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.