เพินกับซกเชน การเข้าถึงจิตตรัสรู้จากมุมมองของทิเบต T & Eng

ลำดับตอนที่ #8 : part 1

I am very pleased to be a part of this event and to have an opportunity to share about the history, culture and wisdom of the Bon tradition, which is indigenous religion of Tibet. I do have enough good experience giving talks and speeches at universities, colleges and in public occasions. But here today is a different experience. I have a different feeling, a pleasure and a feeling very connected, warm and something very unique.

 I think it is nodoubt the blessing of Buddhas and spirituality of each and every one of Thai people, each and every place in your city. There’s a stupa, there’s a statue, and there are all religious events in each and every individual life and every full of yellow color in this city. So I am very much positive that most of you are very new in the Bon tradition and history. Therefore, I will begin with a very short and brief kind of history, introduction part of the Bon.

Bon is founded by Buddha Tonpa Sherab. It has a very long history of more than 18,000 years and gradually he has preached in his birthplace and another place, which is called “Zhang Zhung”, one of the main sources of history, culture and religion of the Bon. Buddha Tonpa Sherab is an enlightened one himself. An example of his teaching that is left behind for us is to follow the spiritual path by integrating it in our day-to-day life. That makes it beneficial in our present. Tonpa Sherab has been once in Tibet in his life due to a certain condition through Zhang Zhung.

The reason I would like to explain here a little bit about Zhang Zhung is its significance historically, culturally, spiritually of Bon and of Tibet itself. In early history it’s wide geographically but there were gradual changes due to the circumstances of the political nature. It is located in the northwestern most part of Tibet centered by Mt. Kailash, a holy place for Buddhism in general, as well as for Hinduism and Bon traditions, especially in all those parts including the upper northern part of India like Kashmir, Ladakh, Lahoul, Spiti and Kinauri. All these areas were the regions of Zhang Zhung in the early days.

In those areas there are still a lot of evidences, proofs that show the surviving culture of Zhang Zhung, in the spiritual level, cultural level and some parts of language and custom. But mainly the important part of that is still in those areas the existence of Bon tradition practiced in common people’s lives and applying it in everyday life. For forty-two generations, the history of Zhang Zhung has had its own language. But literature is totally different.

This you can still find in some old texts in the Bon tradition, the characters and also the prayers of Zhang Zhung. But in some cultural areas in the northern part of Kinauri there are still people who speak that language. In the very early day it is a very powerful place linguistically and spiritually.And some how it was integrated into what is known as present-day Tibet. So Tibet became a greater Tibet and then Bon has emerged into a Tibetan kind of form. Therefore, Tibetan and Bon or Tibetan and Zhang Zhung have become a part of an inseparable nature itself.

We often say Bon is the culture of the Tibetans both in cultural and spiritual levels. Until around the end of the 7th century A.D. when Buddhism came to Tibet from India the whole nation of Tibet was a practitioner of the Bon religion. And still it is being practiced very widely. If any of you is interested furthermore about the history, culture and nature of Zhang Zhung, there is a scholarly book written by John Blazer. The title of the book is “Integrity of Upper Region of Tibet and Integrity of Zhang Zhung”. There are 3 books in general. The two of them deal directly with history and culture of Zhang Zhung. Gradually from then on the Zhang Zhung language has been transmitted into the Tibetan language.

Then gradually the Bon teaching has been spread all over Tibet during the first Tibetan king Nyatri Tsenpo and his successors. During the time of Tonpa Sherab, he preached the nine levels of Bon, which are nine gradual ways or nine stages of Bon practice. The first four of them out of nine connect more directly with social or physical benefits and relate to environment and day-to-day life, rather than dealing directly with how to achieve enlightenment or insight awakening. For example, in the first stage there are four sub-divisions related to divination, astrology, ritual and healing ceremonies, diagnosis and medicine tradition of Tibet.

The reason why I have emphasized the application in day-to-day life here is it is actively functioning in our Tibetan society today. Divination, for example, has played a great role in our life. When you are confused as to which decision is to be made, which direction you want to choose, what level of relationship or job, whatever so and so forth, even health related, you consult the divination. So divination is one that the master, the practitioner or the spiritual person, whoever is qualified, can guide you—what is right to choose, which helps ourselves to make a decision that you are not able to do it on your own.

That’s why we say it has a benefit in our everyday life. Of course we have to take full trust toward that system, that tradition, that aspect. Then you have to make a decision on whom you are going to ask for the decision, whom you will depend on for the result or advice of the divination. Sometimes it seems superstitious for developed countries. For example, in my case I had a brain tumor.

The question arises whether I should have a surgery or not. Friends and everybody in the west have the same idea or advice that there is no question that I must go to a surgery. But my point of view is I’m not going to make a decision until the divination approves that I should. Otherwise, I won’t make the decision. It doesn’t mean that there is a brain tumor or not. I’m not asking or looking for that.

 I’m not saying that having tumor is threatening or not. That is not the point. The point is whether tumor can adjust itself. Maybe I can survive a little bit longer than I do surgery if it’s not the right direction. It’s the matter of time, doctor and so forth. And that is exactly for my case. I’m not talking about a third person’s story. And everybody thought I’m a little bit typical Tibetan. But that is the way of our life, how we teach our people to follow the teaching. And we do ourselves accordingly. So luckily the divination’s result was on my side. So I had surgery successfully and there were no side effects. So you can see now how I am.

The doctor at that very moment believed that I would have for sure side effects, if not anything else. He was one hundred percent certain. He said I would lose my left eye. But I can see every one of you now clearly. I’m having no side effects. Neither did I lose the sense of this left side. Otherwise, my left side would be paralyzed. One doctor said the worst possibility is that I would have that. We went along with that belief, and we did everything according to what is instructed.

It turned out that the surgery went miraculously with an unexpected success. So this is just giving you one example how we Tibetans, not only myself, believe, and we Tibetans follow on and do as it is being taught. The Buddha’s teaching doesn’t fake you as long as you don’t fake yourself in the teaching. It means if you don’t weaken or distrust your belief in the teaching, then the teaching will never fake you. It always remains truthful and reflects power of blessing. That is what I’m trying to say. There are three main way of teaching, and they come in the forms of sutric way, tantric way and dzogchen or the great perfection ways.

The purpose of these three different levels of teaching is to benefit both the mental and the physical aspects of us. We are more concerned with the internal level. Inner quality is much more important than the outer, physical one. Material quality is good for external level.Internal level, on the other hand, is very much on your own. It remains with you and will always be with you. It is your most trusted friend.

This is the main message of Buddha, to teach these gradual steps. It is to refine your inner being. I have been using the word ‘inner being’, but we can also use ‘your mind.’ So it is often mentioned in our text to try to see your inner mirror. Don’t project outwards, but learn how to look into your inner mirror. Because often we are not looking into our inner mirror. We keep on talking about the inner mirror but we are not actually looking into it.What we have been doing is mostly looking for the outside mirror to find out who we are. But looking at the outer mirror, we are not looking at ourselves.

We are merely looking at our reflections. So Buddha Tonpa Sherab is trying to point out- Look at yourselves, not at your shadows. Shadow is not you. Yourself is you yourself as you are as who you actually are. That is the essence of all the teachings, to self-realize.

In the beginning of our conference we had prayers, we always pray for all sentient beings, including ourselves. Even when you are alone in your room, you should not forget all the beings so you can include them in your prayers always. This is to apply the teaching to your inner level. Find your inner quality and let that inner quality, or you can call it power, blessings and so on,shine forth from yourselves and reach all the sentient beings so that everyone who is in need of the blessing receive it. By finding your mind, what I mean is: Each and everyone of us deserves and expects to be in the environment of happiness and joyfulness, in your environments, surroundings and families, right? Often we try to search for ways to make our lives happy and perfect, with no complaints. We think that all the conditions such as having a good car, a good job, a good family constitutes happiness.

We think we will be satisfied this way.But when we actually have all those,it actually increases, not decreases our complaints and dissatisfaction. But where do these negative qualities come from? Therefore the teachings of the Buddhas are for pointing to us that those physical and material things will not bring us absolute peace and happiness in each and everyone of us. These physical things are not the final solution.

True happiness results when you know how to overcome your own selves. Being in the place or the space where there are no effects that bother yourselves, so there is nothing to disturb your peace. As I mentioned there are the sutric, tantric and dzogchen levels. The message of the sutric level is how to overcome the Five Poisons. These are desire, anger, hatred, jealousy and ignorance.The three levels here kind of lead us in different ways, but the ultimate goal is one and the same, which is to free us from these poisons.

The key is how to apply the teachings into our lives. In the Sutra itself there are different schools or levels, the highest of which is the Middle Way or Madhyamika. We are not going deep into that. The essence of the teaching is—thinking of these Five Poisons. The sutric path teaches us how to avoid them using antidotes. The tantra teaches how to transform the Poisons without avoiding them. Dzogchen teaches how to liberate the Poisons without making the effort either of avoiding or transforming them. Just liberate itself. Just leaving it as it is. So these three have different methods, but the same purpose.

The ultimate goal is the same. Either you come by airplane, by ship or by road, you come to Bangkok. It depends on financial resources, time, so many factors. It does not mean one is better than another. Each is good and appropriate in its own way.

All the problems among us person to person, community to community, country to country. Whatever problem we talk about. If you look very deeply into the nature of the problem, no matter how you give the explanation, but it goes directly to the mind. Somebody’s thought, somebody’s idea, somebody’s ignorance is responsible for the whole problem. So that ignorance is not going to go away by a rocket launcher nor atom bombs.

The only way is through the Buddhas’ teaching. Therefore the root of all the sufferings is your own self or mind, which we are talking about here all day. We are talking here about the relationship between mind and body. So in Tibetan we say if the mind is comfortable and at peace, then the body is comfortable and at peace. Pretending the body to be peaceful does not mean that your mind is peaceful. Merely sitting in the meditation position does not mean your mind is meditating, right? So everybody knows.

When you learn how to meditate, you sit in a position and close your eyes, but at the same time you being to travel and manifest yourselves elsewhere, projecting hundreds of things to think about. Something you realize immediately, something carrying it so far that you have to bring it back. That is how our active mind functions. There are some visible parts that you can notice; there are also parts that are not so visible easily unless you go in with it. So mind is important, and we try to purify it of the clouds that are covering it. So in the afternoon, Venerable from Sri Lanka said that some pointed that the mind was in the head, some said it was in the heart, and so on.

 No matter what we are not talking about it. But it’s clear that no matter where you take the mind to be, there is someone who is responsible for the pointing.The key is to train your mind, or your brain if the brain is in fact one and the same as the mind. So why do we need to train the mind? Let me give you an example from our tradition. Let’s see you encounter two persons. One is your very close friend whom you know very well.

The other is a stranger to you. Suppose the first one is saying something bad to you. Suppose both are using the same words to hurt you. But your responses will be very different. Even though the first one means to harm you verbally, you think that it’s OK and he may not mean that. You make yourself OK with that person. However, this is not the case with the second one who is a stranger. You are not OK with this one.

This is totally different even though they are using the same words. So you are not being affected by the words that are being uttered, but you are affected by your own self, your own prior perception. For the first one you say OK because your inner big boss says OK. Your physical body has no choice but to be OK too. But once your inner boss says not OK, then the body is not OK too. Your reaction is totally different. Therefore I say, if the mind is OK, then even if somebody hurts you, you still can control the situation. Of course this is not comfortable. But you are still tolerant. So this is one example.

The key thing is the mind. The key thing is not the material outside of the mind. Therefore Buddha Sherab said “Look into your inner mirror. Look exactly how beautiful you are, how smart you are, how ugly you are, how foolish you are. Observe it with no reaction.” The Buddha asked us to look deep into the inner mirror in order to find out who you really are. If your mind can be trained so that it’s OK on every occasion, accepting everything as it is, this is the practice we are talking about. You should notice and realize — Did I go across my commitments? Did I commit any transgressions? If so, how many times? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Realize how many times you have actually gone out of control of yourself. Train yourself in mindfulness everyday in your life.

Within a week you can reduce the number, and in two or three months maybe you can reduce them significantly. That is called mindfulness training. We are complaining about a lot of things but we have not paid much attention on training ourselves. If you are religious, you think my master may help you and they will take care of me. The inner qualities that are capable of uplifting and helping us get rid of these negative emotions are already within ourselves.

The blessings of the Buddha will never reach us unless we practice it ourselves. If somebody can do this on behalf of ourselves, then the Buddhas would have done that long time ago and we do not have to worry about anything right now. It is not something in that way. So Buddha shows the path. We have to follow it. Then only we can experience the benefits of the teaching and blessings. Otherwise no. If food is on the table and you don’t move your hands and look at it, food will never come into your mouth. It’s equally so with the Buddhas’ teaching.

 The teachings are there, given by the Buddhas, but they will never reach us unless we make effort to do so ourselves. The key is how to take of our own selves and we should not depend on something else. Merely having the teaching with us is not going to help us. Just like if we have a treasure box, such as a jewelry box in our house, merely keeping it is not going to bring us any benefit. You are afraid of taking the treasure out in the public, and you are not happily using it. It does not help you at all. Likewise, we have the diamond inside us, the quality of our mind, our inner being has the quality to transform everything. That can make life a different level of purity. You can make it by yourself.

Somebody has the problem of anger and desire, Each has different problems.Think how mind training can help us significantly. If you are afflicted with anger, you will be rejected by the group. You won’t be chosen by the community. People will want to be away from that person. Those who are humorous, joyful, flexible will be liked by everybody. Everybody chooses this kind of person because it gives them pleasure. Anger actually drives you away from the community. So we need to overcome anger.

One of the great masters was asked by one of his disciples what is most important for the good practitioner. The reply from the master is try to be within yourself. What is needed to be within yourself. Try to learn yourself, to control yourself. What does this mean? Let us go back to the examples I already gave about the two persons. If somebody makes you angry, immediately you are losing your control and you are reacting on that anger.

You want to protect yourself from the perceived threat. Your reaction is your way of protecting yourself. But you are not protecting yourself, you are actually damaging yourself. You are not peaceful at the moment; you are not comfortable. You are full of the energy of the burning five elements. You can hardly see and think what you are doing. That is the power of anger.

 How it damages and destroys everything, including yourself. So, with the limit of time, we will go directly to Dzogchen. Generally I would like to reflect on the antidote of the five poisons. The antidote of anger is loving and kindness. Try to practice loving and kindness whenever anger arises. As for hatred, its antidote is openness, spaciousness and flexibility. For desire, the antidote is how to let go, how to be generous. Desire is bringing things to ourselves, so the antidote is giving out. Generosity is part of the practice of letting go, which is antidote of desire.

We can see the result of generosity. For example in this country, we went to the Grand Palace and the nearby temples. We went to see the Reclining Buddha. I can’t explain how the Buddha is—the energy level, the power level, everything. I know many went there as tourists, but many went there for really spiritual purposes. Either way, there are connecting in a symbolic way to the energy of Buddha.