Winter Retreat 2007Sravasti AbbeyTeaching/Q&A SessionVenerable Thubten ChodronJanuary 11, 2007

VTC: Let’s cultivate our motivation. Everything that appears to us—to our sense consciousnesses—appears very real, appears as some sort of objective reality and we completely buy into that appearance and hold it to be true. So in our ordinary life, there’s these things out there that we like and there’s these things out there that we don’t like and they’re all very real and very solid. This person that we are who likes and doesn’t like is also very solid and we might even say, “Oh, my mind’s under the influence of attachment or aversion,” and the attachment and the aversion are very solid and then we just struggle. We struggle in the middle of this whole scene that we’ve created, that doesn’t exist in the way that it appears. It‘s good to reflect a bit on dependent-arising and see how these things that appear so solid to us exist by being merely labeled in dependence upon a base. That there is no thing out there in the base, there are just these various components and then our mind conceptualizes and makes them into a "thing." From the side of the object there’s not that "thing" inherently there, inside the base. So when we reflect like this then things soften a bit. So we don’t fight as much against all these things that we see outside, we don’t fight as much with ourselves inside; things just get a little bit softer. So this is the view that we want to cultivate that will help us really work for the benefit of sentient beings because by seeing things as dependent-arising and empty—at the same time in a non-contradictory way—then we’ll be able to purify our mind of the defilements that prevent us from being the greatest benefit to all living beings. Contemplate that for a moment.

VTC: So how are you this week? Depends upon which five minutes I happen to ask the question because your mind changes a lot?

R: Everything you have said in the past five minutes is exactly what I’m sitting with all week and I’ve gotten to the ultimate nature of the deity—the first deity of the self-generation—and I've been sitting there all week.

VTC: That’s a good place to sit.

R: I think for me to really start thinking about the object to be negated is to really see how big and hard and fast and tight and solid this “I” is that I’ve conjured up. A part of it is this whole thing about how the senses—everything that comes in through my eyes and my ears and my nose and my hands—it immediately gets compartmentalized and then it gets built and it’s part of my way to keep my self, the “I,” from other. Depending on how attached I am or how much aversion to whatever it is that’s coming into my senses—then I say, "I like it," or "I don’t like it," or "I don’t care"—it determines how big an “o” that other begins with. So if it’s really kind of a small “o” then it’s a small “o”, a neutral. But if it’s a pleasant or unpleasant feeling ,depending on my ego it prefers big “O’s.” Just someone walking into the room my mind can make it a big “O” out of that whole thing.

So I’ve been just spending the whole week just studying myself, how she just is sitting in this tight, concrete, boxed in tight, hard and fast thing with all this stuff coming off from the outside and she thinks that she’s seeing everything really, really clearly. Because, you know, it’s her retreat and it’s quiet and it’s really nice here and I’ve been doing this for awhile and I should be really starting to see things a little bit more clearly. And this week I have been seeing things a lot more clearly; how solid and how concrete and how right I am and I'm making it all up! At the same time that I’ve been sitting with this object to be negated trying to see how big I actually have conjured up this whole reality of mine, I‘ve been listening to the tapes on the Three Principle Aspects of the Path and I'm doing the nine-point death meditation right now. About seven years ago, I had a really, really profound effect when you led the meditation on imagining your death at a retreat and re-listening to those nine points this week and realizing that death is definite and the time of death is uncertain and that this very moment what I’ve observed about myself and how I see myself in this world, if death were to come to me tonight I would be in terror, I would have white knuckles. I would be screaming out of fright. I think it’s the first time since I have heard these teachings that it’s getting onto a deeper level. That this is no joke, it could happen in the next minute. I really have got to get some understanding about this because I spend way to much time nit-picking at people, at things, and at situations. I’m spending all my energy on things that just don’t matter. I go outside the meditation hall and I look outside and I see this beautiful sky and I say, "Some day this will be gone, this may be the last night I will see those stars." The third part of the nine point meditation is that the only thing that matters at your death is the Dharma and do you really believe that? In these teachings you spent about four weeks on those two line verses, “by contemplating the leisure and fortunes so difficult to apply to the fleeting nature of this life, reverse the clinging to this life by contemplating the infallible effects of karma and the miseries of cyclic existence, reverse the clinging to future lives. And you've been just talking about death and impermanence for about the past four tapes that I've listened too and I'm hearing it in a way that I've never heard it before. And I want that feeling that I am getting to be able to work as an antidote to this solid, concrete, conceptualized, hard and fast illusion that I’ve got going on. That’s where I am at this point. And I am really grateful that those teaching are there and I remember last week when R asked, "Don’t you get irritated at how many times you have to teach the same subject over and over again?" It’s like as many times as you teach them, that is as many times as we maybe have to here them, until they go in a little bit more. I went through this whole thing, "Oh, I’ve heard this before." I went through that when I was transcribing and in the teaching you say, “Death is death, and yeah, yeah what’s for lunch?” That's the exactly the mind I had when I was doing the retreat. I thought, "This is your mind, Venerable's got you pegged!" So anyways, it's been really a nice fruitful day.

VTC- How are other people doing?

R- Well, I have uncontrollable laughing spurts, and I think it’s just not only irritating me but I think it’s irritating everyone else. It’s just not based on anything, just on stupid things that normally wouldn’t seem funny so it’s been goofy. Anyways, I have a billion questions but mine are mostly around the front-generation. When you visualize, to have an interest in something, you have to be attracted to it or there has to be something you

value in it or something like that. So when we are developing that sort of attraction in relation to Chenrezig what is that? Is it based on faith? What is it based on?

VTC- So you're saying that if you are attracted to something then your mind is more interested and so in creating that feeling of attraction—and I think attraction is fine to use, attraction towards Chenrezig—what helps you develop that feeling? I think it’s contemplating Chenrezig’s qualities and so contemplating qualities is also what helps our faith to arise and our confidence. So you can think about physical qualities and if you look just at Chenrezig’s body—just the body position, the eyes, everything—if you spend some time visualizing that it’s so completely beautiful. To look into those eyes and to think, “What would my eyes look like if they were like that?” What's the word, enhances, entices, something that makes you feel involved. Think about the qualities of an enlightened ones’ body, being able to make all those manifestations and do so many things to help others. Think of the qualities of a Buddha’s speech, the principle quality and the principle way they say the Buddha’s benefit sentient beings is by using their speech to teach the Dharma. And so how Buddha teaches, everybody hears in a way that accords with their karma and their capability, and speaking the truth and being skillful in the speech, contemplating those kinds of qualities you can read in the Lam Rim about them more. And then especially thinking of the qualities of Buddha’s mind of wisdom and compassion. What it means to have those kinds of qualities and what it means to be omniscient and to have these various psychic powers so that you are really able to benefit sentient beings and having no ego that gets in the way of using those powers to benefit others. So thinking about these qualities and thinking Chenrezig has these; then it develops, of the three kinds of faith, the admiring faith because you admire the qualities. Then based on that you can develop the aspiring faith, that aspires yourself to generate those qualities. That really makes a feeling of closeness to Chenrezig.

R When you are visualizing the image of Chenrezig, introspective alertness is the thing that initially finds the image itself?

VTC: Actually it’s mindfulness.

R: That finds it or holds it?

VTC: Mindfulness remembers the thing. You have to have the tension first of all on the object but then mindfulness holds it in such a way that you don’t forget it. Mindfulness can also be translated as memory; it has something to do with memory because you’re remembering the object that you are focusing on. You may have looked at a thanka or something and then you remember that, you put your attention on that, but then your mindfulness holds that. The introspective alertness makes sure that you are not wandering off. It’s interesting that this factor of introspective alertness in the Theravada tradition is translated as clear comprehension because it’s actually a form of wisdom. The Tibetan term is "shin-she" (sp?) and "she" is the same "she" as in "she-ra" (sp?) which means intelligence or wisdom. Or "yeshe," it’s the same "she." So it has some factor of understanding of wisdom in it. I think it is interesting they translated from Pali to English

as clear comprehension. So there is some understanding of the object that’s coming and also some understanding if you’ve gotten distracted how to bring your mind back.

R: So what causes clarity of the object to develop?

VTC: There is stability and clarity, clarity is just going back over the object again and again. You go back over it again and again and then you place your mind on it and to have clarity you have to have the mind that is free of dullness and laxity.

R: When you are visualizing, for me, it seems that I can only focus on one thing. So let’s say you’re visualizing Chenrezig and also reciting the mantra. I can really only focus on one thing.

VTC: So this question comes a lot because you’re visualizing and also reciting the mantra. It seems like you can only focus on one thing but you know we can eat and read the newspaper at the same time. Not in the same concentrated way, but sometimes what you can do is emphasize the sound of the mantra and the visualization isn’t as clear, but your main focus is the mantra. Other times the mantra is put back kind of more on automatic and focus more on the visualization, so you can balance them differently that way.

R: And so when you are putting your focus on one more strongly, for me, if I’m not really holding onto that visualization then I either go to dullness or excitement in some way.

VTC: Yes those are the two main hindrances.

R: So I really have to be continually putting my mind back on it, just constantly.

VTC: Yes, again and again, you put your mind back on it. Don’t squeeze, okay. It’s kind of like when you’re bringing up a small child. The kid runs away and you bring them back and he runs this way and you bring him back and he runs that way and you bring him back. So you just keep bringing your attention back but don’t get irritated and don’t get squeezed. “Okay I’ve got to stay on the object.” Have a more relaxed awareness that is still alert and focused on the object. There is some kind of relaxed quality, not relaxed in the sense that, "I’ll let my mind go wherever it wants to," but relaxed in the sense that you’re not sitting there squeezing yourself, “ I’ve got to see Chenrezig, I’ve got to master this.” That’s the kind of attitude with which we approach many things in our life. That kind of an attitude becomes a bit of a problem.

R: There’s some force to it though, right?

VTC: Things can be relaxed and have energy at the same time. You know when I lead you through the body scan? Remember at the end, I always say, "Be aware of your position which is firm and relaxed at the same time." I say that every time very deliberately because if we can feel how it feels to have the body firm and relaxed, at ease,

well then how can I transfer that to my mind? When my mind is firm but it is also at ease, it’s not tight. We usually think of relaxed as limp, that’s not actually relaxed, I don’t think the mind is really relaxed. At that time the mind is more scattered and distracted. I don’t think scattered and distracted is the same as relaxed. R: It takes a lot of energy to meditate, sometimes I get so tired.

VTC: Yes, it takes energy but you can’t sit there and squeeze and like “Ohhh...” You’re not going to the bathroom on the cushion; you’re not trying to deal with a constipated mind! Chenrezig is there, you are just looking. Chenrezigs there and you are seeing Chenrezig.

R: Sometimes you get started thinking about something and it really takes off and it gets a lot of energy behind it and I can’t stop it and then like at night I’m so wound up and I can’t go to bed. I have to stay up and study and then I’m tired in the morning and just hate it but I just can’t turn it off.

VTC: What’s going on in the mind?

R: From one you start thinking about something, and I don’t know if it’s because a lot of the antidotes that I use are things from the Lam Rim; so I’ll start thinking about them and I’ll find a point that will get me more interested in it and then I’ll want to look at it more and then I’ll find another point and I’ll want to look at it more. And it keeps going and going like that and it has a lot of energy.

VTC: But your mind is thinking in a positive way? You’re not being spaced out, you’re being really interested.

R: But it needs to calm down so I can go to bed and get up in the morning.

VTC: So at that point you have to say, “Okay I’m going to go to sleep,” and let this contemplation go on subliminally in your sleep. Let it be running in the background or just, “I have to rest my body and mind right now.” Sometimes even in your sleep insights will come to you about different points. Look at your sleep as, “I’ve got to rest my body right now and my mind, but it doesn’t mean I have to completely let go of this topic” and you can either subliminally, while you are sleeping go in deeper. But also see maybe you don’t need as much sleep as you think you do.

R: Yes I do!

VTC: You have a hard time getting up in the morning?

New R: This week she has ten books she needs to study to know the chemical component of the nectar of Chenrezig! (L). I am the opposite. This week I started being in a good meditation mode since last week we talked. It has improved wonderfully. I’m not good in the morning but I have my morning nap, but it has been improving and what I have

noticed is that I remember Mary Colony and she emphasized instead of saying the prayers and developing the feeling of emotion that goes with the prayers, instead of saying how wonderful it would be that all sentient beings have impartiality and this and that, just imagine beings and how that all sentient beings have a mind with no hate and no attachment. I think focusing, instead of saying even with the visualization it’s really juicy for me, of course I use words, but even in the visualization, for example, I’m not saying the second arm is holding the mala, I’m just looking at it and feeing the beads of the mala, how they feel in the hand and what they tell me and all these things. The seven limb prayer is amazing because it’s like you confess and you rejoice and you offer and you rejoice which is the best part from ordinary to realized beings. I think focusing on that, and I instead of saying the words visualizing a world that is so perfect and enlightened and all these beings and continents and jewels and this is the kind of world I want to create. At the same time I am verbal, like a story teller, I do it knowing this is a part of the merit and is like cleaning the soul.

VTC: And you can really see through doing the refuge and the four immeasurables and the seven limb prayer, you can see how when you really focus on it there is a definite change in your mind and you can feel that purifying effect and you can feel what it means to collect a store of positive potential, to have that basis.

R: It has helped me a lot. I try to see minds with so many afflictive emotions and I seal it with all these prayers and aspirations. I have had a lot of reflections also about the devotion to the teachers to how great they are. It is because of teachings that we can have these techniques .That is their effort and being a child of the lineage is a pride. I have also thought a lot about the life of a lay person and the Dharma, somehow the Dharma that has come to the west is becoming western. There is a Buddhist tradition in Tibet and there is the Zen and there’s the Chinese and there’s the Theravada and all of them have adjusted to a culture. Now how all this knowledge and wisdom has come here and adapted here, how precious it is because it is so fragile. It is so new it is just 35 years here and how we can contribute to that in our lives, either in a monastic way, which is the rarest. America and the West are developing Buddhism that is for the lay people. There is such a possibility to change our lives and to mark the difference from who you are and who you want to be. ___ it’s just so small but at the same time it’s so important.

VTC: It’s small and it’s important at the same time and it’s big too. From another viewpoint it’s big when you think of before.

R: I was thinking today, if I live twenty more years and the Abbey is really thriving and there’s lots of people here, will you let me just go on retreat here and stay there? When there are no more FOSA jobs, can I just go on retreat and stay? I’m really loving this and having a little bit of stuff coming up about going home. Mostly, I think for me what has been so incredible is the chance to be a student. In the study time, I’m going through my notes from the teachings and then I’m making notes about them to then take in to meditate on and I have never had such an extended period of time to be able to really take what I just heard and then go through it and then go sit with it and I just love that I can get up from a session, and if it’s a terrible session, “Nope, I’m going right back; it’s

okay!” There aren’t so many terrible sessions. I am very much appreciating your book on this practice because I’m really focusing on the emptiness part so I’m increasing my understanding of it and then going and meditating on it. So, mostly I’m loving it and learning a lot but I’m not sure I can articulate it. This whole idea of manifesting, trying to see all phenomena, that’s imputed, that in meditation the things that I am visualizing as a manifestation of the wisdom mind and trying to see their emptiness at the same time that’s plenty to work on but it’s good. I also had an insight--just as a life issue--there is this Christian parable about the talents. A man gave three talents to three children, but the whole teaching is very ingrained in me to go out and use your talents well and to help people. In a way, it has been really a positive force but I’ve had this responsibility, because I’ve been in theatre, use your talent this way, use your talent that way; all these worldly ways that I felt totally bound up to use my talent. So I’m meditating on this opportunity I have of being here. And I realized, “This is the talent, this is the talent you’re supposed to use ding-dong.” Here you have this incredible opportunity, none of that wordly stuff was the talent I’ve been stressing out on for all these years! In a way, it was a big opening, “This is what is the most precious, this is what my job is.” That Christian teaching has bound me up for fifty years.

VTC: Because use your talents meant your specific worldly skills.

R: Exactly. Use your worldly skills in a worldly way to help people. That’s the use that is proper and right and God commanded. But, even take God out of it and there is still that command to help people in that way.

VTC: There are many other ways to help people.

R: And it’s a very narrow view of what “helping” people means and also the very narrow view of what “talent” means.

R: I was thinking about that today when I was walking. It hit me that there are a lot of lives so maybe just develop your skills in this life for the next life. I actually would really like to be helping people. I would really like to do that. You know I thought about that with really a lot of analysis to this feeling. It‘s a little bit like when I was told to do this practice a teacher wanted me to do so I have been doing it every day for a few years without really knowing why. So today it was like, “Okay maybe that was why, so you would be able to help people.” I thought just a little bit about what it would look like but I have no idea what it would look like. I thought for a minute I would be a doctor in my next life but what kind of doctor would it be that would work with a whole being, you know the whole everything? There’s not anything really out there.

Another R: I don’t really think you can have it all. I thought about that before too. Like a Dharma doctor.

R: I don’t know. I was thinking about healing and what is healing.

Another R: Physical healing?

R: All healing. I don’t think you can actually separate them to tell you the truth.

VTC: And I think somehow through practice, I think part of what happens is that just by who you are, that helps people. At the beginning our idea of helping people is, “OK, I’ve got to have a skill, I’ve got to go to school and I’ve got to have a skill and then I’ve got to learn techniques, give me a technique,” because in this country we’re so into techniques. “Something that I’m going to do, that’s what going to help.” We get quite tangled up in that because we can do all of our techniques up and down and whether they help or not you never know. But then you see some people, just who they are helps. They don’t have to say anything, they don’t have to do anything, but it’s the qualities that they developed inside their own being that wherever they are they’re helpful. I was thinking today because they talk about when a bodhisattva breathes, just a bodhisattva breathing, creates so much positive potential and is so beneficial. When you first hear this you go, “Huh, somebody breathing?” But then if you think inside that mind of a bodhisattva everything is done, the whole life is lived, from the perspective of what is the best thing for everybody in the long-term and how can everybody arrive at lasting happiness. So if you have that kind of motivation and you breathe, it’s an incredible benefit to sentient beings isn’t it. Because just one person sitting there having that motivation, even they are not doing anything, on a “psychic” level, on the level of just mental energy—because mental energy is incredibly powerful—just somebody having that kind of mental energy in the world I think can be really, really effective. We usually think energy; there’s gas energy, there’s wind energy. We always think of physical energy but we don’t look at the mind that moves the physical energy that’s why we wind up with such a mess in the planet. If you think of developing that kind of mind and how that mind can influence the world. We don’t just influence each other by what we say and what we do. Just by what we think. If somebody is really violent and walks into this room you feel it, they don’t have to do anything but you feel it. If somebody is compassionate and they walk into that room you feel it too. So sometimes just by who we are that becomes something very powerful. You can really see it when people go to do hospice work, because when you go to do hospice work you feel real insecure, “Give me some techniques and tell me what to do. OK, when somebody says this, this is the kind of thing to say and when they say that then that is the thing to say. This isn’t what helps people! I think it’s who you are as a person and your ability to feel what’s going on and be there. So, I think when we have the aspiration to help, so much of it can be activated by changing what’s inside of our mind, because that can become so helpful, without thinking or doing anything. And I say this beause Jim, at the county health department, talks about a Friday afternoon when Eric the architect and I went into his office, the first meeting with him. Poor guy comes in, he looks like he’s at the end of his week, and feels at the end of the line, and we talk to him and at the end he says, “I feel so much better,” and we’re just asking him how to do the septic system and things like that. We’re not saying how we can benefit him; we are just being who we are. That has some kind of effect. Lots of times, when we change who we are then who you are just in the middle of that. And you feel that when you go into a prison, speaking the words and saying things is an extra benefit but as you walk across that yard you can be of benefit. You can be of benefit or you can be of harm, it depends on what is going on inside of your mind. So much just comes from inside and that’s why

I think the whole mindfulness practice is very helpful. When we’re mindful and ask, “How am I walking,” you’re mindful. Mindfulness is this buzz word, I don’t think people really know what it means very much but everybody talks about it. Am I walking with kindness, how am I walking, and what am I expressing by the way I’m walking and what’s going on in this mind that’s motivating the walking? That’s expressing something to the whole rest of the world that is around us. I think very often its good practice of mindfulness to observe, “How I am wiping the table? Am I wiping the table with the mind that wants to get this darn chore done already or am I wiping it because it’s just a wonderful thing to do and I am cleaning off the negative karma from the minds of sentient beings?

R: When we are talking about how powerful the mind is, I just remembered I had a question. I want to deepen my understanding of the dedication. I understand when we dedicate for the benefit for all sentient beings, my understanding is that the seed stays in the mind and eventually will grow and not be destroyed. But we dedicate for people, for example, the people that died that we don’t know or the people that we might know and are close to us. I understand the importance of aspirational prayer, but I would like to know more about how dedication works. I can dedicate for Karri but how will she be transformed? How will her mind be transformed?

VTC: This is really the power of the mind, because if you think something positive about somebody I think that energy is there. I think, what the dedication does, is it creates a positive atmosphere so that the person’s own good karma can ripen. They have done some studies of people who have been prayed for that show that they recover quicker. The mind is tremendously powerful that way. I think when we dedicate, because we get a lot of requests to pray for different people and to dedicate, the dedication benefits them and the dedication also benefits us. Here’s this person we don’t know at all but all of the sudden we’re involved in their life and we don’t know them at all in this life but how did we know them in previous lives and where are they now? I was really struck when we got that dedication to pray for Jorge. It just made me think, that he had the karma to live fourteen years here and then he’s gone. Who you are, this whole identity lasts only fourteen years and all those things, your basketball, all the toys in your room, your mother and father, and everything’s gone. You’re just propelled by the winds of karma into another life and then how stunned his family is and the Dharma community there. Everybody thinks a child can’t die before their parents but it happens a lot. What’s happening to his mind now, how can the parents heal, how can the parents make this part of their Dharma practice so that his life has some meaning in a Dharma way for everybody he encountered. So his short life of fourteen years can motivate other people to practice the Dharma well. Isn’t that a beautiful gift to be able to give to them? This whole contemplation comes because you are making a dedication prayer for somebody and thinking about their life. I was also going to ask you, because I just heard that a friend of mine died, Venerable Tenzin Yunten, and some of you may have seen her--there’s an old picture of her in 1993, an old picture of His Holiness and Ven. Tenzin Palmo and me she’s the third nun. And I don’t know how she died, they found her some time around Christmas time and another nun walked into the room and she was sitting in meditation position looking very beautiful. And I don’t know what she died of, it didn’t

say. But she wasn’t very old and she apparently remembered to meditate at death and apparently____, when they told His Holiness, he said, “She’s OK, don’t worry.” Just thinking about that, “OK, when I die…?” Am I going to sit there and be screaming or terrified out of my whits or crying or is His Holiness going to say, “Oh, she’s OK.,” or is His Holiness going to say, “Oh boy, I better do something for this one because she’s in big trouble.” So when we’re dedicating, it’s something that influences us and it’s something that influences the other person. Because you think, somebody is in this world and then they are gone and the world continues on. We always feel that everything we do is so important and if it doesn’t get done everything is going to collaspe and I have to this by this time and that time and we become anxious and frantic. And actually, everything just goes on, people die and everything just goes on. And one day we’re going to die and everything is just going to go on, it’s not going to be any big deal for the rest of the world when we’re gone but can we let go with grace and can we let go now. Let go each moment that we’re living so that our death doesn’t become some big thing.

Another R: It’s a coincidence, I really appreciated the Lam Rim, that I’ve been doing everyday, and it’s tremendously beneficial to do meditations on Lam Rim after concentrating on the mantra. Today, it was death. I’m really familiar with this. I’ve been really preparing for my death for the past ten years and I try to reverse it, all the different possible ways, with a car crash being the worst I could think of because it would be fast and terrifying. To die like Ghandi, he said Ram was on his lips as he died, and to die going for refuge would be my ultimate goal. It’s a big one.

VTC: And it’s good to have refuge with us all the time because we die the way we live, creatures of habit. But what you said about finding it beneficial to do Lam Rim meditation after focusing on the mantra, this was Lama Yeshe’s special way of teaching us and he always insisted that whenever you do some kind of deity practice that you always include the Lam Rim analytical meditaiton as well.

R: I must say that I’ve really gotten into Lam Rim and Lama Yeshe since I came here. I am just in love with him. I wish I could have had teachings______ he’s just so special, so joyful, and so wise. I can see why he was dearly loved.

VTC: Yeah.

Another R: I would like for you to talk a little bit about silence. I think as a group we’re having a little bit of trouble keeping silence and it’s group-wide. I think the intentions there but the boundary is not so strong. So, I thought it might be helpful to hear about how to set that boundary and how to hold it for each other. I’m catching myself all the time, “Just a little, just a little,” but I know, as soon as I open my mouth, just a little opens the door.

VTC: The value of silence is a way of respecxting others and giving each other some space to be internal. Silence is a difficult thing when you have to do certain work, like when you have to do things in the kitchen and you have to do things in the office and sitting and writing anote can waist a lot of time. So sometimes I think when there’s

something inmportant to communicated, go into an empty room because that’s one thing that really helps you if you’re trying to keep silent because you want to say something right there but when you have to take the person and go into another room then you think twice about whether this is something that needs to be said or not. If it’s something like we need more protein in the lunch, then it might need to be said, but you have to take the time to go somewhere else to say it. So you check in your mind, if your just cracking a joke or chit-chatting or something, because we are trying to take care of ourselves. There are certai times. Even the very great meditators, when they are up ion the mountains, they basically keep silence but sometimes they wioll talk with their friends. When we talk it often winds up being silliness or joking or this kind of stuff which breaks the energy and sometimes, it’s this delicate balance, because there is sometimes a lot of build up and the whole group needs to laugh all together to release the energy and you just need to let that happen. And then there are other times when people really have to breathe and calm themeselves done first and make sure that they themselves are centered but the basic thing is to watch the intention and so often our intention for speaking is for distracting us and distracting the other person not necessarily communicating siomrething that needs to be communicated. But like I said, because we don’t have a cook and because our office helper is only here for 4 hours a day and she’s new then things do need to be discussed but go into another room to do it where it doesn’t effect the rest of the group and where you have to double check in your own mind whether it is something that needs to said or not. But the I think the silence is nice in the sense that you can walk past somebody and you don’t have to worry about them tapping you on the shoulder to tell you this and that, you know that whatever you’re thinking about you can just walk by or if your visualizing Chenresig or saying the mantra or whatever then you can just focus on that, but you don’t have to interupt the thought to be nice or be something. How do you feel that you benefit from silece?

R: Well, a couple of things. One is that I really feel that there is a place that I can go, and we’ve been in silence for a while, that I don’t go any other time-internally-there’s a depth of my own concsousness, in my own sense of what’s going on. I love this feeling of being able to have whatever is going on—whether it’s really horrible or really sad or really joyful or whatever—and being in community and not having to share it but know that we are all in it together.

VTC: Just the support that you give and receive. Like you said, your going through whatever your going through and other people are going through whatever their going through and you don’t need to fix their stuff and they don’t need to fix your stuff. Just by being in the group together, you’re supporting each other and helping.

R: You can tell people are going through stuff but to be able to have the space to do it, uninterrupted undsitracted

VTC: Your sitting their in your bad mod or your sitting there in your blissed out mood and it’s not interupted.

R: Well, it’s harder, having to do all the chores we’ve been doing.

VTC: Well, it’s harder because our mind gets distraced and this is the whole thing of coming back to why when were doing the chores, what is our mind doing what is our motivation am I doing this chore to get it done or am I doing this chore and am I offering service. Or whatever is going on in my mind, this good thing this bad thing, I like it, you can still be aware of that while you chop the vegetables or clean the floor. It’s just the process of slowing ourselves done enough so that we can be aware while were doing these things and keep the flow of the meditation. And sometimes when you’re doing the chores, you mightthat they get interupted, but what’s actually interupting them is the mind that says, I don’t want to be doing this now!” Or I’m cleaning the floor, who made it dirty, if they only cleaned up after themselves I wouldn’t have to spend my time now cleaning up after them.” We have so many opinions and so many I likes and I don’t likes and that is what interupts the flow and so you come out of your meditation on bodhichitta and you go to clean the shower and you say, “If I find one more long hair in the shower, I’m going to pull out my clippers and go after them. The long hair in the shower isn’t doing anything, it’s the mind that’s saying, “This is intolerable,” or “I can’t stand it,” or you’re vacuuming and there’s a tuft of the cat hair, “Why do they have cat’s at this abbey anyway all they do is shed their hair, they meow at three-o-clock in the morning and they drive you crazy. And their hair is all over the carpeting and that means I have to vacuum the carpeting twice a week instead of just once a week and when I’m at home I only have to do it every ten days because I don’t have any cats and all these epole dragging their dirt in and you just watch your mind. So it’s not the chore that is the interuption, it’s the trip that our mind makes. And you just see and that actually is quite a strong thing because we see that we’re spending a lot of time thinking about the hair in the shower and the fur on the floor. This is my precious human life! (L)

R: The other day, actually what you are talking about, I found very comic and very sad at the same time how in a five hour period you go from hell to pure lands. I got so angry at one minor thing, I couldn’t control myself. And then you kind of forget it or ____ and then five hours later you finish your meditation and your in total bliss and you think, “Five hours ago I was in hell?,” and that’s what my mind has been the whole time, like an emotional rollercoaster.

VTC: Yeah. That’s what Lama Yeshe call “yo-yo mind”. And then we look and we can see so clearly how we create hell for ourselves. We create the hell ____ because nothing really changed; we have the same routine, one day there’s more cat food than another day, one day there’s more salad and another there’s more starch, different things like that. We just watch and see how our mind is so reactive to everything. Just that awareness of what you said, “Oh, now I feel good, five minutes ago or five hours ago I was in hell and nothing is different anywhere. I’m sitting in the same place with the same people around me, nothing has changed, just my mind. It has nothing to do with the outside. And then when you see that then you think, “OK, I’m going to wash this dish for the benefit of sentient beings and I’m going to vacuum the floor for the benefit of sentient beings. I’m offering service, benefitting people, I’m going to do this small thing. Somebody has tracked ice into the house again, don’t they know to take their boots off outside. Why are

they tracking ice in, again? Why’s this path so slippery? And we realize that it has nothing to do with ____.

(CONTINUATION OF TEACHINGS ON “THE ESSENCE OF REFINED GOLD” BY THE THIRD DALAI LAMA)

VTC: Last week we talked a little bit about the introduction to teachings, the lineage and things like that. So that’s talking especially about the greatness of the (lineage), Buddha and Manjushri and Maitreya and Nagarjuna and Asanga and Atisha and Je Rinpoche down here to the Third Dalai Lama who wrote this text. The first Dalai Lama was a disciple of Je Rinpoche, Je Tsong Khapa. And then the next section, it says,

The Lam-rim teaching has four especially great facets:

It really helps you understand why knowing the Lam Rim and the Lam Rim outline, how that can help your mind understand the Dharma. So, we’ll go through these and you’ll see in the process ___.

(i) It reveals how all the various doctrines of Buddha are non-contradictory.

If one relies upon the Lam-rim teaching, all the words of Buddha will be effectively comprehensible. One will see that there are root practices and branch practices, and that there are direct and indirect teachings, all of which aim at creating helpful circumstances along the stages of spiritual development for a practitioner like oneself.

So, one of the things that happened in Tibet historically was after the big persecution, which was in the 9th century, and they knocked down monasteries and Buddhism was very scattered; there became quite a bit of misunderstanding and people thought that practicing sutra and practicing tantra was contradictory. And so they couldn’t see if you practice monastic life then you can also practice tantra and if you practice the bodhisattva vehichle then you can practice the fundamental vehicle. They saw all these different teachings and their different sets of vows as contradictory to one another. And so when you study the Lam Rim, you see that in fact, no, none of these teachings are contradictory but it’s that different things are practiced at different stages of the path for particular reasons. So these things don’t contradict each other but they really fit into a whole. So for example, at the beginning of the path, we really need to get our activities of body and speech under management because they are the most flagrant ways that we harm others and harm ourselves and so you take one of the sets of the pratimoksha vows—the vows of individual liberation—so these can be monsatic vows, they can be the 5 lay precepts. But especially with the monastic vows, there are all sorts of things that are regulated; how you get your food, how you dress, how you do this and how you do that. That’s something that is very good to do in that way because at the beginning of the practice you need that kind of explicit thing of, “Do this,” and “Don’t do that,” and avoiding doing very gross things with your body and speech. When you get to the bodhisattva vows, a lot

of them deal with the mind. And there is one Bodhisattva vow where it says that you break it, if you do a small action to keep your pratimoksha vows—the vows of individual liberation—if you keep those when you could be doing something that is bigger, that’s more beneficial to others, and so it’s in the bodhisattva practice, it says that some people would hear that and say, “Well this is completely contradictory because the vinaya says this and the bodhisattva practice says no you don’t have to do that, the Buddha’s contradicting himself.” Well, no! The Buddha isn’t contradicting himself because in the beginning of the practice, you really need to watch your physical and verbal actions. When you’ve got those under control, then it becomes much easier to look at your mind, when your looking at your mind—especially your intention with the bodhisattva practice—then you become quite aware of your intentions; why you’re doing certain actions. Then, if there is some small vinaya thing—what’s a good example, could be something about how you walk or how you eat—and you’re in a different culture and people do things in a different way then if you do them, if you are training in the vinaya and if you keep real strictly to what you’re doing in the vinaya, then maybe people will get the wrong impression of Buddhism or maybe they are going to criticize or something like that. So, you let go of that small kind of thing. If you have a mind that wants to benefit others for a particular purpose so then it’s OK, it’s not a break in the vinaya and it’s a way of keeping your bodhisattva vows. So if you can see that as non-contradictory, that’s good. Of course, it also presents a challenge because many people will say, “Oh I’m doing the bodhisattva vows and then use that to rationalize and justify their being quite lazy keeping the pratimoksha or bodhisattva vows or even doing negative things. It’s not something you do flipintly and it’s like, “Well, here I am in this culture and they all drink and so I bettter drink because otherwise there going to think I’m a Buddhist prude.” No, that’s rubbish! You have to know how to distinguish what’s a small thing and what’s a big thing and particularly why is your mind doing it or not doing it. But the main point here is that the Lam Rim is helpful because at the different stages of training the mind, it’s permissible to do different things because you have different motivations. If you understand the Lam Rim then you understand that and so your mind doesn’t see these different practices as contradictory. You see how they actually make a lot of sense. But you have to be very astute because otherwise you wind up rationalizing things and creating a lot of negative karma.

(ii) All the various teachings will be taken as personal advice.

The profound teachings of the Sutras and Tantras, as well as the treatises and dissertations written by later masters, and all the levels and branches of practice, will be seen as methods to be used to overcome negative aspects of the mind. The significance of all the teachings of Buddha and his successors—from the teachings on how to follow a spiritual master up to those on how to perceive the most profound aspects of reality—will come into one’s own hand. One will learn how to practice contemplative meditation upon the words of the teachings amd then fixed meditation upon the central themes of those words. Thus all the teachings will be seen in perspective to one’s own life and progress.

So what this means is that you’ll be able to see the teachings as personal advice because it can be very temping for some people—and you see this actually happen quite a bit—people say, “Well, the Buddha taught this for other people, he didn’t teach it for me,” and it just happens to be those things that we don’t like to do that he taught for other people or it just happens to be those things that we’re not quite sure that we believe in that we think that the Buddha didn’t really mean in that way. We don’t necessarily take everything as personal advice. We get confused, we pick and choose, so on and so forth, but if you see the teachings as personal advice, then you can understand how the whole path unfolds and how there’s this gradual development of your understanding, and thus there’s a gradual development of motivation, and thus there’s a gradual develoment of the things you do motivated by that motivation. So, you begin to see the teachings as personal advice. You know where on the path, where you are right now, so you know where you need to focus right now but you can also know that to prepare for the future you learn the (more advanced) teachings. So we learn the whole path—the very beginning to the very end—but we also know I have to think more about precious human life and death and karma; I have to get that a little bit clearer in my mind and I do that because I want to benefit all sentient beings. Concerning generating bodhichitta, (we think) “I’m going to practice it now but I’m not going to expect to actually generate it now because that’s putting the horse before the cart.” And so you train your mind in the later aspects and you can use that to help you understand the initial things on the path, but you just have a better idea of where different teachings go and how they fit in and so you know what to pratice on different levels. One big thing that I notice that happens a lot in the west is the way it is at dharma centers. The teacher arrives on Friday, gives teachings Saturday and Sunday and leaves Monday. So they have something on death and the next weekend they have highest yoga tantra and then the weekend in between they have bodhichitta and another weekend they have emptiness and another weekend they have how to do water bowls. So people learn a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and they’re totally confused; they don’t know what do I practice and think, “I’m getting all these different teachings yet so vast and so how do I put it together to make a dharma path that suits me.” I think this is one of the beauties of the Lam Rim is that when you know the Lam Rim, then you know where the different practices belong. So you know your weekend that you had on waterbowls, well that goes at the beginning because there’s setting up your alter and making offerings (at the beginning). This teaching on death, it comes here in the Lam Rim—for the being of initial capacity—but they always say that the meditation on death is good at the beginning, the middle and the end so actually I practice a lot here with my initial capacity but I’ve got to keep it up because it deepens and changes and transforms as I become a being of middle capacity and great capacity. And this initiation on highest yoga tantra, well that’s at the end of the path, so I’ve got the blessing, I’m going to keep the vows and commitments but I don’t need to put all my energy in there because that’s what you do after you have renunciation, bodhichitta, and insight into emptiness. So you know where things go. Also, when you talk to Buddhists from other Buddhist tradtions and you hear what they practice then you also know where it goes on the path and you don’t get confused. Or you see a different such and such a ceremony and you ask, “What are you meditating on when you doing that ceremony, what’s the purpose,” and then your friend from the other tradition tells you and then you know where it goes on the path and then you don’t get confused about

what they’re doing and what you’re doing and you don’t think, “Oh, that’s some weird thing, that’s nothing to do. Because one thing that I find here in America is people, they’ll talk about the new thing (and they’ll say they’re practicing) Vipassana, Mahayana and Vajrayana or Vipassana and Zen and Tibetan Vajrayana. That’s what people say as the main traditions but actually it’s not like that. First of all, Vipassana is a style of meditation—it’s not the name of a Buddhist tradition—you have vipassana meditation in all the traditions; you have it in Zen you have it in Tibetan. The word “zen” is the sanskrit word—the chinese is “ch’an,” sanskrit is “dyana (sp?),” pali is “jyana (sp?)”—it means concentration, the levels of meditative stabilization that you practice. So, it actually means meditation; meditative stabilization. And then Tibetan Buddhism, it’s not just Vajrayana. This is one of the big things I find people think, “Oh, I practice Vajrayana.” Wait a minute! Actually, to practice Vajrayana you have to practice the fundamental vehicle (Hinayana), you have to practice Mahayana, and you don’t abandon those practices when you go to practice Vajrayana. People see Vajrayana as this whole separate Buddhist tradition now that has nothing to do with actually either mindfulness meditation or zen or vipassana. Actually, if your going to practice Vajrayana you have to practice mindfulness meditation and vipassana and meditative stabilization; you have to practice all of these things. So this kind of confusion that happens—you can see it so much now in the west—really gets avoided if you understand the Lam Rim well because you understand how all the different tradtions really fit into one nice, long, very cohesive path and they’re all the teachings of the Buddha.

R: They have it in the bookstores, categorized as you described it.

VTC: Yeah! I know and it makes no sense. Because you look at my book, the book on the chenersig yoga method, what are you going to put that under. Well, you say, “Oh, Chenresig, it must be Vajrayana,” but actually most of the book is about how to work with your mind, how to cultivate bodhichitta and emptiness, taking refuge and keeping your precepts. It actually deals with a lot of the fundamental topics too so why are you putting it on the shelf with Vajrayana? It’s very confusing this kind of thing. One thing that it did say in this point is that you’ll learn how to practice analytical meditaion on the words of the teachings and stabilizing meditation and the central themes of those words. So those are two basic kinds of meditation that we do; the first one is analytic meditation and the second is stabilizing meditation. So, analytic meditation is when you are probing the teachings, scrutinizing the meaning, investigating. So this may involve thought or it may not involve thought. This is actually one of the big misunderstandings that people have about analytic meditation. They think analytic meditation, and they hear the word analytic, and they think your just sitting their intellectualizing, counting off points, “Buddha said this, Buddha said that,” intellectualizing and doing all these mental gymnastics about emptiness, why on earth don’t you sit there and meditate on emptiness? Why are you doing all these mental gymnastics and refutations of these different debates and blah, blah, blah. Well, the thing is that’s all actually analytic meditation, or it’s leading you into analytic meditation, because your probing the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings and your trying to get a better understanding of those teachings. When you have a better understanding of a particular topic by really thouroughly looking at it, the analytical meditation isn’t intellectual. It can be very personal when your thinking about

these various topics about Lam Rim and applying them to your life; it’s very personal, it’s not intellectual at all. And so it may involve some thought at the beginning but when you get into the higher levels, once you have a correct inference of emptiness and you really know what the object of negation is and how to refute it in your analytic meditation, then you don’t intellectualize so much because your really scrutinizing your own mind looking for all the ways in which that solid, reified ‘I” hides out here and there. So your scrutinizing, your probing, but your not just intellectualizing. So a lot of people misunderstnad that about analytic meditation but analytic meditation is really helping you to understand the meaning about something. When you understand the meaning, then you use stabilizing meditation so that you can hold that meaning in your mind without letting it go. So for example, your doing this meditaiton on death, the recollection of death and so you think of the nine points in the death meditation—that’s analytic meditaion—but when some feeling starts to come that’s like, “I’m going to die, I better get my life together here!,” then you really think about what’s important, then you hold your mind on that feeling and that’s stabilizing meditation. Or maybe your contemplating Chenresig’s qualities—that’s kind of like recollection of the Buddha—and your contemplating Chenresig’s qualities and then you get this strong feeling and experience of, “Wow, how wonderful there are beings like that in this world and I want to become like that,” With stabilizing meditation, you hold your mind there so that that feeling, that experience you have, you hold it for as long as you can because that enables you to really integrate it with your mind. Or maybe your meditating on, “may all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment, and anger,” and you get this experience of “Wow, imagine what that would be like!” Then you just stay there and you stabilise your mind, you focus on that experience you don’t continue to focus on that topic you just stay on it. And so when you learn the Lam Rim you learn both of these types of meditation and that helps you to develop understanding so that it stays in your mind. If you understand Lam Rim well you will also understand how, like I was saying before, if you talk with friends that follow different traditions—like when I was in Thailand last year—I said, “OK they also do a reflection on death. I know here’s where it comes in Lam Rim. They also have a reflection on the Buddha and a reflection on the Dharma and a reflection on the Sangha. Oh…, that comes in to the chapter on refuge, the Lam Rim meditation on refuge.” Or you have the reflection on the organs of the body and the inside of the body and the unattractiveness of the body and that comes in the middle capacity being when your developing renunciation and strong determination to be free by meditating on the first noble truth; that’s where mindfulness of the body comes in, right there And so you can begin to see this, how the traditions are very similar and not contradictory at all. You can also see how the reflection on Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha have something to do with tantra too because your visualizing these different Buddha figures, you need to know what their qualities are, so it can also fit in there. Do you get what I’m saying? While we’re talking about different kinds of meditation, dividing it into stabilizing and analytic is one way of doing it. Stabilizing meditation is more on the side of shamata which is translated as serenity or calm-abiding or quiessence. Stabilizing meditation is more on that ___. Analytic meditation, when your trying to probe and understand, that’s more on the side of vipassana or special insight meditation . So you see how those fit in? Sometimes they also talk about, they divide the types of meditation into another two. One in which you’re focused on understanding the object and then the other one in which

you’re trying to transform your own mental state. So for example, if your meditating on subtle impermanence, or your meditaitng on emptiness, you’re trying to understand impermanence as an object, you’re trying to realize that impermanence is something that exists, you’re trying to understand it and realize it. Emptiness is something that exists, you’re trying to bring that as an object, you’re trying to understand that and bring that into your mind. So your focusing on a particular object that you haven’t cognized before because you mind has been so filled with distortions. The other kind of meditation is where your transforming your own experience, more transforming the affective state of your mind, so for example, if your meditating on love, your now trying to perceive love. Love isn’t an object that your trying to analyze and perceive. Love is something that your trying to experience, you’re trying to transform your mind into that feeling of love. Or if you’re meditating on compassion, compassion isn’t like impermanence or emptiness—it’s not an object out there that your trying to perceive—it’s something that your trying to generate within your own experience. So it can be interesting to see these different meditations. Of course, don’t see them as contradictory, because of course, if you perceive impermanence, your whole internal experience is going to change; you can see that it’s different if you say I’m meditating on impermanence and impermanence is your object. When your meditating on love, love isn’t your object—maybe when your generating love—the actual object is the kindness of sentient beings and love is the aspect with which you look at their kindness or love is more you’re reaction to understanding their kindness. Getting what I’m saying? I wanted to get through all four, we did two, maybe that’s enough for this week, we’ll continue on next week with the other advantages of Lam Rim.