is important. You can watch the ant walking up the wall for a while, but the point is not to get stuck with that. You need to develop focusing power so that you can use it to develop wisdom. The meditative power itself also depends on morality or ethical behavior. All three of them have to work together. In Buddhism they are called Three Higher Trainings or Three Baskets, wisdom, concentration and morality. The morality basket carries the concentration and the concentration basket carries the wisdom.

Uphold your own morality but don’t judge others. Morality is important but not in the sense of criticizing others. Instead, you have to check your own morality. If it is wrong, correct it. If it is right, be happy about it and keep moving. Judging others is immoral, honestly. No one can really judge others, unless you exactly know what that person’s motivations, thoughts and actions are. If you know it clearly, if it has proved to be that way repeatedly, then maybe you really know something. To see something once or twice doesn’t mean you really know. It could be coincidence. You can’t really rule that out. Therefore, judging others is immoral. I am not here to judge you, but to judge myself. If I am wrong in my own ethical commitments it is for me to correct it and not for you to point it out. If you point it out, I may welcome it or hate you for it. Human beings do that. We don’t think that the other person will hate us if we criticize them. We think that we are good friends, meditate together and so on and that is fine to tell them that they are wrong, but they may not appreciate it. I have some personal experience with that. In 1964 I was in Ithaca, at Cornell University with a group of 8 Tibetans. I was the only one who didn’t even know the English ABC. Two knew quite well and some knew enough. I was the only one who didn’t know anything. I had come out of Tibet, spent a few years in India and here I was, in America.

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One day, the others wanted to go to the movies, so we all went. As we got into the car, I noticed that all the doors and windows in our place were left open, so I went back to close them all. The driver was honking, but I thought I had better lock all the doors. I didn’t know that in this neighborhood you didn’t have to do that. It must have taken me over 20 minutes. Afterwards, they told me that it wasn’t necessary to lock the doors. I said, ‘And if a thief takes something, who is responsible?’ They said, ‘Don’t worry, there is insurance for that.’ The others also argued and fought quite a lot among themselves. I was the only one who wouldn’t fight. Late one afternoon I was sitting in the living room, looking at pictures in a magazine, since I couldn’t read. One of the guys came down from upstairs and sat on a chair near me. He and the others had been fighting. I should have shut my mouth, but for some reason I said casually to him, without looking up from my magazine, ‘So, you got angry again?’ The next thing I knew was a slap across my cheek. He had gotten up instantly, come over and slapped me. My first automatic reaction was to laugh. Then I got second thoughts, ‘Oh, I probably shouldn’t laugh, he may hit me again.’ I decided not to say anything at all. I didn’t say yes or no, or good or bad, but just kept quiet and did not respond at all. He kept on yelling a bit more, but I did not react. After that he felt bad. He did not come to dinner that evening, nor to breakfast or lunch the next day. Then, before dinner, this old German lady who used to cook for us told me, ‘You better speak to him. He did not eat anything all day because he is feeling bad. Better call him down for dinner.’ So I did. He came down and was very shy. That was because I had not responded. Judging others is not right. You cannot do that. You can only judge yourself. If you find you did something wrong, you have to change it. You are educated, grown-up people. If you cannot change yourself no one can. They may slap you but nothing is really going to change. If you want change you have

Gelek Rimpoche to make it by yourself. If others try to change you, they will just achieve the opposite. If you see negative addictions in yourself, change them, but don’t use this to judge others. We are addicted to judging others, but truly, we only know ourselves. Our mental faculties are directly known to us. There are no secrets and no mysteries. We know ourselves, but we don’t act. Yet, although we don’t know others directly, we are happy to judge them. We get quite good at judging others. Maybe we get it right some of the time, but even then we shouldn’t judge. Buddha himself said, ‘If you are fully enlightened, you may judge other persons. Otherwise it is better not, because you can be wrong.’ It is an addiction in itself to want to judge others and not oneself. We judge our roommate, mother, mother-in-law. To give in to these addictions is laziness. We react automatically; we are so used to it. Shantideva tells us clearly in verse 15 not to do that.

VERSE 16 Without indulging in despondency, I should gather the supports (for enthusiasm) And earnestly take control of myself. (Then by seeing) the equality between self and others, I should practice exchanging self for others. We have been talking about two kinds of laziness, just sitting around and wasting time in useless activities. This verse begins by mentioning the third kind, despondency, the laziness that insists, ‘I can’t do it. I am not good enough. I am not capable. I am not well enough equipped. I don’t have support, I can’t do it.’

Gather the supports for practice. At this point let’s say we have overcome the usual, delaying tactics type of laziness. Let’s say we have developed great enthusiasm for whatever we want to do and have collected the powerful forces that support our work. The powerful forces here refer to the preliminary activities

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE such as the Seven Limbs and any other preparations. Purifica- tion especially is a powerful force that will make things happen for us. Another one is rejoicing, which makes us fortunate enough to cash in on our good karma. Purification is very important for whatever we do in the spiritual work. Im- purity is our biggest obstacle and can hold us back. Some people think that once they have done something wrong, that’s it. It can’t be changed. It’s done. Buddha doesn’t agree. If you have done it, it’s done, that’s true. However, everything is also in the nature of impermanence. If you have killed an animal, you have the killing karma and you cannot bring that animal back to life, but that does not mean that there is nothing you can do about it. Even the killing karma is not permanent. The killer is not permanent. The mind, attitude and motivation of the person is not permanent. It changes. There is always room for improvement. Even the most evil deed can be purified. Even for Jeffrey Dahmer there is room for improvement. Mass murderers can improve, if they can get the opportunity. Actually, from our side, we can take away opportunities for people, but we can’t give them. Some- times you would like to give opportunity to somebody but they won’t take it. If they want it, they have to take it. Once when His Holiness the Dalai Lama was teaching in Jerusalem, he said that everybody had Buddha nature. Some- one in the audience asked, ‘Are you saying that Hitler could become a Buddha?’ His Holiness replied, ‘Sure, he can.’ If you have the opportunity and conditions, anything can be changed. Everything can be purified. Yes, it is true that if you have killed animals, you cannot bring slaughtered animals back to this life, but they have definitely taken another life. I am talking with the background of reincarnation. Reincarnation is true. No mind, consciousness or soul will disappear. We are all old souls, continuing to exist. You cannot bring anyone back to life with the same conditions, looks, style and environment, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot

Gelek Rimpoche purify the negativities from your mind. They are changeable. The person is changeable, the action is changeable, and the result of the action is changeable. Everything changes, even so-called permanent fixtures, like big buildings and big statues. The ancient Buddha statues existed in Afghanistan for centuries, but then the Taliban destroyed them in a few days, just as many old statues in Tibet and China were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. In ancient Tibet, before the 7th century, there was an anti- Buddhist king called Langdarma. He cut the limbs off many images. Tibetans called those lang dar tim bu: that means images that have accepted punishment from Langdarma. Now there are lots of new ones that we could call mao tim bu! I got a parcel from Tibet some time ago, containing a nice, old statue with one leg cut off. Those ancient statues, made out of solid material, are also subject to change. Big concrete structures change and crumble. If externally, things can change that much, why not internal things? All things change because they are impermanent. That is a very strong reason. Who could refute that? No sensible person one would disagree, not scientists, not even God. Purification is one of the powerful forces that help to develop enthusiasm and overcome laziness.

Bring in mindfulness and alertness. That much for the preparation. Now the actual practice. Here you have to work with mindfulness and alertness. If you are not aware of what you are doing there is no point in doing it; I have to earnestly take control of myself. In Tibetan Buddhism we are fortunate that we have words to say. If you connect the words you say with the correspond- ing thoughts in your mind, your practice will become perfect. Even if you can’t keep up with the thoughts but just say the words it is quite okay. At least it will protect you from the downfall of not having a practice. The result of such a practice will be just okay, but not that great, because you haven’t been mindful. If you are not mindful you may only catch the beginning of a practice and before you know you have reached the dedication and lost everything in between.

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Not only do you need mindfulness in actual practice but also alertness. You would be doing something but just for the sake of having to do it, like paying a tax. You don’t really want to pay but you do for fear of punishment. You need enthusiasm and alertness, otherwise what is the use of doing something, particularly if you have no idea of what you are saying? With alertness your actions are in your own control. You know what you are doing. Many people just try something and hope it will work. Even most computer people do it that way. They also have no idea what they are really doing. The so-called experts do it and hope that they will somehow get it right. Sometimes they are right, but sometimes they create extra headaches and waste days and weeks. It is so much trial and error. Carpenters have it easier. They can see what they are doing more clearly. On the spiritual path it is also more difficult. You don’t see the results of your efforts at once. Therefore you have to know what you are doing. Don’t keep guessing. Pabongka’s Liberation in the Palm of your Hand says: It has to be the essence of the real teaching of the Buddha, and not something cooked up by somebody else. It is the great path that is accepted by the great forerunners, the early Indian teachers and not somebody’s false Dharma. It has to be the experience of the great sages and learned scholars and not the shimmering mirage of some twisted person’s invention. This is really important. If you operate by trial and error and rely on guesswork on the path to liberation, you could easily land in a ditch and not in the city of liberation! We do not know the way by ourselves, therefore we have to rely on a reliable method, a reliable road map. As Pabongka says: It should be the highway to total enlightenment, not some quick side street leading you further and further downwards.

Gelek Rimpoche Exchanging self for others. With that, the ego-oriented mind that thinks ‘I am the most important,’ can be changed into thinking, ‘You are the most important.’ We can exchange self for others. If we take an honest look at ourselves, we will admit that we usually like to be right. We won’t say it to others, but we think it. If somebody points out anything we have done wrong, we go into damage-control mode and justify ourselves. We would rather blame everybody else. This alone shows us that we like to see ourselves as the person who is right, who is the most important. This is our ego. Associated with that is a tremendous fear of getting busted. It is the fear that thinks, ‘If you get too close to me I will kill you!’ That happens. People do it or try to do it. This is where we go wrong and this is what we can change. Each and every one of us is capable of it. Look at the last two lines of verse 16: (Then by seeing) the equality between self and others, I should practice exchanging self for others. If I think that I am so important and so great, it stands to reason that the other person thinks the same; we can see the equality between self and others. For me I am the most important, and for him or her, they are the most important. The question of who is right does not arise. Just let it be. But our ego will not tolerate it. It will say, ‘That is wrong, it is challenging me! We will see who is right!’ That means there is no equanimity. At least you have to think, ‘I respect you and you respect me.’ It is not the great equanimity of the Bodhisattvas, but in our own life, we should have at least that much. We don’t need to prove who is right beyond that. If possible, I can switch attitudes. Let me say that your needs are more important than mine. If everybody thought like that there would be no problems in the world. We can’t do it and that is why we have all these problems. It is always, ‘Who is right, you or me? Let’s prove it!’ Then the fighting starts. It would be good if we could at least think, ‘Your needs are equally as important as mine. I will respect that. My needs are equally as important as yours, could you

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE respect that?’ That is step one. Step two is, ‘Your needs are more important than mine. Would you consider my needs more important than yours?’ Bodhisattvas go further, taking the blame for others. That is great, but it is not applicable for us. We should go at least to the level where we can bring peace to our home.

How ego fosters laziness. Enthusiasm is a mental faculty that is important for all of us in everything we do, not necessarily only in the spiritual world. Whatever we are doing, we won’t be able to accomplish that work well at all without enthusiasm. Time will make you cut it and perhaps a deadline will force you to put a stop to some work, but otherwise you will not satisfactorily finish the task, if you don’t have enthusiasm. What are the reasons why you have difficulties accomplishing a task? First of all if you don’t enjoy doing it, you won’t do it well. The first laziness comes in because you don’t like to do it. If you don’t like getting a haircut you will try to avoid going. In the spiritual path you have to make sure that you don’t hate what you are doing. If you hate it, you would be better off not doing it. If you want to do something spiritual but you hate what you are supposed to do, better don’t do it. What is the use? It is like me, when I wanted to be a vegetarian but then I hated it. It is better for me not to be a vegetarian. It is the same for spiritual things. If you hate doing spiritual work, don’t do it. Nobody is forcing you to do something you don’t want to do. Especially in America we value our freedom, provided we don’t lose it to Attorney-general Ashcroft! As human beings we have natural enthusiasm, the inclination that spiritual practice is something wonderful, yet we don’t know exactly what it is all about. Within spirituality people are always looking for something wonderful, something to make you feel good and proud. In other words, they are looking for a great ego-service. In that case you like to do it, because it boosts your ego. In reality, boosting your ego is not helpful, but harmful. It boosts your

Gelek Rimpoche attachment, obsession, hatred, jealousy and so on. You are enjoying your obsession and jealousy and other negative emotions in the disguise of spiritual practice. You are doing a disservice to yourself. We want happiness, whether we are seeking spiritual benefit or not. We are all looking for peace, joy and harmony. Even business people, total yuppies and even crooks and gangsters want happiness. They think that they way they function in life will bring them more joy and happiness. No one would do all this illegal stuff if they did not think it would benefit them. In one way they may hate it, but they still think it will bring them happiness. There is no one who is not seeking happiness, including even great Bodhisattvas. They are seeking enlightenment, the most joyful state in existence. On the other end of the spectrum, even the devils and demons are seeking happiness. The problem is that we are not in touch with reality. We measure what is good against how our ego feels. If something boosts our ego, we think that is good, and if it hurts our ego, we label that bad. For example, if I say, ‘Hey John, you look good today,’ he will feel happy and if I say, ‘John, you look horrible, you lost most of your hair, your beard looks tangled, you are too thin,’ he won’t be happy. He won’t like it because his ego got hurt. On the other hand, he could use the criticism to improve his situation. He could look into the mirror and think, ‘True, something is wrong. Maybe I should take more vitamins.’ That may help. But no one really likes to acknowledge criticism. We just want to hear the good things. This is how ego tricks us. We all say that we are under the control of confusion and dualistic perception. This is what it boils down to. The foremost laziness of not liking to do positive things is also an ego trick. When you really put efforts in- to the spiritual path you are going to have to challenge the ego inside of you, the one who is dictating to you to do the opposite of what is good for you. To overcome that, you need to meditate and think about

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE the importance and value of this life and also about the results of spiritual practice. This is also important. If you never think about the results of spiritual practice it will seem to be unat- tainable, somewhere up in the air. Then we won’t value it, thinking that we will never get there anyway, so what is the use. We have to think that we are going to achieve enlightenment. We should think about the qualities of enlightenment, and that it is something that can be achieved.

Three spiritual goals. We are looking for three different goals: 1. To free yourself free from all delusions and make sure your next life is a good one 2. To free yourself from the uncontrolled cycle of lives, the contaminated continuation of identity that we call samsara. 3. To become fully enlightened. All these three goals are achievable. If you continuously think that it is beyond your capability, that thought is actually laziness.

Going against our ego. Exchanging oneself for others is very important in Buddhist practice. Does that mean to wear the clothes of others and give one’s own to them or to exchange the beds you sleep in? That would create more problems! It is also not a sex change. Some people do put lots of efforts into that, years of hormone injections, plucking out every hair out of your face and so on. This proves that if we have enough interest in something we will make any amount of effort. On the other side, if we can’t seem to find the time to work on our progress to enlightenment, it proves that we really don’t have an interest in going there. At the back of our head somewhere we know that it is a good thing, but it is not our top priority. We are willing to put some reasonable amount of time and energy into it. We will like to say that we do as much as we can, but how much that is actually depends on our priority. For a sex change, some people show extreme endurance and energy for years! The exchange we are talking about here is something dif-

Gelek Rimpoche ferent. It is the exchange of our desires and wishes. I first recognize that my desire to achieve what I want and your desire to achieve whatever you want are equally important. Why should my agenda have priority over yours? There is no reason except that it is mine. That is not a valid reason. True, my responsibilities are my own and if I fail I am going to suffer and no one else. At the same time my responsibilities should not have priority over yours. I should not have priority over you, just because I am me. As much as I cherish my wishes, dreams, aims and hopes, I should equally be able to cherish yours. At this point we are not going to go deeper into the practice of exchanging oneself with others. Shantideva, the author of this text, only casually mentions it.21 Since I am comment- ing on the root text I have to mention it too. Still, the message is that if you are interested in the path of love and compassion, you should not cherish your dreams as more important than those of others. My ego gives me the opposite message, telling me that my agenda is my top priority, that if I don’t pursue it no one else will. True, you have to do your thing, but your thing is not more important than anyone else’s.

Abandoning a poverty mentality. Exchanging priorities does not mean self-sacrifice either, though this is a common misunderstanding. Especially in America, spiritually oriented people have the strange idea that in order to be a spiritual person you have to be poor. Sure, there is nothing wrong with being poor, but why do you have to be poor? What is the big deal with that? Does being poor purify any negativities? No, certainly not. Does it leave you without resources? Yes. It also makes you think poor and feel poor. Yet, some people feel guilty about making money. They think that they are taking it away from somebody else. That is wrong. I had interesting discussions about this with the late Allen Ginsberg. He sold the rights to his papers to Stanford Univer- sity for a million dollars. Allen said at the time, ‘Many of my old friends now think that I have sold them out, that I have

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE become a traitor, but it is not true. The Japanese offered three times that amount and I did not sell my papers to them, because I want them to remain in the country, so I sold them to Stanford.’ That million bucks was not dirty money. They came from the university, not from drug dealers. The money did not come from Iraqi oil sales; it was straightforward white money, nothing wrong with that. You have the karma to get it and that is why you can have it and you can make the best use of it. Allen Ginsberg for example set up a fund for poor poets, bought a place for them where anybody could live. There is nothing wrong with that. We have to get out of that poverty mentality. As long as you are stuck there nothing will work well, no matter whatever you do. With that mentality, any company or institution will have hindrances to achieving its goals. If you think you can’t take the reward for your work, feeling guilty that you are taking it from somebody else, you are wrong. If you leave it there, some crook will take it. It would be better if you took it. At least you would try to make good use of it. Is that against Buddha’s principles? No. Buddha did leave his kingdom, but he did it in order to overcome attachment. If you have attachment to something you have to leave it. If you don’t have attachment you can use it and do everything. That is where you draw the line. The thing you renounce is not the object you are attached to but the attachment to the object, the submission to the materialist attitude. You don’t renounce the green dollar bills. Buddha did not renounce money. In all the Buddhist vows there is no vow of poverty. A vow does state that monks and nuns are not allowed to touch money and precious metals, but that is not so that you remain poor but in order to counteract attachment. In South-East Asia I have seen monks who accepted money but asked people to put it into their robes so that they did not have to touch it. Actually, the monks’ robes themselves are an example of how to renounce attachment. The idea of the patched robes came from an incident where a monk accepted a gift of a beautiful set of robes made from good cloth and developed

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Gelek Rimpoche tremendous pride and attachment. Buddha then advised cutting and re-stitching everyone’s robes to make them look like farm fields. Again, the idea is not to renounce cloth, but to renounce attachment. If you are a wealthy spiritual practitioner you can help so many other people. Think about it. If you are not wealthy you can only think that you would like to help and rejoice in others who are able to help. It is okay to make money and use money, but don’t submit to money. We shouldn’t submit to anything. There is a Tibetan teaching, ‘If you are a great spiritual practitioner don’t let yourself be roped through the nose like a farm animal.’ If you are roped like that then others (and especially your addictions like attachment) can drag you wherever they want you to go. You are controlled by somebody else and have no freedom. The teaching continues, ‘If you are a great practitioner, take your rope onto your own horns.’ In other words keep your freedom: earnestly take control of yourself. Don’t submit yourself to somebody else. Don’t become a slave to anybody or anything. You don’t want to be a slave to money, but you can make and use money. If you can’t make any, that’s too bad.

VERSE 17 I should never indulge in despondency by entertaining such thoughts as, ‘How shall I ever awaken?’ For the Tathagatas who speak what is true Have uttered this truth:22 Buddha who speaks what is true has said that you can become a Buddha, so why would you doubt that enlightenment is possible? We think that very often, because it is so difficult to change even one tiny little thing. To get over our feeling of poverty is so hard. If that is hard, how can you believe that you will be the owner of the sky treasure? In Tibetan this is called nam kar dzo23. Buddhas are not poor, believe me. All Buddhas are rich in both internal qualities and material wealth.

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You may think, ‘I can’t even pay my bills. How can I become a Buddha? I would be a poor Buddha!’ There never was a poor Buddha and never will be one. It is simple. Poverty is the result of negativity, in particular stinginess, not letting go. Buddhas don’t have any negativities, nor their results nor their imprints. Therefore no Buddha is poor. Poverty is not a result of good karma, but of bad karma. Buddhas don’t have any bad karma left. All enlightened beings are rich. No wonder that the churches and monasteries are rich! We have a hard time overcoming negativity. Sometimes we think we are over something but the moment something goes wrong, we respond with negative thoughts and actions. Then we question whether we can become enlightened at all; we think, ‘How shall I ever awaken?’ Buddha warns you not to think like that. You are giving yourself the wrong message. Everyone can become a Buddha and that means everybody including you. In particular, our life is a human life, capable of delivering everything. If you want to become a millionaire you can. You have the capability. If you want to become a Buddha you can do that as well. The attitude of ‘I cannot do it’ is wrong. Don’t ever entertain that idea! The moment you think, ‘I cannot,’ ‘It can’t be done,’ ‘It is impossible,’ it won’t be done for sure. You will never be able to do it, because you yourself tell yourself that you can’t. I was first asked to teach Dharma in English back in India. Lama Yeshe approached Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche and asked him to find him a teacher for the Tushita Center in Delhi. Ky- abje Rimpoche replied, ‘Ngawang Gelek lives in Delhi. Ask him to teach. You can’t find a better teacher.’ Lama Yeshe then came to me and asked me. First I declined. I was rebelling at that time, smoking and drinking and doing every fun thing I could think of. Later, Kyabje Ling Rimpoche asked me to teach on The Three Princi- ples of the Path and give a Yamantaka initiation and commentary in the Tushita Center in Dharamsala. I said, ‘I can’t do that. I have no experience in doing that kind of thing. I have

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Gelek Rimpoche only done minor lectures here and there. I don’t have any spiritual development.’ Kyabje Ling Rimpoche told me, ‘If you go into a lake or pool, the water will come up higher and higher and then you will know how to swim. If you only go halfway into the water, you will only know halfway.’ He is right. As long as you think, ‘I cannot do it,’ you will never be able to do it. So I was thrown into the deep end! Kyabje Rimpoche only agreed to do the initial teachings and then handed it over to me. I was stuck with it. Gradually I learnt how to do it and now I am not bad. I should say, ‘I am good at it,’ but that would perhaps be too proud. Once you begin teaching others you understand the meaning much better than as if you remained only as student because you have to tell others all about it. If you don’t know it, how can you explain it to others? So you have to get it clear for yourself and then tell it to the others. Therefore, if Buddha says that you can become a Buddha and you insist that you can’t, you are wrong. Shan- tideva explains further in the next verse:

VERSE 18 ‘If they develop the strength of their exertion, Even those who are flies, mosquitoes, bee and insects Will win the unsurpassable Awakening, Which is so hard to find.’24 If flies, ants, spiders, scorpions and cockroaches can become Buddhas, why not you, a great, educated human being? There is no reason why not other than that you have no enthusiasm, no strength of exertion. You don’t want to believe it is possible. You don’t trust your own capability and thereby undermine yourself. That is why you have problems. Do you think you are worse than cockroaches and mosquitoes? Unless you are crazy you have to say, ‘I am not.’ If they can achieve enlightenment, there is no question that you can. You have such a wonderful life, such a wonderful body and mind. The sky’s the limit for human beings. Einstein and Buddha were human

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE beings. What they have achieved, we too can. We have the capability. We are just lacking in self-confidence. We don’t want to develop pride but we do need self- confidence. These are two different things. Pride makes you think, ‘I am superman, superior to anybody else!’ In fact, we are all equal. Self-confidence means trusting in your capability to become a Buddha. That is what we need. Some people think, ‘I am a spiritual practitioner and I should have humility.’ Yes, you can be humble and yet have self-confidence at the same time. If you don’t have self-confidence you are underestimating your qualities as a human being. There is in fact nothing that you cannot do. If you want, you can become president of the United States. You would certainly be better than the present president or some of the previous ones! In Tibet we have the saying, ‘If you have the capability, Tsongkhapa’s throne is not reserved for anybody.’ In principle, anybody is eligible to sit on it, if they have the capability. Self-confidence is necessary. You can be wrong. That does not matter. If someone tells you that you are wrong you should be open-minded enough to admit it. Don’t be a touchy person. If the criticism is true and you can do something about it, do it. If you cannot change it, then don’t worry about it. The Bodhisattvacharyavatara itself says, If you can correct it, why worry about it? Go ahead and correct. If you cannot correct, why worry about it? Since you can’t do anything, just forget about it. Get over it.25

VERSE 19 (It will be) so, ‘If I do not forsake the Bodhisattvas’ way of life. Why should someone like myself who has been born in the human race Not attain Awakening, since I am able to recognize What is beneficial and what is of harm?

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Gelek Rimpoche If you have the will, there is a way. If mosquitoes and cockroaches can attain total enlightenment, if they can become Buddhas, why not me, a human being? I was born in the human race, with all the human qualities and immeasurable benefits talked about in lam rim. There is no equivalent to what human beings can do. Buddha Shakyamuni was a human being who officially reached enlightenment. Many others have attained the same state unofficially. They were all human beings. The body and mind of humans is such that the sky is the limit for what they can do spiritually. In the material world the same is true. Ein- stein was a human being. He may have contributed the knowledge that is needed to make atom bombs, but he did not do that with the aim to cause destruction. So why should we entertain our laziness that tells us we are incapable? All the people that tell you to be positive and that you can do anything you set your mind to are cashing in on the basic truth of that human capacity. What is the most important human quality? According to Shantideva we know what is beneficial and what is of harm. I would say that we do know that to a certain extent but not always and not fully. We are captivated a lot by samsaric delights. We don’t want to give them up, although they are not helping us. We do know certain things that are bad for us, such as the kind of food that gives us constipation. However, what is truly helpful or harmful is based on our virtuous or non-virtuous activities. Traditionally, this is called knowing what to take and what to discard. We should pick up the positive activities, because they give us good results. They are good for us. Nega- tive actions are bad for us. Throw them out! We can see that the insights of this ancient text, the Bodhi- sattvacharyavatara are still valid today. This book, though many centuries old, is still very much alive today. We would like to be modern and up-to-date and on top of everything and simple and straightforward and clear, but we are still reading this ancient text. Shantideva says that we are supposed to know what is good for us and what is not and because of that we are

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE capable of attaining enlightenment. If we work and are willing, we have the capability. Everything is ready for us. Physically, we are capable. Mentally we are, too. We have all the necessary facilities available and the solution is there, right in front of us. If we don’t give up the mind and the activities of a Bodhi- sattva, if we don’t forsake the Bodhisattvas’ way of life, we will get there

Living the way Bodhisattva’s live. We are happy and excited to take initiations. I used to think that the Chinese in particular were keen on initiations, but it proves to be true in the West as well. People want to be initiated but they are not so keen on learning and practicing. When I first went to Singapore in the mid-eighties, I was invited to the Dharmachakra Society to give initiations there. People had no idea what was involved. I just read through the texts. I touched the vase on their head and went through the ritual. So many people came to the initiations that the hall was filled up and even the windowsills and the waiting areas outside were full. When I wanted to do some teachings and explain a little what was going on, very few people came, so I suggested that we could construct a machine that would lower a vase to touch people’s heads. Then they could do it by themselves and wouldn’t need me! That was half sarcastic, half joking, but also true. I did so many blessings and initiations there and I noticed that more and more people started to come into the initiations only at the point where the vase was to be touched to their head. That’s when I suggested doing it electronically. The point is that we are very excited to take initiations, which also includes taking vows, but when it comes to daily practice, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, then we get fed up, frustrated, upset. In such a state of mind it is very easy for the individual to give up the Bodhisattva vows and activities and even bodhimind, love and compassion itself. That possibility is there.

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Gelek Rimpoche After September 11, 2001, all over America there was an explosion of anger, remember? I don’t blame people for being angry, however, that is never going to bring any peace and harmony at all. Anger is going to haunt us and get us. War can never bring peace. How many wars have been fought in the last century? Are we better off after all those? We may have gotten rid of Hitler, but now we have Saddam. If we get rid of him, somebody else is going to come up. Before him, there was Ayatollah Khomeini. At that time the US was helping Saddam to build up his army, so that he could threaten Iran and the US would not have to do it. Now we have to get rid of Saddam. Many times wars are fought out of fear. Our security seems under threat and we decide to fight the enemy before they can get us. Maybe that is a valid reason, but at the end of the day, one threat is just going to be replaced by another one. It is the same with diseases. We got almost rid of malaria and tuberculosis and along came AIDS and not doubt other things are going to pop up in future. This is samsara and these things are going to continue. You cannot wipe out every suffering from the world. Something else will always come up. When suffering hurts us badly, we are in danger of giving up bodhimind and bodhisattva activities. It is your right to do that. Nobody is going to stop you, but you have to know the consequences. If you give up bodhimind, you cannot dream about enlightenment any more, you can’t think about becoming a Buddha. On the other hand, if you don’t give up and carry on with some enthusiasm, there is no reason why you, a human being with an intelligent mind, should not become a Buddha. You will definitely get there. A sutra quotation tells that a bodhisattva went to Buddha and asked him, ‘If all those tigers, lions, dogs, jackals, birds, cranes, robins, owls, insects, flies, worms, etc., can obtain total enlightenment, what could prevent me, a human being, from attaining it?’ Buddha replied, ‘If you lose your enthusiasm, you will not get there.’

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Without enthusiasm, our practice will be like paying tax close to the deadline. It is April 15; you have to beat the 5 p.m. deadline, before the post office closes. You hear that the post office remains open till 8 p.m. and then you are relieved that you can still make it. If you do your spiritual practice in this manner, it is an indication that you don’t have enthusiasm. Maitreya Buddha and also the Dream Sutra says, You are a human being, with unequalled opportunity to achieve enlightenment within a matter of seconds. Why do you adopt the ‘I cannot’ attitude? We do that all the time. We underestimate ourselves. We say things like ‘That’s not for me. I am not intelligent enough. I am not senior enough.’ From that point of view there is always something that could be better and is not good enough, but if you look from the positive point of view, there are tremendous opportunities. In daily life, we should always look from the positive point of view and not from the ‘I cannot’ point of view. Another sutra says, Bodhisattvas should not think that they can’t do this or that. All the Buddhas were not ready-made from the beginning. They had to go through a lot of difficulties, just like you do, but they made it. Buddhas were not Buddhas right from the beginning. They are not sons of God. They began as ordinary beings, just like you and me. They had the same problems as we have, but they became Buddhas by working through the problems, by struggling. Don’t ever think that only you have to struggle! We often think that, but talk to the person who is sitting at your right side and the one on your left side and you will find that they all have the same problems. Our own teachers and all the lineage masters went through the same problems and even Bud- dha did. That is why Buddha is extraordinarily fit to be an object of refuge. He is not out of touch. He went through the same experiences as we do today, the same struggle. He himself said,

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Gelek Rimpoche You and I were equal some time ago. Then I put in a lot of effort and became a Buddha. You have entertained laziness and that is why you are still in the same condition as before. Enthusiasm is what makes the difference. The thing is you don’t get enthusiasm just because enthusiasm is supposed to be a good thing to have. You have to see the qualities of what you are going to get from it. Then, even if it is a little hard to achieve your goal you will think it is worth putting in the effort.

How to generate enthusiasm. Let’s say you have a wonderful little cottage up in the hills, overlooking the valleys and the ocean. You will not mind hiking up there, even though you have to climb some hills and carry your supplies and food on your back. You look forward to being up there, because the view is so fantastic. The air quality is really good and it is peaceful. The temperature is just right. You don’t mind going through some hardship to get there. This is how you build and maintain your enthusiasm. Sometimes you have to remember the qualities of enlightenment, how great it is for yourself and for others. When you are sick and you hear that an operation will help you, you will go for it, even if it means that your stomach will be cut open and a piece of your body removed. You know it is worth it and you are going to be well in the end. You may be cautious but you will go through with it, especially if the prognosis is good. Another sutra quote: Many of those who are Buddhas now have gone through much worse than what we are facing today, yet they made it. Do not underestimate yourself, do not undermine yourself. Never entertain such a mind. You may say that even the simple practices are very difficult to carry out. You say, ‘Just to avoid killing is almost impossible. Just walking on the road I step on all kinds of insects. Going forward I step on an ant. Trying to avoid stepping on another one, I step to the side and squash a spider. What can I do?’

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Usually, we settle for not giving up the intention to avoid killing, yet we think it is quite impossible in practice and if that is impossible then becoming a Buddha is totally out of the question. According to Buddha that is a misunderstanding. He says that the solution is to follow a complete and proper path. It is not enough to concentrate on one issue, such as eliminating anger or avoiding killing. Without a proper path, no matter what kind of Mr. Nice Guy you may be, that is not going to deliver enlightenment to you at all.

A complete, perfect path. We in Jewel Heart do have a perfect, complete path. We have the Odyssey to Freedom. We have the lam rim and the Vajrayana. All these practices are in order, in the right sequence. You can follow each step exactly. It is not just one little thing. It is not just trying to develop concentration. That is only one aspect. By itself it is not going to lead to enlightenment. By developing concentration you can reduce your negative emotions but you are not going to get rid of them. You need an organized, step-by-step path. We have a variety of negative emotions. Our ego is such a sophisticated thing. If it were something simple, we would have overcome it long ago. We are intelligent and educated. Many of us are brilliant. We could have overcome our ego a long time ago, if it was simple, but we could not, because it is sophisticated. Therefore we need a variety of methods, at least morality, concentration and wisdom, the Three Higher Trainings of the mind. That alone is not enough. It has to be incorporated into daily life. If you continue counting ants on the wall year after year, that is not going to get you out of samsara. Remember lizard meditation? When my teacher took me out in the mountains to look at lizards sitting on rocks with closed eyes and open mouth, and told me, ‘Look, the lizards are meditating,’ it seemed to be just a joke. But since then it has had a big impact on me and now even on many of you.

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Gelek Rimpoche When you know the quality of the Buddha level, when you know that you have a perfect path, you know that you have to put together causes and conditions. When these are in place there is no way that you won’t get a result. Even if you say, ‘I don’t want to become enlightened,’ you will. That is exactly what happened to Avalokitesvara. He vowed not to become a Buddha until every living being had become enlightened. This is called the shepherd-like bodhimind.26 Funnily enough, this extremely selfless commitment to bodhimind became the cause for him to reach enlightenment quickly! Causes and conditions were in place and even though he did not want enlightenment then for himself, it happened. Remember also the Kadampa lama who prayed to be born in a hell realm, but instead was born in a Pure Land because he had accumulated the right causes and conditions to be born there. The same is true for us. If we supply the right causes and conditions for enlightenment we are bound to get enlightened. We underestimate ourselves. We say, ‘No way, I am not getting there, it’s a long shot’, but we have the perfect path and the perfect life to put it into practice. The only thing stopping us is really our laziness. If you submit to it, nothing is going to improve. You are going to die, get reborn, die again and so on. That’s all. On the other hand, if you apply enthusiasm you are going to get results. Getting something is better than making no difference. You can do great or you can make a mess out of it, but even then, it is okay. You are doing something and you will be better off in the long run. Once Shariputra was teaching a group of students who were close to becoming Arhats. Somehow Manjushri sneaked in between and taught them some Mahayana teachings. They got confused and upset and were reborn in the hell realms. Shariputra saw that and went to Buddha and complained, but Buddha said, ‘Manjushri was right. These people will get out of hells quickly and then practice Mahayana and will get enlightened far sooner than even you, an Arhat.’ So even if you make a mess of trying to practice, it is better

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE than not being connected. A sutra says, ‘Even hurting or harming a Bodhisattva is better than not being connected.’27 In the sixties and seventies there were a few scandals around the spiritual teachers in this country. Keeping in mind what I just said, perhaps that was their way of getting in touch with a lot of people. After all, the news of a scandal gets round much quicker than the description of someone’s qualities. I don’t mean to justify scandals with that thought: people may misunderstand.

VERSE 20 - Nevertheless, it frightens me to think That I may have to give away my arms and legs- Without discriminating between what is heavy and what is light, I am reduced to fear through confusion. You may be trying to be brave, but it seems impossible to give up your arms and legs the way stories tell us some Bodhisattvas did. One Bodhisattva, Aryadeva, gave his eyeball to a beggar who had asked for it and walked on. When he looked back he saw that guy smashing the eyeball between two stones. How can I do that? I may give something away to a certain extent but I am not going to go all the way. Why? Because I am afraid. I don’t want to experience the pain. I am reduced to fear through confusion. It is true that at some point you may have to give away everything, but do we really understand what is heavy and what is light suffering? We don’t, and that’s why we get frightened by the idea of giving our arms and legs. If you check carefully, giving your arms and legs is actually not that difficult. First of all, at our level it is not appropriate to do it. We are not even allowed to do that. When you have reached a high spiritual development, you will be a Bodhisattva who is happy to give arms and legs, and who experiences pleasure from doing it rather than pain. It is a different level of understanding.

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Gelek Rimpoche We on our level have no idea how much joy Bodhisattvas get from giving their body. Secondly, we routinely take on tremendous hardship just to entertain our dissatisfaction, obsession and hatred. We sacrifice our life to entertain them. We lose our total property to entertain our jealousy. A good example is this senator from New Jersey, who just won’t give up his election campaign although he has got no chance at all and everyone is begging him to quit. Also, many lives get lost through hatred, for instance in war, and what do we get out of that? Nothing but more suffering. Bodhisattvas, on the other hand, through giving their eyes, for example, get two wisdom eyes instead. We don’t know which is a heavy negativity and which is light. Nagarjuna says, For those who know, even heavy negativities become light. For those who don’t know, even light negativities become heavy. He gave the example of iron. If you have an iron ball and throw it into a river it will sink within less than a second, but if you make the same amount of iron into a flat sheet it will float on the surface. What it boils down to then is ignorance, confusion. That is why we are afraid.

The source of fear is ego. We have so many fears, like the fear of being lonely or poor, not being looked after and so on. All these fears come out of ignorance and confusion. The combination of fear, ignorance and confusion is what I call ego. Ego causes you to be afraid. When you look deeper into it, there is no basis for these fears. You are not going to go crazy from not entertaining your ego. On the contrary, entertaining your ego can drive you over the edge, particularly if you are a borderline personality. Fear comes from stupidity. Then other people use your fear to further dominate you. To summarize, even animals and insects have the capacity to become fully enlightened. In our own particular situation we are especially well positioned. We have a precious human life, including a spiritual path that is ready-made for us, like a

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE ready-made dinner. There is no need to cook, cut vegetables, find ingredients or anything, we just have to eat it. So it is up to us whether we want to become enlightened or be worse off than a cockroach! We have to make this decision for ourselves. We find it very difficult to believe that we can achieve the ultimate result of our spiritual practice. We are all interested in the spiritual path, but spirituality also means different things to different people. Everybody has their own interpretation. To many people spirituality has to be non-mechanical, non- scientific. Some people think that eating brown rice and drinking wheat grass juice is doing something spiritual.

Ego as the source for all negative emotions. When I think about spirituality, I mean a spiritual path that really frees the individual from the control of negative emotions such as hatred, fear, obsession and so on. We should also look very deeply where these negative emotions come from. We will see that they come from the ego. I am not using the term ego according to psychological technical terminology, but according to the popular notion that most people are familiar with. That ego is hard to point out though. When we say, ‘This is just your ego talking,’ it seems to be some hidden, big monster inside of us. The deeper you look for it the harder it is to say what it really is and it becomes hard to figure out the difference between our self and our ego. Sometimes people totally identify with their ego, at other times they feel they are being overpowered by the ego. Sometimes they perceive the ego as so powerful that they can do nothing about it. Let me try to define more closely what I mean by ego. To me it is a confused state of mind, dominated by fear, which is very defensive, needing to protect itself. It makes us act like a porcupine, ready to shoot quills at anything that comes near us. Who knows what we are protecting, but we are very sensitive. We are even ready to kill anyone who we think is a threat to us. That is what our government is doing

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Gelek Rimpoche these days, isn’t it? They say, ‘We better get Saddam, before he can get us!’ Maybe that is the American ego talking. This confused, fearful state of mind then takes charge of everything we do. It thinks, ‘No other person is capable of protecting myself, except me, the ego!’ But what about love and compassion? The ego-state of mind will say, ‘They are nice and good to have around, but they can’t protect me. Don’t put them in charge. If you do, they will surrender everything.’ Once ego has taken charge, then everything else we want to do will clash with the ideas of that ego. This goes on continuously. That is why we are pushed and pulled from here to there, wanting to do the right thing, getting pulled in the wrong direction. This is the struggle between ourselves and our ego. We know that the actions and reactions of ego make us suffer all the time. Ego creates hatred, obsession and fear. It is completely confused and doesn’t know it, almost like a stubborn mother who refuses to accept that what she is doing is wrong. She insists that she is right and will reject all argu- ments, especially from her mother-in law! That’s how ego functions and we know that it is wrong. Hatred never brings anything but more suffering. It creates more enemies than friends. If you are under the control of hatred you will make more enemies. On the other hand, if you act from the perspective of love and compassion you will gain more friends. When a dead-set enemy of yours sees you act on the basis of love and compassion and caring, they may dismiss you a couple of times, maybe even a dozen times, but after a while they will begin to think, ‘So and So is not so bad after all.’ That is how you win over your enemies. If you treat your dog well it will come to greet you at the door, wagging its tail, and will lick you or even get on its hind legs and shake hands with you. If you approach them with a mind of love, care, and compassion, even animals respond. If you mistreat a dog, it will run away from you whenever you show up, with tail between its legs. It will recognize your foot-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE steps and even before you actually show up hide under the bed. This is how living beings and particularly, also human beings function. How can you like somebody who is hitting you all the time? Nobody likes the big fat bully at school. Most kids are afraid of him. They may go along with him out of fear, but when there is an opportunity, they will try to get him from behind. We usually have a hatred-oriented mind. We always think that if we could only get rid of this enemy of ours, crush them, reduce them to pieces and make them suffer, that is going to make us happier. I don’t think so. So many wars have been fought, quite a lot even on the grounds of religion. Reli- gion is supposed to give us peace and harmony, but we fight about that too. We fought World War I and World War II. We got rid of Hitler, but then we got Mao. Eventually he died, but meanwhile we had so many other dictators. How many of them did we have in South America alone? When they are gone, somebody else comes up somewhere. Osama Bin Lad- en has come. Now there is Saddam. We can get rid of some of them, but somebody else will come. You cannot wipe a thought, an idea, a group of people, a society, out of human registration. As long as we can live together with compassion, love and caring, we will have peace and harmony. Look at our own situation in American history. We had the Yankees and the Confederates fighting each other. It took a long time to get over the division. Now they are the fellow citizens from Alabama and New York and Boston. So basically there is no problem with people living together. The only problem is the ego inside of us. In a recent radio interview I said, ‘Last year we tried to hunt down Osama bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan. But the most important is to get our own Osama bin Laden who is hiding in the caves of our own heart.’ Similarly now, we are trying to get Saddam Hussein out of his palace in Baghdad, but it is more important to get our inner Saddam out of the palace of our own heart. If we don’t achieve that we will con-

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Gelek Rimpoche tinue to have to struggle with more dictators and ayatollahs and terrorists. The true way to finding harmony and peace is to find joy and peace within us. When you are in peace and happy, you can make your companion happy. If you are troubled and sad you make your companion uncomfortable. If you keep doing that, then even though your companion loves you he or she will have no alternative but to leave you. The real enemy is functioning deep inside of us.

The goals of our practice. The goal of spiritual practice is to overpower this internal enemy and to bring peace, joy and harmony from inside out. Spiritual practice must have a goal. It is not done with observing ants crawling up the wall. To do so is not really spiritual. It may bring some peace, maybe some kind of joy or tranquillity, but also some stupidity. You may feel a little higher or lower, but that should not be the goal. The goal should be for spiritual practice to empower the individual, to overpower the negative emotions, to claim back our rightful freedom from those negative emotions. That is the least a spiritual path should get you. Better than that would be to free yourself completely from samsara, from the uncontrolled cycle of rebirths. The best is to become a Bud- dha. Mahayana Buddhism is the only system that tells you that each and every one of us is capable of becoming a Buddha. We all have the seed, the Buddha nature, in ourselves, men, women and children, whether black, white or yellow. Whatever your sex, color or nationality may be, everybody is capable of achieving enlightenment. Our job is to help this Buddha to mature. That is the ultimate goal. It is definitely possible to achieve. Millions of spiritually developed people have achieved it. What is wrong with us? Noth- ing, except our laziness. This stands between us and the result of enlightenment. Laziness tells us, ‘I am too stupid, I am too old, I am too young, I am not capable, I am not interested, I am burned out.’ Different people use different excuses at different times for different situations, in order to block our own path.

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Verse 20 says, ‘Hey, it is great that I can become a Buddha, but I cannot cut my arms and legs and give them away. I am afraid. I am not even interested. That’s not for me.’ Fair enough. It is a reasonable enough argument. But the last part of verse 20 says, Without discriminating between what is heavy and what is light, I am reduced to fear through confusion. Because of confusion I have been reduced to fear. I don’t know what is heavy and what is light. Buddha has never demanded that right from the beginning you should cut your arms and legs off. That is not meant for us right now. Of course it is difficult for us right now to cut a little piece from our fin- gertip, let along cut a whole arm off. But on the other hand, you can see in some Japanese gangster movies that someone cuts their own finger off, wraps it in a piece of cloth and pre- sents it, all because they want to have someone killed. They are happy to sacrifice a finger for that. This is submission to hatred. The result is going to be terrible, but they do it. The point is that our fear arises through confusion; if we know properly why and when certain things should be done, we don’t have to be afraid.

VERSE 21 For over countless myriads of aeons I have been cut, stabbed, burned, And flayed alive innumerable times But I have not awakened. I am working for enlightenment, for a great purpose. In the past, over countless myriads of aeons, I have sacrificed my health and life for much lesser purposes. Countless times we have been cut, stabbed, burned. How many people were killed in the Civil War and World War I and II and all the other wars? The latest has been the war in Afghanistan and the ongoing war on Al Qaeda. Apart from Americans, how many others have died in that conflict? We have no idea. Nobody really knows. Yet we go into wars again and again. Over several lifetimes, how many times each

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Gelek Rimpoche of us has been killed, burned, wounded? We have been to the hell realms, the hungry ghost realms. We were born as animals and slaughtered, even flayed alive. How many times you as an individual have enjoyed my pork meat? It has happened many times in our lives and lives. Without good purpose we have gone through these sufferings countless times. We have achieved nothing out of it. This ancient text takes it for granted that reincarnation is a fact. For many people it is a big question, but you have to give it at least the benefit of doubt. No scientist has ever proved that there is no reincarnation. We are a continuation, not some strange, new creation. In other words, our soul is an old soul. Our consciousness is not a new consciousness. There are many reasons why that makes sense. Today’s Joe Blow s the continuation of the Joe Blow from yesterday and he is the continuation from the one from day before yesterday. Having said that, Sunday’s Joe Blow is not identical with Tuesday’s Joe Blow. If that were the case, then Tuesday should be Sunday, but that is obviously not the case. Equally, Tuesday’s you is the continuation of Sunday’s you, but today’s you is not the same as yesterday’s you. We are unable to trace life back to before a new life begins in the mother’s womb. The change is too big. As yet we are unable to see it, but I am not ruling out that in future scientists will be able to demonstrate that consciousness continues from one life to another. Once it is clear that there is continuation from the past to the present, it follows that there must be continuation into the future as well. In our continuing existence we have been cut and killed and burned so many times and yet have achieved nothing, we have not awakened.

VERSE 22 Yet the suffering Involved in my awakening will have a limit; It is like the suffering of having an incision made In order to remove and destroy greater pain.

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Today, if with the goal of our enlightenment, our awakening, we go through a little bit of hardship and suffering, spend a little time, put in a little effort, it is definitely worthwhile. It helps us to reach our goal. We are travellers who have been on this journey for a long time, but eventually we have to reach somewhere. If the traveller never reaches the destination, something is wrong. Bud- dhism tells you that you can become a Buddha. That is the goal. Without that we will be roaming around for millions more years, zillions of lives in an uncontrolled continuation. We will repeat the same patterns and follow our addictions over and over again. We will be killed over and over again. That is the problem. This is the object of negation of spiritual practitioners. That is what we have to stop. We must reach to our destination. It might take a little trouble, but it is worth it. Our suffering can have an end: the suffering involved in my awakening will have a limit. If you have some physical problem you go and get treatment. A surgeon may cut your body a little bit, make an incision, but they will actually remove and destroy your illness and pain. You know that an operation is not easy, and involves some pain, but we will be happy to go through it, because we want to see the illness removed from our body. Even though there is some pain we are ready to bear it. People willing to undergo beauty treatments where they cut your belly and suck out your fat and all kinds of things. People do that voluntarily because they think that they will look better afterwards. They may or may not look prettier. Some people lose their lives or become a vegetable in the process. But still, others are going through with the same thing. Here we are talking about a method to deliver you to total enlightenment. Why are we afraid of it? There is nothing to be afraid of. Fear controls us, spiritually and otherwise. As kids we react to fear all the time. As old people we are afraid of being lonely and sick. The fear of dying controls us throughout our life. All this is because we are confused. We don’t know that there is nothing to be afraid of. Nobody truly can make you do any-

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Gelek Rimpoche thing that you don’t want to. If you are clear about that within yourself, there is nothing to be afraid of. Fear comes out of confusion. Wisdom overpowers confusion. It gives you a clear picture, which overcomes fear. We have huge sufferings, tremendous pains. Young people have their own pains and kids have theirs, while old people have different pains. Everybody has so much suffering. When we meet somebody after a while, at first we might say, ‘You look good, so good to see you,’ but soon the conversation will turn to themes that contain suffering. It will go like this, ‘What happened to So and So?’ and the answer could be, ‘He died,’ or, ‘She is sick,’ or, ‘They have moved away.’ We talk mostly about misery and pain and suffering, and that shows how much of it we have. If we could end all that suffering, it would definitely be worthwhile to accept some pain and discomfort to accomplish that.

How the Six Paramitas interlink with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is one of the Six Paramitas, the Transcendental Actions of Bo- dhisattvas: generosity, morality, patience, enthusiasm, concentration and wisdom, six very important tools that each of us has to apply in each and every job we do. In one way, you could see them as something special and separate, but actually, in every job and activity, we have to apply all these six tools. If we do, we will be perfect. If not, there will always be shortages and difficulties. All of them should be combined with each other. Gener- osity should have enthusiasm in it, morality should and patience should. We need enthusiasm of enthusiasm and enthusiasm of concentration and wisdom.

Generosity is necessary; otherwise even though you have enthusiasm and you work very hard, you get nothing done because of lack of resources. If you are not generous, you are setting a limit. You are not going all the way, but trying to cut corners. That is lack of generosity.

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Morality or ethics is also necessary. Without that you won’t achieve anything. Morality is discipline. Without discipline in your enthusiasm you will be excited for a while about spiritual practice and then suddenly you want to get in to something else, so you drop your first activity and jump into the next, from there you suddenly move on to something else and then back to the first. Without discipline everything will drop between your fingers. You will lose one project after another. If enthusiasm is not disciplined, you are not organized and it won’t function properly.

Patience is also needed with in conjunction with enthusiasm. Otherwise you will lose your will to persevere with difficult things.

Without enthusiasm itself you will become lazy. You will never be able to achieve anything. Everything has to wait till tomorrow and tomorrow never comes. Earlier I mentioned three kinds of laziness. The laziness of addiction If you are addicted to something that takes you away from what you are supposed to do, that is laziness. For example I am very addicted to being a couch pota- to. It gives me a big stomach and stops me from moving. I like to just sit somewhere and hope that whatever I need will come and walk towards me. I will find someone to bring me things. With this kind of laziness, we remain stuck in the status quo. We are afraid to change anything. We can’t bear to make a change and rather remain in the unsatisfactory state we are in. Some people have different addictions like needing to be busy for nothing, running here and run there. You think you have to show your face everywhere. You pop up in one place, say hello and run away. You want to do everything, want to see everybody and say hello to them, but can’t even wait for the other person to give a reply – you have already moved to somebody else. Somebody from Europe complained to me about that. He said, ‘When I visit America all these friends say

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Gelek Rimpoche to me, ‘Hey, how are you?’ but before I can say whether I am well or not, they have already gone somewhere else!’ Some people do have that addiction. They think it is the art of living. Others are addicted to not dealing with anybody. You would like to keep the curtains closed and treat 3 o’ clock in the afternoon as if it were 3 o’ clock in the morning. Yet others are addicted to drinking or smoking the ‘unofficial’ dope, marijuana. According to Allen Ginsberg, the official dope is the nicotine in cigarettes. All these addictions delay our achievements, either in the spiritual field or in any other area of life. Whatever we are supposed to do is not getting done. The laziness of underestimating ourselves. The second addiction is underestimating yourself. ‘I am not capable,’ ‘I know nothing about that,’ ‘I am not good enough,’ ‘I had my chance, but I blew it,’ ‘I can’t, I am burned out.’ All that is laziness. One says, ‘It is too much for me. I cannot handle this. I am not capable.’ Sometimes we try to justify this attitude as being realistic, but that is not always true because we underestimate ourselves. Often, if we don’t want to do a particular thing, the best excuse we can think of is to say, ‘I cannot do it. Good bye.’ The laziness of procrastinating. The third laziness is procrastination. This is saying, ‘Yeah, I will do it - when I have time.’

Pointers for overcoming laziness. Each verse in this chapter gives us pointers on how to overcome all our laziness. Verse 22 tells us that in order to obtain total enlightenment we may have to endure a little suffering here and there, but that has a limit, like when a doctor, in order to remove the cause of a great pain, cuts something from your body, to remove and destroy greater pain. You have surgery to remove something that causes you trouble. The surgery involves undergoing anesthesia and cutting your body. This is inconvenient and painful, but you know that in the end the cause of your pain will be gone, and therefore, we happily go through with it. We also know that under anesthesia we won’t feel that much. Likewise, when working for total enlightenment, you have to put up with some suffering here and there, but you can see

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE the end result of awakening, of total enlightenment. That’s why it is worth bearing. Even if you don’t work for enlightenment, suffering won’t leave you alone. It will continuously come and bother and torture you all the time. At any time in our life, wherever we are and whatever we do, suffering comes and attacks us. Meeting a friend after a period of separation tells you. At first you have a little bit of sweet talk, but soon the conversation will turn to ‘So and So died and So and So is sick. I have this problem and that problem.’ This clearly indicates that our life is full of pain. Whether we work for total freedom or not, these pains will continue. If we don’t work for total freedom, there will be no end to the pain. You can’t just get over it, but if you are working for enlightenment, at some point the suffering will end; it has a limit. Even though it involves a little hardship it is worth going through it. When a surgeon cuts your body and re- moves whatever is wrong in there, it is painful and difficult, but it has purpose and you will see the end of suffering. Re- member, working for total enlightenment means working for the end of all suffering, not only for you but for all beings.

VERSE 23 Even doctors eliminate illness With unpleasant medical treatments, So in order to overcome manifold sufferings I should be able to put up with some discomfort. The learned, good doctors can sometimes give you a treatment that is a little hard and unpleasant, in order to remove a bigger pain. If you have to take slight, little pains in order to eliminate bigger sufferings, you should patiently and enthusiastically accept that pain. That is almost looking forward to a slight pain in order to remove a big one.

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Gelek Rimpoche Practitioners are repeatedly told that a little headache for half a day can substitute for taking rebirth in a hell realm. That is why it is fit to be patient with that sort of suffering. Some difficulties in obtaining enlightenment are far less than the sufferings you have to experience in the lower realms. The tremendous sufferings of the hell realms have no purpose. You are simply paying off your negative karma. While working for enlightenment you may have to endure some slight sufferings like your car breaking down or a little accident. That is a tiny, little suffering but it is worth being patient with because it may substitute for tremendous sufferings one would otherwise have to go through. It happens because you are working for enlightenment. Otherwise the same karma could ripen into some karma in a hell realm that would last for a long time. On the other hand, look at the general suffering in samsara, the manifold sufferings. It is extremely heavy and there is no end to it. Sometimes on the spiritual path, the best comfort is not available. We know it very well. You would like to have a comfortable life, but it is not always possible. We would like to sit on soft cushions but we don’t have them here. We simply cannot afford them. We do have to put up with some discomfort. Not only external conditions, our own mental state is often not the most comfortable to us. Spiritual practice is not always done in a five-star spiritual resort. Even if we could, it wouldn’t work that well. The purpose of spiritual practice would be defeated. We do need a little purification. That will not take place if we only move from comfort to comfort. In- stead we would only cash out and use up our positive karma, physically as well as mentally. So we do have to sometimes sit on cushions that are not very comfortable and stay in an environment that is not so convenient for us. As Shantideva says here, doctors sometimes need to cut your body and take certain parts out, but we know the result will be better health. We will have more joy and comfort, physical comfort and mental relaxation. If you have a few dif-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE ficulties here, try to take the best advantage of them. Howev- er, if it is too uncomfortable, then that is not very helpful. If you break your leg and have to remain in a plaster cast for 6 or 12 months, then that is a little too much to justify this verse.

VERSE 24 Yet the Supreme Physician does not employ Common medical treatment such as these, With an extremely gentle technique He remedies all the greatest ills. The Supreme Physician refers to Buddha. Buddha did not encourage any violence, including violence against yourself. He didn’t say, ‘Torture yourself. Beat yourself up. Burn your finger as a lamp. Put some fire on your hair.’ All these actions are violence against oneself. Remember, during the Vietnam War, some Buddhist monks burned themselves in anti-war demonstrations. It is good to demonstrate against the war, but not good to burn yourself. You can express anything you want with non-violent means. That helps, but indulging in violence is not that great. Buddha did not recommend this, not even for purification. He never recommended harsh treatment: With an extremely gentle technique he remedies all the greatest ills.

Now you may say, ‘But in the Bodhisattvacharyavatara it says to give your arms, your flesh and so on. How would you justify that?’ Buddha never recommended that to us on our level. For us it would be violence. We could not bear the pain. It is very difficult for us at our stage, and therefore it is violence. For Bodhisattvas at a certain level it may not be violence: it may become joy. For those people it is a different story. That’s why Buddha never recommended being violent towards anybody anywhere. That is a most important point. Buddha, the supreme doctor, never recommended extreme hardship, but an extremely gentle technique,

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Gelek Rimpoche the technique of compassion. Love and caring is so gentle. Don’t use violence against anybody, including yourselves. Violence is not something new in society. Certain traditions even encourage violence. That is not fit for a Supreme Doctor. That would not eliminate negative karma.

The story of Marpa and Milarespa. You may raise the question, ‘Then what did Marpa do with Milarepa? Why did he have to build a multi-storied building, tear it down and build it again?’ Marpa, Milarepa’s teacher, asked him to construct round, square, triangular and square towers and tear them down again. That was an unusual situation. Not everyone is a sorcerer or black magician like Milarepa was in the beginning. Early in his life, he and his mother were very much tortured by an uncle. His mother could not take it anymore and wanted revenge. That is why she sent Milarepa to sorcery school, where he learned destructive methods to kill and harm. At that time there were no bombs, so black magic was the only way. During the marriage of his uncle’s daughter, Milarepa used his powers to make the house where the marriage was taking place collapse. All the guests and relatives were killed. At the time some witnesses saw a huge scorpion digging out the central pillar of the house with his two claws. Others saw a crazy horse that dragged the foundation pillar from underneath the building. Milarepa and his mother raised a flag made from torn clothes and announced their revenge publicly. That is what hatred and revenge does. In order to purify that, Milarepa had to build and tear down 13-storied buildings several times. Then finally he became one of the most outstanding yogis ever known to humanity. Most people around him thought still he was a filthy, useless beggar. Even when he became a great yogi and was seen flying in the air to different places, the farmers in the fields would say, ‘Oh, there is the evil sorcerer again. Let’s get away from here. If the shadow of his body touches us we will have a problem!’ They remained scared and suspicious for a

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE long time until they came to know that he had become a great yogi. For Milarepa, this rough treatment was suitable. He had committed such terrible crimes that he needed a lot of purification. Revenge is really a terrible thing. I even wonder whether what we call justice is not a hidden kind of revenge also. By punishing somebody, especially with capital punishment, what purpose is achieved? People say, ‘He killed somebody, therefore he should die too.’ To me, that is unjustified justice. Killing yet another person is not making anything better. We just add up another level of violence and suffering. We make sure that violence goes on and grows. Who are we to punish anybody? Who wants to punish whom? The karma is created already. Whether you punish them or something else happens, that person’s karma will get them. There is just double suffering. We as a society impose punishment and that person’s karma will give them punishment. Then God may want to punish them on top of that! So to me, even the word ‘justice’ is difficult to understand. Some people say that to mete out justice you are punishing the per- petrator on behalf of God. If God is not capable of punishing a person, who are we to take over the punishing? I don’t get it. That’s why I am against any punishment, especially capital punishment. All it does is hurt people who are already in trouble. That will only create more negative emotions. Buddha never recommended this. He, the supreme physician, according to Shantideva, With an extremely gentle technique (he) remedies all the greatest ills. Love and compassion is a gentle technique. The Six Perfec- tions are a gentle technique, generosity, morality and so on. Morality is important. We can’t ignore it. Patience, enthusiasm, concentration and wisdom are important. All together, they remedy all negativities, all the greatest ills. Buddha does not recommend excessive hardship. His healing is better than anybody else’s. If you have the good 128

Gelek Rimpoche karma to get Dr. Buddha to look after you, you don’t need any difficult procedures. Everything is quite magically done. However, that is very rare. A verse says, Even if the Medicine Buddha came as your personal physician and Vajrapani stood there, protecting you from all obstacles, and even if Manjushri himself were to give you the best ideas and Shakyamuni Buddha were to meditate on your behalf on love and compassion, even then if you have the karma to die, you will die. This is true, but still, Buddha does not recommend harsh techniques. You could interpret this to mean that Buddha does not use common medical treatment because he can cure through miracles. In other words, Buddha is trying to eliminate the suffering of everybody, but he does not have to cut and burn. Even 2500 years ago they did have medical procedures involving cutting and burning; the texts definitely refer to it. Buddha has methods of curing people without going through such hardship. On the other hand the common illnesses, the greatest ills, here referred to are our delusions, our negative addictions, like hatred, obsession, and fear. Buddha has the methods to cure these illnesses, without going through extreme hardships. In other spiritual traditions you do have such hardships. Certain traditions use animal or even human sacrifices. Bud- dha does not approve of any of these violent activities. The principle in Buddhism is non-violence.

The end cannot justify the means. Sometimes, at a certain point in time, even Buddhist monks resort to violence, like the Viet- namese Buddhist monks. The purpose maybe all right, but the method is not good. One should never justify the means by a positive end. It is a terrible way of drawing the attention of the world. It was said they sacrificed themselves voluntarily, but who knows what really happened? Some monks might have been brainwashed into giving their lives. We also saw it also on 9/11. The people who flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center were definitely brainwashed using religious reasons.

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On TV last night I saw the story of Joan of Arc, yet another example of the misuse of religion. It should tell us that there is no benefit in resorting to violence for any reason. It is very important not to have the end justify the means. If you do that, it gives room to people like Jim Jones and the Heav- en’s Gate cult, and gives room to hijackers and terrorists. Many of us will say that motivation is the most important thing, but you could say that some of the hijackers had a good motivation. Motivation alone should not determine all our actions. In many places violence becomes a means of politics. Here we don’t do that. We are civilized. I don’t know how civilized we are, but we are not so bad. Think of the Communists re- gimes around the world and of Hitler and other dictators. The moment you allow the end to justify the means there is danger of it getting out of control. You have to be very cautious about that in your life as well. Motivation alone should not determine all your decisions. If you give top priority to your motivation, then the danger of the end justifying the means could easily come up.

Freeing ourselves from suffering. Buddha gave such a gentle medicine, such an extremely gentle technique, to cut off our sufferings, the samsaric ones in general and in particular the sufferings of the lower realms, by protecting individuals from the causes of these pains, the negative emotions and the addictions to them. Whenever I talk about my book Good Life, Good Death I say that to me a good life is one that is free from addictions to negative emotions. I don’t mean a life where you have plenty of material things. If that were the case, the rich people shouldn’t have any problems, but they do. Very often you hear that some rich person has committed suicide. This year especially, quite a few high profile CEOs have been lined up for corruption charges. Having plenty of money does not guarantee you a good life at all. Where does a good life really come in? Is a life of poverty a good life? Certainly not! If you can’t pay your bills you don’t

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Gelek Rimpoche have a good life. Some people may say, ‘Well, I don’t have anything, so there is nothing to worry about.’ That’s fine, if you live in a monastery, a cave or in the forest somewhere by yourself. Perhaps you can live on thin air! Then it is fine not to have anything, but we can’t do that: we need to pay our bills. On top of that, our most important sufferings come from our burning desire to get something we think we need. Also, we suffer continuously from fear. Traditionally, we call it obsession and attachment. We have tremendous desire for something that we can’t get. It has to be something that you can’t get. It has to be, because if you could get it quite easily you wouldn’t have that desire; you wouldn’t ebem want it any more. The next time you don’t want the same thing again. You want something else. This burning desire makes us unhappy. Where does this desire come from? Later verses may have the answer. Why do negative emotions stop us from having a good life? Because they make us do negative things. They cause us to hurt ourselves or others or both. The moment you hurt a living being, it is negative. Some people say that it is not possible to figure out what is good and what is bad. They say, ‘Who knows what really is good and bad?’ To me it is clear. When you hurt somebody, it can’t be good, because you bring misery to that person’s life. Perhaps you give yourself a hard time and bring suffering to yourself. That is bad, too. On the other hand, helping is supposed to be good, except that not all helping really is useful. It has to be done right. Buddha’s extremely gentle technique is the method of love and compassion, of transforming negativities, of accumulating merit, of purifying wrong deeds. Buddha’s teachings are full of advice on these things. Everything is included. Certain methods are suitable for some people but not for others. Mr. A may need something that would not necessarily help Miss B. Buddha taught everything and you have to pick up what is suitable for you.

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When I was young I lived in Drepung, the biggest monastery in Tibet with over 10,000 monks. Were all these monks great practitioners? No. Some were great learned masters, de- baters, practitioners, and meditators. On the other hand there also were all kinds of other people there. In smaller retreat areas it was better. The monks there went to retreat voluntarily, and at that place, for that time period, they behaved well, because they came there for a purpose. This lead to the Tibetans saying, ‘The great monasteries may be great places of learning, but the little retreat areas are much better.’ The saying goes, ‘In a great ocean you have all kinds of sea animals, big and small.’ The great variety of Buddha’s teachings reminded me of this. He taught this variety because the living beings needing them are like an ocean, so the teachings have to accommo- date them and that’s why everything is there.

Cutting our addiction to negativity. Most importantly, a spiritual practitioner has to cut through the addiction to negative emotions. The moment you do that, your negative emotions are gone, and then you won’t have negative actions and therefore no negative karma. Consequently you won’t have any suffering. Sufferings are the result of negative actions. The negative emotions force us to act negatively. That desire of ours drives us crazy to look for things we cannot get. That hatred of ours is driving us crazy, forcing us to have ill wishes and cause destruction for those we don’t like. When we hurt someone, we will get the same thing back. If I kill you, next time you come back and kill me. Otherwise someone else is going to kill me, because I have created the karma of killing. Not only that. If it ended there, it would not be that bad. I kill you: you kill me. All right, but our addictions to these actions makes us want to kill again. People who like to kill have to do more killing. Otherwise they don’t have any joy. They get a big release from killing. That is how addictions work. If you indulge in negative actions there is always this tendency to lean towards similar behavior in future. Look at people who are in recovery from alcohol addiction. They may be

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Gelek Rimpoche doing fine, but a single drop of alcohol or even just the smell can push them into the addiction again because of the tendency to the addiction. You may for a time have overpowered the urge of the addiction, but it is not completely gone. It is still in your system. A drop or a smell is enough to push you back in. It is the same thing with all negative emotions. If we occasionally meditate on love and compassion, we may be able to reduce the itch of the negative emotions, but since it has not gone completely out of our system it can come back.

VERSE 25 At the beginning, the Guide of the World encourages The giving of such things as food. Later, when accustomed to this, One may progressively start to give away even one’s flesh. Actually, in Tibetan it says the giving of vegetables, but I guess vegetables are food. In the beginning it is good to share your food, clothes and so on. That means whatever extra you have: you don’t have to take off your last shirt and give it away.

Using a gentle technique with ourselves. That is gentle generosity and kindness. It doesn’t ask you to give away all you have, get in debt, not pay your bills and get in trouble. To be generous is great. It is applicable when you have taken care of yourself. Then it can really begin. You can’t be generous at your own detriment. It should be a gentle technique, not a harsh technique. Morality should be applied in the same way. Keep your commitments; honor your vows. Keep your discipline. Commit to what you can. Take the vows that you are capable of managing; that is gentleness. Patience is necessary, but don’t break the camel’s back: that is violence. The same goes for enthusiasm. Yes, you have to work energetically, but if you exercise too much, you get a heart attack. That

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE also goes for the spiritual path. Work with your limita- tions. Even when we sit here and discuss spiritual topics, we have to draw the line somewhere. Our attention span is not much more than 30 to 40 minutes. For that time we are alert and can express our views and participate. After that, I as the talker become lazy, and you, the listeners become fed up. That is not gentle any more. Again, the same is true for concentration. Don’t try to concentrate for longer than you can manage or you may go to sleep. Wis- dom also should be applied gently. Wisdom must see how much you are capable of, how far you can go at any point in time. If you cannot make that judgment, it is a lack of wisdom. It is stupidity.

The Six Paramitas within generosity. Generosity is very important for us, but it should have wisdom in it, or actually all the Six Paramitas. Without morality, your generosity has no discipline. There are two ways to look at it. First, morality on its own gives a proper context to your generosity and then, a disciplined generosity, which is the morality within the generosity. You have to think in both ways. You consider what you can give and what you shouldn’t give. This is wisdom and morality, both. For example, you cannot give an alcoholic drink to somebody who has just finished the 12-step AA program. If you do that, it is immoral; you are hurting that person. If you do that on purpose, it is done through ill-wish and evil thoughts. When you give, you need patience. Giving something at the wrong time won’t do any good. When the time is not right, the person may not even accept your gift. All this is nothing new, but we make mistakes all the time. We are not geniuses, so we have to learn. When you give, you have to be enthusiastic. Once you have decided it is the right thing to give at the right time to the right person, don’t wait, but push ahead. A lot of people will change their mind about giving and let doubts come up and then finally not give. Not only are you then not being gener-

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Gelek Rimpoche ous and neglecting your morality, but in case you have vows, you may get a downfall for stealing. You may only have kept your own property, but at this point it becomes stealing. Look at this cup. It is by nature neither your cup nor mine cup. What makes it mine? We decide on ownership. Now, the moment I decide in my mind that this should be your cup, it has become your cup. It is no longer mine. When you then don’t give it but keep it for yourself, it is probably stealing. In order not to make mistakes here the wisdom of generosity and the enthusiasm of generosity are needed. You need mindfulness, too. Otherwise you dedicate to give one thing to a certain person and then another thing to another person but end up giving the first thing to the second person and the second thing to the first person. In short, you need all Six Perfections with all the other ones within every daily activity we are doing. If you do this, you will automatically become a good person, efficient, capable, somebody people will admire. You are automatically organized, and become a role model for others. These six things are really interesting tools. Though Buddha put them together 2500 years ago, today we can use them not only in the spiritual field, but even for our daily chores. That is what the Supreme Doctor wants you to do. That is the prescription from the Su- preme Doctor.

The joys of giving. For Bodhisattvas generosity is extremely important. Chandrakirti said, In the beginning, when you can’t give much, Buddha recommended to share your food. But do not give the yellow part of the vegetables and the blue or green part of the butter or bread! It is no big deal to give away your vegetables when they are becoming dry and old. That is not generosity at all. When you get really used to it, accustomed to it, you get the giving addiction! Then you can even give parts of your flesh and your organs and you don’t feel bad. You don’t even feel pain. Remember the story of Aryadeva, Nagarjuna’s disciple who

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE gave one away of his eyeballs because somebody asked for it. When these Bodhisattvas hear the words, ‘Give me that,’ they experience tremendous joy. In our case, when we are very addicted to negative actions we enjoy doing them. Likewise, the opposite is true. The Bodhisattvas are so used to giving, they look forward to it so much and are so excited that they even like to give away parts of their bodies, their own flesh. When is it okay to give away parts of your body? The line is drawn on whether or not you feel any pain. Even if you don’t feel joy, it is all right to give your life as long as you don’t feel any pain. For us, this is not only not recommended but even forbidden. If we do it, it is a downfall, a negativity. Chandrakirti says that when the Bodhisattvas hear the sound of people begging, their joy is even greater than what Buddhas experience in peaceful Samadhi. Alternatively think if you are addicted to something and when you smell, see or hear it, how much joy do you get? This is contaminated joy. The joy of the Bodhisattvas is uncontaminated. That is a big difference. Contaminated joy gives us trouble; it is an invitation to suffering. Uncontaminated joy is the solution to stop suffering, the cessation of suffering. Con- taminated joy increases contamination. If you are addicted to alcohol you have to drink more and more, until your body becomes almost like an alcohol bottle and even then you are not satisfied. Uncontaminated joy functions according the same lines, but it is uncontaminated, and so it does not bring any suffering. I can’t give you examples, because we are ordinary beings just don’t have it.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Student: Would you say that Gandhi’s hunger strike was an act of violence against himself or was it a gentle way of getting the attention of the world? Rimpoche: Gandhi never indulged in a hunger strike to the death, except at the very end, when there was nothing else he could do to stop the outbreak of mass fighting between Mus- lims and Hindus. He never used the hunger strike to death

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Gelek Rimpoche against the British government. He did go on hunger strikes earlier to draw attention to conditions in jail. The Hindu-Muslim violence was so terrible. People were really killing members of the other religion for no other reason than that they belonged to that religion. Trainloads full of people were killed when Hindus had to leave Pakistan and Muslims had to leave India at the time of partition. When the treks of refugees from both sides crossed paths they started killing each other. Why was there this problem in the first place? It was purely man-made. Although there had been some conflicts before it was due to the British Empire wanting to come back into power in India. The treaty with Britain said, ‘There can be in- dependence in India and Pakistan, but if both parties cannot get along, the British Empire will return to rule the country.’ It was done the same way in Kuwait and Iraq, Palestine and Is- rael and so on. The British Empire controlled the whole world from the late 1800’s up to almost World War II. Their method was to create divisions and if fighting broke out because of that, the British Empire would return and take over. Who would have thought that within quite a short time this huge empire would shrink to one little, insignificant island? Even the United States was in the beginning under British control. If religion, which is meant to heal divisions and bring peace, is misused to create violence, it is terrible. Tibetans say, ‘It is making a devil out of God.’ That is really bad. Buddhism is not an exception either. We have seen it in Vietnam. It is man-made corruption, which is using the great religions to achieve its aims. That is not a gentle technique.

Student: If someone is executed by the state, wouldn’t that at least reduce the negative karma they would have to experience as a result of their crime? Rimpoche: I don’t think the state has any control over karmic processes. I don’t think it reduces anything.

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Student: You talked a lot about non-violence in Buddhism, but isn’t there this story where a captain of a ship kills a guy in order to save all the other passengers? Rimpoche: Good point. Actually, the gentle techniques should always apply, except in rare cases, in order to save 500 people it may be necessary to sacrifice one. If you fail to do it, your compassion becomes idiot compassion. That means it lacks wisdom. You would lose so many lives, just because you cannot get rid of one. Student: In that case, I have two follow up questions: Do you have to be enlightened to do carry out such a wrathful act of compassion? And secondly, if you have somebody like Ted Bundy who is definitely going to kill more people if he gets a chance, isn’t it better to execute him in order to protect society? Rimpoche: I have no objection to imprisoning him. You have to; otherwise he will go on killing people. The judgment is so difficult to make. No one can judge anybody else, unless you have unmistaken knowledge. According to the Buddha, you shouldn’t judge anyone unless you are fully enlightened. Then you have total knowledge and you cannot make mistakes.

VERSE 26 At such a time when my mind is developed To the point of regarding my body like food, Then what hardship would there be When it came to giving away my flesh? When the Bodhisattvas are at a high level they don’t feel any pain. It is the same for them to give vegetables from their fridge as it is to give their own eyeball. If you are at that level you can give your body, your flesh, otherwise it is not permitted.

VERSE 27 Having forsaken all transgression, there would be no suffering, And due to wisdom, there would be no lack of joy; 138

Gelek Rimpoche But now my mind is afflicted by mistaken conceptions And my body is caused harm by unwholesome deeds. Since at that level, you are totally free of all negativities, having forsaken all transgression, you don’t have any suffering. Without negative causes there can be no negative results and therefore no more suffering. We can see that to a certain extent in ordinary people. Some people don’t suffer nearly as much pain as expected from particular illnesses they have. Some people suffer less under torture than others. I don’t know if that is going against the law of physics. We simply say that this is due to mind, but it is the spiritual level of the individual person. What they are going through may look very painful, but maybe they don’t have any pain. It is somewhat unusual but we can see it quite often. Song Rimpoche, a great Tibetan teacher of the last generation, was about to die in 1983. He just said, ‘I think it is time for me to die, but I don’t want anybody say that I died through some black magic, so bring a doctor to check me.’ Tibetan and western physicians came and they could not find anything wrong with him. Still he said, ‘It is time for me to die.’ The next day he died, just like that. Dying is not easy and comes with a lot of pain, but not for Song Rimpoche. He left, just like that. Also last year, Domo Geshe Rimpoche passed away almost in the same way. Actually, he was ill, but he did not have any pain or difficulties. Two days before his death he talked to me and said, ‘Well, I am getting better, but one thing is funny. When I go to the bathroom it is sometimes tiring for me.’ That was all. Then two days later he suddenly died. Shortly before, he was still talking with people. So, without negativities there is really no suffering for the individual person. Further, this verse says, Because there is wisdom there is no unhappiness. The lack of wisdom is what gives us all our mental agonies. People suffer from depression because they don’t

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE have wisdom. I don’t think psychologists will buy that, but according to Shantideva it is true. He also says that if there is something to be corrected, don’t worry about it, but just go and correct. If there is nothing to be corrected, don’t worry about it. You would only create additional suffering for yourself. What is the use of that?

Eliminating the causes of suffering. The Tibetan says there is no suffering because you have eliminated all causes of suffering. What are the causes of suffering? Negative activities. This is telling us that we should not underestimate our capabilities to work towards becoming a Buddha. We may think, ‘I worked so hard for all these years and I got nowhere. If it takes so much time to become a Buddha, I will have a lot of difficulties in samsara. Even if I don’t get any additional sufferings, in each life that I take I will have the sufferings of birth, death, illnesses and aging. I might not be able to bear it. I already have so much trouble with the little things that are going wrong now. There are things that I hoped for and they are not working out. There are quite a lot of difficulties. I am afraid it is going to take a hell of a time and be very difficult.’ This verse is telling us to stop and think for a minute. Where does our suffering really come from? It does not come from nowhere, and neither has a creator god thought it up for us, nor is it a total accident. There are only two sources, our physical body and our mind. If you become a Bodhisattva, you have purified your body, your mind and even your speech. The contemplations we have done before we enter into the path, the hardship we have gone through, the heat we have generated, the melting of the airs in the central channel, all the difficulties we have gone through have purified our airs. These hardships do purify. I have a friend who refuses to take any medical help because he thinks that a little suffering, a little pain, is purification. I know a person in Malaysia who is suffering from ulcers but who will not take any medication. She thinks that this will

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Gelek Rimpoche relieve her pain and she will be deprived of her opportunity to purify. In itself that is probably done with good motivation, but I am definitely not recommending that to anyone, because that is a little inappropriate, I don’t want to say silly. But because of these types of difficulties purification does take place. It purifies our body, speech and mind. At the level of the great Bodhisattvas, all your body, speech, emotions, mind, everything is pure. No negativities are left. The translation says, Having forsaken all transgressions. You could also say, Since there is no sin left, there is no suffering. In- directly this tells you that all sufferings come from negative actions. As an Arya Bodhisattva it is impossible for you to experience any suffering. As for us, we have negativities and have been unable to settle our account and therefore we are still paying for it. That is seen from the karmic point of view. From the angle of the conditions, the wrong physical treatment of your body, like eating wrong food, not looking after it properly, doing wrong things, and so forth hurts your body. Sometimes, even knowingly, we materialize these conditions because of having the karma to experience this suffering. This, however, does not mean that we should just succumb to it, thinking that it is our karma and there is nothing we can do. That would be stupid. Yes, it is karma and it is happening, but karma is also a dependent arising, not a self-contained, independent unit, functioning by itself. Anybody who experiences any suffering, mental, physical or emotional, has contributed to it and we are not helping ourselves. So we are torturing ourselves for our own deeds. What would really help? Getting rid of the cause. Without cause there can be no result.

Eliminating unhappiness. The verse continues by saying, Due to wisdom there will be no lack of joy. The direct translation of the Tibetan is Since you have knowledge, therefore there is no unhappiness. This is talking about the mind. It is very easy to say, but difficult to get.

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What kind of knowledge are we talking about? To a certain extent we know. Even our education can eliminate certain unhappiness in our mind, but the knowledge talked about here is very specific. In English, when you say wisdom it can refer to very specific types of knowledge or information. Here, however, we are talking about knowledge that can eliminate all the sufferings in samsara, the circle of suffering. In America, whenever you talk about life, people think about a linear thing with beginning and end. When I talk about samsara, I immediately get the picture of a cycle. It is life and death, followed by life and death, going round in cir- cles. This whole samsara as well as the sufferings in it is nothing but a magician’s illusion, a parlor trick. When you say magician’s illusion, you get the understanding of something that appears but is not there, similar to a hallucination. A parlor trick gives you the idea that is not real either, just a trick. When you try to trace it scientifically, you can’t find it. Our suffering is like that. We feel it and experience, but when you really investigate it is nothing but a parlor trick. When you know that, the suffering will be already much less. When you fully understand that, you don’t have any pain. Right now our suffering may feel very real, but when you look at it, you see that it is not real. When you know this completely there will be no lack of joy, according to Shantideva. If you just think that it is not real and hope that it will go away, however, you are wrong. It does not work that way. Some people say, ‘All right, nothing is real, everything is a parlor trick, there is no truth in it. It will go away.’ Just thinking that is not enough; you must struggle to definitely find that it is not real. Buddha talked about emptiness. The Heart Sutra tells you that there no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue and so on. It tells you there is no butt and no smell of butt! However, just by wishing and thinking you don’t get the true understanding. Even visualizing and praying, forcing yourself to think that way and so on does not work at all. You have to go deeply into this. Finally, when you are really able to see it and move

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Gelek Rimpoche within and function in that way, you will see that all this is not truly there. When you get to that level all delusions will be gone. In one way it is very hard to get there. You have to contemplate and work hard, but on the other hand, it is just a matter of hitting a couple of the right keys and you are inside. As soon as you are inside you know that everything has been a parlor trick. The suffering is not real. Our kids have to struggle tremendously to achieve what they want. We, as parents, watch with sympathy. We know where they are moving towards, and we know that they have to go through some process and all we can do is watch. We may be able to help a little bit here and there, but mainly we can only watch them struggle. For them it is a big deal, almost a matter of life and death. From our perspective we know it is not that. But we are sympathetic and give our support. Maybe the way we are caught up in suffering is something like that. When we truly know that, it is the wisdom we are talking about. Emptiness means that the suffering we have is not substantially true. When you know this, there is no lack of joy. Everything is joy, because there is no pain, not even the smell of pain. Nagarjuna has said, Such a person who has no physical pain, how can they have mental pain? The combination of morality and wisdom. Such a person can stay among people who experience suffering because of compassion. That is why Bodhisattvas don’t burn out, no matter how long it takes and how much they have to do. What really burns us out, what really makes us give up is unhappiness and pain. As Bodhisattvas you have perfect morality, you have forsaken all transgression. You are a person who has no negativity. In Sanskrit morality is shila or tsul trim28 in Tibetan. Without negativity, every one of your actions is absolutely ethical. Moreover, such a Bodhisattva understands the true nature of reality. The combination of morality and wisdom is the perfect cause to gain short term and long term liberation. Nagarjuna said,

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Morality will bring you the short term goal of a good life, a good rebirth. Wisdom will bring you ultimate enlightenment Whether our life is perfect or not really rests on whether it is contaminated or uncontaminated. If it is influenced and in- spired by delusions it is contaminated. Even good actions like meditation, even a great artwork like making an image of the Buddha, if it is done with a contaminated mind, cannot give you perfect morality. If there is no contamination, then no matter if you make an image of Jesus out of cow dung, it is perfect and uncontaminated. The free expression of artwork is something very good, whether it is tangible art or music or something else. When it is uncontaminated the result will not be perfect. The moment contamination is involved something is not right. The same goes for giving teachings. It may be a Buddhist or Christian lecture or teaching, if it is done without contamination, it is perfect and pure. With contamination, it is not that good. Verse 27 continues: But now my mind is afflicted by mistaken conceptions And my body is caused harm by unwholesome deeds. Without wisdom you have the wrong understanding, mistaken conceptions. From that come negative actions that hurt our mind and our body. It is very simple.

Letting go of mistaken conceptions. Wrong knowing is present because we have very the powerful habit of needing to protect Me and Mine. We become very touchy when a button is hit that wakes up Me or Mine. We do certain things we don’t want anyone else to know about and call this freedom. You have a right to keep your privacy. It is a legitimate human right, but on the other hand we don’t have to be that touchy. The feeling of dislike, of being hurt, is there because we have some kind of perception of Me and Mine. We still have that even though everybody knows about it. Look at it. They made these new security laws and Big Brother is looking over our shoulder and already knows every single damn thing we do. There we are not so touchy. It is the law,

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Gelek Rimpoche but if somebody else comes to know we would be very touchy. We are touchy because it is Me and it is Mine. No one can come in here. We will kick them out! All human beings do that and not only them: all animals do the same thing. Buffaloes charge and horses kick. It is because of hurting Me and Mine. Our territory is ours. If anybody steps over the line we get upset. We show long faces, we cry, yell and scream. This wrong perception, the mistaken conception of Me and Mine gives us unhappiness in our mind, so let it go. Don’t have territorial issues. Simply let it go. What problem could you get? No one is going to have problems. In fact all the problems are only there because of Me and Mine. Kicking and screaming is actually not so bad. It gets worse if you begin to indulge in manipulation. Sometimes it goes as far as killing. It is all because of Me and Mine. When you go beyond the wrong perception you become learned. You will have knowledge and therefore you won’t have unhappiness. This tells us that the whole of spiritual practice boils down to cutting out the negative thoughts and emotions and the touchiness they are rooted in. All our internal and external sufferings are symptoms of this touchiness. If you can let that go you will have no problems. You not only will have no sufferings in body and mind but instead of that we will get joy.

Physical and mental joy. Bodhisattvas practice generosity and so on to accumulate merit. Because of that there is joy in their physical experience. Understanding the reality is wisdom and that gives them joy in their minds. Even for the sake of one single sentient being they are ready to stay for a long time in samsara, because of their compassion, caring and understanding. There is no reason why that Bodhisattva could be unhappy. Bodhisattvas have a very special meditation called ‘Every Existence is Joy’. That meditation will at some point materialize and become reality. Buddha, in a former life, gave his body to a tiger family. He cut his wrists, trying to revive the dying mother tiger enough so that she could eat him. Not only did

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE he not have any pain at that time but felt tremendous joy. This joy developed from the concentration on the meditation ‘Eve- ry Existence is Joy.’ Earlier the Bodhisattvacharyavatara said that Buddha only uses gentle techniques. Even if it looks harsh to give your blood and life to tigers, in reality it is non-violent, not rough, not harsh but actually joyful. This is the difference spiritual practice can make. Maitreya Buddha further says, The great Bodhisattvas have one particular quality. Their own qualities can be helpful to others. They take rebirth again and again willingly, with choice. Even when they go into lands that have great difficulties and suffering, for them it is like wearing special ornaments, going to a great party. This is only possible for those who have great compassion. You may think that you have such great suffering that you don’t have the leisure to work towards enlightenment, but what I have been saying shows you that it is wrong to think that way. Then you may think that it is going to take a hell of a long time and you want to get there right now. The answer is, ‘Let it take time. If you don’t have to go through extreme pains and difficulties, what is wrong with that? If you have joy, don’t you think you will be happy to stay longer, rather than hurrying up?’ Nagarjuna says, When you have to endure suffering and pain, even one single minute is very long. When it comes to joy, years, centuries and eons are too little time. This is true. When you have a good time and you have to leave you will say, ‘I want to stay. Why do I have to go now?’ As a Bodhisattva, you don’t have to go. That’s what it is.

Summary of verses 26 and 27. The meaning of these last two very important verses boils down to two things: morality and wisdom. The combination of these makes it possible to achieve enlightenment. Morality means being free of negativities. That

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Gelek Rimpoche is really what morality is. We are not talking about Monica Lewinsky! As for wisdom it means truly understanding that whatever we are doing is a parlor trick. The combination of that is really the so-called union of wisdom and compassion.

VERSE 28 As their bodies are happy due to their merits And their minds are happy due to their wisdom, Even if they remained in cyclic existence for the sake of others Why would the Compassionate Ones ever be upset? Bodhisattvas enjoy physical happiness due to their luck, their merits, the force of their positive actions. When we perform virtuous actions we don’t hurt others, but help them, give them enjoyment and make them happy. As a result of that we will get physical joy and mental joy. That is the ideal solution. Bodhisattvas have no pain, but instead joy and bliss; no suffering or worry in the mind due to their wisdom. Body and mind are at their best. If then you stay in samsara in order to benefit others, even if it takes a little longer, why worry about that? Why be upset? Because of compassion and wisdom, there is no room for worry or upset. Joy in the body is something that Bodhisattvas have developed. Even something that from the outside looks very painful, in the personal experience of a Bodhisattva can be very joyful in nature. Remember, when Buddha gave his body to the tiger family, he did not experience any pain at all, but joy. Many Bodhisattvas in the past have done unthinkable things, but from their side they only experienced joy. Just recently the United States we saw the experience of a great teacher from Tibet, Tungar Rimpoche. He had late stage cancer to the point where his bones were breaking. Jewel Heart was able to bring him to the United States for treatment in Los Angeles at Cedar Sinai Hospital. During the month before he passed away, his condition was extremely painful, but

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE he never seemed to experience any pain and never took any morphine. When you touched him his bones would break. When they turned him in bed a couple of bones would break, but he did not seem to have any pain. He couldn’t speak because so many tubes were put through his mouth, but he communicated by writing and his writing was not crooked or anything. He had beautiful handwriting. Also, remember about a year ago, Domo Geshe Rimpoche got sick. We don’t know what the sickness was. He died, and he also did not have any pain at all. He just died. In the case of Bodhisattvas, it is possible to have such experiences. Physical joy and lack of pain comes from virtuous actions and mental joy comes from wisdom. The right knowledge gets you all this. Because of bodhimind, because of the Bodhisattva activities, we all have a chance. Right now everything is very fragile. Anything can go wrong anywhere, any minute. We have nothing to fall back on. There is nothing to support us. At most you can get medical service. Here also, you never know, with the current political developments, nobody may be able to afford any health insurance for longer than a few weeks! How- ever, the potential to feel joy all the time is there. It is only a matter of willingness. It is not going to happen tomorrow. It is going to take time, like everything. When you want to drive to another city you have to go along the whole road. You don’t just get there. On Thanksgiving Day we were driving back here from Cleve- land. I was running late. The moment I got into the car my mind was thinking, ‘I want to be there now!’ But it was not possible. I had to travel the whole road. I was fast, only 2 hours and 15 minutes, but we didn’t fly. With spiritual practice it is the same. We have problems coping with that. Often we think it is going to take too long and may not ever materialize. Is it really possible that there is the perfect union of body and mind, without any suffering whatsoever, or is that just an un- realistic dream?

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Gelek Rimpoche I have tried to give you some examples that it is possible. I also chose to give examples not about what happened in Ti- bet 400 years ago, but what happened in the US on the west coast 4 years ago and on the east coast a year and a half ago. Now you may still think, ‘These are incarnate lamas and I am not. It may not be realistic for me.’ The spiritual or inner development that you can get through practice is not restricted to lamas. It is not reserved for Orientals, it is totally and openly available for everybody, Caucasian, African-American, man, woman or child. It is occasional, first, because it is not available all the time and second, we are only occasionally interested, without the will to pull through. The opportunity is there right now, the methods are here, the examples and role models are here, we just don’t have the willingness. If we did, it is possible. The occasional potential can be made lasting. Yes, it is true that it is going to take a long time. You may think that you don’t have time to wait that long, but where are you going in such a hurry? What alternative is there? We are going nowhere. If you try to rush you will only land in the wrong place at the wrong time. Secondly, if it is misery and suffering, even two minutes is too long for us, but if it is enjoyable, even two eons are two short, so there is no possibility and no need to rush.

The magical key. Bodhimind is something funny. We say all the time For the benefit of all beings... It is a good thing to say, but it does not mean that much. It is the Mahayana way. We go through the motions and think about it, but don’t really know what it means to us, if it is really going to work. But Nagarjuna says in the Precious Garland, If you look at the countless multi-galaxy-universes, there are countless numbers of beings. I have made up my mind that I totally dedicate my work for their benefit. No matter how many people are there, according to that number, that is how much benefit I get from my practice.

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If you say, ‘I would like to feed this dog for the benefit of all beings,’ and give some food to the dog, the benefit you receive will be equal to the number of sentient beings. It is equivalent to feeding zillions of dogs. Your yield is zillions, even if you could only feed that dog some rotten, old, dry bread. Because of the bodhimind you get the benefit of feeding zillions of dogs. When you say NAMO GURUBHYA for the benefit of all sentient beings, it is equivalent to saying a zillion of this mantra. That is the reason why thinking for the benefit of all becomes so important. It is the magical key. Otherwise, we would have to accumulate that virtue individually; in that case we would never ever get any nearer to Buddhahood. The magical formula is for the benefit of all beings. The mind thinking that, however, has to be totally dedicated. It is not enough just to say it. You can’t manipulate it, by replacing it with a selfish motivation like ‘If I say ‘for the benefit of all beings’ I will get all that benefit just for myself!’ Manipulating others in spiritual practice is worse than manipulating people in business. That will not gain us or them anything. The result comes from a definite, dedicated mind to the benefit of all.

VERSE 29 Due to the strength of the Awakening Mind, The Bodhisattvas consume their previous transgression And harvest oceans of merit: Hence they are said to excel the Shravakas. We have still not settled the account for all our negative karma, all the negative actions we have committed. They are still there, but because of bodhimind they will completely disappear: The Bodhisattvas consume their previous transgression. They will be washed out. Not only that: you will also harvest an ocean of merit. In the first chapter of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Shantideva says that no matter how heavy your negativities may be, even if you have committed all the five limitless negativities, you

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Gelek Rimpoche can wash away all of those just by developing bodhimind. This is the power of bodhimind. Bodhimind not only purifies but also accumulates merit. The entire first chapter is devoted to the benefits of bodhimind. If you do it right, you don’t have to do that much. If you develop bodhimind, you don’t have to lift a finger! Once you develop that mind, if you can maintain it, then, even if you only lie down and sleep for 24 hours, even then every minute and every second of that sleeping period you are purifying and accumulating merit equal to the number of all living beings. If this is not skilful means, is there anything worth that name? These are the methods that make even impossible things happen. We have that opportunity right in front of our own nose. The last line of this verse says, Hence he is said to excel the Shravakas Bodhisattvas and Mahayana practitioners in general are much more important than the Shravakas29. Earlier the Bodhi- sattvacharyavatara gave the example that young Bodhisattvas who have just developed bodhimind are like princes who by the power of their lineage as princes will completely overpower all their senior ministers.30 Diamonds, by virtue of being diamonds, overpower all other precious stones. Likewise, even immature Bodhisattvas are much more valued than even seasoned, old Arhats, because of the benefit of bodhimind, the mind that is dedicated to all beings. Bodhimind is the method through which we can really accumulate merit and purify non-virtues much faster. The Mahayana method is much faster than the Theravada system. Remember the story of how Shariputra, an Arhat, once gave teachings to about 60 people who were about to become Arhats themselves, but then Manjushri came in and gave them a Mahayana teaching. This caused them to develop doubt and they all went to hell instead. Shariputra complained to Bud- dha, but he said that Manjushri had done the right thing. He said, ‘Yes, they could have become Arhats, but because of Manjushri they didn’t. They did go to hell but they will come

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE out faster and practice the Mahayana and become a Buddha way before you.’ That is why the Mahayana is important.

VERSE 30 So, having mounted the horse of an Awakening Mind That dispels all discouragement and weariness, Who, when they know of this mind that proceeds from joy to joy, Would ever lapse into despondency? Because of the Mahayana, you have the horse of the Awakening Mind. This was written over a thousand years ago. Today we could say, You have the Chevrolet of the Awakening Mind! That mind gives you physical joy and mental happiness. Therefore there is no tiredness and no burnout: no discouragement and weariness. When you get into burnout, remember that it is a clear sign that you are not yet a Bodhisattva. Bodhimind provides you with a vehicle far superior to a Chevy. With that vehicle you go from joy to joy, happiness to happiness. No question of saying, ‘I can’t do this,’ of lapsing into despondency arises. You will be so happy to do it. That is why the path of love and compassion is superior and much more important than the other methods.

Violence never gives good results. This is also where the issue of violence and non-violence comes in. Violence has the mindset of ‘I better hurt you before you can hurt me.’ That is the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike. It is Bush’s style. That is violence. What do you get from that? Look at our history. Violence has never provided anything great from a political, military, economic or spiritual angle. You may say, ‘If we did not have World War II, Hitler would have ruled the world.’ Hitler would have died anyway, or he might have been toppled internally. Mao died. Right or wrong, World War II is done, so

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Gelek Rimpoche there is no need to argue about it. Happily, it is over, but we don’t want to go into World War III at all. If you really look carefully, violence has never given us any good results. Non-violence, on the other hand, has. Any little joy and happiness you see anywhere in the world has come through non-violence. Whatever Gandhi did for India and Pakistan was possible through non-violence. It is not the case that the British government at that time did not indulge in violence. There are plenty of reasons why Gandhi could have responded with violence. Thousands of people got killed in the Punjab massacre. But due to Gandhi’s method of non-violence, even the most powerful country at that time had to give up and withdraw. You know the saying, ‘The sun never sets on the crown of England.’ The British Empire controlled most of Africa, Asia and even America at one time, so wherever the sun rose was a part of the British Empire. This powerful empire was forced to sit at a round table conference with this simple person called Gandhi, who was wearing a sarong, walking with the aid of a walking stick and bringing a goat along with him. His success was clearly a result of non-violence. The same can be said of Dr. Martin Luther King. The civil rights that are in place today were achieved through non- violence. I am not sure how much Malcolm X really contributed. Also, whatever Mother Theresa has done was done through non-violence. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is another such person. He is applying non-violence and even such a powerful country like China cannot afford to ignore him. He has no other weapon except two folded hands, traveling all over the world. If he were carrying something else in his hands nobody would bother with him. This is the bottom line how love and compassion works even in the ordinary world. In the spiritual field, it is the magic force making everything possible.

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VERSE 31:

THE FOUR SUPPORTS FOR ENTHUSIASTIC BODHIMIND The supports when working for the sake of living beings Are aspiration, steadfastness, joy and rest. Aspiration is developed through fear of misery And by contemplating the benefits of (aspiration) itself. This verse is telling us how we can get this mind by employing four powers or supports. These are the power of motivation or aspiration, the power of stability or steadfastness, the power of joy or happiness and the power of determination.31 The English translation says rest. The Tibetan at this point says torr (dor ba), which means throwing away. In other words, don’t throw it away, even if you are tired. After you get a little rest, continue straight away: don’t give up. So I think it should be the power of determination. The translator was not a native speaker, so probably he was not thinking with a native mind. You have to read between the lines here a little bit. Traditionally, when people went to war in ancient times, they used another set of four powers, the army, the horse carts or chariots, the weapons, and the determination in the mind of people, in order to defeat the enemy. With that idea, these four powers were formulated by Shantideva to defeat the enemy, laziness. Where does the first power, that of motivation, come from? Shantideva says here that Aspiration is developed through fear of misery. When you know that you have carried out negative actions and not cleared them, if the results of those materialize one day, you know that you will suffer tremendously. You don’t want that. The fear of this suffering will give you the energy to do something to prevent it from materializing. This is a true pre-emptive strike on the negativities, before they can hurt you. That is Buddha’s style of pre-emptive strikes. It is not about getting some being, but getting the negativities before

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Gelek Rimpoche they can get you. The last line gives you a further method to develop aspiration. Because of the benefits you get from bodhimind, from love and compassion and of aspiration itself, you know that you are going to go from joy to joy, from bliss to bliss, without any interruptions. Therefore there is no reason to be unhappy.

VERSE 32 Thus in order to increase my enthusiasm I should strive to abandon its opposing forces, To (amass the supports of) aspiration, self-confidence, joy and rest, To practice in earnest and to become strong in self control. This verse mentions the four powers again. With these you can cut down on all laziness, the opponent force to enthusiasm. Self-confidence32 or stability is necessary, and is equivalent to steadfastness mentioned above. You can be proud of being in a fortunate position where you can do it. You are proud and happy to be able to develop love and compassion. Any obstacles that could make you tired and close to giving up can be overcome and thrown out by that self-confidence and by determination, the fourth power, which again is translated by rest. Because of those four powers my mind will be influenced by mindfulness and alertness continuously. I have my own power to control my mind and my body and I should be able to work for that in earnest.

The opponents to enthusiasm. The way to build enthusiasm is by abandoning the opposing forces. All Bodhisattva activities work that way. You gain by abandoning opposing forces. Often we directly strive for what we want. We think we have to work hard to get it. That’s true in one way, but here you get what you want by throwing out the opposing forces. In order to gain enthusiasm, what is the opposing force to get rid of? La- ziness.

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Our number one laziness is our addiction for doing wrong things, our addiction to attachment, obsession, anger, jealousy and so on. We all have them. We don’t have to work for them or meditate on them. They just come up everywhere, even if you don’t want them to. The second kind of laziness is thinking that we are incapable, thinking, ‘I am not capable, I am not good enough, I can’t do it, I am not worthy.’ In America we have that laziness sometimes but normally we are not especially humble, but rather over-proud. A good example is George Bush, but it is not only George Bush. We think that we know best and that if the others do it our way, then it is professional and if it is done differently, it is not right and not professional. This basic way of thinking is quite common. So the problem of ‘I am incapable’ may not our biggest problem. Pride can be okay if it is self-esteem, but if pride goes in the direction of, ‘It has to be my way, because your way is wrong,’ than it goes against the spiritual path, against the quality of the individual. Traditionally, Tibetan masters say, ‘Look at the mountain peaks. Do the peaks collect water or does it flow away?’ Of course the water does not stay on the peaks. In the valleys the water collects much more and therefore they are green, whereas the mountain peaks get green later in the year and the grass doesn’t last long. Another example is that during harvest time in fall, the wheat stalks that have more grain don’t stand straight up. They are heavy with grain and bend down. When the stalks don’t contain grain, they stand up sharply. These are the traditional examples of humility, saying that a person without qualities may behave proudly and one heavy with qualities may bow down and be humble. However, if there is no self-esteem, your development is not stable. That is different. Pride doesn’t maintain quality. People who think they know it all will keep on talking all the time without listening to anybody. They want to present and force their thoughts on others, but that way they will never learn anything. The time will go by, you will be talking and won’t pick up anything new.

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Gelek Rimpoche The laziness that thinks, ‘I am incapable,’ also doesn’t allow for any development, because we never even make the attempt. Yet another type of laziness is the self-insulting one. You make yourself silly, making jokes at your own expense. If you don’t have pride that is okay, but insulting yourself with a sense of pride is not right. You devalue your own quality. One should not have the extreme pride of a George Bush, nor go down to such a low self esteem that one is overly humble. You should be able to balance this. Self-deprecation can be laziness. Some people think, ‘It is best to say ‘I don’t know’ so I don’t have to do anything.’ If you don’t know, nobody can force you to do anything and you can stay inactive. The other extreme is the people who don’t know anything but pretend they know everything and make a mess out of everything. We do that in the spiritual, personal and professional fields. In reality everybody is a student, but some pretend to be experts. They make a mess, make a lot of people suffer all the time.

Gaining self-control. The most important thing is to gain control over your own body and mind. That is the most important force you can gain. Why do people meditate? The result of the meditation you are looking for should not just be joy and calm and relaxation. That may come as a by-product. What we really need to develop is control over our mind. That is what mediation should give us. In the Tibetan tradition the mind is compared to a wild, untrained monkey. If you let a monkey loose in the temple, what will happen? The monkey will jump over all the images, eat up or knock over all the offerings, drink the water offerings, grab the fruit and eat them, and shit all over the place. This is exactly what our mind does. It will not stay in one place, but will jump around. We will not get any control over this mind unless we catch the monkey and tie it down. Meditation is trying to gain control over the mind through focusing. Remembering the object is like a pillar and aware-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE ness is like a rope, so you tie the monkey to a pillar with a rope. Now it can’t jump round so much. In other words, through meditation you make the mind focus. When you have control over the mind, you can get it to focus on anything. It will be like a mountain. It will not move.

Building our aspiration. Verse 32 tells us to abandon all the opposing forces and adopt and amass the supports of aspiration and self- confidence. We have to build up our aspiration, the desire to do something positive. In Tibetan it is dun pa (‘dun pa), one of the 51 mental factors. I am reading from a commentary that says, ‘The basis of gaining enthusiasm is desire.’ They use the term dun pa, but also the term mö pa. This translation uses aspiration. The desire to do something is necessary, otherwise you won’t do it: some dissatisfaction or dislike will make you drop it. People can’t force you to do something that you don’t want to do. Honestly, nobody can force anybody to do something they don’t want to do, even George Bush. That is why the anti war demonstrations are going on. If we don’t have to desire to act, why should we spend time and energy on it? Even if you are paid to do something, if you don’t like doing your job, you will just do the time, 9 to 5. This desire is the first necessary condition and next is self- esteem. Here you have it: Pride no, self-confidence yes. At- tachment no, desire yes. And then you have to love what you are doing. In this translation it is called joy. Even if you have the initial desire to do a particular thing, if you don’t love doing it in actuality, you won’t keep doing it. You will find every excuse in the world. It will always be the next thing on your to-do list. The commentary gives a quote by Asanga, one the great ornaments of the world. Along with Nagarjuna, he is known as one of the path-breakers or trailblazers, those who opened a road which others then can more easily travel on. Some- times they are also compared with the soldiers who carry the banner and go first, the standard bearers. Asanga talks about

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Gelek Rimpoche mö pa which means that you understand the subject well and you don’t let anyone take that away from you. Intelligent faith or conviction is based on mö pa. Without that, your faith becomes blind faith. The difference comes through understanding the subject. You have gone through carefully. When you have perfect understanding you cannot lose it. Usually, our mind is such that it is easily influenced. Even if you think you know something, someone else can come along and tell you that you are totally wrong and you can lose your conviction. The mental faculty of mö pa gives you the good understanding which cannot be lost to anybody. Having said that, you shouldn’t be stubborn either. People make the mistake of thinking that stubbornness is the same as stabilization. Being stubborn is also bad, just like with self esteem and pride. Here stubbornness is the bad way. You have to come down from that. Many stubborn people don’t have good reasons., but insist because they think it is a good thing. That is a pathetic reason. You need sound, perfect reasoning to back up your decisions. With good reasoning, your understanding improves and finally becomes unshakable. That is different from stubbornness.

The strength of our convictions. Right now we may say, ‘The Bud- dhadharma is great,’ but someone could come and tell you, ‘Hey, you are making a big mistake. If you think that, you are going to go to hell, because that is going against God.’ Then you start to worry and waver. On the other extreme, just in- sisting that you are right without good reasons is stubbornness. Also, some people say that they are open-minded and to them everything is fine. That is also not great. That is like being a flag on a flagpole outside in the wind. When the wind comes from the left the flag blows to the extreme right and flaps noisily in the wind. When the wind direction changes the flag moves to the other side and makes flapping noises. There is no stability, because there is no good understanding.

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Without good understanding and reasons to defend your view, you don’t have mö pa. Others can tell you that you are wrong and you will follow them.

The Brahmin and the goat. Remember the story about the Brah- min and the dog. The Brahmins don’t want to touch dogs, because dogs are dirty and unholy in the Indian culture. Even if a Brahmin touches cooking pots, clothes or utensils used by an Untouchable, he becomes so unclean himself that he has to run into the kusha grass fields and sometimes has to sleep there for seven days in order to purify. Their family members will not let them come home. This is old Indian culture. Brahmins can keep goats. That’s why Gandhi went to Lon- don to the Round Table Conference with a goat. He annoyed all the British officers with that goat. Brahmins keep goats to give milk, while dogs are considered dirty and unclean. Once there were three thieves who wanted to steal a Brahmin’s goat to get the meat. They made a plan, then split up and positioned themselves in different places in the market. The Brahmin walked past the first one of them who said, ‘What a funny sight. Look at this? This Brahmin is taking a dog with him. What a stupid person, doesn’t even know the difference between a goat and a dog.’ The Brahmin heard that. A bit further the second thief said to a group of people, ‘Look, this Brahmin is taking a dog along with him.’ Now the Brahmin thought, ‘What?’ and he looked back once to make sure it was a goat. He thought, ‘What is the matter with those people? This is not a dog.’ He walked on and after a while the third thief said, ‘Look at this Brahmin, taking a dog with him.’ Now he thought, ‘I might have some kind of delusions. Everybody sees a dog, except me.’ He panicked and chased the goat away, thinking that it was in reality a dog. That’s how the thieves got the goat and had themselves a nice lunch. That’s the example. When it only takes three people to change your perception it shows that you’re not solid regarding the points you are being challenged on. This is so important for us.

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Gelek Rimpoche Know what you are doing and why. We do practice, so we have to be quite good at it. We have to understand what we’re doing. Otherwise, why are we sitting here? If you put in this much effort you have to have a valid reason. When you have good reasons and when your understanding is correct, then you have mö pa, convinced understanding with reasons. When somebody else then tells you that you’re wrong it is not easy for them to convince you, not because of your stubbornness, but because of your good reasons. That not only becomes the basis of enthusiasm, but it also becomes the basis of faith that is no longer blind faith, but intelligent faith, faith with reasons behind it. That is what we need. We are all intelligent, educated people. We don’t go in for blind faith. We are better than that. So that is the mö pa or dun pa. These are almost the same terms with only a very slight difference. The first, mö pa, is actually there to establish conviction in something and the second, dun pa, is then wanting to do it. The bases of almost all spiritual practice are these particular types of mental faculty. These will make you then enthusiastic about whatever it is that you want to do. Without them, you don't have a basis to practice. A lot of practitioners tell me that they have been practicing so much , but now they are getting tired, like that dead tired donkey struggling uphill with a heavy load. This comes from the lack of mö pa and dun pa. People tell me that they have burned out. When they talk to me individually, I say that I don’t know why that is. In a group gathering like this, I can say clearly that it is because you don't have mö pa or dun pa. In other words, you don’t know what you’re doing or why you are doing it and that’s why you burned out. The Bodhisattvacharyavatara is great. It talks about what the bodhisattvas are supposed to do, but at the same time it also tells us what we should do. In verse 32 we talked about the opposing forces to enthusiasm, the three different types of laziness, for example. In the next verse we’re going to talk about the first of the different forces that help to build enthusiasm. These aren’t the forces of mö pa itself, but tell us what mö pa really is. 161

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VERSE 33: ASPIRATION I shall have to overcome The boundless faults of myself and others, And (in order to destroy) each of these faults (alone), (I may have to strive until) an ocean of aeons is exhausted. This is talking about impossible things, right? It actually tells us to have a very strong will. We need the extremely strong forces of willingness. Without these, whatever we have to do will be difficult. Right now, we are not really willing. We have been compelled to do it, or we have been forced to do it. We have not yet developed a heartfelt willingness, because we are not happy to do it. We are not fully satisfied. We think, ‘Yes , I want to do it, but I don't like the language I have to do it in,’ or, ‘I’d like to do it but there are certain people that I don’t like to talk to,’ or, ‘I like to do it . but I don’t want anybody to tell me what to do. I like to do it all by myself.’ All of these are negative forces. It is like saying, ‘I would like to become a fully enlightened Buddha, but I don’t like that it takes so much time to meditate. I don’t have the time. I need time to go to the bar. I need time to gossip. I have to watch the Super Bowl. Then there is my party.’ If you are thinking like that, your willingness is questionable, not strong willingness. If the will were strong enough there would not be a problem. Even in bad weather, some people come driving in from a long-distance. Last week, some people came from Lansing and from Toledo to Ann Arbor. It is willingness that provides the force. Otherwise, you may just feel compelled or you feel that you have been made to do it, or you feel that you are obligated to do it. These are weak forces. It is not mö pa, which implies a very strong willingness, the most powerful force. It makes you very eager. If you don't have mö pa or dun pa it’s not right.

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Gelek Rimpoche Especially as a bodhisattva you have to overcome the opposing forces to mö pa or dun pa. You have to think, ‘When I developed bodhimind I gave my commitment for my own sake and for the benefit of or beings.’ You not only committed to destroy all the negative forces, but all the boundless faults of myself and others. Not only that. You gave your commitment to spend lives and lives to overcome all negative forces such as ego-service, hatred, and laziness, every single type of laziness. You have to think, ‘If necessary I will spend life after life for countless eons to overcome that fault. That was my commitment when I generated bodhimind.’ Bodhimind of course means ultimate love and ultimate compassion. Love and compassion don’t come so easy. It is easy to talk about, a beautiful thing, but when you really have to handle it, it becomes difficult. When I commit to developing unlimited, unconditioned, ultimate compassion and love, I have committed to overcome every single fault of either myself or others, no matter how long it takes. Here we are not talking about years or weeks or months, but oceans of aeons. That means many lifetimes, and a lot of hard work that needs to be done. We gave that commitment at the time of generating bodhimind. We have promised to ourselves to do that. That also shows you what enthusiasm really is. The Lama Chöpa says, Inspire me to perfect transcendent joyous effort, By striving with tireless compassion for supreme enlightenment, Even if I must remain for many aeons In the deepest hell fires for the sake of each being. Will comes from compassion. What prevents you from getting burned out? It is compassion. People’s suffering is too severe and urgent. Compassion is what keeps you from feeling bad and sad. You don’t get burned out. You never think that it is too much too bear, that it is beyond you, because you care. If you don’t care, even a little is too much. If you deeply care, then no matter how much needs to be done, nothing is too much.

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Compassion leads to your willingness and the willingness gives you the force to be able to complete whatever you need to do. If there is no willingness, then it is just business as usual and that will not receive a great priority, as long as you can make money. There is no sense of urgency. You have got to do something, but only because you are obligated. You just have to do it, but there is no caring. You will only do it when you are being bugged. When you care, nothing is too much. Caring develops willingness and then things get done because human capacity is unlimited. Yes, there can be accidents and things can go wrong, but basically our capacity is unlimited. As the saying goes, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ The will is force number one, aspiration, being willing. Bodhi- sattvas need to have that. If that is missing, as a Bodhisattva you are going against your commitment. When you generated the bodhimind you said, ‘For the sake of a single sentient being I am prepared to stay in the deepest hell for as long as it takes and never get tired.’ Therefore Bodhisattvas should never talk about getting burned out. People over here used to tell me that they were burned out. I always said, ‘I don’t want to hear that.’ It is only the lack of compassion that makes you feel burned out. You are lacking in your fundamental commitment to ultimate, unlimited, unconditioned love and compassion, breaking the commitment at every point. You compassion is not ultimate, because you don’t care enough. It is not unlimited, because you are putting a limit. It is not unconditioned, because you are insist- ing on conditions. You will only do something if you have time. It may still be love or compassion, but not very much. The basic commitment of bodhimind really roots out the half-willingness. Now you may be saying, ‘There is a lot of pressure of doing things for others. What about me? I am being accused of not caring enough, not having enough willingness. Now I have burned out.’ I am sure many think that way, but actually, this is the sign of stupidity.

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Gelek Rimpoche What is truly beneficial? The compassion that benefits others and works for them actually works out to be to my own benefit, yet we fail to see that. The problem is that we measure benefit in dollars. We think that if we get many green dollars we have been benefited. That is deep in our mind, perhaps the fault of the economists. It is Alan Greenspan’s fault! Even when it comes to social benefits, the recipient as well as the provider will try to measure that in terms of dollars. Truly speaking, human life and human benefit has very little to do with dollars, yet life insurance is measured in green dollars. The value of human beings getting killed is measured in dollars. After the tragedy of September 11 the journalists on TV kept saying that the damage was something like 3 billion dollars. How can you measure 3000 people’s lives against 3 billion green dollars? Too much in our culture is measured in terms of money. Maybe we have diluted our eyes with too much green like when you go to the eye doctor and they give you some eye dye that makes everything look different. Economists have put a lot of green in our eyes so we see everything tainted green. That is basically wrong. If that is the culture, we should go counter-culture. You can never measure human values in terms of dollars. In this country we can get a great education, but among that there are also a lot of twisted things. Teaching our kids human values in terms of dollars is twisted, totally false. On the other hand, it is no use rejecting the whole system, because the whole society functions that way. If you go against that you are isolated, cut off. Remember the story of some Indian guy driving from Boston to New York on the highway, going the wrong way. (In India they drive on the left side of the road) All other cars were driving on the right, only he was driving on the left. He heard a message on the radio, telling motorists to be careful, because there was someone driving in the wrong direction. He thought to himself, ‘Some- one is driving in the wrong direction? Everybody is! What are they talking about?’

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It would be similar if we tried to contradict our society. At the same time, in true reality our money measurement is false. We think we have to find a point of reference to measure happiness against. If you choose the correct point of reference, then that is okay, but green dollars are not a reliable point of reference. The moment the currency collapses our whole value system will collapse. We can count ourselves lucky that the United States is well established and is able to hold the forces together for a while, but otherwise, the whole society would collapse. We can see it sometimes in other parts of the world when they have to devalue the currency. Then all the measurements we have been accustomed to are proved wrong. We saw it last year in Argentina and Brazil. The same thing happened some years ago in Southeast Asia. This is because a false point of reference has been used. When such a currency is valued against the dollar or the euro suddenly its value goes down tremendously. It can drop by 70% overnight. Then it depends on the skill of the country’s managers to hold the price of food and basic necessities. It can be done. You can still get the same amount of food for the same price as before, even though the currency itself is devalued. This really shows you that the whole system is false, just man-made. The points of reference, the evaluation of products, it’s all man-made. Food prices can stay the same in the local currency although the value of the currency against the dollar has dropped sharply. There you can see that it is man-made, not natural, artificial, and yet we have been trained by our society to measure every human benefit in term of dollars! We will often not even acknowledge the true benefit, if there is no dollar figure available to express it with. Education is wonderful. It is enlightening. It brings light into darkness. It is the best friend you can have, because it will never let you down. However, there are certain problems like the teaching of false value systems. According to these systems some humans are more valuable than others. For example we put a huge value on any American life, but what about the lives of people in Afghanistan and Iraq?

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Gelek Rimpoche The benefits of compassion. To come back to my main point, when I say that exercising compassion for the benefit of others is of benefit to ourselves, I am not talking about dollars. For example, the hardship we put up with for the sake of others reduces our negative karma. It reduces and substitutes our negative emotions. Our emotions become positive and the actions resulting from that become positive actions. That is the benefit. And therefore, to cry ‘What about me?’ when we are doing something for others is a sign of stupidity. We are not thinking deeply enough. Most of us, when we are not thinking, do not appreciate our life. We take it for granted. It is there and happening, but if somebody gives you a thousand dollars you will be very happy. When other people are losing their lives, often nobody even thinks about it. Two days ago, seven astronauts lost their lives in a space shuttle accident. We feel sad about that. We can see the pictures, we see the families, we get told about their background. But at the same time definitely more than seven other people died in Michigan alone that day. Nobody is talking about them or thinking about them, except their immediate families because they were not astronauts. Again, it is our value system that causes us to react differently. Normally we don’t think about that, but as spiritual practitioners we really have to. What do we really value? We can’t do without the green dollars. We would go broke and bankrupt and couldn’t function in this society. Your car will be repossessed and you will get kicked out of your own house in the middle of the night. You can’t do without money, yet intrinsically it has no value. This is called relative truth. It has to go side by side with absolute truth and we have to walk carefully in the middle. Relative truth is true, but it is a false truth. The relative truth, which is accepted by the whole society, should not be lost. If you lose it, everybody treats you as crazy. They put you aside, will not respect you, and may almost tell you that you belong in an institution, so you cannot ignore relative truth. The thing to do is to understand that it is false, yet go along with it.

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If you think in terms of money instead of spiritual development, then sitting here listening to a talk about Dharma is a waste of your time, money and energy. You sit here for two hours and drive up to an hour to get here. In economic terms it is also a waste of gas and you are polluting the environment. You are not making any money by sitting here either. Instead you have to listen to this crazy guy who tells you that everything is wrong. So whoever is coming here to listen to this must also be crazy. From the economical point of view therefore the whole exercise is absolutely crazy. Yet, in reality it has tremendous value. You just can’t measure it with dollars. No one will tell you that measuring the value of life in dollars is wrong. No one will tell you that the perception of dollar value is wrong. No one is willing to challenge Allan Greenspan! We have made a commitment to all beings. If we don’t honor our own commitment we don’t value our own words. That word has true value. A promise is a promise, whether you made a promise to yourself or to others.

VERSE 34 Yet if within myself I do not perceive Even a fraction of the perseverance (required) to exhaust these faults, Then why do I not have a heart attack? For now I have become an abode for infinite misery. I don’t have even a hint, I do not perceive, how to stop the suffering within me. Consequently I become a store of suffering, an abode for infinite misery. All the sufferings can fall on me and stay there. Why don’t I worry about that? If you really think deeply you should just about get a heart attack. The danger is that great, but we don’t even think about it. We are the source of suffering. All the suffering is within us. Our body itself is in the nature of suffering; the perception that the inside of our body is clean is false. When I talked with

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Gelek Rimpoche one of the chief researchers from Merck Pharmaceutical Company about that, for a while he had some difficulty accepting it, but sometime later he called me and said, ‘You are absolutely right. Medically, we try to picture the inside of our body as totally clean, but that is a false perception. Otherwise, how can we develop cancer from within our body? Most of our illnesses are produced from inside the body. Only a few come through external sources like mosquitoes and so on.’ We have a lot of false perceptions and somehow we have to correct them for ourselves. That will change our life and increase our happiness. When we don’t see any sign of reduc- ing or exhausting these faults within us, then they stay with us, mentally, physically and emotionally. This is so severe and so dangerous that if we suddenly became aware of it, our mind would not be able to take it. We might get a heart attack. The change we need to make within ourselves comes about through developing the willingness to do something. We cannot just force that willingness to be there, and cannot pretend to have it. False willingness is almost an idiot kind of willingness. Some people remind themselves with little notes saying, ‘I have to have willingness.’ They stick them on their refrigerator. That is rather stupid. Willingness has to be built through gaining a true understanding of the situation. The true understanding is that we are the breeding ground or abode for mental, physical and emotional suffering. Is that bearable to even think about? It is like the swamps where mosquitoes breed and multiply. We are like that because of our selfish attitudes.

Developing willingness to take care of ourselves. We are so sensitive. We become like porcupines and don’t let anything come near us, ready to shoot anyone and anything. Instead of analyzing and observing these processes carefully, we actually protect them. Only by opening ourselves to the true situation can we develop compassion for ourselves. Without compassion for ourselves, we don’t really care for ourselves. Our body may not be injured but we are mentally

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE and emotionally hurt and wounded. We walk around with these huge wounds and scars going yadda yadda yadda to everybody. We make much more noise than any reasonable person, because we want to hide the emotional hurt we carry. That is a clear sign that we don’t have compassion for ourselves. We don’t care for ourselves. If you care, you work out the reasons why you are hurt. Willingness to act then comes from these reasons. I have said many times that faith is necessary but it has to be intelligent faith, not blind faith. How do you get intelligent faith? Through truly understanding the situation and analyzing it, and building self-compassion for your needs. With that intelligent faith you are able to help yourself. Intelligent faith does not mean worshipping Buddha, Jesus, Yahweh or Allah. It means having faith in yourself that you can make a difference to your situation. This faith brings you the complete willingness to do something. You underestimate the value of your human quality, if you just say, ‘I need the willingness to help myself, but I don’t know how to get that.’ In conclusion, the fundamental willingness to take care of ourselves is the basis of our spiritual development and, indeed, even the basis to meet our material needs. We have to find out what the value of our life really is, and check that with the values that society imposes and then we have to balance these. You have to develop intelligent faith in your own ability to make a difference. Blind faith is not that great. It can even be dangerous. Jim Jones and Heaven’s Gate are examples where blind faith got people into deep trouble.

Building enthusiasm and diligence. We are studying here the 7th chapter of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara about enthusiasm, why it is necessary to have it, what are the obstacles, and how to overcome them. Mainly the obstacle is laziness and to overcome it you need diligence. In normal life situations people often say, ‘I don’t like my job. It is very boring and difficult. I have to pay my bills. That’s why I am still working here.’ In the spiritual path nobody pays you, so it does not help to pay your bills. That is why the first thing people drop is

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Gelek Rimpoche their spiritual activities. There is no sense of urgency. No bill collector will come if you don’t do your spiritual practice. It won’t show up on your credit report. On the other side, there is real pressure to pay your bills. You have to get busy to manage. Then, after that you are too tired to bother with spiritual activities. Bills need to be paid, there is so much pressure at work, and then we are exhausted. Being physically and mentally tired makes us emotionally tired too. Then everybody gets together and someone starts, ‘I am extremely tired today.’ The next person will say, ‘Oh, me too.’ Whether you are tired or not, you will feel as if you are. It is like that toothache I have been having for a while. For a few days I felt okay with just a little pain. Then it extended to my ear. Still it was no big deal. When it ached a little more I took one aspirin, sometimes two. I wore something in my mouth to protect the tooth and did not eat hard and solid foods. Today I went to a dentist who took x-rays and told me, ‘You have an abscess. It is a root canal problem.’ After he said that I really felt pain, yet nothing extra had happened. The situation remained the same. Just the dentist’s diagnosis seemed to increase the experience of pain. It suddenly felt more hot and swollen. In the same way if other people complain about how tired they are it rubs off. We also feel more tired. That is how the mind works. We do know that we need to work on the spiritual path, but because there is no pressure from anybody we think, ‘I can’t do it right now. Sometime before I die I will get it right.’ We let it go. We don’t have the right aspiration. Let us read the next verse.

VERSE 35 Likewise I shall have to realize Many excellent qualities for myself and others, And (in order to attain) each of these qualities (alone) I may have to acquaint myself with its cause until an ocean of aeons is exhausted.

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This is talking not about days, months or even one lifetime, but an ocean of aeons. Who has the time to exhaust an ocean of eons? When you don’t have such an aspiration however, you may end up being the loser.

Finding aspiration to work without bill collectors chasing you. In the spiritual field no bill collectors are chasing us. If in the material world bill collectors are chasing us we have to do something that gives us money. People say, ‘I don’t work because I want a lot of money, but because I have to pay the bills.’ This is true. When the bill collectors really chase you it is difficult. Our life is set up in such a funny way, with everything is reflecting a false security. We function within and have to make use of this system, otherwise we cannot make it in this society. The system was set up by thinking, ‘How can we best utilize the energy of many people? How can we make them work for us? How are we going to keep them busy?’ The whole economic system here is set up like that. If you belong to a wealthy family and inherit a huge amount of money, then perhaps you don’t have to worry, but otherwise, everybody has to watch their finances very closely. If you don’t, your plastic money won’t work one day and you will be unable to function in society. The system is not set up so that people can get enough food and clothes. It is more than that. Our whole life has been organized. It is a total set up, but if you don’t live in accordance with this world, if you try to go against the current, you will get into great difficulties and you won’t make it. I remember a guy who tried to fight against the whole system: he died and the system is still very much intact. It is no use going against this system. Even though it is false you have to know it and live within it. Buddha himself said 2600 ago, ‘Whatever the structure of the society is, don’t go against that.’ You can be counter-culture to a certain extent, but if you go too far, you won’t succeed. Nothing will change, except that you will waste your life and won’t be able to help yourself. On the other hand, we should not be so naïve that we ignore the

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Gelek Rimpoche fact that the whole thing is a completely false set up. It can actually happen that something in the system goes wrong and it completely collapses. It is also not permanent. When it collapses we will know that it was totally false. Money is in essence not worth anything. I saw this in my own life. In old Tibet we had a currency that worked, with coins and notes of five, seven, ten, twenty-five and one hundred. Up until the day the currency collapsed, you could go to the market, pay your money and buy goods. In some countries, experienced leaders manage to keep the food prices stable even though their country’s currency is devalued by 50 % in the international market, but when the currency completely collapses, bank notes become just worthless pieces of paper, no longer useful. Even as toilet paper it is not that good, forget about writing anything on it! That shows that the value associated with money is absolutely false. Right now we just have this funny system that forces everybody to be frantically busy and work for these valueless notes. You have to, because otherwise you can’t pay your bills. Finally, the police will come and even lock you up. In short, we are living a false life. No wonder it is said that we are living in a state of delusion. That is definitely true. From the person living in the White House down to the regular guy in the street everybody lives in delusion. Some are in more delusion than others perhaps. The ones who have more delusions can create more trouble for more people – for example George Bush. He can create a lot of trouble for a lot of people and you can’t do anything. If you disagree with him it is like a mosquito trying to impress an elephant. He doesn’t even hear you. Yet, if a thousand ants bite the elephant in the foot he may have to raise his leg! Our life is false, but it is not without remedy. Let’s say I am wearing a silk shirt. I look around and everybody is wearing cotton and wool. I may think that I have the best, most expensive one, but those woolen ones can also keep you warm, maybe even better. The purpose and function is the same but our false mind will regard one as better than the other. Why is

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE the silk shirt better? Because it is expensive. Here you have the emphasis on the dollar value again. I may be drinking from an expensive Ming dynasty china cup or from a cheap plastic cup, or I may drink straight out of the bottle, which is even easier. The purpose is to get the liquid into my body, to quench my thirst. What difference does it really make whether I drink from a cup or from the bottle? Our deluded mind suggests to us that when we drink from an expensive cup the tea or coffee tastes much better. In reality it goes into my mouth and there it makes no difference. The same goes for clothing. If a shirt is nice, warm and soft, it is good enough, whether it is silk, cotton, wool or paper. It doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t bother you. But society puts a value on everything, so we cannot say that silk is the same as cotton. Our delusions are linked to the values of society. There is no inherent value for silk or cotton. In society’s eyes silk is more expensive. If you want it you have to pay more green dollars. What about human life? That is different, because it does have special value. It is capable of fulfilling all desires. What is our deep desire? We want to be free of suffering. Nobody wants to suffer. Who wants problems? Everybody wants their life to go comfortable and smooth. However, we are faced with problems all the time. To try to be free of suffering is having love and compassion for yourself. When you try to make yourself comfortable it is an indication that you care for yourself. If you don’t care, you will just be happy to pass your days. It is a lack of compassion and love for yourself. Having compassion means having an aspiration for your own joy, your own freedom, your own personal comfort. Is this true in our life or not?

Aspiration is the major point. If you don’t have the aspiration to become rich you will never be. If you don’t have the aspiration for your own spiritual well being you are never going to be spiritually well-off at all. You will always be struggling. You will not become the subject of praise, but of disgrace. I am

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Gelek Rimpoche using harsh words, but spiritual practitioners who don’t even have aspiration for their own well-being are a disgrace. Some people say, ‘I am a spiritual person I don’t care about mundane things.’ People say that from their mouths, but in their heart they hold something else. I saw an example of that on a TV show the other day. A guy is asked by his friends, ‘What are you going to do for your wife’s birthday?’ He says, ‘Oh, nothing. She doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Am I right darling?’ She says, ‘Yeah, but you can do some little thing.’ This indicates that from the bottom of her heart she did want to make a big deal. So we as spiritual practitioners may say that we don’t care about material or mundane concerns, but in our heart of heart we do care. That is dishonest. We consider not caring as spiritual. We think it is being humble, but we did not take any vows of poverty, did we? In the Buddhist tradition, if you are a monk or nun, probably you have no worldly desires whatsoever. But as lay practitioners you don’t take vows of poverty, chastity or obedience. Nobody is saying that you have got to be poor. Some people think that if they get something extra they are taking it away from somebody else. That may not be true. Not possessing wealth does not make you spiritually right either. It is okay to have everything, as long as you don’t have obsession or even attachment to wealth. You have to see that quite clearly. On the other side though if you don’t care for your living conditions it is almost the same as not caring for yourself. Then you are losing the fundamental principle of your compassion. If you don’t care for yourself, how can you care for others? It is impossible. Maybe we are trying to imitate His Holiness the Dalai Lama or Mother Theresa, but they are different people than we are. We can’t compare ourselves with them. We may wish that we could be like them, but we are not. We are whoever we are. We need to have the aspiration both for our own well- being and that of others. If you don’t have that aspiration you are losing out. That’s what Shantideva is talking about, espe-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE cially in this verse 35. He talks about the qualities of oneself and others. This includes temporary and ultimate qualities, so many, and we spiritual practitioners need all of them. When we have generated bodhimind we promised to bring all the best qualities to all sentient beings. How can I do that if I cannot produce them for myself? It is my commitment. I have promised to do that. All these tremendous qualities are to be attained, but right now I haven’t completed even a single one. In order to get that I may have to work very hard, even for eons. I will have to build them up. Every day we say, May all sentient beings be happy, may they have the joy that has never known suffering, and so on. But have I achieved that for myself? Am I happy all the time? I am not. I only get a little bit of happiness for a short time, followed by long-term misery. Then there is a little bit of happiness and after that it’s back to long-term misery. That is how our life goes by. I have to switch this round. The short period of joy has become longer and the long duration of misery has to get shorter until finally it disappears completely. When we say, May all beings be happy, first we must mean that to be, May I be happy. Nobody is just going to give that to you, but when you are trying to do this so that you can make everybody happy, your chances of getting it are much bigger. You have a much greater purpose. In reality you are trying to get these qualities for yourself first. We talk so much about compassion and benefiting other beings, but in fact we are really working for ourselves. Don’t forget that! We are working for ourselves but not out of narrow, selfish interest, not to satisfy our itchy, touchy ego-mind that gets hurt for no reason.

VERSE 36 But I have never developed acquaintance With even a fraction of these excellences. How strange it is to squander This birth I have found by some coincidence.

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Gelek Rimpoche Here it is confirmed. We have no idea about the meaning of these qualities: no acquaintance with even a fraction of these excellences. We don’t even have a single one. For a long time I haven’t been getting any good result. Sometimes, by coincidence, I get a lucky break, like this precious human rebirth that has all the special qualities. By chance, I have something valuable here. If I waste or squander that it would be so terrible.

The qualities of enlightenment. We don’t often talk about the qualities of an enlightened being. All we say is that a Buddha is an awakened being who has the all-knowing mind, but we don’t know what makes a Buddha so extraordinary and how he attained that. Nagarjuna wrote a text called Ratnamala, in Eng- lish Jewel Rosary. One verse in there says: Even a hair pore on the body of a Buddha requires for its existence ten times the amount of all non-Buddhas’ positive karma put together. We are talking here about the positive karma of all beings who are not Buddhas. That includes all the Bodhisattvas, Arhats and Pratyekas and ordinary beings. All their positive karma multiplied ten times is needed to buy a single hair pore of a Buddha’s body. There is no credit from the sky treasury bank! Then, if you collect all the hair pores in a Buddha’s body and multiply the positive karma it takes to get them by 100, that is just enough to buy one of the 80 minor marks of the body of a Buddha. A Buddha has 32 major signs and 80 mi- nor marks. It sounds incredible, but sometimes you need to hear this. Next, if you multiply the positive karma required to get all the 80 minor marks by 100, that creates just one of the 32 major signs. All the 32 major signs’ positive karma multiplied by 1000 gets you the urna, the little hair treasure between the two eyes of a Buddha. In Vajrayana that may become the wisdom eye. Next, if you multiply the positive karma required to get the urna by 100,000 times, you get the ushnisha. That is the lump on the head of a Buddha.

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Finally, if you multiply the positive karma needed to produce the ushnisha by 100 you will get Buddha’s speech, and so on. This whole comparison shows just how expensive it is to produce the attributes of a Buddha. From the quality point of view you can see now how rich and deep it is. You get an idea what the qualities of an enlightened being are. What are the qualities of a Buddha’s speech? No matter what language people may speak they will hear what Buddha says in their own mother tongue. It is almost impossible for us to imagine. To a certain extent we do that through interpret- ers. If you go to the UN in New York there will be translations available into 10 different languages simultaneously, but that is using electronic facilities. For us there are limits with doing this and a lot of people have to put a lot of effort in. Buddha on the other hand, speaks in his own language and yet if there are a thousand people from a thousand different countries they hear it all in their own mother tongue. If Bud- dha came here, talking in Sanskrit we would all hear it in our own native tongue, right down to the accent, let’s say a Texan or Californian or Midwestern accent. Further, the mind quality of all knowingness is not something easy. Nowadays we have some clairvoyant people or psychics. They have to concentrate and sweat a lot and then they may begin to figure out 50 per cent of what is going to happen. That is not total knowledge. Buddha proved his knowledge once. He was in a town where about 500 people were listening to him. He told them all to go home and bring back a handful of grains each, put them in a marked piece of cloth that only they could identify and hand these to him. Buddha picked one bundle up after another and was able to exactly tell which bundle belonged to which person. Our psychics can’t do that, nor can the astrolo- gers, scientists or psychologists. Nothing can compare with Buddha’s knowledge. He ef- fortlessly knows present, past and future all together. A psychic may be able to foretell one single incident that may or may not happen within one week. Many psychics are now

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Gelek Rimpoche predicting that a war between the US and Iraq will start within the next two weeks. They may have some signals telling them what is about to happen, but it is subject to change. In Bud- dha’s case he will be able to say that war could start on the 17th but due to certain factors it will be delayed by so many days or weeks. The psychics can’t do that. Even oracles and mediums can’t. How is a Buddha able to have such a quality? He bought it by accumulating positive karma. Without having the strongest aspiration you cannot accumulate that positive karma. If you can’t tell the difference between the omniscience of a Buddha and the little clairvoyance of a psychic, it is pathetic. This verse is therefore telling us that we don’t really have one single good quality like that. All we have is the quality of having this great human life, so we must not waste this. The next verses up to verse 40 answer how we can get these qualities or why we haven’t got them yet.

VERSE 37 I have not made offerings to the Lord Buddhas, I have not given the pleasure of great festivals, I have not performed the actions for the teachings, I have not fulfilled the wishes of the poor, It sounds a little strange when you say I have not made offerings to the Lord Buddhas. In Indian language they don’t translate the word puja as offerings. They just leave it there. That is probably very wise. It sounds better if you say I never did my pujas for the Buddha Jewel out of the Three Jewels. The body base is an image of an enlightened being. The speech base is holy books and the mind base is a stupa. We have not accumulated the merit that you get from making an image of the Buddha, by making Buddhist books available, which represents the speech of a Buddha, nor have we built stupas so that people could collect merit and do purification based on it.

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Eastern traditions have their temples and the Christian tradition has these huge churches. In Asia there are so many images and stupas and hundreds of thousands of books. People print and buy them, and offer them to other people. That is all a great accumulation of merit.

The story of the ugly singer. During the period of the previous official Buddha, a king built a great stupa using a huge labor force. One of the women on the project continuously cursed the king for undertaking such a huge project. She got paid for the job, but at the same time she worked very hard on it too. Finally, when the stupa was finished she actually quite liked it. Out of her wages she bought a pure golden bell and offered it as a decoration to the stupa. Later, during the life time of Shakyamuni Buddha, there was singer who had a very beautiful voice. Everybody loved to hear her sing, but nobody wanted to see her because she looked terribly ugly, so she gave all her performances from behind a curtain. Somebody asked Buddha about that. He explained that many lives before she was that laborer who had cursed the stupa but later offered a golden bell to it. She had tried to square the bad karma from cursing the stupa by offering that bell to it, but karma doesn’t work that way. Instead she received the karma of having a beautiful voice that everybody wanted to hear and such a terrible appearance so that nobody wanted to look at her. This story tells you how accumulation of merit works and why it is necessary. The next verse continues by stating that we have not been generous in the past and didn’t share our resources with the poor and needy.

VERSE 38 I have not granted fearlessness to the frightened And I have not given happiness to the weak.

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Gelek Rimpoche All I have given rise to is The agonies in the mother’s womb, and to suffering. I have not given fearlessness to those who are being tortured by their fear. People suffer so much from fear. We hear that somebody we vaguely know has cancer. We go, ‘Oh poor thing.’ When we hear that a particular person is very afraid of something we go, ‘Ha, that’s crazy to be so scared.’’ At least with cancer we know how it kills people, but we can’t see how fear torments them.

The three types of generosity. Buddha taught three kinds of generosity. One is the generosity of giving materials. Then there is the generosity of giving Dharma to those who don’t know the causes of happiness, and thirdly, the generosity of granting protection or fearlessness to those who are frightened. These three are equally important, yet we mainly ignore the last two. Dharma teachings are considered to be something holy that we have nothing to do with. We do however have great opportunities to help the frightened. People don’t usually express their fears, but each and every one of has many fears in their deep mind. We don’t want to talk about them and put some protective shield over them. From the other side, we also don’t want to listen to other people’s agonies all the time. If you have to listen to that for the whole day it is not easy. I know that for a fact, but you have to listen. Here we have the opportunity. Just look to your right and to your left and see what you can do. That is equally important as giving Dharma teachings and as giving material resources. To do these things helps you with working on your spiritual path. These things bring your qualities about. We often think to do something spiritual means to sit down and shut the door and not let anyone come near us. Buddha never said that, not in this and not in any other book. It is just our West- ern idea of spirituality. Outwardly we are nice to everybody, but in our mind we think, ‘What a stupid person.’ That is not

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Dharma. That is not spiritual. The person who is honestly working with the weak, the poor, the downtrodden, the suffering people, they are the great ones. Those who protect other’s lives are great.

A little story: a guy in Tibet goes to a teacher and asks him if he can learn Tibetan from him. The teacher says, ‘You have to repeat what I say. That’s how you learn. First you say A.’ The guy repeats, ‘First you say A.’ The teacher says, ‘Don’t say all that. Just say A.’ The guy repeats, ‘Don’t say all that. Just say A.’ Finally, the teacher says, ‘For God’s sake, just say A!’ The guy again repeats, ‘For God’s sake, just say A!’

VERSE 39 Both now and in previous lives Such deprivation has arisen Because of my lack of aspiring for the Dharma. Who would ever reject this aspiring for the Dharma? When you don’t have a good aspiration, nothing will work. When people have no interest in what they are doing but are forced into it, they won’t give it their full attention. It could be that they are just working for the money or under the control of a dictatorship, but under those circumstances it doesn’t work very well. On the other hand if you have a personal interest in your work, the result will be different. Here Shantide- va says that whether your spiritual work will be effective or not depends on the personal interest of the individual. Where there is a lack of aspiration the result of the spiritual practice won’t be that good. This verse says that in this and in previous lives I lacked a strong interest in virtuous activities for building up my merit. Because of this I have had all kinds of difficulties: I have been deprived of positive things in life. Why do we have so many difficulties in life today? We suffer from illnesses. Things don’t turn out the way we want

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Gelek Rimpoche them to. Of course, if we don’t know how to plan, that is another problem that has nothing to do with our lack of aspiration, and also, if you don’t know how to execute he plan if you have one, it is not a lack of good karma. However, if you do everything correctly and still it all goes wrong, that is the situation Shantideva is talking about; that comes through a lack of positive aspiration, not only from this life but even from previous lives. The deeds from our previous life make a difference to what happens in this life. If you are not convinced about reincarnation it is difficult to get that picture, but if you are convinced it is not so difficult to see that what is happening to us today is dependent on what we did in our previous lives.

Shifting gears. Now the question is: Can’t we change that? Yes, you can, but it means shifting from Plan A to Plan B. It is not a smooth transition, but we can make that transition. If you make changes today, don’t expect that you will see a difference in the next days or weeks or months. It takes time for things to get into gear. The gears have to be completely shifted. Look at this example: It is very difficult to switch to different software on your computer. It takes a long time to get familiar to new software. It also depends on how stubborn the operators are, but in any case it takes a tremendous amount of time and energy. Here we are talking about karmic processes that have been running over lifetimes. It is obvious that these changes should take some time, but that does not mean you cannot change it. By changing you can definitely ensure that things will run smoothly in future. That is for sure. That future could mean after a couple of years, or decades or after a couple of lives. That is not certain. If you realize that your current difficulties are coming from a lack of aspiration, who in their right mind would give up or reject trying to develop such an aspiration for Dharma? I don’t know what kind of picture you get in your head if you hear the word Dharma. You may immediately connect that to Buddha and

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Buddhism, but in Tibetan the literal wording is chö, which in English it means corrective measure. There is a big difference between Dharma and dogma. A number of people may get completely confused thinking that they are the same. They may think it is just a philosophical doctrine. You have to be clear about the difference, otherwise you are depriving yourself of a lot of the benefit of the Dhar- ma. It has nothing to do with dogma. Dharma is pure. It is truth. We say Nature empty, everything’s pure, naturally pure. That’s what I am. This is pure spirituality. When you make that into a dogma you will say that it has to be the Buddhist spiritual path. The word Dharma probably does not carry that implication. In the Tibetan language, when you use the word aspiration you only have to mention it, without saying where it fits. It is for the individual to figure out what it is. But in English you have to make everything very obvious, so the translator has to say, Aspiring for Dharma. I am always told by my editors to say everything very specifically. I can’t just say ‘orange,’ I have to say ‘orange, which is a mixture of yellow and red.’ In Tibetan it is good enough to say ‘orange.’ In Tibetan it is good enough to say ‘aspiring.’ You don’t even have to say ‘for Dharma’. In English you have to, but then you have to be careful how you read ‘Dharma’. In this case it is not necessarily Buddhadharma. Then again, in the context of this text, the Bodhisattvacharyavatara it could sometimes refer to Mahayana Dharma. This is always subject to debate and interpretation. Also, no matter how much you try to pin it down and identify, people will still interpret it differently. Look at all the legal documents. Everything is spelled out to the letter, as if you were talking to an idiot, and even then disputes arise and the different parties take the documents to the Supreme Court and fight and try to get things changed. This also shows you why mind is more important than matter, by the way. So the lack of things working out the way I want comes from a lack of aspiration in the past, my lack of aspiration for

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Gelek Rimpoche purity. If I don’t produce the karma for things to be that way, how could they materialize? There is no basis.

Without the root cause, the conditions won’t work. Now you can plan, work and push for it, in other words, provide the right conditions, but there is no force. No matter how many circumstances you try to arrange now, nothing can materialize, because there is nothing to work with. If there is something, even if it is small, then the conditions you provide can make it perfect and wonderful, but there has to be something there in the first place. Otherwise it is just like a beautiful antique cup, worth thousands of dollars. If it is empty, you can only look at it. You don’t get to drink from it, because there is nothing to drink in the first place. In this example, don’t think about the value of the cup itself. The point is that no matter how valuable the cup is, you need to drink and if there is nothing to drink it is useless even to have the most expensive cup in the world. So, if you don’t have the root cause, all the conditions you may provide are wasted. Shantideva says that because of that, who in their right mind would reject the power of the aspiration for goodness and purity or for dharma in the sense of pure spirituality? There is another reason why we shouldn’t just think of Buddhadharma in this context. Does a pure person necessarily have to be Buddhist? Are only Buddhist going to be enlightened and everybody else is going to hell? That is not right. So we shouldn’t use Dharma here in a dogmatic sense but in the sense of the real Dharma. So, who in their right mind would reject the pure and right way, except George Bush? The problem with him is that he is becoming a non-virtuous friend for Tony Blair who will probably lose his job as prime minister because of the Iraq war. A few years ago it would have been unimaginable. He won two elections in a row in a landslide. That has never happened in British history for a century. Now he has to go on every talk show, trying to get his popularity back, but people are all shouting at him. When he wants to talk about a regime

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE change in Iraq, people in the audience suggest there should be a regime change in Westminster instead. This should be an example to us how non-virtuous friends can negatively affect your spiritual practice. Where does the negative friend come from? From the lack of aspiration. When you go wrong in principle, when you make the wrong choice about peace and war, when you move away from the fundamental points, then things start to go wrong. This Iraq thing could drag everybody in and there could be terrible consequences or else it could drag on for a long time and will have some results the administration is happy with and that look good in print. It is like in Afghanistan. If you really look you will see how much people are suffering there now today. The shopkeeper from California who has been made president of Afghanistan has to come to the White House and say, ‘Don’t forget me.’ He is not even controlling the city of Kabul. There are so many warlords there and the Americans and the Pakistanis, plus the Taliban and Al Qaeda are still there too. He doesn’t have any power. That is the true state of Afghanistan today. But all you see printed in newspapers is the story of a girl who has been able to take off her burka and can study in the university and even become a minister. That gives people the chance to say that all women in Afghanistan are free. Anyone in their right mind should not throw away the aspiration for peace, for purity, for well-being, for liberation of the people. If you are losing that aspiration you are not a right minded person. Again, what is right-minded could be something different for different people. What is right for one person may not be right for another person. What is right for Jacques Chirac might not be right for George Bush.

VERSE 40 The Mighty One himself has said That aspiration is the root of every facet of virtue; Its root is constant acquaintance33 With the ripening-effects (of actions).

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Gelek Rimpoche Positive aspiration is the root or foundation of every virtuous action. One sutra says, All phenomena grow from conditions. The root of the conditions is the aspiration itself. The fulfilment of one’s wishes works out in accordance to how one prays. All positive action and good karma depends on the positive aspiration, on mö pa. In other words faith, but the intelligent faith of conviction. It is said that faith is like a mother who gives birth and nurtures the children. Without faith, no positive things ever grow, because if the seed has been burnt how can you expect crops to grow? The root of all is aspiration for that which is positive. Remember the tremendous difference between intelligent faith and blind faith. We don’t need blind faith. We are not fools. We have beautiful minds, well trained, educated. People often don’t value their education because we are in a developed country where everybody is educated. If you go to areas where the level of education is very low you can’t help notic- ing what a difference that can make for the individual. Educa- tion makes your mind very alert so that you can think, make judgments, and calculate. If you don’t want to utilize that and behave just like an uneducated, illiterate person, that doesn’t make much sense.

Remembering karmic principles. Good aspiration itself is rooted in understanding karma, the ripening effects of actions. This may sound like doctrine, but actually it is true. Karma really makes a hell of a difference to all our lives: because of karma that we have got to do the right thing. Many people say that you have to act right because of compassion. That is also true, but even more so it is because of karma. Right actions will give you the right result and wrong actions will give you the wrong results. If you hurt somebody, you will also get hurt by somebody. It may not be that particular person. You may be more powerful than the person you have hurt, but somebody else will smash you later.

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That is karma. If you are good to somebody, somebody will be good to you, may or may not be the same person. That is karma. Positive actions bring positive results and negative actions bring negative results. This is commonly known. We often say, ‘Have a positive outlook on that and you will get a good result.’ The reason why positive thoughts give you positive results is the same that positive deeds give you positive fruits. Bad thoughts bring bad results. Thought processes are actions of the mind. Deeds are actions of the body or speech and sometimes even of mind itself. Without thoughts there won’t be any real actions or karma. A robot carries out actions without thoughts, just automatic action. If a robot does something good it won’t necessarily produce good results, because there is no being in there. There are all the conditions for karma, but no force, no karma. Whatever a robot does it neither positive nor negative. It is just action. However, for whoever programmed the robot it will become either positive or negative. Karma will work on that person, not on that piece of machinery. It is like hitting somebody with your hand. It is not your hand that is responsible, but you, the person. To summarize: because of our lack of positive aspiration in the past, unpleasant things are happening to us now. If you are intelligent, don’t give up your positive aspiration, the root of all your spiritual development. The Mighty One, Buddha, has stated that. What happens is the truth of cause and result. That is the reason why aspiration works.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Student: Can you change karma that you have produced in the past? And what happens to your positive thinking when the suffering in the world doesn’t seem to get better no matter how many positive thoughts you try to think? Your negative thoughts then come back and take over.

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Gelek Rimpoche Rimpoche: Karma is not permanent. It is changeable, but it is not easy to change, like a mechanical system. You have to change everything, but it is changeable. Also, it is not necessarily true that all the karma we produce now will only take effect in the next life. Karmas from our previous lives are active, but if a karma is super strong it will supersede all the previous karmas. Karma has a lot of priority categories, ones with priority, ones with overriding priority, and even immediately ripening. It all depends on how strong the karma is. The ones with the highest priority will supersede every other karma you have. You can also inactivate karma through purification. By purifying you change it, you cancel it. I have taught about that on various occasions. Sometimes it is true that negativity is like a bulldozer and seems to just run over you and you are helpless. But sometimes there is sunshine, too. You find opportunities to do positive things. Negative forces can be very powerful and you have no chance to feel good or do anything for a while. You have to see that there are a number of mental, physical and emotional aspects involved. Sometimes the mind and the emotions will influence the state of our body. Sometimes the physical body influences what happens with our mind and emotions. Western medication can be quite useful for the physical body. As for the mind and the emotions, you have to take care of them yourself. All kinds of methods are available, the most important of those being analytical meditation. Concentrated meditation can only give you a little bit of peace and harmony for a while. Deeply analyzing makes the real difference. Find out why things are the way they are, how they can be changed. Gradu- ally, you will find a way to handle it. It is never the end of the world. Sunshine is also real. Take whatever help you can get, but with care. If you don’t put any limits you can get into trouble. Student: In some cases, instead of aspiration you could have also used inspiration.

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Rimpoche: I had to use the word because that was in the Eng- lish translation. I have to comment on what is there. Student: Where does aspiration come from, from karma? Rimpoche: I should have said it differently: I should have said that the reason why aspiration works is because of karma. You can’t really say that aspiration comes from karma. How does that work with karma? Positive aspirations bring positive actions, which bring positive results. Negative actions bring negative results. You develop aspiration for positive action when you think about that a lot. Student: Is there a way to take a sick person’s sufferings away from our side? Rimpoche: There is the practice of tong len, Giving and Taking. But when you meditate on those lines, does it really work that way? Student: I thought it is more of letting the person know that you are with them. Rimpoche: When you really learn it well, the tong len actually works, but when you don’t know very well, just wishing that the person you are meditating for is being healed or whatever, doesn’t work. At the beginning level, it is a wonderful aspiration. What works better? Do something positive, some good deed and dedicate that for the person. Pray to somebody who can make a difference or ask a person who can make a difference to pray. That will make a hell of a difference. To let the person know you care is also helpful. At the end of the day, though, no matter how much help you get, and no matter how many people are standing around your sickbed, trying to hold you back, when it is your time you will go like a hair being pulled out of the butter. Only the hair will go, the butter will stay. When a person dies you can stay with them and let them know that you are there, but after some time they are gone and you can’t follow. The journey to the next life is quite far. You can only accompany them in the beginning of that process.

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Gelek Rimpoche Some days ago at the New York airport I was in a very long line of people waiting to go through the security check before their flight. In one case, three people were leaving and another 12 people had come along to see them off. They accompanied them, standing together in the line, but when they reached the security check, only those three went through and left, the others stayed behind and walked back. It is the same with dying. You can only accompany a dying person up to the security check, not beyond. The dying person has to go through the narrow door way of the security alone. The journey is long. They have to pass the security, walk through the airport to their gate and finally get on the plane. The journey is that long. Student: Did I hear you say that the positive aspiration becomes intelligent faith? Rimpoche: In Tibetan two terms are used: mö pa and de pa (dad pa). That is aspiration and faith. Aspiration and faith are two different things. Both come from dun pa, willingness or desire to do good. Faith has three divisions. One is the admiration for something and the wish to follow that. The next is that you really want to develop that. It becomes a desire. From the practical point of view that is a stronger faith. The next is trust or conviction. That means intelligent trust. You have your reasons to trust. It has proved itself right to you. That is the intelligent faith. It is a bit of semantics here. All three are part of faith.34 In Tibetan, there are different words for each of these. The translators then have a hard time to find which is which in English. Then, instead of covering all three kinds of faith, they designate aspiration to cover only one kind of faith.

Verse 41 (Physical) pain, mental unhappiness, All the various kinds of fear, As well as separation from what is desired All arise from an unwholesome way of life.

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The Tibetan talks about suffering and that refers to physical suffering, then comes mental pain, mental unhappiness. As the verse says, there are two ways of experiencing suffering, physical and mental. Physical suffering itself is experienced through the mind. Mind then is divided into two categories. One is the mental awareness of physical sensations, like touch sound, sight and so on. The body receives sensations, but it is not the body that experiences them, but rather the physical aspects of the mind, the sense consciousnesses that have a kind of mental pervasiveness throughout our body. In normal language we can say that our circulation is not that good and that’s why we can’t experience any feelings in our toes. In that case, no sense consciousness is present in our toes. In Tibetan we call that either lu she or wang she35. The first means physical or body consciousness, and the second includes also the other sense consciousnesses, eye-consciousness, and so on. Body consciousness is the pervasiveness of the mind throughout the body. When we lose that in a particular part of the body, we say that our circulation is not good. The diabetics get that a lot in their fingers and toes and so on. The sense consciousness is not able to reach these body parts. If a sense consciousness works, the mind will acknowledge what is happening and will feel either joy or pain. When the mind cannot acknowledge that, it is not functioning. Mind in that sentence is not the mind that we almost identify with the person. When we talk about our mind, generally we think it is located somewhere in the middle of our brain or perhaps at the center of our heart. The level of mind I’m talking about here is different. If there is no sense consciousness present in a particular part of the body, this body part will be just like rock. When a person has died the body will not experience any sensations at all because there is no more mind in there and that’s why we can cremate the body. We commonly talk about the relationship between our body and mind, but actually mind pervades every part of our body as long as we are alive. Otherwise we would have no ex-

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Gelek Rimpoche perience in the body or in part of the body where the consciousness was disconnected. Tibetan Buddhism divides the mind into 52 different seg- ments or mental factors.36Each aspect of mind has its own little function. Body sense awareness is on duty throughout your body. For now, let’s just worry about two aspects: the physical aspect of the mind that pervades the body and the mental part. The physical aspect acknowledges and experiences physical painful and joyful sensations. The mental part of the mind experiences things like sadness and happiness. This is what the first line of this verse is talking about Actually, the physically pervasive part of our mind does not reach into our hair and fingernails and toenails. You can cut them and not experience any pain, but when you shave your hair you touch the skin and that is what you can feel. That is the boundary of the physical pervasiveness of the mind.

All the various kinds of fear. Shantideva also talks about mental unhappiness. We have a lot of worries, doubts and all the various kinds of fear. Things either don’t go the way we want them to or shape up in a way that we don’t want. In the West it is not that common, but in the East the greatest fear of spiritual practitioners is about what is going to happen in the future life. In the West, we worry more about what is going to happen tomorrow. At most we wonder whether we are going to be left unknown or what is going to happen at the end of our life. We worry about whether we are going to be able to pay our bills, about problems in our relationships and so on. We do not worry about our future life. We easily reject the position of the church that is telling us we can go to hell after this life. However, simply rejecting it does not really change the situation. Many New Age followers do reject the existence of anything bad. They just pretend it is not there. True, that suits the mentality of a lot of people. We don’t like to be threatened by the church and by the priests, but we cannot regard any suggestion of hellish experiences as simply ridiculous.

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One time I had to substitute for Sogyal Rimpoche in one of his workshops. After the workshop one lady came up to me and said, ‘I used to be a happy person and did not want to think about bad things like death. Then I read Sogyal Rim- poche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and my peace of mind has been totally destroyed.’ What could I say? I just said that I was sorry. A lot of people try to simply reject the possibility that anything bad could ever happen and just want to do what they like to do, but the reality is that just pretending it is not there does not change anything. We cannot go so far as to say that there are no hell realms. They do exist. We already see a lot of hellish situations in the human realm itself. We are going to see it again in Iraq once the war starts. The bombs that are falling do not kill people instantly. A lot of people are going to be burned and fried alive by the fires that the bombs cause. That is hell. This war is not like playing an electronic game. We were very well entertained by the last Gulf War. On television, we were shown briefings by the Pentagon and the White House and from the battlefields. All you can see on television are some computers simulations that show a bullet en- tering through a window, causing a little bit of smoke and fire, but we are not stupid. We are educated and all know what is happening there in reality, big fires and big explosions. When you see the smoke clouds on television, where do they come from? How could there be smoke without fire? These fires burn human beings inside buildings. The dust we can see on television comes from falling buildings that crush human beings underneath. The reason for all that is the attempt to try to get Saddam Hussein, but that is not so easy. We haven’t got Osama bin Laden yet, and how long did it take to catch Noriega in Pan- ama City under the administration of George Bush Sr.? Bombing cities is hell on earth. Modern weapons are very strange. When you fire them, you don't see the destruction they are causing directly. In the old times people were fighting

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Gelek Rimpoche one-on-one with knives and swords, but you can only kill a few people that way. Then came guns and you could kill people from a little distance away. Now we have bombs. They can be fired from 300 miles away and kill a lot of people all at once. This really is hell, and we all have to be afraid of that. Right now the United States is very strong and powerful. It is still one of the best countries, even now, not because of what we are doing today, but because of what our forefathers set in place earlier. Individual rights, liberty, democracy, these are great achievements for people. They are declining now and it almost looks as if the French have to teach us what they are. When the Chinese president recently met the president of the United States he put his arm around Bush’s shoulder and said to him, ‘You have a lot to learn in your life, young man. Don't advocate a unilateral pull-out of the Kyoto protocol.’ This was a Communist leader talking to the president of the United States, can you imagine? That was a diplomatic disaster. Now we have the fear of seeing hell on earth.

Separation from what is desired. Further, Shantideva says that we will have to experience separation from what is desired. We will not be able to keep our nearest and dearest with us, nor our wealth. Our life is so strange. Whatever we wish for will probably not materialize and whatever we don’t want will materialize. Luckily, situations mainly change gradually, otherwise it would be terrifying. Imagine two lovers. when they first get together, they don’t want to be separated for even a single minute. If they are forced to separate, it is very painful. If all of a sudden you found them fighting, separating and going into different directions, it would be a shock. It is a little better if the process is gradual. Then they can say that they love each other but for some reason they could not get along in the long run. It is also a little easier to lose a loved one when they are sick for a long time and then finally die. It is much harder to take if they die suddenly.

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In the end, however, it remains true that each every happiness will end in sadness. All companionship will end in separation. All popular and high positions will end in low positions. We have a nice way of talking about that. We talk about former presidents, retired presidents, and so on. The truth is, they are no longer president. It went up and then it went down. Anything that we consider great in this life will end with sorrow, sadness, suffering and pain. That is called samsaric joy. Anything that we enjoy will end with sadness. Even with sex, if you have too much it is not good any more, but becomes painful. All these are samsaric joys. Where do all these come from? The last sentence of this verse tells us: All arise from an unwholesome way of life. They are the results of non-virtuous actions. It is as simple as that. Non-virtuous actions bring all these consequences. When they materialize it is not easy, not for individuals, not for society as a whole or for the whole country.

VERSE 42 (However) by committing wholesome actions, Which are (motivated by aspiration) in the mind, Wherever I go I shall be presented with Tokens of the fruit of that merit. Just as the non-virtues bring suffering results, in the opposite direction virtuous actions and thoughts will bring us positive results. Virtuous or wholesome actions that are very carefully planned, acted out and dedicated are most powerful. Last night I gave a talk called Mind over Matter. It is always good to do positive things, but you get better results if you them properly, well planned. If you just happen to be somewhere and do something right it is one thing, but it is even better if you, for example, plan to save a life and then do it. It is different from just accidentally being there and the result is different. This verse talks about well-thought out and moti-

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Gelek Rimpoche vated action, also an action that you prayed for. Praying can open up opportunities to do these virtuous things. Such virtuous or wholesome actions bring you luck, fortune or good karma and the result of that is always beautiful, wonderful, helpful and joyful. It brings you happiness, physically and mentally, not the usual physical discomforts and pains and mental agonies we face. These are the results of positive, virtuous actions, the fruit of that merit. How can you improve your life? It is very simple. You can improve yourself by doing the right thing. We have all heard that a million times coming from every tradition: Judeo- Christian, Hindu-Buddhist, East or West. Forget about religious traditions, even for straightforward good human behavior this is recommended in every decent society, so we know about it, but somehow we haven’t been able to link it together in our minds. Then, when we get the same reminders from religious traditions, we may dismiss it as religious bullshit. Sometimes we choose to think, ‘That is a very conservative viewpoint.’ With one excuse or another we manage to avoid having to do the right thing. It is not a question of conservative or liberal views, or of religious or secular backgrounds. It is our very human nature. We can learn to do better. The most probable reason why we are not acting on our knowledge is that we are too skeptical. It is excellent to be cautious, but to be overly skeptical becomes a disadvantage. Everything seems suspicious and doubtful and your wavering will never end. You need to get the balance right, otherwise you may die before you get anything done. You will just be critical of everything and before that is re- solved you are dead and have wasted your life. On the other hand, if you are not critical at all and just buy whatever people tell you, you can get into trouble. Americans fall for such things easily. If they see something printed they believe it, because it was written in a book. Actually, anybody can print anything for a few dollars. You can work out the layout on your computer and then give it to a printer and it

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE will look just like a book. It is easy to do nowadays. It is not necessarily the case that something is true, just because you have seen it printed nicely somewhere. People often ask me strange questions and when I ask, ‘Where did you get that from?’ They say, ‘From a book. I don’t know the title any more but it was for sale in the Jewel Heart Store.’ The reasoning seems to be that if it was sold in our store it must be correct, but I cannot be responsible for every item that is sold in the store. Who knows what books are in the store? A store is a store and mainly sell books that they think people will like to buy. It is a different story with the transcripts from my teachings, but even then there might be a misprint or misquote or a mistake by the transcriber or editor. Returning to the main point, verse 41 talked about how generating negative karma brings suffering and here verse 42 shows how it is the same process on the positive side.

Making our actions more powerful. A well-planned action has stronger results. We know that even in everyday life. If someone carries out a well-planned killing we call that ‘premeditat- ed murder’. That is different and more negative than a killing by accident. The same logic applies for positive actions. Well planned and motivated actions differ from accidental actions. Therefore we emphasize motivation so much. First thing in the morning, when you wake up, try to generate a good motivation for everything you are going to do that day. Let your day be influenced by love and compassion, not only towards others but also for yourself. With this, you set the tone for all the activities of the day. Then, even if you don’t particularly plan for something but you end up doing it, it will be a perfectly virtuous action.

The fly on the cow dung. We also should not ignore even a seemingly insignificant, tiny little virtue. It is still fantastic. During the Buddha’s life time there was a king called Nalenu. He wanted to become a monk and be Buddha’s disciple.

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Gelek Rimpoche Many of Buddha’s senior disciples refused to ordain him, even though he was a king. They couldn’t find even a trace of karmic virtue on which they could base the ordination. They said, ‘Whatever good virtues you have, are tied up with being a king. They are all being used up and nothing is left.’ Finally, the king went to Buddha himself who said that it was possible for him to become a monk. The king was surprised and asked him how it was possible when all the Arhat disciples said it wasn’t. Buddha replied that as a Buddha he could see far more clearly than the Arhats. He saw that some million life times ago this king had been a fly that landed on a piece of cow dung that drifted on a stream of rain water around a stupa. In this way the piece of cow dung circumambulated the stupa once accidentally and took the fly with it. Buddha said, ‘Therefore, even some tiny, little accidental virtue can turn to be extremely useful, so don’t ignore it.’

VERSE 43 Yet by committing negative (actions), Although I may wish for happiness, Wherever I go I shall be completely overcome By weapons of pain (caused) by my wrongful life. Although we may try to have a good motivation and good thoughts, somehow it did not turn out to be as we wished. In fact we have been creating negative actions, while hoping that we will get good results, wishing for happiness. We think, ‘I am not really an evil person and I am not doing anything wrong, so I should get good results.’ A lot of people think that. They think, ‘I have not anything really bad, and if I have done something wrong, I had my reasons. I am not evil, so I can hope for good results.’ No one wants to accept that bad, negative and wrongful things exist. Ram Dass even asked me once, ‘You talk about bad things happening. What do you mean by that?’ I said, ‘For example your stroke was a bad thing.’ He said, ‘That was the

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE blessing of my guru. It is not really bad.’ With these view- points people may think there is nothing bad, but it is not true. People go through a lot of difficulties and bad times. It may turn into something positive along the way, but what they experience is bad. That is reality. Thinking that something bad exists doesn’t make more bad things happen. On the other hand, thinking that nothing bad exists is not going to prevent suffering from arising at all. In my opinion, in this country, some churches went too far by saying, ‘You have done bad things and you are going to go to hell for that. God is going to punish you.’ Because of such extreme statements a lot of people now go to the other extreme of denying that there is anything bad. But when you pretend bad does not exist you are ignoring what is going on right in front of you, what is happening in your own life. Honestly, what is happening in Iraq right now is really bad. It was unnecessary and could have been avoided completely. People experience a lot of difficulties, financially, physically, emotionally. Each of those is heavy enough to drag the individual down completely. You can’t just pretend it is not happening. Shantideva here says that joy and misery, good and bad, simply follow the rules of cause and effect. We create causes and the results are what we experience. The experiences don’t come out of just wishing for something or thinking about it.

Just thinking positive is not enough. People say, ‘Feel positive about everything and it will become positive. If you feel negative about things they will turn out to be negative.’ To a certain extent that is true. If you feel positive, you more easily connect with positive things and vice versa. If you think negative, that drags you down into negativity even further. You can become a sorrowful person, like sour grapes. Making things worse than what they are already doesn’t do us any good. When you are more positive about things there is more hope of connecting with positivity. On the other hands, just thinking positive alone does not make things positive.

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Gelek Rimpoche How is it possible to connect to positivity? It is only possible because we have some positive karma we can connect to. There is no human being who has completely exhausted all their positive karma. That can never be. No matter how difficult the situation we may be in, we still have plenty of good karma, but are unable to connect to this good karma. The negative karma has taken over too much. We have provided the terms and conditions for the negative karma to materialize and function. Somehow, when you look from the purely material point of view, by looking at the melodrama of our life we may think that we have made particular mistakes that got us into certain troubles. That’s how it looks and to a certain extent it is true, but why do we make the mistake and assume that this is exactly how it happens? No one plans to make a mistake knowing that it is a mistake. Somehow the negative karma con- nects. We may be wishing and presuming that we are doing the best thing possible but it can turn out bad. The negative karma can overtake us. The same thing happens with good karma in the opposite direction. The positive karma can also take effect for us if we provide the correct atmosphere and conditions because it is dependent arising. Emptiness, karma and all these things come together. Things are empty because they dependently arise. Karma functions because the conditions are right. These aspects all work together. That is why sometimes something good can happen, even while many bad things are taking place. This war may end, and not so many people have to die, although a lot are already dead. How can a change from bad to good happen? Not just by wishing. After all, we always wish well. Nobody wishes ill on anybody, apart from a few mean, bad people. In case you think there is no such thing as a bad person, someone who wishes others ill is a bad person. Still, in general we all wish for good things to happen, but that does not make them materialize. It is karma that makes things happen. It is cause and effect.

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We have zillions of karmas, good and bad, no shortage of any kind of karma. Right now bad karma may be taking over, but at some point conditions come up that create a change and then good karma can take over. There can be joy and happiness. By creating negative actions, the person who is their creator may well like to experience joy and happiness, but wherever they go they can only expect negative results. The karma follows you like the body odor follows the body or like the shadow follows your body.37 Perhaps you can get rid of body odor, but you can’t get rid of your shadow. Wherever you go, whatever you do, the results of negative actions will give you negative results. This will manifest as personal difficulties, not necessarily as the problems the whole country is going through. Then you think, ‘I am so unfortunate, it is so dark, so low, so far down.’ That may be true, but don’t forget that besides that we are still lucky to have this wonderful life which is capable of changing anything you want changed, temporarily or even forever. It is in our hands. Sometimes you can cheer yourself up by remembering what kind of wonderful life you have. Often we may say, ‘I am lucky to be still alive,’ but that is not said through really appreciating our life for what it is. You have to be mindful that this life is capable of doing anything you want to. You can communicate and translate your thoughts and plans into action. You can make a difference to yourself and to everybody once and for all. It only depends on how we handle it. That is the reality, even if you find yourself in the bottom of a pit. As long as you have this wonderful human life you have all these qualities. From the Buddhist point of view we all have the 10 endowments and 8 leisures. If you want to, you can draw on them, but even without focusing on those particular qualities, we know that as human beings we can think and plan and execute the plans, we can translate thoughts into action. You may feel as if you are in the bottom of a pit but you are not really at a dead end. You know it and I know it.

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Gelek Rimpoche When we lose our life, yes, then we have lost the qualities that go with it. You are at the end of the rope, but until then it is changeable. Any minute it can change. It follows our karma, not the man-made mechanical system. The man-made mechanical system has faults and errors itself, advantages and disadvantages. A few months ago we had great financial difficulties in Jewel Heart. A simple little delay on my personal credit prompted the credit card company to worry that I may go bankrupt personally, because I am a guarantor for Jewel Heart. I was just late for a payment by a few days, but they immediately threatened to cancel my card and refused to reinstate me, even though I paid the bills. Then other credit card companies started calling. That is the man made system. One difficulty can lead to a lot of others. However, what is triggering these problems? The underlying karmic causes and consequences. If you can reverse them, the man made system will reflect that. It will go the other way round. The credit card companies will call and offer you extended credit! So there are two layers, a natural, karmic system and within that, the man-made mechanical system. When you can handle these two together homogeneously, without difficulties, then you are what is called a clever, efficient person. You have an easy life. It is very important to have both working together, hand in hand. If you lose one, the other becomes useless. It is like carrying bow and arrow. They only work together. One without the other is useless. There is no point in throwing around the bow or poking with the arrow. If you know how to handle both together you don’t get into trouble. On the other hand, if you don’t know how to do that, all your efforts will come to nothing. Some people work 20 hours a day all week long and make nothing, just pennies because they cannot access any karma to support it. That can happen to wealthy people too. Suddenly everything can fall into pieces. In the early 1980’s I used to know a family in Malaysia who were very well to do. They had 38 different stores. When things started to go bad for them, it

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE happened very quickly. Almost every month they lost another store. They even lost their own house and their cars were taken away. At the core they were very good people and worked hard and by now they have come up again. They are not as wealthy as they used to be, but they have a very reasonable life style. That is how it goes, both ways. You may feel you are at the lowest possible point in your life and nothing can possibly improve, but even then some positive karma can kick in. In other words, things are never hopeless, no matter how difficult it may seem. There is light at the end of the tunnel, because we always have some positive karma in waiting. On the other hand, if things are going well for you, don’t think it is going to be like that forever, there is the end to that tunnel too, and something else will happen, because there is negative karma waiting to kick in as well. You may wonder why some people who do very questionable things apparently have a wonderful life while you are trying to lead an honest life and yet can hardly make it. It seems that karma is not true, but you have to realize that what we are living off now is the consequences of karma we have created in our previous life. From that perspective, our life now, no matter how bad it may seem, is in fact very valuable. We can create positive karma now that will be available to us later. The earlier Tibetan teachers used to say, I thank my previous life’s activities for the wonderful human life I enjoy now. You present monk, don’t let me down in my future. Shantideva tells us in verses 42 and 43 that whatever we do is not wasted. We never lose the result. But often we think and act like this: I want to have happiness and then I go and create negative karma, thinking that this will bring me happiness. Guess what the result is going to be? You are going to go through suffering that will make you cry. Now what happens to our positive karma? That is what the next verse talks about.

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VERSE 44 As a result of virtue I shall dwell in the spacious, fragrant and cool heart of a lotus flower, My radiance will be nourished by the food of the Conqueror’s sweet speech, My glorious form will spring from a lotus unfolded by The Mighty One’s light, And as a Bodhisattva I shall abide in the presence of the Conquerors.38 As the consequence of virtuous, white karma, as a result of virtue, you will take a good rebirth. Our normal human rebirth is not that easy. Yes, when a baby is born, the parents are so happy and the baby looks so cute, but that little person has just been through a very difficult time. The living quarters of the last nine months have been less than spacious, over- crowded, like being crammed into a bottle. It didn’t smell so good, obviously, you know where the location is. You suffer uncomfortable heat, with hot and cold substances coming down on you. You get burned by red hot chilies, if that is what your mother eats. With a rebirth from really good karma you avoid living for nine months in that smelly, crowded place. Instead you will experience a pure, open, beautiful, spacious paradise. You don’t have to be born from a womb, but you just come out of a lotus flower. Your environment is wonderful, with pleasant fragranc- es and perfect temperatures. If it gets a little too hot, you will find a pleasant breeze is blowing in your direction. If you are a little too cold, a gentle heat wave will come over you. You will look beautiful and everywhere you touch anything you will experience joy. It is the essence of the beautiful lotus. That is the difference just of being born as a result of positive actions. The heart of the lotus, cool and fragrant and joyful, that is your home, an extraordinary womb. You will also not have the suffering of trying to squeeze and push your body out through that tiny, little narrow pas- sage. Instead the lotus you are born in will gently open up

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE with the light coming from the hearts of the Buddhas (unfolded by the Mighty One’s light) and will deliver your beautiful body. Your glorious form is not an ordinary body with all the defects and weaknesses our human bodies have. It is an extraordinary body with the special qualities of the 34 major marks and 80 minor signs. Your teacher, your master, your role model in that world will not be an ordinary father and mother, but Amitabha the Buddha of Infinite Light himself, accompanied by many holy, enlightened beings. You will be nurtured and helped by their presence, educated and brought up to develop the same qualities as the Buddha of Infinite Light. You become an actual child of the Buddhas and they take care of you. That is how your virtuous life will develop. Where does all that come from? Positive karma. You will soon reach to the first stage of the Bodhisattvas, called ‘So Happy’.39 Buddha himself said in the sutra of morality, Those who have created good fortune will be happy in this life and in future lives. Therefore that state is called ‘So Happy.’ You will see your good karma’s results flowing through one after another. You can look forward to a future where more and more great karmas will come up. You will only see good future events. That is why that state is called ‘So Happy.’ Remember that positive karma gives positive results. You have to maintain hope and positivity but, that alone is not capable of delivering the results. The real force within ourselves is the positive and negative karma we create. Hoping and feeling positive are just one of many conditions that can have an influence. Verse 44 gave us the positive results of virtue. The next verse gives the negative results of non-virtuous actions.

VERSE 45 However, as a result of non-virtue my skin 206

Gelek Rimpoche will be ripped off by the henchmen of Yama. In this feeble state, liquid copper melted by tremendous heat will be poured into my body. Pierced by flaming swords and daggers, my flesh will be cut into a hundred pieces, And I shall tumble upon the fiercely blazing iron ground. Non-virtuous actions are negative and bring negative consequences. Positive actions have positive consequences. It is very straightforward. If you do something good you get something good, and if you do something bad, you get something bad. We know that, but we just fail to get it. We still do bad things and hope for good results. This never works. The karma we create is definite. If we create positive karma, we will definitely have good results. Bad actions will definitely have negative consequences. This is not prophecy or fortune telling, but true fact. Buddha had that experience again and again himself and he is sharing that with us.

We are responsible for ourselves. I always tell you that we are responsible for ourselves. Each and every one of us makes the difference for ourselves. Nobody else can really do anything for us. Second and third persons can help or hurt us, but the total control is in our own hand. No one else can do anything much. The simple reason is karma. I can blame you or try to hurt you, but I cannot make you experience the consequences of any action if you haven’t performed it. Not even a Buddha can do that. It is completely ourselves alone who make a difference to us. These two verses giving the pictures of heaven and hell show us once again that there is good and bad. The description of hell reminds me of what people in Iraq are going through under the bombardment of the American troops. Be- lieve me, I am not supporting the actions of Saddam and his people. It is so unfortunate that this stupid guy is in charge of

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Iraq. If you want to support the people there you have to think twice, just because of this crazy guy. When we hear about the hell realms we may think that it is some place seven layers under the ground, but look at what is happening in Iraq. Thousands of bombs are raining down. If that happens to you, what else is that except hell? So we don’t even have to doubt where there is a hell or not. Then, some people experience similar things even in our own country. People get killed, they get burned in accidents, and the relatives of soldiers who are dying in Iraq, even though nothing is happening to them physically, are going through mental torture and anguish.

Experience in the hell realms. Since this verse goes into it, let me talk to you a little bit about the Tibetan idea of hell realms. Hell realm experiences are not the consequences of some little white lies, like the used car deal- er type of lies. Rebirth in hell comes from killing human beings, like mercenaries who kill others for money. Accidentally killing is also different from purposely doing so. In any case, powerful negativities lead to powerfully negative experiences like in hell realms. Ti- betans recognize two different types of hell, hot and cold. I always had to disagree with people who came from the Christian tradition and told me that they were happy to leave all that talk about hells behind. I had to tell them, ‘There is bad news here, too.’ When they die, such people are not received by da- kas and dakinis who come to pick them up on soft cushions, and carry them over the clouds accompanied by sweet music and so on. Instead, the messengers of Ya- ma come and drag those people upside down into the hot hells. So the henchmen of Yama come and take you. Your body is that of a young, sensitive child and they will rip the skin off your youthful body and then cut up your flesh, just like we cut up a steak, into a hundred pieces.

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Gelek Rimpoche Now, at least if the knives were sharp, it wouldn’t be so bad, but they are bad, dull knives and they have to cut many times, so it is even more painful. It is like with me. The doctors find it hard to take blood samples from me, because they cannot find the veins easily. They poke the needles in here and there, drag out a little bit of blood, stop and poke somewhere else and try again in a different place. That pain makes me think, ‘Can I imagine what happens if they actually start cutting up my body all together?’ But that is not all. The place where the torturing takes place is also not temperature-controlled. It is 400 degrees, a fiercely blazing iron ground. You also get no water to drink. In- stead they melt down copper and zinc and pour the molten metal into your mouth, which burns everything inside of you, not only the outside, and yet you don’t die. In that manner, there are eight hot hell realms and eight cold ones. In one after another the suffering increases tremendously. Just in the first one, the beings fight with weapons and kill each other a hundred times a day. After each killing, the beings are revived to do it all over again. The devils there don’t let you die. You rise again, pick up the weapons, fight and kill, a hundred times a day. That is lightest one. It gets worse and worse. We cannot claim that this is all not true. These are not made up stories to frighten people. Even if that were the case, just look around the world today. Hell is a reality. Baghdad today under the American bombardment is hell. The bombs and the resulting fires tear people to pieces and burn them. Fortunately, they die only once and don’t have to rise up again and go through it again. In the hells, the connection between body and mind is much stronger than in the human land. In the human experience, when you bleed, once the blood leaves your body you don’t feel it. The pervasiveness of the mind is cut off at that point, but in the hell realms it continues. When your body is cut the flesh and the blood fall down on the fiercely blazing iron ground, the burning sensations of any body part that was cut off are

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE felt by the individual. The pervasiveness of the consciousness throughout every part of the body is not simply disconnected when a body part is cut off. Buddha said in the Vinaya sutra, the sutra on morality, The consequences of non-virtues are that one gets burned in this life, and in future lives. One experiences the consequences on one’s physical and mental continuum itself. Taking karma seriously. Karma is very complex. For any other aspect of the Buddhist teachings and philosophies I can come up with logical reasons that are commonly acceptable, even to today’s scientists. After all, scientific evidence never contra- dicts logical proof. In all areas of Buddhism you can come up with convincing logic and evidence that meets scientific re- quirements. It can be shown and argued for, but karma is beyond our capacity to do this, beyond our comprehension. Mere belief is very hard for me to handle. I was brought up in a tradition where you question and debate everything and personally, I am a very critical person. For instance, it took me a very long time to be convinced that Osama bin Laden was really behind the terrorist attack on Sept 11, 2001. I couldn’t say it aloud, so I kept my doubts to myself. I didn’t dismiss it, but I had my doubts, until former President Clinton made an interesting statement when interviewed on Larry King. Poindexter was in New York, in Tribecca, when on Sept. 11 and called Clinton, who happened to be in Australia, to tell him what was happening. Clinton told him that he only knew two sources that were motivated and capable of doing this to the US: Iran and bin Laden. Clinton said that Iran would not do it, because they feared being bombarded, so it had to be bin Laden, since he had no country and could run and hide everywhere, from mountain to mountain. To me that was a strong reason. After that I was convinced. So I will not buy anything unless there is a convincing reason. I am happy to go along with what people say but I wouldn’t really buy it. I would be the last person to tell you to blindly believe anything, but when it comes to karma this is way beyond our capacity to reason and figure out. We can give examples like

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Gelek Rimpoche growing fruit trees. We get good seeds, good soil, we provide water and fertilizer, we make sure the temperature is okay and there are no bugs and then we definitely get nice, sweet fruit. You can even see the continuation from the fruit to the next fruit tree. If you plant the seeds of your apple that you have just eaten, you get another apple tree. You can see the evolu- tion of things take place. That is the easy part, but there are levels of karma that are unseen and we cannot catch them with our usual faculties. It goes beyond our capacity. In that case you have to rely on a person who has greater capacities and more awareness than we have. In the bin Laden situation, for me that authoritative person I could trust was Clinton. His explanation was logical and acceptable, plus Clin- ton had until recently been the President of the United States and thus had all the information. He put two and two together and figured it out for himself. He is an intelligent person. At the gross level of karma where you generally make statements like, ‘You do something good and you get a good result,’ that is fine, but it is the subtle and very subtle levels that we can’t trace or even reason about. Scientists today talk about quantum leaps, where things apparently disappear and pop up somewhere else, but I don’t know enough about that and about how much that has to do with karma, so my only alternative is to find a reliable person. I go back to the original source, Buddha. Even then, it is not just Buddha who said it. All other world spiritual traditions also emphasize causes and results. Buddha did not have a conference with Jesus or the Prophet. It is not like the three great auto makers, Ford, GM and Chrysler in the 70s who got together and decided to make cars that only last a few years. Unfortunately for them, they forgot to invite the Japanese! Although the founders of the great spiritual traditions never got together they all emphasize the same thing: if you do good, you will reap good results and if you do bad, you will reap bad results. It must be true. At least you have to give it the benefit of doubt. You definitely cannot say that it is not true.

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As Allen Ginsberg always said, ‘I am not convinced that there is reincarnation, but if it is true I don’t want to be deprived of the opportunity.’ He was also an intelligent guy. We have to take the same approach. I am not here to sell you hell. That is not my product: we don’t have it on the shelves of the Jewel Heart store! Furthermore, Buddha said, If you have a seed of a sweet fruit, as a result the fruit you get will be sweet. It cannot be sour or hot. If you grow hot jalapeno peppers and hope that you can a sugar-sweet fruit you are wrong. It will never happen. Like- wise, non-virtuous actions will give you negative consequences. Positive actions will give you sweet fruit. Buddha says that intelligent people will know that. Any pain, anything we dislike, light or heavy, all come from non-virtuous actions. Just like that, any good things, even a nice, little cool breeze in the middle of a 140 degree day in downtown New Delhi, are the result of virtuous karma that we have created. On that ground, Nagarjuna adds, Non-virtues give you all the sufferings, all lower rebirths included. From virtuous actions come all happiness, j oy and all beautiful lives. Again, this confirms that non-virtuous actions give you negative consequences, while good actions get you good results. You have to get that message: Karma is definite. Some people say, ‘I have done something terrible and I want to square it up, so let me do something good.’ That is probably not going to work that way, unless you do it very well. For something good you do, you will get a good result, and for the bad, you are going to get bad results. They are not going to mix. There is not sweet-sour chopsuey available. Fruit tree and jalapeno peppers each have their own fruit, but they don’t mix. The fruits will be sweet, the jalapeno peppers will be hot, unless you cook them together into a chopsuey.

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Gelek Rimpoche Buddha further says, Many people think that a small non-virtuous action won’t be a problem. Don’t do that. When you want to poison somebody, you only need a tiny amount to destroy a huge body. You are not going to eat a whole poison dinner. Just a little is enough to make you sick or kill you. Likewise, also a small good deed can give you great results. Sometimes if you make nice patterns or copyright something, somehow it flies and you are set for life. It can happen. Don’t think it is only small and it doesn’t matter. A tiny spark can cause a forest fire. Eve- ry year we hear about these devastating forest fires, caused by a spark, a discarded cigarette or by one stroke of lightning. Buddha continues, Even tiny virtuous actions are worthwhile. If you save drops into a bucket, before too long the bucket will be full. How practice can transform our minds. The Bodhisattvacharayavataram addresses all the emotional problems we can have. Any single verse can have a very strong message meant for you personally. It will tell you how to deal with your emotional problems. It is an interconnected complete teaching as a whole and at the same time each verse on its own can be used and will be very effective to the individual. The effect comes in three steps. First, when you hear the verse and its message, it provides you with wisdom in the form of knowledge or information. Your mind notices that and registers that it is there. Next, something happens. Let’s say you are desperate, but you have not quite fallen into depression. You will be looking for what to do. Suddenly your memory will click. You remember, ‘I heard a certain verse once in downtown Ann Arbor from this big, fat oriental guy.’ Then you think about it again and the message will affect you. The problem could be anger, obsession, or burning jealousy. We all have these emotional beasts in us. They could be asleep for a while, but we wake them up, and then we get a fright and feel threatened. At that point, the flash-back memory of having heard this message will come up and help

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE you, unless, of course you lost it. When the thief forgetfulness comes and takes it away from you, then it is gone. Otherwise it should help you. Especially, your mind that has recognized the message will begin to work. The wisdom of hearing and learning will be followed by the wisdom of thinking or analyzing. Your wisdom will be not only knowledge but also understanding. It is not just information. It is the real thing within you. Some people will leave it there, but you can go further. You can spend more time thinking about it. If you like the romantic word for it, it is meditation, but it is the same thing as analytical thinking. We are more inclined to participate in something if it is called meditation. We would like to sit down, beat a gong, burn some incense and do some chanting. In any case, with more thinking about it, your level of understanding will increase to becoming part of it. This is different from just hearing about it. We hear external sounds and see external objects, but when you understand something it is an internal process. The sense consciousnesses, like seeing and hearing and smell are different from the consciousness that processes knowledge and understanding. The mind itself does not have any color or shape and is not tangible. It does not see or hear anything. Knowing takes place in that the mind becomes like that. When the mind knows something it becomes like that. There is a big difference between knowing something through hearing or through actually having become that. Any spiritual practice you do, particularly meditating through the Vajrayana sadhanas, makes you become what you are meditating on. When you visualize yourself in a certain form and posture and your mind totally accepts that, you will become that. That is the real purpose behind doing the sadhanas. In other words, when you really know Buddha you have become a Buddha.

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Gelek Rimpoche We can’t describe Buddha in any other way except to say that he has an ushnisha, this extra lump on the head, plus extra long ears and that is all we can say. We have some information but we don’t really have the knowledge. You only get the full knowledge when you become that. People wonder what the essence of their practice is. Is it saying mantras, doing prostrations or doing purification? None of the above. The true practice is to get your mind to know and become that. That is also why the way professors and scientists know something and practitioners know something is different. If you spend time with the practice the impact will come and that is what I am looking for. Now let’s talk about bodhimind in that context. Knowing love and compassion means having love and compassion. Un- til we really know what that is we don’t become that, and if we don’t become that, it remains as something external to us. Our mind will remain like a monkey in the temple. If you let a monkey into the temple he will jump all over the altar, over all the statues, drink the offering water, knock down the flowers, incense and butter lamps and eat the fruit. Our practice should not be like that. We should become the practice. There should be no separation between practice and ourselves. Then it is really true practice. A lot of people come to meditation and to Buddhism because they are looking for alternatives. They spend years of their life to find the right thing to do, but often you can get into some little, limited practice that does not get you very far. Some teachers only tell you to observe everything that happens very mindfully. For example you hear the phone ringing. You are supposed to acknowledge that: ‘Oh there was a noise. That is the telephone. Okay, we will have to pick it up. Now I pick up the telephone. Zrrrrrr – oh, they’ve hung up!’ Other people go and worship, pray or sing. Yet others perform acts of generosity. But do they know what the purpose of all that is and what kind of effect they want to get? Quite honestly, most people don’t know. They just do it because they have seen others do it and it seems to be a good

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE thing to do. They lack understanding of how the mind works. You have to know how you can make a difference to yourself with all the various practices. If you can reach such an understanding you have come quite far.

My karma is my own creation. Verses 44 and 45 contain some important points about karma. Everybody talks about karma. We all have our own ideas about it. Many people say, ‘This is my karma, so I can do nothing.’ Also, when you work hard at something and you don’t get the desired results you may say, ‘Oh well, that is my karma.’ You have challenged a difficult situation. Now you cannot go on and you are beat up. You are saying that you can do nothing more and make karma responsible for it. This statement is partly right and partly wrong. Karma is my own creation. I create my own karma. Otherwise there is no reason why karma is given so much importance. I can make a difference. I am the person who created the program, therefore I can make design changes, if it doesn’t work the way I wanted. It is not a dead-end situation. At the same time it also a characteristic of karma that it is definite. The messengers of the hell realms can only appear because once a particular karma has begun to take effect it cannot be stopped. Plus any cause will eventually ripen into a cor- responding result as mentioned previously. That is what verse 45 is telling you. It talks about the burning iron ground and the fire that burns everything. On the other hand the fruits of positive actions will always be pleasant. That does not change. It is definite. Whether you are an ordinary person or an extraordinary person, you are subject to experience the positive and negative results of your previous actions. Positive actions will never give you a result of suffering and negative actions will never give you positive results. The only difficulty I have with New Age groups is that they reject the fact that bad things do happen to people. They will re-interpret everything as good. Looking at things that way may make us feel good for a while but that doesn’t

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Gelek Rimpoche change reality. The reason why the New Agers prefer to look at life that way is probably that the church in previous years went way too far in emphasizing the negative aspects. All you heard was ‘If you do this you will go to hell’. This only made people feel threatened and naturally there is a tendency to go to the other extreme and say, ‘There is no such thing as bad.’ There is good and there is bad. That is the reality. Not everything wrong you do condemns you to hell. But there is a hell and some people are experiencing it. Likewise some people experience heaven. Not everyone goes to heaven, otherwise the hells would be empty and vice versa. Both ideas are too extreme. We should be at the center. From the karmic perspective there are no accidents and there are no cases where you have just been lucky. Miracles do exist, but when you look from the karmic point of view they can be explained. Karma is not only definite but also fast growing. You can see that just by looking at our kids. It is surprising to see how fast they grow up. At the same time it shows us that we grow old. Internally, our karma grows too. Buddha says, Do not underestimate small negative actions. They can become big. Don’t think it cannot hurt you. A small spark can burn a whole forest. That is very true. Every year you can see on television how forest fires rage and wipe out hundreds and thousands of acres. Often they are caused by tiny little sparks, like a discarded cigarette. Sometimes a lightning strike can cause a forest fire. Likewise, a small instance of a negative action can turn out to be very harmful. Therefore, don’t ignore them, but purify. Likewise, don’t underestimate small positive actions, by saying, ‘Well, that little thing is not going to do any good for me.’ Think about it. A drop of water helps to fill up the bucket. For example you can make an offering out of every bit of food you eat. You don’t have to make a big show out of it,

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE just do it quietly. You can make a little tea offering or coffee offering every morning. Just filling up a cup of coffee as an offering does not seem to be anything great, especially if you end up drinking it yourself. But, doing it every day is like the drop that eventually fills the bucket. It is generosity. Altogeth- er these things can become huge. The most important thing is, no matter how small, whether positive or negative, we should never underestimate any of them. The consequences are huge. You cannot image how far it can reach. Buddha has said that any karma doubles every 24 hours, if you don’t stop it. Luckily you can take care of the negative, stop it and even destroy it. Nagarjuna says, For intelligent people, even heavy negative karma will become light. For unintelligent people, even light negative karma will become heavy. The example is a piece of iron. It can either be made into the form of a ball or in form of a flat sheet. Even a large, heavy flat sheet can be thrown into the water and it will float. But if you throw just a tiny iron ball into the water, it will sink immediately. Nagarjuna refers to those who know how to handle karma as intelligent ones. How do you handle negative karma? You purify it. Yes, karma is definite, but I am the one who has created my own karma and I should know how to handle it. It is my program, I am the programmer. I can change it, destroy it or develop it. I can make the difference to my own experience. You cannot make the difference to me that much. You can help me to make a difference or hurt me, but you cannot change my karma. You are not me. I am responsible for my deeds, you are responsible for yours. It is nice and smooth to pray for grace and for miracles, but we cannot blame the Almighty for our unfortunate incidents. He or she didn’t do anything. It is us who did it. Therefore, if I did something right, I have earned the result. I should be happy. If I did something wrong

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Gelek Rimpoche it is my own fault. I have to pay for it. This puts the responsibility squarely on my own shoulders.

Accepting responsibility and discipline. In the spiritual path the practitioner has to accept responsibility and discipline. That does not mean that you have to sit straight, look nice, and walk around with folded hands. You don’t have to acknowledge the way the phone rings every time. Rather discipline means accepting your responsibility. This discipline comes along with your freedom. It is your choice. Nobody else can tell you to do it. You have to know what happens and then you make the choice. It is not like some Zen tradition where somebody will come from behind and hit you on the back to remind you that you should be meditating; here it is your own freedom. It is you who can make a difference. You are responsible. You are educated. You know what you should do. If you don’t, it is too bad. Discipline is related to karma. You have to take care of it. It does not mean that you have to get up at 7 am every morning. As a kid, in Tibet, I had to get up early. My guide used to wake me up. If I didn’t get up, he would beat me on the knees, but that is not what I mean here. It is taking care of your responsibilities. Every citizen has their own responsibilities. Otherwise the law will catch you. If you work in an office you have responsibilities, and if you don’t fulfil them your boss will get you. The bosses too have responsibilities; otherwise the board will get them. The corporate world functions like that and likewise the spiritual world. Those who came before us went through with discipline. Those who didn’t are still around now. We are still here, striving for betterment. We are still refusing to accept responsibility. This is because we have done the same thing in our previous life. We are addicted to shirking responsibility. If we fail again this time, we won’t get another opportunity for centuries, maybe even eons, if we are unlucky. We have been circling

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE through different states of suffering for life after life. Karma means responsibility for your own life. There are no police to get you, no bill collector to call you up, no credit report done for you during the life, but at the time of death, the credit report will be forwarded to the Lord of Death and then we are in trouble. He will deny every credit we need to get reborn in a better life. Then it is too late. When your credit is bad and you want to buy a big house, you will be denied credit. Then you try for a smaller one and will be denied again. You try for an apartment and again you are denied. You can’t even buy a car. At the end you become homeless and helpless. If you are lucky you can piggyback on somebody else’s good credit. Perhaps, if you are lucky, at the time of death you will be able to piggyback on your guru’s credit, but most probably it won’t work. Every time your credit is denied you have no access to the good things. It is not that somebody in particular doesn’t want you to enjoy that, but your credit is not good enough, so end up in the worst conditions. You see that in our life right now. Therefore, take the responsibility now, before it is too late. Fix your credit. As long as you are in this life, it is not too late to do something. When this life is over, it is too late. That is where the line is drawn. Then there is another thing. Sometimes you are doing your best, but even then all kinds of difficulties come up. You wonder what has happened to your positive karma. However, Buddha tells us that our positive karma will never be wasted, even if a hundred eons go by without it coming to fruition. When the time is right, when all conditions have come together, the result will materialize. Until the time is right, no matter whatever you do, it will not materialize. That doesn’t mean, however, that the karma has disap- peared. It may not be there when we want it. But it is not gone. Actually, what is happening to us now is more or less our previous karma and what we are shaping right now is our future. If you accept karma, you have to accept it with its

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Gelek Rimpoche principles. You don’t have to buy it. That is your choice, but if you do, that is the way it works.

VERSE 46: SELF-CONFIDENCE Therefore I should aspire for virtue, And with great respect acquaint myself with it. Having undertaken the wholesome in the manner of Vajradhvaja, I should then proceed to acquaint myself with self confidence. Our karma is what makes all the difference whether our future is going to be good or bad. Because of that, we should spend more energy and time on building positive karma and not waste our time with other things: I should aspire for virtue. Especially we should not spend time building negative karma, because that will only create trouble. We should have strong faith and great respect in Buddha’s words that good deeds will bring good results and bad deeds will bring bad results. Buddha gives the reason, When the bird is flying in the air you can see its shadow following it on the ground. Likewise, the reflection of our karma is always will us. Our positive and negative karma will follow us, wherever we go, like our shadow follows us. We therefore have to be alert and aware. Buddha further says, I have taught karma in this way, although I can’t prove it to you materially. It is beyond the material. Therefore I say this: Sun, moon and all the stars may fall to the ground. The ground can become water and the ocean can become dry, but no Buddha will ever tell a lie. Buddha is compelled to make that statement, because karma is not something you can prove right here and now. It takes

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE time to work itself out. Sometimes it can take eons, sometimes life times, and occasionally just a few days. You can’t prove that you did this deed yesterday and that is why today you got sick. Sometimes karma may come around quickly, but mostly it doesn’t. This verse 46 mentions Vajradhvaja in Tibetan dorje gyel tsen40, referring to the 26th chapter of a particular sutra, the dedication chapter, where it says that the Bodhisattvas, if it is for the benefit of the people, will never give up.41 To us the situation may seem difficult, horrible, or even impossible. We would give up, burn out and get fed up. The job of the Bo- dhisattva, however, is not to give in to that, but go and get involved even more and have the self confidence that thinks it is do- able, not matter how horrible and impossible it may seem.

How to help others and ourselves at time of death. Many of you know Bodhisattva John passed away some days ago. I hope that everybody will pray for him, that he may have happiness, be free from suffering, may have the joy that has never known suffering. We should also dedicate our positive karma to him. We are his sangha and he is connected with us, so if we dedicate our virtues to him, it will make a difference. When you pass away, the best is if you can do everything that is needed by yourself. If that is not possible, the next best thing is to have someone connected with you do something on your behalf. That is also the reason why people offer money on behalf of someone who has died. If you do a dedication as a group, it is of course more powerful than if one person does it. So, when any one of us goes, the rest of us will do this for them. Today we are going to talk about spiritual development, about how to decrease our negative emotions and increase the positive ones. These are all spiritual activities. We would like to dedicate our past and present positive karma to him and to all others who have passed away so that it may purify their negativities, accumulate positive karma and very importantly, cause them to connect with their own positive karma.

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Gelek Rimpoche Every one of us has a tremendous storage of positive as well as negative karma. We may say, ‘I must have a lot of negative karma, and hardly any positive,’ but that is not true. We also have a lot of positive karma, otherwise we could not have become human beings. That itself is a clear indication. This body of ours is very expensive. How could we afford to buy it? What did we pay with? A credit card? Actually, karma sorts of works like a charge card or a debit card. We are trying to cash in the positive karma, ours and that of the spiritual masters, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Some- times we get access to it, but when you don’t pay, they cut you out straight away. In any case, we do have a great storage of positive as well as negative karma with us. That is where luck comes in. It is a matter of connecting to the right karma. It is not really luck in the sense of chance. Likewise, if things un- expectedly go wrong, that is also a matter of connecting with the wrong karma. One important point is that if you are very used to creating positive karma, it will automatically lead you to positive karma. You will connect more easily. It works the same way with the negative karma. When you are falling asleep, or when you faint, you will experience what your mind links up with. It will automatically, involuntarily link up with either good or bad things. Some people are very much used to saying migtsemas or Yamantaka mantras or OM MANI PADME HUM. When they fall asleep, sometimes they find that they are saying that mantra even in their sleep. That gives you an indication where your mind is leading you. Whatever you are used to, that is where the mind will tend to go. If you are used to doing positive things, your mind will like to go there. A student of mine in Holland who suffered from cancer for a long time once told me that she wasn’t very happy with her spiritual progress. At one point in her illness she had fainted and could have died. At that time she couldn’t think of anything else but taking refuge. She thought that was a bit pathetic, but actually it was wonderful that she automatically had refuge come to her mind, because she was used to thinking that way.

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This is the way it goes. This is how your consciousness transits to the future life. In the case of somebody else being in that transit phase between lives, the best we can do is dedicate our virtues. That adds up on their charge card. Having said that this doesn’t mean that you lose the virtue that you have dedicated. You don’t have to worry about finding the person you dedicated your merit to pay you back! It is still your karma. Even though you have given as credit to somebody else you don’t lose it. I get a lot of phone calls from people asking me to pray for someone who has died. I am sure you people are also bound to be hearing that. We may be trying to be an unat- tached bachelor, but there are always connections, friends, relatives. Suffering is everywhere. Everybody has too many problems. People are always dying. When people ask me what they can do, I always answer, ‘Do your usual practice. If that is not worth anything, then why are you doing it?’’People always look for something special to do, and some lamas like to give some special task to that person, like doing a lot of prostrations, or saying a lot of mantras or something. They do it because it is an opportunity for that lama to do something. Also the person doing all the mantras will be quite happy, because they have done something positive. It is great, but my point still is: what is wrong with offering your daily practice that you always do? If you like to do something special, sure you can do so many things. You can do pujas and you can get somebody to read the collected works of the Buddha along with the commentaries. You can give offerings to 10,000 monks and ask them to do prayers. But what about your daily practice? Every day we spend an hour on it. Some people spend hours. If that is not good enough, then what is? Many of you are doing the Six Session Yoga every day, and the Lama Chöpa, plus a number of sadhanas like Va- jrayogini, Heruka, Yamantaka, Guhyasamaja. All of those, if they are not useful in that case, then what are they good for?

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Gelek Rimpoche Your daily practice may not seem very special to you, because that is what you do every day. Our mind feels that way, but in reality, we are doing extraordinary, very important practices every day. We don’t recognize that and when there is an emergency situation, we think we have to do something extra. If you can do something extra on top of it, good, go ahead. But the everyday practice itself is actually perfect for it. If you are doing it for a third person, dedicate it. Dedication and motivation make a difference to how your actions work out.

Know what you are doing and why. I would like to talk to you more about mind and its relation to spiritual practice. Many people have a big problem figuring out what the spiritual work for the individual really is. Some think it is discipline, some will think it is saying prayers or doing meditation. You have to know how these practice have an effect, why you are doing them, how they support each other. Many like to practice because they think it is cool to do it, but we don’t know what really happens when we work with the mind. When you think and learn more about the nature of the mind it will lead you to understand how you can become a Buddha, a fully enlightened being. Whether you want to die or not, the day will come where you have got to go. No one can stay. Even Buddha and Jesus have gone. Who else can stay? We are still here, but for how long? Going is definite. How can we expect to live forever? No spiritual power, no monetary, military or scientific power can make us stay. Some go when they are young, some when they are old, some go in middle age. No one can tell. That is our situation. Sometimes you have a close call. Your plane is landing and almost crashes into another plane that is taking off. When you come that close, you suddenly realize how fragile you are. Otherwise we never think about it. We always assume that tomorrow and next year and next decade and even next century we will still be here. We all think that way. No one thinks, ‘I am going to die today.’ Even the person on the 11th hour,

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE lying on their death bed, will think, ‘Today is my last day on earth.’ They will still think, ‘Who is coming to see me next Sunday? If they come, can they bring me this thing and that thing?’ But the next day that person is gone. We are all living in that situation. The 7th Dalai Lama said, The moment you are born, you don’t have a minute’s rest. You will be running towards death, like a galloping horse. We call ourselves living beings, but that is our situation. Guntang Jambelyang said, Wherever you look, rich, poor, powerful or weak, the only difference is the outward show. Internally, everybody is spending their time suffering. That is how we spend every day of our life. How sad it is. We don’t even have to look at ancient Tibetan quotations to find that out. In our own culture, you only have to watch Day of Our Lives on television. You will see the sand dripping down in that hour glass. That is exactly how our lives are going. Every minute we spend, every time the clock ticks our life is going. We do know that, but we refuse to acknowledge it. It is not only the clock, but the days of our lives that are ticking by. Every minute, every hour, every day that goes by is one minute, hour and day less to live. You are subtracting that and at the end the bell will ring and you are out. At that time, will you be prepared? You can answer that only for yourself. No one else can answer for you. Ask yourself today, ‘If my bell rings tonight, am I prepared?’ One of our friends told me that he saw Bodhisattva John walking past in the afternoon one day and next day he heard that he had died. He saw him walking in the afternoon and that same night he was gone. How do I know I am not going to be dead tonight? None of us knows. There is every possibility that we may go. Are you prepared? Please ask yourself this question many times, especially when you are high or when you are low. Give yourself an honest answer.

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Gelek Rimpoche I don’t expect that anyone of us to be able to leave like a bird flies from a high mountain into the sky. But I do hope and expect that none of us will have anything holding us back. If the bird tries to fly from a rock and there is a rope tied to its leg it won’t be able to leave. I don’t expect that we will have that kind of problem. We claim to be spiritual practitioners and should not have such a problem. How do you prepare for that? Just do two things: purification and accumulation of merit. If you simply say, ‘I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, until I am enlightened. I purify all my negativity and I rejoice in the virtues of all others,’ that is all you need. That is your preparation, your food, your motel. That is your vehicle. It is that simple. If you want to make it complicated, go ahead. I will watch, but that is the way you can help yourself.

VERSE 47 First of all I should examine well what is to be done, To see whether I can pursue it or cannot undertake it. (If I am unable,) it is best to leave it, But once I have started I must not withdraw. Before you put any efforts into anything, first check if you will be able to do it or not. Follow the saying: Bite off what you can chew. If you bite something you cannot chew, your tooth will break or you will make a hole in your gums. Wherever you are going to put efforts in, first understand and make sure that you are capable of attempting it. There are zillions of wonderful spiritual practices that you may not be able to do; no shortage of spiritual practices, in East or West, but no one person can do everything. It depends on the terms, conditions, availability, capability, accessi- bility. You have to take all that into consideration. Even Mao would tell you, ‘Don’t go to war, unless you are prepared.’ It is the same with the spiritual path. If you don’t know if you can

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE do it, don’t: if I am unable, it is best to leave it. It is not good to take on a commitment and then not being able to fulfil it. Buddha has given five vows for lay people: not killing, not stealing, not lying, no sexual misconduct and not taking intox- icants. Buddha said that if you cannot take all five, just take four, three, two or even only one. Once you have committed, you should fulfil it, not only because you should honor your word and be true to yourself. It is more than that. The next verse talks about the consequences of withdrawing from activities before they are completed.

VERSE 48 (If I do), then this habit will continue in other lives And evil and misery will increase; Also other actions done at the time of its fruition Will be weak and will not be accomplished. If you break your promises now, that will ingrain a habit of doing so that will continue in future lives. Liars will continue to like to lie, thieves to steal, killers to kill, and rapists to rape. As a consequence, negative actions will increase and because of that suffering will increase: evil and misery will increase. Even if you are able to start something new you will be unable to complete it: other actions done at the time of its fruition will be weak and will not be accomplished. Try to avoid beginning something and then failing, particularly if you have done it to work on bad addictions. If the habit of failing is set up in this life it will continue in future lives.

VERSE 49 Self-confidence should be applied to (wholesome) actions, The (overcoming) of disturbing conceptions and my ability (to do this). Thinking, ‘I alone shall do it,’ 228

Gelek Rimpoche Is the self-confidence of actions. If you read directly from the Tibetan, it says, You should have pride. The translator in English chose to use self-confidence. That is fine. Pride in the sense of arrogance is bad, a negative emotion, so I have no problem with the choice of the term self confidence.

Three kinds of self-confidence. A Bodhisattva must have three kinds of self-confidence. First is the self-confidence applied to wholesome actions, second, the self confidence to destroy negative emotions, to overcome disturbing conceptions. Third, you need self confidence in your capability or ability. You need to be confident that you can do what you have to do without depending on anybody else. You have to think, ‘I am going to do it, whether anybody helps me or not. It does not matter even if the whole world is against me.’

VERSE 50 Powerless, their minds disturbed, People in this world are unable to benefit themselves. Therefore, I shall do it (for them), Since unlike me these beings are incapable. Talk about pride! If I have to depend on somebody to support me, to share the responsibility, I am not likely to find anyone who will be willing to do that. Other people have their own selfish interest, their own delusions, negative emotions. Many people have been controlled and overpowered by their own negativities: they are powerless, their minds disturbed. There- fore they are not only unable to help others, but many of them are unable to even help themselves. So how can they help others? When your mind is disturbed by negative emotions you become powerless. When you are very angry, you become helpless. You try your best but you are very badly disturbed. Likewise, if you have some huge obsession you can see nothing else except what you are obsessed about. Remember the

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE joke about the windshield wiper? Similarly, jealousy makes us powerless. Our ego especially is the one that makes us absolutely powerless. At that moment, in that condition, people can’t do anything to benefit themselves. The Tibetan text says that such people can’t help themselves, unlike me. I am a Bodhisattva who is not overpowered by negative emotions. I can help myself, and because they can’t, I shall do it not only for myself, but for all beings. Bodhisattvas are totally encouraged not to depend on somebody else’s help. If somebody helps you, fine. Other- wise, do it by yourself. What bodhisattvas need is strength and power and then by themselves, they can clear all the darkness of the negativities of all beings.

Rely on yourself. If I have to depend on others to achieve enlightenment, or to give service to people, I will never be able to do it. I must have the confidence that I can do it myself, without a single person helping me. No one wants to help me. Fine. I should do whatever I have to do. That is the self- confidence Shantideva is talking about. Think, ‘I couldn’t care less about what others think.’ In other words: ‘Don’t rely on anyone for this.’ They will let you down. No matter, whoever, whatever, however, they will let you down, because they are controlled by their own negative emotions. Therefore, even if they come halfway through, they can still do a 180 degree turn and switch totally around. They can choose to retreat. If you are counting on somebody else to do it they will let you down. Is that an acceptable excuse for Bodhisattvas? No, certainly not. They can’t say, ‘I was waiting for somebody else and then they didn’t come and I couldn’t do it.’ That is not acceptable. If you lose, you are the loser. If you gain, you are the winner. Ultimately, it is only you who makes it happen. Rely- ing on others you will not be able to do it. That is what Bud- dha demands of Bodhisattvas. Mostly it is accumulation of merit and purification. If you keep on waiting for somebody it won’t work.

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Gelek Rimpoche Some old Tibetan lamas have attendants who make offerings on them behalf. One great old lama wouldn’t let anyone do it for him, but insisted in doing everything by himself, even though he was quite old. Someone came up to him and said, ‘Please let me help you.’ He answered, ‘Are you going to eat my food for me too?’ There you have it. You cannot depend on somebody else to eat your food for you. Purifying negativities is the same. Somebody else cannot do it on your behalf. If they do it, that won’t make any difference to you. No one can go to the toilet on my behalf. Purification is your business alone. No one can do it for you. The Tibetan version of verse 50 says that people are under the power of their negative emotions and are unable to help themselves. Then it says, Therefore I shall do it for them. In other words: let me tell them what to do, because unlike me these beings are incapable. That is really pride, isn’t?’ We ordinary beings are not in control. Our lives are totally controlled by negative emotions. Every action we perform is because we want to. If we don’t want to, we won’t do it. It is not the body, but the mind that decides on what is done. When the mind is influenced by negative emotions it will act accordingly. Remember, the mind has no shape or color and it is not tangible. I usually give you the example of a clean, clear crystal lamp shade. Our emotions are like the light bulbs. They can be red, green, yellow, transparent or whatever. When you move a couple of feet away, the lamp shade takes on the color of the light bulb. That is how you get a yellow, red, green or blue or nature-colored lamp shade. For all practical purposes the lamp shade is red, but the nature of the lamp shade actually has not changed. It is still crystal, clean and clear, but for all practical purposes it has become red or green or blue. That is exactly how our negative emotions cause our mind to change, yet our nature has not been changed at all. As Nagarjuna says, The nature never changes.

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For all practical purposes the lamp shade is red. It reflects the color perfectly, and you wouldn’t know, unless you turn the lamp shade upside down and look underneath and find that it is not a red lamp shade at all. It is actually just a red light bulb. It is the same as the beautiful, open sky. Suddenly the clouds come in and you don’t see the sky, especially in Michi- gan. However, the sky actually doesn’t change. It is still beautiful and clear. When the clouds go you see the clear sky again. It is the same with the mind. For all practical purposes the negative emotions can block everything, and then we are incapable of helping ourselves. Those people whose emotions zig zag a lot are either very high or very low like the stock market. Therefore they cannot do much for themselves. But I, as a Bodhisattva, should be able to do everything by myself. That kind of confidence is required for any spiritual practice. Particularly, today, when we have so many pressures and problems and so much push and pull, self confidence is a must.

Motivation requires self-confidence. When you look at the five pow- ers42 to be used during life and death, the first is the power of motivation. It is important for a good life as well as for a good death. You need it in both places. I am not saying that this is more important than others, but it is equally important. How- ever, the power of motivation comes first. In setting your motivation, what you need is self confidence. In a sutra Buddha says, When I became a Buddha, without any help, I sat down on the ground and overpowered the total force of the maras. Just before Buddha became enlightened, the maras made a big attempt to stop him in any way they could. First they tried seduction. When that didn’t work, they applied force, trying to kill him. The movie Little Buddha showed this very well, how Buddha sat under a tree, and the evil forces began to attack him. They tried seduction and when that didn’t work they manifested fearful creatures who threw all kinds of weapons.

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Gelek Rimpoche But whatever weapons they threw at him became flowers. That film was not a documentary but there is truth in it. The power of changing weapons into flowers is the power of love and compassion, which is actually the highest protection for us, rather than weapons and security guards. Killing does not provide security. Love does. It is the one that changes people’s minds. You cannot force anyone to do something that they don’t want to. No one can force anyone, but you can convince people to change. If you hit somebody they won’t like you. They will hit you back. Even if they can’t do it now, they will wait for their time and opportunity and hit back then. Instead, if you give love and compassion, no matter how bad the other person may be, they will think twice.

Ghost stories. There is a Tibetan story about how love and compassion affected even ghosts. A great Kadampa Geshe called Ngonapa (which means ‘Bad Mood’) was always sad. Howev- er, in his case he was crying all the time, thinking of people’s suffering. The bad ghosts in the area where this geshe was meditating used to have their meetings in the evenings. I saw lots of ghost meetings when I was a kid in Tibet. I had a little cave in the mountains in central Tibet, between Sera and Drepung monasteries. I used to go to that cave to be quiet, to memorize, to study and read. Unlike the great monasteries that have so many activities, the retreat areas are quiet. In the evening, sitting on the mountain, I would look down into the valley at a little village and about a mile away a huge, single tree. In the evening you could see many little lights gathering on that tree. Then we knew that the ghosts are having their meeting there. More and more would come and form a circle and they would become quite big, like cigarette lighters. They would sit in a circle for a long time. That was actually ghosts having a gathering. On the 10th and 25th lunar days when I did my tsoh offerings, they would always have a meeting at that tree. At the point when I did the left over offering of the tsoh all these lights would fly up to my cave. I could also hear them. It would sound like thirty or forty peo-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE ple rushing and running. It happened very often. They came to collect the left over tsoh. The physical material would still be there the next day, but they got their share. These ghosts were harmless ones, but there are others who are not that friendly. So, in the area where that geshe was meditating those harmful ghosts were suspicious that this geshe would become powerful through this spiritual practice and become a problem for them. They decided to take pre-emptive action and kill the geshe before he could get them. One of them volunteered to do the dirty deed. At the next meeting nobody talked about it, another meeting went by and nothing happened. At the third or fourth meeting somebody said, ‘What happened? This guy is still around.’ The ghost reported, ‘I tried to kill him a couple of times, but he was always crying. My clairvoyance tells me that he is crying about us. He is thinking about all these living beings and crying for them all the time. So what could I do? Every time I went to get him, he was crying for us, so I couldn’t hurt him.’ Now a few other ghosts volunteered, but they couldn’t do it either when they noticed that he was worrying about them.

Love and compassion are the best protection. That is really how love protects you. When you challenge your enemies and try to destroy them, it will never work. The tiny ants will gather in their thousands and bite the elephant in the leg. He may be crush- ing them, but they will try to bite. Therefore, wrathful activities are not the best protection. Love is much better. Buddha protected himself by the power of love. That is why all the weapons transformed into flowers. That is how Buddha was able to say, ‘Without any help I sat on the ground and was able to overpower all the evil forces. My mind transformed into wisdom and became totally enlightened.’ That is the self confidence we need. In another sutra Buddha says, The sun does not need outside help to shine. Shadows don’t need other shadows to produce shade. The lion does not need another lion to roar.

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Gelek Rimpoche The Bodhisattva does not need any help. The Bodhisattvas engage in the activities of Buddhadharma and purity. With enthusiasm they are able to destroy the negativities of evil forces. Nagarjuna adds to that, I am the one who has to liberate myself. How can I depend on others to do that? What can they do? That is the self confidence we need.

VERSE 51 (Even) if others are doing inferior tasks Why should I sit there (doing nothing)? I do not do those tasks because of self-importance; It would be best for me to have so such pride. In Indian culture, jobs like sweeping the floor, cleaning toilets, butchering and blacksmithing are considered to be inferior, low caste tasks. The Brahmins, the highest caste, don’t sweep floors, wash clothes or clean toilets. It is the job of the Hari- jans, the lowest caste. In old Indian society, Harijans couldn’t walk in through the main door of a Brahmin house. They came in through a back door in the kitchen, swept the floors, cleaned the toilets and then walked out the same way. If they touched the cups, bowls or plates of the Brahmins, the Brahmins consider themselves to be contaminated and ran off to the kusha grass fields for seven days in order to become pure again. The lower caste people had to wash the Brahmins’ utensils but then the Brahmins had to rinse them again before using them. Therefore, for a high caste person to do that kind of work, such inferior tasks, was shameful and embarrassing. This is just Indian culture. In Tibet it wasn’t like that. That is only in India.

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Dr. Ambekar, a lawyer who wrote the Indian constitution was not sure how to deal with the caste system and the best way he could think of was by suggesting to low caste people to become Buddhist, because Buddhism doesn’t recognize the caste system, yet it is interrelated with the Hindu religion. Mil- lions of low caste people thus became Buddhist in a single day and were no longer subject to the caste system. It was very good for them, but at the same time they lost the lower caste benefits that were available in India at that time. They call this ‘New Buddhism’. Actually, there is really not that much difference between Buddhism and Hinduism. Maybe Hindus don’t take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, but instead in Vishnu or Brahma. Dr. Ambekar made a wise political decision, but now the ‘New Buddhists’ worship Dr. Ambekar almost like a second Buddha. They include ‘Ambekar Saranam Gachami’ in the refuge after Buddham Saranam Gachami. So they have 4 objects of refuge, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and Dr. Ambekar. If you meet these new Buddhists in the street they will greet you with Namo Buddhaya. That is how you know who they are.

Good pride and bad pride. Shantideva’s text was written 1400 years ago and that is why this question about doing inferior tasks comes up. If you have to have self confidence and do everything by yourself, it isn’t embarrassing to sweep your own floors, wash your own toilets and so on. Now, of course, we do all these things, either because we have to and can’t afford to hire anybody or perhaps we even like it. So Shantideva, even then, encourages spiritual practitioners to do all these jobs, saying you should rely on yourself and that it is not shameful. He says that the kind of pride of thinking yourself superior and refusing to do so-called inferior tasks is not the pride we want. It is not self-confidence. In Tibetan both of these are called pride, nga gyel. Even in English there is good pride and bad pride. The pride you shouldn’t have is the one that thinks

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Gelek Rimpoche it is superior to another person. Similarly, if in this country someone says, ‘I am superior because I am white,’ that pride should be rejected. But self confidence is absolutely necessary, whether you are man or woman, black or white, yellow or red.

VERSE 52 When crows encounter a dying snake, They will act as though they were eagles. (Likewise) if (my self-confidence) is weak I shall be injured by the slightest downfall. The Tibetan text literally says that if there is a dying snake even the crows will behave as if they are eagles. They will come down with dignity and landing without fear of poisonous fangs will enjoy eating the snake. Likewise, without self-confidence you are weak and can be destroyed by even the slightest downfall. Without self confidence you will hesitate to do anything and you will destroy yourself.

VERSE 53 How can those who, out of faint-heartedness, have given up trying to Find liberation because of this deficiency? But even the greatest (obstacle) will find it hard to Overcome (one with a firm mind). Without self-confidence you will not be able to apply any enthusiasm at all. You may think, ‘How can a weak person like me challenge these powerful negativities?’ That fear or faint- heartedness, however, is really laziness, the opposite of enthusiasm. A strong enthusiasm will overcome the laziness that thinks, ‘I am incapable, I am useless, I am not intelligent, I am so poor, I am so backward.’ The Chinese have labeled the Tibetans as backward, barbari- an, dark, and dirty. In that way they try to instill fear and low

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE self-esteem in the Tibetans, but Tibetans think, ‘Let them say whatever they want. We are what we are!’ Have you ever seen anybody who has been successful while thinking, ‘I cannot do it, I am incapable!’?’ Is there anybody who has got rich by having these fears? Have you ever seen anybody who achieved liberation, while being under the control of that kind of fear? Have you ever seen anybody who became successful, while they were completely obsessed with fear and lack of self-confidence? This has never happened and will never happen. If you work hard, with self confidence, mindfulness and alertness there will be no time and opportunity for the negative emotions to overtake you, no matter how big and powerful they might be: even the greatest obstacle will find it hard to overcome one with a firm mind. Without confidence you will not be able to anything. If you are overpowered by fear you can do nothing. If you are overpowered by anger you can do nothing. Anger, obsession and jealousy are easier to overcome. Fear is the worst. If you are afraid you will be paralyzed. You can do nothing different. In summary, without self confidence you can do nothing, but if you have self confidence, then even if you are a crow you can act like an eagle. That kind of self confidence does not only apply on the spiritual path but also in your daily life.

VERSE 54 Therefore, with a steady mind, I shall overcome all falls, For if I am defeated by a fall, My wish to vanquish the three realms will become a joke. We need very strong self confidence, a steady mind, so that our negative emotions don’t destroy us. We need to be able to challenge them and overcome them. Buddha said, Thinking and worrying ‘I am incapable, weak, too old, not intelligent, lacking support, no understanding,

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Gelek Rimpoche no experience, not enough time’, and so forth, is never going to help you liberate yourself at all. Therefore don’t be afraid. Don’t submit to depression. Don’t undermine yourself. Learn how to handle things. Even if you don’t know how yet, try. Then you can learn it. Try to learn and practice. Then you will become quite intelligent and you will know how to handle it. Even if it is very difficult, you can get a big surprise how easily you can actually make it. Do not develop dislike for your practice. Try in all different ways to do what you need to do and you will be able to achieve it. If you become learned and show your qualities, everything you want to achieve is already in your own hands. You don’t have to add anything from outside. This is Buddha’s advice. The commentary on the Bodhisatt- vacharyavatara actually comes from the words of the Buddha. The most important thing is not to be afraid and not to develop any dislike for what you want to do. Try all kinds of methods. You will learn. No one is learned from the beginning. Everybody works and then becomes expert . Experts are not born experts.

How we attain our qualities. You can attain good qualities in different ways. One is naturally born and another is when you pick it up later. In case of the first one you are born with qualities already, but where you have brought those from? From your previous life. Genetically, everything comes from the parents, but mind has its own continuation. It carries information that is already downloaded at birth. Other qualities get developed by learning and practicing. The qualities you have at birth are what you have analyzed, developed and made part of you in a previous life. We call it god-given talent, or gifted genius, but it is what we bring along from our previous life. We also bring fears with us from our previous life too. Nobody has to teach us how to be afraid. It is already with us at birth. Sure, we tell kids that they will get into trouble if they

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE do something wrong, but that is not teaching them how to be afraid, at least I hope not. So where do these things come from? Parents try to prevent their kids from seeing Playboy magazines and have locks on their television to keep such things away from them, but the 12-13 year olds know even better than the parents. These addictions come back up, in this case addiction to sexuality. Likewise there is addiction to hatred and anger. That addiction cannot be taught to a little kid. It is already there. It can only come from the previous life. If you are unbiased and open-minded you will have to agree that it is the most obvious explanation. When I was in Holland a few months ago, I was interviewed by the Buddhist Broadcast Corporation. They have a spiritual show on every other Sunday. They take many hours of interviews. In one of their documentaries they showed research regarding people’s memories. They had kids who re- membered the parents of the previous life. They refused to accept this life’s parents and insisted on going to the next village to find their real parents. My own stories for that program were very mild by comparison and probably served not much purpose for the Dutch audience. My mind is geared much more to the American public. The truth is that our habits and addictions, both positive and negative have come across from our previous life. That does not mean that we can’t change. We definitely can. It is in our own hands. We can make the difference, but we must not be weak and undermine ourselves. We need self-confidence. There is nothing that human beings cannot do. We have to put efforts in and work consistently. It is definitely not easy, because we so used to it. I for example, am a couch potato. It becomes difficult for me to move. My friends give me information on how to do exercises. To cut such a habit is difficult. The true difficulty, honestly, is making up your mind. If you really decide that you have to do it you will find a way. If you just go along with your habits and just want peace and quiet that is an obstacle. It is a matter of willingness and self-confidence. If these were strong enough they would force

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Gelek Rimpoche you to make the change. You have to have a strong mind and willingness. Otherwise, your day will go by as always. In the morning you wake up to hear the news. Then the usual daily pattern goes on until you fall asleep. The day you really make up your mind and begin to do something a lot of things happen. Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and great masters wouldn’t waste all their time saying that self confidence is important if it made no difference: they have lots of other things to do. They are committed to helping all sentient beings all the way. It is part of their job to have self confidence. If you don’t have that self-confidence there is no way that you can destroy your negativities, and if you cannot destroy them, they will destroy you. We can say, ‘I don’t want to quarrel,’ but the quarrel between you and the negative emotions is there, no matter how much you try to avoid it. The more you avoid it the more you defeat it yourself. It is hatred and anger versus love and compassion. It is stinginess versus generosity, morality versus immorality, anger versus patience, enthusiasm versus laziness, wandering mind versus concentration, stupidity versus wisdom. Everything is either black or white, no gray area in between.

Our mental factors color our mind. I have been accused of being black and white for years, but unfortunately it is the reality. It is strange. Mind has its own mind somehow, but at the same time mind has nothing tangible. The principal mind looks like a crystal clear lamp shade which takes on whatever the colored light bulb inside produces. That makes the lamp shade appear red, green or yellow. The 52 mental factors are what create the colors. Every mind needs 5 specific ones of those to accompany it at all times. The negatives factors include the 6 root negatives and 20 secondary negatives. Four factors are changeable: sleep, regret, analysis and understanding. They can be either negative or positive, depending on the state of mind immediately before. Then 11 are virtuous mental factors. All of these are the

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE light bulbs and they are colored and influence the principal mind. I guess the only gray zone comes with the 4 changeable mental factors. That is why mindfulness is important. You have to focus. If you don’t, the negativities that have been lying in wait all along, alert and ready, will use the opportunity. They don’t want to stay shut out. They catch us with tooth and nail, whenever they can. The moment you forget and pay no attention, your addictions will take over. In my case I want to go for a walk and I need to, but then this voice inside of me says, ‘Well, not right now. It is too tiring. It is too hot.’ These are mental tactics to avoid doing it. The force against these tactics has to be strong enough, otherwise you won’t make a move. That is why self-confidence is so important. More than that, you really need the willingness, the desire wanting to do the right thing. This has to be very strong, otherwise there are so many things that will cause us to lose our focus. Entertainment distracts us and wastes our time. It is nice, but also bad. When you are entertained you don’t feel bored and lonely. You don’t want to look at your mind and then the negativities can take it over. Even news and current affairs shows have that effect, plus they can feed you exactly the information that they would like you to have. Our mind is extremely bombarded with all kinds of information, so many advertisements. Cigarette companies even make ads in which they show that smoking is bad for you. While they are telling you that Marlboros are bad for you they still show it in attractive ways. When we don’t pay attention and think about it, that is how our time goes. The sun does not wait for us to move. It rises in the morning and sets in the evening, comes back the next morning and so on. Meanwhile our lifetime goes. The sun is going to be there for millions of years, but not us. Eve- ry year we get older, our glasses become thicker. Entertainment and distraction have no limits. If you let them, they will take all or your time, so you have to help your-

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Gelek Rimpoche self. You need a strong will. Without that they entertainments will eat up your time. Compare life in the 1960’s and today. In the sixties most people still read newspapers and had time to drink coffee. The papers had actually much more information in them then. Today the information only lasts 30 seconds. Even if you write a letter to somebody, if you cannot give your message in the first 3 sentences, people don’t bother reading through. They will just throw it away. Then, when you ask them, they will say, ‘No, I haven’t received anything. I have never seen that letter.’ We are in that time. In one way modern scientific developments are great. Everything is at our fingertips. On the other hand, our personal needs are totally bypassed. A few people react to that by not watching any TV, not listening to the radio, not reading papers, but to me that is a little extreme. You cannot block out all information. We do need information. This is the information age. There is a big difference between those who have information and those who don’t, not only in terms of money. Now it is information that makes all the difference, more so than the money itself. Therefore we need good spiritual information. Entertainment is so strong that if you don’t pay attention, your mind is really going to go. Even those programs that are not considered to be entertainment are also treated as entertainment by us, like the general news.

VERSE 55 I will conquer everything And nothing sat shall conquer me! I, a child of the Lion-like Conqueror, Should remain self-confident in this way. That is how a Bodhisattva thinks. Talk about pride! No wonder the Tibetan text just calls it pride. It is not just self- confidence but a big, positive pride. Maybe Bodhisattvas need that much pride, because otherwise the task is too difficult, too much to handle.

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The opponents that draw our attention are also very powerful. After all, these things are all products of the human mind. If you use them for good purposes the benefits are tremendous. If you use them for bad purposes the result is equally destructive. Einstein sent an open letter after he discovered how the atomic energy could work. He said that if it is done right the benefits would be great, and if it was used wrongly the outcome would be terrible. We made bombs. The human mind is so powerful. Entertainment has become so pervasive. You can watch TV for 24 hours. If you keep on watching you don’t know where the time goes. You have no idea any more whether it is 11 in the evening or already 5 in the morning. All of that is human achievement. Many people’s efforts have been combined in such a way that it can take you away like that. If you use that human power for the positive side the achievement will be equally strong. It is the same mind power, with the same amount of efforts, so the result will be also very powerful. Many people think it is more useful to spend your energy on external things, because that gives you money, but that comfort is an illusion. Right now our country is strong and powerful, so the green dollar has value, but if something serious happens to the economy the currency can collapse over night and then the green paper is worth less than toilet paper. I learned that when I got kicked out of Tibet by the Chinese. Tibetan money used to be worth quite a lot. I had tons of it, but the day I was kicked out of Tibet the value came down to zero. The value of money is an illusion and Alan Greenspan is the magician. Success in our life is too often measured in green dollars, but that is false measurement. Why? Because you cannot use it later on in the long journey. No one takes out a life insurance policy on the future life unless you are a reincarnated lama! Then you can come and claim it! We are trying to achieve a balance between our spiritual path and the need or green dollars, but for all of us the green dollars are more powerful in our thoughts. We can’t help it, because society is made that

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Gelek Rimpoche way. If you don’t want to deal with material things you will be just left out. Again, you need self confidence. If you know how to handle the spiritual path you should definitely know how to handle the material path. On the other hand if you don’t know how to handle the material path you will never know how to handle the spiritual path.

A Drukpa Kunley story. The great early lama Drukpa Kunley, founder of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition, was a very interesting guy. He used to walk around like a hunter, with bow and arrow and a little dog.’43 Once, on his travels, he asked an old lady to give him shel- ter for the night. She was happy to have him. Since he was quite well known he expected that the lady would vacate her best bedroom and let him stay there, but she didn’t. She made him sit outside, near the barn and didn’t let him in the house, but was kind enough to give him some tea. Tibetan tea is usually mixed with butter, and tastes more like soup, that is if you get good butter. But this lady gave him plain black tea, without any butter. That is considered very ordinary. Drukpa Kunley said disap- provingly, ‘There is not even the smell of good tea in here. How could there be even a drop of butter in here? It is impossible to drink, so I offer this to the wall.’ Having said that, he emptied the cup against the wall of the barn. Now she got hold of him by the neck and said, ‘There is not even the smell of good human behavior in you. How could you have any spiritual development? There is no room here for you tonight. Get out of here!’ And she threw him out! So, if you don’t know how to function in the normal material world you will not know how to function spiritually.

VERSE 56 Whoever has self-importance is destroyed by it, Is disturbed and has no self-confidence. For those with self-confidence do not succumb

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to the power of the enemy, Whereas the former are under the sway of the enemy of self-importance. While emphasizing that you have to have self-confidence Shan- tideva is also saying that you shouldn’t have the kind of pride that thinks one is superior to others. I don’t know what translator intended by the word self-importance. In Tibetan it is just pride. Isn’t self importance a positive term? It should be, because we are all important. If you are capable, are you not important? But apparently it is a negative term. I don’t really want to use the word self-importance here; in Tibetan the term is associated with feeling superior. Feeling important is not the same as having a superiority complex, is it? If you don’t feel important your self-confidence will be shaky. Every human being is important. We are talking here about Bodhi- sattvas. Each Bodhisattva is a person on the way to become a Buddha. If such a person is not important who else is? George Bush? I would like to change the term ‘self-importance’ to ‘feeling superior.’ Feeling superior will destroy you. It happened to Hit- ler and is happening now to Saddam Hussein. Quite a few fascist leaders and brutal dictators have gone down that path. Idi Amin is dying right now. Even though he was one of the most brutal dictators, now that he is in a coma you can’t help feeling sorry, because he is a human being, although a bad one. I have nothing to do with Idi Amin or Saddam Hussein, but also today two of Saddam’s sons got killed. They did also horrible things but you can’t say ‘I am glad you are dying.’ From one point of view it would have been better if they had died earlier since they wouldn’t have been able to create so much trouble but the fact is they have died now and you have to pray for them. They are human beings. Some years ago His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited Jeru- salem and talked about Buddha nature. Somebody asked whether he was suggesting that Hitler might have Buddha nature and His Holiness said, ‘Yes, he does have Buddha nature.’ As a human being he had the potential to become better

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Gelek Rimpoche and even become a Buddha. In this lifetime he didn’t, but on the contrary, did the worst possible things. Still, he has Bud- dha nature; he just didn’t utilize it. To say that does not mean that you sympathize with his actions.

Two helpful mental faculties. All that shows that feeling superior destroys you. Even if it does not destroy you militarily or po- litically or economically, it definitely destroys you spiritually. People who feel superior do not hesitate to do wrong things. They don’t apply the two mental faculties called shame and self-restraint. 44We don’t like to feel ashamed, but according to Buddha there are two kinds of shame that are useful because they help us refrain from negative actions. One is when you think, ‘If I do this and other people come to know it, how embarrassing that would be for me.’ The other type of shame is, ‘Even if no one else comes to know, I still know how bad it is.’ These two kinds of shame are two separate mental faculties. We can use these to help ourselves avoid doing negative actions. People like Hitler and Idi Amin somehow did not have these mental faculties, or had them only very weakly. They didn’t care about other people’s pain and suffering, so they had nothing to restrain themselves. They thought they could kill as many people as they wanted, because they felt superior. All incidents of ethnic cleansing come from feeling superior. It is the feeling that we normally ascribe to lions. Supposedly, lions think, ‘I am the king of all wild animals. I can destroy anyone with a little hit of my claw.’ A wild, crazy lion will kill anyone who comes along. A wild, untrained elephant will do the same. People think that an elephant will pick you up with the trunk and throw you somewhere. That can happen, but mostly elephants will kill you my smashing you under their feet so that you will look like pita bread. The elephant can’t see your situation, because of this feeling of being superior. Self-confidence is different. It doesn’t involve feeling superior to others. No race is superior to any other race. When you have the superiority feeling your two kinds of shame will

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE not work. Nothing wild hold you back and you will destroy yourself.

Feeling superior is against good human values. To me immorality does not mean what your sexual orientation is. It is losing your good human values. On top of that, if you have vows and commitments and you go against them, that is immoral. During the Clinton presidency we heard about morality all the time. It was all over the media, but that was television morality. A certain person in that time wrote a book about morality and was very proud of having written it in 10 days. He appeared on all the talk shows. I started calling him Mr. Morali- ty. Now we know that this person has exactly the same problems that he accused others of having. Apparently he has a bad gambling addiction and is a few million dollars in debt. Remember the story of the king who dreamed about monkeys? One monkey got his tail dirty in a manure pit and another monkey completely fell into it. He climbed out, covered totally with manure. He forgot about that very soon and when he saw the other monkey he pointed the finger at him and shouted, ‘Look at that monkey. He has shit on his tail!’ This is what is happening now. Certain people write books about morality. We see them on TV for weeks and then it turns out they are worse than the people they are criticizing. Lack of true morality comes if we lack the two mental faculties related with shame. It makes the individual feel superior to their peers. The moment you feel superior to your peers that is a sign of trouble. In our case, as spiritual practitioners we have to watch ourselves. If we feel we are superior to others we are in trouble. If, on the other hand you lose your self-confidence you are in trouble too. You will think, ‘I am inferior, I am incapable. I have been abused. I blew it. I missed out, I couldn’t do it.’ Yes, maybe we did blow it, but a hundred other opportunities will come. It never ends. It is not the end of the day until your last day has come. The day when the Lord of Death says, ‘Hey, it is time for you to go,’ then it is the end of it. Un-

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Gelek Rimpoche til then, it is not the end. No matter how low you may go, it is a sign that you can go up. Also, no matter how high you go, it is in itself the sign that you will go down. Therefore it is important not to be too high or too low. Gungtang Jambelyang said, Your popularity, prestige and wealth are like a dead, dry tree. If you climb that tree and you fall, you would be better off falling from the lower branches. If you climb that tree very high up, falling from there will be very painful. If your activities are based on ego-perception that will always be trouble and will cause any other delusions to grow easily within the individual. People with such superior feelings are easily overpowered by their negative emotions. If you are a really great person, then no matter how high you go, you will remain the same old person. Your friends are friends. You will not begin to feel superior. Some people, the moment their name gets a little bigger, start feeling like they are a universal king. That tells you that there is nothing up there. It is just an empty shell. Verse 56 is about self confidence versus wrong pride. Not every kind of pride is bad. You need good pride. Negative pride is perceiving yourself as superior to everybody, like when people say, ‘Oh, that’s your ego talking.’ That is the pride you don’t need. We need self-confidence but it has to have a basis. You can’t just say, ‘I am so great.’ That has no value in itself.

Knowledge builds self-confidence. Of course we all have a precious human life and Buddha nature, but that in itself is not a good enough reason to have self-confidence. In order to build it you need some basic information. You have to know where you are today and how you get to total enlightenment, what steps are involved, how you train yourself, how you go. With- out that, you can do nothing. It was a big surprise to me when I first came to the United States in the mid-eighties. When I talked about meditation

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE people immediately sat down and took up a nice posture. That is easy. You can look at how the others are sitting and just copy them. When you sit down and begin to think, then you can’t copy any more. You look up and down and probably think nothing and close your eyes. Who knows what you are really thinking? You may call it meditation but it may not be meditation at all. You can sit down cross-legged or any other way, but that is not meditation. Meditation is something you do with your mind, not physical training. If it was physical training you could go to Chuck Norris and get trained. When it comes to mental training you need information that feeds into your ability to train your mind. When you learn something on that level it changes how you function. The sign of learning is the change in behavior of the individual. The sign of success in meditation is a reduction in negative emotions. You become much more humble. The 17th century teacher Gungtang Jambelyang said, Look at a field of wheat. The stalks that don’t have much wheat grain in them stand much higher. The more wheat there is in them the heavier they become and bend down much more. The sign of good learning is that you become more humble, yet are self-confident at the same time. If you have to do a particular task you know that you are capable of doing it, without having to say ‘I, I, I.’ Remember the example of Shantideva, the author of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. He was famous for only knowing three things, how to eat, how to sleep and how to go to the toilet, but when he was asked to teach, he came up with the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. In the monastery they used to give us this example: The little sparrows, after eating seven grains, will make a lot of noise, because they are so proud to have seven grains in their stomachs. The basis of self-confidence is knowledge. There are two types of knowledge: natural knowledge and knowledge that is

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Gelek Rimpoche gained by learning. In normal American language the first one is sometimes called God-given knowledge. The person naturally develops this. The other knowledge is picked up through gradual learning. The same goes for wisdom. You need to know what you have to do. With that you have the basis for building self-confidence. Without that, you get nowhere. With it, you get everywhere. We have read so many verses where it says, ‘You are a Bodhisattva, therefore you should be able do this and that.’

VERSE 57 Inflated by the disturbing conception of my self-importance, I shall be led by it to the lower realms. It destroys the joyous festival of being human. I shall become a slave, eating the food of others,45 The feeling of superiority, here called self-importance, will get you into trouble in this life and then will lead you to hell. You will not be able to enjoy the celebration of being human, the joyous festival. Human beings have so many qualities and so many values. No matter how many difficulties we may face we should still continue to celebrate our life for its qualities. When Allen Ginsberg’s father died, Allen asked Trungpa Rimpoche to pray for him. Trungpa Rimpoche told him, ‘Let your father go and continue the celebration of your life.’ Hu- man beings have always something to celebrate and that is the value of our human life. It does not matter how horrible you might have been in your life. That even goes for people like Jeffrey Dahmer. After all he had done, his human life was still there and he could have done something with it. He killed a lot of people and ate them too, though the eating part doesn’t matter so much. Once your life is over, your consciousness goes its own way and your body is just a piece of dirt, no human value left at all. Jeffrey Dahmer killed those people, and that is really ter-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE rible, but after that the body has no connection with that person any more. The mind is gone. It does not matter to the person who died if the body is smashed or burned or cut up or minced or eaten. The connection between the being and the body is no longer there. The body is then nothing more or less than compost. As spiritual practitioners we should see this. It may not be nice and we may not want to hear this, but it is a true fact. As long as the mind and body connection is not broken, even if you are brain dead, whatever happens to the body happens to the person. After the disconnection it is pretty much the same as the skin of an animal. It is used for leather and even musical instruments. It is no longer the animal, but just skin or leather. Today we have so much attachment to our body, but tomorrow it will be no more than a piece of rock or worse. It is going to rot. Today it is occupied, but tomorrow there will be no occupants.

Building our self-confidence. We have been talking about self-confidence. Not only Bodhisattvas, but all practitioners do need self confidence. Without it, you won’t be able to do much. On the other hand you first need a certain basis on which to gain your self-confidence. It won’t work if you just tell yourself, ‘I have self-confidence and I can do anything I want to!’ For example, you could say, ‘I have self-confidence. I should be able to fly in the air.’ If you think like that and jump from a cliff you are going to be in trouble. If you know very well about energy, it could be possible, but you first have to try to jump from a staircase or something like that. Try three or four steps. Then, you could try jumping from a window. If you can manage that, you could try jumping from the roof. Then you can fly from the cliff. You have to build up your basis. Otherwise it will be a bit like donkey behavior. In Eastern cultures at least, the donkey signifies stupidity. If you put gold dust or sand in the donkey’s ear, the ear will move just the same. The donkey doesn’t know the difference. Poets will often use the donkey to depict stupidity.

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Gelek Rimpoche Without having any basis for your self-confidence it would be just like saying Me, Me, Me. Any gorilla can do that, walking round in the jungle and beating his chest. At least the gorilla has some basis for self-confidence, his physical strength. We should be better than that. Our basis for self-confidence is information. Even in our material world information is the most important. In the last century the gap between haves and have-nots largely depend- ed on money. In the 21st century this difference depends on information. That goes for politics, science, economy and everything. You could see how important information is when many CEOs starting to selling their stocks. Shortly after that the stock market went down drastically. In the spiritual field likewise, information makes all the difference. If you don’t have any information, the only thing you can do is pray and hope for the best. You are very limited. With the spiritual information available you can plan and work. You can do and undo things, at least for yourself. To be able to do that is the basic requirement in the spiritual field. Otherwise any spiritual improvement would do no more than making you feel good for a while. Every one of us can make a total difference to ourselves. If we can’t do that the value of being a human being is limited. That is nobody else’s fault, except our own. If we have limited information we can do nothing because we don’t know what to do. Then you can’t do anything, except following somebody who claims they know. If you are lucky it is a good one, but now there are so many questionable spiritual leaders, even some who we thought were good, but they change and do some funny, crazy things. That is terrible for all of us. It is not just simply a question of disliking certain individuals. It is particularly tragic for those who have been following such a person, thinking, ‘This guy is great, he can really do something good and now he has gone crazy.’ That is really terrible for everybody, very unfortunate. Information is absolutely necessary and we must have it. That is the key and the only thing you can utilize on your spir-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE itual journey. To be spiritually right or wrong does not depend on whether you feel good or not. That is not the point. If you have only nice feelings for a while and then that also goes down, that is not the right spiritual path you follow. Spiritual development has to be a fundamental change within the individual, a change from negative mental addictions to positive addictions. That is spiritual development. If you try to look for something else called spiritual development in terms of getting temporary wonderful feelings that is not spiritual. The life we have today has the capacity to make a difference to our journey throughout. Whether we make it today or fail will make a difference to our next five or six lives at least. That’s where we are because this particular life has tremendous capacity. This is nothing but our own mind, our consciousness. The mental limitation is a terrible one. From the point of view of the mind itself there is no limit. The limit is within ourselves. We have not been able to utilize the capacity of our mind. I don’t believe we are using even 30% of our mental capacity. Even the scientists will tell you that we hardly use our brain capacity that is at our disposal. We are not using enough of our mental capacity, because we don’t know how to. We don’t have enough information. Then there is the connection between mind and energy. We don’t have the information on that. I taught on that subject in the last summer retreat (2003). Normally it is not easy to fit in. We typically use the lam rim format and then add up Vajrayana. This is the way one individual follows the path up to enlightenment. We have set it up this way in general. So this time I used the summer retreat to talk about mind itself and its connection to energy. I didn’t have enough time to go into the topic of principal mind and 52 mental factors. We mainly talked about the way the mind works. People said it was quite intense, although I only taught two sessions a day. On the other hand, when I teach lam rim, even three times a day is not enough for people. Maybe I could have got away with talking only once a day during the

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Gelek Rimpoche summer retreat. I almost did, because the evening session was devoted to answering questions that had come up from the morning sessions. To gain self-confidence you need a basis. The number one requirement is actually experience, but even in order to get that you first need information. Otherwise what do you base your self confidence on? You need to know at least what the mind is, where it goes, what the negative and positive emotions and their consequences are, how, when you overcome the negatives, the positives will grow. We need to know these things. Otherwise our spiritual practice consists only of praying. Just praying, however, does not satisfy the modern, educated mind. It was perhaps okay in the 15th century or even up to the early 1800’s but today our minds are so much more sophisticated. There is so much talent. Strength of the mind is what makes the difference in the spiritual field. Just being a big, fat guy doesn’t make you strong in the spiritual field. As a matter of fact it does the opposite. It shows that a person like that is lazy and doesn’t have a strong mind. It is a threat to spiritual development. In the old days, in Tibet, where I come from, being fat used to be an indication that materially you are well off, but now that is no longer the case. As a kid I wanted to be big, fat, and majestic- looking, but I wasn’t. By the time I became fat it was not a good thing anymore. I changed countries and cultures. That has been a dilemma in my life.

Lam rim gives us the information we need. What type of information do you really need? You need to find out where you are today, where you can go, how far and how fast you can go, what the obstacles are, how you can travel and how you can avoid going crazy in between. This is necessary, even the last part, which was never necessary in Tibet, but it seems to be necessary in the West. Unfortunately some people go off the deep end who we were hoping to become great in order to help people in future, so you need all that information. There is no better source for this information than

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Tsongkhapa’s lam rim. Nobody can give you anything better than that. Some people claim that if you meditate the way they tell you, you can be enlightened tomorrow. They say that if you meditate in the morning you can become a Buddha by evening; if you meditate at night, you will be a Buddha in the morning. That has never worked and it will never work. It is a very gradual process. There is no enlightened being who has not been through this path. It is necessary. It begins with the guru devotional practice and ends at overcoming dualistic perception. Up to that point, it is the sutra path. Then on the tantra path you go through to purifying the perception of whiteness, redness and darkness. We have to overcome dualistic perception in relation to these three subtle mental levels as well. From the beginning up to that point, you need the information how you proceed and that is the information I am talking about. I am not talking about to chant, how to sing, how to say mantras, how to read prayers. I am simply talking about how you get yourself to that level. There is no better way to present this in an organized way than the lam rim that Tsongkhapa has developed. Then, in the lam rim you will find a lot of categories and sub-categories and it can become quite difficult for people to follow, so we made it into the easy, 64 step practice, which we call Odyssey to Freedom. It is not an odyssey to nowhere, but to freedom. When you have that information in your heart or mind, then you will be able to collect and add up anything else you read or hear to what you already have established. First you need the basic framework and the basic information. You don’t necessarily have to be rich in information but you have to have a good basis. Then, wherever you go you will find the teaching. You will pick it up everywhere. I used to enjoy watching the TV show Days of our Lives, that begins with the sand dripping down in the hour glass. It is very vivid information on mainstream television, entertaining all Americans. What better information on impermanence could you want? You see how the sand is going down contin-

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Gelek Rimpoche uously. That is exactly how our life goes. It is all the time we are wasting. Then when the top part of the hour glass is empty, it turns round and the sand is dripping down again. This is a good symbol for reincarnation. It never stops, it starts up again and again. Further, the episodes of this show never end! There is always another one. When I compare what was on that show when I first came to America in the mid-eighties, and what is on now, I have to say it is still the same old characters and the same old subjects. It is the never ending story of the melodrama of our life. It is the lam rim in the form of Days of our Lives. But you need to have eyes to be able to see that and ears to be able to hear that. You need to have a mind to be able to digest that. If you do, then every single damn thing you do in your life will be revealed as a teaching. It is the spiritual teaching about our life, but if you don’t know how to look at this all you will see is same old TV characters moving around, getting everybody into trouble. You have the information in your hand now. Whether you make use of it or not is your choice. If you have the information you will be able to build up something solid. Then whatever else comes up you will find you have a place to fit it in. Earlier Tibetan masters used to give the example of storing food. For example, if you have all the ingredients for making Tibetan tea in the right containers, then if you get some more you will know where it goes and when you need it you will know where it is. It will be organized. Likewise, if you read the lam rim and get to know the order and sequence of the spiritual steps, then you will be able to use other texts and know where they fit in. The earlier Tibetan masters used to say, ‘If you have the basis and then find something else outside, like some salt, tea, sugar or butter, you can pick it up and use it. You put the sugar in the sugar dish, the butter in the butter dish, the salt in your salt dish. Otherwise, what would you do with a handful

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE of sugar and a handful of salt, if you find it? You either have to throw it out or mix it up. Neither of those is very good.’ So, you will be able to use any spiritual information from any tradition if you understand the lam rim framework, as long as it is respectable and gives a result. Whether it comes from Eastern or Western background, you can package it and add up and become richer. You have a foundation where you can put it in. People’s problems, happiness, sorrow, suffering, for all of these the lam rim system has spiritual information that they can use if they know where it is. You just have to organize the information. Then, even if you want to mix something you can do that in the quantity that you need. In recent years I have been giving you a lot of information about the text we are using here, the Bodhisattvacharyavatara, but you have to know how to use it and in what context it can be used. I have been talking about that you have to have self- confidence, but where is the base on which you build your self-confidence? At least you have to know where you are, how you can get self-confidence, how long it will take, what is involved, what kinds of obstacles I have to except, what to do with these obstacles. Otherwise, you can only pray and then go to sleep and hope for the best. It is good enough for uneducated, or mentally challenged people. They don’t have any other capacity, but that is not for you people.

Avoiding spiritual pride. What is the cause of being reborn in a hell realm? This kind of self-importance or negative pride. It will make you look down on others. It is an inflated disturbing mind, a negative emotion. This will blind you and won’t be able to see the qualities and good deeds of other people. You think that you are superior to anyone else. These thoughts are not a new thing for us. We are very much used to it. The civil rights in this country have only come through a few decades ago. That is a simple example. Spiritually we can also think the same thing. A number of people think, ‘My practice is superior to anybody else’s.’ We

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Gelek Rimpoche could say, ‘My practice is better than anybody else’s because I am doing Vajrayana. I am doing Mahayana. I am a Buddhist.’ All these reasons are invalid and unnecessary build up of self-importance. If you can say, ‘My practice is very good because it forcefully cuts negative emotions,’ that is a valid reason. All the other reasons, such as saying that it is Tibetan, or Mahayana or Vajrayana, are invalid. The practice may be Va- jrayana, but if you are not a Vajrayana practitioner your practice will not become Vajrayana at all. Atisha says, It is not enough that the Dharma is Mahayana. The person must be a Mahayana practitioner. It is the individual mind that makes the difference, not the practice you do, unless you are doing black magic. Then the practice can have an effect to a certain extent, even if you don’t know what you are doing. But in the spiritual field, it is the person who makes the difference. To make ourselves better people the practice has to affect us with the result of re- ducing our negative emotions. If you know how to do it you have a basis of building self-confidence. Have self-confidence rather than self-importance or feeling superior. Self-importance can lead you to the lower realms, as verse 57 tells us and the next verse continues.

VERSE 58 Stupid, ugly, feeble and everywhere disrespected. Tough people bloated by conceit Are also counted among the self-important; Tell me, what is more pathetic than this? This verse further tell you that if you fall under the influence of the negative emotions and have no self-confidence, but instead are ruled by a feeling of superiority that you will become the worst of the worst. You have to have self confidence but you don’t need to make yourself feel superior. You are good and great, but not superior. If you have the wrong kind of self-confidence this verse tells what happens. To have proper self-confidence you need the 259

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE basic information which you get through learning. Tsongkhapa himself, when asked about his biography, said, First I learned very intensively whatever I could. After that I analyzed and meditated, Understanding the essential meaning of the essence. Finally I practiced day and night and dedicated my efforts To the longevity of the Buddha’s teaching. Even the great masters began with learning, then analyzing, and finally they dedicated day and night and thus built their spiritual life. The earlier masters’ biographies are the example for us to follow today in our practice. It is not mere history. They are the role models for us to follow. First you have to learn. That does not mean that you should become a university professor or scholar. You just need to know what to do. That much information is definitely needed and is tremendously valuable. Buddha said, Learning is the light that destroys the darkness of ignorance. It is the best wealth you can have, something that thieves cannot steal. It is your best friend. No matter how down you are, this will never let you down. It is the best weapon to destroy your enemy, ignorance. It is one of the best friends. You can consult it any time to find out what to do. Without learning you can never do anything. Many people think that they can just sit there and everything will happen to them, but you can sit there till the cows come home. By simple sitting meditation you may learn how to focus. That itself of course is a good quality you need to have, but focusing alone can’t do so much. You have to focus on something that challenges your negative emotions, which create all your negative karma. If your practice cannot do that, it is not really spiritual. You can focus on the face of your boyfriend or girlfriend, but that is not going to get you anywhere, except it builds your attachment and obsession up more than you had expected. It may look spir- 260

Gelek Rimpoche itual, sound spiritual or even smell spiritual, but it is not, honestly. When it comes to learning, there is nothing better than lam rim and lo jong. Sure, there are the great Vajrayana teachings. Some people will even tell you that if you meditate in the morning you will be liberated in the evening and if you meditate in the evening you will be liberated in the morning, but this has never happened in the past and will never happen in future. It is always a gradual process, not just one little thing. Even on the Odyssey bookmark, which has only the most essential outlines of the practice, there are 64 steps. Each step is dependent on the stability of the preceding one; otherwise it will just collapse. If your mind is filled with wrong pride it will compel you to create tremendous suffering for yourself. If that suffering is considered to be learning or practice or purification it is pathetic, as verse 58 tells us. Sometimes we create a lot of difficulties for ourselves by doing wrong things. You may consider these difficulties as purification or learning experiences, but I say very often, ‘If you keep on learning like this there will never be an end.’ It is pathetic to go through these so-called learning experiences again and again, one after another. By repeating our mistakes we just make ourselves suffer. Some people hope that it is at least some kind of purification but that is pathetic, according to Shantideva. I personally know some people who refuse to take medicine. They say, ‘My stomach pain is given to me by Buddha for the purpose of purification.’ I personally think that is not that great at all. The value of the human life is so great that in a day or even in an hour you can do so much, but not when you are really sick. It is not right to think that the suffering we create through misunderstanding is some kind of purification.

VERSE 59 Whoever seizes self-confidence in order to conquer the enemy of self-importance,

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They are the self-confident ones, the victorious heroes. And in addition, whoever definitely conquers the spread of this enemy, self-importance, Completely (wins) the fruit of a Conqueror, fulfilling the wishes of the world.46 You have to use self-confidence in order to overcome self-importance. It gives you the faith in yourself that you are capable of overcoming the wrong pride in yourself. On what basis do you build your self-confidence? It is based on the knowledge of the wrong self-important superiority, how that perceives me, and what does that do to me. How can I avoid submitting to the control of self-importance? I need the confidence that I can manage this. In Tibetan, the term nga gyel is used for both self-confidence and self- importance. This can be a little confusing. In English the translators chose to make a verbal distinction. That makes it a little easier. Such self-confidence is the confidence that the Buddhas praise. They demand that everybody should have that. This can destroy self-importance. It is intelligent self-confidence versus stupid self-confidence. The stupid one has no reason, no value, just simply saying, ‘I am greater than you, because I am ME!’ In our deep mind we all carry that. This is our ego affecting us. This is ego is not the one which the psychologists talk about but the ego that everybody talks about. In my opinion it is the combination of ignorance, not knowing and fear, trying to protect the big ME, the director inside of me. The self confident person is a victorious hero for the Bud- dhas, because their mind can challenge the negative self- importance. Not only that. It can even open the door for you to become totally enlightened, to win the fruit of a conqueror. Bud- dhas praise it and demand that every Bodhisattva should have it.

VERSE 60 If I find myself amidst a crowd of disturbing conceptions I shall endure them in a thousand ways;

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Gelek Rimpoche Like a lion among foxes I will not be affected by this disturbing host. You have to remember these disturbing conceptions are what we otherwise call delusions or negative emotions. What kind of antidote do we need? Remember, we are still talking about self-confidence. What kind of self-confidence do we need? What kind of armor do we need, in case we encounter the enemy? It is impossible for us today to get away from disturbing conceptions. Earlier, in good old Tibet, all that was possible. You could remain a monk or nun. Whether the monasteries and nunneries are free of disturbing conceptions or not is a different story. The retreat areas were definitely free of them. One of my great teachers, Gen Yundung Rimpoche was a great monk and also was the priest and personal teacher for one of the wealthiest families of Tibet. This family had already supported Tsongkhapa in the late 1300s and early 1400s. They sponsored the building of the Ganden monastery and the prayer festival in Lhasa that Tsongkhapa initiated, the Mön- lam Chenmo. But Gen Yundung did not stay much in the great monasteries like Drepung. He kind of hid out in a tiny, little retreat area. He had nothing against the monastic rules and he kept all his monks’ vows, but he was not listed as one of the 10,000 Drepung monks. Later, I noticed that quite a few great practitioners withdrew their names from the big monasteries and went into small retreat areas where not so many people stayed. In these places it was possible to avoid disturbing conceptions, but I am not sure whether you could in the big monasteries. Anyway, that was good old Tibet. Today, in the 21st century, where we live now, would it be possible to avoid disturbing conceptions? No way. We cannot avoid them at all. Then how can we protect ourselves? This verse gives the answer. We are talking about obsession and hatred and so on. We find ourselves in the midst of a crowd of them. Shantideva says we should generate a thousand different ways of overcoming

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE them. The English translation says to ‘endure’ them. I don’t think that is meant in the sense of putting up with them, but rather letting them be around you without letting them bother you. Even if they bother you, you shouldn’t be disturbed or affected. It is like a lion who does not get bothered by a few foxes running around trying to threaten it. The lion remains a lion. He will just sit there and not even react. If one of those foxes really comes close the lion will hit it hard just once and that fox won’t move any more. We should treat the disturbing conceptions in the same way. If these disturbing conceptions are around you trying to get you, don’t bother with them. Don’t let them overpower you. Behave like a nice old grandfather or grandmother. Think of the elders in Native American society. They don’t bother with the kids running around, but guide them from a distance. Luckily we still have the Native American culture here as an example. Traditionally we had the same thing, but now our culture has changed so much. I don’t know whether grandfathers still behave in that way or not. Maybe we have to take care of the grandfather more so than he of us. In any case the lion is not disturbed or influenced by some little foxes or cats running around.

Like a lion among foxes. Just like that we should develop ourselves in such a way that we are not bothered by some negative emotions. It is not easy but not impossible to do that. It is like when you are addicted to alcohol and go through an AA program. You are protecting yourself. The first couple of times it is very difficult, but thereafter it becomes easier. However, if you lose it once, chances are you lose a lot. I had the opportunity to give in to them a number of times. I went through a belated teen-age rebellion against my traditional upbringing. When I was kicked out of Tibet in 1959, I lost my country and had to leave. Through that I was no longer tied to the rules of the monastery.

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Gelek Rimpoche Particularly my own personal discipline in Tibet in the monastery was extremely tight. I had attendants whose job was actually to discipline me. They would come into my room very politely, carry my robe, shake the dust out, and put it on me. In the eyes of other people it would have looked very dignified – a show of great respect. But while they put the robes on me they would also give me a big pinch and whisper, ‘Behave yourself.’ Nobody else could hear it, but I could. In order to get out of my room I had to go through another room where a teacher of mine would sit. Until I was eleven years old I never saw a white smile on that person’s face. I couldn’t get in or out without passing him. Later, that teacher went to Southern Tibet to stay with his uncle. During my escape I passed through that place and saw him there again and found that he was such a jolly fellow! I had no idea, but then I was already nineteen. When I was a young kid, even if he was not around, the attendants would put his robe up in the room in such a way that it looked like a person and I thought he was still there. I never dared to go close to see if he was really there. All this tight discipline was suddenly gone in one day in 1959 when I escaped from Tibet. Between age four and nineteen I was brought up with the strictest discipline, starting from getting up early in the morning. If I didn’t get up straight away I got beaten on the knees. I must have slept with my knees tucked in. Then, during the day everything had to happen exactly according to a tight schedule. Everything, private life and study, was completely streamlined and organized. Then all of a sudden, in one day, all that was gone. So, coming to India, I had to work it out for myself. I tried out all the things that were not allowed. I wanted to be mischievous and go against these restrictions for a while. It is human nature. It was a teen-age rebellion against tradition. I tried everything. It was the sixties. You know what that means. I became a chain smoker. Three packs of Panamas without filter didn’t last me two days.

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Then I stopped smoking in the very early eighties after smoking for thirteen years. I didn’t stop for health reasons: neither was I aware of any health issues, nor do the Indian au- thorities tell you. The reason was that I had to go to Ladakh with Drikung Kyabgon Rimpoche, the head of the Drikung Kagyu tradition. He is really in a high position now, but after escaping from Tibet he first went to America and worked for two years in Texas as a dishwasher. Later he was promoted into the salad bar. Then, the Drikung Kagyu people asked him to become the head of their school and the main monastery happens to be in Ladakh. He wanted me to accompany him. In Tibet, as a kid, he was a very good soccer player. He told me that the spectators at soccer matches would shout, ‘The lama’s leg is gold, the lama’s leg is silver.’ In Ladakh, smoking is a very lowly behavior. They will look down on you as if you are butcher or something. There- fore I decided that I had to stop. I didn’t even finish the pack- et. I stopped right then and there. I put out the cigarette that I had start started smoking and that was that. I didn’t pick up another cigarette after that. I wanted to smoke again but I told myself, ‘It is now ten minutes I have gone without smoking. I don’t want to ruin those ten minutes.’ That became twenty minutes, half an hour, one hour and so on. I kept telling myself that I didn’t want to lose the benefit of those minutes and hours in one second. Then it became a whole day, 2 days and longer and longer. I definitely didn’t want to blow the endurance I had for such a long time. Then it became weeks and months. I just didn’t want to blow it, until the habit was completely gone out of my system. In Ladakh I got some withdrawal symptoms, but it could also have been altitude sickness. I took some pills and I was fine after that. This was after thirteen years of being a chain smoker. It can be done. Then, when you completely lost the habit, after many years, if you then pick up one or two cigarettes occasionally, it doesn’t bother you. It depends on the

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Gelek Rimpoche individual. For me at least that was okay. I have smoked one here and there in recent years. The same thing happened to me with drinking. I drank like hell for quite a while. I had a friend, Gedun Gelek. He and I and another guy used to buy twenty-four double sized bottles of Indian beer every day and we finished them quickly and drank whiskey and brandy afterwards. But also this drinking I stopped. The key for me is that you have to want to stop once and for all and not ever drink or smoke again. Then it may be itch- ing and twisting your body but you have to keep telling yourself ‘No.’ You have to be strong at that time. Chew gum; that is very helpful. Then eventually it doesn’t bother you anymore. When I was in Ladakh and went to the market I saw some low class Ladakhis smoking and got that itch in my nose, but I didn’t let it bother me. Actually, even in Ladakh, the habit of taking snuff is very widespread. It is not that different from smoking, but I didn’t want to give myself the excuse to switch from smoking to taking snuff. I cut it and that was it once and for all. After a while you don’t like even the smell of tobacco. You don’t want to be around people who smoke. Some people may like it but really it is a terrible smell. That is what it means to be like a lion among foxes, as well as rabbits and all kinds of other creatures. This is how you protect yourself from hatred, obsessions and so on. Most of our sufferings come from hatred and obsession, particularly obsession. Everybody has that. I have seen so many of my friends here go through these problems day after day and most of them come down to obsession. Our country now is going down every day with the suffering generated by hatred. All you hear is the word ‘terrorist’. Yes, it is true. Some terrorists did attack us in September 2001, but still we are talking about nothing else. Of course there are terrorists, but the more you talk about that the more you make it happen. We are practically calling for terrorists.

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Particularly the way we try to protect ourselves by attack- ing other countries is just making ourselves more enemies. We all agree now that what goes on in Iraq today is terrible, including G.W. Bush and Rumsfeld. Individually we mainly suffer from obsession, collectively we suffer from hatred. Obsession is our daily problem. ‘I like her, but she won’t talk to me. When she talks, she talks too much and I can’t stand listening to her,’ and so on. How many times do people go through that kind of pain and suffering? The girls have the same problem with the boys. It is the same thing wherever you look. Lion-like wisdom. If you don’t want that pain, you have to behave like a lion. Look at obsession and hatred like foxes that can’t bother you. Even when these little animals directly attack a lion they can’t hurt him. His majestic power will definitely get the better of them. What we need is lion-like wisdom that understands what reality is. Wisdom it is not about finding something new, but seeing the reality, the truth, that is always there. We are only recover- ing or re-discovering it. We call it emptiness, which is the lack of a self. Again, it is not negating something which we have but something that we have never had. It has never existed. Recognizing that is the negation. It is not discovering something which was there and which we have overlooked and throwing that out. It is purely the understanding that what is not there is in fact not there. This wisdom has the majestic power of the lion among the foxes and rabbits and actually, mostly monkeys. You become wiser. You know how to handle your negative emotions better than before. You are not going to run away. You can’t run away from them in the 21st century. Wherever we go, the negative emotions are there. Even if you sit all by yourself in your own room, between your four walls, with the door and windows shut, with the electricity turned off, even then you will be visited by all your negative emotions one after another, perhaps even more than usual. You will begin to recognize

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Gelek Rimpoche them more. The only way to protect yourself is with the method that this verse has pointed out.

VERSE 61 Just as men will guard their eyes When great danger and turmoil occur, Likewise I shall never be swayed by the disturbances within my mind, Even at times of great strife. When great danger and turmoil occur, like threats, challenges and insults by others, no matter how much difficulty you are put through, you should protect yourself like human beings protect their own eyeballs. No matter whatever happens, whatever challenge or strife may arise, we should not be swayed, but be strong, stubborn and consistent. This is the place where you should be very stubborn. We do it the other way round. We are stubborn when it is not helpful and weak when we should be stubborn.

VERSES 62 It would be better for me to be burned, To have my head cut off and to be killed, Rather than ever bowing down to those ever-present disturbing conceptions. (So likewise in all situations I should do nothing other than what is fit.) I am not sure when this verse was added, but some Tibetan editions include it. It is not in the original Sanskrit version.

Emphasizing the point. We are talking about self-confidence, and while verse 62 does not add anything new, it makes the point and puts a strong emphasis on the need for the stable power of enthusiasm. It is a very strong will power that will not let you go back on your commitment, that pushes you to complete whatever you have committed to. Whatever commit-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE ment you have made, until the work has been completed, you should not be wandering around, but be totally focused. Oth- erwise you may lose your total goal. One should have the willingness to complete one’s commitment. You have to say to yourself, ‘I am going to complete my work! I am going to finish it!’ You need this mind. Our commitment is to enlightenment, to getting free of all negativities, to the accumulation of all merit. These are strong, heavy commitments, not so easy to fulfill. It is going to take time. For some people it is going to take whole lifetimes. Therefore we need a very strong commitment. When we change lives we go through many transitions, not only the transition from life to life but in the new life you have to through adolescence and youth and so on. In all these transitions there is a very real possibility that we could lose our commitment. Therefore, once you have a commitment, have a very strong and stable mind, determined not to give up. That needs to be understood.

This is what you should do with any virtuous work you take on. You should also be willing to do that work all by yourself. Basically you have to train yourself, become confident that any virtuous, positive work, with or without help, to be able to do this work by yourself, without depending on anyone else. That is the kind of mind you need to establish within yourself.

Relying on our own efforts. If you think carefully, how does spiritual development work within the individual? It is very private and personal. If you get enlightened that means you and not everybody else. If someone gets spiritual development then that individual gets it and not everybody else. Milarepa did say: The lama-meditator practicing on the mountain top And the benefactor working in the plateau Have great omens to become enlightened together.

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Gelek Rimpoche However, these are omens only, not a guarantee or a commitment. Enlightenment or even a single step of development is very personal and private. When we work for that aim it is a personal, individual process. Yes, collective things are wonderful, but the process is individual. That’s why we need self- confidence and commitment. The result is very private and so the causal level is also very private. Whatever you do by yourself, in a way also affects others, no doubt, but still it is private work all the same. One should not have the mind that one should depend on anybody else. When you are dependent you are dependent. For example, I go to New York frequently. I used to wait for Kathy to bring me to the airport and also to help me pack. I became dependent on that. I did not even start packing until Kathy came in. Then a number of times she was delayed and came just in time to take me to the airport and I had to say, ‘Well, I have not packed a thing.’ When I noticed that I changed. When you depend on others to pack your phone, medicine, palm pilot and everything else, you are the one who will suffer when you haven’t got those things and you have to ask somebody to send them after you by FedEx. Any positive virtue that you want you should work for by yourself, without depending on somebody else. It is like our daily commitments. We don’t depend on somebody else to do our meditation practice. In the morning, the moment you open your eyes, you start saying your practice. Or perhaps you say it when you are in the shower or in bed or wherever, but if you depend on somebody else you have to wait until that person shows up and makes you move. We are in the habit of depending on somebody else. It is very easy to stick with that habit. Normally we become dependent because we cannot function independently. That is the reality. Becoming dependent is like a bad habit or addiction. In the West people are active. But in Tibet, especially the elder lamas will not move at all. They are in the bad habit of sitting on one cushion and only their fingers and lips move. You get very dependent that way. You sit there and if want

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE some little thing from over there it won’t come, until somebody gets up and gets it. When you get like that and nobody is around to do it for you, you end up doing less. You may not get up and look for that book you want to read. You probably let it go. You give up. That is how laziness influences us, especially if you become a couch potato like me.

Three levels of self-confidence. The self-confidence of doing things by oneself is very important. Easy or difficult, we can’t depend on anybody else. You have to think, ‘I will not hope for anybody helping me. I won’t look for anybody. I will do it by myself!’ That is the first level of self-confidence one needs. Then, when you have to cut the addiction to negativity, your compassion for yourself will help to cut the negativities and negative emotions. To build the capacity to help others you need the strong power of compassion. It will cut the narrow, self-interested ideas. So on top of the first self- confidence you need an additional thought, ‘If I don’t do it, who else will do it? If I don’t help myself, nobody else will. I should do this for myself, because I care for myself. Then I should do it for others, because I care for him and her.’ The power of compassion has to be added. Then there is a third level. While I am working, I will make sure that the harm that comes from the negative emotions and addictions that they will never be able to influence me. I will control and overpower them completely. I can do that and I will do it. So there are these three layers: 1. Not depending on anybody. 2. Generating compassion for self and others. 3. The big commitment not to submit to negative emotions. This is very strong self-confidence. You have to grow that within yourself. You have to give yourself a pep talk, lift your spirit up. You may notice that your self-esteem goes down when you lose it and fall back into some negative addiction. That doesn’t matter. You lost it. So what? That has happened to us zillions of times, so if you lost it once more, so what? No big

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Gelek Rimpoche deal. Some people will cry. There is nothing to cry about. It is wonderful. You noticed that you lost it. You never noticed in the past. Now you begin to become aware of your actions. You can even cry. That itself is beautiful. You have to acknowledge that.

Never give up! When you have lost it, again, don’t underestimate yourself. If the negative addictions could be overcome by just learning about it once, we would all be Buddhas already. You may lose it 300 times a day, but you have to make sure that you get up 300 times a day, too. It is just like being thrown off a horse. You have to make sure you get up on the horse straightaway, otherwise you will be very afraid of riding in the future. Get up and try again! Even the negativities have one quality: you can bounce back from them. When you fall on the ground, you use the ground to get up again. Let’s say you learned about anger and you try not to get angry. You lose it and do get angry. Then on the very basis of realizing that you got angry, you rise up from that anger, above the anger. You say to yourself, ‘Oh my God, I lost it. I am so embarrassed.’ With that, you get up. Don’t sink yourself and don’t say to yourself that you are terrible and hopeless. If you do that, you go further down, deeper into the ditch and then you can’t get out. Allen Ginsberg used to quote Blake: He who kisses the joy as it flies Will be in eternity’s sunrise. The idea is to acknowledge and let go. If you don’t get up quickly, it gets harder. Pull yourself up. Never give up! If you keep on slipping further under the blankets, more and more, then you are going to sink. That’s the key, whether you allow yourself to suffer from depression or whether you are willing to help yourself, saying to yourself, ‘You slipped, now get up!’ If you fall that is itself a sign that you had come up a little bit before. If you are not up, you can’t fall, so it is great. Just get up again.

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When I became a layperson it was quite difficult. I was in hiding and felt embarrassed. Everybody said, ‘Oh oh oh.’ I had a cousin who was a very well known disciplinary monk, not a qualified teacher, but more like a political officer in Drepung monastery. When I saw him, I thought he would certainly hit the ceiling, but he didn’t. He said, ‘Oh yes, I have heard about you disrobing. Some people may criticize, but think like that: when the walls and pillars fall it means that they were up before, otherwise they couldn’t fall. So you should be proud that you had that status rather than feeling bad for falling from it.’

Don’t be too hard on yourself. It is true. First you have to come up and begin to do something worthwhile. Then you notice that you are falling from that level. You had some purity from which you fell. The trick is to get up again quickly. Pulling yourself out of sadness and sorrow is very important. Don’t be too hard on yourself. It is not your fault. It is nobody’s fault. This is samsara and it necessarily is suffering. Buddha could have said, ‘Samsara is a picnic spot,’ but he didn’t. He said that it is suffering. This is our life and it happens, so focus on the positive fact that you had managed to do something good and find the energy to get back up there. Also, just realizing that you have an addiction and wanting to get out of it is a great thing. When you are deeply caught in the addiction you won’t admit it at all. You will be in denial. If you have a drinking problem you will say, ‘Well, I just drink a couple of six packs a day, but I am not an alcoholic.’ Some people will even say, ‘I only drink for medicinal purposes.’ If you are a Tibetan Buddhist you might say, ‘I don’t drink, I just take the inner offering!’ So if you are not denying your problem and you wish that you could get out of it, that is a great thing and to be admired. There is nothing to be sad and get depressed about. Don’t give up. That is self confidence. Keep on fighting. As long as you don’t give up, you can keep on fighting. Even if you die in between, you continue in your future life. That way you will

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Gelek Rimpoche be perfect one day. Don’t let the negativities affect you, don’t bow down to them, but instead overpower them. You can do it. You know why? Because the negativities are faulty and you have powerful antidotes. Truth prevails in the end, because it is faultless and pure. Anything that is not true will collapse sooner or later, because it is faulty. All faulty things have powerful antidotes. The negativities are by their nature faulty and unreliable. They will lose. They are just cheating us if we let them. Nagarjuna says that you have to have stable enthusiasm and powerful compassion. This is the self-confidence we are talking about. The next verse, verse 63, says that when kids enjoy their game it is difficult to take them away from playing. They keep on playing continuously. Just like that, when you do positive work, you should enjoy it and if anybody is trying to take you away from that, don’t go. Just say, ‘Shut up, don’t bother me!’

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Student: I have tried to quit smoking three times during my life. Each time, after a few years I thought that one cigarette couldn’t harm me, but I got hooked back on them really bad. Then I couldn’t even quit at all. Then one night, feeling desperate because my health started to fail by then I prayed for help. When I woke up the next morning I realized that I had been lying to myself, telling myself that smoking was not harmful. From that day on I never smoked again and never even felt withdrawal symptoms. I could only do it with the help of prayer. Rimpoche: Well, you just about could have done it by yourself. It is good if you can get help. That is wonderful. But in essence, you did help yourself by not telling yourself any more that it wasn’t harmful.

Student: Should we not look at mistakes as necessary steps to enlightenment, using them as tools to move to enlightenment faster?

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Rimpoche: Good point. But the truth is that we make mistakes because we lack wisdom. Then some people say, ‘Making mistakes is a good learning experience.’ I have a problem with that. How many times are you going to learn? When people tell me that they see making mistakes as learning experiences I am almost tempted to tell them, ‘Very good. If it helps you, do it again and take all the time you want and enjoy yourself.’ I can’t really say that to people, but I feel like it. I can’t say that making mistakes can never be a learning experience, but for it to be a real learning experience you have to actually learn something and if you do learn you won’t repeat it. I don’t think that making mistakes gets you to enlightenment faster. It just lets you know what you shouldn’t do. Student: If you are motivated from the start to learn from your mistakes and not to repeat them, does that make it different? Rimpoche: The motivation always makes a difference. The very fact whether it is virtue or non-virtue can change through motivation. It is such a powerful thing. Positive motivation is always helpful. But still, if you have a learning experience and you never learn, that is not right. Any time you catch yourself repeating the same mistake, say to yourself, ‘That’s fine, but I won’t repeat it another time.’

Student: You said we have to do it all by yourself, so then what is the function of a teacher? Rimpoche: Teachers give you the information. You have to first properly learn the information and then apply it. Finally you have to collect the fruit of the work. That is the individual’s responsibility. You can get help from many sources, but nobody can do the work for you. It is only you who can do it.

Student: When you take the information about self-confidence and not getting depressed and so on without the background of compassion and wisdom it sounds similar to many things Tony Robbins would say. But these people still treat the person as something finite and self-existent. How do you make

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Gelek Rimpoche the transition from just generating positive karma to do it with the understanding of interdependent existence in mind? Rimpoche: True. Here we are talking about the activities of Bo- dhisattvas. The moment you talk about Bodhisattvas you talk about bodhimind, the mind that is committed to helping everybody else. It is a very big deal. But we also have to talk about self-confidence. At our stage you can overdo the talk of doing everything for the benefit of all beings. Some people go so far as saying, ‘I am doing it for the benefit of everybody else, but not for me.’ The transition that you have mentioned is not something you can decide on. You are not doing anything different. The transition will happen by itself. It is like an automatic pilot. The important thing is to define your destination. You have already punched the course into your spiritual GPS road guidance system. The system gives you three options: long route, short route and very short route. The last one is using only highways. Once you have punched the destination and the option you want, the system will tell you to turn right here, left there and so on, so the process goes by itself. You don’t decide to transit. If you try doing that you will get into trouble. You just do your thing according to the system and then the transitions will take place. You can’t just say for example, ‘Now I have done the guru devotional practice for some time. Enough. I am going to move to the next topic.’ You just keep doing the practice which is outlined for example in the Foundation of Per- fections and every transition will take place because of that. You don’t decide when the transition will come. You decide on the goal and the course, whether you want to take 3 eons, a couple of life times or less. If you punch 15 minutes in, the system will tell you, ‘Take I 94.’ So if you say, ‘I want to progress to ultimate enlightenment as quickly as possible,’ the answer will come, ‘Vajrayana.’ So then you click on Vajrayana and the system tells you, ‘Mahayana first.’ You click on that and the answer comes up, ‘Self-compassion first.’ That is how the transitions work. If you try to tell the system

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Student: Can’t our experiences not be stepping stones on the path and therefore be genuine learning experiences. Couldn’t you justify making mistakes with that reasoning? Rimpoche: You just said it yourself. This would be trying to justify making mistakes over and again. Why do you have to repeat again and again? Student: If we continue making the same mistakes, perhaps we fall less deeply each time? Rimpoche: If you go on repeating, that would prove that you haven’t really learned. It might not have been a learning experience at all, but just an excuse for wanting to continue doing the wrong things. When you recognize a mistake you should say, ‘Well that was a good learning experience. Let me not repeat it. I really want to learn this once and for all.’ We have to get over the habit of justifying and excusing. In Tibetan there is the saying, ‘Even the son who killed his father will have some justification.’ We have seen it on TV. There were two kids recently who killed both their parents and they gave a lot of reasons.

VERSE 63: JOY Just like those who yearn for the fruits of play, (Bodhisattvas) are attracted To whatever task they may do: They never have enough, it only brings them joy. We have been talking about self-confidence. We should not only have self-confidence in our activities, but also have the force of joy. This joy should be like the joy of playing children. Kids that play yearn for it and don’t want to stop. We need that kind of motivation or interest. Likewise, it is very hard to pull gambling addicts away from the poker machines. I went to the Detroit casino once

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Gelek Rimpoche and saw people with buckets full of quarters going from machine to machine without stopping. They would gain a little and lose a little, try to gain more and go on. They are addicted to the joy of winning and no matter how much they lose, they have to keep playing. You can’t stop gamblers from playing. They enjoy it too much. They are looking for the big win and won’t stop playing all night in the casinos. On the good side, the joy of the Bodhisattvas should also be like that. Just like that we should be addicted to the joyful results or fruits of good work, as well as to the activities that cause that joy. You have to forcefully get people out of the casinos, drag them out, while they keep begging, ‘Let me just finish this game.’ Like that, we should get ourselves addicted to positive work. That addiction helps you continue your work. Especially, when you are winning you don’t want to stop, but keep running. And as a matter of fact, we are winning on the spiritual path. We are already purifying and laying the causes for joy in the future. We just don’t realize the result. We have no immediate measurement of the success of spiritual practice. It is not like the blood sugar readers, where you poke yourself in the finger and within seconds can read your blood sugar. You can check your blood pressure in the same way, but you can’t check your spiritual development like that. As a result we often lack encouragement to continue. Right at this moment we don’t have the incentive. We may think that after practicing year after year nothing is happening, but in reality we are winning. We already realize what is good for us and others to do and what is not. We are much better than we used to. We just can’t see immediate results: the lights don’t go crazy and the quarters don’t come spurting out of the machine. We need to remind ourselves of the long term benefit to gain and maintain our self- confidence. Spiritual practice is not there to improve your looks tomorrow: it is not make-up. It takes time and constant effort. Therefore encouragement is needed. Actually, we are at

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE the point where the lights go crazy, the wheels are spinning and the quarters are coming out, but we are not aware of it. It is important, while you are in this phase not to cut off your practice. Especially, Bodhisattvas who work for themselves and others in the future, should definitely not interrupt their work

What is our spiritual work? What is your work? We keep on saying that we have got to do something. Like an addicted person who cannot give up playing, a Bodhisattva should not give up the good work. Two things are needed for that: lo pa tö sam and po wa sam ten47. The first, lo pa tö sam, is learning, reading and analyzing. The second, po wa sam ten is, while you are learning you have to avoid negativities and focus and be creative. We have a lot of artists in Jewel Heart, so we all know what creativity is. However here we are not talking about external art, but about creating internal art. This means internal meditation. In the Midwest, mostly when you start talking about meditation, people get the idea that it is focusing and sitting still. People on the east and west coast don’t think that now, but understand that it is more than that. A few days ago I spoke to 500 people in St. Bartholomew Church in Manhattan. One reason why so many people came was the catchy title, ‘What to do after meditation. ‘ I am not that well-known in New York. I only teach at Jewel Heart for between 100 and 200 people, so these people have a better idea that meditation is more than just sitting down. Even scientists are now saying that the brain activities change during different kinds of meditation. Reading, learning and analyzing give you the working material to be able to engage in the art of internal meditation. You first listen, learn and analyze. Then, finally, you draw a conclusion and focus on that result, which will direct your attention in the whole way how you function. That becomes practice in every life situation.

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Gelek Rimpoche Again, normally people think that spiritual practice means to learn, study and meditate on your cushion, but actually, practice is much more than that. It means making changes in your attitudes towards your emotions and activities and doing the right thing in your daily life. Yes, doing sitting meditation and your sadhanas, is also practice. Even putting on a dress and checking if it fits, is some kind of practice. But more or less, here it means making a difference to your life. Taking the example of bodhimind, first you have to learn and analyze it, then you start putting it into practice. You have to know how to maintain it and increase it. We are spending so much time reading the Bodhisattvacharyavatara to find out how to do that. Don’t think it is a matter of just reading this and then forgetting about it. It is not like reading a novel. You should try to keep up whatever we have learned and review it. Likewise you should preview what is going to be studied next time and compare that with what you have learned already. Review and think about it. That will change your way of thinking and functioning. You can’t sit down and instantly expect change. You learn, analyze, preview, review and meditate. That itself will influence you. You may not even realize it at the time, but that is how people change. That way you get better results and your spiritual level gets uplifted. That is what this particular verse tells us. The last sentence of verse 63 says, They never have enough, it only brings them joy. Whoever practices in this way will receive joy. You should get addicted to these activities: they are good addictions. Every desire is not necessarily bad. Every Bodhi- sattva is longing for Buddhahood, and that is desire, definitely. At the MIT conference, Alan Wallace said, ‘In Sangye Samdrup’s (George Dreyfus) description of the 51 mental factors, fear is obviously missing because it is not a negativity.’ I laughed. Later in Garrison I told him, ‘That reasoning was in- correct. The 11 virtuous minds are also in the 51 mental factors, but they are virtuous and according to you then should also not be included.’ He replied, ‘Okay, either virtue or non- virtue then.’ Then I said, ‘And what about sleep? That is neu-

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE tral, neither virtue nor non-virtue.’ So, desire also is not necessarily a virtue or a non-virtue. It can be either. If you have the desire to cheat, then that becomes non-virtue. If you have the desire to help it becomes virtue. Every addiction is not necessarily bad either. Normally addiction is a negative term, but there are some good addictions.

Taking joy in both cause and result. Verse 63 also says that we should not only work for joyful results or fruits but apply joy at the causal level, during whatever task we may do. In other words, we should be very happy and joyful to develop the causes of joy. How can you encourage yourself to have such a joy? It takes willingness and will-power. Actually it is will-power and enthusiasm. Both make it strong. It is true. We all have so many difficulties trying to do what we have to do. When you constantly have to do something it becomes particularly hard. If it is a short-term activity, lasting a couple of hours or even weeks, we can get excited and willing to participate, but when it goes on day in and day out, year in and year out, laziness creeps in and overtakes all our efforts. We lose steam, we lose force. That is why here we learn that we should develop the enthusiasm of an addicted person who just likes to continue playing as well as joy. Without joy we won’t make it over the long term. We may have done meditation on love and compassion for years and by then these extraordinary practices become our daily food. You need your daily food, otherwise you get weak and your sugar level goes down and you start shak- ing, but eating your daily ration is not that exciting any more. We are spoiled. The practice we are doing is actually very profound, but when we do this every day it becomes very ordinary, nothing special. If you compare it with someone else who doesn’t have this practice you realize how wonderful it is. For us it is everyday stuff. Naturally we lose the enthusiasm. Some people even lose steam. It is not so easy to maintain it. Why don’t we appreciate our practice? Because we have it available everywhere and it seems like nothing special any

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Gelek Rimpoche more. If we have compassion for ourselves and compassion for others, then the compassion will make it more forceful. The will-power and willingness will help a lot.

Don’t use brute force. Remember, this is not some brutish kind of will power, just forcing your way through. No, this will power is based on commitment, understanding, appreciation and caring and love. This makes your will power strong and this will bring on joy in our positive activities. Otherwise laziness will overtake us very easily. Laziness will become routine, very difficult to break. It will become another addiction. Even if you try to change it once, it will quickly revert back to the pattern. Addiction to laziness makes us lose joy and with that we lose steam. When you don’t have steam your engine won’t run. It is not only self-confidence, but you also need joy. People get excited thinking about a good result, but you need the excitement at the causal level as well.

The importance of learning. If you don’t learn, you can’t do anything. The more you learn the better you are. Enlightenment is total knowledge. It is funny. Many of you have some kind of aversion to learning. You would like to be good spiritual practitioners, but without learning. People are happy to clap in agreement when somebody says that. To me that is like saying, ‘I don’t care if I have legs or not, but I have to run very fast. That is good enough for me.’ How can you run fast without legs? How do you know what to do if you don’t learn? That is why we have so many problems with people going in a wrong direction. There are all these people who claim, ‘I have seen emptiness, I am enlightened,’ and so on. All that is totally bull---…Don’t let me spell it out.

Geshe Tashi Namgyel’s famous debate. My previous incarnation Geshe Tashi Namgyal once debated a well-known scholar called Lhundrup Tsondru, the teacher of Geshe Sopa’s teacher, at the Dalai Lama’s summer palace. Tashi Namgyal was young and short. The other geshe was tall, and older, with some gray hair. He said, ‘I thought Losseling would stand a 283

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE famous, outstanding geshe to debate me, but they are sending this little kid against me.’ Tashi Namgyal just laughed. Then Lhundrup Tsondru challenged him further, ‘If I say to you that I am a Buddha, what are you going to say? You can say nothing to contradict me.’ Again Tashi Namgyal just smiled. The other geshe said, ‘See, you can say nothing. Even if I claim to be a Buddha you have nothing to say. You just smile, but that is not enough. If you can’t say anything in reply you have to get up and do three prostrations, touch my feet and promise to remain under my feet from now on.’ Then Tashi Namgyal said, ‘No, you are not Buddha. You have a huge black mole on your face.’ Lhundrup Tsondru said, ‘What does that mean? You just see that because of your impure mind. In reality I am a pure Buddha.’ Tashi Namgyal said, ‘First of all, Maitreya Buddha never said that Buddha has a black mole on his face. Secondly, if my vision is impure, then the vision of all the people in this hall, including the 13th Dalai Lama, is also deluded. Either they see something that is not there, or else they must be blind because they don’t see your mole.’ Then Lhundrup Tsondru couldn’t say anything. That was a debate. Lhundrup Tsondru just assumed that claim for the sake of debating it, to see if the other guy could refute that statement. But here in the West, some people just say they are Buddha, without any basis. And everybody will keep quiet. Nobody will say, ‘No, you are not,’ because people don’t have the understanding or enough education to make an informed judgment.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Anybody can come and claim, ‘I am Maitreya, I am Padmasambhava,’ and so on. All that is ho- cus pocus. Especially you should know that anyone who has real development won’t make such claims anyway. They become more humble. In Tsongkhapa’s order in particular, the more you develop, the more humility you have. You don’t claim anything, but yet you have the signs of development.

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Gelek Rimpoche That is why Dharmakirti said, When you have smoke you know there is fire. When you see water birds flying in the air, you know that there is water nearby. Likewise, you begin to see the signs of development of a bodhisattva, without them having to claim anything. They actually become more humble. That guy who was the debate part- ner of my previous incarnation and debated that he was a Buddha, became the Ganden Tripa, the chairman of the Ge- lugpa tradition when I was a young kid. Every morning, during the prayer, he used to bring a little piece of rock sugar for me. He was sitting on the throne and handed it to me. So that was Lhundrup Tsondru, the teacher of Geshe Sopa’s teacher, who was Lhundrup Tabkye, while Geshe Sopa’s full name is Lhundrup Sopa. These are the three Lhundrups. When you see smoke, you know there is fire nearby. Like- wise, a Bodhisattva’s way of functioning will indicate his development. None of them will go round and say, ‘I am a developed person.’ If someone does that it means that person is questionable. It is something else if you say about somebody else that they have spiritual development. For example, the former Ganden Tripa who visited here, Lobsang Nyima, was already quite senior in Tibet, but became a geshe in India. Last time in January, in Dharamsala, His Holiness told me a little incident that happened during his own geshe examination. Ling Rim- poche was also present. Lobsang Nyima took the role of questioner in the examination debate and the subject was supposed to be the prajnaparamita, but instead he asked a question from uma. The Dalai Lama noticed and told him straight away, ‘That question is from the wrong subject.’ Lobsang Nyima said, ‘Oh, is that right?’ and switched, and, without a second of thinking, came up with a question from prajnaparamita. Then His Holiness thought, ‘Oh my God, this guy is so learned he can switch his thinking in a second. He didn’t have to organize his thoughts at all. He had everything

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE right there, on his fingertips.’ Now he has become Ganden Tripa so quickly. It is good to hear from others, ‘Hey, this guy is not bad.’ In Tibet no one would say anyone was great. First they would say, ‘Oh, he is not bad.’ That alone is an indication that this person may be good. It is a judgment by the peers. If they say, ‘He is good,’ that means he is really good. The normal response would be not to comment, but if you say, ‘He is not bad,’ it is an endorsement already. That is because there were so many learned people in Tibet. Now of course, since 1959, the situation has degenerated. Without learning you can’t tell who is good. You can’t differentiate between good and bad. The individual student who is putting in so much effort and energy can be easily misled. It happens. That is why learning and analyzing are so important. The geshes were given so much privilege and acknowledgment in Tibet because of their learning, not just because of being senior. That was the monasteries.

The first activity of a Bodhisattva. Even in our situation, you must have a working knowledge of what you are doing. It is great if you can have information from this tradition and that tradition. That is the icing on the cake. But to start with, you need a cake! You have to have your own fundamental principles intact. Otherwise, to have the icing without the cake would be like licking cream only. Therefore learning and analyzing is the first activity of the Bodhisattva. The Dalai Lama, in his teaching in New York was talking about the philosophical views on emptiness of the non- Buddhist schools, followed by the views of the four Buddhist schools. It took four days just to go through the non-Budd- hist theories alone. That is lo pa tö sam. Remember, tö means hearing, but it includes taking it in and understanding what’s been said. Then sam means going over the material you have listened. In other words, the teaching is over, the prayers have been done and you go home, but thereafter you have to think about that ma-

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Gelek Rimpoche terial. Otherwise it is like the doctor giving you a prescription for medicine but you pay no attention and make no use of the prescription other than for toilet paper and flushing it out. That doesn’t do any good. The $75 consultation fee has been flushed down the toilet. Just like that, you take the medicine and use it. If it helps you, continue to take it, if not, change it. That is what you have got to do. In this regard, the meetings we are having here are not prayer sessions. It may look like that, because we have tangkas and images and cushions and I am sitting on this thing here that looks like a throne, although I am only using one cushion. I just have to sit a little higher, so I can see everybody and everybody can see me. After the teachings here, however, the analyzing is your job. In the West we are organize courses and classes now which carry the function of analyzing and learning. That is useful. In Tibet we didn’t do that. You have to do it, whether you meditate by yourself, or whether you get into a group and debate with others. It is your choice. No one will force you. It is not compulsory. But in Tibet and in the monasteries in In- dia there are hundreds and even thousands doing the debating even in the middle of the night. That is also analyzing. Here we give group discussions and courses. The courses are more or less on the analyzing level, rather than teaching. I hope that is the case. If you think that I am not a good enough teacher, then you can teach! I am just kidding. Yes, you have to have a teacher there, who organizes the class and makes sure that everybody stays on the subject rather than talking about anything under the sun. For questions dealing with your practice, whether they are directly related with your practice or whether something else is bothering you, you can consult with your group leaders and teachers, either privately or collectively. Remember that although your questions may be of a personal nature, it may be very helpful for others as well to share that.

Apply what you learn in your life. Group discussions contain all three, hearing, learning and analyzing. Then you have to do po

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE wa sam ten. This is what you really have to do by yourself. No one can help you with that. It means applying what you have learned and analyzed in your life. Your life should function in accordance with this. Reading, saying prayers and so on are not the real practice. They are also practice, but mainly it is how you think and function. For example, you have been convinced that killing is bad, so when you go out you are not willing to kill any insects. Walking on the road you are careful and step out of the way a little bit. If you see a bigger creature moving, you are happy to pick it up and put it under a tree, where no one can step on it. These are changes that have taken place in you because of what you learned and thought about. If you see kids unneces- sarily killing insects or if you witness somebody abusing another person you would probably intervene. That is practice. Sitting in a shrine room, closing your eyes and banging a gong is not necessarily a great practice. It is nice and quiet and you are retreating from the multiple activities of the day, trying to become a little gentle and quiet. That can help with the transition from states of mind that are absolutely polluted with worry and anxiety into a relaxed, positive thinking frame of mind. But in essence po wa sam ten means giving up wrong doing, refraining from harmful actions. I don’t mind if you throw a clay bird in the air and shoot that. It does not matter how much you shoot at that, but shooting real birds is really unkind. Transiting away from that is your real spiritual work. That is where your spiritual development takes place. The signs of your spiritual development will naturally become apparent to the outside world. When you are not hurting anybody, you are refraining from harmful actions. Other than that I don’t know what the definition of ‘harmful’ could be. Even taking some medicines that you have to take but which have side effects could be considered harmful. These things are hard to judge. You can never tell. But hurting people is definitely harmful. At the sam ten level you concentrate on that. That change improves the quality of the individual. This will improve your

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Gelek Rimpoche mental level, your understanding. Otherwise spiritual development won’t give you wings so that you can fly. Even if you could, people would then accuse you of being a witch! Bodhisattvas are not only happy to engage in those activities, but should never be satisfied, but always wanting more. When I was a kid I always wanted more sweets. I had a piece of rock sugar inside my left cheek and another one inside my right cheek and still I wanted more. I slept with rock sugar in my mouth and in the morning all my blankets would be stuck together and had to be pulled apart. Like that, you shouldn’t be satisfied with a few positive activities but always go for more. That is what this verse 63 is telling us.

VERSE 64 Although people work in order to be happy, It is uncertain whether or not they will find it; But how can those whose work itself is joy Find happiness unless they do it? This gives you the reason why you should have joy for the result as well as for the cause. In the world, people engage in all kinds of activities, working hard in order to be happy, and to make a living, but you can’t be certain whether you can achieve your aim. When you are working for money you can’t be sure whether you are going to make money or lose it. This is especially true for people who are dealing with the stock market. Today the shares are up, tomorrow they are down. Day after tomorrow, who knows? Whether you make it or not, you will still do whatever it takes. You say ‘It’s my job.’ You don’t hesitate, you don’t regret, you go all out to do it, even though it is uncertain whether or not you will achieve it. If you are a Bodhisattva, it is different. Your activities are guaranteed to have the benefits of great spiritual development. It is guaranteed, beyond doubt, so why do you hesitate? This is talking about the causal level. Not only do you generate joy for the result level but also for the causal level.

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Therefore the conclusion of these two verses is this: Like the addicted person who is playing all the time and is never satisfied, like the sugar-addicted person who has two pieces of rock sugar in the mouth 24 hours a day plus three pieces in his pocket, Bodhisattvas should be happy to engage in learning and analyzing as well in practicing and concentrating and meditating. The next verse talks more about why you should never be satisfied with good work.

VERSE 65 If I feel that I never have enough sensual objects, Which are like honey smeared upon a razor edge, Then why should I ever feel that I have enough Merit which ripens in happiness and peace? This is simple. If you are addicted to honey, you won’t mind licking it from the razor’s edge, no matter how great the danger of cutting your tongue. We will put all our efforts in to getting the honey off the razor blade. We take such great risks for such little pleasure in sensual objects. We can put so much effort into ordinary work, which can only give us very limited pleasure for a very short time. On top of that we may get terrible long term consequences. Attachment does that to us. If you are a Bodhisattva the result of total enlightenment is guaranteed through your own efforts, your own merit. Why should you hesitate? Why even think twice about what needs to be done? As Bodhisattvas we are working for the ultimate enlightenment level, for the end of all suffering, including the causes of sufferings, for absolute peace, happiness and liberation. This is guaranteed by creating merit, which is nothing but our positive works. So why should we be satisfied with a tiny, little positive work and hesitate all the time to engage in more? We should not. The next verse says that not only should you not be satisfied with a little positive work but you should also be able to complete what you begin.

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VERSE 66 Thus in order to complete this task I shall venture into it Just as an elephant tormented by the midday sun Plunges into a (cool, refreshing) lake. The heat in India is tremendous, up to 110 F or more. At midday, the sun is so burning hot that the elephants get really thirsty and overheated. Imagine such an elephant suddenly coming across a beautiful lake with lotuses floating on it and a cool breeze blowing. The elephant will not hesitate to jump into that lake, drink the water and take a good bath. Just like that we should engage in our positive activity because it is beautiful. The result is beautiful, and the work itself is pure, like a pure lake. It has many benefits, like flowers blos- soming on the lake. We should not hesitate to engage in such activities. Verses 63 through 66 have been about the force of joy. Thus you not only have self-confidence, but a confidence joined with forceful joy. The joy should be brought through your mind. It should look into the future, what you are going to get from it. It should look into the present work, what quality it has, how pure it is. You should also look at the other side, at negative activities and check what qualities that has, what the consequences will be. From the cause point of view and the result point of view we should engage in good actions without hesitation, until the work is complete.

VERSE 67: DETERMINATION OR REST When my strength declines, I should leave whatever I am doing In order to be able to continue with it later. Having done something well, I should put it aside With the wish (to accomplish) what will follow.

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While you are meditating, working hard, trying to develop huge amounts of merit, your physical strength and mental capability could lessen: your strength could decline. This is different from burnout. Burnout is partly physical, but mainly emotional, an emotionally triggered unwillingness to continue with efforts we have begun. In my opinion this kind of burnout is laziness rather than actual exhaustion or an obstacle. This verse is talking about feeling absolutely tired, losing physical strength and capability, particularly physical strength. Occasionally, therefore, it is good to take a holiday. It is important to have some kind of break. This will help you to do more later, to keep the continuity of efforts later. Some people, when they are physically unwell, think that they have to continue without a break. They just try to patch up their health issue and don’t really take care of themselves. This will only cause more distress and hardship, not only to yourself but to the whole issue you are working on. To have strength of body and mind is important. If you lose it, you have to regain it. Take a break, but for the purpose of being able to complete it. You have to know when to go slow. If you let yourself get completely run down, to the point of actually physically and mentally breaking down, that will be extremely harmful for yourself, others and all beings. There- fore you should know when to take a break. This is common knowledge. We just have to be aware of it. Again, if you are taking a break, when the break is over and you have regained your strength, you have to continue your job and not let it go. It sounds contradictory to say on the one hand, ‘Never let it go,’ and now ‘Take a break,’ but this is definitely not contradictory. Taking a break is necessary for the continuation of the work. Then the second two lines talk about what to do when we finish. Very often, when we finish doing something, we are satisfied and happy and then stop there, thinking ‘I did it. I am done.’ That’s not right. Our mission includes becoming fully enlightened. Until then there is no such thing as having finished or being done.

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Gelek Rimpoche The translation of verse 67 says, Having done something well, I should put it aside with the wish to accomplish what will follow. The Ti- betan does not say put it aside but says that after finishing something, concentrate on the next thing, continue to do better and more important tasks. If you have completed something nicely, don’t think, ‘That’s it.’ Pick up other and more challenging projects. Be more widely effective for even more people. Go forward more and more, rather than turning back and winding down. We have a tendency to pick up a certain project and try to own that. We say, ‘This is my baby,’ and we want to just do that. Don’t do that but rather think, ‘Now I am capable of doing that. What else more challenging could I do next?’ If you cannot go forward, your enthusiasm will not contribute any more to your qualities, including learning and knowledge. If you have learned something in particular and you are satisfied with that, without wanting to know more, your progress will be stopped. You won’t get to total enlightenment. Total enlightenment means total knowledge, so you can’t be satisfied with a little knowledge and leave it there.

Don’t overdo, and don’t slack off. This verse also tells you that you do have to have strong enthusiasm, but you shouldn’t overdo it either. If you drag yourself over the limit of your capacity you will be forced to stop. This should never be done, nor should you be too relaxed and slacken off. These are the two problems with regards to enthusiasm: either too much activity, which makes you run out of steam, or not moving enough and constantly. Tsongkhapa says, Enthusiasm is the armor that protects you from laziness. Wear this armor and move forward at a reasonable speed, neither overdoing nor under doing things. Move carefully and then your development and all your qualities will constantly increase like the rising moon. All your activities will become worthwhile. All your work will be completed. Knowing this, avoid laziness at all times and carry on with enthusiasm at all times. This is the system of the Bodhisattvas. 48

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In other words, enthusiasm has to be applied quite carefully. Being overenthusiastic and emotionally getting very involved is a perfect invitation for discontinuation. Suddenly everything will fall apart. We are good at that. We function very emotionally. Some- times our emotions drive us very strongly and we try to go very fast, try to do everything very forcefully and then all of a sudden, the air is out, the train stops, nothing happens. That is not the Bodhisattvas’ way.

Don’t rely on emotional enthusiasm. Bodhisattvas moves slowly, carefully, continuously, not pushing themselves to the extreme, not getting emotionally overwhelmed. Here some people, when they are driven by their emotions, think it is wonderful and special, but it is not that reliable. It is very temporary and everything then depends what affects you emotionally. For spiritual practice emotionally reacting is not that good. It is helpful to make a start, but to be able to continue being based just on emotions does not work that well. If you are overly enthusiastic about meditation you will sit down for long sessions, burn incense, beat gongs, do everything all the time, you will find that soon you will feel bur- dened by having to do the practice. You will become lazy, without energy and have to force yourself. This happens if you depend on the emotional stimulation, rather than picking up the practice based on reasons and with a purpose. Don’t let the emotions take over. That is a problem spiritually and even in daily work. In Tibet we try not to emotionally react to anything, but in this culture, if you don’t react emotionally people think something is wrong with you. It is funny, but I think it is just a cultural difference. Also, when I happen to know a little bit about something, I prefer to keep quiet, listen to what others have to say and then think about what I know and decide whether it is useful to open my mouth, but the culture over here wants you to speak up as much as you can and often that is how we make a mess out of the situation and a fool out of ourselves.

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Gelek Rimpoche Maybe it is just culture, but the Bodhisattvacharyavatara seems to support the Tibetan way. If you are over-relaxed and don’t contribute actually, then you are just planning and talking and nothing really happens. You just think about what should be done, but it doesn’t happen. Therefore, over-relaxing and over-reacting both are not helpful. Especially, in your spiritual practice don’t rely on emotions: they will let you down. Your spiritual practice will go up and down with your emotions. When your emotions don’t pop up, nothing happens. You have to leave the emotions aside and make the decisions by yourself, through your mind. Otherwise, if you wait for your emotions to stimulate your interest, nothing may come of it and you will think, ‘Oh my God, my practice is going down. It doesn’t affect me anymore. I don’t feel anything. It used to make my hair stand on end and I used to feel great.’ Actually it was not going well at that time, it was just that your emotions were running high. That doesn’t help at all. Feeding the emotions does not do that much good. You have to rely on your mind, on your inner strength and not on unstable emotions. This is the bottom line message of this verse. The next verse is talking about the power of enthusiasm and the power of control.

VERSE 68 Just as an old warrior approaches The swords of an enemy upon the battlefront, So shall I avoid the weapons of the disturbing conceptions And skillfully bind this enemy. This is a thousand year-old work, so the images are from that time. This verse means that the power of enthusiasm relies on awareness and mindfulness. When a good soldier, an old warri- or, is fighting with swords on the battlefield, he will not only focus on trying to hit and kill the opponent. He also has to 295

GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE think of protecting himself. Otherwise, if you only think of hitting the other person, they may get you before you can get them. This is very common. In some cases people sacrifice themselves do get the job done they are trying to do. You see it in movies all the time. To avoid that, protect yourself first and then try to hit the opponent. Only wanting to go out and knock the other person down is immature. The seasoned, well experienced warrior’s approach is first to protect himself and then destroy the enemy. If you manage to destroy the enemy but you get killed as well, what’s the use? Likewise, when you are fighting with the negativities, you have to make sure first that the negativities don’t hit you. This is even more important than being able to destroy them. The English translation says, I shall avoid the weapons of disturbing conceptions. The delusions are our enemies, so you have to make sure that they don’t wound you or destroy you. When their weapons are coming towards you, do whatever you have to do to avoid, stop or destroy these weapons. When you are well-protected then you cut off the root of the delusions. That is the approach of an intelligent person. Let’s say we indulge in an argument. We tend to think, ‘I will get to the bottom of this problem and make is absolutely clear what I think, bring it all out into the open, lay it on the table.’ We will go for that, and we may even do it with a good motivation, but we are playing with fire, we are handling sharp weapons of anger, harsh words, fear and so on. You may be trying to clear misunderstandings, but instead you can wind up creating more bad blood. You may end up using sharp words and as a result you get wounded yourself. Anger can come up and hurt both. All the negative emotions can come up more. You have to be careful. For some people in small cases, bringing it all out and laying it on the table may work, but very often you may win the small case but create long term problems. You create more harm than help. You need to destroy the problem but do it wisely. First of all you have to protect and save yourself. That

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Gelek Rimpoche is most important. Otherwise, you get destroyed. Skillfuly bind the enemy here refers to destroying the root of the problem, for which you need the awareness of self-protection. You have to make sure that your mind is not influenced by hatred.

VERSE 69 If someone dropped his sword during a battle, They would immediately pick it up out of fear. Likewise, if I lose the weapon of mindfulness, I should quickly retrieve it, being afraid of hell. If in a battle I drop my sword, I have to pick it up immediately. Other- wise I am weapon-less and unprotected afraid of getting harmed. Forget about trying to destroy the enemy at that point, I have to get my sword back first. Likewise if you lose mindfulness you have to make sure you get it back quickly, otherwise you are in danger of creating the causes of falling into the lower realms. You always have to have awareness and mindfulness with you. Make sure that you are not disturbed or influenced by hatred, obsession, or overpowered by ignorance, ego, confusion and fear. You need to be mindful of what you are doing. When you are in battle with your enemy and lose your weapon there is a chance that your enemy is going to get you. With that fear in mind, you have to immediately pick up your sword. Likewise, we always battle with the delusions, our enemies. At that time the mindfulness is necessary.

What is mindfulness? What do we mean by mindfulness? What does it do for us? What are we supposed to do with it? Ask yourself these questions often: don’t ask others so much. You may get a number of different answers. Many people think that mindfulness is just watching your mind. You turn your eyeball up into the air, indicating that your mind is focusing somewhere in the middle of the brain, scanning it and watching what the mind is doing. Some people may like to look down into the heart, trying to scan what

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE goes on there. Mindfulness meditation teachers and practitioners try to pick up the mind with no perception, no thoughts, no projections, blank. Then, when any thought that comes up, any projection or perception, you go, ‘Hey, there you are,’ and let it go. If you don’t catch it you haven’t been mindful. I hope I am wrong but I guess that many people will think that. This may well be a type of mindfulness, but definitely it is not the mindfulness that Shantideva is talking about here. This mindfulness is not really interested in what your mind is perceiving or projecting, but the way the minds holds something and doesn’t let it go. The traditional picture given here is this: Some farmer is splitting wood in the yard. A piece flies off and a kid picks it up. For the kid it is interesting, a nice piece of wood could make a nice toy. This kid is holding this piece of wood, looking at it from all directions, being entertained and occupied for quite a while, holding it and not letting it go, because it likes it and doesn’t want to give it away. In today’s society you could use any example of a toy, which is interesting to the kids. Just like that we are supposed to hold mindfulness. What exactly are you holding? What is left to hold, if it is not what the mind projects and perceives? You are supposed to hold your vows. As a Bodhisattva you have Bodhisattva vows and you should them tightly and neatly. Don’t let them pick up any dirt, mud or anything. This is the mindfulness we are talking about here, remembering virtue and not losing it from our mind. If you hold your vows and commitments and keep them clean and intact, unsullied by non-virtuous actions, the comprehensive practices of the Bodhisattva will remain intact. The key is comprehensive practice: it is not important to hold one single point and remember that. Just doing that will not get you very far. That is why Shantideva gives the example of a battle. When you are engaged in a fight, the first thing is to make sure that

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Gelek Rimpoche you don’t lose your weapon. Secondly, if you do lose it by chance, pick it up immediately, because there is the danger that your enemy could kill you. That is true reality, not just words. One has to remember that. Verse 68 also gave the example of battle, where man fights against man, on equal ground, with equal weapons. When you are fighting like that, your job is not only destroying the enemy, but equally to protect yourself. On the basis of protecting yourself you then try to destroy the enemy. That is called being a hero. If you get killed first and nothing happens to the enemy, I don’t think you qualify to be a hero, although these days you get a purple heart just for getting wounded in war. That is done for political reasons.

Spiritual heroism. Likewise, protecting yourself from the downfalls which would undermine your vows is your basis. On top of that you then try to destroy the negative emotions and if possible, ego itself. Then you are called a hero, a powerful, wonderful Bodhisattva.49 In order to protect your vows you need information. You have to know what to avoid and what to develop. Whatever you have learned you have to remember. Learning is like holding the weapon. Remembering is making sure that you don’t lose this weapon. Even if by chance certain downfalls occur here and there, pick up your behavior immediately. Don’t say, ‘Oh well, now I have a downfall anyway, so I might as well let it go completely. Let me relax for a while.’ That is not good. If you notice you have a downfall, purify it immediately and make sure that your vows remain perfect. No matter how many downfalls you get, you can become pure again through purification. Downfalls are the clouds in the sky. Clouds are temporary. Downfalls, misdeeds, negative actions and positive actions, negative and positive karma, all of that is impermanent. We ourselves are like the sky. We will remain there. All the emotions are like clouds, so even though we make mistakes and keep making mistakes we can purify it.

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We are not perfect. If we were, we wouldn’t be here. Mak- ing mistakes is not a big deal if you know how to purify. Westerners, Europeans and Americans, have lots of problems with guilt, as though a mistake was a done deal business. We are human beings and make mistakes, but this is like dropping our weapon in war. If we don’t pick it up we get killed. Like- wise, if we don’t purify and continue we will be the losers. Losing this battle is serious. We picked up the spiritual path this time. You can lose your weapon sometimes, and that doesn’t matter, if you pick it up again and continue. What you can’t do is really give up the battle and become a loser. No- body wants to be a loser, do they? Nobody likes losers. Espe- cially in this country, we only like winners. Actually that shows that we are not really compassionate. A compassionate person also likes the losers. However, the idea is that we shouldn’t become losers. If we lose the spiritual path this time it is a great loss. Therefore, if you drop your weapon, pick it up immediately, before you get killed.

The cause of refuge. Dropping the sword here means forgetting your commitment to virtue. If that happens the non-virtues are going to get you straight away, so make sure you pick up your virtue immediately. If you can’t do that, as a consequence you will fall into the lower realms. The fear of falling into the lower realms is the cause of taking refuge. Our mind has to be influenced by virtue, not non- virtue. Even neutral mind states are not recommended, as they are without mindfulness. Mindfulness, alertness and awareness are so important. We talked about that in the previous chapters of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara and even in this chapter on enthusiasm we are reminded once again.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Student: What does it mean to take refuge? Rimpoche: Taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is the doorway to being a Buddhist. When you enter into spiritual practice you do that first to help yourself. This is not the same 300

Gelek Rimpoche as all these self-help courses, but still, first you have to help yourself. We don’t want suffering, but we do want joy and pleasure. Right now we have suffering, and we don’t have joy. We need help. Who can help? The true answer is that you can only help yourself. If you can’t do it, who else can? Probably nobody. You have to do it yourself. If you don’t have time or opportunity, what can you do? Now your question comes in: Buddha, Dharma and Sang- ha are there to help. You can rely on them. You have to have two things in place: you have to know why you take refuge and you have to know in whom you take refuge. Our mind will answer: in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. But these are simply words. We have to check that out for ourselves. What are they? You may say, ‘I know Buddha was that guy who lived in India 2600 years ago.’ However, that is just the historical Bud- dha. Is that who you take refuge in? That is a big question. Similarly, when you take refuge to Buddha, that is not even the true refuge. Buddha is considered to be the guide and Dharma is the actual refuge. So what is Dharma? The text books, the teachings, the message? If you ask ten people they will give you ten different answers. The Abidharmakosha by Vasubandhu says, There are two aspects of Dharma: the information and the spiritual development The information aspect is the message. This is called relative Dharma. The spiritual development is called absolute Dhar- ma. That is also not somebody else’s spiritual development, but ours. Our own spiritual development is our own dharma. Buddha says, I am the doctor. I can tell you what your problem is, I can make the diagnosis, I can prescribe the medicine, but you are the one who has to actually take the medicine and get cured.

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The well-being, the overcoming of the illness is called Dhar- ma. The actual Dharma is the spiritual development within you. It has overcome the obstacles, difficulties and negativities, in other words, non-virtues. Instead of negativities you develop positivity. That is perhaps the true meaning of refuge do Dharma. It is not simply participating in a ceremony, not about getting a fancy Tibetan name. There is nothing fancy about Tibetan names anyway, except that nobody knows what they mean and therefore you think it is something mystical. The only name commonly known is Tendzin. There are so many Ti- betans called Tendzin. This happens to be His Holiness’ the Dalai Lama’s personal name, so everybody wants to name their kids after him. There is joke that if you come across a crowd of one hundred Tibetans and you shout, ‘Hey Ten- dzin!’ ninety of them will turn round and say, ‘What?’ True refuge is gaining spiritual development within the individual and overcoming negativities. Then there are refuge ceremonies, half show biz and half something does happen, on a mental level, rather than emotionally. Refuge vows are a different story. I don’t know whether taking vows equals taking refuge. You may be taking refuge but you are not necessarily developing refuge.

Student: Is there something we can do use to emotions to help us in our path? Rimpoche: Yes, Tibetan Buddhism is supposed to be the system that is using the emotions. It is supposed to transform hatred and obsession into the path. You can’t transform ignorance. This is the best system, but it is easier said than done. The emotions move the individual. They can make you lose control, the positive as well as the negative. The emotion itself is neutral. The mind strongly moves either to the right or the left. In the beginning level we use these three factors: awareness, alertness and mindfulness, to help us deal with the emotions. The seasoned old fighter knows that protecting yourself is the first goal and then you can destroy the enemy. If you

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Gelek Rimpoche lose your weapon in the midst of the battle you pick it up immediately. You don’t want to be killed. These are the examples given even today. Maintaining mindfulness, awareness and alertness helps not to come under the control of the emotions. They allow you to remain your own boss. We are already very much under the control of our own ego. On top of that there are these other emotions. Many psychologists and psychiatrists may not agree, but using emotions to move the individual is very risky stuff. You have to use the real mind, the real person if you want to improve the situation. Emotions are based on certain temporary circumstances which make them go high or low. If you keep on riding these waves, you will keep going up and down. Sometimes, if you go down very far, you can’t come up for a while and you are in depression. A hundred thousand thoughts and doubts will make you swing and push you down. Then you may go up so high that you fly above Mt. Meru. Then suddenly you fall down very deeply. That is the problem with the emotions. We are addicted to using emotions instead of learning to use our mind. Mindfulness, awareness and alertness watch whether we are riding with the emotions or with the mind. The mind does not swing so much. You don’t zig zag as much as with the emotions. When you do concentrated sitting meditation you are trying to move the emotions away and try to stabilize the mind itself, not letting it ride the emotions. Stabilizing the mind is the foundation for mental development. Maybe that is what you can do.

VERSE 70 Just as poison spreads throughout the body In dependence upon the (circulation of) blood, Likewise if (a disturbing conception) finds an opportunity Unwholesomeness will permeate my mind.

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We may think that if we get wounded we don’t have to do something about it right now, thinking that we can always fix it later. You think you can retreat somewhere, recover and come back. We think that a little cut here and there doesn’t matter much. We think we are strong and don’t have to bother much, but the advice here is that you have to be mindful all the time. Don’t get cut or hurt at all, even slightly and don’t think a small injury is insignificant. The problem is that in a battle, if you are only slightly hit by an arrow or something, that arrow could be poisoned. The wound may not hurt you much but the poison could be deadly. It will go through your blood- stream everywhere in the body. Likewise, if you let a simple, little insignificant disturbing conception or downfall get the better of you, that could damage you much more than you think. It opens the door to other wrongdoings and they could soon completely invade or permeate your mind. You need mindfulness to carefully protect your vows. Even tiny, insignificant downfalls can have serious consequences. Your mindfulness has to be very comprehensive, not just focusing on one single thing.

VERSE 71 Those who practice should be as attentive As a frightened man carrying a jar full of mustard oil, Who is being threatened by someone with a sword, (And told) that he will be killed if he spills just one drop. Imagine a terrible, ruthless king who is rude and angry and forces someone to carry a lamp with burning oil across a courtyard. He tells him, ‘If you spill just one drop there is a man with a sword behind you. He is going to kill you.’ That person carrying the oil will walk very carefully and concentrate on what he is doing. There is a story behind this verse.

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Gelek Rimpoche The story of Katyayana and the king. In ancient India during Bud- dha’s time a wrathful, terrible king called Rab nang ruled over a little kingdom. He wanted his extensive retinue to be frightened of him all the time. When a dangerous illness arose in the kingdom, the king demanded to his ministers, ‘Go find a soothsayer who can dispel the illness from the kingdom. Oth- erwise I will have all of you killed!’ They knew he meant it. Buddha had a disciple called Katyayana.50 He told Katya- yana that he had a karmic connection with that kingdom. He said to Katyayana, ‘It is your job to go to that kingdom and pray and practice and dispel the illness.’ At that time the ministers had already brought lots of soothsayers and shamans and their retinues and so on, because they were so worried about their own lives. Anybody who could beat a drum was there. Katyayana came with 500 disciples and prayed, ‘May all the illnesses disappear and may the king not be afflicted by any illness, including delusional thoughts.’ The illness did in fact disappear and each of all these heal- ers claimed that they had done it. The king wanted to know for sure. He said to his ministers, ‘Take a lot of nice food to these sages, but let them eat in a dirty place, close to the sew- age and garbage dump. Then see what they do.’ A lot of them got upset and said, ‘We helped this king and now is serving us food in the filthiest place imaginable!’ Katyayana was there too with his 500 disciples eating their food quietly. The ministers asked him, ‘What do you think about this?’ He answered, ‘Well, this food come to us through the generosity of the king and we enjoy it. We’ll take a little more too, if there is any left.’ The ministers related what had happened to the king. The king said, ‘Tomorrow go and serve nice food to them in a beautiful place and then tell me how they react.’ When they were served good food in a very nice place, all these other people were very happy and said, ‘The king is so kind and precious and you ministers are so great. We have been well compensated for what we did for you.’ When they

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE asked Katyayana he just said, ‘The giver of this food has been generous, the action of giving was through generosity. Giver, gift and action of giving all are impermanent and all will be gone, nothing will remain.’ The ministers reported to the king and he began to think, ‘This Katyayana is probably the one who did the healing. The others overreacted when treated badly and when treated well they tried to butter me up, but this guy is different.’ The king invited Katyayana and his monks to the palace and had many beautiful girls dance almost nude, in front of these 500 monks. At the end of the dance, the king asked Katyayana, ‘How did you like the dance?’ He replied, ‘I didn’t see it.’ The other monks said the same. The king was surprised, ‘How can there be a human being in the presence of such beautiful music and dance and not even see it? What do you mean?’ Katyayana said, ‘We were meditating and therefore we didn’t see it.’ The king said, ‘Im- possible. Prove it to me.’ Katyayana said, ‘All right. Select somebody of your choice and tell that person to carry a bowl full of oil across this courtyard. Have somebody with a sword follow him and tell the guy with the oil, ‘If you spill as much as a single drop you are going to get killed right then and there.’ Don’t really kill him but have him believe that.’ At the same time the music and dance carried on, but the guy worrying about his life had all his attention on the bowl of oil and not on the music and dance. He had total focus on the oil. After he managed to carry the oil across without spilling any, Katyayana asked him in front of the king, ‘How did you like the music and dance?’ The guy said, ‘I didn’t see a thing. I had to concentrate on saving my life.’ So that is the story which is the background for this verse. You don’t have to be a meditator. If your life is under threat you can concentrate well and then no matter what else is happening you won’t even notice. This is called mindfulness and concentration. This is how Bodhisattvas should be mindful of their vows.

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Gelek Rimpoche Katyayana’s story confirms the capability of the individual. If threatened with our head getting chopped off, we can carry a bowl full of oil without spilling any. The guy in the story completely focused and got it done. He was totally oblivious to the singing and dancing going on around him. He didn’t hear or see anything except watching his oil. This indicates our capacity. If we apply good enthusiasm we can do this. However, if we do have some downfall or misdeed, what can we do? The next verse tells us:

VERSE 72 Just as I would swiftly stand up If a snake came into my lap, Likewise if any sleep or laziness occurs, I shall quickly turn it back. In the example, if you are sitting outside idly when suddenly a cobra lands in your lap, you won’t have time to think. You will jump up and run. You will be very afraid of the poison from this snake and will try to get away as far and as fast as you can. Likewise, it is nothing unusual to have downfalls in general. In particular certain mental faculties prevent us from focusing properly. Sleep is one of them. During sleep our eye consciousness will withdraw from its activity, making us fall asleep and completely lose our awareness. Then the translation mentions laziness, but it is not quite that. In Tibetan it says nyom le (snyom). This could be laziness or ignorance or many other things. This chapter again emphasiz- es mindfulness and of course laziness is an obstacle, so from that angle the translator is right, but I would not look at it as simple laziness. It is more some kind of tiredness, when our body is very heavy, we can’t lift our head and can’t focus or think. I don’t know if is an emotion, but it is a tiredness that weighs on us very heavily, physically and mentally. When this sort of laziness comes, you have to react as if a cobra has landed in your lap.

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How can you make yourself wake up from laziness and sleep? We do all kinds of things to keep ourselves awake, but still we have difficulties. Sometimes if we have particular worries, we can’t sleep even though we may be tired. It is the mind. If it is not properly occupied you try to change something and can’t and this game goes on between you and your mind in between that you fall asleep. Then you try to wake up but you are not really awake and fresh. You try to lie in bed longer and all this push and pull goes on. We have allowed our mind to overly relax at that point. I am not saying that sleep is bad and you shouldn’t sleep, but oversleeping is not good. Physically speaking, some people need more sleep than others. I know people who need 6 or 7 hours sleep. Student: That is very little, most people need that as minimum. Some people sleep 10 or 12 hours. Rimpoche: Don’t tell me that! There is 24 hours in a day and 12 hours spend on sleeping?

The urgency of our situation. This goes with what this verse is trying to say. Our mind is not convinced of the urgency of the situation. The laziness of sleep is serious. If you sleep away half of the day, that is really a lot. No wonder sleep is treated as a problem here. We are not convinced about impermanence in general and particularly not about death. We are not convinced about suffering in general, and particularly the sufferings of the hell realm. We have not seen the possibility that we ourselves are the subject to that, so laziness has a lot of room. Some people seem to need a lot of sleep, but the mind is responsible and the body adjusts. With some discipline 4-5 hours are good enough. Without discipline you end up sleeping more and more. Sleep is such that you can have a lot of control over it. If you really want to wake up at 4:15 am, you don’t even need an alarm clock. You tell yourself before falling asleep that you decided to wake up at 4:15 am. Tell yourself ten times. Then by 4 am you will wake up. I am sure you

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Gelek Rimpoche have had this experience. On the other hand, if you don’t make up your mind and just set the alarm, then when it rings you will kick the alarm clock out of sight and will still be sleeping at 7 am. Similarly we would like to examine our dreams. That has a good purpose, but many of us don’t remember our dreams at all. We wake up in the morning and don’t remember a thing. It’s all gone. If you tell yourself in the evening that you want to dream about certain things and do this over and over again, you will remember. You will see results. It has to do with discipline of the mind. Sleep is a mental faculty. It does help to a certain extent to have physical well being, but it shouldn’t have to take too much time. During the day we think too much, and have too much anxiety, so that when we sleep we need more time. We are too intense, mentally and physically during the day. At night, the intensity of stress is somewhat lessens and the body and mind uses that time to recover and needs more time, but 10-12 hours is too much. The mental faculty of sleep overtakes the stress and the body probably even demands a certain amount of time to be able to recover.

Not reacting to stress. As a spiritual practitioner you should not react to stress that much. Stress is there, true, but you have to recognize it and tell yourself, ‘I am not going to be subject to this. Whoever is going to give me pressure, let them. It won’t bother me. Let whoever wants to yell as much as they like until their mouth aches.’ It looks like I am telling you something bad, but as for me, I act like that. If people try to give me pressure I won’t move at all. I will sit down like a rock. Some try to lay a guilt trip on me. That is absolutely ridiculous. If people try that on you, don’t budge. Go 500 miles into the opposite direction. I have a friend who told me, ‘If you don’t lose weight, I am not going to do my prayers.’ I said, ‘It’s absolutely your choice whether you say your prayers or not. Who cares? I have nothing to do with that. If you get downfalls, it is your

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GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE problem. I am not getting the downfalls. I would even prefer not to lose weight under these circumstances.’ Whoever pushes me I go in the other direction. I have no control. I can’t help it. Pressure is a problem and stress comes from that. Yes, of course, it is wonderful in this society that people are asked to give and they do. Yes, we do live in a world where we depend on each other very much, but at the same time you have to see that you are responsible for yourself. In any case, one shouldn’t take too much stress. Not everybody may have the luxury that I have in not responding to pressure. You have to keep your job. There are deadlines and demands. Otherwise you won’t get paid. You can’t pay your bills and everything collapses. Our whole sense of security is based on green dollars. This is totally false security, but still, our whole life here is built around that and you have to go with that, unfortunately. Yes, you have to try to do your work without taking pressure and stress, and yet not be lazy. Buddha has recommended a certainly simplicity in life. We have too much going on in our lives. We are very greedy, no doubt about it. If you have secured a contract, you want two. If you have two, you want five more. You take ten contracts and of course, you have to spread yourself very thin and stress and pressure comes up. Even the people in 9-5 jobs take second jobs. We need money to buy all kinds of things. My neighbors have a gazebo, so I have to have one too. My neighbor has a new car. I need one as well. More demands costs more money. You have to pay more. On top of that you try to save up in order to have a safety cushion and many people can’t do that. So there is stress, which translates into physical and mental torture. That pressure is only alleviated when the mental factor of sleep takes over. No wonder then if you need 10 hours of sleep. You need some discipline to organize your time. Select how much time you want to spend on certain things and cut through the unnecessary things and you will have much less stress. Too much sleep of course is a great waste of time. You do nothing and just lie there like a dead body, except you might

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Gelek Rimpoche be snoring. The precious life is just wasted by lying there, snoring. Then, if you don’t sleep but watch a lot of TV, that is another waste of time. If you keep watching CNN, they show you the same news 30 times a day and replay old tapes. Some- times there is not even a human being in the media room. Sleep is a waste of time and stress stops you from being effective. You need a sense of urgency to protect you from laziness. Nagarjuna further adds, Obsession and hatred, plus ignorance, laziness and so on, will come. That is the time to remember the essence practice of impermanence, death, etc. We do waste time in various ways. In the old days sleep was probably the biggest time waster. Nowadays we have all kinds of entertainment that will definitely cause us to lose a lot of time and energy. Even if you recognize laziness and so on, you can still get downfalls. There is no guarantee. Then what can you do? The next verse tells you.

VERSE 73 Each time something unwholesome occurs I should criticize myself, And then contemplate for a long time That I shall never let this happen again. This verse is straightforward, nothing mystical about it. This must be meant for Americans, not Europeans and Middle Easterners! Americans are like that. They go into Iraq and Af- ghanistan and tell everybody, ‘If you are not with us, you are against us.’ Everybody just waits and says nothing and now that there is a mess, nobody comes forward to join the Ameri- cans in cleaning up Iraq. Actually, it is not as straightforward as it is projected by the government. If we didn’t have our oil interests in Iraq, we wouldn’t be there, for sure, Saddam or not. After all, Iraq is the second largest oil producer in the world. American straightforwardness is more or less a projection.

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But this verse is simple and direct, maybe too simple. It says that although we try our best, our alertness and awareness may not be strong enough. We have weak spots. Sometimes our eye consciousness takes us somewhere else, sometime our ear consciousness does. When you notice that you are falling into wrong behavior, doing something unwholesome, it is important to generate regret. You have to feel unhappy about this behavior and criticize yourself. Don’t go as far as hating yourself though. You have to tell yourself, ‘Since many lives I have done this kind of thing and that is why I have to continue to live in samsara where there is real happiness but a lot of suffering. Today I have the great opportunity of spiritual practice. I have taken Bodhisattva vows. I have commitments and I have some understanding. If I ruin such a precious opportunity and let myself be controlled by wrong behavior, it is terrible. I must make sure that I don’t repeat this in future. I shall never let this happen again.’ Thinking like this just once, twice or three times is not enough. You have to do it constantly, for a long time, as much as you need. The longer you can do this and the more strongly you can do this, the more it will help you protect yourself. Your mind is letting the old habit go and building a new habit. Every time you notice and think strongly, ‘Oh, this is bad and I did it again. This has created trouble for me before and if I keep doing it there will be more trouble. I shouldn’t do this.’ Long term and strong thinking will bring change. This is straightforward and there is no mystery. Purely thinking like this and doing it strongly helps. It may not be enough. We need more than that. We need conscientiousness. Chapter Four was all about that.

VERSE 74 ‘Likewise in all these situations I shall acquaint myself with mindfulness.’ With this (motivation) as a cause I shall aspire To meet (with teachers) or accomplish

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Gelek Rimpoche the tasks (they assign me). Let me try to work through the Tibetan here. How do I generate a good cause for maintaining good purity? I definitely need alertness and awareness and almost get addicted to them. We have to remind ourselves and rely on teachers and friends who remind us that regrettable things are to be regretted and good things are encouraged. Whatever I can remember will help. The conclusion here is nothing more than alertness, awareness and mindfulness. The- se are the three keys. We have to constantly remind ourselves, whether through our own efforts, through teachers or friends. The commentary on this particular verse says that following role models, listening to good advice, and so on help us remember. This strengthens mindfulness. If you are close to masters and spiritual friends, it is easier to cut down negative emotions and wrong behavior. Particularly at this level, thinking about karma is important. If we create negative karma, we get negative results. If we create positive karma, we create positive results. Remembering karma and its effects is very important. How can we help ourselves karmically? Again, first through learning and whatever you have learned you follow up through reading, listening, thinking, discussing or any other means. Always try to retain mindfulness, awareness and alertness. These three of course have to be joined to what you have learned. If you don’t learn what can you be mindful of? What can you be alert about? You need awareness of karma, of the Bodhisattva’s way. After learning, you have to analyze and think and then you have to make it a habit. These are the important ways of protecting ourselves from downfalls. The next two verses draw the conclusion: Enthusiasm is absolutely necessary for everyone in order to achieve their goals.

VERSE 75 In order to have strength for everything I should recall before undertaking any actions

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The advice in (the chapter on) conscientiousness, And then joyfully rise (to the task). This is easy. We have already explained the chapter on conscientiousness. Before joyfully engaging in whatever virtuous actions you want to, remember conscientiousness. Nobody forces us to put in any efforts; it entirely dependent on our own choice and will. Within that, however, if we have taken vows and commitments, it is necessary to honor them. Otherwise we get big downfalls and it gives the upper hand to negative emotions. You should only commit to whatever you are able to complete. That is the essence of the conscientiousness chapter. Then with enthusiasm, alertness, and awareness we should carry out our task you have undertaken. If you have made commitments to the spiritual path, especially to benefiting all beings, it is not so easy. There are difficulties, but we should look at these difficulties not as burdens but as ornaments. If you put ornaments on your body it makes you look nice and attractive. You will feel good and others will admire you. If you regard them as a burden, you have to carry them and you feel bad. We are bound to face difficulties. Spiritual activities go against our addictions. We are strongly addicted to hatred, obsession, jealousy and so on. We are trying to replace hatred with compassion, obsession with love, jealousy with appreciation. That is not easy to swallow. Our habits will challenge that, but we should take it as a as an ornament, not a burden. We should joyfully rise to the task. In other words, this is all about will-power. With that, we can use our body and mind for positive actions. When you get used to it, you will not find any struggle in the mind to turn to positive actions. When you get further used to it, it will get even easier. Right now we don’t find it difficult to develop anger and obsession, since we are used to doing that. A time will come when we have no problem developing compassion, caring,

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Gelek Rimpoche and love, but will have great hesitation to develop hatred, obsession or even slight anger. When you are at that level it is a sign that you are on the way. Such a person is reaching the ‘gone beyond’ level of the paramita of enthusiasm. The last verse of this chapter carries the same explanation but gives an example:

VERSE 76 Just as the wind blowing back and forth Controls (the movement of) a piece of cotton, So shall I be controlled by joy, And in this way accomplish everything. In the Tibetan, the example refers to these little hairy bits that blow out of the trees in autumn, but the translator uses the term a piece of cotton. A powerful wind blowing back and forth will carry this cotton ball around, without any effort on the part of the cotton. It is the power of the wind.51 Like that, we will be able to use our body and mind for virtuous efforts, without any struggle, automatically, controlled by joy. Then all our goals will be accomplished. In our mind, right now, we don’t have to put any efforts in to develop or encourage negative emotions, like hatred, jealousy or any of those. Without effort they just come up. Just like that, a well-trained mind should be able to produce positive actions without efforts, controlled by joy. That is called perfect enthusiasm. Enthusiasm does not necessarily mean hard work but smart work. That is exactly what it means. It has to become effortless.

This concludes the explanation on Chapter 7 of the Bodhisatt- vacharyava52

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Appendix I Tibetan transliteration, Chapter Seven

1 DE LTAR BZOD PAS BRTZON 'GRUS BRTZAM 'DI LTAR BRTZON LA BYANG CHUB GNAS RLUNG MED G-YO BA MED PA BZHIN BSOD NAMS BRTZON 'GRUS MED MI 'BYUNG

2 BRTZON GANG DGE LA SPRO BA'O DE YI MI MTHUN PHYOGS BSHAD BYA LE LO NGAN LA ZHEN PA DANG SKYID LUG BDAG NYID BRNYAS PA'O

3 SNYOM LAS BDE BA'I RO MYANG DANG GNYID LA BRTEN PA'I SRED PA YIS 'KHOR BA'I SDUG BSNGAL MI SKYO LAS LE LO NYE BAR SKYE BAR 'GYUR

4 NYON MONGS RGYA BAS BSHOR NAS NI SKYE BA'I RGYAR NI CHUD GYUR NAS 'CHI BDAG KHAR NI SONG GYUR PA CI STE DA DUNG MI SHES SAM

5 RANG SDE RIM GYIS GSOD PA YANG KHYOD KYIS MTHONG BAR MA GYUR TAM 'ON KYANG GNYID LA BRTEN PA GANG GDOL PA DANG NI MA HE BZHIN

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6 LAM NI KUN NAS BKAG NAS SU 'CHI BDAG GIS NI BLTAS BZHIN DU JI LTAR KHYOD NI ZA DGA' ZHING 'DI LTAR GNYID LOG JI LTAR DGA'

7 MYUR BA NYID DU 'CHI 'GYUR BAS JI SRID DU NI TSOGS BSAG BYA DE TSE LE LO SPANGS KYANG NI DUS MA YIN PAR CI ZHIG BYA

8 'DI NI MA BYAS BRTZAMS PA DANG 'DI PHYED BYAS PAR GNAS PA LA GLO BUR 'CHI BDAG 'ONGS NAS NI KYI HUD BCOM ZHES SEMS PAR 'GYUR

9 MYA NGAN SHUGS KYIS SKRANGS PA YI MIG DMAR GDONG LA MCHI MA 'DZAG NYE DU RE THAG CHAD PA DANG GSHIN RJE'I PHO NYA'I BZHIN LA BLTA

10 RANG SDIG DRAN PAS GDUNG PA DANG DMYAL BA'I SGRA NI THOS PA YIS SKRAG PAS MI GTZANG LUS GOS SHING MYOS PAR 'GYUR TSE CI ZHIG BYA

11 KHYOD NI NYA GSON 'GRE BA LTA'I TSE 'DIR 'JIGS DANG LDAN GYUR NA SDIG BYAS DMYAL BA MI BZAD PA'I SDUG BSNGAL RNAMS NI SMOS CI DGOS

12 CHU TSAN GYIS NI REG PA NA GZHON SHA CAN LA RAB TSA BA'I DMYAL BA YI NI LAS BYAS NAS CI PHYIR 'DI LTAR BDE BAR GNAS

13 BRTZON MED 'BRAS BU 'DOD PA DANG BZE RE CAN LA GNOD MANG ZHING 'CHI BAS BZUNG BZHIN LHA 'DRA BA KYI HUD SDUG BSNGAL DAG GIS BCOM

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14 MI YI GRU LA BRTEN NAS SU SDUG BSNGAL CHU BO CHE LAS SGROL GRU 'DI PHYI NAS RNYED DKA' BAS RMONGS PA DUS SU GNYID MA LOG

15 DGA' BA'I RGYU NI MTHA' YAS PA'I DAM CHOS DGA' BA'I MCHOG SPANGS NAS SDUG BSNGAL RGYU YIS G-YENG BA DANG RGOD SOGS LA KHYOD CI PHYIR DGA'

16 SKYID LUG MED DANG DPUNG TSOGS DANG LHUR BLANG BDAG NYID DBANG BYA DANG BDAG DANG GZHAN DU MNYAM PA DANG BDAG DANG GZHAN DU BRJE BAR GYIS

17 BDAG GIS BYANG CHUB GA LA ZHES SKYID LUG PAR NI MI BYA STE 'DI LTAR DE BZHIN GSHEGS PA NI BDEN PA GSUNG BAS BDEN 'DI GSUNGS

18 SBRANG BU SHA SBRANG BUNG BA DANG DE BZHIN SRIN BUR GANG GYUR PA DES KYANG BRTZON PA'I STOBS BSKYED NA BYANG CHUB THOB DKA' BLA MED 'THOB

19 BDAG LTA RIGS KYIS MIR SKYES LA PHAN DANG GNON PA'I NGO SHES PAS BYANG CHUB SPYOD PA MA BTANG NA BDAG GIS BYANG CHUB CIS MI 'THOB

20 'ON TE RKANG LAG LA SOGS PA BTANG DGOS BDAG NI 'JIGS SHI NA LCI DANG YANG BA MA DPYAD PAR RMONGS PAS BDAG NI 'JIGS PAR ZAD

21 BSKAL PA BYE BA GRANGS MED DU LAN GRANGS DU MAR BCAD PA DANG DBUG DANG BSREG DANG GSHEGS 'GYUR GYI BYANG CHUB THOB PAR MI 'GYUR RO

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22 BDAG GIS BYANG CHUB SGRUB PA YI SDUG BSNGAL 'DI NI TSOD YOD DE ZUG RNGU KHONG BRLAG GNOD BSAL PHYIR LUS RMA BTOD PA'I SDUG BSNGAL BZHIN

23 SMAN PA KUN KYANG GSO DPYAD KYI MI BDE BA YIS NAD MED BYED DE BAS SDUG BSNGAL MANG PO DAG GZHOM PHYIR MI BDE CHUNG BZOD BYA

24 GSO DPYAD PHAL PA 'DI 'DRA BA SMAN PA MCHOG GIS MA MDZAD DE CHO GA SHIN TU 'JAM PO YIS NAD CHEN DPAG MED GSO BAR MDZAD

25 TSOD MA LA SOGS SBYIN PA LA'ANG 'DREN PAS THOG MAR SBYOR BAR MDZAD DE LA GOMS NAS PHYI NAS NI RIM GYIS RANG GI SHA YANG GTONG

26 GANG TSE RANG GI LUS LA NI TSOD SOGS LTA BU'I BLO SKYES PA DE TSE SHA LA SOGS GTONG BA DE LA DKA' BA CI ZHIG YOD

27 SDIG PA SPANG PHYIR SDUG BSNGAL MED MKHAS PA'I PHYIR NA MI DGA' MED 'DI LTAR LOG PAR RTOG PA DANG SDIG PAS SEMS DANG LUS LA GNOD

28 BSOD NAMS KYIS NI LUS BDE LA MKHAS PA YIS NI SEMS BDE NA GZHAN DON 'KHOR BAR GNAS KYANG NI SNYING RJE CAN DAG CI STE SKYO

29 'DI NI BYANG CHUB SEMS STOBS KYIS SNGON GYI SDIG PA ZAD BYED CING BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSO SDUD BYED PHYIR NYAN THOS RNAMS PAS MCHOG TU BSHAD

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30 DE BAS SKYO NGAL KUN SEL BA'I BYANG CHUB SEMS KYI RTA ZHON NAS BDE NAS BDE BAR 'GRO BA LA SEMS SHES SU ZHIG SGYID LUG 'GYUR

31 SEMS CAN DON GRUB BYA PHYIR DPUNG MOS BRTAN DGA' DANG DOR BA YIN MOS PA SDUG BSNGAL 'JIGS PA DANG DE YI PHAN YON BSAM PAS BSKYED

32 DE LTAR MI MTHUN PHYOGS SPANGS TE MOS DANG NGA RGYAL DGA' DANG DOR LHUR LEN DBANG BSGYUR STOBS KYIS NI BRTZON 'GRUS SPEL PHYIR 'BAD PAR BYA

33 BDAG DANG GZHAN GYI NYES PA NI DPAG MED BDAG GIS GZHOM BYA STE GANG DU NYES PA RE RE LA'ANG BSKAL PA RGYA MTSO ZAD 'GYUR BA

34 NYES ZAD RTZOM PA DE YI NI CHA YANG BDAG LA MA MTHONG NA SDUG BSNGAL DPAG TU MED PA'I GNAS BDAG GO CI PHYIR SNYING MA GAS

35 BDAG DANG GZHAN GYI YON TAN NI MANG PO BDAG GIS BSGRUB BYA STE DE LA YON TAN RE RE YANG BSKAL PA RGYA MTSOS GOMS 'GYUR NA

36 BDAG NI YON TAN CHA LA YANG GOMS PA NAM YANG MA SKYES TE JI ZHIG LTAR RNYED SKYE BA NI BDAG GIS DON MED BYAS PA MTSAR

37 BDAG GIS BCOM LDAN MA MCHOD CING DGA' STON CHEN PO'I BDE MA BYIN BSTAN LA BYA BA MA BYAS DANG DBUL PO'I BSAM PA RDZOGS MA BYAS

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38 'JIGS LA MI 'JIGS MA BYIN DANG NYAM THAG BDE MA BYIN NA BDAG MA YI MNGAL GYI ZUG RNGU DANG SDUG BSNGAL 'BA' ZHIG BSKYED PAR ZAD

39 BDAG NI SNGON DANG DA LTAR YANG CHOS LA MOS DANG BRAL BA YIS PHONGS PA 'DI 'DRA BYUNG BAR GYUR SU ZHIG CHOS LA MOS PA GTONG

40 DGE BA'I PHYOGS NI THAMS CAD KYI RTZA BA MOS PAR THUB PAS GSUNGS DE YI RTZA BA RTAG TU NI RNAM SMIN 'BRAS BU BSGOMS PAS SO

41 SDUG BSNGAL YID MI BDE BA DANG 'JIGS PA RNAM PA SNA TSOGS DANG 'DOD PA RNAMS DANG BRAL BA NI SDIG PA SPYOD LAS 'BYUNG BAR 'GYUR

42 YID LA BSAMS PA'I DGE BYAS PAS GANG DANG GANG DU 'GRO 'GYUR BA DE DANG DER NI BSOD NAMS DES 'BRAS BU'I YON GYIS MNGON MCHOD 'GYUR

43 SDIG PA BYED PA BDE 'DOD KYANG GANG DANG GANG DU 'GRO 'GYUR BA DE DANG DER NI SDIG PA DES SDUG BSNGAL MTSON GYIS RNAM PAR 'JOMS

44 RGYA CHE DRI BZANG BSEL BA'I PADMA'I SNYING POR GNAS RGYAL BA'I GSUNG SNYAN ZAS KYIS GZI BRJID BSKYED BYAS PA THUB 'OD KYIS RGYAS PADMA LAS BYUNG LUS MCHOG CAN RGYAL BA'I MDUN GNAS BDE GSHEGS SRAS SU DGE BAS 'GYUR

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45 GSHIN RJE'I SKYES BUS PAGS PA MA LUS BSHUS PAS SHIN TU NYAM THAG CING RAB TU TSA BA'I ME YIS BZHUS BA'I ZANGS ZHUN LUS LA BLUGS GYUR LA 'BAR BA'I RAL GRI MDUNG THUNG GIS BSNUN SHA YI DUM BU BRGYAR LHAGS SHING SHIN TU 'BAR BA'I LCAGS KYI SA GZHIR LHUNG BA MI DGE MANG POS 'GYUR

46 DE BAS DGE LA MOS BYA ZHING GUS PA NYID DU BSGOM PAR BYA RDO RJE RGYAL MTSAN CHO GA YIS BRTZAMS NAS NGA RGYAL BSGOM PAR BYA

47 DANG POR 'BYOR PA BRTAGS NAS NI BRTZAM MAM YANG NA MI BRTZAM BYA MA BRTZAMS PA NI MCHOG YIN GYI BRTZAMS NAS LDOG PAR MI BYA'O

48 SKYE BA GZHAN DU DE GOMS SHING SDIG DANG SDUG BSNGAL 'PHEL BAR 'GYUR GZHAN DANG 'BRAS BU'I DUS KYANG NI DMAN 'GYUR DE YANG SGRUB MI 'GYUR

49 LAS DANG NYON MONGS NUS PAS TE GSUM PO DAG LA NGA RGYAL BYA BDAG NYID GCIG BUS BYA'O ZHES 'DI NI LAS KYI NGA RGYAL NYID

50 NYON MONGS DBANG MED 'JIG RTEN 'DIS RANG DON SGRUB PAR MI NUS PAS 'GRO BAS BDAG LTAR MI NUS TE DE BAS BDAG GIS 'DI BYA'O

51 GZHAN DAG DMAN PA'I LAS BYED NA BDAG NYID KYANG NI JI LTAR 'DUG NGA RGYAL GYIS NI MI BYAS TE BDAG LA NGA RGYAL MED PA MCHOG

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52 SHI BA'I SBRUL DANG PHRAD GYUR NA KH'A YANG MKHA' LDING LTA BUR SPYOD GAL TE BDAG NYID NYAM CHUNG NA LTUNG BA CHUNG DU'ANG GNOD PAR BYED

53 ZHUM BCAS RTZOL BA DOR BA LA PHONGS LAS THAR BA YOD DAM CI NGA RGYAL RTZOL BA BSKYED PAS NI CHEN PO YIS KYANG THUB PAR DKA'

54 DE BAS SEMS NI BRTAN PA YIS LTUNG BA RNAMS NI GZHOM BYA STE BDAG NI LTUNG BAS PHAM BYAS NA KHAMS GSUM RGYAL 'DOD BZHAD GAD 'GYUR

55 BDAG GIS KUN LAS RGYAL BYA STE BDAG LAS SU YANG RGYAL MI BYA RGYAL BA SENG GE'I SRAS BDAG GIS NGA RGYAL 'DI LA GNAS PAR BYA

56 'GRO GANG NGA RGYAL GYIS BCOM DE NYON MONGS NGA RGYAL CAN MA YIN NGA RGYAL CAN DGRA'I DBANG MI 'GRO DE DAG NGA RGYAL DGRA DBANG 'GYUR

57 NYON MONGS NGA RGYAL GYIS KHENGS NI NGAN 'GROR NGA RGYAL GYIS KHRID CING MI YI DGA' STON BCOM PA DANG GZHAN GYI ZAS ZA'I BRAN DANG NI

58 GLEN PA MI SDUG NYAM CHUNG DANG THAMS CAD DU NI BRNYAS PAR 'GYUR NGA RGYAL GYIS KHENGS DKA' THUB CAN DE YANG NGA RGYAL CAN GTOGS NA DMAN PA CI 'DRA YIN PA SMROS

59 GANG ZHIG NGAR GYAL DGRA LAS RGYAL PHYIR NGA RGYAL 'CHANG DE NI NGA RGYAL CAN DANG RNAM RGYAL

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DPA' DE NYID GANG ZHIG NGA RGYAL DGRA BDO BA YANG NGES BCOM STE 'GRO LA 'DOD BZHIN RGYAL BA'I 'BRAS BU RDZOGS PAR BYED

60 NYON MONGS PHYOGS KYI KHROD GNAS NA, RNAM PA STONG DU SRAN GZUGS TE WA LA SOGS PAS SENG GE BZHIN NYON MONGS TSOGS KYIS MI TSUGS BYA

61 NYAM NGA CHE THANG BYUNG GYUR KYANG MI YIS MIG NI BSRUNG BA LTAR DE BZHIN NYAM NGA BYUNG GYUR KYANG NYON MONGS DBANG DU MI 'GYUR BYA

62 BDAG NI BSREGS TE BSAD GYUR TAM BDAG GI MGO BO BCAD KYANG BLA RNAM PA KUN DU NYON MONGS PA'I DGRA LA 'DUD PAR MI BYA'O

63 DE BZHIN GNAS SKABS THAMS CAD DU RIGS PA LAS NI GZHAN MI SPYAD RTZED MO'I BDE 'BRAS 'DOD PA LTAR 'DI YIS BYA BA'I LAS GANG YIN

64 LAS DE LA NI ZHE NA BYA STE LAS DES MI NGOMS DGA' BAR BYA BDE BA'I DON DU LAS BYAS KYANG BAD 'GYUR MI 'GYUR GTOL MED KYI GANG GI LAS NYID BDE 'GYUR BA

65 DE LAS MI BYED JI LTAR BDE SPU GRI'I SOR CHAGS SBRANG RTZI LTA'I 'DOD PA RNAMS KYIS MI NGOMS NA RNAM SMIN BDE LA ZHI BA YI BSOD NAMS KYIS LTA CI STE NGOMS

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66 DE LTAS LAS TSAR PHYIN BYA'I PHYIR NYI MA PHYED DUS GDUNGS PA YI GLANG CHEN MTSO PHRAD MTSOR 'JUG LTAR LAS DE LA YANG 'JUG PAR BYA

67 STOBS NYAMS PA DANG RJES 'BREL NA SLAR BYA'I DON DU DOR BAR BYA LEGS PAR ZIN NA PHYI MA DANG PHYI MA 'DOD PAS DE SPANG BYA

68 'THAB RNYING DGRA DANG LHAN CIG TU G-YUL NGOR RAL KHA LHAGS PA BZHIN NYON MONGS MTSON LAS GZUR BYA ZHING NYON MONGS DGRA RNAMS GZHOM PAR BTAG

69 G-YUL DU RAL GRI LHUNG GYUR NA 'JIGS PAS MYUR DU LEN PA LTAR DE BZHIN DRAN PA'I MTSON SHOR NA DMYAL BA'I 'JIGS DRAN MYUR DU BLANG

70 JI LTAR KHRAG LA BRTEN BCAS NAS DUG NI LUS LA KHYAB 'GYUR BA DE BZHIN GLAGS NI RNYED PA NA NYES PAS SEMS LA KHYAB PAR 'GYUR

71 YUNGS MAR BKANG BA'I SNOD BKUR LA RAL GRI THOGS PAS DRUNG BSDAD DE BO NA GSOD BSDIGS 'JIGS PA LTAR BRTUL ZHUGS CAN GYIS DE BZHIN SGRIM

72 DE BAS PANG DU SPRUL 'ONGS NA JI LTAR RINGS PAR LDANG BA LTAR DE BZHIN GNYID DANG SNYOM 'ONGS NA MYUR DU DE DAG BZLOG PAR BYA

73 NYES PA BYUNG BA RE RE ZHING BDAG LA SMAD NAS CI NAS KYANG BDAG LA PHYIS 'DI MI 'BYUNG NGA DE LTAR BYA ZHES YUN RING BSAM

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74 JI LTAR GNAS SKABS 'DI DAG LA DRAN PA GOMS PA NYID 'GYUR ZHES RGYU 'DI YIS NI PHRADPA'AM RIGS PA'I LAS NI 'DOD PAR BYA

75 CI NAS LAS BYED SNGON ROL NAS THAMS CAD LA NI MTHU YOD PA DE LTAR BAG YOD GTAM DRAN TE BDAG NYID LDANG BA YANG BAR BYA

76 JI LTAR RLUNG NI 'GRO BA DANG 'ONG BAS SHING BAL DBANG BSGYUR BA DE BZHIN SPRO BAS DBANG BSGYUR TE DE LTAR NA NI 'GRUB PAR 'GYUR

BYANG CHUB SEMS DPA'I SPYOD PA LA 'JUG PA LAS, BRTZON 'GRUS BSTAN PA ZHES BYA BA STE LE'U BDUN PA'O

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Appendix II Annotated Bibliography

English Translations (from either the original Sanskrit or the Tibetan translation): Santideva. The Bodhicaryavatara. Translated with introduction and notes by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Translated from the San- skrit with footnotes on where the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts differ. Includes an introduction on Shantideva and his world by Paul Williams. Santideva. A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. Translated from the Sanskrit and Tibetan by Vesna A. Wallace and B. Alan Wallace. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 1997. Shantideva. A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Translated by Stephen Batchlor. Dharamsala, India: Library of Ti- betan Works and Archives, 1979. Reprints 1981, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1992, 1998. This is the translation that Geh- lek Rimpoche uses in this commentary. Shantideva. Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: How to Enjoy a Life of Great Meaning and Altruism. Translat- ed from Tibetan to English by Neil Elliott and Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. Glen Spey, New York: Tharpa Publica- tions, 2002. A new translation that appear succinct, done under the supervision of a learned geshe. Shantideva. The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhi- charyavatara. Translated from the Tibetan by the Padma- kara Translation Group. Boston: Shambhala, 1997. A very beautiful and poetic translation. Commentaries: 329

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Kelsang Gyatso, Geshe. Meaningful to Behold: The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Tharpa Publications, 1980, fourth edition 1994. This is a detailed commentary on Shantideva’s Bodhisatt- vacharyavatara. It does not include a separate translation but has the translation interwoven in the commentary. Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche checked the Tibetan text of this commentary. Roach, Geshe Michael, Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Part I, II and III; Course X, XI and XII. New York: The Asian Classics Institute, no date given. These courses include tapes of Michael Roach’s lecture commentary on selected verses, plus study materials taken from traditional Tibetan sources. Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama. A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night: A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Translated from the Tibetan by the Padmakara Transla- tion Group. Boston: Shambhala, 1994. The Dalai Lama’s commentary on selected verses of the Bo- dhisattvacharyavatara. Tenzin Gyatso, The Dalai Lama of Tibet. Transcendent Wisdom: A Teaching on the Wisdom Section of Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. Translated, edited and annotated by B. Alan Wallace. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publi- cations, 1988, second edition 1994. The Dalai Lama’s commentary on the ninth chapter of the Bodhisatt- vacharyavatara. Wisdom: Two Buddhist Commentaries on the Ninth Chapter of Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (Khendchen Kunzang Palden, The Nectar of Manjushri’s Speech. Minyak Kunzang Sonam, The Brilliant Torch.) Translated from the Tibetan by the Padmakara Translation Group. Peyzac-le-Moustier, France: Padmakara, 1993.

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Notes

1 Tibetan tson dru (brtson ‘grus) has also been translated as enthusiastic efforts, joyful efforts, heroic efforts or perseverence. It is the opponent of laziness. A definition follows in verse 2. 2 In the commentary on Chapter 6 of Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara. 3 bzod pa 4 Rimpoche remarked here that in Tibetan you don’t have to use personal pronouns. You don’t have to say ‘I’ or ‘you’ or ‘anyone’, but in English you always have to. That sometimes makes translating difficult. 5 Rimpoche often uses the terms ‘merit merit’ and ‘wisdom merit’ for the two accumulations. 6 Often called merit merit 7 Relative bodhimind is the committment to become enlightened for the sake of others, while absolute bodhimind is the mind that has realized the ultimate nature of reality. 8 Chandrakirti (Tibetan Dawa Drakpa) was one of Nagarjuna’s disciples. He lived in India around 650 CE. 9 Asanga (Tibetan Tok mey) lived lived around 300 CE. 10 dge la sbro. 11 Completing and accomplishing have a positive connotation in Tibetan that they do not necessarily have in English. 12 See Gelek Rimpoche’s Lam Rim Teachings, Volume Two, or any other lamrim text on the value, importance and rarity of human life for a list of these qualities. 13 Rimpoche often says that one’s ultimate Dharma is one’s own spiritual development, which cannot develop without enthusiastic efforts. 14 The estate of a an incarnate lama.

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15 A great Tibetan master who lived from 1182-1251. 16 In Do the Meditation Rock. 17 As noted previously, in Tibetan pronouns are often left unspecified, so that a verse can have several interpretations. 18 brtson med ‘bras bu 19 bze re chan 20 This working basis of a human form endowed with liberties is superior to a wish-granting gem. Moreover, such is only obtained this very one time. Difficult to acquire and easily lost, it passes in a flash like lightning in the sky. Considering how easily this can happen at any time and realizing that all worldly activities are as immaterial as chaff, you must try to take advantage of its essential significance at all times, day and night. I, the yogi, have practiced just that. If you would also seek Liberation, please cultivate yourself in the same way. From the shortest Lam rim, Lines of Experience, vs 10.. 21 There is more on this topic in Chapter 8 of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. 22 The sentence continues in the next verse. 23 gnam khar mdzod 24 This is said in the Subhahupariprccha Sutra. 25 Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Ch. VI, vs 10. 26 Shepherd-like Bodhisattvas aspire to make sure all other beings become enlightened before they do, just as a shepherd drives all his sheep through a gate before going through it himself. 27 See also the Guide to the Bodhisattvas Way of Life, chapter one, verse 36. 28 tshul khrims 29 Hearers or Shravakas are practitioners who aim to become Arhats, to achieve individual liberation. 30 See chapter one, verse 9. 31 Aspiration or motivation möpa (mos pa), steadfastness ten pa (brtan pa), joy ga wa (dga ba) and rest or determination tor wa (dor ba). The meanings of these supports or forces are explored in the verses 31-67. 32 Nga gyel (nga rgyal) can mean pride or self-confidence. 33 Bsgoms pa, the word meaning constant acquaintance, also means meditation, in this case constant analytical meditation. 34 The faith of admiration Dang bai dad pa,the faith that wants to attain the same qualities mngon ‘dod kyi dad pa, and convinced faith yid chhes pai dad pa 35 lus shes and dbang shes respectively 36 Gelek Rimpoche is currently (2007) teaching an extensive course on the Mind and Mental Factors, which will be available later in transcript or book form. 37 Referring to the line in The Foundation of All Perfections by Je Tsongkhapa that says one’s good and evil deeds trail after one like the shadow trails the body.

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Rimpoche has explained that the word for shadow could also be translated as odor. 38 In the Tibetan, the meter changes from seven syllable lines to longer lines for verses 44 and 45. The imagery in verse 44 is from the Sukhava- tivyuha Sutras, two Mahayana sutras which talk about Sukhavati (Tibetan bde ba chan pronounced dewa chen) the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. 39 The first Bodhissattva stage comes when a Bodhisattva attains the Path of Seeing, the third Mahayana path. 40 rdo rje rgyal mtshan 41 The Vajradhvaja sutra, or Vajra Banner Sutra, is a subsection of the Flower Ornament Sutra (Avatamsaka sutra). 42 Rimpoche has taught on the five powers a number of times, for instance in Guru Devotion, his commentary on the Lama Chöpa. The five powers are the power of determination or motivation, the power of the white seed, the power of familiarity, the power of repudiation and the power of prayer. 43 1455 - 1529). Rimpoche told another story about Drukpa Kunley. An old woman who had a beautiful piece of turquoise told her family, ‘When I die take this turquoise and give it to this Drukpa Kunley wherever you may find him and ask him to save me in future.’ The family thought that it would be a shame to give away this great turquoise and decided to give him a less valuable one. They found him but he said, ‘I don’t know anything about this. I don’t want this cheap stone. This is not mine.’ He just refused to take it, so they had to go back and get the real one. The moment Drukpa Kunley saw it he said, ‘Oh yes, that is the one. This turquoise goes in my quiver and the old lady goes into liberation!’ 44 Two of the 11 virtous mental factors, shame ngo tsa, which means refraining from a bad action because of how bad you would feel about yourself, and self-restraint or embarassment trel yö (khrel yod), which means refraining out of consideration for how others could be affected. .45 This sentence is completed with the first line of verse 58 on p. 265. 46 The verse again has a longer metrical line, and contains word play that does not translate into English: the syllable rgyal is repeated seven times. As Rimpoche mentions the word nga gyel (nga rgyal) is used for both ‘self- confidence’ and ‘self-importance’ ‘In order to conquer’ is rgyal phyir. ‘Self- confident’ is rgyal can and ‘victorious hero’ is rnam rgyal dpa. The word translated as ‘Conqueror’ (Buddha) is gyel wa (rgyal ba). 47 slob grwa thos bsam and bsam gtan respectively 48 Tsongkhapa’s Shortest Lamrim, Lam rim bdus don, vs. 18 49 The Tibetan word for Bodhisattva, chang chub sem pa (byang chub sems dpa) contains the word for here pa wo (dpa bo).

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50 At this point, Rimpoche also mentioned, ‘There are lots of stories about Katyayana. I quoted one of them in my book Good Life, Good Death, where Katyayana saw the past and present lives of a family and laughed, because the father from the previous life had become a dog, the mother a fish and the husband in this life killed a guy who was misbehaving with his wife. The killed enemy was reborn as the couple’s son. They were holding their previous enemy in their arms as the most precious, dearest person. That is a long story in itself.’ 51 See also verse 1 of this chapter for the wind of enthusiasm. 52 Rimpiche adds the message: I have to give you some bad news now. Bakula Rimpoche has passed away this morning [November 4, 2003]. It was 7 pm Indian standard time. Rimpoche did come here and given the 13 deity Yamantaka initiation. Many of you have taken the initiation from him, so I would like to in- form you. Bakula Rimpoche was very old, actually. He has completed all his spiritual activities as well as political responsibilities. He was the head lama of Ladakh, went to Tibet, studied everything and returned to Ladakh, where he was asked to become the Ladakhi representative at the insistence of Mahatma Gandhi and Jahawal Nehru. He became a political leader, first as minister for Ladahki affairs in the Kashmir state government and then member of the Indian parliament, member of the minority commission. Later he became for many years the Indian am- bassador to Mongolia for an unprecedented 20 years. This is unheard of otherwise in the diplomatic core. Normally they will change the ambas- sador every 3 or 4 years. He was asked to stay on again and again at the request of both, the Indian and the Mongolian governments. One of Rimpoche’s most important activities was to effect the transition from communism to democracy in Mongolia without any bloodshed. This must be completely credited to him. Now he has passed away and we will pray that his wishes be completed. We are going to do the lama chopa tsoh now, assuming that we have all done the Lama Chopa itself.

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About Gelek Rimpoche

Born in Lhasa, Tibet, Kyabje Gelek Rimpoche was recognized as an incarnate lama at the age of four. Carefully tutored by Tibet’s greatest living masters, he received specialized individual teaching at Drepung Monastery, the nation’s largest monastery. In 1959, Gehlek Rimpoche was among those forced into exile, fleeing the Communist Chinese who had occupied Tibet since 1951. While in India, Rimpoche as a member of a group of sixteen monks, was chosen to continue specific studies with the great masters who had escaped Tibet, including the Dalai Lama’s personal tu- tors. At the age of twenty-five, Rimpoche gave up monastic life. In the mid-70’s, Gehlek Rimpoche was encouraged by his teachers to begin teaching in English. Since that time he has gained a large following throughout the world. Coming to the U.S. in the mid-80’s, Rimpoche later moved to Ann Arbor, MI and in 1987 founded Jewel Heart, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Tibet- an culture and Buddhism. Today, Jewel Heart has chapters throughout the U.S. and in Malaysia, Singapore and the Netherlands. A member of the last generation of lamas to be born and fully educated in Tibet, Gehlek Rimpoche is particularly distinguished for his understanding of contemporary society and his skill as a teacher of Buddhism in the West. He is now an American citizen. Gehlek Rimpoche’s first book, the national bestseller, Good Life, Good Death, was published in 2001.

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About Jewel Heart

Jewel Heart is an educational and cultural center whose doors are open to all. Its purpose is to transmit the essence of Tibetan Bud- dhism in an authentic and accessible form. Jewel Heart provides guidance and practical methods to anyone interested in spiritual development, as well as to those who wish to follow the traditional Buddhist path. The name Jewel Heart was chosen to represent the organization because the heart is the essence of the human being, and the jewel something of great value – considered precious. Through embracing the preciousness of our life and developing our qualities, inner peace will grow, and our actions will be influenced by compassionate concern for others. It is to this end that Jewel Heart dedicated its efforts. The Jewel Heart logo contains three graphic elements: the spinning jewel wheel, the lotus, and the flame. The central wheel symbolizes the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The Buddha represents our potential for enlightenment. The Dharma is the spiritual development within each individual. The Sangha is the community of those individuals, who have developed wisdom, act as guides. In nature, the lotus rises from the mud, yet remains pure. Similarly, we are capable of rising above ordinary conceptions and putting love and compassion into action in daily life. The flame that sur- rounds the jewel wheel represents the fire of wisdom, consuming all obstacles and bringing insight. JEWEL HEART Chapters are to be found:  USA: in Ann Arbor, Chicago, Cleveland OH, Lincoln NE, New York and San Francisco.  The Netherlands: Nijmegen, Den Bosch, Tilburg, Arnhem, Utrecht.  Malaysia: in Kuala Lumpur, Gerik and Panang, and in Muar.  Singapore JEWEL HEART P.O BOX 7933 ANN ARBOR, MI 48107 www.jewelheart.org

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Jewel Heart Transcripts

1. Gelek Rimpoche. Ganden Lha Gyema; The hundreds of deities of the land of Joy.* 1991, revised 1999. A commentary on guru yoga in the tradition of Je Tsongkhapa. 2. Gelek Rimpoche. Karma; actions and their consequenses. 1991; revised 2004 half-size format. An introduction to the concept of karma and how to deal with it in daily life. 3. Gelek Rimpoche. Love and Compassion. 1992; revised 1997 The altruistic mind and the Six Perfections 4. Denma Lochö Rimpoche. The Wheel of Existence. 1992; revised 2004 half- size format. Explanation of the cyclic nature of existence following from ignorance and neurotic patterns. 5. Gelek Rimpoche. Six-session Guru Yoga.* 1 992; 3rd and extended edition 2003. The guru yoga as a requirement for the practice of Highest Yoga Tantra 6. Gelek Rimpoche. Self and Selflessness. 1993; third edition 1998 The nature of the Self in Buddhist philosophy 7. Gelek Rimpoche, Lam Rim Teachings; teachings 1987-1991, 4 volumes. 1993; revised 2005. Comprehensive teachings on the Graduated Path to Enlight- enment in the tradition of Je Tsongkhapa. 8. Gelek Rimpoche, Transforming Negativity into Positive living. 1994, half-seize format 2004. Practical advice on how to deal with negative emotions in daily life 9. Gelek Rimpoche, The Three Principles of the Path by Je Tsongkhapa,1994; revised 2003, 2004. Detailed Commentary on the Three Principles of the Path: Determination to be free; Altruism, the Perfect View 10. Gelek Rimpoche, The Three Principles of the Path – a Concise Commentary; 2006. Totallly renewed edition in half-size format of the 1995 Three Principles. 11. Gelek Rimpoche, Healing and Selfhealing through Tara.* 1996; revised and extended edition 1999. Healing practices based on the deity Tara, a manifestation of the active aspect of the compassion of all enlightened beings 12. Gelek Rimpoche, Three Main Short Vajrayana practices.* 1997; 2nd and extended edition 1999. Commentaries on: Six session yoga, Short sadhana of Solitary Hero Yamantaka, Short sadhana of Vajrayogini. 13. Gelek Rimpoche, Guru Devotion: How to integrate the primordial mind.* 1997, revised, extended edition 2003. Commentary Lama Chöpa –Offering to the Spiritual Master.

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14. Gelek Rimpoche, Solitary Yamantaka teachings on the generation stage.* 1997; 2nd edition 1998. Comprehensive commentary on the Generation Stage of the Solitary Hero Vajrabhairava, including reviews and discussions. 15. Gelek Rimpoche, Odyssey to Freedom; in sixty-four steps. 1998; 2nd edition 2001; revisionextension in action. The Graduated Path to Enlightenment in easy- to-practice form. 16. Gelek Rimpoche, The Perfection of Wisdom Mantra. 1998. The Perfection of Wisdom Mantra and the Five Paths of the Mahayana 17. Tarab Tulku, Nearness to Oneself and Openness to the World. 1999. 4 Selected topics. 18. Gelek Rimpoche, Lojong, Training of the Mind in Eight Verses. 2000. Com- mentary on Mind Training based on the root text by Langri Tangpa. 19. Gelek Rimpoche, Lojong, Training of the Mind in Seven Points. 2000. Commen- tary on the Mind Training based on the root text by Geshe Chekawa. 20. Gelek Rimpoche, Vajrayogini Teachings* 2000; 3rd revised and extended edition 2003-05. Comprehensive commentary on the Generation stage of Va- jrayogini. 21. Gelek Rimpoche, Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Chapter- volumes 1-8, 2000-2011. Detailed Verse by Verse Commentary on Shan- tideva’s Famous Work 22. Gelek Rimpoche, The Practice of the Triumphant Ma. 1996, revised edition 2002, half-size format 2004. Healing practices based on the Deity Tara, a manifestation of the active aspect of compassion of all enlightened beings. This transcript can be read by the general public, no requirement of an initiation. 23. Gelek Rimpoche. Ganden Lha Gyema; The hundreds of deities of the land of Joy. 1991, revised 2002. Guru-yoga practice for general public. No initiation requirement. 24. Tarab Tulku, Unity in Duality; the inter-determinate nature of all that exists. 2003. 25. Gelek Rimpoche, GOM – A Course in Meditation. 2005. An essential guide for developing profound realization. One of the most thorough transcripts available on concentrated mediation 26. Gelek Rimpoche, SEM – The Nature of Mind. 2005. 27. Gelek Rimpoche, The Four Mindfullnesses. 2007. 28. Gelek Rimpoche, Cittamani Tara – Extensive Commentary*. Cittamani Tara, as the highest yoga tantra form of Tara, empowers us to reach enlightenment within this very body, this very life. 2008

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29. Gelek Rimpoche, The Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths is the basis of all the Buddha's teaching. Gelek Rimpoche’s eloquent and pragmatic approach sheds fresh light on applying these teaching to daily life. 30. Gelek Rimpoche, The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, 2010. Commentary on the Mind Training [Lojong], based on the root text attributed to Dhar- marakshita, one of the teachers of Atisha.

* Must have Highest Yoga Tantra Initiation to read. To be able to understand them properly, it is important that you receive a Highest Yoga

Tantra initiation from a qualified teacher

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