ACI 10 «Руководство к образу жизни бодхисаттвы, часть I», занятие 4

Class Four: How to Purify Bad Deeds
March 11 1997



Okay, I think Buddhism is like allot of other things in that, often times the
preparation is more important that the real thing. And I think that especially in
terms of meditation, you've seen that. I think if you want to meditate properly, I
mean, I know allot of older middle aged Dharma students who say their
meditation doesn't go very well. Normally I ask them if they are doing it or not,
[laughs]. You know, that's one possible problem. It's like i had a friend who's
mother was in the hospital and the bed wouldn't work and they called the
electricians, but then he was there and he just plugged it in for them. You know,
[laughs], but Buddhism is like that, so if it's not the lack of doing it in the first
place, it's, it's often times the preparation, like you don't set up things right, it's
like trying to go and dance some very difficult dance without trying to warm up
first and you're likely to pull something or it won't come off very well in the first
place. And preparation is everything. In Buddhism, they say that if all the causes
and conditions are come together which is called {duchepa, guy dang gyen
duchepa}, then the thing must happen and you can't stop the thing and there's
this huge debate in Buddhist logic, if all the causes and conditions come together,
can you stop, is there any force in the universe that can stop something from
growing and we debated it in the winter debates. It's a very, very heavy debate.
Like if a seed is planted and watered and fertilized and the sun shines on it and
everything's ready, could any force in the universe stop that sprout from coming
up. And it's a really heavy debate, it's Master Dharmakirti, first chapter. And
what we're doing is the same, bodhichitta is the same, you need all these special
preparation all these special causes ,to get bodhichitta is very, very difficult,
maybe there are only a few people alive in the world at any given moment who
have Bodhichitta, so it's very difficult to get an you have to work very, very hard
and you have to understand what the warm-up is and you know, what is the
causes and conditions that you need, because if you could get all the causes and
conditions together, then it would just come and you couldn't even prevent it if
you wanted to prevent it., so if you set up all the causes just right, it'll happen,
but you have to know all the cause. So we've been thorough some of them
already, we talked about learning how to prostrate, it occurred to me that I
forgot to mention a few things, we talked about how to do it, you know putting
your thumbs inside, you know, going up here one time, two three four and then
going down slow, which represents, you don't want to go to the lower births.
You know, there's these discussions in the Lam Rim that say , "If you did a
prostration wrong would it cause you to go to the lower births? And Geshe
Drolungpa, in his, Ten Rim Chenpo, says, "I think so." So, [laughs], it's kind of
depressing, so you've got to go down slow , put your hands down flat and do
the prostration and the idea is to get up fast, you get up fast, and the idea is that
you don't want to ...that you'd like to go up after you die and not go down. So
those are some things, to remember. Come up fast like that. So there is a
custom in some scriptures where you could genuflect, you know, on your right
knee, you know, you could, you could go like this and I think that for some
Westerners that's a little more natural, but you can check it out, you could see,
like, and I think it's important to do it, to practice prostration in your own home,
when you're alone and no one is around and it's sweeter because it's a statement
that I believe in the thing I'm prostrating too. So try it, try doing it at home, try
doing it when you're alone. See what kind is more comfortable for you. I have
these monk friends that like to flatten themselves out and I kind of like a half
prostration, [laughs]. And then I know some people who prefer to get down on
your right knee. And you won't be able to do it and it won't seem very
interesting to you and it won't seem like very much fun and it'll seem like an
obligation if you do not picture some holy being in front of you, you know. You
have to have the capacity to imagine a holy being. And if you can't them sooner
or later you'll stop prostrating, you know it'll be on of those Buddhist things that
you say, "Oh, that's for other people, I'm not into that ritual stuff. You know,
and that means that you just don't understand what is going on, you don't
understand why you're doing it, you don't' you're not visualizing the being in
front of you right. If you keep visualizing properly, then one day, you'll be there
and you'll be ready, because you already know how to get down on the ground
and it'll happen some day, but don't think that it's not important, it is important.
If you don't do all the warm up stuff right, you won't get bodhichitta and master
Shantideva says it's important. And the second thing we talked about last time
was taking refuge and that's mainly just committing yourself to this path. Partly
because there's nothing else. I mean there's two reasons to commit yourself to
this path you know, the negative one is that there ain't nothing else, you know,
you could try other things, try 'em. Try them, you know, try other things and
see if anything works, we're talking about something that addresses your
problem of having to get old, to get dead, to get sick and to have everything nice
in your life dissolve, you know, I'm talking about that particular problem. If you
find any other resource to go to for that particular problem, you know, let us
know, you know, but taking refuge, means, "I'm aware of the problem. You
know, you don't take refuge to be serene, you don't take refuge to have a good
marriage, you don't take refuge to work better at work, that's not the function,
you take refuge because you have to die, you take refuge because every good
thing in your life is gonna dissolve. You take refuge because your body is gonna
get sick and get old and it will happen , it's just a matter of what kind of sickness,
like you can read these insurance forms, you know, like thirty percent chance of
breast cancer, twenty five percent heart attack, You know, you can see your
odds check out your parents and see what they died from, or your grand
parents, you know, you can check it out. But it's just a question of what it's not a
question of whether and it doesn't matter how strong you look and it doesn't
matter how healthy you look and it just doesn't matter. I was translating for the
Tibetan doctor like twenty years ago at Nancy Carin's house and it was like there
were fifty people in the room and he said, "Anyone who's seriously ill should
come tomorrow and I'll do some personal appointments and the next day there
were like fifty people there, it was really weird. It means everybody has
something and it'll just kill you. It's just a question of what. Alright, it's not a
question of whether and it'll come and that's the reason for taking refuge. refuge
means in your mind, you're putting some kind of hopes in this path. You know,
you say, when I'm hungry I go to the diner, you know, Cooper Square, you
know, when I'm, when somebody robs my room of something, I call the police.
If a fire breaks out in my room I call the fire station. But when I'm alive and I'm
dying, I think about the Three Jewels, you know, like that, I think about refuge.
And that's, that's the function, that's the whole point. Refuge has to be like that.
It means some kind of commitment, not because the three Jewels need your
commitment, but because you need them. And they offer some hope, now
whether the hope is for real or not, we have to check it out, by trying it, and we
don't know yet, maybe it's not true but frankly there's nothing else, so you
might as well give it a shot, you know, it could be true and there's no body else
saying, "Hey look, I'll fix your death for you." Okay, you know, so check it out,
try, that's refuge, refuge is deciding like that. Third one we talked about last time
is offering. And if you've tried it and I tried it in a very wimpy way this week,
and I wasn't very serious about it, I did some of... I did more than I usually do
which is not very much and it was really, first of all it was really fun. Second of
all it felt, I don't know about you, I don't know how many people tried, should I
ask, no, no, nah, how many people tried? Some, oh, nice. DO it some more, I
mean I think you feel it in your heart how good it feels. It feels very, very good,
it feels very very right to make some offerings, it gets you out of a selfish mode,
you know, selfish mode is what can I buy for myself in this store ? You know,
offering mode is like what is there in this store that my Angel would like, or
something like that. And you're looking around and you're looking around and
you're seeing what I would buy for them or for that being. You know and that's
a whole state of mind and I think if you try it it kind of puts your mind in some
kind of a sacred mode or some kind of a holy mode. It's also again a statement
that you believe in enlightened beings. You don't go to the store to buy
perfectly good stuff and waste it on some table in your room called an altar if
you don't believe that there's an enlightened being that's getting it. And if you
aren't into offering, if offerings seem stupid to you or offerings doesn't seem like
necessary. Or you can't really see any great benefit to going out and buying
some really beautiful flowers or something really good to eat and leaving it on
your altar and just letting it go to waste, if you think like that, what it really
means is that you don't really believe in enlightened beings, or you don't
understand what an enlightened being is. And then there is no way that you can
get bodhichitta, cause bodhichitta, totally impossible, because bodhichitta is the
wish to is the wish to be an enlightened being to help other beings. So when you
don't make offerings and you, and you just say, "I think it's important to study, I
think it's pretty important to meditate, but that other stuff, that devotional stuff,
I'm not really into that. It means you don't really believe in those beings. And it
means you don't really understand what they are, you don't really appreciate
what they are and you don't meditate on it, and then you're not acting on it.
Cause if you really appreciated them then you would be filling up your room
with flowers and inviting them to come and experience them. They don't need
your flowers, they can experience every flower in the universe before you buy
it, but it's for you and it's a statement that they are there. It's a statement that
you're waiting for them. It's like putting out cookies for Santa Clause. Nobody
puts out cookies for Santa Clause unless they believe in Santa Clause, so put it
out and see what happens. You know, sometimes they disappear, those are the
three warms we did so for. Those were supposed to be warm-ups, those were
not even collecting good deeds supposedly, Those were, we didn't get to
collecting the conducive conditions yet, those were just supposed to be warm-
ups for something else, what was that? Name of the second chapter in fact,
which is purifying yourself of bad deeds, purifying your, your mindstream of
bad deeds and that's what we are going to talk about tonight. We're gonna
actually go to the guts of the second chapter of the [b: bodhisattva charyavatara]
and we're gonna talk about purification. You have to do the other three just to
get here.       You know, if you don't do the other three, you don't get to
purification, okay, so those three that we talked about last week, prostrating,
taking refuge and making offerings, you have to do those first. And, and I don't
mean like some obligation that you get out of the way so you can get down to
the real guts of meditation, it's not that, they are absolutely necessary
preliminaries, they are like warming up before you jog or something like that,
and if you try to jog without it, it just, you won't, something will go wrong, it
won't work, you know and you'll be one of those, there's nothing more sad than
one of those middle aged Dharma students, you know, they're nice people and
they're sincere people and they kind of tried and nothing happened and they're
kind of, they're kind of, depressed or something, you know. They're like, I tried
and nothing really happened, but they didn't try in the right way. And they
didn't try sincerely because if you do try something will happen and if nothing's
happening, than you've left something out, if nothing's happening, then you're
probably not. You know check it out, you've left out something, you're not
doing something. People think that spiritual things are not like cars. You know,
like if you get in a car and you turn the key and nothing happens and you look
inside and the battery's gone, people say, you're a fool, you know, the battery's
gone, what do you expect, but in spiritual things, people leave out two or three
important things like a battery or like the carburetor and then they get
frustrated when nothing happens. It's the same thing. You know, in spiritual
things getting to Nirvana and enlightenment is like a car engine, turning on a car
engine, and if there are any major pieces missing, it won't work, it just won't
work, and you'll be one of those pitiful frustrated people, you know, who say, I
tried it, you know, I've been trying it for four years, I've been reciting that thing
for two hours a day and nothing happened you know, and if fact, I'm just getting
bored of it. It means that something's left out, don't think that spiritual things
aren't like a car. They are and we're gonna talk about purification today. And
we're gonna talk about the practice, it's called the Four Forces, like they're called
{tob shi}, Say, {tob shi}, [repeat]. If you think about the practice of getting
enlightened, of creating your own Buddha Paradise, which is what we are here
for, you basically have to stop doing any bad karma, new bad karma, which
would make you see the world in a dirty way, then you have to take care of all
of your old bad karma and then you have to collect some fantastic new good
karma. Okay, basically those are the steps that you have to talk about .
Purification is the practice of primarily, initially, of wiping out your old bad
karma and then secondarily, collecting new good karma. But and this is
interesting, because in the lower schools of Buddhism, in the two lower schools
of Buddhism, they say that it's impossible to wipe out old bad karma, they say
that you cannot do it. Once you lie, once you hurt somebody else, once you steal
something, once you kill a creature, that karma is planted in your mind,
imprinted in your mind and you cannot get it out unless you experience it's full
karmic result. Meaning, like a birth in the hells of something like that. They say
it's impossible, they say that there is no such thing as cleaning out bad karma. In
the Mahayana schools, we say there is a way. And then people say, "Oh those
Lamas in Tibet, they made up something new, you know, we don't believe it.
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna put the name of a book, it's a sutra, it's called, it's a
sutra and I think it's important that you know where the four forces came from.
they were taught by, by the way, who teaches sutra? It's a fully enlightened
beings, okay. Sutra means, a book written by or spoken by a fully enlightened
being. So I'm first gonna go over, I'm fist gonna give you the name of the sutra.
[silence] Say, {chu shi}, [repeat], I'm sorry, questions?

student: [unclear]

Alright, alright, we'll try, I'll try. Okay, {chu shi}, [repeat], {dempay}, [repeat],
{ndo}, [repeat]. {Chu shi}, [repeat], {tenpay}, [repeat], {ndo}, [repeat]. {Chu},
means "dharma". Dharma can mean thing, "Dharma can mean teaching, in this
case, "dharma" means practice, a certain spiritual practice called "chu". {Chu shi},
{shi} means four, number four, {tenpay} means, which teaches and {ndo} means
sutra. So this is a book called the Sutra which teaches the Four Practices and this
was taught by the Buddha and it is in the Kangyur, it is in the Tibetan Canon.
You can read it, it was translated form Sanskrit and in that sutra which Gyaltsab
Je quotes in his commentary and you can read i it your reading. In that Sutra he
states the four powers, the four forces, he gives them, there. In fact, he's
speaking to this dude called Maitreya, alright and he goes through the four
forces, he's teaching the four forces and then you can see it in your reading in the
first few pages. And that's the four forces, {tob shi] is spelled like this , [silence}.
Say, {tob shi}, {tob shi}, called the Four Forces, so when the Buddha teaches the
four practices they end up to be the four forces and they are the four forces. It's
called, {chu shi, tob shi tsangwey gonay, dikpa shakpa}, if you have these four
elements, if you have these four forces, according to the Buddha you can purify
old karma from your mind, you can wipe out karmic imprints from your mind.
There's another description from the diamond cutter sutra where it states again,
that if you, if you follow this practice, you can actually, it's not totally wipe out,
but you can reduce the effects of old bad karma and in the Diamond Cutter
Sutra, the Buddha says, 'If you do this properly, then a karma that would
produce a hell birth, it would make you go to hell , would become the karma to
feel a short headache in this life.         And that's the Buddha and he's not
exaggerating. A karma that was going to make you have a million year lousy
life becomes a small headache in this life. And then the Buddha warms his
disciples that if you follow this practice, you can expect allot of headaches, okay,
okay, so if you have some minor disasters in this life after learning this practice
and following it, then don't be surprised and I have seen among sincere dharma
students, this, this exact thing. You will have some problems, you know, you
will have some illnesses, you will have something happen, it's purification and
you should be absolutely joyful about it. Okay, you can't identify the exact
karma that's ripening, but you can be sure that, if it's a result of this practice, it
was something very major and you should be happy. Like if you have certain
problems come to you, like, the Buddha says, in the Diamond Cutter, "you will
suffer." Then you should be happy about it. It's a purific.... it's cleaning out some
old dirty bad karma. It's like you know, when you first learned to excersise or
something, and all these toxins are coming out of your body and you feel them
coming out of your body. And, and you know that and when they're out then
you'll be, it'll be good, you'll be pure and you they can be very heavy. I've seen
very heavy ones, but they are real. It's the real thing, it's purifying, so you
should be happy, okay. If nothing disastrous happens, you are either totally
pure from the beginning, or you're not doing it very well. Okay, {tob shi}, Four
Powers, we're gonna go through the four in a general way which is what Master
Shantideva does and then he goes through the four in a very leisurely way. We
were gonna have to go through all four tonight in a general way and then I don't
think that we'll have time to go through all four in more detail so we're gonna
save half of them for next class, okay. So we'll go through the four in a general
way and then we'll go on the first two in some detail, okay. By the way, if
you've already studied these four forces, you'll get allot more detail this time and
you'll also see that the order is different. In the Lam Rim it's presented in one
order, in the sutra itself it's presented in a different order, you'll see that Master
Shantideva goes through it in two different orders and don't worry about the
order. And by the way, there's a homework question which is wrong. I got the
homework order confused myself. It says, "List six practices for power number,
for force number two, it should be force number three.                 Okay, but just
remember that. Six practices, we'll get to them alright, because I started to get
confused I learned it like three or four different ways and it comes here three or
four different ways, but you'll, I'm gonna give you the way in which Master
Shantideva goes through it in detail, alright. [silence] Say, {Nambar}, [repeat],
{sun}, [repeat], {jinbay}, [repeat], {top}, [repeat], {nambar}, [repeat], {sun},
[repeat], {jinbay} [repeat], {top}, [repeat]. Okay, {top means force, the last word
becomes force, one of the four forces. {Nambar sun jinba} is one word, okay,
{nambar sun jinba} is a very, it's a little bit special word and it's unusual in
Tibetan. In one common usage, {Jinba, sun jinba}, which is not the same as our
{jinpa} okay, it means, "TO rip something out". Like to rip out the heart of
something, like if you were going around a yard and ripping up weeds and
ripping up the roots, that's called {Nambar sun jimba}. It can also mean, "To
totally destroy something". "To deface something", "to ruin something, " the
word, "rape", has this, this word in it. It means to just rip out something, and just
very nasty way. really in a very powerful nasty way, {nambar sun jinpa} I call it
the force of destruction, in English. I think destruction gives you the sense of
some very nasty destroying of something. Destruction force. Very briefly, it's
called "destruction force" because this is the one that has the energy that destroys
the bad karma. This is the one that really damages the bad karma, badly. So the
{nambar sun jinba} for us, is a good thing. You know, something is being
damaged, and that's the bad karma in your mind, the bad imprint in your mind.
The thing behind the destruction is called, {gyupa}. Say, {gyupa}, [repeat],
{gyupa}, [repeat]. {Gyupa} means, regret, okay, regret. Feeling sorry about
something. In the scriptures, it's always a funny story, in the scriptures they
always give this example. Three guys go into a bar and older students heard this
story already. Three guys go into a bar and they all sit down on these stools.
The bartender's says, "What do you have?" And they all say, "We'd like the same
whiskey." And they all point to the same bottle, the bottle of brown stuff. So he
pulls the bottle down and he pours it out in the three shot glasses and they all
say "cheers", you know, and they clink glasses and they all down it in one drink,
you know. In one {hoop}, in Tibetan, they call it, one {hoopchik}. You know,
one like {hoop}. And in one shot it's all gone and they're like, it's all gone and
then they're sitting there and talking and then the guy on the left starts, you
know he's [cough], and he chokes and he's down one barstool and he's just flat
down on the ground and he's dead you know, and then the other two guys
are ...and then the second guy is going [cough], and he goes unconscious and he
falls off the bar stool and then the third guy starts feeling queasy, you know and
he's looking at the other guys and they're both dead and apparently, there was
something in the bottle that was like this incredible poison and he already drank
it and the feeling that you have right then, the stupid feeling, you know, like, "Oh
man, really stupid." [laughter] Like it's already in you and it's gonna be over. I
mean like you got ten seconds to get it out and, and it's dead, you're over with,
so you just feel stupid. {Gupa} means regret in the sense of, I don't think you can
have this properly unless you are a well educated Buddhist. I would say it's the
regret of a well educated Buddhist. It's the regret of a person who knows, who's
been trained to understand how karma is planted in the mind. Karma is very
inciduous, karma is very sneaky. You know, in one minute, you can assemble
the karma to be born in the Hells with a bunch of friends, just with a group of
friends over a cup of coffee. It's very, very terrible. Karma is planted in the
mind in a very subtle way. It slips into the mind very subtly and if you know
that, then if you do something that's very powerfully wring, you feel this very
sick feeling inside or this very bad, you feel somehow very bad inside and that's
{gyupa}. Okay, there's no word in Tibetan for guilt. I'm not aware of any word
in Tibetan for guilt. You know, it's not like this hopeless, despairing, self esteem
lowering, you know, it's not like that. It's the intelligent regret of a well trained
Buddhist who then goes and does the right thing about it. It implies action.
{Nambar sum jinbay top} means, regret which leads to action, you know, I
screwed up and know, I'll do what I have to do to fox it. It's not like this, "Oh
man, I'm so bad you know." Cause that doesn't help, it's will not remove the bad
karma if you sit there and whine about yourself. It doesn't do
anything to the bad karma . So guilty is not in the picture, it's some kind of
intelligent understanding you know, like a soldier going and doing the right
thing that you have to do, with guts. You know, and that's {Nambar sun jinbay
top}. {Nambar sun jibay top} is like some kind of very intelligent understanding
of the trouble that you just put yourself in and it's you can get very
"schizophrenic " later on and you know like you can be like half way through a
sentence criticizing somebody and then you're like, [gulp] and your friends are
all like, "Yeah, but what did he say next?" You know and it's like you know you
just collected a karma, or half of a karma and you know you're gonna get half of
a suffering out of it and it's like, your like just frozen. And then like five minute
later you're in this conversation with these people and you start to say the same
thing again and then you stop again and they're like thinking, "Is this lady
getting crazy or what? It's some kind of an ability to, the regret comes up very
quickly, the better you get, the faster the regret takes. And then you become a
little "schitzophenic", so expect it. Expect it. If you get to this point where you're
like walking down the street and suddenly you can't, you can't look that way,
you have to look that way you know, or you can't finish that sentence, you have
to shut up. So that means it's working so don't be depressed. They also say that
as you start to get better at this you will start to think that you're getting worse,
like you will start to think that you're really a bad person, like you'll get into a
normal conversation, a normal twenty minute conversation and you'll be aware
that you said like ten bad things that were really bad karma, and then you start
to have this despair about yourself, you start to say "If I can collect ten very
serious karmas with my friends at the cooper square diner, then what have I
been doing my whole life? You start to get really depressed about the quantity
of bad deeds that you start to notice. And the scriptures say, "You're not getting
worse, you're just noticing what was always there, for the first time. And you'll
get this feeling, like, "I'm a bad person or, or you'll think you're even getting
worse. Like you think you're trying to be a Buddhist and the more you study
the more you find that you're doing wrong and then you'll start to feel like
you're getting worse, but you're not, you're actually just noticing what you were,
okay, and before you just never noticed it, before it was like ignorance is bliss,
but it ain't bliss and we're gonna cover that. And know you're just noticing so
don't be surprised when you're just starting to practice this, you think you're
degenerating, you 're not, you're just noticing for the first time. So {gupa}, I
would translate as intelligent regret, of a trained Buddhist, of a person who
understands karma.         Say, {ten gyi}, [repeat], {tob}, [repeat]. {Ten}, is, I like to
translate it here as foundation, okay, foundation, it means the thing upon which
something else is resting. Like a house is standing on it's {ten}. Those of you
who are interested, there is another {ten}, which is the thing that's resting on the
thing, so it's very confusing. The {ten} which means the thing which is resting on
the other thing, is spelled with a b prefix letter and I used to always remember it
by saying that the thing on top was heavier. It's got one, just for those of you
who are interested in the Tibetan language. {Rten} is the thing resting on top.
{Rten} is the thing upon which it is resting. {Rten} is the thing upon which it is
resting and it can be really confusing in a debate because they are the same, they
sound the same. Both are {ten}. {Ten} means foundation, {tob} means force, the
force of foundation. This is explained in two ways, the lineage says, foundation
means when you fall down, meaning when you do something that's bad karma,
you need, you need some solid ground to get up from`, you know, like if you
fall down in quicksand there's no {ten} to push yourself back up again, it's all
oatmeal, There's no place to put your hands and legs to stand up again, so they
say, you need this foundation, this ten, this solid ground upon which you get
back up again, and what it means is to go back to the basics of Buddhism, go
back to the basics, and the basics are two. The basics here are two. and you
know them, because everyday before class you say , '{sangye cho dang tsok kyi
chok nam la, jangchub bar du dak nyi kyab su chi, } Okay, what is that? Yeah,
okay refuge and bodhichitta, two things going on there. Okay, take refuge and
think about bodhichitta, think about the wish to get enlightened. that's called
going back to the basics and that's a {ten gyi tob}. that's the four forces. I repeat,
you must have all four forces present, [chu, shi, sangwey, goney], you must
have all four forces present if you were gonna wipe out the old bad karma, all
three must be present. Okay, like if you leave out one or two don't expect the
karma to get cleaned up. [silence] Say, {nyenpo}, [repeat], {kuntu}, [repeat],
{chopay}, {tob}. {Nyenpo} means a fix an antidote a counter agent, okay.
{Nyenpo} means all those things, some kind of a counter agent force, okay.
{Kuntu chopay} means some kind of activity, {tob}, means "force". You could
translate this one as some kind of force of doing something to make up for what
you did. Okay, the force of doing something to make up for what you did. And
by the way, I don't want to be I mean, I'm not, how to say, remember the thing
about intelligent regret, you know, I'm not like saying, "Bad boys and girls."
You know, "Very bad, very bad, you're a very bad person", you know, blah,
blah, blah, you know, it's not like that, it's very cold and calculating, every time
you had a bad thought today, you planted an extremely powerful thing in your
mind stream, this is the science of removing them, you know, this is the art of
destroying those and you must learn it, because we can't control ourselves,
forget it. You know, do you think you cannot, do you think you can keep your
mind from having a single irritated thought in the next ten minutes, it's not true,
you must, we must become masters at the art of removing bad karma, because
we can't stop ourselves, okay, I mean this is , extremely important, this is why
Master Shantideva goes over it so quickly. We're gonna list six different activities
which are listed in the sutra, Okay, which are listed in the classical text, alright.
These are all parts of number three, okay, these are all makeup activities, great
makeup activities. Say, {dode}, [repeat], {sabmo la}, [repeat], {tenpa}, {dode},
[repeat], {sabmo la}, [repeat], {tenpa}. {Dode} means, "sutras", okay, sutras.
Books that were spoken by the Buddha, records, teaching, the actual Buddha
Himself gave, {dode}. {Sabmo} means, "profound", and it's normally a codeword
for? Emptiness. It's normally a code word for emptiness, {sabmo}. {Sabmo l
tenpa} means, "To study the scriptures which treat emptiness." {Tenpa} here
means study. And that's the first classic makeup activity. And it has to be very
conscious. You have to think, "I'm gonna do this to make up for that thought I
had about my boss when he criticized me for not showing up on Monday cause I
had to translate the class for the next day, [laughter], okay. "I'm gonna use this
for that", you know it has to be very conscious, you have to say" I'm gonna use
this for that." It doesn't have to be very long, it could be like, "I'm gonna do
fifteen minutes of study to make up for wanting to yell at my boss and being so
wimpy that I didn't and actually I criticized him all day. Say {tongpa}, [repeat],
{nyi}, [repeat], {gompa}, [repeat]. {Tongpa nyi}, [repeat], {gompa}, [repeat].
{Tongpa nyi} means emptiness, {Tongpa nyi} means emptiness. {Shunya ta},
emptiness, {tongpa nyi}, {gompa} means meditating, meditating on emptiness.
This is the single most powerful antidote you can do. And those of you who
studied the Diamond Cutter you know why. And it gets into the dynamics of
bad karma. If you study emptiness carefully, then you understand bad karma
perfectly, okay, if you really understand about emptiness, then you can
understand bad karma, and you will never understand bad karma if you don't
understand emptiness and if you want to stop doing bad karma, you must
understand emptiness, so emptiness is really critical. And that's why it's such a
good make up activity. The books say, meditate on emptiness to the best of
your ability, which means that if you don't understand it very clearly, that's
okay, if you haven't understood it directly yet that's okay, what ever you
understand, review it think about it, study more. Okay, did you have a
question?

student: [unclear]

And doing something else? Oh, it, the scripture is very careful to say, "To the
best of your ability." Okay, I mean maybe we don't understand emptiness much,
but as much as you understand you have to study it and you have to try to
improve it everyday, and that's a, that's an antidote activity. [silence]       Say,
{depa la}, [repeat], {tenpa}, [repeat] {depa la}, [repeat], {tenpa}. {Depa} is a
difficult word that comes, it's adjourned here. Which comes from the word {Da}
which means to repeat something. And what's {dawa} mean? The moon, cause
it's the double of the sun, okay, so {sla, sa la tak la nda}, it always means to do
something double or triple or quadruple, and it means to recite over and over
again, {depa} means to recite over and over again. {Depa la tenpa} and this is
specifically reciting mantras, secret mantras. I can't tell you about secret mantras
because they are secret. If you want to get a secret mantra you have to have an
initiation, if you want to have an initiation, you have to study sutra. Which is
what we are doing right now. But I can tell you because it's covered in the
second chapter of the [b: Pramanavartika] by Dharmakirti, which is a logic book,
he explains why mantras work, and I think it's really cool, he says a mantra
works. Some secret words that you learn to repeat over and over again, they
work. There must be two conditions present for a mantra to work, it's in the
description of it and I can tell you because it's not a secret book, okay. He says,
"First of all, the mantra must have been composed by an enlightened being or
some very holy being. In other words, you can't make up your own mantra.
Okay, unless you already are enlightened or some kind of incredibly holy being.
And the mantra has to come from some authentic source according to Dharma
kirti, Master Dharmakirti, sorry. The second requirement is that the person who
is saying the mantra must have a pure heart, must be living a good life. Like if
you are thinking crummy thoughts and you have this incredibly powerful secret
mantra to do, but you are just allowing your mind to be crazy or, or
uncontrolled, or not holy, it won't work, nothing won't work. But if those two
conditions are present, then that mantra has incredible power, you can do almost
anything with that mantra. Okay, you can do miracles with that mantra, and this
is one, I mean, removing your bad deeds is one, removing your bad karma is
one of him. So if you have those conditions, it should, then if you use a mantra it
can have that result. What number are we on? To do four? We did four?
Sorry?

student: I would say that it wouldn't work if you were even neutral, except, the
ability, I can't get into the details. Certain scriptures have said that even if you
don't have a great motivation, but just sort of a wimpy good motivation, then it
can still be extremely powerful. You're supposed to be thinking about the bad
deeds that you were doing and try to purify it. In this case, in this case, okay.
Okay, four. Yeah, hang on one sec. I'll put this up and then while they're writing
we'll talk. Yeah, go ahead.
student; [unclear]

You know, we checked that, because the people who were helping me translate
this, by the way you should thank those people, we spent like, we did an almost
all nighter, we worked eighteen hours straight, I think or something like that
and we checked all these commentaries and it did say, secret mantras, [laughs].
Because we were curious if it mean the heart sutra and stuff like that, there is s
secret mantra and it's in the middle of the heart sutra, I guess it's not secret but
that one's pretty cool. Gate Gate Para Gate Para Sam Gate Bodhi Soha. Say,
{kusuk}, [repeat]. {la}, [repeat], {tenpa}, {kusuk la}, [repeat],{tenpa}, [repeat].
{Kusuk} means, "Holy Body", okay, Holy Body. {La Tenpa} means, "The practice
of the Holy Body. And we weren't sure what that meant and we went digging
around in all of these commentaries, these old Sanskrit commentaries in Tibetan
and it said in one place, Je Tsongkapa mentions is as building altars, you know,
and other objects like that. And another scripture said, you know, making
statues or paintings of the Buddhas, so what it means is painting, sculpting, you
know holy beings. Building altars, you know anything that has to do with
enlightened beings, you know, the form, the image of an enlightened being,
okay. Sorry? Yeah, for sure, that would be small one. Okay. number five and
then we'll take a break after that. Say, {chupa la}, [repeat], {chupa la}, [repeat],
[tenpa], [repeat]. {Chupa}, means offering , you had it last class, the practice of
offering and {chupa} means, to do that practice, Okay, {Chupa la tenpa}. I don't
have to explain that, because we went through it. I guess we could do those
twelve, right. We could start with the twelve. How many people gave away the
sunset and stuff like that? It's fun right? [laughs]. I mean that you can do just
walking......[cut]

[silence] Say, {tsenla}, [repeat], {tenpa}, [repeat], {tsenla tenpa}, [repeat].

question: [unclear]

No, because you're purifying in order to get bodhichitta and in order to get
enlightened and in order to help beings. It's gotta be a thing like that. I repeat,
it's not self serving to reach enlightenment, because you are doing it for other
people, you must reach it first yourself. But it's also a grave error and it's
breaking your bodhisattva vows if while you make an offering you don't reflect,
even briefly on helping other people. It 's breaking your bodhisattva vows if
you don't that, even when you eat, even as you buy a piece of clothing. Even as
you use a subway or a street, you are supposed to be thinking, "I'm doing this
for other people". And, you know, you actually break the advices of the
bodhisattva vows if you don't do that. Some how you have to be thinking, I'm
brushing my teeth for other people, I'm eating breakfast for other people, I need
to get fuel into this body so it can serve other people, you know, like that.
Okay, Excuse me" [laughter]. You could say, "I'm purifying my karma so that I
can get to be a Buddha faster so that I can help other people", that's alright. But
normally, it needs to be something, something voluntary, [laughs]. Alright,
{tsen la tenpa}, {tsen} means "name". A persons name. {Tsen la tenpa} means to
practice names, and it means to learn and to recite the names of Holy Beings. I
mean, just to recite the name of a holy being, is a great virtue. And if you find
your special holy being in your life, you know, supposed to be that every person
has one, you know, every person in this room has a particular enlightened holy
being who is taking care of you, or has a special connection with you. It's called a
{yidam}, and then you have to find them and you have to learn their name and
just reciting their name is a great good karma. You know, just saying their name
is a great good karma, just saying it over and over again. When you find then
you'll know, okay. That's a good one two, ,like the lineage names of the Lamas
of the lineage and we memorize it and there's allot of them like that and we go
through them and memorize them. Okay, we'll take a break for ten minutes and
we'll come back at eight thirty, okay, one more question. It's a holy, it's a pure
being, it's a perfect being, you know, yeah, it's a holy being, it's a pure, being, a
perfect being you know, just reciting their name, in devotion, with devotion. I
don't think you would say it unless you had some devotion, you know, I mean,
not very long, okay, [laughs]. Ten minutes. [cut]. I mean the four forces in
detail. And then he covers, he begins to cover the first one, which is what in this
order. Yeah, {nampar sum jipay tob} which is the force of destruction, So he
gets into allot of detail about what destruction is. What's the guts of destruction?
Oh, wait, I didn't do number four, I'm sorry, I gotta give you a brief overview of
number four. Sorry, maybe you won't get home on time, I don't know. Huh?
No number three was fixing up right? Number two was foundation, number
three was destruction, Oh, by the way, the regret is the destruction. Okay, okay,
number, four, where is number four? Number four, where was number four?
[silence] Sorry, there's two different ways to spell the {dok} here. Some people
spell it, some modern scriptures say, {la na tak da naro do ga dok}. And this is
the ancient spelling, but you see both, you do see both. The prenasal is from the
{sla}. Say, {nyepa ley}, [repeat], {larn dokpay}, [repeat], {tob}, [repeat]. The {n}
comes from here, from the {sa la tak da, nda} and it's, it's very noticeable when a
Tibetan says it. {Nyepa ley larndokpay tob}, okay. {Nyepa} means "bad deed".
{Ley larndokpay}. {Ley larndokpay} means, "to restrain yourself". Literally it
means to turn away from." {Tob} means "force". {Tob} means "force". So this is
the fourth force, okay. Force number four. this means some kind of resolution
not to do the thing again and this is the hardest one, and this is the one that
makes the four work. People always tell me, "Oh, you Buddhists, you know,
very convenient". You can do whatever you want the night before and then just
get up the next and just do your four forces, wipe out. I mean if you think about
it, this could be very dangerous thing, you know, like you could go to a bar, do
whatever you want and just make sure you do the four forces on your way out,
you know, I mean, basically, if this is true, it could be very destructive, I mean,
you could have Buddhist all around New York doing whatever the hell they
want, because they know they can do their four forces the next morning, you
know. Force number four, I mean, people have accused me of this is the
Buddhist morning after pill. You know, but, but if you really do number four,
then you're not doing the thing again, you're not doing it again, number four
means, a decision that you are not going to do this thing again. And the older
student's know, I mean, I always quote Geshe Dhargye in Dharamsala nineteen
seventy three or four or whatever and when he got to this part he said and all
the Lamas of the lineage, when they get to this part, oral tradition, they say,
"You don't want to add lying to whatever bad deed you're purifying, [laughs]. In
other words if you swear, "I'm never gonna yell at my boss again, you know, "I
will never be jealous of that other student again, because they get more attention
than I do, then, you know you're gonna break it, it unrealistic, you don't have
that kind of self control. So, they say, set a time limit, you know, be more
realistic, you know. say, "I swear, I will not do this thing again for, and I say if it's
very heavy, like abortion or something like that, I swear I will never be involved
again in that for my whole life. Period." I mean, that you can swear for you're
whole life. If it's something like yelling at a particular person you can say, "Okay,
for the next two days until Thursday afternoon, you know, I will not scream at
that particular person", "Friday, I might do it, okay, but for Wednesday and
Thursday I swear I won't do it." And then you keep, you know you can keep
your awareness for about two days, you know, you can be sensitive for about
two days. The mental ones, I would say, five minutes, ten minutes and I say
with truth, that I have personally broken one before I got finished with the four
forces. You know, I have done it again, before I got finished with the practice of
the four forces like two minutes later. You know and I set a time limit of thirty
seconds or something you know. I won't be obsessed about that bad guy at
work you know, for thirty more seconds, I won't think a bad thought about him,
cause that's about all the time that you can focus on can concentrate on your
mind. The mental ones are very delicate, very difficult. But the point is, don't lie,
set a time limit. Okay, by the way, in general, the more classes that you come to
the more practices you pick up, you know, like, "I gotta do my long mandala,
that's like twenty minutes". And then he said that I have to do this prostration
thing that's like another ten minutes. And then I gotta offer all those things.
that's at least twenty minutes. I gotta prostrate and take refuge, that's at least
another twenty minutes. You know, and, and I once tried, I was in Arizona, I
tried, I woke up at four am, I tried to do all the practices that I was supposed to
do and I did not, I could not finish by midnight. I just did it the whole day, I just
was curious o see if it was possible, I don't think it's possible. It brings me to the
point of overcrowding your practice, you know, don't overcrowd your practice.
I mean , be a Zen person as far as your practice, I mean pick something, pick,
pick something and simplify, concentrate, focus. You know, pick, pick a practice.
You know, there's certain practices that we have to do. But like this practice, pick
a good time, make sure you have like a half hour and do it very sweet and nice,
you know, don't become one of these overcrowded dharma persons who's
trying to do like fifty practices and, and I can tell you from my experience, from
my own experience, you just end up being nervous and you end up not even
thinking about the meaning of the practice that you are doing. Focus on some
practice. You know, do the minimum things that you have to do to keep your
commitments, but then leave aside some good time for the four forces, you
make it sweet. If it has to be every other day, make it every other day. If you
have taken a {wang} and if you have committed to {tundruk}, you have to do it
{druk} times per {nyima}. {laughter]. But everybody else, you can take your
time and you know, make it sweet, you know, don't become one of these
nervous overworked Dharma practitioners. You got like forty five minutes in
the morning and you are trying to rush though everything and four years later,
it hasn't had any effect on you because you didn't even think about it because
you were just trying to get through it. So pick some sweet time, leave some nice
time. You know, tell your friends, you're not going out tonight and set aside like
from nine to ten. You know, unplug the phone, turn off everything, lock the
door and do a nice four forces, do it
sweet, do it nice, do it leisurely, and do it very powerfully. Better to do it once
every two or three days than to do a crummy one every morning that you don't
even think about. Much better, I mean I think Americans, we have to learn how
to not do with our practice, what we do with our lives, you know, because we
are like that, I'm like that, you are like that, probably. Okay, make it simple. So
{nyepa ley larn dopay top}, so you decide not to do it. And we'll talk more about
that one in detail next week. Yeah, Mr. Hector?

student: [unclear]

Yeah can do it in meditation posture, but you don't have to . You could do it on
the way to work. You know you could make it your schedule that on the
subway ride to work you are gonna do your four forces or whatever. You
know, often times I do it laying down as I go to sleep or something like that you
know. I think it's a good time, after you do your journal, your journal you
should do every day, okay. Okay, details about, actually we don't need this.
We're gonna talk a little bit about {gyupa}. {Gyupa} means, that intelligent regret
of a well trained Buddhist. And Master Shantideva goes into great detail about
{gyupa}. And if you study it carefully you can see that in his verses, he's talking
about regret in three different stages. I think that the first stage you could say is
regret about the stupid things you did about this life, concerning this life, this
current life, it's regret that's focused on what's going on before you die. Okay.
The other kinds of regret we'll go into later, like when you die and after you die.
But I'm talking about the regret that you have before you die. And this, you
know, there's a homework question that says you know, what is the general
thing that triggers regret. You know, what is the most general thing that master
Shantideva says triggers regret? And the answer is, understanding the three
results of karma. You know, understanding the results of karma. You know,
understanding the three results that you get from karma. And Gyaltsab Je
doesn't say what they are, but I'm gonna say what they are, okay. I, I, there's
actually four but you can narrow it down to three, I might give you three and a
half okay? When you say something that hurts another person or another
being, okay, when you do something that hurts another being and when you
say something that hurts another being and when you think something that
hurts another being or that could lead you to hurt another being. There's a trick
there. okay. When you think something that could either hurt someone or could
lead you to hurt someone. Like getting irritated at somebody. Getting irritated
doesn't hurt somebody, but it could lead to hurting some one, we include it, they
are all bad karma. Opening lines, {dulwey gyatso nying po}? {Tamche khyenpo
la chakstel lo, de la nyi ......}
Okay, in other words there has to be somebody hurting someone, you have to
hurt somebody, physically, verbally or in your mind you have to hurt
somebody either in the sense of either thinking something bad about them or
getting irritated that's gonna make you do something. And that's bad karma,
that's all bad karma. It is extremely subtle, we did a whole class on it. The only
thing you need to plant a bad imprint in your mind is to know, is to be aware.
It's your own awareness. Karma is planted just by having consciousness. {le nyi
sem pao dang de che}, fourth chapter, [b: Abbhidharma kosha]. When you see
yourself doing something, when you hear yourself saying something, when you
see yourself thinking something, karma is planted in your mind and this whole
world, this whole room, this whole city, your face, your name, your job, your
life, your guts, your toenails, everything is those imprints just flowering. The
imprints come up in your mind and they, they flower, the imprints ripen and
they create your whole world. Your whole world is a big bunch of imprints
going off in your mind. Okay, Your whole world is determined by everything
you thought and said and did before and then in a sense that's kind of scary and
in another sense it's kind of exciting because it means that you could change your
whole world. You know, you can manipulate your whole world, you can create
a new world if that's true, if everything is imprints, then you can create a new
world, but you must get rid of the lousy imprints and you must be aware that
when you say something or think the slightest thing, three things are gonna
happen. Okay, three karmic results, the first one has to do with what we call it's
a {namin gyi drebu}, say, {Namin gyi}, [repeat], {drebu}, [repeat], {namin gyi},
[repeat], {drebu}, [repeat]. This is what they normally call like a karmic result, or
like a ripened result, it's ripening of karma. But it, it refers specifically to the
realm in which you go because of what you've planted in your mind. Do you
go to another realm when you die? A couple of things to say and we're not
gonna go over it, it's not a class on karma but your mind does not stop when
you die, you've got to get used to that, you've got to see that. Okay, it's, it's a
superstition of the western world that your mind stops when your body stops.
It's just absolutely not true and there's not a single shred of evidence for that,
there' nothing for that, to prove that, there's no proof for that all. It's not true at
all, it's completely false, it's a myth it's a fable. Okay, your mind does not stop
when you die, the body dies. The mind and the body are related, but not so
related that the mind has to die when the body dies. Do the brain waves stop?
Yes. Is that the mind stopping of the body stopping? The body stopping The
body can't create those waves anymore, the body can't create the electricity
anymore , but the electricity is a reflection of the mind and not the mind. The
mind is not electricity. If it was then you could plug your fingers into the thing
and get smarter or something. The mind is totally invisible, the mind is clear, the
mind is aware, the mind is awareness itself. and where does it come from? And
where does it stay? these are like mysteries. But the mind, it cannot be weighed,
cannot be burned cannot be split. You can't shoot a guy in the face and shoot his
mind. It's not true, it's false. Your mind goes on your mind does not end, it must
go on. Then you get, you get that mood, you know, your mind's gonna go on.
You know you're gonna die, your body's gonna be taken to some place and
burned or, or whatever, and but the mind is going to go somewhere, it has to go
somewhere. It doesn't it can't just sit there at the hospital where you died, there
would be a big crowd there. you know . It's not like the mind just stays there.
the mind goes someplace the mind moves someplace, and it, and it wouldn't
make any sense at al to say that the world that you are experiencing now is the
only world there is, I mean, come on, if this world can happen, millions of world
can happen, it would be silly to say that this is the only world and we are the
only people in the universe, .like the beings that you can see right now are the
only beings that exist. If you study light or you study vision, or the colors that
you can see. It's a tiny, tiny sliver of a huge spectrum of energy. Like we are
blind to about ninety nine percent of all the colors there are and all the energies
there are. We can't see them. You know, but don't be so stupid or peroquial to
say that there is no other realms, you know. I'm not gonna try to describe hell
realms and all the other realms, and excetera, excetera. I just say, A, your mind
does not stop, B, don't be so silly as to think that New York city is the only realm
there is. Don't be so silly as to think that a human mind is the only kind of mind
that there is. You know, and don't be so crazy as to think you're gonna end up in
the East Village, where you started from, you know, you know. I mean, what is
the likelihood? It's almost impossible. I mean, the likelihood that you will come
back on this planet is very little. There is millions of realms that you can go to
and you and I will go to separate realms, probably, you know. I know, maybe I
have a path or something, I know, let's say, I know which realm I'm going to.
But, we will not go to the same realm, we will be separated, you will go by
yourself, you will have to go by yourself. No one can go with you. You go to
some other realm and there is millions of choices and don't be so crazy as to
think that the room in which you are sitting is the only room in the world. You
know, the kind of mind you have, the kind of body you have, the people around
you, those are the only kind of beings in the universe and that's the only thing
possible and this kind of level of half happy half sad, half credit card, you know,
that this is the only configuration of a being, you know it's ridiculous to think
that, it's ridiculous to think that your mind stops it's ridiculous to think that
there's not other places that your mind could go. And that's just, that's just true
and that's just the way it is and your... karma will determine that, your imprints
will determine that they will create that next world. What's that got to so with
purification? It's regret, and if you think about it, Shantideva goes, Master
Shantideva goes into this thing, he says, "Why do you do bad deeds? Why do
you do them for? Why do you lie for example? Why do I get up at work and
lie? Why? why do I lie? Why do we do anything wrong? And by the way I'm
not talking about gray areas, I'm not trying to convince you about morality, this
is good, this is bad. Let's pick something that everyone knows is harmful, like
lying. You know. Why do I lie at work? Really. Yeah, cause you get
something. And Master Shantideva says, "Now I got ya". You know, He says,
"Oh, you think you r getting something, right?" Well, exactly what are you
getting? No, really, what do you think you're getting? Money. [laughs] I mean
in my business we like money. You know, you like to get money. What are you
gonna use the money for? What's that? Yeah credit cards. [laughs]I mean,
you're gonna use the money for something that relates to your body. You
know, like you're gonna get an apartment or you're gonna get a nice meal in a
restaurant, or you're gonna get a car to sit your butt in. Or you're gonna spend
money to be with your friends, so that your body can be with your friends, butt
basically, you're investing in your body. You're investing in your life and Master
Shantideva says, that's just stupid, you know, cause it's gonna die and at the end,
it's just gonna die. And at the end, I mean, what he's saying is that even in this
life before you die, the things for which you do your bad deeds are worthless,
you know why lie, why hurt somebody else to protect something or to take care
of something that must go lie in a hospital somewhere and get cancer? You
know, why take a risk for such a stupid thing? You know, it's meaningless. So
he gets into thins long thing about how meaningless it is. So what are you
gonna do? Are you gonna lie to get money so you can sit in a better apartment
for five years? And then get old and go somewhere? You know, and then go to
Florida and get put in a nursing home? So what's, and he's very adamant about
it, because he says, the things for which you hurt people, they go, they die, but
what doesn't disappear? It's the imprint on your mind, it doesn't disappear. You
are training a future imprint for some food or some bed or something like that.
He says, "You're crazy." The things for which you lie are gonna disappear in a
few years anyway, but the lie won't , the lie stays in your mind. The lie creates
an imprint and it stays in your mind, that stays with you, you cannot destroy the
mind. The mind goes on, you cannot destroy .... You could put an atom bomb
in this room and set it off and all the bodies would incinerate but the minds
would just sit there, the minds would not be touched at all, they are not physical,
they don't work like blood and bone and stuff like that they don't work like that.
they are made
of different stuff. Your mind will not finish when you die. And then it will be
chalked full of stuff that you did for what? For something that's gone, you
know, for something that... and then he gets into the example of a dream, you
know, when you wake up from a nice dream, what was all that stuff you did in
the dream mean? I was once having a really pleasant dream about my root
Lama, really, really incredible. And I was in the monastery and I woke up and I
was really trying hard to go back to sleep, I say, if I go back to sleep right now,
right now, I go back to sleep you know and get back in the dream and it doesn't
work you know it doesn't work and Master Shantideva says, once you wake up,
the dream, it doesn't mean anything. And then he's talking about the moment of
death, the moment of death, you know, it doesn't mean anything. All those lies
that you told to take care of yourself are worthless, because the thing you were
trying to take care of is not there anymore and then he gets into your friends
and family, and then he gets into your enemies. You lie to hurt of your enemies,
you lie to "help" your family. They are all gonna be gone. You are lying for
something that is like sand in your hands and is just dribbling by and, and then
at the end you are gonna be stuck with all these lies and then the thing that you
were lying for is gonna be gone, you know and it will be like a dream it will be
like trying to get back into a dream. And you'll just die and you'll go by yourself
somewhere, you know you can't take them with you. Those, the people that
you lied to help and the people that you lied to hurt, he says this very beautiful
verse, you know, " They all die, your enemies die your friends all die, your
family dies and you die. What's the, what's the point of lying for those things,
you know, you're lying for something that's gonna be gone anyway. That's his
first argument about regret so if you've lied, for, if you've done something
wrong to help somebody or hurt somebody it's crazy, it's crazy, you should be
sorry, you should regret. You should regret all the lies that you did in this life
because they are meaningless. You didn't help anybody, you didn't hurt
anybody, you know, they are all dead. And if they are not dead yet, they are
gonna be dead, so what's it for, what are you doing it for? You know, for a year
of, of a car or something. What's it worth? Because the seeds are planted in your
mind and you can't get rid of them, it's very difficult to get rid of them. That's
the first argument, the second argument is very interesting, he says, I have seen
a man tat was given a sentence and this was in ancient India and like he stole
something, and he was sentenced to have his hand cut off. And he says, "I have
seen, I have seen this thing, and he, and he, the judge, he says, "You are
sentenced to have your hand cut off." And then the guy, he's sitting in the cell
and then on the morning that he's gonna have his hand cut off, he's seeing
people go into the cell, these guards, and they grab the guy, you know, and they
are like dragging him out and he's screaming and he's kicking and he's crying
you know and he's begging not to have his hand cut off. English Patient, did you
see that? [laughter] Same thing. He played that very well, William Defaux,
right. And he knows he's gonna get his thumbs cut off and his face at that
moment, he really played it well. That's what Cantilever's describing. He's
describing exactly the same thing, like he knows, he's gonna get his thumbs cut
off. You know, they are coming in to cut his thumbs off with a razor blade and
he's screaming, he's doing anything he can do to get away, and he can't get
away. And it really breaks your heart when you see it, and you know it's a
movie, but still it's like. And Shantideva is describing one that he really saw, and
then it gets him thinking and then he says, "If knowing that you were gonna
have your finger cut off or your hand cut off would make you act so crazy and
change your whole appearance, you become a totally different, the face changes,
you know, you start whining and crying, you know, your face all transforms
into somebody elses face. And he says, well what do you think is gonna happen
when you die? And the terror that person has who knows he's just gonna get
one hand cut off, you will feel exactly` like twenty times greater than that.
Because you know, you're gonna lose the whole thing. You know, I've heard
these people, usually they are like twenty years old, right? And they say, "I'm
looking forward to death, this is like one great adventure that I haven't been in
yet, you know" And some of them even commit suicide or something. But
when you really know you're gonna die, I mean take them upon a roof and go
like that and see, see if the body can just stay limp, you know, I mean, you
struggle, you fight, you know, and this is this, they day that when you die there's
a certain fear that you get and a certain special pain that is partly mental and
partly physical, but they say, there's nothing like it, the scriptures say there's
nothing like it, you can't imagine it. It says, it's a very special kind of pain that
goes through your body in those ten or twenty minutes and you can't even
imagine what it's like. And, and take the feeling of the guy getting his hand cut
off and multiply it times a hundred or two hundred and that's what your heart
will feel like at that moment, you know. All these people tell me, "Oh, when I
die, I'm gonna do this {powa} thing and I'll be okay." You know, forget it, forget
it, at that moment you're it's that human instinct that will do anything to avoid
that special, there's a special pain that happens when you die that you cannot
imagine and your body, you will fight against it. fiercely you will fight against it.
That's in that moment, in that frame of mind you can sort of look into your
future, you have some kind of vision of your future and you know that what
you did before is going to determine it. And in that moment, I don't know if
you've ever had a near death experience, but for me, in that moment you start to
regret all the things, and I don't mean missed business opportunities, you know.
I mean, I mean, serious bad deeds that you did that you know are going to have
their effect now, and you're like thinking, "If I could get out of this then I would
really change. I would go apologize to that person or I would go and confess
that to my Lama or something like that. Something comes up in your mind at
that moment of death. In the middle of that pain that particular kind of pain
comes to you, you will get it it will come to you. You know your life will flash
through your eyes and your whole life will go before your eyes and you'll see
everything that you did to hurt somebody, and that's the kind or regret. You
have to try to get it now, you have to try to anticipate it now. And do the
purification. You have to use that kind of regret now and do the four forces.
You have to try to think about all the things you.. You know don't think about
then, think about them now and clean them. So that at the moment of death, Je
Tsongkapa says in his death meditations, "At the moment of death the point of
death mediation is okay, I'm ready, everything is taken care of, everything is in
order, I don't have anything on my conscience. You know, I took the worst
things I did and I confessed them to my Lama I purified, I did the four forces, I
can't have them anymore, I can die with a clear heart." You know, they say that
if you practice sincerely and if you have done your four forces, then when you
get to the moment of death it's like there is no problem. You know, the mental
thing of knowing that your heart is clean is no problem, and, and then Master
Shantideva gets into this s thing like when are you gonna die? You know, He
says, "When are you gonna die?" When are you gonna die? You don't know, so
for god sake do your four forces tonight, you know, don't wait, you don't know,
you really don't know, you've got to get ready now, Tsongkapa says, if you
don't die tonight it's okay, if you purified yourself tonight you could die
tomorrow or three days from now and it's okay, but don't assume you're gonna
live for three days, from tonight. DO it tonight, do your four forces tonight and
I say to the people here, you know. pick the worst things that you've done, you
know then, I don't know them, and I'm not talking about the borderline things, I
don't care about the borderline things. There are things that you've done that
you know damn well hurt other people, really bad and were really bad and I'm
not talking like the something you have to debate about it, you know it. Do the
four forces`, clean it, get it out and then you can die happy. And you don't know
when you're gonna die, so do it know, do it tonight, and go to some high Lama
like Rinpoche, I always go to Him. And when I walk in his room He's like, "No,
no, ...[laughs]" And just open it, admit it and you just are pure, you feel pure and
your heart is nice. You have to do it, you really have to do it and you have to do
it now . Did you have a question.

student: Then how come when people die they look so happy and peaceful
[unclear]

They say that as the mind starts to withdraw it starts to get into hell it starts to
go. When the sense powers shut down it starts to go, because the consciousness
shifts to a very subtle consciousness so even a very tiny
pain becomes like chaos. They say that when you enter the moment of death
internally, you know, your face can be like that, and o the inside you can be like
that. That's like about twenty minutes before you really die. So your face looks
fine and you're okay, but then your mind starts to go through the process and
they say that it's like being on a very bad acid trip. They say it's, you loose all
sense of reason you loose all sense of normal consciousness and you become,
you hallucinate, your mind just begins these wild and very painful hallucinations
and every thing becomes extremely painful and this is like a half hour or an hour
after they think you, after the last brain wave has, is measurable, that the
internal struggle starts with in the mind and it's like a very bad hallucination and
it has certain stages which are always the same for everybody.

student:    But then people who say they've had near death experiences.....
[unclear]

Didn't die enough. Didn't die enough. Very unusual, I mean, their heart would
have to be very clean. If their heart was clean it's possible. And I believe that's
why we struggle so much when we're close to dying, I think that's responsible
for that, you know, take those people up on a roof and just go up behind them
and go , you know grab them kind of hard and go, go like that and see if there's
no, you know. There's this thing that you do you know . there's this ..... no and I
think that comes from thousands and millions of times of dying and you know
what's coming, subconsciously, you know what's coming and you do not want
to do it, you do not want to go through that again. You know, they call it
autonomous reaction, it's not. It's a knowledge from having to do it over and
over again, you do not want to do it. And that's why you struggle to live, you
know everybody struggles to live, come on, I mean, maybe a few crazy people
commit suicide in the, in a moment of passion or craziness, but no normal
person wants to die. No normal person wants to go through that. One more
question.

student: [unclear]

Not true, no. I mean the whole point is that most people die with out getting
ready. Yeah, yeah and Shantideva goes through that and the last thing he says
and then we'll stop is the regret of knowing I mean as you go into death and as
you get older, this is why the old people go to church more, [laughs]. I mean
you begin to focus on what will happen after you die So Shantideva, Master
Shantideva is saying that, "Even in this life you can see that doing things that hurt
other people are stupid because what you're trying to get for yourself doesn't
last for more than a couple of days or a couple years, it's not worth it." I mean
anything that you can get by hurting anybody is, is just stupid because it's
worthless. What are you gonna get? Something to eat? Some place to stay?
You know, some kind of fame or something? you know, it doesn't last. And
then from the point of view from when you die it's really stupid because when
you die you go through this process of reviewing your life and you are in total
pain and the pain is multiplied if you, if you are regretting at that moment what
you did and then finally, you get into future lives and he starts to describe all the
other realms that are possible and then he says, "It's too late there's nothing you
can do, it's over. You know, he says, he describes, it's in the reading that , "Once
the transition from this life to the next life has taken place your choices are down
to zero, your options have just zeroed out. You cannot go to a realm of
suffering and say, "Oh I would really rather not be here, I think I'll just, I'll be
back later." [laughs] It's, he's says, He says, "It's too late". And then you get
some other kind of regret. And then He's trying to describe this other kind of
regret. You know, like you show up in this realm and there are millions of
other really horrible realms, this is like the best realm that you could be in. If
you believe the scriptures at all this is like a totally great realm and the other
option where you can go, where you must go somewhere, they're really, really
bad and once you get there, there is nothing you can do. You know, it's too late,
it's too late and you feel this like stupid, you feel like the guy who drank the third
shot of whiskey, you know, and you're like, "This is stupid, I shouldn't have been
here." You have to do something now, you have to do something about it now,
so that's all you can't get... We're after this perfect love where you love yourself,
sorry.. You love others as much as you love your self. The goal of this class is
that at least one or two people in this room learn to love others as much as they
love themselves and Master Shantideva says, "That's not possible unless you
learn to do purification. So learn to do purification. Like go after the two or
three worst things you ever did. The scriptures say go after the worst ones first.
Like when you get in a gang fight go for the leader of the other gang. So go for
the worst one and do it tonight. Do those four forces tonight, You know, start
to work on them tonight. Start to do it tonight, just, just it's for another, and pick
it, work on it and use the four forces, at least start with those two and take your
time and do a nice job. Yeah?

student; [unclear]

{Gyelken pongwa}, you have to remove the obstacles these are spiritual
obstacles that separate you and that attitude. You could not get to that attitude
unless you remove these obstacles. They are like, what are those? they are like
cataracts. You can't get there if you don't remove the obstacles, can't do it. One
more question.

student: [unclear]

She says, "why do you have to confess to another person?" First of all you don't
have to, have to, have to. in fact, Rinpoche doesn't like the word confess,
because it brings up the vision of all these places where you have to go and be
guilty, you know, it's not that. In Tibetan they call it, [shakpa}, which means you
have to go and admit it or open it, How does it go? [Chok chu na shuk pey sang
gye dang....matok..[unclear] If you don't I mean, there's this kind of release,
what do they call it in psychology? There this kind of what do they call it?

student: Catharsis.

Cathatrsis of going to another person and in the bodhisattva vows it doesn't
even need to be another person with bodhisattva vows, you know, but you go
to another person and admit it to them openly, you know, just to open up and
there's a, there's an incredible power to having to go to another living being and
open your heart to them, and that's the best way to do purification and it really
works. You know, go to the person that you least want to tell, or it doesn't even
matter, you know, go to some close friend. People have said to me, "I don't
want to tell, you know, blabbing my bad deeds around to people, because all my
friends are indiscreet, [laugh]. Which is probably true. you know, find a really
good friend, find and intimate friend, find a dharma friend. That's a real Dharma
friend. It's not the people you go to have coffee with after class. A real Dharma
friend is someone that you and they can confess to each other openly and who,
who won't let you get away with it easily. You know, they won't say, "Oh, it's
okay Tash, don't worry, no problem." They'll say, "Oh, that was stupid, you
confessed that to me last week too. And you know, and let's review the bad
results of that karma. I mean, a real Dharma friend, a real Dharma friend, find a
real Dharma friend and admit it to them. I mean if you can admit it to Khen
Rinpoche, I don't know, maybe he'll be too busy next week. It's also very
powerful, they say it's very powerful to take them from a living being because
you'll be embarrassed to tell them. And embarrassment, or your own self image
is very, it's very much a deterrent, you know. I mean , when I had to go tell
Rinpoche the worst things it was like, I made a vow, I made a vow, you know, if
I do this one more time I'll go tell Rinpoche directly, not indirectly, and, and it
actually stops you, it works, it's not a great motivation, but it works, you know,
so. One more, I don't know, okay.

student: [unclear]

I'm sorry, I didn't do the other, she's right, I didn't cover the last two. The first
karmic result has to do with where you're gonna go when you die, we're back
on karmic, the three karmic results. If you know about karmic results, you're
gonna regret what you did. The second karmic result is that you will get a
similar payback. Okay, like if you lied, you will wonder why people are always
lying to you. Did you ever wonder why people are lying to you? Or did you
ever wonder why people are lying to your friends and not to you? It'll come
back to you in the same way. You will live in a place where people lie to you all
the time, you know, like that. That's called {gyuten gyi drebu}. A similiar result.
And some Lamas has described that result as the habit of lying, you know,
you've seen children who from a very young age enjoy or are attracted to lying.
And that's, that's a variation of the second karmic result. Now the third karmic
result we call {dakpa drebu}, which is an environmental result and it's very
interesting that for example if you engage in sexual misconduct then you will live
in a place which is stinky. Like you will actually, if you wonder why the street
you live on has these stinky garbage cans or why certain cities in Asia and the
whole place stinks the whole city stinks, it's because the beings who have to
endure that stink did sexual misconduct in their past life, according to Buddhism,
this is what we would call an environmental result. Every detail of your
environment can be explained by your personal behavior in your past life. You
know, whether or not there is a pothole on your street, whether or not the
garbage trucks make noise, you know, whether or not it rains allot where you
live, it all depends on your own personal behavior in your past life, and that's
called an environmental result and you're supposed to think of those three when
you think of regret, think of those three, coming out of simple little thoughts
you have or simple little things you say to other people, you will not want to do
them, you will have regret about it. Okay, we'll stop there. I don't know, okay,
one more.

student: [unclear]

Number one is like the realm in which you're born, like, which one of the six
realms are you gonna be born in? There is only six choices to number one, and
then number three is like all the details of the realm that you are born in,
basically those two, okay. I think we'll go straight into prayers because it's really
late. But I really ask you to, this class is worthless if you don't go home and do
some kind of purification tonight and if you don't learn how to do it. And it will
change your life, you will notice your reality starts to change. And if you are
three years form now, not happier then you are now, then stop coming to class,
because it didn't work and it'll work. It really works. Do it and you'll see, it
really works. And, and your life, your world changes, it really does work. If
you get rid of all your bad karmas, old bad karmas in your mind, you won't
have so much problems in your life, period. Things will start to go really nice,
you'll be amazed, it works, it really works, and, and the other co relater is that if
you don't do it, it never works. Okay, I mean, if you don't learn this purification
and you don't do it, then don't expect anything great out of your Buddhist
practice, it won't happen. If you do this purification, I guarantee results, or your
money back, [laughs]' Phuntsok la.

Prayers: [short mandala]

Prayers: [dedication]

[cut]
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