LTF 9: Further Qualities of a Buddha’s Speech; Qualities of a Buddha’s Mind

[45] A Buddha’s speech is never clipped short or has any words missing. This is because because a Buddha never gets tired, never forgets or omits anything that he intended to say. A Buddha doesn’t suffer from dementia like an old person – meaning to say something and then forgetting.

[46] A Buddha’s speech leaves nothing incomplete. In other words, Buddhas are working for the sake of everybody. So, when somebody needs to be taught or needs to be trained, a Buddha doesn’t leave it incomplete. A Buddha’s speech goes out and teaches this person to whatever extent that person can digest at that moment. 

[47] Enlightening speech is without any feeling of any inadequacy. In other words, when Buddhas teach, they don’t have any fear or doubt. If somebody debates with them or challenges what they say, they have no doubts that they will be able to hold their position. Buddhas don’t have self-doubts when they speak; they are sure of what they say. The Buddhas would never feel “I am not good enough. I won’t be able to defend my position,” or “I’m not sure of myself.”

[48] A Buddha’s speech doesn’t have any feeling of desire or attachment behind it because Buddhas are not concerned about receiving service, respect, praise, or offerings. They have no hidden agenda based on greed or desire; they’re not trying to sell us anything.

[49] A Buddha’s speech is joyously exhilarating. This is referring to it being exhilarating for a Buddha. When Buddhas speak, their speech has that tone of exhilaration to it because Buddhas never have any mental fatigue or physical discomfort. 

[50] A Buddha’s speech is pervasive. This means that it can cover all fields of knowledge, and whatever Buddhas explain fits in very well with all of these fields of knowledge. The commentaries usually refer to the five major fields of knowledge, which are studied in at least some of the monasteries. These five major fields of knowledge are: (1) arts and crafts – painting, making statues, and these sorts of things; (2) medicine; (3) languages and grammar; (4) logic; and (5) inner, exceptional self-knowledge, which I guess, in the West, would be psychology, but this is particularly Dharma knowledge about the self, the mind, and voidness.

I think that this is a very important quality. Also, I don’t think that we need to limit the pervasiveness of a Buddha’s speech to these five fields of knowledge. However, when somebody teaches the Dharma, particularly when a Buddha teaches the Dharma, it should fit in with these five fields of knowledge and doesn’t contradict, for instance, science – an example being the way that His Holiness the Dalai Lama teaches. A Buddha’s teachings should fit in with all of the general fields of knowledge and not be something that is weird or contradictory. 

As we have been pointing out with these qualities, not only is it important to think of them in terms of Buddha refuge and what we are aiming for with bodhichitta, it’s also important to try to emulate these qualities as best as we can when we speak to others, particularly if we’re explaining anything about Buddhism to others. We should try to have these qualities to the best of our ability. 

[51] A Buddha’s speech stimulates growth. In other words, it’s very stimulating to anybody who hears it. It brings meaningful benefit whether the person is a beginner whose mind is still a bit stiff and inflexible in their way of thinking or whether their mind is already flexible. 

[52] A Buddha’s speech is continuous in the sense that it is never the case that Buddhas don’t feel like teaching; it’s never the case that they are too tired or can’t be bothered. When Buddhas teach, they explain without breaking the continuity of their flow. Buddhas never pause, hesitate, or, like me, say, “uh,” or “you know,” or are at a loss for words. A Buddha’s speech just flows continuously.

[53] A Buddha’s speech is related. This means that Buddhas don’t explain by just using one word or expressions without any context for them. In other words, Buddhas always use related examples and phrases that are well-connected. So, when a Buddha teaches, everything is very well organized and fits together. 

[54] Enlightening speech has all languages complete within it. This is really quite an extraordinary quality, I must say. When a Buddha speaks in a certain language, it has the nature of being one specific language, but everybody understands it in terms of their own language. This is a little bit like a universal translator in Star Trek. Ling Rinpoche was like that. When the old Ling Rinpoche spoke or taught, his speech just absolutely flowed. It seemed as though he never even took a breath. 

[55] A Buddha’s speech suits and satisfies everybody’s powers and abilities. In other words, when a Buddha explains a certain point, everybody who hears it understands it according to their own level in terms of their own power of belief, their own power of concentration, their own power of intelligence, their level of development, etc. Everybody feels totally pleased and satisfied with the explanation. This is a quality that one can see in the teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Everybody seems to understand them at a different level and everybody is very pleased with them. 

This is a quality that we often find in the texts of the Buddha – which are, after all, the words of the Buddha – and in the great commentaries: any given passage can be understood on many different levels. That’s why we have all of these different commentaries to Buddhist texts. The texts are called “root texts” because they act as a root from which many, many different understandings and levels of understanding can grow. This is very special quality of a Buddha’s speech and of the writings from the Buddhas’ speech. 

Actually, when one does training in a very deep type of way, what one would like to be able to do when reading these texts (of course, the Tibetans would learn them by heart) is to be able to keep in mind the many different levels of meaning of the text – for instance, understanding a text from the different tenet positions, the Indian schools of tenets. That’s why when one translates a root text, it’s important to try to keep it as loose as possible so that many different commentaries and levels of understanding can fit. If we make it too specific to one commentarial tradition, it doesn’t make any sense when somebody explains it from a different tradition. This is especially true if we leave out the parentheses that indicate something we’ve added. This is a very difficult point when it comes to translating because, nevertheless, the text has to make sense on its own as well. For this reason, one has to drop the German love of Genauigkeit – precision – and leave things open to many levels of interpretation in order to deal correctly with Buddha’s speech. 

[56] The enlightening speech of a Buddha can’t be faulted. In other words, if a Buddha promises that a certain result will come from a certain cause, that can’t be faulted. In other words, it is correct. So, we can’t find fault with what a Buddha says.

[57] A Buddha’s speech never deviates. In other words, when it’s time for somebody to be ‘ripened’ – which is the Buddhist expression meaning that somebody is ripe for the teachings – a Buddha’s speech will never lose a moment in going to that person and helping them to grow and reach maturity. 

[58] A Buddha’s speech is never in nervous haste. In other words, Buddhas speak in a steady and calm way and aren’t in a rush of confusion with the words all jumbled together. 

[59] A Buddha’s speech resounds to the entire circle of those around him. It doesn’t matter whether the listener is close or far; everybody can hear a Buddha with equal volume, even without a loudspeaker. Actually, one wonders how this worked in Tibet during the Monlam Festival. There would be thousands and thousands of monks, and there’d be a great lama up on a throne giving teachings. How could the people in the back possibly hear? I have no idea whether the lamas’ voices were so loud that they carried. I know that His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s voice is pretty loud and can carry very well.

Do you understand this point 57? It’s a very interesting point that a Buddha’s speech never deviates. In other words, Buddhas know when somebody is ready to understand something; they know the exact moment. Sometimes we are very receptive and have just reached that moment when, if the right thing is said, we can understand something. This is what a Buddha’s speech can do. A Buddha’s speech has the understanding behind it that enables it to never lose the moment when somebody is really in a receptive state of mind and would be able to understand a new insight, a new point. This is point 57, and it’s a very important one, obviously. It’s important even for a psychiatrist or a psychologist to know the right moment to say the right thing to their patient, the thing that’s going to give the person the condition for gaining an insight. 

[60] The speech of a Buddha stills or quiets down our attachments and desires.

(61) Enlightening speech tames or quiets down our hostilities.

[62] A Buddha’s speech clears away our naivety. So, just listening to a Buddha calms down the poisonous, disturbing emotions. 

[63] Enlightening speech puts an end to the demonic forces of Mara. In other words, if we put it into practice, we are able to overcome the four types of Maras. Maras are interferences. “Mara” comes from the Sanskrit word meaning “to kill.”  The demonic forces of Mara kill our chances for being able to make spiritual progress and reach enlightenment. 

What are these four types of Mara? They are: 

• Death – so, if we listen to a Buddha’s speech, we’ll be able to learn the ways to overcome the usual, samsaric type of death. 
• The disturbing emotions. 
• The 5 aggregates that continually perpetuate our suffering and our lack of awareness that is the cause of that suffering. 
• The offspring of the gods. This, according to the way the Tibetans understand it, refers to the non-Buddhist tenet systems. 

Actually it’s quite interesting where “the offspring of the gods” derives from. For this weekend course (that was cancelled) about Mara, I had done some research. The figure of Mara in Buddhism is parallel to Kama in Hinduism. In fact, “Kama” is another name for “Mara.” Kama is like Cupid, the one who increases desire in others. Kama was the son of Krishna, so it’s referring to him as the “son of the gods.” Kama tried to cause interferences for Shiva because Shiva was meditating, and somebody had told Kama that if Shiva would get up out of his meditation, go to his wife, and produce a child, that child would be able to kill a certain demon. So, Kama, who is Mara, went to Shiva and shot five arrows of the different types of desire at him.

Participant: So, Mara is Cupid?

Dr Berzin: Mara is like Cupid, the same image. Here, Kama attempted to rouse Shiva from his meditation so that Shiva would have a lot of desire, go to his wife, and produce this child. Well, Shiva, of course, was rather pissed off at this, and with his third eye he burned Kama to a crisp and killed him. But Kama had a wife, and the wife begged Shiva, “Please bring him back,” so Shiva brought him back. The story then continues from there. 

It’s very interesting because Buddha, also, with his third eye, the eye of wisdom, defeated Mara. It’s quite interesting to see the parallels here in the Buddhist and the Hindu stories. In any case, in the way that “off-spring of the gods” is interpreted, it is referring to wrong tenet systems, tenet systems of the non-Buddhists.

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr Berzin: No, it was Kama’s wife who begged Shiva. Kama was married. All the Hindu gods are married. Maybe there are some who aren’t, but you always seem to have this family structure among the Hindu gods. 

Many Levels of Interpretation

The question is: How do we take these stories in Hinduism? Do we take them literally? Do we take them historically? Do we take them as representing something? I think that, as we explained with the speech of the Buddhas, we could understand these stories on many different levels. Some people, I’m sure, take them literally. Was it intended to be literal? No, I don’t think so. There are many stories in Buddhism that are almost as fantastical as this one. We have, in certain Buddhist explanations, certain Buddhist systems, though not all of them, this whole concept of words or passages that can lead us to something deeper. They are not to be taken literally but can be interpreted to lead us to a deeper meaning; they represent something, which can be something psychological, something philosophical, and so on. I think that we can look at it that way. 

Jung speaks very much about how myths, fairy tales, and so on, are symbolic and how they represent various psychological processes. For many people, it’s much better to teach them through something like a fairy tale or a fable where they learn a lesson through the example of a fox and a sheep or whatever – these sorts of things. We have this in the Indian tradition, the Greek tradition, and also in the Western tradition. I think that for us Westerners at least, who might not be comfortable with taking these stories literally, we can always look at them in terms of what lesson or moral they teach us. There are many lamas who teach with stories and who don’t like to teach with just lists and things like that. For many students this is very effective. 

Obviously, we can see Mara as a demonic force within us, as in this example of Kama trying to interrupt Shiva in his meditation, or Buddha in his meditation. We can see how the forces of desire, particularly sexual desire, can disturb our meditation and how we have to burn that off. If desire is in our minds, we can even think, “Well, if I act it out, it will be of benefit,” but this as well could be the work of Mara making us think that.

Participant: The wife of Kama who wanted him back – who would that be then?

Dr Berzin: The whole thing is that Kama went on to do all sorts of other things after this. I forget the story. But Mara, even in the Buddhist story, is not killed by Buddha. Mara just goes away. But we’d have to think about what that could symbolize. What do you think it symbolizes? 

Participant: That we can change dirt into gold.

Dr Berzin: Right, that we change dirt into gold – that we can transform desire into something positive. We can also take this on the level that we shouldn’t condemn somebody who is very desirous; instead, we need to have compassion toward them. I don’t know.

[64] The final quality is that the speech of a Buddha can make everything take on a supreme aspect. In other words, Buddha can take any worldly example, any well-known example in the world, and use it as an example to explain some Dharma point. A Buddha can turn anything into a Dharma teaching. 

These are the 64 qualities of the enlightening speech of a Buddha. As I said, even at our own level, when we are speaking to others, we can try to follow as best we can these various points  – for example, the one about saying the right thing at the right time to somebody. Very often we say things at the wrong time, like when the person is very busy or upset and so on, because we are thinking only of ourselves. If we are really thinking of others, then, when we want to get a point across to somebody – whether it’s for a worldly thing or for a Dharma thing – it’s important to be able to speak to them at a time when they are most receptive. For this, we have to have self-control – not to speak when they are not receptive, for example, speaking just because we are in a hurry or we won’t have time later; these sorts of things. All these qualities of a Buddha’s speech are very helpful to study in terms of the development of our own speech. 

The last quality, by the way, is also a very important quality. Somebody might be interested in something that, to us, seems incredibly stupid or that we are just not interested in. A Buddha, though, would be able to use whatever topic the other person is interested in and turn it into a means of explaining the Dharma, whether it’s science, sports, politics – whatever it may be. Hollywood gossip… anything.

Participant: Star Trek.

Dr Berzin: Star Trek. Well, Star Trek is inherently Dharma. 

Participant: The World Cup.

Dr Berzin: The World Cup – why not? Everyone is striving for enlightenment. 

Participant: That’s what we can learn from them.

Dr Berzin: That’s what we can learn from them: get the ball in the goal – get our minds in the goal of enlightenment. 

Participant: And giving the victory to others! 

Dr Berzin: Yes, and giving the victory to others when we lose, when our team loses. That’s right. And tolerance for the crowds… You can use anything as an example. Turn it into Dharma. 

So, I just summed up that it’s very useful to know the qualities of a Buddha’s speech so that we can try to apply it to our own speech.

Now we have the good qualities of a Buddha’s mind. When we speak about the mind in Buddhism, we always have to remember that, from our Western point of view, we are speaking both about the mind and the heart. The two main qualities of a Buddha’s enlightening mind are: (1) The omniscient awareness that a Buddha has, which from our Western point of view, is what is on the “mind” side, and (2) a Buddha’s deep loving kindness and affection for everybody. So. on the one hand, Buddhas know everything, both the deepest truth and the conventional truth, and is able to be aware of both of them simultaneously. On the other hand, parallel to that, Buddhas have equal loving kindness and deep affection for everybody. It’s not that Buddhas are only concerned about someone when they are actually with that person and can see them and then forget about them when they go away and are helping somebody else. Buddhas, being omniscient, are aware of everybody’s problems, everybody’s situation at the same time. Their understanding extends out to everything, and their hearts, with loving kindness, extend out to everyone while simultaneously knowing the voidness of everything. 

This is the general context of the mind of a Buddha. Then, within this container, there is a whole long list of the various qualities of a Buddha’s mind that we can go through. Again, these are things that we need to develop in order to be able to do what Buddhas do, which is to help everybody as much as is possible. I think that this is a very important point in terms of understanding the mind of a Buddha. It’s not that we want to become omniscient just so that we can be the smartest person in the world and know everything. That’s not the point. The point is to know everything in order to be able to help everybody with that knowledge.

The Ten Forces of a Buddha’s Mind (1 through 2)

First, we have the ten forces of a Buddha’s mind. 

[1] The first force is that an omniscient Buddha knows the appropriate and inappropriate relations between various types of karmic behavior and their results. In other words, Buddhas know that doing this particular thing will produce that as its result and that it won’t produce something else. Knowing what’s appropriate and inappropriate in terms of cause and effect also implies knowing what is correct and incorrect in terms of behavior, in terms of teachings, and also knowing what can be achieved and what cannot be achieved. It’s very important when we’re trying to help somebody to know what they can or can’t achieve at their level so that we can teach them what is appropriate. This is the first quality.

[2] The second force is that a Buddha is able to distinguish the results of all karmic actions. In other words, if somebody acts in a certain way, Buddhas know what this will produce. Particularly, they’re aware of the karmic causes of everything that happens to any being. We have many stories of this – for example, somebody coming to a Buddha and saying, “I have a headache. What was the cause of it?” Then the Buddha says, “In a previous life you did blah, blah, blah.” Like this, a Buddha is aware of the karmic causes of everything that happens to everybody. 

It’s interesting that certain schools of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the West try to look for the causes of our problems in terms of our childhood – how our parents treated us and so on. Buddhas, though, look back much farther than just this lifetime because what happens to us in our childhood is part of a whole syndrome that comes from karmic causes originating in specific types of behavior in previous lives. 

I think that the first force is more in general – that a Buddha knows that from this type of action, that will result, and knows what is appropriate and inappropriate in terms of karma, teachings, and what can and cannot be achieved. The second force would have more to do with specific individuals. 

Remember, though, when we speak about karma and the karmic causes for things that there are many different things that karma ripens into. One is the rebirth situation, such as the type of family we’re born into, how they treat us, and also the instinctive behavior that we’re born with. Just to look at the family – the type of family we are born into and how they treat us is not really the cause of our problems; instead, these are the result of karmic causes we’ve created in previous lives. These types of results are ones that correspond to their cause either in our behavior or in our experience. This is why it’s important to know the karmic causes from previous lives. Then we can see, “Ah-ha! The cause of my problem is not how my family has treated me; instead, it is from my own behavior.” So, we try to see within ourselves how we are repeating that type of behavior so that we can stop repeating it as best we can. In this way, we stop the whole syndrome. This is the way to work with karma, by the way.

How Does Eliminating the Two Obscurations Help Us to Understand How Things Are Karmically Connected?

OK. So, the question is: How does eliminating the two obscurations – the emotional ones that prevent liberation and the cognitive ones that prevent omniscience and enlightenment – help us to understand all of these karmic connections? It’s quite simple, actually, because… Well, actually, it’s not that simple! 

The cognitive obscurations that prevent omniscience and prevent enlightenment – what are they? From the Prasangika point of view, the Gelug Prasangika point of view, they are the appearance-making of true existence. In other words, our minds make things appear to be truly existent. “Truly existent” means that things are established by findable characteristics on their own side, which means that things exist as what they are in isolation from everything else, just by themselves, by their own power. “It is this problem in my family,” or “this behavior of my mother when I was four years old,” or whatever – thinking like this comes from the habits of grasping for true existence, the appearance-making of true existence. If we eliminate this appearance-making of true existence, what are we left with? We are left with the interconnectedness of everything. Then things don’t exist in the mind’s view as isolated facts, isolated incidents or anything like that. 

The analogy that I always tend to use is that the way that our limited minds are now is like looking through a periscope from a submarine, from a U-boat; we only see a very limited field because we see everything as isolated from each other. However, if we eliminate the solid lines that our minds make around things, we can see the interconnectedness of everything. In this way, we can see the interconnectedness of cause and effect. In this way, a Buddha knows all things with non-conceptual, straight-forward perception. It’s not that a Buddha figures things out logically – logically would be through inference, and inference is conceptual. Straight-forward perception is not conceptual. 

Participant: So, what’s artificial is the limitation. And once you break this limitation that isolates you…

Dr Berzin: Right. The limitations that our minds create – we experience them, but they’re artificial in the sense that they don’t refer to actuality. In actuality, things don’t exist encapsulated in plastic like – to use our example from the Shantideva classes – ping-pong balls. Everything is interrelated. But this interrelatedness also doesn’t make everything into one big, undifferentiated soup. Of course, conventionally, we can label, within the interconnectedness of everything, this phenomenon, that phenomenon, and so on. But that doesn’t mean that things are actually established as knowable things from their own sides – encapsulated in plastic. 

We had a lot of discussion of this in the Shantideva class for five years. It’s something that we need to continue applying because it makes us able to better understand the qualities of a Buddha.

It’s always very helpful, once we’ve had some advanced teachings and have gone deeply into a topic as we did with voidness, to then go back to the foundational teachings and apply our understanding to those very basic teachings. This should give us a whole different level of understanding. As we saw with the qualities of a Buddha’s speech, everything that Buddhas teach can be understood on many, many levels. Even the most basic teachings can be understood in a very profound way as well as in a beginner’s way. That’s why there is this famous line that’s often quoted from the late junior tutor of His Holiness, Trijang Rinpoche: “I’ve read the Lam-rim Chen-mo, (the Great Presentation of the Stages of the Path) by Tsongkhapa a hundred times. And every time that I read it, it’s like reading a completely different book.”

Participant: Are biological causes for things, like headaches, always from intentional actions we committed in the past?

Dr Berzin: So, the question is basically dealing with the causality process – that when we experience certain problems like headaches, can we say that it was caused by something that we did in the past? What about the fact that we might have slept poorly on the pillow because the pillow was an improper height or hardness or whatever? There could be biological reasons. 

We had a weekend on causality, and we saw that the Buddhist explanation of causality is very complex. There are many different aspects of the causal process. Sleeping on the wrong pillow and having eaten too much greasy food or whatever, would be a condition for the headache to arise. There need to be conditions in order for a cause to bring about a result, and there are many, many conditions. But in terms of the causal process, we can say that the elements of our bodies are part of that causal process as well: if we didn’t have the elements of our body, we wouldn’t get headaches. 

But why did that headache happen to us? And why did it happen at this particular time? Other people might sleep on the same pillow and not get a headache. Other people might eat very greasy food and not get a headache. There are many different situations. So, karma helps explain why this particular karma is ripening at this particular time. Now, of course, the karmic action is not the deepest cause. The deepest cause is our unawareness, our ignorance of cause and effect and of voidness. This is what has caused us to act in a certain way and what has triggered the ripening of previous karmic instincts and so on. So, it’s a very complex process of causality happening here. 

By pointing out the karmic cause for a certain syndrome that we are experiencing, Buddha is not giving us the deepest method for overcoming the syndromes. The deepest method would be the teachings on voidness. On an initial level, though, we work with karma – at least on the initial scope of motivation in lam-rim – to exercise the self-discipline to stop repeating the actions that produce these problems. Then, we go more deeply into eliminating the deeper cause, which is this unawareness, or ignorance. 

We have to differentiate the various kinds of conditions for problems to arise from the various types of causes of them. And within the various types of causes [Vasubandhu lists six different types of causes, and Asanga lists 20], we can go more deeply to what the root cause is, which is ignorance.

Let me add one little point here. Why I use this example of a periscope is because our hardware is limited; we have limited bodies. When we talk about sentient beings, we’re talking about beings with limited minds. There’s also another term for it: beings with limited bodies. Our bodies – our hardware – are limited. That’s part of the whole problem with this periscope vision. Depending on the brain, the eyes and this type of body, we can’t be omniscient. That’s why Buddhas aren’t sentient beings: they don’t have this limited type of body. We, on the other hand, can only see out of the holes in front of our heads, for example. That’s like a periscope, isn’t it? 

Participant: Two.

Dr Berzin: Two periscopes. 

OK. Let’s end here for today. We’ll continue next time with more of these qualities of a Buddha’s mind. Then, after that, we’ll have three weeks break.