In the spread of Buddhism in America, the Kagyu
lineage was in the forefront of the sending of lamas to America. Of these
lamas, the three great progenitors of the dharma in America were His Holiness
the Gyalwa Karmapa, His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche, and the Vidyadhara Chogyam
Trungpa Rinpoche. It was very unfortunate that in the 1980s we lost all of
these great beings, but in the aftermath, there were a number of remarkable
lamas in the lineage who stepped forward to fill their places and to bring
great benefit to sentient beings. Amongst these, in the forefront of them, was
The Very Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, abbot by appointment of His
Holiness Karmapa of Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim. He is also abbot of his own
monasteries in Nepal and Tibet, and by appointment of Chogyam Trungpa
Rinpoche, of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. In addition he has been very generous
and kind to Western students, teaching the dharma extensively in retreats and
seminars throughout the world. Rinpoche taught in Seattle for the first time
in May 1996. This transcript is from his teachings the evening of May 24.
The essence of the buddhadharma, the teachings of the
Buddha, is practice. And when we say practice, we mean the practice of
meditation, which can consist of either the meditation known as tranquillity
or that known as insight. But in either case, it must be implemented in actual
practice. The reason we practice meditation is to attain happiness. And this
means states of happiness in both the short term and the long term. With
regard to short-term happiness, when we speak of happiness, we usually mean
either or both of two things, one of which is physical pleasure and the other
of which is mental pleasure. But if you look at either of these pleasant
experiences, the root of either one has to be a mind that is at peace, a mind
that is free of suffering. Because as long as your mind is unhappy and without
any kind of tranquillity or peace, then no matter how much physical pleasure
you experience, it will not take the form of happiness per se. On the other
hand, even if you lack the utmost ideal physical circumstances of wealth and
so on, if your mind is at peace, you will be happy anyway.
We practice meditation, therefore, in part in order to
obtain the short-term benefit of a state of mental happiness and peace. Now,
the reason why meditation helps with this is that, normally, we have a great
deal of thought, or many different kinds of thoughts running through our
minds. And some of these thoughts are pleasant, even delightful. Some of them
however, are unpleasant, agitating, and worrisome. Now, if you examine the
thoughts that are present in your mind from time to time, you will see that
the pleasant thoughts are comparatively few, and the unpleasant thoughts are
many - which means that as long as your mind is ruled or controlled by the
thoughts that pass through it, you will be quite unhappy. In order to gain
control over this process, therefore, we begin with the meditation practice of
tranquillity, which produces a basic state of contentment and peace within the
mind of the practitioner.
An example of this is the great Tibetan yogi Jetsun
Milarepa, who lived in conditions of the utmost austerity. He lived it utter
solitude, in caves and isolated mountains. His clothes were very poor; he had
no nice clothes. His food was neither rich nor tasty. In fact, [for a number
of years] he lived on nettle soup alone, as a result of which he became
physically very thin, almost emaciated. Now, if you consider his external
circumstances alone, the isolation and poverty in which he lived, you would
think he must have been miserable. And yet, as we can tell from the many songs
he composed, because his mind was fundamentally at peace, his experience was
one of constant unfolding delight. His songs are songs that express the utmost
state of delight or rapture. He saw every place he went to, no matter how
isolated and austere an environment it was, as beautiful, and he experienced
his life of utmost austerity as extremely pleasant.
In fact, the short-term benefits of meditation are more
than merely peace of mind, because our physical health as well depends, to a
great extent, upon our state of mind. And therefore, if you cultivate this
state of mental contentment and peace, then you will tend not to become ill,
and you will as well tend to heal easily if and when you do become ill. The
reason for this is that one of the primary conditions which brings about
states of illness is mental agitation, which produces a corresponding
agitation or disturbance of the channels and the energies within your body.
These generate new sicknesses, ones you have not yet experienced, and also
prevent the healing of old sicknesses. This agitation of the channels and
winds or energies also obstructs the benefit which could be derived from
medical treatment. If you practice meditation, then as your mind settles down,
the channels and energies moving through the channels return to their rightful
functioning, as a result of which you tend not to become ill and you are able
to heal any illnesses you already have. And we can see an illustration of this
also in the life of Jetsun Milarepa, who engaged in the utmost austerities
with regard to where he lived, the clothes he wore, the food he ate, and so
on, throughout the early part of his life. And yet this did not harm his
health, because he managed to have a very long life, was extremely vigorous
and youthful to the end of his life, which indicates the fact that through the
proper practice of meditation, the mental peace and contentment that is
generated calms down or corrects the functioning of the channels and energies,
allowing for the healing of sickness and the prevention of sickness.
The ultimate or long-term benefit of the practice of
meditation is becoming free of all suffering, which means no longer having to
experience the sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. Now, this
attainment of freedom is called, in the common language of all the Buddhist
traditions, buddhahood, and in the particular terminology of the vajrayana,
the supreme attainment, or supreme siddhi. In any case, the root or basic
cause of this attainment is the practice of meditation. The reason for this
is, again, that generally we have a lot of thoughts running through our minds,
some of which are beneficial - thoughts of love, compassion, rejoicing in the
happiness of others, and so on - and many of which are negative - thoughts of
attachment, aversion, jealousy, competitiveness, and so on. Now, there are
comparatively few of the former type of thought and comparatively many of the
latter type of thought, because we have such strong habits that have been
accumulating within us over a period of time without beginning. And it's only
by removing these habits of negativity that we can free ourselves from
suffering.
You cannot simply remove these mental afflictions, or
kleshas, by saying to yourself, "I will not generate any more mental
affliction," because you do not have the necessary freedom of mind or control
over the kleshas to do so. In order to relinquish these, you need to
actually attain this freedom, which begins, according to the common path, with
the cultivation of tranquillity. Now, when you begin to meditate, [when] you
begin to practice the basic meditation of tranquillity meditation, you may
find that your mind won't stay still for a moment. But this is not permanent.
This will change as you practice, and you will eventually be able to place
your mind at rest at will, at which point you have successfully alleviated the
manifest disturbance of these mental afflictions or kleshas. On the
basis of that, then you can apply the second technique, which is called
insight, which consists of learning to recognize and directly experience the
nature of your own mind. This nature is referred to as emptiness. When you
recognize this nature and rest in it, then all of the kleshas, all of
the mental afflictions that arise, dissolve into this emptiness, and are no
longer afflictions. Therefore, the freedom, or result, which is called
buddhahood, depends upon the eradication of these mental afflictions, and that
depends upon the practice of meditation.
The practice of tranquillity and insight is the general
path which is common to both the paths of sutra and tantra. In the specific
context which is particular to the vajrayana, the main techniques are called
the generation stage and the completion stage. These two techniques are
extremely powerful and effective. Generation stage refers to the visualization
of, for example, the form of a lineage guru, the form of a deity or yidam,
or the form of a dharma protector. Now, initially, when first encountering
this technique, it's not uncommon for beginners to think, what is the point of
this? Well, the point of this is that we support and confirm our ignorance and
suffering and our kleshas through the constant generation of impure
projections or impure appearances which make up our experience of samsara. And
in order to transcend this process, we need to transcend these impure
projections, together with the suffering that they bring about. A very
effective way to do this is to replace these gradually, replace these
projections of impurity with pure projections based on the iconography of the
yidam, the dharmapala, and so on. By starting to experience the
world as the mandala of the deity and all beings as the presence of that
deity, then you gradually train yourself to let go of mental afflictions, let
go of impure projections, and you create the environment for the natural
manifestation of your own innate wisdom.
Now, all of this occurs gradually through this practice
of the generation stage. The actual deities who are used can vary in
appearance. Some of them are peaceful and some of them are wrathful. In
general, the iconography of the wrathful deities points out the innate power
of wisdom, and that of the peaceful deities the qualities of loving-kindness
and compassion. Also, there are male deities and female deities. The male
deities embody the method or compassion, and the female deities embody
intelligence or wisdom.
For these reasons, it's appropriate to perform these
practices of meditation upon deities. And because these practices are so
prevalent in our tradition, if you go into a vajrayana practice place or
temple, you will probably see lots of images of deities - peaceful deities,
wrathful deities, and extraordinarily wrathful deities. And you'll see lots of
shrines with some very eccentric offerings on them. Initially, if you're not
used to all this, you might think, "What is all this?" And you might feel,
"Well, the basic practices of tranquility and insight make a lot of sense, and
are very interesting; and all these deities, all these rituals, and all these
eccentric musical instruments are really not very interesting at all."
However, each and every aspect of the iconography, and each and every
implement you find in a shrine room, is there for a very specific reason. The
reason in general is that we need to train ourselves to replace our projection
of impurity or negativity with a projection or experience of purity. And you
can't simply fake this, you can't simply talk yourself into this, because
you're trying to replace something that is deeper than a concept. It's more
like a feeling. So, therefore, in the technique by which you replace it, a
great deal of feeling or experience of the energy of purity has to be actually
generated, and in order to generate that, we use physical representations of
offerings, we use musical instruments in order to inspire the feeling of
purity, and so on. In short, all of these implements are useful in actually
generating the experience of purity.
That is the first of the two techniques of vajrayana
practice, the generation stage. The second technique is called the completion
stage, and it consists of a variety of related techniques, of which perhaps
the most important and the best known are mahamudra and dzogchen or "The Great
Perfection." Now, sometimes, it seems to be presented that dzogchen is more
important, and at other times it seems to be presented that mahamudra is more
important, and as a result people become a little bit confused about this and
are unsure which tradition or which practice they should pursue. Ultimately,
the practices in essence and in their result are the same. In fact, each of
them has a variety of techniques within it. For example, within mahamudra
practice alone, there are many methods which can be used, such as candali
(see footnote) and so forth, and within the practice of dzogchen alone there
are as well many methods, such as the cultivation of primordial purity,
spontaneous presence, and so on. But ultimately, mahamudra practice is always
presented as guidance on or an introduction to your mind, and dzogchen
practice is always presented as guidance or introduction to your mind. Which
means that the root of these is no different, and the practice of either
mahamudra or dzogchen will generate a great benefit. Further, we find in
The Aspiration of Mahamudra by the third Gyalwa Karmapa, Lord Rangjung
Dorje, the following stanza:
It does not exist, and has not been seen, even by the
Victors.
It is not non-existent, it is the basis of all Samsara and Nirvana.
This is not contradictory, but is the great Middle Way.
May I come to see the nature which is beyond elaboration.
And that is from the mahamudra tradition. Then, in
The Aspiration for the Realization of the Nature of the Great Perfection
by the omniscient Jigme Lingpa, an aspiration liturgy from the dzogchen
tradition, we find the following stanza:
It does not exist, it has not been seen, even by the
Victors.
It is not non-existent, it is the basis of all Samsara and Nirvana.
It is not contradictory, it is the great Middle Way.
May I come to recognize dzogpa chenpo, the nature of the ground.
In other words, these two traditions are concerned
entirely with the recognition of the same nature.
So both short-term and ultimate happiness depend on the
cultivation of meditation, which from the common point of view of the sutras
(the point of view held in common by all tradition of Buddhism) is
tranquillity and insight, and from the uncommon point of view of the vajrayana
is the generation and completion stages.
Meditation, however, depends in part upon the generation
of loving-kindness and compassion. And this is true of any meditation, but it
is especially most true of vajrayana meditation. The reason is that the
specific vajrayana practices - the visualization of deities or meditation upon
mahamudra and so on - depend upon the presence of a pure motivation on the
part of the practitioner from the very start. If this pure motivation or
genuine motivation is not present - and, since we're ordinary people, its
quite possible that it might not be present - not much benefit will really
occur. For that reason, vajrayana practitioners always try to train their
motivation, and try to develop the motivation that's known as the awakened
mind, or bodhicitta.
Now, as an indication of this, if you look at the
liturgies used in vajrayana practice, you'll see that the long and extensive
forms of vajrayana liturgies always begin with a clarification of, or
meditation upon, bodhicitta, and that even the short and shortest liturgies
always begin with a meditation upon bodhicitta, loving-kindness and
compassion, the point of this being that this type of motivation is necessary
for all meditation, but especially for vajrayana practice.
The only real meaning that we can give to our being born
on this planet - and in particular being born as human beings on this planet -
and the only really meaningful result that we can show for our lives is to
have helped the world: to have helped our friends, to have helped all the
beings on this planet as much as we can. And if we devote our lives or any
significant part of our lives to destroying others and harming others, then to
the extent that we actually do so, our lives have been meaningless. So if you
understand that the only real point of a human life is to help others, to
benefit others, to improve the world, then you must understand that the basis
of not harming others but benefiting others is having the intention not to
harm others and the intention to benefit others.
Now, the main cause of having such a stable intention or
stable motivation is the actual cultivation of love and compassion for others.
Which means, when you find yourself full of spite and viciousness - and it is
not abnormal to be so - then you have to recognize it, and be aware of it as
what it is, and let go of it. And then, even though you may be free of spite
or viciousness, and you may have the wish to improve things, you may be
thinking only of yourself; you may be thinking only of helping or benefiting
yourself. When that's the case, then you have to recollect that the root of
that type of mentality, which is quite petty and limited and tight, is
desiring victory for yourself even at the expense of the suffering and loss
experienced by others. And, in that case, you have to gradually expand your
sympathy for others, and therefore this cultivation of bodhicitta or altruism
in general as a motivation is an essential way of making your life meaningful.
The importance of love and compassion is not an idea
that is particular to Buddhism. Everyone throughout the world talks about the
importance of love and compassion. There's no one who says love and compassion
are bad and we should try and get rid of them. However, there is an uncommon
element in the method or approach which is taken to these by Buddhism. In
general, when we think of compassion, we think of a natural or spontaneous
sympathy or empathy which we experience when we perceive the suffering of
someone else. And we generally think of compassion as being a state of pain,
of sadness, because you see the suffering of someone else and you see what's
causing that suffering and you know you can't do anything to remove the cause
of that suffering and therefore the suffering itself. So, whereas before you
generated compassion, one person was miserable, and after you generate
compassion, two people are miserable. And this actually happens.
However, the approach (that the Buddhist tradition
takes) to compassion is a little bit different, because it's founded on the
recognition that, whether or not you can benefit that being or that person in
their immediate situation and circumstances, you can generate the basis for
their ultimate benefit. And the confidence in that removes the frustration or
the misery which otherwise somehow afflicts ordinary compassion. So, when
compassion is cultivated in that way, it is experienced as delightful rather
than miserable.
The way that we cultivate compassion is called
immeasurable compassion. And, in fact, to be precise, there are four aspects
of what we would, in general, call compassion, that are called, therefore, the
four immeasurables. Now, normally, when we think of something that's called
immeasurable, we mean immeasurably vast. Here, the primary connotation of the
term is not vastness but impartiality. And the point of saying immeasurable
compassion is compassion that is not going to help one person at the expense
of hurting another. It is a compassion that is felt equally for all beings.
The basis of the generation of such an impartial compassion is the recognition
of the fact that all beings without exception really want and don't want the
same things. All beings, without exception, want to be happy and want to avoid
suffering. There is no being anywhere who really wants to suffer. And if you
understand that, and to the extent that you understand that, you will have the
intense wish that all beings be free from suffering. And there is no being
anywhere who does not want to be happy; and if you understand that, and to the
extent that you understand that, you will have the intense wish that all
beings actually achieve the happiness that they wish to achieve. Now, because
the experience of happiness and freedom from suffering depend upon the
generation of the causes of these, then the actual form your aspiration takes
is that all beings possess not only happiness but the causes of happiness,
that they not only be free of suffering but of the causes of suffering.
The causes of suffering are fundamentally the presence
in our minds of mental afflictions - ignorance, attachment, aversion,
jealousy, arrogance, and so on - and it is through the existence of these that
we come to suffer. Now, through recognizing that there is a way to transcend
these causes of suffering - fundamentally, through the eradication of these
causes through practicing meditation, which may or may not happen immediately
but is a definite and workable process - through this confidence, then this
love - wishing beings to be happy - and the compassion of wishing beings to be
free from suffering, is not hopeless or frustrated at all. And, therefore, the
boundless love and boundless compassion generate a boundless joy that is based
on the confidence that you can actually help beings free themselves.
So boundless love is the aspiration that beings possess
happiness and the causes of happiness. Boundless compassion or immeasurable
compassion is the aspiration that beings be free of suffering and the causes
of suffering. And the actual confidence and the delight you take in the
confidence that you can actually bring these about is boundless joy. Now,
because all of these are boundless or immeasurable or impartial, then they all
have a quality, which is equanimity. Which is to say that if these are
cultivated properly, you don't have compassion for one being but none for
another , and so on. Now, normally, when we experience these qualities, of
course, they are partial; they are anything but impartial. In order to
eradicate the fixation that causes us to experience compassion only for some
and not for others, then you can actually train yourself in cultivating
equanimity for beings through recognizing that they all wish for the same
thing and wish to avoid the same thing, and through doing so you can greatly
increase or enhance your loving-kindness and compassion.
This has been a brief introduction to the practice of
meditation, and how to train in and generate compassion. If you have any
questions, please ask them.
Question: Rinpoche, can you speak a little bit
about the difference between pure projection and impure projection, and in
particular, where do pure projections actually come from?
Rinpoche: First of all, impure projections are
how we experience because of the presence in our minds of kleshas or
mental afflictions. Because we have kleshas, then we experience friend
and enemy - that to which we are attached and that towards which we have
aversion - we experience delight and disgust and so on. And all of these ways
we experience the world - all these ways we experience are fundamentally
tinged with, at least tinged with unpleasantness.
Now, what is called pure appearance or pure projection
is based on the experience of the true nature or essential purity of what, in
confusion, we experience to be five types of mental affliction, or the five
kleshas. The true nature of these five kleshas is what are called
the five wisdoms. For example, when you let go of fixation or obsession on a
self, or with yourself, then the fundamental nature of the way you experience
is a sameness, a lack of preference or partiality, which is called the wisdom
of sameness. And, when you recognize the nature of all things, then that
recognition which pervades or fills all of your experience is called the
wisdom of the dharmadhatu. And so on.
Now, when you experience the five wisdoms rather than
the five kleshas or five mental afflictions, then instead of projecting
all of the impurity which you project on the basis of experiencing the
kleshas, you project purity, or you experience purity, which is the actual
manifestation of these five wisdoms as realms, as forms of buddhas, and these
are what are called the pure appearances which are experienced by bodhisattvas
and so forth. Now, in order to approach this, in order to cultivate the
experience of these wisdoms and the external experiences which go along with
the experience of these wisdoms, we meditate upon the bodies of these buddhas,
the realms, palaces and so on. By generating clarity of these visualized
appearances and stabilizing that, then gradually we transform how we
experience the world.
Question: In practicing compassion, there's the
practice of tonglen, which is the sending and receiving, taking the
suffering from all sentient beings and giving them the happiness and merit
that we have. And, in this practice, I've practiced it before, and it seems to
go well for a while, but then there's a subtle sense of "I" that creeps in
that says, "I don't really want to take the suffering," or its, "I can't deal
with too many people having cancer, I just can't take it all on myself," and
so one kind of loses a little courage in the practice. So, could you
illuminate us on this practice, and how to overcome these obstacles and really
develop heroic mind?
Rinpoche: What you say is very true, especially
in the beginning of undertaking this practice. And, in fact, its okay that it
be experienced that way. Even though there is a quality of faking it about the
degree to which you actually really are ready to take on the suffering of
others in the beginning, there's still benefit in doing the practice, because
up until you begin this practice, you've probably been entirely selfish. And,
to even attempt to fake altruism is a tremendous improvement. But it doesn't
remain insincere like that, because eventually the habit starts to deepen and
starts to counteract the habit of selfishness.
Now if, when you began practicing tonglen, you
already had one hundred per cent concern with the welfare of others and no
concern for your own welfare, then you wouldn't need to practice tonglen in
the first place. So, it is designed to work for a practitioner who's starting
from a place of selfishness and to lead them into this place of concern for
others. And, gradually, by using the practice, you will actually cultivate the
sincere desire to take suffering away from others and experience it yourself;
you will cultivate real love and compassion for others. But on the other hand,
you don't really do the practice in order to be able to, at that moment, take
on the suffering of others and experience it yourself; you're really doing it
in order to train the mind. And by training your mind and developing the
motivation and the actual wish to free others from suffering, then the
long-term result is that you have the ability to directly dispel the suffering
of others.
Question: Rinpoche, you said that we may not be
able to - one person may not be able to directly affect or remove short-term
unhappiness or suffering of another person, but that we can learn to generate
the basis of another's happiness, ultimate happiness. So could you say more,
please, about how one person can generate the basis of ultimate happiness for
another person?
Rinpoche: Well, the direct basis of establishing
another being in a state of freedom or happiness, long-term or ultimate
happiness, is being able to show them how to get rid of their mental
afflictions and to teach them how to recognize and therefore abandon causes of
suffering. And, through doing so in that way, then you can establish them
gradually in ultimate happiness. But even in cases where you can't, for
whatever reason, do that, by having the intention to benefit that being, then
when you yourself become fully free, then you will be able to actually help
them and gradually free and protect them as well.
Question: Rinpoche, can you say a little more
about the practice of letting go when the mind is agitated, as you described,
as used in mahamudra and dzogchen? I experience my mind when I sit as being
agitated. And there's the practice of letting go. And I'm wondering if you can
just say more about that in a practical way?
Rinpoche: In general, the main approach that is
taken in the mahamudra and dzogchen traditions is applied when you are looking
at the nature of your mind. Now, kleshas or mental afflictions are
thoughts, and thoughts are the natural display of the mind. Thoughts may be
pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant, they may be positive or negative, but in any
case, whatever type of thought arises, you deal with it in exactly the same
way. You simply look directly at it.
Now, looking at the thought, or looking into the
thought, or looking at the nature of the thought, is quite different from
analyzing it. You don't attempt to analyze the contents of the thought, nor do
you attempt to think about the thought. You just simply look directly at it.
And when you look directly at a thought, you don't find anything. Now, you may
think that you don't find anything because you don't know how to look or you
don't know where to look, but in fact, that's not the reason. The reason,
according to Buddha, is that thoughts are empty. And this is the basic meaning
of all the various teachings on emptiness he gave, such as the sixteen
emptinesses and so on.
Now, to use anger as an example of this, if you become
angry, and then you look directly at the anger - which doesn't mean analyze
the contents of the thoughts of anger, but you look directly at that specific
thought of anger - then you won't find anything. And, in that moment of not
finding anything, the poisonous quality of the anger will somehow vanish or
dissolve. Your mind will relax, and you will, at least to some extent, be free
of anger.
Now, you may or may not, at this point, understand this,
but in any case, you'll have opportunity to work with this approach tomorrow
and the next day, and over the next couple of days you may come to have some
experience of this.
So, we're going to conclude now with a brief dedication.
But I would also like to thank you for demonstrating your great interest in
dharma, and listening and asking questions.
footnote: gtum-mo in Tibetan, meaning
fierce or wrathful and referring to a kind of psychic heat generated and
experienced through certain meditative practices of the vajrayana. This heat
serves to burn up all types of obstacles and confusion. Included in the Six
Doctrines of Naropa, the Six Doctrines of Niguma, and the Six Doctrines of
Sukhasiddhi.
