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TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE
something of what you are trying to communicate; and then, you find out it was not true, that is disappointing.
L.M.: Westerners often take an approach with Eastern teachers that puts the teacher on a pedestal. Teachers are treated like God, really, they aren't supposed to feel any emotions.
T.W.: A fantasy--the teacher should never be sick.
L.M.: How does the Bon meditation practice of the Six Lokas help us deal with negative emotions? One of the things that makes life so complicated here in the West is that our emotions are afflicted; we often seem at cross purposes with ourselves.
T.W.: Basically, what the meditation of the Six Lokas does is—that you just try to burn the seeds of different afflicted emotions--try to understand these negative emotions as afflictions that cause suffering-before they actually take form. So there might be people who are suffering, who are living in a bad neighborhood—suffering due to the outcome, or result, of anger in their life. They have so much anger; they make bad decisions; they are poor. They get into a bad neighborhood where things are broken and there is a lot of anger around. So before you are being born there, you can in some sense burn the seed of anger within yourself. Then you will live in peaceful places, rather than in rough places.
We believe there are six different dimensions or realms of different beings. For example, you are born here as a human being, you have causes and conditions to be born here. For fifty, sixty years you are living here. What you are doing is, you are burning your human karma. The only problem is that, while you are burning your karma, exhausting your karma in order to be free from that karma, you also are reaccumulating karma.
L.M.: Making new karma.
T.W.: Making new ones, preparing for the next life. If you are not accumulating new ones, then you will be free when you are dead.
L.M.: You will be free.
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