Third Discourse: Monday Morning
Since yesterday we have all been trying as much as possible to leave the mind in a natural state of intensive awareness. We are trying to do this so that we can see our mental sickness, our mental illness. By leaving the mind in a natural state, we can discover the many heavy blankets of egotistic mind and superstitious mind, and we can discover them through our own experience. If we don’t go into this natural state, we cannot see our problem, especially the root of our problem.
At the moment we are deluded. We think only in a superficial way and regard suffering conditions as pleasure. We don’t realize how deluded we are. So when we try to solve our problems it is like having the skin disease eczema. When you scratch, like this, you get blissful pleasure; but when you stop scratching, then it is like fire.
Let’s say that I meditated yesterday and today. I leave the mind in its natural state just one time, for a couple of minutes. That one time is enough to see that there is a lot of confusion there. If once is enough, why should I continue to meditate when I finish this meditation course? Why should I meditate again and again?
When a person who has a disease goes to the hospital and the doctor gives them medicine, does the disease go away after taking the medicine two or three times? Yes? Does cancer finish after taking medicine two or three times? No way! It is the same thing. We have to go into the natural state again, again, again, again, again, again.
Repeated meditation and experience is very important. Many of you may already have had fantastic, blissful experiences of great peace and calm. I am sure you have had some experience of this already—no? But a superstitious wind always comes; a tornado comes and interrupts the experience, and you cannot get that experience back again. That is how it is. Are we communicating or not?
We have all had some good experiences, very pleasant, peaceful, balanced experiences from time to time. Yet because there is so much superstition wind and wrong conception wind, the wrong conception tornado comes along and whoosh! away it goes. You cannot bring that state back again. That is why repeatedly staying in the natural state is important so that you confirm that experience again and again until you reach the deepest fundamental reality of yourself.
Generally, I am sure all of you Swedish people consider that you are healthy people. I am sure you are all considered healthy people: maybe your body is healthy, I am not going to discuss that, but the problem is whether we have a healthy mind. Even though we are normal, not having any mental illness or sickness, still we have the seeds of madness, confusion, and disorder. They are there right now even though we seem to be healthy. That is why we should go into the natural state, then we can see clean-clear the way that we are really sick and how we are covered with heavy superstition blankets. You can see this clearly; which is why it is essential to leave the mind in a natural state of intensive awareness and let go.
By discovering your heavy blankets of superstition and wrong conceptions, you gain strong energy to mediate and strong will to put your life into the right livelihood, the right direction. You know your own problems and become sympathetic towards other people as well. By leaving your mind in a natural state, you gain wisdom-knowledge. You realize that other people also have heavy blankets of ego projections, and you understand. You feel sympathetic, and you begin to feel loving kindness and compassion.
When we feel this way, we say, “I want to be happy and liberated from my complicated mind. But who or what can liberate me?” From the Buddhist point of view God can’t liberate you, Buddha can’t liberate you, and a monk can’t liberate you. The liberation is you. You, your clean-clear state of knowledge-wisdom and your loving kindness, which understands other people’s heavy blanket, their superstition egotistic problems. This is how you truly begin to be liberated; this is the way of taking refuge.
Do you understand now? Buddhadharma is the refuge object, isn’t it? Buddhadharma liberates you from depression and from dissatisfaction. How? The question is how. Buddha shows you the method for entering into the natural state. He shows you how to gain wisdom-knowledge, how to gain love, universal love. You actualize these and fertilize them, making them bigger and bigger and bigger. You take care of your wisdom flower and your loving kindness flower by nourishing them so that they grow.
The more wisdom you gain, the more you touch reality, and the more you develop loving kindness, the more you are eliminating dissatisfaction and loneliness at the same time. That is the way to take refuge. Otherwise, even if Guru Shakyamuni were to come to Sweden and suddenly put a jug of water on top of your head and say a mantra to purify your heavy blanket of superstition, Buddha could not wash it away, you know. That is not Buddha’s style.
Taking refuge in Buddhadharma is important. Why? When you are restless and take a pill, you are only taking a temporal solution for your mental illness. When they become nervous, many people take a tranquilizer, don’t they? The restless mind takes refuge in a tranquilizing pill. This is not the professional way of taking refuge; it does not solve the problem. You have had some experience of reaching the clean-clear state by your own strength and of seeing with clarity what your relative problems are and the absolute state that you can achieve. Therefore, now you need determination. Then you will discover that the ultimate refuge is Dharma, which is wisdom and great compassion, great love. This is the true path, true Dharma. This is the way to elevate yourself. Self-pity-ignorant temporal solutions cannot elevate you. They lead nowhere. They just make you more dull.
That is why determination is very important. It gives you strength. When you have a good experience, you should confirm it inside your mind. You need confirmation and determination. You think: “This is the way I should solve the problems of my life. I am not going to take ultimate refuge in this fruit. I may take temporal refuge in this fruit; I may eat it and stop the hungry ghost feeling. But the ultimate refuge is something that brings everlasting satisfaction, and that comes through Dharma, through Buddha’s teaching. Buddha himself discovered great wisdom, great compassion, and great love through his own wisdom light. So this is the way I can help myself.” Make a strong determination.
Then when you become a little bit irritated or down, you will have the energy to find your own way of solving the problem, instead of saying: “Hello, please help me! Oh, oh, oh....” You will become your own doctor, your own psychiatrist.
Dharma means being in touch with reality, with the wisdom and loving kindness that is already within you. Dharma is the means by which you make these bigger, bigger, bigger. You are able to feel, “I am now at this stage, but from here I can go on further and further and further. I can see that there is a way of reaching indestructible satisfaction in my mind. I can achieve this.”
This everlasting satisfied state of consciousness could be called the Buddha stage, in a loose way. You feel you are on the path that leads in that direction: “Now my heart is closed much of the time, but I can open it up and develop it completely. I can become liberated.” You make the connection; you can see your five stages—maybe you are on the second stage now, but you can see how you can go all the way to liberation. “Yes, I can become healthier and healthier, more and more open, more and more satisfied, less confused, less covered by superstition blankets and less egotistic. I can develop this way.”
You can see how you can progress because you are already somewhere on the path. It is important to feel this instead of thinking, “I am hopeless, I am totally hopeless. I am ignorant. I am a disaster.” If you think, “I am a disaster,” the rest of you becomes disastrous because you believe that you are disastrous. That is not true. You do have wisdom; you do have love; you do have compassion—already! You just have to fertilize these a little to make them grow bigger and bigger and bigger.
It is important to know this. You should not interpret yourself as a hassle. Does science say human beings are creatures? No? That sounds like an animal to me. Are creatures animals or not? Do you know? To me it sounds like having a low opinion of the human being. If they are like creatures then they are like worms. From a Buddhist point of view there is a big difference between a worm and a human being.
From a Buddhist point of view, the human being is completely distinct from creatures and has a highly developed consciousness. The human being has developed a higher level of wisdom and a higher level of loving kindness. You should recognize this and not think, “I am like a pig. I am like a chicken. I am like a snake.” That is not true because you do have something different. You have some quality that has to be recognized.
In the West when you become a doctor or you have a birthday or something special, people are aware, and they congratulate you. You keep a note of the date, everything is special, and you write it all down. But when you have some experience of liberation, there are no congratulations. It seems as if, “Well, nobody cares so I don’t care either.” My point is that when you have some experience of gaining knowledge, reaching the clean-clear stage, at that time you should confirm it. Put a seal on it. That is the time to make a note of the date and time and feel that it is something very special. It seems to me that that experience leading towards liberation is of more value than having a samsaric birthday or the congratulations you receive when you become a nurse or whatever.
Anyway, you understand what I mean. My point is that when you have any experience, confirm it, make it valuable, and develop determination. You need strong determination so as not to lose it when the tornado comes, remember? All right. When the superstition tornado comes, it destroys many valuable experiences. That’s all.
It is like athletics. Nowadays people spend months and months and years—some even dedicate their lives—training themselves to jump. First they jump a little bit, then a little bit higher, then even higher. They are encouraged because each time they experience progress, they become more determined. Through experience comes more and more determination. Then they become convinced that they can win the competition. Because they have some experience, they become more and more convinced.
It is the same for us. We are doing athletics inside. When we meditate, we are in an athletic competition with the ego and the natural state of consciousness. This is our competition, isn’t it? We have to be completely scientific and analyze the situation thoroughly. Each time you experience the strong clean-clear state and clearly see the superficial covers, you have experienced the most precious, valuable experience. So think about it. Seriously, this is something we should congratulate ourselves for. Congratulate yourself in your room. You can talk to yourself saying, “Oh yes, this is the way….” Your neighbor will think you are crazy because you are talking to yourself! But sometimes it is useful. I think that is the best thing you can do.
So there are two ways of taking refuge. Temporally you take refuge in food, clothes, and money, but that is not the ultimate self-sufficient method. The ultimate refuge means that you are working out something inside you, developing your own inner wisdom, compassion, and love. There is taking ultimate refuge and taking superficial refuge; these two things are going on at the same time in your life. It is important.
The longer you stay in the natural state of clean-clear intensive awareness, the more you will understand about samsara and nirvana, and the more you will see that the selfish attitude of attachment to oneself is the source of human problems. You discover this just by being in the clean-clear state. And for example, you discover why you cried last year when your girlfriend left. You discover why you cried. If you don’t stay in the clean-clear state, you won’t even know why you cried!
If you ask superficially, “Why did I cry last year when my girlfriend left?” the answer is going to be, “Because I love her.” Isn’t it? That is the normal answer, but that is almost a lie. You are almost lying because what you are really saying is, “Because my self-cherishing thought is attached to her.” That is the truth. It concerns me; it is something that I am losing; that is why I am crying. That is the real truth, not “I love her, so I’m crying.” That is not true.
From a Buddhist point of view, we know clean-clear what love is: love means wishing other people to have pleasure, wishing other people to have a good time. That is love. When you lose your girlfriend and you cry, that doesn’t mean that you feel sympathetic towards your girlfriend and wishing that she have a good time, that she have pleasure. Actually, you are just concerned with the fact that you are not having a good time. It is completely the opposite.
When you are in the clean-clear state, the natural state, you can see that your self-cherishing thought, your attachment, is making you cry, making you miserable, making you lonely, making disorder. Through this experience, you understand clean-clear, and by being in a clean-clear state of mind, you have more loving kindness for others. You think, “I look a disaster. My self-cherishing thought and my attachment are making me cry like a baby. I am like a baby. I am hopeless. Look at me, look at my state. Really! Just like me many other people have so much suffering, so many deluded concepts. They are not in touch with reality, not able to go into the clean-clear state.” You feel sympathy; you begin to have real compassion and real love. You wish that they could abandon their confusion and stay in a happy state of mind. Buddhists call this bodhicitta.
Citta means the heart: in your heart, you keep space for other people and feel sympathy, wishing them to reach ultimate happiness rather than being caught up in attachment and selfish confusion. That is what we call bodhicitta. So you can see that meditation produces loving kindness and bodhicitta, because you recognize other people’s problems.
When you are meditating, try to stay in the clean-clear state; when the winds start coming—the attachment wind comes, the desire wind comes, and the ego-problem comes—and you are unable to stay in that clean-clear state of jet consciousness, just look at the situation. Don’t cry and say, “Oh, how terrible my state is! Too much wind! Today there is an incredible tornado inside my mind, and I cannot go into the calm, clear state.” Instead of crying, think that there are millions of people like that and then feel real compassion.
First look at your own experience, then put this experience on others: “There are a lot of people like me.” In that way, lots of compassion comes, and you remain in that state of loving kindness, of sympathetic feeling for other people. Stay in that state, and it becomes meditation on bodhicitta.
That is bodhicitta meditation. Whatever clean-clear energy you have left over, send it to other people and take on all their problems—cancer, disorder, dissatisfaction, and loneliness energy—in the form of black smoke that enters your heart. You exchange your clarity for their darkness.
This is very useful because normally it is characteristic of our attachment that we try to avoid bad things. We try to avoid cancer, bronchitis, disease. We try as much as possible to avoid any kind of unpleasant situation because of our attachment and our selfishness. But when we are unable to stay in that cleanclear state of consciousness, then we should feel real love for other people and send out our energy, our good energy, with white radiating light to all people. Then we take back their difficulties and loneliness into our heart as though they were black smoke or a bad smell entering our heart. Do this with sincerity gained from your own experience. This is what we call bodhicitta meditation.
Literally, bodhi means “open,” “totally open,” and citta means “heart,” so bodhicitta means having an open heart. This is very important to know. In the West we also talk about having an open heart; there is this expression.
There are many different ways of having an open heart; in this sense, however, having an open heart means recognizing that selfish attachment puts you in a concentration camp. It is like being in a Jewish concentration camp—there is no way to get out. You are trapped behind iron bars and one, two, three rows of fences. You cannot escape. Similarly, attachment and the selfish attitude are like iron bars—they are so painful, so painful, so tight, so tight, so tight.
The iron bars of attachment are like this (strapping his mala around his wrist). Attachment is wrapped around like this, many times, tight, tight, tight. The heart is completely tied up with attachment. Really, this is true. I really want you to check up right now, this moment. Attachment is so painful, so painful. It is like a knife, like a sword in your heart—do you understand? So unbelievably uncomfortable, twenty-four hours, every day.
Attachment and selfishness are so uncomfortable—it doesn’t matter where you go. If you go to the seaside, your attachment comes with you, your selfishness comes with you—so uncomfortable. If you go to the mountains, hiking, your attachment comes with you, your selfishness comes with you—so uncomfortable. Then maybe you go to church and your selfishness and attachment come with you. There is no place you can go to be free. It is so painful, so incredibly painful!
Because we have attachment and selfishness, we are always paranoid. You people are not paranoid? Paranoid means you are always thinking, “Maybe she is taking advantage of me, I’d better be careful.” Or, “Maybe he is taking advantage of me, I should be careful.” You understand? You are always paranoid, thinking that society is taking advantage of you—your boss is taking advantage of you; your mother is taking advantage of you; your father is taking advantage of you; your girlfriend is taking advantage of you; your boyfriend is taking advantage of you; your husband is taking advantage of you; or the Tibetan monk is taking advantage of you. You know what I mean? The police are taking advantage of you; Jesus is taking advantage of you…!
You have so much fear, so much unnecessary fear. Perhaps you think I am exaggerating, but this is how it is, I tell you! I am not exaggerating. Somehow, as long as you have attachment and selfishness, you will always be uncomfortable, even when you are with your heart-friend, your loving kindness boyfriend, your husband, your girlfriend, your kindness mama or papa. You will never be comfortable because your self-cherishing thought is always with you, like a knife. For twenty-four hours a day, since you were born until now, your own knife is always with you, through your heart.
This is only my feeling. Maybe you people think I am a terrible man? Really, I feel this way. But when you begin to open up to others and have more trust for other people’s feelings, when you begin to think, “Other people are so kind; due to their kindness, I am surviving in this world. My mama is kind to have given me this body, my papa is kind, and I have food and clothes because somebody is working. So I survive. As a matter of fact, my life is completely and totally dependent on others. Others are the source of my pleasure.” Then, suddenly you even begin to breathe better.
When you become a little bit more open towards others, your breathing becomes better because it is your attachment that makes breathing so uptight. Because attachment and selfishness make you so uptight, your breathing becomes uptight. Look at the whole of Western society, that is a good example. Just look at Western society, how they build so many things and then become paranoid and worry about their property. You can see this for yourself. That is why attachment and the selfish attitude are such unbelievable human problems. You can see that it is really sick.
So it is very important as much as possible to recognize and to eliminate these human problems. As I said before, when you lose your boyfriend, you cry because you are selfish. If the Soviet Union were to occupy Swedish territory, why do you think that would be? Because of selfishness! So you think that is fun? I’m joking. Okay. Swedish people becoming upset would also be selfish, unfortunately!
The whole reason we fight each other, all the conflict, everything comes from selfishness. Do you think that the reason we fight is to try and gain pleasure or not? Does it come from selfishness or not? If a husband and wife fight, it is because of selfishness, isn’t it? The wife says, “I’m not getting enough pleasure from you.” And the husband says, “I’m not getting enough pleasure from you.” Then they start complaining, bla bla bla bla. Every human relationship has something to do with selfishness: the selfish attitude and attachment.
In Western Europe you have always believed that revolution and industrialization were good for human society and that revolutionary machine work was something good for society. You decided that, and now you have it. Maybe I am just talking negatively because I am selfish, but as a matter of fact, the reason you have an unemployment problem is because you are so concerned to make money. Instead of paying human beings, you buy machines; you spend the money on machines so you can earn more. No? I’m not sure.
Are machines important, or are human beings important? As a consequence of this machinery revolution, so many people have become unemployed. Is there scientific evidence for this or not? Basically this comes from the selfish attitude. Scientific technology is good, but you have to get the right mixture. You make a mistake because your motivation is the selfish attitude. You don’t have to take me seriously, but that’s the way I think it is!
As our environment becomes more like a machine, we also reflect that in our human minds. We also become like machines and we lose our feelings, we lose our human quality: we think human beings are like machines. Let’s say she is seeking a job from me. I just treat her like a machine. When I ask her, “Are you healthy?” I am making sure all the mechanical things are working, as though she were a machine. If everything in her machinery is okay, I hire her. If her machinery is not so good, I will not hire her. That’s the way it is. There is very little human sympathy, unfortunately.
What we are saying is that the selfish attitude is so strong that it makes your entire life painful. All life’s problems come from the selfish attitude. Therefore, by staying in the clean-clear state of mind, you can see the problems that all people have, and you can then develop true loving kindness, true bodhicitta.
