Серия ежедневной практики, курс 04 — Семичастная практика развития доброго сердца (1999, Гоа), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
Session four. So, the reason I'd like to do this is that part 6 of the 7 steps consists of what they call the 18 pledges. 18 pledges means 18 different kinds of behavior that are very practical.

18 different ways of conducting yourself that are something you can start right away. And what usually happens in a course like this, if you do this 7 step lojong, is that they get shoved off to the end, and then I rush through them at the end, and then you never get to hear them in detail. So, I thought, especially people who have heard this teaching, we did it once in New York, we did it once in Ireland, I thought it'd be nice to go to those 18 pledges, because these are really 18 guidelines for your life, and I think it's important to go through them in sort of a relaxed way.

So, I moved class number 5 up to tonight, and this is the 6th of the 7 things. Ori, are you ready? Where is Ori?

He went to get the thing, probably. This is the meditation you're going to do on Friday, and the suggestion for Friday's meditation is to go through 3 of these on a rotating basis. You're going to have 18 pledges, or 18 guidelines for how to practice a good heart from day to day, in your real life, in your office, or with your family, or something like that.

So, my suggestion is, on Friday morning, you go through the list, and take the first 3 on first Friday, and then the second Friday, take the next 3, and like that. So, this is a program for at least a month and a half on Friday, that you can go through these 18 modes of behavior, conducting yourself in your normal life. So, here we go.

I'm going to put up the Tibetan. The Tibetan is very, very ancient. There are books written on what these words mean.

Even for Tibetans, these are very odd words. So, I've translated them very loosely, to try to get the Kadampa feeling. So, if it sounds a little weird, or a little too racy for a Kadampa Lama, that's exactly how it's supposed to sound.

The Kadampas were not wimpy. They were very powerful people. These are the people who invented turning your water bowls over at night, as a sign that you'll probably die before you wake up, so people won't have to clean the water out the next morning.

You know what I mean? These are the kind of weird people they were. So, these translations are modern, they're very colloquial, and they really capture the Tibetan, I think, better than a more conservative translation.

So, they were very wild guys, and this is exactly how they lived their lives. Okay, here we go. Please say, Chi Dön, Sum La, Tak Du, Lap.

Chi Dön, Sum La, Tak Du, Lap. And this is the first, second, and third pledge. There's three pledges contained in the first one, okay?

Chi Dön means the three general rules, okay? Chi Dön means general rules. Sum means three.

Tak Du, Lap means always practice them, or always follow them, okay? And the translation says, keep to the three laws, okay? Keep to the three laws.

The three laws are the following, okay? Number one, never act in a way that contradicts what you have committed yourself to. And this mainly means your commitments to your three vows, three sets of vows.

Three sets of vows, what are they? What we call freedom vows, and the emphasis there is not hurting others. Okay, like not killing, not stealing, not committing sexual misconduct.

Then the bodhisattva vows, where the emphasis is loving others. For example, not praising yourself, not putting down other people, okay? And then the third one is your secret vows, okay?

And the emphasis there is on very special ways of viewing the world, which will get you enlightened in one lifetime. So those are the three emphasis, cihs, okay? And never to act in contradiction to those.

Never breaking what you've committed yourself to is the first of the pledges, okay? So if you're going to do a meditation on that, you would sit down and you'd say, have I done anything today which is against my tantric vows, for example? And how can I honor my tantric vows today?

Or something like that, okay? That would be the first one. And never to act in a...

Your other commitments, by the way, are to your lama. Once you take a lama, and this is a formal taking of a lama, okay? Once you formally decide that this person is your lama, and once you request them to be your lama, once they agree to be your lama, then you have what's called a dhamsik or a samaya, or you have a commitment to them.

And then there's a whole different mode of behavior and a whole different way of looking at them that you have to engage in, okay? And like that. So those are kinds of commitments that you might have made, okay?

The second general rule is to never place yourself in a dangerous situation. For example, in the Vinaya, one of the monk's vows is that we're not allowed to take our meal from the sponsor and walk off into the forest in some dangerous place where we might get hurt or something like that. I mean, you have to honor the vessel, meaning your body.

This is your ship to get enlightened in. You're going to need a healthy body, and you don't endanger it needlessly, okay? People ask me, Would you like to go skydiving?

And I say, No, it's just asking for trouble. You know what I mean? I mean, it's not worth it.

Whatever fun I might have off of it, it just pales in comparison to what I could do if I could practice a few more years and get Tantrically enlightened. So you don't take risks. Not because you're not a risk-taker.

Anybody in the Dharma in the West is a risk-taker. But you don't risk your holy body needlessly. You take care of it.

And also you don't put yourself in general situations which are risky. For example, if you have Tantric vows, one of your vows is not to put yourself in a situation where your mind could be swayed away from those vows by somebody else. You see what I mean?

And you're actually not allowed to stay in their house, for example, past a certain period. Not allowed to hang out too closely with them if they totally disrespect the idea of Tantric practice or something like that. So those are examples of not putting yourself in danger.

The third general law is never fall into the habit of discriminating between other people. And this is where you treat different people by different criteria. And there's a very famous line in Master Shantideva.

He says, people come to him and say, I'll do anything for my lama. And you say, well, what would that include? Would that include violence to somebody else if they risked your lama's life or something like that?

And if they say yes, then Master Shantideva says, you're a fool, on two counts. And they say, what? Count number one, if your lama is an enlightened being, they don't need your violence to help them.

You know what I mean? They don't need you to do harm to someone else to defend your lama or something like that. They don't need it.

And by the way, anyone who considers me your lama, I don't need it either. So, don't need to be defended. Don't need anyone else hurt on my behalf.

You know, don't need it. You see what I mean? Just don't need it.

If the person is enlightened, which I'm not, but I still don't need it, they don't need it. The idea of defending your lama against someone else who's trying to hurt them or speak badly about them or something like that, you can just throw it out the window. They don't need it.

If they're a real lama, they got this karma control stick and they know how to use it and you don't have to worry about them. Then Master Shantideva says, if they're not enlightened or they don't understand things very well, you still shouldn't do violence for them because they're at the mercy of their karma. So, you're not going to help them any by making more bad karma.

You see what I mean? So, if the lama is enlightened, they don't need you to hurt anybody on their behalf and if they're not enlightened, they don't need you to hurt anybody on their behalf. So, don't do it.

Did you have a question? She said, should you treat people with the same respect you treat your lama? I'd say yes, you should.

I personally find it very suspicious when someone is, you know, I don't trust it. You know, someone says, you know, I'm acting kindly towards this person because they're a lama. Because they're a lama.

You know what I mean? The implication is, if you weren't a lama, I wouldn't act kindly towards you. That seems to me very strange logic, very improper logic.

So, yeah. If you have a nang dom, what's a nang dom? Dharma-priority conflict.

This comes in Vinaya. You have two virtues which you can only perform at seven o'clock. Then you have to choose which virtue.

You see what I mean? And on behalf of all living beings, you should choose the more powerful virtue. And one of the examples given in all the scriptures is, you know, giving food to a dog or giving food to a human.

If you've only got one piece of food and they both need it equally and you can only do it once, you should give the food to the human because they have a better chance of getting enlightened. They have all the equipment necessary to become a tantric deity in this lifetime. They have channels and drops and they have a mind, an intellect which can allow them to become a tantric deity in this lifetime.

So, go for the higher virtue. So, if it's a priority conflict. But most of the disrespect I see of people, you know, they'll come up to some poor...

I've seen this, you know. Some poor beginning student has sat in the lama's chair by accident or has pulled their cup out of the cupboard by accident and they're sitting there and then suddenly this older student pounces upon them and says, I can't believe that you're using the lama's cup, you idiot, you know, and they drag it away from them. That just seems very strange to me.

I've seen many younger students, newer students get turned off by this kind of behavior. Yeah, you should treat people equally. But mostly it refers to people that you don't like and people you do like.

And treating them equally. So, those are the first three rules. These rules are called jidun, means they apply to everything.

They apply all the time. These are the most important three. Number four.

Say, dhumba, gyrla, rangsor, shat. Dhumba, gyrla, rangsor, shat. The translation...

Well, let me give you the separate words first. Dhumba means how you think, in this case. Normally it means aspirations.

Gyrla means change it, change your aspirations. Rangsor, shat means but stay the same. The translation is change your mind and stay the same.

I think you can guess what this means. It means work on the inside and not the outside. Change your spiritual life on the inside, but on the outside, it's supposed to be a virtue and a very desirable to look like a normal person.

Like my lama, I was eight years in a monastery. I didn't go outside almost at all. I didn't go to my mother's funeral.

I didn't go to my brother's weddings. I didn't go to my brother's funeral. Just stayed in the monastery.

And then at some point he said, now you go work in an office. Grow your hair, wear a suit, go work in an office. Don't tell anybody you're a Buddhist.

Don't tell anybody you're a Buddhist. And just, you know, see if you can be a Buddhist without appearing to be a Buddhist. And act like a Buddhist, but don't tell anybody you're a Buddhist.

And it was a very, very beautiful exercise. It was wonderful. And, you know, I think for five years nobody knew I was a monk, for example.

So, just do that. That forces you to change your behavior without anyone knowing what you're doing. And that's great.

It was really a great experience. I didn't have any of this pressure from the outside of trying to look Buddhist. I was just supposed to be a Buddhist and treat people like a Buddhist.

You know what I mean? And that's a great practice. So, they say the greatest yogis on the outside, you know, you meet them on the street.

They don't tell you how much Tibetan they know. They don't tell you how many years they've been meditating. They just act like a normal person.

And there's nothing on the outside to indicate. I think a lot of people, when they meditate, they're almost more concerned about how they look on the outside than how their meditation is going. You know?

And that's funny. I heard that in dance it's like that. You know, some dancers are the really great dancers, like Nijinsky or something, that they pretty much just close their eyes and dance because the dance is coming from the inside.

And then lesser dancers are concerned about how they look to people. As they dance, they're thinking, how do I look to people? Instead of letting the dance come out of them.

And Buddhism is a similar dance. It's coming from the inside out and you're not too concerned about how you look, how Buddhist you look to other people. Inevitably, in everybody's spiritual career, if you're moving, you see what I mean?

If your Buddhist career is, how do you say, moving, if it's progressing, then you're going to look different in 2003 than you did in 2000. And the people who thought you looked like a pretty good Buddhist in 2000 might think you look weird by 2003. And you have to be able to deal with that.

If you're making progress and if you're going up higher through the Buddhist practices, then the way you look to other people in the first year of your practice may not look at all what you look to people like in the third year of your Buddhist practice. And you have to be able to deal with that. And you have to understand that the important thing is on the inside and not how you look to other people.

And that's the fourth rule of this Lojong text. Worry about the inside and don't advertise anything on the outside. These are very practical things and I think if you try to follow them you'll find that it makes you happier right away.

Lojong is advertised as a happiness vehicle. And I think if you follow these 18 you'll see that you feel much happier very quickly. Say, Yenlak Nyanpa Jumija Yenlak Nyanpa Jumija Yenlak in this case, which normally means branch or part means one of your vows part of your vows part of your spiritual commitments Nyanpa means broke them broke your commitments broke your vows Jumija means don't talk about it Now this is not referring to your own vows If you break your own vows you should go tell somebody as soon as you can.

Why? For example, in the Vinaya and in general the power, the negative karma of breaking a vow doubles every 24 hours. So if you leave it unspoken to someone else for 15 days I think Pabongka Rinpoche figured it out it's 5,260 times 16,000 times more powerful than the day you committed it.

Within 15 days. In other words, you're encouraged to go and tell a lama or tell one of your friends about something you've done wrong because it kind of stops the power from growing from that moment on that you admit it to someone openly it stops the power. That was the original intent of Sojong, for example.

This refers to not advertising other people's spiritual mistakes. Not like saying, oh, you know, I saw you break that vow or you have this problem or I saw you doing this thing. Let me say a couple more things and then if...

There are higher vows which require that you go to that person themselves and the vow says in a happy way and keeping your vows yourself you go to them and give them spiritual advice from one Dharma brother or sister to another Dharma brother or sister. You say, look, I can't judge you. I don't know what's inside of your mind but it seems like you're breaking this vow.

And, you know, from one friend to another I think maybe you should think about it. But I'm not judging you. I don't know why you're doing that or it could be something special that I don't understand but it looks like that.

You're required to do that in your higher vows. We're talking here about where you accuse somebody publicly or you start rumors that this person is doing this when you don't have any basis to say so. It could be some special practice.

It could be anything. Particularly harmful about other spiritual traditions or other spiritual teachers or things, you know, I heard this lama drinks a lot or has sex or stuff like that and then to start talking about that or to start rumors about that is a very typical way of breaking this. You have no idea what they're doing.

You have no evidence. In the Vinaya also there's a thing called there's two monks and nuns vows called accusing someone with no what do you call it with no basis shi me pa It's in the Getul recitation. And then there's one is to accuse them with some basis.

Those two, you know what I mean? Meaning that you're not supposed to do it at all. You can't do that.

You can't judge other people. You don't know why someone's doing something. I'll give you another example.

In the monastery we have these we probably see one there one or two and this is where it's often called an inter-class debate like the sophomore class will debate the junior class. And the junior class puts two guys up on a throne. Usually it's a picnic table.

They put a nice cloth on it. But it's really shaky. And you put this big hat on and then the junior class or the sophomore class gets to field about six guys at once to ask you questions.

And then you're sitting there and you're trying to respond to six guys at once. And usually your partner wimps out. And you get stuck with all the answers.

They always put you with some guy that doesn't know anything. Appears to be. So anyway often times a senior lama will stand up and ask a really stupid question.

Or they'll appear not to understand something and they'll ask some kind of they'll make a point which is slightly defective. And then it'll take the opposing team like three hours to prove them wrong. It's a very simple point.

He made a very elementary error. And then you'll see the debate go on for three or four hours. And then when the older geshe sits down you realize he set it up.

He did it knowing that it was a wrong position. And he just wanted everybody in the audience to be aware that there's this wrong position which might be very tempting and that's why you shouldn't take that position. But it's very interesting to watch a newer geshe or a younger monk try to beat this guy on a point which everybody can see is wrong.

The older geshe is wrong. And they do that as a game. Just to see if other people can figure it out.

So these are all examples of you have no idea why other people are doing what they do. So be very very careful in how you approach other people's spiritual lives. Spiritual lives, they range from very obvious proper behavior up to very wild behavior and you can't I forget who it was I think it was Marpa met Naropa at the banks of the Ganges River.

And he heard about this great lama. And then he keeps asking at the Ganges River for Naropa. And finally they say he's over there.

And he goes there and here's this guy fishing. It's sin. Killing animals.

And he's got this big basket of fish next to him. And it stinks. And he looks like a wreck.

And he starts this fire. He says, What's your name? Oh, Marpa.

Yeah, what are you doing? I heard you're a great lama. I want to study Narottudu, the six dharmas the six practices from you.

And he says, I don't know anything. You want some fish? And Marpa's like, He says, throw two live fish on the frying pan.

And he's cooking them up and they're all dead. And the bones are sticking out. And Marpa's like freaking out.

No. No, that's a very wrong thing to do. I wouldn't do that.

So Naropa takes the fish out of the pan and says, OK. Flops them back in the Ganges and they swim away. You know?

Now, you never know. Personal experience, my personal experience, your hands are full with your own spiritual life. You know, you've got all you can handle with your own mental afflictions.

You don't have to worry about other people's apparent mental afflictions. OK? And you don't know why they're doing what they're doing or anything else.

So, is it important to go to a person and say in a very honest, peaceful way, Looks to me like you're breaking your vows. Maybe I think you should think about it. Between us.

That's fine. But to say anything decisively outside. And by the way, it's also OK to condemn that behavior.

You know? Like, I saw this lama take a beer. You know, we were at a party and I smelled the punch.

He said, Can I have some of that punch? And I said, Yeah, here's some. And then I smelled it and I said, Oh, be careful, it's got alcohol in it.

And he goes, Great! You know? You have to condemn that kind of behavior.

We're under vows, all Buddhists are under vows not to use alcohol. So you condemn the behavior but not the person. You can't judge the person.

You don't know why. So that's very important. Worry about your own spiritual life.

Don't criticize other people's mistakes. Especially in public. And don't decide that you know what they're thinking because you don't.

What about amongst people who don't have vows? Like, I think of having a little bit of experience with parenting. I think of intervening with two children, for instance, who seem to be hurting each other.

Oh yeah, what if you come across two people hurting each other? I mean, it's very difficult, but mentally you can't decide that the one child is not a Buddha who is emanating something to help the other child. But you have to act on the basis of what you perceive.

You have to take action on the basis of what you perceive. You know what I mean? Person A is hurting person B.

Now maybe person A is a Buddha and person B is the next Hitler. You know what I mean? And maybe this is the right thing to do.

But you have to deal with your level of perception. Buddhist vows are like that. You have to deal with what you know to be the case at that time and you have to try to break them up.

And that's an act of truth. And that is the correct action. And you will get good karma from it.

And it's up to you. It's at your level of what you can perceive at that moment the right thing to do. Which is why amongst Buddhists, two sincere Buddhists can take opposite actions and they can both be doing good karma.

Okay? Two sincere Buddhists can take the opposite sides of a controversy or a question and if they have proper motivation they can both be doing good karma. Okay?

Even as they criticize the other viewpoint. So you have to realize that that can go on like between high lamas and stuff like that. Be very careful saying, Oh, this high lama is right and this high lama is wrong.

She said, Does writing a negative action you've done down in your book We're going to talk about the idea of a book or a personal diary of your hour to hour mental afflictions progress. Yeah. Yeah, all the scriptures say if you just admit it.

The main thing is that you admit it. And if you honestly admit it to yourself that's the main thing that stops the power of the karma. That is the main thing that stops the power of karma.

But, if there's an appropriate person to mention it to I had a problem when I went on business trips and I would watch bad movies late at night in Thailand. I was embarrassed and I said to myself, I have to go tell my lama. And I'd go back to Howell, New Jersey and explain to Rinpoche what a bad movie is and then confess it.

And he's like, Huh? What's that? And then I was so embarrassed that I just made a vow to myself that if I ever did it I would go tell him directly.

And he'd say, That's disgusting. And I'd say, Yeah, I know. But what I mean is the embarrassment level is so good that the embarrassment factor is so powerful that if you have a good lama that can be very powerful in restraining yourself from a bad deed.

If you know you're going to have to tell them then a lot of things you won't do. Until you're strong enough not to do it on your own that's a very good method. By the way, the last one is very common in Dharma circles, Dharma centers.

It's like the main thing people seem to talk about in some centers is other people's spiritual mistakes. Did you hear? Such and such a monk disrobed.

There was such and such a scandal. There was such and such a problem. And it seems to be one of the most popular things to talk about.

So what I mean is, among those of you who are in a Dharma center, you're in a Dharma group or you're really working hard on your Dharma practice it's my personal observation that it's one of the things we have to work on the most. It's one of the most common forms of gossip in a Dharma center. Say, Shen Chok Kang Yang Mi Sa Mo Shen Chok Kang Yang Mi Sa Mo By the way, the scriptures that discuss that pledge say, if you know that a teacher has a problem and that they are doing something bad and you feel it's your responsibility to inform one of the other students you know, they have a student that you feel might be hurt then it's your responsibility to mention it to them.

You have to check it out carefully and then it's your responsibility to go. If you have a friend who's in that Dharma center and they don't know about that situation and you do know about that situation it's not gossiping to go to them and say you know, there appears to be this problem with your teacher and you should check it out or something like that. That's your responsibility.

But not in the sense of gossiping and just getting into it like O.J. Simpson or something like that. Okay? Shen Chok means the other side or other people.

Kang Yang means at all. Mi Sa Mo means don't worry about it. This is a very similar pledge to the one before.

Okay? Don't worry so much about others' activities what other people are doing, what other people are thinking, other people's problems. You have more than a lifetime to take care of your own spiritual life.

Don't worry too much about other people's problems. If someone's sick or someone needs help, you worry about them and that's important. But I'm talking about you're more concerned to point out to them all their mental afflictions than you are to take care of your own.

It's the the moat in your brother's eye as opposed to the, what is it? The log in your own. And it's very common.

You're much more strenuous in your examination of other people's minds than your own. Even though you can't see other people's minds. Alright, number seven.

Say Nyo Mong Kang Che Song La Jang Nyo Mong Kang Che Song La Nyo Mong means your negative emotions. Your own negative emotions. Example, pride, anger, jealousy, desire, hatred of others, things like that.

Kang Che Song Kang Che Song means whichever one is the biggest one. Okay? Kang Che Song means whichever one is the biggest one.

Most serious one. La Jang means take care of that one first. In the Lam Rim they say and I used to do this I wasn't like a street fighter kid but we did have gangs.

Little gangs. Wimpy gangs, okay? And I remember once we had a wimpy gang fight and you know actually the other side won which I'm embarrassed to say.

But this kid came over to the leader of my gang which is my brother and this is the opening round. He just walks up to him and punches him as hard as he can in the face and he falls down and we're all like and we all ran away. And when you're dealing with mental afflictions this is the same principle.

You know, go for your worst one first. Work very hard to identify your worst one. Then the other ones are easy after that.

So find your most chronic mental problem you know jealousy or whatever it is and go after that one first. Devote all your efforts towards eliminating the leader of the other gang. And then the rest of the guys will fall apart easily after that.

My personal experience with this is that we are very good at identifying our second worst mental affliction. And we're very good at not admitting to ourselves our most serious mental affliction. Like if you asked any five friends of yours what's my biggest mental affliction?

They'd say jealousy, of course. But if you asked yourself what's my worst mental affliction? You'd say anger.

And you know, jealousy, no, not much problem with that. What I mean is you're not even, there's something about your biggest mental affliction is that it's such a bad mental affliction it's so much a part of you that you can't even recognize it. Or you don't want to admit it.

And it's very common to go for your second worst one, or your third worst one, or something like that. So, spend some time, do some research, in your own head, find your worst mental affliction, talk to your close friends who will be honest with you, and they'll probably have the same thing to say. And then go after that one first.

Now the scriptures always say after saying that, having said that, there comes a point of diminishing returns. Meaning, you can work on your jealousy for about six weeks or something, and it just becomes exhausting. I mean, you reduce it, and they say, chung u, chung u, chung u, ding, chung u, chung bu, ding gi, chung u, ding gi, ding, ding gi, chung bu, chung bu, chung u, chung bu, ding, chung bu, chung bu, means the biggest version of your biggest mental affliction, the medium version of your biggest mental affliction, the smaller version of your worst mental affliction, the smallest medium version of your worst mental affliction, and there's nine levels that you go through in eliminating your mental affliction, like jealousy. First you polish off the obvious version, of the obvious version. Then you go to the medium version of the obvious version.

And then you go to the lesser version of the obvious version. And there's nine stages that you go through with every single mental affliction. I would say, try to knock off the most obvious forms of your most obvious mental affliction.

Jealousy, which is so bad that you throw something across the room every couple of weeks or something. At least learn not to throw things across the room. And then maybe get down to not screaming at someone that you're jealous of.

And then leave it for a while. What I'm saying is that there comes a point where you need in meditation and you need in your practice to spice things up a little bit. It gets dry.

You make all the easy progress. Then you make some medium difficulty progress. And then you make a little bit of very difficult progress.

Then leave it for a while. Work on number two for a while. And then come back.

That's my own personal experience. I find that every three or four months I move to a different focus. And then I come back to the other one.

Just because you'll come up with new tricks. You'll be refreshed. You'll come back to it with a new perspective.

And I think that's a useful thing. So work on your worst one first. We're on number eight, right?

Okay. Say, Drebu.

[Speaker 2]
Rewa. Tamzeh.

[Speaker 1]
Pang. Drebu.

[Speaker 2]
Rewa.

[Speaker 1]
Tamzeh. Pang. Drebu means results of your spiritual efforts.

Drebu means results. Rewa means hope. Tamzeh means all those hopes.

Pang means forget it. Don't hope for any results. Now obviously we have to talk about this one.

It has two meanings. It has two very different meanings. The first one is don't hope for any instant results.

Don't hope for any instant results. What's this mean? I'll give you a very, very common application.

A real life example, you know. There's a person in your life who keeps getting angry at you. And maybe they say bad things to you.

And so you've been studying Dharma. And then you realize that the last thing you want to do is respond to them angrily. So you don't want to say anything angry back to them.

Having learned that thing about emptiness, you understand that the worst thing you can do is to respond with anger. So the next time they come up to you and say, You're really stupid. You just smile at them.

You say, Okay, can we get on to something else now? You know, let's go to the beach. Let's do something else.

Let's think about something else right now. Now you've just given proper response. You understand their emptiness.

You understand the emptiness of the situation. You understand your emptiness. You understand that they could have been a tantric deity.

You could have been a tantric deity. It could have been tantric Paradiseville. And you've done exactly the right thing back to them.

And then what happens? They say, You're really stupid. Or they hit you or something.

Okay? No, and that's... It's very, very important to understand that karma has a ripening period.

Okay? Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna had a very, very... He was adamant about the karmic ripening period.

He said, If there was no ripening period, the world would be perfect already. People come to me in New York. They say, Can I squash...

I understand what you said about respecting life, but roaches are a different thing. You know? Roaches in my apartment are a bad thing.

You know? Can I kill the roaches in my apartment? You know?

And I'm like, You don't know what my name is? You know, but... Now they expect me to make some exception because roaches are so gross.

You know what I mean? And they say, Let me ask you a question. If when you stepped on a roach, if as your foot went down towards the floor and started to crush their bodies, if at that moment your own ribs started to break, would you step on roaches?

Or would you maybe find a different way? And I say, Of course I wouldn't step on roaches. The whole world would be compassionate.

The whole world would be 100% perfectly moral if there was no karmic maturing time. If there was no gap in time between doing it, killing, stepping on them, and your own ribs breaking. But that's exactly what will happen.

Without question. Undoubtedly. It's called Milua.

Milua means karma never fails. You step on an insect, you will have your rib cage broken at some point. It's just a matter of when.

It's not if. So don't ask me stupid questions like that. It's just the gap time.

In positive karma, it means don't stand there and expect this person to suddenly become compassionate or understanding or a tantric deity because you were just able for the first time in a million years to be patient. You know what I mean? Don't expect some kind of instant karma to happen like that.

There's almost no such thing. On a tantric level, when you understand tantra and you're practicing it properly, it comes very close to zero gap time. But that's another subject which we have to get into after three years or so.

That's a whole different that's a whole different ball game. But in the meantime, don't stand there and expect instant results. In fact, an understanding of emptiness implies that you keep doing the right thing even though it doesn't appear to work over and over again.

You see what I mean? That means you really understand emptiness. In a brief time, meaning in three weeks to six months or something, you will see obvious confirmation that you are doing the right thing.

You know? Your life will change. Your level of prosperity, your own happiness, everything around you, your own body's health will obviously start to change.

But it takes time. And don't stand there and give up if it doesn't happen right away. What I'm saying is that be aware that a person who is acting perfectly according to bodhisattva principles may well have some very bad events happen to them in the short run.

And realize that that's coming from old karma. And it has nothing to do with your new plan of attack. And that's vital for all of us to remember.

Okay? You can be acting perfectly for the first time in a million years and there's more and more crap happening to you. And don't doubt that that's the last of the crap and now things are going to get better and better.

Okay? You can't doubt during that gap time. Okay?

You must do the right thing. Conversely, understand that bad karma just doesn't work. Okay?

Like the idea of lying to get some kind of profit. Or the idea that you have to lie to someone to get something that you want. It just doesn't work.

You see what I mean? We were talking in Bodhgaya and I think in Kathmandu. You know, if you understand emptiness clearly, you are forever liberated from the need to lie.

You never have to lie again. If you understand karma clearly and if you understand emptiness clearly, there's this big weight off your shoulders. You can forget any kind of negative behavior forever.

It doesn't work. Okay? Buddha never said, don't lie because I said so.

Buddha never said, don't lie because it's the wrong thing. Buddha never said, don't lie because your parents told you not to lie or your church taught you not to lie or your government tells you not to lie or it's against the law to lie or anything like that. Nothing to do with it.

It's a very, very profound thing. Lies don't work. Okay?

Lying does not and cannot lead to a positive result. It's impossible. It's just strictly impossible.

It's as impossible as, you know, dropping something and it doesn't fall to the earth or something like that. It's a law. It's a divine law.

It's a law of the world. It's a law of the universe. Lying doesn't work.

So if you understand emptiness, there's this, I don't know how to really convey it, but there's this huge weight goes off your shoulders. You never need to misrepresent anything to another living being again. Period.

Just because it doesn't work. If it works, we could debate it, you know? If it works, we could say, maybe you should do it sometimes, maybe you shouldn't do it sometimes.

It just doesn't work. Okay? So you're free from that.

If you really understand emptiness, you're freed from even having to consider lying. It just doesn't work. Now in the short run, it appears to work.

You know? You lie, you get a green card. You lie, you make some money.

You lie and your boss doesn't yell at you or your friend doesn't yell at you or your lama doesn't yell at you. But it doesn't work that way. Okay?

The lie causes its own negative thing after the gap and the thing you seem to get right after that is coming because of something good you did in the past. There's no connection between your lie and what you seem to get from the lie. That's it.

So what it means is, keep doing the right thing and things will change. But they won't change immediately and don't hope for that. The second meaning of this pledge, the second meaning, is don't hope for some little wimpy karmic results.

Don't do your good deeds because you want to make some money. I mean, or you want better food next year or you want disco to go off the radio stations or anything like that. Don't tie yourself down to wimpy goals.

The ball game is big. The ball game is this. You could stop your own death.

You could stop the aging of your body. You could become a tantric deity in this lifetime. You could become the next Jesus on this planet.

And I'm not kidding. Keep in mind the big time goals. That's the second meaning of this pledge.

Don't say the reason I'm a Buddhist is that I like to sit in a corner and be calm once in a while while I meditate or something like that. It's not the goal of Buddhism. The stakes are higher.

And go for the big time. Don't hope for some wimpy little results. Okay, so why did Geshe Michael write a business book about karma that's coming out next month?

This is called attracting bees. I mean, business people are very intelligent, talented. If you can get them to make some more money by doing the right thing and then maybe get them into doing bigger things, then that's a method.

That's called skillful means. So I'm not saying that you don't go to people and say, look, meditate, you'll feel better. Be nice to other people.

The world will run nicer. Those are okay. But it's not the main goal.

You can tell that to people in order to attract them and to get them started. And then you have to move them out to the more serious spiritual goals, which are overcoming death itself, becoming a Tantric deity in this lifetime, reaching a Tantric paradise in your life. Those are the real goals.

And don't settle for anything less. We'll take a break. You have to settle for some refreshments.

And we'll start after 10-15 minutes. If you have any question that's bugging you, come up and talk. It's okay.

Say, duk chen gyi se pang. duk chen gyi se pang. Duk means poison.

Duk chen means poison, filled with poison. Se means food. Pang means don't eat it.

Give it up. Don't eat poison food. And it means when you do a good deed, try to do it without this idea that you are number one.

Worry about yourself first. Try to make sure that your virtues are not infected by the thought that you want to take care of yourself first. I think it's very important to qualify this.

When you took your bodhisattva vow, and I'll repeat, the commitment you made was I will reach total ecstasy as soon as I can, so I can show other people how to do it. That's bodhichitta. That's the definition of bodhichitta.

And don't forget that. So really, the more sophisticated you get in your practice, if you could find a practice which would quickly make you enlightened, you know, if you had a serious chance to practice tantra, for example, in a qualified way, learn it from a qualified person, practice tantra in the proper way, then you would be fulfilling your vow if you did it. You see what I mean?

It's your responsibility. And you have sworn to do that as soon as you can. And if that's the quickest way you can do it, then that would take priority over other kinds of virtues.

And that's not being selfish. That's being responsible. And I think you have to be very, very careful about that concept.

Like, you meet some Buddhists who give up their daily practice in order to do some kind of social work or something like that. On a certain level, once you've gotten to a certain level of practice, that's irresponsible. If you've been introduced to higher practices, then you must follow them and finish them and get enlightened as fast as you can.

And I don't mean to phrase it as choosing between serving others and doing your tantric practice. Doing your tantric practice is the highest service you can ever do to other people. Because then you can get enlightened and show them how to do it.

Does that preclude helping the elderly, helping the poor, helping the sick? No. I'm a little bit suspicious of people who say, I don't have time to help sick or old or other kinds of needy people because I'm doing my tantric practice.

That's okay up to a certain level. It takes a few hours a day to do your tantric practice. And then I would suspect that your tantric practice would automatically include taking care of the needy or the elderly or the sick.

But what I mean to caution you against is a practice where you don't do any of the formal advanced practices that would make you a Buddha quickly because you want to do some other kinds of more physical service of others. I think you need both. And I think I see either one of the extremes.

Either somebody deludes themselves into thinking that they can practice tantra without serving other people in a normal hands-on way. And then I see the opposite delusion which is reciting those tantric things, doing those visualizations, practicing those practices is not real. I want to help people in a real way.

I think those are both extremes that you have to avoid. The reason I brought this up is that it's not self-cherishing to get yourself into a tantric paradise as fast as you can. That's your responsibility.

And you have to think carefully about whether or not you are following the deepest practices you can with the short amount of lifetime you have left. What number are we on? Ten?

Say shung, sangbo, maten. Shung, sangbo, maten. Shung has a lot of meanings in Tibetan.

It means major. It can mean major scriptural classic. It can be major highway like in shung lam when we study the bodhisattva vows, highway for bodhisattvas.

It can also mean the federal government. It's called shung, deva shung. In this case it means a major stream or a major river.

Sangbo means perfect, uninterrupted. Maten means don't leave it like that. Don't let the river flow uninterrupted.

I think the translation says don't let the stream flow smooth. This means when you become aware that you're having a negative emotion, when you become aware that you're having a mental affliction, put up some kind of a fight. Don't roll over.

Don't say, I can't control it and just let it go. Those of you who studied your bodhisattva vows, you know that there's two relevant vows here. One is allowing your anger to go on unchecked.

And the second one is allowing desire, negative desire, to go on unchecked. And then Je Tsongkhapa in his commentary says, what does it mean to let a mental affliction roll on unchecked? And then he answers it.

He says, if you don't put up a fight, you broke the vow. Then he says, if you put up a fight but you lose, like you're starting to get angry, and you say to yourself, that's wrong. And then your mind says, no, it's right.

No, it's wrong. I can give you ten reasons why you should get angry right now. You say, yeah, but I can give you ten reasons why I shouldn't get angry right now.

And they say, well, just listen to my first three, okay? And then your mind says, first of all, they said something bad to you. Second of all, they did that yesterday.

Third of all, they're probably going to do it tomorrow again. You want more? And you say, no, no, that's enough.

I'm mad. And then you lost to your anger, but at least you put up some fight. And so, Je Tsongkapa says, if you put up some kind of resistance, you don't break the vow.

It's not that you have to succeed. It's not that you have to beat your anger, even in that particular moment. But you have to put up some kind of a fight.

At least say no before the truck hits you. At least say stop. And then the train runs you over.

And then you don't break your vow. And this is the same thing. Don't sit there and watch the anger go wild in your mind.

Say, excuse me. And then a minute later you're like, but this is not right. You've got to put up some kind of a fight.

At least object. Stand up and object. And then let it smash you.

I had a great lama who said, it's the accumulated failed objections which finally succeed. It's the, what do you call it? The accumulation of times that you stood up and it ran you over that finally allows you to beat it.

You see what I mean? Over a course of time, it's all those piled up that finally is strong enough to stop the train. And if you just roll over and be wimpy, then...

I don't know, once you get ordained, you start having all these thoughts that you never had before. The night after you get ordained. And then you put up a fight.

And sometimes a fight can last all night. You just sit there all night fighting with your own mind. You don't go to sleep.

You're just fighting all night. And that's cool. That's the way it's supposed to be.

That's called self-control. That's called fighting with your own mind. And so don't feel that you're a failure or don't feel that it's uncomfortable so I must be doing something wrong or something like that.

It is uncomfortable. And you have to fight. And it's not always very pleasant.

And then sometimes you won't get any sleep. And the next day you'll do even worse because you didn't get any sleep. Okay.

Number eleven. That's where our reading is. I'm just kidding.

Say shag ngen.

[Speaker 2]
Shag ngen.

[Speaker 1]
Ma gge. Ma gge. Shag ngen.

Ma gge. Shag, I forget what it means. I'll tell you tomorrow.

There's an expression in Tibetan which means mi sha len which means take the meat which means to get back at someone who hurt you. So I believe it's that. But shag ngen ma gge means don't try to repay criticism with criticism.

Somebody says you shouldn't have done that thing that I saw you do. And they tell you in a kind way, in a proper way. And then to respond to that by saying no, I saw you do something yesterday.

You know what I mean? Which is totally irrelevant, right? It doesn't at all address what you did.

And that's a common thing that we do. In fact, there's a monk's vow about redirecting criticism. Like the abbot of the monastery calls you in and says we've become aware that you're doing this thing and we request that you don't do that anymore.

And you say, yeah, but I saw you three days ago do something similar. Which has nothing to do with the fact that you did it. You're not saying I didn't do it or anything like that.

You're just saying, yeah, but I saw you do this. And that's like the monk's vow is called deflecting the question. And you can't do that.

So those of you who have bodhisattva vows this is an allusion to the four what do they call it? Ways of virtue. And I'm going to give you the other three.

The first one is not to respond to criticism with criticism. The second one is if somebody physically or emotionally beats you, you can't respond with another beating. When you get actually hit by someone physically or emotionally it's very hard not to respond in the same way.

It's the samsaric thing to do. And then you have to stop acting that way. Don't respond to a beating with a beating.

We're not talking protecting other people's property or lives. That's nothing to do with this vow. You're required by your bodhisattva vows as far as you can in a non-violent way to restrain other people who are hurting other people or hurting other people's property.

We're talking someone punches you and you punch them back just because you want to punch them back. Like that. Third one is to respond with anger to anger.

Somebody gets mad at you so you get mad back at them. And it's very very difficult. Easy to say, difficult to do.

Fourth one respond to scolding with a scolding. Now, what's the difference between criticism and scolding? That's a little delicate.

I think criticism is saying to somebody I think you did something wrong. And scolding is more like you did really stupid and you shouldn't do that. They're almost the same thing.

Those are the four different kinds. Basically, don't respond to negativity with negativity. That's what this one means.

We'll do two more, okay? Say, chang ma guk. Chang ma guk.

Very very ancient words. The bottom line is it means don't lay ambushes. Okay?

Don't lay ambushes. Okay, what does it mean? It means let me get it straight.

Somebody's hurt you in the past and then you wait for an opportunity to hurt them back. Okay? And that's called chang guk.

Chang ma guk means give up that kind of behavior. And you see that. You know, when someone has hurt you, someone has criticized you, someone has done you a wrong, it's the idea that a second wrong would set things right.

You know, what Gandhi said. Somebody said an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. You know what I mean?

Don't wait for an opportunity to get back at somebody who's hurt you. Okay? And that's another one.

Okay, number 13 and then we'll stop. Say ne la mi op.

[Speaker 2]
Ne la mi op.

[Speaker 1]
Ne means crucial point, like I've translated it here as jugular. Okay? Ne means a particular spot where if you strike at that spot, it's a very deadly spot to strike at.

Okay? Mi op means don't go for the jugular. Literally it means don't fall on the jugular.

Okay? It has two meanings. In the commentary it gives it two meanings.

By the way, this work has branched off after Geshe Chikawa. It branched off into other traditions as well. Okay?

Like, I'm a member of the Galupa tradition, but you might be interested to know that this work branched off into the Kagyu and the Nyingma traditions as well. So, you know, if you have friends who are in a Kagyu or Nyingma Dharma center, this is something you can sit down and compare notes on. And there's some beautiful Nyingma commentaries and things like that.

Anyway, this particular one means especially if there's someone you don't like and you get a chance in public to embarrass them or to expose them publicly, there are faults in a group of people. Most often I think it happens when there's four or five people sitting around a dinner table and you say, oh, oh, didn't you mention in class that you did this thing, you know? And they didn't really have in mind that the other four people should know about it.

You know what I mean? And you embarrass them in public or you try to take an opportunity to expose them in a place where they didn't volunteer to be exposed. That's called nela up.

The commentary gives another example which is very... It's a little bit strange, but I figure it's my responsibility to tell you. It says don't pick on spirits.

Don't use your magic powers to pick on spirits, helpless spirits, even negative spirits. Don't torture negative spirits with your magic powers. That's one of the meanings of this one.

Now what's the application of all this stuff? Again, in the weekly schedule we wrote out, Friday is called Good Heart Day. Friday is going to be the day that you go through these eighteen.

I'll finish the other five in tomorrow's class, at the beginning of tomorrow's class, but the point is that every Friday I suggest that you go through at least three of these. You sit down, you do your meditation preliminaries, and then you go into a state of meditation. Before you go into meditation, you peek at the list and see what the next three are, and then actually meditate on them.

Did I in a group setting in the last week or so say something about a person who was there who maybe didn't want that said about them, or maybe didn't want the other people to know this thing about them? And then cover all the things that you've been doing and check and see if you've been doing them. Those of you who keep a book, which we'll talk about, those of you who check your vows every two or three hours, which is a tantric requirement.

When you get to tantric, you're required to do that. It's called six-session yoga, and it's much misunderstood and much mistaught. The guts of it, or the essence of that practice, that tantric practice which is required of all higher initiations, to check your vows every two to three hours.

Those of you who are doing that, and we'll talk about how to do it and things like that. I have a lot of very fine students who took these eighteen and they threw it in to their book rotation, so that maybe every day they were checking one or two of these, like they made a new box off to the top right. These are very good for developing bodhicitta.

These are Geshe Chikawa and the lineage before him. These are barometers of how your bodhicitta is doing. These are points to watch in the battle to try to learn to be a compassionate person.

So I think it's a very worthwhile thing to write a little corner in your book and track these for a month or two. See how you do on these eighteen. Then they start to become second nature.

They start to become part of your normal way of thinking, if you're watching out. These eighteen were identified by Lord Buddha, by Maitreya, by Serlingpa, by Lord Atisha, by the Fifth Dharanama as being very important for bodhicitta. I think what I like about them is they're so specific.

They're very specific. Something you can check about how you act in your family. Something you can check about how you act at work.

Something you can check about any behavior or any time. It doesn't matter what you do for a living or what kind of home life you have. You can check these anyway.

They're very specific and very concrete. They're not like the perfection of giving or something like that. This is much more concrete, deep guidelines about how to live your life from hour to hour, day to day.

So I suggest if you're into it, add it to your book for a while. Don't make your book too complicated. If you throw something in, take something else out for a while and then put the other thing back in and take this one out.

But if the book is to be 78 things to check every half hour, you'll just quit or you won't do it. I'm very much into the simplification of practice. Westerners fall into two categories.

They either don't do all the stuff they promise to do or they do all of it and don't spend any time on it because they've got too much that they promise to do. And I think it's your responsibility to keep your practice streamlined. It has to be simple, something you can get through in half an hour to an hour or an hour and a half.

It has to be something realistic. I used to interview every single student who took my classes. You had to go to an interview before you entered the courses.

And I'd say one of the questions on the interview was do you have any tantric initiations? And they'd say yeah. And I'd say, well, what are they?

And they'd say, well, I have about 20. And I'd say, well, just give me the first 10. And they'd say, I don't know what they are.

And I'd say, well, who did you take them from? And they'd say, oh, this lama, he passed through town. I think his name was Gubu or Jubu or something like that.

And I'd say, well, what were the commitments you made? And they'd say, you know, I don't really know. Or they'd say, I got this paper.

They gave me this paper. I'm supposed to do something. And then they'd say, but I threw the paper out or I lost it or I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

And that was one extreme. Then maybe one out of seven or eight people, they'd say, I've taken 15 initiations. And so every morning I recite 40 pages of stuff.

And I say, well, what is it? And they say, I don't know. It's in Tibetan.

And I say, well, what deities are they? And they say, I really don't know. But I do it every morning.

And then I say, well, would you stop and do the visualizations and think about the mantras? I say, no, how could I do that? I've got to finish 15 of these things.

You know what I mean? Those are the two extremes. The one extreme is more common.

They don't know what they agreed to do. They don't even know what deity is from whom. And then the other extreme is they do it all in a big rush because they've got too much junk.

Their spiritual practice in the morning is very similar to their rooms. Just filled up with all this junk. And they don't really know what they're supposed to be...

They just rush through it. I did that. I'm admitting it.

I did it for 15 years. I used to do it on the bus going home, hour and a half, per thamboy, wake up, do tundu. Oh, man, there's a lot of traffic today.

And I swear, a week, I could do my practices and not think about it once. Really. And I memorized the whole thing in Tibetan and I was really good at it.

People thought I was really good at it, which is more important than being good at it. And I'm just saying it's a trap. So for Westerners, you have to choose your practice, fit it within the time that you can do it in a nice samadhi-filled way.

You're going from practice to practice, meditation to meditation, in a very calm, very smooth, very happy, very joyful, very clear way. And if there's like 14 sadhanas that you have, that you're supposed to do, most lamas will agree if you do what we call Nyeway Nyingbo. Nyeway Nyingbo means the short mantra.

21 times or something like that, you fulfill the minimum requirements for that tantra. I mean, normally there's some kind of small print like that in the contract. So find it out, talk to your lamas, talk to the lama that you took it from, or talk to some other qualified lama.

Streamline the other initiations you took. Find the one that's most precious to you, that you relate to, the deity that you really feel that you might become. And then concentrate on that one.

And simplify your practice. And make it beautiful, and well considered, and joyful, and lots of time to stop and meditate on just how sexy her eyes look, you know, and stuff like that. And then it'll be a much more precious practice.

Much better. So try not to make your practice like your life. Too busy.

It should be clean, simple, powerful. So what I mean, what got me off on that is, take these 18, if you add them to your book, you might want to take something else out for a while. And then put that other thing back later, and take this one out.

Like that. Okay, here we go. We'll do some prayers, and then we'll do it again tomorrow.

[Speaker 2]
Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji This is the end of session four.