Chapter 21. Sunday, November 11: Final Medicine Buddha Session

Ceasing samsara

I thought to give some explanation at this point, rather than waiting until the end of the sadhana. I love this practice of the four immeasurables very much. Of course, unfortunately, even though I love it very much, it doesn’t mean my mind is in the immeasurable state twenty-four hours a day.

As I mentioned one time when I was leading the refuge practice here at the beginning of the sadhana, there is a Hinayana way of taking refuge and a Mahayana way of taking refuge. We have to understand the differences between them. One of the two causes for taking refuge is the useful fear of how samsara is in the nature of suffering. What is that samsara? It is the continuity of these aggregates, which are defiled, contaminated by the seed of disturbing thoughts and under the control of karma and delusion. In other words, they have an impure cause. That’s why these aggregates, our body and mind, are suffering in nature.

To achieve total liberation—in other words, complete cessation of the continuation of these aggregates, which are suffering in nature—we need to cease the cause of this samsara, karma and delusion. These aggregates, caused by karma and delusion, circle from one life to another. From here they circle to the next samsara, the next aggregates, and the continuation of that samsara circles to the next samsara. In this way we continuously suffer, without end, until we cease the continuation of this samsara. To cease this we need to cease the cause of this samsara, karma and delusion, by completely eliminating the root of samsara, the ignorance that is unknowing in relation to the ultimate nature of the I and the aggregates.

How can we achieve this? How can we make it possible to achieve this total liberation, this sorrowless state, so that we make it impossible for us to ever experience suffering again? How can we ensure that there will be no more death, no more suffering rebirth, no more suffering old age? How can we make it impossible for us to experience the problems of human beings? There are relationship problems, which are like being in hell. Physically you’re not in hell but mentally you’re in a hell realm, an emotional hell. There is the suffering of poverty that we always hear about, even though we ourselves mightn’t be living in poverty. There are two types of poverty: poverty of material means and poverty of Dharma, or spiritual poverty, which means poverty of scriptural understanding and of realizations. As we hear on the news, millions of people in Afghanistan are now facing many hardships because of poverty, and many others are dying of starvation in many other countries.

Many people have manic depression, which no doctors can help. Even though they take many medicines and try various methods, nothing helps. There are also many people with headaches or incurable sicknesses that no medicine can help. Or even if there is a cure, some people don’t recover; somehow the method doesn’t work for those people because of their heavy karma. Even though many pujas are done, because the karma is very heavy, they aren’t healed quickly. There are the sufferings of physical sickness and of mental problems, mental instability. Human beings and non-human beings, such as spirits, interfere on the basis of past negative karma collected by degenerating samaya vows or in relation to gurus, the Triple Gem or other holy objects or by having harmed other sentient beings. The person then has to live their whole life with no control at all, no freedom at all. They can’t use their precious human body to do any practice, and they can’t offer service to other sentient beings. They are unable to meditate, unable to actualize the path. It is very heavy karma.

The problem of desire

As well as all those sufferings, the whole world is filled with the problem of desire. Wars basically have to do with desire. Because desire isn’t controlled, there are wars between countries. This is what is now happening with the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York and damage to the Pentagon on September 11. Basically, it has all to do with not controlling desire. It happened because of desire and lack of Dharma wisdom; it happened because of wrong views, because of not understanding what is true and what is false. It happened because of the lack of the wisdom that understands these things.

It has now affected the rest of the world. Many airlines have lost business, even Swiss and British ones, as well as many airlines in America. One airline in Arizona has closed down. Many banks have collapsed, and many other businesses are bankrupt. Even though the destruction happened in New York in America, it has affected not only the whole of America but many other countries all over the world, including Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the mother of the incarnation of Gen Jampa Wangdu has been working for twenty years in the same company. (Gen Jampa Wangdu was one of the great meditators from Tibet. He passed away in Dharamsala, where he had realized emptiness and actualized bodhicitta and the Six Yogas of Naropa; he had very high attainment of the tantric path, actualizing clear light and the illusory body. He had great success in that life. He completed the nine levels of calm abiding, or shamatha, and achieved the actual shamatha at Dalhousie. He completed the lamrim realizations, based on the root, guru devotion.) So, in the company where the mother of that meditator’s incarnation works, many of her friends and their boss lost their jobs, because the company couldn’t afford to pay all the workers. She said that because she has been working there for a long time, she wouldn’t mind giving her job to one of the people who had lost their job. Many hotels have also lost business. There are problems all over the world. It has affected not only Western countries but even Muslim countries.

However, you can see that all these wars, fighting back and forth, that have happened in the past and are happening in the present are basically related to desire. It’s a problem of desire. In the past many millions of people have died because one influential person didn’t control their desire.

It is due to the problem of desire that you end up again and again in prison. You go back home, then again go to prison; you go home again, then again go back to prison. It is due to desire, to being unable to control desire.

It is by following desire that a person becomes an alcoholic. Following desire, you drink more and more and then become an alcoholic. Your life becomes very difficult; you cause so much trouble to yourself. What made you an alcoholic and made your life so difficult, so uncontrolled, is your own desire. Nobody else did it, only you yourself did it. By following desire, you made yourself an alcoholic. You completely destroy your life. You can’t function; you can’t do anything.

The mind, which has buddha nature, gives all the hope, all the potential, and a perfect human body gives you the incredible opportunity to achieve any happiness you wish, temporary or ultimate. You can achieve all the happiness of future lives: a beautiful perfect body, with perfect people around you who do everything you want them to do. You could become a king, be the wealthiest person or be born even in a deva realm or in a pure land of buddha where you can become enlightened. This is another quick way to become enlightened. If you don’t become enlightened in this life, if death happens without your completing the path, you can go to a pure land and complete the path and become enlightened there. This precious human body gives you the opportunity to achieve any happiness of future lives that you wish to achieve.

You can also achieve ultimate happiness, with total cessation of suffering. As I mentioned before, you can cease the continuation of this samsara, these aggregates, which are suffering in nature and caused by karma and delusions. You can also achieve full enlightenment, the cessation of even the subtle faults of the mind and the completion of all realizations. If you wish to, you can achieve the peerless happiness of full enlightenment. With this precious human body you can achieve any happiness you wish, including the happiness and inner peace of this life. By achieving the happiness beyond this life, by creating the cause to achieve enlightenment, you achieve all the other kinds of happiness, including the happiness and success of this life, by the way.

Why are you able to achieve all this with this precious human body? Because there is buddha nature within your own mind. This is within you. Even the mosquito or flea that bites you and takes your blood has buddha nature, this potential to achieve full enlightenment. As I mentioned the other night, even though they have buddha nature, because they don’t have a human body they’re unable to practice. I often give the example of cats and dogs. Even though cats and dogs live with people, if you explained to them for eons that the cause of happiness is virtue and that if you want happiness you must practice virtue, there is no way they could understand you. You could explain for eons in both an English and American accent. If they didn’t understand the American accent, then hopefully they would understand the English accent. I’m joking. Even if you explained for eons, there’s no way that cats and dogs could understand.

It would be the same if you explained to a snake, “If you want happiness, you must practice virtue.” The snake, with its long body, is slithering around looking for a mouse or a frog. Its mind is thinking of mice or frogs or something else to eat. Due to the pitiful karma that a snake has, that’s the only food it can eat. It’s due to its past karma. I suppose it’s possible that someone could have the karma to see a snake and think, “Oh, this snake is so beautiful,” as if it had no suffering. Maybe someone could become attracted and attached to a snake. You never know. Sentient beings have all kinds of views. Someone could be attracted to that, and that could then cause them to be born as a snake.

If you’re attracted to Buddha, on the other hand, that attraction leads you to enlightenment. It leads you to always be able to be near Buddha, to see Buddha, to be the heart disciple of Buddha, as in the story of the arhat Shariputra. You might remember the main cause of Shariputra always being with Buddha and becoming Buddha’s heart disciple from reading Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, the lamrim teaching by the great enlightened Tibetan lama, Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo. In Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, it’s mentioned that in one of his past lives, Shariputra was traveling and stopped one night in a temple. He had a light and was fixing his shoes. He then saw a painting of Buddha on the wall and thought it was very beautiful. While he was sewing his shoes with needle and thread, from time to time he would take a rest, look at the painting and think, “How wonderful it is!” Doing that left a positive imprint on his mind, which became the cause in one of his lives for him to become the arhat Shariputra, Buddha’s heart disciple, and to be with Buddha.

Here in this case, it’s possible that thinking a snake is beautiful could become the cause to be born as a snake. However, I’m not saying that is the only cause. There are various negative karmas that cause rebirth as a snake. As you might remember, in the story of Jinpa Pelgye, I think, Buddha explained that in one of his lives he was born as a beautiful girl who was so attached to her body that when she died she was then born as a snake. I think the snake went inside the mouth of the girl’s body or something like that. There are many stories like that.

There are various negative karmas that cause one to reincarnate as a snake. It’s not that you would like so much to be born as a snake that you purposely take rebirth as a snake. It’s not that you are happy to be born as a snake. You reincarnate as a snake due to heavy negative karma, due to anger, attachment and ignorance, including the root ignorance not knowing the ultimate nature of the I and the aggregates. Everything is rooted in that.

A snake, for example, is without freedom. It is totally under the control of past karma and delusions that the consciousness took birth in this particular body. Even though this snake body depends on the father and mother snake, that’s not the main cause. The physical cause of the body is the male and female snake mating and the sperm and the egg meeting, but there is the other cause, which is mental: the karma and negative imprint left on the mental continuum in the past life. This is what causes the consciousness of this being to take this body, to migrate and be conceived in this snake body. Due to karma and delusion, the consciousness migrates into this snake body totally without freedom, totally without choice. Without choice, it receives such a body that lives only by eating frogs, mice and other sentient beings. It has no other means to survive. Every day it has to kill so many other beings.

Every day animals such as snakes have to eat so many other creatures, and those creatures get unbelievably frightened. The frog tries to escape, but it can’t jump very far, especially on rocks. The snake comes so fast from behind that the body of the frog goes into the mouth of the snake so that only the head and the front legs are left outside. The frog, with big eyes, holds strongly to a plant, but almost half of its body is already inside the snake’s mouth. It is unbelievably frightening for the frog.

At a park or zoo for tourists somewhere in south India, Roger and I saw crocodiles on the side of the road. I don’t think they were dead but they looked as if they were dead. I don’t know how long they had been there without moving. You couldn’t see any movement. There were also many snakes curled up in a small mud house. Their food was small brown birds, maybe sparrows. A skinny Indian worker would bring a basket full of those small birds and feed them to the snakes. The snake would coil its body around the bird so that it couldn’t move, then it would open its mouth and eat the bird. While this was happening, the other birds didn’t notice; they would just be walking around like normal, pecking at the ground with their beaks, as if they were outside.

In another place there were different snakes, many huge ones. The skinny Indian man brought frogs there to give those snakes. I think he must give them thousands of frogs every day—very heavy karma. He jumped down from the wall and went there where the snakes were. He picked up one green snake then swung it back and forth. After some time, he let it go. The green snake must have been very frightened, I think, because as soon as he let it go, it quickly hid in the bushes. I think this man probably does this many times a day when groups of people come to see the snakes.

My talk got scattered—it went all over the place!

Saving the lives of animals

I think I have mentioned at another time, a number of years ago, that the centers in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong quite often save the lives of animals. They buy animals from restaurants and markets where people buy live animals for food. In Taiwan or Hong Kong, there is a man with a truck who volunteers to help anybody who wants to liberate animals. He brings his truck and helps to take the animals to the reservoir. He voluntarily offers this service to anybody who is saving the lives of animals.

At our centers in Singapore and also Hong Kong, I think, where they do the practice quite often, one of the students is responsible for collecting donations from the center members for saving the lives of animals. That person is in charge of arranging everything. They go to the market and buy the animals, then bring them in a truck to the ocean or reservoir.

In Hong Kong they do the practice quite often, and liberating animals has also happened many times when I’ve been there. One time the truck was filled with tanks of water with oxygen. There were many big fish and many frogs. We chanted mantras and blessed many buckets of water. People came with their children. Many family members and other people who don’t normally come to the center to meditate or do practice also participate. Everybody chants whatever they can of the different mantras then blows on the buckets of water. The water is then poured into the tanks of water filled with big fish on the truck. The blessed water is also poured over the many thousands of frogs and sprinkled on birds. Everybody together, all the parents and children, then help to liberate the animals in the ocean. This is a very good thing to do because that day you feel you are doing something for others. You are doing something pure, without any expectation. At other times you may be giving things but it’s not pure because you have the expectation of receiving something in return. Here there is nothing in return. You simply help the animals, causing them to have longer lives. I think it’s a very positive thing. It’s very good education for the children, as well as a very good thing for everybody to practice.

We have a table on which we put many holy objects that we bring from the center. I also bring Buddha’s relics and all the many pictures of buddhas that I travel with. We then set up an altar with all those holy objects and arrange sets of offerings around them. We then do refuge and bodhicitta, the seven limbs, a mandala offering and a lamrim prayer as a puja for the animals. We make these offerings in the same way as when we do a puja for other people. After that, we chant mantras, then blow on buckets of water. This way of blessing animals with water purifies their negative karma and causes them to have a good rebirth in their next life. And by hearing the mantras, the frogs, birds and other animals that can hear are able to meet the Dharma in their next life. With the huge sacks of shellfish, we just pour the blessed water on them to purify all their negative karma. I don’t think the shellfish can hear mantras. These are the ones that people fry in oil with a lot of garlic then put in a cup or a big bowl, where two or three people eat them with chopsticks. In Malaysia one wealthy benefactor that I know explained to me that he enjoyed very much eating live shellfish with chopsticks. He said that they’re very delicious while they’re moving, while they’re alive, with just some oil. As I didn’t feel it was the right time to talk to him, I just listened. Or maybe I wasn’t brave enough. I wasn’t sure whether, if I told him a story about karma, he would believe in that or not. Anyway, he told me how delicious they were and how he enjoyed them so much.

Blessing the animals with water blessed with all these powerful mantras, including Medicine Buddha mantra, purifies their negative karma and causes them to have a good rebirth. That’s an incredible gift from us to the animals. Giving them a good rebirth as a deva or human, where they have an opportunity to achieve much happiness and comfort, all temporary and ultimate happiness, is an incredible gift.

The other thing we do is have everybody, adults and children, carry the animals in as many circumambulations as possible. Each of the animals, no matter how many thousands of them there are, creates the cause of enlightenment with every circumambulation. And by the way, they create the cause of liberation from samsara and good rebirth. They create the causes to have a good rebirth for hundreds or thousands of lifetimes. Because you are taking them in circumambulation around holy objects, you’re causing them to create causes of enlightenment and, by the way, causes of liberation from samsara and of all the happiness of future lives. From just one circumambulation, they can experience all this happiness for hundreds or thousands of lifetimes. Therefore, if you’re carrying one hundred or one thousand animals, you’re giving enlightenment to those one hundred or one thousand animals. By the way, you’re giving them all those types of happiness as you take them round the holy objects. That’s one point.

The other point is that this happens even if there is only one stupa, one statue of Buddha or one text. By taking them round even one time, you are giving enlightenment to the one thousand insects in the plastic bag or other container. If there are one hundred holy objects—one hundred statues, stupas, tsa tsas or texts—on the table and you carry one animal around the table one time, you are giving one hundred causes of enlightenment to that animal. If there are one thousand holy objects on the table, if you take one insect around the table, you are giving it one thousand causes of enlightenment. What I’m saying might sound funny, but it means you are enabling the sentient being to collect merit, to collect one thousand causes of enlightenment. By taking one insect, no matter how tiny it is, around at the same level as the holy objects, you are giving this sentient being one thousand causes of enlightenment. If there are one billion holy objects on the table, you are enabling that one tiny insect (or however many thousands of insects there are in the plastic bag or container) to collect one billion causes to achieve enlightenment.

Therefore, it is extremely good to have as many holy objects as possible to circumambulate. At a temple, where there are already many holy objects, you can circumambulate the outside of the building if there’s a road or path around it, like here at LMB. When you carry animals around the outside of this building, your circumambulation includes all the holy objects here inside. Later, when we have the temple with 100,000 Medicine Buddha statues and the 100,000 stupas, you will be able to carry animals around them. There will then be many more holy objects because many tsa tsas go inside each stupa. In dependence upon how many sentient beings you are carrying in circumambulation and how many holy objects there are, you are giving them that many causes of enlightenment. If there are a thousand or a billion holy objects, you are giving them a thousand or a billion causes of enlightenment. Then, by the way, you are also giving them causes of liberation from samsara and of the happiness of future lives. So, it’s a most precious gift.

This is not the only thing you can do to help animals. You can purify them with blessed water or by blowing on them, which is the best, most certain way to help them, and you can then take them around the holy objects. It’s such an easy way to liberate them. The existence of external holy objects makes it so easy to save sentient beings from reincarnating again in the lower realms and to give them a good rebirth. You can give them a good rebirth for many lifetimes, thousands of lifetimes. It makes it so easy to help them to purify their negative karma and defilements and to achieve enlightenment.

Even though the main thing is to meditate on the path, we also need to collect merit. The existence of holy objects makes it unbelievably easy to benefit and liberate others, and you yourself also collect merit. It becomes so easy to purify and collect merit and thus easy to achieve enlightenment.

So, going back to Singapore.... In one of the early times we bought a lot of frogs. I suggested that we also buy snakes, so the person in charge bought three sacks of snakes. They were bought the night before and kept in a car, then brought to the reservoir that morning. When the snakes were released, they seemed puzzled. Maybe it was because of the heat, but they seemed as if they were drunk. They didn’t escape immediately but went away very slowly.

At that time it made me wonder: we’re liberating snakes, and they will eat mice and frogs and harm birds, so what do we do? They frighten and are a danger to those other animals. However, if we don’t liberate them, they will be killed. They have such a long body and will experience so much suffering when their whole body is split. The bigger the body, the more the suffering. So, what is the solution? If we don’t liberate that snake, it will suffer. If we liberate it, it will harm so many other sentient beings. So, what do we do? Well, we liberated them anyway, but it made me think for a while. I came to the conclusion that the only solution is to free all sentient beings from samsara.

You also have to free yourself from samsara so that you don’t harm other sentient beings. If you are born as a snake or a tiger, what can you do? You have no food except other animals. As human beings, we don’t need to kill. We have so many choices of food we can eat that we can survive without killing animals. We can change our habits; we can change our mind. By generating thoughts not to harm others and to benefit them, we can then change our habits.

Dharma is the only solution

The solution is to free sentient beings from samsara. And what is the method for that? It’s Dharma. We have to free sentient beings from samsara, from the circling continuation of these aggregates. In essence, to explain it simply, we have to free sentient beings from this body and mind, which are suffering in nature, which experience so many problems, which are a container of suffering. Besides the four major sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death, there are so many other problems. Every day sentient beings are experiencing so many problems. Even if there are no physical sicknesses, there are mental problems, such as loneliness and depression. There are all the emotional sufferings: feeling hurt or jealous, the pain of attachment and anger. Of course, this gross physical body doesn’t continue, or circle, to the next life. The part of the aggregates that continues to the next life is the mind. It is the continuation of the mind that joins to the next aggregates, to the next samsara.

Ceasing samsara completely comes by ceasing karma and delusions. No matter how much progress there is in developing technology or the physical sciences that alone can’t stop the suffering of death. And because you can’t stop that, you can’t stop the suffering of rebirth. In a similar way, you can’t stop the sufferings of old age and sickness. You can’t make it so that you don’t experience them at all, because technology can’t cease karma and delusions. Even the most sophisticated machine that science can develop can’t make it impossible to get angry; it can’t eliminate desire, or attachment. No matter how much technology is developed, it can’t cease desire, this painful mind that brings so many problems and so much confusion and unhappiness in your own life and in the lives of others. So many disasters are created in life because of desire. Anger then comes and creates so many other disasters. No matter how much technology is developed, it can’t stop the three poisonous minds of ignorance, anger and attachment. No matter how much technology or the physical sciences are developed, they can’t eliminate the very root of samsara, which is the ignorance that apprehends the I and the aggregates, or phenomena, to be truly existent. It can’t eliminate the root of samsara, the root of all karma and delusions, the root of all suffering. It can’t stop the false view that is the object of that ignorance.

Anyway, now going back.... Therefore, Dharma is the only solution. Dharma practice is the only thing that can cease the cause of suffering, karma and delusion, and the root of suffering, ignorance. Of course, the specific Dharma realization that eliminates ignorance is wisdom, the wisdom that realizes that the object of ignorance is empty, totally nonexistent. This wisdom realizes that the I and the aggregates, which appear to be truly existent, to exist from their own side, and which ignorance believes to be true, are empty, totally nonexistent. So, the only solution is Dharma, specifically, the wisdom realizing emptiness.

The conclusion is that for you to help other sentient beings, for you to liberate other sentient beings, other sentient beings need to learn Dharma. They need to understand Dharma, practice Dharma and actualize the path. For you to help them do that, you yourself need to understand Dharma and realize the path. So, Dharma practice is for both you and others. The solution is Dharma practice. There is nothing else.

Here again you can see that there is nothing more important in life than Dharma practice. The rest is meaningless. Anything other than Dharma is meaningless.

I now want to make some commentary on that, just to clarify it a little.

When you go shopping, if you go shopping with your mind in lamrim, with a bodhicitta motivation, the altruistic thought to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, your shopping doesn’t become a cause of samsara, a cause to reincarnate in the lower realms; it becomes a cause to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. When you go to buy food or clothing, even though you haven’t realized emptiness, the ultimate nature of the I and phenomena, you can do the shopping with mindfulness that you the buyer, the money you are paying and the object that you are buying from the shopkeeper are merely imputed by the mind. The buyer is merely imputed by the mind. What you are called depends on what function you are performing, whether you are buying or selling. If you are performing the function of buying, due to that action, you are merely imputed “the buyer.” Because you pay money and get something for it, that action is merely imputed “buying.” The person to whom you give the money and who is supposed to give you something that you want in return is merely imputed “shopkeeper” or “seller.” Due to their function, that person is merely imputed “shopkeeper” or “seller.” Your mind merely imputes “shopkeeper” to that person who performs the function of owning a shop or selling things. And what is called “money” is merely imputed by your thought to the paper with all the designs that is made by the government and officially accepted as money. This paper, officially accepted and believed to be money, has been labeled “money.” You label “money” on this paper that has been officially designed and labeled as money by the government. Because you are giving this paper that is officially accepted and labeled to the other person to get things, you merely impute, “I am giving money. I am giving ten dollars.” The government officials who made this paper with all its designs simply believe that it is money, and you also believe the same thing. You then give this paper to the shopkeeper. Your mind merely imputed “money,” and because you are giving this paper to the shopkeeper, you believe that you are giving money to them. That is what you merely impute and then believe.

The buyer who does the action of buying from the shopkeeper, the shopkeeper, the action of selling, the money: all these labels came from the mind. All these labels were imputed by the mind and then believed in. When you analyze all of them, you see that the mind merely imputes, or just thinks, “This is this.” It’s just an idea. You just think something and believe in it. It’s not that all this is happening in your mind. You might think that this person and all these shops or department stores are in your mind, but that’s not quite it, even though it might look like that when you analyze how all this came from your mind. Since your mind simply thought and believed this, since you created the idea of all this, you might think that everything is in your mind, but it’s not quite like that.

It’s true to say that some things are the mind, but it’s wrong to say that about other things. In your daily life, the day when you see that your friend is angry with you or doesn’t love you any more or has left you, even though it’s wrong, it’s good to think, “All these things are happening in my mind. It’s just in my mind.” I think that’s helpful during that time. It’s as if you’re having a dream of that happening, so it doesn’t bother you because it’s just a dream. When you think, “All this is in my mind,” there is no painful mind of attachment, and no anger arises.

Everything has a base. Take the aggregates, for example. The general aggregates are the base in relation to the label “I,” but “aggregates” is the label in relation to the collection of the five aggregates. The aggregates are the base in relation to the label “I.” This is the label that the aggregates receive. “Aggregates” is then the label in relation to its base, the collection of the five aggregates: form, feeling, discrimination, compounding aggregates and consciousness. Each of those five then has its own base. Those five are the base in relation to the general aggregates, but each of them is then labeled in relation to its own base. So, it continues in this way. Any base is a label imputed to another base. Therefore, all the bases are labels merely imputed by the mind; all the bases exist in mere name, merely imputed by a thought. That’s the very nature of everything; that’s how everything is.

Harming others

Anyway, going back to what I was saying before.... Without talking about other sentient beings, if even we ourselves don’t get liberated from samsara, the suffering realm of these circling aggregates (and this present samsara has not only a mind but also a body that is suffering in nature, caused by karma and delusion), so many sentient beings will have to suffer because of us. For example, think of how many insects die when we drive a car. Think of how many sentient beings there are in the vegetables we eat. You don’t see all the insects because the vegetables you buy in a supermarket have already been washed and cleaned by other people. If you are taking vegetables directly from a farm, however, you see there are so many tiny insects living on green plants. Their consciousness takes place there, and their body becomes green. If you’re not aware, you don’t notice them. If you don’t normally pay attention, if you don’t normally think about whether there are sentient beings there, you think there are no sentient beings there. However, there are many tiny green insects, the same color as the leaves, on the front or back of the leaves when vegetables come straight from a garden or a farm. When the vegetables are washed and cut for food, all those insects are killed. You can see this if you check carefully the vegetables that come straight from a farm. With the vegetables that come from a supermarket, they’ve already been washed, so somebody else has already killed the insects.

I’ve just remembered a story. Tim McNeill, the person in charge of Wisdom Publications (before, it was Nick Ribush), has a house in the country outside Boston, with a big lake down below the house. One time I went to stay at his country house for a few days. Tim’s friend Bob, who did fund-raising for presidential elections, also came to stay there. Tim had his own vegetable garden, so he had picked some vegetables and made a nice, big, American-style salad. Bob, Roger, Tim and I were sitting out on the patio. I usually have many superstitions. Like a preta, I find hairs and worms in food. Pretas see food as pus and blood, whereas other beings see it more purely. The hairs and worms are very easy to find because of my superstition. I started to eat the salad, but then I saw that there were many tiny green insects on the leaves. I ate a little but then just pushed the salad backward and forward, and I was looking at Roger. Bob kept on saying, “This is so delicious!” He made it out to be special because Tim had his own garden and the salad hadn’t come from a supermarket. Bob said many times, “So delicious, so delicious.”

Roger was sitting there, and I don’t know how I passed the message, but I got him to put the salad somewhere in a corner of the garden. I don’t think Tim knew what had happened.

Anyway, what I was saying is that if we ourselves don’t get liberated quickly from samsara, the longer we are in samsara, the more sentient beings that have to suffer because, like a snake, we have no other way to live. Without sentient beings suffering, dying and killing for our comfort and survival, there’s no way we could survive one day, one hour, one minute or even one second.

For example, when this house was built, how many worms in the ground and insects on the trees were killed? So many sentient beings died so that we now have the comfort of this house where we can do practice. Here one point is that we are using this house for practice, for generating bodhicitta. We are generating bodhicitta to achieve enlightenment not only for the thousands and thousands of insects who have died, but for every single sentient being without exception. As much as possible, we are trying to do prostrations for them; we are trying to make offerings for them; we are trying to do Medicine Buddha practice for them; we are trying to dedicate the merits for them, for all sentient beings. Here we’re not using this house just for our comfort but for practice for all sentient beings, to liberate them and bring them to enlightenment. Sentient beings, and not just the ones that suffered when this house was built, receive a lot of benefit. Even though many sentient beings have suffered for this house, we are making it meaningful, or worthwhile, by doing practice to bring them to enlightenment.

It is the same with water. If you look at water through a microscope, you see that it contains many tiny sentient beings. When we heat the water, those sentient beings die. Then, as I often say during courses, to have one grain of rice, land needs to be fertilized, and when the land is fertilized, so many ants, worms and mice in the fields have to be killed. They die for us to survive. And this grain of rice has come from another grain of rice, for which so many sentient beings suffered and died and other sentient beings had to create the negative karma of killing them. That grain of rice came from yet another grain of rice, for which so many sentient beings suffered and died and other sentient beings had to create the negative karma of killing them. Then that grain came from another grain of rice.... It goes on and on in this way. If you think about the entire continuation of this one grain of rice that you eat, numberless sentient beings have suffered and died for it and other sentient beings have created the negative karma of killing them. In all the generation of this one grain of rice, numberless sentient beings have suffered and died and others have created the negative karma of killing. This is how it is even for those who are vegetarian, those who are not even eating meat.

Now, when we are eating a plate of rice, since numberless sentient beings suffered and died for it and other sentient beings created the negative karma of killing them, there’s no way we can eat even one grain of rice for our own happiness, with the thought of seeking happiness only for ourselves. It’s unbearable when we know that numberless sentient beings suffered and died and other sentient beings created negative karma in the continuation of this one grain of rice. There’s no way we can eat it with the thought of seeking happiness only for ourselves. It’s impossible to eat the grain of rice for ourselves, for our own happiness. And for a whole plate of rice and vegetables, so many sentient beings have suffered and died and other sentient beings have created the negative karma of killing them.

We are talking about one meal in one day of this life. By eating this food, you have to sacrifice your life for others. It’s impossible not to do that. You have to sacrifice yourself at least for the numberless sentient beings who have suffered to bring you this food, for all the numberless insects and animals who have suffered and died and the people who have created negative karma by killing them to produce this food. It’s impossible to eat this food without sacrificing your life to others, especially to those numberless sentient beings. You have to do something meaningful, something beneficial, for them. For their happiness, you have to liberate them from the oceans of samsaric suffering, ceasing their delusion and karma, and bring them to full enlightenment. Without cessation of their delusion and karma, there is no way they can be liberated from samsara. What they need is happiness: not only temporary happiness, but ultimate happiness, with cessation of all suffering and its cause, karma and delusion. What they need is the peerless happiness of enlightenment. This is the best, longest-lasting happiness; this is the highest, everlasting happiness. Even if they don’t know that such a thing exists, this is what they need. Even when they go shopping, people look for the best and buy the best quality they can afford. And it is the same with all other creatures. So, what others need is for you to free them from suffering and the cause of suffering, karma and delusion, and to bring them to ultimate happiness, especially enlightenment. Causing them to achieve this is the benefit you’re going to bring them. So, that happens only through Dharma. For that, you yourself first need to learn Dharma and then actualize the path.

Again my talk has become scattered....

It is the same with our silk clothes and other clothes. If we think of the long-term evolution of silk clothes, again they came from the suffering and killing of so many sentient beings.

Without sentient beings suffering and other sentient beings harming them, there is no way we can get even water or a plate of food. Our survival not only for one day, but even for an hour, a minute or a second depends on so many sentient beings suffering and creating negative karma. It is in dependence on so many sentient beings that we have food and drink and all our other comforts and enjoyments, such as a house and clothing to protect our body. Therefore, without talking about snakes, tigers and all the other sentient beings, we ourselves need to get liberated from samsara as quickly as possible so that we don’t have to be reborn any more and depend on other sentient beings for our survival. Numberless sentient beings have to suffer for our comfort and survival. Therefore, we need to practice Dharma and actualize the path; we need to realize the four noble truths, which is the essence of the path. Buddha has revealed the complete path to total liberation from all suffering and its cause, karma and delusion. Buddha’s teaching reveals the means to be totally liberated from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause. Not only that, but it reveals the complete path to full enlightenment.

Christianity, while it has some good things that are useful in life, doesn’t have a complete path to achieve liberation or full enlightenment. That’s the difference. Christianity doesn’t mention bodhicitta; it doesn’t mention having compassion for pigs or fish. Compassion for animals isn’t emphasized, even though there is compassion for poor or sick human beings. People who sincerely practice Christianity do sacrifice themselves. His Holiness was saying that there was a priest who sacrificed himself to look after someone with leprosy. He served that person and didn’t care whether he himself got that contagious disease. While there are individual people like that, in Christian teachings, there’s no emphasis on compassion for every single sentient being, for every being who is obscured and suffering. That kind of compassion is not there.

Since that compassion is not there, Christians can’t have the realization of bodhicitta. Great compassion that embraces all sentient beings is the root from where bodhicitta rises. Because you have that great compassion, you feel it is unbearable that sentient beings are suffering in samsara, being under the control of karma and delusion, and you wish to free them from all their suffering and its cause and bring them to the peerless happiness of full enlightenment. You then generate the special attitude, thinking to do that by yourself. For success in that, what do you need to do? First you yourself need to achieve enlightenment. The realization of bodhicitta then comes. Without great compassion, which embraces every single one of the numberless sentient beings without exception, you cannot then generate bodhicitta. Without depending on every single sentient being, you cannot generate bodhicitta, and without bodhicitta, you cannot enter the Mahayana path to enlightenment. You then can’t cease the gross and subtle defilements without completing the Mahayana path, without the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness. You need to actualize the Mahayana arya path to directly cease the defilements with the support of bodhicitta. And you need to complete the two types of merit: the merit of virtue and the merit of wisdom. By completing the practice, which comes in two, method and wisdom, you then achieve full enlightenment.

The techniques for developing bodhicitta are not there in Christianity. Even though there are good-hearted, compassionate individual people who are helping the poor, since the Christian religion itself has no technique for developing bodhicitta step by step, it’s impossible to achieve enlightenment.

The four noble truths are also not there in Christianity. There’s no explanation of the entire suffering, of not only the suffering of pain but the suffering of change, the temporary samsaric pleasures that are in the nature of suffering. Therefore, how can you cut attachment to samsaric pleasures? There’s no way to do that if there’s no explanation of how samsaric sense pleasures are suffering in nature, if that which is suffering in reality is not introduced as suffering. Ordinary beings without renunciation of samsara just hallucinate that the suffering of change is pleasure. Because there’s less pain and the suffering is subtle, you don’t notice it, so your mind labels it “pleasure.” It then appears to you to be pleasure, and you become attached to it. If there’s no explanation of how that is suffering in nature, you cannot be liberated from the attachment that clings to that.

It is the same with pervasive compounding suffering, such as these aggregates. These aggregates are contaminated by the seed of delusions and under the control of karma and delusion. This body and mind are suffering in nature. If there’s no explanation of pervasive compounding suffering, how can we achieve liberation? How can we achieve liberation from the attachment that clings to these aggregates? There is no way we can be liberated. There’s no way we can generate renunciation of this samsara, of this pervasive compounding suffering. We can never cut the attachment to this.

Also, because this suffering is never explained, the wisdom of emptiness is never explained, so there is no opportunity to realize emptiness, ultimate nature, and cut the delusions, especially ignorance. Ignorance is the root of all the delusions, all the karma and all the suffering. Since the wisdom realizing emptiness, the ultimate nature of the I, aggregates and so forth, is not mentioned, there is no means to cut the root of all these sufferings, karma and delusion. Because there is no mention of right view, of the wisdom realizing the ultimate nature of the I and phenomena, the seed of ignorance gives rise to ignorance, like a seed in the ground giving rise to a sprout. It is the seed, or imprint, left on the mental continuum that gives rise to ignorance. We need to cease that seed completely, to make it impossible for the ignorance that is the root of samsara, of suffering, to arise. That can be done only by the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness. Since that wisdom is not mentioned in Christianity, since the ultimate nature is not explained there, that opportunity to achieve total liberation, what is called “nirvana,” is not there.

Taking Mahayana refuge

So, going back to refuge, which is what I was explaining before. The Hinayana way of taking refuge is with the useful fear that one’s own samsara is suffering in nature and faith that Buddha, Dharma and Sangha have the power to save one from the oceans of samsaric sufferings. All suffering is included in three divisions: suffering of pain; suffering of change, which are the temporary sense pleasures of samsara; and pervasive compounding suffering, which refers to the aggregates, which are suffering in nature. With these two causes you then rely upon Buddha, Dharma and Sangha with your whole heart. That is the Hinayana way of taking refuge.

For the Mahayana way of taking refuge, there should be three causes. One is the useful fear of your own samsara, understanding how it is suffering in nature. You then think, “Like myself, numberless other sentient beings are suffering in samsara.” You reflect on how other sentient beings are suffering in samsara and wish them to be free from the sufferings of samsara. This is compassion, the third cause of Mahayana refuge. The second cause is the faith that Buddha, Dharma and Sangha have the power to save you and all other sentient beings from the suffering of samsara and its cause, karma and delusion. With these three causes, you then rely upon Buddha, Dharma and Sangha with your whole heart. That’s the Mahayana way of taking refuge.

Therefore, when we take refuge we should always remember not only the first two causes, but also compassion. As I mentioned the other night, you first reflect on your own samsara, which is in the nature of suffering. You reflect, in essence, on the three types of suffering. You then look at the numberless other sentient beings who are in a similar situation, suffering in samsara. So, what can be done? “The guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha who are in front of me are the only ones who have the power to save me and all other sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering. Therefore, I go to them for refuge, which means relying upon them with my whole heart.” You then recite the words of refuge. Once your mind has been transformed into refuge through the three causes (fear; faith in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; and compassion) you then rely upon them with your whole heart and recite “namo gurubhyah” or “lama la kyab su chi wo.” When your mind has been transformed into refuge, you then recite with that mind. Since your heart and what you recite are then connected, it becomes very meaningful and very rich. You then do the meditations of purifying and receiving the qualities.

The four immeasurable thoughts

I will mention the four immeasurables and then stop. I actually meant to expand a little on All phenomena are empty by nature and thus become emptiness only. Well, I did mention a little bit on emptiness....

My idea was actually to elaborate on this at this time, but then my talk went to refuge, and then it went round and round and round. It went sightseeing!

I think here the sadhana has immeasurable loving kindness first: “May all sentient beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.” This is the shorter version of generating the four immeasurable thoughts. The longer version, which is in Jorchö, the preparatory practice, is a little more elaborate. Jorchö has practices to purify negative karma and defilements, which become obstacles to achieving realization, and has various means to collect extensive merit, which allows one to have realizations of the path to enlightenment within one’s heart. It also has guru yoga. Those previous two, purifying negative karma and collecting merit, are not enough; you also need to receive the blessings of the guru by meditating that the guru is one with buddha. With the devotion that sees the guru in that way and then relies upon that, you then make the various offerings, do confession and the rest of the seven-limb practice, mandala offering, requests and so forth. By making offerings and so forth with that devotion, you then collect extensive merit. It is receiving blessings from the guru that causes you to have realization within your mind. You then meditate on the lamrim path, which is the actual body of the practice. Jorchö, or preparatory practice, is what makes it possible to have realization of the path to enlightenment within your mind.

In Jorchö, you first generate the immeasurable thought of equanimity:

How wonderful it would be if sentient beings were to abide in equanimity, free from anger and attachment, discriminating some sentient beings as distant and others as close.

When you recite this, you can first think of yourself. Remember how these discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment create many sufferings for you and for others. Then look at the rest of the world, at how sentient beings are suffering so much with these thoughts of anger and attachment, discriminating some sentient beings as far and others as close. World War I, World War II and this present war are the same in that they all happened because of discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment. It is the same whether on the largest scale, where many millions of people are killed, or on a small scale, where two insects are fighting and killing each other.

Think in a vast way about the harm of discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment. You will then get the feeling:

How wonderful it would be if sentient beings were free from discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment, holding some distant and others close.

You can then really feel the wonder of how it would be if everyone were free from these thoughts. If everybody were free from anger and attachment, how would it be? There would be unbelievable peace for everybody, including you.

May they be free from these discriminating thoughts.

I will free them from these discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment.

When you recite this you should know that here you are taking the responsibility upon yourself: “This is what I am going to do.”

The four immeasurable thoughts are there at the beginning when we do Guru Puja in the morning and in other practices, especially long sadhanas. Even in Highest Yoga Tantra practice, you can see that the four immeasurable thoughts are always there just before you engage in meditation on the three kayas. This is because practice of the four immeasurables is a powerful way to collect merit. For example, to be born as a king, especially a wheel-turning king, you need to collect inconceivable merit. Such a king is the most powerful one in the whole world; no other king can compete with him. In a similar way, you need to collect a lot of merit before you engage in meditating on the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya. You need a lot of merit to achieve them.

During the rest of the day and especially when you are in danger of having emotional problems—of getting angry with and harming someone or of giving rise to discriminating thoughts—you then remember, “Oh, I said this prayer this morning and made this vow. I have taken responsibility for this today.” This way the prayer you did in the morning in your meditation room or in the temple or gompa is connected to the rest of your daily life. There’s a continuation of that. Otherwise, there’s just a few seconds on your meditation cushion, and that’s it. The rest of the day then becomes the complete opposite to the prayer you did in the morning. It becomes, “For a few seconds I’m going to do this, but for the rest of the day I’m going to practice the complete opposite; I’m going to practice discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment, especially when I encounter difficult situations. I’m going to practice equanimity only for the few minutes that I’m sitting peacefully here on my cushion and nobody’s bothering me.” Anyway, I’m joking.

To be able to do that practice of equanimity, you then make request to your guru, for whom you have generated devotion by looking at him as buddha:

Please, guru-buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

You can visualize that nectar is emitted and purifies the discriminating thoughts, both yours and those of other sentient beings. You can think that you then receive blessings to be able to free other sentient beings from these discriminating thoughts.

How wonderful it would be if sentient beings were to abide in equanimity, free from thoughts of anger and attachment, discriminating some sentient beings as distant and others as close is generating the immeasurable wish. May they be free from discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment is the immeasurable prayer. I will free them from these discriminating thoughts is the immeasurable special attitude. And Please, guru-buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this is the immeasurable request.

Next is generating immeasurable loving kindness.

How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings had happiness and the causes of happiness.

Here you particularly think, as I mentioned before, that what sentient beings need is highest, everlasting peace and happiness. Even though they might have no idea of this, this is what they need. When you wish others to have happiness, think especially of the peerless happiness of enlightenment. Don’t just think of ordinary pleasures: the pleasure of chocolate or ice cream or coffee or the beach when the sun is shining and there are big waves. When you say that you wish other sentient beings to have happiness, in your mind think especially of enlightenment.

May they have happiness and the causes of happiness.

I will cause them to have happiness.

Again you are taking the responsibility upon yourself for the success of that. You then request for blessings:

Please, guru-buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

If you can, think of being purified and receiving blessings and qualities.

When you think of enlightenment, it includes everyone: not only the beings in the lower realms and those in the deva and human realms, but also the arhats and ordinary and higher bodhisattvas. It includes all sentient beings.

There is then immeasurable compassion:

How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were free from all suffering and its causes.

Don’t just say the word “suffering,” but try to picture the extensive suffering of sentient beings. Human beings have their oceans of problems, and it is the same with the hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras and suras. They all have the cause of suffering, karma and delusion, even the beings in the form and formless realms. The beings in the formless realm don’t have the suffering of pain and the suffering of change but they do have pervasive compounding suffering; their aggregates are pervasive compounding suffering, contaminated by the seed of disturbing thoughts and under the control of karma and delusion. And when their karma to be in the formless realm finishes, they will again be reborn in hell or one of the other realms.

When you think about freeing others from suffering, don’t think of some small problems. Look at the suffering in a vast way. The vast oceans of suffering of each realm come in three types: the suffering of pain; the suffering of change, the temporary sense pleasures, which are only suffering; and pervasive compounding suffering, which beings in the form and formless realms also experience.

In this way, all the sufferings are included; nothing is left out. You simply say “suffering,” but in your mind you should have this vast view of suffering, like looking down on a city from a mountain. You are seeing the whole city. The word is just “suffering,” but the meaning is very extensive.

May they be free from all suffering and its causes.

I will cause them to be free from all suffering and its causes.

So, you take the responsibility upon yourself.

Please, guru-buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

May sentient beings not be separated from the happiness of higher rebirth, as a deva or human, and from the everlasting happiness of liberation.

Here liberation doesn’t mean just the cessation of samsara but includes enlightenment, the great liberation. Both types of liberation are included.

How wonderful it would be if sentient beings were not separated from the happiness of the upper realms and liberation.

I will cause them not to be separated from this happiness.

Please, guru-buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

When we do each practice of the immeasurable thoughts, we collect merit as limitless as the sky. Why do we collect limitless merit when we generate each immeasurable thought? It’s the same as with generating bodhicitta. We collect numberless merits because the sentient beings for whom we generate bodhicitta are numberless. The logic is similar here. When we generate each immeasurable thought, the object for whom we generate each one, sentient beings, is numberless. Therefore, with each immeasurable thought we collect skies of merit.

In his commentary on lamrim and also dzogchen, Shabkar,⁷² a great lama respected in all four traditions, mentions that if you generate the immeasurable thought that all the people in Tibet have happiness, you create the cause for you to be the leader of the whole of Tibet. In a similar way, if you think of all the people in the world and generate the thought that they have happiness, it creates the cause for you to become a wheel-turning king. A wheel-turning king is the king of the entire world and everyone in it. Geshe Sopa Rinpoche explained that no other king on this earth can compete with a wheel-turning king.

You then generate the thought that the human beings of the eastern continent have happiness; then the thought that the human beings of the western continent have happiness; and the thought that the human beings of the northern continent have happiness. This creates the cause for you to be a wheel-turning king, the leader of those other continents. If you generate this immeasurable thought in relation to the devas in the same way, you then become king of the deva realm. You can do the same thing with galaxies and universes, with the great thousand of three thousand galaxies, or universes.

If you generate the immeasurable thought of loving kindness in that way toward every single sentient being without exception, it becomes the cause to achieve buddhahood. It creates the cause to become a buddha.

The benefits of generating immeasurable loving kindness and practicing the immeasurable thoughts are also mentioned in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. It is the same with each practice of generating an immeasurable thought: you create the cause of enlightenment. This is one cause to consider if you are thinking of becoming a leader, or a king, and benefiting many millions of people in the world. Generating the four immeasurable thoughts becomes the cause for that. Because you yourself have power, you can bring many millions and millions of people to Dharma, to liberation from samsara and to enlightenment.

My gossiping is now done, so maybe we’ll stop there. I guess we can recite a few mantras—I think one and a half.

Ven René: Rinpoche, maybe a short break?

Rinpoche: Oh, that is also very good. That is an excellent idea.

Ven. Sarah: Rinpoche, I just wanted to say that we’ve ordered 10,000 animals to be liberated this week, as part of the long-life offering. We want to do the practice here every month. I wondered if Rinpoche would join us for that.

Rinpoche: Maybe I could join as part of the worms; then you can carry me round....

Thank you very, very much. That’s very good. I think that it would be very good if our Western centers could propagate this practice. Families and children can participate. It’s a very good thing to do.

Ven. Sarah: Rinpoche, we’ve found a company that sells these animals over the Internet. You can order over the Internet. We had a thought to liberate 100,000, but we would then have to take care of them, and we also didn’t know how much damage they would do to the property, so we thought maybe it would be better to liberate 10,000. It’s much, much cheaper—I’m just making a commercial for people. They sell crickets and worms, and they guarantee that when they send them, every single one will be alive when it gets there.

Rinpoche: Do they also send human beings? I’m joking.

Because we take the animals around the stupa, they are actually helping to liberate us. Saving them helps us to collect merit and to have a long life; it also helps us to purify our negative karma and to achieve liberation and enlightenment. Here we’ve been thinking we’re helping them but maybe they’re also helping us.

So, pipi break.

Ven. René: Just five minutes, please.

[The break is followed by recitation of the Medicine Buddha sadhana, a cymbals solo from Rinpoche, then the protector prayers and King of Prayers.]

Dedications

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by the buddhas, bodhisattvas and all the rest of the sentient beings, may the Buddha of Compassion, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is the sole object of refuge of all us sentient beings and from where all the temporary and ultimate peace and happiness of all us sentient beings come, have stable life. May all his holy wishes succeed immediately, and in particular, his holy wish for the Tibetan people to have total freedom, especially of religion, like before.

“May all the leaders of the government of mainland China completely change their attitude into the thought of bodhicitta, cherishing sentient beings, thinking that sentient beings are the most precious and understanding their need for happiness and religious freedom. May they be able to find faith in refuge and karma, as well as unmistaken faith in Lama Tsongkhapa’s teaching, which unifies sutra and tantra. May they cease their wrong views and projections, which block their minds from seeing the truth of the Buddhadharma teachings, particularly Lama Tsongkhapa’s teaching. May they be able to find unshakable faith in the Buddha of Compassion, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, realizing that within His Holiness there’s not the slightest self-cherishing thought nor the wish to have power, as they have. May they purify their wrong views and be able to discover this reality. May they see that His Holiness has omniscience, great compassion for all sentient beings and all other good qualities. His Holiness’s only concern is other sentient beings, including every single person in mainland China. He cherishes most and is concerned about every single person there, officials and the general public. May everyone, including the officials themselves, be able to realize that and change their attitude to sentient beings. May they then offer service exactly according to His Holiness’s wishes to benefit sentient beings. May they allow all those billions of people access to the Buddhadharma, like the sun rising on mainland China, by inviting His Holiness the Dalai Lama there, as well as, of course, to Tibet.

“May all the holy wishes of all other virtuous friends also succeed immediately.

“In particular, may Lama Ösel Rinpoche, without any obstacle, be able to come back from Spain to Sera Monastery as quickly as possible, within these weeks, to continue his study. Like Lama Tsongkhapa, may Lama Ösel Rinpoche offer skies of benefit to all sentient beings and the teaching of the Buddha by showing the same qualities as Lama Tsongkhapa shows.

“Gang ri ra wäi khor wä zhing kham dir....

“Päl dän la mäi ku tshe tän pa dang....

“Jang chhub sem chhog rin po chhe....

“May bodhicitta, which is the source of all temporary and ultimate success and happiness for myself and for all sentient beings, be generated within my own mind and in the minds of all sentient beings without even a second’s delay. May that which has been generated be increased.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may all the father and mother sentient beings have happiness; may the three lower realms be empty forever; may all the bodhisattvas’ prayers succeed immediately; and may I be able to cause all this to happen by myself alone.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, from now on, forever, may whatever activity I do—eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, working, meditating, doing sadhanas, reciting mantras—and whatever life I experience—happy or unhappy, healthy or unhealthy, rich or poor, gain or loss, receiving praise or criticism, receiving a good reputation or a bad reputation, and even if I am born and am suffering in a hell realm—become most beneficial for sentient beings, causing all sentient beings to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible by myself becoming enlightened.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may I be able to bring skies of benefit to all sentient beings and to the teaching of Buddha, like Lama Tsongkhapa and like Medicine Buddha, by having the same qualities within me as they have. May this happen in every second from now on, forever. In all future lifetimes may I offer infinite benefit to all sentient beings by having the same qualities as Lama Tsongkhapa and Medicine Buddha.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others (the buddhas, bodhisattvas and the rest of the sentient beings), which are merely imputed by the mind, may the I, who is merely imputed by the mind, achieve His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s, Medicine Buddha’s, enlightenment, which is also merely labeled by the mind, and lead all the sentient beings, who are also merely labeled by the mind, to that enlightenment, which is also merely labeled by mind, by myself alone, who is also merely labeled by the mind.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals, those people who have died who rely upon me, for whom I have promised to pray and whose names have been given to me immediately be liberated from all those unbearable sufferings of the lower realms and reincarnate in a pure land where they can become enlightened or receive a perfect human body and achieve enlightenment quickly by meeting a perfectly qualified Mahayana guru and Mahayana teachings.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may my hearing a sentient being is sick cause that sentient being to immediately recover; may my hearing a sentient being has died cause that sentient being to immediately reincarnate in a pure land where they can become enlightened. Also, may the sentient beings who have been born as human beings but with no opportunity to practice Dharma meet a perfectly qualified Mahayana guru and the Mahayana teachings, and by putting them into practice, may they achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may I, the members of my family, all the students and benefactors in this organization, as well as the members of the centers or of the FPMT who give their lives to the organization to serve other sentient beings and the teaching of Buddha, and those who rely upon me, for whom I have promised to pray and whose names have been given to me and those offering service to me have a long life and be healthy; may all our wishes succeed immediately according to the holy Dharma; and, most important, may we be able to actualize in our mind the whole path to enlightenment, the stainless teaching of Lama Tsongkhapa, which unifies sutra and tantra, in this very lifetime without even a second’s delay.

“May the Sangha in this FPMT organization, as well as the Sangha outside this organization, complete the scriptural understanding and realizations of the path to enlightenment in this very lifetime by living in pure vinaya and by receiving all protection and all their needs.

“May the social service and meditation centers of this organization become most beneficial to all sentient beings, immediately pacifying the sufferings of mind and body of sentient beings. In particular may they be able to spread the pure teaching of Lama Tsongkhapa in the minds of all sentient beings by receiving everything needed for that. May all the projects that each center has to benefit sentient beings succeed immediately, including, here at Land of Medicine Buddha, the building of the temple with 100,000 Medicine Buddha statues, the 100,00 stupas project and the social service projects.”

Universal education is included in these projects. We are now trying to organize the production of books for the different subjects. “As planned, may universal education be most successful and most beneficial for all sentient beings. May all the children and teenagers who learn about universal education immediately transform their minds into bodhicitta, the special attitude of universal responsibility, taking full responsibility for bringing happiness to all sentient beings as well as for freeing them from all their sufferings. May they immediately generate this special attitude of universal responsibility and then, on the basis of that, have great compassion, loving kindness and tolerance, or patience, which prevents anger and then frees them from obstacles. On this basis, may they develop their minds in the spiritual path, developing the precious qualities within their minds to benefit themselves and the world, bringing peace and happiness to all sentient beings.

“May every person who is involved in and who studies universal education become the source of peace and happiness. May every child become the source of peace and happiness not only for him- or herself but for their whole family. May they be the source of peace and happiness for their whole family, for their country, for this world and for all sentient beings.

“May they become like Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi and the other great saints, who are great examples of compassion and gave so much peace and happiness to this world. May the children also inspire their parents, helping them to transform their minds. When they become parents may they help their own children in the same way, giving them the same excellent education so that their actions are good-hearted, generous and kind. May they educate their own children to be kind human beings. In this way, may this universal education cause happiness from generation to generation. And may universal education be accepted and studied in public schools worldwide.” Please dedicate for the quick success of this.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times merit collected by others, may all the projects related to building holy objects in different parts of the world, such as the large stupa in Bendigo, which will be the same size as the Gyantse Stupa in Tibet, and the building of monasteries and nunneries succeed immediately, particularly the project to build the 500-foot Maitreya Buddha statue. May this project succeed immediately by receiving all the funding without any delay and without any obstacles.”

Pray like this to Maitreya Buddha, to the Medicine Buddhas, to bodhisattva Kshitigarbha and so forth. “May the Maitreya Project and all the other projects of the centers cause bodhicitta to be generated in the minds of all sentient beings. In this way may this world be filled with so much peace and happiness, and may nobody experience war, famine, disease, torture, poverty, sickness or danger from fire, water, air or earth, such as earthquakes. May nobody experience anthrax, which has now become very famous, terrorist attacks and so forth.

“May Lama Tsongkhapa’s teaching spread and flourish in all directions, and may I be able to cause this to happen.”

[The group recites the multiplying mantras].

Today, by taking each of the eight Mahayana precepts with a bodhicitta motivation, we have collected skies of merit, so we have collected eight times skies of merit. With each session we have collected skies of merit. We have collected skies of merit with the prostrations done with bodhicitta, then skies of merit by doing the practice of the seven limbs; with the offerings and by rejoicing, we have collected limitless skies of merit so many times. We have also collected inconceivable merit by meditating on emptiness and by reciting mantras with a bodhicitta motivation. We have collected so many skies of merit even with one session.

We will now multiply all these merits one hundred thousand times by reciting this next buddha’s name, which also causes whatever prayers we have made to succeed.

[The group recites the final multiplying mantra and prayer, followed by Final Lamrim Prayer and the two Lama Tsongkhapa dedications.]

Good morning.

 

Chapter 22. Monday, November 12: Final Medicine Buddha Session

New York air disaster

I would like to talk about the object of ignorance, and then we will chant some Mitrugpa and other mantras for the 250 people who died in the airplane crash in New York this morning.⁷³ I’m not sure exactly when it happened—it might have been early this morning, I think. The plane took off, then exploded in the sky, killing everyone on board. The pieces of the plane dropped on a residential area, and people also died there. The FBI expert said that he didn’t think it was due to terrorists because of the way it happened. First one engine fell off, then the wings. They cannot yet tell how it happened. From President Bush’s words, it sounded a little as if it were related to terrorists.

The plane took off from one of the airports in New York, and after a few minutes it exploded into pieces in the sky. They said that the cemeteries will now be very busy. Eight stewards working on the plane were also killed. So, I think it would be good for us to chant some mantras for them. Of course, the buddhas and bodhisattvas pray, but it’s also our duty, our responsibility, to pray for them.

Identifying the object of ignorance

As Lama Tsongkhapa explained in Praise to Dependent Arising, “Our kind, compassionate Guru Shakyamuni Buddha sees that phenomena are dependent arisings, existing in mere name, merely imputed by the mind.” Buddha realized this, then taught it to us sentient beings. By explaining how to make the object of ignorance totally nonexistent by recognizing it as false, Buddha enables us sentient beings to realize emptiness. In that way we are able to cut the root of samsara, ignorance; and by developing this wisdom, we cease even the imprint, or seed, of ignorance, which then liberates us completely from the oceans of undesirable samsaric sufferings. That’s how Buddha has already liberated numberless sentient beings in the past, is liberating them now and is also liberating us, especially by revealing the teachings of the Perfection of Wisdom, the Wisdom Gone Beyond. There are four types of Wisdom Gone Beyond: the Wisdom Gone Beyond of ultimate nature, the Wisdom Gone Beyond of the path, the Wisdom Gone Beyond of scripture and the Wisdom Gone Beyond of the result, the transcendental wisdom of dharmakaya. The ultimate one is the Wisdom Gone Beyond of the result.

Lama Tsongkhapa wrote a praise to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha for realizing profound dependent arising and then instructing us sentient beings in the teachings of dependent arising. It says, “To the peerless founder, Victorious One, who has understood, realized and taught dependent arising, I pay homage. How much suffering there is in the world, the root of that suffering is ignorance.” Lama Tsongkhapa is saying that the root of the suffering realm, of cyclic existence, of samsara, is ignorance, or the unknowing mind (ma rigpa, in Tibetan). Rigpa means knowing; ma rigpa means unknowing.

“Since seeing that eliminates it, dependent arising is taught.” Whatever suffering of samsara there is, whatever problems there are in this world, the root of them is the unknowing mind. With realization that the object of ignorance is false and totally nonexistent, empty, that ignorance is eliminated. Therefore, dependent arising is taught.

The problems of desire

With the realization of renunciation of samsara, we see the desire realm as only suffering in nature. Our realm is the desire realm, where pleasure depends on contact with sense objects. The deva realms situated on the various levels and top of Mount Meru, including the realm of Thirty-three, are all desire realms. No matter how many billions of times greater deva realm enjoyments are than those of the human realm, all the enjoyments of all these desire realms are only suffering in nature. If you have renunciation, you aren’t attracted to them for even a second. You see being in the desire realm, even in a deva realm, as like being in the center of a fire. Since you don’t want to get burnt, you don’t want to be in the very center of a fire for even a second. It doesn’t make any sense to be inside that. You don’t have the slightest attraction to being in the center of a red-hot fire.

I don’t think that even those who are suicidal and want to jump into a fire jump because they are attracted to fire. They jump because they can’t stand the relationship problem or whatever other problem they have in their life. Since if they continue to live they have to experience the problem, their hope is that if they die they won’t have to experience it. They then jump into a fire. However, the person has no idea at all about what happens in the life after this. The person jumps into the fire and dies, but they have no idea what is going to happen to them after they commit suicide. They don’t know whether what comes after death is going to be better than their present life. There’s a problem in this life, but they don’t think about the life after this.

Even though normally you might intellectually believe in reincarnation, that there is life after this, when you are overwhelmed by relationship problems or other emotional problems, feeling so much sadness, anger and hurt that you can’t stand it, during that time it’s difficult to think about how there is another life. You have no time to think about how your next life might be much worse than your present one. There is no analysis because your mind is totally overwhelmed by your problems, by this concept that believes, “This is a problem.” You create this concept, this belief, about whatever change has happened in your life that you didn’t want to happen, that your self-cherishing thought didn’t want to happen. Your own attachment doesn’t like the change in your life, whether it is a separation from somebody or something else. Your attachment or self-cherishing doesn’t want it to happen.

Just because of that, you create the concept, the belief, that this change is a problem, that it is bad. You are deeply hurt. Since you are completely overwhelmed by your concept that this change is a problem, you are completely overwhelmed by the problem. Because you have the concept that this change is a problem, you create the belief that it is a problem, then see it as a problem. After that, the problem then appears to you, and you believe in it. Because you created the concept that this change is a problem, you then believe that it is a problem. After you believe it to be a problem, it then appears to you as a problem. Only then is there an appearance of a problem, so that you believe, “I have a problem.” You believe it to be true and are totally overwhelmed by it. At that time you have no space in your mind for anything but the thought of suicide, because if you live you then have to experience this problem. Since you can’t stand the problem, you then think of killing yourself.

At that time there’s no space in your mind to think about the next life, even though you normally talk about reincarnation and intellectually believe in it. At that time you don’t think about how there is another life, how that life is going to be much heavier than this one, how life in the hell, hungry ghost or animal realm is billions and billions of times heavier. You don’t think, “If I reincarnate there, I’ll experience much heavier suffering.” Even when you are later born as a human being, you will have much heavier problems than you have now. There’s no time, no space, to analyze such things—not even to have the doubt, “Maybe this could happen. Maybe it could be worse.”

I suddenly forgot why I am talking about this....

That’s right—I was talking about jumping into a red-hot fire. Even when you’re suicidal, you don’t jump into a fire because it seems pleasant and you’re attracted to it. You think that if your life is stopped then your relationship problem or whatever other situation you believe to be a problem will be stopped. I sometimes mention the story of a student in Switzerland. I have some visualization of his face, but I don’t remember his name. He studied and knew the Tibetan language and was maybe even teaching it. For quite a number of years, I think, he received teachings from Geshe Rabten Rinpoche, as well as from Lama Yeshe. He had studied Dharma for many years, though not very intensively, I think. One day his wife left him—it might have been for another man. He then hanged himself in his house and died. He was a Dharma student. He’d been around for many years and received many teachings, but this is what happened. When his wife left him, he hanged himself and died.

Ven. René: Actually, he was reborn as a spirit, and for many years he hung around his mother. His mother went to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama a few times, and the Dalai Lama said, “It’s true—your son is always around you. He has been reborn as a spirit.” His Holiness then advised the mother to have some pujas done in the different monasteries to free him from that rebirth. After three or four years she felt that he had gone.

Rinpoche: His mother needed to practice sur, where you burn flour in a fire and make charity of the smell. Yesterday I was talking about the problems of desire. I meant to elaborate more, but it didn’t happen. I started, but then went somewhere else....

Even in worldly life, if you don’t control desire, it becomes a problem. Even when you’re successful in business, if you don’t control desire, when you’ve made a profit of $100 you want $1,000. When you’ve made $1,000 profit, you then want $10,000. After you’ve made $10,000, you want $100,000. After you’ve made $100,000, you want a million dollars. After a million, you want a billion dollars. After a billion, you want a trillion dollars. After a trillion, you want a zillion dollars. What comes after a zillion? It goes on and on like this. While you are experiencing success, if you don’t control your desire, it grows more and more. You are never satisfied. That’s the shortcoming of desire.

Of course, you don’t have the merit to be successful forever. Because you always follow your desire and never control it, one day you no longer have merit, and your whole business collapses. The next day you are poor, concerned about even paying the rent. You are worried about meeting even your basic needs, which you normally didn’t have to worry about. This is happening everywhere in the world. Because you don’t control your desire, you don’t stop before your business fails. If you had stopped before that, you would have had enough wealth. If you wished to help others, you had the wealth to do so. However, you didn’t control your desire, and since you didn’t have enough merit to always have profit, your business suddenly collapsed. You then have a nervous breakdown or go crazy, then become suicidal. These are shortcomings of not controlling desire. Because you have failed and all your wealth is gone, you don’t see any meaning in life and want to commit suicide. Because you are bankrupt and unable to pay all your debts, you want to jump off a roof or out of a window.

In worldly life, there are so many problems, so many shortcomings, if you don’t control desire. Even if you are not meditating, not practicing Dharma, if you don’t control desire in worldly life, you lose even your present wealth and comfort, then become very depressed and mentally disturbed. Because of that, even though nobody else physically harms you, you harm yourself.

The other point is that if you don’t control desire, you want so many things; you want more and more. Then, because there is no other way, you do illegal things to make money. You then get caught or you lose a lot of money and end up involved in court cases. That is another shortcoming of desire that we often see in the newspapers and on TV. There are many such cases in the world.

If you are unable to control your desire for food, you can end up with many sicknesses from the food, including cancer. In relationships, if you don’t control your desire, the partner you now have is not enough, and you want somebody else. You want more and better partners. Desire is always looking for something better. Desire always has expectations, one after another; that’s why you encounter problems one after another. You create one relationship problem and suffer unbelievably for some time, then it’s over. You again start another relationship, another package of problems, then suffer heavily for some time. Then again you start another one. The problem is not controlling your desire. As I mentioned the other day, being an alcoholic, a smoker or a drug addict also comes from not controlling desire. All those problems are shortcomings of desire.

When you’re unable to start retreat because you need so many things, that’s also part of the shortcomings of desire. Since even in worldly life not controlling desire causes many problems, there is no doubt about in Dharma practice. Self-cherishing thought is like the prime minister or president and desire is like a very active, powerful, influential minister.

First of all, it is desire that makes it difficult to take vows, whether lay precepts or ordination. Then, even if you have taken vows, it is desire that makes it difficult to live in pure morality. It is desire that doesn’t allow you to live a pure life. And desire is the major obstacle to successful shamatha meditation.

Also, if you are following desire, you then want what desire wants, so your efforts go into achieving the object of desire. If your guru advises you not to be with the object of your desire, if your guru advises you to do something that is opposite to your attachment so that you then don’t get the object of your desire, you generate anger and heresy toward your guru. And no matter how qualified your guru is from his side, even if he is the most qualified one in the world, even if it’s proved and even historically known that the guru is Chenrezig, if you receive advice that means you don’t get the object of your desire, anger and heresy arise. Then, even if you try to meditate on calm abiding in an isolated place, nothing happens. There’s a total blockage. It’s like when the road you are traveling on is blocked; you are completely stuck and can’t go beyond that point. When things like this are happening, it’s basically the mistake of not controlling desire. The reason you hate your guru’s advice and get angry with your guru is that you are not controlling desire.

There is no question of realizing emptiness, of course, because desire obscures your mind so that you can’t see the ultimate nature. Desire is an obstacle to actualizing the wisdom that realizes emptiness, and without that, you cannot then achieve the path of seeing and the path of meditation. You can’t realize the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness, which is what directly ceases the delusions and defilements, and you then can’t achieve the sorrowless state. You can’t achieve even the blissful state of peace and everlasting happiness for yourself.

Desire brings harm everywhere in worldly life. If you go to climb Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and die there, it happens because you didn’t control your desire to get a good reputation. So many problems, including AIDS and other life-threatening diseases that shorten life, happen because one didn’t control desire. Even when you try to practice Dharma, you can’t practice purely. Again, that’s because of desire; that’s a shortcoming of desire. Even when you try to meditate, try to do retreat, it’s not pure Dharma, because of not controlling desire. From that, many obstacles arise. You’re unable to keep your samaya vows or your pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric vows. It is basically because of desire that you collect many vices by breaking those vows.

However, to go back.... With renunciation, you see abiding in the desire realm like being in the center of a red-hot fire; you don’t find any attraction to it for even a second. You also see the form realm as only suffering in nature, like being in the center of a fire; you can’t find any attraction to it for even a second. You see that even the formless realm is samsara, and being in it is also like being in the very center of a red-hot fire. You can’t find a single attraction to it. You see even the formless realm as unbearable, as only suffering in nature. So, you then want to be free from all of those realms. You can’t stand to be in samsara—whether it’s the desire realm, the form realm or the formless realm—for even a second. You see that it’s like being in a red-hot fire. You can’t stand not being liberated from samsara for even a second.

When you feel like this, you have renunciation, and that renunciation is stable when it lasts and is not there for just a few hours or a few days. You don’t have any attraction to anything from the lowest hell realm up to the highest level of the formless realm, Tip of Samsara. You don’t feel any attraction, even in a dream, to samsara and samsaric perfections. When it is like that, your renunciation of samsara is stable, and when you have this realization, you enter the path. Here we’re talking about just the Lesser Vehicle path.

You then actualize the path of merit, which has three levels: small, intermediate and great. You then actualize the preparatory path, which has four divisions: heat, tip, patience and sublime Dharma. There, on the basis of the shamatha realization, you achieve the realization of great insight. You are then able to derive the extremely refined ecstasy of body and mind by doing analysis of emptiness based on great insight unified with calm abiding . There you realize the four noble truths. You then actualize the path of seeing. Here there is equipoise meditation and the achievement after that, the uninterrupted path and the liberating path. I think there is also transcendental wisdom that is neither of them. By actualizing the path of seeing, you cease the defilements—112 disturbing-thought obscurations. By actualizing the path of meditation, within which there is equipoise meditation and the achievement after that, similar to the path of seeing, you cease sixteen disturbing-thought defilements. You then completely cease even the imprint, or seed, of delusion, and the ultimate nature of that mind is nirvana, the sorrowless state. You achieve the path of no more learning. The ultimate nature of the mind that is free from all defilements as well as their seed, which is of the nature of an imprint, is nirvana, the sorrowless state. This is just liberation from samsara.

Identifying the object of ignorance

Achieving nirvana and ceasing the disturbing-thought obscurations through the path of seeing and path of meditation depend on actualizing the wisdom realizing emptiness. For that, Buddha has explained dependent arising, how phenomena are dependent arisings.

The safe way to learn about emptiness, so that you don’t fall into nihilism, is to first be introduced to dependent arising. Make sure that you first understand how things are dependent arisings. One wouldn’t realize the subtle dependent arising of the Prasangika school’s view without realizing emptiness, without realizing that the object that ignorance apprehends, true existence, is false and totally nonexistent, totally empty. Without realizing that, one cannot realize that the nature of phenomena is subtle dependent arising. Realizing that phenomena exist in mere name, merely imputed by mind, is realizing conventional truth.

The main point is that realizing the emptiness of the I, for example, depends on recognizing the object of ignorance, the self-grasping of a person, which holds the I to be truly existent. You have to recognize the object of that ignorance. This is what is called “the object to be refuted,” or gag cha, in Tibetan. Recognizing the object of ignorance after you have the lama’s instructions or teachings on the object to be refuted is like having a picture of someone who is a thief and checking until you actually find him.

How do you recognize the object to be refuted? One easy way to recognize this object of ignorance is by analyzing time—a year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second—as I mentioned some days ago. When you don’t analyze how a year exists being merely imputed by the mind, how does the year appear? What is that year? Because there is the base, the twelve months, your mind merely imputes “year”; your mind simply makes up the label “year” and believes in it. You create the concept. Because your mind sees the base, twelve months, it simply makes up the label “year.” When you analyze how the year exists in this way and see that it’s merely imputed by mind, you see that the year you believed in before, the year that appeared to you to exist from its own side on the twelve months, is no longer there. That real year that appears from its own side and that you believe to be true is no longer there. That one is totally false. You have a perception of a real year appearing from its own side, and your ignorance then believes in it. When you analyze what the year is, however, you see that it is nothing except what is merely imputed by thought, and that real year that appeared to you before and in which you believed is totally false, totally nonexistent.

It is the same with a month, week, day, hour, minute and second. As you analyze each one, you find that it is merely imputed by mind. When you think of how each of them is a dependent arising, merely imputed by thought in dependence upon its base, you see as false the way all these—year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second—have normally been appearing to you in daily life and the way your mind has apprehended them every day since your birth, and during beginningless rebirths. This is not the first time they have appeared to you in this way and you have believed them to exist in this way. By analyzing the gross dependent arising and the subtle dependent arising, that they are merely imputed by mind in relation to the base, you then see that the year, month, week, day, hour, minute and second that have been appearing to you and that you have believed a hundred percent as true are now gone. Now they’re not there. Now you see all of them as completely false. You see them totally differently. Your understanding of what they are is totally different from your previous understanding. You have proved that your previous understanding was totally wrong. The way they appeared to you and your belief as to how they existed were totally wrong. Doing this analysis is another easy way to recognize the object to be refuted. You realize the emptiness of the truly existent year, month, week, hour, day, minute and second. Realizing the absence of their true existence is realizing that they are totally empty; it is realizing the emptiness of the year, month, week, day, hour, minute, and second.

There is another example that makes it easy to recognize the object to be refuted, so that you can realize emptiness quickly. The more easily and quickly you recognize the object to be refuted, the more easily and quickly you can realize emptiness.

You can use many other different examples. You don’t have to stick to only what is in the texts, which all use the example of a rabbit’s horn. Since a rabbit doesn’t usually have a horn, the texts use that as an example of something that doesn’t exist. Human beings also don’t usually have a horn, but sometimes a human being is born with one. It’s not an impossible thing.

Langdarma, the king who destroyed the teaching of the Buddha in Tibet, had a horn on his head like the horn of an ox. I think he usually covered it. Langdarma destroyed the teaching of the Buddha for about sixteen years, I think. The lineage of the vows then started again from Kham. Since they didn’t have enough Sangha to grant ordination, I think Hashang from China was added as a member of the Sangha. They then gave the ordination, and it spread from there. Geshe Sopa Rinpoche often says that the reason we have this blue cord on the edge of our dongka is to remember the kindness of the one or two Chinese Sangha who completed the number of the community of Tibetan Sangha so that the ordination could be given.

As Chöden Rinpoche explained in the lamrim teachings, Langdarma was killed by Lhalung Palgyi Dorje. I think he invited Langdarma to a performance of a religious dance, a black dance ceremony. During the dance, he shot an arrow through the king’s heart and killed him. He then changed the color of the king’s horse from black to white and rode it.

So, what I was saying is that the Tibetan philosophical texts quite often use the example of a rabbit horn. It’s a famous example in the texts. Another example is a sky flower. They are used as examples of something that doesn’t exist.

Of course, you can use many other examples. Here I’m going to use the example, mentioned in the texts, of a coiled rope in a road at dusk, when it cannot be seen clearly. In dependence upon the lack of light and the way the rope is curled to look like a snake, your mind, on seeing that, makes up the label “snake,” then believes in it. Your mind labels “snake,” and it then appears to be a snake. After you have labeled the rope “snake,” it appears to you as a snake, and you believe that is true. If you look at what is appearing to you, it’s a real snake. There is the appearance of a real snake; you see a real snake. In the view of that hallucinated mind you see a real snake. A real snake is appearing to you, and you believe it to be a real snake. There’s no doubt about it in your mind.

Now, when you put on a flashlight and check, that real snake exists nowhere. That real snake, which appeared to you and in which you believed, exists neither on the rope nor anywhere else. You can’t find it anywhere, neither on this rope nor anywhere else. It’s a complete hallucination, totally nonexistent.

We will now analyze the rope itself, the rope that you see with your flash-light. When you look at the rope with the light, how does the rope appear to you? What is your view of the rope? And what is your belief about it? Your view of the rope is of a real rope appearing from there, a truly existent rope. A real rope is appearing from there, and you believe that it’s true. You believe, “There is a real rope appearing from there.” The rope appears to you to be not merely labeled by the mind. Not only does it appear to be not merely labeled by the mind but it appears to be not labeled by the mind at all. The rope appears to you to have nothing to do with your mind, with the perceiver’s mind. The rope appears from there, as if it never came from your mind. Besides appearing to be not merely labeled by mind, it appears to be not labeled by the mind at all.

We will now analyze whether this rope is there or not, whether it really exists or not. First we will analyze what the rope is. Each single tiny fiber is not the rope. Even the whole collection of all the fibers together is not the rope. Here I’m talking about the merely labeled rope. The rope that exists is what is merely labeled by your thought, by your mind. So, each single fiber is not the rope. Even all the fibers together are not the rope. The rope that exists is the merely labeled rope, but even all the fibers together are not the merely labeled rope. All the fibers together are the base to be labeled “rope.” When you think, “This is the base to be labeled ‘rope,’” you see the base, the collection of fibers, and the label, “rope.” These two phenomena don’t exist separately but they exist differently. The collection of fibers and the label “rope” are two different phenomena.

Now here you can’t find even the merely labeled rope. First of all, every single fiber is not the merely labeled rope, which means it’s not the rope. Even the whole collection of fibers is not the merely labeled rope, which means it’s not the rope. Why? Because that is the base to be labeled “rope.” So, which comes into existence first? Does the label “rope” or the base, the collection of fibers, come first? If you don’t first see the collection of fibers that performs the function of tying things, your mind doesn’t have any reason to choose this particular label, “rope,” and to label this object, “rope.” If you don’t see this base, this collection of fibers wound together, there is nothing there to make your mind decide upon this particular label, “rope.” If you don’t see that particular base that performs the function of tying things, there’s no reason for your mind to choose the particular label, “rope,” and to label that base, “rope.”

Even if your mind labels “rope” at that time, rope doesn’t exist because there’s no base. Because there is no base, the collection of fibers that performs the function of tying things, rope doesn’t exist, even if your mind labels “rope” at that time. And even if the base, the collection of fibers that performs the function of tying things, is there and you see it, if your mind doesn’t make up the label “rope” again rope doesn’t exist.

This can be helpful in understanding how to differentiate the base and the label. In our perception these two, the base and the label, are mixed and undifferentiable. That’s the definition of gag cha, the object to be refuted. This is according to what His Holiness Ling Rinpoche explained when he was giving a commentary to Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun at Drepung Monastery. Rinpoche was explaining what the object to be refuted is. According to Rinpoche’s explanation, in order to realize emptiness we have to recognize the object to be refuted, which is the object of ignorance. Rinpoche explained that we see the base and the label as undifferentiable. This is the huge hallucination, the huge false view. Letting our mind believe that the base and the label are undifferentiable cheats us of our whole life. We are completely trapped in this hallucination, like a mouse trapped in a cage or a fish trapped in a net. It is essential to differentiate them. When we are able to differentiate the base and the label, it then makes it very easy for us to recognize the object to be refuted. But as long as we are unable to differentiate them, we can’t recognize the object to be refuted.

I will give you another example. When you meditate on the emptiness of a table, analyzing the table, where is the table? If you point here, this is a part of the table; you are pointing to part of the table. If you point at that side, if you put your finger there, it’s part of the table; you are pointing to part of the table. Wherever you point, it’s part of the table; you’re pointing to part of the table, whether it’s a table leg or the top. This is not table, this is not table, this is not table and that’s not table. None of the pieces is table, and even all the pieces together is not table. You don’t find table on this. None of these parts is table, and you don’t find table on any of these parts. You don’t find table anywhere. None of the pieces is table, and even all the pieces together is not table. All these are parts of the table, and this is the collection of the parts of the table. Since the collection of all these parts is the base of the table, it’s not the table.

You have done all this analysis and found that any part you point to is not the table and that even the collection of all the parts is not the table. Th at is the base of the table. Now here is the point: you have to analyze your view of the table. You cannot find the merely labeled table. If you look, if you analyze your view, you cannot find it anywhere. If you then examine your view, there is the appearance of a table in your view, but it’s inseparable from the base. Nothing changed in your view. In your view table is undifferentiable from its base. If you analyze your perception, or your view, there is an appearance of a table from there. The table is appearing from there, undifferentiable from the base, as His Holiness Ling Rinpoche said.

Now, it means that the way you did your analysis didn’t harm the object of ignorance at all. You missed your target, as a missile shot by the Americans can miss its target. You missed the target. You didn’t hit the right point, right on the object of ignorance, the concept that apprehends true existence. Since you didn’t hit that, in your view there is still a truly existent table. There is still a real table appearing to you, even after you did all this analysis. After the analysis, you look at your view and find a real table appearing from there, undifferentiable from its base.

So, this is the object to be refuted. I am using this as another example of how to recognize the object to be refuted. When you do the analysis in the wrong way, nothing touches your wrong view. After all that analysis, the truly existent table, the real table appearing from there, the table that is undifferentiable from its base, is still there.

Now, to realize emptiness you have to realize that this one is totally empty. To see emptiness, you have to see it as totally nonobjectifying, totally nonexistent. You have to realize that the real table appearing from there, undifferentiable from its base, is totally nonexistent there. It’s appearing from there, but it’s totally nonexistent right there. That’s the correct conclusion. Later, the realization of the total nonexistence of that truly existent table, that real table from there, leads, as a result, to the discovery, or realization, that the table exists, that the table is not nonexistent. It’s not that the table doesn’t exist at all; the table exists in mere name, merely imputed by mind. So, it leads you to understand how the table exists as a subtle dependent arising. In the same way, realizing emptiness gives us more faith in karma, in cause and effect. It gives more faith in the existence of karma rather than negating it.

Until we become enlightened, as long as we are sentient beings, whenever a conventional truth appears to us, it will appear to be inherently, or truly, existent. The only exception is when we become an arya being and are in equipoise meditation on emptiness. Otherwise, until we become enlightened, we will always have this hallucination; any conventional truth, any phenomenon, that appears to us will appear to be truly existent, to be existing from its own side. But in our heart we will have the definite understanding that phenomena do not have true existence.

This table does not exist from its own side at all; it is empty of existing from its own side. Even though there is the appearance of a table existing from its own side, you have the definite understanding that it’s not true, that the table is empty of existing from its own side. You then see everything as like a dream or like an illusion. When you recognize a dream as a dream, you don’t believe what is happening in the dream is true, even though it is appearing to you. You see things as being like illusions. It is like realizing, in relation to a mirage, that there is no water on the sand. Because you walked across that part of the sand, you know there’s no water there. When you look back, you have a vision of water, but at the same time you have the definite understanding that there’s no water there because you came through there and didn’t see any water. Combining these two things, you see that the appearance of water is a hallucination. It’s false. Realizing that doesn’t allow you to cling onto that appearance. You don’t see any point because it’s not true. Seeing it is not true doesn’t allow you to give rise to anger, attachment and other delusions. I am using this as another example of how to recognize the object to be refuted.

Of course, by searching for the table in that way, even though at the end you don’t find it, that has done nothing to touch the gag cha, the object to be refuted, the table appearing from there. When you analyze your view, the table is appearing from there, and you believe it to be true. Nothing has touched the real table appearing from there, the truly existent table. It’s still there. You then say, “Oh, this is a hallucination. This is the object to be refuted.” You then one-pointedly meditate on how that is a hallucination. You meditate on the meaning of hallucination. What it means is that it is totally empty, totally nonexistent. You then concentrate on that emptiness. So, that’s the correct meditation. That’s the shortcut.

From the analysis of the four vital points, you now recognize the first one, the object to be refuted. This is the target. You then use the other vital points: if something exists, it has to exist either one with the base or separately from it. The conclusion is that it doesn’t exist. In short, that real table, that inherently existent table, exists neither separately from nor as one with the base. For any phenomenon to exist, it has to exist either separately from or one with the base.

With the I and the aggregates, you first check whether or not the I is one with the aggregates. It’s not one with the aggregates. You then check whether the I exists separately from the aggregates. No, it also doesn’t exist separately from the aggregates. You then conclude that that real I appearing from its own side that you believe in, that inherently existent I, is totally nonexistent. You come to the conclusion that it’s totally nonexistent. After realizing that I is neither one with nor exists separately from the aggregates, you understand that the I is merely imputed by mind in dependence upon the base, the aggregates. This truly existent I, this real I appearing from there, in which you believe, is totally nonexistent. You come to that conclusion.

So, just to finish discussing the example of the rope. Each single fiber is not the rope. Even the whole collection of fibers is not the rope; that’s the base to be labeled “rope.” The merely labeled rope exists nowhere on this. Since you cannot find it, it exists nowhere. You now see that the rope that previously appeared to you as not merely labeled by mind, the truly existent rope, the real rope appearing from there, is a total hallucination. After that analysis, you see that the rope that appears to you as not merely labeled by mind, as truly existent, is completely false. You see that what appeared to you and what you believed before are completely false. It exists nowhere. It exists neither on this collection of fibers nor anywhere else. But, of course, the merely labeled rope exists. You cannot find it on this collection of fibers but the merely labeled rope exists where there is the base, the collection of fibers. Where there is the base, there is the rope. Even though you cannot find the merely labeled rope, which exists, on this base, this collection of fibers, you can find the merely labeled rope. Even though you cannot find it there on the base, you can find it in that place where the base is. You can find it at that spot in the road, but not on the base.

You cannot find what you saw previously, the real rope appearing from there that you believed in, anywhere. That exists nowhere. The absence, or emptiness, of that is the emptiness of the rope. So, that’s another way to do the analysis to recognize the object to be refuted.

Sorry, it became many eons of talk. We will stop here.

Dedications

“Jang chhub sem chhog rin po chhe....

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and those collected by others, gang ri ra wäi khor wä zhing kham dir....

“Päl dän la mäi ku tshe tän pa dang....”

Give everything—all your own past, present and future merits and all the resultant temporary and ultimate happiness up to the ultimate happiness of enlightenment—to all the sentient beings. Give everything to every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human being, every asura being, every sura being, every intermediate state being. They all receive whatever they want, whatever they need, from this. And everyone—every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human being, every asura being, every sura being, every intermediate state being—becomes enlightened by ceasing all defilements and completing all realizations. Everyone becomes Medicine Buddha.

We will do the King of Prayers for all those 250 people who died. It’s for all sentient beings, but particularly for them. It’s a very powerful prayer.

[The group recites King of Prayers in English.]

“Due to whatever small merit I have collected by doing Samantabhadra’s Prayer of Good Deeds, may all the virtuous prayers of transmigratory beings be received by them in one second. Due to whatever merit I have collected by doing this dedication Prayer of Good Deeds, may all the transmigratory beings who are sunk in the oceans of suffering achieve Amitabha’s state. (That means all the 250 people who died today in the airplane explosion in New York, as well as the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts and animals, who are suffering in the lower realms, those who are suffering in the intermediate state and all the rest of the sentient beings who are suffering in samsara.) May all those who are sunk in the oceans of suffering be born in the Amitabha pure land and achieve Amitabha’s enlightenment.”

We dedicate to all those people who suddenly died in the plane all the merit collected by doing this prayer, as well as the limitless skies of merit we have collected today by taking the eight Mahayana precepts, practicing the three principles of the path (renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness) and doing the Medicine Buddha practices (the seven-limb practice, making offering to Medicine Buddha, which is equal to having made offering to all the buddhas, the recitation of mantra and so forth). “May all those people, as well as all the beings in the lower realms and all other sentient beings, be born in the Amitabha pure land and achieve Amitabha’s enlightenment.”

If we recite the five powerful mantras, those of Mitrugpa, Namgyälma, Kunrig, Stainless Beam Deity and Stainless Pinnacle Deity by thinking of those people who died, these mantras have the power to transfer their consciousness from the lower realms, even if they have already been born there, to a deva or human rebirth.⁷⁴ If these mantras are recited by thinking of the people who have died, they have the power to liberate them from those suffering realms and cause them to receive a higher rebirth. Putting these mantras on the body of someone who has passed away also has the power to transfer the consciousness from the lower realms to a higher realm. And if you recite these mantras and blow on water, mustard seeds or sand grains, then sprinkle the substance on a dead body or even on the place where a dead body has been burned, even that affects the consciousness of the person who has died, helping to free them from the lower realms and to receive a higher rebirth. Thinking you are reciting the mantras for those people who died still helps them to be liberated from the lower realms and to receive a higher rebirth.

So, we will chant a mala of OM MANI PADMA HUM. Visualize that Chenrezig purifies the people who died in the plane, all the beings in the three lower realms and all other sentient beings.

[The group recites the manis.]

All their negative karmas are purified, as well as those of all other sentient beings, by nectar-beams emitted from Chenrezig, who then absorbs into you.

Visualize that nectar-beams are emitted from Mitrugpa, purifying the people who died in the plane, the beings in the lower realms and all the rest of the sentient beings.

[The group recites Mitrugpa mantras.]

We’ll now recite the short Namgyälma mantra.

[The group recites Namgyälma mantras.]

We’ll now recite the Kunrig mantra.

[The group recites Kunrig mantras.]

I have to recite it very fast; otherwise, I can’t make it.

We’ll now recite Stainless Beam Deity’s mantra.

[The group recites the mantras.]

We’ll now recite Stainless Pinnacle Deity’s mantra.

[The group recites the mantras.]

This Stainless Pinnacle Deity’s mantra, which is sometimes called the Amoghapasha or Wish-Granting Wheel mantra, is an extremely powerful one.

[The group recites more mantras.]

The Stainless Pinnacle Deity’s mantra is extremely powerful. If you recite this mantra seven times then blow on a drum, gong or conch shell, when you beat the drum or gong or blow the conch shell, anybody in that area—not only human beings but also animals and birds—who hears the sound is purified of the ten nonvirtuous actions and other negative karmas they have collected in the past. Besides that, the sound purifies even the five uninterrupted negative karmas (having killed father, mother or an arhat, harmed Buddha, caused disunity among the Sangha). All those heavy negative karmas are purified. So, it’s very, very powerful.

We should use this mantra before we ring gongs or play the small cymbals. In the text of making a hundred torma offerings to the Triple Gem and the beings of the six realms, including pretas and nagas, it talks about reciting this mantra seven times then blowing on the small cymbals. When you then ring the cymbals, the negative karma of anyone who hears the sound is purified. If you recite this mantra and blow on musical instruments that make a big sound, such as large gongs, bells and especially conch shells, then play them on the top of a mountain, it becomes very powerful purification for the many beings, animals as well as people, who hear the sound.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by the buddhas, bodhisattvas and all other sentient beings, including themselves, may all those people who died in the plane, all those people (no matter which side they were on) who died today in Afghanistan, where there is continual war, and all those people who have died whose names were given to me, for whom I promised to pray and who rely upon me never ever be reborn in the lower realms. May they receive a perfect human body and find unshakable faith in refuge and karma. May they enter into the Buddhadharma when they are young, take the ordination of renouncing worldly life, be ordained in Buddha’ teachings, and with a happy mind only pleasing them, be guided by perfectly qualified Mahayana virtuous friends. May they then train their mind in the common path, the three principles of the path, and be able to complete the ripening path, the graduated generation stage, and the liberating path, the graduated completion stage, and achieve the Vajradhara state, which has seven qualities, as quickly as possible.

“May all the sentient beings who are suffering in the lower realms quickly achieve enlightenment in the same way.

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may I, the members of my family, all the students and benefactors of this organization, those who give their life to the organization to offer service to sentient beings and the teaching of Buddha, and those who rely upon me, for whom I have promised to pray and who are offering service to me have long lives and be healthy. May all our wishes succeed immediately in accordance with the holy Dharma. May we be able to completely actualize the pure teaching of Lama Tsongkhapa, which unifies sutra and tantra, in this very lifetime, without even a second’s delay.

“May all our virtuous friends, including the Buddha of Compassion, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, have stable lives, and may all their holy wishes be accomplished immediately.

“May all the Sangha in this organization be able to complete the realizations, as well as scriptural understanding, as quickly as possible, based on living in pure vinaya and by receiving all needs and protection.

“May the social service centers and meditation centers be most beneficial, able to pacify immediately the sufferings of body and mind of sentient beings and able to spread the complete teaching of Lama Tsongkhapa in the minds of all sentient beings by receiving everything needed for that. May all the projects here at LMB—the temple with 100,000 Medicine Buddha statues, the 100,000 stupas and the social service activities—as well as all the projects and activities of all the other centers, succeed immediately by receiving everything needed for that. May all the projects involving building holy objects, monasteries and nunneries succeed immediately, especially the building of the 500-foot Maitreya Buddha statue. May this project be completed immediately by receiving all the funding without any obstacles and without any delay.

“May all these centers and all the projects be most beneficial for all sentient beings, causing bodhicitta to be generated in the minds of all sentient beings. And due to that, may everybody have perfect peace and happiness. May nobody experience war, famine, disease, torture, poverty, sickness or dangers of fire, water, air or earth, such as earthquakes. May no one ever experience any of these undesirable things. And may the Maitreya statue and all the other projects and the centers cause all sentient beings to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

“May Lama Tsongkhapa’s teaching spread and flourish, and may I be able to cause this to happen.”

So, thank you very much for praying for all the people.

If we ourselves had been in their place in that plane when it exploded today, think how frightening it would have been. Where would we be by now? There would have been a total change of life, and we would now be somewhere else. Yesterday we were a human being but today we are somewhere else. Suddenly we would have another rebirth. It would be difficult to say what rebirth. Since most people create mostly negative karma, it would be difficult to say whether we would have a good rebirth, according to our karma.

If we had been in their place, we would have experienced incredible fear and suffering. We couldn’t do anything, as the karma had already ripened. It’s so important that somebody somewhere in the human realm thinks of you and recites OM MANI PADME HUM even one time. That is something you need so much.

So, thank you very much and good morning. Have a long dream.

Oh, the multiplying mantras!

[The group recites the multiplying mantras.] 

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Notes

⁷² Shabkar Tsokdrug Rangdrol, a highly attained Nyingma lama, wrote Practicing Guru Devotion with Nine Attitudes. Read it on LamaYeshe.com. [Return to text]

⁷³ Rinpoche is referring to the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed in the New York borough of Queens killing 265 people. [Return to text]

⁷⁴ See Heart Practices for Death and Dying, which can be found in the FPMT Catalogue. [Return to text]