Углублённый курс ACI 02 — «Руководство к образу жизни бодхисаттвы» Мастера Шантидевы, глава об уничтожении гнева (2004, Нью-Йорк), занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
Verse 22, page 3. I'm not going to correct the Tibetan Sanskrit as we go. You'll have to do that.

Also, I am going to stop by 7 o'clock. And I know that's weird, but there's a reason I have another commitment tonight. And I'm just going to run out.

I'm not going to say goodnight or talk to anybody. I'm just going to be out the door. So I need a watch or something.

Anybody have? Is it okay? Sure.

Remember to recover it. Okay. It'll be right here.

Okay. Okay. And tonight is the most important class of the patience chapter.

So I'm going to make it short and sweet. I think it's better actually. His Highness does that.

Where is that? Gatsabje tonight gets to the kind of patience which really works. It destroys anger permanently.

This is the only one you can use that will keep you from ever getting angry again. And it's not what we called last night. What do you call it?

Coping? What do you call it? Supercoper.

Okay? You don't become a supercoper. Supercoper means, okay, you learn.

It's like this thing where you can sit out in the snow for six hours and not mind it. I read an article. I was teaching in the prison in Arizona.

We teach at a maximum security prison, 20 years to life. And this guy comes up to me and says, Geshe Michael, I smuggled this article in. Check it out.

It says a Japanese monk runs around Japan in 40 hours or something doing mantras. Six people have died doing it before. He didn't die.

He's declared a famous monk of Japan or something like this. He says, that's so amazing. The guy could run around Japan in six hours and not die.

And I'm like, that's like some kind of, what do you call it? There's this perception, especially of monks, right? Buddhist monks or nuns.

You sit and they put fire on your body. I've seen this. I've seen it done in certain Buddhist sects.

They have incense and they're sticking. And this is like a test. Can I concentrate?

Am I a tough guy? And there's this perception of that. And that's the other two kinds of patience.

That's like, I can do it. I'm tough. And you can go through life putting up with people that make you angry.

And by the way, it's not just people. It's also events that make you angry. Traffic.

AOL. Things that don't work smoothly. Stuff like that.

You just get frustrated and you get mad. It doesn't have to be a person. But people and things, the first two kinds of patience, actually it's the first and the third in this text, are like, I can put up with it.

I will learn to sit next to the person that most annoys me over and over, hour after hour. And I will be calm and I will be happy. And you're like, my enemy is my friend.

And like that. And we can do that and there's a benefit to that. If you're going to burn up thousands of years of karma through five minutes of getting angry, then it's worth it to try to learn that method.

What we're talking about tonight is the permanent method. It's the permanent solution. It's where, by undertaking a certain practice, you actually remove all the things that could make you angry.

Okay? No more traffic jams. AOL is working perfectly all the time.

You know? There's nobody at work that you don't like anymore. Okay?

Got the difference? See the difference? First kind of patience and third kind of patience are temporary.

They're abandoned. How to deal with a bad world. But the second kind of patience is much more powerful.

How to design the world so that you never have to put up with anything anymore. Okay? See the difference?

It's very, very profound. This is the most precious thing that we as a group have to offer the world. You see what I mean?

The world is full of different advice. You can open up any book on advice about how to deal with problems. How to deal with angry people.

How to deal with it when someone hurts you or attacks you. You know? There must be editorials in the newspapers for the last three years.

How to deal with the problem in the Middle East. You know? How to deal with that.

Okay? But this approach is different. This approach is like, I don't know how to say it.

It's like a human comes to the dogs and explains to them about a different reality that they just never perceived before. Okay? Like we said that if a dog came in here and I had a pen.

You know, I use this pen to write with. A dog comes in and uses it to chew on. I'm not saying better or worse.

Okay? I'm not saying that. They have their own world.

We have our own world. But as if a human tried to enter the animal world and explain what this is used for. Okay?

Like totally almost beyond their level. Right? Master Shantideva is coming to our realm and saying, Look, you just don't see how things work.

Okay? You just don't see how things work. Things work different than you thought.

If you could get that, you would move up to a whole new level. You wouldn't be in a world where you need patience. Get it?

Okay? Much different. It's not like how to deal with bad stuff.

It's like graduate to a whole new level of reality where there is no such thing. They say that in this level there is no word for death. Okay?

They don't have a word for death. They don't have the word bad. It doesn't exist there.

Okay? So we gotta talk about that. It's very, very important.

Okay? And it's so cool that he does this in the middle of the patience chapter. This is wisdom.

This belongs in the ninth chapter. Right? Higher reality.

How to see a higher reality. This belongs in the ninth chapter. But Master Shantideva puts it in the sixth chapter.

When you're talking about anger. Why? He says in the end, you will never be able to become patient all the time unless you see reality directly.

Unless you figure out where are things coming from. Okay? So if anybody asks you, what is that class about that he only talked for 45 minutes?

The first one ever. Okay? It's like, where do things come from?

Okay? Where does stuff really come from? Meaning, where did the guy next to you in the world come from?

Where do traffic jams come from? We've been traveling across the country. It's been dangerous in many senses.

You know, we have sort of cranky cars, old cars. And then you're traveling on these highways. And then coming along like the other way.

Sometimes you see, we saw in North Carolina, there's a truck, a semi-truck overturned. And there's four miles of traffic behind it. And then we just float through in 20 seconds.

You know? What's the difference? You see?

Why is there traffic on this lane and there's no traffic on this lane? You see what I mean? What makes things happen?

Because then you could gain ultimate patience. Then the whole question of anger would be finished. You see what I mean?

It's very interesting. Could you move into a different reality where there is nothing to be angry at? You see what I mean?

And how do you remove all those objects? How do you get rid of the guy at work? I did it, I can tell you.

You know? I had a supervisor. Some people have met him or her, I won't say.

Extremely difficult person. Really crazy person. Like, unbelievable.

I'll give you one example. This is just a joke, okay? But it's for real.

We're in a board meeting, right? All the VPs are around this big table. The Hudson River is on this glass window as big as the building.

And we're all like in our suits and ties, you know? And this company is now up to about $100 million a year. And we're discussing how to send gifts to the buyers at JCPenney, and Sears Roebuck, and Mervins, and you know.

And you can't send them cash anymore. That's considered bribery. And we don't give away alcohol.

Like in the dining business, normally you get a big bottle of champagne or something to the buyer. So we didn't want to do that. So we came up with this idea that we'll contact Godiva Chocolates, and we'll have them make a special chocolate just for our company.

And we'll send that to all the buyers, you know? So this person raises their hand. This person last year made $3 million, okay?

That for themselves. Raises their hand and says, I just want to make one more suggestion. When we get the chocolate from Godiva, we get a special machine that cuts off the bottom half of the chocolate.

You know? She was there. And then we can send the chocolate back to Godiva, and they can make more, and we can just keep slicing the chocolate.

And we'll save like 50 cents a bar, you know? And this person just made $30 million last year. And we're like...

And you know, it was my boss, so I had to be like, Well, you know, I'll definitely look into it. How do you cut a huge bar of chocolate in half this way? And so I worked on this person.

I worked on them. First they changed, then they went away. Seriously.

And I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. So either they will change or they'll go away.

It doesn't matter. The method is the same, right? What I'm saying is that when we discuss tonight's class, this approach to patience, this is what we really have to offer the world, you know?

And if it's in the realm of bowling or yoga or business, we're going to do a book on relationships, we're going to do a book on international politics, we're going to do a book on ballet. It doesn't matter what. But the principle is the same.

You can tweak reality. Tweak reality. What's his name?

I always forget. Keanu? Not Nemo, but?

Neo? Neo reaches into the matrix, switches something, and the world changes. You see what I mean?

Because the world is like the matrix, okay? That's why the movie is so popular. It calls to your inner knowledge.

You know that. The whole world is like the matrix. It is a projection.

It is like data flowing by you. And you can reach in and switch switches. And you can change your physical body.

You could become a ballet dancer at age 50, okay? You could make millions of dollars switching switches. Or you could remove all the obnoxious people in your world and all the traffic jams.

Just reach in, switch the switches. And that's what we're going to talk about tonight. That's the cool thing, okay?

Now that depends on understanding how you view the matrix now. You have a vision of the matrix. You're looking at the matrix.

And you're small. You're like Keanu up until he holds out and stops the bullets. I saw that part.

Up to that point, he's struggling with this reality. He didn't see how to get into reality and change it, right? So we're going to go over, the wrong ways you see reality.

And that way we'll get to the right one, okay? We'll eliminate three ways of seeing things wrong that we do all day long. And then we'll get to the real matrix and how to fool around with the matrix, okay?

You can get healthy. You can get very wealthy switching the matrix. Or, I suggest what might even be more satisfying.

You can get rid of every obnoxious person in your life. Okay? Either they will become extremely sweet, or they'll just go away.

And I'm talking also about events that you don't like. Traffic. What do you call it?

Crime in New York City. Pollution. Crowding.

Noise. And, international threats. That's where it applies in international terms.

There could be a world where there is no threat from one country to another, okay? You can create this world. You can make this world happen.

I think we have to. As I said last night, you know, we're on a very weird course. Einstein predicted it, you know, 1940-something.

He said, right after the bomb went off, he became a pacifist. He's like, we've got to stop this thing. It will only end in some disaster, you know?

He saw, inevitably, it will happen. Somebody will explode one, like we did, in a city. And one or two of those, and then the whole discussion is academic, you know?

All your attempts at being nice, peaceful, etc. We are on the verge of that. So, how do you change that?

You have to, as a group, we have to use this other world view. So, I'm going to go over the three wrong ways of viewing the world. World view.

And then, we'll get to the one that works for the matrix. And I promise to do it in 45 minutes. Okay.

Much more important is the party. And, there you go. Okay.

So, this is world view number one, okay? You only have to know three. That's all you need to know.

Half an hour, we'll do three wrong world views. Okay? This is how you view the matrix, the wrong way.

If you see it as this kind of thing, you can't fix it. Okay? It's unfixable.

Okay? You can do band-aids. You know?

Temporary solutions. They don't work in the long run. Okay?

Okay. So, it all means, in Tibetan and Sanskrit, it means a primal energy, the primordial energy. The first energy of all things.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Literally, it means the chief, like Lam, Kutsala, Namsen, the three principal paths. It means principal. But here it means the first energy of all things.

Okay? And what it means is, if I ask you, where did the universe come from? Then you say, there was an explosion.

Okay? Like, for a long time, people thought that we weren't moving, that we were just not moving, that we were the center of the universe. Then after a while, people figured out that we were moving around the sun, and the sun was stationary.

And then later they figured out that the sun is moving away from all the other stars. Like, they're all moving away in a certain direction. So from that, they figured out that there must have been a big explosion at the beginning.

So other things started when a piece of matter smaller than your nose blew up. Okay? And that's called the Big Bang.

Okay? That's the Big Bang Theory. And it's based on the trajectories of all the stars that we can see.

If you trace it back trillions of years, it all started from a single point. And that is the viewpoint of your world. Okay?

Your culture. Western culture. America, Europe, Australia, etc.

The modern world. You believe that the world was created when there was an explosion, back when there was nothing. And then after that, there was something.

Okay? First there was nothing. Then there was a Big Bang.

Big Bang. And then there was something. Okay?

Really. And it's just trillions of years ago. No, I'm just repeating Stephen Hawking's.

I'm repeating what your culture believes. It's the energy which blew up Hiroshima. You know?

The people who are talking about this idea, they blew up the city. So we believed them. You know?

We believed them. Okay? Tremendous evidence of the truth of their beliefs was that moment.

You know? Then after that, everybody took Einstein seriously. You know, just before that, I said, there was a book came out about Einstein.

He was attacked by many people. There was a book that came out, 150 authors speak against Einstein. You know?

150 major thinkers in 1930s attacked him. And then there was a book printed called 150 thinkers against Einstein. And later he said, if I was wrong, I wouldn't have taken 150 of them to prove it.

But the moment the first explosion became public, then we all started to accept this thing. Science. Science says, get it.

First there was nothing. Then there was something. And between that, there was a blow-up.

Okay? Something blew up. Okay?

What was before that? None. So nothing made this blow-up happen.

Nope. Just happened. Okay?

No, you believe that. I mean, ask any scientist, any nuclear physicist. This is what is the belief of our...

We believe in science, not superstition. We no longer believe in religion, really. We believe in science.

And science says that that's what happened. That's why the world is here. No.

What happened after that? Certain particles collided with other particles. Oxygen, carbon, nitrogen.

They were created. The elements of the periodic table were created. Okay?

And get this. To some amazing, totally unthinkable coincidence of collisions between infinitely tiny particles, trillions upon trillions, quadrillions, any imaginable number of collisions have created your face. No, seriously.

That's the belief. I'm not joking. It is the belief.

First, they collided in such a way to create the elements. And then all the beautiful faces in this room. Like, I get to stand here and I see, like, I don't know, a couple hundred extraordinary expressions of humanity.

You know? I get to see all these faces, all these different faces. Each one a future Buddha or a Buddha.

You know what I mean? It's very beautiful to see. But what science says is that this is all just an extraordinary action.

An extraordinary coincidence. Okay? And it's not crazy, okay?

Like, it's not totally impossible. Okay? If you follow the Big Bang to the end, you have to say all the faces in this room are just some extraordinary coincidence.

And a physicist would say that's why we don't have evidence of life on other planets yet. That's why we've never been visited by other beings. It's because it's just impossible.

Just for a face to happen is almost totally impossible. It's infinitely, it's nearly infinitely impossible. Okay?

Stephen Hawking says that if the spin of a proton around an atom had been a billionth of one percent different, this wouldn't all happen. It couldn't happen. The world couldn't happen.

It's just one extraordinary coincidence that the velocity of a particle is such around the cohesiveness of the atomic, what holds an atom together. If it were infinitely different, this world is physically impossible. So, and then to go all the way to faces sitting in a schoolroom talking about the holiest book in the world, this is like totally, totally impossible.

Okay? Almost impossible. So that's what you are.

Science says that. First viewpoint. Okay?

First viewpoint. That Master Shantideva describes as Tso. Tso is this idea of a first energy.

Okay? First. Okay?

Like I used to give this lecture seven years ago. The Big Bang. The Big Bang.

Capital T, you know? Then the stupid New York Times, which I'm always fighting against, they came out with this idea. Scientists report Big Bang before Big Bang.

You know? Okay? Now we're up to 25 different dimensions and stuff.

But anyway. Imagine something happening from nothing. That's what your culture believes in.

Physicists. The people who make your airplanes. The people who make your computers.

The people who made the web. The people who made the nuclear bomb. They believe in this viewpoint.

And you better take them seriously. Because you've bought into it. All the things you own and all the careers you have to pay for those things are based on disbelief.

That's belief number one. Now, belief number two. How much time I got?

Yes. Okay. Say dak.

Dak. Dak means, in Sanskrit, it's atma. Okay?

Atma. It means self. Okay?

And then Buddhists always say, no self. And then Hindus always say, no this self. And then Buddhists say, no self.

And you've got to understand that they're not talking about this self. Okay? That's not the dak they're talking about.

That's a different thing. Okay? It's this pen itself.

That's the dak they're talking about. So we're talking about that now. This dak is a whole different guy.

This is an atma. Atma here means a guy. A guy who made the world.

Okay? A big guy. I used to have a student named Rick.

I don't think he's here. He had a white beard that went down to about, you know him. And he's got white hair longer than mine.

And he looks just like dak. You know? You know, God.

We can say God. Okay? We grew up in a Judeo-Christian world.

You can say that the United States is freedom of religion and all that. But the whole system, the Constitution itself, the government systems, the financial systems, the economy, everything, the morals of the culture, they're all based on Judeo-Christian background. Everything.

And that viewpoint is that the world, your world was created by dak. Meaning a creator. A God.

Okay? God. Capital G, God, created the world.

Okay? So, here we have a second version, okay? The first one was Big Bang, right?

It's all Big Bang. Where did the guy next to you at work that drives you crazy come from? A random collision of atoms that started when there was nothing and then there was something and stuff banged into each other until he came into my office.

Okay? No, that's what your scientists believe. And you believe it.

You use a cell phone, you use a computer, you're on the web. They made it. Based on misunderstanding.

Okay? But now dak comes along. Dak is different.

Dak says, a conscious being who is eternal and unchanging. Okay? Lives forever and had no beginning.

Okay? Nobody made God, right? Then you'd have a Big Bang before the Big Bang, right?

Like, nobody had to make God. God's always been there. God always will be there.

Nobody made God. God made everything else. But then he rested on the Sabbath day.

Okay? So, no, we still take Sundays off. That's why you laugh, but your culture is, is, believes in that.

And that's why you take the Sabbath off. You know? That's, that's the, you know, you live in a culture, Tibetans ask me, why do you take Sunday off?

We take Tuesdays off. Why do you take Tuesdays off? In Berakopi, that's market day in Berakopi.

Yeah, you can buy tomatoes on Tuesdays, but you can't get them on Sundays. We take Tuesdays off. I say, we take Sundays off.

Why? Well, you know, the only way I'm talking about people is to go to church, you know? And, and so we take Sundays off.

Why do we take Sunday off? Well, God rested on the Sabbath day. Who's God?

God made the world. He made everything. Why do we have to take a day off?

I don't know. That's just the way it is.

[Говорящий 2]
You know? Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
But anyway, there's this belief that, um, somebody made the, the world. Okay? And no one made him.

And he's gonna last forever. He never changes. Okay?

So that's idea number two. Okay? That's the second one.

You say you don't believe that. Okay? I mean, all, all, only a certain number of people say, I am Jewish.

I am Christian. I am Islamic. And I believe that the world was created by a being.

By some being. Okay? But, and in your mind, when you were a kid, and they explained it to you, God is, like, up in the sky.

Jupiter. Jupiter. Means, Jupiter.

Means, uh, Father in the sky. Okay? Uh, and, and that's what you still see.

Cause you come from that culture. You know? You see Father in the sky.

You still see that. And, and, and they are creating the world. So, second idea.

Where did the guy that you don't like at work come from? He was put there by God. Okay?

God has arranged the traffic jams. God has arranged AOL. To break down.

You know? God has brought you everything else that makes you upset. Or angry.

Okay? That's second interview. Master Shantideva is no dummy.

He is going very methodically, very seriously. Dead serious. If you can't figure out where things come from, you're gonna die.

You know? If you can't figure it out, you're gonna die. You're gonna get old and die.

You just lose everything that you have for your whole life. You better figure it out. You better ask what's going on.

Second choice. Somebody made all this stuff, and they're just putting it there. And I'm gonna say it in my own two cents, okay?

This is not Master Shantideva. Okay? This is not Master Shantideva.

The big problem I have with the God idea is who would kill my mother? You see what I mean? She had this terrible cancer.

Her body was cut up by doctors trying to save her life. She was radiated with every kind of stupid radiation. She went around half torn up.

You know? Like her arm just flopping. From the treatment, right?

And then this extraordinary pain, suffering, all of us sad. You know, that whole thing was created by a person who didn't have to make it that way. You know?

Or a child that I know dies coming out of the womb or terrible, horrible accidents. You know, people burning up in cars. People I know died today.

A bus came by and ripped his arm off on a bus. Come on! You know, I don't buy it.

I just don't buy it. You know, I never could buy it. Okay?

I mean, if this person is compassionate, who's making everything run, I don't buy it. You know? I just, I can't accept that.

Okay, anyway. That's theory number two. They made the world like that.

Okay? Now here's number three. Say le.

Le. Le. What's the Sanskrit?

Karma. Okay, le means karma. Karma.

Everything that ever happens to you is ultimate justice. Perfect justice. One hundred percent perfect justice.

You don't ever get anything that you didn't give to someone else. Okay? Good or bad.

Okay? Every meal you ever ate came because you offered a meal to someone else. And then you get scared, right?

Like you're working on debit card. Right? Credit.

You have eaten more meals than you have offered to others. You see? That's the cosmic balance.

There is a matrix. It's a perfect ecology. You put in x numbers of volts over here and then reality pours out over here.

Okay? By how you take care of other people. Do you take care of other people?

Did you take care of anyone yet today? Period. Okay?

That's it. That creates everything. Okay?

Period. Did you take care of anyone today? So far.

Since you woke up, up to now, did you actively, knowingly, purposely, sacrificially, take care of somebody else? That's the only energy that creates all the food you eat, all the houses you stay in, all the money you use, all the paper in the United States with those guys' faces on it, the green paper. It has all been produced by giving to other people.

And that runs everything. Everything runs like that. That has created your world.

Okay? That has created. And it's a perfect justice.

And you can't complain about anything. You know? When a person walks into your office and makes you angry, you got one person to blame, not them.

Okay? You created them. You created them.

Okay? So, who are you going to get mad at? Chila Cho says, Master, who are you going to get mad at?

You should get mad at yourself. Okay? Perfect total justice is going on, like gravity.

You know? You let go of the pen, it will drop. Okay?

It's not that the planet is a good person or a bad person or an angry god or a compassionate god or it's not that there's a big bang or blah, blah, blah. It just works like that. That's gravity.

Karma is a law which runs everything. Anything that happens to you is one hundred percent logical, perfect justice. Okay?

And that's it. So, now I propose to you something. Get used to this.

There's two ways of looking at this pen. I'm not going to do the dog thing. Okay?

So, the people on the tour who've heard it forty times in the last... They might fall asleep. They might hold this up today.

You know what I mean. Anyway, I'm not going to do that pen thing, so stay away. Buddhism says that you have never had a correct perception in your life.

Unless you're an Arya, unless you've seen emptiness directly, you have never seen a single thing correctly in your whole life. Okay? Never.

Like, that's radical, right? You have sixty-five many perceptions per second. You've never had a correct one in the thirty, forty, fifty years you've been alive.

At that sixty-five times sixty times sixty times twenty-four times three-sixty-five times the number of years you've been alive, you have never seen anything right. Not once. Okay?

Unless you've seen emptiness directly. The idea of Pramana, correct perception, you have never had a single one. Okay?

Why? I'll run it by you, okay? I'm going to hold up a pen.

Tell me what it is. And I'm going to let you off the hook. I'm going to say, from a human point of view, I'm a person in New York City in 2004 who grew up with pens and blah blah blah, who has eyes, and no trick here.

No debater's trick here. Okay, ready? Tell me what this is.

It's a pen. It's a magic marker, right? It's a pen.

Okay? It's a pen. It's a pen.

Is that correct perception? Yes. What would be a way to confirm that?

Just write something. Let's check. Hey, hey, hey.

Six-fifty, you get out of here. Something like that. Okay?

Okay? Like, it has an effect. You laugh.

Right? You're hoping. Right?

Okay? That's proof that this is a pen. Therefore, it has confirmed your perception.

Okay? So, when we say you've never had a correct perception of this object, are we talking that when you see a pen, use them? No.

It is a pen. From that point of view, it's correct. No problem.

Okay? Now, I'm going to hold it up again. And when you see it, try to get in touch with your very deep instinct about where it came from.

You ready? One, two, three. Carbon.

Sorry? Carbon. Yeah, carbon.

You can say carbon. No, but I'm talking a store. A factory.

It's got to be a microwave. It's five bucks. You know it's going to be a microwave, right?

Anyway, somebody put out the money. You know, ACI forgot to pay him. Unusual.

And he brought this pen here. And when I hold it up, and I say, where did this come from? Then in your heart, you say, a store.

You know? And where did it come from first? Let's look at a factory.

Let's look at a pen factory. You know, men take plastics, and they take oil, and they compress it, and they make a pen. And you'll hold it up again.

Get in touch with that feeling, okay? I'm going to hold up an object. I don't want you to think what it is.

I want you to get in touch with your feeling about where it comes from. Ready? Microwave's bank account.

Right? The store. I'm thinking of the store when you're NYU.

And then a factory. Right? And you believe that.

That's wrong. Got it? That whole feeling is 100% completely wrong.

This doesn't come from a factory. It doesn't come from a store. You cannot buy this with money.

Cannot. This object is held together. The atoms, the molecules, are held together by only one thing.

Did you take care of other people? Okay? The whole building, the atoms in the whole building, the force that holds the atoms together into little pieces, molecules, is not electromagnetic.

It's not gravity. It's moral. It's ethical.

It's compassion. That's so cool. That's so extraordinary.

What's holding this building together, the only thing that holds these atoms together, is are you taking care of other people? Did you take care of other people? Got it?

It's unbelievable. It's extraordinary. This object comes from you taking care of other people.

It always stays in one piece because you took care of other people. It only works. Okay?

We were talking about where it comes from. Got it? Now, what does it do?

What does it do? What's it do? It writes.

It doesn't write. Get it? It doesn't write.

You gotta get that. You gotta understand that. This thing doesn't write.

Okay? This is not why the letter came out 645. 650.

I'm moving it back. 645. That's not why that number came up there.

Got it? It doesn't come from where you thought it came from. It's not being held together the way you thought it was being held together.

And get this. It doesn't do anything. Things don't do anything.

Nothing affects anything else. Get it? It's amazing.

It's just amazing. You gotta put your mind around it. When I hold this on the paper and you see 650, it's got nothing to do with this thing.

Got it? It's like unbelievable. You gotta get used to it.

Okay? What's holding together this building? Did you take care of somebody else?

Did you take care of other people? Did you provide people space? Did you provide people shelter?

That's what holds the pieces of this building together. Okay? Well, I didn't do that recently.

No, you probably did it last night. Okay? And if you don't believe in previous lives, I don't care.

You proved to me they don't exist. Okay? That's a whole other story.

Anyway. You did take care of somebody else. That's holding this building together.

And every minute you stay here, you're using up that force. Got it? Every minute you stay here, the force that keeps your body in one piece is being used up.

And we call it what? Injury. You'll be two hours older when you leave this room.

You'll be two hours closer to your death. Your body is falling apart. Why?

Chemicals? Atoms? Big bang?

Or a nasty God? You see? No.

Did you take care of anybody today to the extent that your body would get younger? You see? What's holding your body together is only did you take care of other people.

And we ain't keeping up to speed. You see what I mean? You're using more than you're producing.

You're spending more than your credit card has. And that's why you age. That's why people get old.

It's extraordinary. It's unbelievable. This doesn't write because of ink.

This doesn't write because it's in a cylinder shape. This doesn't write because I put it down on the paper and wrote something. Nothing to do with that.

Did you take care of other people? You'll see the number on the paper. There's this extraordinary thing in the Bible.

It's so cool. Jesus is going into Jerusalem. People are yelling about him, you know, like, Oh, Hosanna, you know, the Messiah's come, you know?

Everybody's like, it's real, you know? And the disciples are nervous. Why?

Everybody who says they're the Messiah gets murdered by the Romans. You know? No, really.

That's what the Romans do. Okay? And so he's coming in and they say, No, no, Jesus, tell him not to yell your name.

Tell him not to call you Messiah. You're going to get in trouble, you know? He said, No.

If they don't yell it, the stones, the floor will yell it. You see what I mean? He's not being, what do you call it, metaphoric.

He's being literal. Meaning, it's not a production of someone's voice. It's not coming out of someone's mouth.

It's not some kind of sounds coming from a human being. This is the, because I took care of people. Then the stones would cry out.

You see? The rock would cry out. Miracles could happen.

You see what I mean? It's not coming from anything scientific. Things don't happen that way.

It's very profound. It's very profound. You've got to think about that.

Okay? Get that. What holds together this pen, and what holds together this building, and what holds together your arm, is not from the Big Bang.

It's not an atomic force. First. Two, it's not some kind of God fooling around with us ants.

Okay? It's not that. The energy which keeps the world in one piece is did you take care of other people?

And get this. To keep this arm going for one second takes 65 acts of kindness to another person. Okay?

65 seeds going on in their mind to keep this going for one second. Are you up to speed? You see?

No. 65 conscious, purposeful, knowing, very well planned acts of kindness to other people is the only way to keep this arm going for this long. Okay?

It's very profound. It's really profound. Like, you got to cook that.

And then you've got the whole deal. Right? I don't have to say anything else.

You can go home at 6.35. Okay? No, really. Cook it.

Think about it. Okay? And just think about it.

And I'm not going to do the rest of the homework. And you can go over the Sanskrit and the Tibetan and all that stuff if you want. It's in your hands.

Okay? But think about it. Okay?

You have three choices about where the world comes from. A big bang. Big accident.

A conscious effort by some external guy. Oh, by the way, if the homework says, what's the problem with the big bang thing, well, it's the word first, right? It's the word first.

If there's a first big bang, what made that big bang? You know? Oh, it just happened?

Okay? What's the wrong with the God idea? He never changes and he does stuff?

The minute I do something, I change. Right? I handle something, I change.

You see what I mean? You can't do anything without changing. That's Master Shantideva's argument.

Okay? Now, the question on the homework also says, by the way, list two more world views that we have. That most of us have.

That comes after the three, okay? Then there's two more. You ready?

Here's the first. You ready? Look up.

Okay? Is this one still ready? Which means I don't know and I don't care.

You know? When you get in a taxi, you tap the driver on the shoulder, where did the world come from? Where did that guy at work that I don't like come from?

Don't ask me, lady. You wanna get out of here? Okay?

It's like, we don't even think about it. You know, back at age four or five, your mom said, don't ask that. And ever since then, you've been very obedient.

I just don't think about it. You know? Why is there a dead man in a semi-truck on the line going south?

And why am I cruising by in my van on the yoga book tour going north in 30 seconds? Why do I see a dead man in the truck? Why am I having a coffee, latte, organic charcoal?

You know? Why? You see?

You don't ask that. You don't sit there and say, oh my God, where did this trucker come from? I don't know.

I don't know. You know, why did he die? You stopped asking.

After a certain age, you don't ask. Okay? That's our world view.

You know? We don't believe in Big Bang. That's just a couple of physicists who are worried about that.

We don't really believe in God anymore unless an airplane's going down. It's like, no, it's like, you don't care. You don't, you don't ask.

You don't really care. You're dealing with some guy that you don't like, and you're not asking, why did this guy come in my life? I couldn't cancel the, if I could reach him to the matrix, I can or, no, Neil does.

He just never would've walked in my office. He would've walked into the next office. I never would've met this guy.

Okay? You don't ask that anymore. Start asking.

Start asking. Start screwing around with reality. Okay?

Switch the switches. I'm tired of this stuff. I'm tired of coping.

You know? No more super-coper. You know?

No more viewing my enemy as my friend. I just don't want him around. Okay?

Just do that. The rest is all coping. That's for somebody else.

You're a Buddhist. You gotta figure out where the world came from. Okay?

So, you can't be worldview number four anymore. That's like, okay, mom told me not to ask. Mom told me there's no reason why the guy died in the truck that I'm having my coffee and latte.

Okay? What's worldview number five? These two I made up, okay?

They're not in Shantideva. Number five is this impossible mix of everything. Totally illogical, impossible mix of everything.

Okay? When you talk about, when you're in company, when you're having a party, where is it? Greenwich Street, between Dwayne and me.

You know, and you're in good company. And you're intelligent and there's a lot of suits around you. And they say, what makes things happen?

You say, oh God, I just read, New York Times had a new article about the velocity of a neutron, you know? And, about the big bang. And you try to sound, what do you call it?

Knowledgeable. And, what do you call it? Cosmopolitan.

You're from New York, right? Like, I read Hawking's book, you know? You can show a few words out, you know, like, oh, you know, there's this, what do you call it thing?

The Symbol about Black Holes. And, it was just a singularity. You know?

You add four syllables onto a word, it becomes scientific. Singularity means, it just happened. There went nothing, and then there was something.

Okay? It was a universal singularity. What do you mean, Stephen Hawking's singularity?

It just happened once. How the hell can it even happen once? Something that happened before can make it happen.

It's a singularity, man. You put four syllables on it, I'm supposed to believe you? Okay?

No, like, you can drop singularity in words like that, okay? But then, when you get on a plane, going home, and it goes, and it goes up, you know, and then on takeoff, it gets that drafts, what do you call it? Wind shear.

And it goes, that happened to me once, 400 feet off the ground, it goes, you know? And then anyways, you did it. Except that wasn't an Italian plane at all.

Mama! Mama! You know?

And it's like, and the plane's going, you know, and there's all this, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, you know? And I'm looking around, who's saying that? It's me.

I'm going, I'm going, no, it's like, no, when you're really scared, then the old stuff takes, the whole stuff you grew up with, the whole church stuff, comes like, you know? And you're like, save me, save me, save me, you know? You know, and then one of your number got kicked in.

One of your number two kicked in, you see? And then sometimes you just, sometimes, then you go to ACI class, you know, and somebody says, who made the person that most irritates you in the world? Oh, and this halo appears above your head.

You know, especially if you're one of the new teachers, you know? And you're like, it was all karma. You know?

Did I take care of others or not? And I hurt somebody, and that's what made this person, and then there's like this irritating person in my student class, they start bugging me with six, seven questions. Then on the A2, they're like, shut up!

You know? You know? And then, so you have this, you have this impossible, that's all there is to it.

We're just mixed up. It's this impossible mishmash. What do you call it in Yiddish?

It's a, what do you mean? It's like a mish, what is an impossible mishmash? I mean, maybe Che calls it tukta.

Tukta means impossible stew. I think, let me call it in Marathi. We got it.

It's something like gunja gunja. It's something like, it's like, mish, what's it? Mishigash.

Anyway, this is your real view. This is our real view. And it's either this, or it's whatever you feel like at the time.

If you're in company with a lot of suits around, it's singularities. If you're in a plane that's going down, it's Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, you know? And if you're in your ACI class with your, you know, you got your beads on and everything, it's all karma, you know?

I mean, you just got this mishmash. You know, you just put whatever real view you want at the moment, you know? And you don't have a real view, you know what I mean?

So, these are the five real views, okay? And the last one is what we really hold. And they come to dip with each other.

It doesn't make sense. It's insane. You're crazy.

Okay? If you're doing those two things, you're crazy. You're a machine and I'm not a machine, or whatever.

Okay? Yeah. Okay, so, so I think we're getting there.

Get used to this, okay? Go home. On your way home, please, honestly, now I'm very dead serious, look around at the pillars, look around at the building, look at the beautiful faces of the people around you, you know, walks through New York City tonight, look at all the beautiful, precious people.

They're very precious. They're very beautiful, right? And you imagine that the only thing holding these atoms together into these objects is did you take care of other people, you know?

Are you taking care of other people? Okay? That's holding reality together.

That's the elementary force which is keeping your reality in one piece. Are you taking care of other people? You know?

Just imagine it. You don't have to accept it. You can go back to the other world views, you know?

But, just on the way home or tonight as you walk around in this mandala, New York City, just imagine everything you see, objects and people, the force which has created them, the force which keeps them together, the force which will keep them safe and whole in their world, is, are you taking care of them?

[Говорящий 2]
You know?

[Говорящий 1]
Are you taking care of other people? Okay? Just imagine it.

Okay? That's all. Forget the homework.

Okay? Alright. Okay, we'll do a prayer.

Okay?