(Bowl rings)
(John): So In this presentation we are going discuss the Path of Sutra.
We will look at how Sutra enforms monastic life and the advantages of monastic life.
We are going to look at the refuge vows may be taken by lay practitioners.
And we'll also look at the types of meditations
that are done in Sutric tradition,
which are different from the ones in Tantra and in Dzogchen.
So Geshe la, perhaps we could start out with talking about just the view and
conduct of Sutra. How would you describe the view and the conduct of Sutra?
In Sutra there are 5 poisons, and the 5 poisons have the 5 antidotes.
The antidotes can destroy the 5 poisons.
(John): Can you tell us what the 5 poisons are?
Yes. Attachment, anger, ignorance, pride, and jealousy are the 5 poisons.
In Sutra they say that these are the 5 poisons, and you don't touch them,
we need an antidote for them. Destroy from the root and throw out.
If there is a poisoned tree, with this poison the tree will grow up.
You need to take it out from the root and throw out, otherwise it will destroy us.
Same as in the West. There are medicines, and description: away from the child.
If the child touches and eats it, it is a posion for the child.
(John): Right, So you want to keep it away from the children.
Yes, keep it away from the children. Sutra looks like that.
(John): So we try to avoid negative actions, negative thoughts,
negative speech, and we also try to cultivate the virtuous activities.
Yes, cultivate virtous things. Also they say, if there is a posion
and the poison is destroyed, good things would come out. In Sutra they think that.
So I guess in one way you could say that
Sutra is the basis of moral behavior in the Bön tradition.
Yes. In Sutra they talk more about disciplines.
In the monks' life there are a lot of disciplines.
It all comes from the Sutra.
Looking the outside the Sutra is good.
Inner you practice Dzogchen and Tantric, outer you practice Sutra.
(John) : Good. I was going to ask you about this, because many people in the
West first encounter Dzogchen practice, before they really studied Sutra.
And of course Dzogchen tells us that everything is perfect as it is. Right?
Single taste, right?
And so it also gives you a lot of freedom in your conduct.
And yet we see that great Dzogchen practitioners such as Yongdzin Rinpoche or
His Holiness and of course yourself
you are still continuing to practice the life of the monk. Right?
So why do people continue to practice and observe all of these moral conducts,
and also practice Dzogchen?
There are two ways to practice Dzogchen.
In Dzogchen there are Tantric practitioners.
This Dzogchen is common for everyone who practices.
Before Nyame Sherab Gyaltsen there was only Tantric practitioner,
Dzogchen practitioner or a Sutric practitioner.
There were only single lineages of Sutra,Tantra and Dzogchen.
Before that they did not combine Sutric and Tantric, or Dzogchen.
Then Nyame Sherab Gyaltsen, second Buddha of the Bön, he combined them.
Outer monk, inner Dzogchen and Tantric.
Also Dzogchen can be practiced by lay people too.
(John): Of course.
Sutric [vows of monks and nuns] cannot be practiced by lay practitioners.
There are different types of Sutric practices,
Lay level Sutra practices and Sutric practices for monks are different.
Monks need to take a lot of vows. Lay people do not need that kind of vows.
(John): You know I heard Yongdzin Rinpoche saying one time that he preferred to
continue practicing in the moral way of the Sutra, because it does not confuse
people too and give people the wrong idea about behaviour.
Yes.
(John): So you are trying to set a good example for other people.
Yes, if you show the good example, then people will follow that.
If you show the bad example, the student will follow that.
The teacher need a better discipline than the student. It's more important.
(John): Why do monk and nuns take many vows as part of their path?
What is the advantage of taking all these vows?
Because there are 250 vows for monks is that right?
Yes. 250 vows. Monks take 2 types of vows.
One is when they take 25 vows, and after that we take 250 vows.
(John): So the first 25 vows are for the novious monks,
and then the 250 are for the full ordination of a monk?
If you take the 25 vows then you become a monk.
Before that you are not a monk.
They are more disciplined, more than lay people. Lay people do not have
[the same level of] discipline. They can put in discipline [when needed].
If you go to an office, they have a discipline.
If you go the school they have a rule for that.
And the monks in the monastery also need disciplines.
They say that monks are better than lay people. Why are they better?
Because they have vows and they are more disciplined.
So it is about disciplining your behaviour and disciplining your mind.
Yes, yes.
Which makes your practice stronger.
Yes. Yes.
Discipline in the daily practice and discipline for when you go out,
the way you talk, the way you do [things or the way you act]
everything that needs to be under discipline.
And of course all these vows that the monks and nuns take
also help tame the ego. Like for instance the monks are always
wearing the robes, and nothing else. And you always cut the hair.
So in these ways we avoid becoming proud of our appearance.
I guess that's one of the reasons. Or are there other reasons?
Yes. This colour we call the spiritual colour.
Red, yellow, blue we call them spiritual colours.
Now also black and white, we call normal colour.
We wear the spiritual colour. We do not wear the fancy things.
If you look in your house and you have a lot of different shirts, T-shirts,
different jackets. This jacket for the party, cocktail party.
This jacket for something else, wedding party, this one is for the office.
Lot of different shoes, pants, different jackets and shirts that we do not have.
We have 2 or 3 clothes. For party we wear this one, for monastery we wear that one.
Whenever we go out we wear that one.
We are satisfied. Satisfaction.
You [lay people] are not satisfied. Especially girls, they go the mall,
and they are buying every time, keep wanting more and more.
(John): Attachment?
Attachment, desire. Every year there is a new fashion, they want it.
The things from last year are no more of use.
Not only the girls do this, many man do it too, you know.
Oh yes. I think that girls do it more than men.
(John): Possible.
Shopping, shopping. Girls have a lot to shop. Their shopping chakra is open. (laughing)
We call it the shopping chakra.
That way if you go to mall there is a lot of girls' cloth, more than men.
I think it's showing that the girls are doing more shopping.
(John): One of the vows that monks and nuns take is of course not to have
relationship, no family basically. What is the advantage of not having a family?
Because many people think that family is wonderful. It's very warm, very loving.
So why do monks and nuns choose not to have a family, not to have children?
These days it's easy to give an example, in the past time it was
a different answer. These times we would say population control (laughs).
Easy to say that it's population control.
Look at the Tibetan people. The population is not big.
We don't need to say population control.
We are already control because of the nuns and the monks.
In the texts they say we make relationships because of the attachment.
(John): We have very strong attachments.
Strong attachment. So because of this we do not have attachments.
Also that's why we don't have family. If you have a family, you need to spend
a lot of time for that. That time takes us away from our mediation.
Doing the virtuous thing, or you need to spend time in the family.
We monks have a lot of time to do the practice, because we don't have family.
(John): That's right.
Saving time.
Well, and also if you have a family, you have to generate a lot of money somehow,
to support this family. Again, this takes us away from the spiritual practice.
Also you need to take care of wife, child and also money, time, and everything.
That way it's reducing the practice time.
So you just making your life simpler and simpler and more focused on the practice,
more focused on the teachings.
Yes. More focused on the teachings and meditation.
And you live in the community of the monastery,
so you are supported by all the other monks and nuns.
We think that all the monks are Dharma brothers, and the nuns are Dharma sisters.
We don't have a family life, we have Dharma brothers and sisters, as we call.
This seems like a very wonderful way of living.
Yes. Then you [lay people] are saving money. Also you have health insurance.
As monks, we don't have it. We don't save money, we don't have insurance.
We don't think about that. We just got food today, and it's fine.
We are not thinking about putting things away for tomorrow.
Mainly we focus - the dialectic school - just focuses on the philosophy.
Then also in meditation there are 2 groups in the monastery.
One is the meditation group and the other one is the dialectic, philoshopic group.
And we just focus on that.
If you go to a monk's room, there is nothing. It's very simple.
(John): Simple life. Simple is good.
Yes. (laughing)
(John): So lay practitioners do have the possibility of taking refuge vows.
Yes, sure.
(John): So it's possible for lay people to take some of these simple vows,
and simplify their lives, and also guide
their moral discipline as a lay practitioner.
Yes. Moral discipline is very important, and lay practitioners also take the vows.
There are 4 lay vows. First is killing life. Don't kill anyone.
(John): No harm.
No harm.
If someone harms you, how much suffer does this harm cause for you?
This is the same for others. Don't harm anyone.
(Tibetan words)
Second is don't steal.
(John): Yeah. Don't steal.
(John): Actually is it going a little bit further than that? Not to take what
You should not take what was not given to you.
Yes. Anything not given to you, you do not take it.
(John): That's right. So if you see a 100 dollar bill laying on floor,
you don't take it.
You don't take it. If you take it, then you can put a note somewhere with
your contact that you found it. You can give information.
And then the next vow is to refrain from false and idle speech.
(John): So in other words we always tell the truth.
Yes.
(John): And we also don't gossip.
Yes, don't gossip.
(John): Or say negative words about people.
And also avoid sexual misconduct, as the forth vow.
Sexual misconduct is harming a lot others too.
If you don't marry a woman, if you have a girlfriend who is already married
or a boyfriend who already married, than don't do the sexual misconduct.
If you had a sexual contact with somebody else's wife and the husband notices it,
it destroys the husband's heart.
(John): Sure, yes.
Also some girls have a contact with somebody else's husband.
If the wife notices, there would be a lot of fight at home.
(John): It comes back to the very first vow, when we don't harm anyone.
Yes, don't harm anyone.
(John): So harming is not only on the physical level, but also on the
emotional level. Or the mental level.
So any sort of sexual behaviour that we would do and cause someone some pain,
some harm, that should be avoided.
Yes.
That's one of the lay people's vow.
(John): Now there is also the possibility to take some vows for
we don't use any intoxication, such as alcohol, or something like that.
Is that correct?
Yes. Alcohol (Tibetan words)
If you take 5 vows then it includes not taking alcohol.
If lay people take 4 vows, than it's not included.
(John): So you have the possibility of taking a different set of refuge vows.
Yes.
(John): But you have to take the basic four
if you're going to take the refuge vows.
But you can take the five. Because there is also a possibility, I think, of taking
some dietary restricitions. Either about no meat or no onions, or garlic.
Yes. There are not root ones. There are vows that are root vows.
And there are vows that are branch vows.
If you cut the branch, the tree will not die.
If you cut the root of the tree, the tree will die.
If you break one of the root vows, then monks are not monks anymore
and lay people also take we call the "genyen" (Tibetan word), so if they break
then there is no more "genyen" too.
(John): These first 4 are considered to be the root vows:
so it's not harming other living creatures,
refraining from taking that, which is not given,
we refrain from sexual misconduct and
we refrain from false and idle speech.
Yes, these 4 are for the lay people.
And the alcohol. If you drink alcohol limitless, you drink it with no limit,
and you get drunk, you'll be doing something wrong.
(John): Sure.
That way it's very strict for monks. They are not allowed to drink alcohol.
(John): Of course.
(John): Because we loose control.
Or loose our good judgement. Or we loose our moral discipline.
Yes.
(John): Of course it's not just alcohol, but any sort of drugs or anything else
we become inebriated. Same principle.
Same principle, yes.
(John): It's not restricted to just alcohol.
So, some lamas give the refuge vows very frequently, but I've heard that
Tenzin Rinpoche said that he prefers not to give these very often because
it's better not to take the vow than take it and then break it.
Yes.
(John): So one should be very careful, if one is really serious if they're going
to take the vows or not.
When you take a refuge vow from the lama you need to consider
that lama is your is your teacher. You have to think about that.
Some day if the lama is doing something little bit wrong, you may say:
oh I don't want to contact any more this lama.
Then the refuge vow is broken.
(John): So when you take that refuge vow from a teacher you have the
spiritual connection.
Yes, you have the spiritual connection.
You always need to think of him as your spiritual teacher.
(John): So it seems that these refuge vows though are a wonderful way
to simplify are own lives as lay practitioners because, of course if
if we tell the truth, if we don't harm other people and so on,
it leads to a much happier life.
Yes.
If you take the refuge vows, this life is more useful.
Refuge vows are not these four [previous vows].
Anyone can take refuge vows.
Taking refuge in the lama Taking refuge in the Buddha
Taking refuge in Buddha's speech Taking refuge in Boddhisattva.
That's the refuge.
(John): So you are taking refuge in the sources of enlightenment.
Yes, that's the refuge.
And it's an other thing if you take the 4 vows or 5 vows,
that we call the "genyen" (Tibetan).
(John): So it's two different sets of refuge.
Yes, first the refuge vow, and then comes the "genyen".
Then monks have 2 types of vows : "tsantsug" and "gelong" (Tibetan)
(John): Do the monks and the nuns take the same vows?
Almost the same.
(John): In the Sutric system not only do we avoid these negative behaviours,
for instance we do not lie, but we also try to cultivate the positive,
the virtuous conduct within ourselves. Which are referred to as the paramitas,
or the perfections. Right? So let's talk about that a little bit.
I have list here with the 10 paramitas, maybe you could explain us a little bit,
what's the importance of each one of these.
So the first one is, how would you say Tibetan? "sByin-pa" ?
"sByin-pa", yes. Generosity.
(John): So we try to cultivate generosity.
What is the advantage of cultivating generosity?
There are 2 types of generosity. One is when physically you can give something to
somebody who doesn't have it. We can be generous and give food for
somebody who doesn't have enough to eat. Those people are hungry,
those people are thirsty. If you give food to them, if you give drink to them
that's a generosity too.
What is generosity according to the teaching?
According to the teaching generosity means very big things.
There is a lot of suffering in this Samsara.
Giving teaching to change the mind,
that kind of teaching, if you give it. This is a generosity.
(John): So when we share the Dharma with others it a great generosity.
If senior students help junior students in the Dharma things,
Some have a lot of suffering they can not control
they don't know how to control, and then senior student teaches to
do meditation. Then you can guide the meditation.
You can teach the Dharma prayer. This is all generosity.
(John): So our Dharma brothers and sisters in our sangha
are great support for us.
Here at Ligmincha in summer and autumn hundreds of people come to
Rinpoche's teaching. They all come at the same time and share things.
Some are new students, some are old, or senior students.
Senior students share their experience and everything. That's generosity.
(John): Hopefully without pride. (laughing).
Yes, pride like "I'm the teacher, l have more knowledge
than the other one". Sometimes there is a lot of pride, when people are thinking
"I have knowledge". I have a lot of experience. Don't think like that.
Rather think that "I've learned many years, I have a knowledge. They are new
and I'm generously helping the new student". That is the best, it's generous.
(John): That's wonderful.
(John): So the second paramita we've already talked a little bit about,
because it's the ethical discipline.
Discipline, yes.
(John): We keep our ethics pure and clear.
Discipline. There are a lot of discipline. Monks have disciplines.
Lay people have disciplines.
During the teaching time you have discipline. You put timetables:
Monday at 9 the teaching is starting and at 10.30 there is a break.
Following all the disciplines, is a discipline.
Monks have discipline, all the community has discipline.
If you follow all the disciplines, everybody is happy for that.
No one is angry. Discipline helps develop patience.
(John): Yes, I mean that's the beauty of moral conduct and ethical conduct,
is that it leads to happiness within ourselves and happiness in others.
Yes, it gives happiness for both sides.
(John): So the third paramita is patience. Now we could all use more of this.
Yes. (Laughing)
Patience is the most important one.
Especially patience in the case of husband and wife.
(John): Or anyone in the family. (laughing)
Or anyone in the family.
Mostly husband and wife, if they spent long time, more than 10 years,
together after that they can loose patience often.
At the start when they were girlfriends and boyfriends,
they had a lot of patience.
After marriage they loose the patience.
To have the patience, if someone is angry, don't respond immediately.
They say, just listen, listen. If you put wood on the fire,
fire becomes bigger and bigger.
If you put gas on the fire, it gets very big.
If you respond immediately, than the anger, the fire will come out.
(John): So just be patient and just wait.
Just be patient, and wait, and just listen. Don't respond immediately.
If somebody is angry, the other side needs more space.
More space. Space helps.
(John): Space helps in many things.
Yes, in many things.
Looking in the space you can see lot of things.
Space holds everything. Good and bad, everything. Space doesn't bother.
(John): So the next of the paramitas is virtuous effort, being diligent.
Or I guess the Tibetan term is "brTson-'grus".
"brTson-'grus", yes.
If you do virtuous things, if you do practice, you need that.
Immediately you can not run [away from] that one you have continually spend time
and do it continually, more and more you need to practice.
(John): So you should do things well.
Yes.
(John): So we shouldn't do things half way. If we do it, we should do it
very fully and completely.
Also we give example: (Tibetan words)
If the fire is on the hair, then you need to do everything that is possible to
put out the fire.
Also grass burns slowly, and then burns everything
Let me give you another example.
Every books they have it.
Also in the West you have the story of the rabbit and the tortoise.
(John): Oh the rabbit and the tortoise.
(John): Oh yes. Where the rabbit goes very quickly, but it goes down to sleep,
and eventually the tortoise wins because it slow and steady, but diligent.
Yes, it looks like that.
(John): So have your diligents to complete your task.
Like a turtle.
(John): So it's the same story in Tibetan. That's interesting.
(John): So well the next one is pretty obvious: meditation.
(John): So we should have our meditation practice, and
be regular in our meditation practice.
Meditation. When you meditate you become happy.
If you suffer, if you have a problem you can meditate.
There is so many different ways to meditate.
You can meditate on emptiness, you can meditate on impermanence,
if you are on a higher level, you can practice Dzogchen,
Natural state of the mind, you can do that kind of meditation.
If you meditate, meditations feels good, right?
(John): Meditation brings us joy, brings us equanimity,
it said that it brings us the four inmeasurables: love, joy, compassion and
equanimity. It leads to a wonderful positive life.
Yes it's possible that meditation would bring that.
Meditation is medicine for the mind.
(John): Yes, it is.
(John): So the 6th paramita is confidence, or (Tibetan word)
Confidence.
(John): So self confidence? Is this what we are talking about?
Yes, self confidence is very good, self confidence if you practice.
Also too much confidence in not so good. It becomes pride.
Self confidence is for example when I know that I have the capabilty of
teaching other people. Teaching is to help the others.
That kind of confidence is good.
Too much confidence is not so good. Then comes pride.
Pride is one of the poisons too.
(John): So it always that balance of confidence and pride
we have to make sure. Too much confidence might lead to pride.
"I'm the teacher. I have the knowledge." That's pride.
Confidence is a little bit different from that.
I have the capability to teach.
I know these things, I have the capability to teach.
I will not hold it to myself, I will teach other people.
This teaching will help the others.
That kind of "nuba" (Tibetan word) can help.
(John): Of course it also an be that confidence it's more basic than
being a teacher, just being confident that I'm a good person.
I think this is something many people in the West have challenge with, because
maybe they had some experience when they were a child and someone told them
that they were bad. And then they don't have this positive image of themselves.
So it's very good to have this confidence in yourself,
that you are essentially a Buddha, within.
Yes. I can see this confidence in children sometimes.
When here in the West children are taught in the school
how to talk with in front of other people.
From the child level they are teaching.
Whenever they got a chance they talk, they are not shaking, they have a lot
of confidence to talk with the people.
If you look at the children from India or from Nepal coming to the USA,
they are a little bit shy. They don't have a confidence for that.
In the West children, sometime I feel, have so much confidence.
So " Ok, I will do it" They never say: I don't know.
They say: " I know that".
Someone tells them "don't do that", they say: "yeah, I know that".
That is too much confidence. (laughing)
(John): Yeah. Again it's the balance of confidence versus pride.
Yes, confidence and pride need to be balanced.
(John): So the 7th paramita is compassion.
Of course this is a very important part of the teachings.
Yes. Compassion "snying rje" (Tibetan )
"“nyen gye manu pala tsa" (Tibetan)
If someone does not have enough food to eat
we have compassion for that.
After the compassion we can be generous.
(John): Yes, you can show your generosity.
Yes, you can show generosity.
If an animal is injured, you feel compassion for that.
After you have compassion, you take action.
You need to take it to the hospital.
Take care for that. That is compassion.
(John): Of course we should show compassion for eveyone that we know,
everyone that we meet, everyone in our family.
Because everyone is experiencing suffering.
Yes, everyone.
Whoever has suffering you can have compassion for that.
(John): So everyone is experiencing it, so we should have compassion for everyone.
(John): So the 8th paramita is the aspirational prayer or monlam.
Maybe you could give us an example. What would be an aspirational prayer?
Aspirational prayer we are doing it every year.
" I wish you a very happy...". This is an aspiration.
(John): "May you have a happy year"
I wish you a very happy year.
I wish you a better life or something like that.
That is a monlam (Tibetan word). An aspiration.
(John): May your life be filled with happiness.
Yes. Every year is like today. Every year be healthy, have good health.
This is all monlam, (Tibetan word). An aspiration.
(John): We are wishing that someone have a better life, a good life.
Wishing anything, wishing is a monlam, (Tibetan word), aspiration.
(John): So this is connected with the generosity and the compassion too,
because we are hoping that others enjoy a beautiful life.
So the 9th is skillful means, which is in the dedication. Or "top" (Tibetan word)?
"Top" is the method. "Top" means idea.
(John): Careful thinking maybe.
Careful thinking, yes.
(John): Careful planning, careful execution.
Yes, careful thinking. Helping through different ideas is a "top" (Tibetan word)
(John): Yes. Many times we have the motivation to help someone
or improve something, but we are not careful about it and maybe we are
rushing too quickly. So this is a careful, skillful way of helping others.
Yes, skillfully helping others. That is "top".
(John): The final one is "Sherab" (Tibetan) or wisdom.
Wisdom, yes.
(John): We all could use more of this.
What do we mean by wisdom exactly here?
There are many different ways that wisdom might be interpreted.
Wisdom is something like intelligence.
If you learn something, you need more wisdom.
Someone learns really quickly. They have a lot of wisdom.
For someone it takes time to learn. There's less wisdom there.
Someone has a lot of experience, lot of knowledge,
that we call a lot of wisdom.
There is a lot of wisdom to carry all the things.
(John): There is this one aspect of wisdom having intellectual knowledge,
or sharpness of the mind.
Yes, sharpness of the mind also.
(John): But there is also isn't there a wisdom that just arises from the heart?
Like the wisdom of emptiness, or the mirrorlike wisdom.
Speaking of the five of these wisdoms.
It's more about the mediative experience.
Yes. When you do the meditation, first level it will be difficult to
do the meditation. When you do it again and again, more wisdom comes,
more knowledge comes out. Better knowledge.
(John): More wisdom. We just say it, more wisdom.
More and more wisdom comes out, more good things come out.
More experience comes out.
(John): The wisdom and experiences arise directly from the meditation.
Not necessarily just throught thought.
Yeah. If you look at the Tantric masters, earlier masters,
when they meditate, more experience comes
and they thought to write it down.
Through the thinking, there is all we call "gurma" (Tibetan)
Experience telling to people
(John): That arises directly from their meditative experience
the text that they are writing, flows naturally.
Flows naturally yes. Flows out.
If you look at one text again and again and again,
more and more knowledge comes out from that text.
After that you don't need to look in a book.
When you start immediately everything comes out.
There is more knowledge.
(John): It seems like that the Sutric method is avoiding all these negativities
like lying, sexual misconduct, and stealing and so forth,
in combination with the cultivation of these paramitas.
leads to very happy life.
Yes, it leads to a happy life.
(John): And it serves as a very clear guide for our behaviour.
Yes.
If you do all these things, it leads to a very good life.
(John): It does lead to a good life.
Now the meditational methods in Sutra are many times are analytical meditations,
like the meditation of impermanence for instance, where we are using the mind
to reflect on the truth, the inner most truth of something like
what can we find that's truly permanent.
And we think, we are using the mind to think about these things.
So this is quite different from Dzogchen meditation.
Also meditation on impermanence helps the practice too.
(John): Of course
When you are young, you are not thinking of the impermanence.
You are energetic, you have power, you think that this life is forever,
and you don't want to meditate.
Also Sutra is saying that our life is impermanent.
(John): No one is lives forever.
Yes. Children, boys and girls will become teenagers, then they will be men and women
and after that wifes and husbands. Then their child call them parents,
and one day they will be called grandpa and grandma,
then it's time to go. Life will be finished.
That way it's all changing.
It's impermanent. We should think "now I need to do the virtuous things."
(John): It changes our mind when we understand impermanence.
This helps us to do the practice.
(John): Give us motivation.
Motivation, yes.
(John): Because we realize that nothing is permanent in this life.
Also is Sutra there is the practice of emptiness.
If search for the table, you find out that there is not a solid table there.
If you take it piece by piece, then there is no table.
We are just giving name.
(John): Yes, that's one of the classic analytical meditations. You meditate
upon a table, - because people might not be familiar with this meditation, -
and you try to find a table. You look at every element of the table:
Is it the leg? Is it the top? Is it the side? Where is the table?
And you find that there is no table. It's only our mind.
But this analytical process leads to inside, it leads to a new wisdom.
Sutric teachings says that we are giving name for things,
that are not not solid from the outside.
We give names to all the things.
Or when the boy is called by his mother and father my son.
Wife says: my husband. Child says: my father.
Everybody is giving names.
(John): That's right.
They are not solid from outside.
(John): It's always changing. From every different perspective.
(John): I remember that one of the teachings I received on this was
when a monk was visiting me as a house guest, and he start giving this teaching
on emptiness and we were eating pizza. He held up the pizza and said:
show me the pizza! Is it the mushroom? Is it the olive? Is it the tomato?
No, we could find no pizza, while we were eating the pizza.
Because this pizza was in our mind, a name. Just a name we create.
Then you ask: where is the tomato? Is the tomato the colour?
Is the tomato the shape?
There is no tomato. (laughing) Nothing is there.
(John): Nothing is there. Empty.
Empty. This Sutric practice leads to the realization of emptiness.
(John): So in the Sutric analytical process we are using the mind to think.
We are using thoughts.
While in the Dzogchen practice we are trying to liberate the thought.
Yes, to liberate the thought.
(John): So it's a very different way to of working with the thoughts.
Yes. Dzogchen says if thought comes don't chase after thought.
Just leave it there.
If you leave them there, thoughts will dissolve themselves.
So ok, we need an antidote for that. You need to take it out from the root.
(John): With the Sutric analytic approach we use the thought,
we don't try just liberate the thought.
Yes we don't liberate it.
(John): Because throught the thinking, and through the sharp, clear mind,
which is really emphasized in the debate especially in the monastery,
you can reach this insight.
Yes.
(John): So this meditation over impermanence we were discussing,
is found in the Ngöndro, which is one of the foundation mediation practice.
So it's considered to be very-very fundamental.
Yes, it is fundamental. The practice of impermanence is a fundamental
practice for everyone.
It's a foundation.
(John): It really changes your life whenever
you have this understanding of impermanence.
And the same is true for the meditation on emptiness.
These two are considered to be a very fundamental meditation.
Looking at these practices, sometimes we are powerful,
sometimes we are down. We are poor, then some years later
we become rich. This is all impermanence.
(John): That's wonderful.
Well, thank you very much Geshe la for this explanation of these
Sutric meditations.
So the next part of the this course people going to get to enjoy
a teaching by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche on impermanence.
And then a meditation guided by Rinpoche on impermanence.
Yes. This will be very helpful, he will explain everything in detail.
His English is a wonderful English. Not like my English. (laughing)
(John): I think your English is very good.
(John): But this should have given you a very good taste of how we work
with these analytical meditations in the Sutric way.
(John): Hope you have enjoyed.
Thank you.