ACI 18 (обзорный курс), Занятие 03 — стенограмма

Class Three
Geshe Michael Roach
Transcribed by Angie Overy



[cut] class. [laughs] And where’s Thomas? Yeah, Thomas of Mongolia, has returned. [applause]
[laughs]
Thomas came with us to Mongolia and he was charged with helping set up the cataloguing of the
Buddhist books there, which is, a million and a half Buddhist books, the last copies in the world
probably, before they get lost. And I think about three hundred Mongolians have asked us to start a
Dharma centre there and teach English, computers and Dharma by Americans. They want it by
Americans.
And also our first TV shows have aired. We’re not quite sure but sounds like which Christina and Ian
and Mercedes worked on and so it’s pretty cool.
[announcements]
So we’re gonna start the review of course twelve, I think it was. And that was the final, was it
twelve or thirteen? Twelve. Final course of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara, the ‘Guide to the
Bodhisattva’s way of Life’ by Master Shantideva and that was the infamous chapter on Wisdom,
okay. It’s the famous chapter. It’s called chapter nine. People have written commentaries on it ever
since.
I don’t know if you remember the story, but at this point, Master Shantideva was rising off the throne
into the air. And there was even a debate about how many chapters there were towards the end
because only a few people with clairvoyance could follow him as he continued to reach and fly away
from the monastery.
So, the bottom line is, this chapter’s a little difficult.
I don’t think there’ve been a lot of, I mean, it’s very hard to give a good commentary on chapter nine
and I think what you’ll hear in this class and the next class are a good summary of that information.
I think as good as you’ll find.
Hopefully, it’s my dream that we could bring maybe bring His Holiness or beg His Holiness to,
maybe, come to Arizona in three or four years and maybe teach the ninth chapter because the people
in Tucson said that He agreed to come back. He taught the patience chapter there about three or four
years ago, ninety-three. Doesn’t seem that long. He did agree to come back and to teach some more
so I think there’s, like, resources there and between them and us, maybe, we can get Him there.
So, that’s one of my dreams.
Anyway, in the meantime, I’m gonna mainly go through one of the questions on the homework.
This is Lord Maitreya’s take on the ninth chapter. This is what Lord Maitreya’s presentation relating
to wisdom is.
Personally, I remember the days when I was sitting in Khen Rinpoche’s class. He very kindly taught
Gyaltseb Je’s commentary for over ten years to us.
It was, like, the first class I ever went to I think and he was teaching it.
And I remember getting to the ninth chapter and reading that my misperception of the world was
causing all my pain. And, you know, having gone there because I was in pain, I was very interested.
You know what I mean.
I remember staring at the door. It used to be the back door. It’s the door between the two buildings.
That used to be the back door. There wasn’t any door there.
And I remember staring at the door and trying to decide what I was doing wrong, you know. And I
would sit there, in the kitchen, and stare at the door and try to figure out what I was doing wrong,
okay, first of all.
And then secondly, why should this cause all my pain? You see what I mean.
If I’m looking at the door the wrong way and that’s causing all my pain, then, if I just looked at the
door a different way, things would change and, you know, I’d get younger and my hair would grow
back and, I had hair then actually. But all these things would change. You see what I mean.
And I remember being very frustrated that I couldn’t really figure it out. You know what I mean.
It took me a while before I could. And I think Lord Maitreya’s presentation is very sweet because it
takes you across that bridge from, oh, you’re looking at things the wrong way to well, how’s that
supposed to help me if I look at them differently? You see what I mean?
To me, it’s the bridge that explains why the way I misperceive things is causing all my pain and then
how I could fix it, you know.
And it’s very practical and it’s very for real. And to me the most frustrating thing about going to
classes about emptiness or wisdom was that I never felt like it got tied down, you know. Like, I
never felt like they were saying, look at it this way, look at it this way, look at this way and see,
that’s how you can get out of it. See what I mean.
And I’m, like, it was just always, you know, causes, effects, spots, no spots, holes, pieces and it
never really got it down to my life, you know, like, well how am I supposed to use that. And what
am I supposed to do with that? And how does that really get me out of my suffering? You see what
I mean. And I think Lord Maitreya’s presentation is awesome.
This was given in the Uttaratantra. It’s one of the five great books of Maitreya. It’s called ‘The
Higher Line’ and I don’t know why. It’s not a tantra. Tantra can also mean ‘stream’ or ‘line’, okay.
So it’s one of the five great books of Lord Maitreya that he dictated to Master Asanga. So Asanga
gets the credit in universities in the United States and Lord Maitreya did all the work.
So this is the presentation of that.
And then the rest of the homework I’d like the assistant teachers to go through, okay.
So here we go. To me, it was one of the most precious teachings I’ve ever seen, because it tied
together how emptiness is supposed to get me out, okay.
So here we go. They say you can’t get out without understanding emptiness, so how, how’s that
work, okay.
Here you go. He outlines six steps to the process of suffering because of misunderstanding your world.
And I’m gonna go through those six steps, okay. A lot of you have seen them before. [cut] Say {dak
dzin{[repeat]{ bakchak}[repeat], the trouble started before you were born, okay. {bakchak} means a
seed in your mind from your past life, okay.
So how did it all start, okay.
If my suffering is a result of my misunderstanding this world, when did that misunderstanding start,
and why does it start?
And it starts before you were born. There’s a seed in your mind that was planted by continually,
chronically, misunderstanding your world in your past life. And then that seed, you are born with that
seed in your mind. {dak dzin, dak} means ‘nature of its own’, what they call a ‘self’. You can think
of it as a nature of its own. So {dak} means, a nature of its own; {dzin} means, ‘to grasp’ or to try to
grab to that thing, okay. So {dak dzin} is grasping to a thing, which doesn’t even what?
Exist. And you got to appreciate that.
The irony of our lives is that, the suffering we undergo, is triggered by trying to grasp to something,
that never existed anyway. You see what I mean. It will be a little bit more comforting if it was
like something we just had to overcome or something like that. But to be so stupid is frustrating.
You see what I mean.
Your suffering is triggered, by believing in a santa claus that was never there, you see what I mean.
And, all you have to do is straighten that out, see what I mean.
So it’s really, you just have to identify what it is that’s not there, clearly, and then you’re out of it,
you see what I mean. Okay. So, that’s {dak dzin bakchak}.
Why are we making this mistake? Why do we misunderstand our world?
You were born that way. Don’t feel bad. Okay.
{bakchak} means, it came as a seed in your mind and you can’t do anything. You’re born with it.
If you’re born in this realm, desire realm, you have it. Period. Okay.
Two kinds of beings in this desire realm, I mean, one are emanations of an enlightened being. Who it
is we do not know. I don’t know. The people around you, anybody could be. It could be that
everyone in this room except me is or it could be that all of us are desire realm beings or I don’t
know.
But if you’re here involuntarily it’s because you had those seeds in your mind, okay.
Number two. [cut] Say dangdzin kye}[repeat] Because you have those seeds in your mind when
you’re born, then {dangdzin} which means the tendency of holding that things have their own nature,
okay. {kye} means, it’s born in your mind. It rises in your mind. It arises in your mind. Okay.
When? How long does it take?
One millisecond after you’re born, okay. [laughs] Alright.
The first conscious thought you have, which is what?
It’s hot in here, okay. It’s wet in here or something like that. Okay.
The first conscious thought you have, is already infected by, a misunderstanding of your world. And
this misunderstanding infects your mind twenty-four hours a day after that, okay.
You’ve never had a thought that wasn’t infected {lepa} by {dangdzin}, by this tendency to see things
as self-existent.
Does it mean that you are conscious, you know, I used to struggle with that. I used to around and
stare at the door and say, you know, what am I doing wrong? I’m not even thinking about self-nature,
you know what I mean. Like, Rinpoche would say, you’re seeing the door self-existently and I’d get
this guilt complex, you know. And I’m trying to look at the door not self-existently. And then, you
know, I’m eating dinner, momo, and then suddenly, oh my god, I’m seeing the momo as self-existent,
you know. What am I doing? And you get nervous, you know, like you’re doing something wrong
and you don’t know what it is. And it drives you crazy you know what I mean. You’re not quite
clear what they’re talking about.
And, you know, I feel normal. I thought it was a momo. It tastes like a momo. You know, spurts
like a momo. [laughter] And I’m doing something wrong, you know, and I don’t know what it is. You
know, it makes you crazy, you know.
Anyway,{dangdzin kye} starts when you’re born, starts as soon as you’re conscious and possessed by
every life form from amoebas up to elephants. You know what I mean. Every life form is making
this mistake twenty-four hours a day as they perceive objects, you know.
Is there a pen here?
Yes.
Am I perceiving, a pen?
Yes.
Am I correct to say that I’m perceiving, a pen?
Yes.
But there’s some kind of feeling or overlay or some kind of mode in which I’m perceiving a pen,
which is wrong. The way I hold it to be, the way I assume it to be, the way I feel about it, is totally
wrong all the time, okay.
And, that, we have to talk about, okay.
Is there a pen there?
Yes.
Are you mistaken that there’s a pen there?
No.
Is that a mistaken perception?
No.
Is that {dangdzin}?
No.
Is it infected by {dangdzin}?
Yes.
Do you have {dangdzin} all the time?
Yes.
When you’re thinking about {dangdzin} you have it. When you’re not thinking about {dangdzin} you
have it. Okay. All the time. You’re always misperceiving this pen.
Not that seeing it as a pen is wrong but there’s something inherent about the way you think about the
pen that is wrong.
And you can bring up that thought consciously but it’s always there subconsciously, okay. That’s the
distinction you have to make.
You can isolate how you feel about the pen, which is wrong, but even as you do that, you’re doing it,
okay. Like, I can explain to you what you’re holding wrong about the pen, and even at the moment
that you understand it, you’re still doing it, about the new understanding, you’re still doing it, okay.
It’s very slippery. We’ll talk about it, okay. It’s very slippery. We’ll talk about it. Don’t worry.
Okay.
[cut]
Say {tsul min}[repeat] {yi-je}[repeat]; {tsul} means, way, {min} means, not, {tsul min} means,
wrong way, the wrong way, okay. {yi-je} means, thinking about it the wrong way, okay, thinking of
it the wrong way. {yi la jepa} means to turn your mind to an object, okay. It’s one of the mental
functions. And it’s thinking of the pen the wrong way. And this doesn’t mean, this general thinking
of the pen, it’s thinking about do you like it or not? Is it pleasant or not? Okay. Is it pleasant or not?
So you have to write that down in step number, which one are we on? Three, okay.
Thinking about whether the pen is pleasant or not in a wrong way, okay. Thinking about that specific
part of the pen in a wrong way, okay.
What is there to say about that?
Do you like this pen or not? I mean, suppose it’s your favourite ice cream, okay, or something like
that. Do you like it or not?
Okay, you do. Okay.
So think of your favourite ice cream. It’s hard for me because I like all of them except [unclear],
okay. [laughs] Anyway, it’s hard for me to distinguish, but anyway, think of your favourite ice cream
and try to get in touch with the emotion or the feeling that its pleasantness is a quality of that ice
cream, you see what I mean.
That the pleasantness belongs to the ice cream, okay, that, that ice cream has a quality of being
pleasant, okay.
Now is the pleasant ice cream, sorry, is the ice cream pleasant?
Yes. Okay.
Is it pleasant form its own side, in and of, itself?
If you say, ah-ha, like [unclear] [laughs], just kidding, then what you’re saying, in essence, is that of
all the ice creams in the world, [unclear], not the non-fat kind, okay. [laughter] [laughs] And I’m not
asking, okay, that’s breaking a bodhisattva vow. But this particular kind, in and of itself, from it’s
own side is pleasant; if that were true then what’s the necessary consequence?
All the other brands would go out of business, you see. ‘Cos if it were true that ice cream had a
quality of being the best form its own side, then everybody who was not insane, would like it the
best, you see what I mean. So that quality of being the tastiest ice cream or the best ice cream we
say, it doesn’t belong to that ice cream, okay, Ben and Jerry’s cherry garcia ice cream. It doesn’t
belong to that.
That perception of it being that way, the feeling that it’s that way, is coming from somewhere else.
Where?
It’s coming from your mind. I mean, you have, like, three choices, okay. You know, it’s coming
from outer space and hitting this ice cream carton, you know. It’s inside the carton. Or, it’s coming
from me. You see what I mean. Like, there’s three choices. It’s obvious that it’s probably coming
from you, okay, ‘cos everybody has their own favourite ice cream.
That’s a very, very, very simple and very accurate description of emptiness.
You don’t have to think of black holes. You don’t have to think of cosmic dust. You don’t have to
think of auras. You don’t have to watch your thoughts and watch them fade in or watch them fade
out or watch them go black or anything like that.
That’s the emptiness of Ben and Jerry’s cherry garcia ice cream, of the pleasantness of that ice
cream. It is not a quality of that ice cream. The quality has an emptiness or is devoid of that quality
of pleasantness. That’s all. That’s all that emptiness means. It’s all it’s ever meant. Forget all the
other stuff, okay. Seriously.
That’s the emptiness of Ben and Jerry’s cherry garcia ice cream, okay.
But number three says, your mind thinks of the pleasantness the wrong way. It doesn’t realise that
that pleasant thing, the pleasantness of the ice cream doesn’t belong to the ice cream, okay.
Like, you could make a debate that the coldness belongs to the ice cream, right? Although we could
debate it later, okay. But I mean, it’s pretty easy to see that, most people touch it, it would feel cold,
see what I mean. I mean, you could say more convincingly, although it’s wrong, that the coldness is
the quality of the ice cream but to say that being the best is a quality of that ice cream is not true;
and that, you immediately understand that, okay. {tsul min yi-je} though, says that, being good
belongs to cherry garcia ice cream. Being good is a quality of that ice cream. Being the tastiest ice
cream is a quality of that ice cream, okay, not coming from me. Okay.
Number four. [cut]
Say {chak dang kye}[repeat] okay. By the way, where did the pleasantness of the ice cream come
from?
Your mind. Okay.
And why do you like this ice cream and someone else doesn’t?
Because, your perception of it as good, is forced on you by your past karma. That’s how karma
works. That’s what karma means. Okay.
You fed somebody in the past. Somebody was cold, no, somebody was too hot you gave them
something refreshing, you know, lemonade, a glass of lemonade with ice. You were careful to put
the ice in it. And due to that you have cherry Garcia ice cream in your world and you like it and I’m
not kidding. This is ultimate worldview.
There is no experience that you can experience that doesn’t come from some event like having given
one lousy lemonade in a paper cup, you were careful to throw in two dirty cubes of ice. And because
of that for a whole lifetime you enjoy this kind of ice cream. That’s exactly how things work. When
people stop giggling when I say that, you’ll be there. You’ll be going out and serving people
lemonade ‘cos you want to keep your ice cream, okay.
Okay, that’s all.
And you can imagine cases under which that karma wears out. You get tired of that kind of ice
cream. Your students give it to you for three months and [laughter] then you’re, like, no, I don’t want
to see it anymore, you know. Or you get diabetes or something and then you see it as something
that’s going to kill you or something like that, you see. The karma to enjoy anything wears out and
then at some point the karma wears out and then it’s not the best ice cream in the world anymore,
okay.
That’s an indication that the goodness of it is not one of its inherent qualities because if it were you’d
never get tired of it. You could eat twenty bowls a day instead of just ten and get tired of it, okay.
And that’s a sign that it doesn’t have a nature of its own of being the best ice cream, okay.
So, really, when you think about this ice cream and why you enjoy it, and if you wanted to keep that
enjoyment of that ice cream, you would have to serve others, you see. You would have to somehow
help others have something tasty or something like that. That would be the karma that would keep
you seeing this thing as pleasant would be to share something similar with other people constantly.
And that’s the only way to get ice cream. And that’s the only way to have Ben and Jerry’s continue
to be your favourite ice cream. You see what I mean. The only way. Otherwise, it will just wear
out and you won’t have it after awhile. They’ll take it off the market. Your tastes will change,
something like that. Your doctor will tell you, you can’t have that anymore, okay, or your food police
or somebody will say, you can’t have that anymore or something like that, okay.
What I mean is, we talked about thinking about, number three was thinking about how good it tasted
in the wrong way. In the right way is to see, oh, yeah,I have the karma to enjoy this ice cream
because I was kind to others. I shared with others. I helped someone else get something like that.
And that karma is in my subconscious, it has come up to my conscious mind, it colours how I see my
world and I like that kind of ice cream. And it’s my sunglasses, my rose-coloured glasses, called
karma, that are making me see that as such great ice cream. I understand it’s not part of the ice
cream. I understand the whole world is not, like, pink coloured. It’s the glasses I’m wearing. Okay.
It’s the karma that I bring to the object, okay.
So if you don’t understand that then you could get some kind of bad emotion about the ice cream. I
want it and other people shouldn’t have it. Okay. Right?
Like, then you could have the ignorant thought.
If you perceive the ice cream the wrong way, if the pleasantness of the ice cream is a god-given
quality of the ice cream, then you can rightly say, I should have it and other people shouldn’t have it,
okay.
If the goodness of Ben and Jerry’s cherry Garcia ice cream is something that I’m perceiving only
because I shared ice cream in the past, then is it possible to not want to share it?
I mean, if you’re crazy, maybe. Right? But if you want this ice cream to continue to be great,
what’s the only way?
Share it.
{chak dang} is the opposite, okay. {chak} is like the ignorant reaction to ice cream.
{chak} means, wanting it in a way that you don’t want others to have it. It’s like a stupid wanting,
okay. And {dang} is the opposite for people you don’t like or ice creams you don’t like. Like,
[unclear]. I have {dang} for [unclear], okay. And {dang} means you don’t like it and you get, sort of,
like this dislike for it in an ignorant way. Which means if someone, if you had a choice at a party
between getting the chocolate chip ice cream and the [unclear] you’d make sure you got to the
chocolate chip ice cream first and the other people had to eat the [unclear], you see. That would be
{dang}. That would be, disliking [unclear] in a stupid way.
You see the stupidness of it? You see the difference?
One is like, oh, here share my cherry Garcia ‘cos I want to have the karma to continue to see it. You
see what I mean. That’s intelligent liking and that’s not what {chak} is about, okay.
In a lot of Buddhist teachings they fail to distinguish between stupid liking and smart liking, okay.
Does the Buddha like living beings?
I hope so, okay.
Would the Buddha like to see you reach nirvana?
Sure.
Does the Buddha like ice cream?
Of course, you know.
Does the Buddha dislike seeing people suffer? Does the Buddha dislike the fact that your suffering is
caused by yourself ‘cos you’re just stupid?
Of course, he dislikes that, you know.
Does the Buddha dislike the fact that people send themselves to hell realms?
Of course, he’d stop it if he could. You see what I mean.
So there has to draw a distinction between good liking and stupid liking and good disliking and stupid
disliking.
What’s stupid disliking?
You take the [] Jay, ‘cos I got the chocolate chip first. That’s stupid disliking.
That’s the best way to what?
To lose chocolate chip in the future and get inundated with [], okay. [laughter] No.
And I’m not kidding, okay, I’m not kidding. Okay. That’s stupid disliking. So {chak dang} refers to
stupid disliking.
In the picture of the Wheel of Life, in the middle, {chak} is the rooster or the pigeon, {dang} is the
snake, and whose mouth is holding both their tails?
The pig, which represents stupid, okay.
It means, you don’t get it that if you don’t share the chocolate chip and if you dump the [] on Jay
Hahn, you’re gonna have to have [] forever. Well, not forever, ‘cos that’ll wear out too but very
slowly, okay. Alright.
So {chak dang kye} means, you get, {kye} means, you get the emotions of stupid liking and stupid
disliking. {chak} is stupid liking, {dang} is stupid disliking, okay.
By the way, if you want to have a barometer or a check on whether you’re having stupid liking or
smart liking, it’s pretty much your natural reaction. Okay.
That’s why you’re in the desire realm. That’s why you’re here and not in a Buddha paradise if you’re
not; I don’t know where you are, okay.
But if your natural reaction to something you like is to corner it, protect it, keep it away from others,
don’t share it, this is {chak}. That’s natural and it’s stupid, okay.
And then if your natural reaction to things you don’t like, [] oh, I got a choice, let’s see, let me make
sure the [] goes down to the other side of the table and the chocolate chip comes up here. That’s the
natural reaction.
Somebody yells at you, what’s the natural reaction?
You yell back.
What’s the only thing that could make a person yell at you in the future?
Yelling back.
You see, the natural, you have to watch out for your natural reactions ‘cos you are stuck in the desire
realm and you’re here because you’ve been doing that all along. And that’s why you have to suffer.
Examine your natural reactions to the things you like and don’t dislike and you can pretty much, as a
rule of thumb, know that you should be doing the opposite, okay. [laughs] ‘Cos you’re stuck in the
worst realm so you must have been doing the exact ass-backward thing all this time.
When somebody gets mad at you be pleasant to them. You have a choice between [] and chocolate
chip, you eat the [], you give them the chocolate chip, okay.
You have to overcome your natural reaction which is ignorant and which is damaging to you, okay.
You can only have that natural reaction if you don’t understand where this stuff comes from. Number
three.
You can only have that problem if you have ignorance in your mind.
You can only have that problem if you had ignorance in your past lives. Okay.
You see how, when you meditate on this you can go one, two, three, four; four, three, two, one; one,
two, three, four; four, three, two, one. You know what I mean.
We call {lung jung and lung ..}, okay.
I didn’t understand stuff in my past life so I have these seeds.
Those grow into the same misunderstanding in this life.
I see things that are nice and bad the wrong way.
And due to that, I like some things stupidly and I dislike some things stupidly.
Why am I in trouble?
I like things stupidly or dislike things stupidly ‘cos I don’t understand pleasant and unpleasant things
‘cos I have this defect in my mind called ignorance and I have that because I had that seed in my past
life. You see what I mean.
You can run it both ways.
Now, number five.
And I’m not talking theory. I’m talking you do this in the break, okay. You do this with the person
three seats down that you don’t like so much, okay. Right now. Use it right now.
{le sak} [cut]

Say {le}[repeat] {sak}[repeat]; {le} means, karma, {sak} means, you collect it.
What’s it mean?
Kill, steal, sexual misconduct, lying, harsh words, gossip, craving, ill will and wrong view come into
your mind and you do them.
You collect new karma. You collect new bad karma. Okay.
Why?
Oh, run the play back: because you like things and you dislike other things. By the way, you can put
for number five, ‘my natural reaction’. That’s all. I yelled back. That’s number five. I took the
chocolate chip and left the [] for Jay Hahn, okay.
So, that’s natural reaction is collecting karma. It’s caused by the fact that I like some things with a
stupid state of mind and dislike other things with a stupid state of mind.
Does it mean it’s wrong to like chocolate chip ice cream?
Not at all.
After you’ve shared it with as many people as you can find eat the whole carton. Okay. That’s all.
It doesn’t mean you have to, it’s not this Buddhist thing that you have to scourge yourself all the time.
Get that out of your mind. That’s your old Judeo-Christian thing. Dump it. It’s stupid.
You can have your cake and eat it too. Okay.
You keep this code of behaviour up you’ll live in a Buddha paradise, jerry garcia Buddha paradise,
you know.
You don’t have to, you know, suffer so others can be happy or something like that. You can be happy
so others can be happy, how’s that, okay. So, get over those emotions that are caused by
misunderstanding good things and bad things that comes as a natural thing in your mind because you
had a seed in your past life.
Because you had the seed in your past life, you have the seed in this life. You see good things and
bad things the wrong way. You feel this ignorant desire for them and ignorant disliking for them,
which means you don’t share your ice cream, okay.
And you just keep running it back and forth, you know.
By the way, I [unclear] want you get this immense light going off in your head that this is what the
Buddha really meant. You know, oh, so emptiness does relate to getting out of it, you see what I
mean, there is a connection between karma and emptiness and getting free of all this. See what I
mean. It’s like Lord Maitreya has finally put it down on paper, yeah, here is how it goes from step to
step.
Here’s how not understanding your world causes all your problems, causes your {la sak}, okay.
What’s the last step?
[cut]
Say {korwa}[repeat] {kor}[repeat], you’ve heard this word in Sanskrit. It used to frustrate me ‘cos I’d
go to Buddhist teachings, you know, I’ve been studying for three weeks and you’d go into a class and
they’d say, samsara’s caused by your samskaras [unclear] your alaya [unclear] due to your, you know.
And I’m, like, woa, you know. Okay. Samsara. It means vicious circle. Did I spell that right?
Okay, that’s lucky.
Vicious circle. That’s all. Vicious circle.
What’s the only way to have to have [] ice cream for the rest of your life? Assuming you hate it,
okay.
Make other people eat it and get chocolate chip for yourself. Which is number five.
That’s because you like things and dislike things stupidly. That’s because you have this wrong way
of looking at good things and bad things.
That’s caused by this habit in your mind that you were born with because you had it in your past life.
You had it in your past life so you’re born with it.
You look at good things and bad things the wrong way.
You feel like or dislike for them in a stupid way. The barometer there is, would you be selfish?
Would you have a mental affliction about it? You see? If you could have a mental affliction about it
you’re thinking about it the wrong way.
And then you refuse other people the chocolate chip and give them the [].
And then {korwa kor} means you have just spun the wheel again, okay. {korwa} means wheel,
vicious circle, {kor} means, you spun it again.
Meaning, you’ve just made it perpetuate itself, okay.
The classic example: the boss yells at you and your natural reaction, which I said is a good test for
your stupid reaction, is what?
You yell back.
If this theory of Buddhism is true, and I don’t say you have to buy it, but if it’s true, what’s the only
way to get a stupid ugly yelling boss in your face in the future?
Yell back. And that’s samsara. That’s a vicious circle. You see what I mean.
Your natural reaction triggers the next occurrence of it, so that you can react that way again, so that
you can react that way again, so that you can have it again, so you can react that way again, so you
can have it again.
People ask me, why am I still here after millions of years?
Der, you know, okay.
Because your natural reaction, by the way, we’re the left overs, okay. I mean, everybody else is
gone; they’re out. No. I’m not kidding. We are the leftovers and we didn’t get it, you know, we’re
still yelling back, we still refuse to share the things we love. You know what I mean.
And so we keep setting up in the future for it to happen again. And that’s what the word ‘samsara’
means. That’s what {korwa} means; vicious cycle, right, where you react the wrong way.
The cycle happens because you react the wrong way because you have this thing of liking and
disliking things in a stupid way because you perceive nice things and good things the wrong way
because you have a tendency to think that things have their own qualities from their own side
because you’ve always thought that way in millions of past lives. And because you thought that way
in millions of past lives you have this habit in your mind of seeing things as coming from their own
side.
And then you think the goodness and badness comes from its own side. And then you feel good or
bad about it and want to protect it or fight off other people and then you hurt them in some way to get
what you want or to avoid what you don’t like.
And then you’ve spun the wheel one more time. Okay.
And you, you know, if you want to say you’ve been in these classes and you understand anything and
I’m gonna have a Geshe degree from ACI whenever I finish that last final exam, you know, you’d
better be able to spin this wheel up and down for people ‘cos this is it.
This is the thing that people have to know. Okay.
This is the greatest kindness you can do for other people.
Teach them how Maitreya’s process works and then they can break it. They can break it. They can
break the cycle.
And then master Shantideva says, kiss those irritating people goodbye, you know, because, one by
one they will drop out of your life because you didn’t see the vicious circle. You refused to return
violence to violence.
You refused to return anger for anger. Okay. And you just stopped.
By the way, it’s unilateral, okay.
Don’t wait for the other person to stop. They’re not going to. Why?
‘Cos you didn’t stop. You create those. Okay.
Don’t sit there and be, you know, the stupid, you know, you see it around the world. Oh, when the
other side stops, I’ll stop, you see what I mean. It has to be unilateral. Okay. They’re not going to
stop. Why? From their side, ‘cos you didn’t stop.
You have to break it from your side. You stop getting angry and then there’s no angry person in the
future to bother you, you see. That’s all.
So it has to be, the breaking of the cycle has to be done by you, okay.
Where? What number do you think is the first one that you kick the ass out, you know? Which one?
I don’t think so. If you get to {chak dang kye}, if you’re already feeling this dislike or wanting
something selfishly, you’re gonna collect karma.
I don’t think you can break it between four and five. Give me another place.
Between one and what? How about between [students] Yeah, I don’t think between three and four
because once you perceive the goodness of ben and jerry’s cherry garcia as being a quality of that ice
cream, you’re already in trouble, okay. No. Really. If you don’t understand that that goodness is
coming from your side, you’re already in trouble. Three is too late.
Between one and what? Between two and three, that’s where you break it, okay.
Right here. You stop thinking of things the wrong way. You stop thinking of things the wrong way,
okay.
Yeah, it looks good, it tastes good, but only because I’ve been good. Okay. So I refuse to not share
my ice cream ‘cos that would be the stupidest thing I could do, okay.
We were joking at Godstow this weekend. Who was the first caveman who figured this out? And
it’s brilliant, right. I mean, you go out to your cave, you just, you know, you kill the deer, you
dragged it back to your cave. And I think there was an earthquake and the deer body fell off and
landed in the next guy’s cave. And he came out and said, thanks a lot and he took it in and ate it.
And then the next day two deer came and the guy got two deer bodies. And then he figured it out,
like, he’s this genius Einstein caveman, and he said, how come two deer came today? I did give the
other guy a deer yesterday. Let’s try it. And he throws the other two deer down there and the next
day he gets four deer. You see what I mean. No, I mean, somebody had to figure it out ‘cos it’s
totally not human nature, right, to share something knowing that it’s going to give you everything you
dreamed of. You see what I mean. It’s just not normal. It’s just weird to think like that, okay.
It takes a lot of knowledge to implement it, okay. And that’s it.
Those six steps of Maitreya, Lord Maitreya, absolutely connect karma to ignorance, to how you see
things, to how you act. And you can start doing this at the break with the refreshments, okay.
We used to have a kid’s class in New Jersey for the Mongolian kids. And there were about fifteen
kids and we had this rule.
Janis was there eighteen years ago, she was about that high, she was King Uddyana ‘cos we didn’t
have any boys, you see.
And anyway, it was ‘last is first’ and the kid at the back of the room got the cake first after class.
You see what I mean.
And then everybody would run to the back of the room. [laughter] And I could cut the cakes up. See
what I mean.

But what it means is to act this way you can do it right now. You can start doing it at the break.
You see what I mean.
If you like some kind of drink there or your favourite cookie is sitting out there, make sure other
people get it first. Okay.
You see something you like to drink, take one, that’s good, and share it with everybody. Pass it
around and then you’ll have as much as you ever want.
And that’s just the way it goes. You know what I mean.
Especially if you can break down this division between ‘me’ and ‘you’, okay.
It’s just as important that you have the coke as that I have the coke because you are me and I just
don’t see that, okay. That’s all.
I think I’d like to stop there because, to me, this is the essence. I don’t want to say anything more
about wisdom. It’s all there. Okay. It’s all there.
That’s emptiness. That’s the connection between karma and emptiness. That’s how you can use
karma and emptiness to be totally happy, okay.
If you reverse everything you create a Buddha field, okay, and your body starts to change. I call it
‘living crystal’. It’s called prasada in the {dzog rim}, in the high tantric Scriptures. Your body will
just start to change and then, eventually, it will become a different kind of substance. And you don’t
get old and you don’t die. And you can teach other people to do that and then everything is finished.
And then the last, you know, stupid people in the world graduate and, you know, then they can rent
this school out. Though there probably won’t be anybody around to rent it to actually so they can just
stay here. You see what I mean?
And that’s all. So you have all the information you need.
That’s the essence of Master Shantideva’s ninth chapter. Okay.
That’s the connection between emptiness and your life and your happiness.
To get that teaching tied together is extremely rare so be happy and understand that and then you
have to start acting on it by sharing with other people. Okay.
Alright.
Oh, one thing, if you have, like, personal questions about the three years, like you want some
personal advice .. [announcements]

Okay, we’ll start. [laughs] Okay, we’ll start again.
We’ve been reserving this last five, ten minutes, which is never just five or ten minutes, about how
to, like, what would be the vision for Buddhism in the United States: what would it be like; how
should our centres be like. We talked about finances; it should be free.
We talked about content; it should be the Geshe course.
This centre or this institute is built around the idea of {tsennyi pa}. {tsennyi pa} means, the tough
way, meaning the logical way rather than Lam Rim, rather than even more general teachings.
This course, the core of it, is, and by the way, they’re all valid and they all work, but our schtick is
the Geshe schtick and you learn it. You learn it hard, you learn it in detail and then you have all this
information that you’re able to help other people with. That’s what we do.
And then we talked about all those kinds of things. And, just in general, all these details of how we
would like to see Buddhism, like Tantra spread in the United States.


What I’d like to talk about tonight is a vision of how we could do social service. You know what I
mean. How we, as Buddhists, do social service.
The Tibetan tradition up til now has been very weak in this specific thing. And His Holiness is very
adamant that it’s one thing that we can learn from the Christian tradition and the Jewish traditions
and even the Moslem traditions; that they’re very strong on serving other people and in a very
concrete way.
You have to say, very openly, very brazenly, that in Buddhism we believe that the ultimate service of
any person is to teach them exactly the six steps that I taught you tonight, you know.
There’s nothing kinder and there’s nothing more compassionate and there’s nothing more effective
than to teach people how to create their own paradise in the future rather than just giving them a bed
to sleep in tonight or just feeding them or just giving them an operation or something.
So, I mean, I want to start by saying the Dharma itself is the ultimate social work. Period. And
there’s no kinder or greater gift that you can give a person than to teach them the courses, okay.
At the same time I think, and His Holiness is very adamant about it, it would be clearly mistaken to
say that therefore we should, you know, ignore the normal needs that people have for a place to
sleep, something to eat, medical care, counselling and things like that. I think it would be clearly a
violation of bodhisattva principles to espouse Dharma as the ultimate social work and then not do any
other social work. You see what I mean. It’d be clearly, I mean, in plain English, I’m very
suspicious of bodhisattva’s who don’t have time to help someone who’s sick or, you know, who needs
a place to stay or who’s hungry or something like that.
It’s just suspicious. You see what I mean. Oh, I’m working for the good of all living beings and
don’t hassle me about these homeless people, you know what I mean. Or I don’t like crazy people
or, you know, they don’t even know the six steps, you know what I mean.
We shouldn’t be like that.
And I think in the Tibetan community in India, like at Sera monastery, they’re just becoming very
sensitive to this fact. So rather than just living among the Indian community in Sera, Sera Me has
now opened a hospital and it’s free for everyone in the surrounding community, which has not been
done in the last thirty years, forty years.
It has not been the policy of the Tibetans to help the people around them. And only just now they’re
starting to do that and I think we have to keep up with that, you know. We have to do the same
thing.
So my model for this, or what we’re doing in this regard is the ‘Three Jewels’. When we first moved
to the east village we started this, we thought it would be a store. We thought it would help pay for
the nun’s residence because they didn’t have any place to stay. So, you know, I remember walking
up and down, the coldest day of the year through the east village looking for a storefront.
And we found this place and we bought it. And we bought all these books and we had this fancy
inventory system. And then, after about six months, we realised none of us wants to make money and
people kept coming in and asking for books and we’d just give it to them. And the place was a mess.
I mean, financially, it was a disaster because we just didn’t want to make money off Dharma.
We can’t sell tantric books. We’re not supposed to sell images. And books we didn’t feel
comfortable with selling anyway. We wanted to give them away. And it quickly became clear that
the place wasn’t going to work like that.
We were gonna do the Starbucks thing there with, you know, mint lattes and stuff like that. And we
got a restaurant license and everything and we bought tables and everything. And then we just
cancelled it and said you make your own coffee and it’s for free, you know. And you can’t pay the
rent with that, you see.
Anyway, after awhile it became clear that the place could be better used as a community centre.
And these classes here attract a certain kind of people. They attract a certain kind of person. You
have to have a sort of psychological and you have to have a sort of intellectual bent. You have to be
willing to sit here with the four divisions of this and the twelve divisions of that and the thirteen this
and you have to be somebody who enjoys that and who appreciates that and who can sit there and
struggle with those things.
But there’s a whole section of our population, especially in New York City, that’s just not interested
in that stuff but wants to study Dharma. They want to meditate. They want to talk about the ideas of
Dharma in a very normal way that they can immediately apply in their own lives.
And I think what we found is that the ‘Three Jewels’ has attracted, hundreds of people has come
through the ‘Three Jewels’.
Some of them have come here to these classes. Many of them are in their own community the ‘Three
Jewels’ people. They go to ‘Three Jewels’. They use the ‘Three Jewels’.
I asked Pelma to give me some pictures about what they do there and then I wanted to talk to you
guys. What I wanted to do is present it as sort of a fledgling idea of how to serve people in a city
because a lot of our work will be there.
And then we have to talk about whether the ‘Three Jewels’ stays open or not [cut]
[end side A]

[side B]
We just have to talk about who can keep it open. What should it do? How can it continue to do
what it does without ani Pelma there, which will be difficult ‘cos she’s very good at what she does.
And that’s sort of what I’d like to lead up to. [announcements about ACI project meeting: re the
‘Three Jewels’ / prison project / community teachings, etc]

I think one tradition we don’t want to continue from old Tibet is not to do this kind of thing very
much. And I think this is something that our Judeo-Christian background has been very admirable and
something we should aspire to. And something that we shouldn’t lose from our old religious tradition,
which is, you know, the hands-on service of people who need us around us.
So I, you know, I think, that if we just have an institute where you learn a lot and meditate a lot, I
don’t personally think you can see emptiness directly, for example, unless you’re doing something,
some kind of service of other people in a hands-on way.
And I think, Pelma has brought that side up organically. That thing has grown and grown and it
serves more and more people and it serves our community. And I think we should consciously make
it part of our institute as the institute goes on.
I could also see that being one of the main classrooms for the next three years for those of you who
haven’t finished your eighteen courses. The tantric carrot is out there. And you know, it’s a place
where you’ll be able to go and finish your courses.
And I hope that the basement will continue to function, sometimes called the dungeon, shipping out
correspondence courses. [announcement]
I urge you not to make your bodhisattva life an intellectual thing only, okay.
I think there’s a great defect in your Buddhism if you’re not doing something like this for somebody,
you know. Somewhere your Buddhism has to cover the people who didn’t make it here, who aren’t
lucky enough or don’t have the finances or don’t have the time or don’t have the, you, know, the
intellect to be here right now.
And I think we have to serve everybody.
My theory for that is, that people like Khen Rinpoche are serving us. You see what I mean. They
have agreed to come down to our level. I mean, we must look really crazy to them, right.
I mean, I see it as a food chain thing. We’re somewhere here and if we don’t take care of the people
who are less capable of taking care of themselves , then, I don’t see how we can expect the Khen
Rinpoches, to take care of us. You see what I mean.
You’re the beneficiary of this food chain and then you have to feed the next, the people who couldn’t
make it here. You know what I mean. The people who just need a, they need to get sane before
they can go on and study, see what I mean.
So think about it and think about some ways of serving maybe at the ‘Three Jewels’ during the next
three years, okay.
And that’s a model really for all the other cities that it will spread to.
I told her she has to open a ‘Six Jewels’ in Tombstone, Arizona. [laughs] [laughter]
Every time I’m nice to her she’s, like, what are you setting me up for? [laughs]
Okay, let’s do a prayer. Okay.
[prayer: short mandala]
[prayer: dedication]
Okay. Goodnight. Thankyou.




Asian Classics Institute
Course XVIII: Great Ideas of Buddhism