Lama Yeshe at Chenrezig Institute, Australia, 1975. Photo donated by Wendy Finster to the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind is one of the most beloved free books from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. The six teachings contained in this volume come from Lama Yeshe’s 1975 visit to Australia. They are all filled with love, insight, wisdom and compassion, and accessible question-and-answer sessions. 

Today we share Chapter 3 of Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, “Experiencing Silent Wisdom” from a talk given by Lama Yeshe at Prince Phillip Theatre, Melbourne University, April 6, 1975. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. 

When your sense perception contacts sense objects and you experience physical pleasure, enjoy that feeling as much as you can. But if the experience of your sense perception’s contact with the sense world ties you, if the more you look at the sense world the more difficult it becomes, instead of getting anxious—“I can’t control this”—it’s better to close your senses off and silently observe the sense perception itself.

Similarly, if you’re bound by the problems that ideas create, instead of trying to stop those problems by grasping at some other idea, which is impossible, silently investigate how ideas cause you trouble.

At certain times, a silent mind is very important, but “silent” does not mean closed. The silent mind is an alert, awakened mind; a mind seeking the nature of reality. When problems in the sense world bother you, the difficulty comes from your sense perception, not from the external objects you perceive. And when concepts bother you, that also does not come from outside but from your mind’s grasping at concepts. Therefore, instead of trying to stop problems emotionally by grasping at new material objects or ideas, check up silently to see what’s happening in your mind.

No matter what sort of mental problem you experience, instead of getting nervous and fearful, sit back, relax, and be as silent as possible. In this way you will automatically be able to see reality and understand the root of the problem.

When we experience problems, either internal or external, our narrow, unskillful mind only makes them worse. When someone with an itchy skin condition scratches it, he feels some temporary relief and thinks his scratching has made it better. In fact, his scratching has made it worse. We’re like that; we do the same thing, every day of our lives. Instead of trying to stop problems like this, we should relax and rely on our skillful, silent mind. But silent does not mean dark, non-functioning, sluggish or sleepy.

So now, just close your eyes for five or ten minutes and take a close look at whatever you consider your biggest problem to be. Shut down your sense perception as much as you possible can, remain completely silent and with introspective knowledge-wisdom, thoroughly investigate your mind.

Where do you hold the idea of “my problem”?

Is it in your brain? In your mouth? Your heart? Your stomach? Where is that idea?

If you can’t find the thought of “problem,” don’t intellectualize; simply relax. If miserable thoughts or bad ideas arise in your mind, just watch how they come, how they go.

Don’t react emotionally.

Practicing in this way, you can see how the weak, unskillful mind cannot face problems. But your silent mind of skillful wisdom can face any problem bravely, conquer it and control all your emotional and agitated states of mind.

Don’t think that what I’m saying is a Buddhist idea, some Tibetan lama’s idea. It can become the actual experience of all living beings throughout the universe.

I could give you many words, many ideas in my lecture tonight, but I think it’s more important to share with you the silent experience. That’s more realistic than any number of words.

When you investigate your mind thoroughly, you can see clearly that both miserable and ecstatic thoughts come and go. Moreover, when you investigate penetratingly, they disappear altogether. When you are preoccupied with an experience, you think, “I’ll never forget this experience,” but when you check up skillfully, it automatically disappears. That is the silent wisdom experience. It’s very simple, but don’t just believe me—experience it for yourself.

In my experience, a silent lecture is worth more than one with many words and no experience. In the silent mind, you find peace, joy and satisfaction.

Silent inner joy is much more lasting than the enjoyment of eating chocolate and cake. That enjoyment is also just a conception. 

When you close off your superficial sense perception and investigate your inner nature, you begin to awaken. Why? Because superficial sense perception prevents you from seeing the reality of how discursive thought comes and goes. When you shut down your senses, your mind becomes more conscious and functions better. When your superficial senses are busy, your mind is kind of dark; it’s totally preoccupied by the way your senses are interpreting things. Thus, you can’t see reality. Therefore, when you are tied by ideas and the sense world, instead of stressing out, stop your sense perception and silently watch your mind. Try to be totally awake instead of obsessed with just one atom. Feel totality instead of particulars.

You can’t determine for yourself the way things should be. Things change by their very nature. How can you tie down any idea? You can see that you can’t.

When you investigate the way you think—“Why do I say this is good? Why do I say this is bad?”—you start to get real answers as to how your mind really works. You can see how most of your ideas are silly but how your mind makes them important. If you check up properly you can see that these ideas are really nothing. By checking like this, you end up with nothingness in your mind. Let your mind dwell in that state of nothingness. It is so peaceful; so joyful. If you can sit every morning with a silent mind for just ten or twenty minutes, you will enjoy it very much. You’ll be able to observe the moment-to-moment movement of your emotions without getting sad.

You will also see the outside world and other people differently; you will never see them as hindrances to your life and they will never make you feel insecure.

Therefore, beauty comes from the mind.

So, that was the experience of silence. But if you have some questions, let’s have a question-answer session. You can discuss what I’ve been saying through your own experience. Observing and investigating your mind is so simple; very simple. Constantly, wherever you go, at any time, you can experience this energy. It’s always with you. But chocolate isn’t always with you—when you want it, it’s not there and when you don’t feel like it, there it is in front of you.

The joy of the silent experience comes from your own mind. Therefore, joy is always with you. Whenever you need it, it’s always there.

Still, if you have questions, please ask, although an answer from the silent mind is always better than too many words. There are so many views and philosophies; instead of helping, they sometimes cause more confusion. Some English words can mean more than twenty things.

Please continue to the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive to read the lively Q & A session that followed. 

Excerpted from Chapter 3 of Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, “Experiencing Silent Wisdom” from a talk given by Lama Yeshe at Prince Phillip Theatre, Melbourne University, April 6, 1975, published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. You can read this book online, listen to the audiobook, access links to translations or download a PDF. LYWA Members can download the ebook for free.

You can also order a paperback copy from Amazon’s print-on-demand service. Go to the Amazon website in your region to find the best price for a print-on-demand copy.

Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935–1984), who founded the FPMT organization with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, was able to translate Tibetan Buddhist teachings into clear ideas that resonated with the Western students he met and taught in the 1970s and ’80s.

You can find additional teachings, discourses, and advice from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe at Chenrezig Institute, Australia, 1975. Photo donated by Wendy Finster, courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind is one of the most beloved free books from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. The six teachings contained in this volume come from Lama Yeshe’s 1975 visit to Australia. They are all filled with love, insight, wisdom and compassion, and accessible question-and-answer sessions. 

Today we share Chapter 2 of Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, “Spirituality and Materialism” from a talk given by Lama Yeshe at Prince Phillip Theatre, Melbourne University, April 5, 1975. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. 

People often talk about spirituality and materialism, but what do these terms really mean? Actually, this is not a simple subject; it’s vast. There are probably countless points of view as to what spirituality and materialism truly are.

On the surface, we might agree, “This is spiritual; that is material,” but if you look into it more deeply I think you’ll find that as individuals, each of us has a different view.

Some people think that spirituality and materialism are complete opposites—two irreconcilable extremes—and that it’s impossible to be spiritual and materialistic at the same time. Others consider that those who seek the spiritual path do so only because they are unhappy with their lives, have failed in the material world and can’t find a way to be happy in it, can’t face living in normal society and therefore hallucinate that somewhere up there, there’s a God in whom they can believe.

Another common misconception is that if you are a spiritual seeker you must abandon all material comfort; that you can’t enjoy both together. This kind of superficial contradiction is all too common amongst the people of this Earth—“If it’s this, it cannot be that; if it’s that, it cannot be this.” Should a spiritual practitioner be wealthy, people will say, “How can you be so rich? You’re supposed to be spiritual.” This kind of philosophical judgment shows a complete lack of understanding of what spiritual and materialistic really are.

My point of view is that all such interpretations are wrong conceptions; too extreme; they are fixed ideas.

Furthermore, there are those who say, “You’re a spiritual practitioner? You must be a believer. I don’t believe anything.” However, a few simple questions will show that they have more beliefs than most religious people. Belief is not simply intellectual. As long as you have attachment to ideas, material things or projections of good and bad, in my view, you’re believer. When you say, “I don’t believe anything,” it’s just not true. Belief isn’t only the fear that up there in the sky is a God who controls and will punish you. If you really check up on the human mind, you’ll never find anyone who believes nothing. It’s impossible. As long as people have attachment to anything and ideas of good and bad, as far as I’m concerned, they’re believers.

Really wise religious people do not hold extreme beliefs, such as the hallucination that they’re under the control of some energy force up there. Therefore, do not think that those who seek the spiritual path are all hallucinating, extreme believers. What they are depends on how they understand the nature of the path they are following.

Of course, I know that some people, especially those brought up in the West, can have a materialistic attitude towards the spiritual path. The moment they hear about Buddhism or some other religion, they are immediately attracted to it. Without understanding the religion or checking that it suits their basic nature, they grasp at it right away: “Oh, this is fantastic.” That’s extreme. It’s also very dangerous. From my point of view, that’s not a spiritual attitude. Just because you love some idea doesn’t mean that you understand it or that you are able to practice or experience that philosophy. You can label any idea as good, but if it has no influence on your daily life, how can you say, “I love that idea; I’m spiritual.” That’s ridiculous.

All such attitudes are very dangerous. Spiritual practitioners have to be realistic about their everyday lives instead of hallucinating—“I am Jesus, look at me”; “I am Buddha, look at me”—holding exaggerated views and complete misconceptions of their own reality that have nothing to do with any religion.

Religion is not just some dry, intellectual idea that appeals to you. Rather, it should be your basic philosophy of life; something that through experience you have found relates positively with the energy of your psychological makeup. If you hear an idea that seems to make sense, first see if you can get a taste of it through experience. Only then should you adopt it as your spiritual path.

Say you encounter Buddhist philosophy for the first time: “Oh, fantastic. This is so good.” Then, because you regard these new ideas materialistically, you try to make radical changes to your everyday life. You can’t do it; it’s impossible. You can only change your mind gradually. To actualize Dharma you have to start from where you are and base any practice that you do on that foundation. But to abandon your basic nature and try to change yourself according to some fantastic idea, as if you were changing clothes—that’s really hallucinating. That’s too extreme. People who do that have no understanding of the nature of the spiritual path. That’s dangerous. You check up; we tend to judge things very superficially.

As I said, if we were to ask ourselves what is the nature of spirituality and what is the nature of materialism, we’d all come up with different answers. There would be no unanimous conclusion. This is because we all think differently and we’ve all had different life experiences. Even if you show a group of people some unknown material substance and ask them to identify it, they do so on the basis of their previous experiences and may come up with many different answers. For similar reasons, we all reply differently when we’re asked to define the religious and the materialistic life.

My point of view is that following a spiritual path does not automatically mean that you have to reject material things and leading a materialistic life does not necessarily disqualify you from the spiritual. In fact, even if you are materialistic, if you really check deep within your own mind’s nature, you’ll find that there’s a part of it that is already religious. Even if you declare, “I’m not a believer,” nevertheless, within your mind the religious dimension is there. It may not be intellectualized, it may not be your conscious philosophy, but there’s a spiritual stream of energy constantly running through your consciousness. Actually, even the intellectual and philosophical aspects of religion are also there in your psyche, but they have not come from books or papers; they have always been there. So be careful. Your extreme views may interpret that spirituality and materialism are completely contradictory, but they are not.

Actually, from the point of view of religious tolerance, the world is now a better place than it was even less than a century ago. At that time people held highly extreme views, especially in the West. Religious practitioners were afraid of non-religious people; non-religious people were afraid of those who were religious. Everybody felt very insecure. This was all based on misconception. Probably most of this is now behind us, but it’s possible that some people still feel like this. Certainly, many feel that spiritual and materialistic lives are totally incompatible. It’s not true.

Therefore, take the middle way as much as you possibly can. Avoid the extreme of thinking, “I am spiritual”—clinging tightly to that idea, hallucinating by imagining what you think a spiritual life should be—and then neglecting the basic nature of your everyday life—“I’m enjoying my spiritual life so much I don’t even want to make tea.” Here, there’s no harmony between your so-called spiritual life and the demands of your everyday existence. If you really were pursuing a spiritual life, there would be more harmony and better cooperation between the two; instead of a barrier there would be more concern with and understanding of the needs of everyday living. A barrier between the two means there’s something wrong with what you’re calling your spiritual path; instead of being open to the world around you, you’re closed. Therefore, communication is difficult. If the religion you are practicing is a true path and gives satisfactory answers to your dissatisfied mind, you should be better than ever at dealing with your everyday life and living like a decent human being. Living by dry, hallucinated ideas is not realistic; that way, you can’t even get breakfast. Check carefully to see what you really understand about your religious practice; you might find much that needs correction.

Everything Lord Buddha said, his entire philosophy and doctrine, was for the purpose of penetrating to the essence of our being, of realizing the nature of the human mind. He never said we just had to believe what he taught. Instead, he encouraged us to try to understand.

Without understanding, your entire spiritual trip is a fantasy, a dream, a hallucination; as soon as someone questions your beliefs, your entire spiritual life collapses like a house of cards. Your hallucinated ideas are like paper, not cement; one question— “What is this?”—and the whole thing disappears. Without understanding, you can’t give satisfactory answers about what you are doing.

Therefore, I encourage you to put it all together. Enjoy your material life as much as you can, but at the same time, understand the nature of your enjoyment—the nature of both the object you are enjoying and the mind that is experiencing that enjoyment and how the two relate. If you understand all this deeply, that is religion. If you have no idea of all this, if you see only the outside view and never look to see what is going on inside, your mind is narrow and, from my point of view, materialistic. It is not because you necessarily possess the materials but because of your attitude.

Say I dedicate my life to one object: “This flower is so beautiful. As long as it’s alive, my life is worth living. If this flower dies, I want to die too.” If I believe this, I’m stupid, aren’t I? Of course, the flower is just an example, but such is the extreme view of the materialistic mind. A more realistic approach would be, “Yes, the flower is beautiful, but it won’t last. Today it’s alive, tomorrow it’ll be dead. However, my satisfaction doesn’t come from only that flower and I wasn’t born human just to enjoy flowers.”

Therefore, whatever you understand by religion, Buddhism, or simply philosophical ideas, should be integrated with the basics of your life. Then you can experiment: “Does dissatisfaction come from my own mind or not?” That is enough. You don’t need to make extreme radical changes to your life, to suddenly cut yourself off from the world, in order to learn that dissatisfaction comes from your own mind. You can continue to lead a normal life, but at the same time try to observe the nature of the dissatisfied mind. This approach is so realistic, so practical, and in this way you will definitely get all the answers you seek.

Otherwise, if you accept some extreme idea and try to give things up just intellectually, all you do is agitate your life. For the human body to exist you at least should be able to get lunch, or breakfast, or something. Therefore, be realistic. It is not necessary to make radical external changes. You simply have to change internally—stop hallucinating and see reality.

If you really check up, the two extremes—religion and materialism—are equally hallucination; both are projections of a polluted mind making extreme value judgments. Never mind that the person says, “Oh, I don’t believe anything…all I believe is that this morning I had breakfast and today I did this and that. What I see and think is real; I don’t hallucinate.” If you question this person, “What do you think of the color red?” you will automatically reveal that he’s hallucinating. He sees the shapes and colors of the sense world but has no idea of their true nature; that they are simply projections of his mind. Ask him, “What color do you like? Do you like black?” “Oh no, I don’t like black.” “How about white?” “Oh yes, I do like white.” So, he likes one thing but not another—two things. That shows his mind is polluted. Anyway, many things in our life experience are not expressed verbally, but they are there, obscured in our minds. It doesn’t matter that we don’t say the words.

Often we are not sure what we really want. We are too extreme; mentally ill. A fickle thought arises in our mind and we jump at that idea and act upon it. Another idea comes; we jump at that and act some other way. I call that schizophrenic; not checking. Ideas come and go. Instead of grasping at them, check them out. Some people get fixed ideas: “This is absolutely good; that, I hate.” Or, somebody says that something is good and you automatically contradict, “No, no, no, no, no.” Instead of just rejecting what people say, question why they say it. Try to understand why you don’t agree. The more we tie ourselves up with fixed ideas, the more trouble we create for ourselves and others. Somebody changes something—we freak out. Instead of freaking out, check why they’re changing that. When you understand their reasons, you won’t get so upset. Fixed ideas— “My life should be exactly like this”—lead only to problems. It’s impossible to firmly establish the way your life should be.

Everybody’s mind, everybody’s basic nature is constantly changing, changing, changing. You have to accept that and bring some flexibility to your ideas of the way things should be. Fixed ideas make life difficult. Why do we solidify ideas: “I want my life to be exactly like this”? Because “I like.” That’s the reason— because we like things that way. None of us wants to die, but can we fix it so that we won’t? We would like to live forever, enjoying life on Earth. Can we fix it so that we will? No, it’s impossible. Your basic nature—your mind, your body, the world—is automatically changing. Wanting things to go exactly a certain way is only making trouble for yourself.

When you solidify an idea, you cling to and believe in it. Lord Buddha’s psychology teaches us to free ourselves from this kind of grasping—but not to give it up in an emotional, rejecting way, but rather to take the middle way, between the two extremes. If you put your mind wisely into this middle space, there you will find happiness and joy. You don’t need to try too hard; automatically, you will discover a peaceful atmosphere, your mind will be balanced and you will dwell in peace and joy.

I think that’s enough for now. Perhaps even too much. Anyway, no matter how long we talk, we’ll never get through this subject. Therefore, if you have any questions, please ask them. I think that would be better at this point.

Please continue to the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive to read the lively Q & A session that followed. 

Excerpted from Chapter 2 of Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, “Spirituality and Materialism” from a talk given by Lama Yeshe at Prince Phillip Theatre, Melbourne University, April 5, 1975, published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. You can read this book online, listen to the audiobook, access links to translations or download a PDF. LYWA Members can download the ebook for free.

You can also order a paperback copy from Amazon’s print-on-demand service. Go to the Amazon website in your region to find the best price for a print-on-demand copy.

Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935–1984), who founded the FPMT organization with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, was able to translate Tibetan Buddhist teachings into clear ideas that resonated with the Western students he met and taught in the 1970s and ’80s.

You can find additional teachings, discourses, and advice from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe At Chenrezig Institute, Australia, 1975. Photo courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind is one of the most beloved free books from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. The six teachings contained in this volume come from Lama Yeshe’s 1975 visit to Australia. They are all filled with love, insight, wisdom and compassion, and accessible question-and-answer sessions. 

Today we share Chapter 1 of Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, “Buddhism: Something For Everybody” from a talk given by Lama Yeshe at Prince Phillip Theatre, Melbourne University, April 4, 1975. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. 

Some people think they know all about Buddhism and Buddhists just because they’ve read a couple of books. They pick one up, “Hmm. Let’s see what this book says. Well, according to this it seems that Buddhists are really extreme. They believe in all sorts of strange stuff.” They pick up another: “My goodness, Buddhists are completely nihilistic.” They draw all sorts of wrong conclusions based on extremely limited information; they don’t see anything like the whole picture. This is very dangerous.

Perhaps they read something from the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, which is known for its rigorous intellectual approach to the subject of emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality, and can be very difficult to understand. This can lead them to think, “Oh, Buddhists aren’t religious; they’re atheists. They don’t believe anything; they think that nothing exists. How can they consider themselves religious?” This too can be very dangerous.

Other people might conclude, “Wow! Buddhists believe in three Gods. They say Buddha is one God; Dharma is another; Sangha a third. They must be super-believers. That’s too much. In the West, we’ve never heard of such a thing as three Gods; only one. We’re religious, but we only have one God. We can’t even agree with the Buddhists on how many Gods there are.”

If you look at just one tiny aspect of Buddhism, of course it might appear too much for you. But Buddhism is not just about one or two small things; it is not some tiny philosophy. Lord Buddha explained the nature of every single phenomenon in the universe.

At this stage, I have had about nine or ten years’ experience teaching Buddhist philosophy to Westerners and experimenting with how it fits their minds, mainly in the one-month meditation courses we hold each year at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. In these courses we try to explain everything, but I have found that if we talk too much about the negative side of things, students completely freak out. Not all of them, but many do. They say, “These lamas emphasize the negative too much. Why don’t they talk more about the positive? Buddhism isn’t only about delusion and suffering. Why do they teach us this negative stuff day after day?”

But the thing about Buddhism is that before you can put yourself into the positive path to liberation, enlightenment or God—whatever you want to call it, the name doesn’t matter—you have to know how your negative mind works.

If you don’t understand how the two extreme negative views of overestimation and underestimation function within you, how can you correct your actions and put yourself into the right path? Therefore, it is crucial to know the negative aspects of your nature. Actually, if you comprehend the evolution of your negative mind from beginning to end, you’ll feel very comfortable. Conversely, if you don’t know how it works, you’ll finish up thinking that negative actions are positive.

Moreover, if you try to practice the path to liberation without a solid grounding in what is positive and what is negative, a simple question from someone challenging what you are doing can completely derail you. You might get confused and give up. That’s the sign of a weak mind. You have to see the totality of the evolution of both the negative and the positive mind.

Some people assume that Buddhism is probably a nice religion that always talks diplomatically and sweetly about holy things. When we start teaching Buddhism to beginners, we don’t begin by talking about holy things. The first thing we explain is the basic nature of your present mind—what’s going on down here, right now—not Buddha up there.

However, at this point, I would like to say one thing about the nature of Buddha. As I mentioned before, some people with a limited knowledge of Buddhism think that while Christianity and other religions say that God is only one, Buddhists worship three Gods. Actually, if you understand the true nature of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, you’ll know that there’s no separation between them. Buddha is Buddha; Buddha is Dharma; Buddha is Sangha. Accepting Buddha, Dharma and Sangha as the ultimate refuge does not contradict the unity of God.

There are those who think that Buddhism is simply an intellectual philosophy and includes no religious practice. That’s not true either. Buddhism contains both intellectual philosophy and religious practice. When Lord Buddha was teaching, he taught his students as individuals, giving each whatever they needed. When offering solutions to the negative mind, he would reveal different methods, because each person’s negative mind is different. Sometimes he would explain, “Yes, this exists,” but at others he would say, “No, this doesn’t exist,” drawing upon the Buddhist school of thought appropriate for each person’s level of mind.

Seeing this, people whose minds are limited might think that Lord Buddha was confused, that his explanations were contradictory. But Lord Buddha was not confused. He was a wise teacher who could see that different minds experienced different problems and, therefore, different solutions were required. For example, a skillful doctor might advise a patient with a fever to fast for a couple of days but then tell the patient to eat. The small-minded person might observe, “This doctor is silly. One day he says don’t eat, the next day he says eat. He’s really confused.” But actually, the doctor is wise. He understands the evolution of the patient’s disease, so he prescribes different treatments at different times.

Lord Buddha, the supreme physician, treated his disciples the same way. He taught sentient beings according to their level of mind. You can’t all of a sudden start talking about the intellectual intricacies of the enlightened view to people whose minds are completely confused. They have a long way to go; they have to be taught what their limited minds can digest. If even Lord Buddha were to teach you things your mind could not digest, you’d freak out. Instead of gaining benefit, you’d go berserk. You have to know this.

Even before Buddhism came to Tibet, there were already many different Buddhist schools, doctrines and philosophies in existence. There still are. But basically, they are in no way contradictory. They are all there for the gradual development of the human mind. Actually, all those various doctrines and philosophies exist for the gradual development of the individual person’s mind.

In the lowest school of Buddhist philosophy, Lord Buddha teaches that phenomena are self-existent. In the next, he teaches that they are not completely self-existent; that something comes from the side of the object and something from the side of the mind. Finally, he explains that in reality, nothing at all comes from the side of the object; it exists only in name.

You’ll find that some religions don’t have these different levels of view; don’t have a variety of approaches for the gradual development of the human mind. In Buddhism, when your mind is at the initial level you are given certain practices to do. When, through those practices, your mind has developed a little, you are taught the methods of the next level. When you have accomplished those, you go on to more advanced techniques. In this way, by degrees, your understanding and perception change and you progress along the path. Thus, Buddhism is extremely precise. Whoever you are, you can find specific philosophical explanations and methods of practice to suit your individual level of mind.

In the West, we pick up a book, “Oh, this sounds good. I like this book. I think I’ll practice this meditation.” But even though the words sound nice and you like the ideas, if you’re not ready for a certain practice, there’s no way you can integrate it with your mind, and if you try, you might end up thinking, “Oh, this method doesn’t work.” But the problem is not with the method; it’s with your trying to implement something for which you are not ready. You don’t know how to integrate that idea with your mind or put it into your experience. That’s the problem.

You can find nice ideas in every book in the world, but how do these nice ideas relate to your mind? How do you put them into everyday experience? If you can, it makes sense for you to practice them. Your mind will become soft and gentle, calm and peaceful, and your life will be happier. You will begin to taste the honey of Dharma. Otherwise, no honey, just Coca-Cola. Too much Coke, too much gas. No sleep and all running to the bathroom. I’m joking! I’m not talking about the physical here; these are just examples for the mind.

Whatever you find in Buddhist philosophy and practice is there solely for the psychological treatment of the human mind. Lord Buddha never propounded any abstruse philosophy just so that he could proudly proclaim, “This is my doctrine.” He never propounded a single philosophical point that wasn’t related to the human mind or meant to be integrated with it. Never. Buddhism is a way of living your life that is related to your own mind, your own view, your own experience. Therefore, be careful when you evaluate Buddhism as “this, this or that.”

For example, after this lecture, you’re going to go home and tell people, “Buddhism is this, Buddhism is that, because this Tibetan lama said so.” But please don’t think that tonight I’ve told you all about Buddhism. I’ve barely scratched the surface. What I’m saying here is by no means the measure of Buddhism.

Since the different schools of Buddhist philosophy and their views are graduated—different schools for different minds—how do you know that when you pick up a particular book, what it contains will fit your mind? Of course, in Lord Buddha’s teachings there are methods for each of us. If you are wise, you can certainly select a book that suits you. In Buddhism, there’s something for everybody—something anybody can understand and actualize—and nothing that is too difficult for anybody, that no human mind can understand. Lord Buddha gave precise teachings that can be understood by any individual according to their level of mind—different methods, different views, different philosophies, different doctrines.

For example, Lord Buddha gave a general explanation of how karma functions in everyday life that you don’t need a sophisticated intellect to understand. In his very first teaching, on the four noble truths, he explained karma very simply. First, he explained true suffering. Isn’t that sensible? If someone describes your own agitated mind—how it comes, how it goes, what sort of effects it has—how can you reject that? “Oh, that’s too much for me.” Impossible. How can you reject somebody’s telling you correctly and in detail how your mind is agitated; how it’s in conflict every day of your life because it is split, not integrated? If someone gives you a perfect explanation of this, how can you say it’s too difficult to understand?

We don’t try to teach beginners the intricacies of Madhyamaka philosophy. We can tell immediately who’s ready to listen to teachings on emptiness and who isn’t. But we can teach them about the problems they face every day of their lives and the nature of true suffering in such a way that they can understand the evolution of their everyday reality.

Actually, Lord Buddha taught about human suffering and the agitated mind in many different ways. To some people, he gave very simple explanations; to others, who were more intellectually advanced, he gave more subtle, technical explanations. Even the way he taught about the nature of suffering is fantastic—he had so many different approaches to introduce this subject to the human mind. Isn’t it amazing? How can you deny your agitated mind? “I don’t believe I have an agitated mind. I don’t want to hear about that.” How can you deny it? Every day of your life you are trapped in your physical body and have to put up with it. When somebody explains its nature to you, how can you reject it?

Perhaps you’re going to argue that you don’t have an agitated mind. In that case, I’m going to say, check how you are when you get up in the morning. Be aware for just a day, then you’ll see. Or not even a day. Just try sitting still for an hour in a cross-legged position. Your ego will completely freak out: “Oh, my knees hurt.” Pain in the knees is so transient; your agitated mind keeps going and going and going—all day and all night; for months, for years. It never stops.

In Sanskrit, the word for Lord Buddha’s teaching is Dharma. Dharma is medicine. Just as every physical illness has its own medicine, Lord Buddha has prescribed a specific method for each mental disease. That’s what he taught. He didn’t just hand out the same teaching to everybody, irrespective of who they were or what their problem was. Therefore, you can’t simply say, “Buddhism is this.” Dharma is not just one thing.

As I mentioned before, there are various schools of Buddhist thought. The two main ones are the Hinayana and the Mahayana. The Mahayana, in turn, is divided into Paramitayana and Vajrayana, or Tantrayana. Tantrayana, or tantra, also contains a variety of schools. Basically, there are four, each of which contains its own specific techniques, but I can’t go into that here. Nevertheless, it’s important for you to know that there exists such a well-organized, step-by-step path, by which you can gradually develop your mind to enlightenment. Since Tibetan Buddhism is not yet perfectly established in this part of the world, I’m just mentioning this for your information.

For example, these days we have advanced modes of transport, like fast cars and jet planes, but that doesn’t mean there’s no longer any place for the bicycle. In the evolution of human transport, we started off with simple carts, then came cars, then planes and now we have moon rockets and so forth. Soon there’ll be something to top even the rockets of today; don’t think that they’re the ultimate human invention. There’s no limit to how far the human mind can develop. Like today, everybody has television, but a few decades ago, if you’d described a television set to somebody, they would not have believed such a thing possible. Or nowadays, in developed countries at least, many people have a car. Perhaps in time, all these people will have their own jet. You’re going to tell me that that’s not possible, but why not? These things are material phenomena and if the human mind puts effort in that direction, such things can develop. It’s nothing supernatural; it just hasn’t happened yet.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that just as here, with these material things, there are degrees of development and the earlier versions don’t conflict with the later ones, so too the philosophies, doctrines, views and methods contained in Lord Buddha’s profound teaching are all there for the gradual spiritual development of any one individual and do not conflict with or contradict each other.

Of course, if you think that the material sense world that you perceive is all that exists and that there’s no possibility of accomplishing that which you can imagine, that it’s all purely mental speculation, that’s ridiculous. Even the inventor of the rocket had to picture it in his mind before he could create it. First he dreamed it up; then he put together the material elements necessary to manufacture it; then the rocket appeared. There’s no way he could have made a rocket without first creating it in his mind. So you can see, all these different modern inventions result from the power of the human mind. Therefore, don’t think that dreams never become reality. It’s possible.

Perhaps that’s enough for now. Basically, Mahayana Buddhism contains many methods and techniques and every single one is necessary for the development of each human mind. I’m not going to go into the specifics here, but if you have any questions I’d be glad to try to answer them.

Please continue to the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive to read the lively Q & A session that followed. 

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, “Buddhism: Something For Everybody” from a talk given by Lama Yeshe at Prince Phillip Theatre, Melbourne University, April 4, 1975, published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. You can read this book online, listen to the audiobook, access links to translations or download a PDF. LYWA Members can download the ebook for free.

Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935–1984), who founded the FPMT organization with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, was able to translate Tibetan Buddhist teachings into clear ideas that resonated with the Western students he met and taught in the 1970s and ’80s.

You can find additional teachings, discourses, and advice from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe teaching at Royal Holloway College, 1975, London, England. Photo by Dennis Heslop, courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

In 1975 during their first trip to Europe, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a weekend seminar in England, once again demonstrating their charisma and knowledge, and the profound effect of Buddha’s wisdom on Western people. This seminar was published in the book Freedom Through Understanding and covers the purpose of meditation, bodhicitta, the importance of motivation, tonglen and the shortcomings of attachment, among other topics. Produced by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, this is one of the few works that feature both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This short course was also videotaped and is available on the LYWA YouTube channel.

Today we share an excerpt from Chapter 9 from Freedom Through Understanding: “Giving and Taking on the Breath”  by Lama Yeshe:

Totally changing the attitude of your ego-attachment’s attitude is very useful because the personality of attachment is limitless want: “I want every pleasure the universe has to offer.” And at all costs, attachment wants to avoid any unpleasant feelings whatsoever. So this time we act in completely the opposite way. Without the slightest hesitation, we send all our goodness, wisdom and joyful life energy – all our positive physical, mental and verbal energy – to others. We exhale through our right nostril and send joyful, blissful white light energy into all other beings’ left nostril without discrimination – not just our dear friend; all living beings in the universe.

Then bring their biggest problems, those that you don’t even like to see, let alone experience, in through your left nostril into your heart, where they smash into your ego and attachment, which completely vanish as a result; your ego completely freaks out.

Normally your ego’s attitude is such that if somebody who is not a friend barges uninvited into your house, you freak out: “How dare you come in without knocking?” Compared to your heart, this is nothing! So visualize bringing all sentient beings’ problems and sickness through your left nostril into your heart.

We call this kind of meditation tonglen. Tong means giving; len means taking. And we also say lung wai gyö par cha. Lung means breath: to give and take together with breathing.

Read all of Chapter 9 from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and watch a video of Lama Yeshe offering this teaching:

Watch Lama Yeshe giving this teaching on “Giving and Taking on the Breath”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smggExPi6gI

From the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website, you can order a print copy of Freedom Through Understanding, order an ebook, listen to the audio book, read the book online, access translations, or download a PDF. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe teaching at Royal Holloway College, 1975, London, England. Photo by Dennis Heslop, courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

In 1975 during their first trip to Europe, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a weekend seminar in England, once again demonstrating their charisma and knowledge, and the profound effect of Buddha’s wisdom on Western people. This seminar was published in the book Freedom Through Understanding and covers the purpose of meditation, bodhicitta, the importance of motivation, tonglen and the shortcomings of attachment, among other topics. Produced by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, this is one of the few works that feature both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This short course was also videotaped and is available on the LYWA YouTube channel.

Today we share an excerpt from Chapter 8 from Freedom Through Understanding: “The Shortcomings of Attachment”  by Lama Yeshe:

From Tibetan lamas’ point of view, if your actions don’t change, even though you might think or say, “Attachment is the cause of all my problems,” it’s not really true for you; you haven’t realized it. Mere intellectual comprehension is not realization. It’s worthwhile to understand these things.

If we don’t identify the psychological root of problems we can never cut them off, never rid ourselves of them. In order to overcome an enemy we have to identify that enemy and know where to find him. Otherwise we’re shooting in the dark. Similarly, in order to destroy the root of our miserable energy we have to know exactly where it is; then the antidotes we apply will go to exactly the right spot. Even one atom of antidote will be part of the solution.

But that’s not what we normally do. Normally, our problems are here but we apply the antidote there. Like when things go wrong, we usually blame our family, friends or society. That’s totally misconceived. If we think that the cause of problems is external, there’s no way we’ll ever be able to stop them. In fact, that’s why, from the time we evolved on this earth we’ve never been able to put an end to problems. It’s impossible to do it that way.

Since we now realize that attachment is the cause of all our problems and acting under its influence causes us to create negative actions, we must determine that for the rest of our life we will not allow the actions of our body, speech and mind to follow after this deluded mind.

We have to change our mental attitude, our self-attachment to our ego, I, and to transfer that energy to others. That means we should concern ourselves more with others’ pleasure than always thinking only of I, I, I. We should make the determination, “Right now, for the rest of my life, I’m going to dedicate the energy of my body, speech and mind to others and change my attitude, my self-cherishing thought of attachment – excessive concern for my own pleasure – to greater concern for that of others. From the time I was born until now, all my pleasure is due to others’ kindness. Even my very existence is due to the kindness of other sentient beings; without it I would not exist, I would not have reached even the age of five.”

That’s true. For example, from the time we were born we’ve been drinking milk. It’s not our own milk we’ve been drinking; it’s that of others, it’s others’ energy. Think: this is scientific reality. And we need clothes; without clothes we’d die of cold. We don’t make our own clothes, do we?

Everything that preserves us – food, clothing, everything comes from other sentient beings. So think how others preserve our life and how without them we’d die. Most of us eat meat; without depending on animals, how could we eat meat? Animals are so kind; they give us clothes, meat and milk. Similarly, all the people who work for us one way or another are also kind.

Read all of Chapter 8 from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and watch a video of Lama Yeshe offering this teaching:

Watch Lama Yeshe giving this teaching on “The Shortcomings of Attachment”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxVZfCiC9Eo

From the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website, you can order a print copy of Freedom Through Understanding, order an ebook, listen to the audio book, read the book online, access translations, or download a PDF. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe, Kensington Town Hall, 1975. Photo courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

In 1975 during their first trip to Europe, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a weekend seminar in England, once again demonstrating their charisma and knowledge, and the profound effect of Buddha’s wisdom on Western people. This seminar was published in the book Freedom Through Understanding and covers the purpose of meditation, bodhicitta, the importance of motivation, tonglen and the shortcomings of attachment, among other topics. Produced by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, this is one of the few works that feature both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This short course was also videotaped and is available on the LYWA YouTube channel.

Today we share an excerpt from Chapter 4 from Freedom Through Understanding: “How to Meditate”  by Lama Yeshe:

In order to awaken, or become conscious, we need to practice meditation. We tend to think we’re conscious most of the time but actually we’re not; we’re unconscious. Check up; really check up. But by gradually developing our meditation practice we slowly, slowly integrate our mind with reality.

Also, when we meditate we often encounter obstacles to our practice and experience much trouble and frustration. The fundamental character or absolute nature of our mind is clean clear – we call this nature clear light – but relatively it is obscured by misconceptions and other hindrances that prevent us from seeing reality. It’s like the sky obscured by clouds – when a strong gust of wind comes and blows away the clouds, the underlying clear blue sky is revealed. It’s the same thing with our mind. Therefore, when we try to meditate, we encounter hindrances and lack of clarity and find it very difficult to concentrate single-pointedly on an object. When this happens, instead of getting disappointed we should employ the methods contained in Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism to purify our mind.

When our meditation is not going smoothly we should not push. The mind is like a baby; babies don’t like to be pushed – we have to treat them differently. Instead of pushing them we have to play with them in a psychologically skillful way. Then they’re OK.

Similarly, we have to play a little with our mind. When it becomes impossible to meditate, we shouldn’t push. Instead, we should just leave our mind where it is and do some purification practice. This will decrease obstacles and make our mind more powerful.

Read all of Chapter 4 from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and watch a video of Lama Yeshe offering this teaching:

Watch Lama Yeshe giving this teaching on “How to Meditate”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7q6JA91IcI

From the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website, you can order a print copy of Freedom Through Understanding, order an ebook, listen to the audio book, read the book online, access translations, or download a PDF. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe teaching at Royal Holloway College, 1975, London, England. Photo by Dennis Heslop, courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

In 1975 during their first trip to Europe, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a weekend seminar in England, once again demonstrating their charisma and knowledge, and the profound effect of Buddha’s wisdom on Western people. This seminar was published in the book Freedom Through Understanding and covers the purpose of meditation, bodhicitta, the importance of motivation, tonglen and the shortcomings of attachment, among other topics. Produced by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, this is one of the few works that feature both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This short course was also videotaped and is available on the LYWA YouTube channel.

Today we share an excerpt from Chapter 3 from Freedom Through Understanding: “Making the Most of Your Life.”  

Despite having had many previous lives and having lived many years in this one, if we really check, from the time we were born up to now, we’ll find that we haven’t acted seriously for even one day because most of the time our mind has been completely occupied by uncontrolled thoughts and superstition. So we are very fortunate to have generated the enthusiastic feeling of wanting to help others and ourselves in the highest way possible.

Since we were born we’ve wasted practically every moment of every day, month and year. Instead of making our time worthwhile and using it to bring happiness, we’ve engaged in only useless actions and used our precious life for nothing. At the time, we’ve thought that what we’ve been doing is useful but if we check we’ll see that it really has not been.

Perhaps you’ll disagree; you think that what you’ve done has been worthwhile because you’ve taken care of your life, preserved yourself and made money. But is that fulfilling your human potential? Is that all you can do? If that’s all you can do you’re no better than a cat or a rabbit. Having profound human potential but using your life as an animal does is such a waste of time. You have to realize how incredibly tragic that is.

If you check up deeply to see if, since you were born until now, you’ve done anything that was really worthwhile in bringing you true happiness and a joyful life, do you think you’ll find anything? Check up. Don’t look at others; check yourself. It’s not complicated: you have your body, speech and mind; just these three. Which of their actions have been worthwhile?

I’m going to suggest that most of time your actions of body, speech and mind have produced only frustration and confusion. Check up: how many hours are there in one day? During how much of each of these hours have you been aware? How much of each hour has been positive? Check that way; it’s very simple. The Buddhist way of checking is very scientific. Anybody can do it; we’re not trying to be exclusive. It’s realistic. Check for yourself.

Even though you might say that you’re following a spiritual path or leading a meditator’s life, you’re not serious. It doesn’t matter if you sit in meditation, go to church on Sundays, visit the temple regularly or do any other kind of customary religious activity; that doesn’t mean anything. The actions that you need to do are those that actually lead you to everlasting, peaceful happiness, the truly joyful state, not those that simply bring up and down transitory pleasure. Actions that bounce you up and down are not true Dharma, not true meditation, not true religion – here I can make a definitive statement. Check up: you might think you’re doing something spiritual but is your polluted mind simply dreaming?

Read all of Chapter 3 from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and watch a video of Lama Yeshe offering this teaching:

From the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website, you can order a print copy of Freedom Through Understanding, order an ebook, listen to the audio book, read the book online, access translations, or download a PDF. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe giving a public talk at the Theosophical Society, Adyar Theatre, Sydney, Australia, 1975. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

“On Educating Children,” is a discourse given by Lama Yeshe at Kedron Park Teachers College, Brisbane, Australia, April 29, 1975. In this excerpt, Lama offers advice on how to best educate children on the fundamentals of living in the modern world, and also to foster their abilities and interests and develop them. He stressed that good teachers feel responsibility toward their students and really try to communicate well and understand them.

“The purpose of education is to benefit people. We all know this. However, different countries have their own ideas of what constitutes benefit according to their individual inclinations. What some countries consider to be bad education, other countries consider good. In other words, what makes education good or bad depends on how one interprets good and bad.

“These days, people live in so many different environments, societies and communities—rural, urban, industrial, intellectual and so forth—that education itself has become confused. For a start, no one person can learn every existent technology; that’s obviously impossible.

“Therefore, the decision as to what constitutes a good education depends very much upon personal interest, but ultimately, we have to decide whether what we’re learning benefits us and helps us benefit others. If we’re not clear about this from the beginning, we can embark on one course of study but finish up thinking, ‘Oh, this doesn’t help,’ and drop it. Then try something else but that doesn’t work either; then something else again . . . we go on so many educational trips but eventually finish up empty.

“I think everybody—especially people in the West—should at least receive a basic, general education in things such as writing, mathematics, cooking, gardening and housekeeping. Those things are essential. If we simply focus on theory and technical education and ignore the practicalities, we won’t even be able to make ourselves breakfast. That’s not realistic.

“Life in the modern world demands we know the fundamentals—how to prepare food and how things work. The benefit is security. What use is abstruse technology if we suddenly find ourselves alone? We could die of hunger. Don’t think it couldn’t happen; in this world we can never be sure. And don’t think it’s easy to survive because we have money. Money isn’t everything. Therefore, an education in the basics of human necessity is essential. Studying technology without knowing the fundamentals of survival can be very dangerous.”

“When it comes to teaching others, we have to take into account and foster our students’ abilities and interests and try to develop those qualities in the classroom; if we don’t, the students just get bored or upset. Especially at this time, it’s not wise to teach in an authoritarian, dogmatic way: ‘Sit there! Learn this!’ Children nowadays are very intellectually free and don’t respond well to coercion. So we have to arouse their interest. Skillful teachers know how to make their students interested in the subject being taught, whatever it is; that’s a uniquely human ability. Simply pushing students isn’t just unwise. It doesn’t work.” Read this entire teaching. 

This talk has been published in the LYWA book Knowledge-Wisdom: The Peaceful Path the Liberation. All of the chapters are available to read online. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.
 

Lama Yeshe, Waikanae, New Zealand, 1975. Photo by Ecie Hursthouse, courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935–1984), who founded the FPMT organization with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, was able to translate Tibetan Buddhist teachings into clear ideas that resonated with the Western students he met and taught in the 1970s and ’80s. These teachings by Lama Yeshe continue to profoundly connect with students today. 

This discourse was given by Lama Yeshe in New Zealand on June 14, 1975. Here Lama offers advice on how to understand the different schools and traditions of Buddhism and discusses how different people need different methods. This talk has been published in the LYWA book Knowledge-Wisdom: The Peaceful Path the Liberation which is available in multiple formats.

The nature of emotional pride is such that you go around with your nose in the air. You never want to see what’s in front of you or look down. The antidote is to do prostrations.

When I talk about prostrations, I don’t mean that you prostrate to only the Buddha. As Shantideva said, we can also prostrate to all mother sentient beings by remembering that the basic, fundamental nature of their minds is as equally pure as that of an enlightened being.

Furthermore, doing prostrations doesn’t necessarily mean doing either the full-length or five-point physical ones. If you’re out on a busy city street and suddenly go down on the sidewalk people are going to freak out. Instead of doing that you can simply make mental prostrations. Remember, there are three ways of prostrating: with body, speech and mind.

The Buddha was so skillful. He gave us methods for every situation. So even if you’re on a crowded street and want to make prostrations, instead of putting on a big show and doing them physically, where everybody’s going to think, “What on earth is that?” you can just prostrate mentally.

If you do things with understanding, it’s so worthwhile. If you do them without understanding and then ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” you’ll conclude that you’re regressing instead of advancing. Practicing with understanding is helpful in treating your uncontrolled mind. If you practice like that, everything will become worthwhile.

The same applies to making offerings. We don’t offer food to the Buddha because he’s hungry. We do it as part of training our mind to release emotional miserliness. The way we should look at charity is that no matter what the material value of what we give, the real value of generosity is in what we gain: knowledge-wisdom. Of course, it depends on your attitude. Even if you offer only one dollar you can still gain a lot. Basically, you have to understand the psychology of the various Dharma practices you do, especially those that initially make you uncomfortable.

But everything has meaning. For example, incense symbolizes the pure energy of body, speech and mind, especially pure thoughts. The real essence of incense is within you and the sticks we burn are external symbols of that. The real incense is in your mind. You have to know that, otherwise, when you offer incense you’re just imitating other people you’ve seen doing it, just copying Easterners. That’s not right. The real incense is your pure thought that gives pure vibrations to others.

It’s the same when you’re offering light. External lights have the function of destroying darkness, of making things clear. But the real candlelight is within you—it’s your wisdom. So whenever you offer incense or light you should do so with a dedication like, “May my mind and those of all mother sentient beings be filled with the light of knowledge-wisdom and completely purified of the darkness shadow that makes us totally unconscious and is the cause of all suffering.”

In other words, everything we do that might look like ritual is actually training our mind and freeing us from agitated states and negative impulses. It’s very useful.

Then why do we have all these physical objects on our altars? Buddhists are supposed to renounce material things, but then we put all these statues and paintings up there? That’s kind of strange. Well, we think it’s far preferable to have pictures of holy objects in front of us rather than pictures of fashion models and rock stars on our walls. Those things automatically grab our attention and stimulate attachment. It’s like when we’re in the supermarket and see all these desirable foods and think, “Fantastic! How much money do I have? Oh, not enough, how can I get some?” and then we go, “Mom, Dad, can I have some money please?” “No, you can’t!” and we’re so disappointed.

That’s all visualization. Expert marketers know how to display products in order to trigger our attachment and make us want to buy them. They understand people’s basic psychological energy and what the combination of appealing object and craving desire results in. That association makes us go pam! There’s contact and we go berserk. We lose wisdom and become unconscious.

We have to know this. We think we’re conscious and aware but we’re not. When we’re overwhelmed by attraction and attachment, we actually become unconscious. If you check carefully at such times you’ll find that perhaps at first your mind is very clear, but as attachment takes over, something dark seems to envelop it. Check up. That’s experience. You see, Lord Buddha’s psychology is not about what you believe but what you experience. Go into town right now and see what happens! That’s reality.

And that’s why I always say that Lord Buddha’s teachings are so scientific. They’re very different from Western modes of religious expression. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that Buddhist psychology and teachings may be different from what you were brought up with. They’re not about believing certain things and then going to heaven when you die; they’re not about doing something now and waiting for a long time to experience the result. No! If you act correctly with wisdom right now you can see the result in the next second. It’s so simple.

For example, after you’ve meditated for just half an hour, it’s incredible: you can see other people in a whole different light. And a short morning meditation can make your whole day so peaceful. This is our experience. You don’t need to wait a long time to see results: “I’ve been waiting for realizations and enlightenment for such a long time.” Don’t think like that. Don’t grasp at enlightenment. Just act in your daily life as much as you can. The result will be right there. The result of half an hour’s morning meditation can last all day. Isn’t that beautiful? And you expend almost no energy.

How much do you have to pay to enjoy samsaric pleasures? And they come with much conflict and other complications. You have to know that. While actually, real happiness lies within you. And through meditation you discover that.
That’s why I always say that Lord Buddha’s teaching, Buddhadharma, is so simple. Trying to be happy the materialistic way takes so much energy. In Europe, for example, there’s so much material wealth, but how much effort do you need to expend for it to make you happy? It can be difficult to get a job; earning a decent salary can also be difficult. It’s not easy, even amongst all this material plenty.

It’s really incredible if you compare the benefits of material pleasures to those of meditation. You work at a difficult job and make money, but it can often get complicated, even though your polluted mind thinks, “Oh, I’m happy. I get paid today!” And in between paydays your mind remains in that expectant condition, which really agitates you. On the other hand, if one morning you spend an hour in meditation, you can make your entire day peaceful. How can you buy that? That sort of happiness is beyond material. It’s so simple. Don’t you think that’s simple? Really think about it.

Take, for example, a couple living together. Most of the time their arguments are in their home. These are just ego games. They have no understanding. They want to be happy, they want to live together, but, “Yesterday he hurt me; today I want to hurt him,” and then they just bump heads all day. It’s incredible. So ignorant. They mean well, but the psychology is, “If you hurt me, I have to hurt you back, otherwise you’ll just keep hurting me.” That’s such silly psychology. You know what I mean.

If they understood that real happiness comes from within, from understanding their own true nature, from understanding their partner’s nature, that wouldn’t happen. But they don’t look within; they just look externally. If they understood this, besides seeing the external appearance they would also see each other’s powerful inner beauty and potential purity, and in that way come to respect one another. This would lead to a much better relationship in everyday life.

So, forgetting about the realization of enlightenment for the moment, simply understand that daily meditation can at least bring good vibrations to your family and your home. The better we understand each other, the better we understand human nature, the better our lives will be. All problems, all ego games, come from a lack of understanding. OK, I think I’ve gone off on a tangent!

The material objects you see on the altar and hanging on the walls of this meditation hall, these statues and thangkas, are symbolic. What do they symbolize? Wisdom, or understanding. Tibetan Buddhist psychology would say that these physical objects are talking to you beyond words.

Take my dorje and bell, for example. The person who created them had pure motivation, so they have a certain energy, what we might call “good vibrations.” This energy too communicates with us beyond words.

Similarly with pictorial representations of buddhas, bodhisattvas, realized lamas, yogis and yoginis. Yoginis are sometimes shown as dancing—if you want to dance, realized dancing is OK! Anyway, such art also automatically transmits informational energy to your mind. Spiritual art gives you wisdom vibrations rather than the emotionally ignorant energy that ordinary art conveys.

You can see this even here. I think Westerners find this kind of thing easy to experience. For example, at this seminar you’re all sitting in the meditation posture for long periods of time, whereas at home you might find it difficult to sit like this for even five minutes. You’re surprising yourself: “In my life, I never thought I’d be able to sit this way!” Don’t you think that people new to this tradition might think like that? “I can’t believe I’m sitting cross-legged. I never dreamed I’d be able to do that. But here I am at this meditation course doing it.”

This is partly because of the influence of the Buddha statue on the altar and the thangkas on the walls. You think, “He’s a human being; I’m a human being. He’s sitting like that; I can sit like that.”

Then there’s the female buddha, Tara. She’s an enlightened being with perfect power and perfect knowledge-wisdom in female aspect, in a female body. She’s completely controlled; a female who has attained realizations equal to any male. So when women see her they think, “Wow, if she can become a buddha, so can I.”

Look, I can’t generalize, but I’ve heard many women say, “I can’t control my body; my energy’s too strong.” We always devalue ourselves like that. It’s a weak mind that does so and many women feel their mind is weak. They feel that they need somebody else to depend upon. Without grasping at another person, they feel lonely and lost. This is symptomatic of the weak mind. As long as you’re on this earth, there’s no way to be lonely. You’re surrounded by all living beings. But when people—both men and women—are depressed, they do feel lonely because the lonely mind is unrealistic and emotional. So archetypal images of perfection are part of Lord Buddha’s psychology and are really very helpful.

Tourists come to the East and see Buddha statues and so forth in the temples and think that we believe that these material objects are God: “Buddhists worship graven images.” You can even read this in books. Isn’t that silly? We don’t believe that those material images are Buddha. They’re symbolic. You have to know this, otherwise you’ll get yourself into trouble. Mahayana art is not Buddha, Dharma or Sangha. When we place light, incense, flowers and so forth on the altar we’re not making offerings to the material objects there, we’re making offerings to the Buddha’s mind, his wisdom consciousness.

So it’s very good that you keep images of enlightened beings in your room. Just looking at them can give you control and everlasting peace. They leave positive imprints in your mind; they impart knowledge; they give you teachings. They’re like a fulltime meditation course. So it’s very helpful for you to have holy objects in your room rather than ridiculous samsaric pictures polluting your mind.

Actually, when you go to your friends’ houses you can see what their interests are by the art on their walls and the way they decorate their rooms, because what they do is a projection of their minds. You can see what trip they’re currently on, no matter what they say. People can talk all they want but what they actually do speaks louder than any words.

The way people put their lives together demonstrates whether they’re living with delusion or wisdom because it’s symbolic of their state of mind. You can see what’s going on in their mind because its vibration manifests externally.

However, the characteristic nature of all of Lord Buddha’s teachings and methods is psychology and knowledge-wisdom. And what he taught was not just theoretical but practical and based on experience.

In general, theories and ideas are inadequate if they lack the key of understanding. We need to know how to put them into practice. Because of this, the Tibetan tradition has always emphasized the importance of passing the experiential lineage, not just the theories, from guru to disciple, and in this way the living teachings of the Buddha have come down to us today.

There are four different schools of Tibetan Buddhism but their similarities are far greater than their differences. They all contain the complete methods for reaching enlightenment, from beginning to end, and all practice tantric yoga, the Vajrayana. But while they all have the same methods, some emphasize certain meditation techniques over others. That’s the main difference. But they’re all equally Mahayana and all practice both Paramitayana and Vajrayana.

While the Hinayana, the Southern School of Buddhism, contains neither the practices of the Paramitayana nor those of the Vajrayana, it in no way contradicts the Northern, or Mahayana, schools. Lord Buddha sometimes said “yes” and sometimes said “no.”

We can understand what he meant by looking at how a skilled physician treats a patient. When somebody is sick the treatment can vary during the course of the illness. For example, at first the doctor may recommend fasting, but later, as the person recovers, the doctor may recommend meat or other heavy foods. When that happens, you don’t get angry with the doctor for contradicting himself: “First you said no, now you’re saying yes! Do you know what you’re doing?” No—rather you think how kind and wise he is.

It’s the same thing with Lord Buddha’s teachings. Different people need different methods. For example, I’m a monk. I took my vows on the basis of my own decision. Strictly interpreted, according to the Vinaya rules I’m not supposed to look at women’s faces. I can look at men but not women. The Mahayana view qualifies this. For monks, just looking at women isn’t the problem; it’s looking at them with an attached, grasping mind; with craving, emotional desire. That’s what disturbs you. You can’t say that just looking automatically means that you’re sick. It depends on your mind.

Similarly, Lord Buddha never said that monks can’t touch women, just like that. He never proscribed any actions without explaining why and under what conditions. Lord Buddha’s Vinaya psychology is incredible. He explained in minute detail with what kind of mind, what kind of attitude, you should avoid doing this or that. He never, ever said, “You can’t do that because I said so.” There’s a profound psychology behind all his teachings.

So, monks cannot touch women with craving desire and nuns can’t touch men with craving desire. Doing so makes you lose conscious awareness. That’s the danger. If you have the power to stop your finger from burning, you can stick it into a fire. But if you don’t and your finger will burn, why stick it into a fire? That’s all Lord Buddha is saying. Anyway, whether or not something will burn when it’s put into a fire depends on what kind of material it is. It’s not automatic that whatever’s put into a fire will burn.

So you can see that there’s no contradiction between the Hinayana and Mahayana schools of Buddhism. And with respect to the four Tibetan schools, there’s no such thing as “this one takes this kind of precept, that one takes a different kind.” All four schools take the same precepts.

Also, it’s not necessary that everybody who wants to practice Buddhism takes ordination as a monk or nun. The Mahayana offers people many different ways of practicing Dharma. In particular, the Mahayana does not emphasize external signs of practice; those are not important. What matters is mental attitude. On the other hand, the Hinayana, or Theravada, school does emphasize physical actions—how you act and so forth. Some of their rules are very strict and definitely needed. But none of this is contradictory.

Much of the time our mind is running amok, like a mad elephant, so sometimes we need rules to keep it in check. Rules can be incredibly helpful. Since this is just a weekend seminar, don’t worry! We don’t have time for too many rules. Normally, when we conduct a one-month course, the students take the eight Mahayana precepts ordination daily for the last two weeks. They find the experience very helpful. I’m not just saying this; it’s what they’ve told me. We’ve been doing this for the past few years and I’ve been watching how the students react, and that’s what they say. It’s an incredible experience.

One of the eight precepts is to not eat after the midday meal until the next day. At the one-month course we just did in Australia, one woman unconsciously ate an apple in the evening. Then, after she had eaten it she remembered that she had taken that precept and kind of freaked out: “Oh, no! I took a vow not to eat and now I’ve broken it,” and came to me crying to confess. Normally she’s very conscious, but if you don’t test your mind, sometimes you don’t really know how aware you are. You think you are aware but you actually do all these unconscious actions. When you take a vow, you watch your mind and increase your awareness of what you’re thinking, saying and doing. You notice how many polluted things you unconsciously do. Often we don’t even notice what we’re doing. Most of the time we eat, drink and talk unconsciously. So the precepts help us notice.

Some people think that vows are just something you promise: “I promise not to do that.” It’s not that simple. Lord Buddha said that his vows should be given only to people who really want to take them. They should not be given to people who don’t understand what the vows are, how they work or why they’re given. Lord Buddha’s psychology is that the wish for the vow must come from the person who’s taking it, not from someone who says, “I want to give you these vows.”

These vows, whichever ones you’re taking, are part of the method of Buddhism. We sentient beings are psychologically sick, and precepts are Buddhism’s mental hospital [Lama holds his outstretched fingers to his head, suggesting a cage]. We can see that when we voluntarily put our unconscious mind into this situation, it’s a great test for our mind. But it’s not going to work if it’s done forcefully, if someone compels us to take ordination.

Otherwise, if we’re not tested, it’s difficult to control our mind. Our unconscious energy sort of becomes universal, bigger than the whole world. Of course, it’s only mental, not physical, so we can’t see it. Anyway, you have to understand what Lord Buddha taught and why you want to learn it. I’m not saying you have to do this. I’m just suggesting you try to understand how Buddhist psychology works, how Lord Buddha’s teachings elevate the human mind into enlightenment.

If you know the whole scope of his teachings—study, reading of the sutras, meditation and so forth—your understanding grows so comfortably. Even if you don’t practice, everything you read can bring you to, “Oh, this is fantastic. This really speaks to me.” You can see how all the teachings relate to you rather than, “Oh, this is ridiculous. This is not for me; it’s for somebody else.” In that way you end up with nothingness.

And you can’t take everything the Buddha said literally. For example, as I mentioned, the Vinaya rules state that a monk cannot touch a woman’s body. So what happens if a monk’s mother falls down. Can he not help her up? Or like in the story I told before, when the monk carried that female leper over the river. Even though he wanted to help her, if he’d thought, “No, I can’t touch a woman” and left her there, would that have been the right thing to do? That would have been silly.

If you study the teachings correctly, you’ll see how they relate with your own mind. That is really fantastic. That is extremely helpful.

Knowledge-Wisdom includes new material and complete discourses edited by Nicholas Ribush and published for the first time. Go to the Contents page to find links to all the teachings published in this book and now available online.

You can find additional teachings, discourses, and advice from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website

Through timely advice, news stories, and updates, FPMT.org shares the wisdom culture inspired and guided by the teachings of FPMT founders, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. 

In 1971, Lama Thubten Yeshe gave a series of talks at Kopan Monastery, in Nepal, at the end of the month-long Kopan meditation course. As Christmas drew near, Western students were feeling a little out of place and unsure of what to do with their feelings of “missing out on Christmas.” Lama Yeshe, sensing their confused feelings, had them gather in the meditation hall where he talked about Christmas and Buddhist practice. The talks Lama Yeshe gave from this period are collected into the book Silent Mind, Holy Mind. 

First published in 1978 by Wisdom Publications, the book has been out of print for many years. With the kind permission of Wisdom’s director, Daniel Aitken, the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive has created the second edition (2024), which includes the original collection of talks given by Lama Yeshe at Kopan Monastery on Christmas Eve, as well as another Christmas talk and a Cistercian priest’s tribute to Lama after he passed away in 1984. Please read the thoughtful preface to this collection by editor Nick Ribush. 

Here we share an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Silent Mind, Holy Mind, which is from a talk given by Lama Yeshe in 1982 at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Pomaia, Italy. We are also so pleased to share a joyous video of this teaching: 

Somehow, we’re still alive and aware enough to remember how long it is since Jesus was born. It was one thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two years ago, right? And I myself am fortunate enough to have been born in the Shangri-la of Tibet, to have come into contact with the world of Western dakas and dakinis, and to have this chance to acknowledge the history of the holy guru, Jesus.

I’ve found that having a little understanding of Jesus’s life helps me develop my own path, but it’s not easy to fully understand the profound events in Jesus’s life. It’s quite difficult. Of course, the superficial events of his life are fairly easy to understand, but there’s not enough room in our mind to comprehend his high bodhisattva actions. Even when Lord Jesus and Lord Buddha were here on earth it was very difficult for ordinary people to understand who they really were. At that time, very few people understood.

Today I was looking at the Bible, at the Gospel of John in particular, and he was talking about the miracles Jesus performed and how few people understood the profundity of his liberated mind that allowed him to perform those miracles.

Anyway, whenever I’m at a meditation course such as this at Christmas time, I like to talk about this kind of thing. But you need to understand that when I do, I’m not trying to be diplomatic. I don’t need to negotiate my relationship with you in that way. It’s just that from the bottom of my heart, I sincerely feel and believe that simply to remember Jesus’s life is an incredible opportunity.

In a way, of course, it doesn’t matter where people come from— East or West—or what color they are, those who eliminate their self-cherishing thought and give their life for others are exceptional human beings. For that reason, I’m happy just to bring Jesus to mind and reflect on what he did.

Also, to some extent I’m responsible for my Western students’ psychological wellbeing, so if we’re going to bring Buddhism to the West, we need to do it in a healthy way rather than introduce it as some exotic new trip. We don’t need new trips—we need to do something constructive, something worthwhile. Anything truly worthwhile does not diminish any light; it only enhances it.

And with respect to psychological health, we’re part of the environment and the environment is part of us. Therefore, those of us who were born in the West should not reject the Christian environment into which we were born. We should consider ourselves lucky to have been born into a Christian society and to have the wisdom to understand what that means for our mind. Such understanding is very useful if we’re to remain healthy. Especially these days, when there’s dangerous revolutionary technology everywhere and the world is overwhelmed with fighting and war, we really need to actively remember the lives of our unselfish historical predecessors.

So, John was explaining how God sent Jesus to us as a witness to the truth, but most unfortunately, some ignorant people failed to recognize who he was or understand what he was teaching and killed him. In my opinion, the Buddhist point of view is that Jesus was a bodhisattva, not only in the sense that he had realized bodhicitta and overcome selfishness, but in the sense that, as a performer of miracles, he was a saint, like Tilopa and Naropa or, to name a living example, His Holiness Zong Rinpoche—somebody completely free of superstition who sometimes instinctively does strange things that the rest of us don’t understand.

For example, John says that one day Jesus was near the water when a woman came by to fill her pot. Jesus said to her, “How can you satisfy your thirst with water? It’s water that makes you thirsty in the first place.” He told her that since it’s water that makes her thirsty, how can water be the solution to her thirst. It’s some kind of reverse thinking. Who can understand that? It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

What he meant was that only spiritual water can truly slake your thirst. So you can see, the actual meaning is somehow beyond words. The woman’s taking water; he says, “Why are you doing that? It’s not going to solve your problem of being thirsty.” It’s crazy talk. Nowadays we’d probably hit somebody who spoke to us like that. But luckily, back then Jesus didn’t get beaten up for talking in that way.

John also said that since Jesus was born from God, his disciples were also derived from God’s energy. That’s similar to what the Buddhist teachings say when they explain that all shravakas and pratyekabuddhas are born from Shakyamuni Buddha. The sense here is that such followers are born from the teacher’s wisdom truth speech. Through internalizing that, they discover the truth for themselves and become such realized beings.

Philosophically, of course, we can say that Buddhism doesn’t accept that God is the source of all human beings and other things. But from another point of view, we can say that Buddhism doesn’t contradict that statement either. For example, where does the human realm come from? The Buddha said that the human realm is caused by good karma. That’s true. If the upper realms do not come from good karma, then where do they come from? Then, from the Buddhist point of view, all good karma comes from the Buddha…or, you can say, God. Therefore, the human realm comes from God, from Buddha. Because of the Buddha’s holy speech, sentient beings create good karma. I want you to be clean clear about this.

Still, philosophically you can argue this point one way or the other. It depends on how you interpret it. You can interpret the statement negatively or positively. Actually, you can do anything with philosophy.

Now, concerning God, what is the different between Buddha and God? Today, I’m going to say that according to Buddhism and
Christianity, the qualities of the Buddha and the qualities of God are the same. People always worry about creation. “God is the creator of everything; Buddha is the creator of everything.” Does that mean the Buddha created negativity? Well, the Buddha said that ultimately, there’s no positive, there’s no negative.

Tibetans address this issue with the example of a river. When you’re standing on one bank of the river you call the opposite bank “the other side.” When you’re on that bank you call this one “the other side.” There’s this side and that side, that side and this side. It’s interdependent. Without each other, this side and that side wouldn’t exist. In the same way, if positive doesn’t exist, negative
can’t exist either. In other words, negative comes from positive, positive comes from negative.

Then maybe you’re going to argue, “Well, if God is the creator, if God is the cause of everything, such as organic things like plants, then how can God be permanent?” People say God is permanent—then how can something that’s permanent produce
something impermanent, like a plant? The principal cause of an impermanent phenomenon has to also be impermanent.

That sort of argument comes from Buddhists, so I’m going to debate with them: “Then how can you say shravakas and pratyekabuddhas are born from Buddha? Buddha is permanent.” The answer to that is that such statements are not meant to be taken literally. In response to that, I’m going to say, “Well, God can be the same as Buddha, in the sense of a personal being. God can be a person in the same way Shakyamuni Buddha was.” It’s not as if a permanent God is sitting up there somewhere. God can be something organic, a personal being with whom you can personally relate.

I tell you, philosophers always try to make everything very special. “God. Buddha. God is this; Buddha is that.” They put God and Buddha up on some kind of untouchable pedestal, so ordinary people can’t relate to them. They make it impossible to understand the nature of God, the nature of Buddha. That’s stupid. They just create more obstacles for people.

Then human beings, with their limited minds, try to put cream on God, chocolate on God, like with a knife. They put their own garbage on God. That’s all wrong; definitely wrong. I truly believe that sometimes philosophy can become an obstacle to people really understanding the nature of God or Buddha. Maybe I’m a revolutionary, but I reject many of the philosophical positions on these matters.

However, personifying God or Buddha doesn’t contradict their omnipresent nature. We can talk about the personal qualities of Heruka, for example, but at the same time, he is universal and omnipresent. We need to understand that.

Excerpted from Silent Mind, Holy Mind, forthcoming from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, edited by Jon Landaw and Nicholas Ribush. Printed copy and ebook of the new edition of this text will be available mid-January 2024. Until then, you can read excerpts from this book online or download a free PDF. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe in Stockholm, Sweden, September 1983. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Universal Love is a collection of Lama Yeshe’s teachings on the yoga method of Maitreya, which he taught at Maitreya Institute, Holland, in 1981. Also included are some introductory lectures on Buddhism from Lama’s 1975 teachings in the USA. 

In Appendix 1 of this collection, ” An Explanation of the Shunyata Mantra and a Meditation on Emptiness” Lama Yeshe discusses the mantra OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHO SARVA DHARMA SVABHAVA SHUDDHO HAM and provides a powerful meditation on emptiness. 

An Explanation of the Shunyata Mantra 

The main body of the yoga meditation begins with the shunyata mantra, OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHO SARVA DHARMA SVABHAVA SHUDDHO HAM.

First, it’s significant that the words of this mantra are the original Sanskrit—just hearing or reciting them imparts great blessings.

Also, this mantra contains a profound explanation of the pure, fundamental nature of both human beings and all other existent phenomena. It means that everything is spontaneously pure—not relatively, of course, but in the absolute sense. From the absolute point of view, the fundamental quality of human beings and the nature of all things is purity.

We need to understand what the mantra means by “nature,” or “natural.” Much of the time we are unnatural; we go against our nature. Our ego tries to be clever and intelligent; it’s always dreaming up ways to generate hatred, anger and desire, but that’s bad, negative intelligence. It creates an artificial self and then believes that this artificial self is the real me: “This is me; look how beautiful I am.” We present an artificial emanation to ourselves, believe that this false image is real, and then present ourselves to others in that way.

As long as we’re on this kind of psychological ego trip we can never be natural. In order to touch our fundamental nature we have to go beyond our false self. When we do, we touch purity.

Thus the shunyata mantra also shows that the self-pity wrong conception that constantly repeats in our mind—“I’m hopeless, I’m impure, I’m a bad person, I’m evil, I can’t do anything, I can’t help myself, I can’t help others”—is completely deluded and an unnatural way to think. In other words, Lord Buddha’s philosophy and psychology teach us that we should not believe that we are totally negative or sinful by nature. That’s absolutely incorrect. Our fundamental nature is pure. The artificial cloud projected by our ego is not our nature; it’s just something fabricated by our intellectual ego. Therefore, we should disregard this wrong view and just be natural, as we are.

Let me give you an example of how we’re not natural. Look at how people have changed through the history of human evolution. Women have changed their image; men have changed the way they work. Have you noticed? I have. I don’t look at the world from only the religious point of view; I observe human history, too. This kind of change explains the generation gap: old people don’t understand the way young people act. They look at them and think, “What on earth is that?” Young people look at the elderly and think they’re out of touch. They see their peers acting and dressing in a certain way, believe that that’s the best way to be, and adopt a new kind of emanation. But it’s completely artificial, not at all natural. Therefore, through understanding the fundamental nature of the human being, we should try to be natural.

The shunyata mantra shows the positive reality of what a human is. Why should we have only a negative self-image? That’s just ego. And that’s why Buddhism never has anything good to say about the ego. From our point of view, the ego is always bad because all it brings is suffering. And that’s why we practice meditation—it’s the way we transcend artificial thought, gain peaceful tranquility and touch our fundamental reality.

Reciting the shunyata mantra helps us cut the conceptions that lead us to misery, such as ideas of permanence and the inherent existence of the self. Such conceptions should be cut. If they are not completely eradicated they just build up; they diminish today and tomorrow recur. We have no control. We suppress something here, it comes out there; we suppress something there, it comes out here. Sublimating problems is no solution.

Anyway, whether or not you recite the shunyata mantra, the important thing to understand is that the self-pity image of yourself to which you cling does not exist. I could easily explain this in a detailed, philosophical way but the simple approach is to look at how you hold yourself today—“I am that-this”—and compare that with how you held yourself last year. Do you hold yourself the same way or has your self-conception changed? It’s actually very difficult for that to change—we always feel that the “me” of today is exactly the same as the “me” of last year. But of course, that’s wrong, both relatively and absolutely.

First of all, things are constantly changing in the shortest fraction of a second. There’s no way that the Mr. Jones of today can be exactly the same as the Mr. Jones of yesterday. It’s just not possible. And when you clearly see the way in which you hold a permanent self-image, all you can do is laugh at yourself. It’s just so nonsensical. You believe that you’re the same person you were ten years ago. That’s what Lord Buddha meant when he said that we’re deluded, deluded, deluded!

Deluded means holding and hanging on to nonsensical conceptions and hallucinated projections of ourselves and as long as we don’t eradicate this cause of all problems, we’re not doing a good job. We can meditate for twenty or thirty years but if we don’t touch the root of problems, if we don’t shake our ego, if all we do is make it more beautiful and solid, we’re not doing a good job at all.

What we need to do is to shake our samsara, the root of ego, the way our ego conception holds things. When we shake the Mt. Meru of our ego, our entire samsaric mandala collapses. That’s a real earthquake.

Lord Buddha’s teaching on universal reality is so profound. It shows us the best way to be healthy by shattering all our concepts and illusions. He said, “Even if you hold concepts of me, the Buddha, you’re still trapped in samsara.”

The so-called religious practitioners of today are going to run to their guru saying, “You’re a fantastic guru, I love you; please love me.” They’re going to want their self-existent guru to love their self-existent selves. That’s their ego at work. If people had run up to the Buddha like that he’d have told them to get lost. That’s beautiful. Lord Buddha didn’t want people to be hung up grasping at anything, much less him and his doctrine. He said that such people were foolish; that that was no way to be healthy. He said even if we’re attached to the bodhisattva path, the six perfections, the tantric path—any Buddhist philosophy—we’re trapped.

It’s very simple. Lord Buddha made no exceptions. He said that we should grasp at neither samsaric nor religious phenomena, not even Buddhist philosophy. His aim was universal health.

We also find that many gurus are attached to their disciples and want their disciples to be attached to them. That’s totally wrong, too. Gurus should not be attached to their disciples; disciples should not be attached to their guru. True spiritual practitioners should not be attached to any person, doctrine or philosophy. It’s unhealthy. The Buddha taught so that we might also become buddha: healthy, eternally happy and free of all concepts, misery, doctrine and bondage. That’s all he wanted.

Therefore we have to recognize the falsity of the conception of the permanent, concrete self of last year that we’re clinging to right now and break it down; we have to see how our ego-grasping creates an atmosphere of ignorance within which we then grasp at sense pleasures, which tantalize and trick us by their dancing in the dark.

This shunyata mantra is most profound: “All existent phenomena in the universe and I are of one reality.” At the moment, our ego divides us from other phenomena. It says, “You are this, this, this; I am that, that, that.” It keeps us from getting close to even our loved ones. We spend our whole life with another person but never get really close because of the games our ego plays. Our ego prevents us from understanding one another.

The mantra finishes with, “That is me,” HAM. “All existent phenomena in the universe and I are of one reality and that is me; I am that.” This signifies divine pride. Through experiencing shunyata we experience a kind of unity of self and other, like pouring milk into milk. When you mix two lots of milk they become indistinguishable from one another. That is the beauty of the nature of shunyata—understanding, experiencing or realizing it makes our dualistic mind vanish. Dual means two; relatively speaking, you and I are dual. But from the ultimate point of view, when I realize my universal nature and yours, we become indistinguishable.

People talk about racism: it’s a bad thing, we should do away with it; many people have been killed as a result of racism. From the Buddhist point of view, without destroying the dualistic ego there’s no way to eliminate racism; it’s too deeply rooted within. So until we discover the reality of universal unity, any talk of racism disappearing is a joke. It’s just not possible.

However, Lord Buddha gave precise, practical teachings on overcoming duality that we can implement in our everyday life. That’s the beauty of being human; that’s why from the Buddhist point of view, humans are beautiful. In the relative world we can practice charity and so forth but we can also transcend the relative world; we’re capable of both functioning in the relative world and going beyond it into the absolute.

Experiencing Emptiness

From the practical point of view, tantric techniques help us gain direct experience of shunyata. The usual way to do this is to first visualize the deity that you are practicing—Maitreya, for example—in space in front of you, seeing this deity as your guru, a buddha or a bodhisattva, depending upon your level of understanding. A laser-like beam of radiant white light emanates from Maitreya’s heart and shoots into your heart, transforming all the energy of the self-pity image you have of yourself into radiant white light. This white light image of yourself then gradually dissolves, becoming smaller and smaller until it completely disappears into the space of non-duality. Then, with complete awareness, you concentrate single-pointedly on that.

This technique for experiencing emptiness epitomizes the tantric approach. Lord Buddha taught tantra so that we could not only understand emptiness intellectually but also to experience it directly.

If you want to practice this technique right now, do it as follows. First, close your eyes. We meditate with our eyes closed because, from the Buddhist point of view, sense perception is no good—the moment we open our eyes we’re assailed by dualistic impressions. So close your eyes and visualize Maitreya in the space in front of you. As if magnetically attracted, a laser beam of radiant white light shoots out of his heart into yours, instantly burning up your entire concrete self-image. This nuclear energy transforms your body into radiant white light. It gets smaller and smaller, dissolves into atoms, neutrons…and completely disappears into selflessness. Remain in this state, fully aware, and just experience it without any intellectualization; just let go.

Your normal, ego-conceived self-image disappears. Think strongly that it has completely gone. Let go.

Think, “My self-pity image of myself is universal reality.” Feel this, fully aware; let go without intellectualization.

Think, “In the great universal reality of emptiness there’s no form, no color, no substantial physical energy.”

“The view and experience of non-duality is great peace. This is the experience of enlightenment.”

This whole book is available for free and a download of it all is now available. 

You can find additional teachings, discourses, and advice from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Yeshe, Yucca Valley, California, US, 1977. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Universal Love is a collection of Lama Yeshe’s teachings on the yoga method of Maitreya, which he taught at Maitreya Institute, Holland, in 1981. Also included are some introductory lectures on Buddhism from Lama’s 1975 teachings in the USA. 

In Chapter 3 of this collection, “Compassion and Emptiness” Lama Yeshe discusses the importance of analyzing the actions of our body, speech, and mind; an overview of the lamrim and bodhicitta; and how all of our problems come from ego and attachment. A lively (and humorous!) Q & A session follows the teaching. 

Compassion and Emptiness

The most important thing those of us seeking enlightenment can do is to thoroughly analyze the actions of our body, speech and mind. What determines whether our actions are positive or negative, moral or immoral, is the motivation behind them, the mental attitude that impels us to act. It’s mainly mental attitude that determines whether actions are positive or negative.

Sometimes we’re confused as to what’s positive and what’s negative; we don’t know what morality is or why we should follow it. Actually, it’s very simple; we can check up scientifically. Moral actions are those that derive from a positive mental attitude; immoral actions are the opposite.

For example, when we talk about Hinayana and Mahayana it seems that the difference is philosophical or doctrinal, but when we examine it from the practical level we find that although literally yana means vehicle—something that takes you from where you are to where you want to go—here, this internal vehicle refers to mental attitude.

The practitioner who, having clearly understood the confused and suffering nature of samsara, seeks liberation from cyclic existence for himself rather than enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings has the mental attitude of self-concern and doesn’t have time to look at other mother sentient beings’ problems: “My problems are the greatest problem; I must free myself from them once and for all.” That kind of mental attitude, seeking realization of nirvana for oneself alone, is called Hinayana.

In Mahayana, maha means great and, as above, yana means internal vehicle, so what makes this vehicle great? Once more, yana implies mental attitude and here we call it bodhicitta—the determination to escape from the control of self-attachment and obsession with the welfare of “I, I, I” and reach enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.⁶

We often say “I want enlightenment” but if we’re not careful our spiritual view and practice can become almost materialistic. However, those who truly have the innermost enlightenment attitude of bodhicitta seek enlightenment only for the sake of others and thus become true Mahayanists. Those who seek self-realization out of concern for only their own samsaric problems are Hinayanists.

Why do we call these attitudes vehicles? A vehicle is something that transports you—in the case of the Hinayana, to liberation; in the case of the Mahayana, to enlightenment.

We talk a lot about Hinayana this, Mahayana that. We can explain verbally what these vehicles are, but actually, we have to understand them at a much deeper level. It can be that we’re a person who talks about being a Mahayanist but is, in fact, a Hinayanist. What you are isn’t determined by what you talk about but by your level of mind. That’s the way to distinguish Mahayanists from those who aren’t.

However, the way the lam-rim is set up is that it explains the whole path; it begins with the Hinayana and continues on through the Mahayana in order to gradually lead students all the way to enlightenment. It also demonstrates the step-by-step way practitioners have to proceed. The realistic way to practice is to follow the path as laid out in the lam- rim. You can’t skip steps and jump ahead, thinking you’re too intelligent for the early stages. Also, in order to experience heartfelt concern for the happiness of others instead of always putting yourself first, you have to start by understanding your own problems. This experience is gained in the beginning stages of the path.

There’s a prayer ⁷ that says,

Just as I have fallen into the sea of samsara,
So have all mother migratory beings.
Please bless me to see this, train in supreme bodhicitta
And bear the responsibility of freeing migratory beings.

It means that first we have to see that we ourselves are drowning in the ocean of samsaric suffering; only then can we truly appreciate the situation others are in. Then, by seeing that, we should not only wish to relieve them of their suffering but also take personal responsibility for their liberation and enlightenment; we must generate the determination to lead all sentient beings to enlightenment by ourselves alone. This is the attitude that we call bodhicitta.

Actually, what is bodhicitta? It’s what this verse explains. It’s not a situation of becoming aware of your own suffering, seeing that others are also immersed in it and then generating some kind of emotional sorrow, “Oh, that’s terrible; how can I possibly help them?” That’s not bodhicitta.

It’s true that we suffer from the problems of ego and attachment and that all sentient beings are in the same situation of confusion leading to samsaric problems. However, seeing that and getting emotionally upset—“Oh, poor sentient beings, but what can I do? I have no method”—is not bodhicitta.

If you get too emotionally worked up over sentient beings’ suffering you can even go crazy. Instead of your insights bringing you wisdom they bring you more hallucination; you pump yourself up, “I’m completely confused and negative, the world is full of suffering, I have no reason for living. I might as well slash my wrists and end it all.”

It’s possible to have this kind of reaction to seeing universal suffering. If you’re not careful you might feel that this distorted compassion is bodhicitta. That’s a total misconception. Bodhicitta requires tremendous wisdom; it’s not based on emotional sorrow. Bodhicitta is the enlightened attitude that begins with seeing that all sentient beings, including you, have the potential to attain enlightenment. Before, you might have felt, “Oh, what can I do to help all sentient beings? I have no method,” but when you see the possibility of leading them to enlightenment, a door somehow opens in your mind and instead of feeling suffocated and emotionally bothered, you feel inspired. Therefore, in the verse I quoted, bodhicitta is described as supreme, perfect or magnificent.

So there are two things we need in order to develop bodhicitta. One is, as it says, “Just as I have fallen into the sea of samsara.” First we have to investigate and understand our own samsaric nature. When we realize that all our wrong conceptions and suffering come from the ego, we can extend that experience to others: “So have all mother migratory beings.” Then, when we see our own potential for enlightenment, we see that all sentient beings have the same potential and take personal responsibility for leading them to enlightenment by attaining it ourself. This intention is bodhicitta; when the two thoughts—attaining enlightenment and others’ welfare—come together simultaneously in the one mind, that’s bodhicitta.

Seeing the possibility of leading all mother sentient beings to enlightenment and taking personal responsibility for doing so is very important. It automatically releases attachment and at the same time your actions naturally benefit others without your having to think about it.

Many people think that bodhicitta is a dualistic mind and therefore somehow contradictory because the Buddha said that enlightened beings have completely released all dualistic minds; they can’t understand why we would purposely cultivate a dualistic mind. Some people engage in this kind of philosophical debate.

However, a mind perceiving a dualistic view is not necessarily totally negative. For example, when we begin to understand the nature of samsara, impermanence, emptiness and so forth, without first cultivating a dualistic view of these topics it’s impossible eventually to realize them beyond the dualistic view.

It’s very hard to transcend duality. Sometimes you can be experiencing a kind of unity but still find it has a dualistic component. The dualistic view is very subtle. Even a tenth level bodhisattva who has gained complete understanding of emptiness still has a slight level of subtle dualistic view.

Also, conception and perception of dualistic view are two different things. You can demonstrate this for yourself by compressing one eyeball slightly and looking at a single light bulb: conceptually, you know for certain that there’s only one light bulb there, but what you see is two. The difference between conception and perception of dualistic view is like that. Therefore, when you first experience the wisdom realizing emptiness, you have the right conception but you still perceive things dualistically.

The reason we have not reached enlightenment since beginningless time is because our relative mind has relentlessly perceived things in a mistaken, dualistic way. The only unenlightened mind that does not see things dualistically is that of the arya bodhisattva in meditative equipoise on emptiness. Everything else is dualistic.

We often feel that analytical meditation is too hard because we have to expend a lot of intellectual energy checking this, checking that, and conclude it would be better just to stop thinking altogether, to completely empty our mind. That’s just ego. How can you stop thinking? Thought runs continuously, like an automatic watch. Whether you’re asleep or under the influence of drugs, thought is always there. Your stomach can be empty but not your mind.

From the perspective of Tibetan lamas, everything that sentient beings’ relative minds perceive is not in accordance with reality. So where does this idea of the mind being empty of intellectual thought come from?

The experience of emptiness is not an intellectual one. If it were, all you’d have to do to experience it would be to fabricate it intellectually, “Oh, this is emptiness, I’m here,” and then you’d feel, “Wow, now I’m experiencing emptiness.” But of course, that’s simply a polluted, deluded, wrong conception mind. It really takes time to experience emptiness. Nevertheless, there are degrees of experience. But for beginners, it’s impossible to experience emptiness intellectually; it’s beyond the intellect.

As spiritual seekers we face two dangerous extremes. One is over-emotionality: “I’m suffering, others are suffering, oh, it’s too much, God help us!” Seeing everything as terrible is too emotional. The other extreme is over-rejectionism: “Nothing exists.” You can’t reject the reality of your own suffering… but through skillful wisdom and practice you can free yourself from it.

What we need to do is follow a middle path between the extremes of seeing everything with too much ignorant emotion as suffering and too much intellectualization as non-existent. But that middle path is very difficult to take.

Therefore Lama Tsongkhapa always advocated the simultaneous development of method and wisdom in order to realize enlightenment and negotiate the two extremes: that of no wisdom and emotional spiritual misery and that of over-emphasis on emptiness and rejection of morality and so forth. Method and wisdom have to be developed simultaneously.

Method means bodhicitta. And not just the words, “Bodhicitta is wonderful!” We have to practice it the way the lam-rim explains. If you don’t have a perfect method for developing bodhicitta it will simply remain in your mind as a good idea. Therefore, if you do have a way of developing bodhicitta, you are extremely fortunate. Shantideva and Chandrakirti both explained how to practice bodhicitta, and based on their teachings Lama Tsongkhapa elaborated on how to actualize it in his.

One of the methods especially emphasized by Shantideva was that of equalizing and exchanging self and others [Tib: dag-shen nyam-je]: changing attachment to one’s own happiness to attachment to the happiness of others. For countless lives we have always been obsessed with our own pleasure and have completely neglected that of others. This beginningless focus on our own happiness to the exclusion of that of others is called “self-cherishing.” So we have to totally change this attitude to one of greater concern for others’ welfare than our own.

Actually, this thought is extremely powerful; just generating it automatically destroys the ego. For example, if somebody asks us to serve tea to a visitor, resentment immediately arises within us. We serve the tea, but unhappily. As soon as we’re asked, the buzz of irritation starts in our heart. It’s amazing: we can’t even be happy to give somebody a cup of tea.

The person who changes attachment to self to attachment to others doesn’t have that buzz of irritation in his heart. Without even having to think about it, he’s automatically happy to serve others. Psychologically, that’s very helpful—it stops the pain of self-attachment from arising in our heart.

At the start of our practice, we beginners need tremendous understanding and strong intellectual determination because for countless lives we’ve instinctively thought, “My pleasure is the most important pleasure there is.” Every minute, every second, that thought is there, even if it’s not at the intellectual level. Attachment goes way beyond the intellect and is very well developed in our mind.

In order to destroy the instinctive experiences of attachment and self-cherishing we need to be strongly dedicated to the happiness of others; we do it not through the use of artificial force but by realizing that even the pain of losing our best friend comes from attachment. Nevertheless, even if this best friend asks us for a cup of tea, the buzz of self-attachment can still stir in our heart. It’s incredible.

So we have to think, “Attachment has been a problem in all my beginningless lifetimes and it’s still my real enemy. If I had to name my worst enemy, attachment would be it, because it hurts me all the time and destroys all my pleasure. For countless lives I have been concerned with just my own pleasure, which only results in misery. I must change my attitude from concern for my own pleasure to that of other mother sentient beings. Guru Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment through concern for other mother sentient beings and helping them but because I’ve been on the attachment trip since beginningless time, I’m still totally confused.”

Those who really want to realize enlightenment have to forget their own pleasure and completely devote themselves to that of others. That’s the most important thing. It’s actually a matter of psychology. At first glance you might think that this is just intellectual thought but if you really sincerely concern yourself with others’ pleasure and forget your own, automatically your selfish motivation is released and you have less anger. That’s because anger and hatred come from the selfish motivation that is concerned with only one’s own pleasure. Don’t think about this from simply the philosophical standpoint; check up through your own everyday experience.

For that reason, Nagarjuna said, “All positive, moral actions come from concern for others’ pleasure. Everything immoral and negative comes from selfish attachment.”

So that’s clear, isn’t it? We don’t just make this stuff up philosophically. It’s scientific experience. Check your everyday life: ever since you were born you’ve been dealing with other human beings. You can’t live without involvement with other people; it’s impossible—unless you become Milarepa. But even if you do, you won’t be Milarepa forever.

So bodhicitta is very practical. You don’t have to intellectualize too much. Just check up every day how the self-cherishing thought agitates your mind. Even if somebody asks you for a cup of tea you get irritated. That’s unbelievable, but it’s your ego. So you bring the person a cup of tea and begrudgingly dump it down, “Here’s your tea,” but even though you brought the person some tea, because you did it with selfishness buzzing in your heart, it’s negative. On the other hand, if you give somebody a cup of tea with the dedicated thought of bodhicitta, it’s the most positive thing you can do: all the wonderful qualities of the omniscient enlightened mind come from concern for other beings’ pleasure.

Just having this understanding is very powerful. For a start—forget about enlightenment—it makes your everyday life happy; you have no problems with those around you. It’s extremely practical. Therefore, as much as you can, train your mind in bodhicitta and try to realize that attachment is the greatest obstacle to the happiness of your daily life. And even if you can’t completely change attachment to your own pleasure to concern for that of others, at least you can try to practice the equilibrium meditation, ⁸ which is also a very powerful and practical way of bringing enjoyment into your life.

Perhaps, instead of arrogantly going for the realization of enlightenment, you can first try to make your daily life joyful by putting a stop to the things that come from the selfish thought and complicate everything. For beginners, this is probably more realistic and sensible. Just look at your everyday life and see how selfish attachment causes all the problems that arise.

All the problems of desire come from attachment; all those due to hatred and anger also come from attachment. Even a bad reputation or the upset that arises when you’re insulted come from attachment. If you really understand this evolution you’ll have fewer problems and be psychologically healthy because understanding allows you to release emotional attachment so that it no longer has a hold on you.

What I’m saying is that sometimes we intellectualize too much about the highest goal—enlightenment—and neglect to investigate how our everyday problems arise. This only throws our life into disorder and is not a practical approach.

What’s practical is to check how everyday problems arise. That’s the most important thing and that’s what practicing Dharma means. By constantly checking what kind of mind causes our problems, we’re always learning. By understanding the nature of attachment we can easily recognize it when it arises. If you don’t know how to look, you’ll never see.

I don’t need to say much more now but if you have any questions I’ll try to answer them.

Q. Say we have the Mahayana thought and want to bring pleasure to others. There are so many of them—how do we decide who to help and how?

Lama. When I say that we should be more concerned for others’ pleasure than our own, I don’t mean that you literally have to help all beings right now. Of course, that’s impossible—that’s the point we have to understand. When you generate the wish to help infinite other beings and then look more deeply into what’s involved in doing so, you’ll see that at the moment, your mind, wisdom and actions are too limited to help all living beings and that in order to do so you’ll need to develop the infinite, transcendental knowledge-wisdom of a buddha. When you become a buddha you can manifest in billions of different aspects in order to reach and communicate with all the different sentient beings in their own language according to their level of mind. So, understanding that you can’t do this now but that you do have the potential to reach enlightenment and then really help them, you start to practice your yana until it eventually carries you all the way to buddhahood, when you can be of true benefit to others. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t be of some help to others now, even though it’s limited.

The path to enlightenment has three main levels. The first leads us to upper rebirths but not out of cyclic existence; from here, the help we can give others is minimal. The second level is for those who seek complete liberation from cyclic existence mainly out of concern for their own problems. Even though such practitioners transcend their ego, the help they can give others is still quite limited; they can’t help all mother sentient beings. Only fully enlightened beings can help all sentient beings—if that’s what you want to do, that’s the goal you have to reach, and that’s where the third, or highest, level of the path leads.

Helping others has to be understood as rather more than, “I want to share my furniture with others” and then sawing it up into little pieces and distributing them evenly among your friends. That’s not the way to help others. The emphasis has to be on training the mind. Otherwise it sounds a bit like communist propaganda: I have to share everything I own with everybody else. That’s wrong; it’s emotional. The communist idea of equality is false because it’s not based on mind training. It’s just another ego trip. It’s impossible to achieve true equality just by saying, “Everybody should be equal,” with ego, attachment and no mind training. You can’t control people’s minds with guns—from the outside it might look like control, but it’s not.

The goal is to change self-attachment to concern for others. This is based on equilibrium, which is achieved through meditation, not physically. It’s psychological, mind training, and very different from the communist idea of equality. Look at the Soviet Union, for example. Their original goal was equality but now they’re becoming more and more like America. Why? Because they have attachment; everybody wants to be happy. It’s the same with China. The cyclic nature of samsara is reality. The same things come around again and again. I’m not making some kind of telepathic prediction; you can see through logical analysis how it works.

Q. In thinking about the two vehicles, it seems that the Hinayana is quite strict in prohibiting certain actions—not killing, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct and so forth—whereas the Mahayana says motivation is more important than action. Also, Nagarjuna quoted the Buddha as saying, out of his great compassion, that we should have few possessions and be content because it’s very difficult for us to know our motivation. So it would seem to me that at our level we should follow the Hinayana, not the Mahayana.

Lama. I agree that it’s better to have fewer possessions rather than to be surrounded by hundreds of objects of desire, pulling us this way and that and agitating our mind. However, Tibetan Buddhism puts Hinayana and Mahayana together; it unifies the two vehicles. Since our mind tends to run wild like a mad elephant, we definitely need to adhere to certain mental rules—following the disciplines suggested by experienced practitioners makes it unbelievably easier to practice sincerely and meditate properly.

For example, say you’re at a busy airport with people rushing everywhere and I tell you, “Meditate! Meditate!” It’s impossible, isn’t it? Why? Because all your sense doors are wide open and you just can’t focus your mind on one point. Similarly, if you sit down to meditate and I poke you with a needle, saying, “Concentrate! Concentrate!” you can’t do it. Objects of sense gravitation attachment ⁹ are just like a needle—they automatically agitate your mind and by not avoiding them you make meditation difficult for yourself.

One lama said, “The more you possess the greater your superstition.” It’s true; the more possessions we have the more paranoid we are about protecting them and their constant presence in our mind causes it to be restless all the time.

In America, it’s almost a right to possess a big house, a couple of cars, a refrigerator and all kinds of other stuff. Nobody looks at you twice and it doesn’t necessarily take much effort to acquire such things. What takes effort is deciding, for example, what to have for breakfast; you have so many choices—“What should I eat? This? This? This? This? What about this?” It’s such a waste of time; that kind of thing makes life difficult.

Take the middle path and choose your environment carefully; create your own mandala, just like Chenrezig creates his—surround yourself with people and things conducive to your practice. Sometimes we’re very weak; we think everything’s so difficult. However, you have to know that human problems can be solved by human wisdom. So create your own mandala according to the way in which you want to develop—select carefully the kind of people with whom you want to associate, the kind of house in which you want to live, the activities in which you engage and so forth. That’s very important. Otherwise you’re just left with “Whatever happens happens. Who knows?” That’s not the right approach. Karma is strong. Just because you want something to work out in a certain way doesn’t mean it will go the way you want but if you put yourself into the right environment, you give yourself every opportunity to develop the way you’d like.

Q. Thinking about all this creates a bit of a dilemma for me. In a land of excess like America, it would seem that the fewer possessions I have the less my attachment and the greater my ability to think clearly and therefore benefit others. On the other hand, if I had a nice big house with lots of bedrooms perhaps I could help people more by giving them a good place to live, food to eat and the opportunity to meditate while being supported in this way.

Lama. If you have skillful wisdom it’s definitely possible that you could help others like that, but if your mind is unclear and you make your offer emotionally, ten days later you’re going to be saying, “The kitchen’s a mess, there’s a broken window, last night he did this, today she did that….” You get upset; others get upset—unfortunately, things can turn out like that. If you can execute your plan with wisdom and keep it all together skillfully, then of course helping others in the way you suggest would be a great thing to do, but first think it through and weigh your options carefully.

Getting back to the issue of mental rules, however, it’s important to follow them at the outset of your practice but after some time, if you have skillful wisdom, perhaps you don’t need them any more.

Q. I’m wondering how others and I should relate to you as a lama. Should we think of you as a person too?

Lama. Of course! I’m just another man.

Q. I mean, it’s very hot outside today and although it’s OK for me, I understand that it might be bad for you. ¹⁰ Since you’re a lama, am I allowed to think in that way? Somebody told me that we should never think of a lama as an ordinary person.

Lama. Of course I’m a person. At the moment I’m manifesting as an American man from Wisconsin!

Q. Lama, where do you draw the line between putting yourself into situations—for instance, a job—where you have many opportunities to see your self-cherishing but where unconsciously you’re also creating a lot of negative karma, and not putting yourself into situations where the negative mind can easily arise like this?

Lama. That depends. For example, if you don’t put yourself into that kind of situation perhaps you won’t have any money to sustain your life. Say you can’t get a job other than one that will disturb your mind. You can take it and try to use that opportunity to understand your mental disturbances and in that way develop wisdom. It’s a mixed situation, part negative and part positive. If you have little choice other than to take that job, then you’ve got to try to make the positives outweigh the negatives, but if you think that that is beyond your capabilities and will just lead to a nervous breakdown, then obviously it’s better to try to find some other kind of work. You have to assess all this for yourself. However, if you’re skillful, you’ll try to find a Dharma job that offers peace and happiness and the opportunity to benefit others.

Q. My present job is driving a cab, so there are all sorts of people getting into the car all day long and I have many opportunities to practice the equilibrium meditation, but what I was asking was, is that type of situation good, where there’s all this material to reflect on during my meditation at night but at the same time I’m creating a lot of negative karma during the day, getting angry, for example?

Lama. Again, it depends. If you assess the situation as basically more positive, then a little anger might be OK. Developing yourself for the benefit of others is better than a little anger. You can think, “My anger makes me go a bit crazy but as long as I’m helping others, I don’t care.” Giving yourself up for the sake of others automatically makes your craziness disappear.

Thank you. I think that’s all the questions we have time for. We should now dedicate our merit. Dedication is very important. We often do positive things without dedicating the merit and as a result, as soon as we get angry that merit is destroyed. It’s all about mental energy. So whenever you do something worthwhile, instead of puffing up with pride—“I did great”—or at some point getting angry, all of which dissipates your positive energy, sincerely dedicate your merit to others. This is an essential part of mind training. So beginning with bodhicitta, the determination to lead all mother sentient beings to enlightenment, do whatever action it is you’re doing and then dedicate your merit: this helps make the action complete.

If we’re not aware of these three—motivation, action and dedication—all our actions are incomplete and therefore not particularly powerful. On the other hand, when we do negative actions, even without thinking, we do them perfectly from beginning to end: we’re motivated by strong desire, we do the action with great enthusiasm, and when we finish we think, “That was so good,” sort of dedicating it to attachment. So from beginning to end it becomes a perfect negative action.

Mahayana practice is the complete antidote to perfect negative actions. At the beginning we generate bodhicitta, which completely neutralizes self-cherishing. Then we engage in a positive action. Finally, instead of feeling proud, we sincerely dedicate the merits of that to others. In that way it becomes totally positive.

Other religions may not be complete in the same way. They might start with good motivation but be bad in the middle, or the middle might be OK, but there’s no dedication. Such incomplete practices can’t be proper antidotes to attachment. If you look at the psychology of the Mahayana you’ll see that the entire practice—motivation, action, dedication—is geared toward the destruction of attachment. You have to understand the psychology of your practice in order to know the purpose of what you’re doing.  

NOTES

⁶ In the Tibetan Tradition of Mental Development, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey says (p. 202), “The Mahayana is called ‘great’ for the following reasons: 1. The aim is great, because it is for the benefit of all sentient beings. 2. The purpose is great, for it leads to the omniscient state. 3. The effort is great. 4. The ultimate goal is great, because it is buddhahood rather than mere freedom from samsara. 5. The concern is great, as it is for all sentient beings. 6. The enthusiasm is great, as the practice is not regarded as a hardship.”  [Return to text]

⁷ In Lama Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Good Qualities. See www.LamaYeshe.com.  [Return to text]

⁸ See the Appendix in Lama Yeshe’s Ego, Attachment and Liberation (a free book from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive).  [Return to text]

⁹ Editor: For several years I thought Lama was trying to say “sense gratification attachment” and would try to correct him (to no avail) but eventually it became clear that he knew what he was saying and meant the irresistible gravitational pull that objects of attachment have upon our mind.  [Return to text]

¹⁰ It was common knowledge among Lama’s students that he had a heart condition that was aggravated by hot weather even though he never complained himself. 

You can find additional teachings, discourses, and advice from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website. 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.