We are discussing this great text of Nagarjuna, Letter to a Friend. In it, he starts with an explanation of the importance of having confidence in the teachings and the six things to always keep in mind as a support for the path. Then he explains the essence of the path. This section is divided into an introductory discussion and then a discussion of the six far-reaching attitudes. We’re now in the section concerning the sixth far-reaching attitude, discriminating awareness. That has a brief account of the essence of the path having five features, the five supreme Dharma measures. In this brief account, we first have a verse concerning what to adopt. This is what we are discussing here, Verse 45:
[45] Belief in fact, joyful perseverance, and mindfulness, absorbed concentration, and discriminating awareness are the five supreme Dharma measures. Strive after them. These are known as the forces and the powers, and also what brings you to the peak.
Although these five forces and powers are developed all along the fivefold path to either arhatship or enlightenment, at a particular stage on the second of these levels of pathway minds – the applying pathway mind, or the path of preparation – they are directed at the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths. We have gone through the sixteen.
Understanding the sixteen aspects helps us to overcome the sixteen distorted ways of embracing the four noble truths. Last time, we went through the four distorted ways of understanding true sufferings, and we started our discussion of the four distorted ways of understanding the true origins of sufferings.
The Four Distorted Ways of Understanding True Origins (Continued)
We spoke last time about the first distorted understanding, which is divided into two parts. These were:
[1a] Holding that suffering has no cause at all;
[1b] Holding that suffering has a discordant cause – in other words, that it comes from something that is unrelated to it, such as a perturbation of primal matter, which is asserted by the Samkhya School.
Now let’s go on with the second distorted way of understanding the true origin of suffering.
[2] Holding that suffering is created from a single cause.
Putting the Blame of Our Suffering on One Cause
Obviously, this is something that comes about very, very easily in our way of thinking. We tend to think in very simplistic terms, just about ordinary things, that it was “my” fault. Very often we put all the blame on ourselves, and that leads to tremendous feelings of guilt.
So, why do we have this? The example that I always think of is, “Why did my child commit suicide… or die?” and so on. “It was my fault. It was my negligence. If I had only done something differently, that wouldn’t have happened.” This is a very unfortunate way of thinking because it really puts all the blame on oneself. Even though we do find material, like in the lojong teachings, the Seven-Part Mind Training, of placing all the blame on one thing – namely, our self-cherishing – what we are talking about here is not the correct understanding of our suffering coming from self-cherishing and unawareness. Instead, we are talking about incorrectly understanding it to come just from one cause, like me or one thing that I did: “Because I took the wrong turn, we got lost,” “Because I didn’t go to the university, I am a failure in life.” It’s very easy to think like that, isn’t it? That’s because it reduces things to a very simple level. Another version of this is: “If I had only done so and so, then everything would have worked out OK, but I didn’t do it. That was my big mistake in life. I didn’t do that thing; I didn’t take that opportunity.” This is really a very limited way of understanding things.
From understanding the true origins of suffering, we know that results come from a multitude of causes and conditions. It explains in the text that a sprout comes not just from the seeds alone but from a combination of contributing factors, such as seeds, water, fertilizer, heat, light, and so on. Many, many things contribute to what happens. Buddha himself said, “A bucket is not filled by the first drop of water or the last drop of water. A bucket is filled by a collection of all the drops of water.” Likewise, what happens to us is a result of tremendous amount of karmic aftermath from countless previous actions, plus all the supporting conditions, both internal conditions in terms of our disturbing emotions and external conditions of what other people do. of history, of economics, of social factors, and everything like that.
Now, of course, a danger in thinking this way is that we don’t take any responsibility for what happens to us or what happens in general because we think, “Well, there are so many factors affecting what happens. What difference does it make what I do?” That is a very interesting thing to investigate. It’s like saying, “There are so many factors affecting global warming. What difference is it going to make if I go and protest in front some polluting company?”
Participant: Or if I turn my heating down one degree.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But again, if we understand that things arise from a combination of causes, we can understand the implication – namely, that every cause actually counts, including what I do. Also, we do bear responsibility for our actions. So, what happens to us very much arises from a combination of many, many different things.
Discriminating awareness of the second aspect of true origins, which is origins – referring to craving, the obtainer attitude, the disturbing emotions and so on – is what eliminates this mistaken view. With discriminating awareness, we discern that craving, karma and so on are the origins from which all the true sufferings arise over and over again. So, that means that what happens to us comes from all different kinds of karmic aftermath, not just one, and from all the different types of craving and supporting disturbing emotions that activate that karmic aftermath. So, the different combinations of this craving and karma are what bring about our experiences. These are the causes.
When we speak about the true origins of suffering, we don’t usually speak about the contributing conditions brought about by what other people do. Usually, the emphasis is just on ourselves. However, I think that these contributing conditions are also important to bear in mind because often there is a misunderstanding that, for instance, “I had the karma to be hit by a car. I built up the karma to be hit by a car by this person. So, did I cause this other person to hit me with the car? Did I?”
Participant: I think that’s what Shantideva says in his text. In one place he said that, actually, I’m responsible for other people acting destructively toward me.
Dr. Berzin: So, now Karsten is bring up something in Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior (Bodhicaryavatara; sPyod-'jug), in the patience chapter where he’s talking about not getting angry with the other person. He explains that it is because of something negative that we ourselves did to them that they are now doing something negative to us. Therefore, it is inappropriate to place the blame on them; it’s proper to place the blame on ourselves. That’s true for not getting angry. However, again, the fault lies in thinking, “I am the single cause causing this other person to hit me with the car.” You see how, again, that’s a simplistic way of thinking. So many factors are involved. How, for instance, did they build up the karma to meet us so that we behaved negatively to them?
This is the whole point here – that things don’t work so simplistically. For the purposes of not getting angry, we say, “OK, they are hurting me because of something that I did in the past.” Then we have the Wheel of Sharp Weapons type of thinking as well – that “This is my negative karma coming back on me.” However, this doesn’t mean that when some karma has ripened on my mental continuum and caused me to do something that that karmic ripening acts like some magic force on the other person, causing them to come and hurt me. This is what makes the whole issue of cause and effect and karma so complex.
Exploring a Quantum Mechanics Analogy
Sometimes people ask me, “How is it that a karmic potential on your mind-stream and karmic potential on somebody else’s mind-stream… do they communicate with each other?” So, that sounds, Mr. Jorge, like one of your quantum mechanics problems. Do they communicate with each other simultaneously? Do they both go off at the same time and then meet?
Participant: It just happens.
Dr. Berzin: It just happens. Now we have the first fault: “It’s happening for no cause at all; it just happens.”
Participant: No, in this case, the problem we are talking about is two particles being entangled. That means they are related in a way. For example, a particle can have two properties only: on and off. Because both particles are entangled, when you measure one particle that says “on,” you know that the other one is automatically off.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, the example is not so analogous here. With quantum mechanics, we’re talking about two particles are entangled. So, they have a karmic relationship with each other (if we can put it in Buddhist terms), and we don’t really know the state of either of them. But measuring one automatically determines the state of the other one before even measuring the other one (in other words, before there is interference by the measurer). So, then, there is just the probability function of it being one or the other of these different quantum states.
But then again, that gets into the question of how one establishes their existence other than by measuring them. Is there something that establishes their existence? You can say that there is nothing on the side of the quantum particle that establishes its existence as on or off (given that there are only those two possibilities). There is also nothing on the side of the quantum particle that establishes it as being in a quantum flux state of being on or off either. So, then you get really weird here.
Participant: The really relevant part of what we’re discussing here is…
Dr. Berzin: So, what’s the relevance of what we are discussing here?
Participant: It’s not like when you measure one that it’s communicating to the other particle, “Oh, I was measured and I’m on, so you have to be off.” There is not a time-causal relationship of one communicating with the other because they actually can be years and years apart. Also, usually, communication has to take place at the speed of light, whereas this happens instantaneously.
Dr. Berzin: So, it’s not a causal relationship here – that measuring one causes the other one to be the other thing – because there is no communication. The process of determining the on/off status happens instantaneously. If there were communication, it would be at the speed of light, which can be measured, so there would be a time gap. So, now we have the simultaneous occurrence of cause and effect.
Participant: I mean there’s a really…
Dr. Berzin: If there is any causal explanation.
Participant: There’s a really weird explanation, which is a multiple universe explanation, one that is becoming more and more acceptable, I think.
Dr. Berzin: OK. So, enlighten us on the multiple universe explanation of this. Let’s see if this has any relevance to karma – for example, my karma to walk down the street and be robbed and the karma of the robber to walk down the same street and meet and rob me. How do those two karmas communicate with each other? Do they communicate with each other?
Participant: I don’t think that one happens and that the other one happens from it. It’s a phenomenon that comes together…
Dr. Berzin: So, what’s the multiple universe? Yes, it’s not that one communicates to another or that one causes the other to do what they do, although you’d have to say that they are conditions for each other.
Participant: But they are not in that…
Dr. Berzin: But they are not in a temporal… in a sequential order.
Participant: However, they are dependent on each other.
Dr. Berzin: They are dependent on each other. So, they are entangled with each other.
Participant: Yeah. But the thing is…
Participant: Because if there is no robbery and if there is no victim, there is no robbery…
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, if there is no robbed person, there is no robbery. If there is no victim, there is no criminal. Yes, they are dependent on each other; they dependently arise. That’s called “dependent arising.” Also, they are a dependent arising in terms of somebody having built the street, and that it was dark – so, a dependent arising in terms of the revolving of the earth around the sun. There are a million things that affect what happens.
But what is our multiple universe theory, please?
Participant: This idea is that in the moment that you are measuring this particle, you separate the universes so that, in one universe, the person who is measuring this particle in its “on” state, automatically, in this same universe, the other particle has to be in the “off” state. However, there is also another separate universe where the opposite happened for the person who measured the “off” state. For that person, the other particle is in the “on” state. The time relationship between these events is not necessarily linear, though – that the one causes the other.
Dr. Berzin: I don’t understand what you explained – that when a person measures and gets one result, another person is measuring it in a multiple universe and getting a different result?
Participant: Separates the universes.
Dr. Berzin: That separates the universes. Now it sounds like true, independent existence, doesn’t it? That sounds strange. But is it saying that all quantum possibilities occur simultaneously? And is it the same person who is measuring it both ways?
Participant: It’s in two separate universe sheets that are not able communicate.
Dr. Berzin: Two universes that are not able to communicate with each other. This starts sounding like the alternate universe in Star Trek where everything is the opposite.
Participant: Actually, it explains a lot of things better than the idea of the act of measuring directly affecting the result, which was the old idea of the Copenhagen interpretation.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I don’t see how two possible things happening at the same time answers this question of how one affects the other, how someone measuring one particle affects the measuring of the other.
Participant: So, you’re saying you don’t understand why there is no communication happening between the particles. So, when you measure one, the other one is in the other state because it was always the case in that universe sheet; it was still not separated before the measurement. But the act of measuring it separated the universe in two.
Dr. Berzin: I didn’t understand what you just said. I thought two different possibilities happened with the same particle.
Participant: No.
Dr. Berzin: So, I misunderstood what you said.
Participant: In each universe one possibility occurs, and automatically the other particle of the other universe has the opposite property.
Dr. Berzin: So, there are two universes. Are the two universes the two particles?
Participant: You could say that there are four particles because there are two particles in each universe. However, there is just one universe until you try to measure, and the act of measuring separates the universes.
Participant: There are endless universes. They are separating all the time.
Participant: Yes.
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is a very interesting thing if we now put this together with Buddhism. You are saying that the two universes of each of the particles are interrelated – in other words, non-dual, to use Buddhist terminology – and that when you measure them, you get two universes. So, that’s duality. Buddhism speaks an awful lot about non-dual and that when you have a conceptual process, that makes a dualistic type of thing. This isn’t Gelug Prasangika, but it’s in other schools.
Participant: It doesn’t make any sense because when you separate the two universes, you have half of the mass in each one.
Participant: No, actually, both universes will be copies of each other in all respects except for this measurement.
Dr. Berzin: Anyway, we are going far off from our topic. What Rainer was saying was that the objection to this theory is that the mass would be divided in half if the two universes split. But Jorge is saying the two universes would be totally identical except for the factor of this measurement.
Before we go too far in this direction, which is now getting quite irrelevant to our discussion, let us get back to the idea of two people’s karma ripening in such a way that they interact with each other. The point here is that any one thing that happens doesn’t come from a single cause – as if my karma ripening makes the other person’s karma ripen. Everything in the universe dependently arises on everything else. So, everything is interrelated. Then, because everything is interrelated and all conditions are affecting everything, those conditions will cause certain things to ripen; they will act in such a way as to cause certain things to ripen, let’s say, on my side and on your side. And because we, along with all the causes and conditions are interrelated, we interact. But it isn’t a linear thing of “What I did caused you to hit me over the head.”
Participant: We don’t have to look to such intricate examples like using quantum physics. There are a lot of things in everyday life that very clearly arise dependently. It’s not like a bureaucratic process of, first, we get one paper, and then we get the other paper. It’s like when you bake a cake. You put all the ingredients together, and all of them have to be there at the same time for the cake to work. If there are no eggs in it, the cake doesn’t work.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, to use the analogy of baking a cake – all the conditions, all the ingredients, have to be there in order for the cake to actually come out. Yes. Well, all the conditions have to be present for anything to happen, and if one condition is changed, then everything will come out slightly differently. Now that starts to get into the whole discussion of predetermination and whether the future is fixed and whether we can change any condition. Of course, we can change conditions. But no matter what we do, it is affected by other causes and conditions.
So, when we speak about the true origins of suffering, we’re speaking about things arising based on many, many different interactions of disturbing emotions and karma on the mental continuums of everybody. Different combinations are going to produce suffering over and over again. So, no suffering is from a single cause.
Participant: That means that if we go throughout the day with less craving and fewer disturbing emotions, less karma will ripen?
Dr. Berzin: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a matter of just less. It’s a matter of none.
Participant: Is it an all or nothing thing?
Dr. Berzin: I think it is something or nothing. How can you have less craving?
Participant: Instead of five…
Dr. Berzin: Instead of five on the scale, one to ten, of intensity, we have two?
Participant: I have three events.
Dr. Berzin: Instead of five events of craving, we have three events? Well, no. Craving, remember, is the craving for happiness not to go away, for unhappiness to go away, and craving for further existence. And when we grasp for true existence, which we do every moment of our lives, except when non-conceptually absorbed on voidness, according to Tsongkhapa, we will have this third type of craving, the craving for further existence, in every moment.
Participant: So, this ingredient is not something we can get rid of…
Dr. Berzin: Not something that you can get rid of so easily.
Participant: Not gradually, either.
Dr. Berzin: Not gradually, either? Well, the grasping for true existence you can get rid of. There are stages of that. There is the doctrinally based, there is the automatically arising, there are the various grades of this over the bhumis, and so on. So, there are grades. But what is the actual result of that? Do you get less suffering? Well, in a sense you can. At a certain stage, you no longer have rebirth in the lower realms, so you get rid of certain types of suffering in that sense. Does it mean that when you hurt your hand, it’s going to hurt less? I don’t know about that.
Obviously, we can work on the grosser aspects, but that’s very difficult too, isn’t it? This is because we grasp at happiness and unhappiness as being truly existent. We grasp at ourselves as being truly existent: “I want that happiness; I don’t want to lose it.” Try it when you are lying in bed and the alarm clock goes off and see how successful you are in not wanting the happiness of lying down and being asleep to continue. Or when you really have to go to the toilet, how much can you not have that craving to relieve yourself of that suffering? Or, if you come into your room exhausted and you have all your sweater and stuff on, do you really not have the craving to be free of that discomfort? It’s very difficult, Jorge. We are not talking about something super dramatic. We are talking about everyday things, everyday life. We have craving all the time. You have an itch – why do you scratch it? Why do you change position ever?
Participant: When I look at these higher, accomplished lamas, it seems that they have a kind of detachment or realization that enables them to deal in a much better way with certain kinds of sufferings like dying or illnesses. There are some quite impressive stories – like somebody having cancer and who laughed throughout their last days. So, I think if you progress on the path, you learn to deal with all these kinds of sufferings more easily.
Dr. Berzin: This is certainly the case. Karsten is pointing out that the great lamas seem to be able to go through very difficult situations like sicknesses and not experience pain and suffering. So, it is possible to reach that point. Even nowadays, in the reports about Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, who is apparently dying of liver cancer… it is a very, very painful disease, and yet he says he doesn’t feel any pain. He is in the terminal stages of that.
[To participant:] Where is he? I’m not sure. He’s back in India, but he’s staying in somebody’s house that has a garden with swimming pool. So, maybe it’s in Delhi. I don’t where he is exactly. But he went back to India.
Participant: Is he related to Serkong Rinpoche?
Dr. Berzin: Is Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche related to Serkong Rinpoche? He started to give the oral transmission of the collected commentaries of Kalachakra to Serkong Rinpoche because he had the oral lineage of that. He started giving it to Serkong Rinpoche so that Serkong Rinpoche could give it to His Holiness. This was the normal route. Everybody felt too frightened and too humbled to give oral transmissions to His Holiness, so, they would give them to Serkong Rinpoche, and Serkong Rinpoche would give them to His Holiness.
Participant: Well, Tsenshab, he was at debates…
Dr. Berzin: No, no. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche means that he was the tsenshab, the Master Debate Partner, of Kirti Rinpoche, who is a high lama from Amdo. But what happened was that Serkong Rinpoche died before Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche could give him the full oral transmission. In the end, he had to give it to His Holiness directly.
Participant: How old is he?
Dr. Berzin: How old is he? He is in his eighties.
Participant: Now he has liver cancer?
Dr. Berzin: Yeah.
Participant: Is that painful?
Dr. Berzin: It’s supposed to be one of the most painful diseases. That and brain cancer.
Participant: [Inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: Yeah. He is a great Kalachakra master.
So, yes, there are examples of great lamas who have reached that point – that they no longer feel any suffering of pain.
Examples of How We Oversimplify Causality in Our Daily Lives
Anyway, our point here is about true origins of suffering – that it’s not simple; things don’t come from one cause. There are many different ways in which we tend to think that things come from just one cause. The most simplistic is having an argument with somebody. We say, “It’s all your fault. I am miserable because of what you did.” Isn’t that a simple thing, a common thing? “You didn’t invite me to your party; therefore, I’m miserable, I’m depressed.” That’s obviously silly, isn’t it? That’s just a circumstance for many different types of negative karma on our side to ripen in terms of feeling unhappy. Our karma didn’t cause this person to have a party and not to invite us, did it?
However, it’s so, so common for us to think like this. We think that everything that the other person does is because of me. “You didn’t call me because you don’t like me anymore, you don’t love me anymore.” As opposed to, “They have a life of their own, and they have many other people in their life and many other things that are happening. We are not the only thing that affects what they do.” But we tend to think that it’s because of me, especially when we’re in a close relationship with somebody.
This is a very important point – to recognize this fallacy, to recognize this fallacy in our own thinking when it occurs. The more we think about it, the more, I think, we can identify that it occurs quite frequently. When it occurs, when we are over-simplifying what’s happening, what we are experiencing… “What’s happening in Iraq is all President Bush’s fault.” This is absurd. “If we just replaced the secretary of defense, then everything would be better. If the Democrats would just win the Congress, then everything would be better.” This is absurd. There are so many causes and conditions that are affecting what’s happening. OK? But that doesn’t mean, as I said, that some change is not going to affect what happens, either.
Participant: This doesn’t mean that all factors have the same weight.
Dr. Berzin: Ah, that’s an important point. It doesn’t mean that all factors have the same weight. That’s very true. We learned, in our teachings of karma, that different factors affect the heaviness of karma and these factors can change, such as how frequently you repeat an action, whether you feel regret afterwards, and these types of things. Also, different factors have different effects. What the people in this room do now has far greater effect on what happens in this room now than what people in China are doing now. Sure.
Participant: I don’t think I understood that last example.
Dr. Berzin: That last example? What is happening in this room now? OK, if everybody started talking at the same time, we wouldn’t be able continue our discussion; it directly affects what’s happening now. There are also people who are not here who affect what’s going on in this room. Let’s say you had a fight with some relative or some friend and you come here, and you are in a bad mood or you arrive late or whatever. So, what that other person did affects what’s happening now in this room. What somebody in China that we don’t even know is doing – does that have any effect on what’s happening in this room now? Well, only very indirectly. You can’t say that what that person does exists totally independently of the whole interconnected universe. But Jorge’s point is that certain things have more immediate effect than other things. That’s true.
Also, things don’t happen in a very linear way. That’s also very true. That’s one of the reasons why karma is so difficult to understand and why only a Buddha really can understand it.
Participant: I think it’s very useful to have an open mind for the complexity of this and not to crave or want for things to always be very simple.
Dr. Berzin: Right, this is a very good point. We need to have an open mind and not to crave for things to be too simple. Why would we crave for things to be too simple? It’s because of grasping for a big “me.” “I need to understand it, therefore, it needs to be simple.” That’s grasping for a big “me.” What I think is a much more beneficial attitude is, as you say, to be open (this I find useful as a corollary of voidness meditation when we have the subsequent realization that everything is like an illusion), to have the mind be totally open to the fact of everything being interrelated. Of course, I am not going to understand how everything is interrelated and all the details of that, but that doesn’t matter. The point is the openness and the non-concretizing of things into very linear, fixed types of relationships. In this sense, everything is like an illusion.
Dharma Examples
Participant: But then, for some things, like these karmic things, Buddhism says some things that really sound quite linear, like when you make prostrations, you should put your hands like this; otherwise, you’ll be reborn with… claws?
Dr. Berzin: Hooves.
Participant: This is something very linear and very fixed.
Dr. Berzin: OK. So, this is a very interesting point – that we have specific teachings of cause and effect, such as saying that prostrating with your hands clenched in a fist will be a cause for being reborn as an animal with hooves, or that being generous will result in being wealthy and not being generous will result in being poor, and so on. Well, yes. This doesn’t mean that there is no order in the universe in terms of cause and effect. Certain causes produce certain effects, but they don’t produce the effect all by themselves without conditions.
In order for you to be reborn as a hoofed animal because of that prostration that you did (if we want to use this rather simplistic example), there has to be someone who has the karma to be your animal mother in order to give birth to you like that and someone with the karma to be your animal father. There are many, many circumstances that have to be involved with that. Now, does this mean that every animal in the world that has hooves was caused to have such a rebirth because they made Buddhist prostrations with their hands clenched? I think that it doesn’t work that way. That sounds pretty preposterous, doesn’t it? That, again, seems to be too simplistic – to say, “Well, it’s only because of their Buddhist acts that these things happened.” What I’m saying is that there is only one thing that acts as a cause for having hooves. There could many other things that also result in that.
Participant: What I don’t like so much about the Wheel of Sharp Weapons is that it doesn’t tell you when the relationship is just one way and when it is also the reverse.
Dr. Berzin: Well, Mr. Jorge doesn’t like the Wheel of Sharp Weapons in this aspect – that it doesn’t tell you when the relationship is only one way or reciprocal. Well, not everything needs to be spelled out. One has to think about it.
Participant: I recently read something a friend wrote me. It was about a recommendation that he have three thousand monks do fifty-day long prostrations. One would need to gather a lot of money very quickly. Then the monks would chant certain dharani mantras, and then he maybe would be healed.
Dr. Berzin: What would they do with the money?
Participant: Paying the monks one thousand one hundred euros per day to feed the monks.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure. What are these dharanis for?
Participant: Well, I haven’t a clue. This is what I wanted to ask.
Dr. Berzin: What are the dharanis?
Participant: I don’t know. It seems kind of related to this example because I never know how far this really goes into cause and effect or if it’s just superstition. If he is so a high lama, why can’t he heal himself? Why do so many monks have to do mantras for him and not for world peace or whatever? There are so many people needing good vibes.
Dr. Berzin: OK, Christian’s question is regarding one old Nyingma lama who is very sick. They had a mo done, and the mo said that they needed to have three-thousand monks do prostrations all day long for fifty days, and…
Participant: Not prostrations, mantras.
Dr. Berzin: OK, it’s easier to do mantras all day long. It was said that if they do this, and obviously, they’d have to raise money to be able to feed these monks during this period, then perhaps the lama would recover. Well, this is not so unusual. Sometimes, for averting certain disasters in Tibet or certain difficulties happening with His Holiness, they recruit all the Tibetans to do tens and hundreds of millions of OM MANI PADME HUM’s, and they have big sessions in which all the people in Dharamsala, all the Tibetans, get together and do this. They also have, every year, a whole month of Guru Rinpoche pujas in Dharamsala to try to help the situation in Tibet. Whether it has an effect or not is another question, but it could always be worse in Tibet, so maybe it has some effect. One can never tell.
Christian’s question, though, is why doesn’t this lama heal himself? Why does he need to have all these people saying mantras? Also, why don’t they do mantras for other causes? Well, as I was saying, they do do mantras for other causes. The reason for all of these prayers for this lama is that one needs conditions and circumstances for karma to ripen. So, particularly with a high lama… remember, Buddha said that you have to make requests for the teacher to stay and for the teacher to teach. If others don’t make requests and don’t have the appropriate open-mindedness and karma and stuff like that, then Buddhas go away. The Buddha passed away because nobody continued to ask him to teach, basically. Nobody else had the karma at that time. So, what they are doing is trying to build up the conditions of, “Please, we request you to stay; don’t go away.”
Now, whether that actually has an effect or not, I really have no idea. From a Western point of view, that sounds pretty far-fetched. From a Buddhist point of view, it makes a lot of sense. Does it help to build up their immune system? I don’t know. Does it have any effect? I don’t know. Does it have any effect on world peace? I don’t know. But it’s seen as acting as a condition for certain karma on the mental continuum of this teacher to ripen or for the teacher – if they are some great being – to continue to stay. It’s like that.
Participant: I was just thinking about this in terms of emptiness, also. If you really think of how this lama is empty from his own side and also that he exists in dependence on billions and billions of conditions, then, actually, it makes sense. If you don’t look at him like a kind of individual thing, like a block, if you think of him as interrelated, then it does make sense.
Dr. Berzin: Karsten is saying that this starts to make more and more sense the more we understand voidness – that the teacher doesn’t exist as some isolated ping-pong ball, some solid entity not affected by things, but is made up of millions of particles and causes and conditions and things like that. So, of course, he would be affected by these other forces, these other conditions, of what other people do – if it is with the proper and dedicated.
Christian recalls an account of Sangharakshita being aware of somebody on the other side of the planet who was doing some meta-meditation for him. So, perhaps that has some sort of relation to our two quantum particles that Jorge was speaking about. However, I think this is more causal – a condition and cause type of relationship – if that was the case.
Participant: I think it is not possible really to prove. If the lama gets better, people say, “Yes, because of all the prayers he got better,” and if he dies, then people say, “Ah, the students don’t have the…”
Dr. Berzin: “…the good karma.” This is a very good point that Mariana says, which is that there is no way to prove that the monks’ and the disciples’ prayers really had an effect and that if they hadn’t done the prayers, the lama would have died or that if the lama had died even after all the prayers were said, it would be because the students hadn’t done enough – so, it would be their fault. Again, that’s seeing the origin of things just in terms of one cause: “It’s only because the students didn’t do enough. So, the lama died.” That, also, is false. That’s obviously false. Maybe it has an effect; maybe it doesn’t have an effect.
But looking at this in a very objective, non-Buddhist way, a psychological way, we could certainly say that students praying and doing practices for their teacher to live and get better is far more beneficial for everyone than them either totally ignoring what’s happening with the teacher or not caring or being completely freaked out and crying and so on. So, just on a practical, psychological level, it’s healthier.
Participant: So, that’s more a circumstance, not a causal relationship?
Dr. Berzin: This is exactly what I said: it’s a circumstance. And it is no different from praying to God, really, in terms of structure.
Participant: There have been studies whether prayer helps people heal, and, actually, they always find that it does not help.
Participant: Yeah, because they’ve seen that a lot of times, they have actually been big frauds. They’ve actually done studies.
Dr. Berzin: Jorge reports that the scientific studies that have been done in terms of seeing whether or not prayer actually heals have shown that it doesn’t. Whether it does or not I think is irrelevant; I think the important point is whether it makes the person feel better while they are sick.
Participant: I feel like you substitute your negative thoughts with positive things.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, this is exactly what I’m saying. It’s better to pray than to be depressed. It’s better to be optimistic than to be pessimistic. And certainly, there are studies that show that it strengthens the immune system to have a positive attitude rather than a negative attitude. Also, really wanting to get better strengthens your immune system as opposed to saying, “I can’t wait to die,” and giving up, which a lot of old people do, certainly
Participant: I know also people who say, “I want to die. Really, I suffer so much,” and “Please, please, please – I want to die,” but they don’t die.
Dr. Berzin: Right, so there are opposite examples, of course. Again, there are people who say, “I suffer so much. I am old. My life is useless, and I just want to die,” and they don’t die. Therefore, we come back to the same principle – that what happens is not caused by a single cause. Wanting to die or not wanting to die is not going to be the single cause for living longer or not. So, you see how easily we fall into this mistaken view. We reduce things to one cause.
Participant: I just wanted to add to the point that Mariana brought up about how to put the hands while doing prostrations and the result of that. I think it’s very important to keep in mind the complexity of causes and conditions because there is also another danger. This is that the teachers, especially the traditional Tibetan masters, often have a very strict way of teaching. If there are many new students listening to that teaching, that can have bad results.
Dr. Berzin: I agree with you. This is an important point. She is pointing out that being too strict about these teachings about how your hands should be when you do prostrations and so on can turn off an awful lot of people.
Also, I must say that behind this is a very fundamentalist point of view, which I think is not so healthy. If you look at the way that people in other Buddhist traditions make prostrations – the Thais, the Chinese, the Japanese – they all prostrate in a very different way than the Tibetans do. The Chinese stay down on the ground much, much longer than the Tibetans when they are doing prostrations, and so on. So, what makes the Tibetan way of doing prostrations the only way that really is perfect? I think a lot of this is cultural as well and can become fundamentalist. It’s a pity because some people left the teachings because of these things. That’s why one has to be very careful when approaching the teachings and, especially, to be aware that there are certain aspects that tend to be a bit fundamentalist. One has to be discriminating. However, it’s not so easy to learn to discriminate between what’s fundamentalist and what’s not, particularly when you have a teacher who is very traditional and fundamentalist. That’s difficult.
Of course, the problem is that we go too much to the other extreme and throw out too much. Serkong Rinpoche used to say that. He used the example of the monks’ robes. He said, “Yes, the robes do not make the monk, but that doesn’t mean that you forget about the robes. The robes do have an important purpose.” Then again, Chinese changed the robes completely. Mongolians, who follow the Tibetan tradition, also changed the robes.
So, these are difficult issues, very difficult issues.
Alright, let us think for a moment about this incorrect view – holding that suffering comes from just a single cause. I think what is helpful is to try to identify this in our own, practical lives and to try to find a most recent example (so, that it’s relevant) when we have fallen into this mistaken view. Then we should try to recognize how much suffering it actually causes when we think in that way.
Any comments or questions? Everybody able to find examples? A lot of examples?
Participant: We tend to do this constantly.
Dr. Berzin: Right, we tend to do this constantly. We do.
Participant: [Inaudible]
Dr. Berzin: That’s another good example: “If I only had this or that then, everything would be different.” “If I only could find a job…” “If I only had a new flat…”
There Are Innumerable Causes for Things; Nevertheless, Certain Causes Are More Important Than Others
Participant: I was thinking about how making things simple is also a natural thing for the sake of survival. I heard one program about autistic people – that for them the world is so complex. Every single, very simple act becomes very complex, so they can’t do anything.
Dr. Berzin: Mariana points out something that is true – that in order to survive, we need to make things a little bit simpler. One sees with autistic people that they see so many different possibilities that it makes it hard for them to do anything. I think one of the factors of autism is that they don’t have a filter. So, they take in all the sense perceptions and all the various things going on, and things become so complex that they just shut down and can’t do anything. It’s true that we need to simply in order to deal with things. This is why we go back to our old trotzdem factor, which is that in spite of the complexity of things arising from so many causes and conditions, there are certain fairly simple things that I can do.
Participant: I think it also relates to this weighing – that not all factors have the same weight.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, Jorge says that not all the factors have the same weight. That’s very true. However, I’m thinking more in terms of when we get angry with somebody or are disappointed because they didn’t do something or did do something that we didn’t like. This, to me, at least in my own personal experience, is when I commit this fault most strongly. I over-simplify the situation and, therefore, tend to ignore the fact that the person has a million other things happening in their life and that the reason for what happened is not just because of me and our relationship.
Participant: I think that you can understand that it’s no more a relationship at all, so…
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is very good, Johannis – that we deconstruct the relationship. What in the world is a relationship? There actually isn’t any solid relationship as a “thing.” Now we get back to the Nyaya thing – that there is some sort of stick connecting the two of us and that that’s our relationship. And then, “You’re not relating to our relationship.” That’s very true.
Yes, we need to simplify in order to deal with things, but this is trotzdem – that even though it’s very complex, and even though we can simplify it, simplifying it is like an illusion, so don’t solidify it too much. Make that balance between seeing the complexity and seeing what the most important factors are.
When we talk about the Middle Path in Buddhism… actually, that’s very, very profound. Things are devoid of true existence; nevertheless, things function. There are a million causes for things; nevertheless, certain causes are more important than others. So, here, too, we have a middle path. To be able to see the two aspects together without them being contradictory – that’s really tough. Tsongkhapa says that all the time. And that’s what we really need to do. We need to not lose sight of either aspect here.
Participant: We kind of see a lot of details, but knowing how to prioritize which are the major factors…
Dr. Berzin: Right, to be able to see all details. Well, I wouldn’t say to be able to see all details but, rather, to be able to appreciate the fact that there are a lot of details and that we can’t know all of them unless we’re Buddhas. We can appreciate that there are a lot of details – we might know some of the details (and the more that we can add the better) – and at the same time, appreciate what the most important things are.
Also, it’s about knowing how to respond in a given situation – not to get angry. It’s a great way of developing patience. For example, “You didn’t come to class on time. You were late.” One could reduce it to a stupid thing: “You don’t have enough respect; you don’t care,” and blah, blah, blah. Or, “You don’t like me.” There are all sorts of silly reasons that one could come up with. But it could be for a whole number of reasons that you were late. Maybe you were busy, or there was a telephone call, or maybe the U-Bahn got stuck, or there was traffic… There could be so many different causes.
Participant: The culture.
Dr. Berzin: The culture, or laziness, or whatever. So, not to get angry. Why get angry? One could suggest, “Try to come on time.” But then, again, I am just as guilty. I was talking to everybody here, so we didn’t start till seven thirty. So, it’s my fault as well. There are so many factors. When things are important, we make an effort to pay attention to them, and when they are not so important, we’re flexible and don’t get upset. You know, eight worldly dharmas, eight transitory things. We don’t get super excited when we start exactly on time, and we don’t get super upset when we don’t. OK? That comes from understanding cause and effect.
The Fact That We Suffer Is Not Part of Some Intelligent Design
Alright, we have time for one more of these. I don’t think this is such a complex one:
[3] Holding that suffering is created from having been sent ahead by the mind of some other being such as Ishvara (that’s God, in other words).
According to the Vaisheshika School of Indian philosophy, suffering is sent, by previous plan, from the mind of the creator god Ishvara. It’s like saying God sends us suffering to test us – that he has a plan. Similarly, it is said that Ishvara sometimes creates and sends suffering and sometimes rests from this type of activity.
I don’t know how many of us actually believe that, but there are some people who obviously do. Whether it’s sent by a creator god or it’s sent by a government leader or something like that, it’s sent by somebody else. You don’t even have to make it into a creator god; it can just be a creator of my own hell: “This person is my tormentor” – you know, somebody who is stalking me, calling me on the phone all the time. They are my tormentor, and they send suffering to me. They don’t do it all the time; sometimes they rest, but then they send it. We have a friend who is being stalked at the moment. I am thinking of this example.
That’s the idea of suffering being created from the intention of somebody else’s mind that’s sending it to us. “The government is constantly sending me these things about my taxes,” or things like that. “That is the cause of my suffering.” There can be many examples, not just being sent suffering by a wrathful god… or “God was testing me” type of thing.
Participant: I don’t know how related this will be, but sometimes, from time to time, you hear people saying, “Oh, I’ve suffered so much. Now I am doing fine, so maybe I should trust more in life. I have to trust that things will get better.” Do you know what I mean? It’s this idea that some other suffering has stopped and that that will keep more suffering from coming. So, you have to trust in it.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, this is naivety to say that, “Well, I have gone through a period of suffering, and now it’s finished.” “I have purified my karma. I got through that sickness; it purified all the obstacles. And now everything will be wonderful.”
Participant: “I paid for the puja.”
Dr. Berzin: “I paid for the puja, and they did the puja for me, and now everything is going to be great.” This is naivety. This ignores the fact that samsara is going to continue to go up and down for us until we achieve arhatship, which is a very humbling thought, and not a very nice one, at that.
Participant: “Suffering is a present from the universe.”
Dr. Berzin: Right, “Suffering is a present from the universe to teach us humility.” Well, that again is implying that it’s being sent to us by somebody else. However, it’s not being sent to us by somebody else, by some plan that they have, which is a paranoid vision of the universe. What gets rid of that is the third aspect regarding true origins, which is understanding that craving and karma are strong producers of suffering. In other words, regardless of what any creator might do, our karma and disturbing emotions are going to produce suffering for us. They are very strong. So, it’s irrelevant what the stalker does, what the creator does, what anybody does. This point eliminates this mistaken view.
Participant: Say this again, please.
Dr. Berzin: The third aspect of true origins is that craving and karma are the strong producers of suffering, so it doesn’t matter what a creator does. These are so strong that they are going to produce the suffering anyway. It isn’t that a creator has the power to negate that, to override that, to just press a button and then we get the suffering. This wrong view is like the Monty Python thing of God sending forth a pigeon to shit on our heads – this type of image.
Let’s think about that for a moment, and then we will end the class.