The Purpose of Religion
by Lama Thubten Yeshe
Source:
Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Lama Yeshe gave this teaching in
Edited by Nicholas Ribush.
Many people misunderstand Buddhism. Even
some professors of Buddhist studies look at just the words and interpret what
the Buddha taught very literally. They don't understand his methods, which are
the real essence of his teachings. In my opinion, the most important aspect of
any religion is its methods: how to put that religion into your own experience.
The better you understand that, the more effective your religion becomes. Your
practice becomes so natural, so realistic; you easily come to understand your
own nature, your own mind, and you don't get surprised by whatever you find in
it. Then, when you understand the nature of your own mind, you'll be able to
control it naturally; you won't have to push so hard; understanding naturally
brings control.
Many people will imagine that control of the
mind is some kind of tight, restrictive bondage. Actually, control is a natural
state. But you're not going to say that, are you? You're going to say that the
mind is uncontrolled by nature, that it is natural for the mind to be
uncontrolled. But it's not. When you realize the nature of your uncontrolled
mind, control comes as naturally as your present uncontrolled state arises.
Moreover, the only way to gain control over your mind is to understand its
nature. You can never force your mind, your internal world, to change. Nor can
you purify your mind, by punishing yourself physically, by beating your body.
That's totally impossible. Impurity, sin, negativity or whatever else you want
to call it is psychological, a mental phenomenon, so you can't stop it
physically. Purification requires a skillful combination of method and wisdom.
To purify your mind, you don't have to
believe in something special up there—God, or Buddha. Don't worry about
that. When you truly realize the up and down nature of your everyday life, the
characteristic nature of your own mental attitude, you'll automatically want to
implement a solution.
These days, many people are disillusioned
with religion; they seem to think it doesn't work. Religion works. It offers
fantastic solutions to all your problems. The problem is that people don't
understand the characteristic nature of religion, so they don't have the will
to implement its methods.
Consider the materialistic life. It's a
state of complete agitation and conflict. You can never fix things to be the
way you want. You can't just wake up in the morning and decide exactly how you
want your day to unfold. Forget about weeks, months, or years; you can't even
predetermine one day. If I were to ask you right now if can you get up in the
morning and set exactly how your day was going to go, how you were going to
feel each moment, what would you say? There's no way you can do that, is there?
No matter how much you make yourself
materially comfortable, no matter how you arrange your house—you have
this, you have that; you put one thing here, you put another there—you
can never manipulate your mind in the same way. You can never determine the way
you're going to feel all day. How can you fix your mind like that? How can you
say, "Today I'm going to be like this"? I can tell you with absolute
certainty, as long as your mind is uncontrolled, agitated and dualistic,
there's no way; it's impossible. When I say this, I'm not putting you down; I'm
just talking about the way the mind works.
What all this goes to show is that no matter
how much you tell yourself, "Oh, this makes me happy, today I'm going to
be happy all day long," it's impossible to predetermine your life like
that. Automatically, your feelings keep changing, changing, changing. This
demonstrates clearly that the materialistic life doesn't work. However, I don't
mean that you should renounce the worldly life and become ascetics. That's not
what I'm saying. My point is that if you understand spiritual principles
correctly and act accordingly, you will find much greater satisfaction and
meaning in your life than you will by relying on the sense world alone. The
sense world alone cannot satisfy the human mind.
Thus, the only purpose for the existence of
what we call religion is for us to understand the nature of our own psyche, our
own mind, our own feelings. Whatever name we give to our spiritual path, the
most important thing is that we get to know our own experiences, our own
feelings. Therefore, the lamas' experience of Buddhism is that instead of
emphasizing belief, it places prime importance on personal experimentation,
putting Dharma methods into action and assessing the effect they have on our
minds: do these methods help? Have our minds changed or are they just as
uncontrolled as they ever were? This is Buddhism, and this method of checking
the mind is called meditation.
It's an individual thing; you can't
generalize. It all comes down to personal understanding, personal experience.
If your path is not providing solutions to your problems, answers to your
questions, satisfaction to your mind, you must check up. Perhaps there's
something wrong with your point of view, your understanding. You can't
necessarily conclude that there's something wrong with your religion just
because you tried it and it didn't work. Different individuals have their own
ideas, views, and understanding of religion, and can make mistakes.
Therefore, make sure that
the way you understand your religion's ideas and methods is correct. If you
make the right effort on the basis of right understanding, you will experience
deep inner satisfaction. Thus, you'll prove to yourself that satisfaction does
not depend on anything external. True satisfaction comes from the mind.