ACI 17 (обзорный курс), Занятие 01 (прогон ГМР, Нью-Йорк) — стенограмма

Class 1, part 1



And so was (unclear)...do you have any...can you hear in the back
all right? No. can't hear. How's that? Better? No. Still
bad? You want to try without the fan? Sure? We'll try without
the fan for a while. If you get hot, let me know, okay? All
right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We've brought an engineer in from
Germany to turn it off (laughter). (laughs) He has a PHD, he'll
be okay (laughter). (laughs) (applause) Okay. (laughs) So
it's good to see you again. A lot of changes...like to welcome
the new ordined people. Some people got married. Probably some
people got divorced (laughs) I don't know (laughter) (laughs)
Forgot to mention (unclear) and a lot of things like that.
(unclear) Can't hear still. Still can't hear.

(student: (unclear))

How's that...better? No. Can you go any further...no? We also
brought Madonna's son (unclear)...how's that...better? It's
okay? (unclear) Yeah, that's...all the rock stars do that
(laughter) (laughs) Okay. All right, so we'll start. So we had
a long trip...we got back last night...so spa... a little spacy,
but wh...I think, there'll be a...I think you're gonna get a
report about it. We went to North Carolina first, did death
meditation...that was about two and a half months ago, then went
to California and tried to talk this guy into giving some cabins
for Arizona and Connecticut...and looks like he will, and then we
went to Australia and we taught Bodhisattva vows to about a
hundred and fifty people and did business seminars for about
three hundred and fifty people and then did Mahamudra in western
Australia and then we went to Mongolia and that was a riot.
There were about...I don't know, between eight hundred to a
thousand people came every night, five nights in a row...it was
on national tv, and it was a riot...it was just a riot, and they
all mobbed everybody afterwards and it was really cool. But this
is the renaissance of Buddhism in Mongolia, I think, and it's
starting with that and they're very happy, so, you know...we'll
talk, we'll talk more about it later, but they really want
Americans to come and help them, especially Dharma trained
Americans 'cause they lost it for seventy years and they're very
excited to see Americans who can teach them 'cause they also love
English, they want to learn English, so they're very very
excited, like thousands and thousands of young people called the
television station, and just incredible energy, so you have to
think about that. (laughter) Then we went to Ireland and did
really nice talks in Dublin and Galway, and I think we started a
center there...and we started a center in Mongolia, Australia
also, and and that was really beautiful. And it's a very
beautiful mixture of their...it's a very interesting mixture of
like Catholic, mystic druids, Celtic Buddhism (laughter) (laughs)
and it was really really powerful, and they're very excited and
so they begged us to come back...we'll do another tour in the
fall of Mongolia and Ireland, I think. They just insisted that
we go back. So, so it was really beautiful. Then we went to
Arizona and we...it looks good for purchasing that land for three
year retreat. We had a lot of meetings with developers and
financiers and ranchers and cowboys and (laughter) all sorts of
things, but in th in the...bottom line is I think it looks good
to sign the contract in about a month. Winston's working really
hard on it, and some developers from Ireland and Australia have
volunteered to come and help there...these are people like who've
 done like hundred million dollar projects and things like that,
so they're very excited and they've volunteered to help us and
the building is starting soon and it looks like we'll be able to
import yurts from Mongolia and have housing for anybody who wants
to come for shorter periods of time. That was a big hurdle that
we had, because otherwise it's tens of thousands of dollars and
now we can probably accommodate each person for about a thousand
dollars. In other words you can have a semi-permanent building
for like a thousand dollars. And so that that would accommodate
more people and the land is huge...it's about five miles square.
And I think it's about the size of Manhattan or something,
(laughter), it's something like that, but it's beautiful and
there's lots of space, so the idea is that during the three years
you could just plop your yurt down and stay there for as long as
you want, and and meditate and help with that, so we'll talk more
about that as the time goes on, okay? But anyway, that was the
trip in a nutshell...I think Christy wrote up a ten page thing
that you'll get handed it, and then I think we'll have a separate
meeting about Arizona and things like that, but right now we
gotta get on to the Diamond Cutter. The only thing I have to say
about the rules of the class, which the sergeant has already
covered, he really was a drill sergeant, you know (laughter)
(laughs), is I'm gonna stick to the rule of miss two...more than
two and you're out, okay? So you must have your homework ready
when you come into class, you must, you know, prepare your
answers and everything, you must do the quizzes...that includes
the people who hang out with me, okay...must do it or you cannot
come to class, okay. We don't want a lineage of people who heard
a quarter of it or a third of it or a half of it, okay, you have
to pass it on completely, and you can't do that if you don't come
to class, okay. So must do your homework, if you miss more than
two classes you'll have to come back in November, something like
that, all right, so we're gonna be strict on that, like last
time, okay. We'll be doing, in ten classes we'll be doing about
a a years worth of work, okay, three cour...five courses, sorry
it's about a year and a half, and so necessarily it'll be
abbreviated somewhat, and we'll be just touching the main points.
 I always tell people that...you know, in the Geshe course you
spend eighteen years learning these things. Then you take your
final exam. I took my final exams right after finishing the
first six courses or seven courses...it was a breeze...fifteen
hundred people asking you questions, in Tibetan, in seven days of
debate and it was easy 'cause everything we've covered in class,
okay. So you've done it all in class. What we will cover during
this course is the main part of those courses. You'll be getting
the main questions in those courses, okay? And that's all that a
Geshe remembers two years later, okay, but don't tell them I told
you (laughter) all right, okay. The very first course that we're
going to work on is...was number six in the fifteen courses, it
was the most important one, okay? That was the one on?

(students: (b: Diamond Cutter Sutra)

(b: Diamond Cutter...Sutra), okay, on emptiness. And we'll spend
two classes on that. The next one is the most important one, so
if you're gonna drop this course at least come to the next class
okay, and then you drop it after that, okay. That's one where
we'll cover the direct perception of emptiness. Tonight I just
want to go over some of the introduction of the (b: Diamond
Cutter Sutra) okay? Sutra means "a teaching that was spoken by
Lord Buddha", okay. This is a lecture that was given by Lord
Buddha, and I want to explain a little bit about why it's called
Diamond Cutter, okay? I think actually...save you some
time...Say (dorje) (repeat) (chupa) (repeat) (Dorje) (repeat)
(chupa) (repeat). By the way, if you've never been to these
classes, you just have to know the English, okay? It's nice if
you learn the pronunciation...you don't have to. All right. But
I just put it here to put a blessing in your mind, and then maybe
in a hundred lifetimes you'll start learning Tibetan or
something, okay? (laughter) (laughs) Okay. (Dor) means "stone".
(Je) means "king". And that's why they call Tsongkapa what?
(student: Je Tsongkapa)

Je Tsongkapa. It means "the Lord, or the King", okay. (Dor je)
means "the king of stones", which is, of course, the diamond.
Okay. (Chu pa) means "cutter". And the whole thing in Sanscrit,
which is good to know, is vajra chedika. (Vajra) means
"diamond"...the real pronunciation is (wud dra), okay...(chedika)
means "to cut, the cutter". Okay. I'd like to explain three
meanings of diamond. This is maybe the most important thing in
the eighteen courses that you'll every hear. Okay. How many
times do I say that (laughter) anyway...(laughs) I think it maybe
it is the most important thing, okay. Diamond has three meanings
here, okay. And you should know them. Okay. It's on your
homework anyway (laughter) (laughs). The the first one I think
is the most important one. If you look around the world for
something which is ultimate, okay...think about the idea of
ultimate which means "the most of something", right...like the
ultimate mistake, or the ultimate credit card bill, or...you see
what I mean...think about those things. Ultimate means "the most
of something". The highest of something, the shortest of
something, the most of something...if you think about it, okay.
And and in a sense it's impossible, okay. The idea of
ultimate...if it's...there is no ultimate credit card bill.
Someone could always spend a dollar more, you see what I mean?
There is nobody who is ultimately tall or ultimately short...you
could always cut them in half or add an inch...you see what I
mean? And and the idea of the most of anything, in the physical
world, doesn't really exist. They talk about...what they
call...cold zero...absolute zero, okay, but there's not really
absolute zero, you can make it colder. You know, and and there's
no edge to the universe, you can always go an inch farther, you
see what I mean? There's no such thing. If you think about
ultimate, try to imagine what ultimate means. Try to imagine
something which is the most or the highest of anything and you
can't, okay. There is no such thing in the physical world
really, okay? We have things which are close, and the best of
those in the diamond, okay. If you've studied about gems, which
I I did, you study the Mo scale of hardness, or the Knox
indentation test, but either way you do it, the diamond is
something 'bout ten thousand times harder than the next hardest
thing. Okay. The next hardest thing, by the way, is ruby. In
other words if you tried to scratch it with something, you
couldn't scratch it. Nothing can scratch a diamond. Nothing in
the universe can scratch a diamond. Okay. So how do you cut
diamonds? You actually take a a diamond and crush it. You can
crush them or you can cleave them, but you can't you can't
scratch them, you see what I mean, and you grind it up into a
little powder and you put it on a diamond wheel and then you hold
the other diamond that you want to make into a diamond down on it
really hard, and it starts to burn like red florescent...like if
you touch it you get a really bad burn, and you're you're holding
it on a steel plate, if you hold it the wrong way it goes through
the plate and destroys the plate, 'cause it plate, the steel is
like fifty thousand times softer than diamonds, okay, and and a
few of the little diamond powder pieces are facing up and hit the
diamond in the right direction and the diamond cleaves off, like
that, but you can't, you can't scratch a diamond with anything,
you see what I mean? If we...some diamonds are so hard you just
have to throw them out. It's it's kinda cool (laughs) okay.
Very frustrating if you bought it...but it's like that in the
Diamond business. What's that got to do with emptiness? Okay.
The diamond is a metaphor for emptiness. When you see emptiness
for the first time, directly, okay, which is a very major event,
all right..I'll tell you some of the things you see...we'll talk
about it more next class, you must come to the second class,
okay? Very important. But in the space of maybe twenty minutes,
in deep meditation, you see emptiness directly, okay? That's
called (wun sum) When you come out of it...when you come out of
that direct perception of emptiness, for the next ten or twelve
hours you have extraordinary realizations. You see the day of
your own enlightenment, okay? And very typically this is seven
lifetimes hence, okay? You understand that you have met the
essence body of an enlightened being. Okay. You understand
prostrations, you understand offerings, you understand the idea
of a thangka, for example, because you've met this being, you see
what I mean...and things like ...I mean it's an extraordinary ten
hours. You can read other people's minds for four-five hours,
something like that...all these extraordinary events happen to
you right after you see emptiness directly, and one of...by the
way, all of those events are organized into four things called
the?

(students: Four Noble Truths)

The Four Noble Truths...okay, mis-named "Noble", somebody
translated "arya" by mistake as "noble", okay. There are four
groups of realizations that you have. These are called the Four
Arya Realizations...arya means "somebody who has seen emptiness
directly", okay. So right after you see emptiness, after you
come out of that twenty thirty minutes of seeing emptiness
directly which you can't describe, okay, but we'll talk about it
(laughs), then you...all these things, you see all these things
directly. So the next ten or twelve hours you have these
experiences...directly. Okay? During that time you are
searching for some metaphor, you know...what is there in my
normal life that was like what I saw, you know...I saw ultimate
reality. I saw emptiness. What's the closest thing in the world
to that...what do you think? It's diamonds, okay. Why? 'Cause
diamond is the closest thing in the world to something which is
ultimate, okay, which is the most of anything. Why? It's the
hardest thing...by about ten thousand times, okay? It's...in
other words you could...if you had a ruby against a diamond and
and hit them with each other, ten thousand rubies would break
before the diamond broke...you see what I mean. So diamond is
by far the hardest thing... it's the closest thing in the natural
universe to an ultimate. And when you see emptiness directly for
the first time, after you come out of that experience, you're
groping for some kind of metaphor, you know, you're looking for
something to remind you of what you saw, because it was the most
profound experience that a human can undergo, okay? And and
you're groping for something that you can keep near you and
un...and keep remembering what you saw. So like, if you saw it
directly, you would come up with diamond and then you would want
to be around diamonds, okay...like somehow you would want to be
involved with diamonds, okay. And that that would drive your
life, like you'd be willing to spend the next fifteen years, you
know, working in some office to be around diamonds, just to be
close to a diamond so you could remember...for no other reason,
just to remember those twenty minutes, you would be willing to
work in in some stupid place for eight hours a day just to
remember those twenty minutes...for fifteen years of your
life...you know what I mean? It's worth it, okay. It's an
amazing experience and you have to remember it, okay. That's why
this diamond is important. That's why the diamond is in the
title, okay. That's the first reason. Okay. Why do we...why do
we compare emptiness to a diamond? Because a diamond is
something which is ultimate, okay. Second thing. Every object
in the universe has its own emptiness, okay. This pen has its
emptiness, the chair you're sitting on has its emptiness, the
last hair on your left eyebrow has its own emptiness, okay...the
last (unclear) you had has its own emptiness, your mind has its
own emptiness, New York City has its own emptiness, okay.
Emptiness has its own emptiness. All right. Everything has
emptiness, okay? But you can't see it. You see, twenty minutes
and your life is over. Twenty minutes and you have (dang).
(Dang) means "insurance policy". Definite, gonna be out in seven
lifetimes, you know, perfectly, absolutely sure...saw the day of
your enlightenment...know what they're gonna call you, what
they're not gonna call you, saw directly, okay. All you need to
do is see it for twenty minutes and you're sitting there in an
ocean of emptinesses, the millions of emptinesses in this room.
Every object in this room has its own emptiness. The end of the
last hair on your left eyebrow has its own emptiness. And the
root has its own, you see what I mean? It's it's endless. And
you can't see them. If you could see it for ten twenty minutes,
you'd be outta here, you see what I mean. So emptiness is like
all around you, emptiness is clear, okay...emptiness is
invisible. Normal people cannot see emptiness, okay. You must
have some extraordinary preparation to see it, okay. So so it's
an interesting thing about diamonds...diamond is so pure that if
I put a wall of diamond between me and you that was a hundred
feet wide or a mile wide, you wouldn't see it. Diamond is that
pure. Now glass...is not pure. Class has iron in it. You set a
pane of glass and look down the end, what do you see? You see
green, 'cause iron takes the blue and the yellow and the red...I
don't know...anyway green comes out, okay. That's 'cause of
impurities in the glass. If you turn the glass this way you can
see through it, but if I had a wall of diamonds between you and
me that was five miles thick you would still see me perfectly
well, okay. It's in...it's so pure that it's invisible, it's
totally invisible, okay. And that's the second meaning of
diamond, okay. Diamond...emptiness is around you
constantly...you don't see it, you can't see it, okay? What is
it that lets you see it...by the way, that's why those deities
have this third eye here, Lobsang Rumba had one drilled in...you
don't have to drill it in...you can get one the old way, okay
(laughs), that eye is seeing emptiness...the eye represents
seeing emptiness. To see emptiness you have to have an
extraordinary amount of virtue, good deeds, okay, like, examples
would be like...building a house for your lama, or something like
that, or serving sick people for decades, or studying scripture,
or helping refugee monks or things like that, you need some kind
of extraordinary virtue, you need an excellent, authentic teacher
to show you how to do it, you must have great books to learn it
from. It's very similar to learning to play concert piano, and
it's about that difficult. If you don't spend the time, every
day, to prepare yourself to see emptiness...about the same amount
of time that a person spends to learn to play at...what's that
place?

(student: Carnegie)

Carnegie Hall. Seriously. Then you won't make it. You won't
see it in this lifetime, okay. What if you don't see it? Oh,
you just die like everybody else. Okay. Really. You die and
there...then in the one mind state, the mind state you're looking
at me, you have a certain mind state, you had a certain mind
state to get to this class. That's one in millions and millions
of mind states. There are millions and millions of other options
of mind states and there are millions of other beings that you
can see and you can't see, and they have other mind states, okay.
 You become one of those. Like the odds of being here now are
about one in two hundred million or something. Okay. You have
that...you've succeeded in getting here, okay. You have that
mind state, if you die, you lose it, okay. You have to go to one
 of the other mind states, animal, insect, bug, anything, it
doesn't matter. You will go into another mindstate. There's not
a (laughs)...I'll talk about it later...there's not one single
shred of evidence that's convincing that the mind stops when the
body stops. I got tired of people asking me, "oh you're
Buddhist. Can you prove future lives?". I say "you're not
Buddhist. You prove to me there are no future lives. I'm tired
of it, okay". You prove to me that the mind stops. Oh the body
stops. Oh yeah, well, trucks break down so drivers die, right?
I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all. Okay. The body stops
twitching...that doesn't say anything about the mind. Okay.
Forget it. It doesn't convince anything. Two thousand years ago
they made this argument and Dharmakirti said, "come on. That's
stupid. That doesn't prove anything". Okay. How do you know
that the mind stops? You see, you don't know. Oh, the guy
stopped talking. Yeah, his machine broke...he can't talk to you.
 It doesn't prove he's not alive. It doesn't prove he can't
think, okay. That's not...that's the only proof western society
has actually. And it's dumb. You must go on. It's the only
mind state in which you can see emptiness is the one that you
have right now. Okay. You have to do it now, okay. You have to
try to do it now. If you do it now, everything is taken care of
forever. If you don't do it now, you just...you have to come
back here a million years, two million years, here this old stuff
again...who wants to do those courses all over again (laughter)
okay. Okay. The third, third reason emptiness is like diamond.
Third reason they use the word "diamond". If you take a
diamond...as you've seen on tv, you can cleave diamonds, which
means you create a, you create a little notch in them with a
lazer, or you find a natural notch and you take a diamond which
is fatter or you, you know, and you gen...you go "bok", and you
force it in, and it cracks, it cracks, it cleaves, okay. So you
can actually smash a diamond into thousands of pieces. The old
Debeeres Mine in South Africa are these poor guys who come up
with these big diamonds and ask the appraiser "how much is this
worth?", he's say, "that's not diamond. That's just quartz", you
know. And it was a diamond and the guy would take a hammer and
tap it, you know, and it would fall into pieces, and say "look,
it broke, it's not a diamond". The guy would leave, and then
he'd pick up all the pieces and throw them under the table
(laughs) you know. Anyway, there's lots of diamond stories.
(laughter). So you can you can cleave a diamond. In other
words, you can separate diamond into tiny parts...we call (dorje
segma), it means "tiny tiny pieces of diamond", okay. The nice
thing about diamond is that no matter how many times you cut it,
each piece of diamond is pure diamond. One hundred percent pure
absolute clean perfect diamond. If you smash it down to
molecular level, down to single molecules, each molecule is
perfect diamond, okay. What's that got to do with emptiness? We
said that every object in this room has its own emptiness. The
chairs, the people, your hair...you lack of hair has its own
emptiness, okay. Each thing has its own emptiness, okay. And
they're all one hundred percent equal...emptiness, okay. That's
all. You know...what do you call it...content-wise, they're all
perfectly, one hundred percent equal. When when an enlightened
being sees emptiness and when a normal schmuck like us sees
emptiness for the first time, that's one hundred percent
perception of emptiness...it's no different at all, okay. The
direct perception of emptiness is the same, okay. Nothing can be
half emptiness or seventy five percent emptiness, or eighty-five
percent emptiness, it's pure, one hundred percent sheer
emptiness. Okay. And what that means we'll get into later,
okay. But the third point is that, take a diamond, smash it,
every piece is one hundred percent diamond, okay. Take all the
emptinesses in this room, each one is totally equal, one hundred
percent devoid of what?

(student: Self existence)

A self existent thing. What's a self existent thing mean? Do
you like this pen? Do you like this pen? Some people do, some
people don't, okay. Some people do, some people do. So the
goodness of this pen or the badness of this pen is not something
that belong to the pen. The pen has no nature of being good or
bad from its own side. Okay. That's obvious. You don't need to
be a philosopher to understand that, okay? There's no quality in
this pen of being a bad pen or a good pen from its own side.
You's making it that way, okay. Something about you. Something
in your mind is saying, "I like that pen." Something in your
mind is saying, "I don't like that pen". Something in your mind
is saying, "I could care less about that pen. I don't know why
he's getting into that". (laughter) Okay. I mean, everybody has
their own feeling about the pen. The point is, there's no
goodness or badness about the pen itself, okay. It's not like
it's coated with good and that coating is like is like showing
itself to everybody, okay. It's not like that. You are sending
something to it. You are imposing something on it. It's just a
plain old neutral, innocent pen, and you're thinking "good", or
"bad", okay. So the goodness or the badness doesn't come from
the pen's own side...that's its emptiness. Okay. That's no big
philosophy thing...you don't have to worry about anything...you
don't have to go close your eyes real tight and try to see
something black but these green or purple spots keep coming up,
okay (laughs) it's not like that. It has nothing to do with
that, okay. The pen doesn't have its own...it is devoid or empty
of any nature of its own as far as being good or bad. That's
all. It's empty. Okay. What would be a self existent thing?
Oh, a pen which was good from its own side, or a pen which was
bad from its own side. By the way, if it were self existently
good from its own side, if it had a nature of being good from its
own side, then every person who every saw it would say what?

(students: Good pen)

A great pen. Great pen. Okay. If it was bad from its own side,
you know, if it was like emanating rays of badness, then
everybody who looked at it would say "oh, I hate that pen, I hate
that pen". Okay. That's a...if you want to know what a self-
existent thing would be like, that's it. Okay. How many self
existent things exist?

(student: Two)

(laughs) Zero. (laughter) None, okay. They can't have that,
okay. They know...they make a joke in Tibet, they say, "imagine
a purple two headed elephant fifty feet high rampaging through
this school auditorium at this moment", okay, close your eyes,
imagine...Kirim you can imagine rampaging through
the...(laughter) the kid, okay, but you can't imagine an elephant
like that, right? I mean you can imagine it, but you can't see
it really happening, right. That elephant and the goodness of
this pen have the same ontological status, they are equally
existing, meaning they don't exist at all, okay. Santa Clause,
you know, the Tooth Fairy and pens which are good (laughter),
no...they all belong to the same status...they have the same
status which is zero. Okay. There is no pen which is good,
okay. Where's it coming from ? Your mind. You're imposing
something on it, okay? That's all. That's the emptiness of this
pen. You don't have to go any farther than that. Okay. That's
the emptiness of the pen. And that's a self-existent thing.
Next question on your homework...oh, sorry, we finished
diamond...three meanings of diamond. Now, why call it
(b:"Diamond Cutter")? Like a lot of early translators got lazy
and called this book what?

(students: Diamond Sutra)

Diamond Sutra...like, who needs that "cutter", okay? (laughs)

okay. There real name is Vajra Chedika, Diamond Cutter. What's
the cut mean? The cut is this. I mean, when you come out of the
direct perception of emptiness, and you have seen your own
enlightenment, you know, that's a pretty amazing thing, and then
you're grappling, you know...what's what's a metaphor for that
emptiness, and you come up with diamond, okay...you you know that
diamond is the closest thing, you know that you should spend the
rest of your life close to diamonds, and and near diamonds, but
you al...equally realize something else. It ain't even close.
Okay. It's close and no cigar, okay? Like it's very close, it's
the closest thing in the universe to emptiness is diamond...how
close is it? Not at all. A billion light years away, okay. I
mean, ultimate reality, meaning emptiness, and the reality we see
here are a zillion miles apart. A zillion miles a part. There
are two realities. You are sitting in one of them now. You are
swimming in a certain reality right now. You've never touched
the other one. It's a million miles that way. You see that one
and it's all over. You just see it for twenty minutes and its
all over...two vastly different levels of of reality, okay. So
you can say, "Oh hey, Michael Roach, what's the closest thing to
emptiness that you can think of?" "Diamond". "How close is it?"
 "Not at all", okay. So in that sense, the diamond is cut, and
that's why they call it (b: Diamond Cutter). The idea is that
diamond is the closest thing and diamond is vastly inferior to
the real thing, the real McCoy, which is ultimate reality.
Totally...different level of reality. Totally different. You
can understand the emptiness of the pen that I just explained.
You have only perceived emptiness intellectually when I get
through with that, okay. If you go on and meditate and see
it...directly, it's a whole different reality...it's
tot...completely different level of reality. You see that
reality for twenty minutes, you will be an enlightened being
within a certain amount of time. That's all. Okay. It's it's
incredible...you have to try. The reason we're having this
class, you have to come outta here saying...I have these people
who write me from California every few weeks, "I'm trying, I'm
trying", you know, you have to try to see this thing. It's the
only thing that can save you, okay. You have to try to see it,
okay. That's the purpose of this class. It's really the purpose
of the whole...institute...is to get you to see emptiness
directly. By the way, to do that you have to be meditating a
lot...so it'd be nice to be in a nice quite, super-quiet place,
(laughter) okay (laughs) for a while, and that's the whole reason
to do this thing in Arizona...no other reason at all. Try to get
people into seeing emptiness directly. You must have a quiet
place, you must concentrate on it. You have to be locked up and
try. Before that you have to have about fifteen courses
(laughter) (laughs) okay? All right. So that's why they call it
(b: Diamond Cutter), because diamond is close, but it's "cut" or
it's inferior by the real thing. Okay. Now a (gak ja). Say
(gak ja) (repeat) (gak ja) (repeat). Some people it's easy to
remember if they think of "got cha" (laughs) okay. Anyway (gak)
means "to stop or deny". When you hang somebody in Tibet, you
say (gak) (unclear) okay? (Gak ja) means "the thing to be
(gak)ed, the thing to be stopped". Here it means "the thing we
deny. The thing we deny". The thing we'd say, "hey stupid, that
doesn't exist". Okay. What is it?

(students: (unclear))

A pen which could be good from its own side. By the way, the old
translations of Buddhism said "self". They left out "the
nature". So everybody went around thinking they shouldn't be
themselves. And I don't know whose teeth they were brushing in
the morning, but, okay, forget all that, okay. Big mistake,
stupid translation. Does this thing have a self? No. It's not
a person. Does it have a self-nature? Yes, it does, it's a pen.
 Does it have a self-nature in and of itself of being good for
example? No, it doesn't have that kind of self nature. That's
all they meant when they said, "no self", okay, they meant "no
nature of its own". No quality of being good or bad of...in and
of itself...by itself, okay. That doesn't exist, okay. That's
the (gak ja), okay. (Gak ja) means...get this...(gak ja) means
"the thing that emptiness is empty of". Got it? If you say my
pocket's empty, what is it empty of? Enough money to buy a
Michael and Joey's fruit shake. Okay. That would be the (gak
ja). You see what I mean? When you speak of emptiness or or
voidness, you say, "void of what, empty of what?" You see. His
head is totally empty. Empty of what? Brains. (laughter)
(laughs) Okay? All right? What is this empty of. (Gak ja), you
see? That's what (gak ja) means. The thing that's not there.
Okay? The thing that emptiness is empty of. A thing which could
exist from its own side in and of itself, a goodness or badness
of this pen which is emanating out to every person so everybody
likes it the same. How many of those are there? Zero. They
don't exist. They're they same as the Tooth Fairy and Santa
Clause and the self-existence of the goodness of this pen, okay?
They just don't exist, okay? So why talk about something that
doesn't exist, you know? Why don't we talk about Santa Clause
instead of spending the whole lecture on Buddhist philosophy?
You see? 'Cause they have equal reality, which is zero. You see
what I mean? You might as well talk about anything. We had this
huge debate in the monastery trying to debate about whether you
could describe a thing that doesn't exist. You see, you can't.
They're all equal. You could say ten foot purple elephant
smashing through this room, twenty foot, thirty foot, thousand
foot...it doesn't matter, they're all equally ex...they don't,
they don't exist, okay. The thing that this is empty of is a pen
that is good from its own side, bad from its own side, that just
plain doesn't exist. That's (gak ja). Okay? You have to know
that. All the texts say...Shantideva is the most famous
one...(tak ba mu la ma re par je, mu me gin my yin, mu ma yin)
which means "you can't establish what emptiness means, you can't
get to enlightenment in seven lifetimes, unless you know what
emptiness is empty of". You see what I mean? What is it that's
not there? A pen that could exist from its own side. That's
all. Okay. All right. (Gak ja)...let me see...let's do one
more okay and then we'll stop...we'll take a break. No one's
asked me the famous Mrs. Ribush question (laughter). Who's Mrs.
Ribush? There's this brilliant monk named...ex-monk...Nick Nick
Ribush who started Wisdom Publications...great Dharma student,
last thirty-forty years. I think the main thing he's done is
converted a bunch of other people too. But, so I I was giving
this lecture in Melbourne and and Mrs. Ribush calls me up...this
is his mother, eighty-five years old or something like that...she
calls me up..."I have to meet you". So okay, okay. "Tomorrow,
at your place". I said, "okay okay". You know, and she comes in
and she can hardly walk, and there's this lady carrying her and
she sits down and she says "I was at your lecture", you know, and
I said "yeah I know". (laughter). She says "I I want to know
something about the pen,". I said, I said, "okay, ask me". She
says, "you know, you were talking about the goodness of the pen
and the badness of the pen. What about the pen itself?" Okay.
What about the pen itself? Does the pen itself has a nature of
being a pen or not, you see what I mean? Good or bad is easy.
What about "penness"? Does it have a nature of being a pen from
its own side...which is to say, would every single living being
who ever walked in this room...roach, dog, bird, human, Eskimo
from the fourteenth century...would they all look at it and say,
"oh, Dry Erase Marker, blue one, medium color". Would they all
say that? No. Which means even its penness is something being
projected on it by you, okay, otherwise dogs could walk in here
and start writing, you know, birds could walk in here and write
(laughter) something...you know what I mean, they would recognize
it as a writing instrument. You see what I mean. It's not even
a writing instrument from its own side. Get it? To a bird or a
roach or a dog it's just another cylinder. It's a pretty one.
It's shines. It's just a pretty black and white cylinder. They
can't cognize it as a pen, you know, they can't use it as a pen,
they don't see it as a pen. Even its "penness" is something that
you are laying on it, okay. Where's that come from?

(student: Karma)

We say karma. That's the meaning of karma, okay. In the
past...history of your mind which has never died...get it?...it's
been around for a long long time, you helped someone write
something, you did something for someone, to give them a pen,
supply them with something written, okay, and that put a seed in
your mind to see pens, and now in this life...by the way, you
think it's natural, right..."oh, all those things are pens. I'm
not projecting that. That's coming from the pen." You even call
it a pen. You don't say, "oh, nice black and white cylinder,
Michael, okay, you say it's a pen...you believe it's a pen from
its own side. That's wrong, okay. It's a it's a conditioned
thing. You are laying it, you are you are putting it on this
cylinder...you're putting pen on this cylinder. If it wasn't
that way, and if it was a pen from its own side, then every
single being who ever walked in here would say, "hey, let me use
that to write a letter". Woof woof...woof. You know, let me
write a letter with this thing. It's not true, okay. It's not
even a pen from its own side. Okay. You gotta get used to that.
 Now in the (b: Diamond Cutter Sutra), Lord Buddha says, "and by
the way, when you yourself get to an enlightened being, it's all
that way". It's all the same, okay, meaning what? When you get
to be a Buddha, you know, finally, after all those
classes...okay, memorizing all those stupid (dak gyes)...Rinpoche
said the best thing about the (dak gye) is that when you get
enlightened you don't have to recite any more, you know.
(laughter) (laughs). Okay. All right. Okay. Anyway, so after
all this work, what's gonna happen to this cylinder? (laughter).
 Two cylinders here, okay. Here's one...it's just a plain own
cylinder...if you have karma in your mind to see it as a pen, you
see it as a pen. Guess what. This one's the same...this
cylinder here...it's just the same, okay. You have pretty good
karma in your mind, you'll see it as a human arm. You have
crappy karma in your mind, you'll see it as a dog's foot. And
then you will be a?

(student: Dog)

Dog. This rebirth stuff is serious. It's just perception. They
don't make dog bodies out in Nebraska somewhere and stuff minds
into them. It's just a perception, okay. Your mind can turn on
you in ten seconds. It's called "dying", and and you'll see it
differently a minute later...at any moment it can happen. This
rebirth stuff is serious...stuff. Very dangerous stuff, okay.
It's not that your mind floats around...flop, flop, flop, and
then goes to Nebraska and finds the dog body factory and they
stuff it in there and sew it real quick or something like that,
it's not like that. Your mind shifts slightly...your perception
slip...shifts very slightly, and instead of an arm you're seeing
a leg, okay; instead of an ear you're seeing an antennae. And
then you are a dog, you are an insect. You see, it's very
serious, very possible. The thing called "death" itself is just
another perception. The thing you're used to see as moving, now
you're forced by your old karma to see as not moving. That's
called death. It happens in a minute or so. And don't think
that you're like exempt from being those other kinds of beings.
You're not. It...all it takes is a slight shift in your mind and
you are that being, you see what I mean? 'Cause then you see
this cylinder differently. What's that got to do with the (b:
Diamond Cutter Sutra)? Now that you're ready for dessert...I I
mean refreshments, sorry, the point is this. If you could put
some really really really pure karma in your mind, okay, mainly
in this lifetime your only real shot is tantric practice, okay,
if you could put some kind of heavy heavy good karma in your
mind, then in this lifetime, before you die, maybe you have a
shot to see this as an enlightened being's arm. Okay. That's
all. Maybe you have a chance, okay. If you practice very
seriously, very hard, the highest practices, you have some chance
of seeing this cylinder and this cylinder as something different,
you see what I mean? There's nothing human about this cylinder
from its own side...I'm...I'm imposing that on this. Okay. If I
change the karma in my mind by being very very holy, very good to
others, then I might be able to see this thing change before I
die...that's what (tantric) al...practice is all about. We're
gonna talk more about it later. That's...you have to try in this
lifetime to try to pull it off, okay. What happens then? Your
mind is forcing you to see four new things about you, okay?
These are called the four bodies of the Buddha. You have to
write them down 'cause they're on your homework. Okay. And
everybody should know the four bodies of the Buddha. By the way,
sometimes it's taught as three...sometimes it's taught as four,
when you teach it as three you're really just grouping two of the
four into one, okay. So don't get worried about it. I'm gonna
teach it to you the more detailed way. All right. But what
we're talking about is how you're gonna become a (tantric)
enlightened being in this lifetime. You've gotta...you're
gonna...four things are gonna happen to this arm and to this
mind, okay. Here's the first one. They call them
"bodies"...they should have called them "parts" or "body parts",
I don't know. Body number one. I I don't like the word "body"
much. They should've called it "the four parts of an enlightened
being", or something like that. I mean most translators like
Thubten Jimpa now is using "part" or something, you see what I
mean? Say (ngo wo) (repeat) (nyi ku) (repeat) (ngo wo) (repeat)
(nyi ku) (repeat) This is the most important part of an
enlightened being and it's the most im...difficult part of an
enlightened being. (Ngo wo nyi) means "emptiness", okay. (Ngo
wo nyi) is another word for "emptiness". Okay. This whole first
part here (ngo wo nyi), means "emptiness". (Ku) means "part" or
"body". The part of an enlightened being which is their
emptiness. This is the coolest part of an enlightened being.
This is the most important part of an enlightened being. Okay.
Why? Check this out. The fact that this thing...the fact that
this cylinder is not a human arm from its own side, anymore than
this is good from its own side...get it, you gotta keep it in
mind...this two things are the same, okay. This thing is not
good or bad, or even a pen from its own side. This thing is not
a human arm from its own side. I'm imposing that on this
cylinder. I'm forced to see it as an arm. By whom? Mr. Karma.
(laughter), okay? Mr. Karma is twisting this arm so I see this
arm as an arm. Mr. Karma is forcing me to see this...by the way,
you don't have any choice right now. Your karma was set...you
did certain things, you said certain things, you thought certain
things...they are imprinted into your mind. You don't have a
choice now, okay. You can sit there and say "I wish it wasn't a
human arm, but, but it's not gonna change it. Okay. Your karma
is forcing you to see this cylinder as a human arm, okay? But
there's a potential here...what the potential? It could be a
(tantric) angels arm. Why? It's empty. It doesn't have its own
nature any more than this is good or bad from its own side.
There's this incredible potential, there's this thing called good
luck...what? Thank god, this thing is empty. (laughs) Okay.
Thank goodness this thing is empty, okay. If this was an arm
from its own side, you'd be stuck forever...until the day it got
more wrinkled and died. Okay. But since it's empty, you have a
shot, okay. It doesn't have any nature of being an arm from its
own side. Okay. It doesn't have any nature from its own side.
Everything about it is coming from?

(students: your mind)

Your mind. And your mind is being drive, whipped by
karma..."hey, see it this way". Okay. No choice, right now.
That's why you have to be good, because then you have different
karma set in your mind and you'll see it differently. Okay. But
what's our saving grace...what's the only good thing about our
present arm? Is it the blood? Is it the bone? Is it the cancer
cells probably already running around, getting ready? You know,
both my parents were dead by this age. Like I'm just waiting,
you know (laughter), okay. What's the only good thing about your
arm? What's the only saving grace about your arm? It's empty.
It has potential, okay. It's not fixed, it's like an empty
screen. If you fix the projector you'll have a nice (tantric)
deity's arm, okay. That's the saving grace of your arm. By the
way, that's the only thing you can take with you to the bank.
It's the only part of you which will still be there when you
achieve enlightenment, okay. You won't have the same hair, eyes,
brain, nose, ear, foot, anything, but your emptiness you get to
take with you all the way. So we call that...what?

(student: Buddha nature)

Buddha nature. Buddha nature. Okay. And all those people who
say that Buddha nature is this little guy that's hiding under
your fourth rib somewhere, and you just have to scrape off enough
skin or something...it's all stupid, okay? Buddha nature means,
every piece of you and every piece of your mind and every piece
of your body is empty. It doesn't have a nature of being one way
or the other...from it's own side. So if you could just clean up
your karmic act, you would see it as a (tantric) deity's arm.
That's cool. That's its emptiness, okay. And that emptiness you
carry all the way to enlightenment, and when you get enlightened,
the emptiness of your mind and the emptiness of your body is
called? The emptiness body, okay...the emptiness body. Or
sometimes they call it the "essence body", okay. That's all. So
the most impartant part of Buddha, the part of a Buddha that
allows him to be a Buddha is their emptiness, okay. That's all.
That's the first body of a Buddha...that's the most important
one. I always do the most difficult one first because then
you'll pay attention to the others. Here's number two. The
sergeant's been waving at me...I I think he says there's enough
orange juice for everybody. Okay. Say (long ku) (repeat) (long
ku) (repeat). By the way I'm gonna give you the...shall I give
you the...nah. Forget that. Okay. (Long ku) means "the
physical body of an enlightened being in their paradise". In
their own heaven, okay. Like, it's very cool because to tell you
the truth, whatever you are attracted to now, it will be a
variance of that you will be. It's very interesting. Like
whatever you find physically most attractive in the whole
universe, you'll be very close to that, okay. Like if you're
attracted to Tara, you'll look a little bit like Tara. If you're
attracted to...I don't know...Baywatch ladies (laughter) or
something, (laughs), no I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding. You
will be the most beautiful thing you can imagine. Okay. Ten
times better...billion times better, but it's funny, you will be
some kinda take on that. Okay. It's very interesting. Whatever
you are most attracted to now, your deity body, the body that you
enjoy in some sor some lonely enjoy, the body that you enjoy in
your own paradise...we call it the paradise body, okay, that one
will be about a billion times better than the most beautiful
thing you can imagine right now...the thing you're most attracted
to. Okay. You have a seed for it already. You have a certain
attraction towards that kind of physical form already. Just be a
billion times better...no blood, no guts (laughter), pure light,
but you will look like that being, okay. Okay. That's in it's
own paradise. Number three. Say (trulku) (repeat) (trulku)
(repeat). Sometimes this word is corrupted to (tulku), okay,
'cause people can't say (tra) which is not so bad, okay, you can
say (trulku, tulku) doesn't matter. (Trul) means "to emanate".
(Trul) means "to emanate". This is the emanation body. What
does that mean? One millisecond after you achieve enlightenment
you appear in billions of planets as billions of different people
and animals to help other people, okay? That's the nature of an
enlightened being, okay. One millisecond after your
enlightenment...by the way, in the first moment of enlightenment
how many bodies do you have? Just three. Okay. One millisecond
later you get a (trul ku). (Trul ku) means "the ability in a
single moment to project bodies onto billions of planets to help
billions of people...all at once". And (tsun gyi druppa) means
what? Spontaneously. No conscious thought. You're not even
aware of it going on, okay. You just show up on billions of
planets. You..bodies...you can also be something inanimate,
trees, bridges, ships, cars, okay? The Buddha has this ability,
okay. So you're sitting up in your paradise with your what?
Your (long ku), okay, your paradise body, and then you've got all
these other forms appearing on billions of planets, okay, to
anyone who is ready...that's the catch...okay, first Dalai Lama,
(b: Abhidharmakosha) commentary, (b: Ta wan del je), opening
pages..."hey, if there's all these (trul kus) around, how come I
didn't bump into one?" (laughter) You gotta have enough good
karma, and lots of people don't okay? How many (trul kus) around
you right now? How many of your friends are in drag (laughter),
you know (laughs)...you don't know, okay. I mean everybody in
this room could be...I'm not, okay, but everybody in this room
could be a (trul ku). Everybody in New York except you or me
could be a (trul ku). Okay. You don't know. Okay. But anyway,
you got to have a lot of virtue to see a (trul ku). Then there's
like...you know Coke Classics, there's a classic (trul ku) okay
(laughter), described in the eighth chapter of the (b:
Abhisalamkara), that is the physical body of Lord Buddha
Shakyamuni who appear in India two and a half thousand years ago.
 You know, they have thirty-two major marks, eighty minor marks,
they have certain set of marks on their body...they have a little
thing here, they got Dharma wheels here, they got bump on their
head, they got long ears, you see, they...that's called the
"classic (trul ku). That shows up on a planet once in every
couple thousand years or less, okay. And then there's all the
other mini (trul kus), okay, emanation bodies. That could be a
car, a dog, the person sitting next to you on the subway that you
didn't like this afternoon, all trying to bring you to
enlightenment. Okay. All working...they could have been on that
subway for twenty years, waiting for you to get on, okay. For
them it's nothing. We're talking people who've been enlightened
for a billion years. Oh okay, twenty years I gotta wait for
Christina to get on the subway...okay. So I can shove her
(laughter), you know (laughs)...no, I'm not kidding (laughs).
Somebody did it to me this morning. So like, you know, this guy
says he's teaching patience and then he gets pissed on within
thirty seconds. (laughs). One good shove, you know. Okay.
That's all. They're all around you. They're helping you.
They're testing you. Okay. You guessed, right? Say

(cut)

(repeat) (yeshe) (repeat) (chu ku) (repeat). (Ye she) means
"wisdom"...a lot of Tibetans are named (ye she). (Chu ku) means,
 like "Dharma body". Dharma body. (Ye she chu ku) means, just
simply, "the ultimate wisdom of an enlightened being", okay? The
omniscience of an enlightened being. Enlightened beings have the
power to see everything that ever was, everything that ever will
be, everything that is now, in the entire universe, in one
millisecond. They can see all of them directly, okay. They see
all of history that ever was or will be, on every planet in the
universe, every second that they're alive...they see it. Okay?
This is omniscience. All the thoughts in all the minds of all
the beings that ever lived, will live, did live, period. They
see it all. Within...that's what makes them so good at helping
people. Okay. It's like a goal that we can...strive. By the
way, does omniscience imply omnipotence?

(students: No)

No. Whatever those people say, okay...come on, who's killing all
these people with cancer. Who's burning little babies in
buildings, okay? Who's letting Kosovo go? They, you know, it
can't be an enlightened being, can't be a compassionate
being...there's no such thing, okay. There is no omnipotent
being...in...we don't believe that. Are there omniscient beings?
 Of course there are. Are they surrounding you all the time,
watching you, trying to help you? Yes. Do they emanate all your
friends and...you know, all your enemies too? Yes. Maybe, okay.
 Are they very powerful? Yes. Do they have ultimate love for
you? Yes. Do they constantly guide you and help you even though
you can't see them? Yes. Are they omnipotent? No. Why? Aids,
cancer, car accidents, babies dying in fires that didn't have
time to be bad yet, okay. It's obvious, okay. So Buddha does
not have omnipotence. The Buddha has omniscience, okay. So
that's the fourth body, okay? Yeah?

(student: (unclear))

Yeah, right right right. We did define it that way. That's
called (bam she). (Bam she) means "a useful way of describing
it". Technically it's the ability to see everything in the
universe at the same time, but what makes omniscience sexy, is
that omniscience can decide what's good and what's bad for
getting you enlightened, okay? I don't care if omniscient knows
every kind of, you know, boll worm...in..bollweivel in the world,
and can name them all for me. It doesn't matter. I mean, the
function of omniscience is to teach people what's right and
what's wrong for getting to be omniscient or enlightened. You
see, that's the...the value of omniscience. It's not that..."oh
gee, I can tell you the fourteen different kinds of, you know,
bugs that live at the bottom of this kind of...I don't care,
okay. But if you say I can come and describe to you in fifteen
minutes how to get your rear end into a paradise, you know, what
kinds of karma to do and what kinds of karma not to do, well that
becomes interesting. That that's all. The main reason to admire
or want to be omniscient is that, okay. Please have some
refreshments and we'll start in about ten minutes, okay?

(break) (laughs) Thank you. I'd love some.

There's a short schpiel in there about the perfection of giving,
you know, what is it to give perfectly, okay. What the
perfection of giving is not, is that you give something and it
works out great, okay (laughter...that's not it. Frankly, when
you do a virtue you can't predict the result fo...in the short
term. The apparent result is unpredictable. You give somebody a
hundred dollars, they go out, buy a gun, shoot their parents

(laughter) you know, you can't predict the apparent, what we call
the apparent result. But you can always predict the ultimate
result, okay, which is that if you give, so shall ye get, you
know. And that's the result of that. So it's important during
an act of giving, Buddha says something like, "there are three
elements in an act of giving and do not see them". Okay. There
are three parts to an act of giving and do not see them. And we
have to discuss what " do not see them" means, okay. But first
we hafta figure out what are the three parts. Well, here's the
three parts. (Geshe-la whispers...(unclear) notebook...where's
his notebook...it's in his mind already...in his mind already, he
doesn't need to take notes) Say (jin je) (laughter) (repeat)(jin
je) (repeat). (Jin je) means "the person giving the thing.
(Jin) means "to give", (je) means "doer". The person giving the
thing. So the, the subject in this action. The person who's
giving something is called (jin je). Can you see the (jin je) if
I give this paper to Venerable Anne, our newest Venerable
(laughter)...can you see the person who gives it? Of course you
can. I'm standing here. Okay. But can you see me in a self-
existent way? Can you see me independent of your own karma
forcing you to see me?...the way you see me? By the way, if you
think I'm ugly, that's your problem (laughter). I'm not kidding.
 I'm really not kidding. It's your karma projected onto me. I'm
not ugly from my own side, I'm not handsome from my own side.
You gotta get used to that. Anyway you perceive, your teacher
especially, it's totally your problem (laughter) okay, it's your
karma, okay. Anyway, that's what it means not to see the person
who's giving, you see what I mean...that's (jin je). That's the
emptiness of the element of the giver, okay...and you have to
think about that when you give something, okay. What does it
means in terms of yourself doing the perfection of giving. If
you give little pieces of food to birds on the street in New York
City, but you are thinking about that emptiness thing and
thinking about this arm turning into Manjushri's arm or Tara's
arm or Baywatch arm or whatever you're gonna do, okay, if you're
if you're concentrating on that it all happens a lot faster.
Okay. So if you give a scrap of food to a sparrow on the street
in New York City, but you're concentrating on that emptiness
thing of you, the giver, much more powerful, much much more
powerful. You have a good chance of getting enlightened soon.
You see, that's the perfection of giving as opposed to ignorant
giving. 'Cause you're thinking about the emptiness of the person
who's giving, okay. Next one. (Jin ngo) Say (jin) (repeat)
(ngo) (repeat) (jin ngo) (repeat). (Jin ngo) means "the person
to whom you are giving something. (Jin) means "giving", (ngo)
means "the person to whom you're giving it". The indirect
object, if you will, okay? And again, you give this piece of
paper to Ven. Dr. Sikes (laughter), okay, and while you're giving
it you think, you know, if I had better karma, I'd be seeing
Manjushri. Okay. Now I see a very holy being, but not quite
Manjushri. Okay (laughter)...yet. And that's my fault...you see
what I mean? Okay. (laughter). No, that's my fault. I don't
have the karma yet, you see. I'm projecting a a human being, a
normal human being, okay? That's my fault. If I were more
pure...if my mind were more pure, I'd be perceiving an
enlightened being, okay. So that's the emptiness of the person
to whom you're giving something. Say (jin ba) (repeat) (jinba)
(repeat). (Jinba) means "the whole act of giving". The fact
that Dr. Sikes is there, Venerable Dr. Sikes, the fact that I'm
here, the fact that we're into acting, it's not a
coincidence...there are no accidents in Buddhism, okay. That
event of the giving itself is also empty, okay. The fact that
it's happening is a projection of my mind. Okay. The fact that
he sat there, the fact that I'm standing here, the fact that I
have something to give him, the whole ambience of the thing, is
due to my karma, okay. I'm seeing the whole thing happen because
of my karma, all right? And that's the emptiness of the act of
giving. Now there's one last part. And then we're finished with
the easy stuff. Say (jin ja) (repeat) (jin ja) (repeat). (Jin
ja) means "the thing that you give", okay...the piece of
paper...is the (jin ja). So ho how many elements of the act of
giving do we have? But there's only three. Some scriptures
replace any one of the first three with the fourth one that I
gave you, okay? So I'm just giving it to you for dessert, all
right. Usually just the first three that you see here.
Sometimes different scriptures throw in number four and they skip
one of the first three. So it gives you more flexibility on your
homework (laughter) okay? So anyway, the (jinja) is the thing
that I'm giving to Dr. Sikes, okay. If my karma...it is also
empty...if my karma had been different, he would have been Donald
Trump, you know, I woulda had a contract that said, "we're moving
you into the World Trace Center tomorrow (laughter),
okay...something like that. All right. That's all. The
emptiness of the paper. Emptiness...this paper's much more
valuable, right? It's got the four bodies on it, okay. That's
all. Emptiness of the giver, emptiness of the givee, emptiness
of the giving and emptiness of the thing you're giving, okay.
And if you keep your mind on those while you give
something...that's why you can get enlightened giving food to
birds, okay. You don't have to save three thousand people on a
Titanic in the middle of the Atlantic, or something, okay. They
say you can get enlightened giving food to birds. Why? 'Cause
if you keep all this stuff if mind, you know...I have to see
myself as a normal person 'cause I don't have the good enough
karma yet, I have to see him as a normal, beautiful, holy monk
because I don't have the karma to see him as Manjushri yet, you
know. I have the karma to see myself giving this paper, instead
of a million dollars...sorry (laughter) because I don't have the
karma yet. That's all...the emptiness of all those things going
on. And I met him and he's here and I'm here and I'm giving it
to him because of my karma also. Everything is your projection.
Everything around you is the same. Yeah?

(student: (unclear))

Oh, it's nothing very logical okay, just sometimes there's,
sometimes there's no...nobody...well, most often it replaces the
one about the thing being given...for example, in the perfection
of patience there's nothing exchanged, you see what I mean? So
that...then they say, the guy being patient, the guy you're being
patient at, and the act of patience itself. And there's no
particular object being exchanged, or somethin...okay, so
sometimes they will replace that one, okay. Okay. Last thing.
We've been going through...where is that? We've been going
through each time at the very end and talking about what?

(students: (unclear))

Huh?

(students: (unclear))
Future of Dharma in America. Future of Buddhism in America. So
I think in the last year of reviewing these courses, we have to
talk about, how do you teach those courses, you see what I mean?
And subjects we've talked about so far were like stuff like what
are you going to teach, and who's qualified to teach it, and
should you charge or shouldn't you charge, and how're you gonna
keep track of your finances, and how you gonna certify that
teachers are real, what kind of books are you gonna say are good
books and what kinda books are not good books and things like
that, and we've been talking about all the details of how to
spread a new path in this country, and sooner or later it has to
be brought up. You can either do it in a random way, or you can
actually sit like this together and say, okay we want our
Buddhism to be like this. We want to avoid these mistakes from
the old country, we want to enhance these things from the old
country, and and we want to keep very preciously these ancient
wisdom that's been passed down to us by the Tibetans very non-
corrupt...you see what I mean? It's very very pure...lineage.
So how do we do that? I had one sponsor. I said, "if you give
me twenty million dollars I can spread Buddhism all over
American". They said, "sounds great. Can you promise me that in
a hundred years it won't be like such and such a church", you
know. I said "no". They said, "okay, I won't give you the
money". (laughs). Anyway, how are you gonna guarantee that this
tradition is as pure as it is now a hundred years or two hundred
years from now? You see what I mean. This is a big question.
You have to plan for it now, before it takes off...it's taking
off already...so you have to see how're you gonna keep it pure,
how're you gonna spread it from person to person, how're you
gonna prevent it from becoming a a doctrine, and and something
which keeps people down instead of liberating people, how are the
people in this room gonna pass it on and guarantee that in a
hundred years or two hundred years you don't have an inquisition,
and anyone who's not keeping their book gets burned (laughter),
you know, or those who don't keep vow number fourteen like I keep
vow number fourteen, ge...get expelled from the church, you
know...it'll happen. It...you know, this is the honeymoon,
okay. You know, the forces of dogma will come and and and start
to assert themselves, okay, how do you prevent that, how do you
keep things pure. We've been talking about that every step of
the way, and you have to talk about it. And how're you gonna
keep Buddhism alive and and flourishing in this country? So I
want to address one thing...I'm just gonna read it straight from
a piece of paper, which I never do, but I think it's so important
that I sat down and wrote it and thought about it for a few weeks
actually, okay. I'm kinda nervous 'cause I've never done this
before. Okay. It says, Tantra in America, okay. How you gonna
pass Tantra in America...how're you gonna keep it pure. "During
this series of talks we have been discussing the future of
Buddhism in America and other Western countries; its transmission
from Asia, and the focus we would like to see it take in our
countries. Since we are approaching the conclusion of the final
review of the Buddhist master's study program"...you're gonna be
Buddhist masters, okay, "which will be complete in eighteen
courses, and because the three-year retreat is soon to begin, and
finally because our students as a group have reached what I think
is a critical point in these matters"...people are always coming
up and me and asking me if you're gonna teach tantra or not, and
I haven't okay, and you've never heard me teach tantra in these
classes, question is...what's gonna happen. Okay. "I would like
to address the future of (tantra) in America. First point is
called "Why Practice (Tantra)?" People have asked me if I
practice tantra. The answer is "of course"; and I devote a good
part of each day to trying to master a wide range of various
tantric texts, arts and practices. I properly consider it the
primary focus of my practice and my life. In general, the word
(tantra) itself means "secret", and normally it should be
practiced and taught in a very private way. But because of my
role as a public teacher, because so much of what I do is done in
the public eye, I think it is necessary for me to discuss openly,
in brief, the reason and method for the practice of (tantra),
especially as I hope to see it develop in the West. The spread
of an improper practice of tantra would be a serious blow to the
growth of Buddhism in our countries. Equally so, the failure to
properly teach and follow the extraordinary methods of (tantra)
would be de...to deny a real chance for ultimate happiness to
thousands of Western people. We have committed ourselves as
Buddhists to ending pain in the world, as quickly as possible.
To do so, we must ourselves become enlightened beings. This can
be accomplished either by following the "sutra" or open teachings
of Buddhism, or it can be done through the practice of secret or
tantric Buddhiam. The standard texts for the sutra method
explain that, even after achieving the very high level of real
bodhicitta, or the wish for enlightenment, it took Lord Buddha
himself over two hundred thousand lifetimes to reach his
enlightenment more, okay. After Lord Buddha achieved
enlightenment, he taught that this process can be reduced to one
lifetime...through the practice of...proper practice of (tantra).
 So if we are serious as Buddhists about ending the suffering
that others and we ourselves must endure daily, it is our sworn
responsibility to practice (tantra) and (tantra) in its highest
and most powerful forms, as quickly as we are able." So you
know, everybody here says they are here because they want to
reach enlightenment. And then supposed to be that you're doing it
for other people because you want to save other people from
suffering. And thousands and thousands of people are suffering
at this moment who weren't suffering five minutes ago, okay? So
you've pretty much sworn...I think most of the people here...to
the Bodhisattva Vows...you've sworn to do whatever necessary to
reach enlightenment as quickly as possible. Which means
you...yo...it's not a question of should we practice (tantra) or
is it okay to practice (tantra), you have sworn already that you
you'll you'll do whatever is necessary as quickly as possible, so
there's really no question...you have to, as soon as you are...
properly able. "The Forms of (Tantra). What then are the
highest forms of (tantra)? (Tantric) practice in general divides
into four classes; these are distinguished by going from a
greater dependence on outer focus and ritual in the lower
classes, up to a general focus on inward practice in the higher.
Within the highest of the four classes of (tantra) there are
three broad steps of proper preparation, actual practice, and
final goal." There's four classes of (tantra). They're
basically different from each other because in the lower classes
you are more concentrating on rituals, recitation, things like
that, and then in the higher classes of (tantra) that shifts into
 a...more of a a mental or an inward focused practice, okay.
"Within the steps of actual practice, there are two important
levels: the first in which we undertake to develop a special
view of our reality, which is called (kir rim) and the second in
which we use this view to work on our subtle spiritual body,
which is called (dzog rim). This dual process ends in
transforming the mind and body into the state of an enlightened
being, a state of total knowledge, purity, compassion, and
physical perfection. Work with the subtle spiritual body is
itself done in two different ways. These involve a rigorous
discipline of practice and study, including intense work with the
physical channels throughout the body." I want you to understand
a little bit about...working with the channels, okay. I'm not
allowed to talk about it, publicly, in detail, but I think I have
to...I've been forced to, okay. Here we go. "I would like to
clarify this work with the channels briefly here, since it can so
easily be misunderstood. In their current condition, certain
subtle channels within our bodies are badly choked; this
situation is aggravated every time we have a negative thought and
especially when we have any kind of misperception about the
nature of the world around us, about how things really work."
You have certain subtle channels running through your body.
Everytime you get angry, everytime you get jealous, everytime you
have wrong desire, they choke a little bit more, okay. What
happens when they choke...by the way, the worst thing is to not
understand the thing about the pen. Except there's two worse
things but I can't tell you because that's (tantra) (laughter),
okay. They have to do with how you view your Lama and things
like that. Okay. "This continual choking of the channels is in
fact what makes our bodies mortal; it is responsible for the
aging process, and unless corrected, eventually leads to our
physical deaths." Every time you have a negative thought,
certain areas of your body are choked. Every time you
misperceive reality, which you're doing every second, they get
choked. This is what kills you. This is why you die. This is
why people die. What if you didn't do that? You wouldn't die,
okay. You'd be a (tantric) deity. That's how you get to be a
(tantric) deity...and you and you gotta choose one or the other,
you don't have any other choice. Okay. Either you clean up your
channel act and become a (tantric) deity in this lifetime, or it
kills you. And then your mind enters another state and there's
millions and millions, it's...I always call it the Moscow Hotel.
Biggest...they wanted the biggest one in the world. They didn't
care that it's ugly, everything's lousy, but they've got the most
rooms in the world, five thousand rooms on the Kremlin, you know,
and and dying is like that. You don't know what room you're
gonna be in. Only one room is is usable to reach enlightenment in
one lifetime, okay. Next. "When we work to fix this condition,
we are using our defective physical body, our vessels, in effect,
to eliminate themselves." Okay? So you're using your body to get
rid of your body, okay? "To eliminate, to replace them with the
indestructible, perfect form of a (tantric) deity. This is a
painstaking and difficult process, requiring an extensive
background in Buddhist philosophy and long hard hours of
training. It is about as romantic as cleaning a badly clogged
toilet, or cutting open a woman's breast in an operation to
remove cancer." I mean, someone might say the doctor is
interested in this lady's breast. He's trying to cut open and
cut out this cancer. I mean, forget it. He's he's have any
thought like that, he's totally beyond that thought. He's
working with this part of her body, but his mind is to save her
life, and he's doing that by removing that part of her body, you
see what I mean? It's very interesting. You have to use it to
get rid of it, okay. And that's a very interesting process...and
difficult. And hard. And it takes a lot of...holiness, okay.
All right. "For certain personality types, much of this work is
best accomplished through the cooperation of a (tantric) partner,
and in fact we are required by our vows in the highest form of
tantra to seek out and undertake this means, in the appropriate
circumstances. Then you get into "Appropriate Practice of
Tantra". What are the "appropriate circumstances" for the
practice of these higher forms of (tantra)? One must first of
all complete the proper preparation, and, to put it quite
bluntly, this is the entire goal of the eighteen courses of this
Institute." Okay? You're getting through the preparation when
you finish this six years. I didn't want to tell you that in the
third year or you would have quit, okay. "Aside from study, one
must internally have developed a true wish to escape from the
inevitable suffering of this life, a genuine wish to use the holy
Buddhist Dharma to escape from a world which is either pain
already or pain waiting to happen, the gradual decay of our
bodies and our minds; the loss of everything we have ever worked
for, and being torn in the end from everyone we have ever loved."
 That's what you have to look forward to. Your body will fall
apart. Your mind will get more and more stupid as the years go
on. You will lose everything you ever went to work for. You
will lose everyone you ever loved. That's your choice, okay.
It's the reason to practice (tantra). "We must as well have come
to see that this suffering will not end with death. Whatever
brought us here once can and will bring us here again. There is
not a single compelling proof that the mind does not continue on
after the functions of your physical body have ended. There are
thousands of states of conscious life, from insect to human,
which are obvious to us. There are millions more that are not
obvious to us. At the moment of death there are literally
minnoya...millions of forms of consciousness we can be thrown
into, almost all of them are simple chaos and terror. We cannot
practice (tantra), we cannot reach total happiness, in any state
of mind other than the one we are currently in, and you must lost
it." Okay? That's the prospect, okay. You got this window of
opportunity. The intelligence that you currently have in your
mind and the attraction to holy things is extremely rare, and you
must lose it when you die, okay. You...the...you can't...you
can't wait to do these things, you hafta as soon as you are
ready, you hafta do them, okay. "We must die. We must go on.
It can happen any moment of our lives. We must practice (tantra)
and we must do so now. We must also be resolved to practice it
in the most powerful ways within our capacity. We may not have
time to follow lesser paths. Consider finally the fact that a
(tantric) disciple who succeeds in this practice becomes, in one
fell swoop, a person who can simultaneously reach out to
thousands of other suffering people and guide them away from
pain." The minute you succeed at your (tantric) practice, you
are emanating on other planets. Okay. Billions of other
planets. So that's a added attraction, okay. "Tantra is at
present taught in many forms. There are false and very filthy
practices, many of which are simply common copulation with a
glorified name, that are being taught and spoken about without
any authority whatsoever, in various "new age" schools and the
like." You can see it in...what do you call it...the thing you
get free on the street...learning, learning annex...yeah...learn
(tantra), three simple lessons, hundred and forty dollars
(laughter), you know, bring light clothing or something, you
know. "There are also public forms of (tantric) initiations and
teachings, where eminent masters such as His Holiness the Dalai
Lama have conveyed the broad principles of (tantra) to large
groups of people." Why do they do that? It's secret. Why is
His Holiness going to teach ten thousand people the Kalachakra in
Indiana? Who he's never met...most of them. "In order to plant
the powerful seed in them for secret tantric practices in the
future, as well as to combat common misconceptions about tantra."
 His Holiness has written books about (tantra) and Khen Rinpoche
has released books about (tantra), one of their goals is to put a
seed in peoples minds, the other goal is to fight all the dirty
information about (tantra), okay? Lastly there are truly secret
empowerments and practices which are transmitted, privately, to
proven disciples by the extraordinary beings known as Tantric
Masters." Okay. So now we gotta get into who's a Tantric Master.
 "The success of (tantric) practice depends solely on the proper
guidance of a qualified Tantric Master. These are beings who
started out like you and me, and who by their intense efforts
have been able to reach a completely different level. They are
literally on a higher evolutionary plane, as different from a
human...as different as a human is from an ant." Okay. To
compare a normal person like us and a Tantric Master, you just
about comparing the intelligence of an ant to the intelligence of
a human. You gotta get used to that idea, okay. That's about
the difference between us and them, okay. "Making contact with
these beings, learning from them and having them lead us to
ultimate happiness, is in fact very similar to an ant trying to
relate to a human. Due to the fact that we ourselves are on a
much more primitive plane of being, the process of reaching them
is very...is first of all very rare, and secondly an often
difficult and trying experience." Okay. You've read stories
about Milarepa, Marpa...those guys, okay. It's true. All right.
 It's very difficult to have a (tantric) teacher and a (tantric)
relationship. 'Cause you're like an ant and they're like a
human, okay. Trying to understand what they want you to do, and
trying to do the right thing and trying not to see them as
something other than a (tantric)...it's difficult, okay...it's
not easy. All right. "Imagine a summer meadow covered with
marigolds and green grass. At the edge is a great oak tree.
Nestled in one of the boughs of the tree is a great honeycomb.
There is a human lying out under the tree enjoying the day. He
sees the honeycomb, and he sees an ant scurring around the roots
of the tree, in the dirt. Out of great kindness and care for
this single ant, he determines to lead it gently up the entire
trunk of the tree, to the sweet honey." You gotta get this
vision of a guy, a human, sitting under an oak tree, and there's
an ant crawling around on the roots. And he's gonna try to get
the ant to go up to the top of the tree 'cause there's some honey
there, and the ant has no idea what's going on. Okay. That's
about where we are when you have a (tantric) teacher, okay?
"They're trying to help you and all you feel is...he's taking a
single blade of grass and begins to nudge the ant, pushing at his
behind with the blade of grass. To the ant this is a very
disconcerting and freightening experience, but remember we are
talking about a special kind of ant. He has some instinct, he
has a seed of faith in him, that says "perhaps something bigger
is going on here." Okay, I mean, the idea of a (tantric) disciple
is you have some kind of an extraordinary good karma in your
mind...I don't understand what's going on a hundred percent, this
guy's trying to get me somewhere, I don't completely understand
it, but I trust, okay. In (tantra) this is the (cries) most
important part. "So he swallows his fear as best he can and
accepts the guidance, with occasional lapses of panic where it
all gets too high...talking about the ant. In the end he gorges
himself in the nectar of immortality. We are just about this far
away from the level of the (Tantric) Masters, and to meet them,
to learn from them and be guided by them to total happiness
within a single lifetime, is just as difficult. Like the ant,
our position as a lower form of life prevents us from
understanding the actions they do to help us, the pokes they give
us on our posteriors. Due to our own set of past actions and
thoughts, due to our own set of karmic imprints coloring and
actually creating our reality"...the people in Mongolia got it,
one thousand people yelling back, (ho san) (laughter) in
emptiness. They haven't studied it for seventy years, they've
been not allowed to talk about it and man, they got it in one
hour. You know, okay. "We often sometimes see the (Tantric)
teacher, Master, especially in the beginning, act in a way which
we cannot understand or appreciate. This is a common phenomenon
in (tantra). We should expect it and learn to move on up the
tree despite it. A person may even appear to be a (Tantric)
Master to one disciple, and seem to be a normal, ordinary person
to another. For those of you who have studied emptiness, this is
also to be expected. We see only what our own level of past good
karma allows us to see, and in fact there is nothing quote "out
there" except what your past deeds compel you to see."

And there's a famous story and this thing mentions it...Asanga,
Master Asanga, 350 AD is practicing in a cave, twelve years he
tries to see this (tantric) angel called Maitreya. Twelve years,
meditating, praying, reciting mantras, waiting for this guy to
show up. Nobody shows up. He gets fed up. He quits. (laughs)
He walks down out of the cave. He's on the road going to town.
He comes to a crossing and he sees a dead, half-dead dog. It's
been run over by a wagon wheel. And it's guts are hanging out
and they're rotting, and there's horrible things in it like
maggots, and everything else, so, you know, he decides he's gonna
help this dog, he's gonna take this dog to the doctor, vet,
350AD, and like he gets down and he starts to stuff the guts back
into the body, and then he sees all the maggots and he says,
"wait a minute. Now I can't kill the maggots to save the dog,
you see. I can't kill these things. I have to, I have to save
them too." So he just...he like tries to pick one up and he
squashes it, and he says "Oh my God, I can't do that", so he
says, you know, "What's the softest part of my body? I'll lick
them off the dog." The dog's guts are hanging out, right, and
and he (laughs) (laughter) so he closes his eyes, he says "this
is too gross to watch." (laughter), and he sticks his tongue out
and goes down and down and down and then finally his head hits
the ground, and he and he's like "where's the dog"? And then
there's Maitreya standing there, you know, and he, so Asanga,
you'd think he'd be happy, right? He gets mad. (laughter)
(laughs). He says, "I've been sittin' in that cave twelve years,
and you show up like this," you know, "what took you so long?"
And Maitreya says, "Look I was in the cave sitting next to you.
You didn't have the karma to see me. Used to clear your throat
when you're reciting, remember used to spit over on the left? I
used to be standing there, I had to jump out of the way"
(laughter), you know. "And you didn't have compassion. You
know, you're this bigshot, Buddhist teacher, and you didn't have
compassion. And now you you got it (cries) with the dog", you
know, "and and you were willing to save the dog like that, and
that's why you're seeing these things", you know, so he takes
Maitreya on his shoulders and he runs around town, "I did it",
you know. Guess what everybody else sees. Rotten guts hanging
out of this dog. This crazy guy is running around town, okay.
Who's right? Who's right?

(student: Both of them)
They're both right, okay. Okay. So the town the towns people
say this guy is crazy. Is he crazy? I'd like to be crazy like
that. Okay. "Potential Abuse of Tantra". This explanation
leads us to the question of the potential abuse of (tantra). If
things are however you see them, then what's to prevent someone
from simply deciding on their own, I'm ready to practice (tantra)
when they're not. There is no authentic lineage of (tantra)
descended from Lord Buddha which does not say that the disciple
must be thoroughly trained long before being led into the
mandala, or the secret world of the (tantric Master. The
(tantric) teachings repeatedly stress that the disciple must be
deeply knowledgeable in each step of the open teachings", which
happen to be presented in full in our Institute's courses. "The
(tantric) path is not easy. It requires a great knowledge of
Buddhist philosophy, a willingness to work long and hard in
retreats and other practices, and unshakable confidence in one's
(Tantric) Master. It should never be undertaken otherwise, since
a failure to practice properly, a loss of faith in (tantra)
itself, would set the disciple back many years. This itself
would be a grave bad karma for their teacher, also, who quote
"falls with the student, like one yak tied to another as the
first falls off the cliff."" If you teach (tantra) to someone
who's not ready, or if you practice...if you agree to teach it to
someone who's not ready, then when they go to hell, you go to
hell with them. That's a rule, (laughs) okay? And they say it's
like two yaks on a cliff and they're tied together, and one gets
pushed off the cliff, the other one goes automatically. Okay.
So it's not only wrong for the student to try to study it, it's
wrong for the teacher to teach it. "(Tantra) therefore is like
fire, with a great potential for good if properly used, and a
very destructive power if improperly used, whether this improper
use be due to the mistakes of insufficiently trained people with
good intentions, the carelessness of people who should know
better, or even outright abuse by deluded people. The
possibility of such abuse though cannot prevent us from
fulfilling the tantric tradition in its highest form, any more
than the existence of arsonists implies that we should ban the
use of fire. As with fire, abuses can and probably will occur.
Our goal then must be to establish procedures which will make it
unlikely, thus making...still making the full and proper benefits
of (tantra) available to those who can use it to attain ultimate
good within their lives. At this Institute, therefore, we have
created a formal police to assure that students are properly
trained before attempting (tantric) study and practice. "Policy
of the Institute". Okay, we're getting to the end, don't
worry...this is the most important thing ever I said. All right.
 You said that before today...okay. "It is therefore the policy
of this Institute that (tantric) teachings will only be granted
to students who have successfully completed the entire eighteen
courses of its Buddhist Master's program. These eighteen courses
are based directly on the five great books of ancient Buddhism,
along with the teachings on the Steps of the Path called (lam
rim), which constitute the Buddhist master (or geshe) course in
Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. In Tibet, it was a custom for
monks to complete their geshe studies in order to qualify for
admission to (tantric) college, and I think this is a wise
requirement." In Tibet it's even harder...I didn't tell you.
You have to be a Hlarampa Geshe. Two geshes per year out of ten
thousand at Sera get a spot in in Gyume Tantric College, okay, so
we're not that hard, okay? "The first fifteen courses may be
taken optionally by home study (including listening carefully to
each tape fully, completing all homework, quizzes, meditation
assignments, and final examination). But the final three review
courses must be taken either from myself or from one of my
directly appointed assistant teachers. In addition to this
requirement, the potential student must be examined by myself to
determine whether they have sufficiently developed the inner
spiritual qualities"...you can imagine some smart guy getting
through all the courses, and still being a schmuck (laughter)
okay? I mean, you gotta have some kind of mechanism to handle
this people, okay. "They must have developed inner spiritual
qualities...renunciation, compassion, and faith in the teachings
and their teacher before receiving these teachings. In some
cases, I may require an additioonal period of study and practice,
along with special tasks for serving other people. Finally, no
tantric teachings will be granted to a student who has not
actively maintained a book...I call it a six-time book, okay...of
vow observation for a period of at least three years." Okay. So
you have three years ahead of you. No problem. "Authenticity of
the Lineage". I'm gonna read the whole thing...I hope you don't
mind is it okay? Yeah. Okay. Oh sit down Sergeant, it's all
right. "Authenticity of the Lineage." This is wherein I try to
prove that I'm qualified, okay? "The (tantric) teachings have a
firm foundation in the word of Lord Buddha, and almost a quarter
of the canon of His teachings are dedicated to these methods,"
that is about twenty thousand pages of the Kangyur. So to say
that (tantra) is not authentic or (tantra) is not the word of the
Buddha is is to deny about a quarter of the whole
scriptures...it's about a hundred thousand pages to say that a
quarter of them are not valid. (Tantra) is valid. Buddha taught
it about a quarter of his life, okay. "The Tengyur, or
collection of early Indian commentaries upon the Buddha's own
teachings, contain over a thousand texts on (tantra). And the
Tibetan masters themselves have written over fifty thousand
commentaries upon these. More than a thousand of these
commentaries have already been input on computer by our project,"
okay. See...(tantric)'s for real. "The tradition as it has come
down to us has been real and authentic. Although I am hesitate
personally to state my qualifications for granting (tantric)
initiations and teachings, I would like to list them here, only
for the benefit of those who have asked me to." Many people have
come to me and asked me to teach them (tantra), okay? This is my
answer, all right. (child making noise in background) Ooh...he's
teaching his Mother (tantra) (laughter). "For those who are
seriously interested in the possibility of receiving them from
myself, I encourage each student of the Institute to be very
careful in the selection of their (tantric) teacher, and I tell
you quite frankly, that I may not be the proper teacher for your
own personal needs. It is crucial though that you do seek a
teacher out, that you find them and learn from them as quickly as
you can. My training in the theory of (tantra) in this life has
been accomplished as follows. Over the last twenty years I have
received group tantric initiations from His Holiness the Dalai
Lama, from the late...
(crying) from the late Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, senior tutor of the
Dalai Lama and holder of the throne of Je Tsongkapa. (crying)
From Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, former abbot of Sera
Mey Tibetan Monastery, and from the late Zong Rinpoche (crying)
from the (laughs-crys) who was...who was the (tantric) master of
Ganden Monastery. I have received extensive group teachings on
(tantra) over the last twenty years from Khen Rinpoche Geshe
Lobsang Tharchin, and more specialized teachings from
Genlin...Trinley Topgye, abbot of Gyume Tantric Monastery. I
have also received brief...(crys) (tantric)
initiations...instructions from the esteemed Pabongka Rinpoche."
It's all a long story, okay (laughs). Bottom line is, they are
very much like the pen, okay? And you see them if you work hard
enough, okay. (crying) You bring them to you and you don't go
to find them, okay? In otherwords you can't go to Dharamsala
with fifty dollars and ask for a (tantric) initiation, (laughs)
okay, like you have to bring them to you by practicing very very
hard, and you won't see them unless you practice hard, okay?
Then it says, "you don't have to be a (tantric) mas...you don't
have to practice (tantra) if you're part of this Institute," you
know, you don't even have to be a Buddhist, as you may have
noticed, okay? And I'm not saying everybody in this place has to
try to practice (tantra). I'm just saying, unless you're crazy
you should, okay? (laughs). And you have to try as hard as you
can and you have to try the most serious practices you can.
Okay. So there...I skipped some pages, but anyway, you can read
it. Next page says, "while I'm on retreat in Arizona, we will
continue to have classes here, and I encourage people who want to
learn these things, to finish their eighteen courses, gives you a
chance to finish them," okay. And we'll be continue to hold
those courses during the time I'm gone, okay. So, even if you
only have one or two finished, you can catch up by the time I get
out and start teaching these things. That's why I'm saying,
okay, and your work is cut out for you. It's not my problem if
you don't do it. I'll start a series of (tantric) teachings when
I get out...it'll take four or five years cycle...if you're not
ready when I get out, you're gonna have to wait, okay? So, your
work's cut out for you. Okay. And I don't think you can do all
eighteen in the last two months, but you can try (laughter) okay.
 "In the case of partial completion of a course (meaning more
than two absences during that course) the entire course will have
to be taken over again." I don't want a spotty lineage. Okay.
You gotta take the whole thing over again, okay. There's lots of
people here who took three or four courses...classes in each
course, or eight or nine...forget it. Oh no, eight or nine's
okay. But unless it was eight or nine you you have to start
over that course over again, okay. There's lot of courses that
are not interesting to some people: logic, (lojong), you know, I
don't know, philosophy. I'm sorry. You have to take the whole
thing, otherwise you won't be ready, okay. You will not get it.
And lots of people don't get it, okay. You have to go through
the whole thing. There's a reason why Je Tsongkapa designed it
that way. You you have to go through all of them, okay? "I urge
 each of you now to begin the process of planning your
study"...also Dr. Taylor's sitting here in Washington D.C. with
this big computer that tells me who finished what homework and
what classes, okay, and we'll print it out for each person, so
you don't have to wonder...did I finish number six or not...you
didn't (laughs), all right, but we'll make a list for each
person, and and yo your work will be cut out for you. And then
we'll design a schedule of classes, in the homes of the assistant
teachers, during the time I'm in retreat. Okay. So you'll have
a chance to cycle through the whole thing while I'm gone. Again
you can take the first fifteen by homestudy, but you have to take
the last three from someone who was in the last three, okay?
Meaning (unclear). No...(laughs), just kidding. "Also I
encourage you to take Bodhisattva Vows and Layman's Vows and
we'll be having those ceremonies one more time before I go into
retreat. It's very very important to have pratimoksha
vows...ordination or lifetime layman's vows, or at least to be
observing the ten precepts." It's also very important...you can
not take a (tantric) initiation without Bodhisattva Vows, okay.
And then you are granted (tantric) vows. Each one is built on
the other. People who say that the lower vows are unnecessary
for (tantric) practice are crazy. Je Tsongkapa said they are
like what? Do you remember?

(student: Hail)

Hailstorm that rips through parts of valley and ruins all the
crops in ten minutes, okay. To have that idea that you don't
need the lower vows to take the higher vows is ignorant. Okay.
To have the idea also that you shouldn't prioritize your vows is
equally ignorant, okay? If you are in a (nong dom), which is
what? If you're caught in a...what do they call it?...

(student: Double bind)

It's like a catch twenty-two but there's a better word...

(student: Double bind)

Double bind. Anyway. You got this vow that says do this, and
you got this vow that says do that. You must do what the
hower...higher vow says. Don't go around saying people that you
see who seem to not be keeping their lower vows, but you don't
know that they're not keeping a higher vow...they may be the only
person in this room keeping their vows, okay. Get it straight.
You have to respect your higher vows even at the expense of
apparently not keeping your lower vows. Okay. Period. If you
don't, you're crazy, all right, and you're corrupt. "Watching
one's vows throughout the day you can do very happily with the
six-time book and encourage you to do it. In fact it's the only
way to get into (tantric) paradise," all right, and it's a...I'll
 I'll break my (tantric) vow...it's a requirement for all higher
tantric initiation. You must keep that book, okay. Might as
well start now, okay. "If you get a chance in the next three
years, take initiation from Khen Rinpoche. He is in...I'm not
being biased, I certain would never be (laughter), he is the
greatest living master of (tantra) and sutra in the world today.
Period. You guys don't know what you have. They would love to
have him back at Sera. There's nobody left at Sera, okay. They
think he's crazy just to waste his time on us, you know...he is,
he was in (tantric) college as the assistant to the abbot in
nineteen...fifty seven?...when I was five years old, you know
what I mean? It's a blessing. Okay. So if you can, try to take
it from Khen Rinpoche in the next three years...must try to do.
Okay. Last thing it says here...there's always many last
things..."the course in (tantra) will be taught both in Arizona
and in New York. The course in Arizona will be more intense,
we'll go through textual study, we'll go through the various
visualizations, then we'll go through mandala construction, torma
construction, then we'll go through fire offerings, how to do a
proper (tantric) retreat, and if you survive all that, you'll
study (dzog rim), which is working with the channels, okay. And
we'll take some time. But the whole course will be just as, I
think, organized as this one is, you see what I mean. And that's
been lacking I think in the West, you see what I mean. You'll be
able to go through...it's not like a weekend initiation...which
are great, but it'll be a a regular course of study and practice
that you have to go through in a very organized way, and
rigorous, for four or five years, or something like that...maybe
more. We'll see. Last thing it says here, I don't know if
you...how many colleges in Sera Monastery?

(students: Two)

What are they?

(students: Sera Je and Sera Me).

Sera Je and Sera Me, okay, I mean it's a famous, that Sera Me's
are smarter (laughter), that Sera Je's are (laughter), no just
kidding. This is a big rivalry we have okay (laughs), we're from
Sera Me, so are you by the way. But people don't know there was
a third college at Sera. Ngakpa Dratsang. There was a (tantric)
college at Sera. It it was totally wiped out for the last month,
okay, (crys) not a single monk (crys)...and it's gone and I'd
like to revive it, okay? Out in Arizona somewhere (laughs) okay.
 It was a part of study at Sera. And it's a necessary part of
the study, okay. There was a (tantric) college, and it's gone,
okay. So I'd like to see that course of study revived.
Properly, okay. Okay. Last this is says here...how many last
things..."I will continue to teach in New York after the three
year retreat. I intend to do two long courses a year here, and
during the three years in Arizona, due to Winston's efforts and
other people's efforts, there will be, I think, looks like,
housing for anyone that wants to come out and be in retreat for
a week, or a month, or a year, or whatever you want. We found a
way to make very inexpensive places, and we'll have two courses a
year there even during the three year retreat of about three
weeks each. Okay. And I'll teach those. So I encourage you to
come. It says here that I will accept important messages and
questions like "life" questions? by writing in retreat on a very
limited basis, and they'll come through John Stilwell, I think.
John will be directing the Institute in New York during my
absence, if he still wants to. Winston McCullough, with his wife
Andrea and son Kieran will be moving to Arizona in the next six
months and creating that center there. And Elly van der Pas will
be directing the actual retreat as far as caretaking and things
like that. And you're very welcome to come and participate at
any level that you're able to, okay, and we've kind of overcome
all the housing questions and property questions, looks like,
okay, you have to pray a little bit for that, okay. That's all I
have to say tonight. Next week, next class I'd like to talk more
about Buddhism in the West, about the form that Buddhism takes,
okay, like do we really have to blow those horns (laughter), you
know, or could we just play violins or something...you see what I
mean? And we'll talk more about that next class, okay. Thank
you for that...we'll do a dedication, okay. Are you ready
Phuntsok-la? Oh, one thing before that, I think you've all got a
copy of Khen Rinpoche's long-life prayer, Khen Rinpoche's
birthday is coming up, July 1

(students: Today)

Today. His legal birthday's today. So we'd like to recite his
longlife prayer. This long-life prayer was written by the
teacher of the Dalai Lama, Trijang Rinpoche, who was Khen
Rinpoche's root guru, okay. Okay. Do you have a copy? There's
a special tune to this, which they usually do wrong, so try to
listen, okay? Try not to run over me like a tractor, okay,
that...the...okay, all right, here we go.

(prayer: Khen Rinpoche's Longlife prayer)

(cut)
Review Course 17