Углублённый курс ACI: Колесо жизни в Сутре сердца (1999, Сан-Франциско), занятие 5

[Говорящий 1]
OK, we're going, a little bit loud, we're going through the Wheel of Life. I think we've gone through about nine of the links, OK? And we're up to number ten.

Number ten is right here. And the picture is of a lady who's pregnant, and she's just about to have a child, OK? And this is called chupasipa.

Say chupa. Wake up. Chupa.

Sipa. Chupasipa. OK, chupasipa means number ten.

Sipa means becoming, sometimes they say, and... It's not a very good translation, it's a lousy translation. It should be something like activated karma, or something like that, OK?

Karma is like the atomic bomb or something, you know, and it can either be something which is never going to blow up, you know what I mean, like inert, like if there's no trigger. Like just a big pile of plutonium in a casing can't do anything, you know, it's just this dead thing, and there has to be a trigger on it. And so, in the Wheel of Life, there are two kinds of karma.

We already had one over here at number two. Say nyipa. Nyipa.

Dujekhi. Dujekhi. Le.

Le. Nyipa. Nyipa.

Dujekhi.

[Говорящий 2]
Dujekhi. Le. Le.

[Говорящий 1]
OK, nyipa dujekhi le means karma which is like inert, OK? Newly collected karma, fresh karma, OK? New seeds put into your mind stream.

The scripture we're going to study tonight is going to say it's like oil that's been dripped onto a piece of paper and sort of got impregnated into the paper or on cloth, you know, like when you are eating really greasy French fries and you drop one on your new dress or something, and this oil starts to spread into the cloth, and it's very hard to get out. So, they say at number two, which is right here at two o'clock, where the potter is making new karma, right? Fresh pots.

That represents the impression put into the mind stream, OK? That imprint which is put on the mind in the way that oil would stain a new dress or something like that, OK? So, karma is...

karma like leaks into your mind. Your mind is like a very delicate video recorder, OK? And whatever you do, whatever you see yourself do, creates karma, meaning it makes an impression on the mind in the way that like if you dropped some oil on a piece of paper, it leaks into the mind and it stays in the mind.

So, if you see yourself doing something good for somebody, OK? That's how karma is placed into your mind. If you see yourself reach out to somebody with money or something like that, and you see it go from your hand to their hand, and if in your mind you think, I've given them something, I'm really happy about that, then the karmic seeds are put into your mind.

Impressions are made in your mind. That's number two here, OK? So, at any given time you have all these karmic seeds in your mind, unactivated, OK?

Inert. Whether or not they're ever going to do anything, depends on something else, OK? So, all of us have, according to Buddhism, millions of inert, inactive karmic seeds in your mind.

You have all these karmic seeds sitting in your mind. I like to say they're like planes lined up at Newark airport, you know? And they're going to take off one by one, OK?

Those karmas will ripen in your mind one by one. What do we mean when we say karma ripens, you know? It means that in your mind, because of the impressions you put in your mind in the past, you see things a certain way, OK?

Like, I'm standing up here. There's a certain percentage of people in this audience who are interested. There's a certain people who are neutral.

There's a certain number who are bored already, OK? And the way... I'm just one person, OK?

I'm just one object. So, if it's true that, you know, X number of people are having X number of different versions of me right now, in Buddhism, that proves my emptiness. That proves my emptiness, OK?

Emptiness is a sort of a bad translation of a word that means blank, OK? So, I'm neutral. I'm blank.

I'm just standing up here talking, OK? Even my words, says Buddhism, don't have meaning of their own. They're just decibels, OK?

Decibels changing, OK? You are giving them meaning, OK? Whether or not they have meaning depends on each person here.

And whether or not you think what I say is meaningful or interesting depends on each person here. It's not coming from me, because if it were, everyone would be equally bored or equally interested. You see what I mean?

So, it's not coming from me. It's coming from each one of you, OK? And that's a result of a karma that was placed in your mind a long time ago, OK?

So, that karma to be interested, or that karma to be bored, is ripening in your mind, and that's why each person in this room has a different impression of me as I speak. I'm neutral, which is what the word emptiness really means, OK? I'm just blank, OK?

Whether or not you're interested is your problem. We've been debating in the other classes, three different schools' version of emptiness, and how reality works, and the lower school, mine only, they say, I'm interesting or boring from my own side, and it doesn't matter what you're thinking, OK? And then the next school up, the better school than that says, for you to be bored, I have to be boring from my side, and you have to be bored from your side, you know?

It's somewhere in the middle, you know? I'm sort of boring, and then you think of me as boring, and between the two of us, we make me boring, OK? And that's their view of reality.

And the higher school says, you're just blank, empty, OK? And whether or not we see you as boring is totally coming from our side, OK? Meaning from your side.

Your karma is making you see me as boring or interesting. In fact, your karma is making you see me at all, OK? That's on another level, OK?

But that proves that... By the way, that's how karma ripens. Right now, according to Buddhism, karma is ripening as we speak.

In your own mind, you are looking at me, and you are thinking, oh, boring, I hope to break this pretty soon, or interesting, and that's all coming from your side. What's the proof? The proof of it is that if I was, from my side, boring or interesting, everybody in the audience would be either bored or interested, equally, but it's not that way, OK?

There's something coming from your mind which is interpreting me, and we say that's a ripening of karma, OK? If you used to interrupt people or bore people a lot in your past, you'll be bored, OK? If you've been trying to help people and speak meaningfully during the day and not blabbing about the New York Times or something, then you will find me interesting.

And it all depends on your mind, not on me, OK? So, that's how our karma ripens, OK? But why is it that some karma is ripening now and other karmas are not?

According to Buddhism, in the time it takes me to snap my fingers, you've planted 65 more karmas in your mind, OK? You plant them that fast, and they play back that fast. Life is like a movie frames, moving by really fast, and you think it's a flaw, but it's not.

You are having discrete moments of, you know, ripening of karma in your mind, and it's like a really fast moving film. And it looks like real motion, it looks like real time, but it's not, OK? And in this amount of time, you have 65 impressions of me, you know, moving like that, OK?

And same thing when you're collecting karma, OK? So, if you collect karma like at 65 per finger snap, and if they multiply, the longer they stay in your mind, OK? They're like rabbits, OK?

Like one karma becomes 16 karmas in 24 hours, and then those 16 become, I don't know, 16, it's, what do you call it? Exponential, OK? It's actually like that, OK?

Every day that goes by, you add a 2 exponent, you know? So, it goes like 2, I don't know how it works, 8, 16, 64, you know, it's weird. But that many karmas are collecting in your mind.

So, where do they all stay? And how come by now I'm not living 24,000 different lives? Because that's a lot of karmas, you know?

The distinction is that some are inert. In other words, the seed is put in your mind when you saw yourself do something to somebody, and then that karma lays there until it gets activated. Something has to come along and activate it, OK?

And there's a special word for that. And that's what I wanted to talk about tonight, especially with regard to number 10, because number 10 is specifically the last moments of your life, OK? Number 10, called becoming, is specifically the last moments of your life.

We want to know what it is that activates out of the millions and millions of karmas in your mind, why are one or two activated and cause you to go somewhere after you die, you know? You have to study this. I thought, you know, there's a lot of subjects with dependent origination.

We could do this wheel for a year or something like that. But I thought for normal Americans like you and me, the important thing is to know what's happening during the final moments of your death, you know? How are karmas activated?

What happens to you during the process? What happens right after that? What can a normal American person do in a practical sense to die as well as possible?

You see what I mean? Because that's very necessary for each person here, you know, at least for me, OK? So I thought it'd be good to go over that.

So we're going to go in great detail. We're going to go off the book we've been on, which was written about 500 years ago. And now we're going on to a later presentation called NAMDURLAKJANG.

And in this particular book called A Gift of Liberation Shoved into Your Hands, mistranslated as Liberation in Your Hands, which makes it sound like it's your problem, you know, it's really a gift of liberation, like, here, take it, OK? That's what the word means. And in that book he describes the process of the last few moments of your life very nicely, like there's five pages on it or something.

So we're going to go through that very carefully, you know, line by line, and tear it down. And make sure you get all that information so that you're ready, OK? There's a thing called Buddhist death meditation.

In fact, we're going to do it down in North Carolina. I don't know when. In February, I think.

It's very, very beautiful. And the point of Buddhist death meditation is to get ready for your death so that when it comes, you're ready, and you're not scared. So the idea is to go through it over and over again before you die, and then when the time comes, you're all ready, and it's just a comfortable transition, OK, like that.

So that's the purpose of studying this. It's not to scare you, or it's not to talk about weird things, or something like that. It's to very rationally, calmly, while we have time, to get ready for it.

You know, I train some of my students what to do when I die, and I always keep them near me. And people criticize me. They say, why do you have these people hanging around with you all the time?

It's quite self-interested, OK? I don't know when I'm going to die. People say, well, you're not going to die in this restaurant.

How can you say that, you know? I'm going to die in some restaurant. You see what I mean?

I mean, they say, come on, you're not going to die on the way home from the class, you know? How can you tell me that? You know what I mean?

Everybody dies somewhere where they didn't think they were going to die, really. You know what I mean? Everybody dies on the way somewhere, surprised, you know?

Ah! So, actually, it would be crazy not to carry around, you know, train a couple of people to do what you die, and make sure they stick close to you. You know what I mean?

And live that way, you know? Train a couple of your Dharma friends, and stick around. Stick close to each other, you know?

Every minute of the day. You don't know it. You know, for me, it's very comforting, you know?

Like, train them very well. They know what to do. I know what to do.

They're going to help me. And then you just make sure that you don't walk too close together in the crosswalks. You know what I mean?

And, uh... And it's very smart. It's not like some crazy, stupid thing.

It's very intelligent, okay? It's the most intelligent thing to do. You can't say, oh, just be here from this hour to that hour, and I won't need you after that hour.

You know what I mean? Because it doesn't work that way. You don't know when you're going to die.

You should be ready. And you should have some friends nearby, okay? The priest might be busy that week, you know?

Vacation or something. To do the last rites, right? And by the way, we say that's a very intelligent thing.

We say that that thing of having someone there at your side, which you'll see tonight, to do the right thing for you, is very important, okay? So, you know, if we're in a Buddhist country, you could just have a thing on your neck, you know, like, I need Vajrayogini sadhana three, you know? But...

But it's not, so it's better to have some friends, or better to learn what to do, and then, you know, have a network or something, okay? So what distinguishes this karma from this karma, okay? We're talking about, only two of the twelve links of the wheel are karma.

This one represents fresh karma, which goes into your mind inert. It's not armed yet. It's not wired yet.

Okay? And this karma, chupasipa, number ten, is wired. It's about to go off, okay?

The trigger is on, and the timer has been set. Okay, so something happened between number two and number ten to get this karma wired, or armed, okay? The karma is armed now.

By the way, they talk about people who reach nirvana. They talk about people who don't have to come back to this version of reality, okay? They're in a different version, which is much better, okay?

They don't have to come back here. They're called arhat. Say da?

Chomba. Da chomba. Those who have defeated the enemy of what?

Of the mental afflictions. They don't have to come back to a world like this. They are in a...

They may be in the same physical place, they're on a different level. They're not experiencing the world that you're experiencing. At all, okay?

And they won't experience death at all the way you're going to experience it if you don't reach that level. And are they in a different place? Not necessarily, okay?

They're at a different level of reality of this same place, okay? And they're experiencing the world completely differently, okay? What's cool about them is, they have all this karma here, and this karma is called pen je ki le.

I'll write it for you. Say, pen je... ki le.

Pen je ki...

[Говорящий 2]
le. Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Pen means to project, like... the Tibetan word for shooting an arrow is pen. Or throwing a spear is called pen.

And... so pen means like shooting, okay? Pen je means shoot...

which does the shooting, and le means karma. Ki le means karma. So we call this projecting karma, or shooting karma.

This is the karma... there's different kinds of karma, okay? Some kinds of karma shoot you into your next life, okay?

They project your being into your next existence after you die. They determine what's going to happen after you die, okay? They decide where you go after you die.

And then there's other ones called... what do we call that? Dzog je.

Say, dzog je... ki le. Dzog je ki le.

Dzog je means finishing karma. Dzog je ki le means finishing karma. It's like finishing school, okay?

Pen je ki le determines what kind of place you're going to be... generally, what kind of being you're going to be, like human, okay? And then dzog je ki le finishes off the painting.

They compare it to a master painter like Michelangelo, who sketches out the... what do you call the thing on the wall? Sistine Chapel.

The fresco. He sketches it out, and then the students come... the apprentices come and fill in the coloring according to his directions, you know?

And... Pen je ki le is like the master artist who comes up and says, okay, this is going to be a human. And then dzog je ki le comes up and says, okay, ugly, beautiful, fat, happy, sad, you know?

They make the details of your life, okay? So, we're talking about which one tonight? Projecting.

Yeah, we're talking about projecting, okay? We're talking about what activates the karma. You've been collecting karma your whole life.

How fast? Sixty-five karmas, a finger snap, enough to give you a whole life, okay? Any one of those would be enough to give you a whole life, okay?

Or any small number of them together could make your whole next seventy years, okay? So... So, you've got millions of those already in your mind.

How do you know which one's going to go off when you die? Okay? Very important question.

You've got to die right, okay? My mother... had very bad cancer.

The doctors told her, forget it, it's impossible. So, I was studying in India, Dharamsala, and... and...

she wrote me a letter, she said, the doctors have given up, you know? They said, just do what you want, because there's no hope. So, I said, come to India, you've got nothing to lose.

You know? She's never been anywhere. So, she gets on a plane, she flies to India, she's about dead.

She can hardly walk. And, get her up to Dharamsala, and His Highness's doctor sees her. And he comes out and he says...

you know, he comes out into the waiting room and he says, I prescribe Geshe Dargye. You know? Which...

which means, teach her how to die. You see what I mean? And, that was it.

He gave her something for the pain and he said, go study with Geshe Dargye, you know? And, very wise. This is a real doctor.

You see what I mean? This is a really cool doctor. Because they say, okay, you're going to die, so now get ready.

You know? And she had like two or three months, and the lamas just crammed her. You know?

They prepared her properly. And it went really nice. It went perfect.

You know? So, this is what you have to do. I mean, this is what real...

You know, this is what doctor... American doctors should have that training, I think. You know, when they see it's hopeless, they should say, look, it's not going to work now.

Now we'll teach you how to die right. Okay? So, you're going to get it here.

Okay? How do you get the right panchayati lay to go off? Okay?

Meaning, meaning, how do you select, or how do you activate the right karma? At the moment of death, as you die, what do you do to die right? Okay?

That's what we're going to work on. And I'm going to pull it right out of the scripture. Okay?

First it says, here, chi-po-wa dang-yin-tsam-jo-way-tsu-la-tsum-le, dang-po-chi-wa-tar-jung-tsu-ni means, I'm going to teach you how to die, how to go the right way, and then how to take a good rebirth. Okay? And then he says, here's the first one.

Why am I reading it? Because I didn't have time to translate it for you. Okay?

Sorry. Okay. Maybe, I'll give it out next class, because I think this particular one is really important.

Okay? Chi-wa-ken means, first let's talk about the factors that can kill you. Okay?

I mean, first you have to know how you're going to die. What can make you die? What are the circumstances that can make you die?

And it says, Sutra outlines nine different ways, nine different factors that can kill you. First is, tse-se-pa. Tse-se-pa means, your life energy comes to an end.

Okay? Life energy ends. Second one is, sunam-se-pa.

Sunam-se-pa means, you don't have enough good karma left to keep it going. Okay? Number three means, yang-wa-wa-ma-pa-ma means, something about like, you are unable to eliminate certain kinds of anxiety that kill you faster, that give you heart attacks and stuff like that.

Okay? And that's a circumstance that could lead to your death.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Now, there's a couple of things to say here. First of all, he doesn't tell me the other six. He just says, etc.

Okay? I'll try to look them up in the sutra. Then he says, ken.

Say, ken. Ken. Ken.

Ken is a very beautiful word. I translated it for... the Dalai Lama's doctor, a long time ago.

I mean, 15, 20 years ago. And he gave lectures in New York, and he said... Somebody said, why do people get cancer?

And he says, well, I'll tell you the ken, for cancer.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
And he said very interesting things. I mean, it's not the purpose of the lecture tonight, but he said, the rubber that wears off of automobile tires in New York City and gets into the air is very poisonous. Then he said, electricity lines that are crisscrossing the city create some kind of energy that hurts your body.

Obviously, the pollution from cars hurts you. He says, the chemicals that they put in the food in New York City to preserve it are killing you. You know?

And then he went into all these weird things, you know? Like, what causes cancer? And then, I don't know, a day later, somebody said...

He took questions, you know? And somebody said, I'm just a normal New Yorker, you know? I live in New York City.

I'm going to live in New York City. You know? If this is what gives you cancer, what am I supposed to do?

Am I supposed to avoid the electrical lines? Am I supposed to not breathe the air? Am I supposed to not eat anything?

And I translated to him, you know, this guy says, this is what causes... You said, this is what causes cancer. How am I supposed to avoid it if I'm just an ordinary New Yorker?

You know? You know, I translated that into Tibetan. And then he got mad and he said, I didn't say that's what causes cancer.

And I said, yeah, yesterday you said gen. He said, gen means factor. Gen means contributing factor.

You know? And then I said, well, what's the difference? And he says, that's how the expression of death comes to you.

That's what contributes to your death. That's not what kills you. And then he said, it's your karma.

You know? You run out of karma. Your karma runs out and you die.

How that running out of karma expresses itself as a taxi cab, as a cancer tumor, as a heart attack, but it's karma. I just told you the circumstances, the factors, the contributing factors. Okay?

That's what they're talking about here. What really kills you is that. By the way, then he got mad at the guy and said, don't call yourself an ordinary joe.

There's no such thing. You can be enlightened. You can get bodhichitta.

You can get compassion and wisdom. Don't call yourself ordinary. Okay?

And he got really funny about it. Okay? So, that's what the...

those are the factors, but not the cause. What kills you is that you run out of karma. How that works, we'll talk about next class.

Okay? How the karma runs out is very interesting. Okay?

It's not some stupid idea that Buddhists made up to explain why people die. You can understand it through just normal psychology. Okay?

How you die is very much linked to your perceptions. And you can change it.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
You can actually change that process. You don't have to die like that. Okay?

You can actually... something else can happen if you do it right. Okay?

Which is next week, so you have to come next week. Okay. chhiway sem ni chhika khyewa chhima penje kyi lela sundab la It says here, what state of mind do you die in?

Okay? What should your state of mind be when you die? Called chhi sem.

Say chhi sem. Chhi sem. Chhi sem means...

state of mind you're going to have as you die. Okay? And it says...

the state of mind at the moment of death that projects your next life, penje, it's going to cause your next life. Okay? Lela sundab la.

It has to be activated. These karmas from number two, from two o'clock, have to be activated. Okay?

If they're not activated, you don't die. If they're not activated, you don't go through this again. And when I talked about arhats, what's cool is that they have millions of karmic seeds left in their mind.

They just learned one simple trick. What? How to prevent the activation.

You see what I mean? It's very famous in scripture. All these enlightened beings walking around have tons of lousy, karmic junk in their pockets.

But it'll never go off. You see what I mean? They'll never have to go through this again.

You see? It's not like you eliminate all those bad karmas. You just prevent them from going off.

It's like walking around with atom bombs strapped to you. But they'll never go off. You see what I mean?

So, no problem. It's as good as getting rid of them. Okay?

But you got to learn the trick of how to do it. You have to learn what's triggering them. What's triggering them.

And what's triggering them is 8 and 9. And that's why the wheel is built this way. We went through 8 and 9 last time.

Okay? They trigger number 10. Number 10 is number 2, triggered by 8 and 9.

How's that? You could say number 10 is number 2, which is activated by 8 and 9. So, we got to go to 8 and 9.

We got to do a little review to 8 and 9. Because I suppose there's at least one person here who wasn't here last week. Okay?

All right? So, we got to decide what's happening in 8 and 9. And as you know, that relates to someplace else in the picture.

Where? What did we talk about last week? I know that's a long time back.

Where were we last week in this picture? The pig, come on. You don't remember?

Where's that lady who drew the thing? Yeah, right in here. In the middle, okay?

Okay? We got pig, we got snake, we got rooster. Okay?

Pig being... Sorry, let's do rooster. Rooster being liking things stupidly.

Okay? Liking things the wrong way. Snake being disliking things stupidly.

Okay? And the pig being Mr. Stupid himself. Okay?

Stupidity itself. Dharma stupidity, okay? Religious stupidity.

Okay? How does that work? Okay?

And then we got into emptiness. I don't know if you remember.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
We can take, for example... Where's Dumala? I don't know.

I did see her. Anyway. I'll talk about my boss again.

She and I went through her... Yeah, okay, hi. She's hiding.

She used to sit next to me at work for like five years or something. And we had the same boss that came in and terrorized me and never said anything to her because her karma was different. So, let's say that the boss comes in and starts yelling at me.

And there's somebody sitting next to me. Okay? And I see the boss as somebody very unpleasant.

Right? Like, actually this boss is what? Empty.

Blank. Okay? It's the same thing as the boring lecture which is getting worse now.

Okay? So, the boss is blank. Okay?

It's just a tabula rasa. Okay? It's just a blank screen.

That's what emptiness means. Okay? My karma is making me see something bad.

Her karma is making her see something neutral or even nice. Okay? There's the guy across the way who doesn't like me at all who's seeing something fantastic.

Okay? Michael Roach is finally getting yelled at. Okay?

And so there's empty boss and there's three different people having three different impressions of him from their own minds. Okay? He's not three different people at the same time.

He can't be. He can't be bad, 100% bad, 100% good at the same time. Impossible.

There has to be something else going on. The three of us are having three impressions of this boss. Okay?

If you don't... By the way, where are those impressions coming from? Your karma.

Okay? Specifically, Buddhism says, if you saw yourself yelling at someone in the past. Okay?

Got it? If you saw yourself, you have to see yourself. Okay?

You saw yourself... How often are you aware of yourself? All the time.

Okay? The tape recorder is going all the time. Unless you're totally knocked out or in a deep state of meditation, in which case they say, it's subtle but it's still going, your consciousness.

You are recording all the time. Karma is being recorded all the time. Okay?

So, as you're aware of yourself yelling at someone, you're putting impressions in your mind to see someone yelling at you. Okay? When that karma gets activated.

Okay? It has to be activated. Okay?

So, I'm sitting there and then this boss is yelling at me. Okay? And I'm seeing this thing as something unpleasant.

If I really understood all this stuff about karma and I knew that by yelling back at him, what? I'm putting a new number... Two.

In my own mind. I'm planting more number twos in my own mind. Would I do it?

You know, people ask me, can I kill the roaches in my apartment? You know, aside from my name. Okay?

I always tell them, if karma was immediate, you wouldn't ask me this question. You know? If as you crushed it, your own ribs start to break, the world would be a better place.

You know? Everyone would be totally moral. Okay?

Every time you stole something, your own bank account dropped. You see what I mean? It'd be really cool.

You know what I mean? If karma didn't have a time gap, there'd be no problem. Unfortunately it has a time gap, but that's the way karma works.

If you knew this, would you yell back at him? If you knew that the only way to get a boss to yell at you was to yell back, what would you do? You'd shut up.

Okay? I mean, and you'd be peaceful at it. You'd say, this is great.

You know, he's yelling at me, I'm using up that old karma, and I refuse to start a new one. I will not make a pot today. Okay?

I will not do a new number two. That's, by the way, wisdom. Okay?

If you have wisdom, what's happening to number one? The blind guy. He's stopped.

Okay? This is where you throw the monkey wrench into the gears. This is how you, this is where you turn the water off, because you don't like what's at the end of the hose.

You see what I mean? This is very cool. You shut off number one, and then number two never happens.

You see? Number one is understanding, the opposite of ignorance. I understand where this guy is coming from, and I refuse to do it again.

Then what happens to number two? Shut off. Never happens.

Then what happens to number ten? There ain't no number ten, because there's nothing to activate. Okay?

That's really cool. That's very interesting. That's how you shut off the wheel of life.

Okay? This is really the wheel of death. I don't know why they call it the wheel of life.

Sipi Khorlo. You can call it wheel of death maybe. Okay?

That's how you can shut it off. Alright? So that's what the pig represents.

Pig and Mr. Blind Man are the same. Okay? Pig and Mr. Blind Man are the same. Can you really hate your boss if you know you're making him? No. Okay?

By the way, just the hatred itself, even if it's never expressed, is violent bad karma. Some people don't understand that. You know, they say, as long as I keep my mouth shut, everything's okay, right?

Thinking hatred towards him is much more powerful than saying anything or shooting him. Much more powerful. Okay?

Thinking that you hate him. What are you hating? You believe that there's something out there bad from their own side, or you couldn't hate him.

Otherwise you would hate whom? Yourself. Hey, stupid!

Who do you think collected that karma? You know, if you're gonna yell at anybody, you should go in the bathroom and scream in the mirror. Okay?

Really. If you're a real smart Buddhist, intelligent Buddhist, you should go in the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror and say, look, stupid! You know?

You did it again, you know? Because that's the person who's really responsible. That's the only person who's responsible.

Buddhism says that when you yell at the boss, you're making him again come again. You're making pots. Yelling at the boss depends on being ignorant about reality.

You think that the things around you are coming from their side? Come on! Remember the pen.

Okay? It's not coming from its own side. This is not a pen, this is a cylinder.

Okay? Prove it. When a dog comes in, all they see is something to chew on.

It's not a pen from its own side. You's making it a pen. You's making it a pen.

Okay? Remember the pen. Then you won't have any trouble.

You can't hate anybody and you can't be attached to anybody in a bad way, if you understand that you're making them. Okay? If you like this person, then for God's sake be good to everybody around you and you can keep them.

Okay? If you hate this person, then for God's sake be good to them and you'll get rid of them. Okay?

They'll either change or they'll move to Iowa. Okay? Or something like that.

Okay? Because you're actually changing the real cause of them seeming bad, which is your own karma. Clean up your karma.

They will suddenly be... become your best friend or they'll be transferred to Alaska or something. Okay?

Something like that. That's how it works. Okay?

What's that got to do with chupasipa? We were talking about how to activate it. Okay?

And here's what the text says. You gotta have number 2 to get from number... to get fresh karma or inert karma to turn into activated karma, dangerous karma.

Just about to blow up karma. Okay? Which is number 10.

How do you know it's just about to blow up karma? Well, number 11 is what? What's that lady doing there?

I don't know if you can see. Her legs are spread out and she's having a baby. Okay?

Her baby is halfway out. That represents birth. Okay?

That represents having to go through this level of reality again. I had somebody told me, you know, I don't think it's so good that you talk about death all the time in class because it's kind of cool to die and kind of interesting, you know? And I was like, this is kind of weird, you know?

And they're like, it's a challenge of life and it's part of life and it's not so bad and I don't know why you're talking about that. And then I got to the second page of the letter and it says, I wrote the first page six months ago and I got hit by a car after that. And I changed my mind.

It's really a funny letter. And I never mailed it to you. And now I really want to know how to stop it, you know?

By the way, so it's not like you're just living forever and you get more and more wrinkly or something like that. We're talking, you go to a different level of reality, you will be in the same chair maybe. Okay?

But your whole reality will be different. And you'll be young and healthy and your body won't be even made of blood and bone and things like that. It'll be made of some kind of light.

And to you it'll be normal, you see? You hardly will remember these days. You know?

You really won't remember it so clearly. And... and it'll just be wonderful all the time.

And you'll be on a... This reality, according to Buddhism, is a boo-boo. We are here by accident.

This level of reality, you can be on this... this level in these chairs and then after you get out of the Wheel of Life, you could still be sitting in these chairs, but you'd be totally different. Everything would be totally different.

Nobody would be dying around you, nobody would ever be depressed, nobody would ever be sad. It's like, you know, when a dog walks in here, there's really two realities going on. There's a dog's reality going on and a human reality going on.

According to Buddhism, those are two totally separate realms. One of them is... Where is that?

Here. No. Here.

Yeah. That's dog reality and this is human reality. And according to Buddhism, they can be going on in the same room at the same time.

Okay? Two different worlds are co-existing in this room at the same time. I was in Mongolia.

I was giving a lecture to these yak herders, average age 60. Okay? And they got it right away.

You know, they said, Yeah. Hmm. Mitna.

You know, there's two worlds going on here in the same room. Two totally separate realities going on in the same room. So I said, Is it any big deal to add another one?

You know, to say that there could be somebody in this room who's experiencing it as a heaven or a paradise? You know, that somebody in here has already reached the goal and is already in a tantric paradise and you can't see them? You know, you're not sensitive to the fact that they're there already.

They look like a normal person to you. Okay? Oh, it's just a dog.

Okay? Oh, it's just tantric deity, you know? But...

but... but three realities can be going on in this room at the same time. So, what I'm trying to say is that, when you get out of the wheel, it's not like, you know, you're out there on the high...

on the New Jersey Turnpike and... and the wheel goes down the... the road and you're still...

you got... you got out or something like that. This reality will change.

And you'll be on a different level. And your body won't be like this anymore. It'll be...

This reality is an error or a mistake. This wheel is describing a boo-boo that you made and it's showing you how to fix it. And that's all.

We're just here temporarily. Everybody here will be somewhere else later. You know?

Just by learning this stuff, it's really interesting. Okay? So, how do you prevent the acti...

I mean, that's a... Could you get to the point? You know?

How do... I got it. Okay, how do you stop activating this stuff?

Okay, see what this text says. The thing that activates the karma is number 8 and number 9. Okay?

Gepa, sepa, gupa, lempa. Say, Gepa, sepa, Gepa, sepa, gupa, lempa. Okay?

Gepa, sepa means attachment or desire. That's number 8. It's down here.

It's this guy right here. It's not too easy to see, but... He's like stuffing his guts, okay?

He's like having a big McDonald's Whopper and a big oversized... What do they call those things? Burger King has a word...

What? No, for the drink, the malt, the... There's some disgusting word they use.

It's at Wendy's. Huh? Big gulp.

What is it? No, it's really terrible. I'll try to remember.

We had a monk that worked there. He used to bring them home. Okay.

Gupa, lempa is a... is a monkey. And he's like...

grabbing for something. Okay? And that's called grasping.

Okay, grasping. He's grabbing at some fruit in a tree. Okay, what's going on here?

Here's what the text says. Uh... This is really cool.

Uh... Jeetardhapani... Here's how you do the activation.

Okay? Lu, di, dan, do, du, nyam, du, ta, re, lu, di, la, se, pa, dan. The number 8, which I described last week as a general desire, or a general wanting something.

Here he's... he's interpreting it at the moment of death. So, when this wheel of life applies to the moment of your death, the last minutes of your life, it's...

the thought that you're about to lose your body. And you get some kind of... desire to keep your body.

You get some kind of attachment to it. Okay? So that's what's happening.

That's starting to activate karma at link number... Actually, which karma is getting activated? Yeah, the one that came from number two.

Okay? There's only two karmas on the wheel. Number two and number ten.

Okay? So the... the innocent, unactivated karma from number two, which is being collected in your mind at about a million a day.

Okay? It's like playing the lottery. My lama used to say, dying is like playing the lottery.

It's like sticking your hand in a big bowl with ten million choices. Which one are you gonna stick out? Maybe you can rig it.

Okay? The point is to try to rig it. Okay?

Let's try to fix it. Alright? So, number eight is this desire that comes for your body.

And they say it's mixed with fear. So at that moment you're like scared. It finally dawns on you that you're gonna lose your body.

Okay? And the separation between you and body becomes very strong. You're like thinking, I'm gonna lose that.

You know? Up to now I used to own that. And now I'm gonna lose that.

And you get this intense desire to hang on to it. Okay? And that's number eight.

Okay? At the moment of death... And they even narrow down the moment of death.

They say, by the way, when we say moment of death, we mean a specific period during the death process. What is it? Apparently you go through like three stages.

And in the tantric texts it's much more clear. And you have to study it someday properly. Not from some best-seller book.

Okay? From a qualified lama who can lead you through the death process. Okay?

It's secret. And it's only for people who've been trained properly. And someday you have to get that instruction from a qualified person.

Okay? It's not something you can read in a... You can't write Snow Lion publications and...

You know, get it. Okay? Anyway, generally speaking there's three periods.

Up to a certain point you're like denying what's going on. You're like, everything will be alright, I'll be living another day or two, you know. The doctor...

You believe the doctors, you know. Don't worry. We'll get this thing.

You know. You're battling courageously. Okay?

And then... And then at a certain point it dawns on you that... that you're gonna die.

That you really are dying. Okay? And at that point you have an opportunity to have thoughts that matter.

You know? Activating thoughts that matter. You know?

They're either holy thoughts or... or unholy thoughts. Okay?

I mean, at that moment it's important whether you think something pure or whether you think something impure. You know? At that moment it's the most important time in your life to be a...

a good person. You know? Those few minutes you have a chance to activate a good karma if you keep your mind holy.

And if you don't then it's very bad. Okay? So, at that moment you have an option.

You have an option. And then they say you pass into a place where you're beyond that. And your mind isn't clear enough to make decisions like that anymore.

Okay? So the opportunity... the window of opportunity is very brief.

Between the time you really decide you are gonna die and the time you do... and by the time you get too unconscious to decide... to have a thought that is clearly virtuous or non-virtuous.

You know? Because after that point it won't be good or bad karma anymore. It'll just be some kind of fuzzy kind of ignorance.

Okay? So, in between there is when you activate your karmas. Okay?

The first thing that happens with most people who have not trained themselves properly is they get number 8. And number... number 8 is talking about Oh God!

You know, I'm gonna lose my body. I don't wanna lose my body. Okay?

You start to get this feeling of revulsion or anger or fear about what's happening. Okay? Should you be afraid?

Is it wrong to be afraid? No, you should be afraid. My God!

I mean, to get to this realm is one in a million. You know? And at that moment you know.

You know? You're suddenly, it all comes back to you. You know?

You're like, Oh, the odds of getting back in a place like this are very bad. You know? I mean, you have a flash of the truth of things and at that moment you're very honest.

You should be afraid. You really will be afraid. Okay?

The point is to try to practice it until you're... until you're not afraid. Okay?

Is it natural to be afraid? Yes. Should you be afraid?

My God! Yes, you should be afraid. Is it useful to be afraid?

No. Okay? You might pick the wrong...

You might activate the wrong karmas. Okay? You have to be calm.

You have to be doing this knowingly. Okay? You have to go into it knowingly and activate the right karmas.

Okay? In... In many...

monasteries, I mean, in many monastic traditions, they spend years training you every night how to die. Okay? Every night before you go to bed you go through an hour, half hour meditation.

And they just run through it one more time. Why? It might happen tonight.

Okay? I did it already for years. That's okay.

One more time. You know, and you just get ready what to do over and over and over again. You know, it's a practice for half an hour, an hour, every night to practice activating the right karmas.

Okay? That's number... So, number eight is where you're afraid that you're losing your body and you start to get upset or off balance, which is bad.

Okay? That's why it's in the wheel of life. Okay?

These are bad. Everything in this wheel is bad. Now number nine.

What's the difference between eight and nine? Number nine says, lemme nitsanya duke na tsawa dubba sok sos. Means like this.

You begin to have some motivation for where you'd like to go or something like that. It's some kind of selection process of thinking where you'd like to go. And at this point your mind is starting to hallucinate and there can be some dangerous things going on.

Okay? Which means like this. They say that, for example, if you get a desire for heat, if you start to feel cold, and we're gonna get into how the body starts to cool later and what it feels like and stuff like that, but if you have a too strong desire for heat, you can go to a place which is too hot.

Okay? I mean you can actually cause a birth, believe it or not, okay, in a hot hell. Okay?

Like that. Like you have to control your mind about what kind of thoughts you have at that moment. Okay?

Because they'll be amplified or magnified. Okay? Like a small desire for something to eat could take you into a preta realm, or a hungry spirit realm or something like that.

So you have to be very careful about what kinds of... This is number nine. Okay?

Number nine is like some kinds of... What would you say? Some kinds of random thoughts that might be going through your mind at the wrong moment.

Okay? Like if at that moment you think of that guy at work that you've hated all these years, and you get just a small feeling of hatred, it's very bad to die that way. Then something very bad will happen to you.

See what I mean? And the text says something kind of gross. Let me see here.

Mmm... DUS SHES RAB PA RGA GNAD ZHIG SEMS PHRA MA'I SKABS SEMS LU MA BSTAN DU RGYUR BA'I RGYAS MI RGYAS GANG YANG DU DRIN MI NUS Once you get past a certain point, you won't be able to do something consciously good or bad. Then you're...

Then you're up to your karma. You know what I mean? It's too late to start activating the ones you want to.

DE NA, PHYI RGYAS SEMS LA BDE BA SOGS CHUNG NA RGYAL BA LA SRID DRAG PAR RGYUR BA'I CHIG RGYAS SEMS LA SRID DAM RENG PA NA GYUR SEMS SEMS DOD PA NI BRAC CHADR Therefore, at the right moment, as you drift off to unconsciousness, okay? As you drift off, it's very important to try to get in control of things, and very important to direct your mind towards something holy. Okay?

Try to think of the Dali Lama, you know. If you used to be a Christian or something, try to think of Jesus, or something. You know what I mean?

Try to think of something that will lead your mind upwards, you know. Some holy object, something holy. put your mind on something holy, helping other people, you know, things that you did good in your life, okay?

Try very hard to direct your mind at something which is holy, it says. SON DEPA GNAS BYAS TE. It says, very very important, because...

this is where it gets gross. RGYUN DU RGYAS PA BYAS CAN GYI, CHOS PA ZHIG YIN KYANG. You can be a person that spent their whole life in spiritual pursuits, went to all the ACI classes, okay?

And tried really hard to be a good person. Kept their book, okay? Watch their vows carefully.

Tried to help others, tried not to hurt others. But, KYANG, KYANG means but, CHIGAR KHONG THOB TABU SEM DE, CHI SA MI RGYAL BA LA SRID THAB PA NA. But if at the moment of death you suddenly remember, we're talking about that window of opportunity, if you...

during the activation process. If suddenly you remember some guy you didn't like, okay? If suddenly you have several minutes of anger, or hatred towards somebody, DE PA NA, MUN DU MI RGYAL BA MIN LAS NGEN SON DU DRO.

Then, whatever non-virtuous or bad karmic seeds you have in your mind, those will be activated. And then you'll go to a... I mean, if you believe in a hell realm or whatever, but you will go to a bad rebirth, okay?

We're going to talk about hell realms and animal realms next time, okay? But I tell you very briefly, how many worlds can be going on in this auditorium at the same time? You can say almost innumerable, or how many ever seats there are, okay?

I don't know how many people have lice in their hair, but then there's another world there. You see what I mean? There's a whole other world going on.

There's two realms going on. Two totally different realities going on at the same time, okay? What makes those realities, realities?

What... how do you get credit for being a separate reality? Here they say, oh, there's only five.

One, two, three, four, five, okay? Only five versions of reality, okay? That means, you know, very gross versions of reality.

There's basically five versions of reality, okay? There are basically five different ways you could be looking at this... cylinder, okay?

Okay, if you're a human, you might see it as a pen. If you're an animal, you might see it as something to chew on. If you're in a hell realm, they'd probably be sticking you with it, okay?

And I'm not kidding, okay? It's the emptiness that causes all the trouble, and it gives you your opportunity to get out. So, I don't know, double-edged sword, okay?

This is only a cylinder, okay? If you have certain karmic seeds in your mind, you will see it as a pen. Then we'll call you a human, okay?

And if you look at the same object, and you see it as... if you start to salivate, and think about chewing on it, and playing with it, okay? The minute you look at this cylinder, then you're a...

and that's what makes you a dog, you see what I mean? That's what I'm trying to get to. You got to remember that, okay?

Being a dog is only a state of mind, and being a human is only a state of mind. The emptiness of this pen proves it, okay? See, we speak of this emptiness of the pen.

The pen is empty, because really it's only a cylinder that you as a human are seeing as a pen, okay? That means your reality is very much more fragile than you thought, okay? If it was a pen from its own side, things would be sort of comfortable.

We could count on things, you know? If it's not a pen from its own side, but only because you're seeing it as a pen, things are very fragile. Your reality is very fragile.

It could shift to a different reality in how long? One sixty-fifth, please, okay? I mean, you could be seeing a totally different reality in the time it takes you to breathe another breath, and...

and guess what? That's what happens to everybody who ever died, okay? I'm not talking theory, I'm talking what really happens.

People's perceptions shift slightly, and they say, dead. You see things as dead, as a dead person. And then it shifts a tiny bit more, and you see things as, oh, I'd like to chew on that, but my tail's in the way, you know?

Seriously, I'm not kidding. They don't take spirits and Buddha—we don't even believe in a spirit—and go stuff it in a dog body out in Missouri somewhere. There's no such...

there's not a factory making dog bodies, and spirits are being stuffed there by special workers of Buddha, you know, or something like that. We don't believe in that. The minute you start seeing things as a dog sees them, which takes about five minutes, you are a dog, and you've changed realms, okay?

And you... and... and that's what rebirth means, and you...

and you can do it... you are eligible for it at any moment, okay? You're eligible for it all the time.

By the way, you're equally eligible for tantric deity-ship, okay? I mean, you can also do the reverse. You can use that fact to your own advantage, okay?

Collect enough virtue, and then suddenly what? You look in the mirror, and there's like Manjushri. No more shaving.

All the hair I wanted, okay? All right? That's the way it works.

That's really the way it works. You can use that emptiness to... to your own advantage.

You can... you can manipulate your world, okay? And you can make things happen.

You can make yourself go to paradise, okay? So, that's how things really work. I'll finish this, then we'll take a break.

Mmm... So, he was describing someone who had been a good boy their whole life, but activated the wrong karmas at the wrong time, okay? Now he describes the opposite.

gyun du dipa che khen la ong de ring je means, for those of you who've been bad all along, there's hope, you know? Because you can pull off the opposite, okay? Just activate the good karmas.

And by the way, that's what po'a refers to, okay? That's the process of po'a, which is a special practice, it's a secret practice, it cannot be taught in public, okay? But you can learn to...

secret practices to, like, nail down that activation at the moment... at that moment. Because, he says here, if you've been, like, sort of...

you know, nobody in here murdered ten people, or not that I know of, okay? You don't have to tell me. But, uh, people in here are normal Americans, they've done a lot of good things, and they've done a lot of, kind of, nasty things, and they...

they didn't really ever kill anybody purposely, or... you know, we're all about at the same level of... of, you know, most of the day we try to be good, and then a lot of the day we're doing some kind of bad karmas.

That we... and if somebody asked us, what's the percent, you'd say, I don't know, maybe 50-50. I mean, it's really worse than that, but that's okay, okay?

But that's not the point. The point is that, at the moment of death, you have to be able to activate the right ones. And...

and it's cool, you know? This kind of gives us hope. By the way, obviously the odds are better if you got more good ones there to activate, okay?

I mean, to play it down to the wire is very risky, okay? Buddhism says it's... it's very foolish to go on living a very, sort of, lousy life.

And I'm not saying evil, okay? I'm not saying evil. I'm saying lousy.

You don't really care about other people. You don't really spend your money to help those who need it. You know, you don't really go out of your way to help somebody.

You know, you're just a normal person, living a normal life in New York, normal career. But... but then you're adding up bad karmas much more than good karmas.

So, you try to reverse that, so that when the time comes the odds are better. You got to increase the odds, okay? Then it says, DE'I KAP SURGYEN DOG DANG, GNYEN DUG GANG DUG DOG PA SOGS NI, I'll tell you what decides at that moment whether you go to a...

a better birth, okay? And I hate to say birth, okay? I'd rather say whether or not your...

your mind shifts to a better version of reality or shifts to a worse version of reality. Because you're always in some version. There is no reality independent of your version.

That's the meaning of emptiness, okay? You're always making up some version of reality. It can change any moment.

Right now you're making up a certain one. You can go either way, okay? And...

and you never stop. According to Buddhism, there will always be some version. You just shift between versions of reality.

I don't like to call it rebirth, okay? We don't believe in rebirth. Let's call it shift of reality.

Those happen to you about every 30 seconds, okay? At least every time you break up with your last boyfriend or girlfriend, okay? GNYEN DUG GANG DUG DOGS SOGS NI, DE'I NGYEN DUG DUNG DUG DROD MED NE, YAR NYING'O DUG DANG.

Let me see this. If you're going to go to a better—he's giving you some signs as you die, so you can know, but I don't know why, because it's too late, right? He says, if you're going to go to a better birth, then as you start to die, the warmth will start to withdraw from your body, from the bottom.

So, I guess it means your feet get cold first. It goes—they say if the warmth starts to move towards your heart, then it's a good sign, okay? DUG SOGS NI, NGYEN DUG DROD NA DE LEG DOGS PA SOGS CHOD DUG MED NE DUG LUG DANG.

Here it says, if you're going to take it sort of in a bad rebirth, then it's the reverse. And then it says, the reverse constitutes the warmth coming from both the head and the...and the legs, okay? So, first it says, if you're going to go to a better one, the warmth starts to move up your body towards—and then concentrates at your heart.

And if it's a not such a good one, you'll feel getting cold from your head also, okay? Then it says, NA CHOS CHE CHUNG SOGS LA LTA PA'I SHES. Okay.

NA CHOS means—those of you who were at—we were translating some stuff for CNN, and this old nun comes up to the Dalai Lama and says, I hope I don't get NA CHOS. Okay, here it is in the text, okay? NA CHOS means a special kind of pain that occurs to you as you die, okay?

They say, as you die, you get a special kind of pain that you never had before. There's a certain kind of pain that you've never experienced before, you know? And this nun—there's a very poignant scene in the video, where she comes up to His Highness and says, I'm afraid—she says, I don't mind dying, which I'm doing right now.

She's dying. She says, but I'm worried about the nature, you know, this special kind of pain that you have at death, can you help me out? And then he says, don't worry, you know, and he's just going to do this, and this, and this, and then you're not going to worry about it.

And he teaches her what to do at that moment, and it's very cool, the way to avoid that pain. So, it says, if the pain comes very strong, then it's a bad sign, okay? Then it says—then it starts to go into different hallucinations you have as you die, okay?

And they—they can also help you determine what to do at that moment. Mmm. I think you better hallucinate some refreshments first.

They're back there, and then come back in five or ten minutes, okay? Okay, we'll continue with the scripture. I thought you might like to read this one.

Mmm. Sön Depe Yü Ni, Sön Depe Yü Ni means—which karma gets activated, okay? Which karma gets activated?

Le kar nag mam bu nang ne. You, in your life, have collected many negative karmas and many positive karmas. Nang ne, le kang top chewa dang.

The first one is which karma is more powerful, okay? And there's a whole pecking order of karma. Like, killing a human is more serious than killing an animal.

Are animals less valuable than humans? No, okay? Is it worse karma to kill a human?

Yes. Why? Because they have a good shot at becoming enlightened in this life, okay?

And animals have a much lower shot, like almost non-existent. So, to kill a person—to kill a sentient being, to kill a living creature that might have made it in this life—is much more serious than someone who probably wouldn't have made it in this life, okay? Although in general an animal's life is no less precious than a human's life, okay?

That's not what we're saying, okay? That would be more powerful. De nyam na means—if those are all equal, let's say you have three bad karmas that are equal, okay?

Like, you killed three people, okay? Or you saved two people's lives and killed two people, okay? With the same motivation, same circumstances, everything equal.

If everything is equal, then which one of those gets activated? Kam kom jewa. Kam kom jewa means—whichever one you are more used to.

Like, if you spent your whole life trying to knock off people, and you have two knock-off people karmas and two saving lives karma, the knock-off people karma is going to go first, because you're more used to that. You spent more of your lifetime doing that, okay? De nyam na.

De nyam na means—well, suppose that's equal, okay? I mean, suppose the force of the karmas are equal, and suppose you're equally—you know, you spent exactly half your time trying to knock off people, and exactly half your time trying to save them. Then which one gets activated?

It says, kam lun la chepa de nyi la sundep so means—the earlier collected one, whichever one was collected first, whichever karma was committed first, at link number two is the one that gets activated, okay? So, that's generally the prioritization scheme of karma. Now, when we say which karma is more powerful, there's a lot of different factors.

For example, how strong was your motivation? I mean, and in fact, it's very similar to the way that the law courts decide how bad the deed was. Like, did you torture the guy for two hours before you shot him, or did you run him over by accident?

You see, I mean, in each case you've killed a person, but in one there was no intention to kill, and there was no, like, long-standing premeditation over a couple hours, like, make—like, stretch it out and make sure it hurts before you kill them, or something like that, okay? So, so it depends a lot on your motivation. It depends on whether you've recognized the situation for what it is or not.

Karma is recorded how? By your being there, by being aware of what's going on, you see? So, suppose you don't believe that a fetus is alive, okay?

Is it alive? I mean, Buddhism says that at the moment of conception the thing is alive, consciousness has entered, okay? At that moment that the egg and the sperm meet, consciousness has entered.

If you stop it after that, you're committing murder, okay? But suppose you honestly believe—by the way, now you're stuck, okay? But suppose you...okay? But suppose you honestly believed at the time that it wasn't a living thing, is the karma as powerful? They say not at all, okay? I mean, if the... what we call the identification of the object, you believed it was a...it was like something that could have turned into a living being, and you wanted to stop it, that's not as serious as knowing that it's a living being and stopping it, okay? So, there's a...there's identification, there's motivation, you know? Did you really mean to kill them or was it an accident, okay? And then there's mental affliction, you know?

Were you really angry or...or were you doing it out of compassion? You thought you were helping them, you know? He's old, he's suffering, I'll try to kill this dog, you know?

Like, then the...by the way, that's also a bad karma, but it's much less because you didn't...you didn't...you thought you were doing them a favor, you thought you were helping them, which, by the way, Buddhism says is wrong, okay? Because where they're gonna go next is certainly not as nice as where they are now, but that's a long story. And then we say conclusion, meaning, did you succeed in what you're trying to do, okay?

Like, if you shoot at President Reagan and you hit Mr. Brady, do you collect exactly the right karma, you know? No, okay? Like, it's some kind of thing where it has to go the way you planned it, or the karma is less, see what I mean?

So, there has to be a conclusion, or the thing has to end. If you want to shoot the President and he doesn't die, then the karma is less, because there's no conclusion, what we call conclusion. And then the final element in karma is what we call owning the deed.

Like, do you at the end of it say, ha ha, he's dead, I did it, great, you know? Like, do you take full credit for it? Like, in your own mind, are you happy, you know?

Do you say, you know, great, I did it, I'm really happy about it, I don't regret a thing, I'd do it again anytime, okay? Then that makes the karma even more powerful. If all of those conditions are there, the karma moves up in priority.

The karma is right up there, and then it gets activated, okay? When you start having these bad thoughts as you die, okay? So, which karmas are gonna be in the front of the line to get activated, depends on all those things I mentioned.

Do you recognize the object for what it is? Do you have a motivation to do that thing? Do you have a strong negative emotion, or positive, or do you have some kind of mistaken love for them, or something, okay?

Does the deed go off the way you planned it? Do they actually die or not, you see? And at the end, do you take pleasure, and do you own it, and take responsibility for it?

If all of those are present, that karma moves up to the front of the line. And then, if as you die you have number eight and number nine, they get activated, okay? The karma gets activated.

So, very important during your life to...very important to practice dying, so that at that moment you can be clear, and you can be calm, and you can die properly, okay? And not be pulling up any bad karmas. Very important that the person be left alone to die quietly, okay?

This whole thing of everyone screaming, and rushing up and down, and jabbing needles in them, and trying to get them to live for another half hour or something, it's very bad. As the time comes, then they should be left alone. I'm not talking about pulling off the respirator, according to Buddhism that's wrong, okay?

Leave them alone, let them die quietly, with a quiet respirator, okay? And...but make sure that the room is peaceful, okay? I'll read you a part here.

It talks about...if the person...the activation occurs by the person's conscious thoughts, or as they are...it says chuktu. Samlo chuk means as someone else reminds them of something, okay? So, if you're sitting next to the person, it's very important to...to start reminding them of good things, you know? Be calm, think of some good thing, you know? Think of the good things you did in your life. It's very important that they think that the bad karmas are gone, you know?

They must think... you know, you have to say...teach them how to do purification before they die. Main purification, by the way, in Buddhism, can you remove a bad karma from your mind altogether?

Yes, you can. You can, okay? How do you do it?

The main method is very simple. You regret it, no guilt. You regret it, and you try very hard not to get close to that thing again, you know?

If you were involved in an abortion or something like that, and you say, okay, now I understood that that thing was a lie, and I very strictly will avoid that again, you know? Like, I'll be celibate, or I'll make sure I never get pregnant again, or I'll make sure that if I do get pregnant, I promise to have the baby, or something like that. If you're in your mind, if you make all those decisions, and you strictly keep to that the rest of your life, it affects the old karma.

The old karma will be much, much less. The Buddhism says, Diamond Cutter Sutra, direct quotation, you can destroy it. You can destroy that old karmic seed, okay?

If you truly think it was a mistake, and if you try to take the opposite action, protecting people's lives, caring for children, volunteering at a hospital, volunteering at a hospice, and dedicating that energy to the destruction of that old bad karma that you made when you didn't know any better, we say you can remove it, okay? We say you can get rid of it. They say it ripens as a very small karma.

And very, very famous sutra, Dhingyaltsingyi Gyalpo, okay? The Lord Buddha himself said, take the worst thing you ever did, if it was killing somebody, and if you clearly, knowingly, consciously regret it, and then dedicate the rest of your life to doing the opposite, you know? And I'm not talking about letting goldfish go or something like that, which is a good thing.

I'm not criticizing it, but, you know, go and make some major contribution to other people's welfare, you know? Go to a hospital, dedicate 10 hours a week for the rest of your life, you know? Stay celibate for the rest of your life.

Or do something that's really a major devotion to somebody. Work for a hospice, you know? Dedicate a lot of hours to working for a hospice or something like that.

Work for a child daycare center for years, you know? And then that karma will remove the other one, okay? Then they'll say, the Tengenzingi Gyalpo says, it will ripen on you immediately.

It's very cool. The purification works like this. If you decide you're never going to do it again, and you take some opposite action very, very consciously, and dedicate some serious time to it, then that karma will be pushed up to the front, and it'll ripen much smaller than it was supposed to ripen.

And it says that the karma that was supposed to take you to the lower realms will give you a small headache or something like that, or a backache or something like that. Then I had my friends ask me, you know, I did a lot of purification. And, you know, somebody dropped a brick on my head the other day.

How do I know if that was from bad karma or from purifying? You know? And this is the answer, okay?

There is a way. Your life will start to improve, okay? Think about it.

If you take all the bad karmas that are up in the front, and you wipe them out, what's left? You know, your life will start to get sweeter and sweeter. It's very, very interesting.

If you do this process of... it's like search and destroy mission, I call it. You know, try to recall all the worst things you've done.

Purposely do the opposite for a while. Some small bad thing happens to you, and then suddenly your mind is clear, and your heart feels good, and your conscience feels good, and then suddenly... You know, Buddhism says like, if you had done an abortion and killed somebody without knowing what you were doing, that maybe you would have some health problem for years.

Then if you purify that karma, you know, if you dedicate yourself to protecting life, then something very strange happens. The backache goes away. You have some small thing go...

some small thing goes wrong. And then suddenly your body feels much, much better, like your health will start to improve. You will feel younger, okay?

You'll actually feel much healthier as the years go on. It's very strange. If you use this method, it's very interesting.

You start to feel better and better. Okay, so that's the... that's the trick about not activating karma, or unactivating karma, okay?

Actually, that's taking unactivated karmas and actually removing them, okay? Let me see if there's anything else. That's about all here.

We'll go back to the painting. What happens between this one and this one, okay? Let's say you...

the karma has been activated, okay? How is it activated? We're talking about the final moments of your life when you're still thinking clearly, okay?

And you have to take care at that time that there's no, like, big noises in the place. The person has to be quiet, okay? You should be talking in their ear, you know, like some kind of mantras or something.

Something they're used to their whole life. Like, if this person has been doing a certain kind of mantra or holy things their whole life, and then as they die, you're whispering in their ear these things and like that, they can hear, and it starts to affect them, okay? So, it's very important that you have something to be activated, alright?

Like, it's some practice that you do every day, that when the time comes, your friends can say, okay, remember we practiced it every single day, now here's what you're gonna do, you know? And then you lead them through it, over and over again. Like, we've had students here who did Vajrayogini, and then they died.

They had AIDS, they knew they were gonna die, so we got ready, you know? We had like six months in this case, and they practiced, and they practiced, and they practiced, and then when the time came, they called some of the monks and nuns, and we were there, and the person was dying, and we did Vajrayogini with them, and it worked out very well, you know? So, to get ready, you have to have some kind of practice ready, and you have to go through it, you have to review it, okay?

You have to practice going through the death process over and over again. So, you should have some kind of regular meditation that you do, okay? There should be some kind of regular meditation that you're doing, and then when the time comes, like, you know, practice it really well, and then tell the people who are close to you, your wife, your boyfriend, your children, your parents, the people that you're near, tell them what it is, and make sure they know what to do when the time comes, okay?

Very important, okay? I think on Mondays, if you... I think there's one more, I don't know...

There's one or two more Monday classes, okay? On Monday night we're teaching how to do those basic meditations, on 6th Street, okay? Between 1st and 2nd, if you've been there, okay?

And then you can pick up a basic meditation. Then you keep doing that every day, half an hour or an hour, and then you let people know that's what you're working on, okay? And then they help you, okay?

They can help remind you when the death process starts. And it'll be very nice, you can pick out... you can activate the right karmas, okay?

But very important to do that, okay? At that time, normally you're very afraid, like, fear takes over, and also you go through a standard set of hallucinations, like, the mind starts to go crazy, okay? Like, you can't think straight after a certain point.

From then on, it's just instinct, okay? It's like being a basketball player who's done the same move a thousand times, and then when the actual game comes, and they're scared to death, and they can't think straight, but they go through the right thing in the right way, because they've done it a thousand times, you know what I mean? So, it's very important then to have done it a thousand times, because the idea of doing Poha, for example, doing some virtue at the last minute that you didn't do for your whole life, during the worst moment of your life, it's not going to work.

Nature means at that moment you'll have some kind of special pain, and that pain will prevent you from thinking straight. You cannot think straight at that time. It's all going to be reflex or instinct, what you've been practicing your whole life, okay?

So, you have to learn how to meditate properly, you have to be able to put your mind into a state of meditation, and you have to practice like a holy visualization for years, okay? And then, when the time comes, you know, it's just an automatic reflex, even though you don't feel well, okay? Like, you'll be very, very frightened, and you'll be...

it'll hurt a lot, but just by reflex you'll be doing the right thing, and then the right seed gets activated, okay? The right mental seed. So, very important to have a regular practice, and very important to keep it.

And then, very important to let people die quietly, okay? Very important not to touch them for, I don't know, four or five hours if you can. Very important that they not be put into a refrigerator for four or five hours, okay?

And normally you can talk to their hospital ahead of time, you know, and in my experience they normally agree, they say, look, this person's a Buddhist, it's harmful for their mind if they feel cold during that selection process, okay? Because they get distracted and they start thinking the wrong thoughts, okay? They start thinking anger, like, I'm cold, you know, I don't feel well.

Okay, so it's important that the whole thing be quiet and smooth, and if you can, at home is much better, and leave them for four or five hours, you know? And then call... When they finally appear to be dead, we say the mind still...

there's still... I guess scientists would call it small electrical impulses going on. You're still having some consciousness for several hours after you stop breathing, okay?

So, it's careful to leave them alone. It's important to leave them alone for three or four hours. After they stop breathing, the mind is still conscious.

The mind doesn't leave the body for three or four hours, or in the case of someone who's practicing heavy, it could be a few days, okay? Most people, three or four hours. Say four hours to be safe, okay?

And the mind, after the breathing has stopped, give them maybe four hours before you touch them, okay? And then when you touch them, it's very important to touch them in the right area. You can touch them at the heart, okay?

It's very good. But not grab them by the arms or legs or something like that. Don't do anything violent with their body, you know?

The first place you touch should be here, and then you should be doing prayers. You should be saying prayers out loud, okay? At that time, your mind moves in to the bardo.

The bardo is a period when your mind is liberated for a while. They can hear you. They can see you touching what used to be their body, okay?

And then it affects them, okay? So it's very important to be— you keep doing prayers for a while, okay? Like, if you've been close to them, you could keep doing prayers for even a day or two, okay?

After they're—around their body is good. Within seven days, the bardo takes a new birth, okay? Within—I'm sorry.

Within seven days, the bardo dies. The spirit body that they go into after they leave this body can only last for seven days, max. They always die within seven days.

You can only take seven of them in a row, okay? Like, you can go from one bardo to another bardo. Like, when the first bardo dies, you can move into a second bardo, okay?

Seven times seven is? Forty-nine. On the forty-ninth day, they will have gone to another body, okay?

Sorry, they will be perceiving themselves as a different body, okay? Big difference, right? Within forty-nine days.

How do you count the forty-nine days? Count it from the day of death. Day of death counts as one, okay?

So, if you want to know how to do it, that's how you do it. You start counting the day that they died on as day number one, and then you count two, three from there, okay? And then, on the forty-ninth day, it's very important to do special prayers for them, okay?

So, seventh day after is important, because the first bardo will have died on that day, if they haven't gone already. And then, forty-nine days is very— that's why seven and forty-nine are so important in Buddhism. How long will it take them to have a rebirth?

It could be thirty seconds later, okay? But never more than forty-nine days, and then they'll be in another form, some kind of form. So, during that time you can help them.

They have ability at that time to understand other languages. If you do prayers in Tibetan or something, they can understand it, they know what's going on, and it helps them. You can help them, okay?

During that time. But nothing can help them as much as choosing the right karma as they die, okay? I mean, helping them after the fact is not very helpful, okay?

Can you like redirect them to another life or something like that? No. Prove it.

We wouldn't be here. I mean, it's quite simple. People can say what they want.

Any lama can say anything they want. If it was possible for an enlightened being to direct you to a better place, from their side, in the bardo, there wouldn't be any animals, and you and I wouldn't be here. Buddha can emanate trillions of bodies at the same time.

He would have directed you somewhere else by now. They can't do it, okay? Once you're in the bardo, it's pretty much up to your karma.

Very important, there's only one person who can send you the right way, and that's you, okay? If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't be here. This is not a good place to be, and we wouldn't be here if someone else could help you like that, okay?

It's not true that they can. It's simply not true. You're proof of it, okay?

That you can help somebody a lot during that period. You can't, okay? Very important before that you prepare your mind, okay?

And try to improve the odds constantly, you know? Be a good person. And then the odds that you're going to activate a good karma are much higher, okay?

It's very important to try very hard in this lifetime. The best way is to practice tantra, take bodhisattva vows, and, you know, get out of here, get out of this level of reality twenty years before that comes. You see what I mean?

And everybody here can do that. That's the reason to be in this class. You don't have to play chicken with your death.

It's dangerous, you know? You can take care of things now, you know, twenty years before that, and just avoid the whole question, okay? And hopefully—I mean, that's what these classes are for, okay?

You can actually learn to get out of the problem, get out of the wheel before you reach the twelfth link, okay? So, next class we'll talk more about doing that, okay? So, that's a pretty important class.

How do you get out of the wheel before all that selection? You know, I don't even want to be in that lottery, okay? I remember the night they were choosing my number for Vietnam, you know?

This is the most gross feeling that ten million young men are watching TV to see if they're going to die next week, you know, next year or not, you know? It's the weirdest feeling. And we're all sitting there and like, you know, waiting for the number, you know?

You don't have to go through that, okay? I mean, you can take care of it long before that, okay? And that's how you have to do it, all right?

We'll do a short prayer, and then see you next week, okay?