Chenrezig Retreat07 Winter Retreat 2Venerable Thubten ChodronSravasti Abbey, Newport, WAJanuary 5, 2007Transcriber: Lyn Salmon

Q&A Session [Audio: 59 minutes]

This is our first question and answer session for the Chenrezig retreat. I had in mind, as in previous years that this would be a very informal kind of question and answer discussion session where you could share what has been happening in your meditation, any questions you have about the practice or about what has been coming up in your mind. Then at the end, I thought I would just begin to go through some of The Essence of Refined Gold.

It can be very helpful if you have some teachings at the same time that you’re doing retreat. That is why I thought also of making one of your sessions this year a study session. Are you finding that useful? It’s very nice because when you slow down, you don’t have so much external input then when you read you read things much more slowly, much more contemplatively. Then after that when you meditate you’re thinking about what you read and you can apply what you read to your meditation practice.

So, in terms of the sadhana, I’m assuming that everybody read and studied Cultivating a Compassionate Heart before the retreat; and that you will refer to it during the retreat for different things that come up. There’s a lot in there about distraction and different things. Whatever questions and doubts you have please feel free to ask them and especially what’s kind of coming up in your meditation that you feel it might be good to get some input on. Sometimes people feel and get very stressed out in an individual appointment. Then they also think, “Oh, this is such a big thing that’s happening, I can’t concentrate on my meditations, this is horrible.” And if you air it and bring it up in a discussion group like this, then you find everybody has the same question.

Ok, so I’ll turn it over to you for what you want to bring up in this first part of our session.

"Q" Your question is, that when you are doing the self-generation, you are thinking that it is your wisdom realizing emptiness that is manifesting in the form of the deity so then when you offer breakfast and lunch and medicine meal should you think of the food as the manifestation of your wisdom mind, and by extension, even the merit field that you are taking refuge in, is that a manifestation of your wisdom of great bliss that’s realizing emptiness?

The answer is yes. You want to think like that. And it’s something to contemplate because, first of all, we have so much the idea that what we perceive with our senses is out there totally unrelated to us. By thinking of it as a manifestation of the mind that

realizes emptiness, it helps to overcome that feeling that its objective out there, unrelated to our mind. Also when we think it’s the mind that is realizing emptiness that’s manifest like this; then, it’s like, you can’t think of the thing as inherently existent. It is a manifestation of the mind that is realizing that there is no inherent existence. And then third, seeing things in that way is a technique that helps you avoid having a lot of ordinary emotions towards stuff. You’re not going to get attached to the appearance of food that is by nature the blissful wisdom mind. Attachment is not a suitable response. So it helps you overcome those kinds of afflictions.

“Q” Then is it proper to try to connect with my own, to try to dissolve my sense of inherent existence of myself before I do that?

Yes. The whole sadhana, the whole Chenrezig practice if you’re doing the self-generation, is based on doing it in emptiness. That’s why you have the mantra “Om Svabhava Shuddha Sarva Dharma Svabhava Shuddho Ham” and the deity: the first deity, the deity of emptiness. And it’s important to spend time on that particular deity. That is the key to the whole thing.

“Q” Right, but that wasn’t my question. When I’m at the dinner table then should I do the same thing, is what I’m asking?

When you finish your session in there you again dissolve and reappear as a simple Chenrezig with one face two arms. It’s that Chenrezig who’s going to the dining room table. So that Chenrezig isn’t going to have ordinary cantaloupe. So it’s really kind of getting us to shift how we are perceiving things with our mental consciousness. Things still appear how they are now to our visual consciousness but to our mental consciousness we are thinking about them differently. It’s very important in light of this when you do the self-generation that you don’t think that it’s THIS body of flesh and blood that becomes Chenrezig. Uh, uh, THIS body has dissolved into emptiness; this flesh and bones body, this one that’s such a hassle? It’s finished in emptiness. There’s no inherently existing body there. So when you generate as Chenrezig, you don’t have bones, you don’t have muscles. What is it that’s hurting? You’re not thinking about that body because you’ve dissolved it into emptiness; and instead it’s your wisdom mind appearing in that part.

“Q” Can I do my next thing? Yesterday, I was really having this experience. I often use lam rim to do my motivation, but the bulk of the time right now I’m spending in that dissolution and then mind expansion. But, yesterday morning, in the second session, I started having that tightness in my chest. By the third session it was really painful. So I thought, ah, more purification, but I backed off and thought I should ask about that.

So you’re getting some pain in your chest?

“Q” Yes, it’s familiar. It’s the pushing pain. I don’t feel like I’m pushing, but I know it is.

Often we don’t feel like we are pushing, but we get some kind of sense of tightness here and that’s a warning signal that we just need to go more slowly. What could be happening is that in the meditation you’re paying too much attention to your heart chakra. Because when you think of the HRI at your heart chakra and you are sending out light and then, of course, enlightening all sentient beings; and then they are all just dissolving in, you could be just relating everything too much to your heart chakra in the center of your chest. That causes that kind of uncomfortable, achy feeling. If that’s happening, then take the attention off your heart chakra and focus more, let’s say, on the offerings. Don’t think of, “Oh, here’s this big offering. I’m offering a refrigerator and it’s coming out of my heart." (L) Its no wonder you have pain there. Just concentrate more on these clouds of offerings that you’re offering that are so beautiful. Imagine all the sentient beings receiving them and feeling so happy and becoming Buddhas and so on like that. And it’s also possible because sometimes when you’re meditating on emptiness, sometimes your attention automatically goes to your heart chakra too. That could cause that kind of uncomfortable feeling, so make sure that doesn’t happen. Don’t focus there so much.

“Q” I also had a thing coming up. I don’t know if it’s related, but towards the end of the day I started to get this to this edge that I relate to as nihilism. It's like this: I don’t want this to be true. I don’t want this to be the way things are. Like the stubborn part of me that thinks: I want things to be inherently existent, I want happiness to be eternal. I want relationships to last forever, I want food to be perfect and life would be perfect, you know.

So your question is, there’s a little bit of resistance.

“Q” Well, I didn’t realize that, there was the pain and then later last night this other thing came up and I thought," Uh oh."

Well, your mind is rebelling. I want things to be inherently existent. I want my happiness to come from these external people and things. I want this world to keep on being familiar even though it’s a hassle. I just want to tweak my samsara and make it a little bit better. But I don’t really want to change my mind because that’s just too much, or it’s too scary, or it’s not ME, or something’s going on. But give me a break! Can’t things just be inherently existent and permanent and all those other misconceptions that, on my good days, I’m trying to get rid of? Of course, the ego is resisting, fighting back.

Remember there was that part in Precious Garland when Khensur Rinpoche was teaching it? One of the early stanzas about how the child is still afraid when they here the teachings, but for the wise it’s a relief. So now you are understanding that verse. It’s good to understand when you see your mind fighting like that: "Oh, this is the childish mind." This is why it’s said that I need to accumulate positive potential so that I can do something with this childish mind. This is the reason why I need to keep on with this meditation. Gently, not pushing, but I don’t give up; because that’s the way I’m going to eventually deal with this childish mind. And then I think what’s helpful is to go back and think about how painful the ordinary view is: "Yes, I want my relationships to be permanent! To bring me happiness!" And then you look at your life and ask yourself,

"Have they?" "I want things to be inherently existent and I want the food to be good!" Well, where does that get me? When I sit there and whine all the time because I want the food to be like this, I don’t want it to be like that, does that make me happy?

The resistant mind comes up with these doubts, so you put up some resistance and throw the doubts back to that mind: You have your story; you’re making it out to be like this. Is that true? What happens if I believe in that version of reality? That the food is supposed to bring me everlasting happiness when I eat it; maybe not everlasting but at least a lot of pleasure. Where has that gotten me when I’ve followed that? Don’t get mad at yourself. And don’t run down the hill. You just stop and you look and say, "That Nagarjuna knew what he was talking about when he talked about the childish. Nagarjuna's some smart guy there." Maybe I better listen to some more of what he says and let’s ask this childish mind some questions.

In the retreat two years ago, Bo wrote this incredible letter about his non-negotiables. He was still incarcerated at the time. And that was his ego mind fighting the whole Dharma thing. He said, “I have my non-negotiables of what I definitely want in my life when I get out of prison!” And he went on and on. He was digging his heels in big time. So I kind of laid off. It was interesting when I saw him in Pasadena last year. Most of his non-negotiables he hadn’t done because he’d lost interest, or, if he did do them he saw that they really weren’t that great. He wasn’t so interested. He was coming to this conclusion that contentment is the best recipe for happiness.

So when your mind is resisting you ask it questions - but you have to be skillful. You don’t hit it with a sledgehammer - but you ask it questions, and test it out and check it out. That was what happened with Bo and his non-negotiables. His writing that sparked many discussions in our weekly meetings as everybody in the retreat wrote down their non-negotiables for their life: the things in their life that they absolutely could not do without, no way, they did not want to give those things up. It was really interesting because everybody had some similarities and also so many differences. People started questioning those. I remember Kathleen, she was saying about relationships and how important having the one special person was, and she began to ask, “What’s this thing about being special? What does that mean? Why do I want to be special to somebody and why do I want somebody to be special to me? What’s that all about?” I think it was quite good that she didn’t clobber it with a sledgehammer and fear, she didn’t buy into it; but she just said, “What’s that all about? What am I basing those thoughts and feeling on? Where’s that coming from? Where’s that view gotten me?” So this is the way you want to deal with these things when they come up.

“Q” You’re saying that you’re finding that when you have expectations that are unrealistic, or even if they’re realistic, and the thing doesn’t turn out that way, that that causes a lot of suffering. Right?

Yeah, that’s it. I think that that comes from both parts of what you’re saying. The second part of what you said was essentially the same as the first; that when there’s an

expectation that you’re going to be happy, and then you aren’t happy, then you’re angry or upset.

“Q” Well, the first one that really felt like it helped me to figure this out was that I remembered the thing that Atisha said, “Moderate goals, moderate activity, moderate concern for the outcome.” What I realized is that I had none of those. The goal was high; everything was high, high, high and suffering, suffering, suffering. It was just unworkable. So I really had to let that go and it seemed like it was based on this expectation. It seems like we’re always denying reality. We’re always thinking that everything should be fine. But what we find is there’s suffering around every corner.

Yeah, those two things go together.

“Q” What you’re saying is that you saw in the situation when you got upset was that you had high expectations, doing a lot of activity, a lot of attachment to the outcome, you got hit in the face because reality didn’t cooperate with what you thought it should do.

That’s the whole thing with expectations is it never turns out the way we think it should. We’re in samsara and so there is dukkha, there’s unsatisfactoriness, like you said, around every corner. Things don’t go the way we want. All the time they don’t go the way we want. We’re always expecting that they are going to. Not just expecting that they’re going to, but we’re very attached to their going to. And this is the problem, how our mind creates suffering for us because we have an expectation of how things should be, and we’re very attached to the outcome. That’s just a recipe for disappointment.

If you think, “Okay, here’s something that I hope to do”: there’s some daily activity. I’m trying to figure out this thing with the roof, and I want to get it figured out, and it would be nice to figure it out sooner rather than later. But chances are it’s not going to go according to my schedule. How can I make my mind happy doing this for however long it takes? I’m not going to stretch it out, because its not something I want to do during the whole retreat, but it might take more energy than I hope to put in. I’d like to resolve it with one phone call, it may take three or four or five. But how can I make my mind happy in doing what needs to be done? What I come to see all the time is it’s not the activity that’s making me unhappy; it’s my attitude towards the activity.

Remember I told you awhile back that I realized when I was in Singapore and my morning meditation I was just getting angry. Every morning there was anger in my morning meditation. I realized that this was exactly it. Whatever was happening”,” my mind would just be angry at it. It wasn’t the situation that was making me unhappy. It wasn’t the situation that was unworkable or too much. It was my angry mind that made me so miserable. Okay, then you have to work with the angry mind. Makes some sense?

“Q” So you’re saying you had a lot of negativity coming up the first few days. You found it much more helpful to sit down and meditate on the thought training and talk yourself through it. To see each situation that you were unhappy with that the karma to produce that unhappiness was now ripening and it was finishing. Thereby that gave you reason to

be joyful, because you felt like it was all this karma ripening and finishing and you're purifying. You found that a very helpful way to deal with the situations that were coming up.

That’s really good and that’s exactly what practicing Dharma means. It means working with whatever is coming up in our mind. At the beginning of retreat, it’s always good to expect that a lot of junk will come up. It’ll take a few weeks for your mind to settle down. Often what happens is there are all sorts of thoughts and feelings about stuff that’s been happening: I like this, I don't like that. You haven’t had enough time to work it out or you’ve worked it out but then it’s come up again or even you’ve settled it and its still come up again. You’ve just got to expect it because this is the way it’s going to be. It’s kind of like stuff just bubbling up, just junk, bubbling up. And so here it is and you work it out and you deal with it, and you let it go.

And it’s usually stuff with your daily life: "I like this person, I don’t like that person. Why do I have to do this? Why is that going on?" This kind of stuff. And so you spend a week or two working with that as it comes up and slowly your mind settles down and you can get more into the practice. Of course, at different times different things may come up even after the first few weeks. And things will come up big and you’ll have to work with them, but really expect that. That’s part of retreat to deal with all this stuff that’s coming up. The mind and all it’s complaints about everything.

That's going on all the time isn't it? The mind complaining about one thing. I mean this is just the way our mind works: "I like this, I want that, I want it to be this way, I don’t like that. Get that away from here. It shouldn’t be like this." But we’re usually so busy in our daily life that we aren’t even aware that this kind of stuff is going on. And then when you sit down and meditate, it’s like boy, the opinion factory is cranking them out. Then we begin to see how our mind is so reactive to everything. It’s like any little stimuli and our mind REACTS: "I like! I don’t like! Give me! Get it away!" This is just the samsaric mind. Isn’t that what just everybody is kind of going through? Practicing Dharma means exactly that, working with all that stuff that’s coming up and just say, “Okay, come on, come on, get out of those closets, we’re cleaning you out now.” And after a while you learn to laugh at it a bit.

“Q” Are you saying to apply a curiosity factor to it?

Yeah, when this junk comes up apply your curiosity.

“Q” Oh, so you’re asking about the difference between being curious and applying an antidote?

They are kind of the same thing. When you are curious, you’re saying, “Okay, my mind’s telling this story, is this story true?” That’s the curiosity part. As you begin to investigate the story and you think of the teachings you’ve heard. Then you’re saying, “Does this story correspond to the teachings that I’ve heard?” Well, no. "How would the teachings

describe this situation?" Well, they describe it in dah, dah, dah, dah way. And then that’s applying the antidote.

“Q” When you were talking about the mind that wants and doesn’t like; you were describing me every step of the way. I’m at the grossest level that I have been. I have been struggling a lot. If Dharma is practicing really training the mind then I think I am doing that because it’s been very hard for me because I’m governed by emotions now. Every day I give up and then I really fight. I really try. Maybe one session is good but the rest is just: I can’t stop my mind. But I told myself to do purification, at least purification. But it’s awful. But then like this morning I say I’m going to think about death, you know I'm going to die. And what is the purpose, I had really better stick to this because this is accumulating merit and that will help me. On some other days I go with precious human life. I try to be hooked. Put a sign up saying: No pregnant Mexican women allowed at the retreat! (L) I really feel bad for my companions. What’s the root of this entire problem? It is not something bubbling up at the retreat all of a sudden; it is the mind I usually have. So I started investigating that and asking myself, "What do I do in my every day life that gets me in this state?" For the past year and a half I’ve been a jumping bean, I watch TV. I want to eat something, I’m eating and then I want to be on the internet, then I want to go out, I want happiness. So it’s really hard. All the emotions coming out were just tremendous. That is the mind, but the body is related to the mind; and you can feel it during the day. But it’s mostly the mind. Your mind is the fundamental source of all this: I found the root of all this today, so now what should I do? I found that you are not happy or content anywhere, any place, any moment. How do you change that? I did a whole session intervals of shamatha, then observing the mind, then calming the mind. I’m sorry I’m not self-generating. But I need shamatha and stabilization because that is what I need. I feel bad but at least I’m doing something.

You find that your mind is just completely bouncing off the walls. And that it’s not just here but the past year you’ve been a jumping bean. Always looking for the next hit. So today you decided to tackle it and found that it was very helpful to do shamatha meditation, some breathing meditation, just watching the mind, meditation that is more pacifying, and you found that very helpful.

Go for it! The whole thing about Dharma practice means learning to be a doctor to your own mind. Applying whatever your mind needs in any particular moment. If that is what your mind needs in order to calm down, then do that. Do that kind of meditation and you can come back to the self-generation practice and all that at a later time. Do what’s working for you. Sometimes it’s also very helpful just to say the mantra. When your mind is so full and just bubbling around and bouncing with opinions and emotions, just say the mantra. At that point just forget about the visualization, if you want to, and just tie your mind to the sound of the mantra. Just let your mind sink into the sound of the mantra and the energy of the mantra. That can also be a very, very good stabilizing thing. Or just concentrate on the light coming and doing this. Whatever it is, you’re the one who’s going to know what your mind needs at any particular time.

What I think is completely amazing is how you are hanging in there. You are a hero. You’re definitely a hero. I think it’s wonderful that you came on retreat. It’s so good for the baby”,” and we’re not going to make a rule that pregnant women can’t come to retreat. (L) Its actually quite good. I think you have the support of everybody who’s here. Please”,” don’t apologize”,” there’s nothing to apologize for. It’s incredible for the baby. The baby’s not getting fed on soap operas and violent movies.

“Q” I am very happy about what I expect. I don’t expect many things but as some psychologist friends of mine said, you have to visualize your goals to achieve them. Maybe they won’t come true as exactly as you want”,” but you need that. I don’t know if that’s true or not. When I got pregnant I was really scared”,” now I’m really happy. Today I read a book here that is about motherly love. It says that this person is a monk and he was thankful to his parents because they gave him a very stable family and he said, “I have always felt secure in my life and I have seen that people who come from broken homes are insecure and always afraid of things.” That’s me. And I don’t want this new person coming here to be like that. I really want him to feel so full so that he can do anything and hopefully really become a great person, a good human being.

And have that same goal for yourself.

“Q” The mother of this monk was asking”,” “Why in Buddhism do they say that children must repay the kindness to their parents. I don’t understand why we mothers must be repaid; it is such a great joy to bring life to the world and to see it grow.” It was very interesting to see how she was a mother of a monk talking about that.

And they often give that example of how a mother loves her child as an example for the kind of love that we want to have towards sentient beings. Because you were quoting her as saying why do children need to think about repaying us, it’s such a joy to bring them into the world. It’s that whole attitude of taking the focus off ones self and really wishing well for the other. And so often when they talk about the kind of love we’re trying to cultivate towards all sentient beings, we use the example of a mother’s love in that way because it doesn’t have, in general, a lot of conditions. Conditions often come later. Some mothers have a lot of conditions.

In terms of worldly examples, it’s one of the closest things we have to unconditional love. This kid’s a total stranger moving into your house for the next however many years. You love them just because they exist. You don’t go through the interview application. Here’s a sentient being and I want to help. The thing is to take that feeling that mothers feel instinctively towards their kids and spread it towards all living beings. And as you were quoting that mother, how she was saying, why did the kids have to repay that kindness, to use that as an example when we do things for other people. You just do them. Her joy was just bringing that life into the world. Whatever we do for sentient beings, our joy is just in doing that action. We’re not looking for reward, or respect or acknowledgement or thank you or something else. You just do it because your reward is the doing of it. Those kinds of attributes that they so often talk about as parental love, especially for the mother, that’s what we want to cultivate in our practice. The only thing

is that rather than cultivate it towards one being we want to generalize it towards everybody.

“Q” It seems kind of impossible.

What seems impossible?

“Q” It seems that thing that you can have”,” that nonbiased feeling for all people. It seems really far”,” far away.

It’s far away”,” being unbiased towards everybody. It’s far away, but what a wonderful thing to aim towards. It doesn’t have to be close by in order to be something that inspires us.

“Q” I feel like if I could know everybody, then I could have more concern for them. They’re just kind of a huge mass. I’ve just found that when I get to know people, then I have concern and care for them. I actually experimented and took on a fellow who really needed a friend. He had no friends. Before I became a Buddhist, I would stay a long distance from him. I was just there for him and listened and really became fond of him and concerned about him. I would never thought that this could happen, but it did. And so now I feel that if I could know people, everybody, I could care for them but it’s just so huge. Maybe I should use my imagination to extend it.

When you get to know an individual and talk to them and get to know what they’re like”,” then automatically care and concern arises for them. Even for somebody who previously you wouldn’t have thought to have care and concern for, when you get to know them you see them as a human being and you’re affection for them comes quite naturally. But then when we say all sentient beings, it seems like this big lump, a huge mass. How are you going to get to know each one of them on an individual basis?

I think that one way to do it is, if we think about the essential ingredients, about what people are really like, then we’ll see that we actually do know very important things about people. For example, just everybody wanting happiness and not wanting suffering, we all know that, but in another way we don’t know it. If you even just contemplate the life of a stranger and just think, “That person wants happiness, they don’t want suffering.” Of course you know they want happiness, just basic human needs, food, clothing, shelter and medicine. They want friends, they don’t want to be lonely. They don’t want to be rejected. They want to be liked and appreciated. They want to feel like their talents are useful for others. There are basic human qualities that fall into when we say you want to be happy and don’t want to suffer that are pervasive for everybody. I think if we focus on those, then we can feel close to people who we don’t know personally. In a way we do know them personally because they’re just like us in this respect. We don’t know the particular story it manifests with them. We don’t know whether they like peaches or they like apples or whether they’re unhappy today because their child quarreled with them or because their boss quarreled with them. The details aren’t as important as just knowing that that person, in the bottom of their heart, they

really want to make it in the world. They want to be well liked and they want to like other people.

You don’t need to know specifically, well, they’re having problems because they’re very quarrelsome or they’re having problems because they’re very greedy and you don’t need to know they’re quarrelsome because they say they said this and that to such a person or they’re greedy because they want this and that. Everybody has problems because they’re quarrelsome, and everybody has problems because they are greedy. It’s true; we know this about everybody. You pick any sentient being whether you know anything about their life story or not, but you know that this is true of them. When you look inside their hearts and what it means to be a sentient being then that helps us to really feel that level of closeness with them, even though we don’t know the exact story of their life. If we think about it, we know something deeper about the story of their life. That little bug right there wants to be happy, doesn’t want to suffer.

“Q” It’s so funny because you say the same things over and over again and all of a sudden it hits you sometimes. She said that before and I never thought of it like that.

I remember one time sitting down and reading a transcript that somebody had sent me of a recent course that one of my teachers had given. I realized that he was saying the same things as he was telling us 30 years ago. Why? Because we still haven’t gotten it. We just need this reminder. We need to be brought back. One day you’ll hear it and say, “Oh, I’ve heard that before, I want to hear something new.” The next day you hear it and go, “Oh, my goodness, is that what that means?” And it hits you in a totally different way.

“Q” That must be so irritating for you. (L)

No, it’s not irritating to me because I’m reminding myself at the same time.

About the mind that tends to complain a lot, what I’ve found very helpful in watching my own mind is that often it’s my mind that complains and my mind that’s angry at other people. It’s actually those people who are trying to help me. It’s just that they are not helping me fast enough or in the way I want them to or whatever. But If I actually look, most of the situations that I am getting upset at, the people are actually trying, from their viewpoint, to do something that’s helpful to me. We just have different views maybe of what it means to help with what I need. Most of the time they have good intentions; it’s me that’s saying, "Nya, nya, nya."

Shall we start the text?

“Q” May we offer a Mandala? Or is that too formal?

That’s ok, just the short one.

The Essence of Refined Gold

It is by the Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso. It is a commentary basically on Lama Tsong Khapa’s Songs of Experience, his very short LamRim. I don’t know how many verses, not so many. So he quotes a lot of these verses in the text.

The Nature of the Instructions

He starts out with a prostration, “To the feet of the Venerable Lama, Embodiment of the Three Jewels, Profoundly I turn for refuge; Bestow upon me your transforming powers.”

At the beginning of a text they always make an homage to the guru in the form of part of the triple gem or sometimes it’s the Buddha Manjushri or it might be the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Here it’s seeing the guru as the embodiment of the three jewels. You always do this at the beginning of an activity, especially in writing a Dharma text, something like this, for a couple of reasons. One is to really request the inspiration of the three jewels and the inspiration of your spiritual master. The second is because we seek in them the inspiration to enable you to actually complete the project you’re setting out to do. This process of requesting the inspiration and paying homage also makes us humble and it makes us receptive. Those are good qualities to go into any endeavor with. Rather than going into an endeavor with, “Here I am, I’m going to make it all happen. I’m the conqueror.” Saying to the feet of the venerable lama embodiment of the three jewels, "Humbly I go for refuge, bestow upon me a transforming path." You can think of that as something to do before any activity you do, or just even waking up in the morning requesting that kind of inspiration and making that kind of connection with your spiritual mentor.

TextIt says, “Here for spiritually inclined beings who wish to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by a human life, is a treatise on the Lamrim Tradition of meditation; a tradition known as Stages of the Spiritual Path Leading to Enlightenment. What is the Lamrim Tradition? It is the essence of all teachings of Buddha, the one path traveled by the high beings of the past, present and future, the legacy of the masters Nagarjuna and Asanga, the religion of supreme people traveling to the earth of omniscience, the unabridged synthesis of all practices included within the three levels of spiritual application. This is the Lamrim Tradition."

"The Lamrim Tradition": a little bit of the history. The Buddha when he was alive, he taught for 45 years, and he just wandered around northern India. Whoever asked to speak to him, he spoke to them. He gave them teachings on the path that he had discovered and through which he himself had attained the final goal of supreme enlightenment. He gave lots of teachings to all different capacities of beings. Some of the beings were human beings, some times he taught to bodhisattvas. In The Heart Sutra there was a grand assembly of monastics and bodhisattvas, and there were also the celestial beings, lots of different beings there. The Buddha taught on many, many different levels. The sutras were initially passed down orally and eventually they were written down. There were so many different teachings that he gave to different people. How do you put them all

together? How do you know what to practice and in what order? The Lamrim Tradition was generated in response to those kinds of questions.

He mentions here Nagarjuna and Asanga. On the thangka, the painting, we have in the meditation hall you’ll see Lama Tsong Khapa’s at the center. At his heart is the Buddha, at his heart is Vajradhara. But on either side there are lots of different lamas sitting in the space. To Je Rinpoche’s right, to the left as we’re looking at it, the central figure is going to be Maitreya and then Asanga and then all the different lamas on what’s called the extensive part of the path. On Je Rinpoche’s left, or on the right as we look at him, is the central figure of Manjushri and then Nagarjuna and then around them all the different lamas in what’s called the profound lineage.

These are the two main lineages from which the Lamrim draws. The idea is that the extensive lineage teaches, it emphasizes, practices on the method side of the path, in other words: renunciation, compassion, love, bodhicitta, generosity, ethical conduct, patience; these kinds of things. The teachings went from the Buddha to the bodhisattva Maitreya or the Buddha Maitreya; however you want to see him. Asanga was one human disciple who meditated on Maitreya and then wound up going to Tushita, the Pure Land, where Maitreya is residing. He received teachings from him and then brought those teachings back to earth. Asanga lived in the fourth century. The Tibetans say he lived 900 years after the parinirvana of Buddha but that doesn’t exactly match up with the fourth century.

The wisdom teachings were passed down through the bodhisattva or the Buddha Manjushri to Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna, as the legend goes, went to the land of the Nagas and brought back the Prajnaparamita sutras: the explicit topic of which is emptiness. Nagarjuna spread those sutras in the world. The traditional explanation is that Nagarjuna appeared 400 years after the parinirvana and he lived for 600 years. Modern scholars place him about at the end of the first or early second century AD.

You have these two traditions coming down. It didn’t mean that in the lineage of Maitreya and Asanga that there were no wisdom teachings and that in the lineage of Nagarjuna that there were no teachings on the method aspect. It doesn’t mean that. It’s just a thing of emphasis. Actually, in fact, it was through Maitreya and Asanga that the Cittamatra tenet system was delineated and spread: similarly in the lineage of Manjushri and Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti. Chandrakirti also, in his Supplement to Nagarjuna's Fundamental Wisdom, talked about all 10 perfections. It wasn’t just the perfection of wisdom. So then these teachings were passed down in India.

Buddhism went to Tibet in about the sixth century. It didn’t really spread so much then. The king Khri-Srong-ide-brtsan invited Santaraksita and then Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava to Tibet at the end of the eighth century and they came. In the ninth century, in 842, there was this big suppression by the King Lang Darma, and that’s when monastic lineage was almost lost. There were only three Tibetan monks left. They had to go to the borderlands and have two Chinese monks come and join them in order to have

enough monks to give the ordination ceremony for the monks. It was a horrific suppression.

After the suppression, there was a lot of confusion because both the sutra teachings and the tantra teachings had come in to Tibet, but then when the monasteries were destroyed by the suppression of King Lang Darma, then everybody got very confused. There were just small pockets of people practicing here and there. People thought that if you practice sutra, you can’t practice tantra. If you practice tantra, you don’t practice sutra. If you have bodhisattva precepts, then that totally contradicts your monastic precepts. If you have tantric precepts, then you can’t have monastic precepts. There was just a big mess in people’s minds.

One of the kings wanted to invite Atisha, who was one of the great sages at the great monastery of Vikramasila in India. There were several of these great monastic universities: Nalanda was one, Uddandapura was another, Vikramasila was another one. They invited Atisha to come to Tibet and Atisha went. Tara told him to go so he followed her instructions and went. His main thing was to rectify all of this confusion about how to practice the path. It’s said that he taught a lot about refuge and karma to get people stabilized again. He wrote this text for the Tibetans called Lamp of the Path or Lamdron It’s just a few pages long but it outlines the whole path to enlightenment.

Especially what Atisha did is he talked about the three levels of spiritual practitioners or the three capacities of spiritual practitioners: the initial capacity, the medium capacity, the advanced capacity. He mentioned those in the Lamdron text. In later centuries, the Lamrim texts were written and they really amplified this. What Atisha sketched out is an outline. Then the Lamrim texts really amplified. Atisha’s closest disciple was Dromtonpa, a layman, which I find interesting. I was reading something about Dromtonpa that really touched me. Every night he made a butter lamp and he put it in Atisha’s room because he didn’t want his teacher to have to sit in the dark. It was like his complete faith in his teacher that Dromtonpa did this for his teacher every night. I found it very touching. Anyways, Atisha went to live at Reting?? He set up a monastery and from there came the Kadampa tradition. There are three different kinds of Kadampa traditions: one that followed the philosophical treatises, one that followed the instructions or the advice, and another one that followed the pith instructions from the teacher and focused a lot on meditation.

When Lama Tsong Khapa came, he practiced from this Kadampa tradition and he also practiced from so many other traditions. He was so eclectic. Wherever there was a good teacher, he went and listened. Wherever there was a pure lineage and a good lineage, he took that lineage. Lama Tsong Khapa wrote three Lamrim texts, the Great, the Medium and the Small one. After him there were hundreds of Lamrim texts that were written. There’re eight that are pointed out as the eight great ones. The Essence of Refined Gold is one of them. There’s another one by the fifth Dalai Lama, three by Je Rinpoche, this one by the third Dalai Lama and one by the fifth Dalai Lama. Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation is a very great text but not counted among these eight but it is

definitely one of the great texts in Tibetan literature. I can’t remember the other three right now.

The Lamrim tried to take the teachings and outline them in a simple fashion for these three capacities of beings. Depending on what our capacity was, where we were on the path, we would know what to practice. These are all teachings that have been taught by the Buddha that were passed down though both Nagarjuna and Asanga and then to Atisha and then to Je Rinpoche. The third Dalai Lama is commenting specifically on Je Rinpoche’s short Lamrim text.

Text“Lamrim is an especially profound aspect of Dharma, for it is a tradition of practice sound in its origin. It has neither fault nor shortcoming, for it is a complete practice perfectly uniting both method and wisdom aspects of the path. It provides all levels and grades of the techniques passed through Nagarjuna and Asanga, from the practices meant for beginners up to and including the final practice before full Buddhahood, the stage of non-practice."

Lamrim can be translated as gradual path or it can be translated as stages of the path. It extends from the very beginning what to do, to the very end of the path. It emphasizes certain topics more than other topics. So in addition to studying Lamrim, I think it’s very helpful to complement it with studies of other texts, some of the thought training texts, some of the philosophical texts. You’ll need texts on tantra and so on.

His Holiness was recently commenting on and we were discussing the '37 harmonies with enlightenment', which is a very key practice in the Pali tradition. It includes the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness, which is really a very, very basic practice. These '37 harmonies with enlightenment' are foundational practice for all Buddhist traditions. But they’re not explained within the Lamrim texts. At least not in an explicit manner, you know, one through 37. His Holiness is saying that he thinks that that may be because, especially Lama Tsong Khapa, he was writing the Lamrim text as a summary, maybe, of some of the points that were taught in the philosophical texts, for people to meditate on this summary before taking tantric initiation. The '37 harmonies with enlightenment' may not have been included in the Lamrim texts explicitly because Je Rinpoche took for granted that his audience already knew them and was already practicing them. If you look in the monastic universities in India, indeed the topic of the '37 harmonies with enlightenment' comes up and they are studying parchen??, the perfection teachings. It comes up there, it comes up in the fourth chapter of Chandrakirti’s Supplement, and it comes up in a few different places. It could be that he didn’t teach it explicitly in the Lamrim because he’s assuming his disciples already knew about it. If you look where the '37 harmonies with enlightenment' would go, they would mostly go in the three capacities, with the being of middle capacity, the one who’s aiming for liberation. Although they could be these same practices are also practiced by a bodhisattva who has cultivated bodhicitta, in which case these '37 harmonies with enlightenment' would be the practice leading to full enlightenment, if you are practicing the sutra vehicle. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

What I’m getting at is just because it’s not explicitly mentioned in the Lamrim, don’t think that it’s not important. The meaning of many of the 37 is explained in the Lamrim but in a different kind of way. For example, in the Lamrim in the medium capacity, there’s so much talk about the Four Noble Truths. The practice of the four foundations of mindfulness, actually each one of the four correlates with one of the Four Noble Truths. One of the purposes in practicing the four mindfulnesses is to understand that things that are under the influence of afflictions and karma are dukkha. That’s one of the things you’re trying to conclude through the practices of the four mindfulnesses; one of the things, not the whole conclusions but one of the conclusions of that practice. In the Lamrim what you have is instead an analytical meditation on the six kinds of dukkha, the eight kinds of dukkha and the three kinds of dukkha. But if you do the meditation on the four foundations of mindfulness, you’re going to get that same conclusion, plus a little bit more. I just want to make that clear because otherwise people might begin to think, “Oh, it’s not explicitly mentioned in Lamrim so it’s not important, or it’s not part of the Tibetan tradition or something like that.” That’s wrong because if you only study Lamrim you’re not getting all the things that are taught in the philosophical treatises, which include these '37 harmonies with enlightenment'.

His Holiness was commenting that Atisha’s text, the Lamp of the Path, and then all the following Lamrim texts, were taught for people who were already Buddhists. So they don’t contain a lot of debates in them. Actually in the vipassana section of the Great Lamrim, Je Rinpoche's Great Exposition, there are a lot of debates in that. But in most of the Lamrim texts, there are not a lot of debates, there’s not a lot of use of reasoning and things like that. It’s just getting to the point about how to think and how to train the mind in the Lamrim. This was done because most of the people in Tibet were already Buddhists. They already had faith in the Dharma; they already knew something about the Dharma. They knew what the three jewels were, they believed in rebirth, they believed in other realms of existence, they had monasteries all around them and they knew it was important to have a spiritual teacher. It was directed for that kind of audience.

The philosophical teachings became very prominent in India during the fourth century to the late twelfth century, when Buddhism was knocked out of India. Using logic and reasoning and the debating was so prominent at these monastic universities because Buddhism was not the only religion there. For example, there were all these very well developed other traditions like the Samkhyas, the Vaisesikas, the Chakravartins??, and all these other ones. They had these huge debates. So the Buddhists had to learn debating in order to prove that the tenets of the other systems were wrong, and to establish the validity of the Buddhist path to enlightenment because that was the culture it was existing in at that time.

But then Lamrim came to be in a totally different culture. Now Buddhism is coming to the West. We aren’t the ancient Indian culture and we aren’t the Tibetan culture. We need a little bit of both. Lots of times we're just taught the Lamrim and we’re told everything is in here, this is all you need to study. And then we start studying it and we scratch our head and we go, “I don’t get it. They’re talking about these different realms of existence,

they’re talking about rebirth, they’re talking about all this stuff that I don’t believe. I can’t force myself to believe it.” Actually, for those of us who didn’t grow up as Buddhists, I think we need more of the philosophical teachings now brought back into the Lamrim, taught with the Lamrim, so that we can really understand the subjects a lot better. What I’ve seen happen is that there is so much misunderstanding that happens. I think because sometimes people are only studying Lamrim. So, for example, one of the Lamrim texts, Pabongka Rinpoche’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, is a wonderful text. But it was taught to monks and nuns who were about to take a highest-class tantra initiation. Those were people who knew a lot about the Dharma. He was trying to give them a review. He was encouraging this feeling of faith. He taught about the relationship of the spiritual master in a particular way: seeing the spiritual master as the Buddha because these people were going to take highest class tantra initiation in which you’re trying to not only to see your teacher as a Buddha but yourself as a Buddha and the environment as a Pure Land.

But then you get those teachings that were taught for that kind of audience, taught to a bunch of people who didn’t grow up as Buddhists. We’re told to think of our spiritual master as the Buddha and we get totally confused. We develop this kind of blind faith. Then you have a lot of messes that happen, because people aren’t being wise in their selection of teachers. They are being too tolerant sometimes of misbehavior. They’re saying, “Well, I have to see it as Buddha’s actions, so, must be.” Well, not necessarily, we don’t know that. There is so much confusion about this meditation on how to relate to the spiritual master. That’s because it was taught for a specific group of people, in a specific culture, at a specific time in their practice. And it’s given to us and we aren’t that same audience. I think this is why it’s important to include the study of other things in with the Lamrim so that we really understand the Lamrim properly.

For example, if you spend some time thinking about rebirth, and all the reasonings for rebirth are not explained in Lamrim because everyone who studied it believed in rebirth, but we need to study. Why is there rebirth? What’s the body? What’s the mind? What is this thing we call the self? What are the logical reasonings for rebirth? Can I accept it? If I don’t believe it, does it mean I can’t follow the rest of the teachings? We need to think about all of that. If we do, then when we come to one of the first meditations on the precious human life, if we’ve done this kind of study before, then we don’t go into panic when we hear about, “Oh, you have a precious human life and you’re not born in the hell realm, and you're not born as a hungry ghost, you’re not born as a perceptionless god. And we are going, "Huh?" Well, if you have some understanding of rebirth and what the other realms mean and all of this, then that doesn’t throw you off.

Text“This graduated Dharma of taintless origin is like the wish-fulfilling gem, for through it the infinite beings can easily and quickly accomplish their purpose. Combining the rivers of the excellent teachings of both the Fundamental Vehicle and Great Vehicle scriptures, it is like a mighty ocean. Revealing the principal points of both the Sutrayana and Vajrayana, it is a complete tradition with complete teachings. Outlining the main techniques for taming the mind, it is easily integrated into any practice, and, being a

teaching combining the lineages of Guru Vidyakokila, a sage of the Nagarjuna School, [he was one of the teachers who taught Atisha the wisdom aspect of the path], and Lama Serlingpa [Dharmakirti, who taught Atisha the method side of the path], a sage of the Asanga School, it is a precious ornament. Therefore, to hear, contemplate or meditate upon a Lamrim discourse is fortunate indeed. Je Rinpoche’s Song of the Stages on the Spiritual Path says:

From Nagarjuna and Asanga,Banners unto all humankind,Ornaments amongst the world’s sages,Comes the sublime Lamrim lineage

Fulfilling all hopes of practitioners,It is a wish-fulfilling gem,Combining the streams of a thousand teachings;It is an ocean of excellent guidance."

That is the third Dalai Lama Sonam Gyatso praising the system of teaching that he is about to explain.

“Q” Does Lama Tsong Khapa talk about the Buddha nature in the Lamrim?

I don’t remember it being there, there’s not a huge long explanation of it. The teachings on the Buddha nature come mostly from Maitreya’s text of Gyu-lama?? by Taratantra?? called The Sublime Continuum. It comes mostly out of there. Again, that’s a topic that’s of great interest and importance for people who didn’t grow up as Buddhists.

“Q” Is there a difference between Buddha nature and Buddha potential?

No, they’re just different ways of translating. The meaning is the same.

“Q” Speaking of how the Lamrim teachings went from one teacher to another, did they come directly from the Buddha? [paraphrased]

You just hit on a very interesting point. Teachings are coming from the Buddha, but they’re coming from Maitreya and Manjushri through Nagarjuna and Asanga who lived many, many centuries after the Buddha.

“Q” Is it an act of faith?

It depends on whom you are speaking to. If you are speaking to a Tibetan, they will tell you it is not an act of faith that Asanga actually went to Tushita, the Pure Land, and got these teachings. That Maitreya had a direct line to the Buddha and that Nagarjuna actually went to the land of the Nagas and that the teachings had been taken there a few years after the Buddha taught them. And that person would say, this is not an act of faith, this is history and historical fact. If you grew up as a Tibetan, this is historical fact. There’s nothing to question.

If you grew up with an education like we did, this is not historical fact. How can you say that you have a lineage if you can’t tell us every single person who’s in it? This is one of the things that when we’re working cross culturally with our teachers that you come up against. One way that His Holiness has recently started to explain the Nagarjuna lineage is he said that he thinks at the time of the Buddha, the Buddha taught The Perfection of Wisdom sutra and that maybe a few disciples had writing skills and wrote them down. But these teachings were not widely spread because writing was not widely spread, predominantly because the capacities of the people at that time were not ripe and not suitable to receive those teachings. He thinks these things might have been kept on a very small scale and were very, very privately passed down. Then Nagarjuna, who was this great sage born in south India, went up to north India. Of course, he was at Nalanda, and at Bodh Gaya. He thinks Nagarjuna when he was traveling might have met some of these very small groups of people who still had parts of The Perfection of Wisdom teachings. He might have come in contact with them there, collated them there, and then reproduced them and spread them. At the time of Nagarjuna, writing was much easier to do. His Holiness is trying to explain it in that way.

Western scholars still have some discrepancies and arguments with that kind of presentation. They would say, at the time of the Buddha there was not much writing. Also, the Western scholars don’t know that for sure. If there was writing, what do you write on? The bark of a tree. How long is that going to last? The fact that we haven’t found remnants from that time doesn’t mean that people didn’t use writing. The texts decayed even if you were trying to keep them really well.

The same thing comes in the ordination lineage because the Tibetans will say when they look at the ordination lineage for the monks; they will say that we can trace it exactly back to the Buddha. We have a pure lineage; it’s never been broken. But if you look at it, between some of the people in the lineage there might have been a hundred years or two hundred years. But that doesn’t give them any problem because they have the pure lineage going back to the Buddha, don’t question, it's there. But when they look at the Chinese lineage, they’re saying, "Well, we want to see every single one going back to the Buddha." These kind of things that after awhile you just [unfinished].

“Q” What is important is that they work.

Yes. For me personally, the origin of the Mahayana Tradition scriptures is not a big deal because I look at them and these scriptures work if you practice them. The bodhisattva ideal that is presented in them, I can’t think of anything better in the world to do. If Buddha’s fully enlightened, I can’t think of somebody who wasn’t the Buddha teaching these teachings. The Buddha’s fully enlightened, but he didn’t know the Madhyamaka view so Nagarjuna had to make it up? Or the Buddha’s fully enlightened but he didn’t know the bodhicitta so Asanga had to make it up? Uh, uh, no, I don’t think so. When you think about these teachings they’re just so amazing, they must have come from the Buddha. Exactly how doesn’t bother me. I studied history in college; I’ve learned that [noise].

“Q" Is much known about Saraha?

Saraha? He was the one who gave Nagarjuna ordination, and he was also a great tantric practitioner. I haven’t studied his life very much.

“Q” I was wondering if there were writings from him?

I know there’s a biography of Saraha somewhere, but I don’t know so much about that.

“Q” Do you have a list of different texts that would include the philosophical texts and the Lamrim texts you talked about? I think it would be good to study these.

Yes, I think it would be great to study these together. The thing is that what we need is really good translations of the philosophical texts and really good translations of the commentaries on them. We don’t have all of that yet. There are some translations, there are some commentaries. Also, the way the philosophical texts are taught you can’t just sit down and read them as your evening reading to relax. They really take quite a bit of concentration. I think what is needed is to pull out certain points in the philosophical texts and bring them into the Lamrim where they’re relevant. I haven’t studied all of the philosophical texts in depth, but from the parts that I have studied, I can try and pull some of that out.

When I started studying there wasn’t very much that was translated. I’ve relied a lot on the oral teachings from my teachers. If you look at what His Holiness now teaches, he starts at the beginning when he’s teaching in non-Buddhist countries. He starts with the four seals, the Four Noble Truths, the Two Truths, what is the mind, what is rebirth, how is enlightenment possible. A lot of the stuff that comes up in the philosophical texts is in different parts, but he draws it from all those different places and gives it to you all in one shot in a very concentrated way. He has studied all that, so he can do that. I can rely on some of the things I have learned from His Holiness and pull that out. But it was 20 years ago when I was studying Abhisamayalankara and I didn’t have a chance to complete the text because I got transferred somewhere else. When we get to the emptiness chapter, there I can do much more because that’s much fresher in my mind, and I’ve studied that more in depth.

Let’s sit quietly for a few minutes.