Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute talk from 1987, Alex Berzin addresses practical challenges facing Buddhism in the Western context. He emphasizes the importance of intellectual openness within established traditions, cautioning against both cultic insularity and the uncritical mixing of incompatible practices in a single session. Berzin argues that centers should expose practitioners to diverse lineages and teachers to enable informed spiritual choices, while maintaining standards of authentic transmission. He underscores the urgent ethical responsibility to support Tibetan culture and freedom despite rapid Chinese colonization—rebuilding monasteries in exile, preserving textual traditions, and raising global awareness of Tibet’s plight. He then clarifies Tibetan Buddhist terminology for Western audiences: the distinctions between lamas (qualified spiritual teachers), Tulkus (reincarnated masters), Rinpoches (precious ones), Geshes (PhD-level monastic scholars), and the proper use of honorific titles in relation to hierarchy. Throughout, Berzin stresses skillful communication adapted to mixed audiences and long-term strategic thinking informed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s guidance.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 B in the west .mp3
UUID: 44ed799a-4284-49ad-a5e2-dd9e1ed0e98a
Teacher: Alex Berzin
Collection: Buddhism in the West
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.7 minutes
Words: ~5,827
But it’s available. I mean, it’s so important, it says in the tradition, to check up. Check up the teachers. Check up, you know, what connections you have. All these sort of things.
How can people check up if there’s only one possibility which is available? So, you know, it’s a matter of really being fair to everyone. Also, as his holiness says, it you know, we shouldn’t make a big mishmash out of things, a big stew. You know, don’t water things down in that way. If you’re going to follow different types of practices, don’t mix them all together.
Do them individually. You know, there’s nothing wrong with doing a, you know, a Zen practice or, you know, practice from this lineage or that lineage, Dzogchen or Kagyü Mahāmudrā or whatever. That’s not contradictory to let’s say if you’re following a mainline type of Gelugpa training. But do it in an individual session. Know, don’t try to combine it with you know, doing something else at the same time.
That would be like putting, you know, the soup and the main meal and the coffee and all these things together in one dish. I mean, if you have the tradition of the pie floater here, still, we don’t want to throw the coffee in there as well. So this type of way of approaching things is important. It’s It’s important to be open minded. You know, not this football team mentality towards things.
These threatening closed type of things because that can only tend in the direction of becoming more and more like a cult. And as soon as Buddhism becomes labeled as a cult, then you know, you get into a lot of trouble. Because it’s important to differentiate, you know, what is the difference between ourselves as Buddhists and the various cults that are around. How about, you know, with the the Hare Krishnas and the Rajnishis and all these different things? And what about the born again Christians and the way that they’re approaching things?
You know, how do we fit into this whole picture? And you want to fit in in such a way that you’re not going to make yourself into a cult that’s, you know, you’re gonna be damned by one group and, you know, all these sort of things. And by being open is a very, important step in, into this. I mean, doesn’t mean that you open up your center to, any charlatan off the street who, comes in and wants to, preach about this or that type of spiritual trip. You know, because there are a lot of spiritual trips available and not all of them are very validly based.
But, you know, within established traditions, particularly Tibetan traditions, it’s important to allow people to have exposure to, you know, the whole spectrum so that it just helps with your education. It helps with your understanding. You know what’s going on. Based on that, you can make an intelligent decision as to what actually suits us the best. And we’re not at all missionaries.
Know, the whole point of it is not that we’re going out and trying to convert people and we get more and more points if they join our lineage or our type of thing than others. It’s to try to make techniques available to others which are going to help them with realization that not everybody’s going to find the same technique suiting, you know, suitable to them. And you need to have many different techniques because people are different. Also, a last point is that it’s important not to forget about the Tibetans. Because, you know, we work in terms of, you know, freedom of religion and spiritual paths.
For us westerners, we should have all the opportunities. But what about the Tibetans? You know, the Tibetans are the source of this. You know, if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have any of these techniques available to us. And we shouldn’t just say, well, you know, that’s politics or whatever and to hell with them, let’s just grab all their best teachers and we’re here for ourselves.
But it’s important to, you know, think in terms of how about freedom of practice and so on for the Tibetans as well in Tibet. And to not shy away from making available the information and so on about the Tibetan cause, about the difficulties that they’re facing in terms of, you know, although, you know, at the moment, it’s not as bad as it was before. I mean, before of the six million Tibetans, one million, you know, after the invasion in fifty nine, you get the Cultural Revolution. A million were killed in concentration camps or died, you know, in various other related ways. And six thousand over six thousand monasteries were destroyed.
All these sorts of things. Now it’s slightly eased, but you have to look at it more deeply. What’s happening? They are colonizing now and moving in, you know, millions and millions of Chinese into Tibet. So the Chinese now outnumber the Tibetans, you know, by more than a million more Chinese than Tibetans in Tibet.
The capital city, the there’s five times as many Chinese as there are Tibetans. They’ve allowed the Tibetans to rebuild a hundred and sixty monasteries, sort of shuts them up. But what it does is it makes a big tourist attraction. How are they paying for bringing all the Chinese in and building houses for them? They are paying for them out of the tourist money of exploiting the place.
Alright? Making it available for us westerners to go and see. Right? With all that revenue, then they are there building up things and, you know, they say, look, we’re developing Tibet, but, what are they doing? They’re building housing for more Chinese.
They’re not building it for Tibetans. So schools, hospitals, the whole bit. So, these sort of things are things that, you know, we shouldn’t just put a bag over our head and say, you know, well, we’re just spiritual, holy holy, and you know, we won’t don’t want to involve ourselves in these worldly affairs. But again, you know, the same vein as what I was saying that we don’t wanna have a complete brain drain, you know, and deprive the Tibetans who are in India of their teachers, you know, completely. But likewise, you know, we do want to as well try to help out the Tibetans as much as we can, at least in terms of making information available.
I think that that is a valid thing that we can do in our centers as well. So these are some of the the points that I had wanted to discuss with you. And in terms of just, you know, what I’ve seen traveling around the world and going to centers from most of these organizations that I mentioned and seeing what’s going on. And it’s important throughout all of this to also keep in mind His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s guidance through all of this. Know, it’s basically through his programs of encouraging, you know, the various teachers to go out, opening things up, making the institutions and so on in India available that, everything is possible.
That’s another point in terms of terminology. Know, titles that people use. You know, there’s this whole issue of His Holiness. Right? Now, His Holiness as a title, you know, if, you know, is basically like you wouldn’t call the ministers by the same title as you call the king.
You wouldn’t call the cardinals by the same title that you call the pope. So like that, if his holiness becomes just a general term of respect that’s used for, you know, just about any type of lama who comes along, even if they’re the greatest lamas, it gets very confusing because you have to ask his holiness who? And that becomes very awkward. Now, there can be a very valid argument given for saying, the heads of the four traditions should be called his holiness. And in that case then, his holiness, the Dalai Lama should have something extra as part of his name because he really is the head of the whole thing.
So his holiness, the supreme his supreme presence, which is a translation of one of his titles, the Dalai Lama, something like that. But it’s important to have some sort of sense of protocol. Tibetans are very much into protocol. And especially when Tibetan lamas come visiting, it’s important to be a little bit mindful of that. And, you know, like one can take a guideline from the way that titles are used in the Kagyu tradition in English.
His Holiness is used only for the Karmapa. The four regions are called his eminence. Situ Rinpoche, Gyaltsab Rinpoche, Shamar Rinpoche, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, then somebody like Kalu Rinpoche, who’s the teacher of all of them. You know? He’s just called, the most, venerable.
You know? These sort of of things, you know, take a guideline from the Tibetans themselves. They’re into protocol. Their titles, they’re certainly not going to use them sloppily. And these are things that, are helpful for us to be able to do as well.
Because in dealing with the Tibetans, because our interaction is going to be, you know, very close, at least for the next several centuries with the Tibetans, it’s important to know, you know, some of the things of how they operate, what’s important to them, and try to use our terms and our way of explaining things in, you know, a constructive type of way. Okay. So these are some of the issues. Any questions? Anything you wanna discuss?
You wanna take a break first before we discuss? What do you wanna do? I mean, if you have stuff to discuss, we can take a five, ten minute break and then, have a chat. Or what do you wanna do? Sounds good?
Okay. So we’re up to questions. Anybody have any questions or anything we’d like to discuss? Yes? Yeah.
There’s well, this I don’t know if everybody heard that, but the question was in terms of I was talking about how lamas, when they teach, they don’t explain everything all at once. And then the question was about that. Is that also a type of discipline that we should follow ourselves? And yes, I think that’s something that we can follow. It’s a matter of degrees, however.
You see, I think that to explain well, first of all, there’s several issues involved. One is the material itself can be very difficult and obscure. My personal feeling is that the language that we use to explain it though doesn’t have to make it even more obscure. Material is difficult enough as it is the way that it is. And so I wouldn’t obscure it by explaining it in very vague misleading language.
I think that level of trying to explain things clearly is very helpful. But then when you even when you explain things in clear language, nevertheless, you don’t want to explain things, you know, in the most complex and full way in the beginning because it’s going to confuse. Well, no. It’s not purposely making it vague. It’s not filling in all the detail.
You know, you can make it vague. Right. I mean, you can make it you know, it it depends on what you say by what you mean by vague. You know, usually vague. Yeah.
I don’t remember too interesting that they come in Well, it’s not a matter of interesting or boring. That’s not the issue. The issue is, you know, you can have an explanation of something which, is gonna turn people off because it’s too difficult. Right? You don’t wanna do that either.
You don’t wanna also make it you know, because you have issues as well. You know, is the lama here just to be a comedian and entertain us by, telling jokes and making us feel nice? That also is a bit of a waste. I mean, you can go to a circus for that or turn on the TV. When is enough enough?
That’s hard to say. You know? I mean, because you’re saying, you know, as a teacher, how would you know enough is enough? And the difficulty with that is that unless you’re teaching to, if you’re teaching just to one person, then it’s a little bit easier to, suss that out because you can tell by the reaction of that person. But if you’re teaching to a large audience of a group of people, that’s difficult.
And then the question is, do you teach to the lowest common denominator or to the highest common denominator? Not necessarily highest com there’s no common denominator, which is highest, but, you know what I mean. Now the way that his holiness, Dalai Lama often teaches is he will teach text. You know, he’ll give a very long introduction, which everybody can follow. Right?
And with a lot of practical advice. And then he’ll teach the text and explain it on a very, very profound level with the more simple levels as well. And the more difficult the subject matter, the faster he goes. Alright. So when he gets to the real technical difficult discussions of voidness, he’s going at top speed.
And the, idea behind that is those who are capable of understanding it will be able to understand it. Those who can’t understand it, no matter how slowly he goes, they won’t be able to follow it. And so, you know, that purpose that in a sense purposely keeps it, vague without it being vague. Now as, you know, a Westerner, you know, in a Western context doing that, you have to be very skillful. You know, you have to sort of explain what you’re doing.
That’s what I mean by Western Buddhism, explain what you’re doing rather than just do it because Westerners won’t stand for it, really. I mean, they’re too intolerant. I mean, it’s too weird. So, you know, when you get into a technical discussion, if there are advanced people in the in the room, you say, you know, well, and for these people, and then you go blah blah blah blah blah. And those of you who, you know, haven’t, don’t have the background, well, you know, you’ll get to that.
You can either do that or you can give them a simpler way of understanding. I mean, there’s different ways to do it. Oh, yes. This is something that his holiness says very much that with the difficult situation in Tibet and the refugees coming out, it has acted as a circumstance for, you know, the Buddhist teachings to become more available around the world to be helpful to more people. So, you know, in that sense, you don’t look at the at the Chinese invaders as, you know, total enemies, the big black line around them.
We’ve also, taught us and given the circumstances for things to grow and develop. But that doesn’t mean that you just sit back and let them slaughter your people either. And the mhmm. No. Dalai Lama lives in India, in Dharamsala.
Well, the center of Tibetan Buddhism is in India. Well, I don’t know whether it develops into stronger movement or not, but the major monasteries, the major learning institutions are in India. You know, where the Tibetans are being trained. Because whatever institutions we have in the West are still very primitive and beginner level compared to anything that you have going on in India. You know, monasteries, etcetera.
You know, there have been a few that have been started in the West, but it’s very difficult for Westerners. Extremely difficult because you have the issues of, you know, well, what model do you use? Do you use the model of Tibetan monasteries? Do use the model of Christian monasteries? Westerners are really not into discipline.
Disciplined trip of, you know, what goes on in a monastery. Everybody’s very independent, wants to do their own trip. And, you know, how are you going to institute discipline within the monastery? And who are they going to accept discipline from? And if it’s coming from discipline is along Tibetan lines, which doesn’t necessarily suit the Westerner.
If a Westerner tries to institute the discipline, they have no precedent for doing that. What model do they follow? It’s a very difficult issue. Well, you’re not going to get people in France or Germany agreeing with that. Right.
Yes. It’s unifying. Unifying. But as I say, I wonder if it really is, necessary. You see, you need to if you have everything in English, then you’re going to exclude a very very large number of people in the world, you know, if they have to learn English in order to be able to study Buddhism.
Now, certainly, in the past, that was the case. You know, say let’s take, you know, ten, fifteen years ago. Certainly, was the case. Now more is becoming available in other languages. You have a number of publications in Italian, French, German, Spanish.
Things are starting to be available a little bit in Polish, some Hungarian translations, few things being done in, Serbian or Croatian. Know, things are starting in different languages. But, I think that, it’s healthy to try to have it in the different languages. You get more and more complex problems with them, of course, because, you know, sometimes they’re translating from English. And when they’re translating from English, then the misunderstanding that’s in English, the confusion becomes even worse when you go into their languages, like in Spanish.
Because I work a lot with translators in other languages, in European languages, with the problems that they’re having with their language. And, you know, you’ll get in Spanish, for instance, people saying, you know, well, we don’t have a difference in our language between awareness and consciousness and what actually is meant by that. And now you’re discussing something which is totally irrelevant because neither of those are Tibetan words either. And then you try to, you know, explain to them the difference of the connotation of those two words in English. You know?
It’s it’s irrelevant. So it becomes a a big problem. But, I think that, it is good to try to put it in the various languages just, in terms of trying to communicate with others. Still, more is available in English than it is in any other European language. And so if people really want to be able to, study, you know, let’s say, they’re living in, you know, whatever country, non English speaking, they are going to have to learn English first.
But I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea to, make everybody learn English and only leave it in English. That’s a bit unfair. What’s your language, Right. Well, by that token then, for the, basic teachings, you want to be able to have things explained in, you know, your own national language. Even in Czech, it’s done.
Oh, but on the initial level, it is necessary, and it is practical because, otherwise, you don’t reach, the people. The question is, are there Buddhists are there Tibetans who are Buddhist and also attracted to the ideology of communism? You know, there’s a lot of different issues. One of the things that His Holiness takes interest in is finding a common meeting ground between Marxism and Buddhism. Because he says that if you look at a large part of the Asian continent in large areas.
You have the political system being Marxist and the I mean, not only China, but Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etcetera. And you have the people’s, you know, basic belief being Buddhist. And he says that there are certainly common grounds there in terms of the concern for the majority, concern for society, not the emphasis on one’s own private selfish aims. These sort of things. But the thing that one always has to differentiate is difference between Marxist theory and a totalitarian regime.
Right? Totalitarian regime, you know, of course, are many totalitarian regimes in this world, not only communist. You know, you can, look at, Cuba, for instance, versus Chile and say, which is, the worst? Well, both of them are, you know, severely totalitarian regimes. One on the right side, one on the left side.
Neither place you really have, very much freedom. So, the thing that, you know, is objectionable is, you know, a totalitarian dictatorship type of regime in which people have no freedom to be able to pursue spiritual things. Now, you know, whether you know, in terms of the economic systems, that’s something, you know, private ownership or state ownership, these sort of things, that, you know, there’s no problem. There is the possibility. But, of course, you know, in communist type of societies, you have, you know, their own individual type of problem that comes up, which is basically one of feeling that, hopelessness.
That it doesn’t matter what you do. You you know, whether you are productive in work or you’re not productive, it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares. You get the same salary. You get the same benefits.
So why even bother doing anything? And so there’s a basic, lack of of, faith or confidence in cause and effect that what you do matters and can change things, especially in your in terms of your life. And so, you know, that’s a really difficult thing that that, people in these societies have to deal with, something which doesn’t come up so much in, capitalist societies. But, you know, that is an issue that his holiness is very interested in, this common meeting ground between Marxism and Buddhism so that you can come up with some sort of working solution for these vast areas of Asia that will allow for, you know, each side not to feel threatened by the other. The Marxists not to be threatened by the Buddhists.
The Buddhists not to be threatened by the Marxist. I mean, the objection in Tibet is not, you know, Marxism. The objection is the inability to choose what type of government you have and the absolute colonization of your country and genocide. Genocide. I mean, that’s the objection.
How are the Chinese going down now and another teaching? Well, they are slightly easing up. And so you do have a hundred sixty monasteries. They’re allowing to be rebuilt. In those monasteries, there is, over the last year or two, the starting of, new monks being ordained, little bit of the education system going on.
But, it’s a token. It’s a token. And one tends to almost think that it’s sort of, you know, in a sense keeping the Tibetans, you know, making them shut up. So that, you know, on a grosser scale, they can just colonize the whole thing. You know, it keeps them quiet.
Let them go to their monasteries and spend all their effort and money building it. And, you know, it’ll make even a bigger tourist attraction. To allow the people to go back. He has no control over that. If people wanna go back, they’re free.
It’s when the people have their their right to self determination, and the Chinese get out. Well, I mean, in term I mean, if Chinese get out in the sense of not colonizing the place, I mean, they’re gonna move in millions and millions more Chinese. You know, very quickly, it’s going to become like Inner Mongolia, which is going to be like the situation of the Maoris or the Aborigines or the Red Indians. Tiny little pockets. That’s it.
That clearly is not something, desirable or beneficial for the Tibetans or for the area or for anything. But the basic thing is self determination and the right to have your own country. Is presented it presented in the United Nations? No. There’s no representative there.
It’s very difficult. The Chinese object very violently to that. I mean, Chinese are very clever. You know? You open up the border to allow the Tibetans to go back and forth and visit their relatives.
You know, the world thinks that you’re a good guy for doing that. What does it do, though? It allows the Chinese to then say they’re not refugees anymore because they could go back. Therefore, all the refugee agencies must stop giving them help. Clever.
Pretty clever. Pardon? No. I haven’t. I haven’t had yet.
If I had the opportunity, I would go. Yes. Yes. There were a lot of texts destroyed. A lot lost.
Things were taken out. There are also a number of monasteries which were in the border regions of the Himalayas that are on the Indian side of the border or the Nepalese or the Bhutanese side of the border or Sikkim. So, some things were preserved there. Yeah. That’s true.
A lot of things have been lost. No. A lot of things have been lost. I mean, it’s hard because, it wasn’t really cataloged what was available before. I mean, there are still vast, resources, library resources, which aren’t really well cataloged at all.
And there’s a very big collection in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, which isn’t very well cataloged. There’s a huge collection in Leningrad as well, which was taken out, earlier in the century. That’s not cataloged at all. It’s just, you know, in boxes. So there is some slight, hope.
But in the monasteries, you know, where they had the texts and stuff, these were used as toilet paper or burned or, you know, these sort of things. I don’t follow your question. Well, ten years is ten years. The Tibetans think in terms well, His Holiness thinks in terms of long periods of time, you know, obviously, from a historical point of view. So even if it takes centuries, you know, before something happens.
Right. Well, you can get the idea, you know, the His Holiness has always found the example of the Jews very interesting because they went for two thousand years before they got their country back. And, you know, he was interested in what were the, aspects, you know, what were the techniques that the Jewish people used to be able to preserve their culture, their religion, their identity that allowed them to survive for two thousand years. Sure. Well, I mean, he doesn’t say specifically, but they’re not sitting around sour grapes.
They’ve, you know, rebuilt their various institutions in India, rebuilt the monasteries, rebuilt the medical school. So they have the training, you know, the traditional medical system of Tibet, art schools, sculpture schools, statue making, drama, you know, astrology schools, everything, and keep it going. And one of the the, benefits of, teachers going all over the world is that it raises the consciousness of people about Tibet. You know, how are you going to, somehow gain interest in the world about the Tibetan issue? Now if you try to make a terrorist movement or a guerrilla movement, you know, the world isn’t interested in that.
They, really look askance at that. And there are tons of countries in the world that have been taken over and swallowed by larger countries. So how do you, approach it? I mean, His Holiness is a very intelligent person. And, the best way to gain sympathy is to, show the world how much Tibet has to offer and to share that with the world.
You know? So with the Buddhist teachings, the techniques, things like that, then Tibet takes its place as, you know, a country that has a tremendous amount to offer to the world. Therefore, it has a right to exist. Much more effective than trying to stage a guerrilla war against China. Well, number you, you know, an unbelievable proportion.
Oh, no. India is, one of the greatest countries in the world in terms of, being completely open to, taking in anybody into mother India. I mean, India is a fantastic place in terms of that generosity, in terms of that, openness. They gave them land for making agricultural settlements. Sure.
It was marginal land, land that they weren’t using. So, you know, it was quite poor. But, the Tibetans were able to, make these camps, clear the jungles. They had lots of problems with wild animals, elephants, wild boars, these sort of things, you know, trampling the fields and, you know, they dealt with these things and, were able to make it. Indian government.
Well, after all, Buddhism comes from India. And so, you know, it’s very fitting that they’re there. They’re refugees. They’re refugees. The vast majority, hardly any of them have become citizens of India.
They maintain the refugee status. A hundred thousand. Probably about five million now. You see, that’s that’s what was Tibet. I mean, the Tibetan speaking people.
Chinese have carved it into little provinces. So what they call Tibet is just one area of, where the Tibetan people, lived. Yes. Any friction with the Buddhists in India? No.
Well, Buddhists are very small. You have the Tibetans. You have the Tibetan speaking people in the mountain, in the Himalayas, who are part of India, like in Ladakh or these areas that there’s never been any trouble with. You do have some new neo Buddhist movements, particularly around the Bombay area of low caste Indians becoming Buddhists as a way to get out of a caste situation. But that’s something that’s just happened over and again in Indian history.
These people approach it basically in a very devotional Hindu type of way, aren’t really, terribly interested in teachings. But that that is happening to a certain extent. But there isn’t that type of friction now. I mean, the the difficulty with the Sikhs is not one of, it’s not a it’s not a religious issue. It’s a political issue.
Rinpoche is a title. Rinpoche literally means the precious one. Now, it’s used for Tulkus. Tulkus are reincarnated lamas. Those are lamas who have reached the point where they can direct a line of rebirths.
There are about a thousand of them, Tulkus. They’re all given the title Rinpoche. Then, the title Rinpoche is also given to any abbot or retired abbot called Rinpoche. And then often people will call their own particular spiritual teacher by the title Rinpoche out of respect. Like, gen Rinpoche is.
Gen means elder or teacher, and Rinpoche is precious. No. Lama, I mean, it’s confusing. A lama is, the equivalent of a guru. Right?
It’s the Tibetan equivalent of guru. And so it’s a spiritual teacher, but one who’s qualified as a spiritual teacher. Now that doesn’t mean that, they’re necessarily a monk or a nun. Right? Could be a lay person as well.
Right? No. A monk is just anybody who take a monk or a nun is just anybody who takes the vows and wears the robes. If someone is a spiritual teacher, then and, you know, a high spiritual teacher, they would be called a lama. A Tulku would also be called a lama.
Right? I mean, you have to work it out on the board, the provisions of, you know, all Tulkus would be called lamas, but not all lamas are Tulkus. Right? And all not all lamas are monks. Not all monks are lamas.
Right? And even mean that lama may not have been a monk. That’s correct. A lama is a spiritual teacher. A very advanced, not necessarily enlightened, but, a very advanced person can be a spiritual teacher.
Now these incarnate, Lamas are called lama, but they might not necessarily be a teacher. That’s a slightly different use of the word lama there. It’s more sort of like a respect. But then his holiness always says these incarnate lamas, these Tulkus have to prove themselves. He says that, the system could be very much abused, by people, you know, sort of worshiping them.
And, you know, a little kid comes along and they think that this is the golden child and is gonna save the world. That’s ridiculous. That, any incarnate lama, he says, should not just rest on their name and title. They have to prove themselves in that lifetime by their own qualifications, by what they’re able to, you know, achieve. That’s extremely important.
Otherwise, it becomes a complete superstitious, system. Because for one reason or another, you have a lot of these incarnate lamas who drop out, who don’t go into being teachers, who don’t, you know, stay in the system. It could continue to generate. By the force of the person who starts the line, it will generate a continuing line. But for one reason or another, each individual person in that line might, you know, be more or less involved in what they’re doing.
You know, what his holiness says about these Tulkus is that, the only thing definite you can say about them is that they’re born with a tremendous amount of positive potential, which means that they’re going to get tremendously, great advantages in terms of the circumstances, the situations that are available to them. They’ll get the best teachers. They’ll get, you know, most attention and so on. In some cases, it can be beneficial. Other cases, it can be too much.
You know, these young Tulkus, because I’ve known many of them, if they get too swamped with, people, expecting that, you know, they live up to a certain role and they’re not allowed to be human beings and not allowed to develop as human beings, often it’s been the case that they just rebel. It’s just too much. They drop out. They go to, you know, America, get married, work in a factory, work in a restaurant as a waiter. It’s happened.
A Tulku is a reincarnated, bodhisattva, somebody who has reached the point where they can direct their incarnations, and then they do that. And they’re found as a small child. As I said, there’s about a thousand. A lama who is a Tulku. He would be called a Tulku.
I mean, he could be called that. Guru and Geshe. Guru is the a Sanskrit word. The Tibetan equivalent would be a lama. Alright.
So it’s just the Indian word. And the Geshe is the way that it’s used nowadays, let’s we don’t have to go into the history of it, is it’s somebody who has gone through the monastic education system and has passed a tremendous amount of examinations in that. So it’s the equivalent of a PhD. Comes at the end of about twenty, twenty five years of study. And you have that, primarily in the Gelugpa tradition, that title.