Meditation is action
Most of you gathered here have already had a good deal of meditation experience and, through that, have developed confidence in yourself and an enthusiastic feeling for the practice. Yet sometimes, when you don’t keep that energy flowing continuously and your positivity and inspiration go down, down, down, down, you can start feeling hopeless. Perhaps you begin to think that it will be impossible to discover everlastingly peaceful realizations through meditation. Many different kinds of negative thought can arise. But the thing is, if you do act continuously, you will definitely see results. Our problem is that we don’t act enough, that’s all. Meditation is action; meditation is action.
It’s quite simple, too. You can see that a few short minutes of morning meditation, maybe half an hour, can bring quiet, peace and awareness to the rest of your day. You can experience that result. Also, you don’t need to hold some kind of extreme philosophical or doctrinal beliefs to actualize meditation. In fact, just experiencing meditation—acting to bring conscious awareness—is enough.
I mean, you can see what makes you happy and what makes you unhappy. It’s so simple. That’s the whole question: what really makes you happy and what really makes you unhappy? That’s what, through meditation, you need to check up for yourself. The effect of actions that benefit others and actions that harm yourself and others is what you need to discover through meditation. It might be easier to know all this intellectually, but to have an actual, really deep-root understanding takes much time. Why? Because over countless lives we have nurtured and strengthened the misconception of the self-cherishing thought. We’ve had the wrong idea about what makes us happy.
Now, as adults, we look at a young boy playing with a sharp knife in danger of cutting himself and think, “Oh, that’s foolish,” even though the child thinks it’s making him happy. But even though we’re now old enough to know better, through having reinforced the self-cherishing thought over countless lifetimes, our behavior patterns are exactly the same as those of a child. We have all these wrong ideas, wrong attitudes, wrong conceptions and desires, but still think following them will make us happy. We have to examine our wrong conceptions and see how rather than making us happy, they make us miserable.
If you cultivate your mind in meditation, it becomes sharp and clean clear and you can easily see your false conceptions. This is extremely difficult to do when you are deeply submerged in hallucination, just as it’s extremely difficult to surface when you’re trapped deep in the ocean. At the beginning, when you’re full of wrong conceptions and garbage thoughts, it’s hard to distinguish between right and wrong. Extremely difficult. Therefore, meditation is so worthwhile. Its result is that it integrates your mind and allows you to understand your own actions, which mostly arise from misconceptions and lead you into a restless state of mind.
Through meditation you can also see your great potential and understand that there’s no value in just living for food and clothing. It’s so sad to see people living only for food and clothing, ignoring their great potential. That’s incredibly sad, isn’t it? Living for such small temporal pleasures, which have no real value and do not last. Sometimes, if we really check up, we’re too much; it’s incredible.
What we need to do is to compare the worldly pleasures that our wrong conceptions believe will make us happy with the benefits of meditation. In the West we have hundreds, even thousands, of ideas of what makes us happy, not just food and clothing. Look at supermarket shelves. There are so many ideas. Most of them are wrong conceptions. Through meditation you can discover those temporal objects have little value; actually, no value. I don’t mean you should completely reject them. Don’t reject them, but if you strongly desire them and put too much energy into them, it’s just not worth the effort. Especially when it comes to material objects, which are so unreliable. When you need them, they’re not there; when you don’t, they are. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes they’re not.
Consider medicines, for example. They are there to help us, to support and sustain life, but we can never be sure whether they’ll destroy our life or preserve it. It’s not certain. Through meditation, however, we can discover joy and the everlasting, peaceful state of mind, and that understanding can last forever—from this life to the next and to all our future lives. By comparison, material things can disappear in a flash, and at the time of death we leave everything behind. Not only that; we die with great attachment to our material possessions, and that brings us much harm. It’s not the material objects that harm us but our clinging to and grasping at them. During our life we grasp at this, we grasp at that, building up our attachment more and more, so that when we die, our grasping is incredibly strong and very difficult to release. During our lifetime, our desire wants more and more, such that we build up more and more superstition, which makes us more restless, more confused, more foggy and more ignorant. Therefore, actualizing meditation is really worthwhile.
If you don’t contrast material things with meditation you won’t understand how much more worthwhile the results of meditation are compared with those of the desires of the sense world. If you don’t know that, you won’t have much energy for meditation. Being unsure, you won’t see that sitting down to meditate is of much greater value than running out for chocolate. Your attraction to chocolate will be stronger than your desire for meditation. It’s obvious.
I’m not joking when I talk this way. I’m saying “chocolate,” but I’m referring to the incredibly overpowering Western vibration for sense pleasures. It’s all so exaggerated, which just makes life much more difficult for Western people. So much clinging. I can see that. But at the same time, you people are very intelligent; you can see how shopkeepers and television advertisers in the West understand people’s psychology. Ask yourself, “Why are they doing this? Why are they doing that?” They’re appealing to people’s superstitions and delusions. You can see. Maybe you think I’m exaggerating but check up for yourselves. That is the really important point.
You can also see that it’s impossible to find satisfaction by feeding desire. Satisfaction comes only from the mind, not from the outside, not from chocolate. I can say that as long as you’re dissatisfied, there’s no everlasting happiness. In fact, there’s no happiness whatsoever, even though you put on a big show of “I’m happy, I’m happy.” In the West, we throw parties where everybody is drinking and dancing and apparently having a good time. It means “We’re happy, we’re happy,” but they’re not happy. That’s the misconception.
It’s hard, isn’t it? Somebody thinks, “A life of utmost luxury is happiness,” and then along comes this Himalayan lama who says, “You’re wrong; that’s a misconception.” That’s difficult to accept. Check up. Why is that? People may be dancing and having fun but at the same time we say they are suffering. It’s true; they are suffering.
When you meditate you can discover that people who are laughing, dancing and enjoying samsaric pleasures and people on the street who appear unhappy or angry are basically the same. They look different from the outside—one lives a life of happiness and luxury, the other is homeless and miserable—but through meditation you can see there’s some unity, no differentiation; there’s something about them that’s the same, a nature of equality.
Of course, what I say about the West is the same for the East. As long as the mind is dissatisfied, it doesn’t matter if the person is Eastern or Western; both are suffering. Whether you’re dull or intelligent, it doesn’t matter; you’re suffering. Lord Buddha’s connotation of suffering isn’t that you have to be physically ill to suffer. As long as your wishes are not fulfilled, you’re suffering. That’s simple, isn’t it?
Also, when you experience a joyful or blissful feeling in meditation, that itself is a kind of antidote to desire. Without such inner experiences, you’ll always keep searching for satisfaction externally. When you have an inner experience, you’ll develop an aspiration for stronger experiences like that. Then you won’t be relying on simply believing what a lama said or what you read in a book. You’ll know from experience that by acting in a certain way you’ll get a certain result, and by acting in the same way continuously, you’ll gain even greater results. You’ll know this through experience, not from what somebody else said.
Since the results you get from meditation—happiness, joy, calm, clarity—do not come from material, external objects, you can see that meditation has more value than those things and its benefits are more lasting. It doesn’t matter what kind of bad situation you’re in, whether it’s loneliness, undesirable changes in your environment or somebody else controlling you, that knowledge-wisdom becomes your best friend and will never cheat you. External materials are not like that.
Proficient meditators can explain to themselves whatever’s happening, good or bad, and this allows them to bear or digest it. Because of their knowledge, they understand cause and result; they understand everything. People who know very little about their own mind can easily freak out at the slightest change in their situation. They have no solution and cast about looking for help: “Can you help me? Can you help me? God, please help me!” They ask for help everywhere, but nobody comes to their aid and they can’t help themselves. This is a very poor situation to be in. Therefore, meditation is so worthwhile. You can actualize your meditation and explain your own nature to yourself whenever the need arises.
If you have some kind of physical illness, such as a broken leg or pain somewhere else, you can go to a doctor for help, but when you’re suffering from psychological symptoms, it’s very difficult to ask others for advice. Those who meditate become their own therapist, their own teacher, their own guru. So it’s very worthwhile.
The most important thing to understand is the conception you have of yourself, what you think you are. You might think, “This is me” or “I’m the worst person in the world” or “I’m the most perfect person there is.” We all have different ideas of ourselves because our minds are different, but if you don’t break the fixed conception you have of yourself through meditation, you’ll always find yourself in trouble.
If I tell you, “You think chocolate makes you happy,” you’re going to respond, “Don’t be silly, Lama. That’s not what I think.” OK, maybe you don’t think that intellectually, maybe you don’t claim that to be your philosophy, but in fact you have the long root of it beyond words deep in your psyche: “Oh, this makes me really happy; that makes me really happy.” It’s very hard to understand. It’s extremely difficult to discover the nature of your attachment and self-cherishing. Check it out.
You do have such conceptions. You are conditioned to deal with the sense world, the material environment. You do have within you “This makes me happy.” I can say that that’s true of each and every one of you. Maybe the thing that makes you happy is different for different people because we all have our own ideas, depending on the relative material environment, but basically, you all believe that different external things make you happy. That’s real; that’s your philosophy. But fundamentally, it’s a wrong belief, a wrong fixed idea of what makes you happy.
When you discover, as you can, that the thing does not make you happy, then you can see the reality. You’re not caught by or attached to that environment. “This thing is OK, there is some value, but it doesn’t really make me happy, as I used to think.” You can see, but it’s difficult. It’s not an intellectual thing; it’s something your mind does. It’s a kind of experience beyond the intellect. It’s a deeply rooted philosophy and not something on the conscious or intellectual level, where it can be articulated verbally. But it’s there, it’s there, and you are completely bound by it.
You can see how this is true when you do the seed-syllable meditation and experience the mental energy and bliss that pervades your entire nervous system, fulfilling you completely.2 That blissful experience comes from your mind. When you gain inner satisfaction and a happy feeling in that way, your dissatisfaction automatically vanishes. That blissful feeling in your consciousness automatically releases the dissatisfied energy that we all have. It’s the antidote to dissatisfaction.
Therefore, it is so important to gain that blissful experience through meditation; extremely important. Normally, we’re dissatisfied because we’re not happy. That’s clear, right? It’s simple. So the more you can generate a happy feeling in meditation, the more dissatisfaction you purify. Through experiencing bliss in that way and understanding its nature, you can see your great potential: “Having this experience through just a short meditation shows me that if I act continuously in this way, I will definitely discover an everlastingly peaceful state of mind. My own experience tells me that.”
Thus you can see that everlastingly peaceful enlightenment isn’t just something that you have to believe in. You might not be experiencing it right now, but through your small experiences you can extrapolate, can’t you? Like, before the sun rises in the morning, you can tell it’s about to rise from the light vibrations it sends out ahead of itself. Enlightenment is similar. “Oh, I don’t know if enlightenment or everlastingly eternal happiness really exist or if I can attain them.” But it is possible, and the way you discover that is through meditation. You should really understand that. Then you can see just how much value meditation has. You can prove it for yourself. You don’t have to rely on some other guy’s words. You can see it for yourself.
Also, when you’re feeling satisfied, you have less superstition. Most of the time, superstition arises when you don’t feel happy or satisfied and you start thinking, “Maybe this, maybe this, maybe this, maybe this...,” casting about for a solution. Then your mind fills with superstition; your consciousness becomes a garbage dump of superstition.
Therefore, in this meditation course we try to develop concentration, using the breathing techniques we did this morning, and along with those, we meditate on the graduated path to enlightenment [Tib: lamrim]. The combination of these two brings good results.
This kind of meditation will really help people who think something like, “I’m worthless. I’ve done terrible things and feel really guilty,” and are psychologically bothered by that. “I’m this, I’m that, I’m the other. I’m not good because of this, this, this.” That kind of thinking is no good at all. It’s negative and brings you down instead of bringing you up. In order to break such conceptions, you should realize that actually, bad is good. Whatever you’re thinking is a fantasy. It’s just your imagination. You should know that. Instead of basing your ideas of bad and good on external factors, look at how your mind interprets the bad and the good you’re thinking of; check your own conceptions. You’ll find that in reality, those conceptions are hallucinations. You’re hallucinating, and your hallucinations are in the nature of superstition.
In this world, there’s no totally bad or totally good. Such things do not exist. And whatever we think to be good or bad is dependent. When we say, “This is good,” something bad is created. When we say, “This is bad,” something comparatively good comes into existence. Good and bad are dependent; they’re relative. There’s no absolute good; there’s no absolute bad. Such things do not exist. They’re simply fabricated by your fantasies, but once they’re made up, they bother your mind.
Also, you should not follow what your mind concocts. Your mind is like a vast ocean and has incredible energy. It’s always telling you hundreds of things: “This is good, you do this, you do that, this is good for you,” and so forth. Instead of following that, just be very skeptical of your own mind. Don’t just do what it says, don’t believe what it tells you. Check up; examine it. Really, that is truly worthwhile. Most of the time we’re just hallucinating and imagining fantasies.
And that’s the problem. The Western world sort of epitomizes what Lord Buddha termed the desire realm, the world where desire impels all our actions. Our entire lives are spent following desire. That’s why Lord Buddha called where we live the desire world. So simple, isn’t it? And if we’re honest, desire is all we live for. Look at all the world’s past civilizations, all the troubles that have been experienced: with parents, with children, with everything: it can all be traced back to desire. Desire is dissatisfaction, that’s all. It’s so foolish. The whole world is in trouble because of desire.
A good contemporary example is the way the whole world thinks we don’t have enough material goods. But that’s absolutely not true. If you compare the world today with the world a hundred years ago, look at how many more material things we have now. Yet we still cry about how bad things are. That’s dissatisfaction. We have far more material things than past civilizations had. For example, a hundred years ago there were no supermarkets. Now we have supermarkets full of stuff but still we feel it’s not enough. That shows that all dissatisfaction comes from the mind.
Tibet’s great yogi Milarepa ate only wild nettles but was extremely blissful, happy and satisfied. You people have so many supermarkets overflowing with food, but you’re still dissatisfied. This totally comes from the mind. That’s completely true and you need to discover it for yourselves. I’m not joking about this. I’m very serious and you should discover this truth. You can debate it if you like, but if you understand it clean clear, you’ll know something and will act in a better way.
But we’re like, “Maybe Lama says this, maybe Lord Buddha says that, maybe this....” We don’t understand; we don’t have realizations. We might have some idea, but we don’t understand clean clear, so we have little or no determination. We don’t have a precise understanding; that’s why our determination is so small. With small determination, our practice is like a yoyo. When we’re happy, when everything’s together, we think, “Oh, meditation is very good. Yes, yes, yes. Good.” But when we’re even a little bit sick or experiencing some kind of small problem, “Oh, meditation doesn’t help me anymore.” That shows our actual nature. We have very little wisdom, so we lack determination.
At a minimum, we have to discover that satisfaction comes from the mind. Just that can make us incredibly blissful. My point of view is that if you really understand clean clear, with determination, that satisfaction comes from the mind, if you really understand that, it’s enough. The nature of that mind is actually blissful.
We’re bound by seeking pleasure from the outside, and that makes us restless. If we could just discover that satisfaction comes from the mind, we’d automatically have a feeling of liberation and acceptance. But for some reason we never accept that fact; we never accept that what we have is OK, that we’re all right the way we are. We don’t accept the situation we’re in and are always seeking more.
Our mind is really funny. You’ll often see Buddhism liken it to a mad elephant: the mad elephant mind. For example, you might see a beautiful, expensive vase in a shop and, with strong desire, think, “Oh, that’s fantastic. I must have it.” So, with some effort, you acquire it, but when you get it home it doesn’t look that good and you’re somewhat disappointed: “Hmm, maybe that was a mistake.” But then you see something else that arouses your desire: “Oh, that’s really fantastic. I wish I had it.” You put much effort into getting that, but again, once you have it you don’t like it so much. Then the same thing happens with something else: “Oh, that’s so nice.” And on it goes. That’s exactly how it is with desire. There’s no way to satisfy it with external objects. It’s impossible. In that way you discover that there’s absolutely no material thing in the world that can satisfy you. It’s really true. “Sincerely, absolutely, satisfaction comes from only my own mind, my consciousness”—when you realize that, maybe then you’ll truly be able to say, “I’m satisfied.” Otherwise, it’s impossible to find satisfaction by chasing material objects one after the other. Impossible.
In the West, if you have inner satisfaction, you don’t really need to lead an ascetic life. Material comfort and supermarkets are there, almost effortlessly. You don’t need to become an ascetic; all you need to do is to discover that satisfaction comes from your mind. But at the same time, you can enjoy the comforts of Western life, as long as you do so without attachment or extreme grasping.
In a way, there are two extremes. In the West, it is seeking satisfaction externally, while not seeing that it comes from within. In the East, there are people who believe that satisfaction is only internal and do nothing, finishing up on a sort of pseudo-Milarepa trip. You don’t need to go to either extreme. You already have a comfortable material environment. In India and Nepal, we don’t have supermarkets and so forth, but the people think it doesn’t matter because supermarkets won’t make them happy, so they don’t build them. Not yet anyway.3 But here, externally, everything is already OK, so all you need is the inner understanding that satisfaction comes from the mind. That’s the knowledge you need.
What I’m saying is that Western people should avoid the extreme view that material things have no value at all, give everything up and go live in the mountains. That’s both wrong and unnecessary. The material comfort you have comes to you almost without effort. It’s just there. What you need to check is how much you value the external versus the internal. Try to avoid extreme views.
Remember the eight worldly dharmas?4 Somebody praises you, “You’re such a wonderful person” or something like that, and you balloon with pride, “Yes, yes I am!” Then somebody else criticizes you, “You’re a really horrible person,” and you plunge into despair. This shows that you are just living in the desire realm and are completely unrealistic. Somebody says you are good—you believe it and feel happy; somebody says you are bad—you believe it and feel unhappy. All this up and down indicates that your philosophy is the belief that what other people say is reality. It doesn’t matter whether you say you believe them or not, your reaction shows your reality. If you didn’t believe them you wouldn’t be up and down all the time. Why do you swell with pride when somebody praises you? Why do you get depressed when somebody puts you down? It’s because you believe them; you believe what they’re saying is true and is your reality. That’s wrong, but you react the way you do because you don’t understand reality; you don’t understand your true nature. You believe what other people think of you is what you are.
Most of the time you don’t know what you are. You fantasize, “I’m this, this and that,” but that has nothing whatsoever to do with your reality. I’m not talking about some religious point of view, just demonstrating that you reject reality. You’re living in a fantasy world of your own creation. Maybe if I tell you you’re living in a fantasy world you’re going to freak out: “Wah! What do you mean? No, I’m not!” Well, actually, you are. But you need to check for yourself in meditation. If some stranger in the street told you that you’re living in a fantasy world, you’d say, “What?” and maybe punch him in the face! But here, in this different time and space, you’re giving me the opportunity to tell you that you’re living in a fantasy world without the risk of getting beaten up. So that’s what I’m telling you. In other words, we’re not realistic. It’s incredible. We’re not at all realistic. We don’t accept what we are.
When you accept what you are, you automatically feel kind of comfortable. When you don’t accept yourself, when you pretend to be something you’re not, that’s when you get into trouble. Some people think you are this; other people think you are that—it’s like impossible things are happening. They think you are this; you think you are that—it’s impossible to be both. You pretend to be this other person, but others can’t see that. Psychologically, that’s how we are.
In reality, no other person can change my goodness or my badness or whatever my energy is, no matter what they say. Somebody else’s words cannot improve or worsen my qualities. It depends on me, doesn’t it? We should know that’s how it is. All we’re responsible for is our own mind, which in turn is responsible for our actions. If we act with the right motivation, our actions will be right. We ourselves are solely responsible for our good actions and our bad ones. Nothing anybody else says can make us good or bad. That’s impossible. All the actions of our body and speech come from our own mind. Our mind is like the pilot, or driver, and our body and speech are like a plane or a car. If the driver mind thinks, “I want chocolate,” the car body will go all the way into town to get it.
Therefore, the mind is the essential thing and knowing how it functions is extremely important. Our body and speech are kind of servants; they are not the principal thing. The principal thing is the mind. The mind makes the whole thing, as Lord Buddha said in his teachings: the mind is the creator of the entire hallucinated world.5 It’s true. You can see how we are living in a fantasy world.
Check up. Try to recognize how we are living in a fantasy world. Check how many people are living in the world of “this is good” and “this is bad.” Everybody on earth is living in the world of good and bad. All this conceptualization comes from the mind, from the minds of everybody contradicting each other. What one person thinks is good, another thinks is bad. What one person thinks is bad, another thinks is good. Everybody’s good and bad is different. We’re all contradicting each other. That shows we’re living in a fantasy world. If we weren’t, we’d all be totally unified in what we think is good and what we think is bad. If everybody was right, if everybody’s judgment was correct, there’d be a totality of agreement and there’d be absolute good and bad. Nothing like that exists. I mean, it’s so simple, isn’t it? Still, it’s unbelievable.
Take Hitler, for example. He killed six million Jews. He thought that was fantastic; he thought it was great. From his philosophical point of view, he thought killing six million Jews was good. Similarly, throughout the world, it doesn’t matter, whoever does a good action, whoever does a bad action—you can’t imagine, there must be billions and billions of different ideas generated around the world every day—all these are fantasies. Relatively, there is right and wrong, good and bad, but their absolute nature is emptiness, shunyata.
Even here, we’re all living in the same environment, the same building, and each day we’re doing similar things, but everybody has a different feeling: “This building is this, this building is that. . . .” If you ask each person what they think of it, everybody will have a different answer. Or you ask everybody what they think of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Some will think he’s this, others will think he’s that. Everybody’s idea will be completely different. That shows nobody knows reality. That’s why Lord Buddha’s teaching is very interesting. It’s really incredible; it shows the exact way humans think. All these relative judgments of good and bad are fantasies, hallucinations.
Until we realize the absolute nature, shunyata, we won’t be able to see the complete unity, the totality, the absolute nature of all existence. That is exactly what Lord Buddha said. You can understand that, right? You need to understand totality nature, which we sometimes call shunyata or, in English, the total reality of all existence. Now, totality nature is simultaneously existent within the relative good and bad. Relative good and bad are like waves on the ocean. Ocean waves come and go. Sometimes they go this way, sometimes that, but it’s still all water, isn’t it? It’s still water energy. Similarly, when we say good and bad, women and men, all kinds of other different things, if we have seen totality, we can see that there’s some totality absolute nature existing equally in all of nature: living things, nonliving things, organic things, nonorganic things, every kind of energy, human beings, animals, the sky, the four elements, whatever—it doesn’t matter. Totality nature exists within everything.
When you reach that level of insight, you don’t have too many hallucinated fantasies flashing in front of you: “Oh, this is fantastic!” Presently, everything the relative mind perceives is kind of flashing, giving off a strong vibration, so you have to run after it; you can’t free yourself from it. It’s as if somebody has laid a powerful vibration on you and you can’t escape paying close attention to it. Similarly, all relative phenomena attract our attention in that way. “Oh, this is fantastic, this is good, this is bad.” Our mind has to pay too much attention, “Oh, this-that, this-that,” instead of being liberated by seeing some absolute nature of equality. We have too much overwhelming superstition.
Sometimes, if you have a good meditation session, you can experience totality, a kind of universal energy pervading both yourself and the outside world. You can experience this through meditation. You can feel this totality strongly rather than being distracted by the usual movement of the surface waves.
It’s especially important to check what you think you are and your everyday thoughts: “I need this, I need that, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this....” We spend all our time thinking, “I need this, this, this, this....” There are a billion things we need because we have the fixed idea, “I am this, therefore I need that.” We have a fixed idea of what we are. We make ourselves bigger than this entire building through our imagination. Our imagination constructs us with the bricks of wrong conceptions. We lay one wrong conception on top of another, then add another wrong conception, another wrong conception and so forth until there’s this huge edifice, larger than this big building we’re in: “I am this.” From “I am this” comes “therefore I need that, I need this, I need that.” It’s all too much. And then the grasping attitude arises.
It’s extremely important to recognize this fixed idea, this imagination of what you are. It’s so simple. Check up right now what you think you are. I don’t mean your profession or whatever work you do. Just investigate what you think you are, your fantasy idea, “I am this, therefore that.” You make a kind of frame for yourself, like the brocade around a thangka. You think, “This is me; this is me.” It’s a completely false conception.
I’ll tell you why it’s a false conception. The minute you think, “I am this,” the very next second you’ve entirely changed. We’re not talking about your absolute nature but the relative, “This is me.” Your relative nature changes minute by minute, second by second. One moment you’re like this; the very next moment you’re not the same as you were at the first one, even though your conception of permanence thinks, “I’m like this. I’m always the same. I want to live in the world permanently. I have lived, I am living, I will continue to live.” It’s interesting.
The entire you of yesterday no longer exists within you today. Nothing of yesterday remains in your body today, does it? The energy that moved through space yesterday does not exist today. It’s different. It’s the same with the energy movement within our body’s nervous system. It may be similar, but yesterday’s does not exist today at all. It’s entirely different. Yet our conception of permanence still thinks, “I’m the same person that I was yesterday. I am. I’m yesterday’s me.” Which is totally unreasonable.
It’s not right. I’m not just talking from the religious point of view. Scientifically, it’s absolutely wrong. I can demonstrate that to you right now. I’m not talking from the religious point of view or about something that’s just Lord Buddha’s or Lama’s idea. I’m talking from exactly the Western, scientific point of view. Exactly.
You have been carrying the fixed idea “I am this” for such a long time, but it’s totally unrealistic in describing the entirety of yourself. Nevertheless, you still think “I am this.” It’s completely silly, isn’t it? As you think “I am this,” if I were to say to you “I’m this cup,” you’d think that was pretty silly. But it’s exactly the same thing. Perhaps I’m joking too much. Well, check out what I’m saying. It’s a good thing to check and never too late to do so. It’s true. You can’t imagine what we’re doing now.
It’s also so simple. What I’m talking about is not some extreme you have to believe. Just meditate and check what you think you are: “I’ve always thought I’m this; year after year I’ve thought the same thing. But now, after checking up scientifically, I see I’ve been completely hallucinating the whole time.” It’s true, right? For example, say you’re twenty now. If I were to ask you if the twenty-year-old you existed when you were five, what would you say? You’d say no, it didn’t exist then. If you understand that clean clear, you can see that the entire you of today did not exist yesterday.
So my conclusion is this. As soon as you fix the idea “I am this,” how can you change? If your fixed idea were true, how could you not be the same a second or a minute later? That would need a change in nature, a change in reality. This shows that your fixed idea is a wrong conception, and it’s this wrong conception that causes all the trouble you experience. It’s this wrong conception that is the basis of your entire evolution. It all starts from that.
Therefore, what I mean is that there’s no such thing existent as the you as you interpret it, as the picture you imagine. No such thing exists. That is my conclusion. There’s no such you as painted by your mind: “I’m this, I’m this, this is me.” That you does not exist on this earth, in this universe, no matter how much you believe it does. And in this way, you now discover that belief is not just a religious thing. As long as you hold this wrong conception, you believe in it. Don’t be proud. In the West, people think if you don’t go to church, you’re not religious. Some proudly say, “I’m not a religious person; I don’t believe.” But as long as you hold to the wrong conception, you’re a believer. Do you agree or not? As long as you imagine yourself as you always have, you’re a believer.
Young people these days are so proud that they don’t believe in anything. They think they’re special. “Oh, you’re a religious person; you believe. I’m not a believer, so I’m not a religious person.” But if you honestly check how much wrong conception garbage that you believe in, that you have in your mind, you’ll see just how big a believer you really are. Perhaps you don’t consider that kind of thing to be belief and would argue against it. Well, I guess you can think that way if you like. Do you agree or not? [Lama pointing at student.]
Student. I do have belief.
Lama. So, you agree that anybody who has misconceptions and imagines such things does believe in something? I say that anybody who harbors misconceptions believes in something, even if they say they don’t. It’s really important to check up on this. Don’t be wishy-washy. Use your wisdom and come to a conclusion. It’s important to reach a conclusion when you check up. Otherwise, you’re like, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.” If there’s no conclusion, there’s no decision, no determination, nothing. It’s very important to check.
This is very true. We have incredibly many wrong conceptions—at the conscious level, at the subconscious level and at increasingly more subtle levels, too. Our consciousness is much deeper than the ocean, therefore it has many levels, from the superficial on down, and thus many of our misconceptions, the things we believe, are completely unconscious. We don’t even notice them. We say, “I don’t believe this, that or the other,” but when certain misconceptions rise to the surface, as they sometimes do, and we can see them, we realize that we have all sorts of incredible beliefs. To see what lies deep in our ocean-like consciousness we need to go into deep meditation. Until we do it will be impossible to see what lies in our unconscious. We can only see what’s happening there in deep meditation.
Thank you. This has been very worthwhile. It is extremely worthwhile to investigate the nature of your own consciousness. At the moment you’re physically and psychologically healthy, but still, one change in your circumstances can freak you out. For that reason, it’s worthwhile to develop the wisdom that understands your own mind and can lead you to perpetual, everlasting, blissful nature. If you have wisdom, you can keep yourself together. It’s really worthwhile.
Otherwise, your life is so poor. The moment some kind of psychological problem arises you’re looking around asking, “Please, can you help me, can you help me? Please help me.” That’s extremely dangerous, but in the West it’s quite common. People think everything has an external solution. As soon as a mental problem arises they’re on the phone: “Please can you help me?” which is not right and almost impossible. By knowing the nature of your own mentality, you can keep your mind together all the time. You know how to take care of your own mind. That is most worthwhile; extremely worthwhile.
I think that’s all, thank you so much.
Notes
2 How to Meditate, p. 61 ff., “Inner Heat Meditation.” [Return to text]
3 Remember, this is 1976! [Return to text]
4 See p. 158 and chapter 13 for more on these. See also our online Glossary. [Return to text]
5 The first two verses of the Dhammapada are:
(1) Mind precedes all mental states.
Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.
If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts,
suffering follows them like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.(2) Mind precedes all mental states.
Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.
If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts,
happiness follows them like a never-departing shadow. [Return to text]
