ACI 16 (обзорный курс), Занятие 8 (прогон ГМР, Нью-Йорк 1999) — стенограмма

Class Eight

Geshe Michael Roach



Transcribed by Angie Overy




[laughter] and we talked a little bit about what it means to have a correct
perception and then we talked about direct perception and deductive perception.
And that’s where you get into logic, okay.
You need logic to see through blind spots in your own mind, okay. There are
many places in your mind that you can’t see. And there are many objects
around you, for example: emptiness, subtle workings of karma, hungry ghosts,
past and future lives. They’re around you, you exist in them, you can’t see them.
And these things you have to see with initially with logic and then as your
meditation gets stronger you see them directly in meditation. But think of your
mind as a, as, as having many, many blank spots, okay. Like, there are many
more things in the world to see than you can imagine. And your mind is not
seeing all of them because you have certain obstacles. And you can drill through
those obstacles by using logic. And that’s why we study reasoning and, and the
art of reasoning, it’s figuring out things. Okay.
We’re gonna experiment with one of the most important of them tonight.
Which is, the reasonings that can help you drill through the block you have. You
have a mental block for not seeing that you had a past life and you have a future
life, you know.
We, in the west, and Tibetans also and people in India, have a mental block for
seeing those things. And you have to use logic to start to chip away at that
block. And then, at some point, you can see future lives directly in your
meditation.
But in the meantime you have to prove it with logic, okay.
Where does this come up in the Scriptures? Why are we talking about future
lives in the Pramanavartikka, in the logic texts?
It’s because somebody has said that if you spent long enough that the evolution
of all human minds is ultimate compassion and omniscience. Every living person
will become a Buddha, you know.
Every living creature will become a Buddha. The evolution of all minds that are
alive today is that, eventually, they will become a Buddha.
To do that, you need ultimate compassion. Okay.
And so the text is going to be talking about three different kinds of compassion,
okay.
And I’ll talk a little bit about that. [cut]
Say, {nying je}[repeat] {nying je}[repeat]; {nying} means, heart, {je} means, lord
or king, like Je Tsongkapa or {dorje}, okay.
So {nying je} means, ‘lord of hearts’. And that’s the word in Tibetan for
compassion, okay. So {nying je} means compassion, alright, king of all hearts,
alright. In Sanskrit, karuna.
We’re gonna discuss three different kinds of {nying je}, three different levels of
{nying je}.
First level {nying je} what we call ordinary {nying je} is simply the desire that
other people be free of suffering. Like, you see someone who’s having a hard
time and you say, I wish they didn’t have that suffering. I wish that they could
be free from that suffering. That attitude or that state of mind is called {nying je}.
That’s compassion, okay.
Now, the second level. [cut] Say {nying je chenpo}[repeat] {nying je chenpo}
[repeat]. In Tibetan, I’m sorry, Sanskrit, mahakaruna. This is called, great
compassion, okay, and it’s distinguished from regular old compassion.
Great compassion means that I wish that people could be free of suffering and I
take responsibility to make it happen. And I don’t care if nobody helps me. I
don’t care if, what, okay. But I will make sure it gets done, {nying je chenpo}. So
that’s the difference between ordinary compassion and great compassion, okay.
That’s a, I will become a Buddha so I can help them do that, okay, {nying je
chenpo}, great compassion.
[cut]
Say {tuk je}[repeat] {chenpo}[repeat] {tuk je}[repeat] {chenpo}; {tuk} means,
mind or heart in the same way that {nying} does but this is the honorific form,
you see. This is the high form of the word. Like, if you’re gonna talk about the
Dalai Lama’s mind, you don’t say {sem}, you say {tuk}, okay. And {tuk} means,
your holy, excellency’s mind. You see what I mean. It’s the high word for mind.
So {tuk je chenpo} is used to describe the compassion of an enlightened being,
okay.
So this is compassion in the mind stream of an enlightened being. And these are
three different stages in the evolution of what you can call compassion in a
normal person, okay.
So it’s, it’s not too unusual to meet someone who would like that other people
around them don’t suffer. That’s {nying je}, okay. And then, to meet a person
who says, specifically, I understand that if I became an enlightened being and
then I could emanate thousands upon thousands of other bodies to help people
all over the world and other planets as well in one millisecond, that that would
be cool. And I want to do that. I’ve decided that I’m going to do that. That’s
{nying je chenpo}. Now, how many people on this planet, at this current
moment, you know, from appearances, are actually sitting there obsessed with
the idea of, of reaching this state so that they can help other people? You know
what I mean. Very rare, okay; very rare to find somebody thinking like that.
Okay. Somebody who’s willing to spend every single waking moment of their
day trying to get people enlightened, you know, specifically.
And that would be {nying je chenpo}, okay.
Then {tuk je chenpo} would be a person who’s already enlightened and they’re
going about doing what they have to do to help people remove their suffering,
okay. And this is what we call {..}. You might know Tibetans whose name is {..}.
{..} means, it’s automatic. It’s a reflex. They don’t think about it. It just happens,
okay. The minute you reach enlightenment, {tuk je chenpo} is automatic. You
have great compassion for everybody and you are sending out your emanating
bodies wherever someone needs it, without any thought process. It’s automatic,
okay.     It’s result of your extraordinary karma, okay, that it’s happening
automatically. Okay.
How long does it take to go through those three stages of compassion? Master
Dharmakirti has been trying to prove that it’s possible for every single mind
stream on this planet, meaning, every person in this room, will become
enlightened.
It’s not a question of whether or not you’ll become enlightened. It’s just a
question of how fast, okay.
So Dharmakirti, Master Dharmakirti is trying to prove that every being in this
room will become an enlightened being.
How do you do it?
You have to go through these three stages. And, normally, it takes more than
one lifetime. Okay. To develop all three in one lifetime would be extraordinary.
And Master Dharmakirti is saying, look, we have to talk about multiple lifetimes.
You have to start working on it now.
If we study Vinaya, in the opening lines of the Vinaya sutras, there are lots of
descriptions of how many years it took Lord Buddha to get to this. It’s
something like seventy-five and seventy-six plus seventy-seven times ten to the
sixtieth power years, kalpas. Okay. Meaning each of those, being millions and
millions of years.
So, I mean, to go through this process normally it takes more than one lifetime.
And you have to practise.
I mean, Master Shantideva said, anyone can do it with practice but you have to
practise it a lot. To try to get to a state, I mean, even to have number two you
would pretty much have to see that enlightenment was possible. You see what I
mean. Because number two is like, deciding to get enlightened and to work
your whole life, every hour of your life, every single moment of your life, trying
to get other people enlightened, okay.
And that’s the, that in itself is an extraordinary state. Okay. So this is where
future lives comes in. Master Dharmakirti is not trying to prove future lives to a
bunch of people who don’t believe in future lives to try to get them to do A or B
or C.
He’s bumped into some non-Buddhists in ancient India who said, you cannot
develop these kinds of compassion because it would take too long and you’re
gonna die before you can. So just forget it. Okay.
And he says, no, no, no, we’re talking multiple lifetimes here.
And they say, you’re crazy. And they give three arguments against future lives.
Okay.
They come up to Master Dharmakirti, these are the chravakas, okay. I’ll spell it
for you in Sanskrit. [cut]
And they’re saying it’s impossible that there’s a future life.
And, and Master Dharmakirti says, no it’s not possible, because after the body
dies the mind goes on. Okay. That’s Master Dharmakirti’s big schtick.
After the body dies the mind goes on, okay.
Then they come back with, impossible, okay, no such thing.
And Master Dharmakirti says, why do you think that?
And they say, three reasons, okay. [cut]
And I’ll just put them in plain English. [cut] I mean, they’re gonna give three
arguments. You see if they sound familiar, okay.
The first argument is this: we think the mind is actually a physical thing. You see,
you cut open the head, you look inside, there’s this stuff in there. And that’s the
mind, okay. See, they’re not only saying that’s where the mind stays, they’re
saying, that is the mind. Okay. Your brain is your mind. Okay. And that’s their
first argument, okay. So that if the body dies then the mind cannot go on
because the mind is part of the body, okay. And you gotta think like that, okay.
If the brain, was to die, then the mind would die and stop. And it wouldn’t go on
to a next life.
You can’t get ultimate compassion. You don’t have time. And there’s no such
thing as a Buddha. Okay. That’s their first argument. Okay. So, the mind is part
of the body. It belongs in the brain. It is the brain, okay. It is the brain.
[cut]
And they say that even if that wasn’t the case, oh by the way, well, the example
they gave in the first part is like, beer and the ability to get you drunk. You see
what I mean. Or alcohol, the substance called alcohol and the characteristic of
alcohol, which is, that it can get you drunk. Okay. It’s almost like saying the
redness of apples or something. Okay. They say it’s part of the apple. It’s not
like it’s a separate thing. Redness is a part of apple, red apples, okay. And
something like that. So they say, you can’t take away the beer and take away
the, and not take away the ability to get you drunk. They are one and the same,
okay.
That’s important later. They are setting up Master Dharmakirti, okay. If he
agrees to that, he’s already in trouble. But we’ll see why later, okay.
But that’s their first argument.
Second argument is that the mind depends on the body the way a picture hangs
on a wall. Okay. The way a picture hangs on a wall. Meaning, even if we agree
that the mind is separate from the body somehow, that always rests on the
body, okay. The mind is always depending on the body.
If you take away the wall what happens to the picture?
It falls down, okay.
So first of all, they say the mind is part of the body: the brain. Even if it wasn’t,
even if it was some separate thing, it’s always resting on the body. You take
away the body the mind is gonna fall down and die okay. So they are
depending on each other like a relationship like that.
So, even if the mind isn’t the body, the mind must at least be resting on the
body. And, in such a way that, if you pull out the body, the mind dies, okay.
That’s their second argument.
[cut]
And then their third argument is, well even if that’s not the case, at least the
mind grows from the body. Okay. Like, the embryo starts to form and the cells
start to get together and there’s more and more cells. And at some point there’s
enough cells that the brain forms and then you can think, okay. And then the
mind starts to function. Okay. If you take away the cause, which is the body,
then the mind will be stopping shortly afterwards. Okay.
So, they say body and mind are like a lamp and the light that comes out of a
lamp. Okay. Which is the result of a lamp, see what I mean.
These are their three arguments for why the mind does not go on after you die.
And they don’t, they say, we don’t care which one you accept. You can think of
it any one of those three ways: like the alcohol, like the picture on the wall, or
like the light, the lamp and its light. But in either case, in any one of these cases,
you take away the body the mind cannot survive. Okay. Sound familiar? Right.
First one’s saying that the mind is the brain or is some physical part of your
body, okay.
Second one’s saying the mind is floating on your body and when the body
collapses and dies the mind dies, always dies, okay.
Third one’s saying when the body reaches a certain point of development then
you can start having a mind. And when the body’s development stops and dies
then the mind stops also. Okay.
And this is, this is the western viewpoint. It boils down in the chravaka’s
argument to something very simple. They say, Master Dharmakirti, how do
you know the mind goes on?
And he says, well how do you know it doesn’t go on?
And they say, look when somebody dies the body just lays there. It doesn’t
move anymore.
So he says, does that prove that the mind is gone?
They say, yeah, talk to the guy, shake him, try to poke him with a pin, he won’t
complain at all. You know what I mean. They don’t, they don’t twitch anymore.
The fact that the body stops and doesn’t twitch anymore proves that the mind
has died also, okay. And that’s their argument.
And by the way, that’s about the only argument that a westerner can give you
also.
I mean, that’s the most obvious argument for believing that the mind stops
when the body stops. It’s just that the body doesn’t move anymore, okay. And
that’s like saying, or if the guy can’t talk to me anymore then the mind is not
there anymore.
That’s like saying because the truck broke down on the New Jersey turnpike that
the driver’s dead. Okay. It’s exactly the same argument. The truck’s not
moving. The guy must be dead. Okay. It’s actually just an equivalent to it,
okay. He can’t talk to you, I mean, it doesn’t have any bearing on whether the
mind is there or not. The fact that the body is incapable now of functioning,
even if there was a mind there the tongue can’t move, right. It’s broken. It’s
dead. Then what does that prove about the mind? It doesn’t prove anything.
You can’t say that the mind is definitely not there because the body’s broken
anymore than you can say the driver of the truck has died because the truck’s
not moving anymore. Okay.
There’s something wrong with the truck so the driver died, some thing like that.
That’s same kind of argument.
Deep down in your own mind you believe that argument.               Somewhere,
culturally, you have a blind spot and, and you have this real belief that when
your body dies the mind will die. And you think that. And, and you’ve been
inculcated to think that. And your culture has taught you to think that way.
And you believe it. And you believe it unreasonably. And you believe it for
wrong reasons. And there’s no proof for that.
You know, people used to come up to me and say, prove future lives exist. And
then I’d give them all these arguments.              Dharmakirti, second chapter,
Pramanavartikka, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then, finally, I got tired and said, you prove tome that the mind dies, you
know. Let’s switch, let’s reverse the tape, you know. Let’s reverse the thing.
I’m exhausted. I’m tired of trying to prove to you that future lives exist.
You prove to me they don’t. You prove to me the mind doesn’t go on.
By the way, Buddhism doesn’t say that there’s some soul or spirit. We don’t
have to have a {pung tsumpa}. {..} in logic means something beyond mind and
body that goes on. You don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to
think like that.
We’re not saying that there’s some eternal spirit blah, blah, blah.
It’s not that difficult. Your mind goes on. Okay. The mind goes on. The body
and the mind are separate things and the mind goes on, okay.
You prove to me that I’m wrong. Okay.
Yeah. [student] Absolutely. Not to be able to prove that I’m wrong doesn’t
mean that I’m right. But let’s start like that. We say, {dun gyur kyi te-tsom}. Say
{dun gyur}[repeat] {kyi}[repeat] {te-tsom}[repeat]; {dun gyur kyi te-tsom}
means, reasonable doubt. Okay. Don’t go telling me the mind doesn’t go on
because you haven’t proved it either. You cannot disprove what I say about the
mind so at least have {dun gyur kyi te-tsom}. At least entertain the possibility
that the mind goes on, okay.
I mean, people used to ask me my personal argument for future lives, okay.
This is not from Scripture, okay. Anything that can happen once can happen
twice. Given infinite odds, given infinite time, given infinite interactions between
all the objects in the universe, why can’t it happen again? You know what I
mean. If it’s only, if you only have five minutes of time then, maybe, it wouldn’t
happen again. You have eternity. Whatever made me happen once can make
me happen again. I don’t see any reason why not, you know. It seems perfectly
reasonable to me.
You can tell me, it takes a jillion years of chemicals running around, but if it
happens again, I mean, it would happen again. Why not?
Why can’t something that happens once happen again if the possibilities are
infinite, you know, if time is infinite.
But that’s not, that’s my own argument, okay.
Yeah. [student] Sorry? [student] Oh, we don’t accept an idea of a soul, you see,
when [cut]
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And frankly, when you get into tantra, the relationship becomes quite intimate.
{…} means the mind and the inner winds ride in tandem, okay.
And that explains a lot of why you can get enlightened by doing tantra, okay.
But that’s another story. Okay.
So {chi suk} that’s the argument against {shi suk}. I like to go on quickly so
people don’t give me all the objections that are here. [laughter] Okay. [laughs]
You will not accept these arguments in a day. They are pretty good arguments
and you have to get used to them because you’re fighting twenty, thirty, forty
years of brainwashing from your culture. Okay.
Say {shen gyi gyu}[repeat], {..}[repeat]; {shen} means, ‘other’, {shen gyi gyu}
means, ‘mindstream’, okay.
The chravakas say, okay, you did pretty good on the living tissue thing. I
believe that a mind cannot, an ineffable, uncuttable, unweighable, crystalline,
knowing thing cannot be created from living physical tissue. And I also think
your argument against sulphur and oxygen and iron is pretty good. So, what
says that the cause of your mind has to have the mind from the moment before?
Has to have been something mental? Okay. I agree that it could not have been
something physical that turned into your consciousness, which is a totally
different stuff, okay, but can you prove to me that the cause wasn’t somebody
else’s mind? Meaning, your parents mind, okay. Your parents at the moment of
your conception are so intimate and this thing meets this other thing and their
mind creates a new mind. Okay.
And then, a lot of these arguments seem silly because they’re so obvious.
He says, listen, I heard your father was a carpenter.
Yeah, my father’s a carpenter.
He says, so he’s good at wood, right? I mean, he knows everything about wood
and nails and tools?
He says, yeah, perfect.
He says, well, do you?
He says, no, I’m a clutz with a hammer. I can’t do anything, you know.
He says, so you got your answer, okay; that there should be some similarity
between the mind stream that causes the other mind stream.
If the one mind stream had any kind of characteristics, tendencies: tendency to
anger, tendency to peacefulness, tendency towards, has a specific skill, which has
been imbued, through that mind stream for decades.
And tell me that the child exhibits none of those skills or none of those abilities or
none of those tendencies towards those kinds of emotions? It doesn’t make
sense. Okay.
Yeah. [student] Axel says, the mind stream’s changing. Yeah, but so is the
father’s mind stream. It’s not like you forget how to do carpentry five years
later or something.
There should be some kind of, the child should exhibit some kind of, of the
tendencies, emotional tendencies and the abilities.            Okay, the child’s not
developed enough to hold a hammer yet but they should at least show some
kind of tendencies even five, ten years later.
You know, I haven’t done piles of diamonds now for three years, but you put a
pile of diamonds in front of me, and it’s, like, that, you know what I mean. It’s,
like, there should be some tendency towards that, some kind of ability towards
that thing. Not that they’d totally forget it in a year or two years or something
like that. And especially emotional.
The father, we used to make fun of all the minister’s kids in our school because
they were always the worst ones, you know what I mean. Like, the daughter or
son of the rabbi or priest or minister was always, like, the worst kid in the
school.
There didn’t seem to be much emotional or contentual similarity to the mind
stream of their parent, okay.
Yes. [student] yeah [student] I forget when I did it before. How did I do before?
[student] No, I think we have to talk about content. I don’t remember, I think I
did say something like that but I don’t remember about what though. I don’t
remember about what. [student] Yeah. Yeah. [student]
I don’t think, you see, you’re talking about the difference between, in Buddhism
we distinguish between awareness and mental function. Okay.
So the raw consciousness, the fact that you are aware is called {..sem} which
means, ‘main mind’ or main awareness. And then you have {sem chungs} which
are called, which are mental functions like anger, attention, doubt, you know,
sleepiness, you know, all kinds of, jealousy, all kinds of things, honesty, you
know, traits like that.
But they are said to be, I don’t think you can divide, it’s difficult to divide those
from main mind, you know.
You can’t say, like, you could shake them out of the main mind and then later
they’d still be there or something that, you see what I mean.
You can’t, there are, like, at least five in one school, ten in another school mental
functions that are always concomitant with mind; that you couldn’t have a mind
that doesn’t have attention, you couldn’t have a mind that didn’t have any
intelligence at all although you might have met some people like that [laughter]
or things like that, you know.
Certain qualities, certain parts of the content are, are what we call {sem ..} which
means they always come with mind.
[student] Yeah. [student] By the way, when you get into Madhyamika, all of
this stuff becomes different. I mean, we’re in the second of the four schools and
don’t forget it.
When you go up to Madhyamika it’s much more subtle. The mind is the
projection of the mind. Your awareness is a projection of your mind.
That’s the ultimate truth about the nature of the mind. But that’s a whole other,
we’re not going there or we’ll never finish, okay. [laughter]
Yeah. [student] I bet you could put a big dent in them from the Prasangika
point of view because, ultimately, it’s not the mind that goes on.
It’s the projection of a going on. Okay. And that is the gong on. And it’s just as
real as going on. Okay. And that’s a long story.
Yeah. [student] Yeah. [student] Oh yeah, you could say that. [student] Right,
okay, you could say that. We’re talking about {nyer-len gyi gyur}, yeah, yeah.
[student]
Yeah. I mean, it’s basically asking, I have heard His Holiness was asked this
question, you know, can a computer become so sophisticated that it’s a mind?
And I use computers all day long, you know. I use them, like, eight hours a day
and I appreciate them. I think there’s some kind of extraordinary karma that I
can have at my fingertips two or three thousand Tibetan Buddhist books for
anything I want. But I understand exactly how they work. You know what I
mean. And I understand their limitations. No, there’s no, I mean, they can be
mind-like in a sense. They can make so many calculations a minute and things
like that but there’s nothing conscious about it. I’m totally aware of that.
I love my laptop more than anything. I was in Japan. There was an earthquake.
I ran to get my laptop, you know, at the risk of my life, you know, as a reflex.
But I understand completely that it will never be a conscious thing. It’s not, it’s
totally different thing. It’s a, it’s a series of operations caused by another series
of operations. It’s not the same thing as awareness at all. The computer is not
aware, you know.
[student] Yeah. It’s very similar to that but it’s in no way conscious. The
computer’s not aware of me at all, you se what I mean.
[student] [laughs] Yeah. No. I think they’ll be faster and they’ll be so fast they’ll
look mind-like and it won’t be mind at all. Okay.
Let me see if there’s one more thing here.
The only thing to cover, and you’ll do it in your break-out groups, is so why do
some minds have to get reborn and some minds don’t. Okay. Why, what’s the
difference, okay?
If we’re talking about where life comes from, if we’re arguing about how the
mind evolves over the course of thousands or millions of years, then at what
point does the mind no longer have to come back to this kind of world where
you can die and where there’s pain and suffering and things like that?
What’s the difference between the mind of what we call a non-returner and the
mind of a once-returner? What is it that makes you come back? You know,
what is it at the moment of death that makes you have to come back to this kind
of suffering, you know.
And then they go into that. Basically, it relates to are you perceiving things as
self-existent or not, okay. Which is to say, do you have the desire or the
negative emotions that are forced on you by seeing things as not being
emptiness, not being empty. Okay.
If you misunderstand reality at the moment of death and therefore have some
negative emotions you must be reborn. That’s the schtick. That’s the argument.
Okay. You will be reborn. Until you can perceive emptiness directly and until
you can use that understanding to stop your negative emotions permanently,
which is, nirvana, you must be reborn. You will be reborn.
The mind must perceive another existence in this kind of suffering. Okay.
So that’s the difference. And there’s a list of things that can trigger a rebirth and
there’s a list of thoughts that don’t trigger rebirth.
We’ll do that in the [unclear].
We’re running a little late so please have a short break and then we’ll come back
and do your groups.
By the way, I’m gonna project up here the Tibetan for all the homework to save
the group leaders [cut]
We’ll start again.
[announcement re CD ROM launch]
Vert short thing about, we’ve been talking about ACI structure at ACI. What
ACI teaches; serious spreading of Buddhism in the United States.
And I wanted to talk tonight about the governance of such an organisation,
okay.
We have a very good sponsor who came up to me and said one day, how are
you gonna guarantee that a hundred years from now, this baby, this cool baby
Buddhism n the United States doesn’t become some corrupt church organisation
that ends up being, you know, the dogma ends upbringing more suffering to
people than the, than the teachings do help people, you see what I mean.
Like, how are you gonna prevent that from happening in your organisation, you
know? How can you say that three hundred years from now or two hundred
years from now, the people who study Buddhism in your classes or the people
who come after them, won’t be just as dogmatic or just as causing as much pain
as some of the other traditions have caused?
And even the Tibetan traditions in Tibet, where people were killed or tortured or
enslaved or harmed, or arguments fought, broke out between sects.
How are you gonna, what are you gonna do about that Michael Roach?
And I’m, like, [laughs] you know. What am I supposed to do? Two hundred
years from now, you know.
And I think it’s a fair question because right now because we are so new
everything is fresh. We haven’t had time to have any inquisitions yet or burn
anybody or have fights between the American – we’re starting, we have a good
start [unclear] something.
But we don’t really have [unclear] hassles and arguments or [cut]
How you gonna, what should you do to instil that?
And I say two things. One is, the oral tradition of Buddhism, okay.
So, I think in Buddhism, very strong idea that Buddhism doesn’t spread except
for oral tradition. Meaning, it goes from mouth to mouth, you know. You teach
it. You have to be near a living teacher to get it. And to teach it you should be
around a teacher intimately for many years. You know what I mean.
And there’s something that passes on, through the oral tradition, which has
never been broken in Buddhism. I mean, we can say, we spend all day long
sometimes doing lineage trees, you know. I can tell you the lineage trees back to
the Buddha, you know. We know who they are. A lot of the CD ROM is filled
up with lineage trees, you know.
And it’s a very strong tradition that the teachings are passed on from a living
being to a living being and with such familiarity that there can’t be any major
corruption. You know what I mean.
That, that if you go through fifteen ACI courses and three review courses you
probably won’t make any major corruptions of the teachings. You see what I
mean.
And if you’ve been close to a person who’s explained them to you orally, you
know, and that you’ve seen and that you’ve lived around them and been near
them and all the subtleties of behaviour that are carried on from people when
they have contact.
That’s one way to prevent corruption or, or to prevent things from turning into
something which is harmful to people, okay.
The second way, and to me, the main way. People say how are you gonna
administer this thing? Is there gonna be a president? Is their gonna be a council?
Is there gonna be a rule book? You know, is there gonna be, how’s that gonna
work, you know.
And I thought about it a lot, you know. How are you gonna prevent there from
being a group of people who actually end up making it a dogma and kicking out
people who don’t do what they like? And on the other hand, how do you
prevent it from getting corrupted by being too loose? And there is no structure
and there is no guidelines and it gets corrupted a different way.
How do you guarantee a middle path, you now, between those two extremes?
I’m very clear about that. And it’s {tundruk}. It’s the practice of checking your
vows six times a day, every two and a half hours that, that is the governing
principle. That is the governing board. That is the failsafe against corruption of
the teachings and of behaviour. And it’s also the way to prevent disharmony.
In my mind, it’s are you checking your vows every two and a half hours, you
know.
If you get into the practice of knowing your vows intimately and then examining
your own heart every two hours, you can’t have a major screw up. You see
what I mean.
And if you get into the habit of sincerely checking your vows every two hours,
every two and a half hours of your waking life for the rest of your life, I don’t
think you can have those kinds of corruptions happening in this path, you see.
So I think, I think that’s the answer to what would the administration be like,
how do you prevent certain problems, you know. How do you run that? It’s
the old way.
It’s the Lord Buddha’s way. You check your vows every two hours. You cannot
have a major problem.
And I think since that custom began strongly in our own group I’ve seen a
noticeable increase in the harmony and a noticeable increase in people’s own
happiness. And that’s really what it’s all about, right.
And I think since it’s become pretty much a custom among ACIers to check their
vows, keep that book every few hours, that I, it almost prevents any major
problems from happening.
You will have minor problems. You will have, you know, minor problems
between students. You will have things like that. But major kinds of corruptions
in the Dharma or major kinds of schisms or problems between students, I
haven’t, I don’t think it can happen. Or it will happen much less if everyone
knows their vows. And I’m talking your layman’s vows, your bodhisattva vows
and your tantric vows, you know; those three sets of vows. You know them
well, you check them every two hours and then you could pretty much have
whatever governing council you want or any structure you want or, doesn’t
really matter to me.
I don’t think it’s, I don’t think that’s the question.
If you have a group of people who are all watching their vows every two hours
you will have a sweet, pure religion going for a long time.
And if that ever stops then you won’t.              We have had problems in this
organisation and we have had individuals who were very unhappy and other
kinds of problems.
And it’s amazing thing I’ve noticed. It’s always the people who did not want to
keep their vows or who weren’t interested in their vows or thought it was stupid
to watch their vows or said that’s naïve or I’m okay, I don’t need to check my
vows or I don’t want to learn my vows or that reminds me too much of Sunday
school or I don’t want to do that.
And those were the people who ended up being unhappy or having a problem.
And they just naturally go away because they’re unhappy.
So I think, check it out. I think that’s my personal feeling about how the
governing or the assurance that the thing doesn’t get corrupt.
I’m not saying, that could become a corruption itself, right. You say, anyone
who doesn’t have a book and doesn’t do it every two hours, we hate them and
they can’t be in our club, you know. And you gotta make sure you do it. And if
you don’t we’re gonna cut off your fingers or something, you know what I
mean. And it shouldn’t become like that either. You shouldn’t be judgemental
about people like that.
What I’m saying is that if enough people do it frequently enough there’ll be a
certain kind of sweetness and beauty to the organisation that you could run it
through a democracy or some people have suggested a ‘guru-ocracy’, [laughs]
or what ever you want to call it. It doesn’t really matter I don’t think.
If everybody in the organisation is making a honest attempt to review their own
heart every two hours I don’t think you, then I think whatever else happens is
alright.
The karma will be that whatever you choose to use will be successful. And that’s
my idea for governing, okay.
If you don’t keep your book and you don’t know what they’re about, talk to
somebody else.
It’s a very, very sweet practice. It is the essence of tantric practice.
If you want to know the one single tantric vow which is the most powerful one,
it’s to every two and a half hours, two hours, {tundruk} means six times a day:
stop, look at one of your vows, look into your heart, see if you’re keeping it
well, you know, rejoice about how well you may be keeping it, decide what you
might need to correct about it. And you can’t go too far wrong.
And you will succeed in your tantric practice. Okay. You will see all these
amazing deities and become one yourself.
And that is the only way to do it. Okay.
It’s also a cool way to run an organisation. Okay.
We’ll do a prayer and [cut]
[prayer: short mandala]
[prayer: dedication]
Okay. Thankyou. Sorry to keep you late. See you Tuesday.
The Asian Classics Institute

Course XVI: Great Ideas of Buddhism