The first thing we have to understand, when talking about bringing adversity to the spiritual path, is that if we engage in spiritual practice, we will be undergoing adversity.

Adversity can take many forms; it can be external, such as physical or environmental, or it can be internal and arise within our mind. As a great abbot of the Sakya tradition, Khenpo Kedrup, once said, “For you all, there are so many adversities and so few conducive circumstances.” What we have to understand, though, is that in spite of the fact that adversity is so conspicuously prevalent in our lives, none of the adversities we encounter are inherently existent. They arise as circumstances that we experience as adverse because of the attitude we take toward them in our minds. And therefore the adversities themselves are secondary to our nature.

It is important, however, to make a distinction in this regard between the situations of persons who bear different degrees of responsibility that affect others. If someone bears the responsibility for something like a dharma center, in which the decisions they make will affect the spiritual practice of many others, that is a whole different situation. But with regard to persons concerned only with their own development—with their own personal practice—fundamentally, what they need to do is maintain their faith and connection. They should especially remain free from sectarianism and ensure that their minds not be overpowered by kleshas.

One of the most important things for us as Buddhists is to understand the meaning of our taking refuge in the Three Jewels, and especially to understand the actual attributes of the Three Jewels in whom we take refuge. We can learn about these things from the many books, teachings given by eminent lamas, and so on. But the point is that if we understand the attributes or characteristics of the Three Jewels, then the whole process of relating to the teachings becomes very easy, I think.

In the context of taking refuge, the Buddha is defined as “supreme among those who walk upon two feet.” That means that the Buddha is supreme among all humans and devas, because he is the authentic teacher.

In the context of the vow of refuge, we define dharma as “supreme among all that is free of attachment.” This means that dharma itself is always free from attachment and all other kleshas.

What is dharma? Dharma consists of two things: tradition and realization. The dharma of tradition exists as written words found in books. Books and the words within them are inanimate. They are not sentient beings and therefore they do not, and cannot possibly, possess kleshas. So therefore the dharma of tradition is immaculate in the sense of being free from attachment.

Realization refers to all of the resultant states and levels of realization gained by practitioners of the shravakayana, pratyekabuddhayana, and mahayana through their practice of the Buddha’s respective teachings. So the realization dharma consists of the states of shravaka arhat, pratyekabuddha arhat, bodhisattva, and finally a buddha. In that state of realization and in the realization itself, the kleshas are eradicated, not increased, and one comes to possess the wisdom that knows the nature of things and the wisdom that knows the attributes of things. So the dharma of realization increases one’s merit and in no way increases or supports the kleshas. It is, therefore, accurate and true to say that dharma is supreme among all that is free of attachment and other kleshas.

In the same context, the sangha is defined as “supreme among assemblies.” In this world, there are a vast number of societies, groups, assemblies, and organizations. Some of these are held together by a common commitment among the members to try to do good; and some of them are held together by a shared commitment among the members to do bad. The Buddhist sangha is defined by the shared commitment among its members to do their best to try to emulate the Buddha. And so we regard the sangha as a source of refuge because it is the next best thing to the Buddha. But the members of the sangha are explicitly not buddhas. Therefore they have kleshas. If the members of the sangha did not have kleshas, they would not need to practice dharma and would not be members of the sangha. A sick person will take medicine; someone who is completely free from illness is not going to take medicine because they do not need it.

The problem we experience very much nowadays is that we are unable to tell the difference between a spiritual tradition and those who practice it. When we encounter upheaval, adversity, disputation, or controversy in a religious or spiritual tradition, we immediately denigrate the tradition itself. We say, “Well, this tradition is simply no good.” But this comes from our misapprehension of the behavior of some of the members of the tradition as something inherent in the tradition itself. This is a problematic misapprehension for us because it causes us to lose respect for genuine spiritual traditions. And, for example, if we are Buddhist practitioners and we lose respect for our own tradition, it harms us tremendously because we leave the path. Without pursuing the path, we find ourselves unable to tame our minds and our kleshas.

Even when there are problems, we need to recognize that dharma itself is pure, but the humans who practice it are human beings who should be expected to be imperfect. The nirmanakayas who intentionally take birth among us in order to teach us and guide us to liberation—however they may appear—are essentially free from affliction. But practitioners, all of us, have all five kleshas functioning fully. The amount of kleshas that we have and the degree we fall prey to them is based on our attitudes, our intentions, and our previous karma. Whenever we act out our kleshas, this is not coming from dharma, this is coming from us as people.

In order to survive upheaval or adversity, we need to learn to distinguish between the dharma and the sangha, and to recognize that after all we are practicing dharma because we all have kleshas. No matter how much we may object to the errors or misdeeds of another, we have to remember that all beings without exception have countless times been our parents because we have all been born countless times throughout beginningless time. If we can take that attitude of empathetic bodhichitta and abstain from the demonization of others, then even when adversity arises, we will not lose our accumulation of merit and our accumulation of wisdom in an outburst of anger. We will know how to tame our minds even in the midst of difficulties, controversy, and adversity. We will learn how to recognize our own kleshas and tame them. We will continue to study and practice. And especially, we will not fall into the error of rejection of dharma and we will not harm others.

It is said that there is nothing good about wrongdoing but in fact, there is one good thing about wrongdoing—it can be purified. If a person who committed wrongdoing admits to it wholeheartedly, then regardless of what the wrongdoing consisted of, it will be purified.

Dharma, because it is inanimate, is said to be flawless and immaculate. But in a sense we could say that dharma has one flaw. There is one problem with the dharma. Precisely because it is inanimate, dharma will not tell you when you are distorting it. We have a saying about this, “Quotations of the Buddha’s words are like animal skins, they can be stretched quite a bit.” And this is why the Buddha warned us by saying, “Test those words attributed to me down to a single stanza with the skepticism that you would treat something being sold to you as the purest gold. Do not accept it until you have proven its purity.” This means that we each need to employ our own insight and our own common sense in assessing any teaching—written or oral—to see it is really true to the dharma. We have to ask if it is really helpful to beings or not. And if we can use our intelligence in that way, then we will be certain that our practice will be unmistaken and of benefit to ourselves and others.

Those who teach dharma may possess both virtues and flaws. In all cases, we need to be able to tell the difference, so that we can emulate our teacher’s virtues and avoid our teacher’s flaws. Only in that way will we be able actually grow spiritually.

His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa and His Holiness the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa, and in fact any buddha or bodhisattva, has only one aim, and that is to help beings. As it is said, “the only thing pleasing to buddhas is the happiness of beings.” Any buddha, any bodhisattva, any emanation of any buddha or bodhisattva, will have that aim alone. All they want to do is free beings from suffering and bring beings to a state of happiness. If we have that understanding and if based on that understanding we, as practitioners and in working with our teachers, can act according to dharma, things will go very well. So it is my hope that all of us will do this. I pray that all of us do this and I ask that all of you do this.

Still, no matter how hard we try, there will be problems. Something is always going to come up. Sometimes things come up within our minds. Sometimes things come up externally. When problems arise, we need to deal with them in such a way that we can actually bring them to the path, which means to use the unavoidable situation of the problem to go further on the path rather than abandon it or backtrack.

We are Buddhists and especially we are practitioners of the mahayana. That means that principally what we are trying to do is train our minds in both aspiration and implementation bodhichitta. We are trying to practice the six paramitas (or six perfections). But the six perfections can only be practiced when there are problems of one kind or another. We can use the third perfection—patience—as an example. The quality of patience is the ability not to become angry and not to act out of anger when something or someone is making us angry. When we are subject to no stimulus that evokes anger, when nobody is doing anything that bothers us, when nothing is going wrong; there is simply no way for us to practice patience. We cannot practice patience unless there is a situation that tests our patience. The situation may be internal—it may be something that has arisen within our mind that is tormenting us. It may be a disagreement within our family, within a mundane group or association, within a sangha. But whatever it is, by being patient with it we have a fantastic opportunity to increase our own virtue and obviously to facilitate others’ increase of it.

While we can never expect others not to get angry at us, while we can never expect there to be an absence of stimuli evoking anger, we have to remember that a fight takes two. No cymbal can make sound unless it is collided with another cymbal. No drum will make a sound unless a drumstick strikes it. So there will always be disagreements among us and we will always experience disappointments with the behavior of others. But if we can commit ourselves to open-minded patience, we will not lose our way along the path. And we will be able to cooperate with others and be of real use to them. Even in order to succeed in this world in the most mundane way, we depend upon doing as much good as we can, and avoiding as much wrongdoing as we can.

To use myself as an example, at the command of His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa, I served the monastery of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra for 31 years. During that time, when Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche had founded the Karme Ling Retreat Center and was busy teaching and directing the retreat, for a period of almost 20 years I had the principal responsibility of teaching and supervising the ongoing functions of the centers. Therefore, I remain attached to the outcome in these centers and I pray that in your centers you work together in harmony; and that the centers grow, prosper, and flourish. Never think that I want these centers to go down, be ruined, or suffer in any way. Work together and remember that even though there will always be problems, there will always be miscommunications, ups and downs, disagreements of all kinds, that your centers were founded by the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa and they will therefore, without doubt, be the primary venue for the activity in this country of the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa. Furthermore, the teachings of the Karmapas will last for as long as the teachings of the thousand buddhas of this kalpa continue to exist. So for all these reasons, the survival of these centers is of far greater significance to me than how you view or treat me. I always pray for all of you and for the centers, and I will always keep you all in my mind.

NAMO GURU!
I bow to the supreme guru Vajrasattva.
I will provide here a little instruction for disciples
On the purification of karma.

Imagine your guru, Vajrasattva, above your head
In the form of the second Buddha, Padmakara.
In nature he is Padmakara indivisible from your root guru.
He is white and red with one smiling face.
His two hands hold a vajra and a kapala of amrita.
In sambhogakaya attire, he is embraced by white Tsogyal.
Seated in vajra and lotus posture, they blaze with light rays.
They are sitting on a lion throne, lotus, sun, and moon.
They clearly embody all buddhas of the three times.
Offer a billion mandalas, your body, and your possessions.
Confess all wrongdoing of body, speech, and mind of the three times.
In their heart on a moon is HUM surrounded by the hundred syllables.
Streaming amrita purifies wrongs and obscurations.

Recite the six syllables, the hundred syllables,
And the all-sufficient VAJRA GURU.
Pray to Guru Rinpoche and the three roots.

Your mind, awareness of this moment,
Is beyond characterization as this or that.
Without being distracted from the continuity
Of mere presence, cultivate it without fixation.
Whatever happens—birth, death, joy, or misery—
Remain undistracted yet relaxed.

Always entrust your heart to your root guru through devotion.
Turn your mind to holy dharma.
Give up as many mundane actions as you can.
If you do all this, you will accomplish much.

It would be excellent for you now to engage in purification and accumulation
according to tradition, with inviolate samaya toward both
your guru and your monastery, entrusting your whole life to the cultivation
of virtue in a good retreat in isolation or in a hermitage. Please
keep the tradition of doing so in mind. Written by Barway Dorje. May
it bring virtue!

Please listen with the motivation of bodhichitta, which is the thought that all beings throughout space must achieve the state of perfect and complete buddhahood and that it is in order to bring that about that you will listen to the profound and holy dharma. Such a motivation of bodhichitta is considered to be extremely important. This is because whatever we engage in—whether we are receiving empowerment, transmission, or instruction, and indeed whether we are engaged in any action—its moral quality and its result are primarily determined by our motivation. It is the motivation with which you engage in an action that makes it virtuous or unvirtuous rather than the action itself. Therefore, even apparently virtuous actions that are engaged in with a motivation of mental affliction or negativity cannot become the pure virtue and cannot lead to the result of a purely virtuous action.  An apparently virtuous action that is engaged in with an impure motivation is like finding a delicious food that has been mixed with poison. It may be delicious while you eat it but because it is poisoned, unless you are a peacock and thereby immune to poisoning, it will kill you. In the same way, any virtuous action that we might perform with a klesha (or mental affliction) as the motivation, will not really be a virtuous action. Any one of the ten virtuous actions that is motivated by kleshas becomes in effect the corresponding one of the ten unvirtuous actions. Therefore, especially when approaching the teachings, do not be selfish in your motivation; do not be limited. Bring to mind the fact that all beings throughout space have all been your parents and all of them want to be happy just as intensely as you do. All of them want not to suffer just as much as you want not to suffer. Therefore resolve that you are engaging in this virtuous action, in this case listening to the teachings, so that you can bring about the full awakening of buddhahood for all those beings who seek that final and permanent happiness that can only be achieved through that; that you will bring all beings to a state that not only transcends the three realms of samsara (or cyclic existence) but also the state of one-sided nirvana of an arhat; that you will bring all beings to buddhahood and for that purpose you will engage in whatever action of virtue you are setting about. In such an attitude you are seeing the suffering of beings as it is, recognizing its severity and intensity, and you are seeing beings’ wish for happiness as it is.

Unfortunately, although we all want to be happy, because we are generally ignorant of what constitutes true causes of happiness —virtuous actions and so forth—with the aim of making ourselves happy, we do exactly what will cause us to suffer and therefore, in spite of the fact that none of us really wants to suffer, we suffer a great deal. Recognizing that all beings want to be happy as much as you do and that they are largely unsuccessful in achieving the happiness that they seek, and especially considering that all beings have been your parents time and time again, understand that to abandon them in this situation would be unconscionably ruthless and selfish. Therefore, if you can engage in even a slight act of virtue motivated by a true love, compassion, and bodhichitta, the power and merit of that virtue will become immeasurable. As is said, through even one instance of generation of bodhichitta, the most severely benighted beings in samsara are transformed into bodhisattvas worthy of the homage of devas and humans, just as base metal is immediately transformed by the philosopher’s stone into immaculate gold.

As is said, there is no way to please buddhas other than by pleasing sentient beings. One of the things this refers to is the fact that all buddhas and bodhisattvas of the past, present, and future appear among us with a single intention: Their single intention is to free all beings from all suffering and from all causes of suffering. At the very inception of their path, these great beings are motivated by the aspiration bodhichitta, which is the aspiration to achieve perfect awakening for the benefit of others. On that path they implement this aspiration through implementation bodhichitta—through the practice of the six paramitas and so forth. And finally in reliance upon those two types of relative bodhichitta [editor’s note: the aspiration and implementation bodhichitta], they discover absolute bodhichitta. That is to say, at the culmination of their path they recognize that immaculate, flawless, perfect nature or true being, which is called by so many different terms by so many different traditions; that nature, which has always been perfect and is unchanging but up to the moment of its recognition remains obscured by the clouds of our ignorance. When that nature is revealed at the culmination of the path, that is buddhahood.

Therefore we can see that the achievement of buddhahood begins with the motivation of aspiration bodhichitta, is brought about through the cultivation of implementation bodhichitta, and comes about through the discovery or achievement of absolute bodhichitta. To put it bluntly, no one has ever achieved buddhahood through selfishness. If it were possible to achieve buddhahood through a selfish motivation, then we would certainly have achieved it because we are all masters at selfishness. And yet it appears that we have not done so. About this it is said that all buddhas have achieved buddhahood through altruism. All sentient beings remain sentient beings because of selfishness. Of what does our selfishness consist? It consists of “I want”: I want pleasure, I want wealth, I want security, [and so forth]. In more detail, as Nagarjuna advised the king in his Friendly Letter, it consists of our obsessive concern with the eight things of the world: whether I am happy or unhappy, whether I experience pleasure or pain, whether what I have to hear is pleasant or unpleasant, and whether people praise me or revile me.

The characteristic attribute of true awakening (or buddhahood) is spontaneous engagement in the benefit of others. It is therefore characterized by altruism. It should be clear, therefore, that an awakening that is altruistic in nature could not and cannot possibly be achieved by a path motivated by selfishness. In practicing according to our lineage, and especially if you are attempting to follow the practice lineage of the Karma Kagyu, which is as famous as the sun and moon, we seek to achieve what are called “the nine attributes of the wise.” [Those are:] to be noble; to be benevolent; to be wise; to engage in the training of hearing; to engage in the training of contemplation; to engage in the training of meditation; and to benefit others through the three activities of explanation, composition, and debate. We must look at the actual motivation and the actual behavior of the great masters we wish to emulate.

The Karma Kagyu began with the first Gyalwang Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa. Dusum Khyenpa’s awakening that he has continued to exhibit in every lifetime since then was, to say the least, not caused by selfishness. The great qualities of the masters whose tradition we claim to follow and uphold were not brought about through their being selfish, through their putting themselves first. For example, in the Guru Yoga for the Four Sessions composed by the Eighth Gyalwang Karmapa, Mikyo Dorje, the prayer recited at the beginning, called The Four Monlams, begins, “My mothers—all beings throughout space—supplicate the guru, the precious buddha; My mothers—all beings throughout space—supplicate the guru, the all-pervasive dharmakaya; My mothers—all beings throughout space— supplicate the guru, the sambhogakaya of great bliss; My mothers—all beings throughout space—supplicate the guru, the compassionate nirmanakaya.” Notice that the attitude we take even in praying to the guru is one of praying on behalf of all beings throughout space, all whom have been our mothers and this attitude is considered so important that we customarily repeat that prayer 100,000 times during the practice of guru yoga.

But is that really what we are thinking inside? We may be saying, “My mothers—all beings throughout space,” and thinking “I, who am as important as all space.”  If that’s what we are thinking inside, then we are really only praying for our own benefit and the fact that we may be talking about all beings in the prayer is not going to make any difference. A dharma practitioner must develop the signs of practice. It is said, “The signs of having heard the dharma are to be tranquil and subdued; the signs of having meditated are to have few kleshas (or mental afflictions).” If that doesn’t happen, if our dharma practice consists of thinking that “I am as important as all space,” then it’s not working—we are not emulating this lineage, the golden garland of great unity; we are not fulfilling our guru’s intentions; we are not defending the purity of the dharma, or whatever else we may think. If you want to emulate this lineage, if you are concerned with this lineage, then study the behavior of its great masters. Recognize how unselfish they have been, how compassionate they have been. For example, consider the life of the first Gyalwang Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa. While engaging in the path of meditation for many years, he meditated in a hut. The hut was so small that it was called the meditation cube, because it was a cube one cubit or span in width in both directions and one cubit or span in height. That was his living space for many, many years. If the Gyalwang Karmapa became the Gyalwang Karmapa through such intense practice done for the benefit of others, and not through selfishness or some kind of self-aggrandizement, then we should recognize that self-aggrandizement and selfishness are not going to do us any good. If selfishness were the correct motivation for the spiritual path, then the Gyalwang Karmapa would not be the Gyalwang Karmapa. We would be. We would all be Gyalwang Karmapas, but it appears that we are not.

In all practice of dharma it is our mind and our state of mind that are of the greatest importance. For example, the Buddha taught 84,000 aggregates of dharma and the purpose of all of these teachings was to serve as remedies for our mental afflictions (our kleshas, our poisons). He taught the Vinaya in order to serve as a remedy for the affliction of attachment; the Sutras to serve as a remedy for the affliction of anger; the Abhidharma to serve as a remedy for the affliction of bewilderment; and he taught the Secret Mantra to serve as a remedy for all three afflictions. All of the Buddha’s teachings were given in order to provide us with the means needed to overcome the three afflictions: attachment, aversion, and apathy (or bewilderment) that are within us. That means that if these teachings—whichever teachings we practice—serve as remedies to these afflictions, they are working. And if they do not serve as remedies to these afflictions, they are not working. The Buddha did not teach in order to give us the means to increase our fixation on ourselves. He did not teach in order to teach us how to become more selfish, more attached, or angrier. If he had, then he would have been wrong and the Buddhadharma would be a bad thing. But he didn’t. The correct way to approach any of the Buddha’s teachings is to start with the recognition that we are afflicted, we have kleshas, and with that understanding to see ourselves as persons who are ill; to see the Buddha as a physician; and to see the dharma he taught as medicine that we take in order to cure the illness of the three poisons. If this medicine does not cure that illness, it is not working; in some way we are not absorbing it, it is not countering the illness. For example, if you have a headache and you take an analgesic that is designed to get rid of the headache and it doesn’t get rid of the headache, it didn’t work. In the same way, if dharma does not achieve its purpose—the purpose intended for it by the Buddha—then it’s not working.

Lord Gampopa composed the template for dharma that we call The Supplication of the Four Dharmas of Gampopa: “Grant your blessing that my mind go to the dharma; Grant your blessing the dharma become a path; Grant your blessing that the path remove delusion; Grant your blessing that delusion arise as wisdom.” If our practice of dharma and our involvement with dharma does not heal our kleshas, does not change or improve our minds, then our minds are not going to the dharma. If our minds do not go to the dharma, dharma cannot possibly become a path, and there is therefore no path to remove delusion. If delusion is not removed, we will never experience that original wisdom which is our true nature. The only way to achieve awakening (or buddhahood) is through the transformation of the five poisons into the five wisdoms. It is only through the purification of those poisons that those wisdoms can manifest and be recognized. Without that there is no way to get out of samsara.

Especially authentic practitioners of dharma must focus their attention on their own faults and not on those of others. We can ascertain from our own experience thus far that attending to the faults of others is fruitless and pointless. After all we have all spent our whole lives up to this point obsessing about the faults of others and it has gotten us nothing. The basic definition of the dharma that the Buddha handed down is pratimoksha (or individual liberation). This concept and teaching of individual liberation is so important and so central to the Buddha’s message that he said himself that after his parinirvana the teachings on individual liberation would be his representative. The idea of individual liberation is that before you can help others, before you can free others from their kleshas, you must first liberate and free yourself from your kleshas. Otherwise your perception of others will remain so skewed by your own kleshas that you won’t even be able to see them as they are. Therefore in following the Buddha’s teachings we have to apply the practice of dharma to our own kleshas. We have to pay attention to our own faults and recognize them as what they are. If we fail to do so, we will project our kleshas onto others. Neglecting our own kleshas, we will become more and more obsessed with the apparent faults of others. The more attention we place on what we perceive as other’s faults, the more we feed our own kleshas, we are literally adding fuel to the fire of our own mental afflictions. About this, Jamgon Lodro Thaye said in his Calling the Guru from Afar, “We hide the mountain of our own faults deep within us and yet openly and widely proclaim the sesame seed’s worth of another’s faults everywhere.” And this is how we are. Especially because we are afflicted and deluded by our kleshas, we experience our projections as real. But they are not real. Our projections are mere appearances with which we invest reality that they do not actually have. In teaching about this, the Buddha taught that there are two aspects to reality: One is the causality of mere appearances, which he called relative truth, and the other is the nonexistence of those mere appearances, which he called absolute truth. We need to understand this and understand, therefore, that our deluded perception and our deluded projections are mere appearances dependent upon the existence of the mental afflictions, the unsubdued or unconquered mental afflictions within our own minds. If we fail to take this to heart, if we become someone like the person described by Jamgon Lodro Thaye, who actually hides the huge mountain of their own faults inside and widely proclaims the sesame seed’s worth of faults in others, than we have missed the whole point; then we are someone like those of whom Guru Rinpoche was speaking when he said, “If they don’t recognize this, even great pandits learned in the five sciences will remain as deluded as anyone else.” Dharma must tame our mind. We must tame our own mind through dharma. Otherwise we will not be imrpoving of our situation. The kleshas that have afflicted us throughout beginningless samsara, unless eradicated, will continue to afflict us endlessly and will remain as they were.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa, and many other great masters of the four traditions of Tibetan Buddhism have come to this country repeatedly. You have had the opportunity to meet these great masters, to listen to their teachings, and to do so in a state of freedom, convenience, and even luxury that is almost unique to this country. Since you have all of this, all of these resources at your beck and call, it is necessary that you make some genuine use of it; it is necessary that your contact with these holy beings actually do you some real good. And the real good that such contact is supposed to do is to help us actually tame our minds and overcome our kleshas. I have said what I have said up to now this evening in order to remind you of this spectacularly extraordinary opportunity that you all enjoy and to urge you to make the best possible use of it.

In our practice, we depend upon our teachers or our masters. And we naturally choose teachers based upon their qualities. We choose teachers based upon their learning: who has the best ability to compose, to teach, and to debate. But if we rely upon the teacher for their learning and our reliance on such a teacher is genuine, then we ourselves must come to exhibit the fruit of having heard the Dharma.

Traditionally, it is said that the sign of having really heard the Dharma is to be tranquil and subdued or at peace. No matter how great our teachers may be, no matter how eloquent, how skillful, and how learned they may be, if we remain wild and untamed, then never mind practice, it means that we have not actually even heard the Dharma yet. We are like yak horns that are impenetrable. No matter how much oil you rub into them, it does not penetrate the substance of the horn. We may rely upon masters who are renowned as great yogis and teachers of meditation, but if we rely upon such masters, we must exhibit the signs of the practice of meditation.

In Buddhist tradition, the sign of having meditated is very simple—it is to have no kleshas. As we go on year after year, practicing meditation, relying upon or attending great gurus or great masters of meditation, if our kleshas increase as time goes on, then it is simply not working. So we need to be genuine on the inside. We need to actually be going through a process of training. Only through being genuine on the inside, can we become good examples of the sangha, good examples of what Buddadharma does to people. 

The Buddha said that his sangha would always be inspiring to all and a basis for the accumulation of merit by the affluent. When he said that his sangha would be inspiring to all, it means that anyone who is an authentic or genuine follower of the Buddha, should automatically—through the force of their internal training—be a source of inspiration to everyone who encounters them regardless of that person’s subjective predisposition. And when he said that we should be genuine causes of merit or basis of [accumulation of] merit for the affluent, it means that we should be people who are so genuine and so honest, that any form of patronage or donation to us is used well and is, therefore, a cause of genuine merit.

During the Buddha’s lifetime, he described the sangha as those who are never disturbing to the sight and always delightful to the eyes. To be authentic Buddhists, authentic members of the sangha, we need to be internally and externally, as a natural result of that, never discordant, never disturbing in the sight of others. We need to be a true delight to the eyes of other people. Speaking realistically, if we are old practitioners who are attempting to really do this, then we need to have at least a little bit of these qualities evident within us.

There is a traditional saying, “When amidst society, watch your mouth. And when alone, watch your mind.” We are either with others or we are by ourselves. When with others, for reasons that I need not state, we need to watch our mouths. But when alone, we need to watch our minds. And, after all, isn’t watching our mind the essence of meditation practice itself?

By watching your mind, what I mean is that we have to be honest with ourselves about what is really going on in our mind, about our state of mind. Is my mind pure or impure? Is my mind what I think it is or not? Like anything else, until you scrutinize your mind, you will be unaware of its attributes. Anything that is unexamined remains largely unknown to us. And although we are very, very good, clever, and strategic at scrutinizing everything other than our minds, we tend to avoid actually examining our own minds and the contents of our minds.

In his Crying to the Guru from Afar Jamgon Lodro Thaye wrote, “I conceal my own faults, even if they are as large as a mountain and I proclaim the faults of others, even if they are as tiny as sesame seeds.” It seems that we employ our innate capacity for clear and vivid insight in the obsessive concern with the faults of others. And we allow our innate capacity for utter stupidity to take over in how we deal with our own faults. We are completely ignorant of our own faults and completely obsessed with the faults of others.

The whole point of being a practitioner is to turn this habit upside down and inside out, to change it completely. We need to do the utter opposite of this. We need to turn all of our lucidity into an examination of our own state and let go of attempting to control or examine the state of others. Realistically speaking, we cannot control others and we cannot and should not expect others to be perfect or free of kleshas.

No matter what tradition we may practice, no matter whom our teachers may be, that starting point of being genuine Buddhists, genuine practitioners, is just this—whether or not we are willing to subject ourselves and our own faults to the scrutiny that we normally reserve for the faults of others. If we are willing to do this, there is no doubt, whatsoever, that our training will be successful.