ACI 7 «Обеты бодхисаттвы», занятие 1

Class One: Overview of the Course



...to hear it in Tibetan, it's a blessing to hear it, a lot of people end up moving from this class
to the Tibetan class, you might have to learn Tibetan, you probably will end up learning
Tibetan. I just ask you to repeat it in Tibetan, it's good for you, it's a blessing, and then I'll
explain it in English. Quiz, homework, everything else is in English, it's good to know, it's
good to hear it.

So first say {dukngel} [repeat] {kyi} [repeat] {dukngel} [repeat]. Don't be shy, okay, when I ask
you to say it, just give it some oomph. {dukngel} [repeat] {kyi} [repeat] {dukngel} [repeat].
{dukngel} means suffering.

[silence]

{dukngel} means suffering, {kyi} means of. This is the first of three different kinds of suffering
that we have. This is the first of three kinds of suffering that you and I have. It's called
suffering of suffering. Suffering of suffering means outright suffering, obvious suffering.
What's an example?

[student: Back-pain]

Yeah, in fact that's what the scripture says, 2,500 years ago, apparently they had the same
problem, it's back pain, a pain in your back, backache, or headache, or anxiety attack at
work, anger, ok, upset, hurt someone in a relationship, those are all suffering of suffering.
Mental or physical suffering, mental or physical suffering, just straight, obvious suffering,
outright suffering. We don't have it all day long, unless you have an illness or something or
unless you're very depressed. You don't get this all day long. You have it on and off. You
have your healthy days. Maybe once a month you get seriously ill, then you get better or
everybody has some little illness somewhere in their body. You look normal, but you know,
and everybody in this room probably has something, and mentally we all know, we all have
suffering throughout the day, on and off, not all day long.

[student: What about people who are terminally ill?]

They have it all day long. [laughs]

[laughter]

[student: Would they be included in this?]

Yeah. That's the first kind of suffering.
[silence]

Say {guruway} [repeat] {{dukngel} [repeat],{guruway} [repeat] {{dukngel} [repeat]. Okay,
guruway means change; {dukngel} means what?

[students: suffering]

this little "y" means .... by the way, Tibetan order and English order are opposites... Tibetan
you read from the back. This is the suffering of change, ok? In the scriptures it is defined as
any kind of pleasure that you and I can have. Any impure kind of pleasure, mental or
physical. Any impure kind of pleasure. Impure means this: any kind of pleasure you or I
can have always ends on a sour note, any kind of pleasure that you or I can have always
screws up at the end. I'd give examples, but you don't need them. Any time you have a
career, at the end of the career either you get old and die, or they fire you, [laughter] or
whatever, but it always ends on a bad note.

Always. Everybody. You have a relationship, either you get divorced or separated, or one
of the partners dies, and that's the end of it. There is no other choice, there is no other
ending. It's always like that. Any pleasure you can count, ok, your health, your own health,
or if you are handsome or beautiful, you will lose it, must lose it, you will lose it, you know,
strong, handsome, beautiful, whatever, you will lose it. Attached to every pleasant thing we
ever experience is a lousy ending. You cannot experience a pleasure in this life, in our
present condition, that does not deteriorate at the end. So Buddhism says that's not a real
pleasure. If it must be attached to destruction or deterioration at the end, then it's not a, not a,
you have to count it as suffering. It looks like...nice. They call it honey on a razor blade.

Licking honey off a razor blade. And I mean it tastes good for a few seconds, but then you
feel the cut. Behind every honey pleasure that we can experience is pain, it's waiting behind
the scenes. It will always come out at the end. We cannot experience anything else. If you
have any pleasure that seems to be going on for a while, don't worry, it will end, [laughs] it
will deteriorate, and it will bring you lots of suffering when it does, that's the nature of our
life. That has a lot to do, everything to do with the cause of it, the cause of your pleasure, the
cause of having anything nice happen in this body, which, according to Buddhism you can
prove it, it takes a few courses, the older people went through that is your past deeds, is your
past karma, what you planted in your mind.

That always wears out, the cause always wears out. You did a good deed, you're going to
get pleasure from it, you helped somebody, you were nice to somebody, you didn't get
angry when you should have gotten angry, you did something good. As a result of that, in
the future you have some kind of pleasure, pleasant event, physical or mental. And then,
when that power runs out, when the power of that karma runs out which actually runs out in
your own mind you perceive that as suffering, it always ends up as suffering. That's the
nature of any kind of pleasure we can have. That's where those pleasures comes from and
that's the end of all of them. Any decent thing that's happening in your life now, has a bad
ending attached to it. And that's the second type of suffering.
Suffering number 3, last one. Say {kabha} [repeat] {dyujegee} [repeat] {dukngel} [repeat].
What's {dukngel} mean?

[Students: suffering]

{ki} is of. And {kaba dyujee} roughly means pervasive. This is called pervasive suffering.
Pervasive suffering means it covers everybody. There are realms in the universe which you
and I cannot see where beings are living a pretty pleasant existence, more pleasant that we
do, you know, they're called like pleasure realms, you get there by being a very good person
in one life.

So they don't have backaches and things like that, but they do have pervasive suffering.
Pervasive suffering means it spreads through all the realms. It doesn't matter whether you're
on this planet or whether you're in another realm where beings are having a better time, they
still must get old and die. The nature of their body, the nature of their whole existence, their
whole being, is to get old and die. And that's the third kind of suffering. So it's called
pervasive suffering but what it refers to is the condition that you and I have that we must get
old and die and that we are getting old every moment. This suffering begins when the sperm
of your father hits the egg of your mother. It begins at conception. Aging and dying starts at
that moment. The first moment of your life you begin to end. That's the third kind of
suffering.

[student: When you say it's spread all around, does that include the realm of the gods...?]

Yeah, and hell realms, but it does not mean the Buddha realm. I don't mean to say that.
Buddhas are outside of this whole thing. They don't any of these kinds of suffering. So when
I say higher realms, I'm talking about, there are certain other realms where there are certain
kinds of happy beings that are not like us. They don't have any big problems during their
lives, they have a good time their whole life, then in the end they have great suffering, they
die and they move down to a different realm. That's what pervasive means here. Pervasive
means it covers all the realms.

Any kind of life in the universe, unless it's enlightened, is suffering this way, getting old and
dying.

[student: Does everybody get to this realm? Do we have to go there or...?]

Indirectly, we've been there trillions of times, countless times.

[student: So how we you stop that? I'm not talking about this one, the other one...]

Reach enlightenment.

[student: How do you get out of it?]
You just have to go through it. You go through it and then you reach the end and you die.
Then you come down to a lower realm.

[student: How do you get there? [unclear]]

You reach there by being extremely good in your life. And it's considered a kind of suffering
because they also get old and die. It's not a desirable place.

[student: [unclear]]

No. It's better to be a human because we have a good mix of suffering and pleasure.

[student: So we don't want to be good, because....]

Not that kind of good. We want to be good and reach buddhahood, Nirvana. Seriously it's
true that we don't want to be good and go to that place and waste time. That's true.

[student: What kind of good do you have to do to get there?

Mainly meditation, deep states of unthinking meditation. It's one of the problems of bad
meditation.

[student: Why?]

When you're in deep meditation you can't do anything wrong.

[laughter]

Okay. All right, those are the three kinds of suffering. They say that every experience that
you and I have, if you cover all the sufferings that you have and the pleasures that you have,
physical and mental, that covers everything. What it means is that everything about your life
is suffering.

You don't have any other kind of experience. What it means is that suffering is suffering and
pleasure is suffering too. All the good things that happen to you are lousy because they're
always attached to a lousy ending. And no one would argue that the honey on a razor blade
is a good thing...it cuts your mouth.

[student: Not everything has to have a bad ending....]

Example?

[student: Well, I could go through a change and have acceptance of it, I don't have to react so
that it has a bad ending.]

We had this debate in California about a month ago. We had a big question during the class:
is the goal of Buddhism to reach a state of equanimity where you can put up with any kind of
crap that happens to you in life? Is that the goal? Because a lot of people if you really
question them, in the end... Can somebody answer the door? Banzai, can you check the
door? Just check the door and see if there's anyone there. Is that the goal of Buddhism? Is
that the state where you have total equanimity, and whatever bad things happen to you in
this life, you can accept, some kind of embracing of it, not get upset, turn it into sort of a
good thing, and sort of absorb it in a kung fu way. [laughter] Is that the goal of Buddhism?

And I was in a class of 20 year students. These were people who had been studying for 20
years. And I said, is that the goal? And we really discussed it seriously, we really had a
good discussion and people weren't really sure. They talked about it, and we thrashed it out.
And it's not the goal. The goal is to reach a realm or place, it's not where you put up with
bad things, but where they don't even occur. You stop the causes of suffering. Those are the
Four Noble Truths, the first thing the Buddha taught. The holiday was last Monday night.

That was the anniversary of this teaching, 2500 years ago. And he said: the goal of Buddhist
practice is not to put up with a lousy life, it's to remove the lousy life, it's to reach a higher
kind of life, a higher kind of existence. So that's a common sort of question. It seems like
from all the pictures you've seen, Buddhist masters put up with a lousy life, with some sort of
equanimity. It's much more radical than that. If you practice Buddhism properly, you
actually change reality. Reality changes. That's the goal. You can reach a place that doesn't
have any of those three, and that's the goal. As long as a place has those three, I'm not
interested in it, I don't want to be there.

[student: Michael that sounds like the ultimate goal, but isn't it an absolutely necessary
intermediate goal not to respond to bad things that are happening, to have equanimity so that
you don't perpetuate bad karma?]

If you practice well, you'll see that equanimity happens to be the best way to get to the
ultimate goal. It's a side effect, it makes life more bearable. But ultimately, the goal is to get
to a place where you don't have to be patient with life, where life is just good, all right, and
that's a Buddhist Paradise. So those are the three sufferings. You can map out your life like
this.

[silence]

Actually it goes on like that. And you could say that life is going in a time line. And this is
the life you've lived up to now. This line is tonight. And all the life that you've lived up to
now is gone. And you've had suffering and certain kinds of pleasures or pains or whatever
and they don't count for anything tonight. They might be at best a good memory, or a bad
memory. But anyway you're still alive, they didn't kill you, they might have been happy or
whatever. But they're all finished anyway. They might as well be a dream that you just
woke up from, they don't have any effect on you now, they're gone. You have a section here
up until the time that you die. This is death. You have a section here. You are moving
through this time line uncontrollably. You don't have a choice. You can't slow things down.
Life is propelling you at a certain speed. You cannot affect it. You cannot say I'd like to slow
down for a while. You can't say I'd like to get older a little slower. It is uncontrollably... it's
like a huge powerful river and it's carrying you, you have no control, it's carrying you to this
day that you die. You have no control over it. And you are hopeless, you are helpless in the
sense that you are just being driven to that death and we don't know how long it is, it could
be stopping tonight. We don't know. But you're just being thrust towards it and you have
no control over it. You might as well be a feather in a tornado.

You are being thrown around, you are being controlled by past events, you don't any big
choice about it. You know, you could decide to get a new job or change your hairstyle or
whatever, but basically you cannot change the thrust of you into oblivion. Okay, and you
can't even slow it down, you can't take a day off, you don't get a rest, [laughter] it's just
thrusting you at a certain velocity, and you have no control over it, you are hopeless,
helpless, we are being controlled by those events and we are being thrust towards death at a
certain speed.

And we're all in the same condition. You die, and then, according to what we've learned in
other courses which, if you weren't in them, it's okay, the mind goes on. I'm not going to go
through all the proofs that the mind goes on. But I've noticed that if I put it this way, it's a lot
easier for me. You can't prove to me that the mind does not go on. You have the very flimsy
argument that the body stops twitching. It doesn't prove a thing about the mind. The mind
is totally different material from the body. The mind is invisible, the mind cannot be touched,
the mind cannot be divided, the mind cannot be burned, you can put an atomic bomb next to
the mind, you can blow it off, you have no proof that the mind is affected at all. The mind is
a different material than the body.

The mind is ineffable, the mind can go to your apartment right now and check the door, see
if the stove is off. The mind is not restricted to the skin, the mind goes beyond the skin, the
mind is different, the mind is indestructible, you cannot destroy the mind, the mind has been
there forever, it's going to go on forever. I propose that. You don't have to accept it. You
actually can't prove to me anything else. You can't prove to me anything about the mind
dying when the body dies. Maybe the car's broken and the drivers inside, cursing the car
because it won't go anywhere. But you can't prove to me that it's not true. It happens to be
true, which is why you can't prove it to me, but that's another subject, ok.

[student: Not even the Buddha?]

No, not even the Buddha. So the mind is going to go on. That mind goes on in the same
sort of uncontrollable rush. Whatever thoughts you had in this life, all those milliseconds of
thoughts... was it 64? 64 thoughts in the time I can snap my fingers, millithoughts,
milliseconds of thoughts, they continue, they all affect your mind. You go through the
process of death, the process of the body dissolving on which the mind rests upsets the mind.
The mind starts to hallucinate. And when you cross this line, the mind is also out of control.
You can't think straight anymore, you start to have terrible hallucinations, you actually
become a totally different being.

You wouldn't recognize yourself any more, and you won't recognize yourself any more and
you have no control over it. You could be in a totally horrible existence 30 seconds after you
die, totally different, no thing about what you're experiencing now is there, totally different
and bizarre and horrible experiences. It's possible. So basically, you and I have that to look
forward to. Up until the point of death, we have those three sufferings to enjoy. [laughter]

After the point of death, when the mind is totally disrupted by the destruction of the body,
we start to have a totally different world around us, totally unrecognizable, very frightening,
it's possible, it's normal. That's about all we have to look forward to, that's our life, that's
your life. If I say meditate on the two kinds of suffering not three, ok, two you've got the
three kinds of suffering to look forward to in this life, and after that big moment, a mind
which is very very frightened and undergoing very frightening experiences and totally
unimaginable now, I mean, Friday the 13th and all that is not even close. Horrible things.

Probably. Most people. Because of their lack of training. What I mean is that if you don't
learn what to do, and if you don't learn the right things to do, your mind will go through
with that, and 99.99% of humanity is in that condition, they are being thrust towards this
death, hopelessly, helplessly, not even aware, I mean most people are not even
thinking about it, they're being rushed on the subway, they're thrown in this cattle car and
are being rushed to death and they're not even aware, I mean they're just like ignorant, bliss,
ignorance is bliss, right? Better not to know, I guess. It's their condition. They're distracted
by: are they happy? do they have a good house? are the people at work treating them right?
do they have the right partner? are the children growing up nice?

They are distracted by all these questions but all that time they're being rushed off the cliff,
and then they fall off the cliff and they're totally unaware, they're totally like sheep being led
to the slaughter and they have no...the day comes, they get slaughtered and their whole
existence changes. There's no kids anymore, there's no husband, there's no job, there's no
person they didn't like or person they did like, they're in a totally different realm, things are
going on which are horrifying, and they don't even remember what they were before. And
that's all that a normal person has to look forward to.

They're not aware of what's happening and when it happens, the last thing they can do is to
do anything about it, they don't know what to do. They have no training, no warning, and
that's our condition, it's the condition of every person in this room and everyone you meet on
the subway and everybody you see in the street. It's all of our condition. We're either
suffering now, or after we die it's going to be worse. So there's only two places to go, either
be alive and have those 3 sufferings or die and have worse. And there are only two
destinations for most of the people in humanity. It's a very frightening thing and it's a very
sad thing. And that's our condition, that's life.

[student: your [unclear] state of mind after death [unclear]]

It's called {nyengya kyi dukngel} which means...{nyenga} means... it's very hard to
translate...it's like vital point suffering. And you have this kind of special suffering that you
never had in this life. It's the suffering of the moment of death. It's the suffering of your
lifeforce ending, like stabbed to the heart...the word means something like that.
[student: Physical life?]

Yeah, and mental. And it's a very special kind of suffering. It's some kind of... it's the last
scream you hear on the black box in the airplane, you know, it's from a person who knows
that they're dying, and it's some kind of special...

[student: So it's that moment of suffering as opposed to that state that you can wind up in...]

That's the beginning of that state. [laughs]. Seriously, we only have those two places to go.
We're either alive, and we're going through the 3 sufferings, nothing else, no other
experience, everything we experience is in one of those three categories, or we're dead and
we're worse. And that's the only thing we have to look forward to.

[student: To an untrained person?]

To an untrained person.

[student: You're talking about all the bardos?]

[laughs] Yes, and in the next life.

[student: So these are all projections?]

Ultimately, yeah, definitely.

[student: Write that down, in English.]

What?

[student: Suffering at the moment of death]

I'd rather look it up for you, I'm not sure of the spelling. {Ne} is this.

[silence]

That's our condition. When you realize that, that's renunciation. You hear that Buddhists are
supposed to have renunciation. So you think it means that if you are going to be a good
Buddhist, you can't enjoy a good dinner any more, you can't go to good movies any more,
can't listen to music...it's not like that. Renunciation means...it's like the feeling you had
about two minutes ago, like when you said, yeah, what he said is true. That's renunciation.
You will naturally give up certain things and you will naturally want to study, if you
understand what's happening, you know. And it's not like you're going to have to force
yourself to give them up.

It doesn't mean you have to give up things. The state we're seeking is similar to the
happinesses we have in this life. In other words, just be like a normal rat in a cage that goes
away from the electrical shock and goes towards the food. [laughs] I mean, just give up the
things that deserve to be given up and seek the things which deserve to be sought. Just try to
avoid pain and try to reach some kind of happiness. It's very difficult to reach, and it's very
natural to reach. It's not wanting a lousy life and wanting to get somewhere where it does
not work that way. Wanting to reach a state which does not have AIDS and cancer and
Bosnia and atomic weapons and pollution. You know, I mean, it's a natural desire to get
away from bad things and reach good things. Yeah...

[student: [unclear] we are suffering today because we created them?]

Where do they come from?

[student: Are they like thought forms? [unclear]]

You have to study Emptiness. You have to study Emptiness.

[student: [unclear] So the idea is to clear everything... [unclear]]

I distinguish between this a psychological removal of your suffering and an actual removal of
suffering. What it means is to reach a state in this life where someone could come to you and
poke you with a knife, and you wouldn't feel it and you wouldn't mind, and you'd still smile,
it doesn't mean that. It means to reach a place where there is no one in the world who would
want to poke you with a knife. It means to reach a different realm altogether.

[student: Spiritual realm?]

It's a realm. It will have spiritual qualities also. When you reach there, there will be certain
beautiful qualities of that world. Like the ground will not have any rocks in it, it feels like a
cushion. Everyone you meet is a highly advanced spiritual person and anytime anyone's in
trouble on any planet in this galaxy you are there automatically to help them. Those are the
qualities of a Buddha. That's what you want to reach. But is it to reach a state where you can
put up with the crap of this world? No, you'll be in a crapless world. [laughter] A lot of
people confuse that point. As a by-product, until you get there, you will be the kind of
person, or you can reach the kind of state, where if someone stabs you.... you will have to
reach that stage, that's not where you're headed, it's not the goal, it's a byproduct of where
you're reaching.

So renunciation is...you can't point to me a relationship where one of the partners doesn't die,
you can't point to me a family that didn't disintegrate, you can't point to me a career that
lasted forever, you can't point to me house that did not fall down after it's been built, you
can't point to me a beautiful or healthy or strong person who didn't get old and ugly and
diseased. There's no debate. It's our nature. That's renunciation.



Renunciation is very clear considering the possibilities of a life that's not like that. Totally
different kind of existence, realm, and you can reach it, and you can do it, and you just
become a good educated Buddhist, follow the practices, and you reach it. And that's what I
like about Buddhism. Just do this and this and this and this and you get there. And you can
check it out because you can try it for a year or you try it for six months and if you do it
nicely you start to get some kind of result, that's all. That's renunciation.

Tonight we're talking about bodhichitha.

[silence]

{Boddhi} means buddhahood, {chitha} means "wish for", "the wish for buddhahood, the wish
for enlightenment", bodhichitha means "the wish for enlightenment." Sometimes it's badly
translated as boddhi mind and then you think it's a Buddha's mind and it doesn't mean that.
It's something that we can have now. It's the wish that we could reach buddhahood. It's the
wish that you and I could reach enlightenment, for the sake of other people. What it means
is that if you take that renunciation, which is simply the recognition of your own problem,
that you've only got two places to go, and you turn it around to other people, like you look
at the other people in this room, you see everyone's in the same condition. Unless I'm some
emanation of a tantric deity,

I'm in the same boat as you, I have the same problems as you. I also am hurtling towards
this, and the moment that happens, I'm at the mercy of certain uncontrollable conditions. I'm
in as much trouble as you are. Your mother is, your wife is, the kids are, your aunt is,
President Clinton is, someone who just got shot in Sarajevo is, we're all in the same condition.
We're all in the same condition, all have that same condition, we're all in one of two
conditions, suffering now or terrified later. [laughs] I mean everybody. Doesn't matter how
powerful somebody looks, or how healthy, or how pretty or how successful. You know,
wait a few weeks, or years, it'll become obvious. They'll get there too, obviously. I mean
they're there now, but it'll become obvious.

We're all in the same condition, we're all suffering. Everyone else you meet outside, if they
don't have any training, I don't mean to say Buddhism, but in dying or in spiritual life, they're
not only suffering but they have no hope, it's hopeless. They don't admit the situation, the
day that they do they're too old to do anything about it, it's too late to study, they don't know
anything about what to do when death comes, they have no clue, no inkling, no training at
all, their condition is desperate, it's extremely dangerous and desperate and they have no
possible relief. They're gonna suffer and they have no idea of the method to get out of it.

And that's the condition of the people around us. Bodhichitha is saying I wish I could help
them, you know, I wish I could somehow affect other people and help them. You can't
really help them unless you reach the goal yourself. You know that kind of BS where
someone's teaching something and they haven't reached the thing? Like me. [laughs]. You
can't really help somebody else if you really haven't experienced that thing yourself. You can
describe what other people said about it, you can say what the book said, you can say what
you heard in a lecture, but it's nothing like something you actually know from your own
experience.
You've reached that thing yourself, you're trying to help someone else reach it. Boddhichitha
means that. Boddhichitha means you and I would like to become enlightened so we can
really help other people reach there. And that's what we're going to study. Boddhichitha is
the wish. It comes first. We call it the prayer.

[silence]

That's the first kind of boddhichitha and maybe you got a taste of it just now. Maybe you got
just an inkling of it just now. How nice it would be if because of this class, or because of
some training that you undergo, because of some meditation that you do, you reach some
really high level and you can help other people get out of this torrent, this river that they're
thrown into.

How nice it would be if you could help them. That's the prayer. If you get any kind of
inkling for that tonight from what I said, everyone else around you, everyone you love, all
the people you love, all the people you're close to, their condition is totally desperate, their
condition is very very dangerous. If they die like that, and you can't reach them anymore,
you can't contact them any more, they're going to undergo tremendous suffering, you know.
So you kind of feel some kind of urge to try to help them. That's the boddhichitha, the wish
in the form of a prayer. There's a second kind of boddhichitha...

[silence] [cut]

That's why you want to do something about it. One is you decide in the class, okay, yeah, I
wouldn't like to see my brother or my wife or my child just get thrown into death like that,
hopelessly, untrained, nothing that can help them. I would like to learn something that I can
pass on to them where they could be protected, they could reach some place of safety from
that. I would like to do that. Number 2 is: okay, god dammit, I'm doing to do it, you know.
It's a decision. I will do something. I'm going to do something about it. That's some kind of
different mental state. This state is like saying I wish I could do it. What do I have to do?
Tell me what I have to do? Basically you have to do two things. One, you have to take the
vows, bodhisattva vows.

You have to learn them, then you have to take them. You don't have to take the bodhisattva
vows to be in this class. You don't have to be a Buddhist to be in this class. I don't care. I'm
going to teach you the bodhisattva vows, they're the only vows you can study before you
take them, and you will. You're welcome to take them if you want to take them later on,
you'll have an opportunity. But you can learn the bodhisattva vows. Whether or not you
take them, they're wonderful vows, they're a wonderful way of life. Bodhisattva vows are a
code of life that helps everyone around you. It's a beautiful code of life. And that's the first
thing you do when you decide to take the wish. The second thing you do is you study the
six perfections.



These are six bodhisattva activities that you do. We're not going to study those in this course.
We're going to spend six weeks just on the bodhisattva vows. Bodhisattva vows are a code of
life, very very beautiful. It's nice to know them, it's nice to practice them, you can start doing
them at work the next day, and very useful. It makes your life happy whether or not you
believe everything else about death and rebirth and... if you only just practice them and never
do anything else, never go to a Buddhist class, never call yourself a Buddhist, it doesn't
matter, they're beautiful, they make your life much happier. And hopefully they make your
whole future happy.

You cannot reach Enlightenment without taking those vows and keeping those vows. We're
going to go through those vows. We'll take a break now. Come back after about ten
minutes. You're welcome to come over. There's some refreshments there. When you come
back we'll talk about where the vows came from.

[silence]

Say {sem ke} [repeat] {pa ni} [repeat] {chen din chu} [repeat] {yan dak} [repeat] {so pe}
{chamchu} [repeat] {duh} [repeat]. All right, that's the definition of bodhichitha. Buddhism
loves definitions so that even if something goes off in two and a half thousand years, people
are still defining it the same way, and it doesn't get updated by the New Age people of each
generation, ok? [laughs] This is the definition given by Maitreya. Maitreya is the future
Buddha. According to the highest teachings of Buddhism, he's already a Buddha. And this is
his definition of bodhichitha. It's given in the [b: [unclear]]. So {sem ke pa} means
bodhichitha. The {ni} means "is". In Tibetan where do we have to start?

[student: The back.]

The back. We go to the back. The wish, the wish. {duh} means the wish. Bodhichitha is the
wish to reach {yan dak so pe cham chu}, {yandak so pe cham chu}, means "pure and total
enlightenment", "pure and total enlightenment." I used to get confused by that. There are
lesser Enlightenments. Is there intermediary Enlightenment? There are lesser
Enlightenments. It's a long story. This means pure and total Enlightenment. So what we
have so far is that bodhichitha is the wish to reach pure and total Enlightenment. {Chen din
chu} is the wish to reach pure and total enlightenment for the sake of other people, for the
sake of other beings. Bodhichitha is the wish to reach pure and total enlightenment for the
sake of other beings.

This is where you're focussing on enlightenment and you're doing it for all those other people
around you whose condition is desperate, it's hopeless. It would be better if everybody in
New York had HIV or something and then you'd really believe it. If everybody on the
subway had a cane and splotches all over them, you would get that emotion that you were
the only healthy person, and that's what the situation is, their situation is more desperate than
that. The suffering that they are headed for, and the suffering they're in now, is hopeless.
And Bodhichitha means that if you have any pity for their condition, then do something.

[student: Do you have to be totally enlightened to help other people?]
They say that you can pass it on. Asanga was not a Buddha. Asanga was a third level
bodhisattva. Obviously you don't have to be a total Buddha to be of service to other people.
But the difference is in the capacity of a Buddha to help... if I'm enlightened, I can see in one
glance your whole future for thousands of years, your whole past for thousands of years, I
see every corner of your mind, I know precisely what sentence to say that will help you
avoid that suffering, at any given moment, I know precisely what you personally need to
hear at this moment to get there quicker. Nobody else has that capacity, no other being has
that capacity. So they try to reach that level. [laughs]

[student: You don't need many lifetimes to reach total Enlightenment?]

Normally it takes 3 periods consisting of 6971 countless eons. Countless is a word that means
10 to the 60th power.

[student: So...[unclear]] [laughter]

It only take trillions of years. If you practice bodhisattva vows and if you are trained
properly in tantra, you can achieve it in this life.

[student: [unclear]]

Yeah.

[student: [unclear]]

It has everything that you need.

[student: Does that mean we have no choice?

You actually don't have any choice. You really don't have any choice, you might as well do
it now. You'll be back in this class if you don't do it now. [laughter] You don't have any
choice. Really. I mean, I don't like to put it that way but you are suffering. If you don't do
it now, you're going to come back some other time. So you might as well just finish it now.
And you must do it for other people. You can try to be selfish, you can try to get some
meditation, or you can try to reach some great levels on your own and ignore the condition
of the people around you, but you cannot reach buddhahood that way. And ultimately you
will have to take care of other people so you might as well do it now, you might as well do it
right now.

[student: [unclear]]

I said all other people, and then I corrected myself to include all other beings. Means all
other living beings, all living kind. {Shem} means others, and "others" means all other living
beings.

[student: [unclear] for the sake?]]
For the sake of is {unclear}, I mean if you really want to know.

[silence]

For the benefit of, for the sake of, for the good of...I like to see if I can cover everything that's
on the homework otherwise I get 50 phone calls. [laughs] If I ask you what's the
relationship between renunciation and bodhichitha, you'll probably say bodhichitha is
renunciation aimed at other people.

[silence] [cut]

Every good thing that is going on in our lives is doomed. We might as well get out of it and
find something....if we recognize it for what it was we wouldn't be attached it. It's not like
I'm begging you to give up icecream. Just try to find icecream that doesn't make you fat.
[laugh] Something with 50 calories. Find a happiness that's not attached to suffering, and do
it before you get too old to do it. You've got to be healthy to do these things. To practice
Tantra you have to be in good physical condition. There are a lot of things you have to do.
You can't wait until you get too old. You have a window of opportunity.

[student: [unclear]]

I forgot [unclear]. Right, renunciation and buddhahood.

[student: [unclear]]

There is a last question on the homework and it's something you'll get from the reading. I'm
going to leave it. You have to do the reading well and you'll be able to answer it. Jetsun
Kampa compares our condition to a person who is handcuffed, put into an iron cage, that
cage is thrown into a Niagara Falls, and it's night time. There's nobody else around, ok?
And each one of those has a different meaning. It represents that timeline that I drew. That's
our condition. We might as well be that person, we have as much hope as that person, if we
don't do something, now, if we don't meditate, if we don't practice, you might as well be that
person. Our condition is very similar.

Okay, we have about 10-15 minutes. I'm going to just... that's the real heart of... I mean our
purpose tonight was to talk about bodhichitha because based on bodhichitha, you take the
bodhisattva vows. You say okay, I believe what you say, I do want to help other people.
And I tell you, you have to understand the bodhisattva vows. You must take the bodhisattva
vows. It's not a requirement of this class to take bodhisattva vows. If you want to get
enlightened, you have to take them. If you don't do it now, you have to do it later. I'm not
proselytizing for bodhisattva vows. It's nice to know them, it's nice to live by them. It's not
my business. If eventually you want to take them, certainly I'll make sure you can.



The purpose is to study that code of life which would lead you to be capable to help all the
beings around you who are suffering like that. That's the purpose of the bodhisattva vows.
Where do they come from? I'm going to do ten minutes of technical stuff, dry stuff, all right.
That's the worse thing, everyone falls asleep. But it's on your homework, so you have to
listen. [laughter] I'm going to tell you where the vows come from. I think it's nice to know,
I think Western people like to know. In the monastery when we study these things, they
don't even tell us who wrote the book. We've got to memorize the book, for the next two
years, but we don't even know who wrote it. They say don't worry about it, just memorize
it. Westerners, we like to know where things come from.

We're going to be studying a book called [b: Shum Lang].

[silence]

[student: Michael, is this where they come from, or is this about where they came from?]

I'll go through it, I'll explain it. Say {chang chu}, [repeat] {shum lang} [repeat], {chang chu},
[repeat] {shum lang} [repeat]. This book...{chung chu} means... do you know?

[student: bodhichitha.]

Well, it's the "boddhi" in bodhichitha. It's short for bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is any person
who gets that wish truly in their heart, any person, doesn't matter if they're Buddhist or not,
any person who decides they would like to become totally enlightened to help other people,
then you are a bodhisattva, you're already a bodhisattva. And you can practice to be a
bodhisattva before you're a bodhisattva, take the bodhisattva vows before you become a
bodhisattva. {Shum lang} means highway. {Shum} means central, {lang} means path, and it's
the Tibetan word for a highway. Bodhisattva Highway. The book is called [b: The Highway
For Bodhisattvas].

This is the main book we're going to study. To study about the bodhisattva vows, it's not
where they came from, it's a very...its the best explanation of it. It was written by Jetsun
Kampa. Jetsun Kampa is the greatest master ever to live in Tibet, greatest writer, Shakespeare
of Tibet, greatest organizer, George Washington of Tibet, greatest founder of great
monasteries, greatest everything, Jetsun Kampa. Dates are what? Do you remember?

[student: 1367-1419]

Nice. This is the boring part, ok, but I think it's nice to know. Isn't it nice? My teacher told
me it was nice to know, I ignored him. When I was in India, I was in a train station, I saw a
big commotion, I went to see what it was about. There was this senior teacher of the Dalai
Lala, Ling Rinpoche. My teacher dragged me over there. He said: "What are you studying?"
I said "I forgot the name of the book." And my teacher was all red. He was behind me....
[laughter] You don't want to be like that, okay? That's Jetsun Dampa. This book is very
difficult, it's very hard to read, it's never been translated. We're going to study the difficult
points from that.
It's considered one of his greatest writings, it's put in the first volume of his writings, he wrote
10,000 volumes. That's one of the first books, in other words, it's one of the most important
books. It's never been translated by anybody. We'll be studying that. There's a much easier
version.

[student: Is it a commentary or what?]

It's an explanation of the vows. It explains the difficult points of each one of the vows.

[silence]

Say {norbu] [repeat] {gyu la teng}, {norbu] [repeat] {gyu la teng}. I think you might know
{norbu}. You know {Norbu}? {Norbu} means jewel. The Dalai Lama's brother is named
{Norbu}. {Norbu} means jewel, {gyu} means light, sunlight, clear light, sunlight, light.
{Chang} means a string, like a rosary is a {changla}, but it means a string of anything. It
means a big string of shining jewels, you can imagine a rosary made of jewels that are shining
with light.

And that's an explanation of all the vows. There are monk's vows, bodhisattva vows and
tantric vows, secret tantric vows. It explains all three. The explanation of the bodhisattva
vows is brief, and accurate and complete. So that's what you're going to end up with at the
end of class.

You're going to have the whole explanation of each vow. If you used Tsongkapa's book it
would be like a couple of hundred pages long. This is going to be about 40-50 pages. But it's
good for you to take home and practice for the rest of your life. Gives you the vow, gives
you a short description of the vow, tells you what it is. We have this book which, by the
way, this book is recommended by Pabongka for those of you who know who he is. He
never wrote a book about the vows because he said that's the only one you need. It was
written by the teacher of the 10th Dalai Lama. It's very hard to get. We succeeded in getting
it due to two of the students in this class. [unclear], right, and Laura Segal. And they went
and combed these libraries and found these manuscripts and we pieced it together. They did
a nice job. She was faxing me all over the world. [unclear] [laughs] [laughter]

I'll give you the man's name who wrote it.

[silence]

These are not his dates, these are not his dates, these are the dates of the 10th Dalai Lama. He
was the teacher of the 10th Dalai Lama, so we know he was alive during that time, we don't
know his dates. 10th Dalai Lama, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th Dalai Lamas all died at age 20. Why?

[student: They take political power]

At age 21 they take power.

[student: What?]
At age 21, they take political power, at age 21 they become the head of the country.

[student: Oh, political power]

We believe they were poisoned by the Chinese representatives, but we don't know for sure.
But they were guarded by the Chinese Manchu's troops and they tended to die...[laughs]... I
don't know, a month before... [laughs]. It was a way to keep the power of the country out of
their hands. So he was the teacher of the 10th Dalai Lama. By the way, I don't know for sure
about that. That's what the general belief it is. Don't think we'll ever know.

[student: Did you say we're studying both these books or one?]

We're going to study the fine points from Tsongkapa's text. Whenever there's a difficult vow
and you say: well, what if I do that? And we say, let's check Tsongkapa. But Geshe Sewa
Sanduk's book is the one you want to have in your hand for the rest of your life to check
your vows every day. To see did I keep my vows. For those of you who are doing
{__________}, the practice of {_____________}, is 99% to review your vows, everyday, 6 times a
day, to see if you broke them, and you have to know them.

So it's great to have a short explanation of each vow, and that's the function of Geshe Sewa
Sanduk's text. You're going to have that, you'll have the Tibetan and the English book to
keep. Then you'll know the vows very well. Lots of people take these vows, very few
people know what they mean and fewer keep them. [laughs]. All right. Where did the
vows comes from? Last point.

[silence]

Sutra means any book taught by an Enlightened Being. It also means any book taught by an
Enlightened Being which is not secret. If a book taught by an Enlightened Being is not secret,
it's not called a Sutra, it's called a what?

[students: Tantra]

Tantra. Sutra means an open teaching by an Enlightened Being. So who wrote this book?
The Buddha. [laughs] This is the original source of the bodhisattva vows. You'll find all
bodhisattva vows in the Sutras on the Perfection of Wisdom. Which book are they in?
They're spread out all over. They happen to be concentrated in 2 of the books, and this is one
of them. This sutra, this teaching by the Buddha contains 13. [silence] You can find 13 of the
root vows in this sutra.

[silence]

[unclear] This sutra, which is another teaching by Lord Buddha 2500 years ago, has one root
vow.
[silence]

[student: Don't you have 4 more to go now?]

By author, okay, the book by the same author. That's how it is on your homework, ok?

[laughter]

For those of you who care, this is the [b: Bodhisattva Bhumi]. You know who wrote it?

[silence]
Date?

[student: 350]

Half-brother?

[student: [unclear]]

[unclear] Abidharma Kosha. All the Abidharma we ever get was taught by his brother and
Asanga wrote most of the Swatantrika text. So he wrote a book called the [b: Bodhisattva
Vows] with a very long chapter on morality. In that chapter he clarifies 4 root vows.

[student: [unclear]]

They all come from the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, but if you go try to find them, you're
probably going to have a problem. They're spread out all over.

[student: [unclear]]

No. How many have we got?

[student: [unclear]]

That's the total number of root vows. Those are the root vows. The root bodhisattva vows
are 18. We'll go through them, we'll study them, that's where they came from. Ultimately
they all came from the Prajnaparamita, Perfection of Wisdom Sutras.

[silence]

This is called {B: Lak Du}, it's a very famous book. What was his most famous book?

[student: [b: Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life]]

[b: Guide to the Boddisattva's Vows]. Most famous book. It's what His Holiness teaches
wherever he goes. We will have a course on it, or two or three. Fantastic book, incredible
book. He's a great master, 8th Century, Master Shantideva. He took all 18 and put them in
one place. Last thing, we're finished on time...

[silence]

This is the classic source for the 46 secondary vows. So how many total vows for
Bodhisattvas?

[student: 64]

64. And that's it, that's a nice class. I just want to say the vows are...when I say vows, you
think monks' vows or something, very restrictive, big hassle to keep, no fun, can't get drunk,
can't look at girls, can't go to movies, can't play music. Not like that. Bodhisattva vows are
totally different. Bodhisattva vows are liberating. They're very beautiful and they're a very
excellent code of life. And they're not like you're going to feel like restricted. After you
know these vows, and after you've tried them out in your daily life, you'll find that they
make you very happy, they make the whole atmosphere around you very pleasant. Aside
from making you escape this suffering, which is their real benefit, they lead to a real kind of
peace in your own life.

So they're really not vows in the sense of oh, you can't do that, you can't do that, you've
gotta stay like that. It's not like that. They are ways of behavior that will make you a lot
happier. If you just try them for a couple of weeks or something, you'll notice radical
changes in your life. Very beautiful changes. Those are the benefits of these vows. That's all.
We'll do a prayer to close. I didn't go through the list of days that we will have no class.
That's the first thing you should know about. So be sure to look at those. Make sure you
don't come on those days.

[student: [unclear]]

Who's got....did you get a list of everyone?

[student: [unclear]]

People who did the books....
Course 7 – The Bodhisattva Vows