Welcome to the SC Dharma Group Teachings PageColumbia TeachingsGeshe Dakpa Topgyal: The Four Noble Truths (continued)Dateline: Columbia: August 31, 2001 The Four Noble Truths We were talking about the Four Noble Truths, which are the essence of Buddhist teaching. The Four Noble Truths teach us different ways and methods to live a meaningful life. At the same time, the Four Noble Truths teach us different ways and methods to solve problems. We have many problems that cannot be solved by receiving help from the physical or material world. The Four Noble Truths teach us why we have so many human problems, the causes of those problems, who created them, whether these problems are fair or unfair, why we don’t recognize problems as problems. We fail to deal with many of our problems because we don’t recognize them as problems. And this creates additional problems that can’t be fixed or cured by receiving help from the physical or material world. But we can learn mental techniques that directly or indirectly help us recognize these problems as problems and deal with them ourselves. This is the right way to deal with our problems, without fingering friends and relatives as the source of our problems. The second of the Four Noble Truths tells us that many of our problems are created by our own minds. If we remain under control of our minds, and our minds remain under control of our thoughts, and our thoughts remain under control of our delusions, and our delusions remain under control of our false notions of self, all this causes us to divide the world into two: I and you. Anything we think has to do with "I" we bring to our side. And things we feel have nothing to do with the self, we put on the other side. Dividing the world into I and you becomes one of the most destructive of human emotions. That attachment, that I, I, I brings up anger, antipathy, aversion, repulsion. Anger and attachment lie in our human psyche, and even small external events can activate residues, a tendency to repeat these two emotions. First, we have a habitual tendency that lies in the back of the psyche to repeat similar emotional patterns. Second, the external environment is conducive to mismatches of our emotions and reality. Third, we pay incorrect attention. We make incorrect emotional responses, thanks to our conceptual ideas. Our ideas create certain things that we impute or project on people, things, and events. The moment the mind of attachment creates the quality of attachment, we see that as real, as an attractive quality that is part of the object. We become attached. In the same way, the mind creates unattractive qualities and places them on things, objects, and events and believes these imputed unattractive qualities exist as part of the object itself. Because of this an object may feel attractive one day and unattractive the next, and we feel bad. The object itself is the same; the only change is in our perception. This is very frustrating to us because we don’t know what’s happening in our mind. We think the changes are in the object. Not knowing how we perceive, what we create, and how we project causes us great suffering. When our perception changes, the appearance of the object changes to us, and we are very frustrated. This is related to the second of the Four Noble Truths, the truth of the origin of suffering. The truth of the origin of suffering has two parts. One part is karma, an intentional act with a greater or equal reaction. Karma is not a law imposed by the Buddha. Nor is it a law imposed by some higher, supernatural being. Nor is it self-punishment or penance. Karma is the intentional act that has an equal or greater reaction, and that intentional act is produced by our distorted mind or thoughts. Our perception does not match reality, and the delusions are our distorted thoughts. So the second of the Four Noble Truths deals with karma and delusion. When karma and delusion come together, two things occur. We have an undesirable environment, and we create a mismatch of psychological responses so that the perceiver is always experiencing unwanted experiences. There are six root delusions and 20 secondary delusions. Some of the ancient Hindu schools believe all negative emotions are the essential nature of the human mind. So they don’t believe in the possibility of nirvana or moksha. They believe delusions are like the blackness of charcoal; they cannot be removed from the mind. Buddhists believe they are not an essential part of the mind; delusions are temporary manifestations of the mind and can be totally separate and totally eradicated. Buddhists say if delusions are essential nature of the mind, then anger is essential nature and compassion is essential nature. But the two cannot coexist at the same time. It’s impossible in the same cognitive moment to feel both anger and compassion. If both anger and compassion are essential nature of the mind, it would be possible for the two emotions to coexist and to be felt simultaneously. But attachment is 100 percent closeness, and anger is 100 percent repulsion. They cannot be experienced by one person simultaneously. If you don’t understand that these emotions are only temporary manifestations, that they are not essential nature of the mind, then the Buddhist idea of nirvana or enlightenment becomes only a story. Buddhists believe they can be removed irreversibly, and achieving that is achieving liberation. Nirvana, moksha, or liberation means total cessation of all kinds of disturbing emotions or thoughts. The Vaibhasika and Sauvantantika schools believe a person will be left with subtle residue or remnants of the self or I, yet this doesn’t force you to divide the world into two. But Mahayana Buddhism says that in full enlightenment even that non-destructive sense of I must be abandoned because it disturbs your peace and hinders your helping others. Otherwise, you might abide in the blissful state of nirvana and forget the rest of the world. The false notion of self is our main problem. It gives rise to all sorts of delusions. Our delusions don’t match the actual, physical world, so we remain confused, frustrated, agitated, constantly blaming our problems on others, creating problems in our mind and working to ensure others share our problems. Once we understand that this is what we are doing, we must ask: Is there a cure or not? That brings us to the third of the Four Noble Truths, the truth of cessation. Some think the cessation of suffering is a physical place you can go and live. But nirvana is not a destination; it is not a physical world. If it were in the physical world, the richest people would go there easily, and the rest of us would be left behind. If there were a plane ticket to nirvana, it would be very expensive. Definitely, nirvana is not a physical world, a physical place where we can go and live. Nirvana or liberation or moksha is a pure state of our own mind. Our mind is filled with "positivities"; there is no room for "negativities." Our mind does not mismatch. Our mind perceives the physical world as it is, completely free of conceptual elaborations and conceptual decorations. The mind is capable of accepting everything without rejecting anything. That state of mind is called nirvana or liberation or moksha. In order to achieve nirvana, you don’t have to abandon this physical world. But you can only achieve that state of mind after eliminating delusions and karmic imprints. This is what karmic imprint means: If we all look at one object, a cup, although we all perceive a cup as a cup, although we all reach a consensual agreement, a consensual reality, at the same time each of us perceives the cup slightly differently. We make limitations on the cup. The reason we each perceive the cup differently is due to the karmic imprint. That mismatch in our perception is called a delusion. Once we eliminate delusions and our mismatching, we reach nirvana, a pure state of mind that is unbiased, that accepts everything without rejecting anything, that relates to the world without conceptual elaborations or decorations. This state of mind perceives the world as a source of joy rather than a source of pain. This state of mind reminds us of the blissful nature of life, rather than nasty harshness. So meditation is the technique to understand that the harshness we find in day-to-day life is a creation of the mind. Secondly, meditation prevents the mind from creating anew the harshness of the world. Nirvana has unique features. One is cessation. Nirvana is actually nothing more than the state or factor of the cessation of pain. We feel physical pain because we don’t separate the sense of I from the gross body. In deep meditation, the sense of I is temporarily lost; it is not responding to what’s happening in and around the physical body. When you come out of meditation, though, and the sense of I returns, you will once again feel physical pain. So you can call nirvana a painkiller, a spiritual medicine. We’re considering starting a big pharmaceutical company! Ordinarily, we feel even a mosquito bite. Every part of our body is pervaded with a sense of I. Our sense of I no longer exists when we reach nirvana, so there’s no sense of pain. As long as you do feel a sense of I, every part of your body can feel pain. Question: Is nirvana death? Answer: No, nirvana is not death, not normal death. Once you reach nirvana, though, you dissolve your physical body. Nothing is left but your nails and hair. The Tibetan word for body is "lu," which means something left behind at the time of death. When someone reaches nirvana, the physical body dissolves, and nothing is left but nails and hair because they are not a part a living part of the living body. An ordinary being feels a sense of I every waking moment. Without a sense of I, there is no mismatch. With a sense of I, there is an automatic sense of attachment. With a sense of I, you don’t just see a cup as a cup; it’s "the" cup or "my" cup. Losing the sense of I happens to us on the way to Nirvana. Unfortunately, we are about 20,000 miles away and driving in first gear. To reach nirvana you are always combining three efforts: study, for intellectual understanding; contemplation, to deepen your understanding until you reach full comprehension; and meditation, so that your understanding becomes part of you. If you do not combine all three, no answers will be fully satisfactory. When you achieve full understanding, you won’t separate what you perceive into subject and object. As long as there is a gap, a subject and an object, you have only an intellectual understanding. You want to assimilate until all becomes natural. This understanding becomes like our knowledge that fire is hot. You don’t need to go to a reference book to be told fire is hot. You don’t need to say, "Another person told me." You know fully. Source: South Carolina Dharma Group Contact: Claudia Smith Brinson Phone: 803-799-4901 E-mail: csbrin@infi.net |