Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche · Web viewInterview by Diane Musho Hamilton – Traleg Kyabgon, Rinpoche...

Interview by Diane Musho Hamilton – Traleg Kyabgon, Rinpoche

Dianne: The focus of our discussion is just going to be on the cultivation of compassion through the training of the mind and what the Buddhist teachings have to offer in terms of our personal relationships, how mind training relates to psychology and also to spiritual teaching, and as a very experienced and revered Buddhist teacher Rinpoche, maybe you could begin by just saying a few words about what you think about the cultivation of love and compassion, why it’s important in our modern times.

Rinpoche: I think these are very uncertain times that we are living in, because so many things are going on all at the same time, and there are some very positive things going on and also some very negative things. So I think it’s times like this that both kinds of situations really call for a re-evaluation of our spiritual values and I think in that context Buddhism has something to offer, particularly based on the fact that Buddhism believes in change and impermanence and so on, and I think that would also include how Buddhists actually apply the Buddhist values of love and compassion and things like that. You can’t just speak about these things out of context or out of living daily realities of the times.

Dianne: Indeed. In other words it’s sometimes easy for us to talk about why they are important but to actually create a living practice where we learn how to extend kindness, how not to blame others, how to take responsibility for our situation, to actually do that is a different thing than being able to just talk about it.

Rinpoche: I think with Buddhism the whole idea of cultivation of these qualities, what we call virtuous qualities, is about reaching upwards, it’s about realizing certain ideal states and it’s actually more about making the effort rather than the fixation on the ideals actually attained or realized. I think sometimes people feel Buddhists have these very high ideals and they are out of reach, but as I understand it, the ideals are not there to be completely realized as much as trying to approach it, the best that one can. And making that effort allows you to change and transform and you become a better person as a result of it.

Dianne: Rinpoche, in your experience as a Tibetan teacher and also as a person who teaches Westerners and who has practice centres in the United States, what do you notice in your experience about your students who come to, you might say to attain enlightenment or to recognize Buddha-nature, and those students who come to you with questions regarding how to work with their love lives or how to work in a situation with ageing parents or with children. As a spiritual teacher how do you make these distinctions between let’s say the psychological implications of loving, and the more, what we might say, more spiritual sometimes impersonal dimensions of loving, do you make that distinction in your teaching? And how do you do that?

Rinpoche: Yes definitely, we do. And actually even though in Buddhism this emphasis on the idea of non-attachment, and renunciation and cultivation of what we call equanimity, things of that kind, I think we have to be very careful in terms of how we understand these things because the idea of non-attachment is there to help us not to fall into extreme forms of a mode of being, either in terms of being greedy, needy, being possessive, things of that kind, due to excessive attachment and things of that kind. And if we get caught up in personal relationships also, if the emotions are too strong and normally these mixed emotions that we feel towards our parents or our siblings or our friends and so forth, can bring up a lot of negativities and the relationship does not flourish then, it leads to

Interview Dianne Musho Hamilton – Traleg Kyabgon, Rinpoche

all kinds of what Buddhists would call emotional entanglements. So these teachings are really given in order to help us to deal with our relationships with other people better, and it is not about turning our back on people, or something like that. Non-attachment is not exactly the same as detachment, even, I suppose, and practice of equanimity is not like practicing indifference or something like that.

Dianne: Or non-responsiveness?

Rinpoche: Exactly. According to Buddhism, if we have some equanimity, which means we feel more grounded, we are not easily given to upsurge of strong negative emotions and so forth, which is not to say that we will not have any negative emotions at all, but we are better at dealing with these things, then our capacity to care for others and so forth. And also by doing so, according to Buddhism, we are also taking care of ourselves as well, so then we become more effective as a result of that.

Dianne: Yeah and there comes a deeper understanding of the non-separation of my wellbeing and your wellbeing that we’re intimately connected, so what’s good for you is also good for me and my person.

Rinpoche: Exactly. These things are made amply clear by Buddhist masters, that thinking about others is a very healthy thing to do on all levels, physically, psychologically, spiritually and only thinking about one’s self leads to all kinds of personal problems and inter-personal problems.

Dianne: And I would like to reiterate actually for the audience who is listening to you right now. The distinction that he made as a teacher, because I also find this problem to some degree, that the notion of non-attachment is somehow confused with detachment, and that there is a sense that, which can be confusing in the relational realm, because of course we are attached to each other and that attachment is both natural and necessary. But as we cultivate a meditative discipline there could be a tendency to confuse or misunderstand the role of that attachment, and what I heard you say, is that to help us loosen our fixed notions of how things are supposed to go, and by loosening our notions we can be less reactive, less emotionally destructive with each other.

Rinpoche: Yes and then we become more emotionally healthy and so therefore we begin to project a more healthy kind of outlook, and also as a result of that we can show emotions in a constructive way, express ourselves in a constructive fashion which then has a positive impact on those around us.

Dianne: The other thing that you said that seemed important to me is that, you said that it is important that we reflect on, on not simply ourselves but on others, and from an integral perspective, you could say that, using the integral map, and of course Ken Wilbers’ work which is the way that you and I have to come to meet each other, is through Ken’s work, that that would say there are always four quadrants which means that my individual wellbeing is completely connected to the system I’m in, and to the culture I belong to, and to the values of that culture. And the way I behave is constructed to some degree where it is all a relationship, and we should always consider others because ultimately there is not a separation.

Rinpoche: Absolutely. That is exactly right, and I think that is a very important thing to keep in mind from a Buddhist point of view, and I think also even now people don’t think of it like that, I think people think that if they care, if they do something, either in a very personal way in relation to interacting with someone close to the person, or interacting with others, in a larger context, people


often think of it as what is love or compassion or whatever, that they are trying to use in order to benefit others, that it’s a form of giving and self-sacrifice, and so therefore they do not see the interconnected nature of the relationship, that it is all about giving. And then people talk about compassion burnout and things like that. But if one is expressing these things properly, you don’t get burned out, you feel more invigorated because what you are doing is very encouraging and empowering. Whereas being selfish, needy, demanding, manipulative, exploitive and so on, leads to a feeling of disempowerment and one feels frustration and unfulfilled all the time. Every situation one encounters then becomes a challenge and is seen as a potential for disappointment and frustrations and things of that kind, so one begins to dread dealing with people and one begins to form very bad opinions about people and the world in general.

Dianne: Yes, so an experience can lead to a belief and that belief can lead to an attitude, and that attitude determines your relationship to the world and then the world starts to look that way, so it becomes ...

Rinpoche: Yes, I think a lot of people, sorry.

Dianne: No please finish, please.

Rinpoche: Yes, so I think that’s why often nowadays many people are very nihilistic and cynical and things like that. They feel that they know where everything is at and nothing they see is really good or meaningful or has any kind of intrinsic value.

Dianne: And if you participate in a belief that becomes an attitude and then ultimately maybe you might even say a value, there is a funny way that reality can support that view, as you said, because there are many positive things happen and also very difficult things that in a way reality will confirm our basic disposition.

Rinpoche: Yes, I think so. I think because as Buddhists we think that most of us we live in ignorance, or we have a habit of joining dots together and if we are very negatively habituated in terms of how we see things, then we look at all the bad things that are going on and then we join them together and then we come to the conclusion that everything ‘has gone to the dogs’ or whatever the expression is, very cynical.

Dianne: My grandmother would say, ‘going to hell in a handbasket’.

Rinpoche: Yes, so I think it is like that. So in that way, Buddhist teachings on meditation on love and compassion even has a practical component to it. Because the idea is that we actually have to think about loving thoughts, then if we do that then we become more loving, and if we have compassionate thoughts then we will become more compassionate as a person, and so on. So we have to begin there and then we have to begin with people who we are close to and then we try to expand that. And so in Buddhism really non-spiritual, just normal kinds of love and highly refined forms of love that we speak about in relation to our spiritual practices and so forth and in relation to what we call ‘all sentient beings’, ‘all sentient creatures’, are different forms of the same love. So though we do not actually have this dualistic idea that there are these more base kinds of love that we feel towards fellow human beings, to our neighbours, I suppose, and then another one that’s directed to a higher goal, a higher purpose, and that is very pure. But in Buddhism, really, the higher


forms of loving expressions have their origin in what we already experience towards others that we love and care about.

Dianne: Yeah, in other words we can trust our basic situation and the nature of our human existence and that the loving that we learn how to express that would appear to be ordinary or mundane, is exactly the same love of that which we might say is the highest expression of compassion in the world.

Rinpoche: Yes, and that’s why really even though in Buddhism as I said before, we have also the monastic system, but in Buddhism equally, as you know, there is a lot of emphasis on the family, and good relationships with one’s family members and the neighbourhood, and just getting on better with people.

Dianne: Yes, whether they are fellow monks or whether they are children, it’s the same challenge, just to treat each other well. To actually find a real place of the heart. You said something that struck me a few minutes ago, because the notion of compassion burnout, and I, being an American was raised in a Judeo-Christian context, maybe we can talk more about that in a minute. But we received a lot of instruction as a young person about love and about service, and for whatever reason in my own life I was drawn to the teachings and I had the good fortune to encounter Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche and spent a number of years at Naropa Institute, and one of the things that was helpful to me, is that I was able, because of the meditative training, and becoming aware of what we might call the ‘ego’ or just that impulse of self-striving. And I started to see that there’s a funny spiritual problem that can happen when compassion and service is attached to self-striving. That when we burnout in terms of our compassion or our loving it’s precisely because in some ways it is tied up with our self-identity. And that in order to be compassionate in a way that we don’t burnout is to liberate our service and our compassion from my need to be recognized, or my need to be affirmed, or to be loved, and that there’s a tremendous amount of giving and generosity that’s available when we can start to really make that distinction in our own life and in our practice.

Rinpoche: Yes, exactly. In Buddhism, as you know, while we do these loving-kindness types of meditation and that is when we contemplate on all sentient creatures and we contemplate on high ideals and things of that kind, and then in post meditation situations we have to be very practical and we have to look at our capacities and our limitations and not over exert ourselves but at the same time always trying to do a little bit more than what we have been able to do in the past. So in Buddhism, practice like this is seen as a form of training, so we are always trying to make the mind become more strong and more resilient. So if the mind becomes more resilient then it starts to build up some kind of immune system of its own. So when the mind begins to get more healthy, then even when adverse things happen one does not then become overwhelmed and one has a greater capacity to deal with what is going on. So therefore one would not become frustrated and get thrown into depression or despair or something like that.

Dianne: Well maybe I can ask this question, so we talked yesterday a little bit about, it’s a profound meeting, it really is a profound meeting of the East and the West, and I think that the Tibetan tradition is revered by many of us in the West as one of the most profound and subtle technologies, if you will, for working with the mind and the heart. And so many people in the West of course have been drawn to these teachings. But I asked you the question yesterday and I’d be interested to hear


your answer again, of how the word ‘love’ is used in Buddhist teaching and how that may be different than in a Judeo-Christian context and whether you think that is important and whether that matters?

Rinpoche: Yes, I think the main difference is that because Buddhism is a non-theistic religion the practice of loving-kindness really comes from our own human nature and it is about turning to the best aspects of ourselves and working on our best potentialities as a human being, and so in that respect it is our humanness which allows us to really evolve and become a better person, than because of our direct contact with the Buddha or something of that nature.

Dianne: So it is beyond culture and it is maybe framed in different ways and maybe there’s a different emphasis on the ….

Rinpoche: As we were saying before, Buddhism really sees the practice of loving/kindness as a form of training, and it is a form of training of the mind as well. You referred to Lojong practice before, mind training, so the core element of the mind training is the practice of loving-kindness, love and compassion. So it is seen as a way of strengthening the mind, and by doing so we become a better person because our ability to express ourselves becomes much more expansive, and also what this then means is, in Buddhism we don’t think of love and compassion purely as an emotion, healthy emotions or based purely on our feelings and so on. Because if we are really loving and caring and so forth then our whole mental outlook would be totally different, so we start to think differently, see things differently, so there is a cognitive change, not just a change in our affect, so it’s a way of re-orienting one’s way of being, and one’s way of conceptualizing and also even on the sensory level, seeing things differently, perceiving things differently.

Dianne: Beautiful, in the integral discourse, the expression of love is being talked about quite differently than an emotion, just as you are saying. I have heard Ken talk about love as the actual process of evolution which reaches out to become more than itself, so in the same way that a molecule becomes a cell, becomes an organ, becomes an organism that that same - he called it the fifth force in the universe that actually has a direction towards a greater and greater recognition of itself. And we also talk about it sometimes just like you did, as a perception, as a capacity for seeing things, or for love as a capacity for transformation. That there is a built-in quality of transformative potential and that you’re talking about mind training as actually a way of realizing that potential. That there is a tremendous potential for us not only to perceive ourselves and others and the world through a perception of love but become an actual expression of that love an actual manifestation of that love in action.

Rinpoche: Yes, exactly. So in Buddhism that’s why we don’t just focus on the feelings of love and compassion but we engage in mind training, and so that we can begin to do contemplation, so we don’t only feel love and compassion but we also have to contemplate. And thinking about these things in a much more profound way, and by doing so then we begin to see the values of these practices and values in the people that we are practicing love and compassion with, or for.

Dianne: In Ken’s expression of the role that psychology has to play in spiritual practice, there are two things that really come to mind, at least in my experience, and one is his emphasis on really starting to take account of what we call structure stages of development, that our consciousness moves in a pattern and expands in a pattern, and a pattern that in some ways can be described and anticipated


and that’s one of the things he points out very clearly is that spiritual practice that doesn’t take into account structure stages is incomplete. I think the other thing that he points out quite a bit, that I have a curiosity about is what he calls, the role of shadow, which really comes out of the Western psychological tradition and in some ways and also through Jung’s work and that is that any part of consciousness that cannot be held in awareness, because it is either too threatening or because it’s somehow marginalized or disapproved of, that that potential of consciousness finds other ways to express, but it’s never expressed in a congruent fashion. And that part of the challenge of, let’s say what psychology can add to spiritual practice, is this notion of bringing the parts of awareness that we don’t want to see or feel into our practice. Is that shadow work, is that already mapped in Tibetan Buddhism? Is there something similar in your mind that is around, picking up the qualities that we don’t want to see in ourselves, like our capacity for jealousy of ...

Rinpoche: Yes, I think it is there. Obviously a practice of meditation and specifically mindfulness meditation practices and so forth, is designed to combat that. But in the teachings also we have the idea of the four maras, the four evils and so on, which relate to different psychological states that we can fall into. And meditators are actually warned about the sinister characteristics associated with the maras and how we should be on the alert. But as you know in Buddhism really the shadow aspect was associated with an acknowledged egoism. And the other thing, I suppose, is that like everything else, even meditation can be abused or misused, so instead of helping us to bring these things the shadow aspect, the shadow elements of ourselves into the light we may use the meditation for the very purpose of keeping these things in the dark. So in that respect certain forms of Western psychotherapy might be helpful in making somebody come to recognize what one is doing.

Dianne: So it is possible that these more negative or destructive qualities, or energies as they arise in consciousness, that through the meditative discipline there may be awareness brought to them, it may be possible that a psychological context would be more helpful for certain configurations?

Rinpoche: I think, yes, it is possible, and of course it is very difficult to generalize and I think it depends on the personality of the individual as well. For some people that extra nudge or something like that might be needed.

Dianne: I practised originally in the Tibetan tradition and then due to geography moved to the Zen tradition and studied with my teacher who was Genpo Roshi for many years, but I think that in my own understanding whenever I see a painting or a depiction of a wrathful deity, in some way there is a sense that the wrathful deities are a kind of promise of the capacity to transform negativity.

Rinpoche: Definitely, in Tibetan Buddhism, in tantricism, in the esoteric part of Tibetan Buddhism there is definite emphasis on dealing with our negativities in a much more direct way and acknowledgement of our suppressed unconscious desires and aggression, basically - those two emotions because in Buddhism generally and in practices and especially aggression represents many forms of emotions, jealousy, for example is seen as part of aggression and so on. And then the desire aspect, that also has many different kinds of emotions associated with that, so in Tantricism there is a real emphasis on how to deal with these things and to sort of acknowledge one’s own innate feelings of aggression and desire and things of that kind, and trying to exploit their potentiality so that what used to be negative then can be transformed into something that is useful and that is life-


enhancing rather than life-destroying. Because normally various forms of aggression lead to all kinds of conflicts and discord, but through skilful use of various psychological and spiritual techniques it may be possible to tap into the basic energy of these emotions which is seen as more positive than negative.

Dianne: In a retreat that I had been recently leading, I was able to watch two students who had an experience of a rather raw aggression, two male students, and it was very beautiful for me to watch them be able to transform that energy into an extremely life-affirming situation, rather than, as you put it, as life-destroying, and it’s my observation that when practitioners start to see the capacity, to actually, not to simply empty out, or just simply avoid, although I think it is true that to waffle around a situation that is potentially difficult, there is a lot of skill there but sometimes we find ourselves in moments where just negative energy and negative karma emerges and to see that there is an actual possibility of transforming that can be extremely, I don’t know if the word ‘confidence-building’ is right but it certainly boosts the willingness to practice and affirms the sense that we do have this transformative power, that it isn’t simply avoidance or maybe you might say, quietude, but that there is actually an ability to take when something really difficult arises and work with it in order to transform. So I was extremely moved to see my students be able to do that, they did it quite beautifully.

Rinpoche: Yes.

Dianne: I’d like our listening audience, I’d like to actually direct them, you are the author of The Essence of Buddhism and Mind at Ease, but there is a beautiful book called The Practice of Lojong: Cultivating Compassion through Training the Mind, and the Foreword was written by Ken Wilber, and I would like our audience to become aware of this particular book because we have been referring to mind training. Would you mind saying something more specific about the word Lojong and what Lojong practice is for the people who are on the line with us?

Rinpoche: Yes, sure. Lojong, lo means mind and jong means training, but in Tibetan we have many different words for ’the mind’ depending on what aspect of the mind that we are emphasizing. So we have sem for example, sem also means mind, but when we use the word sem we are talking about mind in terms of its intentionality, because often when we are using our mind for whatever purpose, if we are thinking about something, even, or when we look at something through our senses, through our visual sense, then the object that the mind is intent upon, then we use the word sem. And when we want to emphasize the quality of sentience or talking about the mind in terms of its sentience or consciousness then we use the word namshey. And the word lo is used more in terms of intellect, but it is very hard to translate this word because it doesn’t just mean intellect, purely in relation to the conceptual mind, but a use of some kind of basic intelligence and this then means the mind’s capacity to coordinate various aspects of its attributes or qualities in relation to feelings, emotions, thoughts, and so on. And so by making use of all of these qualities or attributes of the mind then one becomes more empowered. So what one is training then, is training the mind to us its basic intelligence, so Lojong practice is geared towards that.

Dianne: I remember from my early training at Naropa Institute that I was introduced to Lojong practice, one of the slogans that I remember that comes to mind easily, is the slogan of, I don’t know how it’s framed in your book but, ‘drive all blames into oneself’. And I remember in my own practice


with that particular slogan, there is a little bit of an impulse in the West, a kind of, it’s a developmental impulse in culture, and it’s an important developmental impulse to see the ways in which human history has marginalized and oppressed certain classes of people and that it is important for us to recognize that and to start to bring into our consciousness the differences in social, economic, and political power. So it has been important for, you might say people who might have had experiences of being in more victimized classes, to really own that and speak to that and make that experience of being victimized known, so that as a collective we can learn how to transform that. And at the same time that can also create a spiritual confusion, because the impulse to easily or quickly blame others seems to have also become more exaggerated, at least in the West, and so this instruction to actually be willing to take responsibility or to see your capacity to work with whatever has happened, those two things get a little bit confused. Would you say anything about that?

Rinpoche: Yes, well I think, as you pointed out, there is a real increase in how people actually blame others for all sorts of things, from their personal problems, to problems of the world at large, and so therefore I think really the emphasis on taking personal responsibility has diminished, and taking responsibility is then maybe seen as self-blame or something like that. And of course if one thinks about it one would realize that that is absolutely not true, taking responsibility is a good thing, but blaming oneself for certain actions in a manner that would lead to psychological impairment or some kind of psychologically unhealthy kind of state to be in. But taking responsibility is a good thing and Buddhism encourages that because when we take responsibility we feel more empowered. But the thing about putting all blames into one, in Buddhism what it really means is blaming our egoistic obsession, that is the one to be blamed for a lot of the misery that we are subjected to.

Dianne: So it is really important to understand this, you might say this egoic, this self-grasping function, and to realize that that is the source of the ...

Rinpoche: The egoic entity is seen as the culprit.

Dianne: ‘The culprit’, that sounds great, I like that word, that’s the culprit.

Rinpoche: Yes, that is to be blamed. But that doesn’t mean one is blaming oneself entirely, though. Because actually in my Lojong book I quote this Lojong text written by a great Lojong master, and in that he is having dialogue with the egoic mind and he is saying, “you have done nothing for my benefit, you have caused me a lot of troubles” and so on. So he is saying “you have done this to me, you have done that to me”. Basically, as you know, in Buddhism it is a manufactured concept, if you like, this thing about the egoic identity, so in Buddhism we think of it as being that, so it is something that is created, so if it is created then we can un-create and recreate.

Dianne: Yes, unwind it also, yes, very good.

Rinpoche: So the idea is that through practice of Lojong and other similar practices we can get into a position where the egoic personality can do our bidding instead of us doing the egoic mind or egoic identity’s bidding, which is what we normally do, that’s what Lojong masters have said.

Dianne: Rinpoche do you have a particular wish for your students in terms of their practice at this time, this time in history, this time in their development, is there a particular insight or a way,


something that you could point out to them that as a collective you think would serve everyone. A particular instruction that you think would be useful to everyone.

Rinpoche: I really don’t know, but I think practices that people already do, like mindfulness practice as you know these days it has a become very, very useful practice. Again, it’s been taken up by cognitive therapists, and I things like that, I think there is a lot of potentiality there because cognitive behavioural therapy, there is a lot of emphasis on changing your mental outlook and your behaviour and so forth and not spend too much time digging up what may be laying about in the unconscious, but paying more attention to what is in the conscious states, which goes with what Buddhism also does. Which is not to say that we should not try to deal with the unconscious, but what is in the unconscious comes up, and whatever we are conscious about, a lot of it has come through the unconscious anyway. And the practice of Lojong and loving-kindness, these things are very important as I mentioned because generally, as you know, we think that we know what love is, what compassion is, it is just a matter of doing it. But as Buddhism has taught us, these things we have to learn, and we have to keep on learning for the rest of our lives. It is an unfinished project and it is seen as a good thing, it is not a bad thing, So the thing is it is not like we have to first become really good at practicing loving-kindness and then we work with others, but the process itself is what is exciting and what is good.

Dianne: That’s beautiful, it is very exciting.

Rinpoche: And I think that perhaps a little bit more attention to Buddhist philosophy because I think often people tend to think Buddhist philosophy is irrelevant, but I think people might be missing out on quite a lot of things because of their aversion to delving into the philosophical aspects of Buddhist teachings, and to their surprise and I think Ken Wilber really has been very good in this, bringing out some of the Buddhist teachings and Eastern teachings generally in a comparative light, and so we can see that these philosophical ideas still have currency, still have relevance.

Dianne: What you are saying is actually important and I think that Ken has actually helped clarify this for many, at least American Buddhist practitioners, which is that for some reason in terms of our cultural development, the emphasis in Buddhist practice on mindfulness and awareness and learning how to relax the conceptual barrier between ourselves and reality or ourselves and what is, that that’s been mistaken, in a certain way it develops as a kind of anti-intellectual attitude that somehow starts to say that philosophy itself and cognition and learning the theory doesn’t have a place and that’s a very misinterpretation and that’s ...

Rinpoche: Yes, and this is taking the whole idea of doing things to the extreme level and the whole idea of contemplation and things have very little place and I think that is a big imbalance. And also even in terms of dialogues and things like that, if East and West are to dialogue and so on, then the dialogue has to occur on ideas and not just in relation to what we do.

Dianne: Yeah, indeed. And then as Ken often points out, cognition often precedes our development or our ability to do something, so that you have the idea that something is possible actually creates the opportunity, so that much of what we do needs to happen in the realm of ideas and of language, because actually it’s a possibility that isn’t there prior. So there is another thing that I wanted to share, that I think is, in my own experience, somewhat interesting. I asked you what practices that you feel are most important and you talked about mindfulness and loving-kindness, and the way in


which mindfulness is becoming a part of how therapeutic work is done, and then we are familiar with the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn using mindfulness in health care for stress reduction and also for pain relief. I have a history of working in the judiciary with lawyers and with judges and my husband is a former judge and also a practitioner of Zen. And it is very interesting, when you consider in the United States that the law itself, the culture of the law, is probably one of the slowest cultures to change, it is the most conservative, except maybe next to banking, or something like that, and what is interesting is that now we are seeing small pockets within the legal profession are starting to use mindfulness training. And in our own work, because of some of the religious bias we have had to be a little bit careful about how it is framed and assert the importance of meditative traditions in a Buddhist philosophy without putting an emphasis on religion, in order for the culture to receive these practices, that it’s amazing how many people are open to them at this point.

Rinpoche: Absolutely. And I think, and also really again they are very much needed, and I think that’s why people who are Buddhists, really they have to appreciate the practice, because as Jon Kabat -Zinn somewhere has said, the people who actually are suffering, they take to these practices without any complaints and they get a lot of benefit. Sometimes people who may be practicing in a Buddhist Centre or something like that, may be complaining and don’t fully appreciate the profundity and the effectiveness of the practice.

Dianne: Yes. And then one final thing is, I just want to also, we are going to open up the line now to questions for people who are listening, but I want to just say to our listeners to remind them that what Rinpoche is saying that love and compassion and our ability to treat each other with generosity and respect, it is not something that is accomplished, it is actually through the process itself, and the continuing to deepen and realize this possibility, and learning, that itself, is very exciting. And the effort, continuing to find a way to rouse our energy and our interest to keep unfolding this possibility we have a seminar in January called The Integral Spiritual Experience and this year the four days in Asilomar, California are going to be focused on the future of love and the evolution of relationship and with our good friend Dr Marc Gafni and with Ken Wilber and this year Deepak Chopra is going to be joining us. And I just want to remind those who are listening that that is happening and that we would love to have you there just to unfold this question with us, how can we can keep learning and maintaining the excitement to see the other ways we can evolve. So with that I would like to invite, maybe I will invite people who are actually on the line to unmute, and you can unmute your line by hitting star 7. And Rinpoche is available for the next 30 minutes to answer your questions and we would like to give you an opportunity to talk to him personally. So is there anyone who is on the line and if so please say your name and we will give you a few minutes.

Dexter: I have been wondering about Buddhism in general and maybe Tibetan Buddhism since that seems to be your lineage, a very simple question which always arises in my mind and which seems simple to me, which is who are we, and why are we here, what are we doing? And it seems that in that metaphysics there is a whole lot of clarity about how to relate to one another, what we’re doing, where we are going. So much becomes clear if you can answer that question of who are we and what are we doing here, I would like to hear your perspective on that?

Rinpoche: That’s a very profound question, as you know, very philosophically important and very profound, but it is not very easy to answer. But from Buddhist point of view what we are is actually not just one thing. What we are is made up of varieties of elements, and the cluster of these


psychophysical elements is what constitutes what we would normally refer to as ‘the self’. So that’s one thing and the other thing is, why we are here, well we are here because of our past actions, that is the Buddhist view, because we believe in pre-natal existence, we believe we have lived before. But these two questions are related.

So even though we may say we have lived before it does not actually mean that we have lived before exactly as the same person, it doesn’t mean like the same, exact person lived previously in a past life, because of the Buddhist concept of ‘the self’. So what is re-born then is the same as the one before, but at the same time, different, and the sameness of the residual characteristics and what we call karmic propensities is what has brought us into this world, so it is not due to chance or by accident, or by fate, but, or we have not been placed here by an Almighty God or something like that, but because of our actions in the past. So what we are is a psychophysical, composite structure, if you like, and so therefore a real sense of self-transformation is possible, because everything about us can be changed. Well really that is the short answer, I think.

Dianne: Yes, thank you very much Rinpoche and thank you Dexter. Is there somebody else on the line who would like to ask a question? Please say your name.

Jenny: I have been struggling with a negative addiction from many years and this is through an unhealthy relationship. I have been trying all the general procedures, in terms of psychotherapy, you name it, I’ve begun studying Buddhism and meditation. I find that focusing on loving-kindness, compassion, metta I don’t know, I have difficulty with that, because I am in a process where I want to eliminate or let go of an unhealthy addiction. I don’t know whether that makes any sense to you?

Dianne: Are you saying Jenny that you feel like you have an addiction to a person and then in some ways you need to separate and you’re not able to when you cultivate love?

Jenny?: Exactly. And I am just, when I think about focusing on compassion and loving-kindness it brings a thought of this other person who I know is also obviously suffering and I need to extricate myself from this pattern and behaviour. I don’t know, is there is a different focus maybe, in terms of my meditation that might be helpful for me?

Dianne: Yes it is a very good question. Rinpoche what are your thoughts?

Rinpoche: Yes, I think the practice of mindfulness, mindfulness practice, and also really mindfulness practice used in conjunction with cognitive behavioural therapy, things like that I think would be extremely beneficial. And when we talk about contemplation on loving-kindness and things like that, the whole idea is one is supposed to be shifting one’s focus from one’s spouse or partner, or somebody like that and just try to, in situations like this specifically, then you try to focus on the suffering of other beings. The whole point is that instead of focusing on one’s own suffering, or suffering of one’s own partner or something like that you are supposed to focus on the suffering of others, people living in distant lands and people who are starving, or people who have no shelter, or people who have suffered as a consequence of natural disasters, and things like that, so then your mind is relieved of your immediate preoccupation. So what you have done there is that you have created a gap. I mean addiction is encouraged by incessant obsessive thoughts. So when you do something like that then you have interrupted that thought and so you have then managed to stop it at least for the duration of when you are preoccupied with something else, and you don’t have the


luxury of indulging in those obsessive thoughts, that’s the idea of how it is supposed to work. So if you can think about others’ suffering and so on, and then not think, ‘oh, I am suffering, my life is a mess’ or whatever. If you are getting more and more focused on that kind of thing then it becomes very upsetting, so the idea is to broaden the whole thing and see that there are many others who are suffering and some maybe suffering more than yourself even, at least in terms of life-threatening situations or whatever, so that then, as I said, would help you to be able to at least gradually wean yourself of the obsessive thoughts. There is no other option. Behavioural therapy conjoined with mindfulness practice would definitely help as well.

Dianne: Jenny I just might add as a way of closing, to just keep in mind that love takes many forms and that sometimes separation is a form of love, and is a form of compassion. Thank you. Is there someone else who is on the line who would like to ask a question?

Charles: This is a question to Traleg Rinpoche. He mentioned, if I’m not misquoting you, unacknowledged ego as being shadow, is that correct, I wonder? Sometime ago earlier in the conversation, it has really grabbed my mind because I saw this could very well be it, and then as the discussion proceeded I re-thought this a bit, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I was beginning to think that perhaps the shadow elements here are repressed lies, so to speak, maybe not exactly our unacknowledged ego, but maybe our unacknowledged greatness or freedom, or what you might call the ‘ego burnout’ type of thing, that’s like we have compassion burnout, maybe this is a kind of an ego burnout that we suppress them and then our greatness cannot come out. Would you care to comment?

Rinpoche: I’m not actually exactly sure about what you are really asking, but I think ...

Dianne: What I heard in this question, and correct me if I’m wrong Charles, but what I heard in your question is sometimes what we refer to in the integral world is a kind of golden shadow where there are parts of our, he called it greatness, but I would say that buddha-nature is out of awareness, that somehow our natural enlightened mind is actually out of awareness, kept out of our ability to identify with it. Is it possible to bring buddha-nature out of the shadow and into awareness? Was that your question Charles?

Charles: I think that’s my implication, yes.

Rinpoche: Yes, well definitely. The thing is it works both ways. If we are able to work with the maras, as I was saying before, which are manifestations of suppressed egoic tendencies then in proportion to that, one’s ability to tap into one’s true potentialities would naturally increase. To use that metaphor of shadow and light, if there is light then shadow retreats, and if there is less light shadow increases, so we do not need to do two things, just doing one thing accomplishes both. That’s a very good point though, thank you.

Charles: Can I just add one more thing, if I may? In many ways it seems to me that we are very dualistic along these lines, and we talk about the shadow and whatever is on the non-shadowed side, couldn’t there be a different way of talking about this?

Rinpoche: Sorry, without talking about shadows and things like that?


Charles: Yeah, because I think we are bifurcating things, we are calling the shadow, whether it’s golden or darker aspect, compared to an ego reality which we live on a daily basis, isn't there any way to talk a little bit differently about this?

Rinpoche: Well, let me put it this way, actually Buddhism does not really say ego itself is a necessarily bad thing, it is what we call ego fixation, the fixation on the egoic entity and egoic tendencies is what lands us in trouble. So the idea is to reduce the fixation, but as long as we are alive, we have to rely on our ego, we have to have some kind of egoic identity and so forth, but the ego does not represent the sum total of our entire being, I think that is the question. And of course, I am not an expert on psychology or psychotherapy, and also Ken has written about these things as Dianne pointed out before. But I think the idea of shadow is just a metaphor, it is not to be taken too literally, I think it is like an indicator of the way in which how certain psychological states and processes work, especially on the unconscious level. It’s like the Zen idea, Zen example of finger pointing to the moon, the finger helps to point to the moon, but it is the moon we should be looking at not the finger-tip, or something like that. In Buddhism we use many metaphors like that.

Dianne: Thank you Charles. And that’s really important. Sometimes in our practice we talk about just using language as an indication, not as a label, not a fixed reality and it becomes a very subtle thing to actually understand that concepts can illuminate our experience and they can obscure experience and that to use language properly is actually part of the practice. So is there anybody else on the line, I have a question over the web if there isn’t. So Rinpoche this question came over the web from Nikola, and his question is, he is wondering, this is a big question for you. What do you think would be the biggest contribution of Buddhism to the West in terms of human relationships? What do you think the contribution of Buddhism to the West is in terms of relationships?

Rinpoche: I think, like you said that’s a very big question again and so therefore it is very hard to answer. But in my humble opinion, I think that what Buddhism can offer is, you know Buddhism is a very multi-facetted spiritual and religious tradition, and because of that it has a lot of flexibility and it gives an opportunity for people of this day and age who see the value in many religious and spiritual ideals to be religious and spiritual, while at the same time not being bound by certain restrictive religious structures, and so therefore I think Buddhism gives a lot of room for individual self-expression, and at the same time drawing on a very old and ancient wisdom tradition. Because Buddhism has spread to many countries, as you know over the centuries and how Buddhism is practiced, even traditionally in these countries is very varied, and it’s practiced in many different cultures and Buddhists use many different languages and it is already very multi-cultural in the way in which it is practiced, and the potential for that to happen even more so in the future is even greater.

Dianne: Thank you. We have many conversations in America and in Europe and I’m guessing in Australia about you might say the destiny of Buddhism in the West. But I think Buddhism does appear to be notable for its capacity to come to a culture and you might say to assume the conventions and the dress and the manners of the particular culture, but somehow it is quite beautiful the way in which the tradition is able to change and at the same time to be preserved. So there is an innovation that is always happening, you might say a novelty, and yet the essence of the teaching remains and the capacity of each culture in a way to reflect on and to refine or to add to the


teaching based on the particular sensibility of the people. It is quite a beautiful thing to be positioned to, to even be able to ask that question and to think about that question.

Rinpoche: Yes indeed, I think that’s true, and also as you know, even in Asia where Buddhism has had to live with many different faith and also ideologies brought in from the West like Communism and so on, for many years now. So Buddhists, even from overseas are used to living in an environment where there are different kinds of people and people practicing different religions and they have had to, like I said, they have had to cope with foreign invasions and colonisations and speak different languages, and so people are used to that kind of thing.

Dianne: Indeed, yes in other words the culture changes, and evolution within the culture happens and the spiritual traditions provide a reference point and a way to maintain ourselves as those changes happen. There is a story, I don’t know if you have ever heard this story Rinpoche from, you must know Ram Das the contemporary American spiritual teacher, he had a student whose family of origin was Jewish and who had grown up Jewish but who had taken to Buddhist practice and his parents were not particularly pleased, because they experienced it as a betrayal to their culture, so the student was struggling with this, and so one day he came in to meet with Rhombas and Rhombas said to the student, ‘how is your mother doing with your Buddhism’, and the student said, ‘well she’s not doing well with my Buddhism, but she really loves when I’m the Buddha’. That sort of makes a point, you know.

Rinpoche: Yes, very funny, that’s very good.

Dianne: So I just would like to thank you, just so much for being willing to get up at this hour, I know it’s very early.

Rinpoche: Well, thank you very much Dianne for having me, and I want to thank Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute for doing such wonderful work, and I think this kind of work is really needed and I really appreciate it, because again, it really relates to what we were talking about in terms of dialogues and bringing different ideas together and bringing people together and so on. Encouraging people to have some kind of shift in their mental outlook, to the more positive side is a very, very encouraging thing and that can then keep the nihilism and the cynicism at bay. So thank you very much.

Dianne: You are very, very welcome, and I hope that we actually get to meet each other in person at some point.

Rinpoche: That will be really good, it has been very nice talking to you again, thank you.

Dianne: Good bye. Thank you to Integral Lives and to our friends that are involved, it’s a pleasure and we hope to see you at the Integral Spiritual Experience in Asilomar over New Year. Thank you very much everyone.


Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche · Web viewInterview by Diane Musho Hamilton – Traleg Kyabgon, Rinpoche...

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