Days of Miracles 2021 - Day 9 - Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

and then for the italian also on the fpmt youtube youtube channel for italy okay i think jitsuma might join us any second so i wanted to welcome you back to toshita wow many people today yes i think shitsuma i don't really have to um introduce her in length i think venable yeah ajutsuma everybody everybody knows her yeah from the cave in the snow so maybe you have just joined our watch party i hope you enjoy it and apparently it will be still there on facebook so you can watch it also in different time zones yeah people who are uh will listen to the recordings right afterwards uh join the watch party uh afterwards and the recording will be still there maybe not the watch party but the recording so i was told uh otherwise let us know and we put it on again yeah uh so jutsuma i'm just looking out right i'm talking i'm looking out if jitsuma appears on my screen here with yeah i hope on my screen and not somewhere somewhere else so uh jutsuma came um to india in the 1900 1960s many of you were not born yet so and then got ordained quite quickly she met her guru quite quickly got ordained as one of the first western nuns so uh then um she stayed a few years uh with her looking at me yes are you there yes i'm here oh where are you i can't see on my screen you must be one of the small ones here there's so many people 150 the people go up up up and i can't see you where are you and then could you highlight zuma i can see me you can see her does that have a very deep meaning [Laughter] some madhyamika or something shitamatra welcome to toshita tsumana thank you so so very happy to welcome you uh i'm not a toshita but um you know in spirit i am and we are so very honored and delighted to have you here with us um not not quite in person but almost and thanks to technology we can enjoy you anywhere in the world so we have students joining us from i think from 60 countries from india of course and we are so very very honored to have you and uh that you make time for us and could i just offer please please please except i know you are not one for you know those ritual things but i would love to so whenever nandro in brazil is ready [Music] thank you so much i had to do that since you never accepted before and vandenberg nandrol is uh joining us from brazil i think jitsuma remembers her so we have a translation into portuguese also venerable sayana is joining us from italy from institute to la matancapa and a palomala venerable paloma is uh translating afterwards into spanish so we have quite a few centers joining us in this very special event so will these translations be simultaneous or should i stop and let them translate simultaneous everything taken care of yes okay yes yeah instituto llamas on carbon brazil very efficient they're used to those things yes so i introduced jitsuma already a little bit uh so i think we could just jump right in uh because i think everybody knows chitsuma and we also showed the movie right on the watch party i don't know jitsumala if you know what that is a watch party i didn't know what it is but it's something where people can enjoy a movie all over the world together on facebook so we showed the cave in the snow just before your movie yeah so i think everybody will be very aware of what's going on yeah [Applause] so we could just jump in yep i'm sorry our neighbor just came in and he he waved to me so i said i'm online so our first question our first question is actually coming from brazil uh jutsu mala and um it's tamin and tamin is saying um thank you so much for your precious teachings svena buchitsuma for decades you have been covering a long and arduous way with love and compassion on behalf of gender equality and tibetan buddhism nowadays from your point of view even though nuns can study and debate what's the major progress to be highlighted in this journey i would say the level of confidence and self-esteem in nuns nowadays when i first started because nuns and women in general have been traditionally very overlooked neglected and basically disregarded their level of confidence in themselves and their level of respect for each other and the level of just of you know basic self-esteem was very low and in all none aries when we said what is the main problem it would always be lack of confidence now because nuns are being taken seriously they are studying the same program that the monks are studying they are receiving the same titles that the monster are receiving and also they are doing practices which previously had not been allowable for women now they are practicing those so i see very much not only i mean my own nuns not only their level of confidence has risen but that the new ones coming in are already at a much higher level of um well well being within themselves i mean they they don't know there's any ceiling you know they they it's for them the sky's the limits now they can do anything they want and they do it because they believe in themselves they say other nuns can do it so we can do it and they don't know even that 20 years ago 25 years ago all of this would have been impossible for them so the new ones are standing already on the shoulders of the senior nuns and um are accomplishing so much and don't even realize that this is a huge breakthrough in and therefore the monks also respect the nuns very much and the lay people now also are respecting the nun so much and you know requesting uh rituals from them when when we go to our tibetan colony the lay people stand up as the nuns walk past previously they wouldn't even have noticed that what the speaker stand up and you know and the monks likewise are very very gracious to our nuns and um really love having dharma sisters so that's enormous not only from their side but from the side of society supporting them it's been a huge breakthrough so this is good for everybody it's a win-win situation nobody's it's not a cake which if the nuns get a bigger part the monks get a lesser part i mean dharma is not a cake and so everybody's winning with this and um it's a very positive a very very positive step forward for female potential showing they can do anything you know whatever the boys can do they can do it just as well sometimes better yes so also for lay women i think that is a great great progress great example well i mean certainly um in the west uh the majority of any audience in the dharma circles would be female take away the women and there's a llama sitting up on his throne in a practically empty hall you know who's going to make his tea um you know so the llamas are realizing now i mean and his honest dalai lama said to me so i know he said it and he said it to many but he also said it to me that he said in my opinion the future of the dharma is in the hands of the women and kamapa when he came to visit ananray said the same thing he said to the nuns you are the future of the dharma so um i the llamas are recognizing it you know that really and truly educated women they have you know more focus devotion intelligence they have every all the qualities nothing against the boys the boys have always had it now the girls likewise are stepping up and so there's more of a balance as women find their own voice so you know there's some also very interesting young nuns in the tibetan tradition who have done all their studies maybe six nine years retreat and they likewise very confident very assured and i think in the future that they will also really have a voice because what the women always lacked was a voice now things have changed impermanence has a good side right you know changes can also be for the better jitsumola yes i wanted to thank you so much i mean you've been our trailblazer for oh my goodness so many years i just told everybody you know that shitsuma came to india in the 60s you know many of the audience especially you know the indian audience is very young so the 60s ago like 2060s 1960s you know you were one of the first you met your guru quite quickly and were one of the first nuns to get ordained uh in the in the tibetan tradition and then uh you stayed at your guru's monastery for a few years up in uh lahore and then moved into the the caves the famous cave for 12 years and then yeah so the rest many of us know you went to assisi in the middle for the italian listeners here um when i mentioned to venerable siriana uh you know we have chitsuma hosting her she said oh yes yes yes she has been you know to italy so uh many of the younger listeners might not be aware and then since then for the last 20 almost 25 years that summer uh building up your nunnery and now it's running and producing the first teachers and people are on long term retreat and it's it's quite amazing yes lots to rejoice in wow but what a life accomplishment so you have been our trailblazer and we thank you so much uh because for the women there are not yet that many yeah models to look up to let's say like this so it's been very important to us to all of us so i just my love you have a few more questions if i may ask uh something very practical so sophie valencia she is asking uh probably especially during this time of lockdown uh in many countries you know i think many people experience the same you know a situation the same mental you know challenges so she's asking what is the antidote for fear and anxiety um like the fear of sickness and the fear of death and may add the fear of losing your job right now or the uncertainty the uncertainty of the whole situation many countries are still locked down i think in india it's now getting more normal but here in europe we're all still sitting in lockdowns and it's getting extended and extended and i think so it is in many other countries in the world well one thing about the dharma about buddhism is that it always faces the problems of life it doesn't gloss over them i mean the buddha said that our ex unenlightened existence in this world is by nature difficult it's dukkha it's it's unsatisfactory so we shouldn't be surprised when things become difficult because it would have never said this is a joyride you know as long as we are in ignorance and and grasping at you know this sense of me and mine we're going to suffer if it's not one thing it's going to be another but fear is a very interesting emotion and even without this you know present pandemic many people especially also when they start to practice one of the emotions that comes up people imagine that we are going to have joy and bliss and clarity often the first thing which comes up is fear because as the mind quietens down then these uh un unwelcomed emotions which we normally would suppress are given as it were permission to rise up into the consciousness and so therefore many people uh report on on great feeling deep sense of anxiety and fear so whether it's because of sickness death losing a job something tangible or just a unrelated feeling of anxiety which is just there without any particular object the important thing i think is not to fear fear to because that's just adding on to the problem the thing with any strong emotion fear anger lust any feelings which come up very very strongly what we need to do is not to reject them or to fear them but to welcome them this is what our understanding of the mind is all about that whatever emotion comes up whether it's a good emotion like bliss and clarity or a negative to our mind to the ego's mind and negativity like anxiety fear and anger rather than trying to suppress it or get rid of it we should embrace it this is very important that we should welcome it and ask what is your problem listen what where in the body are we feeling this emotion because sometimes you feel the whole certain parts of the body start to tense up or the heart starts to beat or do you feel something in the stomach to look at that to relax that to but especially the feeling to just look at it but with eyes of compassion and friendliness not with rejection and especially for things like fear of death and sickness to to make friends make friends with death this is poor death nobody loves him everybody rejects him everybody fears him so make friends you know i mean truly it's it's so important that that we we don't reject that which makes us feel uncomfortable but that we open ourselves and embrace it and look try to look into its nature because you know we say oh all these feelings are are empty in their nature and that sounds very good but we need to really see what that means that this is not something solid this is not something permanent this is not inherent in our nature this is a learned response which we have and we can never transform it and we transform it by knowing it and we know it by making friends with it so this is the point we give it loving kindness and compassion just as we would give loving kindness and compassion to any anything which is suffering so here this is ourself suffering so give it love and compassion and the the fear the anxiety look into its nature what is it where is it how does it feel but with kindness not with with rejection and the second thing about fear of death and sickness is that it can act as a goad to make us more diligent right now i'm not dead right now maybe i'm not sick so this is the time to practice so that when the time comes which it will that we become sick and then i reach the time of dying we can do so with confidence because we made use of the time when that was not our problem we're not dead we're not sick we're here so make use of that while we're here and then when it cut the time comes then we can face it with confidence knowing we've done the best we can the tibetans have a saying which means if you're sick you're sick and if you die you die and that's the point when i was in the cave i always said that to myself if i got sick i said you know if you're sick you're sick and if you die you die so either you get better or you don't big deal make friends make friends with everything and by being friendly it transforms of itself and our fear turns into confidence truly but not maybe right away slowly slowly but whenever fear comes up rather than trying to suppress it reject it turn our mind to something else we look straight at it and we ask what's your problem with friends like being a psychologist looking at the patient what's your problem tell me about it listen because that also is a kind of wisdom there if we don't reject we shouldn't be afraid of fear can be a big help on the past anyway there there are i'm sure many many um books and talks on on how to deal with fear intelligently and make use of it on the path everything we can make use of nothing should be rejected that leads straight to the next question thank you so much also a question on emotions what to do if you have lots of doubts and wrong views like one day you believe and the next day you think maybe there is no afterlife or maybe there is no common it's only an unfair world how to have faith in something you cannot prove well my feeling is that all right whether we can prove there is um future lives and the consciousness goes on or whether we cannot prove that whether there is karma or whether there is not karma sorry i'm getting you back again i only see me which is very disheartening there you are um the point is to to act as if there were because if we act as if there really is with the comic effects of our actions of body speech and mind if we act as if there really is a continuity of consciousness and next life then when we die if there is then we will be very grateful that we were careful in this lifetime and if there isn't and we just go boom then at least we have done something useful during this lifetime and we haven't wasted it so it's a win-win situation you know act as if there is and if there is then we'll be grateful and if there isn't well then who cares but we have done something useful in the meantime with our lives and we haven't caused any harm to others which is mostly what karma is concerned with not harming others not harming ourselves but living a life which is of benefit to ourselves and to others so that at the time of death whether there is a consciousness continuing or not we can die with no regrets because we have used this lifetime to bring benefit to ourselves and to bring benefit to others it was a life well lived so that's it isn't that you know act as if it is and that's a win-win situation again yes um the next question is uh very practical again from divia how to deal with people who have a lot of expectations of me and i know i cannot fulfill them completely and my actions are not fulfilling my expectations [Music] i think devia is afraid that she's hurting the other person deeply in that process of not fulfilling their expectations relax you know honestly and truthfully we are never able to fulfill the expectations of others and as the buddha himself said we are all the heirs to our own karma we are all the owners of our own karma so we cannot try to be something that other people expect of us we have to be true to our own self and you know provided one is nonetheless you know kind and and considerate one has to listen to one's own heart what is one's own heart telling one to do and follow that because you know otherwise it doesn't work you know they're never going to be satisfied you're never going you feel that you've lost your your the path and a lot of people you know um for example my very good friend aileen who you know very well um quinn ben knows very well i mean her mother was a very devout catholic and i meant she's irish and saw um you know many of her uncles and aunts were catholic nuns and monks priests and so when alien became buddhist and especially became a nun her mother was so upset so angry that for several years she would not even speak to her and if aileen tried to call her she would put the phone down but then as time went on she recognized that aileen was going to do what aileen felt was right for her and her mother agreed to meet her again and then by the time i went to meet her mother with a scottish nun any k her mother was extremely welcoming and because kate has great sense of humor and she's scottish i mean we had great fun and lots of laughter and her mother in the end invited in her neighbors to meet us because she was so proud of us and said next time you must come and stay with me and so next time also when we saw her she was extremely welcoming and kind and then she she had recognized that alien was happy and that her friends were not as weird and you know some weird kind of cult that actually we were fairly normal despite how we looked and that that for aileen this was the right way for her so i think this is the point that mostly people find that in time those people accept you as you are and respect you for following the path which was meaningful for you even though it was not the path which they themselves would have chosen for you so have patience be kind be patient but do what you know your inner calling is that's the point you you have an inner calling there then you have to follow that calling and you know just be friendly just be humorous relax as i said relax you know and just be who you are be true to yourself don't have to pretend to be somebody else just to please others be be honest be truthful be natural right otherwise you're playing a part which is not right so i would say to her not to worry be friendly be kind and eventually they'll come around yes very good advice for many of us it has been coming up many times the question of how to be authentic and to be oneself with so many expectations as a good daughter as a wife as a good colleague as a so many roads we're playing and so many expectations and that often we have to play a role in our workplace maybe otherwise people you know um to be ourselves and authentic it has brought up a lot of reactions when this question came up before and people were questioning what is it to be authentic and what is it to be oneself well i mean at least you can you can be kind you can be you know you can laugh you can have a sense of humor about yourself not take yourself too seriously and not take the situations too seriously you know because peop that's another kind of grasping and you know we're trying to open up and let go rather than when then hold on because their reaction is also based on attachment including an attachment to their own view and you know that's exactly what we're trying to you know release not plug into that energy yes i think jitsuma has mentioned before as a seventh per perfection we should have humor so and if we come where are we you know we have to be able to laugh at the situation at ourselves a kind love not a cynical love a kind love but don't take yourself so seriously you know because really really the whole sanctuary is a joke on one level a cosmic joke as a german i try to learn from the english [Laughter] you're famous for your great black humor so there is another question um from ana wu and she would like to study buddhism at university she's a lay person i'm not a nun and she would like to study buddhism at the university and she wonders what subject jitsuma would feel most important and then she's also wondering where she can do long retreats so i think it's the whole question about as a lay person how can you practice buddhism in maybe the most effective or most important way well as to what you would like to study in buddhism in a university i mean i think that first of all it depends on the university and the kind of teachers available and of course also what you're interested in i mean if you're interested in the philosophy then you study the philosophy if you're for example interested in women's studies then you could study buddhism from the point of view of women's studies i mean all the historical aspects of the of it i mean a lot depends on your interest and also as i say on the kind of teachers who are available and where you're learning it um you know because especially in universities it becomes very academic it's certainly not based on on faith and devotion which they regard as being very suspect so sometimes it's quite hard for genuine buddhists to study in a university to study buddhism in such a cold and distant way without any heart to it it's all up in the head but you know then there are other universities which actually have genuine buddhist professors you know who are actually practitioners who are also teaching so i mean it a lot depends on where she's she's got planning to study and what she wants to study in that as the longer retreats again it depends which country you're in longer retreats means what one month three months three years you know what do you mean um i i would definitely say that to to start with one should start with short retreats and group retreats you know i mean i think it's quite important in the beginning to get have guided retreats because you know things come up during retreat if you're by yourself in a solitary retreat there's no one to ask so it's good to do uh group retreats that also gives a group energy you know which um can be very sustaining and also a discipline because you can't just get up you know if you're a bit bored or your legs are eight get up and go off and make yourself a cup of coffee you have to sit there if you're in a group so it teaches discipline it teaches how to practice properly you get guidance if you have questions you have someone who can help you understand what's going on inside and so forth so i think that at the beginning at least it's important to do shorter retreats long retreats in the sense of three years often i'm not very successful i mean i know so many people have had a lot of problems trying to do three-year retreats because they are there's a whole long question about it but there many of the three-year retreats which are offered are geared towards the the way things were in the tibetan psychology pre-communist you know where everybody had you know in a country where there was no electricity there was no radio no television no no anything really there were no newspapers no magazines everybody you know either walked or rode on horses there was no real traffic people's minds were very empty and things were very slow so when they did retreat there was a lot of emphasis on you know getting people motivated to you know finish millions of mantras in a very short time do millions of this millions of that everything was numbers to get people activated from a society which was very very slow and also because people's minds were so empty then they could fill it with all this very colorful visualization as well as you know very complicated philosophical thinking because people had lots of room in there it was like an empty canvas to be filled with all these these you know colorful uh deities and and ideas but for us most people's minds are already chop block full you know they're they're stuffed full that's not an empty canvas and we have a lot of stuff in there mostly junk i mean a lot of our stuff that we get in coming especially from the media is just complete trash and so to build a buddha palace on top of uh a rubbish dump is not a good idea and therefore it helps to do practices which allow us to empty out a bit put some space in there not cram it with more at this point i think for many people but rihanna is just too complicated what they need is to relax to open the mind to become more conscious more aware more bring more space into the mind not cram it full with more we need to empty out and many of the longer retreats are very very busy very very busy and they don't have much space in there so i would be careful what kind of retreat you're planning to do and i would say start with shamatha with good clear teachings on shamatha on how to make the mind more clear more open more aware more present to cultivate that because also if we have awareness we can bring that also merging with our daily life there's no you know this is the session then there's you know the the bit in between where the mind just goes crazy again that allows the mind to become settled and clear throughout the day a sense of presence loving presence it's very important so to use our retreats for that for learning how to cultivate our loving awareness and to relax and be at ease and has more open spaciousness this is what is really important so it infiltrates the whole of our life not just when we're in retreat it's no use being in retreat then when we come out and it all falls apart we have to have something which continues yeah sorry no perfect thank you so much it's my very precious advice uh i've been hearing many many times that we're westerners we all have something what the tibetans call lung like a wind wind disorder and that you're just always hyper for the tibetans and that you can't really fix because it's pressure you know and we're already pressured so it doesn't help you know the our whole energy system gets completely out of balance by pushing too hard also the idea of getting a result you know that well what have we gained from that you know it's not a matter of what we gain it's a matter of what we lose i always say it's it's it's we've got to drop things not build up more and more for the ego to play with yeah so learning how to relax rather than pushing pushing pushing so we don't get long yes i think it's very difficult for many like me when i hear relax i hear lazy who wants to be lazy i know you're lazy lazy that probably is the best thing you can do for yourself but there is no time to lose jitsuma is shanti devas no no no no no no no no i mean that's all right in a society which was so slow but in a society which is so speedy it doesn't work and in the end people crash it's like driving the ferrari if you don't know how to drive you're going to crash you know better to have an ox car which just this is the year of the ox right so in the ox goes very slowly but steadily and it just keeps going you know and it gets there it it it accomplishes all its deeds it plows the field it pulls the card but it's not in a race right slow and steady wins the race we say and it doesn't crash you know just keep it i think that ties also in with a whole question of self-compassion i think especially for women we often feel like we have to especially when we hear about bodhichitta and having compassion for all sentient beings we often forget ourselves because we think we need to give and give and often think it's selfish to think of ourselves it's a very deeply rooted i think especially for women yeah look the buddha himself said when we practice the four brahma viharas for immeasurables loving-kindness compassion joy joy is there you'll see mudita and impartiality then we start with ourselves this is not some new age thing this is the buddha the buddha said you start by giving loving kindness compassion and and rejoicing in your goodness to yourself first then then you give it out to others those you love or feel indifferent towards or those who are difficult and then to all beings but if we don't have you know we have to encourage ourselves the buddha was very very wise and so he said the first thing even though buddhism is all about no ego no ego no ego but the buddha realized that who is walking the path towards the dissolution of the ego is the ego so in order to be able to walk the path we need to have a well-balanced healthy sense of self that is going to walk the path joyfully towards the realization of no self evashanti davis says that arrogance and pride of course is a defilement but self-confidence is essential we have to believe and in order to walk the path therefore we have to have a well developed sense of confidence in our own abilities so the buddha said first start with shamatha because in order to shamatha our mind has to be well balanced and healthy otherwise we can't really go into deeper levels of samadhi then at the same time giving ourselves loving kindness and compassion and empathy with our our goodness to encourage ourselves to make us healthy if we have an unhealthy sense of self low self-esteem we should as you know the dalai lama didn't even know what low self-esteem was what's that he said right he'd never heard of it and then when they tried to explain it he said oh i think very rare very rare right so you're dealing with that kind of culture who doesn't even know what low self-esteem is and then if you are very proud and arrogant then you can beat yourself down if you're something kempo or geshe but for ordinary people who have already very little confidence the buddha said start by making yourself believe in yourself you have to have faith that you can do it when i first met the 16th karmapa within five minutes he said to me your problem is you don't believe in yourself if you don't believe in yourself who will believe in you so he didn't say that's very good you don't believe in yourself because there is no self he said you couldn't give himself right so we have to start where we are people with low self-esteem are always thinking about themselves it's not that they have no ego they're always thinking about poor me and how useless i am and how i can't do anything but it's all circling around themselves that's why you know they go to psychotherapists to try to make them healthy their sense of self because a healthy sense of self only that can really walk the path and this is what the buddha understood so he said start with yourself get yourself strong healthy confident and you'll walk the path you can't be a body such if you don't believe in yourself or you're always beating yourself up that's not being a bodhisattva that's not even humility that's just low self-esteem which is not something which we're aspiring to you end up depressed and you know unable to function properly or beating yourself up if you're not functioning properly it's not that's not what he's talking about at all so we have to have a healthy sense if we i i sometimes say if we break our leg the leg is injured we're always thinking about our leg we can't walk properly and we're always thinking oh my poor leg my poor leg somebody hits it out for my leg my leg my leg but when the leg heals when the leg is healthy then we can run skip and jump but we're not thinking about our leg who is sitting here thinking about their leg unless the leg is hurting and it's the same with the ego if our ego is healthy and strong and and well balanced we're not thinking about ourselves it's easy to think about others but as long as we are injured inside hurting inside we are thinking me me me me me even if we're thinking how useless we are that's so this is very important to understand that we need to have a very balanced sense of self in order to walk the path towards selflessness how did that come up perfect thank you it's very very important to understand that because buddhism looks like it's always bashing the ego but if you look at the buddha's advice you can see that he understood that first we have to have a good strong sense of of self in order to dismantle it that's why you do shamatha before you do the passana right you have a nice strong clear well-balanced scent itself then you can start taking it apart but while it's fragile and pained if you start taking it apart it just hurts it more and we could end up mentally unbalanced which is not the goal at all anyway so yes i think that also brings up the question of how we translate the teachings the buddhist teachings being universal but how do we translate them into our into our culture into our background and i think often guilt comes up you know i've also heard the tibetans don't have guilt they have just healthy regret no yeah yeah they have remo but they don't they're not always i mean like if you have a a a wound then if you're endlessly scratching the wound it just gets steeper and it never heals so yeah you recognize there's a wound you clean it you put on some balm and then you allow it to heal i mean that's important being you know endlessly flagellating ourselves for wrongdoing doesn't doesn't solve the problem i mean as you know we first you feel regret remorse then the the um conviction of never doing that again right that we i'm sorry that was a mistake i won't try very hard not to make that mistake again and to try to do something to counteract that you know something good is much more healthy than just endlessly moiling over all our past mistakes or our downfalls i mean like a baby it falls down a little toddle it falls down pulls itself up again you know it doesn't ever think that you know because it's weak it's going to spend the rest of its life falling down you know every time it pulls itself out and starts again doesn't just sit there feeling sorry for itself poor me mommy i'm so useless it's a great body set for everybody else he's in deep samadhi meditating only me i only have the one that has you know monkey mind i think it's a very common perception jitsuma everybody is better than just me do you think that something like psychotherapy or could help to to build first that healthy strong ego or would it go overboard paying somebody just to listen to you you're not talking about the same me me me again i think it depends on the therapist and i think it depends on the degree of mental problems because if people really do have mental problems meditation might be just what they don't need because the what comes up they won't be able to deal with i mean i i sometimes say that if you think of consciousness normally as like an ocean then normally we are on the waves of the ocean the waves go up the waves go down we're tossed up and down on the ocean but through shamatha then the ocean waves begin to steady and we go deeper and deeper below the waves but we're in the ocean of our consciousness well we might meet with friendly dolphins and nice goldfish and all nice that's what people hope for but there are also sharks there there are also killer whales there's all sorts of stuff going on in the depths and you don't know what you're going to meet but some people meet endlessly with really very monsters of the deep are their memories traumatic experiences or maybe they're somewhat mentally unbalanced in which case meditation is not good for them at this point they can't deal with it their their sense of self is not strong enough and so those kind of people would benefit from a skillful psychotherapist who can help them to um on on a mundane level yes but nonetheless some psychotherapists are really quite spiritual and nowadays there are also many buddhist psychotherapists i mean most many many uh buddhist teachers meditation teachers are also uh psychotherapists that's their their job i mean that they do uh teaching meditation as a you know an avocation so i mean those kind of people who understand more deeply about the the nature of consciousness could be very helpful i'm not saying not and i also i have a number of friends who take psychiatric medication because if they don't they are very unbalanced i mean what can you do and but gradually as they begin to practice more and more slowly they begin to reduce the medication and eventually can come off it often but i mean we shouldn't repudiate that side of the western understanding of the mind because we should not use meditation as a psychiatric tool that's not what it's for i mean we are we are not using it for psychiatry so if we need psychiatry we should go to a professional psychiatrist meditation is not for that so yeah some i mean not everybody needs a psychiatrist but some people really would benefit a lot if they have a lot of you know mental instability it could be very very helpful at least for a time and as you said i mean the whole point of psychotherapy is to make a healthy well-balanced ego and that's exactly what we need for walking the path to beyond go beyond the ego so you know no harm i think jitsuma many people fear when they're you know being nice buddhas that they're trembled upon that people use them as a doormat i think it's a very common perception you know i'm just always nice i say yes yes to everybody try to please everybody and then people will take advantage of me um so could shitsuma elaborate on that that kind of i mean if i see his holiness a dalai lama if i see a jitsuma i don't see a doormat obviously i see some pretty amazing strong determined human beings who know what they want and have a goal and go for it exactly i mean patience is not a weakness patience is a strength being upset and angry every time things go wrong is a weakness so i mean i think we could look at say tara so when we think of tara as we can see behind you and behind me we have this nice lady who is white and and holding a lotus and smiling sweetly and you know that is our idea of you know a good nice bodhisattva type being but tara has 21 forms and some of them are very rawful she's not always peaceful and sweet and smiling she can be very very fierce and she represents fearless compassion she's a very strong lady and where it is needed to be strong she will manifest that appearance or with its compassion but compassion doesn't mean that you're always sweet and smiling you can be very outwardly you know strong and quite even quite wrawful i mean the other example of that is uh of the tetra chenrezig who is the bodhisattva of compassion and again is white smiling holding a lotus looking like everybody imagines compassion to look but the other side of a vodakateshwara is mahakala mahakala who is the chief of order protectors it's black really awful terrifying but he's also compassion and and this is the point i mean anger is definitely a defilement but if sometimes we have to manifest a wrongful appearance if it is genuinely based on skillful understanding of the situation and and genuine compassion for others then that that it doesn't mean that we become a bunch of wimps i've never seen any llama who who was weak in that way they're very tough guys sometimes if it's necessary when it's necessary to be sweet and smiling they're sweet and smiling when it's necessary to make a stand they make a stand but it's always based on compassion and and seeing the the situation skillfully in what what way to manifest at this particular point so it doesn't mean we get trampled on because people who cheat us or trample on us they are making bad karma so our compassion is therefore to try to help them to go beyond that way of acting unskillfully if we can i mean we're not doormats nobody suffers a doormat i've never seen any llama who i mean they can laugh and they can just go along with situations when they're not serious but when it comes to something which definitely you need to make a real stand about then there they will you know manifest a whole different aspect at least for that time yeah i mean i think of tara i mean she has so many different ass you know different colors different different moods depending on the situation what is most appropriate for that situation to help not only ourselves but to help the other because if we allow people to to act unskillfully we are not helping them i mean one time i and my llama come to rinpoche he was very powerful he's big and big solid guy very very powerful but very very sweet he had a very soft voice always very very sweet we were all terrified of him but he was always very very sweet and then one time i went to see him and his other talker he said oh maybe don't go in i was ripped his secretary so i would see rinpoche to see what he wanted me to do oh don't go in richard is very very angry he was so angry just now you know uh so i knocked on the door and went in and raped him just sitting there looking sweet and then he said you know sometimes people are so stupid and they don't they do everything which is really against their own best interest so sometimes you have to appear awful in order to stop them from doing very unskillful actions what can you do any kind of you know so that's it right i mean the guy was probably terrified because richard was very powerful you know but rinpoche inside were just acting out of compassion and recognizing this was the way to do with this man who otherwise would act unskillfully so yeah i mean you know compassion can be quite wrongful yes thank you don't forget your doormat content is this my private therapy session here sharing it with the world so how to be skillful jitsuma how to how to know when to do what especially when one is with many people uh maybe yes maybe the family or maybe in one's working place or how to be skillful when do we know to say something and when rather to be silent or as shandy deva says you know why worry if you can do something about it why worry if you can't do something about it you know but how to make the distinction i think this is where the practice of meditation comes in because um genuine meditation especially you know um meditation on developing awareness gives us a sense of presence when we have a sense of open spacious presence we can see with so much more clarity not obscured by our own emotions but see other people very much more clearly then spontaneously we know how to manifest in in that situation this is one of the reasons why cultivating this sense of loving awareness is so important not just because it helps us but because it helps us to manifest in the world in a way which is skillful and without being caught up in on our own you know ego delusion we begin to see the the whole dynamics the whole mandola so much more clearly and then naturally we would know how to respond whether to allow it to happen or to make it stand or or you know how to just laugh it off or whatever is needed just naturally we begin to understand what to do and other people think oh how skillful but actually i mean you see it with great beings how they act they just naturally know the how to respond to the different people that they meet and i don't think it's it's a rational idea it just comes from within just naturally flows from their their basic presence that's why you know like his holiness you know you can see he knows how to respond to people he doesn't think about it i'm sure he's not planning it it just naturally flows from his ability to be this embodiment of wisdom and compassion but that's why awareness and and mindfulness and and the sense of innate presence is so important because it helps us for acting in the world how to act skillfully without having to go through the head first it just naturally flows until the ego gets in the way that goes off very quickly i think that brings up the whole question of balance between this comes up again and again you know shall i go up in a cave for we are overtime it's so so nice chatting with you jitsuma but we also know that you don't wanna you know take your time too much jitsuma it's okay i have an appointment to go walking at half past five so we still have some time okay the balance between being by oneself doing a retreat or just once morning practice or whatever it is going for a walk or something and to be with others i think that comes up very often that maybe again fear people feel guilty oh you know i can't take time for myself or i should be like this i should be like that so how to know where the balance is between taking time for oneself and solitary going up to the cave for maybe not 12 years but we ruled out the three years as well but going for a short retreat or being being out there in the world and trying to help with one's limited capacity i think it's really very important to breathe in and breathe out so we breathe in by giving time to ourselves for our practice and then we take that and we breathe out for benefiting others i mean this is very important it keeps the balance between the two if we're only breathing in in and in we asphyxiate if we're only breathing out out we collapse a lot of people who are social workers or running dharma centers and so forth they burn out and they burn out because they're always giving out out out and they don't take time to breathe in and so it's very important to breathe in and then we'll breathe in you get some understanding some insight we need to find out if that's genuine insight by then coming out and relating to others so there's this balance between the two and i think this is very important and especially in the modern world that we we need to you know i mean it's like if with the computer my laptop here um you know it's if if we keep going it's going to go flat so then it will all just you know collapse and so i need to keep recharging it right if you recharge it it will function and but you don't keep it on recharge the whole time once it's recharged then you can use it and so that's what we need to do we need to keep recharging ourselves also every day a little bit and we practice in the early morning even if only 10 minutes 20 minutes that helps to give us a recharge for the day and set our motivation for the day and then as much as we can when the opportunity comes to take at least a few days off a few weeks whatever we can afford but we need then to take it out into the world and because also with others we have opportunities to prac to cultivate those qualities which we can't do in by ourselves like patience loving kindness compassion it's one thing to sit on your cushion thinking may all beings be well and happy it's another thing to go out there and try to help them to be so uh the two go together and i think that it's not an either or it's a both end yes because there has been a question right now in the chat of a person saying she wants to go in in the cave and be by herself i always say there's a monkey's living caves i mean you know there's nothing magical about caves i think it's a dream of peace there i'm by myself i'm peaceful but you know caves are damp caves are cold caves have all sorts of problems too it's um just staying your room is enough you know let's just i speak from experience oh there is one lady may have asked the question because i'm i'm curious as well is it too late to answer summer what she thinks the meaning of her being born in bethnal green was my mother best no green is the area east london island the reason i got reborn there was my mother i am completely sure of that there was no other reason and i always thought i was in the wrong place and that i had to leave england which is what i did when i was 20 but why was i born there because my mother that's the only reason she was an extraordinary and my upbringing as a spiritualist so we're always talking to spirits and that also helped me to understand that there is so much more going on than we imagine is going on and that definitely there is consciousness after death so um i'm very grateful for that and my mother was a wonderful example of of a um a bodhisattva who didn't even know what were dodi sat for men but her skill in means in times when uh you know of real problems and difficulties and with myself also being very sick when i was young um she was just so unbelievably skillful and she really was a wonderful woman and i i mean i think that she she that can only be because of her the rest of my family were useless i mean nice people but totally pointless as far as you know my journey was concerned but my mother was very important person in my life and later she came to india she took refuge with my llama she took precepts and um the llamas loved her they liked her much more than me i think they really liked her a lot and um she yeah so that's why i was born in bethlehem it didn't matter where the place was it was uh the person that my mother that was important my father died when i was two so i don't remember him at all so that's the answer to that i like michael green actually it was uh it had its own character do you ever miss it not in the least bit um no and not at all and as i say when i was young i i always knew i i had to leave i that i didn't belong there but and in fact when i was very young i i was also puzzled about being female i i felt my body was all wrong and i was told when you get older your body changes so i thought well maybe then i change into a boy but by the time my body changed i didn't want to be a boy so that was all right um but uh i think also to be a female in this lifetime was an important thing i'm very glad of that too uh i think that um i don't want to go back into them and nothing against the males but i don't want a male body again i think a female body for as guru rinpoche said you know that as to male and female there is really intrinsically no difference but if a woman has bodhichitta then a female body is superior why because first of all because women are naturally you know nature intended us to be mothers and to be nurturing so therefore loving kindness and compassion come naturally to us we are not afraid of them you know we naturally uh have most women i mean some men too but in general men are taught as boys to suppress their emotions not feel that's not manly etc women are not taught that they can cuddle puppies and kittens and nobody tells them you know that there's not anything wrong with that and so they're naturally also much more in tune with their emotions and as for example um who is a very austere but famous burmese meditation master uh when i met him he said to me and i never bought any of this up but he said to me that his best students his best meditation students were women and he said because women are more in tune with the intuitive and they can fly in space like the translation of darkini in tibetan means someone who travels in space come from uh he said they they can they will they can like jump into the uh into the into the intuitive they're not afraid of it most men like to go step by step by step as you see when they do meditation they always put in the scholars put it all into steps women just jump they feel in tune with the intuitive and so therefore they are better meditators and my own llama said that women although they are usually more emotional if they are in control of their emotions then they naturally go up further and quicker than the males will do plus the women if you take the in vajrayana if you're taking adriana women in tumor you know the inner heat meditation think about it should i go into this why is a woman's body superior in the inner heat meditation as within kundalini meditations the energy the sexual energy has to be brought from below up through the central channel now for the men the main problem is that their sexual energies naturally go outwards right their sexual organs are on the outside and their their sexual energy is sent out so they have to spend a lot of time taking that energy and bringing it inside to bring it up that's a lot of their their energy and time is taken in reversing their sexual energies women are already inside and they are already going upwards naturally so for them there's no problem they can the tumor is much easier for a woman than from a male plus when men you think if any of you have ever done tumor that the male is visualizing himself as a naked female he is seeing himself as vajrayogini right women are already vajrayogini we don't have to pretend so also from that point of view from the tantric point of view also when you see tantric images like chakra sambar samaja or they are always shown with their consorts they don't stand alone but the consort like vajrayogini or narratmia they can't stand alone right vajrayogini stands by herself she has her her consort as her staff if she wants him she brings him up but she doesn't he just stands there like a star she doesn't need him but he needs her as in in in hindu tantras with the shiva shakti the shakti stands on top of shiva so yes although you know all the books were written by the boys so they don't mention this but in fact if you look at it a female body is is very uh useful so we should not regret that i mean the the only problem with being a female was that we did not have the opportunities that the males had now that's not true anymore everything is being taught to females the same as to males and so therefore we have a great advantage we're ahead of the game so please don't pray to come back as females next time even the boys i think we made a really nice circle there from the first opening to now um jitsuma teaching us first being the trailblazer and now teaching us how to fly having taught us already in the last oh my goodness 60 years tirelessly again and again and again because we need to hear it again and again and again uh to be yeah to be brave isn't it well you know we really have to remember that we really are all tara and that therefore tara does represent fearless compassion she's fearless and that's our true nature compassion genuine compassion is fearless and that's what we have to invoke within ourselves you know that that that sense of of our inner divinity we are tara we just don't know that that's our tragedy that's why the buddhism bodhisattvas have compassion on us because we think we're just ordinary flawed sentient beings and we don't realize that the our buddha potential is already there we don't have to invoke it somebody doesn't have to give it to us we already have it what we don't have is a recognition of what we have that's the point once we recognize it then we know that's that's our true nature this is our false nature and that's what what the whole point of meditation is about is coming back to realizing who we really are not who we think we are and who we think we are is is our tragedy we don't see that's why the buddhism bodhisattvas have compassion for us because we have such potential and yet we we don't know it like the story of the man the beggar who has this treasure under the ground and he goes out every day begging for a few coins and thinking he's rich if somebody gives him a rupee or two and all the time he has this huge treasure under the ground in his heart he's a he's a multi-millionaire but he doesn't know it he's a co-party but he doesn't know he thinks he's poor that's our tragedy so this is why tara is important to remind us when we look at her ways looking in the mirror [Music] may you all be well unhappy and keep practicing with joy it's very very important to have joy in practice you know if we enjoy something then it's easy for us so we should not push too hard but we should you know have a nice steady pace so that we can you know as i say like the ox card maybe we're not in a ferrari we're in an ox cart the ox car keeps going you know very steady so this year the iron ox is very good an ox represents strength patience you know they're steady they keep they they accomplish the task they're not you know exciting like a tiger or a dragon but it's very very stable very very secure and you know all the tasks they set themselves they do accomplish and that's what we need to do slowly but surely just keep going and don't stop isn't that wonderful that we have the dharma we should be deeply grateful no matter what we face you know if we have dharma in our heart it's it's okay everything will be all right so it's good be happy thank you so much it's summer this was a very delightful at least for me the light for and i think for all let me see how many people joined us 232 right now for all the students around the world um yes and many more will by recordings uh listening to you because they're in different time zones can't make it perfect for everybody so the americans they're you know they're going like what about us you know they're still asleep but uh they will listen later thank you so much itsuma it's so kind lovely to see you hear you be with you all thank you all very much thank you hope to see you very soon in person jitsuma please you can't say about that one [Laughter] you're always happy but please tell halsey and please please please give us many many many more teachings hopefully soon in person thank you so much thank you thank you all thank you all thank you thank you so much thank you so much thank you thank you thank you very much thank you thank you thank you everybody thank you so much thank you thank you everybody thank you everybody have a great day have a nice night wherever you are a very very amazing human being our only western geshema yes please don't miss her she's amazing yes see you tomorrow thank you thank you very much thank you very much thank you to brazil thank you [Music] on behalf of brazil thank you so much

Channel: Tushita Meditation Centre Dharamkot

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Id: QqkEPV1PdRU

Length: 85min 52sec (5152 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021