[Rinpoche chants the first verse of Praise to Shakyamuni Buddha three times in Tibetan.]

So, good morning. We are trying to do the meditation prayer. I want to say that even though it’s being led in the Tibetan language, you can read it in Spanish so that you know what’s being said. That’s very helpful. Just hearing the words of these teachings of Buddha plants the seed of liberation and enlightenment, which is the ultimate goal you achieve. The arrangement of the prayer has that effect on your mind, but by also being aware of the prayer in Spanish, you know what you’re saying and you get some idea of the meaning, so it’s more powerful.

[Rinpoche chants the verses of Praise to Shakyamuni Buddha in Tibetan up to “Chhog tu dä pä chhag tshäl lo.”]

Yesterday I got distracted by talking about this verse—I got carried away. The next verse is the very heart advice of the Buddha, the Omniscient One:

Do not commit any nonvirtuous actions,
Perform only perfect virtuous actions,
Subdue your mind thoroughly—
This is the teaching of the Buddha.

The advice is given in this way, not to engage in unwholesome actions and to engage in virtue, because that advice accords with our wishes. If our wishes were different, if we liked suffering and didn’t like happiness, the Buddha’s advice might then be different. But that is not our way of thinking, not our wish. Our wish is to have happiness and not to have suffering. This is the common thing not only for us human beings, but even for animals, for insects, cows, horses and dinosaurs (though you don’t now find dinosaurs here in this world). This is the wish of every animal, no matter how large it is, no matter how small it is. It’s the wish of even the tiniest insects, the ones that we can’t see without a microscope, that live in water, in space and even inside our body.

It seems that our bodies are filled with those tiny sentient beings. One time when I was flying to the United States from Taiwan or Nepal or somewhere, they showed a video that someone had made of what happens when you eat food. It showed how when you eat a biscuit, the food goes down, and it magnified the many tiny beings inside the body, who were like people in cars in a busy city, with many cars coming this way and many other cars going that way on highways. It was always bustling. So, besides what Buddha says in the texts, this has been scientifically shown in the West.

The whole body is very interesting. There’s so much that we don’t want to see. The whole body looks like a machine—it’s amazing! When you eat food, the body is like a machine inside, with the bad things going to one side. It’s very interesting. Every part of the body is exactly like a machine, and there are things that help and things that don’t help. There are so many things inside the body that are dependent on each other to function. It’s quite amazing.

I don’t think it was created by our parents. It’s not that they spent many years in a factory putting all the things together. They didn’t invite many thousands of people and pay them money to make each of the parts. It’s interesting to think about why we have a body like this. The body itself is amazing. It’s like a machine with each part helping another part. Everything is a dependent arising in the way it works. It’s inexpressible—quite amazing!

I heard that in Christianity the very first human being was Adam, and there is a story about Adam being told not to eat the apple. But who created Adam? [Students: God.] Only Adam? So we’re all incarnations of Adam? I’m joking.

Adam was created by God, right? What would have happened if Adam hadn’t been created? The whole world wouldn’t have happened, right? It becomes interesting if you analyze it. So the whole thing has to do with the apple?

Anyway, there are different explanations. That’s one explanation according to Christians, and science holds that human beings came from monkeys, right? Human beings came from monkeys or gorillas or yetis (which would mean they came from the Himalayan mountains). There’s another explanation about how if you go back, back, back, you find that human beings and all the animals started from some substance in water. But how did that substance originally start? If something exists, you still have to know its evolution. I’m not sure that present scientists would agree with that explanation. Anyway, it is many millions of years since human beings first started on this earth.

There’s a story about some fruit, though not quite an apple. I think it might be durian, the big fruit that fills the whole house with its smell when you eat it. I think the Abhidharmakosha explains in regard to the first human beings that the consciousness came from the deva realm. The whole of samsara comes in three realms: desire realm, form realm and formless realm. In the desire realm, beings have desire for external sense objects and experience sense pleasures through contact with those external objects. Beings in the form realm experience pleasure derived from meditation.

So, there was light on this earth, and the consciousness came from the higher realm, the form realm, and was then conceived on the light. The very first human beings didn’t have bodies like ours, but had bodies of the nature of light. Fireflies and some other insects also have light; at nighttime you see the blue or green light of fireflies. Even fish can have a blue kind of light. The original human beings didn’t have bodies like ours but bodies of the nature of light because their consciousness came from the form realm and took place on the light on this earth, so they then had light.

It was due to past good karma that those beings had bodies of the nature of light. But those original human beings weren’t liberated from karma and delusion. They didn’t have the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness or renunciation of samsara. With renunciation you enter the path to liberation; of course, on the basis of renunciation, you have the realization of bodhichitta, the altruistic mind to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, and you then engage in the Mahayana path to enlightenment. But those original human beings didn’t have either the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness or renunciation or bodhichitta. They didn’t have the realizations that are essential to the path to liberation and to enlightenment.

So, due to past good karma, the very first human beings had bodies of the nature of light. Because they had past negative karma and they hadn’t ceased their delusions, after some time the light of their bodies degenerated. What were the cause and conditions? The main cause was attachment, or delusion, but the external condition was eating mud. Due to eating that impure substance, the light degenerated, and their body became gross. So, that is a more logical explanation, because what you eat affects the body, making it healthy or unhealthy. What you eat can pollute your mind and pollute your body. Eating pure food has a positive effect on your mind and body; eating impure food has a negative effect. That’s a normal thing.

In my own experience, not recently but a long time ago, I hadn’t eaten garlic for a long time. When there was then some garlic in the food I ate, my body felt kind of unhealthy and gross. You feel that effect, that feeling of grossness in your body, because it’s something you haven’t eaten for a long time. If you’ve been eating it all the time, you don’t notice anything; but if you haven’t been eating it before, when you do eat it, you feel the effects on your mind and body.

It’s a normal thing. Anybody can understand that the purity or impurity of what you eat has effects on the body and mind.

That might be the reason that especially in lower tantra practice, in Kriya Tantra, one of the fundamental practices is keeping the body clean. Of course, the practice is based on renunciation of samsara, in which you realize how the whole of samsara is of the nature of suffering and generate total detachment, with your mind totally free from attachment grasping to samsara. That makes your mind totally peaceful and happy because you don’t have all those distractions that come from grasping at samsara and samsaric pleasures, or enjoyments. The practice is also based on right view and bodhichitta. Right view ceases the root of samsara, ignorance; it’s the antidote to samsara. Bodhichitta is the antidote to the selfish mind and causes everything you do to become a cause of enlightenment. (Renunciation causes everything you do to become a cause to achieve the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara.)

However, on the basis of these, which are sutra, you then practice tantra. In the lower tantras, one of the very important practices is keeping the body clean. It is mentioned that when you do those practices you can’t eat meat, garlic or onion; these are the major ones, but there are quite a few other things to abandon. Keeping the body very clean, or pure, then helps the mind to be pure. What’s the purpose of keeping the body clean? It helps the mind to meditate; there are fewer obstacles when you meditate. When you meditate, your mind is clearer.

To return to the story…. The light disappeared, and the body became like an ordinary body after they had eaten those impure substances. Because past karma and delusions were there, because they hadn’t actualized the path, which removes the delusions and the cause of delusions, the negative imprint, as their bodies degenerated, these first human beings developed male and female organs. This was the result of past karma. Because of imprints from past lives, they then again developed attachment to the opposite sex. That was not the first time those human beings had experienced this attachment; they had gone through it in the past. As I mentioned yesterday, we have had all the various human and animal bodies, male and female, and we have gone through all these experiences. We have had bodies made of light with no ordinary substances of flesh, blood and bones, and not just one time. We have gone through that numberless times; we have been born like that numberless times. Even we ourselves have gone to the higher realms, the form and formless realms, numberless times.

There are imprints of attachment to the opposite sex from the past, from beginningless rebirths. The imprint is like that on a roll of film. When you take a photo, an imprint is left on the roll of film, and later it gets processed and printed on paper. In exactly the same way, the past karma with attachment to those objects left a negative imprint on the mind, on the mental continuum, At that later time, when the light of the body had degenerated and the body had become ordinary, with male or female sex organs appearing, attachment arises on seeing the object, because of the cause of attachment, the negative imprint. Since the cause of attachment hasn’t been removed by actualizing the path, when the object is there, because the cause of attachment, the negative imprint, is there—it has been there during beginningless rebirths—of course attachment arises from it. Attachment then clings to that object.

This applies not only to the opposite sex but to anything toward which attachment arises. Some people like very much to wear animal or human bones; for them, it’s maybe more precious than gold. To such a person gold may not mean much, but bone is regarded as very precious. Other people regard bone ornaments as ridiculous, as something to throw away. They don’t want them in the house. So, for some people the bones are something to get rid of; for others they are very precious, and they want to wear them.

[Rinpoche has a drink.]

I have to put some fuel.

[Rinpoche drinks some more.]

There’s a reason that something is an object of attachment, and that reason was created in the past. For some people an object is to be renounced, to be thrown away, or they have no interest at all in it. For other people, that same object—whether it’s a person’s body or a material object—is the most precious thing, something to be most attached to. So, it all comes from imprints from the past, from past lives.

Since I’m talking here on this subject, I’m going to mention this point. It’s good to remember that it’s not so much to do with the object. It is because of the negative imprint left on your mental continuum by past attachment that you now feel attachment to an object. Remember that the reason you are attached to it is because of past habituation, past karmic imprints. It’s very helpful to think more of the cause of your attachment, to think of the past karmic imprint. It’s not coming from the object’s side; it’s coming from your mind. That’s one method to give you peace and freedom. It makes you independent. If you’re looking for independence, it gives you independence. It gives you inner peace and freedom. You gain control over your desire; you don’t find any reason to be attached to that object.

Unconditional universal loving kindness and compassion can then arise, without any expectations that you will gain happiness from the object. With a sincere heart you can help that other person or animal. There’s no partiality in your loving kindness and compassion; your loving kindness and compassion are impartial. Otherwise, you may have compassion only for your friends, and no compassion for your enemies, for the people who criticize or harm you, or for strangers. You have compassion for only those few people who are your friends and you don’t have compassion for the rest of the sentient beings. It becomes that your compassion is very limited; it’s related more to attachment. I’m not sure—you should analyze it.

So, it’s helpful to think that you’re attached to a particular object because of past karmic imprints. When you then see that object and attachment arises, it becomes interesting. If you think in this way, you don’t get as attached to that particular object.

The evolution of attachment becomes very deep, involving many past lives during beginningless rebirths.

It’s your mind that makes an object beautiful, and at the same time other people don’t see that same object as beautiful. When one hundred people look at one person, there are many different views of that person. It’s very interesting. If you ask each of the hundred people how they see that person, it’s very interesting. Some are very attached to that person and find it hard to separate from them. If the person goes all over the world, you follow that person all over the world, if you are able to afford it. You would follow them under the ocean or to the moon. Of the one hundred people who look at that person, some can’t bear to be separated from them day or night. And for some other people, that person means nothing, So, it accords with their karma from the past.

Remember how sometimes when you meet someone in the road, you suddenly get angry with them. You have no memory of their harming you in this life—there’s nothing like that. You haven’t met that person before—“before” means in this life—but the moment you meet them, you get angry with them or you get frightened. The person is just there, not acting in any harmful manner, but you suddenly get very frightened to see that person or angry. So, because you have never met that person before, it tells you of the existence of past lives. Some negative situation happened with that person in a past life.

In his past life one lama in Tibet was killed by an official of the Tibetan government. This lama who was executed by the Tibetan government has now reincarnated, and in this life he feels fear whenever he sees anyone from the Tibetan government.

When you meet someone and you suddenly get frightened even though the person doesn’t act in a harmful way, it means that a similar situation happened in the past. In the past, that person harmed or killed you, and you had such strong fear of that person in their past life when that situation happened that an imprint was left on your mind. When you meet that person at this time, even though they have a different body, you feel fear.

All these things are telling you that past lives exist and that there’s continuity of your mind from the life before this. There was a continuity of your mind before you were born to your present parents, before your consciousness was conceived in your mother’s womb. It was not that the sperm from your father fertilized the egg from your mother and the consciousness suddenly happened without cause and conditions. Otherwise, these things would be happening for no reason. There wouldn’t be any cause for you to be so afraid of this person or so angry with them. There are some people that you spend your whole life fighting, whether it’s in your family or in the office; you might live together but you’re always fighting. All these things have a reason from past lives. It’s a continuation of something that happened in a past life, and the effect is being experienced so that you see that person in that way. There are some people you think are beautiful, and attachment arises toward them; there are other people you see as undesirable, and anger arises toward them. It’s all the creation of your mind, the creation of your different minds. When you change your mind, when you change your discriminating thoughts of anger and attachment, you see them differently. As I mentioned yesterday, you might be very attached to someone, but one day when you get angry with them, you have a totally different view of them. Or you might be angry with someone, but when attachment to them then arises, you have a totally different view of the person. So, it depends on how you think; it depends on your commentary on that person. When you think about a person in a certain way, you then see them that way. How you see the person is created by your own mind; it came from your own mind.

How you see a person depends on how you think of them. If you look at someone as beautiful, you see them as beautiful. If you look at someone as ugly, you will see them as ugly. You will think of all the ugly things, then see them as ugly. If you think of all the faults of the body, attachment runs away into the forest.

This doesn’t apply only to people. It is the same with everything, with the flowers and all these other objects. With whatever we see, everything came from our mind. It is the same with those trees, the sky and the clouds. In a department store there are many hundreds of thousands of things: so many types of makeup to paint your body with, so many dresses, so many different pants, so many different jackets. However, when you go to a department store, what you see is a view of your mind. What you see and how you see them came from your mind.

Basically, all the sense objects—whatever we see, whatever we hear, whatever we smell, whatever we taste, whatever we touch—came from our mind. When you see objects of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, how you see them is the view of your mind. It’s all a creation of your own mind. This meditation is extremely important, unbelievably important. Mindfulness of this is most important and is extremely beneficial in seeing the ultimate nature of phenomena. This awareness that all the sense objects came from your mind, are all a view of your mind, is essential.

Now, I’m going to mention to you two ways in which everything comes from your mind. One is immediate. When you see sense objects—forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects—you see them as good or bad. With forms, the sense of the eye, and here I’m referring to the eye not the I. I don’t know where the I is, but this eye…. Here I want to explain a story on this important point.

When I came to Mexico for the very first time, I gave a course. I’m not sure whether anybody who organized that course is here. The main organizer was a university professor—I don’t remember his name; he is the person who organized His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s first visit to Mexico, and I came after that. He wanted me to introduce His Holiness to the Mexican people, but I said that Geshe Sopa Rinpoche would be better, so Geshe Sopa Rinpoche came.

I came after His Holiness had left. There was a Mexican woman I had met in Nepal or Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamsala, as well as one or two people who had lived in Dharamsala for a few months, I think. The professor invited me to Mexico, and there were to be two or three days of teaching in a Japanese shrine room.

The first night the translators were an old man and woman. I’m sorry but I don’t remember their names. I think a Tibetan monk, who they had invited from a Gelugpa monastery in Nepal, lived for one year in their house. Because the couple had been receiving teachings or initiations from this monk, I guess the group thought that they had more Dharma knowledge, so they translated on the first night. I was talking about the I, the self. Of course, if I had used the term self instead of I, they wouldn’t have misunderstood and translated it as eye. I guess I must have used I and not self. There’s no difference in pronunciation between the eye with which you see and the I, the self. The old man and woman who were my translators were very generous people. They did the translation and had invited the Tibetan monk there for a year. (The monk didn’t stay. He later left and went on his own to Los Angeles, where I heard he was selling hotdogs on the roadside or something like that.)

So, I was talking about the I, the self, and at first no one said anything. At the end of the first night or on the second night, a woman in the audience, who had come to Nepal for a short time and whom I knew, corrected them. She pointed out that it was not this eye but this I, the self. All those times they had translated “I” as “eye.” Anyway, I just remembered this story. Since it’s a story from Mexico, I thought I must tell it. For the rest of the time, the translator was the woman who had corrected the old couple.

It’s okay as long as the people in the audience didn’t think they had to go to hospital to have an operation on their eye so that they could look at things and see their conventional nature, how they are impermanent in nature, and also see their ultimate nature, how they are empty. In that case you wouldn’t need to meditate; you would just go to the hospital and ask the doctor for the operation. Maybe you would come back home enlightened!

Since I came to this point about how everything is created by the mind, I want to mention that there are two ways to understand how things come from the mind. One way is that how you see things—forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects—is created by your present mind, your present concept. That’s the first point to understand. The second way that things are created by the mind has to do with something that was done a long time ago. So, you have to meditate and discover these two ways in which everything comes from the mind.

So, in regard to the immediate creation by the mind, when you see a base, your mind creates the label. On seeing the base, if you create a negative label—“unpleasant” or “impure” or “bad”—and believe in your label, you then see that thing as negative. When it appears back to you, it appears as bad because you have labeled it “bad.” Here I’m saying “bad” and not “bat,” the animal with the mouse-like face. I don’t want you to misunderstand like with “I” and “eye.”

On seeing the base, if you put a negative label of “bad” or “ugly” but don’t believe it is true, you won’t see that thing as bad. It won’t appear to you as bad, and you won’t see it as bad.

It’s very important to meditate on what I’ve just said and to be aware of it in your everyday life. You need to be mindful of it not only when you sit on your cushion in your meditation room but while you’re walking around, while you’re doing your job—any time. It’s especially helpful to be mindful of this when you’re having problems in your life, whether you’re having relationship problems at home or in the office. It’s very helpful in removing your mental sickness of thinking that everything is bad. If you think, “This is bad,” “That is bad,” there will be so many bads. You will make your life full of bad, instead of good. You will then make everything bad. If you think, “This is bad,” about everything you see and hear, you then make everything that appears to you bad. You make everything negative; everything becomes undesirable. You make everything that you see and hear disturbing to your mind.

The more you do that, the more lung you get. Maybe only the older students know about lung—I’m not sure about the new students. Lung, or wind disease, can also arise when you use your mind to look at everything as bad—“This person is bad,” “Their way of talking is bad,” “Their way of thinking is bad”—instead of using it to put positive labels and look at everything as good. The more you do that, the more lung develops. Instead of developing more and more positive experiences, more and more realizations, you get more and more lung. It is also the same when you work at a Dharma center.

So, maybe I will begin with this story. In Tibet, two disciples returned to their monastery from their home, which was very far away. I think it probably took them months on foot. On their return, their teacher served them cold tea. One disciple thought, “Oh, our teacher is so kind, so precious. He knew we had come such a long way on foot and were very tired, so he purposely made the tea cold for us. He’s so kind.” He was so happy because he was feeling a deep appreciation of the kindness of the teacher.

The other thought, “We came so far and are so tired, but our teacher didn’t even give us hot tea.” He got very angry with the teacher, thinking that it was so bad that the teacher hadn’t given them hot tea. It was the same cold tea, but the second disciple gave it a negative label, “That’s bad.” Of course, he did that with the belief that it was bad. If there’s no belief that something is bad, it doesn’t appear bad to you, and you don’t see it as bad. You don’t then get angry and create negative karma—in this case, the heaviest negative karma. Among negative karmas, creating negative karma in relation to the guru, the most powerful holy object, is the heaviest negative karma. I guess, since I’ve mentioned the most powerful holy object, I need to explain what that means.

Why is the guru the most powerful object? It is explained in the teachings that the guru is the most powerful object because it is the person with whom you have formed a Dharma connection by receiving teachings with the recognition that you are the disciple and that other person is your guru.

It’s mentioned in the teachings that powerful objects start with parents and end with the guru. The first powerful object is your parents, your present father and mother. The ones who gave you your precious human body are more powerful objects than other family members or outside people.

With your parents, because they are powerful objects, showing them some small disrespect, criticizing them a little or beating them becomes heavy negative karma. Because it’s heavy, you can see the suffering result in this life; it is initiated in this life, and you then experience it in many lifetimes because karma is expandable, as I mentioned yesterday. Since here we are talking about a powerful object, you experience the suffering in the lower realms and from many lifetimes even as a human being when, due to some good karma, you are again born as a human being. For hundreds, thousands, of lifetimes you experience problems, the suffering results of how you treated your parents. From that one action, you get the result of experiencing harm for so many lifetimes: hundreds or thousands of lifetimes.

When you offer your parents of this life some small respect or service, that good karma is very powerful, and you start to experience the result, happiness and success, in this life; the result is initiated in this life. For many hundreds or thousands of lifetimes, you then continue to enjoy the results of that good karma.

Since I’m talking on this subject, I would like to mention that in the West, especially, there’s no education on respecting one’s parents. Respecting parents is not taught in schools in the West, and it’s missing in Western culture. The positive side of the relationship between parents and children isn’t taught. In Buddhism, respecting parents is regarded as very, very important. Because they’re powerful objects, you have to be very careful. Because you want happiness and don’t want suffering, and especially because you want to help other sentient beings, you need success. You don’t want obstacles to your bringing happiness not only to your parents but to all sentient beings.

Therefore, since this part of education is missing in schools in the West, when problems are experienced, all the blame is put on the parents: when you were born, your parents didn’t take care of you well and this and that. There’s no education about karma, about the children’s karma motivated by ignorance, anger, attachment and other delusions in this life and all their past lives. There’s no education about reincarnation and karma, or your actions and the effects of your actions. If you do a positive action, it has a positive effect, happiness; if you do a negative action out of a negative mind, it has a negative effect, suffering. So, you can experience the negative results of that one negative action now and long-term; you can experience them for many lifetimes, hundreds or thousands of lifetimes. You can also harm other living beings.

It is the same with positive actions. If you do a positive action out of a positive mind, it will have a happy effect now and for many lifetimes, hundreds or thousands of lifetimes. It can also bring liberation from samsara and enlightenment and enable you to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and enlighten them. It’s amazing! From your positive thought and your positive action, you are able to liberate the numberless sentient beings from each realm (the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, asuras, suras and intermediate state beings) and bring them to enlightenment. So, it’s just amazing! It’s incredible! The good things that you can do with your positive mind are just unimaginable.

There are also the bad things you can do with your negative thoughts. When you generate negative thoughts and do negative actions, the effect on you is that you experience the suffering result. It is not only that you harm yourself, with no liberation and no enlightenment in all your future lives, but you harm numberless sentient beings from life to life. The harm goes on and on, so that you harm numberless sentient beings.

In this world and even in this country, it has happened many times that people with influence and power have killed many millions of people. By generating negative thoughts of anger, hatred and so forth, one person has killed many millions of people. They have burnt children to death, killed old people, tortured and imprisoned other people. It is unimaginable. And many thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people have engaged in killing others under that person’s instruction. Because of that one’s person’s desire or anger, many hundreds of thousands of people engaged in killing many millions of people. This is without talking about the animals, who are not counted. Just the human beings are counted. There is no doubt that many animals are harmed and destroyed by bombs on the ground and in the ocean. There is so much harm you can do by generating negative thoughts. It has happened so many times in the history of the world.

So, we don’t want to do that; we don’t want to become like that. You want to be someone who gives only happiness to the numberless living beings in your own country and in this world and, last of all, to you yourself, who want only happiness and no suffering. Being able to live your life in happiness has to come from positive thoughts. Always living a happy life has to come from your positive mind, your positive way of thinking. It has to come from a healthy mind.

Many of you here have met the Buddhadharma and already had lam-rim teachings before, but some of you might not know what is meant by a positive, or healthy, mind. When delusions such as ignorance, anger or attachment arise, there’s an immediate, negative effect on your mind. They disturb your mind. When jealousy, pride and all the other delusions arise, there’s immediately a negative effect on your mental continuum. There is also a negative effect on others; others’ minds are also disturbed. When a delusion arises, it destroys other sentient beings’ peace and your mental peace. It immediately creates a negative environment. Wherever you are, whether you are at home or at the office, when a negative mind arises, it becomes an unpleasant situation. You then lead an unhealthy life. You have a very sick mind with all these delusions, with all this anger, desire, pride, jealousy and ill will. Because of the sickness of your mind, you develop many sicknesses of the body. Many physical problems such as poor blood circulation and cancer arise. It has been discovered by doctors and scientists that the majority of people who have heart attacks have very impatient or angry natures. This is what scientists discovered from their research. Anger harms the smooth circulation of the blood. It’s also said that cancer arises in people who have a lot of fear or worry. That’s not from the teachings, but just what has come out through research. Just as anger has been linked to heart attacks, worry has been linked to cancer. But, of course, that doesn’t mean worry is the main cause of cancer. It can be a condition for cancer, but it should be checked as to whether it’s the main cause of cancer.

An unhealthy mind brings many physical problems. A couple from the United States—the husband is a doctor and the wife is a psychologist, I think—wrote a book about what they discovered. Through their research, they discovered that cancer is a result of the unhealthy, or impure, mind, of negative thoughts. That’s what they said.

It’s mentioned in the texts, and it is the reality, that the mind and its vehicle, wind, are the same in essence but have different functions. (I’m not talking about this wind that is blowing the altar and the flowers.) There are four elements within us, and one of them is wind, which is the vehicle of the mind. So, the mind and its vehicle, wind, are the same in essence but have different functions. That which moves is called “wind” and that which is clear and performs the function of perceiving objects is called “mind.” According to their function, they are given different labels.

When ignorance, anger, attachment, jealousy, pride and the other delusions arise, they disturb and obscure your mental continuum. You then engage in negative karma, which results in only suffering. It results in rebirth in the lower realms, with all those heavy unimaginable sufferings; and when, due to another, good karma, you are born as a human being, since you are still not finished with the suffering results of that past negative karma, you experience problems, such as the possessed result, which has to do with the environment, in the human realm. You also receive harm from others, and you engage again in the same negative karma again. Whether it’s killing, stealing, telling lies or something else, even though you know it’s bad, you still uncontrollably engage in that negative karma. In this way, even in future lives you also harm other sentient beings.

You can see from this explanation that when the mind is disturbed, the vehicle of the mind, the wind, becomes disturbed. Because the mind is not peaceful, the wind also becomes unpeaceful. When the wind is not balanced, when it becomes disturbed, the four elements within you then become unbalanced. When the elements become unbalanced, sickness and other difficulties are experienced in the life.

When you practice Dharma, your mind becomes very peaceful. With guru devotion or the very deep, calm, peaceful contentment of renunciation, your mind doesn’t create any problems. Since attachment, or desire, which creates so many problems is not there, you are free and very peaceful. With loving kindness, compassion and bodhichitta, your mind is very peaceful and joyful. When your mind has bodhichitta, you receive incredible benefits, as deep as the ocean; you receive skies of merit. It’s unbelievable. Also, when your mind has right view, you experience unbelievable peace. During that time, there’s not all this troubled mind; everything is totally cut. You have a complete view of yourself and others, and with whatever you see, there is incredible peace. You haven’t achieved liberation from samsara but it’s like liberation. You experience unbelievable peace, free from all those troubling thoughts that trouble you and others. There is then no doubt about when you do tantric practice, generation and completion stage, which is based on that.

So, that’s why at the end yesterday I said that without Dharma, life is only suffering. Without Dharma in the life, life is only suffering; there’s no inner peace or happiness in the heart, and no satisfaction. Without Dharma, no matter what you try externally, you never get satisfaction, inner peace. Your heart is always empty. Even if you own the whole world, there can be so many unbelievable problems. You don’t see millionaires, billionaires and zillionaires experiencing unbelievable peace and happiness in their hearts. You don’t feel that with them. I normally meet many different classes of people in different countries: wealthy people, simple people, all kinds of people. With wealthy people, at the beginning everything looks very good. Of course, they are well dressed and their house and everything else is beautiful. But as you then listen to them, as five minutes go, ten minutes go, fifteen minutes go, you slowly hear about the problems that they have.

Because they already have so much money, they also spend a lot, and then they need more money. It keeps them busy because they spend so much. This is the nature of life. You spend more and more and you need more and more. The more money you spend, the more money you need. That is the nature of following desire. That is how it is for the whole of your life, even if you live for a hundred years. Of course, it’s possible that sometimes you become unhealthy and can’t do anything. However, life goes on in that way, with all the business and relationship problems. It may not be known by outside people, but there are so many problems inside. So, life goes on in this way, with so much worry and fear. It’s unbelievable—life goes on like this until one dies. One day death just comes, and that’s it.

Without Dharma in the life, it’s like that. It’s like that even for wealthy people. Sometimes the more wealthy you are, the more attachment and miserliness you have. Instead of becoming a kinder, more loving and more compassionate person and helping people, you’re even more stingy when you become more wealthy. You see that many times.

Of course, if you’re a good-hearted person, someone with loving kindness and compassion, you’ll become more beneficial to other people when you become more wealthy. You are able to benefit the Dharma and other people and animals. You’re able to help anybody who has problems. That makes it very worthwhile to be wealthy.

Anyway, I’m just talking about the nature of life. Now I’ve forgotten the point. Maybe if I take some pills it will come back….

As I was saying before, in my experience of meeting many people from different countries, as far as wealthy people go, while there are good-hearted people who are helping many people and the Dharma, there are also many who don’t make themselves useful. As they become more wealthy, they have unbelievable problems. With more wealth, they are more stingy and have more worry and fear about losing what they have or not being richer than other people. They want to be richer than others, to make more profit in their business than others. They have worry and fear about losing what they have and many problems with the government in relation to taxes. The more wealth you have, the more things you have to worry about. It depends on whether or not they have met Dharma, on whether or not they practice Dharma, on whether or not they practice the good heart. If they’re not practicing, they have unbelievable problems.

I’ve now remembered what I was saying. I didn’t take the pill—I just remembered anyway.

Yesterday at the end I mentioned that without Dharma, life is only suffering. The first point is that you can’t get any satisfaction; you never get satisfaction. No matter which world you are in, and even if you go to the moon, you can’t get satisfaction. You can’t get it even if you go to live under the ocean or in one of the holiday places like Tahiti or Goa or [Los Scao]. I think I went to [Los Scao] the second time I came to Mexico. It’s the place near the ocean where famous people like singers and movie actors come to stay in the hotels? In one hotel there, the owner has a room that people can use for meditation. I think they have a statue of Buddha there, which is good.

Anyway, life is only suffering. I already told you yesterday how samsaric pleasure is in the nature of suffering, and I mentioned yesterday how to meditate on that. To your hallucinated mind, samsaric pleasure appears to be pleasure, but when you analyze, your wisdom sees that it’s only suffering. If you’re practicing Dharma, if you’re practicing renunciation, you are able to make your life meaningful; you’re able to achieve the ultimate, everlasting happiness of liberation, with total cessation of rebirth and death and all the sufferings between them. If you’re practicing bodhichitta, you’re able to achieve the highest, peerless happiness of enlightenment, complete in all the qualities of realization. And if you then practice right view, you don’t have to die and be reborn, die and be reborn continuously in samsara, because the right view directly ceases the ignorance that is the root of samsara, so there’s no doubt that it directly ceases all the other delusions and karma. So, you get what you really need. It’s like getting the cream. It’s just amazing! That you have met Dharma in your life is just amazing! Even if you don’t know all the philosophy but just know the lam-rim, the three principal aspects of the path, and are practicing them, even if you just receive the teachings and have the opportunity to practice them, it’s just amazing. So, I’m going to repeat it a few times. That life is just unimaginable. It’s the best life. That life becomes yum, yum!

Guru Shakyamuni Buddha said, “I don’t have much worry about anyone who puts their palms together and recites, ‘Tön pa chom dän dä de zhin sheg pa dra chom pa yang dag par dzog päi sang gyä la chhag tshäl lo.’ I will guide them.” (Or it might have been, “Tön pa chom dän dä de zhin sheg pa dra chom pa päl gyäl wa sha kya thub pa la chhag tshäl lo.” Anyway, they’re basically the same.)

This quotation comes from a text in the Kangyur, the hundred volumes of Buddha’s teachings. The text is called Kangbu Tsekpa—kangbu means house and tsekpa means piled up—and it talks about the benefits of building stupas. In that text, there were some words I didn’t understand, so I asked Kyabje Choden Rinpoche about them. Rinpoche is a great master, a great scholar, whose holy mind is always in Dharma, without a break for even a second. That’s the comment I made on seeing Rinpoche at the very beginning. Even externally you can see that Rinpoche has very high attainments of the tantric path.

Anyway, when I went to ask Rinpoche about some of the words in the text, when it came to these words about how Buddha will guide anybody who puts their palms together and prays “Tön pa chom dän dä de zhin sheg pa dra chom pa päl gyäl wa sha kya thub pa la chhag tshäl lo,” Rinpoche paid very precise attention to them.

We should realize that we’re included in that. Every time we put our palms together and recite this, we should realize how unbelievably fortunate we are to be able to do that and recite it with a happy mind. Just by doing this, you will quickly get liberated from samsara. The reason Buddha said that he doesn’t have any worry is that reciting this prayer, sooner or later, liberates you from samsara, from all suffering and its causes, and enables you to achieve enlightenment. That’s why Buddha says that he doesn’t have much worry about those sentient beings who recite this prayer. Buddha then said, “I will guide them.” So, we are under the guidance of Buddha just by reciting this prayer, without talking about doing other practices. We’re unbelievably fortunate compared to other sentient beings.

At another time I plan to mention the benefits of reciting this prayer and Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s mantra, TADYATHA OM MUNÉ MUNÉ MAHAMUNAYÉ SOHA. It’s extremely important to know the benefits. Maybe at that time we’ll do Guru Shakyamuni Buddha meditation.

Maybe I will just finish this one there, then we’ll go back one step. What I’m going to say is this: if you have created a lot of negative karma in relation to your parents in the past, it’s very important to purify it. If you have done anything, it’s very important to purify it because it’s very heavy negative karma. And from now on, by remembering the teachings, you must be kind to them, respect them and offer them whatever service you can. You must respect them with words and with actions, and you must always think of their kindness. It’s very, very important.

Taking care of your parents, serving your parents, is regarded as incredibly powerful good karma. Buddha explained that it is very important to take care of your parents when they’re sick. Offering your parents some small service, some small help, helps you, because you start to experience the result, happiness, in this life, and you enjoy it for so many lifetimes.

More powerful objects than your parents are the ordained Sangha, because they are living in vows.

Now, one bodhisattva, whether an ordained or lay person (and some bodhisattvas manifest as animals), is more powerful than numberless Sangha who are not bodhisattvas. Sangha here means those who don’t have bodhichitta and includes arhats, who are free from all delusion and karma, all the sufferings of samsara. One bodhisattva is a more powerful object than numberless arhats.

Now, it’s very important that you understand the following. It is said in the sutra teachings that glaring, or scowling, at one bodhisattva is much heavier negative karma than gouging out the eyes of all the samsaric beings in the desire, form and formless realms, in each of which there are numberless beings. So, the negative karma of looking disrespectfully at one bodhisattva is heavier negative karma than taking out the eyes of all the beings in the three realms.

Now you put the eyeballs back! Giving eyes to all the beings in the desire, form and formless realms, so that everybody could see, would create unimaginable merit; but looking at one bodhisattva with a calm mind collects more merit than giving eyes to all those numberless samsaric beings in the three realms. This is due to the power of bodhichitta. With the thought of bodhichitta, you completely let go of the I and cherish only other sentient beings, who are numberless, and seek happiness only for other sentient beings. This is an incredible change, a total change. Can you imagine that development of the heart? Before you cherished just one sentient being, yourself; but now here you cherish everybody, numberless sentient beings, and seek happiness for them. It’s unbelievable. This is the best life! Even if you’re not an enlightened being but just a bodhisattva, it’s amazing! It’s incredible. Taking care of the numberless sentient beings like you would yourself and cherishing them the most are unbelievable.

You don’t just bring them the happiness of this life by giving them food, shelter, medicine, money and so forth. You bring them the happiness of all the future lives and the ultimate, everlasting happiness of liberation, freedom from all the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes, and of enlightenment. This is the bodhisattva’s work for every sentient being. The bodhisattva’s work is not just to bring others the happiness of this life for a short time.

Now, by understanding this, you know why you have to be careful when you are with other people: since you cannot see others’ minds, you never know who is or is not a bodhisattva, who is or is not a buddha. Therefore, you have to be very careful with regard to harming others, in case they are a buddha or a bodhisattva. Equal to the number of seconds you get angry with a bodhisattva, for that many eons you will be reborn in the lower realms and experience heavy suffering. We cannot tell who is or is not a bodhisattva. It is difficult for us to judge because we don’t have the karma to see buddhas and other holy beings. Since our minds are so obscured, it’s difficult for us to tell.

Now, one buddha is more powerful than numberless bodhisattvas. In this case, we have to be even more careful in regard to not creating heavy negative karma. Even a small criticism of a buddha creates much heavier negative karma than getting angry with all the numberless bodhisattvas. And making a small offering or showing some small respect to a buddha (whether it’s an actual living buddha or even a statue of a buddha, the benefit is the same) brings greater benefit than making offering to numberless bodhisattvas. Making offerings to numberless bodhisattvas collects unbelievable merit, but it cannot be compared to making offering to one buddha, or even a statue of buddha. That merit is inconceivable. You collect much more powerful merit than from having made offerings to numberless bodhisattvas.

Only then comes the guru. The moment in your life when, with the recognition of yourself as the disciple and the other person as the guru, you receive a Dharma teaching, even the oral transmission of one or a few stanzas of teachings or of a few syllables of mantra, a Dharma connection is made. Once that is done, that person becomes the most powerful person in your life, more powerful than numberless buddhas. Therefore, a small disrespect, a small criticism or some other small harm in relation to the guru becomes the heaviest negative karma, heavier than doing the same thing to all the buddhas. And making a small offering, showing some small respect or offering some small praise or small service becomes the most powerful good karma, more powerful than having done the same thing to all the numberless buddhas.

So, it’s a dependent arising. Why is fire hot and can burn? Why does the wind blow things? It’s their nature, and it’s a dependent arising. Their nature exists in dependence upon cause and conditions. That is why fire burns. Each phenomena has its own nature; it’s a dependent arising. The moment you make a Dharma connection with someone, even by receiving the oral transmission of a few syllables of mantra or a few stanzas of teachings, with this recognition that you are the disciple and the other person is the guru, that person becomes the most powerful one in your life. So, it’s a dependent arising. It came into existence through dependent arising.

Again, I don’t remember from where I came to reach this point. What I wanted to say originally was about how phenomena are created by your mind, how things come from your mind. First, I’m trying to tell you about the immediate way in which whatever you have contact with at this time—forms, sounds, smells, tastes and tangible objects—is a creation of your present mind. So, I mentioned the two disciples. One gave a positive label and made himself very happy, and he also collected so much merit. That’s right—the talk about powerful objects started from that. By appreciating his guru, he collected unbelievable merit. The other disciple gave a negative label on being given cold tea; it made him very upset and angry, and he then collected unbelievably heavy negative karma. So, my talk started from this last part.

You can meditate on this and find many examples of it in your life. It all depends on what label you apply. When you apply a positive label, it makes you happy. When you apply a negative label, it disturbs and upsets you. In reality, there’s nothing there to upset you, but your mind upsets you, or your mind makes you happy. Therefore, the best psychology to keep your life always happy is, no matter how many problems you have in your life, to think of the benefits of those problems. All problems have benefits, and by thinking of their benefits, you apply a positive label to them, and that then that makes you happy. In this way you can keep your mind in happiness twenty-four hours a day. This is the best psychology, the best meditation.

“Due to all the merits of the three times collected by me and merits of the three times collected by others, may bodhichitta be actualized within my heart, in the hearts of all my family members and in the hearts of all sentient beings, especially in the hearts of the world leaders and in the hearts of all the people of the different religions.”

Please pray for this.

“Jang chhub sem chhog rin po chhe…..

“Due to all the merits of the three times collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may I achieve Lama Tsongkhapa’s enlightenment and lead all sentient beings to that enlightenment by myself alone.”

Think that all those things are merely imputed by the mind.

So, gracias.