Since we're back in regular mode now...
I had received an email during the retreat from somebody in Ireland who is doing a co-dependents
anonymous group. And he's finding it very helpful, following the 12 Steps, and he wanted
some guidance about how to do this within a Buddhist framework. So he was asking some
very good questions. So it might take some time to go through them.
So, he was saying it shouldn't be so much of a problem because they say "higher power,"
although the group he does apparently says "God." But to substitute "Buddha" or "The
Three Jewels," or something like that. So it seems like that would be good. But when
he's thinking about it in more depth then he's coming up with some questions.
So he said: "What I'm struggling with is the balance that I discern within Buddhism for
self-reliance and how this exists alongside the realization that we need spiritual teachers
at the same time. The idea that we create our own experience and are responsible for
our own karma is a central tenet of Buddhism, obviously, however, there is also the realization
that we need qualified spiritual teachers to guide us on the correct course for spiritual awakening."
So that's the first part of the question. There's several parts here.
So, yes, Buddhism talks about self-reliance, but then it also says that you need a spiritual
teacher. So does that mean that's contradictory? No. Okay?
The reliance means that we have to do the work ourselves. That nobody else can do it
for us. That drinking blessed water, getting bonked on the head with a vase, swallowing
a pill, wearing cords... These kinds of things, the material things themselves, cannot change
our mind. If we use those things to change our mind and remind us of the Dharma it's
very valuable, but the real work that we have to do is ourselves inside here. So that's
what the self reliance refers to.
The self-reliance does not refer to making up the path ourselves. Because we've been
making up the path to happiness ourselves since beginningless time. Yes? And mostly
our path to happiness has been sense pleasure. But we've been born as everything in previous
lives. So we followed this religion, we followed that religion, we probably even made up our
own religion in previous lives. You know? Or we took different bits of different things
and we mushed them together making what Lama Yeshe would call stew or soup. A little bit
from this, a little bet from that, I like all these ideas, I don't like those so I'll
stick the ones I like and mix them together.
So, that's not the meaning of self-reliance, picking and choosing ourselves or inventing
the path ourselves.
It's actually much smarter and much wiser to learn from people who know. It's like our
whole life we learn from people who know, don't we?
I mean, it's kind of amazing in spiritual things, "Oh, I want to develop it myself!"
But everything we know, we learned form other people. People taught us how to talk, they
taught us how to type, they taught us how to sweep the floor, how to brush out teeth...
Everything we learned from other people.
So, it's good-- I mean, imagine if nobody had taught us how to brush our teeth and we
were going to have to invent a way ourselves to keep our teeth and gums healthy. You know?
It's just much better to learn from experts, isn't it?
So here we definitely need teachers because in the spiritual realm it's even more important.
If you get a typing teacher that doesn't teach you so well, that's okay. You can get somebody
else who does it better and you can improve your skills and so on, it's not a big crisis.
But if you have a spiritual teacher who teaches you the wrong path, and you follow that path,
then all your spiritual attempts are really going to be foiled because you're not going
to get the kind of results that you want.
So that's why it's so important to check the qualities of the teacher and the qualities of the teaching.
And so when we look at the teachings that came from the Buddha, we saw that the Buddha
himself was a realized being.
Now, somebody might say, "But Buddha just discovered the path that very lifetime, why can't I?"
Well, that's one view of looking at the Buddha. But from the Mahayana view we say, actually,
the Buddha was enlightened a long time ago, and he appeared in the aspect of an ordinary
person 2500 years ago so that he can demonstrate to us how we have to put effort into the practice,
and so on. So it wasn't that the Buddha just sat under the Bodhi Tree and *wham* it all
came to him. He was previously enlightened.
So if you read the chronicles of the Buddhas, they all have teachers in previous lifetimes.
And they all make the bodhisattva vow in the presence of those teachers, and receive a
prediction and so on. But they really receive teachings. And then we have to think about
the teachings ourselves and actualize the meaning ourselves. But it's much better to
learn from an enlightened being such as the Buddha. Okay? Rather than inventing our own path.
Then some people might say, "Well, I can just go directly to the Buddha, I don't need a
live teacher to guide me."
I think when we are already involved in the path and have a deep understanding that may
be the case. When we've already been practicing for a number of years, and so on. But, especially
at the beginning, for the first -- I don't know how many -- years, until your teachers
pass away, you need a teacher. You know, maybe after all your teachers pass away then you
rely on the books and so on. But at the beginning we really need a teacher because the texts
are not always so easy to understand. We can easily misunderstand them. And some of you,
I mean we've been going through some of these philosophy texts. Could you read those on
your own and understand what was going on? No. Okay? So having a teacher who helps you,
and gives you examples, and gives other terms and so on and so forth, that's really helpful.
Also, having a teacher that can help us understand how to practice in our own culture at our
own historical time period. Having a teacher who we can discuss with (e.g.) If we're keeping
precepts, well what's the limit of keeping this precept? And what falls within that limit?
And having a teacher who points out to us when we're doing things that are beyond how
we should be behaving, or a beneficial way to behave.
So all of that is really helpful right now in a practical sense of having a real live
human being as a teacher.
And actually, in Vinaya it says that your preceptor has to be somebody who is alive
now. You can't say the Buddha was my preceptor and ordain yourself.
So we learn from teachers who can trace their lineage back to the Buddha and who have practiced
well and who have a good relationship with their teachers and the lineage and so on.
And teachers who we've checked out their qualifications and who we trust.
So we learn from those teachers, and then the self-reliance part is that we put it into
practice, we think about it in terms of, is what we're learning, does it logically hang
together? And if it doesn't, we ask questions. We practice it. And if we're getting results
from the practice that don't correspond with what the teachings are saying we should feel,
then we go back and we say, "I must not have understood something correctly. So how do
I need to readjust my understanding so I get the results that this meditation is supposed to bring?"
So that's the self-reliant part. And we work together with the Buddha and together with
a teacher to bring that about.
So that's Part 1. He has several questions. We'll continue.