Mente y realidad

Por Shamar Rimpoché

This is a transcription of a teaching and a question and answer session held at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on October 4, 2002. Shamar Rinpoche spoke in Tibetan and English, and the Tibetan was simultaneously interpreted into English by Lama Rinchen in Rinpoche’s presence.

Enseñanza

Buddha Shakyamuni’s Three Types of Teachings

The Buddha gave his first teaching about how he viewed reality now 25 centuries ago. And since that time, he has, and his followers have, continued to transmit the specifics of his teaching and of his way of practice. In this way, what we call the Dharma, that is, all of the teaching of the Buddha throughout these 25 centuries, has been able to speak sensibly to all of the beings and people who have heard this teaching throughout that time. Otherwise, it would not have lasted for so long.

It was because the Buddha was able to give advice and explanations which would be in harmony and be fitting for the people of each of those times throughout the 25 centuries, that the Buddha’s teaching has still survived today and is still able to correspond to the needs and the way of life of people nowadays, even though that way of life has considerably changed over the course of 25 centuries.

When we look at the way that the Buddha gave his teaching, then, there are three types of teaching, or three levels of teaching, which he gave to the people around him, his disciples, which were transmitted down through the centuries. The initial teaching, which he chose to give to his close followers, is what we refer to as the Las Cuatro Nobles Verdades. This was followed by another cycle of teaching, where the Buddha explained how the reality which we consider to be around us in ultimate terms is not true reality at all. It is on a relative level from our point of view simply an experience of our own confusion and does not correspond to true reality. So he taught a series of explanations, a series of sutras, on those particular topics and this was a major part of his teaching. And then this was followed by a third level of teaching, a third cycle of teaching, where he took care to, through this teaching, prevent people from falling into a state of denial of saying nothing existed, nothing was real. This third cycle of teaching is what’s called the cycle of teaching which describes the characteristics of reality.

So particularly in this third cycle of teaching, the Buddha took care to present the teaching in such a way that there could be a clear distinction between a reality which is explained as simply an illusion and a reality which would be affirmed as something genuinely existing with certain characteristics. The Buddha thus developed in his third cycle of teaching a balance or a harmony, an ability to distinguish between these two extremes.

First Cycle: Four Noble Truths Teaching

If you go back to the first cycle of teaching which he gave, this was on the Four Noble Truths. This was the initial teaching he gave to his disciples. First of all he explained suffering, frustration, what it meant, what are the characteristics of the experience of suffering in our lives. He went on to explain secondly, the second noble truth, that is the cause of suffering, the source, or the reason, why our lives can feel frustrating or unsatisfactory for different reasons. The Buddha explained the whole basis for that experience of life, that frustrating experience of life. And then, having explained suffering, or frustration, in detail, he went on to explain the third noble truth, that is the way to get out of that suffering. He gave a great deal of teaching about the path, which would be necessary to follow, to put into practice, so as to cure or transcend that suffering. He dedicated the major part of his teaching to this topic so as to clearly explain to those who wish to follow the path the way to do so.

The fourth noble truth is called the noble truth of the cessation of suffering. This is referring to the result which we attain when we have gotten rid of all suffering through following the path. In the initial cycle of teaching the Buddha didn’t explain this in a great deal of detail. The reason is that simply by following the path, each individual person by their inner experience will come to know what the stopping of suffering is, as gradually, through the methods of the path, the different causes of suffering are brought to an end within the mind of each individual. Thus, in this first cycle of teaching there was not a huge amount of explanation or definition about what the result of the path would be.

In response to this initial development of the teaching, the disciples around the Buddha at that time began to question the Buddha in a great deal of detail about the exact nature of suffering. This was suffering, or frustration, keeping in mind suffering is a very broad term in Buddhism. It doesn’t just mean the ordinary sense of suffering, but the basic dissatisfaction of suffering which we all experience. Of course, this is a common experience. Naturally the disciples of the Buddha questioned the Buddha more and more so as to get more deeply into the actual nature of this suffering, to better understand it, better define it. It was in response to this inquiry that the Buddha began to give the second cycle of teaching.

Second Cycle

In this second cycle he explained that what we experience as suffering or frustration is simply the confusion of the mind which is manifesting in the world and which prevents us therefore from experiencing things as they really are. The mind falls under the influence of the confusion that itself has created, and this confusion forms a pattern such that one is going to relate to that confusion in a personal sense, accepting some things and wanting to keep them, denying other things and wanting to reject them, whether those things constitute other people or other situations. Thus, there is an emotional basis for our relationship with life. As a result this builds up into confusion, the characteristic of which is suffering. The Buddha explained therefore that this confusion in reality is not really happening. In that sense he explained the lack of reality of the world that we experience around us.

Once again, this second level of teaching gave rise to an enormous amount of discussion amongst the Buddha’s disciples as they gradually assimilated this new level of teaching. Through the very extensive teaching which the Buddha gave throughout those years of his life, there was initiated a great discussion about what exactly is the end when all suffering is pacified. If everything is like an illusion, then that must mean everything is empty, everything is unreal, everything is hollow. And his disciples began to ask themselves, “Well, separate from the confusion, is there something else? Is it just that the confusion ends and there is nothing, there is emptiness, or what exactly happens when the confusion is pacified?”

Third Cycle

This led the Buddha to develop his final level of teaching, what we call the third cycle of teaching, in which he explained that even though the manifest world around us is a product or an expression of the mind’s confusion, the mind also has a capacity to be not confused. This lack of confusion in the mind is the quality of mind or the capacity of mind we call primordial awareness. The Buddha therefore in his third cycle of teaching gave the means to distinguish between the confused mind and the wisdom mind, or the mind based on primordial awareness. Associated with the mind’s freedom from confusion are many qualities, and these qualities the Buddha described in great detail—what kind of resources the basic nature of mind had. However, once the mind has fallen under the influence of its own confusion, the confusion itself has created, the mind develops many faults. The Buddha taught about the distinction between faults and qualities, how all faults arise from confusion, and how all qualities arise from the mind, or within the mind, when the mind is free of confusion. This then constitutes the third cycle of teaching.

As part of these explanations the Buddha described how the mind could get free of its dualistic clinging and within that freedom from dualistic grasping discover its own inner nature, its primordial awareness. At this point the mind would be free of confusion and a source of all qualities. About these qualities, or this level of mind, the Buddha also explained in this cycle of teaching that it’s very difficult for us, it’s hard for us from our present state of confusion, to actually appreciate what the mind is like when it is not confused. The reason is our only reference point at the moment is the state of confusion. Thus, it’s in this third level of teaching that the Buddha often talked about how the true nature of mind is beyond the intellect, it’s beyond our comprehension, it is inconceivable, inexpressible and so on. These are the terms which intervened at this point, in recognition of the fact that from our current point of view we cannot fully grasp what primordial awareness really is.

Integration of the Three Cycles

Which aspects within these cycles of teaching would the practitioner put into practice so as to follow the path to Buddhahood? Initially, one starts with the basics, the foundation, the starting point. One forms these basics by learning about the Four Noble Truths and particularly in detail about the truth of the path out of suffering, the way out of suffering which the Buddha taught. One would train oneself in these methods taught by the Buddha to transcend suffering and throughout that training use the other, or consider the other, two cycles of teaching as a support; the support helps us cultivate the right view, the right understanding of the path we have chosen to take and the development that we are engaging in through our practice. In this way we integrate all three of the cycles of the Buddha’s teaching when we practice.

Path Out of Suffering: Two Parallel Roads of Path of Study and Path of Meditation

When we follow the path out of suffering, our path tends to develop two parallel roads which we follow simultaneously. There’s one which constitutes a path basically to retrain our thinking, to get a more correct understanding of where we are going, what we are doing. This forms the path of study which we develop. At the same time, we are working on the mind particularly through the practice of meditation, and this is backed up by constant efforts in body, speech and mind to transform the way we behave when we’re not meditating—what we do with our lives, how we behave—so that this behavior becomes a help to our meditation practice, a help to our understanding of the true nature of mind.

In summary, what we have discussed so far is that we’re starting to consider the path which has two aspects to it, which we practice in parallel, a study aspect in order to develop our understanding, our thinking about ourselves and the world we live in, and then with that the meditation practice where we learn to understand the mind better and work directly with the mind, for which we need the support of our out-of-meditation behavior.

When we’re learning how to deal with the confusion, the mistaken understanding of the mind about the world that we function in, then there are different techniques which the Buddha gave, teaching us for instance how to deal with the confusion from within the confusion. This means that we also need to weaken the sources or the origins of this confusion and ultimately to take them away, so the confusion actually disappears or is removed. We also need to learn about the actual cause of this confusion, where it comes from and therefore how we can get rid of it. The first aspect where we tend to work on the means—which will help reduce the force of this confusion, weaken our confused mind, this dualistic clinging, so as to gradually be able to remove it, the method we use here in particular—is cultivating a mind based on virtue. And the principal way to do this, or the principal area in which we cultivate this kind of mind, is the practice of love and compassion.

Once we have this basis, we can then go on to pay attention directly to the mind itself, the source of our confusion. This is where the path of meditation, or the practice of meditation comes in. It’s only through meditation that we can actually come to see the true nature of mind. The cultivation of virtue or qualities such as love and compassion referred to earlier, these will help reduce our strong attachment to illusion, but they cannot lead us to see into the very nature of mind, which is why we need to work with the practice of meditation. Working with meditation involves two phases. Initially, we have to try to train the mind—we have to tame it or pacify it, bring the mind under our control, make the mind workable. This is because we’re busy, worried, confused, and often in a great deal of agitation, which makes meditation extremely difficult. Thus, there’s a first phase of the mind’s stability or the mind’s pacification, practices aimed at this. Then once the mind is considerably tamed, we can then go on to a second phase where we learn how to see into the mind’s true nature, and see what the mind is like when it is free of confusion. We see this for ourselves. This is not theoretical knowledge, but the direct perception of the non-confused mind, in meditation.

So the first phase is pacification meditation. It’s called in Tibetan shinay; the Sanskrit term is shamatha, which you may have heard of. The second phase of meditation in which we see into the mind’s reality; this we call lhaktong in Tibetan, or vipassana in Sanskrit. We usually translate this as insight meditation.

This then, all of this practice, constitutes what we call the noble truth of the path. We apply these methods, and as we apply the methods, gradually we make our way along the path. And due to the effectiveness of the methods, we will be able to judge for ourselves, through our own experience, to what extent these methods are applied correctly and to what extent they bring the actual result, which is called the noble truth of the cessation of suffering. Suffering will not cease immediately at one precise point in time; it’s something which develops in harmony or in tune with the path that we follow. The more we practice meditation, the more we develop, then, the results of meditation, the more we will discover the reality of mind, and through this more and more approach the ultimate and final discovery of the mind’s true nature, what we call the noble truth of cessation. In this way the path we follow is the path of meditation. As our experience of meditation grows, this meditation is giving us the means to estimate the criteria for understanding for ourselves—through our own direct experience of life—how our meditation is resolving gradually the suffering and the confusion and the frustration of life around us in a very natural way, as a natural effect of meditation.

It’s common usage to translate the word in the Buddha’s teaching as suffering. But of course, each time we could perhaps consider this word not as something so precise, but more to apply it to the term confusion. In this way, the path out of confusion is what we are doing, arriving at the cessation of confusion.

There’s a relationship between these four noble truths. One could consider them almost in terms of two pairs of truths in the sense that: [one] we have the confusion, which is like our current reality, this is the noble truth of suffering, or the noble truth of confusion; and [two] under that, then there is the cause of this confusion, the noble truth of the cause of confusion, where did this confusion come from? Then parallel with that, we have [three] on the top level the path out of confusion, the noble truth of the path. Underneath that, [four] what will happen when the path is completely followed and fulfilled, we have the noble truth of the cessation of confusion. By following the path, then the cessation of confusion will naturally increase and make itself felt, make itself manifest within the path itself. As we are going along the path, then the cessation of confusion occurs, let’s say the confusion starts to get resolved more and more; this makes its appearance in the path as we go along in the practice of meditation in particular. In parallel with that, on the other side, we can say the cause of confusion is getting weakened so that the confusion itself is also starting to fade, it’s starting to disappear, it’s starting to no longer be a part of our life.

When we talk about confusion, we can say that probably the simplest definition of confusion is dualistic manifestation; our world experience is one of duality. The cause of this is dualistic clinging: it’s clinging to the idea of double, self-other, subject-object. Of course this is developed in an enormous amount of detail in the Buddha’s teaching, but we can give a brief outline as to how this dualistic clinging develops and how it manifests as the world around us. Initially we have the basic mind, and this basic mind makes the mistake of clinging to a self, thinking that there is a truly existing ego, which it identifies as itself and therefore separates itself from others. Then it goes on to consider the other, everything which is not itself, as only in relation to itself, so we talk about my world, my possessions and so on. From the “I” we get a world experience based on “mine” and this then is duality. Once we have this, using the world’s manifestations as a kind of way to support the self, this is where the sensory functions begin to enter into operation. There, from within the mind, the sense consciousnesses develop, so the part of the mind which is able to see and perceive visual objects, the part of the mind which is able to hear and taste and smell and feel tactile sensations and so on, all of these senses arise from the mind. When these senses are in operation, or simultaneously with that, then the mind creates objects which it considers to be other than itself; and it considers these objects as things to be perceived, and therefore we have the whole sensory functioning which is going on. There is this constant co-operation between the mind and how it thinks of itself, and the senses in operation and the world it considers to be outside but with which it’s constantly relating always in this functioning of self -importance, self-identity. This then is what we call the confusion of dualistic manifestation, and the cause of that confusion then is the basic tendency in the mind to think of things in terms of self and other.

When we practice meditation and we go on to the second phase of the practice where we learn how to see into the mind’s true nature, this then is the phase of insight meditation, so called because it’s a dimension of practice where we get a much deeper, a more profound view into what really the mind is. This phase of insight meditation, its effect or its purpose is going to be to increase our ability to see into the true reality of mind and therefore transform the confusion of the mind.

The purpose of insight meditation is to transform specifically the source of the confusion, that is the dualistic clinging. By looking deeply into the mind as it really is in profound meditation, we discover that this dualistic tendency that the mind has, that the mind’s constant habit of thinking in terms of duality, that this is actually not real. It’s not a fundamental functioning of mind; it’s just a mistake that the mind keeps making over and over again. In this sense we say it is not real, it is not something which is definitely there.

By looking more deeply into the mind as it really is, we discover that instead of the dualistic creation of mind, we can access the primordial wisdom of mind, that is the part of the mind which does not make the mistake of thinking in dualistic terms. This primordial awareness, what we call the wisdom mind, is something which we cannot fully be aware of, we cannot imagine, we cannot directly know, if we haven’t actually seen it in our practice of meditation. This is because from the state of confusion, it’s not directly accessible. We may have some hint of it, we may have some idea of it, we may have some cloudy, hazy notion of it. But until we actually encounter it directly in our meditation, we will be unable to describe it. It’s not like pointing to something and then being able to describe all its details. To do that, first we have to see what we are pointing at, and this primordial wisdom is something we will only see when the mind’s confusion is cleared.

Therefore, that’s why the Buddha, when talking about the ultimate nature of mind or the primordial awareness of mind, he used terms such as inconceivable, unimaginable, inexpressible, and so on. However, when we are on the path, then we are from within this confusion able to apply the relevant remedies to the relevant difficulties, problems, or faults which are in the mind—each method, each remedy, is coupled with the right thing it’s trying to get rid of, the right illness it’s trying to cure, so that gradually we are able to clarify this confusion even from within the confusion, and then at one point see the underlying wisdom. This whole process works because underneath the confusion there is the wisdom waiting to be seen.

This discussion is basically covering an outline of the points given in the title of this talk, “Mind and Reality”; that’s what a Buddhist is doing when practicing within this theme. On this basis of the Buddha’s teaching, there will be the approach, for instance, of the practitioner, which is the systematic learning and application of the path of meditation, so that the practitioner will study the relevant texts and begin to apply the relevant methods, so as to discover the innate primordial awareness of mind. And there is also a path which is more theoretical, where we learn to understand about the nature of mind so we try to see through some of the mistakes we are making on an intellectual level; this is the approach of Buddhist philosophy. Thus, there’s a theoretical approach of Buddhist philosophy, and there’s the practical approach of systematic meditation.

This completes the outline of the topic itself as given in the talk.

Question and Answer Session

Questioner: How much does one meditate a day?

Rinpoche: Well, meditation is a training. Meditation, as I explained here, has two types. One is the training of the mind. The training depends on how much your mind is used to it. Therefore, as much time as you have is, of course, better. But it is not that one time you do it for a long time alternating confusion and not confusion; that will not serve to accomplish purposes quickly. There is a proper way to do it. However, as many times as possible in a day will be of course better. Then the other part is, also of course it depends on how much you do, which determines how much you will progress. Eventually it can be more spontaneous, not needing a lot of effort, because you can easily access it at that point. So in the beginning time, for training, you have to put a lot of effort.

Questioner: Could you please give a more of a detailed explanation on how actually to do the two types of meditation or is it required to have a guide that you should go to?

Rinpoche: You need a guide. Definitely you need a guide. And then the two types; you will not do two together. First one and then second.

Questioner: Where would someone go to get a guide?

Rinpoche: She’s here all the time. [Refers to Dharma Teacher Khaydroup, 2002, Los Angeles area.] We appointed her as a guide here. She’s very qualified for teaching on meditation. She practiced a lot in a nice Buddhist center in France. She started there. Before that, she also learned Buddhism in the USA. But for meditation training, she went to France, to a very, very well-organized meditation center. She practiced there and trained there. Now we invited her here, to teach here. Sometimes we come, but permanently she is here.

Questioner: Could you say a few words about the relationship between compassion and the confusion of the mind?

Rinpoche: Actually, when we are talking about the confusion of the mind, if we look at how that confusion was created using this duality or the initial self-clinging, clinging to oneself, we can see automatically in that functioning or in that experience of the world around us, we give an enormous amount of space to ourselves. Most of what we do, most of the way we behave, is based therefore on pride, anger, all these very negative emotions. That’s why the mind is so agitated. The confusion is something very agitating; the mind cannot see its own reality. For this reason we pacify the mind, we calm the mind down, and one of the best ways to do this is to practice love and compassion because they are the direct remedy to anger, hatred, pride and so on. Now these qualities, they are not things we have to get from outside; they’re actually part of the very nature of our mind. We don’t have to go looking for them; we just simply have to work to bring out the natural qualities of love and compassion which are already there. As they begin to emerge in the mind, they will diminish, reduce, the influence of pride and anger.

When we use the word compassion, we have to be careful to understand what it means in Buddhist terms. In ordinary Western terms, compassion is very often an emotional state of mind, something we feel, something we feel strongly even. In Buddhist terms, compassion is a natural quality of mind which emerges when we understand the role confusion is playing in the suffering of the world. The quality of the compassion doesn’t have the same emotional overtones as it has as usual.

Questioner: Does the insight meditation relate to say receiving teachings, or learning, or from self-study? Does receiving teachings help you?

Rinpoche: Receiving teachings is a guide, a guide on how to do the insight meditation.

Although we may receive teachings, some of them also on the practice of insight meditation, this teaching is basically a guideline, an external guideline. It’s not going to allow us to, on its own, produce or develop insight meditation. For that, we need to be guided gradually by a meditation teacher because the insight meditation progress is the way that understanding of reality is going to emerge from our own mind as we meditate. It’s not something we can go and get from outside by reading a book or by following a course or whatever. In that sense the insight is something which grows from within the mind, as was said for love and compassion. These are innate qualities of the mind to recognize its own true nature, and these have to be gradually brought out by the correct guidance.

Questioner: You said something like clinging to myself is caused by ego, and that is part of the confusion. Then we can establish a self-consciousness, and visual objects, you said something like smell, taste, all from our mind. But I was just wondering, establishing my own, for example, aesthetic taste, I like this or I don’t like that, or I like this style or I don’t like this style. Are these ego too?

Rinpoche: These are the result from self-clinging. Once you have self-clinging, the manifestation is that self has something to remain in as a body. Then, it has faculties to access the consciousness. Through the faculties, according to your interest, then you have discrimination mind, that says: that is I want, or that is I don’t want. As well as through seeing, through hearing, everything, through feeling.

Questioner: So, just to follow up, is all discrimination, is all of it concept?

Rinpoche: It will, yes, not necessarily but majority yes, maximum yes, then when you have the discrimination, then always you go to: what you want or don’t want. Yes, always, maximum like that.

Questioner: Related to the patience, perseverance, and tolerance, how do you tell some of the difference between when you should stay in a difficult situation and largely patient, and be in it, or when it’s a mistake, and it’s actually harming you to be in a situation?

Rinpoche: Actually if we look at what’s the root or the kind of basis behind this, it’s always the ego-clinging. And this is because the ego is asking itself, “Well, should I put up with this or should I not?” Whereas, in fact, we have to see that the practice of patience is gradually going to enable us to overcome the kind of compromising effect of the ego-clinging. What happens is that in the case of beginners, we try to cultivate patience, that is the ability to put up with difficulties, support difficulties and problems. We cultivate this by reflecting on the benefits or the advantages of practicing patience and the disadvantages or the problems which arise when we don’t have enough patience. In that case, we can see very clearly how advantageous it is to practice patience. That gives us the basic motivation. Once we’ve got the mind well-trained in this, got our priorities well-trained, then we can, through the practice of love and compassion, we can directly work on anger, love and compassion being the antithesis of anger; therefore, that’s another way of practicing patience. Patience is a natural outcome of the practice of, or the cultivation of, love and compassion. And all of this is possible because from an ultimate point of view there is none of this really going on. It’s just part of the illusion from within which we are working.

Questioner: I’ve read again and again practitioners of Buddhism say—I dedicate the merit of this meditation, I dedicate the merit of this action for the benefit of all sentient beings. What does that mean and how can I do it?

Rinpoche: Actually, this kind of dedication, it would be better to consider it like a wish. Every time we voice those words, we are wishing that all the positive action we do, that it may somehow contribute and be of benefit to living beings. So it’s just by making the wish that one is actually doing it.

If one has a very genuine compassion and loving kindness mind, any wish you made, it will happen. It will happen to others as a very positive illusion. It will happen to you until all ignorance has gone, as a positive illusion. The word “illusion” in English is very negative, but there is no other word better than “illusion,” is there? So, better I say positive illusion. [Gentle laughter.]

Questioner: In talking about patience, and in the same way with generosity, let’s say you’re generous, and then the next morning you’re in your mind thinking how you were generous the day before with something, but in your mind you’re going, “Why the heck did you do that?” And you lessen the generosity.

Rinpoche: If you regret? If you regret for your generosity, then…

Questioner Follow-up: Or the patience you know, that you’ve done, what’s the best way to move through that?

Rinpoche: If you did not make mistakes with your generosity and patience, there’s nothing to regret about it. Nothing to regret about, about mistakes. Let’s say somebody needs, okay, somebody needs very bad drugs, yah? Is it all right to say those words? Drugs. So you think it is generosity, so you try to get it, give it, and make the other person very sick or something. It is regrettable, yes. That generosity is regrettable. But otherwise generosity, you don’t have to regret. And if you regret for the right generosity, it’s not good. [Gentle laughter.] It’s wasted.

Questioner Follow-up: So how do you not waste it once you’ve performed it?

Rinpoche: You should have a clear understanding. Regret means the generosity is finished up; all lost. Merit is lost, your giving is also wasted. So you should have proper understanding. Right.

Questioner Follow-up: Through meditation?

Rinpoche: No, no, proper understanding. Meditation is one practice, but proper understanding.

If you . . . If you jump from a rock as you use your arms as wings, you know yourself that is not proper judgment. [Audience laughter.] If you practice hang gliding properly and then you use it and then fly, that is proper judgment, isn’t it? [Audience laughter.]

I know precisely it’s the judgment. So, for example, as I explained to her here now about her generosity yesterday—generosity yesterday, if you did not regret, the generosity yesterday is fruitful, you help the other, and yourself, you did very good, generosity. And today regret is not good for your mind, and then you’ve wasted what you’ve done yesterday.

60% wasted. [Audience laughter.]

30% left is for the other one who received your help.

Questioner: So in the moment if you say you were generous yesterday, but today you have a regret, in this moment when you experience the regret and you’re aware of it, what’s the remedy?

Rinpoche: No, that’s the training, training. Training means that spontaneously you have this understanding after you train, then you will not regret, yah?

As you are asking questions of me, then I explain to you and you understood, that means knowledge, yah? Accumulation of knowledge. While you are accumulating the right knowledge, you have to think it over and over, and question the guide, the teacher, and the teacher will answer you—that confirms what you understand is precise. Then when you have some kind of faults in the mind, the remedy will be there, simultaneously. It depends on your memory, of course. What you understood is the remedy—you will implement on that, is it?

So there are three phases, in fact, in this process. It’s what’s called traditionally listening, reflecting, and then meditating, or putting it into practice. The listening refers to any kind of informative situation where we receive explanations about what to do, and we therefore, through the information we receive, we develop an understanding about what’s being told to us. That therefore means we have a certain level of knowledge. This knowledge then we apply in the second phase which is reflection. We think about it. Have we really understood it; do we need to ask any more questions; do we need to demand more details. Until we can confirm that our understanding of the subject does indeed correspond to what the teacher was really telling us, that we haven’t misunderstood. And then we put this into practice. And by putting it into practice, it becomes integrated into ourselves, and it becomes an automatic functioning. We don’t have to deliberately develop it beyond a certain point; it happens automatically. And this is because it’s really sunk into the memory, because we’ve learned it properly, and we thought about it properly, and so now we can actually do it.

Is it clear?

Questioner: I think a lot of the confusion is coming from the attachment. But when cultivating love, I understand my confusion, love is limited to my family, my wife, friends. How can we cultivate that without also attachment? Can we have love without attachment?

Rinpoche: Initially, it’s not very easy at all, because our current habit is to always think of love as something we experience in a relationship based on attachment. That’s why we really have to work at this because true love, free of attachment, is very profound, and we cannot understand it and apply it immediately from our current experience, which is often tainted with attachment. This therefore brings in the role of meditation. This is because we need to use meditation, we need to use methods and particularly the view, initially the view, to soften our fixation on the reality of things. If we cultivate an awareness of how everything is simply the illusion of mind, the illusory manifestations of mind, then we develop an understanding or an experience of the world around us, which is not so fixed, not so full of attachment, things seem like a dream or like an illusion. That already is weakening the attachment. Then once we’ve done that, we can go on to use loving kindness, the methods which were explained earlier. We, for instance, meditate or think about the advantages of being a loving person, being able to develop love and compassion for all beings, and we think about the disadvantages, the drawbacks or the faults of not being able to have these qualities and being constantly ruled by anger and other opposing qualities. Then through meditation, by cultivating love and compassion in our practice of meditation, there comes a point where even though we may still have feelings of not genuine love and compassion, they can immediately be countered by the love and compassion cultivated in our meditation, which is free of attachment. When we get trained in this, there comes an experience from the mind where our love and compassion has no attachment whatsoever.

Actually, the emotional attachment is very different from the sensible love.

Questioner follow-up: Sentimental?

Rinpoche: No, I say sensible. Sensible. For example, I think you know about this lady. There was one lady who tried to save the guerrillas in Africa, a volunteer. She has a lot of compassion for them, as people hunt them. But she doesn’t know how to influence by a right view, her compassion. Then it became extreme; later it’s emotional. It has become a tragedy. That kind of compassion, one should not develop that kind of compassion. Well, she has the compassion, of course good. But it should not develop in that way.

Yes, because the attachment, when love and compassion are tainted with attachment, sooner or later they transform into anger, into resentment of various kinds.

Questioner: When we pray for the benefit of all sentient beings, I feel that we exclude minerals, sand, ocean, and I feel it makes me separate from all the non-sentient part of the world. How do we include everything?

Rinpoche: Well, you can Invite them also, you can, no problem, no problem for them. Usually they don’t get included, because they don’t get pain; they have no mind, so they have no pain. That’s why we are not specifically concerned about them. But yes, you can invite them, no problem.

But then difficult to work on? [Audience laughter.]

Thank you. Thank you, folks.

Foto de Thule G. Jug

Centro Budista Bodhi Path

Etiquetas: Buddha Shakyamuni, Four Noble Truths, Mind and Reality, Path of Meditation, Path of Study, Three Cycles