The difference between samsara and nirvana.
Samsara is like being imprisoned in a plastic bag. It is total limitation, just like going round and around in a bag. Nirvana is like being outside the plastic bag; it is total freedom, spaciousness, and limitlessness. In order for samsara to become nirvana the only thing we have to do is to turn around the bag. The two things in one is the meaning of nirvana and samsara.Mandala
We have five main related manifestations of five essential energies, or aspects of enlightenment. However these energies are not separate from each other, but are inseparable aspects of the same reality. In the same way the five Buddha families, which are the essence of the pure aspect of this, are the mandala with five directions. When we talk about the mandala we are referring to an organic universe made of different aspects, which cannot exist independently of one another. THEY ARE PART OF THE SAME UNIVERSE. In the case of the five poisons and the five energies of those poisons, we can consider that each one of us manifests principally one or two of these, but that does not mean that we do not have the other ones as well. In reality we have all five because we are all complete. Even one speck of dust contains the whole universe so in the same way everything contains everything else. We contain the five aspects of wisdom and for that reason we should think better of ourselves. Rather than having just one colour, we should think of ourselves in terms of a rainbow containing all the colours. We definitely have all of them!Mandala means we have those five poisons but predominantly one shines more than the others. At certain times one is predominant and at other times another one, but they are all part of one person. Rather than being independent entities they are like transformations of one single reality. So the mandala of the five Buddhas is not that they are five separate Buddhas but it is more like each one of the five Buddhas is the same Buddha but with a different attitude. One suddenly gets red and adopts a different posture, and then it gets blue and also adopts a different posture. The essence of the five Buddhas is Dorje Chang, the embodiment of the five families but at the same time any Buddha is the embodiment of the five families. All of them wear a crown with the five jewels, which represents the fact that they have the five aspects of wisdom. So mandala means this unity, this variety of aspects of manifestations within that inseparable unit - this is how everything is. In Buddhism we do not say that everything is just one thing but it is also not true that everything is made of many things. The ultimate truth according to Buddhism is that there is not one and not many. We talk about the inseparability of two aspects. It is not one but two, and these two are inseparable; for example, clarity and emptiness. Emptiness is not just emptiness and clarity is not only clarity, like two separate things, however, emptiness and clarity are indivisible. This is the ultimate truth.
The negative aspects of the five poisons.
We normally emphasise the five poisons as being the main problems in our life, but they are just the negative poles of any particular energy. This energy can be more or less positive or negative and when it is totally ego-centred then it becomes neurotic. That is the negative aspect such as when we talk about attachment, pride, and anger. These are the egocentric extremes of the particular energies, an exaggeration of those particular qualities. The more ego-centred we become the more negative those five things become. The less ego-centred we are the more positive or less negative we become and the closer to wisdom we are. When we are totally ego-centred we are close to the suffering and destruction of samsara. The less ego-centred the same energies become, the clearer and more constructive they are. For example, for practical purposes we need the energy of anger in order to overcome problems, to have the energy to fight for survival and to live, to attack our problems and to fight with our difficulties. We need the strength and diligence of anger to survive. The positive energy of anger is the diligence necessary to achieve enlightenment and we also need desire to reach enlightenment. If we do not have the aspiration to improve ourselves and to achieve realisation how are we going to move towards this? So this is what the energy is when oriented in a positive and non-egocentric way. When these energies are ego-centred and neurotic then we call them kleshas, which are like illnesses. When we are angry we are like sick people and we become totally distorted mentally. That is the effect of klesha. It is a kind of tendency of the mind that creates conflict in the mind. So this is like being sick, and the root of all the sickness is the ego of course. Therefore the way to put an end to all the sicknesses is to make this ego trip dissolve and disappear.The problem with each of these kleshas is that they are based on the notion of ego, or 'I' as separate from others. Take for example desire. It is based on the belief that we are going to find the source of our happiness outside of ourselves so then we pursue things and try to get them, but this is a mistake as we are running after the things outside. Then if we realise and stop this kind of activity, we will understand that the source of happiness is not external. When we stop going out of ourselves then slowly we are going to find happiness inside ourselves. In order to do that, we need to diminish the exaggeration of duality. When there is strong desire then we become totally separate. "I am here and this thing is there and I am totally separate from that and that is why I am not happy". So the source of happiness is out there and we have made a strong separation into 'I' and 'the happiness' which is elsewhere. Strong duality means strong ego. We have to diminish this exaggerated tendency and become more balanced. Instead of looking outwards we should look inwards and then slowly allow the natural potential for happiness to increase. Take for example meditation itself - we try to become more aware of ourselves, to become more detached from external things. We just try to be fully here without missing anything, just experiencing our own existence in every moment. Then if we cultivate this a little bit, we suddenly find that we feel much better. Just sitting quietly, relaxing and watching inwardly, makes us feel better after a while. We feel more contented and more optimistic and then it is easier since the happiness comes from inside.
All the five poisons function in the same way. Anger for example is an exaggeration of duality. It is based on the belief that the source of our conflicts and suffering is outside. So we think that, out there, there is somebody who is causing 'me' trouble. We separate very strongly inside from outside, then we feel anger, and we have to eliminate that. Naturally when we look inwards we find peace inside ourselves, no matter what is happening around. So it is with all five poisons. The way they function is the same, as the root of all of them is the exaggerated dualistic perception and ego-centred attitude.
Questions:
Student:You were saying about anger. When you upset someone and then try to make peace with them, you apologise but in some way it still upsets you because they may still feel upset. How do you deal with this?
Lama Jinpa:
We cannot change the world. We cannot make everybody fit our own expectations and wishes, so as far as you are trying to make somebody fit your own expectations and to accord to your way of being then we are bound to experience conflict. That is why in Buddhism it is said that we cannot cover the whole world with leather but it is much easier to cover our own feet. Because we are interdependent there will always be frictions. The world will never fit perfectly with ourselves because everything is in flux therefore we cannot avoid strife. We have to know that and accept it, but we can change our attitude to it. Instead of rejecting we can adopt an attitude of compassion and acceptance. In Buddhism we always emphasise that first we should change our mind rather than changing the world. In the case of personal conflicts, the first thing one needs to make sure is that one is at peace within oneself before trying to convince the other person or discuss issues with them. If you are peaceful then no matter whether they react positively or negatively we will still be at peace, because we have done everything correctly. If the other person does not respond properly then you are still at peace and can feel compassion and forgive.
Student:
Are the six realms in the mind or are they real realms?
Lama Jinpa:
It is said that everything is in the mind therefore the realms are in our mind as well. Realm is a way of experiencing reality and the human realm is also a mental realm. It is the way we experience the world. Humans experience the world in a way that is different from animals, so animal mentality, even though they share the same world with us, is different from ours. Similarly there are other ways of experiencing the same world - hell, heavens, and spirit realms. They are not in a different place in space but are different ways of perceiving reality, different mentalities. In that way they are mental states of mind but that does not mean that they are less real than the states of mind that we experience as human beings. Then we also say that in the human realm we experience different realms but they are not real realms but similes of those realms. They are human states of experience, which are like hell but are not hell itself. Dreams can help us to understand this. In dreams we can experience different realms, such as happiness, suffering, or really terrible things. Sometimes we have dreams that we are tortured, fighting monsters or we are bothered by things and at other times we feel we are happy. So everything is in our own mind. Why do we have different dreams? Because we have accumulated different states of mind during the day the result of which is that, for example, if we accumulate resentment for a long time we will have horrible dreams. If we have a compassionate attitude we will have pleasant dreams. The dreams are the reappearance of the tendencies we have accumulated in our ground consciousness, so with the dream we experience the result of this as if they were real experiences. Each of the six realms is related to one of the five poisons. So anger leads to a hell realm experience, ignorance leads to an animal realm, attachment leads to human realm, pride leads to the Gods' realm and envy leads to the demigods' realm.
Student:
The five poisons perpetuate the ego and maintain the sense of duality - "I am angry", etc. So is that the function of the poisons - to perpetuate the sense of me and I?
Lama Jinpa:
Yes, in the mandala of the five poisons they are parts of the same reality - the reality of the ego. The five poisons are the five different colours of the ego, five waves in the sea of the ego. The difference between samara and nirvana is recognising or not recognising the true nature of things. If we do not recognise, we misunderstand and we take emptiness as 'I' and clarity as 'other'. As soon as we have made this mistake the five wisdoms become the five poisons. We can say the five energies may be more negative or positive, but as long as there is ego-ignorance, those five are tainted by ignorance and duality. Even in the positive manifestations of the qualities of those energies there is still the existence of ignorance. They do not become totally positive until we have gone beyond duality. As long as we are within the plastic bag of samsara, they will be there, destructive and tainted by ignorance. Sooner or later they can become negative, as they are the tools of ego. They are the activities, the servants of the ego. Actually they are ego. It is not that ego is one thing and the five poisons are another. They are the energy of the ego mentality, the functioning of the ignorant mind, which is the ego.
Student:
You just said that ego is nothing. But can ego be actually quite useful sometimes? It gives us some identity when we need it, but then we can let go of it when we do not need it. Can you say something about that?
Lama Jinpa:
This is what I have just been talking about. We cannot get rid of the ego because it does not exist. Ego is nothing different from the five poisons. This ego, together with the five energies is useful as long as we are ignorant and have not realised the true nature of reality and ego. But we need the ego in order to abandon it. We need it to work on it and discover the true nature of it - To do this we need some pride, strength, aspirations and confidence to discover, which are all aspects of the ego, but they should be oriented towards a positive goal. So while we are in the plastic bag we need the ego, but when we have stepped out we realise that we do not need it any longer because we have realised the true nature of the ego, which is emptiness and primordial wisdom. When the five poisons of ego become the five wisdoms we do not need the ego. Buddha does not need an ego; he needs emptiness and the five aspects of clarity.
Student:
But is it not useful to have an identity in this relative world?
Lama Jinpa:
Identity is the ego. We need a sense of ego-identity while we are in this world. It is like playing a particular role in a play. It is useful to know which is our role. But we should try not to be confused by it. We usually think we have a fixed identity but this is a mistake, so why should we need a mistake?
Student:
How does Buddhism deal with the development of children who need to develop the ego, feel secure, etc
Lama Jinpa:
As long as we are here we need an identity but this is composed of the five energies, which can be either positive or negative. We have to cultivate the positive aspects of our identities and we have to encourage and educate our children to develop the five positive aspects of their personalities. We have to help them to diminish or to avoid getting involved with the negative sides of their personalities and to focus more on the positive - it is a matter of education. We need to see how the development of the child conditions the development of those emotions. Each one wakes up at a particular stage in the development of the child. But we do not need the neurotic aspects of personality. We can be ordinary human beings with an identity and still be healthy human beings without a neurotic mind. We will still have the five energies, but they will be healthy. We will not be enlightened but we can be positive, not ego- centred, but other-centred basically.
The Three Views
I would like to mention the way to deal with the five poisons and how to purify them in general. The Buddhist path is a way to heal the negative energy/five poisons and to achieve the five wisdoms. It is composed of three stages: Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. The three yanas are not three separate paths but three stages of one's ego path. Each one of them has its own view of what samsara is and how to remedy it.The Hinayana view is to abandon the causes of suffering, which are the kleshas. We need to get rid of them and this way we will find the peace of nirvana.
The Mahayana approach is that we do not really need to abandon samsara but to empty it, so to say, because once we empty it there will be no more samsara. How do we empty it? By leading all beings to enlightenment and for that we have need of the kleshas. We need them to work for the benefit of others. Those energies will then be transformed in an altruistic way for the benefit of all beings rather than for ego-centred benefit. Also, we empty the samsara through wisdom, by understanding the emptiness of everything
The Vajrayana approach is - we need neither abandon nor empty samsara, we simply need to recognise it for what it is. If we recognise its true nature, that is enough. Recognising that samsara has always really been nirvana but it was just a mistaken perception then automatically everything becomes pure.
In order to apply the three views:
Hinayana
The first step to dealing with the negative emotions is to recognise them. We need to recognise their presence and let them be without attachment. This is the first stage of how we abandon them. To abandon does not mean that we have to get rid of a part of ourselves. We simply renounce involvement with them or being slaved by them. But in order to renounce involvement we have to see them very clearly, recognise their presence in our mind. If we do not recognise that we are proud how are we going to abandon pride? For that we need to develop mindfulness and awareness, a clear perception of how our mind functions, through meditation. We need to learn to see the existence of the different types of emotions in our mind. One possible way of doing that is through meditation when we watch what happens and are aware. We practice also in daily life during our reactions, when we start recognising how we act; that we act in an angry way or a proud way, etc.In order to help us see emotions, which have very strong tendencies, we may need to investigate them a little bit more with different methods. We may need to investigate, try to analyse, examine our own behaviour and also trying to examine the causes of particular patterns of behaviour. When did they start? Why do we act the same way in the same circumstances? We need to find the patterns of our conflicting actions and all this requires an investigation. Perhaps a kind of therapy may be necessary to remember and to disentangle all this mess in which we have landed. We have to remember how it started. We can also do it on our own, go to a retreat and to "psychoanalyse" ourselves, remember how many things we have done in our life. Then we will see ourselves. Or we may also listen to people. People tell you and you wonder " Am I like that? I though I was perfect, I was clear, etc" but then you see that you have so much anger, jealousy, attachment, etc and that you have cultivated these emotions for so long all your life. Then you remember the story of your life, and you remember all the occasions when you were attached, angry etc. It is good to do this research to understand how the patterns work and what is the essential factor of a particular pattern of conduct. From the Buddhist point of view if you analyse a particular problematic aspect of your life and you clearly reach an understanding that the root of it is the ratna energy or padma energy, for example, then this means that you have reached the root of it. Reaching the root is very useful because then you know how to deal with it. If you do not know what the root is then you are confused and you do not know what the essence of the trouble is.
Anyway, you have to recognise clearly who you are and see how you affect others through your negative aspects. Once you are clear about those patterns then you have to learn to be aware of them without being involved with them; that is, you should abandon them. You do not have to reject or negate a part of you, because in a sense it is pure wisdom, but you do have to learn not to get involved, not to follow and get carried away. This is the second step which, we could say, is part of Hinayana aspect - to watch the emotions and at the same time be detached and not involved. This is what we practice when we meditate. We try not to be distracted, not to follow our thoughts.
At this first level of working, we also apply the remedy of the opposite. If we are angry we try to cultivate the opposite, which is loving-kindness. We learn to develop a new tendency, which we have not developed yet because we were so carried away by anger. We have to cultivate the opposite of each poison to diminish the negative exaggeration of that poison and in so doing we diminish the exaggeration.
Mahayana
The 2nd level is the Mahayana level which consists of accepting the kleshas. Once we have recognised them and are not too carried away by them, we have to learn to accept them with love. We have to be open to them and listen to them and understand why they are complaining, because they are like a child complaining. They are a symptom of being unhappy so we have to listen with affection. We will never solve our own negatively with an angry attitude, by thinking "I am such a bad person". It does not work. We have to accept our own negativities and the way we are and we have to understand why we have developed those negative tendencies.Secondly there have been many conditionings in this and in previous lives, which have made us behave in a certain way. We have to understand this and be compassionate towards ourselves. This acceptance transforms the negativity of the emotions. When we are loving, they stop being naughty, but when we do not love them, they keep on causing us problems. The only way to pacify an angry person is by being loving to them, not by being more angry. If we reply angrily, then the anger of that person will be justified and they will fight. If we react patiently, in a loving way then we can pacify that anger. The only way to pacify our negative emotions is through being loving and not through rejection. In this way we are going to transform the negativities through the loving attitude we develop. Recognising our own negativities and trying to understand ourselves will help us to understand others. Then we understand why others are angry - because they also have the same conditionings that we have. Being compassionate towards ourselves helps us to be compassionate towards others and through this compassion and loving kindness we will naturally become less ego-centred. Our own negativities will be used in a more compassionate, positive way.
Vajrayana
The third way to deal with the emotions is to purify them and to transmute them through wisdom. Here we are not talking about transforming from negative into positive, or even in the sense of using them in a positive way but directly transmuting them into their true nature, which is wisdom. This is done through recognising the true nature of those emotions. Not only recognising their presence in our mind (which was the first stage), but by recognising their wisdom. We have to study, reflect, and meditate; we reflect upon the emptiness of everything; how everything is pure, and then we try to apply this in meditation. If we understand and have confidence that the nature of everything is empty clarity then with this confidence we learn to watch our own thoughts and emotions and we gradually learn to recognise their true nature. This is done with Vajrayana practices and through Mahamudra practice. Once we have recognised the true nature of the emotions then we do not have to avoid or abandon them but to just to maintain the recognition. At that stage it is said that the more emotionality you have the better it is as you will have more to recognise. If you have lots of passion and anger, then you have a lot of landscape to watch. Strong emotions are easily recognisable, and are something very powerful to watch, which is useful to do, but before that, you need to have trained in the first two stages. First you have to learn to recognise and let it be, then you have to learn to accept it with compassion, and then in the third stage you can sit with the emotion and cultivate the wisdom of it.Resume:
It is said in the teachings that the negative emotions are the root of all suffering. The five energies have become destructive because we have turned against ourselves. We have separated ourselves from them and become disconnected from them through dualistic mentality. We have split our minds so the five energies become projected outside and our challenges seem to be on the outside; and we have also split ourselves in two -the good and the bad. Thus, our negativities have turned against ourselves. The process of purifying the kleshas through stages is the process of recovering those energies, which becomes a means to finish with the dualistic mentality. When there is no duality then you can become one with everything and then there is no problem. In order to recover those energies, which are part of ourselves, we need to follow those steps and try to diminish the exaggerated projection of things. We must find some balance, become accepting towards ourselves and others and then become a Bodhisattva - a person who is happy to be in the world and to accept all the garbage that everybody is carrying with them in a compassionate way. Finally, when we recognise the empty nature of everything there is no more duality. Inside our own minds, our negative emotions are not separated from ourselves and they are totally the colour of our own true nature. When they are like that, they are not negative. At this stage we have totally recovered and assimilated that which we mistakenly got rid of.So how do we split ourselves from our energies? One way is through repressing or negating them, and another way is through projecting them. We feel that anger is something terrible so we reject that anger or repress it. We separate ourselves from that anger because we think it is a terrible thing and we have to keep it hidden and repressed in the ground consciousness. As much as we try to hold it back it is still there and it will come out because it has not been accepted and loved in the first place. Repressing is one way of splitting our minds, and fighting ourselves is another way - "I have so many bad tendencies, I have to try to be a better guy", but then the ghost takes over, and then you feel terrible, you feel guilty and you try to purify. As long as you are negating yourself, you are separating yourself and it will never work as you are negating a part of yourself. So we have to make friends with samsara, that is we must totally accept and totally fuse with everything we have. Like in alchemy, we transmute the impurities of our minds into the pure nature, and the only way to transmute is through loving acceptance and understanding.
