← B. Alan Wallace

Transform Your Mind & Change Your Life Retreat - 7-Point Mind Training from Atisha (part 46)

B. Alan Wallace · 50 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 3:09

    Imagine that you're just totally lucid in a dream. Totally lucid. There's just no reason to prefer a pleasant dream over an unpleasant dream. Because you don't need anything out there to make you happy. You don't need to meet attractive people or have a nice place or beautiful sunrises. You don't need that. Because the bliss you're bringing to the dream so overwhelms any pleasure, hedonic pleasure you could get from this dream versus that dream, this person versus that person, and they're all empty anyway, that you don't need to.

  • 9:00

    Accumulating merit might warrant a few words because the term comes up a lot. And in English, I know as a native English speaker, accumulating merit is something to me, raised in America, is something Boy Scouts and Brownies do. Or Cub Scouts and Brownies, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. And, you know, they get brownie points. It's called merit badges.

  • 24:55

    And then when you're focusing, and I'm commenting here, it counteracts mundane hopes and fears. And here's how you're accumulating merit in this context. He's not referring to offering mandala a hundred thousand times or doing other ritual practices. The way to accumulate merit in this context is to counteract mundane hopes and fears, the hedonic, by yearning that all situations, agreeable and disagreeable, may lead you to spiritual awakening. Having that malleability, that flexibility to shift from the hedonic prioritization to the eudaimonic and then aspiring to, anticipating and hoping.

  • 37:47

    So that's the first one. And that already begins to purify, to soften. It starts to singe, metaphorically. It starts to singe the seeds. You're on a good start. If you rejoice in some negative deed, take pride in it. That empowers it. So it may be, you know, on a scale of 5 to 10, it could be 5 negative. Rejoice in it, it pops up to 8. By the power of rejoicing in it, if it's 5 and you feel very strong regret, it pops down to 3 or 2.

  • 44:21

    So that's one way of doing it. But saving life, saving life would be just generally something diametrically opposed to and then would thereby purify. Other more generic practices like Vajrasattva practice and so forth. But for that matter, bodhicitta and cultivating ultimate relative bodhicitta, that is tremendously purifying. So those are the four. And a very important point here, as we're coming to five o 'clock really quickly, is here's a major premise from all of Buddhism, very specifically Mahāyāna Buddhism.

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0:38 So I mentioned that the seven-point mind training is like one of those cafeteria trays and it has seven areas. Here's preliminary practices, ultimate relative bodhicitta. So with these seven little categories, these little areas within the overall tray of the seven-point mind training, my sense is, could be wrong, but my sense is every Dharma you might ever hear from Buddha Dharma will fit into that tray. Report an error

1:02 So here's a place for state of regeneration. Anybody who's had any introduction at all to state of regeneration or vajrayana in general, That's where it is, right there. Taking the fruition of the path, the four kayas, transforming the four kayas into the path. Taking the fruition of the four kayas, transforming those into the path. Report an error

1:18 That's classic Vajrayana. Viewed from the perspective of Rigpa, then it's Dzogchen. So in Vajrayana practice, where there's such strong usage of visualization, you are imagining seeing reality as you would if you were viewing it from Rigpa. So the old phrase, fake it until you make it. You imagine that until your awareness is purified and your mind dissolved in substrate consciousness and substrate consciousness dissolved into Rigpa. Report an error

1:52 And then you actually see in vivid reality. That's what you used to be imagining. And that's how things actually are from the perspective of Rigpa. So when we consider lojong as a matter of shifting perspective, that attitudinal reversal, such that When you really are very, very deeply versed in this practice, there is no adversity for you. Hedonically, yeah. So I mentioned, I think the reason I mentioned this story with Gatron and his teacher is that anybody would look at staying behind in Tibet and having to go through the genocide and then being killed. Report an error

2:30 That's adversity. I mean, why didn't he escape? He told his disciples this. He saw exactly what was going to happen. And he didn't. There was nothing preventing him from just walking out. And that's because There was no need to. That simple. There was no need to. Not from his perspective. Anybody else? He told the student to leave. Report an error

2:52 But for him? One taste. One taste. And so you can imagine. It's hard to imagine, of course. Why would you stay and be dragged to death behind a horse? Unpleasant end. Almost anybody would think that. One taste. Imagine that you're just totally lucid in a dream. Totally lucid. There's just no reason to prefer a pleasant dream over an unpleasant dream. Because you don't need anything out there to make you happy. You don't need to meet attractive people or have a nice place or beautiful sunrises. Report an error

3:28 You don't need that. Because the bliss you're bringing to the dream so overwhelms any pleasure, hedonic pleasure you could get from this dream versus that dream, this person versus that person, and they're all empty anyway, that you don't need to. And then when you know that you are an illusory being within the dream, and everything that's happening in the dream is illusory, and you know that, like this woman who allowed herself to be stabbed with a knife. Report an error

3:54 I did tell that story, didn't I? No? Another retreat? You've been to so many retreats, you don't care. This might be your first retreat. Have I told the story of the woman who allowed herself to be... Okay, then I have to tell the story. It's a good story, true story. And as a Westerner, it's not one of these mystical Tibetans. Report an error

4:15 One friend of mine, just a student of mine up in Norway, she's very gifted for lucid dreaming. And I often stay with her husband and with her when I'm visiting Oslo. And she's especially a very dedicated armor practitioner for years. And she's also very gifted for lucid dreaming. So a couple of years ago, when I visited them for a few days, she told me that she'd had a very lucid dream just recently. Report an error

4:38 And in the dream, she's a tall, slender, very feminine woman. It's kind of important here because what appeared in the dream was a big, burly, muscular, mean guy with a great big knife. A thug, a real thug. She's about to be, what's the word, mugged. But she's about to be stabbed. He's coming towards it very menacingly with a big knife. And she is very lucid. Report an error

5:00 I mean, she's really lucid. And so he's approaching her, approaching her. And then just when she about could be attacked, she reaches out, takes his hand in her hand, and then plunges the knife into her guts. So she disarmed him by placing the blade deep inside her own gut. So I asked her, did that hurt? Report an error

5:22 And she said, no. It was a dream knife and a dream gut. It's like a holographic image of a knife and a holographic image of an abdomen and trusting one with the other. I mean, really, what's the big deal? She said, no, there was no pain. I knew exactly what was going on. There's nobody there. It's like a holographic image of a big, grimacing man. Report an error

5:44 Holding a big grimacing, you know, empty blade. And I'm there, she probably was there, I assume she was there in the dream, looking pretty much like herself in the waking state. And she just disarmed him, and that was the end of that. You know, that there was no need to run away, to escape to India, or to disarm him. Report an error

6:06 Or she knows when you're that very, very adept at lucid dreaming, you know you can change things at will. It's really not that hard. So if she wanted to, when she saw this big, let's say, big six-foot-four, burly, hairy guy with a big knife, she could easily, this is really not difficult to do at all if you're good at lucid dreaming, she could have changed herself, she could have simply transformed herself into Godzilla, you know, 50 feet high, and just go, that would have been very easy. Report an error

6:38 She could have swallowed up, you know. But there was no need. She could have flown away. That's one of the easiest things to do in a lucid dream is fly. Report an error

6:49 Bye-bye. Fly. Fly away. Really, there's a lot of exits for that kind of situation. But if you're very lucid, what's the point? Where are you flying to, by the way? How far in your mind, is that one kilometer? How far are you flying away? And have you actually left that person behind? When you're flying off in the distance, have you left that big guy with a knife? Is he still waiting? Where did she go? Report an error

7:17 Where did she go? He doesn't have a perspective. Because he's not there at all. It's merely an appearance. So there's no need for her to choose a pleasant dream over an unpleasant dream, because she's getting all the joy she needs just from being lucid. Report an error

7:39 So if you are an emanation of Dujum Lingpa, and in his previous incarnation, 13 of his disciples achieved rainbow body and 1,000 achieved direct realization of Rigpa, became Vidyadaras, then you don't really need to escape from Tibet, because you're not really there anyway. Report an error

8:00 So I think that's why they told the story. Report an error

8:05 We have this whole genre of lojong to radically shift, turn about a revolution in the way you're viewing reality. Well then in this light, from this perspective, you could say all of Adriana is one lojong on steroids. I mean really powerful, powerful, powerful lojong. But then the most powerful lojong of all is okchen, where you don't need to visualize anything. Report an error

8:29 You just view reality as it is. So that's that. So that's... Transforming, transforming, transforming. Transforming adversity into an aid to spiritual awakening by independence upon ultimate bodhicitta. That's it. Just that one aphorism. That's what he says. But now still within this context of transforming adversity into an aid to spiritual awakening, we have another category we'll cover this afternoon. A special practice for accumulating merit and purifying obscurations. Report an error

9:00 Accumulating merit might warrant a few words because the term comes up a lot. And in English, I know as a native English speaker, accumulating merit is something to me, raised in America, is something Boy Scouts and Brownies do. Report an error

9:16 Or Cub Scouts and Brownies, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. And, you know, they get brownie points. It's called merit badges. Merit badges. It sounds like pretty trivial, frankly. Like you get an award, you get a sticker or something, you get a little pin, it's a merit badge. And then we have the same word here for something that's really quite awesome and incredibly profound. So I don't know a better translation. The Sanskrit is punya. Tibetan is sunam. Report an error

9:45 But what is it? What is it? Because the word merit just doesn't really have much juice. I don't think it's used much in Christianity. I don't think merit, merit is a term that crops up. Whereas here, in Buddhism, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. And so what is merit? And what is the notion of accumulating merit? Report an error

10:04 I remember asking one of my teachers, Geishinomantaiki, accumulating merit, accumulating merit. Report an error

10:15 There's always more you can do. There's always more virtue you can do that accumulates this merit, which is a kind of very positive, wholesome, virtuous, powerful energy. I don't know what else to say. I think energy is about the best word there is for it. It's like... Like accumulating energy and something really positive and constructive that can be directed to something really wonderful. So merit, if one lives in a very humble way, a very respectful way to other people, a very generous way, there's merit from that. Report an error

10:52 And that's with or without any kind of Dharma, religion, anything like that. But humble, ethical, generous, courteous and so forth, without any dedication of merit, that merit, If what you really would like would be really attractive and really wealthy, that's what you'd really like. If I were really successful, I'd be really attractive and really wealthy and maybe have a great reputation, I'd be something of a star. Report an error

11:20 And if you lived a life where you're sowing those seeds and accumulating that merit, and there's a great deal of merit, then you very, very well could be born into a life where you're one of those lucky actors. Who meets just the right people at the right time. And the doors open just when they need to open. And you get just the auditions. And then everything just turns out right. Report an error

11:43 And by the age of 20, you're a superstar. And you're also gorgeous. And money's flowing in like a tidal wave. And that's what you get out of your merit. Report an error

11:54 And then after 10 years, you're getting fewer parts. And 20 years, you're getting... And you've been through two marriages by now. And you're getting old. And you're kind of disappearing. And you can't cover up those wrinkles much anymore. And after a while you're just, oh yeah, she was very beautiful, oh he was very handsome. What became of him? So that's what can happen to merit. Report an error

12:15 It manifests as something you wanted and then it just fades off into the sunset, as they say in the movie industry. So merit can be, it's something positive. There's nothing wrong with being beautiful or attractive or wealthy or famous. There's nothing wrong with those at all. And people do like those kind of things, a lot of people. But then it just doesn't go anywhere and then it just fades out. Report an error

12:34 It just fades out. Whereas you can take that same merit, like acting with humility, with graciousness, kindness, generosity and so forth, and if you're dedicating, it's the same energy, the same merit, the same virtue, the same goodness, the same constructive, positive, wholesome energy. And you can direct that, and you do direct it no matter what, because what you desire is what you're dedicating your merit to. And what you really desire is, oh, I wish I were... Report an error

13:00 Really famous and attractive and wealthy. I wish I won't be, but oh gosh, I wish. And then you'll live your very wholesome life. That's what you're going to get. You weren't specifically dedicated to merit, but that's what you really wanted. You know, mundane pleasure. And you'll get it, and then you'll see whether you actually got any happiness out of that or not. Maybe, maybe not. But if you're following some white mind training, probably Dharma, then you accumulate merit, and you see there's something really positive here, very constructive. Report an error

13:26 This is a dynamo of energy, and then you direct it. You direct it. Now what would you like this to go to? Do you want to be really beautiful and famous and so forth? Or would you like it to go just supercharge you along the path? Because it's the kind of energy that will propel you. Where would you like to be propelled? Into a mansion in Beverly Hills or into a fantastic retreat hut in Tuscany? Report an error

13:50 I know my answer. It's really, really easy. It's really, really easy. And you can have either one. It will go into one or the other. But one will actually be a source for more and more merit, more and more and more genuine happiness, all the way up to rainbow body. And the other one, you just wind up old and wrinkled in a great big house. Report an error

14:14 And then dead. So that's it. So you can either dedicate merit, you can not dedicate merit, and it goes into default mode. What did you want? Well, that's where it's going to go. What was your aspiration? What were your goals, your cognitive intelligence? What is it that your life was all about? Was it material success? Was it this? Having a great family? What was it? Having a ranch in Wyoming? Some people, you know, that's what they would really, really like. Report an error

14:42 If they don't get it in this lifetime, it might come up the next lifetime. If the merit is there and that's what they really want. So this accumulating merit is that. You can accumulate it, you can also lose it. But if you accumulate it and you dedicate it, you direct it wisely, then that will just propel you along the path. So there's blessings that come. Report an error

15:01 The blessings come of the Buddha, but there's also just the sheer momentum of our own merit. And that's what propels us from lifetime to lifetime in a very positive way and generates these very fortuitous circumstances that arise. So it's not just, I'm totally undeserving, but the Buddhas like me a lot. And then we're just getting a whole lot of blessings. Because the appearances that arise, these very fortunate appearances, like meeting with someone like His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Report an error

15:26 Meeting great yogis in Tibet, going to great sacred sites and so forth, having fantastic spiritual friends and so forth. These are appearances and they are arising as a result of karma. You're not just lucky or you're not just fortunate or having a lot of blessings like the Buddhas give more blessings to some people because they like them better. Not like that. Report an error

15:46 So what you're bringing to the table, that also counts. And the blessing, yeah, that also counts. But this is where you take that positive karma and you direct it in the most meaningful possible way. But you accumulate it first and then you direct it. So that's what really propels us along the path. So people have great merit. Great merit. Then these are the people that just keep on... That is, either hedonically, if that's what they wanted, but eudaimonically, if what they really want is their focus, their aspirations, their priorities are all about Dharma. Report an error

16:16 When there's great merit, then you just wind up... Somehow encountering one wonderful teacher after another. Not necessarily easy. Hedonically, again, it can really be very difficult. But yudaimonically, in terms of Dharma, just going from one fantastic situation to another. I can say it myself, I think I must have a lot of merit. Because I've met, and how I know is inferentially. Not because I'm anything exceptional myself at all. Report an error

16:43 But I just look at the people I've met over the last 45 years. I said, I must have done something right. Been a really good Lhasa Apsu. A really sweet one. Report an error

16:57 Had to be something good there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had these opportunities. So that's inferential. That's looking back. So how can we accumulate merit? And that's what propels us into fortuitous circumstances hedonically, if that's what you want, or fortuitous circumstances euromonically, like Genlam Rinpo living under a rock for two years with a sack of flour and loving every moment of it. Report an error

17:19 Hedonic, I'm sure, is sucked. Because I've lived in a situation not much better than that. I kind of know about that. Not a rock, but some of the places I've lived in India, not that much better. Report an error

17:33 So just hedonically, really tough, just kind of hard. But eudaimonically, he just encountered one wonderful situation after another. Realities kept on rising to meet him. A personal relationship with his Holiness the Dalai Lama and so forth and so on. So that's the merit that can be directed. And direct it well. It's like investment. But this is infinitely greater than simply having money that you invest. But then what obstructs us? Report an error

18:02 What gets in the way? What throws us off? What can totally block us? Just completely block us. Especially internally, but it can manifest externally as well. And so those are called obscurations. And so we want to accumulate one and purify the other. So this is within the context of transforming adversity into the path. And so the best of methods is to have four practices. This is a special practice for accumulating merit and purifying obscurations. Report an error

18:29 This is the really, this right here is the central theme of the so-called mundo or preliminary practices. And that this is offering mandala, prostrations, guru yoga, bodhicitta. Vajrasattva and all of that. It's all about accumulating merit, purifying obscurations, so that when you set out, specifically in Vajrayana, some people have the mistaken notion, and it's really, I think, a serious mistake. Report an error

18:53 When they encounter a Tibetan Lama, they want to practice Tibetan Buddhism, then some Lamas say, oh, you'd like to, okay, I'm the Lama, and you're my student, you just want to start off from practicing Tibetan Buddhism, okay, hit the deck, give me a hundred thousand prostrations. Report an error

19:08 It's kind of like joining in Marines. Okay, Marine, hit the duck, 100,000. You finished? Okay, give me 100,000 mandala offerings. Finished? Okay, give me 100,000 guru yoga. Finished. Are you finished yet? Okay, not yet? Keep up. You lost interest? Never mind. So it can be like boot camp. And the idea being, if that's your entrance, it's not the entrance. I know it directly from his home, the Dalai Lama. I mean, he made it so clear that that's not the entrance to Buddha Dharma. Report an error

19:40 That's the answer to Vajrayana. But there's no Vajrayana without having your foundation in the fundamental teachings of the Buddha, the Four Noble Truths. For starters, ethics, samādhi, wisdom. That's the mundo. That's the preliminary practice. Establish renunciation, establish authentic view, practice the Eightfold Noble Path, develop shamatha, develop vipassanā, develop ethics. Report an error

20:06 That's the preliminary. And that's just the basic teachings, Thravagayana. But if you want to go for vajrayana, well, the next set of preliminary practices is develop bodhicitta, relative bodhicitta, ultimate bodhicitta, cultivate the six perfections. That's the preliminary practice. All of lamrim, that's the preliminary practice, including Vipassanā, the culmination of lamrim. You finish the preliminary, okay, you finished all of that, and you've cultivated bodhicitta, have some insight into emptiness, you've got some degree of shamatha, you're ready for vajrayana now? Report an error

20:37 Okay, now do the hundred thousand prostrations, and so forth and so on. That set of five, which is taught a lot, and I've done them, all set of 100,000, I've done them years ago, those are specifically preparations for Vajrayana practice. They're not preparations for the practice of Buddhadharma. And when they're taught that way, it looks like Buddhadharma is starting out with blind faith. You don't know anything. Report an error

20:59 You don't even know if Matamaru exists or the four continents. So you're taking something that sounds like pure mythology and then offering it 100,000 times. Why not offer... Santa Claus and Santa's Village 100,000. And populate them with two fairies and Easter bunnies. I mean, really, if you don't believe in it, then what's the point of, and you don't even understand it, then what's the point? Report an error

21:24 I mean, it really looks like an empty ritual. And so I am not deprecating or having any sarcasm whatsoever to the practices. But if you don't understand what's going on and you don't have faith and you don't really want to do them, really, what's the point? And I know a lot of Westerners. They're doing as the Lama told them to. I revere this Lama, fantastic Lama. He told me I should do the Viper Liminary. And sometimes years go on and they're dragging by because they don't want to do them. Report an error

21:52 They want to please the Lama, but they just don't want to do this a hundred thousand times. Offering the Mandala, they don't want to do because they just don't understand it, have no inspiration for it and so forth. So they can be tremendously meaningful. Until they come back, I'm not ridiculing the practices at all. Report an error

22:08 If you understand them and you have faith in the aspiration, you see the whole point, then absolutely, fantastic. And then if with that and with some degree of samādhi, so you're not just having a wandering mind as your arms are going around and around 100,000 times, if you are well prepared, then these do indeed, because these were taught by Kala Rinpoche and Dino Kinsa Rinpoche, they're taught by fabulous lamas who are not anything but superficial, so they're not teaching them for trivial reasons. Report an error

22:39 But they're teaching them over the last thousand years to Tibetans who are raised with faith and are probably learning Dharma all the way through, especially if they're monks or nuns, but even if not, a lot of Tibetans really learn the Dharma as they're growing up. And then they get to the point they really want to go into Vajrayana practice. They've got, you know, 20, 30, 40 years of momentum behind them. Enormous faith. And so then when they're taught that, they say, of course, of course, happy to do that. Report an error

23:03 There's a lot of merit and they jump right in. Very different from people coming direct from... From Sydney, let alone Melbourne. Report an error

23:14 You have a major disadvantage there. So His Holiness was saying to actually a group of people in Greece, because I was translating for it, in 1979, he said, you know, do the real preliminies, learn the formidable truths, learn about ethics, samādhi wisdom, learn about the 12 linkages, learn the foundational teachings of the Buddha Dharma and the Mahāyāna, and then, then come these. Report an error

23:37 But don't think that's the entry level. Because they didn't want to do it. A Lama told us we should do this, and we don't want to, but what should we do? They said, well, that's not the preliminary practices. So when understood well, they're all very, very meaningful. And the point of accumulating merit and purifying obscurations is enormously important. And so the best of methods is to have four practices. Report an error

23:59 Now this is for accumulating merit and purifying obscurations, but it's still within the context of transforming adversity into... An aid to spiritual awakening. So the first of these four, accumulate merit. Charge your battery. Charge your battery. So I was about to tell, got halfway through the story, asking Geshe Ngann Taike, you're accumulating merit, but then you say, it seems like that could go on infinitely, so when you never achieve enlightenment, if you can always accumulate more merit, then wouldn't you never achieve enlightenment, because you can always accumulate more. Report an error

24:31 And his answer was, no, you got it wrong on that one. I was 22, so I'm allowed to make a lot of mistakes. And he said, no, accumulating merit is like charging a battery. And if you're fully charged, then you go. You don't have to keep on charging. Just go. Jump into practice. So accumulating merit is the means to develop habitual propensities. So strong, very wholesome, virtuous, constructive habits. Report an error

24:55 And then when you're focusing, and I'm commenting here, it counteracts mundane hopes and fears. And here's how you're accumulating merit in this context. He's not referring to offering mandala a hundred thousand times or doing other ritual practices. The way to accumulate merit in this context is to counteract mundane hopes and fears, the hedonic, by yearning that all situations, agreeable and disagreeable, may lead you to spiritual awakening. Report an error

25:21 Having that malleability, that flexibility to shift from the hedonic prioritization to the eudaimonic and then aspiring to, anticipating and hoping. May all that arises, may it all arise, however it may appear, agreeable or disagreeable, may it all serve as an aid to spiritual awakening, to further you along the path. Report an error

25:44 Having that aspiration already is an accumulation of merit. Within the concept of lojong, that's it. And then in terms of... So here's the second one. These are all four practices. The second one, very important. Everywhere. Purifying vices, that is any negative deed, harmful deed, evil deed, anything by body, speech or mind that you know to be non-virtuous, antithetical to the path, contrary to the whole spirit of Dharma. Report an error

26:11 Purifying vices by means of the full remedial power. So let's linger on this. It may not be thoroughly familiar to all of you, although to some I'm sure it is. Report an error

26:23 So the situation is one where you, whether just Yesterday or ten minutes ago or whether it was a year ago, you look back and you recognize with your own intelligence, not just looking at a rule book, some Buddhist rule book or a Christian rule book, but you look back with your own wisdom, your own intelligence, and you look back on some action that you've done. Report an error

26:45 It could be five minutes ago, it could be five years ago. And you look back on it and you simply recognize that was really unawesome. It was aroused by, driven by mental afflictions, delusion, craving, hostility, some combination of those. And then the enactment, what I brought to the world, was toxic. Report an error

27:03 It was harmful. Whether driven by desire and craving, or hatred, jealousy, ego, whatever it may be, you recognize that that was non-virtuous. That was a vice. But it's done, right? It's done. I mean, the act, whatever it was, its speech, its physical activity, it could be simply an intention, that also. Having an intention, that's already accruing, it's already karma. Report an error

27:28 Let alone manifesting it, just having intention. We ran through that. Building a bomb to blow up people, you never blow it up, you still go to jail. Because of the intention. Nothing wrong with a bomb. I like to say, give the example of people who want to build a tunnel to connect two villages. And they're going to create a bomb to TNT, to make a tunnel. Report an error

27:48 So if they're caught in the act, and they're civil engineers, and they're creating some dynamite, some explosives, they might even get an award before they blow it up. Thank you. Especially imagine they're doing it for free. And then the people find out, oh, you're building us a tunnel. We've been wanting that for centuries. And it's going to make it so easy to get back and forth. Report an error

28:06 Please carry on. And here's some extra money. And we're going to give you an award for building a bomb. Everything is the motivation. Everything is the motivation. What do you have in mind with that TNT? And so motivation is enormous. But here we look at the motivation. We see the motivation was driven by mental afflictions. We see the enactment was toxic. Report an error

28:27 Whatever it may be, it won't give an example. But you know for yourself, that was wrong. And so what do you do about it? Because it's done. In the karmic imprints, the seeds have been sown on your mental stream, mind stream, and they are there. They're there in your substrate consciousness. The seeds are sown in the soil, and there they are. Report an error

28:48 And so, what can you do? Because it's done. The act itself is done because it happened, let's say, a year ago. So you can't roll back the clock. That's not possible. But how is it that those karmic seeds will actually germinate in the future? Well, those karmic seeds are in the present. They're not in the past. The past is gone. The karmic seeds from that, the imprints, the impressions, the configurations on your mind stream. Report an error

29:18 That are the karmic impressions that are getting through time. They're where you are right now. They're in your mind stream right now. It fingers touch. Right there. And so there's a possibility of taking those imprints or seeds and metaphorically they are seeds that can give rise to very, very toxic harvest. Report an error

29:38 Really poisonous. That you would find out when it manifests, this is adversity. This is cancer. This is poverty. This is being killed. This is something you don't want. Nobody wants. It's disgrace. It's disempowerment. It's misery. It's death. It's sickness. And so forth. All the stuff we don't want. It's adversity. And you've sown the seeds of adversity. And you know it. Report an error

30:01 I mean, really, if you have common sense, you know that nothing good can come from that. If you have some sensitivity, you're not a complete materialist and reductionist. So what can you do? Well, you can look back on that deed. Report an error

30:13 And as you're focusing on it, and the wording is very careful here, you're focusing on the deed. And the deed, like an act of killing, is a deed. It started here, it ended here, and then you're moving on. But you're not killing every moment. You killed on that occasion, right? Maybe you killed out of sport. Just thought it would be fun. Report an error

30:32 Wouldn't it be fun to go out and bag a deer? And if you fall under the influence of people that think killing for sport is a lot of fun, giving misery to sentient beings is really a lot of fun. That's our hobby, is I kill deer. If you fall under it, maybe you're raised in such a family. Let's go out and have some fun. Let's shoot some ducks. But some people, they regard that as entertainment. Report an error

30:51 The misery, the bleeding, the death and agony of the creatures. Oh, look what I begged. Bring home this bleeding carcass. And that was your fun. Instead of playing tennis, you bring misery and then enjoy it. And maybe not even eat it. That's called sport. Sport hunting, I guess. And so you look back on that. I mean, I was, I'll give you an example. When I was growing up, I was told that by a very good man, he was a Christian, a very good man, that fishing is no problem because the fish don't have any feelings. Report an error

31:23 That's what I was told. Then I was like 12, 13, 14 years old. That they're cold-blooded, so they're not like you and me, and they have no feelings. So if you hook them and breathe, and then, you know, they don't have any feelings, so don't worry about it. They don't feel anything because they're cold-blooded. Report an error

31:39 And I was 13, I said, okay. And so during that period, a few years of my teenage years, not often, but I would go up into the mountains and fish were trout, enjoy reading them in. And then I was told by the same man, I don't want to mention his name, he's actually a very good man, he was just misinformed at this point. He said, when you reel them out and you bring them onto shore, and they're all wiggling, wiggling, wiggling, they've got a great big hook in their mouth, you drag them in by their mouths. Report an error

32:05 You bring them up on shore and they'll walk like that. Then what you should do is, as an act of kindness, take a rock and smack them over the head, bash in their skull. Report an error

32:17 And that was, it was kind of a mixed message. That's the kind thing to do, so they don't wiggle, wiggle, wiggle and then finally die like that. I didn't really quite put two and two together. If they have no feelings, then why are they wiggle, wiggle? And if they have no feelings, then why put them out of the misery because they don't have any? And that was the justification for hitting one head with a rock. Report an error

32:35 So I did that for short, not often, but I did that sometimes. It's Report an error

32:42 called fishing, when you go camping, back and back. Then I was 18, I was on my own, and I had an B.W. bug, and I was driving way up the coast, the west coast, up to Canada, solo. I just like to be by myself, going off into nature. I had my fishing rod with me, habit. I went to a stream and pulled in a fish, got my camping stove and all of that. I pulled in this fish, that big. I pulled him in, he's wiggling. Report an error

33:10 And I just thought, it's not true. Report an error

33:19 It kind of dawned on me the obvious. I mean, it's staring in your face. Almost any scientist would tell you, you know, fish have consciousness. Birds have consciousness. Rebels have consciousness. Insects have consciousness. Latest data I've saw in the last six months or so. Evidence, yeah, you might not like it, but insects, especially when you swat a mosquito, it feels it. Report an error

33:40 It doesn't like being crushed. So I look back. I mean, I've thought of this. I think I really don't need to dwell on myself because I've thought about that many times, and I was acting out of ignorance on those occasions. When I would fish it in and then whack it and then gut it and then all of that. And it was ignorance. I mean, a flat, I really wasn't aware of the obvious. Report an error

34:04 It's cognitive deficit disorder. What could be more obvious that the fish does not want to be on the hook? They're trying to get away. And you pull them under the sand and they're wiggling, trying to get... What's more obvious than that? And I didn't see it because I was told it wasn't true by a man I trusted. And in many ways, most ways, he's very trustworthy. Report an error

34:21 Wonderful man, just in this area. Not so much. So you look back on that, and then I recognize that was killing, and that's regrettable, and I do feel remorse. And so there's one for me that's become pretty ancient history, but nevertheless there it is. And I've done other things since then that I also have remorse for. So you focus on something that to my mind is crystal clear that that is harm, it's injurious. Report an error

34:53 It inflicts pain. You could have just brought freeze-dried food and had the whole of that vacation with no killing at all. You could do that. Not that hard. And so looking back and then feeling remorse, not I'm a terrible person, what got into me, I'm awful, I'm malevolent, I'm evil. The focus is not on I. The focus is on the deed. And the deed was one of injury, bringing misery and pain. And looking upon the deed with remorse. Report an error

35:22 And the more powerful it was in terms of its negative, whether it's driven by, this was just ignorance and wanting some food, but it could be malice, it could be greed, it could be anything, but seeing the mental fix and seeing the enactment and seeing that the remorse is commensurate with the magnitude of the deed. Report an error

35:43 So Milarepa killed 35 people, the greatest of all the yogis, not the greatest, but one of the most beloved saints and yogis of the whole history of Tibet. Well, he started out by killing 35 people, malevolently, as an act of vengeance, because his uncle had treated his family despicably. And this was retaliation, with a full approval and encouragement by his mother, who told him, this is righteous, this is good, this is appropriate, this is excellent. Report an error

36:10 And you, my son, I can't do it, I'm a woman, but you can, and you can get back at them. And this is your charge, this is what I, your mother, am telling you to do. She's Tibetan. Sounds a lot like ISIS and other terrorists. These people killed our people, so now my son, go off and get back. So it's in Tibet. Report an error

36:29 So killing 35 people out of malice, and he did so, there's no reason to believe that, it was just a myth. But then when he saw the Arabist ways, the magnitude of his remorse was immense. And he knew that if he just let that one slide, well that's going to lead to some really, really heavy results that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Report an error

36:50 So he saw that intense remorse, because that's an intensely negative deed. And then he purified it completely with the help, the guidance of his guru. Some pretty major purification practices. So you can read all about it in Malariva's life story, or apparently you can watch the movie. But see that the remorse is commensurate with the deed. Report an error

37:10 Killing 35 people, very intense. Killing some trout, negative. Not as negative as killing 35 people. And so forth and so on. You can take it right down to things that are negative, but a rude comment. A rude comment. It just slips right out. But it was rude. It was deprecatory. It was insulting. It was abusive. You want to suck it right back in again. But it's already done. Report an error

37:36 You've said it. You've harmed somebody. Their feelings are wounded and so forth. Okay. Not killing 35 people. So let the degree of remorse be commensurate with the act. So that's the first one. And that already begins to purify, to soften. It starts to singe, metaphorically. It starts to singe the seeds. You're on a good start. Report an error

37:58 If you rejoice in some negative deed, take pride in it. That empowers it. So it may be, you know, on a scale of 5 to 10, it could be 5 negative. Rejoice in it, it pops up to 8. By the power of rejoicing in it, if it's 5 and you feel very strong regret, it pops down to 3 or 2. Speaking very broadly. So that's the first of the four remedial powers, is remorse for past wrongdoings. But of course, like the alcoholic husband who gets drunk and then abuses his wife, and then when he gets sober again, he's just full of tears and apology, and I'm so sorry, sweetie, I'll never do it again until the next morning. Report an error

38:37 And he's drunk again, and he does it all over again. So the sincerity, the regret, the remorse is very sincere. It could be. It could be. He sees her all bruised or whatever, or he sees that the kids are all cowering in the corner, and then he feels really bad about it. That could be very genuine. But if he does it all over again, I can use some profanity or I won't, but who cares? Who cares how much remorse you feel if you're not going to stop doing it? Report an error

39:04 Who cares? So you do it and feel remorse, you do it and feel remorse. There were robbers in Tibet. Of course, it's a country. They had bandits, and they were not nice bandits. They were not cute, cuddly Tibetan bandits. They were really mean, nasty bandits who happened to be Tibetans. And they did some really nasty stuff out there in Eastern Tibet, in Golo, in Kam Amdu. Report an error

39:28 There's some really wild cowboy country out there. And they would come in just like, you know, like the Westerns. And they were no nicer than the Western, you know, we've hidden all the Western movies. They were mean. And they would come in, you know, they would attack caravans, attack people and so forth. Report an error

39:44 There's nothing of a nice about them. But a number of them felt they were Buddhist. They were Buddhist bandits. So they'd go off and rob and pillage and so forth. And the gang would bring their stuff. They'd come back to their tents or their yurts or whatever. And they'd have their little shrine in there. And they'd offer the booty to the Buddha and say, it's my karma that I have to be a bandit, but I'm really sorry, but here's your take. Report an error

40:14 I'm really sorry that I'm a bandit, but you know, my karma, what can I do? But, you know, here's your portion. Thank you for forgiving me. And then, of course, they're planning the next raid. That happened in Tibet. I hear something like that happens with the mafia in Italy. Very dedicated Roman Catholics, and exactly the same. And the drug cartels in Mexico. Drug cartels, Roman Catholic. Report an error

40:38 Bless me, Father, for I am sinned. But be quick about it, because I'm about to sell a lot of dope. know. And so this, we're laughing quite rightly, the remorse may be genuine, but if there's no second power, then who gives a darn? I'm still not going to use profanity, I really want to. But that's it, there's got to be, it has to be follow-up. And that is good remorse, you're looking to the past, remorse, good, but do you have the resolve to turn away in the future? Report an error

41:04 Are you going to stop? If you're not, then you maybe sing the seeds, but they're still going to come. They're going to germinate, they're going to manifest. If you're not turning away, there should be resolve. Strong determination. I erred in that way in the past and I shall not do so. And this is my pledge in the presence of the Buddhas. Then there's more purification. Report an error

41:25 It's an alcoholic husband and he has remorse. And then he stops drinking and stops abusing and really sets out afresh. Then I think the wife, I mean, it's her choice. She may very well have forgiven. Okay, you were awful, but you're not anymore. And it's her choice, but she may forgive him and it may turn out well. It does happen. Report an error

41:45 But if there's no turning back, what's the point? Then support. Denkitop it's called. Taking refuge, cultivating compassion. There are some types of wrongdoings that are directed towards the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha, to temples, to gurus and so forth. I mean stealing from a monastery would be a good example. Report an error

42:05 That happens sometimes. People come to a monastery and temple where there tends to be a lot of offerings and they rip them off. That's happened around about. Well, then it's a violation against the objects of refuge, in which case take refuge. That is, do the first two, and then do something diametrically opposed, really deeply take refuge. Report an error

42:22 Re-infirm your commitment to buddhidham and saṅgha. Whereas in contrast, on the other hand, if there's the wrongdoing, it's a nice word, the wrongdoing, if it's directed towards sentient beings that you inflicted harm, physically, mentally, with intention, or of course, the big way that we modernists tend to harm each other is usually with the mouth, voice more than anything else. Report an error

42:42 But we can do a lot of damage with the speech. So if it's damage or wrongdoing committed towards sentient beings, then cultivate compassion. And then the fourth one is engaging in purificatory practices. And that is engaging in practices that are, how do you say, diametrically opposed to that which you've done. So if it's killing, saving life. So one of the common practices in Tibetan Buddhism, Chachalambha did this to an extraordinary degree. Report an error

43:08 He was regarded by many as the greatest living Dzogchen master. Lived at the age of 102, passed away just recently. He didn't teach very publicly at all. But periodically, I think once a year, he would receive a lot of offerings because he was tremendously renowned. Report an error

43:23 People have fantastic reverence for him. But periodically, he would receive a lot of offerings from people. And he had no use for them, really. He was living very simply as a yogi. And so he'd take these offerings. And periodically, he'd go down to Calcutta. On a regular basis, I think once a year, he'd go down to Calcutta, the nearest big city and port. Report an error

43:42 And he would buy millions of fish and crustaceans and just whatever had been harvested from the sea. And he would buy them before they're dead. And then it's release. He'd buy them and then make sure they'd be taken out to the bay and then all released. And he actually saved the lives of millions of sentry beings that way on a regular basis. Report an error

44:00 He'd just spend all his money releasing, releasing. Gaucho Rinpoche and his students in the bay area, they do this regularly. Because it's bay, it's San Francisco Bay, it's a fishing, it's a fishing place, all kinds of really good seafood. So his students there, they'll go off and then buy and then release, all kind of things. Because that's diametrically just the opposite of killing, you're saving. Report an error

44:21 So that's one way of doing it. But saving life, saving life would be just generally something diametrically opposed to and then would thereby purify. Other more generic practices like Vajrasattva practice and so forth. But for that matter, bodhicitta and cultivating ultimate relative bodhicitta, that is tremendously purifying. So those are the four. Report an error

44:40 And a very important point here, as we're coming to five o 'clock really quickly, is here's a major premise from all of Buddhism, very specifically Mahāyāna Buddhism. There is no deed that is so vile, so unspeakably evil, that it can't be purified. It doesn't matter what it is. I mean, you can name it, you can sort of get given a list of the most evil deeds done in history. And there is no deed that is so evil that it cannot, in principle, be impurified. They can be purified. Report an error

45:10 The remorse must be commensurate with the deed. The resolve to turn away has to be absolute. The power of the refuge or compassion should be deep, strong and persistent, and then doing things that which are diametrically opposed. We find many cases of that over history, of people doing all of those, really turning about. Millery was a great example, or Ben Kunkin was another one. Report an error

45:34 Oh, he was a Kadamba, one of the old school. And he was a bandit. He was a bandit. And I won't tell the whole story. It's quite a cool story. Our time is out. But he was just a robber. He was a brigand. He was a bandit. He was a bad guy. And then it just hit him like a sledgehammer, what he was doing. Report an error

45:52 And that it was so awful. And he just, one event, turned him around completely. And he became like the ideal Kadampa monk. Just the ideal. And stories go about him. Very simple stories. No great philosophy, no great esoteric practice and so forth. Just how he consistently, persistently... Turned absolutely away from any type of non-virtue whatsoever. And there's little doubt. They utterly purified all the awful things he'd done. Report an error

46:19 And they were awful by any criteria. So this is, these are the four powers, and they can purify completely. And so the final word here, it's five o 'clock, is that it's, the analogy here, it's a very close analogy, is you have a seed of, let's say, so miller, they kill 35 people, they're seeds. Report an error

46:39 And then he did, clearly purified, otherwise he would have never gained that realization that he did. You're burning them. It's like holding a mat under a seed until the seed is parched all the way through. It's coal. You just keep the light under it until it's just finished. It's still a seed. It's a burnt seed. But that seed will never germinate. Report an error

47:03 But it's not the same as having no seed. So it would have been better not to do it in the first place. That would have been better. Because it did have impact. He killed 35 people. And the impact on his mind was really unwholesome. And so forth. It has repercussions. The seed was there. The act was done. Report an error

47:18 You didn't undo the act. It was better not to do it. But now that you've done it, in terms of karmic seeds that could, in your mind stream, that can come to maturation in something really, really awful, that will not happen. Report an error

47:31 Because you've burnt the seed. And nothing will ever germinate it. And so that's it. Whatever the seed is. Whether it's slapping a mosquito or rude comment or whether it's genocide, it can be purified. And that's how. So that's pretty powerful, pretty important teaching. Good to know. The caveat here, I'm going to end though, is when karma starts to mature, that is a seed can be there for a hundred years, it can be there for a hundred lifetimes, they don't wear out by themselves. Report an error

48:01 They don't just kind of lose their, like ordinary seeds. They'll just lose their power after some time. Entropy sets in no longer, but not karmic seeds. There's no entropy for karmic seeds. They can last in your mind stream indefinitely. And then when they're catalyzed, karma gets catalyzed. It germinates. Karma ripens. And when the karma is in the process of ripening, then it's too late. Report an error

48:25 You're going to have all the remorse you like, but if it's already ripening, if that movement is set into action, it's happening. Report an error

48:35 That's too late. Then you will experience the adversity. If you are very powerful in your practice, you may be able to transform the adversity. And then it winds up as blessing. It's possible. But it will happen. Because it's already germinated. Too late to purify. Not too late to do anything about it. Report an error

48:52 You could practice lojong and transform what other people would call adversity into blessing. But it will happen. Will happen. And so it's good then to purify before the karma is germinated. Then you can purify it completely, and it doesn't have to manifest at all. So, very mature Dharma practitioners in Tibetan tradition say, I don't know how many seeds there are, I don't know where they're going to germinate, I think I better purify all of them now, as much as I possibly can. Report an error

49:26 To have a clean slate, to clear out the obscurations, so you have smooth sailing. Smooth sailing without the obscurations. And accumulate merit to give you turbo power on your path. So, it didn't quite finish. That's what tomorrow is for. So, see you at 7 o'clock. Report an error

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Talk by B. Alan Wallace. Original at Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/retreatmindtraining. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

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