TRANSCRIPT

So, when you’re feeling bad about Dharma work, Dharma volunteering, Dharma commitment to time, Dharma commitments… when you’re feeling bad, contrary to thinking that the Dharma is making you feel bad, your guru is making you feel guilty, or the Dharma community is negative, it is a good sign.

It is a good sign that your wisdom, clear mind is arising. Instead of running away, go full force; do more Dharma, engage in more Dharma, practice more Dharma, do more Dharma work, take on more responsibilities, because you’re going in the right direction. Because that process is the natural, correct process of our mind becoming better.

Every single day, I do a little bit of social media, in order to express thoughts, and passages, and realisations, and understandings, and other things I’ve read about the Dharma. I tweet and I social media, on Facebook on different subjects, blog on different subjects. But of course, my favourite and my passion has always been the Dharma.

I guess the passion for Dharma arises from knowing that there is no escape from Samsara, there is no pleasure in Samsara, and everything that’s really in Samsara may be made out to look like it’s really nice, but in the end it brings some kind of unhappiness and suffering.

The peaks that we experience in Samsara, the happiness peaks for whatever you want to call it for lack of a better name, the happiness peaks that we experience in Samsara comes from a very high price we have to pay.

And eventually the peaks become lesser and nil as we become older because what we experience when we’re younger, it won’t be possible when we’re older.

Anyway, when I was going through my Facebook wall today, I came across a profound, deep, and extremely thought-provoking, evocative speech, or write up, by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo.

As you know, Jetsunma is a very advanced and a great nun who has meditated in solitary retreat for more than a decade. If my memory serves me right, 12 years. And then she proceeded to work for women’s opportunities in Dharma, building her own nunnery, and at the same time travelling the world and expounding the holy teachings of our Lord Buddha.

This I find very profound, and it can only arise from someone who has attained something in their mind, a level in meditation that doesn’t reverse, doesn’t go backwards. Let me read it to you, let me give you a short explanation.

Most people feel cosy in Samsara. They do not really have the genuine aspiration to go beyond Samsara; they just want Samsara to be a little bit better.

The underlying motivation to go beyond Samsara is very rare, even for people who go to Dharma centres. There are many people who learn to meditate and so forth, but with the underlying motive that they hope to make themselves feel better.

And if it ends up making them feel worse, instead of realising that this may be a good sign, they think that there is something wrong with the Dharma.

We are always looking to make ourselves comfortable in the prison house. We might think that if we get the cell wall painted a pretty shade of pale green, and put in a few pictures, it won’t be a prison anymore.

– Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

The first line what she said is that most people feel cosy enough in Samsara, they do not really have the genuine aspirations to go beyond Samsara, they just want Samsara to be a little bit better.

So many people actually just want to make their situation better. For some more money, a bigger house, a cooler room, more clothes, better food, and that’s what the general aspiration of the general public is. It’s more of to be more comfortable.

And the second thing that she says here is that the underlying motivation for people who go beyond Samsara is very rare, even for people who go to Dharma centres.

And there are people who genuinely think that, “Wow, you know, Samsara is a really difficult place: it has no end, it is an endless cycle, it promotes and deludes. It promotes a lot of suffering and it deludes us into further suffering and that I want to do something better. I’m going to look for the Dharma, I’m going to look for a teacher, and perhaps I need to go to a Dharma centre.” That type of thinking is extremely rare, even among people who go to Dharma centres.

Most people who go to Dharma centres are actually looking for a quick fix; some are looking for a better way of dealing with guilt, a better way of dealing with their happiness or wealth; or they’re looking for an easy way out of their problems, or betterment of a situation, or an improvement of the situation.

So, people have many, many different types of reasons why they go to Dharma centres but not actually have the highest required motivation in order to gain full results from Dharma practice. Very rare.

It says here that there are many people who learned to meditate and so forth, but with the underlying motive that they hope to make themselves feel better.

People do pujas, they do mantras, they perpetuate a protector; they pray to a yidam, they do special retreats, they do special meditations, they read books, they contemplate, they do breathing exercises, but very rarely do people use those Dharma practices and methods to gain a higher form of mind, in order to conquer the Samsara within them and around them.

But there’s an underlying motive, she’s saying, that they just want to feel better, they want an improvement in their lives.

Because of their underlying motive, and their actual, so-called “true motive”, that their wish to do Dharma is not really to be liberated, or to liberate others, or to go for the highest goal which is enlightenment, the Dharma practices end up making them feel worse. I repeat, it ends up making them feel worse.

Instead of realising that this may be a good sign, they feel that there’s something wrong with the Dharma.

So, when they learn more from the teacher, they understand more from the teacher, they get more from Dharma readings, they see more from advanced students, or they understand more from their contemplations, they realise that a lot of things in their life are wrong.

They realise that their motivations, way of thinking, mode of acting, and conduct, actually instead of creating happiness, peace and harmony, growth and emergence to a better new self, a higher self, it actually self-deludes or self-deceives themselves into thinking that they’re not happy, they’re uncomfortable.

Why is that? Because for the first time in our lives, someone is telling us more money doesn’t make us happy. More luxury doesn’t make us happy.

Having the yacht, the beautiful girlfriend, the handsome boyfriend, the name, the fame, the attention, the youth, the nice hair, the nice clothes, the overseas trip, the big cars, the big houses, the luxury-branded items, does not make us happy and we should not be focused on that.

In the beginning of our spiritual journey, we accept that. We know that that’s true. We understand that that’s true. And we inherently know and look around us and see many people who have those things they’re not happy, those who aspire toward those items they’re not happy, and we know that. It’s an intellectual understanding.

So, when we begin Dharma we understand that and we have this idealistic kind of view that, “Oh yes, I understand that materialism doesn’t make me happy, I want to explore myself, I want to find myself.”

But you see, it’s an intellectual understanding.

But when they’re actually faced with Dharma and materialism; or Dharma or materialism; Dharma practice, Dharma work or overseas trip; Dharma friends or going out to drink and party; solitary retreats or finding a new lover or maintaining a lover; Dharma volunteering work or simply lying at home doing nothing. When they are actually challenged, and they have to make a decision between Dharma and Samsara – that’s when the dilemma comes.

The dilemma comes because they have more wisdom, more understanding. They have more knowledge of what is right.

And it’s not that they intellectually don’t understand it. They intellectually understand it, but they refuse to apply it.

When they refuse to apply it, the conflict comes. What is the conflict? The conflict doesn’t come from your guru, or from Dharma, or the Dharma centre, or your Dharma brothers and sisters. The conflict comes when you know what you need to do but you are not applying it. And when you are not applying it, it makes you feel bad.

And when you feel bad, you like to say that, “The Dharma made me feel bad; my guru made me feel bad; my friends made me feel bad; the Dharma centre made me feel bad; the Dharma centre is not nice; the Dharma centre is harsh; the Dharma centre is pushy; the Dharma is difficult.”

We like to impute or say that the Dharma is making me unhappy. But you see, it’s not the Dharma is making me unhappy.

It is when you have cancer and you are given treatment. When you’re getting treatment, it’s very painful. It’s extremely painful. When you’re going for the test, it’s very painful. There’s a lot of side effects. When you go for cancer treatment you go for a lot of tests, you have to be poked, blood taken, lots of medication, injections, medicine, changes in your diet and environment.

And if we blame our pain comes from the cancer treatment and we give up the cancer treatment, then the cancer will take over our body and we will die. The pain doesn’t come from the treatment of the cancer, or the doctors, or the nurses, or the hospital. The pain comes from cancer.

And whatever’s been applied to you by the doctors and nurses and hospitals, is actually the process of removing your ultimate cause of pain. Because if you’re healthy you don’t have to go for tests, you don’t have to go for chemotherapy, you don’t have to go for treatment, you don’t go for anything. Chemotherapy is very painful for some, and there’s a lot of negative side effects for some. But you see, we cannot blame our pain on chemotherapy. We have to blame it on the cancer.

So similarly, we cannot blame the Dharma centres, we cannot blame the teachers, we cannot blame the Buddha, or the teachings, or the practice, or the knowledge – we have to blame ourselves.

And when we keep blaming the Dharma, and we say it’s making us unhappy, what is actually making us unhappy? What is making us unhappy is not the Dharma, but our understanding of what we need to do, and our laziness, or selfishness, or unwillingness to do it. This is making us unhappy.

And we could even say, “I don’t care about Karma, throw caution to the wind, I don’t care anymore, I’ve reached a level where it doesn’t matter.” We can say all that. We can justify all that.

But you know what? If it didn’t matter, and we didn’t care, we wouldn’t be unhappy. We won’t be concerned or worried. We won’t be having a debate. The internal debate, the internal battle we’re having that is making us unhappy. And the battle is not between good or bad, heaven or hell, Buddha or the Devil, the internal battle is we know what we need to do, we are not doing it. And that’s what’s eating away at us.

And if we run away from the Dharma, blaming the Dharma, justifying that the Dharma is bad, the Dharma centre is bad, the Dharma people are bad, the Dharma teachers are bad, it will justify that way.

Of course, you’ll have a small legion of people that will believe you. Of course, you’ll have a small following of people that will support you and say that it’s correct, and you may even feel temporarily okay and satisfied and at peace that you have the supporters that feel the same thing. But you see, those supporters come from a few categories.

There are people just like you who do not want to apply and face the truth, or there are people who are totally ignorant.

So, it’s like saying that you are going to a country where people have AIDS. And when you go to a country where people have AIDS, a developing country, or a very poor country, and they have no knowledge and no understanding about AIDS, and they have no idea about AIDS, and how it spreads, and how it’s treated, and it’s dangerous, and how it can affect and damage your family and your friends and people that you copulate with.

And you go to this country and you have indiscriminate, unprotected copulation, and you just copulate, and enjoy yourself, and go one after another, and you write on social media, “Hey, I met this beautiful girl, I met that girl, I met this boy, I met that boy, and you know, we’ve had a good time, and tomorrow I’ll meet another one, and another one”.

And of course, you’re going to have a bunch of people on social media that supports you and says, “Hey, that’s great! Let’s have indiscriminate, unprotected copulation!” Why? because they don’t understand the dangers of AIDS, they didn’t hear about it, they don’t know about it, they don’t understand about it. They see symptoms, they see people dying, but they don’t know where it comes from. Of course, they’re going to support you.

And then you have the other group of people that think, “Oh, I already have AIDS. I’m angry at the world. The world is at fault. I have AIDS because the world is at fault. It’s their fault. So, I don’t care, I’m going to go have fun, I’m going to go have indiscriminate copulation with anybody I like and whether it spreads or not, I don’t care,”. So, you’re going to have that category of people supporting you saying, “Yeah, indiscriminate sex or copulation is very good.”

But if you have people who know how AIDS spreads, and they know the sufferings, and they work in the AIDS hospice, or they have a relative, a friend, a husband, a partner, a wife, or a child that has AIDS, and they see the sufferings, they will say, “No don’t do that. Don’t give this suffering to others. Don’t have indiscriminate, unprotected copulation with others because you’ll bring pain, you’ll separate their families, you’ll create trouble, you’ll create financial strains”.

And then you know now, you know what you’re supposed to do. You’re not supposed to have unprotected, indiscriminate copulation.

And then there’s a battle. There’s a battle going on in you, and then you blame the education for AIDS awareness. You blame the people who tell you about AIDS, you blame the hospice worker, you blame the person who gave you the information. They made you feel bad. They made you feel horrible. They made you feel down.

And then when you go around indiscriminately having copulation and they report you to the authorities, they let the authorities know, then you say that they’re harsh, they’re cruel.

But in actuality, they’re stopping you from spreading this disease that can damage other families financially, emotionally, physically, and cause death. In fact, they are very compassionate because they’re not thinking of one person, just you, they’re thinking about everybody around you.

So therefore, if you use social media or you want a legion of supporters that say, “Hey, indiscriminate copulation is wonderful,” then you’re going to get it from people who know nothing about AIDS. That’s an example.

You’re going to get it from people who have AIDS who don’t care anymore because they’re angry at the world, and they just want to get back, and they don’t care spreading it. In fact, they might want to spread it so that other people suffer like them.

But from people who know the sufferings, they’ve experienced it, they care, and they don’t want other people to get it, they’re going to come and tell you, “Don’t do that.” They might even report you to the authorities and say, “don’t do that”.

And if you call them cruel and harsh, that is your twisted, wrong view.

Similarly, with that analogy, in a Dharma centre, when your Dharma teacher, and your Dharma brothers and sisters explain to you the pitfalls of Samsara, the difficulties of anger, selfishness, laziness, greediness, stealing, and lying and you’re caught doing it, and you keep doing it, and they talk to you nicely, they talk to you nicely again, and again, and again, and they confront you, and they explain to you, and they even try to stop you from doing it, that’s not control.

That’s not negative. That’s not them being evil, or harsh, or difficult. It’s from care. It is from care. It is from care, and if you label them, the Dharma centre, your teacher, or the Dharma institution as bad, you are not accepting responsibility for where it is coming from.

So therefore, if you feel guilty, and you have this battle within you, then the battle within you is actually not a bad sign.

That is what Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is saying. It is not a bad sign. Why is it not a bad sign?

Because you are having a battle between doing something virtuous and wonderful and good that you are not used to doing, as opposed to something that you’ve done thousands of times that brought you nowhere, that brought you spurts of tiny little bits and pieces of happiness but ends up unhappy. So, you are having that battle.

That battle is saying that you’re gaining knowledge, you’re gaining some ground in your contemplations, you’re gaining some ground perhaps in your meditations, or in your views, that your knowledge is increasing.

So, this battle comes from you having Dharma knowledge, and this battle makes you feel bad not because of the Dharma, but because your conscience, wisdom, clarity, good mind, is saying, “Don’t do what you were doing before any more.” Your good mind, your wisdom, the innate clarity of your mind, who you really are is saying, “Stop. Dharma is good. What it’s teaching you is good.”

And the process of transformation isn’t when you wake up one day and you just renounce Samsara. The process of transformation comes from rejection, anger, not accepting, accepting, understanding, and then applying.

So, when you’re feeling bad about Dharma work, Dharma volunteering, Dharma commitment to time, Dharma commitments… when you’re feeling bad, contrary to thinking that the Dharma is making you feel bad, your guru is making you feel guilty, or the Dharma community is negative, it is a good sign.

It is a good sign, that your wisdom, clear mind is arising. Instead of running away, go full force, do more Dharma, engage in more Dharma, practice more Dharma, do more Dharma work, take on more responsibilities, because you’re going in the right direction. Because that process is the natural, correct process of our mind becoming better.

So, we have to stop viewing the guru as someone militant. We have to stop viewing the Dharma centre as an army camp. We have to view the Dharma as not as something that makes us feel guilty. We have to view that Dharma brothers and sisters as people who are not deluded or in a cult.

We have to view the Dharma teacher really as someone that tells you the truth for once in your life with tremendous wisdom, knowledge, and experience maybe even from many lifetimes, and listen to the words and understand he’s trying to benefit you.

We have to look at the Dharma brothers and sisters as a community who have accepted, understood, contemplated, and meditated, and got some results, that they are also committed on this path.

We must also think that there are different methods that apply for different people, that it cannot be all across the board. With some people you have to be very direct, with some people you have to be very gentle, and with some people you have to go around the bush. There are many types of people. So, one method doesn’t apply to all. Therefore, don’t expect your teacher to have just one method.

On top of that, you shouldn’t think that the Dharma centre as a burden. You should think of the Dharma centre as a place that comes from people’s donations, love, energy, time, and their contributions to create a physical place where we can gather to do good Dharma work and to benefit others.

And to disparage the teacher, disparage the Dharma institution, disparage the people within, is to disparage all the donations, all the hard work, all the contributions that everybody else did.

So that doesn’t make sense either. Why would we want to do that? Why would we want to disparage something that someone has invested so much into, even yourself?

So therefore, it is not the Dharma, or your teacher, or the centre, or the Dharma brothers and sisters, that make you feel bad. They’re not the ones that are harsh, they’re not the ones that are difficult.

Your clear conscience, and your understanding is starting to rise, and you’re having that battle. And now, your duty is to win that battle.

“We are always looking to make ourselves comfortable in the prison house. We might think that if we get the cell wall painted a pretty shade of pale green, and put in a few pictures, it won’t be a prison any more”.

So, if we change locations, we quit, change clothes, go on trips, meet people, go for more dinners, hang out in ritzy places, go to nice restaurants, buy a new car; it’s like just changing the location and changing the situation around us to change what we know inside, it’s not going to work.

Unless we’re very good at self-denial, self-deception, and we are willing to take the consequences, and the consequences will be regret, loneliness, a waste of time, and lots and lots of losses of great opportunities that would have gotten you somewhere.

So, if we’re willing to take the consequences, and when the consequences come, don’t complain.

If in the past, we’ve had difficulties with certain situations, and it has made us testy, uncomfortable, belligerent, and unhappy, then it is a sign to us that we are not ready for the consequences, because those are the consequences of actions that we’ve created in the past.

So, don’t just blatantly say, “I don’t care about Karma, I don’t care about consequences, I’ve reached the stage I don’t care about what people think, or the karmic consequences, or anything.”

Because if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be talking, you won’t be battling. You do care. You definitely do care.

So therefore, this wonderful Dharma paragraph from Jetsunma was very beautiful, very simple, and yet, extremely profound. I wanted to give that little explanation because I came across it today on Facebook. Let me read it for you one more time and conclude.

Most people feel cosy in Samsara. They do not really have the genuine aspiration to go beyond Samsara; they just want Samsara to be a little bit better.

The underlying motivation to go beyond Samsara is very rare, even for people who go to Dharma centres. There are many people who learn to meditate and so forth, with the underlying motive that they hope to make themselves feel better.

And if it ends up making them feel worse, instead of realising that this may be a good sign, they think that there is something wrong with the Dharma.

We are always looking to make ourselves comfortable in the prison house. We might think that if we get the cell wall painted a pretty shade of pale green, and put in a few pictures, it won’t be a prison anymore.

– Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Now, if she was your teacher, and you’re having this internal battle and she tells you this, you might even be offended, or feel that she’s targeting you, or feel that she’s telling you hurtful things.

But if you read this, you might think that, “Oh yeah, that’s nice.” You see, it’s our perspective. What’s our perspective is whether we want to accept the truth or not.

If we see things from the side of truth, it doesn’t hurt. It’s enlightening. It’s freedom.

So, therefore I hope this one helps, and I want to reiterate: Dharma teachers, Dharma centres, Dharma people, brothers and sisters, the Dharma teachings, the Buddha, the yidams, the Dharma protectors, are all here to help us, are all here to give their best to us, and that’s very important to know.

And if we keep thinking they’re our enemies, we are actually attacking the wrong enemy. The enemies are not these above-mentioned. The enemy is inside of us. And that is what we need to battle. And when we understand this, that is when we feel uncomfortable.

The uncomfortable feeling comes from our conscience, and knowing what we should do, so we should just go ahead and do the right thing. Do Dharma. Thank you.

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

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