December 17, 2007
HAPPINESS COMES FROM A VIRTUOUS MIND
[The recording of this discourse is incomplete. It appears to be a talk given to a group of people after the completion of the Kopan course.]
Hello all my brothers and sisters, all of you who are gathered here. First, I want to say thank very much.
In this life, people do many things to try to find happiness. Whatever different lifestyle people have, from the president or the beggar begging in the street, from people involved in a circus or making movies, actors, singers, farmers working in the field, people having eating competitions, seeing how much food they can eat in a short time, soccer players, mountain climbers, people jumping off cliffs with wings—or even people without that! Even without wings, they jump from cliffs! People jumping from airplanes with a parachute. Everybody jumps together and holds hands in a circle as they fall. People trekking in the mountains but taking the very difficult ways that others can’t do. People who whip their bodies like in Africa or in the West, or they are whipped by somebody else from another town, leaving lots of marks, cuts and wounds on their body, which means they are regarded as brave if they are able to do that. Also in the West, there are people who put a ring through the body and hang from it without their legs touching the ground. There are all sorts of things that people do, but all this is trying for happiness. The goal of all these things is to achieve happiness. Whatever each individual person thinks of as happiness, they try to do that.
People in the world try just anything for happiness. Even the insects—the ants and the flies—keep so busy, and it’s for happiness. The ants keep so busy, running over the trees and the ground looking for food; the birds flying in the sky, the worms crawling on the ground, the people flying in airplanes—they are all doing the same thing, looking for happiness. Those wealthy people living in five-star, six-star, seven-star, ten-star hotels or very luxurious houses, with all the sense pleasures, with everything that they can get in the world, it is all just to achieve happiness.
To not experience suffering and to experience happiness, that’s the basic thing; that’s the foundation. Everything starts from there.
Just like the external example, planting a poisonous seed means a poisonous tree will grow, with the trunk, the leaves, the flowers and the poisonous fruit. Planting a medicinal seed means a medicinal tree will grow, with the trunk, the branches and flowers and medicinal fruit. The medicinal fruit and the poisonous fruit have a totally separate evolution. The poisonous fruit doesn’t come from a medicinal seed, and the medicinal fruit doesn’t come from a poisonous seed. That’s impossible.
It’s similar here. The evolution of happiness and suffering are totally separate. Happiness doesn’t come from nonvirtuous actions, negative action. It doesn’t come from negative thoughts, from impure thoughts, from the mistaken way of thinking, which transforms our actions into nonvirtue and results only in suffering, only in problems. The evolution of suffering is that. The evolution of happiness is that it comes from positive actions, virtuous actions, which come from positive thoughts, pure thoughts, virtuous thoughts, which is Dharma.
There is the story of two people who went to beg food from a monastery. One person came when the Sangha were having a meal. Arriving at the right time, he got plenty of food and he was so happy that he generated a positive thought toward the Sangha, wishing them to have happiness, to always to have plenty of means of living, food and so forth. The other person went at the wrong time, when the Sangha was not eating, so he didn’t get any food. He got so upset that he generated the very negative thought of wishing the monks’ heads would be cut off.
What happened was that, sooner or later, the first person—the one who went at the right time and got plenty of food and generated a positive thought for all the good things to happen to the Sangha—was sleeping in the park under the shade of a tree one day. Due to the powerful merits he collected by generating positive thoughts for the Sangha, even though the sun moved around, the shade he was sleeping under always stayed over him. When people saw the shadow was not moving away, they thought he was a very special person, one with a lot of merit, so they all asked him to be the king in their country. So he become the king, by them seeing that he was a special being.
The other person who generated negative thoughts by getting angry through not getting any food, sooner or later he fell on the road and a horse carriage, a chariot, came and the wheel went over his neck and cut off his head.
The Sangha is an extremely powerful object, so if you offer a little service or make a little offering, the karma is so powerful that you experience great success in that very life, like the first man. And if you do some little negative thing, like generating a negative thought, the negative karma is so heavy that you start to experience the suffering in that life. So, sooner or later, this is what happened to the other man. His head was cut off because that’s what he wished would happen to the Sangha.
The point here is that generally suffering and happiness come from the mind; they do not come from outside. They come from each individual being’s mind. Somebody who experiences happiness or who experiences suffering, it comes from their own mind. The suffering comes from the negative thought; the happiness comes from the positive thought.
There are numberless stories like this, but this is just to understand how suffering and happiness come from the individual being’s mind, from totally different thoughts; one is from the virtuous, positive thoughts, which is Dharma, the other one is negative thoughts, wrong concepts, superstitious thought. Suffering comes from a mistaken way of thinking, which harms you and which harms others. This is true of not only the suffering and happiness from life to life, but even this life’s suffering and happiness, how it too comes from the mind.
I remember once there was an earthquake. Generally, so many people suffer. Their houses collapse, huge buildings collapses. Once, in Taiwan, when a huge earthquake happened, even large, very strong-looking buildings and large monasteries collapsed, but there was a very simple, old house squeezed between other buildings where a family lived. The parents and the children were our students—the daughter was a nun—and they were all extremely devoted. The father is a very good-hearted person, always helping other people, very devoted. When this huge earthquake happened, so many people died. They were downstairs and they had a shrine room upstairs where there were water offerings. They thought all the water bowls would have fallen over and all the water in the bowls would have spilled, but when they went upstairs, not a drop of water had spilled from the bowls. It was a complete surprise. I mean, this old house could have easily collapsed. Intellectually you might think that is what would have happened, but in reality it didn’t.
Of course, it’s a question of karma. I think one thing was that they had strong refuge, strong faith. But the main thing was that they not only hadn’t created the karma to die at that time but also they hadn’t created the karma to be affected by the earthquake at that time, so nothing happened. That happiness is the result of past good karma, living in the morality of abstaining from killing and maybe also abstaining from ill will, from harming others.
Even in the monasteries, many of the huge buildings collapsed. Of course, many people blamed the builders, the construction company—“If they hadn’t built it this way…” “They didn’t build it according to earthquake regulations….” Things like that. But I think that when you have created the negative karma to be affected by an earthquake, the karma will be experienced—the house will collapse, you will die. When that negative karma, the cause is actualized, no matter how strong your house was made, when the earthquake happens, the building will break and people will die.
This has happened many times. You can think that buildings should be built to stand very strong earthquakes, but when one happens, there are often very surprising things, very shocking things. During the minutes of an earthquake, it really clarifies how karma works. There are those who have created the negative karma to die at that time, who have created the karma to have their house collapse, and there are those who haven’t created the karma to die at that time, whose house remains stable. Within those minutes, it shows so clearly how it is completely according to individual karma.
When the tsunami happened, so many people died. Even many big hotels completely collapsed. I saw on TV how while so many people were carried away by the water, there was one very small child in the middle of the water, holding on to a tree. In the middle of all that water he survived; he didn’t die. Hundreds of thousands died, but this child didn’t. He wasn’t carried away by the water and for many hours he was able to hold on to the tree. It all comes from the child’s mind, from his own positive thoughts and positive actions, from the morality he practiced in the past, as I mentioned before. That result, that good karma, which is Dharma, was experienced at that time.
And when the Twin Towers in New York were destroyed by the two airplanes, thousands of people died inside or when they jumped from the windows. But there was a blind person who was led by his dog down from the thirtieth story. Thirty stories and he was able to get out. That’s amazing! There’s no other way to explain it. There’s no other way to scientifically explain why so many people with eyes, complete organs, limbs and eyes, died, but this person who was blind was able to escape.
That he could survive and have a long life comes from the morality of abstaining from killing, that positive thought and that positive action, making a vow, making the determination to not kill other living beings. That’s amazing. All those others who died, whether jumping from a window or being burned inside, that comes from their past negative karma, having harmed others. The result of that negative karma was collected on that day, it became very powerful and manifested in that way. That is what happened.
A lot of fires happen in the United States and in other countries, but even though so many houses get burned, there is usually one particular house that the fire comes to but then jumps. That house doesn’t burn but the houses on either side are burned. How do you explain it? The real scientific explanation, the complete, clearest, deepest scientific explanation is related to the mind of the person who experiences that suffering or happiness, how that experience has come from their own mind. Whatever you say, the external situation is just a condition. For those who didn’t experience the danger of fire, that came from their good karma. Those whose house didn’t get burned down, that is because they were living in morality, abstaining from ill will and things like that.
Once, a fire happened at one of our centers, O Sel Ling in Spain. Our guru, Lama Yeshe, who is kinder than all the three-time buddhas, reincarnated in Bubión, the village near there. O Sel Ling is a retreat center. When the fire happened, the bushes and trees were burning and the buildings of the center were in great danger. Although they were built with stones, the roofs, the doors and the window frames were wooden and they would be burned [and cause the whole center to burn]. In the main building there is the kitchen and a gompa, which is where the geshe who lived there was staying. Everybody ran into the mountain to be safe. They called out to the geshe to run away but he preferred to stay. The fire arrived but it jumped the buildings and the house didn’t burn.
In the same way, in Madison, Wisconsin, in the United States, where my and Lama Yeshe’s teacher, Geshe Sopa Rinpoche, lived, there was once very bad weather. It was announced on TV that a tornado or a cyclone—I’m not sure which—was approaching. Geshe Sopa Rinpoche was at the university teaching. He thought that maybe the house and the center would be destroyed, but what happened was that all the property around Geshe-la’s center was destroyed—all the houses and many of the trees—but the wind went around the center; it didn’t affect Geshe-la’s house. Nothing happened, but there was a lot of damage around. When some danger happens like that, it completely shows the karma of each family and person in the area.
Whatever happiness we experience in our daily life comes from our positive thought, the root, the non-anger, non-ignorance, non-attachment, from that pure, healthy mind, from that correct way of thinking. The action motivated by that thought is a positive, virtuous action, a Dharma action. Because the motivation is Dharma, the action is Dharma. Only happiness can come from this, the happiness we experience now in our day-to-day life, at the time of death and after death, and all the happiness in our future lives, including the ultimate happiness, total liberation from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes, karma and delusions, and the great liberation, the non-abiding sorrowless state, full enlightenment. All this comes from our mind, from the pure, virtuous thought, which is Dharma.
All the suffering we experience in our day-to-day life, every moment of whatever problem we experience, comes from our mind. Even when we feel hot and a cool breeze passes through and brings some comfort, even that comfort—even some little comfort in a dream—even the smallest thing like that, every pleasure, everything comes from our mind, from a positive thought.
THE PURPOSE OF KOPAN
What is the purpose of establishing Kopan Monastery? Now we have three hundred and sixty monks as well as a nunnery of three hundred and eighty nuns. The abbot of the monastery, Lama Lhundrup, will explain the details, about the monks who look after the education and the discipline of both the monastery and the nunnery, and about all the external conditions that are needed. Lama Lhundrup will explain the details, the subjects and daily programs and all the things the monks and nuns learn, so hopefully you will appreciate how important their education is. We have a normal Dharma education, but they also learn science, English, Nepali, and all those other subjects that are taught in normal schools.
However, the most important thing here is the very foundation of Buddhadharma, karma, action and result, the very secret point, how everything comes from the mind. Living here means learning about this and protecting the mind. The main practice, the main thing it means when living in the monastery or nunnery, is protecting the mind from harmful thoughts, always watching the mind and keeping it virtuous, healthy, positive, in Dharma, that which only brings happiness. It means transforming your actions so that whatever you do—eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, doing your job, meditation, study—whatever you do is transformed into Dharma, becoming the cause of happiness.
And here, especially, it is not just the cause of the happiness of this life, but with the bodhicitta motivation, with that purest thought, and with letting go of the I and cherishing other sentient beings instead, to free them from all the suffering and its causes and bring them to enlightenment. To do that, we need to be fully qualified; we need to be a fully enlightened being, having completed all the qualities, with compassion for all sentient beings, having completely attained omniscience, all the understanding and the qualities, with perfect power to benefit others. We need to achieve that; we need the thought seeking that. With that wish, whatever activity we do—eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, working, studying, meditating, doing prayers, pujas—everything becomes the cause of enlightenment, to achieve enlightenment and to liberate the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment.
That should be there as the main heart practice, to live life with that attitude and thought of benefiting all sentient beings, without leaving even one out, including the thought of benefiting the enemy, the person who hates us, who criticizes us. The altruistic thoughts should include everybody, not only friends but also strangers and even enemies—everybody, all sentient beings.
When we do that, whatever we do in the monastery, when we study, everything becomes the cause to not only achieve enlightenment but by the way it become the cause to achieve liberation from samsara, the total cessation of all the suffering of samsara, including the cause, karma and delusions. And then, by the way, it becomes the cause of a good rebirth in the next life and all the happiness of future lives. Then, by the way, from that we receive a long, healthy life and even the happiness of this life. Even though we don’t seek it with attachment, even though we let go of the attachment to this life, all the happiness this life comes naturally from Dharma practice, from this action done especially with the motivation of bodhicitta.
Even if we can’t have that pure attitude, in case even that is not happening, at least we should try to have detachment to samsara, to the whole of samsara. By knowing it is in the nature of suffering, then whatever we do is with that pure mind. In this way, whatever you do becomes the cause to achieve liberation from samsara, the ultimate happiness for ourselves. Then, by the way, we also achieve a good rebirth and all the happiness of future lives as well as the happiness of this life, which also comes by the way, without looking for it. As a result of Dharma practice, by letting go, without looking for it, even the happiness of this life comes, the success of this life comes. This is how Dharma works.
The last thing is having detachment to this life, seeking the happiness of future lives, just that. We do all the study, the activities, the meditation, the prayers, all with this minimum motivation. This is the least motivation we should have in the monastery. And not only in a monastery but of course, anybody in daily life who wants happiness, who doesn’t want suffering, this is the way to change our attitude, making our mind become Dharma. Happiness has to come from our own mind, suffering has to be stopped from our own mind, letting go of the anger, freeing our mind from anger, from the attachment clinging to this life. Then, whatever we do in daily life becomes the Dharma, only the cause of happiness.
What I explained before is the foundation; that understanding is the purpose of a monastery, the very basic thing. Now, the next one. The Buddha said that the truth of suffering is what should be known and the truth of the cause of suffering is what should be abandoned, the [truth of the] cessation of the suffering is what is to be actualized and the truth of the path is what we should rely on. That shows how in a monastery a person should learn how to practice Dharma, how important it is for the Sangha, the monks and nuns, to live in ordination, in morality.
Generally, because suffering is a dependent arising, not independent, not permanent, it can be eliminated. It happens due to cause and conditions, not independently; it exists by depending on cause and conditions. Similarly, with our daily life problems there are causes and conditions happening. Due to that, the result of suffering has happened. So, when we change the cause and the conditions that produced the suffering, we also change the suffering result. The suffering stops. When we change the cause and conditions and we create the cause and conditions for happiness instead, we get totally the opposite. Suffering is a dependent arising; suffering is a causative phenomenon, which means it can be eliminated. We have freedom, especially because we have buddha nature. That gives us great hope that we can be free from suffering forever.
The way to be liberated from suffering forever, so it is impossible to experience it ever again, is by ceasing the cause, karma and delusions—ignorance, anger, attachment. Among those superstitious thoughts, the very root, the king of the superstitious thoughts is ignorance, the unknowing mind—not knowing the ultimate nature, the emptiness of the self and the aggregates.
The king of delusions is not knowing the meaning of the selflessness of the person and the selflessness of the aggregates, of phenomena. These two ignorances are the root, the whole root of the oceans of suffering of samsara: the oceans of suffering of the hell realm, the oceans of suffering of hungry ghosts, the oceans of suffering of the animals, the oceans of suffering of the human beings, the oceans of suffering of the devas, the suras and asuras, including the desire realm devas, the form realm devas and the formless realm devas. All these sufferings caused by the root, this ignorance, are all causative phenomena; they are all dependent arisings, so they can all be eliminated by other causes and conditions. Every suffering, including the seed of the delusion, the seed of ignorance, the negative imprint, can be completely ceased. Then, there is the total cessation of suffering, something we can achieve.
TO ACHIEVE THE PATH THE FOUNDATION IS MORALITY
How can we achieve that? There’s a path that exists, the truth of the path, revealed by the Buddha. How do we go about generating all the details that the Buddha has explained as the truth of the path? There are five paths to achieve liberation: the path of merit, the preparatory path, the right-seeing path, the path of meditation and the path of no more learning. The main one that directly ceases the defilements, the negative imprints, the cause of delusions, is the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness. By achieving the third path, the right-seeing path, the 112 obscurations are removed and then, by actualizing the path of meditation, the twelve defilements are removed. Sorry! I got confused. Actualizing the right-seeing path removes the 112 obscurations and actualizing the path of meditation removes the sixteen defilements. Then, we achieve total liberation, the sorrowless state, with the mental continuum separated from those defilements, the disturbing-thought obscurations, the mind that blocks the ultimate nature of that mind.
To achieve this exalted path that directly removes the disturbing-thought obscurations, we need the foundation, great insight. When we achieve the preparatory path, at that time we achieve the realization of great insight, which is the foundation for the exalted path. So, achieving that depends on the foundation. That great insight is the higher training of wisdom.
Now, to achieve that depends on the higher training of concentration, perfect meditation, mental quiescence, shamatha. Perfect meditation comes through having cut attachment-scattering thoughts and sinking thoughts. Then, we are able to concentrate for how many months and years we want. We achieve the fully characterized shamatha after having experienced extremely refined rapturous ecstasy of the body and mind, after we achieve the ninth level of shamatha.
Now, to achieve that perfect meditation, shamatha, the higher training of concentration, that depends on the foundation, the higher training of morality. That shows how important it is to live in morality, how that is the foundation. This first foundation is so important. All the rest of the development, all the realizations, the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness that ceases the disturbing-thought obscuration, and then achieving the sorrowless state—all that is based on having the foundation, the higher training of morality.
This is talking about the Lesser Vehicle path. In the Great Vehicle path, there are also the same five paths: the Mahayana path of merit, and the Mahayana preparatory path, the Mahayana right-seeing path, the Mahayana path of meditation and the Mahayana path of no more learning. So again, that involves the higher training of wisdom, the higher training of concentration and the higher training of morality. These are also in the Mahayana five paths. In the Mahayana path, when we achieve the exalted paths, the right-seeing path and the path of meditation, as far as the disturbing-thought obscurations, it’s the same, how much each path removes. But now the subtle defilements, called she drib, the obstruction to the fully knowing mind, the 116 are removed by actualizing the Mahayana right-seeing path, then there are also 116 subtle defilements removed by actualizing the Mahayana path of meditation. So again, there it’s the same.
If we enter the Mahayana path straight away, we have to remove the two types of defilement, but if we have achieved the five Lesser Vehicle paths and the sorrowless state, then after some time, when the Buddha inspires us with the four stanzas, which inspires us to enter Mahayana path, to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, we only have to remove the subtle defilements.
Here again, the foundation is morality. Not only in the Lesser Vehicle, the Hinayana path, but even for the Great Vehicle, the Mahayana, we need the higher training of morality The main reason we need a monastery or a nunnery is for that, for that practice. That is how it important is. Now you can see how that foundation is so important. The whole development of the mind up to enlightenment is based on ceasing all those gross and subtle defilements.
To attain this, we not only need intellectual knowledge of Buddhadharma, which explains all the details, all the philosophy. Lama Lhundrup will explain those—the five extensive sutra texts and the teachings the Buddha taught. Then the great pandits, Nagarjuna, Asanga, and then Chandrakirti, Vasubandhu and so forth, wrote those scriptures based on the Buddha’s teachings, those many volumes of sutras, the root texts and commentaries. Then, on top of that, there are the texts by Tibetan lamas like Lama Tsongkhapa and the many great enlightened beings who wrote commentaries on that.
It is not only learning the words but attaining this path. This is preserving the Buddhadharma, the Buddha’s teachings. He sacrificed his life for three countless great eons—not three hundred years, not three eons, but three countless great eons. He gave his body to sentient beings, making charity of his eyes, his limbs, his whole life. For three countless great eons he sacrificed himself to other sentient beings, practicing charity, then practicing morality for that many eons, and patience for three countless great eons, and perseverance, and concentration, and wisdom and so forth, in order to complete the merit of wisdom and the merit of virtue and to achieve the two kayas, the Buddha’s holy body and holy mind.
The main reason was so that the Buddha could reveal to us the unmistaken path, the teachings that explain the path. That is the main goal, to liberate us from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring us to enlightenment. That is why the Buddha sacrificed his life, bearing so much hardship for three countless great eons.
Now you can see how this is unbelievably important to the world. What is done, what is studied, what is practiced in the monastery and nunnery here is so important, unbelievably important to the world. As I mentioned at the beginning, all sentient beings want happiness and do not want suffering. What they like is happiness and what they do not like is suffering. Therefore, how to achieve this is so important to the world and to all sentient beings. It’s crucial. It is the most urgent thing, more urgent than anything else in the world. This is the most important thing for world peace.
This is why we built this monastery and why the monks and nuns study here.
[Note: The transcript for this discourse is incomplete.]
