Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 73-minute session, a panel including HH Dalai Lama discusses how Western students encounter and practice Buddhism authentically, starting from the premise that all living beings seek happiness and freedom from suffering. The speakers clarify what distinguishes Buddhist practice from secular psychology and mindfulness: reincarnation and a non-material view of mind are non-negotiable foundations for genuine Buddhist motivation, not optional add-ons. They explore the tension between Buddhist teachings aimed at liberation across multiple lives and Western seekers wanting mental health benefits in this life alone, arguing these are legitimate but separate pursuits. The panel walks through the three scopes of motivation, the role of karma and ethics, and practical integration of study and retreat for lay practitioners with jobs and families. They close with concrete advice from senior teachers: generate strong motivation each morning, assess your day’s actions, and transform ordinary life through mind-training techniques like Lojong, all without changing external appearance.
File metadata (for organising)
File: four-noble-truths-2010-10-02-kr
Teacher: HH Dalai Lama
Collection: Four Noble Truths
Date: 2002-10-10
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~7,907
Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.
Okay. Okay. Thank you everybody. This is an opportunity for you to bring your cogitations, contemplations into a question form for the panel from what you’ve heard today. And I was just saying to the panel that we’ll just see how we go in terms of the flow of questions and how much energy we have, but we won’t go beyond five, but we could finish earlier depending on how we Four.
Half past three? Oh, well, we won’t go beyond half past four. Probably don’t need this from the floor, so over to you. Thank you. What the data seems to suggest, this is data from psychology, from social psychology, from biology, from neurobiology, is that when organisms of any kind, this is true of bacteria, this is true all the way to humans, everything in between.
When organisms of any kind are under chronic stress, when they feeling themselves impinged upon in a way that makes them really uncomfortable, it activates a really widespread change in their physiology, in their bodies, that ultimately is destructive. So anything there’s there’s lots of evidence, particularly in in mammals, that when mammals are under pressure, psychological pressure, living pressure, that sort of stuff, when they’re subjected to, say, foot shocks, When they can’t they’re subjected to crowding conditions, can’t escape. When they’re subjected to restriction restricted conditions, they can’t escape. They have a tendency to turn on one another. They get aggressive or they get very helpless.
But that becomes destructive. But just simply the physiological response to chronic stress that things are not okay is enough to start wearing down the body and the body will disrupt. Does that answer your question? Yes. So it’s not it doesn’t wanna destroy itself.
It’s just that in in seeking to preserve itself, because it’s an unrealistic position, because there actually isn’t anything to protect, there actually, there isn’t any there there, really. That’s what Buddhism tells us is the fundamental mistake. The act of protection and enhancement can become pathological. I think Richard actually had a very interesting question during the break. Would you like to raise it?
Center, a Buddhist center, is because that’s what they want. They want happiness and they want to be free from suffering. Presumably they continue to come because that is what the center offers to them. It provides greater happiness or a degree of happiness and less suffering. It provides them with the some tools for how to control their mental anguish.
Being less ignorant, being less attached, being less averse, at a simple level. And of the is the you’re asking the question, what is the purpose of the center? I think that one of the purposes might be of the center is presumably to offer people the because they are taught how to have that greater control, is offering something to many, many people without a belief in reincarnation. I’m throwing this out. There’s there’s at least some providing some explanation as to why people espouse Buddhism in the West.
I obviously, from a point of view of you’re you’re indicating that it is that this is not a grounding in Buddhism, you know, a a non acceptance of of of reincarnation. Can start to answer your question? Is there a question yet? I think if we try to understand what types of persons come to the center, will give us a framework to answer your question. Broadly speaking, we have three categories of people who attend the teachings: people who are non Buddhists, people who are searching, and people who are Buddhists.
All three are welcome. Having said that, it is important to have a measure of what is a Buddhist and what is not. All the more so, because when people want to become Buddhist, want to know what they are basically committing to accept. So reincarnation, as I mentioned this morning, is non negotiable. In other words, there is no such thing as a Buddhist who does not believe explicitly in reincarnation.
Now, if one cannot believe in reincarnation, one cannot take refuge. It is not possible. If one does not believe in reincarnation, one thinks one has taken refuge, then basically one has not taken refuge. That is a non negotiable boundary. It does not mean that believing in reincarnation is sufficient to be a Buddhist.
Buddhist. Actually, many of the Indian schools of philosophy, Hinduism and Jain, teach reincarnation. Both Hinduism and Jain, as well as Buddhism, teach the existence of a liberation, a state of moksha. The only disagreement between these three traditions is a means to attain the state of liberation. Hinduism and Jain teach the existence of an inherently existing self.
Buddhism teaches the non existence of such a phenomenon or more broadly speaking for all schools, teaches the selflessness of persons. The two higher schools teach selflessness of phenomena. So, therefore someone who does not accept the actual phenomenon of reincarnation not only cannot be a Buddhist but he cannot be for that he or she, cannot be for that matter either a Hindu or Jain. So one doesn’t even start talking. Now, when people come to the center, what are they searching for?
I think fundamentally all living beings search for happiness. Not only articulate sentient beings like ourselves, inarticulate beings, animals, all search for happiness, all try to avoid suffering. Happiness is a result. Buddhism teaches the causes which give rise to that result. So in that sense, Buddhism can be of benefit to people who are trying to find happiness.
The cause for happiness is a practice of virtue, as Tsongkhapa pointed out so clearly. The cause for suffering is a practice of non virtue. What one can understand through the practice of Buddhism is what precisely is virtue and what precisely is non virtue. All of the Buddhist techniques of meditation, all Buddhist philosophy without exception, is dedicated to the attainment of ultimate happiness or at least happiness in a future life. There is not a single Buddhist technique of meditation which is dedicated to the attainment of happiness in this life.
I think I have to be quite blunt about this one. It may be a byproduct, it is not the goal. Now, there is a tremendous interest in the West now in the possible benefit of Buddhist meditation in the here and now for this life. That’s perfectly legitimate. That, however, never was the intention of these techniques of meditation.
And because it never was their intention, they cannot be authentically assessed on that basis. Pamela was telling me during the break, there’s a tremendous literature on Satipatthana, on the practice of vipassana and its impact on mental health, on heaven knows what. From a Buddhist standpoint it is self evident such techniques of meditation will have an impact, but that is not their goal. And when someone was asking me a couple of months ago what benefit I could see in Buddhist meditation for people who are mentally ill, I felt I had to say from my side of this person that such questions could only be answered by a Buddhist meditator working in conjunction with a psychiatrist, and that this never was the goal of Buddhist meditation in the first place. So very, very sound Buddhist practice has a potential to make us extremely unhappy in this life.
That is simply not a problem. One very great Kadampa Geshe, Geshe Langri Thangpa, I think it was, was known as the always crying. He spent his life in a valley crying on the suffering of sentient beings. So crying is not a state of happiness. Yet this was a very advanced practice of a Bodhisattva.
Many of the ascetic experiences of Jetsün Milarepa were not undertaken for the sake of this life. Yet it is very clear that they led to ultimate happiness. So, to summarize my answer to your question, I think the goal of a center has to be to cater to sincere Buddhists who are aiming for the Buddhist goals, which are the practice of the being of middling, smaller middling or greater path. And then everyone else is obviously welcome, and we are very happy if they can derive benefit. But we are not in a position to guarantee that you can open you can use a car to open a bottle of Coke.
You may, but the car was not designed to open a bottle of Coke. And you cannot assess the value on the of the car on the basis of whether you can open a bottle of Coca Cola or not. Does that answer partly your question? If you say sane mind, the basic problem is we don’t agree on the meaning of both terms. Sorry?
We don’t agree on the meaning of the noun in the mind, and possibly we don’t agree on the meaning of the adjective same. A sane mind for a mainstream westerner is a mind which is happy and contented and functions well in the here and now. Knows to have fun from time to time, doesn’t take things too heavily, right? And heaven forbid that there should be too much guilt. Has little or nothing to do with what a Buddhist would consider or call a sane mind.
To take the case of guilt for instance, which is a completely taboo term. From a Buddhist standpoint, guilt can be positive, neutral or negative. Powerful guilt with respect to a non virtuous deed one has committed is a very virtuous state of mind. It’s very unpleasant. From a Buddhist standpoint, someone, let’s take an example, who had performed an abortion without understanding what an abortion was, and then felt tremendous guilt over what happened over this, until the end of that life, have probably purified an important part of the non virtual crude.
That’s a very virtuous mind. It’s the same mind from a Buddhist standpoint. From the standpoint, let’s say, of someone functioning, for instance, in Western psychotherapy and focusing only on this life, someone who remained in a state of guilt until the time of their death because of a non virtue they had committed would not have the same mind. Don’t you think such a pain? I’m just trying to I’m wondering where Joe is getting with this one.
The term happiness is not helpful. From a Buddhist standpoint, we’re here purely in a Buddhist perspective, so I think since it’s a Buddhist conference it’s not legitimate. From a Buddhist standpoint when we talk of happiness we’re talking of contaminated happiness. Contaminated happiness is nothing other than the suffering of change from a Buddhist standpoint. That’s all.
It is something which arises in a drop in the threshold of suffering, which lasts as long as the mind has not become accustomed to that drop. Then the happiness which is proposed in Buddhist teachings is uncontaminated happiness. That uncontaminated happiness is something which is durable, which is permanent, which does not change. That is what we are trying to achieve. And then, I mean, to reassure you as a byproduct of Buddhist meditation, yes, your mind does become a lot more peaceful, would say, but that’s not the goal.
The goal is not for your mind to become more peaceful tomorrow or after tomorrow. I mean, of you may have attended the teachings on the four parting from the four attachments, which is what H. P. T. Translated.
Parting from the first attachment is very powerful. The statement that basically everything related to this life is non Dharma. And I think it is something we have to assert powerfully in Buddhist centers precisely because the demand is for this life. Now, obviously, are welcome to come, they’re welcome to attend meditation classes, teachings. It’s up to them whether they believe or not in future lives.
It’s entirely up to them whether they believe that the mind is non material or not. If they do not, it actually will be impossible for them to practice ethics. It is impossible to practice authentically ethics if you believe that at the end of the cycle it is all over. You can only practice ethics as long as there are no major Well, you can practice ethics as long as there are no major temptations. I think it is the rare person, I would not want to say they don’t exist, but I think it is the rare person who, believing that at the end of this life everything stops, would abstain from engaging for instance in a non virtuous deed such as making a false insurance declaration which this person here would never be detected.
I’m not sure from a Buddhist standpoint they would. I think His Holiness has tried to present a secular ethics because that is all many people in the West can respond to. Whether it actually can work reliably, I think is an open question. Well, think it’s an open question. I think it’s an open question.
I think there’s another element there too, if I can just, and that is the the feeling the mental feeling of happiness that does arise as a a product of past karma. And when it does arise, it arises, due to causes and conditions, and the major ones being the current state of one’s mind. So we have little control over what karmic results are maturing in the present moment. So when happiness does arise, it’s just the the karmic maturation of a past virtuous deed. And we’re not it’s uncertain which life we created that, but it occurs in the present, due to causes and conditions that are both internal and external.
And we don’t have much control over the practice. The only level of control we have is that if our mind is virtuous in the present, that would tend to act as a condition for maturing virtuous karmic seeds. That’s all. But the mind itself tends mainly to the nonvirtue because of our strong habits. And we can see this ourselves because it’s so much more difficult to generate patience and love and compassion.
It’s so much easier to generate hatred, resentment, anger. So, actually, we don’t the window for our happiness in the present is not so large. And we know this because we’re often not happy. And mainly, it’s due to the condition of the current state of our mind. Just whatever whatever is function whatever is manifesting at the present.
And not only what’s manifesting, the main thing is the intention. And it’s the intention that’s going to either, arouse positive mental factors, or it’s either gonna arouse negative mental factors. So it’s, really, it very much depends on our motivation in the present. But because of our strong habits to the negative, we don’t have much control over the process. We really have to put a huge amount of effort just to make our mind virtuous.
Well, Richard’s question goes to that. Mhmm. How can we develop control over that process? And what faith beliefs do we have to I think, in every single teaching, put such emphasis on generating the motivation that that should be a bit of a pointer for us. As Tsongkhapa said, deeds in and of themselves are basically karmically potent in the light of the motivation which generated them.
So if our motivation is only this life, then it is a worldly deed. It actually does not fall within the pool of the Buddhist teachings really. It is when the motivation is focused on the next life at least that it becomes a Buddhist motivation. And that is not sufficient for many deeds. Actually, one needs to strive to liberate for liberation from the cycle of lives for which a belief in reincarnation is indispensable.
Otherwise, it’s impossible to strive sincerely for this. Or one has to strive to lead all sentient beings to attain oneself a state of enlightenment, to lead all sentient beings to that state after numerous lives, in which case again the belief in reincarnation is indispensable. So I think the three motivations which form the backdrop of Buddhism, the motivation of the being of small, middling and great scope, can only arise if one believes in reincarnation. Belief in reincarnation is only possible if the mind is seen as non material. Now, one can debate the details, as Pamela has pointed out, whether the mind is from the standpoint of Highest Yoga Tantra, let’s say, of one nature and separate isolates from the subtle winds.
One doesn’t enter into that here. But if the mind is matter, as Jungpa Yin said, the mind is, in other words, a manifestation of the brain’s activities, there is no brain before conception, there is therefore no mind before conception, there is no brain after the process of decomposition has started, there is therefore no mind, then there is is no Buddhism at all. People can practice Buddhist meditation to gain benefit in their life. That practice is perfectly legitimate. It’s not what these practices were designed for.
And there may or may not be benefit. You see, what’s always worked for me is the idea of going back to school again. That’s works marvelous. A teenager. Just the idea of going back to school for twelve years, it’s But this is perfectly legitimate.
It’s perfectly legitimate, Robin. You’re perfectly entitled to believe, not believe. You want, but Can I say something there? We function perfectly well with complete ignorance. Yep.
We have, you know, like, ignorance of so much in the universe, of ourselves, of internal, external. We are full of ignorance. This darkness, the inner darkness, as they call it. And we function perfectly with this ignorance. And there’s a huge amount that we simply don’t understand, and we don’t see it ourselves.
The only thing that we can do about these objects that are beyond our current understanding is to investigate and contemplate them as much as possible with common sense and logic. And this we must, I think we need to apply ourselves to this, you know, in a sustained Lojong manner because the whole issue of the continuum of mind is absolutely essential to us. That’s where our welfare is. This continuum of mind that’s come from the beginning of this life as far as we can see and continues each moment in the present, we don’t really understand what this continuum is. We’re not really sure what the mind is, but that’s our benefit.
That’s our heritage. That’s our future. That’s our past. That’s everything that we are that we need to, you know, grow in understanding of. And that’s up to us.
And the way that we do develop understanding of this is really through discussing it with others and investigating our experience, looking introspectively at our experience, and thinking logically about the stream of consciousness that we possess and whether the the possibility of the stream of consciousness extending back into a previous life and a life before that. Now at present, we can’t remember that. And the reason why it said we can’t remember our past life is that, of course, we go through the death process where the mind dissolves to the clear light, and it’s not easy to remember back beyond that point. Right? Now I guess, in other words, you know, we have a philosophy of what the nature of the mind is, of how it goes through the death process, of how it continues in this life.
It’s not evident to us that that’s exactly how it is. We don’t see it clearly ourselves yet, but the way we will come to understand it is through discussing the topic, you know, logically over a long period, looking at text, looking at, you know, different types of argument that can be brought to bear. And I don’t think there’s any other way. And I think you’re right to say we need to investigate it. Well, just one word about that.
That’s something that’s brought up in the Tibetan tradition, the Gelugpa especially, the whole issue of what enlightenment is. And there are positions of presenting the nature of enlightenment. And I think we do need to think about these issues as clearly as we can. And often, in thinking about them, we are guided by what past masters have said and so forth. Sorry?
The comfort in the Irishman and culture can Can I say something here? Can I say something here? I hear your distress, and I think it would be horrible if you were lost to this center. I think it would be horrible because many of you don’t realize Robin actually has been a huge patron of Rinpoche’s for decades. No, but, no, I, yeah, no, but, so, her relationship to Rinpoche is absolutely unquestioned.
The problem is, as I see it, Robin, is that we are looking at doing something radical. I mean, really radical, when we’re talking about becoming liberated and enlightened. If you’re talking about something that’s quite radical from our ordinary way of existence, we’re not talking about just being good people. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about just living an ethical life, you know, so that, you know, we don’t do harm and that sort of stuff.
We’re talking about stripping away every single delusion we have. That’s really, really big stuff. Now, if you’re going to pursue that kind of path, I’m not saying that you’ve got to believe in rebirth in order to do that. I’m not saying that you must do that. I agree with Ilya that everything in the Buddhist tradition says that that is a default belief that you must have if you’re going to be a Buddhist.
If you’re going to have the label that says Buddhist, that said that you take refuge on it. But if you’re going to attempt to do something that radical, you had better have a rule book, a manual, people who have done it, that you can look to and say they’ve done it. Now, there’s going to be cultural baggage that comes along with it, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You have been near Zuru Rinpoche for two decades. You know how different he is from everybody else.
He got that way through following a particular series of steps and practices that purified his mind and realized his potential in ways that we can’t even imagine. Now because we think because we have this vaunted autonomy that Ilya was talking about this morning, it’s built into our culture. We’re individuals. We have a right to our own opinions. Our opinions are as valid as anybody else.
You know, wherever I get the bits that go into my opinions, that’s you know, they’re valid, that’s fine. But if you’re going to attempt to do something radical, you had better follow the steps of somebody who’s done it previously. And the twentieth century, the late twentieth century, the whole twentieth century is just littered with people who had good ideas, went to good teachers, pulled a few things together into a general framework and just said this works. This works for me. And people have followed them and they’ve ended up drinking Kool Aid.
You know, they’ve ended up committing suicide with shoes, know, silver trainers on their feet, you know, laid out in nice little box. You know, they all kinds of you know, the twentieth century has been scary in that respect. That’s that’s But John, the point is you can’t pick and choose from if you’re going to be a Buddhist, you just can’t pick and choose the things that you that suit you and what don’t. You can’t. I ask you get there?
If you want to be happy, fine. But if you want to get there, you can’t. Could I ask Please. That is a sort of question Tsongkhapa should answer, but perhaps it’s a little bit complex for us sitting here. I think what I wanted to add to what Pamela was saying, and I think it is perhaps the simplest answer to your question.
It is possible to gain memories from past lives. Meditators have done it generation after generation. I know Tibetans who have. It is possible. I think you owe it to yourself to try to find whether it’s true or not.
Because there’s only two possibilities, either it’s true or it’s not true. There’s no middle ground in something like that. Someone who has those memories and you get them through retreats. They come in dreams. Sometimes they come in, for some practitioners, in flashes during the session.
These memories are sometimes verifiable. No. No. Obviously, if if you if you remember I remember it clearly. If you remember being Marie Antoinette, I think it proves reincarnation does not exist.
You know? None of us was Marie Antoinette. You know? None of us was Marie Antoinette. But you’ve got to appreciate that people are trying to present the classic Buddhist view and that’s fine as well.
Our venerable teachers and our venerable lamas present it with authentic Buddhist tradition, then we benefit from that. What individually we take about, well, that’s the So, I think he will say that to us. Can I just say also there’s a about being a Buddhist? There are different levels in a sense that are probably possible there. There’s a text by where he goes into what is the nature of taking refuge, and he takes a very strong line on it.
And when you take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, in terms of when you look at those three refuges, what is the ultimate refuge of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, then you’re looking at, you know, the truth of cessation, the truth of path, and the truth of cessation is emptiness. So you can take refuge as meaning that you when you say you take refuge in Dharma, you’re taking refuge in emptiness. In order to do that, have to understand emptiness. Now if we took refuge in a strong sense, it’d be difficult for us to be Buddhist because we don’t really understand Dharma. We don’t understand emptiness.
So there are degrees of being Buddhist in a sense, and we can’t take it on the strongest level. Otherwise, you know, we would be discounted as Buddhist. And belief in reincarnation, karma, and so forth, they are important elements of the pantheon of Buddhist beliefs, if I can put it that way. Probably, it’s hard for us in the West to believe in these things immediately. They’re not part of our culture.
And I think there’s a to a degree, we can just put them to one side and investigate them. We’re Buddhist because we take refuge in the Three Jewels. These other philosophic issues are you know, if we cannot accept them straight away, then put them to one side with a view to investigating them as the you know, that the you know, our mind will change in future when we gain further insight into these things. But, we’re not gonna understand everything at once. And, you know, there’s no we need to be a little bit easy on ourselves as well.
And and, you know, expect that we’re not gonna understand. And, actually, just just to, you know, to know what the Buddhist is, what a Buddhist believes is necessary. But a lot of these things, we’re gonna have degrees of understanding of them. Yep. That’s all I wanted to say.
I think personally, that, living in a Western culture, we need to be, we need to study it because, you know, that’s we derive so much from Western culture. I don’t wanna give the impression from what I said before that I’m against Western culture by any means. It’s our home, actually. And we need to study it. And, within reason, you know, it’s it’s a vast.
Western culture is absolutely vast, and we can only ever study a bit here and a bit there. At the same time, balancing that with Buddhist texts, for instance, is essential. We need a bit of a balance, a bit of each. One is dealing with the issues in this life. The other is dealing more with the more fundamental issues of our all of our lives, all of our future.
So we need a bit of both. In fact, if we don’t take care of either, we’re not gonna be contented. We can’t I mean, it’s difficult for us to live, you know, like hermits as hermits in this in our society and just to reject it and, just concentrate on doing retreat and so forth. I think it’s important that we we have a balance. Dear.
I haven’t balanced it very well at all. And why do you think that balance? Why why is it very important just going to find that caravan sitting with? For most people, it’s not possible, you know, to really, stay in retreat for long periods. It’s very difficult because we’ve got to take our current mind into the retreat, and we know what our current mind is like.
And we should do short retreats. His Holiness has recommended us doing shorter level retreats, not just giving up completely and, you know, finding that caravan and staying there for thirty years. I doubt if that’s possible for us. We have family. We have friends.
We have associates. We need to interact. In interacting, we need to keep up, like, with his holiness, you know, what his holiness does. He lives almost in seminary retreat. He gets up at 3AM in the morning.
He does all his practices up until dawn, then he has breakfast. Then he looks at listens to the BBC. He does a bit of reading. He attends conferences on mind science and various other things. He’s interested in politics.
I think that he is a monk, but he he lives in the world as well. And he sets an example, I think, of how to balance the two. I don’t know about getting up at 3AM in the morning. That’s not But if we can do that, that’s wonderful. Well, I get up a lot at 3AM.
Well, I go back to bed. I think it’s an individual question, Chris. Very individual question. I think it depends very much of the age of the person. It depends also very much of what their responsibilities are.
So when I was young, I read tremendously all over. German philosophy, Russian philosophy. From one standpoint it was a waste of time. From another standpoint it was very helpful because it enables one to put oneself in the world view of someone from another culture. Now I am actually not interested at all in Western publications.
I read for the conferences because if I do not, then it’s not possible to present the material in, actually for the term, a sexy and appealing way. You have to attract a Western audience. It has to be intellectually stimulating. It has to be provocative. Then within that, try to put a bit of Buddhist teachings.
From my standpoint, I would be much happier reading, frankly, Tsongkhapa. I feel it would be much greater benefit. So I asked Him but she’s permission to stop giving these conferences. And Rinpoche asked me to continue. But from my standpoint, there’s not a great interest, but that’s because of age.
I think for a young person, if the mind is sharp enough, if there is time, then Rinpoche is saying it’s very important to have a broad culture, not just for one’s own understanding, but because then one can connect with people. We have a responsibility to help others, and we have to see where they come from. You know? It’s not always possible to connect, but we have to try. I haven’t done this very well.
I mean, I for certain. I would not recommend to anyone actually doing a crash amount of reading in science. I think that that is kind of a waste of time. Because the things that are accessible are frequently, they oversimplify the state of affairs. They are almost always written with a kind of an ideological thrust, frequently of the kind that you’ve been describing.
It’s hard to, there are so many books published, it is really hard to find your way through the thicket. And the ones that attempt to blend science and spirituality tend, in my opinion, to end up honoring neither. That’s probably. Have my life is completely out of balance. My life is completely out of balance.
I don’t know how to balance my life. The stresses of our society are significant. I think long retreats are a great idea. When I say long, I mean a month or more. That’s not like a three year retreat, but I think it really does put you in touch with the nature of your mind in a way that you just don’t get otherwise when battling with jobs and family and just driving down the road.
I don’t know if you guys have any idea how stressful just driving down the road is. We take it completely for granted. It’s an automatic thing that we do, and it is absolutely amazing the number of systems in our bodies that that mobilizes. It just says alert, alert, alert. You know, we take it completely for granted.
Take the bus. And it’s just it’s it’s a real stressor. It’s a real stressor. It’s a real stressor. And it’s not just because of age.
Know, mean, you look at the young people racing around with P plates. I mean, like, you know, they’re, well, I mean, like, you’ve got that’s not really relaxed. It’s really it’s so this is a problem. This is a problem. And I think that this is something that everyone answers for themselves.
But what I wouldn’t recommend is that everybody go out and start reading science. I’m going to try and synthesize some biology. And hopefully, they’ll start being some things that are at least a little bit Buddhist and biological in short order. It’s really, really it does not repay the effort. It doesn’t repay the effort.
Work on your practice. What is the thing that there were four things that recommended and I don’t know which source it was. Try to understand the nature of things. Second, think about the deeds that you do. Third, remember that death is coming.
And fourth, try to be of benefit to others. I mean, that really basically sums it up. It’s the try to understand the nature of things is actually first, but it’s only one of four. You know? And understanding the nature of things is really about understanding the interdependence of things and the and the emptiness of things.
It’s not how does the body work or how does the how do the cosmos form and all that sort of stuff. It’s not about that. Know, Tsongkhapa wrote Lamrim Chenmo six centuries ago. And in the Lamrim verses, he has a verse which is very powerful. Was powerful six centuries ago.
It’s the entire project of Lamrim Chenmo. I think it’s powerful nowadays. Those who practice do not study and those who study do not understand the fine points of practice. Now he was describing the situation during his day and age. That was the reason for which he wrote Lamrim Chenmo.
That there were meditators who were not studying. As said, they were getting experiences no one had ever had neither before nor after, you know. Which is what you want to avoid. Right? Was very sharp, you know.
Then there were scholars who never did any meditation, you see. And I think the very essence of certainly the tradition, Tibetan tradition we are in, the Gelug tradition, is a combination of the two. Now, because it’s such a forceful intellectual tradition, it can become a bit dry. Then that’s a sign it is betraying itself. I had several friends at Sera Je who were able to integrate practice and study.
Know? And, during my stay there, we didn’t have, I think, when you were there, it was even more flexible. We didn’t have a lot of pressure, regarding attendance to other pujas. Now it’s become like, you know, if you don’t go, they basically drag you. And then we could fit in one or two months retreats a year.
And what those retreats do, you don’t necessarily gain any realizations. But sometimes if the retreat goes goes well, the people who do them can gain one or two tastes of what might be going on. What does it mean a lot? A friend of mine, he did a very good retreat, a very fine monk, Dutch monk, and things went really well. And at the end of the retreat, he said, it’s nice to know that some of the things which are talked about in the texts really do exist.
He had experience. Now once one has experience, it’s as Geshe wrapped it in, he said, back tasting chocolate. You can talk about the taste of chocolate and you’re blue in the face. Someone who’s never had chocolate, it doesn’t pass. Right?
So at a certain point, all of us, we have to gain experience. One gains experience is through retreat. And then, as Tsongkhapa said, we are now talking of long retreats. I think for Westerners, they are difficult, for most of us as beginners they are very difficult. Short is good enough and practicing every day.
And then if we check the teachings against our practice, I think we can progress as quickly as it is possible for us to progress. More than that is not enough. Some forbearance to think about it and then decide what I’m gonna do. How do I act generously? How do I act with patience?
How do I act wisely? Practice is not easy. Because our mind is not easy, and we’ve got to train the mind. So that’s the the work face. That’s the cold face for us.
Just our ordinary mind and dealing with it, you know, day by day, moment by moment. And if we can do some retreat that gives us, as Eliot pointed out, a little bit of a taste of, the teachings and so on. That’s good. We can carry that through our ordinary everyday lives and so on. As much as possible, it’s balancing our work lives and then Dharma, bringing those two together as much as possible.
We’re not the first culture to be confronted by this. The time of the Buddha, it was the same in China, Tibet, Sri Lanka, and so on. Everyone, every culture to where Buddhism is spread, they’ve dealt precisely with these issues. How do you balance work and practice? And for us at present, especially if we don’t have the leisure or the opportunity to become ordained and we need to work, we need to be in the world, then finding a balance, just finding this balance, is essential every day.
Think we rediscover the balance every day. And it takes a lot of patience. As you pointed out, it does take a lot of patience. And we’ve got to be kind to ourselves as well and learn how to relax. And I think there’s a misconception about relaxing.
Actually, is a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of discipline and hard work to be able to relax. But that we need. We need that sort of space, and we need all the techniques that we can bring to bear just to allow us to relax and to put thing be able to put the, you know, our cares to one side and, you know, do a little bit of meditation, do a little bit of practice, be kind to ourselves, and so on. There’s many, many techniques that are available, and it’s good to know of these techniques and develop a range of techniques that we can apply.
I thought Khensur Rinpoche gave the most extraordinary advice for people who have full time jobs a couple of weeks ago. I had never heard it from a great Tibetan teacher like Rinpoche. It’s very powerful because it is so simple. You know? At Sera Je, they used to say that, excuse me, would blow your mind because it was so difficult.
And at last, at least you understood something. So you remember Rinpoche said that for his lay students who had to work, the way to practice was to generate the motivation in the morning strongly. Strong motivation of loving kindness, as high a motivation as one can, starting with the motivation of the being of small scope. If that is possible, then try to move to the being motivation of the being of middling scope. If one can generate a a taste of that, we don’t have these motivations, but a taste, then the motivation of the being of a great scope.
That generation of the motivation is practice. Everything else is commentary, really. That is practice. And then, once we have generated that motivation, we go on with our daily life. At the end of the day, we make an assessment of our life.
Then, if we have made mistakes, we confess, we take the resolution not to do them again. If we haven’t made mistakes, we rejoice. If you remember, Rinpoche said, the next day we start again. Yes. And after day after day like this, a life, a human life has been well spent.
I think and it’s think it’s very powerful advice. There’s an anecdote I would like to tell you. He’s a very great practitioner, a bit astride the Gelug and Nyingma traditions in the Nyingma. You know, he had a heavy past. He was one of the Tibetan refugees.
You know He, That’s fantastic. Yes. He was in the Indian Army, fought in Bangladesh, then he had drinking problems, major drinking problems, you know. And then under the guidance of Namkha Rinpoche, in his mid forties, I think. Oh.
Yeah. That was took ordination. Took ordination. This was a soldier. He had he had killed people in the war, and the the Bangladeshi war was ugly business.
I think he attended Khensur Rinpoche’s recitation of the Kangyur. He received the Kangyur from Khensur Rinpoche. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Then under the guidance of Denma Locho Rinpoche, he really had generated real renunciation. He had seen so much. You see, the key to our practice is to connect the theory and life. Otherwise, if it’s just theory, it becomes dry and sterile. He had connected the two.
He went with his army kit, that’s how he describes it, in a cave above the Dharamsala, started meditating. And it is said he attained full enlightenment in one life. I am told he’s already split a stupa to commemorate his passing. And I was speaking with a friend who knew him and who said that the reason he progressed so far in his practice, his very advanced standard of practice, he gained two more, many realizations, was that he put little emphasis on the core of the practice and great emphasis on the motivation. And he would never start practicing a Tantric Sadhana before tears ran down his face from bodhicitta.
So I think that is an example for us. Then, if we practice, as Rinpoche was saying, daily lives like that, and as Tsongkhapa was saying, we bring for instance, Lojong is very powerful. Lojong techniques are extraordinary. One doesn’t have to be a Buddhist to practice them. One doesn’t need initiation.
One doesn’t need anything. How to transform daily life into practice? Then and that was why I put Abhayadatta’s Lives of the 84 Mahasiddhas as the first text in the bibliography this morning talk. That is how we can practice secretly. We do not change anything in our exterior appearance, it’s not necessary.
The externals are actually an obstacle to our practice, especially in a society like this one. And our practice is purely the alchemical transformation of the mind. That we can I mean, they say one of the core practices of Tilopa, who was Naropa’s master and who prepared sesame seed oil, was to visualize a crushing of the delusions with his pestle? Now all of the, eight eighty four, each had a way of transforming a trivial daily activity. One that was sweeping.
Was excuse me. How do you say? A procurer in English. That’s how you say it. Was a procurer.
He attained for the night. Then we see that sort of terrible job, really, got that far so we can do it too. And in the case of this meditator I was mentioning, what’s extraordinary inspiring for me personally about him is that he was not learned. Mean, His Holiness basically set him on Lamrim Chenmo. He had a lot of trouble with Lamrim Chenmo.
And His holiness kept calling him in, you know, and checking him out on that, yet he managed. The only thing he had was something which Tibetans have a great amount of, which is that extraordinary will. That perhaps is something I think we could learn from the Tibetans. Does that does that answer part of your question? Just hearing Jampa Gyaltsen say that it takes extraordinary amount of self discipline and practice to relax, it probably also takes very good sharing of symposiums.
And we’ve been working very hard today, and so it’s nearly quarter two. So maybe that might be a good time to draw it to a halt and to thank you each on the panel for your contribution. And for each of you for your determination and resilience and questions. And may you relax in a very determined way when you leave here. Sleep well and we’ll see you just a tad before eight in the morning for meditation.
And what I’ll do now is just to ask Jampa Tenzin to just put the karmic stamp of dedication. Thank you. Okay, Rinpoche said whenever we engage in any form of activity to make it a truly Dharma activity is to dedicate the merits. So each of us will do it in whichever way is appropriate for the individual. However, I would like to say we dedicate whatever merits we have gained by attending and listening and reflecting and interacting with each other.
Whatever merits we have gained as a result of this activity, may it be for the greater benefit of all beings. May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. May all beings never be separated from the happiness that knows no suffering. May all beings abide in equanimity free from attachment and anger, holding some close and others distant.