Серия ежедневной практики, курс 03 — Размышление о практике даяния и принятия (1997, Коннектикут), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
Session three. Okay, we'll do breath first. Ten breaths.

Out is the first half, in is the second half. The way of breathing has some significance in the higher teachings. It's like unlucky to leave things going out.

They're supposed to all come back to the center. So we count the breaths from the out first and the in second. Next step is to take refuge.

The ultimate act of refuge is all day long, during the day, when something goes wrong, someone says something to you, that you break the cycle of violence, that you don't respond ignorantly, that you see that you caused it and respond sweetly and short-circuit one more cycle of karma. So think about something that went wrong today or yesterday and think about reacting to it in the opposite way to the normal way you react to it, and that would stop it from happening again, and that's a real act of refuge. So think about having done that yesterday or maybe doing it later today with some problem that you're having.

Next preliminary is to think about bodhicitta, and a very practical way is to think about a particular person you know who's having a problem and think about being able to help them in an ultimate way. Next step is to invite a holy being to meditate with you, and it's very important to start with the closest thing you can think of and then make it perfect in your mind. So image of a lama or Jesus or anything that you feel, any being that you feel close to, but then when you picture them meditating in front of you, shine them up to perfect, make the image perfect in your mind.

The next step is to bow down to them. This prostration is done mentally, and the way is to think of some good quality they have and concentrate on one or two of their good qualities and admire it mentally. That's a mental prostration.

Think about how nice it would be if you could have that quality. Next preliminary is to make them an offering. It could be something that you own, that you're offering, or it could be something in nature, like the green grass or the look of a tree or the sky.

And then it's often important to go on and offer a piece of your practice, something that you're working on in your practice. You may not be very good at it yet, but you're trying, and then offer that to that holy being. Then review your day, especially since your last meditation.

Try to choose something negative you did or said, and the more important ones are the mental ones, some kind of attitude that you have on a regular basis that's not good, and purify it by admitting it. Try to play back the videotape and try to remember exactly what it was you were thinking. And if you look at it now from a distance, it looks very like crazy or sad, and focus on that.

But try to really remember having a thought that was very unhelpful. Now do the opposite. And oftentimes Americans and other Western people, because of our backgrounds, they're very good at thinking about what they did wrong, and they're not very good at thinking about what they did right.

So now is the time for rejoicing and think about how fortunate you are to have met the Dharma, met holy teachers, great teachers like Ken Rinpoche, Dalai Lama is walking on this planet, Sipa Rinpoche is working for thousands of people. Think about how fortunate you are to be here in these times, and be glad about it. The next preliminary is to ask for help, ask for teachings from holy beings.

It could be formal teaching, it could be something that someone next to you says or does to you. They could be an emanation. Personally I like to think of my worst mental afflictions that I'm having that week or something, and ask for help or ask for teachings that will help me overcome them.

And oftentimes those teachings will come in a negative way, and you have to embrace them and ask for them to come that way. And the last preliminary is to ask for the long life and health of great teachers in the world, and great people in the world who are doing good things, and particularly the Dharma friends that you have who are near you and supporting you just by being there. Every time you see them reading a scripture or memorizing something or doing their meditation or doing their book, then it puts some kind of good pressure on you to be good also.

So pray for their long life. I like to pick one, and I like to cycle through different people. So I just pick one person like that and pray for their long life and pray that they stay near you for the rest of your life.

And that ends the preliminaries. When you're doing your own meditation, this is a place where you can scratch your nose or shift your legs. When you're ready, go back to your breath.

Ten breaths. Now we'll start the tong len. And remember, we're just doing len so far.

We'll start tong later on today. Picture someone new from yesterday who's having a problem, physical or emotional, and imagine that you're in their room with them or in their office with them or wherever they are, and picture their room very clearly. Pretend like you're a spirit or an angel who could enter that room without them knowing it and be invisible to them and you're close to them.

I find it easier if I'm facing them. And picture very clearly their problem. Get their problem very clear in your mind.

And try to feel what it feels like to them. Now see all their trouble, mental or physical, all their pain or illness. Right now it's spread throughout their body.

And bring it all in. I like to use their blood vessels and bring it in like some kind of liquid traveling on their blood and bring it towards the heart. Bring it in from all the parts of their body.

And all their other problems, physical problems, aging, mental lacks of intelligence or spiritual lacks, and also all the bad karmas they've collected in the past that haven't gone off yet. And all of these things are seeping towards the heart and they collect there in a dark ball about the size of an olive, black, evil. For me it's gui, like asphalt or something.

Collect it all into their chest, into their heart. And then with about ten slow breaths, long deep breaths, start to suck the blackness out of them. It comes up their throat, out of their nose, and it comes towards you across the room or across where you're sitting from them in a stream.

And it starts to collect in another round ball in front of your own nose. But don't let it touch your face yet. Just keep it there.

And do it in about ten breaths. Suck it out gradually in a stream. And imagine strongly that you're taking away all the problems that they have and all the problems that they're going to have from them.

Now focus on your own heart and see a small flame, about an inch high, red and yellow, like a candle flame. And this represents your own selfishness, your own tendency not to think of others. Just the exercise of tung len requires you to think of other people's problems.

And maybe we don't do that very often. More often we're focusing on our own needs and our own problems. So the flame is the enemy of your tung len meditation.

Focus on it, think about it. Think about how much of your effort in your life is focused on satisfying your own needs and not others. And we'd like to snuff that flame out.

And remember again that the flame is based on a deeper mental affliction, which is not understanding the reality around you. We'll talk more about that later today. So focus on the flame.

And try to... Whenever you do a visualization in sutra or tantra where the object of the visualization is a symbol, it's important to think of the meaning of the symbol. It's not enough to visualize a certain color or a certain number of arms or heads.

You have to consciously bring up the meaning of the symbol in a few concrete examples. So when you look at the flame, it's not enough to just look at the flame. You have to think of two or three examples in the last day of your own selfishness or your own failure to think of others.

Now we're going to do the destruction of the flame and the destruction of the blot. And you'll be taking one long out-breath to get ready, and then you'll take one long in-breath. And on the in-breath, go very slow, feel the blackness coming down through your nose to your throat and approaching the flame in your heart.

And during that time there should be some conscious willingness to take other people's pain on yourself, some decision that you would be willing to sacrifice your own happiness if it meant that someone else could be happy. And you'd be willing to take their pain into you. And then breathe in slowly, and then as the blackness approaches the flame, slow it down.

I like to back it up like it's all coming down at the same time and it's gathering in a ball before the flame. And then slow motion, bring them closer and closer together until finally they touch. And then there's a burst of light, and the flame goes out, and the blackness is incinerated, and all you see is light and some kind of gray smoke, very light like cigarette smoke, and it just dissipates.

And as it dissipates, imagine that all the selfishness is leaving you and all the pain of the other person is being destroyed, and sit there and enjoy watching the smoke dissipate. So when I say go, then take a slow out breath, and then bring in the black and start that process. Okay, go ahead.

Now focus on that other person and enjoy how it feels to them. Imagine that suddenly that problem has lifted from their shoulders. They feel some kind of immediate relief and happiness.

I think the fun thing is that they don't know why it happened or how it happened, but they're glad it happened, and focus on them. Imagine they don't have a single physical or emotional problem, and all their bad karmas that are going to give them problems in the future have been wiped away, and they're just totally happy. And imagine them like that, healthy mentally and physically, and very happy.

Now go through the last two concluding steps of the meditation, which is always, first of all, asking that holy being to come into your heart and stay with you during the day. Then whenever you have a problem, you're having doubts or anxieties or starting to get angry, then ask them to help you and focus on your heart and focus on them sitting there and giving you strength. So there's a formal step here.

You ask them if they'll come into your heart, and then all the scriptures say they get this big smile on their face, like, oh, you're so smart to ask me. And then they happily agree, and they start to rise up in the air very slowly, and getting smaller and smaller. And then they move over your head, and they turn around to face the same direction as you, and then they come down on your head very lightly.

They're about two, three inches high at this point. Then they get smaller and smaller until they're about the size of a pea. And then you prepare a place at your heart.

And again, at your heart means at the level of your heart, about just less than half an inch in front of your backbone. Make a small chamber for them. That's also about the size of a pea.

And if you look at it from the outside, it's just a little tiny pea. If you put your mind, slide your mind into the door inside, then it's a big comfortable room. And there's a beautiful lotus flower.

Sometimes I use a rose, covering most of the room on the floor. And then in the middle of that is the moon, set down flat like a hamburger. And it's shining with a beautiful, cool white light.

It feels like a velvet cushion. And then you bring them down slowly, like down a small elevator shaft in front of your backbone. And they're coming down.

And try to feel them as they make their way down, sort of warm feeling. And then they're going to park on that moon disk on the lotus. And they're very happy, and they promise to stay there all day for you.

Whenever you need them, then you think of them. And the nature of an enlightened being is when you think of them, they're there. Then the final step is to dedicate the good karma of this meditation.

And even though it's a visualization, and even though it's make-believe, the exercise of thinking about someone else's problems is so unnatural for samsaric beings that it's a great good karma, even just for half an hour or something. So dedicate that karma to the health and the happiness of the person that you are thinking of. Okay, then relax.

And again, this is what somebody... Every time we have a class, Aura comes to me and says, what should I put on the tape? What should I name the class?

And she said, how about Love Scales? I said, it sounds too much like my hands, you know, scaly. But it means something you practice every day.

And it's not natural to care about other people's problems this much, but if you practice every day... I've noticed with anything, like exercise or yoga or music or dance or anything, scripture, Tibetan verbs, if you just do it every day, you get good at it within a month or two. You know what I mean?

You get pretty good at it. So just decide. Practice it every day.

And despite yourself, you'll get good at it. You don't have to do it very well every day, but if you just are stubborn enough to do it every day, you get good at it. So practice.

Practice it. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
The tempo of the meditation, ten minutes to be fast, is it good for me to do it slow?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, for sure you can speed it up. I think meditations have to go at your own speed. I've personally spent ten breaths on each step, especially the preliminaries, because I've found that I get distracted on the preliminaries that I don't like to think about, like my bad deeds, and it takes me 30, 40 breaths.

So I force myself to move it. I think what you have to realize is that when you start a meditation session, you have about 30 or 40 minutes of good attention, and admit it. If you waste five minutes of that on one of the preliminaries by spacing out, you're ruining the end of the meditation already.

You see what I mean? You only have 30, 40 minutes of attention spent. So you have to keep it moving, or else you're shortchanging the real meditation.

You see what I mean? And your knees will start to hurt, and your attention will start to wander. So you've got to keep the preliminaries moving.

I use ten breaths. If I find on breath number nine that I didn't even think about the preliminary yet, I give it two or three more breaths, and then I go on. You see what I mean?

I suggest you do that. And you have to keep it at a good tempo for your own personality. It's okay if you want to go through two tonglens in the same amount of time.

Mucha Dharmabhadra, one of our great lineage lamas, advised that, especially for lay people. He said, Look, any intelligent person is going to get bored doing this visualization for three or four hours. So move it quickly, and then put in some other practices that you're doing, and then go back to that, and move it quickly, and then do another practice, and go back to it.

And rather than one long dull stretch, make it five 25-minute stretches or something like that. I talked to some Zen people. They do it this way.

I like it. The Sakyas also do it that way. They do a short stretch on the object of meditation.

They take a mental break. They go back to this object of meditation. They do like 10 to 20 minute bursts of focused attention on the object.

And then they rest for a while mentally, and then they go back to it, something like that. So you might try both. I think more than 30 minutes on any object is beyond most of us.

If you practice hard and do a lot of retreats, you might get up to 45 minutes or an hour, or sometimes an hour and a half. But that's about it.

[Speaker 2]
Is that the upper limit?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, I don't know. I don't think there's any limit to the human...

[Speaker 2]
It's going to start to change from 30 or 40 minutes.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I don't think there's any limit for a human being. I mean, we'll be enlightened, and we'll be able to do it for 24 hours a day. But I think, practically speaking, if you're working a job and living a normal life, then if you do some long retreats, you'll be able to get up to about an hour and a half, something like that.

And then I think that's sufficient for most of your goals. You know what I mean? Okay, so this will be a real short break.

[Speaker 2]
When you're inhaling the altar, and because you're doing it in slow motion, then I find myself holding my breath.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I think you don't want to hold your breath, okay? I mean, bring it in at whatever speed you have to, but try to practice taking... That's why I encourage people to take a full out breath first.

Most people, when you breathe out, you breathe out about half the air in your lungs on a normal breath. So consciously squish it in here, and squish it in here, and here, and get it all out. And then you'll have a nice long in-breath, you see?

And that'll be enough. And then when you get here, then start breathing again after they make contact and there's this light. Start breathing again, but keep focusing on it.

You don't have to hold the breath throughout the whole enjoyment of the light process, okay? Because that would be pretty short for most of us.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah? Yeah, definitely.

[Speaker 1]
Because everything is a projection. So actually, her appearance to you is going to change by your practicing loving her. It's very interesting.

We did this in Ireland. A lady was practicing it. Her daughter hadn't called her for ten years.

And the night after the last tonglen, she called her, you know, and said, I love you, and please come over. And you see, because that reality is created by your thoughts. So if you don't believe that, you're thinking self-existently.

By practicing loving your mother, she will change, because she's your projection. It's a very profound practice. You know, people think you have to go bake her a cake and make her eat it to affect her.

That's a self-existent thought. She's a projection of your mind, and if you practice loving her on your meditation seat, her reality will change. It's very profound.

Yes?

[Speaker 2]
Yesterday you were saying that you're not meant to use your lama as the object of tonglen. How does that relate to doing prayers for life and health?

[Speaker 1]
Ah, yeah, yeah. We're going to get there. It's a separate chapter here.

I actually wrote a separate thing on it. And Pabongka Rinpoche discusses it, and Nrtyadhara Bhadra discusses it. Briefly, the reason to pray for your lama's long life and health is so that you personally collect the good karma to see them stay a long life.

That's all. And the Sutra of Golden Light, I was telling some people yesterday, this is the second most popular book in Mongolia. They asked us to come back.

So I thought I'd better start boning up on it and teach them that one. And this is where the story of the tigress is. It's a beautiful sutra.

But the first chapter is dedicated to a bodhisattva who asks a question to Lord Buddha. He says, You've announced that you're going to die at age 81, which is 80 in Asia. And...

Or reverse, actually. Anyway. Yeah, we would count it as 80.

They would count it as 81. Something like that. But he says, Why did you announce that?

If you're an enlightened being, you don't have to die. And then there's this whole 20-page answer. He says, You can count the number of drops in the Ganges River.

You can count the stars in the sky. You can count the number of dust particles in the planet. But you can't count the number of years I'm going to live.

So I said 80 because I'm going to withdraw this emanation at 80 so that you guys will take me more seriously. And when you come to our class, you'll think, Oh, these classes are going to end someday. I'd better pay attention and learn seriously.

You know what I mean? So that's all. And when you truly pray for them to stay, then they stay longer.

There was a historical Buddha. I forget who it was. Sariputra, or I forget.

He didn't ask him to stay. This is Ananda. It's considered one of the greatest mistakes of all time.

And then he passed. He could have asked him and could have stayed, and he didn't. So Ananda didn't have the perception of him staying.

You see what I mean? Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Why is it important to take 15 years versus the last 15 years?

[Speaker 1]
I'm sorry, say again?

[Speaker 2]
At the end, in the program, why is it important to take 15 years?

[Speaker 1]
She's asking why you should be closer to your back. Normally when people say, in your heart, Westerners are doing a heart operation. They cut here and they open it here.

It's kind of off-center and it's up in the front. And then, as you learn more, people start to move it to the middle, towards the front. But really, ultimately, we're trying to work with chakras.

It's a preparation for working with chakras. And when they say heart, they mean the heart chakra. And I can't talk about that in this class, but it's a preparation for later.

[Speaker 2]
Can I have enlightened beings be awakened?

[Speaker 1]
That's fine, that's no problem at all. Yeah. If it's just like an enlightened energy or something like that.

Yeah, that's fine. The most important part of an enlightened being is their dharmakaya. The most important part of the dharmakaya is their emptiness.

Their emptiness is totally formless. So, that's probably a really good one. Yeah, the first time you meet an enlightened being, it will be their dharmakaya.

So, directly, knowingly. So, no problem. Although, I find generally scriptures say it's better to try to visualize somebody.

And for a lot of people, quite frankly, I grew up with Jesus' images. Somebody said enlightened being or holy being, that was the one that I could think of. And it's no problem.

If you understand what we call sangeki cinle, the holy deeds of the Buddha in the world, all virtuous people in the world and all virtues exhibited by anyone in the world is sangeki cinle. And when you study that subject in Prajnaparamita, in the monastery, it's like profound. You get this big hit in your head one day because you realize that whatever virtues have been exhibited by Christians in the whole last 2,000 years or Jews or anybody else, Muslims, are all the activity of the Buddha.

Not to say we're co-opting them, you see what I mean? I'm just saying that thing is the activity of enlightenment. And it doesn't matter where it's exhibited, what kind of people or what kind of country or what kind of time, it doesn't matter.

They are all the activity of the Buddha, of an enlightened being. So you don't have to feel strange about visualizing someone that you grew up with that was comfortable for you. And as you learn more about Buddhism, you can make them even more perfect in your mind.

If you want to play on your early bhaktiaks in this life, then go ahead. There's no problem with that. In the end, you'll realize that every person who influenced you for the better in your life was very likely an emanation of an enlightened being.

So much less people like Jesus or Muhammad or whatever. They're all like... As you get more advanced, you'll start to see that they are all emanations of your root lama.

We're going to cover two contemplations each time. Right now it will be five and six. Contemplation five is called which goes first, giving or taking?

The name of the practice is tonglen. Tong means giving. Len means taking.

So you might think that first you're supposed to give and then you're supposed to take. And then we have a selection here from Pabongka Rinpoche's Gift of Liberation Thrust into Your Hands. Sometimes translated as liberation in the palm of your hands.

The palm of the hand in English means that's your problem. It's in your hands. It's in the palm of your hand means it's right there or something like that.

The real meaning of the verb namdo lakso jangwa means to stick it in somebody's hand. It's like, hey, you want to get liberated here? Take it.

That's the real meaning. Now how to translate that is difficult. But it just means somebody takes liberation.

Pabongka Rinpoche is like, here. Bam. Take it.

It's like a gift. Just sticks it in your hands. Normally the palm of God's hand means he's taking care of you.

It's all in your hands now means it's up to you. But the real meaning of that, you have to get the feeling of, if you read this book, Pabongka Rinpoche is thrusting it into your hands. And he talks about the correct order of the practice.

Should you try to take away other people's suffering first? Or should you try to give them nice things first? Because if you look at the name of the thing it's tong len, which means give and then take.

Now in English giving and taking sounds better so I reversed it. So we called it the practice of giving and taking. Sorry, that follows the Tibetan.

But actually in Tibetan and in English you should reverse it. He says do the taking first. Take away their suffering first.

And we talked about it yesterday. It's no good to give a child a toy if he's still throwing up from something he ate the day before or something. First you fix their problems, then you make them happy.

That's just a natural progression. Because we have so many selections from so many lamas in these readings, you'll see some selections where due to the nature of your breath you do the giving first and the taking later. As I said, in Buddhism you always count a breath from out breath to in breath because it's considered auspicious in the higher teachings that everything is moving towards the center.

The ultimate goal of Buddhism in Dzogrim, the stage of completion in the highest stages of Tantra is to bring everything into the central channel. So in honor of that all visualization should go out and then in. Because it becomes important later.

So when you do breathing you always think of the out breath as the first half and the in breath as the second half. So you should do it... You'll see sometimes when they do it that way.

They do the giving first and the taking second in a single breath. And that's not the way we're going to do it. And not the way Pabongka Rinpoche wants you to do it.

He says, look, you can do it in a single breath that way. Many lamas are teaching it that way and that's fine. It has its own significance in this thing.

But if you're going to spend a half hour on tong and then spend a half hour on len or len and then tong then do it that way. Take all their sufferings first for like 20 minutes and then give them all happiness for like 20 minutes. That's okay.

Just do it that way. Just because it's so illogical to give somebody a toy while they're still throwing up. First you fix their flu.

Then you buy them a toy. Like that. In the next selection, which is six This is an explanation of the actual famous verse that I said you could recite as a mantra.

And this again is from Mucchadarabhadra is a master Mucchadarabhadra is a famous lama of the Vajrayogini lineage. He's very important in our Vajrayogini lineage and a very, very great writer and a great thinker. And so, example in the computer project we've input all his works already.

So, he was talking about the actual meaning of that verse from the Lama Chöpa from the Offering to Lamas. So we talked about that verse yesterday. It's on page 21.

That's the verse you could memorize and recite as you walk around New York City. And Mucchadarabhadra gives you the details of how to do that. He's like, okay, as you walk around you can say these lines and think about this and like that.

So you can read it in Contemplation 6. He points out, by the way, most verses in Tibetan have how many lines? Four.

Most, okay. If you look at all the other verses in the Lama Chöpa they have four. But there's five in this one.

Okay, why? He says, oh, there's this great Takpupa who felt that the first Panchen Lama was being too modest. And he didn't mention the first line is, my high holy Lama, Lord of all compassion.

Because if he taught his students to say that they'd be saying it to him. So he didn't put it in there. So the original verse had only four lines as written by the first Panchen Lama.

And it just said, you know, may I be able to take away the pain of all mother beings and like that. Then Takpupa, who was a student of the first Panchen Lama, came to him and said, you know, with your permission we're going to recite it to you this way. And that's the right way to do it.

So then he has to say yes. So the first line was added. And in Lucha Dharbada it discusses whether this now becomes scripture or not.

You see, there's different kinds of scripture. There's the word of the Buddha, right? It's the Kangyur, or Do.

Something the Buddha actually said. It's the Heart Sutra, the word of the Buddha. No.

There's lots of things in the Heart Sutra the Buddha never said. For example, the opening line, which is? Jigme Dagge Dugbe Dukshina.

That's being said by somebody much later who says, I heard the Buddha say this one time. So that part of that sutra is not a sutra. Take that out.

Then there's the Buddha doesn't say much, right? He says, like so, like so, at the end. Oh yeah, you're smart.

And then there's this whole sutra in the middle which is actually a conversation between two of the students. Now, we say this is the word of the Buddha. We call it Jigme Dagge Dugbe Dukshina, which means due to the Buddha's blessing.

The Buddha goes into meditation at the beginning of the Heart Sutra. He forces these students to have a conversation. They are puppets in his concentration.

His samadhi is just moving these two mouths. They probably sat around afterwards and wondered how they did it. You see what I mean?

So we say that's a special kind of word of the Buddha that's been allowed by blessings. So we have a loud word of the Buddha, a blessed word of the Buddha. Trees can make the word of the Buddha.

The ocean can make the sound of the Buddha. Those are all different words of the Buddha. And then there's one called a permitted word of the Buddha.

So this is like Jigme Dagge Dugbe Dukshina was permitted by the Buddha. So you can put it into a sutra. He said, okay, it's okay later if you say, I heard this one time.

You can add that to my sermons. And they'll still be authentic. So here he's saying, this is called granted, granted sacred speech.

In other words, the first Panchen Lama told Thakpurpa, okay, now this now becomes part of the Panchen Lama's words. So it's legal, and it's important, and that's the first line. Then he goes into the visualization, the slight difference, and you'll see only in the color as the smoke is going away.

The rest is the same. Then I think finally what you might find interesting is Lucha Dharmabhadra on how to make the whole thing work. We're going to talk, and we have to talk about, does this thing really work?

Can you really take somebody's cancer away from them? Remember that we're not talking them or you. That's a misperception about Dong Lin.

We're not saying you have to take their cancer away and put it in your liver. The idea, of course, is to take it out of them, be willing to take it into you, and then destroy it within one breath. And it's considered very inauspicious and very bad form and bad luck and bad karma in a way to leave it in you like black.

To say, okay, I take your cancer and then leave it there is considered just wrong. And it's considered unhealthy. It could hurt you.

So you have to destroy it within the first breath. Just, boom, gone. And nobody has it.

That's the idea. You have to be willing to take it, but you don't take it. This is that thing about, and we're going to talk about it later, are there any poor people in the world?

Yes. Did the Buddha perfect the perfection of giving? Yes.

No, he didn't. He's a failure. There's still poor people in the world.

This is the argument. Is he perfect in the act of giving? Yes.

Does that mean that there were no poor people in India two and a half thousand years ago? No. It's a mental thing.

It's a willingness to give all that you have. The perfection of giving is when, with an understanding of emptiness, you are totally willing to give everything you have. Okay?

Your body, everything. Okay? But that doesn't mean that if there's poor people still left in the world, you failed.

Something like that? Okay, if you still see angry people around you, or people are still bad to you, or people accuse you of things, or things like that, that doesn't mean your practice is not perfect. Okay?

It means that due to your past bad karma, you're being forced to see these things. But your new karma can be perfect. You know what I mean?

The problem is it doesn't take effect immediately. Okay? So there'll be this period of transition between being a lousy samsaric being and being an enlightened being where you're doing exactly the right thing, but bad things are still happening to you.

And you've got to get used to that. That's the gap. Because it takes time to kick in.

So you can be acting perfectly, and people can still be accusing you, or hating you, or attacking you, or anything else. You have to get used to that. That's the nature of samsara.

If you don't have correct worldview, you might give it up. You see what I mean? If you don't understand that, you might get disappointed or discouraged.

You might say, I've been nice to my boss. Michael Rhodes said, don't shout back. I didn't shout back for a whole six months now, and he's still screaming at me.

I give up. That means you don't understand the way it works. It takes time to kick in.

The nature of karma is that it has to ripen, and it takes time for that to happen. So that's the idea of what's going on in this process. That's a clue about how to think about whether tung len is working or not.

It's not going to work like that. Because nothing works like that. You have to get used to that.

I'll give you a little taste of the worldview argument. Why are you doing the tung len? What are the expected results?

What is supposed to happen when you do tung len? Do you actually take away their sickness? Do you actually give them your good karma?

Can you do that? And how is this whole thing supposed to work? It's not only a question with tung len.

It's a question with every single good deed you ever do. People get freaked out when I tell them how tung len really works. And I say, guess what?

Every good deed you ever do is the same. You can give somebody some money, the last $10 you have, sacrifice everything to give it to them, and they go out and buy some drug and eat it and overdose and die. Did you fail in your practice?

What's happening here? Where's the real cause and effect? Why be a good person?

We've got to talk about it later, this afternoon. All I want to say is that in reading 6 at the end, and you should read it, Mucchadamabhadra introduces you to the idea of an act of truth. Say, act of truth.

It's the most holy thing. It's the denpeyto. Denpeyto.

The power of the truth of an action. Okay, I mean, the power of doing the right thing. It has a separate power, unimaginable power of truth.

You see what I mean? Gandhi was into it, you know what I mean? Gandhi's telling all the Indians in India, if you do the right thing and swear by it, the British will leave our country.

And they're like, by the way, that's the non-self-existent way to get the British out of your country. And then all his friends are saying, no, we have to blow them up. We have to bomb their trains, kill the soldiers, get their guns.

And he's saying, no, no, that's self-existent method. There's a big difference. There's a huge worldview clash here.

Gandhi's saying, by being kind to them and swearing by your kindness, they will leave your country. And other people are saying, come on, Gandhi. We got to get a hold of some guns here.

That's how you get people out of your country. And there's this clash of worldviews. And every time you're faced with a problem in your life, you have to make the same decision.

Are you going to try to fix it self-existent way, which doesn't work? Or are you going to fix it power-of-truth way? And it's a very interesting thing.

So at the end of a Don't Lend meditation, you do this power-of-truth thing. It's on page 28. And there's a prayer there, very famous.

If... If I wanted this to really happen, if the Buddha is real, if emptiness really exists and can get you enlightened, then may all this meditation I just did come true. And they say you can turn back the Mississippi River with this.

Okay? I mean, Gandhi's river, okay? But they say you can do it.

Stand on the edge of the Mississippi River and say, if it's true that I did this don't lend with a good heart. And if it's true that the Buddha really exists, and if emptiness is really what they always say it is when they do those diamond-cutter courses, then may the Mississippi River flow backwards. They say it'll flow backwards.

I didn't try it yet because it disrupts a lot of farming and stuff. But... But anyway, at the end of a Don't Lend meditation, take a few minutes and do an act of truth.

If it's true that I, at my bug level, had a small good intention here and really wanted this to work, then may it work. May they... May they be cured of their illness.

May they have all happiness. You know what I mean? And then you have to make sure your intentions were pretty good.

You can say, if my intentions were 40% good, or something like that, okay? And it will start to work. You see?

You have to get used to doing an action because it's right, and not because you will see any immediate result. You have to get used to that. That's how Buddhism works.

You have to get used to that. There's a power of doing something because it's right, and not because you're going to see any immediate result. Gandhi is in South Africa.

He's got this car that they're requiring minorities to carry. He refuses to carry the car. He's throwing the car into this fire, and the British policeman is standing there with a stick, and guess what he does?

Now he's saying, if you put that in the fire, I'm going to break your arm. So what does he do? He throws it in the fire.

Act of truth. What happens? He gets his arm broken, okay?

Is that cause and effect? No. You've got to get used to that.

Getting your arm broken is because you hurt somebody in the past. It has nothing to do with throwing your immigration card in the fire. Get used to it.

That's worldview. You've got to think like that. You must do the right thing, whatever the apparent cause is.

The apparent cause has nothing to do with doing the right thing. You must do the right thing. And then in the short term, somebody might break your arm.

It has nothing to do with you did the right thing. Doing the right thing can only have holy, beautiful, paradise-creating results. And then in the short term, maybe somebody's going to hurt you or do something to you.

You just have to, with your perfection and wisdom, you have to understand that these are not connected. There's no relation between you doing the right thing and someone criticizing you or hurting you or something like that. And if you keep this up over a period of months or years, it's an extraordinary power.

It's called Gale Jigme. Nagarjuna named one of his books that then you have nothing to fear in the world. It liberates you to do the right thing at any given moment.

And you're afraid of nothing. Fearless. Someone's standing over you.

It happened to me recently. You're going to lose $200,000 if you pursue this course of action with me in the next five minutes. And I said, OK.

I mean, it's hard, OK? And I did it because I know that losing the $200,000 has nothing to do with a proper course of action, doing the right thing. And you have to get used to that.

If you act this way for six months, a year, you will see the results. What it means is you're no longer doing what you do because of what other people think or because of what other people may do to you. You're doing it because you know it's the right thing to do and can only have holy results.

You see what I mean? And this whole transformation takes place in your life. You are liberated to do the right thing all the time.

And the other stuff sorts itself out. You don't get your arm broken after about a year or so. OK?

All right? It's incredible. So we're talking about power of truth.

At any given moment, do the thing which you know to be right, regardless of the apparent results, because those are not the results of what you just did. The results are something older. And if you keep up that course of action, live by truth, then you're happy all the time.

Because you know you... Think of what it feels like to do the right thing all the time. And not have any...

You're not worried if someone attacks you or breaks your arm or something. You just know you're doing the right thing. Now, can you have a misperception about what's the right thing?

Obviously you can. That will sort itself out. But mostly, you know what the right things are.

I mean, there's a few gray areas that you're not sure about. But 99%, you know what's right. You're just afraid to do it because you won't get what you want if you do it.

What I'm saying is, if you get what you want or don't get what you want, it didn't have anything to do with doing the right thing. You have to do the right thing. And you'll always get what you want.

I don't want to say this to my boss because he'll hate me and he won't give me a raise. You have to say it. If it's truth, you have to do it.

Because it cannot have a bad result. If you get a bad result from it, that's due to some older karma. And okay, you know, use it up.

That's fine. Is there a question? If you persistently intend to the best of your ability to do the right thing, will you then, will the consequence of that also be that you need to know what the right thing is?

Absolutely. Very lexo-lexo. Well spoken.

Doing the right thing leads to wisdom. What he's saying is, if you try to do the right thing and maybe you're doing the wrong thing sometimes, will it help you understand later what the right thing is better? Absolutely.

[Speaker 2]
There is a story by Ram Dass that a guru said, say the truth, love everybody. And for him it was something. So even if the right thing might be to say the truth, you still have to do the love.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Truth delivered with love. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I have a question about karma. And it was sort of sparked by your name asking the question yesterday.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, that was so hard I ran downstairs.

[Speaker 2]
The question is, in light of time kind of moving, what came first, reaction or reaction?

[Speaker 1]
Ah, good question. She said, given the time had no beginning, what came first, you know? The bad karma in the past or the bad karma you got by reacting to the past.

Something like that, you know. It's really, you don't have to think of it in such a complicated way. According to Buddhism, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

According to Buddhism, it's a bad question. It's a faulty question. Neither came first.

Both have existed forever. In principle, what came first, bad karma to react to or your reaction to a bad karma? It's a bad question.

We say, no beginning. Now, very briefly, a Western person would say, due to their Western bias, due to the culture they grew up in, they'll say, if you can't point to a first moment of things, then things have no beginning and you're not being logical. You're not pointing to a first cause, then you're being illogical.

You're being unscientific. We say, if you point to a first cause, you're being illogical and you're being unscientific. It's ridiculous to posit a first cause because that must have been the result of a previous action or energy or movement of something.

It's ridiculous to say movement started with nothing. That's truly ridiculous. And it's just a Western blind...

We all have blind spots. Tibetans have blind spots. Americans have blind spots.

That's a blind spot. Of course things have no beginning. Come on.

The Big Bang started from zero? What triggered it? I made a joke like that in class.

Some physicist was in class. He said, now the New York Times says there was a Big Bang before the Big Bang that helped the Big Bang start. So I said, oh, now they're stuck in the Buddhist viewpoint.

Because there had to be a Big Bang for the Big Bang that started the Big Bang. Of course there's no beginning. That's obvious.

I don't want to end like that. Think of the act of truth. Do the right thing and swear by it.

There's two steps there. Do the right thing. Say to your boss, frankly, that's a really dumb action.

You shouldn't do that. And then swear by it. That's a separate action.

That's a second thing that you do. I swear by the truth of what I said. May goodness prevail.

Sarva mangalam. And then if things explode in the next five minutes, you did your act of truth. You've got to get used to that.

Because they will explode. Gandhi got beat up how many times? He refused to accept that wrong worldview.

And he's in some paradise now. You think he got shot? Forget it.

He's in some paradise now. I mean, living your life like that, day after day, refusing to have wrong worldview, refusing not to speak the truth and do what's true, you can't have a bad result. You've got to get used to that.

You must reach a tantric paradise. Okay? If you keep up that course of action.

And frankly, it feels right, doesn't it? I mean, in the few times you've told your boss... Not in a bad way, okay?

Not in an inappropriate way. Not at the wrong time. Not when you knew it wouldn't have any effect.

But when the time was right, just to speak the truth, at whatever cost to your personal career, is a Buddhist way to act. That's correct worldview. And tonglen has to be done that way.

Okay? I'm taking away your pain, and by the truth of my desire to take it away, may it be taken away. Now, how that happens, we've got to discuss later.

Okay? All right. This is the end of session three.