Podcast

Spirituality and relationship
by Lama Tsering Everest

In order to speak about spirituality in relationships we have to start with spirituality. There are many different ways that human beings exercise their spirituality.
Within the Buddhist tradition, we rely on the basic teachings of Lord Buddha in an effort to reduce suffering, and more than that, to create causes and conditions for happiness; and more than that, reduce suffering and create causes and conditions for happiness for all beings. Not only ourselves and not only our chosen ones, but for all beings. And that goal of immediate and ultimate happiness includes the reaches of enlightenment.

Enlightenment is the accomplishment of the cessation of all suffering and the realization of unpreturbable perfect happiness.
Lord Buddha, he meant to create causes to relief people; relief them from the pain and difficulties of unenlightened existence.
In unenlightened existence we experience birth. Now most of us don’t remember birth. Birth was very difficult, almost unimaginably difficult and all of us went through that, one way or the other.

Birth led to sickness. Once born, causes and conditions of a human being in our world, we have problems. Even though we have great advances in science and all kinds of wonderful miraculous nutrients, we get sick. And as quickly as we eliminate illnesses, new ones arise.
We think that we are supposed to be healthy but what is the basic common denominator is sickness. Lord  Buddha noticed that.

Not only do we get sick, we get old, day by day; hour by hour. We are advancing towards our extinction, moment by moment. But we don’t really notice it at first. Except we rejoice from nine years old to ten years old, we celebrate. But from sixty nine to seventy we don’t celebrate quite the same. Eighty nine to ninety is very, very difficult.    
When I was teaching this recently and one of my students said: “Well, my father is really getting up there, he gets around, he goes coughing, he is as happy as a lark.” I said: “He doesn’t complain, that’s all. He doesn’t complain.”

It’s difficult to get old. Some of us just don’t complain.
And then we die. This is the condition of unenlightened beings. And the story just continues and repeats and repeats and repeats.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it repeated in a way that was always improving, as we think in evolutionary terms. We think that as we are humans, we liked it initially to hear about reincarnation, that sounded just skippy, we could just keep going on better and better every time. We mixed evolution with reincarnation and we are on an escalator.

But as it turns out, it’s not really an escalator, because just as the mind does, so the mind becomes. So in the mind’s actions are the causes of the mind’s experience. Every thought, every word, every deed has inevitable results. They are not really negotiable results.
So if a person spends their human life basically being a couch potato, uninspired, undeveloping, basically lazy, really on pause, the mind is not creating the causes and conditions for their future to be more fortunate. Instead the mind can be creating the causes and conditions to be less fortunate.

If a person is angry and vicious, they create the causes and conditions for their future to be angry and vicious.
So, this is really quite horrifying. Now, as people, we have a lot of leisure- you might think you don’t and maybe you have 12 kids or 4 jobs and you have to commute. It just seems you don’t have the leisure, but you do have the bus you can take. We don’t think about that, you have the bus. And we have leisure.
We can look out the window and enjoy the view. Even if it is just the building next door, you can find something lovely in looking at that.

We have leisure, we have a good life. But our actions and reactions to our life are not very well managed. And they are creative, theses thoughts of your mind.
How many do you have in a day?
And they are all creative; they are creating your future.
What happened in your mind before is creating what is present for you now.
Look how vivid your experience is. Tremendously vivid.
And now you are creating the same experience for your future, just as vivid,  with every thought, every word and every action.

This is why samsara, the endless cycles of becoming, is a tragedy. Because we don’t understand who is running our show. We think that our problems are due to others, or maybe to God. “God did this to me.”
We don’t understand who is really steering the car we are riding in. And as a result, we drive the car off the cliff, not realizing what actually harms us and what actually helps us. So we are not able to adhere to what’s helpful and reject what is harmful, because we really don’t know, we really don’t understand.

We think that when we get really angry with somebody that we are justified shouting and calling names or laying weight for them for another time. We feel justified. But every thought, every word and every action, positive, negative or neutral produces exactly like results, positive, negative or neutral.
And that is what is happening to you and that is what is happening to your children, that is what is happening to your friends and that is actually what is happening to your enemies.
And really, even your enemy only wants to be happy. That’s really what is really underneath it all, they just want to be happy, just like you. They just don’t know how to produce it, probably like you.

And they really don’t want to be unhappy, they don’t want to be afraid, they don’t want to be lonely, they don’t want to be powerless, they don’t want to get old and die, it’s not what goes on in their mind.
And if they are harming you they must think that by doing that is helping them. That’s what they think. And instead of helping them, it is certainly harming them. This is what is happening to all the unenlightened beings.
As human beings we are in a very good position, because we have the capacity to understand this. That’s an amazing power that you could understand cause and effect. It is a tremendous power to understand that you are really driving this car of your life, not only this life but your lives.

It is a big responsibility to understand that. But when you understand that you are really in charge of driving the car, you start paying attention. “What do I do now?” Your eyes are as big as saucers, your knuckles are white, holding the steering wheel. “What do I do now?”
But as soon as you learn what is the gas and what is the break, how it works. You turn this way, you turn that way, you yield when there is oncoming traffic. When you begin to learn then you can relax a little bit, you can actually enjoy this ride. You can cruise, you can listen to tunes with your arm out the window - you should not be using the cell phone…
Buddha taught, he taught out of compassion, understanding the terrible predicament of unenlightened beings who are suffering by the ignorance of not knowing what is happening to them.

And he taught what to adhere to and what to reject. He said: “Do no non-virtue whatsoever. Do virtue thoroughly and tame your own mind.”
But we are busy. We are dashing and when we step our toe we are cursing, jumping, cursing. We are not really designing life, we are not really intentional, we are reactive. And what we reactive with are the poisons of our mind.
We react with ignorance, not understanding the true nature of life; we react with desire thinking there is something we can gain. That is based on something missing. We really think something is missing.

This whole world runs by something missing. And that proves our ignorance, because in truth, in absolute truth, nothing is missing. Only we are so confused. Without examination, we just assume something is missing. And then, we shop; we hunt, we cultivate; manipulate and store- lots of storage- of all the things we gather that we can’t keep.
And we think that it is going to work, it is going to make us happy.
And one of those things that we shop, hunt, cultivate, gather, and store, are relationships.
And we think that we can keep them. And we think that they will make us happy.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche said: “Don’t ever talk to the lama about relationships because they are just really a big bummer. They will tell you how everything is impermanent, and what are you thinking anyway?” Like this.

And that advice is actually quite good, there is a whole system in the Buddhist teachings of renunciation. And most of the time people think that that is what Buddhism is. Just basically the path of renunciation and that is why most people would not come tonight.
But the Buddha taught different ways for different people. And he presented the possibility of removing ignorance in different ways; because the bottom-line problem is ignorance. As a result of ignorance, we feel need. “I need”.

“I” always needs. As much as water is wet or fire is hot, “I” needs.
It never stops needing. You might think: “No I don’t need.” But that is a need too.
“I don’t need that, I really don’t want that, I really don’t like that, I don’t want that.”
It is just a negative need.
So, we have to find out what the root problem is, to produce a solution.
And then there is “I need a relationship.”

Próxima