In a similar vein, the Buddha once said: “I never taught the Dharma. I am not teaching the Dharma now, and in the future I will never teach the Dharma either.” As with many teachings, there are many levels of understanding this statement. There is the expedient level of meaning as well as the definitive meaning. We shouldn’t necessarily cling to every single statement as being the ultimate truth.
Having recognized mind essence, we utilize various types of methods to perfect its strength. We need to progress by strengthening the insight aspect. Developing this strength is difficult, but we should not give up. Soccer players who want to participate in the World Cup train ceaselessly. They try to perfect their strength to qualify for the World Cup series. It’s a basic requirement that you have to be a human being to be a World Cup player. You could train a monkey to be a World Cup champion, but he won’t play because he is a monkey. A monkey will only perform his own activities. In the same way, you need first of all to recognize mind essence. And it is that recognition of mind essence, the strength of that, that needs to be perfected gradually through various methods.
The Vajrayana depiction of deities in union shows us that means and knowledge are both necessary. Unity is the nature of the deity—the unity of emptiness and experience. The experience aspect appears as the male, while the empty quality is the female. Not understanding the real significance of these deities in union, one may think, “Why are the deities always in union? Aren’t they ever satisfied? It seems as if they’re stuck together!” Actually, this symbol means that intrinsic to emptiness is a state that is totally untainted by any obscuration, which manifests as bliss indivisible from emptiness. That is the purpose of depicting the deities as naked. Their fully developed attributes of bliss symbolize that the deities of our aggregates, elements, and sense factors are totally revealed in their purest nature through the recognition of empty bliss.
There is the approach of attaining liberation by means of desire, attaining liberation through aggression, attaining liberation through dullness, and so forth. In this way there are many profound methods in Vajrayana. The Vajra Vehicle of Secret Mantra is extremely profound and extremely effective.
When you apply the Vajrayana teachings, do so with clarity, free from any misconceptions about what is what. We must know clearly the purpose and the significance of the symbolism, so that we don’t form distortions about the profound nature of the Vajrayana teachings. It is very, very hard to find anything in this world more profound or more precious than the Vajrayana teachings. This is my personal opinion.
Why is this so? In order to overcome emotions, not to get caught up in them or be overtaken by them, there is no method more profound than recognizing mind essence. You may want to smash a painful emotion to bits, but you can’t blow it up with a nuclear bomb. Even hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs detonated at the same time will not stop dualistic mind from creating more emotions. If someone were to kill every single human being in this world, dualistic mind would still continue making emotions. Through the power of karma, all these minds would take rebirth in some other world and continue in the same way as before.
No matter what drug one takes, there is no way to stop dualistic mind from churning out selfish emotions. It’s not like in the movie The Matrix, where you take a pill and wake up to reality. It doesn’t happen this easily; there is really no way to do that. Of course there are pills to eat. There are pills to make you feel less, to make you unfeeling, or to make you feel nothing, to become totally oblivious—no emotions, no wakefulness, no nothing.
However, there are not any pills to make you genuinely more compassionate and less aggressive, to make you wiser and less caught up in negative emotions. There are no pills like that that I know of right now. In the future, who knows? But it certainly doesn’t help to wait for that pill to come along someday. Much better to use the realistic approach of practice right now!
What we need first of all is to recognize mind essence and to develop the strength of that. As we continue to develop the strength of this recognition, one day we will attain stability.
Can I have a few questions now?
STUDENT: I don’t want to question the Dharma, but I have some problems in combining the Dharma teachings with modern psychology.
RINPOCHE: I don’t feel that there’s any real conflict between the psychological method and the Buddhist method. The vital point is whether the method works or not. If it works, great; there is no conflict. If there’s still a remnant of anger or resentment left behind, then it didn’t really work and so it’s not that good a method. The real test is whether the psychological method is truly effective.
For example, one discovers there’s a reason one feels aggressive again and again, and one starts to investigate: “Why am I getting so angry? There doesn’t seem to be much reason in this. It’s irrational.” And then one finds out that it has some earlier cause, that something was done to me that wasn’t really resolved from the past; maybe Mom and Dad mistreated me as a child, or somebody else abused me. Because of understanding this, one can step away from hating oneself. One understands oneself better; there is more self-knowledge. But still there is some resentment toward Mom and Dad or whoever the perpetrator was. That part of the problem hasn’t really been resolved. One’s anger at oneself has gone, but there is still some other anger remaining. This means that sort of therapy didn’t really work that well in terms of eliminating anger altogether.
But let’s say the therapy goes a little deeper, so that one is actually able to forgive the target of one’s resentment and totally relinquish it. This means it worked: the anger is given up and resolved. In other words, when the method works, it’s wonderful. One experiences a kind of liberation through that. One is free of that type of emotion. Then it is a genuine therapy, a real cure.
I must admit to having one criticism of a certain type of Western therapy. Even though it can solve a lot of problems for people, there is the tendency to blame Mom and Dad, or early childhood problems, for everything: “You’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with you, but you have problems because of how your father treated you. Therefore your father is no good.” Temporarily there is a certain release in this, because you take the focus of the problem away from yourself. Also it’s logical in its own way; there’s some reason in it. But it creates the basis for another emotional problem, which is resentment toward one’s own parents.
Buddhist psychology attempts to solve the whole issue from a different angle. You begin with accustoming yourself to thinking of all sentient beings, countless as they may be, as your own fathers and mothers. Other beings are the first objects of compassion. If you instead build up resentment toward your mother and father, there is no way you would want to regard all sentient