دار بيبليون
Tenzin Palmo
Interview 4
(13/10/2021)
Compiled by Dr Lwiis Saliba
Quotes from the book: ‘A hermitage in the snow’ from Vicki Mackenzie, NIL Editions
Lwiis Saliba
1) Dear Jetsunma, you said: “Many people avoid thinking about death and are very afraid of it. But when we are not afraid of death during our life we are relieved of an immense burden” (p29) – When and how not to be afraid of death?
Tenzin Palmo: Basically death is totally natural, everybody dies. I mean, the one thing in life we should understand is that when somebody dies the consciousness carries on, it’s only the body disappearing : so, if we think about this, we are like in a guest house, like living in a hotel and we travel to find another room, another hotel, this will not be a big deal! If we remind ourselves everyday that death is certain but the time to death is not certain, then, it makes us appreciate life, we don’t take life for granted and we think: “well, right now, I’m not dead, so, how can I use this time I still have most beneficially?” Thus, at the time of death, whenever it will come, sooner or later, we will be able to die without regret, we can just die and know we have well used our human live, we didn’t waste it. In that way, if we are ready to die, whenever it happens, then death is really the next great adventure!
2) How to get ready every moment to die?
TP: The first thing is recognizing that this is a very precious life and that the things we are taking with us is not our health, is not our money, is not our position, is not family and relationships, our children or our parents. All that, we have to leave behind, all our prestige, we have to leave behind. The only thing we carry with us is consciousness, our karmic propensities of this life. So, we should be careful with that: so, take care of mind, take care of heart and don’t do anything which harm others, and try to cultivate the mind and transform it into a kind of mind that we will be happy to take with us into the future. If we do all this, we won’t have to worry, we did the best in this life time to benefit ourselves, benefit others, and we know it was OK: then let’s see what happens next!
3) You said “this mind, we take it with us after birth”?
TP: Our conceptual mind maybe not continues, but the stream of consciousness goes on, I mean, the stream of consciousness never stops, that goes on.
4) You say: “No one can maintain me that consciousness does not exist after death because I have seen over and over again proof to the contrary. It is not a belief, it is a certainty. I have also learned that there are other forms of existences which are perfectly real, but in ordinary time, we do not have consciousness of them “(p. 29 – How are you certain of this existence after death? And what are the other forms of existence?
TP: You know, I grew up as a spiritualist : my mother was a spiritualist and we had ‘seances’ every week in our house when the neighbors would come, At that time, I was probably eight or nine years old and we talked with those gone on the other side as spiritual guides . What they told us, the information they told us, through the woman who was the « channel one » we could not possibly know but we could ratify them by our investigations. For example one couple who came to this meeting, it was just after the war, in the 50s: they lost the only son they had, he was in a tank on a bridge which blew up. So he came to them and many things he told them, they didn’t know about them…and when they checked later, it was true. For example he said he died on the 23rd of September and they said to him: “No, dear, it was on 24th of September” but he said: “no it was my death, I remember, it was on the 23rd of September”. They checked up with the war office and, in fact, they had made a mistake. They said in this office: “Yes sorry, it’s a clerical error, we made a mistake in writing it was on 24”. So nobody could know this, this kind of information, you can’t make it up. It’s like that.
Also, he was used to call himself Tom and the parents said: “But, darling your name is Cyril!” “To tell you the truth I never like to tell, but I hate my name Cyril, I used my middle name when I joined the army and I called myself Tom”. His middle name was Thomas and then, the parents met his old friends in the army, they all called him Tom, nobody knew his real name was Cyril. So the family couldn’t know that, they discovered it.
Many such things happened, anyway as a result I grew up with this very deep awareness that we are surrounded all the time by many different rounds of beings, the one we see and which is so obvious to us, is just the outer shell of many much more circles around, which are surrounding us all the time, sometimes helping us, sometimes making problems, normally, just ignoring us. So as a result of that, while I have grown up, death and what happens after death was an everyday topic of conversation in our house. It was never something to fear, or something you never mentioned, because we were always very fascinated by the after-life. This particular round of being what happens next? It seems what happens next for most people, if they are not very bad, is that it’s ok, there is nothing to fear!
I mean all I try to say it’s all the feedback when I had myself a Near Death Experience and left the body. I was looking down at my body, indeed at that time I was surrounded by beings of light, and with love they said : “Come with us come with us”, Then, I thought : “Oh, I’m going to die, that’s interesting!”. I really wanted to go with these beings of light, I didn’t want to go back into my body… So, I don’t know, but personally for myself, I feel that really, unless one is a very wicked person, one doesn’t have much to fear of death.
5) You deny, on the other hand, the existence of Atman by saying: “When I had heard for the first time this term of Atman I had nausea (…) Buddhism on the other hand spoke of no -existence of Atman. He did not develop any notion of entity independent of SELF “(p38) – Isn’t it a paradox that consciousness continues to exist after death while Atman (spirit or soul) doesn’t?!
TP: The point is that consciousness is not something static and unchanging, this is what the Buddha was denying, something as the center of us which is individual, unchanging, eternal. He said: “Look for it and you’ll never find it!” However, he did not deny that we exist and we are conscious beings, so what we are trying to do; our conceptual consciousness changes from moment to moment, it’s like a river just flowing. What the Buddha said is that the very nature of our mind is pure consciousness, it is indeed pure awareness, clarity, it is luminous, it is knowing, it is love and compassion and great wisdom: such is our true nature, says in particular the Mahayana school of Buddhism. Through meditation, that’s what we are trying to recognize because we have it always of course, but we don’t recognize it. Personally, I think that all those who practiced the spiritual aspects of religion like the Sufis, the Christian and Jewish mystics, as well as the Hindu Mahatmas, have all understood this: we are something so much greater than who we normally identify ourselves as being, but what blocks our vision is this clinging to a small self.
This small self is what we think it’s me even if we may call it Atman. Nevertheless, it’s not really Atman, it’s me, a bigger, more glorious me. Buddha said it was our big mistake, it’s not like that at all. I mean, even when we get a glimpse of it, there is no self, there is no other. It’s non-dual by its very nature.
6) In fact what are we carrying with us after death, the pure consciousness only, or our karma?
TP: Both, because we are carrying the effects of our karma…. As long as we don’t clean our ego, there will be karma. The ego carries karma along with it. We are only free from karma when we are free from ego, when we are liberated. In the meantime, as long as we are grasping to our sense of conceptual selfhood, we will just continue to rotate in the round of births and deaths, rebirth re-death, rebirth re-death, endlessly. Nonetheless, at the same time, this quality of pure primordial awareness is always there, otherwise we wouldn’t be conscious. The problem is we don’t recognize it, it’s like the sky, we always see the clouds, we don’t see the clear sky. So, this is the problem we need to look at: the unconditioned beyond the conditioned.
All great mystics who dealt with the spiritual aspects of religion have understood this, it’s not just Buddhist talking about this, everybody does, they use their own language and their own examples but basically they all say the same : we mistake our true nature, which is divine : we don’t recognize it, that’s our tragedy.
7) Why are we not aware about our previous life? And how to be aware of it?
TP: Some people are very aware with it, especially when they are children, you know, many children talk about what happened ‘before’, but nobody listens to them, and people say to them: “Stop talking like that, you’re telling lies”. People don’t recognize that what children say is what actually they remember. There are hundreds of cases of it, of children who, when they are young, are describing some place, some people, everything. When they come back to that place, they recognize it and also recognize any change. This represents real evidence: but as they get older, the conditioning of their life takes over, and goes to the background because nobody listens to these children anyway, so, what’s the point about talking of it? Then many of them forget.
8) They know a previous life just by innocence or they have some vision about it?
TP: They know about it or sometimes they dream about it. When I was young, I had recurrent dreams. I also had some dreams about past life, about ancient places. Actually, I didn’t have any idea of being a small child living in London, but I could feel that I could see the sun and everything so clearly. I had that dream again and again, very joyful and very clear, when I was walking up to the temple. Many children know this, they can even recognize people. Of course we should mention here the Tulku’s system in Tibet, where masters after their death are again recognized in the form of young children. When they are taken back to the same place, it’s very common that they recognize everything, even their own position from past lives, etc. They have this system for making sure that the continuity of master remains, they don’t lose them.
9) You say about your meditation experiences, especially during your hermitage period: “Frankly, I don’t like to talk about that. It is like your sexual experiences. Some people like to talk about them, others don’t. Personally, I think it’s extremely intimate” (p.166) – What is your advice to meditators: to talk about their experiences as they may be useful to others or to keep them quietly by oneself?
TP: Well usually we are told we should only talk about our experience to a personal teacher, because he’s the one that gives us guidance. However, sometimes we could discuss it or compare experiences with a close friend, especially if we are studying with the same teacher. That is also sometimes permissible, some people like to discuss these things and some people don’t. On the whole it’s considered that, if we talk too much about our experiences, it would corrupt them.
10) You mean the ego will be more stimulated by doing so?
TP: Yes, and also they we’ll lose their strength, because they represent something very intimate. For example, when I was in a retreat, I had extraordinary vivid and prophetic dreams. Then, one time, I was in a town and a sadhu I didn’t know at all, came up to me in the market place and said : “I have to tell you one thing, it’s very important : never tell anyone your dream! Never tell anyone your dream!” and then, he walked away…I think his remark was very positive. Sometimes if we talk about these things which are very intimate, we lose them and eventually dissipate their energy. This is why normally you only speak of these very intimate experiences to your teacher or to close dharma friends.
11) Is there any similarity between sexual experiences and meditative experiences enabling us to compare the latter to the former?
TP: It’s just what I meant recently: some people love to talk about sexual experiences in life, and write whole books about it, that’s fine, but most of people think this is something very private and very intimate and it’s none of your business, it’s only a matter of concern to me, and not to whomever …They don’t want to talk about that, they consider that it’s not something to talk about, it’s something between you and your partner. Likewise, meditation is between you and your teacher.
12) Did your own master or the masters you met talked about their experiences or did they keep them quietly by themselves?
TP: My own Lama never talked about anything. Some great lamas, they can tell stories about some experiences they had if they think it would be helpful, but certainly they never boast about it. On the whole, Tibetan Lamas don’t talk about this very much, they might talk about somebody else’s experiences, but they don’t talk about themselves.
13) However, sometimes if they talk about their own experiences, it’s maybe good for the student in order to understand more or to have some light about their own practice…
TP: I think it depends on the master: probably, if they felt it was helpful they would speak about it, but if they didn’t think it was really helpful, then they wouldn’t. But most of the lamas really don’t talk about their experiences.
14) You say about meditation: “Transformation only begins to take place when meditation descends from the head to the heart and is actually experienced. The realizations are very bare. They are not accompanied by lights or music” (p.167) – When and how does meditation descend from the head to the heart?
TP: It descends when the meditator and the meditation become one, when there is no separation, when we completely merge with the practice. Then somehow this is no more intellectual, what happens in the brain goes down to the heart chakra. There is a real feeling that the heart chakra itself becomes the meditation. So, you know, this is just what happens. Otherwise, we are just thinking about it: still, it’s important to reach a level of consciousness which is not connected so much with the brain, because the brain is a very wonderful machine but it’s not the consciousness itself, and what we are trying to do is to experience that level of deeper awareness within us.
15) It descends from the head to the heart chakra, you mean?
TP: Yes!
16) So, it’s on the head on the highest chakra?
TP: No, no! In Buddhism, the main chakra we try to open is the heart chakra, because it’s connected with love, with compassion and all these things. Moreover, it’s very important to recognize also, as I said in that quote, that realization, the direct realization of the nature of the mind is very bare. You know there are two things, one is the experiences, and one is a realization. Experiences consist in enlightening, bliss, vision… and also exciting things may happen, sometimes very bad things. Often you know people imagine that’s what they try to get is bliss, clarity and visions… But that is considered like just experiences, they come and go. It’s like watching a very interesting movie but it’s external. What we try to do is to go to something deeper than that, which is direct realization of the nature of the mind: that is not usually accompanied by fireworks… That is a totally naked awareness with no clothes on.
17) Sometimes, in the same context, you said: “We have nothing to realize, it is there – What do you mean?
TP: What I mean is we think that realization is something different from how we really are, but what we are really trying to do is just to recognize what has always been there but we haven’t seen yet: the fact you can see me and hear me, the fact we have consciousness shows we are conscious, shows we are aware. But normally we miss the thing because we’re talking to ourselves too much. We don’t recognize that naked awareness, naked consciousness behind it all, just like if we look at the clouds and the rainbows, at the thunderstorms, we don’t see the sky, we don’t see the space, and yet, none of these clouds and rainbows could appear if there was not the sky. (Jetsunma makes a large opening movement with the arms accompanied with a big smile).
18) Our main idea about realization is something should change about us. Nothing could change?
TP: Yes, it changes because we realize that we are not what we think we are: identification with our conceptual thinking mind is a fiction. When we see the true nature of the mind, that is a very important breakthrough. Usually, at the beginning, it’s only a glimpse and after you have to stabilize it. My Lama said: “When you recognize the real nature of the mind, then you can start to meditate!” This means that now, we understand what we are trying to do which is to stabilize and make more constant this naked primordial awareness which is our true nature. This is not something that you can grow. It’s just like space: everything appears because there is space, but you cannot grow space. You can’t say: “Space is mine this is my space”. I am breathing and you are breathing my air, we are intimately breathing each other air if we are together, and yet we are not even conscious of that, you know and yet that is the fundamental of everything, the bases for everything to appear.
19) On the subject of meditation you say: “It is only when you begin to see the nature of the mind that meditation begins. Then you have to stabilize it until it becomes more and more familiar. When you have done this, all that remains, is to integrate it into everyday life” (p.169) – Is it through vision that we see and understand the nature of the mind?
TP: It depends on what you mean by vision when we realize the nature of the mind which is primordial awareness, unborn, undie, right? This is like space, it doesn’t come up and disappear, it’s always only present right here, we realize that by direct seeing in our meditation, or because it is pointed out by the master. One of the roles of the master is to point out the nature of the mind. Then, usually, as I said at first, it’s just a glimpse and immediately afterward the ‘egotist’ conceptual mind says: “Oh I got it! I’m really enlightened”! And then it’s gone… But that glimpse shows us that “it is”! Something inside us knows: that’s it! After that, our practice is to stabilize that realization, until finally we can remain in that state of clear naked awareness as often as we want to – and then integrate it to daily life. It’s not that we all become like spaced out zombies just sitting there … One thing with the great masters is that they are so light, so vivid and so clear in their mind, more than ordinary people. They are not this kind of people unable to function in daily life, their functioning is 100% better because the ego is not getting in the way. Therefore, they have clarity of seeing the things how they really are, and not distorted as they are usually through our conceptual consciousness. They have that sense of the interconnection with all beings, all living beings, not just human ones. This is compassion, which is veiled because we messed everything up, while we had such a great potential. Then however, compassion arises naturally. Thus, the clearer we see the situation, the more compassion comes up.
20) How and by what means can we transform everyday life into a meditation?
TP: Be aware, be aware, be present, don’t get messed up endlessly into the past, don’t get endlessly fantasizing about the future, unless you need to make plans. We only become more present, more mindful, more aware, and open up the heart. So, we embody loving awareness, in everything, which we do and instead to be slipped away by endless conceptual thinking, we are here now in what is happening in this moment. We don’t have to sit and think about decisions to take. Naturally, what’s to be done becomes clear, I mean our responses become spontaneous, we don’t have to think how we should deal with the situation, it’s obvious.
21) Has our daily life to be also a meditation?
TP: Absolutely! 100%! That’s indeed the point when we meet great masters: we know they are in a state of complete presence with us and of great love, we just feel it. I’m sure you met many great masters and this is a feeling you get with them, they are totally present with you and they have this total, non-judgmental love and compassion for who you are. It’s like the sunshine. It doesn’t think: “I’m going to shine on those, I’m not going to shine on these”… If we sit in the sun, we get the shine of it and if we go in the shade, we don’t get it, but the sun is still shining.
22) You also say: “For any practice to have effect, the meditating mind and the object of meditation must merge. Instead, most of the time they face each other” (p.175) – We are continually confronted with this “facing” and we can’t get out of it! How can we find an issue from this?
TP: First of all, it’s very important to relax and not to try too hard, you know, because who is the one who wants to get something? It’s the ego! Thus, really, just relax and allow the mind to be as it is, keep the sessions very short and don’t push too hard, allow the mind to be more calm, more connected, more quiet, more present and then bring that feeling into your daily life as much as possible. It’s very important not to pressure the mind to achieve something: actually, what should I gain from this? It’s not a matter of what we are gaining. It’s just a moment to moment awareness. We try to understand the mind and to bring it more and more to a state of calm and inner clarity, so that we could see the things more clearly. Most people never look at their mind, have you realized that? We live in a world of thoughts, and yet most people never ask themselves what is thought, like fishes in the ocean, which never ask what water is. Therefore we are deceiving our mind.
23) What is the impact of relaxation on our ego?
TP: Stop forcing the mind to do what you think it should be doing. If we don’t push the mind when we are meditating but if we allow it to become open, spacious and if we relax and just watch it, that reveal the nature of mind. Thus, without trying to make the thoughts in any particular way during meditation, just observe the thoughts, just watch them going. It’s like someone sitting on the bank of the river and watching the river going by, sometimes rubbish goes by, sometimes beautiful fishes, anything goes by, we’re just watching it, not interfering.
24) But sometimes in meditation or even in daily life, we see that the mind is working even against us, he’s doing what we don’t want to do, and he’s thinking on something which is not good… How to deal with this kind of mind?
TP: In meditation, it could not actually happen, because whatever comes up in the mind, it’s just a thought. Bad thoughts, stupid thoughts…. It’s just bubbles, we’re not clinging to them, we let them go by, even if we have really stupid thoughts, it doesn’t matter, because immediately we’re going to another thought, right?
We’re not holding the thought or developing them, or think: this is a brilliant thought!
I must think about that more! In meditation, we only allow everything to just pass by. Someone said it’s just like being in a train looking out of the train window: sometimes, we go past slums, sometimes we go past beautiful countryside but whatever we are passing, it’s just passing, we’re not getting out of the train. In other word, we’re not stopping… we’re just letting everything go past, right? So, this is what we do in meditation we just observe the mind and allow everything to just pass by, recognizing it’s just all passing phenomena, just thoughts. It’s not me, it’s not mine, just flowing energy. During the day, our attitude should be slightly different: we should be more careful, more aware, when we have thought which are connected with negative roots, like greed or anger or pride or jealousy, anything like that. We should notice that, and try to change it, transform it into something more positive. If we feel very angry, then we cultivate dispassion, if we feel greedy, then we cultivate generosity, contentment and so on… During the day, we should be more careful of our mind and take care of it., while when we are meditating on the mind itself, then we should just allow it to do what he wants to do, because forcing oneself is not the point. The point is inside, into the very nature of the thoughts.
25) But sometimes specially in daily life many thoughts are creeping in, and bad thoughts…
TP: Yes! So, we should be careful and notice: “That’s a greedy thought, that’s angry thought” … and to stop there: “Ok, right now, let’s change that: This is not a useful thought, this is a stupid thought, I’m going to change that thought.” Actually, we have to tame the mind. Buddha said we have a mad monkey mind? So, we have to tame the monkey. When we have quietened down the monkey, then we can train the monkey to be a good monkey and training the monkey is to transform the monkey, it’s no more like an ordinary monkey, so this is what we do when we’re working with our mind. It’s not out of there that there is a problem, the problem is in here.
When we recognize that happiness depends on a well-trained mind, with good thoughts, useful thoughts, happy thoughts, then an inner joy begins to grow because we become the master of our mind instead of being slave of it, which more people are. Their feelings, their moods are completely untamed. They have no control. What we’re trying to do, is to learn this truth: “I have to take my mind with me, so, who is going to be in charge? Why should this stupid ego, this ignorant mind give me all the rules?” It’s horrible to see that people are so miserable because their mind is completely out of control. This has nothing to do with what you know intellectually, with the circumstances of your life. Some of the wealthiest people in the world are also some of the most miserable. Some poorest people in the world could be some of the most joyful, it hasn’t that much to do with outer circumstances, but it has so much to do with our inner landscape! And that, we can change, this is the good news: we can’t change the whole society but we can change ourselves.
26) When we are in our bed and we are not totally sleeping, we are between sleeping and awareness, there are many thoughts coming up: it’s like in meditation, so how to deal with them?
TP: With all those thoughts and feelings, if we recognize them, then we can let them go. Actually, somebody said the real mantra of Buddhism is, “Let go, let go, let go”, because the mind always clings. Buddha said the suffering is clinging mind, so once we begin to see that and how it works, then we can begin to untie the knots.
And in fact, it’s said that this is not like a rope with many knots you have to untie, but rather like a snake which is untying its own knots. So, if we leave the snake alone, he will untie itself. Likewise, if we look at our mind, if we see what the mind itself is, it will begin to be released. That’s what meditation is for: to release the mind.
27) What kind of meditation did you do in the cave? And what meditation do you continue to practice now?
TP: When I was in the cave, I mostly did a lot of deity practices and a lot of mantra recitations because that’s what my lama told me to do. So, it was mostly what I was doing and nowadays I do some of these practices, but mostly I do some sitting meditation.
28) What do you mean by sitting meditation?
TP: Sitting and looking at the mind.
29) Without any special technique or method?
TP: It’s called mahamudra.
30) I remember, especially on your intervention last week on the international ‘Non-violence day’, you advised to always watch the mind itself. Why did you recommend this special meditation?
TP: All the problems we have in the outer world, or almost all of them, have been caused by the mistakes of the human being living on this planet. I mean, the roots of the problems are not animals, but humans…We, as human beings, have of course enormous potential, we all have Buddha nature, but in the meantime, our inner life is so completely clouded over : we are so driven by our greed, like anything, and aggression, jealousy, competition as well as fundamental, egoistic ignorance. This, of course, comes out in what we say, in what we do, in a how we relate to each other in society, how we use our planet and how we consider others : “This is my friend, this is my enemy”…All this illusion is creating all the trouble that we experience in the outer world, it comes from ourselves. If our mind is peaceful, kind, generous and not discriminating between people: “This is my friend, this is my enemy”, but everybody is considered to be our friend, and this worldwide, we would be living in a totally different planet. And moreover, religions have a tendency to blame anyone else than themselves, they are very divisive, which is too bad, because they sound to say one thing, but they go in the opposite direction!
31) You praise the effects of imagination by saying: “Creative imagination is in itself an incredibly powerful force. If properly channeled, it can reach very deep layers of the mind, layers that cannot be accessed through speech or mere analysis, because, at a deep level, we think in images. If we use images created by an awakened mind, it awakens very deep levels in our own mind” (p177) – What do you mean by “channeling the imagination properly”?
TP: What I was trying to say is that we were talking about our relationship with deity yoga. To see yourself as a deity emanating from the Buddha, the creative mind is deeper than the intellectual mind which only thinks in words. The creative mind thinks in images. Therefore, this is a skill of deity practice which helps us to access levels of consciousness which are not reachable through analytical thoughts, right? Deity yoga were created by an awaken consciousness, so, this drips down into to the consciousness of particular images.
If we visualize ourself as Mickey Mouse, then we will access the consciousness of Walt Disney, but do we want to? That’s the point: if we actualize the vision of enlightened beings, it activates deep levels of our own enlighten qualities. Thus, it’s a very skillful way of reaching to deeper levels within ourselves, which mirror the ones of the enlightened beings who created these practices in the first place.