We have a simply, we have a very complicated style usually that we tend to have. It’s that we think that we are practicing spirituality, at the same time that we are deceiving ourselves constantly, or else that we think we are not deceiving ourselves and we are practicing completely spirituality free from spiritual materialism, on the other hand still projecting and coming through a well polished stainless steel globe without dent. And it’s so sophisticated and so good, but it’s rotten underneath. Nevertheless, without going through some kind of training, some kind of churning through, beaten down, reprocessed all over again without those things that nothing would work, nothing would actually happen. So it’s interesting that seems to be the teachings of the Kagyu lineage.
It’s still open possibilities, but still cut through the fundamental deceptions at the same time. This particular tradition of handling students that way is not only a Marpa alone, it continues with the previous lineage, generations of Naropa and Tilopa and so forth beyond that as well. Traditional knowledge is that a person is like wild, tame, wild and fertile rather than tame, ground which is chosen as a good site and you plow the field by the means of the teachings and the teacher’s method. You plow the field back and forth and sometimes you spread the seeds over it. And then you put more manure over the field and again could plow the second time.
The manure seed could be mixed properly under the ground. The finer the proper seed is sown. People talk about a Satori experience, sudden enlightenment. There’s not so much that people should get suddenly something should be clicked therefore everything go boom. And there you are living Buddha on the spot.
The Satori experience comes very gradually. As the gradual process grows and they begin to grow up, the seed becomes shoot. Shoot becomes the sparkle of grain. And then when the grain begins to get harvest, there comes a Satori experience which is finally harvest and the grain begins to flourish on the spot. So from that point of view, the sudden gradual path united to one situation at this particular point.
Have any questions? You’re welcome. When Milarepa first met Marpa, he plowed Marpa’s field and drank the offering of beer that Marpa gave to him. And and Marpa later said that this signified that Milarepa would be a good vessel for the teachings. In other words, he would be able to imbibe the teachings as he drank all his beer.
And you also mentioned that in Milarepa’s offerings to Marpa that there was something in his, in the way he was presenting the things that he did to Marpa that wasn’t quite right. And I was just wondering, was it that Marpa put Milarepa through all of these things in accordance to the way Milarepa was reacting to the situation? Did he have a grander plan for that? I think so. But the interesting point is that there’s interesting in what we do here in the community setting.
It’s that somebody comes along very interested in practicing meditation and wash the food bowl, wash up the dishes, which is the same kind of process that Milarepa has gone through, and how this particular person can plow the fields and they can drink that chang. It doesn’t you don’t need too many credentials or how many scenes that you’ve gone through, how many trips that you’ve gone through, how many books that you’ve read, but how you handle yourself on the spot. And the student is asked here, so can you wash this dish? This dish. Clear out the pathway, shovel the snow, dig in the garden.
That speaks by itself automatically. Particularly when the physical task is involved dealing with an animate object, things become much more powerful and self revealing. Whereas if you’re dealing with an inanimate object like talking to a person, some fantastic salesman can talk someone into that, giving you secret teaching, Marpa would be completely helpless maybe. If some great salesman come along and tell him that the house is fantastic, he should receive teaching, it would be a great benefit for him, especially in humanity and for the benefit of his lineage. But the Master wouldn’t do that.
He would make him milk the cow, plow the field, something very simple is right. That’s somehow the same tradition of what we do here too. It’s become an established tradition actually, Just watch how you do it, clean the bathroom, wash your clothes, Nothing to do with how you cut onions.. I’m confused now about the value of honesty. You said yesterday it was Milarepa’s honesty that enabled him to achieve everything he strived for.
But now tonight you said that his honesty was like a false facade and that it was problematic. Interesting. Should we approach honesty then? Well, one thing at a time. Dawn is good until sunrise.
The blank canvas is good until you begin to paint on it. So you start with honesty, that’s good as it goes, then it becomes something else that honestly shouldn’t be regarded as a passport to heaven, in other words. Honesty could have become a chauvinistic thing. And I heard people saying that I’ve been all good in my life. How this could come to me?
You know, people lost faith in heaven, whatever that is. So good at one point makes further good if you don’t stick with that previous goodness per se. In order to make tea, can’t just drink cold water because cold water is such a good thing to boil. If you have to boil the cold water and the hot water, then you put the tea in it and you have to drink it out. So it goes through a process that raw material is fantastic if it’s a good raw material then you make something else out of that.
So that’s the general process. Process rather than fundamental scheme, Good at the first, good at the beginning is good at the beginning. Good in the middle is good in the middle. Good in the last is good in the last. So everything comes to a process.
On the other hand, the goodness last couldn’t come from if there wasn’t goodness in the beginning either, but that doesn’t mean to say that you need to be sure the necessary good at the beginning particularly. And then not cling to that later. Professor. Mmm, a bit. Hmm.. Could you say a little bit more about the smooth facade that’s covering the neurosis underneath that desire to to say more about that and mindfulness?
Because sometimes it’s a fine distinction. One could be mindful of the neurosis and not want to lay a trip out on somebody else. And yet even that would be creating a pious facade at the same time. Or does it? I’m not quite getting can you say it once more if you don’t mind?
You talked about a smooth facade that of being so good and so honest and that being that way the neurosis that’s really underneath that doesn’t come out so that it can be dealt with with the teacher or with other people. No. What I’m wondering about is how mindfulness plays a part in all of that. Because the student could have some level of mindfulness perhaps and be aware of the neurosis also and be projecting that smooth facade unwittingly. Well, think the point of that is that mindfulness is not so much for caution.
One shouldn’t make any mistakes to cover over your smoothness. Mindfulness is to see through your concepts, so to speak, your neurosis that are operating on the spot. So once that mindfulness is operating on the spot, that’s why traditionally we have labeling everything thought, rather than good thought or bad thought. It is simply a thinking process taking place all the time. So you begin to see through that process and somehow that fundamental mindfulness is not so much as trying to be good, good all the time, be careful all the time.
So mindfulness in this case doesn’t mean trying to avoid, be bad, trying to be good, be good, be good, be good, but the mindfulness is simply look out, that is it, that’s it, that’s it, that’s it. You’re thinking, you’re thinking precisely without any overlay of preconceptions or religious thinking particularly. When that begins to take place, then you begin to develop a see-through process taking place at the same time. It begins to become very functional, very workable. Just so..
It seemed as if Milarepa had a great deal of faith in his true mind and that was part of what carried him through all the adversity he went through. And it seems as if that’s sort of counterpart or the other side of the coin to always be mindful of the deception, that there needs to be balanced somewhat with a faith in your own true nature and that you can overcompensate one way or the other. And I was wondering if you’d say something about that. You ever trusted in your true nature? Yes.
You do? My goodness. Well that’s questionable. I think one of the problems there is an incomplete understanding and appreciation of his true nature, it has been corrupted a lot. If he had a complete trust and faith in the true nature all the time, then he could become completely impenetrable, that even Marpa couldn’t get through, that the flaws in his past couldn’t be healed, that because he is fluctuating all the time, So much want to receive the teaching but at the same time afraid and constantly trying to give up.
Wife, my wife, Dagmema, played very important. She played the role of hope and Marpa played the role of hopelessness or fear. So between the two, as a couple, they did a good job on the but at the same time as far as Milarepa is concerned it’s quite a risk. If both the wife and the husband were consistent, then we could get something through, which is not possible actually since the wife and husband played alternating roles. She has been hopeful so Milarepa would find that his faith begins to wane because his faith is all hope.
Now that I don’t want to be so hopeful, I have to open myself to relax. Maybe this time I’m going to receive the teachings. And on the other hand, the Marpa is being so unkind and cutting and Dagmema is being so kind and encouraging, so can’t completely give up and he can’t completely commit suicide. So the interesting thing about inspiration of innate nature, one’s innate nature, but the mind can be only nurtured by fluctuations and at the same time disappointment of all kinds, you know. Fluctuations as well as continuity at the same time.
So you need both of that in order to see something to do properly. It’s like a moment that you’re gonna live and someone’s going to give you an award, a golden star, and a moment that you’re to be executed on the spot as being the most terrible criminals in the whole world. Those two things are very powerful, fantastic. That’s what actually continues the true nature. What is this quarter?
One last one. While while Milarepa was building the towers, did he also have time to sit? Not very much. Not very much. His practice started later?
What? The sitting practice started later? Sitting practice started later because he was, to begin with, you see the whole story is that Marpa wouldn’t instruct anything at all, just to make him work. So just to create an enslaved person in the beginning. He didn’t practice anything for something like six months or several years until Marpa’s trip to India was accomplished.
Then Milarepa was able to sit in a cave above Marpa’s castle and sitting practice continues down. Because the interesting point is that if Marpa begins to instruct Milarepa on the slightest of the teaching situation at that point, and Milarepa is going to work hard on him so much, he’s going to get everything through, and all the sitting practice requirements are going to get through, that he is going to be ripened as a monster. So there was a fear that Marpa had, that he had not given anything at all just to make him more at that point and make him sit later. But he also did something concealing and then he got what he actually wanted some time. But we always start with sitting now.
Well, I think at this point, Americans are very soft, and they should be encouraged at the beginning. And then give them a hard time. Thank you. And some kind of without any faint heart, it doesn’t work. And case is more desperate and more difficult.
And Milarepa was already hooked on the basis of tradition, basis of national culture, based on his own better experience. That Milarepa has no choice, that he doesn’t have a choice to go to the Yogi’s and take the supreme mind training course. There was no choice. I’m sure if there was a choice, Milarepa would not have gone through all of this. And he achieved the highest result of all of the best at the same time.
So at this point, because so much the mark here is not quite right, that we have to localize, we inspire the people to one point and inspire them enough, then give them a hard time. Speaking of ask, Werner Erhard. Werner Erhard says that comparative comparison is a pitfall to raising the consciousness. And my question is, am I in the wrong place? Compare to what?
Comparison. You speak of mindfulness leading to carefulness. I could understand carefulness to be sort of thinking more through meditation, understanding the nature of the ego. But is carefulness also doesn’t it also lead to comparing ourselves to one another and saying, oh this person is doing it this way, so maybe this way is better, and this other person is doing it that Well, you see the interesting point is when you begin to practice of your technique, how simple it may be, there’s no room for intellectualizing. You’re being forced, confronted by so much of your own practice of you having your thought process, you having irritation of the body, and you have all kinds of psychosomatic visions begin to occur.
So there’s no room for comparison actually. It’s very simple, you’d be caught. But as far as the answer is concerned, as I understand it, it’s a very interesting one and it’s based on a group thought-directing process which is somewhat different than what we’re doing here. Everything’s left for individuals to practice and have their own thought process, but we don’t direct their thought process. We don’t have a section on sexual fantasy part, a section on the aggression fantasy part, meditation.
The whole process is directed to guide them to see through their neurosis. That would seem to be too corny as far as we’re concerned. Well, that seems to be interesting. It’s time to start at this point, actually. It’s one o’clock.
So hopefully you have a good time to sleep and rest. And tomorrow if there’s anything, that will be the case..