Finding Richness and Transcending Cultural Identity

However, as human beings, we must have a culture. If you’re not aware of the characteristics of the culture that you’re from—both the good parts and the bad ones—then it’s very hard to say who and what you are. It’s hard to say what your capabilities are for doing anything in your life—especially if you’re looking for another culture to adopt and to learn from—if you’re not aware of what your own culture is or have any appreciation for it. Without this understanding and appreciation of their own culture, people can get confused. They’re blonde, but they wear Tibetan dress and act like a Tibetan. They are neither Tibetan nor do they think they are Western. So where do they belong? As much as they try to become a Tibetan, they are not. The Tibetans know that. And in an intuitive sense, at a deep level, they themselves know this, but they’re trying to act like a Tibetan. They like Tibet and would like to be accepted as a Tibetan.

From the Tibetans’ side, they may appreciate that somebody is interested in their culture and trying to learn about it, but how does this really bring benefit to the person? It does not bring much benefit to the person if that person doesn’t know their own roots or their own culture. It’s important to try to know your own roots and your own culture. Find both sides—the good and the bad—and come to be at peace with your roots and culture. Just be happy with who you are. This is particularly important for Americans, who are often scrutinized by cultured countries, such as the French, English, and even Tibetans. It seems like Americans sometimes have a hard time fitting in with any group.

I’m trying to encourage you not to be embarrassed or ashamed of being American. Though as a relatively young country America lacks ancient culture, still, it’s a great culture with many good qualities. To cherish those qualities, learn more about them. America is multicultural, with people from all over the world coming here to start their lives. Other than the native Indians, everybody is recently settled here.

So, go back to your roots. If you’re from Italy, go back to your Italian roots. If you’re from England, go back to your English roots. If you’re from Germany, go back to your German roots. If you’re from Asia, go back to Asian roots. In this way, you have the culture from where you came in addition to the new culture that you found in America. I have Tibetan roots, so I’ll always be Tibetan and remain Tibetan in many ways. But in many other ways, I’ve become American, and I think the ways that I’ve become American have actually made me a better developed person, a more skilled person. The qualities that I’ve adopted, I’ve consciously chosen, and those qualities serve me greatly. So, in some sense I can relate with the good aspects of Tibetan culture and the Tibetan people’s qualities and appreciate and identify myself with them. But I have let go of a lot of the worst parts of the Tibetan culture and qualities of the Tibetan people. I’ve also adapted to the West, the Western mind and ways, and particularly, out of all the European cultures, to American ways.

I feel that we all can do this. It might take some work for you because many of you were born and have grown up in America, and this is all you have known—who you are as an American. You might not have much knowledge about where your ancestors came from or what their culture was like, so this would require getting to know and understand how you might identify with that culture. You could also learn about the transition that your ancestors made from their original culture into the American culture, and see the positive changes or growth that came from that. This might take some research, but I think it would be worthwhile for people to find out more about their roots and their culture, and to have something solid to identify with. After that, try to become a Dharma practitioner—not to lose your identity but to transcend it.

Transcending Our Cultural Habits

To lose something and to transcend it are very different. For example, generosity is a basic act. Transcendental generosity is without hindrances to generous actions, which enables one to grow even further. When you reach the point of transcendental generosity, you have not lost basic generosity. If the foundation for generosity were not there, how could there be transcendental generosity? It is like that with transcending cultural identity.

After you find out about your cultural roots, both ancient and new, and you understand their qualities—both the positive and negative sides of cultural identities—then you can transcend these identities with a sense of knowing that all of this is still relative. Any relative phenomena can only serve you in relative contexts, in the relative world, and within relative experience. Only in very limited ways can cultural identities truly liberate you or bring you peace and happiness. For instance, cultural identity can provide some order in your life, so for those who lack such order, this can be a support. The sense of wholesomeness that you feel from having some order in your life can be an incredible step from having no order at all and no culture to fall back on. Having a sense of order in one’s environment, in one’s mind, and in one’s emotions provides a stable ground.

But if that order is not transcendent in the end—if we don’t search for a degree of wholesomeness that goes beyond the basic wholesome feeling created in your mind, emotions, and in your world from your relative cultural roots—it can be a place to get stuck and not progress further. At some point, your life will just end, and you would just be an English, French, American, or Tibetan person.

What we are trying to do first on the path of the Dharma is to know the relative world that we live in, the culture that we were born into and grew up in, and to try to establish a good foundation. Then, we cultivate a path that transcends all of that, not losing this foundation but transcending it. Doing so establishes the basis of a Dharma path for becoming a practitioner in the culture of Dharma—the Hinayana culture, Mahayana culture, and the culture of the Vajrayana Dharma, which all build upon each another. 

Richness Comes from Growth in the Cultures of the Yanas

From the conventional world, we first go into the Hinayana, but we can’t get stuck there. We progress to the Mahayana, but we can also get stuck in the Mahayana, so we have to go into the Vajrayana. That is the view that we try to learn ultimately and to truly identify ourselves with. But we should never lose the culture of the Mahayana or the Hinayana, or, for that matter, the good parts of our own conventional culture. 

In this way, a feeling of richness grows within the view. Otherwise, there isn’t a foundation for you to feel the richness of each of the views. Our sense of progressive growth comes from having been a non-cultured person to becoming a cultured person, and then from being a cultured person to becoming a Dharma practitioner, learning the Hinayana teachings, and then the Mahayana teachings, and ultimately the Vajrayana teachings. This provides a sense of growth, as well as a feeling of richness to your life. It doesn’t have anything to do with outer circumstances—such as whether you have a good job or a bad job, or whether you have lots of money or very little, whether you own a home or have a rented apartment, or whether you have a nice car or no car at all.

Without direction to our lives, all of those outer things seem very important. Then we try to get those things to fulfill some kind of emptiness within ourselves. But when we find the direction to grow inwardly rich, outer things become less important. This is not to deny that those things are useful to have. But even if they don’t exist in your life, or if they easily came to you through your own good merit from the past, you’re not as crazy about them since your growth in life is toward feeling more inwardly rich instead. With this approach, we can appreciate how a simple life can be a much more dignified life than a more luxurious and complicated one. We can see how a focus on gaining those luxuries leads to complications that make a person unable to live or do things according to their own ways, and instead have to do things according to what other people tell them to do.

The feeling of power that we yearn for within ourselves only comes if we can express ourselves fully and in a dignified way. We often don’t have the freedom to fully express ourselves because our choices must be cut short; we must give in to the world and to people, which ultimately destroys self-esteem. In this way, rather than living in the manner of a bodhisattva, we live feeling codependent on others.

Please try to go beyond in the spiritual path—go beyond your world perceptions, your mental streams, and your emotions. If you know the pain of not going beyond, then you know the peace of what it means to go beyond. The absolute state, or the state that is gone beyond, is not dependent on causes and conditions. To go beyond is not to lose nor to deny anything. To go beyond is the point of the path. Whether you use this or not, the gift is in your hand. When you are given the chance to do so, please, take that gift. Do it on the cushion and in life, and you will become something—your path has already begun.