Углублённый курс ACI 01 — Учения будущего Будды: «Уттаратантра» Майтреи (2003, Аризона), занятие 5

[Говорящий 1]
Class five was about the third of the seven diamond-like visions, which is what? Sangha, okay, the jewel of the Sangha, meaning what the community or what you will become. And as we know, it refers to people who have seen emptiness directly.

And I wanted to go into, you know, this course is actually course number 19, sort of like that. You see, you're supposed to have been through the first 18 courses before you hit this course. So those of you who are feeling lost or tired, don't despair.

Okay, this is sort of the high school course after the elementary school course. And then the college courses start next fall. And if you've been to these courses during the last 10 years, starting in the basement in New York City, in Hell's Kitchen, with six people, we've talked a lot about the direct perception of emptiness, you know, the first time you ever see emptiness directly.

We've talked a lot about what that feels like, what happens to you during that time, you know. And especially during the Diamond Cutter course and the sixth class of the Diamond Cutter course was meant to convey a lot about what happens to you during that 20-minute experience or something that we're all seeking. And we've covered that a lot.

Like, I think you have a good feeling for what that experience is. What I wanted to do today was something different. It was, what do you do after that?

You see, like, you might be on the path of habituation after that for 450, for 500 years, right? And what happens during that period? You know, what's going on then?

And, you know, what's like, and we've never spoken about that. We've never gone into that, okay? And I wanted to talk about that today more in detail.

And this is all coming from the most famous verse of the Uttaratantra, okay? So we're going to cover the most famous verse from the Uttaratantra. This is the verse that comes up constantly everywhere, okay?

In the debate ground, in the Tibetan scriptures. This is the verse that people really concentrate on in our lineage. Like, if you go to Sarah and you debate for a couple of weeks, you'll hear Uttaratantra quoted, but this quotation will come up constantly, okay?

So I'm going to write it up here. I suggest you try to memorize it at some point, okay? You'll have it in your reading, the Sanskrit and the Tibetan.

You can do either one. And I'm just going to write the whole verse up here, okay? Here we go.

Say, PHAG PA'I CI DANG NAWA DANG GA WA'I DUNG-YA TSE NAS PA'ANG Very, very, very famous. PHAG PA'I CI DANG NAWA DANG GA WA'I DUNG-YA TSE NAS PA'ANG You get this over and over in the monastery. It's drilled into your head, you know?

And again, you become a member of Sangha. You become a member of the community when you see emptiness directly, right? And that's what a PHAG PA'I is.

So the first word here, PHAG PA'I, means someone who has seen emptiness directly. Can I scoot this up? Is that done with the Tibetan?

Just so people can see the whole thing. Then I'll scoot it back. Okay.

So PHAG PA'I means by Aryas. And again, Arya means someone higher, someone who is higher by virtue of seeing emptiness directly, right? Then CI, CI means death, okay?

CI. What's the word for peace in Tibetan? CIWA.

They're related. CI and CI went into CI, okay? It means to rest or to die, okay?

CIWA, okay? DUNG means and. NAWA means sickness, sickness and DUNG.

GAWE means getting old, getting old. DUNG-YA means pain or suffering. TSE NAS means from the root, from the very root.

PA'ANG means they have eliminated it, okay? So the verse says Aryas or those who have seen emptiness directly have eliminated from its root the sufferings of death, sickness and getting old. And I just want to talk about that.

I mean, that's the subject of this last talk, okay? I mean, I just want to go more into that. It's been a very, very controversial statement over the centuries.

People have said, what's that mean? What are the implications of that? And it's very important for us.

I'm always trying to get you to see emptiness, right? Like that's my goal in life, right? The whole purpose of all the classes, years and years and years of classes, years and years of years of effort, the whole purpose of doing retreats, the whole purpose of doing your daily meditation, the whole purpose of keeping your book, is to see emptiness, okay?

And then it's been one of my big spiels, right? It's one of the most important things in my life to try to communicate that Buddhism is not about becoming calm while you die, you see? While the world burns, you are in equanimity, you see?

It's not that, you see? It's not that. I mean, it can have that effect on you, and that's fine.

But you don't come to Buddhism to get feeling good about yourself and about your life, because you should feel bad. The scriptures say you should feel like your hair is on fire, you know? Things are bad.

Things are deadly. Things are dangerous. The world is a dangerous, violent, deadly place, and you have to wake up, right?

You have to know you're in trouble, right? So it's not, I mean, the real purpose of Buddhism, I'm not saying that it's not appropriate if you're speaking to a large general group at a Kiwanis club to talk about how to meditate and get calmer. That's fine.

That's appropriate. But among the insiders, we say, you know, just between you and me, within inside people, the purpose of Buddhism is simply to prevent dying and getting old and sickness, okay? And that's the real purpose of what we're doing.

The reason to see emptiness directly is not to get into some mystic mood or feel better about yourself or, you know, cope with life better. I'm tired of coping. I'd just like to fix it, you see?

You can cope with a broken toilet or you can fix it, you see? And if you fix it, it's a lot more pleasant, right? I mean, you don't have to keep cleaning up the floor or anything like that, you know?

You can cope with it or you can fix it, you see? And what I propose is that Buddhism is and always has been about fixing the very fundamental sufferings of life, okay? Lord Buddha's message was that radical.

It wasn't, you can feel better about a bad life. It was, you can stop permanently the sufferings of sickness, getting old, and death itself, okay? Death itself.

And it's not metaphoric. It's not figurative. It's not like, oh, the kingdom of deathlessness or something.

It's not something that only people used to do thousands of years ago or something like that. The message of Buddha is, in this lifetime, every person in this room can change into a body of light, become an enlightened being, stop death, stop suffering, stop aging, stop sickness, and then be in a position to take care of every living creature in the universe. You are meant to do that.

That's your destiny. That's your purpose for living, is to become a holy being of light who can go to countless creatures and serve them and take care of them. It's what you really want to do deep down inside.

It's why you come here and sit through these hot afternoons and, you know, bored. You know, it's why you're hanging out here. You know, if it were just the words and the books and everything else, you'd probably just leave by now, you know.

Deep down inside, somewhere deep down inside, you want to become that angel, you know. You just need somebody to talk you into it, you know. You need someone to say, it's possible, you know.

And the reason I put this verse here, this is half of the verse. The reason I put it here is that you know this is what Buddhism is for, you see. I didn't make it up, you know, this whole shtick about angels and helping people and like that.

It's from the scriptures. It's what Lord Buddha taught, okay. It's what he taught, right.

Now we have to discuss it, okay. Like, how is it that 20 minutes of seeing something, this thing called emptiness, could stop your death, you know, and sickness and getting old, right. How is that possible, okay.

And what really happens, right. And that has been a subject of debate for thousands of years now. People have struggled with this question for thousands of years.

What exactly happens to you when you see emptiness directly, okay. Like, we've often said that you get rid of two or three negative thoughts forever. Anybody want to give me any of them?

Yeah, like doubt, okay. Like that would be the main one. And we talked about it yesterday, you know, you call yourself a Buddhist or you're studying Buddhism.

And to tell you the truth, none of us has ever met a Buddha. We don't know if a Buddha really exists, something like that, okay. That could be the case, right.

What happens right after you see emptiness directly is that you come into, you know that you have come into direct contact with an enlightened being, okay. You meet an enlightened being directly, an existing Buddha, which would be diamond-like vision number five, right. The Buddha outside of you, okay.

And then you also see something in the future. What's that? Your own enlightenment.

So in a way you meet two Buddhas, you see. You've seen your own enlightenment directly. You know how long it will be, okay.

You know how long it will be. And I've many, many times I've told you that during that moment after the direct perception of emptiness, it's very typical that you see that you have seven lifetimes to go, okay. Seven lifetimes to go.

And I thought you would enjoy reading some real scriptural references to that. You see, like I've told you about that experience in sort of a, as an account, right, of something. But I thought it would be comforting for you to see that scriptures have also presented this idea over and over through the centuries about what they call a seven-timer.

It's called a gyun-shuk sipa-len-dum-bawa. And we'll talk about that. We'll talk more about that, you know.

But anyway, the thing that you lose permanently, the cessation you gain when you see emptiness directly, the first one is you'll never doubt about Buddhism again, okay. You know, you've seen directly that all this stuff is for real, you see. And that's a huge step.

I mean, you have doubt now and you don't know you have doubt, you know. If you could meet an enlightened being directly, you know, if Tara came to you and just sat down next to you and talked to you for half an hour, your life would change radically, right. Your life would change forever, like you would, you'd have some kind of certainty about life and some kind of certainty about what's going to happen to you, and certainty about these books and these teachings, you know.

We're lucky. Lord Buddha taught for how many years? 46, okay.

Got enlightened at 35, taught till 81 by Tibetan county, right. If you count the 10 months in the womb, if you get confused about why they say he lived till 80, that's why. So anyway, taught that long, he taught thousands of scriptures.

I mean, we have 1,500 separate teachings of Lord Buddha, you know. That was one of the big schticks when I met my own Christian friends. I'd say, you have three or four gospels, we have 1,500 sutras and tantras, you know.

And, you know, like, I mean, Lord Jesus only taught actively that we know of for three years and then was killed. Lord Buddha, we're lucky that we have, you know, 1,500 separate scriptures. And the exciting thing is that when you see emptiness directly, you know that it's all completely true, you know, 100% completely true, you know.

So then you have a massive resources for figuring out how to do it yourself, you see. You have 1,500 books to go to, to learn about how to do it yourself. And that's why we're working so hard, John Brady's group is working so hard to preserve them and to spread them and to translate them, okay.

Where were we? Oh, that's the first thing, you lose doubt. What's another thing?

Yeah, you can't believe in the way you used to see things, you see. When you see things as empty, when you see emptiness, then intellectually you can't believe anymore that it was any other way, okay. Intellectually, you know, when you come out, right, you start seeing things wrong again.

But at least you know you're crazy, okay. At least you know you're crazy, okay. Then there's no question in your mind, you know.

And you know there's a goal ahead of you to come into that way of thinking all the time in the future, okay. So you come back to seeing things the wrong way, but at least you know what you're doing, okay. You're sure of what you're doing.

Then there's a third one, which is not a big one. I mean, it's not very talked about a lot. We don't talk about it a lot, but do you guys know what it is?

Yeah, it's like any belief that any spiritual practice that hurts you could be beneficial, you see. Like in ancient India, there was this idea that if you poked your head the right way with a spear, then you could attain nirvana or something like that. Or that if you didn't eat anything for six weeks, then you could attain nirvana.

Or even nowadays, if you sit between four fires for weeks at a time, that somehow this is a high spiritual practice, okay. In Christianity, it would be like, what do they call it, flagellation or something like that. Like when you see emptiness directly, you see that anything that would hurt you is not a beneficial spiritual path, okay.

You reject dumb spiritual practices, okay. So those are three things. Now, why did I go into that long spiel?

How many mental afflictions are there? How many negative emotions does a human mind hold? Eighty-four thousand.

Say, gechi shitong. Gechi shitong. Gechi means 80,000, and then shitong means 4,000.

84,000 total. So you still have 83,997 negative emotions. You only got rid of three, okay.

Now, is that enough that in that lifetime you wouldn't have to die again? No, okay. It's not.

It's not. Those of you who know the way Buddhism works, there's this whole spiel, you know. First you enter the stream, which is you see emptiness directly.

Stream enterer, okay. Then you become a returner to the desire realm. Then you become a non-returner to the desire realm.

Then you become an arhat. There's still this huge space to go. You still have so many steps to go through before you reach nirvana, much less Buddhahood, okay.

So what's he talking about? You know, people have struggled with this for centuries. People have struggled.

So why did Lord Maitreya say, once you see emptiness, no more death, no more sickness, no more getting old, okay. Does an Arya, does a person who has seen emptiness at age 20-something get older? Yeah.

You don't eliminate aging, okay. Will they die? Unless they practice tantra, they will die, okay.

They will go through a normal death process, okay. Will they get sick? I mean, they get sick, okay.

So what's Maitreya talking about? I mean, this has been a big struggle for people throughout the centuries, you know. You do not eliminate all your negative thoughts when you see emptiness directly.

You will have to go through a normal process of death, etc. In fact, one of the books you're going to read in this reading says that you are still the truth of suffering. Your body, your mind are still the truth of suffering.

We say you don't have the demon of the heaps. Some of you might have gotten to that during the 12 Deeds. I don't know how many, how many got to the four demons?

I don't know. Not too many, okay. Anyway, there's this thing called the demon of your heaps or your body, you know.

And then you start to see through the centuries people struggling to explain what's going on. And they start to split hairs. And you're going to see hair splitting in the reading for about 500 years of Tibetan monastic textbooks, okay.

And so somebody comes along and figures out, well, I think it's Kedrup Dhammadhargi who wrote the books for our monastery in the 1500s. And he says people have seen emptiness directly. They are still the truth of suffering.

Not only they have, you see, but they are the truth of suffering, okay. But they've gotten rid of the gross demon of the heaps, okay. The gross version of a samsaric body and mind.

They've gotten rid of that. That's how to explain it, okay. I'm going to give you another one.

Choney Dhapushedu, who's who? Wrote what? Choney Lama.

Wrote the only Tibetan commentary that I know of to the Diamond Cutter Sutra. And that's the one you guys studied, okay. Here's what he says.

He says there could be somebody who still has impurity involved with mental afflictions, okay. Involved with mental afflictions. But they don't possess the truth of suffering.

And he says, oh, that's a bodhisattva who's seen emptiness directly. So now we get the idea that here they are talking about a bodhisattva who has seen emptiness directly, okay. What's that mean?

They have bodhicitta. They've had the direct experience of bodhicitta. You can see emptiness and not gain ultimate compassion.

But what these verses are talking about is someone who has seen emptiness and has developed ultimate compassion, okay. Most of the texts say that you get bodhicitta before you see emptiness directly. And the whole way of reporting what happens to you during the path of seeing is difficult.

Because what's happening is that we know, we are told that in 200 AD Nagarjuna saw emptiness directly, you know. We are told that in 350 AD Ayasanga saw emptiness directly, you know. We are told that Jetsun Kappa at a certain point in his spiritual career in this lifetime saw emptiness directly, okay.

Like we have three reports. And Maitreya is supposed to have seen emptiness directly. So we have four reports over thousands of years that people have seen emptiness directly.

What I'm trying to say is that it's extremely, extremely rare in history. I mean we're not talking just in one generation, but in the space of 60, 70 generations there might be three or four people who have seen emptiness directly. It's that difficult, that rare, okay.

And then you get them speaking to people and describing what happened. And then you get those people teaching other people, teaching other people, teaching other people, teaching other people. Sometimes 30 generations without anyone seeing emptiness directly, you see.

And then the message, the description gets lost a little bit, you know. And those of you who are teaching now, you will see it, okay. When you hear your students teach, you'll be surprised, you know.

Like you'll say, well that's not what I meant, you know what I mean. Like it'll be maybe the words that you said or maybe just slightly changed, but it will be the wrong idea, you know. And then you're sort of, even in one generation, it's very difficult to communicate an experience like that directly, you know.

And if you haven't seen emptiness directly and you're teaching about it, then you can repeat the words almost verbatim, but not catch it, you see. And then that goes on to another generation and that goes on to another generation and like that. What I'm trying to say is that, you see, you get real bodhicitta after seeing emptiness directly on the Mahayana.

And then you'd have to go back in the text and try to see that. But it happens in the hours following the direct perception of emptiness, okay, typically. Okay, so I wanted to write for you the words Sipa Landubhawa, okay.

The seven-timer, the person who has seven times to go. This idea is not very common in scripture, but you can find it. There's probably a hundred references to it in scripture that in three thousand books, okay, something like that.

That's about how common it's mentioned. Say, Sipa Landubhawa. Sipa means rebirth in this case, okay.

Sipa can mean the wheel of life, Sipa Kornel. But in this case, it means a rebirth, Sipa. Land means times, how many times, more.

And dun means seven times more. Dumbhawa means a seven-timer, okay. So, we call them a seven-timer, okay, someone who has seven more lifetimes to go.

By the way, what I said about 30 generations or something passing per Arya, if you ever had the opportunity to actually study directly from a person who had seen emptiness, your odds would go up a thousand fold. You see what I mean? And that happened during the Buddha's lifetime.

I mean, the Buddha, when he turned the wheel the first time, a certain number of the five students that he spoke to went into the path. One of them, I believe, went into the path of seeing immediately, you see. And then he dragged up the other four very quickly during his lifetime.

So, I don't mean to discourage you. You know what I mean? I don't mean to say it's like, forget it.

It's not like that. It's extremely rare. And you can do it.

You have all the proper training. You have all the conditions. You can do retreats.

You can do meditation. You live in a country where you can have time, leisure to try, right? And you have direct access to the lineage, to an authentic lineage, and to the real experience.

So, I don't mean to imply, I mean, I would say that your odds are better than anyone in the last thousand years or two thousand years or something. You have all the conditions in a way that very few people have had for many centuries. You don't believe that and, you know, I mean, you think you're normal people, but you're not.

You are very close to seeing it. And you have to really try to get over the last hurdle to see it, you see. You have everything you need.

Among all the people in history, you are very fortunate. You are very close. So, you have to go for it, okay?

Anyway, seven-timer, you see that you have seven lifetimes to go, okay? And they will be nice lifetimes, okay? They will be nice lifetimes.

Like, I threw a reading into your reading. Let me see which one it is. Yeah, there's a Lam Rim.

You know Lam Rim text. Lam Rim is like the stages of the path to enlightenment, right? A typical kind of Tibetan text.

There was one written by the first Panchen Lama, Losang Chukgyi Gyeltsen, who's a great poet and a very beautiful writer. Those of you who take the tantric series, you'll be studying that Lam Rim for the first year, okay? We'll be going through that Lam Rim.

It's called the path to bliss. Sometimes you could call it the easy path, okay? But in there, he gives a very stirring argument for why you should try to become a bodhisattva, why you should move up to Mahayana first and not fool around with Hinayana.

Like, just go straight to the greater way. Just go straight to the greater way, okay? Then he tells this long, depressing story.

You know Ananda, oh no, sorry, Modgalyayana and Shariputra. These are the first two great disciples of Lord Buddha, you know? These are called the Choksu.

Choksu means the big two, okay? These are the two great disciples of Lord Buddha. According to tradition, they never learned Mahayana, okay?

They never got out of Hinayana. They were lower vehicle. They are known to have been lower vehicle arhats, okay?

And then there's a long, depressing story. They go to the hell realms on a trip, you know, and they meet this non-Buddhist yogi who gives them a message to give to his students back on earth, like he's died and gone to hell. And then he gives them a message to give to his students back on earth, like, probably, like, don't do what I did or something like that.

And then, out of compassion, they approach these students and deliver the message. Then they get very angry, you know? It just seems like a crazy claim that they've gone to hell and met their teacher, which is, like, totally insulting to them.

And so they beat up, I think it's Madgalyayana. They beat him up and they kill him, okay? And apparently, that's how Madgalyayana died.

So anyway, the first Panchen Lama says, you don't want that to happen to you. You should go straight to the Mahayana path, you know? And people who study Lamrim should go straight to higher vehicle.

Why? Because you'll never get any of this trouble. Why?

Because if you see emptiness, you will never again have a major problem in your life. Okay? I mean, that's his selling point.

That's one selling point. What I'm trying to do is, I've been digging around the computer for weeks trying to give you scriptural authority for what I've been telling you for a long time, okay? So there's the scriptural authority.

He says, if you see emptiness directly, like, there's a side benefit. You don't have much big hassles in your lifetime ever again, okay? Like, the normal reason to do anything, which is to get some kind of financial security, be healthy, be fairly happy for the rest of your life, it's all taken care of when you see emptiness directly, okay?

You just don't have, you have still major, sorry, minor problems, okay? You still have minor upsets, minor problems, bad days, but on the whole, you are totally different, you know? Your life is totally taken care of.

You don't have to worry anymore about anything. So Panchen Lama says, oh, that's a good reason to see emptiness in itself, you know? Okay?

And then for the next seven lifetimes, which you see directly, you will never again have a major problem, okay? Never. When you are born, you'll be born in a place where there are teachers.

Like, the minute you're born, there'll be some great yogis living there, great lamas will be around you, starting to teach you. Like His Holiness was taught from age two or age three, you'll have people, like, hovering around you, serving you, teaching you. You'll always be born into a beautiful family, you know?

You'll always have enough money, all these things. You'll be immersed in Dharma for the rest of your existence, you see? You see this directly when you see emptiness directly, okay?

You see this directly. You see the future. It's very, very cool.

How would it feel to know that you will be the single being to take care of countless people at the same moment, you know? How would you feel if you knew that, you know? Okay, seven more lifetimes.

What's the big deal, you know? I mean, to you, it sounds like a lot. You grew up in America.

You grew up in a place that said there is no future lifetimes, right? If you're a Buddhist, you've had lifetimes without beginning, okay? There is no beginning to your lifetimes.

Countless lifetimes, billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of lifetimes, time wasted, right? Now you're about to see emptiness directly. Then seven more lifetimes, I mean, what's that, you know?

It's nothing, okay? And it's very hard to talk about it to a group of people that may not have even seen one future lifetime, you see? Or maybe doesn't believe in a future lifetime.

But it's extraordinary, you see? It's extraordinary to reach a place where, I don't know how to compare it. It's like you fly around the world and you come back to your home in New York City and the key is in the door, you see what I mean?

It's like that. It's like that. It's like you're on the last second of your trip.

Say it's been like a three-year trip around the world and the key is in the door. You just turn it and walk in and you're done, you see what I mean? It's like that.

It's like to be that close to being done. And to bump into a person who's Sipa Lendunpa, you know, to see, to meet a person like that is like one chance in trillions and trillions of lifetimes, you see? It's one opportunity in trillions and trillions of lifetimes to run into a seven-timer, to meet a seven-timer.

So if you did, you would be some kind of extraordinarily special person, you know? The tantras, you know, when we translated, we were working on translating Vajrayogini commentaries during the three-year retreat. There's a special section in there about just touching a seven-timer and, you know, like getting a piece of a seven-timer's fingernail or a piece of flesh from them and like that.

And there's this whole Vajrayogini ritual about that, you know? And we actually took it out of the book because it was so heavy. You know, we didn't send it out for Xeroxing because it was so heavy.

And that's how rare it is and how special it is. And so this thing does exist and this thing is real. And the scriptures often, not often, but it's in the scriptures you can find it.

Then I'm just going to do some minor questions that come up. Maybe I shouldn't even bother. I don't know.

If you're going to do your homework, you got to know it, okay? These are like continued argument, generation after generation of, why does this guy have to take rebirth? Okay?

I mean, if you've seen emptiness directly, why do you have to take even seven more lifetimes, okay? Why? Here are some arguments.

Let me give you the rest of the verse first. It says, Leda, Nyamo, Wanki, Ke, Dela, Demechir, Demet. Just one more thing about the Sipa Landar Baha, the power of that being on the planet, okay?

There was a yogi named Goraksha, okay? Goraksha. In Tibetan they call him Bakyong, which means cow protector.

You had go, right? You know go. And then Raksha means to protect, like, anyway.

And he lived just after Naropatha and carried on Vajrayogini secretly in India, never reached Tibet. His lineage never got to Tibet. It spread all the way from Afghanistan to Bengal, like his teachings about Vajrayogini and yoga spread all the way across the Indian subcontinent.

Huge area, thousands of miles, people were practicing Goraksha's teachings on Vajrayogini and yoga. And he was very close to seeing emptiness directly. He went to Nepal to teach and people treated him badly.

The Nepalese people did not give him a good reception and he left. And for 12 years it didn't rain in Nepal, you see? That's the power of, it's a very, very powerful object, okay?

So even if you didn't believe in it or you have doubts about it, it would be very important to shelve it, you see? And not actively disagree with it or disrespect the idea that a person could be a seven-timer, you see what I mean? So I mean it's the distinction between, okay, I just don't believe it, that's fine.

But to disrespect that idea or that person would be extremely dangerous for your city or the country in which you live, you see? And the power of that experience, the rarity of that experience is extremely dangerous in a way. So it's really important for all of us who are around, we're around high lamas all the time, we're around holy books all the time, very powerful ideas.

They are like nuclear weapons, you know? And we are like children playing with nuclear weapons, you know? Very much like that.

So it's really important for us to be careful. And you know, there's that advice from Maitreya himself, Lord Maitreya said, if you can't accept the teaching or a certain concept or something happens that you find difficult to believe or support, it's very important to let it go and not attack it, you see? Not to disrespect it, you see?

Just shelve it, just say, I'm not ready for that concept yet, I'm not ready for that kind of activity or practice yet, and I don't quite believe in that yet. And that's fine, there's no bad karma associated with that. That's very much encouraged by Lord Buddha.

But to gossip about that or to disrespect it or to in any way do anything actively negative about an idea or a person like that is extremely dangerous karmically for your entire city or even the country in which you live. It's extremely powerful karma. It can affect millions of people, thousands of people.

Things can happen as a result of that. So it's very important for us. We're like kids playing with high explosives or something, you know?

Be careful around the books, be careful around high lamas. You don't have to throw yourself at their feet like that, because usually that wears off in three weeks or something. But don't disrespect it, don't actively, especially mentally.

That happens to be the highest tantric vow, okay? I mean, mentally, don't disrespect it. Say, I heard what the guy said, could be like that, doesn't fit me right now, I don't quite buy it yet, I'll just let it go for a while.

But don't go around saying, oh, this guy said that, he's crazy, he's a bad guy, something like that. Then you can draw this whole kind of extraordinary karmic results onto whole groups of people, okay? Cities full of people, okay?

I'm just going to skip to the thing I really like, okay? Obviously, the seven-timer has something left in them that makes them get born again, right? And there's this huge debate, is it a mental affliction or not?

Because this quotation says, me means karma, dung means end, nyomo means negative emotions, mental afflictions, wang gi means by the power of that, kye means they are born, okay? People take rebirth through the power of karma and mental afflictions, okay? De la de me, but they don't have it, meaning what?

Ah yes, people have seen emptiness directly, don't have it, meaning what? You can take it a couple ways, right? I take it as they don't have karma and mental afflictions, right?

So, so, kye means so, de me, so they don't have rebirth, okay? They don't have rebirth, okay? There are four great sufferings Lord Buddha said you could get out of, say, kye, ga, na, chi, kye, ga, na, chi, kye, ga, na, chi, kye, ga, na, chi.

The last three we already had, right? Ga getting old, na getting sick, chi dying. What's the first one?

Having to take birth again, you see? He didn't cover that in the first two lines. Did you notice?

It's missing. So, now he's covering it in the last two lines, okay? They don't have birth either because they don't have karma and mental afflictions anymore.

Now, that's been a big argument, why? What's sipa len du bhava? They take seven more births, what are you talking about?

What are you talking about? And to do that they have to die six more times, right? What are you talking about, you see?

First you say this guy hasn't eliminated all their mental afflictions, then you say they have seven lifetimes to go, and then you say they're not going to get old, they're not going to go through dying, they're not going to go through getting born again, okay? Because they don't have karma and mental afflictions. Do they have karma and mental afflictions?

Yeah, they do, okay? Now, one easy way to get out of it, right, is to say, oh, that's their old karma and mental afflictions. They don't have any new karma and mental afflictions, but that's true either, why?

They still have mental afflictions because they only got rid of three, okay? They got 83,997 mental afflictions left. What do you mean they don't have mental afflictions, you know?

So yeah, you can't say, oh, that was their old karma and mental afflictions, right? But what you can say is that apparently, obviously, the experience of 20 minutes of seeing emptiness directly is enough to start the process shutting down, you see? The process is shutting down.

The root of it has been torn up, okay? Now, I'll tell you something really interesting. Christy asked me to put up the Sanskrit, which we don't have time to do and still have a nice dinner, but I will tell you one really interesting thing, okay?

Those of you, Sanskrit aficionados, okay? In the Tibetan, it says, Aryas have eliminated from its root the sufferings of death, sickness, and getting old, okay? The Sanskrit from its root here is Mulam, okay?

Mulam. Those of you who know, Mulam means the root, like Mulamajjimikapra, you know? And then, like money is the root of all evil, Mulam, right?

And then, it's how you can remember your Sanskrit, okay? But the Sanskrit says they have eliminated the root. The Tibetans translate it as from the root, okay?

That's really cool to me. That's very interesting. To me, it would have saved 2,000 years of writing monastic textbooks, you see?

Have they eliminated the root of these things? Yeah. They don't believe in self-existence anymore, okay?

Like the belief in self-existence, they have eliminated, okay? They've eliminated the root of those sufferings. It's not that they've ripped them out from the root, okay?

I mean, except in a very stretched meaning, you see? So, if you know Sanskrit, and you can read that, and you know about the problem, then it's kind of clear now, right? If you can see emptiness directly, you will tear out the root of these problems, okay?

And not tear them out from the root, you see what I mean? And that's a little easier. And in the later Tibetan textbooks say, well, they basically agree with that, they say, basically, we can agree with that.

Some of them say they've eliminated the tendency to see things as self-existent, but not the seeds, like that. But we know that doesn't happen until the seventh bodhisattva, like that. There are lots of arguments, I'm not going to go through them all, okay?

The basic thing is that they have started the process of shutdown. They have turned off the faucet, but there's still water coming through the, the, what do you call it, the tap, right? The, what do you call that thing?

The faucet itself is still dripping, but they've shut off the process, you know? So, within a certain number of years, they are guaranteed a total shutdown, no more death, no more aging, okay? Like that.

Kendall said, could it be like a diamond cutter kind of thing, where they're still experiencing old age, death, etc., but not in a self-existent way? You could say that. I mean, that would help them shut it down, ultimately, according to the six steps of Maitreya we covered before, right?

Okay, anyway, I'm going to rush on to one more point. To me, it's an extraordinarily important question of whether you could speed up the process, you know? Like, supposedly, this person has seen that in seven lifetimes they will be enlightened.

Can it be shortened, okay? Could you speed it up? What's the, what's the implications of that?

A person has seen into the future. They've seen in an event that will happen within seven lifetimes. Does it have to be that way?

Could you speed it up, you see? To me, that's a big question. And so, I started digging around in the Tantras to see if there was any more stuff about it.

And it turns out that Je Tsongkhapa uses this very verse to discuss that question in two different places. And I've put them into your reading, okay? It's in your reading.

He talks about it in several contexts. One, well, there's three beautiful things that you'll see in your reading. One is that he says, if the Uttara Tantra says that a bodhisattva who's seen emptiness directly can get out of suffering that fast, you know, say seven lifetimes, then needless to say, if they did Tantra, it would be a lot faster, okay?

So, I was just really encouraged to find that. And it's in the reading, and I stuck it in there for you. I just pulled it out of that Tantra and gave it to you, okay?

Then there's another verse. I'm sorry, there's another part. This is where Je Tsongkhapa is discussing po'a, okay?

Po'a is this idea that as you die, during the process of death, in the Tantric teachings, you could do something special. And instead of going into the bardo, you go into the miracle body. It's called the body of illusion or the rainbow body, your light body, you see?

Like, you have to change bodies when you die, okay? After you leave this body, you have 49 days to enter a new body. But in the meantime, you hang out in this sort of Casper the Friendly Ghost body, okay?

It's like a ghostly body. It's like an insubstantial body. It's physical, but it's like smoke or something like that, okay?

And that's called the bardo, your bardo body. So, certain Tantric practitioners, as they move towards the bardo, they can take a detour and go to the body of light, okay? That's called po'a.

First of all, I think you should know that Je Tsongkhapa says, gyana, gyana, gyalamna, say gyalamna. Gyalamna says one chance in a billion. I mean, his basic story is, don't wait.

I mean, don't count on it, you know? Don't count on it, you know? Like, it's possible.

It can be done, but don't count on it, you know? Then there's this beautiful paragraph. He says, you get your rear end into gear.

You try to see emptiness directly before you get old. And then you just go into your miracle body, okay? Just take care of it that way, you know?

And I thought it was really exciting to see him actually say that, you know? Then he says, you can enter your paradise now, next week, next month, okay? Don't wait till you get too old, you know?

Don't wait. Don't try to pull off this one in a billion lottery thing at the last minute, okay? Take care of it now, you know?

And it's so rare. It's so depressingly rare to hear a lama or to read a scripture that says, in a month, in six months, in one year, if you work hard, you can gain tantric enlightenment, you know? Just do it, you know?

I mean, it's always later, right? Do it now, okay? Practice it, learn tantra, and get it done now, you know?

And there's this beautiful scripture that Je Tsongkhapa quotes, and you can read it, okay? You can read the whole thing. It's in the reading.

Then he says, by the way, if you hope to pull it off, either in the bardo or earlier, okay? If you hope to ever move into your body of light, by the way, he says one beautiful thing. He says, once you get this light body thing going, you get enlightened in the same lifetime, guaranteed.

I mean, that's always the case. It's not at the same moment, okay? You'll be learning that in the tantric course, but you gain a body of light.

You gain what we call, say, gyulu. You gain that body. If your body changes in this lifetime, then it's definite you'll be enlightened in that lifetime, okay?

Definite. You'll be able to travel to countless planets to take care of countless beings in that lifetime, guaranteed, okay? And it's not an immediate thing.

It happens slowly. You start to get healthier, healthier, healthier. This material body gets better, stronger, stronger, stronger.

If you keep doing virtue, then it starts to get stronger, healthier, more light, powerful. Stronger and lighter at the same time, okay? And then you can do things you couldn't do 10 years ago or 20 years ago, and then it gets like that, okay?

Then you move into a body of light. There's this cool thing in the monastery. They take a knitting needle and they stick it in your arm to see how you're doing, okay?

And at some point, you don't feel it, you see? Like you're halfway to a light body. I mean, I don't suggest it.

You can start with, I don't know, pins or something, all right? Lightly. But this is like your body is changing, okay?

But Je Tsongkhapa says something beautiful. He says, don't expect that to start unless you've seen emptiness directly. And don't expect to pull off the poor thing unless you see emptiness directly.

It doesn't happen, okay? It doesn't happen. You have to see emptiness directly to move into the light body, to get the light body going.

So there's another, what do you call it? Incentive, right? For seeing emptiness directly, which is basically doing a meditation on your Buddha nature, right?

Because that's emptiness. So what I'd like to do is take a break. And then after that, come back and we'll talk a little bit, just like half an hour, about a good Buddha nature meditation, like practical stuff.

Like, you know, is there something I can do tomorrow when I get home to meditate on to take care of this, okay? To try to accomplish everything you've talked about today, okay? So we'll do that after a break.

Okay, party time. We got two more things to do and that's it. One is, I promised you something from Lama Umapa, from Je Tsongkapa's Lama, right?

And this is from a tantric text. This is from a book called A Collection of Practices for Manjushri. And in there he does something.

He talks about purifying, you know, revealing your Buddha nature and in a way transforming the negative parts of you into positive things. You see, the parts of you that you were born with, how to transform them into something positive. And this is sort of an unusual presentation.

It's not like very common. It occurs throughout some of the tantras. And I throw it out to you more as something to think about, okay?

Like, he says that if you remove certain negative emotions, then you can gain certain parts of an enlightened being's body, you see? And I just think that's cool. I haven't seen it a lot.

And I want you to chew on it and maybe tell me why, like, what does emotion A have to do with purifying this part of your body or something? You see, it's very tantric. I don't really get it that well.

So I'm just going to throw it out for you to chew on. And I'll give it to you as like a chart. Like, it'll be, if you purify this emotion, then this part of you, your old self, will turn on into this kind of the wisdom of the Buddha.

You see what I mean? Got it? I'll say it again.

If you can eliminate this kind of emotion, then this part of your body or mind will change, and you will gain such and such a wisdom of the Buddha. You see what I mean? I just think it's cool.

Now, I don't exactly understand how it works. I think you should work on that. Maybe it's homework for the next few months, all right?

Here we go. The first emotion he talks about is anger. If you could eliminate your anger, then it would change the heap of consciousness.

This is the plain old mind that you were born with, the awareness that you were born with. It would fix that. All your mental, we could say your raw capacity of awareness, the fact that you're aware, alive, is that, heap of consciousness.

If you remove anger, then your heap of consciousness transforms into mirror-like wisdom. An enlightened being has five kinds of wisdom, five kinds of stuff running around in their minds. Mirror-like wisdom is a perfect understanding of subjects and objects.

Like, when they see Michael Moore, they don't ever imagine that he's something that's coming at them. They know very clearly that this is a creation of their mind, that their mind is projecting this. So, I just throw that out to you.

I mean, play around with the implications. If you had trouble developing wisdom, that understood that the things around you are coming from you, then according to this theory, if you could work on your own anger, then your wisdom would become clearer. You see?

So, that's kind of interesting to me. And I think, obviously, the opposite is true. If you have a problem with anger, then try to understand that the object is not coming from its own side, that it's coming from you, right?

The person who irritates you, or the person who attacks your country, right, is coming from you, you see? And then you would be less likely to be violent or angry, okay? And somehow that would clean up your entire consciousness, all right?

So, work on that. That's the first one. There'll be five.

Then, supposedly, if you could work on your pride and your achievements, there's no good word in English. It's serna in Tibetan, and it means you don't like to give. You hold out.

It could be money, it could be time, it could be emotions, it could be anything, you see what I mean? You don't give freely. So, if you could work on pride and not giving freely, then you would get rid of the problems that you have with sensation or feeling, and mainly feeling bad, depressed, physical illness, pains in your body, okay?

That kind of feeling would be purified, and you would gain what we call equal wisdom. Equal here means that you have a capacity for equanimity or treating people fairly, like you treat everybody the same. You don't have a double standard, okay?

You treat people fairly. Whether they're your friend, whether they're your enemy, whether it's someone you don't know at all, you treat them all equally nice and with the same concern, okay? So, that's kind of interesting.

You see, you work out the implications. If you could work on your pride, if you could work on your inability to give freely, somehow your own feeling would be improved, you know? Your feelings, your capacity of feeling, and it would transform into this total equanimity of a Buddha.

And in the tantra, these are each accompanied by different deities appearing at the different channels around the chakra of your heart. And that would be a cool subject to study when you get there, okay? This is what some texts call desire out of desire.

They call it desire and aversion. And I don't like those words because they don't give to me the right feeling. The idea is that every moment of your life, every moment of the day, there are three poisons running through your blood.

And they are liking things the wrong way, disliking things the wrong way, and then thinking the wrong way, okay? It's the middle of the wheel of life. It's the pig and the rooster and the snake, okay?

And it's very simple. Do Buddhas like things? Yeah, they like to see us having this class, you know?

Like Buddhas are looking down and saying, that's good, you know? Out of the whole world, there's a few people who are trying to improve themselves in a serious way, you know? I like that.

Of course they like that. Do they like it in an ignorant way? No.

Which means they understand that if they have the pleasure to sit in a class and see 10 or 20 amazing new teachers teaching, right? In those groups. Like I was getting chills up my spine, you know?

Like it's so beautiful to see, you know, in a new country where Buddhism is spreading. And then like 10 or 20 people who are like intensely into it and who are teaching really, really sweet Dharma, you know, in Tucson, Arizona, you know? Like I just get excited about it, you know?

And you like it. You have to like it, you see? You look at it and you're happy.

But at the same time, you must realize that it's coming from your mind, you see? Like it's real, okay? People say, oh then it's not real.

No, Nagarjuna said it's real because it's coming from your mind, get it? It's real because it's coming from you, okay? I have the pleasure to sit in this room and see 20 of you teaching extraordinary classes.

Like I was spying on them, you know? Like they're so cool, you know? And then I can just sit back and thank who, you know?

Like I made that karma, you know? Like we're always beating ourselves up. We always have this guilt thing, oh bad karma, I created 9-11, you know?

You did, okay? You should feel bad, okay? But on the other hand, when something like this happens, you know, which is the opposite, and you see like 20 incredible people teaching classes, you know, these whole four days, that was so...

I think we should give them a hand. Ready? Yeah.

Yeah. You know, to see that, rejoice in what they do, be happy in what they do, but also rejoice that you made the karma, you see what I mean? You made the karma to see that, okay?

So that's not ignorant disliking. And then there's no problems involved, you see? Got it?

Then there can't be any future problems, okay? One of those teachers comes up to Geshe Michael and says, I changed my mind, you're an idiot, you know? I want to go teach Kung Fu or something, you know?

I'm not interested in your stuff anymore. And then I'm not going to get angry, why? All along, during the good times, I've been holding that vision.

It's my karma. I'm creating this. Then when it shifts, who do I blame?

Me. I don't get mad at anybody, see? That's wise liking, you see?

And wise disliking, okay? Like it's intelligent, Dharma intelligent, right? Then you're not going to get mad if something happens with those 20 teachers, you see?

Because, okay, that's my karma too. I made that too. I don't like it, but I know where it's coming from.

If you know where it's coming from, it prevents what? Reaction, you see? Negative reaction, bad karma, you see?

If I think I made this thing, I made this bad thing that I'm watching, then I'm not going to fight with anybody, see? Somebody comes up to me and says, you're an idiot. Then I can just like say, okay, I said idiot to somebody three years ago and now it's coming back to me.

Thanks, I'll see you later, you know? Like you're not going to get in a fight with them, right? You're not going to make new bad karma.

That's what liking things intelligently means. That's okay. You can do that.

You should like things. If you didn't like things, you wouldn't be striving to work to a Buddha paradise, right? You should like things, but like them in the right way.

I'm making them. I'm creating them. If I want them, I have to set them up properly.

I have to create the karma, right? If you get rid of this disliking of things ignorantly, then you can purify the heap of discrimination. This is your capacity of discrimination.

This is big. This is small. This is tall.

This is short. This is red. This is blue.

I like them. I don't like them. This is male.

This is female. Some schools of Buddhism and some schools of philosophy, they're going around saying, if you didn't have discrimination, everything would be all right, you know? Yogas citta-vartim nirodha, opening lines of the Yoga Sutra.

A lot of people are saying, oh, that means if you could just stop thinking, everything would be all right. You know, if you could just stop dividing between things, everything would be all right. Buddhism never said that.

Ancient Indian schools never said that, okay? Then you'd be like a jellyfish, right? No, you'd just be like a jellyfish.

You wouldn't say, I have to go to the right door and not the left door to get to my car. You see, that's discrimination. That's making a decision.

I should help people and not hurt them. You see, that's a discrimination. You want that kind of discrimination.

That's not a bad thing. But you'll purify the negative parts of that, you see? I dislike this person that I didn't make.

I like this person that I didn't make. That's discrimination in a stupid way. You see, I mean, you purify that.

If you purify that, you get to analytical wisdom, the wisdom of a Buddha which understands emptiness and all its boundaries, okay? Roughly. She said, could you call the heap of discrimination judgment?

On some level, on some level. In particular, with the sense organs, eye, ear, nose, tongue, and tactile, it's more immediate than that. You see, the distinction between hot and or red and blue is not so much judgmental.

When you get into the sixth version of discrimination, which is mental, then it becomes more, you could call it judgment, I think. The other is almost too raw to call judgment, you see? So if we could remove envy, then it would purify.

This is the fourth of the five heaps. Heaps, if you don't know, is a part of your body and mind, right? And the other four heaps are easy, like the first one is your physical form, the second is your capacity of feeling, the third one is your capacity to discriminate between things, and the fifth one is your raw awareness.

Now, everything else about you, which means, in my case, Michael, or Michael's anger, or Michael's faith, or Michael's concentration, all these other things about me are thrown into number four, heap number four. So they call it other stuff. It's basically the heap of other stuff.

And it has all these weird names, like compositional factors, or blah, blah, blah. It's all wrong, okay? Abhidharma says, just all the other stuff, we're throwing it in there, okay?

So it would purify all the other parts about you if you could get rid of your jealousy. Then you'd get what we call accomplishing wisdom. This is basically the state of mind that you need to get things done as a Buddha.

What does a Buddha get done? They teach people, okay? How do they do that?

They send out emanations. So the function of this wisdom, that's the one you're going to need to send out your emanations, mainly, gets things done, called accomplishing wisdom, okay? One more to go.

By the way, I want you to struggle with that, you see? Struggle with that correlation. How is your jealousy connected with the inability to get things done?

I mean, think about it, okay? And again, it happens in degrees. You could get more done in three months from now if you could cut down on your jealousy 10%.

Like, you're not going to eliminate your jealousy in a month, right? But if you could rejoice in other people's successes a little bit more, then would your own projects go better, right? And it's sort of a cool idea, you see?

You can apply this to business or yoga or anything, relationships, anything, okay? So if you could get rid of your ignorance, which is just not understanding that all this stuff is coming from you, right? That's all.

That's ignorance. No fancy thing. The person that annoys me the most in the world has come from me.

That's all. That's getting rid of your ignorance. Then your heap of form, your physical body, would transform into the wisdom of the Dharma realm.

Wisdom of the Dharma realm is a fancy name for emptiness itself. It is not a wisdom. It is not a state of mind.

It's a code word for emptiness itself, and particularly the emptiness of the other wisdoms or the emptiness of the Buddha, okay? So when they teach the five wisdoms, they say, by the way, just throw out number five from the beginning. It's not a kind of wisdom.

It's emptiness itself, okay? It's the fact that the irritating person that I thought was coming from their own side doesn't even exist, okay? All right?

All the people that you ever got irritated with in your entire life didn't exist. That's the great irony of our suffering. We are like Don Quixote jousting with the windmills.

They're not people. They're just windmills, you know? And you're angry.

Every time you got pissed off in your home life, it was at something that didn't exist, okay? Is there a person there? Yes.

Are they irritating? Yes. Do they exist in that sense?

Yes. Very important. Yes.

But do they come from their own side? Are they a butthole, beavis from their own side? No, okay?

Who made them? I did. Whose fault is it?

Me. Who should I blame? Me.

Who should I fight with? Me, okay? That's all.

Do they exist? Yes. Are they irritating?

Very much. Yes. Is that real?

Totally real, okay? Does it come from their side? That's the crux, okay?

No. Who's it come from? Me.

How do I get rid of them? Stop getting pissed off. And you can eliminate these people.

This is the karmic method, you see? It's the only method. I don't want to meet you again, so I'm going to be nice to you, okay?

All right? Seriously. It's what His Holiness calls enlightened self-interest, right?

You know, I always tell my friends, this is an old joke, I have friends at the post office. Every time they hear a click, they jump, right? Because people always come to the post office and shooting all their friends.

And I said, you can get rid of your friends at the post office if you're just nice to them, you see? The people that annoy you at your office, you can get rid of them, eliminate them, terminate them, by being nice to them. Don't react, okay?

Don't react. Because when you react, it creates a new person, a new annoying person in the future, okay? It's easy to say, it's extraordinarily difficult to practice, okay?

You will never make it unless you keep thinking about emptiness, you know? And I speak from experience, okay? Like, I'll walk out here, somebody will irritate me and I'll get angry, you know?

And then you just have to pour on the perfection of wisdom. That's what perfection of wisdom means. Pour it on, you know?

Maybe it's the day later after you got angry. Maybe it's okay. That's not bad reaction time for someone just learning about emptiness.

Later, you get to the point where you can apply it in 10 seconds, 5 seconds, 1 second. You lower the gap. You lower the reaction gap.

And then the karma goes less, less, less, less. And then slowly, you're like, how come I go to Tucson, Arizona, and I meet 100 nice people, you know? What is that?

You know, why is that? You know, give credit where credit's due, okay? They're not nice people.

They're blank people, okay? They're empty people. You know, pat yourself on the back.

You created them, you know? And keep up that chain of thought. Don't do this American thing, Judeo-Christian guilt thing, where you're beating yourself all the time.

Think of the 10 people you met today that are really cool and say, I made them, you know? I created them. I'm doing okay, you know?

Before I was 50-50. Now it's 60-40. Maybe I can get it up to 70-30, you know?

And be happy, you know? Be inspired. Now I know how to make things happen, you know?

I'm going to keep my temper because I want to get rid of another 10% of the annoying people in my life, you know? And get the odds better and better. And then there gets this weird thing happening where you're just walking around in a bubble all day with tantric deities.

You know, everybody around you is, like, cool, you know? Everybody around you is so cool, you know what I mean? And what do you think is happening in a Buddha paradise?

Who's there? Lord Buddha and 10th level bodhisattvas. See?

See what the extreme does? If you carry this logic to the extreme, you would reach a place in Tucson where you're just surrounded by incredible tantric deities all day long, you see? Extraordinary people all day long.

And you almost feel guilty, you know? Because you're just walking around in this big bubble of extraordinary people. And you know other people are, like, having a bad day, you know?

But everyone you see is, like, cool, you know? And that's the ultimate end of your practice. That's what a Buddha paradise is, okay?

So that's the transformation of your annoying friends. Last thing. I had a neat way to get out of it.

What time is it? 10 or 6. Okay.

We were going to talk about two ways of doing meditation on your Buddha nature, right? Last night we did what I feel like is more of a compassion version, you see? It's, like, more of a bodhicitta version.

We're trying to link your Buddhahood, your Buddha, to other future Buddhas, okay? And that's a very wonderful practice. You have to keep trying that, okay?

Today we'll do just a little taste of a different one. We'll finish, like, 5-10 minutes, okay? This one is for when you're feeling sharp and you're not too tired and you want to meditate on your Buddha nature, which is emptiness, right?

And it's called Mahamudra, right? A lot of you have already taken a course called Mahamudra. And I have a proposal for you, you know?

I'll make a mazal. Now listen carefully. When a diamond dealer says, let's make a mazal, you listen very carefully.

Like they say, I'll pay your price for these diamonds. And I'll pay for the delivery. And I will pay you in cash and not in check or anything like that.

And it'll be 120 days, okay? Like, you didn't lie, right? You said 120 days very softly.

Like, you'll pay four months from now, right? 120 days. It's like 180 days.

Hundred days, right? Good? Mazal?

The guy goes to the mazal, he's saying, 180 days. You didn't say 180 days. I said, 180 days, that's it, you know?

So anyway, listen before you mazal. My idea is, you know, Mahamudra is a meditation on your Buddha nature. It's a meditation on the emptiness of your mind.

It's a very sweet course. It goes from beginner's emptiness meditation on your mind up to advanced meditation on your mind, okay? Which is the one at which you see your Buddha nature.

We'll do a short one just for good luck, okay? It's not going to be a big deal. So sit up straight.

That'll be the last thing. Then we'll dedicate to good karma and go have dinner. Okay, start with 10 breaths.

Then we'll start with your feet, okay? We're starting with your feet. How do your feet feel?

Okay, good, bad, or neutral? Get in touch with the feeling of your feet. Good, bad, or neutral?

[Говорящий 2]
Not the feet themselves, but how the feet feel. How do your legs feel? Up to your hips, how do your legs feel?

How do your hips feel? How does your bottom feel? How does your lower back feel?

How does your upper back and your shoulders feel? How does your neck feel? How does your head up to the top of your head?

[Говорящий 1]
The back of your head and the top of your head feel?

[Говорящий 2]
Good, bad, or neutral? How does your forehead feel? How do you feel in your mind?

Happy, sad, neutral? Now stay on the feeling in your mind and watch it. Does it change?

[Говорящий 1]
Do you feel slightly better than you did when you started? Do you feel slightly worse? Try to follow your feelings.

Happier, slightly less happy. Sad, slightly less sad. Neutral.

Feel good again. Remembered dinner, felt good. Remembered cleanup, felt bad.

[Говорящий 2]
Forgot to think about my feelings, felt neutral. Follow your feelings like that for another minute or two. If your mind drifts off, bring it back to your feelings.

[Говорящий 1]
How do you feel? Happy, sad, neutral? Objects will come up and you will feel happy about them.

Objects will come up and you'll feel sad about them, or some kind of negative feeling, nervous. Sometimes you'll just start thinking about nothing. It will be neutral.

[Говорящий 2]
Keep trying to follow the feeling.

[Говорящий 1]
Then take one moment and reflect on the fact that all these feelings are coming from how you took care of people or didn't take care of people in the past. Take a moment to think about how all of those changes are coming from whether we took care of others or not.

[Говорящий 2]
See a rose in your heart, the size of a grain of sand. On the rose is a Buddha. The Buddha becomes a lady Buddha, woman Buddha, angel, shining golden angel.

She loves you very much. Now she's changed. She's you.

You are her. It's you who's sitting on the rose and you are a shining golden angel. A blue spot of light grows in your heart, in the heart of the angel.

A thin ray of light comes out and connects your spot to the spot in the heart of one other person here.

[Говорящий 1]
Suddenly all our hearts are connected with blue light, thin rays of blue light. There's a whole network in this room.

[Говорящий 2]
All hearts are connected by a blue light. Then they are connected to all the hearts of all the creatures in the universe. Blue light.

Hold it. Hold it. Bring the light back to your heart.

Open your eyes. Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
So when we used to finish a corporate business meeting, we used to have a thing called deliverables. Meaning everybody in the meeting had to say what they were going to deliver in the next few weeks. And by what time.

So we had the following mazals that I remember or semi mazals, not real mazals. You're going to try to get rid of half the stuff in your house. Okay.

Just throw it out. My general rule is if I haven't used it in six months, I'm probably not going to use it. Okay.

I have an exception, which is Dharma books. Okay. And I don't mind to say it.

That's different. Okay. That's different.

But I'm talking about the knickknacks around your house. Okay. Just throw them away.

Give them away to somebody. We have a big box out at Diamond Mountain called gifts. We're going to give them away to elderly people that we meet on the tour.

We're going to do visits to elderly homes, nursing homes during the tour and do singing or dancing or playing music. And so if it's anything kind of cool, you can throw it in a gift box. Okay.

And we'll give it away when we reach your city or whatever. Okay. Don't mail it to us.

Keep your book. Okay. I mean, it looks like this dumb new thing, but it really keeps your mind straight.

Okay. It keeps your mind straight. I can tell who's doing their book.

I don't have to know. Okay. I don't have to ask.

You can probably tell when I'm doing mine. Keep up some meditation every day, at least half an hour. You can just go straight into Mahamudra, download it, get it.

Probably there's even some there now, right? Are there still some there, Anthony? There's probably a few packages there left.

I don't know out there. Do that. That's about it.

Be nice to each other. Today is hug day. You have to give everybody a hug when you get up.

Okay. Like go up to anybody that you thought they would look kind of cool. Go give them a hug.

And everybody else too, you know. Okay. This started when the days when we were in three-year retreat and we couldn't give the care ladies a hug and you were our proxy huggers.

So I think it's good to keep up that custom. So give everybody a hug to say goodbye. All right.

Thank you for coming. Very holy. Very holy.

Please remember you will be my chair. Okay. Gelola, how about one like really stirring mandala and dedication.

Okay.