Серия ежедневной практики, курс 04 — Семичастная практика развития доброго сердца (1999, Гоа), занятие 2

[Speaker 2]
This is the continuation of session one.

[Speaker 1]
Say dunya. Dunya.

[Speaker 2]
To.

[Speaker 1]
Dunya.

[Speaker 2]
Dunya.

[Speaker 1]
To.

[Speaker 2]
To.

[Speaker 1]
So the first meditation we talked about was what?

[Speaker 2]
Rejoicing.

[Speaker 1]
Rejoicing. That's really good if you don't feel so happy, okay? It's really good if you are on a three or four day problem in your mind mode, you know, where you can't be happy because you have some, you got some serious problem at work or a serious problem with some other person, and it's hard to meditate because you keep thinking about this problem, or you have a medical problem, then do that rejoicing one where you just try to think of three to five things that are going right, especially with regard to your dharma life, like, okay, I know Nagarjuna, but I did meet a lama, I did get good lamrim teachings, and I have some chance.

Other people don't have any chance at all, okay? So that's good when you're feeling not too happy, or you feel a little down, okay? Then secondly, if your life is too busy, and you're not able to organize your life or prioritize your life, sit there in the morning and say, I'm going to die at six o'clock.

Now, what things can I eliminate today? What things should I not do today if I'm going to die at six o'clock? And you would just stop doing about 80-90% of what you do.

You would just say, that's not relevant because I'm dying today, okay? You wouldn't be in the mode of making excuses about not meditating or not doing your practice or something like that. You just say, hey, I'm going to die at six o'clock.

I might as well get ready. You know what I mean? The bills can wait.

My friends can wait. That movie I haven't seen yet. What's it called?

Tomorrow Never Comes? Tomorrow Never Dies. Haven't seen it yet.

Well, maybe I can put it off until next life. I heard it was pretty bad anyway. Something like that.

You would just do your practice for two, three hours. That's all. And you wouldn't have any problem doing your practice if you really did a good death meditation.

That gets your life. Now, third one on the six sufferings, which was mainly taught by the first Panchen Lama in a book called Easy Way or Easy Path. It's called Lam Rim De Lam.

It's a very famous one of the Lam Rims. It's not taught much in the West, and I think it should be in the future. Maybe you guys can do it.

You know, people tend to concentrate on Pabongka Rinpoche's Lam Rim or Chetsenkapa's Lam Rim, but actually the first Panchen Lama's Lam Rim is a lot easier, and it's very eloquent. He was a poet. He was one of the greatest poets in Tibet, and it's very, very beautiful.

So he gives six kinds of suffering. This is good to do when you're having doubts about being a Buddhist. Did I do the right thing to blow all my money and go to Goa?

Did I do the right thing not to be a very sociable person? Did I do the right thing not to have a normal life? I mean, all of us have these doubts once in a while.

It seems like other people are having normal lives and fairly happy lives, and then we're like losing hair or we're not memorizing a certain text or trying to meditate. That last half hour is so painful, and then seem to be losing out on things that other people are enjoying. Did I do the right thing?

This is very good for meditation for that. On Sundays, you're going to do one of these three on Sundays, okay? And you're going to decide on how you feel on Sunday morning when you get up.

Which one of the three are you going to do? Ready? Say, nge me.

Nge me. Nge me. Nge me means no certainty, but it's a very, very specific kind of no certainty.

It means you can't trust anything. Nothing stays the same. Nothing stays the same.

You can't trust anything, okay? I've had weeks in one week I lost a job, lost my best friend, lost a teacher, all in the same week. You have six good things going on in your life, like you're healthy, you have a Dharma teacher, you have a few good friends, you have a job, you have an apartment.

And if you have a really bad week, you can lose four out of five in a week. You can't trust anything. Nothing stays the same.

People that you thought were your closest friends, there's some incident, something goes on, and then suddenly two weeks later you're not talking anymore and you're not going to talk for a few years. You see what I mean? And it just reversed itself like that.

That's an inmate. You were one of the healthiest 45-year-olds you knew. You know what I mean?

And people would point to you and say, My God, he didn't have his first stroke yet, he still has some hair, his hair is not white, he can still jump up and down. And you feel this subtle pride about it. And then suddenly you get a call from the doctor.

We met a guy in Arizona like that. He was showing off. I remember he could jump up.

He was putting his boots up on these high posts and stretching his legs. He's like 60 years old. And he was unstoppable.

Then he goes to the doctor and they say, You have this heart condition, you're not going to be alive. You have to stop even going anywhere. You can't eat anything.

And I remember his face. We took him out for dinner the next night. Suddenly he looks 15 years older.

His body didn't change. Just his mental... He just believed the doctor.

You know what I mean? And it just changes. You can't hang on to anything.

There's no relationship which is steady. There's no job which is impregnable. There's no apartment or house you have that can't be lost in a week.

Bad luck, something like that. Ngei mei means done. Ngei mei means even the things that are going right in your life are very unstable.

Say, Ngo mi she. Ngo mi she. Ngo mi she means you can't be satisfied.

No matter what you get. And it's this curve. It's this curve.

You didn't have a Lama. You were looking for a Lama. You met this crazy American Lama.

You got all excited. This is the honeymoon. And you thought it's going to change all your problems.

And then you get to know them and know them and know them. And then you get used to them. You know what I mean?

And then you start to see faults. And then you start to wonder why they're not teaching 12 hours a day instead of 6. And then you start to wonder why they're not teaching today because you want to go to the beach.

And the basic problem is not them. It's just that a human being cannot be satisfied. Within a week, within two weeks, within a month, it doesn't matter what you get.

We have a Lama in America who's our root Lama. He was the number one Harambe Geshe in Tibet out of 10,000 monks in 1954. He became Assistant Abbot of the Tantric College in 1959.

He's the most extraordinary living teacher of most of the subjects of Buddhism. And then people... It's an hour and a half to get to his house.

So people are like, I don't feel like going today. Or, you know, I don't know why he teaches that. I wish he would teach that.

Or, he doesn't teach enough. Or, he teaches too late. When I go, he runs over for an hour.

You know, he's 80 years old. And people are complaining that he keeps going. You know what I mean?

And it's just our minds. You see, I mean, if someone told you this man's coming from Tibet, you know, he's the ex-abbot of the Tantric College, he's the ex-abbot of Sarame. He's got his Hlambegeshi before all the current Hlambegeshis were born.

You know, out of 10,000 monks, he was number one in the Potala Palace. And then you put up a big poster and you charge $40 and the guy will show up. Everybody will crowd into the room.

And then if you say, he's around all the time, you can go anytime you want. You don't have to go. It doesn't cost anything.

And then people get used to it. Lom Mishe means... Human nature is to just...

to just become dissatisfied after a day or after a month or after six months, after you get used to things. And then you demand more. And that's human nature.

It doesn't matter who you met and became their boyfriend or girlfriend. It doesn't matter what kind of income you have. You'll become dissatisfied with it within a year or six months or six weeks or six hours.

It's just your mind. It's a state of your mind. The human mind cannot be satisfied.

And that's one of our... To me... See, the First Venerable Lama is not talking hell realms.

He's not talking animal realms. He's not talking all this stuff. He's saying, if you could stay in this human realm as a nice 20-year-old, you know, with all your hair and, you know, beautiful face and everything else, still you'd be unhappy because of these six.

You see what I mean? It's just your nature. You make yourself unhappy.

That's what he's saying. Okay? Okay.

Say yang yang.

[Speaker 2]
Yang yang.

[Speaker 1]
Lu Tor.

[Speaker 2]
Lu Tor.

[Speaker 1]
Yang yang. Yang yang. Sam Tor.

[Speaker 2]
Sam Tor.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? These go together. Yang yang Lu Tor.

Yang yang means over and over. Lu Tor means you die over and over. You give up bodies.

You shuck off bodies over and over. Lu means body. Tor means you shuck them off.

You keep dying. Okay? You keep leaving your own body.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
How this happens, we're going to talk about in the context of emptiness in the next class. Okay? So I'd rather leave it for that.

Okay? As I've said many times in these classes, it's not as if there's a factory in some part of India which is making bodies like dog bodies, human bodies, snake bodies. And then there's this big guy in the sky who's keeping track of your life and if you've been bad, he sends you down to a dog body factory and they put your soul in there or something like that.

I mean, that's coming from a Judeo-Christian background, that's the feeling you have about rebirth. That there's all these dead bodies lying around or fresh bodies with hatchbacks in them and then they put your mind in there, they catch your spirit and they put your spirit in there and then you... You know, that's the way you saw it when they talk about rebirth.

Rebirth is much more frightening. Rebirth is provable. It's something we can talk about in the next class.

Okay? Samjor... Nyamyang Samjor means to make the crossing over and over again.

Samjor means to make the crossing. And that means to be born into another body over and over again. Okay?

I think you have to talk about it in more detail when you do a teaching on this and I'm... I'm not going to talk about it right now. I'm going to save it for the next class.

Okay? The two sufferings of having to leave your body again and again and the suffering of having to take a new body again and again. Okay?

Ready? Say Tomen. Tomen.

Gyor.

[Speaker 2]
Gyor. Tomen. Tomen.

Gyor. Gyor.

[Speaker 1]
To means up. Men means down. You know what Gyor means.

Going up and down over and over again. Okay? And it just means that, you know, I was in this big company.

We had 800 employees. I worked my way up to vice president. Okay?

And I got in the office. I sat down in the chair. You know, it's the first time I had this swivel chair.

There's something about a swivel chair in a corporation. If you get a swivel chair you're a big shot. And then you have a desk between you and the people which is another side.

And then I was swiveling around in the chair and looking out at my dynasty, you know, a couple hundred employees. And then I was thinking, what do I do after this? And it was a very frightening thought because you can't go anywhere but down after that.

You either die, you get shot, you get fired, or you go down. But there's nowhere else to go. It's a private company.

The owner, there's no way he's going to make me a shareholder and he never did. And I'm just sitting there reflecting that there's nowhere to go here but to a coffin or a nursing home or a lower position. You see what I mean?

And it was a strange thought and it came true, you know. But that's it, you know. There is no position you can hold on to very long.

It just doesn't work that way. You know, you're famous for a while, 15 minutes or more. You know, people like you for a while and then suddenly people start not liking you.

By the way, it has nothing to do with your behavior or your activities or anything else. You're probably doing the same thing you did last year. It's just your karma runs out, their karma changes, and then suddenly you don't seem so smart to them or you don't seem so DP to them or you don't seem like such a boyfriend or a girlfriend to them and then suddenly you're not interesting anymore.

And then you're just men, men means low, you know, and you keep cruising between these two extremes over and over in life. You know, anybody here who's been in any kind of company or any kind of relationships or any, that's just the way it goes. Your health goes up and down like that.

You're just constantly on this roller coaster of life and you can't hang on to anything. You can't, especially any kind of success is normally quite short, you know. And then and then there's this very sad thing where you meet people and all they can do is tell you about how successful they used to be.

You know, like it's very sad to live with a person like that or be near a person like that because they're constantly talking about the good old days. You know, they introduce themselves to people as I'm the one who used to be, you know, this and it's sad to meet them because it means they're already in the lower part, okay, and you can't get anything going right for very long. Then it just changes and you're down again, okay.

Last one and then we'll break the class. This is the last one. Are you getting depressed?

I mean, that's the point of this meditation. No, they say do these things when you're feeling too high, like you have trouble getting yourself to practice and also, especially when you're having doubts about your life, you know. I became a Buddhist.

I'm spending all this time meditating, trying to keep my vows, doing things like that. Did I do the right thing to give up that job or that marriage or other things like that? Say drogme.

Drogme means, look, in the end, drogme means companion. Me means you don't have any. In the end, you're alone and that's the worst of the six sufferings, okay.

In the end, no one can come with you very long. You have short liaisons with people. You get married.

You're with a person five, ten, fifteen years. You get a job. You stay there a year, two years, three years.

You get an apartment. You get a dog. You have friends.

You have associations. You have health, but sooner or later, you're off on your own again. You come into the world alone, totally alone, and you leave totally alone.

No one can go with you at all. You can't really keep anyone. You really don't have any friends that you will have shortly, family.

In the end, every one of us is completely alone and it doesn't matter how badly you want to stay with other people or even, you know, the rare people in your life that you do get along with steadily. One of you will die first. One of you will have to move first, and then you're just alone again.

And that's the basic condition in our life, is that you can't stay with anyone. You lose them, okay. And then, those are the six sufferings of the first Vajralama.

He says, if you have trouble, if you feel some doubt that you're on the right path, then think about these six, because these are faced by all human beings. All human lives boil down to these six. And you're one of the one in a million who is intelligent enough to do something about it before it's too late, okay.

Meditating, practicing, studying, trying to understand emptiness, karma, keeping your vows, it's all the kind of activities people would do if they knew that these were the six ways that things are, you know. The point of Buddhist practice is to reverse these six. The point of Buddhism says that these six are not inevitable, that you can stop them.

But it takes intense training, and it takes intense devotion and effort to that exercise of getting rid of those six, okay. People ask me, how hard should you practice, or how long does it take, or things like that, to make some kind of change in those sufferings. I say it's like learning piano, okay.

Like, Toby is a good piano player, right? Shy. Winston is a good piano player.

I don't know, ten years? Ten years. Ten years of pretty steady practice.

Of course he's only nine, but... Just kidding. It's not, it takes about...

You want to know how long it takes to make. If you put this kind of effort into it, the kind that you would put into learning piano well, and you were very sincere about it, and you practiced every day, two or three hours, and had a very fine teacher, and really committed your life to that, and took your time off when you have to take your time off, then it would take about that kind of effort. And if you make much effort than that, then you probably can't change these six sufferings.

You're probably stuck there. If you do make that effort, you don't have to go through these six kinds of sufferings. You can change them.

That's why we're here. And that's the point of this class. Okay.

See you again around... What time is it now? Do you want to start a little late?

Let's start around 7.15. Okay, 7.15. And we'll be on to the second meditation, which is compassion. And emptiness mixed together, for some reason. Okay.

We'll do some prayers. You're going to get a notebook, and the prayers are in the notebook. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
This is the end of Session One. Session Two. Sang ne chen tu de ne ung wang gyi dro könpang dag chen na chen tu pang chok yi wang kun wak nam mandala kam nayatayami

[Speaker 1]
Sang gye chen chen dang sang gye chon nam la chak chok wak dang dang nyi kyap su kyi dak gyi chen yin gye pe sang nam gyi dak gyi chen yin gye pe sang nam gyi Sang gye chen chen dang sang gye chon nam la chak chok wak dang dang nyi kyap su kyi dak gyi chen yin gye pe sang nam gyi dak gyi chen yin gye pe sang nam gyi Sang gye chen chen dang sang gye chon nam la chak chok wak dang dang nyi kyap su kyi dak gyi chen yin gye pe sang nam gyi ro nam peng chok sang gye du pa chok Here we go. Okay. I'm going to read you the second part of the seven points.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So try to listen carefully. chen nam mi lam tabur sam ma gyi rikpe shi la chik nyam bu nyi kyang rang sar tru ngo kun shi nang du shak tin sam gyur me gyur bur cha dang nan nyipo bel mar jang de ne lum na gyur mar cha yu sum thuk sum ge tsar sum chok lam kun du tsik gi jang nam pe korim rang ne tsam I'll give you just a brief translation and then we'll talk about the details. chen nam mi lam tabur sam means think of all things around you as being like a dream.

ma gyi rikpe shi la chik examine the nature of the mind which is unborn. nyam bu nyi kyang rang sar tru the antidote itself is freed. How do you say?

How do I translate it? Yeah, it's gone to is. That's pretty good.

[Speaker 2]
It's gone to is.

[Speaker 1]
ngo kun shi nang du shak let it go in the essence source of all things. tin sam gyur me gyur bur cha means in between sessions be a figment of the imagination. Practice giving and taking alternately.

Let the two ride on the wind. Three objects, three poisons, three stars of virtue. Practice throughout the day in words.

The order of taking is to start with yourself. This you're going to do on Mondays. What's Sunday?

We call it Foundation Day. Foundation Day means you can either do a rejoicing meditation if you don't feel too happy. You can do a death meditation if you're having too many things to do and you want to straighten out your life and your priorities.

And then you can do a... What's the third one? Six-sufferance meditation.

Especially, well, if you're too happy, but also if you start having doubts about the path you've chosen. If being a crazy Buddhist starts to seem crazy to you, then do the suffering meditation and then you'll look like the smartest person on the whole block. Seriously, I do it all the time because I get these doubts all the time.

Because of what I teach, people give up their houses and give up their jobs and go out to wild places and sit there on their asses and meditate. And I start to feel some reservations. And then I think about the six sufferings and I think, well, yeah, we did the right thing.

So here we go. First part here says... Well, I thought it would be nice to go through how to get into a meditation.

So I promised you that. Most of you know this already. I thought for the people who haven't heard it, you should hear it again.

So each day of the week, before you do your meditation, you do the preliminaries. A lot of people come to me and say, why is my meditation not working? I say it's possibly because you're not doing the preliminaries correctly.

So it's important to do those well. There's a beautiful verse that some of you probably don't know. And it summarizes the preliminaries.

It's very beautiful. Also, if you've heard this 10,000 times already, then do what I used to do as my teacher. When it got to the point where he was saying things that I'd heard already a lot, then I would try to watch how he taught it, with the intention of being able to teach it to other people.

So you can shift from learning it, to memorizing it, to internalizing it, and then go on to see how it's taught and how you might want to teach it to other people. So it should never be boring. I mean, even until...

Up until 25 years after I'd started with Khen Rinpoche, I would still go to alphabet class. A, B, C, D. Kakaganga.

To see how he did it, and how he pronounced it, and where he went from there, and could I anticipate where he would go. So never waste your time. Never think I've heard it before.

Here we go. Say, chak-sa-wa-dang. This is a very famous verse.

Chak-sa-wa-dang. Chak-sa-wa-dang means, the first of the preliminaries is to bow down to a holy being. And I'm going to give you the basic morning schedule.

You have to meditate every morning or it doesn't work. To get the goals of meditation, if you don't do it every day, it doesn't work. It just doesn't work.

So you have to decide that if you want to learn to meditate, you're going to have to do it every day. By the way, if you learn to meditate, I always tell people, you might be able to see emptiness directly, you might be able to see your future lives, you might be able to see your own enlightenment, you might be able to reach all those goals, read other people's minds, perform miracles. These are all things you can do in meditation.

If that doesn't impress you, you can also run your life better. You can do anything better with meditation. And what happens, Arya Nagarjuna said, is that you go into a state of meditation all day long.

You see what I mean? The idea of meditating every morning is that you go into a state of Samadhi all day long. It's deeper during your meditation, but you continue it during your working hours and when you come home and study.

So once you reach that point where you're meditating all the time, then even if you just do business during the day, the business is well thought out, you're constantly responding to business problems much better than other people. And over the long run, and I was in business 15 years, we made hundreds of millions of dollars from my division, the one I was in charge of, we just cranked out money like crazy. Because it also infects other people around you.

If you are in a state of Samadhi all day, and I don't mean your eyes are up in your head and you're just bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, that's what clarity means in meditation. It doesn't mean how clear the object is, it refers to your mental alertness. You're just wired all the time.

And I don't mean in a nervous way, I mean you're totally aware of everything all the time. And then problems come up, you can deal with them, decisions have to be made, they're just simple, immediate. You evaluate things and immediately make, and this is from being in a state of Samadhi almost all day long, but you've got to do it right in the morning.

So those are my selling points for meditation. Meditation is not something you do for an hour in the morning. It affects your entire day.

And over a period of time, you start to see, you start to pull away from other businessmen or other artists or other dancers or other filmmakers, or just the quality of being able to concentrate all day long. The meditation starts during the session and keeps going after you stand up and continues to the next morning, even in your dreams. I mean in advanced stages, you're analyzing emptiness during your dreams and things like that.

That's a very common practice. So the point is to stay in Samadhi all day long. You have to start out with the preliminaries, you have to start out right.

Wake up. Don't get up right away. If you're doing, if you know what Kejik Chongge is, you do that.

If you know what Kerem is, you do that. If you know what Dakhnag Kepa is, you do that. And then you might want to do a quick death meditation.

I'm going to die tonight, what should I do with my day? And only then you get up out of your bed. If you're studying Dhamma Together, you do Yinmei Kunju, then you get out of bed.

And then you go into the bathroom. It's very important to clear out your nose. I understand that in yoga they do a similar thing with, what's it called, Pranayama or something.

I don't know. Okay. It sounds like piranha to me.

And you, it's very similar. That's a very good practice. In the morning, blow your nose really hard.

Blow out all the, in the monastery, you'll see, they don't use toilet paper. They say only rich people keep those things. We don't.

They just go like this over the sink and just blow out everything forcefully. Okay. And then make sure the nasal passages are clear.

Shouldn't breathe through your mouth. Then wash your face, get your face brightened up. Very important that your mouth tastes good.

Even in ancient sutras, before the Buddha teaches, he's like washing his, brushing his teeth. Your mouth should smell good, taste good. Then have something, a little bit to drink, but don't eat anything.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Then make sure your meditation area is beautiful. Have an altar with a representation of the Buddha's body, mind, and speech. Meaning a statue, a book, and a stupa, like we have here.

Everybody got stupas in Bogai. Then make sure you have a nice cushion. I have this crescent shaped cushion that I started using recently.

And you know, I'm sort of a freak about these things, but I've tried everything. And I really suggest you try it, you know. It seems to give you the support that the scripture says for your back.

I find that the Zafus, personally, they're a little, I start to rock off of them or something, you know. They're not quite, they don't ground me or anchor me in a way that these things do. I don't know who invented these, but Ali got them off the internet or something.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And then they really help under your thighs. It's important that your thighs be done. Then there should be a cushion under your ankles, because that's where your feet start to hurt, is at your knees and your ankles.

So there should be another cushion under your butt, okay, and under your thighs. I like this because it gives a real ground to you, okay. And the scriptures seem to insist that the back of your butt be higher up than the front of your butt, okay.

And I think this one does it well. Then you go into Vajratana, seven or eight point posture, which means, you know, head straight up like a soldier. Even if you open your eyes or close your eyes, which is the eighth one that they debate about.

I mean, you can either open them like halfway, or you can close them. If you're a person who gets distracted easily, close them. If you're a person who gets sleepy easily, open them.

And they say, look at your nose. It means at the level of your nose, and it doesn't mean stare at your nose. And I've seen so many Westerners going around with crossed eyes, because it was translated wrong.

It means on the plane of your nose, meaning focus them loosely out here, okay, like you're aware that there's something there, but you're not focusing on it, okay. You want to get into the state you would get in when you're reading a very good novel, and you're like all cringed up on the couch, and you're like that, you know, or you're listening to your favorite song, and your eyes, you know how your eyes just unfocus, you know, you're hearing Neil Young, and your eyes are just like that, you know. When I was really into my withdrawal, and you know, and you're just like that, and that's a state of samadhi, like a good movie, or a good book, or a good song, that is a state of samadhi.

That's what you want to reach. It's this wired, it's this, it's nyam shak. All the words in Sanskrit, samapatir, samihita, samadhi, they all mean, sama means, you know, you're halfway between thinking about too much, and being dulled out, and the goal is sama means to stay balanced between the two, okay, that's always the goal, and all the Sanskrit words point to that, all the different Sanskrit words for meditation point to the same thing.

You want to be balanced between these two extremes, and it's like driving a car, you know how you're moving all the time, you're correcting all the time, it should be like that, constant correction, is my mind dulled out, is my mind wandering somewhere, and you're correcting between the two, okay. Hands should be left palm down first, right palm on top of that, in this system, there's a hundred different systems of meditation, you're learning vairajana, which is one of the meditation buddhas, dhyani buddhas, okay, and then you join your thumbs, and keep your back very straight, okay, you can judge the straightness of your back by the pressure on your thighs and your calves, in other words, the pressure should be equally distributed, like when you're in meditation, your back should be straight and slightly, very slightly tilted forward, so that the weight is evenly distributed by your whole leg, and not just by the back or the front of your legs, okay, I found it useful to, when you sit and you poke your butt like this a little bit, and the flesh of your buttocks spreads out more, and it puts more weight, divides the weight more evenly, okay, what else, I found that elbows should be slightly tilted away from the body, I personally get hot when I meditate, and it keeps the air flowing in between here, your mouth should be, you shouldn't breathe through your mouth, which probably means you should close your lips, but that you should be very comfortable, and very, not tight, your muscles here shouldn't be tight, and the muscles here shouldn't be tight, okay, very loose, but not open, and not slobbering or anything like that, this prevents you from swallowing too much, and later the swallows will disturb your meditation, your shoulders should be even, and straight, and relaxed, some of the lamas I know, like great, even Sri Lankan meditators, they go like this before they meditate, you're not like this, okay, so you get into posture, then you go through these preliminaries, oh, by the way, first you prostrate to the altar, and then get into your posture, chaksa wadang means prostrate, okay, get down and prostrate, now the oral tradition is that you do a couple of things before this, you do one physical prostration, then you get into posture, and the oral tradition says that before you start the preliminaries, you watch your breath, okay, and that's, normally you try to get up to ten breaths, the out breath is the first half, the in breath is the second half, okay, and you try to focus your mind on the, on this circle right here, these two circles, these two donuts, your nostrils, and you try to feel the air as it passes the nostril, okay, and then you count ten, counting means without thinking about something else, if you think about something else, you have to go back and start over again, if you're really honest, you won't get past three, or you might get to eighteen, okay, I'm just speaking from experience, and then you have to go back, there's a special case, if somebody slams the door, or something like that, or you hear a car horn, if you bring it back without losing count, it's okay, that's an act of God, you can't control that, okay, so, that's okay, but generally if you think of something else in a big way, and it starts to disturb the count, you have to start over again, I say start over five, six times, if you still can't get to ten, go on, okay, because you don't have time, your body will start to get hurt in a while, and you have to keep moving on, I don't give any of these more than ten, fifteen breaths each, okay, and that's enough, that's what you need to do, so then you watch your breath for ten counts, then you do, we say take refuge and go for bodhicitta, go for refuge and do bodhicitta, so go for refuge means, you can either do cause refuge or result refuge, cause refuge means think about the Buddha, or the Dharma, or the Sangha, identify some beautiful thing about them that you admire, and aspire to it, like that, like I would like to be able to read the minds of every person in this room, and see their future for the next few hundred years, so I know what to teach them, result refuge means, I take refuge in Michael wrote the Buddha, which is going to happen in the future, and how about sending me back a little help here, okay, it's very funny, you can take refuge in yourself later, and ask for help, like that, you know, all these SOS's and messages in a bottle going out to the future, you see, and then imagine that the day you become enlightened, you're sending back help, okay, like that, before these preliminaries, you also do bodhicitta, okay, now you can either try to imagine all living beings, which would take you about three years, or choose one person that you know is suffering emotionally or physically, and try to imagine that you could go to them and help them, okay, and that would be an act of bodhicitta, okay, and imagine helping them, that's a quick thing, it should take no longer than ten or fifteen breaths, okay, now you're ready to start the actual preparations, okay, and the first one involves inviting some holy being to meditate with you, so you imagine the holiest being that you can imagine, okay, a lot of people, I think, if you're honest, it would be somebody that you grew up with, like Jesus, or it might be Gandhi, or any being that you relate to as being very holy, later, when you have a deep relationship with a root lama, or with his holiness, or lama sopa, that you can visualize them, or Jetson Kappa, but it should be whoever you would like to be like, like Mother Teresa, or whatever, it doesn't matter, somebody that you would like to meditate with, someone that would be an honor for you to meditate with them, and then you visualize them in front of you, traditionally they're up on a throne about eye level, personally I find it a little more intimate if they're sitting in front of me, like a friend, and when you visualize a person, don't visualize a thangka, okay, I think a lot of people visualize pictures, and it's flat, and it's a postcard, and it's only about this big, and, you know, don't think like that, visualize their outline is the first step, as if there were a light behind them, okay, like a silhouette, that's the first step, and then fill in the colors of the eyes, and then do the eyebrows, and then do the whole face, and then do the hair, and then do the shoulders, and then fill them in carefully, visually, then go on to do their other qualities, physical qualities, like watch the eyes twitching a little bit, and the chest rising and falling, and a little bit twiddling, now and again, and then try to do the subtle sounds coming from them, like their breath, and the warmth of their body, and holy beings have this scent, it's called the suchinki tuma, means the fragrance of a moral person, there's some kind of, like a sandalwood smell, or something, you know, whatever is your favorite smell, can't be an apple pie smell, okay, but some kind of good smell, jasmine is wonderful, you know, and we say suchinki tuma, you know, if you brush by His Holiness or something, or Lama Sopa, you often get this faint smell comes to you, you know, and it comes from they keep their vows nicely, okay, so that, imagine all these things, like visualize them as a real person, okay, then you do chak-tsal, okay, then you're ready to do the first of the seven preliminaries, and chak-tsal well done, which means you've already done one physical prostration, now do a mental prostration, okay, in your mind, bow down to them, that requires thinking what is it about them that you admire, see what I mean, it's not enough to keep prostrating some picture of Buddha, if you don't think about what it is about them that you admire, then the prostration doesn't mean anything, okay, you're not prostrating to, you know, Andy Webber's paints and, you know, National Paper Company's paper, you're prostrating because they have some quality that you would like to have, so as you do the prostration, now we're talking about a mental prostration, you think about some good quality they have that you would like to have, like if it's Gandhiji, who's meditating with you today, you imagine his ability to do an act of truth, to do what he believed was right, even at the expense of his physical well-being, okay, that he was willing to do something like that, and then bow down to that mentally, to think of his good quality is to bow down, that is a mental prostration, okay, now we're going to the next one, choo-ching, you don't have to, chak-tsal well done, choo-ching, say choo-ching, choo-ching means offering, and this offering is mental, it's good to do a physical offering every day, like water bowls or fruit or anything on your altar, and change it every day, but this one is mental, the classic one is called Samantabhadra's offering, you picture the whole sky and cover it with flowers, okay, you know, just this whole, they call it a cloud, meaning little masses of beautiful things that you can imagine are floating around in space, okay, they say there's a special power to offering natural things that are not owned by anybody, like the sunset over the ocean, or a forest, or flowers that you've seen by the side of the road, or something like that, and then the ultimate offering is offering your own attempts to practice, so you might say, you know, today I'm going to have to meet someone that I have trouble with, and I'm going to try to be patient with them, and when it happens, you please accept that as my offering to you for today, so, you know, I do a proactive offering often times, I know the difficult people I might meet today, and then I offer in advance, you know, my patience or something, and I say, you can have my patience at three o'clock with this person, and I make an offering like that, that's supposed to please them more than any other offering, okay, it can also be something good you did yesterday, if that's okay to them, so that's number two, and that's still mental, I don't spend more than three, sorry, ten breaths on each step, you know, I actually got into this mode of, I know when ten breaths are up, and then it's important to keep the meditation moving, if the meditation bogs down in the preliminaries, then your butt starts to hurt, and your knees start to hurt, and you start worrying about being late to work, and then the meditation breaks down, or it gets rushed at the end, so, go through the preliminaries carefully, but do them in a very deliberate way, that you're moving on, you know, every ten or fifteen breaths, don't get hung up in one preliminary, and then have to rush the meditation, or feel nervous that you're going to miss work, or something like that, okay? So, that's number three, Chö Chö Shakpa, yeah, verbs require normally a wa, often times, so, chak chak wa means prostrating, dang means and, chö means offering, ching means and, and yeah, I'm giving you the first line, it's going to be four lines, it's good to memorize it, chak chak wa chö chö chö chö chö, and then there's some more, okay?

Shakpa is a verb that means to split something open, like when you take a piece of wood and you hit it with a hatchet, and it falls into two pieces, that's called shakpa, or when you do an operation on someone, and you cut them and you open them up, that's called shakpa, so it means to bare your heart, and in this case it means to think about some bad karma you've done and admit it to yourself, openly, which is the hardest person to admit it to. Just admit it and say openly, yeah I did that thing, and it's wrong, and I'll try to stop those things.

That's Shaktipat. If you know the four powers, you can run through them very fast at this point. I like to do that.

And if you don't know them, talk to somebody who is in Kathmandu or Bodhgaya, I think we actually will go through them. But those are ways to purify all bad karma. tu shing shakta da dewa la re pa nirpa gyur kyi, ma tu ma shanta deta mingyur lakso means, it's part of our monk sojourn, tu shing shakta da dewa la re pa nirpa gyur kyi means, if I admit everything openly to other people, or to myself, then I'll feel better.

ma tu ma shanta deta mingyur lakso means, but if I don't admit it, and I kind of hold it in or try to conceal it even to my own heart, you don't feel right, you don't feel good. That's part of the monk's confession ceremony. You feel like empowered if you admit things.

And admitting it goes a long way towards purifying it. Deciding not to do it again is the most powerful method to remove the karma that you committed. So the whole point of the preliminaries can be divided into two parts.

Clearing out your old bad deeds and collecting new good karma just before you meditate. It's like cleaning out a battery and then loading it full of fresh water and then starting the car. You see what I mean?

And the whole point of the preliminaries is that when you get through the last preliminary, you should be already halfway into samadhi. Just by the good power of the six of the seven preliminaries collect good karma, one of them removes bad karma. This is the one that removes bad karma.

And then you go into the meditation and you're already like halfway there. It's very important just before meditating to pick up some very powerful good karma and then you just drop into meditation. It's very cool.

That's why I like to do a book before a class or before meditation or something like that. We're now going to write the second line, so you can erase the first line. Say Gesu.

[Speaker 2]
Gesu. Yidam. Yidam.

[Speaker 1]
Gesu Yidam.

[Speaker 2]
Gesu Yidam.

[Speaker 1]
You know, I tell people this many times, and sorry if you heard it already, but you know how Catholic churches have these special little rooms you go in and tell the priest what you did wrong, right? Confessionals. When we build Buddhist cathedrals in the future, they should have confessionals on one side of the...

What is it? Narthex? I don't know what they call it.

And then on the other side there should be rejoicinals. And you go into a little box and there's a monk on the other side or a nun and you say, I have something to tell you. And they say, what?

And I say, I got... someone came up to me and got angry at me today and I just smiled and treated them politely. And I said, let's rejoice, you know, and okay?

You're required before a meditation not only to purify what you did wrong, but you're required to be happy about what you're doing right. Okay? You're required.

And in our background, Judeo-Christian background, and I'm speaking from my own experience, and my students are very... I've noticed a very serious tendency to spend a lot of time on the confession part or the purification part. And then when you say, well, did you spend any time on the rejoicing part, and they feel like somehow it's not right, or it's being proud, prideful, or it's somehow selfish or something like that, that's a wrong idea.

That's completely wrong. Okay? You have to give equal air time to being happy about what you're doing right.

And you have to honestly scour your life for the last few days and see what you did right and be happy about it. Now, from personal experience also, there's a lot less stuff available there. But be happy about the little progress, okay?

It's important to be very happy. For every good thing you did, there's about five bad things or ten bad things. That's true.

But you've got to identify the good ones and you have to be happy about them. And I always say, someone watching you meditate should be able to guess when you reach this stage in the meditation from your face, if you did it properly. So I mean, I have a lot of students who finally get the idea and they start giving equal time to rejoicing, but they don't really rejoice.

They're just rushing over their good stuff. And someone who's doing a good rejoicing, your face should just light up, and the edge of your mouth should start to move a little bit. Because you're really seriously considering all the good things you're doing with your life that you didn't used to do.

And that's really important. That's Jason, you know. Say, kul-shing.

Shing means and. Kul means asking people to teach the Dharma. So you try to imagine the great teachers like His Highness or Lama Tsongkhapa, and in your mind you go to where they are.

I like it. Lama Tsongkhapa is fun. Where is he today?

He's in a retreat in Mexico on the eastern seashore. So I just go there and see him. He's probably freaking out all the fishermen doing some ritual by the beach.

And you just imagine, what's he doing at this moment? And according to what you know where he is. And then you just imagine him and you'd be happy about what he's doing.

I'm sorry, that's the Jason you know. I forgot to tell you during the rejoicing, it's very important to rejoice in other people's good karma. So to be happy about what Lama Tsongkhapa might be doing at this moment or His Highness the Dalai Lama, according to all the scriptures you get 10% of their good karma.

If you compare that to 100% of your own good karma, it's more. So it's good. And all the scriptures say 10%.

I'm not doing a diamond dealer thing on you. It's true. Now, kula means, again you picture them and you picture yourself in front of them and say, please keep teaching in this world.

Please keep teaching. To have a Dalai Lama wandering around the planet giving free teachings all over the place is beautiful to think about and ask them to keep going. That's called kula.

You can also ask for teachings from the people around you at this point. May I get teachings from the very sweet people who live around me. May I be sensitive to the sweet things that people are doing around me.

Children can come up to you on the street and say something to you, it can be a teaching. Someone can yell at you on the subway, it can be a teaching. I always pray that I'll meet some difficult person who will teach me something today.

Then later during the day when it happens, you can't complain. You're getting your wish, you asked for it. I always think like that.

I said, this is not just some irritating person showed up in my life this afternoon. I actually, they're responding to my heartfelt request and they have showed up in my life. So it's a good thing.

Kulshin, say Sulwa. Sulwa Yi. Sulwa means, Sulwa Ndepa means asking the great Lamas in the world to stay for a long life.

To stay in our world for a long life. And if they're real chukus, if His Holiness is really a chuku, they can stay as long as they want. Lord Buddha only left this earth because no one really asked him to stay.

Indicating that no one felt they could still benefit. And it's listed as one of the great mistakes of all time. I forget which, I think it was Madgalyayana.

But somebody didn't ask him to stay at the last day or something, for God or something. And then he passed. So it's important to ask them to stay.

They will stay as long as you have the good karma to have them be in your life. And that will be there as long as you keep asking. Sincerely, they will stay.

I also think it's important to ask the good people around you to stay in your life. Sometimes they're Buddhists, sometimes they're not Buddhists. Some of the most moral people I've ever met had nothing to do with Buddhism.

I was in Bombay two days ago and there's this man there that I've admired for 20 years. He's a businessman, he's a diamond dealer. But he reeks of the fragrance of morality.

He's just totally smiling all the time. I've never seen him get angry in 20 years. I've never really seen him lie.

And just this power that comes out of his being. And I pray, I go to home at night and I pray that he'll survive another few years so I can just be near him. And that's another kind of surva.

It doesn't have to be a Buddha or a Lama or anything else. That was number five, by the way. Oh, six.

That was five and that was six. You know, it says seven limb puja or something like that. Only six of them happen before the puja.

Number seven happens after the puja. Here's number seven. Say, ge-wa, chung-se, da-gi, chi-sa-pa.

Ge-wa means good karma. Now, we're referring to the good karma you just collected by doing the meditation. So between number six and number seven is your whole meditation.

So this is happening at the end of the meditation. You finish the meditation. It's very important to ask the holy being who's been sitting in front of you to come into your heart.

And the classic way is that you ask them to come stay in your heart. And it's very important, they say, that you imagine that they break this big smile, like, oh, I've been waiting for you to ask me, you know. And then they start rising up off the ground.

And they get smaller and smaller and they reverse position so that they're facing the same way as you. And then they come down on your head and you feel this small pressure when they touch your head. And by this time they're only like an inch high.

And then at the level of your heart, they say your heart, which doesn't mean your heart. You're supposed to line up your two breasts and draw a plane back to your backbone. And then like half an inch in front of your backbone, you imagine a small chamber like a pea.

And there's an elevator shaft going from there up to the tip of your head, which is about as wide as a McDonald's milkshake straw. And then you picture inside the chamber. Outside it looks like a little pea.

When you get inside, there's a quite spacious room in there. And there's this huge lotus flower. And then on top of that, there's this beautiful sun cushion.

And then you invite them to come stay there and hang out there all day. Remember I said that you're supposed to try to stay in samadhi all day. And this helps you.

All the problems you have all day, anytime you need something, you can actually communicate with them. You imagine them, picture them in your heart. And you go there, somebody yells at you, or your lama yells at you, or somebody says something bad to you, and then you just go to them.

You're upset, and you go and you say, and they're like, everything's okay, don't worry, keep patient. And then you come back out. And you're just carrying them around all day.

It's like a little refuge pill or something in your heart. Then you invite them to come into that room by bringing them down slowly. They keep shrinking until they can fit in the McDonald's straw.

Then you feel the warmth of their body coming down right in front of your backbone, half an inch, and then down into that pea, and then they're sitting there all day. To me, it's very, very comforting when I'm having a really bad day. I can keep checking in with them.

They're always in a good mood. They're helping me out. And that's the end of the meditation.

When you finish that meditation, that last step, then you dedicate the virtue, and you see this light coming out of the pea, out of their heart, and then it breaks out of your heart, and then you send this beautiful light out to all living beings and help them. That's called dedication. Try to pray that the good karma you just did should help all living beings.

Just the act of meditation is a heavy good karma. So gewa. Gewa means, by the good karma I just did by having a meditation session.

Chung se means, that little tiny karma I did. Chung se means, like chung chung means small. Chung se means tiny.

Chung se means, okay, I was able to do a little bit of virtue today by some dumb good luck. Chung se. Dak gi.

Dak gi means, I was able to do it. Chi sak pa means, whatever amount I have. Whatever good karma I've just done by meditating.

Okay, ready? Say it. Tam che.

Tam che. Dak gi. Dak gi.

Chang chup chir.

[Speaker 2]
Chang chup chir.

[Speaker 1]
Ngo o.

[Speaker 2]
Ngo o.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Tam che means, all that good karma, all that wimpy good karma I just did. Dak gi means, me.

Chang chup means, to my enlightenment and the enlightenment of others. Chir means, for the sake of that. Ngo o means, I dedicated for that.

And at this point you see all this beautiful light coming out of your heart. It pops out of the lama's heart, and then it breaks out of the pea shell, and then it breaks out of your chest. And then you see this really powerful light going out and touching other people.

And then you dedicate the good karma, so that you can become an enlightened being to help other people. Now, how does that work exactly? How does that karma work?

And how is that going to get you enlightened? This is where the actual meditation is supposed to start. This is how you close the meditation.

This is number seven, the dedication. Ngo o means, I dedicate this karma. But between six and seven we skipped about an hour.

And that was the real meditation, that was the meditation. At this point in the text of the seven-step Dundunma, they describe two kinds of meditation, two very powerful kinds of meditation. I'll write what you're supposed to meditate on.

Say, sem kye.

[Speaker 2]
Sem kye.

[Speaker 1]
Sem kye is the Tibetan word for bodhicitta. Sem means mind, kye means develop it. And it means bodhicitta.

It's the Tibetan for bodhicitta. What is bodhicitta? We're going to talk about it.

The important thing is there's two kinds. And you have to meditate on both of them at this stage in the lojo. Here they are.

Say, dundam.

[Speaker 2]
Dundam.

[Speaker 1]
Kun dzok. Kun dzok. Dundam.

[Speaker 2]
Dundam.

[Speaker 1]
Kun dzok.

[Speaker 2]
Kun dzok.

[Speaker 1]
This is very, very interesting. And it's not taught very often. But if you're going to do lojo and dundumma, you have to know both kinds of bodhicitta.

And we're going to go through each of the meditations. It's two different meditations. Dundam bodhicitta is one kind of meditation.

Kun dzok bodhicitta is a totally different meditation. Dundam is ultimate. Ultimate bodhicitta.

Ultimate compassion. Dundam. This one here.

And then kun dzok means deceptive. Deceptive. Dzok, like when you say this guy is a fake, you say subzu...

It means this guy is trying to pass himself off as a lama, but he's just a fake. He never was trained. He doesn't know anything.

That's called subzu. So dzok means fake or artificial or liar. In this case it refers to...

Kun dzok means deceptive. Why bodhicitta could be called deceptive is something we'll talk about. Right now we're going to concentrate on the first one.

Tonight, after the break, which is right now, we're going to concentrate on ultimate bodhicitta. Ultimate bodhicitta, which is the next thing talked about in our lojong, refers to the direct perception of emptiness. Ultimate compassion, the ultimate form of ultimate compassion, is nothing other than the direct perception of emptiness.

And the text gives you that one first. Before they get to labhi dabhi bodhicitta, they talk about emptiness bodhicitta. And that's the ultimate one.

So we're going to do that right after the break. So take a 10-15 minute break. By the way, if you have a personal question or you want to clarify something that you're thinking about, you're quite welcome to come up during the break and just interrupt me and talk to me here.

There's lots of students here from New York who see me every day, and they usually sit next to me. And you just break in and sit in front of them and ask your question. Don't feel shy.

If it doesn't happen tonight, feel any time during this course, during one of these breaks, just come up and throw out that question you're always wondering about. Take a break.

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