by Lama Thubten Yeshe
Lama Yeshe gave this teaching in Brisbane, Australia, in April, 1975. Edited
by Nicholas Ribush.
Many people misunderstand
Buddhism. Even some professors of Buddhist studies look at just the words and
interpret what the Buddha taught very literally. They don't understand his methods,
which are the real essence of his teachings. In my opinion, the most important
aspect of any religion is its methods: how to put that religion into your own
experience. The better you understand that, the more effective your religion
becomes. Your practice becomes so natural, so realistic; you easily come to
understand your own nature, your own mind, and you don't get surprised by whatever
you find in it. Then, when you understand the nature of your own mind, you'll
be able to control it naturally; you won't have to push so hard; understanding
naturally brings control.
Many people will imagine that control of the mind is some kind of tight, restrictive
bondage. Actually, control is a natural state. But you're not going to say that,
are you? You're going to say that the mind is uncontrolled by nature, that it
is natural for the mind to be uncontrolled. But it's not. When you realize the
nature of your uncontrolled mind, control comes as naturally as your present
uncontrolled state arises. Moreover, the only way to gain control over your
mind is to understand its nature. You can never force your mind, your internal
world, to change. Nor can you purify your mind, by punishing yourself physically,
by beating your body. That's totally impossible. Impurity, sin, negativity or
whatever else you want to call it is psychological, a mental phenomenon, so
you can't stop it physically. Purification requires a skillful combination of
method and wisdom.
To purify your mind, you don't have to believe in something special up there—God,
or Buddha. Don't worry about that. When you truly realize the up and down nature
of your everyday life, the characteristic nature of your own mental attitude,
you'll automatically want to implement a solution.
These days, many people are disillusioned with religion; they seem to think
it doesn't work. Religion works. It offers fantastic solutions to all your problems.
The problem is that people don't understand the characteristic nature of religion,
so they don't have the will to implement its methods.
Consider the materialistic life. It's a state of complete agitation and conflict.
You can never fix things to be the way you want. You can't just wake up in the
morning and decide exactly how you want your day to unfold. Forget about weeks,
months, or years; you can't even predetermine one day. If I were to ask you
right now if can you get up in the morning and set exactly how your day was
going to go, how you were going to feel each moment, what would you say? There's
no way you can do that, is there?
No matter how much you make yourself materially comfortable, no matter how you
arrange your house—you have this, you have that; you put one thing here,
you put another there—you can never manipulate your mind in the same way.
You can never determine the way you're going to feel all day. How can you fix
your mind like that? How can you say, "Today I'm going to be like this"?
I can tell you with absolute certainty, as long as your mind is uncontrolled,
agitated and dualistic, there's no way; it's impossible. When I say this, I'm
not putting you down; I'm just talking about the way the mind works.
What all this goes to show is that no matter how much you tell yourself, "Oh,
this makes me happy, today I'm going to be happy all day long," it's impossible
to predetermine your life like that. Automatically, your feelings keep changing,
changing, changing. This demonstrates clearly that the materialistic life doesn't
work. However, I don't mean that you should renounce the worldly life and become
ascetics. That's not what I'm saying. My point is that if you understand spiritual
principles correctly and act accordingly, you will find much greater satisfaction
and meaning in your life than you will by relying on the sense world alone.
The sense world alone cannot satisfy the human mind.
Thus, the only purpose for the existence of what we call religion is for us
to understand the nature of our own psyche, our own mind, our own feelings.
Whatever name we give to our spiritual path, the most important thing is that
we get to know our own experiences, our own feelings. Therefore, the lamas'
experience of Buddhism is that instead of emphasizing belief, it places prime
importance on personal experimentation, putting Dharma methods into action and
assessing the effect they have on our minds: do these methods help? Have our
minds changed or are they just as uncontrolled as they ever were? This is Buddhism,
and this method of checking the mind is called meditation.
It's an individual thing; you can't generalize. It all comes down to personal
understanding, personal experience. If your path is not providing solutions
to your problems, answers to your questions, satisfaction to your mind, you
must check up. Perhaps there's something wrong with your point of view, your
understanding. You can't necessarily conclude that there's something wrong with
your religion just because you tried it and it didn't work. Different individuals
have their own ideas, views, and understanding of religion, and can make mistakes.
Therefore, make sure that the way you understand your religions ideas and methods
is correct. If you make the right effort on the basis of right understanding,
you will experience deep inner satisfaction. Thus, you'll prove to yourself
that satisfaction does not depend on anything external. True satisfaction comes
from the mind.