Серия ежедневной практики, курс 04 — Семичастная практика развития доброго сердца (1999, Гоа), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
The Asian classics Institute presents the seven-point practice for developing a good heart with Geshe Michael Roach Recorded live in Goa, India session one

[Speaker 1]
There's some prayers that you'll get in the book I think after the first class So long All right Uh Okay We just came from Kathmandu, I'm sorry, Bodhgaya We had a very technical teaching it was about Diamond Cutter Sutra, it was about emptiness and You know, it's a lot of details and a lot of this and that and complicated, you know Then Goa seems a little bit different and Then Bihar and Seems like we should change mood so This class is about a thing called Lojong. Lojong is a special kind of Buddhist teaching from Tibet.

It was designed, it was first taught openly about a thousand years ago and Mainly it's just about you know, when you come to Goa from Bihar Then suddenly your mind gets wider, you know, they say kuyangbo in Tibetan means your mind just opens up and you feel more relaxed and everyone's like just more loose and less tense and people's clothing changed roises, but no And You know everybody who had a cold and was sick got better and you feel this kind of well-being, you know I mean for a few days You feel this kind of Relaxed or something different, you know, and then after a few days here, it starts to go away Okay, because you get used to the place. I mean and I remember I was just before I went to India The first time I was in Hawaii And my brother was there.

He was a very good surfer and so I went there to surf with him and we surfed for six months and smoked marijuana and ate crackers and peanut butter and lived off food stamps and And I couldn't stand it. It just drove me crazy. When I get to a place like this, I get nervous again, you know No, it just drove me crazy.

I couldn't stand it and I actually ran away I actually just got in a car and went to the airport and gave my money and flew away, you know and after that, my brother killed himself, you know, and I mean a few months later and He had it everything perfect. You know, everything was just Perfect, you know the waves there are perfect. The beach was perfect.

He had two houses. He was watching two different mansions for different people it was like Hawaii 5-0, you know and No, what's his name? Magnum PI No, this rich guy gave him a house to watch, you know, it was a mansion on on Hilo and with a it's all private beach and everything and and after a while you just You can't maintain that happy mind.

There's something wrong, you know, I mean, and I don't know I mean and that's why I came to India and When I saw everybody get diarrhea and Katmandu and Burkina Faso, I was you know, I felt like coming home And I Remembered that first trip and all the people I met and the attempt to To try to get a happy state of mind and try to keep it for a while you know, I mean and I can't think of a better teaching than lojong. So I mean hopefully the beach and the Sun and the ocean will make you put you in a state of mind like a happy state of mind and then You can switch over to lojong after about three days And try to stay there, you know, I mean and lojong is designed for that and I personally It's one of the sweetest parts of Buddhism. It's Just more or less how to stay in a very happy state of mind all the time so I'm gonna write I'm gonna write Tibetan on the board because Two reasons one is to impress you that I know what I'm talking about And secondly That you learn something and then it stays in your mind the seed stays in your mind, okay, so it's good for you So also we have the stupid homework thing and please do it.

Okay, then the practice will stay with your mind and We're gonna go through a way to meditate on lojong. It's a divided out into a one-week practice so, you know, like Monday is Compassion day Saturday is emptiness day, you know Wednesday is change problems and opportunities day And I'm going to teach you a special meditation based on lojong. But first I thought you'd like to hear a little bit of history of This teaching how it came to exist in Tibet Who used to use it?

What its name is things like that. I think at the beginning of a class It's good to hear about all that stuff. Then come on you have time here on the beach You can sit and do the homework.

You can all sit in a circle and cheat do it together and You know, please do it because then when you leave you remember everything and then you can actually do the meditations and things like that Okay So first I want to tell you the word And I'll ask you to repeat the word okay, then it stays in your mind better it stays and it sticks in your mind say lojong Okay, lojong has been translated many different ways some people say mental development some people say thought transformation Some people say mental training lo means mind and jong means to practice something or to make something pure and What it means in this case is Very specific, it means to practice thinking like a bodhisattva Okay, this lo doesn't mean general mind.

It doesn't mean like mental training in the sense of SAT or College exam when I heard mental training I had in mind my college examinations It means to practice thinking like a bodhisattva, okay, and the lo means Bodhicitta it means a Kind of ultimate love or ultimate compassion for other people. Okay, so that's really it's just trying to think that way Trying to learn to think how to think like Mother Teresa or somebody like Gandhi or something like that. Okay I'm gonna write for you the Enemy of lojong.

Okay, and we'll be talking about him all during the course Those of you are learning Tibetan that Chalkboard is a good example because all the strokes should be made down. You see I mean When you're writing Tibetan with a bamboo pen, which is the word for pen in Tibetan is bamboo You can only make strokes a certain way. You can't go back on it.

So it's it's a way to get your calligraphy better actually Say run turns in run turns in Run means myself. Just myself changing means cherishing Taking care of myself watching out for myself and not taking care of other people. Okay, this is the big enemy of lojong See lojong is trying to think like a compassionate person and then long chance in is Just thinking about yourself and we all have it it's rooted in What we call ignorance or not understanding emptiness.

It's rooted in that but it's a it's an emotion where it's just thinking about yourself mainly and you're not thinking about other people and If you want to keep the goa state of mind You know, I mean that you have for the first two days here Really? Like the difference it feels between here and Bihar, you know, if you want to keep that Kuyango feeling that mellow feeling happy feeling It all depends on how much you can destroy wrong tendon. You know, how how much can you repress or how much can you Diminish your tendency to take care of yourself and not think about other people because your happiness will be Exactly that much, you see what I mean?

So generally since most of us Haven't ever gone into a training course of how to stop thinking about yourself too much Then we have a very high rang chenzhen and a proportionately low Happiness level so at the beginning you can make a lot of progress So I mean in the first few weeks that you try lojong You can get rid of some very obvious Tendencies to take care of yourself like when you eat cookies you eat ten and give one away or something or when you have tea you pour yourself three teas and nobody else gets any or or you know, you go to a hotel and you break all this stuff and there's something like that and Or you just don't think about it. And so Our tendency to think about what we want is so strong in its natural form since birth If no one ever told you about these things and if no one ever trained you to stop doing it You've got a long way to go. And so that's a good thing because you can make a lot of progress Just by starting to think about it and then your happiness level will go up So as rang chenzhen goes down happiness goes up and they work like that.

They work in a symbiotic relationship Okay, the less you're worried about yourself The more happy you get, you see what I mean? And that's just karma and we can talk about that later But and since most of us don't think about it much the minute you start thinking about it You start getting happier right away. So the first few weeks are like dessert and then you get down to you know Your real tendency to take care of yourself first and that's harder Okay, so then the progress becomes more difficult and then the happiness becomes more lasting Okay, so anyway even just this afternoon during the break to start thinking about what other people would like to drink or eat or take care of somebody else think about somebody else you can immediately start to feel the Happier and then you'll get stuck in about three weeks Okay, then you get down to the real tendency and then that takes a lot of work. The purpose of this particular training is to Anticipate that day in about three weeks if you practice it seriously, you'll get stuck Against the real tendency to take care of yourself. And then we're going to Talk about that one right now.

First I want to introduce you to there are many kinds of lojongs. There are oh maybe 30 or 40 different famous lojongs and they've all been collected into a text in the 13th century by somebody named Wuqian and I'm going to just teach you one of them. Okay, I'm gonna give you the name of that.

Okay, say lojong dun dun ma lojong dun dun ma Okay, lojong means lojong. Okay practicing to think like a bodhisattva and then dun Means points or steps. Okay, and then dun ma means seven Seven so seven it's called something's called seven point Training to think like a bodhisattva or something like that.

Okay Sometimes they shorten it to dun dun ma the seven points. Okay, it's very very short It was obviously passed down Verbally for a long time. Obviously, it wasn't written down for a long time and I want to tell you a little bit about the history Who wrote this lojong?

Up until 1100 it was called a kagyama This is a new phrase, I don't think you've heard this one most of you guys Say kagyama kagyama Ka means like the kan kangyur, the canon and it means the word of the Buddha Teaching okay, it can also mean a command of a king got the word. Okay ga means like the gyal mahamudra chakya chenpo chakya chenpo and it means mudra mudra means Seal like a stamp that you put on something and kagyama is a kind of sacred Book in Tibet that was hidden and they didn't show it to people. It means seal text and into that the government would take very Controversial or very in a sense dangerous teachings that Shouldn't be exposed to most people and they would keep them under seal.

So the book would have a seal on it It was kept in the papala and only special could look at it and That was called a kagyama. So kagyama means like a sealed text. It would have a special seal on it with a thread in it and you'd have to break the thread to get into the text and These are called kagyama.

So up until the 1100s the book you're going to study was kagyama Okay, it was sealed and it was passed on mostly by memory People would memorize it and pass it on to the next generation Kokchu is the same thing as a kagyama. Kok means those of you who know Buddhist maze, kokyu means Like hidden reality or like emptiness is in the category of kokyu. Kok means hidden or very deep or Difficult to perceive and then chu means dharma.

Kokchu means a Teaching that was kept under wraps. It was kept hidden from normal people for up to the 1100s Okay So the text you're going to study, Lojong Dungyula, was kept secret and passed on from people Up until the 1100s. Okay I'll tell you who's the first person who taught it according to the secret lineages, which were written down later by People like Pabongka Rinpoche or Moojibaba Bhadra He says that this teaching actually originated with Lord Buddha So the first person to teach Lojong Dungyula was Lord Buddha He taught it to Maitreya who in those days was Disguised as a plain old bodhisattva.

Okay, student of Lord Buddha and the next major figure in the lineage is Sir Lingpa, Lama Sir Lingpa, who lived in Indonesia and As you may know, Lord Atisha went to study with him in around 1000 A.D So Lord Atisha took a very dangerous trip to Indonesia on a ship, came back with the teachings on bodhicitta or compassion and he learned that from Sir Lingpa So Sir Lingpa passed it on to Lord Atisha Lord Atisha, who was one of the great lamas from India who brought Buddhism to Tibet and stayed at Nalanda Monastery.

He was the jewel of Nalanda Monastery and the Tibetans Talked him into coming to Tibet Then a war broke out in Nepal and he didn't get home for a long time. Actually He stayed in Tibet for a long time So he came from Nalanda. He saw the ruins I think Then it was passed on to his great disciple Dromtönche.

Dromtönche Is a very interesting figure in Buddhism in Tibet. He facilitated Lord Atisha's Mission in Tibet. Like every time Lord Atisha needed money or food or a few donkeys or a yakas to carry things This guy would show up at the last minute You know reminds me of some people like in New York and Australia Mongolia, people that show up at the last minute when you're having a teaching and you know suddenly the money is there or Stuff you need is there.

They look a lot like Dromtönche. Dromtönche is interesting. He never became a monk.

He was a layman and in the Pictures of the lamas of the lineage you can always tell him even without the caption because he's got a ponytail He's got this bun and his hair is tied back and He looks at him like an amazing person. He helped Atisha build one of the great monasteries of Tibet called Ra Deng. And it was at Ra Deng that Je Tsongkhapa later wrote Lama Chamo and the Yiminshi Gyumri, other great texts.

So He passed down to Dromtönche. Dromtönche is like the grandfather of all the Kadampa lamas. Kadampa's were like these fanatical first Tibetan Buddhists who risked their lives to go to India and Came back and they would go and somebody would go to Kashmir or somebody would go to Bengal or somebody go to Bihar And they would come back with different teachings You know like Somebody would come back with two of the tantras and somebody else would come back with Buddhist logic and somebody else would come home with Perfection of wisdom and then they spread this germ virus among each other. To draw the Family tree of the Kadampa lamas is impossible because it looks like a tumbleweed Because they would just teach each other. You see I mean it's like as if Some Westerners went to India and they each came back with a different teaching and then they taught it to each other first And then they started spreading it to other people some of the great Kadampa lamas who spread this teaching were named Potawa and Sharawa and If you want to see their pictures Elizabeth Heimberg Did you do it yet?

She took digital photographs with Rob of all these lamas from great scriptures and Lama Sopa asked them to Fax them to Root Institute because they want to make some statues of these early Kadampa lamas and they don't know what they look like You know So you got to get Potawa, that's why you have to get Döntingde, Potawa and then Sharawa And these people lived between the 1000 AD and 1100 AD So the teaching you're going to learn was passed on for that long you can say 16 centuries Privately, quietly from person to person and you can see it in the text. The text is extremely It feels old and it feels very The words are very ancient and the thing is obviously meant to be memorized. It's very short You know, I mean the root text is only a few pages, one or two pages, two pages in English Okay, and English is fast, you know, English takes a lot more than you think Then you're going to have a commentary That we found, commentaries are kind of rare on this.

By the way After it was written down Some of the great people who taught it were the 5th Dalai Lama, who's called the Great 5th Mookshu Dharmabhadra, who's a big Lama in the Vajravini lineage, those of you studying Vajravini Supposed to be a former life of Pabongka Rinpoche and then Pabongka Rinpoche passed it down to Chidyar Rinpoche, Chidyar Rinpoche to My root Lama Ken Rinpoche, Geshe Rosen Thakshin, who passed it on to us So you're now the next person in the lineage.

It's a direct oral chain Rinpoche had a, in his private papers, a Commentary on the Rojo Ndungma, which he allowed us to copy. That's what you're reading is It's old. I don't know who wrote it.

There's not even, you know, we've got thousands of catalogs in the Electronic database now. We can't identify who wrote it. Apparently it was passed down secretly also So it's a very interesting commentary that you have, you will get in the meeting.

Okay I'd like to tell you a little bit about the person who finally wrote it down. In the 1100s There was a Lama named Chikawa Geshe Chikawa Say Geshe Chikawa Geshe Chikawa By the way, the word Geshe In the days of the Kadampas, before the Kadampas in India, it was called Yadamitra And it means spiritual friend. And then when the Kadampas began, Geshe Became a title for like a learned Kadampa scholar or teacher.

And then when the first great monasteries of the Galupas were built in the 1400s Sara was built in the early 1400s I Think 1412 Which you're going to visit next on your trip It became a title for a person who had mastered five great books. It used to be ten great books and It got shortened to five. So It used to be Kachupa meant a master of the ten great books, which even nowadays no one can identify for me I've asked many people.

What are they? Not only are there no Kachupas around, there's nobody who knows exactly what the ten were then it became a Kangapa, which is a master of the five great books, which is what the Geshe course is now and People here have several people here today have finished that whole course They'll be taking their final exams in February Hope you're all nervous. Okay You can spell Geshe Chikawa's name several different ways.

So if you ever see it a different way, don't worry about it I'll give you his dates He took this teaching Lodro and Vendima and he started to Teach it to a lot of his students and then eventually he was into helping people with leprosy people of lepers and he found that if they understood the meaning of the Lodro properly as I'll try to convey to you. Okay, if you understand this teaching In its context of emptiness, you know, if you understand the emptiness of this teaching you can actually use it to Transform not just your state of happiness, but even physical problems. So he began to teach this Lodro to people with leprosy and cured a lot of them.

A lot of them used this Lodro. They started to do this meditations, the seven meditations and They began to get cured so the teaching began to be called Zeche. Ze means leprosy and Che means Dharma.

So they call it the leprosy Dharma and It got to be such a big thing that I think he did in the text It says that he decided that he should make it public. He took off the Kalyama He made it he took off the seal, you know And then he decided that This is so beneficial and that people by his generation seemed to be capable of learning it Properly that he decided to make it public and then it became a Tsogche. Tsogche means something you can teach in public As opposed to a Kokche.

So he began to teach it to to the public. Okay What was the problem up till then, you know, why why go, you know 16th centuries without teaching it to anyone. It's a very subtle thing The most basic Principle of this teaching is that it makes sense to take care of other people before you take care of yourself Okay, that it That it's a holy action a sacred act to Think about other people before you think about yourself and that's the whole point of this module You know the whole point of what we're going to do for the next four or five days All the teachings you're going to get all the things I'm writing on the whole point of everything is to try To learn how to think about other people first and how to think about yourself second you see I mean and that's The most sacred teaching there is in Buddhism up to the time of Geshe Chukawa the great Lamas checked the people living around them and They realized that they couldn't get it.

You see I mean they realized that if they got up and said You know, if you're really intelligent you would take care of other people first and then take care of yourself and that's the key to happiness is to watch out for what other people need first and Always be thinking about other people and then think of yourself second is the key to happiness and They checked the people around them they checked the people that were living in their times and The people that they could reach with this teaching and they made a decision that they couldn't understand it. Lorma chumba means It's a very common expression in Buddhism meaning They didn't have enough goodness To grasp what was going on and they would take it the wrong way They would they would reject it.

You see I mean they would think it was foolish or naive or letting yourself be Taken advantage of by other people if you put them first and you put yourself second They were they recognized they have this power to judge a disciple's Aptitude a disciple's goodness how much they can understand and then there are many many many levels of Dharma that are not being taught even now Okay, they're called the culture or they understand that a normal person Wouldn't be able to Handle that teaching they were disrespected you see and there are many teachings even now there are many ways of Practicing Dharma that are still Kagyama, but are still culture and not passed down in public and Just given to special disciples Because other people wouldn't understand it. They would misinterpret it or they think it was crazy or something dirty or something illogical or something naive and And so there are still a lot of teachings like that By Geshe Chigala's time and I think because of his success with the Lapras and things He judged that there were enough people around who were good enough to understand it that he started to teach it openly Okay, so that if somebody asks, you know, why keep Mojo secret for 16 centuries? It's that Most people when you start talking about this idea That you could be happier if you would stop thinking about yourself and take care of other people first They would just reject it outright offhand they would reject it because it just sounds crazy I Sometimes sit and fantasize about the first person who discovered it I fantasize about this caveman up on a hill and he kills a deer and he's eating it and And it's very hard to get deer or something like that and then the deer rolls off the cliff and falls down to the next caveman's cave and He takes it and eats it and then the first guy the next day gets two deer you know and he He's like this genius caveman and he figures out that it's because he gave away one deer And he got two deer the next day like imagine who could have met Could be the first person to imagine that By giving away something you get more bad. By watching out for other people you would get everything you ever dreamed of I mean and then You take it for granted that cars exist or spacecraft exist or You know Laser discs exist and things you take it for granted You assume that you would be intelligent enough to make them or invent them but really people who can make leaps of genius like that like Da Vinci or Columbus or people who could Galileo who can see the world in a whole new way are very rare You know for someone to discover Electricity or something is you use it all the time So you think you're smarter than people who didn't use electricity, but we're not smart enough to think of those things. It was one extraordinary person who saw a new pattern on a new way of looking at things like Edison and These are the people who practice the Lojong in the early years people who made this leap of intellect to realize that you can get what you want or you can become happier if you stop worrying about yourself and start taking care of other people first. You see what I mean?

And it's such a difficult idea, and it's so unnatural and abnormal for us that you tend to Just reject it. You know like you're polite enough not to leave right now But whether or not you'll do it is another question, and that's why it was kept secret so long. The karma of hearing it and Disrespecting it is very very grave.

It's very bad It's very serious bad karma to hear about this idea, and then reject it. You know I mean to actively say It's stupid the most Common objection you hear is it's naive to think that by taking care of other people I will get what I want you know especially like in business or something You know if you go to a businessman, and you say which I have been in business for 15 years in New York corporation right and and to express some of these ideas you know like the best way to have a successful company is to Take each individual employee and find out what they would most like to happen with their lives Or what thing would make them most happy and most satisfied with their career?

And to make that the main emphasis of your company. It's just so Such a strange idea to most people that they would reject it and to reject it is a very serious bad karma this is one of the keys to the universe you know this is one of the laws as Great as gravity or something and then to spit on it to reject it Is a very serious bad karma, so that's why it was kept secret for so long. Lamas Identified there in among their students they chose those who would Grasp it who would not disrespect it and who would not see it in the wrong way And then they taught it to them slowly, and that's how it was passed on then by Geshe Chikawa's time He judged that there were enough people around Who saw its benefit that he began to teach it openly and that's why we have it now as an open teaching, okay? so that's a little history of Lozang Danduma I'm Going to go on to the first of the seven points and in each class we'll do one or or more of the seven points, but we've also organized the seven points into a Series of meditations that you can do every week.

I have a lot of I'm going on a long retreat in March three years silent retreat and mostly silent and You know a lot of my students are coming and saying what should I do you know? I don't know what to do you taught a lot of stuff, but you know do you have like a Schedule or a proposal for a meditation practice. This is one.

That's very very Holy very sacred, it's very Deceptive in that it looks very simple But it's a very very nice one, so if you want if you have in mind You know what am I going to do when we get back from Sarah? You know what I'm going to do with my life. What am I going to do my daily practice?

This is a very appropriate one. You know you can take this to be The one that I think would be the most useful for most people here, okay? This lojong dungyong is very brief, very simple, very appropriate for a person in the West who has a family or a job and who's busy and But still needs something very powerful, okay, and you'll find that if you practice it well It has a mental benefit, and then it has a physical benefit if you can cure leprosy which it did It could definitely cure your personal problems.

You know and I've seen it many times physical problems people with bad backs or bad knees or other health problems It can do both. It can take care of the mental part, and it takes care of the physical part I don't think you can be really happy if you feel bad physically And that would be part of it, right? And it has an effect on equal number and why it has that effect we'll be talking about it So the first of the seven steps, okay?

I'll just mention it I'll do a little bit about it Then I'd like to take a break and you guys can have something to drink or something to eat, and then we'll start again I'll read you the root text It's exactly one line long. Okay. It says by the way.

I'll also give you the The loom as we go okay, so you'll have the oral Transmission okay, there's two parts to getting a teaching in a lineage Right if I teach you the meaning Then you become the next person in the link in chain of people who've learned this and practiced it That's by explaining it And then I'll read the text out loud and then you get the oral transmission also as I received it from my teacher Who received it from the Dalai Lama's teacher who received it from Pabongka Rinpoche? Who's a couple of generations after Murthy Dalai Lama and then it goes back like that to back to Geshe Chakala and before that So first line That's all Dumble means first Mondo means preliminary practices Doc means there's going to be more than one Don't love means you have to train yourself In the preliminary practices, okay, and this is referring to How you start the meditation, so this will be Sunday morning, okay, you're going to get a sheet that will give you all the days but Sunday is called what do I call it foundation day? Foundation means there's three Meditations that you can choose from on Sundays Okay, and that will be all meditations From the first line You know first you have to study the preliminaries, okay in the preliminaries there are three kinds different kinds of meditation and you can do any one so I'd say, you know on the first Sunday of the month do one maybe on the next Sunday do another one and The way to choose them is by how you feel at the time, okay the first of the three meditations is called a Rejoicing meditation. Lama Tsongkha was very big on this We asked him for three year retreat advice a couple of weeks ago a week ago and It was at the end of the interview we had like three minutes and we said by the way He had the advice and that was a mistake, right? He went on for two hours But he was very big on the rejoicing one, okay, it's I'll show it to you later It's called down draw Down draw literally means thinking about everything that's going right with your life, you know, like thinking about little progresses you've made Thinking about how fortunate you are Thinking about how lucky you are to be alive How lucky you are to have a decent brain How lucky you are to be fairly healthy? How lucky you are to be exposed to the Dharma to be in a place where Dharma is taught and we'll go through that After the break so that would be the first Meditation that's advice for people who are getting a little down, you know, like if you're Sunday comes and you don't feel very good. I'm Sunday morning choose this one.

Okay, and that's supposed to be a good especially in deep meditation antidote for Gross forms of what we call mental dullness she more which is a number one. It's one of the most serious Obstacles to meditation. This is where you feel sleepy because you didn't sleep enough on Saturday night, right right?

No or You ate too much there on the weekend or something like that when you feel a latitude or bored or dull or Also, if you don't feel very happy, you feel sort of depressed then you should choose the first one, which is Rejoicing meditation. Okay Um Second one is called She won't meet that far and I'll go through them. This is a death meditation And you know like everybody else in America.

I got a hold of the Tibetan Book of the Dead before I met these mamas and It talked about all these purple lines and green lines and yellow lines, by the way later. They told me don't read that book It's wrong. It's it's there are other books about the death process which are correct But that one is known among the Lamas to be mistaken.

So just forget that one Okay, you can get a better one from there are like 20 better ones. That one happens to be Have a lot of errors in the presentation. So they say don't learn that one Okay, and if you learn Vajrayogini Tantra or other tantras, you can learn a proper death meditation So I thought death meditation was you know Like close your eyes and pretend that there's an IV hooked up to you and hear the beep beep beep and then hear it go flat, you know and Then you know imagine seeing all this weird stuff and there is a meditation like that.

You can learn it later. Okay? That's not what death meditation is.

We're going to go through a good death meditation Death meditation is good for people who have trouble prioritizing their life Especially people who are too busy, you know, if your life seems too busy and you seem like you're having trouble Concentrating on anything like at the end of the day you feel like you haven't accomplished anything Like you maybe you've done a lot but three days later, you can't remember what you've done three days before or you have trouble You know getting your life organized and doing the most important things first prioritizing your life if you have trouble like that Death meditation is very good. Okay, and it has an effect which we'll talk about I'm just cleaning your life out and Organizing your life so that your life it becomes very simple and clear and you feel very powerful.

Okay, that's a death meditation the third choice When you say Dhammo nondalala The third choice is called suffering meditation okay, like if you're And and this is a special meditation on all the sufferings of this life There are many versions of this I'm going to teach you the one by the first pension mama he lived He was born in 1565 his name was pension, Los Angeles Jensen and he taught This suffering meditation using six different sufferings and most of them are mental.

Okay, and he taught it that way. I Personally find it to be a very compelling meditation on suffering and I think you will too because it really emphasizes The kinds of sufferings that a person would have if they were already wealthy you know if they were already healthy and handsome or beautiful and But still didn't feel happy. He goes through a very good suffering meditation.

I Think this meditation is especially useful if you're having doubts about your life Okay, if you're not sure you're doing the right thing with your life in general, you know, they call it tatsongi, nyambo means it's a Antidote for having second thoughts or misgivings about the way your life is going and I think oftentimes we Especially if you've learned Dharma, especially if you just started Dharma, I remember I went from a big University You know very expensive University. I could have gone on to be a Professor at many different places and instead I went to Howell, New Jersey, which is this little You know town, there's not even a town. It's three pizza shops on the highway, and I'm not kidding And it's nothing it's nowhere, you know and I had a lot of doubts when I first got there, you know I'd walk around this Lama house and the neighbor had all these junk cars in their backyard and I slept in this garage and I had to save the poo-poos for the morning because the toilet would only take number one and It was and I had a lot of doubts, you know, I was like, maybe I'm doing the wrong thing You know to sit here and live in this conditions and and study Dharma, you know Maybe I'm crazy because all my friends thought I was crazy I wasn't making any money at all and they all went on to become very Successful lawyers and business people and very wealthy and and then Doing a suffering meditation sort of puts your heart at ease. You know it it lets you Come to a feeling of being sure that you've done the right thing that you're concentrating on Dharma You know that the Dharma is a big part of your life You know that that you're not strange or weird or your way of life is not Something that's crazy or doesn't make sense if you really do a good suffering meditation I don't think afterwards you would have any doubts that you made the right choice. I'm not saying you can't work I mean I my Lama forced me to go to work and and work in a normal office and I'm very happy and glad that he did and You can have a family. You can have a good job.

You can have a meaningful career But still your focus in life and what you do at work is mostly to think about things like mojo it's to concentrate on on deeper things even at work, so you're almost like meditating all day even while you work so and and to not have doubts about the path you've chosen and And to be sure that you've done the right thing If you know if you feel yourself having some doubts that maybe you know When you look at your credit card bills and you know and you're And then you realize all your friends have gone on to these big houses and big jobs and careers and you're like You know hanging out and gone Sometimes you get doubt, you know, sometimes you feel like maybe I didn't do the right thing, you know, and And in this meditation is very good for that.

It's a suffering meditation Then it then it just clears up right away. You know, you're on the right track You know, you're in the right ballpark, you may not be doing it very well, but you made the right choice Okay, as I get older, by the way many of those same classmates call me and Asked me for help and recently one of them who became a hundred millionaire Called me and came to the Dalai Lama's talk and and asked me to take care of one of his children And things like that, you know after 20 years You know, he realized that That that was a better path. And he said that and it was very Overwhelming to hear that, you know, okay, so Take a break about 10 minutes. I think we'll ring some kind of bell.

Do you have, Nangala? Oh well, we'll jump on the roof I don't even Is there a place to get refreshments or anything? Is there a place outside to get refreshments?

Yeah You can go downstairs and out to the back and there's cokes and so go have like 10-15 minute break and then come back And we'll actually go through with those three meditations very briefly. Okay, please say Dhammajhara Dhammajhara, okay Dhammajhara is good. It's one of the three meditations you can choose.

This is going to be on Sundays, sorry. Yeah Sundays It's called the rejoicing meditation and It's good to do if you're down, if you're feeling down, okay Also, I have people come to me, either your meditation is dull like you get sleepy or you get bored or you feel anxiety or You get minor kinds of loom, you know Like wind disease and it starts to like get tight and you feel like you can't meditate like everything's too tight Then they say do Dhammajhara, okay This is a technical thing from Lamrim, there are you know, 18 down drawers. These are called leisures and fortunes and Some of them are hard to relate to, you know Like one of them is you weren't born as a hell being so you should be happy You know, and I mean most Westerners don't really believe in hells.

We'll talk about What those beings are and why it's serious that you could have been a hell being but in the meantime The way Lama Serpa presented it to us in one of the teachings he gave to us was just sit down in the morning think about Five things that are going well in your life, you know, like be happy about five things. For example My health is not so bad. You know, I mean like okay, I have This problem or that problem, but generally speaking my health is not so bad.

Generally when people Wake up in the night time. We say that your mind is Vulnerable to negative thoughts, especially there's a period Buddhism recognizes a number of periods during the night. There's the initial sleep period and then there's Sleep period without dreams and then there's a dreaming period and then there's a lighter sleep period There's a waking period and it and they're between I think Say two and four o'clock Your mind is in a state of consciousness, which is vulnerable to negative thoughts So, I mean personally if I happen to wake up Around three or four just because someone banged the door or something I start to have worries about my life or I start to I start to think about problems I have or something like that and they seem very serious like they might keep me away for an hour and then If I fall back to sleep and I wake up late Then and if I had a good tea Then nothing seems they all go away.

You know, I don't even think of one of them I can't remember what they were, you know, I mean and This is a very good meditation for that It's like if you're if you're waking up in the morning and and you still have some of that Vulnerable state of mind left which means that you're still having some Problems or doubts or worries in your mind about normally it happens if you're a working person on Monday morning Or Sunday night, you know is when you get these demons come to you and they start giving you You start worrying you have you feel a little down or Life seems like a big problem or something like that.

So so this is this Lama sipa thing Think of three to five somebody told me that's not Lama sipa. I heard on Oprah Winfrey so I'm not sure which one started but You know get up and think about three or five good things that are really going nice, you know, like you out of ten million people met Authentic Tibetan Lamas, you know, I mean Lama sipa Lama yes His Holiness, you know you out of ten ten million people waking up in your time zone you Met met them. So you have a chance, you know, and and just instead of worrying about Some problem you have at work or someone you don't like or something like that then then reflect, you know for a few minutes I Out of ten million people I ran into real Tibetan Lamas, you know, and I and they taught me Really sweet things and then it's just a way to start your day It's called pemba tongue pemba tongue means get off to the right start in the morning and Lama soba said to do it before you open your eyes, so you're lying on your bed and You wake up and don't even get up.

Just sit there. You can do it on your back You know sit there and think so I'm I do this a lot I said I refuse to get up until I think of five good things that are going well in my life Because normally your mind jumps straight to a problem you're having with somebody or something like that, so and then you'll find out that you have hundreds and hundreds of nice things are happening to you and Your negative mind wants to think about the three problems you have, you know, you have hundreds of Opportunities today and hundreds of beautiful things are happening to you but the minute you wake up your mind is thinking about the three things that are not going very well and just tell him to shut up and Think about something sweet, okay We'll do a few real meditations.

You have to know how to set the room up You have to know how to set the altar up. You know how to blow your nose, right? You have to know how to set your cushion properly how to sit properly.

We'll go through that. That's assumed okay, when I'm gonna give you there's a guy named Ori here who's gonna Xerox the Meditation instructions, but you'll you'll get them tomorrow at this time. Okay, so I'm not gonna go through that now But you have to do those preliminaries if you don't do it on your bed do it on your meditation cushion there there's a warm-up you have to do meditation warm-up like stretching, but it's but it's mental and Then you go into the we'll do that I'll teach you that later this evening and then you go into your meditation So it's very simple this first meditation Just three or five things that are going right in your life and then close out the meditation get up go to work like that and it's very very very profound for your level of happiness to start your day, right is is one of the Most important teachings of the modern do Dhamma. It's called the Pema tongue As you die You use the same principle and we'll talk about that I think it's in the fourth or fifth class, but it's how to use the same principle as you die Okay, when you're actually in the death process, okay.

Okay now meditation number two Say Chihuahua Mitaka Chihuahua Mitaka This one is good. If you find that you have trouble Doing your Dharma practice getting motivated to do your Dharma practice things like that if you have trouble Also, if you find yourself too busy or too scattered I teach mainly in New York City and That's probably the most common problem in New York City is that people have they're very talented normally They're very intelligent and because of that they've met a lot of interesting people and they've gotten themselves into a lot of interesting projects And it's how to how do you prioritize your life? How do you simplify your life? Chihuahua Mitaka is a really good thing.

Chihuahua means death. Okay. Chihuahua means death Mitaka means you are impermanent.

Okay Mitaka means you're not going to last And again, this is one that you could do on Sundays and you You sit in your bed. You can do it either a formal meditation or If you have to get up early to go to a baseball game or something You can just do it laying there, you know and a lot of great Lamas that I know like one time I stayed in a room with the Abbot of Serame and We were at a hotel and in Bangalore and he he before he wakes up He he sleeps he lies there and he does his death meditation, you know And he doesn't open his eyes. He just does it and it's death meditation is very interesting.

The word death meditation is I Think deceiving it's not like you pretend you're gonna die or pretend that you're dying or something like that It's that you go through a three-step meditation, okay, first one is First one is to decide I have to die Okay, I will die. I have to die. It's not technically true Okay, it's not technically true when uh When we leave Serame and we're going to Singapore those of you who don't know It's an 18-hour layover so they captured me The Diamond Center there and we're gonna do hard sutra For the whole day and we're gonna do the part where it says Maripamaya maripamaya kasetam me gacha me gacha seva pariyamida Which means you don't have to die. You don't have to get old. You just have to figure out how to stop it and We're gonna concentrate on that one line So technically it's not true that you have to die, but it's good for death meditation if you Say I have to die.

Okay have to die. That's the first point Then you will be more likely to get serious about your practice, okay, you get serious Second part Is I don't know when I don't know when I'm going to die And then they say it enables you to start acting today get going today and last the last part of meditation is Only Dharma helps when you die Only the Dharma helps when you die. There's nothing else is going to help you Okay, all other all other things become irrelevant How much money you have how many friends you have how much influence you have what country you live in You know, whether you're healthy or you're not healthy what color your hair is things like that They just become in the last moment of your life.

They become Cancelled everything is cancelled. You're back on a level with all the ants who died today and the rats who died today and Millionaires who died today and you're all at exactly the same place which is zero You're back to ground zero and you're you have the same status as all the as all the dogs who died that day Yeah, you know, I mean you you are exactly on the same level with them. You're just another dead thing.

You don't own anything You don't have a body anymore You don't live in a wealthy country anymore. You're just back to zero. Okay, and at that moment The only thing you can possibly take with you is any kind of Realizations you have in your mind because your mind doesn't stop So the only baggage you it's not sure you can't take anything with you.

You take your thoughts with you and your karma So whatever thinking patterns you've developed during your life, that's the only thing you can take with you. Okay So knowing that you would try to choose Dharma over other activities You know when faced with like I I had to drive a lot in cars In the last few weeks and you know in India a decent car ride is not an hour long or something and Then I had a choice of spacing out or trying to read the computer or trying to study a text and when I got out the computer it was impossible and Then I tried to pull out a book and it was painful I mean because there's like like going like that, you know, and there's certain parts of VR that doesn't matter You couldn't read it anyway but And it was unpleasant, you know, it's hard to read it and I got I knew I was gonna get a headache I did get a headache and but then I think well, what's a choice? You know, I mean am I gonna waste a day?

Am I gonna waste a day in my life? Just staring out the window, you know, I mean, or should I try to Fix my mind, you know, so I try to do something with my mind Even though it hurts. It probably doesn't hurt as much as it's gonna hurt later in my life when I'm less healthy Probably reading in a car Driving to Bihar is not as bad as as my normal day is gonna be in 10 or 20 years So I might as well use it You see I mean and that's you just choose not to waste your time you choose at any given moment that this is more important And if it hurts a little bit it hurts a little bit.

That's one of the kinds of the fourth perfection Is if it hurts a little bit to do Dharma, don't worry about it and be a little bit Tough, it's gonna hurt a lot more next year If you of course if you're not doing Tantra In other words, it's gonna only get worse. So I might as well do it now. Okay, do your practice now?

They present the death meditation this way when you study it with a really good Lama as I remember studying it with the This abbot that I stayed with him, by the way, he's the one who passed away while we were in Kathmandu okay, so he was ready and and every morning he would sit there and And he would say this is a real death meditation Okay, and and really it boils down to this and you don't have to do more than this.

I'm gonna die today By six o'clock. I'll be dead and just decide you know I mean a real death meditation is not to picture colors or to imagine turning into a spirit or Floating around your body and you know Crying or you know something that's not like that real real real death meditation as described by Jetsun Kappa in the Lama in Tamil In the final paragraphs of it. He says it's really You just sit on your bed lay on your bed You don't open your eyes and you say I'm gonna die at six o'clock today.

Now, what should I do? You know just decide I'm gonna die today. Now, what should I do?

Okay, and then There's this pattern I've noticed among people who really do it and there's very few people who really do it lots of people nod when I'm teaching and then they Put the book away and go to the beach, you know but If you're by the way, you can do a death meditation on the beach too. I'm not saying that it's probably a good thing but You just decide I'm gonna die tonight at six o'clock. Now, what should I do?

I have I have a Three hours left or two hours left. What should I do? What should I do with the time?

I mean and and I I see this pattern First of all, if you really do this for a couple of weeks if you really lay on your bed in the morning you would start to try all the things you ever wanted to try like bungee jumping or what do you call it parachuting and Skydiving What's that? Sailing? Yeah, parasailing.

All the things you certain kinds of drugs that you haven't tried yet You know, I mean you might say what the hell I'm gonna die at six o'clock I'll go to a disco in New York, you know, I'll see what it looks like, you know I mean, I mean I think if you were really really honest to do this meditation you would try the things you've never tried and Then you'd get bored in about You know a week or two weeks you try all these different things you try You know all the things you ever wanted to try I mean if you really believe you're going to die and then I think and then I think you would start to look for other things and I think in the end you would end up with Bodhicitta or something you'd end up Sitting at home Thinking about the suffering of other people or something because that's really what makes a difference that what's meaningful That's why people when they get old rich people they start to give away their money and they start to get very charitable It's it's a natural thing for people who believe they're going to die.

So By the way, somewhere between giving away all your stuff and trying that drug you didn't try between there You would throw all the stuff in your house You know who needs it? You're gonna die tonight. Give it away.

Make it meaningful. We're going on to your retreat. It's really been fun I think every one of us did it in three levels.

We gave away all the easy stuff Or threw it out. Then we gave away the stuff that hurt To give a little bit, you know, like, you know high school girlfriend's picture and stuff like that And then the last thing was, you know, like you have a little bit of too much Dharma articles like you got two dolls and two Dorje's and you don't really need them and That was the hardest thing to give away and then suddenly you feel great, you know, you feel like you could die tonight If you believe you're gonna die tonight, I think you'd get you clean out your house You'd throw out about 90% of the stuff. You don't use it.

I think there should be this system where you You put a sticker on all the things you own and then when you use it you take it off And then a month later you see which stuff still has stickers on it and just throw it out. You see what I mean? Because it's just more cluttering up your head.

You see what I mean? You can't meditate if you have too many things So a real death meditator I think would start to throw away all their things and then I think you would quit your job and you would do what you Really want to do? You know, I mean if you knew it didn't matter Then I think you'd be willing to take a cock 50% pay card or something easily happily you say I don't care I really wanted to write poetry So I'll start writing poetry for a couple of weeks a couple hours.

You see I mean, I think if you did a really good death meditation every day You would after about three months you'd end up doing the things you really wanted to do and you'd be happier anyway You see what I mean? So consider it like a gift The death meditation every morning wake up Don't open your eyes and just review your life and say I'm gonna die at six o'clock What should I really be doing today? And I don't mean in an obligation way and what would I really like to do today?

And I think if you just follow the things that are pleasurable to you like try Certain pleasures that you haven't experienced yet. I think you'll quickly get the bodhicitta I think after a few weeks or months you'd start to get into deep meditation and Bodhicitta as being the most pleasant thing you can do with the last day of your life. Okay, so try it That's a death meditation sit in the morning Decide you're gonna die at six o'clock And then and then do what makes you happy Do what makes you really happy and you'll end up serving other people Within a few months because you'll find out that that's what makes you very happy Session one continues on the next CD