ACI 16 (обзорный курс), Занятие 11 (прогон ГМР, Нью-Йорк 1999) — стенограмма

Class Eleven

Geshe Michael Roach



Transcribed by Angie Overy




Okay, we’ll start.
We’re gonna do a quick review of the final. And I’m only gonna do parts of it
and then you’re gonna break out do the other parts with your class leaders.
I was looking at, you know, when I was compiling the final. The final is made of
all the, the final is derived from all the quiz questions. And the quiz questions
are derived from the homework questions. And the homework questions are
derived from the quiz questions in the original courses. And the quiz questions
in the original course are derived from the homework questions in the original
courses.
So what you have is the crème de, crème de, crème de, crème, you know what I
mean. You have now, it was really hard to do the final. The first time I wrote
the final I came out with, like, eighty-five questions. [laughter] [laughs] And
then, I couldn’t bear to leave out those things and then I got them down to
thirty-five, okay.
But is’ just, it’s just the most important things of all. And you must know them.
If you’re going to be a good teacher you really must know them.
And I felt very proud doing the final ‘cos it makes me very aware that you are
learning the cream of everything. The cream of everything in Buddhism is on
here, you know.
So, if you go through this course and the other two, you’ve done everything,
really, okay. So, it’s really, I think, you know, John was thinking about putting
out the classes as more formal books and I think this one would make the first
one, this review course. Because what you have, it was designed for westerners.
You have, first, Lam Rim, which everybody needs, Three Principle Paths.
And then you have Refuge, which everybody should take, and a little bit about
Perfection of Wisdom.
And then you have how to meditate because you can’t just study, you have to
meditate also, and you have to have your daily practice and that’s in there.
And then number four is what, proving future lives.           Think in the Tibetan
presentation in Lam Rim it’s not necessary to prove future lives so early, but in
an American presentation I think you have to prove future lives early on.
And then you get to the fifth course, which I don’t even remember what it was.
What was that? Karma, yeah, meaning that we don’t believe in karma either. So
you have to pay special attention. Four and five come earlier than in the normal
course in the monastery because we don’t believe in either one. We don’t
believe in past and future lives and we don’t believe in karma.
So the whole first five courses there’s an order to them and there’s a logic behind
them. And the idea is to introduce people to Dharma who are not, who have not
grown up in a culture, which is Buddhist, you know.
So I think this foundation of the first five courses is really strong. And I think
you’ll see it from the final. If your students, eventually when you teach,
meaning, next year, [laughter] your students, and you know, I have little groups.
I went to [unclear] course, her class in New Jersey, it’s, like, fifteen really good
students. And they were really sharp and they’ve studied well with her. And
she taught them the first course and they knew everything really well. They
clearly understood the concepts. And, you know, I can’t see why anybody can’t
do that.
It’s really [unclear] are a little faster usually but you guys can do it, okay.
[laughter] Alright.
Okay, I’m gonna skip some of the questions so maybe the leaders should follow
their thing, you were supposed to get it last week. No? Didn’t get the final? Oh,
okay. [students]
Okay. I’ll tell you the numbers I’m covering, okay, or you’ll remember it, okay.
Question number one I won’t tell you.
Question number two. Question number two is important to me. It’s about the
relationship between the three principle paths and tantric practice. And, you
know, I made a big deal about that in the first course because it’s a popular, I call
the ‘Dharma rumour’ or ‘American Dharma misconception’, that tantra is some
kind of advanced thing and then, the three principle paths is just lam rim. I
mean, I’ve heard people say that, I don’t have to go to that course, it’s just lam
rim, you know.
And that’s just a basic, they say in Tibetan {kuk tak ten}, say {…}[repeat]; {kuk}
means, stupid head or fool, {tak} is a sign or a reason, and then {ten} means to
display; it means to broadcast your stupidity publicly, to show what a fool you
are if you say, oh it’s just lam rim. You see what I mean.
Lam Rim is a ticket to tantra and people have to understand that. Your students
should understand that.
Successful practice of the three principle paths, I’m not only saying prepares you
for tantra, I’m saying it turns into tantra. It’s a {nyer len gyi gyu} for tantra. You
see what I mean. If you do the three principle paths well you will start having
tantric realisations, you see.
And to me that’s proof that it’s a beautiful flow into tantra, you know, and that’s
the way it should go.
So, it’s not like you get up to tantra and you reject the lam Rim and especially
morality and things like that. That’s a very, very stupid idea that one might get
from reading the Annexe, what’s that thing, the new age thing? It’s like tantric
sex workshop in, you know, number four, bring your whatever, you know
what I mean. And very, very dirty and very bad, okay, nothing like that, alright.
Question number three is the ten characteristics of a qualified lama.
And I think that’s important for every beginning student to know, you know.
That’s something that all your students should know right away, you know.
And it puts pressure on you to be a good lama because they know immediately
what Asanga said or whoever it was, Ashvagosha said was a good lama, you
know. So, you know, you gotta clean out number four or number seven or
whatever, okay.
So I like that question. Okay.
I think the next question is about the four principles of karma and those are very
necessary for people.
I think it’s skilful to mention to your students how much the first one is like what
the bible teaches. You see what I mean. Because Jesus talked a lot about that
you don’t get good results from bad deeds and you don’t get bad results from
good deeds although it seems to be that way in normal life.
And I think it’s good to play on that {bakchak} which is in a western person’s
mind. You know, a western person already knows about that but doesn’t really
believe it. You know, they think that if they lie and they get some money, the lie
caused the money. And then your job in the first principle of karma is to prove
that that’s impossible, okay.
And, that they should just be honest all the time. And then, sooner or later, it
pays off, okay.
Second one, ‘consequences are greater than the actions’. I think that’s important
to teach to westerners because they tend to think that a small bad deed is okay,
that if they do something, like, they call, a white lie, or something like that; that a
small bad deed is somehow okay.
And even just jostling someone on the subway in a very irate state of mind could
cause you years of back problems or something. You see what I mean. And
they have to think about that, you know. They have to be aware of that
otherwise you’re, like, sending them out into a reality that they’re gonna get
killed in if they’re not aware. See what I mean? If they’re not aware that it’sthe
case that if they do a small bad deed it could cause them years of problems
you’re, like, making them defenceless. You’re, like, cheating them. And they’re
gonna go out and do little bad deeds and think it’s okay. And they’re gonna
have a miserable life and not know why. You know what I mean. So I think it’s
very important to stress that to people, the second law.
Law number three is cool because, ‘if you don’t do something you’re not gonna
get any result’. And people are always hoping for something for nothing, right.
They don’t do good deeds, they don’t keep their book or they keep their book
half the time. And then they get halfway results and they’re, like, complaining
and kevetching, you know, that I didn’t get my results. You know, and you say,
did you keep your book?
They say, well, you know, pretty well. You know what I mean. ‘Pretty well’
either means half the time or half-heartedly and both get you the same result
which is mixed, you know. Not much, and no noticeable progress that way.
You see what I mean.
And then I think when you teach number four, ‘once an action is committed the
consequence cannot be lost, you always have to talk about the exception of the
four powers.
So first you teach that it can’t ever just go away. And then you have to say, by
itself. Okay. And then you say, by the way, the ‘by itself’ means that if you use
the four powers you can get rid of some of this stuff, the power. And then you
have to teach them the four powers, okay. ‘Cos it’s kind of cruel to teach
somebody karma and not teach them how to get out of it if there’s a way to get
out of it, okay.
Yeah. [student] Yeah, Axel has had a philosophical problem with the idea that
karma grows, that karma multiples, they say, exponentially every twenty- four
hours for example in the Vinaya.
So why is that, you see. And all I can say is that, there’s parallels in the physical
world, you know. When there’s a seed and it grows the mass of the thing often
doubles every twenty-four hours or something. And then I would say, you
know, I like to think of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and
Washington, sitting around a coffee table in Philedelphia and having a small idea
about a thing called democracy. I remember reading Franklin’s biography,
autobiography, and he would, everyday he would get home it was hot, he was
chubby, he liked to drink, you know

And he would come home and he would be kind of cranky and the landlady
would say, well what is it Mr Franklin, a monarchy or that other thing you guys
are thinking about? And he’d say, we don’t know yet, you know.
So it means that during that time they were just sitting around talking about the
concept of having the majority rule, you know. And that was, for those times, a
very strange concept and it was something very radical and experimental.
And you have to imagine that that started out as an idea in his mind. It was
Franklin, I think. And it was just an idea. And now it’s become the way that
hundreds of millions of people live by that.
And I think that even in an observable historical sense you can see how a single
thought can turn into a huge construct called the federal tax-eating government,
you know. [laughter] [student] He said, it always collapses when it reaches a
peak. Yeah, it does. It will reach a peak and collapse.
Oh, when people ask that you have to get into the transfer of energy, the billiard
ball thing. And that’s a big debate in Buddhism. It’s a very big debate in the
books about how can a karmic seed go on year after year if everything lasts only
a second?
And the answer is that the energy is transferred to the next seed like a billiard
ball, like a line of billiard balls.
I mean, that’s the, what do you call, pramanavartikka explanation.
And then there’s the madhyamika prasangika explanation, okay.
Yeah. [student] I don’t think it’s in this course actually. It comes in the sixth
course, the Diamond Cutter. And that’s a long story. That’s a long story. You
can get it in the Diamond Cutter.
Yeah. [student] I’m sorry? [student] The dhyani Buddhas? [student] Between
karma and that? [student] Oh, not that I’m aware of, not that I’m aware of. But
Rinpoche always says, that doesn’t prove anything. [laughter] Okay. [laughs]
I’ll leave the next couple.
Number seven is my favourite question, one of my favourite questions. Can the
idea of karma, that is ethics or morality, coexist with the idea of emptiness, or do
they contradict each other? You see what I mean.
And it was common even in Tibet but also in ancient India for Buddhists who
were not well trained to say that, because things are empty, then karma doesn’t
matter. And this is the famous story of the lady at the Buddhist conference in
California. Who I, I read this in Joanna, what’s her name, something’s book.
Anyway, and she wrote that they were at a Buddhist conference on the west
coast and this lady, they were checking out. They’d had a nice conference about
emptiness and everything and she’s checking out and she drops her suitcase and
it pops open. And all the hotel’s towels fall out, you know. And they’re, like,
what are you doing, you know?
And she says, well everything’s empty anyway, it doesn’t matter, you see.
And that’s like important wrong view, you see. That’s like very major wrong
view.
And it just reflects that you don’t understand what emptiness is.
The world is a big blank screen. Every object is only shapes and colours, visible
objects. And then what you see depends totally on your past karma, because all
those things are a projection or a creation of your past karma.
So emptiness gives karma a place to act out its projections. Emptiness is like the
empty screen and then karma is like the projector; very similar.
So to think that emptiness has any meaning without karma is ridiculous. The
events of your life are caused by your karma projecting images on to emptiness,
you see what I mean, in the same way that a projector projects images onto a
screen.
So to say that somehow emptiness means that karma doesn’t matter is stupid.
And what you should, and then at the end of your explanation to your students
you should say, in fact, emptiness proves karma.
You gotta have emptiness to have karma. You see what I mean. Not only does
emptiness not cancel karma, emptiness is necessary for karma to work, okay.
Karma wouldn’t have a place to project things if things weren’t empty. You see
what I mean?
And karma could never work if things weren’t empty. In fact, nothing could
work if things weren’t empty, okay.
You gotta get them from ‘emptiness means karma doesn’t work’ to ‘emptiness
and karma work together’ to the next step, the final step, ‘you need emptiness
for karma to work’. You see what I mean, you gotta go through that process
with people.
I’ll say it again. It’s not true that emptiness means that karma doesn’t matter,
that’s A.
B, karma and emptiness have to work together. The karma projects onto blank
objects and that’s how you get objects, okay.
And then, finally, you say, by the way, did you notice you couldn’t have karma
without emptiness.
So, not only are they not contradictory, and not only are they mutually
compatible, emptiness is necessary for karma to do its schtick, okay. And you
gotta take them through that stage, okay, those steps.
Let’s see what else.
Number ten is the short definition of Mahayana bodhichitta, okay. And, as you
know, anybody who gets bodhichitta in its true form becomes a bodhisattva at
the same moment, okay. So really you’re talking about what is a bodhisattva.
And I think there’s new kind of Dharma rumour, I mean, and it’s a little bit hard
one to talk about. Which is, that anybody’s who really nice is a bodhisattva, you
se what I mean. Like, you often hear, so and so’s a real bodhisattva.
You say, why?
They say, he gives money to anybody who asks, you know.
Or, so and so’s a bodhisattva.
Why?
Oh, they built a hospital in Calcutta and they’re taking care of everybody who
needs help, something like that. They are bodhisattvas by virtue of being
extremely kind to people, okay.
And that’s not technically true. It’s not true at all actually, okay. And it’s hard to
tell people that. It’s hard to say that. I had couple of people got upset last time I
went through this. But what a real bodhisattva is doing, is recognising that this
world is extremely painful and they are trying to teach people the real method to
stop this level of reality and move to a different level of reality. And those are
kind people, you know, those are really kind people. You see, they are, if a
person were a real bodhisattva they would most likely spend a lot of their time
trying to teach people how to move to a higher level of reality like nirvana or
enlightenment.
They would probably devote most if not every moment of their time to doing
that and preserving the books that help teach that, you know what I mean,
things like that.
They would be obsessed by those things.
Would they also ignore people who need help, who don’t have enough food,
you know? Of course not, they would also spend time doing that. But the main
task of a bodhisattva is to teach people how to reach enlightenment and also to
reach enlightenment themselves by the quickest means possible.
So they would be somebody who was trying very hard to focus on the most
powerful means of reaching enlightenment because they love other people, you
see. Because they care about others they would be struggling to keep their book
and struggling to keep their practice and struggling to learn tantra and to
practice it because they know that’s the best way to help other people.
So their idea of what helps other people would be much different. Of course it
doesn’t, I always say, conversely, it doesn’t mean that they would be uncaring
people. They’d probably be very caring people. If there were refugees they’d
be helping refugees. If there were people who needed a place to stay they’d be
helping them find a place to stay, etcetera. But their main focus would be that,
okay.
I think it’s important to know the definition of nirvana for two reasons. One is
to dispel the old Dharma rumour in the United States that nirvana means some
kind of buzzed out state, okay. That nirvana means being able to sit there and
not care about anything, okay, or that you disappear or you go on a permanent
heroin trip or something like that, okay.
There is still, less, but there is still this idea in the United States. The truth is {..}
means, you yourself would eliminate all negative thoughts. You would never
have again a negative thought.
Would you necessarily look different to us next morning? No. Okay.
I mean, your face would be kinda, [laughter] you know. There wouldn’t be so
many wrinkles, you know, like that. But basically, you wouldn’t look physically
a lot different than the night before.
And you could achieve nirvana at 8.05 on Friday and then go out to dinner with
your family, you know what I mean, it’s all possible.
And then the second thing about nirvana, I think, the very, very, very important
thing is the second part of the definition, {…} what? {so so tango}. Meaning, you
can only achieve it if you’ve seen emptiness directly. You must see emptiness
directly. There’s nothing else. There is no other path to removing your mental
afflictions forever. Impossible. You cannot remove your anger. You cannot get
rid of jealousy. You cannot even much reduce them without seeing emptiness
directly, okay. And that’s {so so tango} means, due to the realisations you had
when you saw emptiness directly, okay. And that’s, you gotta push that with
your students, okay, ‘cos otherwise, again, if you water Buddhism down and
present it as something less, they’ll never get there.
It’s cheating other people. It’s actually murder, you know, it’s a kind of murder
to not teach them what they need to know because they’ll die many lifetimes
after that.
You have a big responsibility as a Dharma teacher. A surgeon can cut the wrong
vein and kill somebody, one life. But a Dharma teacher who leaves out the
second part of the definition of nirvana, seriously, gives them a much greater
chance of dying over and over again. [laughs] Okay. I mean, it’s very touchy,
okay.
And don’t fool around with Dharma. Don’t try to edit it, you know, don’t try to
simplify it to where important elements are lost, okay, ‘cos you could kill
somebody.
I like number twelve, which is, the eighth century master Dharmakirti in his root
text on Buddhist logic, says that two elements must be present for tantra to
work. Name them. Okay.
First one, is that the power who spoke the tantra, and this also applies to
mantras, okay. Tantra being books about secret practice and mantras being
special formulas that you recite, special strings of words, holy words that you
recite. So it applies to both, okay. The maker of a mantra and the writer of a
tantra or the person who develops a tantric system for people to follow, must
first be, the first requirement is that they should be a person of extraordinary
spiritual power, okay, like Lord Buddha, okay.
The second part is the interesting part. The person who practices it or recites that
mantra must be very, very pure. Okay. And it doesn’t work otherwise, okay.
So a person who’s not pure could go sneak into the ACI database, break the
code, get into those one thousand and three tantric books, get their Tibetan
dictionary out and figure out four or five paragraphs about these secret
practices, you know. But then if they tried to do them and their heart wasn’t
pure, which is not pure already ‘cos they just broke the first rule of tantra which
is that it’s secret and you have to get it from a qualified lama, it wouldn’t work
anyway. It couldn’t work, okay. They would just collect bad deeds, okay, if they
tried to do this.
So the person who practices it has to be pure, okay. And mantras don’t have
much effectiveness if you’re not pure, okay.
So if you’re not watching your morality, if you’re not keeping your vows, if
you’re not checking your book, you know, if you don’t even know your vows,
tantric vows especially, mantras can’t, they won’t do anything for you. They
don’t have any self-existent power.
And in fact, the Buddhists went to great lengths to demonstrate that the word
OM doesn’t have any self-existent power. It cannot, by itself, have any holy
power.
The person who recites it has to be living a clean act and then the OM works,
like, amazing, you see what I mean.
So those are the two things you need for tantra to work, okay.
And that’s interesting ‘cos it’s from a logic book and it’s true, okay.
Let’s see here. I like to teach people the three different types of meditation just
because of the, again, a lot of this course, a lot of the questions that I think are
most important, are coming from misconceptions from the early days of
American Buddhism. You know, stupid ideas or misinformed ideas that we
would like to root out of our Buddhism before it gets settled. You know, get rid
of those dumb ideas early on before they become a tradition, okay.
And the idea that the only kind of meditation you can do is {jok gom}, fixed
meditation; and the idea that the only object you can take is your breath, which
has no virtuous content normally, okay, it’s neutral. The idea that just focussing
on your breath for a long time would lead you to enlightenment is wrong. It
was meant, it was designed by Master Vasubhandu in a certain chapter of the
abhidharmakosha, {..} is a practice, and it’s meant as a preliminary to meditation.
It’s not meant to be the meditation. So I think there’s this misconception about
meditation. Or that meditation necessarily means thinking about a blank screen
or a black hole or especially, the bad idea that meditation means watching your
thoughts float by and not owning them or not following them. And that that’s
some kind of gonna enlighten you to, you know, rabbits watch their thoughts
and they watch them go by.
You know, my lama used to say it all the time, you know, you know what I
mean. I mean, that’s no big thing, and just to not identify with them or to say,
they’re not me, you know. Of course they’re you. I mean, if a thought comes
by your, the screen saver, right, and says, I wish I could kill so and so at work.
You just, like, oh I don’t identify with it. It’s already karma, {sempa ..}, fourth
chapter abhidharmakosha, you know. That’s already a karma. It’s less karma if
you don’t identify with it but it is your mind and you do have to take care of it.
And it’s not a meditation to sit there and watch it float away.
So you have all these mental afflictions and you’re watching them float away and
that’s going to help you? You know what I mean, that’s a bad idea.
I’m not aware of any scripture where that’s taught, okay.
Let’s see another one. Lama practice, there’s a sort of a basic question about
lama practice. I think some day we should put a more substantial question in
lama practice.
This is mostly about different steps in lama practice. And I’ve been hesitant to
teach it properly because it seems self-serving, especially to Americans, you
know.
If I got up here and said what you really should do, the first day that you meet
your lama is give them all your money, you know, sell all your things. Follow
them around all day long, you know. And cook and clean for them and fix their
clothes. And whatever they say, do it, you know.
Which is really what you have to do.
It would seem self interested, right. So I don’t say it and I don’t teach it but you
should get a good lama teaching from somebody, okay.
And it is the source of all your happiness. {…}, you know, and you have to
understand that. And that’s the opening line of the Lam Rim. You know what I
mean.
And you have to see that serving your lama is the source of all your spiritual
attainments.
But because we’re teaching in an American environment and because of the
abuses of spiritual teachers who have come to the west, I think it’s incumbent on
us as teachers to do the opposite.
I think we should, if it comes time to pay for the class, we should pay for the
class.
If there’s a bathroom to clean we should clean the bathroom. You know what I
mean.
If there’s some trouble with a student, you know, and they’re being bad to you,
you should smile and talk to them and gently and say, yeah, okay, maybe you’re
right, you know.
And I don’t think in our country, at the beginning of Buddhism, it doesn’t seem
appropriate time or place to tell somebody, you know, if you say one
inappropriate word to your lama, you know, you should just leave or something
like that.
It’s not the time to do that. I think this is the time, in these times, a good lama
should probably have to pay most of the expenses and do most of the work and
do all the readings and correct them all, you know what I mean, and do all the
dirty work just because Americans will respect that more.
But once you know the scene and once you’re well trained, I think your own
attitude, if you want to get enlightened fast, should shift, okay.
But I think you have to very careful about how you teach it in America and
especially be careful about money and things like that. And just not take any for
a long time. Especially, I warn you one thing with students, you know, there’s
this honeymoon effect, you know.
They meet the Dharma, they get all exited, they offer you their house or all their
savings. And I did when I met Rinpoche. I gave him my bankbook. And he
said, he looks at it, he says, that’s nice and he said, here, you keep it. [laughs]
And it should be like that. I mean, don’t, wait til a student is more mature before
you allow them to make a major offering because they’ll regret it later and
they’ll see you as abusing them or something like that.
And I think for Buddhism to be pure we have to sort of stick to that. Once you
feel the student understands clearly what’s going on and they still want to do it,
Leon when he first came to me said, the first class or second class he took me out
to lunch and said I have this place in the east village. You can use it for free. And
I said, come back to me in six months, you know. And he did. So we took it.
You what I mean. And it should be like that.
Don’t let people do wild things before they know what’s going on, okay.
Yeah. [student] that was number sixteen, paraphrased, okay.
I think death meditation is important. The next question’s about the three basic
steps of death meditation. That’s number seventeen.
For the following reasons, again, you see, it’s a reaction to teachings that have
been given in the Unites States. All the, or many of the death meditations
teachings that have been going on in this country have concentrated on the
highly esoteric, secret, unusual practices that can be done during the moment of
death by a very highly trained person, you see what I mean. Who’s trained
themselves for many years in tantra, you know. And what colour lights are
gonna happen and all that stuff and things like that.
And I think that’s a disservice to people. I don’t think, people are not well
trained, people are not going to follow it, people are not going to be doing the
right thing when they die; they’re gonna spend their whole life thinking they can
do {powa} in the last half hour and everything will be okay. And that they can
pretty much live the same life they’ve always led and that’s not true at all, okay.
Real death meditation is those three steps of leading your life, the goal of a death
meditation is, that at some point, you begin to act as if you were going to die
tonight. And that every single day of your life and every action you undertake
you evaluate in the light of you’re gonna die tonight.
So at any given moment, you’re not doing any action that you wouldn’t do if
you were going to die tonight.
Now, that would lead to a lot of people quitting their jobs, okay, and that’s fine,
you see, ‘cos you will die tonight.
And much better to be a little poor than not be ready. You see what I mean?
And I’m not suggesting that everybody quit their job, okay. You can do all this
at work. We’re going to get into that later.
But evaluate all your activities: is this what I would be doing if I knew I was
going to die tonight? Okay.
And then even the people in here who are practising pretty well would make
different choices about the priority of their practice, see what I mean. You would
say, okay, you know what, if I only had one practice to do today before I died, I
guess I’d be doing that other thing, see what I mean.
And that’s also very helpful for people who are practising well already to
prioritise their practice, okay.
So that’s the goal of a death meditation not what colour light’s gonna come to
you, not can you trick karma and boost your mind to another realm. Come on,
if that was possible the Buddhas would have taught it and we wouldn’t be here.
Okay.
Lord Buddha would have done it instead of spending 75 and 76 and 77 thousand
                     th
times ten to the 60 power eons, okay.
He would have just waited until he died and popped his mind up to another
place. You know what I mean?
So a real death meditation, the goal of real death meditation is that at any
moment in your life you can honestly say I’m doing the most important thing
that I could do even if I was going to die tonight.
At every moment in your life you can honestly say that. That’s the test of a
good death meditation, okay.
I see nobody left class, okay, good. [laughter]
Number nineteen, do you really think everything in this life is suffering. And we
talked about it, I forget where it was, in [unclear].
And the common American perception of the, you know, Lord Buddha said,
everything’s suffering. And then your mind comes back and says, it’s true, my
boss at work is suffering. It’s true, my spouse is suffering from time to time.
It’s true, I get headaches every three weeks.
But it’s not true that everything in between is suffering. I mean, I saw a pretty
good movie the other night. I went to a good jazz show. I had a good Chinese
dinner. You know, it’s not true that everything is suffering.
There’s suffering from time to time, which sometimes is bad enough that you’d
want to go to class, but it’s not all the time. I mean, it’s not constant, you know.
Life’s not so bad.
Then you have to be able to prove to a student, and particularly to an American,
that even the spaces in between are suffering. And that’s hard.
It boils down to explaining how, first of all how those, according to Buddhism,
Buddhism perceives it this way: if the end of an event is disaster, then we can say
that, that event is a disaster, you see what I mean.
When the Titanic was built and when it was the most noble, glorious, biggest,
most fast, great ocean liner in the world, was it suffering, you see, was it a
disaster?
And Buddhism says, yes because it ended in disaster. You can’t talk about the
first ten days on the Titanic as having been pleasant. Okay. And it’s a true
example. It’s exactly like that. You can’t meet people who were in the Titanic
when it went down and say, but wasn’t the first two weeks really nice? Why
don’t you ever talk about what a great ship it was? [laughter] You see what I
mean.
And they say, no, are you crazy, it ended in disaster, thousands of people died.
It was a disaster from the beginning, you see.
And that’s how life is, you see. If it ends, if every relationship ends in divorce or
death, you know. If every possession ends in losing this possession or having it
taken away from you by somebody else or the possession breaking. You know,
if everybody’s ultimate goal was to become wrinkled and ugly and old, you
know. Then is the body nice? You see what I mean? And the answer has to be
no.
Or you can bring up the Titanic thing. It seems like not a very good example but
it’s perfect. It’s exactly the same thing. And you don’t think so until it sinks.
You see what I mean.
You’re still defending the Titanic until it hits the iceberg. But it’s a great ship, you
know. Until the disaster, until you get close to death, you don’t see the rest is
like, when you get close to dying the rest seems very, very silly that you worked
so hard to do so many stupid things. Okay.
I mean, you have to try to think of these sufferings in the way that you would in
the last few days of it because that’s the real viewpoint, you know. That’s the
real place from where you have to check.
The last point to mention there, I think, is, you know, to me a natural American
reaction should be, well how can what you’re selling be any different? People
lose their lama. People forget what they read and studied. You forget your
Tibetan grammar and you start forgetting words. You become as senile as
anybody else.
Why study? You know, doesn’t that have the same problem?
And you say no, there’s two kinds of karma.
You have to get into pure karma and impure karma, okay. Impure karma
always wears out; pure karma always perpetuates itself. And that’s the big
difference, okay.
Karma done with a knowledge of emptiness can be perpetuated. It’s like money
that you keep reinvesting and get richer and richer.
And then, impure karma is like money that you spend and you lose it, and then
the thing that you bought wears out. And it’s over, okay. Big difference, so you
have to get into that difference.
We say there is a kind of karma, which you can collect, which will only lead to
pleasure permanently, eternally, okay, by reinvestment process. Okay.
Number twenty, what did Lord Buddha say himself was the purpose of logic?
Okay. People are always coming up to me and saying how boring logic is. And
it is.
But the point of this logic is very profound: that you don’t judge other people.
You learn to prove to your own stupid mind that you don’t know what other
people are thinking like you always thought you did. You see what I mean.
You learn to prove it to yourself that you have to go through the world in a state
of, what do you call it, suspended [student] yeah, something like, suspended
disbelief.
You can’t evaluate other people’s intentions, you know, you really can’t.
Can you evaluate their actions? Yes. Someone’s hurting someone you evaluate
it and you stop them. You know, someone’s on the street hitting a guy with a
metal pipe, you’re required by your bodhisattva vows to stop them because the
action is wrong and it’s hurting someone.
But do you really know that the guy with the pipe is not a bodhisattva and that
the guy his hitting is the next Hitler and that he can see the future? You see, you
really don’t know.
So you keep in this suspended state about other people’s motivations and other
people’s reasons for doing things and you fight their actions, okay.
And then you’re okay. But, to believe sincerely, that you really know what
they’re thinking is a grave error and has been the cause of much suffering of
Buddhists; Lord Buddha himself. Remember the story it came from, okay, and
not to judge the person.
Also there are different levels of practice, you know, distinctly different levels of
practice.
I mean, a person, for example, who has kept monk’s vows well for a long time,
who’s done other activities very sincerely, could be seeing the world in a much
different way than you are. Okay.
A person who’s gone even to a higher level, through collecting good karma their
whole life, you know, through devoting their life to spiritual things, could be
seeing the world on a totally thirds level. And acting or engaged in practices you
can’t even understand. So you have to understand that there are distinct barriers
between people of different spiritual levels, you know.
You can’t understand everything about what Khen Rinpoche is doing, for
example, you know. Khen Rinpoche spends time watching TV. He’s, like,
talking about the Mets and the Yankees, you know.
And what is he really doing? I mean, I sat up there many nights with him and
there’d be a movie on and I’d be watching intently and he’d say, he’d turn it off
right at the most important part. [laughter] Like, you’re just about to get to the
most important part and then he’d turn around like that. What are you doing
Rinpoche, you don’t understand, this is the most important part.
And he’d be going like this, you know, [laughter] and he’d say, huh?
And I say, the movie, the most important part.
He’d say, oh, oh, oh, sorry, you know. What’s he thinking? What’s he doing?
You don’t know, you know. [laughter] You know, who knows? Who knows?
I mean, be very careful with those things. It’s the first bodhisattva vow isn’t it,
you see? Be very careful. People are at distinctly different levels from years or
decades of practice and they might be doing something totally beyond us.
So does that mean watching TV is okay for us? No. Okay. See? Get it?
That’s all. The activity is dumb, okay. And we shouldn’t do it. You shouldn’t
waste your time. If you did it at Sera they would punish you in the assembly,
okay. Alright.
I like twenty-two: what does a person have to be to be omniscient, you know.
And the normal answer that pops up in your mind is they know the Latin names
for every single plant and animal, you know what I mean. You think that. Or
they know how advanced computers work or, you know what I mean. Or they,
you know, they understand what Einstein saw. They can explain what Einstein
saw perfectly or something like that.
I mean, your mind goes to, oh they can see what’s on Pluto, the backside of
Pluto.
When ‘omniscient’ comes up in my mind that’s what comes, you know. Or they
can really tell if the boss is gonna give them a raise before or they know the
lottery numbers for next week or stuff. I mean, when you think of Mr Know-it-
all, a person who knows everything, everything in the universe, the possibilities
are quite interesting, you know what I mean.
That’s not what makes you omniscient.
What makes you omniscient, mainly, is understanding perfectly the laws of this
is something you should do because it will make you enlightened and this is
something you shouldn’t do because you won’t get enlightened. And that’s all,
you know.       If you understand that perfectly that’s what’s the essence of
omniscience, you know.
They understand, they are dwelling in that truth all the time.
They’re constantly dwelling in a total awareness of what’s right and what’s
wrong to get you enlightened. And that’s all.
Do they also know all that other stuff? Yes.
So how come we still need money for Arizona? That’s another question. Okay.
[laughs] Did I just break a vow? No. Okay. [laughter]
I mean, the question comes up, why don’t they just play all the winning lottery
numbers and Buddhas will have the best temples around, you know. There
seems to be some karmic thing about the maturation of karma in there. Okay.
What’s the basic principle underlying the arguments in favour of a future life and
a past life? Okay.
And that’s a {nyer len gyi gyu}, okay, that’s a material cause, you know. And
again, this question is a reaction, and the emphasis in these classes on that
question is a reaction to, the American culture’s, the western culture’s ingrained
belief, wrong belief, that past and future lives don’t exist. You see what I mean.
So the only reason to spend so much trouble and time on this question is the
prejudice of our culture against future and past lives, okay.
Is it a founded prejudice? No. You just believe it ‘cos your mom taught you and
Mrs Melvin in the first grade. You have no more logical reason to believe that
than all the Tibetans to believe in a future life ‘cos their first grade teacher told
them that. And they haven’t examined it either. And they can’t explain to you
why there’s a future life either, okay.
So you shouldn’t be either one. You shouldn’t be a person who believes in
future lives and doesn’t know how to explain it. And you shouldn’t be a person
who doesn’t believe in future lives and doesn’t know how to explain it, okay.
You should be a person who does know how to explain it and therefore does
believe in future lives, okay.
And that all comes down to two things: you have to prove that mind and body
are separate, okay. And a very difficult karmic obstacle, obscuration of all
Americans, drilled into their minds from their past lives is that the brain is the
mind.
You gotta overcome that. You’re gonna have to work on that.
With your students you have to first approach the question of the difference
between the brain and the mind. And you could do it be getting into the feeling
of things or demonstrating that the senses don’t stop at the edge of the skin.
There’s a misperception that the edge of the skin is the edge of the person.
Which seems very, I mean, to a Buddhist this is a very primitive way of thinking,
that the edge of your mind is the edge of your skin. What about the hairs and
the freckles, you know, they bump up, you know.
I mean, really the mind is easily going to the back of the room ‘cos the visual
consciousness is going to the back of the room, okay.
Where is your mind?
I mean, there’s this perception that your mind is restrained by the skin and
momentarily popping out and coming back. See what I mean? That’s how you
visualise your mind, you know. You’re thinking, like, no, my mind’s under my
skin and that stuff’s coming up here to my mind, you know. There’s all these
books that you read in high school, the light coming into the eye and going to
the nerve and going to the brain. And you gotta get people over that. They
have to get into, this is why the first chapter of the abhidharma is about the {…},
the presentation of the five skandhas and the eighteen dhatus. It’s to get you in
the habit of seeing that the eye extends easily to the back of the room. I’m not
limited by my skin, you know. My consciousness is not something that, at all,
my visual consciousness for example, easily goes beyond me skin. That’s just a
silly idea. And my visual consciousness is my mind. It’s one sixth of my mind,
okay, you gotta get people used to that.
They gotta stop thinking of the ‘me’ or the consciousness as being restrained by
the bag of the skin. And that, really, it extends to whatever you can reasonably
think of, and that your mind is there, okay.
So you got to separate, learn to separate the body, the meat, from the mind,
which has nothing in common with the body. Nothing. Okay, nothing in
common with physical stuff.
You have to be able to get people into that mode or mood where they see the
difference.
The mind is ineffable.      The mind is unweighable, uncuttable, unburnable,
undestroyable and easily passes beyond physical matter.
There’s no connection at all, you see.
There’s nothing similar about the stuff the mind is made of and the stuff the skin
is made of. There’s just no similarity at all.
And you have to get people, they have to be able to make that distinction. And
to do that you have to overcome a lot of unreasonable cultural prejudices. And
you’ll have to work on that.
The first few times you explain future lives people won’t believe you. They’ll go
out thinking he didn’t really do a very good job, okay, because of this prejudice,
you see.
Unfounded prejudice but deep prejudice, okay.
And then you have to get into could the body cause the mind, you know. Could
this kind of stuff cause that kind of stuff, you know? And the answer is, no
they’re not similar at all, okay.
And that’s the basic argument, okay.
Now you gotta get more refined than that. There’ll be a lot of counter-
arguments to that.
And you have to be ready and equipped to handle them; have to read the
second chapter of the Pramanavartikka.
Okay. How are we doing on time? Not too well. Okay.
I like the question about what makes something good karma, what makes
something bad karma? Yeah, very simple: self-interested pain and pleasure,
okay. [laughs]
It’s not ‘cos god says so. It’s not ‘cos Moses says so, you know. It’s not ‘cos
anyone says so. It’s because if you do this it will hurt you and if you do this
you’ll get what you want. Okay. That’s all. Okay.
This is a good deed because it leads you to pleasure and to nirvana and to
enlightenment.
This is bad deed because it causes you pain. That’s all, you know.
No one had to say anything because that’s the way they work, okay.
It’s like gravity works a certain way. It’s not like gravity works that way
because somebody said it should.
And karma’s the same. You do certain deeds it will hurt you. You do other
deeds you’ll be happy and you’ll reach nirvana and enlightenment.
And that’s what makes them good and bad, okay, not ‘cos somebody says so.
Okay.
Not the courts, not your parents, not your school, not any god, okay, because
it’s just that’s the way they work. Okay.
Let’s see. We’re getting close.
I think it’s interesting to know when karma ripens. You know, people tend to
think, that’s twenty-nine okay, people tend to think, oh it always ripens in the
next life. You can’t prove anything. Okay.
That would deny the effectiveness of a certain Buddhist practice which is what?
Tantra. Okay.
If it’s true that karma only ripens in your next life then forget practising tantra,
whose efficacy depends on, the fact that you can commit powerful karmas in this
life and reap the rewards in this life. Okay. The whole theory of tantra is to
become a tantric deity in this life.
And that’s the power of one of the three types of karmic maturation or karmic
ripening. Okay. That’s all.
I like it because of tantra, you see. I’m interested in that question because of
tantra.
We’re Americans, we don’t want to wait for our hamburgers. You drive
through, you order it, pick it up without rolling up the window again, okay.
Yeah. [student] It does for sure. Does tantra purify powerful bad karma? Yes.
Yeah, it does.
It would have to, you see what I mean, ‘cos otherwise you couldn’t turn intoa
tantric deity. So that would have to be one of the mechanisms or dynamics of
tantra, is that it must not only have a very powerful effect on {..}, you know, of
getting new good karma but it must have a very powerful effect on {..}, which is
purifying your old bad karma. Okay. Or you couldn’t become a tantric deity in
this life.
Okay. I really like what I call the correlations. I think it’s an important part of
teachings on karma, okay.
Four different things that happen when you, for example, kill something
because, again, there’s these Dharma rumours or Dharma misinformation in
America.
You see what I mean. You step on a bug, you become a bug or something like
that.
There’s four different, distinct karmic maturations.
Number one: the realm you’re gonna be born in. Okay. If you commit really
bad karmas you go to a totally different realm.
Who made that realm? Acme realm construction company? [laughter] Who
made those realms? Who made the realms? Your karma.
Do they exist now? Does a hell realm that you might be going to exist now?
Yours?
No. Get it?
It’s not like somebody made it a long time ago and you’re moving there. It’s not
like that. It’s not like they make dog bodies somewhere and they stuff spirits in
them, you know, in some bardo factory or something. It’s not like that.
Your perceptions shift due to a shifting of your karma and you begin to perceive
that realm and that is the creation of that realm. And that’s why you can become
a dog by tonight, okay. It’s too easy. It’s frighteningly easy. It’s just a shift in
your perceptions like the last time you got cut. First you had a perception of a
normal finger and then you had a perception of a finger with a hole in it.
And dying’s the same thing; it’s just a shift. It takes thirty seconds something.
It’s just a simple shift in your perceptions, and you are dead, and you are a dog.
And it can happen to anybody tonight.
Now if there was dog factories and if it took time, the same delays that it takes to
build a building in New York, there’d be some hope, you know. You could say it
takes a while to make hell, a hell realm.
It’s not the way it is.
To get to a hell realm, to create a hell realm, takes thirty seconds of shifting of
your karma in your mind and you will be there. And it’s that easy. And it’s that
scary. And it’s true. Okay.
Yeah. [student] Okay. [laughs] [student] Oh, she asked why is it that I have to
see a dog embryo? You know what I mean? If what you said is true, [student]
right, then why would you have to go through it lime a gestation period or
something that? Why don’t you just close your eyes, die, open your eyes, and
you see paws, fully grown paws?
There are four types of birth, {kye ne shi}. And one of them is called, {..} and it is
exactly that. You don’t have to go through the gestation process. There are
people who are born in other realms who just look down and see a finished
being. {..kyewa} means a finished being. And certain kinds of beings are born
that way. And all four are present in the human realm for example, okay.
We just haven’t had, you haven’t seen anybody do it around you recently, okay,
but it happens. Okay.
Second kind of result: even if you are born as a human, you have a short life,
you know, you’re sick a lot. Okay. Like, we call it some kind of personal
ripening, personal result.
[cut] [end side A]
[side B]
By the way, this includes, you know, the thing that you get killed by other
people a lot, okay. [laughs] Alright.
Number three, which is grouped with number two, you see what I mean, two
and three are usually grouped together. And so some people only teach three
kinds of karmic results but it’s really four. Je Tsongkapa says it’s really four.
I left it as three in the answer key because that’s the way it’s often presented,
more often presented.
And that’s the habit of doing that thing again. You are attracted to that kind of
activity in your future life.
Even if you’re born as a human, or even if you eventually work off the karma of
being in a hell realm and make it up to a human realm, you’re still attracted to
that kind of behaviour.
That explains why some little kids are cruel from the beginning and some little
kids are very peaceful from the beginning. [baby] And some giggle all the time
from the beginning, [laughter] okay.
Last one: environmental result. I mean, this explains your external world.
Why is there pollution? Why is there war? You know, why are there muggers
in New York City? Why are some areas of the earth, like, hard to get over and
some areas are easy to get over? Why do some city’s have nice parks? Rio de
Janeiro, you know, unbelievable. And the some city’s just don’t have any, you
know. Why is that?
And that’s all karma. Okay. The whole external world is created by karma.
Why does the sun come up in the morning? Why do five billion people see the
sun come up in the morning?
It’s a perception. It’s a joint hallucination of your karma. Yeah. And some
people don’t get to see the sun come up in the morning. They’re in prison, in a
basement, they worked at my old office, you know, they’re blind, things like
that. Okay.
But the sun itself is a projection of five billion people’s karma. Okay. And you
gotta get used to that.
[student] Yeah, dogs too.
Yeah, it’s interesting that they’re cross-realms shared projections, yeah.
Number thirty-one. That’s that thing about Maitreya, about the six steps. How
you get in trouble. And to me it’s one of the most beautiful teachings in
Buddhism, you know.
You have ignorance in your past life.
That makes you have ignorance in this life.
That makes you see things the wrong way.
That makes you like things and dislike other things the wrong way.
That makes you do karma.
And that makes you stay here.
And I love that, you know. It connects emptiness and my condition. And it
explains it clearly, okay.
That’s where the whole shtick of Michael Roach about the boss at work comes
from. Right there. Okay. Maitreya.
You should understand the glass of water thing, you know. That’s important.
That’s a, to me it’s a lynchpin of Buddhism. And that’s the boss thing also, okay.
You have to be able to tie those two questions to a normal person’s life, okay.
You must be able to do that. If you’re gonna be an effective teacher of
Buddhism in America you better be able to use those two questions in normal
people’s lives to explain to them why bad things are happening to them and to
explain to them how they should react to them ‘cos that’s their salvation.
And if you can’t do that, then you’re not a Buddhist teacher. In my mind, you’re
not teaching Buddhism.
If you can’t connect emptiness to karma to a person’s everyday life and teach
them what to do when bad things happen and break the ‘wheel of life’ at the first
link, then you’re not teaching them Buddhism. You know what I mean?
You may be teaching them to be a little calm. You may be teaching them to
breathe right. But you ain’t getting them out of this suffering, you know.
You’ve got to be able to do that.
I repeat, question number thirty-one and thirty-two, you know, you gotta be
able to teach those to people clearly so that they react to the boss properly by
understanding the boss’s emptiness. And how that boss is a projection of their
karma, okay. Must- or else you’re not serving them.
You’re not really teaching them unless you tie it to the suffering of their lives,
okay.
That’s it. Those are the important ones.
Yeah. [student] Tantra? Yeah. [student] Oh, he said, you said if you practice the
three principle paths sweetly you slide into tantra like a greased pig, you know
what I mean. [laughter] You just, it just starts happening, you see what I mean.
And I’d say, initiation in this life or no initiation in this life, tantric things start
happening to you.
Now, what is ‘tantric things’? What does that mean?
Two levels: {kye rim} and {dzog rim}, okay. {kye rim}, stage of creation level.
Without revealing secrets, okay, you start to have experiences of encountering
deities and things like that, okay.
Then {dzog rim} experiences, you start to have definite and clear experiences of
you yourself becoming a deity, actually becoming a deity. So, basically, those
two things, okay.
And those start happening, you can make those things happen by keeping your
book well. And that’s so cool. And it makes it so crazy not to keep your book
well. You see what I mean?
I mean, if you know that if you just do ten, fifteen minutes, six times a day,
{tundruk}, you know, if you had any clear indication that these things could start
happening to you if you just followed those vows, you’d do it, you know.
It’s not such a big investment. The return is so much greater than the effort
required that even if I’m wrong you should try it. You know what I mean.
What have you got to lose? You know, I’m only asking ten, fifteen minutes
every two hours or something, you know. What have you got to lose if that
could take you to a higher level and start having all these experiences. And then
you’d be sure that this was working. Then what have you got to lose? Why not
try it, you know?
The worst that can happen is that you’ll act very sweetly to everybody else, you
know, and I’m just lying to get you to do it, you know. But I’m not, [laughs]
okay.
And that’s not {tragnye}. That’s {..},okay. That’s not {tragnye}. I’m speaking
literally, okay.
  Course the Buddha says, what? [laughter] Buddha said you can’t believe a
teacher when they say I’m speaking literally because they might be figurative
about that.
But I’m not being figurative. [laughter] [laughs] Okay.
And then what are you supposed to use? When you get up to that fine point
what’s supposed to take you over the top? Logic.
Okay. It makes sense that you could start seeing deities because everything’s
empty, you see.
And my karma’s creating my world.
Ah, he’s being literal. You see what I mean? That pushes you over the top.
It’s not figurative. It’s literal. Okay.
You sure? We gotta stop now. Sal’s gonna knock you out. Okay, one question.
[student] what’s the difference between Buddhists seeing deities and? [student]
Seeing Jesus Christ? [student] Oh, oh, oh, oh. [student] What’s the difference
between a mental patient thinking he sees Jesus Christ and a Buddhist who’s
seeing deities?
I’d say the stability of it [laughs] you know what I mean. I mean, if you know
how to do it, it goes on forever.
And I’d say, most patients I’ve met usually go in and out of it, and then go crazy.
You know what I mean. I think that’s, my basic answer would be that, it
becomes permanent.
And it’s replicable, meaning you can make it happen again and again just by
being good.
And then it’s confirmable. And I like that, you know.
You don’t have to believe me about any of this stuff. You go try it and see if
people immediately around you start to look different, you know.
They transfer that guy you don’t like. And then this new girl gets hired and
you’re, like, wow. Okay. [laughs] [laughter] You know what I mean.
Okay. Alright. Sal says have a break. And then the rest of the questions will be
covered in the group, okay.
[break]
Very quickly; lots of people asking me, what should I do for the next two
months?
[announcements of teachings/projects/etc]
[acknowledgements]
Last thing. Every time we do a class I try to bring up and talk about a little about
the theory behind ACI, okay.
And now, tonight, very briefly, two minutes, which usually runs into five, I’d like
to talk about the kind of students we have, you see what I mean.
And, I think, in America, it’s gonna be a totally different trip than it’s been in the
other countries. It is not, I don’t think it’s gonna be, it’s obvious it’s not gonna be
only ordained males who study these subjects in America.
As teachers you have to get into the mode of the way Buddhism is gonna spread
in this country is, in my mind, is gonna people just like you. And there will be
ordained people and that’s very precious but there’s gonna be more family
people.
This courses and this whole institute has been designed, primarily, for normal
working people, normal Americans who have a daytime job, who may have a
family, who have lots of other commitments. And the idea is that, for the first
time in history really, a large percentage of the population could learn the details
and the deep philosophy of Buddhism and still live a normal life, you see what I
mean.
And it won’t be one percent of the population, you know, in a cave or in a
monastery or something like that.
It won’t be like that. I don’t think so.
I think it’s gonna be, my dream is well educated, practising, serious Buddhists
who go through the five pillars or four, I don’t know what it is: study, daily
practice, meditation, retreats, and keeping your book, you know, your morality,
your vows. Those five things as normal people, you know.
I think this will be the first, my hope, my dream, first country, men and women,
taught the Geshe course, living a normal life and actually using their life as their
prooving ground for their Buddhism, you see what I mean.
So you have a normal life but you know the details of Madhyamika philosophy,
you see what I mean, and you’re using it at your office. I mean, that’s my
dream, you know.
You’re not sitting somewhere doing theoretical things or something like that.
You’re, you’ve got your daily practice, you’re a good meditator, you’re careful
to do, like, two long retreats a year, you keep your book {tundruk} six times a
day you’re checking your vows, and you study like crazy. And then you, I think
that the advantage of being a normal American is that you get to go try it out
not in a nice monastery where everybody is so holy, okay. You get to do it in
normal life, you know. You get to do it the office. You get to do it with your
family.
And it’s such a rich goldmine of mental afflictions, you see. [laughter]
It’s the perfect, people used to ask me, how could you do Buddhism and work in
the diamond business?
I’d say, this is the perfect place to do Buddhism, you know. You got greed, you
got fashion models with desire, you got jealousy among the top executives, you
got, you know, all sorts of wonderful, you know, situations to try your
Buddhism out ‘cos you have to be tested in the crucible.
You can’t sit in a monastery or sit in a cave and expect to work on your mental
afflictions, you know. It’s a, Rinpoche forced me to go to work. I had an
inheritance. I didn’t have to go to work, you know.
He said, you gotta go to work.
I said, Rinpoche, I don’t want to go to work. I resisted for years, you know.
Then he gave this holy lecture in [unclear] university. I’ll never forget it. I drove
him home and I said, I’ll do anything you want.
He said, go to work, you know. [laughs] [laughter]
And god bless him, you know, it was the most wonderful experience, you know.
It taught me everything.
To be in a normal office, nobody knew I was a Buddhist and people yelling at me
and cursing me and telling me to lie for them. And then I’m faced with all these
moral dilemmas and that’s perfect, you see. So I think America will be the first
country, my dream, well educated, normal people, who can spout Buddhist
philosophy like that, and do their retreats twice a year. It’ll be a national law I’m
sure shortly where everyone gets two months off a year for retreats, you know.
[laughter]
Why not? In Thailand they do. So, you know, it can happen. It will happen.
And then you’re doing your meditations every morning and you’re keeping
your book. You go into the bathroom, you sneak into that stall, you lock it, pull
out the book. So you got a little diahrrea sometimes and you gotta go every
two hours [laughter] or something. And nobody will say anything. I mean,
they might think you’re a little weird but you’ll get to tantric heaven. You know,
it’s worth it. You know, so I think we have to think about who’s gonna be the
Buddhists of this country. And it’s gonna be those people.
And I think it’s perfect. I think these are the golden times, you know, to have
that opportunity. You’re well fed, you’re well housed, you can read. You know,
you had twelve or eighteen years of free education and now you get Buddhism
put into your lap, you know. And then you get, this perfect lousy circumstances,
to try it out, and I think it’s perfect.
I couldn’t wish for anything more in my life, you know.
And I think those are the kind of people who will be the Buddhists of America
and the teachers also.
And I think that’s the way it should spread.
I think you have two extremes that I don’t want to go through. One is where
you have this aristocracy, priestly caste who owns all the information and only
they get to study and only they get to do the prayers and only they get to do the
rituals, only they have altars, you know.
And then, the other extreme is you go to church on holidays and you don’t
know anything and you spout a few prayers and you don’t learn anything. And
you don’t care about anything. And you go ‘cos other people go and because
your mother went. And you don’t have any idea what’s going on. And you are
not allowed to look at the liturgy or be involved in it at all.
I don’t want to see those two extremes. I think it’s gonna be something very
cool among normal people becoming Buddhist scholars, philosophers and deep
meditators and master retreat people. Just normal people like that. And, I think
that’ll be the coolest Buddhist country yet, okay.
Sal’s telling me to, okay [laughter]
[prayer: mandala]
[prayer: short mandala]




                    Course 16: Great Ideas of Buddhism #1. NYC
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