We have started to go through this letter that Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug tradition, wrote to his friend the meditator Konchog-tsultrim in which he explains to him some practical advice on how to practice sutra and tantra. In this letter — after the beginning verses in which Tsongkhapa basically praises the person that he’s writing it to, and says that it’s rather preposterous for someone like himself to be able to really give advice to a great meditator and learned scholar like his friend, nevertheless he will try — he starts by saying that it’s very important for us to engage in the teachings now that we have a precious human rebirth with very rare opportunities to be able to study and practice. We have a great deal of freedom — respites is the word (a respite is a temporary break) — from the type of rebirths in which we wouldn’t have the opportunity or ability to study and practice and help to advance ourselves to a stage where we can really be of benefit to others. Now, while we have this rare chance, it’s very important to be able to use the abilities that we have as a human being to be able to make further spiritual progress.
The main power that we have — or ability — as a human being is to be able to discern what is to be adopted and what’s to be rejected; in other words, what would be helpful to put into practice, and what would be harmful which we have to reject in our daily behavior. The ability to discern that, on the basis of ethical guidelines, is something which is uniquely human and therefore very important to take advantage of. This is why His Holiness the Dalai Lama always emphasizes that the main thing that we have as humans is our human intelligence, and this is something that we need to not put down but rather take advantage of it.
In order to take advantage of this excellent working basis that we have, we have to engage ourselves with the Buddhas’ teachings, actually enter into them. And — as we added from the Sakya master Sonam-tsemo in his text The Gateway of the Dharma — to actually get into the teachings or engage ourselves in the teachings we need to recognize and acknowledge suffering in our lives, that we have various problems, to honestly admit them and face them. Secondly, to have a sincere wish to get out of them and not just make the best of them. Thirdly, some actual knowledge and understanding of the Dharma and how the Buddhist teachings could actually help us to get out of this suffering. Otherwise, why would we turn to the Dharma? Just to turn to it for curiosity is not going to really enable us to get into it and make use of it properly.
Also, Tsongkhapa himself says that to get into the Dharma and engage ourselves with it isn’t dependent on just having kind thoughts towards others. That’s not sufficient. We know from our larger study of world religions and humanitarian philosophies that many, many systems teach us to have kind thoughts to others. That isn’t specifically Buddhist. Tsongkhapa says either we ourselves have to know, without any disorder, the proper stages for engaging ourselves with the teachings, or we have to rely on guidance of somebody who does know them.
He points out that not any teacher will do. That we need to have a teacher who knows, basically, three main things. We have discussed these three.
- First, the teacher has to be learned in the essential nature of the pathway minds. In other words, they have to know what the actual states of mind and heart are — so understanding and emotional feeling — that we need to develop in order to be able to proceed toward liberation and enlightenment, be able to differentiate what actually we need to develop and what we need to get rid of.
- Then the teacher has to know the definite count of their details. In other words, not add anything extra that would lead us astray or away from the direction that we want to go in, and not leave any points or details out which, if they were missing, would also make our training and development of these states of mind and heart deficient or at fault.
- The third thing that the teacher needs to know is how to apply them to each student. In other words, to be able to evaluate correctly and accurately what stage of development each student is at individually and what level of the teaching is appropriate for that student. If the teacher doesn’t know how to apply the teachings personally to each student, then like a doctor prescribing antibiotic for a headache, this could cause a lot of damage, rather than being of any help.
These are the three points. You can see that the way that Tsongkhapa is describing here is from the point of view of very practical advice — what really, when it comes down to it, we need to look for in a teacher. Do they know what is proper to practice? They’re not going to add anything extra. They’re not going to leave anything out, not going to just skip over things because they might be unpopular. Knows how to actually guide us personally, which means take us each individually very seriously and try to customize the way of teaching to each person. That of course is very difficult nowadays when we study in large groups. I mean, here in class it’s not such a large group, but you go to these big teachings by the great lamas and there are hundreds and thousands of students who are there. That’s a general teaching. But if you look at the monastic training: In the monastic training, then, also for the monks they will have classes. Classes can have…
Like my own teacher, Serkong Rinpoche. I mean he’s a high Rinpoche — he’s the highest Rinpoche in his monastery — so he does have a private teacher who teaches him individually. But the other students don’t have that so much. They do have classes, and Rinpoche goes to those classes as well. There are about 20 or 30 students in the class, but it is individualistic in the sense that they debate with each other, and so everybody is working with each other at the level at which each person is at. Because of the debate situation in which everybody is testing each other’s understanding, to make sure that everybody understands, it takes care of that individual aspect.
Also in the monasteries, usually what happens — or at least traditionally what happens (nowadays it’s a little bit different) — but traditionally each of the great teachers — they wouldn’t have to be so great — but each of the teachers, the more senior monks, would have a household of young students, young monks who would live with them. You are, basically, taken care of by the teacher, and so that teacher looked after your individual needs. Nowadays in the monasteries in India, they have more of a dormitory type of system, and so that makes it a little bit more difficult to get the real individual attention that would be preferable with the Dharma teachings. But then again, from another point of view, if you really are a serious student then the teachers will look after you; it’s those who are not really serious that will not be paid attention to so much.
It is very important from the point of view of Buddhist training that the initiative and the enthusiasm and the perseverance has to come from the side of the student. Remember, Buddha always said that you can’t teach — a teacher shouldn’t teach without being asked to teach. There shouldn’t be a situation in which students are basically forced by their parents or society to go to school and the teachers teach them whether they want to learn or not. That is perhaps our public system of education, but that’s not the best way of really developing the character of the student. The student has to want to learn. If the student is sincerely interested, based on what we just covered of Sonam-tsemo — that they recognize suffering, and want to get out of it, and see that the Dharma’s going to help them to get out of it — then they will have sincere interest in learning something.
Now that becomes, of course, a problem when you’re talking about eight-year-olds who are sent to a monastery. You can enter into a monastery if you’re old enough to chase away a crow, is the dividing mark in traditional Tibetan society. You have to be strong and brave enough and self-confident enough that you can chase away a crow; so, obviously some children could do that at an earlier age than others. As a child at that age, can you really recognize suffering in your life and have the wish to get out of it? I doubt it. I doubt it. That’s very difficult. One wonders where this piece of advice falls within the traditional structure of children entering monasteries.
As for lay people — although in the West it’s very, very different — in traditional Asian societies, lay people didn’t study very much and didn’t learn very much of Buddhism; they basically supported the monastic system. In Thailand and Burma, they had the custom that as… usually as a teenager you would enter the monastery for a short period of time; you wouldn’t have to enter it for life, but for a short period of time. It, in a sense, is nicer than having to enter the army as an older teenager, but again I wonder how motivated the teenagers are for being in the monastery or if it’s just part of the whole social obligation, like going into the army or doing some alternative social service is here in Germany.
In any case, we as Westerners are in a very different situation. We are not — most of us — sent to monasteries as an eight-year-old child. We might be dragged by our Dharma parents as an eight-year-old child to come to pujas and to various lectures, and so on, at Dharma centers; this phenomenon has certainly been happening. I must say, from many of the children of friends of mine who have dragged their children to these centers, most of these kids (who are now in their twenties) have developed some interest in the Dharma. But that’s come much later, and it’s usually to find out what were their parents really into. Many have become more sincerely involved with the Dharma. Many have not. It all depends on the individual.
But for most of us, we approach the Buddhist teachings as an adult. There are some who (from, I think, previous life instincts) are very, very drawn to the Dharma when they’re thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old — I’ve met a number of those — but that’s not so common. Most of us enter it based not on an inner drive from, let’s say, previous karma, but looking for an answer to our problems. In that sense, if we really are sincere, and if we approach the teacher in a mature way — not in an emotionally dependent way of, let’s say, a client going to a therapist and expecting that we’re going to get that type of personal treatment — then a teacher can work with us.
But also, it’s very important to realize that the relationship between a Buddhist practitioner and a Buddhist teacher is very different from the relationship of the client and a therapist. Aside from the fact that there are set hours and fees, and so on, with the client-therapist situation, and the therapist doesn’t act as a model for the good psychological and emotional health that the person is aiming for, but aside from that, one of the most important differences is that in the client-therapist relationship, the client talks an awful lot about themselves — mostly they talk about themselves — and this is the focus of the relationship. Whereas in the spiritual teacher-student relationship, it’s the teacher that does almost all of the talking, and it’s up to the student to basically apply it to his or her own life by themselves. If they have questions about the methodology, about the teachings, then they ask the teacher. They don’t go to the teacher with personal problems. This becomes a little bit difficult in a Western setting for most Dharma teachers because Westerners want to share their personal problems with somebody that they respect and think has more wisdom or experience than they have. That I think still needs to be worked out in the future development of Western Buddhism, just what will be the parameters and limitations of the student-teacher relationship — how much is it going to go across the boundary, the traditional boundary between the spiritual teacher and the therapist. This is compounded and made even more difficult by the fact that many of the Western Dharma teachers, at least the senior ones that I know, are therapists and they make their living as therapists. That becomes even more difficult.
Participant: Is this probably also something cultural? Because Tibetans also tend to be very proud. I don’t know if they would really go and share their personal…
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is also very true. But if we look at Tibetans — and not just Tibetans, but certainly Chinese and Japanese and Indians for that matter (I don’t know so much personally about Southeast Asian ethnic groups) — but in any case, among those people whom I do have experience with, they don’t talk about their emotions, they don’t talk about feelings. Even in a marriage partnership, they don’t talk about their emotions and feelings. This is certainly…
No. It’s very true. I mean, I haven’t personally been married to a traditional Asian, but from many of my friends who have married Asians — my Western friends — this has been one of the major problems, that their Asian spouse never talks about their feelings or emotions. Where that comes from in our tradition, in our culture, I don’t know. I really think that probably there’s variation. Let’s say… I mean, you’re from Mexico, I think. Perhaps Latin Americans speak more about their… Well, I don’t know. They speak more on a superficial level of their emotions, but their deep emotions are sometimes masked by this over-display of emotional warmth and so on.
Participant: But with really deep friends, yes.
Dr. Berzin: With really deep friends, yes. But I wonder with more northern countries — British, and German, and Scandinavian, and so on — to what extent that is common.
Participant: Would you say it’s more than Tibetans though?
Dr. Berzin: Would I say it’s more than Tibetans? I don’t have a scale to be able to measure that. I think it would be difficult to get statistics on that.
Participant: Western teachers have quite a task to measure those boundaries and try to…
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes, that’s true. But I’m not talking just about sharing emotions. I am talking about, for instance, going to a monk or nun with your sex problems or marital relation problems. I mean, nobody in a traditional Asian society would do that. Whereas Westerners tend to be unbelievably insensitive to the vows of celibacy of the monks and nuns and ask questions like this. These are the areas where you want a marriage counselor or a therapist and not a spiritual teacher.
They do go to lamas and so on, not for so much advice, but to have pujas, ceremonies done, particularly in Chinese societies, of “May my daughter find a good husband,” “May my business succeed,” these sort of things. “May my son find a good wife” — but they don’t ask the lama to find one for them; that’s strictly against the vows, actually, to act as a go-between.
Anyway, as I said, it’s important to find a teacher who knows how to teach you, if we’re really serious and really want to make progress on the path. Those are the points that we’ve covered so far in the text.
Now Tsongkhapa goes on and he writes:
Furthermore, even though he may be skilled
He or she. I mean, there’s no gender in the pronoun in Tibetan; in fact, the pronoun isn’t even included here in the Tibetan grammar. But talking about the teacher, so excuse me if I use he; it’s easier than always saying he/she.
Furthermore, even though he may be skilled in these important points of practice like this, nevertheless he must also be someone whose certainty gained about the complete stages of the pathway minds has come from his own (experience of) having been set straight in his own understanding and having been led by a hallowed being
That’s a great teacher.
through not a cursory,
Cursory means short.
nor sporadic,
That means just for a short time.
but a thorough (study) of the great classics themselves, as composed by the standard, valid authors. (For you see) the abbreviated, non-disarrayed, personal instructions for how to lead (disciples) through these (pathway minds) are in fact only what have been condensed from these great classics.
Tsongkhapa is making a very important point here. He’s saying that the teacher has to have experience. How does the teacher gain experience in these pathway minds, these states of mind and heart that the teacher is trying to help us to develop? The way that the teacher needs to have gained that experience is through having been led himself by a properly qualified teacher. Not just read it in books, not just learned it from the internet, not just learned it from — like from my website, thank you — and not just learned it from some teacher who just is a self-proclaimed teacher who also just read a few books. But it emphasizes an unbroken lineage going back of qualified teachers having studied with qualified teachers who themselves studied with qualified teachers, and so on. That, in a sense, there is an authenticity and a control, as it were, to the qualifications of the teacher and their own level of spiritual attainment.
What type of training does the teacher need to have? They need to be led, he said, after having been set straight in their own understanding. That means that our understanding…
It’s very nice: The word yonten (yon-tan) in Tibetan means good qualities or advantages, benefits. It has all these connotations. Generally, it’s translated as good qualities. As my teacher Serkong Rinpoche loved to explain the deeper connotations of these terms, he said that really what the term means, the connotation, is to straighten out some sort of deviation. That’s what a good quality is. That we had some deficiency, some confusion, some misunderstanding, and the good quality is when that was straightened out, so that then — as you would say in German, alles klar — everything is clear. That’s what a good quality is. It’s a correction of a shortcoming. Of course, that’s based on the general premise that we all are under the influence of ignorance or unawareness. Because of that, we have to be set straight. This is what Tsongkhapa is referring to when he says that their own experience has to come from having been set straight in your understanding. The understanding is not fuzzy, it’s not incorrect, or anything like that. They have to correctly understand what the teachings are, and all these points that he mentioned before — what is a teaching, what isn’t a teaching, what shouldn’t be added, what shouldn’t be left out, how to apply them, what are the stages, etc.
This study has to be not a cursory one. A cursory one means a study in which you just go over some of the brief points. Superficial. Many of us do that, of course. We don’t... Hardly any of us as Westerners go into as deep a study as the Tibetans do of the text. They can study a text for five years. Now we studied Bodhicharyavatara here for six years, but how much did we study of that? We studied basically an hour and a half once a week. We’re not talking about an hour and a half once a week for six years but really go into depth. Ideally the teacher should have gone into depth, not just a cursory study. For us that’s quite difficult, I must say, to have that time. But some people do that. There are some places where it is possible to do that in the West, not only in India or Nepal.
It needs to be not sporadic. Sporadic means that you study for a little while, and then you go off for another period of time, and then when you feel like it, you come, or when you have free time, when you have a holiday, you come. Unfortunately, that is the limitation that we have with our Western lives. But it’s very difficult to make a thorough study he says that we need to make if we don’t have the time and we can only do it in our free time, and on our holidays, and during vacation, or like that. It’s not steady. You have to push a cart steadily uphill. If you push it for a little while and then go away, it rolls back down, doesn’t it? You have to steadily, steadily push it, really work on it.
What is the study of? It’s the study of the great classics. This is a point that was already emphasized by the earlier Kadampa teachings — Kadampa masters before Tsongkhapa, going back to their reference to Atisha — that they need to make a study of the great classics. These are the classics composed by the standard, valid authors. This is referring to the great Indian masters. That these are the basic texts that are accepted by all the Tibetan traditions. All the Tibetan traditions study the texts by Nagarjuna, and by Maitreya, and by Asanga, and Dharmakirti, and Dignaga, and Chandrakirti, and Shantideva, and Aryadeva — all these great Indian masters.
If we don’t know who these Indian masters are, let alone what they wrote, let alone what’s in the books that they wrote, let alone having studied them thoroughly, then what are we going to teach people? Because Tsongkhapa says the abbreviated… He’s talking about personal instructions. Personal instructions: this is this this term menngag (man-ngag) in Tibetan. It’s a personal instruction. Doesn’t have to be necessarily oral; it could be written as well. But it’s a personal instruction which is abbreviated — they’re short — they’re abbreviated from these great texts.
Non-disarrayed, which means that they are in a proper order for actual personal application.
“These personal instructions for how to lead disciples through these minds” — in other words, how to guide them to develop these types of minds and understanding, and so on — “are in fact only what have been condensed from these great classics.” Where did the various masters who wrote these personal instructions get these instructions from? What is the source? The source is the great Indian classics. Where did these Indian classics derive from? They derive from Buddha’s texts, the words of the Buddha. When he talks about the great classics here, actually he’s referring to not only the Indian commentaries but the original teachings of Buddha himself. We have these collected in the Kangyur and Tengyur. In Tibetan translation, the Kangyur are the translated words of... literally Kangyur means translated words, so the translated words of Buddha. The Tengyur means the translated discourses, so this is referring to the Indian authors, the texts of the Indian authors who followed after Buddha. What Tsongkhapa is underlining here is the need to study these great classics.
If we look at His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s development in what he’s taught in the West, we find that more and more and more His Holiness is emphasizing teaching the Indian classics. Lately he has been teaching over and over again texts by Nagarjuna, the great master who put together the Madhyamaka teachings of the middle way philosophy. His Holiness has been emphasizing that we go back to the sources. The various Tibetan traditions each have their own commentaries to these classics — that’s wonderful, that’s fine — but they are all derived from the same classics, the same texts. This is what we need to emphasize.
There was a Tulkus’ conference, this conference of the Rinpoches, the incarnate lamas, that a few of us Westerners were invited to as observers, and I was among them. That was held — I forget when (in the ’80s, I think it was) — in Sarnath. At that conference what His Holiness suggested, although I don’t know that they actually ever did it, was that for large prayer sessions in which all the Tibetan traditions could participate — that at these prayer sessions, since each of the traditions has their own set of prayers, that what they do is recite the Indian prayers, the prayers translated from Sanskrit. Because there are quite a number of them. Like, for instance, the dedication chapter of Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior (Bodhicharyavatara). Something like that. This is something that everybody would accept and feel comfortable in reciting together. This would be something which would be very, very helpful for harmony. As I say, I don’t know if that really has been put into practice.
Go back to the classics. Then Tsongkhapa expounds on that — expands on that. He says:
Actually, the very meaning of a personal instruction is that it is something to give us certainty more easily into the classics, which themselves are very extensive, the meanings of which are extremely difficult to comprehend and which, for necessary (reasons), scramble the graded order of understanding (and practice) in their showing of the teachings.
Now Tsongkhapa is referring a little bit more to the sutras of the Buddha. Although you could say in a sense the Indian classics are a little bit like this, but primarily the sutras. He’s saying: What is a personal instruction? What does it do? These menngag that people are so excited about, they help us to give more certainty into what the meaning of the classics are. Why? Because the sutras… If we look at the sutras, they are very extensive; some of them are very, very long. What’s some of the features of these sutras? If you’ve ever read them, you find that they have a tremendous amount of repetition. Many of the sutras will have a long phrase which is maybe thirty, forty words long, and they will repeat it twenty times with just one word changed in it when they’re giving a list. This is not very easy for us as Westerners to read. I must say some translators abbreviate it and leave it out. They might just list what that one word that is varied is, but they’ll leave out the repetition because… For economic reasons, perhaps; it’s too expensive to publish a book that has so much repetition in it, so it makes it many more pages. Also, Western people aren’t used to reading something like that; they might not even catch which word is different in each repetition.
You ask, “Well, why was it written that way?” And, as Serkong Rinpoche always said to me in reference to this bit, in reference to the Indian commentaries (which deals with the next point here), “Don’t think that these people were stupid and didn’t know how to write, and out of arrogance you think that you could write it better. But they wrote it for a purpose.” As Tsongkhapa says here, it’s for a purpose that it’s like this. The purpose was that these texts were to be memorized — because they weren’t written down — and the way that you can memorize it is if there’s like a refrain or a phrase that is repeated over and over again. Also, if something is… You’ll find in the sutras they will give many, many synonyms for the same word — it’s like this or this or this — just to make sure that you understand what Buddha’s point is. Repetition is also there so that we get the idea of what really is important — that’s repeated over and over and over again in it. These texts became very extensive.
Then “the meanings of which are extremely difficult to comprehend.” What makes them so difficult to comprehend? One of the things that makes them so difficult to comprehend is that there is a tremendous number of pronouns in it — namely, the word this, that, and it, and they — which for us Westerners drives us crazy, especially people from this culture, German culture, who want to have everything clear — alles klar — specific. I find that with my German editor. Any time that I write in English it or this or that, I am bombarded with a question about what does that refer to.
Now in the original languages the this and the that, and the it, and the they, and these and those are there for a very, very specific reason. This is what Serkong Rinpoche was saying when I objected once to how difficult and obscure the texts are, and then he basically slammed me for being so arrogant thinking that I could put down the way that Nagarjuna was writing because I was so much smarter. But it’s there so that, first of all, you fill in the meaning yourself. The whole idea of the text is to get you to work, to think, to have your own understanding. The text is a structure in which, when you recite it — because Tibetans of course memorize these texts — that you don’t just recite “This is like that because of this and that,” which is how some of these texts read, but you fill in what it means.
Plus, there are many, many different levels of commentary to it. When we get to tantra texts, then it explains four different levels of meaning and six different alternative usages of words. This is what vajra words are in the tantras — they’re called vajra words — they have so many different levels of meaning and you’re supposed to be able to fill it all in. That’s the way that you train your mind to understand and also to be able to teach. Because as Tsongkhapa said, as a teacher you have to be able to teach the graded level to suit each disciple. You can teach the same words. This is one of the special features of Buddha’s words: Buddha teaches, and everybody is able to understand it at their own level.
We fill in the thises or thats, and we need to be able to fill in the many different levels of what the this and that mean. These texts are known as root texts. It’s a root because our understanding will grow from it, like from a root. Now most of the authors, the Indian masters, wrote their own commentaries to it — it’s called auto-commentary in English — so that gives one understanding of it. It’s interesting because other authors later on will write their own commentaries to it, and they will differ from what the author himself explained.
Now you could ask yourself “What’s going on here?” if you have a later person — and presumably somebody who’s learned and has experience in the Dharma — looking back at your text and getting another meaning out of it from the one that you intended. Now I must say, from my own experience of writing, that that’s possible. They talk about, in a sense… I don’t know if you would call it inspired words or what, but this is a very strong phenomenon that not just authors of Buddhist material experience; it goes back — certainly the ancient Greeks had inspiration from the Muses to write. There’s artistic inspiration. You write something and there can be many, many other levels of meaning in it that you didn’t even realize could be understood from the words. Many different levels on which it could be applied, and so on. You didn’t even consciously think of them, but they’re there — in the sense of being valid, not inherently findable there. But if we go back to our mental labeling, it describes it perfectly. This is a basis for labeling on which you can impute different meanings, different levels of understanding. We have all these later commentaries in which, if you want to look at it unkindly, you say, “Well, they’re just using this root text as an excuse to come out with something which is their own meaning and to justify it.” But if you look at it in a kinder way, you can say that these root texts are a valid basis on which you can impute many, many different levels of understanding; you can get many different insights.
It is not that the author themself is a Buddha, is able to speak with Buddha words that can have all these different levels of meaning. But I think it’s this phenomenon of inspiration, this word chinlab (byin-rlabs) in Tibetan or adhishtana. Chinlab means waves of brightening, and adhishthana, the Sanskrit term, means to raise to a higher level; I call that inspiration. I think that’s the aspect that most authors find when they write, they write with inspiration. Otherwise, you’re just writing for a school assignment, writing a term paper, which often is very uninspired, and we can see the difference when reading it.
Tsongkhapa says the personal instruction “gives us certainty more easily into the classics, which themselves are very extensive, the meanings of which are extremely difficult to comprehend and which” — here’s the third thing — “for necessary reasons, they scramble the graded order of understanding and practice in their showing of the teachings.” Why would they scramble it? Scramble means to mix it up so it’s not clear how it goes together. Why would they do that on purpose? Why would Buddha do that on purpose?
Participant: To make us think.
Dr. Berzin: To make us think. That’s right. To make us think. To make us put it together. I often describe the Dharma study process as gaining pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. You get all these little pieces, and we have to put them together. Sometimes we get pieces from different puzzles. These pieces fit together in many different ways. But that really is the traditional way.
Now the personal instructions or personal guidelines put some of them together. I must say — as a Western teacher, from my own personal background and from, I think, the cultural background of being a Westerner — as a teacher, I like to make things as clear as possible. Might not be terribly clear to the students, because of a deficiency in my ability to explain or my tendency to explain in a too complicated way, but at least in my mind I’m trying to make it clearer. But that defeats the purpose. The purpose is that — I mean, the method is that it should be unclear. It should be unclear because that weeds out the serious students from those who are not serious. Those who are not serious, that explanation will be enough, or they’ll get fed up and be impatient and leave. Those who are serious will persist and they will continue to come, they will continue to ask questions, and they won’t give up. This develops the character of the student. That is certainly equally as important as developing their understanding of the Dharma. You have to develop their character, their personality.
When we talk about the far-reaching attitudes (the so-called perfections), perseverance — “I’m not going to give up. I don’t care how difficult it is. I don’t care how much effort I have to put into it. I don’t care if nobody else is doing it. I’m going to do it.” You have to develop that in order to really develop sincere bodhichitta, of course. That’s something that you start to develop with approaching the teachings. Patience.
When I went to India and first went to empowerments (or initiations), there was zero translation, zero materials available for recitation commitments in translation. I had studied some Tibetan at university, but certainly it was not at the level to be able to understand what was going on. We just did it, and we recited things — “Blah, blah, blah” — in Tibetan without having the slightest idea of what we were reciting. Those who were serious had to overcome (and certainly I had to overcome) the arrogance with which you might say, “I’m not going to recite this unless you tell me what it means.” That’s arrogance. That’s arrogance. “I’m so wonderful. You have to tell me or I’m not going to do it.” It’s a big ego trip. Is this equivalent to saying, “Shut up and just believe and do it,” or is this a way of developing your character? “Shut up and just do it” is perhaps without the possible end point that you will get an explanation eventually. The point here is not obedience. The point here is you have to develop further and be patient because, at least in my case, people have to develop the skill and the knowledge and experience to be able to translate these things, which basically I had to do myself. If I wanted to understand this, I had to increase my level of knowledge of Tibetan; I had to get the background and not depend on anybody else to do it. That develops your character, so you’re not going to give up. Buddha made this method on purpose to develop people’s characters.
Nowadays we’re faced with a different challenge. I think also that it can be beneficial for helping to develop the character of Dharma students. The challenge is there’s too much available — so many texts — and still it’s a small fraction of what’s possible. But so many books are available that are published by these various Buddhist publishers, certainly in English. You have a few hundred of them. Okay, that’s not hundreds of thousands of them, but there are a few hundred of them. Where do you start? What do you read? You go to the Internet, type in “Buddhism,” you get a hundred thousand different entries or more. Where do you start? How do you put it all together? That is going to be the challenge that will build the character of students in the future.
But as I say, the personal instructions… Western Dharma teachers themselves make their own personal instructions of trying to help the students get more clarity and put things more together, but still, it’s important not to spoon-feed the Dharma and not to make it too easy. If it’s too easy, people don’t value it and they ignore it. It was like what we discussed last week concerning His Holiness’s teachings when he teaches publicly on these advanced, difficult texts by Nagarjuna or Aryadeva on voidness, like His Holiness did in Hamburg this last summer. Is he breaking the bodhisattva vow of don’t teach voidness to those who are not ready? We analyzed and saw that His Holiness is not breaking that vow, because if you’re not ready you couldn’t possibly understand anything that he was saying. Because it was so complicated, and so difficult, and so fast. You only got part of it through the translator; you got far more through the German translator than you did through the other language translators, but still it was only part. It obscures it. This teaching method obscures the matter on purpose — and in the tantra teachings it’s even more obscured — so that only those who are ready in both their background and training and in their character are actually able to understand it.
That whole process is often described in terms of — to use the common terminology — building up the merit, which I think is a terrible way of translating it. You have to build up the positive force; it’s like putting a charge in the battery so that it’ll operate. It’s not that you do certain things, and you earn merit points, and when you have collected enough — like having enough money — then you have earned the right to understand. It’s not like that. You have to build up enough force, enough energy, enough character to be able to break through the mental obstacles, and then all of a sudden, it’s clear. The Tibetan system of debate is very helpful for this because everybody challenges everybody else — in a very humor-filled way, but very high energy way — to make sure you understand something. That’s good.
He says that these classics “for necessary reasons, scramble the graded order of understanding and practice” — so makes it on purpose difficult to understand and follow — “in their showing of the teachings.”
Then Tsongkhapa continues:
Because these guidelines have been compiled (with this purpose in mind),
This purpose of helping us to gain more certainty into the meaning of the classics.
Because these guidelines have been compiled (with this purpose in mind), then to take the great classics as Dharma for lecturing and the brief personal instructions as Dharma for practicing, and thereby to hold these two as disharmonious, is not to understand the important point of the teachings at all.
This is a common mistake, that there are two types of Dharma: Dharma for study and Dharma for practice. You ask people what practice do they do, and what do they say? “Doing some Tara practice and Chenrezig practice,” something like that. That’s what most people into Tibetan Buddhism say is their practice. Who says their practice is trying to develop Bodhichitta? Who says their practice is trying to understand the teachings on voidness (or any of the teachings) as explained in Shantideva’s text, for instance, and their practice is to try to go through a few of these verses every day and try to apply it in their daily life?
No, their practice is to visualize something and say some mantras and often recite something in a language they don’t even understand. They say “No, there’s a big difference. Study, only” — they usually name one Tibetan tradition as being into study (we don’t have to mention the names) — “Other Tibetan traditions, they’re into practice.” Let’s play lama and have our vajra and bell and little drum and do pujas. With nothing going on in the mind in terms of understanding, it’s like a child playing doctor. Not much going on. If you’ve studied the texts and know what to fill in in the pujas so that your mind is really generating the states that are being described that you’re reciting, and generating it at the speed at which you’re reciting, then it’s a very helpful practice; otherwise, it’s so easy for it to degenerate into “Blah, blah, blah.” Very easy.
Tsongkhapa makes this big point, and it’s a point which is repeated over and over again by many great masters, that one must not think that there is a division between Dharma for study and Dharma for practice. What you study is all aimed for practice.
The young Serkong Rinpoche explained that very, very nicely when he described to me his experience now, as a young man, studying debate tradition. He said that the debate tradition and the debate training is the best training for meditation. Because in order to actually meditate on voidness, let’s say, you have to have complete certainty about what it means. No doubts. All your questions have to be answered. Otherwise, how can you possibly develop single-minded concentration on something that you have indecisive wavering about: “Does it mean this or does it mean that? I’m not sure.” How can you have single-minded concentration on that? You can’t. It’s impossible. You have to have certainty. The debate — I’ll get to your question in a moment — the debate is going to force you (because the other students are going to force you) to check your understanding in a far more relentless way than you would ever do in analytical meditation yourself: you would stop. The other students — because they find it great fun to taunt you — are not going to let you go with any sloppy thinking. The debate prepares you for meditation.
Participant: If you’ve already understood how to debate perfectly, then is it that you have already realized it? I mean, if you’ve studied it so well that there are no questions left. I wonder then if meditation would be necessary anymore because... If you’ve understood it or not — that means you have realized it or not.
Dr. Berzin: Okay. Very good question. If we have gotten to the point where we have a good understanding of the meaning of the text — let’s say about voidness or impermanence, or whatever it might be — that then… Or what you focus on when you meditate on bodhichitta. What does it mean, my future enlightenment that I haven’t attained yet? What in the world are you focusing on? If we’ve gained that certainty in our understanding, is there any need for meditation? Or is that in fact meditation?
This is actually the thinking process. When we talk about the process of how we internalize something and develop and grow, we have a three-step process. Buddha didn’t make this up; you have this in the Upanishads before the Buddha.
- First you have to hear about something (because in those days nothing was written down). We’re basically referring to learning about it. You have to learn about voidness; it’s not something you would figure out yourself.
- Then you need to think about it in order to understand it. This whole process of debate is the thinking process. The end result of that is that you’ve understood what it is that you’ve heard about, you’ve learned about, you’ve read about, or whatever. You’ve understood it. You are convinced that it’s true — not just understand it and think that it’s stupid or dumb, but you’re convinced that it’s true.
- You’re convinced that it would be beneficial to internalize it and make it part of the way that I am.
These three things you’ve gained. You’re clear of indecisiveness about it, about any of these points. You’re also convinced that “I’m capable of cultivating this.” It comes from understanding Buddha-nature.
Then the meditation process has many steps, but basically what we do… What’s called analytical meditation; I prefer to call it discerning meditation. You go through the stages of building up… You see, if you talk about voidness, with voidness you have to decisively cut off any sort of impossible way of existing: “There’s no such thing. No such thing” — Wham! — “as what I am projecting. What I’m projecting is absolute garbage; it’s not referring to anything real.” You have to cut that off.
Based on the understanding, then, this discerning meditation is basically to go through the steps by which you build up that conviction again. When you become really skilled you don’t have to go through those steps again — you just get it instantly. But in the beginning, you are going to have to go through those steps. Tsongkhapa talks about this shortly in the text. You have to go through the steps and build up that understanding again so it’s fresh. Then when you’ve cut off “there’s no such thing,” the meditation process at that point is called — what do I call it? — settling meditation or fixing meditation. I forget the term that I’ve used; I keep on changing the term. But it basically is letting it sink in by focusing on that understanding with complete concentration, so that it really sinks in, and you digest it. “Yes, there’s no such thing. This is absolute bullshit — this is garbage, what I’m projecting. This is ridiculous. There’s no such thing.” You apply it to whatever is relevant. Like if you are in a depression and think “I’m a failure. I’m a loser. Nothing ever goes well with me. Nobody loves me,” this type of thing. Just to drop it: “This is ridiculous. There’s no such thing as an inherent loser from my own side, regardless of any circumstance, cause, or how anybody looks at it. I am truly and really a loser? No good, worthless, nobody loves me?” — just drop it — “No such thing!” The meditation process at this point, once you have gotten that fresh understanding of why this is ridiculous and nobody can exist that way, then you let it sink in. “Yes! No such thing. Absence of that.”
It’s based on understanding, but it’s the process of internalizing, digesting. That’s what meditation actually means, the term. Meditation in Tibetan is the word gom (sgom), to make something familiar, to build up a habit; it’s the same word as habit. Now of course the Tibetans don’t translate Sanskrit words so accurately; they always give a connotation of it. The Sanskrit word, bhavana, is to become that; comes from the word to become. In a sense it’s a transformation process, you transform yourself and become that: someone with the understanding.
Participant: The indecisive wavering — it’s very important to eliminate it, but don’t you also need to keep, at the same time, a certain remembrance that your understanding is temporary and that you can also understand things in a deeper way?
Dr. Berzin: Oh, that’s very true. That’s very true. He says even though we might have gained certainty in our understanding, is it important to realize that we can always deepen our understanding. Yes, that also is one of the… I always forget whether it’s a bodhichitta or a tantric vow, of never being satisfied with our level of understanding, never say that we have had enough: “I’ve understood enough. I don’t have to go any deeper.”
Participant: It’s a balance, no?
Dr. Berzin: Well, it is… How to say this… “I have a correct understanding. It may be a simplistic understanding, but it’s correct on a simplistic level. But it could be deeper.”
Participant: It’s useful.
Dr. Berzin: it’s useful.
Participant: I intend to apply it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I mean, you study physics, so it could be… Like, for instance, I understand Newtonian physics. That’s useful, and it works, and it’s correct. But there could be a more refined understanding — with relativistic physics.
Participant: There can be the kind of situation where you understand it, but you have to see that it will not always apply.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Not only that — that, as you say, you understand one model, but it won’t always apply. But remember our analogy of the jigsaw puzzle. We get different pieces of the Dharma. I have certainty of how five pieces of the puzzle fit together, and so I can meditate on that and really internalize that. We use meditate in the West as to think about as well. When people do these so-called lam-rim retreats, it’s basically thinking — trying to understand what impermanence means, seeing it in terms of your own life. That’s basically the thinking process. Trying to become convinced of it, that it’s true. But you get to a point, for instance, in which “Okay, I see how these five pieces fit together. But that’s only five pieces.” Later on, we might be able to fit another piece into it, and all of a sudden, we see how something else connects.
This I find all the time happens to me. I’m in the middle of writing this — it’s turning out to be a book, a small book on what a Buddha knows when a Buddha knows the past and the future. I’ve been on this thing now for two months already. It’s fifty-six pages, single spaced. What I find in the analysis, when I have time to work on it — I have so many other things, that’s the problem — but when I have time to work on it, what I find is that I may understand something today and write something, but the next morning, usually in my mental wandering in my meditation, but usually another piece will all of a sudden fit into the puzzle that I didn’t even consider that has to be fitted in. Then there is another level of understanding, another modification. Then you work with that. Then as you go deeper, the more that you’ve studied, the more pieces of the puzzle you can fit in to explain something very, very complex like this. What in the world does a Buddha know when a Buddha knows the past and the future? Is it real? Is it determined? Is it fixed? It’s very complex. We had a week and that basically just touched on it, just an introduction to the topic. But anyway…
Our understanding gets deeper and deeper like this, even though we might have found certainty, as I say, about how part of it fits together. We will only get certainty — complete certainty — when we become a Buddha. Why? Because only as a Buddha will we be able to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. Now we don’t even know of the existence of some of the pieces of the puzzle. We don’t even know that some of the pieces are missing, let alone what those pieces are.
This was certainly the case when I went to India. 1969. No idea of what was in the corpus of Tibetan Buddhism. No idea. “Oh yeah, there’s tantra” — no idea really what it was, just some crazy ideas based on Lama Govinda and Alexandra David-Neel and Evans-Wentz; that was it. No idea. When I studied lam-rim, I had no idea of what was in the lam-rim, let alone of the existence of lojong or any of this material.
Now at least, if we have a little bit of education, we know some of the pieces of the puzzle, but there are still a lot of the pieces that we don’t know exist. In that way, our understanding can always go deeper and deeper, and only as a Buddha would we know the full extent of Buddhas’ teachings. A Buddha’s the one that’s able to know the interdependence and relationship of everything; that’s what omniscience means. Then we will have understood everything. If we see how everything in the so-called ten directions and three times fit together.
There’s always a deeper level of understanding that we can have. That’s very encouraging — not discouraging — that’s encouraging. Because it’s an adventure to go deeper and deeper. You have to love it. Then you’ll go, then you’ll continue, and you will never give up. Even if you’re the only person in the universe doing it, you will not give up. That was one of the things that Shantideva pointed out in his text in his chapter on perseverance. What’s one of the factors that contributes to perseverance? It’s fun. You enjoy it. Joyful perseverance. This is the whole aspect of building character.
Now to get back to our text. Let’s just finish this paragraph. Tsongkhapa says “To hold these two as disharmonious” — the personal instructions and the practice — “is not to understand the important point of the teachings at all.” He goes on:
This is so because Buddha’s scriptural pronouncements as well as their (Indian) commentaries on their intended meanings are in fact — like we recite (from Maitreya’s Filigree of Mahayana Sutras, Mahayanasutralamkara),
It’s a famous text that the Tibetans all study.
“hearing, debating, and eagerly practicing.”
That in other words, the scriptural pronouncements and the Indian commentaries are only for eager practice and aimed at accomplishing such practice. What is the purpose of Buddha’s writings — Buddha’s teachings? Their purpose was to benefit us, to put into practice what he taught. “Buddha’s scriptural pronouncements and their Indian commentaries on their intended meanings are in fact —”
only for eager practice, and they’re aimed at accomplishing such practice.
That is their intention, that we actually put them into practice, which means internalize them through the view or understanding, meditating (which means to concentrate on it), and behavior (put it into the practice of your daily behavior).
That is the end of this section, then Tsongkhapa goes on of how we actually begin our practice. Then we will go into that next time.
Any final questions? Good.
Let us end with a dedication. We think whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for everyone, not just myself, to reach enlightenment for the benefit of us all.