Desire and Attachment

My most dear one,
I am very very, very sorry, very, very sorry it took so long to reply to you; it took almost a year to write back.

I checked and if you can, do 100,000 prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas and normally every day do one hundred prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas. Sometimes this may be difficult due to your situation, but do it every day if you can. This is best, but if not then do as much as possible.

Also do Vajrasattva practice at night-time, to protect the mind. The perfect powerful purification is the remedy of the four powers. Do the purification practice and collect merits, and try to live the life with bodhicitta as much as possible, with a good heart to others.

Every day try to do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and the lamrim prayer, to plant the seed of the whole path to enlightenment. If you can, meditate on the lamrim every day: guru devotion, the path of the lower capable being, the path of the middle capable being, and the path of the higher capable being, bodhicitta and emptiness.

I am very, very sorry it took a long time to reply to you.

Then also dedicate after you create merit. Dedicate, also dedicate for him to purify, to not be reborn in the lower realms and to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

With much love and prayers...

PS. Sex is for a very, very short time, maybe not even for a full minute, however by meditating, we can achieve samadhi, calm abiding. We achieve physical ecstasy, then extremely refined mental ecstasy. We achieve this bliss through meditation. Of course, even in sutra as we go higher and higher on the path, there is greater and greater bliss and happiness, so it’s incredible, incredible, incredible.

When we achieve arhatship after abandoning delusion, then we achieve the blissful state of peace. Can you imagine? So ordinary sexual pleasure is really only suffering. It lasts for just one or two minutes, even just for one minute, but really even that is only the suffering of change.

Then through the Mahayana five paths and ten bhumis, then wow, wow, then the tantric path, the Six Yogas of Naropa. When we have [practiced] the Six Yogas of Naropa, when we experience the four blisses, so the fourth bliss is being able to keep the kundalini. For a man this means in the penis, without losing. This is what I heard from the meditators living in Dharamsala on the mountains, they say it is one hundred times greater bliss or maybe even one thousand times greater bliss than sex. So, sex is nothing.

The bliss generated in practice goes higher and higher, amazing, amazing. The transcendental wisdom, nondual bliss, is unbelievable, unbelievable, greater, greater. It is like an atomic bomb to cease the delusions, the subtle obscurations. Then that makes to achieve enlightenment, not just in one life—even in lower tantra we can achieve enlightenment in one life, even in the lowest tantra, and in highest tantra within a few years. What does that is the transcendental wisdom, the non-dual bliss and voidness, then we achieve the dharmakaya. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. Compared to these, even shi-nä or the Six Yogas of Naropa, unbelievable. So sex is nothing, it’s only suffering in nature.

Then one useful thing, we have had this experience so many times before. This is not the first time, this life experience, this sex. We have had it numberless times with every sentient being. Every sentient being has been our wife, our husband, our parents and so forth, so it’s not the first time. This experience of sex is not the first time. We think we never had that experience with that person before, but actually we have had it numberless times in the past, and the result is suffering nature, so we are still in samsara suffering.

[We can achieve] all the great bliss in the Mahayana path, the clear light, the Six Yogas of Naropa, if done with bodhicitta, only for the sake of sentient beings.

Please enjoy my comments and advice.

That’s good advice for everybody. Everybody needs to simplify their life. That’s why there are so many problems, because people don’t simplify. It’s the answer to everything. The problem is everybody wants more and better of everything. Always wanting more and better brings expectation and people become competitive. If it’s competition to benefit others, that’s okay. But people are not satisfied with what they have, for example, they have one friend, then they want another friend. They never find satisfaction with anyone because of following desire. Even if they find the most beautiful person in the world, a person who generally people would regard as being the most beautiful, they may be happy at the beginning but, after some time together, there are problems.

I wonder if there’s anybody who is so happy with the person they’re in a relationship with that they never want to look for anybody else? Of course, there are different reasons that people don’t go after others. They might have desire for others but they stay in the relationship they’re in to preserve their dignity or because they don’t want a disaster. Reasonable people want to avoid disaster.

The student said to Rinpoche that her mother used to have the opposite view; not that Buddhism was too simple but that it was too complicated. Rinpoche replied as follows:

Complicated is not the point, ignorance is: the mind not knowing, not understanding. What is complicated is not the text, it’s the mind. But once you know, it’s not complicated. It’s like a computer. If you don’t know anything about computers, computers are complicated. But, once you know about them, they’re not complicated. It’s like counting to ten. It’s difficult to count to ten for those who don’t know how to do it. Once you know, it’s not difficult. What is difficult is ignorance, not knowing.

In life, if you don’t know how to make decisions, that’s due to ignorance. Knowing what is right, what is beneficial to practice, and what helps others, and knowing what is wrong and brings harm to yourself and others is Dharma wisdom. The most important thing is Dharma wisdom. Even if you have ordinary clairvoyance, if you don’t have Dharma wisdom you can’t make the right decision, because to make the right decision you need knowledge of karma. Here, I’m not talking about the clairvoyance that the Buddha or high-level bodhisattvas have. Ordinary clairvoyance is limited. With ordinary clairvoyance you can tell what will happen in the future, but to make the right decision you need more than that—it has to be made based on Dharma, by understanding karma. What we need is to create the cause of happiness: virtue.

My attachment wants to prevent me from enlightening numberless sentient beings, from achieving enlightenment, from achieving all realizations, and from achieving liberation from samsara for myself and a good rebirth in the next life. It destroys my happiness.

There is a quotation from the Vinaya (oral transmission):

Craving for small pleasure
Cannot achieve great pleasure

By craving for small pleasure, it is impossible to achieve great pleasure. Renounce the happiness that produces suffering, and cherish the happiness that comes from suffering.

Think: Now I will bear hardships to have good morality, then I can achieve enlightenment.

Attachment obscures the mind from realizing emptiness. It creates negative karma, like the ten non-virtuous actions, and causes you to break the three vows: the Pratimoksa vows, which are the foundation, the ground, the earth from which liberation comes, the bodhisattva and tantric vows, which enable you to achieve enlightenment quickly.

Attachment cannot cut the root of samsara, and one will abide in samsara endlessly, suffering. Therefore, I must win over my delusions and defeat my enemy—attachment.

Attachment keeps me in samsara and has from time without beginning, and lets me suffer in the six realms of suffering.

Attachment is like a cannibal, like honey on a sword, appearing to help me but in fact destroying and cheating me.

With attachment, your whole life is so tremendously painful. You have so many projections, so many worries, and fears, and if something changes or happens to your object of attachment it is worse. 

Regarding what you said about attachment being challenging for you while you’re on retreat, desire is very sneaky, like a snake. We think it’s our friend, but all it does is cause us suffering. Anger is more obvious, because we can see that it makes us unhappy, and also causes a lot of destruction, but desire looks like our friend, but like a thief, it steals our happiness. Olympic athletes train for 40 years only to receive some praise, or their name on the TV, or a big trophy to put on a shelf in their home. They train for 40 years out of attachment, thinking that pride and recognition is what life is about.

If you want to take ordination, but have obstacles to this, or want to keep that wish alive, but can’t take the vows, in order to keep that wish alive, and to make sure that when you take the vows you keep them purely, you should do Tara praises and protector prayers every day, with a strong wish for ordination in your heart. Also, you should take the five lay vows and the eight Mahayana precepts as much as possible.

You should do lamrim meditation every day, starting with the small scope and continuing each day for a certain length of time, for instance for three months, then should move on to the medium scope and do a meditation every day for a few months, and then spend a few months on bodhicitta, then a few months on emptiness, and then repeat the cycle over and over again until you gain realization of the topics. Every day, you should do some guru yoga practice in order to receive blessings so that you have a fruitful meditation.

You don’t always have to be in a formal meditation session to do lamrim meditation. You should keep your mind in the topic all day long, so it’s mixed with your mind in whatever activity you do.

It’s good to contemplate the suffering in the lower realms when you recite OM MANI PADME HUM, and it’s good to do tonglen while you’re reciting it.

Regarding how one meditates on bodhicitta while meditating on emptiness, or how one arouses bodhicitta if everything is merely labeled, in emptiness, bodhicitta is seen as dream-like bodhicitta, your bodhicitta motivation and thoughts are seen as if you are dreaming. 

Especially for us beginners, one of the most powerful ways is to think of death and impermanence. Think: “I can die any time. So too the object, the person, can die at any time.”

Death is one thing but other changes can come about too. The object can change and become undesirable. Any day, any moment, this can happen. There are other changes besides death. An accident can happen, the body can get damaged or can become deformed. The body can change at any time. It can contract leprosy, which changes the body. Many things like that can happen.

One other very effective thing for us to think is that, any day, any minute, that person can become your enemy, by doing something that your attachment doesn’t like. The person can say or do something your self-cherishing doesn’t like. For example, that person may come to like another person, follow another person, and lose interest in you. This can happen any time.

I told him also it’s very useful to think that if you allow attachment to arise, that leaves a negative imprint on the mind that makes attachment arise again and again. So that makes it more difficult to handle attachment in the future. The more imprints are left, the more attachment will arise strongly over and over again, causing many difficulties in the future.

It is also good to think that this makes one’s life very uncontrolled.

After this, George did some organizing with some very wealthy people and invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama to visit Australia. This was His Holiness’ first trip to Australia and it went extremely well. His Holiness gave talks at a university in Australia and Jeffrey Hopkins was there translating.

Then the second time, Rinpoche also asked George to organize His Holiness’ visit, and he did so together with many other FPMT members. During this trip, more than 30,000 people came to see His Holiness speak in a stadium, so many that they could not all fit into the stadium. This was also an extremely successful visit.

The third time, for the Kalachakra initiation, again George was asked to be the main organizer. He worked with many other members. There were perhaps a thousand people working together to organize this trip, many of them professional people but not Buddhists. This visit went extremely well too. His Holiness visited several cities on that tour, Melbourne, Sydney, where the Kalachakra was held, and other cities.

Rinpoche started asking George to help Tibet in some way, and George revitalized the Australia Tibet Council in Australia. So that one banana Rinpoche gave to George Farley accomplished a lot!

George has been very dedicated for many years to the FPMT and to Rinpoche. He’s very sincere in his strong wish to offer service. He came up with a whole new way to run the FPMT organization. Even though spiritually there had been a lot of progress in the organization—so much teaching, learning, and retreats—there had also been a lot of hardship on the material side. George offered new ideas for how to make the organization more successful with fewer material hardships. Gradually, it began getting better.

Now, recently, a few of George’s friends have died, one after another, and this has led George to think very much about his own death and his life, his inner life. He was reading Pabongka’s commentary on the "Three Principals of the Path", Lama Tsongkhapa’s text, and he reached the point where Pabongka is discussing reputation, saying that there are even yogis and pandits and such people who still cannot give up their important name. George read that and felt shocked. It really made him think and he recognized something of that in himself. George said he recognized that his mind was very dedicated but that he also had some attachment to his reputation.

Rinpoche’s response to George was to mention that, of course, it takes a long time to change, to develop one’s mind. The correct way to do this is with a motivation of bodhicitta. He wrote the following to George:

Quite a number of years ago, I was afraid of being famous, of being known. Now my mind has totally degenerated from that.

I think if one at least has realizations of bodhicitta, emptiness, and renunciation, then it’s worth being famous. It’s worthwhile having a well-known name, because there is no danger for your mind, for your mental continuum. There is only great benefit. Because of your bodhicitta, even if others harm you, as a bodhisattva, for people simply to hear your name, they only get benefit in return, in this life and in future lives.

That is the special quality of the bodhisattva. It makes everything worthwhile. Even for those who harm the bodhisattva, although they create very negative karma on one side, on the other side there’s the advantage of meeting that bodhisattva again and again. That is because the bodhisattva prays only for good things to happen to sentient beings, including those who harm others or who even harm the bodhisattva himself or herself.

It’s like the chemicals you put in a huge water tank or reservoir to kill germs and make it drinkable. Although the amount of chemicals is very small, it affects so much water drunk by so many millions of people. By having these realizations, especially bodhicitta, just one person can benefit the world so powerfully. It is so dynamic, such a benefit.

Otherwise, having power, wealth, or a famous name is only suffering. Without a Dharma mind, without even the motivation of the three principal paths, without at least living the life of the good heart with the thought of benefiting others, everything is suffering. Whatever lifestyle one has, no matter how famous one is or how many millions or zillions of dollars one has, it is all just suffering. It’s nothing special.

More power and more fame means more suffering, and a greater danger of creating more negative karma. It becomes more of a prison. Not only that—not only is there this suffering for oneself—without a good heart, power also becomes dangerous for others. That’s because without a good heart, power can be misused, and instead of bringing great benefit, it can cause great harm.

Even with just a good heart but without the realization of bodhicitta, there is no danger of others receiving harm, only benefit. With the idea of renunciation, however much power you have, others do not receive harm. Even if there is no immediate practical benefit for them, there is at least no harm.

Take as an example Guru Shakyamuni Buddha. Look what differences Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, one living being, made to the world—enlightened and enlightening numberless sentient beings and liberating so many from total suffering. And he is still benefiting numberless sentient beings and bringing them from happiness to happiness in every second, because the teachings he left behind are functioning to benefit sentient beings in this way.

Look at the differences made by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has been giving unbelievable peace and happiness to many millions of people in the world. Then look at what Mao Tse-Tung did. So you have two people, His Holiness and Mao Tse-Tung. His Holiness brings benefits as vast as the sky and then there is what Mao Tse-Tung or Hitler did. Look at one person in the world and what he did. It is all a question of one person’s mind, whether there is compassion or not.

Then you can think of the great Italian saint, St. Francis of Assisi, and how much he benefited others. His story is a very loving story. He totally renounced samsaric pleasures. He didn’t like to receive praise from others and from his students, only criticism. He specifically asked his students to criticize him, pointing out bad things and telling him he would go to hell for those things. But his students could not think of anything bad. They could only see good things. So his practice was like the Buddhist practice of the great Kadampa Geshes. He was a great meditator of thought transformation.

Then there was Gandhi-ji, who renounced violence, sacrificing his own life for others, for the peace and happiness of others.

On the other side, those stories, of a person who killed many millions of people shows basically a lack of compassion. This is the point. Without realizations of bodhicitta, or without at least a good heart, power, wealth, and a famous name are not only poison for oneself, they bring danger to others.

In the case of His Holiness and other bodhisattvas, the more greater their power, wealth, and reputation, the more benefit there is for others. Bodhisattvas look for these things in order to be able to bring vast benefits. They purposefully reincarnate in royal families, in families of wealth and reputation, so they can offer charity to others and show by their example to other sentient beings that although they have everything, they see only suffering.

To teach sentient beings, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha showed us this by his example. He renounced his power and wealth, and went to do retreat in solitary places after having found his guru. Bodhisattvas use wealth and reputation to benefit others. They achieve this, then they benefit others.