There are couple of things I need to let you to know about this evening. One is that we’re gonna be spending the evening with Ani Tenzin Palmo. She’s gonna be speaking to us on the wisdom of emptiness, mother of of all Buddhas. And and in the end of this talk, there will be a a question and answer session. And also afterwards, there will be a book signing and an opportunity for you to make also donations to the to venerable Tenzin Palmo’s nunnery project as well.
So that will be happening afterwards just for your information. So enough from me. You’ll be seeing me a little bit later on at the end of this evening. I wish you all a wonderful enjoyment of this session. And I’d like to introduce you the person who will be moderating this evening, and that is Zenke Hartman.
She is the Co Abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center. Please put your hands together to welcome Zenke. Good evening. Of course, it’s customary when introducing a speaker to express one’s sense of privilege and honor for the opportunity. But tonight, I’m moved to be to a more personal expression because, as you will soon experience for yourselves, meeting Ani Tenzin Palmo can make this evening memorable as a moment when something changed in your understanding of what the word meeting means.
Four years ago, Vicki McKenzie introduced our speaker to us in the book Cave in the Snow. And we marveled at the ability of anyone, especially a young woman, to survive for twelve years, thirteen thousand feet up in the fierce mountains where India and Tibet meet. But to me, the story of how a little girl raised in Cockney East End district of London took the path that led her to India and a meeting with her guru, Khamtrul Rinpoche, is one of the most inspiring records of what it truly means to be a religious in this modern world and one whose presence demonstrates the richness of the Tibetan tradition. One would have thought that growing up the daughter of a fishmonger in an apartment above the shop would not be a likely beginning for a highly trained and deeply developed Tibetan nun. And I have to say that I have, for some years, been a little bit agnostic about this notion of past and future lives in such a literal way as it’s understood in the Tibetan tradition.
But after learning of Ani Tenzin Palmo’s story, one can’t help but say, this is the literal truth. These past and future lives really happened for her. She really met her guru whom she had known before. I think it I think there’s no other way to understand how her experience than to say, you know, there must be something to this after all. So I think my agnosticism is fading in the face of of her experience.
Ever since a child, Tenzin Palmo wanted to be a nun. But in all the theistic traditions she encountered, she always found that a god is supposedly external. God was in the way. Even when she found her way to Buddhism or when Buddhist books found her, Zen was too austere and Theravāda too structured and Tibetan too strange. But at each critical turn in the way, she heard a voice that never failed in telling her which path to take.
For those who want the amazing details of her journey, I heartily recommend Cave in the Snow and the early part of her new book, Reflections on a Mountain Lake, where she talks of her of her experience as a young person, led her to Tibet and to meeting her guru. But in in in the epilogue of cave in the snow, she says, my life is in the hands of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Literally, I’ve handed it over. Whatever is necessary for me to do to benefit all beings, let me do it.
I don’t care. Besides, I’ve discovered that if I try to push things the way I think they should be done, everything goes wrong. Have you ever noticed that yourself? Having surrendered to the Buddha, the practicalities of her life curiously seem to take care of themselves. People are only too pleased to give her to have her company for as long as she can be with them, offering her plane tickets, their houses, food, transport, money so that all her physical needs are met.
This is how she says it should be. A monastic lives without security, dependent on the unsolicited generosity of others. Contrary to what some Westerners might think, this is not being a parasite. This is going forth in faith. And one of the things that is tremendously appealing to me about Ani Tenzin Palmo is that she is a person of great faith and devotion.
And I’ve always said that my life of practice is completely based on faith and devotion. And it’s wonderful to see someone with the level of faith and devotion that has taken her through the tremendous difficulties of her life. I mean, I do. My life is based on faith and devotion, but I’m not sure it would take me to thirteen thousand feet for twelve years in a cave in the snow. I don’t know if my faith or devotion would be strong enough for such a path.
But I am tremendously impressed by what she did and gratified that she could do it for our benefit. Jesus also said, Give ye no thought unto the morrow what ye shall eat and what ye shall wear. We should have faith that if we practice sincerely, we won’t starve. We will be supported not just materially but in every way. And so living out her faith absolutely, Tenzin Palmos stands in a strange counterflow to the rest of the twentieth century society with its emphasis on acquisition and satisfaction of desire.
She has no home, no family, no security, no partner, no sexual relationship, no pension plan. She has no need to accumulate. She still owns nothing except the barest of essentials, her robes, some texts, a zen bag, a sleeping bag, a few personal items. Her bank balance remains as meager as ever, Tenzin Palmo refusing to touch any of the donations intended for the nunnery, even for traveling to raise funds. She is as meticulous as ever regarding money given for religious purposes.
For all her penury, she remains as sanguine as ever, money having no interest to her except for a nunnery. She’ll happily open her own purse and give whatever she can to whoever asks her. She’s following the life of renunciation that she has always wanted and in doing so demonstrates eloquently that restraint and simplicity can bring happiness and peace of mind. Her most outstanding characteristic remains her overt and spontaneous sociability. For all her mounting status and the thousands of people she has met, she is not tired of human company.
Her circle of friends is immense. She is warm and welcoming to all, especially to those who come in genuine search. Her warmth is genuine. Her concern for the litany of problems she hears is real. Her ability to listen and give advice is unflagging.
Yet you know in your heart that if she never saw you again, she really wouldn’t miss you. And her lack of emotional need is disconcerting for the ego likes to be flattered, wants to be wanted. From her, however, you’ll never get that particular ego satisfaction. This is her hard earned detached engagement, which allows her to wander freely the world without entanglement of close personal relationships. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, she says.
It doesn’t mean that one doesn’t feel love and compassion, that one doesn’t care. It just means that one doesn’t hold on. One can be filled with joy to be with someone. But if one is not, it doesn’t matter. People, especially family, get upset if you’re not attached to them, but that’s only because we confuse love and attachment all the time.
The sudden loss of her guru, Khamtrul Rinpoche, represents the greatest experience of loss in her life because if it had not been for his openness to her request for ordination and his courage to go against centuries of tradition and include her in his sangha of a hundred monks. Her childhood quest to become a nun who did not stand in god’s shadow may have had a different ending. Three years after his death, she had the rare opportunity to meet the three-year-old tulku, who was his reincarnation, and to hear the little boy say, she’s my nun. She’s my nun. A new nunnery, Dongyu Gatsal Ling, has opened in Dharamsala where the nuns are learning the art of debating.
It’s a huge leap forward, the intellectual business of dialectics being customarily regarded as exclusive domain of the monks. At one point last year, the nuns plucked plucked up enough courage to debate in the courtyard of the Dalai Lama’s temple itself in front of the monks. They stood there, small, young, enthusiastic figures stamping their feet and clapping their hands in the ritualized gestures of point scoring. And western onlookers testified that the sight brought tears to their eyes. And the matter of introducing full ordination gets closer and closer.
The Dalai Lama has sent emissaries to Taiwan to investigate the Chinese Bhikśunī tradition with the hope of making it available to Tibetan nuns. After a thousand years, it’s about time. Still, there’s a long way to go. There are as yet no women sitting among the massed ranks of robed figures in the great temple. Depressingly, the new influx of recognized reincarnations of former masters and lineage holders are all boys, thereby promising little hope of a breakdown in the patriarchal hierarchy.
And the average eastern man in the street will still gawk in frank disbelief at the very suggestion that a woman can attain enlightenment. Over the years, Tenzing Palmo, the nun, has risen risen to legendary status with younger Western nuns staring in awe whenever she comes among them. She’s an icon, a woman who proved the men wrong, a woman and a Western woman who survived in a cave all alone for twelve years, engaging in serious meditation without cracking or diminishing her purpose. A woman whose subsequent words of wisdom are an inspiration to people lay an ordained alike. As such, Ani Tenzin Palmo continues to be a role model and a torch bearer for spiritual women everywhere.
Her plans for the future, as much as she will allow herself to have any, revolve around a single theme, the one she has had all her life, to gain full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I would like to gain very deep realization, she says softly, and all my teachers, including the Dalai Lama, have said that retreat is the most important thing for me to do during this lifetime. When I am in retreat, I know at a very deep level that I’m in the right place doing the right thing. But for now, her great project is developing a monastery for women. And the proceeds from these talks will go toward developing that monastery.
And the proceeds from the sale of her book, which will be available at the end of the talk and which she will sign, will go to the development of that monastery. The development of a monastery that will nurture and teach and allow the deep practice of young women who also have the aspiration for enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. It gives me great pleasure, and it is a great privilege and joy to introduce to you Ani Tenzin Palmo. So good evening to everybody. Thank you so much for taking the trouble to come here this evening.
Can everybody hear me? In the back, can you hear? Do I need to speak louder? He doesn’t want to come to me. Can everybody hear now?
Does anybody cannot hear? If you can’t hear, make complaining noises or wave your hands or something. Okay. Well, this evening, I’m supposed to talk to you about wisdom. And while the venerable was making the introduction, I was sitting behind wondering what on earth I’m going to say about wisdom.
I mean, everything I can tell you from personal experience about wisdom would take about ten seconds. And what are we going to do for the rest of the hour? In Buddhism, traditionally, wisdom is regarded as a female quality. Prajñāpāramitā, the perfection or the transcendent wisdom, was shown iconographically as a female goddess. The reason why she was female is because she was wisdom gives birth to enlightenment.
So, therefore, the perfection of wisdom is the mother of all the Buddhas. And in vajrayana Buddhism, the nature of the enlightened mind is considered to be the combination of wisdom and compassion. And wisdom is the female aspect, and compassion is the male aspect, which is sort of interesting. Who doesn’t want to do that? Okay?
But, of course, actually speaking, naturally, wisdom is neither male nor female because wisdom in Buddhism represents the genuine experience of what is called emptiness. And our genuine nature which is beyond conception and beyond duality, and it is certainly beyond gender. So, of course, really and truly, wisdom is neither male nor female, although iconographically it’s shown as a female aspect. So What is wisdom? When I was first starting, when I I was first met my teacher and became a nun, then I went to take my first teaching from an old yogi who we called Togden Rinpoche.
And the first thing he did was to point to the table in front of him, and he asked me, is this table empty by its nature? And I said, yes. And he said, do you perceive it as empty? And I said, no. And he said, is your mind empty by its nature?
And I said a bit more confidently, yes. And he said, do you perceive it as empty? And I said, no. And he said, what do you think would be easier, to perceive the table as empty or your mind as empty? And I said, oh, to see the mind is empty.
That would be much easier. So then he smiled and said, okay. Then you belong to us. And I said, and if I thought the table was easier to see as empty? And he said well, I don’t know how many of you understand this.
He said, in that case, we would send you to Sera Monastery down the road. For those of you whom that’s very obscure, my mom doesn’t think it’s obscure. There are two approaches to a realization of this empty quality which we will discuss. One is through intellectual inquiry, analysis and dialectic. And the other is through meditation and inward analysis and looking.
And in my tradition, we emphasize the meditative inward looking. And in certain other traditions, they emphasize first doing the more external study and external analysis. So that’s what that was all about. Anyway, so when Buddhists talk about emptiness, what do they mean? Sometimes people, when they hear the word emptiness, it sounds like something very bleak and cold.
I mean, sometimes it’s translated the word in in Sanskrit is Śūnyatā. And it’s sometimes translated as voidness. And that sounds even worse. I mean it reminds people of like you know, the coldness of outer space or something like this, something empty and dark and very nihilistic. And so when they are told that the nature of the mind is empty, it sounds like something very threatening and cold and most unwelcoming.
But emptiness doesn’t mean that. It doesn’t mean something which is cold and vacuous in that sense. Basically, to put it very simply, I mean, I am not a scholar. And so both mostly, I’m going to be talking from an experiential point of view. But, basically, emptiness means a lack of inherent existence, inherent nature.
And so, therefore, what it means is that anything you look at, you look at this and you think this you I say, what is this? You say, it’s a watch, which it is. But then which part of it is the watch? Is the watch the face or the back? Is it the numbers or is it the hands or is it the little, you know, machinery inside?
Where is the actual watch? If you take it apart, where is it? And even if you took a little part of this and said, well, you know, this bit is the watch or that bit is the watch, then, again, you could reduce it down to its cellular level. And from the cellular level, you could reduce it down to, you know, atoms and energies and whatever. You can never find the watchness of the watch.
The watchness of the watch is just a combination of many dependent pieces put together, and then we label it. Right? And we say this is a watch. But the watchness of the watch, where is that? And that’s all that emptiness means, really, is that you can never find the thing in itself.
All you see are designations which we have agreed upon. Form is emptiness. Emptiness itself is form. It doesn’t mean that everything, if you reduce it, disappears. It means that in the reduction itself is the thing itself.
They’re they’re opposite sides of the same coin. Think of yourself. Each of us is made up of a body, a mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, memories, judgments, biases, likes, dislikes, opinions. And to each of that, one says, me. This is my body, my hand, my leg, my head, my hair, my ideas, my memories, my thoughts, my opinion, my hopes, my fears.
But if we look for that I behind all this me ness and my ness, where do we find it? In many ways, that’s almost what you could say meditation is about. It’s about stripping off the various layers of the onion. Because we have so much false false, really false identification. We’re identifying with all the wrong things, and we ignore the genuine reality.
That’s why, basically, even in the west where people apparently are so affluent, where you have so much, yet inwardly people feel such a sense of lack. You know, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, is is very fascinated by westerners because outwardly, we appear so prosperous. We have everything. You know? I mean, intellectually, very well educated, beautiful homes, nice clothes, you know, good possessions, prominent careers, everything that apparently would make us very confident.
And outwardly, Westerners appear very confident. We’re trying to make everybody else be just like we are. Are we not? And yet inside, there is such a lack of genuine self confidence. There is such a a sense of low self estimation, such a sense of guilt.
Why else is there such a big alcohol and drug problem? What are people escaping from? We have to ask ourselves. You know, when his holiness he his holiness of Dalai Lama holds conferences from time to time in which he invites top scientists to come along. And because he’s his holiness, then, you know, he gets Nobel Prize winners and and top people in their fields.
He’s very interested in science and what how science and and Buddhism come together and complement each other or disagree. He’s very curious. And I think it was actually Venerable Thubten Chodron went to one of these conferences, and she said that at a certain point, they started talking about low self esteem. And then somebody said, everybody who feels a sense of low self worth and low self esteem, put up their hands. And everybody put up their hands.
All these top scientists. And then they sort of looked at each other. And his holiness just was he just couldn’t believe it. Where comes this low self esteem and this sense of lack inside us when outwardly we have so much. Compare that with the Tibetans when they left Tibet.
They left Tibet. Most of them had to leave behind many family members. They saw the people around them being killed of maybe a hundred trying to escape. Sometimes only two or three actually got out. So they had gone through tremendously traumatic experiences.
They arrived in India, which was a totally alien society where they didn’t speak the language, where it was so hot after they’d been living in such a cold climate, where they were refugees. And they were employed, many of them, to work on the roads. When I first went to India, they were working as road gang, especially up in the hilly areas because they could take the altitude. And some of them were aristocracy previously and they had left everything behind and fled, so they were very poor. Some of them were high lamas.
Some of them were, oh, you know, parts of the Tibetan government. And now they were all working on the road gangs and and living in tents made out of the flour bags, the bulgur wheat bags sent as aid. But when you went to see them, they were laughing. They were smiling. They were cheerful.
They would invite you in, sit down, have tea. They’d run out and buy biscuits As they used to bang these rocks to make little rocks so that you could make the road, they would be singing. You know, Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hung, these mantras, they would just be singing together and they were so alive. Yet they had nothing. But, you know, even the most obnoxious Tibetan feels good about themselves.
That’s why they survive. You know? That’s why they stay cheerful. So, really, the meditation, the emphasis on really looking inside, why do we do it? It’s not so that we can get, you know, experiences of of feeling great bliss, certainly not to get visions or to get, you know, unusual psychic phenomena.
It’s really ultimately to be able to see into the nature of the mind. Wisdom doesn’t mean knowing about. That’s just knowledge. Wisdom is becoming. Becoming what we have actually experienced and realized.
So let’s go back to this whole question of false identification. Our body is changing moment to moment to to moment. All the cells in our body are coming into being, lasting a short time, and then decaying. We are constantly recycling. You know, I mean, our hair, it grows.
We cut it. It grows. We cut it. We are not the hair. If we lose an arm, we are not our arm.
Even our brain cells come into being and decay. We are not the body. From a Buddhist point of view, we are constantly recycled. We are coming to birth. We last for a while.
Then we die. Then that body goes into the earth or into the elements. And then we eventually take a new body. We are being constantly recycled. We are very ecologically sound.
So sometimes a female body, sometimes a male body, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, sometimes western, sometimes Asian, sometimes African, anything. Who knows? The body comes and the body goes. And so the mind. Let’s look at the mind.
Again, thoughts arise in the mind. They last for a moment, and they’re gone. Today, we are feeling happy. Tomorrow, we’re sad. The next day, we’re confused.
Then we’re certain. Moment to moment to moment, our thoughts, our feelings rising, falling, rising, falling. So what are we gonna identify? Are we gonna identify with the times when we feel happy? Are we gonna identify with the times when we are depressed?
Which bit is the me? Are we the same as we were when we were ten years old, five years old, just born? If we think back to our childhood, was that the same as when we were a fourteen, as when we were in our twenties, thirties, forties? All the things we think about, all the things we experience, who thinks about it? Who experiences?
And if we say, well, I am, then who am I? And that’s the question that wisdom is dealing with. This whole question of who am I? I, I, I, I, I. Think about it.
The whole world revolves around I. I and me and mine. The other day, I was speaking with someone about this, and I said, after all, you know, I am I and you are you. And she said, on the contrary, I am I and you are you. And exactly.
Think about it like we’re watching a movie. Now there’s a big screen and on the screen is projected a movie. Now that movie may be a comedy, in which case one is laughing. It may be a tragedy, in which case out comes all the tissues. It may be a drama, in which case the heart is beating or something frightening.
It could be anything. But if it’s a good movie, then we’re engrossed and we we experience these sort of emotions which are being portrayed on screen. Okay. Now in this movie, which is being portrayed on the screen, we are actually playing the starring role. And we’re engrossed in that movie.
But suppose instead of looking at the screen, we turned around and looked behind us, what would we see? What’s actually happening is that there are little transparent frames of film. And these little transparent frames of film are moving extremely fast. And behind them is light. And this light is shining through those little frames, those little transparent frames, and then being projected out.
And because the frames are moving so fast, it looks like there’s actually movement out there. So if we look out, we see what is projected out. But meditation is to turn the focus of our attention inwards. And when we look in, what we see is this stream of thought just like the the stream of the film. And at first, it’s going so fast that it’s like a waterfall.
But as the awareness grows more clear and more strong and more focused, that that waterfall begins to slow down and becomes more like a slow moving river. And if we keep watching it, just watching the mind, the thoughts, then the thoughts themselves begin to become more transparent just like that film. And if our awareness is very clear and the mind is very relaxed, then it can happen that between two of these little frames, there is a gap. And in that gap, one sees the light shining through, which comes from this inner clear light nature of the mind. Now when that happens, there is then that direct awareness of our primordial nature.
And, if you think of it, if one is aware, one is aware of something. Right? So there is a subject who is aware and there is the object, whatever we are aware of. But when we contact the nature of the mind, then this whole subject object dichotomy falls apart. Because the nature of the mind being beyond concepts is also beyond duality.
For this reason, the nature of the mind is compared to the sky. It’s compared to the sky because the sky has no center and it has no circumference. It’s not my sky versus his sky or her sky. There’s the sky. Right?
So likewise, the the innate awareness is not my awareness versus someone else’s awareness. It’s just awareness. And that awareness, because like the sky, it is a vast and spacious, is called empty. It’s empty because it has no solid identity. It’s not empty because it’s nonexistent.
Empty doesn’t mean nonexistent. It means that it has nothing that you can hold onto and cling to and say this is it. Now when this quality of of clarity, of of non conceptual primal awareness arises nakedly in the mind, one sees very clearly also the state of absolute confusion in which we normally dwell. The fact that all of us want to be happy and we’re all looking in completely the wrong direction for it. Then one sees in one’s own heart and in the hearts of others the this quality of of desperation which most people carry within them, always wanting so much to draw to themselves what is pleasant and and to avoid what is painful.
And the fact that we are so confused about our true identity. And when we see that with great clarity, then tremendous compassion arises naturally because we see the problem and how much we we cause suffering to ourselves and others because of our clinging mind which doesn’t understand, which is so lost. So meditation is a way to bring us back to the place where we have never actually left, to bring us back into contact with our true nature. It’s not that we’re trying to gain anything. We’re just trying to recognize what is always there.
But normally, we don’t see just as the sky is often covered with clouds. And we identify with the clouds whether they’re white clouds or black clouds. And we don’t realize however thick the clouds may be. Underneath that, there is the sky behind. Always there is the sky.
Otherwise, there could be nowhere for the clouds to be. The clouds can only exist because there is the sky there. Likewise, our thoughts, our feelings can only exist because of our innate awareness. Our innate awareness is there the whole time. It’s but we don’t recognize it because it’s so close.
We don’t see it just as the eyes cannot see themselves. I mean, I can look down and I can see my nose. Probably I can just about see my mouth. I cannot see my eyes. And likewise, when we look into the mind, we see our thoughts, we see our feelings.
But it’s very hard for us to recognise the bare awareness behind those thoughts and feelings just in itself. And yet without that bare awareness, we would have no thoughts and feelings. Do you understand? So wisdom in Buddhist understanding is to realize that nothing exists inherently from its own side, and that includes us. It’s not that we are nonexistent.
It’s just that we don’t exist in the way that we normally see ourselves. Liberation lies in really being able to reconnect with our true being again. And that’s why it is considered in all schools of Buddhism extremely important to have an initial at least a glimpse. My lama says to me that when one has seen the nature of the mind, this empty this empty nature which is at the same time filled with wisdom and compassion, which is filled with genuine understanding of the way things really are. This kind of understanding of our true nature, when one has a glimpse of that, then one can start to meditate.
It’s not the end. It’s the beginning. So therefore, in Buddhism, we start by learning how to be present. Because normally, whatever we do, we we are so caught up in the movie and we don’t realize that in a way we are projecting it constantly. So we have to learn how to get back to the clear light.
Then we can enjoy the movie because we know it’s just a movie. I mean, if the hero dies at the end, we don’t want to slit our throats about it. We can have a little but it’s only a movie. In the West, especially nowadays, people think that we’re here just to have nice time, to be happy, to get lots of material possessions, to outwardly show signs of being successful, and to stay healthy and look beautiful and have everybody admire us. And if we can manage to do that for as long as possible, then we have had a successful life.
Therefore, if we age, if we get sick, if we suffer loss, if we are not successful, then we have failed. And this way of viewing life not only puts extreme pressure onto us, but also places happiness and and genuine accomplishment in in the wrong direction. And that’s why people, even though they are often outwardly very successfully, inwardly have a a sense of meaninglessness Because they know that merely getting the next, you know, latest fashion or another brand of car or a new computer program is not gonna solve the problem. Something inside is lacking. One of the problems is that we are controlled by our minds instead of being in control.
We are controlled by our greed and our aversion and our basic confusion and delusion, and we don’t know how to deal with these skillfully. So everybody has, you know, this basic ego clinging delusions. Almost everybody has greed and aversion. But if we react to these negative qualities just with a sense of guilt or self hatred, then we are simply adding more fuel to the fire flames. We are not solving the problem.
And in the west, people have a lot of guilt. Have you noticed? They go on and on about their horrible childhood and their personality problems and their neuroses and psychosis. And everybody goes to psychologists. There’s an imbalance somewhere.
Of course, we have to recognize the faults in our mind, but we also have to recognize the goodness in our minds, the goodness in our hearts. That is not pride. That is just acknowledging the goodness in order to encourage it. Like any other quality, if we don’t examine it and encourage it to grow, it’s like a a plant. You know, you you have to water it and and fertilize it and encourage it to grow.
And likewise, the good seeds in our heart, our our loving kindness, our thoughtfulness, our compassion, our understanding, our caring for others, these have to be watered. As well as the poison seeds which grow our anger and our clinging and our envy and and our jealousy are being uprooted or used in a more skillful manner. Each of us has the wisdom mind. We all possess the fullness of wisdom and compassion within us. It’s like a spring within us which has been clogged and covered over so that when we look into our heart, it may appear like a desert or it even may appear like a a garbage dump.
But if we clear away the garbage, if we keep digging down, then eventually the moisture will appear. And if we dig deep enough, suddenly the wellsprings of our natural wisdom mind will appear because it’s always there. Wisdom isn’t something out there. Wisdom isn’t something you’re going to find in the books. Wisdom is something which is within each one of us.
Each one of us has a wisdom mind. But it’s not going to appear unless we really look in the right direction, unless we work hard to uncover it. So each of you has to use your life as a means of really discovering your own innate wisdom, your own innate love and compassion. Your relationships, your workplace, your social life, everything is a challenge. There are so many methods by which you can turn your everyday life into your practice.
But the practice always has to come back to the heart. When one reads newspapers, it looks like, you know, the world is really going to perdition. I mean, you look at all the awful things which are happening in the world and you think, oh my god, what’s happening? But then you go out and you meet ordinary people. And ordinary people are trying to do their best.
They’re trying to be good people. They’re trying to be kind. Many people, not, I mean, by any means just religious people, but people with no particular religious beliefs, are nonetheless trying to lead a life which is sane and which will benefit themselves and others. So for each one of us, there is the challenge of how best to use our lives so that we develop our innate qualities. This is not a talk on meditation.
And I’m sure many of you here are not necessarily Buddhist or perhaps some of you have no particular religious beliefs. But this is a matter of finding a path which leads to greater mental clarity and an opening of the heart. Because our minds are so often confused and our hearts are closed because of fear. So we have to learn to open the heart and make the mind more clear and learn how to look inside and rediscover our own innate wisdom mind. Otherwise, we just waste our life again.
You know you are all very lucky. Do you realize how lucky you are? You don’t have to think where the next meal is coming from. You can all read. You can all write.
You can read any book you want. Any path is open to you. So what do you read? You have this ability to understand what you’re reading. What do you read?
You have a mind. What do you do with that mind? Normally, during the day, what is the contents of your mind? Are you even aware of what the contents of your mind are? Each one of us has the responsibility to learn how to tame our own mind and how to bring ourselves back to our true nature.
No one can really do that for us. They can give us guidance. They can point things out. But in the end, we ourselves have to do it. The good news is that we all can do it.
There are books. There are teachers. There are methods. From our side, we need perseverance and patience. No one is stopping you.
You do not live yet in a totalitarian state where you are told what to think. You can do what you want with your mind. You can read what you want. You can practice what you want. So please, please be skillful and use this life in a way which is meaningful, meaningful for yourself, meaningful for others.
Don’t waste this opportunity. Wisdom isn’t something out there. Wisdom is in here. Sometimes when you read books, it makes it seem like ultimate reality is right out there like the Himalayan mountains glistening in the distance. In the Tibetan tradition, whenever one is going to read a book, first you have to get what is called the lung.
You have to get the oral transmission from someone who themselves have already received that transmission, from someone who had received the transmission, from someone who had received the transmission, all the way back to the author. Can you imagine in the west if we had to do that? So you don’t read a book until you have had that transmission. And the transmission usually means you go to someone who has themselves received that transmission and they read it very quickly. Then that gives you the permission to read the book.
Otherwise, you’re not supposed to read the book. And so one time I wanted the oral transmission for a book which is now translated into English as The Flight of the Garuda in Tibetan is called Kading Sola. And so I asked one of our yogis in Tashi Jong to give this transmission. So he was giving it. And then he stopped and he said, the problem is that when you read books like this, it makes the whole experience sound like out there, somewhere very far.
Whereas, actually, the experience is so simple and is right here now. Because if you use high words, not absolute reality, it sounds like something very vast and, you know but it’s right now, right here, this moment. We just don’t recognize it. I was just looking at this. The kingdom of god is within you.
Right. Says it, doesn’t it? Okay. What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly love, mercy, and walk humbly with thy God. Well, thy God is within thee.
Right? We’ve just seen that. Right? Walk humbly with thy God. God is within you.
So exactly that. To walk humbly means without ego. To walk without ego with that inner awareness, that inner wisdom which could be called God. It can be called anything. It’s just a name.
I one time saw a program on a Greek Orthodox monk was being interviewed, and he said the first lesson in prayer is that whatever you think about God, it’s not that. Because God is just a word. I mean, it’s beyond words, God. Right? So whatever you think of as the ultimate reality is just another label.
Right? But the realization is beyond words, is beyond concepts, but it’s always here. Where else could it be? The problem is usually we’re looking in all the wrong places. So please don’t waste your lives.
No? Please do something meaningful which benefits yourself, which benefits others, which benefits this whole planet, which at this time desperately needs lots and lots of help. But wise help. Right? The greatest thing you can do for the world is to recognize and develop your own innate wisdom.
Which each of you possesses and just needs to be recognized and uncovered. So be happy. Okay? Are there any questions? Yes?
Just a minute. One minute. My country is probably about to attack Iraq with ghastly consequences for Iraq and for us. I think this is madness. What shall we do?
I think at this time, we should all pray very hard. And I think that the problem is also that although most people really in their hearts know that this is very unskillful actions, There is not the the unity, the solidity, and the coming together that there should be. You have no voice. Why are you not voicing? Why is the press silent?
Why is the media so meek? I’m asking. Because our major corporations own the media. Yes. It’s true.
It’s true. So, I mean, at least you can pray very hard that for both sides that finally some sanity will come about and that these terrible things will not happen and send lots of loving kindness around the world to all beings on all sides. It’s not a matter of us against them, whether them is someone over in another country or whether them is someone sitting in Washington. Right? It’s all us.
And we have to give a lot of compassion on all sides at this time. Thank you. I have a question for you. If in your years of practice and being with yourself, you have seen this the kingdom of God is within you so clearly, and you’ve probably felt the idea of signlessness or the idea of symbols and what was called spiritual materialism by Chogyam Trungpa. I wondered if you in in your course of your life, you’ve ever questioned why you would continue to practice or follow a certain tradition or if there’s something that’s beyond that that perhaps doesn’t necessarily if you’ve ever just wondered why, why am I why do I stay with this when I know that it’s it’s all just signs?
Because in order to go to the top of the mountain, you have to follow a path. It’s just the path, but still you have to follow it. Otherwise, you’re not gonna arrive anywhere, are you? The path in itself, there are many paths, but you have to follow one. Otherwise, you will never reach anywhere.
Traditions, each one of them have a very deep link backwards to the source. They’re not something arbitrary. So each tradition links us back to the source of that tradition from the enlightened mind from which it arose. And that’s why one needs lineages because that lineage is the link which takes us back to our source again. I mean, all traditions are fingers pointing at the moon.
They’re not the moon. But nonetheless, you need the finger. I mean, it’s not that you have to become fascinated by the finger or analyze the finger. We must remember the finger is pointing at the moon. But nonetheless, where’s the moon?
And then you follow the finger and oh, look, there it is. Do you understand? Can I ask another question? Mhmm. Can I ask another question?
You said Fine. Similar vein. What how did you, in that sense never mind. I suppose it found you. It found me.
Yes. It found me. And for me, my tradition on one hand is the most precious thing I have. And on the other hand, I appreciate that different people, different traditions are equally valid. It’s not that I’m saying mine is the only tradition which would be absurd.
You know, there are many traditions. As long as they are valid, they would lead us back to the state from which we have never really departed. But we do need a path even though it’s a pathless path. We need a path. Do you think that we also need a guide to that path?
Oh, you know, even if you’re learning to play an instrument, even if you’re learning to play golf, even if you’re learning anything, you need to have a teacher. And since we realized this in the realm of music, of sports, why do we think we don’t need something this much more challenging role of trying to come back to our true inner nature. In the Tibetan path, also, it’s very stressed because usually the teacher is the one who initially points out to one of the nature of the mind. And that is the primary role at first of the teacher is to point out our nature because we usually are looking all in the wrong directions. And through blessings of that, the master, one can get a glimpse of what one is looking for.
And after that, one has to work. And again, you need direction. It’s very easy otherwise, you know, for for people I mean, she knows very well, that if we are, you know, if we don’t have a tradition and a teacher, we pick bits from each path which happens to fit in nicely with our own preconceptions. So it all feels nice and cozy and comfortable. But it doesn’t challenge us.
Maybe the very things we need are the very things which we ourselves would never have chosen to do. And, therefore, it’s it’s important to have someone who sees us more clearly than we can see ourselves so that they know what is right and and can guide us on the path. So, yes, a teacher is important. But in the meantime, there are also there are meditation courses given. There are books.
You know, it’s not a matter of just sitting and waiting for the perfect teacher to be there. And then they’re going to say the word and snap their fingers and that’s it. Now we’re illuminated and we can all go home and turn on television and do something else. It’s not that. Even if we I mean, even if the Buddha himself, the Lord Buddha was sitting in front of you, all he could do is say, practice.
So the thing is to have a practice and then do it. The teacher can’t do it for us. But, you know, as with learning to play the piano, you know, they can show you how to do it, and then you just have to do it and do it and do it and do it until eventually one becomes more and more skilled. Each of us has the potential, but we have to work with that potential. No one can do that for us.
In your years of meditating in the cave, what were your most difficult times? And what advice would you give to us when we come up against those times that are so hard for us to get past the obstacles? I think the most difficult challenge probably, as you’re talking, I’m thinking, was that in the cave, right, there was obviously there was no electricity. So naturally there was no television. There was no radio.
There was no magazines. There was no newspapers. The only books I had were Tibetan books. So in that, it was a great opportunity for the mind to create its own movies and entertain itself. Right?
And that was a great challenge, not to get caught up in daydreams and memories and internal entertainment, But to really try to focus the mind in the present on the particular practice one was doing and not give way to all this. The mind can be extremely boring. It can also be extremely entertaining. And to really discipline it into relaxing into the moment not just creating, getting caught up in daydreams. I think that was the most challenging thing actually.
Because there’s no one to stop it. You can talk to yourself if you’ve got no one else to talk to. You can have wonderful conversations in which you grieve yourself the whole way through. I see a hand over there. If you could just make your way to the microphone.
Several years ago, I was on retreat for maybe two weeks without TV, without newspaper, without the things that you were without for twelve years. And I got in the process quite peaceful. At the time, was living in Los Angeles, so after the retreat, I came back home to go to work. And within the space of twenty four hours, I found myself swearing at the drivers on the freeway. What can you say about that integration and the balance of coming from that space and back into the madness of our ever rapidly increasing insanity culture?
Well, this is the challenge, isn’t it, to really learn how to bring the sense of presence, of inner centeredness into our daily lives. I mean, otherwise I mean, this is a whole talk. I am going to be talking later on how to use your spiritual your daily life spiritual practice. But this is the challenge. It’s not easy.
I mean, I appreciate how difficult it is because as our lives speed up in the so called labor saving technology, which just increases the speed with which everything is happening, the mind becomes more and more and more controlled by these uncontrollable forces. And it’s not easy to remain centered. That’s the challenge. And that’s why it is so important to have these periods of where one is able to quieten the mind just to get a taste and then to really know what one is doing and really have the determination to try to stay present, to relax the mind and at the same time keep this this quality of awareness in one’s daily life. This is really a challenge.
And all of us are challenged by it no matter where we are living. Even in India nowadays, I mean, you know, we we also are are constantly challenged. But then we have to use our life and the challenges as our opportunity to practice. How are we going to learn patience if there are not things pushing our buttons? How are we going to learn how to keep calm when there is not chaos?
It’s easy to be calm when everyone is calm, but the challenge is to be calm when everything is chaotic, isn’t it? So like anything, you know, you start with simple things, learning how to bring the mind back into the present and then gradually increase that. Like anything, it’s a matter of habit. We are in the habit of not looking at our minds and just going with the flow. And so we have to reprogram our minds to learn how to stay present in the moment.
And that’s a challenge. But we can do it if we really, really want to. It’s a commitment. How can I find emptiness in desire? How can you find emptiness in desire?
Well, the essential nature of desire, if you really look into it at the moment it arises, you will see that it is not something which is solid and self existent, but in its very nature, it is transparent and empty. What you need is to develop that ability to really see in that moment, not in the next moment, in the first moment. If in the first moment of the arising of desire, you look at it just as it is, then of itself, it will transform into a wisdom energy. I assure you. But in the second moment, you’ve lost it.
Hello, Ms. Tenzin. Something struck me when I was listening to your introduction and how frustrated you were when you went to pursue your spiritual path initially and teachings weren’t given to you. And I read on the web you were given secretarial duties to do and Oh, that was a joy. That wasn’t a frustration.
But it’s interesting how the lineage that was given to you has these teachings on emptiness, yet the concept of gender is so solidified in these countries and how paradoxical that is. Isn’t it? Where not? Can you point to any country where there is not a gender issue? But in the Buddhist countries where they have teachings that should liberate one from such solidified concepts, It hasn’t happened.
Well, you know, changing. And for example, in Taiwan, in present day Taiwan, there are probably anything between three to seven times more nuns than there are monks. And the nuns there are extremely well educated. And because they have full ordination, as do the monks, they are very well respected by society. They have very much a voice in society.
Many even some of the largest organizations, the Buddhist organizations with millions of followers are run by nuns, were founded by nuns. And so the women in a place like Taiwan are very much a presence in the Buddhadharma. And I hope that they are, as it were, a beacon to light the way for for the rest of us. We are all trying to follow in that. Of course, Buddha nature has no gender.
We all know that. The Buddha himself said, of course, women can be liberated. The Dalai Lama recently, when someone asked him, can women attain enlightenment? Can females attain enlightenment? He just laughed and said, what a stupid question.
Then said, all beings have the potential for enlightenment. So how could women not? If even insects have the potential, how could women not? He said. And when I assured him that certain lamas had told me that it was not possible for women to attain Buddhahood, it was possible to go on all the stages of the Bodhisattva path that last many seconds you had to have a male body.
His Holiness said, no, that was not true. And he wanted to quote certain texts in tantra to show not true. Society is something else. On the other hand, it’s very interesting that in countries which are Buddhist, like Tibet and Burma, the women in society are very strong. You know, if you meet Tibetan women, you know, they’re they’re powerful ladies, and they often run the businesses.
They’re in charge of all the finances. In Tibet, also, usually, there was polyandry, which meant that one woman would marry the elder brothers and take on all the younger brothers. So maybe she had three, four, five husbands, which gave her a lot of power, actually, if you think about it. So Tibetan women, as Burmese women also, are not weak. It’s just that when they became nuns, then they were not educated.
And since they were not educated, even though they had practice, they had no voice. Nobody wrote about them. They were not given any regard. And although I’m sure there were many very great female practitioners in all Buddhist countries, nobody bothered to write about them or very few of them. That’s what we’re trying to do now to change that.
So mean Buddha nature is beyond male or female. You all are educated. You all no lama is going to say to you, no, we don’t teach this to women. They wouldn’t dare. I mean, two thirds of their supporters are women.
So if they said, no, we don’t teach this to women, then women are taking them out and lynched. Hi, I have a question. I’m very curious about your the nunnery that you’ve built. And I’m curious about one thing. It’s are there are there, Sangha from all cultures that come and participate there as well?
So I’d like to know sort of the general name, but also I have this curiosity as well. Well, the nunnery which we have started in Northern India is actually intended really for girls from Tibet and from the Himalayan border regions. So this is like Ladakh in Nepal, Kinur, Spiti, maybe in the future Bhutan, Zanskar. These border regions were traditionally are Buddhist and there were many nuns. But especially in the border regions, the nuns were basically just servants for their families as the unmarried daughter or else they were servants for the monks.
In Tibet, the nuns usually were not servants for the monks. But nonetheless, because they were not educated, they did not have the opportunities which the monks had. So what we’re trying to do is now we have twenty four young nuns and we are teaching them philosophy and debating. They also do a two months retreat every year. In a few years’ time, we hope to start training some of them to carry on a very precious yogini tradition, which was extant in Tibet and died out after the communist takeover.
So we hope to reintroduce this again. And also so that the nuns, they can study and they can practice. And then they themselves will become teachers because at the moment there are very few female teachers. So our aim is that in the future this will change. And when His Holiness Dalai Lama said just now when I saw him very recently that he had noticed that the nuns coming nowadays from Tibet and from the border regions had so much more devotion, determination, and focus than the majority of the monks.
And he felt that, you know, we’d given the right opportunities that they would really carry on the Dharma very beautifully. And when he came out and met with our nuns, he said to them, it doesn’t matter. Male body, female body, it’s the same. If you study and you practice, there is nothing you cannot achieve. And this is very important for them to hear that because traditionally they believed being in a female body was a result of bad karma and that the best they could do would be be good girls and serve the monks, pray hard and next lifetime they could come back in a male body and then really practice the path.
So it’s very important for them to understand that now that they can study, they can practice, that there’s nothing that they cannot achieve. We have a few nuns from foreign countries, Scottish and Canadian, American, who work with us to look after the nuns and take care of them. But they are not officially a part of the nun in that they’re not part of the study program. Thank you. On this, the idea of compassion, can you give us some suggestions how we can open our hearts and have compassion to people who are creating war, leading us towards war?
And also, do you feel it’s a good idea to take part in peaceful demonstrations to voice in a happy, joyful, peaceful way to say that we are against war? Well, I think, first of all, people who are creating violence and difficulties and splitting the world into two sections are very much in need of our compassion because it’s very clear they are acting from very deluded states of mind. And, yes, I think that peaceful demonstrations are a good thing. It’s very important, however, when one what is one’s motivation? If one’s motivation in doing a demonstration is again rooted in anger or frustration us against them, then one is merely perpetuating the same cycle.
If one’s motivation is genuine compassion on all sides to all beings, then it’s good. And one should do that because otherwise, if one stays too passive, then sometimes very negative active forces take over, do they not? I think at this point oh, you’re going to ask a question? Okay. Just want to follow-up on that a little bit because there’s a big field of engaged Buddhism now that’s very, I think, growing in importance in the West.
People are very reticent. Spiritual practitioners are often very reticent about what level they want to get engaged with and are afraid about taking on this oppositional mind. I wonder if you could say, if you had any further thoughts about people, particularly who are their main path in life is to practice, to embody practice and to teach practice in a spiritual way with religious people, what kind of role they might take in that movement, how they might advocate that people are active, but they are active in a healthy way. Well, think you could take as an example someone, for example, like Maha Ghosananda who was, for a time, the supreme patriarch of Cambodia. He is an older monk in Cambodia.
And, of course, Cambodia has in the past and even in the present a very terrible history of violence. And he would lead peace marches through all the land mine areas in among the Khmer Rouge. And initially, just a few people and then hundreds and then thousands of people followed him. And he had actually a great influence on what happened to settle things because he was so respected. Because he wasn’t full of anger and tirades like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi.
You know, their motivation was compassion and peace. And ultimately, like his also, you know, even when people don’t agree with their politics, they have to they have a very deep impact on whoever they meet. Because they’re true I mean truly they have peace in their heart. It’s very important when one is in a so called peace movement not to create this us against them feeling. You know, we are the righteous against, you know, those the evil ones out there causing all the problems.
But to realize that they are merely projecting out conflicts which are in the heart of all beings. And and that’s why we have to act with wisdom and compassion and and really wishing them well even in the face of added violence. We have many examples in the past of people. I mean, look at Mahatma Gandhi. I mean, he brought down the whole British empire, not with machine guns.
So I think now at that point is a good time to just dedicate the merit. Just sit nicely. And just in Buddhism, we have what is called merit, which means like a kind of potential, a kind of positive potential or energy. And this we then it’s like we gather it all up. You all made an effort to come here this evening.
You could have done so many things. This is San Francisco after all. You chose to come here. That’s it’s, you know, it’s nice that you came. And so gathering all that up, you came with a good heart.
Right? So we like to gather it up like it’s a lot of light, and then we send it out around the world everywhere. Because at this time, the world’s terribly in need of light and love and compassion. And it’s like, you know, you have a very heavy dough. You only need a bit of yeast and it can lighten the whole thing.
So don’t feel despairing. You know, you don’t need equal amount of yeast to the dough. You only need a little bit of yeast and the whole dough lightens. Right? So don’t believe you’re powerless.
You are not powerless. So right now, just send out these feelings of light and love and compassion. Imagine a whole globe surrounded by it. Not just human beings, but animals, insects, beings in the oceans and the rivers, beings in the sky, beings under the earth, beings which are seen, beings which are unseen, may all all sentient beings everywhere be well and happy. May they be peaceful and at their ease.
And just sit and imagine the whole globe surrounded with light and love for one minute. Thank you, and may you all be well and happy.