Rinpoche Speech at Ahimsa House Transcript

Dukhten: Before I say a brief introduction about Rinpoche I would like to extend heartfelt thanks to Rinpoche for finding time in his busy schedule and agreeing to meet with our group to talk about non violence and Buddhism. So thank you very much Rinpoche for being here with us.

This will be a very short introduction of the lifelong achievements of Rinpoche, I will keep it very brief. Professor Samdhong Rinpoche was born in Jol in Eastern Tibet. At the age of 5 he was recognized by Tibetan Buddhists to be the reincarnation of the Fourth Samdhong Rinpoche, so he is the fifth Rinpoche now. Two years later he took vows as a monk. At the age of 12 he started his religious training at Drepung Monastery in Lhasa. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet, Rinpoche was forced to exile in India along with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso. From 1961 onwards he worked in Tibetan religious schools in India and in 1971 he became the principal of Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (Now, Central University of Tibetan Studies) in Varanasi, India, and moved on to become the director by 1988 till 2001. He is an eminent scholar who is fluent in English, Hindi and of course Tibetan and he is respected throughout the world in the areas of Buddhist studies and Gandhian philosophy. In 1991 Rinpoche was appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a member of the assembly of Tibetan people refugees and later was unanimously elected as its chairman. Between 1996 and 2001 he was an elected member of the assembly representing exiled Tibetans from town provinces all the while remaining an active chairman. In 2000 His Holiness the Dalai Lama decided that a democratic vote for the Tibetan people in exile to elect their own Prime Minister should take place. Rinpoche won 84% of the votes and thus became the first directly elected Kalon Tripa, or prime minister in exile from 2001 to 2006. Rinpoche is the first person to have exercised political authority following His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s renunciation of political power in 2001. Again he was elected Kalon Tripa by 90.27 of the votes and done his duty so efficiently till 2011. An eminent and distinguished scholar, teacher and professor, Rinpoche is a lifelong campaigner of nonviolence and peaceful resistance and he still acts as a close confidant of the Dalai Lama. Rinpoche has published several books on the subjects of nonviolence and Buddhist philosophy and has been recently appointed as the Chancellor of Sanchi University of Buddhist – Indic Studies based in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in April 2013. Before Rinpoche will start his talk that will be around two hours long, including a Q&A session, I would like to request Professor Silvan De Cous of the group to introduce very briefly the cultural exchange students volunteering with Lha, and thank you so much Rinpoche.

Professor Silvan: Ok, so as you may know we are coming from something de Monterrey, it’s a Mexican University, that’s the biggest private university in Mexico, it was founded in 1946 and today we have 31 campuses. The main mission of our university is to form students with entrepreneurship and human skills and also internationally competitive. That’s the main reason why we are here, in order to develop the human skills of our students, who are currently helping out at LHA, they are working for instance in the nursery, as english teachers or in my case as French teachers.

Rinpoche: Thank you. Good afternoon to all of you, I’m happy to be here and to see many young bright and energetic group of students from Mexico. I always feel happy when I see the younger generations because you are the world’s future and shall have to make or destroy the future. Conversation like this between strangers is not very useful in my view. Particularly I have a number of limitation in spite of that, I agreed to come because Mr. Ngawang Rabgyal has very much insisted for me to come. Last year also different group was here and we had a session of conversation and today we have again a new group of people. Why I say this kind of conversation is not very useful is because I’m seeing you all for the first time so I do not know your individual capacity, liking, disliking or aspirations, what kind of thing you wanted to know, and also what is your standard of knowledge in the field of Buddhism and nonviolence. It may be a very preliminary to you if you have sufficient background knowledge about this, or it may be a bit hard for you if you have no background. So it is just assumption that what I’m talking about would be suitable, but I don’t know. It is just an assumption. Secondly I have no knowledge of your language. Spanish is a very beautiful language, a large number of people speak this language, but I do not have knowledge of this language. We are using English for this conversation, but again my English knowledge is extremely inadequate, I have never learnt it, I just speak it from the streets so therefore at many times I feel difficulties in communicating my ideas. I have a very near friend who knows several languages and among them, Spanish was his favorite language. He was a philosopher who passed away two three years ago, you might have heard his name, Professor Raimundo Panikkar. And he used to tell me that Spanish language is much better than English in the matter of philosophy, I don’t know if he was right or not. Philosophy and dharma I think the Spanish language is very rich but nevertheless I don’t know. Apart from that I still live myself in the seventh century civilization, or in other words I am an uncivilized person. You are in the 21st century, so there is a large gap between us. I’m also your grand parents age, so we have at least two generations gap, so what I’m talking may not be useful or beneficial to you, nevertheless being asked to say something, the subject is Buddhism and nonviolence.

Buddhism came into this earth almost 2550 years ago. A prince, Siddhartha, born in the central part of Jambudvipa Aryavarta, at that time there was no India, no Nepal. Now the place where Siddhartha was born, which is Lumbini, is the political territory of Nepal, and half of his place, Kapilvastu, is on the border of Nepal and India. He remained in India, he travelled almost all the part of central India (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh) and I’m talking only from the viewpoint of the historical Buddha. All religions there are historical parts and mythological parts, they are quite different from each other. The historical Buddha who was born as a prince named Siddhartha, and remained in kingdom until twenty-nine years of age. The sages of that time, particularly some of the very renowned astrologists of that time told his father the king Suddhodana, that if this boy remains in the household he will became a King of Kings, the word in Sanskrit is Chakravarti-raja, a king which rules over all over kings. But most probably he renounced the throne and became an enlightened person. His father wanted to make him a king of kings, therefore he was being kept with all worldly pleasures, anything which is not pleasant or which gives message of misery was kept away from his sight. Anyhow one day he went out to make a tour of the street on a chariot with his servant Chandak, and these alone went around. They were going around, accidentally one corner of the street he saw a very old man, barely able to move, carrying a stick, his body was so frail and bent. Siddhartha had never seen a person that old. He asked what is this, what happened to this person? Chandak replied, Prince this is due to old age, at old age people become like this. His second question was, does old age come for everybody, or only for selected people? All that are born in this world, grown up through youth, then after years everyone becomes old. His last question was, am I subject to old age as well? And Chandak replied, yes your majesty it is inevitable. Then he thought about this and they moved ahead. A very sick person, the body was so sick and in pain miserably. What happened to him, asked the prince. He’s not well, suffering from disease and in pain, told him his servant. Then again the other two questions, does this happen to everybody, am I also subject to this? And then finally they see a dead body being carried away for termination, and a few relatives joining that procession and they are weeping, crying and they feel so sad. Siddhartha asks what is going on, and Chandak replies, this person passed away and now they’re carrying the body for termination. So again the three questions. Ultimately the prince realizes his worldly pleasures are impermanent and it’s bound to decay, so why should he attain to this. And he thought, I must find a remedy to all the sufferings of living beings, how can I solve pain and misery? He went away, gave up his kingdom, escaped at night and became a monk. He was in search of the truth for several weeks, saw a number of teachers, but no one was able to satisfy his questions, so finally he decided to look for the truth himself. So for six years he remained in a serious effort to meditate and to find the truth. Finally he realized that only torturing his body, making meditations for long sittings and by not eating proper food would not give him enlightenment. He took food, washed his body and went to the people’s tree, the Buddha tree. In Bodh Gaya it’s still there, the fourth generation of that tree. He finally meditated so deeply and he was able to perceive the universal truth and he became enlightened. He remained there for six weeks. And then he came to Sarnath to share his experience and insight with the rest of the world. The five monks, his disciples gathered and give them his realizations of his experiences. That can be summed up in the four sequences, which is called in Buddhist terminology the four noble truths. The principle of the four noble truths is the basic framework of Buddha dharma. I intentionally say Buddha dharma, because it is in a sense not exactly, cannot fit within the definition of religion, it is a philosophy or a science, but religion’s definition strictly cannot be properly fitting with Buddhism. Nevertheless we say today Buddhism, is one of the largest religions in world. But strictly speaking it’s a principle, dharma, which may or may not fit within the definition of religion. Buddha the enlightened one taught for 40 years, and there are number of volumes of his teachings, they can be summarized in its totality. The four noble truths are: the truth of suffering, and the truth of cause of suffering, truth of cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path through which cessation can be achieved. Liberation, cause of liberation, this is one set of causalities. Suffering and cause of suffering is another set of causalities the Buddha is teaching. By nature, none of the living creatures are happy with misery suffering and pain. No one likes the pain, and everybody likes happiness pleasure and peace. Therefore everyone has the basic fundamental right to get rid of pain and suffering and achieve pleasure happiness and peace. This is a fact. There is no dispute about this. So therefore the Siddhartha has seen the pervasiveness of the suffering and he was trying to find a remedy to get out of the suffering. So he says you must realize the truth of suffering. He categorizes the truth of suffering into three categories: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of changing and the suffering of dependency. So the entire world which does not achieve freedom is subject to these three types of suffering. The suffering of suffering is the usual pain, suffering which we all know, like disease decay, loss of family, so many kinds of visible pain. The second, suffer of change, is all so called kinds of pleasure in the world, whatever happiness we have today is bound to diminish, decay, or change, it is all impermanent. Today we have very good health, youthful and a new day we may become diseased, or due to old age we may lose energy and strength. So present pleasure is changeable, bound to decay, this is suffering of changing. Suffering of dependence is: we have no independence, we are bound by our foregoing actions, in the technical term we call it karmic forces. We accumulate so many actions that create positive or negative energy and that energy gives you the future and therefore we are not free. For example our consciousness is at this moment bound with this body. We have no freedom to relieve the body without any deterioration forever. One day will come we shall have to give up the body. Not the other way, we cannot go away from this body and get better younger body voluntarily. The relationship between body and consciousness is bound by another force, we call it karma. This is dependence, we are not free. The third we shall have to see misery as misery. As long as we see some portion of misery as pleasure and happiness then we won’t have the intention to get out of it. Second truth is this misery and unhappiness does not come to you without any cause, it has its own cause. What is the cause? The cause is our ignorance, our mental developments, hate, ignorance and attachment. This is basic three method department. Due to this we are suffering in many ways. Therefore the cause of suffering is to be eradicated. And the cause of suffering is eradicable, it is not entered into nature of your conscience. It is a temporary disturbance, a delusion that comes to your conscience. Through effort you can do away with this. Therefore the cessation of suffering, since cause is eradicable, cessation of misery is achievable, so the enlightenment is possible to achieve if you wish so. The Fourth truth is the truth of means or truth of path. What is that? So you see the truth of suffering, you see the truth of the cause of suffering and you also see the possibility of cessation of suffering. Now you have to pursue the path. The path can be summarized into three fold education, it means: the SHILK moral conduct, SAMADI the mental training, and the PREGHIAN the awakening of wisdom. All the mental developments come out of ignorance. When you achieve wisdom ignorance goes away. When the light comes, darkness goes away. Similarly the wisdom that is in your mind, then ignorance will go away. THIs is entirety of Buddhist. To arise in wisdom you need to use your entire mental force in a constant way. At this moment we cannot even concentrate 10 percent of our mind. Our mind is always scattering, and it is not coming to one point. As the modern science, neurological people say, our brain has capacity but small percentage of brain is in usage or in action. That is true, our mind is depending on brain whatever it may be. So therefore to achieve the usage of our mind in totality with concentration we have to achieve the perfection of constantitiveness, that can only be achieved through continuity of meditation practice. And to achieve this you have to follow moral principles, unless you have a morality, ethics principles, you are following your body actions, mental actions, all in a form of non violent way and certain disciplined way, you cannot meditate. If you do not meditate you cannot train your mind to concentrate and without training the mind you cannot awake the wisdom. You have to follow discipline. Avoid negative acts and accumulating positive acts, and then do meditation. Awakening of wisdom is almost ultimate when you achieve training of mind. When you achieve the ultimate level, wisdom will awake and you will see the truth, therefore you’ll have achieved the cessation of misery. This is all that Buddha was talking about and this is the essence of the Buddha dharma, it constitutes a part of philosophy and part of science. All three together, these are the Buddhist canon or Buddhist teachings. How to enter into the threefold education, the gateway entrance to Buddha dharma is taking refuge. It means knowing the Buddha nature and accepting Buddha as a teacher and knowing dharma and accepting dharma as the real protector and refuge. And sangha: the community as supporter, so someone takes refuge in Buddha, dharma and sangha they become a Buddhist person. The historical Buddha, Siddhartha, is in a personified form and taking refuge of course also includes him, but mostly speaking the Buddha nature. It means a state of completely eradicated negative things and achievement all knowledge, that kind of level, of realm, is the Buddha nature and all sentient beings have the nature of Buddha, they can reach that. And the real thing which saves you from the misery and makes eradication of the cause of misery is the dharma that three way education that I spoke about earlier on. And then you need a community atmosphere or environment, the SANGHA. In a metaphorical way we can say someone is suffering from a serious disease and in order to cure from the disease you need a good doctor to diagnose the cause of disease and prescribe the accurate medicine. But the doctor cannot cure your illness, the cure of your illness will be achieved through the medicine and medicine you shall have to take by yourself. Without taking the medicine you cannot be cured. And since you are suffering seriously you need a nurse or aid who gives you the medicine, talks to you, encourages you and reminds you of what the doctor has advised to you. A good doctor, a good medicine and a good nurse, when it all comes together you can get out of the disease. So similarly the suffering is the disease. The Buddha cannot get rid of your suffering, he can only tell you how to achieve the cessation of the cause of suffering. And that is the dharma and that you shall have to take by yourself. In the course of practicing dharma you alone cannot do the practicing in the proper way, therefore you will need a community, called sangha. So these are the three refuges that Buddhist people take. So that much is the end of brief introduction to Buddhism. Now the second topic is nonviolence. Nonviolence is also essence of Buddha dharma, Arya Deva in the second third century AG appeared in South India, the direct disciple of Nagarjuna appeared in India, he says if somebody asks me to sum up the entirety of Buddhism in two words I will use the words A HIMSA, non-violence. Nonviolence is the essence of the entire Buddha’s teachings. I mentioned the threefold education, the moral conduct how things decide which is moral and which is immoral. The basic principle is: anything that causes directly or indirectly harm to others is immoral. Whatever is not harmful to others that is morality. Benefitting to others that’s high morality. How you achieve a con mind, that also comes through non violence, as long as your mind is angry, hateful, you cannot achieve the constantative mind. Your mind must become nonviolent, then you achieve the wisdom. Wisdom sees all sentient beings as equal, that is final stage of nonviolence. When you see everyone as equal, then there’s no question of doing violence to anyone. We shall have to define what is nonviolence. Violence and nonviolence are not principally decided by the appearance of the action, but are decided by the intention from which the action is initiated. Violence generally means harming to any other sentient being, causing injury, pain, unhappiness. That is violence. But that kind of act will become in reality violence when you have the intention of hurting the other, otherwise if you have a compassionate mind and in order to benefit or save the other sometimes causing pain and causing unhappiness may not be in the category of violence. The doctors input your body parts, cutting it by knife, and that is very painful, unless you are given anesthetics. But the intention was to save the life of the patient. So apparently it is causing pain to the other, but in reality it is saving a life so it is not violence. Similarly some action may appear friendly and not mean any harm or pain but ultimately it causes pain. Like for instance giving bad advice. Or these days there are so many cases of people supplying drugs and intoxication things and saying that is good, you should do this and I can give it to you for free. This way the action is apparently friendly way and for benefit of the other, but in reality the intention of the action is to make the person addicted and a permanent customer of the supplier. The entire exploitation of today’s world, we call it structural violence. The economic system is full of violence, not only to living creatures but also to nature as well. Due to that we have made this world miserable, violence is the root of the entirety of problems of the world today. It might be political, social, economic, environment, wherever you look it’s full of violence. Therefore we shall have to understand what violence is and the result of it. Violence was there right from the beginning of civilization history, but in ancient times violence was limited. Particularly violence in the form of war used to be for a specific object, to get more power, territory or to win war. Once the war is won, then there’s not another objective to continue war and this violence. The scale of war is also limited, one person can kill 4 or 5 people. Today one person by pressing a button can kill millions of people, all living creatures. This kind of violence we have created, therefore the principle of nonviolence is very relevant for every living creature today, even more than in the ancient times. Because the violence is a part of trade and business and there’s many business houses that need apparent violence. I’m talking about the weapons industry, they need a sustainable market, to have a sustainable market for weaponry, they need the use of it, and destructive weaponry can only be used for violence never for beneficial purposes. So our generation, your generation shall have to think have to think about how to establish nonviolence, otherwise there’ll be no future of planet earth. At this moment the level of the current omission is reached quite near to human tolerance, in the last ten year the increase is so high, if that is not checked it means it will go beyond the tolerance of living creatures. Everywhere the problem of terrorism, all politicians, philosophers are thinking about a solution to this, which they find in waging war. But in reality terrorism is one good market maker for weapon industry. In my life I remember the Vietnam war prolonged for 21years. If one side wished to win the war it could have be done within 24 hours. Or if one side wished to retreat from war, they could have done it. But these are not their objectives. To prolong the war so the market for weaponry is sustainable is their objective. Therefore the principle of nonviolence has become extremely important for the earth and the entire living system it. There’s no alternative but to adopt nonviolence in our lives. I always quote one of the statements of Martin Luther King. Two days before being assassinated he gave a speech, and his utterance was very correct. He said that “there’s no option for us today between violence and nonviolence. This option was out of date. Today the option before us is only between nonviolence and non existence.” This is very true. We shall have to understand that we have no other alternative. Having said that, the principle of nonviolence is not a new philosophy or new concept. In India for more than last 7000 years there were many philosophical traditions, and the majority of them talk about nonviolence. Particularly Buddha and Mahavira, both are great educators of nonviolent principle. In fact their religions are based on nonviolence. But in 19th and 20th century people did not understand, or teachers did not teach that nonviolence can be used for every sphere, all nonviolent religions talk about nonviolence only in the spiritual practice. They’re not able to apply this in sociopolitical work, national struggle, freedom of a nation, defense, economic system. In all the worldly affairs people thought a certain degree of violence was necessary. Buddhist countries such as Myanmar, Thailand, Bhutan, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Mongolia, their constitution says they’re Buddhist, still they’re not able to do away with their armed forces. They also keep Buddhist force for law and order keeping. They have system of capital and violence punishment in the name of justice or legality. So non violence has been kept only in the realm of dharma or spiritual path, and in worldly affairs, particular in state management, or struggle for independence, or struggle for justice opposing injustice, in these realms the ancient thought is that degree of violence is indispensable. Buddha did not teach to kings and rulers how to manage a state completely nonviolently, his teaching was only about how to reach enlightenment so in order to do that you have to reach nonviolent mind, but for a nation or for a state it’s not very clear. This was for the first time on this planet taught by the person whose name is Ghandi. Mahatma Gandhi was born in 19th century and he lived until 1948. In the late 19th century and early part of 20th he brought a completely new principle that nonviolence can be used in every sphere. To oppose violence, nonviolence is the best way to achieve justice. To fight independence of India against the British rule, he not only preached, but practiced, demonstrated how nonviolence could be more effective than violence. And similarly in all other spheres, education, law and order, he taught how to use the nonviolence action for achievement of any objective, any aim. So this is very unique new invention so to speak, so that’s why the great poet calls him as mahatma, means saint or sage. In other words a saint politician, strategist. Anyone who’s interested in nonviolence then of course you shall have to study Buddhism tradition and all that but you must study Gandhi as well, and only then you’ll be able to understand how to apply nonviolence in everyday life, and postmodern life where everywhere there’s violence. How we move about in this context using nonviolence as a principle, it seems very difficult, but by studying Ghandi it will make sense. Gandhi’s writings are very long, no one can read them in one lifetime. The printed version is 113 volumes so there’s so much. But I recommend two small books. One is INDIA HOME RULE, the basic name is Hind Swarajya. That is very tiny, only 43-44 pages and with the intro altogether 100 pages, you can read it in two sittings. Apparently it is very simple, but until you read it 4-5 times you cannot understand the real intention of the author. The second is his autobiography “my experiments with truth”. It is a little bigger, about 350-400 pages, if you read these two books then you’ll be able to understand what is Gandhi’s idea about how to use nonviolence as a principle and action in all spheres of life. I think that is easy to read and understand and then since he was recent, not like Buddha 2600 years ago, just a few decades living with us, his language his contemporary and everyone can understand, and his incidents are relevant to the present age. So I think I should stop here to leave room for your participation, comments or feedback. As I mentioned in the beginning since I have no intimacy I am only monologuing, this may be fitting or nonfitting, but we may have a little bit of dialogue and that might be useful to us. Thank you for your patience and attention.

Q: Since you have all this tolerance and you want equality for everyone in the world, why don’t you meet with women and men in equality, what is the difference and why nonviolence is not implicated on that?

A: Speaking from the Buddhist viewpoint, we are not only concerned between men and women, we are concerned with all sentient beings, all living creatures are completely equal. There’s no differentiation, no higher or lower, no superior or inferior. Equality in real sense stems from the argument that all the sentient beings have the potential of awakening. The Buddha nature is pervasive to all sentient beings, they all have the potential to be enlightened. There is no difference in their capacity and their potential. Secondly everybody looks for peace or happiness, no one could live with pain and misery, so this is also equal to everyone. So there’s no discrimination between sexes and races if one really follow the Buddhist teaching doctrine. Having said that there are differences between creatures, for example between the animal kingdom and humans beings. Among humanity also, men and women have number of differences. The differences shall have to be understood. Despite equality, a man can never become mother, or give birth to a baby. These are the laws of nature. So this is by the nature giving different functions and by that way there are a number of differences in our biological body, psychological mind, not everything is the same. But these differences do not justify the argument that one is superior than the other. The differences are differences. The basic equality is that each one has potential to be enlightened, and that’s equal. And also each is striving for happiness, away from suffering, so they are also equal in their attitude. So no one can discriminate on the basis of sex. That’s why the Buddha said, the Buddha work will not be completed unless he established the four sanghas – the male monk, female monk, and male and female lay person- and Buddha was 2600 years ago but very conscious of gender equality. In all his teachings, whether or not in his audience both sexes are present, he always starts “ladies and gents”. So all the Buddha teachings are addressed in an equal manner, even when there are no women. In the various Buddhist countries in real social life you might find a number of gender inequalities or discrimination but these are the social disorder and is not in consonance with Buddha teachings.

Q: so you think it’s the men society who is making this problem bigger, not Buddha’s teaching, right?

A: I think so, I’m not a student of sociology so I cannot say definitely. Wherever there’s male dominant society that might be caused by the male, not by their philosophy or religion.

Q: What are the basic steps to meditate?

A: THE FIRST STEP is to know the object of meditation, why you want to meditate. As I mentioned before the aim of meditation is to awaken your wisdom, and achieving your wisdom is to achieve enlightenment. So you’re aiming to achieve the Buddha nature so that is very high objective and in that case there are many steps to be taken to meditate. But today the meditation becomes some kind of physical and mental exercise to reduce stress or to have fitness of the body or calming the mind. That’s ok. But first of all you must know why you wanted to meditate. So In accordance with the objective the steps will be different. If you are just seeking to reduce stress, I am not joking I am telling you the fact, the late great teacher Goyanka who taught the personal meditation 10 day course very widely in India and abroad, there’s these meditation centers and the multinational companies and many faculties send their workers to 10 day course. Their objective is to increase the efficiency of the workers and improve production. So the teacher accepts, ok for that also you can meditate, that might be your main objective but meditation might give you lots of side effects. So there are many companies and industries send their workers there with cost, their wages sustained, that is purely to increase the efficiency of the workers, for that matter any kind of meditation can be. Second step is to know whatever system or method you adopt, you should have full knowledge of that. You know the object and you know the system, these two are very important to meditate. If you meditate for spiritual journey, you should meditate in accordance to your faith. If someone is Christian, they should study the Christian way of meditation, if they’re Buddhist they should follow the Buddhist way and so forth. Whatever faith, since you’re pursuing a spiritual journey that has to be in accordance with your faith. If you’re Muslim and you meditate the Christian way, that will not enhance your spirituality. That is why I say knowing the object is first, and knowing the method is second, you should not casually meditate by hearing from some book or internet, on youtube or whatever. That may go well or not, it is a little risk.

Q: I wanted to ask you what are the main troubles you have as a guide in making people stand behind you and follow you, how do you handle that as a guide?

A: there cannot be a generalized method which can be used for everyone. For example Buddha gives teachings in so many different ways, if you read the Buddhist canon he was never consistent. Sometimes he said yes, others no, sometimes he kept quiet. His teachings are full of contradictions and the reason behind it is that he taught to suit the individual listener. Of course there are generalized principles but non generalized principles are for individuals. Entire sentient beings they are different, each one is individual and each one is unique, one matter is not entire suitable to everyone. The uniqueness is very clear, you can see on this planet earth there are 7 billion people alive today and you will not be able to find identical two completely identical faces. Even twin brothers or sisters, you look closely and you will find differences. Each individual has individual capacity and individual ways, therefore we shall have to handle the people individually and in accordance with their individual need, capacity and mental attitude. Having said that of course to deal with any people any problem the compassionate mind, the mind of loving kindness is the basic factor, if you do not have love to the other people with whom you have to deal, you cannot handle the other people, you may patch up and have some artificial relationship, but the real relationships shall have to be built and dealt with a sincere mindset of love and compassion to the other. Having said that then the other’s background we have to analyse and there’s no generalized principle that I can talk about.

Q: Thank you for your time. I was wondering, your conception of morality and violence, the definitions that you just gave us, seem to revolve around the concept of others. Like you said, if an action intentionally harms others, then it is violent or immoral. Now, last 3rd of December there has been the 124th case of self immolation and I would like to hear your opinion about the fact that some monks are now starting to use violence against themselves not as a mean of destruction, but as construction. In other words, is this kind of violence against the self for constructive purposes an immoral act, and if so why?

A: This is a very complex issue and also at this moment, the self immolations in Tibet become a political issue as well so therefore I generally do not make any comment on this. But one question, in other words apart from self immolation, there are generally lots of suicide and other ways of suicide. The question whether suicide is in the category of violence or non violence is very much debatable. In Buddhism there’s no clear cut instructions saying whether harming oneself is violence or nonviolence. We do not find any direct reference in the Buddha teachings. Now, referring back to the Buddhist canon, Jatakas, the story of Buddha’s past life, in these stories he has given his head, or his upper body, someone is asking for his head and he gives it to them during the practice. All body parts. That means giving up a part of the body is ending one’s own life. That is considered to be a positive spiritual thing and not classified in the category of violence. Apart from that I mentioned Jainism, the tradition alive in India today. Their way of life is extremely nonviolent, Buddha did not go to that extreme. The mahavira asks his disciples to cover the nose and the mouth by a piece of cloth in order to save the small insects, and not to wear shoes wherever they go, as it may kill insects on the path. They carry a small broom in order to save anything on the path. This extreme path of nonviolence was there, and in spite of that they have a system of ending one’s own life voluntarily by fasting and nuns and monks in their old age they go indefinitely fast and finally they give up drinking water and usually after 45-50 days they die. This kind of death is considered to be a very high level of spiritual practice and does not constitute violence. Therefore there are canonical reference about taking your life that may not count as violence but on the other hand to harm one’s body is also considered to be inappropriate act. So there are different versions that need independent thinking on the individual case. Both sides have canonical references. Now secondly, again, it much depends on the intention. Any person who does take their own life, including the self immolators, the action is caused by hate, anger, then I very much doubt the action will be free from violence. If they have no anger, no negative emotions only out of peace of mind, compassionate mind, and wanted to express something in a drastic way, that would be in my view nonviolence. It all depends on the intention. In 1960 one monk of Vietnam self immolated himself and the pictures are still available and he just sat down cross legged in a meditative poses. But the picture shows that in the process of burning he remained in a sitting position, not running around, in a very peaceful way. That had a great impact and just after two months the Vietnam war came to an end. In North Africa a few years ago a vegetable seller self immolated, that also brought about a number of peaceful changes in a few countries. But the point for Tibetans is that it’s not one, not two, not three people, but 123 people who self immolated, and there may be more that we simply don’t know about. But it didn’t evoke the international community’s feeling, so that is very difficult for me to understand why. And so these are very broad and not direct answer to your question but a broad discussion of how I look at it, so it’s up to you to decide and find the answer.

Question: to refer back to your quote about non violence and non existence, how do you feel the best approach is for mankind to implement teachings about nonviolence, would you say it’s through politicians, media, education, religion, which one in your mind is the most effective?

Rinpoche: that is a very difficult question. Non violence used as strategic method I do not consider it genuine nonviolence. I have a disagreement and great debate with my most revered friend Gene Sharp, he thinks nonviolence can be used strategically and he considers Gandhi a strategic person, but I say he was never strategic but anyhow, the best way is to practice by oneself. Until you become nonviolent you cannot encourage pursuit or thought of nonviolence to any other, this is the most difficult part. We always talk about nonviolence and then when it comes to you then you react with anger, hate. Education should be the most effective way to bring the nonviolence principle to the younger generations and to give a culture of nonviolence through education. There’s no doubt it should be very effective. But the question is, would we ever be able to find real nonviolent teachers? If teachers have not evolved their minds into nonviolence, then again that teaching would be just an information. So what we can do at this moment is to practice yourself, and if you become nonviolent yourself then you will have a great impact on your family, students, friends, and from that you can enlarge gradually. You might have heard the story about Gandhi. He lived near Sewagram, and a village boy is eating too much sweet, it’s gur, (Jaggery) before making the sugar. His parents are not able to stop the boy from eating sweets and his teeth have become damaged. Then someone advised why don’t you take this boy to Ghandi, he’s a great person, he may persuade the boy not to eat sweets. They went to Gandhi and explained, and he said okay I will try to persuade the boy, and asked them to come back next week. The following week the boy came back, and Gandhi said: “my dear son, it’s not good to eat too much sweet, you should stop”. Then the father was a little frustrated, “if that’s all you had to say, why did you not say it last week?” to which Gandhi replied “last week I was also eating sweets. So at that time my advice would have no impact. Since you came I stopped eating gur, and now I will not eat it through my life, so now I have the authority to give advice on it”. So that is Gandhi’s way.

Q: thanks for being with us, I would like to ask you something. One of the main differences I realized about the education system in the western world and with the Tibetan community is we are mainly based about competition, we seek it, and here the Tibetan community I feel as if it’s more of a collaborate teaching. I would like to hear your opinion on this, and if you believe that this competition could be a root of violence and danger.

A: of course I mentioned in my talk structural violence. Structural violence is basically in the economic system and political system so that always comes with competition. Comparison and competition is the root cause of the violence. Almost 300 years ago the human community by hand could produce their commodities just to satisfy the need, no one is in want, food, clothes, house, all necessary articles are enough to everybody. All needs are being addressed. Then the so called industrialization or science technological revolution invented the machine, and it can produce the commodity much more than what the people need. And the things are produce much more than need, then the producers should find a way to make use of it, sell it, and make a profit out of it. Market research means how to make the population transform from a user to a consumer. In the ancient we are users, we use things, we do not consume. Now the entire population is converted to consumers, we do not use anymore. That consuming person is indoctrinated right from childhood with comparison and competition. A small child who’s not able to speak very well, teachers or his parents point to another child and say look, he can speak well and. and then at school he got 99 marks and you got 33 marks, and by this way they take away the capacity to know oneself. They always indoctrinate to compare with others. Today I’m not able to organize me, I recognize my identification shall have to find in comparison to someone else. In so called democratic election, I have to find my identification with my representative. So this comparison and competition has made the ground to all kinds of violence. I used to say that humanity is very clever to find elegant terms, we used to say free and fair competition. This is absolutely contradictory, if you’re in competition how can this be free, or fair. The competitor will use all means to win himself, no one competes in order to make others win. Our school the Tibetan Children Village, their motto is “Others before self”, a very good one. Jokingly I would ask some of the competitors in a race or in a game, will you give others the chance to win and go ahead before you? And they would say, no, I have to win and be first. Then what about your motto? You are being taught that others are more important than yourself. To defeat the other is definitely a form of violence, mental one, which can easily turn into a physical one. So Gandhi’s education system he says that present system must be completely done away with. The idea was that the system encouraged a comparative and competitive frame of mind for the students. My late friend Krishnamurti, he also did away with the examination system in all his schools. We tried to develop a culture among the children to not compare and not compete. In other societies this may be difficult to achieve, but in our schools of the Krishnamurti Foundation the children are quite different from other societies so when they grow up we can find that no competitive mindset is really, what I should say, is they succeed with that non competitive mind, they’re able to do everything in the society. What I’m trying to say is that competition is not indispensable to lead a decent life in the present civilization.

Q: I’ve got one more question, and this is something that I personally struggled with. I work within the technology field, and with technology influencing mankind in the matter that violence is now more apparent through nuclear weapons and so on, there’s so much negative force that comes with new technology and growth, but at the same time there’s so much positivity with, for example, the teachings of the Dalai Lama being spread across the world regardless of geographical boundaries. Do you feel that technology in this present age is becoming a positive or a negative force in this atmosphere?

A: that is again a very complex question. In India, particularly the so called followers of Gandhi, there is one group who says that science and technology is neutral. It depends on the user, you can use for very good purpose, or for disturbing purpose. If the user is good, then the technology will also become good, and vice versa. That is one school of thought. The other school of thought says no, science and technology are not neutral, they are fundamentally negative, basically destructive. But if your intention is so powerful and your moral authority is strong enough, you can use them in a positive way. But it doesn’t mean that technology itself is a positive. So this is a second school of thought. And then there are very orthodox people who claim that science can never be used in a positive way. (laughter). So there are so many different opinions and a number of books are being written on this issue, not many in English unfortunately, mainly in Hindi. I’m tearing myself between these schools, but the way I relate to technology is through the principles of selective acceptance or ultimate rejection.

Selective acceptance such as : I shall have to use the internet to communicate to people at large, and I shall have to use the airplane to reach places in time. But I have a conscience that I should not become completely dependent on these things. And If I find that this is not positive, then I will stop without any hesitation. If I realize that I should not go by airplane, I will stop going anywhere, and settle in one place. I will not be a slave to all these objects. But occasionally, and with the mindset of no attachment, I am relating to technology, so this is my explanation to my friends.

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