Second Discourse: Sunday Afternoon

This morning I talked about how when you have a pleasurable experience you are happy, and when you have an unpleasant experience you are unhappy. I said that this was wrong. You must be scared now; this must seem completely unusual for you, totally unrealistic.

Western people think that it is natural to show appreciation when you are happy, “Oh, I am happy,” and when you are uncomfortable to just say, “I am uncomfortable.” That seems natural for Westerners, but Buddhism says that this is a wrong conception, so what to do? This monk is making you angry now instead of making you happy!

Okay, now I have to explain this unusual concept. This is what happens: In a situation where we experience pleasure, we grasp; we grasp and we won’t let go. Is this the experience of Swedish people or not? When you have a pleasurable experience, does your mind start craving and grasping instead of just having the experience of pleasure and then letting go? That is the problem.

When you feel unpleasant, when you are in an unpleasant situation, then again you crave. You crave to be free, “I want to be free of this!” Again you are craving.

When you are experiencing neither pleasure nor pain but are medium, sluggishly comfortable, you have no wisdom and again you crave, you crave for the sluggishness to vanish. Again you are craving.

This is the situation, so what to do? Cry? I am sure you have heard that Lama Je Tsongkhapa said: “Wherever you are in samsara, you never have happiness.” Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? What he meant was that what we think of as self-existent pleasurable experiences are not really happiness, they are not real happiness.

Lama Je Tsongkhapa gave this example: When you are hungry, you are suffering. If you don’t eat when you are hungry, the hunger becomes greater and the hungry feeling of pain gets bigger and bigger, doesn’t it? Then when you begin to eat, you stop the hungry feeling and you call that happiness: “Oh, now I am happy.” Just stopping the hungry feeling is called happiness. Are we communicating or not? Not communicating? It doesn’t sound right?

You call eating happiness, but what is really making you happy is the fact that you are stopping the suffering of hunger. Just stopping the strong hungry feeling is the reason for saying, “Now I am happy, now I am comfortable.” Communicating or not? Yes!

Do you think that is happiness? Just stopping the strong hungry ghost feeling, is that happiness or not? That is the real question, isn’t it? Okay, this section of people, do you think that just stopping the strong hungry feeling by beginning to eat is happiness or not? No? Okay, all right, think about it. This is just a scientific way of talking, not some religious thing, so what do you think? Now I have to ask the other section of people: just stopping the strong hungry feeling means a happy life or not? (Someone says, “Temporarily.”) Temporarily? And you, what do you say? (“No.”) No? You are right.

Normally I ask these Buddhist questions to children, young Western children, they answer PAM! like that. They give the right answer. When I ask Western adults they go like this! (screwing up his nose) Right, so why? For what reason? Okay, you don’t have to answer, that is good enough. Thank you, all right.

Then also Lama Je Tsongkhapa gave these simple, very down-to-earth examples. We should have a down-to-earth understanding rather than just spacing out. He said that when you are very hungry and you begin to eat, the pleasure of beginning to eat is on the way to pain. Doesn’t this make sense to you? To me it makes sense: when I begin to eat my dinner, to begin with there is always a sort of pleasure; but after eating I become uncomfortable—unfortunately, I must be a greedy monk! Anyway, it always becomes uncomfortable.

This is very simple. In the beginning there is pleasure, and you call it pleasure. In other words, that pleasure is your projection. Remember this morning we talked about projections: you project that something is happiness, you give it the name ‘happiness’, but it leads to pain. This is just an example of how for most of us whatever we consider to be pleasurable, any condition, leads to misery.

Here’s a good example: In the West when people marry, they go on holiday, for a honeymoon; that is the Western custom. One day they marry, the next day they go on holiday to the beach or something like that—and after one week they crash! After one week the marriage is finished. There are many people like that. I do know people like that.

Okay, I won’t make many examples, there are many good examples in the West, plenty of them—every Western pleasure. Going to the beach, for example, I am sure all of you have been to the beach this year. You stay at the beach; after one hour you are burnt and uncomfortable. You made up your mind beforehand that going to the beach meant happiness, but the result is that physically you feel unhappy and mentally you feel bored. Myself too. Before I came to Europe, I was in California and my students invited me to go to the beach. So I went to the beach and took off my things and got burnt here (Lama points to his back). I got burnt too much here, in this area, and then I felt very uncomfortable. For a few days it felt burnt out just here and it hurt just to wear this (Lama’s robes).

It is the same for all of us. Everything that we consider to be pleasure actally leads to misery. We say, “Yes, the beach is pleasure,” but really and truly it is misery. Temporal pleasures lead to big misery because we believe them to be concrete pleasures; but, in fact, this is just a concept that we have built up. We have wrong conceptions: we hold onto miserable situations as being happy situations, and we hold onto non-self-existent situations as being self-existent and concrete. They are impermanent, but we hold onto them as permanent entities, so we are full of wrong conceptions. That is why we are unrealistic; we are hallucinating, putting big history bubble projections on every experience and not really being in touch with or seeing things as they really are.

Seeking the truth, seeking reality, means just observing one’s own experience of life, one’s own view of life. That is good enough. If you hold on to your concrete concepts of your experiences of pleasure or pain as self-existent, then you are just seeking liberation like this: “I want to be liberated, I want to know reality, I want to know the truth. Maybe this Tibetan monk will show me the truth.” But there is no way to show you the truth. The truth is with you, the truth is always with you.

That is why in Buddhism it is so simple, extremely simple. Seeking the truth does not mean that we emphasize Buddha; we don’t emphasize truth being here or here (Lama points to some thangkas). We never emphasize that truth is here (the thangkas) or truth is Buddha. From a Buddhist point of view if you seek truth outside, if you seek the absolute somewhere outside, then it is hopeless, there is no way you will solve your problem. No way.

The absolute or totality is within you. It is already with you from childhood, as soon as you are existent. There is no separation between the conventional you, the conventional truth of you, and the absolute truth. This fundamental union is already existent; it is just a matter of recognizing and comprehending it. That is why one should recognize that worldly pleasure or objects are your mental projection and hallucinated vision. It has to be, there is no choice, it is true. IT IS TRUE. You have to recognize this. Then you become more reasonable because you are more in touch with reality and open to reality rather than only clinging to fantasy.

Because we hold onto self-existent pleasure and self-existent pain, we have problems, we have partisanship: “My family is special; my children are special; my wife is special; my husband is special; the rest of the world is not so important.” What is important is “my family, my friends, and my country” and others are unimportant. You have dualistic concepts: strong attachment to some objects and strong rejection towards others.

Then how to be healthy? How can one be mentally healthy? To have one side strongly grasping and craving and the other side rejecting with hatred is not so healthy; one can never be happy, never. We are just hallucinating. We project one thing as an attachment object, another as a hatred object, another as an object of indifference. Then we try to organize things, but the situation just becomes confused.

Somehow we have to have true understanding of what happiness really means and true understanding of what unhappiness really means. One has to really know this and then act accordingly. Then you open your heart, when you touch reality you open your heart. When you are totally hallucinating, holding things as self-existent entities, there is no way to open your heart. There is no way. Even though you say bla, bla, bla, it doesn’t work.

We have to meditate. Meditation is no joke; it is a serious job. Meditation means somehow making space and penetrating reality, eliminating gross preconceptions. Eliminating superficial preconceptions, superficial superstition. Okay?

Here’s a good example: In the West people think that religion or Buddhism or whatever is superstition. This is common in the Western world. It is like in Greek history there are many superstition gods. In the Greek religion there were many gods; that is European history. Did everybody here learn about that or not? Okay. They say this is superstition, right? In the same way I don’t reject your culture or what you say, but at the same time you hold on to such small experiences as self-existent pleasure or pain. From a Buddhist point of view, this mind and this way of thinking are superstition. Superstition, all right?

As Lama Je Tsongkhapa said: In the beginning when you eat, you have pleasure —“Oh, pleasure. Oh, pleasure.” Lama Je Tsongkhapa thinks that this is superstition. Just stopping the hungry feeling is not pleasure. Conventionally you call this pleasure, but it is not really happiness. Most of us experience pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pain, pain, pain. We all label things happy or unhappy, but happy and unhappy are just fantasy; it is only our superstitious mind projecting and putting labels on things. That is all. It is not true happiness.

I am only talking about this intellectually, but meditation helps you to experience this. When you meditate, you can see all your daily actions, all these things, and you know that something is not right; you naturally know. That is why meditation is helpful for you to see that the superficial, superstition lifestyle doesn’t really have any value. You realize it is so superficial. Meditation helps you to go deeper, to touch the depths of your own nature and activate your deepest wisdom.

Now you can understand why Atisha said what he did. Normally we do some kind of religious activity, meditation or other things; but in all these religious activities, we do not really catch the superstitious dancing. We don’t touch this; we don’t catch it.

Superstition is dancing, like folk-dancing, but you don’t see that. You just meditate, meditate, meditate. “Oh, so nice! I see such nice things, such nice colors” (showing a blissed out expression). But superstition and all the junk of ego are dancing. They are completely occupying your entire mechanism. They are running all the time, and you never catch them. In meditation you should be catching them.

So then when you realize this, you slow down naturally. But until you understand this, until you comprehend what is going on, the superstitions just continue dancing. That is why if we really truly want to solve our problem, religious activity is not enough. You have to be questioning and, when something happens, sit back, instead of running around and worrying, just sit back and make a calm clear analysis of what is going on inside your mind.

That way you can catch the chicken aspect of your attitude. The chicken is running ka ka ka ka ka. So you catch your chicken mentality, “Oh, here’s a chicken” (pretending he is catching a running chicken). Then there’s a snake running—you catch that one too. Then there’s a pig running—and you catch it. Then transformation really comes; real transformation comes. Otherwise, we are still joking. We are not really serious.

Let’s say your best friend comes to your house in wintertime in Sweden and says, “Hey, how are you? We must go to Greece for a holiday. It’s so cold and miserable here. Greece is a very happy place for a holiday, and there’s a beach!” If you have understanding, you begin to question in a skeptical way. Question what he says instead of saying “Yes, yes, you are right.,” going on like that. Listen to everything your friend says and then question your friend. You question everything. You don’t just jump into every situation, swallowing everything your friend says. That is very important. A serious seeker, a true seeker, must be someone who questions even what their dearest friend says.

You think I am a very hard man? Yes, I am but I am not worried about it! Anyway, I am not a hard man, but I think I wish I was a hard man. I remember Lama Je Tsongkhapa gave this example: When Shakyamuni Buddha was meditating for six years in Bodhgaya, some ladies came and put perfumes on this part of his body. Then another day, some anti-people cut him with a knife while he was meditating. But for Buddha it was completely the same thing whether a lady put perfume on him with much love or someone cut him with a knife. Do you understand? This is a good example. But maybe it is too much for you. Anyway since Lama Je Tsongkhapa said it, there is a great blessing in it.

I feel that this is a good example to illustrate what we are talking about. Since we are Western oriented, it is difficult for us to understand that when we have pleasure we should not appreciate it, isn’t it? In other words, I am saying that when you have a pleasurable experience you shouldn’t appreciate it, you shouldn’t grasp. So you people think that when someone gives you pleasure, you shouldn’t appreciate it, and when someone gives you pain, you shouldn’t necessarily show any emotional resistance although maybe you feel that way.

It is true that when someone comes and says, “Oh poor monk, you have no pleasure. You never have any experience of pleasure,” and they put incredible Western perfumes on you, or when someone says, “Oh, you are a terrible monk, a selfish monk. You are a bad guy like a monkey, a tiger, a pig, a chicken.” Somehow when someone says and does these things, there are two things that go on inside us that we somehow have to control.

It is difficult for us to control the mind, isn’t it? It is difficult which is why we are deluded. When someone comes to put perfume on us we say, “Oh yes, yes! That is right. Thank you so much.” It may be rubbish, you know, and lead to great misery! When someone says to you truthfully, “You look like a chicken,” it can be true. In one way, in one part of my mind, I look like a chicken, so it can be helpful.

This example is helpful for us. It shows that when someone gives you a little bit of a difficult time maybe that is not necessarily bad, and it is not necessary to hold onto that angrily as a self-existent entity. And when someone tries to give you great pleasure, love, or money, it is not necessarily good; it can make you degenerate, damage all your values, lose your ethics, and mentally degenerate.

I think this example is clean-clear. What I am actually saying is that when someone gives you pleasure or you receive pleasure, don’t grasp! Don’t think, “Oh, something very special is happening.” Just let go. And when something a little bit unpleasant happens, it is not necessary sensitively to reject it. Recognize any painful or pleasurable experience in the world concerning your life as your own projection, your own label, your own superstitious mind’s label. You should recognize that as hallucinated, then it is no longer so painful. It helps to control the emotions, to balance them.

This is very important for all of us, very important. We are always up and down, up and down, over some small thing— especially with relationships. Let me make an example: Suppose your wife gives you, her husband, chocolate every day. Then one day she forgets to buy chocolate and you are so hurt, “Oh, since we were married five years ago, she has been giving me chocolate every day. Today she stopped—something must really be going on!” You interpret it in such a nonsense way when in reality it is unimportant, totally unimportant. This is the way all human relationships are built up, can you imagine? I mean, this is just an example. She supports you mentally and physically for five years, then one day she doesn’t give you any chocolate and you completely destroy all these things. Do you think this is reasonable?

It is selfish, completely selfish, completely superstition, isn’t it? We build up human relationships, they are completely relative. But we don’t realize that this is all relative, conventional, that one day the chocolate must stop anyway. I think so.

What I want to say is this: Remember this morning I talked about when you have a little bit of pleasure, you become uncontrolled, sensitively happy, which is wrong, and when you are a little bit unhappy, you self-sensitively reject, but that is also no good? Well, this was a new concept for you and that is why I have explained it a bit more.

I think it is very important for us to understand this. We are always nonsense. We try to be sense but always we become nonsense and meet problem after problem after problem, repeatedly. That is why we have to take a middle way.

In Buddhism we talk about the middle way. The middle way means you have to adjust a little instead of sensitively overestimating things or sensitively underestimating. This is no good. Anyway, both are deluded, both are superstition, so you have to recognize this. Better to follow a middle way. When somebody gives you much love, say, “Please don’t give so much love,” and when someone gives you a very bad time, with hatred, think that maybe they are a good teacher. They could be a manifestation of Guru Shakyamuni. That is true, so you shouldn’t necessarily feel a strong rejection.

Okay, now actually I am becoming a criminal! I am supposed to talk about renunciation, aren’t I? I should be talking about the three principals or something like that. That is my job—I am not doing my job!

Now, renunciation. Actually what I have been talking about from this morning up to now has been renunciation. As I said before, renunciation does not mean that you renounce your nose—remember? Or that you give up your ear or your hand. Renunciation means that you slow down your clinging and grasping. That way renunciation really happens, true renunciation comes.

I did not mention renunciation at first because then you people would get scared. If you want me to say something then in my opinion you should give up complicated relationships. In the twentieth century we make complicated relationships between us human beings, very complicated relationships. I hope we are communicating? In other words we don’t have natural relationships between men and women, student and teacher, or whomever. They are not natural relationships.

What do you think about what I am saying? I think it may be very strange for you. In my opinion nowadays men and women have very complicated relationships, not so natural. Maybe I am fantasizing? Teachers and students have complicated relationships. It’s the same with everything somehow; we also build up a complicated relationship with society. The relationship between Swedish people and Swedish society is very complicated. All these complicated relationships make us so irritable and so deluded that it increases attachment and increases hatred. Yes, that is all. I think maybe I am crazy, I don’t know. So what to do?

I think if I had to explain how our relationships are complicated it would take me months and months. I think I have to stop here, but you have to figure this out. Tibetan style is that we give the students a job to work out, to investigate. We give a big job that will take a lifetime, something to research; so this is what you have to work out.

To some extent I can say that if it is completely not possible to have peace in a relationship, not possible to have happiness, if you feel that way, you should just cut. Communicating? If it is too complicated and impossible to have a happy atmosphere every day, then I think it is better to give up that situation. Communicating or not?

Of course renunciation can be explained in many different ways. From a practical point of view, for example, I am sure all of you have heard that in Buddhism we have precepts for monks and nuns, and for lay people. That is one way of renouncing situations. There are the five precepts of not killing, not stealing, not telling lies, not committing sexual misconduct, and not becoming intoxicated.

Another way of renouncing complicated situations is to recognize that your mind is linked with hatred, desire, and grasping. You recognize that your mind is connected in such a way with such actions and that these cause the problems. It is not just something physical but also mental— you realize that grasping and keeping old habits leads to mental pain. Realizing this is another way of renouncing complicated situations.

The true way, real renunciation comes from seeing all worldly pleasure as vomit. You see all situations of worldly pleasure as vomit, then real renunciation comes.

I want you to understand another thing: We talked about problems and grasping and said that these things are artificial concepts of the ego—they are not the absolute character of the human being. These things are like waves on an ocean or lake when the wind blows over it. All the complications happen as soon as you start grasping sensitively. Normally we say, “Oh…” then we say, “No…” then we say, “Yeah….” All these things are like waves; they are not the real character of your consciousness. That is why Buddhism says that human beings have the quality of purity as their nature. If we leave the mind in its natural state, it is pure. If we allow it to function, we have a pure state of consciousness. But at the moment we are too windy, so our experience is always like this (showing big waves). Strong attachment comes, and we fly like this, then a hatred wave, then a grasping wave, then again an angry wave (showing bigger waves). All this is like the waves on an ocean. When a big wave comes, we get carried away; we have no control. Okay? This is so simple, it’s a very simple thing.

This morning we meditated on OM for two or three minutes. Then from the OM much white radiating light energy comes. Do you think white radiating light energy exists scientifically or not in your body? No? I am asking you. No? (“No.”) Really? There is no electricity light inside your body and brain? I am surprised about that!

Most Western people know that inside our body we have light. We can show you with scientific equipment how much light we have. Next time you go to school, ask your teacher, okay?

That is the problem, you see. He has light, but still he says that he has no light. Scientifically he is overwhelmed. Even so, it is true that you are only visualizing it. But if you do this meditation, even if you don’t feel that you have any negativity or consciously you don’t feel that you have any problems, it will still be effective for you. You do not need to believe it—just do it and something happens; transformation happens. The mind becomes lighter. Then stop the OM sound and just be whatever experience is present in your consciousness. Just be whatever is there without any intellectual conversation. Just let go.

I want you to do the same thing in tonight’s meditation with the red radiating light AH here (indicating the throat area). Normally our speech is out of control. Out-of-control speech comes from the mind. The mind is making things difficult, so we have to control it somehow. Visualize the red radiating light and the AH sound completely radiating light energy throughout your entire body again, so that all uncontrolled energy is purified. Some transformation happens. After two or three minutes stop saying AH. When you stop, don’t intellectualize; just penetrate whatever experience is present and be aware.

Just stay in a state of mindfulness, not reacting to anything. Even if you feel you are full of negative thoughts, it is very good to penetrate without conversation. Even negative thoughts are clean-clear, like a part of an ocean, part of clean-clear energy. In Tibetan we call this sal.zhing rig.pa. Sal means ‘clear,’ zhing means ‘and,’ and rig.pa means ‘seeing’. So the nature of thought, the consciousness, and the nature of the mind is clear and seeing: even if you are seeing a hallucinated vision, you are still seeing something, aren’t you? And its own nature is clear.

As much as possible be clean-clear without a sleeping mind or sluggishness and without intellectual thought or distraction. Just let go. Even if you feel nothing, that is very good—nothing is much better than being full of garbage thinking! Logically! Just let go. If you are nothing, with no vision, no color, no thinking, just be aware and stay in that state of nothingness. You are just aware; that is good enough.

When you stay in a natural state of mind, it automatically stops artificial concepts, so naturally you experience great emptiness. Instead of being scared and thinking, “Now I am experiencing nothingness. I am going so far away from reality because I feel nothingness,” recognize that experience as good. Normally we run away from reality because we have so much fantasy hallucinated worldly grasping. But this time, by staying in a natural state, all these concepts that are usually so busy slow down and disappear for the moment. If you feel as if you are disappearing, just disappear away. Don’t be afraid of that; feel strong comprehension. “Now I am starting to touch reality.” Okay? Disappearing has more to do with reality than when you feel reality so much and grasp. Communicating or not? Do you understand what I mean?

Normally we have so much, and we grasp on to it and feel, “Oh, I have so much, now I have everything.” We think this way in order to compromise, to be satisfied; we feel that this is reality. This time we feel the opposite—nothingness. This body full of junk is breaking down, and even you yourself disintegrate and disappear. This is much more in touch with reality, so comprehend and penetrate the experience with intensive awareness. Let go as much as possible. Don’t intellectualize, just experience with intensive awareness. That’s all. Then you will have inner satisfaction, inner calm and clear, the inner experience of satisfaction. This inner satisfaction is the guarantee of renunciation. The opposite of renunciation is preoccupation with external working and external looking—constantly looking for something and grasping.

This time the emphasis is not on something outside. We are not visualizing an outside object. We are intensively aware of the state of our own mind. Actually, that is the direct way to cut the symptom of the human problem. That is what I feel. That is why this time we are going to do it this way. Thank you so much.