دار بيبليون
Tenzin Palmo
Interview N°6
by Lwiis Saliba
February 9th, 2022
Introduction
Good night for you all, and welcome again to Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, we will start directly our sixth interview with her.
First, congratulations for the translation and publication of your book Jetsunma, Hermitage in the snow. A book that gives warmth to my heart, I bought this book in a bookstore in Paris in the year 2000, 22 years ago. I went through it and put it in my library which contains more than 20,000 volumes, especially in the field of religions in general and Buddhism. And when my professor Jacques Vigne spoke to me about Jetsunma for the first time, I said to myself: “I know the story of this lady!” and I started to search in my library until I found again this book, it was my first contact with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. This is why this nice book as a special place in my heart, and I choose most of my questions by quoting it. In the end, nothing is by chance in life and it took me all this time to succeed in meeting her. This link between us, I feel, is evolving more and more, and I am very happy about it.
Today we are going to finish our quotations from this beautiful book to start with another one from Jetsunma entitled: Daily life as a meditative practice. When I saw the second book for the first time, I was just thinking : “In the end, if our daily life is not a kind of Sadhana and of meditative practice, our meditation will always remain an incomplete practice”. And the book itself came to confirm my thoughts.
For me, its reading was not only a great pleasure, but also, an above all, a deep dialogue with Jetsunma, just as I was asking her my questions, and receiving her answers through the lines of her book. That is why it was so easy a job to prepare the following questions. I hope it will be easy to Jetsunma to reply, and to all those present to follow this dialogue. Finally with Dr Jacques Vigne, my professor, we are so happy that people are attending and following these interviews with Jetsunma. They write an ask me when the next interview will be and they said that Jetsunma, first by her sheer presence, and second, by her wise answers, gave them a lot of help in their daily and spiritual life.
Lwiis : Welcome again, The Buddhist world lost a few days ago a great master, Thich Nhat Hanh. You quoted him so many times in your books! Can you say anything about him?
Tenzin Palmo: He was a Vietnamese monk during the time of Vietnamese war, in which Americans were very involved after France. He gathered a group of people, monks, nuns and lay people, who were neutral. They were not on one side or the other, they were going out into the villages, just trying to help people who had been struck by the war. As a result of this, they were suspicious to both sides. Nobody would believe that they just tried to help, that they did not have any agenda. Thich Nhat Hanh was then exiled from Vietnam by the Vietcong government, and he came to France. He started a community there which is called Plum Village, in Dordogne.
That’s a community of both Vietnamese and French, nuns, monks and lay people living together, having various kind of social outreach and of course publishing books and so forth. He has traveled all around the world, I met him in America. His idea was, way before this became popular, mindfulness and ecology, the environment and how we are all connected with the environment, what he called inter-being. This was many years before this kind of things became fashionable, thus, he is therefore sometimes called the father of mindfulness. He talked about mindfulness, mindfulness of the breath, mindful walking and so forth, long before it became a catchword. He spent his whole life talking about peace, about conflicts resolution, talking about the environment. He alas had a stroke, he recovered very well but this time, he was quite old. Finally, he was given permission to go back to get to this place, which was really in his heart, so he went back to Vietnam lived in his monastery there out in the countryside. I think he was about 95 when he passed away. He had a tremendous influence on not just the Buddhist world, but on the whole world of people who are sensitive towards these matters.
Lwiis : We continue from earlier time our questions, in the context of chastity you say page 259 : “It must be admitted that very intimate emotional relationships are an obvious dissipating factor.” So, do you advise avoiding this kind of relationship even if it does not affect chastity and celibacy?”
TP: many of the major religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity put emphasis on chastity, because sex really takes a lot of emotional and physical energy. You cannot pretend it doesn’t, nature has its own agenda which of course is to propagate the species, that’s what it cares about. Therefore, for all animals, not just human animals, sex is very attractive and a big drive, but it takes a lot of attention and consequently, the mind automatically goes down to the lower chakras. If one is trying to lead a life which is centered on purity and calm, and higher thoughts, then, obviously at least a period of chastity can be very helpful : it helps both personally and a lot with relationships, because you’re not then looking at other people as objects of desire, just looking at them as people who want you to be happy and you want them to be happy; it keeps the relationship very clean, very clear, there is no kind of ulterior motive going on there, for being friendly and kind. Celibate communities are also very much more at ease on the whole. Of course, people like Thich Nhat Hanh had communities which were monks, nuns and laypeople. While these were there, they had to be celibate, but they were still mixed genders, everybody looked on each other like brothers and sisters. It kept the relationship very nice, very friendly, very open and uncomplicated. It made life much simpler, put it like that.
Still, of course many of the greatest masters have been married, had families and were undoubtedly very great realized beings. Thus, it’s not that sex is a bad thing but at a certain time it can be very helpful to observe chastity. It starts in the mind, it’s not good keeping the outer form of celibacy, while inside having lots of salacious thoughts. The mind itself has to just turn away from relating to people in that way, at least for a time. It gives a freedom to the mind, it leaves the mind open and spacious. At least not the whole of your life, but for a time it can be very helpful, especially if you are in retreat.
Lwiis: By these sexual questions, we waste attention and energy too …
TP: Of course you do, your attention goes right down to the middle of your body and below, below the navel, let us admit that so many of the problems in this world are caused by people giving in to this impulse, especially men. All these prostitutes, all these millions of prostitutes, what are they for? All the rapes, the sexual violence is because people are subjected to the control of these lower urges, not being in control of them. Even if one is married, he needs to be in control, which means keep away from being controlled.
Lwiis : What do you mean by a relation, which is very clean?
TP: Of course, couples are together, and they have sex which is an important part of their relationship, but it shouldn’t dominate it, it should be an expression of love and caring and not purely lust. So many people mistake lust for love! But it’s not at all the same thing!
Lwiis: When we look to the realized masters in the world, they are mostly celibate, is it due to this?
TP: Most of them are celibate but not all of them are, for example in Tibetan Buddhism many of the greatest lamas are married, have families. Their children also carry on the lineage, it’s not that it’s a sine qua non: “If you are not celibate you are not spiritual”, that’s nonsense! But who is in control? That the question!
Lwiis: About anger, you say: “anger is anger, and we use it to justify negative emotions, we all have this huge reserve of anger in us and every time we use it, it only adds fuel to the fire”. (p. 252). My question is: Most of the time we can’t control our anger because of this huge reserve, so how can we gradually reduce it? By getting angry, are we increasing this huge reserve, and what about what we could call a righteous anger, or anger for a righteous cause?
TP: Come on, Lwiis this is a huge subject, right? We could talk about this for hours and hours, write books this thick, just on how to overcome anger … Much of Buddha dharma, much of Buddhism is about how to deal with our negative emotions and especially with anger. This is something, for which there are many approaches, many different ways to deal with. Still, basically, first, we have to recognize that anger is there and to accept it right now: “I’m angry”. Do not pretend it’s not there, it’s there right now: something is upsetting me, annoying me, I’ m angry, then, we shouldn’t give into feelings such as: “I am right to be angry, this is fair enough, I should be angry”. That only creates more problems, more anger is coming back, so everybody is in a big fight and angry and upset. Then, everybody is making really bad karma, because they are saying bad things and doing bad things, shouting at each other or even may be aggressive physically. Instead of that we can say us: “OK, I’m angry now, this is a good opportunity to practice patience, forbearance” We cannot practice this very important quality of forbearance if we do not have anything which makes us angry. Thus, instead of being annoyed with the person that is upsetting us, we should be grateful to him because they are helping us to cultivate this very important quality of patience. Honestly and truthfully, righteous anger is usually simply an excuse for venting our anger: we can always find something to be angry, we can always find something to be upset about, so, all this reaction is just a conduit for the anger which is already in our heart. The problem there is that, if we approach the difficulty with anger, when we are saying: “I’m right, you’re wrong”, so there is no dialogue, it just causes more conflict, as we all know, and it produces aggression. It brings up anger in other people. If we are angry, even if we are right or wrong, who knows, it just creates more anger, it becomes a cycle. Therefore, honestly, it’s better to deal with injustice through a compassionate motivation. Compassion can be very strong, compassion isn’t always weak and sweet, it can be also quite fierce, but it’s not based on the root of anger, It’s based on the root of seeing the problem and trying to find a genuine solution which includes the other as well as ourselves.
Lwiis: but how to reduce this huge reserve of anger inside us?
TP: Look at it, bring it up! Say, “hello anger, what’s your problem, why are you angry?” Because some people, for anything, just ignite, while for other people, it really takes a lot to get upset. Again, some people are upset by anything and the reason for it is the anger inside us. Often, people are angry with us because in their heart they are angry with themselves, they are not at peace. If we are at peace, friends, at ease with ourselves, it takes a lot to make us upset with other people; but if we are not at ease within ourselves, if we don’t really feel happy with ourselves, if we are very critical of ourselves, if we are tense within ourselves, then anything will spark our anger, and it will just flare up. So, send loving kindness to oneself, and send loving kindness to the anger instead of suppressing it or trying to avoid it. Bring it up, look at it and say: “Oh, anger, I’m so sorry, may you be well and happy, what’s your problem?” and listen to what it’s trying to tell you, what is the source of this problem due to which, again and again and again, we are ruffled, and get upset. The real reason is that the anger is inside, it is not out of there! It’s not other peoples, it’s not other situations, there is always going to be something out there. Still, how we respond to what is out there comes from inside us.
Therefore, we have to become friendly with what’s happening inside of us, and really listen and look at it, and look at the anger when it comes up, really look at it clearly. Then, we can see it’s not something solid and tight, on the contrary, it’s something very open and spacious. Actually, in Buddhist terminology, it’s empty.
Lwiis : Still, many times, we really try to avoid anger, but we cannot, why is it so?
TP: Because we are not in the practice, we are not in control of our mind.
That’s the whole problem! Lust comes up, anger comes up, jealousy comes up, pride comes up, and who is in charge? There is our mind and we are the slaves, we are not in control. This is a problem for everybody, that we are just completely enslaved by the negative emotions in our own mind. How sad! Therefore, it’s so important, to learn how to tame the mind. Tame it in the sense of making it quiet, peaceful, and being able to see it clearly. Take it step-by-step, it doesn’t happen overnight, but this is one of the intentions of meditation practice, not the only one, still it’s an important one: how to overcome the negative and transform it into positive, not by suppressing it, not by denying it, but by working with it.
Lwiis: Last question about anger: in the Bhagavad-Gita, they connect sexuality and anger speaking in one word of kama-krodha : what do you think about it?
TP: Yes, that’s the two sides of this really basic polarity of desire-pleasure on one side, and pain on the other side. For everything we are experiencing from our senses, we have like or dislike reaction to it. We are attracted: I like it, I want it, I desire it… or: I don’t like it, it’s bad, take it away! Which is aversion or anger: so, that is like the flipside of the same coin held together by the ego, which is ignorance.
Lwiis: Do you think that, if we are not mastering our sexual desire, we cannot master our anger?
TP: Some people might be very clearly celibate and very angry, some people might be very angry but not have much sexual desire, I mean different peoples have different pleasures, or afflictive emotions, one is less strong, another very strong, but the important thing is to see them all when they come, and deal with them.
We must be the master of our minds instead of being, as I just said, the slaves of it. The reason for this is that we are the slaves of the ego and the ego is ignorant. It is not on our side, it just wants to think it exists. So, the more we feel strongly these afflictive emotions, the more powerful is the sense of “I “. Conversely, when the sense of “I” begins to dissolve and melt away, likewise our desire and anger melt away too. It’s all held together by this sense of “Me”.
Lwiis: You said: “People and especially the family are hurt if you don’t show your attachment to them. But this is because we keep confusing love with attachment” (p.265).
My question is: this is in fact an everyday experience, one is reproached with all kind of things, one is called with being unwelcome etc.… if one does not show attachment to the family members. How do you separate love from attachment, and does this separation require a high spiritual level?
TP: Usually, I sum it up the situation by saying that attachment claims: “I love you and I want you to make me happy” and genuine love says: “I love you, and I want you to be happy”. That, perhaps, won’t include me, but if you really love their happiness, it’s what counts, whether it includes me or not. It’s how it goes! So, this is a very big difference: attachment grasps and clings, it wants to hold on and make that person mine, whether it’s your partner, your children or whoever, they are mine: I own them because I love them! But that’s not real love, that’s just attachment. On the other side, being non-attached is very difficult within the family, but it doesn’t mean that we are cold and distant. We must have loving kindness and compassion, affection, caring. All these things, of course are extremely important, loving kindness is quite essential for all beings, and especially for your family. But it’s not a clinging, it’s not grasping. You must not want people to be what you want them to be! You must allow them to be who they are.
This is the difference, we hold them very lightly, gently, you know like a small one-day old chicken, very gently: if you go like this with a little chicken it’s fine, but if we go like “you are my chicken” and crush it …. Then, there is no more chicken! In this way, this is what happens with people’s relationships, they try to grasp and own the other. Our love for others should not be sticky, it should be “nonstick”, like a Teflon frying pan: it cooks nicely but it doesn’t grasp at anything.
So that “non-sticking” is a spiritual quality, it means that we are not grasping. The Buddha himself said that it was a grasping clinging mind which called for suffering. This is very true because we want to hold on to everything, and we think if we hold on to things, that will make us secure. On the contrary, that is very insecure, because for sure we are going to lose… All meetings end in partings.
The more tightly we hold, the more pain it is. The more gently we hold, the more we allow things just to happen. So, love and attachment are very different but nonetheless the Buddha described loving kindness, metta, like this feeling of a mother for her only child. Thus, it’s not that he is saying don’t love, but love in a way which doesn’t cling.
Lwiis: By this formula, you say: “I love you and I want you to make me happy”. So, is love an egoistic attachment?
TP: That’s egoistic attachment, that’s thinking of me, “I need you because you make me happy! So, it’s all about me, and therefore you have to do what I want you to do, so that you make me happy”… but that’s not love!
Lwiis: Attachment is only a kind of ego….
TP: Obviously…
Lwiis: Is it not a kind of love according to you?
TP: No, it’s not genuine love, genuine love is thinking about the happiness of others, and our happiness come in their happiness. It’s not about them making me happy, it’s about me making them happy.
Lwiis: But all our mothers had a lot of attachment in their love…
TP: Yes, and then, they suffered. The idea is that the mother loves the child more than her own self. If the child was sick, the mother would rejoice to have that sickness and the child would be free of it. That’s what does the Buddha meant, that kind of selfless love that a mother feels for her child, the child is more important than her own self.
Lwiis: How to separate in our daily life attachment and love?
TP: Watch it! Look at it! Come on Lwiis, what we are doing is trying to look at the mind and we are trying to see when negative feelings come up, and recognize them, and work with them, that’s what the whole thing is about. I mean, moment to moment to moment we are thinking, but we are not normally even conscious of what we are thinking, we’re just swept along by our thoughts. Thus, the practice is to develop awareness, so that we become conscious of what’s going on in our mind, and when these negative feelings come up, we recognize them, we name them for what they are. And then say: “OK, this is my opportunity to try to transform into something positive”.
But if we don’t look at what’s going on in our mind, then we’re just swept along by the river of our thoughts. And before we know where we are, we’re saying and doing all sorts of unskillful things, because, as you know, everything is governed by the mind. It’s a practice, you know this very well, and it doesn’t just happen overnight, we have to work at it, again and again. But the first important thing is to recognize when these feelings come into our mind, not just let them happen but recognize them, and think how to deal with this skillfully.
Lwiis: I remember my master was always telling me that only in this relation between master and disciple, we have love without attachment….
TP: Well, we hope so, but again many students want the lama or the guru to notice them and think that there is something special in them. I hope that the master himself is beyond all that, can just see the students as they are and help them overcome their particular problems. From the student’s point of view, what they need is open devotion, without wanting that they should be anything special in the eyes of the master.
Lwiis: You testified in the end of your book: “The masters I have met including the Dalai Lama have told me that the contemplative life is the most important thing to do in this life“ (p.267). Can one lead a contemplative life in the world, or does one have to be in seclusion or spiritual retreat to do so?
TP: Obviously, it’s very useful to undertake spiritual retreats, where you just give your whole attention to your inner world, and you don’t get caught up in external social interchange. There is no doubt about this. So, even a weekend or a week can be very helpful to have the space and time to go inside without being distracted by outer circumstances. It’s like any skill, if you really want to master an instrument or a sport, you have to dedicate yourself to that. You can’t just do half an hour from time to time, you’ll never going to be a master musician or a master in anything.
You have to completely devote yourself to doing that, so, still more for the mind trying to really transform the mind! This is the most difficult task we could possibly have, we must give time and attention to it, if you really want to accomplish anything. Therefore, it’s very useful even in our everyday life to take time out in the morning, in the early morning when we get up, even 20 minutes half an hour or an hour, going inside and doing our own spiritual practice. That sets the tone for the rest of the day, and reminds us, because we make a commitment: “How we are going to use the rest of the day, motivation we do it as our spiritual practice, looking at the mind, being more mindful, more conscious, having an open heart and being kind to everyone we meet, cultivating qualities like generosity and patience, and all these other spiritual qualities which actually require other people? Therefore, we are grateful even when people annoy us, because they are helping us to practice patience, when people are very importunate, then they are giving us the opportunity to be generous and so forth….In this way, everything is an opportunity for us to practice, but the most important practice is to have this loving awareness throughout the day as much as possible! Then our daily life becomes our spiritual practice. But it’s still good to do a few retreats from time to time, even if it’s just a few days, to reach out to our energies, to plug back in.
Lwiis: We will start with your second book, it’s a very beautiful book “Reflections on a Mountain Lake….”- Can you tell us in brief how you wrote this book?
TP: it’s like all my books, it’s a collection of talks I gave over the years, which were then transcribed, edited and put together. So, none of my books have ever been from my sitting down and writing them…
Lwiis: People take notes…
TP: It’s recording like now and then it’s transcribed, then someone sends me the transcription, and because I go blah blah blah, blah blah blah… I edit them so that it makes better reading, and then a professional editor also will eventually review it.
Lwiis: Then we can have a very beautiful style, it’s so easy and in the same time so deep. It first touches the heart before anything else.
TP: Thank you, Lwiis! So, all these books are just based on talks I gave over the years in various places.
Lwiis: My first question about quotes from this book:
You say, “My mother was a spiritualist. We hold sessions where you could see the tables flying around the room… I am very grateful to have grown up in such an environment, because thanks to it, I believed in the continuity of consciousness after death from an early age” (p.13)
My question: I have a real problem with my students when I teach them Buddhism. They asked me: “If there is no Atman according to Buddhist belief, as it is the case in Hinduism, what is reincarnated in the next life?” Here, you are talking about the continuity of consciousness after death, is this not the soul? What is this, which is reincarnated?
TP: According to Buddhism, what is reincarnated is the consciousness, but consciousness it’s like a river, it’s not something static and separate, but something which, from moment to moment, is changing, so it’s not something which is dammed up. It’s a constant flow and from the moment of leaving this life, it then enters the intermediate state of the next life. Thus, what Buddhism is denying when it talks about atman or no atman, is the idea of an unchanging static self that separates us from all other people, i.e., a collection of static selves which are unchanging. Therefore, it’s this sense of the ego, which is not the ultimate reality, obviously, in Buddhism there is a primordial consciousness, the ‘nirvanic’ consciousness, this consciousness which connects us with everything. If I met myself in my past life, I wouldn’t know who is this person, neither in my future life : I will not know who is this, it’s not me that’s going on, it’s just this consciousness and the karmic connections.
Even neuroscientists say that, from when we are small children to when we get old, the personality completely changes, even in one lifetime! Now, they are discovering that’s true, we are not at all who we were when we started, because “moment to moment to moment”, we are changing, but there is nonetheless of course what can we call primordial consciousness behind it all, but that doesn’t separate us from this, what connects us: it’s our ego which makes us think we are something separate, and me behind it all, but if we look for the me, the I, where do we find it? We can’t find it, it’s like an onion, you keep peeling, layer after layer, and each time thinking this is I, but it’s not!
However, at the same time, this primordial consciousness is so close to us that we don’t recognize it, they say it’s like the eyelashes, it’s too close to the eyes, you can’t see it!
Lwiis: In the same context, in the same book, you say, page 53: “This I, Tenzin Palmo, will not come back in the next life, something else will be there, but the stream of consciousness and this energy will be a part of it.
My question: is it the ego that dies and does not come back? And what is this “something else” you’re talking about?
TP: Well, it’s the ego which goes on in a way, and so far, the next lifetime, again, we identify with all the wrong things, this is the problem! We identify all with our body, we think this is me, we look in the mirror and think this is me, if there is a group photo, we look immediately for “where I am, where I am”, trying to recognize our body. Therefore, people are also afraid of death because the body dies, and they think “I am going to die”! Our sense of ego is very much involved with the body, so then when the body goes and the consciousness carries on, it takes on another body. They say this body is like a hotel room, we don’t own it. And then we go into another hotel, this is the point.
When we are in the next hotel room, we think this is I, we identify with the body, and then we identify with our thoughts, and our feelings, our memories, our worries, our anxieties, and our emotions: “All of this is me, I think this, I think that, I believe this, according to me, blah blah blah…” We believe our thoughts, and again we think this is what I am : “I’m an angry person, I’m a happy person, I’ve always been like this”… and again, we are identifying and every time we missed the point, because we are not somebody, and we are not our thoughts and feelings and beliefs, which changes through time. In fact, our thoughts are modified from moment to moment, they are the river, so we look at the river, we see the river and we say, oh this is a river! Still, moment to moment, the water is changing, so our problem is always that we identify with all the wrong things, and we don’t recognize the true nature of the mind which has nothing to do with the “I”. It’s when the “I” completely dissolves that the mind opens up to a much vaster awakening. This is why the Buddha is called buddha, buddh meaning “to awaken”. At the moment, we are all dreaming our dream, and what we need to do is wake up, to a whole different level of awareness, than we are used to.
Lwiis: When you say “I, Tenzin Palmo will not come back”, so, who is Tenzin Palmo? Is it “I” only? Is it an ego?
TP: It’s the ego, which is changing “moment to moment to moment”. Therefore, the next lifetime, who knows, “I” could be a different gender, I mean, “I” might not be human, you can come back in any form, so in this temporary period, I grasped the idea of an ego which is what causes the problem. There is me and then there is everyone else who is not me. We have all the attachment, all our hatreds, pride and jealousy and fears… it’s because we are identifying with the wrong thing, so we need to wake up! And realize this was really just a very bad dream…
Lwiis: But when we got liberation, do we lose this identity of Tenzin Palmo or Jacques Vigne or Lwiis? Do we lose all these identities?
TP: No, the Buddha himself said “I” to use conceptual language, he said: “I remember when I was a prince living in the palace”, exactly like this. He said too, however, that I am not fooled by it, and that’s the difference: we are fooled by it, we think it’s true, whereas if we just recognize it as a relative truth, which exists, of course, it will be much better: in fact, it’s not the ultimate truth, and what we are trying to discover is what is ultimately true.
Lwiis: Does the Buddha himself still exists, is still there, or is he only a part of the global and cosmic intelligence?
TP: I think the nature of the Buddha, the mind of the Buddha is beyond thought, but it would be also all-pervasive intelligence and love. But you can’t say it exist or it doesn’t exist, it’s beyond both existence and non-existence. This state corresponds to the nature of our mind. I mean the Buddha’s mind is our mind, only we don’t recognize it. It’s not that Buddha was unique, he merely displayed what is our true nature.
Lwiis: When I teach Buddhism, my students ask me this simple question:”
Is Buddha still there? Can he even hear us, be aware of us?
TP: He is not a god. We are not trying to make him into a deity, but the whole nature of reality is love and intelligence, and that, we can plug into, but it’s not as a person, because we have gone behind the personality now. We are dealing with the ultimate nature of what is, and that is light and love and intelligence, which, if we open our hearts to it, corresponds to our own nature too. The Buddha isn’t something out there, who is giving us favors, kind of: ‘please Buddha, can I pass my exam next week?’ It’s not like that! You will pass your exams next week if you study hard this week!
Lwiis: in the same context, you say in page 30: “I think about death every day, the awareness of death gives a lot of meaning to life”
My question is: normally people avoid thinking about death, it scares them, and it makes them unhappy. So how can we overcome this obstacle and be friend with death?
TP: As I said, one of the problems is that we identify ourselves with the body. This is the case especially nowadays, with people in the West especially. Because of their very materialistic scientific view, they assume that, when the body dies, they are dead: that’s it, a big black out. So, of course, they are frightened! They don’t believe that something goes on, that’s it’s just a body, which is left behind. Moreover, often, it’s a sick body, so you are very happy to get rid of it… In this context, what we really need to do is to recognize that death is our friend, it’s not an enemy. Still, the Hindu-Buddhist deity Yama is considered very fierce, but we have to make friend with him and with death. This is just part of the natural process, we are born, we live a while, and we die and then we get recycled again and again and again. Death is a gateway into another reality, it’s not the end. People who have near death experiences usually report how wonderful it was, how fantastic it was, and how it completely changed their attitude to life when they came back again. Life had a completely different meaning to what they thought it was before, which was about getting rich and promotion and accumulate things. Now, they realize there is something so much more to life, especially about reaching out towards others and helping others, and doing something meaningful with their life. So, they all somehow become more spiritual and much more compassionate.
I nearly died when I was a young child: my dress had burned, I caught fire and I was deeply wounded on large parts of my skin. At that time, I had an out-of-body experience, I was up, looking down to my little body. I was surrounded by all these beings of light, I couldn’t see them but there was light and within the light there were these beings saying, “Come with us come with us” and I thought, “oh I’m gone to die, that would be interesting, let’s see how that is”… I really wanted to go with these beings of light, because they were all so loving. I looked at my little body down there, all burned up, and I didn’t want to go back into that, I wanted to go with these beings of light.
I think it’s very important that people realize that, on the whole, death is a very beautiful experience, it’s not something to be afraid of.
Lwiis: What was the impact of this near-death experience you got?
TP: Not that much because I was a child. As I said, my mother was a spiritualist anyway, so we had ‘séances’ every week in our house, it just again made me realize that death is not something frightening, I’ve never been afraid of death. At other times in my life, when I thought I was about to die, my feelings again were curiosity rather than fear, I don’t think death is fearful. And as I said we should learn to make friends with death, and not see it as an enemy.
Lwiis: It’s hard to tell people about it, because for them, always, death is the biggest enemy, they feel fear….
TP: Yes, but there is no reason for it, that’s the point, and I think they should read the books on people’s near-death experience, like Raymond Moody and these people, just to reassure themselves. In general, when people are at this point where they die, and then they have to come back, it is the most powerful experience of their life. It completely transforms their overall attitude to what living is all about. It’s not just about dying, but how to live a meaningful, purposeful life with benefits, not just oneself but benefits others and benefits the whole world too.
Lwiis: in Hinduism, we call death Mahasamadhi, it means transcendence. Is it a real experience of transcendence, isn’t?
TP: Because the Tibetans are much interested on dying, they do a lot of practices for simulating the death process, the mental death process of the consciousness, where different types of consciousness are dissolving, one into the other. At the time of death; they go into samadhi, and remain like this! Their brain is dead, the body is dead, but there is warmth in the heart chakra, and they stay in meditation for hours, often days, sometimes weeks. The body, then, becomes very beautiful, it doesn’t go into rigor mortis, it doesn’t decay, it becomes often very youthful, if they stay long enough in that state of what’s called tugdam. So, Tibetans consider the death as an extremely important opportunity to recognize the primordial nature of the mind, the “Clear-light nature of the mind”, in all its openness, it’s called the Mother-luminosity. During our life, we recognize the child-luminosity, but at the time of death because there are no more physical impediments, then the full glory of our primordial consciousness shines out like the sunrise. This is the Mother-luminosity. If we can recognize that and absorb in that, then, we are liberated at that moment.
Lwiis: In Christianity the saints’ body, after death, remains intact, not changed for a long time….
TP: It means that an extremely subtle consciousness, the clear-light nature of the mind, at the end, stays there: normally when we face the clear-light nature of the mind at the time of death, we don’t know what it is and we can’t go up, and then we go back into the intermediate state. But if we are used to seeing this state during our lifetime, if we are used to seeing primordial consciousness, then, when it appears in all its glory at the time of death, we merge with it, the consciousness itself merges with it and therefore it just stays there, that’s why the heart chakra is still warm, because the very subtle consciousness is still there, it hasn’t departed from the body yet.
Lwiis: Last question about death: what is the difference between the death of a normal person and the death of an advanced or even a realized one?
TP: I told you, if you are really liberated, then, at the time of death, you will recognize the primordial nature of the mind, in all its complete fullness and be able to become one with it. And in that way, you don’t go into any intermediate state, you are in charge of where your consciousness is going. Ordinary people like us just get reborn, who knows where and when, and we think all the projections from the mind are real, therefore we are usually very confused. However, a realized being recognizes this is just a play of the mind, and therefore, he is in control. This is why the Tibetan tradition has tulkus, these reincarnate lamas.
They choose who their family are going to be, and where are they are going to get reborn.
So, in the Tibetan system, they decide where they are going to get reborn, that’s why you have for instance the Dalai Lama, who is the 14th in a row of Dalai Lama and so forth. In this sense, they often give indications, before their demise, of who their future parents will be, and where they are going to be reborn, because they make the decision they die consciously, so then they can be reborn consciously too.
Lwiis: Why do we talk about the death of Buddha as para-nirvana?
Is it a kind of nirvana or the ultimate nirvana for him?
TP: Yes, the Buddha felt that having had so many incarnations now, he didn’t need to incarnate anymore. It was enough for him, he said to all his students and all his followers should carry-on the teaching. So, he didn’t come back in the form of a person, he attained what is called maha-para-nirvana.
Lwiis: You say in the same book “Reflections on a Mountain Lake” page 30:”I learned to handle my mind, I discovered how it works, how thoughts arise, how we identify with them, How we dis-identify from them and how to make them disappear again”.
My question is: does everyone have the same functioning of the mind, and how do we happen to discover this functioning, as you did?
TP: obviously we all have the same stream of consciousness; we all have the same stream of thoughts and emotions. We also all have the same fascination with the past, with all our memories, and with the future, and all our plans and ideas and anxieties. Well, we have a problem is staying in the present, that’s the first thing: it’s very hard for us to stay here and now, just aware of what’s happening, trying not to get caught up in all our opinions and judgments and ideas.
We also believe our thoughts, we believe our identity and we identify with our mind, this is the problem. This is our basic weakness, so, what we need is to sit back and simply watch the thoughts, watch them coming and going without judgment, and without being swept away by them, noticing: “That’s an interesting thought” and next thought, we do the same work. We are just sitting on the banks watching the river; or else, as someone said, this is like being in a train or a bus watching the landscape go by, beautiful landscape, slums, it doesn’t matter what, we are not getting out of the train, we are just allowing it all to go by.
Observing the mind is what we need to do, all the great masters, like those in Buddhism, have said: “The essence of the practice is to observe the mind at all times”
Lwiis: you are just telling we believe our thoughts…..
TP: They say: “I’m right, so you must be wrong, because if you don’t agree with me, I know I’m right because this is what I think” and then, people go to war… This is what religion is all about, fighting each other because each one thinks they are right, while it’s all thought constructs.
Lwiis: So, is it a kind of attachment to our thoughts?
TP: Absolutely, we completely believe our thoughts, we believe our memories, even though now, it’s shown by the neuroscientists that often our memories are very distorted: still, we play them over and over and over again, like some soap opera. We believe all this, we believe our anxieties for the future, probably never going to happen, but we torture ourselves in the present, thinking what’s going to happen tomorrow. So, if we look at our thoughts Lwiis, if you really look, sit back and look at our thoughts, we will recognize they are just thoughts, they are not me, they are not mine, they are not necessarily true, they are just impulses of energy, of mental energy, that’s exactly all they are.
Lwiis: In fact, there are good thoughts and there are bad thoughts, how to distinguish?
TP: If we look at our thoughts, we can see if it’s a good thought, that’s nice, we can encourage more good thoughts, if it’s a stupid thought, then we can recognize this is really a stupid thought, we can let it go, transform it into a good thought. Remember that we cannot transform our thoughts, good thoughts or bad thoughts, if we are not aware of what they are. Before we recognize this is a bad thought, we’re swept along, we start saying bad things, start doing bad things, because we are not conscious of what’s going on in the mind. All our thoughts and all our speech, all our actions depend on the thoughts.
Lwiis: In fact, who is creating these thoughts? Is it our mind, or we? Is it our ego? Who is creating them?
TP: If you say, “this is just thought, this is the way the brain works”,
it all corresponds to electric impulses in your neurons. If you say, “Who is looking at them?” you will answer, “I am looking at them”, then, the next question will be, “who am I?” And if you try to look and try to find, that’s what I’m talking about peeling the layers of the onion, because you can’t find this “I” at the center of all these generated thoughts. This “I” is not really like that at all.
Do you know, Lwiis, recently, I was reading this text from a very interesting neuroscientist: he went to experience one of these sense deprivation tanks, where you lie in salt water and float there. He was extremely stressed, so his wife suggested he did that. He tried and what he was reporting was very interesting. One of the first thing he noticed, was how he was left with just his thoughts, and how he could see that the thoughts just came up one after the other, one after the other, constantly… but there was nothing behind it! They were just like sparkles, what now we call impulses of the brain. Then he associated this about what is termed in Buddhism, “thoughts without a thinker”. He said that’s exactly what it felt like, that the thoughts were coming but there was nothing behind it, nothing like an “I” to be there, a “self” who was guiding these thoughts coming. I mean this is the fact that if we look at the mind, if we really just sit back, don’t judge it but just watch the thoughts as they come up, we begin to see how it’s really just a play of the mind.
Lwiis: Jetsunma you talk about your stay in Assisi, in Italy, saying p.31:
“Assisi is a wonderful place, it retains a very powerful spirituality, that is quite similar to what you find in Bodhgaya. Many people have had profound spiritual experiences there, even people who have come simply as tourists.
My question is: Why do we often have more spiritual experiences in sacred places, than in other ordinary places, even than at home?
TP: because our thoughts have power, and we project our thoughts : therefore, places of pilgrimage like in Assisi, in Bodhgaya or Mecca, or any of these places, Jerusalem maybe, absorb these centuries of devotion, and we can feel this, it’s tangible! We can feel something like that. Even if we are in the presence of somebody who has very intense and powerful thoughts, we feel it, it hits us! In bad places too, like Auschwitz and so on, and places where they have been scenes of slaughter and battle, you can feel the negative energy, you don’t have to know exactly what happened: when you go to Auschwitz there is nothing there, just these buildings, yet you know that something extremely bad, extremely sad is there, it’s just tangible. There are very negative feelings of sadness and fear and so forth, even If there is nothing to see.
Likewise, these places we go to react on us at a very deep level beyond the conscious one. That’s why people who go to these places sometimes have really profound spiritual experiences, without expecting them. They were just tourist! Somehow, they are open maybe because of the beauty, and they are surprised to really experience something very profound, very deep beyond their conscious mind. Definitely, you can feel it. That’s why people go on pilgrimage, to connect with this energy.
Lwiis: In the same context, the comparison you made between Assisi and Bodhgaya reminds me of another one, which consider Saint Francis of Assisi the Buddha of Christianity. What do you think of this?
TP: Well, I think it’s a little bit simplistic: the Buddha created a whole new spiritual path whereas Francis only reshaped the Christianity of those days, so it’s a little bit different. In fact, the impact was quite different…
Lwiis: They compare their lives, both came from a rich family…
TP: Yes, both were ‘renunciates’, both of them were opposed to the affluence, the degeneracy and the privileges of the spiritual authority of the ecclesiastics in those times. For example, the Buddha was against the Brahmins. Saint Francis wasn’t openly against the priests, he had to be very careful! Still, he showed a different path to the wealthy bishops and prelates of these days. Both of them were much ‘renunciates’, and of course, both of them were into nature and animals. They were kind to animals. There are a lot of stories of the Buddha with them, taming them just by his presence, as Saint Francis did.
Lwiis: What are these similarities due to, according to you?
TP: Well, they were both good men, they were both spiritually quite advanced. Francis was a very interesting character. He wasn’t just all love and peace, he was a very deep character.
That’s why his influence was so great. In these days there were a lot of people who were leaving home and just becoming ‘renunciates’, but he had something more. His message was quite profound.
Lwiis: In this book, you talk about ghosts and you say about your hermitage in Lahaul, in p.33, “everything is fine, there is no evils spirit here”. Do you really believe in the existence of ghosts and evil spirits? Had you any experience in this direction?
TP: Oh, come on! I was born as a spiritualist, how can you ask! (Laughter)
Yes, certainly, when I was leaving in isolation in Lahore, I felt the presence of spirits very much, but very benign and good spirits. For example, I had a very small little butter lamp, oil lamp for offering, which could burn for about two hours. On a number of occasions, I woke up in the early morning and the butter lamp was still burning, or my little bit of incense stick would still be burning.
The spirits couldn’t light incense, they couldn’t light butter lamps, but If they were burning, they could keep them doing so.
Another example: one time, when I was sitting outside in the cave, I was sorting something, I don’t know, maybe putting stones out of rice or something like this, and then this voice inside me, in my chest, a male voice, said, “get up and move”, and I said, “No, I’m busy”. He again said in a much more authoritarian way, “Get up and move immediately!” Then, I gathered all my things up and left, and a few minutes later, this huge boulder came crashing down exactly where I was. So, I wouldn’t be here talking to you if I hadn’t got to move… Indeed, who told me to move?
Lwiis: Who was asking you to move according to you?
TP: I think it was one of the local spirits who saw that this was going to happen. They didn’t want me to be squashed, so they said, “Get up and move”! Earlier, I would have this voice inside me telling me something, maybe it was a spirit guide, who knows! The only time I ever came across anything like dark energy was again in the cave – all the rest over there consisted of very benign energies and a great number of stories have been concerning good energies helping out. So, I woke up and there was this black dark cold, something pressing against me, a very big, evil kind of thing pressing me back, and I said to it in thought: “Excuse me, here I am, supported by all the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the universe, who do you think you are?” Then, I started reciting a mantra, in front of this really silly little third grade bad spirit trying to frighten me! And as I said the mantra, the sense of being protected by all buddhas and bodhisattvas arose. At this time, the black entity transformed into a very small, tiny little thing, and went out of the window… Naughty little spirit! The important thing to remember is that if you are not afraid of them, they can’t do anything!
Lwiis: In another place, you say: “We have to learn to relax to give our mind space. If you are tense from the beginning, the more you will practice, the more tense you will be”! Is relaxation more important than the practice itself?
TP: The practice is to relax, it’s not “more important”, it’s the practice itself to relax the body, already to sit nicely and rested, but especially to unwind the mind. We must learn how to relax it, not try to force it into being something, just to pacify it and cultivate the awareness.
It’s similar to an eagle, floating in the sky, kept up by the current, he’s not making any effort, just floating along effortlessly, completely relaxed, but totally conscious and aware. The eagle isn’t asleep, he’s just much focused but without any tension. That’s how our mind should be.
Thus, we are not trying to become anything, we are trying to just become extremely natural and allow the mind to be as it is. Nevertheless, it retains this complete open spacious awareness, not tightly focusing and concentrating. This is important.
Lwiis: In the same context of meditative practice, you go on to say: “We must learn to use our mind as an ally, in order that it practices with joy”. How do we use our mind as an ally and not to antagonize it?
TP: I think it is the main thing, in the beginning at least, because if we enjoy doing something, then it’s effortless: we enjoy it, so we don’t have to force ourselves. Thus, in the beginning , for many people it’s useful to keep practices quite short, not push too hard and keep them short but many : then, we keep on enjoying them. If you are only doing something for a short time, you can put all your attention to it, then you remember that it was quite fun and you want to do it again. So, the idea is not to push things too hard, if we do something, we enjoy it, and then we do it with enthusiasm. That carries us a long way. Other people may think it’s difficult, but for us, it is easy because we enjoy doing it. Remember to not make the goal too difficult. In the beginning, just to do things a little bit, like exercising a little bit: then your muscles get stronger you can spend more time to it. It’s the same with the mind. Indeed, the mind resist, it likes running along in the past, in the future, it doesn’t want to stay in the present, it will resist being told to stay here and now… Therefore, it’s better to start by just doing short periods, and then gradually extend them as we get more accustomed.
Lwiis: So, we should prepare it and let it go on for more and more time?
TP: Yes, like with anything; in the beginning if you start short and then as it gets easier because you keep doing it, then naturally you will want to extend it. You could start with 10 minutes, and then when 10 minutes is easy, then 20 minutes, and then half an hour, then maybe 40 minutes then an hour. Anyway, do not strain, that’s the point, do not push, because mind will get tired and resentful and say, “Oh God, now I’ve got to meditate again”…
Lwiis: About the story when you were surrounded by snow in your hermitage, you say:” I heard Rinpoche’s voice inside me saying “dig out”! Do you think it was him who intervened? Or was it your own inner voice?
TP: Who knows? I don’t know… It sounded like his voice, and it wasn’t in my head, it was here again in the center of the chest. Moreover, I had been praying to Rinpoche to send his blessings, for I thought I would die because I saw the oxygen was finishing. And the voice I heard sounded slightly exasperated:
“Dig out!!”
“OK Rinpoche, thank you!”
Anyway, I dug out, that’s the important thing! (Laughter)
Lwiis: was he aware of you at this time, maybe you asked him?
TP: No, I don’t think so, I don’t remember
Lwiis: you didn’t ask him….
TP: probably not!
Lwiis: because sometimes in such very dangerous periods, we listen or we heard some voice, but what this voice is, is difficult to identify…
TP: it was a very useful voice whoever it was coming from, it represented very good, very sensible advice! (Laughter)
Lwiis: in my own experience, sometimes I got this kind of voice, not knowing what this voice was, but it was a good advice….
TP: well, that’s enough! Who cares where it comes from? If it is good advice, then we are grateful even if it’s from our own self…
Lwiis: You say p.56: “A negative emotion will always be a negative emotion no matter what reason we give for it, it is our emotions that we must examine”. My question is: how do we examine the negative emotion such as fear or anger to get rid of it?
TP: we are dealing with this kind of emotions at the beginning, when we are dealing for instance with anger and lust. As a practice, what we do is to settle the mind, get it quiet, maybe watching the breath to appease it. Then, we call up that feeling like anger or fear, we try to reproduce it in our mind, to know how it felt. Then we recognize, “this is a negative emotion”.
As I said at the beginning, we have to recognize this is a negative emotion, our anger our fear lust or pride, whatever it is. We recognize it for what it is, we don’t try to pretend it’s something better: this is anger, actually! Then, we look at it, and we ask it what it wants, rather than trying to get rid of it, or suppressing it or avoiding it or denying it. We become friend with it, we try to understand, we try to start a friendly dialogue, and give it loving kindness and compassion. We listen to what this emotion is trying to tell us because there is a reason for this emotion there.
Normally we try to deny it, or else we act it out, we don’t just quietly listen with friendliness, like in front of somebody who has problems: you just sit there and listen to it, you don’t try to solve the problem, you try to understand it and send him love. If we can look into the feeling itself, we will recognize it is not something solid, not something self-existent. Really, it is very open and spacious and essentially empty in its very nature. Why are we solidifying it? In this way, gradually it begins to crumble, to open up, and we cease to see that as something hard, tight and self-existent: it is not self-existent. We have to be friend, have compassion, listen to what is the problem here and allow it to speak.
Lwiis: My last question (for the first time we can ask all the questions!): you say in page 67: “We rarely compare ourselves to the vast blue sky or naked consciousness. It is because we identify with the clouds rather than the sky that we suffer”. Do you mean that we identify with our emotions rather than identifying with our feelings, or even with the absence of feelings and their source?
TP: The primordial nature of the mind is likened to the vast clear blue sky. Why? Because it is all-pervading, it is everywhere, we can’t see it, we can’t taste it, we can’t touch it, and yet ultimately everything is space, even solid things are space; likewise, the mind, our consciousness are comprised of awareness and this consciousness is both empty, because we can’t see it, we can’t taste and touch it, and we can’t grasp it. Still, at the same time, it’s luminous intelligence. Physical sky is empty, nonetheless, it is not intelligent space. In the same way, the mind is empty: we can’t grasp it and see it. However, it is absolute, ultimate intelligence, it knows; this is a quality of our consciousness: knowing. So, all our thoughts and feelings emerge from this primordial awareness, just as in the clear sky, you get clouds and rainbows and lightning and all sorts of things like this. Now, we identify with our thoughts, just as we look in the monsoon sky and we see clouds only; consequently, we think the sky is clouds, we don’t recognize it. Still, if you keep looking at the sky, then, suddenly the clouds part, and for a moment, we exclaim, “oh there is a sky, we didn’t know that, we thought the sky was clouds!” and then the clouds go back again but now, we know that behind the clouds is the sky.
Likewise, when we look at the mind, first of all, we see our thoughts, but as we begin to observe the mind as such, gradually, the thoughts begin to get slower and slower, calm down. Then, between the past thoughts and the future thoughts there is a gap, and in that gap, we recognize the nature of the mind.
Then, the question arises as to how to allow this gap to happen more and more, to make the gap wider and wider. Eventually, we become one with the primordial nature of the mind which is our basic knowing consciousness. That’s what we say before: this consciousness is what interconnects us with everything, while ordinary thinking mind, the “ego-mind” separates us from everything: there is “me” and everyone else is “not me”. On the contrary, that primordial nature of the mind interconnects us with everything, not just all the humans but the whole of nature.
So, this is what meditation is for: understanding the thoughts, and then that which is beyond the thoughts, that which knows.
Lwiis: Are thoughts a part of any meditation?
TP: First of all, we have to learn how to become more conscious, to develop this ability to be aware and then to turn that awareness onto the mind itself.