Review of Previous Sessions
We have been going through this letter that the great Tibetan master Tsongkhapa wrote (he lived at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries), and he wrote this letter to his friend the meditator Konchog-tsultrim. In this letter, Tsongkhapa is responding to a request that Konchog-tsultrim made to have some practical advice about sutra and tantra.
To just review very briefly: Tsongkhapa, after starting with very humble apologies that he really has nothing to say but he’ll try to say something, he says that now we’ve found an excellent working basis of the complete precious human rebirth, and we’ve met with the teachings of the Buddha, and we’ve been cared for by great spiritual masters, and we have the ability to discern and discriminate between what’s to be practiced and what’s to be rejected, and so now with this situation we need to take advantage of it and try to engage ourselves in the teachings of the Buddha.
You notice that these are the things that Tsongkhapa starts as general lam-rims — with the precious human rebirth and the fact that we’ve met with spiritual teachers. What is always emphasized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama is that as human beings we have the intelligence to be able to discern or discriminate between what is going to be beneficial (and therefore to be adopted) and what is detrimental (and therefore to be rejected).
Tsongkhapa goes on to say that in order to engage ourselves in the teachings, it’s not enough to have kind thoughts. We discussed this quite a lot, that Buddhism is not just another philosophy saying, “Be nice and don’t hurt anybody, and try to help everybody.” There are many religions and philosophies that teach that. But Buddhism is much deeper than that. It includes that of course but goes much deeper beyond that. Tsongkhapa says we have to know how to engage ourselves with the teachings, and if we don’t then we have to rely on guidance from a teacher who does know how to get engaged with it.
Qualities of the Spiritual Teacher
Then he speaks about some of the qualities of the teacher without going into the long standard lists that we find in the sutras and tantras. He says that the teacher needs to be learned in three things:
The essential nature of the pathway minds (lam, Skt. marga) (that’s often just spoken of as “the paths,” but it’s the states of mind and attitudes that we need to develop that will act as pathways for bringing us to the Buddhist spiritual goals). The teacher has to know (1) the essential nature of them, (2) their definite count, and (3) how to accord them with the disciples’ levels of understanding. That means that the teacher has to know, in terms of the essential nature, what actually are the types of attitudes and pathway minds that we need to develop that will bring us to these goals and what are not. In other words, what is to be developed and what is to be rejected. The teacher has to know the definite count of their details, which means not add anything and not leave anything out. “Learned in the graded order” means that the teacher has to know the proper sequence in which one insight and one attitude grows and develops and is based on the previous ones. It is a progressive training of our mind and our hearts and our attitudes, and the teacher has to know the proper order, not leave any out, not add anything, keep to what is really there, and know how to apply them to each individual student (this is very important, because each of us are coming from a different background, with a different disposition, different set of disturbing emotions and positive qualities and backgrounds, and so on, so the teacher has to be sensitive and has to know all of that).
Then Tsongkhapa says that the teacher has to have gained certainty about all of this from his or her own experience of having been led through the sequence of the development of these attitudes by a teacher, qualified teacher, who has taught on the basis of the great Buddhist classics. Our teacher has to teach in terms of the classics.
He points out something which is stressed over and again, that it’s a big mistake to think that there are certain aspects of Buddhism which are just for practice and certain which are just for study. But Tsongkhapa makes the big point that everything in the text is meant for practice, and Tsongkhapa emphasizes this very much in his lam-rim presentations.
Taming the Mind
Then, as to how to begin our practice, Tsongkhapa quotes Nagarjuna and Aryadeva (Skt. Āryadeva) saying that we need to begin our practice by taming our minds. This is the main thing. It is the mental continuum that goes on from lifetime to lifetime, not the gross body, and it is the mind that determines very much the way that we act with our bodies and the way that we speak. Although you can train somebody to perform certain acts, like in a circus, and to recite certain things, like an actor or an actress, that doesn’t necessarily change the mind of somebody. Whereas if you change the mind and tame the mind, not only of somebody else but of ourselves, then appropriate conduct and speech will follow.
The Motivating Mental Framework
Then Tsongkhapa says that, before any type of Dharma practice, it’s extremely important for our motivating mental framework to be a proper one, that we have worked up to in various stages so that it is sincere. The mental framework is dealing with what is our aim, and what is the intention in terms of that aim (which obviously is to achieve it), and what is the motivating emotion behind it (why would we want to achieve this goal?). This is the motivating mental framework. When we speak about motivation in Buddhism, that’s what we’re speaking about. We’re speaking about what are aiming for and why.
Then, in terms of this motivating mental framework, Tsongkhapa explains this in terms of the three levels of motivation which form the basic structure of the graded path, the lam-rim. Tsongkhapa spoke just briefly about these three levels, and we’ve gone through them also quite briefly.
The Initial Level of Motivation
The initial level. Tsongkhapa emphasizes that we need to be mindful of death and impermanence — he’s already mentioned the precious human rebirth — and we are not going to be staying long in this world. After we die, we can go in two directions, either to one of the better rebirth states or one of the worse rebirth states, and this all depends on the type of behavior that we’ve had, in terms of how we have acted, how we have spoken, and how we have thought — whether they are constructive or destructive.
Here we have to always bear in mind that destructive (mi-dge-ba) means based on or motivated by disturbing emotions: anger, greed, attachment, hostility, jealousy, pride, naivety — all these various disturbing emotions that would cause us to act destructively, whether or not our actions actually cause harm to somebody else. Of course, if it causes harm, that is destructive, but we can never tell what the outcome or effect or our behavior is going to be on other people. We can only know what the effect is going to be on our own minds, in terms of the habits that we build up. That’s destructive actions, and that leads to worse rebirth states.
Constructive (dge-ba) actions are those that are based on restraining ourselves, refraining from acting in a destructive manner; in other words, not acting on the basis of disturbing emotions.
When we have realized that in terms of our behavior, and we realize that we have this precious human rebirth — it’s not going to last for long — then we need to turn our minds away from having keen interest in just this lifetime alone and work to have keen interest in the happiness of future lives and beyond.
The Intermediate Level of Motivation
Then we spoke about the intermediate level of motivation, in which Tsongkhapa says we need to think of the shortcomings of all the various rebirth states of compulsive existence, or samsara (Skt. saṃsāra), and the advantages of gaining a peaceful attainment of liberation. We spoke quite a bit about what actually we mean by liberation. This has to do with realizing that our mental continuums have no beginning and no end, and so obviously they go into future lives as well. That’s a basis assumption upon which all of these teachings are structured or established. First, in terms of future lives, we’re aiming for those, because obviously we want to be happy and not to be unhappy. In terms of liberation, the realization that the mental continuum is not intrinsically stained by the disturbing emotions, which are what cause us to act in destructive type of ways or constructive ways that are based on confusion, which then build up certain habits and tendencies which then the disturbing emotions activate, and it brings up the wish to continue to act in these destructive or constructive confused ways, and then we get the impulses or urges to act in those ways (that’s the actual karma), and we act it out, and the thing just goes on and on and on.
Having that type of continuum — I mean a continuum that is under the influence of this type of samsaric mechanism through karma and disturbing emotions — is the basis upon which we have feelings of unhappiness (that’s the ripening of destructive karma, of negative potential) and feelings of ordinary happiness, which never last, which are unsatisfying, etc. (which is the way in which constructive karma or positive karmic force ripens). We want to get rid of all of that on the basis of understanding that the mental continuum is not intrinsically stained by that, and we went into a big discussion of that. On the intermediate level, we need to turn away from keen interest in the good things of uncontrollably recurring samsaric existence and develop this strong attitude to work with keen interest for liberation.
The Advanced Level of Motivation
Then last time we spoke about the advanced level of motivation, in which we see that just as we are in this type of situation, so is everybody else. All mental continuums are in the same type of situation. We’re all interrelated. Everybody has been our closest friend, mother, father, etc., over beginningless lifetimes. Everybody’s equal to that extent, so we have equanimity toward everyone. we see that we need to develop — on the basis of this understanding — love (that’s the wish for everybody to be happy and have the causes for happiness), compassion (everybody be free of suffering and the causes for suffering), and we actually take responsibility to lead them not just toward temporary alleviation of these problems but lead them all the way to liberation and enlightenment. We develop that exceptional resolve: we’re going to do it; we’re going to lead them ourselves all the way to enlightenment.
Then we see that in order to do that, we need to become an omniscient Buddha. For that, we understand that the mental continuum is not only unstained in its nature by the disturbing emotions and confusion but also by this mechanism of making appearances of true, separated existence of things. The mind doesn’t naturally do that, although it’s habituated to doing that and continues to do that, but that is not part of the nature of the mental continuum. That is the obscuration — that appearance-making of true existence is the obscuration — preventing enlightenment, and we can be rid of that. That’s what we have to be — in that state of being rid of that — in order to know the interconnection of everybody, and causes and effects, etc., to be able to benefit everybody fully. That’s Buddhahood.
We focus on our own enlightened state, in other words, further down the mental continuum in which all of these things are removed and in which all the potentials of the mind are realized, and with the intention to achieve that in order to help everybody else achieve that. That’s bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta), the bodhichitta aim. We need to turn our minds away from keen interest in thinking just for our own benefit and turn it toward thinking of the benefits of others.
That, in brief, is what we’ve covered, for the person who has joined us newly today.
The Disadvantages of Not Having a Proper Motivation
Now we go on from here. Tsongkhapa says:
But concerning these (graded mental frameworks), suppose (for our practice) we had made (for ourselves) a deceptive foundation of having a partial, merely intellectual understanding of the verbal formulations (of them) and then had engaged in hearing, thinking, and meditating (on certain Dharma practices). We might then say, with many sweet-sounding words, that “I’m doing these for the sake of my future lives,” or “I’m doing them because of liberation,” or “I’m doing these for the benefit of limited beings.” But despite (such noble claims), I think the way in which our minds will have been working will have in fact been nothing other than one in which it has been aiming for the sake of either (benefits in) this lifetime, or for certain pleasurable fruits of uncontrollably recurring samsaric rebirth to which we’ve given the name liberation, or for a partial (ultimate) aim for ourselves (and not for everyone). Therefore, to develop these motivating mental frameworks in an uncontrived manner, it is not sufficient to have merely an intellectual understanding (of them). We must meditate (in order to build them up as habits).
This is the difference, very clearly, between what I have called Dharma-Lite and Real Thing Dharma — Dharma-Lite like Coca-Cola Lite, and The Real Thing Dharma like The Real Thing Coca-Cola — and Tsongkhapa lays it out straightforwardly. This is what I’m basing my whole discussion that I dwell on so frequently.
It’s very easy to have sweet-sounding words — “I’m doing this for future lives. I’m doing this for liberation. I’m doing this for enlightenment and for everybody” — but do we really, really mean that? Often, we are kidding ourselves into thinking that, particularly because we recite so many rituals in which we say, “I’m doing this for the benefit of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings be happy, blah, blah, blah,” and it sounds very nice, and as Tsongkhapa says, we use sweet-sounding words but there’s no substance behind it. Therefore, it is very, very important not to fool ourselves in — as Tsongkhapa calls it, “make a deceptive foundation,” a foundation for our practice which will deceive us. In other words, it’s not going to hold up.
There are many, many disadvantages that come from engaging in Dharma practice without the proper motivation. It can lead us to big ego trips, for example, that I am doing this type of practice in order to be famous as a great practitioner, or to be cool, or to whatever, be part of an in-crowd, to get a miracle cure for something in this lifetime. We’re focused on it in this lifetime. “I’m doing this in order to be more popular… to make more money… to have more friends… to get along better with others,” and so on.
Why is that dangerous? Anybody? What’s the fault of that? Does Dharma practice help us to have better relationships in this lifetime? Yes, it does. That’s not a disadvantage. What’s the disadvantage? Daniel?
Participant: If you focus on this lifetime, what happens is you improve samsara, you make this lifetime nicer, but you’re not able to reach enlightenment.
Dr. Berzin: Right. We, by working just for this lifetime — having better relations, more money, etc., more success in our business — we might make our samsaric existence in this lifetime a little bit nicer. We might not. There’s no guarantee, of course. But even if we do, Daniel says, we are not contributing toward enlightenment.
Participant: It’s like the opposite of the path: we strengthen the ego.
Dr. Berzin: Right, it’s the opposite of the path. We strengthen the ego.
Well, in response to Daniel’s response, what happens is that we put our hopes in the pleasures of this lifetime, and are they ever satisfying? Will we ever have enough? No, obviously not. That will be inevitably disappointing. “I’ve become a great success, I’m famous, I have a lot of friends, but” — but what? What? “I’m still not happy.” Therefore, you put down the Dharma in saying, “Well, what did it really do?” I think the biggest danger is that we trivialize the Dharma, and we don’t take full advantage of it. That’s called, in a sense, abandoning the Dharma, forsaking the Dharma, not really going to the full extent to what the Dharma can offer. Because of that then we, in other words, shortchange ourselves; we don’t give ourselves the right value for what we’re doing.
Although working for this lifetime might be what I call the Dharma-Lite level of practice, it’s OK as long as we acknowledge it as Dharma-Lite and say that “I’m not really convinced of future lives” — which of course for most of us is the case — “and so it’s hard for me to sincerely work for the benefit of future lives. How can I work to benefit something that I don’t even believe exists? That’s like I’m working here to help Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I don’t believe in it.” You can’t sincerely work to benefit future lives if you’re not convinced of it. But we need to acknowledge the importance and the centrality of beginningless and endless mind in Buddhism, which implies rebirth, and acknowledge that “I don’t really understand it yet, but I realize that this is important, and I am open to trying to understand it.” As long as we have that attitude, then working for this lifetime, I think, is acceptable. We’re not fooling ourselves, we’re not putting on an act, but we realize this is temporary and “I realize that it’s not going to bring ultimate happiness, for sure.”
There are a lot of other problems that come up. All the teachings on karma don’t make any sense if we think only in terms of this lifetime. Because there are great meditation practitioners in Tibet and then they’re thrown in Chinese concentration camps. What is this? What’s karma doing here? This doesn’t make any sense. There are other people who are terrible mass murderers, and they get away with it. How does karma make any sense in terms of this? This is a real problem, isn’t it?
A lot of people fool themselves with tantra particularly. Because tantra, the highest class of tantra, Anuttarayoga tantra, speaks of the possibility — not the inevitability, but the possibility — of achieving enlightenment in one lifetime, as in this lifetime. A lot of people are attracted to this in the West because they think “Great! I don’t have to think about future lives. We’re only dealing with this lifetime and so let’s throw away this whole business of future lives and so on, and just in this lifetime I’m going to get enlightened.” Of course, it doesn’t work, because the chances of getting enlightened in this lifetime are unbelievably slim, unbelievably rare. Hardly ever, ever would happen. A few times in history. It can happen, but it happens only if you have done an unbelievable amount of practice, etc., in past lifetimes; it’s not going to happen for no cause at all. Again, one then disparages the Dharma: “I have been working so hard, and it says here — here is the advertisement — you’re going to get enlightened in this lifetime. Now I’m going to sue the Buddha for making a false claim that I can get enlightened in this lifetime,” and so you put down the teaching.
The texts always speak of the very strong negative consequences of putting down the teachings. Why? What are the negative… I mean, it’s not that Buddha’s offended and is punishing us. Certainly not. It’s just that we have turned our back toward a method that could actually help us to get liberated from our anger and attachment and all the suffering that that brings. If you turn your back on this, what happens? You just continue to create more and more suffering for yourself and for others. This is a very heavy consequence of thinking only in terms of this lifetime and thinking that that is it, that is what Dharma is all about. We reduce Dharma to merely another form of therapy, which it’s not, absolutely is not. Although it can help us to a certain extent in this lifetime.
OK. That’s one point. Any other comments about this? A very difficult point. I always emphasize how important it is to have this initial level motivation and how easy it is for most of us to just skip over it and think “Well, I don’t need that.”
Also, when we don’t think of future lives, then it’s very hard to relate to everybody, because then we just relate to people who are my age, my gender, my nationality, my background. How can I relate to somebody in the jungles of New Guinea? How can I relate to the mosquito? How can I relate to the chicken, let alone to beings in other realms that we can’t see (the hell realms and so on)? It limits us very, very much when we want to practice love and compassion, because it’s hard to sympathize with these others if we identify just with this lifetime, and not only with this lifetime but with this age and gender and nationality, and so on, that we have been born in.
That’s a big limitation, a big drawback. Very hard to develop equanimity then for everyone, all beings, all life forms, etc. Hard to see the connection that we have between everybody. I mean, we could think in terms of global ecology and the environment, and yes, if all the mosquitoes were eradicated, it would break the chain of interconnection and somehow it would be a problem. One could work in those terms. But certainly, it doesn’t bring in the other realms, and I think it has certain limitations. It’s a provisional way of dealing with things.
There’s certainly a provisional way of dealing with future lives if we deal with it just in terms of future generations. “Past generations have affected… history has affected what I experience in this lifetime. What I do will affect future generations. It won’t be me but future generations.” Therefore, develop a sense of responsibility for the consequences of our actions that will ripen beyond this lifetime. I think that’s a step above just thinking of this lifetime, although not quite in terms of rebirth. Why do we have to think of rebirth? Daniel?
Participant: Another thing just came to my mind. Isn’t it a mistake not to practice at all because the motivation is not present maybe today or whenever I want to do my practice? I mean, sometimes I catch myself practicing but the motivation is not there. Anyway, I do my practice, just to keep going.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Well, Daniel points out something. I don’t know the relevance of it at this point in our discussion, but you bring up a very important point, which is that often in our practice the motivation isn’t there and yet we practice anyway in order to keep up the momentum, the discipline, the commitment, the perseverance, patience, and so on.
Well, that’s true. Tsongkhapa spoke a little bit earlier that we have to build up these motivations so that... You see, this is the problem. Often, we don’t have time for our practice. We have only a certain set amount of time before we have to go to work or we have to go to school, or something like that, and my daily practice has to fit into this time slot and that’s it. Isn’t it? You don’t have time to really work yourself into feeling compassion or feeling whatever it might be. You just do the practice — “Blah, blah, blah” — anyway.
I certainly have practiced a great deal in my lifetime like that, and in a sense, I justify it in terms of what I just said: it keeps up the discipline, the perseverance, the commitment, the patience, and so on. You can rationalize it by saying that samsara goes up and down, therefore sometimes the motivation will be strong, sometimes it will be weak; you can’t expect it to always be consistent. But that’s a little bit of an excuse, I must say, little bit of a rationalization, if we don’t put in effort to try to actually feel something.
In the next paragraph, Tsongkhapa will go into how you actually… How do you build up motivation? The thing is to know really the state of mind that we’re dealing with and what are the factors that support it and how do you build it up and then work on that to try to actually feel something. However, for most of us, we have to just… we just rush through, that’s very true. But we’ll come to this. We’ll come to this.
What I was going to say, if I can remember, was…
Participant: You were talking about future generations.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, future generations. Very good. Thank you. In terms of future generations, why is this not sufficient to think of future generations and not think in terms of me experiencing the consequences of my actions in the future? Why?
Participant: There’s not so much emotion involved.
Dr. Berzin: There’s not so much emotion involved. That’s very true. Where does this come from in the teachings? It comes from the fact that — it’s emphasized over and again — we need to develop renunciation first, and it’s on the basis of developing renunciation, which is aimed at our own suffering and the strong wish not to have it and to be separated from it, that then we can transfer that exact state of mind to the sufferings of others. If you can’t, if you don’t do that, then it’s just theoretical, thinking of the suffering of others. We don’t have empathy, what you might have been referring to with the emotional aspect here. It’s very, very strong, that wish for me not to suffer, and it’s on the basis of that and reminding ourselves that “I don’t want to suffer” that then you could develop a wish that the other person not suffer, on the basis, of course, of “We’re all equal. We’re interconnected. Blah, blah, blah.”
When you asked this question of “Well, I don’t really feel something” … Not just you but we don’t feel something. Generally, when we set a motivation at the beginning of a practice… I mean, who spends the time to sit there and develop the motivation? We should, but when our time is limited for meditation in the morning or the evening, you just — bam! — start it. But if we have thought in terms of my own problems and the problems of the day, not just theoretical problems but what I happen to be having — this is assuming that we all have various problems that we’re facing, whether it’s problems at work or a relationship or health, or whatever it might be, or financial — and develop that strong feeling in terms of myself… Because that’s where I think the strong feeling comes. We don’t usually have so much equanimity about my own suffering… Or indifference. Equanimity is OK. Indifference. We don’t have indifference to our own suffering. Our own suffering, we feel that it hurts. Because we can work with “I feel that it hurts with me” then we can transfer it to others. This doesn’t necessarily work with future generations. It does to a certain extent if we’re thinking of our own children and grandchildren, but more difficult in general. Jorge?
Participant: Something else that is probably also involved. When we think of ecology or pollution, you think that “OK, if I just pollute a little bit, it’s just going to dilute in the sea and future generations will experience nothing of it.” This issue is exactly the opposite sense of what happens with karma — it doesn’t get diluted but rather it gets concentrated, and it grows.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s a good point. Let me repeat it. Jorge said that if we think just in terms of ecology, then if I pollute something — I drive my car — well, the effect that it’s going to have, of just what I do, on everybody for the next thousand years is going to not be so significant. It gets very polluted.
Participant: It adds up, but we don’t think about it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It adds up, but we don’t think about it. It gets diluted and is not so strong. Whereas if we think in terms of ourselves, then the karmic consequences don’t get diluted. Although in a sense they do, Jorge, because if you think that we have a beginningless store of karmic potentials then it just gets added to those, so you don’t know when it’s going to come up. You could argue that way. But in general, your point is correct, that it stays within the boundaries of what we will experience. One of the laws of karma is that the longer it sits, the stronger it gets. It might not ripen though for a long time, is my point. We might not experience the results of it for a long time, but it doesn’t get diluted. But what is different with karma is that we never know when it will ripen. It could ripen tomorrow. Whereas the effect of the ocean rising five meters isn’t going to happen tomorrow as a result of the pollution that I’m doing, is it? With karma there are more possibilities for it not being so distant and so diluted in our own way of looking at it.
But here, of course, in our discussion, we’re mixing a little bit initial, intermediate, and advanced scope, but I think that’s OK.
If we’re not working for liberation… We give the name of liberation, Tsongkhapa says, you work for something that you give the name of liberation, but actually it is just for a nice deal in samsara: “May I always be with my teachers. May I always be with my spiritual friends. May I always have precious human life with all the happiness and all the good circumstances.” We call that liberation, but we haven’t really gotten to the level of what liberation is talking about, which is uncontrollably recurring rebirth (even with all these nice things). The place where there’s usually the most self-deception is with these pure lands: “May I go to a pure land and paradise,” and we call that liberation. Or we fool ourselves into thinking that there I’ll gain liberation very quickly or enlightenment very quickly. We don’t think of all the hard work that we have to do there, that we are listening to teachings, studying, and meditating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s the advantage of not having this gross body that needs to be fed and sleep and go to the toilet and work. That means full-time. Will it be fun? Well, they say Dharma practice, the more you practice — Shantideva said this — the more you practice, the happier you become (because you’re building up constructive positive force, so it ripens in happiness). That’s true, but it’s a lot of hard work.
We have to be very careful that we’re not aiming for these things. It’s very difficult. Difficult. We might say in our dedication: “May this act as a cause for reaching enlightenment and may this act as a cause for liberation,” but “I’m really worried about my next lifetimes and so” — this is assuming that we have the initial level — “so really I really want precious human rebirths all the time, all the way.” We tend to think of wanting that forever, a precious human rebirth, and not really thinking seriously what it would be like to be a liberated being or what it would be like to be a Buddha, because it’s very difficult to imagine what that would be like. We keep the scope of our aim in the things of samsara, and not even good worldly things of samsara, good Dharma things of samsara. That also we have to watch out for. Not make it ultimate. This is the point — I mean, Tsongkhapa doesn’t make this, but I make this — as long as we’re honest with ourselves and say, “OK, this is where I’m at. But I acknowledge what the real thing is, and I have great admiration for that.”
There’s this interesting word mopa (mos-pa) in Tibetan. Not an easy term, because it’s defined differently in different systems. But it has one aspect of admiration, another aspect of “certainty in our discrimination.” In other words, “I discriminate that this is beneficial, and this is what I want and this is my intention.” Then there’s this emotional aspect to it of admiration for it — not just admiration based on advertising or something. We have that. That term is used in terms of also an attitude we need to develop toward our spiritual teacher. Certainty, conviction, in the good qualities of the teacher, and then admiring the teacher on the basis of that. These more… the Real Thing motivations for things that we develop that we’re convinced that “This is possible.”
This is also very, very important to develop, a conviction that it is possible. This is why when I spoke of the three levels of motivation, I spoke about what we need to be convinced of in order to work for these goals sincerely. What we need to be convinced of is the mental continuum goes on forever, then you would think of future lives. That it is free of the emotional obscurations — so the disturbing emotions, etc. — so we could work for liberation. That it is naturally free of cognitive obscurations, the ones that are preventing omniscience. This has to do with Buddha-nature. If we’re not convinced of that, how in the world could we aim to achieve that with any sincerity? That’s a very rational thing.
Then the whole issue that you bring up, Daniel: How do you feel it emotionally? Because remember, when I described what we mean by… Why call it a motivating mental framework, not just motivation? It’s a whole framework of what is the goal?, is it possible to achieve it?, the intention to achieve it, and then the emotion behind that. All of that in one package is what’s usually translated as motivation, not just the emotion. All of that’s very necessary. Not just that somebody else can achieve it, but I can achieve it. That’s possible. That’s why Tsongkhapa says Buddhism is not just “Be a nice person. Be kind. Don’t hurt anybody.” Much, much more than that.
These are very, very crucial points that Tsongkhapa says very, very clearly.
Developing Fear or Dread
Participant: When it says that to attain this goal it takes three countless eons, why can’t one say then that it’s also, when one looks at the next step, that I want to improve this life? Because if there’s three countless eons, then one really has a lot of time. One has to start in this life.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s very true. That’s a good point. Marianna says: Since in the sutra it speaks about — Mahayana (Skt. Mahāyāna) sutras — it speaks about how it will take three zillion eons, or three countless eons, of building up positive force in order to achieve enlightenment as a bodhisattva, then couldn’t that lead to an attitude of saying, “Well then, there’s no hurry,” and don’t we need to think in terms of, well, this lifetime, and do something now?
That’s why we have death meditation. We have the precious human rebirth, we realize how rare that is, and take advantage of it now; otherwise, the opportunity is hardly ever going to happen again. That’s taken care of. You work on the emotion there.
You know, it’s interesting — I’ve often discussed this — how do you translate this Tibetan word (’jigs-pa) that is usually translated as fear? Do we really want to work with fear that I’m going to die and I’m going to go to a worse rebirth and go to a hell? Or be reborn as a chicken, being raised in a chicken prison to be slaughtered and made into dog food? Do we want to be afraid of that? I always argue that fear is not a terribly healthy motivation — we usually have that in our Western religions (fear of hell) — and it can make people quite neurotic. Do we want to develop a neurotic motivation? I often translate — not often, I always translate it as dread, which in English has a different feeling to it. “I dread having to go this boring meeting,” meaning that I really don’t want to go to it because I realize it’s not going to be fun at all. That’s very different from being afraid to go to it. “I’m not afraid. I just dread it: it’s going to be awful.” That is an emotion but it’s not as strong an emotion as fear.
Do we really want to... It’s an interesting thing. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not so bad to develop fear, to actually move ourselves into action. The analogies that are used in meditation, the meditations for refuge (putting a safe direction in our lives)… How do you do the meditation? The meditation — it’s described in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s lam-rim, if I remember correctly — and in that, he describes that you are on the edge of a cliff and you are like one second away from falling off this cliff, and you see that there is a way out to prevent that. That’s putting a safe direction of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in one’s life, working to liberation, etc. — “Aaahh! I don’t want to fall” — we have this very strong fear, and so you go and put that safe direction.
Then the second step is you imagine that you’re a little way away from the cliff but heading toward the cliff pretty quickly — you’re driving your car toward it — and then the same thing: “I don’t to go over the cliff.” Put on the breaks, steer in another direction, and then we’ve built up all the causes for this — it’s further down the road (you might not see it coming, but it’s further down the road) — to avoid it.
There are these stages. There are meditations to build up some emotion here. We have to really believe it; otherwise, it’s just a game, isn’t it?
In this context is fear really the better word here? Would dread do it? I don’t know. Maybe I go a little bit too far in wanting to avoid some of the more neurotic aspects of our Western culture of fear. What do you think?
Participant: I think one should use something which indicates one is really already suffering — there’s enough suffering in the present moment or in the present situation — and then one can work with this and say, “Oh no. This I don’t want.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying we can work with something here, in this situation that we are in. Although maybe we’re not falling off a cliff. We can use a different example; let’s say, for instance, getting cancer, getting Alzheimer’s disease, these types of things. I must say that from my own experience, my mother had a horrible long protracted death with Alzheimer’s, and that’s one of the most terrifying things to me, is to experience what she went through.
One could do a meditation like that. This is of course assuming that there is a cure. “I’m about to totally lose my entire memory and mind and personality,” or “I’ve just been diagnosed with it,” or “Now I haven’t been diagnosed with it, but I want to use my mind actively, hopefully in a way to prevent it, because I’m terrified of having Alzheimer’s.” One could work with that, sure. Or cancer. It’s best if it’s something that we have experienced ourselves of course, but then it has to be pretty drastic, doesn’t it? Let’s say you’ve had a heart attack — “I don’t want another one.” That could work. Or “I’ve had a motorcycle accident, and I don’t want another one.”
What examples were you thinking of, Marianna?
Participant: Well, any example which causes suffering.
Dr. Berzin: Well, give one. Losing your job?
Participant: Yes. It can be anything. For different people, different things are threatening. They are suffering from different things. Then to take that, what one is really suffering the most, and think how “I don’t want this anymore.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. Whatever it is that we’re suffering now, that “I don’t want this. How can I work with that?” That was what I was referring to before when I said: in our daily meditation, how we develop compassion for others is to think about what is it that now I am suffering from, or yesterday I was suffering from — you know, have it up to date — and remind ourselves how “I really don’t want that.”
This is what I’m saying. Is it fear? Dread? What really is the emotion that’s there? I suppose it’s hard to prescribe it beforehand, because each person will experience it differently, won’t they? Then transfer it to others.
Participant: One doesn’t want this.
Dr. Berzin: You don’t want it. That’s what dread is. Fear is making it into a monster and thinking of a very strong me and “I’m going to be gobbled up by this monster!” We’re afraid of it. I think fear is...
Participant: Fear has the connotation of “I can’t do anything about it.”
Dr. Berzin: Right. Fear also is on the basis of “I can’t do anything about it.” That’s a very important part of fear, isn’t it?
Participant: With dread, there’s more space — there’s more space for thinking.
Dr. Berzin: That’s right.
Participant: What about aversion?
Dr. Berzin: Aversion? Well, aversion is used in a lot of other contexts, isn’t it? Aversion is basically “I don’t like.” “I have an aversion for crowds. I have an aversion for...”
Participant: An aversion to suffering that such and such a circumstance might cause.
Dr. Berzin: I have an aversion to such and such a circumstance.
Participant: No, I meant an aversion to the suffering.
Dr. Berzin: To the suffering? I don’t know. You see, what’s very difficult is that different words, despite how they’re defined in the dictionary, evoke different emotional feelings in different people, both on the level of a country as well as on an individual level. I mean, English language, the way that so many words have quite different feelings in Britain than they do in the Unites States than they do in Australia or New Zealand, etc.
I don’t know. I think we need a strong word. To me aversion is not such a strong word. How would you normally use it in a sentence? A sentence that comes to mind — “I have an aversion to crowds.”
Participant: I think aversion is being quite strong. Like if I have an aversion to something, that would mean a strong desire against that thing. Like, for example, I have an aversion to the London Underground because it makes me feel claustrophobic and all the rest of it.
Actually, I had an aversion to losing my job. That’s maybe not the right word. I suppose some of it is motivation. Because losing my job, for example… in different circumstances it might mean different things. If I were to lose my job when I was under severe financial obligations, something like that, would be different to losing my job when somebody wanted me to start up a business with them. They’re different.
Dr. Berzin: Right. If we use examples like losing a job, he’s saying that we could have different responses to it, because there are different circumstances. We could lose our job and then we’re homeless and we’re going to lose our home, and we’re going to lose our family, and lose our health insurance and so on (if you’re in the States). Or we can lose our job but we’re happy because then we’re in a situation to start our own business, etc. That’s why I think we need stronger examples, like nobody’s going to be happy to find out that they have cancer, for example, or that they have Alzheimer’s disease.
Participant: Some people will be much more accepting of it.
Dr. Berzin: They might be accepting of it, but nobody’s going to be happy. “Oh, that’s great! I’m really happy that I got cancer.”
Participant: I thought it really also even broader than that. I also thought, for instance, “I don’t want to get angry anymore. I don’t want to freak out anymore.”
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is what we have to develop. Absolutely. “I don’t want to get angry anymore.”
Participant: We can also have aversion again.
Dr. Berzin: Right, I have an aversion to it. “Well, I really dread getting angry anymore, because I know all the suffering that it’s going to cause. I have an aversion to it.”
Anyway, let’s not get into a long discussion of terminology. Aversion (khong-khro) is another word in Tibetan; it’s more associated with repulsion. The word that they use is fear (’jigs-pa), which I’m taking as dread or “to be terrified.” Terrified is another way of translating it. Maybe that’s not so bad. We’re just terrified. We want to have a strong emotional response, as you said, Daniel: How do you really get your emotions going so that you feel something?
Generating an Emotional Component to Our Motivation
Now that becomes a very interesting question. What does it mean to feel motivation? What does it mean to feel it? It would be very hard to even translate that question into Tibetan. I’ve no idea how you would actually translate the word feel in this context. What does it mean to feel an emotion? It moves you, moves your energy. Does physical exercise move your energy, but that’s something else.
Participant: It can possess you for a time.
Dr. Berzin: Pardon?
Participant: Well, maybe that’s not right exactly.
Dr. Berzin: I couldn’t hear what you said.
Participant: It can kind of possess you for a time.
Dr. Berzin: It possesses us for a certain time. Well, that sounds a little bit irrational. We want to be able to use this emotion. We are purposely generating it in meditation, to really feel dread of worse rebirths and “I really, really want to continue having a precious human rebirth in future lives.” How would you really feel that? How would you really feel “I don’t want to continue having samsaric rebirth.” We’re talking about rebirth when we’re talking about the intermediate level of motivation. “I don’t want to continue having...” As I explained when we were discussing this, it means to give up all hope whatsoever that you’re ever going to win in samsara, all hope that it’s going to work.
Participant: Wouldn’t that be almost like a feeling of disgust when we actually see things for what they are?
Dr. Berzin: Exactly. That is the word that is used as the emotional component of renunciation. It’s the word that I translate as disgust (yid-’byung). You are disgusted with it. There’s also a connotation of bored. “I’m bored and disgusted with it, and my mind is made up. Enough!” There is disgust. You have to be disgusted with samsara. That’s a strong emotion. “I dread things getting worse. I’m disgusted with rebirth.”
What about the advanced level of motivation? What are we fed up with here? Selfishness. Selfishness, that’s a much more difficult one. Because selfish… Well, what’s the border between selfishness and self-interest? Is there any self-interest which is OK? These are difficult things. Self-preoccupied. There are many words that are used in Tibetan. Self-preoccupation. Ignoring others. Not taking others seriously. We would really have to... the motivation is compassion, they say, that we’re thinking of the suffering of others and how awful it is.
There are two methods for developing bodhichitta. One is thinking…
All of it, of course, has to be based on equanimity, equalizing the whole thing toward everybody, which is really difficult unless you think of mental continuums with no beginning and no end. Otherwise, are you really working for that fish in the ocean and that cockroach, let alone that hell creature?
But thinking of “Everybody’s been my mother and so kind to me, and I appreciate it and want to pay that back,” and you develop the heart-warming love (yid-du ’ong-ba’i byams-pa), is the word that is used. Whenever you see somebody — “Oh, how wonderful” — it warms your heart to them, to see that mosquito, to see that fly. “Oh, how wonderful. Hello mother.” You want that being to be happy, when you think of the suffering that the being has and how awful that is. This is the emotion that’s described.
Or it’s based, less emotionally, on the equalizing and exchanging self with others point of view of realizing that we are all equal (there’s a big emphasis on that). Everybody equally wants to be happy, not to be unhappy. It’s unfair to just help the ones that we like and ignore the ones that we don’t like, because everybody is equally hungry or equally wanting inoculation for a disease, or whatever. Then thinking of the disadvantages of selfishness and the advantages of cherishing others. That’s where the emotion comes in, thinking of the disadvantages of self-cherishing and the advantages of cherishing others. Again, we’re playing a little bit on dread here, and not just “If I’m selfish, nobody’s going to like me,” but all the negative things that we build up, that we do, on the basis of selfishness and the karmic results of that.
Participant: I think maybe one could also make the effort to realize what the suffering of other beings really is, because I think — I believe — I have a very strong defense against the suffering, against being conscious of the suffering of other beings. I think I have a me who tries to live surrounded by a wall, where I’m comfortable and can’t be disturbed. I don’t want to be conscious of the suffering of other beings. I don’t want to think of people who are really starving, I don’t want to realize what it is like to be in a war, because I’m very afraid of that and it disturbs me. In order to defend myself from those negative feelings… I think possibly most of us are trained in building up a wall surrounding us. Maybe we could try to retrain ourselves to bring down the walls so that we really come to see what other beings are really like.
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is absolutely correct that we generally put up walls. This is part of close-mindedness, the disturbing emotion of naivety. Makes us put up walls to defend me, the ego, from having to think about the suffering or see the suffering of others. “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to watch movies of people being tortured, of having their fingernails pulled out and so on. It would give me nightmares. I don’t want to watch it.” Personally, I don’t even like watching horror movies, let alone to see war and starving and things like that. When we see, on the television, war and these sorts of things, it’s not real. We put up a wall not to feel anything from that. That is definitely the self-cherishing, the me — ego we would call it in the West — that is trying to defend itself.
How do we bring those walls down? Well, meditation on voidness certainly the thing: that there is no separate me isolated from all of this, that we are all interconnected, and so on. But in a sense — this is a little bit nasty — but in a sense, if we do see somebody being tortured and we do get nightmares, that’s good, because then we actually feel something of how awful this is and how “Really I have to do something to stop that” as opposed to feeling anger about it.
Here we have to use discrimination. Let’s say we are in Iraq or Afghanistan and a bomb falls and kills our family, and there we are: we’ve survived. Then it becomes very real. How do most people respond to that? It’s usually with a great deal of anger — shock to start with, but then unbelievable anger. That’s not the solution.
I remember my mother when she would watch the news. (The news in America, on television, is just reporting all the bad things — all the murders, all the rapes, all the things that happened during the day — especially if you watch local news.) She would get very upset — “How terrible this is. This is unfair. Horrible” — and instead of it developing compassion, it just made her very, very upset, disturbed, angry. We really want to avoid that. How do we do that when thinking about the horrors that go on? How do you avoid getting angry about it, let alone despair (which is “Well, it’s hopeless. How in the world can I stop the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?”).
Participant: By seeing the suffering. For example, the suffering that a murderer has himself.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that would stop us from getting angry at the murderer, to think of the suffering that the murderer has, that’s true. If you think of the unbelievable traumas and posttraumatic syndromes of the soldiers that come back from war when they think back at the atrocities that they’ve done… Well, it’s not only at the atrocities that they’ve done — of all their good friends being killed and being maimed and so on. Usually, they’re completely… they have nightmares and get into heavy drinking and can’t function at all, become homeless, lose everything. That also happens when you’ve seen a lot of horror, and it also happens when you have committed a lot of horror.
I remember teaching in Croatia after this Bosnian war and some people coming back from the war — soldiers — saying how they couldn’t deal at all with the... they couldn’t believe that they had committed such violence against others in that situation, and they were really damaged psychologically from that.
How do we prevent that in our meditation if we’re going to really think about the suffering of the worse realms and the suffering of… all these things? That is why you have to be prepared. You have to work up to these things step by step by step. We’re really going to open ourselves wide to really difficult emotional situations. What could help? How about a spiritual teacher? A spiritual teacher can help. How about very firm refuge, thinking of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha? The example of the Buddhas. The example of Dharma, that there is the possibility that the mind is pure, the possibility to attain that. There are those who have worked in that direction. It gives you hope, not in the negative sense of “meditate without hope and without worries,” but it gives you confidence that there is a way out. You get strength from the teacher, inspiration, not to be so… I mean, this is why this word fear I’m always a little bit cautious with.
Anyway, these are things to discuss further, topics to think about. As Tsongkhapa says, it’s not enough to just have an intellectual understanding of these things. By intellectual understanding he means just being able to recite the words. He doesn’t mean just having a rational understanding based on debate; he’s talking about just in words. I mean, that’s another thing to consider: if you have worked all these things out with debate in terms of “Yes, there are future rebirths, and it’s illogical that they...” — you know, in terms of cause and effect and so on — but still, then, how do you feel it to the level that you are actually going to take it seriously? That’s something else. That’s another discussion we can have.
But what do we need to have, in order to deal with these strong feelings, these strong emotions? This… for those of you who did the sensitivity training that I was teaching, do you remember there were exercises for how to unblock feelings and how not to be afraid of feelings? Feeling is just a feeling: feel happy, feel sad, feel frightened, feel delighted. Same, same.
Like with the palm of your hand… There’s one practical exercise: (1) tickle the palm of your hand; (2) hold your hand and scratch the palm of your hand really hard. What’s the difference? It’s only a sensation; it’s only a feeling. More challenging is when somebody else does it to your hand, but still, it’s the same. It’s just a feeling — there’s nothing to be afraid of — just the arising of the mental hologram of a sensation.
The same thing: just an emotion, waves on the ocean of the mind. Obviously, that’s very advanced, but then there’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re not overwhelmed by strong emotion. It is not something that — to use your phrase — it’s not something that possesses you, but these are very interesting aspects that come up when you are seriously going to try to work on changing your attitudes and to change it on the basis of feeling.
There are… Again, it depends on disposition, doesn’t it? There are some people who are extremely… we would describe them as having extremely emotional dispositions, and they get very emotional and very excited about everything. My sister is like that. Then there are other people that are very cool and very rational, don’t get excited about anything. I’m sort of like that. Do you need different approaches for those people? Well, one has to become more rational; the other has to become a little bit more emotional. But in a balanced way.
What does it mean for someone who is more rational and doesn’t get so excited to actually feel something? Is it the same type of feeling as the very emotional person who gets excited about anything? Now we get back to the two truths, which is that you don’t totally deny that there is such a thing as feelings — the nihilist — go to that extreme. It has conventional reality, but you don’t make it into a big deal. It’s devoid of that, being such a big deal. In this way, we work to somehow balance feeling and rationality.
But these are big topics, and we’ll continue discussing it next time.
Participant: Alex, the people in Mexico told me that the people who are doing this sensitivity training are freaked out by the descriptions of tonglen (gtong-len, giving and taking). Because the way it starts usually… and the way we were taught was maybe a little bit imprecise in the nice part, like “Oh, I’m sending out all these nice things.” But the way it’s described in the sensitivity training is a little bit more challenging because we have to feel the pain.
Dr. Berzin: Right. There’s a group in Mexico, Mexico City, that has been doing the sensitivity training that I developed. They’ve been doing it for many years. One friend is leading that. Jorge reports — he just came back from Mexico — that the people there are having difficulty with it. Because normally how it is taught, this tonglen, this giving and taking — this is the chapter on overcoming blocked feelings — and the way that it’s normally taught is not so deep. It is just “Well, you take the suffering from others. Black light comes in. White light goes out. La-di-da,” and you think of making everybody happy.
Whereas the real thing — and I am basing this on the actual teachings, the way that His Holiness the Dalai Lama teaches it, which is not Dharma-Lite version (or Serkong Rinpoche used to teach it, which was even heavier) — is that you really have to be willing to take on the suffering and feel the suffering (that’s where the blocked feelings come in: “I don’t want to actually remove the suffering from you and feel it.”) and be able to then deal with that suffering, develop the calmness, let that settle, and come to the innate joy of the mind, and be able on that basis to give you happiness. That’s what tonglen practice is really about. This — thank you for reminding me — this is really the key to what we were just talking about: of feeling something but feeling something on the basis of the natural qualities of the mind, not feeling it on the basis of exaggerated emotion based on making a big deal out of everything (in other words, inflating it with solid existence).
Anyway, we have much more to discuss, and we’ll continue next time. OK?
We end with a dedication: Whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.