Lama Yeshe: Some Characteristics of Mind

[Guest guest]

Lama Yeshe: Some Characteristics of Mind.Each

human being has a mind and that mind has three divisions: gross, subtle

and most subtle. Similarly, we have a body and that too has three

divisions: gross, subtle and most subtle. The gross

consciousness comprises the five sensory consciousnesses that we use

every day. The subtle consciousness can be things like intuitive ego

and intuitive superstition. They're subtle in the sense that we can't

see or understand them clearly. The gross mind is so busy that it

obscures the subtle. When the gross mind is no longer flashing, or

functioning, the subtle mind has a chance to arise. And that's one of

the functions of Tibetan Buddhist tantra: to eliminate the gross

concepts and make space to allow the subtle mind to function. That's

the business of tantra. Also, the gross mind has no strength,

no power. Even though it understands something, it's relatively weak.

The subtle mind has much more power to penetrate and comprehend. What

meditation does is cut the gross, busy mind and allow the subtle

consciousness to function. In that way meditation performs a similar

function to that of death. Of course, to do the kind of meditation that

leads us through the death process we need strong single-pointed

concentration. As you know, Buddhism explains emptiness [skt: shunyata],

the nature of universal reality. We experience emptiness when

elimination of the gross, superficial, conventional mind allows it to

manifest. Even people who have never heard of emptiness and have no

idea of what it is experience a great emptiness in their mind during

the death process when all their busy minds dissolve. The moment your

gross, crowded concepts stop you feel some space, an emptiness. There's

nothing you actually empty but because your concepts are so crowded,

because your mind is so full, when all that content disappears you have

an experience of emptiness. Sometimes when Buddhist

philosophers describe shunyata, "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," it

sounds so complicated. And it's true; Buddhist philosophy is very

sophisticated. Ordinary people don't understand. "How can I possibly

understand shunyata? Nagarjuna says, 'blah, blah, blah'; Chandrakirti

says, 'blah, blah, blah.'" But when we really bring it back down to

earth, all we're saying is, when you cut your crowded superstitions,

the experience comes; when you eliminate all your busy concepts, the

experience of shunyata arises, as it does in the death process. At

the moment we're normally far from reality--from the reality of

ourselves; from the reality of all that exists--because we're enveloped

by a heavy blanket of superstition. One blanket of superstition; two

blankets of superstition; three blankets of superstition...this

blanket, that blanket, another blanket.... All these gross blankets,

gross minds, completely built up, like Mt. Meru, like Mt. Everest--so

heavy that you can't shake them off. Now, I don't know what

methods you normally use, but our business this weekend is to look at

the Buddhist method of slowly, slowly removing these blankets one by

one: meditation. And in order to do that, we have to understand the

characteristic nature of our own mind. First of all, the mind

is not a material substance; it has no shape or color. It's a kind of

formless, colorless energy: the energy of thought or consciousness.

Therefore its nature is clean clear and it takes the reflection of

phenomena inside. Even thoughts you consider to be heavy and negative

still have their own essence, their own clarity, in order to perceive

reality or reflect projections. Also, consciousness, or mind,

is like space. The essence of space is its own nature, unmixed with

pollution or clouds. The nature of clouds, the nature of pollution and

the nature of space are different. Even though pollution pervades

space. The reason why I'm mentioning the negative mind is that

we humans have a normal tendency to preconceptions such as, "I'm a bad

person, my mind is bad, I'm too negative." We're always criticizing

ourselves in a dualistic way. Buddhism says that that's wrong. The

characteristic nature of space is not pollution; the nature of

pollution is not space. Similarly, the nature of the consciousness is

not negative. In fact, the Buddha himself said that buddha, or

tathagata, nature lies within each of us and the nature of that is

pure, clean and clear. Also, Maitreya explained that if you put a diamond in kaka, its nature remains different from that of kaka and the nature of the kaka remains different from that of the diamond. It's

important to know this. A clean clear mind exists within us; the

fundamental nature of our consciousness is pure. But while our mind has

its own essence of clarity, it's covered by a contaminating heavy

blanket of concepts. Nevertheless, its nature is still clean clear; our

consciousness is clean clear. Therefore we have to recognize, "My

nature, the essence of my consciousness, is not totally negative. The

pure, clean clear nature of my mind exists within me right now." Actually,

our consciousness has two characteristics: relative and absolute. And

the nature of the relative is not negative, not superstition. Christians

might say that the human soul is pure, not negative. It is free of ego

conflict, craving desire, hatred and jealousy. Similarly, the relative

human consciousness can go from whatever level it's currently at all

the way up to enlightenment. That doesn't mean ego conflict goes all

the way to enlightenment; the dissatisfied, emotionally restless mind

never goes through the first, second, third and other bhumis to the

tenth and then enlightenment. That doesn't happen. The essence

of the human consciousness or, we can say, the essence of the human

soul continuously goes up, up and up. The negative blanket of

superstition never goes up. Each time we clear our negativities they

just disappear, disappear, disappear.... So, that's the

relative. With respect to the absolute nature of the human

consciousness, or soul, it is totally nondual. In the nonduality of the

human mind there's no mixed up confusion or emotional disturbance. No

such thing exists; its nature is always clean clear. Therefore we

should all understand that the nuclear essence of each of us our

consciousness and that consciousness is not mixed with negativity. It

has its own nature, both relative and absolute.

Sometimes we liken the mind to the ocean, where ego conflicts

are like waves upon the surface. Concepts arise like waves, shake

things up a bit and then subside back into the ocean of consciousness.

So the consciousness of each of us is clean clear in nature and our

craving desire, hatred and ignorance are like waves upon the surface. That

means we have the capacity not to shake our consciousness. We can hold

it without shaking. To some extent we're capable of that. That's what

meditation does. Negative motivation is also like a wave. It

creates all the confusion, dissatisfaction, pain and misery we

experience. All that comes from the negative motivation part of our

mind. The root of all our human problems is that wrong place within our

mind. It's most worthwhile to investigate this directly for yourself. Still,

we should understand that our own nature is not totally negative, not

totally hopeless. We should respect our own nature, our own purity, our

own characteristics. If we do, we'll then begin to respect others. If

you interpret yourself as a big hassle, selfish, totally hopeless and

negative, you'll interpret others in the same way. That's dangerous. Also,

when you meditate, it's not your sense perception or sense

consciousness that's meditating. Western people sometimes get confused

as to this because they're so used to the sense world being their only

reality; out of habit, the Western mentality is that reality is limited

to what you can see, touch and so forth. But the sense consciousness is

foolish. It does not have the intelligence to discriminate between

right and wrong. That's why as soon as we open our eyes we're

distracted by sense objects and the flashing of dualistic concepts. To avoid these foolish old habits of the senses I always recommend that you meditate with your eyes naturally closed. You

can see why. Your mind always wants to see beautiful things; it has

already decided. Say you're planning to go to the market. Before you

leave home you start visualizing, "Pears are beautiful this time of

year. Apples would be good too." So when you get to the market and see

the pears and apples they appear beautiful because of your

preconceptions. Sense perception is like the Swiss population;

consciousness is like the Swiss government. The Swiss government

decides, "These people are good; those are bad." The decision is made.

The consciousness is like that. Our preconceptions decide ahead of time

what objects are good or bad, so when the sense consciousness contacts

those objects it sees them as good or bad. That's why I say that sense

perception is foolish--it doesn't have its own strength and

discrimination. Also, sense perception sees only the gross

reality. It has no way of understanding totality. Modern science tries

to understand things by looking at them with ever more powerful

microscopes but they can never penetrate their essence that way.

Buddhism knows well that you can never understand emptiness in that

way. So, this afternoon we are going meditate on our own consciousness. Don't

be afraid. "How can I meditate? I don't know what my consciousness is.

This monk's telling me to meditate on my consciousness, but my problem

is that I don't know what it is. How can I meditate on it?" Well,

say, for example, you're in a room where you can't see the sun directly

but you can see its rays coming in through the window. From seeing the

rays we understand that the sun exists. Similarly, from experiencing

our thoughts and motivations we understand that our consciousness

underlies them. Looking at or simply being aware of your

thoughts and motivation is good enough for you to be meditating on your

own consciousness. Is that clear? I'll say it again. One way of

meditating on your consciousness is simply to be aware of your mind's

view. When you look at your own mind's view, when you are aware of your

own mind's view, that's good enough. I call that meditation on your

consciousness. Another way of doing this is to be aware of the

essence of your own thoughts. You know the moment you close your eyes

some kind of thought is going to arise--just be aware of its essence. I

also call that meditation on your consciousness. Don't worry

whether your thoughts are good or bad--the essential aspect of both is

clear, because both good thought and bad reflect phenomena. When

I say "meditation" I don't mean that you should squeeze yourself. These

days there are a lot of misconceptions about what meditation is,

especially in the West. Some people think it means you should squeeze

yourself; others think it means [Lama shows and example]. Both are wrong. With one, you're completely distracted; with the other you're completely sluggish. Meditation

is actually very simple. When you close your eyes, what happens is that

your awareness begins to radiate, like a sensitive radar detector. A

good radar detector picks up any kind of signal; it notices, it's

aware. Similarly, when we meditate our mind becomes aware; we become

very sensitive or totally awake as to what's going on. That's what I

call meditation--intensive conscious awareness. But I don't mean that

in the conversational sense: "Blah, blah, blah, oh, there's a light,

there's something else." It's not like that. However, I'd

better explain what I mean by conversation. Let's say we're supposed to

be meditating. We're aware of what's going on around us: a car goes by;

there goes a truck.... We're aware, but then what we should not do is

start some kind of conversation about what we've noticed: "That must be

a very nice truck. Perhaps it's full of cheese for sale. Maybe it an

ice-cream truck." Conversation. That's what we should not do. We should

be aware but in control and not start some kind of internal dialog. In

meditation you're learning control and how to eliminate the

uncontrolled mind. What is it that makes you uncontrolled? It's your

mind making conversation: "He's like this; she's like that. He says

this; I don't like it. She says that; I like it." All this kind of

internal chatter is what I mean by conversation. The mind's constantly

reacting but control not reacting. Somebody calls you a bad

person but you don't react. You don't make conversation: "She said I'm

bad. That hurt my ego, hurt my ego, hurt my ego, hurt my ego...."

That's reacting; that's an uncontrolled mind, a mind obsessed. The

way I look at it an obsessed mind has two objects: the beautiful object

of craving desire or the repulsive object of aversion. And the mind

obsessed with either of these objects cannot move away from it. That

means you're not free, not flexible. You're always thinking, "This,

this, this, this, this...." That's what obsessed means. And whether

it's an object of hatred or jealousy or craving desire, an obsessed

mind is disturbed. Meditation teaches us to avoid the habit of reacting

when an object of obsession appears. Now, you may ask, what

really is the benefit of awareness of your own consciousness as opposed

to, say, awareness of a flower? Or your girlfriend or boyfriend?

There's benefit in being aware of the nature of your consciousness

because, unlike girlfriends, boyfriends and flowers, consciousness

itself has no notion of concrete self-existence. Therefore, the beauty

of watching, or being aware of, your own consciousness is that it leads

to the breakdown of your heavy blanket, superstitious concepts and to

the experience of great emptiness. In order to solve our

problems we need some experience. Intellectual "blah, blah"

understanding is not enough. To break down concepts we need a way of

gaining experience with our own mind. When we've had an experience we

know we're really capable of solving our own problems and this

encourages us: "I can do anything I want. I can really solve my

problems." From the Buddhist point of view, that's the start of human

liberation. Normally we're too intellectual. We're always

saying, "Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad"; all the time. But when we

meditate we stop saying "Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad." The

intellectual good-bad thinking gets stopped. Good-bad thinking is

dualistic; it splits your mind. Just be aware; just be conscious. We

should be like the sun or the moon. They don't think, "I'll make Swiss

people warm; I'll give Swiss people light." They don't do anything like

that. So that's how we should be: intensively aware without any

intellectual good or bad. That's very important. Maitreya

Buddha said that written texts and scriptures are like a bridge. In

order to cross a river you need a reliable bridge. Once you've crossed

you can say, "Bye-bye bridge." If instead you start thinking, "Oh, this

bridge is so kind, this bridge is so kind, this bible is so kind, this

sutra is so kind," so attached to the scripture, it doesn't make sense.

So what I'm saying is that all the intellectual good-bad is,

from a certain point of view, OK. It's good to be able to discriminate

between good and bad. It has some value. But always going

"Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad" doesn't have much value. You need

that kind of discriminating wisdom but at a certain point you have to

go beyond it, leave it and just be. Lama Yeshe gave this

teaching in Geneva, Switzerland, in September 1983, his last teaching

in the West. Edited from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive by Nicholas

Ribush. www.iamnolabrat.com

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