by Lama Thubten Yeshe
Lama Thubten Yeshe gave this teaching during a five-day meditation course he conducted at Dromana, near Melbourne, Australia, in March, 1975. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. This teaching appears in the November/December 1997 issue of Mandala.
At some point in your life you are going to have to make the following strong
determination: "I'm tired of being a servant to my ego. My ego rules my mind,
and even though it gives me nothing but trouble, continuously, continuously, with
no time for rest, I spend my entire life as its servant. My mind is constantly
in turmoil only because of my ego. I'm not going to be a slave to my ego any longer!"
For example, we would all like to have beautiful bodies; our ego wants our
body to be beautiful. But at the same time, our attachment—sneaky, grasping
attachment—makes us eat more than our body requires. Thus our body becomes
fat and heavy. So all the worry and bother that we experience as a result comes
from these two departments, ego and attachment. This is just a simple example,
common in many of our lives.
Check it out for yourself. Perhaps your body
needs very little food, but your grasping attachment to over-eating makes you
fat, heavy and uncomfortable. At the same time, you also worry about losing your
beauty; these two things are in conflict. So which do you choose, the ego's wish
for a beautiful body or the attachment to eating food? Look into your mind; find
the one you cling to most. One mind is there, grasping at beauty; the other is
there too, knowing consciously that if you eat too much you'll get fat and destroy
whatever beauty you have. Still, you can't stop eating; these two minds agitate
you, give you a psychological beating. But despite their constantly mashing you,
you keep saying "Yes, yes, yes...." It's funny.
So funny. Completely.
The human mind is so funny. So silly, if you really check up. The idea that thin
is beautiful, fat is ugly comes from the mind. Of course, I agree, if you are
too fat it can be physically unhealthy; that's OK. But the idea, the picture created
by attachment and desire of what is beautiful, what is ugly, is so silly, isn't
it? It's not the reality of the fat that bothers you but the idea that it's unattractive.
Why? Because you are clinging to reputation, worried about what other people think
of you. I tell you, the mother sentient beings on this earth are so silly. People
in one country think something is pretty; people in another country think the
same thing is ugly. Here, this is bad; there, it is good. To some, this is beautiful;
to others something else is beautiful. It's all made up; they're just different
ideas.
Otherwise, where is the external, permanent, absolute beauty? It is
only the way our ego mind interprets objects that makes them beautiful or ugly.
You check up; it's so simple. When you do the body sweeping meditation, for example,
where your mind examines every part of your body, try to find the beauty. Check
up: what's beautiful, which part are you clinging to as beautiful? Check up: your
interpretation of what's beautiful and what's ugly is so superficial; it's just
your ego's projection, but it makes you so confused. You're confused even now.
You don't know any longer what is good or what is bad. Really!
When you go
to the bathroom, you don't stand there admiring what you've just deposited into
the toilet bowl, do you? Same thing; when you gaze into the mirror at your beautiful
body or face, when you get stuck on the aspects of yourself that your ego's projection
has deemed attractive, let your mind travel into your body from the inside of
your nose all the way down, trying to determine exactly where your beauty is.
You'll find that basically, every part of your body is identical to what you've
just excreted. This is scientific reality, not a matter of belief. The object
of beauty that you cling to is attractive simply because of an extremely superficial
judgment made by your fickle mind.
Look at the confused young women of today.
They run from one man to another, to another, to another, another man, another
man, another man...they experience so much trouble, more trouble, so much trouble.
But at the same time, they're expecting, "Maybe this one will be good for
me, maybe that one will be good for me...." These are such superficial experiences,
all mental projections, projections painted by their egos. "Maybe this, maybe
this," with expectation, " Maybe this, maybe this, maybe this...."
No satisfaction at all; always trouble.
Perhaps you're thinking, "Oh,
Lama's putting women down too much." Men are the same thing! Such deluded
men. They change their wives, change, change, change, superficially discriminating,
"Good, good, good...." Then, after a while "good" turns to
"bad," so they change again. Then good, then bad, then change; then
good, then bad, then change. Their judgment, good and bad, beautiful and ugly,
is so completely superficial; it has nothing whatsoever to do with reality, either
inner or outer. There's no understanding, no communication, and such fear and
insecurity, all because of ego and attachment.
All this comes from the mind.
We're totally preoccupied with our ego's superficial projections, while we turn
our backs on reality. No wonder we're completely confused and unable to communicate
properly with any living being. All this comes from our big ego.
Therefore,
it is highly worthwhile to switch your mental attitude from the attachment that
is always saying, "I, I, I" to purely dedicating your life to the welfare
of others. Recognize that you have been building attachment for years and years
but still have nothing to show for it; it is so important to be aware of this.
When you dedicate your life to others you are acknowledging that true human beauty
is not on the outside, that beauty is not the view projected by your ego onto
another person's skin, but rather that what is truly beautiful is others' inner
potential. When you see that, you respect other sentient beings, instead of respecting
only yourself and spending all your time developing your two inner departments
of ego and attachment.
Wherever you go—East, West, sky, earth, beneath
the earth—there are other sentient beings. If, through having recognized
the false conceptions of ego and attachment, you generate the pure motivation
of dedicating your life to others, your life will become truly worthwhile, you
will give real meaning to being alive.