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First thank you all for coming. I'm really glad about that. It's our last night in Australia, tomorrow we are for a week in New Zealand, and then we are for a few days in North America and then nearly for a month in South America, and then back in Europe again. We come here about twice every year and I will say we enjoy your country. Not just what everybody enjoys, the weather and the nature and so on but also your interests and the work we are able to do here. We have now, including our Diamond Way group here, we have about eight different groups in Australia already, mainly small groups, self-governing, no hierarchy, just groups of friends meeting to meditate. I think we manage more and more to be useful to a few people in a few places. That's of course the whole idea. People are quite different, and there's always a certain amount of people who somehow think that the hat which Diamond Way Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism supplies, this somehow fits. And that's what we would like to contribute. So, what the theme is today is Buddhism in everyday life, but actually, all that is a little bit up in the air. It's up in the air because Buddhism is understood very differently by different people in different cultures, and different times and so on, and actually what one should do as a lama you know is to give you the chance to find out how Buddhism can fit you best in your life. I mean more than telling you how Buddhism should be used in your life, you know, it's better I tell you what Buddhism is, and then you yourself decide how you would like to use it in your lives. I think that's probably a better approach, because it is so individualized, it is so wide, it touches us on so many levels. So first to begin with, Buddhism itself, what is it. Well, if we look back 2 550 years to a place in Northeastern India about two thirds of the way from Delhi to Calcutta, then we see a young man sitting under a tree and trying to find his mind. He has quite a story before that, he had been a prince, with all the joys and fun of a young prince, he'd noticed impermanence, sickness, old age and death, and he had decided he would have to look for more lasting values; things one could build upon, things that would not die and disappear. And he had gone out and done six years of asceticism and heavy meditation. In different places, he had actually practiced in a period of very high cultural openness. We can say that India 2600 years ago, was definitely on the same level of philosophy and psychology that we find in Greece about 300 years later, with all the really heavy names like Socrates, Plato, Sophocles and all the other people that are still famous today. India was on a similar level at that time. All the ways of thinking that we know today; materialism, nihilism, transcendentalism, existentialism, whatever, all these ways were not just known, but they were known in a practical way, with a basis, a way and a goal. Not just some words, some explanations, not just the formal logic system where the premises and the conclusions would be equally right, but might not have anything to do with life, but as a system where clearly the premises had to do with real observation of the world and our situation, and the conclusions had to do with real experience and real change. So, because it was like that, a way to really transform one's life, he had been able to learn a lot. He had gone through all the schools, he had gone through all the different ways of looking for one's mind and trying to find out what it is. And actually, as a crowning of all this, having looked at all the things happening in mind, all the different ways one can think and feel and experience, now on his thirty fifth birthday he was sitting under a tree in Northeastern India, and he was trying to find his mind. He looked and he looked, and he discovered there was no thing he could call his mind. He looked to see if his mind had a certain colour, weight, smell, size or form, is it made of something, did it come from somewhere, and all these questions he couldn't answer. And now if he had not had a big store of good impressions in his mind from many lives, if he'd just been an ordinary person, then this might have thrown him into some kind of nihilism. Thinking hey, I can't find my mind, then nothing is there, then nothing has any meaning, you know, and he might have become deeply depressed or whatever else. But because he had a heavy, solid building up of good impressions from former lives, because he had been consciously filling his mind with good impressions in every way and from every direction, because of that, when he discovered that there was no thing he could call his mind, he didn't say 'oh, how terrible', he said 'no mind, no problem'. Meaning that when he discovered that when mind was not a thing, that it wasn't made or born or created or put together and didn't come from somewhere, it wouldn't also die, disappear, go away, get lost or not be there anymore. And he developed this quality we call fearlessness. Knowing that that which looked through his eyes and listened through his ears was not a thing, was not composite, not made, not created, that it had not come from anywhere. He knew just as surely that it also couldn't die, disappear, fall away or get lost and he reached a level of complete fearlessness. He knew he was not his body which would get old, sick and die, he knew he was not his thoughts and feelings which change all the time, he knew he was that space-like awareness and he knew that this was indestructible. So, looking from that level of fearlessness, looking from that basic understanding, that deepest understanding, that is aware and not be destroyed or harmed in any way, then whatever happened in his mind took on a completely other tone. Before he was like the poor man, always holding on, pushing away, living in the past or in the future, hoping or fearing and so on, but now understanding that his true essence was indestructible, that that which was aware right now could not be harmed or changed by anything, then everything changed. He looked now from the level of the rich man. He already had basic consciousness, he already had mind, the ability to be aware was something that could not be destroyed, something which was timeless, and from that level he was looking out at the whole richness that mind is capable of. Birth and death, appearance and disappearance, all the free play, all the power and all the quality that mind has. And he discovered how rich he was. He looked out and he said, hey, I don't just have a mind that can't be harmed or destroyed, but it is rich. It's doing something, it's experiencing, things are happening, and so on. And he saw very clearly that the mirror is more important than the pictures, that the depth of the ocean is more important than the waves, that that which is aware was more lasting and more real than all the objects of awareness. And he became deeply joyful, looking at everything from a level of surplus, looking at everything from a level of joy, play, freedom and so on, he could only be happy. But there was more to it. He discovered mind has a third quality. He saw mind is not just space, indestructible, radiantly clear and conscious and therefore rich and joyful but he saw mind is also unlimited. It has no ending to it, it has no stop, it has no place where it is not. He saw that all beings want happiness, all beings want to avoid suffering, they behave nicely if they feel good, that they are difficult if they feel bad, and he also saw that although the ability to think abstractly may be different in different people and different places, nobody had ever found any limit to mind. That where one cannot think anymore, one can feel, remember, dream, hope, have wishes and so on, that there is no ending to mind. And seeing that mind was unlimited, then all feeling of separation between him and other fell away. Then there was no way he could avoid being kind. There was no way he could avoid working for the benefit of others because there was no separation. They wanted happiness, they wanted a good time, just like him. So these three qualities were what dawned in Buddha's mind on his thirty fifth birthday, under this tree in Northeastern India at a place called Bodhgaya. Fearlessness from recognizing mind to be space, joy from seeing this space is free and playful and full of potential, and direct, active love, not just looking at your navel and saying 'om' every hour, but doing something, acting for the benefit of all beings. These three things appeared in Buddha's mind. This was what happened to him. (This transcript has been normalized from the taped speech in accordance with the conventions for written English.) |
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