Серия ежедневной практики, курс 04 — Семичастная практика развития доброго сердца (1999, Гоа), занятие 3

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

[Speaker 1]
Okay, we're just going to do a little bit, and you are hereby excused from homework two. We're going to continue the second class tomorrow. Okay, so you only have to do one homework tonight, which is number one.

And then I'll give you number two after the first class tomorrow. Because what I'm trying to say is class number two is going to take two classes. Because we've got two kinds of bodhicitta.

And tonight I'm just going to start you off on dundam samkhye, ultimate bodhicitta, which is what? Direct perception of emptiness. Somebody came up to me during the break and they said, well, which one do you get first?

You know, that's a long story. The important thing I think to say first is that it doesn't have anything to do with compassion directly, okay? In other words, calling it bodhicitta is just a convention in Buddhist scripture.

It's not a kind of compassion. Ultimate compassion is not a form of compassion. It's a direct perception of emptiness.

And when you're in the direct perception of emptiness, you can't see anything except ultimate reality. Compassion, thinking about someone's problems, wanting to give them help, would be focused on what we call lower reality, or what we call deceptive reality, or what some books, for some weird reason, I don't figure it out yet, call conventional reality truth, or something like that, which no scripture said. I don't know where they got that from.

But it's called deceptive reality or lower reality, okay? So when you have love for a person normally and you're thinking about their problems, or you're thinking about helping them, or you're thinking even about achieving enlightenment for them, that's all focused on lower reality, what we call deceptive reality, okay? So that would be normal bodhicitta.

Ultimate bodhicitta only has one object, and that's ultimate reality. It cannot see any other object. During the direct perception of emptiness, unless you're a Buddha, you cannot see any other thing, you see?

All you can see is ultimate reality, directly. You can't even think to yourself, I saw it, because that's not ultimate reality. That's another form of lower reality.

The words that you hear in your own mind when you talk to yourself are not ultimate reality. So during that 20 to 30 minute experience, when you see emptiness directly, and you have ultimate bodhicitta, which has nothing to do with bodhicitta, okay? Got it?

You can't think, I wish I could help this person, or I feel bad about this person's pain, or something like that, okay? Because you're just having a direct perception of ultimate reality. So we're going to describe, now, the Lojong Dunduma just happens to dump them together here, okay?

They're going to talk about ultimate reality, see all things as a dream, and then they're going to talk about normal bodhicitta, and say you should practice tonglen, okay? Giving and taking on the breath. Using the breath to practice giving and taking, okay?

Now why should, ever since the Buddha for 16th century, secretly, in the second step of the seven, why should they dump together normal love and compassion, along with this very cold perception, dark perception of emptiness? You see what I mean? And why does every scripture in the world call them both bodhicitta, sem khe?

You know what I mean? Why? What do they have in common?

Why do we have to take two classes to explain it? You see what I mean? See they're dumping two completely different things in the same category, in the second step of your meditation, which for you is Monday's meditation and Saturday's meditation, okay?

Why did I put emptiness on Saturday? Having worked in a corporation for 16 years, I know that Saturday is probably the only day you're going to do your practice very well, okay? So are we going to save Saturday for emptiness, okay?

We're going to describe the ultimate bodhicitta first, okay? And we've talked about it already. Where is that?

I need a pen, okay? Those of you who haven't heard this explanation, you'll have fun. Those of you who have heard it 500 times, don't forget I said you need like a thousand hours of it to see it directly, okay?

So you're just piling up more hours, okay? So don't get frustrated, just roll with it. The ancient sakyas used to say you can see emptiness by practicing dzogchen, channel work, tantra, or how about with a pen?

And they used to use a conch shell. They used to go down to a conch shell. So we'll do that meditation.

What I'm trying to say is that if someone explains emptiness to you correctly, it should be very clear, very simple, they should be able to do it with a pen, it should take 10 or 15 minutes, and it should be clear to you. You know what I mean? All the other stuff that you hear, you know, somebody was telling me, there's all sorts of strange ideas, and I'll go over some of them.

Emptiness is some kind of black hole in your mind. You know, I'm supposed to imagine the ocean at night, just all black. That has nothing to do with emptiness.

I'm supposed to watch for some clear light. You can do that your whole life, you won't see anything, okay? Because it's clear.

I'm supposed to watch my thoughts go through my head and not think anything about it. That stupid idea about emptiness was cancelled in the 8th century. Okay?

I don't know why it's still around. Some people say it's green, some people say it's yellow, some people say press your eye real hard right here and you'll see it. Nothing to do with those things.

Okay? Some people say it's understanding that you're not a person. You know?

Self-existent thing means a self, you know, like Dhamma herself, and you see emptiness when you realize that you're nobody. Okay? Which is ridiculous.

Okay? No Buddha ever said that. Nobody ever said that.

It doesn't mean that at all. The word self means a thing that could exist from its own side. That's all.

The self that we deny by saying empty, the self that we are saying doesn't exist, has nothing to do with a person's self. You know, I am Michael Roach. I'm teaching you.

I can't be false because your normal perceptions are seeing me. And I'm functioning for you. I say words.

You have ideas. And you go home and you think about it and you fill in your homework because I said something. So I must exist at some level.

Okay? That isn't what it means. And then I hear, which to me are very, very misleading explanations, where somehow they equate self with your awareness of yourself, which is crazy.

Okay? Are you Fran Dian? Of course I'm Fran Dian.

Should you feel like Fran Dian? Of course I should feel like Fran Dian. Should I feel like Michael Roach?

You know, I don't have a bald spot like that. I'm not like that. I mean, to say that somehow equate it with your sense of self is ridiculous and wrong and has nothing to do with it.

The word self means self-nature. Anything that could come from its own side. Anything that could have its own nature.

Okay? Now does this thing have a nature? Of course it does.

What? It's a pen. Does it possess a nature of having a pen?

Yes or no? Yeah, but if you don't talk like that and get you to Derence's class you're in trouble. In Sarah.

Okay? You've got to go, No! Everybody yells at the same time.

No! It goes, Bah! And if he sees one person not yelling, he says, What do you think?

[Speaker 2]
Is he okay?

[Speaker 1]
Is it a good thing? All right. It's a good thing.

Don't worry. So what is the self that we deny about this pen? What is the penness about this thing that we deny?

Sheree's okay. Tell you what, let's take a break. And we'll take a break.

Okay, come. Take a break. Okay.

I think Venerable Greg would like it most if we did ten minutes of emptiness. Then we'll let him go home. So really, if you understand emptiness clearly, you should be able to describe it with a simple object like a pen.

And this is the ancient way of teaching it. And I'm sorry if you heard it before, but you heard it again. Okay?

If a dog were to run into the room right now, and I, a puppy who likes to chew on things, and if I were to wave this same object in front of them, then they would run up and they would start biting on it. And you know that from the way puppies are. You know?

And they would see this as something to chew on. The minute they saw this same green cylinder, let's call it a whole green cylinder, okay? The minute they see this green cylinder, they would think something to chew on.

Okay? And they would perceive this same object as something to chew on. Now, when a person sees the same object, right, they see it as a pen.

Assuming that you know what a pen is for and what a pen does, and you've seen me use it as a pen, then you see it as a pen. Scientifically speaking, technically speaking, it's the same object. It's just a cylinder.

It's a green cylinder, a plastic green cylinder. And then the dog sees it in a totally different way than you do. In fact, two of the six realms of existence are going on parallel at the same time.

They're in one realm called the animal realm. We're in one realm called the human realm. The cylinder appears in both realms at the same time.

But how it's interpreted by the mind of each different being is totally different. And that's what creates the border between the animal realm and the human realm. You see what I mean?

This cylinder is appearing in both realms at the same moment. But in their realm, which is in the same place as our realm, they're seeing it as something to chew on. And then we're seeing it as something to write with.

Who's right? Both are right. Yeah, both are right.

And you have to get used to that. The dog is correctly and validly for a dog perceiving it as something to chew on. I'm, as a human, who knows what it's used for, am seeing it as a pen.

We're both right. So you can say that there's three things going on. There's the way that the dog sees the thing, the thing as the dog sees it.

And then over here is the thing as the human sees it. And then in the middle is the way it really is. Right?

What? There's no middle. People say no middle.

Okay? Isn't there a way it really is, dog? No, isn't it?

Shouldn't we be angry at the dog for ruining a good pen? No, because they don't see it as a pen. They should be angry at us for writing with something that's perfectly good for them to chew on.

Right? Yeah, same reasoning, right? No, it's not honoring animal rights to say that the animal must see it as a pen and they're not allowed to chew on it.

And it's not honoring human rights to say that you can't write with it and that you have to chew on it. You see what I mean? There is no pen in the middle.

That's the emptiness of the pen. Okay? Did I say there's no cylinder?

I didn't say that. There is a cylinder. That's what we call raw data in the science of Madhyamika philosophy.

It's called basis of imputation. I much prefer raw data. It's just the raw data.

It's just a green cylinder. That's the raw data. Animal sees it as a thing to chew on.

Human sees it as a thing to write with. And there isn't anything between. There's no real way it is between the pen and the thing to chew on.

There's no real way it is. You see what I mean? There's a cylinder that we're both interpreting in a different way.

We call this the emptiness of the pen. That's the emptiness of the pen. That's all.

There is nothing pen coming from its side. If there were, then the dog would write with it. There's nothing chew toy coming from its own side or I would be salivating right now.

Okay? Or I'd be wagging my tail. So we say it doesn't have any nature of its own.

It has no self nature meaning it doesn't have a nature of being a pen from its own side. It does have a nature of being a pen insofar as I perceive it as a pen. Then it has an imputed nature of being a pen or a projected nature of being a pen or a perceived nature of being a pen or something like that.

We're not denying that. That's called the self nature of a pen that exists. But there's no nature of pen coming from its own side.

Okay? It's only coming from you. Now, where the Lama's explanation breaks down is right here.

You know? I mean, if they get this far frankly I think it breaks down here. It's that it takes a long time reading scripture when you finally get to Je Tsongkhapa's Gomba Rabsel page 346 or something and they say Why are you seeing a pen?

You see what I mean? It's one thing to say it's a green cylinder. It's another thing to say that I'm seeing it as a pen.

But then it breaks down. You see? Then they move on to another subject and they leave you hanging.

You've got to say one more thing about that which is what? It's your past karma. It's what you did in the past.

That image coming up in your mind forcing you to see it as a pen. Okay? Notice I used the word what?

Forcing you. You don't have a choice. Okay?

Is it a projection? Yes. Is it in a sense an illusion?

Yes. Is it just a green cylinder that my mind is seeing as a pen? Yes.

Does that in any way imply that you could see some other way if you wanted to? No. You're forced to see it as a pen.

You're so much forced to see it as a pen that you think it's natural. You believe it is a pen. Because your mind has been forcing you to do that your whole life.

And that's why you get angry when what? The dog chews on it. Come on!

You think they see it as a pen? You think they're thinking I want to destroy Michael Roach's pen? They're not thinking that.

They're thinking this is something good to chew on. Okay? Already you see the applications of it in emotional management.

Anger management. You know? Of course I shouldn't be mad at the puppy.

He doesn't see it as a pen. He can't see it as a pen. In fact, get this, and I said it in Bodhgaya, and I said it in Kathmandu, and I said it in Hong Kong, and I said it in New York before that, anyway, he's not seeing it as something to chew on because he's a dog.

What? Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
He's a dog by virtue of the fact that he's seeing it as something to chew on. Okay? It's not that you get reborn as a dog and then you have to see these things as chew toys.

It's that when you start seeing them as chew toys, we say you is a dog. Okay? And forget rebirth in the sense of there are dog bodies being manufactured in Malaysia in some little factory somewhere, and there's this giant butterfly net over some part of China, and when those bardo spirits are passing from east to west, they catch them and put them in a box and ship them to Malaysia, and they zip open the back of the dog bodies and stuff the spirits in there and zip them back real fast, and then they run around and they ship them back to India. It's not like that.

That's not rebirth. Rebirth is a slight change in your perceptions. Okay?

You start seeing this as a chew toy, you are a dog. Okay? That's what separates the human realm from the dog realm.

It's just perceptions. So when we said that out of the six sufferings of the first Dalai Lama, one is to take birth over and over again or to die over and over again, those are just perceptions, and that's what makes them real birth and real death. And then it's dangerous.

That's just a shift in your karma. It's the same one that makes you see my arm move. To see my arm move and to die, to see my arm move and to die, to be born as a dog, it's the same principle.

If you can see one, you can see the other by tomorrow morning. No problem. At all.

The illusion of motion, the illusion of time, is created by new karmas coming up in your mind at the rate of 65 per second. I just read the refresh speed for computer screens. It's 50 to 80 per second.

Yeah. They have to refresh so many lines per second, 50 to 80 per second. And Buddha said 65.

So we're in the right ballpark here. And your fresh karmas are ripening in your mind at 65 per second. And they give you the illusion of time and the illusion of your hand moving.

When I say illusion, I just mean it's not what you thought it was. Can it still punch you in the nose? Yes.

Will your nose still bend and break? Yes. It's not an illusion in that sense.

Which means that you could be a dog within a minute, two minutes, three minutes. Karma runs out to see things as human. Karma asserts itself to see things in a dog way.

Then you are a dog. And that's what's been happening year after year, life after life. Okay?

So that's the emptiness of a pen. And that's all. There's nothing else.

There's no black thing. There's no watching your mind. There's no yellow thing.

There's no pushing on your eyeball. There's no sense of I'm me or something like that. It has nothing to do with it.

The self of a pen that doesn't exist is a pen that could come from its own side, independent of your karma making you see it that way. That's all. I'll say it again.

The self that doesn't exist, which makes the emptiness, right, the absence of something, is the fact that a pen can't come from its own side. That's all. That's the emptiness of a pen.

Then karma becomes essential. Then karma becomes important. Then it becomes important to keep your vows.

Then it becomes important to keep morality. You see what I mean? Why would Lord Buddha spend 25 years talking about emptiness when he was and then 25 years talking about morality if there wasn't some kind of connection somewhere?

You know? Did you think it was just separate? You see what I mean?

And that's my complaint about the way emptiness is usually described. If you're lucky enough to get someone who gets as far as explaining the parts thing to you correctly, they never make that leap to it's your karma that's making you organize those parts into a discrete object. And that's why you see it as a pen.

Okay? So, by the time you end even a 10 minute presentation of emptiness with someone throwing up in the middle, you should still be talking about vows and morality by the end. Okay?

You still have to. If you're not, then there's something fishy going on. Then probably the person talking about it doesn't get it.

Okay? So, this pen is empty. It's only a green cylinder.

Your mind, forced to by your past karma, swears it's a pen from it's own side. It's not. And that proves that you have to be good and that you have to collect good karma.

Why? Here's the punchline. This is another cylinder.

This is one cylinder. This is another cylinder. Okay?

If I had worse karma, my mind would force me to see this same cylinder as a dog's leg. And that's how you get reborn as a dog. Okay?

There's no external dog. That's when the Buddha says the Heart Sutra, there's nothing to see, there's nothing to hear, there's nothing to smell, there's nothing to taste, there's nothing to feel, there's nothing to think. He's talking about your arm.

Nothing comes from it's own side. If you see an arm, it's because you have very good karma. If you see a dog leg, it's because you have worse karma.

On the same principle, if you understood the art of collecting powerful good karma, you could see this same this arm as a tantric deity's arm in this lifetime. Okay? Why?

Because it's empty. Okay? That's the cool thing about emptiness.

If this arm wasn't empty, if this arm was an arm from it's own side, then I say go out on the beach at Goa and drink as much beer as you can because there's nothing else to live for. Really, you know? If this arm was an arm from it's own side, then nothing can be done about it and you might as well pick up as many Budweisers as you can with that arm before you die.

You know what I mean? Or shoot stuff in dirt or something. Then it would be then everything is hopeless.

Then you must die. You know? But the Buddha said that which means you don't have to die.

Heart Sutra. You don't have to get old. You don't have to die.

You just collect some goddamn heavy tantric karma and you see it as Manjushri's arm. Okay? And that's all.

That's all. Okay, so that's a brief description of the emptiness of a pen and the emptiness of your arm. The same principles apply.

Now how do you collect massive amounts of good karma to see this thing as a tantric deity's arm? How about the other kind of bodhichitta? Okay?

The universal love one. Okay? Wouldn't it make sense to do them both in the same session or close to each other?

You see? First you understand the emptiness of your arm and then you go about collecting that heavy good karma to make you see it as a tantric deity's arm forever. You see what I mean?

So it makes sense that you would go from teaching emptiness which is called ultimate bodhichitta, the direct perception of it, to teaching about bodhichitta. Okay? Last thing.

How many last things did we have? Anyway. In this holy scripture this tiny little thing you're going to do tonglen.

The next thing is to do tonglen. Tonglen is a practice of taking away other people's pain and giving them happiness by using your breath, by visualizing pain coming and going on your breath. You know, good things coming out and spraying other people like a good sneeze and then bad things coming in and destroying them when they reach your body.

All their pain is coming in and all your good karmas you're giving to them. Okay? And you do this meditation with your breath.

Now the cool thing is this is a tantric practice. I mean, this is, by the way, this text and this line, the next line, is where tonglen started to be taught openly. It's very cool.

You know, it says, let them ride on the wind. And what they're talking about is start doing tonglen with your breath. Now why did he jump from seeing emptiness to doing this compassion meditation with your breath?

They're connected. Okay? They're very, very deeply connected.

Your breath is a barometer of your inner winds. They're not the same thing. Okay?

But this outer, gross, rough breath, this outer wind, as it goes in and out of your lungs, is a barometer of the health of your inner channels. You know, the prana or the chi or the loom which is moving inside your inner spiritual plumbing. Okay?

Your spiritual body. If that's running smoothly, if you don't have too many mental afflictions, your breathing is long and slow and deep. Okay?

If you're frightened or you have desire, strong desire, strong fear, then it starts to get choked and move fast. Okay? And that's a sign that the inside winds are not moving well.

Okay? Two things can make the inner wind move perfect. Compassion and seeing emptiness.

Okay? Two things can only be done when the winds are moving perfectly. Seeing emptiness directly and having a deep state of compassion.

You see what I mean? So, isn't it interesting that, uh, you know, Geshe Chika uh, lets the cat out of the bag. You know?

In this scripture, he says, hey, why don't we do this compassion practice where you use your breath. He's just setting you up for seeing emptiness. And he's setting you up for having ultimate compassion.

And those are both setting you up for the highest tantric practice that's called Dzogchen. Okay? It's all a big setup.

Okay? It looks like this cute little Kadampa poem. You know, oh, why don't we connect the, uh, compassion practice to your breathing.

Okay? But really, he's setting you up for, you know, two years from now, three years from now, three years and six months from now, whatever. You get a good tantric teaching on it, and then suddenly this tonglen practice becomes a method of seeing emptiness directly.

Okay? Uh, through tantric methods. So, so he's just floating with you.

He's setting you up. Okay? And that's what we're going to get to next.

So now you get the feeling why perceiving emptiness directly, which is ultimate bodhicitta, and, and then practicing tonglen to get normal bodhicitta are deeply connected at the, at the most, at the deepest levels of your perception. Okay? Of your body.

Okay. Uh, we'll do some prayers. Okay?

And chew on that. Okay? Chew on that.

All right? Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. This is the end.

[Speaker 2]
of session 2. Session 3.

[Speaker 1]
Say tonglen. Tonglen. Tonglen.

Tonglen. At this point in the practice, you're supposed to do a tonglen meditation. There's two ways to achieve ultimate compassion.

There's two scriptural traditional methods. One is called dakshin-nyamje, which is exchanging yourself and others, and the other is called yin-ting-ming-ang-dun, which means seven steps of Master Shantideva, and what's presented in this text is based on the first one. So ultimately, tonglen is a practice of exchanging yourself and others.

And this is one of the first texts where it was written down, where the practice of tonglen was written down. There are some misconceptions about the practice of tonglen, so I thought I would go through it briefly with you. Most of you have had it in the other courses we've had.

We went through all the major presentations of tonglen and translated them and made one book out of it, and you can order that from ACI if you like. And I'll give you a list of what we call correspondence courses, and you're welcome to take it and take them. It's not a business.

We give them away free if you can't pay for them. We give them away free. We just tried to set up a center in New Delhi for shipping them out in India and Nepal so that people could have them.

So like, a lot of people would take them, get them for free, like prisoners and things like that. So it's not a business, and we lose a lot of money on it, but you're welcome to. There's a beautiful course on tonglen, and it has about 12 tapes, or I don't know, 10 tapes or something like that.

And we translated all the major scriptures on it and divided it into the major concepts of the practice of tonglen. I'm just going to do a very briefly description of it. This is a practice that you do using your breath, your own breath.

You go into a state of meditation, you're going to do this on Mondays, called Compassion Day, and after doing the preliminaries, which we went over yesterday, then you start doing a practice of using your breath as a vehicle to gain compassion. And the way you do it is this. You think of someone who's having an emotional or a physical problem, and it's very important to choose someone specific.

You picture them sitting in their room, like Greg is in the hospital right now, he's getting an IV drip, he's feeling very sick to his stomach, he's got vertigo, and you take all those physical problems that Greg has, and you picture him lying in his bed in this Indian clinic with the drip going into his arm, and you picture all the bad feeling he has physically right now, and you concentrate it on his heart, as a black, it's about the shape of a marble. And I like to think of asphalt, okay, like it's tar, black tar, very ugly, gooey stuff.

And you take, I like to visualize it as coming out of his bloodstream, he's sucking all of his vertigo and all of his nausea out of his bloodstream, and it centers on his heart, as a black, sort of a tiny black ball, like the shape of a marble or something. Then, in a succession of breaths, on the in-breath, okay, like you're sitting in meditation, you're taking long, natural, deep breaths, without forcing it, but very calm, very good meditation, and every time you do an in-breath, you imagine that you are sucking some of that black out of his heart, so it goes up his, you know, esophagus, into his throat, into his windpipe, and then they say you should visualize it coming out of his nostrils, almost like a deep black smoke, like the smoke off a steamer or something, and the smoke is coming out, and then it's collecting again in front of your face, okay, so it's important that it not touch you, because it's very evil stuff, it's very bad stuff, it's vertigo, it's nausea, it's, you know, three-day-old diarrhea, and it's important that you hold it in abeyance for a second, so it's going to be, you suck it out, and take like ten or twenty breaths, and take it out slowly, so, first it's a marble with a little thin, sticky, little smoke, stretching out towards you, and each time you breathe in, it's coming out further and further, and finally it's starting to collect in a little cloud in front of your own nose, okay, when you get all of Greg's physical discomfort out of him, and it's sitting there in front of your nose, then you're supposed to focus on your own body, okay, and you see a small flame, it's supposed to be about an inch high or something like that, this flame represents two things, on a more, on an easy level, it represents your own selfishness, the fact that, you know, if the doctor came up here this moment, you know, walked up this aisle, and said, we have this new invention, it's a pain removal osmosis machine, it works a lot like dialysis, and anybody in this room can voluntarily take on the way Greg feels right now, so who'd like to volunteer, you know what I mean, and that's the, the resistance to that idea, or the hesitation that most of us would have, you know, like, actually I was thinking of going swimming this afternoon, and if we could just do it later on, maybe I'd take him on, you know, take all his illness off me, me go to the clinic, he comes and swims, you know, there's some natural resistance to that idea, that's the flame in your heart, okay, that's your selfishness, and on a deeper level, that selfishness is driven by a misunderstanding of your reality, okay, meaning, it's your very resistance to take on the problems of others that has caused you all the problems you've ever had, okay, and that's your ignorance, that's not understanding the emptiness of Greg's pain and Greg's sickness, okay, so on a deeper level, that's what the flame represents. Now that you've got the flame visualized in your heart, you get ready, you know, you say, I'm willing to switch places with Greg, you know, I will take all his physical discomforts from him right now, so he can come and film the class and I'll sit in the clinic, you know, then you breathe in this real slow breath, deep, deep breath, and you see all the blackness coming down in one breath, okay, this is not a gradual thing, you get the whole thing coming down, and then as it gets close to the flame, you're supposed to slow it down to slow-mo, slow motion, and you see them coming closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and then suddenly they make contact, and then there's supposed to be this brilliant flash of light, like my Lama calls it, like a flashbulb going off, a camera flashbulb, and there's this brilliant flash of light in your whole body, and your body fills up with this beautiful like golden light, and then the flame snuffs out, and all the texts say that you should see this little puff of like cigarette smoke, like where the flame was, you know how you blow out a candle and then there's this little gray smoke and then it just dissipates, you're supposed to watch that smoke dissipate, and you say, there goes my selfishness, you know, I did it, I was willing to trade places with Greg, you know, and then when that explosion of light occurred, also that ugly black ball just evaporated, boom, and this is a very important point, all the texts on tonglen, of which the first Panchen Lama's text is very important, and also this Geshe Jigala's text is very important, emphasize that you are not to let the suffering, Greg's suffering sit there in your body, it'll make you sick, and it'll make you uncomfortable, and it's psychically and spiritually very bad to leave it in your body, you're supposed to destroy it for him and for you, okay, there's no big benefit in Buddhism to sit there and flagellate yourself, you know what I mean, the goal is to destroy it, so it doesn't bother you or them, see what I mean, so the minute it comes into you, within that breath, the suffering is totally demolished, and it vaporizes, and you just see it float away, and then, just enjoy the light for a moment, okay, you see your body full of light, they say, like an empty balloon, there's no inner organs anymore, it's just pure light inside, this becomes important later in Tantric practices, your whole body is like a big balloon cavity, the skin is like the outer skin of the balloon, and inside is just nothing but sheer light, then you just sit there for a while, and be happy, okay, and that this suffering has been destroyed, that's the len part of tonglen, scriptures say it should have been called len tong, but tonglen sounds better to them, so you do the taking part first, and the logic for that is that if you had a child who was sick, you would want to take, you would want to cure them first, and then give them some toys, you don't give a sick child toys, first you nurse them, get them healthy, and then make them happy, so taking away suffering is the first priority, and the second priority is to make them happy, so then you have to reflect on how that's finished, and you put your mind back, what's very useful is to visualize that you are in the same room as Greg, and you're sitting in a chair next to him on the bed, and he can't see you, but you just removed all his nausea, all his vertigo, and you destroyed it in your heart, and then he suddenly feels like a million dollars, he's like, wow, I feel great, you know, I wonder if I can catch that 5 o'clock, what, 7 o'clock teaching, you know, suddenly he feels, it's very important to imagine him feeling very good, sitting there on the bed feeling good, then you turn on the dong part, so dong means give him something more, in business, I was in business, I helped do product design a lot, diamond jewelry product design, and the goal was this Sony, Sony first did it, it's called give the customer more than they imagined, so I mean, don't just give them a car that's beautiful and works great, put in 12 features that they never thought of, that they would like to have, they didn't know they wanted it, and give them more than they anticipated, so in business, this is like, when you design a diamond ring, like design the most beautiful thing anyone could ever think of, and then figure out a way to make it 3 quarters of the old price, you see what I mean, like keep reducing the price and improving the product, you know, at the same time, and with Donglan it's the same idea, took away his suffering, now as a bonus, as dessert, you know, give him all these incredible good feelings that he wasn't even intending to have at the clinic, you know, and I say send this light out of your heart, ok, your body is already full of light, and you send this light out of your heart, also you could do it, actually it's better to do it out of your breath, ok, so with your breath on this one, breathing out of your nose again, there's this light coming out of your nose, and your breath itself is like nectar, or it's like comfort, and you just breathe on it, you see, you're just breathing on it, and you imagine that the very air of your breath is filled with this light, and they say that on the tip of the light rays, you know, like if somebody shoots a laser this way, you can see this long pencil of red light, but if they shoot it right at you, all you see is a dot of red, which is the front end of the ray, right, and you imagine on the ray, you put all these sweet things for Greg, you know, like the ocean, or a nice chocolate cake that he can eat now, and you know, and a nice emptiness teaching when he's not turning up, and all this stuff that he would like to have, and you cram it into the front of the light ray and shoot it at him, you see what I mean, out of your breath, you see what I mean, it comes out of your breath and like that, and that's called tong, and then it reaches him and suddenly he's got all this stuff he never dreamed of, you know what I mean, and more than he even was thinking of, things he couldn't even think of, and you give it to him, and that's called tong len, and that practice is called tong len.

Now, how it works to help other people, which it does, how it still obeys the laws of karma which say that you cannot give karma to another person, thinking about Greg's emptiness while you do it, thinking about your own emptiness while you do it, thinking about the emptiness of your tong len meditation and stuff, these are all important elements of tong len, and that's a whole week's teaching in itself, and you have to study those things. It does help him, it doesn't help him in the way you thought it did, but it has profound effects on you.

Why? You and I, I know myself, I'm a sensitive person, I care about other people, I'm a normal sensitive care about other person, people person, but how many of my thoughts during the day are actually considering what other people want, or the trouble that other people may be feeling at that moment. I mean, frankly, they're not that frequent, you know what I mean, like I have, like a typical 30 second period of thought for me is, I'd like some tea, I hope I get some free time to translate Heart Sutra stuff, I wonder if my computer is working well, I'd like some tea, and then every 30th thought is like, I wonder how Beatrice is doing, you know what I mean, or something like that, you know what I mean, frankly, I'm being very honest. So that means like a 1 to 30 ratio of thinking about other people and thinking about myself. The thing about tonglen is that it's a concentrated 15 to 30 minutes of actually thinking about what someone else wants, which we do very rarely, you know, we really don't spend a lot of time consciously devoting 15 to 30 minutes about thinking what somebody else would like.

The karmic implications of suddenly doubling the amount of time you think about others, so instead of 1 thought out of 30, it's 2 thoughts out of 30, is that your happiness doubles, it still sucks, and it doubles, you see what I mean, it's very interesting, like just doing 30 minutes of tonglen is doubling the amount of time you think about other people. The karmic effects of that are profound, you know, you start to get happier right away, and you're still only scratching the surface, you see what I mean, it's still only half an hour out of 23 and a half hours that you're not thinking about other people. But you can notice the karmic results right away.

This kind of karma ripens very quickly. It's so powerful that, especially if you do it with some kind of understanding of emptiness, which makes it the perfection of giving, instead of plain old giving, then you have immediate karmic effects on you, and it's very, very pleasant. The name of this course was something like, what was it?

How to get to bliss, or something like that. So, that's how to double your pleasure, with minimum, you know, 20 minutes of thinking about somebody else, doubles the good karma you do in a day, and you immediately feel better, you immediately start to notice that your external world improves. If you do this karma emptiness stuff right, then even the sense objects around you improve.

I'm talking about the weather gets better, pollution goes down in your city. Do you remember what things used to taste like when you were a kid, or something like that? Like, the intensity of flavors, the intensity of colors, the intensity of sounds.

You know, recently, one of my students got a hold of an ancient album that I used to love when I was 16, and I heard it, and it sounds really bad right now, but I remember how sweet the sound was when I was 16. And that's the difference between a 16 year old body and a 45 year old body. You know, just your senses are more sharp and more pure.

And if you do tonglen regularly, if you collect good karma regularly, then actually the process of aging is reversed, and that's what tantra is all about. Tantra is taking advantage of this phenomenon. So actually, if you just try to get into the mode of taking care of others and thinking about others, it actually starts to affect your perceptions.

That's the whole idea, actually. And the culmination of that is a tantric paradise. But along the way, you know, between the time you start this process and the time you end it with tantric enlightenment, just things get better.

Everything gets better. Your body feels lighter, smells better, food tastes better, everything is... Rochok Nang is one of the qualities of enlightenment.

Buddhas eat rice, dal, chocolate cake, and dirt, and it all tastes like chocolate cake to them. It doesn't matter. So I mean, they have this karma thing.

And what I'm trying to say is that if you practice properly, and one of the signs of practicing properly, with a correct knowledge of emptiness and with a concern for other people, you can noticeably improve the quality of your life. Noticeably, taste will taste better, sounds will sound better, more good songs on the radio, and I'm not kidding. That's what the whole business that we're in is supposed to do.

And don't forget it, and you can count on it. If it doesn't happen, you're doing something wrong. Oh, great question.

I was afraid somebody was going to ask that. Does it actually help the other person? Does Dalai Lama actually help the other person?

There's a chapter devoted to this question in the reading. You know, if you take that course, you order that course, there's a whole chapter in there about, can it really help other people? I'll tell you why it can't, and then I'll tell you why it does.

Okay? You cannot give other people your karma. It's totally, 100%, impossible.

And I always say there's a very simple proof of that. What is it? We're here.

Okay? We're here. Like, you know, I have aches and pains in my body, and I have headaches, and I have unpleasant things happening with my students sometimes, or something like that.

That's proof that nobody could give me their karma. Why? Because Buddhas have unlimited good karma.

And Buddhas have ultimate compassion. If it was possible to loan somebody else karma, or transfer funds from one kind bank account to another, Buddha would gladly, Lama Sipa would gladly, His Holiness the Dalai Lama would gladly empty their account and transfer it to yours. You know, they would come and be a normal schmuck, and you would get to be the Dalai Lama.

And be Chenrezig. So the fact that you're not, proves that it can't be done. Okay?

Just can't be done. Okay. And that's the most, most great proofs are so simple that they seem stupid.

Okay? Anyway. That's why tonglen can't work.

Now why it does work, and the First Penchen Lama talks about it a lot, is that when you practice tonglen a lot, two things happen. You are getting closer to your own enlightenment. It is the number one best method, if you do it with emptiness, to get enlightened.

So you're actually speeding up your own enlightenment. On the day that you get enlightened, number one benefit is that at the moment you get enlightened, you can send out billions of bodies. What's this Geshe-mas?

Where are the Geshe-mas? You're supposed to go, what the hell are you talking about? Anyway.

Actually it's one millisecond later. You're able to send out billions of bodies and help other people. What's the greatest help that these billions of bodies do to other people?

Du chu yang men la so means, teach people. That is a Buddha's main career, is to teach other people. So suddenly you're able to send out billions of forms.

Even the sound of the waves, the sound of the wind, can teach people emptiness, can teach people compassion. And you're able to do that the moment you become enlightened. So in that sense, you're helping them, by speeding up your own enlightenment, by trying to help them.

In another sense, why is it that you have to see them sick? In my Buddha paradise, I'm not going to have Greg sick. Greg's going to be a 10th level Bodhisattva, he's going to be filming the paradise.

Okay? That's going to be a product of my own virtue. One of the qualities of the Sambhogakaya, one of the qualities of a paradise body, is that you don't have to see anybody suffer.

So in that sense, you're immediately helping Greg not to suffer, in your perceptions. Which is what your world is, is your perceptions. So actually, yeah, it does work.

What about Greg's perceptions? Ah, now that's a sticky question. You know, does it change Greg's perceptions?

Is it possible that I can see Greg as a 10th level Bodhisattva, filming my Buddha paradise, and he still sees the roof of the Charleston hotel, and still getting some vertigo and diarrhea? Yeah, totally possible, because everything is empty. Yeah, and in that case he'll just see me as someone teaching him, or something like that.

So anyway, the bottom line is, you can't sit there and pray somebody else's cancer away. You know that doesn't work, and that's one of the reasons you gave up on the version of Christianity that was taught to you when you were a kid. You can't do that, it doesn't work.

But, if you continually practice compassion towards others, there's an immediate effect on your level of happiness, which spills over to others. It causes you to get enlightened, which enables you to go to them and teach them in an enlightened way. And then, it very quickly changes your perception of what's happening to them.

Those are the three ways in which it helps other people. Direct karmic bank account transfers are not possible. Now, a lot of people come out of a teaching on Tonglen by me, and they don't do Tonglen.

They say, Michael Rhodes said it doesn't work. I did not say that. I just explained to you how it works.

So now you must do it. So don't go out of here saying, I'm not going to do Tonglen because it doesn't work directly. That's just foolish.

You have to do Tonglen because it does work. But now you know how it does work. And don't sit there and do Tonglen and expect cancer to go away in this other person in a week and then give it up if it doesn't do it.

That's the old Christian self-existent sick person and self-existent prayer and self-existent Tonglen. We don't do that. She said if you want to do Tonglen for a whole hour but it only takes 15 minutes to treat one patient, just do four.

As Sakya said, take a break in between. Take a 3-4 minute break. Refresh yourself.

Relax a bit. And then go back in. And do it on another person.

Yeah, great, wonderful. They teach it that way. By the way, the great teachers of meditation, Muncha Dharmabhadra, we have some records of interviews between him and his students 250 years ago.

And he specifically says, look, if you're an intelligent person and you're meditating on this kind of meditation which is a moving meditation, things are happening. You treat him, the light comes back, everything's finished and then 15 minutes are up and what are you going to do? He says, frankly, if you're an intelligent person you're going to get bored doing it over and over.

So spice it up. Do it with somebody else. Move on to somebody else.

Go ahead and do it with somebody else. I would also personally move on to the emptiness of those three things. Greg's emptiness, why I have to see him sick right now which is unpleasant for me.

So it must be in a sense a ripening of my past bad karma. You know, and think about the emptiness in this thing. By the way, as I said yesterday, the fact that you use your breath, what's the line say?

Let the two ride on the wind. It says, tong len ni po phel ma jang den ni lung la gyong pa jang These are very, very, very famous lines. These are the most famous lines on tong len that exist in Buddhist scripture.

Let the two ride on the wind. Now the two here means giving and taking. Let the two ride on the wind means do it with your breath both ways.

The other two, by the way, in a tantric teaching you'd be talking about a different two which is called the lung sem gyupa jipa. Say lung sem. Gyupa jipa.

In tantra they say the inner winds which is the same word as for the breath and your mind ride in tandem. Gyupa jipa means they ride in tandem. So he's punning you here.

The two riding on the wind here can also refer to your inner winds, your spiritual body's winds that are moving through your channels and your mind. They are linked forever. From the moment of birth they are linked.

I talked about it briefly. I alluded to it briefly. When you get upset the breath changes as a result of the inner winds getting more choked.

There are five classic choke points. There are two secondary channels running alongside a major channel and they intertwine around it at five points and then they choke. If you get angry then one of the channels over here closes slightly that presses on the central channel and then your breath starts to get shorter.

Is your breath the inner wind? No. But your breath is a barometer of the condition of the inner winds.

So if your breathing is short you're either angry or upset or you're having desire in a bad way and that's expressed in panting or breathing quickly and that's because of those choke points are being closed off. Every time you do that there's an accumulative damage done to your body. That results in wrinkles, grey hair a loss of vitality in your body.

That's why people age. It's very interesting. The implication here is that you can stop the aging process.

If you learn to loosen up those choke points if you learn how to work on those points which is called medha-nyamba in the tantric teachings then theoretically you can reverse the aging process and become a tantric deity and that's the whole point of tantra which we can't get into but as I said the other day The practice of using the breath to do a compassion meditation is very profound. It is a teaching by a tantric deity to get you closer and to get you prepared for what's going to come later. That's called a Minje.

Minje means it's an open teaching which is secretly intended to allow you to glide into the secret teachings later. And that's what this whole tonglen business is about. The reason you use your breath is very profound.

[Speaker 2]
But can the outer system actually affect this?

[Speaker 1]
Oh yeah, it's very beautiful. We call it going to the back door. You see what I mean?

In the higher teachings of tantra you manipulate your body to what do you call it? To initiate changes in your inner winds as opposed to working with the inner winds to affect your outer body. So actually in the highest teachings of tantra many of the Dzogchen teachings we call it going in the back door.

You manipulate the condition of your gross physical body in order to trigger changes in the winds inside. And that can actually trigger perception of emptiness for example by doing external things with your body with your breathing and with the other parts of your body that trigger openings of the channels which trigger a perception of emptiness instead of doing it the other way around which is what sutra teachings are for. And if you know both of them if you can work on it from the inside and from the outside, you're in fat city.

You see what I mean? Then you can really trigger things. When you bring the guru into meditation to your heart, is that open?

Oh yeah, that's another one of those tricky things that they're trying to get you to That elevator shaft thing at the end of the meditation of course it's a trick to get, those are the most important ones at the heart and later at the navel. She said after you become a Buddha and you're having all these perceptions, basically you reach the Sambhogakaya, there's nobody in your paradise who's less than a 10th level bodhisattva so who are you supposed to go help? This is a big debate question.

I have the honor I get to brag, ok? I was the senior non-geshe in my college in 1994 or something and it means I get to ask the first question of the next geshe candidate who was Pabongka Rinpoche so I got to ask the first question and that's the question I asked her because I always wanted to know and it precipitated this four hour discussion with all these geshes and it went out onto the porch and we had a great time and it didn't stop. He left, he had his hat he passed and we kept going the bottom line is this it's no contradiction to say and this is very subtle that those 10th level bodhisattvas are not perceiving themselves as 10th level bodhisattvas at the very moment that you're perceiving them as 10th level bodhisattvas you see? The people around you, you can be perceiving the people around you as Tantric deities and at the very same moment they can be perceiving themselves as plain old suffering schmucks and there's no contradiction because of the no contradiction there no contradiction at all.

Now are you aware that on some level that they aren't seeing it that way I would say you are is it a suffering to see that they're seeing it that way? No you have compassion for them which is a sweet feeling which is a good feeling

[Speaker 2]
and that's what enabled you to become a buddha you did it because you wanted to have the power to stop their suffering so when you experience their suffering as a buddha

[Speaker 1]
your reaction is no we had a huge debate about this in the monastery is it painful to see to see other people suffer normally yes but if your only reaction to that suffering is total compassion that's actually a result of a good karma you're actually having this your breath is very slow or not at all actually and you're perceiving them it's a very sweet feeling to be concerned about them they're giving you a chance to be a buddha and teach them on the roof of some hotel in Goa good question

[Speaker 2]
doesn't this imply that the separate mind streams are self-existent?

[Speaker 1]
no why? it almost proves that they're not self-existent that if your projection can't change oh it changes how they are to you but not how they are to them no contradiction there otherwise what would my lama when he got pressed on this point what's that little street in Greenwich Village? MacDougall Street last time he taught in New York 1974 he said what do you think?

they're all going to retire or what? but the suffering that they perceive in non-buddhas is also going to be their projection right? I guess you have to say that but what kind of paradise is that?

what kind of paradise is that? maybe it's fun to be the Buddha in your planet maybe it's something like that I believe that as you get towards Tantric Enlightenment you get to be the Jesus on your planet and you get the satisfaction of saving all these living beings and then towards the end it's like I have a feeling that would be one of the greatest pleasures that could exist actually that you are a superhero you get to be a superhero of your planet I believe it happens to everybody that way yeah I don't know I guess I'd have to say yeah maybe the process is fun I don't know

[Speaker 2]
Geshe-la how can like a Buddha can see ultimate reality and deceptive reality at the same time how can the Buddha have two contradictory perceptions of deceptive reality?

[Speaker 1]
she said how can a Buddha have two contradictory perceptions of deceptive reality? I don't think it's contradictory to say that a Buddha sees how the dog sees the pen and the Buddha sees the pen as a pen that's not a contradiction that's not a contradiction in fact it's an affirmation of the emptiness of things it should be comforting to you that that that's the way it is you know you always ask hard ones ok go ahead can you hear me? yeah there's a Buddha and he sees the suffering of people isn't he projecting that suffering by that same talking there wouldn't be suffering because he's already a Buddha by the way it's a projection of other people's suffering and don't forget what's the definition of good karma and bad karma the definition is a good karma for example is that thing which ripens later as a pleasant experience so my contention and you're getting into really slippery territory and the scriptures are not easy on this point and you can debate it for hours and when we get to Sarah we can do it with some geshes you know but my contention would be that it's very much a good karma to be able to be the Jesus of your planet and to see to go through the a lifetime of being the Dalai Lama on planet earth you know being able to teach millions and millions of people the way to liberation I have to imagine it's a very satisfying experience a result of a good karma you know you're too hard, you're too hard let me finish this one ok we'll do some more later we have time, we have an extra class actually ok I want to cover two more lines of the root it says practice giving and taking alternately that's no problem sometimes you can do just tong sometimes you can do just len you can do tong len in one session my advice by the way is that if you're feeling loomy depressed, a little bit down you don't enjoy your meditation so much, do the tong part do the giving do the giving part and make it big time I have a lot of fun with that I picture hundreds of thousands of apartments in New York City I picture lots of lonely people which seems to be the defining characteristic of New York City which is weird in a city where you can hardly walk down the sidewalk without bumping into 30 people picture each one of them lonely in their apartment watching TV all night and then fantasize about what they would like I imagine all these old grumpy men who would like to have a nice girlfriend and I knock on the door I just moved in next door to you I love that soap opera you're watching something like that and then some people like animals I'm Shih Tzu with long floppy hair and I just don't have an owner because Palma didn't close the store door and I'd love to spend the rest of my time in New York I mean you get up to go to work after a meditation like that and you feel like a million dollars it's a very satisfying, very pure Buddhists can emanate as anything you can be a dog, you can be somebody's girlfriend you can be a grandmother for some child who needs one I enjoy that kind of thing I think it's a good practice actually so that's just giving and then if you know someone who's having a particular problem and you want to kind of be with them while they're having their cancer operation today then you just do the men part you go through it with the men part it's very satisfying you can do that then it says practice throughout the day in words this is in the Tibetan it says this is a code thing for under your breath throughout the day wherever you live you can say I take from you, I give to you I take from you, I give to you you know you're on the subway and you're muttering to yourself like everybody else but it's meaningful I take from you, I give to you I take from you, I give to you and they say that it just becomes a thing that's running through your mind and through your breath under your breath you're constantly muttering I take from you, I give to you I take from you, I give to you and you get it into your breathing process and then it says it has this profound effect on your mind like all day long walking through New York City for example sitting on a New York City subway you see lots of people in pain I'm taking, I'm taking from you I take from you, I give to you on your breath while you're sitting in the subway like a person who knows how to do Tonglen properly is never not practicing you see what I mean everywhere you go, walking down the street someone's getting hassled by somebody they'll think you're on cocaine you know and just do it just breathe on people, it's not hard right and you're just muttering it under your breath all day that's a holy, sacred practice and Geshe Chikal is saying do it he's encouraging you to do it last thing it says here is the order of taking is to start with yourself they say in the practice of Tonglen that it's difficult to do Tonglen with people you don't like you know, people you really don't like it's very hard at the beginning to think of somebody you really don't like and to imagine that you're taking their pain away from them they say start with someone you like and who's the person you like the most? yourself so they say actually project yourself into the future like if it's 5 o'clock now project yourself out to 7 o'clock you're going to be sitting on this chair at 7 o'clock and do Tonglen on yourself say, okay you you know, so and so 7 o'clock I'm going to concentrate into a black ball at your chest all the distraction you're going to experience and I take it into me and I destroy it haha, now you're going to be able to concentrate from 7 o'clock to 9 o'clock on the teaching congratulations, and you actually do it on yourself an hour from now two hours from now, a week from now a month from now actually take away the problems that you can anticipate yourself having in the near future then you can actually get up to taking away the pain of your own death and you know project forward to the day that you're laying on the bed and you're dying and take away their pain, and you can do practices like that then they say start with your close friends people you love then work up to neutral people, and then finally do it on people that you don't like very much at all now, if you like it, most people I know it's not that big of a deal to think of someone you don't like and try to imagine what kind of problems they might have and take them away I don't think you have to wait a year to get into that practice I think if you're a normal person sitting here in this audience I found it very very very helpful to picture the people that I don't like very much and consciously try to remove their pain, and then the next time you meet them there's this subconscious or unconscious thing in your face that they pick up on, people are like dogs they can sense what's going on in your mind subconsciously, if you've had even ten minutes of imagining the problems that the person you don't like is having then the next time you meet them it's very hard not to it's very hard to dislike them as much as you used to normally the people that you don't like you never think of the problems they're having and even just five or ten minutes contemplating on what problems they might have has a very profound effect on your relationship it's very hard, the next time you meet them in your eyes there's a change in your body language there's a subtle change and people pick up on it personally I don't think you should wait six months before you do that, I personally like to do it on people I don't like or people I'm trying not to dislike do it right away so I think that completes that I have to make sure I get all the homework done yeah ok so see you we'll do some pairs and then see you at seven o'clock very important to do this is a very famous sangha mantra and the opening lines the opening syllables refer to when you do tong len try to be aware of the emptiness of the other person try to see at least for a few seconds of the emptiness of the other person and then the meditation is much more profound there are two ways to get your channels open one is bodhichitta one is emptiness now imagine you glue them together and do that on your breath it has a very profound effect on your channels when the channels get fully open full throttle there's this transformation that takes place and you move into a Tantric Deity's body and that's the difference you're trying to set that up weeks or years ahead of time ok and tong len is the most powerful way to do it if you try to remember the pen thing while you're doing tong len on somebody that's the two most powerful things you can do and then link it to your breath and it starts to your Tantric Deity's body starts to be produced at that very moment so it's very cool practice ok that's what you're going to do on Mondays and Saturdays ok where's my little film?

[Speaker 2]
oh I had to go ok Elila oh ok we're going to do those they're in your book if you don't know them they're in your notebook ok chanting this is the end of session three