Students recite the short mandala offering.]

Good afternoon. We’re going to start with the prayer that I mentioned yesterday.

[Rinpoche recites Praise to Shakyamuni Buddha in Tibetan up to “…chhog tu dä pä chhag tshäl lo.”]

Read the remaining three verses.

[The students read the remaining verses in Spanish, while Rinpoche completes them in Tibetan. The students then read the Heart Sutra in Spanish.]

You’re reading these prayers very well and very fast. However, it’s very important to go slowly and meditate on the verse that I explained yesterday: “Look at causative phenomena like a star….” These are very important, fundamental subjects of meditation. This meditation is like an atomic bomb in destroying our enemy, our inner enemy. Once we have destroyed our inner enemy, there’s no outer enemy; they don’t exist. If you don’t have anger, there’s no outside enemy; if you have anger, you’ll find the outside enemy.

Because it was quite difficult to travel with a Nepalese passport, I tried to get a United States passport, which requires you to live in America for five years. This is how it happened that I lived in the United States, and I now have an American passport.

So, Roger bought a car. He was very excited about it. The father of one of the students helped him to buy it, and I think that they got it for a good price. Roger was very excited about showing the car to me, but I didn’t go early in the morning to see it. I looked at it much later in the day. I tried to think, “This is for sentient beings,” but it didn’t last long.

I was staying at John’s house at Vajrapani Institute at that time. When I went to see the car, I tried to think something positive, but it didn’t last. If you have realization, it’s possible; but it’s very difficult if you don’t have realization. The positive thought lasted a few seconds—that’s all.

I wanted to make the car beneficial for sentient beings, so I put messages on it. One message is what His Holiness says, “My religion is kindness,” to which I added the words, “to all.” I thought that adding “to all” would make the message clearer. Of course, what His Holiness said, “My religion is kindness” means kindness not only to your friends but to everybody, but I just added the words “to all.”

On the other side of the car, there is the message, “Cherishing others is the source of happiness for yourself and others.” Here, others means all sentient beings, cherishing all sentient beings. So, that’s the very heart answer. Everybody is looking for happiness, but many people don’t know the best way to achieve happiness. The whole problem is that they don’t know the best way to achieve happiness. That’s the biggest problem in the world, globally as well as individually.

The great bodhisattva Shantideva mentioned, “A child works for itself; the Mighty One (which means Buddha) works for others. Look at the difference between the two.”

Guru Shakyamuni Buddha is himself totally free from samsara, from the continuity of the contaminated aggregates, contaminated by the seed that is cause of delusion, the cause of ignorance, anger, attachment and so forth, and caused by karma and delusion. The aggregates themselves are totally in the nature of suffering: pervasive, compounding suffering. As I said before, pervasive is used because the aggregates are under the control of karma and delusion. This is referring to your aggregates, this association of body and mind, not somebody else’s aggregates or aggregates floating somewhere in space. The general aggregates are a collection of five specific aggregates: form, which refers to the body; feeling; discrimination, which recognizes, or discriminates, different phenomena; compounding aggregates, which are the fifty-one mental factors minus feeling and discrimination; and consciousness.

Our collection of these five aggregates is under the control of karma and delusion, and because of that, it’s in the nature of suffering. That’s why the body experiences problems and the mind experiences problems. That’s why our mind experiences loneliness, fear, unhappiness, depression, anger and attachment. You can see that when your mind is attached to some object, clinging to and grasping that object, it’s not free; it’s the opposite of free. Attachment is painful in nature. You can see that at that time your mind is not free; there’s the pain of attachment. It’s not a relaxed mind; at that time there’s no inner peace.

Anyway, there are so many mental sufferings and physical sufferings. Why are we experiencing problems, whether mental or physical? Because these aggregates are under the control of karma and delusion. It shows that we’re not free from karma and delusion; it shows that we’re not liberated. Our aggregates are under the control of karma and delusion and pervaded by suffering.

The next point is that our aggregates are contaminated by the seed of delusion, which is in the nature of a negative imprint. The negative imprint compounds all our physical and mental problems. So, these aggregates are pervaded by suffering. And this negative imprint causes future rebirth and future sufferings as well. In that way, it compounds this life’s sufferings and future lives’ sufferings.

So, these aggregates are pervasive, compounding suffering.

I’d just like to make a little clarification. It’s very important to understand that if you’re not living your life in Dharma, in lamrim meditation, you don’t have any protection for your life or for your mind. You’re not looking after yourself. I started to talk about this either yesterday or the day before yesterday, but I didn’t get to complete it.

Let’s say that you have one person who is criticizing and provoking you, telling you that you’re selfish or cruel or stupid, and another person who is praising you, telling you how beautiful or wise or kind you are. The second person is saying all the nice words that you want to hear, that your attachment wants to hear, that your selfish mind wants to hear. The first person is saying what your attachment and selfish mind don’t like to hear, a hail storm of criticism. Your attachment and selfish mind are always looking for nice words, always looking to be praised.

So, your life then becomes very interesting. What are you going to do?

Now, if you don’t know Dharma, if you don’t know the lamrim meditations, you don’t have any protection in your life. If you’re not practicing Dharma, you have no guide, no protection. You have no refuge.

So, what happens? Your main objects of refuge become your attachment and self-cherishing thought. In place of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, you have attachment and selfishness. In your life, you have nothing other than attachment and selfishness as your objects of refuge to ask for protection and help.

When you always live your life with attachment and selfishness, when somebody harms your attachment, when somebody does, says or thinks something that your attachment, your selfish mind, doesn’t like, anger then arises, and you want to hurt that person. You become a slave to your anger. As well as being a slave to your desire and self-cherishing thought, you also become a slave to your anger. Your anger uses you to harm that person. Your attachment also uses you to harm others, but in a different way; the harm is through cheating, through deceiving, others. The harm from anger is more direct: you show an aggressive face or say hurtful words. If you analyze the way attachment makes you behave, you will find that it causes you to deceive others.

When you become a slave to your ego, desire or any other negative thought, you harm others and you harm yourself. You engage in negative karma. Being a slave to anger, attachment, ignorance or selfishness, you harm others and harm yourself, because you engage in negative karma. The result is all the problems, all the unbelievable confusion, you have to experience in this life, one after another. This is without talking about reincarnating in the lower realms and experiencing unbearable suffering for an unimaginable length of time, for many eons; and even in future lives, when due to another good karma you are born as a human being, you still experience many problems as part of the result of those negative karmas.

When you become a slave to those negative thoughts, all your activities only obscure and disturb your mind. They obscure you from having realizations, from realizing guru devotion, renunciation, bodhichitta and right view. And they become obstacles to your attainments of all the paths to liberation and enlightenment, the five paths and ten bhumis. They don’t allow you to have those attainments; they don’t allow you to awaken your mind. They obscure you more and more, and you then continuously harm yourself and harm other sentient beings by engaging in negative karma. That then continuously ties you and others to the suffering of samsara. It continuously keeps you in samsara, not allowing you to liberate yourself. What you are doing is always creating obstacles to freeing yourself, as well as others, from prison.

It is the same with the person who is praising you, who is saying the nice words that your attachment and selfish mind are always looking for.

In regard to the eight worldly dharmas, there is clinging to four desirable objects: the comfort, or happiness, of this life; receiving gifts; receiving praise; and a good reputation. Because there is attachment to these four desirable things, there’s dislike of their opposites. You dislike not having comfort, not receiving gifts, not receiving praise and not having a good reputation. If you have grasping to these four desirable objects, you dislike the four undesirable things.

If you have attachment to four desirable objects, these other four objects become undesirable. They become undesirable because of your desire for the four desirable objects. This is the psychology. Because you have desire for these four desirable things, because you cling to them, you don’t like the other four things. Because this clinging is there, you suffer when you encounter these four undesirable things; you see them as undesirable, and your mind becomes unhappy.

How your mind reacts when you encounter the four undesirable things totally depends on whether or not you desire the four desirable things. It’s essential to understand this. This is not something made up by Buddha. It’s basically analyzing and understanding your own life; it’s basically trying to understand and learn about your own mind.

It’s very important to understand because this is the way we live our life all the time. If you don’t know this, you will always be living in confusion, and you will be tortured. When you encounter the four undesirable objects, because you desire the four desirable objects, it will be torture. And when you encounter the four desirable objects, you will be tortured by attachment and clinging; you won’t have any peace.

Basically, we have to understand that without Dharma, without lamrim, without meditation, in our life, we constantly suffer. Without renunciation, the healthy mind that is free from the painful, poisonous mind of attachment, we constantly suffer.

But if your mind is practicing Dharma, applying Dharma, it is like taking medicine when you have a sickness. Practicing Dharma, practicing renunciation, is giving independence to yourself, giving freedom to yourself. Instead of getting caught in the suffering of desire, you give yourself freedom from suffering; you give yourself inner peace and happiness. For example, with the lamrim meditation of renunciation, you don’t have clinging to these four desirable things; you don’t have that grasping mind. Also, when you encounter the four undesirable objects, you don’t become unhappy.

So, for your mind these things are equalized. For you, comfort and discomfort are the same; receiving gifts and not receiving gifts are the same; receiving praise and not receiving praise are equalized; having a good reputation and not having a good reputation are the same.

Nothing then disturbs your mind. You have incredible inner peace all the time, day and night. Nothing can disturb your mind. Your mind, or your emotions, are very stable. Your life is very stable, with no ups and downs. Why does your life go up and down all the time? Because of these things. It is these things that make your life unstable, that make your life go up and down. A few hours ago you were very excited and happy; a few hours later you’re crying and depressed.

Basically, here, we’re expressing the nature of our life, of our mind. This is how life is when we follow desire. These ups and downs happen because of desiring something. You are not free from all this. You’re living in the prison of the eight worldly dharmas, of the desires of this life.

You must understand that these four undesirable things make you unhappy because of your desiring the four desirable things. Otherwise, you might commit suicide. That’s why suicidal thoughts come. When you meet the four undesirable things, if you don’t know that you’re unhappy because of your desire for the four desirable things, if you’re not practicing meditation, if there’s no Dharma, no lamrim and, especially, no renunciation, you immediately become suicidal. You don’t know what to do; you have no other solution but to think of killing yourself.

As I mentioned last night, this human body is qualified by eight freedoms and ten richnesses, and each freedom and richness that you have is unbelievably wish-fulfilling; it’s much more precious than the whole sky filled with gold, diamonds or a trillion zillion dollars. The dollar is down now, so maybe it should be a trillion zillion euros. Or wish-granting jewels. The most valuable material possession is the wish-granting jewel. In the past, wheel-turning kings, those who had a lot of merit, were able to find a wish-granting jewel in the ocean. There are three ways to clean off the mud and smells—the last one is with cotton, I think. After it is cleaned, on the fifteenth day of the Tibetan month, you put it on top of a banner on the roof. You then pray for whatever material possessions you want, and everything materializes.

The main reason that everything is easily materialized is because of your good karma. It is because you have so much good karma that you are able to find the wish-granting jewel. It’s like someone who has a billion, trillion, zillion dollars. That person has a lot of merit, and by having that amount of money, they can do large projects: a million-dollar project, a billion-dollar project or a trillion-dollar project. They can do so many good things to help so many people. Being kind and generous and helping so many sentient beings becomes a good thing for that person. Nothing becomes negative karma. There is good karma for that person, the result of which is only happiness. And, of course, if it’s done with loving kindness, compassion and bodhichitta, all this becomes the cause of enlightenment.

Now it is the same here with the wish-granting jewel. It is mainly because a person has so much good karma that they are able to get a wish-granting jewel, and that wish-granting jewel also has the power to fulfill any wish for material success or enjoyments; whatever the person wishes for gets materialized.

As I was saying last night, there are eight freedoms and ten richnesses, or endowments, and one freedom or richness is unbelievably precious, more precious than possessing the sky filled with wish-granting jewels. If you don’t have this one freedom, if you don’t have this one richness—in other words, if you don’t have a human body—even if you owned that much wealth, even wish-granting jewels filling the whole sky, you couldn’t stop your rebirth in the lower realms and you couldn’t achieve a deva or human rebirth; the everlasting happiness of liberation from samsara, total freedom from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes; or full enlightenment for sentient beings. That means that you couldn’t liberate the numberless sentient beings nor bring them to enlightenment. There are eight freedoms and ten richnesses, and if you don’t have one the freedoms or one of the richnesses, you can’t do all this.

Now, if you don’t have any of this wealth, but you have this precious human body, especially one with the eight freedoms and ten richnesses…. Maybe put it this way. The first freedom is having the freedom to practice Dharma by not being born in hell. Think well about this. With this freedom, you can achieve any happiness you wish: the happiness of future lives, liberation from samsara and enlightenment.

The first of the ten richnesses is being born a human being. Now, with this richness, you can achieve all that happiness. So, with each freedom and each richness, you can achieve all this happiness. Therefore, each freedom and each richness are unbelievably precious, unimaginably precious. Each one is an incredible wish-fulfilling jewel. The whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels is nothing compared to the value of each freedom and each richness that you have.

It’s just amazing! Again I want to say, it’s amazing! It’s just unbelievable! First of all, just having received a human body is incredible. Then, having received a perfect human body, with eight freedoms and ten richnesses is amazing. Owning all the wealth in this world or the whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels is nothing compared to the value of each freedom and each richness.

Therefore, you should not use this precious human body as a servant to gain just money or material things. You should use money and material things to take care of this body, but you should use this precious human body to achieve enlightenment. This body gives you a special opportunity, so you should use it to liberate the numberless sentient beings and to enlighten the numberless sentient beings. Basically, it means you use money and material things to liberate sentient beings, who are numberless, and to enlighten the sentient beings, who are numberless, with this body. That’s the correct way to use this precious human body.

I want to mention this point again, as I think it’s very important to analyze and understand it. How you suffer when you meet these four undesirable things is well-known and easy to understand. But how you suffer when you meet these four desirable objects is more difficult to understand. Those people who have very sharp minds to analyze their experiences may realize how there’s no peace in life when the four desirable objects are encountered. As the Rolling Stones say, “I tried and I tried, but I can’t get no satisfaction.” When you relate those words to the lamrim, it’s renunciation, one of the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment. That’s a dynamite teaching on renunciation. The heart of the 84,000 teachings of Buddha is the lamrim, the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment, the first of which is renunciation. So, that’s a teaching on renunciation.

The way you should understand what the Rolling Stones are saying is by applying it not only to this life but to beginningless rebirths. This has very deep meaning. “From beginningless rebirths, I tried and I tried, but I didn’t get any satisfaction. I tried and I tried in this present life, but I can’t get no satisfaction. And it will be the same in the future.” You have to understand here that this means “By following desire, I tried and I tried, but can’t get no satisfaction.” I tried means I tried to follow desire. You have to understand the full package that comes with the words. The moment you stop following desire, no matter where you are, even in the bathroom, you will find satisfaction just there. It doesn’t matter where you are—on a meditation cushion, in the bathroom, at the beach, on a mountain, under the ocean or on the moon—the moment you stop following desire, you will find inner peace and satisfaction.

But by living life only following desire during beginningless rebirths, “I tried and I tried, but I never got satisfaction.” It is the same now in this life, and it will be the same in future, endlessly. I will never get satisfaction.

So, it’s a profound teaching from the Rolling Stones. I don’t think Mick Jagger was talking about just the stage where he was playing. It’s a very good song.

You have to understand the nature of the attachment. It’s very important to understand what it does, how it does it and how it affects the mind. From that you can understand whether it’s a friend or whether it’s an enemy. You can realize that by analyzing the effect you get from attachment, whether it’s help or harm.

Buddha emphasized analysis not belief. Buddha said to his disciples: “Learned bhikshus and wise ones, you should analyze my teachings like you analyze gold. To see whether or not gold is pure, you first check it by burning, then by cutting it and then by rubbing it. Like that, check well my teachings, then accept them. Don’t do it by faith.” Buddha means his teachings shouldn’t be taken on blind faith, without understanding.

Take this flower here, for example. By judging this flower, you see it as beautiful, and then attachment arises. You exaggerate its beauty; attachment arises from that exaggeration; and you then grasp at the beautiful object. The arising of attachment becomes an obstacle to seeing that this flower is impermanent in nature. This is not a permanent phenomenon. There are permanent and impermanent phenomena. An impermanent phenomenon is changing, decaying, not only day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, but even within each split-second. It’s changing, decaying; it doesn’t last.

When attachment arises and grasps at an object as exciting or beautiful, it obscures your seeing its impermanent nature, its conventional nature. It obscures your seeing the reality of the object. Your realizing the object’s impermanent nature helps you not to give rise to attachment, anger and all the other delusions, so you become free. Otherwise, attachment ties you to samsara, causing you to die and be reborn in samsara, including in the lower realms. So, attachment becomes an obstacle that doesn’t allow you to achieve liberation and enlightenment.

The other point is that while there’s attachment to this flower, it’s impossible for you to see that the flower is empty. It obscures your mind so that you don’t see the emptiness of the flower. It blocks you from seeing that this flower exists in mere name, merely imputed by mind in dependence upon its base. It blocks your seeing the subtle dependent arising of the flower.

While attachment is rising to this flower, it doesn’t allow you to see that this real flower, this flower existing from its own side, is false. That real flower is a false flower; it’s nonexistent, empty. While attachment is arising to the flower, it never gives you any opportunity to see the ultimate reality of the flower.

Discovering that this flower is impermanent in nature and, especially, that it’s empty helps you to control and then eliminate the delusions. You can then achieve liberation, and with the support of bodhichitta, the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness ceases the subtle defilements, so that you can achieve enlightenment.

All this doesn’t happen if you don’t eliminate attachment and the other delusions. You then can’t liberate and enlighten the numberless other sentient beings.

It’s the same with attachment to a person’s body. It obscures your mind so that you can’t see that person’s body as impermanent in nature. You see the body as clean, a source of happiness, permanent and truly existent. It’s very important to meditate on the nature of the body, whether it’s your body or somebody else’s body, to see how attachment obscures our mind. When attachment to a body arises, we have the wrong view of it as clean. Nagarjuna, who was like a second Buddha and propagated the Buddha’s teachings, especially those on emptiness, explained that the body, like a garbage can, is the container of thirty-two unclean things. I don’t remember all the thirty-two dirty things, but they are listed in the teachings by Buddha and by Nagarjuna. So, the body is the container of thirty-two dirty things.

One of my gurus, Khunu Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen, who was renowned as a great scholar and a great bodhisattva, used to give the following example to show how the body is dirty. Rinpoche used to say that when food is on a plate, it’s clean; but after it goes in someone’s mouth and is chewed and spat out, it’s dirty. Why is it dirty? Because the body is dirty. When food comes out of the body through the mouth or from the anus, it is dirty. That proves that the body is dirty. You don’t want to eat what comes out, whether it comes out of the mouth or the anus. So, that means the body is dirty. If the body were clean, what comes out of the body wouldn’t be dirty; it would be edible and drinkable.

Basically, the body is like a septic tank. The gas that comes out of the body, whether from up or down, has a terrible smell, because the inside of the body is dirty.

Also, in regard to the way you see the body, as I already mentioned some days ago, whatever form you see, whatever sound you hear, whatever odor you smell and so forth are things that have come from your mind. All the objects of the senses—forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects—come from your mind. Do you remember how we talked about how all these are merely imputed? First, by seeing the base, you merely impute something and believe in that; it then appears, and you see it. All these forms, sounds, smells, tastes and tangible objects that your senses contact are not things that came from their own side; they all came from your mind.

So, everything comes from your mind. How? Your mind merely imputes it. You have to get that idea. Everything that you see, hear, smell, taste or touch is something that your mind merely imputed. You have to get that clear in your mind. It’s a very important subject, as I’ve mentioned quite a number of times in the last few days.

Now, here, in regard to the body, how you see the body is something that purely comes from your mind; it is merely imputed by your mind. Whatever name you apply to the body—beautiful, hair, nose—it came from your mind. All the names came from your mind; your mind created them. Your mind merely imputed all this, and you then believe in it; what your mind imputed then appears back to you, and you then see it.

Here in this case, since it’s just the creation of your own mind, there’s nothing to be attached to. It’s just your own view, the creation of your own mind. Before attachment arises, you see something as beautiful from its own side. You see everything as existing from its own side, as having nothing to do with your mind. You see everything as real, in the sense of existing from its own side. Attachment then arises to that thing that is beautiful from its own side, and you cling to that thing. That is how attachment arises.

You now have to think of the reality, of how your view came from your mind. You mind made commentaries and gave those particular labels: “This person is beautiful,” “Their ears are beautiful,” “Their hair is beautiful,” “Their nose is beautiful.” Your mind merely imputed everything and you believed in it; what your mind merely imputed then appeared to you, you then see it. So, it’s totally a creation of your mind. Basically, you’re attached to what your mind labeled, to the name that your mind labeled. This is the reality.

But, of course, when attachment arises, you don’t think, “This is imputed by my mind.” Your attachment arises on the basis of something beautiful existing from its own side, something beautiful from the side of the object. Your attachment then exaggerates the beauty of that object and grasps onto that. So, that is totally wrong, totally false. There is no such thing there—it’s a total hallucination. That beautiful thing just came from your mind.

It is extremely important to understand this, so that you then know how to meditate. You then see the actual reality. You see how attachment and ignorance are wrong concepts; you come to realize how their views are totally false. It can then enable you to actually see the reality of phenomena.

As Lama Tsongkhapa said, it is the nature of ignorance to exaggerate. Lama Tsongkhapa didn’t mention true existence, but I think it means ignorance exaggerates things as being truly existent. Everybody should try to understand the meaning of this.

Now, we’ve been talking about the body. So, first you see the base: the head, arms and all the rest. Your mind then labels, or merely imputes, “body.” The next moment what your mind has merely imputed “body” appears back to you. Here is the confusing part. The mistake that happens is that, even though the body should appear back as merely imputed by mind, it doesn’t appear back to you in that way. To your hallucinated mind, it appears back as not merely imputed by mind, which is the total opposite to the reality. Just a moment before it was merely imputed by your mind, but what you have merely imputed appears back to your hallucinated mind as not merely imputed by mind. This happens because, as I have already explained before, there’s a negative imprint left on your mental continuum by past ignorance, the concept of true existence. So, right after your mind merely imputes “body,” on that mere imputation this ignorance projects true existence, existence by nature, existence from its own side. This is the explanation as to why it appeared to you in the wrong way, in a way totally opposite to the reality. This is how it is for us, but not for a buddha.

So, it appears to be not merely labeled by mind, to exist from its own side. Next, you allow your mind to hold on to this as a hundred percent true. You hold on to this hallucination as the reality. Do you understand? You don’t understand that this is a hallucination, so you let your mind hold on to that which is false as being completely true. Your mind believes that it is true. That’s the biggest mistake in our life.

It is because of this mistake that so far we haven’t been liberated from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause: karma and delusion. Every time you let your mind hold on to this hallucination as true, you’re creating ignorance. I’ve been talking about the body, but it’s the same with every other object. Twenty-four hours a day this is what your mind is doing with every single object that you see. The body is just an example. This is what is happening to you, to your mind, with everything that you see twenty-four hours a day. It’s very important to understand this. Without explanation it’s not easy to realize this very subtle point.

Now, it is like this with all phenomena: forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects. The mind creates the hallucination, the hallucination appears to the mind, and then the mind believes the hallucination to be real. It’s a hallucination but you don’t recognize it as a hallucination. You have no idea at all that your mind just now merely labeled the object.

You then let your mind hold on to this hallucination as totally true. Every time we let our mind do this in our daily life we create ignorance. We have been creating ignorance in this way not only from this morning or from birth, but from beginningless rebirths. We have been constantly creating ignorance during beginningless rebirths.

Now, on top of that, ignorance exaggerates the body as being beautiful. Attachment then arises, and you cling to that beautiful body. Like oil put on paper, it’s difficult for you to separate from that object. Another suffering now started: the pain of attachment. When attachment is very strong, you can see that there’s pain; it’s so difficult to separate from the object of attachment.

When you let your mind hold on to what appears to your hallucinated mind as being true, even though in reality it’s totally false, it’s like your enemy pretending to be your friend, when actually he wants to kill you.

It is the same when you someone as ugly. You exaggerate the person as being ugly or bad, and then anger arises. You can see here that everything is built on the basis of the object of ignorance, which doesn’t exist at all. The object of attachment and the object of anger are built on that base of true existence. Ugly and beautiful are exaggerated on that basis, then anger and attachment arise.

First, ignorance believes that which is totally false but appears to be real to be true. What Lama Tsongkhapa says next is very important. The objects of these wrong concepts and the way they apprehend them can be eliminated, can be realized to be empty. This means that you can realize that all the objects of these wrong concepts—first, ignorance and second, attachment and anger—are totally nonexistent. You can realize that they’re not there.

This experience gives you total confidence that you can definitely achieve liberation, that you can be totally free from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause: delusion and karma.

Lama Tsongkhapa said this is according to Aryadeva’s teaching Four Hundred Stanzas.

So, it means that the objects in which attachment and anger believe don’t exist; in reality they’re not there, because the views of the object of attachment and of anger are exaggerations on the object of ignorance. Those views are hallucinations built up on the object of ignorance, and the object of ignorance is totally false, totally nonexistent.

Therefore, you first have to have a clear idea of ignorance, the concept of true existence; you have to have a clear idea of how that is false, totally nonexistent. To the hallucinated mind, the body appears to be something real, something existing from its own side; you then let your mind believe that is totally true, so that is ignorance. In reality, it is totally nonexistent. In regard to all these wrong concepts, all these superstitious thoughts, of ignorance, anger and attachment, it’s very important to understand that there’s no such thing there.

Anyway, this is a very important meditation on the real truth of life. To meditate precisely in this way, in the way Lama Tsongkhapa explained in his philosophical teachings, is very, very important. And you can do it with any object of attachment or anger.

One point we have to understand is that it’s very important to meditate on how attachment obscures our mind so that we don’t see the conventional nature of phenomena, such as impermanence. I was talking about this in relation to the body. While attachment is arising to the body, it obscures your mind so that you don’t see the nature of the body, that the body is dirty. It makes you think that the body is clean. So, that’s a wrong view, a wrong concept.

Attachment also obscures your mind so that you don’t see the body as suffering in nature. You then have the wrong view that this body is a source of real happiness, or real pleasure, and you believe in that wrong concept. You label samsaric suffering as pleasure, believing it to be true happiness. When attachment arises, you have a totally wrong view and wrong concept of that which is suffering. Attachment obscures your mind so that you don’t see that which is suffering as suffering. In regard to samsaric pleasure, which is the suffering of change, attachment obscures your mind so that you don’t see it as suffering; instead you have the totally wrong view and wrong concept of it as true pleasure, true happiness.

Attachment also obscures your mind so that you don’t see that the body is impermanent in nature and that the body is empty of true existence, that it doesn’t have existence from its own side at all. The Tibetan term translates as “no self,” where self refers to true existence. That’s the reality, but attachment obscures your mind so that you don’t see the reality of the body. And it is the same with other phenomena.

If you don’t realize the conventional nature of the object, which is that it’s dirty, suffering and impermanent, and its ultimate nature, which is that it’s empty of self, or true existence, you’re living your life with all these hallucinations that the object is clean, true happiness, permanent and truly existent. You have all these hallucinations, all these wrong concepts. With these wrong concepts you then continuously circle in samsara. You don’t get liberated from true suffering and true cause of suffering; you don’t get to actualize true path, so you don’t achieve cessation of suffering. How can you then liberate and enlighten other sentient beings? There’s no way you can do that.

As Nagarjuna explained, the best quality of Dharma practitioner is one who is able to equalize these four desirable and four undesirable objects. This means someone who doesn’t have attachment to them through having meditated on and achieved realization of impermanence and death and so forth.

Before, I mentioned two people. One is always criticizing you, which is what your ego and attachment don’t want to hear, and the other is always praising and helping you, which is what your ego and attachment want to hear. Now, here, for example, you can use the reasoning from the equilibrium meditation not to get angry with the first person or attached to the second one. The other thing is that you know that what the first person is saying is what your attachment and self-cherishing thought doesn’t like and doesn’t want to hear. It’s not harming your compassion, it’s not harming your loving kindness, it’s not harming your wisdom, it’s not harming your patience. It’s not harming any of your positive minds. It’s helping, not harming, your patience and all your positive, healthy minds. It’s harming only your negative minds.

Without going through the equilibrium meditation, you can think, “This person is actually unbelievably kind and precious. He’s helping to destroy my ego, my self-cherishing thought, and my attachment, which have never been destroyed during beginningless rebirths and because of which I’ve been suffering during beginningless rebirths and haven’t achieved not only enlightenment but even liberation from samsara for myself. Since this person is helping me to destroy my self-cherishing thought, their kindness is as limitless as the sky.”

It becomes impossible for you to get angry with that person; you only appreciate them. You want to thank them; you want to help them. You want to offer a gift to that person—maybe even buy them a five-star hotel or six-star hotel….

In regard to attachment, by simply knowing that, you don’t get attached to them, so you are totally free. You’re not under the control of anger; you’re not under the control of desire. You have inner peace and happiness. You’re not defeated by anger and attachment; you’re not tortured by them; you’re not imprisoned by them.

Now, if you use the equilibrium meditation, you think about how, even though this person is criticizing you now, they have been your friend in the past (if this is the first time you have met them in this life, you have met them in past lives) and praised you. Also, they will praise you in the future. When you think of those reasons, which are true, your anger naturally doesn’t arise. Also, with the person who praises you, you can think about how, even though this person is praising you now, in the past they have been your enemy and harmed you and in the future they can also do that. In this way, you don’t give rise to attachment. This is the way to cut anger and desire.

Of course, another point is that you can use renunciation and impermanence and death, by thinking, “My life is impermanent in nature, and death could happen to me at any moment, even today.” When you have renunciation of this life, especially by thinking of this very important meditation, impermanence and death, it then doesn’t make sense to give rise to anger or attachment. When you think of how your death could happen at any moment, this person criticizing you is nothing to you, and this person praising you is also nothing. You have no anger and no attachment. You’re free.

And then, of course, if you develop compassion for both of them, there is no way for you to get angry. You can think about how they are under the control of karma and delusions and how they are suffering; you can also think about how, even though they are looking for happiness, they are devoid of happiness, both temporary happiness and the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara and enlightenment. By meditating on loving kindness, you then want to bring them happiness. When you use these meditations, you don’t become angry or attached. This especially doesn’t happen if you meditate on bodhichitta by thinking of their extensive kindness, as I mentioned yesterday; when you think of all the past, present and future happiness you receive from them, you then see them as the most precious, most kind ones in your life. After that, by thinking about how they are suffering, you want to liberate them from their suffering and bring them happiness, especially the peerless happiness of enlightenment. And to do that, you have to achieve enlightenment. When you generate bodhichitta, you think of cherishing them, so then anger and attachment don’t arise. You are free. Not only that but you feel they are in your heart, you feel close to them. You not only cherish them but really want to help them.

I’m just giving you an idea of the different meditations you can use. There is also emptiness. You think that the I is empty or think of the merely labeled I. During this time of being criticized or praised, as long as you don’t cling to there being a real I in this body, as long as you are mindful that there’s no such thing there, and that what exists is merely imputed, what the person says about you won’t bother you. You will be completely calm. You can meditate in that way, or think of them as being empty.

There are so many meditations you can use: renunciation, bodhichitta and right view, as well as tantric meditations.

[The group recites the short mandala offering.]

“Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and those collected by others, may bodhichitta be actualized within my heart, in the hearts of my family, of all the students and all the benefactors, so many of whom sacrifice themselves to the organization to benefit sentient beings, and in the hearts of those who rely upon me and for whom I have promised to pray and in the hearts of all the sentient beings without even a second’s delay. May the bodhichitta that has been generated be increased.

“May bodhichitta also be generated in the hearts of all the world leaders and in the hearts of all the people of all the different religions.

“Jang chhub sem chhog rin po chhe…..

“Gye wa di yi nyur du dag….”

So, this morning you missed out on a drink. There was no drink. Maybe you will have to visualize it….

So, thank you so much.