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WORKING WITH EMOTIONS

A seminar with Lama Sönam Lhundrup,

based on a teaching with the same title by Lama Gendun Rinpoche1,

at Karma Rigdröl Ling, Chalkidiki, Greece,

July 3rd

– 11th, 2010

Heartfelt thanks for the transcript to Vijayamala!

– All rights reserved, Sönam Lhündrup –

1 Teaching translated and published by Lama Anila Rinchen (Dhagpo Kagyu Ling)

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CONTENTS................................................................................................................................ Day 1.a ....................................................................................................................................... 6

• Explanation of the title "The Great Peacock which overcomes the Poisons". ............... 6

• Defining emotions .......................................................................................................... 6

• Summary of the stages ................................................................................................... 6

Day 1.b ..................................................................................................................................... 11

• Can we do without afflictive emotions?....................................................................... 11

• Afflictive emotions as unskilfully dealing with the creative flow of mind.................. 11

• Acting out afflictive emotions...................................................................................... 11

• Being fully mindful of the emotions but not acting versus suppression ...................... 11

Day 2.a ..................................................................................................................................... 16

• Remembering what is important and practicing it. ...................................................... 16

• The law of Karma – cause and effect. .......................................................................... 16

• 6 realms of existence. ................................................................................................... 16

• Mental states depend on actions of body speech and mind.......................................... 16

Day 2.b ..................................................................................................................................... 23

• Taking refuge ............................................................................................................... 23

• Taking responsibility for our own actions, looking at our body speech and mind. ..... 23

• Difficult situations as manifestations of unresolved issues. Not tests set by someone

else. 23

• Every act has an effect – of a similar nature. ............................................................... 23

• Regret and purification of karma ................................................................................. 23

Day 2.c ..................................................................................................................................... 28

• Karma and happiness. .................................................................................................. 28

• Mixed intentions mixed results. ................................................................................... 28

• Not a question of good or bad – we chose the outcome we want. ............................... 28

• Great happiness and the Bodhisattva intention. ........................................................... 28

Day 3.a ..................................................................................................................................... 32

• Living in our bubbles. .................................................................................................. 32

• Meditation on developing a loving attitude.................................................................. 32

• Different Bodhisattva activity. ..................................................................................... 32

• Merit and going beyond self-centredness. Limitations of the god realm..................... 32

Day 3.b ..................................................................................................................................... 37

• More on merit and activity without self-centredness ................................................... 37

• Maintaining a vision of our spiritual priorities – what we give importance to. ........... 37

• 2 steps: beneficial activity and waking from the dream............................................... 37

• Solidifying a self, solidifying ‘other’. .......................................................................... 37

Day 3.c ..................................................................................................................................... 41

• Dream example and waking up from the projections of the mind. .............................. 41

• Waking up from emotional projections........................................................................ 41

• Waking up from projections of identity and solidification. ......................................... 41

• Waking up from projections of stability; being prepared for change. ......................... 41

• Kleshas have a purpose but are not successful............................................................. 41

• Nature of psychosis. ..................................................................................................... 41

• Changing priorities for long term happiness. ............................................................... 41

• Exercise on seeing the purpose of kleshas. .................................................................. 41

Day 4.a ..................................................................................................................................... 48

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• Importance of being really motivated. ......................................................................... 48

• Tibetan meaning of klesha and more ‘open’ emotions. ............................................... 48

• Sadness and anger and creativity. ................................................................................ 48

• The Skandhas or aggregates and what we call the ‘I’. ................................................. 48

• The Four Noble Truths. ................................................................................................ 48

Day 4.b ..................................................................................................................................... 53

• Complexity of causes and conditions and rebirth. ....................................................... 53

• Example of Angulimala. .............................................................................................. 53

• Facing up to old age sickness and death. ..................................................................... 53

• Taking the doctor’s medicine and changing our way of life........................................ 53

• ‘Death does not exist’ because of virtuous action and seeing there is no one to die. .. 53

Day 4.c ..................................................................................................................................... 58

• Emotional addiction. .................................................................................................... 58

• The power of anger. ..................................................................................................... 58

• Finding skilful means of expression............................................................................. 58

• The dangers of dullness................................................................................................ 58

• Mechanisms of jealousy. .............................................................................................. 58

• Seeing people’s deepest potential. ............................................................................... 58

Day 5.a ..................................................................................................................................... 65

• Being able to direct the mind, not stuck in emotional reaction.................................... 65

• Meditation helps constructive thinking. ....................................................................... 65

• Noticing habits even though we can’t yet change them increases spiritual force........ 65

• Getting used to using remedies to stimulate qualities that overcome the afflictions ... 65

• Desire – balancing up attraction to the body................................................................ 65

• Buddha’s 4 sights, waking up from the dream............................................................. 65

• Guided meditation on death ......................................................................................... 65

Day 5.b ..................................................................................................................................... 72

• Careful application of the remedy for desire................................................................ 72

• Do Awakened beings have the same bodies as us? Energy bodies versus substantial

bodies. .................................................................................................................................. 72

• Can Awakened beings take on the karma of others? ................................................... 72

• Helping relatives after death. ....................................................................................... 72

• Consequences of suicide. ............................................................................................. 72

• Contemplating the contents of the body....................................................................... 72

Day 5.c ..................................................................................................................................... 78

• Reducing the importance of the body as a support for our ego.................................... 78

• Remedy for anger – all beings as our parents. ............................................................. 78

• Sharing the dharma gives long term happiness. ........................................................... 78

• Perfecting patience as a flexible and relaxed state of mind. ........................................ 78

Day 6.a ..................................................................................................................................... 83

• We need difficult situations and can move away from ‘superior compassion’. .......... 83

• The need to be around others to practice ethics. .......................................................... 83

• The real enemy is our clinging – the 4 maras. ............................................................. 83

• Developing empathy, gestalt exchange. ....................................................................... 83

• Training to come from the other person’s perspective................................................. 83

• Long term practitioners insisting on their views and not listening. ............................. 83

• Tonglen and receptivity................................................................................................ 83

• Listening exercise......................................................................................................... 83

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Day 6.b ..................................................................................................................................... 91

• Significance of the Buddha’s life. ................................................................................ 91

• Summary of the functioning of the 12 links................................................................. 91

• Getting off the wheel.................................................................................................... 91

• How does the Buddha feel without likes and dislikes?................................................ 91

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Day 7.a ..................................................................................................................................... 96

• Advice on sleeping and preparation for sleep. ............................................................. 96

• Healthy eating. ............................................................................................................. 96

• Butter lamp balancing exercise and the importance of alignment. .............................. 96

• Exercise: writing down our faults. ............................................................................... 96

Day 7.b ................................................................................................................................... 102

• Good qualities don’t come from the ego, being in the flow....................................... 102

• Self-importance is a blockage. ................................................................................... 102

• Stage fright, low self-esteem and the feeling one should be able to help are all

manifestations of pride. ...................................................................................................... 102

• Natural spontaneity – freedom to act or not act, no ego identification. ..................... 102

• Healthy self-criticism versus neurotic self criticism. ................................................. 102

• Helping someone with low self-esteem – where do real qualities come from?......... 102

• The poison of having to be someone special.............................................................. 102

• Examining ourselves regularly for faults. .................................................................. 102

• The third eye sees the true state of our mind.............................................................. 102

Day 7.c ................................................................................................................................... 107

• Subtle veils of ignorance – purification of clinging to characteristics. ...................... 107

• The bodhisattva vow. ................................................................................................. 107

• Servant to beings but not their kleshas....................................................................... 107

• Bodhisattva activity – being honest about our capacities and only helping when asked.

107

• Jealousy based on comparison. .................................................................................. 107

• Lazy jealousy – sour grapes. ...................................................................................... 107

• Jealousy within spiritual communities. ...................................................................... 107

• Connection between pride and jealousy..................................................................... 107

• Taking responsibility for our own happiness. ............................................................ 107

• Not excluding others from our happiness. ..................................................................... 107

Day 8.a ................................................................................................................................... 114

• 3rd

step “Transforming the Emotions” – being willing to live without the emotions.

114

• Solidity of emotions dissolved in the fire of awareness............................................. 114

• Looking behind the mask of our persona. .................................................................. 114

• Afflictive states are not wisdom themselves – we don’t transform the emotion but our

vision of the emotion.......................................................................................................... 114

• We have to see right now and not rely on past experiences....................................... 114

• Om Svabhava Shuddha Sarva Dharma Svabhava Shuddho Ham.............................. 114

• An experience becomes impure when there is clinging. ............................................ 114

• Using the 5 Buddhas to remind us of the energy nature of the afflictive emotions. .. 114

• Meditation on the 5 Buddhas to purify our emotions and those of all beings............ 114

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Day 8.b ................................................................................................................................... 120

• Led meditation on 5 Buddhas..................................................................................... 120

• Chenrezi and 5 Buddhas............................................................................................. 120

• Dangers of visualising your partner as a dakini!........................................................ 120

• Looking into the mask of the skandhas –‘female aspect’. ......................................... 120

• Mistake of visualising self as pure and others as impure. .......................................... 120

• Everyone is the yidam and all sound is mantra. ......................................................... 120

• Afflictive emotions depend on difference – we can see the sameness....................... 120

Day 8.c ................................................................................................................................... 126

• Not abandoning but seeing the true nature of the kleshas.......................................... 126

• Where does experience happen? ................................................................................ 126

• Our world is constructed of static after-images or imprints....................................... 126

• The ‘I‘ is constructed to account for the continuity of experience. Like giving a name

to a river. ............................................................................................................................ 126

• Life experience does not need an ‘I’, an observer, to function. ................................. 126

• Look into any experience for the subject or the object (content) of the experience. . 126

• Our habitual actions confirm our existing view of the world. ................................... 126

• Seeing the nature of the emotion rather than the content dissolves it immediately. .. 126

• Our mind is made up of kleshas, this is what we have to work with. ........................ 126

Day 8.d ................................................................................................................................... 131

• In what way do things exist? ...................................................................................... 131

• Abandoning our search for solidity. ........................................................................... 131

• No good just letting the kleshas come and go – we need to see their true nature every

time they arise. ................................................................................................................... 131

• The five wisdoms. ...................................................................................................... 131

• The dakini is experience lived with awareness .......................................................... 131

Day 9.a ................................................................................................................................... 136

• Absolute Bodhicitta – the cure for all ills. ................................................................. 136

• Relative Bodhicitta – a selfless attitude of mind leads to the realisation of selflessness.

136

• Om Mani Padme Hung – 6 realms and 5 wisdoms. ................................................... 136

• 3 levels of practitioner looking directly at the nature of emotion. ............................. 136

• Getting involved in the cinema .................................................................................. 136

Day 9.b ................................................................................................................................... 140

• Stimulating emotions to accelerate the path............................................................... 140

• Illusory body practice – visualise as deity to know the true nature of whatever arises.

140

• Clear light to see the clarity in the dull, sleep state – clarity, not luminosity. ........... 140

• Exercise with candle/flowers to counteract attachment. ............................................ 140

• 2 sorts of shame.......................................................................................................... 140

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Day 1.a

• Explanation of the title "The Great Peacock which overcomes the Poisons".

• Defining emotions

• Summary of the stages

Actually the topic we are working on never changes, we are always dealing with the subject

'what actually separates us from Awakening? What’s going on? Why are we not in an open,

free state of mind?' Or we say 'How come we experience tensions and stress, while actually it

could be possible to be freely flowing, open heart, open mind?' Last year we had a series of

different teachings on Buddhist mind training based on compassion and wisdom and this year

we will continue with this, but from a slightly different angle.

The topic of the course, translating the title very freely, is 'working with emotions’. Actually

the title of the text which we will study is The Great Peacock that Overcomes the Mental

Poisons. Already you can see that the term 'emotion' is not used. We are talking about the

mental poisons, which mean all those emotional states that cause us not to really be our true

selves. We are veiled or distorted by a strong emotion of anger, or a strong desire, or jealousy,

or pride, and when this is over our natural self reappears. So please let us not say that we have

to do away with emotions. This is not the purpose of the course. We don’t have to finish with

emotions; we are working on those emotions which create tension in our mind.

In Greek, ‘emotion' is something you feel, like with the English word. A Buddha feels

everything. We are not going towards a kind of Awakening where we become insensitive,

with no emotions in this sense. The Awakened state is extremely sensitive, but with full

wisdom, so there is no identification. The Latin root of ‘emotion’ suggests something which

brings us into motion, movement, probably a strong movement. Love, joy, compassion,

gratitude and so on are also strong movements in mind, but they don’t create suffering. So

when we talk about 'emotions' in a Buddhist context I think we are wrong. We should avoid

this term, because it includes states of mind which make us very open and states of mind

which make us very closed, so it does not work.

The Sanskrit word for what needs to be abandoned, overcome or dissolved in order to reach

Awakening is klesha which means ‘affliction’, something which makes the mind narrow and

needs to be dissolved. So when we hear klesha it is something which makes us a little bit sick,

we are afflicted by a burden and we want to get rid of it. So the whole course will be on how

to deal with those states of mind which make us narrow or tense or stressed.

We decided on this topic because of the request of the Dharma teachers who are living here at

the centre. Our teacher Gendun Rinpoche taught this little Tibetan text 20 years ago and it has

become a text of reference for how to work with these difficult states of mind. Lodro and

Constance were there when Lama Gendun gave these teachings and they said ‘Can we not

work on them here together?’ We also have a Greek translation of the teachings which were

given 20 years ago, which makes everything much easier.

So what we will do is go through the Greek text, which is the same as the English text, and we

will look at the meaning of what is being explained. We will clarify this meaning. You can

take notes and you can take something home with you to which you can refer in order to

refresh your memory. But we will also have meditations and work groups where we will

exchange about the topic. There will not only be the study of the text there will also be

application of these things.

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The text is called The Great Peacock that Overcomes the Poisons. The title is important. The

peacock is very beautiful, with beautiful blue-greenish coloured feathers. It was said in the

Old Persian and Indian times that you can give poison to a peacock, and the peacock can

transform what is poisonous to other animals and can produce beautiful feathers from it. So

the idea is that we become great peacocks who are not afraid of the mental poisons; we know

how to deal with them and extract the vitality which is in those mental states and leave aside

the poisonous aspects. It is how to deal with desire, anger and jealousy in a way that keeps the

vitality and eliminates the narrowness that goes along with them. The full title says: This

comes from oral instructions that were given in secluded retreat. They are called the

Mountain Dharmas, which is a big collection of 600 pages of Karma Chakme’s teaching.

We start with number one. Karma Chakme Rinpoche lived in the 17th

century and was one of

the very important teachers in the Karma Kagyu lineage. He was a disciple of the 10th

Karmapa. He spent most of his life on retreat and he had the most extraordinary capacity to

make things very simple. So when students came up and questioned him, he would say ‘OK,

wait a moment’. Then, a few days or weeks later, he had written a little text from his retreat

and this was the answer to the question. For us the advantage when we work with such a text

is that we are being given a mirror for our present situation through a teaching that was given

more than 300 years ago. It was not written for the situation nowadays in Greece, there is no

particularity in it. We meet an eternal teaching. We can say ‘Oh wow, it’s about the same

thing which we experience nowadays’ and then we come to the real essence of problems.

The title is a little longer. It continues by saying that it is a background teaching: it explains

the underlying structure of the Buddha’s teaching. You have many Buddhist teachings, but

what is the underlying structure of how to work with the afflictions? This is the teaching on

the five mental poisons, and he says that all the afflictions that we talk about can be

summarised into five families.

If we look into ourselves, we have the afflictions which are around attachment and desire, the

first group. Then the second family: aversion. Then the root of these is ignorance, stupidity,

lack of awareness. And then, if you look more at what is actually happening in our

relationships, you come up with others too: pride and jealousy. Pride and jealousy play

together, and it’s the same with desire and hatred: they are opposites which play together.

So he says that this text will deal with the first step: abandoning the afflictions. The second

step is controlling, subduing them. The third step is transforming them. The fourth step is

seeing their true nature and the fifth is taking them as the path. So now I have explained to

you the complete title. It says in the title that this is a retreat instruction, an oral instruction,

which deals with the five poisons – specifically how to abandon, control, transform, see their

true nature and take them as the path, a text which is called a ‘great peacock which overcomes

the poisons’.

Now let us use a personal application to make it really personal. Don’t let others look at your

paper. Write down the five poisons, and then you have a range from one to ten: have a look in

your life and say how strong were these emotions in your life in general, and then how strong

were they last week? Will you play the game? It’s not necessary to bring it out in the open,

but we need see if we have something to be concerned about.

So let’s go through this together slowly. The first one is attachment or desire. If you can in

general say ‘Well, it could be much stronger, but also much less, put four. But if you can see

that it can’t get much stronger then you put eight. If you don’t even see the emotion you put

one. There is no absolute truth to this, you can’t go wrong. It’s just for your own orientation.

So is desire/attachment/grasping a driving force in my life? Write down whatever answer you

like. Second question: did I feel it last week? Strong or not so strong? I leave you with your

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own definition, we will define it later from a Dharma point of view but it means grasping – ‘I

want this man’, you know? Of course we are not talking about the whole week but one strong

moment or some strong moments.

OK, anger or aversion – is this a strong driving force? Does it appear often in my

relationships, do I get angry easily? Did I become angry last week, strongly, not so strong,

many times or not so often?

Then, dullness of mind. Do I have a strong tendency to avoid situations, to prefer sleeping

instead of looking, to run away, to ignorance? To not want? To fend off? Instead of getting up

in the morning I turn over three or four times and so on. This includes also a tendency to take

alcohol and drugs to dull my mind, not to feel the emotions so strongly and so on, to cop out.

Pride. We have to discuss this so much more, and I'll leave you to your own definitions for the

moment, but it means 'Am I constantly concerned with myself? With my appearance to

others? Whether I am on top?’

And jealousy would be the rivalry to get on top; comparing and so on. Pride is trying to

remain on top, proving how good one is and finding it difficult to receive criticism. Is pride a

driving force in my life? Have I experienced pride in the last week? Have I experienced any

moment without pride?

Q: Can you compare pride with ego?

Yes, you can also write a little bit of your own definition because it’s your own mirror.

Jealousy is when the heart closes and we are not happy when we see others happy, when we

see others being successful. It is this comparing, rivalry, competition, jealousy, envy. It all

goes together; it’s one family of emotions. Is this a strong force in my life? Can I see that

every time my friend praises someone else saying that he did this so well, I have the feeling

‘Oh why didn’t he talk about me?’. Or if people are talking and laughing: ‘Are they laughing

about me?’ Have a little reflection. Is this present in my life? Is it strong or not so strong?

Something which is not mentioned here, or in many Buddhist texts, is fear. I want to talk a

little about fear – it is actually an expression of ignorance and belongs to the third category,

but every emotion has its own fear connected with it. Have another look at your five emotions

from the point of view of fear. Am I afraid that I won’t receive what I want or need? That’s

the first one, desire. Am I afraid that I will meet difficulties or people that I don’t like? Fear

connected with anger or aversion. Fear about what I don’t like. And now the fear connected

with ignorance is actually existential fear, the fear of not existing, the fear of death, deep fears

connected to deep lack of awareness. The fear connected to pride is the fear not to be praised,

not to be on top, the fear not to be so good. With jealousy, the fear is to be left behind, to be

the lowest, never to have enough. It’s terrible to talk about all of this. Thinking about all of

this, it’s a complete description of the struggle of mankind. When we look at this and think

‘What do I have to do?’ maybe we can already see we have a lot to do, in all these areas we

know, we know quite well. Now we will see that what the Buddha calls ‘Awakening’ –

'bodhi' – means to wake up from a sleep, means to be completely free of all of this.

So to give a little relief to our stressed hearts I will tell you about the other states of mind

which appear when these emotions are purified. You can help me; we will make it more an

exchange. When desire is purified what appears? Freedom, love, generosity… When anger is

purified what comes up? Compassion, tolerance, peacefulness. When ignorance, lack of

awareness, is purified? Wisdom, freedom from all fear. When pride is purified? Equality,

equanimity, humility, simplicity (proud people are extremely complicated). When jealousy is

purified? Joy appears and also friendship, support, affirmation. This gives you the spectrum,

the grand tour of the five major afflictions, and look what appears naturally when they are

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purified. – Now we want to how to do that, and I will give you a summary of the five steps of

working with the afflictions.

The author starts with homage to Buddha Shakyamuni: Namo Shakyamuniye, because the

Buddha already taught these steps. The Buddha taught seven steps, seven ways of dealing

with afflictions, and Karma Chakme condensed them into four and he added one, the last one

was added. And it makes the whole thing very well structured. So what do we do when we

have strong anger? Our husband, our child, our wife is making us really angry, we could just

*!!*. The first thing to do is calm down, take three breaths, say nothing now, because the first

thing is to stop, gain some time. When it talks about abandoning, it means abandon the

immediate reaction.

It’s the same for the other emotions. When there is desire, ‘I want…’, you say to yourself:

‘Hands off!’ Someone insults our pride and we want to show how great we are, ‘Calm

down…’ We see people look at us, talking and laughing, we say ‘Calm down, maybe they are

not laughing at me’.

So the whole idea of the first phase is not to hate, not to grasp, not to enter into special

relation, but in order to do that we have to be convinced that to continue in the usual way will

create suffering. We must be convinced that it is better to hold back for now, if this conviction

is not there, we cannot work with suffering.

I was a very angry person and it took me two years of training before I could talk with my

father, keep with my breathing, breathe in and breathe out, instead of yelling back. But I

wanted to learn it. I wanted to be free to talk with my father without reacting every time,

when he was sending his arrows with words, shooting at me. Not every time shooting back; I

really wanted to learn it. And when finally I could do it again and again, without shooting

back, then it was a real touch of freedom for me.

It’s the same with desire. When a man has desire for a woman, he only sees the woman. But

there is a human being there who escapes his notice because he is full of desire. So to be able

to see the full human being is a great freedom, And with pride, when one feels so sure of

oneself outside but inside there is so much fear of not being on top, that when someone comes

to you and says ‘Lhundrup, when you were talking yesterday maybe you didn’t choose the

right word?’ ‘What!!’ So the first step is stop, don’t react immediately, gain some time to look

at it a little bit more soberly. Psychotherapists call this the capacity to hold an emotion.

This allows us to make the next step which is called in Tibetan ‘to tame’. For example, when

we desire something and we want to apply a remedy, we can think about the changing nature

of what we desire, its impermanence, and this will help us to become a little bit more relaxed

about what we desire. Or with anger, when we have a little bit of time to reflect, we can

reflect on compassion, stimulating compassion in our own minds. For example, trying to

understand how the other person feels, why they react like this. Or we can think of how much

they have done for us in the past.

These are remedies because they stimulate opposite states of mind. When we feel compassion

we cannot be angry any more. It works with this principle. Actually what we do is we hold the

emotion and we say ‘OK, this is not helpful’, ‘I can direct my mind to something more

beneficial. Rather than desire I can cultivate love; instead of anger I can cultivate compassion;

instead of pride I can cultivate feelings of equality’. It’s called taming the mind with

remedies. Because we are wild: ‘I want, I don’t want’. We want to stay in our emotion; we

love our emotion. We want to stay in it but being a little wiser, there is something more

beneficial for ourselves and other people just around the corner. But there is a little difficulty

with this approach, because we are still reacting to the emotion. ‘OK this is happening, so I

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will come with something else’, like with a child, to change my mind. I have to direct my

mind to something else which is more beneficial. So in a way I am still a prisoner of the

emotion because I always have to counteract it.

So that leads to the third step, which is transforming the view of the affliction. I will give you

an easy example. If we have difficulties in our work, or in our families, we can say: ‘Great,

these difficulties will help me to learn, to develop patience, to open my mind, to develop more

understanding, a different view’. Instead of thinking that what creates anger in us is a

problem, we see it as a teacher. It is a complete change of vision. Our vision of the situation

changes and that leads to a different experience of the situation. We talked a lot about this

approach last year. It’s the mind training approach. We say: ‘If sickness is good for me in

order to learn more, let sickness come; if difficulties are necessary for me to understand more,

let difficulties come’.

We come here to an area where the Vajrayana methods come in, the special Tibetan Buddhist

methods of, for example, seeing oneself and others as a Buddha, in essence a pure person. For

example you are yelling at me and instead of answering your words I always relate to your

Buddha nature. I continue seeing you as Buddha Chenrezi on your deepest level, and I

continue to relate to the deepest level of what is true about you, and not on a superficial level.

It is a vision of what is really true about the other person and about me. It’s like saying ‘OK,

you are in deep emotion now, but I know your true nature. Your true nature is love, generosity

etc. I have touched it. I have seen this before’ and to always relate to that. This is called the

pure vision, to maintain the pure vision whatever happens.

This was the third point about transforming your vision and then there comes the fourth point:

looking at the true nature of the affliction, the mental state. Now things become really simple,

for those who have deep meditation and a stable mind, you can look directly into the nature of

an emotion. The effect is that, for example, when anger arises, the mind turns inward. We

don’t look at the object of anger any more; we look into the experience itself. It’s like a

bubble which bursts. This is called seeing the nature.

This is not at all easy if you are not trained in meditation, if you are not trained in the capacity

to look at your mind. It can happen; maybe you have had this. You were in some emotional

state and something happened which meant that you didn’t focus on the object of the emotion

any more, what you like and what you don’t like and so on, the criticism. For a moment you

were looking inside and seeing that it has no substance whatsoever, and then it just vanished,

and then you were just laughing and saying ‘How could I get so angry, I can’t believe it!’

Maybe this has happened to you already, but to do it systematically you have to train your

mind to look inside.

Fifthly, taking the affliction as the path. This actually means (we will not much teach much

about this) that because we have lost all fear of the emotions: desire, anger, pride and so on,

they are not a problem any more. We actually stimulate them skilfully, to look again and

again at their nature, to always open more into the nature of mind itself, which we also call

Buddha nature. It’s a skilful way of cleaning up what is still left in our mind, in our karma:

bring it up and look into it.

Actually, then the emotions are seen as friends. They become complete helpers on the Path,

like teachers. Before, I said that sleep was related to ignorance, but at this point you would

sleep as much as you can. You would tire yourself out, and then sleep and maintain your

meditation and look at the true nature of this heavy state of mind. You will discover that it is

clear awareness; it is not what we think. So you find a long section about how to do this

practice. This last step, taking the emotions as the path, is taught on the long-term retreats

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under the title of the Six Yogas or Doctrines of Naropa. – Now we will take a break. This was

the explanation of the title!

Day 1.b

The first section is titled: “Letting Go of the Emotions”

• Can we do without afflictive emotions?

• Afflictive emotions as unskilfully dealing with the creative flow of mind.

• Acting out afflictive emotions.

• Being fully mindful of the emotions but not acting versus suppression

Karma Chakme, the author, starts out saying:

‘Namo Shakyamuni. I prostrate to the Buddha; I prostrate to the perfectly Awakened

one who knows the nature of all things; I prostrate to the one who has explained the

Truth.’

And then he says he has received a request from his disciple, Lama Karma Tsondru Gyamtso,

and this lama has been practicing quite intensively for several years, but he says: ‘Oh dear, I

have been practicing all this time, practicing with the five poisons, but I am not able to

liberate them into emptiness. What can I do to become free of the five poisons? Don’t you

have a profound and simple oral instruction that I can follow?’ The whole text is the answer

to this question, written through the wisdom of Karma Chakme, motivated by compassion for

a student who hadn’t got the point up till then.

At this point we go into Lama Gendun’s commentary, because he gave a little introduction

here, before giving the details of the text.

‘The teaching about abandoning the emotions strikes right at the heart of what’s wrong

with them. If we want to work with the emotions we have to start by knowing why we

have to do something about them. This might seem obvious but in fact it is not so easy.

Some emotions are quite enjoyable; being without them is quite incomprehensible. What

happens to us when we don’t have any?’

Did it ever happen to you that you had this kind of thought: ‘Who am I if I am not getting

angry any more? Who am I without my desire? I would not recognise myself without the

pride and jealousy and so on’? We feel that: ‘I am my emotions, what would happen to me if I

didn’t have these afflictions? What would happen to me if I was not depressed any more? My

feelings of depression have accompanied me for so long; I wouldn’t know who I am. Those

people there are my enemies, what would happen if I don’t have my enemies any more?’

There is quite a question: are we willing, are we motivated enough, to find out what would

happen without these afflictions? Although we suffer from them they are quite comforting. In

a way we know them well and are quite at home, and we don’t want to try out something new.

Who will take care of me if I don’t get what I want with my desire? Who will protect me if I

don’t protect myself with my anger? Who will praise me and respect me if I don’t show how

great I am? Who will take care of my joy if I don’t work out a way to come out on top? What

will happen to me if I open up, if I sleep less, if I become interested, if I know more, if I

become more sensitive? Then I have to deal with them, I have to deal with all the impact of

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that sensitivity, what will happen? It takes some courage and confidence that these emotions

are not our deepest true nature, that there is more to discover.

From my side I have complete confidence that everyone I meet, everyone here in the room, is

a potential Buddha, potentially Awakened – full of love, compassion, generosity, fearlessness

and so on. I have that confidence. This teaching here is an expression of that confidence. The

master is telling everyone: ‘You can do it; you can become awakened; it’s possible and it’s

wonderful!’ The only question is: do you want to take that path? This is your decision every

day, in every situation, it only depends on you. If you are still here tomorrow morning I think

the answer is yes. ‘Yes’ in the sense of ‘OK I will listen, and I will see what is possible in the

next week’. The next paragraph says:

‘The special teaching of the Vajrayana tells us that the emotion itself is not a problem. It

is simply mental activity, energy on the move, which becomes either positive or negative

according to our reaction to it. If this energy of the mind occurs in a state of confusion, a

state of clinging or resistance, we have what we call ordinarily ‘emotions’, (afflictions),

which give rise in their turn to different forms of suffering. If however this same energy

manifests without confusion it completely avoids becoming (an affliction) and operates as

wisdom activity which benefits living beings.’

This is a very important basic idea, the view on which this work is going to be based. The

basic understanding is that our mind is dynamic. Our awareness, the capacity of

consciousness, is flowing from one situation to the next and has an inherent creativity. The

creativity of this mind moves towards happiness. We all want to be happy and experience free

states of mind; this would be the natural tendency of mind. But when there is confusion –

another word for not knowing – then there are fears, holding on to some imagined security,

not being able to let go, so this is a combination of attachment and resistance. We want to be

happy, but because of thinking that we have to defend ourselves, get something for ourselves,

we behave very unskilfully. And what we call afflictions is what we call unskilfully dealing

with the flow of this creative mind.

When I encounter people and hear and feel their anger, pride and jealousy, and so on – and

my own of course, (this is work I have been doing for years) – then I feel my own anger and

the anger of the other person of wanting to be happy, an unskilful expression of the wish to be

happy. When I see the clinging we have in relationships: I cling to my girlfriend or wife, I

cling so much that she almost cannot breathe; this is an unskilful expression of my wish to be

happy with her. In the same way, pride and jealousy are unskilful ways of wanting to just be

there and be respected, be loved, actually be happy.

Due to our attachment, our resistances and aversions, we get blocked. Dharma practice is

about dissolving these blockages, taking away one blockage after the other, so that the

creative energy of mind flows freely, and this free flow we call Awakening. The major

blockage is not knowing reality, what mind really is, what is really the nature of our different

emotional states. So wisdom together with compassion is the most important thing to develop.

Then our blockages dissolve, and what previously manifested as five different afflictive

emotional patterns, then manifest as five different expressions of Buddha activity. We call

this wisdom activity.

For example with anger. The problem with anger is its destructiveness, but there is a clarity

with anger. Anger has a great clarity of seeing, and might see something which needs to be

changed. That clarity of knowing is preserved and skilfully expressed, in a way that is really

adapted to the situation, so that change in that direction is encouraged, but not in unskilful

ways, such as confronting the other person, which the other person then blocks and then we

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are at war. It’s skilfully bringing in that understanding so that things can change in a helpful

way.

The same way with desire: there is the grasping, the wanting, to the point of being completely

afraid of losing the thing. But there is also the appreciation of qualities, because desire is

directed towards something or someone where we see a lot of qualities. And this capacity to

see qualities and to see differences is present also in the Awakened Mind, but it does not

express itself so unskilfully as to jump on the qualities and try and appropriate them. This is

why Lama Gendun says here that afflictions are not really a problem if you can see the

problems inherent in them and not involve yourself in an unskilful way with them.

This also answers the question which you haven’t expressed, but which I know is on many

people’s minds: ‘If I don’t have these afflictions any more will I be like a meditative

vegetable, will I lose my vitality?’ No, this vitality will be freed of the impact of unskilful

clinging and can flow freely for the benefit of all living beings. – And then Lama Gendun

continues:

‘This is particularly important for westerners to understand so as to avoid

misinterpreting the idea of being free of afflictions. It is therefore often advisable to start

with some theoretical knowledge of the Vajrayana approach so that when we talk about

getting rid of the afflictions or abandoning them or transforming them, we know that it

doesn’t mean becoming like a dull unfeeling zombie. It means giving up the confused

reactions we have to the activity of this natural energy of our mind.

Another essential point is to be very clear about what we mean by abandoning an

affliction. It is to recognise that an affliction is something which ends in suffering. Since,

generally speaking, suffering is exactly what we are trying our utmost to avoid, we must

develop a set of attitudes that will enable our mind to be free of affliction as much as

possible. To abandon the afflictions does not mean stopping them from occurring. If we

make our mind very tense, refusing to recognise our afflictions and developing a thin

layer of protection against all afflicted activity in the mind, we will end up with a mind

so tense that it lays itself open to deep psychological disturbances. For this reason we

must be careful not to confuse abandoning afflictions with suppressing them.’

When someone suppresses an emotion this means the person, in this case ourselves, doesn’t

want the emotion and we say ‘No, that’s not me’ and the emotion disappears from out

consciousness. There was a moment of anger, we didn’t want it and we deny it, and we think

we are free of the anger. This is suppressing the emotion. For example in my case, I am a

monk, so suppressing my attraction to women (sexual desire) would mean saying: ‘I don’t

even have any; I am not even aware of it’.

This first step we are talking about means to remain completely present, to remain conscious

and aware of the presence of one or the other of the afflictions, but not to follow the normal

logic, the normal reactive patterns of that emotion, but to find better solutions, more skilful

solutions. In order not to suppress, the first thing we do is to feel completely how the emotion

feels in our body. How does it feel to have the anger, pride or jealousy? Not just in concepts,

or thoughts, but actually to really feel it in the body. It’s very important. It’s the moment we

accept and can say, ‘Yes, there is this emotion’.

For example, I order a software program to download from the internet. I sit there and I try to

get it to download and it just doesn’t work, either I can’t get it to download or when I want to

look at it, it’s just not there. And as I sit, the first thing is to really feel the irritation. How does

it feel? To completely acknowledge it, not to run away, to feel it. And because I have

completely acknowledged the presence of that slightly disturbed mental state I will never

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pretend to myself it wasn’t there. And I will know it so well that when you come with a

similar experience, I will know it from my own experience. To completely feel my own

emotions will help me to help others.

Secondly, I look at my mind and see what kind of thoughts appear in that kind of state. What

are the strong ideas and what would I like to say? At the moment I am holding the emotion so

I don’t express it, but I know exactly what I think, and what I would like to express.

So this is the work of mindfulness: fully conscious of what is happening and for the time

being waiting until we find a skilful way of dealing with it, but not suppressing, not running

away, waiting until a skilful response is possible. Those among you who know about

psychotherapy will see so many similarities. The therapist does the same work: ‘How do you

feel when you have this emotion? What do you think? What comes to your mind?’ The

therapist is not suggesting a solution, they are resting mindfully with the full experience and

then the solution will appear from the inside.

So the first step, not getting involved in reacting to the emotion, means getting fully involved

with knowing the experience. We are conscious of what we experience, and inwardly the

question comes up ‘What is best to do now?’ This is a question we all have. And one thing is

for sure, we don’t want to act in a destructive way. If we follow the normal pattern, our way

of talking and acting and even thinking will actually bring harm to ourselves and others.

Because of love for ourselves and love for other people we do not want to make the situation

worse, we want to make it better. Lama Gendun said to us so many times: ‘It is so easy to

make a situation worse and so difficult to make it better’. So we hold until we know how to

make it a little bit better. And the teaching continues:

‘Understanding the unattractive side of our emotions makes us more ready to give them

up.’

‘Give them up’ means give up the acting out. For example pouring the emotion onto others:

there is anger in me, you get it. There is desire in me, you get it. There is my pride, etc… You

put it onto the others. This is what is meant by ‘giving them up’. We diminish the power of

the emotions by making them into something less important. Are you willing to do this?

Could it be that our emotions are not so important that we have to express them? This is the

crucial point. Is my feeling of self-importance, of wanting or not wanting, so important that I

must get involved and act it out? Could it be that this big thing which I experience, my big

emotion, is maybe just a little wave going through the mind? If I have the patience to hold it,

maybe this wave has gone five minutes later, or one day later. How important is my

affliction?

We will get some help with this point because it’s important. One thing that helps is to reflect

on the consequence of acting out our afflictions. The second point is to contemplate the

enormous benefit of acting differently, and the third one is to see that actually they have no

substance whatsoever and emotion has no true existence whatsoever in the sense of being

lasting. We don’t have to give any importance to it.

An emotional affliction only lasts as long as we give importance to it. Check it out in your

own experience. When we want something, this feeling of wanting only lasts as long as we

give importance to the object we want, and hence to the feeling of wanting. Is this true? When

we are criticised or treated with disdain, this feeling of hurt pride, does it last any longer than

the time we give importance to ourselves and the feeling of hurt pride? And so on, we won’t

do all the afflictions. But I maintain, together with Buddhist masters of old, this point that an

emotion or an affliction only lasts as long as we nourish it through giving importance to it.

15

It works for my own mind and I have to say that I am extremely grateful to our teachers that

they have explained this point to us. It is as if they have given a key to my head saying ‘Here,

it’s up to you how long you suffer or how short. Your happiness is in your hands. It depends

on how much importance you give to those afflictions that make your mind narrow. If you

can learn to give them less importance you will find more openness, more and more freedom.

It’s up to you, do you want to learn?’

If I understand that an emotion does not have a fixed duration, but depends on how I deal with

it, it’s a big discovery, if I can really get the point. I am angry as long as I want to be angry.

It’s not that the anger has an inbuilt duration, it can be a second, or it can completely spoil the

whole vacation. So I will repeat the last sentence:

‘Understanding the unattractive side of our emotions makes us more ready to give them

up. We diminish the power of the emotions by making them into something less

important. In so doing we create a certain distance between ourselves and the emotion

as it occurs. With this approach, instead of just following an emotion when it appears, as

we usually do, we stop and think. 'Look at this emotion. If I continue with it, suffering

will be the only consequence, so I will not let it go unchallenged.' This distancing oneself

from the emotion is the space which enables us to work with it.’

Here the term distance is something very positive. ‘Positive’ in the sense that before there was

identification, I am my emotions, I am angry, I am this, he has insulted ME, identification,

pride. Before there was this identification, now I say there is anger but this is not ‘Me’, I can

take a different direction. For example, when there is a strong fear, normally I am afraid and

there is the feeling all of me is afraid, but when we stop and look and we can sit or stand or

travel with fear there is another capacity which is not lost, which can look at what is

happening. There are more complicated fears and more simple fears. The fear of losing my

partner is a more complicated fear, but the fear of losing a job is a simpler one. I will take the

example of fear of darkness at night, to be without light, it’s an easy example.

I have to go down in the cellar, to the basement to fetch something; I switch on the light, and

go down the staircase and the light goes off. It’s the worst place in the house for the light to

go off, there are mice and rats running around. OK, I stand there at the bottom of the staircase.

I see the fear but there is also this other part of me that can think ‘What to do now?’ This is

the capacity of wisdom, and some inner voices which tell me: ‘Relax, you will not be attacked

immediately, you can give up looking for what you came to get. You can go back up

immediately or you can slowly find your way to the place to find the thing you wanted.’

There are so many other capacities available, fear is not the only thing. This example can be

used for the other emotions. There is emotion – this affliction, this narrow state of mind – but

that is not all, there is still wisdom, there is still mindfulness, maybe the possibility of

contacting compassion, generosity and so forth.

[Q: Something about whether this is a logical approach.]

It is a logical way of behaving. The illogical way of behaviour the Buddha calls confusion.

The alternative way of behaviour the Buddha calls wisdom: to be in contact with the way

things are, to know how things are.

For the moment we are not yet very skilful in dealing with these states, we can be happy if we

can create the space.

Now this following section will stimulate us a little bit more to be more motivated not to

follow the affliction but to create that space

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‘The first section on abandoning the five poisons or emotions centres on the outline of

the four noble truths given by the Buddha in his first teaching. In it he gave a definition

of suffering and pointed to its cause. He went on to explain that to stop suffering all we

need to do is to stop what is causing it, and the way to do this is to behave in a virtuous

way. 'Take yourself as an example!', he enjoined, i.e. treat others as you would like to be

treated yourself. We are quite aware that we do not like to be hurt. So we can easily

understand that others feel the same way and stop harming them.’

So this is a very easy first introduction, but the good old advice that you can find on all five

continents and in all religions in all ethics: treat others as you would like to be treated

yourselves. It can be our guideline for all interactions in life. If we can follow that, it already

changes so much.

Q: What happens if others don’t respect that?

A: I will answer you. I don’t even have to pretend that I am a difficult person in order to

answer. I am a difficult person: I am unfair, I demand too much, I am angry and so on. I wish

others would find skilful ways of showing me how to act better. Part of those skilful ways

might be to give me a definite limit, up to here and no further. I need the boundaries in order

to help me see what I am doing. At other times you may be able to say ‘Come on Lhundrup,

you don’t really mean it like this’, and you may be more skilful and able to express better

what I feel with the emotion. So we need to be able to behave with people not in a way that

they are always right and we allow them to do everything they want, but we behave in such a

way that the whole situation becomes better.

Sometimes it may be necessary to set limits. Sometimes, maybe for children or some kinds of

adults, some kind of punishment is needed. Or telling them ‘Not like this, let’s finish this

game…’ So we need all these options and it is your wisdom and compassion that decides

what to do. There are no kinds of rules of always being soft or always strict, nothing like that.

So this is a very important point; we become ever subtler in knowing how to treat other

people and ourselves in the most skilful way. The understanding gets more and more refined.

If I behave like this then it will be likely to be understood; if I behave like this then probably

that will block things. But one thing is for sure, we cannot be helpful in every situation. There

are people in certain situations who we cannot handle. We also have to accept that. Then we

try and get some distance and wait for later. We cannot do anything right now.

Day 2.a

• Remembering what is important and practicing it.

• The law of Karma – cause and effect.

• 6 realms of existence.

• Mental states depend on actions of body speech and mind.

This morning we did a meditation where we tried to connect to the most important qualities,

that are most important today and in this life. I encouraged you to remember the quality when

you drank coffee afterwards. Did you manage? You see this is the difficulty of practice. The

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reason why we are not already Awakened is because we don’t remember what we already

know and what we want to put into practice. We get lost in ‘Honey, bread, coffee’.

In the Tibetan tradition when you take refuge you receive a name, and this is your refuge

name. It is a name that contains Awakened qualities so that we can remember them. The

names are given in Tibetan, but if we translate them then he is called Mr. Great Intelligence of

the Dharma. Then Lena will be called Mrs. Love and we also had at our table, Mrs. Patience,

and then I am Mr. Spontaneously Accomplished. These are refuge names, some of you also

have refuge names, they are one of these methods to remember these qualities again and

again, every time someone calls me ‘Lhundrup’, OK, here’s Sponty, and I answer ‘yes!’

The idea is, how can we remember again and again? The remembering of what we have

already understood is the crucial point of practice and the capacity of remembering is called

sati in Pali, ‘mindfulness’ in English and drenpa in Tibetan. It is the central quality that

makes the path quick. It is the capacity to remember what is beneficial to us.

Actually, I could finish my teaching now and if you were able to put everything you have

heard and understood into practice, I could go. You have understood so much, you don’t

really need a teacher. Actually the teacher is there to help us remember what we already

know. Sometimes the term mindfulness is translated as memory. This week we will have to

find ways to get the things which you understand not to slip from your mind. We have to find

ways of remembering them again and again. This is called daily practice, daily practice is

remembering what I have understood, so that it is alive in my mind and then automatically it

will be put into practice. Of course some part of the teachings is new, there are new ways of

looking at things and we understand new things. This understanding feels very natural and it

feels like this is a good way of looking at things. It makes sense. It would be nice if we could

remember what makes sense from one day to the next.

So at the beginning of every teaching in our tradition, we remember why we are here. Let us

take a little moment. Take your paper and write down one or two sentences about why you are

here. What is the direction that I am taking that has led me here? What is my motivation for

being here? It’s not something complicated. And then to remember means to remember all

through the teaching, to remember ‘oh I am here for this’. Some people this morning said I

am here to learn how to love, or how to be more patient, or how to be fully present, or how to

help others, or how to help myself. So this is the basic axis of what gives direction to our lives

now, and to remember this again and again will shape our day, it will have a very important

influence on our day.

When you ask questions about the teaching you can relate this to your wish, how does this

help me to develop that? How does it relate to my purpose in life? For example I come here

with the motivation to share this gift, this present that I received from my teachers. When I

received so much from them I said, ‘How can I say thank you to you?’ and they said ‘Just

continue passing on the present to others.’ And this is the same for you, whatever

understanding you gain, share it with others, this is the best way to show your gratitude.

To continue with the text, in the explanation of the 4 Noble Truths there is a long passage

about karma.

‘The Buddha taught us that everything in the universe, whatever it may be is the natural

result of one or several causes.’

This means that nothing happens without a cause. An apple falls from a tree, there is the

increasing weight of the apple, it’s ripening and the force of gravity, and the effect is that the

apple falls from the tree. Is there anything in this world that happens without causes and

conditions producing it? When I turn my head to the right, when I turn my head to the left,

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there is something in my mind causing that movement; there are outer forces of the universe:

physical and chemical forces; there are social and political causes in communities; there are

emotional forces; and causes of wisdom. All of these are causes and conditions which work

together to produce a multitude of effects. It is very important to have a good look at this.

We can read over this first sentence very easily, but it actually means nothing happens by

chance. Have a look; investigate into this, what is chance? It is just a combination of causes

and conditions which we don’t understand. When the balls in a lottery draw fall in a certain

way our perception is not fine enough to see the gravity and speed combining so that we see

the balls falling in this way. It looks like pure chance, but actually our perception is not fine

enough to see the balls falling in this way. Usually what we call chance is just that there are

very small causes making very small variations so that we don’t bother very much, we say:

‘Oh the tree is growing over there by chance.’ Actually it’s because a bird shat on that place

where the tree is growing now, so it looks like chance but actually it’s causes and conditions.

If we investigate into this, it would mean if we knew how to influence the causes and

conditions we would be more masters of our life. When we know the causes and conditions

for a tree to grow we can plant a tree and help it to grow. The mind is the same, when we

know what produces and maintains an afflictive emotion; we know how to do it and we also

know how not to do it.

This is why this teaching comes first. It will teach us a little bit more about cause and effect

relationships in what we call the afflictions, the kleshas. Where ever there is the word karma

in the text I will say cause and effect, just like in the Tibetan. Because karma becomes like an

empty word, but in Tibetan it is las gyu dras – which means the cause and fruit of actions.

‘Because of this natural law, the law of cause and effect, we learn that we ourselves and

the world in which we live are simply the result of our previous acts.’

So we depend on causes of the way we thought in the past and what are the effects of this

previous thinking now.

‘The kind of world the mind projects, just like a dream will depend on cause and effect,

for instance certain beings experience a state of existence where they suffer constantly,

there is not even one tiny moment of happiness.’

Before we go into this explanation of the different realms of existence, let’s look at our own

way of perceiving the world. If you make the centre open to the public, to different people,

and they open the doors of the room and they see these boxes, the small rooms, some people

would say, ‘I would never want to stay here, it’s like a prison’; others would say, ‘Wow what

a wonderful palace of liberation, can I fit in the box, I feel so good’. I am talking from

experience. This is exactly what happens when we have open days at the retreat centre. The

same day, the same hour, even two people entering together perceive completely differently.

The outer situation is perceived through the filter of our personal interpretations, our

emotional projections. Some people here in the room already feel its a little disagreeable, a

little difficult to stay, other people are so happy. We are sharing the same room, but we are

not sharing the same experience. Now when you look at why we don’t share the same

experience you come to causes and conditions in the past. It is due to how we used our minds

in the past. So this chain of how far it goes back, doesn’t need to stop with this life. This life

is the only thing that we can perceive, but already in embryos of twins even though they have

the same mother, you can see the differences, and you don’t know where the differences come

from, but probably from previous lives.

Now we are adults (most of us, except for the children), our habit patterns have solidified to a

certain extent and we live a certain kind of experience repeatedly, quite often. Most of us

19

would probably say, ‘My life is like a mixture of honey and salt, happiness and suffering’.

But some might say, ‘My life resembles hell’; others might say, ‘I have such good conditions,

but I feel I never have enough, there is a constant looking for satisfaction’. Others might say,

‘I am so happy, most of the time I feel like I am in paradise’. Others might say, ‘I could feel

like I am in paradise but I am not really happy, I still have this feeling inside that I still want

to have more’. And some people would say, ‘Depending on the situation, sometimes I am

happy sometimes I am sad, sometimes I am on top of the world and sometimes I am

completely crushed’. All of this is due to how we use our mind; it is due to reactions. When

challenges arise, how do we deal with them? We can deal with them as something very

interesting or nourishing or we can experience them as a dreadful challenge. Depending on

how we deal with them, we experience things very differently. So in the text Gendun

Rinpoche was beginning to talk about some people who don’t even find one moment of

happiness.

‘We find them in the hell realms and the realms of the hungry ghosts or in the realms of

the animals. This is due to the fact that for a long time they never performed any

wholesome actions. Their world or their existence is the result of a lengthy period of

unwholesome or harmful activity, which has produced a world experience which is

characterised by suffering.’

This is actually quite easy to understand, we can use the example of the dream at night:

sometimes we have nightmares, sometimes we have very agreeable dreams. And sometimes

we have very mixed dreams where we have very varied feelings. Now if for the moment you

accept that we think that the consciousness continues after death, it is only the body that dies;

the mind and the body separate and the body goes its own way of decay. The mind for a

moment becomes unconscious, like falling into deep sleep and then the dream of after death,

which we call ‘bardo’ appears, the intermediate state. That state after death, where there is no

body, is only a mental experience, there is no body we only have an imagined one. And

everything depends on how we deal with that experience now. If we get focused, fixed,

identified with for example a state of paranoia, fear, of wanting to defend ourselves, this could

lead to a state of more fear or aggression and we call this the hell realms.

It is like psychosis in human life. When we enter into psychosis, we enter into a vicious circle

of function from which it is very difficult to get out. In the same way you can understand

what it means to enter into the cycle of paranoia and aggression that is called the hell realms.

But it can also be that our mind enters into a very positive state, very blissful, very positive,

very virtuous, full of love and compassion; a very open mind. The more we think and feel in a

positive way then the more we interpret situations in this way. When a certain degree of

stability is happening, (in the bardo it is still quite fluctuating), but when there is a strong

degree of stability occurring in any of these ways of functioning, this is what we call the

rebirth in another existence. What kind of ‘dream’ we stabilise in depends on the dominant

tendencies in mind. Only the human world and the animal world take on a physical body, all

the other realms don’t take on a physical body.

In the Indian tradition they talked about 6 realms of existence. Starting from the bottom, there

are hellish experiences, experiences of extreme want and poverty, experiences in the animal

realm, the human realm, the jealous god realm and the god realm. Now here Karma Chakme

is writing this teaching for his student who knows all this, so he goes very quickly in the

explanation. Lama Gendun takes a little bit more time to explain this, because 20 years ago he

had an audience in front of him who did not know so much, but they had received some

teaching. I have to take much more time to explain, because some of you hear all of this for

the first time.

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When it says that all of these experiences are due to action, we have to define the term

‘action’. Action means karma, action of body speech and mind, so it means physical action, it

also means what we say and what we think, and the most important action is what we think.

So when it says action it means mental action, verbal action and physical action. This is a

very important point to understand. If you want to note down one very simple sentence you

could say: ‘What we think, what I am now, how I experience the world now, my experiences,

are the consequences of how I thought in the past. How I will be in the future will depend on

how I use my mind now.’ This is the teaching of cause and effect in a very condensed way,

but absolutely true. I will continue reading a little bit more and then explain more.

‘We find in the Buddha's teaching: 'Where does the blazing molten metal floor of hell

come from. What produces the flames in hell? It is purely and simply the self-centred

mind.' Self-centredness is the attitude of mind that gives rise to negative actions. The

world which we inhabit is simply the illusory manifestation of our mind. It is our mind

which creates the world in which we find ourselves and if our mind is full of negative

karma, the results of our previous negative actions, then the world projected from that

mind will be unpleasant and full of suffering.’

So this is a different idea from what you might have heard in other religions or spiritual

traditions. It actually means that the hell realms have no concrete true existence. They depend

on maintaining a certain way of functioning with the mind. They are not a punishment of

someone or the reward of someone given to us. There is no surprise, just as there is no

surprise about how we dream at night. If you know the inner mechanisms then you know why

such and such dream occurs, it is the expression of our underlying tendencies. So if we

understand fully what is meant then it gives full responsibility for our experience to ourselves.

The teaching on cause and effect means that every moment we are constructing the future, we

are constructing it in the present. This is why this morning we did this meditation where we

directed our mind to one Awakened quality and tried to keep our minds on this quality, this

way we were giving our minds a very wholesome impulse.

The quotation given here from the Buddha talks about self-centredness or ego clinging, this is

the root of all difficult states of mind. When we talk about self-centredness, it means ‘I’, ‘me’;

the most important one in the world. On a more subtle level it means ‘I the centre of the

world’, based on the reactions of desire; ‘wanting for me’ and aversion; ‘not wanting for me’,

‘Me on top’; pride. ‘Me trying to get on top’; jealousy. And ‘me not wanting to know’;

ignorance. They come from this ignorance. What we call a hell realm is based on paranoia

and aggression. If there is one single instance of compassion, of not being self-centred, the

hell realm is finished with. It is impossible to continue, there is no solidity in that projection,

it depends on the motor being there. The motor is fear and aggression, trying to defend

ourselves. So if in these last years of our lives, these 30, 40 or 50 years that we have left, if we

have been living with a strong feeling of self-centredness, then of course we will experience

everything that happens from the point of view of ‘me’, ‘I’. But although we can say this for

pretty much all of us, that we have been functioning like this, nevertheless everyone’s

experience is quite individual, it’s not exactly the same experience as all the others. This leads

to endless numbers of different numbers of worlds of existence. I have my world of existence;

you have your world of existence. Everyone lives in their own little or big world. So actually

we cannot say that there are 6 realms, we must say that there as many worlds of existence as

there are different sentient beings. But to structure things and in order to describe things, the

next paragraph will talk about 18 different sorts of hells, because there are similar projections

of paranoia, rejection, depression and so on.

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‘There is not just one single hell but eighteen of them, each one with its own particular

kind of suffering. Why is this? It is because the living beings who are born in such states

have each accumulated in the past different kinds of evil actions in different degrees,

and this is why there is not just one single state of hellish suffering but eighteen of them.

The same applies to the realm of the hungry ghosts. There are said to be four specific

categories of hungry ghost, each with its own special form of suffering, all of them

related to hunger and thirst. We can see for ourselves the great variety of those

belonging to the animal realm. We know that some live in the sea, some on land, some

spend their lives in the air. Some of them suffer the particular ills of being owned and

exploited by human beings, others are free, but live in fear of being preyed upon.’

So a lot of combinations of different worlds of experience.

If we turn our mind from the lower realms of existence to the upper realms, we see the

same thing. In our own realm, the human realm, we can see that some people are happy

while the lives of others contain a far greater degree of suffering. This is because in the

past those destined to take birth as human beings have performed a mixture of positive

and negative actions, which will ripen sporadically during the human lifetime as

happiness or suffering, which is why this world is neither one of total happiness nor one

of total suffering.’

When we meet each other, like now we spend a weekend or a week together, we meet, we

listen to each other: ‘Where do you come from? What are you doing? What is your

experience?’ We begin to learn about each others’ different world of experience. There is

some happiness there and some tension, some stress, we all have this strange mixture. When

we look into the world of someone else, we see that this experience depends of how the

person perceives their experiences, how they react to their own experiences, how they

interpret them and then how they deal with them. So we see it all depends on the way of

thinking, the way of using one’s mind, one’s consciousness, one’s awareness. And when I

listen to you and I hear that you are experiencing certain forms of stress and tension, then I

know I cannot change the outer world, but perhaps the Dharma can help you to change your

way of dealing with it.

If we put this together again in one simple sentence, we could say ‘If I suffer or experience

tension, it is because of an unskilful way of using my mind.’ Would you be willing to accept

that? The implications are enormous. The government, the corruption, the military, the

communists, the Church, we cannot blame others for our unhappiness any more! It does not

mean that we don’t see that they are doing things wrong, but just because they do things

wrong we don’t have to be unhappy. If we always react, we grasp, we identify,

attachment/aversion patterns, then of course what others do completely affects us and we

become like a ball in the hands of others.

[Tape 2a2] If they act like this then we have to move like that, and if they act like that then we

have to move like that. We are completely glued onto the actions of others. So this teaching is

actually about a basic autonomy, a basic independence. We need to win that back, so that we

are not a ball in the hands of others, so that we are not, through reactive patterns, completely

glued to the actions of others. ‘My boyfriend is unhappy, do I have to be?’ That can be

actually be a situation of compassion. I lose my job, I am out of a job; it can actually be a

situation of developing more creativity.

‘The food is not OK’; it can be a situation of developing more patience. It depends on what

you want. Do you want to get angry, do you want to blame others and then be paralysed in

your own life because ‘since the fault lies with others I can’t do anything’, or do you want to

take back the reins?

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The work of taking the action back as our own responsibility is the work with the five great

mental poisons which we were talking about yesterday, the work with the emotions will

actually directly work on karma. When I have the emotion for example of anger, I develop a

tendency of seeing the world through the glasses of anger. The more I get angry, the more

easily I will get angry, to the point where there is almost no way back. It’s so difficult, it’s

such a deep tendency in my being.

The whole world tries to make us function with the pattern of desire, and as long as we are in

the pattern of desire we will be good customers, consumer society will work. Because we are

in desire, we can’t get out, we just have to get many possessions, you need this, you will be

happier with that, and one day we will buy it. When we tell a child you have to be the best at

school and you have to be the best at college and the best in training, then rivalry and pride

will combine, so that when there is defeat, when there is not success, they become depressed,

because the whole functioning is built on this. Young people, very intelligent people, commit

suicide. So do you see the link? Working with our emotions we are not so much working with

our emotional patterns but directly with our karma. Do you understand that we have produced

different causes which will produce different effects in the future?

Karma is the way we think and act, and emotionally afflicted thinking is one way of thinking

and dealing with the situation. Wise compassionate views and actions are a different way of

thinking and acting.

‘It is said that the beings in the lower realms are as numerous as the grains of soil to be

found on a large piece of land. In comparison with which those who take rebirth as

humans or gods are as numerous as the grains of soil covering a surface the size of one's

fingernail, the reason for this is that so few beings in the universe practise positive

actions, hence the disparity in the populations of the different realms.’

Well, this means that there are very few who are happy, because there are very few who have

learned to deal with their minds in a helpful way.

‘You may be of the opinion that it is better not to think about suffering, because in doing

so we only make ourselves depressed. But such an attitude is completely false. We are

simply fooling ourselves. If we avoid thinking about suffering we can never be really

happy, since we are keeping alive the mental confusion that is at the root of our present

misery. Once we appreciate the amount of suffering in the universe, we feel stimulated

to do something about putting an end to it. It would be true to say that our greatest allies

in our efforts to reach Buddhahood are those who are at this moment enduring the

torments of the hells, because it is through reflecting on what suffering they are going

through that we are motivated to reach Buddhahood as soon as possible. Their pain is

our spiritual stimulation and as such is very valuable to us.’

The meaning here is that if we think for example about how many people are stressed, of

course it can make us depressed, but it can also stimulate us. ‘I really have to do something

about this because so many people need answers for these problems.’ It also reveals to you

the secret of our spiritual path: we do not go towards a happiness which is just our happiness

where we do not perceive the difficulties of others any more. We constantly keep connected

to the difficulties of this universe so that our happiness is not an ignorant happiness, lack of

compassion.

Q: What we think is more important than how we act?

A: We cannot act without thinking. There is always a thought which precedes an action.

When you have an idea of doing something good but don’t carry it out, it’s because you have

the intention but don’t have the continuing thought needed to act it out. The problem is not the

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body, the mind is not trained enough to continue with the way of behaving that you were first

trying.

Day 2.b

• Taking refuge

• Taking responsibility for our own actions, looking at our body speech and mind.

• Difficult situations as manifestations of unresolved issues. Not tests set by someone

else.

• Every act has an effect – of a similar nature.

• Regret and purification of karma

What we call refuge in the Buddhist teachings is when it becomes clear in our minds what

direction we want to take in our spiritual life. The moment when we decide to formally take

refuge is the moment we say ‘Yes, I want to go towards Awakening, towards Buddhahood,

complete Awakening. I understand that Awakening is something to be found in my own

mind, not elsewhere. I understand that I have to do the work, practicing the Dharma, the

teaching about the truth, in order to find that Awakening in my own mind, and I also

understand that in order to find that truth I need help from spiritual friends that help me to

find the way to Awakening, called Sangha.’

The tradition of taking refuge started with the Buddha Shakyamuni, 2500 years ago. It was

something very simple, people came to the Buddha and said ‘I want to follow your path and

become Awakened’ and the Buddha said ‘Yes, come that’s fine.’ {tape 2b2}. And when he

was asked for more information he replied that it was not necessary, the true refuge is your

own mind, and this is called bodhi, the mind of Awakening. This is what you have to realise,

in order to do that you have to do away with all of the doctrines, all the dogmas, all the things

that people want to make you believe. You have to really test out what is reality, what is true,

what you can really base your life on.

You have to understand life; you have to come to a personal understanding. This is called

Dharma. When you see what life is like, when you find out about the truth of life, then you

are liberated from all the wrong views, but this is a personal process, you have to do it

yourself. He made a differentiation; he said that insofar as the Dharma is only words, words

cannot be a refuge. Words are like a raft, you need the raft to cross the stream but when you

reach liberation then you have to leave the boat behind, you won’t carry the raft with you.

When you have understood what the words were saying then the Dharma will speak from

within, express itself from within. This is called the Dharma of realisation; the other is called

the Dharma of transmission, the Dharma of texts.

For the Sangha he says the same thing: first you let yourself be helped by the community of

friends who know the task, but please later on when you understand the Dharma you yourself

will also become Sangha to the others, you have the quality to become Sangha as well.

So you see, we are talking about three universal things, the goal, the path and the helpers,

these are called the Three Jewels. For all three there is an outer aspect and an inner aspect.

The Buddha is the outer aspect of the Awakened masters, and it is the Awakening which we

can only experience inside. The Dharma is outwardly the teaching, but inwardly it is the

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meaning of the teaching which is being explained. And the Sangha is outwardly the teachers

and spiritual helpers, and inwardly it is compassion, our own capacity to help others. When

you observe how a Dharma practitioner develops, you can see that in the beginning our

orientation is quite external and then we get more and more understanding that when we

prostrate, we prostrate to the nature of mind of all sentient beings, nothing outside. It is the

Buddha Nature of all sentient beings that we respect, venerate and practise.

So just like Gendun Rinpoche, who was my root lama, and now it’s the Karmapa, I insist that

to take refuge is something universal. In Buddha Shakyamuni’s time it was not called

Buddhism, also in Tibet it was not called Buddhism it was called the ‘inner path’, the path

where you realise your own potential. Buddhism came afterwards. Over the centuries a

religion developed around this refuge, but that’s not the original meaning of the refuge, the

original meaning was to direct one’s life to that which is most important, that was the original

refuge. So it’s up to you if you want to do it in a formal way then I am willing to offer that to

you. The ceremony, in the break after the teaching everyone who is interested can come and

listen and get a personal idea of how it is.

In the beginning of every teaching and every practice we remember our refuge. Now for this

teaching I would like to sing the refuge together, what we say is ‘I take refuge in the Buddha,

Dharma and Sangha, may I, through the practice of transcendent virtue, reach Buddhahood

for the sake of all sentient beings.’ This is the translation of the verse which we sing. Of

course there is absolutely no need to do this in Tibetan, but my Greek is very limited. When I

prostrate I often do the German version, but it wouldn’t make much sense here. I continue

reading in the text:

‘We learn also from the Buddha that if we want to know our past we only have to look

at who we are now and to see what will become of us in the future we need simply to

look at our present actions. This means that if we really want to know what kind of

person we were in our previous lives we should look at our present lifetime, how much

suffering we have, how much happiness we experience, then we will clearly be able to

deduce the kind of actions we did before this life began. And if we want to see what will

happen to us after death. Once we know that whatever we do in this life is going to

determine our future state of existence, a glimpse of the way we have been behaving in

this lifetime will tell us what we will become.’

The principle is quite easy to understand: we have a whole mass of thoughts and actions of

speech and physical actions which we have done in the past, and which have impregnated our

minds. How we experience things now is a result of this input from the past, our way of

experiencing is coloured by what we were thinking, speaking about, and how we were acting

in the past. So when I look at myself and can say, ‘Yes I have got a tendency towards desire

and yes, I do indeed get angry, yes there is a good dose of pride and I also know jealousy and

there is a good dose of ignorance. And then on the other side there are also moments of

natural generosity, yes, there are indeed moments of love and compassion and there are also

moments when I am very happy to share with others and I rejoice in the happiness of others.’

So I look at how I feel right now, all this mixture of emotional states and it gives me a mirror

of how I was in the past. Whether whatever I touch always turns into a problem or whether

things go very easy in life, this also gives me feedback on how I dealt with things in the past.

Please when you look at your life, do not only look at the negative sides of your life, also look

at the positive sides. Don’t be too critical with yourself; don’t be lopsided, have a good look

at everything. Also don’t overlook sides which you don’t want to know. I tell you from my

personal experience. I was a convinced pacifist, although I had a tendency to anger, really

harming someone I would never do consciously, it did not occur in my mind. Then one night

25

on retreat, I dreamt that I was living in a village, the village was attacked by people, I got

completely identified and took a machine gun and bang bang bang bang, I killed everybody. I

woke up from the dream which didn’t last very long, but from that moment on I knew I also

have tendencies to kill. It is possible, it’s not something so far away, let us not overlook that. I

had never seen it before, I was in such a paranoia, such an anger, that in my mind such a

situation developed. So let us not overlook what we live in our dreams, it also gives us a

mirror of our past habits. When we work in the 3-year retreats with people they relax and you

think they go towards very beautiful meditative experience, but actually there are many

discoveries. You learn how much fear you have in your mind, how much aggression, how

strong your desire is, how there is almost no situation without pride. As soon as someone else

does well there is jealousy, and we can see all of this.

When we look at all this we have an idea of who we were in the past, this mixture. And now

this stream of black and white tendencies continues in the future. If from now on in this life

we only add white, wholesome actions: this means actions, words, and thoughts based on

compassion and wisdom, then the stream of our consciousness will become more and more

pure, and then actually dreams for example will not appear any more the old way and our way

of perceiving situations becomes very much more positive. You experience a ‘normal’ way of

functioning that becomes the expression of that positive force or karma. Then also, even if our

life started quite well, because of difficult things happening we may become very bitter, very

angry and then the tendency is towards more and more selfishness and then towards then end

of our life our stream of consciousness has really changed for the worst. So if you want to

know who you will become in the future look at how you think, speak and act right now and

in the months to come.

Sometimes in our mind stream there is still something unresolved. For example for the

Buddha with his cousin Devadatta, there was still something unresolved around jealousy, so

the Buddha needed to go through this experience of meeting strong jealousy from someone

else until his heart became so completely free of any anger and feeling of revenge. As long as

he hadn’t resolved this he would attract this kind of situation into his life. So it is not that the

mind selects situations, but because the mind is not in complete harmony it will automatically

attract that sort of situation. For example in my mind, I still have a tendency to pride, then I

will automatically attract the jealousy of others, it will happen automatically, I don’t have to

look, there is no decision, we just work like that. If I in my mind am still not trusting deeply

in life and in the basic nature of others, then as long as that is the case all kinds of situations

of doubt and mistrust will appear.

In the life of Milarepa for example, his life started very well and then his father died, and then

his attachment to his family and his mother meant that his mother, because of his attachment,

could work him up into such hatred that he killed 20 people with black magic. Later on, when

he regretted it and was so ashamed, he had to work so strongly on purifying his attachment to

his family, he actually meditated on the bones of his own mother. When his sister came and

tried to convince him to come back into the world, he sent her away. He worked so hard on all

this attachment because this was the entrance point for all the difficulties.

When we talk with people from different religions or spiritual movements they say these

situations were sent to you or your mind chose those situations to learn something. Actually

they were not sent and there was no choice, it’s just that because there was not harmonious

flow in this area the problem automatically happened. The problem with saying it was sent is

that then we think that there is someone else involved. But there is no one who takes care of

sending us the right problems! But it is true that our mind, because of its special combination

of attachment and aversion will chose a situation which is the mirror of attachment and

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aversion. There is something happening there. It’s like choosing a girlfriend; we will choose

exactly the girlfriend who is the mirror of our needs and our fears. You can see people

choosing one such person and the relationship finishes and then they choose a similar person,

the same problems arise, and this continues until the issues are resolved and then they don’t

need to choose such a person.

[A question about how to choose the right conditions for rebirth.]

A: We are so much under the pressure of our emotional patterns; there is no choice for where

we will be reborn.

If I encounter difficulties on the course here, these difficulties are automatically produced by

my way of being, I accept that. There might be other difficulties, but because I have resolved

those issues they won’t really touch me, they may be problems for you, but what I experience

as difficulties is only when in my mind something is not resolved. Emotional states of mind

do not produce clear choice, we think we choose our path, but usually we don’t choose.

‘This is because the law of karma is something quite impartial. Any given action will

produce the same result for everyone, whoever does it. Nor are the actions we perform

ever lost or forgotten. Each act produces the corresponding result sooner or later.’

I will take some time to explain this to you because it’s important. The first thing is

everything has an effect; every act of thought, speech or body has an effect. When you are in

meditation, you can see that just one single thought changes the energy in the body. One word

or one sound, ‘boom’, something was said, something was pronounced, and an effect was

produced in my mind, in your mind, and what actually happens is that the effect that is

produced is not later, it is now. The very moment the word is said that moment the effect is

produced. There cannot be an effect in the future if there is not an effect right now. From the

effect which is produced right now, a chain reaction is produced, which can come up later on

as a more visible result. For example, during the teaching today you might have some

understanding, which leaves a trace of understanding or wisdom in your being, but then

afterwards you are distracted and you forget. But underneath the understanding is there, and

when later on there is a trigger for that understanding it will come up again.

In the same way for example someone says something to you which hurts your feelings. So

initially there is a hurt and then you brush it away and say ‘OK its not so important’. But

underneath it’s not gone, and then later on when that same person comes along you are

lacking confidence in them, some uneasiness is there in meeting that person.

So everything produces effects, but many of our daily actions, like for example if I drink a

Greek coffee, they are not so important, there will be no strong traces, but the strong

moments, the strong positive moments and the strong difficult or negative moments will be

traces that will ripen. For example, it’s not so important what I drink, but the gratitude that I

felt about someone standing me a coffee, this is important, this will leave a stronger

impression than the experience of drinking and will have more of an effect on the mind

stream. So nothing of this gets lost as the sentence says, and the effect that is produced is only

in my mind stream, it will not produce an effect in someone else’s mind stream. That’s not

possible, because she has not done the action.

To explain: One kind of experience will always produce a similar kind of experience in the

future. For example I say something kind to you, full of love, and you say something kind to

me, then the quality of the experience energetically speaking is something full of openness. It

is something to do with warmth and flow and openheartedness. The immediate effect of that

experience is openness, to remember that experience will also be an experience of openness, it

cannot turn into something which is closed. The quality of that experience will definitely be

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of that quality of love, openness and so on, it cannot change. It is not a bitter experience and

will not become a bitter experience. However, if something difficult happens between us and I

become angry and I really want to hurt you and yell at you and I even do it, the impact on my

mind is one of an angry, narrow state of mind. The immediate effect is of a very dense energy

in my mind. It is not possible that this egocentric energy will leave a trace of openness. It will

continue until it is resolved. It will come up and ripen again and I will first have to learn to

relax and deal with that. The karmic fruit will manifest as a difficult memory or another

difficult situation where the same energy manifests and I will have to learn my lesson, it will

not be an easy one. This is the teaching that the quality of the thoughts, words or physical acts

will leave an imprint in our consciousness which has the same kind of quality. It will not

change, a bitter experience will have a bitter result. This is what is meant by the last sentence,

‘each act produces a corresponding result sooner or later’.

Q: What part does regret play in this?

A: This opens up the question how can a karma be purified? When you have regret for

something not so good that you did: ‘I have been angry at someone and I regret it’, what

happens? The anger produces an effect, I feel the effect and while feeling ‘Oh that was not so

great what I did’ I regret and begin to change my outlook – ‘Oh I was quite ego-centred there,

I did not give the other person a chance.’ And while feeling the after-effect of the previous

action a change of attitude occurs, and it changes that which is left over from the previous

action. It has the effect of diminishing or even annihilating the previous action. Or even, if on

the basis of the difficulty which I was feeling I develop a lot of compassion and love; it can

even become the basis for developing something really positive.

To carry on, if we want to continue on our path to Awakening we need to clear up all these

karmic traces. What we do is we need to give space. We can sit under our olive tree, or palm

tree on the beach, wherever you want to be, as soon as there is space all the unresolved energy

comes up and our peaceful meditation vacation becomes quite disturbed by all these things

that come up. This is the ripening of karma and in that moment we can deal with it, we can

change something.

As soon as we stop acting and producing new karma, we give more space to the ripening of

previous karma and we have to deal with them, and now we can deal with them in the space

of compassion and wisdom, and this is what will purify our mind stream. For people who

have the wonderful opportunity to meditate a lot they can reach the point where nothing

comes up anymore from this life, this life becomes completely purified. And then the work

becomes finer and we work on more subtle tendencies which don’t produce such strong

mental events but we begin to be able to work on those tendencies accumulated from many

lifetimes.

Q: The effects of our action only ripen in our mind stream – but doesn’t it also affect the other

person through their reaction?

A: Yes absolutely, I yell at Gregory, the effect in my consciousness will be all the tense

energy which I experience at that time. Gregory hears this and he has a reaction, he is creating

karma at that time, you are producing a tense state of mind which will have its effect, this will

be a continuing effect in your own mind. If Gregory is an Awakened master – and he hears

‘You are an xxx!’, he says ‘no one home’, no identification, then no karma. He might even

say ‘Oh this poor Lhundrup he is becoming so angry, what can I do for him, how can I help

him?’ You will develop so much love and compassion in your mind, you will create so many

positive imprints, that you will come out with positive karma from the situation and I will be

stuck with my negativity.

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‘We owe our knowledge of the workings of this karma to the omniscience of the

Buddha. Having seen the workings of this law in his deep meditation, he then explained

them clearly in his teaching so that others might benefit from this knowledge and use it

to shape their future.’

There are beings in this world, and the Buddha was one of them, who can see what was before

in this life and if things continue like this what will be the future result of their actions. The

Buddha saw this for himself. He saw many of his past lives, based on what the causes were,

what were their effect and how his mind stream developed, and then he had the capacity to

see also how and why others developed to become what they were now. We only have a very

vague idea. For example, someone comes here to Holomontos, he comes to these teachings,

and he thinks ‘Wow this is my family, I have found my home’. Then we think probably that

because of a past connection this feeling arises now, but we are just speculating. For the

Buddha it was very precise, he could see which life the connection was established in and

what was its nature.

We have talked so much about karma and I want to give you one sentence of the Buddha, he

said ‘Take karma as your refuge’. This means act wisely and thus shape your future. So take

action as something to rely on for where you want to go. Take care how you think, speak and

act because this will decide the spiritual path. Awakening depends on how you think, speak

and act. There is no miracle there, nothing mysterious; it’s all very open. This kind of

teaching puts the spiritual path right in our hands. We know what we need to do.

Day 2.c

• Karma and happiness.

• Mixed intentions mixed results.

• Not a question of good or bad – we chose the outcome we want.

• Great happiness and the Bodhisattva intention.

We come now to the next section of the text

‘All human beings share the same aspirations. We all want to be happy and avoid

suffering. But despite all our efforts to stop any kind of misfortune befalling us, we find

ourselves the victims of circumstance, helpless in the face of events. This feeling of

helplessness is due to the workings of the law of karma. Whether we are happy now or

whether we suffer now is already determined by the actions we have performed in the

past, which is why this feeling of not being able to do anything about our present

situation is quite justified. We are fighting in vain simply because we don't understand

that some things in life are predetermined.’

The message here is don’t fight against what you cannot change any more. I have been born a

man, I cannot be a woman, don’t fight against it. I was born with very little hair, I cannot have

more, don’t fight against it. I was born with genes that make very big feet, so I can’t have

smaller feet. These are simple facts of life, don’t fight against them. I was born in a certain

family with mother, father, brothers and so on, I cannot fight with it, it is just like this.

Now we have a very difficult economic situation, this is due to causes in the past, not even my

personal ones, let’s not fight with what we cannot change, let’s concentrate on what we can

change. We cannot change effects; we have to produce proper causes. If we want to change

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our social situation, our emotional well being, our political situation, our health, then we have

to produce causes that will lead to the corresponding results.

‘We should instead concern ourselves with our future and change the way we behave

now so that it corresponds to the kind of future we want. If we want to be happy in the

future we must now practise positive actions. If we want to avoid suffering in the future

we must now avoid negative actions. This is the only way of achieving the results we are

searching for.’

There is also a message in there which is not so explicit: don’t try to change others, change

your own mind.

‘The fruits of our actions are infallible, they will always correspond to the original

nature of the action. This is just like planting seeds. If we plant the seeds of an apple tree

and an orange tree, when the seeds have grown into their respective plants, the fruits

appearing on the trees will correspond to the original seed planted. The same applies to

the law of karma. Whatever actions we perform will ripen in the form of happiness or

suffering according to the seed sown at the time of the original act. There is no way to

alter this natural law. It is therefore important to chose carefully the actions we perform

if we want to be happy and avoid suffering.’

The message here is also very simple. If I want to live in an atmosphere of love, generosity

and so on, in order to get that result I must practice love, generosity and so on. While I

already practice love, generosity and the other qualities, the old causes will still produce their

effect. So it’s not that because now I start being very kind, loving, helpful and so on, that

immediately my life experience becomes wonderful. It takes time for the old results to ripen

and be purified and the new causes, the new seeds which I sowed, to produce their results. We

have to be a little bit patient with the changes that will happen in our lives and lifetimes to

come. Our life is driven by very strong forces of past thoughts and words and actions, which

have their power. This is what forms our lives, how others relate to us and so on. If now we

start behaving differently, it doesn’t mean that all these forces suddenly come to a stop

because we are behaving differently. They will continue, and we will have to deal with them

in this new way, in this more open and loving way, and then they will exhaust themselves and

the new forces will come to the fore.

‘What makes an action wholesome or unwholesome? It is the attitude of mind which we

have when we do the action. Actually the intention, if we are thinking principally of

ourselves when we do the act the action will be tainted by ego-clinging, self importance,

it then becomes an unwholesome action that brings suffering in its wake. If however our

sole intention is to be helpful to someone else, it will be wholesome and produce

happiness, simply because there was no ego-clinging involved as it was performed.’

So this is the intention. When we want to take care that our life takes a good direction we

have to change our intention, our motivation. For example, say I want to change my

relationship with my parents, my father and my mother. Now first my attitude has to change, I

have to come to a genuine wish to benefit my parents, for love and compassion to be

genuinely there. Then still I may be a little bit unskilful, but already all my words and

thinking go in that good direction. There will be a genuine attitude of supporting them, a

genuine attitude of love and compassion.

Normally we have mixed intentions, this will bring mixed results. So for example you are

generous, but somehow you want to be praised and you want love in return. So then also in

the future you will encounter wealth or generosity around you, but there will always be

conditions linked to it, which make it a little tricky. If there are mixed intentions, there will be

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correspondingly mixed results. For example I love my husband, my boyfriend so much and

really there is genuine love, but there is also some attachment. The genuine love which flows

will cause genuine support to flow towards me, the ripening of that genuine side. So that will

ripen in happiness, but the attachment will ripen in suffering. Very obviously when the

husband or boyfriend dies or you become separated, then you will feel suffering. This

happens already at this point, but there will also be other forms of suffering due to attachment.

If there was only love without attachment you would be like a mother bird, taking care of a

small bird, nourishing, caring, cleaning, and when the bird is ready to fly, it flies. And if it

wants to come back OK, but if it doesn’t no suffering, because the love was given for free and

so you only have one kind of result. So please don’t wait until your love and generosity

become completely pure before practising them. We have to start practising them even with

this mix. We have to accept that in our actions, even with good intentions, there is always this

little mixture of self concern, and slowly, slowly, by being mindful of it, it will purify, our

intentions will become more and more pure, but we have to accept our imperfection.

Q: Do all actions have to be for the benefit of others? For example if I buy a house to live in

then that is for me, not for others.

A: You can decide what the motivation is. If you buy the house for yourself you will get

invested in it, you will have worries about robbers and so on. If you buy the house and say,

‘May this be a house that serves all sentient beings’, your attitude in dealing with the

problems arising with the house will be different. Different intention, different result, you

choose.

An example which Lama Gendun used to give quite often, it was one of his favourites: If you

plant a fruit tree in you garden you may say ‘May these cherries be for me, to nourish me’. So

as the cherry tree grows you take care of the fence to protect it so no one can get into your

garden and take the fruit, and you can enjoy the fruit if everything goes well. Another person

will say ‘I want to plant a cherry tree, but I will plant it outside the fence, where everyone

who passes can take the fruits. My happiness will be that every one who likes cherries can

enjoy them’. This is also just planting a tree, but with a different intention, and the effects in

the future of that different intention will be quite important.

So there is no question of one thing being good and the other bad. It’s just a question of cause

and effect, you choose. Practically it is possible to dedicate one’s whole life to the benefit of

all. Whatever I do, whatever I have, whatever money I receive, whatever translations I do,

whatever words I say, due to the fact of having chosen, I will offer everything to all sentient

beings, nothing is mine! This is possible. The problem is that when we really begin to take

care of everyone and not take care so much of our own life and future, our old age and so on,

we are confronted with fear. Who will take care of me when I am old? Where will I live when

I am old and sick? Who will take care of me? If I don’t take care to have enough money and a

house and so on, these fears, these questions will arise.

The next paragraph is an answer to these questions. It talks about Buddhas and Bodhisattvas

who completely offer every instant of mind, every single thought they offer to all sentient

beings. It talks about these kinds of beings, we will see what it says. It is not an invitation to

be stupid. It is not an invitation for you, Dimos, not to go to the island and sell your products

and take care of your family. It is not like this, it is that one does it with the wish ‘May it

benefit all beings’. Or you can take the example of the two people who said as they were

building a house, ‘This house is a Dharma house, of course it’s our house, but may it serve

everyone’. This kind of attitude.

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The construction of this centre was based on this kind of motivation: may it serve everyone,

without discrimination. All the energy that was put into it by all of you involved, was given

free of self concern. This is why it is still here and it is still working. So let’s try to understand

the next paragraph, which is a little difficult:

‘All the different forms of happiness we see in the world – wealth, contentment,

harmony, creativity, and so on – are made possible by the blessing of the Buddhas. It is

this which inspires the Bodhisattvas on their spiritual path to wish that all living beings

in the future may easily find whatever they need, that whatever would make them happy

happens, that any wishes they have may be fulfilled. The bodhisattvas dedicate all the

merit they accumulate so that all living beings may find the happiness they search for,

and it is as a result of these special wishes founded on the practice of virtue that this

world has such a potential for happiness.’

If I rephrase the meaning of this paragraph, it means all the happiness in this world is due to

selfless intentions, actions and dedications. The greatest degree of selfless presence, action

and dedication we find is with the completely Awakened ones. Then a great degree of selfless

presence is found in the Bodhisattvas, those who have already realised the nature of their own

minds and go towards Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. But there are also just

ordinary beings, like ourselves, like a mother taking care of her child in a very selfless way

and thus making it possible for the child to be happy. A father taking care of the children,

making it possible for them to be happy. So this is also a case where the selflessness of some

makes it possible for others to be happy. But Gendun Rinpoche means more when he talks

about this. He means that these Enlightened beings in their very profound meditations share

their positive states of mind so strongly with all sentient beings that for everyone else it

becomes much easier. This is due to an experience one can have when comes close to such

Awakened masters, even just coming close to them, without seeing them, suddenly

meditation, openness of heart, everything becomes so easy, we wonder how can it be so easy?

Before I had such a closed mind and now it becomes so easy? It is because of the extremely

beneficial influence of those great beings. This influence is also there when we don’t even

know about their existence.

We don’t have to believe this, I would just like you to know how wide is the vision of such

Enlightened masters, you can find out for yourselves whether it’s true or not, it’s not very

important for travelling on the path. When we heard the teaching, we asked Lama Gendun

why there was so much suffering in the world if there were all these Buddhas and

Bodhisattvas who had appeared and made these prayers and dedications. He said if there

hadn’t been these dedications and the Bodhisattvas, this planet would already have been

destroyed long ago. It is because there still are such examples and such positive influences in

the world that we still find the information that leads us towards Awakening. If that was not

present any more we would not feel inspired.

We will stop here. When we do the dedication, like it says here, all the positive things we can

feel, all our love and understanding, we share with the whole cosmos the whole universe. May

all beings, wherever they are in the universe find the inspiration to overcome whatever

suffering they experience. May they become free of the waves of birth, old age sickness and

death, may they be liberated from the narrow prison of ego-centredness, whatever virtue and

wholesomeness we dedicate it to the Awakening of all beings.

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Day 3.a

• Living in our bubbles.

• Meditation on developing a loving attitude.

• Different Bodhisattva activity.

• Merit and going beyond self-centredness. Limitations of the god realm.

As we heard in the last part of the teaching yesterday, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas make a

lot of prayers and dedications for the benefit of all beings. And Gendun Rinpoche continues,

saying:

‘But each individual can only benefit from that happiness if he has previously

accumulated good karma. There are many who are not happy, who suffer, are in

difficulties or are poor. This is not due to the ineffectiveness of the bodhisattvas' wishes.

The unwholesome actions performed in the past by that particular person mean he

cannot benefit from the results of the wishes expressed by the bodhisattvas.’

The meaning is that if our mind is filled up with lots of perturbations and disturbances due to

strong emotional thoughts which are due to past unwholesome acts of body speech and mind,

then although we might be surrounded by the greatest happiness, we cannot open up to it. The

impact of our past functioning creates such a strong bubble in which we live that we cannot

perceive what is around us. To some extent we are in such bubbles all the time. Each one of

us functions in our little bubble. This is especially noticeable in the mornings when we wake

up. We get up and we are very bleary, others are experiencing being wide awake and maybe

they say ‘Come on’, but we would rather go back into our own bubble, rather than opening

that bubble. So in the morning when we rub our face, we rub our body, we touch the earth, we

feel the wind, we get water, all of this is to get out of our bubble. After a minute or two, ten

minutes, we are even ready to say ‘Good morning, how did you sleep?’ We are willing to

reach out to another person. And after we have had the first coffee we are even willing to

listen to the response!

But even during the day, when we think that we are fully functioning, we are still in our world

of our own personal projections. The personal projections can be so strong that we could be

sitting right next to a Buddha who has a completely open heart or mind, and we would not

notice it. Gendun Rinpoche came to Greece 7 times. When he walked through the street, went

to the supermarket or took a plane, he was a completely free being, how much do you notice?

You look at him and say, ‘Jolly good fellow, he seems to be a happy old man’. But if we

manage to open and create a contact, get out of that bubble a little bit, suddenly things

become very easy and we are completely surprised. We feel such openness and happiness that

before, from within our bubble, we couldn’t even imagine was there.

The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the past (we would call them saints in Christian terms),

their meditation was to emanate love, compassion, joy, equanimity, in all directions of the

universe, above, below and all around and completely bless, completely permeate all

universes with absolute kindness and openness of heart. From our side, our task is to connect

to that, to meditate a little so that our bubble opens, thinking more about all others, and then

suddenly we enter a sphere where things become very easy. This is the effort we need to

make, to reach out and dare to go beyond our normal shell of self-protection. Every time we

dare to do that we will have the experience of how easy it actually is out there. But then we

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will also be surprised at how quickly the bubble closes again, because of strong past

tendencies. Don’t be surprised in either case; this is just the way it is.

So every day our task is to open up, to work on these tendencies of self-protection, so that we

are able to move out. And then you will see over time that the tendency to close again

becomes weaker and weaker, not so present any more, and in that way life becomes truly

happy. – The next paragraph gives us the confirmation to do just that;

‘We too should follow the example of the bodhisattvas, accumulate as many virtuous

deeds as possible and dedicate their effects to the happiness of all living beings in the

universe. After such a dedication, we should then go on to make wishes, just as the

bodhisattvas do, formulating prayers that through this merit all living beings may enjoy

happiness and never be in need. In this way we gradually train ourselves to be

bodhisattvas, following the example they set.’

Is it possible for you, just now, here and now, to feel love in your heart? Try to find how. We

will meditate a little. I will try to help you. We will do what it says here.

Meditation:

Maybe it is easiest to think of someone who you love very much, truly, and who has also

given you much love, or you can also think of a little cat or a little dog. It doesn’t have to be a

human being, you can think of some other sentient being. Let us feel all the warmth of our

heart, which we call love, let it fill the whole body. First the chest, then going upwards and

downwards, filling our whole body…..

Our entire being is filled with love. ….

A warm heart, very soft, very gentle, like when you are caressing someone with great

attention. In this way we let ourselves be caressed from the inside. Then we let the caressing

go from the inside to the outside, so we are now being caressed from the outside, like a warm

shower or a beautiful oil on our skin, which is very soft, very gentle…

Allow yourself to feel it with your whole being, as if someone else was caressing you, or as if

the energy of love of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas was caressing you. Like healing

ourselves… This love comes from nowhere, it has no intentions. It is like the sun shining,

shining out to touch all sentient beings without any discrimination. Imagine this gentleness is

light radiating out, from the heart first of all, to the space in front of us. Imagine that it fills

the room in front, goes out and fills all of space in front of you. It touches all the insects, all

the birds, all the animals in the forest, all the human beings, all the fish in the ocean. And

wherever there are invisible beings it also offers them this gentleness and love. It goes out in

front of us limitlessly.

Then we do the same to our back… the light fills the room behind us and all the forests,

plains, hills, with all the living beings visible and invisible. The sun of love is shining all the

time. It is our Buddha Nature, just the way our mind is when it is free…

The light shines out to the right and left, above and below…….

Wherever there are sentient beings in all universes may they all be touched and caressed and

woken up to their true nature by this light…..

Remember it is nothing special, it is just the feeling that we have when we caress a little cat or

take a baby in our arms, the same feeling. This willingness to take care….

Then slowly open your eyes and keep the feeling, continue feeling like the sun of tenderness.

Look there are real sentient beings sitting here!

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If you could follow this meditation then you got a little taste of the Buddha’s meditation. I

searched for references for this meditation in the Pali Canon and I found 34 places where the

Buddha talks about this meditation. In the Mahayana sutras in Sanskrit almost every sutra

talks about this. It is the easiest way to enter deep meditation and to develop wisdom.

Of course when we do it like this, maybe it’s a little difficult to connect with, but actually it’s

easy. It’s the same feeling that we have when we stroke a little cat or a little child. When there

is no hesitation on our part, when there is complete openness, complete giving, this feeling of

non separation, this is what comes. We might be a little shy to allow ourselves to feel this

when we are surrounded by others, but you can go out on the rocks and do it alone.

When we allow ourselves to do it, then we are not protecting ourselves anymore. We become

quite sensitive, because there is no protection, so this capacity to love has to go along with a

sort of fearlessness, there is a courage to love, the courage to open up. There are thousands of

millions of beings who are meditating like this and who have done so in the past. This is what

Lama Gendun meant, it is there; it is all around us, just open up to it, this is our task. And if

you want to know the secret of why we are sitting here, it’s because we met someone like

that. This place was built because there was someone like that, Lama Gendun, who inspired

us. Although he died 13 years ago, having once seen an example like that, you never forget.

There are teachers like this nowadays, who are still alive. You go, you look, you feel and you

will find them.

I met Lama Gendun when I was 22 years old. I had already been practicing meditation for a

few years, but when this man started talking in a small room, like this one, in Freiburg, we

were maybe 30 or 40 people, I listened to him. He talked about this love and compassion,

about Bodhicitta. I looked at him and I listened to him, and I thought ‘It’s possible! Human

beings can be complete, no more difference between what they say and what they feel. Its

possible, it’s like wow!’ Until then I had been searching for one fully integrated human being,

where words and actions, thoughts and deeds are all just one. When I met this person I just

went ‘Wow it’s possible, possible to be complete, to be Awakened.’ Then afterwards I

thought that’s great, these Buddhist teachers are great, and then I was surprised that all the

Buddhist teachers that I met were not exactly all the same.

But amongst them there were some who were like this. The next one who I met of that calibre

was Kalu Rinpoche, very touching. Then there was Tenga Rinpoche, he was like a mother and

father to me both together at the same time. Then there was Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, we

were sitting in the morning in his room meditating with him and wow you could just melt. If

you were melting too much he would take his mala, and he would give you ‘blessing’! Then

we did retreat with Gendun Rinpoche and I lived with him for 11 years. Then fortunately the

young Karmapa Thaye Dorje arrived. At first I thought ‘He’s so young!’ But he’s really

different. So it took me a little time, but already when he first came I was his car driver and

his translator and so on. He went into retreat and I was his doctor and now he is my teacher,

my root lama now. And his love is so incredible you can’t even see it. His love is beyond all

sentimentality, completely stable, unwavering like space, but always there. At first I was

looking for something more touching, but what is so touching is that there is no pretension, no

sentimentality whatsoever, but completely stable with everyone he meets.

So you just look for yourself, there are many such teachers on the planet. With some we have

a stronger connection, with others slightly less of a connection.

Q. Is this due to karmic connections?

A. A lot is due to karmic connections, but there must be one life where it happens for the first

time, so you can establish new karmic connections. How you establish such a connection, is

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that you go and ask for some teaching then you ask for some support. You listen carefully and

you apply what you have received and you see how it works.

Q. Since Bodhisattvas are not necessarily Buddhist or from any particular religion, is it right

that we say this religion is better than any other?

A. To take it step by step, you can recognise true Bodhisattvas by the fact that they are non-

sectarian. Bodhisattvas by definition work for all sentient beings, so it’s absolutely impossible

that they will say there is only one way of doing it, one religion, one sect, one guru, one

tradition. Bodhisattvas make wishes to be reborn in those forms which are most helpful to

sentient beings. If the animal realm needs Bodhisattvas they will manifest as animals. If the

hungry ghost realm needs Bodhisattvas they will manifest as hungry ghosts, and so on. They

take all shapes possible. The idea of a Bodhisattva is to serve as a bridge; he will act as a

bridge from where we are until Awakening. So you can identify a Bodhisattva by the activity

of being a bridge, of crossing over separations, everything that divides and misunderstanding

and dogmatism. You will see they always have this activity of crossing over. They will point

out the deep meaning of the Dharma. The ‘isms’ are not so important: Buddhism, Hinduism,

what you belong to. They might choose one school, to work from there and be a bridge from

there, but they will know that what is important is the essence, not the form. The forms are the

methods of the tradition and the essence is what needs to be realised.

Some Bodhisattvas will choose a religion, a tradition; others will stay away from religions to

be freer to help those who don’t want to be involved with religion. Some Bodhisattvas will do

mainly spiritual teaching; others will not even be recognised and will do social work, political

work, healing work – different areas, whatever is needed.

Q. There seems to be a lot of pride within Buddhism: ‘My group is better than the others’.

A. The problem is that we have found good food and we say to others ‘It’s the best food’.

This is problematic. It is good food but maybe not the best for others, for me just now it is

maybe the best I can get, but there is no need to think that it is the best for others. Pride comes

from there. We have found good food. We can say it is good food for me, but when we say it

is the best and we say it is the best for everyone, we go a step too far. If you see a person

calling him- or herself a spiritual teacher, taking you into dogmatism, sectarian attitudes,

splits, divisions and so on, be careful, this is not the real activity of Bodhisattvas.

Q. Could you have a Bodhisattva who just helps others all the time but has no spiritual

activity, and doesn’t even know that they are Bodhisattvas?

A. Most Bodhisattvas don’t know that they are Bodhisattvas. There are those who just don’t

care because they are not self-concerned, but also if they were not highly realised they have

lost the memory of their Bodhisattva vows when they took rebirth. So there is no conscious

memory, but automatically they will perform the activity of a Bodhisattva because the wishes

were so strong.

Q. Does that mean that they are Enlightened?

A. Be careful of the word Enlightened. In a previous life, they had some realisation, they

could see the nature of emptiness. Now in this life their realisation is activated or not

activated, depending on conditions. This is why it is important to find good conditions, to be

able to activate that realisation.

The Bodhisattva is someone who has vowed, made a promise, to reach complete Awakening,

Buddhahood, and then to serve all sentient beings until they all attain Buddhahood. It is

possible that after death they will remember. When I look at you, I see the room full of

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Bodhisattvas, some are still in the sleeping state and some are in the active state. Some are in

a dream; your Bodhisattva potential is in the process of Awakening.

Q. What is love?

A. Does it produce open mind, open heart? Does it help the person to obtain Awakening? I

would avoid ‘good’ and ‘bad’. I would say is it skilful, helpful or unskilful/unhelpful.

Now we come back to the text:

‘Amongst the six categories of existence that make up the universe we find the divine

realms, heavens where all who are born there experience, during their lifetime as a god,

total happiness. Suffering is unknown to them. What leads someone to be born as a god?

It is their past accumulation of merit, merit not associated with wisdom during its

accumulation. It is merit limited by concepts, reference points for the mind that keep it

trapped in the realm of subject, object and action. The person creating this kind of merit

has not understood how to let the mind rest in a state of wisdom, free of the limiting

ideas of subject, object and action. He is unable to dedicate the merit he accumulates for

living beings, with the result that it ripens in rebirth as a god. The happiness

encountered there is not lasting. Sooner or later it will be exhausted, at which point

without any further merit left to him, he will inevitably fall into the lower states of

existence where his suffering will know no bounds.’

There are two or three important teachings here. What is merit? Merit is the result of a

virtuous action, something wholesome, something beneficial, which leaves a positive imprint

in our mind stream or consciousness and which is the effect of a very helpful activity. When

this beneficial activity continues, the stream of merit becomes so great that one can actually

be reborn in a dimension where there is no suffering. As far as I observe ourselves, we are not

in any danger of being reborn there. But let us imagine that we would only accomplish

wholesome actions, day and night. The example of the gods it taken to point out that this

positive action must be linked with wisdom.

As long as there is a sense of ‘I’ am doing good, there will be a state of happiness where ‘I’

am happy. The self-centredness which was present in the beneficial action will continue to be

present at the time the result ripens. This self-centredness is called subject. There is a subject

and there is an object: ‘you’. I give you my house. This is a self-centred act which is very

nice, very beneficial and creates great merit, but the self-centredness was present at the

beginning and will also be there later. For as long as the forces of those beneficial acts last,

there will be happiness. When they are exhausted other things will happen.

When we act without ego clinging, without the idea or notion of a self, then there is no idea of

separation from another. This is the true path of Awakening, where compassion and wisdom

are not separate. Now if we cannot do this (which I guess is the case for most of us, our

beneficial actions still have this feeling of ‘I’ with them), then at least at the end of those

actions, we make dedications: ‘May it lead to the understanding of non-self, may it lead to

that Awakening which is beyond ideas of subject and object and an action happening between

the two’. This dedicated merit will create conditions where we are able to deepen that

wisdom, that understanding. This is the force of those dedications. Actually what we are

doing is connecting our wholesome activity with the intellectual understanding we already

have, but which has not become a fully experiential understanding. It has not yet fully entered

our being, but it is in this direction. We connect our beneficial activity with the deepest

understanding we have and dedicate it in that direction.

[In response to a question:] Humbleness is the one step in the right direction, but after

humbleness there is an activity which happens with no one who is humble and no one proud.

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There is no one who needs to be humble any more. The activity is done without self-

centredness, so it is just simplicity; simplicity performing for the benefit of others.

The crucial point is to always go beyond self-centredness and to connect to this wisdom of

non-self in whatever we do. Or in your tradition, we might say to always connect it with the

idea of true self. It means the same, no self or true self, but this understanding that there is

nothing individual, separate from another to be protected, this is the understanding. We might

experience the fruits, the fruit of wholesome action, we might experience divine states, but

then we make the wish ‘May these be dynamic states, where we can always learn more’. Like

the idea of Dewachen in our tradition, it is a dynamic state, everything else is like the god

realms, but there is a constant progression towards more openness.

Day 3.b

• More on merit and activity without self-centredness

• Maintaining a vision of our spiritual priorities – what we give importance to.

• 2 steps: beneficial activity and waking from the dream.

• Solidifying a self, solidifying ‘other’.

Q: What is merit?

A: There is a misunderstanding, about two terms. ‘Gewa’ in Tibetan or ‘kusala’ in Sanskrit is

a wholesome or beneficial act. When I give my watch to Lodro, this is the generous act, gewa.

The force that remains from the reinforcement of the tendencies to generosity in my mind is

punya (Sanskrit) or sonam (Tib). So the wholesome act is the cause and the merit or

punya/sonam is the effect.

Q. About karma.

A. When we act with self-centredness the idea of ‘I am doing something’, this will always

produce karma, this means effects linked to the idea of self. When we do a lot of beneficial

activity, all acts with less self-centredness, it will lead to less and less self-centredness and

moments will occur when we act without any notion of self. This is going beyond karma, we

are not creating any effects linked to karma. In a way you can say there is no act because there

is no actor. To describe this we call it Awakened activity, or we call it non-acting.

Q. Is there a benefit of giving artificially, with self-consciousness, or is it better not to give?

A. Yes, perform the beneficial action and link it to the dedication, ‘May it lead to the ability

to give without even thinking of myself’. If everyone waits until we have a completely pure

motivation and no self-centredness in our beneficial acts, the beggars would never receive

anything! Also there can be complicated thinking to start with. I know this from my own

experience, but it doesn’t mean to say that you still have complicated thinking when you are

actually giving. When you give you can give wholeheartedly, you can look into the eyes of

the person and say, ‘Here, be happy. May it be a good day.’ There are many moments of

practice: the time when we get out wallet out, and we decide how much, and then we give, all

these moments are moments of practice. – We will read the next paragraph:

‘We can see, therefore, that this kind of happiness is not reliable, so we should not aim

for such a rebirth. Instead we should dedicate all the merit we accumulate for the

benefit of living beings and let the mind rest after each dedication in a state of complete

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openness, free of all reference points, in this state the mind is free of clinging to ideas of

subject, object and action. The merit we accumulate can then never be used up. It

becomes inexhaustible.’

So this means that the dedication is the moment where you just turn around, let the act be

whatever it was, and continue your life. Actually it means to dis-identify. OK, something

beneficial was done, it’s offered to all sentient beings, and then we can relax back into

complete openness, natural non-identification, and this means that we cut the link of

identification with whatever good was done. In this way the limitations of ego-clinging are

removed and it becomes a limitless force without the limitations of clinging to a self.

Q. Menaced by a family of beggars, in the same place ever day, feeling obliged to give and

fearing what they will do if you don’t.

A. A lot of emotion: a little guilt, a little fear, feeling obliged….You are free not to give and

not to think about the situation! Have you ever heard about ‘idiot compassion’? We talked

about it here a few years ago: compassion without wisdom, and also misplaced generosity:

generosity without wisdom.

‘If we wish to be sincere in our practice of the Buddha's teaching, we have to let go

completely all our concern with the things of this world and devote ourselves entirely, in

body, speech and mind to our spiritual aims. We should dedicate the results of all that

we do for the benefit of other living beings. If we behave in this way then we will

gradually progress through all the different stages in the path of a bodhisattva until we

reach supreme, perfect enlightenment. At that moment we are totally freed of all our

own suffering and, what is more, fully capable of liberating others from theirs. Our

activity becomes as far reaching as the sky, we can act without any limitation

whatsoever, with many hitherto unknown resources available to us.’.

The later part of the paragraph sounds really nice because it talks about Buddhahood, but the

first sentence is tough! You think you can let go of all concern with things of this world?

Maybe I should explain a little how it is linked with the emotions. In our working group,

when we were discussing, we came to the point where we said, ‘Well what makes an emotion

strong is when we give importance to something’. Replace in this sentence here the word

‘concern’ with the word ‘importance’. We have to let go completely of giving importance to

the things of this world. Then you will understand what is really meant, and you will

immediately see how you can do it. It is a question of changing priorities. We continue to take

care of the things of this world. We take a shower every day, we wash our clothes, we go to

work, we buy our food, we take care of our family and so on. We take care, but in our mind

all of this serves a higher purpose, it is not in itself of top importance.

For example our top priority could be to develop love, openness of mind, generosity; different

qualities of mind that inspire us. Something goes wrong in our life, the car breaks down or

someone behaves in a stupid way towards us. If we give top priority to the car and to being

respected, we will of course get angry, upset. But if our top priority is to develop patience,

open mind, then what happens becomes food for our practice, and this changes our life

completely. Actually our home becomes a Dharma centre, we take good care of our home,

just like we would take care of a Dharma centre, but we link it to the higher purpose of

developing mindfulness, patience, the higher wisdom. ‘May it be an open place for anyone

who enters, may everyone feel well in this place’. We link it all to the truly important things

in life.

Normally we are concerned with success, gaining respect from others, happiness, good health.

But maybe in view of the higher purpose in our life it is more helpful to experience a loss,

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moments of poverty, moments of sickness, criticism, insecurity. If we are able to maintain the

vision of our spiritual priorities in life, I assure you that our emotions will reduce by 80 or

90%. What creates desire, what creates anger, what are we proud about, what do we get

jealous over? Just look, all these things of worldly importance. When we come here to a

course about the afflictions, how to deal with the emotions that create tension, we thought

maybe that we would learn many tricks about how to deal with all the emotions, but actually

we get offered something much more fundamental. Change your priorities, look at life

differently and this will take care of most of your emotions. When this change is clear and my

life has one purpose, to serve Awakening, and when I can make the wish ‘May I go through

whatever challenges and difficulties that are necessary to awaken’, when I can make this

wish, then all the rest becomes workable. The rest are the habitual tendencies that will still get

me into afflictive emotions, of course. But because my priorities are clear, I am absolutely

willing and happy to apply the necessary remedies.

Now you can come to a course and hear about the different emotions of desire and anger and

so on and ways of dealing with them, but if your priorities in life are not to really become free

of them, then all of this teaching will just stay as intellectual knowledge. If my priority in life

now when I come to the course is to find a wonderful boyfriend, then when I hear about how

to work with desire, it won’t make much sense, I won’t be very motivated to really apply the

remedy. When the true priorities are clear and this life serves Awakening, then I will ask

myself, ‘Well how can a relationship with my boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife; how can it

serve that path towards Awakening?’ Then all the teaching makes sense, when the priorities

are clear. This is how Gendun Rinpoche almost finishes this chapter. I will read out the last

sentences.

‘It is therefore very important to know and trust the workings of this infallible law of

karma, the law of cause and effect. Only when we have fully understood this law can we

appreciate the unsatisfactory nature of cyclic existence.’

The nature of cyclic existence means that we always repeat the same experiences, because we

always make the same mistakes. The basic mistake is the confusion in our mind, where we

believe ‘I exist, I have to take care of myself, happiness comes from taking what I need and

pushing away what I don’t want’. Based on ignorance, on not being aware of the true nature

of our selves (this dynamic process which in our confusion we call self), we enter patterns of

attachment and aversion. Those patterns lead to thoughts, words and physical acts that will

have their consequences. Without a profound change of attitude there is no way out, it won’t

stop by itself, because causes continue to be planted and continue to produce results. If we

look at it honestly it is a nightmare.

Now the path of liberation goes through two steps. First we make the nightmare into a good

dream, then we wake up from the dream. To make the nightmare into a good dream is the

path of accumulating good karma, merit, performing helpful actions that produce good

results, but still with some ego-centredness. In that good dream, we have some space to look.

And we can see that in here, what I call ‘me’, I find nothing substantial. I find the vastness of

timeless awareness. When that timeless awareness opens up, that means Awakening from the

dream. So it is a process of experiencing more and more space, openness, happiness, until all

limitations drop away.

Q. Is it possible to have a conception of karma if you don’t believe in rebirth – can it work?

A. Yes, with certain reservations. You might be sitting here with more or less belief that there

is a life before and a life after. This is completely OK, just leave it open. You can observe

cause and effect sufficiently well in this life, enough to see that it is a valid way that

everything works. You are left of course with the unanswered question. Where does

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consciousness come from and where does it go after death? You have to learn to live with this

unresolved question. If you practice the Dharma deeply you will solve this question, until then

you have to be patient.

Q. The difference between emotions and feelings?

A. To give a proper answer they have to be connected to the original terms. A feeling starts on

the simplest level as a sensation in the body, or the visual field. We call this a sensation of

perceptions. Immediately with these sensations our tendency is to add ‘agreeable,

disagreeable, or uninteresting/neutral’. This judgement of sensation as being agreeable,

disagreeable or not so important is the birth of emotions. This is where emotions come from.

So if we can have lots of feelings and experiences without entering into this process of

agreeable/I like, disagreeable/I don’t like, neutral/ I don’t care… if we don’t enter that process

we will not enter into an emotional elaboration afterwards.

If I have the feeling of loving someone, if I start to like the feeling of loving someone, I find it

agreeable. Then I get attached to my feeling of love and then the emotions start. Every love

story starts with moments of openness, so flowing, so open. This is no problem, but then we

get attached to those agreeable experiences and there comes the grasping because we say ‘I

want more of this’. This is where the afflictions, the kleshas, really begin to operate very

strongly.

A simpler example: we go into a toilet where unfortunately someone has been before. Our

normal reaction is ‘Phew it stinks!’ What has actually happened? We smelt something and

there was a label ‘heavily disagreeable’. If an Awakened master goes into a toilet, he will

smell fully, just like us, and he will say, coming out smiling, ‘Strong experience!’ There is no

thought of ‘I don’t want’ – this thought does not occur – it’s strong experience. He does not

feel personally insulted because the previous person did not open the window.

The five main afflictive emotions are categories. There are many, many, many emotions

falling into these categories. – I have good news for you in the next sentence:

Emotion and Ego

‘Ultimately, the round of existence is empty of any true reality (that’s the good news) but

as long as the mind is clouded by ignorance, it remains unaware of this (this is the bad

news) and creates a reality of its own. There develops in the mind of each individual a

very subtle idea of an ego or an ‘I’, a sense of identity which gradually solidifies into

what we call 'ego-clinging'.

The idea of a self automatically implies an idea of 'the other', and we find ourselves

operating in a world of duality. Our mind becomes influenced by how we judge the

relationship between ourselves and others. We consider some persons to be close to us,

others to be distanced from us. We feel attachment towards some and hatred towards

others. These reactions lead to the mind being constantly troubled by the five basic

emotional states, and this causes our behaviour to systematically produce a reaction. As

these multiple reactions ripen, they determine the form of the world around us.’

Most of this you can understand because we have been talking about it quite a lot already. In

one discussion at the dinner table, we talked about this process of solidification, which is this

idea of solidifying a self. I want to talk more about this. What actually happens? Where does

the error come in? There is this flow of many different experiences and there is always

consciousness that arises at the same time as the experience, this quality of being aware seems

to be constantly there and there are different experiences. In this flow of conscious

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experiences, mind becomes aware of this quality of awareness and the quality of movement,

what we call ‘experience’. The quality of awareness gets called ‘I’ and the quality of

experience is called ‘other’. As mind begins to function in this artificial separation between

the consciousness and its content, which is the movement, the changing experience, then the

separation between the subject that experiences and an object which is experienced becomes

greater and greater and then we end up with the idea of ‘I’ with ‘my experiences’.

So to cure that error we have to ask ourselves where is the ‘I’ without the experiences? We

are postulating that that there could be a self, an ‘I’, independent of life going on moving,

producing different experiences. Actually there is only this process, this flow of conscious

experience. When we become completely aware that it is just that, we are cured. Mind has

found its way out of these complications and life is simple again. This is the error; this is

where the solidification comes in. The more we solidify ‘I’: ‘I’ with my past, ‘I’ with my

relationships, ‘I’ with my emotions, ‘I’ with my experiences’ phew! This ‘I’ becomes so

solid, because we repeat it all the time, we really think it exists. It is a fixed idea, and from

this all the rest comes: attachment, hatred, aversion and so on.

‘So in fact the world in which we live is nothing other than the illusory product of the

mind's deluded activity, it is the mind's creation, without any true reality at all. But as

long as we do not understand this, we are convinced it exists and therefore when we act,

we do so completely convinced that our actions are important, that they are going to

have some impact on the world around us.’

This is the solidification of the ‘other’ the other side, because there is experience of sound, of

touch, corresponding to the feeling of ‘I’ with my experience. Then the experience itself also

becomes solidified, it becomes ‘the world’. ‘The world is like this.’ But the world is actually

only like this as long as it is experienced like this and we don’t look any more. We have a

fixed idea; the world is like this.

Day 3.c

• Dream example and waking up from the projections of the mind.

• Waking up from emotional projections.

• Waking up from projections of identity and solidification.

• Waking up from projections of stability; being prepared for change.

• Kleshas have a purpose but are not successful.

• Nature of psychosis.

• Changing priorities for long term happiness.

• Exercise on seeing the purpose of kleshas.

The text is not so difficult, but the subject is quite deep and if one wants to get from an

intellectual understanding to the application, then it can be a little difficult.

Q: about how to group the emotions.

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A: The more groups you make the more they overlap. When we want to make things very

simple then on the level of feelings we have pleasant, disagreeable and neutral. On the level

of emotions we could say we only have one emotion, in the sense of affliction. There is one

affliction which we call ignorance or ego-clinging. If we look further we can say we have two

main afflictions, attachment and aversion, these two. Attraction and repulsion, based on ego-

clinging. Then looking even further, ego-clinging combining with an agreeable feeling is

called pride, combined with disagreeable feeling is called jealousy. When you look into

jealousy, you know that there is a lot of anger, ‘I don’t want this’, but there is also an idea that

I want something which someone has, so there is also desire in there. In this way you can

continue to make more emotions, but they will just be special combinations of these families.

There are very complicated emotions, like for example the feeling of guilt. If we analyse it we

can find ego-clinging together with the fear of not being good. There is the wish to do better

but the incapacity to do so. They are special versions of attachment and aversion. So when we

explain it, we keep it simple, but in daily practice, every situation is unique and there are as

many emotions as there are living experiences.

Back to comments on the text:

An example of an ‘illusory product of the mind’, is as if we were wearing glasses all the time.

We think we are seeing the world, but we are veiled because we have filters, we look through

emotional filters, so this it is why it is called veiled production. Some aspects of this are

extremely easy to understand. For a person who has a lot of anger inside, the world appears

aggressive. But then our notion of solidity, our fixations, mean that we think of everything as

being very solid, when actually things are energy or in process and this is much more difficult

to see through. One of my friends, in meditation he could suddenly see through the walls, he

could see what was happening on the other side, for his vision was not substantial any more

and he could exactly decide what was happening on the other side. That was quite a

discovery! It was one of my friends who went to university with me and there are other such

phenomena that when they happen, we think everything is so solid, but there is maybe a little

error in there.

I have seen people who definitely had cancer which was very well developed, proven by x-

rays, biopsies and so on, you could see the pictures and everything. And in one day, one

week, completely gone. How is it possible? So sometimes things like this happen which show

us that aspects of what we think of as reality might still be a projection of our mind. But I

would like us to concentrate on working on the afflictions, because that is what is needed to

become free. It is not so important to understand this aspect of even stones and what seems

solid as being energy. It is a further understanding that comes, but to be happy and have an

open mind it is not necessary to understand this.

‘This is just like being asleep and dreaming. In the dream we are convinced that the

world created by the mind is real and so we waste our energy performing all kinds of

actions in order to alter the course of events in the dream. When we don't succeed we

suffer, we feel frustrated. This is exactly what is happening during our waking life.’

In a dream we can have physical sensations, like the feeling of running or flying or being hurt

or very agreeable physical feelings. We can hear sounds, we can smell, we can taste, we can

have the feeling of eating. All the outer senses can be involved in a dream, and of course we

are thinking and feeling lots of things. The quality of the experience in the dream, the reality

we feel, is the same as now. Sometimes even in a dream we wonder ‘Is it real?’, but we can’t

make out a difference. I remember dreams for example, where I was going on a trip with my

suitcases, and the boat was leaving. The distance was becoming bigger and bigger, and I was

running and wondering ‘Shall I jump or not?’ All this effort that you make to catch the boat.

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We try so hard to change what is happening in a dream. Dramas happen, love stories happen,

all in dream. Now the Awakened masters say that what we experience in our waking life is

very similar in nature to what we dream at night.

I used the example of going to the toilet. We can break the dream down step by step. The first

dream we are in is that this is a complete insult to me that the person before me in the toilet

has not opened the window. So this is a big dream of insulted pride and ego, and we can

already get out of this dream. All of this emotional projection, this is the first big level of

dream we have to get out of. But then further levels of the dream are revealed. Why do we

have to judge this strong experience of smell as so disgusting, why? For a fly it would be

good news! So we get to the level of relaxing those fixed ideas about how things should be

interpreted.

Every once in a while it happens that visitors go around the stupa anticlockwise; it happens.

Then I have had good practitioners run up to me and say ‘Lhundrup, they are going the wrong

way round, I hope they don’t accumulate bad karma.’ It’s just ideas! It has nothing to do with

bad karma, how could there be? There is no rule in the universe that says you have to turn

around a stupa clockwise. One explanation of why we turn like this, is that many people in

India in ancient times felt you had to circumambulate in this way, and the Buddhists on

purpose turned the other way around to break the concepts that you must turn the other way.

So there are many levels of interpreting reality, of thinking that ‘it must be like this’, ‘this is

good’ and so on. All of these are levels of our dream. When you come more and more to the

essential layer of the dream, you come more and more to that level of ‘I exist, you exist’; that

level of the dream. The idea of some solid, stable existence, that this guy here called

Lhundrup has existed since birth and next year he will come back.

Just to give you an idea of how strong this dream is, if someone were to pull out a picture of

you when you were 5 or 10 years old, and he would spit on your picture, how would you feel?

Are you the picture? Who tells you to identify with the picture? You have some idea that this

picture which is from 20 or 30 years ago is somehow intimately connected to ‘me’, who I am

now. This action could leave us completely relaxed, but we have such a strong identification

of who we are now, and who we were and the picture taken of us, that just the fact of tearing

up a photo of ourselves is like tearing ourselves up. We live in these common dreams, we

know, ‘Don’t treat the picture of Daphne or Constance without respect, they might get angry’.

We know, so we accept their dream. We accept each others’ dreams of identification and

solidification. In this way we think it is real, but there is no reality to it, it is all imagined. I

will not go any further. There is more and more to discuss about these dreams, there is a lot to

discover, but these are the essential aspects of what we have to wake up from.

We start with wanting to abandon the dream of strong emotional projections. Thinking we can

find happiness where we can’t and so on, and then we look at where all these ideas come

from. So we look at the idea of ‘I’ itself, because this seems to be the root of all these

confused states of mind. So in order to make it a little clearer, I can add that of course there

was someone who was the child who has now given rise to this adult that I am now, Of course

there is a connection and it is not about denying that I am sitting here and you are there and so

on, it’s not about this. It is just that all of us when we really look, we are in constant change,

we are constantly moments on moments of experience, this body not for a second the same,

this mind is not for a second the same. And there is fluidity, there is constant process, and this

is different from our normal way of looking at the world. Usually when we meet someone, I

have seen last year, and I imagine ‘Oh this is Tania I know her’, but she could have

completely changed and this solidification causes me to be in a dream about who is there, I

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have this fixed idea about who is there. So we want to awake from these dreams about myself

and others.

Now in the next passage Gendun Rinpoche talks about our struggle with this world which

seems to be so solid.

‘All the different actions we perform in our daily lives are intended to help us achieve

our desires, but often our efforts remain unsuccessful. Even if we do obtain what we are

searching for, we are then faced with its possible loss. Whatever we do to avoid a

situation, we may still have to face it. At other times we would do anything to make a

situation happen, yet it eludes us. Our whole life is filled with frustration. When it rains

we don't like the wet; when it doesn't rain we worry about drought. Nothing is perfect.

All these different reactions are due to the demands of self importance, what we call ego

clinging, which is why the Buddha taught that ego clinging is at the root of the whole of

cyclic existence.’

To make it very simple, when we know that things change we will not be so frustrated when

they change. When we know that things happen due to a combination of many causes and

conditions, not just because of our wanting, then also we are not surprised if they don’t

happen the way we want. There will be some very important aspects of struggle which will

disappear from our lives when we really understand impermanence and when we really

understand cause and effect. When we understand impermanence deeply we are already

prepared for the next moment to be different to the previous one and we are not surprised that

we get old, that separations happen, that new situations come, that old situations finish. We

are completely prepared. We are ready to flow with life; the struggle against life finishes.

When we understand, for example, that family life develops in a certain way because of many

influences coming in through the different members of the family, and there is so much which

we cannot control, if we understand this properly, we can take care of what we can influence,

we take care of our mind, of our attitude, but we are not surprised when things don’t go the

way we want. We will also know that because everything happens due to causes and

conditions, and that everything changes the next day, the next hour can only be different from

now and if we can encourage the proper causes and conditions there is a greater chance of

something beneficial happening. So we are waking up from the dream where we think that

situations could remain stable; it’s an impossibility. And we wake up from the dream of being

able to achieve whatever we want. We also wake up from the dream of not being able to do

anything at all, because we can do something, we can take care of what we think, say and do.

‘All the fundamental emotions that we experience – desire, anger, ignorance, jealousy,

and pride – are designed to produce some kind of benefit for the self, the ego. When we

act impulsively out of an emotion it is in order to maintain the ego's existence. This leads

us into performing many non-virtuous actions in support of our ego, all of which end in

suffering.’

There is a very important point here and we should not be ignorant of it. When we work with

our kleshas, our afflictions, we work with our wish to exist through these emotions, through

pride, anger, jealousy and so on. When we are angry, or full of desire, we have a very strong

feeling that we exist. And now when we are going to work with that, we will not have that

strong feeling of existence as one solid unit any more. Affliction serves a purpose in our

internal functioning, they are all purposeful. When we feel anger there is a purpose behind it,

the purpose of anger is mostly to get rid of something unpleasant. The purpose of desire is to

get something attractive. The purpose of pride is to feel good. The purpose of jealousy is to

feel better.

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Actually all of these emotions express the wish to feel better, only they are not very skilful

and don’t really get us there. Sometimes we have a benefit from it, but in the long run it

doesn’t work out so well. The proud person wants to feel good and praised by others, but after

some years of being quite proud, the proud person will be all alone, no one can stand to be

close to them. Desire will maybe be successful in bringing something into our lives, someone

or something which we like. We risk suffocating the person we like so much. Or we are so

attached to our beautiful things that we don’t even want to use them, we can’t share them, we

worry about how well they are being taken care of and so on. The purpose of fear for example

is that we are careful, we take great care, but unfortunately fear makes us very tense so when

we are afraid we make the most mistakes. Just a few examples of how counterproductive

these emotions are, the original intentions behind the emotional responses are not served.

When we look at other emotions, which are not called afflictions, you will immediately see

the difference. True joy does not serve a purpose, it is not purposeful. I don’t create joy in

order to get something. True love is not purposeful, it is not meant to bring me something; it

is free. Gratitude towards someone who has helped me is free, it is not meant to serve my

purposes. True compassion, true patience are spontaneous expressions not for a purpose, they

are just qualities of mind. In the English language the word ‘emotion’ comes from the Latin

and basically means ‘movement of mind’, it covers all these things, but they are very

different. We can make two big groups, the one big group of self-serving emotions, and the

other group of expressions of natural qualities of mind.

The Greek word literally means something which you can experience, so you can have the

same thing. There are just the experiences of what naturally is and then other experiences

where you can clearly see a self-serving purpose behind it.

Q: Why would the mind want to produce the kleshas?

A: The mind does not want to produce them. As soon as we relax the mind the kleshas

disappear and the natural qualities appear. Our mind is in the dream that there is the self, this

is the problem. We have the idea that we need to take care of someone here. And our mind

feels that if it brings something to it then there will be benefit, but we can see that at the same

time it closes. One only feels that now the outer object is with me. It works with anger and

aversion, you can push things out, disagreeable people or objects can be avoided, but you

don’t see that at the same time our heart closes. With proud behaviour we can convince others

to a certain degree that we are top, that we are superior, but then we don’t see that we are in a

very tight prison on top of our ivory tower. With jealousy and rivalry we can work our way

up, but we don’t see that we are constantly stressed and we lose all our friends. That’s why we

use the terms skilful and unskilful. Don’t ask me more about why we are so unskilful, let’s

leave it that it is like this, and see that now we would like to be happier. Now we will look at

how we can be happier.

Q: We need to protect our minds, because if you see the nature of reality when you are only

on the relative level you can get psychotic.

A: There is nothing dangerous about seeing the nature of mind. There is a spiritual dimension

in psychosis, but it’s not the one you think. The nature of psychosis is strong clinging, the

mind gets very quick with a lot of clinging, there can be great moments of what one

experiences as openness within this very strong clinging and one can perceive reality in a

different way from before. Then what happens is a mechanism of fear, fear leading to clinging

and strong holding on, but the speed of mind is very quick. So this gives the manic part of

psychosis, great speed and great clinging together. This is to explain the mechanisms. The

fear of losing something and the fear of not existing mix together, and create a cycle of

46

proving to oneself one’s own existence by very quick grasping to one experience after the

other.

The psychotic mechanism does not start with the experience of non-self, this is the important

point I want to make. The psychotic mechanism starts with the fear of not existing, while

strongly clinging to the idea of a self. It’s very true, and every one look out for themselves,

for someone who has a strong fear of non-existence, to hear teachings about non-self and

emptiness can strongly provoke those fears. This is the danger, not the actual experience of

non-self which is an experience of complete peace, non-clinging and openness. In that

experience there is no danger, but hearing about it stimulates our fears of not existing and

there the defence mechanisms, the security mechanisms, are shaken and act in an unskilful

way and produce a wave of confusion.

So in case you have family members or friends who have already had psychotic episodes, be

careful not to talk much about the subject. Or also when you come to courses like this,

because this can only be integrated in an atmosphere of relaxation, the mind basically has to

be able to relax with the thought of perhaps not existing in the way we thought we existed.

We have to create a feeling of confidence and relaxation so that one can look at life

experience from a new perspective and this takes some courage because a wave of fear can

come up.

But I want to let you know that it is absolutely possible to practice the Dharma. We have

taken practitioners into our three year retreats who had been in hospital several times with

psychotic episodes before, and we were able to guide them through the retreat and when they

touched these defence mechanisms, these security mechanisms, and got shaken up, we just

gave them all the space to relax and look at these fears and to slowly work through it. It is

possible but one has to be very skilful. Because actually these people are very sensitive, they

are very precious people, they have more sensitive antennae for different levels of reality that

most other people. So you have to give them more space and you have to put even more

emphasis on relaxation than with others, and then it is possible to have a new look at reality.

Q: How does confusion turn into wisdom?

A: It doesn’t – its very nature is timeless awareness. The nature of confusion is that confusion

is mind. Confusion is a mental experience. When one knows the nature of mind, one knows

the nature of all experiences of mind, and if one always tunes into the very nature of mind

then even the heaviest of confusion is understood to have the same nature. So there is no need

for confusion to turn into anything else, it is seen as what it is in its very depths.

Enlightenment comes from that timeless awareness, exactly from the nature of mind, that’s

where it happens.

‘At the moment of death all the possessions, power and wealth that we have spent so

much time accumulating will have to be left behind. On the other hand, we will not want

to take with us the results of all the negative actions we have performed in the cause of

the ego, but unfortunately we have no choice. The karma we have accumulated does

follow us and it is at that point that it begins to cause us great suffering.’

So in order to nourish and to protect our idea of ‘self’ we have performed so many acts, with

mixed results, sometimes we were successful, sometimes not. But at death whatever success

we had will have to be left behind, but the chain of cause and effect in our own mind does not

stop. If here in our heart, our mind was filled with the afflictions, the power of those closed

states of mind will unfortunately just accompany this mind stream. They will go through the

moment of separation from the body and continue, and we will again experience closed states

of mind, very strongly actually. The English word suffering is the translation of the Tibetan

47

‘dugnal’ and the Sanskrit ‘dukkha’ and it is a good try, if you don’t understand a sentence so

well, to replace the word ‘suffering’ by the word ‘tension’ or the word ‘stress’. These are

more modern words which mean the same thing. You will see that mental states of tension

will produce – tension. It’s very clear.

‘If we think carefully about the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary worldly existence, we

will recognise that it is characterized by suffering (stress, tension frustration). We should

therefore aim directly at Buddhahood and turn our minds away from worldly values.’

This means let’s change our priorities, let’s change what we are really heading for.

‘In this case there is a firm foundation for our spiritual path, which is why it is said that

renunciation is the legs of our meditation with which we walk to full enlightenment.

As a human being we find ourselves often having to make a decision concerning the path

we should take. It is as if we are at a fork in the road, able to go either right or left. How

do we choose? It depends upon the amount of awareness or ignorance in our mind. If we

remain in ignorance, we are still convinced that we can find lasting happiness in this

world; so all our efforts are directed towards making ourselves happy or avoiding

suffering. Yet while we remain ignorant of the realities of the world, all our efforts are in

vain. We cannot create long-term happiness. We continue to suffer from life to life,

circling through one form of suffering after the other. If however we choose awareness,

this means our understanding that the cycle of existence is characterized by suffering,

the only way to end suffering once and for all is to aim for Buddhahood and completely

transcend ordinary worldly existence.

This then is the decision we have to make as a human being, and it is one we should

make now if we want it to have any effect upon our future. If we wait until the moment

of death it will be too late.’

I will not comment extensively about this. Basically the message is ‘let’s go for long term

happiness’.

Exercise:

I want to prepare now for the second part of the afternoon where we will again do some work

in groups. Last time we had the task of seeing how an emotion arises and turns into suffering,

to catch how it builds tension in the mind. Now it would be good if in each group we take the

5 basic afflictions, and see together what purpose they serve, what is the so-called positive

side and to discuss whether they achieve the positive results. I gave a few examples but the

subject is much deeper, so I would like you to have time to discuss it in more depth.

So I would like you to not just look at the afflictions as enemies. They have accompanied us

since birth and maybe longer, so they are not just enemies they have served a purpose in our

lives. Look at their purpose, but also look at what gets lost when I am in that emotion. For

example, when I am in hatred I lose the understanding of the other person. So we have to look

at their benefit but also what it is not possible to experience when these afflictions are present.

There is something which gets lost, which is not accessible at those times. What is nice about

desire, for example, but what gets lost when I am in desire.

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Day 4.a

• Importance of being really motivated.

• Tibetan meaning of klesha and more ‘open’ emotions.

• Sadness and anger and creativity.

• The Skandhas or aggregates and what we call the ‘I’.

• The Four Noble Truths.

As you can see from the thickness of the little book that you have in your hand we are

unlikely to finish this year, so I promise that we will finish, but perhaps next year. Personally

I feel it is very helpful to go slowly, sentence by sentence, and not to leave loose ends and

unclear ideas.

So we are in the first of the five sections. It is the most important one, the one about

abandoning or not getting involved with the emotions. As always the first step is the most

important one because the others cannot be taken without it. This whole first chapter is about

motivating us to really not get involved when an affliction arises, because it will only create

more tension in our mind. We will understand that getting involved with a heavy emotion

actually just makes things worse. When we have integrated this first chapter, we feel highly

motivated to apply the remedies which will be the second step. Our fascination for the

afflictions will be gone. I have to remind you, and I know it for myself as well, we love to be

caught in desire, we love to be angry, we find it so great to have a feeling of pride and when

we experience jealousy we feel we have every reason to be jealous, we don’t really want to

give them up.

When we don’t have them, we think ‘Yes I want to give them up, it would be so nice to be

free of them’, but when I am in it ‘Oh let me continue with my desires!’ When I am angry the

worst thing that can happen to me is that Lodro tells me ‘Lhundrup, you decided not to

become angry anymore!’ I will tell him, or my wisdom voice in the back of my mind: ‘Shut

up, I am right, it has to change and here we go!’ Or when we are angry someone comes and

says ‘Relax!’. Usually when we don’t have these emotions we would say ‘Yes fine’, we want

to lead a relaxed life, but not when we are in it.

So this first step we are in now is about convincing ourselves so deeply that this wisdom

voice will have a chance. It’s all about giving it a chance. The process is usually like this, that

the emotion comes up and the little voice says ‘Watch out, watch out!’ and I get some space,

because I am just listening enough to that little voice of experience which tells me not to

make things worse. So this voice of understanding, wisdom, experience, has to become strong

enough for us to be able to take a little distance and reflect a little bit about what is the most

skilful thing to do in this situation.

The Tibetan word for affliction, this disturbing emotion, is nyön-mong. Nyön means crazy, or

intoxicated and mong means dull or stupid. What we call an affliction is the process of

creating a kind of intoxication, we become crazy. When desire takes hold of us we are crazy: I

am wild with desire and I am also dull, I don’t see clearly any more, and it’s the same for

anger and pride. We don’t see clearly anymore who we are and who the others are. We

exaggerate our own importance. The same with jealousy, we become intoxicated with

jealousy, we don’t see clearly any more, we lose proportion. It’s always the same.

49

When you ask a Tibetan teacher about joy and love and so on, which are also emotions, then

the translator doesn’t even know how to translate it, because it would mean that the questioner

was saying that joy and love are also what makes you crazy and dull, nyön-mong, because

they don’t have a word like our ‘emotions’ which is so general and covers the open states of

mind as well as the wild states of mind. When we say nyön-mong in Tibetan, or klesha in

Sanskrit, it definitely always means something which creates suffering. There is no other

possibility; it means only those emotions that create suffering. So make this very clear in your

minds that when we sometimes talk a little carelessly about emotions, here we mean the

afflictive emotions, those which create suffering. It doesn’t mean the other ones.

Love is an open state of mind not an affliction, but the attachment and desire which can mix

with love are called kleshas or afflictions and this is the source of suffering. We have to be

careful with a word like compassion in English. It means to suffer together, but it is not a

source of suffering. True compassion is just the wish to alleviate suffering. It is an open state

of mind which goes towards alleviating suffering. It doesn’t mean that we suffer at the time,

but if compassion is mixed with personal identification, ‘Oh I feel you suffering, it makes

me…’, then actually it is an expression of stupidity, identification. This is sometimes difficult

to understand. In the last few days we have seen that the common characteristic of all the

afflictions is that there is identification, a feeling of ‘me’ being that state. This identification

you can find in desire, pride, anger, jealousy, fear and guilt and so on. This identification is

like solidifying our inner processes and we get blocked through this. The other feelings,

which are actually aspects of the nature of mind, unblock our stream of awareness, while the

afflictions block the stream of awareness.

Then you have two states of mind which have the same terms. Like for example regret; the

feeling of regretting something that we have done, some harmful action. So this regret can

block or unblock depending on whether it becomes neurotic or whether it is a helpful regret

that takes us out of, for example, an angry state of mind. When I hit someone in anger then I

am identified, and I am sure I am right, and no one is going to change me. I am blocked in my

way of seeing things. Afterwards when I regret it, then I begin to see things differently and it

takes me out of the identification and out of the blockage. But if then due to this regret I

continue to feel guilty, ‘Oh I shouldn’t have done it and so on….’, then again I identify with

what is already in the past, I get blocked and this then is a cause of suffering.

Q: Aren’t joy and love the cause of suffering because they are impermanent?

A: When there is a state of joy and then this changes into a neutral state, the joy itself does not

create suffering, the neutral state also does not create suffering. But if there is someone who

wants to maintain the joy and clings to the joy, then the diminishing of the joy also creates

suffering. So there is not only joy, there is a grasping on to that joy, and that will be the

source of suffering, not the joy itself. This is the same for all open states of mind, love

compassion and so on. If a clinging comes in then what was love becomes a clinging,

grasping, attachment. It’s not the love that is the cause of the suffering, but it is the grasping,

the clinging that goes with it.

Q: What about sadness producing creativity for an artist or crying being purifying for a sad

person?

A: The process of producing creativity out of sadness or crying for a sad person is a process

of letting go, unblocking. This is actually diminishing the original emotion. When you are sad

it’s not an open state of mind, but when you can cry then you can begin to see things

differently. So it is the letting go preceding the crying that ends the sadness, which is felt to be

agreeable. The sadness itself is a state of intense suffering. So you have to really look

50

precisely, because if you mix things up then suddenly you will say anger is the most beautiful

thing in the world because it’s so vital, because it makes you feel so alive.

When I feel sad, and many of us when we are sad, we cannot cry and then someone comes

with a little bit of love, a little bit of understanding and something happens which gets me out

of this slightly blocked and frozen state. Then, because a little bit of openness comes in, a

little bit of movement starts and that allows for the release, and then after that I am not so sad

any more. And then again for some they are sad and they can cry, they can cry for ever, but

there is no release at all, because there is no letting go accompanying the crying. Crying can

also be a process of identifying more and more. So that’s what we have to look for: is that

state of mind we are talking about leading us to less identification, getting us back into the

flow? Or is it blocking us and making us more and more dense, more and more identified? It’s

always the same criterion that you have to look for and then you understand the path of

liberation. The path of liberation means to go towards the flow, towards less identification,

out of the blockages, towards open states of mind. Then you understand what we are talking

about.

One last thing, it is also said that desire and anger make us feel very alive. Is this a criterion

for these afflictions being something positive? It only means that in a state without these

emotions we do not have enough mindfulness to feel how alive we are just now. And we need

the strong emotion to prove to ourselves that we exist and that we are alive, because our

mindfulness is so underdeveloped, so rudimentary, that in a non-excited state we feel a little

bit dead. But when we start to meditate everything comes alive, and we see that simply being

and breathing and just being there is a state of absolute vivacity, liveliness. In our society

there are so many distractions and stimulations available because otherwise, due to this lack

of mindfulness, people don’t feel really alive any more. But instead we should give each other

the capacity, or the possibility to train in the capacity, to feel how alive we are if we are just

sitting, standing, walking, lying. There is such a richness there, such a wealth which we do

not experience consciously any more. – Now we will follow the text.

‘We have seen that we owe all our suffering to our non-virtuous actions. Any action

performed while the mind is influenced by one or other of the five poisons, is

automatically a negative action and will lead to suffering.’

In modern terms, when our mind is under emotional stress all our thoughts, words and actions

will be the expression of that stress.

‘Such actions, motivated by the disturbing emotions, are what we have to abandon. Until

we do we will have to live through the suffering of this present existence. To fully

appreciate this is the first of the four noble truths – the noble truth of suffering.’

In other words until we have found the completely open state of mind we will experience

varying degrees of tension.

‘Because of the persistent tendency we have to cling to the idea of an ego, we consider

our own body with its five psycho-physical constituents as 'ours'. This is our own person,

we identify ourselves with it. This attitude is the cause of our suffering because through

it our mind will be constantly agitated by the emotions and it is precisely these which

cause us to act in a negative way, bringing suffering in its wake.’

I would like to explain to you what the Buddha meant by the five psycho-physical

constituents, the five aggregates, skandhas in Sanskrit. The Buddha was sitting in a forest

which had had some clearing, wood had been cut into pieces and made into piles. Someone

came up to the Buddha and said ‘Venerable one, does the self exist or not? Is there an ‘I’, an

‘ego’, or not?’ The Buddha said ‘Well, it depends how you look at it. It is as much as we can

51

say to say that this heap of wood exists or does not exist. Actually this heap of wood is made

up of many different pieces of wood. The heap itself does not exist. It is just the result of

many other pieces being heaped up together. When you look at each log, each piece of wood,

you see it is comprised of fibres and so on, and nothing of it will last forever. Just leave it out

here in the forest for a few years in the sun and the rain and it will have all disintegrated.

What we call the ‘I’, ‘the person’, is just like that. When I talk about ‘I’, Gautama, the person,

the Buddha, then there is the body, there are the sensations or feelings of the different senses.

Then there are the ‘distinctions’– that means the process of labelling these different

sensations. Then there are these different mental states, and there are different states of

consciousness. When all these 5 aspects of our existence come together we call this a person,

‘me’.

If we go into detail, if you look into each one of the five then they are all made up of so many

different constituents. What we call body is just not a solid entity, the moment we stop

breathing and the heart doesn’t beat, it disintegrates. There is not one thing that will always be

‘that body’. What we call ‘body’ is actually a process of many causes and conditions

producing their effect, and as long as they combine in a particular way we seem to have

something stable, but as soon as one of the causes and conditions changes, it will fall apart.

We have so many sensations: the sensations of touch, the visual sensations, the olfactory

sensations, the auditory, the gustatory sensations and the mental sensations. All of this is a

flux of many, many different experiences that arise due to causes and conditions. So it is not

one thing, my feeling never exists for longer than the moment I experience it, and the next

moment it’s already a different feeling, experience, sensation.

In relation to these different experiences we distinguish, we put labels, we put names. We say

‘This is a bird’, and we develop language. But all these distinctions, these words, are

constantly changing, in constant flux together with the experiences that they are supposed to

describe.

And based on these experiences, sensations and distinctions, then more elaborate experiences

arise: states of happiness, of suffering, virtuous mental states, non- virtuous mental states.

Many, many mental states, which will propel us to act, to think, to speak further in a certain

way. All of this is nothing stable, processes constantly changing depending on causes and

conditions.

Within that we experience different states of consciousness, awareness, because each

experience is actually a moment of being conscious, of being aware. There is the

consciousness of physical sensations, auditory sensations and so on for all the six senses. And

in each of the six senses there are a limitless number of possible experiences that can arise in

any one of those consciousnesses. For example, the faculty of hearing, so many different

hearing experiences can arise.

The Buddha concluded his explanation by saying ‘You see, to call this a stable self actually

makes no sense whatsoever. If however you want to call it a “self” then you have to be aware

that it is a constant process, in constant change, with nothing solid in it. We call it a mind

stream.’ Then the Buddha went on and pointed out how suffering arises due to not knowing

the true nature of these aggregates. When someone hurts your body, or your body falls ill,

then you think: ‘I am attacked, I am sick’, and due to this unnecessary identification, you have

suffering upon suffering, unnecessary suffering. There are already strong sensations in the

body, but then because you identify and think this is ‘me’, and ‘It’s happening to me’, then on

top of that you have more tension and stress. As we live there is a multitude of agreeable and

disagreeable sensations. In the morning the air was fresh, for some this was agreeable for

some it was disagreeable; now it is getting hotter, for some this agreeable, for some it is

52

disagreeable. If we say ‘I am my feelings’ , ‘I don’t like this, I want this’, then on top of the

changing experiences we are creating stress, because we are fighting against the facts of life,

which are change.

Then we create distinctions, labels. We describe experiences, we become attached to ‘my

way’ of describing and distinguishing the experience. And on top of the difficulty of

communicating what we feel, we get attached to the label: ‘This is how it should be seen by

every one else’. More and more stress comes from this. Then we think that we are our states

of mind, ‘I am my joy’, ‘I am my suffering’, ‘I am my sadness’, ‘I am my anger’. And on top

of these identifications arising – already in themselves unnecessary and states of great tension

– then we solidify them even more by saying, ‘This is me, don’t take my anger away’. We

solidify them. We create a lot of unnecessary suffering. What concerns our mind, our

awareness, which goes through all these sorts of different experiences, we would like to

preserve one moment of awareness: this was a joyful moment, this was a happy one, this was

a clear one. Of course we will never be able to produce the result we desire, and we fight

against the natural process. It can be analysed according to these five different categories, but

of course we could use other ones. These five explain quite well what we usually identify

with. – To repeat:

‘This is our own person, we identify ourselves with it. This attitude is the cause of our

suffering because through it our mind will be constantly agitated by the emotions and it

is precisely these which cause us to act in a negative way, bringing suffering in its wake.

Recognition of this fact is the noble truth of the cause of suffering. The five poisons are

the cause of our suffering because it is through them that we commit negative actions.’

The first noble truth is: Yes indeed, in this world there is enormous tension, in my own mind

and everywhere I look there is tension. There is stress.

The second noble truth: All of this stress, this tension, is due to clinging to a self, and this

clinging to the self leads to a way of acting that is highly unskilful and leads to even more

tension.

‘If we were able to put an end to the emotional disturbances in our mind we could then

be free of suffering. This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering (or the noble truth

of Awakening).

By working our way through the different stages of the path taught by the Buddha, we

will finally be able to reach enlightenment, where all opposition (or conflict), the five

emotions included, will be finally overcome. This is (the fourth noble truth), the noble

truth of the path, the path leading us out of suffering.’

We talk about the end of suffering as nirvana; it is a state of peace, the end of conflict,

struggle and tension.

‘We have here in brief the essential points of the first cycle of teaching which the

Buddha Shakyamuni gave at Benares a few days after his enlightenment.’

This was the 4 noble truths and the explanation of the 5 aggregates (the skandhas).

53

Day 4.b

• Complexity of causes and conditions and rebirth.

• Example of Angulimala.

• Facing up to old age sickness and death.

• Taking the doctor’s medicine and changing our way of life.

• ‘Death does not exist’ because of virtuous action and seeing there is no one to die.

The Emotions and Rebirth

‘The text then goes on to explain that if our mind is influenced by the emotion of

desire/attachment then this will eventually lead to rebirth as a hungry ghost; if we have

quite strong anger then we will be reborn in the hells; if our mind is overcome by

ignorance or mental dullness, life as an animal awaits us. Through jealousy we will be

born as a demi-god, whereas pride leads to an existence either as a god or as a human

being. These are no more than general indications relating to very strong emotional

states. It does not mean, for instance, that every time we are angry, we will be born in

hell. The law of karma is a great deal more subtle and complex than that.’

I already explained a couple of days ago about how this process works, with rebirth, I will not

go into detail again. I just want to remind you of the basic mechanism. Those emotional

tendencies that dominate our mind after death will actually be the main causes that lead to a

certain world of projection, which we call hell realm and so on. Karma doesn’t mean just that

‘a’ leads to ‘b’. Because many other causes and conditions come together, a multiplicity of

causes and conditions interact, so that sometimes ‘a’ might not lead to ‘b’ because other

factors come in.

Did I give you the example of the handful of salt in a glass of water? If someone accumulates

a strong unwholesome action, it resembles a handful of salt. When the Buddha gave this

example he asked the monks around him, ‘If I put a handful of salt in a glass of water can you

still drink the water?’ No of course not, it becomes undrinkable. ‘If I put the same handful of

salt in the river Ganges, does the water of the river Ganges become undrinkable?’ No you

would not notice it. If in the same way in the mind-stream of one individual there is a great

deal of wholesome activity and then something harmful is done, it actually doesn’t change

things so much. It’s like the handful of salt in the river Ganges. If a person only has a small

amount of wholesome activity, then the handful of salt changes the overall karma a great deal.

So you cannot say, you killed, so you will go to hell, it doesn’t work like this. If at the

moment of death, the closed state of mind which accompanied the killing is the dominant one

then it will lead to that rebirth. Someone who has killed other human beings in this life, can

even still in this life become completely Awakened. But there must be a complete reversal of

states of mind, not only deep regret, but love and compassion must find their way into the

heart with a genuine attitude of openness. The ego clinging, the identification, has to be

relaxed and overcome. Then Awakening is possible in spite of that very strong negative

action.

This understanding goes back to the fact that one of the disciples of the Buddha was a mass

murderer. He was called Angulimala and had killed over 1,000 people, he even tried to kill

the Buddha. So this is good news! But the work that Angulimala did on himself was really

54

hard work. And even after he finally got Awakened, he got killed by the angry relatives of his

former victims. He did not defend himself, his love, his Awakening was so strong he could

not escape the consequences of his acts but he did not defend himself. Gendun Rinpoche goes

on to explain:

‘It is only if we harbour intense anger over a long period or at a critical time, such as at

the moment of death, that we will fall directly into the hells as a result. In other

circumstances anger might produce rebirth as a demigod, where there is a great deal of

fighting and quarrelling, or we may be born as a human being and find ourselves often

in the midst of conflict. Perhaps we become someone whose anger is quick to appear, or

someone with a very aggressive personality.’

So the outcome accords to which causes and conditions combine.

‘The same thing can be said of all the other emotions. Although each emotion is

predominant in a particular state of existence, as has been explained, we find them all to

a certain extent everywhere.’

So although we say that animals have a predominantly dull state, a limited clarity of mind,

nevertheless they have desire, they have anger they can become jealous and so on. Have you

ever noticed a jealous dog, cat or horse? They are all there, the afflictive states.

‘If we are born in one of the three lower realms – the hells, the realm of the hungry

ghosts or the world of the animals – the torments there are unbearable and go on

without interruption. Even if we are born in the upper realms as a god, demi-god or

human being, we may be happy to a certain extent, but it is temporary. Because of its

impermanent nature, our hard won happiness will sooner or later be replaced by

suffering, a transformation that may take place very quickly.’

The Buddha is basically saying to us: ‘Open up your eyes and look. Yes you can say that life

is beautiful; you can say life is awful. Life is always changing, there are moments of

happiness, there are moments of suffering, nothing will last for ever, and what makes things

change are different causes and conditions.’ You might be in your present state of life, where

you are relatively happy, so the advice is; ‘Know that this will change’. If you are relatively

unhappy, this will also change. If you want to have an influence on how it changes, create the

proper causes and conditions. Practice those qualities that you would like to encounter in

your life and lifetimes further on. Nothing comes without a cause. So to continue reading:

‘We know ourselves that as human beings, we must face the four characteristics of

human suffering: birth, old age, sickness and death, all of this a countless number of

times, without any possibility of liberation from these human pains.’

Again this is just a teaching about rub your eyes and look…you are human, you will die,

before you die there will be some signs of old age and some dysfunctional states will arise.

This is normal and you cannot escape. It actually just means that because you are young,

strong and beautiful now, that this will not last. Take care of what causes you produce now, so

that you will be using your time very well until old age, illness and death come and you are

well prepared for the journey after death. What we need to watch out most for is to not get

involved with these afflictive states of mind which create the suffering. If we get involved

with them, if we follow them, then we will create the causes for our own pain in the future.

That’s why he continues explaining:

‘At the root of all this is the activity of the five afflictive emotions in the mind, which is

why we need to abandon them. If we still need to be convinced we should simply look

around us at the people we know. We can see for ourselves that each person has a

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different emotion predominant in his mind. For some it is the emotion of desire which is

the most active and much of the suffering they have in their lives comes from the actions

performed when motivated by desire. For others their main emotion is anger, for others

still it is jealousy, making each person react in a different way in any given situation.’

It doesn’t mean that one person will be characterised by one emotion, always, for all of their

life, and this is especially untrue for those people who work with their own mind. If we do not

work with our emotions, we will be an easily irritable child, an angry adolescent, an angry

adult and we will die angry! I believe to a certain extent I have worked with my emotions. So

I was an angry adolescent. In my student days I was convinced pride was the dominant

emotion. Then when I became a lama, I discovered jealousy which I hadn’t seen before. And

as a monk I am constantly confronted with desire! I am at a stage in my life now, over 50,

where I think maybe it’s all ignorance! I don’t know if I have purified a lot, but I have seen a

lot. If you can laugh about it everything becomes easier.

‘The reason why as human beings any one of the five principal emotions may

predominate is because of our actions in previous lives. If we have accumulated acts

mainly motivated by anger in the past, we will now find anger the most active form of

emotion in us. The same applies to the other afflictive emotions. Understanding the law

of cause and effect helps us realise why for us some of these emotions are more active

and more powerful then others.’

We call these ‘emotional habits’ or ‘habitual tendencies’. It is like a track which we use very

often and it becomes deeper and deeper and it becomes difficult to get out. The more often we

use the track, the more often we get angry, the easier it is to get angry and the more difficult it

becomes not to get angry. In our society anger plays a great role, but through advertising and

so on it always plays on desire. It is hardly imaginable now that we could live a life free of

desire, we are bombarded and the tendencies are well prepared for us. They want us to get

into those tendencies, because then we become good customers. To develop pride and have

good ambition and rivalry, we are stimulating them so much that now ourselves as adults, we

have difficulty getting away from them and believing that we could lead a life without them.

It’s difficult to imagine, the tendencies are so strong. One time in retreat I was so desperate

with my tendencies, I said to Lama Gendun ‘I try to change so much but it’s so hard to even

move a millimetre’. Lama Gendun said, ‘Lhundrup, you will never make it like this. You are

like a locomotive, you are on a railway track, you are always going in the same direction.

Stop, go backwards, go completely the other way.’

Don’t try to make little adjustments to the samsaric way of functioning. We have to reach the

point of radically cutting this kind of functioning. We have to have such a deep, we say

‘disgust’ in Buddhist language, you know, you feel nauseated, you feel like vomiting when

you see this way of functioning. So you don’t want to make small changes, you really want to

stop functioning like this. It’s like after a big party, a big feast where we were overdoing it,

over-eating and everything, and someone asks us, ‘Want some music, want a beer, want some

Nutella?’ Everything we loved so much before, now that we feel how sick we are we just

want to push it far away. The teaching of the Buddha is about how to party without creating

suffering. This is the teaching of Mahasukha, great bliss, great happiness, in Tibetan

‘Dewachen’. It is about how to find true happiness, which no longer depends on creating

suffering somewhere else, it’s not based on the suffering of others or ourselves, how to find

true happiness in our mind.

‘Whatever our afflictive emotions, it is only through abandoning them that we can avoid

the suffering they cause. The idea of abandoning the afflictive emotions, even if it does

mean also getting rid of the suffering associated with them, is often quite difficult for us

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to accept. The reason for this is that we are motivated by ego-clinging and we find it

unpleasant to listen to words of advice that will diminish the influence of our ego. Only

through keeping such instructions in mind and thinking them over regularly will our

attitudes be gradually transformed by their application and practice.’

Normally what our little ego in here would like is to find that nice true happiness that we keep

talking about, and have even better parties, but not to abandon anything that I like and have

engaged in so far. Like a sick person going to a doctor: the sick person is obviously sick

because of their way of living, and they ask the doctor ‘Please cure me, but don’t ask me to

change anything in my life.’ Here in the teaching we are at the stage of seeking the

consultation with the doctor and he is at the point of telling us: ‘You have to change your way

of life. I will not give you remedies before you agree to change the way you lead your life.’

This consultation has already lasted for 3 1/2 days and Gendun Rinpoche, together with

Karma Chakme is not giving us remedies, he is only giving us the advice: change your

attitude, change your way of life. No talk of remedies yet. ‘First you have to be willing to

change, and when you are ready to change I can give you remedies to go along with that, and

then I am sure they will work.’ I deeply admire how much time Gendun Rinpoche took to

prepare the ground in this teaching. Myself, I would be too quick to jump to the remedies, but

actually he is preparing the ground and without that the remedies will not work. In the Tibetan

text we have done a little more than half a page (out of 6 1/2) in 3 days, but this is the most

important so let’s really take the time to develop it.

‘If when we hear advice we remember only the pleasant bits which seem attractive to us

because they enable us to stay as we are, later on when we try to carry out these isolated

aspects, all that happens is that the ego becomes stronger, because it has chosen the

instructions that accord with what it really wants for itself. We must therefore be

careful not to make this mistake, but accept what the Buddha teaches without making a

personal choice.’

Some of you might remember the Lodjong teaching of the last year. There was one slogan

which said ‘Train impartially in all areas, to make your practice deep and fast’. So this is the

meaning here, not to pick and choose, but to go out and instead of saying ‘I liked what

Lhundrup was saying about the positive emotions, but then he went on about abandoning and

so on, I don’t like that.’ ‘I liked that visualisation of oneself as the deity, but to practice

patience in all situations in my life is too difficult.’ ‘I like the Buddha’s teaching, he is so

precise on the emotions, but what they say about karma doesn’t touch me.’ You recognise

these things? We cannot avoid this way of functioning, but when we notice it we can correct

it.

‘We are apparently quite happy to welcome different ideas which appear when the mind

is stirred by the 5 afflictive emotions. We let our mind easily be taken over by these

emotional states. However when it comes to actually experiencing the suffering that

results in the three lower realms, we are less enthusiastic.’

Have you noticed how easy it is to accept a present which is made to us of something we

really like? We accept with great ease. Have you noticed how difficult it is to pass that present

on to someone else, or to make a similar present? But then when we do it, it brings us true

joy. Because then we can get out of this habitual tendency to cling to a self and we enter into

this open state of generosity and love.

‘Whenever the mind becomes invaded by thoughts related to the five poisons, we should

not just do nothing. Then is the moment to follow the instructions given by the Buddha

Shakyamuni on this subject. The Buddha is the king of all teaching and his instructions

should be thought of as being like the orders of a powerful king, orders which cannot be

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disobeyed without serious consequences. To ignore them will bring down much suffering

upon oneself. If we fail to take the right course of action in the face of the emotions, as

counselled by the Buddha Shakyamuni, we will be born for many hundreds and

thousands of lives in the lower realms, doomed to endure their suffering.’

The example of the king was given by Karma Chakme Rinpoche in the 17th

century. At that

time if you didn’t follow the orders of the king (there was no court or justice, just the orders

of the king), you were immediately imprisoned. The Buddha Shakyamuni is called the king of

the teaching. There is another example, which he used for himself, which is that of a doctor,

and this works quite well. If you meet one of the best doctors or healers and you don’t follow

the advice of that very wise healer, then you create your own suffering, you don’t follow the

advice of the most competent person.

In a way we can just say, ‘Look, these teachings have been tested out for 2500 years and they

have worked on millions of people, they are test-proved. They have not been invented in the

last ten years and just tried out now on us, to see if they work.’ So don’t brush them off too

quickly as unwanted advice. For as many lifetimes as we don’t listen, for the same number of

lifetimes we will continue to operate in the old patterns.

‘The activity of the five emotions must be calmed, and the only way to master these

emotions is through the practice of the Buddha's teaching. Without this, the constant

disturbance of these emotions will continue to cause us to fall into the lower realms

where we have to experience a great deal of suffering throughout many lives as a result.

Once born in this world we know that sooner or later we will have to die. And the

moment of death is not an easy experience to undergo. But if we do not follow the

instructions of the Buddha concerning correct attitudes in the face of the emotions, the

suffering which we have at the moment of death will be multiplied by a factor of a

hundred thousand. By learning to modify our emotional tendencies, however, we will

come to have good ethical conduct. Then, even though we do die, it is as if death does not

exist for us, because at the moment of death we are reborn instantaneously with a fine

body in a very pleasant existence, so avoiding any suffering at the moment of death at

all.’

There are at least two levels of meaning to this paragraph. One is that death will not exist for

us. This is the case if from now on we really work hard on not getting involved in the

emotions and we act in a completely wholesome way; a way that helps everyone. Let’s hope

that we have several years before we die, but we need to build a strong potential of

wholesome actions after the time of death, then we will be accompanied by a very strong

force of all our positive thoughts, word and actions. People who I have seen dying with such a

life behind them were peaceful. They said ‘It was a wonderful life, my mind almost has no

fear’ and they just dissolved, no problem.

And when they come back to consciousness after the separation of body and mind, there is a

continuation of these open states of mind and their rebirth, their new life, will be according to

them. You can say death does not exist for them, it’s like opening and closing a door. It’s not

really something important, you just go through the door into a new situation and carry on

from there. But for someone who has lived his or her whole life full of clinging to self, full of

self-importance, they think: ‘Oh now I have to die, I can’t do anything, I can’t control it, I

don’t know where to go, I am completely agitated.’ Already the thought of death becomes a

major issue, one wants to avoid it but one cannot. Unfortunately those people have quite a

time of struggle. It is very likely that after mind and body have separated and they regain

consciousness then they will continue in the same pattern, ‘Oh I want this, I don’t want this!’

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In their dream-like bardo state they will be dividing and fighting. So this is the first level of

meaning.

The deeper level of meaning for someone who practices selfless activity and also meditation

is that they will come to realise that there is actually ‘no one there’, there is no self, nothing

permanent that goes from one existence to another, and of which we have to take care. This

person will already realise, here and now, that the mind is a flow, open awareness with the

spontaneous play of all these natural qualities: there are qualities, but there is no ‘self’

involved. Such practitioners enter into the ‘timeless’, or ‘deathless’ dimension of being

during this very lifetime. For them death does not exist. It’s just another change out of the

flow. These are the realised practitioners, at different stages of Awakening.

Unclear passage 21.29…

It is not that we remember our unskilful states of mind in the bardo, but it’s just that the

power, the momentum of these strong energies mean that, even at the moment of death, we

are hanging on, we are fighting, we are angry, we cannot forgive our relatives and that will

have a strong influence on what happens after death.

Day 4.c

• Emotional addiction.

• The power of anger.

• Finding skilful means of expression.

• The dangers of dullness.

• Mechanisms of jealousy.

• Seeing people’s deepest potential.

The teaching in the original Tibetan text up to this point was short because Karma Chakme

was speaking to a student who was himself a lama, so he just needed to be reminded very

briefly of these things, and we need more. The lama’s question was that he felt unable to

dissolve the emotions into emptiness. This is why in his response the Tibetan text does not

give so much emphasis to the early stages, but gives more emphasis on the later stages of

knowing the nature of the emotion.

The next section has the title reflections to help us abandon the emotions, but I think we

have already been dealing with this all the time. The next passage is about the vows and

commitments for the engaged practitioners, the commitments of a monk, a Bodhisattva, or a

Vajrayana practitioner.

‘If we abandon our commitments and vows out of attachment for something very

beautiful or attractive, we are just like a moth tempted by the presence of a butter lamp.

Because of its attachment the moth will fall into the flame of the butter lamp and die. If

we allow ourselves to become attached to some pleasant object, we are behaving just like

moths and creating our own demise.’

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Actually this first paragraph compares us to the moth attracted by a flame, and it talks about

our emotional nature as if we were a drug addict. We are so attracted it is almost impossible

to resist. This is a very good comparison. We know how difficult it is even to break smaller

addictions, like smoking tobacco, and heavier addictions like heroin are very difficult, it takes

so much energy to get out. Similar to these addictions, when we are away from the object of

our attraction it is a little easier, we still have strong impulses to deal with but it’s easier, but

when we come close to the possibility of getting something, it becomes almost unbearable. So

when we are sitting here with such a nice group of people and everything is going so

smoothly then we have strong decisions: ‘Yes, I will not get myself overwhelmed with

emotions again.’ But then something goes a little wrong, or we come home, then the work

really starts. So now we prepare. It’s like being on a course for nicotine addicts and you are

being told it causes so many cancers per year, it ruins your health and you look all yellow and

grey. You are bombarded with all these convincing arguments and this is what is happening

now! When you get home you will see if you can manage.

With nicotine there are indeed some people who can stop smoking just like that. Some people

manage, but with emotions, I have not seen a single person. You cannot decide ‘I will not

have this emotion’, it’s an impossible project. What we can do is say ‘I will be as mindful as

possible and as soon as I notice it arising, I will do my best to calm my mind, to get myself

out of the situation and it will be an ongoing process.’ So we are preparing for continuous,

very demanding work which will continue all our life, even if we succeed in some demanding

situation, we will still be caught in others, so we have to have a very long-term vision of

where we want to go. Just like a drug addict or an alcoholic, I will say ‘One day at a time, one

situation after another, I know I have to be very careful for a very long time, but the actual

work is only just now. One thing I should be sure about, and this is the key to success, when I

notice the emotion, then immediately I should apply all I know. When I don’t notice I can’t

do anything, but as soon as I notice, my promise to myself is that I should do everything I

know about.’ So we are like a moth going towards a flame, so now, and then ‘Oh, its getting

hot’ and we just manage to change direction before we get killed.

‘When the mind is invaded by an inert mass of entangled emotions, we may become

attached to the vague feeling of comfort and security that is provided by this state of

mind.’

This is now. We are living in a state of mind where little attachments, prides, aversions,

ignorances are active all the time and this is what we call our normal state of mind. It’s what

we feel to be normal. Actually, it is a mass of emotions which give us a certain feeling of

being at home, of security. But actually since the tendencies of attachment, aversion and so on

are in a latent state and always ready to start off again, we are only living in the illusion of

security. Actually, only a very small situation is needed to spark off the strong emotion. For

example we are sitting here in a relaxed meditation course, sitting outside in the parking lot

and then someone comes by who really doesn’t like the Buddhists and he says ‘ Oh you

stupid Buddhists, what are you doing hanging out doing nothing!’ And the underlying state of

mind which was never gone, it was just in a relaxed state, comes out and we say ‘What are

you saying!’ immediately ... Fortunately our immediate neighbours here like us very much so

you can’t tell, but we can imagine this sort of thing.

‘To immerse oneself in this ordinary feeling of happiness is like spreading hay on top of

a fireplace, the coals of which are still hot, and going to sleep. The hay seems very

comfortable and one enjoys feeling the warmth provided by the dying embers, but once

asleep the hay may suddenly burst into flames and burn us alive.’

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The example is from the 17th

century and goes back to Indian texts which used the same

example around 2,000 years ago. What is meant is that we get into this false sense of security.

For example, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, everything is fine while they are

engaged. Then they get married and think ‘Now it’s fine, now we are together’ and they relax

their mindfulness. And then it happens, a little sharp remark here, a little lack of attention

here, and what was such a nice story turns a little bit sour. We lose our mindfulness when we

think ‘This situation is fine, now this is it.’ We lose that little bit of extra mindfulness that is

needed to really be open, be listening, to be kind, to be attentive – this normal effort. There is

a little effort needed in life to make things work well. The next paragraph is again for the

lama monk who has asked the question, because you are then a monk in a monastery and you

think everything is fine and again you lose this mindfulness.

‘If we forget the commitments we made concerning our attitude to food and drink and

we drink too much alcohol or eat too much meat, the enjoyment one has is said to be like

that of licking honey from a razor blade, fraught with danger since we are quite likely to

cut our tongues.’

Drinking alcohol seems to be a very innocent act, it’s just to be a little lighter and so on, but

actually it puts us in to a state where we have less mindfulness and then other actions which

we might regret might follow. We might get into a fight or say the wrong words and so on, we

might regret it afterwards. Eating meat refers to the fact that this involves killing animals and

we might regret later on that we have accumulated so much indirect karma of being

responsible for the death of so many animals.

‘We may try to suppress powerful enemies by killing them or stealing their possessions,

but we will never succeed in overcoming all of them. On the contrary, we are simply

robbing ourselves of happiness, not for one but for a countless number of lives.’

We are now not living in a time of war and killing enemies, but if you are, for example, the

head of a business and you want to be the biggest one in your town or country and you want

to suppress your rivals, it’s the same attitude. If the motivation is to be the strongest and finish

all my rivals, my competitors, then inside the mind is never at peace. There is always this

ambition and rivalry, and the fear of the competition which will rule my heart. There is no

happiness to be found. If I behave like this for thirty or forty years in one life the tendencies

of ego-centredness, of wanting things for my own profit, become so deep. And the effect of

this will follow me for lifetimes to come.

‘On top of that, the merit accumulated during many lives lived through many hundreds

and thousands of eons can all be destroyed by one single moment of anger. It is therefore

very important to give up the idea of enemies and not think of them as something to be

destroyed or defeated at all costs.’

This is a traditional formula which says that one instant of anger can destroy the positive force

from an incalculable number of lifetimes. What is meant is that there is no greater destructive

force than anger. One might have been friends a whole lifetime but then in one fit of anger

one might say and do such things that all the trust, all the confidence, all the friendship is

over, destroying the force of all the positive contact created through hundreds of thousands of

encounters.

I have had people coming for counselling who did not understand the power of anger. They

say things like ‘But I love her all the time, only sometimes I get angry’ or her saying ‘I love

him so much but sometimes I get angry and now he wants to leave me. Why, when I love him

so much?’ This is because when we are ‘in anger’ we don’t feel the other person any more,

we don’t feel what harm we are creating. We only feel our own indignation and so on, and we

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don’t understand that the other person is so shocked by how we are and what we are saying.

Just look, I have been coming here for four or five years and we have had very nice seminars,

but if I would have a fit of anger now, it would destroy the whole thing, your confidence, our

relationship, everything. It would be a disaster. So the meaning here is be especially careful

with anger, because it is the most destructive of the mental poisons. Many of the world

sayings go something like ‘Rather bite your tongue than say a word of anger’.

Q: If we have quarrels in the Sangha should we also bite our tongue?

A: You could say that we need even more mindfulness with our spiritual friends, but the best

attitude is to consider all people on the planet as your sangha. It is OK to express one’s anger,

just don’t go too far, find the most skilful ways of expressing it. It is better than having it all

inside and being poisoned inside. But find good ways like ‘It makes me so angry…’, and ‘I

cannot handle it’… Shout into the wind on the seashore. But try to talk about yourself, and

not the other person ‘Oh, you did this etc…’ If you can express your discomfort and your

non-agreement, this is already a good start. And then later on you will see you will not need to

express so much. But it’s better to express it in a good way than to keep it inside with it

poisoning your mind. If we could stay respectful of the other person while expressing our

anger, this would be really good, then we have a chance that the other person may understand

why we are angry.

Quite often also you may want to say something to someone who is angry. You have to wait

until they have calmed down and are relaxed. In the past my girlfriends and then later my wife

were very skilful in this. They had to be because I got angry quite a lot. They would say

‘Tilmann,’ (I was called Tilmann) ‘I love you, what I say now is just in order to help you.’ I

couldn’t stand it when they tried to hold my hand. It’s like biter medicine, but somehow it

creates a situation where you can say something and it can be received. Then later on with

their help and the help of other people I got to the point, and this is still true today, that most

of the time criticism is received as a message of love. It’s wonderful if it works like this, if we

can help each other to understand criticism as such as a help, it’s so great if we can do that. So

this is how we have to prepare.

If we get mad at ourselves it comes from the illusion that we can do things well and properly,

and it is a lack of understanding that I am through and through quite stupid. When you have

profoundly accepted that since beginningless time, countless lifetimes in samsara, we have

made one mistake after the other, we will not get mad about these things. This kind of anger is

due to pride and it is only cured when I understand that there is no cause for pride since

beginningless samsara. In other words a Dharma practitioner, a Bodhisattva, knows he or she

will make mistakes. It’s programmed, its unavoidable, there will be mistakes. The only wise

reaction is ‘I will try to do it better next time’. That I get angry about it is just another proof of

my stupidity; it doesn’t help the situation in the least bit. Anger in most cases is a sign of

stupidity; it is a sign of fear. We feel squeezed and incapable of handling the situation better.

So we are not wise enough to know how to deal with it better.

I have to deal a lot with these men in 3 and 6 year retreats, and they always find it is quite a

forgivable little defect of their character that they become angry. They think it is a minor

occurrence and everyone else should get used to it, it’s just like that. But actually the fact of

getting angry again and again is a glaring sign of pride and stupidity and this they don’t want

to see. When they see it, the cure is just at hand, because humility comes. They see ‘I am not

so clever’ (because when we are angry we think we are really quite clever, because we really

see what needs to be changed). Our pride gets a big blow, and then we are receptive to some

help.

OK, then desire.

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‘If a bee becomes attached to the honey that it makes, it sticks to it, cannot get free and

dies. This example shows us what happens if we let ourselves become attached to the

ordinary happiness and contentment of this world, we get stuck to cyclic existence never

to get free again. For this reason we should learn to have few desires and develop the

quality of contentment and be satisfied with what we have.’

The bee produces the honey, we produce good karma, which produces happiness. If we get

attached to that happiness then clinging comes in and we become un-free. To really get free,

whatever good results our practice has, never become attached to them. Always remain free,

always become more mindful and free ourselves progressively more and more.

Q: Is desire just one form of attachment or are they interchangeable?

A: In the Tibetan text the terms are used interchangeably, but in English it seems that

attachment is the most basic term. Attachment is the underlying way of functioning and then

it takes different forms. In the text the terms are used interchangeably.

In Tibetan dzinpa is used for the basic mechanism of attachment, clinging. Döchak means

desire but it can also be used for attachment, and when we talk about one category of the

family of emotions concerned with desire they always use döchak. Actually when we talk

about dzinpa we can say that both anger and pride are a form of attachment, so it’s really the

most basic mechanism.

‘The emotion of ignorance, or mental dullness, shows itself in the form of sleep. Sleep is

something which robs us of our opportunity to engage in virtuous action. Even if we live

for a hundred years, a long life by any standards, about half that time has been spent in

a corpse-like state, a complete waste of time. Traditionally there are some twenty

different faults attributed to sleep, but all of them come down to the fact that when we

are asleep we cannot practise virtue. We should therefore strive to sleep less and apply

more of our time to doing something more positive.’

The advice for the Dharma practitioner is to sleep just as much as is needed to have a rested

body and mind, and not to turn over in bed and continue with longer and longer siestas, just

because we don’t want to engage with the world.

‘Another aspect of mental dullness is that we are unable to distinguish right from

wrong. We confuse completely what is the Buddha's teaching with what is not. This can

lead to us despising the true Dharma and praising what is not authentic. Such a mistake

is said to be compared to someone who has no food, cutting off his tongue. His act is

senseless, he is merely depriving himself of the means to appreciate the taste of food

when he does get some.’

Karma Chakme in this passage is pointing out some of the disadvantages of the main

emotional states. Here his point is that we might think that mental dullness or ignorance is not

causing much harm. The harm which happens is that the mind is not clear and we are not

completely present. We do not completely understand what is being said or explained, and we

come to wrong conclusions. When the mind is clear, very mindful, very present, one can

listen well and retain well what was said, and can come more easily to a proper

understanding. There is a lot of truth in the saying ‘There is nothing more precious than a

clear mind’, because this clear mind is the source of all understanding, understanding oneself,

the world and understanding others. All of this is due to a clear mind. A dull mind will come

to hasty conclusions, and will look at life and say things like ‘Actually everything happens

just by chance, there is no cause and effect, whoever says that this act will have a

consequence later on? Looking just like this everything appears to happen just by chance.’

Things like that will be said and be believed, and one believes it to be true when it is

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completely wrong. With an unclear mind one will think that desire is a quality, and ambition

is a quality, and so on. So the consequences are numerous of this lack of clarity.

Then if it concerns saying wrong things about a true teaching, the Dharma in this context,

then it actually cuts us off from all possibility of spiritual evolution, because we cut all

possibility of learning more. Someone who laughs at the wisdom of this world, there have

been a lot of wise people who have said a lot of wise things, someone who despises them and

laughs about them, without any clarity of mind, it’s like cutting off his own tongue, he will

never be able to receive the spiritual food. Unfortunately sometimes I have heard

conversations which have this really deep energy of ignorance in them, as if one is intoxicated

with one’s own stupidity. But most people, as soon as they relax a little bit, they become more

intelligent.

‘If we listen to teaching on the law of cause and effect, what must be abandoned and

what adopted, the qualities and the faults of different aspects of our daily life, and yet

mistake their real meaning, our views become contrary to those of the Buddha. We

make them into their complete opposite, maintaining that what is not true is true, and

that what is true is not true. If we stubbornly persist in such a misinterpretation, we

accumulate very negative karma which becomes impossible to purify merely by

confession. This is why we cannot allow ourselves to continue being influenced by mental

dullness or stupidity.’

Such misinterpretation or misunderstanding usually comes from incomplete listening. For

example, Lodro, in order to translate has to listen completely to every word and has to retain

it. He cannot allow himself any mental dullness. But some of you might still feel a little tired

and have moments of dullness while listening to the teaching. You catch a few words here

and there and then you combine them. So you catch ‘eating meat’, ‘killing’ and ‘hell realms’

and you come out of the teaching and say ‘Well Lhundrup said that when we eat meat it’s like

killing, and then we end up in the hell realm!’ Lhundrup says ‘Never be content with the fruits

of your practice’ and you retain ‘never be content’. This happens all the time. Our world is

full of such misunderstanding, because of lack of clarity of mind. So the corresponding advice

of all teachers is to polish the mirror of our mind every day: to meditate a little in the

morning, to have a creative break doing nothing, to have a little moment of openness and

meditation at night. Like this.

‘Another emotion we have to deal with is jealousy. It says in the text that if out of a

desire to be the best or the most important we behave in a jealous way towards others,

we run the risk of perhaps denigrating a bodhisattva. There is said to be no worse evil

than this in the universe, the consequences of which are even greater than those which

come from killing a human being. To avoid the possibility of this happening we must

abandon any jealousy we have towards others.’

This is a very condensed passage. First you have to understand the mechanism of jealousy.

This example is based on the wish to be on top. It’s a form of pride, but the one who is not yet

on top wants to be on top. So it can happen to us that we enter a spiritual relationship with a

really saintly spiritual master and our own ambition is so strong that we want to become like

him, and even better than him. Because of this strong tendency to want to be better even than

this person, then very quickly we will start criticising what has been said and imposing our

own views, trying to make us seem more impressive than the person we are learning from.

This happened for example with Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin. He was ordained by the

Buddha and became a member of the Sangha. He learned from the Buddha and all these

mechanisms became very strong in him. In the end he was talking so badly about the Buddha,

his cousin. He convinced 500 monks and proposed his own teaching to them. He had very

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strong fits of anger several times, and when these monks realised that his teachings did not

lead to Awakening and left him, he had a heart attack in a fit of anger. Actually before this he

tried to kill the Buddha with a catapult; he tried to poison him; he had three attempts at trying

to kill the Buddha. He did not succeed in killing the Buddha, who kept his compassion. But

this kind of attitude is talked about as ‘like killing the Buddha’, because by despising this

being you take others away from the possibility of liberation; you are closing the door of

liberation for all those who believe your angry, jealous words.

From the point of view of the path to Awakening, the worst thing one can do is to create

conditions where sentient beings don’t have the possibility of Awakening any more. In that

sense it is said to be more harmful that killing a human being. The text also uses the example

of Devadatta, 2500 years ago, but it is not at all something which only happened in the far

distant past. If you look at the schisms in spiritual traditions, there is always the emotion of

jealousy present. There is a sort of obligation arising from that emotional state, to talk badly

about the other person. When one understands the mechanism then one can recognise

someone who is badmouthing people who are trying to do good. If their motivation is not

clear, they might indeed be talking out of jealousy. When one religion is talking badly about

another, have a good look, maybe it is due to the energy of jealousy.

‘Someone who takes monastic vows may develop pride by congratulating himself on

being pure and virtuous, someone special, far better than the ordinary person who still

clings to worldly ideas of riches and wealth. Anyone with this feeling of superiority will

make all his own virtuous conduct impure’.

Is it not maybe already happening to us, that because we are following a spiritual path, going

to Buddhist teachings, doing a little bit of yoga, then we feel a little bit better than the others?

If that’s not the case, that’s wonderful; if it is the case it’s normal, but has to be changed.

When we do something which is good for us, somehow the result is that we think that

everyone else should also do it. And because we do it and the others don’t do it we feel better.

and they should learn from our example!

‘When we take vows and become part of the monastic order, the only thought in our

mind should be to follow joyfully in the steps of the Buddha. It should not be with the

intention of becoming better or more pure than others. Anyone who wears the monastic

robes becomes part of the Sangha, the third of the Three Jewels. We should never look

down on such a person, because although their conduct may not be outwardly perfect,

we cannot see into them and really understand their motivation or their state of mind.

The same applies to practitioners or indeed anyone else.’

So here this last point is do not judge others. We never know what is going on in other

people’s minds, as long as we can’t read their minds. We don’t know their motivation. We

can see their outer actions, but we cannot be so sure about their motivation. And this applies

not only to people with spiritual authority, lamas, monks and so on, just as we don’t jump to

hasty conclusions when we observe how spiritual teachers behave, we should do the same

with everyone else.

‘Instead, develop a pure vision, a sincere understanding that all living beings have the

Buddha nature. There is no reason to despise any living being and to think of it as

worthless. Even the tiniest insect has the Buddha nature and one day will become

enlightened. It is important to train oneself constantly in this untainted vision that

deeply respects other living beings.’

When we look at each other, can we see the Buddha nature, the potential to awaken? Not so

easy, huh? We can see in our mind the potential for more open states of mind and also the

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potential to close. When we say ‘Keep the vision of the other persons Buddha nature’, it

means see their best potential, that highest possibility of development. When we talk to

others, let’s talk to that deepest aspect of them. Let’s always encourage that. That person

might feel very confused right now, but if we talk to their inner wisdom we can do so much

better. When we relate to the qualities of love, compassion and generosity in others, it

becomes a very natural thing to do. Normally we always relate to their desire, jealousy and

competitiveness and so on. It is so beneficial that it transforms all our relationships into

healing relationships, because as we look at each other, we don’t fix each other in our

emotional states, we support each others’ deepest potential.

‘Generally speaking, we would do well to cultivate a view of ourselves that considers

ourselves inferior to all other living beings. In this way we will never be prey to feelings

of pride or jealousy.’

In other words, let’s always have the attitude that we can learn from other people that we are

open to whatever they can share with us and we are serving them.

‘These reflections are designed to encourage us to abandon the five poisons and they

bring us to the end of the section on abandoning the emotions. The methods outlined in

this part are used principally in the sravaka tradition, the tradition of the Hearers (close

disciples of the Buddha).’

Day 5.a

• Being able to direct the mind, not stuck in emotional reaction.

• Meditation helps constructive thinking.

• Noticing habits even though we can’t yet change them increases spiritual force.

• Getting used to using remedies to stimulate qualities that overcome the afflictions

• Desire – balancing up attraction to the body.

• Buddha’s 4 sights, waking up from the dream.

• Guided meditation on death

‘Our readiness to let go of the afflictive emotions and the introduction of spaciousness

and flexibility into the emotional event are the main qualities that result from the

practice of abandoning them. This prepares the arena of the mind for the battle that is

about to begin.’

Imagine that we were able to apply everything we have learned over the last 4 days. This

would have the effect, and maybe to a certain extent already does have the effect to some

extent in our minds, that we really feel we don’t want to get involved with the afflictions and

we have found some more space. We see more clearly what is going on, so we are not stuck

in them. In that more spacious awareness, because it’s not stuck so much any more, our mind

has become more flexible. This flexibility now allows us to direct our mind where we want it

to stay. If we cannot direct our mind where we want, it means some affliction is present. Do

you understand the principle here? If now I say ‘I want to meditate on impermanence, or I

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want to visualise the Buddha, or I want to think of my mother,’ is my mind flexible enough to

follow that?

If we cannot place our attention where we want, it is a sure indicator of the presence of

afflictions. The most important one will be dullness of mind, the klesha of ignorance, but it

can also be resistance, due to clinging to something else, but it could also be pride, there can

be other blockages which get involved. The Dharma practitioner, through more and more

relaxation in meditation, finds more and more faith and fluidity in the mind, and can direct the

mind where they want. If this is not possible it means we are limited in our usage of our mind.

We cannot use the tool of our attention, our mindfulness, in the way we would like. It’s like

riding a stubborn donkey. We want to go on but he wants to stop; we want to turn right but he

wants to turn left. This is not very practical, and it limits our ability to learn from this life.

Because of a lack of spaciousness and flexibility, we have to follow the inclinations of ego-

clinging, we are stuck in these inclinations of ego-clinging.

But look, this morning when you did the meditation, you just sat down, looked a little at the

body, got in touch with change and impermanence. And then I guess that most or all of us

were able to do a guided meditation of going back into how we probably were when we were

born, and going ahead to death, and seeing how our body decays after death. We had enough

flexibility to go through the different processes. So this was possible, but it was a guided

contemplation. We need to develop the capacity to do this all on our own.

This capacity to place the mind on a certain contemplation is the same capacity that allows us

to solve problems in our life. I have a problem in my life, for example I want to sell my

parents’ apartment, but I don’t know how to do it. I place my mind on the question: who

should I contact, what should I do, what are the advantages and disadvantages? My mind

stays there until I have reached the limits of what I am able to do right now, but it was a very

constructive way of thinking. A mind which is constantly torn in different directions, stuck in

the afflictions, can only think for a very short moment and then something else will arise. One

has to find a way back and it’s all bits and pieces, not cohesive, constructive thinking. The

purpose of the practice of mental calm, ‘shine’, calm abiding, is to create the space and the

non-distraction that allows for constructive thinking, or for completely relaxing the mind.

Many people think that meditation is only for relaxation and to find that space, but this is only

the first step in meditation. When you find that space and the flexibility of mind then you

encounter the natural dynamic of mind, that the mind is active. And this activity, this

creativity of mind, should be directed to something really beneficial. When our mind is tired

and overworked, we are also quickly overwhelmed by the creative visualisations and the

active meditations and we just want peace, space and calm. It’s like you have worked a lot for

a whole year up to the end of June and then July comes, vacation time, and you just want to

relax, for a few days just lie on the beach, please don’t even talk to me. You can massage my

feet and give me kisses but not too much. But when you have been on vacation long enough,

then you notice that an activity comes, dynamism, you want to do things, you want to explore:

relationships, the environment. You want to do things and learn more. This is the 2nd

phase of

meditation, the phase where we develop wisdom. First it’s like contemplation and then more

like meditation, in order to learn more about the reality of things.

If we try to do that when we are not relaxed, when we haven’t tasted that sort of vacation

mind, then very often these kinds of meditations are too much of a burden. So what we do

then is a little bit of these contemplative meditations until a certain understanding has arisen,

and then again we need to rest and give a vacation to the mind, we need to alternate these

ways of working. So whenever our mind feels tired or gets too irritated, we just relax and give

it space and when it feels fresh we look a little into the nature of reality. Then comes the 3rd

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phase of meditation, which in our tradition we call Mahamudra. It is not really something

new, it is just that the mind does not get tense any more when you give it a task. The mind

keeps the spaciousness, while being engaged in activity. It’s like being able to be active and

on vacation at the same time. It is also called the union of shine and lhaktong, meditative calm

and intuitive insight. When this spacious, free activity becomes truly free of all clinging to

self, then we call this Awakened activity. When realised masters have reached that state they

don’t even need to meditate any more, there is no more difference between meditation and

activity.

So this was a little outline of the path. To come back to where we were, we have created a

little space in the mind. If we feel desire, anger and jealousy and so on, we try to find some

space, not get too stuck to the emotion. In that space we remember what we actually want to

do with our mind. Let’s listen to Lama Gendun explain the next steps.

‘When we first become interested in spiritual things, we discover to our disappointment

that although we feel attracted to certain ideals, we have great difficulty in remaining

faithful to them. This is due to the overwhelming influence that our 'natural' tendencies

have on us.’

These spiritual ideals that we talk about are for example, the idea of non-violence, or the ideal

of loving others, of being kind. Every mother, every father, every partner wants to be kind;

this is our ideal, and then when the situation arises we cannot remain true to our ideals, we

behave differently.

‘We find ourselves behaving badly, despite our good intentions. It is only as the habit of

doing good grows as strong as and even stronger than the habit of doing evil, that our

new-found spiritual force starts to make itself felt.’

If we have the strong tendency to pride for example, we are already fortunate if we notice it,

and then we may want to cultivate more of a spirit of equality, but the wish to cultivate this

will not immediately have the desired effect. We will find ourselves again and again acting

out of pride and only after the situation will we say: ‘Oh again, how did I behave last night at

the party?’ This might go on for a while, that we only catch our emotions afterwards, and we

will be very disappointed that we just don’t manage to diminish the emotion while it is going

on. But during all this time our spiritual strength is growing, because we look at the problem,

we reflect on it. And we begin to find at least afterwards, some means, maybe making some

excuses or becoming a little bit more relaxed about ourselves. So slowly, slowly our force is

growing, while we never really succeed in applying it at the very moment it happens. It is a

period of our lives where we make wishes, we ask others for support, we make a lot of

prayers: ‘May I find the clarity of mind, the presence and the strength to notice when it

happens and to change it immediately.’

Then one day it will happen. We are again out in the evening with friends, we tell a joke and

in the middle of telling a joke we notice ‘Oh this is pride telling the joke’, and we tell the joke

a little bit differently. Or we notice ‘Ah this is desire talking’ and I bring in more love, more

kindness and it goes differently. Or we feel ‘Oh I am angry. No, I won’t say this because it

will hurt the other person, I will say it differently’. Or I hear the others laughing and I feel so

alone, and there is a little feeling of jealousy coming in and I remember, ‘Oh let them be

happy, may they be happy!’

Such situations happen when our spiritual force has become equal or a little bit stronger than

the emotion. Our wishes start to come true a little, but then we must not be disappointed when

we don’t have the same mastery of every situation. We should continue training until the habit

of thinking in these new ways becomes very strong and very natural. Then we will notice that

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in general we can speak or behave like this, but sometimes there are some exceptions where

we still slide into the afflictions. Then we should continue with the practice. We should not

say to ourselves, ‘Oh this is already much better than most people, this is enough’. It’s like

leaving a little bit of poison in the system; from this it can all come back again. We really

have to cure our illness, profoundly and completely. So now we will get to know some

remedies which will help with the cure.

‘It is at this point that our inner qualities have the capacity to influence the emotions as

they appear in our mind. Just like an antidote taken for poison, such qualities can

modify the effects of the emotions. The more powerful the antidote, the more convincing

will be the dispersal of the poison.’

It is about qualities, each remedy stimulates certain qualities.

‘At first we must deliberately cultivate these qualities, since they are far from natural to

our self-centred existence. But with time and patience, they become so unassailable that

they win through every time in the face of our afflictive emotions.’

Remember the Lojong teachings? This is where it says that you become like a horseback rider

who can continue riding even while asleep and not fall off the horse. Like the Tibetan

horseback riders who had to travel long distances, they needed to sleep sometimes and the

horse found its own way. So there is this reflex to straighten up in the saddle when you are

about to fall; in the same way there is this reflex to find your way back into Bodhicitta, when

you are about to fall into ego-clinging. But you have to do a lot of horseback riding before

you are able to do that!

‘Chakme Rinpoche tells us what specific qualities are most effective in counteracting

each of the five principal afflictive emotions. Once the antidote is known, it is left to us to

manufacture and administer it. This second section deals with how to discipline the

emotions through the application of the appropriate remedies.’

The remedies given here are like preliminaries, you can get to know them so well that you can

play with them, they become completely natural. In the beginning the suggested remedies

might seem very far away from us, even opposite to our normal way of functioning. But that’s

what a remedy should be – it should be opposite to our way of functioning. That makes us

think. It should have the force to balance a strong imbalance. So for example I have a strong

belief in ‘me’ being just like this.

So this morning we meditated on change, how from an embryo we become a baby and then an

adult, we grow older until we cannot walk up the stairs any more until we take our last breath

and the body decays. This is a remedy for the belief in solidity. When the remedy has had its

effect what do we do? We don’t take it any longer, but when the imbalance comes back we

use it again. When I feel in myself, that I am caught in the belief that I will remain strong and

healthy for ever, then I had better do this kind of meditation. Then it is very good to look at

my father, to look at him and see what state he is in now. We are genetically very, very close.

I even resemble him very much. Then I can say, ‘OK, this is probably how it’s going to be in

thirty-five years.’ Look at your mother, look at your father and you can get some idea of how

it is going to be for you. Look at your grandparents, most of them may not be alive any more;

this is what will happen to us. – Now let’s look at the remedies. First desire:

‘We may develop great desire for a particular man or woman, someone so good looking

that we feel attracted as soon as we see them.’

This is now talking about physical attraction, attraction to the body.

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‘Let us take a look at the exact nature of the person to whom we are attached. In reality,

although he or she may be outwardly very pleasant to look at, inside them are lots of

unpleasant substances. The person is like a golden vase filled with such things as urine

and excrement. The body is nothing more than a sack filled with the traditional list of

thirty-two filthy substances. The upper body is full of blood, pus and brain fluid; the

lower body is full of urine and excrement, bile and lymph’

‘Oh my God!’ – But then God made us, he is responsible, he put all these things in! I don’t

know what he did but he even put this hair in men’s skin which grows all over, and if you

don’t cut it after a while you can’t see anything any longer! I think we should make a

complaint to God – please make a better model – why did you make us of flesh and blood?

Couldn’t you just leave us with our light bodies, that was much nicer?’ and God will say ‘It’s

not my fault. You wanted this, you wanted so much to touch and feel! I gave you light-nectar

to eat and drink and you wanted solid things – the more solid it became the happier you were.

I am not responsible, its your karma! – So we had blood, pus, bile, brain fluid, urine.

‘If one really looks at the person as he really is, one can wonder what in fact one finds so

attractive about him.’

More realistically we can think about relationships we have had – how does our beloved

partner look when he or she has a cold, a headache, the morning after the party, how does it

smell when they have been on the toilet. Just look at it. This is to balance our one-sided view

of reality. These are the facts of life. What happens to this beautiful body, when the person

gets allergies or pimples on the face, eczema, skin cancer? So this is a remedy for desire for

the body. It makes it clear to us that desire for a beautiful body is a big, big illusion. When

you enter into the experience of the woman or man with the beautiful body, you can see all

the difficulties and the stress that result from that. I have so many beautiful women come to

me and say, ‘You know I am never sure whether men stay with me for my beauty, which is

impermanent, or because they like me.’ Men in the fitness studio, doing whatever they can to

make themselves more beautiful, stronger and not to age and when they reach my age, in their

50s, then things can get really tough in life, how to appear young? It’s just not possible. So

this example comes from the Buddha who made a whole list of 32 substances of the body for

us to meditate on, to get away from our attraction to the body. It does not mean to go into a

disliking of the body, this is not the meaning here, just a balanced view. Nice, but also not so

attractive, changing.

‘The body also houses 84,000 worms (let’s say bacteria) which are working constantly to

destroy the body. When we feel attracted to someone who is in the process of being eaten

up by worms and parasites, aren't we making a grave mistake? This reflexion is termed

the deep contemplation of the body's impurities.’

Or you could say the non-attractive nature of the body. When we become familiar with this

kind of contemplation, we will just have a balanced view: ‘Yes, the body is composed of

different minerals and elements. It needs bacteria to digest, and the same bacteria will also

destroy the body, once the blood stops circulating and the breath stops. We come to a really

sober look at reality. As soon as we stop drinking, eating, breathing, things finish very

quickly; we wake up from a dream. If we were in a dream of making beauty a very high

priority in our life, then from this dream of beauty we wake up thanks to these kinds of

contemplations. Those who have understood this will be able to say to their partner ‘I love

your wrinkles!’ and they will say to their husband, ‘ I like it when you are weak!’ We can

help each other to get away from the struggle to maintain something which cannot be

maintained.

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‘When someone dies and his corpse is laid out to be eaten up by wild vultures, the

skeleton is very clear for us to see. We find it horrifying and shy away from it. Yet this

same skeleton is inside the body when we are alive, in our own body and that of others.

If we ponder this carefully, we will not develop desire and attachment for this skeleton

cloaked with the various other parts of the living body.’

In the legend about the Buddha’s life it is said that his decision to leave the palace occurred

after a big party at the palace. His father had arranged everything over weeks and months,

there were the most beautiful women, artists and musicians, men and women, partying

without end….The father would have liked him to enter into the dream of desire and be

caught in it. However he could not avoid his son waking at night to see all these beautiful

dancers and seductive women and musicians, lying all over the place and snoring, not very

attractive in their complete stupor, after having drunk so much alcohol. It is a legendary

teaching about how he woke from the dream. He sobered up and was not drunk anymore and

he searched for a spiritual path. Also in the legend it says that his father did not allow any sick

or very old person to come close to him. But the young prince was curious and went out in his

chariot wanting to discover the country. The king could not avoid him meeting illness, and he

also saw funeral pyres and many old men, and finally he also met a man who showed him that

there was a spiritual path. We don’t know if it really happened like this, but one thing is for

sure, this understanding motivated the Buddha to go on his spiritual search. The same

understanding is now being shared with us. We are going through the same steps.

‘We can also imagine that before our eyes is the corpse of our beloved, so riddled with

worms that the flesh is crawling with them.’

Some people might feel that this is an insult to my beloved partner to visualise them like this.

No, it is not an insult, it is the reality of what will happen immediately if we fall dead now and

the body lies out there.

‘We can imagine several corpses in various stages of decomposition, some of which have

just died, others already partially decomposed and giving off a terrible smell.’

If you don’t do anything to a normal body it starts smelling horrible after 3 days. This is why

we put them on refrigerated beds and give them injections of formalin and so on, because

otherwise all the relatives would run away.

‘We can meditate on a skeleton which no longer has any flesh on it, the wide open

sockets of its eyes completely empty. Mentally we multiply the number of corpses over

and over again, until the whole area in front of us is covered in dead bodies. It is

important to carry out such visualisations with meticulous detail.’

If we have resistance to carrying out these visualisations in detail, this means we want to hold

on to our dream. Let’s take a little moment to do this visualisation. I would like us to sit in a

kind of circle.

Meditation

….Have a good look around and look at everyone, how we are just now, their physical

appearance, young, old, just now. Imagine that we are sitting in this circle 10 years from now,

we are still all alive. Look around and make everyone 10 years older. Now we take another

step – we will all become 85 years old. All these old friends…. Then imagine that one after

the other, we die. Slip away, the body just lies down, nothing spectacular. The bodies are left

as they are, our mind-streams continue their journey. 20 years later, someone comes back

here, and looks at what is left. The skeletons lying in their places, all flesh has gone. Some

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skeletons are larger, some are smaller, but the differences between our beauty, strength and

health are all gone… And then we all decide to come back, the skeletons begin to live again

and have flesh on the bodies….. And we resume the dance which we call the dance of this

life. We look at each other and wish each other ‘Dance well!’…. ‘Make this dance a dance of

Awakening’. You see, it’s not so terrible, its just a change of perspective. If we do it every

day, our clinging to physical existence will get less.

We have 4 thoughts with which we start the day. The first one is the preciousness of human

existence. The second one is impermanence and death; this is where we meditate on things

like this. The third one is cause and effect, the result of our actions, which means how to

dance. The fourth one is the nature of this entire world which is ego-centred, samsara, is

attached to suffering and stress, and how to get out of that stress. If you want to learn more

about these four meditations, see any one of the Dharma teachers and make this your daily

practice.

Q: We become what we think?

A: Many people have tried to think themselves young or beautiful without success. I hope we

will be vital till the very last moment, but some of us will die by accident or with cancer.

When we say ‘We become what we think’, we mean that if we think always in terms of desire

or anger then our whole character develops along these lines. Even after death it continues.

Sometimes we find young teachers of New Age movements who say things like ‘We can stop

becoming sick or getting old.’ But when you see these same teachers 20 or 30 years later, they

have stopped teaching! There are possibilities to prolong life, to contact deep vital energy, but

look at the billions of people on this planet who don’t want to die, but have to.

So ‘We become what we think’ is meant on the level of the causes that we plant. Each

emotional tendency or each strong thought, we will feel its effects. How we thought will have

its effect. For example, I can think about becoming the president of the country many, many

times, and I might think that thinking like this is a cause, planting a seed that will ripen as

actually becoming the president. When I think like this these are thoughts full of ambition and

desire, and I am planting the seed for functioning with a lot of ambition and desire and not for

becoming the president of the country. There is a certain power to thoughts, but it is not that

we can create exactly the specific result we want. I think it was the coach of Bayern Munich,

who put Buddhas everywhere in the training centre and made them all meditate and collect

their minds in a forced way. They lost all their games after that, and it was only when they

fired the coach that they could win the championship.

So if we have a trained mind we can concentrate our mind on one goal. If a person who has

sufficient karma concentrates, like Sarkozy in France, he concentrated for 20 years on

becoming the president of the country, all his endeavours were focused on that and he had the

skill and the karma and he managed. But if you don’t have the karma and you don’t have the

capacity to hold your mind on that, you won’t obtain the result. But the teaching of karma

does not end there, because in the end he is motivated by a great desire of becoming powerful

and well known and so on, and these efforts which he made and is continuing to make, will

continue to have their effects even after he is not president any more. He will become what he

is creating, someone who has difficulty accepting defeat and who becomes upset when he is

not popular any more. If someone fills their mind with wanting to be young and have great

vitality, the moment when illness strikes will be so much harder. So my conclusion is use

every possibility you have to do good to your body and your mind and to others. And this will

help you practice, if you are relatively free-flowing and in good health and things will go

well, but without clinging. So OK, I am a Dharma teacher, but maybe next year I have to cope

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with the news that I have cancer. So just keep it open, don’t think that because you are a

Dharma practitioner you won’t develop cancer, it won’t happen to you, this is a wrong belief.

Day 5.b

• Careful application of the remedy for desire.

• Do Awakened beings have the same bodies as us? Energy bodies versus substantial

bodies.

• Can Awakened beings take on the karma of others?

• Helping relatives after death.

• Consequences of suicide.

• Contemplating the contents of the body.

With the series of visualisations, the different versions, we can combine them and make use

of them as we find most helpful. I will read through the remaining passages on desire and then

everyone can go and do these meditations. But first questions:

Q: Does the soul decide the right moment to die?

A: A North American chief says ‘Now it is time for me to die. He goes hunting but doesn’t

die, so he comes back and says ‘OK, now it’s time to live!’ It is possible just to decide that

you don’t want to live any more and then just die. In any case if we want to we could just kill

ourselves. But in the normal course of events our life force comes to an end. Maybe an illness

appears, there is no treatment; or an accident, it just happens. From the point of view of

karma, the effects of those actions which have not ripened in this life will ripen in the next.

Maybe not immediately the next but one of the next…

The antidote for attachment can lead to detachment, but for some people it’s not the best

remedy to use right now. The human mind is so complicated and some people reject their

bodies so much that if they misunderstand this exercise, they could even reject their body or

other bodies even more. There are other teachings, for example to see our body as the palace

of the deities. Like the place where all the dakinis dance, but the very same people who are

really into desire love this visualisation, because they don’t have to correct anything about

their attachment to the body. So this beautiful visualisation about the palace of the deities is

also not good for everyone, it can also increase pride and desire. Every remedy has its purpose

and the right place to be applied, just like a medicine. So this here is the remedy for desire for

a beautiful person, like when one sees a film, advertising, or a beautiful person walking by,

and just the sheer presence of the beautiful body already creates great attachment. This is how

it was introduced and this is what the first sentence said, and what you have to keep in mind.

Many of us have this reaction towards a beautiful woman or man, but our relationship to our

own body is quite different. We maybe have a quite conflicted relationship with our own

body. So when we learn these remedies, we try out all of them, some we will keep, because

we can feel the good effect and others we won’t use so often. Unfortunately if you let the

patient decide his own remedy often they don’t go for the right one, sometimes yes,

sometimes no.

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These remedies here work on a number of levels, one is that they show us impermanence.

They show us the inevitability of death, what appears to be beautiful on closer looking it is

not beautiful right the way through. For example, it is made clear that there is a form to which

we are attracted, but the substances which have made this form are not so desirable. If I meet

a person, which can be quite often, who has a real distaste for their own body and the body of

others, then we have to teach about how this body is a wonderful precious tool with which

one can reach Awakening and help others, through which one can have all these experiences

which allow one to understand the nature of reality, and so on…

It’s different in the West. In the East it’s normal to see a dead body, but here we are not used

to seeing such things, this is why it’s all the more necessary to talk about it. Our lives have

become so artificial that we are not in close enough contact with illness, old age and death.

Although I tried to introduce this passage in a way that you could follow easily, I knew that it

might be a little difficult. It’s normal that when you go with this kind of teaching to most

people it creates a very strong reaction.

In my first year of training as a doctor, we spent the first 6 months dissecting the body of a

woman. There were 10 groups of 10 students, each group with a corpse. When we started, the

bodies (which were in formalin) were whole, and just like a naked person. Then we dissected

it and learned about the arteries, the veins, the bones, the muscles, and in the end only bones

were left. Then we also opened the bones, the brain, the spinal column, everything. So that

was a very strong experience for these young people. I would wish that everyone could have

this experience. It was a very helpful experience, it teaches us about the nature of the human

body. I am very thankful to those people who give their bodies to medical science.

For those who do not have this experience, we have to imagine doing it. We know enough.

We have photos. We have seen a pig or a cow; you know, it’s not much different in humans.

You might feel a little shocked, ‘What are you saying, not much different from a pig or a

cow’. But I am sorry it’s not much different! The similarity is so close that you can even

transplant organs from a pig into a human body. I am actually continuing with the remedy! I

could continue for a long time, but I don’t want to make you all upset or unhappy. When we

take each other into our arms and hug each other, we can do it fully knowing the nature of the

human body. Especially those who don’t want to do this exercise, then it is probably exactly

what they need to do. The body of the Buddha and all other Awakened masters had that same

nature. In terms of energy it’s a different matter, because the mind that inhabited that body

was a completely free and loving mind. But from the point of view of substance it was still

the same body.

It is true that Awakened masters don’t fall ill so often because their mind and energies are

flowing so harmoniously, this has a great beneficial effect on the body. Gendun Rinpoche did

not even know what fever was until the age of 50; he had never experienced a single moment

of fever. But when he moved from where he was born at a 5,000 meter altitude, down to the

jungles and heat of Sikkim, he got malaria. There is no such miracle that when you are an

Awakened person, mosquitoes will not bite you. When you are in certain states of absorption,

yes, then you can have an energy field around you and the mosquitoes do not approach. But

when you are in activity and you take care of others, you are just like a normal being. I have

been the doctor of a few Tibetan Rinpoches, high lamas, and on the level of the body they just

have to receive the same advice and the same treatment as others. Yet on the level of their

practice they visualise themselves and others constantly with a body of light and they know

the energy nature of the body. This is not lacking, this level of visualisation is constant.

There are some teachers, Jigme Rinpoche has seen one of them dying, who display a

phenomena called ‘rainbow body’. Such masters enter into an absorption at the moment of

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death, and normally you should not disturb this process for 7 days. And all of the parts of the

body which are still ‘alive’, still circulated with subtle energies, dissolve into light. Only the

nails which have already grown out and the hair remain. The whole of the rest of the body,

including the bones, dissolves into light. Jigme Rinpoche as a tulku child was taken to see

such a master and was there when they opened the tent after 7 days, and he saw that there

were only the nails and the hair. This indicates that our true nature is actually of the nature of

light or energy.

There are other people. I personally know people who in deep meditation did not have to

breathe any more; no need for outer breathing, it completely stopped. This state can last for as

long as the meditation lasts. Not only is there no damage to the body, but when one comes

back from the meditation, it happens very slowly, one is not gasping for air. This also

indicates that our body is actually animated by the circulation of energy and does not depend

completely on physical breathing and food. So knowing this, and all the many energetic

phenomena that occur when you give homeopathic or other energetic treatments, and how

thought affects the body and so on, knowing all this then nevertheless we have to accept that

as long as we have not reached this extremely high level of realisation we have to deal with

the realities of this body.

The problem with our spiritual path is that we know such things, and it’s good to know them,

but then we think that we have to apply them to ourselves, and we just have too much

grasping in our minds so it does not work. We cannot say that it is wrong that this body is just

energy, it’s completely true, but if the conclusion is that we don’t have to take care of the

substantial aspects of the body then we really get lopsided, unbalanced. Each one according to

his capacity.

Living without food – yogis in the world are living like this. There is one in a hospital in India

being keep in seclusion because they want to check there is no cheating going on! I would say

that it’s more important to live without afflictions than to live without food.

From the time when the 16th

Karmapa was in the hospital in Chicago, he had three different

kinds of cancer and other illnesses, but he absolutely didn’t need any pain killers. His mind

was happy and free, to the point where the doctors and nurses who were looking after him

always wanted to go into his room, and they took refuge with him. This example of having

the mind completely open and luminous, while all this was manifesting in the body, continues

to this day. That is so wonderful. He died in 1981, and we still remember today that it is

possible to die completely free, while all of this is happening in the body. Maybe that was part

of the purpose.

Q: A question about taking on the karma of others.

A: Maybe this is a little bit of a loose way of talking, that Awakened beings can take on the

karma of others. Actually what it probably means is that it’s possible to create a situation

where sentient beings can more easily work through their karma. If Awakened masters were

able to take on the karma of other beings, because of their compassion they would do it all the

time and thus liberate countless beings, which means they could establish them in

Awakening. If there is no more karma, cause and effect, or dualistic action, then there is

liberation, so they would be able to establish others in Awakening. That is not possible,

otherwise they would just establish others in Awakening. What is possible is that, for

example, someone here in the room was full of love and understanding and would make the

wish ‘May I take on others’ karma.’ Its not really being able to take on the karma. This wish

crates a situation where the atmosphere or energy for everyone else in the room becomes so

much more loving and open, that things go so much easier, inner development is much easier.

So one could think that someone who wishes to work with this incredible fear of cancer, the

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energy of cancer, a great being might make the wish, ‘May it come to me and may I work

through it, so that it becomes easier for everyone else to work through it.’ For example, we

can imagine that the Karmapa made the wish that ‘These present-day problems of cancer, or

Aids everywhere, may it come to me. May I work through it in my own organism and make it

easier for everyone else to work through’.

So this is the normal understanding and then, indeed, where there is a very close connection

between people then a phenomenon can happen where a mother, for example, can take an

illness from her child and live it through, and the child is free of that. It’s possible, it can

happen sometimes. One colleague on the retreat of Gendun Rinpoche, Lama Ngawang,

recounted the story of when one of Gendun Rinpoche’s benefactors was very ill and the

doctors in Tibet could not help him. He had big blisters of pus all over the body, and

infections, and he was going to die. When the news reached the retreat centre, Lama Gendun

made the tonglen practice until the blisters filled with pus appeared on his body and

disappeared on the body of his benefactor. His friend became healthy. Lama Gendun was

very, very sick for a week and then it was cured also in his body. Similar things are said about

one of the Tutors of the Dalai Lama, he took on himself the impact of a plane crash the Dalai

Lama was in. There are other beings in this world, who because of a very strong connection,

have the possibility to take on the illness or problems of someone else.

You can’t take on the karma from all the previous lifetimes like this, but when for example

your grandfather dies and comes back to consciousness after death, he will live through many

karmic experiences in his mind. If at the same time you are meditating, then because of the

strong connection, your grandfather will be drawn towards you and drawn towards a similar

state of mind as yours, and this is how you can help to purify his karma. The beings in the

bardo know the thoughts of people in the world; they will come close and see what we are

doing. If they are inspired by what we are doing then their minds will open and they can

experience similar states of mind to ours. If they resist and close then they will just go away,

and we cannot help them.

Everything becomes solidified in religion, what is actually a very dynamic process becomes

solidified. So we are told: ‘After the death of your relative sit down, do Dorje Sempa in order

to purify the karma of your relative.’ It sounds like whatever happens to the other person, you

can just do the practice. But it is actually a very dynamic process of connection and it only

works if you can really enter into absorption, if you can enter that letting go, and due to this

that other person will be able to do the same.

Suicide does not automatically lead to rebirth in the hells. There were even two students of

the Buddha who committed suicide and attained Awakening at the same time. This is a good

example of what I mean: things happen and then they become solidified in dogma, it doesn’t

work like this. One disciple of the Buddha hanged himself and I think the other killed himself

with a knife. Both were good meditators, but they wanted to die before the Buddha because

they wanted to be sure that he took care of them afterwards! When the Buddha heard about it,

he looked at what happened to them and he said that due to their devotion, at the moment of

death, their mind entered this great openness, and they became arhats at the moment of death.

He said however ‘Please don’t follow this example, it is sufficient that a little bit of kleshas

(or emotional defilements) are mixed with your devotion and you will not ripen the fruit of

your devotion but the fruit of your kleshas.’

So there is no law in the world that fixes what happens after suicide. There is suicide out of

anger, out of revenge, out of jealousy, out of desire, out of seeing no more meaning, from a

very calm state of mind, as well as a very agitated mind; as many different suicides as there

are people. There are people who commit suicide because they want to take a free decision to

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put an end to their life now, they may not be even heavily suffering. Because the moments

before death are very important for what happens afterwards, everyone will experience the

consequences of these strong motivations, or strong afflictions that were present before death.

Since most of them were in great despair or great anger, then most of them ‘go down’; but it

really depends on what is the dominant force in their mind. Nowadays, there are some places,

like Swiss hospitals, where you can get an injection to end your life. You have an illness, and

before it gets too bad you can end your life. I don’t know how much this is accepted, but in

most countries you aren’t allowed to do it. If someone does this is in a state of love and

confidence, then if the other general karma of that life is not very negative then you need not

think that these people are going to the hell realms. This is what the masters say, just ask

them, it’s very clear.

I am trying to generate a spirit of enquiry in your mind, so that you understand how it works

instead of just following some dogmatic sentences, which you can find everywhere. You can

find the sutra about the Buddha’s disciple killing himself in the Pali Canon, it’s a confirmed

source. I researched a lot about death and what happens after death and discussed a lot with

Gendun Rinpoche and Khenpo Chodrak, and other teachers. They all show very ancient

mechanisms. You really have to know all the causes and conditions in order to know where

the journey might continue, if you can’t see them yourself, the beings, afterwards.

I had the occasion to discuss several different moments when people died with Lama Gendun,

and because he could see where the beings went, he could say what would happen. One of the

lamas died in the Mediterranean, off the coast of France, through drowning, and Lama

Gendun was able to say ‘Well he struggled and struggled, but at the last moment he really let

go and his practice set in, so he went to the pure land, the open state of Mahamudra, at the

very last moment he was able to let go of the struggle.’ But of course they also tell us, ‘Well

this person looked quite good, but now he is in a very great state of suffering. It was only

outwardly good behaviour, inwardly there was a lot of jealousy and anger.’

There have been a lot of questions and it’s very good to talk about such things because it

opens up new perspectives on what the Dharma is all about. But now we come back to the

text.

‘In another version we imagine our own body or that of the person to whom we are

attached dissolving progressively. We begin with the outer skin, which melts away to

reveal the organs within in gruesome detail, then one by one the organs disappear until

only the skeleton is left.

We can also imagine that the body is turned inside out so that all of the organs inside it

which we don't normally see, such as the lungs, heart, liver and so forth are all exposed

clearly. The last five meditations are known as the deep contemplation of the unpleasant

aspects of the body.’

‘Any one of these methods is said to be highly effective in overcoming the poison of

desire. Indeed, this kind of meditation can also be extended to the other emotions.

Whenever we are trying to overcome our reactions towards any given person, whether a

favourable one brought about by desire, or an unfavourable one provoked by anger and

repulsion, this kind of meditation can destroy the emotion. It also overcomes pride,

because if we meditate on ourselves in this way all the pride we have in ourselves as a

pleasant person disappears.’

Every morning before I put on my robes to come to the teaching, I think that all my inner

organs were exposed or that I am sitting here as a skeleton with a little bit of flesh around it.

My pride gets a little flat there, ordinary pride does not continue. If I do this at the same time

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for you, then I know that we are all in the same boat, no one is really that special. We are big,

strong, small, thin whatever, finally what is the difference?

For anger, someone is really angry and is yelling at you, you visualise them as a skeleton, a

bunch of dead bones, will you still get angry fighting with a skeleton? Try it, do it, try these

remedies. They will work miracles if you truly apply them.

Q: What happens if we don’t know what the body organs look like?

A: Just look at yourself, or what people eat. Look at the steak, look at the butcher’s shop, it’s

all the same. We are a little shy and hesitant, but if you apply it, it will work miracles in your

life. If you feel nausea, the remedy already begins to work. If we are not able to apply these

remedies, if our mind resists, it means we are not flexible enough. Last year the young

Karmapa, 25 years old, came and talked to someone in the retreat centre who is already in his

third retreat. This person was very honest and was talking about the projections of desire and

how to deal with it. This person had already received all the basic instructions, the

intermediate instructions, the Mahamudra instructions, the 6 yogas of Naropa, all of the 5

phases. The Karmapa gave him these meditations here. I was sitting there listening and I was

very surprised. A few months later I followed up what happened when he had applied the

instructions and they had worked where all the rest had not worked.

The nausea comes from not wanting to see reality. We were also nauseated when we had to

do the dissection of the body. The first day was very, very hard, some of us were crying. I

remember that when we were dissecting the body, we had a very good group, 10 really

wonderful students, very often we would finish the dissection session just by holding hands

and standing around the corpse and a moment of silence before we went home. We needed it,

it was very strong. There are some people who can’t look at blood. You go very gently, but if

you can’t look at blood, then you deny the reality of human life, we only live because of this

blood circulating. We are running away from that and are blocked by a certain way of

perceiving reality. So whatever you can do in little ways to be freer of that will help you to be

freer in different situations when you see accidents and so on.

I hope I am not talking without compassion. Another story to show that I also went through

very difficult situations. One day in surgery a young man was brought in after a motorbike

accident. He had a multiple fracture of the leg, the bones had punctured the skin and were

sticking out. The operation was so difficult that the blood was put in, flowing through the

veins and flowing out it filled the whole operation table and overflowed from the operation

table and the man was really between life and death. These are the heaviest bleeding bones of

the body. I was the one who had to hold the leg to put it in position and to stretch it out, with

all my strength, because the muscles contract, so that they could put the screws inside. It was

terrible for all of us. There was blood everywhere, a lake of blood on the floor, and I was

slipping everywhere and I had to put my feet on the table to have some support to be able to

pull. If one of us had fainted and not been able to do his job with this elixir, this life juice of

this person every where, he would have died. He would have died if we couldn’t stop the

bleeding. But the man survived and it was one of the strongest lessons of my life.

I think what our parents and grandparents have lived through, especially in Germany with the

war, in situations where blood combines with anger and fear, this must just be so incredible so

outrageous. It’s completely different from a peaceful situation in a hospital. If we want to

become true Dharma practitioners, we need to open up to the fact that all of this is happening

constantly in the world. It is happening now, somewhere on this planet. There are such

beautiful things happening now in this world, such wonderful acts of love and compassion,

and there are such acts of brutality happening on this planet. They are all there, and practicing

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Dharma means to look at the reality as it is, without excluding anything. With this full

awareness of everything that is happening, we can direct our mind to what is beneficial.

Day 5.c

• Reducing the importance of the body as a support for our ego.

• Remedy for anger – all beings as our parents.

• Sharing the dharma gives long term happiness.

• Perfecting patience as a flexible and relaxed state of mind.

When we are together in silence or semi-silence, remember what is most important in your

life. Remember the qualities that you would like to develop before you die, before the body

dies. Because actually there is a little pause and then the dance continues somewhere else. If

you were to name three qualities that were most important for you to develop in this life, then

which three qualities would they be? Which qualities describe Awakening to you? The most

important qualities on your path to Awakening. Of course these qualities will evolve and

other qualities will also become important. We are not limited to three, there are limitless

qualities, but it’s good to know what is most important to you. This next month I fall ill, I

have a chronic illness, what is it that all through that illness I still want to practice, the thing

that gives meaning to my life? Say a few of those qualities out loud, so that others can hear

and be inspired by what you value in life. Those who would like to share can do so, the others

can make the wish ‘Yes, may you develop it!’

Wakeful presence, love, compassion, service, tolerance, energy (joyful perseverance). So let

this be our refuge. ‘May all sentient beings reach the Awakening that is characterised by those

qualities. By practicing these qualities may we reach Awakening for the benefit of all.’

I will continue reading the last paragraph of the previous section

‘This group of methods is said to include the main meditations taught in the vinaya. In

fact it is the sravakas who concentrate on the contemplations of the impure contents of

the living body. The arhats have gone a step further and developed the series of

meditations on the decomposition of the body, based on their observations in the

cemeteries and cremation grounds.’

The Buddha himself spent some time in these cremation grounds and he also sent some of his

disciples to meditate there. One that we know about was Mahakashyapa. When the Buddha

was Awakened, he was naked, he was sitting under a tree and he didn’t have any clothes on.

So what did he do? There was a charnel ground and there were these yellow cloths left over

from the corpses that had died, so he took these pieces of cloth and he sewed them together

into something he could cover his body with. This is why the traditional yellow robe has

many seams, because it was made of many pieces of cloth. It was a constant reminder of the

corpse. It was yellow because saffron yellow was the colour for the dead. The spiritual

connotation is that we wear the colour of the dead because we have died and been reborn in a

new spiritual life. Nowadays people think that we wear these robes to look good. But in the

old days they were old robes and very simple, and the intention was that everyone overlooked

them as completely ordinary.

‘The point of such contemplative practices is to really understand impermanence and

the lack of lasting identity in the body. The same meditations are used here to overcome

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desire for the physical body. Through such practices we are able to diminish the idea we

have of our own importance. Normally we consider ourselves to be attractive or good

looking, but if we regularly consider the fact that our body is merely a conglomeration

of impure substances, we can no longer adhere to the ideal image we paint for ourselves.

These contemplations provide the antidote for any idea we have of our own beauty. In a

wider sense the same meditation helps us appreciate the impermanence and

destructibility of the body. We see that the body is not something stable which can

support our ego, we are not our body and this is the first step in developing the wisdom

of non-ego.’

This is a very important point, if we meditate on the changes in the body and its

decomposition, then, if we really do it deeply we come to the understanding that ‘I’ am not

this body. When you hit my body you don’t hit ‘me’; we don’t identify so much. When the

body has pimples, it’s not that ‘I’ have pimples. We are not this body, so we do not identify

with the body because we feel it is such a process of change. Because of our identification

with this body we feel deeply concerned when something happens to it, and one of the most

difficult experiences in life is when we have for example an accident, or something which

disfigures our face. However, the mind stream before and after the accident is the same, the

person has not been changed.

Now we come to the next chapter, which will deal with the next affliction, anger and hatred.

The remedy for anger, remember the first step when I am getting angry, I don’t get involved, I

breathe deeply and I create some space and then in that space I apply the remedy:

‘The remedy for anger is to reflect very carefully on the fact that all living beings in the

whole universe, whatever their present state of existence, have all without exception at

some time in the past been born as our parents, not once but a countless number of

times. At the moment when we were their children, they gave us a huge amount of care

and love.’

This is very difficult for some of us to understand because we don’t live with the idea of

countless lives. However this is a strong point which teachers make, that we have indeed

already had countless lives, not only on this planet Earth, but in different forms on different

planets, different situations, sometimes with a body, sometimes without a body. In many of

these lives we had parents who took great care of us, just like you can see with mothers and

their children around you. We have a great limitation in our mind. It consists of really wanting

to take good care of our children and our families, but we don’t care so much about everyone

else. We don’t give the same care. If I could practice this just a little bit, to imagine that the

person in front of me with whom I am angry or who is angry with me, could in the past have

been my mother, my father, just that we had a very strong connection and took really good

care of each other . But now this state means that we fail to recognise that they have been our

parents, we forget. This instruction was given at a time when children had much more respect

for their parents. For me it was very important because also I did not have enough respect,

especially for my father, to remember everything that he had done when I was small. How he

had taken care until I grew up and had such a loud mouth and could discuss and fight with

him. Even then he was still taking care of me! Many of us still have our parents, not all of us,

but if you still have them, then we can still make this practice present: that every time we

speak with them we say ‘Hey you are speaking with your father, you are speaking with your

mother. They took care of me when I was full of shit and responded when I wanted to eat.’

These same ones which now you would like to yell at, you remember these old debts. Parents

deserve our respect, even if they were very limited themselves emotionally because they had a

lot of affliction in their mind, without them we would not be alive. If they didn’t have the

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time, someone else took on the role and brought us up. Someone took care of us, from their

point of view. They got up so many times at night, they went to work, they did do many

things to take care of us and showed us so many different kinds of love. So we should not

forget what their real intention was. But then also if we are parents, we should never forget

what our real intention towards our children is. We love our children, but when we get angry

we forget our love a little. It would be helpful, even then, to remember how much we love

them and be a little bit more relaxed with their difficult state of mind.

For Buddhist teachers it is a very important point to tell us that we have been each others’

parents and children many times over. In Buddhist countries this a belief that is completely

accepted by everyone, so it’s easy to tell the people, ‘Hey, remember you have been each

others’ mothers and fathers’, but here it doesn’t work so easily. However what we can do is

we can remember that everyone that we meet is for someone else the object of greatest love,

and themselves takes greatest care of someone else. There is this potential of love in

everyone. This is the essential point. You don’t have to believe in all these lives, although I

believe it is correct, you don’t have to swallow that. You can direct your attention to the

potential of love in all others and to our potential for respecting others as if they were our own

parents; this is possible. So for people with whom we have difficulties, say for example in our

job:

‘Now these same beings fail to recognise that they have been our parents in the past. For

them we are not their former children. Unaware of the former parental relationship that

has existed between us, they now do their best to harm us. It is as if they have been

driven crazy by the demon of confusion. We, on the other hand, are more aware. We

know that these beings are our former parents. We should therefore avoid replying in

kind to their anger and aggression towards us and instead do whatever we can to help

them.’

Basically the message is ‘Behave towards everyone as if they were your close family, parents

or children.’ This is not just Buddhist advice; you can find it I think in almost every religion.

Consider others as your brother, sister, father and so on depending on the age. I think we can

see this with the time we have spent together; we feel a little like brothers and sisters. If we

could carry this feeling into the world and remember it as we meet more difficult people.

With the same love with which we take care of our son, we take care of the sons out there is

in the world.

‘We should think this over carefully until we really feel grateful for the kindness they

have shown to us in the past.’

I also do a contemplation sometimes that they have helped others so much already. For

example, you can see here that you are helping one another, and I know that some of your

mothers are taking care of your children. Some of you are taking care of your parents, or your

brother. So for many of you, I know how much you are taking care of others, so why not be

grateful for the care that you develop for others in the world? I can be very happy about this,

even if I am not directly your son or daughter.

The person who I don’t like is liked very much by others in the world and takes care of others

in the world.

So basically it’s all about a change of perspective, to make this enemy into something else, to

look from a different angle. Someone could be a father or mother, change perspective! Get out

of that fixed relationship where one can only get angry, and look at it from a different angle.

There is another very easy way to help change our attitude: the person who makes us very

angry and is difficult for us, remember this person is just searching for happiness. This person

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is behaving like this because of their unskilful search for happiness. They act like this because

they don’t know how to act better. If this person’s behaviour is already showing that he is

unhappy and is unable to deal with their own mind to have a more open state of mind, then to

talk to them with anger and emotion will add to the unhappiness of that person.

‘Such reflections will enable us to respond with loving kindness instead of aggression,

even when we are faced with people who are unjustifiably aggressive towards us. Once

we have this basic feeling of gratitude towards our potential enemies we will not become

angry immediately. We will feel concerned about them. Thinking, 'How kind this person

has been to me in the past! How can I best help him now, what can I do to satisfy his

wishes?' Like ourselves, our enemies want to be happy and avoid suffering. We should

therefore try to do what we can to see that they accumulate the causes of happiness.’

If we can do that this is real love, we understand that everyone we meet wants to happy. It’s

one thing to make them happy right now: I give you a cookie, a nice word and a hug and you

are happy for the moment. But if I can show you how to create the causes for your own

happiness, that’s like helping you to help yourself. What are the causes of happiness?

Wholesome action of body, speech and mind are the causes for happiness. Effectively we

have to help the other person find out the secret of life: how by changing their speech and

behaving differently they can be happier. If we can do that, the person will not only be happy

while they have been with us, but when they go away, they have learned something and can

continue to take care of their own happiness. We have actually passed on some of the wisdom

of how to deal with mind, how to take proper care of one’s mind.

‘We know that the cause of happiness is virtuous action and this should lead us to try to

be skilful and create situations in which our enemies (or people who we find difficult)

may use their body, speech and mind to perform virtuous actions. We should bring them

into contact with the teaching of the Buddha, and this will give them the information

they need to do positive actions. We should provide them with the conditions necessary

for their practice. Then we are really helping them, since we are giving them the

opportunity to do something which will later produce happiness for them.’

Sharing the Dharma here on this course makes it easier for you to be happy in your lives.

Someone else told you about this course and encouraged you to come, this is a real sign of

love. Others prepared the place so that this can happen, others cook; these are real signs of

love. They are creating the conditions so that life can become happy. Because these are acts of

love it is normal, natural that you cannot pay for them, they are acts of generosity. Like in a

family you don’t make people pay for good advice that you give them, everyone contributes,

or gives from his own resources, so that the family can continue. It doesn’t really make sense

to charge. When I go to visit my parents, they don’t charge for putting me up for a night or

sometimes for a week. When you can look at the world from a family perspective then the

Dharma can only be given for free, and everyone helps with generosity so that it can continue.

If we know the person who we have some difficulty with, then instead of pushing the person

away, we can say ‘Well why don’t you read this book or listen to a teaching?’ so that they get

food for their inner journey and their attitude will change over time. We do this in any case

for those who we like, but we should especially offer opportunities like this to people who we

don’t like much. – Lama Gendun continues:

‘We must recognise that to reach perfect enlightenment we have to fully perfect the six

transcendental virtues, one of which is the virtue of patience.’

The six transcendental virtues are like a flower, the stem is compassion, and there are six

petals: generosity, wholesome conduct, patience, joyful perseverance, meditative stability,

and wisdom. The whole thing together, the heart you can say, is called Bodhicitta, the mind

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or heart of Awakening which has all these qualities. Now all these qualities coming from

compassion, need to be developed on the path to Awakening, there is no way to reach

Awakening without these qualities. Can you imagine a Buddha without patience? A Buddha

without generosity, without wisdom? Impossible, it’s clear these qualities have to be

developed. Meditative stability means meditative absorption; we can effortlessly place the

mind wherever we want. Concentration without effort. All of these qualities become

transcendental if they are no longer linked to ego-centred activity. Generosity becomes true

generosity when it does not serve personal interest, in the same way for all of the qualities up

to wisdom, which is the understanding that there is no solid individual self in this stream of

being. So now Lama Gendun and the text will talk about patience, the third one.

‘Without people who are aggressive and angry towards us, the practice of patience is

impossible, we have no means of developing this necessary quality. In this sense the

person who is acting as our enemy is proving very helpful. The aggressive situation he is

producing is an excellent opportunity to learn about being patient. By giving us some

very valuable instructions, he is no longer an enemy but a spiritual friend who is helping

us develop the virtues needed for enlightenment. Through practising patience in this

way, whenever we are despised or criticized, or if our faults are exposed by others, we

are able to purify an incalculable amount of the obscurity that lies in one's mind.’

When we become impatient what is going on? Impatience arises when things don’t go our

way. Impatience arises when our ego is hurt, ego-clinging arises. To accept that situation

means to become more flexible in mind and reduces the rigidity of clinging to my own

importance. The practice of patience is the practice of flexibility of mind. If one wants to

develop patience then one should ask for difficulties, right? So let’s makes the wish that life is

just as difficult as necessary and not too difficult. There are many stories about Awakened

masters who did not want to send away difficult people, but wanted to keep them close so that

there would always be occasions for them and all their students to practice patience. And like

this our tendencies to self-importance are purified.

‘It is said that there is no evil like anger because one instant of anger can destroy all of

the merit accumulated throughout thousands of lifetimes. And there is no virtue like

patience because it has the power to purify all the negative actions accumulated in that

same number of lives.’

When we had our refuge ceremony, different names were given: ocean of love, ocean of

generosity, ocean of wisdom, ocean of joy. Ocean of patience is also a very important name

which can be given. When we hear ‘ocean of patience’ we have the association of someone

being very tolerant, passive and inert. This is not at all what is meant – it is the capacity not to

give importance to self. It is a highly intelligent virtue. Patience itself is inherent in

compassion and wisdom. If you don’t have compassion and wisdom, practicing patience is

like tying your hands up. When you have compassion, true love for people who are causing

difficulties and wisdom of seeing things in the right perspective, then patience is a relaxed

state of mind which comes from compassion and wisdom, and one knows how to put things in

the right perspective. Gendun Rinpoche always said that someone who has compassion does

not even need to practice patience, it will automatically be present. If I get angry, it’s a sign

that I don’t have patience. I don’t have the compassion or wisdom to deal with the situation

more skilfully.

‘If we want to reach perfect enlightenment patience is indispensable. It is one of the

main qualities that go to make up the enlightened mind, to develop this quality, we must

encounter enemies, both in the physical sense and abstractly as difficult situations.’

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We need difficult people and difficult situations. Yes Lhundrup, we know we need you! Well

I do my best!

‘Therefore all who despise us, or who are aggressive towards us are actually our friends

because they are providing us with the ideal opportunity to train ourselves in patience

and purify our previous negative actions and present mental veils.’

Day 6.a

• We need difficult situations and can move away from ‘superior compassion’.

• The need to be around others to practice ethics.

• The real enemy is our clinging – the 4 maras.

• Developing empathy, gestalt exchange.

• Training to come from the other person’s perspective.

• Long term practitioners insisting on their views and not listening.

• Tonglen and receptivity.

• Listening exercise.

Gendun Rinpoche continues explaining:

‘If we never see people suffering from hunger and thirst, poverty and need, it would be

impossible to develop compassion or generosity. If we never see poor people, how can we

ever learn to be generous? If we never encounter suffering, how can we develop the

compassionate wish to alleviate it?’

He continues in the same way as before: we need difficult situations like angry people and so

on to develop patience, and now he goes on to the other emotions. He turns the logic around.

Normally we say, ‘Oh yes, we take it upon ourselves to develop compassion; oh yes, with our

kind heart we practice patience’. Now he says ‘No actually, you need to develop patience; it is

the others who are offering you the chance to develop those qualities.’ We are very much

developing this wish to reach Awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings, but he reminds

us that actually first of all it is for our benefit, because for this mind stream to become

completely free you need others, so they offer you the possibility of attaining Enlightenment.

For example if we take care of a sick person, or care for someone by giving them a massage,

the correct attitude is inwardly, and sometimes even outwardly, to thank this opportunity or

person that they are so willing to receive our mind training by getting involved with this

slightly difficult situation. So again it balances an unbalanced attitude. Normally when we are

compassionate and we do an act of generosity, then the recipient should be grateful to us. This

is like there is a superior person up here who is generous and thanked by the person down

here, but we can turn it around and say ‘I, the person ‘up here’ can thank the person who

offers me the opportunity of giving and sharing something’. So actually we become equal

again, both have a feeling of gratitude. So Gendun Rinpoche continues with this explanation

and says:

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‘Yet without generosity, compassion and similar qualities, we will never be able to reach

enlightenment. The situations we encounter are very necessary to us, since seeing other

people in these unpleasant circumstances is the best friend for reaching enlightenment.’

You see for example, I sit here and I explain the Dharma to you, from this wonderful text

which we have in front of us. So from your side that is OK, but from my side, I am also very

thankful for every opportunity to share the Dharma, because this is my practice, it is what

helps me to continue on my path, so actually we are equal. I have my gratitude towards you

and the teachers, and you have the gratitude of receiving. So really we can all live with the

same feeling of gratitude.

‘We could even say that other living beings are of more help to us in reaching

enlightenment than the Buddhas. Three of the six transcendental virtues – generosity,

ethical conduct and patience – can only be developed in the company of other living

beings who are kind enough to allow us to train ourselves with their help. To practise

generosity, we must have people to whom we can be generous. Ethical conduct can only

be considered in relation to others, since it is defined as giving up all kinds of harm

towards other living beings, whether of body, speech or mind.’

‘Not taking what is not given’, in other words not stealing, can only be practiced if we

encounter a situation where we like something that someone else has and we practise respect

for what belongs to others. Respect for other living beings, the lives of insects and so on, we

can only practice when we encounter other living beings. And we can only also help cure and

protect them if we encounter them. To refrain from interfering in existing relationships, to

train in the respect for partner relationships of others, is only possible when we are interested

in someone and we say ‘No, no, no. I won’t touch this, this person is already engaged.’ The

important practise of wholesome conduct with speech can only be practiced if we have the

opportunity to speak. Not lying, not slandering, no divisive speech, no harmful speech and no

gossip, instead, telling the truth, creating harmony , gentle speech meaningful speech, these

we can only practice when there are meaningful opportunities to communicate. So you see a

lot of our spiritual training happens in contact with others. All spiritual masters agree that in

order for practitioners to progress on the path we have to put them together, so that their

emotions show, the difficulties arise and they can learn how to deal with them.

Gendun Rinpoche, for example came to the conclusion that after 7 to 10 years in a spiritual

community, like the preparation for retreat and then two retreats, maybe people could go to

more solitary retreats. And then he wanted them to live in houses next to each other so that

there is still a communication taking place. When we live alone and we don’t get involved

with others very much then we can have the illusion that we have quite good patience, that we

have good wholesome conduct, we are generous, because no one ever asks something

difficult of us. It’s really true that we practice in a very strange way. It can sometimes be

easier to offer someone 500 Euros, than to share one’s muesli for breakfast. It’s easier to

invite someone into our house than to let someone have the first shower, when there is still

hot water! We can easily share lots of our clothing, but when it comes to the one shirt that we

really like, then that one is difficult to part with. So I wish that we all look at our practice and

that it gets to the more difficult points, even if they look small and insignificant. That it really

gets there.

‘We have already discovered that patience means being without any harmful attitudes in

the face of others' aggression. We can see for ourselves that there is no way that these

three qualities can be developed in the absence of other beings. It is therefore completely

inappropriate to be angry with the people who are helping one's practice.’

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We can all follow this even if we don’t believe that you have been my mother for a hundred

lifetimes, even if I don’t believe that, but I know that you are helpful for my practice.

Whoever I meet, I can look at them and know that this person, just through their presence is

helpful for my practice. They allow me now to practice love, compassion, patience and so on.

Shall we briefly think about someone in our life who is a little difficult? Is there anyone,

maybe somewhere in your life who is a little bit difficult for you? Except ourselves – we are

the most difficult! Inwardly just think of these people and say ‘Thank you for being there,

thank you for being a little challenge in my life!’ – OK ‘Thank you but keep your distance!’ I

make wishes that we all always have enough challenges in our life.

‘It is said that even the Buddha Shakyamuni reached enlightenment earlier than

Maitreya only thanks to his cousin Devadatta’s evil behaviour.’

There are about 500 different accounts of past lives of the Buddha, and in many lifetimes

those who became the Buddha and Devadatta had already met in different combinations, so

many times the jealous relationship between Devadatta and the Buddha appeared, and it

meant that the Buddha could progress enormously, he developed so much patience and so

much love in his heart due to this constant challenge. A very strong karmic connection

between them. The next Buddha to come is called Maitreya. He started on his path earlier

than the Buddha Shakyamuni. He took the vow to become a fully enlightened Buddha before

the Bodhisattva Shakyamuni took his vow. But Shakyamuni encountered so many challenges

on his path, one of the principal ones being Devadatta in different forms, that he progressed

more quickly towards Enlightenment.

‘We must understand that it is only through the kindness of such negative forces that we

are able to develop qualities such as loving kindness and compassion that are

indispensable to enlightenment.’

These stories of the Buddha’s past lives are from the Jataka tales The Jataka tales have a great

pedagogical significance. They elucidate the teaching of the Dharma by giving stories where

you can really see the meaning of a teaching. Just as we would chose different events from

our own lives that illustrate what we want to communicate, the Buddha chose different events

from previous lives that made a certain point clear. For example in my own life every time I

had a strong physical illness, I saw that this was a major help on the spiritual path. When I

look back on my life, every three years I have a major crisis. They were the best teachers, but

I still have a little hesitation to invite those teachers again. However I know that if I have not

learned my lessons, they will come and visit, and even if I have learned my lessons they will

come by, because life is like that.

If is does not crush us, the greatest difficulty is our greatest teacher. Greatest difficulty is the

kind of situation that we really do not want to have in our life. It can be a problem that works

on us, just for a few months or a year, but it can also be a family constellation, some strong

relationship that will continue for 10 years, 20 years, a whole life. And we could say that

these situations, these people, do more for our Awakening than the Buddhas. The Buddha

gives us the keys with which we can unlock the difficulties, but the real work is there.

‘In his teaching Tilopa says that anyone who wants to get enlightened quickly should not

search out the company of good friends but spend more time with bad friends. This is

because if we are with good friends all the time, we are never contradicted, we remain

comfortably unchallenged, our emotions increasing and no qualities developing. If we

spend our time with bad friends, we have to learn to be very patient, with the result that

we become enlightened more quickly.

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If the previous methods do not succeed in pacifying our anger, we should imagine that

the enemy in front of us is our own mother. Meditating on this over and over again until

we really feel the person is our mother, we should then go on to think that our present

enemy has been our mother on many previous occasions. Is it therefore appropriate for

us to be hateful and aggressive to this person now?’

I would be interested, just out of curiosity, how many of you do not have a very difficult

person in their lives? Not many! Would you say that for this difficult person you could use the

word enemy, or does this word not really apply? It’s interesting, because most of us aren’t

living in stable enough situations for real enemies to develop. Nowadays in our society we are

moving, jobs are changing, families are changing, so we can get away from our difficult

people before they become long-lasting enemies. But if we were to live in the same village all

our life and work there, then because of karmic friction and difficulties then true animosity

could get established between people and families. This is actually what happens when we

work in a company for 10 years or so, then these solidly established difficulties show.

Actually the moving and changing means that we have less bad friends and less possibility to

Awaken!

Q: In our current society we have structures rather than individuals that are enemies.

A: Yes many of us feel this. Wherever we find the word ‘enemy’ in the text we can also read

difficult situation.

Q: The real enemy is oneself.

A: Yes the crucial point – the teaching is pointing to this underlying message that the real

difficulty is ourselves. We project the difficulties outwards all the time. And then if we look

even closer, we can see that it is not my whole being which is the enemy, but it is the clinging

which is present in those emotional states. The rest of my being is completely fine, and is a

helper on the path. So we make the slightly artificial distinction between the disturbed or

afflicted side of us and our Buddha Nature. Buddha Nature is a true help, we can completely

rely on it; there are no problems, only happiness there. But when we enter into those

emotional states then Mara is manifesting, the demon, the enemy.

Do you know the term ‘Mara’? It’s a Sanskrit term which we would probably translate as

‘devil’. In the Buddha’s life story you find Mara trying to do everything possible to prevent

the Buddha from reaching Awakening. When you go to the meaning of the word, it is that

which kills or that which creates stagnation, creates the end of a movement. So the Buddha

explained in his early teaching what the real ‘mara’ was, what creates spiritual stagnation and

death – the enemies of Awakening. The first one he mentioned was ‘klesha mara’. Kleshas as

you know are the afflictive emotions. Every time we are in such afflictive states there is a

blockage, that’s why it’s called ‘mara’.

Then he says that you can also talk about ‘skandha mara’. This relates to the teaching I gave

on the 5 aggregates with the heap of wood. Clinging to the body as being mine, clinging to

sensations as being mine, perceptions/distinctions as being mine, the clinging to the mental

experiences, or events as being mine and the clinging to consciousness as being mine. Each

time when this clinging, this identification arises, it arises as a blockage in the mind. The

problem of solidifying, of identifying with and fixing what is actually the coming together of

many causes and conditions, a constant flow, we say this is the solid ‘me’. This is the problem

of identity and solidifying. It creates stagnation because we have fixed ideas about who ‘I’ am

and how the world is.

Now in other discourses the Buddha talked about mara from a different point of view, the

third mara is called ‘mriti mara’, the mara of death. Actually it’s the mara of the fear of death.

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We believe that death really exists, thus creating a fear which blocks our path. The real danger

about death is only that when we leave this existence the forces of karma, the causes and

effects, will propel us into new experiences, new states of existence. So if we haven’t taken

care of the causes, very difficult effects will ripen. In truth, death is not at all a problem, it is a

great chance. There is even the possibility to enter into Awakening at that moment.

And then on other occasions still the Buddha talked about the fourth mara the ‘devaputta

mara’, the mara of the son of the gods – this is the mara of clinging to experiences. The son of

a god is the spoilt child of sensual desires. The experiences could be spiritual or sensual.

Spiritual experiences are just as much a cause for clinging as other sensual experiences. The

mechanism here is to get attached to certain sensual experiences and to want to repeat them

and this is the sensual experience of desire, but also identification with, for example, states of

samadhi. It is clinging to the experience of happiness, of bliss. So now in the Buddhist

tradition we always talk about 4 maras but each one of them can stand on their own to

describe the whole problem. There are 4 different descriptions of the same problem. This is

all elaborating on the point that the real difficulty is ourselves – so what is the difficulty? The

4 maras.

To get back to the text and the seeming outer difficulty, the so called ‘enemy outside’, can we

imagine that person to be our beloved mother? If we briefly think of those difficult people in

our life, just close your eyes and relate to them as if they were your beloved mother – your

mother who has forgotten that you are her child and who is really angry now. We are there:

‘Oh, I don’t want to harm my mother, how can I help her to get out of this state of anger, to

relax her mind?’ The suggestion here is to do this meditation with the most difficult people in

our lives, in order to be able to do it when we actually meet them. In your private meditations

you are invited to do this before you meet them, so that you have the force of habit when you

meet them. You can replace this with any other convenient image, like my twin sister or my

child. You use an example which really inspires your love.

‘Another method we can use is to meditate on ourselves as the enemy and the enemy as

ourselves, exchanging the two personalities.’

This is a very powerful method. In Gestalt therapy we use this with 2 chairs. I will show you,

because if you understand this method it will be so helpful to your spiritual practice. Please

put 2 chairs in the middle.

Usually when we do this in Buddhist practice it is not done with real people but with

visualisation. You imagine that the other person is sitting in front of you. You feel all your

own discomfort and anger and everything you don’t like about the other person, about the

situation. We feel our own needs, our own wishes, and then we can do the step of expressing.

We can say what I always wanted to tell you: ‘I am really not happy with this and I can’t

accept this behaviour. This is completely overwhelming me and I can’t sleep when you are

like this.’ Five minutes of this and then you have to take the other seat. Now you have to

become inwardly the other person. So how does it feel to be the other person, and to see

ourselves still on the other chair with the eyes of the person we don’t like?

‘It’s been years I have been trying to tell you when you act like this, I experience this and you

don’t even notice how much I am trying to help you…’, and so on. You get into the mind of

the person and speak from there. For example, you feel ‘I am so afraid of you. Every time you

look at me like this I can’t answer anything, I can only shout ‘leave me alone’.’ So you use

your capacity of introspection to feel the other person, and really express what you can feel

from that other person and what perhaps that other person has already felt. You have felt these

things, but now you really take them into account.

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OK, 5 minutes and then switch …you continue like this exchanging roles….you express this

and are then again your imagined enemy, keep exchanging roles. You are actually working

with your own projections. This is my emotion as ‘me’, and this is my emotion as ‘other’,

‘opposite’. Actually we are never leaving our own world, it is not the real other person we are

working with, but what we can feel of the other person. We try to be really honest and feel

what the other person is like. Back in the other role for example ‘I can’t tell you how much I

need your help, I really need your help and I can’t get out.’ (Exchange.) ‘But you never said

that, how could I know that you need my help?’ You go on like this and it is a very powerful

method. It is an old Dharma method, to put oneself into the position of the other person. This

is for the Dharma practitioner who wants to really learn how to exchange oneself with ‘other’.

This is for a highly motivated person who is really willing to get into the feeling of what the

other person might feel.

There are extensive teachings on exchanging self for other, it’s part of the general

transmission of Lojong. The founder of Gestalt, Fritz Pearls, lived in the United States, in

California, and he was looking for a way of showing how empathy works, how you can

intuitively feel your way into what it feels like to be someone else. He had this very simple

idea of visualising yourself as someone in front of us, where there is no-one. He just put a

chair in front to make the visualisation easier. Very simply, I sit here, I look at you. I could

say that I am teaching into the blue. I don’t know how you feel; I just give my teaching. But

no, actually while I teach and while Lodro translates I look at your eyes, your face, I see your

posture. And I go a little bit inside you and I try to feel how you might feel when you have

this kind of expression on your face, or this kind of posture, I try to feel what might be your

experience. So putting oneself into the place of the other in Lojong is also describing the

natural process of what every open person does when relating to another person. One tries to

feel what the other person might feel and then give appropriate advice. It’s what all Buddhas

do, what all masters do. It is the absolutely normal process. In the normal communication

process what you do is you say: ‘This sounds like you are perhaps afraid?’ and you

verify…the other person gives the feedback and says ‘Yes, yes, I feel very much afraid’ and

then you have the confirmation and then you continue a step further. And when this process is

really well lived the person who is listening can express the inner process of what the other

person is feeling in such a good way that the person will say ‘Yes that’s exactly it, that’s

exactly how I feel…..’

It is something which happens anyhow all the time, but because of a lack of mindfulness you

might say ‘But you feel like this’ and the person says ‘No, I don’t feel like this’… ‘But I am

sure you feel like this’… and this is not really working, because one thinks they know what

the other person is feeling and does not really listen to the feedback. So to correct this one

opens up more, tries to be more precise with one’s intuition. And then you take in the

feedback, and one has to take in and believe what the other person is saying.

It is the same thing in the Buddhist mind training practice. You train while the person is not

there. You put yourself in their place, to the point of looking at yourself from their point of

view: ‘How does the other person perceive me?’ This is very important, because if I don’t

understand that the other person is a bit angry at me or afraid of me or very much attracted to

me, if I don’t understand these processes, then my behaviour will be inappropriate. For the

Dharma practitioner who has visualised this and has had some success, in the next situation

where we meet the other person, we continue with the same attitude of openness and we try to

learn more about the world-view of the other person. We look around and we have learned so

much flexibility that we can leave our own perspective for a while, which is not so easy to do.

We can leave that way of looking at the world and enter into the other person’s way of

looking at it.

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In therapeutic training you can see the difficulty of changing places, the difficulty of leaving

one way of looking at the world and going into another perspective. It’s really hard to go from

your own seat, ‘my’ seat, and to make the change – and it’s the same here in the Lojong

practice, this is the real difficulty.

All this training is to train in flexibility and more intuitive perception of different world-

views. When you are able to do this, for example just think of the last person who was angry

with you, if we can get into the position of the other person and see how we are perceived,

then our anger or difficulty will completely change or collapse. We will find different ways of

handling the situation. You are in a traffic jam in Athens and behind you, you have this guy

who has rolled down the window and is shouting and honking at you. If at that moment you

can get into his mind and you feel the stress, the tension, the anger, how he feels caught and

doesn’t know where to go with these emotions. Then what happens in our minds? Great

compassion arises. – So to go back to the last sentence in the text…

‘This will have the effect of also exchanging the feelings felt by the two parties. We learn

to see things from the point of view of the opposition. We must meditate like this over

and over again until we have really replaced our own desires and considerations by the

attitudes and thoughts of the other person.’

There is a very simple technique from Carl Rogers, being able to repeat what the other person

has said with slightly different words and to see whether the other person feels understood.

Basically when you talk to the lama, very often they just enter into your mind, your situation.

They just repeat back to you with a little bit of understanding added, and they get you

involved in this way in understanding your own situation. The capacity to repeat what the

other person says with your own words so that the other person feels understood necessitates

that you have understood the other person. You have to be ready to leave one’s own

standpoint to really take in what is being communicated. So it is a practice of tonglen.

Sometimes I get really sick of what I see of so-called ‘spiritual practitioners’, when I see their

way of communicating. They have 10, 20, 30 years behind them on the path of so-called

dissolving of ego-clinging, but when they talk with others they constantly insist on their own

views. They try to convince others that ‘This is how it should be, you should not feel like this,

you should feel like that.’ It is just the contrary of the whole point of spiritual practice. So

maybe as a first step, we should learn to properly listen and be able to repeat the words of

someone else, so that the person feels understood. For that time we must be able to put our

own view and feelings to the side. In the practice of Tonglen this is ‘lenpa’. We take in what

comes from the other person, we properly receive it to the point of being able to express it,

and then when we want we can go into the giving; into the ‘tong’. We can share some of our

love, our wisdom, as a gentle support. Giving it into that situation which we have understood.

So at any time at our life let’s enjoy the practice of seeing life with the eyes of the other

person. In order to do that we have to ask questions. ‘How do you feel?’ ‘How do you see it?’

‘How is it for you?’ Keeping it simple, we try to understand how the other person was when

we last met, for example. We don’t imagine a whole sequence of how the person gets

wonderfully cured etc… That is the proper Tonglen practice, but here it is just about being

able to see the situation with the eyes of the other person. When we do the proper Tonglen

practice then we imagine the other person to be really touched by Buddha Nature and to open

up and become really relaxed.

‘We usually only pay attention to our own idea of ourselves, but we should learn to think

of ourselves as others see us, and to think of others as they see themselves.’

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This is not the social perspective, of others expecting me to look beautiful, but the emotional

perspective. For example, we might have had a very strict father, maybe he beat us. So putting

ourselves into his mind, we may feel the way he sees himself (because this is the new thing

which comes in here). We might look and we might say, ‘Oh, he feels he was doing just the

right thing, that he was giving us the proper treatment of a loving but strict education’. So we

see that in his perspective, of how he sees himself, he does not see himself as being angry, he

sees himself as doing justice and being loving, whereas we found him quite cold. So from his

own perspective, the way he sees himself, and the way we see him, are different worlds.

So we first need to ask this question, when we look at each other now, we have this intuitive

quality, are we able to feel how you feel about yourself? This capacity to be with a person in a

room and to see what their inner attitude towards themselves is, and of course how do I feel

about myself? So there are two aspects. We go into the perspective of the other person to try

to feel how they feel about us and how they feel about themselves. It is not easy… If we can

do that we will have the key to understanding other people. If we cannot do that, we won’t

understand the other person, it is as simple as that. We have to admit that we do not

understand what is going on in the mind of the other person, or that we cannot express it in a

way that the other person feels understood, feels seen. So this is a heavy blow for our wish to

help the world, because so often we wish to help before we truly understand.

‘We alter our way of seeing things by putting ourselves in the place of the other person.

This attitude transformation is very helpful in overcoming all the emotions, but

particularly the emotion of anger. By gradually training ourselves in the bodhisattva

path, we learn more and more to bestow on others all success and achievement and

assume all failure and difficulty ourselves.

The best antidote to anger is to practise being deeply absorbed in the quality of loving

kindness, which is the principal meditation method of those who follow the Sutra

Tradition with its traditional 21,000 sutras, many of which contain specific teaching on

loving kindness.

Many people find the development of loving kindness and patience extremely difficult.

We may feel it is an impossible task, but we should not despair, since it is merely a

question of practice. If we never make the effort to regularly cultivate such qualities

then of course they will seem unattainable.’

You could make a little daily practice: in the evening when you come home you look and see

who was my best enemy today, and then you practice putting yourself in his position and

looking at yourself from his point of view. You finish with the practice of Tonglen, and you

will see your life will change.

Exercise:

2 people. One person shares a situation where we became really angry, something that really

happened. The other person listens and repeats, adding a little bit of their own understanding,

and checking. Until the listener gets to the point where he really understands how it was for

the other person, and the other person is able to confirm ‘Yes I think now you really got the

point.’

And then after a meditation break you swap and the other person shares something. You don’t

have to get into giving advice; that is not the point. The point is to feel what was difficult and

how it was difficult. If you decide to work with a third person they are an observer and will

help you to get out of any judgements or interpretations. If you want, when you repeat and try

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to describe what you understood from the other person you can swap seats, and the other

person can look and see what he looked like. But you don’t have to do that.

Day 6.b

• Significance of the Buddha’s life.

• Summary of the functioning of the 12 links.

• Getting off the wheel.

• How does the Buddha feel without likes and dislikes?

A short summary of what we have covered so far. We spent the first days on looking at all the

reasons why certain states of mind create suffering and tension and how other states of mind

create happiness and openness of mind. We have looked very closely at 5 different emotional

states which create such tension, which are desire, aversion, mental dullness or ignorance,

pride and jealousy. We have seen how much suffering has arisen due to these states, and we

are now in the section where we can take a little distance and are not involved with them so

much, and we begin to apply some remedies. Yesterday we did desire and this morning we

dealt with anger and aversion.

Now we come to a state which is usually very difficult to recognise. The Tibetans call it

marigpa which usually is translated as ‘lack of awareness’. In English we often hear the term

‘ignorance’ but actually it means not being aware of what is true, the absence of knowing

reality. It does not simply mean not to know a few facts which you can learn in books and

then you are not ignorant any more. Actually, as an afflictive state it refers even to the wish

not to know: ‘I don’t want to know, I don’t want to be bothered, I don’t care to know’. It

often refers to our tendency to quickly jump to conclusions, for example to constantly talk

about an ‘I’ or a ‘self’ and never to investigate what a ‘self’ really is. There are two or three

ways how one can feel the presence of ignorance in one’s mind. One definitely is dullness.

The mind is dull, heavy and overburdened and is not capable of clearly looking and taking in

new information.

Another manifestation is fear. Fear due to the fact of not really knowing. For example, the

fear of death is due to the fact that we don’t really know what is going to happen. And then

there is a sort of existential fear, not really knowing who ‘I’ am – the fear of not existing

because of not really knowing. The fear of losing ones ground: for example, ‘Who am I if I

become crazy?’ All these underlying fears. It is the basic state of not being awake. In

Buddhist iconography it’s painted like this: all the orifices are closed, the eyes, ears, nose: ‘I

just don’t want to see, I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to know, to look or understand, leave

me in my little bubble!’ So the solutions which are proposed for ignorance concern how to

bring more clarity into our life and how to get out of this bubble.

‘The first antidote for ignorance suggested is to learn by heart the twelve stages in the

life of the Buddha Shakyamuni, starting from the moment when he left the realm of the

gods.’

The reason is not about knowing the twelve stages, but to understand what is behind them. He

found fantastic conditions as a prince, in a rich family with very nice women around, a wife

and a child and no worries. Then something moved him to search further, he was not satisfied

with his situation. He understood that this happy life would also finish by experiencing

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sickness, old age and death, it would end like this. And he asked himself ‘How is it possible

to live through these human experiences without the mind entering into suffering?’ Then he

went to the opposite extreme, he got into asceticism, to the point of not eating any more, of

sitting out in the sun, in the monsoon, without moving for a whole year, until the moss grew

on his body.

He entered into deep states of samadhi, but whenever he came out he saw that these deeper

emotional states were not cured. Then he discovered that the extreme of asceticism was just

another form of clinging, just like the desire that he experienced before. He remembered that

when he was a child he had actually experienced very open states of mind just sitting under a

tree and relaxing. So he said to himself ‘Now I will try that, now that I have experienced so

many different mental states and have mastery of my mind, maybe the way of deep letting go,

deep relaxation, is the middle way between attachment to sense pleasures and torturing my

body with asceticism’. And he found this way that became known as ‘the Middle Way’. It is

the way of being completely present in the world, but in our relationship to the world not to

turn to grasping. It is completely knowing reality without solidifying that knowledge into

something that will block the flow, it is to really enter the flow.

And then of course he taught for 45 years and had many disciples, you know the rest. Finally

he left his body, and his teaching continued afterwards through his disciples. Some people

think that the important thing about the life of the Buddha are the many miracles, and the

auspicious deeds he performed, but actually the really important thing about the Buddha is

how he was able to do away with this deep lack of awareness; the path of ‘the Middle Way’,

which knows the nature of reality.

Then a very short description of the functioning of a normal life and Awakened life is the next

step, so we’ll have a little look at that. The wisdom of the Buddha is included in these twelve

links, they are the common teaching of all Buddhist schools. The explanation of the twelve

links usually begins with ignorance which is the source:

‘The next method is to learn thoroughly the twelve links in the chain of events leading to

the production of cyclic existence. At its source lies ignorance, this gives rise to various

mental impressions which in turn produce a whole sequence of events leading to the

final experiences of birth, old age and death. This is the cyclic process that all living

beings undergo as they pass from one life to another. Those who free themselves from it

are buddhas; those who do not remain in the suffering it generates, an eternal circle

maintained by ignorance. This process is symbolized by a wheel precisely because of its

never-ending nature, which is why we talk of the wheel or the cycle of existence.’

Normally it would take me about 4 days to explain the twelve links properly. But I will give it

to you in a nutshell, it is also possible to give you a condensed version. Those who wish to

take more extensive notes, just take one page on which you can write on the left side 12

terms. I will give you the 12 terms one after the other and then I will explain them. You will

see it is actually not difficult at all, it is really common sense, when you hear it you think

‘Well… anyone could have found it’ But it needs a Buddha to make it so simple.

So the first step is what we call ‘lack of awareness’ or ‘ignorance’. It is an absence or lack,

there is a general meaning of not knowing what is going on. The second term is

‘associations’, ‘mental formations’, in modern terms we could say ‘projections’. You may

already have some established Greek words from other translations then you can use these

words. The next one is ‘consciousness’. The fourth one is ‘name and form’. The next one is

‘sensation’– feeling something (the second skandha). Then comes ‘contact’. Then comes

‘perception’, I use the term ‘distinction’ for this one. Then ‘craving’, then ‘grasping’, this

leads to ‘existence’ and then come the factors of ‘birth’, and finally ‘old age and death’.

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I will cover this three times so you get it properly. You should imagine that the last link of

death goes into ignorance and we get the whole thing again so it makes a full wheel. To make

things easy, this lack of awareness represents a state in which our mind finds itself after death

before entering the next birth. We are not aware of the open insubstantial nature of reality, we

believe in this ‘not knowing’, that things truly exist as they appear, and because the mind is

dynamic then the second step appears, like in a dream at night. In the bardo state immediately

after death many projections: many sounds, thoughts and images, including emotions and

fears, appear and we believe all of this is real. This forms the state of consciousness, the third

link. Our consciousness is formed by that whole mass of confusion and clinging at that time.

This is the state of consciousness that precedes entering into the new existence, where we take

on name and form. The consciousness is influenced by all the things happening. It is a

dualistic consciousness where we feel ‘I am here and this is happening to me.’ It is the result

of the lack of awareness clinging to all the manifestations in mind. And this dualistic

consciousness wants to find a new existence to make things easy, a new human existence, a

new body. The consciousness enters into a womb of a mother, and there are two aspects to

this new existence: there is the mind and the body, which are called ‘name and form’. For

those who remember yesterday’s teaching; this means the 5 aggregates, the first one being

‘form’; the body and the other 4 being mind. So we have a baby which is being born due to a

certain process, and due to having a body many sensations arise: touch sensations, acoustic

and visual sensations, and of course there is thought. So lots of experiences arise. The coming

together of the visual object, eye capacity and the visual consciousness, is called ‘contact’, the

same with the ear object, the ear and the ear capacity. It’s a constant process of moments of

contact. Visual contact as I look at you: hearing contact when I listen to the sounds: all of this

is the coming together of consciousness and sense object. And, because this contact is made

on the basis of a dualistic mind and ignorance, then this contact leads to the interpretation of

these sensations as being agreeable, disagreeable or neutral ( ‘I don’t care’); so this is the level

of ‘feeling’ now.

The next step is that automatically because of feeling something agreeable, we want more of

something and feeling something disagreeable we don’t want it. This ‘wanting’ leads to

‘grasping’. First I want to feel a nice sensation and then I really grasp on to it and do what I

can to bring that experience into my life. This grasping happens all the time (not wanting is a

form of grasping). It affirms all the time ‘I am here’. ‘I’ want that, ‘I am here’; ‘I’ don’t want

that, and this confirms the forces of my existence. The driving force in our life is grasping at

agreeable sensations. As long as something is neutral it will not have an influence on my

feeling, thinking and grasping. As long as my clothes do not provoke an agreeable or a

disagreeable sensation then I just leave them as they are. If something is agreeable I want

more; if it is disagreeable I want less. Each time there is this grasping to ‘agreeable’ and

‘disagreeable’, I reinforce my existence and create the forces for further existences. ‘I am’, ‘I

want to be’ and like this birth happens again because clinging is the driving force in my life.

So old age and death is the final point of that life experience and then back again into the

ignorance of the intermediate state with all the mental formations, ‘projections’; the dualistic

consciousness wanting to get a new rebirth.

I explained this as if this cycle belonged to 3 lifetimes. The time before our birth in this life,

then what happens in this life, with contact, sensations, grasping and so on; creating grasping

for existence, leading to birth old age and death and from there again a new life. So actually it

is a description which goes from before this life during this life and after this life.

If we want to make this really simple we can say that due to not knowing the true nature of

our awareness as being completely open, timeless awareness, we grasp at experiences as real,

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cling to them and thus create all the consequences of feeling ‘I exist’, with all the

consequences of a tense and clinging mind. The grasping leads to certain actions of body,

speech and mind which lead to further forms of identification. Ignorance creates grasping,

grasping reinforces that same ignorance, or lack of awareness. Like this we always turn in

circles, the more we hold on, the more we identify, the more we reinforce that basic lack of

awareness. I just explained it with two factors and you can always make this chain more

simple: ignorance leads to clinging, clinging leads to a certain way of thinking, speaking and

acting, and all this creates forces that produce suffering, and in that suffering again we cling

and we continue reinforcing that basic lack of awareness.

I know I am going very quickly with you, but it’s not the major subject of the course so we

are just getting a little overview now. This whole chain of twelve links is not only spread out

over three lifetimes, but it actually happens in every moment of experience just now. So I will

go through them all again explaining how they happen just now.

Just now I am sitting here, not knowing the selfless nature of mind, timeless awareness. Many

movements in mind appear, many mental formations, the creativity of mind expresses itself

and due to my basic unawareness all of my experiences are dualistic experiences: ‘I’ and what

I experience, subject and object; all the time dualistic consciousness. This dualistic

consciousness thinks in terms of ‘I’ and my body, name and form, and this mind and body

experiences lots of experiences. The sense fields operate on the basis of a dualistic

consciousness. Due to the coming together of the capacity to see, hear and feel, contact arises.

I have experiences which I then feel to be agreeable, disagreeable or neutral. I wish to have a

better experience and I wish to avoid a disagreeable experience, and I do what I can to get a

better experience and to avoid the experience of suffering. All of this I do with the feeling of

‘I am sitting here’, ‘I am listening’, ‘I like this’, ‘I don’t like this’, ‘I find this interesting’. In

this way I reaffirm this basic assumption of dualistic experience of ‘I’, reinforce the lack of

awareness that actually a ‘self’ cannot be found. Every moment is the ‘birth’ of a new

experience and the disappearance or ‘old age and death’ of that experience. And I interpret

these experiences in such a way that I can say, ‘Yes, I felt this and now I am not feeling this

anymore. I existed like this, and now I exist like this, and in this way.’ I reaffirm this basic

lack of awareness. So this is another way of looking at the 12 links without any need of

speculating about past lives and future lives.

One thing that is interesting about the chain is if we can break one link, the whole thing stops

functioning and we actually find our liberation. If we investigate properly and we see that in

this mind no individual, solid self can be found, this is doing away with this basic lack of

awareness. Then the dynamic aspect of mind, producing all the experiences is not experienced

in a dualistic way any more. We don’t fall into functioning in a dualistic way any more, we do

not think that this body is ‘my body’ anymore, or of this consciousness as being ‘me’. We

understand that this is a flow of conditions. The sense bases still lead to contact, but the

contact is not made any more on the basis of ‘I like, I don’t like’. We still have experiences,

but they are not made in a dualistic way. Because they are not made in a dualistic way

anymore, the attachment to what appears to be agreeable, and the avoidance of what seems to

be disagreeable, do not arise. The wish for our life to be different from how it is disappears.

The grasping at ‘agreeable’ and pushing away of ‘disagreeable’ disappears. There is no more

affirmation of ‘I am’, ‘I exist’, ‘I have been’, ‘I will be’. All these forces that drive us into

existence disappear. With this birth, old age and death come to an end. We enter into the

birthless or deathless dimension, timeless awareness. So like this whatever link in the chain

you can weaken then the cycle gets weaker, and then one of the links gets completely broken.

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In half an hour we have explained the functioning of our prison and how we get out of the

prison. I know it is a little difficult to understand all this, with the twelve different terms and

how they interrelate. But the basic message is that everything is based on clinging and when

there is no clinging there is liberation. Everything is based on the wrong assumption of a

solid, individual self and when that is gone there is liberation. So the message is simple and

the 12 links are the explanation of that message.

Q: How do sensations manifest if there is no like and dislike?

A: Can you enjoy without clinging? If the sun is warm can you enjoy it and not feel conflict

when the cloud comes? It is a taste of simplicity. The Buddha might have a preference for tea,

but if he comes to Greece and there is only Greek coffee, then for him that is absolutely fine.

You can have preferences but there is absolutely no tension if those preferences are not

fulfilled. I would like to sleep in a calm place, but when there is laughter and talking next

door, I don’t mind, there is no tension, no aversion, no clinging. The life of an Awakened

person becomes so simple because there is not this attachment and aversion operating at all

times. The capacity of your skin to feel will not change but your interpretation will change.

During our siesta Lodro and I both had the same experience, we both had a fly on our lips.

They love to go on lips because it’s very delicious to get a little fluid there, to suck a little in

the corners of the mouth! I think both of us, because of past work, did not develop an aversion

to the fly. We understood that it was a delicious experience that the fly was looking for, it was

not exactly what we wanted to offer at that time, we wanted to sleep, but we made a

compromise. At least for me, I could relax with the fly on my mouth and still have a very nice

relaxing time, not deep sleep but no anger or tension, mind was simple and relaxed and this is

how you get out of tension. You can apply that in every situation in life. There is always

something which is a fly in your happiness, a little difficult, and we can change our attitude.

‘Whichever of the four different categories of birth introduces us into our new existence,

we can be sure that it will end in death. There is no way to avoid death and subsequent

rebirth.’

The 4 different categories of birth are: the birth as a body of light (a non-material body); birth

through a womb (like humans and some animals); egg birth (like birds and some fish); and

what they call in the old texts ‘birth through heat and moisture’, which means the cellular

division of bacteria and all the life which arises in humid and moist conditions.

‘All living beings without exception have to go through this experience. This is why in

the traditional representation of the wheel of existence, the wheel is pictured held in the

mouth of the Lord of Death, represented by a great demonic figure who seems to be

biting into the wheel. The six different realms of existence appear in the very centre of

his stomach because all living things must pass from one existence to another via death.

In order to help regular practitioners and members of the Sangha to understand this

reality, we traditionally find painted on the left hand side of monastery doors a

representation of this wheel of existence.’

So we are coming upon a picture of ‘the Wheel of Life’, which some of you may have already

seen

‘Anyone who succeeds in putting an end to ignorance will automatically stop the rest of

the process, the mental associations and the other links in the chain of events that in

their turn lead to old age, and death. The process is put into reverse, ending in liberation

from cyclic existence.

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In order to help practitioners remember this, we often find on the right hand side of the

door of monasteries a drawing of an eight-spoked wheel representing the teaching of the

Buddha, white to symbolise purity. The eight spokes symbolise the noble eightfold path,

the method taught by the Buddha to put an end to the chain of events which produce the

cycle of existence.

What exactly is ignorance? Ignorance is the mind which does not know itself, one which

is unaware of its own true nature. It is because of this that we remain in cyclic existence,

wandering through one life after another in a vain search for happiness. However, when

ignorance is brought to an end, at the moment when the mind recognises its real nature,

we reach the path of the noble ones that is the way out of suffering. Hence our main task

is to clear away this ignorance so that the mind can recognise itself.’

Now we have explained the 12 links, what is really meant by ignorance, and the implications

of that should be a little clearer to you. We have been studying a little bit. Applying one’s

mind trying to understand the Dharma is a means of remedying –slowly, slowly – this ‘not

knowing’ or ignorance.

Day 7.a

• Advice on sleeping and preparation for sleep.

• Healthy eating.

• Butter lamp balancing exercise and the importance of alignment.

• Exercise: writing down our faults.

‘In order to combat the dullness of ignorance we should try not to sleep so much, by

getting up earlier and going to bed later.’

In Greece this is not the right advice to give! Don’t go to bed later! The natural rhythm of the

human body is a rhythm which follows day and night in nature. For example, now to go to

bed at 10.30 or 11 when it is dark and then to get up at 5.30 or 6 when it becomes light, is the

natural rhythm and where you get the best sleep. The sleep before midnight is very refreshing.

If you don’t have any sleep before midnight you lose a very important part of refreshing the

body. Try to have at least one or two hours’ sleep before midnight and you will not need to

sleep for so long. This was Gendun Rinpoche’s advice and I am just repeating it.

How can we find out if we sleep too much? We can only find this out if we don’t overeat

before sleeping. Before we go to bed we should have finished digesting. This means eating 3

hours before going to bed. If you only eat fruit or soup at night then of course it’s much

shorter. If you have your main meal at night before going to bed you will automatically sleep

at least an hour longer. In the morning when you wake up you are still not fresh, because your

digestion has slowed down so much that it still continues in the morning when you wake up.

Many of us are sleepy in the morning not because we haven’t had enough sleep but because

we haven’t prepared our sleep properly and we haven’t slept at the right time. The last hour

before sleep should be very relaxed, very calm, so that you can enter sleep with a very relaxed

mind and your sleep has the best start. For example a yogi or meditator stays sitting like this

against the wall or in bed and meditates and makes prayers. There is awareness and complete

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relaxation for the last half hour or hour before falling asleep. We do not put ourselves to sleep

because it’s time, but because in meditation we feel ‘Now my mind really needs to sleep, it’s

time to lie down.’ So these can be really beautiful moments during the day, moments when

we can digest the day, when we can feel connected with our prayers. We remember the

Dharma and then the dreams at night will also show the quality of that state of mind.

And how do we know when the right time to get up is? When the mind has the first moment

of consciousness. The mind comes back to consciousness and we know ‘Ah, I am awake’, and

that is the moment to get up. Then we get up, do refuge and start meditating maybe. First it’s

good to do 10 or 15 minutes doing our first prayers, before going to the toilet, before jumping

up and getting a coffee. When we wake up in the bardo there is no toilet and no coffee. We

have to remember immediately what we are here for and where we want to go.

So some people sleep 5 hours, some sleep 6, some sleep 7, some sleep 8. Don’t compare

yourself with others, just use the moment when you come back to consciousness as the

moment when you have had enough sleep. Some people develop pride because they sleep less

long than others. There is no need for that; it’s just that their system works in such a way that

they need less sleep. But in general we can say that people who do not have health problems

should not need more than 8 hours of sleep per day. If you have a health problem it’s

different. Then also the need for sleep varies during the year, it’s not the same every night,

every day.

In general, for learning to sleep less it’s good to have a clock to wake us up, but actually it’s

not the best idea. The best idea is not to deceive ourselves; when we are awake its time to get

up. Not to turn around and lie there for two hours. ‘It’s so nice and cosy, I don’t like the cold’

and so on…. The best advice I think here for most people is to go to bed earlier and not eat so

much at night and then you will discover that mornings are wonderful moments of the day. If

a young person is not fresh in the morning they are doing something wrong, so check for

yourself what’s going on…

In the retreat centres in Tibet they used to sleep for 3½ hours, they slept sitting up so the sleep

would be light. Gradually we have come to 4½ hours, then 5 ½ hours, now most practitioners

sleep 6 hours. Still some practitioners sleep sitting up, and have very clear dreams and very

clear practice at night, but most lie down. If you have a lot of intellectual work during the day

and a lot of emotions, then you need more sleep. The more emotions we have, the more sleep

we need. Except if we have so much emotion that we can’t even sleep, or if our sleep is

interrupted at night because of emotional states. If this is your situation, you need to

systematically learn to relax during the day and especially the last phase of the day before you

go to bed; it has to be like a protected area for you. Don’t watch TV; don’t get into emotional

discussions. Spend some time with yourself, do some Dharma reading which puts you in the

right frame of mind, this will help you to sleep much better.

‘As a help in this, we can attach to a pillar or post in our house symbols of the Body,

Speech and Mind of the Buddhas. Instead of sleeping, we should circumambulate the

pillar out of respect for these objects and what they represent, or make prostrations or

recite mantras. In this way we are not letting the mind waste time in the enjoyment of

sleep and the reinforcement of this manifestation of ignorance.’

In Tibet the yurts were often made with a central pillar, so it is said put a shrine near the

central pillar. In our houses it could be any place where you could put the support of the

Buddha, Dharma and Sangha – like a Buddha statue or image, some Dharma texts, some

pictures of masters, something like this. Then we can practice in front of this place. It is really

excellent to use the moment before sleep and immediately we wake up in the morning to do a

meditation practice which involves the body, like circumambulating or making prostrations.

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All practitioners on the three-year retreats do 100 prostrations at night, before getting into

their meditation box, and the effect is fantastic because you are moving your body, massaging

your body, as you do this very relaxed movement. Of course you do these prostrations with

great relaxation and you enter into a state of confidence and abandoning yourself. If you are

among those lucky people who have a bigger garden, you can put a Buddha statue on a pillar

in your garden, and you can circumambulate around it and relieve all the tensions of body and

mind as you do prayer meditation, walking around. It’s like taking a walk that leads nowhere.

You don’t have to look, and you can actually meditate as you do.

The idea is that we don’t go to sleep in a state of complete confusion. We need a space in

between where we relax and where the mind can clarify all the emotional states of the day. I

would say at least one hour, but if you are lucky you can have longer. Remember how it was

in Greece 100 years ago or 50 years ago? One does the work of the day, and having finished

the work of the day, when the sun is setting one comes home and has a soup, and then one can

still sit on a bench in front of the house and enjoy the evening, have a little chat. Something

very quiet comes. They did not have electricity, and candles were very precious, so then as

the night closes in everyone settles down to sleep.

Some of you have 2 or 3 jobs, so you come home from your last job at 9 o’clock at night and

you still need to eat, and then you watch a little TV. You have electricity, and so the whole

thing can carry over until after midnight. You fall into bed like a corpse, you can’t think much

about your spiritual practice, and then before you have had enough sleep the alarm clock

rings, and you have to get up. And because you haven’t slept enough, you need a coffee,

maybe you need a cigarette. You take a quick shower, no time for spiritual practice. So when

one doesn’t eat well, one doesn’t take the time, there is not enough physical exercise, one is

stressed and you feel tired for longer and longer periods of time. Most of the day you actually

feel tired. After 2 hours at work you need another coffee because you feel tired, and then you

go to your second job, and like this you are in stress all day long. You become addicted to

coffee, to tobacco, to TV, to having the radio on, just to keep you going.

Also there is a lot of talking. There is no silence in your life, the silence has disappeared. In

the old days there was often silence because one was working in the fields, or one was going

somewhere. These moments of silence are important refreshers during the day. We refresh our

mind when we take our car and we drive in a relaxed way, we don’t put on the radio or CDs.

Then actually we can arrive refreshed at the place where we are going, if there is not heavy

traffic. It does not need to be tiring. But it becomes multitasking when you are driving with

the radio on and talking to someone at the same time, it becomes a very tiring experience. The

reason for this is that we are unaware of the true needs of our body and mind. We look for

solutions in the wrong places. We always look for things to stimulate our minds to stay

awake. This is not the real solution for our sleepiness and dullness. The real solution is to

create conditions for excellent rest.

The most important thing is not to sleep less, but to have an excellent quality of sleep. It is

natural for a human being to be happy when they wake up. To regain the freshness of mind is

a beautiful experience. If you haven’t touched that experience for a long time, it means you

need to sleep more, relax before sleeping, eat less before sleeping, and have more moments of

silence during the day. This experience is absolutely natural, the natural experience of

someone who takes the time to sleep properly.

I would like to add a little remark as a doctor and homeopath: the quality of food which you

eat has a very important influence on how you wake up in the morning. If there is a lot of fat,

sugar and oil, or other elements which create acidity in our body, we will have many more

headaches and feel much sleepier. If we add more alkaline substances like vegetables and eat

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lighter food, completely kick out the sweet food and reduce the oil, then our sleep will be

much better and we will discover that we have a fresh mind in the morning.

If we love our partner or children, we don’t offer them chocolate at bedtime. If we love them

we can offer them a nice soup, something light which calms and even cleanses the body, and

then we can go to bed like this. Definitely coca-cola, chips and cigarettes at night are not

going to do it. And then if you want to get some strength and you add a steak you have really

got the best combination to sleep badly. So take good care of yourself. The spiritual path of a

yogi starts with taking good care of ourselves, good care of our body, so that we really create

good conditions for our practice. If you want to be together with your partner at night, go to

bed much earlier! Be smart!

‘An alternative way of reducing our attachment to sleep is to carry out the following

meditation as the evening approaches and we begin to feel sleepy. We should imagine on

the crown of our head a lighted butter lamp and hold our attention on its flame,

visualising it very clearly.’

The actual meditation was one where you do indeed place a real butter lamp on your head!

Having a butter lamp on your head, you will spend your time very wakefully! There is no

danger, because the oil of the butter lamp just gets a little warm, so you wouldn’t get burned,

but you get very oily when it falls down!

Now we just visualise the light, the slightly moving light on top of our head, and this causes

the subtle energies in our body to move upwards and concentrate on top of our head. This is a

very good meditation at night, which prevents us from going into this half sleepy state too

early. Gregory, you are feeling sleepy, why don’t you take the butter lamp! Would anyone

like to try how it feels? When you try it you will see how this straightens you up.! Those of

you who want to have an easier experience, take a pencil or any other object and keep it

balanced up there. The fact of having an object on the top of our head directs our energy

slightly upwards. If this object is an object which can easily fall down the effect will be much

greater. For the evening practice a butter lamp, for the morning practice a glass of water! Now

relax and put the objects down. How was it?

….Things were simple, less complicated, more unified, lively, nice…

When Milarepa did his first retreat of 7 months when he was studying with Marpa, he spent

every night sitting the whole night with the butter lamp on his head! Now what we can do is

we can visualise the light. If we maintain the visualisation with the inner uprightness the

effect will be the same. A little less challenging but the effect is the same.

‘This is said to have the power to clear away feelings of sleep and dullness when they

occur, as well as shortening the time of sleep needed and making it less heavy.’

So much for sleeping.

‘In the pure teaching of the Abhidharma, (the teaching on the structure of the essential

points of the Dharma) reflecting deeply on the chain of twelve interdependent events is

said to be the best remedy for ignorance or dullness of mind.’

Because when we understand these twelve links, we understand the motor of samsara and we

understand where we can do something to get out of this. – Questions about this chapter?

A: Re oil lamp on the head. To do this we have to have a good alignment, and maintaining

this alignment helps with all sorts of emotional states. Usually we become clearer. We cannot

do it if we are too agitated. Once we have the experience we only need to remember that, we

don’t need to repeat the experiment. Now I can sit remembering the experience of balancing

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the candle on my head – inwardly it is there. You don’t always need the object; you just need

to know how it feels. One of the instructions on developing wakefulness is to meditate with

the presence of mind of a warrior who enters the battlefield – we are talking of a sort of

Shambhala warrior or a samurai. You don’t know which direction the enemy will appear from

and you have to be attentive from all directions. Like entering into a room and you don’t

know which side the rat is going jump on you from. You only know one thing, if my energies

get stuck I will not be able to make the appropriate movement. I have to remain fluid and

fully awake. Now if you can imagine this properly it has the same effect as imagining the

butter lamp on top of the head. We know what it feels like energetically, and we don’t have to

experience the actual situation.

For the end of the day the mantra ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ connects us with loving kindness,

compassion, wisdom and it clears away all the emotions of the day. The meaning of the

mantra is: ‘May the activity of Awakened compassion manifest.’

To go into detail: Om is the wisdom of all the Awakened ones. Mani is the jewel – the jewel

of our mind, the wish-fulfilling jewel of realising the nature of mind. Padme is the lotus of

Bodhicitta, of Awakened compassion. Hum is the syllable of Awakened activity. Mani and

Padme refer to the Buddha Avalokiteshvara who holds a jewel and a lotus in his hand. Here

he represents the union of compassion and wisdom of all the Buddhas. So when you say ‘Om

Mani Padme Hum’ you make this prayer that the union of compassion and wisdom will

manifest for the benefit of all beings including yourself. It is a very short and easy prayer to

say which reminds you of all your spiritual aspirations. When you study it in still more detail

then you find out that the syllables relate to the 6 realms of existence and purify the emotions

associated with those realms and encourage the emergence of the 6 paramitas. This you can

learn when we explain Chenrezi in greater detail.

‘The next emotion to which antidotes should be applied is that of pride (self-

importance). This is done by carrying out the following reflection:

(Imagine that we are saying this to ourselves at a time when we feel really sure of ourselves:

we are such good spiritual practitioners, we are on top of the world, but in spite of being so

fantastic we occasionally have a little emotion.) We say to ourselves:

“For a countless number of existences lived through during the course of many aeons, I

have been wandering in endless circles. How stubborn I must be, since, despite all the

suffering I go through, I remain undaunted, ever ready for more. In the past many

different Buddhas have appeared in the world, and all of them have given teaching, yet I

have been unable to use this wealth of instruction to free myself from cyclic existence.

Even in this life alone, look at the number of initiations, reading transmissions,

commentaries, pieces of special advice I have been given, yet I am still caught up in the

round of existences. All of it has so far had no effect. In my efforts to follow the teaching

I have repeatedly asked for and received the three levels of vows: the outer vows of

ethical conduct, the inner vows of the bodhisattva in which I committed myself to

obtaining Enlightenment for the benefit of others, and the secret vows of the Vajrayana

in which I committed myself to maintaining a pure outlook. Yet I have betrayed those

vows and my discipline has become completely impure so that every day a whole

avalanche of faults and transgressions are committed.”

Actually when we talk to ourselves we will not be so polite! I say to myself, ‘Look Lhundrup,

you might be giving nice teachings, others might think it’s really nice and you are really

developed. But so many Buddhas of the past have appeared in this world, so if you’re such a

great guy what’s going on? What’s happened that you’re not even realised? You have met so

many great teachers in this life; you seem to be stupid like an ox, not getting the message

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although it’s right in front of you. So many teachings you have asked for and you seem not to

have understood 1% of it! So who do you take your self for? Do you think you are the tops,

great, fantastic – why are you still suffering after all these chances which you have to

practice?’ And then if I haven’t had enough I continue:

“I have spent a great deal of time reciting mantras and performing the meditations of an

incredible number of deities, yet I have not seen the face of even one of those deities for a

single instant. My mind is completely clouded and obscured, with the result that I have

not had any realisation or meditation experiences. For me they are as unheard of as the

hairs on the back of a tortoise.

From childhood to death in countless lifetimes I have done nothing at all with my life,

simply slept and eaten and generally wasted my time. No time at all has been spent on

practising the Dharma and attaining Enlightenment, I have indulged myself in the

mundane pleasures of life without any sense of real enjoyment.

This means I have been following the different temptations, seductions, pleasures of the

world, but I haven’t even found the happiness I was looking for. I have found a little bit of

temporary happiness, but

“Never satisfied, I am always ready to spend more and more time and energy on

ordinary worldly things. Inside, my mind is filled with the disturbances created by the

five poisons, yet outwardly I put on a very good show of being someone pure, wearing

the right robes and carrying a begging bowl.

Totally unable to explain or to debate the topics of even one single text, I think of myself

nevertheless as being very learned and clever. I am always boasting to others about my

great knowledge and understanding of religious texts. Even though I have had no

success at all in reducing the five poisons, I am still convinced I am a very good person

and impress this opinion on others. Not only am I confused myself, I confuse others in

the process. I have no knowledge of what awaits me when I die, yet I spend my life

convinced that I can guide the consciousness of those who have died. I never know when

my own death will occur, yet I have no thought for this. All I do is pride myself on the

blessing I have to clear away the obstacles of others.”

This is all Karma Chakme, and he was speaking like this to his monk student, the lama sitting

in front of him. And as always those masters don’t speak about the person in front, they speak

about themselves, so you can imagine that Karma Chakme was saying this about himself. We

need to rewrite this speech and put in what really applies to ourselves, but you have to do it in

such a way that you don’t only cry; you must also be able to laugh about yourself. We

laughed a lot about anger and desire as well, but there is something special about pride, we all

feel a little shy about it. It’s a little bit more difficult to admit to so clearly.

In the break write your own little text for yourself….Now if you have a tendency to

depression and you have low self esteem, then you have to write the text a little differently,

you have to say, ‘When you are well you feel on top of the world, but when you are depressed

you are the most depressed in the world…Without thinking of others you are convinced that

there is no one suffering more than you.’ So you speak for yourself, you know yourself. You

can burn the paper afterwards!

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Day 7.b

• Good qualities don’t come from the ego, being in the flow.

• Self-importance is a blockage.

• Stage fright, low self-esteem and the feeling one should be able to help are all

manifestations of pride.

• Natural spontaneity – freedom to act or not act, no ego identification.

• Healthy self-criticism versus neurotic self criticism.

• Helping someone with low self-esteem – where do real qualities come from?

• The poison of having to be someone special.

• Examining ourselves regularly for faults.

• The third eye sees the true state of our mind

How was the experience writing the special ‘praise’? Was it difficult?

It was: ‘Clarifying.’ ‘Not difficult.’ ‘So much to work with.’ ‘Saw funny things about myself,

and also saw some things had changed.’

When I was in retreat and I discovered the extent of my enormous pride, I spoke to Lama

Gendun. He said ‘If you are so proud, so good, how come you are not Enlightened?’ Another

teaching which helped me a lot was Lama Gendun repeatedly reminding us that all qualities

come from Buddha Nature, not from the ego. If I am proud about my intelligence, my

wisdom, my capacity to teach, this is just a natural expression of how mind is when it is

relaxed. When ‘I’ get in I cannot speak any more. My mind blocks up, I don’t even know the

simple answers to simple questions. The ego causes everything to freeze, so these are

definitely not the qualities of our ego-clinging. Ego-clinging causes qualities to disappear.

When there is no self-concern then we might naturally be generous. Then when self-concern

comes in we think ‘Oh, I did something good’ and we immediately spoil the generosity.

Think deeply about it: whatever we could be proud about, does it really have to do with what

‘I’, the ego, achieved? Isn’t it absurd to think that ‘I’ is the one that possesses beauty, love,

intelligence, generosity? The more ‘I’ get involved with them, the more artificial the whole

thing becomes and the qualities immediately go down the drain. But we live in a world where

we think that if we succeed in university studies, or in sports, or if we do something good in

life, then this must be due to our effort ‘This is my doing’. If the good qualities flow, we can

take in information, we can stay relaxed while doing sport. Things go well if the ego stays out

of the way. If we look really carefully, the more we get out of the way, the more the qualities

show.

A good example for me: in the days when I was still very sporty there was a marathon runner

who was found in Kenya just shortly before the Olympics. He was engaged in the Olympics

because he ran naturally in his country. He participated in the Olympics barefoot. If I

remember rightly he finished second. He was completely fresh and relaxed and they asked

him ‘Why didn’t you win ( the winner was completely exhausted)? He said, But I didn’t have

to win. I was fine, it was a good run.’

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This was an important story for me in those days. I understood something about the joy of

sport. It’s not about being the best; it’s about the joy of sport, being in the flow. Then it was

the same later on in my medical studies (which can be very stressful). I discovered how to

stay in the flow, and how to learn things just through the motivation to help and not through

the fear of the exams. You probably made the same discovery, but every single person

becomes beautiful when they are relaxed and happy. If people have emotional afflictions they

can have very nice skin and so on but they are not very beautiful. And some people think ‘I

am not very beautiful at all, I had better hide away’. But when these people have love in their

heart they become so beautiful… There are children who seem to be unable to learn, but when

you can get them into a relaxed, joyful state they can learn so quickly.

I am giving you all these examples to make it even clearer that the more these feelings of self-

importance come in, the more we block everything. Actually, pride is a major blockage in our

life. Some of you might say ‘I could not give a public lecture’. Why? Because of self-

importance. If you are concerned about the message you have to give to others and you are

interested in benefiting others it becomes very easy. You just have to know your subject, and

then you explain it because others need to know. There is no question about ‘me’ giving a

lecture. It’s a question of communicating what needs to be communicated. The most

important advice if you have to talk to a large audience is to be concerned with the message,

with the content, and with the audience. To really be helpful, and not at all to be concerned

about what they think about you. The fear which we call ‘stage fright’, and which comes also

in personal relationships when we are afraid of talking to someone, this fear is a mirror of our

pride. The fear of not being beautiful, or smart enough, strong enough, rich enough, not to be

able to find the right words, all of this is our pride.

People who have a lot of pride live in a very isolated place on top of the world. As long as

they don’t come, or fall, down we won’t be able to help them. Then there is the pride of the

one who wants to help; as a therapist we have to learn that we cannot help everyone.

Especially young therapists who have a little bit of success, they get this feeling that they can

help everyone, and they want to help everyone. This is the fascination with the capacity to

help. It’s a form of identification.

When there is the manifestation of natural qualities, there is no one aware of those qualities. If

for example a person due to compassion and wisdom, is completely patient, you think that

that person is an example for you of patience and you go to them and say that they are so

patient – the person will say ‘What? No, not that I know of!’ The same example applies to

love, generosity, etc. There is no one there who makes an effort and who compares, no ego-

centred awareness saying or knowing ‘I have this quality.’

Q: How do these spontaneous qualities arise?

A: Normal spontaneity is based on kleshas – ‘OK, lets have a party tonight’. If you look at the

mind you see a lot of tension. It’s a programmed or reactive partial spontaneity; under the

influence of one part, one jumps into action. Natural spontaneity is completely free to act but

it is not obliged to, it could also not act; the freedom is complete. You can see this easily, in a

group of friends if you decide spontaneously to go to the beach that’s fine, but if then there is

no car and you get annoyed, then there is a blockage – where there is a blockage there is no

true spontaneity. It’s like giving a gift, if it is not wanted and is given back, no story. No ‘I’

which wants to help.

I am so proud that I am even proud about writing about my pride! Pride is a tendency that will

find absolutely anything to get proud about. One can be proud about how good a liar one is, or

how well one can steal, how well one can cheat others, how good one is at using the system in

order not to work. One can be proud about one’s negative sides; it really nourishes those

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negative sides. It can also be nourished by the negative side of friends and family who we

identify with. I have met a person who was proud to have killed more than a hundred people.

Later on he realised what he had done, and all the regret came.

We need to make a distinction between healthy self-criticism and neurotic self-criticism.

Healthy self-criticism helps to show us where we have gone wrong, and brings a remedy so

that our life becomes more balanced. Unhealthy self-criticism makes our life worse and

worse; we lose all self-confidence. So our self-criticism must be healing, it must be part of the

healing process. Some of us here have a very shaky self-confidence. We are not sure of what

we are doing here in this world, if we are worthy of others’ love, worthy of respect. We have

deep doubts about ourselves. We are trying our best, but we never know if it is good enough.

This is a very delicate situation, because if we feel like this about ourselves, it might even end

in suicide. We might feel unworthy to be alive. It is quite possible that some of us have gone

through periods of our life where we have felt like this.

I want to talk about how we can help each other in such a situation. Usually what we say to

each other, like when we have an adolescent crisis or we lose a job and so on…we say ‘No,

look, you are so beautiful, so strong, so clever’. We start talking about the apparent qualities

of that person. This doesn’t work. It helps for 5 minutes of self-illusion. If a person is

concerned about not being beautiful enough, it doesn’t help to say ‘But you are so beautiful!’

It is important to show where real beauty comes from. We need to encourage the

understanding of these inherent qualities which are the heritage of every human being. This

excessive self-criticism comes from an excessive preoccupation with the self. What will really

help is to give some confidence that, ‘Yes, you are not the most beautiful or the most

intelligent, or this or that. But when you relax and your mind opens, you will see you will be

able to take care of others, there is natural compassion, there is love coming out, natural

generosity in your mind. You are able to understand things especially when you relax, you are

able to understand.’ We can talk about all the qualities that come to the surface as this self-

importance relaxes.

The dignity of the human being does not rely on what the ego achieves in this life. The

dignity of human beings comes from these qualities which are the natural potential of this

mind. So the cure when someone is so concerned with not being enough of this and not being

worthy of love, is not to talk about the individual qualities of that person, but to give

confidence that whatever they do they always have that Awakened potential in them. And

then this self-criticism becomes healthy, because the self-criticism looks to see where the self-

centred tendencies interfere with the natural manifestation of the inherent potential of

everybody. I’ve seen it work many times and this is really what needs to be done: to really

communicate to our friends, to our children, to our partners, that they do not have to be

someone special. If you are a full human being with your feelings and with your qualities, this

is it. You don’t need to be anything else.

For me a Buddha shows us what the full human potential is. Every Buddha is different, but

every Buddha has fully manifested the human potential. When we look at each other in the

room and we think how will you be when you are a Buddha? Actually all the qualities that

will come out when we are a Buddha will manifest because we let go of the wish to be

someone special, and our mind relaxes from the tension of the identification of ‘I hope to

become this, but I feel I am becoming this.’ This cycle of hope and fear, attachment and

aversion, when we get out of this then the Buddha qualities manifest. Please talk with your

friends and your children, your nephews and nieces, wherever. Talk with them and give them

this message, because otherwise they will go through so many unnecessary torments.

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Western society is completely poisoned by having to be someone special. We have all these

talent spotting shows: who is going to be the top talent now, the young talent? The media

shows are working out new contents, to show the new stars of the future. All of this is

completely crazy, let’s be full human beings. Healthy self-criticism helps this process of

Awakening and neurotic self-criticism creates more blockages and will disturb the process. If

the exercise of writing out your praise of yourself – if you can laugh about it and do it with a

certain sense of relief then this was healthy self-criticism. I hope no one plunged into more

depressive states because of this.

In English you can have constructive criticism and destructive criticism. It’s not only the

words but the way one does it, the motivation. Constructive criticism is motivated by wanting

to help the situation, and destructive criticism is motivated by wanting to make you look good

and putting the other person down. Motivation is important, and then we also need to find

skilful means to put that motivation into practice, because sometimes we can have a good

motivation but then we don’t communicate very well and the whole thing collapses

nevertheless. Like in the Christian tradition, there can be situations where the master puts the

blame completely on one disciple who has a good basic self-confidence but has pride. So

everything the disciple does will be wrong from A to Z until they are completely destroyed.

You need to be destroyed because otherwise one doesn’t let go, but there is the underlying

faith or confidence which carries you through.

You can recognise pride because it increases the tension in your heart – it makes you more

worried.

‘As long as we go through life thinking of ourselves as quite nice, we continue to hide our

faults from ourselves. This way we will never get rid of them. This reflection causes us to

admit our own faults, thereby paving the way for their removal. Our pride in ourselves

and our qualities is overcome.’

Constructive self-criticism.

‘Whether we are a lama or a spiritual friend, or simply someone who practises the

Buddha's teaching, it is very important to look into our own mind and examine

ourselves regularly for faults. Once seen they can be cleared away and replaced by good

qualities.’ If we do not admit our own faults, we only become more and more proud.

Pride causes us to view our own faults as qualities, and our behaviour towards others

deteriorates. The people we are with are persuaded into sharing our own opinion of

ourselves, and on top of that we convince ourselves that we are right by taking the

impurities in our mind for purity.’

I already gave examples of how we can be proud of real defects – even harming others. So

one harms others, one is proud, and one becomes incorrigible – one cannot be corrected, not

accessible to help.

‘This ends up causing ourselves and others to fall into lower states of rebirth, which is

why we must practise the Dharma constantly to purify our own faults and put a stop to

their consequences. We must start by first of all looking at ourselves to see our faults,

and then use the instructions in our possession to get rid of them. Once our mind is

completely free of all faults, all our actions become perfect. We reach the genuine purity

of Buddhahood, perfect enlightenment.

Seeing the faults in our own mind automatically makes us feel ashamed and this in itself

will diminish the feelings of pride inside the mind. Facing the fact that we have many

faults in our mind is an excellent way of reducing pride.’

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In other teachings Gendun Rinpoche talks about this, he always told us ‘Did you know that

you have 3 eyes? Two eyes look outwards, and then you have the third eye which looks

inside. It’s the eye of wisdom, and do you know what it sees first of all? It sees the

shortcomings. This is necessary. The eye of wisdom sees all the blockages, all the

shortcomings, all this ego-centredness. The good news is that if we have seen some

shortcomings in the last few days we have become wiser. The bad news is – lots of work!

The more we see, the more we understand how much work there is. This is the eye of

wisdom, and whenever anyone talked about the third eye, the eye of wisdom which so many

people talk about, the chakras and so on, Gendun Rinpoche would say that this is the eye of

wisdom that looks inside and sees the true state of our mind. When you listen to some New

Age teachings you get the impression that this third eye is like a lighthouse which, with the

lamp of pride inside, will illuminate the whole world! One tries very hard to open up the

chakra of the third eye without looking inside, better not to look inside – only look outside,

then everything goes well.

The third eye looks inside, then your whole becomes one big eye, every pore of our skin,

every element of our body becomes a way of reaching out to others – there is nothing in this

organism that will not respond to others. So remember that the third eye is the eye that looks

inside and knows the real state of affairs. It will know all our qualities as well, because it is

not judgemental. It looks at the qualities as well as what blocks the qualities and, as the idea

of inside and outside dissolves, so does the idea of looking inside.

Whatever good results arise from your practice is the blessing of the Buddhas, and whatever

difficulty is there is also the blessing of the Buddhas. This is very important. When something

works, like for example I help someone and something works, then definitely ‘I’ am not

responsible, the ego is not responsible for it working, and fortunately it got out the way so

something could happen. If I am happy about this afterwards, it’s very fine that I share the

blessing of the situation; I have been healed in the same way as the other person. So I am not

happy that ‘my treatment’ was so effective. I am happy that the inherent qualities could

manifest more, that something happened in my own mind as well as in the mind of the client,

who was blessed to relax, to open and find their way back to the natural state. When things

don’t work in that way, then it is a blessing to learn more about letting go and having

confidence. This is also a blessing, and this way of looking at things will take away all

possibility of ego-involvement.

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Day 7.c

• Subtle veils of ignorance – purification of clinging to characteristics.

• The bodhisattva vow.

• Servant to beings but not their kleshas.

• Bodhisattva activity – being honest about our capacities and only helping when asked.

• Jealousy based on comparison.

• Lazy jealousy – sour grapes.

• Jealousy within spiritual communities.

• Connection between pride and jealousy.

• Taking responsibility for our own happiness.

• Not excluding others from our happiness.

True happiness can only be found when we are not under the influence of the afflictive

emotions. When the afflictive emotions, the kleshas, are purified, there remains very little to

be purified until you reach complete Awakening. What remain after these afflictive states of

mind are gone are aspects of ignorance, which still need our attention so that these also are

purified: subtle view about reality, ideas and fixed notions about what reality is. When the

gross level of afflictions has cleared away, the realisation dawns that there is no ‘self’, that

there is no such thing as an individual solid self. This becomes absolutely clear. It even

becomes impossible to think in terms of ‘self’; there is just no more belief in it. But this does

not mean that in relation to the circumstances of our life, there is a complete understanding of

how this world arises as an experience. What is left is the need to develop an understanding of

how, or in which way, what we call our world, this seemly-solid reality, how all of this is also

just mind, just energy. Lack of understanding about what is the reality of the so-called outer

world, is what separates us from Buddhahood, complete Awakening.

The clinging to a self has gone, but the clinging to the characteristics of this world is still

present in a subtle way, and this is what has to be dissolved. So first, the big part of the job,

we have to dissolve this clinging to what we call ‘me’ and ‘I’ with all these characteristics of

the self, because that is responsible for our personal suffering. And then when we have

become really free of this and there is no more personal suffering of this kind, we will see that

we still have limitations in helping others, because of believing in the true existence of objects

and situations, everything we call ‘characteristics’, the characteristics of the world. Until our

understanding becomes so vast that we understand that all of this universe: the planets, and

the spaces in between the planets, and all the beings, all of this is mind or energy. All is in a

process, and all is in a flow, and all is susceptible to the influence of mind. We understand

that there are not even tiny particles which make up the universe; even the belief in these

small building blocks like atoms, even these we understand don’t exist. We understand that

the notion of time is irrelevant. In Tibetan we call the first part the ‘purification of clinging to

self’ and the last part we call ‘purification of clinging to characteristics’.

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I just mention this to you to give the complete path, because we are talking now about what

dissolves personal suffering. But then there comes the further part of the journey where all the

obstacles for helping others are dissolved. A little spontaneous explanation.

Now back to the text. We have these five ‘ornaments’ of human life: desire, hatred, ignorance,

pride, and the fifth ornament is still missing – jealousy, we love it!

A similar practice of reflection serves to reduce jealousy. We think back to when we

received the bodhisattva vows. During the ceremony the Buddhas were looking on as

witnesses to the vow we made that day to commit ourselves to attaining enlightenment

for the benefit of all living beings and after enlightenment setting them too in that same

state.

You probably have not taken the Bodhisattva vows yet. Every one in our lineage who does

intensive practice takes that vow – all practice is based on that. The moment we take the vow,

something extraordinarily important happens in our life. We promise that we will attain full

Awakening in order to establish all sentient beings in Awakening. This vow has extreme

consequences in our life. We do not belong to ourselves any more; we belong to the

Awakening of all beings. This is extremely important. Until then I can say ‘OK, I go for my

own liberation. I take care of my spiritual path and all my needs and so on’. But when I make

the Bodhisattva vow I say ‘This life and all future lives are all dedicated to the fullest possible

liberation of all sentient beings.’

I took the Bodhisattva vow during my medical studies, with Kalu Rinpoche. He explained the

vow to us for several days before giving the ceremony. It became very clear to me, due to his

teachings, that if I take this step I am saying ego-clinging is not the thing any more. The chief

or king from that moment on is Bodhicitta, this vow which means the benefit of all sentient

beings is what rules my life, I am a servant of all sentient beings from this time on. So it

equals an inner decision that really the benefit of all is the only thing that is important.

Personal benefit is simply included in the benefit of all. We can discuss whether it is possible

to establish all sentient beings in Awakening, maybe the task is just too big. But on a practical

level when you vow to do it, then it becomes clear that there are no more self-serving

attitudes. When we are reborn in the next life, usually we don’t even remember that we have

taken that vow, but the attitude to always be there to benefit everyone will remain, as will the

strong force to really clear away all these ego-centred attitudes. And that is beautiful, it’s like

offering ourselves to the happiness of everyone and we say that we offer ourselves with body,

speech and mind to the highest, or deepest, true happiness of all sentient beings.

The lama who asked for the teaching about the emotions had of course taken the Bodhisattva

vow, so here Karma Chakme reminds him of the vow he already took. Many of you have not

taken the vow, and for the others maybe the vow has not been so present. Now Karma

Chakme says ‘Remember your vow, this will help you deal with jealousy’. We are all share

the wish for everyone to be happy. Everyone sitting in the room shares the same motivation.

So let’s remember that wish, at the time when we promised to behave like this, or at the time

we had that wish:

‘At the same time we promised to behave so as to produce as much virtue and as many

positive actions as possible for other living beings, acting all the time only for their

benefit. We also committed ourselves to praying constantly for others, formulating the

wish that they may be happy and come to possess the causes of happiness. . .’

So when we are not under the influence of afflictive emotions we are all very happy to pray

for the happiness of everyone. In our tradition we take a vow which will stabilise this wish

even while we are under the influence of these emotions, so we become like a ship with a

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very stable course. Imagine this wish that you have becomes a commitment. What is the

difference between the wish that all beings become happy and the commitment to do

everything possible for that to happen? What is the difference between a wish and a

commitment?

Your action, what you do. A wish you can sometimes drop and sometimes pick up again.

When things are difficult you have committed yourself. It’s an extra stability, to help you do

what you have promised to do. Like marriage! We are married to all sentient beings. The texts

say we are the servants to all sentient beings, but we are not the servants of their afflictive

emotions. We are the servant of their Buddha Nature. For example if someone is drunk and

asks you to offer him another bottle of rum, you are not the servant of his wish to have

another bottle of rum, you are the servant of his health, so you will not give him what he

wishes. When someone out of afflictive emotions asks that we behave in a certain way then

we do not have to do it. But we understand that behind this is the wish to become truly happy,

so we will take care that the situation develops in such a way that true happiness becomes

more likely. For example, if we have a lazy brother at home who doesn’t want to work, but

stays in bed all the time listening to music, we can go and pull off his blanket, we can even

tell him, ‘You get out of here, you won’t get anything to eat if you continue like this.’ We can

be quite strict; our compassion is not idiot compassion. But we will try not to leave the person

alone if there is something we can do for them.

Q: How can we be sure that we are not acting out our own afflictions, our desire to be in his

bed?

A; If you want to find out you have to look in your mind – ‘Am I acting out of a balanced

state of mind, or is there desire or anger that makes me act like this?’ From the other

perspective, you can feel if you are receiving advice from someone who is in a balanced state

of mind, or if they are acting from a fixed perspective.

When we honestly look at ourselves right now we must say our capacity to help others is

extremely limited. If now we were to say ‘OK, now we go out and help everyone’, we would

make one mistake after the other. So we first have to work on ourselves, the first act of

compassion is to get our afflictive emotions out of the way. If we have already clarified our

pride, OK then we have a more correct look at ourselves. Actually we can see that we are

quite a burden to the world if we continue like this. So first we will make the burden on the

world lighter, we work on our states of mind to find more often more open warm states of

mind. And on that basis then we can start to act, but we act actually where we are invited to

help.

A Bodhisattva never imposes his or her help. Not in normal situations anyway. For example I

am a Dharma teacher, but I will never teach the Dharma without an invitation – it’s against

the rules of my profession! In my family for example they regard me just as their son, or their

brother. They don’t ask about the Dharma, so I will not talk about it. I will live it out, I will be

whatever I can of the qualities of the Dharma, but if they don’t want to know more, not one

word ever imposed on others. Our monastery has been in the area of Clermont-Ferrand for

many years, but we have never advertised, put up posters. We could of course, but the attitude

is ‘Let those who have come into contact with us spread the wish.’ There is no missionary

attitude for the Bodhisattva. It protects us from this attitude of pride, ‘We know better, and we

show the world how to do it’. There is a great respect for the integrity of human beings. If

they ask for help then we can offer more, but if they don’t ask we don’t give more. So we

understand a little more now about the Bodhisattva motivation and the commitment to help

everyone to find true happiness. Now we come on to how to connect this with jealousy.

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‘Is it right, then, to ignore all this, and instead each time we see someone happy or

successful, someone who is better off than ourselves or who has achieved more,

immediately become jealous and resentful of him? If this is our reaction, we are going

against all our former commitments.’

We have made wishes that every one is happy and now we see our friend, our neighbour, or

someone in our family, achieve something or find a situation of happiness, and then we feel a

pinch in our heart – ‘I would also like to have that!’ This is especially true if we have made

some effort and someone else has more success than we do. Or if we are in love with a person

and this person goes off with someone else – and both of them are very happy. Here we are,

our heart is aching and here we are with our vow ‘May all beings be happy – except them!’

Jealousy is so strong that we can kill someone. It is one of the strongest emotions and it

completely destroys relationships. These are the strong jealousies which we notice, but we

may not be so aware of the small day-to-day jealousies. Jealousy is based on comparisons.

We compare ourselves to others, and this family of emotions includes envy, rivalry,

competitiveness, traditional jealousy, all of this is included.

So, for example, if we are ourselves a good-looking woman and we take care of ourselves and

we notice in the group that there is another woman who is especially good-looking, she has a

good-looking dress and she has taken care of herself – there is a little moment of comparison,

we have to swallow a little bit and then we go ‘Oh you look fine!’ Secretly we think, ‘Oh if

only I could be as beautiful as her’, and perhaps the next time we go out we try harder, new

clothes, new makeup. It’s the same for men, when a good-looking woman goes and talks with

a man and they laugh and they are happy: ‘What makes him so interesting? Why is she not

talking to me?’ Comparison – ‘What makes him…’, ‘What makes me….’, this energy of

comparing. Someone tells a good story and we feel the impulse to tell an even better story.

Someone makes a good meal and we feel the impulse to find an even better recipe. Someone

tells a good joke and we say ‘pha!’

We have the jealousy which motivates us to become better and we have the jealousy which

criticises others to put them down. So for those who are more active, we say: ‘OK, he is like

this, I will show that I can do it better. My neighbour has a Mercedes 200 in his garage I will

get a 250’. Bigger, better, stronger, more beautiful, quicker and so on. And the other way is

‘He has a Mercedes 200, typical greed, going to Germany and coming back with a gas-

guzzler. He is just one of those people who doesn’t care about pollution – I’ll take my

scooter’. So you understand the energy is one of criticism, like ‘Yeah, she is nice-looking, but

she doesn’t dress properly, and she doesn’t even know how to move.’ This is lazy jealousy.

We don’t have to make an effort, we just have to bring in some sour grapes – very easy, and it

works miracles: we feel so much better afterwards – but actually we don’t. This is real poison

in our minds, because we cannot be happy.

Constantly comparing all the time, this goes on all day long. She smiles at him or her, but not

at me – so tiring! So when jealousy is in our heart we are stuck, we can’t really be happy, it’s

poison. Obviously the remedy is to remember: ‘But look, he or she is happy, they are

enjoying themselves’. So be happy for them that they are happy. Enjoy it with them; that’s

great. They have good talks together – let’s join in and enjoy it. They make coffee for each

other; let’s join in and bring in a cake! Let’s join in and go together into that joyful

dimension.

‘Each time we see somebody happy, instead of feeling glad that our wishes as a

bodhisattva are being fulfilled, we feel jealous of them, something quite contrary to the

promises we made in front of the Buddhas. To counteract this jealous reaction, every

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time we see someone happy or joyful, be happy for them. This is the antidote to the

emotion of jealousy.’

This includes all the other levels of comparison. Political parties: they got so much per cent

and we only got so much. ‘Yes, they got a higher percentage of the vote, but they are doing

this or that…’ Comparison everywhere. You have a company you want to make a profit. You

see your profit is running at 3%, but others have a profit of 5%, 6%, 10%. Comparison, anger,

‘I want to be better’, ‘I want to be top’. A competitive society is a jealous society. Our new

Pope has declared Buddhism enemy number one, because Buddhism is the fastest growing

religion in the world, so it is the most dangerous.

Within Buddhism: ‘Oh, the Shambhala group is getting so many people, but we don’t have

many, so we won’t work together with them.’ Then we are jealous of whoever comes to teach

and there are so many people going there, we make a few calls. We are jealous of the activity

of other Bodhisattvas. It’s incredible, outrageous if you think about it. There are different

spiritual teachers in the world, taking care of the situation on the planet and doing wonderful

work, and we are jealous that they are doing it so well. It’s completely absurd and goes

completely against our own intentions. We are Buddhists or Yoga practitioners, maybe of the

Satyananda school, but then we hear someone praising this Greek Orthodox priest, it hurts so

much in the heart. Why, it is so beautiful that there is a wonderful person doing good things

so that others feel inspired!

So, since here we are in a spiritual community, we especially have to talk about jealousy

inside spiritual communities. If we were in a political situation we would have to talk about

how not to be jealous of the good political work of others. In commerce, how to do business

so that all sides are happy – a good deal is a deal where the one who sells and the one who

buys can both live properly, they both prosper. A good client and a good sales person will be

happy to meet after 20 or 30 years, because they respect each other and there is benefit for

both. This is when there is respect for each other, and the wish that the other person is also

happy after the deal.

Sometimes in our spiritual circles, when we have studied this tradition, we say ‘Yes, these

teachings really explain very well how you get to complete Buddhahood; these teachings

cannot be found anywhere else.’ Actually, when others don’t see how good our tradition is we

react with insulted pride and this is jealousy, and we become angry when others don’t value

our tradition as much as we do. We completely lose sight of the true dimensions of the thing.

Most people just want to be happy; they don’t want to reach full Enlightenment. People on the

spiritual path want to get free of the afflictive emotions; they don’t care so much about subtle

absorptions in very high samadhis – it’s not in their reach. Most people don’t care for these

fine theological distinctions on subtle points of the nature of mind and the nature of God and

so on – they would like to see the religions join forces and work together –this is what is more

important. Do you know the ecumenical movement, which also extends to non-Christian

religions like Buddhism and Hinduism? This movement is about non-jealousy, non-

competition. If we have the poison of jealousy in our heart then we don’t get the point. We

think that if I hold hands or I am happy together with someone else, this means that our

spiritual approach must be seen as the same, but actually it’s just about supporting each other

to work for humanity.

So when there is jealousy in our hearts we always want to protect what is so special about

ourselves, that actually ‘I know best, I can do the best thing and what I can offer is the best

possible help’ and we always want to insist on this point. It’s as if we have a hang-up there,

we cannot just be normal.

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Do you understand the big connection between pride and jealousy? When things are going

well for a proud person we call it pride; when things are going badly for a proud person we

call it jealousy. My ignorance is also involved – I always believe that I am the best, every one

loves me and I am on top. In my ignorance I don’t even see how good others are. And one day

it happens that there is a failure – my wife divorces me because she can’t stand this proud guy

any more, my business fails, or I was a wonderful runner going from success to success, but

now I have lost and reality strikes and then a proud person will immediately be jealous of

others who are faring better. But of course some proud people remain proud until they die,

and no matter what life tells them they never see anything. It continues without any change.

Jealous people are jealous as long as they are the underdogs – while there is someone to be

jealous of. When they succeed you will see them behaving very proudly. They will become

exactly like those they criticise. However some stay jealous even when they are ahead,

through jealousy they watch out that no one raises their head too high. You can see the

mechanism? It’s not that every time jealousy changes into pride when you get ahead, and it’s

not every time you get lessons from life, that pride changes into jealousy, but the two are

intimately related.

It’s the same with desire changing into anger. So many sexual relationships start out with

strong desire but just look at them five years later when they divorce. You can see that the

strength of desire is very often exactly mirrored by the strength of the hatred. Relationships

which start in a more balanced way – even when they separate they don’t show so much

hatred usually. It has to do with the fact that there were such great expectations and then the

disappointment was just as great.

‘We must understand that to feel jealous whenever we see someone better off than

ourselves simply results in rebirth in hell or as a demi-god with all the suffering such an

existence involves. We should therefore think this over very carefully so as to pacify our

jealousy.’

Because jealousy has so much anger, if that is the dominant emotion jealousy has the force to

kill. It actually intends to block or kill the life force of the other person and because of that

energy one can even go as far down as the hell realms. If, even when one achieves a state of

happiness because of many beneficial acts, one is never satisfied, never happy enough, one

always wants more, this leads to the demi-gods. So the main remedy for jealousy is to rejoice,

to be happy with the happiness of others. It is sometimes not so easy. Let us take the case of

our husband or wife going off with someone else. Can I be happy when they are happy? I can.

If I could not offer my partner the happiness they were searching for and my partner finds it

now, then if I truly love my partner and truly wish for their happiness I can now be even

happier! The whole question is: ‘How important are my own wishes for happiness and how

do I deal with these wishes?’ The other question is: ‘Is the other person my possession?’

I am a Dharma practitioner and I take responsibility for my own mind. So you are not

responsible for whether or not I am happy or unhappy. If I am happy it does not depend on the

outside world. It depends on how I deal with the outside world. When we meet a person and

we decide to live together, we can say to the other person: ‘I really wish you to be happy in

our relationship. If you find out that you are not happy, then of course you are free to leave.

We can join our forces and go forwards towards Awakening, but if we see that there are too

many tensions, too many conflicts, then we have to accept that we are not as helpful as we

hoped to be. In our relationship don’t think that I am purifying your karma and you are

purifying mine! I take care of the causes and effects in my own mind stream and you take care

of what is happening in your mind stream. We won’t get into the idea that if you are unhappy,

I have to take care of your unhappiness, I will not take care of your karma.’ (We do it all the

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time.) ‘I will support you to deal with your mind, your situation, your karma but I cannot do it

for you.’ A happy person and an unhappy person can live together and, although the happy

one is happy all the time, the unhappy one will never learn how to be happy. They have to

learn for themselves. It’s not that the happy one can pass on the happiness into the other’s

mind.

Q: How can we help a person who experiences jealousy towards us?

A: Of course we can be a little bit more sober and not give so many opportunities to stimulate

that jealousy, but this will not work for very long. What does work, besides talking openly

about the mechanisms of jealousy, what really helps is to show the other person they are not

excluded from our happiness, but included. If there was an original basis of friendship and

well-wishing, then to gently remind them: ‘Yes we are happy, exactly what you always

wished for. We still continue to be friendly, and although right now for you it’s not so easy, it

doesn’t mean we don’t love you any more. You love us and are happy and perhaps we can

open up to that and be included in that happiness.’ The feeling of exclusion is the most

difficult thing for a jealous person, the feeling of loneliness, and after a certain point if that is

not accepted, we cannot do anything else. We can continue with wishes and send our love, but

besides that the person has to open. We have to accept that there are certain people we cannot

help.

The most difficult thing in the life of a Bodhisattva is that we love others so much and feel

that this advice or way of doing things would really help them, but they will not accept it, they

will not listen. So we love them and see them going into more and more suffering, but we

cannot do anything. As Bodhisattvas we don’t insist on helping those who do not listen and

are not open. We work with those who do listen and are open, and we already have enough

work with those.

The less we are proud ourselves, the less we attract jealousy; they can still be jealous, but we

attract less.

That brings us to the end of the second section on dealing with the afflictive emotions,

how to overcome the afflictive emotions through the use of the appropriate remedies.

The methods taught in this second part correspond to those of the ordinary Sutras, both

Mahayana and Hinayana.

The Sutras are the oral teachings of the Buddha which were originally written down in the

Pali Canon and in the Sanskrit Canon. Karma Chakme says this because the later instructions

come more from the Tantra, not so much from the Sutras. The Sutras were given by the

Buddha from his form as the Buddha. and the Tantras were given in his form as different

divinities, like Mahakala or Chakrasamvara (these are different names of different divinities).

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Day 8.a

• 3rd

step “Transforming the Emotions” – being willing to live without the emotions.

• Solidity of emotions dissolved in the fire of awareness.

• Looking behind the mask of our persona.

• Afflictive states are not wisdom themselves – we don’t transform the emotion but our

vision of the emotion.

• We have to see right now and not rely on past experiences.

• Om Svabhava Shuddha Sarva Dharma Svabhava Shuddho Ham.

• An experience becomes impure when there is clinging.

• Using the 5 Buddhas to remind us of the energy nature of the afflictive emotions.

• Meditation on the 5 Buddhas to purify our emotions and those of all beings.

In the past five days we have worked through the first two steps of dealing with the emotions.

The first step was all about encouraging ourselves not to get involved with the afflictive

emotions. During that first phase of the teaching we looked a lot into the mechanisms of the

afflictive emotions to see how they create stress, tension and suffering in our minds and what

are the benefits of not getting involved. We came to a deep understanding that if we want to

reach Awakening or be at all beneficial to others, then we should definitely not get involved

with afflictive states of mind. We understood that in order to apply the second step, the

remedies, we need to have that strong wish to not get involved, but really to abandon and

overcome the afflictive states.

It took us three days to develop that deep motivation; then for two days we learned about

some of the most important remedies. And since we are really motivated to apply them then

they really make sense. Even visualising a skeleton when we have desire, even that makes

sense, because we understood why it was necessary. Then yesterday afternoon the last one

was jealousy and we even got to the point of understanding, ‘Yes, if others are happy and we

cannot enjoy the same wealth, the same renown, the same friendship and love as them, yes, it

is an occasion for us to be happy with them, because it is our profound wish that everyone be

happy. So we rejoice when others have happiness in the world, we truly rejoice.’

Today, this morning (it’s the Dharma protector day), we did a puja where we offered all our

mistakes into the fire of wisdom. So this is an excellent moment in the teachings. From now

on Karma Chakme takes a different point of view on the emotions, not seeing them as such a

big problem any more. The third step is to be willing to live without afflictive states. Are you

willing to be without your afflictive emotions? Can you live without pride? Can you live

without your anger? ‘If we have to ….’ I tell you it must be! If we want to help others we

have to become free of pride and anger. Can you live without desire? I mean just joy and love,

not desire…. Who am I without desire? Can you live without jealousy, rivalry and

competition – we would like to! How about living without ignorance, without lack of

awareness? It would be nice, huh? But then we would be aware all of the time. Are you ready

to be aware? Or do you prefer not to see? This is the choice now, between the second and the

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third step, this is the choice. One cannot really make use of what is proposed in the next step

if one has not made an inner choice that we are willing to entertain pure vision, a vision of the

world free of afflictive states of mind. We teach the third step a lot, especially through the

Vajrayana practices in the longer retreats where we work with mantras and visualisation, but

somehow if one is not really willing to enter that vision it doesn’t work. So let’s listen a little

bit to what Lama Gendun says:

‘Thanks to what we call the accumulation of merit – the growing influence our

accumulated positive behaviour has on our mental state – we start to feel an increasing

sense of awareness. Our mind begins to emerge from its obscurity; sensitivity develops

into pure intuition.’

This pure intuition is the beginning of an understanding of reality, the pure vision or intuitive

insight.

‘If we are a regular practitioner of meditation, the first sign of this new phase of our

spiritual growth will be inner experiences of emptiness.’

Now Lama Gendun explains what this means:

‘The world seems to lack solidity, nothing is fixed or permanent like before, and yet this

all seems perfectly natural, without any sense of alienation. If our ego (ego-centred

tendencies) is prepared to release its grasp on a concrete conception of the world, our

mental lucidity during meditation improves, the 'feeling' (emotional colouring of our

experiences) fades, leaving the mind crystal clear.’

So we are talking about moments in meditation when the fixation on what happens has

becomes so much less and the world is seen as if it were a dream. We see its dream-like

nature. When looking at oneself one gets the feeling, ‘Well I don’t know if I exist of not, I

don’t have a solid feeling of self anymore’. It’s crazy, it’s a very natural sense and as one

feels this fluidity, one feels so relaxed and so much more at peace than before. There is not

much thinking. Not many sentences or words that form in our minds. We are just amazed at

how simple and transparent the world is. Sometimes when practitioners come out of these

experiences they say ‘Well, I felt like I was empty and also the world seemed empty’. What

they want to say is that it is not solid; all the feeling of solidity is gone. There is great clarity

of mind. There is completely clear and precise perception of what is going on. It’s not hazy, it

is very clear but at the same time transparent, like when you look at a rainbow. A rainbow is

completely clear yet transparent. The world is more like made of light or energy, not so

substantial. This is what in Tibetan is called tong nyam. It’s not realisation; it’s just the

beginning of an intuition of the non-solidity of the world.

‘It is in this kind of environment that we can practise looking into the true nature of what we have so far been calling (afflictive) 'emotion', using our new clarity like a

searchlight, we can see the (afflictive) emotions for what they really are: wisdom energy.’

So it’s like this morning, when we were doing the puja and we wanted to be able to put our

desire into the flames. We had to have a certain notion, a certain feeling of it, that desire is not

something substantial, that it is slightly disturbed energy, but that behind that disturbance it is

just energy, and potentially the energy of awareness. Desire, anger, ignorance, pride, jealousy

are all energy, although that energy is not flowing freely. The five different kinds of

emotional energy, actually if we let go of the clinging inherent in those afflictive states, show

up as pure awareness. We have the fire of awareness and then we put the solid stuff inside,

like the five kinds of grains and so on, representing the solid feeling of ‘I’ and ‘self’ in each

one of the emotions.

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What does the fire do? It takes the solid substances and they become light and heat, their

solidity is gone. If the fire is hot enough there is even now ashes. It is the same in our mind,

when the awareness catches on to the more solid states of mind which feel so solid, ‘I have

desire’, ‘I have this anger’. Then awareness makes it dissolve, like the fire makes the solid

substances of wood dissolve into light and heat. So basically what we are saying is: ‘Bring

the light of your awareness into the afflictive state and you will see it dissolve.’

When people come to see the lama: ‘Lama, Lama, I have a problem’, I say ‘Well, look, its not

so solid’, and I try to show that. Some don’t want to see, ‘No, no, no. I really have a

problem’… they are not ready for that. ‘Lama, Lama, I have so much anger, so much desire,

so much pride, so much ignorance, please help!’ I ask, ‘Where is your problem, where is it,

show me?’ ‘But it’s there. I can’t find it, but it’s there…. You see, this moment when you

look you try to find your emotion and you can’t find it… at that moment you have to accept

that it’s not there! Its not there, it’s nothing solid, it’s an idea I came along with….So to

transform the emotion means to have the view of its non-solidity. Nothing is solid there. One

moment it condenses into a really strong afflictive state, the next moment when the mind is on

something else, it is gone. This process gets faster and faster the more quickly we bring the

light of awareness into the emotional state.

Even the brief moment of the initial discovery of the reality behind the ego-created mask

short-circuits the confusion of the emotion and for a split second we come to know

wisdom.

Our mask is our persona, we think: ‘I am this person with this desire, this anger and jealousy’;

we carry this and identify with this. Wisdom is what looks behind the mask and asks ‘Where

is that emotion, where is it?’ Then there is a little moment of ‘Ah, I can’t find it…’ This little

moment is a very decisive moment. For a split second we know wisdom. It’s as if in an

ancient Greek theatre we are all dancing with our masks and then for a brief moment I saw

you without your mask, and because I saw you for a moment, my vision has changed. Now

the question I ask you is: ‘Are you willing to live without that mask?’ This is a little bit like

asking you, do you want to live without that persona? On the internet now, in Facebook and

so on, they ask us to create our persona. It is actually asking us to create a fake reality. Are we

willing to just be what we truly are? One moment there is condensed energy, yes emotion,

then the next moment it’s gone. There’s no need to hang onto it once we have looked behind

the mask.

The instant passes, but the memory remains and we are never the same again, our

attitude towards our emotions is completely revolutionized. Yet prior to this moment lie

a great many attempts to see the emotions, some of them obviously unsuccessful, others

revealing themselves to be a sham only after some time has passed, often thanks to the

catalysing effect of an experienced guide. Before the dawn of true clarity, the emotion

can only be seen as an emotion, refusing to recognize it as such in the vain ambition to

see something else, can only lead us astray.

Now this is a warning, a big one, from Lama Gendun, and a very important one. Don’t try to

see the afflictive states through rose-coloured glasses. There is nothing wise in desire, or

anger, or pride, or jealousy, or ignorance. Don’t tell yourself that everything is fine with these

afflictive states. As long as you don’t see what is behind the mask, don’t pretend to yourself.

Don’t pretend that you see. When you see what is behind the mask of anger, the anger is

finished, no more anger. When you see behind the mask of desire, desire is finished, zero

desire. Same for everything else including fear, depression, guilt, shame, all the other

afflictive emotions. When you see what was behind, the mask is gone. As long as we feel the

narrow-mindedness, the suffering, the tensions, and we are in the world of the projections, we

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know that we have not seen… In the presence of an experienced guide who is like a catalyst

for our understanding, sometimes we manage to see things that we cannot see when we are

alone at home with our practice.

We get to a point where we have seen in the past, and we could be tempted to tell ourselves

‘But I know that its not really a problem’, and forget to see that right now we are in an

emotional state and we don’t see right now. We have seen in the past but right now we are

caught in the game…. Our pride wants to make us believe that we see where we don’t see.

You can see this with Dharma teachers, this is one of their biggest obstacles. They have seen

something, they have practiced, they have experiences, but whether or not this is the actual

experience of the moment…? It depends whether just now they see, in the moment. Yesterday

doesn’t count.

‘As with the application of antidotes, the initial phases of the practice are deliberately

orchestrated so as to favour a high degree of clarity.’

The introduction to this practice is meant to create the capacity to clearly direct the mind to

investigate, this wisdom eye looking inside, to enable us to have that clarity.

‘This is the practice of insight meditation, part of the traditional path mapped out for

those who train themselves in informal meditation, the mind contemplating itself as it

is.’

This refers to what I showed you in the morning practices. We always first developed mental

calm, and then sometimes I asked you questions: ‘Who is meditating?’ – questions which

stimulate looking inside to try to understand the nature of reality better. It is called informal

meditation because it doesn’t rely on any other techniques apart from what spontaneously

appears to the mind. Formal meditation uses texts, mantra visualisations, and more

techniques. The next chapter deals with this:

‘Those who rely on the visualisation of universal imagery as a meditation technique have

a special practice of mentally dissolving the concrete world into emptiness and

imagining the five emotions as the five universal aspects of the enlightened mind. Such

visualisations serve to re-train the mind for a vision of things that got lost when the ego

took over. Chakme Rinpoche terms this the transformation of emotion, and treats it as a

separate section before turning his attention to the main part that deals with the direct

perception of the mind using its own innate lucidity.’

As I said at the very beginning of the course it is not actually transforming the emotion, but

transforming our vision of the emotion. You have to intervene when someone insists that you

can transform the emotion. This is not true, you cannot, you can transform your vision of the

emotion and you can know its true nature. When anger falls away, love shows. This is really

important because there is a misunderstanding of some kind of alchemy, as if we could make

something beautiful out of desire, as if it could become love, compassion and generosity. The

mask has to drop. When the mask has dropped we see the energy behind the mask. It is not

that the mask becomes something else. It is dropped, it’s gone. The harmonious flow of the

Awakened qualities was blocked by ego-clinging. When that blockage is gone then the flow is

seen again. The blockage is called afflictive emotion; in itself the blockage will never become

something useful, something wholesome, it will always create disturbances, illness in mind

and body. When energy blocked in the emotion flows freely again it is the expression of

wisdom. Today, when you were approaching the fire and the smoke, it was quite strong and

you couldn’t get so close. If you can’t keep your distance from the afflictive states, if you get

too close, you really get burned.

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‘This next section consists of a description of a method of dissolving the five poisons into

emptiness, making the emotions disappear by visualisation. (Title given by Lama

Rinchen).’

Up to here everything we heard this morning was the free speech of Lama Gendun and now

we go back into the text of Karma Chakme.

‘The instant any one of the five poisons appears in the mind, recite the Svabhava mantra

and think that everything is cleared into emptiness.’

You probably don’t know the Svabhava mantra, it’s ‘Om svabhava shuddha sarva dharma

svabhava shuddho ham’. The meaning is: OM is a short hand for ‘the wisdom of all the

Buddhas’; SVABHAVA is the ‘essential nature’; SHUDDHA means ‘pure’; SARVA – ‘all’;

DHARMA – ‘phenomena’; (A)HAM – ‘and so am I’. So the sentence means ‘OM, the nature

of all phenomena is pure, and my own essential nature is also pure’.

Purity is a synonym of emptiness, it means that there is no problem. There is no problem with

phenomena and as well as there is no problem with myself, because by nature all phenomena

are pure of all solidity, just as I am. An experience, a dharma becomes pure when there is no

clinging. Impure dharma, impure experience, is with clinging, pure experience is without

clinging. So we can read it like this; when there is no clinging, only wisdom, then all

experiences are pure, including the experience of oneself. ‘Without clinging, no problem’,

that’s the message here. When there is clinging there is a problem.

So when an emotion arises: ‘Om svabhava shuddha sarva dharma svabhava shuddho ‘ham.’

OK, no problem. No clinging, relax, look behind the mask. It is just the creativity of mind

manifesting in the manifold experiences, it’s just that creativity. When clinging comes in it

looks so solid, but when clinging goes the natural flow of manifestation continues.

‘Imagine that the five disturbing emotions in the mind, either the emotions themselves

or their potential presence, become the five Dhyani Buddhas (the universal images of the

purified energy of the five emotions).’

So now you have to play a little with me. We will give colours to the emotions: anger, white;

pride yellow; desire red; jealousy green; ignorance blue. We imagine we are wearing a crown:

in the front white, then yellow to our right, red at the back, green to the left and in the centre

blue. Now they are not just flashlights, but they take on the shape of a Buddha. They all look

like Shakyamuni but they have different body colours. So my crown consists of five coloured

Buddhas.

Then the game consists in ‘I like this so much, I really want this’ – warning red Buddha!

Jealousy: ‘I want this so much, I am not happy’ – green Buddha! ‘Don’t bother me I don’t

want to hear’ – blue Buddha. ‘Don’t say that again’ – white Buddha. ‘Everything is great, I’m

on top of the world’ – yellow Buddha. So when the practitioner experiences an emotion, they

remind themselves, first by using the Svabhava mantra and then by visualising the coloured

Buddhas, that in fact this is just blocked energy. And when it flows freely, it becomes the

wisdom energy of those Buddhas.

So, for example, you are on breakfast service on the course and you got there on time but you

find yourself all alone, your helper is not there. They are asleep or have forgotten – so what

do I do? I remind myself ‘Om svabhava shuddha sarva dharma svabhava shuddho ham.’ If I

don’t cling, this is not a problem. This is just the Buddha, in this case Vajrasattva, the Buddha

representing the pure energy of mirror-like wisdom, the dissolution of anger. This is just this

activity in my mind. I see something is there, going on, and before the attachment comes I let

go into that open state of mind which is Buddha Vajrasattva. So there are two steps. First the

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mantra, to get out of the clinging and to understand that this is actually no problem, if I can

develop a pure vision of the situation. Second step is to enhance or support the positive

vision: I see it as Buddha, I see it as the special aspect of Buddha activity. I see a beautiful

seductive man or woman – Amitabha. ‘Oh, it’s all about the flow of vitality and not clinging.’

It’s a very wonderful manifestation of flow if I don’t cling – if I cling, it’s desire. This is the

teaching of Amitabha.

All these Buddhas have names, they come later in the text but I will give you them now. The

first one in the front is called Vajrasattva, the pure wisdom of the absence of anger, or seeing

the true nature of anger. Then on your right side Ratnasambhava, for pride. Behind is

Amitabha, the true nature of desire. On your left side is Amoghasiddhi, the true nature of

jealousy. In the centre is Vairocana, the true nature of ignorance.

Actually you don’t need to know the names and the positions so much, but the idea is that

they form a mandala. In the centre is ignorance, because ignorance is the source of all the

other emotions. In front anger, and behind desire, because they are opposites and can change

into each other. And you have pride and jealousy because they are also opposites which can

change into each other. The message is that our world of clinging is in fact the mandala of

wisdom energy.

Visualise very clearly your anger taking on the form of Vajrasattva, your pride that of

Ratnasambhava, your desire-attachment Amitabha, jealousy Amoghasiddhi and

ignorance the form of Vairocana. Imagine that these five Buddhas then send out rays of

light that fill the entire universe. They purify not only all of the negative karma

produced as a result of the activity of the five poisons in each living being, but at the

same time the emotions themselves. The minds of living beings become completely free

of all emotions, thus ending completely all possibility of any subsequent rebirth in any of

the different states of existence, symbolized by the five paths leading to rebirth.’

These ‘five paths leading to rebirth’, they are actually the six realms with the realms of the

gods and the demi-gods counted as one. The meaning is that we imagine rainbow light of the

five colours going out from the 5 Buddhas and touching all sentient beings. They all have the

special kinds of clinging of the five poisons. They relax that clinging and their inherent

wisdom appears.

It’s like what happens when you go into the room of an Awakened master. We go into the

room and sit down. He looks at us and smiles at us and we can’t find our problem any more.

This happens for each and every one of the beings through these light rays, we can imagine

this, and then everyone is free of the emotions and their consequences. Then there is no

possibility of being reborn in impure states, from that activity of purifying all sentient beings:

‘The light returns to dissolve into the Buddha figures, upon which they melt into light

and fade away completely into emptiness. We should carry out this meditation regularly

whenever any of the emotions appear in our mind.

So we use one emotion that appears to make the visualisation of those 5 Buddhas, appearing

and purifying all emotions, and during that time or during that visualisation our own clinging

has also dissolved. We finish this small practice

‘and after it make the following wish: 'From this life onwards in all my future lifetimes,

may all who come into contact with me, either through seeing me, listening to me or

thinking of me, find the veils of their five disturbing emotions purified. May I have this

ability. Furthermore, when I myself reach enlightenment, may the buddha world that I

project from my mind not contain any of the five poisons whatsoever .'

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These wishes can either be made mentally or recited out loud, the words themselves

expressing, each time this meditation is used, our wish to purify the emotions into

emptiness through the visualisation of the five Buddhas. This method of transforming

the five poisons is used most by those who practise creative meditation (a method based

on imagery/visualisation).’

Day 8.b

• Led meditation on 5 Buddhas.

• Chenrezi and 5 Buddhas.

• Dangers of visualising your partner as a dakini!

• Looking into the mask of the skandhas –‘female aspect’.

• Mistake of visualising self as pure and others as impure.

• Everyone is the yidam and all sound is mantra.

• Afflictive emotions depend on difference – we can see the sameness.

Meditation:

‘Om Svabhava shuddha sarva dharma svabhava shuddho ham’

In one instant all clinging dissolves. Mind re-finds its natural openness. Natural awareness

without clinging. Let us say the mantra again connecting with that understanding, that at the

moment we say the mantra we relax into natural simplicity, into the vision that there is

actually no problem whatsoever…

‘Om Svabhava shuddha sarva dharma svabhava shuddho ham’

Out of that dimension of non-clinging, the creativity of mind manifests as Dhyani Buddhas.

They all look like Buddha Shakyamuni. They manifest above our heads. The central one

being blue in this case and the front one white. The right yellow, behind red, and left green.

They sit on lotuses of the same colour as the Buddhas, their legs in the vajra position with

crossed legs, and hands folded in meditation. Take some time to visualise the blue central one.

The front one white, yellow, red and green…..

In their hearts there are lights of the same colour, as if each Buddha had a sun in its heart. The

whole body radiates light, but the heart is a little bit stronger. Light goes out from each one of

these Buddhas into the 10 directions of the universe; the 4 main directions the 4 intermediate

directions above and below. First the blue light goes out and purifies all ignorance; white light

goes out and purifies all anger; yellow light goes out and purifies all pride; red light goes out

and purifies all desire; green light goes out and purifies all jealousy. And together all the

Buddhas send out rainbow light which purifies all the combinations of the five kleshas. They

touch all sentient beings. As the light rays touch their hearts, all their afflictive states are

purified and the karma of their afflictive states is purified as well.

We imagine that we ourselves together with all sentient beings awaken to the true nature of

timeless awareness. We find true freedom. We experience openness, non-clinging and we

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understand that our true nature is the combination of the five Buddha energies. Our body is

filled with rainbow light and we begin to radiate ourselves. The light goes back to the original

five Buddhas and they dissolve into emptiness and again we relax in complete simplicity. As

we breathe in and breathe out there is no clinging, it is openness itself which is breathing.

When there is no clinging, everything is simple. When there is clinging the world gets

complicated. When we know the true nature of our mind everything is pure.

We bow to the Buddha nature in every sentient being.

Dhyani means meditative absorption, they are the Buddhas of meditative absorption. When

you learn about it in more detail, you will see that the Dhyani Buddhas have different mudras

in which they hold their hands, these indicate a slightly different activity in the world. For the

purposes here of purifying the emotion it’s not at all important. What is important to

remember is that non-clinging opens up to wisdom. When hearing more Dharma you will also

hear the same teaching with the blue Buddha in front and the white Buddha in the centre, it

doesn’t really matter. When the blue Buddha is in front he is called Akshobhya and the

central one is white, but is still called Vairocana. Vajrasattva is then above them all and

represents the fact that all these Buddhas are not separate. In this context Vajrasattva is called

the sixth Buddha who represents the unity of all five. Then you find more elaborate

visualisations where each Buddha has a yum – the female aspect, in his lap. They are united

and embracing each other. This is to symbolise that method, or compassion, and wisdom are

never separate.

You will encounter such elaborations, but they will not change the work we have to do. That

work is to know that there is tension arising in my mind, or in the mind of someone else, and

if we manage to let go of that tension, the free flow of the energy is wisdom. When we have

nothing else to do in our lives than to do these visualisation practices, then the elaborate

practices are very nice to do. But when our mind is already overfilled with too much

information and we have little time to practice, more simple practices are more helpful.

One universal practice which you can learn and do in a busy life is the practice of Chenrezi,

Avalokiteshvara, which we do here every evening. Chenrezi has a crown on his head with

five jewels; these five jewels represent the five Buddhas. We as practitioners are Chenrezi and

we wear the crown of the five Buddhas. When we get used to that we can always visualise

ourselves as Chenrezi when we have an afflictive emotion, and we can do the same thing with

the person in front of us who might also have this sort of emotion; they are also Chenrezi.

If you love to visualise yourself as Tara, she also has the crown of the five Buddhas and the

same meaning applies to that practice. In the realm of purity there is no clinging to masculine

or feminine. Male and female is just a different way of expressing enlightened activity. Men

train and visualise themselves as male divinities, female divinities and divinities in union;

female practitioners also train and visualise themselves as male and female divinities and

divinities in union. Until all distinction is overcome. The real problem is this dualistic mind

splitting everything up into opposites: self and other, male and female, good and bad, purity

and impurity. All of this dualistic clinging has to be overcome. – Lama Gendun explains the

meaning of this kind of meditation.

‘The foundation on which this meditation is based is as follows: In an ultimate sense, the

true nature of the universe itself as a container is to be the pure palace of the deity. All

the living beings contained in it have been yidam deities since the dawn of time.

Visualising this very clearly and being aware of it will pacify our ignorance (lack of

awareness). (The advantage of this practice is that:) Ordinary desire or attachment will

never be developed towards yidam deities’ nor can we be angry with them or insult

them. If everyone is a pure yidam deity, then everybody is equal, therefore there is no

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reason to think of some people as superior and others as inferior. There is no place here

for either pride or jealousy. We can see, then, that through this kind of contemplation all

five poisons come automatically to a stop.’

If we apply this visualisation with the proper understanding, it will have exactly this effect. If

you see a beautiful person, male or female according to your liking, to whom you are very

attracted, and you visualise that person as a divinity, remembering this immediately helps to

let go of the sexual attraction, the sensual desire towards the other person. If at that time you

are willing to let go of your desire. The understanding is that looking at that beautiful person,

their true nature is Buddha. You are not trying to make them into a more attractive object.

Actually when we tell each other, ‘Oh, you are such a beautiful dakini’, ‘such a beautiful

daka’, actually we are just carrying over the desire into a more spiritual label. That is

absolutely not what it meant here. If I see a beautiful woman and then I visualise her as Tara

in order to develop even more desire for her, I have completely missed the point! I should

visualise myself as Tara at the same time with the same intensity. How could a Tara have

desire for another Tara? To make it really clear, if you are a woman and you visualise a man

to whom you are attracted as a beautiful Chenrezi or Chakrasamvara or whatever you like,

this is not the point. At the same time we have to visualise ourselves as Chenrezi and

Chakrasamvara. Then our desire is very clever, it says ‘OK, I am Chakrasamvara, she is

Vajrayogini. Come my dear!’ We completely miss the point.

The meaning of Chakrasamvara in union as with every other deity in union is we are both,

and every other person is both. This mind stream is in itself method/compassion and wisdom

in union, there is no need for someone else to make us complete. When we visualise ourselves

as the divinity, the other person is automatically the same. So the real message is: ‘Oh, I am

already in union. This mind stream is already complete and perfect in its basic nature. And

you, my darling, are already complete in your nature; you don’t need me as the other one.’

Everyone is the same divinity. If we are in union, then the others are also in union.

In all these New Age tantric practices, this basic message has not been got. They just didn’t

get the point. Desire causes us to visualise ourselves and our partners in the form of light

bodies in order to not be so concerned with outer appearance, but to keep the energy of desire.

We just want to continue as before with less complication. So please get that point, and it is

exactly for this reason that many teachers don’t want to teach these practices, because they

can make our basic ignorance even more incurable.

‘Because of ignorance we do not see the true nature of the different psycho-physical

elements that make up our being, the five skandhas.’

Do you remember the skandhas? Form, sensation, distinction, mental formations and

consciousness. We had a little look into the five skandhas and saw that these five aspects of

our body and mind serve as the basis for identification. I think ‘I am my body; I am my

feelings; I am my distinctions, my thoughts about these feelings; I am my mental states; I am

these different forms of consciousness.’ All these possibilities for identification. When we are

clinging then we are not aware that these five aspects of existence are just the expression of

creative awareness. To say it in more modern terms, it is just the flow of experience without a

self, without a nucleus. Actually it’s the expression of that same Buddha nature that we

already discovered as being the nature of the five afflictive states. Why? Because when you

look into form, when you look into sensation, when you look into distinctions, different

mental states and consciousness, when you take their outer appearance away and the mask

falls, then you look into the same timeless awareness as when you look into the true nature of

the emotions.

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‘These five elements and the energies on which they depend have been since time

without beginning the same energies that are manifest as the buddhas and their

consorts.’

So in our playful mind the five male aspects represent the pure nature of the emotional state

and the five female aspects represent the corresponding purity of the five skandhas. The basic

message is: ‘Look, whatever you experience there is no solid identity, it is all timeless

awareness.’

‘Failing to recognise this we see ourselves as just ordinary human beings and we

perceive the activity of these energies as troublesome emotions that appear regularly in

our mind. But in fact these elements and their energies are quite pure. In reality the five

poisons are nothing other than the five wisdoms. The only difference there is between an

(afflictive) emotion and its corresponding wisdom is the presence or absence of

awareness.’

Let’s look at that, is desire different from that all-distinguishing awareness that is Buddha

Amitabha? In desire I think ‘me’ and the object of my desire are real and the desire is real as

well; this is our identification. In this fixation we are ignorant of the fact that what we call ‘I’

is a flow, a process, and what we call ‘other’ is an expression of that same flow, taking on

different forms. And the attraction, what we call ‘desire’ is just a momentary expression of

that same awareness.

As long as we maintain that fixation, we have a solid emotion, and as long as we maintain that

fixation we might as well see a psychotherapist and pay a few thousand euros to get out of it.

When the therapist has finally helped us to let go the therapy has finished. It is a slow, tedious

process of developing mindfulness, awareness, when we are aware it is the question of a split

second. Actually the very moment we are aware, there is no more emotion, there is no more

problem, because awareness means mind is back in the flow. So when we say ‘lack of

awareness’ it means fixation blockage, and when we say ‘awareness’ it means openness, flow.

And that is the only difference between an afflictive state and its corresponding wisdom.

‘When we are aware of the true nature of things we see the five wisdoms, otherwise we

see only the five poisons and experience them as such. It is important therefore to

recognise that an emotion is not something inherently impure, it is simply that we are

not seeing the emotion for what it really is: one of the five wisdoms.

If we develop an idea of ourselves as the pure yidam deity and yet still at the same time

see others as ordinary and impure, this is just another form of pride.’

This is like someone coming to the course here, not listening properly, going back home and

saying ‘OK, now I will go to work and whatever I do I will see myself as Chenrezi or Tara.’ I

go to the office, I go to my family, I go shopping and so on. I am Tara, let everyone yell and

be jealous and so on, I am in the pure mind and I can go through in complete purity. Haven’t

these people forgotten something? Aren’t the others also Tara or Chenrezi? We maintain

‘super’ duality: ‘I’, my ego, tries to put itself into a pure realm, whereas this poor samsara

stays as it is. If I have a little bit of compassion, then as a compassionate Bodhisattva I will

help the others none the less!

This is spiritual pride, actually, not wanting to see the purity of everyone, and the nature of

awareness that is inherent in every situation, every experience and every afflictive state. Our

ego-clinging is very clever. I am sure all of us have already tried that. If you haven’t tried it I

am sure you would have tried it after the course. So let’s remember, every time we think of

yidam, that everyone is yidam, without exception.

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The next mistake we make is on the level of speech. We say ‘OK, I go in the supermarket, I

go on the beach, I will recite the mantra. I will recite pure mantra and whatever other sounds I

hear I don’t care, I will just stay with the pure sound of the mantra. My heart prayer will be

strong enough to overcome all the impurity of the world. I will just hold on to that.’ Did we

forget something? – All sounds are mantra. There is not a single tantric practice where you

will have the instruction: ‘Think of your own sounds as mantra’ and everything else as

impure.

When we practice with mantra we listen to the basic sound of reality, which is that same

awareness, and then we realise that basic reality is to be found in all sound. Words said out of

anger, out of desire, jealousy, pride or ignorance have the same nature as the mantra. So the

mantra practitioner develops the capacity that when someone yells at them, they hear the

sound of mantra. Whatever sound arises it is a stimulation of awareness. The inherent nature

of all sensory consciousness is timeless awareness, so whatever touch sound, vision, taste,

smell or thought we experience, it all has the nature of timeless awareness.

‘OM svabhava shuddha sarva dharma’ – all experiences – ‘shuddho ham’. So let’s do away

with the kind of thinking that ‘Here I am with my practice, and on the course we have done

pure practice and now my energies have become pure, but when I go back into Thessalonica I

have to go back into the impure world. Let’s use the mantra to stay more pure and to fence off

the impurity of others.’ This is just maintaining duality, it will lead to tension and stress when

we meet impure people, impure places, impure states. You know how projections become

stronger and stronger; the more ‘spiritual’ we become the less able we are to interact with the

normal world. In such a situation compassion and wisdom are highly needed; compassion

because it will motivate us to interact with others and wisdom in order to know the very

nature of the experiences that arise. At the end of Tsering’s retreat they asked Lama Gendun:

‘What shall we do if someone needs our help but he insists on talking to us in the middle of a

disco, with all the smoke and all the emotions around. Should we go or should we stay out of

the situation?’ He said, ‘No, you go and you regard all the smoke as the manifestation of the

dharmakaya, the emotions as well. You cut through with wisdom.’ I have heard many similar

instructions. For the yogi who knows these instructions there is no place in the world that they

have to avoid, if one can apply the instructions! If we get lost in clinging while we go to the

disco to help one person, then we have to practice more.

‘Such an attitude continues to be based on ego-clinging, because even though we are

ready to see ourselves as a deity, we continue to look down on others as ordinary people,

with all the usual faults. This is quite definitely not the pure pride in our divine nature

(self-confidence of being the yidam). Once we let go of our ego, we can perceive in our

mind the primordial wisdom which is free of all ego (-clinging) because it lies beyond the

ego (any idea of self). This is the genuine mind of the deity, where not only are we

ourselves the deity, but so too is all life in the universe.’

So the trees, the rocks, the grass, the insects are all also part of this pure land.

‘With the mind in this state of pure awareness, there is no place for ignorance, nor for

anger, attachment, pride or jealousy. The same basis of thinking is also used for the

practice of seeing into the nature of the five poisons outlined in the next section.’

Answers to questions:

1) In the five Buddha meditation you have to know what the Buddhas mean, the colours are

not important. For non-Buddhists you can talk about blocked energy and how to get back into

the flow, everyone can understand. This is better than using the Buddha visualisations.

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2) Abstract thoughts are difficult to apply in concrete situations, so it’s good to have

something simple to hold on to. When we meet someone say to ourselves, ‘Hey, we are the

same. We are equal in our wish to have happiness, and we equally get blocked in our

afflictive states and we are equally just the flow of timeless awareness.’ So basically the

message is that we are the same or very similar. A little different, but essentially the same.

This makes it possible for me to teach. When I sit here with you, we are the same, not

different. We are a little different outwardly, but inwardly on a deeper level, the same. And

since all afflictive emotions depend on difference, if you remember the sameness then the

emotions can’t take hold, they collapse.

When you look back at all the remedies: when we say ‘You are my Mom, I am your Mom’–

same. ‘You are a confused being in samsara, I am a confused being in samsara’ – same. ‘You

want happiness, I want happiness’ – same. ‘You don’t know how to get it, I don’t know how

to get it’ – same. ‘You are a Buddha, I am a Buddha’– same. ‘You are a brother, I am a

sister’, we are just in the same boat. Ego-clinging depends on making a difference between

self and other. Desire depends on making a difference between what is and what I would like

to have. Anger depends on making a difference between what I like and what I don’t like, self

and other. Pride is making a difference between higher and lower. Jealousy makes a

difference between lower and higher. In all of these states we need to equal out the seeming

difference and see the underlying equality. One of the great methods is to see everyone in

their Buddha Nature, all sound as mantra, all forms to be the divinity, the environment to be

the palace, the pure land of the divinity. This equalises the situation.

Q: The moment when someone can have clear vision, clarity, they see through the emotions

and they cannot exist at that moment –but they come back. Why?

A: You don’t believe in that moment so much. When you come and talk with me, many of

you start your conversations with me by saying; ‘I know that this is my emotional cinema,

but….’ You know from previous experience and understanding, that this is a big bubble, a

cinema, but just now, you don’t know how to let go…

‘OM Mani Padme Hung’, doesn’t change the other person’s mind, it changes yours. If you

recite the mantra but it has no effect, you are doing something wrong, you are holding on to

your emotional projections while reciting the mantra. Really you need to recite the mantra and

relax… At home in your families inwardly you say ‘OM Mani Padme Hung’ but they still

continue fighting, the Buddhas are fighting! They make all this cinema so you can develop

patience.

All the five basic emotions combine to produce all the hundreds of emotions. Fear is not

mentioned separately because every emotion has its own fear. Basic existential fears are

connected with ignorance. The fear of desire: not to get what I want. The fear of anger: to live

with something which I don’t want. The fear of pride: not to be respected. The fear of

jealousy: not to have enough. Loneliness, for example, is a desire for distraction. It is the

ignorance of thinking of oneself as separate. One only feels loneliness when one feels

separate, and due to this illusion of separateness one feels lonely. It usually goes along with

the wish not to feel alone, which is actually a desire to be distracted from the idea of

separation. Because it’s a projection of being separate, yogis who live alone in retreat don’t

experience feelings of separation or loneliness. If they get into ego-clinging they will get into

separation and loneliness.

You can examine every emotion like this and you will find it is based on one of the five big

families of emotions. You can even say it is based on three: attachment, aversion, and

ignorance. These three alone are enough to explain all the others. If you want to reduce it to

two, you can say hope and fear. One, identification, ego- clinging.

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To deal with other people’s strong emotions we try to stimulate their Buddha Nature. If

someone has cancer, we can stimulate the qualities of love, compassion, generosity and

gratitude – all the qualities you can think of. If you can stimulate them it will be good for the

person.

Day 8.c

• Not abandoning but seeing the true nature of the kleshas.

• Where does experience happen?

• Our world is constructed of static after-images or imprints.

• The ‘I‘ is constructed to account for the continuity of experience. Like giving a name

to a river.

• Life experience does not need an ‘I’, an observer, to function.

• Look into any experience for the subject or the object (content) of the experience.

• Our habitual actions confirm our existing view of the world.

• Seeing the nature of the emotion rather than the content dissolves it immediately.

• Our mind is made up of kleshas, this is what we have to work with.

Starting a teaching session is like a river: getting all the flows, the streams of our different

energy, to come together in the same place. In order for this to happen then everyone has to

give up a little clinging. Living at ease with each other is a lot about this compromise, this

capacity to give up a little bit of our clinging, so that the rivers can flow together.

In the last six days we have done three of the five steps of dealing with the emotions. Not

getting involved with the afflictive emotions that are present. Then applying the remedy,

which means cultivating the corresponding quality, and today we saw how to have a different

way of seeing the emotions, to transform our vision of the emotions. Now we come to the

fourth step, which also has to do with looking and seeing: seeing directly into the nature of the

emotions, which means developing true realisation. – Lama Gendun says:

‘The second part of the same chapter goes on to say that those who practise the

Vajrayana, the secret tantric teachings, have a sacred commitment not to reject the

emotions of attachment, anger, ignorance, pride and jealousy. The reason for this is that

if they give them up, they will never be able to discover the wisdom which is intrinsic to

them. In abandoning the five poisons, we abandon at the same time any possibility of

realising the five wisdoms, since they will never be found anywhere other than in the

emotions.’

This sounds as if it were saying the contrary of the first step, right? First we were asked to

abandon the emotions and now we are asked not to abandon them. What’s going on here? We

are asked not to reject them, not to get involved with them either, but to go down the route of

mindfulness, knowing their presence in the deepest sense. Having a look at what is their true

nature as they are present. If I don’t accept their presence and I reject them, will I ever be able

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to learn the lesson which they have to offer me? It’s like if I reject an enemy in my life; I

reject an enemy, but will I ever be able to learn the lesson that that enemy is a potential

Buddha? I have to be mindful of the presence of the enemy, not pushing them away and not

getting involved in terms of animosity. When discovering the true nature, then I see there was

never any enemy. This is the same with the afflictive emotions, they are called ‘mara’ like the

great enemy, klesha mara, but actually there is no enemy now, because all these afflictions

have no substance, they have no solidity, they are empty of self nature.

‘That is why when we are engaged in tantric practice, we must work with the different

objects that give rise to emotional reactions in order to experience the corresponding

wisdom. The very objects of attachment, hatred and so forth become the means to

liberation from emotional conflict.

Practically, this means that when one of the five poisons appears in the mind, we have to

look directly at its essence until we understand that in fact it has no real existence at all.’

This was based on two lines of Karma Chakme, everything that follows are the explanations

of Gendun Rinpoche.

The emotions appear because of the conditions created by our confused mind. Our

fundamental consciousness, which is in a state of ignorance at the present time, projects

from itself the idea of a world experienced through the five senses, the five sense organs

and their active relationship with external objects. Because of our previous habits, the

mind projects from itself images which it considers separate from itself.

We hear the sound of a barking dog. We feel that those hearing the barking and those making

the noise are separate entities. Does the barking happen anywhere else than in our mind? Does

it stop anywhere else but in our mind? Does the girlfriend who I love so much exist outside,

in our mind or both? Both? How is that possible, outside of our mind as well? If others have

the barking in their mind as well, isn’t it also a really interesting question to ask whether other

people have the same barking in their mind, or whether it is a slightly different barking?

As a working hypothesis we can start with the view that whatever I experience is my world,

whatever others experience is their world. There seem to be similarities, overlapping parts in

these worlds. We should not investigate these overlapping parts too closely, or we will find

out that each one has a slightly different experience. Whatever we experience we feel happens

in our mind. It might have some outer existence, that’s all well and good, but in so far as it is

perceived it has to become an experience in our mind. Due to different experiences we think

now that there is no such thing as barking, but probably the dog still exists. We make a

hypothesis in our mind, we construct a reality, we inwardly see perhaps someone talking to

his dog, calming him down. We don’t know, but we are quite sure. So what we call ‘our

world’ is a world based on sensory experience and a lot of speculation of what happens in

between one sensory experience and the next. But the ideas which manifest in our mind for us

are just as real as any other experience. The experience of being Greek or being German does

not even exist as such; it is simply a generalisation based on different experiences which we

have with different people.

The point I want to make is that we have experiences of the five outer body senses and we

have experiences of a purely mental nature, with our names and constructs and ideas, and all

of this makes up our world. Actually if we look at what happens, our world is pretty much

constructed of after-images. For example, now we can still hear the barking as a memory that

is still there. But that after-image does not evolve, it stays as it is, it is not part of the changing

process any more. It becomes a fixed memory. (Clap) Can you hear the sound still? In a way

yes, because there was the sound and then the after-image, the after-impression, the imprint.

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And now we could talk about the nature of what had happened in that moment of clapping the

hand, but we are dealing all the time with the imprint, we are not in contact with the actual

clap any more.

In our emotions we deal with the same thing, we deal with the imprint of some experience,

either pleasant or unpleasant, which we have had. We just have to think of our first girlfriend

or boyfriend and we still have an emotion and we are simply dealing with an imprint in our

memory. I am still angry with the person last week who was quite a pain in the office. Where

is the living experience? That experience of the person, or having seen a nice sunset, or of the

thunder etc. all this has become an imprint, a memory. And it becomes this in the fraction of a

second after the experience. This is very important to understand. This is ‘our world’; we are

very much responsible for our interpretations, how we deal with our imprints. So this is the

first mistake which we make, we do not realise to what extent our world is an ‘after-world’,

depending on imprints and not a direct experience. That is why when I ask you where your

problem is now, at that point you can’t find it, because you realise that it is just an imprint, an

idea which we hold onto in our minds. The second mistake is that we consider what we

experience and the so called ‘I’ as being separate. Where in the experience (clap) is an ‘I’?

Sound experience, visual experience, touch experience, thought experience, do not depend on

the presence of an I. The ‘I’, the self, is an idea constructed afterwards to account for the

continuity of experience. We are trying to give a name to something, someone, that

experiences this continuity of different experiences. We want to describe what the

phenomenon is that goes on from our childhood till now, and will go on till our death. This

continuity of experience, of one experience after the other, there is always something

happening and there is a clear feeling of continuity from one moment to the next, and we

would like to give a name to it – we call it ‘I’, ‘me’. It is a useful abstract idea, but it cannot

be found in actual experience. It is like giving a name to a river – a river flows from the

mountain to the sea and we give a name to that river.

Whenever I think of the Axios (a Greek river), I think ‘If I go over there I will find the

Axios.’ What do I actually find? I find a constantly changing riverbed in pretty much the

same location. Inside that riverbed I find a constantly changing flow of water which is not for

a moment the same. The water that came from the mountain has arrived at the sea, and now

there is other water flowing. Isn’t this comparable to a human being, where this body is the

riverbed and inside there is a stream of awareness constantly changing? The riverbed is

changing as well, a little bit slower than what is changing inside in terms of experiences. In

order for the river to flow down from the mountain, does the river need to think ‘I will flow

from the mountain to the sea’? (Clap) Did you have to say ‘I will listen to the sound’? Did

you have to say ‘I listen to the sound’? ‘I have listened to the sound’? No need, but you might

do it. If you do it, it causes a little complication in the way you function.

Q: You don’t think about clapping your hand?

A: It is actually possible to talk without any idea of an ‘I’ talking. When I think a lot about

how I should do things, how I should explain things to you, my mind gets complicated, my

speech gets complicated. It gets a little blocked. Things get more and more complicated

because I don’t really know how the ‘I’ will handle the situation. When I start a teaching, I

pray, ‘Lama. give me the blessing that the teaching will make sense to the listeners.’ Then

river, flow, don’t think so much about flowing, just flow.

Q This sort of spontaneity happens after a lot of work, it doesn’t happen just like that.

A: There can be a misunderstanding of work and letting go. The work is not one of

constructing, the work is that of not creating so many obstacles. The ‘I’ and wisdom is also

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confused. When one is in the flow, the capacity of compassion and wisdom automatically

choose the right words and the right gestures. I don’t have to think about the movements of

my hands; they happen because they are part of the flow. These are the capacities of wisdom,

which expresses itself properly, spontaneous wisdom. We think that in order to express itself

properly it needs an ‘I’, but this is just the capacity of wisdom and compassion, it is much

quicker than the ‘I’.

Q: The ability of spontaneous wisdom does not arise just like that; you have trained to be able

to be so spontaneous.

A: This is still the old way of looking at things. Now we are going more and more into

wisdom and it provokes all the erroneous view. You still think that ‘work’ means constructing

that which was not there before, but it is deconstructing that which obstructs the natural

manifestation of wisdom. Maybe you mean life experience, the great value of having life

experience. And then one thinks ‘the one who has life experience or teaching experience, that

must be a self’. It’s not necessarily a self that has life experience. It is just a function of

memory, which is a natural function of mind, and in that memory function there is no ‘I’ to

nourish and no ‘I’ to defend.

When an Awakened master gives a teaching, the teaching is given and the master has the

feeling no one has given the teaching. There was no ego-centred effort, no necessity to

control. In normal life, because of this separation between the one idea which thinks ‘me’ and

the other idea of what is happening or being done, because of this separation there is always

tension, always effort. When that delusion is gone then the river is just flowing effortlessly.

This is called Awakened activity.

With simple words I think you know what I mean. When you teach theatre or movement you

say ‘Become the movement, lose that separation, don’t always watch how you are performing

your role, become the role, become the movement, become the expression.’ I think from that

simple example you know what I am talking about.

In Dharma language we say, ‘Forget yourself, let the Buddha meditate, let the lama teach, let

whatever, let the blessing through, but get out of the way!’ If this function of ‘I’, of the

observer, of control, was so necessary, these kind of instructions would not work. From life

experience we can say it is not necessary to maintain this separation between subject and

object, it works very well without it.

For practical reasons we will continue to use the word ‘I’ or ‘me’, because it’s helpful to talk

about this continuity. ‘Lhundrup, will you come back to Greece next year?’ and then ‘Yes’, I

say, ‘I will try to get this river flowing back to Greece next year.’ The Buddha never stopped

using the words ‘I’ or ‘self’ for practical purposes, but he didn’t fall into the illusion that ‘I’ or

the river Axios truly exists.

‘These then become forms which act as objects for the eyesight, sounds which are

objects for our hearing, and so on. The presence of these apparently independent objects

causes the mind to become disturbed, allowing the emergence of the emotions. For

instance, when our eyes see a form, things do not stop there. We immediately react to it.

When we find the form pleasing, we feel attracted to it. If we find it unpleasant or

repulsive, we reject it and want to get away from it. The same applies to all our other

sensory information, whenever we hear, smell, taste or touch something.

Each time the sensory organs function we should look directly at the real essence of

what is taking place. Gradually we come to see that the object we are perceiving is

actually only the mind in action. No different from the mind, the object is the mind, and

there is therefore no need to create any artificial duality by maintaining a clear

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distinction between subject and object. If we look at the essence of this non-duality, the

true nature of both the object and the mind that perceives it, we will discover the essence

of the mind itself.’

This is interesting and very practical advice, we can try it out without believing anything of

what was said so far. When an experience occurs in our mind, when an experience occurs (we

don’t even have to say in our mind), we can investigate in two directions. Where is the

subject, and where is the object, or the content of that experience? If we can do that in both

ways we come to the same experience. The essential nature of anger as well as the essential

nature of the one who seemingly has that anger, is the same ungraspable dimension, just that,

ungraspable, it’s funny. I want something so much – who wants? I am troubled when I ask

‘who wants?’ and the mind turns inwards – there is nothing that I could grasp that could be

the ‘I’, just an open mind. Let’s take a simple wish – I just want an ice cream – where is that

wish? There was a clear feeling, very clear, I could go to the fridge and get it. But when I look

into it, that feeling of wanting (and I could also look into the ‘I’, or the ice cream), what is the

essential nature of all of this? – It is always the same nature of mind.

This is due to the fact that before we were not looking into the experience, we were taking

things for granted. OK, ice cream idea, wanting, yes I go, and through going I confirm myself,

I confirm the ice cream I confirm the good wish. Everything gets confirmed. The way we live

is one confirmation after the other for the ideas with which we live. When we stop and look,

that chain comes to a stop. The mind is not following the experience in a dualistic way any

more, but turns towards itself and realises that none of this has any substance, there is nothing

inside which could be the core of an idea. You cannot find inside a nucleus, a core, a soul,

neither of the subject or the object, and that is very surprising after this long life of believing

that it exists.

‘This perception of the essence of mind takes place when all previous thoughts have

come to a stop and the next thought has not yet appeared. The mind is in the

spontaneous present, its own reality. It is mind which sees its own essence, and this is

what we call primordial wisdom (timeless awareness). The presence of primordial

wisdom in the mind then clears away the emotions automatically. It is just like lighting a

candle in a dark room: as soon as the light is present the darkness automatically

vanishes. Similarly, the simple fact of wisdom being in the mind serves to completely

banish all emotions. If we succeed in meditating in this way the moment we detect one of

the emotions in our mind, in that very same instant we see its wisdom and thereby

become free of its emotional aspect. This is what is known as the simultaneous

appearance and liberation of the emotions. Each of the five poisons is then recognized to

be one of the five wisdoms.’

Now fortunately, due to the blessing of the lineage, this is how we are able to experience this.

I have already told you, but I will tell you again how it happened to me the first time. It

happened with anger. I was really getting angry, but it happened in my first retreat and we had

done a lot of meditation already. I was discussing with another person and the other person

was making remarks which were making me angry and I was getting involved in it. Then the

mind, because of the habit of looking, then looked. Who is angry? And then in the middle of

the experience of anger I had to burst out laughing. There was no more anger, because there

was no one being angry.

Up to here the first three steps will lead to a decrescendo of the emotions, you will think ‘Oh

yes, OK, he or she doesn’t mean what they are saying’ or ‘I should visualise them as a

Buddha and then my emotion will go away’, but it takes a little moment before it works. Here

it is different – seeing the nature of the emotions means that there is not even a shade left, not

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even the slightest remnant. Nothing remains. I could take that person into my arms

immediately, we were laughing so much. It is an easy practice because it needs no effort. It is

a difficult practice because one needs to be able to let go of the object of the emotion and look

into the nature of the emotion.

As long as I am focused on the object: ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like that, or that, or that…’

there’s no way for me to experience the nature of the emotion, because I am focused on the

content. It’s the same for desire: ‘I want this, I want this, I want this’…who wants this?

Where is the wanting?

‘If however we do not manage to see the wisdom aspect of the event taking place in the

mind, we become once again involved in duality. We follow the thought (the content)

become influenced by it, and begin to react to the object (the content) either accepting it

or rejecting it, until the mind is invaded by confusion and emotion and we end up by

having to experience the suffering that ensues. It says in the text that if we give up the

five poisons it will be impossible to find any wisdom. The activity of the emotions is the

activity of the mind.’

To put it simply – do we have anything other than emotional activity in the mind? Sometimes

stronger, sometimes less, but to function without ignorance is very rare. So what would we

work with if we were to wait until we had a pure moment of awareness to know mind? We

have to work with what we have, the mind as it is. If we were to not accept that we would

reject our own mind.

‘Each emotion that appears is nothing other than the mind itself in action, so if we reject

the emotions we are at the same time rejecting the mind. Yet it is only through its

activity that we will come to discover the activity of wisdom, so in rejecting the

emotional activity of the mind we reject at the same time the possibility of encountering

its wisdom activity. This will never lead us to realize the ultimate reality of the mind.’

Day 8.d

• In what way do things exist?

• Abandoning our search for solidity.

• No good just letting the kleshas come and go – we need to see their true nature every

time they arise.

• The five wisdoms.

• The dakini is experience lived with awareness

It’s quite OK to think that outer objects exist, even though it’s not true. But there is a problem

with the word ‘exist’. When you have a river and you give it a name, the name is stable but

the river is not. The name Axios will always be the same name, but what is designated by it is

not stable at all. The river as something definite without movement does not exist and the

characteristic of movement is constant change – so the normal term of ‘existence’ does not

really apply. We know electricity, it works, but in the phenomena which we call ‘electricity’

the only stable thing is the word. For the rest you can only say: ‘Connecting this to that, the

energy goes through and that creates light in a light bulb.’

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Actually we are talking about energy. I cannot show you how to go through this world, but for

some masters it’s just energy. Does the world exist for them? Not in the normal way. They

can go through it or look through it. Like this friend I told you about, the world was no

obstacle for his eyes, he could see through to what was happening on the other side. So does

the world exist? In what way does it exist? It seems to exist as energetic processes. As long as

these processes are maintained then to some this appears as a solid wall, as long as the right

causes and conditions come together. One time Khenpo Chödrak was called to the 16th

Karmapa to write some letters together. The pen fell under the table, the Karmapa said ‘Oh

sorry’, his hand went through the table, he picked up the pen and he put it back on the table!

For that moment he had forgotten not to show his siddhis.

The 17th

Karmapa was very playful when he was on his first visit, once he was with Lama

Yönten in the kitchen. I was told that he took one of those really long kitchen knives and he

made a knot in it. The incident was reported to Shamar Rinpoche, and he said, ‘Oh, he is

young, let him play!’ Please don’t ask me, but there are so many indications that what we call

outer objects are not really what we think. There are so many exceptions to the normal way of

seeing. There are people who can live without food. There are meditation states where you

don’t need to breathe. There are so many surprising facts which are not made up, our belief in

solid facts really takes one knock after the other. If we have very strong fixations in our mind

then our reality is very solid. But never the less, in spite of our fixations, sometimes surprising

things can be experienced. I am not good at explaining this, because it’s beyond the reach of

what I understand myself, but I can just invite you to leave it open. There are lots of

indications that what we call the world is just energy, fields of energy, currents of energy,

though also, mind being energy, all of this interacting.

‘Existence’ is a philosophical term, it means that something can be localised and has a colour,

it is not only known through its effects but it is known in itself. We would hesitate to call a

process something that exists, a process is something that happens – it has a dynamic nature.

Existence implies a certain stability, and seemingly all that we can observe are happenings,

change, impermanent nature.

Now to correct our erroneous view about reality and existence we are invited to always look

at change and the non-permanence and to abandon ideas about existence and non-existence.

Actually what happens now in our discussion is very normal. I have been talking a little bit

about how things do not exist the way we think. And your questions now show ‘Is this non-

existence?’ – the second possibility arises. And then if we continue discussing you will say:

‘But then things exist and do not exist at the same time.’ Then if we continue you would say:

‘Well then, they are neither existing or non-existing’, which does not make any sense.

The point is to abandon our search for solidity, for definitions that will put our mind at ease,

so we can say ‘Now I have got it, I have got the definition of what reality is’. Direct seeing of

the nature of mind will put our mind at ease, then we do not search for definitions any more

and then what seems to be a paradox: that things manifest without having true existence, for

us is understood as the only possible way that the world can function. In the beginning when

we listen to the teaching then we say ‘Oh, Lhundrup says it appears but at the same time it is

empty.’ and it looks very paradoxical. When we come to a better understanding, we

understand that it appears because it is empty. So we will not go further in this direction.

Q: How does this fit with karma, cause and effect?

A: The cause is energy and the effect is energy.

It is fine to talk about these things, it’s great and helpful, but not too much! Especially when

we don’t have so much time to go into it from all the different angles. Actually we have to go

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through the process of developing the understanding ourselves. It would not be sufficient,

even if I could give the answers, giving answers would not be sufficient. The real process is

one where you try to refute the Dharma, and you should try as hard as you can, and you need

time to try from all angles and you have to find out all the traps you fall into. Usually in

between one doubt that manifests and the next argument, you need time to investigate in

meditation, you need to sit, you need to look and see what is the teaching that comes from

your experience. Do it, keep on going, look at mind, investigate with all of what you are

given as material now, and then come up with one of your conclusions, one of your questions,

say what you have found.

If I can be helpful to you through answering questions, it’s only because I have asked the

same questions before. So I have had these same questions, the same doubts as you are

having. I still have questions which I have not resolved. For example the nature of the outer

object, of the outer world, its not so easy to understand. But it’s a good working basis to take

it as something that is also happening in mind. It is also a process which we only know

through our mental faculty. It is also helpful to think that the interaction with so-called matter

is actually the interaction between these mental faculties and the energy-like nature of matter.

Now let’s read on. This passage comes from Karma Chakme:

‘To abandon the five disturbing emotions is to take a less direct path to enlightenment.

It is the way followed by the sravakas. But seeing into the true nature of the emotions as

and when they occur is not an easy task. If we just allow ourselves to look at the

emotions one after the other as they appear in the mind in the usual way, we are no

different than before. Nothing has changed.’

This points to a shortcoming of our practice when we say ‘I am a yogi, the emotions appear

and disappear on their own, I just look at them and let them play whatever game they want.’

Nothing has actually changed because there is no awareness of the true nature of the

emotions.

‘If we actually enjoy our emotions, deliberately increasing their strength until we feel

completely intoxicated by them, we are behaving like someone possessed, with the result

that we accumulate the karma of a demon.

This is saying that ‘Now that I see that emotions are arising and passing away by themselves,

I can actually engage in them and follow them, follow my desires, and my anger, and pride,

and so on… as I see them arising and passing away, why should I be careful with them?’

Actually it is only possible to follow them because you don’t see their true nature. You cannot

follow the affliction while seeing its true nature, the affliction is gone when one sees its

nature, and you cannot follow it any more. A friend of mine who did retreat with me wrote a

book called The Seduction of Madness. This is exactly this process. We feel we have a certain

liberty, because we can see the emotions arising and disappearing. But actually we are still

very interested in them, they are like our life juice, and we go their way, thinking that we are

observing their arising and disappearance, but actually we just engage in them. So far Karma

Chakme, now Lama Gendun explains:

‘It may happen too that we become the kind of person who grows more and more proud

of his ability to deal with the emotions by looking into their true nature. Despite the fact

that his understanding is not fully developed, he increases the power of the emotions.’

It might happen that once or twice or several times a practitioner has seen the nature of an

afflictive emotion and then comes to the conclusion that ‘Now I know the nature of emotions,

I know that afflictive emotions are empty, I don’t have to care about them any more.’ Then

the emotions become stronger and stronger in the mind, because no one takes care. Then the

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practitioner is actually back into the lack of awareness. Before there were moments of

awareness, but now the idea is ‘Now I don’t need to look any more, because I know once and

forever’. But actually one is completely stuck in the afflictive emotions, and they come: pride,

anger, desire, one after the other. Here the sentence is saying that the person might say ‘See

how powerful anger is, how powerful desire is, but at the same time I am completely free’,

but it doesn’t stop there either…

‘The stronger they get, the greater becomes his pride. Nor does it stop there. Even

though he is not really free of emotional confusion, he says that he is, and sets himself up

as an example to others of how to experience the emotions without getting carried away

by them. Motivated by great pride, he searches constantly to improve his reputation, to

be recognized as somebody very important, someone well known for his ability to work

with the emotions. More and more out of control, ever more confused, he accumulates

karma which grows more and more negative.’

This is maybe far off for us as we are listening to this teaching. It is a warning given to the

lama who is requesting this teaching. Karma Chakme tells him, ‘Listen, even if you see the

emptiness of the afflictive emotions a few times this does not mean you are free. They still

continue in your mind, and you will have to see the nature of what happens every time as it

arises.’

‘If we do manage to look directly at the reality of each of the five poisons as they appear,

we recognise them to be none other than the five wisdoms. In the poison of anger and

hatred we perceive the mirror-like wisdom that corresponds to Buddha Vajrasattva.’

We will now go through the five wisdoms related to the five Buddhas that we had this

morning. Now we are with the Buddha in front. So mirror-like timeless awareness refers to

the clarity of mind, the capacity to be like a mirror, reflect or perceive all of what happens

without ever getting into a traffic jam. Imagine a mirror, whichever way it is turned, without

any problem it will always reflect what is in front. The images that were there a moment

before do not obstruct in any way the images that are manifesting now. The billions of

experiences that we have already had do not obstruct in any way the next experience, and

each experience is clear. When we look at the emotion of anger, we can see that there is this

clarity and precision in it, and that is already a slight indication of that aspect of timeless

awareness. Then we turn to the Buddha on the right, the yellow one:

‘Looking directly at the true nature of pride, we find the wisdom of equality and the

Buddha Ratnasambhava.’

When pride is purified, all this thinking in terms of higher and lower, then we feel equal with

other sentient beings, but this is not yet the wisdom of equality. The wisdom of equality is

actually the deep understanding that there is not a single phenomenon which is better than any

other. They all have the nature of timeless awareness. When you have the images in the

mirror, none is better or worse than the next, they all have the quality of reflections of light.

In the nature of desire we discover the discriminating wisdom and the Buddha

Amitabha.

We can see this with desire, we make big distinctions: this I like, this I don’t like. Maybe you

have become a specialist in olives, or feta cheese, or wine, or women, or men. When you

become a specialist, your desire is very strong and you really begin to notice the differences.

‘I only like that kind of woman, not the other’, ‘that kind of wine, not that one.’ We become

completely hooked by desire. But the underlying quality of mind is not only to know the one

and the same nature of phenomena, but also to see the differences in appearance. We know,

we can distinguish; this timeless awareness is capable of very fine distinctions. So far we have

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known three aspects: first was this mirror-like clarity, which was an aspect of timeless

awareness; then this timeless awareness knows that phenomena have this one nature, they are

equal in nature; however they appear different, and we can also distinguish the different

phenomena.

‘If we look at jealousy we see the all-accomplishing wisdom and the Buddha

Amoghasiddhi.’

All-accomplishing, or ‘all-perfecting’ wisdom is closer to the meaning. When we experience

jealousy nothing is ever perfect, far from it. Nothing is ever good, we are never satisfied,

never content. This is the nature of jealousy. When it is purified one understands that the

world just as it is, is perfect, not because the world is so great, but because the nature of each

experience is timeless awareness which doesn’t need anything added or taken away, and that

essential nature is perfect.

‘And when we look at ignorance we find the wisdom of the dharmadhatu, reality itself,

and the Buddha Vairocana.’

Dharmadhatu means ‘the sphere of reality’. Dharma here is ‘reality’ and dhatu means ‘the

wide expanse’ or ‘vast dimension’. Actually ignorance or dullness is a narrow state of mind, a

state of fixation. When that fixation is purified, we know the nature of reality as being as vast

and expansive as the blue sky.

‘These Buddhas also correspond to the different elemental energies in the body, each of

which are related to one of the emotions. Seeing into the emotion produces not only the

realisation of an aspect of wisdom. It also transforms the corresponding element of the

body into one of the five Buddhas.’

The five elements here are earth, water, fire, wind and space. It means that everything refers

to stability, movement, heat, wind, and space which everything is in. They have a relationship

to these different aspects of wisdom and the Buddha families. In elaborate tantric practices we

call them dakinis. There are dakinis of all the Buddha families going out to all sentient beings,

coming back, circulating in our body. Actually the meaning of dakini is ‘experience’, an

experience lived with awareness.

When we live the experiences of this body and the mind with the awareness of non-clinging,

then everything becomes a messenger of wisdom. So from this perspective every experience

is welcome as a messenger that stimulates more and more understanding of reality.

‘On this path we do not seek to abandon the five emotions, only to look directly at their

essence or reality, upon which they are automatically transformed right then and there

into the five wisdoms and we generate spontaneously the minds of the five Buddha

archetypes.’

Which means that by looking into the nature of clinging, the timeless awareness with its

different aspects is realised, and the clinging, fixation is finished.

‘This type of practice is employed by those who meditate according to the Mahamudra

or the Dzogchen tradition.’

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Day 9.a

• Absolute Bodhicitta – the cure for all ills.

• Relative Bodhicitta – a selfless attitude of mind leads to the realisation of selflessness.

• Om Mani Padme Hung – 6 realms and 5 wisdoms.

• 3 levels of practitioner looking directly at the nature of emotion.

• Getting involved in the cinema

We have heard a lot of teachings these last seven days. In the beginning things were still quite

easy to understand, we could relate to them. Then as we went on it became a little more

subtle, a little more demanding, and not so easy to understand all the time. We are now at a

stage when, after hearing so much information and so many remedies, so many ways of

dealing with the emotions, we are wishing for maybe one simple piece of advice. One remedy

for all, once medicine for all illnesses, something like this.

There is in general just one remedy which works for everything. This remedy is called

‘Bodhicitta’ – the heart or mind of Awakening. Now this Bodhicitta has two aspects, the

ultimate and the relative Bodhicitta. The following chapter explains how ultimate Bodhicitta

is the remedy for all illnesses, for all afflictions. This ultimate mind of Awakening is the same

as what we called insight into the nature of mind, or insight into the illusory nature of our

projections. It’s the same as insight into emptiness. So this is from the ultimate point of view,

what we need to cure the whole of samsaric illnesses. It’s actually not a remedy in the sense

of something you have to apply, it is wisdom. It is the remedy for the underlying ignorance

which underlies all emotions.

Then there is a remedy called relative Bodhicitta, if we cannot apply the absolute Bodhicitta,

which is true love and compassion, based on a certain wisdom. Everyone can practice this

relative Bodhicitta: whenever any afflictive emotion arises, think of the benefit of all sentient

beings. To think of the highest benefit of all sentient beings dissolves desire, pride, anger,

jealousy, and will finally result in dissolving ignorance. So this is the relative aspect of

Bodhicitta, this wish to be of benefit to every single sentient being without exception. And, on

that foundation, one realises non-self. A selfless attitude of mind leads to the realisation of

selflessness. This is the key. A selfless attitude of mind leads to the realisation of selflessness,

and someone who has realised selflessness will always have a selfless attitude towards all

beings. The two always go together.

This is Bodhicitta, relative and ultimate Bodhicitta, they go together. When you recite the

mantra of Awakened Compassion, ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’, for some it reminds them of

relative Bodhicitta, but for those whose mind has become more and more open, it reminds

them of ultimate Bodhicitta. It does both, all the time both. For those who like to do this work

on the five afflictive emotions, they will see that the five afflictive emotions are included in

the six syllables of the mantra (only that desire comes in two different forms):

Om is related to the purification of pride, purifying tendencies to be reborn in the god realm.

Ma is related to the purification of jealousy, and the tendency to be reborn in the demi-god

realm.

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Ni is related to a mixture of all emotions, with desire as dominant, and the tendency to be

reborn in the human realm

Pad is related to ignorance, and with the consequence to be reborn in the animal realm.

Me is related to envy, a form of desire that turns into avarice (greed), connected to rebirth in

the hungry ghost realm.

Hung is related to the purification of anger, and rebirth in the hell realm.

And then of course these syllables are related to the same five wisdoms that we talked about

yesterday. The wisdom for the human realm is called ‘the spontaneous natural wisdom’,

because in the human realm we are in the situation that we have the emotions of all the other

realms as well. You could say that desire and pride are probably dominant, but all others are

strong as well. This is just for you to make the connections.

When I recite ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’, then I can be aware that this is the letting go of all

identification concerning these five afflictive emotions, and it is inviting the blessing of the

five aspects of timeless awareness. Actually as we repeat it, on the level of relative Bodhicitta

light goes out to all sentient beings to accomplish their benefit and to establish them in

Buddhahood. So on that level it would be an immediate practice of relative Bodhicitta. And as

we recite ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’ we are also aware of the ultimate dimension of illusory

nature and emptiness. That helps us to gain the realisation of suffering. When someone like

the Karmapa recites ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’ it is the selfless activity of that Awakened

compassion, so it is not even to realise anything any more, full realisation is there, and then

with ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’ the benefit of sentient beings is performed. It is that which

makes the energy of the heart radiate out and it is a spontaneous accomplishment of the

benefit of sentient beings.

If I get irritable or full of desire I recite ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’, ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’. It

reminds me to act for the benefit of the other person, not to grasp, not to push away; it relaxes

my mind. It opens the mind into the dimension of non-identification and well, it works! Just

do it! Sit in your office, or with your family around the table, when things are getting a little

heated and recite ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’. You will see this connects you with the whole of

the Dharma, because all Dharma has been connected to the six syllables and so reciting

connects us to all the understanding which we have developed previously. It’s obvious that it

will relax our anger, but it works just as well for desire. Desire is this grasping attitude. When

this grasping relaxes, I realise that the other person has the same nature as I do, we all have

the same nature as Avalokiteshvara, Chenrezi, we all have that same nature. The grasping

dissolves. When you watch a football game and things get a little bit hot: ‘Om Mani Padme

Hung’, ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’, it relaxes your mind! Then the only wish is that the game is

fair, it is joyful, and that at the end everyone is happy to have played such a good game!

‘Om Mani Padme Hung’ is good for all situations. It’s not the mantra that will cause you to

win; it is the mantra which will open the mind. It’s the mantra which brings peace to

everyone. It helps with pride. If there is a moment of pride, then ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’ and

it dissolves. If we get into difficult situations with jealousy, ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’ will help

us connect to all the teaching,, to all the letting go that Lama Gendun describes. It prepares

the ground of a relaxed calm mind and then we can look into the nature of what is happening.

Q: The other mantra ‘Om svabhava shuddha sarva dharma…’, can we use that with ‘Om

Mani Padme Hung’?

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A: Yes, the ‘Om Svabhava’ mantra is very good for seeing into the nature of things. But

actually the ‘Om Mani Padme Hung’ means the same thing, everything is pure. So one or the

other mantra is enough. You don’t have to do both.

Q: What is the difference between avarice and envy?

A: Envy means that you always want something, you are always reaching out for something –

the hungry ghost realm is the spirit of poverty. Out of this comes all the fears about not

having enough, the desire to have things and not being able to get them. It makes it

impossible to be generous. There is no sexual desire in the hungry ghost realm; they are just

preoccupied with survival. You get to this realm through greed.

We can have more teaching later about the six realms and how we experience them. In a sense

we can experience the spirit of the all six realms while being in the human realm. In fact all

emotions are present in all realms, it’s just a question of which is dominant.

Now we will have a look at this last instruction of the step, One medicine for all ills.

‘Looking directly at the essence or the nature of an emotion is a method which can be

applied in all cases, just as we can use a single medicine to cure a hundred illnesses.

The practitioner of great capacity will use this method to flatten the emotions as soon as

any of them appear in the mind. It is like placing a tiny spark into a heap of dry hay: it

will immediately burst into flames and be completely destroyed. Although the original

spark is tiny, it can burn away any amount of hay. Similarly, just one tiny spark of

wisdom will burn away completely all the mind's confusion and the emotions associated

with it, until all that is left in the mind is ultimate reality.

So for practitioners of great capacity this is effortless, they become aware of the nature of the

emotion as soon as it arises.

‘Those of middling capacity will use this method as follows. As soon as they detect the

presence of an emotion in the mind when they are meditating, they will look at it directly

with a naked glare. The emotion calms itself and releases its hold on the individual. This

process is said to be just like recognising the non-duality of waves and water. Many

waves in movement, taking on a constant variety of different forms and shapes, can be

seen on the surface of the ocean, and yet the content of the waves is simply the water of

the ocean itself. There is no real distinction to be made at all between waves and water.

Similarly, the many and varied emotional forms that appear in the mind are nothing

other than the mind itself. There is therefore no reason to reject the emotion or to

consider it different from the mind. The average practitioner will be able to understand

this, and through experiencing directly the fact that the emotions are simply the mind,

they will calm down of their own accord.

So there is a little effort needed, and there is also a little delay – the practice does not work

immediately. The practitioner consciously has to direct the mind towards the emotion.

Sometimes the practitioner will be able to see directly the nature of the emotion and like in

the first case the balloon is pierced, but in other cases at least, the understanding arises that it

is like waves in water, and also there is no more clinging.

‘The practitioner of ordinary capacity will be able through this practice to be aware of

the emotion as it appears in the mind. He will not become involved and get carried away

by the emotion, which is what usually happens. It is just like someone crazy suddenly

coming to his senses; free of his madness his ordinary consciousness returns. Similarly,

as soon as such a person realizes the presence of an emotion, he applies the practice he

considers appropriate in that particular case. Being aware of the emotion, even if our

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awareness is not clear enough to free us completely from it, provides the starting point

for the application of other, more accessible approaches.’

So this might be the case for us. It’s a little bit more effort than the two preceding ones. It’s

like we tell ourselves: ‘Hey, wake up! This is jealousy, you are caught by anger’, or ‘This is

desire’. ‘Oh yeah,’ – then I realise, I wake up from my intoxication. It’s like we rub our eyes

and shake our head and realise this is just a dream. ‘Come on, come on, it’s just a dream!’

You are so angry that you can kill. But just wait, it’s this moment’s feeling, it will change;

you are just very angry that’s all. So we notice an afflictive emotional state is dominating our

mind, and the moment we notice it we don’t believe in it so much any more, it gives us the

time to recite ‘Om Mane Padme Hung’, ‘Om Mane Padme Hung’, and to remember all the

rest.

So after everything that we have heard, this summary was very easy to understand. I suggest

we all call ourselves ordinary capacity practitioners. We wake ourselves up and if we can we

wake ourselves up, ‘Who is angry, where is the anger?’ and then we make discoveries that

these are just like waves on the ocean. We say, in our own words ‘Oh, just the same old

cinema’.

When we progress to the second level practitioner, then this is just a deep understanding that

it is just the same old cinema. This means that when we sit in a cinema and we realise that we

are watching a film, then we are not involved in the film any more. We can have that

experience when we watch a film for the third, fourth or fifth time, when you watch with the

mind of a film critic or a director. You don’t get involved in the story: ‘She is acting like

that’, ‘Here the background light is not good’, ‘Here the contrast is more sharp’... You see the

details of the film, what is happening, but you don’t get emotionally involved. Of course you

are aware of the illusory nature of what is happening. And when that realisation becomes

penetrating, it is like the film has been cut. It’s finished. We are not involved anymore. There

is no emotional involvement, ‘Oh my poor one, I need to help you, it’s so heavy what is

happening’, then the next film is already happening.

‘Chakme Rinpoche ends this section by saying that since he personally has used to some

extent all the methods he has outlined so far, he advises Tsöndru Gyamtso, the lama who

had asked him the original question about the emotions, to put them into practice since

they are the fruit of his own direct experience.’

He has put his hand into the fire and says: ‘This I know from personal experience, it works.

Try it out and you will see it works.’ This is the best condensed and accessible teaching on the

emotions that we have to offer. Its really so nicely condensed, everything, the whole Dharma

is in there.

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Day 9.b

• Stimulating emotions to accelerate the path.

• Illusory body practice – visualise as deity to know the true nature of whatever arises.

• Clear light to see the clarity in the dull, sleep state – clarity, not luminosity.

• Exercise with candle/flowers to counteract attachment.

• 2 sorts of shame.

This last teaching will be about the fifth step of dealing with the emotions. After having seen

how not to get involved, how to apply the remedy, how to transform our vision of the

afflictions and then how to see their true nature, the fifth part is how to take them as a

practice.

This passage is directed at practitioners who have directly experienced the empty nature of

afflictions, and who know how to look into that nature when they wish. There arises the

question ‘Well, now I can relax in meditation, I can open up my mind. I can work, I can live, I

can deal with people, there is much less identification than before, and not so many emotions

arise. How can I accelerate the path of purification towards full Awakening?’ For such a

practitioner it’s extremely helpful to stimulate the afflictions, to go into difficult places, to

deal with difficult people, to then also have a practice of imagining dealing with difficult

emotions. Whatever it takes to get this stuff out from deep in our mind and to get it moving.

Each time an affliction is successfully stirred and brought to mind, look into its nature, so no

more identification, no clinging.

So for desire one will stimulate desire and look into it. So the film, the projection of desire,

collapses. Anger will be stimulated by working with difficult situations or difficult people and

every time there is a problem, looking into it. One puts oneself into situations where one

receives praise to stimulate pride and criticism, also to see the pride working, and then one

looks into the ego-centred reaction and stimulates timeless awareness. One also stimulates

jealousy, getting into situations where people are better, richer, happier, have more friends

and so on, anything that would stimulate jealousy in order to get rid of what remains. And

instead of trying to sleep less, one sleeps more and more, as much as possible during the night

in one stretch, and one practises maintaining the awareness in sleep, looking into the nature of

the sleeping mind, the dull mind. Gendun Rinpoche says:

In this approach, the emotions are neither given up nor modified in any way. Instead

they become themselves the path towards wisdom. However, before going on to give

these instructions, Chakme Rinpoche warns his disciples that because these methods are

very special, they cannot be used by people who have an ordinary level of realisation or

experience in their practice. Only after carefully judging the abilities of our disciples can

we encourage them to practise these particular methods. For them to be effective, the

disciple must have a very high level of realisation. It is for this reason that we find a note

in the text at this point which says that the next section is very secret and should not be

given to those who have no confidence in these instructions, otherwise they will develop

wrong views and create negative karma.

So I don’t find it appropriate to teach this section, but I am obliged to teach it on our three

year retreats, our druplas have received it in the context of the Six Yogas of Naropa, and I will

just give you a little idea of what is being practiced here.

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The practice for desire, when one does it alone, is principally one of working with subtle

visualisations in lower chakras and also yidam practices that stimulate our very strong desire,

which is still present. Since there is no one there on whom one could project this desire, it

becomes very clear it is just a film. One is alone, the energy is moving, if one does not

identify and knows the nature of this movement, it dies down. If one gives importance to it,

one can make it grow and grow, to the point of creating suffering for oneself. One learns to be

skilful with that.

For anger, normally one does not have to do so much, because when one lives together as a

group for three years there are enough things that go wrong, and enough things one doesn’t

like so much, so it’s a good stimulation. The instruction is, related to the illusory body

practice, one can imagine difficult situations and also create difficult situations in the group so

that one can receive the anger of others! So, for example, when Gendun Rinpoche did his first

retreat, he was 21 or 22, he secretly went into the room of his neighbour and took away all the

offering bowls and nicely arranged them on his own table. The practitioner comes back into

his room and says ‘Where are my bowls? Who took my bowls? Has anyone seen my bowls?’

He goes to Lama Gendun’s room and explodes! Lama Gendun receives the anger full blow

and practices.

We can do this outside retreat, we can use situations to stimulate it, but normally there is no

need, only when the group becomes too peaceful. In Lodrö’s group they didn’t need to do

much, huh? The first practice included tummo practice and here this one is part of the illusory

body practice, which also includes practicing with pride and jealousy.

For example we can do training exercises, sitting together with others and praising each other,

and look at what happens in my mind when I am being praised. Because it is based on a good

knowledge of the other person we believe it, it works. Then we switch to criticism, and again

because it is based on a good knowledge of the other person we take what is to be criticised,

and talk about that and see how we feel when we are criticised. Then the other person does the

same to us. Then of course such situations happen without preparation, they just happen like

that.

The main practice of the illusory body practice is to maintain pure vision under all

circumstances: one is the divinity, the yidam, and the practice is to always know the nature of

what arises. One purposely creates challenges to this pure vision, to see whether it is stable or

not.

Then the work with ignorance or dullness of mind consists of making a space during the

retreat where during the day one does not sleep at all, but one takes care to really tire the body

with prostrations and physical activity, and then to have a really good sleep at night and to

sleep as long as possible, to experience both light sleep and deeper states of sleep. To always

try and be aware what kind of sleep, what is the nature of sleep occurring just now? It is a

very subtle practice, and one finds out that as one stays aware, although one is sleeping there

is a luminous clarity inside that state of sleeping. In all translations this is called the clear

light’, but this is not a good translation. It is a clarity of mind that makes it very obvious that

there is no lack of awareness. There is no ‘light’. It is not that the sun is shining, or a candle,

or so on. It is that there is a clarity of mind that illuminates that experience.

Then the same awareness is carried into dreams, and one begins to know dreams to be

dreams. During that phase in practice one tries to dream a lot, to understand each time that it

is just a dream, with not the slightest identification. One learns to be aware and know it’s a

dream and one begins to change the dream, as one likes. One can transform oneself into

different shapes, one can become fire, one can go through fire, one can go under water,

breathe water, fly, or whatever one tries to do. One sees actually it is just a world of

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projection. One is able to know the nature of mind in the active sleeping state and the passive

sleeping state. Lama Gendun speaks quite a lot about luminous clarity in deep sleep. He found

this was the least dangerous to explain, because the other part of the Karma Chakme teachings

he doesn’t even give. He was very extensive on the first five pages. The last two pages he just

jumps most of it, he doesn’t even mention it.

So, if we summarise, taking afflictions as a path to know their true nature again and again.

Instead of just waiting for the afflictions to arise due to circumstances, one stimulates them

with certain practices. But please don’t do it, as far as I know your lives are already difficult

enough, you don’t have to add any extra challenges. It’s already good enough if you can stand

the challenges you have in your life.

Q: How to work with the attachment?

A: It is the most important thing to do. Every day you can go to the shrine in your house and

you think, ‘Buddhas, Enlightened masters, this is my son, I offer him into your protection.

This candle represents my son, this candle represents my husband, this one represents my

mother, this one my sister. As all candles burn down, each life comes to an end. I don’t know

which life comes to an end first, if it is my son or my parents, life will show. I offer their lives

into the protection of the Three Jewels and of their own Buddha Nature.’ When the candle has

burnt out I can see that ‘Yes, one day my relatives will have died just like the candle flame.

May they be happy as they live, and may they be happy as they live on, after the days when I

cannot see them anymore. May they live in the qualities of Awakening.’ It works just as well

with flowers; you offer flowers and after a few days they wilt.

The antidote to attachment here is generosity and letting go. The remedy is also wisdom,

because this develops the wisdom: ‘Yes, it will happen, and it will happen with every person I

know.’ The meditation also has another effect, because you consciously place the people that

you love under the protection of the Three Jewels. If a mother says ‘It’s impossible to work

on the attachment between me and my son’, she will have a very difficult time when either

she or her son dies. Due to the attachment between mother and son, it might even become

impossible to continue on one’s journey into other lives, other existences, to continue one’s

path. Then one becomes a wandering spirit, a ghost who stays close to one’s family. So this is

a very important practice.

Then the next step is to say ‘May I learn to love all sentient beings, just as I love my son.’

They say it is easy, but do it is not all that easy! Place all sentient beings in the refuge,

knowing that all sentient beings will pass from birth to death. Do not get attached to any of

the beings whom you love as if they were your only son. If you have learned that, you have

learned the secret of life, which is to love without attachment.

Q&A: There is helpful shame and destructive or unconstructive shame. For example the

shame around showing one’s naked body is completely useless. It’s cultural and serves no

purpose. But the shame about the harm I have inflicted on others is very helpful, because it is

a moral consciousness that helps me to do things better in the future. We have to really see

what the function of that shame is. In both cases it probably makes our mind a little tight. But

in the latter case it is creating an understanding and, because that shame leads to

understanding, it produced a release and a change of understanding finally, if it has done its

work. The Buddha talked about shame as a wholesome factor of mind. He meant the shame

that comes before performing an unwholesome action. For him there were two forms of

shame, the shame in relation to oneself and the shame in relation to others. I would be

ashamed in front of myself to steal the money of my best friend. I would be ashamed with

regard to my spiritual friends and teachers, if due to my example others lose confidence in the

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Dharma, for example. These are beneficial forms of shame. Then there are neurotic forms of

shame, where societies put a certain pressure in relation to social norms.

Q: About pathos/passion.

A: Being really engaged in an activity is not necessarily a strong emotion and a source of

suffering. You can be a passionate Dharma teacher, and give a teaching with a lot of passion,

but when an obstacle arises, there is fluidity of mind and you don’t cling. In Tibetan language

there only two words which talk about the afflictive states: one is nyön-mongpa and the other

is unwholesome states mi-gewa. They are basically synonyms.

You could use the Greek word miasma for afflictive states, but the problem is that the word

miasma has the connotation of something that stays with you, and afflictive states are passing

states of mind. To remind you of the definition of kleshas, the Tibetan translation is ‘that

which makes us crazy and dull’. Nyön-mong – crazy, dull. This means we lose our clarity of

mind and get involved in a film where we behave like a madman. Nyönpa is the same term

used for people who have drunk too much alcohol, or who have become crazy, due to mental

problems. Mongpa is used for stupid people, idiots or dullards. So when a Tibetan person

hears that you have a nyön-mong, then they hear that you have something which makes you

not very wise, without clarity; crazy and dull. When Indian people heard the Buddha use the

term klesha, they knew it was like a sickness, not a miasma. It’s something which befalls you,

and makes you heavy and unclear and is difficult to get rid of. There is no possibility in those

two languages of confusing these with nice or open states of mind, like joy, love, compassion

and so on. So in all our translations we must definitely use a term which cannot be

misunderstood to include joy, love and so on. ‘Emotion’ just means mental movement to

which you give importance, so in Dharma language if you want to use the word ‘emotion’

you have to say ‘afflictive emotion’ or ‘unwholesome emotion’.

When you look closely at what we usually call ‘emotions’ in English, you find hardly any

state which does not have ego-clinging. And because of the ego-clinging in love and joy and

generosity, then these emotions are actually also kleshas. These veils in our mind cause us to

label dissimilar things with the same labels. We call desire love, and then we don’t have an

adequate label for pure love – we have to call it pure love to make the distinction. Attachment

is the opposite of love; when there is attachment there is no love. There is wanting, there is

grasping, but there is no love, and to confuse these two is very harmful.

The term for compassion in Tibetan is thug-dje ‘noble heart’; there is no meaning of ‘suffer

together with’ which is the root of the English word. ‘To suffer together with’ is complete

attachment and identification. It has actually nothing to do with the noble heart, which is

completely free and helpful to the other person without identification. After this week, you

know, and it’s up to you to use your language properly.

Let us dedicate the merit of these eight days to the Awakening of all sentient beings. Let us

dedicate whatever positivity that has arisen to this place, this area, this country, this part of the

world, this universe and all beings… May the positivity, the force of our open states of mind,

join with all the merit, the positive states, which have been produced in this world, and by

dedicating it completely may it continue growing and working and having its effect, for the

benefit of all.

END