Namgyal Rinpoche – “Karma Yoga is Awakening in Action – Dome of Heaven: Bodhi Publishing, Kinmount.
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One who meditates on or perfects the way of action (karma) is a Karma Yogin. Mahatma Gandhi was possibly the greatest example of that discipline in this century. His involvement with the basic needs of man in terms of land, political freedom, bread and such issues make this man worthy of emulation.
There are numerous examples in the Buddhist texts of this same type of concern with material needs. For example, it is recorded that an elderly man came one time to one of the Buddha’s discourses given after Śākyamuni and his monks had received Dāna from some very important social figures of the time. You can imagine the scene: the teacher surrounded by all his disciples and having finished his meal was about to give teaching. Everyone was waiting expectantly for him to begin when an old man arrived unannounced. He was a working man, coming late because he had been attending cattle, obviously not that important in society.
But the Buddha held up his discourse and directed people to give this being food, take care of his needs. His disciples complained and wanted to know why they should bother with this one not very influential and rather elderly man. In reply the Buddha said that if his needs were adequately taken care of, the man would awaken upon hearing the teaching; if they were not, his attention would be constantly turning to the rumbling of his stomach, he would be distracted, not in a clear state and so unable to hear. Therefore they catered to the man, fed him well, and then the Buddha gave his discourse whereupon the man attained Stream Entry.
If you considered every one of your actions in the light of the ideal you would be following one of the paths to awakening. Different ways of liberation are taught according to the temperament of the being. It is sometimes said that for every lama there is another teaching, and for every being there is another path. Some beings are liberated purely and simply by meditation on sīla, and some by the development of insight. But all beings are liberated by the perfection of awareness. This is the direct way.
The way of the Karma Yogin, however, is to place stress on watching and taking care of action, to ascertain that all of one’s actions are in accordance with the path. I suggest that the lives of such beings as Gandhi and Einstein could easily be held as one of the ideas for the new communities to study.
Karma Yoga is a ‘liberative’ practice. The actions of the yogi are in accordance with the transcendental experience. They are side rivulets that flow into the stream and feed it as it travels to the ocean. They don’t remain stagnant puddles because they are like fresh water flowing into the being, of the same nature as the path. You could say that Karma Yoga is awakening in action.
?. Should love be understood as being in a state of flow with the movement towards unfoldment of all consciousness?
A. Yes, exactly.
? And Karma Yoga is performing no actions that would hinder that flow?
A. Yes. Mahatma Gandhi is an example of a being who comes to those in fear states, helping his fellow man to revolution. It can be a peaceful revolution. In fact, the only revolution of the individual that is possible is a peaceful one. If you looked at the everyday lives of people you would see that love would be the most revolutionary thing they could experience. And love is also the only thing capable of producing a profound change in the being. It brings not just the individual but the society into conformity with the law of awakening, with Buddha nature in action.
The path of Karma Yoga in particular has great applicability to the planet at this time in history. I don’t think that Bhakti Yoga (based on the supposed love for the guru, on adoration) is a sufficient message to involve the broad mass of beings in society. It is good to love the guru because he is in a state of love. He is a manifestation of love, and so by the practice of Bhakti Yoga there is an interpersonal flow of love that is very necessary to give life and hope to the being.
But this path can be distorted unless it is put to the test of daily life. It is not enough to have the guru up on the altar. You must have the guru moving, out of compassionate involvement, through the broad mass of beings. He must be the manifestation of compassion in action to all levels of consciousness, everywhere. He must be a Bodhisattva in factories and fields. Wherever beings are suffering he must be manifesting that love. If he is a compassionate being, and a guru is, the way he would manifest love, the skill-in-means, would be through actions.
You have all heard the saying that actions speak louder than words. I don’t believe that mankind in North America can be reached simply by empowerments. Too often they come under the heading of exotica. I am more concerned with the ‘ordinary’ man. First we must get the ‘ordinary’ man to the state of understanding that will allow him to receive empowerments. Skill-in-means in this case is not waving the sceptre at a Tibetan ceremony but bringing the diamond mind into daily life.
As I see the issue, we are in danger of building a sort of petit bourgeois following composed of somewhat jaded beings, elitists who gather around in exclusive ‘armchair Bodhisattva’ groupings. That’s one possibility. We could, however, bring the teaching of the diamond vehicle through the lives of every man and woman in North America. And what is the vehicle for that? We must be prepared to walk among all beings as did Mahatma Gandhi.
This issue is very clear to me. I wish I could give you an exact understanding that on one side lies an erroneous path of exclusivism, of everything that turns in on itself and breeds nastiness and splits. Wherever you find the feeling that ‘I am holier than thou’, that there are some people to be saved and others not worth bothering about, you find the followers of exotica. On the other side is the true work of the Bodhisattva, the true work of Guru Rinpoche, which is to appear to all beings wherever they are existing in Saṃsāra.
Don’t take all that I am saying and turn it into a party line, a political issue. What I am saying is contrary to that. It is more like the passing of a flame, an inspiration to people. Let people determine their own politics and parties. What we are concerned with is not the seizure of power from a government, but the giving of power to the people.
? When you go to people with an ideal (and I believe you, I think that is what must be done) the North American habit is to package, to categorize and put it into something that can be joined. How can that be avoided? People see groups like the Hare Krishna on the streets and they are wary of that. But at the same time, how do you go among them without manifesting some sort of –
A. Because you don’t go among them – you go among yourselves. You can only transcend this by transcending they and me. They are I and I am they. This is revolutionary. If you come this way there may not be a chance to package. You can only package something when there is a separation. Suppose you don’t allow a separation?
The ship we are on has barnacles attached to it that won’t let go. Divine love in action is like that, it doesn’t let go. You may not admire barnacles, but they do have the capacity to not let go. If you have realized your union with the beings with whom you move, you can’t let go either. Perhaps this matter is not so clear to a political wheeler and dealer like you, unreformed, unrepentant and un-resurrected.
The destiny of man, by God’s will, is God himself
? With reference to Gandhi – look what happened to the purity of his ideal after his assassination. Even in India, a country that isn’t such a great packager, the great ideal got caught up and wound around in politics and the lust for power, with all the very things we want to avoid.
A. Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t a full Śākyamuni. He declared from the very beginning that he came to obtain independence for the people of India, which is all very well and good. The point is that from the beginning his aims were political. He didn’t come for the liberation of all beings. There is a limit to his example. But he is, nevertheless, a manifestation, in part, of the precise application of Buddha-nature in action.
The demand on you is to be a total manifestation of Buddha-nature in action. I shall not be satisfied with anything less. Like the hound of heaven I will hound you on this. But kindly don’t steer the idea to the seizure of political power, the ‘temptation of Christ’ motif. Extend it to the non-violent revolution, which I prefer to call the peace revolution. It is not a negative; it is the positive of the universe.
We are at a point now of spiritual revolution, not reform. Various religions have been great historically, accomplishing various things, but they are now decadent. There is no other word for it. They are fruit on the Divine Tree which has spoiled, gone into decay. So the only thing that a gardener can do is pick off the spoiled fruit and cast it ruthlessly aside. He doesn’t have to destroy the tree because the fruit is overripe. The tree is the history and evolution of mankind, indeed of all nature. We aren’t attempting to cut it down.
There have been some very exotic fruits produced by this tree over periods of time. We have had Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, all sorts of things growing and ripening on the one tree. But there comes a time when even children passing by won’t want the fruit because it is overripe. You have to lop a little off here and prune a little there, so that we can have the fruit which has never blossomed before. It will be a rather green fruit at first, maybe not to everyone’s taste. However, there will come a time in the future when it will be extremely fashionable; everyone will want to eat of this mariongreen. And there will also come a time when it will be overripe and need to be discarded for further discoveries of mankind.
Every religion should, at the very beginning, declare itself redundant. Indeed, if it is wise, it should lay emphasis on man being always subject to his ideology and his spiritual views. It should stress the cleansing of view, the cleansing of history.
? Would you speculate on what forms the new teaching might take?
You might look at the beginnings of Christianity as an example familiar to most of you. There was obviously a great dynamic there, especially at the time of Pentecost. That is what I would call the ‘rocket thrust’ into the world, the blasting-off principle. From there it spread out with great enthusiasm, very rapidly. Undoubtedly it was an electric development, a time of exuberance and also of great confusion.
Perhaps one hundred years later beings eventually got around to wondering what had actually been said by Jesus and his followers. At that point they began to define the teaching, to write it down, hopefully with some promptings from the Holy Spirit (one aspect of which I take as the evolution of man, the unfolding). Eventually there came into existence a written tradition. That seems to be the next stage, there is always that attempt to move into a fixed view.
Later came the problem of how to interpret what was written. That’s when the organization called the Catholic Church stepped in. It got more and more remote, until the pinnacle was reached in the 14th/15th century, the pinnacle of the Middle Ages. Then mankind wanted to get back to the original spirit, the freedom present in the work of the apostles. So there began a slow whittling away at the authority of the church.
You see this in Luther’s work and especially through the Anabaptists, the ‘Communists of Christianity’, who preceded Luther. Eventually came the Jesuits who were counter-revolution, counter-reformists. The real revolutionists were the Anabaptists who, in a sense, laid the seeds for the Universalists. They were persecuted by the Lutherans, but from the time of their appearance you begin to see more and more often private interpretations of the Bible. This led to an abounding of factions which brought the question as to who had the right interpretation. When everyone has the capability of interpreting the words of Jesus, Christianity is free.
This is a quick summary of the history of Christian salvation. Now first of all, by salvation we aren’t talking about going into a city, however beautiful, and seeing 144,000 people all singing, dancing, playing harps or whatever they do, sprouting wings and wearing diadems and generally being the next Lords of Creation. We are not talking about going into a static condition. You have perhaps heard the hymn, ‘This World Is Not My Home.’ That to me is like having a beautiful fantasy projected into the distant future which usually prevents anyone from building this world very well.
What I am talking about is an unfolding, here and now, of all the seeds that God has planted within the garden of the human being…
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