The teaching of the Buddha can help many people.
Not only the people who have a high intellectual capacity,
and the people who do not have enough education.
So the teaching of the Buddha helps everyone.
So there is Buddhism, there is the kind of Buddhism for the vast majority,
and then there is deep Buddhism for only a minority.
So these teachings may contradict each other as far as the form is concerned.
And that is why it is said that in Buddhism there are 84,000 Dharma doors,
many kinds of teaching and many kinds of practice.
And there are those who are afraid of punishment.
And if they know how to be afraid of retribution,
they will behave better,
because they are afraid of retribution.
And that is why to talk to them about hells, all kinds of hells, hot and cold and so on,
that may help them.
This is a kind of threat.
If you behave like that, you will suffer like this.
So in many temples we see drawings of hell, and that's a kind of warning:
"If you don't practice the Five Precepts, you will suffer like that."
You'll be boiled in hot oil or something like that.
If you lie then when you go to the hell, they take your tongue and they cut your tongue.
And that helps many people also.
But that does not help other people.
That is popular Buddhism.
And we know that the vast majority believe in rebirth,
in reincarnation,
but their belief is based on the wrong view of a self:
There is a self, there is a soul that is distinct from the body,
and when the body is gone,
the soul always survives and seeks to penetrate into another body and continue.
That is a kind of belief on rebirth and so on.
And that is the teaching of rebirth.
But it's not truly the deep teaching of the Buddha,
because it is based on the wrong view of the self.
Any teaching that goes against the insight of impermanence, no-self, and nirvana
cannot be described as the deepest teaching.
So whether you are thinking about cause and effect, rebirth, retribution,
if your teaching and your practice do not reflect the insight of impermanence, no-self, and nirvana,
that is not truly the teaching of the Buddha.
So there are many things that have come from the teaching of the Vedas, of the Upanishads.
We know that before the Buddha, there was already the belief in reincarnation and retribution.
It's not invented by the Buddha.
The teaching of retribution and reincarnation had already existed before the coming of the Buddha.
But this teaching was based on the existence of a self.
But the Buddha, although he teaches the continuation, life after life,
but his teaching is based
on the insight of no-self, impermanence, and finally nirvana, no-birth and no-death.
But that kind of belief, which is not purely Buddhist, can also help.
And there are those who believe that the Pure Land of Amita Buddha is not here, but in the
direction of the West, and you get there only after you die.
But there are those of us who have a better…a different view.
We know that the Pure Land, the true Pure Land, is in the here and the now, it does
not have to be in the West or in the East.
When your mind is pure, and then the land is pure also at the same time, which goes
more in the direction of Right View.
But the spirit of Buddhism is tolerance.
So there are those who cannot understand deep Buddhism.
You have to allow them to embrace a form of Buddhism that is more diluted, like the medicine
with some sugar in it, and it helps them.
So we are not criticizing them because their teaching and their belief do not go perfectly
with the ultimate truth.
And because we have compassion and because we have understanding, that is why compassion
is possible, and a real, a true Buddhist is always tolerant, not fanatical.
And if you are skillful you can lead him or her slowly so that they gradually abandon
their wrong view and get a better and better view all the time.
And that may be applied to all of us.
In the beginning we have an idea about the Three Jewels, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
After ten years of practice, we have a better view of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
And after fifty years we have a deeper understanding of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
So according to that, we should learn the lesson of tolerance.
We should not think that our view is the best.
Because we are making progress, and we are ready to abandon the present view in order
to get a better view.
And that is the practice of non-attachment to view.
So in Buddhism if you have that insight you'll be very tolerant and you'll accept other forms
of Buddhism.
You don't criticize.
Only you can help people to have a better and better view and better practice.
And that is why there should not be conflict and war between Buddhist schools of Buddhism.
And that has been a reality.
There are so many schools in Buddhism, but they never organize a holy war in order to
fight each other.
And we should be able to keep that tradition, tolerance.
And tolerance is we are not forced to be tolerant, but because you have Right View that is why
your heart is open and you can tolerate those who do not have the same kind of view as yours.
But you should try with loving speech and deep listening in order to help him or her
to abandon her view that may still have fanaticism or things like that in it.
And here we learn that the present moment is not something that can exist independently
from the past and from the future.
You cannot cut and separate the past, present, and future.
Because the three times, past, present, future, they inter-are.
In one of them, you see the other two.
And that is why if you touch the present moment deeply, you touch the past and you touch the
future.
And that is why the past is still available.
And the future is already available.
And that is the insight you get when you meditate on the nature of interbeing of time.