[From a public talk given in Tampa, Florida, on January 10, 2020 by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamytso.]
Q. Do you have any advice for us in how we can deal with the turmoil and the destruction of the world that’s going on right now?
Trans. You’re talking specifically about the environmental destruction or everything?
Q. Everything.
Trans. How we deal with it? Or how we fix it?
Q. Both.
A. I’m waiting for someone to tell me. [Laughter]
We have to have some perspective on the nature of our world and on its current state. In general, you know, the world that we live in, what we experience, is samsara. We live in samsara, which means that we have kleshas. We have mental afflictions. And if I may say so, nowadays, it’s becoming fairly evident that our mental afflictions are on the increase. To respond to the understanding that the world is samsara, that our world, what we experience, is samsara, by hating the world, hating what’s happening in the world, and by forgetting that our experience of it is really through the filter of our own kleshas is an inappropriate response even in the worst of times. Because the most powerful thing that we can do for the world is for each of us – anyone who is willing to do so – is to take responsibility for our own minds and our own states of mind. We may think that as good Buddhists, we should reject the world, hate the world and say the world is samsara. Samsara is out there. This is a samsaric world. It’s impure, it’s nasty. I don’t like it. We may think that that’s what Buddhism teaches, but it doesn’t.
If we say that this world is samsara and samsara is evil and bad, we are cultivating the klesha of anger. That is not the determination to be free which the Buddha taught. It’s just another way of giving in to kleshas.
Samsara is not the particular world or a particular period in which we live. It is our not knowing how to act, our not knowing how to treat others, not knowing how to treat ourselves, not knowing how to treat the physical environment of this world. And that’s not on the world. That’s on us.
So what is the correct or appropriate or helpful response to this that nowadays our kleshas our increasing and things are looking pretty grim. Not to hate the world or demonize the world or anyone in it, but to make the aspiration: May we all learn what to do and what not to do. May we all learn how to treat ourselves, others, and the environment. And we are only protected from samsara if we adopt that attitude without partiality; without trying to blame anything or anyone in the external world.
The story is very, very commonly found all over the world. In the Buddhist tradition, it’s in the Bodhicharyavatara by Shantideva that you cannot cover the entire world with leather to prevent your feet from being pierced by thorns. But you can cover the soles of your feet with leather. And nowadays I should probably say rubber.
And this is why there’s really nothing better than bodhichitta. Just as if you have shoes on wherever you go, they are protecting your feet without your having to interfere with the external world. If you have bodhichitta, by which I mean that you truly are impartial, that your benevolence in wanting everyone to be happy and not to suffer is truly universal, that nobody is written off, nobody is excluded, then that is like wearing good shoes.
