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Two Flavors of Dharma | Otter.ai

Two Flavors of Dharma

John Pulleyn48min

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

00:00

Hello. This is November 15, 2025 and my first podcast talk in many months. Don't ask me why. But recently, I ran across an interview that now has prompted me to comment on it. This is from GQ magazine. I guess that's gentleman's quarterly. It came across my news feed, and I'm glad it did, because it's a it's an interview of Richard Gere, one of the most famous of the Tibetan Buddhist practitioners worldwide, an interview of him regarding a documentary that he's producing about the Dalai Lama. This is dated October 13 of this year, and attributed to the interview is Derek Lawrence, and so I will be reading from it and commenting on some things about Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, they're comparing and contrasting. So I'll just start reading from the article itself. This Derek Lawrence says the Golden Globe winning actor opens up on his journey with Buddhism, the documentary wisdom of happiness and the sides of the spiritual leader we've never seen who that's provocative. So the documentary is titled wisdom of happiness. It hasn't come out yet to the public, but I definitely will be wanting to see it. And he begins some movie stars use their clout and popularity as a way to gain access to exclusive events or restaurants. Then there's Richard Gere, who turned his successful acting career into a way to meet and then become a student of the Dalai Lama, now more than 40 years after they were first acquainted, His Holiness is stepping into gears arena as the star of his new film. It's it that he goes on the wisdom of happiness features the 14th Dalai Lama Nobel Prize Nobel Peace Prize winner. And he says that for the entire 90 minute running time only, the Dalai Lama speaks talking directly to the camera and giving background on himself. That's unusual, isn't it, for a documentary, just the subject of the documentary to do the whole thing, facing the camera, and then, then they quote the Dalai Lama, reality itself is now telling us our way of thinking must change. He says, I'm taking the opportunity to share my dream for an energetic, long, bright future. This century should be a century of compassion, century of peace, no more bloodshed. We should be we, rather than we and they. Our life very much depends on hope. That's the end of his introduction. The Dalai Lama's introduction, then it just says that ahead of the US theater release of the documentary, gear discusses his 50 plus years in Buddhism, the need for this film as the world falls off a cliff, and why His Holiness is not that different from your favorite uncle. So now first, the first question, before we get into the specifics of the film, I'm curious to discuss what led you here. Where did your journey to Buddhism begin, and what drew you to it all those years ago, and then just a little here in in Richard Gere's reply, he says he grew up in a Methodist house of deep, compassionate, deeply compassionate people. He said that everyone thought his his father was going to be a minister. He didn't become a minister, but he. Very involved with the church, and for most of his life, insurance was his profession, and he sold insurance like he was a minister. He was protecting people, and gear says a little more about how appreciative is what he was because father, his father had just died a month before this interview, at the age of 101

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

05:34

so then gear continues. So I grew up with that side, that is that spiritual side being stimulated. As a child, I would ask questions like, What am I? What is this universe? Why does everyone on some level, seem to be frustrated or miserable or angry? As I left college and became an actor in New York, he went to Syracuse University, I started taking it more seriously and really reading and thinking about it. Zen Buddhism was the first system that struck me, and I was lucky to find good teachers in New York to study with. So most of my 20s was having a daily meditation practice in the Zen tradition.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

06:36

Question, how did you first cross paths with the Dalai Lama? I had an impulse to meet the Dalai Lama who I had never really thought about that much. I had some romantic idea about who the Dalai Lama was. I ended up going to Dharamsala, India, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where the Dalai Lama was living in exile. It was quite a difficult trip to get there, and it was during a monsoon,

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

07:14

just muting my phone. Excuse me, hmm. And it was during a monsoon I spent several weeks in that community, and then I met his holiness, and he got me right over most of the silliness that everyone has when they meet him, and this outsized expectation that he's going to enlighten you and you'll leave there on a cloud. And so that didn't happen. And it says, Here he laughs when he says that, just a little personal note here, that was when I did. I did go to to a meeting with the Dalai Lama about, I don't know, 30 years ago, and a small group of Western Buddhist teachers from North America and Europe, and it was the most punishing trip I've ever had in many trips i

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

08:24

Gu and then guir continues talking about this first trip he had to Dharamsala. He asked his brother, that is the Dalai Lama asked his brother who I was staying with, who is this guy? And his brother said he's a pretty well known American actor, to say the least. So he started asking me about emotions and making these connections between me as a professional actor, manufacturing these sometimes very negative, afflictive emotions, and where do they come from? And the discussion went to the fact that maybe we're also manufacturing emotions in our real life, like they aren't innately there. They're just the way our mind works in that moment. And the profundity of that is still something I'm working on, of how we can work with the afflictive emotions. Go to the root of where they come from, transform the energy of them into something that's positive and joyous and potentially blissful, and ultimately turn that energy into wisdom.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

09:46

So a couple of things I'd like to comment on here, this idea of actors manufacturing them. Yes, actors manufacture them. You can bring them. Forth. Recently, I heard an interview of Tim Robbins, another Hollywood actor who's who's. We haven't heard much, seen much in last 10 or 20 years, but he was being interviewed on NPR. I was in the car at the time, so I didn't record much of it, but the interviewer asked him, Have the topic came up of working with with prisoners. So this is his most, probably, his most famous movie was the Shaw Sheng redemption. Shaw Sheng redemption, I think that was with Morgan Freeman and and the question to him was, Do you Do you work in prisons? Do you use your your acting experience as a prison dharma? And he said, Yes, what? What I've been doing now for some years is having not performing for the prisoners myself, but having the prisoners, those who volunteer, having them come up and perform themselves. And then he detailed that, he said, we asked him to consider four emotions, love, happiness, unhappiness, love and fear. Now I'm afraid. I just can't remember what the four were, basic emotions. That's the key thing, basic emotions that we've all had. And he talked about how it requires them to learn that these emotions, these basic emotions, positive and negative, so called emotions, how they come and go, how they can switch, how the actors can move from one to the other, that's what's that's what they have to do. That's the challenge. That's the training is on stage. There's a little stage there in the prison, they have to switch all of a sudden, from from, say, anger to sadness. And Tim Robbins went on to say that it's has proven to be quite a change for them. You see, said, you can really see it that they they learn that with anger, for example, this is the, he said, the predominant kind of mask that that the prisoners have to maintain in prisons that they don't, they don't have to be stuck there, that they can take off that mask, and they can Then change that way. It was pretty, pretty intriguing, really.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

13:27

What caught my eye here, in this response of the Dalai Lama, back to that, was him saying that we can work with the afflictive emotions, go to the root of where they come from, and transform the energy of them. And how, no doubt, no doubt, in my mind, that's that's an effective practice. Is an effective Tibetan Buddhist practice, but how, in in Zen, on the other hand, we're not really working with them except to learn not to dwell in them. That's the work. Not cling to them. I wouldn't know what gear means by working with them. But many of us have learned, especially in sesshin, it's it's a matter of neither clinging to them nor rejecting them, but experiencing them fully, and in doing that, in experiencing the anger, the sadness, the grief, the fear that enables them to move through us and not get stuck in us. So that's the working with emotions is best. Put in the negative, neither clinging to them nor denying them or rejecting them. And that's where the transformation comes in. I'm just saying this is a different, different way of a different kind of Buddhist practice.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

15:26

At the risk of having told this story too many times. Here we go again. When I was in college, just getting my practice off the ground, my Zen practice, I was still living in Michigan, and Gary Snyder came through town, and he agreed very generously to meet with our little Ann Arbor Zen group. And he said he would, he would have breakfast. We could join him for breakfast. And it was a very impressive. Morning. He was great inspiration. He had spent eight years in a Rinzai Zen monastery in Japan, and it showed he was a flinty, enormously disciplined, keen man. He's a great poet. He was one of the most famous American poets of the 20th and 21st century. Many of you know the name Gary Snyder, but anyway, during the question period, he invited us to ask questions after he finished his porridge, someone who was braver than I was, someone in our in our group said, What's the difference between Tibetan Buddhism and Zen Buddhism? And he was generous enough to actually give us his sense of the difference. And here it is. He says, imagine the mind as a great lake or pond. Let's make it Chapin pond in Tibetan Buddhism. You make your way to the bottom very slowly and thoroughly. And by that, he said, he meant you explore it. You explore the contours of the pond all around you. Explore the the vegetation. Of the pond, the even, maybe the turtles going back to chan and mill, the Turtles, whatever fish there are. There, everything about the pond. You take your time exploring all those things, becoming acquainted with them, and so it takes quite a while to get to the bottom of the pond. Once you get there, then you really know that pond. You know your mind. Then he said, whereas in Zen, and again, he's speaking from years of Zen training. You go dive straight down. You want to get to the bottom directly the steep path, and so you can reach the bottom. We call that Kensho in Japanese Zen. You can reach the bottom. And then the exploration, the refinement and the the really, the getting to know the mind is on the way back up. And I think that's that difference is reflected here in him talking about working with the emotions, transforming them, whereas in Zen, we just acknowledge them. We see them. We don't want to be blind to them, but neither do we want to dwell in them or try to try To somehow solve them.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

19:40

And then that, that idea of transforming the afflictive emotions into, what he says, is something positive and joyous and potentially blissful, that's, that's, that's not Zen. In Zen. And by neither clinging to them, our emotions or our thoughts, same thing, neither clinging to our emotions and thoughts nor denying them, rejecting them, we come to see through them. That's that's the transformation that comes from seeing through them, seeing that there's nothing permanent there that are our emotions, our desires and our anger and our fear and so forth, that they come and they go in Zen. It's seeing these, these states, these states of mind, emotions, seeing them as impermanent, evanescent, not replacing the negative with the positive. It's a It's not, we don't do visualization practices or prayers and Zen, but seeing through them. And again, I'm not saying that one is better than the other. What a foolish thing that would be. That's different strokes for different folks. Those who have more of an affinity with Tibetan style will flourish with that practice, maybe more than Zen and vice versa. I think as we go on, can appreciate how much, what an example, what a model of practice. Richard Gere is a Tibetan Buddhist practice. Next question to Tim Richard Gere, you've had the opportunity to learn from the Dalai Lama for decades, what kind of impact has that relationship had on you? And then gear says, None of this stuff just happens. We don't change like that. We might get zapped in some way, but that's not change. Change takes time. I'll repeat that. Change takes time. And it is the continuity of these things, that is the persisting, the continuity of these things, of thinking about them, practicing going down different pathways, of exploring who we are, what we potentially are, and how we enhance those difficult emotions As we're transforming or letting go of the negative stuff, again thinking about them. That's not what we and Zen do. He says, it takes us into bad places. I would say, you know, again, I think of sesshin. Sesshin is a deep dive into our nature, and our nature we come to see has some pretty bad qualities to it, and he says, we also start to see that in ourselves, and we come to see it in others. I

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

23:31

don't know what could be more humbling than sitting in silence for seven days or even four or two, because we can't run from ourselves, and we see features of our personality and our character that we can't avoid seeing, and it is humbling.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

24:10

But again, just to for fun, to draw the contrast with, with with Zen. We'll get into that in in this next paragraph, he goes on the relevance of this film is these things that we're talking about, the negative emotions, the self cherishing, the tribal stuff. There's nothing innately there that makes us a Democrat, a Republican, a human being, an animal. These are all mental states that come and go, and we can control that kind of thing. Let me just insert that we control it by not clinging, neither clinging nor denying these states, but we're absolutely in Zen practice. We're not trying to control anything. He says they're just labels on basic consciousness, basic awareness. By the way, this term he uses, self cherishing is a very rich, really potent word. Our self cherishing much better, I think, than our egoistic you features,

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

25:29

Geer goes on His Holiness is focusing on what is the basic thing of who we are, and to Him, we are kind, generous and compassionate, and our society says the opposite, that this is a dog eat dog world, which leads us down into a worm hole of where we are right now, where nobody trusts each other, every one hates each other and is angry and afraid all the time. But that is a hallucination on who we are, which is kindness, compassion and love, these kinds of Guo y things seem silly, but they're actually profound as to who we are as individuals and who we can become as a society and culture. Yes, who are we? I wouldn't venture to make the assertion that we human beings are primarily kindness, compassion and love. I know what he's means that those things are liberated. They're actualized when we are free of our conditioning. But this true nature of ours is beyond anything we can say, beyond kindness, compassion and love.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

27:18

We always have to be very careful in Zen when we claim to know who we are, even our founder, Bodhidharma, didn't make that claim. You know the story of when the Emperor, Chinese emperor, met him in the sixth century and asked him, Who are you? Who's standing before me? And his famous words that continue to reverberate today. It was just, I don't know. He didn't say, I'm compassionate in my true nature, I'm compassionate, I'm kind and I'm loving. He said, I don't know. No Limits, no definition.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

28:19

This is this phrase, who we are, we, we need to see through self identity. I would say that's one of the one of the scourges of contemporary life fueled by social media is this need to claim an identity

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

28:53

in Zen? We would say that when we've seen through the we also, which also means the I and the me and the my when we've seen through the we and the are amber, he says who we are, that's what leaves us with hope. Let me, let me. Let me restate that awakening reveals that there is no I or we or me or my there's no fixed entity there, here, and the Same with the the verb are or is or be. It's at every moment again, back to the Evanescence every moment we're being reborn. There's no self that we're stuck with, no we that we're stuck with, no no. No one either existing, nor non existing, and we, when we see this, we're left with the capacity to endlessly change. We see that there's, there's no need to claim an identity, much less assert it in our daily lives, we get free of that, and that does leave us with hope, because the hope comes from recognizing that there's no one we're stuck with here, that we are energy and flux.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

30:48

What we are. I put that in quotation marks, what we are at any moment is reflected by our actions, our words, our thoughts. We don't need to have a notion about who we are.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

31:12

I think of Zen master Rinzai saying students today can't get anywhere what ails you. Lack of faith in yourself is what ails you.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

31:34

Now. He must mean by that, not lack of faith in yourself as a personality, as this body, mind complex that we see more and more is not fixed. He's talking about lack of faith in your true self. That's what ails you, and even true self, it's a mistake to think of that as Oh, our true self is loving and kind and compassionate. Our true self is beyond anything, any descriptor. Hakuin says it in his chan in praise of zazen, he says, Our the true self that is no self, no self.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

32:43

The interview continues. The interviewer asking in the opening of the film, the Dalai Lama speaks about how this will not be an easy century, and he's definitely right about that. So far, he talks about all the fear, anger and hatred out there. Do you feel like this film and the Dalai Lama's message is arriving at a time where it's needed more than ever? Well, duh, but Geir didn't say that. I said that, but Geir says when the directors brought the film to me, they were still figuring out exactly what it was, and we were approaching the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday, and I thought that this could be the centerpiece of celebrating his holiness. You see the life and history of an extraordinary person. In the meantime, the world has fallen off a cliff everywhere I travel a lot, and it's not just in the United States. People are living in a dissonant, crazy reality. So I think the film is actually functioning as medicine, as a corrective of Okay, time out. Let's look at who we are right now. How did we get here? How can we stop this and imagine the positive universe which is closer to the truth of who we are and who we can become as a world? Again, in Zen practice, there's no imagining, there's no visualizing. We don't say that the universe is positive or negative. So what is it? Then? What is it? Who are we? What are we?

Unknown Speaker

34:39

Mmm.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

34:47

And then the next question, after watching the film, it's hard not to want to aspire to the vision that he sees, one of peace, happiness and compassion. It kind of puts the onus on. All of us to do what we individually can. And then gear says something that also speaks to his long experience in the Dharma. He says, You're completely responsible for your experience of the world. Do you have a grievance towards someone or some group? Look at yourself. What sense do you contribute to that problem.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

35:47

Someone said we're living in an age of grievance, and I think that's only possible if we don't pause, turn the light around back on ourselves and see how we are partly, at least partly responsible. Heir says you're completely responsible for your experience of the world.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

36:17

Gandhi said you must be the change you wish to see in the world. Back to gears reply. And the beginning point of changing the world is changing yourself and doing the work. His Holiness is 90 years old now, and he still gets up at 330 in the morning to do hours of practice before he meets with people and has his functioning world. And he's the Dalai Lama. Imagine. I heard this many years ago that his his daily schedule is to get up around that time, I forget what I heard, 333 o'clock. And at the time I heard that he would, he would start his day by sitting six hours, six hours of meditation or practice. Let's say practice. I don't know what the mix is in his practice. How much is meditation, how much is chanting and visualizing and so forth, but imagine that. So maybe it's not six hours anymore, but even hours. How many of us start our day with hours of practice? How many of us are heads of state, as he is, and gear continues for us. We find it hard to take five minutes where we can go and do some practice, and we think we're holy. His Holiness is optimistic but also committed. This is his life. This is authentically who he is. He's here to help everyone, even who I would call the bad guys, are saved in his universe. From his point of view, they're consumed by an illness whose root is self cherishing. There it is again, and it's led them to ignorance, to behave and think and do things in the world the way they behave right now. But you can remove the illness, and then you're left with that basic human being who is, that loving, kind child who wants to be held. I would I would add, and who wants to hold others, not just be held. You.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

39:03

The Dalai Lama. The question the Dalai Lama, is this larger than life figure, but as someone who knows him well as you do, what might surprise people about him as an actual, real human being? And Geir replies, when we re edited the film, we looked at all the raw footage, and there was this wonderful stuff where His Holiness was just coming into the room for the interview. He's 90 years old, so they were helping him sit down, and he had his glasses, and he didn't know where he was supposed to go. They had cut that out before. And I said, No, this is so human. We would all be like, Okay, what am I supposed to do? What do you want from me? Excuse me, he would all be like, Okay, what am I supposed to do? What do you want from me? So we left all that in. I have my own story. Story about Philip Kapleau, Roshi Kapleau During sesshin, I heard it secondhand, but from the sesshin head monitor at the time. This is roughly 1974 and it's the only time I ever heard of Roshi Kapleau oversleeping from a rest period during sesshin, but the head monitor figured it out and went in to wake him. And John told me that when he woke him, shook him gently, Roshi just said, What do you want me to do?

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

40:50

Heir continues even from the first time I met him. He's completely simple and direct and honest, and by the way, that's also my experience in those five days I spent with him and these others that I mentioned, I mean, he's the real deal. He's simple, he's direct, he's honest. He's a model, a model of Dharma practice gear says there's no pretense about him whatsoever. So it's like talking to a favorite uncle or your idealized version of your dad or a college professor who you thought was just the greatest guy in the world. I don't think his holiness would want to be romanticized. I certainly have seen him when he's frustrated and even flashed anger. Maybe someone was being disrespectful or they weren't there on time. There have been moments when he was frustrated with me because he didn't particularly like something I had done, but these are moments that come and go quickly and there's no residue left behind. And that's the difference between his holiness and us with him. It's just a moment it's burned and clean cleaned, and he's right back into I'm here for everyone completely. This is also the mark of someone very developed in Zen practice. Harada Roshi said that the anger of the enlightened person is like snow falling on wet pavement. It's not that there's no anger ever for even a second or two that it doesn't last because she or he doesn't cling to it, doesn't cling to the thoughts that sustain the anger

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

43:02

and then the question, having now studied and practiced Buddhism for so long, and knowing that you view this as an ongoing process, where do you feel like you are now with what you're searching for and hoping to spiritually achieve and gear no false modesty. Here he says, I know I've gotten better. I'm still like a snake crawling on the ground compared to these great Lamas and yogis. I never consider myself close to their league, but it has helped me in real profound ways in terms of how I can behave in the world and with other people, and much more comfortable now with everything than I was when I started practicing as a 22 year old. And part of that is just becoming an old dog, which I am, but it's also 55 years of daily practice. Same, same for me, 55 that's a lot of practice, and it's not like I come out of every meditation and think, Ah, I'm a blissful Buddha, and then he laughs. You do the practice, and sometimes you get to a credible place, sometimes you don't. It's a bit like the New York Stock Exchange. It goes up and then it goes down, and constantly up and down. But then you look at it over 55 years, and you go, Wow, I did really well. That's what I can tell people, from my own experience, that if you do the practice with continuity, the best you can. After 55 years, you're going to be in a different place. When I read this, I thought thought of him saying, Wow, I did really well. I thought of these, these words of attributed to. Anonymous but, but a preacher who was an ex slave had been a slave, he said, Lord, we ain't what we want to be. We ain't what we ought to be. We ain't what we gonna be, but thank God we ain't what we was.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

45:28

And then lastly, gear turns, turns question on to the interviewer, and he says, How did you see this film? And that the interviewer says he that he was sent a screener. I guess that's a preview. And and gear says this, this could be streamed, but we wanted it in theaters, so there was a communal experience. I've seen this screened with audiences in a movie theater all over Europe, because we've opened there already, and there's a qualitative difference in the room at the end of the movie, people are different. It's a small opening, and it probably also closes within an hour or two. But there is a moment when the lights come up and people are internally, internally transformed, and they also feel like, wow, these people around me feel like, I do. These really are my brothers and sisters on some profound level, and maybe there's a community of us that can radically change the world if we all have that feeling that we're in this together.

Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

46:44

So this is what he describes, this communal experience of seeing it with others in a theater. Made me think of how the advantage of going to sesshin in person, sitting with 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 other people in one room, doing the doing sesshin or sitting daily, sitting online, can't compare to that. Now, of course, if we can't join in sitting with others, whether in Rochester or anywhere else, then great. We've got a way to kind of simulate that online. But I would urge anyone who has the chance, who can, who can go to an in person session to do that? It's a whole different experience. Well, our time is well up, and I just want to say again how I really would great respect this, this great respect I have for Richard Gere based on this, this interview, I think his humility and his and his devotion his faith is speaks for itself, and he will be someone i i continue to look up to. Thanks for listening.

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