Читать книгу Fearless Simplicity - Drubwang Tsoknyi Rinpoche - Страница 13

SALAD DRESSING

My style of teaching is not necessarily a style that belongs only to me personally, although it’s one I often use. I lean toward an approach that emphasizes knowledge. Equally significant is the approach that emphasizes method, or means. Please understand that means and knowledge must always go hand in hand, that we should always practice them in combination. In other words, we need to combine the two accumulations of merit and wisdom. Another way to phrase this is to emphasize the need to combine the two levels of truth, relative and ultimate. This combination of means and knowledge, merit and wisdom, relative truth and ultimate truth is like a great eagle in flight, which needs two wings to fly. The eagle unfolds its wings and soars through the sky based on these twin supports. Shantideva said: “Unfold the two wings of means and knowledge and fly to the state of enlightenment, the realm of all buddhas.” The point is that the two wings are equally important. Imagine a bird flying with one wing: it might manage to get off the ground, but it will soon plummet without having gotten very far.

There are plenty of other analogies for this. Doesn’t a human being need two legs? When speaking, don’t we need both the upper lip and the lower lip? When eating, don’t we need both the upper and lower teeth in order to chew? And to determine a distance, don’t we need both eyes? To ring a gong, don’t we need both the mallet and the instrument to make the sound? In the same way, when practicing the Dharma, we need both means and knowledge, method and insight. This is not somebody’s invention or bright idea; this is how reality is. It is a natural law in all cases and situations.

The best situation is to practice in a way in which mind essence is recognized in conjunction with the skillful Vajrayana methods. These methods include refuge, bodhichitta, the preliminary practices, the yidam deity, and so on. To practice these concurrently, excluding neither one nor the other, is the most profound way of perfecting the two accumulations. It is the way of bringing the ground into the path. This is a topic that we might want to reflect on a little bit more.

No matter what Buddhist practice we apply, we should always remember that the two accumulations must be perfected. This holds true from the beginning level of shravaka training all the way up to and including Ati Yoga. There are various ways to perfect the two accumulations; here, I will discuss an approach unique to Dzogchen.

The recognition of empty essence—in other words, the insight that realizes egolessness, the absence of an independent identity—is the state of original wakefulness itself. Training in this state perfects the accumulation of wisdom. During whatever formal practice you undertake, do not leave behind this accumulation of wisdom beyond reference point; rather, embrace the particular practice with the recognition of empty essence. Training in this perfects the accumulation of merit, and it does so without your having to hold on to any concepts or struggle to do so. In this way, by simply training in recognizing mind essence you can simultaneously perfect the two accumulations of merit and wisdom.

Through the profound methods of Vajrayana, the two accumulations can be perfected on a tremendous scale. By utilizing certain skillful means to further enhance the recognition of mind essence, we can develop even more quickly, reaching progressively deeper levels.

Let me mention some of these methods. The first entrance to the Buddhist path, which is taking refuge, involves regarding the Buddha as your teacher, the Dharma as your path, and the Sangha as your companions on the path and using all three of these as support, as a refuge. We take refuge in the Three Precious Ones, which are called the outer Three Jewels, in order to realize the state of complete enlightenment. In other words, you could say, “I place my trust in you, the outer Three Jewels, in order to recognize and actualize the inner Three Jewels.”

It’s not difficult to understand taking refuge once we realize that we already take refuge to a certain extent in various things in the outer world during the ordinary course of our lives. For example, as university students we are helped and supported by the educational setting. We respect it for what it is, that it enables us to get our degree. Here we are taking refuge in the university, and in that sense it is worthwhile. The secular tutoring we receive enables us to reach that full degree of education, of intellectual knowledge, which is similar to the Dharma teachings. Our fellow students and the faculty are the university sangha, whom we respect as helpers on our educational path. In Buddhist terms, there is the Buddha, who represents the ultimate state of enlightenment. There are the teachings that he gave, the Dharma; using them is the path to that state of enlightenment. Then there are the Sangha companions, our fellow practitioners, who provide the support and help for us to reach that destination. When we take refuge in this way, we accept the precept of giving up harming others as well as relinquishing the basic causes for harming others.

Generally speaking, reality has two aspects: the seeming and the real. We take refuge from the seeming aspect, which is the state of confusion, in order to realize the real. As long as we haven’t realized how things actually are, there is a need to seek support in the objects of refuge. A certain beneficial influence arises though this, which, in old-fashioned terminology, is called blessings.

By taking refuge, we are actually requesting an influence. We want to be influenced by what the buddhas have experienced; we want to have their state of realization sway our minds. That is the real purpose of taking refuge. It is actually possible because the realized state of the buddhas is not a solid, material substance but something insubstantial. Since our minds are also not made of material substance, a connection can arise between these two—between our minds and the enlightened minds of the buddhas. Using material substances to influence our immaterial mind can have a certain effect, but it is superficial. True blessings can take place only through that which shares our mind’s immaterial quality.

We could distort the act of taking of refuge by thinking of ourselves as lost, helpless, and worthless: “I can’t do anything except surrender to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.” Then we wait there and expect that the buddhas will take us and throw us into an enlightened state, just like flinging a stone into a pond. I’m sorry, but this is not the way it works. This is not the right way to take refuge. Rather, regard taking refuge as being willing to realize the state of enlightenment so that we understand the fundamental indivisibility of the wisdom of the buddhas and the original wakefulness present in ourselves. That is the real refuge.

Once we have established the refuge attitude in ourselves in a realistic and effective way, the next step is to become a bodhisattva. Taking the bodhisattva vow essentially means we form the resolve to help other beings, and we actively work to create the basis for doing so. In other words, having taken the vow, we are counted among the bodhisattvas. This doesn’t mean we become perfect bodhisattvas simply by taking the vow. Rather, it means that we are aiming in that direction; we are moving toward bodhisattva perfection. Taking the bodhisattva vow is like planting the seed of being a bodhisattva. We are creating the basis for helping and benefiting others.

Bodhichitta, the enlightened attitude, is like a moisturizer for our basic nature. It is like salad dressing on the salad of our basic state. Without this, we are just a little too dry. Our usual way of solidifying and fixating on experience causes us to be deluded, to move away from our basic nature. This pursuit makes us very dry, antsy and restless. We are always chasing after this and that, in a very limited and narrow-minded way. Both our perspective and aims must be opened up. We may not immediately be able to generate the true and perfected state of awakened mind, but we can at least begin to by forming a wish, a resolve: “I want to benefit all sentient beings, and for this reason I will practice the Dharma.” It’s possible for us to experience that opening, that starting point, right now, this very instant.

The real bodhichitta, which is awakened mind, is of course already present within us as our basic nature, but somehow it is covered up by our normal way of thinking, encased within the shell of deluded perceptions. It’s not so easy to have it become visible immediately in a fullfledged way. It’s as if we need to plagiarize awakened mind a little bit, by forming a thought as an imitation. There is really no way around this other than to make a facsimile of the awakened attitude. When a new gadget is invented in the United States, in China someone immediately makes a copy of it to sell. The real gadget is still in the USA, but the copies are being fabricated right and left. Similarly, we need to copy bodhichitta by forming the thought of compassion for all beings. There is nothing wrong with that. Bodhichitta is not copyrighted; no company manufactures it, so it’s not as if we’ll be sued. We simply want to imitate what we have heard so much about, the awakened state realized by the buddhas and masters of the past.

Now we may have heard in various Mahamudra and Dzogchen teachings that we should be totally free from artificial concepts, completely natural, and realize mind’s original, natural state. And here I am saying, “Form the thought of wanting to benefit all sentient beings.” We might think, “That’s artificial. If I try to make up something that is not already present, then I’m corrupting the mind’s natural state.” We might even feel guilty and shy away from doing so and thus end up with nothing. Of course, it is wonderful if you have already realized the original wakefulness that is the awakened state of all buddhas; by all means, don’t hold yourself back. There is no problem at all if it arises as an actuality in your own experience. But if it doesn’t and you feel guilty about fabricating bodhisattva motivation, you simply end up without anything—without either the real thing or the copy. Many people stumble on this problem.

To make a copy, to fabricate a conceptual thought, is perfectly okay if it is helpful and useful. If a copy works like the original, what’s the problem? The idea here is that if we don’t have anything, if we don’t have a natural orientation toward the bodhisattva’s frame of mind, then it is fine to make a copy, because then you at least have something. As you improve upon it, it gets better and better, so that ultimately it may be perfectly splendid. There is nothing wrong with imitating the vow taken by all bodhisattvas; in fact, we should do so.

Refuge and bodhichitta are both included in the excellent method known as the preliminary practices of the four times 100,000. To undertake these preliminary practices, the ngöndro, is something very precious. We begin by taking refuge together with making prostrations, bowing down 100,000 times. Sometimes we form the bodhisattva resolve along with refuge and prostrations. The purpose of taking refuge, as I mentioned earlier, is to turn away from samsaric existence and aim in the direction of complete enlightenment. We do so by seeking help from the Three Precious Ones.

Next in the ngöndro comes the meditation and recitation on Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva is the buddha who embodies all other enlightened families. He is described as their natural form and as the buddha of purification. This practice removes all our negative karma and obscurations, all our faults and failings in the sense of broken promises, which prevent us from making progress on the path to enlightenment.

Next is the mandala offering. The purpose of this is to relinquish all kinds of ego-clinging and any form of conceptual attitude that holds on to something as being one’s own. Giving away everything, by means of the outer, inner, and innermost mandala offerings, relinquishes all types of clinging. Automatically, at the same time, the accumulation of merit is perfected.

It’s said that the first mandala offering was made after the Buddha attained complete enlightenment, when the kings of the gods, Brahma and Indra, requested him to teach the Dharma. Presenting the Buddha with a thousand-spoked golden wheel and a miraculous rare white conch shell that coiled clockwise, they requested him to begin teaching, to turn the wheel of the Dharma.

Later, when the Tibetan king Trisong Deutsen invited Padmasambhava to Tibet to establish the Buddha’s teachings in his country, he composed four lines of verse to accompany his offering. As he made the mandala offering to Padmasambhava with the request to teach, he gave his entire kingdom, all three provinces of central Tibet, as an offering. While making the offering of his kingdom, he chanted these lines, which we still recite today:

The earth is perfumed with scented water and strewn with flowers,

Adorned with Mount Meru, the four continents, the sun, and the moon.

Imagining this as the Buddha realm, I offer it

So that all beings may enjoy that pure realm.¹

I am told that it was due to the auspicious coincidence of the king making this mandala offering that the Vajrayana teachings were able to remain for such a long time in the country of Tibet, in a natural and very propitious way.

What is the substance of such an auspicious coincidence? It consists of a complete surrender of ego-clinging. That is essentially what our practice of the mandala offerings is about—laying down everything that could be clung to as being “me” and “mine.” We could say that the king totally opened himself up. He turned over to Padmasambhava whatever he might cling to as being his, and in this way he rendered himself a genuinely suitable recipient for the Vajrayana teachings.

By completely surrendering ego-clinging, King Trisong Deutsen established an authentic basis for the Vajrayana teachings in Tibet. Not only was giving away his entire kingdom an incredibly courageous deed; it was also a way to temporarily make a gap in ego-clinging. Of course, ego-clinging cannot be totally and permanently erased from one moment to the next. This is a process that happens through disciplined training. Still, the temporary suspension of ego-clinging is in itself something truly remarkable.

Some people might ask, “How can I offer Mount Meru, the four continents, the sun and the moon, and so on when they don’t actually belong to me? How can I give them away? They didn’t belong to King Trisong Deutsen either, so how could he give them away?” It’s not necessary to be this nitpicky. As a matter of fact, our world does belong to us. Whatever we perceive through our five senses and whatever occurs in our mental field constitutes our world, our life, and as the contents of our own experience it is ours to give. Our personal experience doesn’t belong to anybody else. Thus, we are able to give away whatever we perceive as our world.

One purpose of the mandala offering is to eliminate ego-clinging. Another is to perfect the accumulation of merit. Any act of giving is an offering, not just of the object being given but of the effort that went into creating that object. For example, when giving a single butter lamp you offer not only the act of lighting the wick, but also the work you put into obtaining the butter or the oil, creating the vessel, providing the metal that formed the vessel, and so forth. This principle applies to other types of offering as well. Basically, all that energy is what creates the merit.

Some people understand the concept of merit quite readily, while for others it’s difficult to comprehend. Merit most definitely does exist. Like everything else in the world, it’s formed through causes and conditions. All phenomena come about through causes and circumstance; there is no independent entity anywhere. Everything depends on causes and conditions. For instance, anything material is dependent on the four elements. Especially in the West, with its emphasis on materiality, matters are very dependent. Like everything else, merit is dependent on causes and conditions. Through the accumulation of merit, positive situations can be created. For example, meeting with the Dharma and receiving instructions on practice requires a certain amount of favorable circumstances to arise simultaneously. The occurrence of this requires merit.

Mandala offering is a very profound practice, which is why it is one of the preliminaries in the Tibetan tradition. I personally feel that all the preliminary practices are extremely important, but among them, the most profound are probably guru yoga and mandala offering. That doesn’t mean the others are not profound, but rather that these are perhaps the most profound. People often come to me and say, “I understand the reason for doing the prostrations, taking refuge. I also understand the purification aspect of Vajrasattva practice. But I just don’t get the point of making mandala offerings, and I don’t understand guru yoga.” This kind of statement shows how profound these practices actually are. Ego is not so willing to accept them. Ego is very clever and would like to create doubt for us about anything that undermines it, anything that might prove hazardous to its favorite practice, which is ego-clinging. This is really true—check it out for yourself. Whenever something is harmful to ego, ego will try to raise doubts about it. We need to recognize this trick from the beginning.

Prostrations are easy for people to understand. Some look at them as if they’re good physical exercise. They think that they’re good for the heart: “Oh, I understand. Prostrations strengthen my legs and back. If I sit for a long time in meditation and I get back pain, then I’ll just do prostrations to correct this. I might feel drowsy or lazy, but prostrations will chop up the laziness. I think refuge is very important: whatever we do, we need a certain type of guidance. So we have the Buddha as our guide, Dharma as the path or technique, and friends as the Sangha. I completely understand taking refuge. And Vajrasattva is the natural form or the manifestation of compassionate emptiness. I get it. By chanting the mantra and visualizing this thing moving down through me, well, I don’t exactly know what bad karma and obscurations are, but I feel less guilty. All this feeling bad about myself goes away, so that’s great. Karma, all these things, well, I don’t really know—but never mind, I certainly have some baggage, a few emotional patterns. I must clean these out; it makes sense.

But mandala offering I don’t understand. Offering the whole world—it doesn’t even belong to me. Mount Meru does not even exist, and what’s this about the four continents, when there are actually seven? And why offer the moon and sun? It’s ridiculous, crazy talk. Also that thing about blessings, I don’t get it. And why do we have to supplicate the guru, who after all is somebody made of flesh and blood, just like us? What’s the point of that?”

These doubts come up because we don’t really understand what the “guru” in guru yoga really means. The guru is not just the particular person you met. The guru principle refers to a lot of things. There is the guru as nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya, and dharmakaya, and the essence body, the svabhavikakaya. There is the guru as living lineage master, as well as the guru who manifests as our life situations and the guru who is the scriptures we read. Then there is the guru who is our intrinsic nature. We should understand all of these aspects as being the guru. If you learn something from a tree, then that is the guru as symbolic experience. You could say, “All right, I’ll take support from the tree; I learned something there.” If your wife is giving you a hard time and you learn something from that, your wife is your guru in that situation.

The purpose of guru yoga is to receive the blessings of realization of the root and lineage masters. Recognition and stability in the self-knowing wakefulness of one’s own nature doesn’t take place without direct transmission by a living teacher. Therefore, connecting with a living master and practicing guru yoga is essential.

There is a very good reason the preliminary practices come before the main part of practice. Every single aspect of the preliminary practices is meant to be like a pestle to grind and smash your laziness. Imagine that you are making hot sauce, achaar, with a stone mortar and pestle. When making this Tibetan salsa, you successively add garlic, ginger, chili peppers, and spices, grinding them all together into a smooth sauce. It’s the same with the preliminaries: you smash your laziness first with prostrations, then with Vajrasattva practice, then with mandala offerings and guru yoga, till all the laziness is gone. If you really go through these practices in an effective, thorough way, there is no room for being lazy, for hanging on to personal comfort—none at all.

After we do all the preliminary practices, we find we can sit for one hour, five hours, six hours in meditation, and it really feels like taking time off: “What I went through before was so hard, but this is nothing—I can easily sit and meditate for hours and hours.” This is because the laziness has been totally vanquished.

You might think it would be enough to do only 10,000 repetitions, but our tradition is to do 100,000 of each. With this quantity, there’s no way to be lazy. You’ll never finish unless you really persevere, really push yourself and use a lot of effort. In this way, because you do 100,000 of each practice, the laziness does not dare return. It’ll mutter to itself, “I’m just getting a beating if I stay around here. If I dare to come back, I’ll probably get 100,000 beatings again, so I’m not gonna hang around this guy any longer.” I’m not joking here; it’s really true.

For a practitioner who has already recognized self-knowing wakefulness, doing the preliminaries can totally obliterate all laziness so that none remains. At the same time, these practices also perfect the two accumulations and remove all hindrances. The essence of mind is further and further revealed by the steady process of removing that which obscures it. All this takes place through the practice of the preliminaries.

When we are about to begin Vajrasattva practice it is good to have received empowerment to Vajrayana. This empowers us to realize the three vajras—the fact that body, speech, and mind are by nature the innate three doors. There are four levels of empowerment in Vajrayana: the vase empowerment, the secret empowerment, the wisdom knowledge empowerment, and the precious word empowerment. Once we have received empowerment, utilizing skillful means is like squeezing our body, speech, and mind in such a way that they have no choice but to be realized as the three innate vajras, as the vajra body, speech, and mind. There is no alternative to this; it is inevitable.

There is much to learn in Vajrayana, and many skillful methods. For instance, the five negative emotions are by nature the five wisdoms. These five wisdoms are the buddhas of the five families—that is, if the vital essence of the emotions is recognized. Then it can be truly said that one doesn’t have to suppress or reject the emotions. Rather, they can be realized as being the five types of original wakefulness, the five wisdoms. I will go into more detail about this later.

Vajrayana is something precious and rare. The methods of Secret Mantra are not often given. Of the thousand buddhas to appear during this world period, the Vajrayana teachings are available only during the reign of two of them: Buddha Shakyamuni and the last, who is a manifestation of Buddha Manjugosha. Other than that, Vajrayana doesn’t really happen. Why is this? The methods of Vajrayana appear only during the right time, when emotions are visibly manifest in a very blatant and crude way. Our present era is one of these times.

When the emotions are very strong and rough, the potential intelligence within them is equally strong. Strong emotions create big problems. Whenever there are more problems and turmoil, there is an opportunity for strong insight to take place. This opportunity is available right now. Now is the time when the methods of Vajrayana can be utilized. Based on the very profound and swift methods of Vajrayana, it is possible to attain true and complete enlightenment within this very same body and lifetime. If we don’t do this within this lifetime, it is said that it will occur within three, five, or at most sixteen lives; that is, if one doesn’t break one’s samaya and develop impure perception, turning against the teachings. Thus, Vajrayana practitioners are guaranteed to reach enlightenment within at most sixteen lifetimes.

The general teachings of the buddhas are more a matter of developing a placid, uncomplicated state of mind free of strong emotion. Precisely because of this emphasis, there is no presence of a strong intelligence. This doesn’t provide the opportunity to realize the wisdoms and swiftly attain enlightenment. Using the general methods one must journey along the path for three incalculable eons, which is a very, very long time. This route offers a very gentle, steady journey toward enlightenment that is relatively uncomplicated and certainly safer than Vajrayana.

Right now, however, we have the opportunity, rather than suppressing negative emotions, to realize their natural purity. To apply this, and to truly understand Vajrayana, you must have a strong intelligence, otherwise you cannot pick up the methods. You need a very sharp innate intelligence in order to eliminate or break free of the conceptual frame of mind. Conceptual mind wants to make you stay within the boundaries of concepts.

Vajrayana practitioners should not belittle the emotions. Emotions are like smoke, and if there is smoke, there is also fire. In other words, when you look at somebody who has very strong emotions, that person may also have a lot of wisdom. Who knows? Such a person may perhaps, through skillful methods, be able to realize the original wakefulness within the emotions. Such a person may be able to make tremendous progress on the Vajrayana path. That doesn’t mean that one should get caught up in the emotions, of course. When we are overtaken by emotions, we are exactly the same as an ordinary person: we are not progressing on the path.

Please don’t misunderstand this point. What I just said is that in Vajrayana practice we appreciate the emotions. I don’t mean that you necessarily have to create more emotions. Don’t be thinking, “When I’m in front of my master, I should show some aggression; then maybe he’ll teach me Vajrayana.” Please don’t go looking for trouble!

We don’t have to create emotions at all. Rather, within the naturally arising emotions we find a certain strength, a certain intelligence. That strength can be realized as the fuel of original wakefulness. Imagine the opposite of that—someone who is never angry, never irritated, never depressed, and never delighted; who has no thought of wanting to hurt others and no thought of wanting to help others either. That type of personality is listless and complacent, content with being dull.

We don’t have to worry about becoming like that, because it won’t happen: right now we live in a time of very turbulent emotions. Perhaps in the future this type of emotional placidity will arise again. It’s said that when Buddha Maitreya comes there will be a gradual absence of disease. The human life span will lengthen so that people will experience no worries about being sick or uncomfortable. There will be plenty of food, so that whenever one wants to eat one can just reach out and take some. There will be no need to apply effort to take care of oneself, so there will be no hope and fear about one’s own existence. One can just sit back and relax without having to worry about a thing. Since there won’t be many emotional disturbances, there will also not be anyone who is a suitable vessel for the Vajrayana teachings. Therefore, the Vajrayana teachings will not be given.

We are not at all in this situation nowadays, of course; we are in the opposite situation. Emotions are abundant. As we apply these skillful methods of Vajrayana to eliminate confusion, less and less confusion arises, especially through our having recognized the basic nature of original wakefulness. Some of these methods cut off the ears of confusion; some of them tear off the arms of confusion; some peel off the skin of confusion. Through the use of these methods, fewer and fewer moments of confusion will arise, until confusion is totally gone.

Please make a distinction between illusory experience and the belief that illusory experiences are real. These are two different points. Illusory experience has already happened; its scenery has already been produced. That’s what we live in right now. We’re not yet able to be free of illusion from one moment to the next. What we need to deal with, our point of critical action, is something other than that. We can turn away from and eliminate the belief that illusory experiences are real. It’s as if we have already fallen asleep and are already dreaming. There is nothing to do about that. But within the dream, we can confront our belief that the dream is real. We are able to recognize that it is just a dream, that it’s not real. And once we discover that the dream is just a dream while dreaming it, then it is possible to wake up. Do you understand this analogy? In the dream, you are dreaming. And if you know that what you are experiencing in the dream is just a dream, then you can look for a method to wake up. But you don’t know how to wake up. You realize that it is the dream state, but you lack the method to wake up. So in the dream, you look around to seek the method. Seeking the method is also part of the dream. Then you might meet the dream master inside the dream. You request the method from that dream master, and the dream master teaches you. That teaching is also part of the dream. But because you apply the dream teaching, you arrive back into the original state. That is like having woken up. The dream teacher gives you a dream method to actually wake you up. So then you wake up. You are not really getting the awakened state from the dream teacher, because the dream teacher is also a dream. But you get the method from him, you utilize it, and then you wake up.

In a similar vein, the Buddha once said: “I never taught the Dharma. I am not teaching the Dharma now, and in the future I will never teach the Dharma either.” As with many teachings, there are many levels of understanding this statement. There is the expedient level of meaning as well as the definitive meaning. We shouldn’t necessarily cling to every single statement as being the ultimate truth.

Having recognized mind essence, we utilize various types of methods to perfect its strength. We need to progress by strengthening the insight aspect. Developing this strength is difficult, but we should not give up. Soccer players who want to participate in the World Cup train ceaselessly. They try to perfect their strength to qualify for the World Cup series. It’s a basic requirement that you have to be a human being to be a World Cup player. You could train a monkey to be a World Cup champion, but he won’t play because he is a monkey. A monkey will only perform his own activities. In the same way, you need first of all to recognize mind essence. And it is that recognition of mind essence, the strength of that, that needs to be perfected gradually through various methods.

The Vajrayana depiction of deities in union shows us that means and knowledge are both necessary. Unity is the nature of the deity—the unity of emptiness and experience. The experience aspect appears as the male, while the empty quality is the female. Not understanding the real significance of these deities in union, one may think, “Why are the deities always in union? Aren’t they ever satisfied? It seems as if they’re stuck together!” Actually, this symbol means that intrinsic to emptiness is a state that is totally untainted by any obscuration, which manifests as bliss indivisible from emptiness. That is the purpose of depicting the deities as naked. Their fully developed attributes of bliss symbolize that the deities of our aggregates, elements, and sense factors are totally revealed in their purest nature through the recognition of empty bliss.

There is the approach of attaining liberation by means of desire, attaining liberation through aggression, attaining liberation through dullness, and so forth. In this way there are many profound methods in Vajrayana. The Vajra Vehicle of Secret Mantra is extremely profound and extremely effective.

When you apply the Vajrayana teachings, do so with clarity, free from any misconceptions about what is what. We must know clearly the purpose and the significance of the symbolism, so that we don’t form distortions about the profound nature of the Vajrayana teachings. It is very, very hard to find anything in this world more profound or more precious than the Vajrayana teachings. This is my personal opinion.

Why is this so? In order to overcome emotions, not to get caught up in them or be overtaken by them, there is no method more profound than recognizing mind essence. You may want to smash a painful emotion to bits, but you can’t blow it up with a nuclear bomb. Even hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs detonated at the same time will not stop dualistic mind from creating more emotions. If someone were to kill every single human being in this world, dualistic mind would still continue making emotions. Through the power of karma, all these minds would take rebirth in some other world and continue in the same way as before.

No matter what drug one takes, there is no way to stop dualistic mind from churning out selfish emotions. It’s not like in the movie The Matrix, where you take a pill and wake up to reality. It doesn’t happen this easily; there is really no way to do that. Of course there are pills to eat. There are pills to make you feel less, to make you unfeeling, or to make you feel nothing, to become totally oblivious—no emotions, no wakefulness, no nothing.

However, there are not any pills to make you genuinely more compassionate and less aggressive, to make you wiser and less caught up in negative emotions. There are no pills like that that I know of right now. In the future, who knows? But it certainly doesn’t help to wait for that pill to come along someday. Much better to use the realistic approach of practice right now!

What we need first of all is to recognize mind essence and to develop the strength of that. As we continue to develop the strength of this recognition, one day we will attain stability.

Can I have a few questions now?

STUDENT: I don’t want to question the Dharma, but I have some problems in combining the Dharma teachings with modern psychology.

RINPOCHE: I don’t feel that there’s any real conflict between the psychological method and the Buddhist method. The vital point is whether the method works or not. If it works, great; there is no conflict. If there’s still a remnant of anger or resentment left behind, then it didn’t really work and so it’s not that good a method. The real test is whether the psychological method is truly effective.

For example, one discovers there’s a reason one feels aggressive again and again, and one starts to investigate: “Why am I getting so angry? There doesn’t seem to be much reason in this. It’s irrational.” And then one finds out that it has some earlier cause, that something was done to me that wasn’t really resolved from the past; maybe Mom and Dad mistreated me as a child, or somebody else abused me. Because of understanding this, one can step away from hating oneself. One understands oneself better; there is more self-knowledge. But still there is some resentment toward Mom and Dad or whoever the perpetrator was. That part of the problem hasn’t really been resolved. One’s anger at oneself has gone, but there is still some other anger remaining. This means that sort of therapy didn’t really work that well in terms of eliminating anger altogether.

But let’s say the therapy goes a little deeper, so that one is actually able to forgive the target of one’s resentment and totally relinquish it. This means it worked: the anger is given up and resolved. In other words, when the method works, it’s wonderful. One experiences a kind of liberation through that. One is free of that type of emotion. Then it is a genuine therapy, a real cure.

I must admit to having one criticism of a certain type of Western therapy. Even though it can solve a lot of problems for people, there is the tendency to blame Mom and Dad, or early childhood problems, for everything: “You’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with you, but you have problems because of how your father treated you. Therefore your father is no good.” Temporarily there is a certain release in this, because you take the focus of the problem away from yourself. Also it’s logical in its own way; there’s some reason in it. But it creates the basis for another emotional problem, which is resentment toward one’s own parents.

Buddhist psychology attempts to solve the whole issue from a different angle. You begin with accustoming yourself to thinking of all sentient beings, countless as they may be, as your own fathers and mothers. Other beings are the first objects of compassion. If you instead build up resentment toward your mother and father, there is no way you would want to regard all sentient beings as your own fathers and mothers. If you are trained in regarding Mom and Dad as your enemy and then are told to regard all sentient beings as Mom and Dad, basically this will mean, “All sentient beings are my enemies!”

The point here is that honestly, you don’t have to blame anyone. You don’t even have to blame yourself. Just understand this very important point: everything you experience is empty form, an unreal presence of empty form. Realizing emptiness solves every problem right there.

Buddhism has many methods. There are two major ones that can be applied in this situation: one is analytical, the other is just letting be. Analytical meditation involves trying to track down where the anger actually is, where it comes from, what it is made out of, and so forth. If one discovers—as one can also discover in psychological therapy—that there is actually no real anger to find anywhere, that it doesn’t consist of anything, then this method actually solves the problem.

In the other method, called resting meditation, or “training in letting be,” you simply drop all involvement in a conceptual frame of mind. This too can solve the problem from its very core. Sometimes analytical meditation is not enough, because a conceptual attitude still lingers on. That is why I usually emphasize the second method, the training in letting be. In Tibetan it’s called jo-gom, literally, “release training.”

In the analytical training, one may try to find the reason a situation happens and to resolve the problem by figuring it out. For example, I examine why I feel a certain way: “What made me feel this way? Was it Mom or Dad or some event in early childhood?” If the me is still held to be real, and the analyzing mind, the me who is trying to investigate, is still believed to truly be there, then it is hard to genuinely forgive, because the hurt was really done to me. No matter how much one tries to tell oneself, “They couldn’t really help it; you can’t really blame them because they were also caught up in what they were doing, so why not just let it go,” it’s difficult to actually do so. Because of the holding on to me, it’s not so easy to let go of the one who received that hurt.

On the other hand, when we discover through the training in letting be that this me actually doesn’t really exist, it can just be dropped. Then it’s much easier to resolve the whole problem. The technique here is mainly to let go of this me. I understand it’s not necessarily easy. But I also know that it can be very useful if we succeed. Please trust me on this.

¹ Translated by Nalanda Translation Committee.