Серия ежедневной практики, курс 03 — Размышление о практике даяния и принятия (1997, Коннектикут), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
The Asian Classics Institute presents Dong Len, Contemplations on the Practice of Giving and Taking with Geshe Michael Roach, recorded live at Godstow, Connecticut, in July of 1999.

[Speaker 1]
Session One Dong Len, Contemplations on the Practice of Giving and Taking with Geshe Michael Roach, recorded live at Godstow, Connecticut, in July of 1999 Session Two Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Namo Buddhaya, Okay, welcome. First of all, it's very hot and you should just ignore it, okay? If you put your mind on how uncomfortable you are, you won't have a good retreat, okay?

So just, you know, anytime you do a retreat, something's going to happen, something's going to go wrong. I was in retreat last month, it was too cold, and now it's too hot. So that's why we're doing retreat, is to get out of this human body that doesn't like those things, okay?

So don't worry about it, just let it go. Don't think about it, okay? Just let it go mentally, all right?

The way I'd like to do these meditations is about half an hour or something of introduction, then let you get up, and maybe 40 minutes, well, you know how it goes. Then let you get up and walk around a bit, get a drink, something, and then come back, and then meditate, okay, on what we talked about. So I'd like to start by thanking all the people who work so hard here to get the place ready.

The place looks much more beautiful each time we come. If you were never here in the first few days that we were using this place, you wouldn't know, but it was really a disaster. Two people came from California, Jim and Janice.

They were thinking about being caretakers here, and when they saw the house, they went back to California. They said it looked like a mausoleum. But now it's quite nice, and I'd like to thank the people who worked on it.

Fran Pirello's not here. She really worked hard for years to make this place better, nicer. And more recently, John Stilwell, who's hiding somewhere?

Okay, he's sleeping meditation? Okay, who's worked really hard on the place in the last few months. Amber's been helping him, who's very shy in the back there.

Nancy Karen, who's hiding here, is the new program director, and she's been working very hard to make the programs ready. I know Ali's probably been working some. I think Paul's messed up with the cooking or something, but we know whether to thank him or not later.

Michael Wick is the quiet bodhisattva who never says no to anybody. And, you know, probably the most advanced practitioner here, and he doesn't ever admit it. But anyway, thank you for that.

Michael is taking all the registrations and helping with that, and has been doing that ever since we started. Did I forget anybody? Ali's been doing...

[Speaker 2]
Oh, Kelly, sorry.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, we'll thank you later if you cook well. By the way, don't eat too much. It's hot.

We're meditating. Better to eat light, like two meals a day if you can. Don't eat all that she offers you.

Okay, just try to control yourself. Huh? No, ultimately the only person who can decide how much you eat is you, so they'll put lots of good food out, more than I usually can get, too.

So don't go for it. Eat lightly, and then have a good time. This is not meant to be an intense retreat.

It's meant to be a learning retreat where you can learn how to do this meditation, and then the idea is that you should go off, if you have a week, or a weekend, or a month, or three months, or three years to do it, then you could do it during that time. I think it's one of the holiest meditations you can do, and I want you to understand the theory of it well. I think this meditation, which is called Dzonglen, is very famous in Western Buddhist circles.

Many people have taught it. Lots of people are trying to do it. I think a lot of the detail of the practice has not been taught, has not been printed or translated, and so people sort of heard about it and tried to do it, and they didn't really know how to do it properly, or they're doing sort of a strange version of it.

Some people are doing a version of it which is actually harmful. So I want you to learn all the details about it. So what we did was, we have about 150,000 pages of scriptures finished on the computer.

We went through and checked every single lama who ever taught Dzonglen, and then we compiled this notebook. So this notebook is all the instructions from about 1,300 years of Dzonglen teachings in one book, and what you get is the essence of each lama who treated a different part of the Dzonglen practice, how they specialized in it. We're going to be concentrating a lot on a book by the first penchant lama, Losanchuki Gyeltsen.

I mentioned last night in class, those of you there, we're now on, I think, the 10th penchant lama, and he's four years old or so. He had his birthday while we were in Australia. And he...

how old? Ten now. And he's disappeared, okay?

After he was recognized, the Chinese arrested him. He's in house arrest somewhere in China, we don't know where. And they don't...

Normally the Dalai Lamas and the penchant lamas alternate, or while the Dalai Lama is getting older, the penchant lama is getting younger, or like that, and there's always one of them around to help us. So he won't be available unless we can try to do something. So remember that.

I mean, it's his practice. He's the one who taught it the most in Tibet. So maybe we dedicate the virtue of this retreat to try to getting him out and released.

I'd like to go through the name of the practice and then talk about... We have about 14 different contemplations in the notebook. I'm going to be treating the first two in this class, and in each class I'll do two more.

And it gives you more and more detail about the practice. By Monday afternoon or evening you'll be tonglen expert. And then you can do tonglen properly and teach it properly to others.

So I encourage you to take notes. I encourage you to get it right. I'm going into your retreat.

Somebody's got to keep teaching it to other people. And if you don't know it well and you don't take good notes or you're spaced out, you won't be able to teach it. You won't be able to pass it on.

So try to concentrate, even though it's hot and uncomfortable. I think the evening sessions might be a little cooler. We'll see.

So I'd like to talk first about the name of the practice. It's called tonglen. Say tong.

Tong. Len.

[Speaker 2]
Len.

[Speaker 1]
Tonglen.

[Speaker 2]
Tonglen.

[Speaker 1]
Tonglen. Actually the practice should have been called len tong. They say tonglen because it's convenient in Tibetan.

But tong means to give away something. And len means to take something. So I like to call the practice taking and giving, or giving and taking.

In Tibetan it says giving and taking. In the word they put the giving first. And in the word they put the taking second.

But when you do the practice you do the taking first and then you do the giving. So the order which is discussed in the notebook is normally you do the taking away first and then you do the giving. The goal of the practice is to practice taking away other people's pain and their bad karma.

And then give them your happiness and your good karma. If you say pain and bad karma, really what you're saying is pain and pain waiting to happen. You see what I mean?

Like pain which has already happened and pain which is going to happen. When you say bad karma, it's just another way of saying pain that hasn't happened yet. So really you're just taking away the current pain of all people and the future pain of all people that they already have the seeds for.

The future pain is already cooking in their mind and it will come out. So the idea is to take pain away from people and then give them happiness. Now there's been some, I think, brief teachings of tonglen going on in the West where they didn't explain it fully and people got the idea that they should try actually to take pain away from people and try to put it in themselves and then they got sick or something like that.

And that's not at all the goal of tonglen. You're willing to take other people's pain, but the idea is to take it in you and then destroy it immediately. So it's not like you're going to get sick by taking other people's pain.

That's a very important point. A lot of texts say, don't think that you're supposed to take away all the AIDS in the world and then you get AIDS tomorrow and then you die or something like that. The point is that I didn't see the movie, but I read the book when I was about 10, The Exorcist.

And the guy, apparently, I don't know the whole story, but the guy, this priest goes and takes an evil spirit out of this girl and then the priest jumps out the window and kills himself because he wants to kill this evil spirit. You know something like that? And tonglen doesn't work that way.

Tonglen, you take the pain from other people and you put it in your heart and then you destroy it within one breath. So don't think like you're going to get sick from this practice or you're supposed to do something like that. Don't think about that.

That's just the wrong way of teaching it. I've heard a lot of people say they hesitated to do tonglen because of that. That's not the way it goes.

So that's the first part of tonglen. That's the meaning of the word. Where does it come in Buddhist practice?

We have what we call lamrim, which is an instruction book. It's a how-to-do book from the beginning to the end of Buddhist practice. It starts with how to act towards your teacher, how to find a teacher, and it ends with tantric practice, highest tantric practice.

So where does tonglen fit into this 30, 40, 50 steps of getting to Buddhahood? I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Broadly, you can divide all Buddhist practice into three steps, three principal paths, which is sometimes mistranslated as three principles of the path.

The first one is renunciation, getting tired of living like this. What does that mean? That means that, we talked about it last night if you were in class, every good thing in your life has been created by karma, by good karma, and by what we call dirty good karma.

The nature of dirty good karma is that it wears out. So you can point to all the things that are going well in your life, like I'm physically healthy right now, or I can think pretty well, or I have some friends, or I have a pretty good job, or I have a decent place to stay, or anything like that, I have children, any of those things that you can point to, what we call puntsok, korway puntsok, means the good things of suffering life. Puntsok by itself means excellent, and he is.

But korway puntsok means the seemingly good things of this life, which I just listed. And all of them will wear out. They're all created by karma.

They're all driven by karma. And the nature of dirty karma is to wear out. So all you can look forward to in this life is gradually get older, gradually get dumber, gradually lose all your friends, gradually lose your job, gradually lose all the money you've worked so hard to accumulate in the house, and one by one lose your friends and your family and the people you love.

That's the career path for somebody in this realm. Because everything here is driven by karma, and karma wears out. So that's just inevitable.

That's the way it is. When you finally realize that, you can get to the first step of Buddhism. And if you don't face that, you'll never get into Buddhism.

People who are too happy can't practice Buddhism. People who didn't have a good disaster in their life don't make very good Buddhists. Now luckily, karma is of the nature that everybody will have a disaster pretty soon.

I mean, the best Buddhists I know, I can tell you, there was one in Mongolia, I was trying to figure out why he was a Buddhist. Because he was strong, healthy, young, intelligent, didn't seem to have any problems. And then he told me about this story.

Only after knowing him for about a year, he came out with this story that he had been with a friend on the eighth floor of a building, and someone threw the friend out the window. And the police came, this is in Russia, and caught him, and accused him of it. And he was going to Siberia, and then someone said, oh, I saw him on a different street at that hour.

And just by a miracle, he gets out of the hands of the police. He would have been in Siberia the rest of his life. So that makes him a Buddhist.

You see, he had something happen early in life that made him a Buddhist. There's another very, very fine Buddhist in Washington, D.C. I won't tell you which one. She was at the teaching down there, who had four beautiful sons and wanted a daughter.

And finally had a daughter. And then her husband and daughter were standing at a rest stop on the highway, and this semi-truck backed up and crushed both of them. And then she became a Buddhist.

You see, you need some kind of thing to happen, to really understand what's going on here. There is nothing else going to happen here but things like that. The karmas that we have are defective.

They should have been a recall. But they can't bring you anything else but that. There's something wrong with those karmas.

So you have to get to that step. Is tolent in that step? No.

What's the second of the three principal paths? The second one is to think of everybody else in the world as being in the same place as you, and suffering the same things, suffering the same way. And this is very hard.

They teach it in different ways. It's very, very hard. You're supposed to get some kind of compassion or something like that.

And I just personally find it quite hard. I was on an airplane once when I was about 18. And I've told this story.

If you already heard it, I'm sorry to bore you. But we were flying to Chicago. And when we got to Chicago, it was a normal flight.

People complaining about the stupid movie. Two or three guys demanding more beer. Lousy pretzels and people complaining about that.

And people fighting for the armrests. And it was a very normal flight. And we'd been on hundreds of them.

And then we're flying into Chicago. And instead of landing, the guy starts circling. So we're mildly curious why he's circling.

And we figure there's a traffic backup or something. And then he starts going into this thing where he goes up as fast as he can, and then he drops as fast as he can. And then he goes vroom, and then he goes jim, and then he goes vroom.

And we're going, whoa, what's going on? And this is where we're getting concerned. And he does this four or five times.

And it was very overcast. And the stewardess came out of the pilot's cockpit thing, and she comes out, and she's shaking, and she's crying. And we're looking at this lady.

Oh, man. And we said, what's going on? She said, I can't tell you.

I can't talk about it. And she goes in the back, and she's having a breakdown. And you can hear her sobbing.

And everybody on the plane is starting to get nervous. And then they keep flying around in a circle and doing this thing. And then they go down to land, and they come within 50 feet of the runway, and they buzz the runway, and then they go back up again.

And we're like, now we're getting really worried. What's going on? And then they get on the loudspeaker, and they said, we have a problem with the airplane.

And they said, we don't know if the landing gear are down or can go down. You know what I mean? Like, according to the lights in the cockpit, it's not going down.

And so we've tried to jar it loose by doing this maneuver, and we don't know if it's down or not. And then we went down and tried to see if the control tower could see us, and it's too foggy, and they can't see us. So they can't tell us if the wheels are down either.

So we're going to circle for about 40 minutes until we're almost out of fuel, because then when we crash, there won't be so much to burn. And so we had this death meditation, very intense, like you can't imagine it. It was very, very intense.

You couldn't design a better death meditation. Maybe we should do it someday. And you're just flying in a circle, slow circle, and here's like 100 normal people.

And then very strange things happened. I've never seen anything like it. But when I think of Bodhicitta, I think of that.

Here's a bunch of people are sitting there, and suddenly everybody bonded in a deep way. This is 100 people going to die together. And they would come on every 10 minutes and tell us to do something.

They came on and they said, we're 20 minutes from crash landing. All the women have to take off their shoes, because you can't run in them. And then everybody has to take the jewelry off their hands and neck, because it will melt through your body.

This is getting depressing. And then they said, if you want to write a note, sometimes a note survives the crash. So everybody's writing a note.

And then everybody gets kind to each other. It was very weird. It was really weird.

The stewardess was breaking down. Two or three guys got up, went back there, started to take care of her, give her something to drink, calm her down. She's supposed to do it for us, right?

And then everybody started to hug each other, and everybody was talking to each other and saying, where are you from? Do you have any children? How do you feel?

Don't worry. If I can help you, I'll help you. And it was a very weird experience.

It was totally weird. Everybody's crying, and everybody was hugging each other, and people didn't know each other, and people who were fighting for the armrest. Nobody was complaining about the pretzels or the movie.

No complaints at all. Nobody was thinking about that, because everybody was just looking at everybody else and saying, I'm going to die with this person today. And there was this sweetness in the plane.

I've never seen anything like that. And everyone was just like brothers and sisters. It was very strange.

And then the intense love between... I think the human nature is that. We can't get down to it very often, but I think really human nature is something very beautiful.

And it came out. People thought they were going to die, and this feeling was released from all the normal inhibitions. Like this feeling that people really want to have, and the people that we really would like to have, it got released.

And people weren't trying to look this way or that way, or protect themselves. It just opened up, and everybody was having some kind of love towards each other. It was really beautiful.

And then at the very end they said, Okay, now everybody, we're going to practice crashing. Get your seat up, and then put your head between your knees, and cover your head like this. So you're down there for five minutes by yourself.

You can't see anybody else. And you're just thinking about what it's going to be like. And then they said, Okay, get back up.

And we all practiced that. And then finally they come in for the approach. And as you know, I'm here, and the landing gear was down and it held.

And we look outside, and there's all these ambulances lining the runway, and all this foam on the runway. And then there were all these hearses at the end. And we're like...

And then they opened up the door, and everybody rushed off the plane. Nobody talked to anybody. And things went on.

But it was like a small... It was like 40 minutes of bodhichitta. Some kind of deep love.

Actually it's not bodhichitta. It's called ninje or jampa, which is love or karuna, compassion for each other, which is very close to bodhichitta. So I think that gives you a feeling of the second of the three principal Buddhist paths, which is we are no different from the people in the plane.

The people in this room and the people in that plane are in exactly the same condition. There's no difference at all. We are all in an airplane.

We are all going to crash. It's a question of who dies first. Somebody in this room will die first.

Then we'll say, Oh God, it was so weird. I was just doing a retreat with this person last month, and they looked fine. Ernie, the guy who took care of this place, when we got here, he's dead.

He took a wrong turn. A truck ran him over. He's gone.

We met him one morning. He was here. We were having coffee with him, and he was joking around with a friend, and then he just made a wrong turn, and he's killed, and he's dead.

So he's number one. And then somebody will be number two. Somebody will be number three.

And we're all like that. Essentially we're all in a plane. We're all going to die together.

What's the point of arguing? Or what's the point of having any hassles with each other? We're all just doomed.

So why do we not just love each other? You know what I mean? So that's the feeling of bodhicitta.

That's the second Buddhist path. It's not easy to get that feeling. Like you just got it for a few minutes, and then you lose it, you see?

And you have to find a way to keep it strong. You have to find a way to get that feeling and to have it be your normal way of thinking. And that takes practice.

I always say it's a lot like learning to play piano. You have to find scales to do, like love scales, compassion scales to do every day. It doesn't come in one class on tonglen.

It won't happen. You need to find some kind of daily exercise. It's like dance or yoga or jogging or weightlifting or something like that.

You have to find certain exercises to do, and then you're going to have to do it every day for like a half hour or an hour. You're going to have to practice loving other people. And tonglen is the best way to do it.

Tonglen is for that. So that's where tonglen fits in Buddhist meditation. It's for developing love for other people, compassion.

It would be nice to love other people. Deep down inside you really want to. And deep down inside you're jealous of people who just naturally love other people.

I am. Like this Palma. I travel with her a lot.

She's on the plane coming here a couple days ago to New York. She's always meeting these people. Every single flight.

They fall in love with her. She talks to them, and she's interested in them. I'm kind of hesitant to talk to people.

I feel like this boundary. You know what I mean? Every single plane flight, three or four people fall in love with her.

We went to Mongolia. We went to Ireland. We went to North Carolina.

We went to Australia. Where's Palma? And we're like, oh, she didn't come this time.

Oh, that's too bad. Because she just has this quality to be able to reach out and love other people. You know what I mean?

On the spot. And the point is that you don't do that naturally. She didn't do it naturally.

Ten years ago she wasn't like that. I can attest to it. She started working at my company.

She was just a rough, tough-ass... I won't say. Corporate...

She did a $20 million account in J.C. Penning. She used to rip those people apart. They used to rip her apart.

And now she's totally different. She practiced. You see what I mean?

And it's like piano. You just have to practice it. So the purpose of tonglen, what we're going to do in this retreat is just teach you how to do your scales.

And then you have to do it. Rinpoche is always saying... People come to him with their personal problems.

I have trouble with my husband or my wife. Should I buy this apartment or not? Can you tell me, should I go to college or should I drop out?

He says, that's your problem. I taught you dharma. Now you apply it.

I taught you dharma for 25 years. You come and ask me these questions. He won't answer questions like...

Some lamas, they'll throw a moan. They'll tell you your future. He says, I don't want to know about it.

I taught you for 25 years. Now you do the right thing. And it's the same thing.

I can teach you tonglen. We'll go through the meditation perfectly. You'll get detail that no Western person has ever gotten.

But then you've got to do it. You're not going to learn it in one weekend. You've got to practice it every day, every morning.

The nice thing about tonglen is it was designed by Lord Buddha, passed on through Shantideva, Master Shantideva, passed into the Tibetans of the Kadampa tradition, passed on to the Panchen Lamas. The nice thing is it's designed to do all day long. You don't have to be in meditation to do tonglen.

It is a very special practice because it is linked to your breathing. Okay? And we'll talk more about it later.

But your breathing is a reflection of deep, subtle, spiritual, physical body that you have. You have a very subtle inner body that is composed of channels, chakras. Winds are flowing through them in different degrees of flow.

And the trick of tonglen is out of all the non-secret practices that we do, in tonglen you actually use secret methods to accomplish the meditation. This is unique. The Panchen Lama and Je Tsongkapa taught it openly.

But you are working with your breath. Your breath is intimately connected to the inner winds. Your breath is not the inner winds.

But they have a deep connection. And the point is that you can do tonglen all day long. And you'd be working with your breath.

And that has a profound effect on your inner winds. And that has a profound effect on your mind because the inner winds and your thoughts travel in the same channels. They are lungsam jukpa chikpa, means they travel in tandem.

Okay? For example, if you get scared, it chokes the inner winds. The thoughts affect the inner winds.

And then your breathing changes. You see? That's a reflection of the condition of the inner winds.

Breath and inner wind are not the same thing. But inner wind and breath are like sympathetically connected, like a sitar. I don't know if you know sitar.

You hit a D on a sitar and then there's three D strings below. You only play one string on a sitar normally. But then three D strings go off below.

They're called sympathetic strings. Because when you hit a D on the top string, three Ds on the bottom go off. This is sympathetically meaning, because that D went off, these three Ds go off.

And it's beautiful. That's why they sound so beautiful. It takes about an hour to tune it.

Because if it's not tuned right, when you hit a D, then only two Ds go off or something like that. You see what I mean? So the inner winds are like the strings below.

And the breath is like the string above. And in tonglen you are working with the breath. And then that causes changes in the inner winds.

It's like hitting the top string and then just because you hit this top string, the three bottom strings go off on their own. You see what I mean? That's the great beauty of tonglen.

Tonglen is only one of the ways to reach bodhicitta, or ultimate compassion. And you need to practice to reach bodhicitta. And this is cool because you can do it all day long.

As long as you're breathing, you can do tonglen. If you've got breath going on, you can do tonglen. Actually, after you stop breathing too, you can do tonglen.

But that's dzogrim. We can't talk about that. But the cool thing is you're breathing all day long.

You might as well take advantage of this. You see what I mean? And you use it to develop compassion.

So it's a very, very powerful practice. It doesn't matter where you are, if you're working a straight job, whatever you're doing, if you're watching a movie, if you're listening to music, if you're driving somewhere, you can do tonglen. Because you base it on your breath.

It works off of your breath. So it's a very cool practice. Classically, there are two ways to get ultimate compassion, which is called bodhicitta.

I think there's a little bit of misinformation about bodhicitta going on. People say, I went to Dharamsala, I met this monk, he made momos for me, and two of my friends showed up, and I noticed that he fed everybody else the momos and didn't eat any himself. He's a bodhisattva.

He must have bodhicitta. You know what I mean? People are kind of equating kindness with bodhicitta.

Kindness is part of developing bodhicitta, but it's not bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is very specific. Bodhicitta is a higher state of love than anything you can know right now.

It's a higher state of love than normal kindness or normal concern for other people. That's not bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is understanding Buddhism to the point where you are pretty clear on what it would be like to get enlightened.

You could pretty well understand what it would be like to get enlightened. And bodhicitta is the decision to do that for the rest of your life so you can help other people. You see what I mean?

And that's not the same as just sharing your momos with somebody. Kindness is a prerequisite for bodhicitta. But bodhicitta is a very specific state of mind where you've practiced enough that you see enlightenment on the horizon.

And then you're working as hard as you can to get there so you can really help other people. And that's different from... A person with bodhicitta might have to ignore other people's common needs for a while.

You see what I mean? If they're working towards that specific thing, because then they know that when they get to be an enlightened being they can really help other people. They might not be someone that you would think was kind.

They might be sort of one-pointedly concentrating on certain practices that would get them enlightened or something. You see what I mean? They know that that's the kindest thing they can do for other people.

So it's a difference from normal kindness. It's sort of an obsession with getting enlightened for other people, for the sake of other people, because you care about other people. Any other kindness you can do to people...

And what are the kindest things? Work in a hospital. Work for homeless people.

Work for Tibet's freedom. All other kinds of kindness that you can do are lesser because after you get the result, it wears out. It goes away.

You can feed somebody. They'll be hungry in a few hours. You can give somebody a place to stay.

They'll need a new place to stay later. You can save somebody from cancer. They'll not have a heart attack.

You know what I mean? We're talking about a higher kind of kindness. Not to say that the other ones are not important.

They are important. In fact, if you're not doing them, you probably can't get bodhichitta. But bodhichitta is a different thing.

Bodhichitta is like decision and a resolution. And I don't know how to say. It's almost like an obsession, or your whole mind is consumed.

Nyingtsen kundu tarpa dunya la jung-la dey tse ngey ngey la Nyingtsen kundu means all day, all night, you're just obsessed with getting to this goal. You're willing to do anything you have to do to get enlightened. And to make sure that teachings like this survive in the world.

So a person with bodhichitta would be acting a little bit like that. Would they still give up their last momo for you? Definitely.

But that's not bodhichitta. But you need that to have bodhichitta. Why am I talking about bodhichitta?

Two classical ways of getting bodhichitta. First one is called gyun de may nak dun, which means you go through a seven-step process. It starts out by trying to feel equally towards all other people.

That's actually zero. There's really eight, they lied. It's really eight steps.

But zero is like... The preliminary step to the first step is try to feel the same towards all other people. I used to do it on the bus every night back from work.

I had a two-hour commute. And I'd try to do this. I'd try to feel the same about the guy who was asleep next to me and crushing me.

And the same about the driver, who I kind of thought was a cool guy. And the same about this other person three seats back that I could care less about. We call people you like, people you dislike, and people you could care less about.

And I tried to get them all the same. This is the first step. You try to feel the same towards these three different kinds of people.

That's not what we'll be doing in this weekend. We're not going to go through that seven-step method. But that's one of the two methods you can use to get to bodhichitta.

The other method is called dak-chen-nyam-je. Say dak. dak.

chen. chen. nyam-je.

[Speaker 2]
nyam-je.

[Speaker 1]
It's been called exchanging self and others, or putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, or something like that. I'll give you briefly what it means, and then I'm going to move on. Because tonglen is a subset of that.

Tonglen belongs to the instructions on exchanging self and others. That's where tonglen comes in the structure of Buddhism. There's this way to develop ultimate compassion or bodhichitta called dak-chen-nyam-je, which is exchanging myself with you.

And then, inside of there, tonglen is one of the methods. So you're going to be trying to reach bodhichitta, ultimate compassion. We're going to be using the method called exchanging self and others.

And inside there, tonglen is one of the most effective methods. I'm going to tell you about general dak-chen-nyam-je, general exchanging self and others, and then we'll start doing tonglen. Yeah?

Yeah? What is lojong? Lojong is like...

Lojong has been mistranslated as mental training. Lo refers to jang chu gi sem, which means bodhichitta. Jong means practice until you get it.

So lojong means training yourself in bodhichitta. And both of the instructions for bodhichitta are lojong. The lojong genre of literature includes both of them.

But more often, tonglen. One of the most famous lojongs, the seven-point lojong, we will be using to do tonglen. So, dak-chen-nyam-je.

I'm going to describe dak-chen-nyam-je in general, and then we'll go to tonglen. Remember now that tonglen is a part of dak-chen-nyam-je. Dak-chen-nyam-je, exchanging self and others, is a method of reaching bodhichitta.

Bodhichitta is the second of the three great principal paths. What's the third, by the way? Understanding emptiness.

Correct view. Very difficult. Very difficult.

We'll be talking about it. And remind me. Correct view comes in to tonglen practice when you start asking, how does it work?

Can I take the cancer away from Aunt Jane? Can I give my peace of mind to this student who's disturbed all the time? You see what I mean?

Can I really tonglen? And that's something we want to talk about. Remind me.

We'll get to correct view later when we discuss how do you really take away somebody's pain. And can you really give your happiness to another person? We have to talk about that.

That'll be big time emptiness subject. And that'll be nice. We got to move back though.

Bodhichitta. What does it mean to exchange self and others? There's three levels of it.

I don't think this is taught very well sometimes. People teach it like, what do you call it, putting yourself in another person's shoes or something like that. There's actually three levels of exchanging yourself with others.

This is not tonglen, but tonglen is part of this practice. First level. It's the jampa in New Jersey with the tea.

If you know this little monk out in New Jersey, he's a bodhisattva. And how he practices, it's with his tea kettle. And you walk in there the first time he meets you and he's sizing you up.

He's about four feet tall and two feet wide. He's checking you out. And this is a thing they teach the young monks in the monastery.

It's a very, very holy practice. And Americans don't do it at all. It's a difference between us and Tibetans.

It's one of the big differences. They watch you to see where your eyes go. When you enter the kitchen, he's watching you.

And he looks like this friendly little guy, but he's actually checking you out. He's not checking out your shoes or how pretty you are or anything. He's watching your eyes.

And he sees how your eyes... When you walk into a room, your eyes go around the room. And then they stop on the things you like.

If there's a big bowl of cookies in the middle of the table, you're like... If you're thirsty, you're looking at the refrigerator. And it's very subtle.

Eyes are the mirror of the soul. It's true. And the meaning of that saying is that if you watch a person's eyes...

It's kind of scary, okay? Don't do it to me. But if you watch a person's eyes for about a minute or two minutes in a new room, you pretty much can size up their character, what they like, what they want.

And Jampa's checking you out. He sees if you look toward the tea kettle or if you look toward the refrigerator. And before you have asked, he's bringing you whatever you like to drink.

He's already done this logic thing. And he's already figured out what you probably like to drink. And then he'll correct it.

He'll ask you, would you like Tibetan tea with milk in it? And you say, no, no, no, I like caffeine tea. I like black tea without milk.

And then the next time you come there, even if it's six months later, he's giving you the right one. He puts you into some list in his mind. Because he cares about it.

You see what I mean? And to him it's very important. So he watches your eyes, sees where your eyes go.

And the next time you come, you're getting what you looked at last time. You see what I mean? And if you've looked at the cookie bowl three times, it's in front of you.

You see what I mean? He's moved it down the table so you can grab a cookie. And this is the first step of dakshin yam je.

It's observing other people's desires and hopes and wants. It's being super observant of what other people like. And then transparently you give it to them.

The better you are at it, the less they notice it. You see what I mean? If you're really good at it, they don't even know you're doing it to you.

How many people here knew Jampa was doing that to you? If you think about it, he's always bringing you what you want, right? But he's doing it to you.

You see what I mean? And if you're really good at it, you don't notice it. They don't notice it.

That's the first step of dakshin yam je, exchanging self and others. The second step is actually to sit across from this person. What does Jampa do next?

He sits down across from you. He doesn't ignore you, right? He sits down across from you, and then he'll actually exchange your body.

He'll exchange bodies. He puts himself in your body, and he says, What would I like Jampa to say to me right now? You see?

And this is Master Shantideva. When he teaches it, it gets very confusing. In the Bodhisattva Charvatara, in the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, if you're translating it, you pull out your hair.

If you have hair, you're pulling it out. Because it's like, I'm Michael, he's Matthew, but now I'm Matthew, and I'm looking at Michael. Matthew, what would you like Michael to say?

And I say, How are you doing? Good to see you. I like your daughter.

And then I put myself back in my body to answer. You see what I mean? And to translate it gets very confusing.

But the second step of exchanging self-knowledge is that you put your mind in the other person's body. And then you look at you and you say, What would you like you to say? What would he like me to say?

What would I like me to say? It gets confusing, okay? And then you act like that.

What would this person enjoy right now? What would this person like to eat right now? What movie would this person like to see?

What music would this person like me to put on now? They're always putting on your favorite song, and you think they like your favorite song? Because they're so good at it?

And they don't tell you they hate that song? You know what I mean? Because they just want you to be happy.

They could do it for years. Put on your favorite song just because they know you like it. You see what I mean?

That's dakshin yam je. Actually, they're putting on their favorite song. Get it?

And they hate it. Last step of dakshin yam je is what I call the rope. Normally there's this boundary between you and me.

Normally you make a distinction between you and me. It's like a rope. And there's Nancy out there, and I'm over here, and there's a division between us.

And then, even with the first two kinds of exchange, you're assuming the presence of this rope. You're saying, I'll go into your mind, or I'll watch what you want. You see what I mean?

But still you're saying, me and you. In the final stages of exchanging self and others, that's why I don't like the translation much, you actually take that rope, flip it over them, and join it behind you. You take the divider between you and other people, start with one, okay?

It's easier than ten. And instead of having it between Nancy and me, it's around Nancy and me. And now Nancy and me is one person.

I got four feet now to buy shoes for. I got two mouths to cook for. I got two sets of desires or hopes to plan for.

You see what I mean? And just arbitrarily I've decided that me is going to be two people. And let's not even call it two people anymore.

We'll call it one person with four arms, two legs. Now I've got to buy ladies' clothes and men's clothes. Okay?

No, just think like that. And then people attacked Master Satyadeva. They said, come on, that's crazy.

You're not the same as Nancy. You're not one person, you're two people. You say, you know what, that's just arbitrary.

You decide how many people you're going to take care of, don't you? When you have kids, you decide, okay, these kids are part of me. I don't eat unless they eat.

If I don't get anything to eat, if they don't get anything to eat, I don't eat. You know? Arbitrarily you decide.

Now we are one person. You see what I mean? When you buy a new car.

I used to work down in Tribeca. People would buy a new car. They'd park it outside.

People would come down the street on bicycles and check the doors to see if they were locked. We'd see them. They'd just ride down the street on a bicycle and they're really good at it.

They don't even break the speed of the bicycle. They're like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, checking the doors. And so people who didn't have a car wouldn't watch because they don't care.

And then I remember this guy bought a nice new car and he never looked out the window before. Now he's looking out the window. And now somebody's doing that thing to his car.

He's running outside, he's yelling at this guy. And suddenly he has put the rope around the car. You see, suddenly this is part of him.

Like other cars are not part of him and this car is part of him. Why? He bought it.

He owns it. You see what I mean? It's okay if the other cars get vandalized.

But my car? And it's arbitrary. See, what you decide is you.

What you decide is mine. It's just a decision. If you get gangrene in your foot, you're diabetic, what do they do?

They always cut your leg off. It's a policy. Because it'll just kill you.

So at that moment that you agree to the operation, and almost everybody does, or it just kills you, you've just redefined me. So instead of making the rope wider around the car or your kids, you've just what? Made it shorter.

And you've decided that bottom of that leg is not going to be part of Michael Roach anymore. Okay, cut it off. Just before the operation, when you say yes, you've already disassociated, you've redefined me, and made it literally a little shorter.

And so me is arbitrary. What you decide to be me. Are your clothes me or not?

You see what I mean? And it's just arbitrary. You decide what me is.

Okay? So the last stages of Daksin Yamje, the final stages of exchanging self and others, it's not even exchanging, get it? It's more like including them in you.

I don't eat dinner unless these other five people get dinner. Period. And then suddenly it's six people, and then it's seven people, and then it's eight people, and then it's a hundred people, and then that's the goal of bodhichitta, is where I don't eat unless everybody's eating.

So this is Daksin Yamje, and tonglen is part of that practice. Tonglen is a subset of that practice. If you get good at tonglen, you'll get good at Daksin Yamje, exchanging self and others.

Last thing to say, I'm totally soaked, I don't know about you. Last thing to say about this practice is, and that's the second contemplation you're going to get, there's two preparatory states of mind for bodhichitta. They're called, say, jampa, jampa, nyingje, nyingje, jampa, jampa, nyingje, nyingje.

These are two kinds of love. Okay? Jampa's name is love, actually.

In Sanskrit, what is it? Maitreya. Okay?

We'll talk about nyingje first. Nyingje always comes first, normally. Nyingje means a kind of love where you want to take away pain from other people.

Okay? They compare it to a child who is sick, and how does the mother feel? Okay?

The mother wants the child not to have this sickness. Okay? Does a mother go out and buy...

goes to Toys R Us and the candy store if the child is very sick? I mean, no. First they go home and get the child well.

And then they go buy toys. But if the child's throwing up and you come home with a big chocolate bar or, you know, a big new toy, they're not going to... First you want to figure out why they're throwing up or something like that.

Okay? So, nyingje comes first. Karuna, compassion, comes first.

The exercise of examining the problems that other people have and trying to remove them. The exercise of trying to identify the problems that other people have and trying to get rid of those first. Okay?

Which is the tong in tong len. Sorry, the len in tong len. Okay?

Got it? The len, or taking away other people's problems, is... represents compassion.

What we call compassion. Okay? It's a kind of love that's concentrating on the negative in other people and trying to get rid of it.

Then the second kind of love is jampa. Jampa is... I translate it as just love.

Or you could say loving kindness. But it wants to give other people nice things. Okay?

So it's like helping somebody get over a cold and then giving them some ice cream. Okay? Or something like that.

Alright? So that would be len and then tong. That would be ning je and then jampa.

That would be compassion and then love. Okay? And you have to get used to that.

Two ways. Okay? Compassion takes away pain and then love gives them what they hope.

Gives them what they dream of. Okay? And the tong len meditation is going to be like that.

Okay? It's going to be take and then give. Okay?

Take away pain and then give them happiness. Okay? How?

On the breath. Okay? Using the breath.

Very tantric. Okay? Very important.

And then later when you practice higher stages of tantra it's all ready in you. Okay? The breathing practice is already pretty strong.

And then you're ready to take off with more advanced practices. Okay? So that's why this practice is particularly important.

It's a trick to get you into higher levels of tantra quickly. Okay? It's like a secret.

They didn't even tell people. Okay? I'm telling you.

It's in the text a little bit. Not much. Okay, I'd like to take a break.

Take about a five, ten minute break. Get some fresh air. Drink something.

Don't eat anything. Okay? We're going to meditate when we get back.

But stretch your legs. Get out into somewhere cool if there is any such place. Okay?

We'll do the we'll do a short dedication. Okay?

[Speaker 2]
Session One continues on the next CD.