ACI 14 «Лоджонг: развитие доброго сердца», занятие 9

Lojong, Developing the Good Heart
Tape 8
GMR
July 2 1998
Transcriber: Su Hung



Okay, we’ll start. Tonight is one of the coolest lojongs I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to
say one lojong is better than another, it’s probably a mistake to say that, but this
is one is really, really cool. So first we’ll do the name. Say {b: tsuncha korlo}
repeat. Sometimes they call it {b: tsunche korlo}. Okay, sometimes they call it
{tsuncha korlo}. And I’ll spell it for you. {Tsuncha} means ‘a weapon of any
kind’ like atomic bombs are {tsunchas}, knives are tsunchas, guns are tsuncha. It
often means a bladed weapon of some kind. And {korlo} means ‘a wheel’. In the
past this text has been translated … the name has been translated as ‘The Wheel
of Sharp Weapons’. I like ‘The wheel of knives’. And I will explain to you why
later on. The first time I ever met the tsuncha korlo, the idea of a {tsuncha korlo}
was in a sutra in the Vinaya and it was in a text about karma and its
consequences. And I had a student who I knew was disrespecting their parents
and I knew that this particular … it’s like a Jataka tale, talked about disrespecting
your parents. So they asked me to help them translate something so I chose this
text, I didn’t tell them. And this is like twenty years ago and this is in the Vinaya,
a story about a tsuncha korlo. So I thought you’d like to hear what a {tsuncha
korlo} looks like because sometimes you hear about this lojong and you study
this lojong but you don’t really get a feeling for what a wheel of knives would
look like. So I thought you’d like to hear the story first and I’m also stalling
while they put the bulb in the thing. So, I really like that. So the story is … By
the way, this is probably a past life of the Buddha or some holy being telling
about the days when they were mischievous, okay. And this young man lives
on the seaside, in a town near the sea. And this is about 500 BC and his father is
a … works on a ship, on a sailing ship. His father is always going off on trips and
his mother is always getting nervous. And then one day the father goes away
and doesn’t come home. And he dies at sea. So the son is always asking his
mother if he could, you know, go to sea because all his friends get to go to sea.
His mother is like nervous he is going to die and she says, ‘No, you can’t.’ So he
goes to her once, he’s like eighteen and he says, ‘Can I do to sea?’ And she says,
‘No.’ So he really wants to go but he respects her wishes and he tells his friends,
‘You guys can go. I have to stay. My mother wants me to stay.’ And then
second time, like a year later, another group of his friends are going on a
journey and he goes and asks his mother, ‘Can I go with them?’ And she says,
‘No, no please stay.’ And he’s like very angry but he says, ‘Okay, I’ll stay. I
won’t go.’ And then of course a year later, now his last friends are going on a
voyage and he asks his mother, ‘Can I go with them?’ She says, ‘No, please
don’t.’ He’s like very upset and he’s like .. he decides not to listen to her. And on
the way out of the door … she tries to block the door and he accidentally hits her
on the head. And then he goes to sea. He runs down to the ocean and he gets
on a ship and he goes to sea. So he’s there floating around the world and the
boat gets shipwrecked on this desert isle and he’s the only person who survives.
And he crawls up on the shore and he’s there, and there’s nothing there, there’s
just forest and this weird forest and everything. This dark forest. He’s
wandering in the forest and he’s dying of thirst and then he just drops and he’s
like unconscious.
And then he wakes up and he looks up and there are these four beautiful
damsels in silk, you know, and beautiful hair and jewels and they’re like looking
down at him and they say, ‘Come to our castle.’ You know, and they pick him
up and they lead him to their castle and he lives in bliss for years, you know.
And then one day he’s out walking around and he gets lost in the woods again
and he’s wandering around and he’s looking everywhere. And finally he runs
out of food and water and he goes unconscious again. He falls unconscious
again. And then the same thing happens. He wakes up and here’s like six
damsels, you know, looking down at him and, ‘We’ll take you home.’ He says,
‘Oh, great.’ And they pick him up and they lead him into this castle and he lives
a life of luxury for years. And then again he’s out in the forest, he gets lost. He’s
just about to die of thirst and hunger and he comes to this fort, like this huge
moat and a huge gate. And he comes to the gate and the gate, you know,
grreeeee, you know, how it goes in the movies, you know, and it opens and
there’s nobody there. And it’s all dark and evil and bats flying around. And he
goes in and then the door slammed behind him. He’s like, shaking, you know.
And then he looks up on this parapet and he hears this door open and … this is
all in the sutra, it’s in the Tibetan Kangyur. And the door opens and this guy
steps out and he’s got a wheel, it’s like a … it’s a … it’s like a regular wheel but
there’s no rim around the wheel. And all the spokes are knives, like a whole
array of knives around the spokes and they’re sharpened on both sides, you
know and it’s like twirling like a helicopter blade and it’s chopping at his head as
they talk. You know, he’s standing there and this thing is chopping at his head
and cutting, slicing his head open. And he’s … he’s like obviously in horrible
pain and he’s standing at the top of the stairs and he starts walking down the
stairs, you know. The guy says, ‘What’s going on?’ And he says, ‘Oh, it’s a
horrible story, you don’t want to hear it.’ And he says, ‘No, no, tell me, I need to
know, you know. What’s … what’s ... how did this thing come to be above your
head? What’s going on?’ And he says, ‘It’s a horrible story. I was a young man,
I lived by the sea. I lived with my mother. My father went to sea. He died. My
friends came, tried to talk me into going to sea. I wanted to go. I asked my
mother, ‘Can I go?’ She said, ‘No.’ I listened to her the first time. And then I
listened to her the second time. Then the third time she asked me to stay, I
rushed out the door and she tried to block me and I hit her by accident on the
head. And I ran down to the sea and got into a ship and we went to this desert
island and we got shipwrecked. And I crawled up on the … and then I went
unconscious and then I met all these damsels and they took me to their castle
and then it happened again, I met these other damsels. The guy starting to
shake you know, [laugh, laughter] and he says, ‘Well, what’s going on with your
head?’ you know, and he says, ‘Listen, this is the karma that happened to me,
you know, because I listened to her the first time, I met those first group of
beautiful damsels, you know. And because I listened to her the second time I
met the second group of damsels. And then the third time I didn’t listen and
because of that I have this thing chopping me on the head. And I came to this
castle and I heard this story from another guy before. And the wheel came
down off his head, down the stairs and came on to my head and I’ve been here
like that since then, you know.’ And the guy is like ... huhuuuuuuh. [laughs,
laughter] And then he goes through this transformations and he closes his eyes.
And he gets ready for the wheel to come to his head, you know. And this is
called the tsuncha korlo. And he says, ‘I not only … I know it’s going to come
my head. Let it come to my head. Let it come from that other guy.’ He gets a
Bodhisat… he gets bodhichitta that moment, he gets bodhichitta. He says, ‘I’ll
take it gladly. It’s going to hurt but I’ll gladly take it from the other guy. Let it
come.’ And he closes his eyes and he gets ready for the wheel to come to his
head. And then he opens it up and it’s all gone and he’s in this beautiful castle
and, you know, and this is the … so like, this is the real tsuncha korlo. Okay, this
is like some kind of thing. In your homework I have … there’s also a beautiful
description of {tsuncha korlo} in a secret text about {Bhadra}. {Bhadra} is also
called the ‘frightener’, sometimes called Yamantaka. And in there one of the
deities has a {tsuncha korlo} in his hand. And it’s described as a large wheel and
the spokes are made of knives, like razor bladed knives and there’s no rim
around the wheel. And then there’s this empty hole in the middle like a ... it’s
like a … if you ever used a large saw blade, circular saw blade and it has a place
in the middle where you can throw it at somebody. So it’s like a ninja star or
something. And you can hold it in your hand and you can throw it at
somebody. And this is a … this is what a {tsuncha korlo} is. So it’s translated as
‘wheel of knives’ okay, that would cut your head open. And this is the idea. You
have to get in the mood of a {tsuncha korla}. {Tsuncha korlo} is something like
that. You would throw it at somebody and it would circle around and it would
cut them or something like that. And that … this lojong is called {b: Tsuncha
Korlo}. I’m going to put the Tibetan for you. {mtson cha ‘khor lo}. Say {tsuncha}
[repeat] {korlo} [repeat], {tsuncha} [repeat] {korlo} [repeat] The author of the text
… the one who passed it on is Dharma Rakshita. We couldn’t do this on a
computer. {dharma rakshi ta. Say {Dharma} [repeat] {Rakshita} [repeat]. That’s
his name in Tibetan also. They use his Sanskrit name. He was an Indian master,
Buddhist master. We don’t know his dates and we don’t know much about him.
He was a master of Abhidharma especially. We know that he taught some
important Abhidharma text. He taught this text to {Jowoje}. {jo bo rje} Say {Jowo}
[repeat] {je} [repeat] {Jowo}[repeat] {je} [repeat]. Otherwise known as?
Student: [Atisha, Lord Atisha]. Yeah, you’re right. {shen hla jen la ma jar wa, la
ma tsen me, nyer pa dang} that’s the vow. Otherwise known as Lord Atisha.
Lord Atisha was the … in our lineage the great Lama from India, who brought
… helped bring Buddhism to Tibet and then his students were the first
Kadampas. Okay, the first great, early Gelukpas of Tibet. His dates are …(982-
1052) that’s a zero okay. I have other words for {tsuncha korlo} that I thought
you might like to see. This is called ‘The wheel of knives’. The point is you gotta
get in the mood of a razor tip boomerang. Okay. I almost translated it that way
and I thought it’s a little too much, okay, but it’s that, okay. It’s like the whole
concept of a {tsuncha korlo}, the whole idea is that you do something to
somebody else and then it comes back to you. You know, you get the big pay
back, James Brown, okay. So it’s like a boomerang. It’s like you throw it, you
try to hurt somebody and you set … all day long during your normal day you
are setting off boomerangs. You know, you are throwing boomerangs all day
long. And then something happens to you. Your boss comes in, for no good
reason - that’s important, okay - for no reason that you can see, you know, you
know, you’re looking over here and trying to figure out who did that? You
know, and you get mad at everybody over here and you don’t remember that it
was you that threw the boomerang. The whole idea is that you got to get in the
mood of tsuncha korla. {Tsuncha korlo} means that. You’re constantly getting
hit on the head, all day long lousy stuff happening in your life, very, very bad
things happening to you. Your own body getting old, you know, relationships
falling apart, hopes being smashed, friends dying, getting sick and you’re
looking over here for where … who’s throwing these sticks at you, you know.
And every single one has come from you. Every single is a boomerang. You
set them all in motion. You’re throwing them … you put them all into motion.
They started circling around and then they came back and hit you on the head.
And by getting angry at nobody you’re starting … you’re throwing a new one
and then you get angry at that and then you’ll throw a new one. And that’s
what … that’s why samsara is drawn as a circle. That’s what samsara means. In
Tibetan it means a vicious circle. A vicious cycle. You get hit by your own
boomerang and by getting angry you throw another one. And this is constant
suffering. You keep getting hit by forces that you set in motion yourself. And it
looks like somebody else is doing it but it’s not true. Somebody else is the
instrument of your suffering. Your boss, your ex-wife, you know, whatever.
Someone is making you suffer and you’re blaming them. You keep blaming
them. Every time you blame them you throw another boomerang. You know,
and so that’s how we live. That’s what samsara means; self perpetuating
suffering, okay. We keep it going by reacting the wrong way and that’s what
tsuncha korlo really means. Okay. Get in the mood. Get the idea what tsuncha
korlo means, a razor tip boomerang. Or you can say actions that backfire on us,
okay. That’s the idea. These are emotions … these are energies that you set in
motion are just coming back to you. Every single unpleasant event in your life,
even your own mind when you’re depressed, unhappy, low self-esteem, anxiety,
stress; all of those are caused by your own actions in the past. Every single
physical and mental suffering that you have is something that you set in motion,
period, everything. You can’t blame everything … all the people who bother
you are giving you back the things that you did to others. They’re only the
instrument, you know. They’re only carrying the result back to you that you set
in motion. You’re blaming the wrong person constantly, okay. You’re always
blaming other people. They’re just carrying to you the result of an action that
you set into motion, okay. Blowing off your own toes, okay. [Laughs, laughter]
This is a story, I don’t know if you heard it. There’s a guy at night, you know, he
… every night he wakes up at 3am in the morning and there’s these two eyes
staring at him at the end of bed, you know. He’s like … and the moonlight is
coming through the window and he’s like scared and there’s this demon, you
know, every once in awhile the eyes shift around and he’s like scared and he
hides under the cover. And then one night he decides he’s tired of all this and he
puts a shotgun next to him. And he lays down and he waits, you know. And
then the moonlight comes up and then there’s two eyes are staring at him again
and he takes the shotgun and he fires at ‘em and he blows off his own toes.
These are his own toe nails shining in the moonlight, right? And he … This is the
… you’re constantly doing that, all day long, every time you get irritated at
another person or a traffic jam or no parking spaces or at your own depression
or anxiety, you’re setting off another … you’re blowing off your own toe.
You’re setting another boomerang into motion. The whole world is like that.
Your whole life is … that’s your life story. Hanging yourself. Digging your own
grave, okay. We have all these expressions. The next two come from the text
itself. They’re at the end of the first half of the text. You’re getting the first half
tonight and the second half on Thursday. A blacksmith making a sword, who
slips and stabs himself to death with it. He’s there making a sword and then
suddenly he slips and stabs himself and kills himself, okay. This is what we’re
doing. All the suffering you have is coming from yourself, okay.              The last
example in the scripture is an archer who accidentally falls on his own arrow and
dies, okay. These are traps … these are things you’re prepared to hurt other
people and you’re hurting yourself instead, okay. And that’s the story of
everything we do. There is no unpleasant mental or physical event in your life
that you have not caused yourself. You set them all into motion, okay. I want to
read to you the opening verses, okay. First of all he does his prostration to the
Three Jewels, then he changes his mind and he does a prostration to the Lord of
Death. Lord of Death is like this terrifying tantric deity, okay. Like this
ARHHHHHH, you know, this horrible fanged, bloody, ugly monster, call
{Yamari) Lord of Death. And he’s almost like can’t decide how he’s going to
write his lojong. Like first he bows down to the nice sweet Three Jewels, okay,
then he changes his mind and he bows down to this tantric, fierce monster, Lord
of Death. So he’s like … and you’re going to see in the lojong why he does that.
First he’s bowing down to some sweet, normal sutra Three Jewels and then
suddenly he changes his mind and bowing down to the Lord of Death. That’s
how he starts the text. Then he says, {tsunduk naksu maja gyuwa na, men gyi
dumra lekpar dzugyur kyang, majay tsoknam dagwar migyur gyi, tsenduk
chukyi maja tsowa tar.} which means: Peacocks wander in the midst Of a forest
of poison trees. A garden of healing herbs and plants May be something lovely,
But peacocks have no love for them, They live off poison itself. This refers to a
belief in Tibet that peacocks likes to eat poison. Like, if they could find a nice
bottle of arsenic or something they would love to have it and they say that
peacocks have this special ability to eat … they go into the forest and they
choose the poisonous plants, like Poison Ivy or poison mushrooms and they
only eat those. And then it gives them the sweetness of the color of their tails,
you know. This is a Tibetan tradition, a Sanskrit tradition also, that the beauty of
a peacock’s feathers is actually created by the essence of poisons that they eat.
And they can’t stand nice things. You give them some nice normal leaves or
something, you know, mint or something like that, they can’t stand it. They
want some ugly, terrible, poisonous herbs to eat, you know. And this is what
actually … it not only doesn’t hurt them, they live off it, they crave it. They love
it and it’s what gives their tails the beauty that it has. The next verse says {pawo
korway naksu jukpa na, de kyu pelgyi dumra dze-gyur kyang, pawo dakni
chakpar migyur gyi, dukngel naksu sempa tsowa yin} Bodhisattva warriors are
just the same, A garden of comfort and pleasures, May be something lovely, But
the warriors have no attachment for them, They live off a forest of pain. And
this is the idea that Bodhisattvas should be like the peacocks. They should seek
out dangerous situations, problem situations, people who are suffering, difficult
situations, horrible situations. Like if you gave them a choice between going to a
café and enjoying a latte, you know, or going to a place where all these people
are dying of AIDS and helping them or something. They’d much rather go to
the hospital. There’s no question in their minds, that they would rather be in a
place that is suffering, okay. And they would like to help people. For them
that’s more fun, they live off the idea of getting into difficult situations so that
they can develop better practice. And there’s been a misunderstanding about
these lines. And I wanted to talk about that first. There’s a misunderstanding
that, that the lines mean that Bodhisattvas like to stay in this crummy, lousy,
desire realm. You know, that … that they have compassion and so on the verge
of enlightenment, on the verge of nirvana they turn back nobly and come back
to save the rest of us, okay. This is a dharma rumor. I call them dharma rumors,
okay. This is not true at all. In fact, you have Bodhisattva vow, one of the
secondary vows of a Bodhisattva is not to think that, okay. Those of you who
are keeping your books, which means those of you who are doing tundruk,
tundruk, you know those vows, you’ve been through them many, many times,
okay. You do it … every three weeks or so it comes up in your book and you’re
like, I don’t have this problem of reaching the edge of nirvana and
enlightenment and turning back or thinking that that’s a good idea, okay. You
actually are … one of the Bodhisattva vows is not to have the wrong idea that
Bodhisattvas reach the edge of enlightenment and then voluntarily turn back to
help other people. That’s not the point. The best thing you can do for others,
the thing you are sworn to try to do as quickly as you can is to reach total,
perfect bliss, enlightenment, paradise, yourself, quickly. Because then you can …
for example you can emanate thousands of bodies, you know. You could be on
a million planets at once helping people. So what … it doesn’t make any sense
that a person on the verge of that would suddenly turn back and suffer more for
the sake of sentient beings, it doesn’t mean that, okay. It means they seek out
and they enjoy and they embrace difficult situations in their life, okay. When
they’re suffering, when they get sick, they don’t sit there and whine about it.
They see it as an opportunity for practice. They turn disasters into wonderful
opportunities to practice. Like if they got AIDS or something like that they’d
say, ‘Wonderful, you know, now I have some real serious practice. Now I can
think about death meditation in a serious way.’ It’s not that they think getting
AIDS is a good thing, they wouldn’t do it purposely but if crap comes to them
they know how to transform it into enlightened practice. And that’s the point.
So there’s a homework question, you know, and the answer is, ‘No, they don’t
turn back from the edge of enlightenment’. They don’t go seeking terrible
situations instead of getting enlightened, okay, it’s not like. If a terrible situation
happens to them which they don’t like any more than you do, they use it; within
five minutes it becomes this precious spiritual practice. Like, they’re cheating
samsara out of its pleasure. You know, samsara is loading crap on them and
they’re turning it around, every time something bad happens, they’re using it to
make themselves better people and to serve others with their practice, okay.
The same with mental afflictions, you know, the text says, ‘Oh, they use mental
afflictions,’ and then people … I’ve had people in class say, ‘Oh, I read this text,
you know, and I heard this Lama say, we’re supposed to get jealous and we’re
supposed to get angry. And then we use it for our spiritual advancement, you
know.’ It’s not what it says at all. It say, ‘If you happen to have a mental
affliction which is already bad karma and going to have very bad affects on you,
then immediately use it as a spiritual practice.’ You know say, ‘Oh, hey look,
I’ve got jealousy.’ What’s the outcome of that? What am I going to get from
that? If you know tantra what’s going to happen to my {rtsa} and {thig le} What’s
going to happen to them if I get jealous, you know. What’s going to happen to
my body? What’s going to happen to my mind? It’s going to actually kill me to
get jealous. If I keep this up over a matter of years or decades it will actually
cause the aging process to increase in me. This is crazy. And then you use that
jealousy or that anger as an opportunity to understand your own nature and get
out of it as quick as you can. It’s not like you sit there and use the anger or
something like that. Big mistake. Very, very bad dharma explanation, dharma
rumor, okay. Everybody knows {le le jikten na tsok kye, deni sempa dang de
che}. Winston’s the expert on this, what’s it mean? All the worlds come from
karma and karma is any time the mind moves or that you have a thought.
Opening lines, fourth chapter, {b: Abhidharmakosha}, okay. It means … it
means if you put up with another thirty seconds of anger once you’ve noticed it,
you are intentionally and purposely collecting intense bad karma, okay? It
doesn’t matter if you never yell at anybody. It doesn’t matter if you never hit
anybody. The thought of anger itself is intense bad karma. It would be insane
for a Bodhisattva or anybody else to enjoy or to utilize their anger, that’s a mis-
teaching, okay. It’s a dharma rumor. The point is when they find themselves
getting angry they immediately crush it by using it as an opportunity to practice.
They say, ‘Look, this is great, you know, Marie Placide made me angry. Thank
you. Strategic alliance, right. Thank you for getting me angry. I’m grateful, you
know. I would never have known that I had this weakness if you hadn’t been so
irritating to me. Now I’m aware that I do still have anger; I thought I was over
it. Thanks a lot, you know.’ And then you … by thinking like that you use anger
as an opportunity to advance yourself. It doesn’t mean that Bodhisattvas go
seeking mental afflictions, bad karma, which will keep them out of paradise and
help others? It’s not the point. I repeat. It’s kind of fun. In Buddhism you’re
supposed to have your cake and eat it too, okay. You’re supposed to get total
enlightened paradise bliss as soon as possible for yourself so you can really help
other people. So you can really be of service to other people. You are sworn to
seek total ecstasy at the shortest time span you can. And, you know, people
who grew up in the Judeo-Christian thing, they feel guilty about that, you know.
It doesn’t seem right that I should help others by having a good time. Seems like
I should get nailed up on something, or something, you know what I mean? It’s
not like that, okay. That may be how you do it, I’m not saying it’s not, but I’m
just saying as you get closer to enlightenment your life will be increasingly more
blissful and that’s the whole point. And that’s the whole goal and don’t be shy
about it. Get blissed as soon as possible. And then go teach other people to do it
permanently and not to die. And that’s exactly the process. Of course, the closer
you get to paradise the better things start to look. The closer you get to paradise
the better your life is going. The closer you get to paradise the more pleasures
happen to you even if you try to run away from them. Money is coming at you.
Good food is coming … Michael & Zoe’s milkshakes are raining down on you.
You can’t avoid it. As you get closer these things happen to you. They look …
they should happen to you because your karma is getting purified, okay, and
they will start happening to you. So the idea that Bodhisattvas purposely, you
know, on the edge of total ecstasy to help others, come back to this crap and die
on purpose or something like that is totally wrong, okay. That’s not what the
text means. That’s the first homework question. Next one is … let me see here.
The text is going to work like this, okay. Get this; it’s really cool. This text
divides roughly into two groups; twenty-five pages and twenty-five pages. In
the first twenty-five pages it’s almost as if he had just bowed down to the Three
Jewels and he’s watching bad things happen to him and he’s saying … for
example, you know, he’ll get a headache. The guy who wrote this text, Dharma
Rakshita will get a headache, he’ll get a migraine and he will examine the karma.
He’ll say, ‘I have migraine, my head is splitting; my back is hurting; by bones are
hurting, you know, why did this happen? Where did this come from? What
really made this happen?’ And he says, ‘Ah ha, a razor tipped boomerang. You
know, ninja star that I threw three years ago, you know. I did something to hurt
somebody else. In this case … for example in the case of a migraine, I broke my
vows, okay. I had Bodhisattva vows, I had Tantric vows, I had some kind of
pratimoksha vows and I did something and I broke them and that’s why I have
a migraine. Ah ha, the boomerang is hitting me because I did that, I broke those
vows.’
And the whole first half of the text is like that; it’s beautiful. And the refrain goes
like this; it’s because the wheel of knives has turned on me again, you see what I
mean? You keep … this line repeats for the first twenty-five pages, every single
verse. Something bad happens in his life and he says, ‘Where did this … where
did this come from?’ And then he say, ‘Oh, oh yeah, it’s coming back to me. I
did this to somebody in the past.’ And he’s got this ability to see where every
single negative thing in his life is coming from. It’s very important that you
learn to distinguish the instrument of your suffering and the cause of your
suffering. I call it the how and the why. Okay. It’s very important to distinguish
between the instrument that’s making you suffer, which is the how, and then
why you’re suffering, you know, what is the real cause of the suffering? This is
essential; all day long you have to be thinking like that. How did I get jealous?
Well, I like this person and this other person doesn’t let me get near them, you
know. They like this other person more than me. So if I could just get rid of this
other person, you see, that is the mindset, that is the world view of ignorance.
That’s the world view of self existence. That’s the world view that doesn’t
understand the why, it only understands the how. How is this bad event
happening? How is this person not relating to me because they like this other
person. It’s this other person’s fault. If I could just get rid of them then this
person would like me, I wouldn’t have any competition. This is great. If I could
… this is a ‘how’ state of mind and you can’t have it as a Buddhist. You have to
forget it, okay. Buddhists have to go for the ‘why’, okay. Why did this other
person show up three weeks ago that this person likes better than me now,
why? It’s not how. The how is clear. The how is that the person showed up?
You get rid of them, another one will show up a week later. You know that by
now. Every time you get rid of somebody at work another one came. You
know that. Every time you quit a job because you couldn’t stand the boss, the
new boss was that way within six months, you know. You know that by know.
Stop living in the how and start figuring out the why. You see what I mean?
Why did this person show up three weeks ago that this person likes better than
me? Duh … it’s because you were jealous in the past. Would you like it to
happen again? Then don’t like this other person. And you will guarantee that it
will come again, you see, and that’s samsara. That’s how samsara works, okay.
The natural reaction to every bad thing in your life is exactly the cause the makes
it happen again in the future. It’s this wheel of knives. You are throwing
another ninja star, every single time something bad happens to you and you
react in the normal way that every normal person reacts, you just caused it
again. It’s exactly … the irony, the great joke of the devil, right, is that your
natural reaction is going to make it happen again. That’s the great irony of our
suffering. We make it happen again by reacting to our suffering that we had
before. Yeah? Student: [Unclear]. He said this. He said if you think about it
there could be two reactions. You recognize yourself getting angry. I mean,
that’s step number one, right? You realize you’re getting angry. And then you
think … I mean, you could either just deal with it there, squash it, stop it, don’t
be angry, you know, just cut it off. Why is it important to go through the
process of thinking, ‘I’m angry now because I was angry in the past at
somebody and that’s why I’m the kind of person who is attracted to anger.’
What is it important to understand the real causes of why your mind happens to
be in an angry state of mind all the time? Why is that important? We’re going to
get to it, okay? We’re going to get to what I call the correlations between what
you did in the past and what’s happening to you now. Let me say one thing
about that. In this course, in the course on Karma, I think it was number three?
Was it number … five…              Oh, speaking of fives, question five on the last
homework doesn’t have an answer yet, as you may have noticed, okay. Sorry.
I didn’t explain it in class. I’ll try to do it tonight or Thursday, okay. Question
five about the Sakya Pandita’s view on certain metaphors, four metaphors, I
didn’t teach it to you or else you were asleep, okay. I don’t remember which,
[laugh, laughter] but we will do it … we will do it next time, okay. Where was I?
Anyway … where was I? Oh, when we did the karma course, Je Tsongkapa did
a rough correlation of the results of karma. For example, sexual misconduct, if
you engage in adultery with another person’s wife or husband there are four
discrete karmic results of that. One is that you start to enjoy that kind of
behavior and you do it more and more. And you get in deeper and deeper
trouble. The other is that you get born in a lower realm, okay. You will be born
in a very suffering realm. The third one is that even if you do get born in a place
like this as a human, every time you try to have a relationship with a man or a
woman they’ll …you will lose them to somebody else. You know, the karma of
having taken away someone else’s spouse is that you can never keep your
girlfriends or boyfriends or all your relationships are always getting to this point
where somebody else swipes them on you. And then the fourth karmic result,
we call environmental result, like for sexual misconduct, if you live in a place
which is unpleasant, which has a lot of pollution or which is dirty or which smells
bad, this is a specific karmic result of sexual misconduct, of adultery. You see, so
there are four specific results that come from every one of the bad deeds that
you do, okay. But Je Tsongkapa doesn’t go into more detail than that. He
doesn’t give you much more detail. The tsuncha korlo does. Okay, the tsuncha
korla gives you really, really beautiful detail. Every single bad thing you can
imagine about your own mind or your own body or your world or your office,
every bad thought you ever have, every bad habit you have, every physical
problem you have, is just about covered in this text. I love it. It’s beautiful. So
we translated the whole thing so that you could have all the correlations, okay.
Once you know the correlations you have to do something about them, okay.
It’s important to know … that’s why I’m answering your question, okay. You
have to … if you know why you have a backache, if you know the only kind of
karma that creates backache, what is the ‘how’? What is the ‘how’? A certain …
what do they call those bones … vertebrae is crushing another one. You know, I
lost my … what do you call that stuff? Huh? Cartilage. I have a cartilage
problem. And they tell you, ‘Oh, have a back operation and you will fix the
cartilage’. That’s the ‘how.’ Don’t get confused, okay. That’s the how. That’s
the instrument or the expression of your suffering.
Why did YOU have a backache? Why did YOU crush your vertebrae? Why did
YOU pick up that thing on that day, on that stair, in that angle that hurt your
back? Why YOU? And why not somebody else? That’s because you hurt
someone else, you see. So you can’t do much about the hows. The whole
science of medicine is pretty much … how to say … irrelevant. It’s … you have
to study the real reasons and only if you cure the karmic causes will the back
pain go away. If the doctors cut you open and fix your back it’s because your
karma to have back pain is finished. If the doctors cut you open and screw up
your back as they did to our good friend the other day, leaving him almost dead,
it’s because you didn’t have the karma for it to end yet, you see? How come
back operations work on some people and don’t work on other people? You
have to go to the ‘why’, you must understand the ‘why’. And this text is
beautiful for that. Any … this not only teaches you how to avoid all your
suffering in the future, you know, if you study this text well you can design your
own future. You can design your own paradise. I don’t want to have a backache
in my Buddha paradise. Well, how do you get rid of it? Well, you have to do
this to other people, okay.     And he tells you all the correlations. But what’s
interesting for me is that you can reconstruct your past self, you see. You can go
backwards from these things. If you have backaches you can make a profile of
how you used to be in your past life. You know, if you have headaches, you can
profile it. If you have … if you feel depressed, if every time you get a job the
boss seems to be really cruel to you, you can reconstruct every single thing you
did in the past, you can make a very clear picture of your past behavior. I find
that very cool and then you can deal with those karmas. We’ll talk about that.
Yeah? Student: [Unclear] She asked, suppose, you know, like is that the boss
who torments you that you did that to that specific person in your past life and
that’s why that specific person happens to be doing to you in this life? Not
necessarily, okay. The {b: Abhidharmakosha} fourth chapter, says, no. It says if
the conditions aren’t there then other conditions can cause it. If you were the last
unenlightened person in the world, you would still …you’d drop a book on your
back. You see what I mean? Or, you know, something would break on the
horns in the cars in your neighborhood and you’d hear these beepers all night
long. You see what I mean, instead of hearing a boss. And that’s a principle of
karma. Karma expresses itself in an ultimate way if it can’t express itself in the
way … you know, if you’re not going to meet that person directly.            Other
people have asked, you know, Master Shantideva almost implies that you’re
responsible for making them collect the bad deed of hurting you. That’s not
exactly true. I mean, he’s ... he’s doing that for effect. That’s not exactly true.
They are collecting a bad deed by hurting you. That’s a karmic result of them
doing that kind of bad deed in the past. The fact that they happen to be doing
their new bad habit to you is your karmic result. Get the difference? Okay?
They are irritating or angry people from their point of view because they were
irritating and angry in the past. They are irritating and angry to you because
you were irritating and angry to others. The fact that you happen to meet up
with this person who’s experiencing himself as irritating and angry because of
his past karma, because of your own past karma is perfect, it’s not only not a
problem, it’s very fitting. That’s perfect justice. It’s perfect that there should be
an irritating, stupid boss, right in your vicinity the moment your karma for
having him ripens. And it’s very fitting and proper and justice and the way
reality works that he’s experiencing himself that way, at that moment, also. No
problem. It’s not only not an inconsistency, it proves all the whole thing. You
gotta get used to that. That’s a little delicate. He’s in the right place at the right
time. And you’re in the right place at the right time because karma is perfect,
okay. All right. Anyway, at some point in the text he goes through twenty-five
pages of , ‘Oh, now I’ve figured it out. The reason my boss is so irritating is
because the big karma wheel of fortune has spun around and come back to me.
And it’s because I did this same thing to somebody else. I stop. I’m stopping it
now. I’m not going to do it any more.’ And each verse goes like this, okay,
twenty-five pages of verse, okay. He goes, ‘Oh, got hit in the head. Ha, ha, ha, I
know who really caused it. It’s that I did something to somebody in the past.’
And then he makes a decision; ‘I’m stopping this now. I am not responding this
time. I’m cutting it now. I unilaterally surrender, you know, no more response
from me to these angry people. I understand where you came from; I’m putting
a stop to it now, you know.’ And then suddenly half way through the text he
says, ‘Wait a God damn minute, I know what’s really happening. I’m getting all
this stuff because I’m cherishing myself and I don’t understand emptiness. Now
I see who’s the demon here. It’s my own mind.’ You know what I mean? He
says, ‘I now … I know who’s doing all this to me, it’s my own selfishness. It’s
my own inability to understand emptiness. AARRRHHHH!!’ And then goes
into this tantric thing. He goes into this Lord of Death thing. It’s so beautiful and
we’ll do it on Thursday, okay. [Laugh laughter] I’m going to have David Syke’s
spirit. Where is he? [Laughter] I got this chop knife and everything, okay. We
got to practice tomorrow if we got time, tomorrow night, okay. But he’s like …
he changes mood. He changes into this hor… the guy, this sweet guy who’s
writing this sweet lojong and he’s talking about, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have hurt that
guy, it’s coming back to me’ then suddenly he’s like … you know, [laughter] and
he says, and he gets … he gets mad at his own ignorance. And he says, ‘Now I
know who you are.’ And then the whole rest of the lojong is this heavy tantric
thing, you know. It’s him dancing the dance of death and he turns into Lord of
Death. He’s got this sharp knife and he’s cutting at … who? His own self-
cherishing. And his own inability to understand emptiness, you know. And it’s
really incredible. He takes the wheel of sharp knives, he takes the wheel of
knives, he says, ‘I know who we could use this on.’ And he swipes, you know,
[laugh, laughter] and then the whole rest of the lojong is very powerful, okay,
really powerful. And he’s dancing this death dance and he’s swearing to murder
and to destroy this enemy. And he recognizes his true enemy. Anyway, your
homework tonight says, ‘Who is the henchman?’ Right, he calls them the
henchmen. Henchmen of the devil, he says. And the answer is two-fold, okay.
One is grasping to yourself in the sense of taking care of number one first, okay.
I mean, the easy answer. The one who causes all of this suffering, the one who
sets into motion this boomerang. Okay. It all boils down to your habit of taking
care of yourself first, of trying to make yourself happy first before other people.
That in turn can only happen if you don’t understand emptiness, okay. If you
understood emptiness you would never act that way. So the answer is two-fold,
okay. Who’s the guy who is going to get his skull cut open, in the second half of
the lojong? It’s your own habit of taking care of yourself first and underneath
that monster is another monster called ‘not understanding emptiness’, you
know. Ignorance, not understanding where things come from. So yeah, you
must learn the karmic causes. You can’t just remove your anger, just stop your
anger. You can’t do that. Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna said clearly, you know,
you must understand the emptiness behind all of these emotions. You have to
study how ignorance, how misunderstanding of emptiness causes everything.
Causes all your mental afflictions. Nagarjuna said, Arya Nagarjuna said, it’s
impossible for a human being to stop mental afflictions without understanding
emptiness directly. Period. Impossible. You can study, you know, sweet little
mental tricks all day long about how to handle your anger, how to deal with
your anger. Until the day you see emptiness directly you cannot destroy your
anger. You will always have anger. You must understand the emptiness of it.
So when he get pissed at the second half of the lojong and he takes that … he
says, ‘I’m tired of this wheel cutting me. We’re going to see how it works on
something else, you know.’ And he like … it’s like a chainsaw [not clear] …
who’s that guy? I don’t know. He’s like GNRRRRR you know, and you know,
now I’m going to get the real one, you know, and he uses it on his own self
cherishing. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. You know, it’s like something
beautiful. Like watching Jimmy Hendrix smash a guitar or something. And he’s
like … he’s like cutting out this self cherishing and we’ll go through that. We’ll
go through that on Thursday. It’s very, very stunning. Very beautiful. Okay, so
you know who the henchman is? Next thing I thought we would go through
… you’re going to get … can they get the reading at the break? Tasha,
wherever you are. Can they have the reading at the break? Yeah, okay.
See this big thing here? That’s your quiz next time, okay. On the left are twenty
different lousy things that happen to everyone of us. For example, the people
around me are bossy. I have trouble finding friends and keeping them. No
matter what I do my Lama never seems happy. [Laughter] I tend to get serious
headaches or back pains. I never have enough dough. Stuff like that. I get
sleepy during my dharma practice, okay. These are all like … in the course of
the wheel of knives, in the course of this lojong, he discusses every one of these.
And he tells you what you did that made it happen. You know, he discusses how
you set in motion these energies that make you tired during your meditation,
you know. He discusses the real causes between meeting up with bossy people.
You know, never having the respect of other people and he discusses low self-
esteem. He discusses anxiety, stress, depression and, you know, we could put
like psychiatrists out of business, sorry whoever … but, you know, if you really
understood why those things happen in your own mind you can stop them and
that’s the beauty of this text. So that’s going to be your … one of your
homework questions. In the twenty-five pages of the wheel of knives you will
find the answers to everyone of those. You know, you have to pretty much do
it yourself. I’ll go through a few tonight but you can … to me this is like a
roadmap out of samsara. I love this you know. Every single problem that you
have … and I use this constantly, all throughout the day I’m battling my own
mind. All throughout the day, I’m trying to figure out why the things I don’t
like are still happening to me. You know what I mean? And then I read the {b:
tsuncha korlo} and I say, ‘Oh, I get it.’ And then he says, by the way, if you want
to stop it just do this. You see, every verse gives you the problem, every verse
gives you what you did to cause it and every verse gives you what you to do to
stop it. So it’s a beautiful text. It’s like a roadmap. It’s like the idiot’s guide to
getting out of samsara.         Yeah? Student: [Is it just metaphorical?]         Not
metaphorical at all, no. Buddhism says that there is no unpleasant mental or
physical event which you have not personally caused. Student [Unclear]. No, it’s
not metaphorical at all and you have to study emptiness to understand why.
You have to understand emptiness. The people who have been here for awhile
and understood emptiness, you know why you’re perceiving the person as
bossy. And the person sitting right next to you is in love with this person, they
think this person is the most reasonable, undemanding, sweet, gentle, they’re in
love with this person. And you find him like the most bossy, unpleasant,
unbearable person you’ve ever met. Why are two sane, adult, normal human
being having opposite perceptions of a single object at the same moment, in the
same room? How can that be? It’s the emptiness of that person. That is the
emptiness of that person, okay. And that proves that their bossiness is not
coming from their side. You MUST understand emptiness to get rid of these
things, you know. They’re being bossy not to the other person. They’re being
bossy to you. They can’t be bossy and un-bossy at the same time. There must
be something else going on. Okay. It must be coming from somebody else. It’s
not coming from them. You can’t blame other people for anything bad that
happens to you after you’ve sat in this class tonight.           I curse you with this
lojong, okay. [laugh, laughter] You can no longer believe again, truly, I mean,
you can pretend, okay, and you can fool yourself but in the end if you
understand emptiness you must come to believe that every negative event in
your life, the ‘how’ may be some other person but the ‘why’ is because you did
something to somebody else. And if you understand how karma is stowed in the
mind it makes sense. I’m not just … you know, they say Buddhists make up
karma to explain the world which is so chaotic, they’re just trying to make it feel
better. It’s not that. It’s true. It’s really true. If you study psychology, Buddhist
psychology, you study emptiness, you can see how these things work. You can
understand that these things are true. Okay. Yeah? Student: [Unclear] How do
you fix your old bad karma, you know? Like okay, I understand that … I can
read the verses, you know, hand them to me at the break, maybe I can go home,
you know. Give me those verses, I’ll read them. Like, I’ll understand that
because my … I understand that I have pollution in my corner because I went
out with Mr. Smith’s wife last week or something like that. I understand that.
And I’ll stop doing that, but what can I do about my old past karma, you know?
I happen to have a backache. I’ve had that backache for fifteen years or
something. I mean, suppose you have, okay. And doctors have treated it and
I’ve gone to chiropractors, I’ve done everything and it hasn’t gone away.
According to you that’s a result of some specific action that I did against another
person either in this life or in the life before. It doesn’t really matter, you see.
Can I do anything about it? That’s the big question. That’s called Carlito’s
question. There is a … the only person who got it in the last class was this twelve
year old who stood up and said, ‘Excuse me, can I get rid of that bad
karma?’ [Laughs] You know, can you do anything about the old bad karma?
We’re going to do that after the break, okay. So that means you have to come
back. So take a break. That’s a good question. We’ll talk about that question.
That’s what we’re going to talk next, okay. About … I don’t know if you know
who Khen Rinpoche’s root Lama is. It was … yeah? Student: [Unclear]. She
asked if there’ll be a make up class. Due to the Quaker House rental agreement
we can’t do that here but what we’ll do is class eleven which is the review class.
We’ll be … we’ll have a class then. And then your review will be a very quick
thing at the end of that, all right? So you might not get all the final examine
questions as easily as usual, okay, all right? Khen Rinpoche’s root Lama was
Trijang Rinpoche. Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche was the greatest scholar in Tibet
when this Dalai Lama was brought as a young child from eastern Tibet and then
he was assigned to be the teacher of the Dalai Lama; one of the two teachers and
they’re called {Yongdzin}. {Yongdzin} means teacher of the Dalai Lama. And he
was the teacher of the Dalai Lama. His root Lama was Pabongka Rinpoche who
Rinpoche as a young man also met and studied with. Pabongka Rinpoche wrote,
I don’t know, maybe a hundred different commentaries. Beautiful, beautiful
commentaries. Liberation in the … in our Hands is just one of them, okay. And
he wrote many other beautiful texts. The Vajrayogini sadhana that you do was
written by Pabongka Rinpoche.          The commentary on it was written by
Pabongka Rinpoche. The retreat instructions were written Pabongka Rinpoche,
okay. All the Tsongkapa books we have that have been translated were written
Pabongka Rinpoche.         And great Lama in our lineage, he’s your great
grandfather, okay. Six months ago in India … we heard in India that his books
were available. He wrote … all his books have been collected into twelve huge
volumes. And they’ve never been available. We could not get them. Rinpoche
had never had a set. So we heard they were available to purchase and we
immediately grabbed Leon and talked him into it as usual and we contacted the
people in India. After five months of negotiation it broke down and they said
they didn’t have any more copies. And we were like really disappointed. We
had an opportunity to talk to the new Pabongka Rinpoche - number three, his
assistant - and he pledged to go to Tibet and try to find a copy and he did … and
then he brought it out to Nepal and then we secretly got it here by overnight
airmail and it came the day before Rinpoche’s birthday. And that’s … those
were the books that were offered to him yesterday … Sunday. And he was
freaked out. I went up afterwards and he had them all laid out around the room
and he was running from table to table. [laugh, laughter] and I don’t know if
you know but his eye operation was a very great success, so now he can read
very easily. So it was a great culmination of his eyes getting fixed and being able
to read his root Lama’s root Lama’s missing books, you know. I would like to
ask each student to throw in something to help pay for it. We have two or three
sponsors who have already given all the money. We don’t need any more
money but I want you get a little karma, okay. So I don’t care if it’s fifty cents
but try to do something … who wants to collect that? Who’s … Tessie okay?
Thanks. [Laugh, laughter]. Okay, so Venerable Chudren here, used to be call
Tessie, if you … if you’re on your way out, okay, give her … I don’t care if it’s a
dollar, I want you to get some of the karma. We don’t need it but I want you to
cop some of the … it’s incredible virtue, okay, and those were the books that
were offered to Rinpoche yest… at his birthday, okay. So try. Okay. There’s a
group forming to do hospice service and to make a Buddhist hospice in New
York. They’re scheduling it so that it will be open by the time you and I need it.
[Laughter, laugh] So if you’d like to look ahead, Fran Ferrello, put up your hand
… she’s organizing it, I know Al the cheese man is on it and it’s a pretty serious
project. So Al’s back there. So if you’re interested in … it’ll start with small
service of dying people in their homes. And then hopefully we’ll be able to build
something later on, okay. I’m going to go through some of the karmic
connections, okay. And I’m not going to do all of them because some of them
are, you know, you can get them from the text. I just think it’s kind of … it’s
very important to understand how karma works and how karma is planted. If
you haven’t taken the fifth course, you’ve got like a couple of months off after
this course finishes in about two weeks, so I suggest you do it by tape. But
basically the way karma works is, for example, if you yell at somebody, if you
say something bad to somebody, you perceive that yelling, you are there, okay,
while you’re doing it you see yourself yelling, and as you are yelling and as you
are saying those words you have this perception of yourself doing it. Your mind
records it like a VCR. Your mind records it perfectly. Your mind is recording all
those events, your memory and what we call {bakchak shaksa}; the place in the
mind where karmic seeds are stored, okay. These impressions or these imprints
are being made on your mind at that time, at the rate of sixty-five per second.
Sixty-five images, sixty-five separate frames are playing in your mind and each
one is making a very, very subtle impression on your mind stream, as you
scream at somebody, okay. And then those impressions are what we call
{kechik kyi kechik kyi kyen dzig kyerpar chu}. They themselves are destroyed
by instant by instant. They are coming in and out of … its called {Santani} in
Sanskrit. There’s a row of flashes and they are coming in and out of existence for
years. Okay. They are being destroyed and the power of the destruction of each
one is perpetuating the energy. It’s like the energy is being carried from
moment ... like a billiard ball. Like a thousand billiard balls and the first one’s
hitting the second one, hitting the third one, hitting the fourth one and that’s the
process by which the karmic energy is maintained in the mind stream over
hundreds of years; thousands of years. One of those impressions of you, that
you planted there when you yelled at somebody, they are recorded and from
that moment, on instant by instant they are being destroyed and the destruction
is leading to the energy of the next moment and it’s being carried on throughout
time. So there’s a stream, a steady stream of that potential in your own mind
stream. That seed, called karma, karmic seed is being carried in your mind
stream and that’s how it’s carried in your mind stream. It … it disregards the
passage of time because every time an instant … it does destroy by instant and
the destruction of it triggers the next one. So it can go on for thousands, millions
of years. The karma that you committed a million years ago and the karma that
you committed yesterday, those impressions are just as fresh. They’re just as
powerful. In fact, the old ones are more powerful. They build up energy as time
goes on. Okay, so those impressions are very powerful. They are powerful
enough that when they ripen in your mind, they force you to see things, okay.
They force you to see things. Why is it that you see the boss as someone
unpleasant and the person next to you sees them as something pleasant? Is that
one object can be pleasant and unpleasant at the same time from its own side?
No, it’s coming from you, that proof that it’s coming from you. Okay? If you
and anybody you know can disagree about a Rock and Roll song, okay, if you
and anyone you know can disagree about whether a song is good or bad, that
proved emptiness already. I don’t have to say anything else, okay. The song is
not good from its own side. The song is not bad from its own side … except for
Portershead but … no, just kidding. It’s not good or bad from its own side.
Obviously it’s coming from you. If it were good from its own side, it would be
on the top of the top ten forever. If it was [laughter] … if it was bad from its
own side they would be playing it at Old Café forever, okay. It’s not like that,
okay. It doesn’t have a nature of being good or bad from its own side.
Obviously it’s coming from somebody else, from you. And this is karma.
Karmic impressions are ripening in your mind and forcing you, notice I say,
force, okay, they are forcing you to see the world as you see it. You can even be
aware that this is going on. You can be aware that this boss is a creation of your
own perceptions but the word ‘force’ means you ain’t got no choice. And even
though you can stand there and understand that this is coming from your mind,
you can’t stop it and it’s just as real as if it wasn’t coming from your own mind,
okay. If you don’t think so, I always tell people, go out and stand in front of a
cab coming down Second Avenue and as it crushes your legs see it as coming
from their own side and … or from your own mind, right? And see if it hurts
less. It doesn’t hurt less. Because it’s coming from your own mind it hurts just
as much as it did before. Because it was always coming from your own mind,
that’s why it hurts. Get it? Okay, so when Buddhists say everything is an illusion
or it’s coming from your own mind, in Buddhism that’s a proof for why it’s real.
That’s a proof for why it hurts. We’re not saying it’s an illusion so it doesn’t hurt.
We’re saying it hurts because it is an illusion. How’s that? Okay. It hurts
because it’s a projection of your own mind and you can’t stop it, okay. Can’t
stop it. And that’s how karma works. Having explained karma that way we’ll
go into the … what I call the correlations, okay. He says, whenever I feel any
kind mental pain it’s because the wheel of knives has turn on me again. Beyond
a doubt it’s the karma of, what do you think? Mental pain, like upset in your
heart you know. Un ... what do you call it … unsettled in your mind, hurt
emotions. He says, it’s the karma of upsetting other people. And from now on
I’ll do tong len with other people and try to take away their own mental pain.
Period. He just told you what to do. He told you how to get to Buddha’s
paradise. One verse, that’s all. If you feel hurt in your feelings it’s because you
upset other people and you should do tong len. You should to this practice of
trying to take on other people’s mental pain and it will go away, your own
mental pain will go away. It’s very interesting and it works. I’ve had many
students try it. I had all these students with different phobias and they did tong
len. They did this practice of taking that fear away from other people by
pretending, right? And it removed their phobia. You see, it’s beautiful. It works.
It really does work. He says, when I suffer at work because another person who
has higher authority than me is always bossing me around, okay, it’s because the
wheel of knives has turned on me again. This is the karma of … he says
arrogance towards people who are lower than you. Okay. And you don’t notice
it. Like, arrogance goes unnoticed by the arrogant, you know. You’re not
aware you’re arrogant until it comes back to you and then you get a real good
lesson in arrogance by this one boss who has control over your salary and your
vacations and your bonuses and … and you have to smile at them and tell them
how good they look today and stuff like that, okay. All right. Oh, from now on
instead of forcing other people to do what I want them to do, I will force my
own body and life into the service of other people. And that’s the fix, that’s the
antidote. These are beautiful. He gives you the antidote each time. Whenever
an unpleasant word from another,
Comes and reaches my ears, It’s because the wheel of knives Has turned on me
again; The karma of mistakes I’ve made In different things I’ve said, Divisive talk
and such, From now on then the only thing, That I’ll talk bad about, Is what I say
that’s wrong. I like that. [Laughs] The only thing I’m going to talk bad about is
what I say bad about other people, okay. [Laughs]. All right. This is like one of
the most important ones, okay.          Any time a single thing, Strikes me as
something unpleasant, It’s because the wheel of knives, Has turned on me again;
The karma of constantly seeing my world, As something less than totally pure.
From now on then I’ll devote myself, To seeing things only as purity
This is call {nam dak}. Say {nam dak} [repeat] {nam dak} [repeat]. {Nam dak} is
described in the {b: lam rim} and it’s where you try to see the silver lining in
everything, okay. Every event that happens to you, every time you have a
disappointment; every time something wrong happens to you, you immediately
try to see it as like a God send, you know. You try to interpret it, you know, if
Winston comes and screams at me then I try to say, okay, maybe he’s a tantric
angel, you know, what’s he trying to teach me? Maybe I wasn’t strong enough.
Maybe he detected that I didn’t have enough patience and he’s trying to help me.
Thank you, you know. And {nam dak} means you turn around everything to
like that.      You see everybody … it’s a kind of benevolent paranoia,
schizophrenia, paranoia, right? It’s where you think everybody is out to help
you, okay. [Laughter] Seriously, that’s {nam dak}. Every thing that everyone
ever does to you, good or bad, they are secretly trying to teach you something.
They are enlightened beings. The whole world is full of them. They’re out to get
me … to paradise, you know, and they’re making these plots ever since I was a
kid. You’ve got to see ‘Truman’s World’, okay. You got to see it. I should have
made that the homework, okay. Student [Unclear]. Oh, it’s still the homework,
okay. [Laughter] If you didn’t do it you got to do it, okay. It’s exactly like that.
Life is exactly like that. And if you don’t think so that’s responsible for
something striking you as unpleasant. The less you’re able to do that the more
unpleasant your life will be. {Tsuncha korlo}, wheel of life; wheel of knives.
Whenever I find myself without Anyone to help me, no friends of my own, It’s
because the wheel of knives Has turned on me again. The karma of leading
away Those who were close to another From now on then I’ll never act In a way
that makes other lose Then ones who are close to them. So like if you have a
problem finding friends, you have a problem making friends, you have a
problem keeping friends, it’s because you broke up other people’s friendships,
okay. Now, what’re you supposed to do about it, okay? The rest you can read
for yourself. You don’t need me to read them for you. What is the … what’re
you supposed to do about it? Okay. So, two thousand years ago when I was
Joe Blow in Estonia, you know, I broke up some friends, you know, and so now
according to you I, you know, you can’t prove it, I can’t prove it, except for what
you said about karma which is proof but anyway you … supposedly I broke up
some friends in the past; so what can you do about it? I mean, in practical terms
now, okay. Okay, I understand that I must have broken up some buddies,
friends, in the past; I’m tired of losing my friends. I’m tired of meeting really
nice people and then six months later they don’t want to talk to me any more;
I’m tired of that. Okay, I believe your wheel of knives thing. I believe your
boomerang theory. You know, I believe that it’s because I must have broken up
friendships in the past. So what am I supposed to do now? Okay. I don’t want it
to go on any more. All right. Now, - it’s very important, okay - this is the punch
line. Once you’ve used this text that you got tonight to identify the karmic… the
real ‘why’, not the ‘how’, right? The ‘how’, you’re right, it’s the arseholes at
work. That’s ‘how’ you’re getting hurt but ‘why’ are they there? And why did
they come to work at your company, in your department, sitting next to you?
You know, why? That’s in here, okay. The answers are all in this text. So what
are you supposed to do about it? You see what I mean? I had a person come to
me, they said … they said they had certain kinds of physical problems, serious
physical problems and we figured it out it was because they had engaged in
some kind of naughty behavior, okay. I mean, we studied all these books, we
figured out the karma and we figured out that this is what they were doing.
And they said, ‘Frankly, I’ve never done that kind of stuff in this life time. I
mean, I did little stuff but nothing serious. And so either the book is wrong or I
must have done in my past life time. But frankly, I don’t have that problem right
now.’ And this is the case in a lot of these things, you know. You’ll identify the
karmic cause of some physical or mental problem you have, you want to get rid
of it but then you realize that you don’t have this problem anymore, okay. And
that’s often the case, okay. The karma lasts longer than the habit. Okay. It may
be that you identify the main cause of some suffering that you have as lying, but
you don’t have that problem any more. You’re not a person who likes to lie;
you don’t lie; that was all finished a long time ago. That’s old, old karma in my
deep karmic pockets, you know. But I don’t have that problem nowadays. So
how am I supposed to fix that old karma? The trick is … and listen, okay, this is
how to get rid of all your physical and mental pains and you can do it, you
know, especially people who have some kind of serious physical problem, like a
back disc or a stomach problem or some kind of diseases, okay; you can fix
them. And that’s the promise of Buddhism. But you … once you’ve figured out
the karma that you did or that you must have done then now you of all the
people in the world have to be super careful about that kind of karma, okay.
It’s not enough that you don’t lie any more.           You have to be the most
fastidiously truthful person in New York City. If you want to get rid of that
karma, this is how you do it; and it works. I’m teaching you the key to
happiness. Change your reality. Get out of that old crummy body, get into a
new one. You don’t have to go to the gym, it doesn’t cost anything, okay;
seriously. You can make your body look like anything you want, seriously.
Identify the karmic causes; but if you find out that you have a physical problem
that was caused by like say, lying, and even if you’re not the kind of person who
ever lies, you must now become a person who can’t even get near to lying. You
have to be totally, perfectly truthful all the time, okay. And that’s how you do it.
This is the essence of the four powers. I don’t think I have the four powers thing
here. Let me see. That comes on Thursday, okay, when he turns into a monster.
When he turns into Dracula, okay. Frankenstein and Dracula together, okay,
and when he starts to crush and beat up and slash with this knife, his own
cherishing, you know, his own bad mind, he says, ‘And I’m growing fangs.’ He
says, ‘PHURR PHURR’. You know, he says, ‘I got four fangs, I’m going to sink
them into your flesh.’ He’s talking to whom? His own habit of cherishing
himself. His own habit of watching out for himself first. He says, ‘I am going to
take a bite out of you with these rabid fangs; these four new fangs that I’ve
grown,’ you know, he says, ‘AHRRRRR’. And then he says the four forces of
confession, okay. It’s very beautiful, you know. It’s the four powers of
confession, you know. It’s like how to remove old bad karma and the essence of
it is I will not do those things again, okay. So it’s very cool. I’m teaching you the
trick to physically change your body and if you have mental problems,
depression, low self esteem, some kind of anxiety, stress, you get confused
easily, you can’t figure things out that you want … mentally, your intellect is not
strong as you want it to be; you can’t remember Tibetan words etc, [laughter] no
seriously, it’s all in here and I’m not kidding. You can do it, okay. You have to
identify the karmic cause as it is stated in this text. And then I don’t want you
coming to me and saying, ‘Yeah, I understand the causes of lying but I don’t
happen to be a person who lies much. I don’t like to lie, I’ve never been
attracted to lying, I’m a pretty honest person.’ Forget it. Now you have to be
perfect. Okay. That’s the essence of removing bad karma, okay, is to be perfect
about that particular bad deed, okay. Figure out the one that causes migraines,
which is - by the way - taking a holy vow like you guys did last night and
breaking them, okay. Migraines are caused - according to the lojong - by not
being very careful about the vows you took from your lama. Every single …
dotting every I, crossing every T, you know them backwards and forwards; you
keep your book, you track them every two hours, you check them and you’re
perfect; you won’t have migraines any more. You see, they’ll go away and
frankly it’s the only way you can cause it … the only way you can cure a
migraine is that; according to Buddhism it’s the only way to stop it. Either it will
wear out on its own, which takes time, and it may not wear out for decades.
You may have migraines for decades. Or treat it with the karmic medicine, you
know. Find out the real cause behind it. And stop it. Somebody told me you
know, ‘No, no, karma doesn’t cause migraines. I went to the doctor, they found
out that I had a peptide imbalance, you know. I have this chemical, it comes up
in my brain, it’s too much. If I take this pill it goes away. I didn’t have migraines
for six months now.’ You’re telling me ‘how’. You didn’t tell me ‘why’. Prove it.
Not everybody who takes those pills gets better. Period. They don’t cure
migraine. If medicine works it’s because the karma to have a migraine wore out.
If medicine doesn’t work, the karma to have migraine didn’t wear out. That’s
why some people take aspirin and get better and some people take aspirin and
don’t get better. Don’t you get it? That’s why medicine doesn’t work for
everybody. Okay. You’ve got to get it. Medicine is the ‘how’, it’s not the ‘why’.
You have to remove the real reason behind migraines, is not respecting the
promises you made to your … when you took commitments or promises to
your lamas, okay, like that. So now you gotta to be Mr. Clean, you know. Now
you have to be … if you don’t like migraines, you know, you know people who
have migraines who keeps their vows pretty well. It’s not good enough for
them. They have to keep them perfect, then the migraines go away. Okay, like
that. Yeah? Student: [Unclear] Oh, so should you just stop taking aspirin since
that’s not the real cause? No, you still need the … you still need the ‘how’, okay.
I mean, the ‘hows’ are still useful. What I’m saying is, frankly, if you do the
karmic fix well, you don’t need those things. Eventually you won’t need those
things. You won’t need medical treatment, okay. If you follow this lojong, very,
very well, your body would actually change into a different kind of body. You
would not be capable of feeling pain. Okay. That’s what becoming a Buddha
means, you see? You keep this stuff so well that your body actually, physically,
really, changes into a different kind of body and that is the goal of our classes.
That is the goal of our practice. That’s what we’re doing here. That’s what your
goal is. You must pull it off before you die. And that’s second level tantric
practice. Okay, but you must do this for that to work. That cannot work
without this. You see? And if you do this stuff well, the minute you start trying
those tantric practices your body will start to change. It’s amazing and … and
that’s enlighten… that’ paradise. That’s angel’s body and you can do it; but you
have to start now, okay. It’s all here. It’s very, very cool. Everything is there.
And it works and you must pull it off before you die. You can’t wait. Don’t wait
till the last year or so. It doesn’t work. When you’re sick you can’t think about
this stuff, you know. When you’re in a hospital this stuff will seem crazy to you.
You’re too … when you don’t feel well you can’t practice dharma. Okay, you
gotta do it now while you’re still half-way healthy, okay.
Yeah? Student: [Unclear] Oh, he said, following that train of thought, why
would this holy being, Khen Rinpoche, need an eye operation? Why is His
Holiness the Dalai Lama getting wrinkles and getting bald? Okay, why? This is a
very important question, okay, and don’t forget the answer. Don’t ever forget
the answer, okay. If you had good service of your Lama, if you personally
served Khen Rinpoche or your Lama - whoever it is – well, you would never
have to see them get old. If you see them getting old it’s just like the guy who
sees the boss being mean. He swears the boss is mean from his own side. Don’t
believe it. The boss is mean because your mind is making you see it that way.
And when you see one of these holy beings have a cataract operation or try to
get down the stairs and can hardly make it, that’s not Khen Rinpoche’s problem,
that’s your problem, okay. If you see His Holiness the Dalai Lama getting old,
you know, if you are going to live to see a day when the Dalai Lama is not
walking this planet, you better straighten out your karma. That’s your fault.
He’s not … who knows what he’s seeing. You see what I mean? Just because
you see the boss is mean do you believe that everyone in the world sees the boss
as mean? It is exactly the same principle. It’s exactly the same principle. Don’t
think His Holiness the Dalai Lama gets up and looks in the mirror and sees what
you see, okay. He don’t, okay. Boy, he sees something else, you know. And
the closer you get to that, the closer you will see … you know, suddenly they
will say, today we discovered a cure for baldness and we gave some to His
Holiness and [laughter] and he’s … you know, suddenly you’ll hear that crime
dropped again twenty-three percent in New York City. Okay, where do you
think it came from? Who do you think is causing that? Is it Giuliani [laughter].
I’m not kidding. I’m really not kidding. It is an environmental karmic result of
your good deeds. You have respected life more than you did in the past and an
environmental result is occurring now. And it will continue to get better if you
work hard and keep your vows. Keep your book, six times a day, stop, check
your vows; seriously check your vows; check the details of what you just did for
the last two hours and you will change New York City. And you can credit
Giuliani the ‘how’, but if you want to know the ‘why’, any person who’s living in
New York City when the crime drops has personally contributed to that event,
through your … through worshiping the lives of other people, making them
healthy, protecting other people’s lives. Okay. That’s where everything comes
from.
Next time you giggle in class I know how many people have wrong worldview,
okay. That’s wrong worldview. Of course it came from that. Where did you
think from? From its own side? That’s not emptiness, okay. We’ll stop there.
That’s a great place to stop. Okay. That’s how to get to heaven basically. Now
you just have to do it. Next week we become the Lord of Death and we start
growing fangs and slicing this guy up with his own wheel. All right?
[Prayer: mandala]
[Prayer: dedication]