Review
We have been going through the graded stages of the path, which refer to the different levels of understanding, levels of mind, that we want to develop progressively, one after the other, to serve as a pathway leading to liberation and enlightenment.
The Precious Human Rebirth
We started with appreciating this precious human life, which is really very, very rare. Most of us don’t appreciate it at all and just waste it. But if we think of the worst types of situations in which we’d have no liberty or opportunity to develop ourselves further – whether because of having too much suffering, being too involved in trivial things, or being in places where no teachings are available and where there’s a lot of violence, hunger and so on – we see how horrible that would be and how fortunate it is that we are free of that. Although it might not be impossible for those who are in such situations to further their spiritual growth, it’s so much more difficult. How fortunate we are to have the opportunities to be able to grow, to meditate, to learn, etc. We really have very precious human lives.
We saw how rare the causes of it are – namely, ethical discipline, prayer or intention to achieve such a thing, and practicing the far-reaching attitudes – how difficult it is to find, and how easily it can be lost.
Death and Impermanence
In order to be even more motivated to take advantage of our precious human lives and not waste them, we think about death and impermanence – that death will come for sure and that it can come at any time. There’s nobody who’s never died, so why should we be any different? What’s going to be of help when death actually comes and we look back on our lives? The amount of money we have, the number of friends we have, the number of television programs or movies we’ve seen, etc. – that’s going to be absolutely trivial. The only things that will be of any benefit – and here we’re thinking in terms of future lives – are the various habits and karmic legacies that we’ve built up (not just the legacies we’ve left behind for others, which is of course very important) and that will carry on into our future lives.
That means taking preventive measures – which is what the word “Dharma” means – to prevent worse rebirths, worse situations in which we’d have no opportunities to further ourselves and continue on this path.
Dreading Worse States of Rebirth
We think of what could possibly follow our deaths. All of this, of course, assumes rebirth, which is not such an easy thing to accept. But given that that’s a basic premise here in the training, then according to the way that it’s done in the Tibetan tradition, we think of the suffering and lack of opportunities that we’d have if we were reborn in one of the worst states. So, we think of being in some hellish situation where we would be trapped for a terribly long time, just being tortured and so on. We could also be reborn as a wandering ghost, always clutching to get something to eat or drink and never being able to enjoy anything. We also think of being an animal that can be eaten at any time by some larger animal or exploited by humans. Imagine being a chicken in one of these chicken farms where you can’t even move and you have your beak cut off and stuff like that. And in the end, you just end up as dog food, half of which would be thrown away in the garbage. How awful that would be.
So, then we think, is there a way to avoid that? And what are we motivated by? What we’re motivated by is usually called “fear.” I prefer “dread.” It’s a healthy type of fear. His Holiness the Dalai Lama uses the word “fear,” but he makes a differentiation. He says there’s a healthy and an unhealthy type. An unhealthy type is one that paralyzes us. It makes us feel hopeless and that there’s nothing that we can do, which is not at all helpful. A healthier fear is one that makes us want to avoid something because we don’t want to get hurt. For example, when we take something hot from the oven, we’re careful because we don’t want to get burned. We use a potholder or something to take it out. So, there’s a subtle, healthy fear here of being burned. This is the healthy type of fear that we’re talking about. As I said, I call it “dread,” but it’s not easy to specify what it is because a lot of people think of fear in a negative way.
Safe Direction
So, that dread is the state of mind that we have when we think of these worst states of rebirth. We really want to avoid those, and we’re going to be really careful. But in addition, we see that there is a way to avoid them. There is a direction that we can put in our lives indicated by the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha – the Dharma being a state of mind in which all the confusion and instincts of confusion are gone, all the habits and disturbing emotions are gone, all the mental blocks that prevent us from being able to fully know everything and how to help others – all of that is gone forever, never to return.
The mind that has not only realized its natural, pure state but also realizes its full potentials in terms of understanding reality, understanding how things exist and the extent of what exists, and that has infinite love and compassion equally for all others and the full ability to communicate with them, as well as the full ability to physically appear to and help others in whatever way is necessary – that state is the ultimate source of direction: Dharma. The Buddhas are those who have achieved this in full and the Arya Sangha are those who have achieved this in part, so not the full thing. This is the direction that we want to go in, and we put that safe direction in our lives. That’s called refuge.
Refraining from Destructive Behavior; Developing Our Discriminating Awareness
We saw that the first thing that we need to do to be able to go in that direction is to modify our behavior. Basically, what we’re talking about is self-control – avoiding destructive behavior based on a healthy fear of the consequences. We want to avoid experiencing the results that would follow just naturally in terms of the negative potentials and habits that we build up when we act destructively. So, what we experience is not a punishment or anything like that. There’s nobody punishing us, no judge judging us. It’s almost a mechanical type of process.
But building up the potentials to experience similar negative things happening to us is not the only consequence of our destructive behavior. It also builds up the potentials for us to have strong impulses to repeat that type of behavior.
Mind, mental activity, is the arising of some sort of mental hologram, or appearance, and some sort of cognitive engagement with what appears – so, seeing it, hearing it, feeling an emotion toward it, knowing it, and so on. These two happen simultaneously; they’re two aspects of the same process. What comes up – namely, what appears – can be strongly determined by the karmic impulses that arise due to our previous behavioral patterns. But it’s not inevitable that we act on those impulses, because we also have another mental factor called “discriminating awareness.” So, we can discriminate between what’s beneficial and what’s harmful.
As human beings with precious human rebirths, this is our greatest asset. Discriminating awareness is the most wonderful positive quality that we have compared to animals. We have a sense of what’s beneficial and what’s harmful. And we have it not just on a short-term basis as animals might have but on a long-term basis. So, if we build up strong habits of positive behavior and also generate strong positive intentions and motivations, we can override the compulsive or impulsive aspect of the karmic impulses that come up to repeat the destructive types of behavior that we’ve done in the past or to get into unhealthy situations, situations that would be harmful to us. This is what developing discriminating awareness is all about.
We start developing this discriminating awareness here, with the initial scope, with the teachings on karma, applying that awareness to our behavior. Then, with the intermediate scope, we develop it further by applying it to the disturbing emotions, discriminating which emotions to follow, which not to follow, and which opponents to apply to counter them. That requires concentration, so we also have to discriminate between a wandering state of mind and a concentrated state of mind. With the advanced scope, we develop it even more by applying it to our motivation, discriminating whether we are motivated by selfishness or the wish to help others (though the motivation all along is important), as well as applying it to the understanding of reality, discriminating what is pure projection and absolutely impossible and what is actually the case.
The Four Laws of Karma
We’ve been going through various aspects of the teachings on karma. If you recall, we spoke about the principles of karma. In order to actually live our lives based on an understanding of and respect for the teachings on karma – for example, that certain actions will bring about certain results – we need to become convinced that the teachings are so.
We looked at these principles in a very critical way to see if there was a connection between unhappiness, suffering, etc. and destructive behavior. What actually is going on here? How do the consequences of our behavior increase? How is it that if we have done something, we will definitely experience the results, and that if we haven’t done something, we won’t experience any results? These are some of the basic principles of cause and effect that we looked at.
Later on, we will analyze how cause and effect actually works. That’s not a very easy topic – namely, the voidness of cause and effect. It’s not that the cause is like one ball and the effect is like another ball, that the two are connected by a stick, and that one ball follows the other ball in time. It’s a very subtle thing to understand. But, here, on the initial level of the discussion of karma, we don’t really get into that. Instead, we try to understand in a more general way how cause and effect could work and why it works.
The Four Factors That Make a Pathway of a Karmic Impulse Complete
We started our discussion of destructive behavior, and we saw that there are four factors that need to be present at the time of a physical, verbal, or mental action in order for the pathway of the karmic impulse (las-lam) for that action to be complete. What that means is that for the pathway of a karmic impulse for the action of killing, for example, to be complete, certain things need to be fully there. If they’re not fully there – let’s say the person we try to kill doesn’t die – the karmic pathway for the action of killing is not complete. Either it’s an incomplete karmic pathway for the action of killing, or it’s a complete karmic pathway for a different type of action – injuring somebody, for example. So, for the consequences of a certain karmic action to be full, in full accordance with the kind of results that that specific action would necessarily give rise to when the pathway is complete, certain factors need to be there in full.
These four factors are:
[1] A basis at which the action is directed. In the case of killing, the basis is a person, a being (which could be an animal) that could die as a result of our action.
[2] A motivating mental framework, which includes:
- An unmistaken distinguishing (‘du-shes). We need to distinguish whom it is that we want to kill. If we kill somebody by mistake, the results will be different.
- An intention (’dun-pa). We discussed what intention means. It’s the mental factor of wishing for an intended object and the wish to do some intended action involving that object. We aim to do something specific with or to a specific being.
- A motivating emotion – in the case of destructive actions, it is one of the three poisonous disturbing emotions or attitudes (nyon-mongs): hostility, longing desire, or naiveté.
Again, the state of mind, or motivating mental framework, that we’re describing here is the contemporaneous one, which means that it is the state of mind that we have as we enter into the actual action and with which we sustain it.
Our states of mind change. If we observe our behavior, we might notice that, before we even start to do an action and are just thinking about doing it, a certain motivating emotion, disturbing or otherwise, is there as part of the causal motivation, but that when we actually start doing the action, a different state of mind, a different emotional state is there. After the action has ended, we might again feel differently: we could regret what we’ve done or rejoice in what we’ve done. All of that affects the fullness of the result that we would experience.
[3] An implementation (sbyor-ba) (of a method that causes the action to occur) – we have to actually do something to bring about the murder.
That becomes interesting to analyze: If we give somebody a meal and they choke on it and die, would that action be one of killing or something else? It’s quite different from attacking them with a machete or shooting them with a gun.
[4] Then, a finale (mthar-thug) – the person has to die as a result of our action.
It could take a long time for the person to die. What about the people in Hiroshima who were poisoned by the radiation from the atom bomb? It took a very long time to die for those who weren’t burned up instantly. They developed cancer later in life. What, in that case, is happening with the karma of the person who ordered the bombing, the person who actually dropped the bomb, etc.? For the whole action to be complete, then, a long period of time could pass. Also, we might die before the other person dies.
The First Factor: A Basis
We start with the basis. Let’s analyze this factor in terms of abortion. Is the basis of an abortion a person? That becomes very tricky. When is the aborted embryo or fetus actually a person? At what point does an abortion count as an actual killing? That’s a very contentious issue, isn’t it? From a Buddhist point of view, it’s really hard to say. Is it the instant that the sperm and egg join? Is it the instant that the embryo embeds in the placenta and becomes viable, starts to grow? What about if it’s grown in a test tube? That also is a difficult question. Or is the embryo just a substance that has to grow to a certain point before it can have the potential to have a person, a mental continuum, imputed on it? This is a very difficult question to answer, and it’s one that doctors don’t agree upon.
The most detailed Buddhist explanations of when the consciousness connects with the body of a new rebirth as its basis are the ones we find in tantra. There, a meditation method for generating a mandala and so on is explained by way of analogy to the birth process. Whether that is to be taken literally as an actual analog of an external event that happens in our ordinary lives is, again, open to question. Many meditations in tantra are designed to form an analogy with things that happen in life, such as the process of death, bardo, and rebirth, in order to help us to purify the tendencies of going through those processes in a samsaric way and to help us to go through them in a nirvanic type of way (to use the terminology that’s used there) instead.
Once the consciousness of a person has connected with embryo, whenever that might occur, abortion is then an action of killing, the taking of a life. The question then becomes how destructive is the action and how full will the consequences be. Anyway, let’s not go into that.
Actions Unspecified in Terms of the Basis but Specified in Terms of the Motivation
It’s possible for the action to be unspecified as either constructive or destructive – for example, picking wildflowers in a wilderness that belongs to no one. What is that? The second destructive action of body is taking what was not given. So, what happens when you pick berries in the woods or pick wildflowers in a meadow? Is that taking what was not given? It is in the sense that nobody gave them to you. But is it destructive? No, because they don’t belong to anyone. That’s what is specified in terms of the basis for taking something that’s not given: the object has to be something that belongs to somebody else.
However, if picking the flowers or eating the berries is done with greed and attachment, the act becomes destructive because of the motivating emotion. So, the act itself is, in a sense, neutral, but the motivating emotion is not; therefore, there are going to be negative consequences as a result.
That brings up a very interesting question: Why do you pick flowers, never mind whether they belong to you or not? You could say it’s to make an offering. Do the Buddhas need flowers? I doubt it. What are they going to do with flowers? But everybody offers flowers, something that is very beautiful.
Participant: Do the Buddhas need water?
Dr. Berzin: Do the Buddhas need anything? They don’t need anything. So, it becomes very interesting. If we are in the habit, as many people are, of buying flowers and putting them in their homes… well, that’s not taking what is not given. Most people buy them or take them from their gardens.
Participant: But it might be greed as well.
Dr. Berzin: It might also be attachment and so on. This whole analysis of karma always gives one a lot to think about.
Participant: If I make the surroundings nice, my mind might be calmer.
Dr. Berzin: Right, if the motivation is to make your surroundings nice in order to have a calmer, more orderly state of mind so that you are better able to do something beneficial, then the motivation is a nice one. Then the motivation is not greed and attachment. “Motivation” is a big word – the accompanying emotional state is not one that is disturbing. Mind you, you could have the aim to have the most beautiful offerings in order to impress others, etc. That’s something else, isn’t it? You always need to differentiate the action from the motivation, the motivating state of mind.
So, in the case of taking what was not given, you analyze: “Does it belong to somebody or not?” and “What is my state of mind?”
Discussion
What about Violent Video Games or Killing in Dreams?
What if there’s no basis present, nobody who could, say, be killed by a murderous action – for instance, shooting somebody in a dream or shooting an alien in a video game? Is that a destructive action?
Participant: It’s an incomplete one.
Dr. Berzin: But what does incomplete mean? Are there consequences? Does it build up a certain negative habit on your mental continuum?
Participant: Sure.
Dr. Berzin: It does, because, although you might know that the alien in the video game is not real – and, certainly, nobody dies as a result of your action – you certainly have a murderous intent. You want to kill that thing. There’s a great deal of hostility there.
Participant: And it builds up a habit.
Dr. Berzin: It certainly builds up a habit of dealing with situations in that way: just shooting whatever it is that you want to get rid of.
It’s similar with shooting somebody in a dream. Dreams are mental actions, not physical ones. No one actually dies. However, His Holiness has explained that if, after we wake up, we revive the dream in our minds – not just mentally but also emotionally – and feel that the killing was a good thing to do, we have committed the mental action of thinking with malice.
Still, does shooting somebody in a dream build up a certain negative habit? It’s an interesting question. Is it destructive?
Participant: Of course. Why not?
Dr. Berzin: Why not? And what about the intention? Can you have an intention in a dream?
Participant: Of course.
Dr. Berzin: Of course, you could have an intention in a dream. You could have the intention to murder someone in a dream, couldn’t you?
Participant: But unless you can do dream yoga, you can’t help it. You have no choice but to do it.
Dr. Berzin: A lot of people would say that even when they’re awake, they can’t help it.
Participant: Except for killing an ant by mistake, I can help it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That we’ll come to in our analysis of intention.
Participant: But, otherwise, I can avoid killing.
Dr. Berzin: Right, but only to a certain degree. Actually, when you cook or eat food or drink water, you’re probably killing something. Undoubtedly, there are some small creatures in the food and water.
Participant: But do microbes have minds?
Dr. Berzin: That’s an interesting question. That’s very difficult to answer.
How do you know whether something has a mind? I was thinking more about this today. Something that has a mind – so, a sentient being, a so-called sentient being (a limited mind) – has mental activity: it gives rise to mental appearances and cognitively engages with them. Part of that mental activity is the mental factor of intention. Does a plant have the intention to grow toward the sun? From a Buddhist point of view, plants don’t have minds. Do they have choices? Not really. An animal does do things – goes toward food and so on – with intention. There’s some sort of motivation, something that draws the animal to the food. And although it might be very difficult to overcome the karmic impulses to act in that way, it is possible. A plant can’t do that. Can a microbe do this? I have no idea.
Participant: I was reading Lama Zopa. He says that something is a sentient being if it has the capability of suffering. So, there he draws the line. If some thing or some being cannot suffer, then it’s not a sentient being.
Dr. Berzin: That’s correct. For instance, what differentiates a computer from a mind is the mental factor of feeling a level of happiness, namely, a level of suffering or ordinary happiness, which is the suffering of change. A computer doesn’t do that. A computer has appearances, mental holograms. It computes and so on, but it doesn’t feel any suffering or happiness. But that’s hard to measure, isn’t it? How do you know that a plant doesn’t experience suffering? I don’t know how you would know that.
Participant: Alan Wallace claims that one of the abilities of a highly developed yogi is to be able to distinguish the presence of a mind.
Dr. Berzin: Sure, heightened perception is something that you can get as a result of single-minded concentration; so, you can detect if somebody’s able to feel.
Participant: Then the issue should be resolved.
Dr. Berzin: I don’t know about that. You could say that it has been resolved already, because, according to the Buddhist texts, plants don’t have minds. Let’s not get into a big discussion of plants. Also, there are some animals that look like plants. I’ve heard that discussion as well. That sort of gets around the issue. But then that’s not so easy.
Anyway, getting back to karma, the point is that if there is no basis – for example, you try to shoot somebody, thinking they’re behind a curtain but they’re not (so you don’t kill anybody) – the pathway of the karmic impulse for taking a life is incomplete. The action devolves into merely shooting a gun. But the action would still be destructive since it’s accompanied by hostility, and it would still bring about future suffering. It wouldn’t, however, bring about a worse rebirth as actually killing a live person would. So, the consequences are far less.
Participant: What about when one is very angry and fantasizes about killing?
Dr. Berzin: That’s a destructive mental action, thinking with malice. But the destructive karmic mental action of thinking with malice is only complete if it reaches the finale of deciding actually to kill someone.
Participant: One says, “I could kill this person!” but one never intends to do it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. One doesn’t intend to do it, but thinking that thought is a destructive mental action anyway.
It’s interesting, because some people say, “I could kill you,” and they don’t really mean that. It’s just an expression, at least in English.
Participant: Some say, “I love you,” and don’t mean it!
Dr. Berzin: Right. But is saying, “I could kill you,” harsh language?
Participant: This would be that the action’s complete, but the intention isn’t.
Dr. Berzin: No! First of all, for the action of harsh language to be complete, the other person has to hear what you say. If they don’t hear it, it’s not complete. They also have to understand what you say and feel hurt by it. If they don’t, if they think you’re just a complete idiot for saying what you did, the action is not complete.
Participant: But it’s just an idiomatic expression that means that I really disagree with what you just did.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But I think one has to be careful about one’s speech and to recognize that this is actually a very stupid idiom, even if it is very common.
Participant: What if all persons agree that it doesn’t mean what it says and there is no misunderstanding about that?
Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. What do you think?
Participant: It’s mental labeling.
Dr. Berzin: It’s mental labeling, assigning meaning to arbitrary sounds.
Participant: What if all persons agree on that labeling?
Dr. Berzin: If all parties agree on the labeling, does that make it OK?
Is It Destructive to Use Culturally Accepted Swear Words?
What about swearing? A lot of people, especially those from my generation who grew up in America in the 50’s and 60’s and were exposed to the beatnik and hippie influences, have a tremendous amount of swear words in their language.
Participant: In Mexico, we use swear words to express care and affection.
Dr. Berzin: Well, every culture is different. As I say, I don’t know. Do you think that it’s OK?
Participant: I could think, “Would I use this word when I’m with my teacher?” If not, then it’s not a good word.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s perfect. That is why in guru yoga, for example, you imagine your teacher sitting on the top of your head, on your shoulder, in your heart, or wherever. They’re there as a witness, in a sense. If you were always in the presence of your teacher or always in the presence of the Buddhas or always in the presence of God, for that matter, would you speak that way? And if not, why wouldn’t you speak that way? In many ways, it’s because you do understand, even if it’s an idiom, that it’s disrespectful, that it’s not nice. So, then it’s naiveté to use it.
Participant: Sometimes, when you are completely alone in a room and something goes wrong, you say, “Oh, shit!” Nobody’s hurt by that.
Dr. Berzin: Ok, now she brings up a very good point. I’m certainly guilty of that. I think most of us are guilty of that. Is there anything negative about that? She says it doesn’t hurt anybody? But remember, what is the point of karma? The point is that it builds up negative habits for you. The effect that it has on somebody else is uncertain. It could have a positive effect; it could have a negative effect.
Participant: Is it the words that are destructive or the state of mind?
Dr. Berzin: Words are neutral. Or are they? From their own sides, obviously, they don’t have any meaning; they’re just arbitrary sounds that a society has assigned meanings to. The Tibetans say “konchog sum” (dkon-mchog gsum), which means “Three Jewels of Refuge,” instead of saying “shit.” But you could say that with a very hostile, angry state of mind: “KONCHOG SUM!” Like that. What’s the difference? Is there a difference?
Participant: I remember the first time I saw myself saying a bad word in a video. I felt so ashamed of myself – not because of what others might think but because I thought it was so ugly. And it was also like proclaiming. I felt very silly. I also felt it was a waste of energy and that the intention was wrong.
Dr. Berzin: This is very, very good. It underlines what we talked about. Remember the two mental factors that need to be present for an action to be destructive. One is a lack of ethical self-dignity. When you’re acting in a constructive way, you have ethical self-dignity, and so you would feel ashamed to act like that. You’d think, “That’s not the way that I want to be. I have too much respect for myself to act that way.” This illustrates very, very well the validity of the analysis of the states of mind involved in a destructive action – the mental factors that are present. The other one is consideration for how your actions reflect on others, such as your family, which is a very Asian type of thing, your gender, your upbringing, your religion, etc. Because you have so much respect for others, you don’t want them to be held in disrespect.
Participant: What if what comes out is “oh, shit” or whatever when the time of death comes?
Dr. Berzin: Exactly!
Participant: And then there’s not one thought about Buddha or anything.
Dr. Berzin: Exactly. What if that’s the last thought that you have as you’re dying? What will that mean in terms of your next rebirth? It is said that your state of mind at the time of death is very important. It’s very true.
I’ve related this story before, I think. I fell in Dharamsala in the monsoon and cracked my ribs against a concrete edge. For sure, the first thing that came to my mind and to my mouth was “oh, shit!” That isn’t a very nice state of mind to die in.
Participant: But you could stop the words and still have that state of mind.
Dr. Berzin: True.
Participant: It’s not about the words, I think.
Dr. Berzin: Not about the words? What about mantras? Is there any benefit to saying mantras, regardless of the state of mind? Mantras are just meaningless syllables; they’re just sounds. You could say that they’re blessed by the Buddhas and so on. That’s something else. But, still, in its nature, a mantra is just a sound.
Participant: If I say, “oh, shit” in a certain state of mind, I give expression to that state of mind. If I have that state of mind but stop myself from expressing it, I still have that state of mind, but at least I have restrained myself a bit. So, there’s the chance that I will continue to restrain myself more and more.
Participant: You don’t amplify it so much.
Dr. Berzin: What you point out is very correct. When you don’t express that thought, you don’t amplify that state of mind, and you are at least exercising a little bit of self-control. So, you are doing something constructive, even though that thought might be in your mind.
Remember, self-control, from a Buddhist point of view, isn’t something you exercise because you’re afraid of being punished or afraid of being bad and so on. You do it because you discriminate that an action is destructive and that acting on it will lead to building up negative habits that will just bring more suffering for yourself and – if we think further – will hamper your ability to help others. That’s the real Mahayana thing: It prevents you from helping others. That’s a much deeper motivation.
By not expressing a negative thought, you are at least exercising some ethical discipline (let’s call it ethical self-discipline, rather than self–control). That’s a start. You could be with somebody and think all sorts of terribly nasty thoughts about them – “What a complete idiot,” or something much stronger than that – and yet have a big smile on your face and be very polite. So, there are stages of exercising ethical self-discipline. We exercise restraint. That’s the definition of ethical self-discipline.
Participant: Even though I might use questionable words in a context where it is OK to do so, if I get into the habit of using them, I might then use them in other contexts where it’s not OK.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, that’s very true.
Participant: For example, I look after an elderly woman. One day, before I went shopping for her, I told her that I would come the next day and bring her, her “stuff’” (in German, “Krempel”). When I use this word with Christian or someone else, it’s not a problem; they don’t think anything about it. It’s just a word. But she said, “You’re calling my shopping things ‘stuff’!” She was terribly offended.
Dr. Berzin: Right. If we are in the habit of using language or an expression that is OK in a certain crowd, we could use it in a situation where it might not be considered OK. You said that you would bring her, her “stuff.” In English, one would probably say “junk.” When you use that expression with your husband, it’s perfectly fine. But the woman was very offended that you called her shopping things “stuff” or “junk.” Also, if you’re in the habit of swearing, you could find yourself swearing when a policeman stops you because you were going too fast. Obviously, that’s an inappropriate time to use that language, isn’t it?
That’s the discussion of the basis. For the action of using harsh language to be complete, the person toward whom you direct your words – the basis – has to understand what you say and be hurt by it. If that basis is not there, as in the example of using harsh language when you’re just by yourself, the action, even though incomplete, is still destructive because it builds up a negative habit.
Refraining from Destructive Actions by Remaining Like “a Block of Wood”
Participant: Sometimes it also works for me to do as Shantideva says, which is to become like a block of wood.
Dr. Berzin: Right, Shantideva gives great advice. Becoming like a block of wood refers not only to your body and speech but to your mind as well. Does that mean being a zombie, being stiff?
I know some Dharma practitioners, usually beginning Dharma practitioners, who take these things very literally, overly literally, and who are stiff like blocks of wood all the time. They’re not at all relaxed. That’s a delicate thing – to apply this without becoming stiff and literally a block of wood. You just stand there, motionless, not doing anything. How do you implement it in a relaxed, human, gentle type of way? This is really an art, isn’t it? Anybody have any ideas, any experience?
Participant: I find it more helpful in that situation to see that if you’re upset, that you’re not calmed down, you make things worse. So, then you say to yourself, “OK, cool down.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is using discriminating awareness. In a sense, it’s remaining like a block of wood, but it’s doing so with a little bit of understanding.
Another example is “put the baby to sleep.” “Now I’m like a cranky baby that’s crying and being really upset. Put the baby to sleep. In the morning, it will be better.” So, you put yourself to sleep just to relax. It’s very helpful, by the way, to see it like that. Very helpful to see when you’re acting like a cranky baby. It’s a little bit more human than just being like a block of wood. Being like a block of wood means not saying something, not doing something, which is, of course, absolutely correct. You don’t say it; you don’t do it. But, then, how to soften that so that you’re not stiff is the question.
Not Repressing
Participant: I’m not so sure I agree with what Katya said about not even thinking it. I think that, particularly for Westerners, there is the danger of repressing our emotions, which we tend to do anyway. I think it’s important to realize, “I’m angry now,” as well as to try to stop myself from acting on that anger.
Dr. Berzin: Now we get into a very interesting discussion, that of repression. Katya said that you should act like a block of wood not only in terms of your physical and verbal behavior but also your thoughts (maybe I said it; it doesn’t matter who said it). Now, stopping yourself from thinking – is that repression? What is the difference between that and what you do during concentration meditation, shamatha meditation, where you are stopping the mental wandering – which involves stopping not only verbal thoughts but also disturbing emotions – and bringing your focus back? Is that repression? Does it have to be repression? Obviously, there’s mahamudra meditation and dzogchen meditation, which involves not following out the thought, but just seeing it dissolve, etc. There are many, many methods that are used to stop thoughts.
Participant: From my own experience, I’d say that bringing the focus back in meditation is not necessarily repression; nevertheless, it can be used to repress what I don’t want to feel.
Dr. Berzin: Very, very good. Bringing the focus back in meditation doesn’t have to be repression, but, nevertheless, it is sometimes used to repress certain feelings you don’t want to feel.
What is repression, and what is the antidote to it? What does repression mean?
Participant: To repress is to ignore. So, acknowledging is not repressing.
Dr. Berzin: Repressing is ignoring? I wouldn’t say that. There’s a step before ignoring. The step is projecting truly established existence onto the feeling: “There it is – solid. It’s a monster, and I’m going to push it down.” And then there’s the “me” that I have to protect from feeling that feeling. So, it’s quite a dualistic type of thing. So, when you have that projection of duality (if you want to use that terminology) or a grasping for truly established existence, you get repression.
The antidote for that is to dissolve the whole thing in terms of grasping for true existence. You just analyze the thing. And if you’re familiar enough with voidness, analyzing it is not a problem. “This is just a feeling; it’s nothing else. It’s rising dependently on this and that. It’s not some sort of monster.” That is not so easy with emotions, but it’s something that one eventually needs to be able to do by applying the voidness meditation. Obviously, I haven’t explained that very well or in great detail, but that’s the direction that the analysis needs to go in. If you’re feeling very angry, you think, “Well, is there a solid ‘me’ that’s angry? Why am I angry? Is this anger something solid?” etc. So, you, in a sense, deconstruct it. Also, you can see the feeling in a mahamudra way – as a wave that’s coming up on the surface of the ocean. That’s not repressing it; that’s just seeing that all that it is, is mental activity.
Participant: Or you can just hold the feeling with awareness.
Dr. Berzin: In other words, seeing that it has arisen dependently and that it will pass. That’s another method. But whatever the method is, you’re not grasping at it; you’re not holding onto it. You’re not making it a solid thing and pushing it down. You’re also not making it a solid thing and holding onto it: “There it is – I’m experiencing it, and I will suffer.”
Participant: For this kind of thing, I find the techniques explained by Pema Chodron very, very helpful. She’s very explicit about this and about why it’s not about repressing.
Dr. Berzin: Explain.
Participant: Basically, it’s a mahamudra kind of method. She sometimes says to “drop the story line but stay with the feeling.” Basically, it’s not following the disturbing train of thought, but it’s also not repressing it. You just stay with the feeling that’s disturbing you by breathing into it and giving it space.
Dr. Berzin: Then you have to analyze what it means to give it space.
Participant: It’s not taking it so seriously.
Dr. Berzin: So, you’re deconstructing it, in a sense. You’re not giving it validity. But you’re not pushing it away either. If you push, you give it solid existence. So, it’s the same thing; it’s just not expressed in the same words. It’s expressed in a feeling way rather than an analytical way. But it’s the same principle: You don’t wallow in the feeling, “poor me; I’m so sad.”
Participant: But also, when you practice shamatha, you don’t need to analyze in the way that you do when you’re doing analytical meditation on voidness.
Dr. Berzin: In shamatha, in strict shamatha, you don’t have analysis of voidness. That’s absolutely correct. What you’re using, however, is discriminating awareness. You have to notice that your mind is wandering, discriminate that that is harmful to the meditation, and then correct it.
Participant: Without suppressing it.
Dr. Berzin: Well, yeah. But doing it without suppressing it means not giving it solid existence, not holding onto it. So, intuitively (if we can use that Western word), you are not giving it solid existence. You are not giving it such importance.
There’s another thing. Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey always used to cite this example. If you put a wild horse inside a fence, or a “pen,” as we call it in English, the horse will just run around and be very frustrated and unhappy. If you let the horse run loose, it will run for a little while, and then it will stop and graze. It’s the same thing with your mind: The more tightly you try to hold it, the more it will tend to race around and object. On the other hand, if you say, ”OK, I’m going to meditate, but before I do, for two or three minutes, mind, you can wander as much as you want,” and you sit there and just let your mind wander, eventually your mind just gets bored. This is the theory. Whether it happens or not, I don’t know. This was the example that he used. I’m sure he got it from a text and that he didn’t make it up.
Participant: I’ve heard the same story.
Dr. Berzin: It must be in some text. Maybe it’s in Pabongka’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Geshe Ngwang Dhargyey used to take a lot of examples from that text. Zen masters have a similar example. Anyway, this is the thesis.
We’re not getting through all of this very rapidly, but that doesn’t matter. I think these are good issues to think about, not just as they pertain to meditation but to our behavior as well. Is our behavior just driven by habit – which, in Buddhist terms, means being driven by karmic impulses built up from previous behavior – and, so, is out of our control? Or can we exercise some sort of discrimination based on a clear understanding of what is beneficial and what is harmful (whether we would go through a whole analysis or not is a matter of familiarity) and exercise self-control, but without repressing anything?
Participant: There’s something I remember from a Bhagavad Gita course. It had to do with the matter of imposter – that when you repress something, meaning that you don’t accept or integrate it, you are like an imposter, a fake. So, sometimes you just have to integrate your feelings.
Dr. Berzin: What I would say, to put this into Buddhist terminology, is what Tsongkhapa says (and he takes this from Shantideva): In order to catch a thief, you have to recognize the thief. In order to shoot an arrow into a target, you have to recognize the target; otherwise, you’ll never hit the target. So, first, you have to acknowledge. This is very important. When you repress something, you don’t even acknowledge what the problem is.
There’s a difference, perhaps, between just being aware of a problem and recognizing it as something that you have to work on. I think that just being aware – “well, OK, I have it” – but not recognizing that you need to do anything about it is not as effective as being aware of it, recognizing that it’s causing you trouble, and then, either at that time or later, dealing with it. You definitely have to deal with it. To integrate, in some systems, means to make something a part of you: “I have my dark side and my good side. I’m balanced because I have both positive and negative qualities.” Although some people might explain it in that way, that’s not the standard Buddhist way.
Participant: What I maybe meant was to accept that, at this moment, it was a part of you.
Dr. Berzin: Right, it is a part of me, and I have to deal with that. That’s true.
Sometimes in tantra, for example, you do use certain disturbing emotions. Once you have divested them of the grasping for solid existence, you can use that energy in positive ways – as in the case of these forceful figures. You use that energy in a very forceful, even severe way to stop acting selfishly: “Just stop it! Straighten out! Get your act together!” That’s very helpful, actually. “Stop acting like a baby!” It’s very, very helpful to say these things when you’re just acting like a baby: “Oh, I didn’t get my way! Poor me!” “Just stop it!” That could be seen as repressing, but if you have some understanding of voidness and so on, it’s just getting yourself together – like, “Get out of bed! It’s time to get up and go to work!”
Participant: I don’t think that that is repression because I understand what is going on in my mind. And because of that, I say, “I don’t want to act like that. I don’t want to act on it. I don’t even want to dwell on it.”
Dr. Berzin: Right, it isn’t repression because you’re doing it with awareness, with understanding. You think, “I see what this is. I don’t want to follow it out. I don’t even want to think like this,” and you just stop. In that sense, you act like a block of wood.
Participant: But relaxed.
Dr. Berzin: Being stiff is being both the controller and the one being controlled. That’s a really dualistic situation: the good “me” controlling the bad “me.” That’s certainly an imaginary situation. No such thing.