TRANSCRIPT

For all of my wonderful blog visitors and readers, I was just laying down just now and I was thinking about some things. Today I’m not very well, I have a fever and a migraine. But I had these thoughts that were bursting in my head and I thought that I’d talk about it before I forget because I often do that.

I have these very strong thoughts that come, and I have to get it on paper, or on film, or record it or else gets forgotten. And I thought that some of the thoughts might benefit a few people out there who may have the same thoughts.

A lot of things that we experience when we’re growing up either make or break us when we are adults; and a lot of things that we don’t experience when we’re growing up as children may also make or break us when we are adults.

The situation we are born into, either we have chosen or by the force of karma, we were put there. Either way, the blame isn’t for the situation that we were born to around us, but the blame or the credit will go back to us.

His Eminence Kensur Jampa Yeshe Rinpoche on the right. Photo was taken after I was recognised as a Tulku and brought to have an audience with His Holiness The Dalai Lama

So, let me explain all of that. I get often asked, 15, 20 years ago when I first was found out to be a reincarnation by various high Lamas, one of them is His Eminence Kensur Jampa Yeshe Rinpoche. And I really, never thought highly of myself or thought strongly that I’m some kind of great incarnation, but that would contradict all the great lamas and the high lamas who said that I am, of which is Kensur Jampa Yeshe.

So, I don’t always outright deny that I’m a reincarnation because I can’t contradict Kensur Rinpoche. But having said that, just because a high lama said you’re a reincarnation, you still must do the actions, or perform, or leave a mark of a high incarnation, whatever that is.

As Kyabje Pabongka Dorje Chang used to say, if you’re a real tulku, you will leave a mark in this world, a mark of benefit to others.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is that when I was first found out to be a reincarnation, many people asked me, and it went on for years within the Tibetan community, outside the community for years, even up to recently.

When I was a baby

Well if you are a reincarnated lama and you did so many wonderful things in your previous lives, and practice the dharma, and held your vows, and meditated and had guru devotion, then how come in this life you are born into such a difficult, and tumultuous, and hard to fathom childhood?

I’m going to explain that and it might help other people. What I’m not trying to explain is reincarnation but what I’m trying to explain is about how childhood, experiencing and not experiencing things, can both make or break or enhance a person’s adulthood.

That’s what it’s about but it relates to me because I have this label of a reincarnated lama or tulku, a reincarnated person that is supposed to have practice in my previous lives. So, if I practiced and I have all these merits and I have all this great advancement ‘so-called’, then why is it I’m born in such a difficult situation?

On the left is my previous life, Kentrul Thubten Lamsang

As I said, we either choose the situation or we are born to it due to karmic repercussions of what we have done. Repercussions are not in the punishment’s sake but in the sense of the cause and effect.

And I guess my childhood was horrible in many layperson’s sense of the idealistic childhood and I’m going to explain. And the explanation is not to justify that I have this childhood and therefore, “See, I am at high incarnation” or “I am an incarnation” – none of this justification or to cover, it’s just my thoughts. When my parents conceived me, they were not married.

During their era – not being married, and my father had another family, and my mother was very young and she didn’t know; so, when I was conceived – it was during the era where not being married and having kids out of wedlock or having other families besides only having one family was considered a huge scandal, very bad. So, I understand that.

My mother, being in an era where it’s scandalous to have a child without a husband, gave me up to adopted parents. So, for years when she gave me up and I was growing up in Taiwan, I lived with a set of parents there that I thought were really my parents. I really thought they were my parents.

My adopted family in the US

When I was around six or seven, I was taken to the US and then I met another set of parents. And then I was told, “Well, these are your real parents now”. And in my little young mind when I was six or seven, I was thinking to myself, “Well, the people in Taiwan were my family but then they’re not my family; they’re not my parents now and the three kids that they had in Taiwan are not my brothers because these people in America now are my new parents”. And it was confusing for me as a child, but I didn’t ask, I mean, how do you ask?

So these new parents in Howell, New Jersey became my parents and I was told they are my parents, they are my birth parents. Their relatives and they themselves would tell me, “Oh, your nose looks like your mom’s, your face looks like your dad’s, your skin colour looks like your aunt’s,” and you start believing that you start looking like your adopted parents because you’re just a kid.

But as you grow up your features change. And then when I was around, 12, 13, I was at a relative’s house in New Jersey. Because I was adopted from Taiwan to New Jersey, one of the relatives there said “Oh, you are adopted”, or “You’re not part of our family”, or “You’re not a blood relation to our family”.

And this person who said it to me was not a very popular person in the family anyways, and she said that to me and it shocked me because I thought “What? Now I’m like 12 or 13 and I’m going through this trauma that I went through when I was 6 to say, the parents that I’m with now are not my parents.” And it was very upsetting. It’s a fundamental type of foundation that every child needs to feel grounded, and loved, and safe, and nurtured, and belong to.

To have parents that you can be safe with, that you can be yourself, you can let go, you can relax, you can learn, you can be scolded, complimented and to know that these are your parents and they are doing it to you because you are of their flesh, you are of their blood, you are of their being.

And to have this while you’re growing up, to know that you are belonging to these people and so whatever they do to you is love. Gives a lot of grounding to a child, gives a lot of safety, a lot of confidence to a child.

And when suddenly, what you believed is to be your safety net, your childhood grounding and foundation is pulled away a second time, and at an age where you can reason is already there – at 12, 13, 14 years, you’re starting to have reason, or you have reasoning – it’s very detrimental.

My real mother, Princess Dewa Nimbo

And at that age, I found out that my second set of parents, again, are not my parents. And then I found out who my real mother was, or is, because people started whispering who she was. And she was a part of the community that lived there but she herself didn’t live in the community anymore, but she was a part of them. But nobody would tell me who my father was, I had no idea.

When I was around 22, 23, I found out from another person, believe it or not in Nepal, who my birth mother was and my birth father. And in fact, I met my birth father. And so, at 22, 23 – which you’re an adult, you’re already grown up and you should be in your matured mind – I found out who my third set of parents were.

And it was a happy time, it was also an upsetting time, it was also a very confusing time because a part of me said, “Don’t believe it, they can’t be your parents. Someone’s going to come to tell you later and say, they’re not your parents”.

Second from the right is my real father, Lobsang Gyatso

A part of me says, “Well you know, I’m already 22, 23. And if they tell me they’re my parents, what do they get?” They don’t get anything, and nobody gets anything, so it must be true. But it turned out that these third set of parents were my natural parents, I’m not going into the details it’s not necessary here, that they really are. And now I’m 47, and they still are my parents and thank goodness they’re both still alive. Although I don’t have a very close relationship with them, understandably, because I never grew up with them.

And there was this kind of deception, if that’s not too strong of a word, that you grow up ungrounded. The value system of my first parents, the value system of my second parents and the value systems of my third parents were very radically different. Although the value systems of my third parents didn’t affect me much because I was already living on my own – an adult and independent.

But when I was growing up, besides the mystery and the constant fear that I didn’t belong, who my parents were, the confusion, and not having a good foundation of growing up created insecurities, created fears, created a lack of trust. Because when you’re growing up, the people that you trust the most are your parents

And when your parents unwillingly due to circumstances or sometimes in some people’s cases willingly deceive you, deceive a child, hurt a child by lying to them – I’m not lying to them about you know, ‘Oh, let’s not go to the park because it’s raining’ and it’s not raining; it’s not small little deceptions – it’s like the ultimate deception that they’re not your parents and they’ve been lying to you to say they are. And my second set of parents told me they’re my parents not because they’re trying to protect me, it was more about protecting themselves. I knew that later. But they did a lot of good things for me also, they did.

So, besides the unsure ground of not being able to have confidence of who I was, who I am, who I wanted to be due to this kind of experience, there were a lot of things that came along with that.

My step parents, Boris and Dana Bugayeff

There were many times that my step parents had relationship problems and they argued incessantly and they were violent. They weren’t physically violent with each other but they were violent with objects, breaking things, knocking things, I mean really highly destructive that I would sometimes come home from school and there’d be piles and piles of broken things, furniture and chairs, figurines and frames and hangers and clothes ripped up, plates and cups, many things because they used to have incessant arguments because they didn’t trust each other.

And there were a lot of reasons for them to not trust each other which mainly came from my stepfather, which also I won’t get into at this moment, but there were all this kind of insecurities because when I came home I didn’t know if there would be peace or there would be pandemonium. I really didn’t know what it would be.

My mother, bless her heart, my stepmother was a really kind person. But she suffered from schizophrenia, undiagnosed for over 30 years. And I found out later after I left home that when she finally got the medication and diagnosis that she needed, she really just totally became calm and who she really was, a kind person.

But I grew up in the time where her schizophrenia was not diagnosed. And so, she consequently made herself and a lot of people and me suffer quite a lot because she’d had this kind of split personality. She’d be very violent, she’d be accusatory, she’d be extremely paranoid, the world was out to get her, and she wouldn’t just express it in speech, she would also express it in violence.

To me, there was a lot of physical violence. It wasn’t to her husband or to each other, or my stepfather to her, but it was to me; that there was a lot of physical violence growing up because of her schizophrenia.

There was this constant fear that like yesterday everything’s okay, and today would it be okay? And it’s okay today but would it be okay tomorrow? Or they’d make promises, we’d do this, we’d buy this, we’d arrange this and later it would just change. It would just change because they had an argument, or it would change because she was unhappy, it would change because her schizophrenia kicked in.

And so, there was all this insecurity of growing up, of physical violence, and constant broken promises, and a lot of disappointments and a lot of deception. They had deception between each other, and I don’t mean this in a negative way but it’s just a fact. They had a lot of deception between each other. As a result, there was a lot of deception with people around them and towards me.

Photo taken in Los Angeles after running away from home

And it wasn’t a one-off thing, it was constant when I was growing up, constant. That’s why I left home when I was 15, well actually going on 16. So when I grew up I didn’t have the security of knowing who I was, what race I was. Was I Chinese? Was I Japanese? I don’t even know what race.

It doesn’t really matter now but it did when I was growing up. You know we can use Dharma and say everything is emptiness. It is emptiness. But I’m not a Buddha. I’m not an enlightened being. And when I was growing up as a child, I did need some grounding.

So, there was a lot of deception when I was growing up and there were a lot of lies, and there was a lot of instability, and violence, and there was a lot of foundational disruptions where the very foundation of my existence was just pulled away a few times.

When I was in my teenage years and then in my 20s and early 30s, it affected me very deeply because it made me not trust people, not believe people. Fanatical and checking things over, over and over. Worried that whatever people told me, was it the truth or a lie? And when people disappointed me or lied or broke their promises, it would affect me very deeply. Why? I guess when you get a lot of something, either you become numb to it or you become oversensitized until you learn to deal with it.

So, in my case I became oversensitized to it, I don’t become numb to things. Me, numb or oversensitized, both are extremes, both are not good. We should really have the middle way, but I became oversensitized to it.

People around me who lie, and people around me who make a promise and don’t do it and I end up chasing them or reminding them, is very disruptive to the way I operate or work with people.

Because of all the disruptions, and the deceptions, and the lies, and the broken promises that I experienced growing up for good reasons – I mean my mother was not well, she really was not well. I don’t think she did it on purpose and I’m alright with it now – made me oversensitized to, or very sensitized, or extremely sensitive towards it.

Because I’m sensitive towards it, I myself do my best to not disappoint people, to not have people chase me. I have people who help me, and I tell them to remind me if it’s about certain assignments, or certain writeups, or certain things we need to do. It’s not something fundamental.

It’s not something like, “Oh, I promise your salary and I’m not going to do it” or “I promise you that I’m going to give you this teaching and I’m not going to do it” or that “I’m going to take you to buy this and I’m not going to do it” or “You needed medical treatment and I forgot and I don’t care”.

Not something so important you know… well, important is subjective also. So, it made me become an adult that really, I try my best not to disappoint people, to break my promises.

For me it’s a big challenge because I’m not an ordinary person in the sense of like, just me and a family unit. I do have a lot of friends and students, being some sort of teacher that I am. And so, I have hundreds of people that I make promises to, crowds and tons and tons of people over the years.

Kecharians making offerings to the monks in Shar Gaden Monastery

So, it’s a real challenge for me to keep promises to hundreds of people literally, year after year, decade after decade and I mean it. Sometimes I make promises to the Gaden monastery, we’re talking about thousands of people, thousands of monks.

So, it’s been a real challenge because I’m really sensitive to not breaking my promises and it turned out to be really good training. And now when I look back and I reflect back, I feel that through the power of the blessings or perhaps my teachers and my good karma, that I was born into a situation that I would get physically hurt, that I would have a lot of violence upon my physical body, I would be assaulted mentally, I would be insulted mentally, I would have a lot of broken promises and disappointments and that my basis of existence would be pulled away many, many times.

And now that I reflect back, I feel tremendously grateful.

Yes grateful, that I was born in that situation because it made me who I am now – to not lie to people, not deceive, to not break promises, to work hard and to have integrity – because those are things that I didn’t have when I was growing up. And it hurt, it hurt for many years, it confused me for many years.

The thing that I would least like to do with my life and people around me is to not confuse people with my intentions. And who I am and my relationship with people, not to confuse them because if you’re friends with people, you’re honest with them, you’re open.

You don’t want to keep people at the edge and always make them wonder who you are, what’s your intention, what’s your motivation, what you’re trying to do. You don’t want to do that to people. You don’t want to make people chase you for who you are, chase you for your intentions, chase you for your integrity, you don’t want people to always be at the edge about who you are.

And I think I don’t like to confuse people around me. I don’t want people to have to chase me. I don’t want to have people wonder if I’m honorable, if I have integrity. It’s not because of who I am but because I didn’t like that done to me – it’s very painful, it’s very stressful, it makes you not sleep, it makes you not be able to function. So, because I know how it feels, I don’t want to do that to people.

I guess my experience as a child made me grow up to not want to do it, but for some other people I’ve met, which is a little surprising to me, they want to do it to other people because it was done to them. They want to hurt other people because they were hurt. They want to disrupt other people’s foundations and disturb them because they were hurt.

And I’m not trying to be judgmental, but I feel that’s wrong, I don’t feel that we should continue that cycle and that if we know better, we should stop that cycle where we are this moment instantly.

You know change is instant, transformation is instant. It’s whether we want it or not. It doesn’t take time to transform, it’s not like drugs or alcohol, where really your physical body is addicted. This is having to do with your mind, this is having to do with realising that it creates pain for others. So, what you should do is just change this trend this instant, you just change. You say I don’t want to, instantly.

Look, if you’re going at the edge of a cliff and if you take one more step you’re going to fall over. The next time you’re there, you’re going to instantly not go there. You don’t say, “Oh, let me accustom myself,” and you keep going to the edge you almost fall over, you almost fall over, and you fall over. You’re not going to do that. You’re going to instantly stop yourself from going to the ledge. You’re going to stand you know six, seven, well in my case, eight, nine feet away from the ledge so I don’t fall over. You know you don’t need to get accustomed to that.

Well it’s the same thing when you do things that hurt other people, lack of integrity, breaking promises, having to be chased, irresponsible in our works, bad moods, you confuse people who you are because you have mood swings, you’re inconsistent, you confuse people.

You confuse people with who you are and what you are. And you know what? A lot of us are not who we portray to be. We are not there to confuse people, we are not there to hurt people, we are not there to disappoint people, we are not there to damage people, but we inadvertently do so because we don’t want to have this change.

Change is difficult because we haven’t experienced the full extent of the karmic repercussions that will come back from our actions and the karmic repercussions will come back. If they didn’t come back, we would have zero suffering in our lives, zero.

So, for me, I feel it’s the result of good prayers, good intentions, the blessings of my lamas, the blessings of my teachers, the blessings of the three jewels that I was born into a situation where I had to experience no grounding.

A lot of lies, a lot of deception, instability, physical violence and I’m not even talking about just at home. I’m talking even when I left home at 16 and in Los Angeles, I even experienced double, triple of what I experienced at home, even more.

And those experiences, in the contemporary modernistic, a modern kind of secular world are considered negative and bad. But I’m going to go one step ahead and I’m going to say they were good for me.

And if you were to ask me, would you be born in that situation again, my instant reaction would be no thanks. But when I contemplate and think about it and meditate for a little while, yes, I would be.

It’s strange because I was sitting there, laying down with my migraine and I was thinking to myself, if I had the chance to be born again, in the same situation I was born in this life, so that I can be trained up and prepare my mind for all the things I need to do as an adult – which is deal with hundreds of people, keep promises to hundreds of people, have integrity, don’t hurt people, don’t damage people, tell people the truth, benefit them as much as possible, be generous.

If I was asked to take that rebirth again, where I would have to experience the same things to train me up, to grow up to be a good person – a good person meaning a person that experiences the pain that doesn’t want that pain to get to others – I would actually say yes.

And I made that breakthrough today and just now because yes, I would take rebirth in that situation again. Yes, if I needed to. Yes, I would not be afraid. Yes, it was a good experience. Yes, it is a result of my good karma. Yes, it was a wonderful childhood for what I wanted to do. So, I’m going to take all the pain, the problems, the difficulties, the disappointments, the lies, all the deceptions and turn it around and say it was good.

It’s not my mind trying to adjust or play as a way to deal with what happened, but in my mind that’s what made me who I am.

Who am I? Definitely not the greatest person in the world, definitely not, but I’m also not the worst person in the world. And I know that I am a generous person that I like to give, I know that I can feel empathy for pain, and I would go out of my way to do things. I know that in general, I’m a kind person because kindness has been my main practice for many years. I’m not the kindest person, but I am a kind person.

It made me an honest person. It made me not want to deceive people because I don’t like deception. It made me not want to disappoint people because I’ve been disappointed thousands of times.

It made me a person that do not want to confuse people of what I am. I don’t want to be a mystery. I don’t want to be an enigma. It sounds romantic and fun and mystical, but I don’t want to be mysterious. I don’t want to be mystical. I don’t want to make people to wonder who I am.

I want people to say, ‘Hey, Tsem Rinpoche or this person or that person is kind, is nice, reliable, we can trust them and they’re a good person and we can just rest with that”. I want people to be around me and not be on their toes about who I am. If they’re going to be on their toes about work and quality of work and performance, that’s different.

But I don’t want people to be around me to be on their toes all the time to guess who am I? What am I going to do? What’s my unpredictability, in a sense of reliability? I don’t mind being unpredictable in the sense of creativity, but not unpredictable in a sense of reliability, or a good person or a bad person. “Oh, is this guy going to steal from us today? Is he going to tell us the truth? Is he nice to us? What does he want? What’s his agenda?”. I don’t want people to be confused about who I am.

Why does that matter? Because whatever I do, I’m dependent on others. They are dependent on me. We are interdependent. No man is an island, or you know, a stone or a rock on their own.

So, I don’t want people to be confused about who I am and my intentions. I would like to be mysterious in that I am creative and unpredictable, and I’ll come out with great, fabulous, delicious, wonderful, earth-shattering ideas, that would bring benefits to others. I like that. So, my experience as a child was pervasive on a secular sense negative; but in a spiritual, pseudo-psychological sense for me, very positive.

So, as a child, if the child is not challenged, they will experience the challenge in their adulthood. That means if they were not made to earn their own money, if they were not put in a situation where they had to perform and bring results, if they were not put in a situation where they had to be self-reliant, when they grow up and they become an adult, they will have to learn as an adult what they should have learned as a child.

So, adults who are not self-reliant, who are not reliable, who are not independent, who are not able to function, or lead, or be an adult in every sense of the word, is because as a child they were not put into that situation because we coddle them, because we protected them, because we love them, because we nurture them, love in the wrong way, because we always shelter them.

So, when we do that to a child out of love the intention is beautiful, but the result may not always be. So when the child is young and they’re not challenged to make their own money, they are not challenged to be independent, they’re not challenged to come out with ideas, or to survive or to have integrity or tell the truth or perform or to have results, they grow up as adults having to develop those qualities.

And you know what? As adults, they suffer more as a child because there’s no cushion. You don’t want to look at a 30-year-old who acts like a 12-year-old. You don’t want to teach a 30-year-old, integrity, honesty, having results or thinking maturely, or taking responsibility, or explaining, lecturing them about why it hurts when you break your promise or when you don’t finish your work.

You don’t want to explain that to a 30-year-old, a 40-year-old, a 50-year-old because that’s how you would explain to a 10-year-old, to a 12-year-old, to a 15-year-old. And so, when you put a 10, 12, 15-year-old in a situation where they have to produce, there’s got to be results. They’re independent, they make their own and they keep their promises, they have integrity, they don’t disappoint. Then, when they’re 20, they’ve perfected that. When they’re 30, they’re a master of it. When they’re 40 or 50, they’re an inspiration and they are a leader and they are someone that people can trust and follow because they develop these qualities as a child.

So as a parent, we have a special responsibility to put our children in a situation where they will become pros in their 20s of honesty, integrity, production, results; and masters of integrity, production, results in their 30s; and inspiration to others in their 40s and their 50s; and in their 60s and 70s they should be fountainheads of wisdom based on a lifetime of integrity, care, benefiting others, love, like many of the old lamas that I’ve seen in the monasteries.

When we have adults that you have to push and deal with their personalities and remind them to be kind, to not lie, to have integrity, to finish your work, to come out with ideas, to think, to take responsibility, something was lacking in their childhood.

Either from their adults or their own resistance, or both, or a combination, or whatever. As I said, I’m not judging or putting people in boxes, but it can only be one or two things, you know what else could it be.

There are things as adults we need to learn and there are things we need to learn as children. But many of the things that we know as adults come from learning when we were growing up.

So, whatever we didn’t learn when we were growing up, we’re going to have to learn when we’re grown up and that is where the problem arises. Because when we’re grown up, maybe our parents are old, or bless their hearts, they may have passed away, or they’re not capable of taking care of us anymore and we got to take care of them, or we need to take care of ourselves and the people around us.

Because if we’re perpetually a child, we will burden everybody around us and burdening people makes people lose respect for us and when they lose respect, we lose self-respect. When we lose self-respect, we become deceptive, we become angersome, we become hateful and we become all the things that we’d rather not become. We rather not become.

Therefore, if you didn’t learn all these things as a child or you learn wrongly as a child, is it too late as an adult? Definitely not.

Because the mindstream you had in your previous lives is the same mindstream you had at their deaths. And the mindstream you had at their deaths is the mindstream you had when you took rebirth in your mother’s womb for 9 months. And when you took rebirth, when you came out of your blessed mother’s womb, it’s the same mindstream.

And the same mindstream that continues when you are an infant, to preschool years, to kiddie years to teenagers, to adult years, to whom you are now. It is the exact same mindstream. And that mindstream will continue to when you age, and when you die again, and when you enter the ‘Bardo’, and when you enter your mother again, and then when you take rebirth again, and then you’re a child, and you grow up again, it’s the same mindstream.

In that sense that mindstream has no end or if I may say so in this case, no beginning no end. There is, that’s not literally that, don’t take me literally but just for convenience sake. There’s no beginning and there’s no age in that mindstream. That mindstream doesn’t get old or young.

Why? Because if that mindstream is too old to learn, then when you’re taking rebirth as a child again, you’re too old to learn. Your body is young but your mind should be too old to learn. So, if your body is old and then you say that your mind is old that doesn’t make sense because then you must be born old again. That doesn’t make sense either.

Therefore, your mind doesn’t become old or young, your physical body can become a little incapacitated due to age and a little worn out, but your mind should be sharp as ever if you develop it. So, you’re never too old to learn, relearn.

And there’s a wonderful Zen proverb that I read the other day on Twitter, which is “Learning something every day is intelligence but letting go of something every day is wisdom. Learning something every day is intelligence, letting go of something every day is wisdom”. And that really is very impactful on me. So, all the horrible, inverted comma things that I experienced as a child now in retrospect, were not horrible. They made me who I am.

Who am I? The best person I can be at the moment.

But I’m not going to stop at being the best person at the moment because I’m going to be even better. I’m going to be kinder, even more generous, more forgiving, more understanding, more tolerant, more hardworking, more self-introspective to look for improvements within myself.

In other words, I want to get enlightened.

And when we say we can’t do it, we can’t do it, we can’t do it, we can’t do it, we can’t do it, you know what? It’s not the universe, it’s not your enlighten nature, it’s not the Buddha, it’s not your parents, it’s not your friends, it’s not people with wisdom telling you, you can’t do it – it’s you yourself telling you, you can’t do it.

So, when it’s you yourself telling yourself you can’t do it versus the universe, your friends, people with wisdom, your teachers, the Buddha telling you, you can do it – well, it’s you versus them.

If you yourself say you can’t do it, you can’t improve, you can’t grow versus all Samsara and Nirvana telling you, you can do it. Guess who’s not right? Definitely yourself. When we keep saying we can’t do it, we can’t do it, we can’t do it, we can’t do it, we can’t do it, we can’t do it – actually, we can do it, it’s just we don’t want to do it.

Why don’t we want to do it, it’s because the repercussions of damaging other people, or laziness, or lack of integrity hasn’t come back to us full force yet. The wheel of sharp weapons hasn’t come back yet. And may Lord Yamataka bless us that the wheel of sharp weapons returns quickly before it’s too late, so we realize something.

So all the experiences that I labelled as horrible when I was growing up, today I realized were wonderful. And in the future when I talk about it, it’s going to be a different me talking about it if I need to talk about it, if it’s necessary. Why? Because they made me who I am. They made me the stronger Dharma practitioner, they made me better, they made me realize what Samsara is about, they made me become a monk.

It’s just like what Buddha saw the old man, the dying man, the sick man, and the monk; it kind of woke him up, woke up the seeds in him to say no I’m not going to get into Samsara anymore. Well definitely I am not the level of Buddha but seeing all those things did open up my seeds that I don’t want to get into what secular people get into, the normal secular life.

I definitely want to escape from it and that is the main reason I became a monk because I saw what my parents went through, having kids, school, work, getting old, dying, sick, well, not well, pride, ego, fighting, competition. I saw all of that and it opened the seeds in me that I will never be engaged in those actions because they bring no results. I learned from watching my parents, I learned from watching the adults, no offence to them, I learned.

And what I’m different from some people is that when I learn, I don’t continue to keep doing. I’m different that when I learn, I stop it. That’s what learning is about. When you learn something, you don’t do it, or you do it. When you learn something, you do what is necessary and you stop what it’s not. That is what is called learning.

There is no ‘aha’ moment. There is no magical instant enlightenment moment. What it is, is that you realize it, and you stop. That’s it. You stop. You stop looking for inspiration.

In fact, people who know what they need to do, and they continuously look for inspiration is another form of laziness, is another form of procrastination. Why is that? Because they know what they need to do, they understand it, they express it, they write it, they talk about it, they share it in conversations, in art, they know it. Yet they’re still looking for inspiration. That is total procrastination. That is, you want to have your cake and eat it too. So, I don’t really admire people or believe people who are looking for inspiration.

I admire people who become the inspiration, not because they saved a billion people but because they saved themselves and in the process they influence the people around them. Heroes are everywhere, are in us and if we choose to be a hero without knowing it, we will be a hero.

But the first person we need to look up to is ourselves. And how do we look up to ourselves? By having integrity, by finishing our work well, by doing one we’re supposed to – do two or three, not being chased, being kind, being generous, no agenda and using every situation we have around us to benefit others and not to use others.

That’s how we become a hero. That’s how we get a little self-respect and that’s how we get respect from others. And I promise you, anyone with self-respect whether they are rich or poor, will live happy lives and will influence others to be happy.

So, myself growing up in a situation where it was really difficult and dire at times, you know my stepmom used to threaten that she would actually kill me, that she would stab me in my sleep and she would kill me. She threatened me many, many times when she was not happy, so you know I went through that.

Now that I look back, everything that I experienced that was not pleasant, I would experience again because it made me appreciate people, it made me appreciate gifts, help, it made me appreciate when people gave me money or food or a place to stay or clothes or hope or direction or advice.

It made me appreciate deeply about what I have now. And I guess I share, and I give a lot because I appreciate what I’ve gotten. And when I see animals and people in pain, it bothers me, and it inspires me into action to do something.

Because when I was growing up my stepfather, I’m sorry to say, when he saw people in pain or animals, he didn’t really care. He just said they deserved it and that confused me for a while because I didn’t understand why they deserved it. So, when I grew older, I learned from his statements that they may deserve it, whatever karmic reason there is, but they also deserve help.

So, whatever you experience growing up, can make or break you as an adult. But why don’t you not let it break you? Why don’t you let it make you? It’s just a shift of attitude.

And whatever you didn’t experience as a child that is making you or breaking you, why don’t you experience it now, fast forward and make it, let it make you grow, and not break you into reverting back to a child.

Remember something, I’ve been asked many times, “Oh since you are a high incarnation or an incarnation or a tulku, shouldn’t you have had a perfect childhood, shouldn’t you have perfect parents, perfect situation, everything wonderful and delicious and fabulous and great?’ I did.

I did have a perfect childhood. I did have a wonderful upbringing. I did have a good upbringing because everything I experienced as a child opened up seeds in me, made me learn, made me progress, made me become, all the negative things that I saw made me become not wanting to be involved in that when I grew older, and all the positive things that I saw made me want to increase that as when I got older.

So, did I have a perfect childhood? I did. Did I have a good upbringing? I did. Because my upbringing was not soft, easy handouts. But my upbringing was pandemonium, confusion, deception, hypocrisy, lies, violence, having disappointments and those are the very things I do not want to bring to anyone else now that I am an adult.

So, would I be born in that situation again? If it would help my spiritual practice and bring me to another higher level? Yes, I would love to be reborn in that situation again. To learn, to train, to grow.

Would I recommend that for others? It’s individual. The point is whatever we didn’t experience as a child, we will experience as an adult and it will be difficult. Whatever we have experienced as a child as an adult, it shouldn’t be difficult anymore. It should be old hat to us, it should be really. We should be an expert already.

Whatever the situation is, take it as learning, use it, practice it, move on with it. Spiritual practice is moving on and getting results. Spiritual practice is moving on and getting results.

I had a wonderful childhood, all of you had a wonderful childhood. I have a wonderful adult life, all of you have a wonderful adult life. It’s our choice, make it wonderful. Make it wonderful by starting within yourself to have integrity, generosity, kindness, straightforwardness, tolerance, forgiveness.

Start right now.

And that’s what I wanted to share with everyone, with all my wonderful blog friends around the world. There are many lessons within what I said for me to learn, have learned and maybe some things that can help you. Thank you very much.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and ease of understanding.

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