Серия ежедневной практики, курс 01 — Мандала шагов к просветлению (1999, Реддинг), занятие 3

[Speaker 2]
Session 3 Okay, I'd like to practice the rooms we have so far, alright?

[Speaker 1]
So, we'll do about half an hour meditation. So you got courtyard, room, hallway, room, hallway, crystal palace thing, alright? By the way, those are all the secret lamrims, okay?

Those are all the tantric lamrims. And then, from here on out, it'll be non-tantric, okay? So get those straight in your mind first.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, let's start then. Sorry.

[Speaker 1]
Page 79. Okay, we'll read this ninth verse on page 79, okay? One, two, three.

Granted I may quickly gain the path required to insight joined together, one which quiets my mind from being distracted to all objects, the other which analyzes the perfect meaning in the correct way. Okay. This starts the six perfections of a bodhisattva, okay?

Which is, how to act like a bodhisattva. And there's going to be a room leading up to that, which is how to think like a bodhisattva, but we didn't get there yet, okay? So, first you have to decide to act like a bodhisattva, and then you have to start acting like a bodhisattva.

It's called, what is that called? Munsem and... Juksem, okay?

Munsem and Juksem. So we're on Juksem. Juksem means, how to act like a bodhisattva, as opposed to how to think like a bodhisattva, okay?

Personally, I like to use a room that's hexagonal, because I like to make the rooms a little different. So, leading up to the crystal pot room is going to be a hexagonal room, okay? Six-sided room.

And it's going to have all six of the perfections of a bodhisattva, okay? Hmm... If you're really going to go backwards well, Lung Dong, then you have to concentrate on two of the six first, which is the last two, number five and number six, okay?

So... I got one extra juice here. We'll do...

Personally, in the hexagonal room, six-sided room, the two sides which are near the door that lead into the crystal palace, I put... It'll be wisdom and concentration, okay? The perfection of wisdom, and the perfection of meditation, okay?

Personally, I like to use a microscope and a diamond, okay? A microscope is meditation, and diamond is emptiness, wisdom, okay? So, for me, the last two walls are...

You know, in the corner there, there's a door that goes into the crystal place, and then there's a little stand there, and it has a microscope and a diamond. And that's what I use personally. A microscope represents shamatha, okay?

There's many kinds of meditation. You need to develop the one with which you can see emptiness, okay? And...

I think of it as a platform from which you can see emptiness. The microscope in itself is no big virtue, okay? I mean, lots of people concentrate well.

My boss in the diamond business had extraordinary concentration, and I've told many people many stories about it. Like, being in Japan, working for a day and a half, not eating the whole day and a half, and then finally took us out to dinner, sat down at the Okura Hotel, in the cafeteria there, and he ate eight packs of sugar, and then left. Like, he's only thinking about money, you know?

So that's kind of concentration. So anybody can have concentration, but this kind of concentration is something different. And shamatha is a certain level of concentration you need to see emptiness directly.

Your mind is like water, and if it's not perfectly still, you can't see emptiness. It's like having a moon reflect on the water perfectly, and if the water is not quite settled, then you can't see emptiness. You never will see emptiness directly.

And that's the perfection of wisdom, is to see emptiness directly. So, you have to be able to develop that kind of concentration. I'll give you some clues about what it feels like.

I mean, one thing, all your sense powers are withdrawn within. In other words, if you get into this kind of meditation well, and somebody went like that in the room, you wouldn't hear it. You can't smell anything, you can't hear anything.

Somebody could, like, tap you on the shoulder lightly, and you wouldn't feel anything, okay? It's like this absorption into an object. You have it, you've done it, with a good movie, or a good novel, or...

I can remember high school girlfriends, you know, it's like 3 in the morning, and you're like... you know, you're like 4 hours late to get home, and you just didn't notice. You know, just totally, the time went by, and you didn't notice anything, you know?

And that's what it's like, like a very good movie or something like that. You have ting and zin, you have one point in mind when you're watching a really good movie, or reading a really good book, and someone's trying to talk to you, and you're like... like that, or you don't even hear them.

Or somebody's cooking something, and you can't even smell it, because your mind is just totally into the thing. And that's a kind of shamatha. Shamatha is not some weird thing where you're spacing out, or something like that.

You have shamatha when you do your favorite thing. You already have that capacity, all beings have that capacity. It's one of the things of the Abhidharma, that all sentient beings, even ants and amoebas, have the ability to be absorbed in an object, to some extent.

So that's that ability like that. What distinguishes shamatha from other kinds of meditation, in particular, is what we call shinjang, which is some kind of physical and mental joy, physical and mental pleasure that you get from meditation. And that comes from doing it frequently.

So that's just a natural result of doing it on a normal basis. And that's all. If you don't meditate on a normal basis, you'll never get it.

If you do meditate on a normal basis, you'll get it, and then you'll like it, and then you'll keep meditating. But there's sort of a threshold you have to get over where you're meditating enough that your body begins to get very, very easy. You know, like it's easy to sit there for two hours or something like that, and it doesn't feel bad, and you're not thinking about something else, and it just feels great to sit there for an hour or two in deep meditation.

And once you get used to it mentally, it's almost addicting. In fact, there's a bodhisattva vow not to get addicted to it, to the sensation of it. It's almost like a computer or something like that, where it's just so pleasant to be able to concentrate that you get addicted to it.

And you can shut off everything else, and you just can concentrate on one thing. And that's an addicting experience. So it's almost like that.

Shinjang means you start to feel some kind of physical and mental pleasure from meditating. And that's a sign that Samatha is coming. That's one of the qualities of Samatha.

In and of itself, it's like a microscope, and it's worthless. You have to point it at the right object. It has to be pointed at...

You know, you can point it at money, or you can point it at baseball, or whatever. They have it, by the way, those guys. The point is to point it at something worthwhile, which is emptiness.

So then you have the last two perfections like that. I don't have to sell you emptiness. If you've ever been to any classes, you sold it already, okay?

Basically, if you're able to focus this state of meditation on that object for just about a half hour or less, you will see your future enlightenment. You will see how many lifetimes it will take. You will meet a Buddhist body directly.

You will have all these extraordinary experiences, reading other people's minds, able to do extraordinary things, and you'll know it when it happens. People ask me, I think something happened, you know, in July 1985. I saw this red thing came across my mind, and I say, no, no, that's not it.

When it happens, you'll know it, and there's no question about it, and nothing. Absolutely, you'll know it. All of the things I said will happen to you.

So, all those experiences happen at that time, and more. So, you know, it's called Deng. You know, Deng in Tibetan means...

I used to remind you of Deng Mi or something like that, but Deng means guarantee, like you have a Deng. You know, you have a Deng, like you know what's going to happen in the future. You know you're going to get enlightened.

You know how it's going to be like. You know what's going to happen to you in the next X years. Then what can anybody do to a person who has Deng?

You see what I mean? So, what can attract you, or what can worry you, or who can argue with you? You have Deng, you know.

Deng means I know what's going to happen in my next seven lifetimes. You know, I know who I'm going to be with. I know what's going to generally be my kind of family all being, and I know the day I'm going to be enlightened.

So what else do I have to worry about? That's Deng. So those are the last two perfections.

They go hand in hand. The perception of emptiness here is called Vipasyana, which in Pali is Vipassana. And in this country that word is being used to describe Samatha, which is its brother.

You see, Samatha is the microscope, and Vipassana is the analysis of emptiness, or the understanding of emptiness. And it was sort of misused for the meditation, especially on the breath. And that's not what it means.

And I only say that because in this verse you'll see the two words. Vipasyana has been translated as insight, and Samatha has been translated as quietude. Quietude meaning to get your mind down to a calm level so that you can see emptiness directly.

And then insight meaning Vipasyana, which means to be able to understand or grasp emptiness. So those are the last two perfections. I would put them in a six-sided room, up towards the door that's leading into the Crystal Palace.

I like to use a microscope and a diamond. And you can think about it like that. Coming into that room from the room before it, which we didn't get to yet, you've got to have the first four perfections also.

So I use the first four sides of the room, the walls of the room, and I put on the left as I come in, I always start on the left, and as I come in I look over to the left, and there's something to remind you of the perfection of giving. So put a Christmas package there, a present, wrapped up, something, perfection of giving. If you want to get fancy, put the four kinds of giving, and you figure out your own mnemonic device to remember it.

Giving material things, like money, you could put a dollar bill there, around the present maybe. Then giving freedom from fear, you know, protection to people. And I don't know what you want to put there.

A gun? No. Something like that.

No. I don't know, a football helmet. Then the third one would be giving love to people, giving affection and love to people, care for people.

You could have some medicine, I don't know. And then the last one is giving Dharma. And you can have a Dharma book there.

But over on the left side as you come in, there's a wall, one of the six walls, and there's a table, and there's a gift wrapped up there. I see a white wrapping with a red ribbon around it, you know. And then maybe inside you can put those four things, so you can remember the four kinds of giving.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
However you want to do it. That's the perfection of giving. Then you look over on the right side, and there's the perfection of an ethical way of life, okay?

Morality. Morality. And over there you need something to remind you of your three sets of vows, three different kinds of vows that you have.

What are those? Pratimoksha vows. The most primitive one, the basic one being, I shouldn't say primitive, okay, that's a bad connotation.

The most basic one being the ten virtues, not killing, not stealing, no sexual misconduct, etc. Okay? And then bodhisattva vows, and then your tantric vows.

Okay? So those are over here. How do you want to represent those?

I don't know. Golden rule? I don't know.

What do you think? I don't know. I didn't pick one.

I mean, the Pratimoksha vows, the main emphasis is not to hurt anybody. So I was thinking of something soft, like a fur or something, but then you have to kill something to get that, huh? A feather?

I don't know. How about if it's a tree? You've got the roots...

Yeah, that's good. Okay, like a... what do you call that Japanese tree?

A bonsai.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, a bonsai.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. So over here, a bonsai. And the roots are the Pratimoksha vows.

And the trunk is the... A book. Okay, a book, yeah.

Oh, your book, yeah, okay. You don't have a book in the branches or something, I don't know. Okay.

Something to remember, three different sets of vows. Okay, over here. And then the third perfection is the art of not getting angry when time comes to get angry.

Like, I like to call it the art of not getting angry. It's more powerful to me than saying patience. Patience to me is waiting for a boss or something.

This is the art of when that thing wells up right here, you know, when you feel that somebody says something, just the wrong thing, and then you feel this instantaneous thing in your gut start... Then the art of grabbing him and wrestling him down to the ground, that's perfection number three, you know? Like doing some kind of judo on this anger and getting him down on the ground, and he doesn't get past here.

I don't know how you want to represent that, but that's number three. Huh? Huh?

Put your six-year-old boy over there? That's good, a piece of wood. A piece of wood is okay too.

I don't know. Michael said a piece of wood because when you feel like you might get out of control, like you're about to say something, then they say, just shut down. Master Shantideva says, just shut down and be like a log, a bump on a log.

Just refuse to say anything. Like when I start to get really angry and I can't control myself, I just go into this shutdown mode where I sit down, don't say anything, just don't say anything, and just ignore what's happening. That's like my emergency reaction to something.

I just sit down and look at the wall or something. Anyway, something like that. So you have a gift, the four kinds of giving.

Then you have ethical way of life, three kinds of vows. And then you have not getting angry. And that can be people or inanimate objects.

Most people don't understand that. To be angry at a traffic jam or that you can't get a parking space or when you stub your toe is all breaking the third perfection. Getting upset at those things is breaking the third perfection.

Getting upset that you're angry is breaking the third perfection. Although that's kind of a tricky one because reasonable upset that you're breaking your vows is a good deed. Number four over here is...

I see like a jack-in-the-box guy. And that's joy. That's joy about doing good things.

That's having a good time doing good things. And I heard this retreat, especially people talking and laughing and having a good time. It should be like that.

When you're doing something really holy, it's not so much like this. It's like His Holiness is always giggling. And you should be happy about it.

If you're doing something right and you feel giggly about it like His Holiness, that's a good sign. That's number four. Number four is like enjoying being good.

And then five and six you have already. So those are the six perfections, which is how to act like a bodhisattva. Now personally, I like to put how to think like a bodhisattva in the same room.

We call... What does that mean? In Washington we had it.

Definition of Perfectionism. Oh, nice. That was his first diamond cutter, you know.

Anyway, yeah. It's the understanding of emptiness under the influence of bodhicitta. Okay?

So to me, those six actions are not really... I'd like to have bodhicitta in the room. So I put it in the middle like an incense.

What do you call it? A pot? A censor?

You know, and it's like imbuing the whole room. You know, like, that's bodhicitta. Because that's to think like a bodhisattva.

So like, for example, if you're patient or you don't get angry, but you're doing it for some stupid reason and not because you want to become a Buddha to help everybody, that's not the perfection of patience. Okay? So I like to put it in the middle of the room.

You know, it's kind of cool, because it's a hexagonal room and then in the middle is this little... To me, there's this little stand, like a pillar, a column, that goes up to my waist, and there's a nice oriental incense burning pot, and then there's this... with sang on it.

You know, sang is like juniper powder from Mongolia, and you throw it on the incense and it's like smoking up the room. What it means is, semkye gyi simpa. It means, the whole room is imbued with compassion.

Then people ask me, I hear this thing, it kind of irritates me a little bit. They say, Oh, Samso is a bodhisattva. You say, why?

And they say, Oh, I heard somebody say he was a bodhisattva. I heard some lama say this guy is a bodhisattva. And you say, Well, why?

And they say, Well, he gives money to everybody. Or, you know, you can kick him and he says, I'm sorry. You know, stuff like that.

And you've got to get in the state of mind of thinking, I mean, real bodhisattva is... I mean, they would be doing those things, but their overriding concern in their life would be, how do I help other people to get to real enlightenment? You see what I mean?

Like, they would be fanatical about preserving the methods of getting enlightened and making sure that they were communicated to people and going about it like that. They would be concentrating on that kind of thing and doing those other things too. You know, and giving away money and being happy and being nice to everybody.

But the main thing they'd be doing would be trying to get themselves enlightened and then trying to teach other people true methods of getting enlightened and trying to preserve those methods in this world so they don't get lost, you know, or something like that. So, when you think of this thing burning, like, that's true compassion. That's real compassion.

It's like teaching someone to make a living rather than giving them money. Something like that. You know, it's like teaching them to get themselves enlightened rather than feeding them for another week.

You see what I mean? Although, real bodhisattvas are doing both. Okay?

But their main emphasis is how do I get people enlightened and how can I help them get enlightened and how can I get enlightened and like that. Okay? So, that's the room before the Crystal Palace.

The verse for the first four perfections, what they do is they give you a verse for all six perfections and then they give you a verse for the last two perfections. And that's the structure of the Lam Rim Chenmo, for example, the great book on the Lam Rim by Je Tsongkhapa. Okay?

Now, do they call it the six perfections? No. Let's see what they call it.

And that's one kind of confusing thing about this particular Lam Rim. It's page 77. We'll read it.

You ready? Page 77. One, two, three.

Bless me to see clearly that the wish itself is not enough for if I'm not well trained in the three moralities I cannot become a Buddha. Grant me then a fierce resolve to master the vows for children of the victors. Just a small confusing here.

He calls it the three moralities. The three moralities is a code word for the six perfections. Okay?

You can think of it that way. It's just referring to keeping your morality A, so that you can What is it? So that you can stay out of lower realms.

B, so that you can get yourself enlightened. And three, sorry, yeah. And then three, you can stay out of all.

It's sort of like the three scopes of the Lam Rim. And it's practicing the same code of ethics for lesser motivation, medium motivation, and highest motivation. The bottom line is, if you're doing all three kinds of morality, it just means you're keeping your vows for the sake of getting enlightened so you can help all other people.

It's just the six perfections. Okay? The three moralities is a, here, a code word for the six perfections.

I think it would have been easier for Westerners if he would have said the six perfections. But he said the three moralities. Anyway, when you hear three moralities, you have to think six perfections.

I remember being confused by this Lam Rim because I was thinking, you know, he's going to mention morality before this, and then he gets into tantric morality later. And I didn't know why he's mentioning morality again here, until you study it, and it means the six perfections. It's referring to the six perfections.

Six perfections are covered in a very clever way in the Bodhisattva vows. Okay? So there's like 64 Bodhisattva vows, and if you keep them, you are doing the six perfections.

Okay? It's like, I used to go out in the morning on my way to, I got on the bus, I would get this piece of paper, I'm on my way to New York to work for the day, it's an hour and a half to two hours commute, and I would check the six perfections, you know, did I give anything to somebody today? Was I a good person today?

Did I hurt anybody today? You know, did I get angry today? And you went out in about three minutes, you know, like you can cover the six perfections in about three minutes, and then you got the rest of the day, you know, free.

And the Bodhisattva vows are meant to give you more detail. Like, how to put the six perfections into actual practice is covered when you keep your Bodhisattva vows. So, you don't need more detail than that.

You see? There's 64 Bodhisattva vows, basic vows, and then there's a lot of commitments about the wish, and then there's the four white deeds and the four black deeds, and those are all part of the Bodhisattva's morality. So, if you live your life along those vows, you've covered the six perfections.

You don't have to go and do the six perfections separately, okay? That's the point here. That's what he's trying to say.

When he says, children of the victors, that's a code word for Bodhisattvas, okay? Gyalpo se, gyal se. Sometimes Master Shantideva is called gyal se, Shantideva, child of the victors.

Victor being an enlightened being, child being a Bodhisattva, okay? So, that verse is talking about the six perfections, and that's going to be around the outside of the wall, and then the verse before that, which we'll get to later on, this evening, is referring to Bodhicitta itself, thinking like a Bodhisattva. So in our visualization, you've got acting like a Bodhisattva around the edge of the room, and then you've got thinking like a Bodhisattva in the middle of the room, and thinking like a Bodhisattva is infecting all the other things, you know, it's just spread everywhere, it's imbuing, everything else is imbued with this scent of the, of Bodhisattva's way, way of thinking, as opposed to how they act, okay?

So, let's try to visualize that. I'd say just work on this one room, okay? It lets out into this crystal room.

Why?

[Speaker 2]
Can I take your initiation?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, first of all, you cannot take an initiation until you have Bodhisattva vows. That's why they always give you Bodhisattva vows. You know, at least during the initiation.

That's like emergency, you know, minimum, during the initiation they give you your Bodhisattva vows. They never have time to explain them to you, which is unfortunate. You know, maybe initiation should take a few days longer, and they go over all your Bodhisattva vows with you.

That's one thing, but remember the flypaper principle for attracting a Tantric Lama. You have to be keeping the Bodhisattva vows well to attract a Tantric Lama. You see what I mean?

To get one to... They're very slippery, like a greased pig, you know? And to get one to come to you is hard.

To keep them is hard, you know? And they're very flitty, like they... First time you act up, they're gone, you know?

And then you have to keep the vows again for months, and then you meet them again, and then they're gone again because you got mad or something. And then you have to... They're very, very...

The first contact with them is very tenuous. And the same thing in the Keryam room. You know, the first time you start seeing deities or something like that, it's very tenuous, because your karma is just barely good enough to see them.

So, like, you think you see them, or maybe you don't see them, or the minute you ask them, they're gone, or they're like, I don't know what you're talking about, you know, or something like that. And it's the same with the Tantric Lama. Like, the very first contact is very tenuous.

You might not even know that it's going on while it's going on, you know what I mean? So... So you've got to keep your bodhisattva vows well in order to get into the next room.

And that's why these rooms are linear, right? You can't jump over to the bodhisattva vows room and barge into the crystal palace, you know, without the ticket. And that's going to be keeping your bodhisattva vows.

Lamrim is definitely a rim. You know, it definitely comes in a certain order, and it's the order we're talking about. And you can't get out of it.

You know, you want to get to that plumbing fun, you've got to go through your retreats, you know? You want to have these experiences happen to you, you've got to take vows and keep them. You know what I mean?

You want to get a real tantric initiation, you've got to keep your bodhisattva vows. You have to know them and keep them, okay? And there's no other way.

It doesn't work any other way. And you... Hopefully the image of the rooms is helping you to think like that, okay?

You don't get to go to the last room without going to the other rooms. It doesn't happen, okay? Alright.

So we'll meditate... Did you guys get a break? No.

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Are you going to go to like verse 13 and 14 at some point?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. We'll go through the last two verses. Maybe take a short break, and then maybe a five-minute break, and then come back and we'll do the...

We'll just visualize that room, okay? Okay, we'll start. We'll spend about 15 minutes, visualize that room, okay?

If you have time, you can go all the way into the courtyard. But try to get to Six Perfections room and bodhichitta in the middle, okay? Alright?

Alright?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. This is the end of session three.