ACI 14 «Лоджонг: развитие доброго сердца», занятие 3

Lojong, Developing the Good Heart
Class Three: Eight Views of Emptiness.
GMR
May 26, 1998
Transcriber: Su Hung
Tibetan Edit 1 - AD

We didn’t quite finish the last lojong we were on. We ran out to time. And we
were on the Eight Verses and we were on the middle of the last verse. And the
last verse says: {dedak kun kyang chu gye kyi tokpay dri-me mabak par.} So all
of these things that you’re doing for other people, for example, in any situation,
any time interacting with another person, if somebody is going to get the short
end of the stick, you take it. And this means everywhere – this means on a bus,
on the subway, standing in line for some tickets, waiting for the bathroom; who
is going to wash the dishes; who is going to clean up; who is going to do the
dirty work; who is not going to get on the bus; who is going to get the worse
seat? Once you have studied lojong, it has to be you. PERIOD. And then I said,
don’t let your mind start diluting it. Don’t let your mind start saying, ‘Oh well
you know I really have to get there. I have a dharma class’, something like that.
Your mind will start to dilute it. And I had students come up to me and say,
‘Well you know, what if this happens, and I could have lost myself and it would
be very bad, you know.’ And I say, ‘No, no, don’t…hold the line.’ There’s a line
right here. The lojong is creating a line here that you have never been there
before. You have never lived there before. And this line is, is in a new place. And
everybody else gets what they want first and you come last, okay. And
everybody else gets the advantage of the situation and you get the lost. And you
take care of other people invisibly and anonymously. And they never know it.
And that’s the principle of lojong. And don’t let your mind start pushing the line
back, and say, ‘Come on lets be reasonable.’ You have been reasonable all this
time and you’re dying. I mean the reason you’re dying, the reason your body is
mortal is because you have been acting that way, really. When you study
Highest Tantra, they explain it physically why you’re getting old and why you
have to die. And it all has to do with that attitude that we have been holding up
to now. If you could get old with that attitude and stop that attitude, that is how
you reach a deathless paradise. And you can go there. And many, many people
have gone there. And you never will go there if you don’t change that line. If
you start letting the {lojong} get diluted, you’ll never change. You’ll live like you
are which means you will die, okay. You will be like that. I was studying for the
next class, the (lojong dun duma} didn’t do much, The Seven Point Lojong, very
famous and I was looking through…we have about forty, fifty thousand pages
of catalogues and I’m trying to figure out who wrote this stupid thing. You
know one catalogue said this Geshe Chekawa ; one catalogue said Gyalsa Togme
Sangbo; one catalogue said Serlingpa; one catalogue Lord Atisha; one book said
the Lord Buddha wrote it. You know I’m like all confused and I’m trying to
figure out, who wrote this thing you know. I mean it’s the most famous lojong
there is and nobody knows who wrote it. I went and asked Rinpoche, ‘Who
wrote this thing anyway?’ I think it’s Chekawa, I don’t know. We were looking
and I’m studying. There appears to be a commentary by Chekawa before the
root text was written down and two hundred years later and the whole thing is
confusing. Then finally I get it all down, it was secret. The lojong was secret until
about twelve hundred or something. It was kept secret. And then you say,
‘Why? Why keep it secret?’ and then it has all these explanations that people
couldn’t handle it and they would disrespect it. They would say, ‘Sounds nice, not
practical.’ Or they would by refusing to live by the lojong they would disrespect
the lojong and collect more bad deeds than if they had never heard it. So they
kept it secret. And around twelve hundred they started to teach it openly. They
taught the lam rim openly for two hundred years before they taught the lojong
openly. Because they figured people couldn’t handle it. And people would start
to disrespect it. People would come to Michael Roach and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, take a
loss myself but this one thing, at work you know, it would be crazy for me to
take the loss; it would be crazy for me to give all the advantage to the person.
They’re really bad, it’s unjust.’ The root text says, unjust, okay. Forget the unjust
and the just. It says, {mi rikpay gyongka ranggi lenpa dang gelka shenla bulwar
shok}. It says that. It doesn’t say in a reasonable situation where you deserve the
benefit or the profit out of a situation, then take it. It doesn’t say that. It says,
‘when the other person is screwing you, take it. And God bless them and help
them and give them everything they dream for.’ And most people… that’s why
the lojong was secret and maybe we are disrespecting it also. Be careful. I mean,
it’s very holy. If you think it’s just some nice, cute, little verses that some guy
wrote, and people say these are miscellaneous texts. In all the catalogues, these
are miscellaneous texts. It’s only one page long, oh, must be miscellaneous, not
very important. Heart Sutra, two pages, okay, be careful. Very holy. So tonight
we’re going to finish the last verse of the Eight Verses and he says, {dedak
kunkyang che gye kyg tokpay dri-me mabak par} means don’t let your practice
of the lojong be polluted; don’t let your lojong practice be made corrupt by
thinking of the eight thoughts. And then we went over them and they’re very
difficult. Most people…I think it was Nitszche said, ‘everyone is good
philosopher when their stomach is full and then philosophy goes out the
window when you’re hungry.’ And you know as long as you’re feeling good
you practice lojong. And the minute you get sick or something you start being
grumpy and you start acting bad to other people. That’s not lojong. Or you just
made some extra raise at work so you’re generous and friendly to everybody on
the way home. And then when you get your pink slip or when you get cut your
salary, then you’re grumpy for three days and you’re mean to everybody. No,
you can’t do that. He says {mabak par}. {Mabak par} means don’t take this
beautiful holy water and throw crap in it. You know that’s what the word
means. Don’t take the lojong and make it corrupt with these worldly thoughts.
And then we… I indicated last class that a later lama named Changkya Rinpoche
who is later to become Pabongka Rinpoche, and was the emperor’s Lama, that
would be like being lama to Bill Clinton or something or better. He was the lama
to the emperor of China. He said, ‘No, no the Eight Thoughts here are more
profound. There’s something different.’ And I will give you those eight and then
we’ll go on to today’s, different Lojong. {ta gye} {mtha’ brgyad} The last verse of
the Eight Verses is very, very profound. And what it’s saying is, according to
Changkya Rinpoche, you cannot practice lojong unless you understand
emptiness. And if you read this…there’s lot of versions of the Eight Verses,
which only have seven verses because they thought verse number eight was too
heavy for people. And you will see versions throughout scriptures where there’s
only seven verses. So the last verse is really…you have to do all this lojong stuff
and the only way to succeed at lojong stuff is to stop believing that things are not
empty. You have to understand emptiness to practice lojong properly. If you
don’t practice lojong with an understanding of emptiness you will fall into the
eight thoughts that we talked about last time. When you feel good, you will
practice lojong well. When you feel bad you won’t practice lojong well. When
you’re getting something you will happy, when you’e not getting something
you will be unhappy and it will affect your dharma practice. Those all hinge on
not understanding the real nature of existence and not understanding emptiness.
So Changkya Rinpoche says, lets stop fooling around. He’s not talking about
those eight emotions, he’s talking about eight kinds of wrong understanding of
emptiness. And if you get down to those eight you wouldn’t have the other
eight anyway. So lets get down to the real eight, which is {ta gye} Say {ta}
[repeat] {gye} [repeat] {ta gye} [repeat] {ta} means extreme. Like if you had a
lama who had gone to the final limit or the final edge of enlightened behaviour
and being, you might call him {tarchin} {mtha’ phyin} – gone to the {ta}, that’s
what {tarchin} means. That’s what our root lama’s name is. So {ta} means a limit.
Sometimes it can mean a cliff or like that or the edge of a table or the edge a cliff.
{Ta gye} means eight. Eight different…you can call them the eight different cliffs
that you could fall off, okay. If you have these eight it will screw up your lojong,
like the root text says, your lojong, this pure beautiful crystal water will be… it’s
like if you threw dog food into water or something, you know; it will be this
ugly, dirty water. If you can’t divorce it from these eight wrong ideas, about
what? About emptiness, okay? You cannot practice lojong successfully unless
you understand emptiness, okay. If you understand emptiness, you can do
those seven verses which are very hard to do but if you understand emptiness,
no problem. If you don’t understand emptiness it’s like suicide attack. It’s like
walking into a minefield without any armour or something, you know what I
mean?      It’s crazy to try to practice those seven verses, to try to give other
people the benefit and take all the loss yourself, for example, if you don’t
understand emptiness, you’ll probably fail, miserably. And it will be painful. If
you do understand emptiness, it’s a breeze. So you have to avoid these eight
thoughts, {ta gye}.
They all hinge on…{ngo bos grub pa} say {ngowu} [repeat] {druppa} [repeat]
{ngowu druppa}.{Ngowa} means essence or nature; essential nature. {Ngowu}
means by the essential nature and {druppa} means to exist. And it means that
things could exist from their own side or things could exist through some nature
of their own. {Ngowa druppa} means the idea that things could exist from their
own side. That this is a pen, that this blue and white cylinder is a pen from its
own side and not because of some way that you’re looking at it, okay. If this
pen was…oops sorry, I did a {ngowu druppa}. If this white and blue cylinder
were a pen from its own side then any creature that walked in here, including a
dog or a roach would, would say, ‘Oh pen. That’s a pen.’ But it’s not a pen from
its own side. So what does an animal see when it walks in here? ‘Oh there is
blue and white cylinder. I don’t know what they use it for, probably good to
chew on.’ Who’s right? The dog or the human? Is this a nice chewing thing or is
it a pen? Who’s right? Both. I mean it depends, if you’re a dog, it’s a chewable
thing. If you’re a human it’s a pen. But don’t tell me it’s a pen from its own side
or else a dog would be writing with it and a human would be trying to chew it.
Don’t tell me it’s a pen from its own side. Don’t think like that. If you think like
that then you’re holding this thing to be self existent, okay. What is this thing
from its own side? Right now it’s just a cylinder, blue and white. If I start
writing with it, you will say, ‘Pen.’ If a dog walks in then he will say, ‘Oh
something good to chew on’ especially a puppy. And each one is right. Which
proves that the pen is not coming from its own side. The pen is coming from
some kind of perception of the viewer. Pen is in the eyes of the beholder.
Chewable object is in the eyes of the beholder, okay. There’s nothing more pen
about this than there is a chewable object about it. From its own side it’s just a
blue and white cylinder, that’s all. It does not have a nature of being a pen from
its own side. {Ngowu druppa} means it could have a nature like that, which
means there’s no such thing as {ngowu druppa}. There’s no such thing as a pen
that’s a pen from its own side. There’s lots of cylinders in the world that are pens
because you are happening to be seeing it as a pen but there aren’t any cylinders
in the world that are pens because they are pens from their own side, okay.
There’s no such thing as a cylinder, which is a pen from its own side. You gotta
get used to that. If you understand that you can practice lojong successfully.
You can develop ultimate compassion for other beings successfully. You can
truly give up what you want and offer others what they need but if you don’t
understand that you won’t succeed. The key is somewhere there and Changkya
Rinpoche says read the verse that way.           What are the eight extremes? 1-
{Kyewa}{skye ba} By the way these are very, very famous from a work by
Nagarjuna, 200AD, third century AD, very famous, {Mulaprajña} Starts out
{Kyewa mepa, gakpa mepa, cha mepa takpa mepa} ok , it’s like that. The eight
extremes. Say {kyewa} [repeat] {kyewa} [repeat] Okay, things don’t start –
{ngowu druppa}. Nothing in the world starts (ngowa druppa). If you want
something to start in your life, if you’re looking for a new relationship, if you’re
looking for the start of a new job, if you’re looking for a new apartment, none of
it is going to happen from its own side okay. This is very profound. You want a
new apartment, take care of other people’s needs for housing. And you will be
able to find a new apartment easily because that’s the only place where a new
apartment comes from.           You need money, your credit card bills are
overwhelming you, be generous to other people. Give to other people and then
the money will come. How will the money come if I’m generous to other
people? This is very profound. Money is only paper. This is only a blue and
white cylinder, okay? Money is only paper. It’s only in the mind of people who
use it. Try to give a dollar bill to an Eskimo to buy some reindeer meat, up in
Alaska two hundred years ago, they will say, ‘Are you crazy?’ I mean money is
just a convention. Money is something that has value because you perceive it as
having value. And the same with the pen. Why does everyone in the world
recognize the paper that you have as valuable? Because they have collected
some karma in the past that you’ve collected in the past. That’s where money
comes from. That’s why money has value. If you have certain kinds of paper
and other people have certain kinds of karma to see it a certain way, they will
give you an apartment for this paper. And that’s how it works. It’s all a
perception. Why are they having the same perception of the paper that you’re
having? Why is everyone having such a lucky perception today that they’re
accepting my paper in return for an apartment? Past karma. You gave that
necessary help to people in the past. You and the people around you are forced
to see this worthless paper as having the value of an apartment. Five hundred of
these worthless papers, then you can stay in this apartment for a month or
something, okay? Or more. But it’s only the past karma of you taking care of
other people’s needs in the past. That’s the only place this money is coming
from. That’s the only reason people can recognize it as money. You want to get
an apartment, take care of other people’s housing needs. You want money, be
generous. You want a promotion, make sure that the other people get the
benefit out of any interchange you have with them. And that’s the only place
they come from. There’s no beginning of any object in your life, which does not
come because you were good to someone else. Everything is empty. Very
profound.      Nothing ever will come to you good unless you have done
something to take care of someone else. That’s {kyewa mepa}. {Kyewa} means
nothing happens in the world except that you have done something to someone
else, good or bad. Student: ‘what kind of generosity…[not clear] GMR: for
what? Student: [not clear} GMR: He said, what kind of generous… there’s four
kinds of generosity. I mean like giving material wealth; giving love; giving
protection to other people; and the highest act of giving is to give people the
knowledge of how to give because then they can make more money, which is
dharma. So that’s the four kinds of generosity. 2- {‘gag pa} Say {gakpa} [repeat]
{gakpa} [repeat]. {Gakpa} means why does anything stop? Why does anything
stop? If you have a headache or a backache that’s really hurting you how do
you make it stop? According to Buddhism there’s only one thing that can ever
make a backache or headache stop and that’s taking care of someone else’s pain.
Period. And there’s never been a headache in the history of mankind that
stopped except that that person took care of someone else who had pain. Period.
There’s no other cause of…there’s no other cause and effect relationship going
on in this planet, period. Headaches do not stop because of aspirin. They do not
stop because of something you ate. They do not stop because of, you changed
your posture. The only reason a headache could ever stop is if you took care of
someone else’s pain. Period. But wait a minute I took Alieve you know, two
didn’t work but when I take three, it goes away. You telling me how it works
and not why it works. A Buddhist has to make the distinction, okay. You’re
telling me this is how your headache stopped but you’re not telling me why
your headache stopped. And I can prove it to you. Some people take fifty and
nothing happens. Some people take one and it goes away. Some people don’t
take any and it goes away. Some people don’t take any and it doesn’t go away.
Really. That’s not why things happen. It’s just…that’s the truth. And no drug in
the world will always work like that. It just won’t. No headache drug has been
discovered, I mean, despite the claims on TV. The reason they have to make the
claims is because they are not true. Really. If one pill works for everybody, just
pass it out on the street and that’d be the end of it. It doesn’t work for
everybody, why? The only time it works is if you have the karma to make it
work and the karma to make it work is taking care of someone else’s headache.
You cannot stop, {gakpa} means to stop. No good or bad thing in the world
ever stops except that you have the karma to make it stop, okay. Where does
that karma stay? It is not self-existent. It does not work from its own side. It’s
an impression put in your mind when you help somebody and when your
headache stops it’s because it’s an impression in your mind which is ripening, in
your mind. It never went anywhere else. And if you don’t think that
impressions in your mind can last from year to year then you shouldn’t have
gone to first grade to learn the alphabet because that impression is still in your
mind now. So don’t tell me Americans don’t accept this principle that you can
plant an impression in the mind and it can stay there for years and years. That’s
why you send your kids to elementary school because you want the impressions
to stay in their minds from first grade, when they get up to eighth grade and
they didn’t forget the alphabet yet. Of course impressions can stay in your mind
for a long, long time. People who have been victims of abuse when they’re little
kids, they don’t even remember and they’re still living the… the results of it
twenty, thirty, forty years old…later. Don’t tell me it can’t stay in your mind.
{Takpa}. Oops sorry. That will be {takpa}. I hope not. We’re on number four?
Three? Oo, we’re going slow. Don’t worry, Stillwell. 3- {rtag pa} Say {takpa}
[repeat]. {Takpa} here means unchanging. Unchanging. The day that you reach
your Buddha paradise, this cylinder, this blue and white cylinder along with
every other object in this room, along with every freckle on your arm and every
hair on your head even if you don’t have them all, okay, every single object in
your experience, will create great bliss for you, total bliss. Every single, detail of
very object, every curve here, every atom here, every detail of this pen will be
like the best physical emotion you have ever had here multiplied by a million. I
mean imagine the best physical feeling you’ve ever had in your life, multiply it
by a million, and every detail of this pen will give you the same feeling. Every
object in your world will give you the same qualitative emotion. That’s what a
Buddha paradise is like. But if this pen existed as a pen from its own side, it
would be immutable. It would always be a pen. It could never be that bliss
cylinder that it’s going to be. And by the way it could never run out of ink either
if it was a pen from its own side. And you have to get used to that. The reason a
pen runs out of ink if you’re not happy that it run out of ink is that you collected
the karma to see it run out of ink. It did not run out of ink. You gotta get used to
that. If it ran out of ink from its own side, it would be unchangeable and it
never would change from being full of ink to being out of ink because it exists as
a full pen from its own side. If things existed from there own side they could not
change and everything around you would be {takpa}, unchanging which is
wrong and that’s an extreme and that’s why number three is called unchanging.
{Takpa} here is an implication of thinking that things exist from their own side,
okay. I will say it again. {Takpa} is an implication of thinking that things exist
from their own side. If everything existed from its own side, nirvana, paradise
would be impossible. You might as well just shoot yourself, except you wouldn’t
change, okay, all right? Really. It’s only because they don’t exist from their own
side that everything is possible. That makes life exciting. That makes this world
you know a jumping off point for Buddha paradise, is that it’s empty. Thank
God it’s empty. Thank you. Thank you for making things empty. 4- {chad pa}
Say {chepa} [repeat]. {Chepa} is the opposite implication, okay. I mean this
{takpa} and {chepa} are two extremes that result from people misunderstanding
emptiness. If you take everything to be the way it appears you fall into the
extreme of {takpa} meaning nothing ever changes. If someone comes up to you
and say, ‘Hey, Jay Siller everything is empty. It’s not what you thought.
Everything is an illusion.’ And so Jay Siller says, ‘Cool. Nothing matters any
more. I can go break all those vows I was struggling to keep, because nothing
matters anymore. It’s all empty. It’s all illusion.’ That’s called {chepa}. {Chepa} is
another extreme. {Chepa} means nothing the hell matters anymore. {Chepa}
means everything is, what do you call it, nihilism, like nothing exists, nothing
matters. I can go do anything. Everything is empty. To think that’s what
emptiness means is {chepa}.. Thinking that, if that was true, if emptiness meant
that things don’t exist or don’t matter then everything would just have to stop.
{Chepa} means that. Those of you who studied {b: The Diamond Cutter, Dorje
Chupa}, and {chepa} is the past tense. {Chepa} means terminated, stopped,
finished, not going any more. If it were true that things… if it were true that
emptiness just meant that nothing mattered then everything would just grind to
a halt, {chepa} Number five…these are extremes that you want to avoid and if
you don’t successfully avoid them, you will not be able to study lojong. You will
not be able to do those high spiritual practices such as taking the blame at work
when it’s not your fault. It’s beyond most people. And I dare say that most of
us in this room when the poop hits the fan, we will not take the blame. Because
there’s this whole ninety-five percent of your mind that says, ‘Are you crazy
what’s the point of taking the blame? I mean honestly it’s not your fault. It’s the
other guy’s fault. Why should you take the heat for him?’ Your mind believes
that and that attitude has kept you in suffering for millions of years. It doesn’t
work, it’s dysfunctional. It hurts you. Don’t believe it any more. Try the other
one for awhile. It’s cool. This anonymous Lone Ranger, good guy, okay, just
running around helping people, not getting any credit for it. Going broke all the
time. And then slowly your world will change. You will enter a Buddha
paradise, by acting that way. 5- {‘gro ba} say {drowa} [repeat], {drowa} [repeat].
And I’m going to give you number six also. 6- {‘ong ba} Say {ongwa} [repeat],
{ongwa} [repeat], {drowa} [repeat], {ongwa} [repeat]. {Drowa} means going and
{ongwa} means coming. You can say, coming and going. Believing that things
come and believing that things go are two more wrong ideas about reality. And
I think you have to study a commentary here. It’s not general coming and
going. And luckily we have good commentaries in our computer bank, and they
explain these two words. {Drowa} here means going from the cause into the
result. (Drowa) or going means going from being a seed to the condition of
being the result. So ‘going’ here means growing. ‘Going’ here means growing.
And then ‘coming’ means to come to a stop, like when the seed produces the
result and then the seed stops; the seed comes to stopping. So for the seed to go
into the result and for the seed to come out of existence. Let me make sure that’s
right. Yeah, he says, coming in the sense of the sprout coming out of the
destruction of the seed and going in the sense of a seed going into being a
sprout. Okay I will say it again. Going in the sense of a seed going into being a
sprout and coming from the sense of a sprout coming from the destruction of
the seed. So Nagarjuna says again, Arya Nagarjuna, ‘there’s no coming and
there’s no going’ which means there’s no cause and effect, from its own side.
Things don’t cause each other the way you thought. Things don’t cause each
other the way you thought. Okay, if someone is hassling you at work, and
someone is trying to blame you for something that you didn’t do, the way to get
out of that situation, and fix it, is to continually take the blame for other people
and take the heat for them, purposely. It is not to sit there and explain why
you’re right. Cause and effect ain’t what you thought. And I will repeat it.
Someone at work is attacking you wrongly; someone at work is blaming you for
something you didn’t do; the way to stop that blame is not to sit there and
explain why it’s not your fault. The way to get of that blame is to prevent that
kind of thing from ever happening again which is never, ever, to judge other
people, for example. Okay. The real reason you were blamed for something
that you didn’t do had nothing to do with bad communication or anything like
that. It was all caused by you blaming other people in the past wrongly, period.
And it will not be fixed by you explaining to that person why you were right.
What’s the litmus test to prove what I just said. Next time somebody blames
you for something you didn’t do, go explain to them why you’re right and tell
me how many of you are satisfied. How many people are exonerated by the
boss. ‘Oh you’re right. That’s not your fault at all. I’m glad you explained it to
me.’ Come and tell me how many people, we’ll take a vote, you know, we’ll
say, how many people did the boss say, ‘Oh I’m sorry for blaming you. You’re
right. It’s obviously the other person’s fault.’ You know and I know that fifty
percent of the time, pretty much at random, whether you’re right or wrong, you
gonna get blamed… today they were pouring praises on me for doing these
business deals, you know, and two hours thousands of diamonds, whole thing
telling you ‘brilliant job’, you know. I’m like, I don’t know, I just got here. I
didn’t do anything different from yesterday. It’s just coming from something
you did a long time ago. Don’t get excited about it. Don’t get sad about it. You
know smile, thanks you know. Tomorrow you’re going to yell at me for
something I didn’t do also. [laughter] and get used to it, okay. So what’s the
point of acting crazy like this. Sit there and smile when they yell at you and sit
there, smile when they praise you knowing that it has nothing to do with your
current behaviour. What’s the point of acting like that? The point is that you
won’t collect any new bad karma that will make these bad things happen again
in the future. The point of the Wheel of Life painting is to break the wheel at one
o’clock which is for you over here, okay. At one o’clock there’s these two guys
with sticks, blind people, walking along, ‘cos they don’t understand what I’m just
talking about. If you can stop acting like that it breaks this vicious cycle, vicious
circle. It cannot go on if you break it there, whether they tell you, you did a
wonderful job and whether they tell you you did a bad job and whether you did
or you didn’t deserve it just be pure, and virtuous and keep your vows and
everything will be perfect in the future. You have to divorce the appearance, the
illusion of life from what’s really going on, okay. You’re not getting praise
because you’re so smart. You’re not getting yelled at because you’re so dumb.
You’re the same person on Tuesday that you were on Monday. The point is in
reaction to those things, knowing about emptiness, just play it cool. I appreciate
your comment, thank you. If I did something right it’s because I helped
somebody in the past. If you thought I did something wrong, it’s because I hurt
somebody in the past. Either way, I’m going to stop hurting people right now.
That’s all and if you don’t understand reality you will not be able to practice
lojong. The whole thing is an illusion. The whole day at work is an illusion.
Nothing is happening because of what came just before it. Everything is
happening because of the impressions in people’s minds that were put there
years and years ago. And if you don’t like work, or you don’t like to be at work,
then be good to everybody. That’s lojong. And it’s difficult but it’s more difficult
if you don’t understand emptiness, right? Okay. Seven and Eight. 7- {gcig} Say
{chik} [repeat] 8- {tha dad} {tade} [repeat]. {chik} [repeat] {tade} [repeat]. {Chik}
means one. {Tade} means different or plural, you can say, one or many. It’s one
way to prove emptiness, it’s called {chik du drel} {gcig du bral}. {chik du drel gyi
tan tsik} . It’s one of the five great proofs of emptiness, okay. This is related to
it. (Chik) means one and (tade) means many. Is this pen one thing or many
things? I’m not being… it’s not a koan okay. I’m not trying to trick you. {chik
du kun chu ma yin pay chir. It’s neither one nor many. {ngo du che chik du ma
yin pay chir} don’t tell me a story. Yes or no. {tak madrup} or {du}, {tak
madrup} or {yin}.Student: [not clear]
GMR: No, you lay your traps for me by answering simply and innocently. And
if you’re right, sooner or later I will fall. This is Buddhist logic. {ngu ko du chik
du kare ma yin pay chir}

Student: not clear

GMR: no you just say {tak ma drup} or {yin}. I said it’s neither one nor many.
You can either say yes or no, right or wrong.
Student: {‘tak ma drup’}
GMR: {tak ma drup} He said, it’s not correct to say that that pen is neither one
nor many. {chik ten tarme ma yin par tel} You’re telling me it’s neither one nor
many? You’re telling me it’s wrong to say it’s either one or many?
Student: ‘yes’ {‘du’}
GMR: {du}{du}{du}! {Ka rin}? which one is it? Is it one or many? Is this pen ….
Student: ‘I said neither one nor many’
GMR: no, no, no. You said, he said one or many. You can say neither if you
want, your going to go…you’re going to get into trouble that way. {uhha, ngu
ge ma yin par tel} you’re telling me it’s neither one?
Student: {‘Du’}
GMR: so this is not a pen? Well? It’s not a pen?
Student: ‘well ultimately or not?’
GMR: I didn’t say ultimately or not, I didn’t say that. Yes or no. If I’m wrong
you’ll beat me, don’t worry, that’s logic. Logic is infallible. {ma yin} it’s not a
pen?
Student: ‘before you said it was a chewable object?’
GMR: {yin pay ma kyab par tel} Which means, so it’s not true when every
Buddhist book in the world says that every object in the world is either one or
many? {ma yin par tel} [laughter] That’s the proof. That proof hinges on the fact
that everything in the world is either one or many. (Jik ten chik du drel yang yin
pay chir}, all objects in the world are either plural or singular. Even in grammar,
even in the words we use for objects, it’s either a pen or pens’s, as Rinpoche likes
to say. {ma yin par tel} I didn’t say anything about self-existent or anything like
that, conventionally. If you want to say conventionally, I don’t mind.
Student: ‘okay, conventionally it’s a combination of parts.’
GMR: is it plural or singular?
Student: ‘plural’
GMR: no, it’s a combination of parts but it’s one pen. It’s one pen made up of
many parts, which is to say, one pen. {chik yin par tel} so then you’re telling me
it’s one?
GMR: is it one? Are you telling me it’s one? One pen made up of many parts
{yin par tel}?
Student: {‘du’}
GMR: okay, phew… no it’s okay, he’s doing it right. This is how debate goes on
for four or five hours before you get to a pen, okay. It’s a pen. It’s one pen, all
right? So {chik du dzin na tade yin par tel} so it’s no extreme to hold that it’s A
PEN. Right it’s not an extreme, relatively, meaning, apparently. But from its
own side, {ngowu druppa} is it a pen?
(chik du tade yin pay chir) – it’s either one or pleural from its own side, right
GMR: {Tak madrup}
Student: {Tak madrup}
GMR: {Ma yin par tel}so it’s not from its own side, one or pleural.
Student. {‘du’}
GMR: {Ma yin te} why the hell not?
Student: ‘There is no self existent pen in the parts.’
GMR: Good, you can say there’s one or many self-existent pens, ‘cos there ain’t
any self existent pens in this room, okay. There isn’t a pen in this room which
exists from its own side so what the hell are you talking about? What do they
answer in the monastery? {ri-bong gyi rva ka chi yu }How many inches is the
horn of a hare please, ten or twelve? That’s our big question tonight. Is the two-
headed, purple, full sized elephant in this room got one head or three? I didn’t
quite catch it. You say, neither, it doesn’t exist. A pen in this room which could
exist from its own side does not exist, okay. A situation at work in which
someone is blaming you for something that you didn’t ever have anything to do
with is created by only one thing. You hurt someone else in the past that way.
There’s no such thing as a situation at work where someone is blaming you
unjustly. There’s no such thing. And if you respond negatively you just made it
happen again. And that’s what the vicious cycle of life is. And you will stay in
this realm until you figure that out. You will remain here until you figure that
out. So stop it. That’s lojong. Lojong is impossible to practice if you don’t
understand emptiness. And if you do understand emptiness it’s the only way to
live.
All right. Last thing on your homework says, Changkya Rinpoche says, the text
says that we can be free from the chains of attachment, how does Changkya
Rinpoche explain this attachment. And this is the two extremes and then we will
stop and we’ll take a break. The two extremes are these. Extreme number one –
things are the way they look. Things are the way they look. I’m being attacked
at work because this guy was talking behind by back. That’s one extreme and
it’s wrong. It’s not true. You’re telling me how you were attacked at work and
you’re not telling me why you were attacked at work, okay. Why did this guy
want to attack you in the first place? Why did someone in this office want to talk
behind your back? Where did this guy come from? You can tell me how he did
it you know, ‘He went to the boss’s office after I left, six o’clock, he was like
weedling, telling the boss this and that. You’re just describing to me the process.
You’re not describing to me the cause, the real cause is that you did it to
someone else. Oh that’s hocus-pocus karma stuff. No it ain’t, because it is a
perceptional thing. A perceptual thing. What, what do you mean? There are
cylinders and colors and squares and circles moving around your office. You are
being forced to see them as a person stabbing you in the back, in the same way
you’re being forced to see these colors and shapes as a pen. It’s the same
principle. It’s not a pen from its own side. You’re seeing it that way because of
your past karma and if you had a dog’s karma you’d be seeing it as a chewable
object. And in fact that’s what it is to be a dog and some day you will
understand that. But the whole interpretation of all those colors and shapes
going on at work is the result of your own past deeds. Your own mind is
making you see things that way. Go have a really good café latte and a biscotti
and come back and don’t… and see if it changes a bit, you see. It really does. I
mean that’s a very tiny example of…the whole reality of it could change. That
office could be a hell and you know that; and that office could be a paradise and
you can experience that in the future but you must act in accordance with the
lojong. You must understand that these things have no existence from their own
side. It’s all coming from your mind. So straighten that out. And that’s the
teaching. {Chingwa le drul shok}and then you will break the chains of your life.
That’s the last line of the Eight Verses. Yea, all right. Go have a latte outside and
we will come back in about ten minutes. The other extreme is thinking that if
everything in your office is just colors and shapes, that everything is just some
kind of twilight zone or outer limits, you know, that everything doesn’t exist or
doesn’t matter or it’s an illusion so I can go to office and do anything I want. I
can punch the boss in the head because it’s just another square, okay. It’s not
like that. That’s the other extreme. So either you believe the way it looks or you
think if it’s not the way it looks it doesn’t matter at all. Those are the two
extremes and you have to take a middle way between them and that’s why
Buddhism is called the Middle Way. All right, we will start again. Just this
announcement. It’s very nice to come to Rinpoche’s birthday, if you can make it
it’s very wonderful, it’s a lot of fun. And it’s starting on, at two o’clock on June
28. Also to repeat the instructions about the {sojong} ceremony. Those of you
who have a tantric initiation from Rinpoche he has requested that anyone who
has ever been initiated from him should come on the 6th? 8th of June which is a
Monday at two o’clock down in Howell to a special ceremony of purification that
takes place once a year and so he expects every person there. So you can get
sick or whatever from work. Then you’ll have something to confess when you
get there. [laugher] Then … and he expects everyone to have made a good
attempt to memorize the text. On June 6th, Saturday June 6th, some of our
students will be debating at the ‘Change Your Mind Day’, that is sponsored by
Tricycle Magazine at Central Park. And you can find out more about it from Ora
or ….. We were scheduled to have a children’s class that day and we’ve
rescheduled it from… now it’s been changed from two o’clock to one o’clock. So
if you’re a parent who is bringing your kids to the kids’ class, that’s the first kids
class of this semester, instead of two o’clock please bring them to 6th Street at
one o’clock. And they’re going to be participating in the debate so we have to
prime them. Also our illustrious sangha is invited and they will also be debating
a little bit, okay. And we will go over all the questions and answers and make
sure that I win. [laughter] The next lojong that we’re going to learn…we’re
going to do five or six lojongs during the course of this class. You’ve just had the
most famous one, the Eight Verses. I think in the world right now this is the
lojong which is most taught. His Holiness often teaches it when he goes some
place because it’s such a powerful piece. We’re going to do a few other lojongs.
We’re going to do one brief one tonight that has come down through the Kagyu
tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. So it’s very interesting that, at the point of
lojong, as Buddhism begins to enter Tibet is where all the traditions meet
together. And I like it. I think it’s a very nice place to get acquainted with all the
different traditions. It’s not my intention to teach the {Sakya} or the {Kagyu} or
the {Nyingma} traditions in this class because my hope is to give you one
consistent lineage from Buddha to the present day and I want you to learn one
way of studying Buddhism that’s coherent and internally consistent from the
time of the Buddha up until our root lama which is a pure, direct, consistent and
lineage taught in one way. That’s my schtik. I’m a Gelugpa monk, Geshe and
that’s what I’m training you in. So you will be… you will have one pure lineage
that works. And you will be able to achieve enlightenment based on those
teachings. There are also other beautiful, fantastic, perfect lineages going on in
Tibet and to study them would take another five or six lifetimes. But it’s cool to
meet them, it’s cool to be with them, it’s cool to relate with them. We do that.
All the projects we do, we’ve been… like we went down in Nyingma… a lot of
the group here went to the Nyingma, the main Nyingma Monastery in the west,
down in Poolsville, and we had a wonderful {vinaya} teachings there and it was
very cool and like that. I taught the Kagyu group here in New York for nine
years, every week. So we have really good relationship…I think you should… I
want you to get a taste of that beautiful lineage, okay. It’s not what we’re going
to be doing, all our time here but I think it’s a good place…in the years of the
lojong, all these lineages were in one town or one area and they were all just
starting out. And so it’s a good place to take a photograph of where they all
came from. So I’m going to introduce you to a teaching of a Kagyu master
named {Yang Gunpa}. He’s one of the founding fathers of the Drukpa tradition.
Within the Kagyu there are different sub lineages like the Drukpa or the Karma
Kagyu or the Drebung Kagyu. And there’s different kinds of Kagyu. So we’re
going to be looking at a beautiful lojong by one of the founders of the Drukpa
Kagyu. {Druk} normally means Bhutan but in this case it refers to an area of
Tibet where there was a famous monastery and they took the name of that
monastery and became known as the Drukpa Kagyu.
So we’re going to study a book by Yang Gunpa . Not really a book, more a
collection of sayings. {yang dgon pa} {Yang Gunpa}, and his dates are (1213 –
1258). And since it’s tradition never to refer to a Lama by what we call their
naked name. You don’t call them, hey Nagarjuna or hey Tsongkapa. You say,
‘Arya Nagarjuna’ or you say, ‘Je Tsongkapa’. We call him Gyalwa Yangunpa.
So you have to put Gyalwa here. {rgyal ba} – {Gyalwa}. And {Gyalwa} means
victorious one, meaning he’s been called a Buddha. He is a Buddha. They
consider him a Buddha. {Gyalwa} means the Victorious Buddha. The book
you’re going to study…you’re going to get a collection as you go out tonight of
his teachings. And you will get a very good sense of the beauty of the Kagyu
tradition which is short, sweet, sharp, powerful and these are called {dam ngak} –
{gdams ngag}. {Dam ngak} means personal advices. Like when you say it in
Tibetan it’s almost like ‘things that a teacher said to their student while they were
in a car going to Vermont or something.’ These are like, somebody brought up
a subject about emptiness, then they say, ‘What about that?’ and you’re sitting
around having root beer and you start talking about it. And somebody is like
secretly taking notes. These end up being {dam ngak} text. These are like
aphorisms or personal advices that were given by a Lama often in a very limited
context between close disciple and teacher. These are called {dam ngak} Where
did he learn his stuff? Where did he get the lojong teachings? Well one of his
teachers was …(sa skya pandhi ta} {sakya pandita}. Say {sakya} [repeat], {pandita}
[repeat]. Okay {Sakya pandita} as we mentioned in the Friday night class, one of
the greatest lamas ever to live in Tibet; lived about 1200. Did stuff like
memorizing the eight thousand verses of [B: Prajnaparamita], in Sanskrit. You
know, would wander around Tibet reciting it in Sanskrit. Eight thousand verses,
it’s a thousand pages, and stuff like that, brilliant. Great lama. His nephew,
{Pakpa}, invented the Mandala in thirty-seven piles which we studied, brought
Buddhism to Mongolia. Became the teacher of the Emperor Kublai Khan and
met this weird Italian guy there named Marco Polo. So very cool lineage. That
was one of his teachers and the other one was…{rgod tsang pa}. So by the way
there you have a Sakya-Kagyu conjunction and Sakya Pandita being one of our
tantric lineage Lamas. We have a Sakya, Gelugpa, Kagyu, probably Nyingma in
there somewhere. In those days it was very much a big family. Say {gu
tsangpa} [repeat] {gu tsangpa} [repeat]. {Gu-tsangpa} is a great lojong writer
himself. We study some very beautiful lojongs by him. These are both lojong
writers that our tradition also calls upon. And when you read the writings of like
Pabongka Rinpoche he’s pulling out quotations by Yang Gunpa and Gu-tsangpa,
a very beautiful one. There’re very poetic and very beautiful. I wanted to spell
Drukpa Kagyu for you Tibetan guys ‘cos it’s on your homework that way. {‘brug
pa bka’ brgyud). And that’s how you spell Drukpa Kagyu. He’s the Lama whose
lojong you’re about to study, Gyalwa Yangunpa is one of the founding fathers of
the Drukpa Kagyu tradition. I thought I would read to you in English some of
his advices, okay. They’re very short and then we’ll talk about some of the
difficult points. So here you go. In Tibetan it says {Duje la takpa me kyi. Shen
me kyi driwa che. Korwa na dewa me kyi. Ngejung gi kyo she kye.} It’s like
boom, boom, boom, okay.
In English it’s: ‘Nothing that starts remains unchanged, Have no attachment, cut
the ties; There’s no happiness in this vicious circle. Get tired of it, find
renunciation.’
{Jikten la nyingpo me kyi. Dzunla lote ma che. Rang sem sanggye yin gyi. Ngo
she kyi she je gyi sung.}
‘The world is hollow and meaningless, Do not trust the lie; Your own mind is the
Buddha, Go and meet your friend.’ And that’s it. End of lojong. That was the
first part of his {dam ngak}. Then people would study these for years and figure
out what he meant. I think here you see the difficulty of this style of teaching.
He said, ‘you must have a lama there to explain it to you.’ You can’t go round
thinking your mind is a Buddha, it’s not true. So you need someone to say, what
did he mean when he said, ‘Your own mind is the Buddha, go and meet your
friend.’ And this is where, I think, if you feed this stuff to a new student who
hasn’t studied much and doesn’t get a proper explanation they can fall into the
extreme of thinking, ‘I’m a Buddha, I just have to reveal my true nature and
everything is okay.’ And then they get hit by a car and they’re in a hell realm.
You know what I mean? So you have to know what did he mean when he said,
‘Your own mind is the Buddha.’ And this is what he meant. And we’re going to
go through a couple of his verses like that. By the way this is the whole lojong,
it’s only like five pages or something. When we say Buddha nature, {sang gye
kyi rik} {sangs rgyas kyi rigs}, okay, {rangshin merik}. what they call the nature of
the Buddha, Sugatagarba. It’s a very specific thing. It’s a very specific thing.
When they talk about your Buddha nature it doesn’t mean that you have some
nice little crystal nature inside you and if you could ONLY clear away all your
bad things this real nature would come out. It’s not like that. That’s not true.
You’re not a Buddha inside. And your mind is definitely not a Buddha’s mind if
you are who you seem to be and I’m not sure. Like some of you don’t even
seem that way, and that’s another story. What it means is {rang shin merik}
Buddha nature refers to the emptiness of your mind. The only Buddha nature
you have now, the only thing about you which is Buddha-ish is the emptiness of
your mind. What does that mean? Refer to the…what was that again?
Chewable object right? No I’m not calling you a dog. Refer to the good old blue
and white cylinder. Your mind is the same. Is this a pen or a chewable thing?
It’s both, depending on who’s in the room, okay. And the emptiness of this blue
and white cylinder is that if you had the karma to see it that way, you would be
seeing it as a very nice thing to chew and that’s what it is to be a dog. That’s
what it is to be born as a dog. It’s to have those perceptions. That’s what makes
you a dog. That’s why it’s so easy to get born as a dog. That’s why it’s so
dangerous to die. And a human just as validly sees it as a pen but by itself and
from its own side, it is neither thing it’s a blue and white cylinder and even that
we got to talk about some day. Your mind is the same. You’re presently forced
to experience your mind as this bizarre mixture of happiness and sadness;
goodness and evil; you know satisfaction and dissatisfaction; up and down; in
and out, all over the place. You’re forced to perceive your mind that way. If you
had collected better karma you would be forced by that karma to see your own
mind as the mind of an enlightened being. It could have been that way already if
you had gotten your act together a few lifetimes ago and started keeping your
book. Started keeping your vows carefully and by now you’d be perceiving this
mind, you would be forced to perceive your own mind as a beautiful
enlightened being’s mind. If your mind is the way it is now from its own side,
by its own nature then it’s hopeless, things are hopeless, can never change. The
fact that your mind is empty or doesn’t have any nature from its own side is
what gives you and me the potential to become a Buddha. That’s cool. That’s
the Buddha seed. That’s Buddha nature. That’s the potential that you own
already to become an enlightened being. Thank God for the emptiness of your
mind. That’s the only Buddha nature you have. So when he says, ‘Your own
mind is the Buddha, go and meet your friend.’ He is saying if you understood
how your own mind is empty you would appreciate Buddha nature, you’d keep
your vows and within a short time you would be forced to see this mind as an
enlightened being’s mind. That’s all. But you put this in the hands of an
inexperienced American without a Lama teaching them, it’s dangerous. You
know they will go and just meditate in their mind and say, ‘Oh I’m a Buddha
already. Oh, oh just meet your mind.’ Okay you gotta be very careful. These
lojongs are… that’s probably why they were kept privately for so long. Let me
see if there’s another one here. I like this one. ‘Nothing but the Dharma means
anything at all, Throw the rest out like trash; It all boils down to dying, Pack
light and take off now.’[laughter] We had like a really hard time with the ‘pack
light and take off now.’ It says, the Tibetan says, ‘Take speed with dry meat.’
Me and Rinpoche was sitting there and I said, “Rinpoche what do you think this
means?’ He says, ‘I don’t know. Those lojongs, you know.’ And there’s a
couple of meanings it has. There is a famous lam rim teaching about eating the
meat yourself, which we’ve talked about before. And that’s a different thing.
This one means, don’t stop to pack lunch; don’t stop to cook lunch. Throw some
potato chips in a box and run. In Tibet it was dry meat. You could carry a bag of
dry meat for six months or a year and you could just walk around. You didn’t
have to carry anything heavy. You could just take off. Get going on the path of
enlightenment. And he says, ‘throw the rest of your life out like trash. Just stop
doing what you’re doing. Just junk it.’ What’s the test of what you should
throw out and what you shouldn’t throw it? He says, ‘It all boils down to dying.’
And that’s what we talked about last week, okay. You have to apply the test of
death to every action you undertake. Is my current activity for the next hour
worth my life? Is this what I would want to die doing? You know if someone
said to me, ‘You have one more hour to live, how are you going to spend it?
Would you spend it the way you’re going to spend the next hour of your life?’
And a dharma person, a person who is doing lojong, that’s the line you have to
live by. You constantly have to check the things that you’re doing with your life.
Is this worth dying for? Because I might die in the next hour. Is this what I
would want to be the last thing I ever did and don’t do anything except that?
And that is an automatic barometer of whether you are spending your life well,
because you will die. And I have this fight with people constantly. I’m like…
they say, ‘why are you doing this? You didn’t do your financial reports. You’re
going to get into trouble. You’re not going to get any money.’ Said, ‘I don’t
know. I got to practice this morning. I got to do my meditation.’ They say,
‘Yeah but you’re going to lose all this money, million dollars.’ I’m like…I can’t, I
can’t do it. I just can’t do it. You know if I was going to die in the next hour it’s
gotta to be my meditation this morning. It’s got to be, I’m sorry. I’ve got to
give that up. And you gotta keep making…every hour of your life you have to
keep making this decision. And to live the other way is very tempting. You
know the whole world is living like that. The whole world thinks you’re crazy.
And you gotta ignore it. On the last day when everybody is dying they will say,
‘You were so smart.’ I mean you’ll have to wait a long time. But in the end
that’s…the only way, right thing to do with your life. And every minute… I
mean spending your life purely in dharma activities is the smartest thing to do
because everybody has to die. And all things should be judged by this measure.
Is this the most important thing to be doing right now given the fact that you’re
going to die today. Then live your life like that. That’s his, Gwalwa Yang gunpa
saying, ‘death, do I want to die doing what I’m doing right now?’ Because you
will die don’t think it’s tomorrow. You will be sitting there and saying, still
trying to make up your mind and you’ll be dead and it’ll be too late. Just get
ready now, okay. Then if somebody wants you to do something else later, it’s
okay. Then he wrote a thing called ‘ The Six Keys’ and I want you to study ‘The
Six Keys.’ I will write them for you. I’ll read them for you in English. Key
number one….by the way, you’re all going to get this after the class. You don’t
have to worry about writing it too much. Put your death in your heart; this is
the key for checking whether your practice is tuned too tight or too loose. You
want to know whether you’re too fanatical or not. Would you be doing this if
you were to die in an hour? Then you know if your practice is tuned right.
Tuned means, not too crazy and not too loose. Is your practice…they call it
tuning it like a guitar string. It’s not too sharp or too flat. If your practice is too
tight you’re going to fail. You know, anal. If your practice is too loose, you’re
going to die also. It has to be tuned right in between. How do you know what’s
too tight and too loose. Would you be doing this if you were going to die in an
hour? Think of the viper’s nest of the problems of this life; this is the key for
stopping attachment at the bottom of your heart. And it means, think about,
very simply, one sentence… every good thing about your life, any friends you
have, any family you have, any money you have, any possession you have, the
place where you stay, the job that you have, the body that you’re walking
around in, all your clothes, your own face and your own name, you will be
stripped of shortly, all of them, inevitably, okay. So don’t be attached to these
things. Don’t work for those things. That’s all, simple. Very simple. If you live
like that, if you keep saying that to yourself, you’ll do the right thing. Number
three. Let every thought be of what other people need; this is the key for
making everything you do the Dharma. He’s just saying, it doesn’t really matter
what activity you’re doing – you can work in an office in Manhattan, you can
have a normal family, you can watch TV at night, but in the back of your mind
all the time, you’re thinking about doing things for other people’s sake.
Everything you do, you do for other people’s sake. If you do go watch TV it’s
because you’re trying to reach or make comfortable the people around you or
something like that. Everything you do is motivated for helping other people.
Then what he’s saying, it doesn’t matter what you do, everything will become
Dharma. Every activity will become Dharma. Ah, key number.. what was it,
four. {Samgyu lama la gyi dang. Tuk yu chik tu drepay ne yin.} that’s all. Don’t
think of anything but your Lama; this is the key for turning your mind and
Theirs into one. And ultimately, I mean ultimately if throughout your day your
thoughts are focused on your Lama, whoever it is and by the way it has to be
the one that fits you. Lamas are like food, you know. I mean different foods for
different bodies. To say that one food is good for everybody is ridiculous. To
say one Lama is good for every person is ridiculous. But once you find the Lama
that fits your needs then let your whole day be spent in… standing in their glory.
You spend your whole day thinking about them, serving them, being with them,
communing with them. And then sooner or later their mind and your mind will
become one. Ah, next key, number five I think: {Nuchu yidam du jong dang.
Tame gyi shenpa ndzokpay ne yin.} That’s all. See the world and the people in it
as angels; this is the key for stopping the idea that life is an ordinary thing. And
the better your practice gets, the more this white and blue cylinder will begin to
take on blissful emotions for you. Rome was not built in a day. If you practice
steadily every object in your life, whether it’s a pen or the sunset or New York
city or the people you live with or the people you work with or your own body
and your own mind, but if you keep your vows nice, better and better and
better, those things will start to transform. And ultimately the entire world will
change and all the people in it. So he’s saying, ‘Get ready, start thinking of them
that way now because that’s the way it will be.’ That’s the way it will be and it’s
very healthy to stop believing that everything is normal because it’s not. You
may see it that way but you’re wrong and the more you study and the more
you keep your vows, it will be revealed to you that this world is not what you
thought. There’s something very weird going on. There’s all these special things
going on around you. They will be revealed to you as you study your vows and
keep your life more and more pure, it will all be revealed to you. He’s saying,
‘Get ready.’ Okay last thing. Whatever comes make it crystal; this is the key for
making this life turn to freedom all by itself. This life will become nirvana and
paradise by itself if you can see all things as crystal. Again this is the kind of
verse that sounds so poetic and nice and can be so misunderstood by hundreds
or thousands of people if you don’t get a good teaching on it. I’ve met many
American young people, you know, older people too, wandering around, life is
crystal; nirvana is automatic and then they die or the next time you see them
they got cancer and they’re in hospital, you’re like, ‘Hey what happened to that
crystal stuff?’ And they’re like, ‘Who cares I’m dying.’ And it’s like this
statement is true but you need to get the understanding of why? Crystal means
everything is empty. The world around you is empty. Will it become nirvana
by itself? No. Why not? It didn’t do it yet, did it? Of course it takes effort on
your side. The Buddha made great effort after the day He got bodhichitta for
seventy-five, seventy-six and seventy-seven thousand, ten times the sixtieth
eons. Ten to the sixtieth power aeons don’t tell me this world is going to turn
into nirvana by itself. It won’t, that’s not what the verse means. It means if you
understand how the objects and the people around you are empty, you’ve got
all the information you need to turn it into a Buddha paradise by keeping your
vow sweetly, okay, and that’s hard. And by keeping your lojong. So the fact
that everything is crystal which means empty, will make everything turn into
nirvana almost automatically, once you understand how to do good deeds, that’s
the real meaning of it. But if you wander around saying everything is crystal
and I don’t have to do anything because it’s going to be automatic nirvana,
you’re going to get disappointed, by a thing called a hell realm or something.
Last point and then we’re done. {‘dod chags. bde ba thams cad.} {Duchak, dewa
tamche}. He gives a very cool five verses. He gives a little lojong… by the way
all these are separated by… ‘He also said’ (sung yang) this is just reports from his
students who were sitting there in the car, ‘Hey by the way he also said the
following.’ It’s like five little, cute little powerful lines, verses. So at this point in
his lojong or his {dam ngak}, his advices, he gives five really beautiful verses.
And in each one he describes one of the five poisons of the mind. Usually we
talk about three poisons of the mind, in Gyalwa Yangunpa’s tradition there are
five. We’ll be talking about five poisons, five mental poisons. You know
nowadays we’re memorizing something? Rinpoche asked us to memorize
something. So every morning I’m walking around the temple and I’m trying to
memorize something. And I’ve noticed something very interesting. I have a
problem with jealousy. I get jealous with almost anybody, about anything. It’s
my specialty. It’s my special mental affliction, and I admit it openly. Maybe it’s a
blessing, I can get rid of it. But anyway, so I’ll be walking around the temple
trying to memorize this thing and doing pretty good. And then I’ll start to have
a jealous thought about somebody. And then suddenly I notice that I can’t
memorize anything for about two minutes, it’s really weird. You know like I was
doing really good and then suddenly I got jealous of somebody. And then
suddenly I can’t memorize anymore for about two minutes, I might as well sit
down ‘cos it’s not going to come for about two minutes. And in tantra by the
way there’s a physical basis for that. Certain things are going on in your chakra
caused by that jealousy that are ruining your ability to memorize. And it’s true.
It’s really happening. It’s not just like some psychological effect. There’s an
actual block being created by your jealousy that’s ruining your intellect at that
moment. And that’s a poison. Those mental afflictions are literally poison to
your body and mind. And the less you have them the more healthy you will be
physically and the more intelligent you will be and the more compassionate.
They really are a poison, it’s not a metaphor. They really do poison your body
and your mind literally. First one is {duchak}
Say {duchak}[repeat], {duchak}[repeat] {Duchak} – I like to call it liking things
ignorantly. Liking things ignorantly. What’s the test of whether you like
something wrong or right? Can you like something in a good way? Of course.
What? How about Buddha paradise? How about helping all other living beings?
How about getting a nice Michael & Zoes milkshake legally and morally and
properly? You can like that. There’s no problem with that, that’s fine, that’s
healthy. So what does {duchak} mean? {Duchak} means where you would hurt
someone to do it. You would hurt someone to get it. Why? Because that’s
morally repugnant? No, because it screws you up. If you’ve got to hurt
someone else to get what you want, that’s the best way according to the laws of
karma to never get that thing again. If you don’t like money or fame or good
Michael & Zoes milkshake then hurt someone else to get them and you will
assure yourself future problems to get them. So {duchak} means liking things in
a stupid way. It’s not wrong to like things but Buddha would like to see you get
out of this struggle. Is He ignorant? No. Does He have duchak? No. Does He
like things? Yes. Watch the Dalai Lama eat, he’s enjoying himself. He likes the
food. Does he have {duchak} about the food? No, it’s a different thing. Say
{dewa tamche} [repeat]. If you can overcome this tendency of liking things the
wrong way, you can get every kind of happiness you ever wanted. That’s {dewa
tamche}. That’s the result of acting the opposite way. I refuse to hurt someone
to get what I want. Why? Because I want more of it, get it? All right? {zhe sdang}
Say {she dang}[repeat] {She dang} is the opposite emotion. Not liking something
or disliking something stupidly, in a non dharma way. Do the Buddhas dislike
things? Yes. What do they dislike? Oh they dislike to see you suffer, how’s that.
They dislike to suffer themselves. Do they have mental poisons? No. What’s
the test of whether you’re disliking something intelligently or not? Would you
hurt someone to get rid of it? If you stop acting this way you can get (Dukgnel
dang drelwa}. (Dukgnel dang drelwa} means no more pain in this life at all. No
more pain at all. Okay poison number three. 3- {gti mug, byang chub thob pa}. I’m
going through the poisons fast ‘cos we have to leave in eleven minutes or
something. By the way it is all in the reading, so don’t worry okay. Say {Timuk
jangchub toppa}[repeat] – {Timuk} means not understanding the world in the
way I described it today. {Timuk} means ignorance about the way the world
really works. The guy did not screw you at work because he’s a bad guy. The
guy screwed you at work because you created him when you were bad to
someone else before, get it? If you don’t get it you’ve got {timuk}. If you do get
it and you stop reacting to the world as if it was coming from its own side you
are gonna {jangchub toppa}. You are going to achieve enlightenment. If you
can stop thinking of things as being other people’s fault, okay, stop thinking of
things as coming from the other side. All of these sufferings were made by you.
Very famous in the sutra. Buddha said, ‘Do you think the hell realms were made
by ‘Acme Construction Company’? There was some sadistic maestro who paid
for all the concrete and the steel and the molten lead and all the stuff. And pays
for the oil bills for the fires in hell, do you think there’s some guy like that?
Where you think they came from? Do you think someone made them? Of
course it’s your own perceptions.’ And anything you don’t like is coming that
way too. Number four. 4- {nga rgyal. rang mgo thon pa} Say {Nga gyel} [repeat].
I’ll let you finish writing. {Nga} means me. {Gyal} means king. Me king is the
Tibetan word for? Pride. Wrong pride by the way, it’s not bad to be proud
when you just gave up the benef… the profit and took the loss yourself. You
can say, ‘good job, Michael Roach. Out of ten thousand lifetimes you finally did
something for somebody else. hey, not bad.’ That’s all right. That’s a good
pride. Bad pride is like, ‘I don’t have to listen to him, I’m as smart as him’ or
something like that. That’s {Nga gyel}. If you could stop thinking that way, you
know, if you could relate to other people as your teacher, you know, if you
could go around New York city thinking every being in this city has something
to teach me, let me listen, maybe I’ll learn something. Then the karmic result of
that is {ranggo topa}. Say {ranggo tunpa} [repeat] {Rango tunba} even now in
colloquial Tibetan is a very special word that means totally independent. I saw in
a book one time, they call it…well it’s a bad word, I can’t repeat it. Anyway it’s
the point at which you don’t need anybody else. You can tell the whole world
to…okay. You have everything you need – {rango tunba} means money,
knowledge, compassion, intelligence, dharma, everything. You are complete in
and of yourself. That’s {rango tunba}. Rango tunba} means you want to be like
that, like a whole person who is self sufficient in themselves, in their own
dharma knowledge and in their own wisdom and in their own meditation, in
their own morality. They are {rango tunba} means, ‘I did it. I grew up. I’m
independent; mean in a good way. You are like… now you are like a bulwark in
the world; you are like a pillar of strength in the world. You can stand on your
own as a dharma person. That’s call {rango tunba}. But if you’re jealous… if you
have pride you will never get to {rungo tunba}. Karmically you cannot reach
that stage if you have pride. Last one. 5- {prag dog}. Say {Trakdok} [repeat]
{gegs thams cad sel ba} Say {Gek tamche selwa} [repeat] {Trakdok} means
jealousy. Okay all you aspiring bodhisattvas out there, how about a definition
for jealousy. The state of mind that cannot see other people get what they want.
It’s like disgusting for a bodhisattva. Really bad. Your career is supposed to be
the international supplier of happiness to all beings and instead you’re like the
international scrooge who wants to make sure nobody gets what they want. I
mean that’s the state of mind of jealousy. Jealousy is unhappy when other
people get what they were hoping for. That’s {trakdok}. That’s jealousy. As
long as you think that way your life will be full of obstacles. Every time you get
close to something, something will go wrong. Every time something you want,
something will go wrong with it. You will miss out, you will be a day late and a
dollar short for the rest of your life because you couldn’t stand it when other
people got what they got and what they wanted. Karmically it will keep
happening to you, that as you get closer to the things you want, people you
want to be with, places you want to live, work that you want, money that you
want, place that you want, there will always be some kind of obstacle. And the
karma is that you were jealous of other people. So if you can stop that, then
{Gek tamche} means obstacles, {selwa} means you will be able to remove them.
Karmically it won’t happen anymore. Everything will go smooth. Okay real last
thing. He has one line at the end which again and this is the delicate part of the…
I think a lot of these kinds of teachings, they are very powerful short comments
that this Lama made in a divine state to his personal disciple, who in many cases,
that you’re going to get next week, those disciples have had twelve years of
Buddhist logic, advanced philosophy, emptiness teachings, constant teachings of
the great classics of ancient India, they were master scholars of thousand of texts,
in many cases they have memorized hundreds of technical Buddhist texts in the
way that you’ve been doing for the last six years or something. Then he taught
them lojong. Then he said, quote, “The reality of things is beyond the mind, So
reside in a state where you hold to nothing.” They know what he really means
but you don’t go teaching this to new people. They know when he says, ‘the
reality of things is beyond the mind’ he’s saying something like ‘until the day
you see emptiness directly you’re not perceiving ultimately reality.’ It doesn’t
mean that this is not reality. If you don’t think so, let me hit you on the head
with a illusory two by four, and lets see if you get an illusory bump on your
head and then you tell me this is all an illusion. It doesn’t mean that. Of course
it’s not beyond the mind. Of course you’re experiencing reality right now. But
ultimate reality is beyond your current state of perception. And if you practice
and study carefully you can see ultimate reality. That’s what he really means. It
doesn’t mean no one could ever see it or else no one could ever reach nirvana.
‘So reside in a state where you hold to nothing’ – it doesn’t mean sit there like
you’re on heroin and meditate with your brain just wiped out. It doesn’t mean
that. It means, don’t think this thing has any nature of its own from its own side.
Don’t hold to it as being a pen from its own side. It’s not. Don’t hold onto your
own body and mind being a crummy old unenlightened being because it’s that
way from its own side, it’s not. It’s blank. It’s empty. You can make it anything
you want if you keep your vows, if you meditate regularly and if you learn
proper Buddhism, because those things are empty you can reach a Buddha
paradise. That’s what he means by ‘don’t grasp at them as existing from their
own side.’ He doesn’t mean go space out in a corner somewhere. And that’s
why they didn’t give these verses to new people because it sounds like that. And
I’m afraid a lot of Westerners have gotten hold of things like this and wasted
years of their life. These are very powerful if you know what they mean and
you have to have a good teaching on them. So you teach them that way to your
students, all right.
Okay we will do some prayers now and then we’ll go.
[Prayer: short mandala]
[Prayer: dedication]