ACI 10 «Руководство к образу жизни бодхисаттвы, часть I», занятие 9

Class Nine: Awareness
April 1, 1997
Geshe Michael Roach

Transcriber: Su Foo
Proof: Llysse Velez

[cut] think like a bodhisattva, commitment to think like a bodhisattva or after
you take your commitment to keep all sixty-four Bodhisattva vows etc. And
that’s called … the subject tonight is called {drenpa} and {sheshin}. I’ll write it for
you. [silence] Say {drenpa} [repeat] {sheshin} [repeat] Okay, this is after you
have taken your vows and after you’ve made your commitments then this is
how to keep them, okay. And it’s two states of mind that you have to have as
you walk around New York city, okay. {drenpa} is hard to translate. We’re
going to call it recollection, okay, recollection, in the sense of awareness; like an
awareness of what you’re doing at any given time. And then {sheshin} is more
like a watchfulness, okay. And we’re going to talk about the difference. These
are two states of mind you have to have if you’re going to keep your
commitment to think like a bodhisattva and act like a bodhisattva. And I think
we can compare it to the function of these two in meditation. If you study the …
what course was it, third course on meditation, these two are very important.
{drenpa} is the antidote for the very first problem of meditation. The first
problem of meditation is what? Do you remember? Laziness … that’s not
{drenpa} okay, {[unclear]} is the second problem. Huh? Forgetting the object,
okay? Like {drenpa} is where you just lose the object altogether … I’m sorry,
forgetfulness, right? {je nge}, it’s called {je nge} okay. I just got back from four
days of teaching like ten minutes ago, so please excuse. Anyway {sheshin} is …
{je nge} is forgetting the object altogether, okay, like you’re meditating on
something and suddenly you realize that you’re thinking about something
altogether different, okay. There’s other mental functions where you’re just
losing the object slightly from time to time, like you’re meditating pretty well for
like five minutes then the object starts to get fuzzy or you, you blank our for a
second and you come back to the object. {je nge} is in meditation the opposite of
{drenpa}. It’s where you just go off on another tangent and you know you’ve
done it. I, I do it all the time, okay. So you’re trying to meditate on certain
object and then after a certain amount of time you just realize that it’s not in
your mind anymore at all and you just had a long distraction about what you
were going to do at work today or what you were going to eat for breakfast or
something like that, okay. {drenpa} is the opposite of that. {drenpa} holds … its
definition is holding a virtuous object in the mind without losing it. And its
definition comes later in the text. It won’t come in your reading. In fact nothing
will come in your reading because we didn’t finish the reading. So you have to
pay special attention tonight ‘cos you’re not going to get a reading for all this,
okay. We’re just behind. It takes, it takes like we calculated eighty hours, to
finish all the readings and we just couldn’t do it. So hopefully we’ll have it ready
by Thursday if there’s three days between now and Thursday. Anyway, so
{drenpa} is that. {drenpa} keeps your mind on what you’re doing in meditation.
In your day to day life - and especially for a bodhisattva - it means you focus on
an object, you focus your life on some object, you focus your practice on some
object and then as you’re walking around New York you don’t lose it; you don’t
forget the goal for what you’re living. And Master Shantideva gives two
examples. In the text prior to here, he, he talks about {sangye je den} Say {je
den} [repeat] {je den} is called ... sometimes it’s translated as recollection of the
Three Jewels and that’s one kind of recollection. And since he mentions it we’ll
go into that for a bit. I think some of you have been studying that sutra that it
comes from. And I have heard it explained two ways; like how do you recollect
the Three Jewels? Okay, what are the Three Jewels and what does it mean to
recollect them? It’s actually also part of your refuge commitment. If you’re, if
you’ve taken refuge, if you’re in this room and if you’re a Buddhist, six times a
day you’re supposed to be {je den}ing the Three Jewels, okay. You’re supposed
to be recollecting them, okay. You’re supposed to be thinking about them six
times a day; three times in the daylight, three times at night. And what does it
mean to recollect them? Well, for example for the Buddha Jewel, okay, {je den}
which means recollecting them and it’s related to this {drenpa} is mainly to think
about their qualities, okay. Mainly to think about what a Buddha is like. And I
think if you’re like me, especially my early years in Buddhism, when you {je den}
the Buddha, when somebody says, “recollect the Buddha” what do you think of
when you think of Buddha? You think of this guy with long ears and a bump on
his head and somebody totally out of our league, you know, totally irrelevant
almost to us, you know. He started this religion two and a half thousand years
ago and then he sort of disappeared and since then it has been in the hands of
these Lamas and we mostly think of our Lamas. But what is it mean to recollect
the Buddha? I mean, are you supposed to try to think of this exotic guy who is
just totally different than us and who lived in ancient India and doesn’t seem to
have much relevance to us, you know.
What does it mean to recollect the Buddha. I think it’s important to recollect the
two bodies, okay. So when you’re walking around New York and you’re trying
to recollect the Buddha Jewel, what are the Three Jewels? Uh, recollect the two
bodies. What are the two bodies? There’s the mental phenomenal body, you
know like … we’ll get into that. And then there’s the physical body. Let’s start
with the physical since they’re easier, okay. Buddha has two kinds of physical
bodies. And you have to think of it from time to time. One kind of mindfulness
or, or awareness as you walk around New York city is not to forget what your
goal is, you know, what are you trying to do? What is the goal of Buddhism
itself? Why are you going to class? And you see a lot of classes in Buddhism that
pretty much boil down to uh … I saw an advertisement recently, you know, it
was “Learn Buddhism. Learn to be calm. Learn to be … learn to stop stress in
your life” you know, something like that. Be calm and stop stress in your life, or
something like that. That’s too small of a goal, okay. I mean, the thing that
we’re trying to stop in Buddhism is {kye wa na chi} Say {kye wa} [repeat] {na
chi} [repeat] and none of those are stress, okay, what are they? I mean, the four
things we’re trying to stop when we become a Buddhist and … {kye wa}means
having to take birth in a body like this, a body and a mind like this, okay.
Anything wrong with this body and mind? I mean, it’s pretty good as long as
you’re practicing and, you know, you’ve met a lama and everything is going
pretty well, it’s not so bad but, but the point is where this body will go. The
body has nowhere to go but old. Okay. It has no other … because of the forces
which have created it and thrown it into motion, those forces as they wear out
will cause the body to get old. The body, when it’s born … Buddhism says that
things are made to self destruct, that there’s no object, there’s no object in your
normal world which is not made to self destruct. That there’s no object, there’s
no object in your normal world which is not made to self destruct. When it’s
made it will self destruct. There’s this big debate about does it take an external
force to destroy your body? And the answer is no. I mean, if a car doesn’t hit
you or you don’t get AIDS or something like that, the body itself will kill the
body. When the body is born it’s built to self destruct. And that’s the same for
all objects in our lives, okay. Your house, your car, your husband or wife, your
children, your parents, your friends, your job, everything when it begins has in it
a self destruct button that goes off automatically. And they will always self
destruct. They will always do that. Buddha’s body is created by something else.
Buddha’s body is created by … we don’t call it even created by karma. We call it
“created by the two collections”. When you get to the end of the class and you
do your dedication, you’re praying that everybody will get the two collections
and that they will get the two bodies from those two collections. And so the
Buddha’s body is not like that. It doesn’t have {ke}. It isn’t born with a body like
this. Doesn’t have {ga}. {ga} means getting old. It doesn’t have {nga}- it won’t
get sick. And {shi} it doesn’t have death, okay. And, and stress is not in there.
Those are the four things that, that Buddhism is supposed to do for you. It’s
supposed to stop you getting this getting this kind of body. It’s supposed to stop
you from getting old. It’s supposed to stop you from getting sick and stop you
from dying. And, and stress and not being calm are not in there, okay. That’s
the minimum goal of Buddhism. So the, so what you’re thinking about is that the
Buddha has this quality. The Buddha’s body is different. And when you recollect
the Buddha you think about that body. The body in the Buddha’s own paradise
doesn’t have those qualities.        It was not born by this energy called mental
afflictions, okay, or karma. It, it is not going to get old and it’s not going to get
sick and it will never die the way our bodies die. And that’s the first thing.
When you think of the Buddha, think of this body in a Buddha paradise that you
have to try to reach in this life, okay, before you die. Second kind of body that
the Buddha has is the one that one millisecond after the Buddha’s enlightenment,
what? You guys had it in where, Philadelphia? Yeah. A mil… you know, you
don’t have this body the first millisecond of your enlightenment. Like the first
millisecond of your enlightenment you’re deficient, you only have half of the
physical bodies of the Buddha. Which is missing? Huh? You can say
“nirmanakaya”. Nirmanakaya means the body that you send out to other
planets, okay. The bodies that go help people, all right? And, and you don’t
have one the first millisecond of your enlightenment ‘cos you have … it takes …
you are completing the ability to send out that body and then in the second
millisecond you send them out. It doesn’t take any premeditation. It’s called
{hun druk} {hun druk} means you don’t have to think, oh, it’s like four o’clock, I
have got to go to earth right now, okay. Your body just shows up on every
planet where somebody is ready to benefit from that. That Buddha’s body that
you see with the, with the unusual head and the long ears and the special marks,
that’s called the classic Nirmanakaya. That’s the one that comes once on this
planet, 500BC in our times, shows up and has these special marks, it has hundred
and twelve special marks. Then there’s the unclassic nirmanakayas, which can be
anything. They can be any … they can look like anybody you know, okay. I
mean, anybody in this room could be a nirmanakaya, we don’t know, I don’t
know, all right. It’s, it’s possible that half the people or three of the people or
everybody in this room except me is a nirmanakaya, okay, a Buddha’s body.
And if someone is ready and ripe and all the causes are there then they can see
this person and this person can help them.                The moment you achieve
enlightenment one millisecond later you are able to appear in trillions and
trillions of worlds, in trillions and trillions of forms and you can also appear as a
physical object, like the wind or the ocean or something like that. You have this
ability. The Buddha has this ability. So that’s … when you think of the … what is
Shantideva talking about? In this … in these lines today he’s talking about
{drenpa}. One half of {drenpa} means keeping your mind on the ultimate goal –
The Three Jewels. What is the Three Jewels as far as the Buddha … as you walk
through Manhattan you have to keep your mind on the fact that I, I’m going for
that. I would like to become that. That’s really why I’m here. I’m walking
through Manhattan to have some connection with me having to get these two
bodies, okay. One body in a paradise, totally fantastic, beautiful, no death. They
don’t have guts; they don’t have insides like we have; in fact they’re not made of
atoms in the sense of normal physical matter. They have colors, they have
shapes but they don’t have atoms or, or, or molecules the way we do, okay.
And then I’m … then you have to keep your mind on your second goal which is
that I would like to be able in my lifetime to serve people in that way. I would
like to be able to come, become a being who can appear on trillions of planets at
one moment. And that’s {drenpa}. So as you walk around ... I mean, your
refuge vows require you to think of it six times a day. Master Shantideva is
saying as you walk around New York think about it, okay.                  That’s the
recollection of the first Jewel. Okay, second … what we call the close recollection.
Second close recollection is Dharma. Okay. And dharma just means … by the
way, I should tell one more, one more body of the Buddha, okay. I didn’t’ go …
I didn’t cover the mental body, right, what they call the mental body or the
mental element of a Buddha is the ability to, to know all things in all times and all
places.    So the Buddha knows every object that ever was, is or will be
simultaneously. In one moment, in the first moment of your enlightenment you
have the ability to, to perceive everything that ever existed, everything that will
exist or does exist everywhere in the universe, at one moment, okay. Very
useful for teaching people. Okay, because you can see their future a thousand
years from now, a million years from now, you can see the exact effects of
anything you say on them before you say it, okay. And that’s very useful for
teaching people and very useful for helping people. And you have to imagine
that you could reach this point. Then there’s the emptiness body of the Buddha,
okay. The Dharmakaya in the sense of the emptiness of the Buddha. And that’s
the emptiness of the Buddha’s mind. When {Drolungpa} Geshe Drolungpa who
wrote the [b: ten rim Chenmo] which we found through the computer project, -
it is the greatest book written by the Kadampas, thousand pages and Je
Tsongkapa discovered it in his time and used it to write the greatest written ever
written in Tibetan which is the [b: Lam Rim Chenmo] - anyway Geshe
Drolungpa says, this is the essence of the Buddha Jewel is the emptiness of the
Buddha. He says when you take refuge or when you recollect the Buddha, and
you’re trying to think of the Buddha’s great qualities, think of the Buddha’s
emptiness. And there are lot of reasons why. One reason is on the Path of
Seeing when you see emptiness directly for the first time and when you come
out, the direct perception lasts twenty, thirty minutes. When you come out you
are aware that you have met the Dharmakaya, in the sense that you have met a
Buddha in the sense that you have met the emptiness of the Buddha. And that’s
important. That’s, that’s a very important emptiness at that moment. Also the
emptiness of the Buddha allows him to be a Buddha, why? If the Buddha wasn’t
empty could the Buddha be a Buddha? Huh? Yeah, if the Buddha was self
existent then there wouldn’t any place for his good karma or good … two
collections to perceive him as being a Buddha, okay. In other words emptiness is
like a blank screen. And if the Buddha didn’t have any emptiness then the
Buddha’s mind couldn’t be forced to see the Buddha as a Buddha because the
Buddha would be still a plain guy from before because he couldn’t have become
a Buddha, because he didn’t have any emptiness. Okay. It’s the most important
emptiness of all. This is the … by the way, this is what they call Buddha nature.
This is the part of you now that you have now, which can become a Buddha.
The emptiness of your own mind is Buddha nature and that’s what allows you to
become a Buddha. If you … does it mean that there’s some Buddha hiding inside
of you and if you could get some really good Ajax you could clean off and find
this Buddha, you know what I mean? People explain it like that, it’s wrong.
Buddha nature means your mind has its own emptiness. Because of that things
are blank, especially your own mind; your own mind is blank, okay, which
means that if you had very, very good karma, you could look at your own mind
and see what? Omniscience, okay. And if you had medium karma you could
look at your mind and see a human’s mind. And if you had very lousy karma
you could look at your mind and see a bug’s mind. Your mind doesn’t have any
nature of being a bug’s mind, human mind or omniscient being’s mind at all. It
doesn’t have a nature of any of those three. It can be any of the above
depending on ...?      Your projections which are forced on you by your past
karma. So if your mind wasn’t empty it couldn’t be any of those three and you
couldn’t move from one to the other. Okay. When you go from bug’s mind to
human mind to enlightened mind, it’s allowed by the emptiness of your mind,
okay. There’s an emptiness of your mind and your own karma is forcing you to
see either bug’s mind, human mind or enlightened mind. And which one you
see is up to …? You, okay, it’s up to your karma, okay. It’s up to what deeds
you do now. In the future what you see depends on what deeds you do now.
What’s deciding now what kind of mind you see? Your deeds from the past,
okay. You happen to have karma to see your mind as a human, right now. It
could change in five minutes. If you had a heart attack and died here now and
went into the bardo, the karma changed. Did you go into the bardo? This is the
kind of question, you know, they ask in the Diamond Cutter or in the Heart
Sutra. Did your mind go into the bardo? No. Your perception shifted. Okay.
Your karma changed, your mind changed and you’re seeing something
different. You didn’t go into the bardo. Did you go … but did you go into the
bardo? Yes. Okay. But if you say it this way, “did anybody go into the bardo?”
No. “Did you go to the bardo?” Yes. [laughs] Did anybody go to the bardo
means, did anybody go into the bardo self existently?          Is there some bardo
somewhere and you died and went there? No. Okay. Your mind shifted. Your
perception of your own mind shifted. Okay, it’s very hard to get a self existent
human into a self existent bardo, in fact it’s impossible, okay, because there is no
such thing. There’s no such thing as a self existent human and there’s no such
thing self existent bardo, okay. But if the nature of the human is that it’s a
projection or it’s a perception forced on us by our past karma and if the nature of
the bardo is the same thing, well, then you can go from one condition, human
mind, into a bardo mind in how long? Yeah people say … I think I’ve
misqoute…it’s not sixty-four, it’s sixty-five, you have to add one, okay. I found
it in a scripture recently, okay. This [finger snap] has sixty-five milliseconds in it,
okay. [finger snap] sixty-five milliseconds in there. During any one of those
your mind can go from human mind to bardo mind. Did any mind go from
human mind to bardo mind? No, okay. Perception shifted, okay. If, if it was self
existent, if it took a self existent mind to go from human mind to bardo mind, it
would take a long time; it’d be very hard to do. It will be the way you feel it in
your heart ‘cos your heart has self existence written all over it, okay. But if it
were not self existent and if everything depended on your projections then you
could go from … from a human mind to a bardo mind sixty-five times during a
finger snap. Okay. Because it’s just one shift in your perceptions. Therefore the
Dharmakaya of a Buddha is important. The emptiness of the Buddha’s mind is
important. The emptiness of your mind is important, okay. Until you become a
Buddha that’s called your Buddha nature, the emptiness of your own mind.
Why? Is there anything Buddha about you right now? Is there anything about
you now which will be the same when you become enlightened? Will your mind
or body, will any detail of your mind or body be the same when you reach
enlightenment? No. No. Everything changes, you’re totally different but the
emptiness of your mind doesn’t change, okay. That’s one thing you can take
with you, that’s one thing about you which is pretty cool already, all right. And
that’s why they say buddha nature, okay, you will have that emptiness of your
mind there; you’d better have it because if you didn’t have it you couldn’t
perceive your mind as, as omniscient at that moment.               You better have
emptiness of your mind or your mind could not never go from human to
enlightened mind. So the Dharmakaya of the Buddha says Geshe Drolungpa
which is where we started from is very, very important, very critical. That’s the
main refuge; that’s the main Buddha. When you remember or when you
recollect the Buddha, think of the emptiness of the Buddha’s mind. This is coolest
part of the Buddha because we have it too. And because of that we can become
a Buddha. So he says that’s, that’s the main Jewel. Yeah. [student:[unclear]] It’s
true in one sense in that if I just leave it general and say, the emptiness of your
mind then that you can take with you all the way up to Buddhahood. But if I say
the emptiness of your current samsaric mind, if I add samsaric then I can’t call it
buddha nature. See, that’s a little touchy. All emptinesses, all objects have
emptiness. The emptinesses of every object are totally equivalent except for one
detail which is the thing that they’re attached to, okay. Like the emptiness of the
chair and the emptiness of this building are separate only from one point of view
in that they belong to different objects but the emptiness is pure emptiness and
they’re totally equivalent like pieces of diamond after you’ve smashed it. And
that’s the … one of the reasons of calling a diamond an example for emptiness,
okay. So that’s … when you recollect the Buddha as you walk down the street
one of the important things you might want to recollect is what then? Your
future dharmakaya which is hanging on you right now as the emptiness of your
mind. If your mind was not … if your mind did not have emptiness you couldn’t
become a Buddha. You never would become a Buddha. So it’s a very important
emptiness. It’s a very important part of you, okay. Now, how about Dharma
Jewel? Okay, Dharma Jewel. The most important one is the direct perception of
emptiness, okay. When you walk down the street and recollect the Dharma
Jewel or you think of the Dharma Jewel, you have to think of the direct
perception of emptiness, mainly, okay, mainly. In the function of refuge, when
you take refuge only the emptiness … only the direct perception of emptiness
can really help you. When you’re talking about something that can help you or
protect it’s the direct perception of emptiness that can protect you. After you
reach the direct perception of emptiness what’s {lan du bowa} mean? Do you
remember? {lan du bowa}? No? What’s {lan du bowa} – seven-timer. You’ve
heard of two-timers okay, this is seven-timer. Seven-timer means someone who
has seven births to go before they become a Buddha, alright. And this is very
typical on the day you see emptiness you realize that you have seven births to
go and that’s called the {lan du bowa} okay. In other words, ultimate protection,
ultimate Dharma Jewel is the direct perception of emptiness because only at that
moment do you know directly yourself how many lifetimes you have to go and
you see them, okay, on that day and that’s the Dharma Jewel. So as you walk
round New York and recollect the goal that you’re studying for, the goal that
you’re trying to reach one of the most important ones is to remember the
quality of seeing emptiness directly, okay. Now the third jewel – a Sangha Jewel.
How do you have a close recollection of a Dharma Jewel … what is the ultimate
… I’m sorry, Sangha Jewel. What is the Sangha? It’s arya. Okay, I mean,
normally it’s anybody who is wearing a red suit, except Santa Claus, okay
[laughs]. Ultimately it refers to anyone who has seen emptiness directly. So as
you’re walking around New York city and you’re thinking of {drenpa} you’re
trying to recollect your final goal, your ultimate goal, basically see if you see any
theme here, okay.       You’re thinking of the ultimate emptiness of a Buddha,
you’re thinking about the direct perception of emptiness and you’re thinking
about all those people who’ve seen emptiness directly, okay? All right. And
Geshe Drolungpa is very adamant about it. He says, “the theme is emptiness”
and you have to be thinking about it as you walk around. When you think
about I want to become a Sangha Jewel, I would want to become a Buddha
Jewel, that’s what you’re doing. As you walk around New York he says, have
some kind of {drenpa}.        That’s the ultimate {drenpa} okay, that’s called the
{nyewa sha pa} like {drenpa nye shak} means close recollection. Now there’s a
… one which is not ultimate, all right. There’s another kind of {drenpa} and
Master Shantideva gets into that. That kind of {drenpa} is you’re choosing your
virtuous activity for the day and you {drenpa} it all day long. You keep it in the
back of your mind all day long, okay. And later on you’ll see in the verses he
says, “get in the habit of making it specific.” You know, go after one … in these
classes or in general, in Buddhism there are, there are tens of thousands of
virtuous practices. You will learn thousands and thousands of virtuous practices.
And I think he has an instruction later on. He says, pick one and stick to it until
you get pretty good at it. He’s very adamant about it. And I think this particular
class tonight is maybe the most useful one for us, for people in New York city,
you know. He says “pick one practice.” You have hundreds at your disposals
already okay. For example you could be doing tonglen, giving and taking on
your breath. You could be practicing any of the six perfections. You could be
practicing any of the things you learned in lojong in Rinpoche’s class, you know.
You could be practicing hundreds and hundreds of things and I think that the
habit of Americans especially and including myself is that you … you have so
many instructions and so many dharma teachings that you kind of don’t practice
any of them, you know. You just get overwhelmed, you know, you learn thirty
ways to do purification; ten ways to do … you know, you learn all this stuff and
then in practice you only have an hour or two today, during each day to practice
in meditation and you just get overwhelmed and then people on top of that go
out and get like three or four or ten tantric initiations and then they have all
these other things to do during their one or two hours of meditation. And it
turns out to be very similar to our lives, you know. The, the one or two hours of
practice time gets to be very scattered, very broken up, very unfocused and, and
you don’t get any result, you know.
Master Shantideva says you can’t do two things at once. He says it later on
tonight in the text, he says, you can’t do two things at once. He says, pick one
and carry it to its end, you know. So he would say for example, work on the
perfection of giving for six months or something. I personally find like one
month, one and half months is, is good to reach the level of something that
you’re going to reach easily or, or fairly strongly. And then, and then go on to
something else, you know, drop it for awhile, go on to something else. I think
you need to reach a balance in your practice between going into something in
depth and then when you dry out a little bit or you start to dry a bit, you
become less excited by it or less creative in it then stop it for the time being and
then go to a different one. Okay, go to a different one. But you should be have
… you should have {drenpa}. {drenpa} means in the back of your mind, as you
walk through New York - and it’s very difficult, I think New York maybe the
most difficult place in the world to keep {drenpa}. It’s very, very distracting. It’s
very, very difficult and if you can do it here you can do it anywhere, you know.
- keep your {drenpa}. Pick, pick a goal; pick one of the practices you learn and,
and stay with it. Master Shantideva is very adamant about it. Stay with it until
you get good at it and then go on to another one, okay. I say there’s two
extremes, I mean, [unclear] said, if you’re an intelligent person, you know, if
you’re sort of a creative thinking person, you will sort of dry out on something
after maybe a month, you know, it will dry out for you, you know, you, you do
the practice of giving, you make some good progress at it; you work at it pretty
hard and then go on to some … to another one. Then go on to another practice,
okay. Like keep it … what do you call it? Variety is the spice of life but, but
don’t have variety in, in one hour in the morning of ten different practices, it
won’t work. You won’t be able to do it. I think, I think Americans have two
tendencies; we either don’t do our practice or we try to do ten practices in the
morning. And then you fail either way, either way it doesn’t work. Did you
have a question? [student: [unclear]] [laughs] On … today or tonight and I
think if you don’t have any regular practice already, Master Shantideva would
say, start with giving. Start with the perfection of giving. Learn about it; study it
and then make it the theme of your day. Theme of your day means {drenpa},
you know. Make it the theme of your day. And in the back of your mind all day
long, I’m working on {drenpa}. Like I’m work … I happen to be working on
jealousy right now, okay [laughs] you know, I devoted like the last week or two
to jealousy and I’m just watching very specially for jealousy all day long.
Jealousy is the theme of my life right now. And {drenpa} means I’m going to
keep it in the back of my mind all day long that I’m especially sensitive to any
jealousy that comes up. And that’s … {drenpa} means the decision of what
you’ve chosen to concentrate on and you don’t lose it. A higher kind of {drenpa}
we talked about is, is keeping in mind the ultimate goal, you know, I would like
to become an enlightened being. I would like to see emptiness directly, you
know, like that. That, that should be always in the back of your mind especially
for bodhisattva track and especially after you take your vows tonight, if you
take that vow, okay, that vow, I should say, to think like a bodhisattva. So you
… that’s important in the back of your mind. That’s the ultimate thing, {drenpa}
in the back of your mind. But then choose a practice that’s going to be the theme
of your day. That’s going to be something that you’re concentrating on as you
walk through New York. Choose one thing. Does that mean you should dump
all your tantric commitments? Well, first of all you shouldn’t have taken them in
the first place if you didn’t have enough time to keep them, okay. Now it’s too
late anyway. So what do we do? By the way, you should … you must choose
one and … I mean, you must enter that teaching if you can, if you’re ready you
must enter it and then take one practice and concentrate on it. That’s, that’s
important. So what do you do? Do you just dump all your commitments? No,
you can’t, but you can scale them down to minimum necessary. And you’re
already … you’re either already doing that or you dropped them, okay, don’t
drop them. Scale them down to something that you can handle and then
concentrate on one, choose one and concentrate on it. I think since Rinpoche is
teaching a special one all the time, it might be good to concentrate on that one,
okay. All right. What’s the difference between {drenpa} and {sheshin}? And a
lot of people never get it straight, okay. {sheshin} is something different …
{sheshin] is … I like to call it the mental alarm, okay, it rings the alarm. Like
{drenpa} is supposed to be concentrating … I’m supposed to be concentrating on
jealousy right now, like the last two weeks, okay. And then something happens
called {dren pa shor}. {dren pa shor} in scriptural Tibetan, in colloquial Tibetan it
means to fall unconscious, you know, if Mike Tyson punches you, you get {dren
pa shor} okay. In scriptural Tibetan {tran pa shor} means you forget the object
of your focus. You forget what you’re trying to concentrate on totally. Totally,
like you go through a whole day being jealous the whole day and you just
forgot all about it. You just … that whole concept that I will have a theme today,
I will be having a certain theme and I’m going to be watching … you just forgot
it along. In, in a state of meditation the equivalent is called {jeng nge}. {jeng nge}
means you had a … you were visualizing a Buddha five minutes ago and in the
last four minutes and forty-five seconds your boss has been there [laughter] and,
you know, and then {dren pa shor} means {dren pa} got lost. You know, you
lost the {dren pa}. You’re not, you’re not … I like to call {dren pa} retention
sometimes except it sounds like a bowel movement or something, you know,
you’re like retaining the object is {dren pa}, you’re keeping the object in front of
you, that’s {drenpa}. {drenpa shor} means the whole object has disappeared,
your mind has gone onto something else and you’re not even aware of it, you
know. Like you have been thinking about your boss for the last thirty seconds
or minute or twenty minutes and, and you’re just not even aware of it, okay.
How do you go from not being aware that you lost your {drenpa} to being
aware? That’s the job of {sheshin}. Okay. That’s {sheshin}. So I like to call
{sheshin} watchfulness. {sheshin}is a part of your mind, it says in the scripture,
{so du lopa} means you keep in the back of your mind. It’s parked in the back of
your mind, it’s watch dog mind. It’s a watch dog state of mind. And {sheshin}’s
job is to ring the alarm when {drenpa} loses its object, okay. When {drenpa}
forgets or when {drenpa} loses that Buddha object and you have been on your
boss for like ten minutes, {sheshin} hasn’t been doing its job. {sheshin} supposed
to say, ring up the alarm, ding, ding, ding, ding, hey you’re thinking about your
boss, go back to the Buddha, okay. Assuming they’re not the same, okay. It
rings the alarm. It says, you, you’re off the subject; can you get back on the
subject please, okay. And that’s the function of {sheshin}. So {sheshin} is in the
back of your mind all the time. And {sheshin} is reminding you that you have
lost the object.
Shantideva when he gets to this point … I’m just going to, I’m going read you in
English what Gyaltsab Je says, okay, since you don’t have any reading [laughs].
Master Shantideva joins his palms at his breasts and begs us in the following
words. So he has this picture of Shantideva like, “PLEASE” you know, he’s like,
please. And then he has a quotation. “Those who wish to protect their minds
should do whatever they can to maintain at the cost of their lives their
recollection {drenpa} okay, which functions to prevent you from forgetting a
particular virtuous object of the mind and their watchfulness which examines
what is happening with the three doors of expression at any given time.” In
other words {sheshin} is watching, what am I saying; what am I doing; what am I
thinking, you know. It’s, it’s watching those three doors. By the way, the
guards {sheshin} only has three doors to watch. If it was more it might be more
difficult, like if you can talk through your ears or something, okay. {sheshin}
only has to watch your mouth, watch your body to see what it’s doing, and
watch your mind, okay. {sheshin} is watching three things. What is this guy
thinking? What is this guy doing? You know, what is this guy saying? And
{sheshin} is standing at those three doors, they’re called {go sum}. It’s standing
at the mouth; it’s standing at the mind and it’s standing at the hands and the feet
and it’s saying, “what is he doing right now? What are these guys up to? Are
they doing something good or something bad?” {sheshin}’s job is that. And if
{sheshin} sees you thinking something wrong or doing something wrong,
{sheshin} blows the whistle. Okay, it’s the whistle blower, that’s {sheshin}’s
function. That’s the difference between {drenpa} and {sheshin}. Then Shantideva
gets into a very beautiful advice and I think this is really useful for New Yorkers
about how you should move through the city, you know, how should you move
through the day. {sheshin}’s function its watchfulness, it’s watching what you
say, what you do, what you think. Okay, and he says very important at this
stage in your bodhisattva career to have some kind of a … to perfect the qual…
the ability to watch yourself, you know, to perfect the ability to say, what am I
doing right now? What am I saying right now? What am I thinking right now?
You know, it’s this ability to watch yourself and it’s very difficult, you know.
The easiest kind of watching as you may have noticed is watching what other
people say or do or think, seem to think. Okay, I mean, that’s the easiest one. I
mean, the easiest thing is to keep track of other people’s morality or other
people’s giving or other people’s jealousness, you know, that’s the easiest one.
The most difficult one is to watch your own. And he says you have to perfect
this ability. You have to get this ability to be very, very watchful of yourself as
you go through the day. And then he’s giving some clues about useful ways to
do it. He says if you get too much sense stimulus, you know, if too many things
are coming in, you will slip. Okay, if too much is coming in you’ll lose your
mindfulness, your awareness. And I mean, there’s actually two choices; you can
either retire to a monastery or nunnery or to Godstow, you know, and just get
away from all these things which is one option that you have. I mean, if you’re
having real problems with watchfulness you might want to consider moving to
… I was in Bloomington, Indiana, there’s no distractions there, you know
[laughs] [laughter], like the plane, the airport was like about as big as my room
in … and [laughs] the plane had like six seats on it and, and it’s pretty scary.
Anyway. That’s where we had the teaching this weekend. So then, you know,
you can either go to a place like that which is one option if you really can’t
handle all the stimulus then you should move it, you know, move to a place
where you … there’s less stimulus. But Master Shantideva goes into the, the
methods you can use to keep your mindfulness as you walk through … if you
choose to live in New York City which I think is the most difficult city, or the
most difficult place I’ve been to, to keep your mindfulness, you know, to keep
your awareness of what you’re doing and what you’re saying. So the first thing
he talks … he addresses, what should you do like you’re just walking around the
street. And then he has this special practice called dropping the eyes, okay.
Dropping the eyes. Where your eyes are watching, okay. He says, if you want
to get into mindfulness or watchfulness, start with your eyeballs, okay, watch
where your eyes are going. You can learn a lot from people’s eyes. You know, I
don’t know if you’ve noticed, okay. You can sit at a table and, and learn a lot
about them in a few seconds, you know, what do they look at; where do their
eyes go, you know. Like shoe salesmen their eyes are always down on the floor.
Diamond … people who work with diamonds are always looking at ladies’
fingers, you know, what kind of diamond do they have you know. People who
like food are always glancing at, at the food, you know. And, and you can learn
a lot. You know, just … you know, if you haven’t noticed yet, what is it …
Shakespeare said … eyes are the mirror of the soul or something like that, you
know, they are. You can judge who you are or how your mind is from where
your eyes are going. And watch, watch your own eyes, you know, decide
where your own eyes are going. And guard your own eyes. So the first thing
Master Shantideva says is, keep them down, okay. I mean, this is a big practice
for monks in Asia, and, and it’s also important for anyone. Master Shantideva
makes the point, he says, a lot of what I’m talking about was originally designed
for monks but it’s good for everybody and everybody should do it, you know.
So he says when you’re walking around New York city just keep your eyes
down. You have seen everything there is to see, trust me, okay. I mean, there
isn’t any store of any major significance that you have to see any more, you’ve
seen it all. You know, if you really … if you didn’t do it yet then, you know, take
three days off at work and go around New York and look at everything, you
know. There’s nothing new in New York, you know, there really isn’t anything
new and there hasn’t been [laughs] for a long time, you know. If there’s a
certain number of pizza shops, you know what I look at, [laughs], you know,
there’s a certain number of grocery stores and there’s a certain number of coffee
shops; there’s a certain number of this and that and it starts to repeat itself after
awhile. I mean, there’s nothing new in New York city. There’s no big reason to
be looking around as you go … as you walk around new York city, okay.
There’s no real burning need for a Buddhist to look at all those windows and all
those things that are going on and all the activities that people are doing. It’s just
no … there’s no benefit. It will crowd up your mind and you will lose your
{drenpa} and then when it’s time to meditate or it’s time to do something, you
won’t be able to do it. And if you have a theme going in your mind like
jealousy, I’m going to watch my jealousy, these things disturb your, your
{drenpa}. You know, they disturb you from thinking about your ultimate goal
also. You know, if you, if you don’t keep your eyes down, if you don’t control
your eyeballs as you go around New York you will … those other things will
overcome you. You know, they will fill up your mind, the things that you see fill
up your mind. It’s the same with like sounds, if you’re … you know, I used to be
a musician so, you know, if I just sit in a laundromat and I hear these songs and
then I go home, it’s like I can’t meditate for a day or something, you know. You
have to watch the level of sense stimulus that you allow to come into your mind
and that’s the idea. That’s what he’s talking about. So generally he says, keep
your eyes down and, and don’t be looking at all these things. You will forget
within two days everything you saw, so what’s the use of it. You know, it’s the
same with the New York Times, especially the Sunday Times, okay, you know,
you cannot remember a week later. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars you can’t
remember three weeks later one percent of what you read in the Sunday Times
that you spent three or four hours to read. It’s useless, it just goes away, you
know. You can … trust me, you can find out the headlines two ways; stop at one
of those pay things and look in and just figure out if they … anyone new has an
atom bomb or anything else important that you should know. And then … or
you can look over people’s shoulders in the subway and that’s enough. You will
learn everything that’s burning to know. Everything that you need to know
you’ll learn that way. You don’t have to buy it. You’ll save a lot of money too.
You don’t have to buy the newspaper, you won’t remember what’s in there a
week later, so what’s the use of looking at it. He’s saying, your eye real estate is
very precious. Human eyeballs are very rare and they don’t last very long and
use them for something important. So he says, keep your eyes down, don’t get
too much stimulus. I think this is most difficult to practice in New York and I
think also it’s of most benefit to New Yorkers, you know, if you can limit the
stimulus coming in as your walk around. You can be a better Buddhist, you
know, and it’s … I mean, what I mean is, it’s difficult to do but if you pull it off
it’s of great benefit when you’re living in the city because then you’ll be able to
concentrate on something. You’ll learn the art of concentrating on something
and keeping our mind on something. That’s {drenpa} okay. Second thing he
says, oh so, if yur homework says something like, give the four great divisions
of the eye practice. First one is just general advice on how to keep your eyes and
that’s down. Okay, as you move through the city keep them down. Second one
he says, what should you do if you get tired, like your mind is just getting kind
of dull from being down … you know, the cracks in the sidewalk can be very
boring after awhile, okay [laughs]. There are some sidewalks that are really
                                     th              th
great. I’ll tell you one is on 45 Street and 6 , and they have these little
diamonds in the sidewalk, you know, and they glitter [laughs] and … stuff like
that. And then the sidewalk near NYU has Pepsi out of Burma, things written all
over. You know, you get to know all the sidewalks. And [laughter] [laughs] and
he says if you get bored, you know, if it gets too much to be staring at the
sidewalk all the time, he says, look up and refresh yourself, you know, with the
idea that I am refreshing myself, you know. I’m going to look at these trees and
all these people and what they’re doing. You know, just with the idea of
refreshing your mind, okay. The third practice that he mentions with the eyeball
practice is what to do if you bump into somebody that you know. I mean,
someone comes up to you and says, “Hey, how you been, you know, I didn’t
see you since your old days at [unclear] “ and he says, look at them and be
normal. He says, you know, smile and say how are you, good to see you, you
know. [laughter] You know, he says you don’t have to like look at their feet or
anything, you know [laughs] [laughter]. He’s very clear. He says, look up at
them say, you know, engage in a nice conversation and then go on your way,
okay. He doesn’t say like ignore people or something like that. Then he says,
what should you do when you finish resting your mind. You know, you have
been looking at the cracks too long in the sidewalk, you look around and then he
says, go back to looking at the sidewalk. He says take the opportunity to see if
you’re walking into a pole [laughs] or if there’s any muggers around. You know,
he says it’s okay under special conditions, you know, like you’re crossing the
street you better look, you know, and like that. So he says, take the time …

[cut]

Side B

[cut] home or not. And where are you? What’s up? You know, any muggers
around? Any cars about to hit me? Any poles I’m walking into, you know. He
says, you know, take a rest, look around, check for problems. And then get our
eyes back down again, okay. Very … it’s a very interesting practice, especially
for monks okay, [laughs] if you see something you’re not supposed to see you
have a very simple option, just look down, you know, just put your eyes down,
you know and, and somebody is approaching you that you’re not supposed to
talk to in that way or, or something is going on, like that, you have a very nice
option, you have these things call eyelids, like ears don’t have them, your ears
don’t fold over when you don’t want to hear a certain song, you know,
[laughter] seriously but your eyes are different. Your eyes have these things call
eyelids and you can also … you also have the ability to drop your eyes. So you
just drop them and you just … when you start to focus on something that’s not
wholesome for a monk or anyone else to look at, you just, you just look away,
you know, just drop your eyes and go. Walk by, you know. And then you just
never see it so it never bothers your mind and, and your mind is clean and your
mind is pure and your mind is not upset. And you just go on to the next stop,
you know, you just keep going, following the cracks on the sidewalk, you know.
And, and it’s a very cool practice, you should try it, okay. People in New York,
you know, there’s a lot of mental illness here, manifest and not manifest. I
mean, almost everyone I think, no matter how healthy you are mentally, it’s
very stressful to live in New York. I mean, it has a … it has a sort of … it
wounds you as you live in New York; it wears on you and … and the stimulus,
the amount of stimulus is I think dangerous for any human mind in New York.
So I think it’s very … even if there’s no benefit to Buddhism, you know, even if
Buddhism is all wrong I think this particular practice is very interesting and very
sweet. You know, just turn your eyes down, get them down and walk through
New York that way and you’ll feel better, you know. You’d, you’d be able to
concentrate better. You’ll be happier; you’ll be less stressed out; you’ll be less
nervous. I think this is like proactive mental health, you know, if people in New
York can learn to, to keep their eyes down and to look away when you see …
when you start to focus on something that’s not nice, something that’s not pure
then just, just look away, okay, you have that choice, you have that option. And
if you start to get good at it you know, you can really do it nice. Shantideva says
you’ll start to get a little schizophrenic, you know. Like you start to look at
something … you’re going like that, you know, [laughs] [laughter] And then
you kind of wanna look and you’ll be going like this, you know, [laughter]
[laughs] and … or you’ll be going like that and he says it’s okay, it’s a sign that
you’re learning. You know, he says, don’t expect to be perfect with eyeball
meditation the first day. He says, he says you’ll get better at it with practice.
And the first, you know, a few weeks and months of something you’ll be like …
you’ll decide to keep your eyes down and then you’ll say, well, maybe I’d better
just check if there’s any muggers. And you put your eyes up at this object that
you’re not supposed to be looking at and then you remember, no, that’s not …
I’m just kidding myself, and you put your eyes down again. And then you pass
it. And then you say, well, maybe there’s someone behind me, you know,
[laughs] and you’ll act a little crazy for awhile, okay, that’s a good sign. He says
expect it. As you get better at this and as you get more serious at it you’ll find
yourself being a little strange. That’s okay. He says that’s, that’s fine.
Okay, we’ll take a break there and come back in about ten minutes, okay.

[cut]

You don’t have any reading, okay. And we’re really working hard on it; we
spent a lot of time on it; we just … it’s just too much to finish, okay. It says name
three special circumstances under one which may be allowed to let up
temporarily from the normally very detailed scrutiny of one’s thoughts and
bodily actions. In other words, in general you’re going to become a little like a
zombie, okay. If you do this well you’re going to be like, you know, what am I
looking at? What am I going, you know, what am I about to say? And you
should get like that. I’ve noticed a lot of students in these classes, I know a
certain group of the students here who are really doing {trunduk} okay, if you
know what {trunduk} is. If you don’t know what {trunduk} is don’t worry about
it. But they are, they are really, really carefully watching their vows six times a
day, they are checking their vows six time a day, okay. And I know that other
students who are, who have learned their Bodhisattva vows well and I hear this
very sweet thing constantly going on. If you ever get a chance to see “The
Wizard of Oz” again, at the very beginning when the dog runs away and the
nasty neighbor comes and screams at Dorothy. And her mum starts to respond,
what happened? Does anybody remember? The mother says, if I wasn’t a
Christian woman you know what I would say to you? [laughs] And, and it’s just
the same. I, I’ve heard these very sweet words coming out of people’s mouth,
you know. They start to gossip or they start to put down another dharma
center or they start to talk about another student in the class and they’re like half
way through the sentence and they just stop, you know, and they say, “ah” ,
you know, and then they say, “wait a minute, I’m breaking a Bodhisattva vow”
and they stop. And for awhile your life is going to be like that. And if you’re
one of those people who’s just stopping, then, you know, I salute you, you
know. This is the whole point of the classes. You’re supposed to be watching
your speech, watching your thoughts. I have this other … I have a few students
who told me they’ve made this new system which is called ‘this’ you know and,
and every time you catch yourself being jealous, you know, you go like that,
you know, [laugh] and it works, it hurts, okay. And, and then I really admire
that, you know, I think that is the essence of Buddhism, you know, it’s not these
classes, it’s not your homework, it’s not your quizzes, it’s that halfway through a
bad thought, you catch yourself, {sheshin} right? And you, and you stop, you
just stop. And that’s the point. That’s the whole point of doing this. Now this …
then Master Shantideva goes on to say look, and by the way, the more the
better, you know. If I see people doing that all the time … I see people walking
around with these little journals, they keep their bad deeds in it. And the people
who are doing it seriously over the last year, I really notice a change, you know,
I really do notice a change. They’re just getting sweeter. The people are getting
sweeter. Is that what the goal is? No, okay. It’s no good to be sweet and die.
It’s no good to be sweet and get old. Okay. But the point is you can’t stop death
or old age without stopping death, okay. The side effect or the by-product is
that you’ll be a very good sweet person and you’ll be a happy person. But the
main thing is you won’t be collecting the bad karma that prevents you from
getting to enlightenment, okay, and that’s the whole point. So I just want to say,
you know, I love it. I very much admire it. I see people really working hard on
their vows and that’s the whole point.
Master Shantideva says generally speaking you, you should at the beginning be
almost like a zombie, you know, like you start to say something and you realize
that most of what you say is useless talk or, or divisive speech or harsh words
and you just stop.       So you get this constant schizophrenic thing of          …
“oh….huu…h” what were you going to say? Oh, never mind. You know.
[laughs] And you’re going somewhere and you’re like … stop on the sidewalk
and turn around and go the other way ‘cos you just realize that you … that’s not
allowed by your vows, by your commitments. If you are a monk, if you took
Rinpoche’s initiations, you have almost five hundred different commitments,
okay, separate vows and commitments. If you’re a layman I think it’s about two
hundred and fifty, okay. Two hundred and fifty different things to be checking
for, throughout the day, okay; it’s a lot. And, and you have to know them all.
You know, which means you have to have a master list somewhere of, of what
you’re checking. If you don’t have such a list then you’re not keeping them.
And you have to know them; you have to keep them. Master Shantideva says
three instances in which you don’t have to go crazy about watching it. And he,
he talks about the following three. If your life is threatened, okay. Like if you’re
running down the street away a mugger you don’t have to worry that you
might bump into somebody or something like that. It just means in a very
serious situation and you know them, when you have to act quickly and
forcefully. You’re allowed not to sit there and be examining everything you say
or do, you know, just run, all right. Like example when Rinpoche ran from Sera
and he was being bomb by the Chinese artillery and strafed by the airplanes. He
didn’t stop to think about the following four actions that he would do, you
know, like run, you know, and that’s okay. That’s all right. Master Shantideva
says in a life threatening situation, in an emergency … he’s trying to say, by the
way, I think it’s {ma ying gok}. {ma ying gok} means by explaining the
exceptions he is telling you that all … in all other circumstances you should be
mindful, totally mindful. You know, by giving you an exception like, okay, if
your life is threatened which happens how often? I mean, it’s like once in your
life or something or twice in your life. What is he trying to say by implication?
All the other times you are supposed to act like a zombie and, and watch your
mind and watch your speech and watch what you do, you know. And by the
way, it does get natural after awhile but you act a little weird for awhile okay.
Second one, he says when you’re engaged in a celebration of offering to the
Three Jewels, for example like last time we did, we did the Mandala offering and
we got a little silly at the end. We were throwing flowers, you know. By the
way, that kind of silly is to me better than not being silly but anyway … he
would say, great you know, if you act a little … if you go a little wild, that’s fine.
You know, he says, you don’t have to be sitting there and saying I’m about to
throw these flowers, you know, oh, I wonder whether I should throw them or
er… just throw them [laugh] okay, that’s his second exception, all right. Third
one; if it is of some great benefit to other living beings, you know, if you’re
about to do something of great benefit to someone else you can let up very
slightly on the very, very close scrutiny of your own actions, you know. You
decide you’re going to do something and then go for it. And don’t hesitate.
Okay, and those are the three examples he gives. He does not mean, okay to be
immoral or breaking your ethics … your commitments. He’s just saying the
scrutiny you know, of your watching yourself like a zombie [laughs] or
something, it’s okay on, on occasions like that you can let up a little bit.
Somebody then gives him a hard time and Gyaltsab Je writes in his commentary.
Because somebody says keeping your awareness or keeping your mindfulness
about what you’re saying and thinking and doing is in, in a … it is the essence of
which perfection in a way? He said ‘meditation’, not bad. But … [student:
[unclear]] Uh, that’s pretty good too, no. Watching what you say, do and think;
it’s, it’s ethics. It’s number two, okay. It’s what they normally translate as
morality. The perfection of morality or the perfection of an ethical way of life.
It’s doing that that you constantly have to watch yourself, you know. Did I lie?
Did I steal? Did I hurt anyone? Is what I’m about to say going to hurt anybody?
Is what I’m about to do going to hurt anybody? And it’s that practice of being
very, very aware of what you do, that’s so necessary in the second perfection.
But Master Shantideva just got through talking about why the perfection of
giving … by the way he just, he gets … by the way, which is perfection of giving
is number what? One. Ethical way of life is number two. So somebody accuses
of Master Shantideva of making a booboo. He says, you said that when we are
doing some wild offering, you know, some very beautiful offering, we don’t
quite have to stare at ourselves as, as intently as normal. But that practice of
watching your mind and watching your actions is the perfection of morality,
which is number two. And each, each perfection as you go through the six
perfections is considered more serious or more important than the ones before
it, okay. I mean, number two is more important and, and considered a higher
level than number one. Number three is considered a higher level than number
two. And in fact when you go through the Bodhisattva bumis they are designed,
or they’re ordered by the increasing sophistication through the six perfections,
okay. Like number two is of more importance and more difficult than number
one. Number three is more important and more difficult than number two and
like that. There’s an order to the six perfections. And when you go through the
Bodhisattva bumis, although on the first bumi you are practicing … are you
practicing the first … do you know how to practice the perfection of wisdom by
the time you reach the first Bodhisattva bumi. Question for you. Why?
[student:[unclear]] Say it a little more precisely. He said, “In order to get to the
first bumi you have to see emptiness directly.” Yeah with, with the … with
bodhicitta. But there’s even more. It IS the same thing. You see, you said, you
have to get this in order to get that. But they actually happen at the same
moment. You know, if you have … if you’re a bodhisattva practitioner and if
you see emptiness directly you just entered the first Bodhisattva bumi. That is
the first Bodhisattva bumi, is to see emptiness directly as a bodhisattva, okay.
The first bodhisattva level, okay, starts at the day, on the day that you see
emptiness directly. So does that guy have any ability in the perfection of
wisdom? Of course. [laughs] Seeing emptiness directly is, is the sweetest form
of the perfection of wisdom, you know, of course he does. But the bumis, the
bodhisat… the ten bodhisattva levels they’re designed ... their design is on the
first one you, you perfect giving in a very, very great way, okay. In other
words, of course you have all the perfections by the time you reach the first
bodhisattva level. And of course you’re practicing all six of them on the first
bodhisattva level but the function of the first bodhisattva level is that you get
very, very powerful in your practice of giving. And then on the second
bodhisattva level you practice what? You practice all six. Okay. But you get
really good at number two and it goes like that. That’s why there’s an order to
the six perfections, okay. Yeah? [student:[unclear]] Yeah. Going up through
the ten bumis takes a long time. Two things here, by the way … so I’ll finish the
argument that the guy gave to Master Shantideva. He says, “you made a
booboo. What’s more important, perfection number two or number one?”
According to what I just said. Number two is more … is considered superior or
harder or, or more profound, okay. But Master Shantideva just said, if you’re
engaged in, in making some very important offerings it’s okay to let up on your
perfection of … on the watchfulness side of the perfection of … of the second
perfection in order to achieve the first perfection, okay. So this guy accuses
Master Shantideva of, of making a booboo. He says, “You’re telling that I
should let up slightly on perfection number two in order to get perfection one?
Don’t you know why the order of the six perfections is like it is?” And then
Master Shantideva, Gyaltsab Je respond and say, “Of course we know the order.
You don’t know the order. You have to perfect number one before you get to
number two.” Okay. [laughs] He accuses him of laying off perfection number
two to get perfection number one finished. He says, “You have to finish
perfection number one before you go on to perfection number two.” And then
he gets into a long … he gets into a long story about why you should pick one
perfection and work on it until you're good at it and then go on to the next
perfection. Does that mean that while you’re perfecting giving you shouldn’t
meditate or you shouldn’t have joyful effort or you should break your morality?
No. It just means you should focus on it and work on it. So if you want to know
something to be {drenpa} about during the next few months or something or
next few weeks, concentrate on the perfection of giving, you know, get good at
it. If you wait until you have totally perfected the perfection of giving before
doing any moral practices or any meditation, it could be a few lifetimes, so don’t
… you know, of course you should rotate them and go through them like that.
Okay, but the order is like that. I was interested in this question because it … I
have never seen, I’ve rarely seen a real argument about why each perfection
leads into the next perfection. And so this weekend we were searching through
all these texts on the computer and we found a couple of good explanations. The
one I’m going to give you is by the first Changkya Rinpoche. The first
Changkya Rinpoche was a teacher of the Emperor of China and a former life of
Pabongka Rinpoche, okay. So we’re going to go through that. He makes some
nice notes on it and I just thought you might like to hear it. It’s also a homework
question. He says, not being to concerned with possessions and not being
attached to possessions is an important element in which of the perfections?
Giving, okay. Not, not being too worried about how much you own because
you’re going to give it away right? And not being too attached to it are, are two
attitudes that are an important part of the first perfection. But they also lead
very sweetly and very naturally into the perfection of morality, of an ethical life.
In other words, if you are not too attached to material objects and if you’re not
worrying too much about them then it will be much easier for you to keep your
morality. You’re not going to lie to somebody to get money. You’re not going
to steal things, okay. You’re not going to do all these things of body and speech
that normally you might do. And you’re not going to do craving, number eight
of the ten, okay. So he says in that sense the perfection of giving when you get
good at it, it sets the stage for the perfection of morality. So he says, that’s the
connection; that’s why perfection number one leads naturally into perfection
number two. [student:[unclear]] Excuse me? [student:[unclear]] Yeah, and
again they are not exclusive. I mean, of course the better you get in meditating,
meaning keeping mindfulness the better your morality will be and like that. But,
but he’s just trying to justify [laughs] why you should go through them in that
order, okay. And I have not seen any really, many places in scripture where it’s
explained like that but the first Chankya Rinpoche did do it. Secondly; the
perfection of an ethical way of life which is number two, includes restraining
oneself from negative actions. And he says, that, that leads naturally into the
perfection of patience. Okay, the, the exercise of trying to restraining yourself
from saying things or doing things which are negative naturally leads into
patience. And I think patience with yourself, okay. I mean, one of the most
important forms of the third perfection is to have some kind of patience or, or …
this … patience is a little bit bad translation maybe, but it’s some kind of
endurance, okay. I mean, the third perfection involves being able to keep up this
exercise over a long period of time and not get depressed or not get … lose your
courage and to put up with hardships if you have to put up with hardships. So
that … he says, then that naturally, because you’re going to be working so hard
to restrain yourself from hurting other people and that’s such an exhausting
thing to restrain yourself, that you will naturally learn patience and sometimes
patience in Buddhism means endurance, spiritual endurance, you know, working
on it over and over and over again until you finally can prevent certain bad
habits in yourself. If you have a really bad habit and you’ve tried to struggle
with it as a Buddhist then you, you know what I’m talking about. It’s some kind
of endurance, you know, it might take all night to fight a certain mental
affliction. It takes some kind of patience or not being discouraged; some kind of
willingness to fight it over a long period of time; endurance, what do you call it?
Mmm … stick to it [unclear] or some… perseverance. Really perseverance,
okay. It’s hard to stop yourself from doing your bad habit. But the exercise of
that builds up your perseverance and that is the third perfection. So he says,
therefore the perfection of morality flows very naturally into the perfection of
patience, okay. Okay. What’s the connection between patience and effort? He
says, he’s on the same theme. You will have to put with many hardships during
your spiritual practice. You know, there will be many bad times. If you’re, for
example, fighting jealousy or something and you’re jealous about a certain
person and I can tell you from personal experience of twenty years, same
person, I won’t tell you who it is, fighting jealousy for that person is a hardship.
It’s hard, you know, and, and you lose sometimes. It hurts. You know,
sometimes you get out of control and your mind is out of control and you know
it’s out of control and then the next day you feel bad about it. And, and these are
spiritual hardships, you know. It’s not just that you might go hungry or thirsty
or something like that. But it’s all the mental struggles you have to go through
for dharma, learning to overcome those and be happy about them. You know,
to take joy in the fact that you are at least fighting these habits in your mind
instead of just letting them walk all over you. Leads naturally into the next
perfection which is what? Joyful effort, okay. Happy about doing good deeds,
okay. So being a hard arse about your spiritual life and learning to be tough and
to put up with hard times in your own mind, in the war with your own mind,
leads naturally into being happy about doing goodness; joyful effort, number
four. Okay. Then he says something interesting. He says, if you have joyful
effort - number four - you will be doing good things all day and all night, okay.
In other words, effort means you, you enjoy doing dharma. And you’ll find
yourself doing some kind of dharma thing all the time, you know, day and
night. You will be concentrating your life and the efforts of your life will be
concentrated on one thing which is being a good person, being a dharma person.
That’s a kind of single mindedness. That’s a kind of focusing on one thing. And
that leads naturally into the perfection of concentration or meditation. So he
says, the exercise of concentrating your life, day and night on, on what you
enjoy, on enjoying goodness is, is naturally leads into the fifth perfection which is
concentration or meditation, okay. Because you get in a habit of being single
minded. The connection between five and six is, I think, the easiest connection.
The ultimate form of number six is to see emptiness directly under the influence
of bodhicitta. Under the influence of the wish to be enlightened. You cannot see
emptiness directly if you’re not in a deep state of meditation. Impossible. And in
fact they say that almost every movement between the different spiritual levels
occurs on your meditation cushion, okay. The spiritual levels are like a ladder
and each rung, each step up occurs during a state of deep meditation. Almost all
the progress that you make between the different paths and levels, moving
between paths almost always occurs on your meditation cushion. So if you’re
not on your meditation cushion, you’re going to be at the bottom of the ladder
for a long time, okay. So he says … and, and in order to see emptiness directly
your mind must be in a certain state of deep meditation, must be. In other
words, you cannot practice number six, the perfection of wisdom, unless your
mind is number five, the perfection of meditation. So that’s the connection
between five and six. So now you get a feeling, you know, they only mention it
in Gyaltsab Je’s commentary and Master Shantideva only mentions it briefly but
here you get first Changkya’s Rinpoche’s explanation of why the perfections are
a progression. You know, why each one is considered to be more difficult and,
and a higher level than the one before. Does it mean that they cannot be
practiced simultaneously? No. What it means is that as you move up through
the bodhisattva levels each level is marked by the extraordinary ability to
practice one of the six perfections, and that’s the way it goes. That’s the way the
levels are, are put out. That’s in fact the structure of the, of the text we use for
emptiness in the monastery. That’s Chandrakirti’s Madhyamikavitara. That’s
the structure. The whole book is built on that, on that structure for that reason.
Uh, this about covered everything. Last question on your thing and then we’re
gonna take a short break and get ready for those who’d like to take vows. By
the way, the vow that you’re taking tonight, you are not taking the Bodhisattva
vows, okay. You’re not taking sixty-four different vows that you have to keep
for your whole life, for all your future lives, actually. It’s not that. We are only
doing the vow to think like a bodhisattva, okay. It’s a commitment that for the
rest of my life I will try to emulate a bodhisattva, you know, I’ll try to act a little
bit, I mean, think a little bit like a bodhisattva. I will try to commit myself to a
spiritual life in order to gain some high level where I can really help other
people, that’s all you’re committing to, okay. You’re, you’re committing to think
like a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva has two things on his mind or her mind; I want
to reach this high spiritual level so I can really help other people. And that’s,
that’s going to be the purpose of my life. That’s what I’m going to live for now,
is other people, and I’m going to try to reach that level for other people. And
that’s … those are the two things you have in mind when you take your vow
tonight, okay. I mean, it’s just one vow. No big deal. It’s the cheapest you can
get away with, okay.
Master Shantideva … I’m sorry we don’t have the text ready, we’ll try, we’ll try
to finish it by Thursday, if not then by the review but he, he makes a list; there’s
a whole bunch of verses, I think it’s four or five verses or at least sections of
verses which are dedicated to the idea of {shing shindu mepa} Say {shing shindu
mepa}[repeat] I will put it here, okay. [silence] What does {shing} mean?
[unclear] says “wood”, that’s correct, okay. {shing} means wood. Wood like
tree, tree wood, okay. {shingdu} means like. Like a piece of wood. {mepa}
means to stay. Stay like a piece of wood. I like to use the word in English
“freeze”, okay. It means freeze, like a bump on a log. Okay, I mean, we say like
a bump of a log, right. It means not moving, immobile. It means freeze, okay.
And Master Shantideva he wants to … these are so cool, I mean, this part in the
text is so cool. The whole thing about the eyes, you know, eyeball meditation as
you walk around New York, it’s very sweet and very important and you should
try to do it. You should make it your practice for the next few days, try it. It will
just improve your mental health, even if nothing else, okay. You just won’t see
so much that you don’t have to worry about. But this meditation is also cool.
It’s called freezing. And what it means is that Master Shantideva makes a long
list of situations in which a Buddhist must freeze. [laughs] Okay, it’s very cool.
What it means is this whole class and this part of the Bodhicharyavatara is
devoted to mindfulness, you know, being aware of what you’re saying; being
aware of what you’re doing; being aware of what you’re thinking. And then
when you start to say something or you start to do some bad habit that you
used to do or you even start to think something then just freeze, you know, shut
up. Shut up in mid sentence. Shut up before the rest of the sentence gets out.
I’ve seen a lot of students in this class … I really, really like it. I know they’re
checking their vows everyday ‘cos they start to something you know, they say
“I saw this guy and he …” and you say, “what?” and they’re like, “uh, never
mind” You know, it’s like “uh, never mind” is great. “Uh, never mind” means
… and then … we were getting in … what was that we were getting into … I tell
you what I was going to say and then you say it, you know, that one is not as
good. That’s not real freezing, you know, [laughs] [laughter] What’s the other
one? There’s another one that’s been going down. I tell you what I was going to
say, is one … [student:[unclear]] Yeah, no … that’s, that’s the one. You get
almost as much pleasure out of it, saying it. Maybe a little more even. Forget
the other one. But it was like just st… just cut yourself off, okay, and, and don’t
worry. And, and don’t … and if your dharma friend cuts himself off don’t
pressure them to tell you what they were going to say, okay. [laughs] [laughter]
Just let it go. I mean, I’ve been a few situations … we were discussing something
just now during the break and there were three of us standing there and we just
decided not to talk about it because it was something not nice, you know. We
just … it was something negative and then we just said, “Why don’t we just not
talk about it” and everybody else, “That’s a good idea”, just, and just don’t talk
about it. It’s very good. You should get into it, you know, get into it. And when
thoughts come up in your mind, just say, freeze, okay. Stop. You know, you
just stop and it’s very useful. Also when you’re about to do something
physically that’s wrong and you just stop. Like stealing or something like that.
Like your hand is halfway out there and you just like, like that, you know, and
it’s cool You can do it, okay. I’m going to give you a few of the mental ones
that Shantideva mentions, okay. If you’re in Tibetan track this is the only
Tibetan I could think of to give you … so. [silence]
Say {chakpa} [repeat] This is the {chakpa} that means {der chak} and we talked a
lot about it in … say again. [student:[unclear]] That’s {chupa}. What’s {chakpa}?
Who was in … [student:[unclear]] Yeah, they say attachment, okay {chakpa} but
I like to call it … you know, if you read the def… we had it in Massachusetts, in
Berry, if you’ve, if you were there and you saw the definition this is technically
liking things ignorantly, okay. You have to have three words there. Like things
ignorantly. Is it wrong for a Buddhist to like things? Well, if it is then the
Buddha is not a Buddhist because the Buddha likes nirvana; the Buddha likes to
help sentient beings; I think the Buddha probably likes ice-cream, okay. Stuff
like that. He doesn’t really, he doesn’t need it, okay. He likes all those objects
which create bliss in him which happens to be every object in the universe but
that’s another point. Of course you can like things; you should like things; you
should like nirvana; you should like the path. We had that argument before,
right? Gyaltsab Je talked about it. But liking things ignorantly which basically
boils down to willing to do something wrong to get them, you have to freeze,
okay. If you find yourself liking something to the point or where it drives you
to the point … by the way, there has to be ignorance involved. And if you were
in Indiana or if you were in, where were we, I forget. It was Massachusetts.
There is five steps to this process. Basically if you don’t misunderstand an object
you can’t like it ignorantly, but that’s a story that we don’t have time to get into
tonight. Basically if you catch yourself wanting something to the point where
you would say something or do something wrong to get it, for example, going
along with your boss who tells you to go out and lie to the diamond dealer to
get the diamond, okay, to look good for your boss; you have to freeze. You
have to stop, right that moment, just stop and, and tell your boss, you know, I’m
sorry, I can’t do that, you know. And he’ll fire you and sooner or later you’ll
find a job that you’re not asked to lie. Okay. [laughs] I guess there are such job,
but like that. Just freeze. Just stop. Just don’t it, okay. Just freeze. Second one.
[silence] I’m using the words that Master Shantideva uses it in his text, okay.
Say {trowa} [repeat] {trowa} means what? [student: anger] It means anger but if
you study the definition as one of the root, root, root mental afflictions it’s
disliking things ignorantly. Misunderstanding the ultimate nature of things and
disliking them. Is it wrong to dislike things? What does Gyaltsab Je say? No. Is
it wrong to get mad? Not necessarily, you know. What should you dislike? The
mental afflictions, okay. And there’s this big argument and Gyaltsab Je defends
himself. He was very good at it by the way. He used to go down to the Sakya
and wipe those guys out. There are lots of records of it. But, but you have to get
… this … the meaning of {trowa} in this case is disliking things strongly enough
… by the way, you must misunderstand their nature, strongly enough to do
something wrong to get away from them, to stop them. There’s the definition
of disliking things ignorantly, okay. If you find yourself in a situation like that
and the example is, disliking your boss to the point where you would talk back
or do something negative back to your boss; then freeze. Freeze. Does it mean
if your boss is doing violence to another employee you should not do anything?
No. You must do something if you’re on bodhisattva track. Does it mean that
you can be mad at your boss? No. Okay, we’re talking about the mental side,
okay. If you have any hatred for your boss, you have to stop, you have to
freeze, okay. And Master Shantideva is particularly talking about the physical
and the verbal reactions, like you’re about to say something, just freeze it, okay.
Like your mouth opens up and you become … oh and just shut up; just stop
yourself. Okay, you get good at this and you’ll look weird, okay. [silence] Say
{nga gyel} [repeat] We had it last week, right? Pride. Pride. Catch yourself
having pride, just stop, okay. Especially if the pride gets to your mouth or your
arms, okay. All right, just stop, freeze. Be like a piece of wood, okay. [silence]
Say {gyakpa} [repeat] . {gyakpa} is conceit and we talked about in the last …
when we talked about the secondary mental afflictions.            It’s to focus on
something about your mind or your body which you are proud about, you
know, like, I’m smarter than other people or I’m more handsome than other
people or I’m, you know, stronger than other people or something like that.
And that’s {gyakpa}. If you catch yourself doing it, freeze, okay. Master
Shantideva says, learn to freeze. [silence] Say {tsang druwa} [repeat] {tsang}
means an ant’s nest. {druwa} means to dig it up. Digging up an ant’s nest is the
Tibetan word for? It’s a special kind of a mental affliction and a special kind of
bad deed where you go after someone else’s faults. Where you try to embarrass
someone or to criticize them openly and to publicize someone else’s faults,
yellow journalism, okay. Like you found out some dirt on somebody and you
want to publicize it. That’s {tsang druwa}, okay. Normally it, it, it compounds
itself. You find something bad about them and make it public. And then
normally they will find something about you and make it public. Hector, no,
okay. Does it mean that if you learn about some dark secret about a person
which is important for other people to know, and especially a teacher for
example, no, you must publicize it. You have to check it out, make sure it’s true,
okay. But if it’s like something dirty or something bad or the person is teaching
something wrong, you’re allowed and encouraged to attack it, okay. That’s not
what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the kind that you do at work
where somebody made a mistake on a report and you want to make sure
everybody in the office finds out about it, okay. Like that. Hector? [student:
[unclear]] Talking about what? [student:[unclear]] Yeah, I guess I do that
[laughs]. Yeah, yeah, but it’s really, yeah, I guess you could say that. It’s to
identify some fault in them and make sure everybody around knows it for no
good constructive reason. Just out of malice, okay. [silence] By the way, do you
start seeing a pattern here? I mean, it’s basically all the secondary mental
afflictions and primary mental afflictions that we just went through, okay. So
actually what Master Shantideva is saying is, freeze, is, freeze on twenty-six
occasions, you know, [laughs] whenever you have a mental affliction. He’s
saying, you know, if you can freeze while you’re thinking it, better. If you can’t
freeze while you’re thinking it at least freeze when you start to say something or
do something. You know, at least stop. Say {yo-gyu} [repeat] We had it last
week. Sometimes they divide it into two. Just generally it’s deceiving other
people. Putting on, pretending to have qualities that you don’t have. Trying to
hide bad qualities that you do have. Trying to trick or deceive other people,
okay. [silence] By the way, there’s no big number to this. He makes a long list.
I’m only giving you a handful so you can answer your homework, okay. Say
{dak-yu} [repeat] those of you who are doing {trunduk} what’s a {dak-yu shem
ma….} Ayah. Praising yourself, okay. As a Bodhisattva vow it’s a very special
praising of yourself. But we’re not going to talk about it. Here he’s talking
about just generally putting yourself up, you know, talking great about yourself,
you know, I’m, I’m so wonderful. By the way, I believe and I’ve noticed in my
own self particularly [laughs] that this often manifests itself as just talking too
much, you know, not letting other people talk during a conversation. I think
normally it boils down to praising yourself, like your, what your projects are so
interesting and they don’t have anything to talk about so you spend the whole
conversation talking about yourself, basically. And I, I find myself doing this and
I think it’s a reflection of {dak-yu}, it’s a kind of {dak-yu}. It’s where you just take
over a conversation and, and talk about what you like to talk about and all the
great things that you’re doing. And everybody else is going … oh, oh, you
know, and then finally they just give up. Like your best friends learn just to shut
up when they meet you and you’ll do all the talking, you know. I think that’s a
reflection of {dak-yu} okay. [silence] Say {shen mu} [repeat] Putting down
other people, okay. I believe that for myself about seventy-five percent of my
conversation is putting myself up and I try to reserve like twenty-five percent to
put down other people. But I try to make it subtle, you know, and not too
obvious but you’ll find yourself doing it. If you check yourself you’ll find
yourself doing it. Unless there’s some very important necessity which there
rarely is, just cool it, you know. Just freeze. You cannot … I mean, there’s
horrible stories in the … in the Vinaya of these people who put down other
people, who couldn’t read their minds and then later found out that they were
very holy people who were doing things that looked a little bad but were
actually very extraordinary virtues.           And horrible stories of them taking
thousands of births in the hells and stuff like that. And the person telling the
story is always telling about their own past lives, when they made a mistake.
Who is that? Who is the person who is telling these stories? It’s the Buddha,
okay. He is describing from first hand experience all the times that he judged
other people and said something bad about them only to learn, you know, like
twenty thousand hell births later that they were very pure people who were
doing extraordinary actions that he could not understand at the time or
something like that. So be careful about putting down other people. You can
resist evil, you know, if person looks like they are doing something bad then
resist it but … and you must resist it as a bodhisattva but in the back of your
mind, if it’s not like real evil, just avoid, you know, don’t even talk about it; don’t
get involved with it; spend your time constructively. Spend your time on the
mental afflictions that you’re quite sure about that they exist which is your own,
okay, and don’t worry about other people’s mental afflictions. If they are doing
something bad let them know it and try to help them and then if you have to try
to stop them. But work on your own men… you know the state of your own
mind uniquely and perfectly. And there’s lots … there’s a lifetime of material
there to work on, okay. {shen mu} [silence] {shewa} is yelling at somebody, you
know, hey, shouldn’t have done that stupid. Okay, {shewa} means scolding
somebody. If you’re keeping your Bodhisattva vows well it’s one of those … it’s
in there, right? Where is it? Huh? What? Yeah, to return a scolding with a
scolding. It’s one of the four … what do they call them? The four … the four
points of virtue, okay. If you’ve taken your Bodhisattva vows one of them is not
to return a {shewa} with a {shewa}. Okay, not to return anger with anger like
that. This one is if someone gives you a good scolding you don’t just return it,
{shewa}. And there’s a whole list more. I’m not going to go into more, okay,
you can read it when you get the reading. In your homework you have to put
six in Tibetan. Did we do six? We did six, okay. That’s enough. You can forget
three, all right. But we have to stop there in order to get ready for the
ceremony.

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