Teaching Transcripts and Synopses 

Smriti

H.E. Trungram Gyalwa Rinpoche

10:00 am, March 24, 2001
Diamond Way Buddhist Center
New York, New York, U.S.A.

I am very glad to meet all of you. This is actually my first Dharma teaching in New York City. So I'm very glad to share my Dharma thoughts with all of you together.

The topic for today would be Dharma in general, and especially I am going to talk about recollections - the power and importance of recollections - remembering. There is a special Buddhist term for this. I think it is important because you can find it again and again in Sutras. Buddha talked about it very often. The term is Smriti in Sanskrit. In Tibetan, it's called temba which means remembering. It's very important for all the three yanas of Buddhism - Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. It's very important for different reasons. For example, in Vajrayana, the practice of Guru yoga or doing meditation to get close to your spiritual teacher is one of the crucial practices, and what that means is that you actually remember the good qualities of your teacher. You remember him again and again. So remembrance plays a very important role in Vajrayana practice. It also plays a very important role in early Buddhism, because there is the so-called four contemplations, or remembering or placing your mind on four objects. They call it "Smrtyupasthana" which means placing your mind calmly on different objects whatever you are meditating with memory. So that's why I choose this topic. Of course, there are always overlaps when you talk about Dharma. So we will touch on other points, but the main focus will be Smriti for today.

Smriti is also one part of the Eight-fold Noble Path. It is something to do with our thoughts. The teachings of Buddhism can be categorized into three main kinds. They are: things to do with our morality, things to do with our mental practice or mind practice, or Samaddhi and things to do with wisdom. So morality, concentration or mind practice and wisdom are three important topics or subjects of Buddhist teachings. And this Smriti specially belongs to the second one - the mental practice.

O. K. First, what is dharma? Let's ask what Buddha Dharma is. The word "dharma" is very broad. It has ten different meanings. So when you look at the sutras, the moment you see the word "dharma", don't think that it always means the same thing. It covers a lot. It covers the whole universe actually. With the ten different meanings, dharma covers everything possible in the world. So what we are familiar with is usually the teachings of Buddha which can liberate us, which gives us wisdom to understand the truth. That is one of the ten interpretations of dharma. Right now what I am referring to is this kind of dharma - what we all usually think what "Dharma" is. So if you ask what such Dharma is, Buddha said in a very simple way: It is to train our mind, not to do any bad things harmful to oneself and others, to do all the good things to help oneself and others, and above all to watch our mind, to check our mind. That is "Dharma". Since the mind is very important, unlike many other faiths and religions, Buddhism focuses on the mind. Buddhism does not focus that much on the body or speech, but the mind. For example, in some religions they may chain their hands - because they also agree that, for example, stealing is bad. So in order to purify the bad karma created by stealing, what they do is chaining their hands saying that hands are the ones that steal things. So in order to purify karma, let's chain the hands. It's a kind of physical punishment to purify bad karma. There are many other examples - in order to purify bad karma created by the tongue, they needle their tongues and do all sorts of things. But for Buddhism it is the mind that causes stealing, it is the mind that causes lying and so on. If you are determined not to steal, your body and your speech are under control, then you won't steal, and you won't tell a lie. So let's don't punish our body, let's train our mind. That's the Buddha's message.

So the middle path is a very important concept for Buddhism. Usually we think middle path refers to philosophical things - not to fall on either eternalism or nihilism. But it's not only philosophical; it also means practically we should live on a middle path according to the Buddha. Middle path here means not to indulge in luxurious life and at the same time not to punish our body - what is called self-mortification. So do not go to these two extremes: not to just relax and do nothing, but at same time not to punish our body. We should engage our mind to practice, and train our mind and thoughts. So the middle path is not only philosophically a middle path but also practically it's a middle path for Buddhism.

So now what's the objective of Buddhism? The objective of Buddhism is freedom - how can we gain freedom. How can I get freedom - that's the question. Buddha started his practice and meditation from this question. He got this question and then started. He searched his path and looked for all possibilities. He saw that people tried their best to get their freedom, happiness. There were rich people, there were poor people, there were famous and powerful people - there were all kinds of people. But they were all not free from certain frustrations, sufferings and fear. So that answered quite a lot, that answered that material things could not really grant one real peace and freedom. Then the next question he had was: Is it possible to gain freedom and what are the ways to gain freedom? After his six years of meditation, his findings were that the ultimate freedom could only be achieved through practice, understanding and knowledge. It's not something you can gain just through your faith, not something you can gain through material things, but is something you can gain through your own understanding. You know it, then you are free from it. There are things that are unchangeable and if you resist and just fight with it, you will always have suffering. If you understand that it is unchangeable, it is part of life, then you are released from that suffering, you are away from that struggling and sufferings caused by the struggling.

So let's imagine that we are dreaming right now. In fact, according to Buddhist philosophy, what we call "real life" is a long dream. What we dream at night is the short dream. The Eighth Karmapa also wrote about this in his Madyamika text. He always said "long dream" and "short dream" to mean experience of daytime life and the dream. Now I'm talking about the real dream. Imagine that there is a tiger chasing you, and then you are really afraid. You will try to protect yourself; you will try to run away with fear. And that is a kind of suffering in a way. How can you get out of it? Of course, there are ways - maybe you can kill the tiger, use a gun and kill this tiger. You may feel some relief, but the best way to get rid of that kind of suffering and fear is: If you know you are dreaming, then you are away from the suffering. And you don't need to do anything else. There is no ritual, nothing. You just understand it and you are free from suffering. Daytime life is the same thing. For us a dream is a dream, we can understand it, and get away from it. But we still take daytime life to be real because we are still in the long dream, just like you would think it's real when you are in the dream. This is an immediate example for us to understand how our realization can give us peace, how our realization can give us freedom and how we can be free from fear and sufferings.

So for this Buddha gave his teachings from the age of 35. He started his meditation at the age of 29, and then he did six years of meditation. After that he gave teachings for 45 years. During these 45 years he gave many different kinds of teachings, but the most important are known as "the three discourses" - three different teachings.

During these teachings, he talked about the Four Noble Truths. The first noble truth simply means that we understand what problems we have or what suffering we have. We can only understand suffering, we cannot get rid of it. Because suffering is the result, it's not the cause. You cannot actually get rid of the result. You can only get rid of the cause, and then the result will just die out if there's no cause. So understanding the nature of the result or suffering is understanding life in a way. Then understanding what causes those results or sufferings is the second noble truth. Now if you don't like the suffering, how to get free from it is the third noble truth or so called nirvana or enlightenment. The means, the methods to get to nirvana constitute the fourth noble truth. So these are the Four Noble Truths taught by Buddha. A good way to explain the concept of the four noble truths is to take ourselves as someone who has sickness. First, it's important to realize early enough that you have that sickness, or disease or illness. If you don't realize it, you won't bother to look for a doctor. And if you don't do that your sickness won't get cured. By the time you really get physical suffering, maybe it's too late to cure then. Therefore it's just like that we realize what illness we have and then approach and find a doctor. As practitioners, it's important that we understand our problems and find a spiritual teacher. Then from the spiritual teacher you get the prescription, you get the medicine and use it as if you will do with a doctor. That's another truth. So first is to understand that you're not feeling very well, second is to see a doctor to find out what the causes are, and the third thing is to take the medicine, following the course. The last thing is the result - you'll get good health. You can apply the same process for a practitioner all the way from the ordinary level to the enlightened level.

Now the next question is: If you follow this process for practice, can you get the result within one life time? The answer is yes and no. You get results. There are immediate result and even more immediate results if you know Dharma in a more correct way. Let's take an example of practicing generosity. The result of practicing generosity, according to the sutras, will bring you wealth. You become wealthy. But if you practice generosity, or give things to the poor people thinking that you will get rich, or hoping that you'll become rich, then you have to wait until you become rich to become happy. Your act won't give you happiness until you become rich. But Bodhisattvas don't have such expectation or they don't give things in order to become rich. They want to help others. So their goal is different, their expectation is different. They just want to please others, help others. So for them, those who understand Dharma in a better way get the results of practicing Dharma immediately, they gain the inexpressible happiness right away. The moment the other people become happy, the bodhisattvas become happy. They don't have to wait for years and maybe lives to become rich persons to attain happiness.

So how you get the result depends on how you understand Dharma. So you can get the results immediately or you get them after many life times. Here it brings the question of birth - past and future lives and rebirth which in turn draws the question of love and compassion or why we have to generate loving kindness and compassion to others. There are 4 different kinds of births - miracle birth, births from the egg, moisture and the womb. As you go through the countless lives, deaths and births, you will have parents in each life unless it's a miracle or moisture birth. Each time your parents are so kind to you as your parents are now. So that's why everyone is connected actually. The only problem is that we don't remember because we don't have Smriti. So it's important to have remembrance. One of the reasons why we don't understand the truth, we don't realize the nature of life and we cannot generate great compassion naturally is because we don't remember the past. If we remember the past our vision would be completely different. So if all beings have been so kind to us, why we don't return the same? So that's how love and compassion become so important a topic in Buddhism. When you have reincarnations, compassion becomes very important because we are all connected - as a family.

Now let's jump to Smriti itself, it's also connected with meditation. First let's talk about the four Smrtyupasthana - four contemplations. The objects are: the body - this physical body, the feeling, the mind and the rest of the world or the whole phenomenon. You can do the meditation as you listen to the teaching. The first one is to go through each part of your body. You can start from here, go inwards into your body and slowly come upwards, and then you can think about each cell of the body, the skin cells; then you can go into the blood cells and think about the bones, and then come out; and then you go through other parts of body, and try to see what you see and what you find. You can go through the inside of your body and find out what you find. Try to see if there is one person, if there is one at all. The breathing practice is also part of this first upasthana. In a way, this practice sounds very simple, but it's very effective.

The special power of Buddhism is to understand selflessness which is the unique quality of Buddhism. You don't find the doctrine or teaching of selflessness in any other religion, only in Buddhism, and in all Buddhist schools you will find this. This is something that really represents Buddhism. It's a unique feature of Buddhism. It's very important because all confusions and sufferings come from the attachment to "I", "self" or "one". As long as you have this strong attachment and don't understand the next level, no matter what strong faith you have you are still depending on something external, you are still depending on rituals and you are depending on physical things. You won't get freedom. You may get a feeling, you may comfort yourself feeling that you are protected, but you may not get the freedom, which is very different.

There are otherness and oneness in different religions. The special thing about Buddhism is on oneness, not so much on otherness - you're not depending on some objects. That's why the question of whether Buddhism believes in God or not appears. Of course I find people giving different interpretations for the word God. What I can tell is that, according to Buddhism there's no one single entity out there who is permanent, who is single, who can create or control the world. If you interpret God in this way, then Buddhism does not agree that there is such a thing. But if you explain in a different way, then maybe you will lose the original interpretation of the word "God" - maybe not, I'm not sure. But anyway there is no universal thing according to Buddhism. If you study more about Buddhist epistemology, the logics of Buddhism, then you will know more about how universal things don't exist. Only the individuals exist, or more correctly temporary individuals. I'm not going into details because it's a complete different topic, but universal means something like this: Maybe I can ask you what the important things are that you must have in a kitchen, for example. Can you say one thing? (Audience: "Salt") O. K. Salt is one thing. It's one of the many things that you need in the kitchen, right? That's fine so far. We think that way, we communicate that way, that's fine. Now we need to analyze: How we are confused, how ignorance works with us. You said that salt is one of the many things that we need in the kitchen, we all agree on that. The next question is: is salt one? Because we just said that salt is ONE of the many things. Actually from the back of our mind, we believe this - one. Now where is that one salt if it really exists? It does not exist. This would be a universal in case it exists. Of course we can say there is salt in this kitchen, and salt in each individual's kitchen in New York, there is salt in Australia, there is salt in India. But where is that one salt? One, as we describe - one of the many things in the kitchen? It does not exist. Salt should be individuals. We may want to say that one salt is the salt we can find in the kitchens in New York, but again this is still a smaller universal thing. You cannot find a New York salt. There're many "salts" in New York, but there's no ONE New York salt. It does not exist, but our mind creates it, our thoughts create it. So that's the creation of our mind, not something objectively existing.

So there are individuals but not universals. There is liberation of each individual, but there is no such a thing called liberation of everyone or a god. So there is individual's good heart, individual's liberation, individual's understanding, but there are no universal things. It's important to understand this and do mind training or Smrtyupasthana. The first step is to search where is that "I", does it exist in any part of our body? We believe I am one person. If it's one, it's not many, because one and many are opposite. Now we are searching, and we don't find one, we find many. There are many cells, there is hair, finger, legs... but where is "I". So that is the first upasthana - remembering the systems of the body, and at the same time you will get one step closer to the selflessness of person.

The next thing is, now, if the body is not "I", then our question is whether my feelings are "I". And think about the good feeling, bad feeling, physical feeling, mental feeling - which one is the "I"? There are so many feelings but there is no one feeling. That's the second part of Smriti.

The third upasthana is about the mind. Maybe you think the body is not me, but my mind is me. Just by the words "my mind is me", much is told here. "My mind is me" means mind is something that belongs to me because we use "my", right? "Mind is something that belongs to me" just like my cup - the cup is not me, it's something separate but connected to me. So when you say "my mind" thinking or believing that "I am something from my mind", because my mind belongs to me, actually you're rejecting immediately that mind is me - it belongs to me, but is not me. Anyway since you couldn't find "I" physically within your forms or feelings, check your mind and see if any part of mind is "I". That would be the third Smriti. Any sensory consciousness "I", any mental "I"? Which one is the "I"? From the beginning we insist that "I" am one, but now where is "I"? Finally, if you really don't find "I" within yourself, then start searching other things - whether "I" exist in something like "all pervading" things and so on. That would be the last upasthana. But it's unlikely that people would think this way, it's just to confirm to ourselves about the truth of "I", through this Smriti practice.

So those are the four mental contemplations. When you do this, this becomes shamatha meditation. At the same time Smriti joins shamatha practice and vipashyana practice. It brings the two together at the same time. First, calm down yourself, you'll bring your mind into single objects - your body, or your mind, or your breath. You're doing meditation going one by one, very slowly. So it calms down your mind and trains your mind, making your mind able to focus on something. At the same time, because you are doing it analytically, it brings vipashyana, it brings wisdom.

(Recording not clear after this point)
[End]