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This sight will be updated as much as possible. We hope to add as many qualified Gurus as possible. We hope to link all sentient beings to their Guru. We hope all sentient beings will benefit from this site and that it is the cause of their complete Enlightenment. This is your website. You created the Kharma to see it. So please make suggestions to us to improve your site. Let us know about your Guru! Thank you very much, guru4u, email: |
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MEETING WITH VENERABLE TENZIN PALMO TASHI JONG, DHARAMSALA, INDIA MAY 2, 2000 Tushita's Lam Rim Retreatants, along with other Dharma practitioners, visited Tashi Jong Monastery after the conclusion of their course. What follows is an edited transcript of their meeting with Ven. Tenzin Palmo. Ven Tenzin Palmo: What shall we talk about? Mindfulness in daily life, renunciation. Okay, now all of you have finished this two-month Lam Rim course, is that right? From Audience: Not all of us, most of us. VTP: That is incredible. Of course, you do realize how enormously privileged you are and what incredible karma you must have made in the past to have this opportunity to receive these teachings in this lifetime. You take Tashi Jong, right? You have all these Tibetans here who speak perfect Tibetan, and you have the Monastery with all the monks who have presumably renounced worldly life for the sake of Dharma, but I bet not one of them has ever gone to a Lam Rim course. Now think about that. You have come from so far away because the causes and conditions came together so that you could take the course. Yet people who live here, for whom this is part of their culture, people who don't need translators, have never had even the aspiration to do what you are doing. So first of all you should start by being very grateful to yourselves because no matter what, you must have done something right. I mean, sometimes when people take Lam Rim courses they end up feeling, whoa! I mean, the hell realms seem to loom before you whatever you do! But it's not like that. You are enormously fortunate to have not just the opportunity to practice Dharma, but the aspiration to do that, because that's the most important thing. If you don't have an aspiration, then even if the Dharma is right in front of you, you don't reach out for it. So really be grateful to yourself. But now some of you will be staying around Dharamsala, and some of you will be going back to your homeland, wherever that may be, so the question is how to take the Dharma home with you in a way that will be effectual, so that it's not just something up in our heads, but so it can really transform our everyday lives. This is indeed very important for all of us. But the Lam Rim course was designed for Tibetans by Tibetans. It doesn't necessarily mean that every single bit of it has universal application. Is this very heretical? (Laughter from audience). The Dharma itself is very vast and when the Tibetans received it from India in its fullness, they had to make selections. For a start, all the sutras are enormous. The Mahayana sutras are vast, incredibly diffuse and contradictory actually, because on very many levels they are actually saying contradictory things. So how to get the whole thing systematized into some sort of viable path so that it would make sense? And this was the genius of the Tibetans. It was not that they invented anything much for themselves, but that they took what they had and created this system, which has now been used for a thousand years unchanged. But they were creating a system which was very useful for Tibetans in Tibet, right? For them it worked. All these centuries they have manufactured countless enlightened beings it's like an assembly line! This is what is so astonishing about the Tibetans, so don't think that what I'm saying is a criticism. For them absolutely it worked. It's quite astonishing that such a small civilization produced so many enlightened beings. Now consider Tibet. So much of Tibet is vast, enormous, empty nothing, vast space. And you can understand that vast space when they paint thangkas. Look at their thangkas no space! If you look at any thangka, every inch is covered with something. Because they were dealing with that vast space out there so that when it came to their practice, they had to fill it up as much as possible. And it was a culture which had not much secular literature it had no novels, it had no Shakespeare, the poetry was not love poetry, it was about Dharma. Obviously, there was no radio, no television, no magazines, no racy novels, nothing, only Dharma. The peoples' minds basically were also quite empty, like their outside environment, so they filled it up with lots of systems and levels and complicated visualizations, complicated philosophies, because they had lots of empty space inside. The other thing to note is that the oriental mind is given to exaggeration. There might have been only two hundred people, but in the books it will say hundreds of thousands were there. The oriental mind exaggerates continuously. The Buddha would say, this is 8 times as efficacious, but by the time you get through the commentaries, they are saying hundreds of thousands of times. Do you understand? The oriental mind understands that this is just exaggeration, and it makes the point, but the western mind is very literal. Recently a monk was walking past and he was holding in his hand a kapala, a skull cup, which had some liquid in it. And he said to me, "Oh, this was the skull of Loka," who was one our old monks, very stubborn. The skull was very thick, and I thought, well, he always was hardheaded. And that is the other thing about the Tibetans. Metaphorically speaking, you're dealing with nomads and bandits and a people who basically didn't have much culture most of the time. Their heads are very thick, so you have to beat them on the head with a cudgel, and then maybe they'll feel a tickle. So you have to threaten them with all these ghastly hell realms and all these ghastly punishments which are going to happen for the most trivial thing. This is in order that they'll get some conscience and, at the least, they won't murder their neighbor when he does something they don't like. But westerners, especially westerners who come to Dharma, their skulls are very fragile. They're often filled with self-loathing, and they're full of guilt to start off with. If you hit them with a cudgel, all you get is shattered skull and bones and blood and brains all over the place. So they end up feeling, "I'm so unworthy, I'm so awful". They end up with this extremely heavy sense of inability. The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes things which are very beneficial for a Tibetan psyche are not helpful for a western person. We have to be discriminating. The Buddha always said, you should take the Dharma and you should examine it. It's true, but you shouldn't always examine it so that you can come out agreeing with what the Geshe says. You should examine it, just examine it. Sometimes when I used to take my doubts to my own lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche, he would just laugh and say, "You don't have to believe everything you read in books," or, "Everything you read in the sutras isn't true". This is my lama! (Laughter from audience). We have to be discriminating and we have to see what is helpful for us in our lives. Now for Tibetans, at least in Tibet they have very empty minds, so complications were helpful, because if you have a big empty canvas, you can paint lots and lots of stuff on it. But westerners come to the Dharma with minds that are already chockful. Our minds have already been filled to the brink, mostly with garbage, and if on top of that pile of garbage we try to plant our little seeds of the Dharma, it may be that they will have trouble surviving. So it would seem to me more sensible to start by clearing out. Do you understand? To change the image you've got a house and it's full of junk and it's never been cleaned, it's filthy. And then you bring in your fancy thangkas and your beautiful Buddha images and your brocades and you try to hang them over all the cobwebs and all the junk. It's just going to look like even more of a junk-pile. So maybe first we need a house cleaning, we need to throw out a lot of that junk. We need to clean and scour and then we can put up our thangkas and our images. Do you understand? A: Are ngöndros good for that? VTP: I was just looking at somebody's ngöndro the other day and it was just so full of, "Think this, think that, do this and do that." Phew! My mind was reeling! How do you have time to do even one prostration when you have to think so much? Take an ordinary Tibetan practitioner. He does his preliminary practices at a young age usually. His mind has got nothing much inside, so you fill it up. But our minds are so stuffed! We have no air! We need to open the windows, open the doors, we need to simplify. Otherwise what happens is that we build up all these incredible philosophies and practices and we have all the theory down pat, we're so clever, but inside, nothing important has been addressed because we have no time to look. A: It's a long process VTP: Yes, it is a long process, but it's the most beneficial. Take ngöndro for example. If you want to plant seeds of practice, first you have to get the soil ready. You have to throw out the garbage, you have to throw out the stones, you have to dig in deep, you have to get some air in to the soil. Then you can start to plant seeds. Otherwise you won't get anything to grow. A: So how do we do that? VTP: This is something I've thought about a lot because I've seen the predicaments people get into. They start doing all these extremely complicated practices, they take initiations and commitments, and then instead of the Dharma being a light in their minds, like something glowing inside so that the mind becomes much more clear, more simple and light, it becomes more of a burden. Like you're trudging up the hill with this great big rucksack full of rocks, and that's not right. Do you see? The Dharma should not be an added burden in our lives. It should be a way to cast off our burdens. Look at the genuine Tibetan practitioners they're really happy about the whole thing. It's not that they don't believe in the hell realms and things like that, but it doesn't really worry them too much. Because they know that if they're sincere in their practice, they have nothing to worry about and they take refuge in the Triple Gem. The Dharma isn't heavy for them. But for many western people it does become heavy and it makes us very artificial. Sometimes I meet Sangha members and it's like they're in a strait jacket. (Laughter from audience). And that's not right. The Dharma is not for that. You're like a bunch of Calvinists, gloom and doom. So I think the important thing is to have a practice which is meaningful and which you enjoy doing, which really helps your life to become more meaningful instead of becoming something extraneous. People have two or three hours of practice everyday, and then they have their families and their jobs and their social lives, so their practice becomes this heavy burden which they have to get through. So they rush through it, just to finish their commitment so they won't go to hell. That's not the point! The Dharma is supposed to transform our mind and to give us joy and clarity and the ability to benefit others. So we have to see which practices we can do which are helpful for us, especially in our everyday lives. It's different if we're in retreat. For example, the preliminary practices were set out for people who had nothing else to do but preliminary practices. You see, traditionally, you went into a four-month retreat and you just did it. That's how the Tibetans do it. I mean, in the Kargyu-Nyingma we only do four preliminary practices so it only takes four months if you only do 4,000 prostrations a day, which any good practitioner could do... (Laughter from audience). Six months at the most, if they're really being lenient. But anyway, the thing was that you went into retreat and you did it, and then after a few months, you did another one. But the point is that preliminaries were the main focus of your practice, and then of course you can do lots and lots, then you can immerse yourself in the practice because that's all you have to do. But in the west where people don't have the opportunity to do extended retreats, then it's a very different question. If you're only doing 100 prostrations a day, how long are you going to take to do 120,000? Then it becomes this long, extended, arduous path. So everyone has to make their own decision about what practices are meaningful for them. My lama always said to me, "Look, keep your practices short, but do it. If you have long practices, then in the end they'll just become a burden and you'll just stop doing it." So better to just do something short but do it. Even now my basic practice doesn't take more than an hour. I can extend it to two or three hours, but I don't need to. I'm not breaking anything if I don't. So even if you did 20 minutes Chenrezig practice and you did it with sincerity, that's better than doing millions of high yidam practice for hours and hours just with the idea of trying to get through the sadhana. Do you understand? What I'm saying here is that there is this great temptation to take many initiations because it's never been given, or this Lama has never given it, or everybody else is taking it so I've got to take it too. So this is something we should not fall into. We should be realistic in our assessment of our abilities. It's really much better to do a very simple practice and do it sincerely from your heart regularly instead of having all these incredible fantasies of being a great yogi or yogini of the modern age and ending up being burdened with all these commitments and terrified to breathe. I think it's important to keep a practice which is short, not more than an hour, maybe half an hour if you can't manage an hour, but whatever you do, to really have that time. It's better for example to get up earlier because then you won't be interrupted and you can give yourself to your practice. It's not the duration that counts, it's not the level of Tantra which counts. It's that you're completely giving yourself to your practice during that time. Do you understand? That while you are practicing, that is absolutely what you are doing. It has all your attention, all your commitment for that time. Nothing else in the world is as important as doing that practice. That washes the mind. I cannot tell you how much. If you do your practice with a mind that is one-pointed, a mind which is very relaxed and spacious but at the same time very concentrated and merged with the practice, then however long the practice is, at the end of it, your mind feels like it's all washed clean. And it's ready for a new day. Whereas if you just sit there with this long practice and you're just going through it and looking at the time, then it leaves you feeling defeated inside. What was that all about? And then day after day after day you have to push yourself. In the end, it's like this whole deal you have to go through. That doesn't solve anything. You don't get brownie points for trying. So it's better to keep something very simple and do it from your heart. Then it's very helpful to use your Dharma in your everyday life. That is a sine qua non. If Dharma to you just means going for courses, going for retreats, going to Dharma centers and reading Dharma books, thinking that is Dharma and the rest of your everyday life is just mundane samsaric activity, nothing will ever change in your life. We have to realize that every single breath we take, if we take it with awareness, is a Dharma practice. Every single person we meet, if we meet them with openness, with clarity, with the thought in our mind: "May you be well and happy," that is a Dharma practice. I say again and again, Dharma is not just meditation, Dharma is not just saying mantras, Dharma is not just listening to discourses or reading the right books. We have the six paramitas, these six perfections. Giving, generosity, not just things, but your time, your attention, giving yourself, that should be put first because however stupid we are, however deluded or angry, however we are caught up, we can still be generous. Giving materials. It's not just giving things we don't like anyway, but giving things we like, because we like them. Giving is very important. When I was in London, I had some friends who were Sufis. They had a little son who was about three years old and they gave him a box of sweets, and said to him, "Offer them to Ani-la." And he said, "No, they're mine!" And his father said, "Yes, of course they're yours. That's why you can share them with others." (Laughter from audience). And then he said clearly, "Thanks dad," and he opened his box and shared them with everybody in the room, with such joy, thinking, "They're mine, so I can give them to whoever I want to." Why is it that we don't think like that? Ethics. Well, obviously, if we're serious about the Dharma path, then we have to get our ethics under control. What is ethics? Not killing, not lying, not stealing, not taking intoxicants which confuse the mind, are all based on the idea of non-harming. Not harming ourselves, not harming others. Every one of them. The idea of not causing any hurt to ourselves or others. Without that we have no foundation in our Dharma lives. Patience. We should be so grateful for our everyday lives, because we have such wonderful opportunities to practice patience. I mean, when you're in solitary retreat, then who's there to be patient with? But outside in the world we have so many opportunities, all the time. I'm sure that in the Lam Rim it was drummed into you that those people who cause us harm, those people who really push a lot of our buttons, they are our true Dharma friends. And it is so true! Because when people push our buttons, then we see that we have buttons. When everyone's being kind and friendly and doing everything we want them to do perfectly, then it's so easy to delude ourselves into thinking that we are such lovely people and that we don't have any problems. So it's very nice to be surrounded by people who are totally in harmony. It's not like we have to look for disharmony it will find us. Difficult situations, difficult persons, really are the sandpaper which make us smooth. To be rubbed always with silk and velvet is very nice but it doesn't smooth anything. We're rough pieces of wood and we need to be made smooth. So we should be grateful. It really shows us where we're at, and that can be very humbling, when we're opposed, when people insult us, when people don't do what we want them to do, when people are just difficult. Then we can look into our minds. The problem isn't out there. It's in here. What's wrong with our minds? Those monks and nuns who spend so many years in Chinese prisons, although some of them were traumatized, yet so many of them came out looking like they'd been in retreat. Glowing. With deep-felt gratitude to their practice and their tormentors for keeping them on the Dharma path. You see, their patience was no longer theoretical. Either you sink or you can swim when you're thrown in the deep end, and if you swim you're very grateful. Of course, if you sink, it's awful. So our daily life has these incredible opportunities all the time, every moment, every person we meet. Even when the computer does weird things, instead of throwing it out of the window, sit there, breathe in, breathe out. Watch the mind. (Laughter from audience). Effort, because all of this takes effort. Of course, everything we say is so obvious. It's no great, deep, secret wisdom. It's very obvious. But we don't do it. When we first come across the Dharma, we think, "Oh, it's so obvious, why didn't I think of that before?" But it's one thing to think about it and to intellectually know it and another thing to experience. To really have it as part of oneself, as natural as one's breathing, requires perseverance. Perseverance and patience are the two most important components. If you want to get anywhere, you have to keep walking. And then Meditation, because it's important to have time where one just can just go inward. I honestly recommend that apart from whatever practices you are doing, as part of your commitment, for those of you who have commitments, you also spend at least 20 minutes a day doing shamatha, calm-abiding meditation, because it is very important to have an inner stillness. Within us we do have this center which is like a quiet pool. But usually we are unable to contact it. Meditation is a way of coming into contact with our inner center. And then, of course, Wisdom, which is a mind that does not cling. Our mind clings continually, always. It clings to people, to objects, to memories, to opinions, to our identity, to who we think we are. Our mind is sticky. Somebody said to me that the vision he got in his mind was of being covered all over with tiny little barbs, or little hooks, and as we swirl around, everything catches on the hooks, so we carry it all with us. The secret therefore is to withdraw all the hooks. We're touching all these things, but they all slide off, nothing holds on to us. You see, the problem is not the objects. The problem is not one of experience. It's not that we have to hide in a completely bare room and not hear anybody, not meet anybody, and then everythin |