TRANSCRIPT

I need everyone to go beyond taking refuge in a God, in a supreme being, and then throwing one’s problems onto this being and pushing away one’s responsibilities, and just doing prayers and mantras to say, “Solve my problems”. We need to go beyond that already.

We need to follow religion correctly. If religion was only about acceptance of a superior being and then everything is solved. Then the great prophets and masters such as Buddha and Jesus and all that would not have taught volumes of teachings on how to change your mind.

Jesus Christ taught volumes and volumes of teachings, if you take the time to read. Acceptance of a God is just one small or one minor or one preliminary criteria. Same thing for Buddha, he taught for 40 years until he was 81.

If acceptance of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, taking refuge was enough to solve our problems and to release us of our predicaments, then Buddha doesn’t need to teach 108 volumes as in the Kangyur teachings. Kangyur is the spoken words of the Buddha. The bible is one book, in Buddhism there are 108 bibles. Those were the spoken words of the Buddha, recorded and written very extensively.

My point, if it was just ok to come along and say “Oh, I made all these problems, solve it because I accept you”, then just all we need is half a page. In the Kangyur we need half a page, in the bible just half a page, it’s enough. It is so simple, just accept and everything is fine. You show me one person in this room, or anywhere in the world, by accepting everything is fine. I have accepted for 25 years, look at me, and I am still not fine.

How much more do you want me to accept? I’ve shaved off my hair. I’ve given up all the things that you consider pleasurable. And I’ve trapped myself as a monk. How closer do I need to get to my God? Oh my God! How closer do I need to get?

So, we make all these problems for 10, 20, 30 years, and then all these problems come back to us. And when these problems come back to us – our boyfriend wants to leave, our girlfriend wants to leave, our kids don’t listen to us anymore, our business is not working out, or we have too much money and we don’t know what to do with ourselves, we are bored, or we are too old – when all these problems come to us, then we say “Oh, let’s go to the temple”, “let’s go to the church”, “let’s go to the synagogue”, or whatever, and then we pray. And we pray fervently, religiously, voraciously, emotionally, dramatically in some cases. And we pray from the depth of our hearts for the God to remove all our problems.

Where can a God remove your problems? Whether it’s a Christian God, a Hindu God, a Buddhist God, or whatever God, where can a God remove your problems? That means every single one of us who are pious, and devout, and pray from our hearts should have zero problem. And trust me, you would be surprised that I have more problems than you and I am a monk. You would be surprised if you knew the problems that I have to deal with on a daily basis.

When you have for decades created all these problems for yourself, your own mind and your surroundings, and you go to a God and do one million Setrap mantras, one million Hail Marys, but your problems are still there. Well you have two ways to get rid of it, one is you give up the faith and say it doesn’t work, it doesn’t exist; or you reassess yourself and say, “Maybe that’s not the purpose of religion.”

Religion has degenerated. Partly my fault, your fault, all of our faults. Religion has degenerated into that – where we want an instant quick fix – for all the problems we have created for decades.

You go out and you say nasty things, you are mean to people, you hurt them, cheat them, lie to them, and you basically took things from them, and then you go to church and pray, “Dear God, can you please make them go away although I have cheated them, I have lied, I have stolen from them. But can you please make them go away? Because I am a devout follower of yours, I am your wonderful son and daughter, and you are a forgiving, kind and compassionate God. So therefore, of course, you will forgive me and my sins”. Yes, he will, she will, who knows what God is? He, she or it will forgive you of your sins but the guy whom you cheated won’t. How does God take away their problems? If God can take away their problems, all the lawyers would not exist anymore.

And then people say, “Oh, it’s a free choice.” Come on, don’t be ridiculous. Why is it that the predicament you are born into is not a free choice, but once you are born into it you have all these problems then it’s a free choice? It doesn’t make sense to me.

You made those problems. Now you come to the temple, you come to the church and you say, “Dear whatever is on the altar, dear whatever is on the shrine, I’ve got five kids to support and I really need more money, can you bless me to get more money?”. And that is religion.

And if they are blessed to get money, “Wow, the religion worked”, “The priest, the monk is powerful”. It’s just a coincidence. If I have the power to give you money, I’ve said this a hundred times, why would I give it to you?

Degeneration in religion is when we use religion to continue to fulfil our negative, our selfish aspirations. But I want everybody to check themselves and see when you do your prayers, if you do your prayers, what do you pray for? If you pray for materialistic, worldly advantages, that is not spirituality, that is not religion, that is not the purpose of religion. A religion cannot be forced upon by fear. It cannot be forced upon by coercion or by bribery. Going to poor people, giving them things and then converting them, that is not conversion. It cannot be done that way in Buddhism.

Some of my problems were solved because I didn’t stop at saying, “Oh, I accept Buddha. He is my saviour and I am going to be fine. And then I can do whatever I want, and not transform my mind, and keep doing what I want, and then when I die I am going to heaven. Then all the other delusionary people say, “He went to heaven”.

My god, there are people who kill… Yesterday, I saw a programme about SS [The Schutzstaffel] soldiers, one of the biggest war criminals in the world that instigated the killing of millions of Jews and they escaped. And when they died, they got buried, had ceremonies, had a cross, and then their families cried and said, “He is going to heaven. He had a good life”.

How could you have had a good life when you killed millions of people? “Oh, because he believed in God.” So, God is forgiving, but… so what about Mother Teresa? So, she is up there with these SS soldiers in the same place enjoying themselves? You mean when the Dalai Lama dies, he hangs out with the SS soldiers too. Hitler? I don’t understand.

So, we become a religion of “If I (we) accept a religion, everything is fine. I do not have to make an effort. I do not have to change. I do not have to transform”. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say religion is degenerating. No.

I said some of us have degenerated religion into what? Into bringing the Gods down to the level of a ghost. Why? We go to ghosts and say give me 4D, give me a girlfriend, give me a boyfriend. People go to banana trees put pins and say give me 4D. Then they come to the temple, they go to Buddha Tsongkhapa, I mean Tsongkhapa is really supreme, “Give me 4D.” What’s the difference? What’s the difference?

So, therefore, we degenerate the religion into something of putting it in on our altar and praying for good business, praying for a son, praying for a daughter, praying for a child, praying for more money, praying for all these things. And you know, that is not the purpose of religion at all. That has never ever been the purpose of religion.

The purpose of religion is for you to accept and understand the tenets and the teachings and to apply back to your qualities, to make your good qualities increase and your not so good qualities transform into good qualities. And when you have these good qualities and you operate from that space then you become successful. Prayers and liturgies are reciting something we are supposed to do, not a God is supposed to do for us.

Let me repeat. The prayers that we recite are not something you recite to a God for him to do to you, it is for you to do for yourself.

Then what is the purpose of a God? What is the purpose of a Buddha? Very simple, to show you what you can achieve. To show you where you can go with your lives.

We have a choice. The main difference between Buddhism and monotheistic religions is, these days, I am not talking about last time, if you accept a Creator God then everything becomes fine. Whereas in Buddhism, if you accept that you have created your problems, then everything becomes fine.

Why? You take responsibility and you do something about it. If you don’t change the negative qualities inside of you, you can pray all your life and nothing will happen to you. And you can have all the priests, popes, bishops, high lamas, and Rinpoches pray over your dead body, but it will not take you to a better place.

When you accept the Dharma, when you accept Christ, you have accepted compassion, not compassion for you, compassion for others from you. You have accepted patience, not you keep on your monkey-like ways and for people to be patient with you, but you are (it is for you to be) patient with others.

But if we are going to pray to somebody up there in the sky to solve these problems, it is impossible because we created the problems. “Dear Buddha, dear God, dear whatever is in the sky, please clean all of our oceans, and all the pollutants that we put in there.” What is going to happen? What do you think? Moses shows up and opens the Red Sea again, and takes out the pollutants, and put it back in, and everything is fine? If that can happen, it would have happened. If it happens at all.

Am I criticising religion? No, I am criticising our wrong views and perceptions of what we think religion is. What we think.

So, what is the purpose of prayers then? What’s the purpose of meditation? What’s the purpose of mantras? The purpose of mantras, the purpose of prayers, the purpose of reciting or chanting is this: a) to remind you what you are supposed to do; b) the mantras and the words do have tremendous power to move our body in a physiological way to assist our mind to have a calmer state.

You know people can take you to a church and dump you in some water and come out and say “Oh, you know, I am born again. I found God”. I can come here, and I can recite some mantras, throw some rice to you and say “Oh, I found Buddha”. But you know, water and rice – in Buddhism they use rice to bless you and in Christianity they use water – but water and rice have no power to transform you or bring you to heaven. If I can bring everybody to heaven by throwing rice on you this whole place would be like a wedding. All of you will go to heaven.

You can take me to church, dump me in the water, come out and say, “I believe in Jesus”. I know I am not going to heaven because if I go to heaven, I know the SS soldiers are there, they went to heaven too. I don’t think heaven is so easy just by saying, “I accept you and I go to heaven”, and then I don’t have to change, I don’t have to transform. I can be a glutton, I can be a pig, I can be selfish, I can be totally evil, and as long as I accept you, I go to heaven.

How can religion degenerate so badly?

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

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