The question is, do I have a title? And, no. I don’t have a title. If anything, I’m called the translator. Maybe my role within the Tibetan society is as a translator.
Well, there are teachers and there are teachers. I mean, as I was saying, any older student can, go around and, explain to people, you know, as much as they themselves have studied. And so that’s what I do. That doesn’t make me into, you know, a guru or anything like that. I’m not going around giving initiations or these sort of things.
There are many different levels of Buddhist teachers. I am a Buddhist teacher. But the way that I fit into Tibetan society, the role that I play there is as a translator. And that’s a traditional role that a western that a foreign person would, you know, obviously play. Yeah.
Mhmm. Well, the question is how serious is the brain drain? And, I don’t have specific statistics on that. All I, you know, was trying to point out is that it’s something that we should be mindful of. You know, the Tibetan lamas do come to the West.
There are many reasons why they come. One, of course, it is beneficial to, everybody in the in the in the West who comes in contact with them. There are other reasons as well. One, it’s very helpful for raising the consciousness of the world about Tibet and about Buddhism and these sort of things. It can have very many far reaching beneficial consequences.
And just on a practical level, with the money that these Lamas get given in the West, that goes back and supports their monasteries, so it feeds the monks. Now what is the way to, you know, help with that balance? Well, you know, if we are willing to, help, you know, support their monasteries and support the training programs there because, you know, even if we’re just doing it for selfish reasons that we want to have lamas the future as well, that takes off some pressure. Well, there are yeah. It depends on your priorities.
You know, it doesn’t mean that one doesn’t help the Western monks and nuns. I think it’s a a matter of I don’t know. You know, it’s not going to take the two thousand or however many dharma centers, one thousand dharma centers around the world to support, you know, one little monastery of twelve monks in France, twelve western monks in France. We’re talking about something trivial compared to, you know, thousands and thousands of monks and nuns in India. You know?
So the amount of money involved, sure, you want you help your own, but one doesn’t just limit to that. I mean, what is the future of that? The long term future, certainly, it has to grow from somewhere, and, therefore, it’s very beneficial. Alright? Because, if any of the you know, if we’re going to develop a monastic situation in the West for Western monks, it really can only be done in the context of a monastery.
You know, we’ve seen over and again from examples that it’s just really difficult for Western monks and nuns to make it on their own unless they’re really super strong. So you need the community. Mean, we would have taught that. I mean, that was the whole purpose of having the monks and nuns in a community. But if it’s gonna be done, it has to be done correctly, you know, following all the rules of the community.
And that’s very hard for a lot of Western people to swallow the way that it’s done. So I don’t know. I mean, it’s there’s different issues. In my opinion, without a doubt, the future of, Buddhism for the next one or two generations is with the Tibetans. Long term in the West, short term with the Tibetans.
If we ignore the Tibetans now, there’ll be no future of it in the West because it’s going to die with this, you know, out of the old generation of Tibetans, the great masters, there’s only about two or three left alive. All of them have died. Right? In the current generation, you know, there are very few, if any, that meet up to that standard of these great Lamas like the tutors of his holiness, Trijang Rinpoche, Ling Rinpoche, Karmapa, These sort of figures. And so, you know, each generation, you know, the older generation now, you know, the ones in their sixties, you know, they were trained in Tibet, but the generation after them, they weren’t.
You know, they were just kids when they came out. And, you know, each generation after that is going to have less and less of the traditional training. As I was saying, you know, how far have we westerners gone? Well, some have made some progress, but realistically speaking, we’re nowhere compared to their potentialities because they have everything available. Pretty much, for the same type of reasons.
In Buddhism, the reason why there aren’t more women in the hierarchy or, you know, women teachers well, first of all, there are some. It’s not that there’s none. It’s just a matter of situation of women in societies in general, are more difficult. It’s not saying that it’s fair. It’s not fair.
It’s obviously not fair. But the reality is that in most societies, women have a lot more than they have to overcome, a lot of prejudice, a lot of, you know, has hassles being hassled by men, you know, having to wear a veil or, you know, these sort of things not being allowed out of the home. And, you know, so like that, you know, difficulties. But in Tibet, you had many nunneries as well as monasteries. You did have, you know, the abbesses, heads of these monasteries.
You do have some incarnate, you know, Tulkus as women. We do have some women teachers now. But comparative statistically speaking, it is much less much less. But there are current movements, you know, which have just been going on quite recently. There was a a large conference of all the world’s Buddhist nuns in February in Bodh Gaya and a whole movement to try to improve their situation, their position.
Yes. Yes. This line supports it fully. Mhmm. I don’t know why the Russians were quiet when the Chinese took over.
The Chinese were not invited, by the way. The Chinese just, took it. I mean, Hitler wasn’t invited into, Czechoslovakia. He just took it. So the same thing happened there.
I don’t think the Russians were in a position then to be able to do anything about it. Well, this was right after the second World War. It was in, fifty one. The Chinese revolution was in forty nine. In fifty one, they started taking over, Eastern Tibet and coming in.
Now in that period, the Russians weren’t in any position to do anything. Right. Pardon? In the fifties, China and Russia were allies also. So anything else?
A move towards trivializing Trivializing. Well, it’s hard to say. I mean, you do find what should we say? In certain places, it’s trendy? You see, I mean, there’s such diversity around the world.
It’s hard to, generalize. In certain places, certainly, it becomes trendy, but not all places. You know, places in the world in general which are into trends and fads will have things being trendy. The thing that one notices, traveling around the world world is that, the age group of the people who come to, Buddhist things, it’s the same group of people, who’s been going into it all along. And so it’s mostly, you know, the people from the sixties and the early seventies, people who are now in their thirties, approaching their forties.
This group of people, I mean, you look at the people who are here this evening. That’s the average, age of most people in the room. And that you find most places around the world, you don’t find the, eighteen to twenty five year olds coming out. Very, few. There are exceptions, of course.
Poland, it’s almost exclusively that age group, eighteen to twenty five. Hard to say why. But, you know, in most of the western countries, no. So is it something which is just astrological? Yeah.
Mean, it’s one explanation. You know, people with Pluto and Leo or, you know, whatever you want to call it. Or is it, you know, that no. It’s not mid life crisis because in the it’s not that because these are the people at the in the early seventies who were in their twenties who came out. It’s just the same generation of people.
They’re just getting older. It’s hard to say. I think for Buddhism to remain vital and to appeal to people, it has to you see, the way that it started to come in in the West, you know, you have various different waves of it, you know, obviously. There was the early Theosophical Society, you know, the end of the last century, the sort of exotic type of people. You got the Theosophical Society, people into the occult, you know, that appeal to a certain generation.
And, Buddhism and oriental things appeal to the hippie drug type of, generation. And a lot of people from that got into it. And if Buddhism continues to be presented in that type of fashion, it’s only going to appeal to that same generation. It becomes a a fad for them. Whereas, I think it’s extremely important to be able to explain, Buddhism and the relevance of Buddhist ideas to, computer age people.
You know? To, not, you know, as Buddhist, you know, ex hippies say, you know, oh, you know, computer people and, you know, these sort of things. That, you know, because then we make as big a generation gap as we experienced with, our parents. It’s very necessary to, you know, be able to get into that mentality because Buddhism is something which can be very helpful for anybody. And it’s a big challenge to do that and to present it as something relevant.
As an observation, I think Buddhism can be very helpful. You see, it’s a matter of see, I think Buddhism is something which can be helpful to any culture, to any type of people. The question is what avenue do you use in a particular country? Now I’ve only been in this country about ten or eleven days. So I don’t know I don’t have such and I’ve only been in two places, Bendigo and here.
So I don’t have that much of a of an overview of Australia yet, although I’ve had many Australian friends over the years. In Dharamsala, the, you know, a very large proportion of the people came from this part of the world who are studying there. Basic, thing that always stands out with, Australians is what I mentioned before. No frills. People don’t, you know, people don’t want you to put on airs and, ceremonies and things like that, but to be, very down to earth and very straightforward.
And that I think is quite important in, the way that Buddhism be presented here. That’d be presented in that way, and you also I mean, I don’t know. This is just what I hear is that, there’s an awful lot of, growing evangelism, in Australia and, born again Christian type of things. And in terms of that, it’s very important not to present Buddhism as a cult, which is a threat to it, which you’re going to get into if you get into, you know, the real, empty minded guru guru Lama Lama and tell me what to do. And, don’t let anybody else into my center and we have all our jargon.
You know? Then you’re setting yourself, you know, up as a big target, for, the born again again Christians and for people who, even if they’re not in that type of movement, you know, how they’re going to look at you. So I think this general, movement we saw Saturday of, all the Buddhist communities coming together, Buddhism being presented as a world religion, which has its rightful place. This is something very, very helpful for Tibetan Buddhists here. Very helpful because now you join that group rather than being another yet another cult.
And if you have that openness, then it’s something which will be very helpful. And within the Buddhist fold then, don’t present yourself just as another, amusing culture. Right? I mean, Australia is a place of all the different types of cultural identities. If you leave yourself as just simply a culture, a different culture, well, on the one hand, it does allow you general acceptance in the, multinational or whatever you call it here.
Do you call it multinational? Multicultural, community of Australia. You know, it allows you some authenticity if you have a cultural background. So use the Tibetan thing. It’s helpful.
However, as I say, don’t make it into a cult. It helps if there’s some Tibetans who are doing it too. And, also, make it relevant. You know? If it’s not relevant, then, you know, you’re just another, Asian culture.
And you can make it relevant by having it no thrills. No frills. No thrills either. You know? It’s not, out, you know, for excitement excitement type of thing.
It’s not for kicks. And try to, you know, present it to you know, in a way that anybody can relate to it. Now it can be done that way. Now, obviously, you’re going to have different, problems here. You know, you got a similar type of problem in New Zealand as well.
You know, an an awful lot of people in this country are into hunting and drinking. You know? Now that’s a serious issue. Hunting and I mean, this type of person, you know, who feels that this is, you know, a perfect natural thing to do and you’re taking care of pests and, you know, you’re performing a service or whatever. Now, you know, if this is a, a certain proportion of your society here, then you’re going to have to think, you know, how can we present things in a certain you know, in a way that is, going to somehow also be relevant to these type of people.
You know? I mean, if you use the example of, Trungpa Rinpoche, he said I mean, you can say many good or bad things about him, but one of the things that, he said was that, dharma has to also be for the beer drinkers and cigarette smokers. You know, it can’t just be the holy, holy vegetarians who sit there with their incense and how holy we are. But how you actually do that, that’s another question. I mean, that, you know, you know your culture better than I do.
But these are the things that I think are important to, face. How to present Buddhist teachings to children? Well, you know, that’s a a very big, subject. You don’t want to present it as a Sunday school as such, you know, that they’re going to resent going to. There are certain places where lamas do have classes for the children.
In Montreal, for instance, Geshe Könrab, and, Kalu Rinpoche’s center there teaches, the children on Sunday mornings. Mean, it’s not quite a Sunday school, but, you know, he has a particular propensity for, relating to children. You do have that in, some areas where they deal with them. I think it’s one of I don’t know how to do that, really. I’m I’m trying to think of an example when I was, traveling around with Serkong Rinpoche when he was alive.
We went to one community. It was in America, And they wanted Rinpoche to speak to the children of the community. It was a large community. And, there was about maybe, I don’t know, fifty or more kids. Mostly almost all of them, maybe ten or twelve was the was the oldest.
And the way he approached them was, he said that, you know, I think you kids are really great, you know, to be a kid. You know, you have so many advantages because, you can learn things so much more quickly. Your minds are more adept, you know, the way that you approach things. There’s something, you know, of being fresh and open, and these are things which are really great qualities, you know, because, sometimes older people aren’t able to do things like that. And, you know, he really encouraged them.
First of all, he took them totally seriously seriously as human beings and showed them total respect for, what were the good points that they had as children. And like that, you know, then you can approach them rather than, you know, when you’re talking down to them. These sort of things. And so I think that general way of approach is helpful. Now what can you actually teach them?
You know, you don’t wanna make it like school because, kids resent that. There are certain things like, especially for smaller children, which is always helpful, which is to encourage them to use their imagination and not to lose that ability of the imagination. That’s something which, as I spoke this weekend in tantra, is, really, you know, one of the major tasks and focuses in tantras to harness the powers of the imagination because it deals so much with self image. It deals so much with, how we relate to the world, our projections, and so on. So this is something which you can do with kids in terms of, you know, imagining that, you know, there’s this white light or Buddha in front of you, and this white light comes and it calms you down.
And, you know, inside you feel good and you feel warm, and now you’re able to send this white light out to everybody around you and everybody else becomes calm and feels warm and is kind and loving. This sort of thing, you know, you can help them with doing imagination. It becomes fun to do, and it’s also something helpful for them. Right? I mean, so there are different ways of, of generally approaching.
But if you make it, you know, thou shalt do this and thou shalt not do that, it becomes heavy. Most kids rebel against that. And as I was using the example, yesterday for, you know, people who are, you know, kids who are into, fishing or, somebody else asking the question about, kids who kick animals and stuff. I mean, this line that, I heard somebody use, I thought it was really great. You know?
Don’t you think that fish has a mommy and daddy? You know? What do they think, if, you know, this little fish doesn’t come home at night? You know, relate it to things that, the kids can relate to. Of course, it depends on the age of the kid.
But you want to try to avoid instigating what will be the teenage rebellion against what you’re doing. You know? And that takes preventive measures. That’s what dharma is all about. You know?
Think ahead. Think in terms of why did you rebel. Well, you rebel usually because, as a teenager, our identity is that we want to be independent. We want to you know, we’re our own person, and we can decide for ourselves. Therefore, anything that our parents say, we reject because they’re laying too many trips on us.
That’s why I started this out with the example of what Serkong Rinpoche was doing, which was showing respect for the kids, accepting them as human beings and acknowledging what they have, then you allow them not to feel threatened by what you’re doing. Alright? As a foundation, then, you know, you’re taking some preventive measures so that they’re not gonna rebel against you. Yes. Definitely.
Buddhism, you say, is a religion. It’s also a way of life. Can people, gain the benefits of it without adopting it as a religion? Just to repeat the question for those of you in the back. And, yes, it’s totally you see, it’s not necessary to call Buddhism a religion.
You know, you call it a religion when you’re meeting in the Vatican. And, you know, here comes, the Dalai Lama and the pope. And, obviously, they’re both heads of, world religions. And so on that level, you discuss it as a religion. But, in context in which that’s not helpful, certainly not necessary to say that because Buddhism certainly does not have conversion.
It doesn’t have baptism. Baptism. It doesn’t have all this sort of business. One can benefit very much, from the various Buddhist types of training, the ideas, and so without necessarily giving up one’s own, tradition. Now this is something that, I forgot to mention, but, is an important point in terms of approaching Buddhism as a Westerner, which is that it’s very important to make peace with our own background, you know, with what country we come from, what religion we were born into, what culture we are, our sex, our family, you know, the gender, these sort of things to make peace with that, not to have grudges with it or try to deny or fight against or these sort of things.
Because, there’s too many examples that I’ve seen of people who, for some neurotic reason, reject their, background, reject their past. They’ve not made peace with it. And then they jump into Buddhism. And, after a while, you know, it really undermines it because there’s so many things that they haven’t dealt with before. And the classic example is, the person who said, you know, well, I was a Catholic before and now I’m a Buddhist.
If I continue in Buddhism, I’m going to go to Catholic hell. And if I go back to being a Catholic, I’ll go to Buddhist hell. And, you know, it’s a no win situation. She was really in a a very difficult position. Now, you want to avoid things like that.
You know? It’s important to you know, because there’s all these issues of loyalty, you know. We always have a tendency of wanting to of the need to be loyal to our background and yet, you know, it’s done in all sorts of, crazy type of ways. So it’s important in our backgrounds to see what are the positive and what are the negative aspects of it, and don’t throw the whole thing away. Don’t reject it completely because there are many positive things in whatever culture we come from, whatever family we come from, and so on.
And to be able to, acknowledge that, to allow ourselves to be loyal to that, without, you know, all the guilt type of things that happen when you’ve rejected everything and then you’re not loyal at all. And then so, I mean, it gets, you know, psychologically very weird then. So you become loyal to negative aspects of it. But to be able to integrate it. So, one can do that without necessarily becoming a Buddhist because, there are examples of people who came from a strong, Christian or Catholic background, went into Buddhism because they didn’t, find, techniques in their own background about how to be a spiritual person.
They learned that in Buddhism, and then they went back to being Catholics. Now that’s perfectly legitimate. That’s perfectly fine. We shouldn’t feel uptight about that. If that happens, we’re not missionaries.
Alright? And so and you don’t get points for how many souls you save. So, you do have, things like this cooperation between the Christians and the Buddhists in terms of interchanging of ideas. You do like, as someone has said, you know, the Catholics, the Christians can learn very much from Buddhism in terms of techniques of how to concentrate, specific techniques of how to develop love and compassion. And you do have, various, Christian abbots, fathers who have come over to India to Dharamsala to study these things.
The Buddhists as well can learn from the Catholics, particularly in the monastic tradition, their tradition of service. You know, the monks and nuns being teachers and nurses and these sort of things. You never had that in Asia. Monastic orders, something that’s definitely positive and the Buddhist can learn. So there is a lot of interchange.
Now that doesn’t mean that one stops being a Catholic. You know? That’s something which, you know, we can learn things from Buddhism. It’s the same thing that was once said about, psychologists and psychiatrists. There are various things that, they can learn from Buddhism, things which can be adopted into psychology and psychiatry.
But what he says is don’t call it Buddhism. It’s what I was referring to in terms of don’t water down your terms. It’s what I was referring to. You know, you don’t call that Buddhism. You call it Buddh you know, psychology with certain ideas suggested from Buddhism, but that’s not Buddhism.
You know? Buddhism is the whole bag of what Buddhism is. Same thing in Christianity. You know? There could be certain ideas from Buddhism which are helpful, stimulate things in Christianity, but that doesn’t become Buddhism.
Right. In any case, I don’t know very much about Geshe-la either. Any case it’s getting late and this isn’t really the time to discuss Geshe-la psychology. You had one last thing and then we’ll end. Mhmm.
Mhmm. Right. Well, you just you you know, it’s not necessary that, you know, all the different religions agree on every point. They don’t. Thing is not it’s not necessary to push it.
Well, in Buddhism, they say there’s no creator. Right? But, they do explain how the idea of a creator god comes about. Remember we had, how a universe, evolves and grows, and you get the first life form. The first life form that evolves is a certain type of god in the god realm.
And, they’re the first ones to come about. And then after that, everybody else comes about. Therefore, these original, gods think that they’re the creator, and everybody who follows them since they came first think that they were the creator also. And they’re the last ones to go as well. And so, out of that, you get the idea of a creator god.
But as one lama said, Lama Zopa actually, God must have accumulated an awful lot of good karma in his last life to have been worshiped by so many people in this life, which is interesting. But in any case, it’s not necessary with people who are into the belief in God to argue with them about that. Because if you look at the qualities of, you know, is there a possibility of, omniscience? Yes. We don’t accept omnipotence, but omniscience?
Yes. Is there, you know, more highly developed beings who are compassionately concerned with, you know, what’s going on in the world? Yes. You know, those issues are are okay. It’s, you know, a matter of of how you talk about god.
But in any case, thank you very much for, all our discussion. And, whatever positive potential has been built up, let’s, in our minds, direct it towards everybody being able to overcome their limitations and realize their potentials.