Углублённый курс ACI: Колесо жизни в Сутре сердца (1999, Сан-Франциско), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, thank you for coming. It's good to see a lot of old friends and new friends. Before anything, I'd like to thank Miriam, who's sitting there humbly.

She worked very, very, very hard for months, and with her crew of people, and we're all very grateful, because we wouldn't have this without you, and really very grateful for that, and thank you, and I hope it hasn't been too hard. My boss said you could sleep on the plane later. So I was in Singapore, and this person came to our talks, and he said, will you come, will you fly for the day to Indonesia, Jakarta, which is not very far?

And, because we have a television show, and it's a Chinese language television show, and would you be on the TV, you know, for that, for business people, to talk about how you can use karma in business, you know. So I said, okay, and I flew over there just to give that talk, and then there was a man in the audience, and he said, I'm in charge of a place called Bodobudur. Maybe some of you know it, but about a thousand years ago, when Atisha was in Indonesia, they took a mountain, a whole mountain of stone, and they carved it into a mandala.

So it's like a square mile, it's incredible, and they carved it all into this beautiful mandala, and the whole mountain is a perfectly symmetrical mandala, and then on the sides of this huge stupa, this huge mountain, they carved the story of the Buddha's life, and some of his previous lives, and all of the Jataka tales and Avadhanas, so the stories of the Buddha's life are carved on this mountain. And then this gentleman who helps run the place, oh, it was covered by the jungle, and for, I don't know, 500 years, it was lost, and the Dutch found it, some Dutch archaeologists found it, and they cleaned off the jungle, and now you can go see, and the carvings are like they were a thousand years ago.

They built special rain gutters that prevent the rain from coming down the face of the of the carvings, and so they have a special system buried under the mountain that drains the water off the mountain, and it, the images have stayed for a thousand years, about the same, very, very beautiful. So he said, this guy came up from the TV show, he said, I'm in charge of Buddha Buddha, I'm one of the people, and would you come to Buddha Buddha, you know, and would you help us? And I said, what's the problem, you know, and he said, we had a volcano go off nearby, you know, and the dust came up in the air, and it landed on the mountain, and it clogged all of the gutters, it clogged all the hidden crevices in the mountain that were built a thousand years ago to stop rainwater.

So now rainwater is pouring down the images, and if it freezes or stuff like that, then it starts to crack, and he said, will you come and help us, you know? So I said, well, come, when do you want? He said, tonight.

Come tonight. I have a plane, we'll go. So you have to get in this little plane and go into the jungle, and we were like, we said, we only have like 6 a.m to 8 a.m, then we have to fly back to Singapore. He said, I don't care, it's okay. So we flew in the night, and we waited for dawn, and then dawn came, and we ran to the mountain, and I saw all these carvings, and and he said, would you help us, you know? And I said, you know, you know what these carvings are?

And he said, yeah, there's something about the Buddha, you know? And I said, no, this is the story of how the Buddha painted the Wheel of Life, you know? These carvings, a big part of them are the story of how the Buddha painted the Wheel of Life, you know?

And he said, oh, we didn't know, you know? And I said, boy, these are extraordinary, these are, these are the story, every part of the story is here in the mountain, and you should make a book or something, you know? So he said, you make a book, you know?

And then I thought, so I said, okay, I'll make a book. And then he said, he said, can you finish it in six months? And I showed him this book.

This is an art book that we did. We started it in 1985, I think, and we finished it in 2007. It took like 22, 22 years to finish it.

It's a similar project, you know? So I said, well, it might take a little longer, you know? And so he said, but I said, we'll make a book and we'll donate all the proceeds to your, to Bodhidharma, to saving the temple.

So he was very excited. UNESCO also agreed to help, so it's on UNESCO Heritage site, you know? So then I thought, how am I ever going to finish this book, you know?

And then I thought, people were asking me to come to New York and teach. So I thought, I have a proposal for you guys. I'll do my side, you have to do your side, okay?

My side is, it'll take, it'll take five or six trips probably to finish what I would like to do with the Wheel of Life. But if we can do five or six or more teachings like this, three, four days, and we can finish. And then I'm forced to to finish, and Ori's forced to finish the, Ori Karin has been, we had this idea that we would like to make the Wheel of Life in the modern form, right?

There are very intense images in the Wheel of Life. There's a woman giving a baby, there's a couple having sex, there's a, there's a man with an arrow in his eye. And, you know, we thought, oh let's, let's do the, let's have real photographs, you know?

Then we looked on the web for hospital pictures of people with arrows, and then we decided that's not going to go, you know? And, but, you know, if it were like more modern, if we could update it a little bit. Not the meaning, because the meaning is complete, but it would be nice to have a sort of a, you know, a larger representation of it in modern life.

So that's a really just a study, I think, Ori has started, and during the break you can come up and take a closer look, but it's very, very striking and very, very beautiful. And so this is the older traditional painting of the Wheel, and that's one that Ori has been working on, and it will be developed further. Like we would like, we talked to Singapore, the government in Singapore would like to show it in the airport, and they would like to have a whole exhibit of the Wheel of Life.

Maybe people walk through the Wheel, and they, you know, and it's a construct, and you walk through this huge maze, and then it's as if you're traveling through the Wheel, you know? So, so there are people who would like to help with that. There are friends in China who would like to help with that, in Taiwan, and Europe, in France, and in Buenos Aires.

And so the idea is I'll, I need something to push me, to keep me up to doing it, because I don't have much time, but I thought if you guys commit to that, then, okay, all right, all right, okay. And it will take, it'll take two, three years, four years, I think, just for the classes, okay? Because I would like to go deeper.

I taught the Wheel of Life in New York 15 years ago, and I would like to go deeper. In our monastery, we study, we have special books about the Wheel of Life, and what it means. Those books were missing, those books were lost, they were burned, and ACIP recovered them in Russia, in St. Petersburg. So that's been 25 years that we've been, ACIP has been saving ancient books. One of the books they saved out of 141,000 that they've catalogued so far is the teaching on the Wheel of Life, how to explain the Wheel of Life. There are actually two books from my monastery, and we recovered both, and they were republished by ACIP.

So I would like to teach you those two books, and it's deep. It's a really intense, deep teaching on the Wheel of Life. So that's my proposal.

I already taught the Twelve Limbs and the Five Realms, most of you know it. I would like to go deeper, okay, I would like to go deeper into it. Also, my goal in these three days is that the real meaning of this Wheel is how do negative cycles start in your life, you know, like with relationships, typically.

You know, I don't know about you, but when I was in sixth grade, I had my first girlfriend, and then it went through a certain cycle, right? You see them, then you flirt with them. It's in the scriptures even.

The first Dalai Lama wrote a whole description. You see them, you flirt with them, you go out on your first date, first kiss, etc. And then there's the first fight, and then there's a second fight, and then you're fighting all the time.

And then if someone asks you, who's your worst enemy? You say, this person. But it's a typical cycle in people's lives.

Business cycles are the same. Those of you who've owned a business or been in business, you start a company. It's very, very exciting.

You create unbelievable new products, and then you can't fail. The money's coming in, thousands of orders are coming in, and then suddenly your first customer drops out, and then your second customer drops out, and then suddenly you're struggling to keep the business alive, and then finally it's over, and you're bankrupt. It's just the typical life cycles of people and of businesses.

It's typical. The body is the same. You know, our bodies will get older.

There's a joke in the monastery. We do yoga. Advanced students in the monastery are allowed to do yoga.

Traditionally, only after you finish a geshe do you do yoga asanas. But there's a joke in the monastery. You go for a yoga class, and then you meet your tantric teacher on the way home, and he says, where have you been?

And you say, yoga class. And they say, well, how long? And you say, two hours.

And then they go, ha ha ha, you're two hours older now. You know, you're two hours closer to the day you can't do except shavasana. You see, so yoga is meant to make you stronger, make you healthier.

But the time that you spend in yoga class, you are two hours closer to dying afterwards. We did yoga this afternoon. We had a really fine class.

But the body deteriorates. The body falls apart, you know, and and it it yoga will extend your lifespan and will increase your life, but but that's another cycle, right? People are born.

Shakespeare wrote that beautiful stages of life. I can't quote it. I used to quote it in the Wheel of Life classes, but you know, you're born, then you start walking, then you start talking, right, Francis?

Too much. And and then you go to school, and then you graduate, then you're all excited about your first job, and then you start to hate that job, and then you start your own company, and then the company gets better and better, and then the company starts to fail, and then you get older, and you have your last yoga class, and then you die. And there are cycles in in all of our lives.

The Buddha designed this painting to address those cycles, and his question was, the purpose of painting it was, can you stop those cycles? And can you back up? Can you run the movie backwards?

You know, it's called lung juk. Say lung jung. Lung dok.

Lung jung. Lung dok. Okay, lung jung means how does a negative cycle start?

You know, how does the body come into being, and then how does it slowly fall apart? How does a relationship come into being and then slowly fall apart? And how does a business, for example, or a country, or a city, they all fall.

So lung jung means, what are the processes, the deeper processes, that cause things to rise, like cities, or cultures, or bodies, or relationship with your partner, right? And then what are the forces? Can you stop the forces which cause that relationship to end?

You see, is it possible to reverse the wheel? Can you run the wheel backwards? And that's the goal of this whole how many times it takes, I don't know, to finish, right?

But I would like to address those cycles, especially in these three days. I would like to address those cycles. Buddhism says that if you understand the cycles which cause your body to fall apart and which cause your relationships to fall apart, if you understand those cycles, you can reverse them.

It's possible to reverse them, right? You can create opposite cycles. You can create a cycle whereby a relationship gets sweeter every year, indefinitely.

You can create a cycle where the body itself gets younger year after year, and you can create a cycle by which, for example, a business would just keep expanding, or a country, or a civilization. Is it possible to create a constant upward cycle in our own life? So I encourage you, you know, we're we're together for three days.

It's hard for me, and I'm sure it's hard for you to get the time to come here for three days. It's not easy. And it's a lot of money, and it's a lot of trouble for everyone to get here for three days.

If we're going to spend three days together, we should talk about something that's important in your own life, okay? So I encourage you tonight to think about something that you want in your own life, some kind of goal in your own life, something you've dreamed of in your own life. You know, we give these seminars, success seminars, all over the world.

Constantly, we're constantly traveling to all the continents, and I think ACI is active in 85 cities right now around the world. So we are constantly traveling, right? But it boils down to three or four basic hopes that people have in their life.

I'll say them, and then you think which one you want to work on for the three days, okay? Everybody has something in their life that they would like to achieve, or they have some problem that they would like to shut down. So I'll mention some common examples that people give me.

I think the first one is money, you know, people all over the world. I don't, I'm not a greedy person. I'm wise enough, and I'm old enough to know that a better car is not going to make me happy.

I know that. I know that a bigger house is more cleaning and more trouble. I know I've got, I've come over that hump, you know, and so I'm not saying that everyone should be rich or something like that, but it would be nice if we all had totally enough money to do all the things we wanted, you know, like I love these kinds of programs.

It's expensive. I love the refugee work that ACIP is doing. I love the Tariya retreat that's going on.

I would like to have enough extra money to just, it's fun, right? I don't mean to have four cars. I mean if someone came up to me and said, I need a donation for a project to help poor people, I could just go, huh, cool, here.

You know, send me a, you have to say send me a financial statement, okay? You know, giving is not easy. Giving also takes attention, right?

And you have to, but it would be nice, right, if all of us had enough money to do our practice peacefully in a nice, comfortable, small place. And if we had extra money to help other people with, that would be nice. Many people ask me, you'd be surprised how few really greedy people there are in the world.

We travel all over. We spend a lot of time in China. We spend a lot of time in Europe.

We have teams right now in many cities in Russia. And people are not greedy. All over the world, people are just like, I don't want to be a rich person.

I just want to have enough to not worry about money. And be generous, you know, give stuff to people. Almost everybody around the world would like to be wealthy, and like Bill Gates is just distributing money now.

And we would all like to be that. So for some of you, maybe it's getting out of credit card debt or working off your debts or having an income which is predictable and comfortable and happy, that you don't have to think about money. I'm in a state in my life, I don't have to think about money.

It just comes, and then I give it. And it's a constant flow like this, and it's fun, and I feel happy, you know. Relationships, everybody would like to have a nice relationship.

I didn't meet anybody yet who didn't want to have a relationship. Some people claim they don't, but that's because the last three were really bad. And it's not that they don't want to have someone to keep them from being lonely.

They don't think it's possible. They believe it's not possible anymore. They've been through three really hard relationships, and they believe it's not possible to have a sweet, ongoing, year by year, sweeter and sweeter, excellent, gentle relationship with somebody.

And if you understood the wheel, you could, okay? You could have, you could have it, okay? You can have all those things.

You can have, I like to call it oxygen money. Oxygen means nobody's worried there's not enough oxygen in the room. You're just breathing it.

And money should be the same, you know, like, okay, you need a donation. Yeah, I got, yeah, just take some, you know. Or relationships should be, what do you call it?

Predictable, you know. Like, you know they're going to be around in six months or a year, and you know it's going to be nice, you know. It would be nice to have such a thing.

That's like the second thing that people want. I think thirdly, people obviously, if you have money and you have a nice relationship, but you're sick all the time, or you have a bad back, or, you know, you feel, what do you call it? Sore.

You're old. Your body got old. It's not fun to have a relationship.

It gets difficult. So, it would be nice to have a youthful energy, and creativity, and youthful energy, and to maintain that would be nice. People, that's about the third thing that people ask me.

Fourth thing is peace. People would like to have peace in their mind, you know. I met a person this morning.

I had breakfast with somebody, and they said, they were saying, you either have peace or you have money, but you can't have both. And I'm like, that's so dumb, you know. You know, what would be perfect is if you had enough money to be comfortable, and you had a beautiful relationship, and you had youthful health, and on top of that, you had inner peace, complete inner peace.

I mean, to me, I don't see what's the problem with having everything. You know, and then on top of that, obviously, we would like to see an external peace in the world. We would like to see a world where there's no hunger, and there's no war, and there's peace, external peace.

So, I'd say people want those five things in their life. They want, I call it financial independence. I don't have to work.

I don't have to bother other people. I'm independent, number one. Number two, I'd like to have a beautiful relationship.

That's predictable. Number three, I'd like to stay healthy and young. Number four, I'd like to have inner peace, peace of mind.

And then finally, I would like to live in a world which is peaceful, full of peace, right? All countries peaceful, all countries equally prosperous. I would like to see.

Those are the five things I'd like to see. So, what I'm encouraging you tonight, as we start the three days of teaching, is think of what, which of those five you would personally would like to focus on, okay? Don't come for three days.

Spend three priceless days of your life. No one can give you those days back, right? Those are precious.

So, come with a plan. You know, what is it that you would like in your life? I'm not just giving a Buddhist teaching.

I don't care if you're Buddhist personally. I teach Communist Party in China, and I teach Muslims in Jakarta. I teach, there's 48 ACI groups in Israel.

I don't care what you are. I just think you should have a goal, and then what I teach you from the wheel should help you get your dream in your life, okay? It should help you reach your dream in your life.

That's what I want for the three days, and as we do more, your dream should become more and more real, and you should achieve the dreams that you have, okay? That's my hope. I don't care if you have a Geshe Michael picture at your house, or somebody asked me, what picture's on your altar, Geshe Michael?

I said, you really want to know? And this is Daniel. Where is he?

What was the answer, Daniel? Jimi Hendrix, okay? He's my, that's my hero.

You know, so, you know, I don't care what you are. It really doesn't matter to me. I want you to have your dreams, you know, you should have your dreams, and if we're going to spend hours of our life together, it should be something that, you should have a plan in mind, what you want.

So, I can help you achieve that plan with the wheel, but you got to have a plan. You got to come up with a plan. People came up to me and said, I don't have a plan.

How do I, what's the karma to get a plan? That's easy. You adopt someone who doesn't know what they want, and you help them, and then suddenly it's very clear what you want, okay?

So, if you're not sure what you want out of those five things, then what you want is a plan, and you have to help someone else who doesn't have a plan, who needs a plan, okay? That's simple, but we'll talk about that, okay? All right, so we'll go on to the wheel.

So that, what you want in your life to achieve those things, you will have to plant a seed in your mind to achieve the things that you want in your life, whether it's a new boyfriend, or it's financial security, or you have a health problem, bad back, whatever you want, you have to plant the seeds to get it, okay? You have to understand how to plant the seeds. I'm going to do the pen thing.

If you heard it 6,000 times, you have permission to fall asleep, okay? Or you might fall asleep anyway. Okay.

This is necessary, okay? I have to show you this, okay? Then you'll understand about planting seeds, all right?

It's a very painless, quick thing, okay? I'm not going to do anything with the pen. I'm just holding it up, okay?

So, but you have to be a little lively, okay? New York, when I was here in the 70s, it was pretty lively. Frankly, after 9-11, it seems to have got a little sedate.

So, try to answer, okay? I gave this talk to British, I'm not supposed to say, British Airways in London, to the board, and they were like, and I'd ask them, like, what is this thing? And they'd go, so, what is this thing?

Yeah, good, good. It's a pen. If a dog runs here and here, runs up on the stage, and I wave this thing to this puppy dog, if I wave it in front of its face, Francis could answer me, but he's busy.

What would they do? They would chew on it, okay? So, to the puppy dog, it's a chew toy, all right?

Next question. The human sees a pen. The puppy dog sees a chew toy.

Which one is correct? You can say both. It's not wrong for the puppy to chew on it.

The human will say, don't ruin my pen. And the puppy will say, why aren't you chewing that thing? You know, I mean, it's equal, right?

So, both are correct. Next question. This is important.

I take this object, I set it on the podium, all the dogs leave the room, and all the humans leave the room. At that time, which one is it, a pen or a chew toy? Yeah, none.

You could just say like that, or none, you know. All over the world, every country, it doesn't matter. When I get to that question, they all go, it's nothing, okay?

That's emptiness, shunyata. That's emptiness. It's nothing more complicated, and it's nothing less clear.

It's not closing your eyes and seeing black. It's not trying not to think about anything. It's not that everything's an illusion, and you shouldn't care if someone kisses you or punches you, which is dumb, okay?

It's not that. That emptiness means, if the person is not in the room, and the dog is not in the room, at that time, it's like a blank white screen. I was reflecting on the word, what's the French word for white?

Blank. You see, it's blank. So, like a blank white screen.

The world is like a blank white screen, okay? This pen is a metaphor for the whole world. This object is a metaphor for the whole world.

The whole world is like this, okay? Some people are seeing one thing. Other people are seeing something different, okay?

The dog is seeing a chew toy. The human is seeing a pen by itself. Which one is it?

You can't say no. It's neither one until the dog walks in. Then it becomes a chew toy.

If the human walks in, it becomes a... If they both walk in together, two realities are parallel. Universes are going on.

It's also a pen, and it's also a chew toy. It's both at the same time. That's not a problem, okay?

Until they walk in, it's just a blank white screen. Now, why am I seeing a pen? And why is the dog seeing a chew toy?

And Buddhism says, there's a seed in your mind, okay? There's a seed in the human mind for a pen. And that seed breaks open when I raise the object in this room.

That seed breaks open in your mind, and then you think you see a pen, okay? That's a seed in your own mind, right? And then in the dog's mind, a seed breaks open to see a chew toy, okay?

Where'd the seed come from? Why does the human have a seed to see a pen? And why does the dog have a seed to see something to chew on?

Buddhism says, that seed was planted there when they did something to someone else in the past, okay? Kind or unkind, okay? If I helped...

Someone's trying to communicate to the waiter what they want, and they're having trouble. The waiter's not getting it, and they're like, look, I want a Caesar salad, but I don't want the chicken. I don't want mayonnaise and this stuff.

If it's got... What's that little fish? Anchovy paste in it.

I don't want it. You know, give me something else. And the waiter's like, excuse me, you wanted a Caesar?

You know, do you want chicken on that? You know, and you're like, no, no, no. And then you help the person communicate to the waiter, right?

You hear yourself helping. You hear yourself helping the other person to communicate, and that plants a seed in your mind to have an object with which you can communicate, okay? So if you want to see a pen this week, then last week, you should have helped somebody in the restaurant to communicate to the waiter, because that put a seed in your mind.

And when that seed opened, you saw a pen, and what did the dog not see? What did the dog not do? They didn't clarify the Caesar salad.

No, and they didn't have that seed, and so they don't see a pen, okay? It's not... So now my question to you, is the pen coming from me, or is the pen coming from the pen?

It's coming from me. Show me with your hand. Yeah, it's coming from me, okay?

It's easy. If you go through it that way, it's easy. You know, if I'm not doing some metaphysical thing, I'm just saying, it's obvious the pen's coming from me.

If the pen were coming from the pen, then the dog would see a pen, and the dog would write a poem to their dog girlfriend, and say, you have a beautiful tail, okay? But they don't, okay? It means the pen is not a pen from the pen.

The pen is a pen from your mind, okay? Everything's like that. Every person you ever met in your life is coming from a karmic seed opening in your mind, okay?

If you want to know what that process looks like, it's very interesting. A karmic seed opens in the consciousness. When I go like this, okay, watch.

I go like this, very slow, slow-mo, right? In that second that I start to raise the pen, a seed is cracking open in each person's mind here. A seed is cracking open in your mind, and when my hand stops, that seed, which is a small, luminous image about a quarter of an inch high, flies from your mind to this object, and you see a pen, okay?

And if the luminous object that came out of a karmic seed cracking open your mind was of a chew toy, you would see a chew toy, because it's coming from you, okay? It's coming from your mind. The cool thing is if all of that is true, which you can't deny, so far nothing I said, I don't think you can deny anything.

If all of what I said is true, you can design your future. You can design what happens to you, because it's coming from you, okay? They asked me to make money for the Tibetan refugees.

I helped to make a 200 million dollar company, not far from here. I see the president tomorrow. We're having lunch together, breakfast, brunch.

Then you can make a 200 million dollar company. If that's what you want, if you want to help the refugees or something like that, if you want to make money to help poor people, you can do it now. I gave you everything you need to know, right?

You just have to plant the seed. So I'm not going to talk about that. I want to talk in these three days about how to make a seed grow faster.

How to make it grow faster, okay? I had someone in this audience ask me, I need a house. I need, I want a house, Geshe-la.

Then I said, okay, here, you do this. And they were very strange why. They actually did what I told them to do.

And they got a house. They have a beautiful house. They didn't pay anything.

It's a beautiful three-bedroom house. It's bigger than my house. And it's a beautiful house.

And they're not greedy people. They use the house. They do Dharma projects, and they're helping people from that house.

But how to get it faster, you see? If it doesn't happen rather quickly, you won't believe the system. You see what I mean?

If I say, oh, you want a boyfriend, then you should help an elderly person, a lonely person. If it takes five years of helping an elderly person to create a boyfriend, you're not going to try it. No, no American has that kind of patience.

This is the McDonald's, this is the country which created McDonald's, right? Really, maybe Chinese people, but not Americans. You need something.

Can we accelerate the process of planting a seed and getting your dream to come true until it's fast enough that it's confirmable that it came from the seed? That's my goal in the three days, okay? Using the Wheel of Life, I will describe to you how to sharpen a seed.

You could have called this three days of talks, learning how to sharpen a karmic seed until it works fast enough that you achieve your goals quickly, the things that you want, okay? And I don't see it as a choice between material prosperity and spiritual prosperity. I think they can go together quite well.

I don't see a problem with having a comfortable house, good health, a nice partnership, and saving the world. I think they kind of go together. I stayed in a cave, hundreds of spiders crawled all over me.

I couldn't sleep. I quit the cave after two days. When the green rattlesnake came, one scratch and you're dead.

There's no known antidote. I'm like, okay, it's time to go to the house, you know? Okay, so I'm like, this is not spiritual, this is stupid, you know?

Okay, so, you know, it's okay to have a small, comfortable house that green rattlesnakes can't get into, unless you invite them. Okay, so, those are what we're going to talk about. How to clarify or sharpen a seed, okay?

Nobody was, oh, somebody. So, we'll go about another 20 minutes, okay? Then I'll give you guys a break, a pee-pee break, and there's refreshments, right?

Refreshment break. And then, are they allowed to bring them in here? Oh, even that, great.

Okay, so we'll go for another 20 minutes, and we'll take a break, and then we'll continue, okay? So, let's start on the wheel. This is not, yeah, there we go.

So, this particular painting of the wheel, I, I, what do you call it when you order it? I commissioned it, yeah. I taught this in, I forget where I was, Bahamas?

Austin? Oh, in Austin, Texas. And, I ordered like a hundred of them painted in Nepal, but they were small, okay?

I, I negotiated down to ten dollars. That's another, that's another benefit of being a diamond dealer. So, they did it for ten dollars each, and we gave them away to everybody in the class, and they sewed it into a thangka, you know?

But the problem is, there are hundreds of versions of the Wheel of Life, and many of them are drawn wrongly. Many of them are painted with mistakes in them. So, I couldn't find one that was correct, completely correct.

So, I had one, I commissioned one, actually about a hundred, and then we just handed, we gave them away to people. At the talk in Austin. Why?

Because I know how to make money. Gently, properly, legally, so that I can give away a hundred. You see what I mean?

That's nice, right? That's not bad, right? It's okay.

You each have one. All right. So, the, the caption at the bottom is important.

Lord Buddha designed this Wheel in 500 BC. Two and a half thousand years ago, Lord Buddha designed this painting, and, and commissioned the first one, okay? And ever since then, it's been passed down, and in this painting, is depicted the, the causes why your life is not perfect right now.

Either your finances, or your health, or your relationship, or your inner state of mind, or the state of the world that you live in. Okay, those five things, right? The reason they're not already perfect, is depicted in this Wheel.

It tells you why. In this, in the twelve pictures, particularly around the rim, is contained Lord Buddha's teaching on why your life is imperfect right now, okay? Why things are not, why do you have credit card debt, you see?

Do you have trouble with your saddlebags on your horse? Anybody in the, in the audience? Do you have trouble with your saddlebags on your horse?

Yes or no? Okay, no, you don't. Why?

You don't have a horse, you don't have saddlebags. Okay, okay. But if I say, are you, do you have credit card?

Do you have, what do you call it, close situation? Let's be polite with your credit cards. And I don't know, half the people, three quarters, right?

We have the first problem, we don't have the, sorry, we have the second problem, we don't have the first problem. Am I right? Okay.

Okay. In 10 years, in five years, if people learned about the wheel, and I got up and said, how many people have credit card debt? They would all look at me like, what?

Saddlebags? What's a credit card? We just have debit cards.

You see? Do you understand? It would be obsolete.

The problem would be unknown among people who were, had any brains at all. Okay, that's assuming we all have brains, okay? If you have any brains at all, and you study the wheel, credit card problems would become in five years, I'm not talking you personally, five months for you personally, but in general, it would become like saddlebag problems on your horse.

It just wouldn't exist, there wouldn't be such a thing. Try to imagine, I know it's difficult, okay? If you understood the wheel, those things wouldn't exist for you.

They just wouldn't exist, and you'd stop thinking about them. How would it feel in your life if you never had to worry again about your partner, or your credit card, or your body? Then what would you spend your time doing?

Probably you could have fun, right? Other stuff, you could play music and stuff, okay? So, that's the wheel of life.

I'm going to give like a five-minute summary of the wheel of life. Then we'll take, well, until the break, okay? Like 15 minutes.

I'll give you a quick run-through on the wheel of life. And then I suggest we take a break. And then when you come back, I'd like to tell you the history of how it was first painted.

Because in the history of the painting is the little kernel that I want to leave you with in three days time. Which is what? What's the goal?

How to speed up? How to sharpen a karmic seed, okay? We'll talk about how to plant them.

That's no big deal. But unfortunately, they can take lifetimes. Okay?

I would like to teach you how to sharpen a seed consciously, so that it comes back in, I don't know, a month or two months, okay? If you have a personal problem and you work on it with seeds, it will finish within a week or two, if you're good at it. It's amazing.

It's extraordinary, okay? I had a meeting this morning. It was supposed to be a difficult and bad meeting, you know?

And then I said, well, I better fix the karma before I have this meeting, you know? So I worked on it for like a couple weeks. And then I had this big tense meeting and it was just all kisses.

And the person gave me roses. And I was like, damn, that stuff works, you know? So, so we're going to try that, okay?

Let's go through the wheel quickly. This is a 10-minute, what do you call it? The wheel in a nutshell, okay?

I'll start from the top. On the top right, and you can also refer to your, the painting that you should have gotten a copy. If you didn't get a copy, bother Miriam, who's the botheree for the three days.

On the top right is Lord Buddha. Lord Buddha is outside of the wheel. Lord Buddha is not stuck in cycles.

Next week, you will be up there and not in the wheel, okay? And then, traditionally, Lord Buddha is pointing across to the moon, which traditionally represents nirvana or enlightenment. And in our case, no credit card debt, okay?

This shining orb in the future of our fight. Or, you know, or you have a partner who always is polite and listens and washes the dishes, and also maybe, maybe cooks also. Then, I remember the night that my teacher taught the wheel to us.

I think Chunila was there. We were there together. I think it was about 30 something years ago.

And I remember the night that he started teaching us the wheel. And he said, the monster is not a monster. You see, the monster's feet are down at the bottom.

The monster hands are on either side of the wheel. And he was very adamant. This is not a monster.

This is death. This is death. This is your death.

He was really sticky about it, you know. Don't think it's some kind of monster that comes out on Halloween, you know. It's not that.

It's the death that was born inside of you the day you came out of your mother's womb, okay? The day you came out of your mother's womb, there was a creature born with you, inside of you, and he is clawing his way towards your heart. And one day he will reach it, and you will die.

You see, we are all born with the monster inside. That's death. So it's not some...

Tibetans get really irritated if people say, where's this monster? How can I meet this monster, you know? He's inside of you.

He doesn't look like that, okay? It's just a picture. And every day he takes another scratch, a few scratches, and one day he will pierce the heart.

My mom died of cancer. She got breast cancer. And one day it actually broke the skin of the heart, and this blood gushed out.

Her blood life gushed out all over the living room, and she died in that moment. And you have to think like that. He's clawing closer and closer, and one day he will scratch the heart, and that's it, and you will die, okay?

So that's death. In death's hands is the world. So that circle is the world.

The five realms in... I'll point to them. Here, one, two, three, four, five.

These five sections towards the middle, right? Those are the different kinds of life. You can see human life, which is in the upper right corner.

And then you can see animal life in about eight o'clock. Down you can see animals. Those are the only two realms that we can normally see.

In the bottom are the hell realms. On the right are ghost realms. And then on the upper left are like temporary paradises.

So these are the ways that life appears on the different planets of the universe, okay? We are stuck on one planet. We are stuck in two realms.

We can see animals. We can see people. Tibetans say don't be like a frog in a well.

Don't think your well is the whole universe, okay? There happen to be other places than Manhattan. No, I mean we're like...

the Tibetans say you're like a frog in a well, you know? You think everything in the world is what you can see in the well. It's not like that.

There are many, many, many countless realms, okay? Obviously, go out and look at the stars at night, you know? There are other worlds.

People are talking. People are doing stuff. They might have three eyes or four.

They have different arms, okay? And there are such places. There are other places.

And it's possible to go to them, okay? Don't think, you know, your world is all there is. It's very naive, right?

It's very funny to think that, okay? In the middle, in the very middle, are three creatures. There's a rooster, a snake, and a pig.

Sometimes the rooster in the ancient times was a dove or a pigeon. And these represent three basic human emotions which cause all of our pain. The pig represents not understanding how life works.

The snake represents anger. And the rooster represents desire. And these are the three emotions which spin the wheel of suffering.

Outside of that wheel, on the left side are people going up because they have learned the meaning of the wheel. And on the right side are people being dragged down. You can say on the right are people who are living in negative cycles in their life.

They try relationships after relationship. They try job after job after job. They try many kinds of exercise routines and vitamins and new kinds of, I don't know, what is it this month?

Those little seeds are out, I heard. And I have a big supply of them. I don't know what to do with them.

What are those little black seeds? Yeah, chia is out and something else is in. What is it?

It's the answer to everything. I don't remember. But you keep changing, going down, downward cycles.

You try a different exercise program. You try a different partner. You try a different job.

And it just repeats. It's just same old cycles, okay? On the right side, people being dragged down.

On the left side, people going up, okay? The most important part of the wheel for us and the one which we are going to concentrate on in these three days are the twelve pictures around the outside rim, okay? They are called, say, Yenlak, Chunyi.

Yenlak, Chunyi. The twelve links of the wheel of life, okay? The twelve links.

In Sanskrit, okay? These are the twelve links. These are twelve, what do you call that when stuff happens in a row?

Chain reaction. It's a chain reaction. Those twelve are a chain reaction.

If you do this, that will happen. If you do that, that will happen. If you do that, that will happen.

If you do that, that will happen. And you will lose your job, or you will lose your partner, or your body will get old, okay? That's the teaching of the wheel.

Those twelve chain reaction links around the outside are what's crucial for us. We're going to pay special attention to the twelve. If you understand the wisdom contained in the twelve, you can change your life.

You can change every part of your life. You can have whatever you want. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to stand up in front of thousands of people every year and tell them this, and maybe five get it?

Okay? And the rest just go on with their credit card debts, and their arguments with their spouses, and getting older, right? It's very frustrating.

So try to raise the odds here a little bit, okay? I mean, perhaps we've been mistaken all of our lives, and perhaps we were conducting our lives in a mistaken way, and perhaps it's true that if we knew what was contained in the wheel, we could have anything we want, without trouble, without problem, just in a relaxed, gentle way. We could have everything we want, and we could help other people limitlessly.

You see what I mean? There is such a thing. I say there is such a thing in the wheel.

I think it's worth three days of your life to try to confirm that statement or not, okay? So we'll be concentrating on the twelve links, and we'll be shifting over to a text by Nagarjuna after the break. Nagarjuna lived 18 centuries ago, was a great Buddhist thinker.

You have a picture of Nagarjuna on that little handout, okay? That handout was created yesterday on the plane from Arizona, using the ACIP database, okay? I found Nagarjuna's explanation of the wheel, which has been missing for 18 centuries.

It was in their database. I found it, and I translated it on the plane, and we printed it this morning, okay? If you're looking for a teaching, and you don't have a teaching already from New York, because you didn't have time, how would you get one?

Organize a party to celebrate the saving of sacred literature, and then on the plane, Nagarjuna's missing text on the wheel of life will appear on your laptop. You think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding.

It's there. You have it in your hand, okay? It's been missing for 18 centuries, okay?

Got it? Kind of cool, right? If you want things, plant them, and they will come, and you can't escape them.

You can try to sleep on the plane, but the stewardess will wake you up. Not kidding, okay? I'm really not kidding.

Your life can be like magical. All the things you want can just happen, you know, at the last minute, just in time, you know? So, let's learn how to do it.

Just learn how to do it, and the rest of your life will be like magic, like beautiful magic, okay? Okay, we'll take a break. Try to be back by 8.45. Okay, see you in 15 minutes. Okay, we'll start again. Now, the story of how this got painted. We have like half an hour, and the story is not just a pretty story.

It is a pretty story, but it's going to help you achieve your goals, okay? So, trust me, the story is going to apply to your life by 9.30, okay? So, here we go.

In ancient India, 500 BC, two and a half thousand years ago, Lord Buddha was wandering around India. He tended to walk with his students, with his close students. They would travel around India.

So, he entered the kingdoms of two particular kings. One was named Bimbisara, Sukchenyingbo in Tibetan, and one was named Udayana, which in Tibetan is Udayana. They didn't translate it.

There were two kings named Udayana and Bimbisara. Then, unlike most kings and unlike most government leaders, they actually, from a distance, decided they were close friends, okay? Like hundreds of miles apart, for some reason, these two kings decided they were paizanos, you know?

Like they were tight, you know? I don't know why. I don't know what happened.

Karma, right? But they just decided they really liked the other guy. And I don't know who started it, but they started to send gifts to each other.

So, you know, one would send a jewel to the other one, and then the other one would send... There was a saying in India that if someone helps you, you should always return it with more. And if they hurt you, you should do the same, but that's a bad part.

So, they started to exchange gifts. And finally, Udayana sent Bimbisara a special coat, a special robe. And it was studded with gems, and it had magical powers, right?

So, nobody could assassinate Bimbisara. Like, somebody could come up with a gun, shoot him, or someone could do anything, and the robe would stop it, you know? And he wouldn't be hurt.

So, Udayana gave this priceless robe to Bimbisara, covered with jewels. Then Bimbisara called all his, what do you call, ministers, right? His advisors.

And he said, we have a problem here, you know? I'm supposed to give him something bigger back, you know? It's like in Japan, right?

If you're in Narita, Narita Airport in Tokyo, yeah, and you see some businessman leaving, the boss is leaving on a flight, and there'll be four assistants there, and the boss will go like that. And then the assistants have to go lower, and then the boss will go lower, and then the assistants have to go... And then, it's like a gift.

It's a beautiful custom, it's a beautiful custom, but it's the gift thing. So, he has to give something more valuable back, but there's nothing more valuable for a king than a jewel-studded robe that won't let anybody hurt you. So, he's like, he calls all his advisors, Bimbisaras, what are we going to give to Udayana?

And one of them raises his hand, he said, I have an idea. What? The Buddha is walking through your kingdom right now.

He's like 10 miles away right now. He's omniscient. Ask him, you know?

Ask him what would be more precious, you know? And the king is like, duh, that's a good idea, you know? Someone who knows everything, Mr. Know-it-all, you know?

Let's ask him, you know? And they went to the Buddha, and they sent a guy to Lord Buddha, and they explained the problem, and they said, we need something of priceless value. And the Buddha said, no problem, that's easy.

And they said, well, what should we give him? And they said, paint my picture and give it to him, because it's beyond value. Dey shek chu la rintang me, right?

In the Vajrayogini talk. There's no price, it's priceless. My image is priceless because I'm an enlightened being, in all modesty, you know?

You should paint my picture and give it to Udayana, and that would be a, and something cool is going to happen if you give him that painting. Something cool is going to happen. So they said, okay.

The king got a bunch of good artists and said, you know, go out to the suburbs, the Buddha's out there with his followers. I want a painting done in like three or four days, okay? Because I got to get this show on the road.

I got to send this to Udayana, you know? So they, you know, they sent the artists, and they all waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Like a week went by.

It's like waiting for friends at a music rehearsal. And, sorry. So anyway, he's worth it though.

So is the Buddha. So then they, he sent a messenger out, you know, where's the painting, you know? And the messenger went out, and the artists were all standing in front of the Buddha like this.

And the messenger said, are you done with the painting? And they said, what? Are you done with the painting?

What painting? Look at this guy. He's so fantastic, you know?

And they're all just standing there, and they didn't paint anything, you know? And then, so who do you ask if you have a problem painting the Buddha? You got to ask the Buddha.

He knows everything. So they asked the Buddha, how do we paint you? Because the minute people catch sight of you, they can't do anything.

They just stand there, you know? And he said, well, I have a suggestion. You get a big sheet, and you put it right behind me.

And then you get a very bright, you make some very bright fires in front of me, and it will project my shadow onto the sheet. And then the artists can go behind, and they can trace my outline. And then later they can go home and fill it in, you know?

So that's what they did. And they made a picture of Lord Buddha, you know? And it's all finished, and they said, okay, we're ready to send the gift to Udayana.

And Buddha said, wait, I have a suggestion. Under my picture, let's paint a little wheel, and let's send a secret message to Udayana, and see if he gets it. Okay?

So they painted the wheel. Originally, the Buddha was the whole painting, and there was a little tiny wheel at the bottom, I guess, you know? It's not clear, but...

So then they put the wheel on there, and then they're wrapping it up. He says, wait, wait, wait, wait. Put this quotation at the bottom.

Sambarjasana Yomurja, Sankirtana Jupitra, Langtosana, Chidatdeni Sombraja. When you don't know a line in the monastery, you go... So, anyway, add that at the bottom.

It's called wah-wah, by the way. When they're doing, like, 500 monks are going... Then you just go...

So anyway, the problem is if, like, five guys don't know what they're saying, and then everyone's copying the guy next to them. Okay. So anyway, they painted it, they wrapped it up, they sent it to Udayana.

And it's a beautiful story, but then he opened the box, and he took out the painting, and something happened to him, okay? In a short time, he saw emptiness directly, okay? Because of seeing this painting, he had a direct experience of emptiness.

You want to hear how that happened? Do you care? That's a long story.

Okay, but it's a beautiful... I like it, because it's the best part of the story. He didn't see emptiness right away.

He just went on being a king, and he had that painting, and he would stare at it once in a while, and he would try to scope out what the heck does it mean, right? And then one night, he had several queens, and one was named Chandra Prabha, the light of the moon. And he was playing a lute, and she was dancing, and they were having...

probably it was a 25th anniversary party. And then suddenly, he had this terrible vision that she would die in seven days. He saw that in seven days she would die, and he dropped the lute.

And she said, what's wrong? And he said, I had a vision. And she said, what?

And he said, you're going to die. Within seven days, you will die. And she said, she like bows down, and she says, then give me permission to become a nun.

Let me spend the last seven days of my life as a nun. Let me become a... let me spend the last seven days in practice.

And he said, oh, that's fine. But I'm going to miss you. And she says, don't worry, you can meet me.

I'll come for you. Don't worry. So she becomes a nun.

She dies after seven days, right? And then one night after that, he's like in bed, in the middle of the night, and she appears at the... what do you call it?

At the end of the bed? She's standing... what do you call that?

At the foot of the bed. She's standing there in light, you know? And he woke up, and he was...

what do you call it? Groggy. Like he didn't remember where he was.

He's like, come on, get in bed, you know? And she's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. You forgot I'm dead, you know?

And he's like, oh yeah. And then she's like, do you want to meet me again? And he's like, yeah.

And she says, well, then you have to collect special karma. And he says, well, how do you do that? And she says, will you become a monk?

Of course. And then she disappears, you know? And then he's like, I'll become a monk.

Because he wants to meet his holy partner again. It's a whole beautiful story. It's some deep meaning there.

But anyway, he became a monk, and he gave the kingdom to his son, whose name was Shikhandi. In Tibetan it's called Tsupachen. So he had a formal ceremony, and he gave the kingdom to his son, Shikhandi.

Shikhandi means... what do you call that in India? They have long hair, and they tie it up like this, right?

That's called Shikhanda. And so his name was... he had a topknot like that, like a royal topknot.

So he gave the... it's called Gyalse Tipa. He gave the kingdom to his heir, and then he left.

He became a monk, and he left. And he followed Lord Buddha. He started walking around with Lord Buddha.

And during that time he saw emptiness, and he became an Arya, right? Then at some point he met some traders from his own country on the road, walking around with Lord Buddha. And he asked them, how are things going back home?

And they said, not so good. And he said, why? And they said, do you remember you used to have two...

he had two... what do you call those guys? Advisors, ministers.

One was named Heruka, and one was named Bhiruka. And Heruka and Bhiruka have been kicked out, and they've been replaced with Yukpa and Toa. Yukpa in Sanskrit is danda.

What's danda? Dandasana. Stick, but it means a plank, or a club, okay?

So danda in the old Sanskrit means a club that you use to hit people. It was a policeman's gun in the old days. So one of the ministers, evil ministers named Stick, and one of them is named...

Toa means hammer. So they replaced the two good ministers, and they started advising the son to abuse the people, to hurt the people. So Udayana gets this report, and he says, well, I better go home and straighten this boy out.

So he goes to Lord Buddha, and he says, you know, I have to go home for a while to straighten out my son. And the Buddha goes like this. He says, go, go, but be ready for what happens.

You know, that's all. He just, he sees that he's going to go anyway, but he says, be ready for what comes. And then, then the son heard that the father was coming back, and the evil ministers, whose names are Stick and Hammer, Danda and Toa, they said to the boy, the prince, they said, the old man's coming back.

Can you imagine how ugly it's going to look if you put a crown on a monk's head? It's all wrong, you know, and he's going to kick you out, and he's going to kick us out, and he might murder you, you know. I think we should do something.

So he, he, at that moment, he makes a mistake. The son makes a mistake, and he says, do what's necessary. I agree to whatever is necessary.

So they send assassins to kill Udrayana on the road before he gets to the capital. They send assassins. So he's walking down the road, and the assassins are walking down the road, and, and he gets this vision, you know.

He says, were you sent to kill me? He asked them, were you sent to kill me? And they say, yes, we were.

And they were forced to, by the way. Their families were held hostage by the evil ministers. So, so they said, yes, we have to kill you.

Then he said, could you just wait like 15 minutes? Let me do my final meditation, you know. Let me prepare my mind.

And they say, okay, of course, prepare your mind. So he goes into deep meditation, and he becomes an arhat. He reaches nirvana in those 15 minutes.

He, he permanently eliminates his kleshas, his negative emotions, and he reaches nirvana there, sitting there on the road, you know. Then they say, then he says, okay, kill me, but, but send a message to my son, you know. And they say, what's the message?

He says, in, in Buddhism there are five great sins that you can do, five of the most terrible sins, killing your father, killing your mother, killing someone who's reached nirvana, trying to hurt a Buddha, because you can't kill them, and then splitting up a spiritual community. These five are, are unfor, I don't know how to say, unforgivable. They're like the worst sins you can do.

It's the worst possible sins. And they, they claim that if you do one of the five and you die, you will go straight to hell. There's no other choice.

It's always like, it's almost always like that, okay. So he said to the assassins, tell my son he's done two of the five. Like, and in the whole world, almost no one has ever done two of the five.

He's killed his father, and he's killed someone who reached nirvana. Tell him to clean it, tell him to purify that from his heart before he dies. Now kill me.

And they kill him, okay. Then they take the robes to the son, and they're covered with blood. And they say, okay, we, we eliminated the problem, you know.

And he says, you killed him, you know. And they say, yeah. And he's, he says, oh my God, now I've killed my father, and I've killed someone who reached nirvana, you know.

I'm, my future is hopeless, you know. I, I will suffer forever now, you know. Like he's almost crazy.

Then comes the crucial part, and the part that I want you to know. Why? Because we are talking about how to sharpen a karmic seed.

We are talking about our subject for three days. It's how do you sharpen a karmic seed? I understand that I could be financially independent for the rest of my life if I were generous in a certain way.

But how do you make it happen quickly? How do you sharpen that seed? I understand that I could see peace in the world, and I understand that I could see the end of poverty in my lifetime, right?

But how do I make it happen so quickly? 50,000 years of human error, 50,000 years of suffering on this planet, poverty, war. How, how can I make a karmic seed ripen so fast that in my lifetime I see it end?

You see, that's the subject of these three days. And the information is in the wheel. The clues are in the wheel.

Here's how it comes in the story of Udayana, okay? So the prince begins to get sick all the time, and worry, with worry, and pain, and suffering. And the two evil ministers, stick and hammer, Danda and Thoa, they go to the, the queen who's the mother of Sikhandi, not the queen who died, okay?

And they say, your son's gone crazy, you know? He's kicked, he's kicked out us good ministers, and he's got these, he brought back Hiruka and Biruka, these two good ministers, he brought them back, you know? So you have to, he thinks it was wrong to kill the king when he came back, but we were just protecting him, you know?

So she's like, well what's his problem, you know? And they say, well, he thinks he killed his father, and he killed an Arhat. He killed someone who reached Nirvana, so he's going to have terrible suffering.

So she says, no problem, I have a plan. I'll take care of him thinking that he killed his father, you take care of him thinking that he killed an Arhat, okay? Someone that reached Nirvana, all right?

And they say, well how are you going to do that? And she says, I will confess to him that that wasn't his father, that I was having an affair when he was born, okay? And I'll talk him into believing that he didn't kill his father.

He did, right? But I'll do this big confession to him, and he'll think he didn't kill his father. Then the ministers get this cool plan, okay?

There were two people who reached Nirvana in their kingdom previous to that, and they had special stupas, special temples dedicated to them, right? They had gone away, passed away a long time before, but they had reached Nirvana. So they made this plan.

They got two kittens, and they trained them to sit inside those temples. And when they said the names of the two previous ministers, those kittens would come out of the temple, and they would kill small birds. They would put small birds there, and the kittens would kill small birds.

So they got this whole thing ready, and then they called the son, and they said, first of all, you don't have to worry that you killed your father, because that wasn't your father. Also, there's no such thing as an arhat. We'll prove it to you.

They take him to the stupas. They say, hello, Mr. Arhats. And these two kittens come out, and then they say, what do you like to do?

And they kill the birds. And they say, look what kind of arhats these are. They were died, and they will be reborn as kittens.

There's no such thing as an arhat. So your father wasn't an arhat either. You don't have to stress.

Okay. Do you want more of that story? You have five more minutes.

Okay. It ends like this. So Shikhandi loses faith in the idea of reaching nirvana.

He comes to believe that it's impossible to reach nirvana. And there was a very great monk and a very great nun named Katyayana and Shaila, who had trained the old king and his wife, right? These two beautiful monk and nun.

So the son said, since no one can reach nirvana, all these monks and nuns are just stupid. And I want everyone in the kingdom, when you see them walking down the road, throw something on them or spit on them. Like throw tomatoes at them or throw garbage on them or like that.

And he encouraged this towards practitioners. Okay. And they were very peace loving and they didn't do anything, but people threw things at them and they were very quiet and they didn't say anything.

But you know, one day there was this nun and this monk called a few of the old advisors and they said, come to our house, we have to tell you something. Then they came and they had a meeting and they said, look, something strange is going to happen in this city. For seven days, strange things are going to fall out of the sky.

Okay, like the first day, flowers will fall out of the sky, empty sky, flowers will fall through the city. And then on the second day, silk, clothing of all kinds will fall from the sky and the people will be joyful and they will be happy. And then they get, on the sixth day, gemstones, diamonds, rubies, emeralds will fall from the sky.

And then on the seventh day, earth will fall from the sky and bury the city and everybody in it. Okay. So they said, get a boat ready, stay till the evening of the sixth.

You know, stuff your pockets with gems and get on the boat and head out of town fast, you know. So, and then on the seventh day, the city is buried, okay, and Shikhandi dies in the city. Now, why am I telling you this long story that doesn't seem to have anything to do with your modern life?

Like I was promising you some kind of solution to the challenges or dreams of your life, okay. The key is in what the queen decided to do, you see. What did the queen decide?

The evil queen. She decided that if the prince believed that he had not done those things, the karma would be less, okay. The karma would be less.

If the prince misunderstood what had happened, the karma would be less. And that's true, okay. That's true.

Like if you, I don't know, if you give somebody a bottle of something because you think it's going to save their life. I saw this ballet last week, okay. You ready?

Maybe you know. There's a priest. He gives a small vial to a young girl so that she will drink it and go unconscious for 24 hours, right.

And you know the story? Then her boyfriend comes in and sees her as dead and stabs himself in the heart, right. So it's a beautiful story.

But the priest who gave Juliet the small vial, right, he believed he was doing something good. He wasn't trying to kill her. He was trying to make it so that she could run away with Romeo and live happily ever after.

So did the priest kill a person? The priest who gave Juliet the vial of some herb that would make her appear dead for 24 hours, did he kill anybody? Did his actions lead to someone's death?

Yes. Was it his intention to kill someone? What kind of karma did he collect from Romeo and Juliet's death?

What kind of seed did he plant? And what were the karma, what kind of thing came back to him later, right? Okay, that's a question.

There are three elements in an act of karma, and we will start tomorrow. We will discuss them tomorrow. There are three elements in an act of karma.

One is called kunlong. Say kunlong, dushe, nyomong. Kunlong, dushe, nyomong.

Kunlong means what is your intention when you do something. What was the priest's intention? Yeah, he wanted like romance to happen.

Okay, his intention was for these two lovers to spend the rest of their lives together. The intention was good, kunlong. What about nyomong?

Nyomong means what kind of emotion did he have at that time? Was he angry? Was he vengeful?

Was he compassionate? Was he hoping for their happiness? So the kunlong was good.

And what we call nyomong in this case, which doesn't mean klesha, it's called klesha, but it means the emotion. Okay, the emotion was good. What about the dushe?

Dushe means, did he assess the situation properly? No, like he left an opening and something happened and they both died. Okay, so two parts of the karma were good.

One part of the karma was a mistake. Okay, so what kind of karma comes out of that? Okay, that we have to discuss tomorrow.

That we have to discuss tomorrow. Because if you do the opposite, any karmic seed you plant will grow in a few weeks. All right, you can have a perfect partner in a few weeks if you know how to sharpen the seed properly.

And that information is in the wheel. Okay, and it comes from the evil queen. Comes from, I mean she understood something and we're going to talk about it tomorrow.

Okay, how can a normal person in a normal life with a partner with hopes to reach financial independence to help the world, right? And with hopes to be healthy and with hopes for inner peace and outer peace in the whole world. How does the wheel tell us what to do?

Because it's in there. It's in the wheel. The information is in the wheel.

Okay, so what I think is cool that you'll have this picture for the rest of your life, hopefully. You should keep it, right? And every time you look at it after tomorrow night, you will remember how to make stuff happen in your life that you want to happen in your life.

Okay, I'd say you can do it. If you understand the links of the wheel after tomorrow, you can make stuff happen in your life, whatever you want to happen in your life. I made a 200 million dollar company.

I know what I'm talking about. I have no business training. I hate business.

I have no interest in business at all. I think it's stupid. Okay, I really do.

You know, but what you want, you can make happen if you understand the wheel. Okay, if you understand what we're going to talk about tomorrow. And I have wonderful relationships, unbelievable.

I'm surrounded by extraordinary people all day, and I just live like that. You know, and my health, I'm old. I'm ancient, okay?

But I feel like I'm 20. Physically, I feel like I'm 20. You can do, and I have inner peace.

You can plant those things with karma, and you can be what you want, and you can have what you want. All this music stuff, it's so fun. I don't know how to play half those instruments.

It just came. Really, I'm not kidding. I'm really not kidding, and I'm not bragging.

I'm trying to say, you can be anything you want to be, and you can do anything you want to do. Just learn the wheel. Just learn how it works, and you can have what you want, you know?

And then you would just be all happy together. We can play music or something. Okay, really, I'm serious.

I'm really totally serious, okay? And that's what I want for you, and that's the reason to have these talks, okay? All right, I know you want this book so bad that you don't have to do it tonight, okay?

If you're busy tonight, you don't have to do it tonight, but I encourage you in the next three days. This information, this kind of wisdom has to survive in the world. It needs a place to stay.

To have one dumb room rented in all of New York for the most priceless thing in New York is kind of duh, and you got to make it happen, okay? Because I have other cities to worry about, okay? So you guys have to make it happen.

So sign up for something. Sign up for fifty cents a day, or sign up for a dollar a day. I want you to do a dollar a day.

If you can't do thirty dollars a month, I have this trick I do in other cities. I say, will you give thirty dollars a month? They say no.

Then on the last day, I say, we're all going out to a movie and a dinner, but it's thirty bucks. Suddenly, everybody has thirty bucks, and then I keep it. But anyway, come on, you know.

We can keep the place open if you sign up for something every month, okay? I don't care. Honestly, I don't care.

Ten cents a day. What is that? Three dollars a month, okay?

Everyone in this room should sign up for something on a monthly basis, okay? Make a promise at the table and do it, okay? And I don't care if you give one cent a year, I'll give you a book.

That's a good deal. You should do it, okay? For six years you save money.

All right. There's a custom in Tibet at the end of a teaching, which most of you know, but we do a special hand gesture. If you know it, you can do it.

If you don't know it, you can fake it. Or you can just go like this, which is what I'm going to do. And we made good karma tonight, because we talked about something important.

We talked about life itself, and how to sustain life, and how to make a world which is perfect, and we can do it. You can do it if you learn this thing. So, we made a good karma.

The best way to keep it is to give it away, and that's a custom at a Buddhist teaching. So, put your hands out like that. We'll sing the chant.

You can do the wah-wah if you don't know it. Okay, all right. Friends, you ready?

Let's go. Sashi.

[Говорящий 2]
Sashi.

[Говорящий 1]
Sashi. Okay. Thank you for coming.

It's really beautiful that so many people would want to know these things, and it makes me really happy, and thank you for letting me share with you also.