The SFZC Audio Archive | San Francisco Zen Center

Dzögchen Teachings

Given by His Holiness The Dalai Lama at San Jose on October 8th, 1989

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SF-02719A

AI Suggested Keywords:

Don't Know Mind, Peace, Cultivation, Greed, Ego, Enemies, Passions, Balance, Describe, Anger

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Commercially produced cassette

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Recording is a portion of a longer event.

Transcript:

This thing that we call mind, from beginningless time, we have no point of origin, no point in time in which it began. It has spread its consciousness continually, moment after moment, up to the present time and on into the future. Even in the short term of this life, at the moment we were born, at the moment we emerged from our mother's womb, our mind is continually thinking of. The way we experience mind and presence is a continual flow of thoughts and emotions and ideas. Some of these are tinged with desire and attachment, some of these with pride, some of these with aggression and anger, some of these with jealousy, envy, hatred. But there is this continual turmoil of thoughts and emotions, concepts churning out in our

[01:08]

minds, moment after moment, day and night. And in a way, how we experience our mind in the waking state is very similar to how we experience dreams. And just as some dreams are fruitful, have some meaning, and others are not, again, it's because we think that our waking consciousness are useful or they are fruit, and others are a waste of time. But nevertheless, there is this relentless activity in the mind, and in certain things it's tiring at all. Your mind is exhausted. Many of us feel this sense of exhaustion, this relentless churning of turmoil in our minds. People even go crazy when they think of this, because they get so tired by so much turmoil in their mind that something cracks them, they lose their sanity.

[02:09]

And in any case, perhaps the greatest fundamental cause of our suffering, this ongoing pain and suffering and frustration we feel day and night, is due to this relentless activity of the mind. And so we begin to address that fundamental question of how is pain and suffering? Why do we suffer? And that brings us right back to the practice of dharma, as what it is for, to dispel the suffering that we feel because of the uncontrolled and relentless activity of our minds at present, our teenage present. Again, there is this fundamental connection between the dharma and our own mind. As long as there is a mind to speak of, there is dharma. There is this same two-pointed benefit for this question. There is nothing that can be said about the fact that children are being neutered into

[03:13]

the world beyond their mind. They're not trying to feel anything. As they are seeing things under their meditative level, they're not. They're not like the kids in the next room, they're not having the time to see the things in the room. And if we try to account for all of the struggles that we have faced in our life, we have to

[04:26]

and turmoil and disharmony that we experience in the world around us, whether it be on a national or international level, war, one country invading another, one country exploiting another, having a nationalistic pride or aggression, whether it be on the domestic level of strife or the moral disharmony in our own families, where husbands and wives, parents and children continually falling out and continually having disagreements with each other, continually failing to get along. Regardless of the level upon which we are exacting this kind of strife and disharmony in the world, it all comes back to the fact that our own minds within us are in turmoil. It is because of that inner turmoil that there are all these manifestations and ramifications on the external level, whether on the interpersonal level or domestic level,

[05:30]

national level or international level. Questioner 2 speaking Hindi

[06:47]