Last week we began this wonderful letter that Tsongkhapa wrote to his friend and student, teacher — someone that he had a mutual teacher and student relationship with — the meditator Konchog-tsultrim, in which he explained in a very practical way how to meditate on sutra and tantra: What are its most important points, what are the things to emphasize, and how to actually put them into practice. The formal title of this text, as we saw, is A Brief Indication of the Graded Pathway Minds. We started it last time, and since we have a new person here then why don’t I just read the part that we covered already so that we have it a little bit fresh in our mind, and then we will go on.
The letter begins:
Homage to Manjughosha. May I always be cared for by (you,) the foremost of the peerless (Dharma) expounders. Your flawless knowledge and wisdom are unimpeded even concerning the subtlest points. This is due to your familiarization, over a long time, with the methods of profound (voidness) and extensive (enlightening actions, gained) through many magnificent skillful means.
O my excellent spiritual mentor and friend, first you strove to hear and study many scriptural pronouncements. Then you spread the teachings with your excellent explanations. In the end, you made extended effort to actualize them. May your feet be firm throughout a long life!
I have received the perfectly delightful tree of your letter together with its tasteful fruit of your presents, which you have sent, my dear friend, without being requested, out of your affectionate thoughts directed toward me. Not being quenched by the well-explained accounts (already available), as an ocean (cannot be satisfied) by a great cloud-full of rain, you have requested that I write and send you in a letter further (practical advice on) how to apply yourself to the two stages (of the highest class of tantra, Anuttarayoga. A mind of) little intelligence can indeed be easily filled by hearing (merely a few teachings), as a small pond (can be readily plenished) by a babbling brook. Thus, it is awe-inspiring that minds of superior intelligence (such as your own) are so vast they cannot be satisfied by these wonderful accounts.
However, granted that this may indeed be so, it is quite preposterous (for there to be any call) for someone like me to appease the mind of a great man (like) you. I have heard and studied few (teachings). My intelligence is low; my Dharma actions are meager. Although I may have a few words (in my mind), I have been very lax in living up to their meaning. Nevertheless, even dandelion seeds, animated by the wind, can soar to compete with fine-feathered birds, though they lack the power to do so on their own. Similarly uplifted by your ennobling words, I shall try to offer you something in brief.
This is his very beautiful, I must say, poetical introduction.
Well then, (as for lowly people like myself) we have, in fact, found the excellent working basis (of a human rebirth complete) with all the respites (for Dharma study and practice). We have, in fact, met with the precious teachings of the Triumphant (Buddhas) and have, in fact, been cared for by superb spiritual masters. With such an opportunity and when we do have the power of mind to discern what is to be adopted and rejected, we must strive definitely to take advantage of such an excellent working basis.
This, of course, depends solely on our engaging ourselves with the Buddhas’ teachings. But to have engaged ourselves merely by (having) kind thoughts is not enough. Either we ourselves must know, without any disorder, the (proper) stages for engaging ourselves with the teachings or we must definitely rely for guidance on someone who does know them.
Moreover (not any teacher will do). He or she must be learned in the essential nature of the pathway minds, learned in the definite count (of their details), and learned in (the graded order and how to accord them with the disciples’) levels of understanding. (He must be) like this because if he mistakes what is not a pathway mind for one that is, or one that is for one that is not, then even if we were to actualize such (mistaken) pathway minds as he has taught us, they will be of no use. Similar to having been wrongly prescribed some medicine, (in the end) we will have received no benefit and nothing but harm.
That was as far as we went last time. The main point — points — that Tsongkhapa is making here is that we need to really involve ourselves very deeply with the teachings, and in order to do so, then, we have to know the proper stages for getting involved with the teachings, for actually putting them into practice and making them part of ourselves. If we don’t know the proper stages and the proper order of how to do that, then we have to rely on somebody who does know how to do that: a qualified spiritual mentor, a teacher. That teacher needs to know three things, Tsongkhapa emphasizes:
- They have to know the essential nature of the pathway minds. That means what actually are the minds, meaning the understanding, the attitude of mind, the whole general mind frame that we need to develop — what are they. The essential nature: it means what they actually are.
- The second one is that they have to know the definite count of all their details. In other words, what actually are all the specific parts and facts and details of each of these types of mind or understanding. We’re not just talking about intellectual; we’re talking about emotional state as well, like love, compassion, etc. What are all the details of that.
- The teacher also has to know the graded order of them and how to apply them in the proper order to each disciple. In other words, they have to know where to start with each disciple, what level is this person on, what suits them the best, and how to proceed from there, and if the foundation is not stable in this disciple, how to make that foundation stable. In other words, how to really apply the teachings specifically to each specific student. It’s like when you are a doctor and you know the treatments that can be used for all the various sicknesses; you have to know for each patient what is the sickness, which remedy do you apply, and what stage in the sickness are they in, so you know what level within the treatment to prescribe.
Tsongkhapa says that (using this analogy of the doctor and medicine) in terms of this first point — the essential nature of the pathway minds — he says that, like going to a doctor, if you’ve been given the wrong medicine (in other words, they teach you something which is not actually the type of Dharma mind that we want to develop) then we will have received no benefit and nothing but harm.
Okay. Now we go on from there.
The second point. Tsongkhapa says (this is about the details of the path, of each of these minds):
But even if he knows the essential nature of the pathway minds well, it will still be ineffective if he (adds) extra unnecessary (stages) or leaves them incomplete. Thus, if he does not know the definite count (of the detailed points of the stages), that even while on the course of these (pathway minds), we will be unable to progress in the most direct fashion. This is because we will proceed while having omitted certain recognized essentials and will sidetrack onto the superfluous practice of what is unnecessary.
What is the point here? The point is that with each of the different types of minds, emotional states, or understandings that we will want to develop on the Buddhist spiritual path, each of them has stages, each of them has details, and it’s very important when the teacher teaches them not to omit (not to leave out) any stage and not to add some extra stage that isn’t there. Because if you leave out any stage then the whole thing is unstable and can fall apart. If you add something extra, that can also take you off on a tangent, in a direction that takes you away from what we’re actually aiming to achieve. We can think about this and try to come up with some examples so that the point is made clearer. Can you think of any examples, or shall I just give some examples?
What would be a certain staged way of developing a certain stage of mind — let’s say bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta) — that if you left out a stage, the whole process would fall apart?
Participant: Skipping considering all beings as your mother. Or even more basic, to consider all beings as equal. If you leave this out.
Dr. Berzin: Right. If we leave out that all beings have been our mother in some previous lifetime. Or on a more basic level, that all beings are equal — that everybody wants to be happy, nobody wants to be unhappy.
Participant: Even animals.
Dr. Berzin: Even animals. Various realms that we cannot see at all — the ghosts, and the hell realms, and all of these sorts of things. That if we leave them out, then our development of great compassion, and all these other things, will be incomplete. That’s very true. What is the danger then? The danger is that we only work to benefit a small number of beings — those in a group that we happen to like, or that we are aware of, or who are around us.
Actually, there’s an even more basic step, which I think is really important and is one of the most difficult steps, which is equanimity. If you don’t have equanimity, then you won’t even be able to see that everybody is equal. Equanimity is that state of mind which is free of attraction and attachment to some beings, repulsion from others, and indifference to yet others. In other words, if we are drawn to some and repelled from others and yet others we totally ignore, then we aren’t even open to the possibility to see that everybody is equal, let alone work to benefit everybody. Because we’ll only want to work and benefit those that we are attracted to.
Now you add what is perhaps an unnecessary stage. This is difficult because it’s very easy to think that it’s necessary. Maybe it is necessary, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. The step here is that — which I question because… well, anyway, we’ll look at it — is that I will develop all the Mahayana (Skt. Mahāyāna) qualities and so on with my partner, with my loved one. If I can be generous with her or him, and patient and giving, and not selfish, and so on, then I’ll be able to spread that to others. Now that sounds like a very Western way of looking at things, doesn’t it, since we put a great deal of emphasis on that emotional bond with our partner, whether it’s a marriage partner, or a non-marriage partner, or just a close friend, or whatever.
Now is that an extra thing that takes us off to the side? Or is that something which is helpful? Bearing in mind that there is the teaching, the metta — you know, the love meditation in Theravada (Skt. Theravāda), in which you start to extend love to those that are very close to you, and then a little bit further. First your family, then to friends, then to people around and in your neighborhood, your village, your country, etc., people you don’t like, etc. There’s also, in the lojong — the attitude training teaching — to start with yourself, in terms of instructions on giving and taking (tonglen); first take on and accept your own problems and give yourself happiness, the solution to your problems, and then extend this. What’s the difference here?
Participant: I think it depends on the individual. Some individuals have to start and give him or herself — be generous with herself or himself. Others are so strong or selfish that they don’t need this.
Dr. Berzin: Right. She says for some of us it is important to start by being able to be kind and generous to ourselves. If we’re not kind to ourselves, how can we help others? That is true in terms of the order of developing renunciation first and then compassion. Renunciation is aimed at our own suffering with the wish to be free of it; and then it’s the exact same mind aimed at others and their suffering, and a wish for them to be free of it, which is called compassion. This is very much in the teachings that this is so. Even in terms of the teachings of generosity, there’s the instruction for people who are very, very miserly — that you offer a vegetable from your right hand to your left hand, in order to get yourself into the habit of giving.
Participant: Very basic.
Dr. Berzin: Very basic. Broccoli… carrot. Yes. There is that teaching. I’m not making it up. It’s true. There is that teaching.
Participant: I think perhaps we start as a baby — giving a biscuit, giving it back and forth.
Dr. Berzin: Right. You start as a baby and giving a biscuit back and forth. But as I say, if we are developing a Mahayana training, if we only base it on being nice and learning to be giving in a loving relationship with a partner — or with somebody, doesn’t have to be a sexual partner — is there a problem here? Have we left out something and added something extra? I think we have.
Participant: The unnecessary part is, I think, that you’re saying that you have to forcibly go through the barrier; we cannot go through other...
Dr. Berzin: Right. You’re saying that it forcibly goes — I don’t know about the word forcibly — but it has to go through the partner and not through somebody else. It becomes a bit exclusive.
Participant: There are things that are probably going to be developed with other people, right?
Dr. Berzin: Right. There are many things that have to be developed with other people.
What’s missing here is — at least in my opinion, and perhaps a little bit from my experience — is equanimity. First, you need to have equanimity. It’s not that I am so attracted to this partner, and I’m repelled from others, and I want to ignore everybody else, and within that framework of no equanimity and great attachment to my partner, that I’m going develop all of this with my partner. What’s the danger when we do it like that? The danger is that being nice to the other person is involved very much with attachment and usually with wanting something in return. This exclusivism is there. Because the closer you get with somebody, and the more loving, and so on — if you don’t have at least a general framework (you don’t have to be an expert in equanimity, but at least some general framework) of equanimity, then you become too absorbed in this other person.
Participant: Like any medicine has side effects.
Dr. Berzin: Like medicine has its side effects. Yes.
Participant: Attachment.
Dr. Berzin: Attachment. It increases the attachment. Because if you’re really nice to the other person, they usually will be quite nice to you back, and then it becomes a very happy, loving relationship. then it’s not so easy to extend it to everybody, because then maybe the person is going to feel rejected and abandoned, and we’re not going to want to spend time with other people because we want to spend time with this person, all our time with this person.
Participant: It’s finished quickly.
Dr. Berzin: It finishes quickly. I think as… I mean, I’ve certainly gone through this stage of thinking that “Wow. This is the way to develop the Mahayana generosity and so on — is with this one special person.” In the end, I don’t think it works. As attractive as it might seem to a Western mentality.
Participant: That’s why we do meditation practice on the development of wisdom side by side with compassion.
Dr. Berzin: Right. She adds that that’s why we do meditations on wisdom side by side with compassion. But what I’m emphasizing is not so much the antidote, the stronger medicine of the wisdom meditations here — the voidness of the person, the voidness of me, etc. (that’s a very strong medicine) — I’m talking about stages that have been omitted in the path to developing love and compassion. The first stage is equanimity. Work on your attraction to some, repulsion to others, and tendency to ignore yet others; and then, as Jorge said, see everybody as equal. Now within that frame, then, I think that’s how we can understand the Hinayana (Skt. Hīnayāna) instructions of metta — that there you start in terms of those who are close, and then those who are a little bit further, and so on. Or the lojong thing of starting with yourself and then extending it to others. Because you have a basic framework of openness to everybody and basic smoothing down — at least the rough edges — of attraction, repulsion, and indifference. Does that make any sense? I think so. I think so.
This is, I think, the point that Tsongkhapa is making. I don’t know that he has this specific example in mind — I’m sure he doesn’t — because I think it’s a very Western way of approaching things in which we really emphasize that one-to-one couple relationship. We are not so much into — at least in modern days — arranged marriages, where it’s not based on romance.
Participant: I know a lot of Buddhist mothers who approach the relationship with their children that way. I think that’s more global.
Dr. Berzin: Right. He says that he knows mothers who approach their Buddhist practice in terms of their relation to their children. Especially when they have to give the primary care almost full-time themselves, and so being with the child and taking care of the child takes up the vast, vast majority of their time. That’s very, very true. But there… I don’t know. I’m not a mother, so I don’t really have the experience.
Are you a mother? How easy or how difficult is it, when you are taking care of your own child, to have an equal regard for the other children that your child is playing with, for example?
Participant: [missing]
Dr. Berzin: Right. She reports that in taking care of children, her own children, she has attachment and closeness 200%, and to the other children not such a strong emotional bond, which I think must be true universally with mothers and their children.
In theory, one could extend that motherly love to everybody. But I think if we’re doing a meditation practice, you have to start with equanimity; otherwise, it’s going to be very difficult to extend that love. In other words, doing what Tsongkhapa says to avoid — leaving out a step and putting an emphasis on another step which isn’t really there. Yes, certainly one could — one has to practice generosity and patience and perseverance, and so on, and not be lazy, etc., with your baby. For sure. But is that the path of Buddhist training? You could take advantage of that situation to help develop certain qualities. But what does Tsongkhapa say? We will be unable to progress in the most direct fashion. That’s what Tsongkhapa says. There’s going to be a problem here. Doesn’t mean we don’t have children. Doesn’t mean you don’t take care of your child. We are responsible for our children. Absolutely. But we wouldn’t prescribe to develop love and compassion, have a baby as the method, would we?
Participant: But I know, for instance, if there’s a child crying on the street, people will very easily come and say “Aw, what’s the matter?” and they try to help.
Dr. Berzin: Now you use a dramatic example. If there’s a child alone on the street crying, people will come to the rescue and “What’s the matter?” and so on. That they will. Or in a playground and they fall. But what about you’re in your apartment at night and you’re trying to go to sleep, and the baby next door is screaming and yelling (or upstairs is screaming and yelling)? I think most of us get quite annoyed.
Participant: But you also get annoyed when it’s your own child.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, you get annoyed, but you can deal with that because you feel compassion and concern when it’s your own child. When it is the neighbor’s child keeping you awake, or you are in a lecture or a movie theater, or something like that, and there is a baby crying — or at a concert and somebody has their baby there — how much equanimity do we have? I think most of us get rather annoyed and impatient.
Teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama — and mothers have their babies in the back, and they start to scream and yell. You can’t wait for them to leave: “Come on! Do something about it. Make the kid shut up!” I think that is most people’s response. The lamas are usually just totally not disturbed by that.
One friend of mine is a Dharma teacher in San Francisco, actually, and I went to his center, in which actually he taught for part of the hour, and I taught for part of the hour. It was wonderful. Because he had one student who was a mother who brought her two-year-old or one-and-a-half-year-old child who ran around and made a tremendous amount of noise and bother throughout the entire time. He said, he explained to me, that he always encourages her to bring the child with [her] to class and let the child run loose. Because if these people in the class are trying to meditate and trying to develop various positive states of mind, this little child is the greatest teacher of patience and the greatest teacher of anybody in the class — that they need to be able to sit there and meditate and do all their practices while this child is making a lot of noise. The child isn’t crying — it’s just being a small child — and certainly not being quiet. I rather like that. I thought that was neat. I admired him for that. Very, very good.
I think that illustrates the point that we make here; probably not so necessary to come up with more examples. But it’s a danger that we have to watch out for.
Like, for instance… I can think of one more example, which is such a common example, which is that Dharma teachers, particularly in the West, will leave out — or certainly minimize — discussion of certain points that most Westerners don’t like. Like, for instance, the hells. Correct. Exactly. The discussion of the hells. I call them the joyless realms — the trapped beings in the joyless realms — which is again wanting to avoid the word hell. But what is the mistake and fault of leaving it out? Let alone leaving out rebirth, my favorite theme of how that makes the teaching into Dharma-Lite. We’ll leave that aside; I’ve spoken about it so often. But what about leaving out the hells?
Participant: Then we find it difficult to get a good idea about the precious human rebirth.
Dr. Berzin: Okay. If we don’t think of the hells, it makes us appreciate the precious human rebirth much less. Anything else? What about for our development of compassion?
Participant: It tells you about all the degrees of experience that the mind can have, and that there are a lot of things that are trapped in this kind of…
Dr. Berzin: Right. It makes us closed to the extreme levels of suffering and thinking about those who are trapped in those realms and — tying it in with a precious human rebirth — that we could experience that ourselves. Very often, many of us — not everybody, but many of us — just don’t want to deal with the most extreme cases of suffering in the human realm. How many of us could really deal very easily with, let’s say, an accident victim or a soldier or — you must have this in Israel — somebody who has been in a terrorist bomb attack and their guts are half out, lying in the street, and they’re screaming, and it’s just awful. How many people can really deal with that? How many people would just: “This is just too much, and I can’t deal with this.” In Israel, what happens when you have these attacks? People in the street, how do they react? Does everybody run over and help, or do some people just freak out?
Participant: Some freak out and some help, I think. I think that many people also by now are indifferent in some way.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Some people help; some people are freaked out; and a lot of people, because it’s…
Participant: If you’re in the street and you see it. But if you’re at home then…
Dr. Berzin: Right. If you’re at home, you become indifferent to it. Well, that’s true of all the movies and all the TV reports of Vietnam or Iraq or whatever. People become indifferent. It’s like a movie. It’s not real. But what about if you’re on the street? Have you ever seen one? No.
Participant: Some people run, but a lot of people help, I think.
Dr. Berzin: Some people run, but he thinks a lot of people help. I’ve never seen that type of situation either, I must admit. But I would think that it’s very difficult.
Remember I gave an example… I don’t know if it was in this class. I don’t even know if it was here in Berlin; I teach in so many places. But I had (I have; she’s still alive) an aunt who was very, very close to her mother, my grandmother. But when my grandmother went into an old age home, then my aunt didn’t go to visit her anymore because it was just too painful, too difficult for her to see all that suffering.
Thinking about the hell realms opens us up to — regardless of what belief we might have in the existence of these things — to take seriously the type of pain and suffering that could be experienced, and to be willing to look at it and face it; and if you do the meditation properly, to imagine what it would be like if we had that, and how awful that would be, and how we would want to be free of that, let alone these other people. It’s very important for the development of compassion. Not just compassion for little suffering, but for great suffering. To develop the courage of a bodhisattva.
Again, I have another colleague, a Western Dharma teacher who teaches — this one teaches in Los Angeles. One of the meditations he has his students do is to imagine whatever it is that you are the most frightened of happening to you — think of what your own hell would be and how would you deal with that — and then think of it happening to others. Which is quite a heavy type of thing. Whether it is being mugged, being raped, spiders or snakes, or whatever it is that you’re afraid of — being burned alive — these horrible things.
I don’t like to watch these movies — I find them very, very difficult — of people being tortured, being burned at the stake, and stuff like that. I find that very difficult to watch. But if you’re doing meditation on the hells, that’s exactly what you want to watch. To develop the courage of a bodhisattva. These are tough, very, very tough. But — I forget which of the Kadampa Geshes said — when we study the Dharma, we shouldn’t be like an old man with no teeth that just chews the soft potatoes and spits out the tough meat. Not just pick and choose. Take the feel-good Dharma pieces and not want to chew on the more difficult pieces.
This is what Tsongkhapa is referring to, that the teacher needs to know what all the stages are, and what’s important not to leave out, and what’s important to not add.
Then the third point is very relevant here — is to only teach those points to a student who’s ready for it. When they’re not ready for it… Somebody who is really very emotionally unstable, you don’t teach about the hells, obviously. Someone who is very frightened already. You don’t teach them about the hells; they’re not ready for that. That’s the point, that you have quite strong medicine here and we need to apply it at the right time. How does Tsongkhapa express this in his explanation of this third point of what the teacher needs to know?
But then, even if he does know the nature and the definite count (of the specific details of the pathway minds), still if he does not know which (points) to apply at each stage of our mental development
That can also be emotional development.
as he leads from the beginning to the middle to the end, (he will be acting as in the following example). Suppose (a doctor) thought here is a medicine and, since it is the best medicine from among (all of them), it is proper to prescribe it to (any) patient for (any) disease. If, thinking (like this) he were actually to give it (to someone it did not suit), then because it was such a powerful drug, not only it might not help (this patient), it might actually cause him the great harm of taking his life. Likewise, suppose he thought here is a sacred Dharma teaching and, since from among the Dharma (methods) it is the most profound, what wrong could there possibly be in teaching it? If thinking like this, he were actually to lead us by means of it, then if he accords it with our level of understanding (and follows the graded order from there), it will bring only benefit. But if he does not accord it with our level of understanding, then not only will it bring us no benefit, it might actually cause us (by our confusion) to kill our opportunity to gain one of the better rebirths and liberation. Therefore, it is especially important for him to know the graded order (of the teachings and how to accord them with the disciples’) levels of understanding.
That’s how Tsongkhapa explains this point. That obviously is a very, very important point when teaching the Dharma, when dealing with the teacher who’s teaching us the Dharma, and also, I think important in our own practice, in terms of what we read, what we try to put into practice… Because many of us don’t have personal guidance from a teacher who gives us individual personal guidance of what to study and when, do we? For many of us, we pretty much have to guide ourselves. This is one of the things that is always warned against, which is do-it-yourself Dharma. Especially do-it-yourself tantra. That’s very, very important not to do, because as Tsongkhapa says, we might take the wrong medicine (so we practice the wrong thing), because we don’t know — How do we know it’s the right thing or not? We may leave a part out just out of ignorance — not out of not liking it, but it could be just out of ignorance — and add something that shouldn’t be there, also out of ignorance, and we could try to do something far more advanced that we’re not ready for. Then we can be in big trouble. Can you think of any examples?
Participant: If you don’t have a teacher (or they’re not always available) who guides you personally to…
Dr. Berzin: That’s exactly what I said. It’s not so often available, to have a teacher who personally guides us. This is what I’m referring to. Like, for instance, one of the bodhisattva vows is not to teach voidness to those who are unripe, those who are not ready for it. Here we are, we don’t have a teacher, and we go, and we pick up a book on voidness — or we pick up (even more dangerous) a book on tantra meditation on the chakras and the channels and the various meditations for dealing with the subtle energies of the body — and then we try to do it ourselves. That is what happens when you don’t have a teacher; that can happen even when you do have a teacher. Of course, if you have a teacher, you have to also be willing to follow the teacher’s advice. The teacher, as Tsongkhapa says — it’s not every teacher who will know this and follow this. He says we have to follow the one who does. That implies there are many who don’t do this, doesn’t it?
Participant: But what would be the solution? Doing nothing?
Dr. Berzin: Is the solution doing nothing? The solution is… Well, one solution is to find a qualified teacher. One who maybe has time; but if they don’t have time, maybe one of their disciples who’s trusted by that teacher will find time.
Look at these people who in ancient times walked all the way from China to India to find a teacher, walked over the Himalayas from Tibet to find a teacher. Many people nowadays aren’t willing to put in the effort to find a teacher. That’s one way of approaching it. You could say, “Well, but it’s very difficult, and you have work and family, and you have to get the money,” and all of those things. But come on! People in olden days in China and Tibet — also wasn’t easy for them to get up and go and find a teacher. That’s one thing. That’s a rather harsh answer, I’m sorry.
The other thing that we can do is ask somebody who is a little bit more experienced than we are and we trust — even if they’re not a Dharma teacher — to recommend to us levels of what might suit us. What’s a beginning level, etc. I think it’s in Wisdom Publications; they have, or at least they used to have… I forget the colors that they used, but they had — didn’t they have a yellow series and a red series and a blue series, or something like that? The color of the cover of the book indicated what level of book it was. I think in the beginning they had that policy; I don’t know if they still have that policy. I know on my website, I make levels in the sutra and tantra sections — level one, level two, level three. I think if we don’t have a teacher, and if at least some of the literature that’s available in bookstores and online indicated what level they’re at, we could follow that. What do you think?
Participant: Yes. But with tantra one needs a really good teacher who’s guiding you, a personal teacher.
Dr. Berzin: Well, you need a personal teacher to guide you. That’s what I said first. Go find one. If it really is so important, go find one. If you have to move, you have to move.
Participant: But I think for the beginners one can also rely on books.
Dr. Berzin: Right. For beginners, we rely on books. Remember what we mentioned from the Sakya master Sonam-tsemo last week? The Gateway to the Dharma. How do you get into the Dharma in the first place? Recognize and acknowledge suffering in our lives. Have the sincere wish to get out and not just make the best of it. And — here’s the relevant point — some actual knowledge and understanding of the Dharma and how it leads us out of suffering; that you get from reading books.
Participant: When you do this, I think there will come a point when you can see for yourself that “I need a teacher.” To me it came more like this. “What should I do? There are so many things, thousands of prayers and practices. Where should I start? What will work for me?”
Dr. Berzin: Yes. This is very difficult. As he says, after a while, when we’ve been reading a lot, eventually it dawns on us that we really need a teacher to guide us through. It’s very nice, the way that they discuss this with regard to tantra; this image is used, at least by Tsongkhapa — I forget if it’s in this text, but in other texts — we need a teacher like a navigator to take us through the labyrinth of tantra. There are so many texts and so many practices; it’s like a maze. How do we get through this? You need a navigator or a guide to take us. This is so true now with the vast amount of material that’s been translated already into English. It will just get more and more, because it’s still only a fraction of what is available in the Asian languages.
I think I’ve mentioned this before. This is the biggest challenge for the future of Buddhism. I mean, there are two big challenges. One is to overcome over-fragmentation. Because it’s unsustainable to sustain 350 different brands of Buddhism; they have to somehow come together into smaller units, like happened in Tibet in terms of Kagyu and Sakya, and so on — Nyingma — not just separate, separate, separate, every teacher in every monastery (and in the West, every Dharma center).
The second thing is that somehow people are going to need guidance for how to deal with the ocean of material that’s available in the bookstores and on the internet. It’s too, too confusing; there’s just too much. As you say, you don’t know where to start, and even if you have some idea where to start, you don’t know how to deal with it. There’s just too much. Then you do need a teacher because it’s not — one size fits all is the English idiom, if you understand the meaning of that. It’s not that you can just have a guidebook that says, “For everybody, this and this and this and this.” Although there are general things; there’s the lam-rim (the graded stages). There are general outlines of what we need to develop. But in so many cases you find, in studying the Dharma, that it says, “There are two ways of developing this. Either you can develop compassion first and then the wisdom side, or you could develop the wisdom side and then the compassion side” — almost at every step we find that there are many possibilities.
People are different. What suits us as an individual? What can we expect? It’s a very interesting question. Know yourself. Know yourself. Don’t expect the teacher to come with magic extrasensory powers and to look at you and to know exactly what suits you. Maybe some extraordinary teachers can do that, but certainly most can’t. You need to know. Now that’s a difficult one. It requires a great deal of self-knowledge and not fooling yourself. Here there are two approaches — again I’m sorry, but that’s the case — there’s two approaches. One is do you emphasize and go further in the areas that you’re strong in; do what suits you. Or do you put the emphasis on the other sides, the things where you’re weak in but you need to develop in order to gain balance. Which one do you do?
Participant: Two.
Participant: You could do both.
Dr. Berzin: The second? You would do both?
Participant: You have to start with something.
Dr. Berzin: You have to start with something.
Participant: Alternate.
Dr. Berzin: Alternate. Anybody else?
Participant: It becomes automatic. If you do the one thing you’re missing then, after a while, you get better at it and the other thing becomes weaker…
Dr. Berzin: Well, is it that when we emphasize something that we’re not so strong on, the other gets weaker? I don’t know. I can only speak from my own experience.
Participant: Weaker compared to the one that you’ve developed.
Dr. Berzin: Weaker with the one you develop then. I don’t know. I don’t know, I must say.
Let me speak from my own experience, so I share with you. I came out of a super, super intellectual background. You know: Harvard PhD, straight A student throughout my studies, etc. I went to India, and I had the option, do I study — and I’d studied so many Asian languages, all the major Buddhist languages — and I had the option, do I study logic and debate the way that monks do, or not. Now I was very good at that, and I chose very, very consciously not to do that. Because I knew, as I always refer to it, that I would a debate monster and I would not be able to turn it off — I would become even more arrogant and more one-sided in my development. That was basically why I left Harvard. I was going to become a university professor; I was straight in line to do that. My professor had even found me an excellent job after I got my doctorate. But I saw that I would only develop in a one-sided way. I didn’t do that and sought instead to try to develop first the imagination and compassion and social skills side: Imagination with the visualization practices, and various bodhichitta practices, and then actually how do you deal with people.
Now I wouldn’t say that my intellectual side got any weaker. I wouldn’t say that I have mastered the other side, far from it. But I think that naturally the other side — the intellectual side — it’s going to develop anyway, whether I studied debate or not. I had to learn to read the debate texts anyway, but I never did debating. That was my own experience. I thought that it was far, far better for me to emphasize the other side, and I did, while using the side that I was strong. Still, I think that that’s… Now when I’m teaching and writing, with this website and so on, I do emphasize the intellectual side, because I’m much better at that than the so-called — pardon the expression — feel-good Dharma side.
Know yourself. That’s what His Holiness had advised me. See what you’re the strongest in and what other people — you know, what there’s a need for and there aren’t so many other people doing it and do that. Something that you’re not so good at and there are a lot of people doing it already, there’s no need for you to do that. Let other people do that; they could probably do it better.
To get back to our topic. I don’t know if we can rely necessarily on finding somebody who’s going to be able to tell us exactly what we need at this time or at that time. Sometimes you have it. Sometimes you have it, but sometimes you don’t. I think it needs to be a bit of a combination here, if you’re lucky.
I remember Serkong Rinpoche… I mean, I was very fortunate, unbelievably fortunate. Serkong Rinpoche guided me personally. But I served him as his translator, interpreter, made all his travel arrangements, write his letters, run around getting visas, and so on; so, I worked very hard for him. But the way that he taught me was so wonderful, I must say. I saw him in Bodhgaya once; he had been in Nepal for a visit and came back from Nepal and we met in Bodhgaya for His Holiness’s teachings. His Holiness was teaching Bodhicharyavatara (Skt. Bodhicaryāvatāra), Shantideva’s text — Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior — and I was going to translate for His Holiness underneath the tree. I was also having some difficulties at that time in negotiations concerning a book I was trying to get published, and there were a lot of things that were difficult going on. Serkong Rinpoche called me to his room before I went to translate the first day, and he opened the text and he pointed to three different words in some of the verses and asked me if I knew what these words meant. My understanding wasn’t terribly good for these words; these weren’t very common words. He proceeded to explain these three words to me. These three words dealt exactly with the problems that I was having at the time, and Shantideva indicated the way to deal with them. Serkong Rinpoche was very good at teaching in sometimes indirect ways and other times hitting you over the head (as in constantly calling me idiot and scolding me when I did act like an idiot).
Sometimes you do get personal guidance. What retreat to do next, and these sort of things — that certainly one needs to ask the teacher, if you’re doing retreats. But what I was referring to also was this vow not to teach voidness before a person is ready for it. There are two ways of doing that. Because then the question is: Why does His Holiness the Dalai Lama teach these unbelievably advanced texts of Nagarjuna on voidness to these large audiences of seven thousand or eight thousand or ten thousand people? Is His Holiness breaking the bodhisattva vow of teaching voidness to those who are unripe? Question. Is he?
Participant: Somebody requested the teaching.
Dr. Berzin: Well, he was requested. Was he requested by everybody in the audience?
Participant: People came.
Dr. Berzin: People came. Well, how does His Holiness teach it? He teaches it in a way in which, except for those who are ready to understand it and have the background to understand it, nobody else understands anything that he says, do they? It’s true. He teaches it in a very complex way. The real thing, as it were. What is the effect for those who can’t understand (which is the vast majority of the audience)? Inspiration. Maybe the wish in the future to be able to understand. Also, it’s going through the filter of a translator, many of whom certainly don’t give the full level of what His Holiness is saying — there’s no way and there’s no time; it’s too fast. I think in this way he doesn’t break the bodhisattva vow.
What about tantra? That’s also — that’s a difficult one. All these lamas who give initiations, including His Holiness. Well, do you remember the Manjushri (Skt. Mañjuśrī) subsequent permissions, the short initiation type of ritual His Holiness did in Hamburg this summer? It took what, four hours? The actual ritual took five minutes at the end — less than five minutes. The whole time was spent on bodhichitta. The Kalachakra initiation: it’s so complicated, who can follow it?
Participant: But then they don’t get the initiation.
Dr. Berzin: Well, they don’t get the initiation. Again, you have to look at what needs to happen in order to receive the initiation. As Tsongkhapa will emphasize very strongly later on in this text, you have to take the vows. No vows — no initiation. You have to take the vows seriously. Not just repeat “Blah, blah, blah,” and not know what you’re doing. Or not even know that you’ve taken the vows, as often happens. You have to fully consciously take the vows, and you need to have some sort of conscious experience of what’s going on.
Participant: How about in Tibet in the former days?
Dr. Berzin: In the former days? I don’t know how it was in the former days when you had large... You see, first of all they didn’t give... First of all, in former days in Tibet, there weren’t these big public teachings. That was a custom that was started actually by Pabongka among the aristocracy in Lhasa in the early twentieth century; it was not traditionally done like that. I don’t know that he gave initiations; it was lam-rim. The biggest problem — that undoubtedly must have been the case — was that there was no loudspeaker system. How could anybody hear him beyond — hear any lama — beyond a certain distance? Most people couldn’t hear. Now for large crowds, what they did do are these long-life initiations, which I can’t say really is a tantra initiation in terms of people going to practice it. I’m sure the Tibetans looked at it as a blessing or were just concerned with getting that little tsampa bowl at the end for long life. That was what was for the public. Then you have to ask “Well, what about in the monasteries when they gave initiations?”
Participant: Wasn’t the Kalachakra initiation a big thing?
Dr. Berzin: Was the Kalachakra initiation a big thing? That’s a very interesting question. Kalachakra was the exception. I had forgotten about that. Kalachakra was the exception. It was given to large crowds; that was its tradition. Because historically, according to the Kalachakra Tantra, it was originally given to a large crowd (to everybody in Shambhala) for them to unite and overcome their caste differences, to become one vajra-caste in the mandala (Skt. maṇḍala) of Kalachakra. That was the general idea. To unite against a threat of irreligiosity, if that’s a word.
Now did people really receive it? That was interesting because they said that — and I read this somewhere — that even if you didn’t understand what was going on (because I’m sure they had the same problem with not being able to hear) that for Kalachakra it was an exception: that if you were included in the mandala, that somehow you joined in this peaceful unity — harmony — of this larger community. Did you actually receive the vows? Did you actually receive the initiation? That I don’t know; that’s a technical point. Did anyone practice it on that basis? No way. Kalachakra was hardly practiced by anybody. It was the most complicated, difficult system imaginable. Very, very few Tibetans ever practiced it. Westerners of course are very enthusiastic, because if they receive it they take it seriously; if they really seriously receive it then they take it really seriously and want to practice. This surprises the Tibetans to no end, that there are all these Kalachakra practice groups, and so on, in the West. Certainly don’t have that among the Tibetans.
Participant: Everybody recites the mantra of Tara (Skt. Tārā) and recites the mantra of…
Dr. Berzin: Right. Everybody recites the mantra of this or that. You only need to have the lung (the oral transmission) — a lama repeats it, and you repeat after the lama, and then you recite the mantra — that’s not on the basis of initiations. If you look at the average Tibetan...
Participant: Don’t you think the average Tibetan had initiations?
Dr. Berzin: Did average Tibetans have initiations? Yes. Yes. As I said, this is now done more commonly, more openly, with loudspeaker systems so they can hear. I don’t know how it was in the past. These big monasteries, in the monastic halls, without a loudspeaker system — could monks in the back hear? I don’t know. Traditionally, initiations are supposed to be given to small groups. In the Sakya tradition, certain initiations are supposed to be given to no more than 25 people at a time — if the lama follows the traditional manner — no more than 25 at one time, so that the people actually were examined, actually knew what they were doing, and actually took it and could hear.
Most of the lamas when they give initiations tend to do like the... For most Tibetans — most Tibetans aren’t going to do a long sadhana (Skt. sādhana) practice. The long sadhana practices are done by the monks and the nuns usually. But the Tibetans go, and the lamas give it with the idea of planting seeds for future lives. Tibetans take that very, very seriously. They do that. You’ve been at these big Tibetan initiations with Tibetans there. The people up front maybe take it seriously and are into it. The people at the back, it’s a picnic. It’s a picnic. You know that. You know that. Anybody who’s been there has seen that.
Participant: I just wanted to ask about initiations nowadays. The Tibetans see it as a seed that’s planted, something that’s growing later on. But normally when you take the initiation and you don’t practice the daily thing that you should do — well, that has consequences. What are the consequences? Is it that you’re really just planting a seed, or are there negative consequences?
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s very interesting. Right. Now that’s a good question. She says that we go to many of these initiations nowadays, there are many Tibetans there, they don’t follow the commitments, the practice commitments… Maybe they do. A lot of Westerners don’t. It all depends, as His Holiness said: you have to promise that you’re going to do it; nobody is forcing you to promise — you can be a neutral observer. But in any case, let’s say that you do promise that you’re going to do it, and you don’t — you break it. Or you read about tantra material that’s supposed to be kept secret. Because His Holiness has given permission for a lot to be published. He doesn’t want do-it-yourself tantra, that you can just read a book and here are the exact instructions of how to practice, and you just do it yourself without a guru. That’s the limit. Anything less than that is okay. So, in both cases, what His Holiness says is that if you’re going to go to a hell as a result of this — using the extreme — if you’re going to a hell as the result of this, at least when you get out of hell the positive instincts that you have laid will put you in a good position. That’s the logic here.
Participant: But that sounds really like a punishment.
Dr. Berzin: It’s not as a punishment.
Participant: You promised but you didn’t do it, so then you go to hell.
Dr. Berzin: you promised to do this, but you didn’t do this: you burn in hell. Isn’t that a punishment? Well, that’s not quite the thing. Look at Shantideva. Look at what Shantideva says at the end of the first chapter:
[I think it’s this from chapter four:
(4.5) If (Buddha) has said that once someone’s made up his mind To give away even some small and trivial thing, then doesn’t (actually) give it away, He’ll turn into a clutching ghost.
(4.6) Then, if I should deceive all wandering beings, After having sincerely invited them To unsurpassable bliss, Will I go to a better rebirth state?]
Having invited all beings for a feast of liberation and enlightenment, if I were to turn my back on them, having invited them, what could be worse than that? I have let down everybody. If you turn your back on a source of ultimate happiness, you shut the door. When you are outside in the cold, it’s not a punishment; it’s just you’ve shut the door.
I mean, just look at it in terms of this lifetime. I know people like this: As young people they went to India and they practiced, they took initiations, they did all these things, and then they… I mean, there are some people that left and led regular lives, and so on, and it wasn’t the major focus in their life anymore, but it had a positive effect; it gave a certain flavor to their lives. Wonderful. Very good. But there are others who have turned their back on it and said, “This was stupid. This was no good.” They’re bitter about it — “I wasted my time!” — have a very negative state of mind. What are they left with? They’re left with a very negative state of mind. Then they don’t have anything to turn to in their lives as a way to deal with difficult situations, except maybe alcohol. I think that when they talk about hells. That’s an extreme example, but I think it’s more going in this direction.
It’s like people who won’t take medicine. Here’s a very strong medicine. You’re sick. Who’s going to help you? Someone says, “No, no, I don’t want to take medicine.” Then they’re so sick, thinking that somehow, they will get better by themselves, and maybe they even die. Because they’re unwilling to take the medicine; they have this negative attitude toward the medicine.
Although the teachings on hells can be... This is adding something which is not there, which is the whole connotation of punishment. It’s not a punishment.
Participant: But the consequence for me is more that you don’t get the benefit, you know? If you practice and do something and then you leave it, you don’t do it anymore — the thing is just that you don’t get any benefit out of it. But this other thing is some sort of punishment.
Dr. Berzin: Well, you don’t do something and so you don’t get the benefit from it, you say. But are there any negative effects of it? I don’t think you have to look at it as punishment. Are there negative effects? I think there are, in terms of the habit — that I’m going to promise to do something and then you don’t do it. Why don’t you do it? Laziness? Too busy? Or do you think it’s stupid and a waste of time?
If you think it’s stupid and a waste of time, then you regret what you’ve done, and you have a negative attitude toward it. Not only do you not get the benefit, I think you get a negative side effect from that. Because you have a very negative state of mind, you know? We think “Duh, this is so stupid,” and so on. It’s not that you’re punished for thinking that; thinking like that is a very unpleasant state of mind. I’m sure we’ve all experienced being in a state of mind in which we’re thinking very negatively about something or someone and you can’t get it out of your mind. Is that a happy state of mind? Not at all. A very, very unhappy, suffering state of mind.
If we’re too lazy to do something which is beneficial for us, we’re going to be lazy about everything, so you don’t accomplish anything; it builds up a very negative habit. “I’m too busy.” Too busy with what? Could be too busy with work, too busy with family, or too busy with surfing the internet.
I don’t know. But I think one really needs to see that in the Dharma we’re not talking about reward or punishment. Reward or punishment implies a judge and someone who gives reward and punishment. That’s not there. That’s adding something extra that’s not there. Tsongkhapa warns against that. You try to understand, given that that is not in the system — this is how you work with it — given that this is not in the system, how do I understand the teaching? Then you try to analyze and figure out. Without leaving it out, saying, “Well, I don’t like that part, so let’s not talk about these disadvantages. You just don’t get any benefit, but there’s no disadvantage. I’m going to leave that part out.” Without leaving it out. Without adding something, which is the punishment thing. Exactly a good example of what Tsongkhapa is warning against. Then you have to analyze and figure out “Well, what could it mean?” I’ve tried to explain what maybe it means.
Anyway, we’re beyond our time. Let’s end here with a dedication.
But as you see, this text… I think it gives us a lot to think about, although it’s not a text that you would explain word by word by word. Tsongkhapa writes very nicely — a very nice style — of various points that are really quite important for practice or how one approaches the Dharma.
Whatever understanding, whatever positive force has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.