ACI 18 (обзорный курс), Занятие 04 — стенограмма

Class Four
Geshe Michael Roach
Transcribed by Angie Overy



Okay. We’ll start. Are you ready?
We’ll start. Okay. First thing I’d like to do is embarrass three people. Let me see
[announcements re Mongolian teachings]
We’re on the final class of Master Shantideva’s ‘Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’.
And that’s where Master Shantideva started flying off into the air and nobody knew where he
was staying, okay. And there was even a debate about how many chapters there were
because after the eighth chapter nobody was quite sure how many were spoken after that.
And they found him, like, a year later, down in South India and asked him how many
chapters were there. And he said, I left the manuscript in the rafters in my room. You can
find it. Which is a true story. That’s how we got this book.
And it gets hard about this point. I like this final section because to me it explains emptiness
and it explains a lot of questions that I had about emptiness. And I think the nicest part of the
last section is that it explains how karma works itself out in emptiness. You see what I mean.
So I think, last class we went over Lord Maitreya’s six steps of why if you don’t understand
emptiness you get in trouble and you create karma.
But now, I think, something that was not too clear in Master, in Lord Maitreya’s presentation,
was so how does that effect karma, you know. How does karma play itself out in emptiness.
And what’s the connection between emptiness and karma.
And this is where Master Shantideva is at his best I think.
You know, I don’t think there’s any more famous Buddhist book than his early chapters on
patience and morality and meditation.
But when you get up to wisdom he’s no slouch either, you know, and his presentation is
probably one of the best.
I like it because it explains how karma works, you know. My idea of karma until I studied
these subjects deeply was very, very simple. If you step on a bug you’ll have backaches.
And then I remember Nagarjuna, arya Nagarjuna saying don’t forget the time lag. The time
lag is the deadly thing.
Like, people ask me, I understand your lectures, I’m a good Buddhist, I appreciate everything
but, can I kill the roach’s in my apartment, you know?




And I’m, like, if when you stepped on them, even in Mongolia we asked them questions and
they wrote on the thing, you know, what about [unclear], we can’t kill roach’s. So, if your
own ribs started to break when you stepped on them, you wouldn’t ask me, you see what I
mean, there’s be no questions.
The world would be perfectly moral. You see what I mean.
If the minute you lied, your bank account dropped by a hundred dollars, you know, and you
got the statement at the end of the month, you lied twenty times. [laughter]
You owe us some money. You know what I mean. Then you’d be, the world would be
totally moral. If karma ripened in the next moment we wouldn’t be here. It’d all be over.
Nobody would’ve killed anything. Nobody would’ve lied to anybody, you know. The
whole thing would be over.
But it’s also not, you also meet, frankly, Tibetans and I’ve lived with Tibetans for many years
and I’ve known many Tibetans in India, and you ask them what is karma, how does karma
work, you know.
And they say, well Mrs Melvin, right, my first grade teacher back in Mysore or Karnatak or
something said that if you step on bugs you get hurt later, so I don’t do it, you know.
And then you say, do you understand how it works because Americans don’t believe that
and my first grade teacher told me that’s not true. And do you have any arguments or can
you give me any convincing talk about it, you know.
And they say, no, I don’t know why it works, you know. I just believe it ‘cos my first grade
teacher told me that. You now what I mean.
So, they’re just as bad as Americans really and their level of non-violence reflects that.
They’re more non-violent than Americans because they grew up in Tibet or among the
Tibetan people, but because they don’t understand how it works they’re not that non-violent,
you see what I mean. Like, they’re not that strict because they don’t understand how it
works.
So I think the most beautiful thing in, see what I want to talk about tonight, is how Master
Shantideva demonstrates how karma plays itself out in emptiness, see what I mean.
If you understand the process of how emptiness allows karma to work then you, you know,
in my mind, you’d be a lot better person. You see, it’d be a lot easier to be moral or ethical if
you understood how karma works. You see what I mean.
So it’s one thing, we call {depay jedrang}. Say {depay}[repeat] {jedrang}[repeat].
I’ll even write the word here. [cut]
You’re gonna get it in your logic class which is coming up next but I won’t tell you that ‘cos
everybody will get a cold that week. [cut]
Say {depay}[repeat] {jedrang}[repeat]; {depa} means, faith, okay, faith. {jedrang} means, follow,
to follow. And it means, to follow the Dharma because you have faith, you know. Like, you
like the person who is teaching it or your parents told you that. You don’t understand it,
okay. That’s called {depay jedrang}.
Then the other kind is called {rikpay}. [cut] Say {rikpay}[repeat] {jedrang}[repeat]; {rikpa}
means, reasoning. A person who, {jedrang} means, follower. It means, a person who follows
the Dharma because it makes sense to them, okay, so big difference.
The first one follows the Dharma because they have faith in that person or faith in that first
grade teacher or something like that. And a {rikpay jedrang} they follow the Dharma because
it makes sense. Somebody explained it to them and it makes sense, okay.
I want to, tonight, present how emptiness works, how karma works with emptiness, so that
you can understand how karma ripens.
Last week we talked about how karma is created or why you start doing karma ‘cos you
don’t understand objects, okay.
Now we’re gonna talk about how karma works, okay. And the you get a really deep
appreciation of emptiness, okay. And you’ve heard this stuff about the analysis, you know,
to prove emptiness. Is the pen its parts? I mean, the easy one is, is the pen one of its parts?
And you say, no. I mean try writing with it. It doesn’t work, okay.
Is the pen divorced from its parts?
No. If you throw away all the parts you can’t drive the car, okay.
What’s the other choice? Is the pen, [students] that’s easy one, all of its parts then?
They say, no. And that’s the one that used to bother the hell out of me, you know.
Of course, it’s the same as Janis Bradon’s now, whatever the name is, question. [laughter]
You know, it’s the famous question. I tell the story. I was studying Madhyamika with my
teacher, maybe, fifteen years ago, I don’t know, twenty years ago. So we finished this heavy
class and I come out and Janis is in the kitchen. She’s about this tall. She used to climb on
her mother. This was when she was still climbing on her mother like a tree. Now she’s this
big executive. Anyway, no connection to her Dharma studies, alright.
But anyway, so I come out and say, Janis, you know, is this pen the top of the pen?
And she says, no.
And I say, is it something different from the parts?
And she says, no.
And I said, is it all the parts together?
And she says, yes.
And then I’m, like, stumped, you know, because Nagarjuna said, no and Janis said, yes. And
looks like she’s right, you know what I mean, and I’m like, what was that, you know?
Okay.
And it’s frustrating when you read Madhyamika. It’s frustrating.
Oh, by the way, the last choice is, all the above or something like that. Anyway, or neither
or something like that; doesn’t matter.
Anyway, the tough one is this one. Is it all its parts together, you know?
And the texts say, no. But if you put all the parts of a car together, by the way, some people
try to explain it that, it’s not all its parts unconnected. Like, if laid a radiator over there and a
carburettor over there and four tyres over there but put one of the tyres over there, you
know, would the car still work or something like that.
That’s not the point at all, okay. Forget that one. That’s not all the parts together, you see.
That’s all the parts spread around the room.
Is the pen all its parts together in one place?
We say, no. Okay. Why?
And again, got to be careful, okay. It’s the same thing about the dog toy thing, okay. It’s the
same thing. When a dog looks at this object they see a white cylinder with a blue cylinder
on top of it. And how do they compose the thing, you know? How do they organise it in
their mind? What do they see?
They see just something to chew on, okay. They see something that makes their mouth water
and they start wagging their tail ‘cos they think maybe I can go and get it out of his hand,
you know. They don’t have the capacity to organise these colours and these shapes into
what we call ‘pen’. They automatically see something to chew on and they don’t think of it
in any other way. Okay.
And then, a human being who’s {..kyebu} means, familiar with a pen, they look at it and they
automatically see a pen.
In fact, your, I don’t know how to say it, your first impression of it as a pen is so fast that
you’re fooled by your own mind and you believe that everybody would see it as a pen. You
don’t realise that you’re identifying it as a pen. You see what I mean.
You don’t realise. It happens so fast in your mind that you don’t understand or you don’t
appreciate that it’s, in itself, out there, by itself, raw data, right? Out there, by itself, is just a
white and blue cylinder, okay. It’s a neutral white and blue cylinder and then your mind is
very quickly making a mental picture called ‘pen’ and then you call it the pen.
And if I say, what is this?
Everybody says, oh, it’s a pen, automatically. It’s so fast, that your mind lays ‘pen’ on it, that
you think ‘pen’, automatically. You think ‘pen’, right away.
It’s fast that you think everyone should see it as a pen, okay. That’s why people and dogs get
in trouble with each other. Why?
Those stupid people don’t know that this is to chew on and so they’re depriving the dogs of
their chew toy, okay.
Oh, but you wanted me to say something else. Oh, the stupid dogs are chewing on our pens
and ruining them. You see what I mean? That’s just prejudice, okay. Really. They have their
own perception and that’s valid, okay, valid in their context.
They see it as something to chew on and it’s not right that those humans are standing up and
depriving dogs of these chew toys, okay.
And then humans being, they think automatically the thing is a pen from its own side. So
why are these dogs chewing on pens for? You see, you don’t say, why is the dog chewing
on what it sees validly as something to chew on.
You’re, like, why is the stupid dog chewing on my pen and ruining my pen. You know
what I mean.
So it’s so automatic that you don’t catch it but what your mind is doing is, there are parts
there, there’s a blue cylinder, there’s a white cylinder, they go together, you saw me write
with it, so your mind says ‘pen’, okay.
It’s not a pen from its own side ‘cos if it were the dog would be respectful and say, oh, I can’t
chew on that. You need that tonight. I’ll wait until it’s out of ink. You see what I mean.
They can’t conceptualise it as a pen. They can’t think of it as a pen.
Whatever it is in your mind, that is making you see it as a pen, they don’t have in their mind.
Okay. What is that?
It’s karma. We say karma. That’s how karma works, okay.
So it’s not enough to, you can’t keep three hundred million Americans from killing animals
by telling them, you know, you’re gonna be reborn as an animal and you won’t appreciate it
then, you see what I mean.
You can’t go around saying, the reason you get old and die, the reason you have bad health
is that you’re killing animals, you know. You can’t do that. You can’t, it’s no proof. It’s not
convincing. It’s not like an argument, which is very, what do you call it, [student]
compelling or something, you know. It doesn’t, like, everybody doesn’t go out and give up
meat the next day or something like that, you know what I mean.
You have to explain how karma works on an object. You see what I mean.
And that’s how it works. You have a seed in your mind from helping someone in the past.
And when you look at these two pieces called ‘top and bottom’, ‘blue and white’, which is
all it is, from its own side it’s just an innocent bystander, blue and white cylinder, it’s you
who’s making a pen out of it. Okay.
If that wasn’t the case, then the dog would see it as a pen, but they don’t, okay.
So it’s not, the pen-ness is not coming from the pen, okay.
You have the karma to make it a pen and it works so fast that you believe it’s a pen
automatically, okay. That’s how karma works and you have to get used to that.
Karma works by coming up to your conscious mind and putting like rose-coloured glasses
over your eyes and making you see this as a pen, okay.
And that’s how karma works and never forget it.
Is this its parts? Altogether?
No. Because if it were then a dog would see the same thing, okay, but they don’t.
There’s something compelling you to see it as a pen and that’s your own karma, okay.
This is profound. This is really how karma works.
This can bring you to a tantric paradise. Just understand that. Because this cylinder and this
cylinder work the same, okay. This one and this one work exactly the same, okay.
You have the karma to see this cylinder as a arm, okay. And if you didn’t, if you had a
different karma, you’d see it as a paw and as a leg and a paw. Get used to it.
If you accept what I said about the pen and the chew toy then you have to accept what I say
about this cylinder.
And by the way, that’s why people get old and die. That’s the secret of life.
It’s the, what was that thing that [unclear] was looking for? It’s a fountain of life, youth. It’s
permanent youth and happiness. You see what I mean?
That’s the trick. That’s the whole point. The reason you get old and die is not, this is not
getting old and dying. You can’t blame him for anything. He’s just a plain old cylinder.
You karma is wearing out to see it this way. Your karma’s wearing out.
He’s not wearing out; you’s wearing out. You got to get used to it. You got to remember
that.
This is the key to not have to get old or die. This is what tantra is all about. This is why
tantra works. This is why we study for eighteen years in the monastery and then get to go to
tantric college. You see what I mean.
The whole point is, once you understand this, you can call the shots. If you understand that
your karma is forcing you to see it as an arm, and that karma is wearing out and that’s why
you see it get old, then you can stop it, you know. And you don’t have to, this realm, don’t
forget, okay, the world you know is a mistake. It’s a broken realm. It’ll never work. It can’t
work.
It doesn’t matter what kind of vitamins you take. It doesn’t matter what kind of relationships
you change.
It doesn’t matter if you get a new job. It doesn’t matter if you try different kind of exercise. It
doesn’t matter if you try less sleep, more sleep, more food, less food, different people,
different job, different house, different family. It won’t change.
In three weeks you’ll be back to the same unhappiness you were before. You know that,
okay.
This realm doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work, okay. You can’t be happy here.
It won’t work. You have to die here and you have to lose everything you ever worked for,
for every hour you ever lived that you worked for. You have to lose it.
You don’t want to stay here. You don’t have to stay here.
The only people left here, we’re like the leftovers. And I’m not kidding, you know.
Thousands and thousands of beings have gone to their own paradises and we’re stuck here
because we don’t understand the thing about the arm. And that’s all.
You just understand it and then you keep your book, you keep your karma, okay.
So, it’s very important to realise that the reason you’re seeing anything is that there’s pieces of
raw data out there. There’s a flesh-coloured cylinder with five other flesh-coloured cylinders
and my karma is making me see it as an arm.
And when that karma wears out it’ll be called a dead arm. No. And then, maybe five
minutes later, new karma comes up and I’ll see a dog’s leg.
So this rebirth thing is much more nasty and possible than you ever thought, okay.
It’s very possible. If you can see an arm now, you can see a leg later, forget it, okay. The
reason you’re seeing the arm is the same reason you’ll see a leg later. And that’s ‘cos
something is forcing you to organise this. This is just colours and shapes. People who get
Alzheimer’s start to lose the ability to organise information. Their karma is wearing out so
their cognitive ability, they’re losing it.
That’s just karma getting old, their karma getting old, okay.
So you don’t, you can get out of this problem. You can change it. You see what I mean.
There’s raw data out there. There’s a big cylinder and five small cylinders. That’s all that’s
out there. And then my mind is making me see it as a hand and an arm, okay.
And that karma to enjoy seeing it that way is wearing out. Why?
Because I’m seeing it that way.
All energy expended is lost. For me to see it for five minutes cost me five times sixty times
sixty-five karmas. I don’t know. Michael more probably figured it out already; eighteen
thousand karmas or something. Eighteen thousand good deeds, basically, for me to see this
arm go on for five minutes, okay. And they wear out and that’s why it’s five minutes older at
the end, okay.
They wear out by experiencing them. It’s like driving a car. As you sit in it, it’s wearing out.
It’s not like the car broke on the third year, fourth day, fifth hour. The cat started breaking
when you sat in it at the dealer before you bought it, it was getting old, okay.
Yes, you have a question. [student]
Why does karma wear out instead of getting more?
It’s like any other energy in the world. It wears out. It gives its effect and by giving its effect
it wears out.
You hit a billiard ball, think of a billiard ball, and you impart a certain amount of energy and
then the friction it has against the felt, the energy drains out there, and then the billiard ball
stops. So the energy being transferred to the top of the table is like living and every moment
you live you’re using up that energy. And then the energy stops.
[student] Impressions work like seeds. Impressions work like oak seeds or, what do you
call, acorns. And they give their fruit and then they die. You know what I mean.
And that’s what’s happening.
In Buddhism, it’s very interesting, the seed is destroyed by the production of the result, you
see what I mean. If you want to apply it to a human, you are destroyed by your birth, okay.
Yeah. [student]
Yeah great, it’s a great question. It’s a famous Buddhist debate. The lower three schools say
we don’t understand [student] yeah, yeah, that’s a good question.
You have the karma to see it work. You see what I mean. That’s all, you know.
I think what I want to say there just to use it as an excuse [student] yeah, oh some schools say
that.
Let’s say this. Let’s talk about the mind for example, the functioning of the mind, okay.
How do you explain the thing with the parts about the mind?
And now, by the way, we’re gong the way I want to go, okay. We’re going in the direction
that this talk is supposed to go so you can do your homework and all that. [laughter]
There’s raw data out there called ‘blue cylinder’ and ‘white cylinder’, right, part of cylinder.
Two parts and you think of them as a ‘pen’. Your past karma forces you to think of them as a
pen, okay. And that’s a static object. That’s not a functioning thing yet, you know. It’s not
moving, it’s not drawing. It’s just as a static image, as a frozen image it’s easy to see that, you
know, I think of it as a pen.
What about things that move? Which is, functioning question. What about your own mind?
Which is actually where Master Shantideva goes next.
Does your own mind work the same way as the pen?
The answer is yes because everything works the same way as the pen [laughs], okay.
How? What are the parts?
Yeah, moments of consciousness, okay.
The classic argument in Buddhism is that your mind is working the same way as this pen.
Well a pen is easy: you got a top and a bottom and I take that raw data and I see it as a pen.
But my mind? How does that work?
You have moments of feelings. Like, hook into your feelings right now. They’re going like
this, okay: I feel good, I feel bad, I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m pretty good, oh my knees hurt, my
stomach’s empty, oh I feel good, oh there’s that person I like, there’s that person I don’t like,
you know. [laughter]
And your mind is like, no, if you drew it, it would be like this and like that you know. And
it’s going through feelings: physical, mental, good, bad, physical good, physical bad, mental
good, mental bad, physical good, physical bad. And you’re having these momentary
impressions. We say sixty-five per finger snap.
They are not discrete thoughts. They are impressions. And every time I snap my fingers you
have sixty-five.
They run so fast that it looks like what is going on?
Time itself, okay.
They move so fast that it gives you, they’re just like film squares, you know, what do you
call, frames of film. And they’re moving so fast that it looks like time is moving, okay.
So, take a piece of your mind, you know, take how you felt for the last three seconds. Little
bit too warm, little bit too cool, felt neutral, you know. Just that. And you take that segment
or that chunk and your mind says ‘feelings’. Those are my feelings for the last three seconds.
It’s a, three pieces, in the way that this is two pieces and your karma forces you to see those
three pieces of mind stream, three moments in your mind stream, your karma forces you to
have a certain impression of that.
Let’s say it was three seconds of a bad feeling or something, okay. That’s an object. That’s a
functioning object. It’s a bad feeling that came and went, okay.
It lasted for three seconds.
Those three seconds of consciousness are the parts in the way that this is the parts of a static
thing, okay.
So get used to it. Your mind is doing the same thing with your mind that it’s doing with this
pen, okay.
Your thoughts and your feelings are also a projection of your mind onto pieces of your mind,
moments of your mind stream. It’s very profound.
We’re not just talking about, oh, do you like this pen, do you not like this pen, you know.
Oh, that’s due to your past karma forcing you to see it a certain way.
That’s true.
Your own thought processes, your own feelings, your own emotions, your own intelligence
or dumbness, is something forced on you by your past karma.
You are watching your mind and you are forced to see your mind in a certain way. You are
laying an overlay on your mind in the same way you’re doing this pen. Okay.
That’s, by the way, the clue to {sum juk}. What’s{sum juk}?
tantric Buddhahood, okay. Tell you a secret, tell you a secret, okay. {sum juk}, Okay. They
don’t call it ‘bodhi’. They don’t call it {sangye} in tantra.
They call it sum juk}. {sum juk} means, the union of the two, okay.
What’s the union, I mean, tantra’s big on union, what’s the union of the two here?
{sak me gi lu}. Say {sak me gi lu}[repeat] {tok me gi sem}[repeat], which means, immaculate
body and a mind free of all perceptions of self-existence, okay. So those two things together
are Buddhahood.
If you get a mind that can’t see things as self-existent anymore and you get a body which
you’ve cleaned out the channels like a, what do you call that stuff, ‘draino’ or ‘plumber’s
helper’, okay. I’m not kidding.
And then you grow these liquid crystal parts. You see what I mean. Seriously. That’s the
process.
So that’s the process of how you become a Buddha in this lifetime. Okay.
So, what I’m saying is, what makes your physical body is a projection onto the parts of the
body.
What makes your mind perfect is also a projection onto moments of your mind. Okay. It’s
the same as the pen thing.
We’re gonna cancel the word ‘prajnaparamita’. We’re changing it to ‘the pen thing’, okay.
So, no, really, make a little connection in your mind.
Next time you hear ‘prajnaparamita’, think the pen thing, ‘cos that’s really what it’s all about.
And I’m not talking some BS theory, you know, oh, this is Madhyamika, this is Mind- Only,
this is Sautrantika, this is Abhidharma. Who cares? You can use this, okay.
You can take this all the way to the bank. Okay.
You’re being forced to see a pen because there’s pieces of something, that your mind forces
you to see as a pen. You’re being forced to see an arm because there’s pieces of an arm that,
your mind is forcing you to think of as an arm.
And you were unhappy today because you had karma forcing you to perceive different
moments of your mind as unhappy.
So if you just took care of your karma, if you kept your book six times a day, {tundruk},
where is that, {tundruk}. Don’t miss {tundruk}, okay. Right. That’s {tundruk}, okay. It’s
secret spelling. [laughter]
You, by the way, if you’ve had any kind of Vajrayogini initiation and even if you’ve had
another Annutarayoga initiation, I bet Rinpoche would let you in but you can’t miss these
classes, okay, got to come to these classes.
This is all about six times a day, checking your mind, checking your vows, checking how
you’re thinking, checking how you’re living; writing it down six times a day, okay.
If you continue to do that, then you’re putting seeds in your mind to see things differently.
You see what I mean.
Not just the world around you but what?
Your own mind, you see. We’re talking emptiness of your mind and the emptiness of your
body. We’re talking two different emptinesses.
Your body is just a bunch of parts, therefore, if you had a different karma you could see those
parts as a tantric deity, Vajrayogini. Okay.
All the guys have to throw out their suits and go buy some silk robes and stuff like that,
okay. That’s your body, okay.
And your mind, the same principle applies to your mind. Three moments of consciousness
and those pieces are being organised into a thing called the Buddha’s omniscience. Why?
Mr Karma is still calling the shots, okay. Karma is forcing you to see it that way, okay, and
don’t forget it. That’s the whole reason to talk about parts and all this junk, okay.
What’s dependent origination mean?
Things come from causes. Oh, come on, farmers know that, okay. That’s the lowest school.
Let’s talk big time.
Dependent origination in the highest school of Buddhism means parts appear to you, raw
data appears to you and your karma makes you see it in a certain way. And that’s dependent
origination. That’s all. Okay.
And nothing is not that way; and that’s emptiness.
I’ll say it again. Nothing is not that way. And that’s, emptiness. There’s not anything,
physical or mental or emotional or anything about your world which is not created by your
karma forcing you to see pieces in a certain way.
Your karma is forcing you to organise pieces in a certain way.
By the way, those of you who are gonna ask this question, there are Godstow programs
scheduled for this weekend. They’ll be probably be held in New York on Saturday,
shortened onto Saturday [announcements]
I’ll take questions ‘cos I think it’s important. Go ahead. [student]
Oh, oh, he said, what’s the cylinder in the mind part. It’s the combination of the three
moments of consciousness. It’s the stream of consciousness.
It’s the combination of the three moments, which we call, ‘stream of consciousness’, yeah. It’s
the continuation of consciousness over three moments.
That’s what we call {dak shi}. {dak shi}means, the basis of description, meaning, the thing
you’re gonna call ‘my mind’, okay.
So all the parts together is what we call the thing to be named and then your mind thinks of it
as your mind and therefore you have a mind.
I just point that out not because it’s, oh, isn’t it cool, you know, you’re doing the same thing
with your mind that you’re doing with the pen.
That’s not the point. This is the key to be happy.
You know, why is it that my mind goes from happiness to sadness two thousand, three
thousand times every hour? It’s driving me crazy. I’m tired of it.
You know, can’t we just have a stream of happy?
Yeah. You got to fix the right karma. It is also a projection. It is also just a projection in the
same way that the pen is.
It could have been better. You didn’t have to be here. If you just would have kept your
book, {tundruk}, okay.
If you keep your book and know the vows well it’s very powerful. Rinpoche’s the highest
holder of this knowledge in the world, so, you know, don’t miss those classes. Okay. Yeah.
[student]
It’s a good question, okay.
She said, I heard when you attained enlightenment you exhausted your karma.
It’s just a semantic thing, okay, very frankly. No, and it’s important to know. We don’t say
the Buddha’s paradise is being forced on him, that perception is being forced on Lord Buddha
because of his really good karma in the past.
We don’t use that word. We use the ‘two collections’, {gewa di yi gewa kun sonam yeshe
tsok sok shing, sonam yeshe lejung way..}. You pray every night when we finish this class.
You use the words of arya Nagarjuna to say, may all beings collect the collection of merit and
wisdom. You see what I mean.
And at the point where you are collecting karma intelligently, meaning you understand this
process, and you can do it tonight, you see what I mean.
If you start doing good deeds tonight because you finally understood why karma works, oh,
I plant something in my head by perceiving myself giving Pelma a pen because I know she is
a pen addict. And, you know, I watch my hand go out, I watch the pen drop, I watch her
hand grab it. I’ve just done an act of giving.
What’s the difference between an act of giving and the perfection of giving?
Is it the quantity? Do you have to give five thousand pens? I mean, that’s a common
mistake. That’s a common misperception.
Can I be a housewife and still achieve enlightenment or do I have to become Mother
Theresa?
The perfection is done in your mind, okay. The difference is just in your mind.
You can be anything and get enlightened, okay. It doesn’t matter.
I see myself give the pen but now I do it with perfect wisdom. The pen thing, you know.
Hey, I’m planting a thing in my mind because of that and in my Buddha paradise I’ll always
have enough pens, you know what I mean, because my mind will make me see that. Then
you’re not collecting karma anymore. We call that the collection of merit. We don’t call it
karma anymore.
We don’t say, good karma is stupid, you see. Good karma is done because your mom told
you to or the government tells you to or the lae tells you to or you believe the guy so you do
it.
And the perfection of giving is done with a knowledge of emptiness. If I give this thing to
Pelma, you know, she’s gonna get a big smile on her face, and I’ll get this good karma and
then I’ll never have a shortage of pens. And I know that. I understand that. And I’m glad
for that. And I dedicate it, you know, to all beings’ happiness. And then you’ve just done
the perfection of giving.
You see, what is it that distinguishes a bodhisattva’s giving from other people’s giving?
It’s just that. It’s just that.
I’m giving it to her. I see myself give it to her. That’s the best pen I have. It’s all the pens I
have right now. It’s not a big deal. It’s the old woman’s penny in the Bible.
You know, I gave her what I could and I understand I just planted a seed in my mind and I’ll
have lots of stuff later and I’ll use it to help other living beings.
And, ultimately, it will get me enlightened and then I’ll really be able to help other people.
And if those thoughts run through your mind with a piece of bread or half an old bagel,
[laughs] it doesn’t matter, okay.
You’ve just done the perfection of giving and we don’t call that karma anymore. It’s called
consciously collecting merit and wisdom, okay.
Yeah. [student] Yeah. [student]
Oh, it’s a great question, yeah. What about the billiard ball thing, right. So I only gave her
one pen, you know.
So how’s it gonna make a Buddha paradise? Buddha paradise has to go, (a) it has to go on
forever, (b) it has to cover all things, you know.
Like, if I’m just perceiving half the people in this room as tantric angels and not all of them,
what’s the use? That’s not a Buddha paradise. That’s just like a good place. You see what I
mean? Like, it has to cover everybody in this room.
That is accomplished by dedicating it to all living beings the moment you give it. Okay.
That coverage to a hundred percent of my world in the future is accomplished by thinking I
dedicate this to every living creature.
If it’s dedicated to two or three you get that kind of result. If it’s dedicated to everybody you
get that kind of result.
So that’s the thing. Now how do you make it go on forever?
You just keep re-investing, you see. It’s just total reinvestment. Okay, I’m gonna get two
pens back tomorrow, I’ll give those away. Four pens the next day, I’ll give those away.
Sixteen the next day, I’ll give those away. See what I mean.
You’re just constantly reinvesting the, it never wears out. It can’t wear out, you see. It’s
cool. ‘Cos you’re always, Buddhas’ don’t stop practising the perfection of giving when they
hit their Buddha paradise. They keep doing it, perfectly and it just snowballs. It’s a snowball
effect. It’s very cool. It’s a snowball effect. They consciously reinvest it. [student]
Yeah, they have to or it would end, okay. Yeah. [student]
That cycle of samsara is a downward cycle. This is an upward cycle. Okay. It’s still a cycle.
It’s still a self-perpetuating cycle. You can either go on a downward ride or an upward ride.
You know what I mean.
The important thing is the quantity of people you think about when you do it, okay.
Yeah [student] To what? [student] Yeah. [student] Yeah. Ah, sure, yeah, yeah, functioning
thin we’re gonna talk about next class, actually, two classes from now. It comes up in logic,
okay. {..ngupa tsennyi} means the definition of a thing is something that does something.
Okay.
Yeah. [student]
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds selfish. I mean, it very much strikes the Judaic- Christian background
especially, if you say, hey give Pelma a pen, you’re gonna get sixteen back in three days, you
know what I mean.
And then it seems like ignoble. It doesn’t seem very noble. Hey, in Buddhism, you can have
your cake and eat it too.
And just forget that old thing, you know. You can have your cake and eat it too, meaning,
you can’t avoid being successful if you’re a Dharma person. You can’t avoid being happy all
the time. You can’t avoid being surrounded by beautiful people all the time. You can’t avoid
it, okay.
If you’re practising well, you’re gonna be physically prosperous, you’re gonn abe healthy,
you’re gonna be happy, you’re gonna be emotionally stable, you’re gonna be surrounded by
beautiful people.
You can’t avoid it if you’re practising well. You see what I mean?
And the highest stages of Buddhist practice are quite pleasant. Period. Okay. [laughs]
[laughter] No, it’s not like you have to beat yourself or something like that.
It doesn’t work that way, okay.
The better your practice gets the more blissful it is. And the highest practices are the most
blissful practices. Period.
That’s the way it works because you are purifying your world. You are purifying your life.
And there’s no contradiction.
Of course, in the back of your mind, you have to have, you know, I want to reach total
happiness to help other people.
But there’s no contradiction between reaching total happiness, the best thing you could do for
other people is to reach total happiness. Got it?
You see, you are sworn, when you took your bodhisattva vows, you swore to reach total
happiness to help other people, you know.
It’s a blissful path to bliss. You know what I mean.
And don’t get in this mood that you have to sacrifice your happiness so that other people can
be happy. That’s not true at all, you know.
[student] It’s a good question. He says, I understand all that, but should I focus on helping
other people or helping myself?
What’s the definition of bodhichitta?
{…}, I forget the rest. {..}, something like that. Anyway, the long definition is, you focus on
other beings and wish to help them and then your second focus, equal focus, is to reach total
bliss for yourself so that you can help them. You see what I mean.
So it’s actually, it’s called {..lo}, which means the ‘state of mind with two focuses’ is the
definition of bodhichitta, you know. So, yeah, it’s both.
You’re thinking, I want to perfect myself so I can help other people. You know what I
mean. And, frankly, everyday that goes by that you’re practising well, everything gets
increasingly blissful. You know what I mean. And there’s a bodhisattva vow against what?
It’s called, thinking that you have to stay alone or something like that. Thinking that you
have to stay in samsara. It’s a myth and you break a bodhisattva vow if you think that the
role of a bodhisattva is to suffer while other people get enlightened or something like that, to
stay suffering while other people get enlightened.
That’s not what the book meant. And it is so wrong that there’s a bodhisattva vow against it,
okay.
Thinking that, you know, what are you gonna delay your Buddhahood to help other people?
Yeah, yeah, I can do better with one lousy Michael Roach than with ten million emanations
of a holy angel. Yeah, I’d better wait. You know what I mean. Come on.
That’s just a old Dharma myth, okay.
You have to get yourself enlightened then you can emanate about a billion bodies. Why
would you want to delay that, you see what I mean? That’s your job. That’s what you’re
supposed to do, okay.
Yeah. [student] Oh, two bodhisattva’s [unclear] fighting. [laughter] [laughs]
[student] Yeah, good, yeah, yeah, I’m glad you brought it up. This is what I’m really talking
about and the sergeant’s telling me you have to [unclear]
You should be asking what Brook’s is asking. So, what about the raw data, you see? What
about the cylinder? Okay. What about that?
You keep calling it raw data. You keep saying these two things are appearing to you. Now
what about the cylinder? Does the same rule apply to the cylinder?
Absolutely. Everything’s like that. Okay. Oh, one of the parts of the cylinder; let’s talk
about the top of the cylinder. You look at the top of the top and the bottom of the top, your
mind puts them together, your karma makes you call it ‘top’, okay. It’s infinite. It’s an
infinite regression, okay.
And you look at the bottom of the top and your mind looks at the top of the bottom of the
top and the bottom of the bottom of the top and your mind puts those two together and calls
it ‘bottom of a top of a pen’, okay.
It’s one way to establish emptiness to keep going down, I call it onion layers, and you’re
looking for something which is not a product that your mind has made from a couple of
pieces. And you never find an end. There is no end.
And that’s one of the ways to see emptiness.
[student] Okay. [student] Yeah. [student] Yeah, I mean, it’s a common question and it’s,
like, half your homework questions are like that.
The fact that, do you know how you use a microscope and you go down a level, like, you’re
grading diamonds with a microscope. You go down to the middle of the diamond and look
for spots. Then you come back up to the top of the diamond and look for spots.
So when you’re focussing on the pen, the two pieces together, the cylinder is the raw data.
When you’re focussing on the cylinder, the two pieces of the cylinder are the raw data.
That raw data, unexamined, exists out there and that’s a principle of Madhyamika. You have
to understand that. There is raw data. I am perceiving two pieces of a pen and my mind is
organising them into a pen, okay.
And at that point that you say what is the emptiness of the pen, this is raw data and it’s a
priori and it’s assumed and it exists there, okay.
Then when you go down another microscope level and look at the cylinder, it’s just two
pieces of a cylinder being organised intoa cylinder by whose mind? Both the dog and the
human but not by a blind person ‘cos they don’t have the karma. You see what I mean. It’s
very interesting.
You’re not blind because you don’t have the karma. Sorry. You don’t not have the karma
because you’re blind, you don’t have the karma because you’re blind. You don’t have the
[laughter] you know what I mean.
You’re not a dog [laughter]. I’ll say it. I got it now. You don’t see this as a chewy toy
because you’re a dog, you’re a dog because you see it as a chewy toy. And get used to that.
That’s profound.
You don’t see this as a pen because you’re a human. You’re a human because you se it as a
pen. You see what I mean. And that’s very profound. You see what I mean.
That means everything is possible. Emptiness makes everything possible.
I’ll take one more question and then I think you guys need to look into the pieces of the
refreshments, okay.
Yeah. [student] Oh, man, I was afraid somebody would ask me that. [laughter]
Does even Buddha do that?
Yeah, even Buddha does that. But there’s one big difference. They are in no way fooled by
the process. They understand what they’re doing as they’re doing it, okay. They understand
totally what’s happening while it’s happening, okay, big difference.
The benchmark of being an ignorant living being who’s still suffering is that you’re not
aware of it.
It takes like a whole hour to get you to see it that way just for a second and then you lose it
again. And then, the person who takes the refreshments before you do is like, [laughter] you
see what I mean? You know, you forget all this projection stuff. [laughter] No, you forget
that you’re creating them.
They’re totally your creation. How do you get rid of this person?
Share. Share with people. And you can’t hold that for more than a few minutes and then
you lose it. You see what I mean.

You’ll lose it by the time you get back there. Okay.
Anyway, the goal is to keep it in mind all the time. And then, the real way to get rid of your
problems, is not to shoot people or argue with them or try to convince them. It’s to do the
opposite kind of behaviour. That’s all.
If you have a problem with people being stingy on you, it’s because you’re not sharing
enough.
If you have a problem with irritating people around you, it’s because you’re irritating to
others. Okay.
And it doesn’t matter what you say to them or don’t say to them, ‘cos it won’t fix it, okay.
That’s all.
Alright, have some refreshments. See you in awhile.
[cut]
[end side A]
[side B]
To repeat that, if you are, we’re gonna start having interviews [announcement re plans during
retreat]
I’ve agreed that to consider teaching the secret teachings to people who have finished the
eighteen courses. I think it’s very hard to get through the eighteen courses and not be a
worthy vessel for the secret teachings, okay. Although it’s conceivable, so I’m saying, you
know, but that’s the general idea, that intellectually, I think you have to cover four areas.
One is intellectual, so that’s the courses. You have to try to work on those. [course
arrangements]
So, that’s to me, your intellectual life is covered like that. You need it, okay.
You hear about all these big mystics who went into deep meditation and saw emptiness, blah,
blah, blah, you know. [unclear] Milarepa went up into a cave. Do you know how old he
was when he went? I like it. [laughter] Forty-seven, which will be my age when I start my
three year retreat. [laughter]
No, what I’m saying, he studied his ass off before that and that’s why he had such a good
retreat, okay.
And you have to have that. Your skull is like wood and it just penetrates slowly. You have
to hear it again and again. You have to hear it year after year. And it doesn’t matter if you
understood what I said tonight about the emptiness of the pen or something. You have to
hear it hundreds of times and then it just goes a little deeper and deeper.
There’s an intellectual process and then there’s a spiritual process. And the second one takes
longer.
In the monastery we’re encouraged to go sit in classes, like, when I was at the fifteen year old
level, right, I was encouraged to sit in Madhyamika classes which were about nine years
ahead of me. It’s like being an eighth grader and going sitting in a Freshman college class.
Oh, it’s worse, like a graduate school class.
And you don’t know what’s going on.
And they say in the monastery you just sit there and absorb it, you know. And you just sit
there and you listen. You hear the words flying around and you hear them arguing these
concepts and you have no idea what they’re talking about.
Eight years later, you go into that class and suddenly it all bursts on you. You see what I
mean.
So the whole process of spiritual realisations requires study at the beginning and you can’t
get out of it. And don’t say, the Buddha said it over and over again.
The Dalai Lama said it, where was that? Washington DC. Chee, where’s Chee? Yeah,
remember, He said, - he helped organise it.
It was like, He said, I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do: study, study, study, study, study.
You know what I mean. And I was like that, you know. [laughter] So you have to. The
first thing is that, okay.
That’s the first thing you have to take care of during the three years.
Second thing is, yeah. [student]
Don’t mind if you do them on your own, okay. I personally, the position of the lineage is
that it’s much more powerful to get it from a human being, okay.
So if there’s any way you can be in New York to get it from a human being, or Perth,
Australia, or where’s the other places? I don’t know.
West Coast of Australia, East coast, Melbourne. Anyway, there’ll be different places in the
world they’ll be going on. But there’s a blessing to the human being speaking it that can’t be
replaced by tapes and notebooks. Those are emergency measures for people in Iowa, okay.
[laughter]
The last three courses you must take from a human being or I won’t consider teaching you
tantra, okay. The last three review courses you have to take from a human being, okay.
Second thing you need is daily practice, obviously. You have to keep up at least an hour of
meditation every day.
And you have to keep up your book.
And I will not consider teaching tantra subjects to a person who has not maintained their
book for three years.
Now can you miss some days?
You know you’re going to miss some days. I miss days.
Can you miss a month?
You probably will miss a month.
But if it’s like what we call, what’s it called? There’s a word for it. I forgot. Anyway,
dissing the teaching, you know what I mean, like, if you’re actively saying this is stupid and
I refuse to do it or something like that. Then, I refuse to teach you tantra. Period. Okay.
You have to respect that practice.
And it’s also a requirement after you take tantric teachings. So it’s especially, if you break it
after you take the teachings you go to vajra hell instead of just normal hell, okay.
So it’s up to you.
Yeah. [student]
Where do you keep all those books?
What I do is I collect, the students give them to me. I spread them around my room.
[laughter] people sneak in and read them thinking it’s mine. And I have the most interesting
conversations with people. I write in Russian and Tibetan, so if it’s not like that you’re
reading someone else’s book. [laughs] Okay.
I usually, personally, I like to keep them. And the I go back, like, I started in eighty-six or
something like that, and I go back and I see if I still have a problem or I don’t have a
problem. You know what I mean. So I think they are useful for that. You know what I
mean. But, you know, if it looks like a problem or something, throw them away. Throw
them in a river or an ocean or a lake is a custom or burn them is a custom, okay.
So that’s a book and a daily practice, okay.



Then thirdly, you have to be doing some kind of retreat.
The students that have Vajrayogini I would like to request that you try to do two tantric
retreats a year called {lerung}. And those take four, five weeks.
If you can’t d that because of your work schedule or something like that then at least one
good retreat a year of four to five weeks. And you work it out, okay. It’s your life. And if
you really want to you can work it out, okay, with a little work.
Once you’ve done one or two you realise that people don’t miss you so much. [laughs] You
know, you thought you were indispensable to your boss or your wife or your dog and turns
out they do quite well without you. Kind of discouraging, actually. And then it turns out
you really can accommodate it.
The first one I ever did when I was working in this big corporation was very difficult. It was
an emotional struggle with all my workers and all my bosses.
The second one was a little less emotional. And then the third and fourth, you know, they
just call me up. I remember getting out in [unclear], Arizona, and calling up to do the HMO
plans, you know, and it was fine. And everyone was, like, oh, you did one of those retreats,
that’s cool, you know.
Because you come back a much better person, and you actually make much more money,
you know. I made millions more dollars for my boss after those retreats that before because
your mind is totally powerful after that.
So, they won’t mind, okay. Will they share it with you? That depends on what you did in
retreat.
The last thing, and I want to emphasise it, that I expect and I that I hope you will do, you
have to do some kind of service of other people, okay.
People ask me, you know, I went to school with Khen Rinppoche with twenty,thirty, forty
other people, you know. Now I can debate. I’m a geshe. I really can debate anyone in the
monastery for five, six hours at a time in Tibetan. And I can read any text out of hundreds of
thousands of texts. I can just pick it up and it’s like a newspaper.
And that’s greatly to do with the service of me lama, you know. And I think the difference is
serving your lama and serving other people. And I count it as the same thing, you know.
So the fourth thing I really encourage you to do during the three years is find some way to
serve other people, you know, and serve your lama if you have a lama, okay, if you have a
person you consider your root lama. But there’s nothing more powerful. And it’s really, in
my mind, the same thing, you know. When I was serving Khen Rinpoche, built his house,
you know, taught him English, fixed his teeth, got his eye glasses, you know, things like that,
did his taxes [laughs] and stuff like that. Just stuff that helps, cooked for him for eight years
straight, every meal, okay.
And that’s the kind of stuff. Also we had a program and still have a program where we
helped all the old Mongolian people out in New Jersey.
So we were at Social Security once a week, we did all the doctors appointments, translated
for them, did all the nursing home placements, you know. People would just come to the
temple, we would place them in a nursing home. We would do all that work for people.
Diabetics, we would go and shoot them up in the morning [laughs] you know. Really. I
mean, that was my day and that was the kind of day, you know. Drive anybody who needs
it to shop or something like that.
So I encourage you. I don’t think that you can get really heavy spiritual results if you don’t
have number four also.
We don’t have here a normal, a steady program of that kind of thing. It’s mostly people
doing it who have an urge to do it.
Like, Pelma is doing a lot of prison work and outreach work for people in mental institutions
and stuff like that. And she’s doing a lot of that work. And people are doing it out of instinct
but I urge you. Your study and your meditation and your retreats will take off if you do
some kind of service of other people, okay.
So I urge you to do that and maybe try to organise it better among our group, you know, so
that, like, people are doing the prison work together. Like, the correspondence course or
something like that.
Something to help other people, something , where you volunteer couple of hours a week to
help somebody.
And that is to serve your lama. See what I mean. That is the service of your lama. So I
count service of beings and service of your lama together, as number four.
That’s the fourth thing you should be doing during the three years.
As far as Arizona, [ announcement ]
We’ll do a prayer.
The Asian Classics Institute
Course XVIII: Great Ideas in Buddhism