Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / Machig Labdrön and the Courage to Face What We Avoid
Transcript
- 0:04Welcome to the Buddhisticious Tour Berlin podcast.
- 0:08Here we share talks and reflections from our Buddhist
- 0:11centre in Berlin, exploring themes such as meditation,
- 0:16ethics and the path of awakening in everyday life.
- 0:20We are part of the Sri Ratna Buddhist community and our talks
- 0:24are offered freely in a spirit of generosity.
- 0:28We hope this episode supports your practice and your life.
- 0:39OK, so here we are, here am I and I thought I want to take you
- 0:50on a journey today, the journey back in time, but not only back
- 0:56in time, but also back to a very, very different place.
- 1:02And the place I want to take you is Tibet in the year 11 O seven,
- 1:11so the beginning of the 12th century in Tibet.
- 1:16And maybe you have seen pictures of Tibet.
- 1:19So it's a country with an extremely high altitude.
- 1:22So a lot of the country is above 4000 metres.
- 1:26It's very sparsely populated, hardly any vegetation, high
- 1:33mountains. And the people who live there
- 1:38live as nomads. Usually they live in family
- 1:42clans. They have some yucks and they're
- 1:46yuck herders, and they live off the products that those yucks
- 1:52produce, and they live in tents, or they used to live in tents at
- 1:57that point in history and just moving around as nomads through
- 2:04that country and this land, this country had a very animist
- 2:13culture, so there was not much there.
- 2:17So people basically spent their days herding, but they
- 2:22encountered their surroundings as being alive.
- 2:25So every mountain, every stream, every valley, they're all over
- 2:31inhabited by spirits. And people kind of really could
- 2:35be in touch with all those spirits and gods and demons.
- 2:38So they lived in relationship with the countryside, with the
- 2:42land. And at the beginning of the 12th
- 2:49century, Tibet wasn't the country that we might.
- 2:56When we think of Tibet now, we think of it as a Buddhist
- 2:59country. And Tibetan Buddhism, you've
- 3:01probably all come across it so. But at that point in history,
- 3:08Buddhism wasn't very established in Tibet yet.
- 3:14So there was traditionally a very shamanic religion.
- 3:21So people believed in like, yeah, serving all these spirits
- 3:26and gods and with rituals. So they had a shamanic religion.
- 3:29And then in the 8th century, there were the first Buddhists
- 3:34coming from India and spreading the Buddhist teachings, but that
- 3:41wasn't very successful. It was successful in the
- 3:43beginning, but then all the Buddhist institutions, the
- 3:47monasteries got destroyed and got lost, and it took only until
- 3:52the beginning of the 11th century to revive Buddhism in
- 4:00Tibet. So in the year 11 O seven, that
- 4:05revival of Buddhism was just on on its way for maybe about a
- 4:11century. So there was a Buddhist
- 4:13renaissance. So it was a country where the
- 4:15Buddha, where Buddhism was still very new.
- 4:20And just to give you a sense of where we were in Europe at that
- 4:23time. So Europe at that point in
- 4:25history was very Catholic and it was just the beginning of the
- 4:29Crusades. So the first in 11 O seven, the
- 4:33first crusade had happened. The Catholic Church was very
- 4:38influential, sending armies to Jerusalem.
- 4:42OK, so that is the time and space I want to enter with you.
- 4:49And we have a special place, a setting of the scene.
- 4:53And that setting of the scene is a monastery or retreat centre a
- 5:02bit southeast of Lhasa in the central of Tibet.
- 5:07And it's a place called Zhangri Kangma.
- 5:11Zhangri Kangma in Tibetan and it translate, translates as the Red
- 5:17Fortress of the Copper Mountain, the Red Fortress of the Copper
- 5:21Mountain. And it's a retreat centre, the
- 5:27two Storey building sitting on a saddle on 3750 meters,
- 5:33surrounded by mountains of about 5000 meters high and looking
- 5:39into a valley. And so there's this monastery,
- 5:43this place, and I want to introduce you to the main
- 5:47character of our story of that scene.
- 5:52The master of that monastery is a woman called Magic Labdrun.
- 6:00Magic Labdrun. And in the year 11 or 7, she's
- 6:0452 years old. And she has been popular in
- 6:09Tibet from early childhood as a child prodigy.
- 6:13So she was renowned as a Dharma practitioner, as somebody who
- 6:19practised the Buddhist teaching from very, very early onwards.
- 6:22And she was renowned for her speeds of being able to recite
- 6:27Buddhist texts. And it's very interesting
- 6:29because apparently for Indians as well As for Tibetans, that's
- 6:33something that they really value, that people can really
- 6:36recite text very, very quickly so that they can repeat them
- 6:42many make many, many repetitions.
- 6:44So for them, that is a really valued quality.
- 6:48And she excelled in reading speed and recitation speed.
- 6:54So she grew up in monasteries reading ancient traditional
- 6:59Buddhist texts and reciting them for people and then listening to
- 7:05them. But she only, she also
- 7:07understood them and she became a really dedicated practitioner,
- 7:11practising, meditating and practising the teaching of the
- 7:15Buddha. So she was also a mother of
- 7:22three children or other accounts say five children.
- 7:25So she had two sons, one daughter or three sons and two
- 7:28daughters according to different sources.
- 7:32And at that point in her life she was also very revered
- 7:37Buddhist master. And she had disciples from all
- 7:43over Tibet and even from Nepal. And among her disciples there
- 7:48were many, many acclaimed masters, other Buddhist masters
- 7:55and teachers. There were kings and Queens,
- 7:59monks and nuns. There were lay people, but even
- 8:03also even beggars. So she taught the Buddha's
- 8:07teaching to the whole of society, to everyone.
- 8:12And she had started her own religious tradition, her own
- 8:17school. And maybe just to give you an
- 8:22idea, she was a contemporary of Mila Rappa, the very famous
- 8:26Buddhist Yogi as well. Who?
- 8:29Yeah, the Tibetan Yogi who many of you might have come across.
- 8:33So he was just 15 years older than her.
- 8:36So they lived in the same, at the same age.
- 8:41OK. And I want to talk about a
- 8:42central event in the life of Maitic Lapjran.
- 8:50So on that place, her monastery, the Red fortress of the Copper
- 8:55Mountain, the accounts say that they're gathered around 5000
- 9:01people. Usually she was so renowned that
- 9:03usually there were around 5000 people there.
- 9:06And probably we can imagine that they celebrated pujas.
- 9:09And with the Tibetans, they use a lot of drums and trumpets and
- 9:14bells and recite a lot of texts. So it was probably very alive, a
- 9:19lot of recitation happening. So this is what they were doing.
- 9:24And then one day there appeared 3 strangers at the door of the
- 9:32Red Fortress. And Matic's attendant came and
- 9:37said, oh look, there's this, there's this strange, strange
- 9:39people coming. And she said, oh, I think
- 9:43they're Indian. And she greets them in their own
- 9:46language. And so the three Indian
- 9:51acharyas, which are scholars or Yogi really realised Indian
- 9:56masters come and enter the place.
- 10:00And those three Indians were sent from Botgaya and Bodhgaya.
- 10:07And India is the place where the Buddha 2500 years ago attained
- 10:11enlightenment. So it's a source of Buddhism.
- 10:16And so India at that time had a very sophisticated Buddhist
- 10:24culture, very famous universities.
- 10:29Of course, they had a Buddhist tradition for 1500 years at that
- 10:33time, very established. So they were the Buddhist
- 10:36establishment in India. But Buddhism in India at the
- 10:41beginning of the 12th century was already on the decline.
- 10:45And it was already, yeah, losing its influence to Islam and
- 10:49Hinduism. And the apparently the Buddhists
- 10:54in India had gathered because they had heard of this woman,
- 10:58magic Leptron in Tibet and her new teaching.
- 11:02And they were afraid and fear. And they're, yeah, they were
- 11:06afraid. And they feared that she would
- 11:08contaminate the pure Dharma and that she would spread false
- 11:11teachings. And so they decided to form a
- 11:15committee and send through, send three really accomplished yogis
- 11:23to investigate and interrogate magic and to find out.
- 11:28So they really wanted to know, who is this woman?
- 11:31And she even thought, is she a demon?
- 11:33Or maybe in our terms, is she a witch?
- 11:36Is she contaminating the Buddha's pure teachings?
- 11:43But magic invites those three Indians, and she opens her door
- 11:49and makes them a throne and greets them.
- 11:53And she understands that these three Indians have come and they
- 11:59want to debate. They want to debate with her and
- 12:03so she sends for translators because she can speak Indian,
- 12:07but she thinks, oh, all my disciples won't understand it if
- 12:11I speak Indian. So I need translators and
- 12:15Tibetan, Nepali translators. All kinds of translators come
- 12:19and she announces there will be this debate and it says that
- 12:24more than 500,000 people gather at the Red Fortress for this
- 12:28spectacle and they all gather to hear magic lectern debate with
- 12:32the Indian guests. So I I think Indians love these
- 12:41spectacles or the debates. There's also something very
- 12:45popular in Indian culture. So and the three Indians start
- 12:51to question her all kinds of things about Buddhism and the
- 12:55Buddha's teaching, and she can answer all of it.
- 12:58And then she even asked questions that they can't
- 13:01answer. And she realises that somehow
- 13:05she has to tell her life story in order to convince them and to
- 13:13inspire faith in her or like in her disciples, so that they have
- 13:19faith. And she talks about her
- 13:22childhood and youth, how she from very early onwards had that
- 13:29fascination for the Buddhist teaching, for the Dharma.
- 13:32And she taught them how she met her teachers and what kind of
- 13:37teachings she received. She taught them how she met her
- 13:42Indian gurus. She had a guru who was Indian
- 13:46and she also talked about all her visions and meditation
- 13:49experiences. She talked about how she met her
- 13:52partner who's also an Indian. So she continued to talk about
- 13:56for seven days and after those seven days telling all her life
- 14:03story. And after those seven days, the
- 14:07three Indians are asking, OK, what is your teaching?
- 14:10What is your teaching? We've heard you teach a Dharma
- 14:15called like a teaching that is called the pacification of the
- 14:2084,000 Maras. What is that?
- 14:23We've never heard about that. So you need to tell us what
- 14:26you're teaching. And so Magic Leptron starts to
- 14:30explain her teachings. And maybe it's.
- 14:34Yeah, good to know and important to ask, what are maras?
- 14:40So what are maras? Basically, maras are everything
- 14:45or everything that hinders us on the path to awakening to on the
- 14:54path to develop our own creative potential to the utmost level.
- 14:59So everything that's in the way on that path to the creative
- 15:05unfolding of our full potential. And that there are 84,000 of
- 15:11them means that they're just innumerable.
- 15:14There are really, really a lot of things that can hinder us.
- 15:17So they're uncountable. There are really a lot of things
- 15:20and some of these obstacles that that can happen happen outside
- 15:26through illnesses or things we get distracted by or other
- 15:31things might be inside psychological things, whatever.
- 15:36But basically at the end, they're all, they're all rise
- 15:39within the obstacles within our own mind.
- 15:43And one or like maybe just to talk about two categories of
- 15:50these maras. I mean, there are 84,000 of
- 15:53them, but we can also just talk about two categories to look at
- 15:56them a bit more closely. And one of these categories,
- 15:59category of maras are the five poisons, the five poisons.
- 16:05And so Buddhism teaches that at the core of our suffering there
- 16:15are 5 poisons. Well, three poisons or and some
- 16:21is five that delude and cloud our minds.
- 16:26So there's ignorance and delusion, there's greet hatred
- 16:31and diversion and pride and jealousy.
- 16:35And so they're negative mental states.
- 16:38And these negative mental states cloud our minds and become a
- 16:43hindrance because if we are in negative mental states, we can't
- 16:48develop our full potential. So if we are greedy, we can't be
- 16:54generous. So it's either or if you're
- 16:57greedy, we can't develop our potential to be generous.
- 17:02Or if we are in a mental state of hatred, we can't love.
- 17:06So hatred is an obstacle to the development of love.
- 17:13So this is how these negative emotions become obstacles and
- 17:19they cloud our minds. So this is the five poisons.
- 17:26And then another category, very important one very basic 1 is
- 17:32called the 8 worldly winds. Some of you might heard about it
- 17:37and the eight worldly winds are the unconscious drives that
- 17:43steer our actions and life choices if we're not aware.
- 17:48So this is what we everything that we usually steers our
- 17:55actions and our choices. And so the list of the 8 worldly
- 18:00winds is their pleasure and pain, their fame and
- 18:07unpopularity, their gain and loss and praise and shame.
- 18:13So you always have a list of something that sounds very
- 18:15attractive, pleasure, and on the other side, something that
- 18:19doesn't sound very attractive, pain, fame, unpopularity, gain,
- 18:23loss, praise, shame. So, and somehow naturally we
- 18:32tend to move towards what's pleasurable and positive.
- 18:37So we naturally want pleasure or we want fame, we want gain, we
- 18:41want praise and we don't want pain and popularity, loss,
- 18:48shame. So of course we, we, we want to
- 18:50avoid that because it's, it's just uncomfortable or it's just
- 18:54painful. So it means that somehow if we
- 18:58are not aware, we will constantly be blown between
- 19:03these poles. So we're, we will move towards
- 19:07the pleasure and try to get away from pain.
- 19:10So in some ways that's how the winds work on us.
- 19:14So we will constantly be blown between these pairs of
- 19:19opposites. And if you're not aware, that's
- 19:24how our choices, what what we do with our lives, what we seek,
- 19:31where we what, what we want. That's how how it characterizes.
- 19:36And so there's one pull of, oh, we want that, there's craving.
- 19:40And the other side is aversion. We don't want that.
- 19:43No, it's negative. We don't want that.
- 19:45And it's maybe even fearful to be where we don't want to be.
- 19:50So all these unpleasant states create fear because we don't
- 19:55want to be in touch with pain, unpopularity, loss or shame.
- 20:02And so this is a very key Buddhist teaching from the
- 20:10beginning of Buddhism. This is a central message of
- 20:14Buddhism and it is expressed in Indian Buddhism.
- 20:20By the story of the Buddha himself in the night of his
- 20:26enlightenment. And I, I'm sure many of you know
- 20:29that story or have come across it and maybe know also the
- 20:35images. So the Buddha who was a man who
- 20:38lived 2500 years ago, at some point sat under the Bodhi tree,
- 20:43the tree. And he said, well, I'm, I'm, I'm
- 20:46determined to gain enlightenment.
- 20:48And in the night before his enlightenment, he was attacked
- 20:52by Mara. And Mara sent his armies.
- 20:56He sent his armies. He sent all the obstacles to
- 20:59kind of deter his test, his determination and to, yeah, I
- 21:06don't know, to tried to pull him away from his path.
- 21:13And he sends the seductive daughters or armies that should
- 21:18inspire anger. But the Buddha just sat there
- 21:20and didn't respond to any of those obstacles.
- 21:26And maybe the truth that this points to is that the path to
- 21:31creative unfoldment, the path of transformation or of awakening
- 21:36is a it's a quest. It's not an easy walk.
- 21:40So it's definitely a quest and we need we transform on that
- 21:48path through overcoming hindrances and obstacles.
- 21:52So, if you want to transform our minds, transform ourselves, we
- 21:57need to overcome obstacles and transform the hindrances that
- 22:01arise, some of the 84,000 hindrances that arise on the
- 22:05path. And so the teaching of magic
- 22:10Lebtron in Tibet is basically, she said, turn towards all those
- 22:19hindrances with kindness and compassion and do not regard
- 22:26them as enemies, but try to regard them as friends, see them
- 22:32as helpful occasions to develop. So don't see them practice
- 22:39matter and kindness. And if you really want to
- 22:43transform, then don't avoid situations that cause aversion
- 22:48and fear. Even you can seek them because
- 22:51they can test that. You can test your practice.
- 22:55You can use them as opportunities to practice
- 22:57matter. And this is the place where
- 23:00transformation happens. So yeah, go to the places, don't
- 23:08avoid pain, unpopularity, loss and shame.
- 23:14One could say looking at the 8 whirly winds.
- 23:18And she expressed that teaching in a form that could speak to
- 23:22the Tibetan psyche. So she used a lot of rituals and
- 23:26meditation practices that integrated a lot of the images
- 23:31and the shamanic animist culture of Tibet.
- 23:34So lots of yeah, drumming and bell ringing and recitation.
- 23:39So that she she expressed that in a form that was that
- 23:44integrated the tradition, the Tibetan tradition.
- 23:50And so how's that relevant for us today?
- 23:56I thought we could just make a very short experiment to find
- 24:01out if that teaching is still relevant for us.
- 24:05And what I want to do is I give you 30 seconds and after that I
- 24:11ring the bell and you can just sit and observe your experience
- 24:16and look at everything in your experience, in your present
- 24:20sense experience that you find annoying or where you think, oh,
- 24:24I would love this to be different and count how many
- 24:29things you encounter. OK, so how many things did you
- 25:11count? How many?
- 25:16OK, OK, collectively that's we're accumulating 84,000 Maras
- 25:25here. So, and we do it again, 30
- 25:28seconds and go back to all these things that you found annoying
- 25:33and use them as an opportunity to practice matter and say, OK,
- 25:39welcome them with kindness. Just try and see what happens.
- 26:25Was it a different experience? OK, so I think this teaching is
- 26:36really relevant for meditation is something to explore because
- 26:42I I think we all know what happens when we sit down and
- 26:45want to meditate and then the hindrances arise.
- 26:48So we might get restless or anxious or craving, doubt might
- 26:53arise or we might get tired and dull.
- 26:56So it's very easy that there are other bits of us that emerge
- 27:03once we sit down and think, OK, now we want to meditate and but
- 27:08what happens when we sit down with the expectation to have a
- 27:14nice pleasurable meditation? So if that's what we're craving
- 27:18to remember the 8 worldly winds, so we want a nice pleasurable
- 27:23meditation then and then all these hindrances arise.
- 27:28What happens is that very quickly there arises negativity
- 27:32or aversion against these things that kind of create an obstacle
- 27:38to that nice pleasurable meditation and we start to
- 27:42reject our experience. So welcoming all the hindrances
- 27:52as part of the process and bringing kind awareness to the
- 27:56hindrances can have the potential to calm the mind and
- 28:02dissolve the hindrances on its own.
- 28:05So just try that in meditation. Just not seeing how much we
- 28:13sometimes can reject our experience.
- 28:16But if we let go of the expectation of wanting to have a
- 28:19nice meditation, then yeah, the hindrances itself can be an
- 28:25opportunity to develop meta towards whatever arises in our
- 28:31experience. And the same is true for
- 28:37psychological integration. So we might sit with things and
- 28:43some unresolved conflict might arise in our experience when we
- 28:47meditate or maybe even outside of meditation, and we can kind
- 28:51of push it away or suppress it. But as long as we do that, it
- 28:55will always come back. It will not resolve itself.
- 28:59So it will keep coming back and we're not being able to move
- 29:03forward. So we can also try to turn
- 29:10towards it, turn towards what might feel unpleasant and maybe
- 29:17fearful because it might mean to take responsibility for some, I
- 29:24don't know, unskillful behaviour to look at something that is
- 29:29unpleasant or maybe strong emotions that we might fear.
- 29:33But if we, if we manage to turn towards it with kindness and
- 29:37awareness, there is a potential for a for resolution.
- 29:43And this is not only true for the individual level or
- 29:48meditation, it is also plays out on the social or the collective
- 29:53level. And so I can talk about myself
- 30:01living in a community with six other people, six other women,
- 30:04Sangadashni one of them. So I, I mean, I, I really
- 30:10noticed that the way I've been conditioned is that I have
- 30:18definitely a fear of conflict between people.
- 30:23So I, I don't like conflict. I'm afraid of conflict because,
- 30:27and I try to avoid it because it's unpleasant.
- 30:31And maybe there's also an expectation or view there that
- 30:37of course, as a Buddhist community we want to be, we live
- 30:40in harmony. We are, we're living in harmony
- 30:43with each other. And of course, underlying this,
- 30:46there's a craving for a pleasurable experience.
- 30:50I want to be in a nice, harmonious, pleasurable place.
- 30:59But what if we don't see conflict as as something that
- 31:07estranges us from harmony, but as the path and turn towards it?
- 31:15And I think I've just learnt because we had a really, really
- 31:23good community day session being three days at home.
- 31:27And I could just see the difference if you allow, if
- 31:32everyone allows to turn towards conflict and what it does, if
- 31:40everyone overcomes the fear to address it.
- 31:43And if there's space and a where kind space to see how much
- 31:49potential there is for a true resolution and a true
- 31:53transformation and a much deeper level of harmony that can arise
- 31:58through a resolving of conflict. But it really needs a turning
- 32:03towards conflict and not see it as a hindrance, something that
- 32:07disturbs me from my pleasurable harmonious feeling and it but it
- 32:15requires a real listening and yeah, awareness and turning
- 32:22towards and holding a space, A space of matter and kindness
- 32:27between each other. And I really don't want to
- 32:32advocate indulgence in hindrances and conflict.
- 32:35That's what I'm not doing. So I think the key is really
- 32:38awareness and kindness. So it's not just staying in
- 32:44hindrances, it's and it's being aware and using them as an
- 32:51opportunity to practice kindness and seeing that all the
- 32:56hindrances are friends on the path and they are the
- 32:59opportunities that we need to grow and develop.
- 33:02And without them, we're not challenged.
- 33:05We're not, we're we're not growing.
- 33:08So, but it, it takes a lot of courage to be able to turn
- 33:12towards these hindrances and these obstacles and to really,
- 33:18yeah, lose our fear of what it takes to change.
- 33:27So yeah, just a few words to come back to our monastery, the
- 33:37Red Fortress of the Copper Mountain in Tibet in the 11th or
- 33:42early 12th century. So after a month of debate and a
- 33:50month of magic, Leptron explaining, expounding her
- 33:54teachings, the Indians have gained a lot of faith in her.
- 34:00A lot of faith. And because it's a Tibetan
- 34:02story, of course, she also performs a lot of extraordinary
- 34:06magical feats, something out of the extraordinary.
- 34:12But it helps them to, to, to believe or to, to have faith, to
- 34:16gain faith in her. And they listen to her life
- 34:19story and her explanation of the teachings.
- 34:23And they do understand that magic's teaching, that she's
- 34:27really genuinely transmitting the essence of the Buddha's
- 34:31experience, of what the Buddha also realised through its
- 34:35awakening. But it does so in a form that is
- 34:40strange to the Indians and might be really not very familiar, but
- 34:46it's very culturally adequate to the Tibetans and then can speak
- 34:50to the Tibetans. And I think this story, this
- 34:56encounter at the Red Fortress between Magic Lapdran and the
- 35:00Indian challengers of the Indian committee interrogators, is a
- 35:07very important moment in the history of Buddhism.
- 35:12Because I think it somehow shows that after a few centuries of
- 35:19trying to establish Buddhism in Tibet, the teaching of the
- 35:26Buddha, the teaching of the Buddha, is finally fully
- 35:29integrated into the Tibetan psyche and culture.
- 35:32So it's expressed genuinely, naturally, in a way that speaks
- 35:37to the people and that people resonate with.
- 35:40So that's why Magic Laptron is so popular throughout the whole
- 35:43country. So it's expressed in a way that
- 35:46people can really understand, and I think it's really
- 35:53important. So what the story tells us is
- 35:55that it's important to distinguish between the essence
- 35:59of what the Buddha experienced and realised and the cultural
- 36:11expressions in which his teachings are being kind of
- 36:14passed down through the ages. And it's really under important
- 36:19to understand what is actually the essence of Buddhism, what is
- 36:23the essence of the Buddhist awakening of his experience.
- 36:27And this was also the quest of Sangarakshita, the man here on
- 36:35the shrine who founded our community.
- 36:38And he went to India in the 40s and he stayed there for 20
- 36:41years. And he got in touch with all
- 36:44kinds of Buddhists from Tibetan, Chinese, from Sri Lanka, from
- 36:50India. And he also, because at that
- 36:54time all the teachings suddenly became available in English
- 36:57translation. So he studied the whole Buddhist
- 37:00Canon and tradition and he was quite puzzled, like there's so
- 37:05many different forms and what is it that unifies?
- 37:10What's the essence of the Buddhist experience that is
- 37:13communicated through all those traditions?
- 37:17And maybe you've also had experience of that.
- 37:20I, I think like we are, we can go to many different Buddhist
- 37:26schools and traditions, maybe Zen or Vipassana or whatever,
- 37:30and they, they might seem so different and we might ask
- 37:34ourselves what is the essence? And so Sanghar Rakshita came to
- 37:39the answer to say, actually, the essence of Buddhism, of the
- 37:46Buddhist awakening, is what he called going for refuge.
- 37:51That's what unites all Buddhist across all schools.
- 37:58And it means that we're moving towards a creative unfoldment of
- 38:05our own full potential symbolized by the Buddha.
- 38:08So, but the Buddha's experience is an experience we can all
- 38:12share, we can all make, and it's expressed through the
- 38:17development of wisdom and compassion.
- 38:20So or the essence is the development of wisdom and
- 38:26compassion and through that a creative unfoldment of our full
- 38:29potential. So it's a moving towards
- 38:32directing our energies towards that goal.
- 38:35And it's at the same time a moving away from egoistic
- 38:40concerns and worldly preoccupations.
- 38:44So moving towards a development, an unfoldment and away from
- 38:50egoistic concerns and worldly preoccupations like expressed by
- 38:55the 8 worldly winds. OK and I want to finish with
- 39:01just a few thoughts. Why I find that, why I find
- 39:07Magic Leptron inspiring and why I find that story inspiring.
- 39:14And I think I love that story because it is a full expression
- 39:23of her teaching. So she in the story, she
- 39:26exemplifies her teachings because the Indians, they come,
- 39:35they're not nice. They they don't come as friends,
- 39:38they come as enemies. And they really want to
- 39:41challenge her and maybe even destroy her, but she's
- 39:45completely unafraid. And she welcomes them into her
- 39:50plays and makes a throne for them and really welcomes them as
- 39:55honoured guests. And I think the fact that she
- 39:59even speaks their language is, yeah, important.
- 40:06So she can welcome them in their own language.
- 40:09She knows her enemy as well. And then she's not afraid.
- 40:17She over the course of this debate, she transforms them into
- 40:22friends and supporters. And at the end, they even
- 40:27request her to come to India and say, OK, come, you could be
- 40:31useful in India as well. But she says, no, Tibet is where
- 40:36the Dharma is flourishing now. This is where now I'm needed.
- 40:40This is where I can be helpful. I'm not coming to India, but you
- 40:43can have some of my teachings, so take them to India.
- 40:48And so this, according to the history, is the only lineage of
- 40:54practice that originated outside of India and was then brought
- 40:59back to India. So it's something quite
- 41:01remarkable because usually all the teachings, of course, came
- 41:04from India and then travelled to Tibet, to China, to Japan, to
- 41:09Indonesia. But this is a teaching that
- 41:12apparently arose outside in Tibet and then was practiced in
- 41:17India. So she's a really remarkable and
- 41:22courageous master and one of the very few women who actually
- 41:28founded a Buddhist school, or maybe one of the very few women
- 41:32who founded a religious movement.
- 41:35And her movement was so successful that at the end it
- 41:40didn't survive as a separate school, but it was incorporated
- 41:45into all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
- 41:47So basically her teachings were so, yeah, so popular that they
- 41:54shaped the whole of Tibetan Buddhism.
- 41:58And, and I think it's really important to remember and
- 42:02acknowledge that the history of Buddhism was shaped by men as
- 42:07well as women. And lastly, I think the theme of
- 42:12cultural integration is something I find really
- 42:17important and interesting in that stories as well, because
- 42:21these stories of when the Dharma was translated into a place
- 42:27where it hasn't been culturally, Yeah, it was new.
- 42:35I think it resonate a lot with what we're doing here.
- 42:38So I mean, we're still very new to Buddhism culturally.
- 42:42So we've only had Buddhism for 150 years, maybe just a few
- 42:47decades really. So we still, we are in the same
- 42:51position that we still need to integrate Buddhism into our
- 42:54psyches individually, but then also culturally.
- 42:58We need to express the Buddha's teaching, the Buddha's awakening
- 43:04experience in a way that speaks to us as Europeans or Westerners
- 43:10in general. And I think in that process it
- 43:15is really important to understand the principles and
- 43:17the essence of the Buddhist experience and not to get caught
- 43:22up in forms or specific cultural expression expressions.
- 43:26So it's really, really important to really understand the essence
- 43:31and to be able to express that in a form that then culturally
- 43:36communicates. And I want to finish with a
- 43:40quote by one of Sang Rakshita's Tibetan teachers that he met
- 43:49when he lived in India in Kalimpong.
- 43:52And yeah, he expresses that beautifully in his own words.
- 44:02No matter where you stay, be it a busy place or solitary
- 44:09retreat, the only thing that you need to conquer are mines, 5
- 44:17poisons and your own true enemies.
- 44:23The 8 worldly concerns nothing else.
- 44:29Whether it is by avoiding them, transforming them, taking them
- 44:35as the path, or looking into their very essence, whichever
- 44:42method is best suited to your own capacity, there's no better
- 44:48sign of accomplishment than a disciplined mind.
- 44:53This is true victory for the warrior who carries no weapons.
- 45:00Thank you. Thank you for listening.
- 45:19If you enjoyed this talk, you are warmly invited to visit
- 45:23Buddhisticious Tour Berlin in Kreutzberg.
- 45:26We offer meditation, Dharma talks, and courses that support
- 45:30practice in everyday life. You'll find more information in
- 45:35the episode description.