December 10, 1993
Meditating on reality is the antidote to samsara
Do not commit any unwholesome actions;
Engage only in perfect wholesome actions;
Thoroughly subdue your mind.
This is the teaching of the Buddha.
Again, reflect on impermanence and how everything is empty of existing from its own side. Therefore, there is no basis for the arising of ignorance and discriminating thoughts, anger and attachment and so forth. All those emotional minds, those disturbing thoughts, do not arise by practicing mindfulness of the reality of these phenomena. Then, without these disturbing thoughts, we don’t create karma and, in that way, we don’t create the cause of samsara. By practicing mindfulness of the reality, of the nature of these phenomena, we don’t create the cause of sickness, old age, death, rebirth and so forth, all the sufferings. The result of practicing mindfulness on the reality of phenomena is everlasting happiness, liberation.
Not practicing mindfulness on the reality of these phenomena, we let our mind be under the control of the wrong concept of true existence, which gives rise to anger and attachment and so forth, these disturbing thoughts, these emotional minds, which in turn result in samsara. What we achieve from this is just the suffering realm, samsara, and in particular the lower realms.
By practicing the meditation on the reality of phenomena, by understanding the reality of phenomena, we can see on a much deeper level how other sentient beings are suffering. It’s not just people in the poor countries who are starving, who don’t have food, who don’t have the means to earn a living, or sick people. It’s not just refugees who have to escape from their own countries or beggars who live on the street and have to beg for food. We can see how suffering is much deeper, how all the beings of the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm are suffering. This is something that common people—those who haven’t met the Dharma, who do not meditate on the lamrim—can understand. Because their understanding of other sentient beings’ problems or sufferings is extremely limited, their compassion is also extremely limited. They only know one aspect of suffering; they have no idea of the suffering of change or pervasive compounding suffering at all.
The suffering of pain, the first type of suffering, is the suffering that even animals do not want to experience, but even their understanding of this suffering is very limited. They cannot understand how rebirth and death are in the nature of suffering. Some may think that is suffering but some may not, and they have no idea especially about rebirth, which is caused by karma and delusion. Those who have not meditated on the lamrim, who have no understanding of Buddhadharma, don’t even think much about the suffering of pain, or even the rebirth that is the suffering of pain. They cannot understand.
We can’t remember when our consciousness took place in the mother’s womb on the fertilized egg and what that experience was like. It doesn’t mean everybody who gets born from the mother’s womb has to go through suffering. When those holy beings, those highly realized beings, the yogis or bodhisattvas, take birth, they don’t have the aspect of suffering. It depends on the level of mind of the being, whether the being who is taking birth is free from the delusion and karma. It doesn’t mean anybody who gets born from a womb has to go through suffering, but generally, for us ordinary beings, we have to go through the suffering of rebirth that are listed in the five outlines in the lamrim texts to get an idea.
Even though we have gone through this experience, most of us cannot remember even how we came out of our mother’s womb, leave aside being able to remember the experiences we had when we were in the womb, or the first time the consciousness took place in the fertilized egg. Similarly, there are many things that we did since we were born that we have forgotten. It is basically due to ignorance as well as the conditions, the pollutions and so forth, that we cannot remember. Maybe it is due to the distance of time—the longer ago it was, the less capacity we have to remember—but when the capacity of memory is developed, when there are less obscurations, then again we will be able to remember more and more.
Impermanence and death
Practicing mindfulness, the more we realize the reality of the phenomena, particularly of the I and the aggregates, the sense objects and so forth, the more we are able to see how other sentient beings are suffering, how their life is totally living in the concept of permanence, their hallucinated minds apprehending impermanent phenomena—that are changing within every second by causes and conditions—as permanent.
We all have this wrong concept of permanence, looking at impermanent phenomena as if they are permanent, as if our life and the sense objects in our life, and the surrounding people—friends, enemies and so forth—everything is always going to be like this. We have a fixed concept that things have always been like that and that they are always going to be like that. They’re kind of fixed; they’re going to last. When we are not aware of their nature, if it’s left up to our mind, then we have the concept that things are going to last a long time, it’s always going to be always like that.
I think the electricity in Nepal is a very good teaching, reminding us of impermanence! [Rinpoche and students laugh] When the lights go off, the appearance of many bright objects suddenly stops. It is there but suddenly it’s gone. This is similar to the appearance of this life. Seeing the brightness of the object, seeing around us many people like our friends, places, objects, possessions, pleasures—including this human body we now have—all these appearances that are happening now can be stopped at any time. The appearance of this life can be stopped at any time, like the appearance that happens when we have electricity and the lights are on.
The day that the impermanence of death happens, at that time it is just like last night’s dream. That appearance of this life that was happening is gone. It happened and then it is gone. Like when there is a flash of lightning, during that moment we have the appearance of a brilliant, bright object. We see our own human body and the people around us as well as all the other phenomena—this happens and then it is gone.
It is exactly the same when the day, the hour, the minute that the impermanence of death comes, when death happens. What we feel is just like that. The appearance of this life with all its many brilliant objects that were happening are suddenly stopped, just like the moment after a flash of lightning. During the flash we have this appearance, but we can’t trust it. We can’t assume this bright appearance of objects, people, material, places and so forth, including this human body, will remain. The appearance can be stopped at any time because life can be stopped at any time. The impermanence of death can come any time. Because the actual time of death is uncertain, the appearance of this life we now have can be stopped at any time. That is the nature of life.
When we look at others and ourselves we can see that even though we have met Dharma, we still can’t conquer death, we can’t overcome death. We have not yet gained complete freedom over the rebirth and death like the arhats and the arya bodhisattvas have. The practitioners of the Lesser Vehicle path, the arhats, have completely ceased the cause of the suffering, karma and delusions, including the seed of delusions, ignorance, the concept of inherent existence, and have achieved freedom over death and rebirth caused by karma and delusion. Arya bodhisattvas, the practitioners of the Mahayana, the great vehicle, have actualized the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness and have completely abandoned suffering rebirth, old age, sickness and death; they never have to experience them again.
Then the practitioners of the highest tantra achieve the realization of the completion state, which has six levels—the isolation of body, the isolation of speech, the isolation of mind, the clear light, the illusory body and the unification [of clear light and illusory body]. Those who have achieved the isolation of mind and the clear light are the real yogis; they have the qualification to receive the label “yogi.” These practitioners can achieve enlightenment in this very brief lifetime of these degenerated times. Having achieved clear light, with that realization, they can become enlightened within a few years. According to highest tantra, these are the great yogis. After having achieved clear light, they have overcome the suffering cycle of death and rebirth.
Without practicing tantra, even by practicing the Lesser Vehicle path or the bodhisattva path, the Paramitayana, we are able to overcome death and rebirth. Even if we don’t get to accomplish these levels in this life, where we can be completely free from death and rebirth, by having met the Buddhadharma we can at least make preparation to receive a better rebirth again with a perfect human body, and then we can continue to practice the Dharma, and like this to complete the path to full enlightenment. The reason we do this is for the sake of the numberless sentient beings, to free them from all the sufferings and lead them to peerless happiness, to full enlightenment.
In this case, what is called “death” is just like changing our clothes. We take off our old clothes and put on new ones—this new body with which we can practice Dharma under even better conditions. Even if we don’t get to achieve very high realizations in this life, at least we can accomplish this [better rebirth] by practicing the holy Dharma.
Not understanding reality, sentient beings suffer
We need to look at how other sentient beings are suffering, how they are living their lives in the hallucination, the concept of permanence, apprehending impermanent phenomena as permanent—their own lives, the surrounding people, their material possessions and so forth. They have this fixed idea, and because of that, they are tortured because the reality they expect to last doesn’t stay like that all the time, it doesn’t last a long time. So, when phenomena show the reality of impermanence, opposing what they expect, life becomes so depressing. They get depressed and have a nervous breakdown, even becoming crazy. Their whole life is so sad.
For instance, their partner, the object of their attachment, dies or leaves them, and this is not what they expected. Because of that, they fall into a state of great anger, or if not anger, depression, with a deep sadness in their heart. All this is due to not having meditated during their life, not having the Dharma wisdom understanding of the teachings, understanding the reality of the phenomena. This fixed idea, this wrong concept of permanence, becomes a fundamental problem in their life.
Besides these other wrong concepts they have, they mistake the [second type] of suffering of samsara, [the suffering of change], a feeling that is suffering by its nature, thinking of it as pleasure, labeling it “pleasure,” believing it to be pure happiness and being attached to it. And because of that, it becomes the cause of further samsara, the cause to experience samsaric sufferings over and over again—rebirth, death and all the sufferings in between.
They see the body as pure, unable to see that it is dirty by nature, a dirty container of thirty-six or however many dirty things. It is like a septic tank that holds all the waste from the toilet, even though from the outside these things are invisible. There is a very thin skin covering what is inside, which is terrifying. If you go just a little bit below the surface of the skin there is nothing that is not terrifying. The body is just like the septic tank of a toilet.
For example, if we are attached to a body but suddenly there is a wound and blood seeps out of the wound, even just a drop, it is terrifying; suddenly we are not attached to that body anymore. This is the body’s reality, but we cling to the fantasy that it is not suffering; our view is completely at odds with reality. On the basis of these hallucinations that we and other sentient beings have, delusions arise, discriminating thoughts such as attachment and so forth arise, which then create more negative karma, the cause of more samsara, more continuous suffering.
As I have mentioned during these last few days, while everything including the I is merely labeled by the mind—that is the reality—apprehending the I, action, object, everything as independent, as existing from their own side, is the biggest hallucination. This is the fundamental hallucination, the wrong concept that is the root of suffering.
Blaming the parents who are so precious
We and other sentient beings are suffering like this, completely trapped in the hallucination. This is the fundamental one but there are many other wrong views.
For example, if we have any problems—no question about mental problems but even physical ones—we believe they are due to our parents and we blame them for our problems. We think, “When I was a child, my parents didn’t take care of me well enough. My parents didn’t love me.” Then we put all the blame on them and think we ourselves are completely perfect, that we have never done anything wrong. Whatever problem we have is all due to parents, not just our mental problems but even our physical ones. This is the explanation given by so many people, that they weren’t loved, that they were abused as a child. There are parents who abuse their children and there are parents who don’t, but whatever the case, this is one of the biggest explanations of why people experience mental problems.
When we blame our parents for whatever problems we have, any harmonious relationship we might have with them is completely destroyed. The good feeling we have for each other is completely destroyed; it becomes a disaster because of our habit of always placing the blame on something outside of us. The cause of the problem is always outside, even if that blame is put on the parents, who are so precious, so kind, who gave us this precious human body.
If they had decided to have an abortion, we could never have had this precious human body or even been able to experience samsaric enjoyments, samsaric pleasures, leave aside practicing the Dharma, practicing meditation, liberating ourselves from all the causes of suffering and achieving full enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. Leaving aside that, we wouldn’t even have this incredible freedom we have now—all the samsaric pleasures, enjoyments, comforts—if they had decided to not have us or not to take care of us in the womb.
Even without talking about all the other kindnesses they have shown us, just thinking of this kindness—that they gave us this precious human body, that they didn’t have an abortion, that they took care of us in the womb—just that is an unbelievable kindness. We can realize how kind they are through the meditation on the perfect human rebirth, how this human body is qualified with eight freedoms and ten richnesses. By doing this meditation, we can realize how our parents are unbelievably kind, without thinking of all the other ways they have been kind to us.
Having this precious human body they have given us, we can practice the path and achieve any happiness we wish, the happiness of future lives, as a god or human, even liberation from samsara and enlightenment.
Having this precious human body gives us the opportunity to hear Dharma and to understand the meaning of the words. Animals such as dogs, cats, pigs, goats or sheep, even if they lived for a thousand years, even if we explained to them for a thousand eons what is the meaning of virtue, the cause of happiness, and what is the meaning of nonvirtue, the cause of suffering, there is no way they could understand. But for us, by having this precious human body, when somebody correctly explains what the cause of happiness is, and defines virtue for us, it doesn’t even take a minute for us to understand the meaning.
It is easy to compare how easy it is for us to understand the Dharma, how quickly we can understand it, with this precious human body and how impossible it is for those other sentient beings who have taken a body that is not a human body, such as an animal body. Even though their mind has buddha nature, the nature of the enlightened being, the potential to become fully enlightened, because at this time they do not have a human body, they cannot understand the meaning of even something very basic like this, even if it were repeatedly explained over and over for a thousand eons.
If we compare like this, we can realize how without talking about a perfect human rebirth qualified with eight freedoms and ten richnesses, how just having a human body is so precious. We can understand how it gives us so much freedom, how it gives us the unbelievable opportunity to be liberated from the whole of samsara. Because of it, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute we can become closer to liberation, to the end of suffering.
When we see how valuable this human body is, the more we see this then the more we understand how precious our parents are, these people we received this precious human body from. We naturally see them as so kind, so precious.
With this understanding, we can realize how illogical it is that we still see ourselves as completely perfect and our parents as the source of all our problems. We put the whole blame on them, even though they are the ones who gave us this precious human body and hence are the source of all our happiness. By giving us this body with its infinite benefits, they have shown unbelievable kindness.
They have shown numberless kindnesses; they have not only shown the kindness of giving us this body, they have also saved our life from hundreds of dangers each day, and have shown the kindness of leading us in the path of the world by teaching us how to walk and speak, and giving us an education. There are numberless times they have been kind, bearing so many hardships for us. They have been doing this from beginningless rebirths. Every time they have been our mother or father, they have borne so many hardships and created so much negative karma in order to protect our life and to give us happiness. And we still place the blame for all our problems on them.
This is because we only ever place the blame on external things. We deny responsibility for our problems and we blame others, but when we put the whole blame on our parents it only creates extra problems in our life. Our life already has so many problems and we add another, the heaviest problem, cutting the affection toward our parents. The love we should have for them is completely destroyed. It brings them so much suffering. They don’t know what to do; they don’t know why their son or daughter is so angry with them. There is no explanation why they have been made into an enemy by their child. They don’t know that this is because of the hallucination that their child lives under, how even though everything comes from the mind, as I have explained over the last few days, they are being blamed because of the hallucination their child believes in.
When I was coming back from Greece recently, I read a big article in Time magazine where a lady went to see a psychotherapist. I don’t know what problem she had. The psychotherapist explained that because her parents abused her when she was young, she now has all these problems. I think her problem was depression, and that was the psychotherapist’s explanation. She hadn’t remembered being abused by her parents, but then she became completely angry with them. However, even though her first reaction was anger, when she checked again using her own wisdom, she discovered that her depression had nothing to do with her parents abusing her. The article went into a very long explanation about how the diagnosis was wrong. Anyway, the cover of that edition of Time had the head of a person, maybe the psychotherapist, and the inside of the skull was empty. I think it was trying to show that without knowledge the head is empty or something.
Drugs and awakening the mind
I think people’s minds are slowly awakening; they are starting to see the truth more and more. Actually, I think it first started when LSD started, with those mushrooms and buddha grass and all those things! [Rinpoche and students laugh] Those things were a big part of breaking the very narrow concepts that were held at that time. The experiences that people had [with those substances] where they saw that the mind can travel without this gross body, that although everything appears solid, nothing is solid, concrete, that everything is a kind of formation of atoms.
This is similar to what is explained in the tantric teachings about the experience of the absorptions at the time of death, the white appearance path, the increasing red appearance, then near attainment dark appearance. Then, there is the extremely subtle consciousness, the clear light, the extremely subtle mind of death. So many young people who have taken LSD and so forth have some kind of experience that they have been able to relate to these highest tantra meditation experiences or death time experiences because at the same time their karma to meet Dharma ripened.
One of the original Dharma books [translated into English] is the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Bardo Thodol. Just by hearing somebody read it, you get liberated during the intermediate state. Due to the various experiences these young people had, if their karma to meet Dharma ripened, with this book they were able to relate their experiences to what was said in Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism within tantra.
The other main book they read was The Way of the White Clouds by Lama Govinda, who was a disciple of a great yogi, Domo Geshe Rinpoche, whose incarnation now lives in America around New York. And for some people, another book was Milarepa’s life story. Milarepa himself made a promise that even hearing his own name or his story would benefit all the sentient beings in the world. Milarepa made a very strong dedication like this. Anybody who remembered his name or recited his mantra, Milarepa would guide to born in a pure land and to be able to meet him there and receive teachings from him.
Due to their karma, some people were able to read Milarepa’s book and, because of that, they wanted to practice like him, completely renouncing everything. One student saw Milarepa’s book in the West when he started to take these drugs like LSD. After Milarepa’s life story, he gave everything away, all his belongings, and went to India. I don’t know what happened after that. He went to India and then to Nepal. An Italian student told me the story.
Because of those young people coming to Asia, the Dharma was able to go to the West. Now each year, thousands of people meet and practice Dharma in many Western countries. It is increasing all the time. Basically, it’s because of these young people who managed to break through the limited concept by having taken these substances, which happened according to their karma to wake up their mind. But after having met the Dharma, I don’t think it’s necessary to keep taking those things. Especially after having met tantra, tantric teachings, which is a much better [way to wake up the mind]. Theirs was temporary method and that is finished now.
Anyway, what was I saying? Now I’m lost. [Rinpoche and students laugh]
I think it’s better to have tea!
Overcoming karmic obscurations
Rinpoche: Maybe there’s one question?
Student: Rinpoche, at Institut Vajrayogini in France one morning, you spoke about two kinds of emptiness, emptiness and vast emptiness in relation to something about Guru Rinpoche.
Rinpoche: Vast emptiness? I am sorry. I think it’s going out with the kaka. [Rinpoche and students laugh]
Student: Is it something related with the karma? With regard to how emptiness clears or eliminates dualistic elaborations of the experience. You said something to the effect that not only insight into emptiness, but also the sphere of emptiness, is responsible for eliminating dualistic elaboration.
Rinpoche: Collaboration, dualistic collaboration? [Student: Elaboration.] I thought you said emptiness is collaborating with dualistic view, elaboration of emptiness? Can you repeat the question?
Student: I don’t understand what you meant. You said that meditating on the sphere of emptiness could eliminate the defilements in karma.
Rinpoche: Meditating on the sphere of emptiness—I think that just means emptiness, the emptiness that is like the space. The meaning of “sphere” relates to that, emptiness like space. Then, meditating on that eliminates karmic obscurations, karmic defilements.
Negative karma is like the mental pollution, mental obscurations. The more negative karma we accumulate, the less we can understand. For example, even when we hear Dharma we cannot comprehend the words. Before, we were able to comprehend the words, but now, because we have accumulated so much negative karma, we hear the sound but we cannot comprehend the words. It makes it more difficult to understand; our mind seems to become more distant from the words, therefore it becomes more difficult to keep the concentration and to understand the meaning. This is one example.
Before we were able to do this but now we can’t, due to the obscurations. The negative karma pollutes the mind, obscuring it. Therefore, we have these difficulties. Even if we hear the sound, we are unable to catch the words and understand the meaning. The mind becomes distant from that.
It’s similar when we meditate on compassion. Before, when we had less negative karma, we were able to feel compassion when we thought of others, when we thought of how the hell beings suffer, [how the hungry ghosts suffer], how the human beings suffer, but now, using the same words we used before, the feeling is not there. It just becomes words; it is difficult to get the feeling from the words because the heart is kind of empty. The words are repeated from the mouth, but the heart is empty. Before, we did the meditation and we were able to feel it, but now even that doesn’t happen.
It can be similar with devotion. This can also be an example of how karmic obscurations make it more difficult to do a visualization. Before it was clear, but now it becomes difficult to visualize something. I’ve heard some people express that they can never visualize anything, such as the Buddha or a holy object. That shows there is a need for a lot of purification. If that is so, we have to develop perfect compassion by using the four remedial powers of purification, the strong practice of purification.
Negative karma accumulated in relation to the virtuous friend is purified by depending on them. With the guru yoga purifying practice, on the basis of the compassion of the virtuous friend, because we have created negative karma in connection with them or degenerated the samaya vows we took from them, we confess to that virtuous friend. Then, on that basis, we do the guru yoga practice and the purification practice, such as Samayavajra. Then we do the tsog offering if we are practicing tantra. Even if we have not received an initiation and cannot do the complete meditation, we can still do the tsog offering to the virtuous friend for purification and to hook the realizations. This tsog offering is a common method and it is very powerful. The most powerful purification we can do is something that most pleases the virtuous friend.
The other powerful purification we can do is the bodhicitta practice of taking and giving, taking other sentient beings’ suffering and problems on ourselves and giving them all our happiness and merit. We take other sentient beings’ sufferings and its cause into our own heart by generating great compassion, and we give them our happiness, merit, body, possessions and so forth by generating great loving kindness. That this bodhicitta practice is the most powerful purification is mentioned in the first chapter of A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.
Then, we can also meditate on emptiness. And reciting the holy names of the Thirty-five Buddhas while doing prostration is an especially powerful purification. If the virtuous friend has passed away, it is advised we should confess in front of any relics there are, such as the robes or any part of the holy body, the bones or hairs or whatever. Or we can confess to the guru’s nearest disciple, the main disciple. This is explained if the guru has already passed away.
So, with karmic obscurations, we can tell according to the state of our mind whether or not there is more pollution, whether more negative karma has accumulated. We can get a gross idea from the experience of our state of mind.
I don’t think I understood your first question due to my pollution, due to my karmic defilements! [Rinpoche and students laugh] I think I missed out something there in France. I think I was unable to catch up!
Believing in one life and fearing death
Since I brought up this topic, I just want to mention one or two things. On top of all these hallucinations, there is also the belief in having just one life. On one hand there is the fear of death and on the other there is this belief that there is only one life, which is strange. If that were the reality, it would be better in some ways, because there would be no need to fear death.
After death there would be no more problems—no more relationship problems, no more problems of discrimination and so forth—all our problems would cease at the time of death. It seems to me that believing in one life and being afraid of death are contradictory. If there was only this one life, any worries we have would stop at death. The objects of attachment that bring us problems and dissatisfaction would cease at death. All the wrong views that cause us suffering now would cease. The four sufferings common to us humans—getting what we don’t want, not getting what we want, and so forth—would cease, because these are problems of this one life which has finished.
Based on the four major wrong views and according to the education we are given and the culture, we develop many other wrong views because we don’t analyze what is reality with our wisdom. Therefore, because there is no clear understanding of what is mind, it seems to us that there can only be one life. We cannot explain the definition of mind and therefore we cannot explain what birth is, how it happens. Among [Western] psychologists there are many different views about this, so our own understanding of what mind is and the beginning of life, birth, becomes unclear.
We are also unclear about the end of life, death, what “death” means. It is unclear because our understanding of mind is unclear. How birth happens, how death happens, the beginning and the end of life—there is a lot of confusion, a great lack of clarity on these two very important points. It’s like there is a hole that is beyond the understanding of [Western] doctors. In reality, there are many things about death that are beyond their philosophy, such as what happens when the brain stops functioning. One of the older Sangha members who is an Australian doctor, Dr. Adrian, told me that a doctor witnessed how one patient’s brain stopped functioning for some time and it was believed he was complete dead, but then he came alive again. Dr. Adrian said that he himself has seen things that are beyond what is commonly believed within the philosophy of the doctors about what death means. He has seen many things that don’t fit with their explanation, which shows that their explanation is a wrong explanation, or at least it is not the complete explanation.
I’ll mention this and another one, and then I’ll stop. His Holiness Zong Rinpoche is a lama who both I and many old students have received many initiations and teachings from in the past. He was a great yogi who from past lives completed the three principal aspects of the path as well as all the realizations of the two stages of highest tantra. Once, Rinpoche explained what he saw in a place called Pagri in Tibet, where I lived for three years. It is near Bhutan and is a main business place, where people from Lhasa bring their things to trade with Indian businesspeople who come from Bhutan, bringing their nuts and stuff to sell. People come from many different places to sell things there, as it is on a main route between India and Lhasa.
It was in Pagri that Rinpoche saw a Tibetan man who didn’t have a head. He had the rest of the body but no head. He might have had leprosy or maybe he was born without a head, I’m not sure. He had a neck and people would feed him tsampa, probably mixed with tea and things, spooning the tsampa down his throat. Because he had no mouth, he would indicate he was hungry by rubbing his stomach. He talked with his hands. People would take him outside to sit in the sun and then take him back inside the house into the shade. That’s one story.
In another story I saw in a text that a very high Amdo lama, somewhere in the lower place of Tibet, also saw exactly the same thing, a person without head. Of course, similarly, there are people who have a head but no limbs, just a large face and a torso, with maybe hands. I saw this in Varanasi as well as in Spain, in a missionary hospital, where Christian nuns took care of people with disabilities.
Normally, when I travel to the West I like to see these things, such as the place where they keep all the dead bodies. The first time I saw this was in Sydney, many years ago, and then also with His Holiness Zong Rinpoche in America, near Vajrapani, but there were only a few bodies there, whereas in Sydney there were a lot. As soon as I entered the dead body house, it was very interesting to observe all the faces that were kept lined up around the door in glass frames. Looking at each person’s face was very interesting and it took a lot of time. The students with me and the other friends went straight inside to where there was a small baby in a bottle. They called me to go inside but I still had not finished looking at all the faces by the door, right after you entered the house.
So, normally, I visit places like old folks’ homes or places where the dead bodies are kept. We went to a place in Spain where people with disabilities were living. On one side there were the children and on the other were the older ones. In one section, there was an older girl whose arms were tied to a bar covered in leather and she had a kind of table with wheels that she could move on because she couldn’t walk. It must have been cleaned just before we arrived. We had made a special appointment because the director of the Barcelona center had worked there before, so there was some connection and she was able to get the appointment to visit the place.
I was very surprised. It felt incredible that these nuns were able to look after these people where there was no hope at all that they could get better. If there is some hope somebody can get better [it gives you the motivation,] even though it might take a lot of energy to take care of them, but here the nuns had to look after these people even though there was no hope [of full recovery]. Their whole life was like this, no matter how long they lived. Everything, kaka, pipi, had to be cleaned. I felt it was incredible how patient the nuns were, how wonderful their attitude was, taking care of these people.
In a big hall there were a lot of people who were a little bit better. They had been given jobs to do, such as sewing. They were very happy to meet us and they were smiling and very happy. I tried to shake hands with everybody. One person had a small body and a very big face. As I was shaking his hand, I wasn’t sure whether I was dreaming or not. But these people are like that, of course they are. I saw similar people in Varanasi. There are people in the West just the same, with the same karma, but of course you don’t see them outside in the streets like you do in Asia.
It is similar. There are people like this who have the karma to not have a head. Although of course they are much fewer than those with other physical disabilities, those without faces and [with intellectual impairment] are alive and serving a function. They are able to express their wishes with their hands, whether they want to go into the sun or the shade.
We need to understand the mind to see how others are suffering
The [Western medical] definition of death is after the brain stops functioning, even though there is a lot of factual evidence that shows that [the mind] goes beyond that. Nowadays there is a lot of confusion. As I was travelling in Australia, I saw on TV the top psychologists explaining their different points of view about birth. It became very unclear. The main problem is that there is no clear definition of what is mind, like it is explained in the teachings by the Omniscient One in the very early philosophical texts that form the elementary study of the young monks in the monasteries. They learn the definitions of all the mental factors and all those basic things, and then they learn it more elaborately when they learn the Abhidharmakosha and so forth.
Even just the simple, clear definitions of mind, such as the ones the young monks have to memorize, are very difficult to find in psychology books, even though there are many thick books talking about mind. Many years ago, when I was in America staying with Geshe Sopa, a student brought me a book on mind. Although I didn’t read the whole thing, just the beginning and some of the middle, and then glanced at the end, I got the feeling that there was no real conclusion about the mind. It seemed to me that it talked about a lot of different things without offering any condensed, clear, complete definition what the mind is.
There are many aspects of [Western] education that need to be developed because there is confusion between what is believed in philosophy and the reality. But now, as time passes, by continuously doing research, as their research shows previous explanations are wrong and new discoveries are made, it seems that [Western mind scientists] are coming closer to the reality, to what the Buddha explained in the teachings.
As I was saying before, by doing our meditation practice we can come to understand the realities of phenomena. Then, the more we recognize what is the false view and what is truth—what is the wrong concept and what is right understanding—the more we come to know how other sentient beings are suffering because of their hallucinated wrong views.
Understanding emptiness and so forth helps us to see very deeply how other sentient beings are suffering, completely trapped in hallucinations, with this ignorance, the wrong concept of true existence. They totally believe in the existence of that which doesn’t exist at all in reality, causing them to live their lives in a complete hallucination, which is the basis for anger, attachment and all the many other negative emotional minds to arise. Then, they suffer and create more negative karma with this wrong concept, which only ties them further to samsara.
It is extremely beneficial to understand this to develop compassion. The more we understand, the more we meditate, the more we realize the realities of phenomena, the stronger our compassion will be toward others. And that leads to bodhicitta and enlightenment for other sentient beings.
