WSW 43: Belittling the Teachings, Making Up Our Own

We have been going through the verses one by one, first with the old translation – the more poetical very loose translation that I had done back in 1974; it was published so a lot of people are more familiar with that. And second, with the more literal translation, which is on my website, which I did more recently. In the old translation, it’s numbered verse 87: 

We do not follow proper procedures of study; we say it is needless to read the vast texts. We feel there’s no value in learning from gurus; we slight oral teachings and think we know best. Trample him, trample him, dance on the head of this treacherous concept of selfish concern. Tear out the heart of this self-centered butcher who slaughters our chance to gain final release.

Then the new more literal translation of this verse is verse 86: 

We haven’t made proper studies and so we’re dismissive of the vast (teachings). We haven’t entrusted ourselves to gurus and so we berate their oral transmission. Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a “true self,” our foe.

This verse is referring to our attitude toward the Dharma practice, the practice of the Buddhist teachings. It says, “We haven’t made proper studies.” This is referring to the attitude that many people have of feeling that in order to practice the Dharma, they don’t have to study, they don’t have to really learn anything or go to teachings. It says that having not made proper studies, “we’re dismissive of the vast (teachings)” – so we ignore them and think we can get just a little bit of a tiny instruction, not terribly much and just meditate; and think that like that, we’re going to achieve enlightenment. This is not at all the proper attitude that we need. 

In all the texts it always speaks about, first, this threefold process of listening to the teachings – in other words, getting the information; thinking about it so that we understand it; and then, once we’ve understood it – and not just understood it but are convinced that it’s true and convinced that it’s possible to develop the type of positive attitude that’s being described in the teachings and that the methods will actually work – you have to be convinced of all of that – then you can actually meditate. Meditating is the process of repeating over and over again this positive attitude, or the way of developing a positive attitude, or state of mind and in this way build up a beneficial habit. This is what the Tibetan word means: to accustom ourselves to something, to build it up as a habit. The Sanskrit word has the connotation of “to make it actually so,” and so this is how we make it actually so: by repetition. It’s like learning how to play the piano. You have to practice. When we talk about practice, practice means basically doing something over and over again, first in a controlled environment, in our meditation room or wherever it is that we do our daily practice, so that we are not so seriously challenged by the external factors; and then we try to put it into practice in our daily life. 

But what is emphasized here is that all of this is based on making proper studies. Whether that’s easy to do or not – that’s beside the point. Many of us find it very easy to study and to learn; some of us find it not so easy to study and learn. But regardless, if you don’t have the instructions, if you don’t have the information, how can you possibly accomplish anything in terms of following those instructions? Sometimes people just say, “Well, just sit there, look at your mind or whatever,” but usually when people are given that type of instruction with nothing further behind it, they just sit there and they don’t know what to do, and so what happens? Either they have all sorts of mental wandering, or they fall asleep, or their mind just goes blank – which is actually quite hard to do because we have so much mental wandering – that your mind will be completely silent. Now, the question is, what would be the reason why we would have this type of attitude toward Dharma practice – that you don’t need to study anything, you don’t need to learn anything? What would be behind it? The text is saying that behind all of these things – these problematic attitudes or types of behavior that arise – is this ruinous concept, this concept of the “true self,” the solid “me.” 

How would that cause this type of attitude towards Dharma practice? Complacency: we feel that “I know everything, nobody has to tell me anything, I don’t have to learn, I’m satisfied with what I know already and so let’s just get on with it.” That’s thinking of a big “me,” isn’t it? It can also be, if you have a difficulty learning or dealing with words and that type of thing, to say, “I can’t do it.” That’s thinking in terms of a big solid “me” which has limitations, like a brick wall around us – that it’s impossible and so you don’t even try. But it’s very important to try, even if it’s difficult.

The question is what about if the opposite happens – that we find it very easy to learn, we’re rather intellectual and we continue studying and studying and reading and reading and never actually put anything into practice, either in meditation or in real life? It could be because we don’t really believe in it. It can be also that we feel I don’t know enough yet. There are a lot of people who think, “I don’t want to make a mistake,” and so they’re afraid of ever jumping into the water, as it were. I think that’s the same issue of thinking in terms of a big solid “me:” “I’m afraid to let go of the books;” “I’m afraid to let go of the side of the swimming pool and just try to swim.” It’s a threefold process that’s described in the Dharma. One is learning, studying, which means to get the information. “Listen” is literally the word – to listen to the teachings, because in the beginning, nothing was written down – but nowadays I think it would include reading. But listening is the main emphasis because what comes in the second part of this verse is the importance of listening to a teacher, not just reading from a book. But a teacher had to have written the book, so that’s another aspect. But in any case, the second step is thinking about it, trying to understand it; and then the third thing is to put into practice what we have understood. I really wonder how much you could read or listen to teachings without thinking about it. If you didn’t understand anything, why would you continue to read and continue to go?

You feel pride and “I don’t need this anymore” – what does that have to do with the thinking process? That would be why we don’t go to class – that you think, “I don’t need this or other things are more important,” like our favorite television show or something like that. But I would think that in most cases, even just listening to the teachings the Buddhists would say that it makes some sort of impression on you. It might be a very small impression, but I would think that they would go more on the side of saying that although both approaches are an unbalanced approach – of either only listening to teachings and not actually meditating, or not listening to teachings and trying to meditate – if you had to choose between those two, it would be better to listen to the teachings. This is because at least it would leave some sort of imprint and might have some sort of effect – as opposed to sitting there and trying to meditate when you have absolutely no idea of what you’re doing and just building up something negative and not productive at all as a habit. This would be just sitting and spacing out, sitting and mentally wandering, sitting and getting annoyed because you’re bored and you don’t know what you’re supposed to do – this type of thing. 

I know that Trungpa Rinpoche used to teach this – although he didn’t make it so known. He would tell people to just sit and not give such detailed instructions, which forces them to deal with boredom, because you get totally bored. Then the point is, how do you deal with being bored and who is it that’s bored? It’s a very strong “me,” isn’t it, that gets angry. “Why am I sitting here? This is stupid” – all these sorts of thoughts. If you’re going to survive you have to somehow, in a sense, surrender and just sit there in a New Age way – sort of “just be.” But I really wonder how classical that type of approach is in, at least, Tibetan Buddhism. So, one could see a benefit to that type of method; however, the traditional method is that you have to get some information. What are you doing? What am I aiming for? The general instruction is always that if you want to generate a state of mind – whether it’s concentration, whether it’s love, whether it’s patience, whether it’s an understanding of voidness – you have to know what the focus of that state of mind is. What are you focusing on and how does that mind deal with that object? For instance, compassion: it’s focused on other beings and their suffering and how does your mind deal with that? It’s with the wish, “May they be free of it.” If you don’t know that, how can you develop compassion? What would you do? I mean, I have no idea. You would have no idea. 

I think the best example of that is bodhichitta: a lot of people have no idea what bodhichitta actually is. They think it’s love and compassion whereas it’s not. Based on love and compassion, what you’re focused on is your own future enlightenment, which you haven’t attained yet but which you’re convinced that you can attain on the basis of Buddha-nature. Because it is generated by love and compassion and taking responsibility, you want to achieve that in order to be able to be of best help to everybody. So, you’re first you’re focused on everybody – “I want to be able to help them be free of suffering;” and then you focus on your own future enlightenment, which could be represented by a visualized Buddha. Or you do it with a mahamudra type of practice – this clarity of the mind of everyone that it represents – and think, “This is what I want to achieve in order to be able to help everybody.” That’s what you’re really focusing on. If you don’t have that description of what you’re trying to generate, how can you generate it? You can’t. You can sit there and think nice thoughts about everybody and that certainly would be beneficial, but that’s not bodhichitta. Therefore, it’s very important not to have this smug attitude of “I know best;” “I know everything already, let’s go. I want to begin” or “I don’t need to study.”

How extensively do people study, how extensively do they need to know the Buddhist teachings? I think that’s difficult to say because the teachings are so vast. From one point of view, if you want to really become a great teacher and a Buddha (who is the greatest teacher), if that’s what you’re aiming for, you have to be able to teach everybody. Since each person has different capacity and different methods might suit them, then you need to have studied almost everything – in fact everything, if you really want to be a Buddha. Now, I think at minimum what one would need is at least an appreciation of how vast the Buddhist teachings are and what are the various topics and the general idea of the approaches. I’m talking about not if you’re a Buddha already, but at a much less advanced level – to at least have a general idea of the various types of teachings that are available. This is so that if we ourselves don’t know that teaching, we could direct the person to that and not just think in an egotistic way that my method and what I know is best for everybody, because it may not be. It’s very important, if we’re going to become a teacher, not to be possessive of our students and force them into becoming clones of ourselves, because that doesn’t work. That’s really, I think, abuse of power by the teacher. You have to be able to send the student off to somebody else. You could say, “Well, I can teach you this and that, but I can’t teach you this other thing, so if you want to learn this other thing, here is who you should go study with.” Serkong Rinpoche himself sent me off to other teachers to learn various things if he wasn’t able to teach me. So, that’s fine; that’s not being disloyal. 

Do we need to become scholars? Scholars write books; we certainly don’t need to be scholars. How do the Tibetans study? They study with debate. There are two styles of study in the monasteries: the Gelug tradition follows one, the other traditions follow the other. In the Gelug tradition, it is primarily the debate structure of seeing if your understanding is stable. In other words, in the debate, the other person challenges you and challenges your understanding to see if you are consistent. If they can point out logical inconsistencies in your way of thinking, then you haven’t understood it properly. That’s the whole point of the debate. It’s not to come up with the right answer. It’s to learn to have logically consistent thinking – that you’re able to put it all together in a consistent way, since this is one of the big points of the Buddha’s teachings – that they are logical. They fit together. There may be different explanations, but each explanation is logically consistent. This is the point of the Gelugpa training in the debate. 

In the other traditions, they learn more to be able to give commentaries and explanations of texts. They do a little bit of this type of debate, but their main training – and this is why they go through more texts in their trainings than the Gelugpa does – is to learn the commentaries to the texts and to be able to give an explanation word for word of the texts. You become a Khenpo in those traditions. That’s what a khenpo is – khenpo literally means “learned” – somebody who knows the texts and can explain the texts. A geshe knows a certain number of texts and may have learned commentaries and so on by going to discourses, but that’s not the main part of their training. The main part is to learn how to think clearly. It’s quite interesting because the misconception about these trainings is that the non-Gelugpa are strong on meditation and the Gelugpa is not strong on meditation but on study, whereas that’s not so. 

The way that the young Serkong Rinpoche explains it is that the Gelugpa training in debate prepares you very well for meditation, because in order to be able to gain concentration on an understanding of impermanence, or voidness, or whatever it might be, you have to be free from doubts. You have to be absolutely certain that you have understood it correctly and have no more questions. All those questions are taken care of in the debate so after you finish that, everything is clear. Then you can really sit down and meditate. So, this process of study to train the mind is very important. The big ego comes in and says, “I don’t want to do it, it’s just intellectual, blah blah blah and the text is so big and it’s so much, it’s too much, I can’t deal with it.” Well, did you ever hear of patience? Patience to deal with the hardships of studying the Dharma and meditating and training ourselves, without getting discouraged and angry – that’s a big aspect of patience. Patience is also very necessary for helping others, because there are going to be some very difficult people you try to help and even when you try to help them and even when they are open to your help, they might not take your advice, or your advice might not work. You need patience – not to get upset; and perseverance, which is to not give up but continue, try something else. 

Until you are a Buddha, you can always learn more and understand more deeply. But if you are afraid that, “I haven’t understood it yet and so I have to study more and have to read more,” and you go on and on and on and never actually get on with it, that’s a problem as well. I remember when I was writing Anthology of Well-Spoken Advice – this lam-rim, graded stage text – which was a collection of oral teachings by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey over all the years. I worked on that thing for 12 years, rewriting, rewriting, adding and so on and one of my friends kept on bugging me about it. She kept on saying, when am I going to finally give birth to this thing. It’s been sitting inside my womb, as it were, for 12 years – isn’t that long enough? This actually was a very nice way of putting it.

I think that in the process of studying, you have to think about it. It is possible that you go to class, you take notes – I mean, in the West we don’t really debate – and then you have your busy life, and you don’t have time to really think about it. At best you take notes; a lot of people don’t take notes. I don’t know if there’s anybody in my class who’s taking notes, for example. If you don’t take notes, how in the world are you going to remember, especially if you go to a lot of teachings, unless you really have an incredible memory and how many people actually read their notes again? This I think is very helpful. But even if you don’t have time, I would think from my own experience of listening to teachings, that while you’re listening to it, you try to understand. It’s not that you stop listening and then think about it. If the teacher can remember – I’m talking now to myself – to give time for the students to think over what I just said, that’s even more helpful. But I think what’s important here is not to say, “Oh, the teachings are too much;” “There’s too much, it’s too big, it’s too vast;” “I don’t need that, I don’t want it.” Let’s think about that for a moment. If we do think it’s too much and so on, what’s behind it is this idea of the solid “me:” “I don’t need this, I know enough” or “I know what’s best.” It doesn’t mean that you don’t use any critical judgment between what is helpful and what’s not helpful, but you need to be open to what is helpful and not just have preconceived ideas. 

The second part of this verse is, “We haven’t entrusted ourselves to gurus and so we berate their oral transmission.” This ties in with the first part of this verse. This is the attitude of “I don’t need to learn from teachers,” and so we put down their oral transmission. I don’t think we have to think of it literally, as in when the teacher reads a text and gives the oral transmission; but we feel that learning from books is enough, or learning from the internet is enough and we don’t actually need the personal instruction of a teacher. Why? Because “I don’t need somebody to tell me what to do.” Here we’re don’t even think in terms that somebody actually having written this book – but “I can learn everything from this.” So even if you want to learn, it’s important to have a teacher. Some say it’s like with a mirror. You can’t really see yourself. But do all teachers point out to you, “You just asked a stupid question,” “You should get your hair cut,” “You should do this or that?” Teachers don’t usually do that, do they? Some are direct, some are indirect. 

Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, one of my close teachers, was very good at that. I can think of two instances. One was when I first studied with him; he eventually went on to be the teacher at the library, but I was his first Western student in Dalhousie, before the library was built in Dharamsala. I think I started studying with him in 1970 and he lived in a cow shed. This cow shed was made of mud and cow shit and some stones, and it was big enough for a bed that fit between three of the walls and then a little aisle in which I sat and three Rinpoches who were his students. One went on to become this Jhado Rinpoche – now he is retired – the abbot of His Holiness’s monastery, but at that time he was like 14 years old. Anyway, the four of us sat scrunched up in this cow shed with Geshe Dhargyey and it was totally infested with flies and all sorts of other vermin. The tulkus, of course, would play fly games in the way Tibetans like to do. They’re very good at catching a fly in mid-flight with their hand. Your hand has to go in the same direction as the fly. If you do that, you can catch the fly in your hand without hurting it. I remember Khamlung Rinpoche was very good at this. They used to shake up the fly so it would get dizzy and let it go and then the fly would fly in a dizzy way and they would all roar with laughter – this was their fly games. 

You can imagine somebody coming from the antiseptic America there; and Geshe Dhargyey could see that I was having a difficult time with this. Once he just sat up on his bed and waved his robes and his arms and went “aahhhh” – like that, with the flies and then just sat down very calmly and looked at me and smiled. In that sense, he was a very good mirror. The other time with him was when the old Serkong Rinpoche died. I had gone up to Rinpoche’s house and I found out and I was obviously very upset and, on my way back home, Geshe Dhargyey’s house was on the way, so I stopped there. Geshe Dhargyey was having lunch with another Tibetan and they were having lunch in the usual Tibetan way. When they have lunch, they are joking and laughing and drinking tea and all this sort of things. I’m sitting there really upset and he had me just sit there until they finished lunch. So, I sat there and then when he finished lunch, they were all jovial and so on, then I said to him, “Have you heard that Serkong Rinpoche died?” Serkong Rinpoche was one of his teachers as well and he said, “Yes, I heard and Trijang Rinpoche died and this one died and that one died and everybody’s teacher dies.” That was very, very helpful, actually. Life goes on. So, they can mirror in a certain sense, but that requires quite a lot of skill to be able to do that. Usually what they’ll do is they will act even more ridiculously than you’re acting, so that you see what you’re doing because you get annoyed with them – that they’re doing like this; and suddenly it dawns on you that I’m doing that. So, the guru does act as a mirror, which we could never do. But I think other people also can act as mirrors to us. Usually what annoys us the most in others are things that are our own problems that we see in them. But the main emphasis, the main need for the guru, is to inspire us. They give a living example of what we’re aiming to achieve, at least to a certain extent and it inspires you.

So, that verse was: 

We haven’t made proper studies and so we’re dismissive of the vast (teachings). We haven’t entrusted ourselves to gurus and so we berate their oral transmission. Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a “true self,” our foe. 

I think if people complain that there aren’t teachers here where I live and the teachers who may be here aren’t qualified and so on – I don’t think that’s really an excuse. Look at the great masters – the hardships that they went through in the past to collect the resources to be able to travel and meet the great teachers.

Let’s go on to the next verse, verse 87. It is numbered 88 in the old translation:

We fail to explain what the three baskets teach, but instead dwell on theories we’ve made up ourselves. We lack deep conviction and faith in the teachings, whatever we say leaves disciples confused. Trample him, trample him, dance on the head of this treacherous concept of selfish concern. Tear out the heart of this self-centered butcher who slaughters our chance to gain final release.

In the new translation, verse 86:

We can’t explain The Three Baskets and so we feign (teachings) that we have made up. We haven’t gained mastery through (genuine) pure visions and so the gauge (for the authenticity) of our discourse is that we speak, reprimanding. Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a “true self,” our foe.

This is continuing this aspect of how we regard the Dharma. The first thing, “We can’t explain The Three Baskets” – that’s a classification of the Buddha’s teachings; “and so we feign” – which means to make up – “(teachings) that we have made up.” This is when we are actually explaining the Dharma to the others as a teacher, we don’t explain the actual texts. We don’t rely on the teachings of the Buddha themselves, but we just teach from our own insights and thoughts. That’s a big ego trip as well: “I know better. The texts are too complicated, too archaic, too complex, but I’ve had this great insight and I’ll explain that.”

That’s very easy, to ignore the actual texts – “They’re boring, they’re dry, they don’t go deeply enough” – and you just explain from your own insights. I think the big problem with that it could be an ego trip: “I know better.” But even if it’s not such an ego trip, the danger is if you say that what you have understood is what Buddha taught. I think if you say, “This is my understanding of it” – you clearly indicate that it doesn’t really say this in the texts, but “My own idea is like this or that” – then you’re being honest and at the same time don’t ignore what it says in the text. 

Look at Tsongkapa. I think Tsongkapa is a good example here. Tsongkapa basically overthrew all the main explanations of his time about all the texts and he explained them differently. Now you could say – and he said – “Well, he got the teachings from a vision of Manjushri” – that’s again the next part of this verse. But no matter what Tsongkapa explained, no matter how radically different it was from previous explanations, he always based it on the texts. He said, “I explain it this way and this way because in the text it says like this and this is how we can understand the text.” He always went through usually the most difficult parts of the texts that other authors tended to just ignore – they just cited without explaining it. So, all his insights, he verified them, gave evidence – like giving footnotes, basically – of where it comes from, what he is basing it on. 

How do we explain the teachings? We explain it by saying, “Oh, the other people were stupid, I know what’s right.” Tsongkapa didn’t do that. He didn’t say they’re all stupid and just, “I’m great and you’re no good.” What he did was he said, “Here is this explanation, but it contradicts what it says in the text; it contradicts itself.” He is not reprimanding, he’s not scolding. It’s not that he is setting himself up as the righteous great holy one that understands – he’s the smart one and everybody else is the stupid dummy. “I figured it out, I’m the great one. Everybody before me was wrong” –that’s what you want to avoid. And you justify it by saying, “I had this pure vision.” “God told me to invade Iraq” – this type of thing. This becomes very tricky when you are a teacher. Even if you’re not a teacher, how do you explain to other people who might ask us questions? Do we just make up something? Do we say just, “This is my understanding” and then claim that is what Buddha teaches? 

Let’s look at that verse once more: 

We can’t explain The Three Baskets and so we feign (teachings) that we have made up. We haven’t gained mastery through (genuine) pure visions and so the gauge (for the authenticity) of our discourse is that we speak, reprimanding. Crash, really crash down, right on the head of (this) ruinous concept! Deal the death blow to the heart of this butcher, a “true self,” our foe.

Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever positive force has come from this, may it act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.