Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A story about a Nepali yogi who spent seven years in a mountain cave — meditating eighteen hours a day without sleep and eventually surviving on nothing but air, a practice called chulen — anchors the opening of this 44-minute session from a January 2002 weekend retreat. Geshe Pema Tsering uses the story to argue that compassion, not willpower, is what drives practitioners past ordinary physical limits. He then walks through analytical meditation on impermanence and death, using obituary reading as a concrete daily practice and his own mother’s death as a personal example. Vivid descriptions of animal suffering — lions hunting, rats met with human revulsion — illustrate why contemplating lower-realm rebirth motivates practice more than abstract warnings. A candid discussion of taking refuge and supporting the Sangha addresses why Westerners find monastic respect culturally awkward. The session closes with a recap of the morning’s Lamrim arc — precious human life, impermanence, lower realms, refuge — and a preview of karma teaching to follow after lunch.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 Retreat.mp3
UUID: 515923d4-06e2-435a-ab23-df1efc2c5b1b
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Retreat Jan (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.1 minutes
Words: ~9,423
Many of the Lamas we know. So for example, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, lama of this center, the main lama of this center. We just live here, we have another lama here, but he’s the spiritual director of the center. He’s one of these people who, since a little boy, he was known as a Rinpoche. It’s a term used out of respect for the people who’ve been recognised as reincarnated Lamas.
So obviously even in his past life he’s said to have realisations and he was discovered and so on and so forth. And that’s what happens at the time of death, I’ll talk about that in a minute, for holy beings, it’s different for what they are able to do, first because of their huge compassion, which is at a level that is way beyond what we think is possible, and we’ll talk about that, that’s the third scope, the implications of this level of real compassion for others. But actually, as this Australian monk who’s Lama Zopa’s attendant has, he said, sleep, for Rinpoche, is a disgusting waste of time. So the real energy that caused him not to want to sleep is compassion, it’s a waste of time to sleep, you want to benefit others somehow. But the other is they have no need, because they’ve come to certain physical levels, they are able to do the meditations and go to a subtle level anyway, where their physical level has ceased.
But they’re conscious subtly, you know, that’s all. But it’s really the one on compassion, or just this huge energy to practice. Mean, there’s recently one lama at our monastery in Nepal when I was there last year. He passed away, he was maybe seventy something, and he’s well known for having been in meditation in a cave up in the mountains in Nepal for twenty five years, right? And then I was interviewing his attendant and getting some kind of life story about him.
And then the details are kind of interesting, this is also very common, you know. He, for the first seven years, in one place up in the mountains, where it’s six foot of snow in the winter, right up high, the desert, in the mountains in Nepal near the border of Tibet. For the first seven years he trained himself in the very beginning just to live on nettles and eventually to not have anything. So for seven years, are certain practices they do, where they talk about it taking the essence, it’s they learn to mix the subtle essences of flowers and rocks into like a little pill which you eat, but they call this ‘chulen’, taking the essence, well he even lived on what they call wind Chulen, he didn’t even eat the pills, he simply lived on the essence of the energy of the air. He ate the air, if you think about it.
Sounds ridiculous for us. So for seven years he didn’t eat. Also for that seven years he practiced his meditations from two in the morning until eight pm, and then from eight pm until two in the morning he would do certain physical ones like these prostration practices for seven-eight hours, he didn’t sleep for seven years. I mean that normal, makes me exhausted just thinking about it, you know, so you think what on earth motivates a person like that? Well, you can’t even imagine the levels of compassion and whatever, this aspiration to achieve their realisations as quickly as possible for the sake of others, which is said to be this main aspiration it just almost sounds like a joke to us, you know, or to me it does anyway.
So they say it’s capable, all these other things that motivate you to do it. So, we have this view in our culture, we have an entire culture around sleep. Mean, look at our bedrooms, they’re the best places in the house half the time, aren’t they? We spend so much energy and money on making our bedrooms so beautiful, you know, just to be unconscious in. Okay, we have sex in there too, I agree, so you’ve to make it nice.
But you get my point. So, you know, and we all absolutely tend to think well you can’t have less than eight hours and we have all these sicknesses because we get sick and we get people with I’m reading recently in The New Yorker the various drugs they’re trying to find now that don’t, know, like one of the ones that keep you awake but give all the side effects. You know the speed ones, you know they get pseudoephedrine. Thank you, all those ones, whatever. But then they have this pill now where they say there’s no side effects.
Because all this incredible, what’s all that the disease when people keep falling asleep, narcolepsy or something? Who? Narcolepsy. Thank you very much, that one. I mean, we can see it’s really chronic if you don’t get your sleep together, so we of course concretize all this, well that’s just how it is, but actually, Buddhism would say you can go beyond anything, you know, as a change in your mind.
I mean, we can even know when we’re younger, and you’re in love with somebody, you go out a party, you go all night without sleep, and you’re in the morning, you go to work, you’re so blissful, even though you’re exhausted, you’re so happy. But your mind’s happy, right? So, it’s clear that being, for example, being tired, we tend to think being tired causes you to be depressed and anxious. It’s not true, It’s a question of your attitude towards it. We can see, there’s the proof, you know.
So, by changing that, this is the point, Buddhism view, changing your mind, you change even your relationship to sleep, you can have less sleep. Learn to do without less sleep by training your mind, and by making your mind happy, that’s the point. Anyway, that’s just that one. Long answer to a short question. Yep.
It just means that you had the karma to leave the body and your karma wasn’t over yet, you went back. Yep same body. Yeah I mean you had this accident let’s say and it caused your consciousness to leave the body so it’s like death was coming but all the conditions for death didn’t come. People all say they have to go back They say like that so the karma hasn’t finished. That’s all.
Well, mean it depends on the person doesn’t it? If a person is using their life to kill others every day it’s a very bad thing to go back into their body because they’re creating more negative karma. If the person is going back into their body they’re making use of their life then it’s a good thing. There’s nothing inherently good about living long. It’s a question of what you do with your life, isn’t it?
So anyway, let’s talk a bit more about why the oh yeah, go on please. You contemplate these very things. These words I’ve just said, so okay, some of the words I’ve just said, have they made sense? Then all you do, you hear the teachings, this is the structure, you’d have a book probably or you’d hear the teachings, you’d get it more down, you’d have a more structure for yourself in front of you with a book. Then you sit down and you’d literally sit down and you do an analytical meditation using these ideas.
And how it works is this, you hear it once, even let’s say some of these words you’ve heard already this morning, and it was not even the first time, it doesn’t matter. Would you say something that you sort of go like Yeah. Okay, that’s an insight. So all you do is you want to develop those insights bigger and deeper and deeper and bigger until eventually they’re completely what you feel. Right now we hear it once, we go wow and then we forget about it and all the other default mode of grasping it permanently comes back.
Well by meditating every day, literally analyzing, just like we, you know, I’m sort of saying it now, but having a note of it, or doing it in a more formal way yourself, which is the best way to use your own imagination, your own creative experiences to sort of flesh out the basic points, death is definite, time of death uncertain. That’s what analytical meditation is, it’s not so secret. You just sit down and you contemplate it all, and you get another insight, then one day you get another insight, then you get more insight, you go to retreat on it, you get even more insights, until eventually you’ve got such insight into it that you don’t forget that you’re impermanent, you live according to it. Okay, that’s a very good point. In terms of how you realise these things, you realise them one step at a time.
You have to realise the first scope before you realise the second, just like you have to get grade two before you can accomplish grade three. But you can practice all of them, you must practice all, you must. It’s good to have the overview, which is what I want to do this whole weekend, give the overview. So you practice all, but you accomplish them at different stages. And sometimes you can go off and do a retreat on the lower scope for, you know, a month.
Sometimes some of these Lamas you hear about go off for seven years and meditate just on the first scope. Well no, the focus you’ve got down. You’re learning to meditate on these things by contemplating, analyzing them. The focus is the first mode of meditation, and once you’ve accomplished that to whatever degree, you then do the second mode, which is the analysis in meditation, like this, you like this, know, you’ve the things, and impermanence in your mind. You’ve got a really good focus, really intelligent, really clear mind, and you’ve got all the outline in your mind.
So you’re bringing, you’re actually doing this analysis in your mind. It’s a very sophisticated way of using a conceptual mind, that’s all. This type of meditation. Do you understand what I mean? Oh you could, but yeah you could and there some methods for doing.
Yeah you could, you could and you need to at some point. Well you would make progress because you achieve single point of concentration and then you can really start to work on meditations. But you don’t do it like that, don’t wait till you perfect that. I mean you need to perfect single pointed concentration to realize emptiness. But you don’t need to perfect it to realize all these other things, because they’re conceptual.
So very often when people go into meditation retreats, they will do a period when it’s just their concentration bit, then they’ll do their other parts in the afternoon or something. Share, you do both. You get realizations in the first and the second kinds of meditation. Yeah? Only if the consciousness is there.
That’s why it’s so important. If the consciousness is there and there are indications the way they talk of when the consciousness does leave, then it’s really important if the consciousness is there not to disturb the body. What are the indications? Well, the way they talk is there’s one which seems a bit subtle for most people to see it, think there’s certain subtle liquid energies. There’s a pinkish one that would come out.
They call it the red kundalini. And that comes out through the nose. So when that’s left the body, it’s like a little liquid here, like sort of pinkish fluid. And then a white white ish fluid comes out the sex organ. It’s hard to see because they’re probably messy anyway.
Depends, that’s one sign. But even at one time when one Lama died, there were people with him and he was supposedly what they call meditating. Because when the holy beings when they die, they have complete control. This is very common in the Tibetan tradition, they have complete control of the death process and they are able to go through these stages without ever losing consciousness, even then eventually do their meditation and then when their mind has when the gross level has completely ceased, they’re at the clear light consciousness stage which is a subtle one and they’re able to meditate very deeply at that stage and they can stay there for several days if they want to and then when they can choose to leave their body when they choose well this one this old Lama was dying was meditating like looking like dead but meditating and all his students around him and one of the students said he thought he saw Lama’s head move slightly and he said no no, it’s just hallucination. But then the other Lama who was with him, he turned to him and he said Lama Yeshe’s meditation has now ceased meaning his consciousness did leave and it leaves through different parts of the body, could be through the top chakra, the crown chakra or something and that slight shift, that slight movement, you wouldn’t notice that necessarily, wouldn’t be watching all the time.
But another way to check is if there’s warmth, because they talk about all this energy that’s absorbing comes all into the heart chakra and as long as there’s warmth still here you put your hand over if you can feel warmth the person is still there and I’ve heard many people like nurses who don’t have all this idea but they say you just know when a person is gone you know you know when a person is still there here’s a feeling okay that’s a bit subtle then meditate, after meditating about death, on death and this is the main one, the first one how I described about death in permanent death is definite, time is uncertain and all you contemplate those things again and again, just like the words I’m using, these are the words that I use roughly speaking, know, when I’m thinking about it, one can find one’s own way of describing according to these points, know, so you, as I said, you basically beef up the bare bones of these ideas with your own experiences. That’s what you use as the basis of these kinds of contemplations. It’s analytical contemplation. But it can be very focused, and that’s the point.
That’s when the more insights come. The more focused it is, the more your concentration, the more likely you are to have strong insights into the truth of these things, they touch your heart, you know. And you just build those up until eventually they become your default mode, in place of the other one, you know, the grasping it permanently. And how you do it also, you don’t just think of it in meditation, you think of every minute of your life. There’s constantly things out there staring you in the face that are reminding you of impermanence, they don’t touch us because it’s not us.
So every time you read the obituaries, I love to read the obituary pages, it’s reading a death meditation. Because all you’ve do is link with this could be me, you know. But we don’t think that way because we’re so separate from it. So it’s really important to think this will be me, you read about that person, how they were young, you see photos of them back in the thirties or something, know, they’re young and you can just know they’re all full of hope and real, they’re living real person, know, with their life ahead of them like we all feel, All everything is exciting and fantastic in this big bubble we’ve created. Nothing mean, know, it’s how we are.
And then life goes through, then their husband dies, they get divorced, another one comes and the dramas, and so they grow up and the kids get old and then boom, they’re dead now, wrinkled and old and dead, know, gone like a dream, you read it all, boom, it’s in front of you. It’s powerful way to meditate on death and impermanence, and you realize this will be me, you know, it’s gone like a dream. When my mother died, when I was thirty something, I remember in a flash of a moment when she was thirty something, when I was a little kid, and just in that period, thirty years had gone and my mother was dead, this thirty year old woman was dead, you know, I mean, she was seventy, but it just went like a flash. You think of it like this, it’s much more real for you when you read the obituaries, when you read about famous people dying. It’s not just in terms of gossip, which is how it is now, you know?
Oh, Frank Sinatra’s so amazing, the mafia, this, that, fantastic, it’s all gossip. No, think of this person, who was a real human being who felt like you, you know, who believed he was so real. Lived his life like this invulnerable, real person, you know. Now suddenly he’s old and decrepit and senile and he’s dying. Can you only imagine the fear and suffering in his mind, you know.
That’s the way to think about it. So therefore what’s important? All the creatures who die every day, you know, with the same kind of grasping at their self, boom they’re dead too. So death comes, death is real. So it’s insane not to think about it.
Not to get us depressed, it’s to get us less depressed actually. That’s the irony. To wake us up, to not waste this precious life. That’s the idea. So then you increase that, like I said, you increase that wish by contemplating, and this is this context here, and this is all taken again from Buddha’s very extensive teachings about the different realms of existence and Buddha’s view of reality basically, you know.
So by contemplating the suffering of these lower realms, and even just to contemplate, you know, it really means for us, maybe it’s a bit much for us to think about spirits and hell beings, but we can certainly see animals. It’s very clear. Well, first leap of imagination for us in the West is to even imagine that our consciousness can become a lion. There’s already a leap for us, it’s outrageous concept, know. I mean, it is an outrageous concept, but if we can even make that leap, then to get some sense of it’s sort of like when you see a person who’s suffering, it’s hard enough to relate to that that could be me.
We don’t think that. It’s sort like a relief when we see a smelly old homeless person, it’s a relief that it’s not me, aren’t we? We don’t care, you know? But to have a sense that that could be me, but due to karma. Or as you say, as a Christian, but for the grace of God go I.
Same idea, you know? Gives you a sense of connectedness. So to see animals in this way. And then what’s interesting is Buddhist psychology refers to all living beings, not just to humans. So Buddhist psychology refers to animals.
So if you use the same understanding, we’re going to be discussing it Buddha’s view of the mind, have these delusions, we have anger and violence and aggression and peace and kindness and love and generosity, the whole deal, right? You just have a look at animals, don’t have to be too clairvoyant to observe their behavior, and that indicates pretty much what’s going on in little mind. You don’t have to be too clairvoyant to see a lion has plenty of aggression and attachment when she’s ripping the guts out of that buffalo. Come excuse me. You just have to and that’s what suffering is.
I mean there’s the gross level of suffering being an animal who’s misused by humans let’s say. The sheep, you know, the chickens. That’s one level of suffering. But then there’s the other level of suffering which is all animals, which is the suffering of their minds being locked into this ignorant being who lives in fear and paranoia. We watch all animal shows and we’re so fascinated, how interesting this fascination, how all this is nature, so wonderful in the wild, blah blah blah, look how they kill each other, look how they do this, but I mean excuse me, it’s like a nightmare when you watch it.
All you gotta do is replace yourself with them, and when you observe that lion stalking the buffalo, then getting it, ripping its guts out for breakfast and feeding her babies around like in a leisurely way. Can you imagine if you were so hungry one morning you had no choice but to go stalk your neighbor and then rip their guts out and eat it on the street? Can you only imagine the intensity of your mind? Can you only imagine the intensity of your attachment and your aggression and your lack of choice? I mean that is unbelievable suffering, excuse me.
To be caught up in that mode of operation, how intense, how incredible. So to try and think like this, you know. When you watch those, especially the fishes and everything, all the little creatures, I mean it is like a hell realm. They’re killing or being killed, there is no other choice. Even the affection most animals give each other in the wild is so surreptitious because you can’t afford to be relaxed.
Because you’re constantly in paranoia being threatened, you know, you’re constantly threatened. I mean, to compare even the worst humans, some humans the suffering is pretty terrible, it’s so true. But there’s some mental space sometimes, you know? Even a little bit. But for animals, there’s no mental space.
And then they’re living they’re food for each other basically. I mean it’s just inconceivable to think of such a war zone, you know? I mean that’s suffering. If that’s not suffering, don’t know what is. So just thinking freshly, looking differently at animals, you know?
This is the Buddha’s view. And having of course a strong wish, Thank you very much, whatever it is that caused that little mosquito to be a mosquito, or a rat to be a rat, or whatever it is, Thank you, I don’t want to do that. Whatever it is, I don’t want to be that way, thank you. When you think of the karma of a rat, because one of the ways karma ripens, which we’ll talk about, is in terms of how people see you, how you are treated. Well, look how rats are treated by humans.
Just the sight of a rat fills us with horror, doesn’t it? True, real disgust, and the wish to immediately annihilate it. Can you imagine being treated like that by somebody? Can you imagine, if that’s not suffering, can you imagine what it does to that mind of that rat? Absolute paranoia all the time.
It’s hideous, you know? Just horrible. Think about it. So animals can’t do much about their karma. That’s the tragedy of being an animal.
That’s right. Exactly. Yeah. I understand. How it is like this, that a rat just like you and me according to Buddha has countless lives.
Okay? So it’s created countless negative and positive karmic imprints. So in that rat’s consciousness, infinite numbers of virtuous imprints as well. Huge ones that aren’t so like I said before, their garden the animal energy is completely what’s ripening and all the other seeds are buried right now, so they’re there. And so as long as it’s in the animal or the rat mode, know it’s got that life which brings to another one, brings to another, have many many many lives of suffering.
But eventually that karma runs out too, it’s a petrol tank, runs out. And then eventually like a miracle, it could be in an animal type of form like a lot of our dogs and cats, who have good owners, who love them and take care, who prevent them from killing, and who by, let’s say they’re a practitioner, they’re sort of doing practices around them, so whatever they’re hearing goes into their mind stream, that can activate one of their virtuous karmas. If you give it a peaceful death, and do many prayers and stuff for it, Buddhism would say, you can encourage that virtuous karma to ripen and you can get a decent life again. I always quote this story about this little bird that used to live on the windowsill of some great yogi in India. Every day we hear all the different texts being recited and the prayers of the yogi.
The Buddha’s view would be that every single thing we hear or see leaves an imprint in our consciousness, it leaves an imprint, right? So he got born as one of his students next life, is what they say. Because of the power, just of the power of those imprints all the time. I’ve been with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, whenever he’s around animals he’s kind of famous for this. He never misses an opportunity you know, so I mean he sort of lets the fleas live in his socks and he feeds the mosquitoes, he feeds the cockroaches, the scorpions, he used to feed the scorpions trying to work out what they liked you know, he used to feed them milky little kind of tiny things on the He would, when I was at the zoo with him in Singapore one time, he kind of was having this picture taken of this big ape, and he was shouting all these mantras into the ape’s ear, right?
Then there’s this porcupine that he was bending over and saying all these prayers to, the porcupine was completely mesmerised like this, know? Stories like that all the time, because you don’t waste an opportunity. That’s what they say. So anyway, thinking about the suffering of the animals is a very helpful one. And of course it takes a lot of leaps of imagination, and the real point of it here is not so much to have compassion, and of course, you can’t help but have compassion, but that isn’t the main point here, the main point is to have this sense of horror at the thought of their suffering, and that you don’t want it, thank you.
Just like, we know this perfectly well, and what prevents you from staying away from fire is the horror of being burned. So don’t get all superior about we shouldn’t have fear, you know. It’s healthy to have a reasonable fear, but the reason most of us don’t drive like complete maniacs on the road, apart from not wanting a ticket, we don’t want to turn into a mangled mess of bones and blood, you know? So you know, you’re driving on the freeway and you see this mangled car and you see bodies, you immediately panic and you start slowing down and driving better. Why?
Because you don’t want to be like that. It’s perfectly reasonable, you So this is the approach here, which is the most unusual one. We don’t think like this normally. But it’s very practical. And then of course it can’t help but give us compassion.
Because Buddhism would say that all these sentient beings, beginningless lives, all these worms creatures have had countless lives including human and have potential to become a Buddha, but due to their negative karma ripening, because of their ignorance, now in this suffering state. So it brings compassion as well. This leads us to the next point where you think, well whom can I turn to, to give me methods to avoid this type of rebirth? So here we talk about refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. So again there’s ways of meditating on all of this, but the essential points that one would meditate upon are sort of getting some qualities of a being who is called a Buddha.
In this case, Mr Buddha, two and a half thousand years ago, his teachings, which is like the medicine. They have this analogy like when you are sick, when you’re not sick, you can hear some great doctor, let’s say, in Timbuktu somewhere. You can hear he’s got this amazing quality, he’s going heal everybody. You go, that’s interesting, I’m very grateful, but I don’t need him, so who cares? You wait till you get sick.
Suddenly, you’re completely focused on getting to Timbuktu, don’t care how much it costs because you have this incredible appreciation of this person’s qualities, don’t you? Because you need them now. So they say that that’s like what refuge is. So to hear about all the qualities of a Buddha sounds most fascinating, but you only really a sense of wanting to rely upon a Buddha, if when you feel that you’re suffering and you need to change your ways, if you like. This idea of refuge, it’s like relying upon a doctor.
Then the Dharma, which is simply the Buddha’s teachings, the methods that the Buddha used to become a Buddha, that’s the medicine that we’re going to be using. That’s the real refuge in a sense. You’re going have twenty two doctors in front of you, perfect doctors. But if you don’t take their medicine, if you don’t take their advice, you won’t get better. So the real medicine is the medicine.
The real medicine is the Dharma, is the teachings, is the stuff that we’re discussing here for a person who considers himself a Buddhist, who uses this stuff and uses it in their life as the medicine transform their mind, change their karma. So there’s much there’s extensive discussion of the qualities of the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, you know. So basically the Buddha Yeah, anyway, we’ll talk about that. What time is lunch? What time?
Twelve o’clock. Okay. Okay. Two minutes. Yeah.
You know, what’s a Buddha? We’ve said already, already. Buddha says we all possess potential to be a Buddha but this Mr. Buddha of two thousand five hundred years ago, Śākyamūni Buddha, he’s this person who was originally a prince, seemed, born into a very well-to-do family with all the good qualities and very revered and loved and very handsome and intelligent just like Keanu Reeves who ever played the part, probably. He was very nice as Buddha, wasn’t he?
I liked him. So then the way they tell Buddha’s story like this, it sort of sounds kind of cute, a bit like a kid’s story, but it’s interesting. When Buddha was born apparently, all these various signs show that he was a special person and some seer, some oracle came and said that he would either be a very famous and amazing king or he’ll be a great spiritual practitioner. Which in those days of course meant he’d leave his home and go off and be a sadhu, a holy man. So the king didn’t want this.
So he tried to protect him from seeing the suffering of the world. He tried to give him absolutely he wanted. I mean, they had this story. So he lived in this kind of extraordinarily luxurious richness, this vast kind of environment where he never saw suffering. So the father would always ensure that he only had young beautiful people around, all these gorgeous girls, and only young and only handsome and only beautiful things.
Didn’t see suffering, see sickness, didn’t see any of this stuff. So the story goes that one time he started to feel a bit of dissatisfaction, he had all these gorgeous things, was very happy, had a wife and a nice baby and all the rest, the dancing girls, blah blah blah. But he started to sort of have this dissatisfaction. So I think he wanted to go out and see all the people outside. So they made sure that everything was beautiful, got rid of all the dirty stuff and got rid of all the old people and the sick people and just showed them all the nice handsome young people.
So somehow though he had a vision of a sick person in the crowd and he got a real shock, he’d never seen a person like this ever in his life, you know, this is how they tell the story. And I think somebody manifested whatever, and he got a really profound shock to see this person who was sick, so he asked about it, so he thought deeply, this sickness, what’s the point of all this stuff? Then the story goes, he went out two more times, next he saw what’s the next one? Sick person, old person, yeah, an old person, and he was completely shocked to see this old person, all the wrinkles and everything. And then the third time he went out, saw this dead person, like a funeral pyre, a funeral procession.
So all these things profoundly touched his mind, apparently, and he started to think about the meaning of life, what’s the point of all these gorgeous things, all that happens to you is this, what’s the point of all this, like a bubble, you know, it’s just ridiculous. So that’s when he ran away from home, left in the middle of the night, and he went off and joined these various Hindu sadhus, who at the time were using various methods, you know, ascetic practices to discover the nature of reality and go beyond suffering and blah blah blah. So he cut his hair. There’s a symbolic point at which he cut all his hair off, which is why Buddhist monks and nuns have their head shaved. It’s a symbol of giving up the ordinary lifestyle.
So I think he meditated for many, many years, trying different methods, trying to find the nature of reality, trying to find the truth, blah, blah, blah. And at some point after many years of these ascetic practices, discovered that this wasn’t getting where he had to get. He sort of got to Bodh Gaya by he crossed a river and found this tree and sat under the tree and determined to sort of sit there until he got all the realizations and he became enlightened. That’s how they tell a story something like that I’m sure it has far more grandeur to it, it all sounds a bit like a fairy story but it’s a very nice book actually I was talking about one of the books I want to recommend that is published by Shambhala called the Awakened One which is the life story of the Buddha taken from many many sources but it’s very nice the Awakened One published by Shambhala I don’t know if they sell it here but it’s a very nice book gives you his life story we send it to all our prisoners so basically Buddha’s teaching, we’re discussing them here, and of course we’re discussing them in the context of how they’ve been developed in Tibet, which is obviously a different way than the way you’re going hear them if hear from some Taiwanese person or a Japanese person, but the essence is there.
And what Buddha is saying, as I’m saying here, what Buddha is saying, that we all possess this potential to become a Buddha. So to appreciate, to take refuge in the Buddha, to have some sense of what the Buddha is, what the qualities of a Buddha, and then the qualities of the Buddha’s Dharma, and then have a great appreciation even for the practitioners, for the Sangha, they say, or the spiritual community. We rely upon this for our practice. We rely so at some point in a person’s life, when they say, let’s say they decide they want to be a Buddhist, there’s a formal little ceremony that you do of going for refuge, as they say, for quite short, where you commit yourself to living according to Buddhist teachings, And then to live according to the Dharma, which is the teachings, the medicine, and then to have respect for the people who represent the existence of the Dharma in any one place, which is said to be the people who are monks and nuns. The presence of in Buddhist culture, since Buddha’s time, in Buddhist teachings, in fact, it says that the very presence of the living Dharma, and it’s got to be a living thing, not just in books.
The presence of the living Dharma in any one place is indicated by the presence of Sangha, at least four fully ordained monks or nuns in any one place. And actually, there’s a story in Tibet at a time when they had one king. It was a bit like a period they’re going through now, when the king was anti against the dharma, and he destroyed the dharma, destroyed the monasteries, killed the monks and nuns and so on. And at some point they only had about three monks left, I can’t remember exactly the number because I forget. And they were just on the border near China, and they needed one more monk order to have the quota so they could have an ordination, an ordination ceremony so they could keep it alive.
And so they got this Chinese monk to come over the border and at that point I think they wore blue or something. Out of respect, the Tibetans put this thing here, this blue strip on here, as a sign of respect to the Chinese monks at that time who wore blue for allowing them to keep the Dharma alive in Tibet. Know, Buddhist centers. It’s quite foreign to people in our culture sometimes. People don’t understand that know, Sangha don’t work, don’t Well, some do.
What’s your name? Helen. Helen wanted me to talk a little bit about the importance of Sangha, I suppose, a Buddhist community and how to support them and everything. It’s a bit difficult for me to talk about that, isn’t it? I am one.
Would you mind just being detached and talk generally because we have a Geshe, we have a month that’s starting an intro to Buddhism on Monday night for seven weeks, is my promo. I understand, yeah. Well, yeah, it’s interesting, it’s like it is a foreign thing for us in our culture. In our culture it’s very self help and very independent and very democratic. We’re all equal, you know.
It almost seems shocking when people see the way, let’s say, even the way a person who’s called a lama, let’s say in Tibet, Tibetan tradition, the person who’s a spiritual practitioner is known as a lama, let’s say they’re a monk as well. It’s almost foreign to Westerners to give all this respect to this person, you know? It feels like, excuse me, we’re all equal, what’s all this about? It’s very common among Buddhists too. So really, of course, have to interpret it.
It is an Asian tradition, so there is something cultural there. If a culture is a valid culture, then there is meaning to what you do. So, you know, we can see in our culture, like in Tibet when you meet somebody, you bump heads with each other. It’s a common way of greeting, you you bump heads. I mean, me, somebody’s walking around bumping our heads, you think we’re nuts, right?
Well, what do we do? We shake our right hands. So, you know, for a person who’s not familiar with that, it’s a very weird thing to do, so we’re used to it, it has meaning, and we know there’s nothing inherent about two hands meeting, but we know it means greeting, we know it means friendship. So we can see everything the cultural in itself, holding hands in that way has no meaning, but we know what it means because we understand it. So then that’s the same with seeing the meaning behind, you know, what it is, and there’s some kind of logic behind this idea of so called respecting and supporting the Sangha, the monks and nuns for example.
Because according to Buddhist teachings, it’s their presence in any one place that is the indication of the livingness of that thing. So, you know, in the Asian cultures, no problem, especially in, say, countries like Tibet for sure, but also in Taiwan, you know. So Taiwan at the moment happens to be quite flourishing money wise, right? And everybody says there that when you go to the monasteries, there are these amazing places, extraordinarily beautiful, even recently on the telly last night on the news. The newsreader, maybe they do this, newsreader was in this amazing big monastery, this Chinese monastery in Sydney.
Did you notice on the news last night? The night before maybe? The night before. And it was this extraordinarily beautiful, huge big monastery with gorgeous grounds, beautiful lotus ponds, I mean obviously it took a lot of money in Sydney, I mean huge. So, you know, where does all that come from?
That comes from all the lay people, and they don’t have to do many fundraisers among the Taiwanese community, because they all automatically understand. The job of the monks and nuns is to provide the spiritual teachings and be and they just do their job, and the job of the lay people is to support them. What’s most interesting also, the monks and the monasteries are also incredibly generous, you know. There’s no concept of paying for the dharma, mean technically even in the West there’s not. Because it’s understood in the Eastern culture, there’s a natural understanding.
First of all, understanding of karma, that generosity is one of the most powerful qualities to be giving is a guaranteed way to get for yourself, which is not the reason you do it, to understand the logic of karma. Then they have this great appreciation of the presence of the dharma in their lives, and they know that those who uphold it are called the monks and nuns, so then they know it’s their job to support them, and they want to support them, not as if they’re being forced to by this horrible, you know, kind of autocratic monks and nuns. It’s a complete agreement in their culture, you know. So it’s very inspiring to see it. So when you go to one of their monasteries, these magnificent, beautiful monasteries with so many gorgeous things and very beautiful environment.
Everything is free, everything, there’s no concept of being charged. But of course, you know that, so of course you give. So it’s kind of interesting, know. And actually there’s one centre I know in America, one centre only, that I know about, that does things like that. They always say there’s no cost, but of course people know, and they always give a bit of a talk about generosity in the end, they know there’s no charge, so you kind of feel good about that, and they always end up getting more, you know?
Most of us in the West it’s very hard to think that way, the centre hires this place, pays a fortune, to then just say to you all come along and it’s all free well usually in the West it wouldn’t occur to us unless we were told that we ought to give something because we know that’s how the whole ball keeps rolling do you understand my point? But it’s interesting, this one of generosity and it’s very strong in the Eastern cultures and certainly one of the things about supporting the monks and nuns, you know But it’s not an interesting one. It’s not an easy one for our minds when we think like this. But also the other one that’s very Asian is this one of it’s almost a revolting word for us, one of the best jobs among the Tibetan lamas. The key job, you’ve got the best job if you become, and they use the word, the servant of the lama.
That’s so horrific to our mind, to think of being someone’s servant, it’s so disgusting, you want to go on strike. But it’s the most revered job because it’s the one that you want to do most, actually serve a person. I mean, what a wonderful word. So of course we’ve so misused it in our culture, servants are people who become slaves, you know? Of course it’s terrible that way.
But when there’s this mutual relationship, like a lama, who has a person who supports and takes care we do it all the time in the West, we call it a paying job, that’s all. But it’s this attitude of enormous respect, when you have a great respect for somebody, then it’s a natural one that you would like to offer them something, or give, or take care, or support. And so, again, in our culture it’s quite hard because we have this view of all self serve. It’s a very interesting term, self serve is interesting. Not criticising, it’s really great because we like to be independent.
I know that Dalai Lama often talks about how it’s very entrenched, when there’s always a negative and a positive to all the ways we are, you know? So he would always complain about how it was so stultifying in Tibet. He couldn’t move an inch because everyone was taking care of him and serving him and loving him and putting him on ten foot thrones, you know? So he was so happy to be around the democratic west where he could be his own person and cut away all the rubbish. So you can see how it can get all kind of wrong but the essence of it is very pure, you know?
So how does it work at the centre? We’ve got Geshe Kelsang who’s retired basically. We support him, don’t we? Centre supports him, right? Yeah, partially.
Partially. There is still a cooking roster. I see. People offer their services to cook for him. Yeah.
I see. Which I find quite difficult for all the reasons that he’s Yes. That’s right. Right. But I found that to be one of the most rewarding things that I ever did because I got to know the attendants who speak good English.
Right. And there was such a lot of fun around that. I understand. Yeah. And what I got back from Rinpoche, you know, and he’d always ask about my family and get the names wrong.
Was just very rewarding. I understand. Absolutely. Makes sense. So the one also amongst the nuns is not easy, even among us Western monks and nuns, because we’re so into when they talk about refuge, there’s this formal ceremony, you go for refuge in the Buddha, for example, when a person’s thought about all this stuff that we’re talking about and really begins to develop a practice and then commits themselves.
And there’s certain commitments at each stage in terms of the Buddha. Of the commitments is to always have a very pure view towards all the objects, you know, Buddha’s statues. So not to see them so much in terms of, prefer that because it’s gold, I don’t like that because it’s pink, you know. Or I put my green painting over there because it fits nicely with my green carpets. They say not to have this view of it just being decoration or art or value, you see it as actually something more than that, even if it’s bad art, you still see it as representing all essential qualities that you want to develop, so it’s a very pure view towards it.
And they say the commitment towards the Sangha, taking refuge in the Sangha for example, is that we would all have equal respect for each other as monks and nuns, or lay people would have respect for monks and nuns. You might not like Fred, you you think you prefer Fred to Mary, but actually you’d have some kind of part of your mind have respect for both of them because they’re upholding the Buddha’s teachings in any one place. And these are the ideas that I think aren’t so comfortable sitting in our minds, you know? This is an attitude that takes time to develop. Certainly among even among the monks and nuns, you know?
We’re just all into personalities. If we like a person, don’t care if they’re a murderer. I don’t mean like that. We like people, we can’t so much appreciate a person as a position, it seems a bit odd for us, you know. It was always interesting when Western people, monks and nuns are around, say in an Asian culture, because then you’re treated with unbelievable respect, having nothing to do with you but to do with what you represent, which is being a monk or nun.
So it’s interesting, it’s just a very different approach. And also it takes time for our mind to see if it’s meaningful. Yeah, it’s interesting. Okay, we’ve looked at just to reiterate, finish we’ve looked at these various points. I know it might all sound a bit kind of confusing, where does all this fit in and how do you meditate on and how do you change your mind by sinking, but basically the one I’m trying to get at again and again and again, there’s a whole level of practice in Buddhism, is the first main level, which is at the conceptual level.
The Buddha is saying in our minds we have these misconceptions about how things are. So what we’re doing is presenting Buddha’s views, so the way one integrates those into one’s life is by thinking about them, and so slowly thoughts trickle, we all know that, they trickle from here to here. Just like when you first learn any kind of interesting theories, in the beginning they’re just mere words, aren’t they? You think, well, how am I going to make this real for me? Well, you keep thinking about it and thinking about it and studying it and thinking about it and discussing it until eventually those words, those theories, that astronomy or that mathematics starts to become meaningful for you.
So that is exactly the process here. You don’t call it meditation when you do mathematics, but it’s this internalizing of it until eventually it’s natural to you. That’s the process of meditation. And in this context, at the initial stage, it’s called analytical meditation. By hearing about these views and thinking and thinking, let’s say if you walk out of this room after this weekend and you and you want to go further, then you keep thinking about it and analyzing it and hearing the teachings and getting a more deep and more fleshed out picture of all this, and then you meditate upon it in an analytical way, bringing it from your brain to your heart, until eventually these become the way we see life.
This is how it works, you know. Something mysterious, this process. So we’ve looked at the first main points, the one of how we do possess Buddha nature, and how our mind is beginningless and not created, and so on. Then we looked at how we need to look, really, really contemplate how this life is so precious, not just take it for granted. And really, this gives us energy to not want to waste it.
And then thinking about impermanence and death increases our wish not to waste it, realizing that life is so fragile. Death definitely can come at any time, and will come at any time, and we don’t know when. And what’s important at the time of death? It’s basically the virtuous imprints on our mind, because that’s what’s useful to us. It’s not a religious idea, it’s a practical one.
What’s of use to you on that journey from this life to the next? The only thing that’s of use to you at that transitional point is the virtuous imprints in your mind, because they will ripen in the experiences that you actually want. And then we’re looking at the necessity to think about the suffering of the various other creatures, the other sentient beings in the universe. Because Buddha would say we have the potential to be born as them if we die with negative karma on our minds. It increases our wish not to waste this life.
And then we think, well, can I turn to, to give me the methods to do this? And so we think about the qualities of the Buddha, Dharma, the Sangha, meditate on this, and get some sense of wanting to rely upon them. And then the next point, which we’ll begin after lunch, is where now we start the essence of this scope, which is putting our money where our mouth is, which is abiding by the laws of karma, which is Buddha’s actual teaching. Now we’re going to rely upon the Buddha, and we’re now going to listen to his view of what we should do, and what we should not do, in order to get what we want when we die. This is the first level of practice. Don’t be all holy.
Again, it’s got nothing to do with emptiness, and nothing to do with compassion yet. It goes in stages, very first stage. I mean, impermanence up to here is the very first stage of practice. And so the essence of it, the heart of it is here, where we’re going to begin to look at what karma is, what is negative karma, what is positive, what makes it this way, how does it ripen, how do you purify it, how do you change it. This is where you really begin to practice, put your money where your mouth is.
So we can discuss that after lunch. Thank you very much, let’s dedicate. Again, thinking dedicating means simply recognizing that every moment that we’ve been listening to all this is seeds that we’ve planted in our minds, and so rejoicing that we’ve done this, thinking that I’m not the person that walked in the door, you know, at six this morning, eight this morning, whatever. All these imprints is like this gardening that I’ve done. So if I hadn’t planted these seeds, the fruits won’t come.
Now that I’ve planted them, may they ripen as quickly as possible in the development of all these marvelous fruits, which are my own experiences of joy and happiness, my own fulfillment. So then I can use that for the sake of others. So again, remembering how to have your lunch, just if you want to think about it first, imagine that this food in front of you, rather than say the usual grasping, oh I like rice, I don’t like beans, oh this doesn’t look so good, this is really crummy food, oh this is really delicious food, all the usual views we have, try and get more space from it, and imagine there’s just radiant nectar, blissful, blissful, oceans of it, and then you imagine, before you eat it, you imagine that you’re offering it to all beings in the universe. Lama Zopa Rinpoche is famous for his meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings on this, sometimes he can go for three hours blessing the food. As one monk said, You never get a hot meal with Rinpoche.
So, don’t be don’t be just do it for a minute. But even for a minute, to get some space from it. To think that it’s not real, solid, delicious, ugly, very kind of spacious, blissful nectar, which you then imagine oceans of and you imagine offering to all the beings. And because the mind is the most important thing, then what you think completely transforms the