ACI 17 (обзорный курс), Занятие 05 (прогон ГМР, Нью-Йорк) — стенограмма

Class 5, part 1
Transcribed by: Karen Becker

This class was on...this whole course was on...it was I think it
was called "Death and the Realms of Existence" and at the time
that I offered the course, Tibetan books on dying were very hot
and so I decided I had to put one out also, and anyway. So, the
book, the the course had a few parts to it. One was a
description of the various places you could go after you die,
okay. And we'll talk about that. Another was a description of
the bardo, meaning the the time between the time you die and the
time you're reborn, you know, what happens to you, and then I
think at the end of the course we did a death meditation, you
know, how to do a death meditation, so we'll be going through all
of those parts during this mini-review. I'd like to talk first
about, you know, the various places you can go after you can
after you die. This is one of the hardest parts of Buddhism for
Americans to listen to because we don't believe in future lives
and we in instinctually don't believe in future lives. All of
your newspapers, magazines, parents, schools, churches, temples,
whatever, they are informing you that there are no future lives,
you know. Every TV advertisement for Budweiser says "one life to
live, drink up now", (laughter) and, you know and you don't, you
think that's silly but it actually is a small step towards brain-
washing you to believe in your heart that there are...that you do
stop when you die. And I had people continuously throughout my
career as a western Buddhist and a western Buddhist teacher, I've
been challenged to prove that there are future lives, you know,
so I got tired of trying to prove them. We had a whole course on
it, by the way, which we finished...or did we get to that
yet...yeah. Then I decided to turn the tables around, you know,
you prove to me that your mind doesn't go on, you see what I
mean. I would...people would come up to me and say, "prove that
there's a future life", and I'd "hey, you prove to me that there
isn't", you know what I mean? And the only proof, and this was a
proof that was debated back in India in six fifty AD, is that
your body stops moving, okay. That's the only proof there is.
That your mind stops. Mind and body are related, but not totally
interdependent...you see what I mean? And and so that just means
that, for example, if a car breaks down on the highway, then the
driver died. You see what I mean. Can you assume that if you
see a a car on the highway which is broken down, that the driver
is no longer alive...who's sitting in the front seat. It's
something like that. It's something as weak as that. It sounds
silly to you, but that's about the only proof they have in the
West, and the rest is just what I call Mrs. Melvin...what's Mrs.
Melvin? This is my first grade teacher, okay, and she told me
that my mind stopped when I died and I believed it and I've
believed it ever since, for no better reason than that, okay?
When Je Tsongkapa's student was writing a book about future lives
he said, "by the way, everybody in Tibet believes in future
lives, but I haven't met a Tibetan who could tell me why there
should be a future life". It's just their Mrs. Melvin told them
that there was future lives, and they can't they don't know why
there is either. You see what I mean, and the basic thing is
that your mind must go on, okay, the odds are something, okay, in
your own mind, if you think about it, the odds are something that
you go on, okay. What are the odds. You read this thing in (b:
Hamlet, right. He says, "to be or not to be", and I used to
think, you know, when I was a kid, "to be or not to be what", you
know. What is it. It's to be dead or not to be dead, you see
what I mean? He's meaning, should I kill myself or not. He's
having a debate with himself about whether to commit suicide.
And then he goes through this beautiful soliloquy and then at the
end he says, "yeah, I'll kill myself and then maybe I'll start a
dream and, oh oh, maybe the dream is worse than this. I won't
commit suicide,", you know, he (laughter) he decides that
ma...essentially he decides that maybe the mind goes on and he he
decides that what he knows is better than what he doesn't know
about, and he decides not to kill himself, and that's exactly
where you mind should be, okay? Like, yeah, maybe I can't prove
to you in five minutes that you're gonna go on, but hey, what are
the odds that you can happen again if you happened once? It's a
hundred percent. Why? 'Cause time is endless. Anything that
can happen once in a zillion years, can happen twice in two
zillion years. You see what I mean? Time goes on. If you are
sitting here once, in this realm, in this world, experiencing
these things, do you think it can't happen again? You know,
don't don't call a bardo. Say it takes a million years, but
you'll be here again, you might have to happen aga...you will
happen again. The odds that brought you here, the conditions
that brought you here will be repeated. Statistically it's it's
a hundred percent odds. Because why? Because you happened once
and the space you're dealing with is infinity. So you can happen
again. I mean, just statistically, you will happen again, okay.
So how does it happen. Is New York City the only possible realm
you can exist in, you know what I mean. What are the different
realms there are. No, I mean, people tend to think in the small
little town they grew up in, the Tibetans call it the frog in the
well syndrome, you know, the frog thinks that this well is the
only possible body of water and then somebody comes and explains
the ocean to him and he's like, "ah, come on" and then somebody
takes him out of the well and takes him to the edge of the ocean
and his mmmm...brain blows up, okay, that's the story of the frog
in the well (laughs), you know, he's like, he just couldn't take
it, you know, and everybody thinks that their own well is all
their is, you know what I mean? And, we have to talk a little
bit about how you go to other realms and then we'll talk about
the other realms, okay. Those of you who know about the
emptiness of the pen which...you know, you're waiting for three
year retreats so you don't have to hear about the pen right
(laughter), (laughs) okay, it's it's all the pen, okay, it's all
the pen. Do you like the pen or not...totally depends on you,
it's not part of the pen. It's a projection or a perception on
your part. It's not part of the pen to be likeable or unlikeable
it's only you, and everybody can accept that. On a deeper level,
it's penness...the fact that there's a...that you perceive it as
a pen is also coming from you. An animal comes here, they don't
see it as a pen, an Eskimo comes here who's never seen a
pen...they don't see it as a pen, and then you do see it as a
pen. That proves that there's no penness coming or emanating
from this stick, okay. It's just whatever your mind forces you
to see, okay. The same is true of every object around you, okay,
the whole world around you. You recognize chairs from brown
rectangles because of some karma you did in the past and
therefore you're able to use it as a chair, and enjoy it as a
chair, and the same for every single object in this room.
Everytime you recognize something it's because your own mind is
forcing you to do it in a certain way, based on your passed
karma, based on what did in the past. So like another kind of
being, you know, like a dog, could come in here. They see the
same colors, they see the same shapes. They interpret it
completely differently. For them it's a totally different
world, and they don't see it as a chair, they don't cognize it as
a chair. It has no use for them as a chair, you know, you have
to get your butt on there and push it down, your tail doesn't fit
right, you know, it doesn't...they don't see it as a chair, you
see. So when a dog comes into this same room and looks around,
they see it totally different, you know. There's an interesting
corner, right down there...where I could peepee, you
know...that's really cool, and you know and they they just see
the room like that...they see it as a totally different thing.
So it's easy to understand, that based on their past karma, the
dog and the human in this room are experiencing two different
realms. There are two parallel realities going on in this room,
okay, at least, and that's easy to understand. You don't have to
be a philosopher to understand that. There's an...dog's world
and there's a human's world going on in this room, at the same
time, when there's a dog in here, and and they're totally in the
same place, they have the same circumference and there are two
different beings having two different worlds in this room at the
same time. That's easy to understand, okay? You don't, you can
accept that easily. And by the way, when you teach this, please
teach it this way, you know what I mean. If you say, you know,
you hear Buddhist teachers who get up there, "oh you're gonna go
to hell. There's a big box you know, and they stuff you in the
box and you're burned", and then people are like "come on", you
know, it's not convincing, you know what I mean? It's not
compelling because it's so foreign, and it's so hard to believe,
you know. But this is easy to believe. Get it. There's a dog
world going on in this room, there's a human realm going on in
this room. Do you think there can't be more than that? Do you
think there can't be other kinds of beings in who experience this
realm in a different way...you see what I mean? It's it's very
naive, it's frog-in-the-well thinking to believe that there's
only the two realms that you're aware of in this...even in this
room, okay. That's just...that's just naive to think that.
That's paro...what they call parochial, right. It's very small
minded. Of course this room can be perceived in thousands of
ways. Of course, therefore, there can be thousands of different
creatures in this room at the same time, some of them are visible
to you, some of them are not. And how they experience this
realm, or or or this room is as foreign to you as how the dog
experiences it. When the dog walks in, really, they're only
calculating three or four things. Where's a good place to
peepee, (laughter), you know, can can anybody in this room give
me some food, is there another dog in this room, you know what I
mean. They're just evaluating the room...think about it in very
primitive terms. They only want three or four things out of this
room, and that's how they see the room, and and to think that
there's not thousands of other ways to see the room is just,
naive, it's foolish, okay? So, when you get reborn as a dog,
it's not like there's a...I mean, when people talk to me about
rebirth as a dog, when I was a kid, I thought there must be a
factory out in Omaha or something, like a secret government
factory and they're producing dog bodies, you know, like just
carcasses and then they had there's some guy that cuts a ...has a
scaple and opens up the back near the back bone and then there's
these spirits of dead people flying around the country, like
from...usually probably from the east coast to the west coast,
and they stand there with big nets and they catch the spirits and
they stuff them into dog bodies and they sew it shut real tight
and and then the dog becomes alive. You know, you think that.
Or at least you think in your mind, "there's a dog", and your
mind enters the dog, or your dog, your mind enters the body
of...your spirit or mind enters the body of the dog. That's how
you picture it in your mind (dun chi) right...when I, sorry, (dra
chi), it's only you've heard about it right, never experienced
it, that's what you think of when you think of being born as a
dog. You think of...there's already a bo a dog body there and
then my mind some how slips in and gets caught there, and can't
get out...or something like that, okay? That's completely wrong.
 That's not how it works, okay. You just start seeing things
differently, and then you is a dog (laughter), okay, get used to
it. Get used to that. It's not like you become a dog and then
you start to see the world differently? Your karma forces you to
see your world differently, and that's what makes you a dog.
Then you are a dog, okay. You gotta get used to that. It's just
a shift in your perception...to believe that there's some
government conspiracy to catch spirits and put them into dog
bodies is unreal. To say that my perceptions can shift radically
within five minutes and this doesn't look like an arm anymore, it
looks like a leg...of a dog, is is is the way it really works,
okay? You know how much your perceptions are determining even
the existence of this pen, okay. Your perceptions are are making
this pen exist, okay. You don't think the same thing applies to
this cylinder that applies to this cylinder...of course it does.
How long's it take for the perceptions to shift? About the time
it takes to die. How long is that? Couple minutes, okay. At
any given time in your life, with a ten minute shift, you'll be
in a different realm...you'll being seeing this as something
different, okay, and so the question of what are those other
realms like, how many are there, what are the odds of going to
each one, which are better than others, how can I control the
trip, you know, that becomes a very important question if you
understand the perception thing. Because of per...your
perceptions are determining your reality, it's a very
freightening and real prospect that at any moment in your life,
ten minutes from now, you could be in that realm. You could be a
dog. Why? 'Cause you're seeing things as a dog, okay? Oh
that's just seeing things as a dog. Hey, that's what it is to be
a dog. Get used to it okay. That's what is it to be a dog.
You're only a human now because there's something in your mind
forcing you to see these things as humanish things, and that
karma's wearing out every time you have a thought. (Snaps
fingers) Sixty five in that much time. You just wore (snap) out
(snap) hundred (snap) and ninety-five karmas to see me as a human
and to see you as a human, okay. And you ain't got that many,
and and then one day they wear out and what do we call that?
Death. You used them up, okay. And there's very limited supply
in your mind. There's a very limited supply of karma...karmic
seeds that are producing this vision of of a human realm like a
film, like frames in a film. Sixty-five going off every finger
snap, and you're using them up like crazy, okay. Your karmic
credit card is being blown as we speak. To spend an hour here to
watch a person teach Dharma is the most expensive use of your
karmic credit card, okay, and by being here an hour, you've
gotten one hour older, which means you've used up one more hour
of karmic impressions in your mind, and they wear out...they wear
out all at once...the karma...the impressions to see the clothes,
the impressions to see the face, the arms, the chairs, New York
City...they just (snap) they just go du-du-du-du-du-du-du-schoop
(laughter) and then they're done, like that...no, they just blink
 out, you know they wear you wear out all at once and we call
that death. Five minutes later your perceptions are radically
different. New karmic seeds are coming up, they could be
anything. You don't know what's in your karmic pocket. Normally
they're worse, okay, much much worse, okay and you're just seeing
things differently. People say "how come people don't remember
their past lives?" You have to appreciate the radical difference
between your mind five minutes after you die and your mind now.
You will be nothing like you are now. Nothing. You won't
remember a thing, you know, all the things you struggled your
whole life (laughs) to collect, people, honor, you know, things,
money, friends, family...they just...you can't remember them five
minutes after you died. There's this dim memory, this instincts,
you know, I I used to like ice cream (laughter) I don't
remember...you know, I mean, you can't even think ice cream,
okay, no really, the very most powerful imprints created by a
whole lifetime of a certain behavior will be will remain with you
in a very dim way, a very murky way, and the rest is gone, you
know. The whole conscious awareness of this plane of reality is
just gone. And and you don't remember much of it at all. How
much of your dreams do you remember the next morning. How much
of you your dreams do you remember a week later. I mean except
for the very very strong ones, and that's exactly the same. Je
Tsongkapa in many of his works on dream yoga or, you know...it's
very similar, you know. Until the day that you can go into your
dreams and study emptiness and meditate on it, in a conscious
way, as if it were your waking life, don't expect to be able to
remember anything ten minutes after you die, you see what I mean.
 You have to be on that level which is very hard to get to, where
you can walk around in your dreams, be as conscious in your
dreams as you are now, do your practice in your dreams, meditate,
study, recite things, think about emptiness...the hardest thing,
right...until you can really do that, you don't have much hope in
the bardo...of of controlling what's gonna be going on, okay.
And how many people in this world, in their lifetime, achieved
that kind of mastery over their dreams? The difference between
your dream consciousness and your waking consciousness is very
similar to the difference between your consciousness as your die
and your consciousness ten minutes after you die. If you can't
control one, you have little odds of controlling the other. And
you just won't remember. And you will be that other creature.
And and just the most...the things that you spent most of your
life on, there'll be some instincts imprinted on your mind, and
the rest is all forgotten, okay, so now it becomes a quite
serious question of what are the other realms you can go to. At
least we should know the possibilities. Okay. Did you have a
question...somebody...yeah?

(student: (unclear)

(laughs) "How do you spend karma." Karma is imprints from your
subconscious floating up to your conscious world and coloring
what you see and and more deeply, creating what you see. And
everytime you see anything, for any length of time, even a
microsecond, you've just used up that impression. That
impression has what we call "ripened" into the conscious mind and
 then by experiencing it you use it up. And then it's over,
okay, and and everytime you spend a minute on this plane of
reality you've used up something like...you know...what is this
(unclear)...three thousand karmic imprints, you know. You can't
grasp how expensive it is karmically to stay in this realm for a
minute or an hour, you know, you take it for granted. But that's
why people die so quickly, so easily, you know, and the older you
get the more it's just unreal, you...I remember John F. Kennedy
standing at his...in front of his father's casket, this cute
little kid in his shorts and making this gesture...it seemed to
be very natural, you know, and then think of he's dead, it's just
like that (snap), you know what I mean? And to to live here, to
stay alive here is very hard, karmically. To stay alive in in
this realm is is very very very expensive, and that's why people
die quickly and suddenly, okay, and...that's all. That's the
process by which you use up karma. When you use up good karma,
the almost...which, by the way, to be a human is to use up a lot
of good karma...to come to a class is extremely
expensive...karma, okay. It's the most (laughs) expensive karma,
okay. And and you use it up. Then there's a process by which
only the bad karmas are left, you see what I mean.
(student: (unclear))

Oh, if you can spend bad karmas, it's great. Like one of the
Lojong or mental training practices is that, you know, if you're
having a a problem in your life, you know, you have someone at
work you don't like, or you have a relationship that's not going
well or you feel sick or something like that, you should be happy
that you're using up bad karma, you know. There's a there's a
state of mind where you take joy like...there's even a prayer
that says, you know, "may this problem go on" (laughter) so I can
use up more bad karma and may it double and triple in the in the
weeks to come, you know what I mean. So that's all. Yeah. You
can use it up. Can you switch karmas and stuff like
that...definitely. We talked about it last week in the Friday
night class. There's ways to short-circuit bad karmas, there's
ways to enhance good karmas, there's ways...and then ultimately
the goal is to perpetuate the good karma. There's a kind of, you
know, fusion? Is it "fusion or fission", I don't know. They're
trying to reach this thing in atomic physics where a teaspoon of
water could run New York City because it will run on itself.
More energy out than you put in. And Buddhas are doing that.
Buddhas have figured out karmically how to get one good deed to
run a whole Buddha paradise and not wear out, and there there's a
process by which you do that, okay. That's called a perfection.
Okay. All right. So I'm gonna review with you the the possible
realms which you can die and go to, but please don't think of it
as dying and going to, right? Just a shift in your perception.
Could happen as easily as the shift in perceptions from this room
to the to the room out there when you go for refreshments,
remember, okay. The the shift required to perceive this room and
then follow that with a perception of that room is no less, or no
more...I don't know, anyway, it's just as easy to have a shift
from this human realm to an animal realm or worse, okay? It
takes the same amount of time to go from this realm...this room
to that lobby as it does to go from this whole realm to a
different realm, because it's just a shift in your perceptions.
You don't walk from this room to that lobby. Your perception
shifts, okay. It's the "Matrix" all over again (laughter)
(laughs) okay? All right? Your karma...it's really nice movie,
you gotta see it, okay. Your karma is feeding you data, it's
actually a lot of it is only going on in your mind, and and
you're perceiving...you interpret it as going from one room to
another but actually you you're not moving in that sense.
There's no independent person moving. There's a shift in your
perception. "Oh, well then that means nothing's real". Well,
you go and take your perception out to the middle of Second
Avenue, stand there in front of a perceived Pakistani driver taxi
driver (laughter) and see if your perceived legs break. And you
gotta go to a perceived hospital. And it hurts, okay. Yeah,
it's all perceptions but it's real...get it? Okay. It's a
reality which is created by your perceptions and it hurts. That,
you know if it didn't hurt, everything'd be okay. But it does.
The fact that it's only perceptions is both your salvation and
your doom. Right? The fact that it's just perceptions means, if
you are nasty to the people around you and never get your act
together as far as compassion, you will make things worse. Your
perceptions will get worse and worse. Ultimately...because
everything is a perception, you have the opportunity to go to a
(tantric) paradise in this lifetime. If you just work on your
mind and on your vows, you know what I mean? You have both
options are open to you because things are empty. Because things
are just your perception. That's your salvation and that's
your... what's the opposite?

(students: Damnation. Downfall)

Damnation, yeah (laughs) okay. No really. Everything's empty.
If everything was fixed, we'd be in trouble. We'd just die and
then there'd be the idea that you just die and everything stops.
But that's not the way reality works. Reality works because it's
being produced by your perceptions. So, if you take care to
garden in your mind and plant nice karmic seeds by keeping your
book, (tun druk) six times a day and, you know, you do gardening,
consciously gardening, putting the right things in your mental
stream so that a month later, six months later, a year later your
reality is improving, okay. The fact that the movie "Matrix"
came out, the fact that I could see it, the fact that that
hundreds of thousands of people could watch a thing that's
talking about the possibility that, you know, your mind is
creating your reality, is in itself an extraordinary karma. It
means we've been having good classes on emptiness. And I'm not
kidding. The moving was produced from that. You gotta get used
to that, okay? For us, the movie was produced by that, okay?
And more and more come out...it's weird. "Truman's World" and
stuff like that, okay. Anyway. All right. Yeah?

(student: (unclear))

Yeah, she said, "you...I understand the thing that karma wears
out and you perceive your death, but aren't you making new good
karma all the time?" That's true, but the odds are very very
lousy. You make one good karma for every hundred thousand bad
karmas, something like that. Okay. Seriously. In other words
the small irritated states of mind throughout the day, which you
can read on a person's face, you know, the very few people in the
world who are collecting good karma faster than bad karma look
like the Dalai Lama or something, you see what I mean? They are
shining and the rest of us are going around like, (laughter) and
you can read it on a person's face. You don't need to count
their good karmas and their bad karmas, you know. The state of
your face describes how your karma is being collected. And
that's all. Most people are...get older. Most people's faces
get worse as they get older. This is a direct result of their
thoughts, okay. (Tantr)ically you can explain it with the
channels and everytime you have a small irritated thought in this
room a little more choking occurs at certain chakras and then
that affects specific areas of your face and your body. So
actually there's a physical basis for that, and the...if you are
aging, what I mean to say, you are collecting bad karma much
faster than good karma, okay. It's just a fact. If you reverse
that process, you would get younger. And the reason so few
people are seen to do it is that very few people do it. Okay.
Very few people do it. But (tantr)ic practice is the process of
reversing that, and and your body...actually, in the end, it goes
from not just younger but it goes to a whole higher plane,
physical plane, your whole physical body transforms into some
beautiful light and then you're a (tantr)ic deity. The whole
idea is to reverse the the...is to reverse the trend...extremely
difficult, and only possible if you understand how it works, you
see what I mean? Like you can only get into trying to do it if
you understand how you can do it. Somebody has to sit there and
explain to you about the pen and all that and then about the
channels, and then you can say, "oh, I get it. Now let me try".
You see what I mean? It's knowle...we say knowledge can defeat
everything, you know. All your millions of years of crappy mind
can be overcome by a few years of pure knowledge, okay. That's
our hope, you kn...that's our only hope...is that knowledge or
wisdom...if you understand how this process works, then you can
start to reverse it and it works, and it's exciting when it
starts, you know, you can observe it. Things happening in your
body and your mind and your life and you can just sit there and
sit back and watch the fireworks. It's very very extraordinary.
Very cool. Very cool process. Okay. Yeah?

(student: Are all negative thoughts bad karma, negative karma?)

She said, "Are all negative thoughts...)
(student: I'm sorry. Selfish thoughts.)

"Are all selfish thoughts bad karma?" Yeah. Basically. I can't
think of one that wo...

(student: So from the minute we wake up in the morning and want
something for ourselves, this is a hundred thousand (laughs))
(unclear))

Is it bad to want something for yourself - you gotta be careful
about that. Okay. You gotta be careful about that. Buddhism
says, "want what you want for yourself but never at the expense
of others". Okay. If you want something for yourself...I wanna
get enlightened. I would like to have my body start reversing in
the aging process. That's a pure thought. That's renunciation.
That's close to bodhicitta, you see what I mean. We build on our
own hope, and those are reasonable hopes. You wouldn't be here
if you didn't hope for something, you wouldn't be in the class if
you didn't hope for something, so we say that's a virtue. Say, I
wanna get enlightened, you know, I don't wanna go to hell, I
don't wanna die, I don't wanna get old, you know, those are pure
thoughts. There's no problem with that. Those are not selfish.
Where it gets selfish is, "and I'll do anything to anyone else to
get it", you know. There's this scene...I saw "Gone With the
Wind"...it's really long (laughter) and there's a scene halfway
through...what's her name picks up the dirt

(students: Tara. Tara)

Tara. (laughter) (laughs) And she goes, "I'll rebuild"...what
was the farm called?

(students: Tara)

Tara...oh sorry...what's her name?

(students: Scarlet)

Oh Scarlet, yeah. So Scarlet like picks up the earth and says,

(student: (unclear))

"I'll rebuild Tara if I have to kill, lie, steal", you know and
(laughter) you know, and that...you know, it's not bad to want to
rebuild Tara, that's a good thought. But then there's the next
thought, you know, to steal, kill, burn...you know, that's the
distinction. Buddhists have to want to be happy. You have to
want to reach paradise. It's not selfish to want to do it.
Bodhicitta means wanting to do that and then on top of that
wanting to do it for other people. So no contradiction. It's
very not a Christian idea. The Christian idea is...I mean if I,
the way it's been interpreted now...I don't think Christ would
say that, but is that you can't want anything for yourself. It's
wrong. You know what I mean. That's not...in Buddhism you gotta
want to be totally happy and then when you get more mature, you
wanna be totally happy so you can teach other people how to do
it. That's all. And that's not a bad thing. But to do it at
any expense of other people which is what we do do from the
morning to the night is...that's bad karma. Yeah. Yeah. It's
the difference between the intelligent desire and ignorant
desire. Intelligent desire is something like bodhicitta, okay.
Yeah?

(student: Can beings in a lower realm collect good karma?)

Good. It's a good question. "Can can beings in a lower realm,
like insect realm, can they actively collect good karma?" We say
almost never, which is why we say that you can't get out of those
realms very easily. They tend to perpetuate themselves. Okay.

(student: (unclear))

Yeah, once you get down there you stay, for a long long long long
time. Until you have an extraordinary life or you use up a hell
of a lot of bad karma, and then there's one little tiny karma
left from some smile you gave somebody in New York back in
nineteen ninety-nine a thousand years ago, and and then that
kicks you up to a higher realm. You see what I mean? But
normally, once you're down, you stay down for millions of years.
Okay.

(student: (unclear))

Yeah, to come out...to come up is very brief, very unusual. They
say in the scripture (ta re sum shi gyen) which means, "this is
the only time I've ever come up", out of the lower realms. And
then there's all these commentaries, "it's not technically true",
you know, I've been up above before". And then they say, "yeah,
but why did Je Tsongkapa say, "this one and only time?"...(len
chig nye pe jo way jen chon di), you know, why does he say "only
one time that you ever got this kind of a body"? He says, "well,
if you really count the odds, it's like one in jillions, so it
might as well be one", you know what I mean. That's his answer.
So anyway, yeah...hard to get out. We gotta go to the realms.
No.

(student: (unclear))

(laughs) This is called the "parking space theory" (laughter)
(laughs) I shouldn't come to class 'cause it's so expensive
karmically (laughter), okay. I should go to Starbucks, I guess.
It's a lot of karma to drink a nice coffee, but I don't lose as
many brownie karmic brownie points as I do as if I go to class,
and that's true. Okay. The theory though is that if you come to
class, you learn how to make more, you see what I mean...so
that's a that's a fallacy. I had a friend who said...it's very
hard to find a parking space in the East Village, you know, and
he found this perfect one, and he's standing there and he's
looking at it, and he says, "I'll leave it", you know, "I'll
we'll keep driving around", and I'm like, "why?" And he says, "I
don't wanna use up the good karma that would (unclear)
(laughter), you know (laughs) and I'm thinking...that's a
fallacy, okay. That's a fallacy. If you end up not parking
there, you didn't have the karma anyway. Get it? (laughter)
Okay. Anyway. Here we go. There are...you know, when I talked
about the direct perception of emptiness the other night, I
forgot one big realization that you have. And that's that there
really are three realms. You really are in a separate area of
reality. There really are these things that are described in the
(b: Abhidharma) about three different realms. You see that
directly during what we call the "aftermath" (je top yeshe)...of
the direct experience of emptiness. You understand directly that
you do live in a thing called the desire realm. You do directly
perceive that there are other realms. You do directly understand
that this realm is defective and that to be here you have to be
defective. Okay. The proof that any of us is defective is that
we're here, okay. If you're in this realm and you're not an
emanation of a enlightened being or something like that, you are
messed up, okay. Your mind is messed by up definition, you know.
 You meet nice people, kind people, people you swear are
different. Forget it. Anyone in the desire realm is about a
half a percent apart. The the nicest person in the desire realm
and the worst person in the desire realm are in a very close to
the same state of mind, period. You know, you haven't ever met
other beings, but if you get to this realm by means of karma and
mental affliction, then you are totally messed up, unless you've
seen emptiness (laughs) directly or something like that, okay?
Seriously. I mean, if you haven't reached that, you are a desire
realm being, your mind is chock full of mental afflictions, your
your body is gonna fall apart, your life is gonna fall apart,
every relationship you ever had is gonna fall apart, this
realm...to get here, you have to be bad. And to be here you have
to be bad, okay...I don't wanna make you feel bad or anything
(laughter) okay. (laughs) But this is a realm of of total
suffering and to get here you have to be defective and this realm
doesn't work. It's like a broken car. You can...the reason
you're here is that you figured it out, okay. It's just like a
broken car. It doesn't work. It will never work. You can't fix
it, this realm is is a...what's that thing in the computer where
they...it's the recycle bin, you know, (laughter) I mean, this is
where they dump all the mindstreams that are not working very
well (laughter) and and you if you're here you're you're that
kind of being. You perceive this right after you see emptiness,
okay. You perceive this really is a defective realm, everyone
here is defective, the life here is defective. It's a it's a
waste, it's a joke, it's a sad joke, you know. They could (kye
mu nye) in Tibetan means "laughing", something to laugh...
something to cry and laugh over. You know. Nothing works here
and it can't work here. Relationships, the...your job, your your
life, your body, you know, it can't. It doesn't work here. It's
just broken. The realm is broken and you gotta get out of it
(laughs) okay. And the only way is the Buddhist path, to get out
of it, okay? Not...nnnnn other traditions don't even tell you
where you are, you know. There's a line in the "Matrix"...how's
it go..."it's a it's a prison Keno, Keno, Keanu (laughter), you
can't feel it, you can't see it, you can't taste it and you're in
it", you know, and and the desire realm's like that. We are in
the desire realm, okay. It's called (du...du kam).

(silence)

The desire realm has basically five or six sections, sometimes
taught as twenty sections. You can go over it in your breakout
session, okay. I'm not gonna go over it now, but basically,
parallel...six or five or six parallel realities going on at the
same time. What? Animal way of seeing this place. Human way of
seeing this place. And then a couple of other ways of seeing
this place that you can't see them, but they're experiencing this
place, okay, like the hell realms. There's a very very, you
know, in my mind, unfortunate thing where some Tibetan teachers
have been coming to America and say, "oh the hell realms are just
a metaphor for a bad day", you know what I mean. Oh, you know
what I mean? Like, oh, there's not really any hot hell there's
not really any cold hell, it's just...hot hell means when you're
having a bad day. Cold hell means when you're not friendly, or
something like that. That's not true at all, okay. There are
realms where people just burn, okay, all day, and someone in the
Christian tradition saw it and described it, you know what I
mean, and that's why you have Dante and things like that. It's
someone somewhere saw it. People struggle to say, "oh, some
Christian guy must have made it to India and then to Tibet and
that's why the Tibetans are talking about the same kind of
hells". It's not true. People in different parts of the world
in deep meditation have seen or in direct perception of these
realms. They can see those realms and they're describing them.
You shouldn't think it's like like some historical weird thing
that somebody in the Middle East and somebody in Tibet is
describing the same hell realms. It's not historical question,
it's that certain people have entered deep states of prayer or
meditation and seen these places and written down what they saw.
And so, you I mean it should almost act as a confirmation process
for you...that there do exist these places. And they're
horrible. And they go on...the the nature of those realms is
that the the perception of time slows down, you know, so what
would be five minutes of pain here is hundreds of years there,
you see what I mean? Because of the intensity of the pain then
the perception of time starts to slow down, so you could be there
for a hundred years but it would feel like ten thousand years,
you see what I mean, of pain, like that. And they're under that
all the time, okay, they just live like that. They can't die.
There's a thing about hell realms, you know. People stab you,
cut your head, you know, cook you in something, you can't die.
You don't have the capacity to die. It'd be all right to die.
You can't. Okay. You keep re regenerating your body, okay.
Then there's a (suk kam). (Suk) means "form", (suk kam) means
"form realm". It's given that name because the beings there have
the most beautiful physical bodies of any of the beings who are
still suffering, okay. So they are still they're still
suffering, but they they do have the most beautiful bodies. They
live in some sort of like a temporary paradise and then because
they used up their credit card, they usually go to a hell realm
after that. We consider reaching those temporary, worldly
paradises a big mistake. You get there by doing a meditation in
which you sit and watch your breath and be calm for months and
months and years and years, okay. You get to the form realm by
doing this meditation because you haven't had the opportunity to
do gross bad deeds because you're not lying and stealing and
commiting sexual misconduct 'cause you're in a state of
meditation, okay. And it feels great. You know, I saw the
courses for watching your breath are booked for the next six
months or year or something, you know what I mean. It's a very
pleasant experience. The only karmic result is to take you to a
realm called the de...the form realm in which you live as a some
kind of a on like a heroin state of mind for a long time and then
you always go to the hell realms after that, and so we consider
it...in Buddhism, as Lord Buddha taught it, gross error, gross
mistake, to watch your mind and try to turn off your thoughts, or
to watch your thoughts move through your mind, or simply to only
watch your breath as a practice. We consider it a grave mistake.
 Grave error. And it's been taught that way throughout the
history of Buddhism, okay. People teaching that just haven't
studied properly, okay. It's it's very satisfying, it's very
pleasant and the results are very terrible...karmically.
Dangerous, okay. So you have to...that's that's how to get to
the form realm, okay. It's that kind of meditation. You have a
temporary very pleasant experience and then, and then you always
go to a hell realm, okay. Yeah.

(student: Can you do good deeds in the form realm?)

"Can you do good deeds in other realms?" They say desire realm
is the best because you have a nice recipe of suffering and
happiness, you see what I mean. Like, if you're in a hell realm
they say you can't do good deeds because you are just in total
pain constantly. You can't have a generous thought of,,,towards
someone else, okay. In the form realm, they say the opposite
problem applies. You're too happy to wanna do good deeds, you
see what I mean? You're just having too much of a good time.
It's supposed to be a really good time. So like, I remember a
guy came into my class a couple...ten years ago and he was
handsome and successful and he had a good suit on and I I knew he
was a movie actor, and I'm like, "what's this guy doing in my
class"? Those people don't come to class, you know what I mean.
Those people have receptions to go to and and, you know, more
interesting things, you know. They're in big demand. People
wanna see them. Later I found out he had AIDS. He died with a
couple of us standing around him. We took care of him, you know,
 as he died and, you know...the form realm is like that. You're
too happy. You fe..there's just too many things going right so
you don't think that you should practice. Okay. So
those...generally, it's very difficult to do good deeds in those
realms. They don't think to, okay. Yeah.

(student: (unclear))

Yeah. (laughs) Master Vasubandhu in in the (b: Abhidharmakosha)
which is the source of our text tonight teaches breathing
meditation only as a way to bring your mind to a state of calm so
 that you can move to a meaningful object, okay. But in and ev
of itself if you don't take it any further, if it's just watching
your breath to get a feeling of calmness, it's a drastic error.
It's a very dangerous. If you're able to do it well your whole
life and die in some kind of a deadened state of mind, you go to
the form realm. And and that's just another suffering. To see
emptiness directly is a thousand miles away from watching your
breath. It's a much...it's a totally different experience.
We're aiming for that and that takes hard study, hard practice,
thinking your brains out, you know, sitting and meditating deeply
for years, you know, and then you reach it, and that gets you out
of this realm totally. But to sit and watch your breath is a
serious mistake, flatly, okay. There's no basis for it in
Buddhist scripture at all, nowhere in the traditional scriptures
of of India, okay. It was meant to be a warm-up in the first
five minutes of your (laughs) (unclear). Now there are higher
practices that depend on breathing practices...there are
(tantr)ic practices that are deeply rooted in in breathing and
and that's a whole different story. That's a completely
different story, okay. All right. Yeah.

(student: (unclear))

I didn't catch you.

(student: (unclear))

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Quietude, meaning "shamata" is a is a
perfect state of meditation. You can get it by studying baseball
or soccer or music or anything else. It's a state of
concentration. All great talented athletes have it, all very
talented business people have it, something very close to
shamata. Okay. It's the state of total concentration, okay.
Vipassana, which is Vipassiana in Sanscrit, is a state of
understanding, it's a state of knowledge. The the whole word has
been misapplied. It doesn't have anything to do with states of
meditation. Nothing. Okay. It's a it's described as a as a
state of analytical wisdom which understands the emptiness of its
object...has nothing to do, technically, with breathing or or
meditation per se or like that...it's a totally different thing.
It's just been mis...the word has been misused accidently for
something totally different, okay. Vipassana means "a a state of
knowledge which if linked with perfect concentration allows you
to see emptiness directly"...something like that, okay. And and
a foe-destroyer is a person who reaches the highest levels of
that, overcomes their tendency to see things as self-existent
even in their most

(cut)

okay, that's all. Desire that they overcome is ignorant desire,
not not knowledgeable desire. There's a huge distinction. Does
the Dalai Lama desire to reach paradise? Of course. Does the
Dalai Lama desire that you reach paradise? Of course. Is that
something wrong? Of course not. Okay. What makes desire...what
makes some desires right and some desires wrong, okay. That's
the whole key. If you undertake an action to acquire something
without understanding the emptiness of the thing...like...I can
get a better pen if I go to a different store and pay more money.
 That's wrong desire, okay. Now here's right desire. I can get
a better and teach you all to have a better pen if I understand
that the reason I'm seeing this pen is that I gave away pens in
the past to other people. Now if you keep up that state of mind
over an extended period of time, you're gonna get your rearend
into a (tantr)ic Buddha paradise. You see, 'cause that's
knowledge...and that's not desire at all. That's a totally
misconception. That's a complete misteaching, okay. Should you
want more pens? Of course. Are there pens in a Buddha paradise?
 If they needed them, they'd be there. Is it wrong to want to be
in a pu...Buddha paradise? Of course not. Is it wrong to want
to get there yourself? No. Okay. Is it stupid...yeah, I mean
you should do it for other people, but, not at all, not at all
wrong to want to be there. That's not desire. Desire that you
remove in Buddhism only refers to the kind which doesn't
understand emptiness. Why? What's wrong with that desire?

(student: (unclear))

It don't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't get you what you
want. If if you have the kind of desire that says, "I will take
this pen and put it in here so other people can get to it",
that's just ignorance...that's the best way to lose you pen.
Okay. That's stupid desire. That's the kind you get rid of in
Buddhism. But to stand there and say, "hey, the reason I'm
seeing this thing tonight is because I was generous to other
people in the past and the reason I'm seeing it is that it's
empty. Now if it's empty it means that I can see it over and
over and over again if I totally release it and give it to anyone
who needs it. And then the karma of that will be that I'll be
forced to see them for the rest of my life. That's brilliant
desire. And that all Buddhists should have, okay. Get used to
it. Get used to it. And your heart tells you that. You don't
wanna go to some Buddha paradise where, oh no, I can't eat the
ice cream, it would be selfish, you know, you know, that's not
what paradise is about. When they paint paintings of paradise,
they're not sitting there, you know, unhappy or...they're in a
state of bliss, ecstasy, you know. They're having all the things
you ever wanted at the same moment. They're getting "ice-cream
ecstasy" from every single object, (laughter), you know, from
every single object in the Buddha paradise. That's not selfish.
That's that's the goal of Buddhism, you know. And then to teach
other people how to do it. That's all. Now we gotta move on.
Okay. By the way the (du) in desire realm...you're you'll you
will treat in your breakout class, okay. Why is it called
"desire realm"...maybe that's what's tripping you up. It's
called desire realm because our realm runs on a desire for sense
objects, like most people in our realm are primarily interested
in food and sex. And and the first Dalai Lama explains that the
"desire" in "desire realm" refers to that. Most people can't
think farther than those two objects, and they will kill you
(laughter), there's no future in that, it will kill you, it will
certainly kill you. Are they bad, evil, undesireable...not like
that. You have to get to a point where you don't need them
any...your desires should be higher. You should work for
something better, you know. You don't have to just get bliss
from two things in the world. You could get bliss from
everything if you knew how to do it right, okay. And it's a lot
cheaper and easier, okay. Say (suk me kam) (repeat) (suk me kam)
(repeat). (Suk me kam) means "the realm where people don't have
any physical bodies", okay, "formless realm", in this case
meaning "physical bodies". It's just a state where you can take
a rebirth where you don't have a physical body, you just have the
other four skandas or heaps. You you just basically...you are
living in your mind, okay. Where is the formless realm?

(students: (unclear))

It's wherever you died last time (laughs), okay. Like if I died
standing here, then my mind would enter the formless realm right
here, okay? Do they have a bardo?

(student: Yes)

We say no. Why? The function of the bardo, or the state between
death and rebirth, the function of that period is to make it from
your current location to your next location. Okay. It's travel
time. It's a subway st...you know, thing. You have to get from
one station to the other station. The whole bardo is defined by
the time it takes you to get to you next rebirth. That's all.
(Suk me kam) when you enter the formless realm, you enter the
formless realm wherever you happen to be standing, so there is no
bardo. You just take (snap) immediate rebirth in the other...in
the other realm. Okay. Like that. So there is no place for the
formless realm. Form realm is supposed to be somehow higher than
the desire realm and it depends on which geography you're in,
okay. I'm not gonna talk about it. People make fun of Buddhist
geography. They say, "how naive. They thought there was a big
mountain made of emerald and sapphire and other stuff and there
was these four continents, and I'm on (Dzambuling) and there's
other ones...and, that's...how quaint that Vasubandu thought that
was how the world was," you know. If you understand emptiness
you don't have to apologize for the Buddhist presentation of the
universe, okay. The idea that the moon is here, oh, out there at
the end of the Apollo spaceship and the earth here is just one
more way to see the world. And a two hundred, three hundred
years from now they will consider that incredibly naive. And and
get used to that. Every few hundred years somebody discovers a
new way to look at the world and the old ones are all dumb.
(laughter) Okay. It's all relative, okay, get used to it.
Don't think that in nineteen...what was it...seventy something, I
was...I remember, that we finally figured out where the moon was
or something like that. Don't don't even think like that. It's
the same thing as this, okay? We are having a certain conception
of the wo...universe and the solar system right now dependent on
our past karma. A hundred years from now, five hundred years
from now, people will surely have a different perception of the
universe, and and the physical solar system and all that, okay.
Get...don't be so naive as to think that we've finally discovered
 the the ultimate answer to as to where the planets are and stuff
like that. They change...depending on your perceptions, every
few hundred years...and people think there's progress, okay. Now
the Dalai Lama can't get up in front of ten thousand people at
St. John's and say that, so he has to apologize. He has to say,
"well, you know, that was the old days, and, of course those
books are...that part of the Buddhist books is just old
fashioned", okay (laughter). He has to say that, okay. There's
no time to explain emptiness to that many people. All right.

(cut)

We're getting short on time. Let me see if we have anything
else. I think it would be...you know, it's tradition to go
through the suffering of each of the realms now. We don't have
time, okay. You got a taste for the hell realms. And and I
don't wanna go much more into it. I just want you to understand
how, with a slight slip in your perceptions you could be there
ten minutes from now, okay? And I think you believe it. I think
you understand it. If you understand the pen thing, then by by
implication you understand the other thing. I don't have to go
and try to prove hell to you. You already have a all the
theoretical basis you need to accept hell. What I'd like to
do...yeah...hang on one sec, okay? I'd like to do is go through
the confirmable sufferings of our realm...of the human
realm...very briefly, okay. I think when you teach Buddhism to
your students in the future, you should emphasize these
sufferings. I mean, these are the ones that you can see, taste,
feel, the ones that you're undergoing now and these are the ones
that we can help people escape. Okay. So I think you should
concentrate on them. I don't think until your students are
pretty sophisticated, that you should try to force on them hungry
ghosts, hell realms...I've seen more people walk out of Buddhism
on those issues than anything else. Don't don't push it at the
beginning. Later you must go over it because they will go there
if you don't tell them about it (laughs) okay? But only when
they're ready. You know. (tantr)ic teachings you're supposed to
give only when people are ready. Emptiness teachings you're only
supposed to give when people are ready. I would say the same in
America about realm teachings, you see what I mean? 'Cause
you're just gonna alienate people, I think, if you lay too much
of this stuff on them..."oh, you're gonna go to hell...there's a
guy there with a big hook", you know...and and people don't
believe it and then their whole perception of Buddhism gets goes
down a notch. It's absolutely true that there are those places.
You will go there if you don't take drastic steps now. You must
teach people about them, but but I'd say only when they're
mentally ready for it, when they have some faith in you, trust in
what you say, they understand something about perceptions and
emptiness. Then then lead them into the discussion of the hell
realms...because they must know about them. But I'd say be
careful how you...don't go to work tomorrow and lay hell realm
teaching on somebody. They'll just ignore you after that
(laughter), you see what I mean? You'll lose them, (laughs)
okay. All right. Did you have a question?

(student: (unclear))

Okay. Yeah. Good question. The three realms are all broken.
The three realms are all defective. Whichever one you go into
it's the same story, okay. Buddhas go outside of those three
realms. They don't experience any of those three realms as their
own reality ever after, okay. High bodhisattvas would normally
be coming back to the desire realm to finish off their work,
okay. So, if you've seen emptiness for directly for example,
very typically, you will have seven rebirths in the desire realm,
and you know it. You know where they're gonna be...you know in
in principle you know where there're gonna be, what they're gonna
be like, things like that, but normally desire realm. Desire
realm's a perfect realm for Buddhism. Just the right combination
of suffering and hope. Just the right combination of
renunciation and in intellect, you see? It's a perfect realm for
teaching Buddhism. And New York is is like that, I think
(laughter). People in New York are talented, sharp and it's a
very painful place to be sometimes and so you have that perfect
combination of of talent, and and intellect and pain. And then
between all three people get Buddhism, you know...I think it's a
perfect place to teach Buddhism. Okay. All right. Here we go.
People make fun of New York mun New York for all its bad parts,
but I think on those three bases it's a perfect place. You have
a large population, they are intelligent, they are well-educated
and they are suffering greatly, so I think it's a beautiful
opportunity for...you know, Chakrasamvara's mandala is supposedly
a swiped mandala...he swiped it from an evil being and he
replaced all the minds of the beings there. There still have
their old physical form, which like monsters, and they say that
the worse things get in the world, the more powerful his mandala
works, because of that ancient connection to evil, you see what I
mean. So...I I take New York to be the (laughs) same way. I
think it's a beautiful (laughter), no it's a beautiful
opportunity, you know...there's enough pain here, there's enough
people here and there's certainly enough intellect and talent in
New York, you know...people are creative, intelligent, you
know...I think it's a perfect place for for teaching Buddhism in
detail. Okay. All right. Here we go. These are six sufferings
of a human realm given by the first Panchen Lama. You heard it a
few weeks ago if you were here at Friday night class. I'd like
to repeat them in brief 'cause I know we're getting late and the
Sergeant hasn't even been waving at me...I don't know why. Say
(nye me) (repeat) (nye me) (repeat) (Nye me) means, literally,
"nothing is certain; nothing is fixed". It has a very specific
reference here. It's not just that things are uncertain in our
life. That's not the point. The point is, especially in person
relationship, people can go a hundred and eighty degrees around
in about three weeks. And you've see it, okay. The people that
you were closest to, the people that you have the most faith in,
the people that you felt the most love for, the...can switch a
hundred and eighty degrees in the space of a few weeks, become
your worst enemy...I used to...there was a program where I grew
up in Arizona where you could ride with the police so you could
sympathize with them, and whenever...I went with them a couple of
times, and we were called to domestic violence scenes, and they
would shake...the police would shake. They'd say, "this is the
most dangerous by far". You know, like we would go to bars and
stop gun fights and stuff...they didn't bother them. But the
thought of going into a house with the husband and wife going at
it was freightening 'cause, they said, "you never know what's
gonna happen, you know. There's a worse things happen in those
places". These are people who love each other enough to vow, to
swear on the Holy Bible that they would live together for better
or for worse blah blah blah, and and there's something there that
can make the whole thing twist around into the greatest hate of
all, okay, and that's the first suffering of our mind. This is
the first suffering of our realm, the human realm...the worst
suffering. Panchen Lama's six sufferings are not physical.
They're mental. Okay. I think they're the most powerful of all
sufferings. I, if I were gonna teach Buddhism for only half an
hour...I did it once in San Francisco, I...Santa Cruz I
think...and I didn't go through the six hell realms and blah blah
blah. I went through these six 'cause these are much worse
(laughs), you know what I mean? The fact that the people you
love in a few weeks can be the people you hate the most is is one
of our sufferings, okay. Is it that they changed? No. What is
it that makes you hate them so much later? Your credit card ran
out. (laughter) Okay. Get used to it, okay? It's not your
fault really, it's not their fault really. They are not a evil
person. They are not someone who is a monster hiding behind this
beautiful smile the first three weeks. It's not like that. Your
karma wears out and then you see them something different and it
will continue to happen over and over and over again in your
personal relation

(cut)

the book, you will continue to have this happen, okay. You meet
Dharma teachers this thing called a honeymoon, you know, like a
nine month honeymoon with a Dharma teacher. "Oh, I heard Michael
Roach speak in Santa Cruz" (laughter) "I've been waiting, I'm
gonna move to New York", you know...then they move to New York.
Six months later they're like, "I can't believe you're such a
schmuck", you know (laughter) and "now I see you for who you
really are". That's that's how I really am but (laughter) this
is (laughter) this is your own karma. This is your own
karma...the karma to see this sweet Dharma teacher wears out...it
happens. It happens in all relationships. Your karma wears out
and you see something different. Okay. Unless you work really
hard, and if you work really hard it gets sweeter and sweeter and
sweeter, but not because of the teacher, okay. Because of you.
You're keeping your vows better and better and better. If you
keep them very strong, they start to look more and more
wonderful, okay? So really it's a decision for you...to make,
okay. All right. Number two. Say (ngom mi she) (repeat) (ngom
mi she) (repeat). (Ngom mi she) means the..."that we are
incapable of being contented". We are incapable of being
satisfied, okay. In a work place...I did this okay...I worked
for a huge corporation...we started out with two people, three
people...they offered me seven...I couldn't get a job. I went to
thirty jewelery stores asking if I could work with
diamonds...they threw me out. I went to this guy. He needed
desperately someone who spoke English, he didn't he wanted to
deal with huge companies he didn't speak English, so he's like, I
said, "I will scrub the floors, I will clean the windows, I'll
clean your shoes...just let me work with diamonds", you know.
And he's like "okay. Seven dollars an hour". Princeton
graduate, you know, Presidential Scholar. Seven dollars an hour.
 What is the job? Carry the jewelery from Thirty-fourth Street
to Fourty-seventh Street...rain, snow, sleet, hot, can't go on
the subway 'cause somebody'll mug you, you know...you got
diamonds and gold and you're like...gotta look around you and and
for years, in wool suit, you know, walking up and down, and so
seven an ho...dollars an hour seems wonderful compared to thirty
places that threw you out, you know. And then it's fifteen
dollars an hour, then it's twenty dollars an hour, then it's
twenty-five dollars an hour, then it's twenty thousand a year,
thirty thousand a year, fifty thousand a year, hundred thousand a
year, hundred fifty thousand a year, and you're never satisfied.
Cannot be satisfied. Each time you get a raise you're thinking
about the next raise, okay. It's just suffering. It's amazing
that in a certain number of years you can go from seven dollars
an hour to the hundred and something and you can't be satisfied,
you know...you you can't. Okay. We're incapable of being
satisfied. The same in personal relationship. It's the same in
Dharma teachings. "Oh, can't believe he won't teach me that", you
know (laughter) you know. Seven years of free Dharma classes.
"Yeah, but I want that one" (laughter) you know. You know.
(laughter). You know what I mean? "Yeah, you can study with
me". "Oh thank you," you know. Six weeks later, "no, but I
wanna follow you around (unclear)". "Okay". Six weeks later,
"no no, but I wanna be in your room all the time". "Okay." "No
no, but I wanna be on the couch with you all the time"
(laughter), you know, and it gets...you can't satisfy it. It's
in...you can't. It's just your mind. It's your mind setting one
more impossible goal that you can't have, you know. It's just
your mind. Six months ago you were happy to come to one lecture
with ten thousand people there, you know. (laughter). Now you
gotta be on the couch, you know what I mean. It's just your
mind, okay. It's just your mind. And at some point you have to
say, "come on, that's enough, okay" (laughter) all right
(laughs). Okay.

(cut)

Say (yang yang) (repeat) (lu ndor) (repeat) (yang yang) (repeat)
(lu ndor) (repeat). (Yang yang) means "over and over and over
and over again". (Lu ndor) means "give up your body; shed
another body", okay. (Dor) means "to junk; throw out". Okay.
The irony here, and it's very brief, is that you spend your whole
life feeding one mouth, combing one head of hair, making sure one
face looks okay in the morning, making sure one body has the
nicest blouse or shirt or pants, you know, making sure one body
has the nicest shoes, making sure one body doesn't get too hot or
too cold or too thirsty or too hungry. Ignoring all the other
bodies in the world...basically. You know, once in a while you
might offer someone some of you tea or something, okay, but
mostly you're obcessed that this head of hair shouldn't be out of
place, you know...you wouldn't want to go to class looking like
Bob Chilton when he wakes up (laughter), you know, (laughter)
okay, like, you know, like, at all costs, your hair must be all
right, you see what I mean? And why? Why is your hair more
important than the hair next to you? But you live like that,
okay. Then after spending all your attention on this particular
body your entire life, how do you think you feel when you lose
it, you know what I mean...when somebody says, "hey, time to give
it up". After thousands of hours of combing and washing and
picking and (laughter) plucking and and smearing (laughs) you
know, then then naturally you're gonna be incredibly attached to
this body, and then when it's time to leave it, you're gonna
fight like hell which is the worst thing to do as you die, okay,
so it's just...get in the mood of, you know...I think it was
Socrates who said, "everytime you have a thought about food or
something you put one more chain between your spirit and your
body"...you know what I mean? And then when the body dies you
feel all this pain, you know what I mean. So, the idea is to
just start looking at it as a vehicle and not as something you're
attached to. Okay. Number four. Say (yang yang) (repeat)
(nying tsam) (repeat) (jor) (repeat). "Over and over again to
have to take on new bodies", okay. Take on new bodies. (Nying
tsam jor) means "to take on a new body at the time of birth",
okay? Over and over again you're shucking off old bodies, taking
on new bodies, okay. They say that if you dedicated one atom of
dirt or molecule to your bodies that you've had and then put them
all together, it would be larger than the planet...larger than
this planet. I think what's particularly useful is sometimes I
go into one month retreats...I buy enough food for one month.
You know how big that pile is? (laughter), you know. I had like
four carts full...I went to this grocery store in Ireland and
they said, "going to the islands?" You see, like that means you
go camping on one of the islands and it's a it's a month's worth
of food and they said, "this is not gonna make it...you're not
gonna make it...this is not enough"...you know, I'm like, "come
on...four carts...it's five hundred dollars of food...I can't
make it?" They said, "no, you won't make it, that's not enough
food", you know. And then imagine that times twelve times the
number of years you've lived...I mean, they say in Buddhism, once
in a while sit down and meditate on on the mountain of food
you've processed (laughter) in in your lifetime. You've chewed
ton after ton after ton of food...you've pooped ton after ton
after ton of food, and the number of bodies you've taken on...if
you put them in a huge pile, it would just look like the
Himalayas...it'd be larger. You know. Just imagine sometime
dead bodies, just stacked up, you know, like that. You you can
imagine it easier I think with the food you've eaten...that
you've processed. Really...think about it...you know. It's it's
disgusting (laughs) in a way, okay, all right. Two more and then
we'll give you some more food (laughter).

(cut)

Say (yang yang) (repeat) (to men) (repeat) (gyur) (repeat).
(Yang yang) means "over and over again". (To) means "big shot",
(men) means...what's the opposite?

(students: small fry)

Small fry. (laughs) Okay. (Gyur). (To) means "high position",
(men) means "low position", okay? (Gyur) means "you go back and
forth, roller coaster" - your whole life is a big story like
that, okay? Like, I lived in corporate life for sixteen years.
There's no place better to watch it than that, you know. One bad
board meeting and you're three levels down, (laughter), you
know...the boss has a good day with you, you're three levels up.
You know, you can go from Supervisor to VP to Manager to Schmuck
(laughter) in in a year (laughter) and and it's amazing...it's
just extraordinary, you know, to see people...they had a thing in
the diamond business, they said, "be good to people on the way up
'cause you meet them on the way down", you know. And (laughs)
I've really seen that happen, you know. It's this thing in the
diamond business is a pretty small business...I mean there's only
 like so many diamond buyers in the world and you have to be nice
 to everybody because next week you might be working for them.
You see what I mean. And that's the way it works. And then some
people get into a big position and start abusing other people and
then inevitably they have to end up working for them
and...there's some kind of karmic thing there...it's not in the
(b: Wheel of Sharp Weapons), but I'm sure it's (laughter) it
should have been, you know, (laughs) there are...the people that
you dis...respect are the people that you end up having to work
for later and it just goes like that, you whole life is like
that, okay? The karma to be the person in charge, the karma to
be able to run your own life, the karma to be your own man is
temporary and then sooner or later you're working for somebody
else, you have to do what they say, you don't like it...it's one
of the great sufferings of life, okay? And you go up and down
constantly...you can't control it. You can leave that job,
you'll be at another job, a worse job, okay? 'Cause the karma
doesn't change when you leave your job. Okay. Last one. Say
(drok me) (repeat) (drok me) (repeat). (Drok) means "someone to
accompany you, like a friend" and (me) means "you don't have
any", okay. And that's the maybe the most painful suffering of
life is that ultimately you are alone, you are always alone,
okay. Think of it as walking down Fifth Avenue, you meet someone
for awhile and then they walk uptown and you walk downtown. And
your whole life is like that, okay. You make temporary laisons
with other people and then you move on your separate ways and it
will continue to be like that, it will always be like that. You
are alone, okay. You come in alone, you go out alone.
Temporarily you hook up with somebody and then karma will rip you
apart, okay. You can't really share it with other people, you
can't really go through life with someone else, something,
somebody, some karmic event will rip you apart. Ultimately you
are alone and that's your condition in the desire realm, okay.
Ultimately no one can go with you, come with you, okay. You can
have relationships with somebody else, they are always temporary
and then you must go your separate ways, and it will always be
like that, okay...in the desire realm. Okay. Somebody asked me
in Australia, "is there any way to get out of that?", you know,
and I said, "yeah. If you follow your vows carefully, if you
keep your commitments properly, if you collect only good karma,
then you can be with other people forever, okay. I mean, that's
one of the incentives I think for Buddhahood. Yeah. You work
with the person you like or someone that you're close to, if you
work on your vows, keep your vows purely, reach your goals, you
can help each other reach your goals, then...there was a joke in
Australia that said, "oh, it's be like Mr. and Mrs.
Chakrasamvara". I said, "yeah, it would be like that", okay.
You can do that. That's possible, but you'd re really hard work.
Really really hard work, okay. So it's possible to overcome each
of these sufferings. You don't have to live like that. These
are sufferings of this broken realm and you don't have to stay
here. If you get to another realm, they work differently. Okay.
 They don't work on karmic credit cards, they work on karmic
fusion. Less karma in, more pleasure out, okay. And they feed
it, they feed, they get bigger and bigger, okay...that's the
whole point, that's the whole goal. These six sufferings are not
inevitable. The opposites are achievable. You just have to
understand the Buddhist path and then you have to follow it with
your book and other practices. Okay. Take a break and then
we'll go into our into our thing.

(break)

Eventually we'd like to have a crew of our people there teaching
Buddhism. They want us there, they're asking us to come.
They're begging us to send students there. American students
like you. They want you there. And hundreds and hundreds of
people want to study and they want to learn English while they
study Buddhism, so that's their goal...is...is that, okay? So.
If you can help it's be nice. If you go then you'll get to know
them and you'll probably want to do it, I think. It's a
beautiful place. Pristine country...maybe one of the last in the
world, I think, okay. All right. Just finishing my book, okay?
Okay. Very very brief tonight and then we'll go. The function
or the purpose of this series of talks has been to talk about the
future of Buddhism in America and then my Australian students
say, "why not Australia too?"...but, anyway, in the West, okay.
I just want to talk for one minute about the goals of Buddhism,
you know. We've talked a lot about how to keep your finances,
what books to teach, how to do certain teachings, blah blah blah
all these things...I think it'd be worth it just to talk for one
minute about the goal of having a Dharma Center or a Dharma
organization, you know, why are we having these classes, you
know...why does this orgination...organization exist, okay. And
I think it's easy to get distracted by lower goals, like,
sometimes you're concerned about how many people come to class,
or you're concerned about whether or not people can speak Tibetan
language or recite things in Tibetan. Some times you're
concerned about, "do you know the four this's the three thats and
the five thats" (laughter) (laughs)...someone told me the
homework...the quiz for tonight was four fours three threes and
one five or something like that (laughter) but (laughs) you know
what I mean...and and if you get those will it somehow make you
better person or make you feel better or or something like that,
you know, what is the goal of these classes and just very
briefly, what is the reason to exist as an organization? What's
the reason to have classes. Why even start Buddhist path? Why
do meditation? Why think at all about Buddhism? What is your
goal, you know? And I think it's easy to get distracted by
lesser goals, like, is your organization going well as an
organization, is...do does everybody know their prayers, you
know, is there...do you feel good at the place, you know what I
mean, is there a nice community feeling or or something like
that. Is your breathing going smoothly (laughs) you know what I
mean...no, I mean, these are goals in in various places. Is is
your...by the way I don't mean to disparage the breathing
practice. It's a very holy sacred practice taught by Master
Vasubandu and other people but it's not enough by itself..that's
all I'm saying. And then, you know, in some places the you you
feel good if you're doing community service, you know...if the
organization is feeding poor people or or doing something like
that, then, what is the goal, you know. What do we really want?
And I think it's important on a organizational level, I think
it's important on a national level...what is Buddhism in America
supposed to hap...what's supposed to happen. If if Buddhism
became successful in America, wha what would happen? What do you
want? You know. Do you just want to have a religion or what do
you want, you see what I mean? And and do you want to have more
mem...people than other religions or or what's the goal, you
know. I think it's very very important on a personal level,
national level, city level that each Dharma organization keep in
mind the only goal which is each person as an individual doing
their practice, understanding the main ideas of Buddhism and then
actually achieving their own spiritual goals, you know. And it
seems to go without saying that that's what we would be here for,
but then you tend to get distracted by other things. You know
what I mean. So. All I wanted to say was that we have to keep
in mind the goal. a) Try to see emptiness directly. Period. b)
you know, try to get to a state of real compassion where you
really care about other people, you really love other people for
the right reason, you see what I mean...to to help them reach
ultimate goals and not just to feed them or to clothe them or
things like that, that that would be the reason for existing, and
then finally, to reach enlightenment. And I believe that...I
have a personal feeling that...when I go around the country and
around the world, people are constantly coming to me and saying,
"you make it sound like we could actually do this in one
lifetime". You know, "you make it sound like like I could change
into a (tantr)ic deity in the next few years, you know...nobody
ever says that...are you sure this is not just Michael Roach's
version of Buddhism?", you know. And it's not, okay. And and
that's the goal of Buddhism is to... you know, I get nervous when
I talk about, "hey, you could reverse the aging process, you
don't have to get old, you don't have to die, that's not true",
and then I'm like looking around if anyone's gonna raise their
hand, you know (laughs) I get nervous, you know. It's absolutely
the truth and it's the only reason we're here. And get used to
it, you know. Think about it. We're here to overcome death
itself and you're here to actually reverse the process of aging
and you're here to reach a totally perfect enlightened realm and
body and mind in the next few years, period. That's what we
exist for. That's what we are doing, you know what I mean. And
and just keep that in mind. That's all. Okay. That's what
we're here for and nothing less than that. The other thing's are
nice. It's nice to have refreshments, it's (laughter) nice to
talk with each other, you know, it's nice to have a community,
it's nice to help other people in a physical way...it's
important, but but the goal is that, and don't ever let somebody
sell you Buddhism for less than that. Okay. You're here to
reverse the mistakes of the desire realm and and to get out and
and to actually become a a different creature altogether. And
keep that in mind all the time, when you're studying, when you're
doing your quizzes...these boring stupid quizzes and
homeworks...it's all aimed at that. And as you teach your own
students and begin to attract your own students, don't don't sell
them less than that and don't be shy to talk about it, you know.
That's the goal, that's the real goal. Totally achievable by
each person in this room. We have the information. We have the
data, you know. All the method is there, you know. You just
have to have the courage to practice it, you know, and the vision
and don't be satisfied with something less than that, you
know...don't be satisfied with going to class because you've met
somebody there that you like, or or something like that. You're
here for one reason. To change your body into that of an
enlightened being, and your mind, and to reach a a sacred,
enlightened realm in this lifetime and you can do it. We have
all the practices you need but you gotta have your mind on that
all the time or it becomes something less than what it is, okay?
That's all. (laughter) (laughs) We'll do a short prayer.
(laughs) Okay.

(prayer: short mandala)

(prayer: dedication)

Okay. Thanks for coming. I know it's very uncomfortable in New
York at this few months and and I admire that you actually come
and work so hard and and I thank you for that, okay. All right.
Review Course 17