Dalai Lama Quote

August
17, 2012

EMPTINESS
AND NON-EXISTENCE

The doctrines of emptiness and selflessness do not imply the non-existence of
things. Things do exist. When we say that all phenomena are void of
self-existence, it does not mean that we are advocating non-existence, that we
are repudiating that things exist. Then what is it we are negating? We are
negating, or denying, that anything exists from its own side without
depending on other things. Hence, it is because things depend for their
existence upon other causes and conditions that they are said to lack
independent self-existence.

Tulku Dolpo Rinpoche

The Meaning of Dharma ( By Tulku Dolpo Rinpoche )

The meaning
of Dharma, the spiritual teachings and their effect

We shall listen to the following teachings with the intention to
attain ultimate enlightenment for the sake of all sentient
beings.

Today I would like to talk about three main points: the Dharma, the
way in which it is practised, and the fruition, ie the effect of that
practice.

What is the Dharma?

Without the right understanding what the Dharma is, though we may
wish to practise the Dharma it will not be effective. So, rather than just going
into what we think is Dharma practise, we should first make sure to understand
exactly what the Dharma is.

The Tibetan word Chö is the translation of the Sanskrit word Dharma,
which has the sense of “to hold”, “to grasp” something - to grasp the
negativities of the body, speech and mind, and to hold an individual back from
falling into the lower realms, in the long run, and in the present to refrain
from those negative actions. The Tibetan rendering has the flavour of "to
change" or "to transform". If we ask "What is it to be transformed?" it is none
other than our mind. Naturally and effortlessly, our mind goes towards
negativities, led by afflictive emotions. What we want to transform is this
tendency of the mind, so that it will follow in more positive
directions.

If we are to enquire, “Well, among things to be transformed then,
should we transform the activities of the body, or the activities of the speech,
or of the mind - which one of the three is the most important?” Well, the most
important is the mind, because the body and the speech follow after the mind,
they are the mind‘s followers. So by the word Chö, or Dharma we mean the
transformation of the mind in a positive direction.

Then we may ask: "When does our practice of Dharma begin?" It is our
own mother and father, who first teach us how to transform towards positive
directions, so it can be said our Dharma practice begins with our
parents.

It is also important to understand that the meaning of the word Chö,
or Dharma does not pertain to religion. In fact, the sole cause of happiness or
suffering for anybody anywhere in the world is whether or not they act according
to Dharma. It is not that only Buddhists can have happiness, or that happiness
only comes from practising Buddhism. The cause of happiness, of genuine
happiness, is to transform the mind in a positive way, or to bring the mind into
positivity, which is common to all people and it is part of our common human
heritage.

Most people see the Dharma as something very difficult to accomplish,
or as something far off in the distance, far from where we are now. But that is
not, in fact, the case. The reason why they mistakenly believe this is because
they have not understood the real meaning of Dharma as, simply, improving the
mind. Dharma is not something that the Buddha taught only for a select few of
incredibly diligent, incredibly intelligent people. This is not the case. The
Dharma that the Buddha taught was something that especially those with the most
suffering and difficulties would also be able to practise, something that anyone
at all could practise. When it comes to topics such as Emptiness, we may find
ourselves learning that this kind of teaching is only for "those of the most
advanced faculties". But this is not to say that the Dharma is only for those of the most advanced
faculties. Rather, this is a way of praising those specific teachings and not to
say that all Dharma is for those
of the highest capacity. As Mipham Rinpoche says on the subject, in a prayer
called the Dzogchen Prayer: "The nature of the mind is unbelievable in its
simplicity". As it is the very nature
of all phenomena, it is simple - the natural way of abiding in
phenomena. For example, even seemingly difficult philosophical subjects such as
Emptiness, can be exposed directly and in a very simple way, because their very
nature is of the “unbelievable simplicity” that Mipham Rinpoche speaks about.
Their nature is, in fact, simplicity.

So as we have seen, one of the reasons why it is easy, or possible
for us to practise the Dharma, is because the Dharma is something the Buddha
taught for all beings to be able to practise, for people like you and me, and
even for beings who are suffering. The second reason why the Dharma is easy,
then, is because it is something which is conceivable to us ordinary beings. If
the Buddha only taught for the most advanced practitioners and did not teach
something that could be understood by people of lesser and middling faculties,
then it really wouldn't benefit us at all, only the Buddha himself would be able
to understand what he was talking about! So, to state it simply: the Dharma is
conceivable to us - it is something that we are capable of understanding. We can
think about it, we can spend some time engaging in it, just like any other
activity, Dharmic or non-Dharmic, which we get engaged in; we can understand it,
we can think about it. The Dharma is not something that is far away. Were it the
case, it would be like trying to speak about Emptiness to a cow. It would be
something inconceivable to him and therefore totally pointless. That is not the
case. The Dharma is taught for people like us in mind and it is something we can
understand. That is why the Dharma is not far away, it something that is very
close, something that is very approachable and
accessible.



The way to
practise the Dharma

I’m not sure what the word “practice” really means in English, but
the Tibetan word “Nyam Len” means „taking into experience“, and it has the sense
of “right now”, that it is happening in the present, what I am doing right now.
Whether I am practising the
Dharma, observing the mind, bringing the mind into positivity, there
is this sense of practising right now or of observing the mind right
now.

Practice means transforming the mind. There are a lot of people who
think "I am a practitioner" because they spend maybe one or two hours reciting
prayers. But for the rest of the day they fail to mix their body, speech and
mind with the Dharma. They consider themselves practitioners on the basis of
their reciting a lot of prayers.

When we pray, we aspire for something to happen in the future, ie for
happiness to occur in the future. Although prayer is an aspect of the
Bodhissatva's practice, practice itself is active and transforming the mind now,
whereas prayer is to do with the future. So, if someone is only doing a couple
of hours of prayers, thinking "Oh, maybe I'll be happy in the future, maybe I'll
have happiness in the future" but failing to bring the Dharma into their actual
life of the rest of the day by the actions of their body, speech and mind, then
they cannot be considered a practitioner. Just praying "I wish I had a car, I
wish I had a house", no matter how hard you pray, that in and of itself will not
get those things for you. So, starting from now, if you want those things, you
will have to start accumulating the actual causes to bring them about. Some
people have the sense that just praying for things is enough. There are people
these days who use a lot of fancy words to describe their practice, and they
think "I received the pith instructions from the lama, I am doing that" and feel
satisfied. They use words like Generation Stage, Completion Stage, meditating on
the deities, doing yoga, practising Dzogpa Chenpo, the Great Perfection or
whatever, but forget about transforming the mind. The thing about some of these
people who claim to be practitioners of the Great Perfection or this or that, is
that if the practice is not affecting their minds, and when they meet some kind
of a person they should have patience with but they get angry and their face
turns red just like an ordinary person‘s, then they might as well have not have
received the teachings.

Some people also see practice as something which occurs in their
temple, monastery or Dharma centre. They think "Oh, I'm going to go and practise
in the temple now" and they do not see Dharma as something that could occur just
in their daily lives. Or they say, "I want to practice but I don't have time to
practice, I have too much work". The problem here is that they haven't
understood what the Dharma actually is. So when I hear that, I exclaim "Well,
that‘s great!" because I think that is the best situation in which to practise
the Dharma, a situation full of opportunities to develop patience, kind heart,
and the wish to benefit others.

Until we reach retirement we will have spent about 60 percent of our
lives working. This doesn’t have to be an obstacle to practice. Practice is not
something we can do only in the temple, in our free time, on the weekends or
when we have holiday. It is during the working time that we actually have a good
opportunity to mix our life with the Dharma and work on improving our mind in
place of increasing our anger and jealousy. And as a result we will also spend
that time being happy.

So for example if you do some administrative work in an office, you
have a choice of attitude: You can work with a genuine good-hearted intention to
benefit the company, not only for the sake of getting paid for the work. You
will then practise generosity. Likewise, if you work with people, there are
opportunities to practise patience, rather than getting exasperated. And when
our colleague gets a promotion or pay rise we don’t have to be jealous but happy
for them. The thing about jealousy is that no matter how much time we spend
being jealous of others, we cannot bring them down and harbouring hatred will
only bring mental discomfort and suffering upon ourselves. Instead, we may
consider they deserve to receive this prize for good and hard work and their
qualities.

The point I am trying to make here is that it is possible for anybody
in society to practise the Dharma. You may have read in Dharma texts that it is
essential to practise in remote locations, but that refers to particular
practices for developing the states of one-pointedness, Shamatha and Vipashyana.
For those you do have to rely on a remote place. But the Dharma is actually much
faster than just those practices. The Dharma is something that the people in the
regular world can practise, something that anybody anywhere can
practise.

As practitioners we look at what is happening in our mind. If it is
improving, we can rejoice. If it is not then the question is, are we a
practitioner?

Some people who are involved in the tradition of the Secret Mantra
are attracted to activities like beating on drums and playing with Damarus and
so on. These are actually branch practices of the Dharma. What we need to be
careful of here is that we do not ignore the root of the Dharma and only
practise the branches of it. As a practitioner does the root practise, the
understanding of the words arises and, naturally, the instruments will basically
play themselves, spontaneously. Otherwise, if you are too involved with the
technicalities of playing the instruments, while you are thinking about the
words the Damaru will stop, while you are thinking about the Damaru the bell
will stop, and it is all just a joke, something worth laughing at. In that case,
it’s better to concentrate on the actual, root practice and leave the branches.
If you really do want to play the instruments during the different practices or
Sadhana, you should learn to play them properly beforehand, so when it comes to
using them, they will enhance your practice. Then you arrive at the ideal
situation where you can read the words, think about the meaning, and also have
these material things going on, simultaneously and in harmony. Otherwise, if the
branches are there with no root, if you play the instruments with no meaning, it
is like branches with no trunk!

So what I have been trying to explain here, is a general sense of
practising the Dharma, based on the word “Nyam Lneen”, which roughly means
"taking into experience". Of course, you may have received specific teachings
from specific traditions, and they need to be practised in accordance with the
instructions you have been given.


Fruition of
the Dharma

From the Hinayana point of view, the ultimate fruition is one's own
mental stream free from suffering. In Mahayana, on the other hand, we wish not
only for our own happiness but for the happiness of all sentient beings. This is
taught very clearly in the opening lines of the text by Maitreya called the
Abhisamayalankara, that the ultimate goal for Bodhisattvas is the benefit of all
beings. Since the ultimate goal is to benefit others, the Bodhissatvas wish to
obtain enlightenment because enlightenment is a state in which the maximum
benefit for beings can be accomplished.

Let’s use the example of somebody wishing to become a tailor. If you
did not know how to sew clothing you wouldn’t be of much benefit. But if you had
already mastered the craft, you would be in that position to teach them. In the
same way, in order to liberate sentient beings, one becomes enlightened to show
them the way.

When we study the teachings about the fruition of the three Buddha
bodies (kaya), for example, we may think that the goal of the path is to attain
enlightenment. We may forget that the goal of the practice is in fact to bring
benefit to all beings. The goal is not to attain enlightenment but to attain
enlightenment so that the vast enlightened activities thus acquired may be of
benefit. We should not only understand that the ultimate result of the path is
the accomplishment of the three (or four) Buddha bodies, but that with this
accomplishment there will be the manifestation of Trinle, the Buddha activity,
which is the best and fastest way to benefit
beings.

I have spoken in relation to the ultimate fruition of the path. Next,
I will explain the more immediate effects of the practice. If we do not know
what the short-term effects and results of the practice are supposed to be, how
can we be sure of our practice at all? If we know what to expect from our
practise, we can be confident we are on the right track, and it will not be
necessary to rely on supernatural signs or dreams, or keep asking the Lama’s
advice.

There are two short-term effects of the practice: For oneself, it is
that the interest in the Eight Worldly Concerns decreases, and in relation to
others, there is an increase in compassion that naturally, effortlessly arises.
So if we notice those occurring, we can be confident that our Dharma practice is
on the right track. Even if we have bad dreams or bad luck, we should still have
no doubt that the Dharma is being practised according to the Dharma. But, if we
have no signs of these two coming to presence, rather the opposite, if one is
becoming more and more interested in oneself and one's own benefit, and less and
less interested in the benefit of others, then even though one is having very
amazing dreams and a lot of good luck, the practice of the Dharma is not
actually there. Based on those two signs, you will know whether or not your
Dharma practice is on the right track, whether or not you are going in the right
direction.

So today, I have talked about the nature of the Dharma, what it is,
how it is practised and what its fruition is, in a general way that can be
broadly applied. Other than that I do not have anything else to
say.

Translated
from Tibetan by Daniela Hartmann

Criminalizing Dissent (By Chris Hedges, OpEdNews, 8/12/2012 )

Photo byCTJ71081 (CC-BY

You would think voting in the rigged political theater of the corporate state actually makes a difference. The charade of junk politics is there not to offer a choice but to divert the crowd while our corporate masters move relentlessly forward, unimpeded by either party, to turn all dissent into a crime.

 

 

I was on the 15th floor of the Southern U.S. District Court in New York in the courtroom of Judge Katherine Forrest last Tuesday. It was the final hearing in the lawsuit I brought in January against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I filed the suit, along with lawyers Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran, over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We were late joined by six co-plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. This section of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military, which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself -- the Homeland Battlefield Bill -- suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within "the homeland" as well as those abroad."The essential thrust of the NDAA is to create a system of justice that violates the separation of powers," Mayer told the court. ...[The Obama administration has] taken detention out of the judicial branch and put it under the executive branch." In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks whether she will make the injunction permanent.In last week's proceeding, the judge, who appeared from her sharp questioning of government attorneys likely to nullify the section, cited the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a precedent she did not want to follow. Forrest read to the courtroom a dissenting opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in Korematsu v. United States, a ruling that authorized the detention during the war of some 110,00 Japanese-Americans in government "relocation camps." "[E]ven if they were permissible military procedures, I deny that it follows that they are constitutional," Jackson wrote in his 1944 dissent. "If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say that any military order will be constitutional, and have done with it." Barack Obama's administration has appealed Judge Forrest's temporary injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional rights. The administration's added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act -- which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens -- and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric, Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state. I and the six other plaintiffs, who include reporters, professors and activists, will most likely have to continue this fight in an appellate court and perhaps the Supreme Court.The language of the bill is terrifyingly vague. It defines a "covered person" -- one subject to detention -- as "a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces." The bill, however, does not define the terms "substantially supported," "directly supported" or "associated forces." In defiance of more than 200 earlier laws of domestic policing, this act holds that any member of a group deemed by the state to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or a Black Bloc anarchist unit, can be seized and held by the military. Mayer stressed this point in the court Wednesday when he cited the sedition convictions of peace activists during World War I who distributed leaflets calling to end the war by halting the manufacturing of munitions. Mayer quoted Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissenting 1919 opinion. We need to "be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe," the justice wrote. The Justice Department's definition of a potential terrorism suspect under the Patriot Act is already extremely broad. It includes anyone with missing fingers, someone who has weatherproof ammunition and guns, and anyone who has hoarded more than seven days of food. This would make a few of my relatives in rural Maine and their friends, if the government so decided, prime terrorism suspects. Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Torrance argued in court that the government already has the authority to strip citizens of their constitutional rights. He cited the execution of Nazi saboteur Richard Quirin during World War II, saying the case was "completely within the Constitution." He then drew a connection between that case and the AUMF, which the Obama White House argues permits the government to detain and assassinate U.S. citizens they deem to be terrorists. Torrance told the court that judicial interpretation of the AUMF made it identical to the NDAA, which led the judge to ask him why it was necessary for the government to defend the NDAA if that was indeed the case. Torrance, who fumbled for answers before the judge's questioning, added that the United States does not differentiate under which law it holds military detainees. Judge Forrest, looking incredulous, said that if this was actually true the government could be found in contempt of court for violating orders prohibiting any detention under the NDAA. Forrest quoted to the court Alexander Hamilton, who argued that judges must place "the power of the people" over legislative will. "Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power," Hamilton, writing under the pseudonym Publius, said in Federalist No. 78. "It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental." Contrast this crucial debate in a federal court with the empty campaign rhetoric and chatter that saturate the airwaves. The cant of our political theater, the ridiculous obsessions over vice presidential picks or celebrity gossip that dominate the news industry, effectively masks the march toward corporate totalitarianism. The corporate state has convinced the masses, in essence, to clamor for their own enslavement. There is, in reality, no daylight between Mitt Romney and Obama about the inner workings of the corporate state. They each support this section within the NDAA and the widespread extinguishing of civil liberties. They each will continue to funnel hundreds of billions of wasted dollars to defense contractors, intelligence agencies and the military. They each intend to let Wall Street loot the U.S. Treasury with impunity. Neither will lift a finger to help the long-term unemployed and underemployed, those losing their homes to foreclosures or bank repossessions, those filing for bankruptcy because of medical bills or college students burdened by crippling debt. Listen to the anguished cries of partisans on either side of the election divide and you would think this was a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. You would think voting in the rigged political theater of the corporate state actually makes a difference. The charade of junk politics is there not to offer a choice but to divert the crowd while our corporate masters move relentlessly forward, unimpeded by either party, to turn all dissent into a crime.