Audience: Why are hurtful, even violent responses more prevalent choices over caring ones, even though they clearly only bring more suffering?

Transcription

1 5. The Cause of Suffering: Karma Questions and Answers Audience: Why are hurtful, even violent responses more prevalent choices over caring ones, even though they clearly only bring more suffering? Rimpoche: Thank you for the question. It is because we are addicted to violence. We are not addicted to kindness. This is what addictions normally do. They take you into your comfort zone. We are comfortable to respond violently. We are uncomfortable in unfamiliar territory if we should respond to some kind of attack with compassion and love. We are not used to that. We are so used to acting violently. If someone abuses us we are very happy to respond with F- words. We are not happy or comfortable to think, Poor thing, they don t understand me properly or maybe I misunderstood. We are not comfortable to think that way. We are not used to it. It is simply addiction that is making the difference. Addictions make us move towards violence. And to move toward goodness we have to put in efforts. It doesn t come automatically. It is hardship. It is hard work. That is what the addictions are all about. The person who is addicted to cocaine has no hesitation to use it. Whenever any difficulty or discomfort arises, straight away they take their refuge in cocaine. The same thing if you are addicted to hiding in a cocoon. This is addiction. Audience: Do you have any tips to recognize our negative habitual patterns when they arise and how to no longer submit to their harmful influence? Rimpoche: Thank you for this question. This is a very true question. You hit it on the head. Any negative or positive actions we encounter, we really have some kind of automatic position. Mostly it is with an idea of protecting ourselves. That is somehow deeply ingrained in our personality. We really react to this. Along with that we are ready to attack and hit the others. I call that the porcupine position. This is always thinking that everybody is there to get you. Anything that is happening is attacking you. Your response is always to attack the other one back. This is deeply in our personality. It is a strong addiction. Recognizing it is very hard, particularly to recognize them in time. We almost forget about it the moment it has come. However, it is like the good old American saying: Better late than never. If you try to recognize it even after it is gone past tense even then it is worth recognizing and acknowledging this. Begin to train yourself, prepare yourself so that the next time you will be able to recognize it in the present tense. You will then know what is happening at the moment. If you get quite comfortable with that you will be able to recognize it in the future tense, before it is coming. Then you can help yourself. It is the personal efforts you put in to mentally getting accustomed to thinking that way. But then also, as a Buddhist practitioner, you apply prayers and purifications and things like that. That is also very helpful. But today I want to tell you: mentally prepare yourself. You can handle it. It is not impossible. Not only that: it is probably that you can do it. We all will be able to do it. 2010, Ngawang Gelek GRTR4 Page 1 of 5

2 Let us continue talking about the real essence of Buddha s teaching. It also happens to be the first teaching Buddha gave. When he obtained total enlightenment in India under the bodhi tree, his first reaction was to say: I found something extraordinary, profound, free of all fabrications, like luminous nature. It is a dharma like nectar, free of contamination. However, if I talk about it, nobody will understand. Therefore I choose to remain silent in the forest. Dharma in Buddhist language means religion, not so much in terms of doctrine but as real religion, real faith. The truth is dharma too. So he found such a nectar- like dharma. And the first thing Buddha did after obtaining enlightenment was to keep silent. He thought nobody would be able to understand. But then he was urged by the Hindu-Buddhist mythological gods, like Indra and Brahma, who came and offered their own hand implements. Brahma offered his Dharmachakra and Indra his conch shell. They asked Buddha to share his personal development and experience. Then the first teaching Buddha gave was in Varanasi s Deer Park. That teaching was called The Four Noble Truths. We know now that the Truth of Suffering is the reality of our life as it is. I have already explained this a number of times to all kinds of audience. In Buddhist terms the shortest way to look at this is as the three sufferings: suffering of suffering, suffering of change and pervasive suffering. Each of them is not prefabricated. They are not made by somebody else and given to us. No one decided for us, You should suffer and then we have to go through. That s not true according to Buddha. I only know we suffer. That is the truth. Beyond that I don t know. But it is not made by someone. It is our own deeds. All the sufferings we experience, mental, physical or emotional, plus all other sufferings like ageing, illness, death, separation, forced to be together with someone when you don t want to be all of these different sufferings are dependent arising. They depend on conditions and causes. The Second Noble Truth then is all about the Cause of Suffering. Today we are concentrating on the second segment of the Second Noble Truth. The cause really is created by us. Traditional Buddhist teachings name two causes: karma and delusions. Karma is something that we accumulate and then use. So we either enjoy or suffer until that karma is finished. But karma is continuously created. I would like to say it very clearly here, though it may not be the actual subject of this Tricycle thing. But it is very important for a lot of people, particularly those of you who are interested in the spiritual practice, whether it is Buddhist oriented or any other spiritual tradition. A number of us always think, Well, I have to suffer, but that way I will finish my karma. Yes, you will finish your karma, but that doesn t mean you finish your suffering. That s because we constantly, continuously create more karma, whether it is good or bad. Particularly bad or negative karma is created continuously. That s because we always have negative emotions, such as hatred, obsession and so forth. Anything from anger to hatred, from attraction to obsession, from ignorance, confusion, fear combined together, Buddha called all that the Three Poisons. You may see them described as attachment, anger and ignorance. But you have to understand there is a cultural language and 2010, Ngawang Gelek GRTR4 Page 2 of 5

3 understanding gap. The term attachment in Buddhism really refers to anything from attraction to obsession. The term anger means anything from irritation over temper tantrum to hatred. That sort of segment you have to see. When we talk about ignorance, it is not only not knowing, but also confusion as well as misunderstanding, not understanding clearly, wrong understanding. It includes being stupid. So the term ignorance is just thrown in instead of calling it stupid. These three poisons are the cause of suffering. That is the trouble within us, the evil within us if you want to use the term evil. We know that development is within us and enlightenment will be within us and ignorance, suffering and evil are within us. These three poisons influence us and change our pure being into some different force. You yourself are a wonderful human being. You are not hateful, you are not obsessed. You are a wonderful person. However, we get influenced by our negative emotions. Hatred makes us an angry person. Some people are angry all the time. They don t need a specific reason. They are just simply angry, so much so that they want to hurt somebody. But very often they hurt themselves. In the barbarian age, people would just pick a fight and kill somebody, no matter who. Now, in the educated time we don t do that. So we hurt ourselves. We are angry and obsessed all the time. So the nice, wonderful person comes across another person who gives them the rough shoulder. That is not you. That s not you. That s your negative emotions within you who are doing that. Each and every one of us has to look at ourselves. Whenever we are given a rough shoulder by somebody or feel discomfort, sad or lost, it is always wise to pause for a minute. Check who said what and why. Very often we have invalid reasons. We say, I don t know why I am so sad. I don t know why I am so angry. We go to extremes. The anger and hatred and all these are the right extremes of expressing our emotions. To the left extreme we have sadness, depression and so on. If you look for the reasons you see that the reasons for being angry or being sad are not valid none of them, except a few, like being sad if you lost a friend. But even if you have a valid reason there is no valid reason to torture and punish yourself by extreme actions. The early Indian Mahapundit Nagarjuna said, If there is something to be corrected, don t sit there, being sad. Go ahead and correct. If there is nothing to be done, why torture yourself additionally? In other words, don t sit there crying, if there is something that can be done. So do something. And if nothing can be done, what s the point of torturing yourself? Nagarjuna was one of the top Buddhist banner holders of the Mahayana path. So that s his philosophy. And it is great advice for us. Otherwise, you have your usual suffering there, plus some special ones, plus you create your own sadness, driving yourself to the corner. All of them are actually not yourself, but they are your fear, your anger. That s it. In my book Good Life Good Death I am explaining in more detail about anger, hatred as well as obsession. There is a chapter on anger and patience and attachment and pure love as well as ego and compassion. 2010, Ngawang Gelek GRTR4 Page 3 of 5

4 Anger is something horrible we know. But sometimes we don t realize that attachment is very bad. On the contrary, we like it. It gives us a little coolness. It makes you a little excited. Buddha called that sticky stuff. These mental negative emotions are addictions. They are very difficult to get rid of. They are not physical addictions. When you are addicted to a substance you know how difficult it is. That includes cigarettes and even coffee. If you are addicted to coffee and you don t get your coffee in the morning you get a headache, right? These are physical addictions and they can harm you physically but not mentally. One time, the late Allen Ginsberg called me from Kansas and he had William Burroughs with him. William Burroughs asked me, What do you think of my addictions to drugs when I die? My reply was, That s your physical addictions. They will not catch you beyond your death. You will leave your body along with the physical addictions. Then it slipped out of my mouth, But anger will catch you even on the other side. Later Allen Ginsberg told me, You hit the hammer right on the head. I didn t know that William Burroughs was a short-tempered person! These mental addictions not only get you here, but also in your next life. Let s say someone says, I have suffered so much. Now I will commit suicide. Will that person disappear after death? No. They will circle round and come back with a changed identity. The same old mole will get out of the ground and look up again. You may be sitting down there for six months, but then the same old mole will come up again. I don t know whether it sees its shadow or not, but that s what happens. So it the same person, with the same mind, with the same mental addictions, will come back. Whether these addictions are negative or positive depends on the person. We are addicted to negativity. We don t have to go to school to learn how to get angry. We don t have to learn how to develop obsession. We already have it plenty of it. We have it overwhelmingly. That s addiction. But we have to go to church, synagogue, or temple to develop faith. We have to go to those institutions to develop compassion. We have to go to these places to learn how to gain wisdom. So we are not addicted to these. We are not bringing them with us from a previous life. Maybe some kind of little imprint because we have some interest in it. That s all we brought. But negativities we brought so much. But the negativities we have plenty of them. If someone says boo we don t have to learn how to use the f- word. It comes automatically. Even little kids will do that. That s how we are addicted. But compassion no. Love no. Attraction yes. These are our addictions. When we are able to correct these we will have freedom and joy. If we can t, then for life after life the suffering will continue. Buddha called that samsara. We are circling helplessly from suffering to suffering to suffering. Liberation here means getting out of that circle. Get yourself out of that circle. Cut the chain at the root level not in between, because then it will continue again. The branch cutting will not destroy the poisonous tree. You have to remove it from the root. That is the Second Noble Truth leading towards the Fourth Noble Truth. With this I will conclude here today. Sorry, I couldn t give you an opportunity to ask questions. So thank you for coming here today and a good new year for all of us. The usual English New Year and now the Asian New Year. It happens to be Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian New Year all together. In this New Year I hope there will be peace, love, compassion and caring. That s the kind of change we are looking for 2010, Ngawang Gelek GRTR4 Page 4 of 5

5 from this election. We are looking for change from war to peace, from hatred to love, compassion and care. Not only in the administration but ourselves, in our own homes, in our own family, within ourselves. We want to function from the basis of love, compassion and caring, rather than from a basis of anger, disturbance, disgust and hatred. That s really beginning within ourselves. Look at your own life. It begins with something, maybe your own life, maybe the policy of the country or the world. Then you dislike that and then you say, I tried my best, nothing happened. Now I am disgusted. That moves gradually and moves totally into anger and hatred and then the individual is completely occupied. You are consumed by that. You don t want to do that. Put your foot down. Say to yourself, No matter what happens in this world, I am going to be the good one. I am going to correct myself. I am going to be a kind person, a loving person, a person who shares love, not anger. Make up your mind and have that as a resolution for this second New Year. You have a second chance here (laughs). That should be our resolution to have that life. We should all look forward to such a year. Thank you 2010, Ngawang Gelek GRTR4 Page 5 of 5