Geshe la gave a wide-ranging teaching on Sunday, to say the least. In some ways, the core teaching had to do with what Buddhists call the Ten Non-Virtues--a bit like the Christian 10 Commandments, in reverse--but he also had much to say about the monastic educational system that he went through as well as a good deal about karma and reincarnation. In short, he touched on many of the cardinal points of Buddhism.
Geshe la began with a Tibetan text book on the practice known as Lojong, or mind transformation. This is a relatively ancient practice, developed between 900-1200, and said to have been brought to Tibet by Atisha in 1042. Lojong recognizes the ego's power to transform all of our experiences into energies that support the ego's activities: jealousy, selfish love, anger, protection, greed, grasping . . . all of these things find supportive evidence in the world around us when viewed through the lens of the ego. Lojong training devises activities and practices designed to destroy the ego's defense mechanisms, to attack its immune system, and to wear it down. It's a difficult practice in many ways, but if undertaken with perserverance a very effective practice. The fundamental idea behind lojong is transformation, an important word in Tibetan practice.
In fact, Geshe la continued by telling us that if the essential message of the sutras--the earliest texts that record Buddha's teachings--taught us how to diminish our misperceptions, the next step involves the transformation of these misperceptions into accurate ideas about how the world is truly constructed. Geshe la then spoke of the Kalachakra and Guyasamaja tantric initiations, whose major purpose involves a thorough-going transformation of the human personality, teachings that are not part of the original sutras.
Geshe la then spoke very movingly about a teaching he received from the Dalai Lama's teacher on Lama
Tsong Khapa's Lam Rim Chenmo, a complete program for making progress on the path toward enlightenment, and one of the central texts of the Gelugpa tradition. Geshe la's teacher, Ling Rinpoche, spoke largely from memory for weeks and weeks as he gave his instruction and commentary. An extraordinary feat by all accounts. But this kind of performance and admiration for the teachers who deliver these performances is very typically Tibetan, and the Tibetans inherited it from the Indian tradition. This is how Tibetans, and Indians, have traditionally learned: by oral transmission from teacher to student. Oral transmissions allow gifted teachers to deploy an entire range of pedagogical energies--physical presence, expression, tone of voice, authority of presentation--that aren't available when the same material is consulted through a text.
The importance of Atisha for the Tibetans lies in his ability to arrive in Tibet in the eleventh century, find a scattered and disunified Buddhist practice, and then proceed to construct a comprehensive guide to all Buddhist practice by collating the important texts and developing the practices from them. His knowledge was encylopediac, and his organizational skills were unparalleled. In the modern-day parlance of physics, Atisha discovered the unified field theory of Buddhism, and the Tibetan people have been singing his praises ever since. Atisha's central text, and one that Geshe la teaches in his philosophy class at the University, is Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment.
Considering how these transformative practices work, Geshe la mentioned the Ten Non-Virtues. These are divided in three areas of our body, our mind, and our speech. The non-virtues of the body are three: 1) killing; 2) stealing; 3) sexual misconduct; the three of the mind are: 1) covetousness; 2) harmful intent (malice, ill will); 3) wrong views; and the four of speech are: 1) lying; 2) insulting words; 3) harsh speech; 4) idle gossip.
In Buddhist practice, while avoiding these ten non-virtues is important, it is more important that we see them as symptoms, when they appear, of our root misconceptions about the true nature of the world. Once our ignorance is cleared away, so too are the non-virtues. And while the sutras teach us to avoid and extinguish these non-virtues, the tantric initiations, and Lojong training as well, counsel us to transform the energies of these harmful symptoms into supportive and healthy engergies that bring us more into line with the true nature of the world. For example, while we might feel anger over the fact that someone steals our book, it is more profitable to transform that energy into a power that could be used to overcome our attachment to the book. There are, of course, specific techniques designed to accomplish this transformation, and they are explained exhaustively in Lojong and the tantric initiations. But Geshe la's point has always been--and always will be--that these practices aren't truly effective until we have a foundation in philosophy and acquire a basic understanding of the structure of the human mind and its fundamental apparatus.
Central to this understanding is an elementary familiarity with the workings of karma because it is only when we gain this familiarity that we will understand the real effect we are having in the world, and it is only when we understand the real effect that we are having in the world that we will see the need to bring our actions into line with our new understanding. It's very simple. And it's very complex.
Here's the simple part. The karma that falls to us is either complete or incomplete. What determines the one from the other? For karma to be complete, four aspects of an action or thought must be present: motivation, intention, effort (attempt), and satisfaction or fulfillment. So let's say you've had an argument with someone who's taken advantage of you in the office. They received a promotion, and you didn't. So, to get even with this person (motivation), you decide to go to the boss (intention), and tell him (effort) that the person who got the promotion is now embezzling funds even though you know he isn't, and the boss believes you (satisfaction, or fullfillment). If any one of these four aspects is missing the karma is incomplete, and its effect ligher.
Geshe la made the point on Sunday that once we understand this, we can also understand how love and compassion for all sentient beings will allow us to stop our adversaries from completing harmful actions directed against us. If someone attacks us verbally, attempting to hurt us, we can understand the ignorance out of which the attack arose, preserve our feelings from being damaged, and thereby spare our adversary--whom we no longer see as an adversary, but as someone operating from ignorance--from completing his karma, and thereby preserving him from further, heavier karma. Such is an authentic love and compassion for all sentient beings.
The complex part of this concerns the fact that we normally conceive of karma in the gross physical sense. But karma, or cause and effect, occurs at the subtle mental level as well. Every thought, every conception, every desire, every inclination, every whim arises from a cause, and every cause gives rise to an effect. Karma at this level is difficult to monitor and even more difficult to control--the antidotes required at this level are subtle and profound and are mastered through rigorous training and practice. We start with the gross level, however, and move gradually toward the subtle level.
Geshe la spoke briefly near the end of the session about reincarnation as a natural extension of his discussion of karma. Propelled by our actions--and their effects--through life after life, we are victims of our cumulative karma.
"But what gets reincarnated?" someone asked.
"Nothing," Geshe la answered, giving the example of a series of candles being lit, one after the other. The flames arise in a seamless succession that give the illusion of continuity, but are in reality a series of cause-and-effect relations. It is very difficult for Westerners to feel comfortable with this analogy--we seem to need something, the same something, that moves continuously through each life. Buddhist philosophy rejects this as illogical and unsupportable.
The various philosophical schools have different interpretations of this central motion, but this is a good place to begin: simple, but fundamentally accurate.
We start, as the Buddhists say, where we are, and we are lucky to have a teacher in our presence who will be able to accompany us however far we go along this path.
Sidney Burris
