64 FEATURES • TSONGKHAPA TEACHING THE MIND AND LAMA TSONGKHAPA A TEACHING BY H.E. THE 25TH TSEM RINPOCHE
FEATURES • TSONGKHAPA TEACHING 65 Dear all, I gave a Dharma talk for a few of my students at my residence a while ago and I thought I’d share this on my blog for the benefit of everyone else. In this video, I talk a little about the vastness of our mind, how our mind shapes our present condition and how it’s interlinked with our spiritual practice. I hope that this short teaching will help you understand more about the true nature of our minds and how we can transform our minds to be more stable and understand the Dharma clearer through Lama Tsongkhapa’s practice. I received these teachings from my gurus, and I hope it will benefit you as it did me. Do watch this short video and let me know your feelings. Thank you. Tsem Rinpoche A transcribed excerpt from the teaching: In Buddhism, we call the consciousness or mind, sempa. And what happens is this: our mind is connected to our body, but it’s not a part of it. It is separate but it temporarily abides in the body. Now, there are two levels of our mind: there is the gross mind and there is the subtle mind. The gross mind is an extension of the subtle mind. The subtle mind is the ultimate mind, which is you. Now, the subtle mind is what travels from one life to another. It is you but you are not defined by it. But it creates who you are. So when the subtle mind is clouded by ignorance, it creates actions that further the ignorance. It creates the body, the speech, the functions, the environment and the people to increase the ignorance. The subtle mind appears three times; it appears to you when you are in the deepest part of sleep, it appears to you when you are having an orgasm and usually when people are having an orgasm, it is very quick and they don’t focus on the subtle mind but instead, they focus on the physical pleasure. The third time is at the time of death. When the subtle mind appears at the height of an orgasm, you’ll see some darkness or some redness and then you black out. People often say, “Oh, because it blew my mind and it was so good”. It’s actually not that, it is you. Your physical constituents are forcing you to go back to your real mind through orgasm. That’s why ancient tantric practitioners of Hinduism, Tantra and Buddhism, don’t use sex as a measure or a vehicle for pleasure. Instead, they use it as a vehicle to get to the mind. When you are dreaming, you can see, hear, feel, taste and touch, and it’s so real. You are not using your eyes but you can still see. This ability to taste, touch, see and feel without your physical aggregates proves that your mind is separate from your body. This was written by the great Indian pandits of the past in the Buddhist monasteries of India. It was spoken and taught by fully enlightened great Indian masters such as Dharmakirti, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Shantideva, Aryadeva and Arya Asangha. The Tibetans went to India and sat at their feet to learn and bring the Dharma back to Tibet. Now, the Indian masters said that this subtle mind works on a secondary basis, meaning it is very fast. If you have a moment, you have a prior moment and you have a following moment. Without the following moment, you can’t have the next moment. So it’s like a film reel. Let’s say you are 25 years old now and the fact that you exist right now at 25 means that you existed at 24.
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