It takes a tremendous amount of merit to meet with the dharma - especially if you have an interest in it.
I've always loved the Sangha. I have the deepest, deepest respect for them. I'm very sorry that in the West people don't appreciate what the monastic order is about.
My mother was a spiritualist. We had weekly séances at our house with a neighbor who was a medium and various friends, and so I was brought up with the idea that there are many realms of being all around us. So that prepared me for Buddhism, and especially Tibetan Buddhism with all its talk of different realms and dimensions of being.
The Tibetans have many teachings on how to die, consciously, and how to remain in the clear light, and it works. You can see it working, and they can stay in that state for hours, days, or weeks.
Traditionally, women didn't have much a role in Buddhism. The books were all written by monks, for other monks. So the general view of the feminine was rather misogynistic, with women playing the role of the forbidden other, waiting to pounce on innocent little monks! In that society, it was hard for women to become educated and get the deeper teachings and really become accomplished.
If you're meeting with the dharma, you have probably been a human being before.
The Tibetans are good at learning many skillful ways to show that everything we do becomes dharma practice, depending on which kind of approach we use.
For some people, every door opens, and they meet just who they need to meet when they need to meet them, all the conditions come together. For other people, there is one problem after the other, even though they are so sincere. And from a Tibetan point of view, this is because of a lack of merit.
This is a time that calls for extreme restraint. In a world of outright aggression and violence there can be no winners. To respond to violence with counter-violence only throws oil on the fire.
You have to recharge your batteries.
I know many Catholic priests and nuns who use the Buddhist teachings to become better Catholics, and Jews who use them to become better Jews. Why not?! It just takes us towards more deeply recognizing our original nature, which is what we all share after all.
The internet can be enormously helpful, just like books can, but I don't think it's the be all and end all for really practicing Buddhism. At a certain point, as with learning any skill, we need personal instruction from someone who is more advanced than us.
We are educated. We can think. We have the freedom to think.
Tibetans are great with meritorious practices.
From the point of view of the relative world, merit is very important.
We have met with the dharma. Many of us have met with teachers. We do have some idea of what to do and how to practice. And we should not be lazy.
I never really wondered about getting from London to Lahaul. It all seemed such a natural progression. In London I felt I was in the wrong place and wanted to leave. I'd thought about going to Australia or New Zealand. It's nothing against England, but I knew I wasn't meant to be there.
There are certain teachers who shouldn't be teachers.
We've been human countless times and done everything you can imagine. So we've been planting all these negative seeds, and they're going to come up.
In the texts, and as His Holiness the Dalai Lama reminds us, we should check the person's behavior not when they're sitting on a big throne, but behind the scenes. How do they treat ordinary people - not the big sponsors - but just ordinary people who are of no particular importance to them.
If you go to any nunnery and ask them what the main obstacle is, they'll always say low self-esteem and lack of confidence. It will take time. But the difference between the first girls from Ladakh who became nuns, to the girls we have now, is very encouraging.
I don't think I've changed anything, but I hope that by my talks I have encouraged people in their practice. That's as much as any of us can do.
If you've made a lot of negative seeds, and not a lot of positive seeds, even though you meet with the dharma, you're going to have problems.
A realized being would not be making any fresh karma because karma is very much connected to the ego but would still be receiving the results of past karma.
Every country that meets Buddhism molds it into their own indigenous religion, as America will. A very clear example of this is Japan, which threw out almost all the dharma, and just kept that essence, which spoke to them.
