Серия ежедневной практики, курс 04 — Семичастная практика развития доброго сердца (1999, Гоа), занятие 7

[Speaker 1]
This is the continuation of session six. Then the text says, or it says something like, send your mind and cherish the thought. Now, what they mean is these same five principles, which are penpa, which means what?

Setting the day before you wake up, before you get up. What's the second one? Gompa.

In transition, you remind yourself, what can I do to help somebody? Third one, yakarpo saban. Get rid of your old bad karmas and pick up new good karmas.

That's Wednesdays and Thursdays? Right. And then, what's the next one?

Sunjima. Every time you catch yourself being selfish, stop it. What's the indication that you're being selfish?

You're unhappy. You're angry, or you're upset, or you're jealous, or something like that. You must be doing self-cherishing at that moment.

It's interesting that happily serving others cannot coexist in the same mind at the same time as having a mental affliction. Okay? The implication being, if you're having a mental affliction, you're probably cherishing yourself.

Okay? If you don't feel happy, you're probably cherishing yourself, and you're definitely seeing things as self-existent. Okay.

Number five. Manlam. At the end of the day, sit there in your bed and say, I dedicated all this work I did today that I could see emptiness directly, and that I could have the idea to think like a bodhisattva.

Okay? And those are the five. Now, take those same five, apply them to the moment of your death.

Okay? And this is another kind of a death meditation. Okay?

Those same five, says the text, can be used to do a galupa form of po'a. Okay? Po'a means transferring your consciousness to a higher state as you die.

And so you can practice this. I say not too much, because you're not going to die a normal death, but not bad to have it anyway. These same five can be used at the moment that you die.

Okay? And you can practice them in the same way. The same five steps.

Get ready to die. You know? Practice that when you die, the night that you die, the day that you die, if you die a normal death, that you can pull them out and use them.

Okay? And then I'll describe to you the effect of that meditation on you after you die. Okay, here's the first one.

What was the first one starting out today? What this means is that as you die, you think to yourself, I hope I can continue my bodhisattva studies in the future. Okay?

I hope I continue to meet people who will explain to me about bodhicitta, about how bodhisattvas act. I hope this whole bodhisattva story continues into my next life. I hope I can meet good teachers, have good dharma friends, grow up in a country where Buddhism not only exists, but is also a practice.

And, you know, give it that prayer as you die. Okay? What's number two?

This one, they say, is the most important one. And it's to be so used to thinking about helping others that in the last transition you make, which is lying down on the bed, or lying down on the pavement, depending on how you die. Anyway, it's going to be horizontal normally.

No, eventually gravity wins and you lose and you lay down, and you don't get back up. So, on that last transition, you say, I'm going into another transition, and I pray that I can hold on to this vision of trying to help other people with my whole being, with my whole life, with everything I do. And you lay down like that.

Okay, that's the last transition. Pure white seeds. Okay, that was number three, right?

Purpose seven? This is a very important one. I mean, my parents both died around the same time.

They both got cancer. My father got lung cancer, my mother got breast cancer. They both had a similar amount of time to get ready to die.

It's interesting how they died. My mother ran around like crazy and made sure that her children would be okay. She got the house sold.

I mean, she took care of the house. She went to the lawyers. She made sure her will was correct.

She made sure all the money was donated to people she wanted to donate it to. She put my little brother in the army. She would sit there at night and have talks with us.

This is what I want you to do. This is your responsibility. This is your responsibility.

I'm going to die, maybe a week, maybe a month, I don't know. But everybody has their own thing. You should do this.

You should do this. I want the table to go to Jeannie and take care of the dog. Don't forget.

And it's very calm and very purposeful. And gave away her entire life's possessions. Very compassionately and very wisely.

And in great self-control. And with a perfect understanding that she was going to die. She did not avoid the thought at all.

And she died very beautifully. Very, very, very beautiful death. Then my father was like, I'm going to beat this thing.

Dad, they opened his whole chest up and closed it back up and said, forget it. It's hopeless. And then he's like, no, no, I'm going to beat this thing.

He was 250 pounds at the start. At the end he was 120 pounds. And he's still saying, no, no, I'm not going to die.

He's still on the phone the last few days trying to close some business deal. Or trying to start another deal. And you're like, Dad, you've got to get ready.

You've got to do something. And he's like, no, no, I'm not going to die. I'm not going to die.

And he just died like that. With all these possessions, it took us a year. It took my stepmother a year to figure out what to do.

You know, all the debts and all the... everything. It took like a year.

Karpo Savan with death po'a, with a po'a means that before you lose your ability to think clearly, you freely and happily and in a very organized way divest yourself of all the things you own. You know? I'm going out clean.

I'm going out with zero. You know? I'm going to die with nothing.

I met this very wealthy lady recently. She said, I won't even say the name of her family. She's like, let's say it's Smith, OK?

It's not Smith. But she's like, are you aware that the American government takes... Do you know how much money they take when you die?

If you die, you know, normal rich person, you know how much they take? 51%. 52.

55. She says, God damn it. I can't believe it.

45 I can understand. But to take more than half? The tax man?

55%? Well, I'll tell you one thing. Us Smiths have known how to die for generations.

And my mother, who died last month, bless her soul, got all the money transferred before she died. And there wasn't a single penny that went to that god damn tax man. You know?

And that's the attitude you have to have. You know? You totally go out free.

Totally clean. Totally empty. Okay?

I don't own anything. I don't have any rights to anything. I already gave everything away.

All my stuff has been donated to these beautiful things. And I... Even my body.

You know, in Tibet you'd say, take my body, go feed it to the birds. You know what I mean? After I die.

And just finish it. Okay? It's very important to die with this kaposava, white seeds.

You know? I don't own anything anymore. I'm ready to go off to Mr. Anonymous. Okay? And people won't remember me. And I don't even own my name.

I don't own anything about me. I don't own my body. I'm happy to go.

And I give away freely and happily all the things I own. And give them thoughtfully and very compassionately and then die. Okay?

Which kind of implies that you should get ready beforehand. You know what I mean? I mean you should, in the event that you fall down on the airplane to Bangalore, you know, right down somewhere where you want done with your stuff.

Okay? They say because the spirit, the bardo spirit, otherwise will be attached to those objects. And it's dangerous for them.

Okay? It's dangerous for that spirit. The spirit won't be free.

Okay? Alright. Number four.

As you die, you do a final purification. You know? It seems to be the case, at least in my experience, that when you have a really dangerous event in your life, if you come close to dying, you start to remember the worst things you did.

They come back to you very clearly. You know what I mean? And it's important to anticipate that.

This Catholic thing where they give you last rites and the Father says, you know, tell me what you want to say because you're going to die in ten minutes. And you say, okay, I didn't tell you about this thing I did when I was eighteen. You know?

And you say, okay, you're pure. I take your confession. You're clean.

You know? That's a very, very correct thing according to Buddhism. You know?

It's very important as you die to believe that the last bad karmas you ever did, the big ones, are already pure. Okay? You're purified of them.

So, it's very important as you die to admit openly if there's a Lama there, it's great. If there's a Buddhist, another practitioner like your friend, it's very great to tell them, oh, I have these three things on my conscience. It's important to die with nothing on your conscience.

Okay? So, that's number four. That's what they call destruction.

The text also says, the commentary says that if you've been practicing a tantra, like if you've been taking, if you've been following Vajrayogini tantra, for example, that you request some Lama to reinitiate you in the last hours. Okay? They go through once again the ritual of entering the mandala, of meeting Vajrayogini, of having special blessings conferred upon you that will result in your becoming an enlightened being in a certain amount of time.

And that you retake your tantric vows and your bodhisattva vows. It's very good as you go out to leave with fresh vows. Okay?

Like monk's vows, nun's vows, layman's vows are all destroyed upon your body's death. You have to take them again in your next life. But bodhisattva vows and tantric vows continue in your mind as you die.

And they continue through the bardo and they continue into your next life. So it's very important to get a fresh one, a clean one, just before you die. And you re-enter the mandala and do the whole thing.

Yeah? Is there an exception for the qualification in case there's nobody around? Yeah.

Actually any person who has a Vajrayogini initiation has received, normally has received what we call Dorje Lopun, Ki Wang, which means the Vajra Master Initiation. So technically it's okay. And any other person who has that initiation normally has been granted that.

If they've been through the four retreats, it's better. All right. Last one is very sweet.

And this one I think is very powerful. As your last act, last conscious act, like in the final hours, before the pain gets too bad, there's a certain point at which the pain gets too bad and you can't remember what to do. But as you go out, when you know that you're getting close to dying, and you know, if you last for another day, it's okay, you can do it again tomorrow.

But you consciously do a very strong tonglen. You say, with my dying breath, I take in the suffering of every single person on this planet. You know, every being, every dog, every cat, every human being, with my last breaths.

And there's this thing called ney chok gi dun gyal. Ney chok gi dun gyal means there's a special pain that happens to you when you die. Something happens when you die.

And there's a special pain. It's like this thing called the nishikbe tigle. The indestructible drop at your heart breaks open.

And then there's this extraordinary pain. Okay. So you anticipate.

You use that final pain as an opportunity. You see? Big problem, big opportunity.

You say, I'm going to have this pain as I die. You know, it lasts for a few minutes or something. Extraordinary pain.

I know it's going to come. And I, at that moment, I will take on all the pain of the people on this planet. You know, that pain should stand for all the suffering of the people on this planet.

Sound familiar? I mean, I always think of Jesus on the cross, you know? I mean, you know, once you get to a certain spiritual level, it's no big deal to realize that this guy was doing exactly that.

You know, you don't have to be a Christian. You don't have to believe he's the son of God or anything like that. But the idea of somebody as they die to think, even just to imagine, that they could take on the pain of every other living being at that moment as they die is perfect, beautiful, galupa, poa.

Okay? Perfect. And that is the ultimate poa.

Okay? That is poa. Poa is not some kind of magic where you take somebody's mind and grab it in a vacuum cleaner and send it to X paradise or something like that.

If it was that easy, we wouldn't be here. Okay? Galupa poa, real poa, is at the moment of your death, you willingly put all the pain of other people into your pain and you die with it.

You see what I mean? And you destroy it. You go out that way.

You see what I mean? And you believe that you are taking away the pain of the whole world. Okay?

Very powerful poa. And that's the correct way to do poa. Now, last thing, a real story, true story.

Okay? Hang on, one sec. True story.

Geshe Chekawa. Okay? The Geshe who wrote this down.

1175? Something like that. Yeah, yeah.

He's on his deathbed. This is a true story. He's on his deathbed.

And he, it's like reading Socrates' last words, you know? It's like reading his last interviews with his students. And he says, okay guys, I taught you guys the Seven Point Lojong my whole life.

And I was the first person to write it down and I spread it to a lot of people. And now you're going to watch me do it. And he lays down and he's dying.

And he says, they say, how's it going, Geshe Chekawa? He says, good, good, good. And they said, what are you doing?

And he says, first, I'm going to take all the pain of every living being in my heart and I'm going to die like that and I'm going to go to the hell realms and I'm going to help people there. That's my plan. That's my game plan.

And he's on his bed and he's starting to die and everybody can tell his breathing is starting to stop and he's going into these motions like this and they're like, Geshe Chekawa, what's happening? And he says, I'm ready, I'm ready. I'm taking on the pain.

I'm starting to feel the pain. And then they said, what's happening now? And he's like, I'm going to try to direct my mind to a hell realm.

And there's all this big quiet and then there's this, and he's going, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And they're like, oh, what's happening, Geshe Chekawa, are you seeing the hell realms? And he says, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And they're like, what's going on? And he says, I want to go to hell. And they're like, it's not working.

It's all these tantric deities trying to pull me to paradise, you know. And he's like, you know. And he dies.

You know, he's like upset. You know, he died like that. This is a true story.

He died saying, the more I wish to go to hell, I keep seeing more and more deities are grabbing my arms and legs and they're dragging me, you know, and they're leading me to paradise. This is a true story. And that's a real power.

You see, what would be the karma to die and go into a Buddha paradise? What would it take? What kind of attitude?

It would take the attitude of Christ, you know. It would take that willingness to say, okay, I'm going to take all the pain of this. By my final pain, I eat all the pain of the entire world and then die.

And then you'd have to go to a Buddha paradise. You see what I mean? Your mind would be projected.

That's what po'a means. Po'a thang. Your mind would be projected into a Buddha paradise.

Okay? And that's the, that's po'a. And that's the end of the class.

Question. Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
In a regular tonglen, you're supposed to take that pain and dissipate it. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
In this tonglen, you take it with you. No, it's very important to dissipate it. As you die and as you feel the pain, the pain will go away.

The nature of the dunya starts to break down. You're, actually, you stop becoming able to feel things. And then, so it does go away.

And then as it goes away, you say, okay, that's it. All the pain of the world is gone.

[Speaker 2]
Question.

[Speaker 1]
You know, they say it's good to see your consciousness going on at the top of your head. Okay? And it's important that other people don't touch you on your feet, for example, or other parts of your body.

It's important to leave instructions that other people shouldn't touch your body for maybe 24 hours even. Okay? So it's important to tell people that clearly, that you don't want them.

It's important to be in a quiet place. If you have a choice between dying at home a week earlier or going into a hospital and dying with a lot of noise and things pumping into you and things like that, then it's better to die at home. Yeah.

Question. It's interesting. He said, is there a giving part of that?

I'm not, I don't remember any such thing, but I know that in the ending of, in the end of the Bodhisattva Charvatara, he does it, and he tries to visualize all the hell realms, for example, and he says, I hope I can be reborn as a cloud and rain down on all the hot hells. You know what I mean? And I hope I can be born as a sun in the cold hells and shine on people.

And I hope, and it's a beautiful thing. It goes on page after page. You know, I hope every pregnant woman in the world tonight who's having a baby, it just pops out and they feel happy and there's no pain.

You know what I mean? And all this goes on. If it's done ideally, you die at the same moment?

Are you... Death, death is a sort of a weird concept because it goes on. You know what I mean?

Conscious thought stops. Subconscious thought takes over. There's a standard series of very frightening hallucinations that always repeat themselves.

And it's very, I think it's a little hard to say that at that point you're dead mentally, you know. You go through a series of frightening hallucinations. Then you are aware of certain raw visions of raw colors.

And then the darkness. And then your bardo takes over.

[Speaker 2]
So you can't really plan to time that.

[Speaker 1]
I think it would be hard to time it. But I think as you start to feel some very great pain, I mean, the main thing here, by the way, is to practice it over and over and over again. You're going to be very afraid at that moment and your mind is not very clear and you're upset.

I mean, go stand over here on the edge of this place. Stand up on the thing and have somebody stand behind you and push you. You know, hold you.

Don't do it, okay? But I mean, this thing you have, that reaction, that normal autonomic reaction where you don't want to fall takes over when you're dying. And it's very hard to think straight when you're dying.

So the lamas, my lama used to say practice it every night. You know, every single night practice it. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
When you say practice it every night, do you mean to practice it to make sure that there's no chance of actually doing that?

[Speaker 1]
It's not so much the movement, okay? Don't get hung up on the movement, okay? It's not the point.

The point is practice this grey pain coming in your chest and practice the idea that you're taking on all the pain of the whole world. And then you don't have to worry about the movement thing. That'll come.

You see what I mean? It'll go the right way. The main thing is the compassion part.

The main thing is the willingness to imagine the pain of the entire planet and be willing to swallow it at that moment. Then you don't have to think so much about sending it out your left toe or your right toe. No, seriously.

Then the rest is automatic. It's the compassion thing. So that's like a bunch of sorts of things you need to do at the same time.

Say again? Is that any fixed, like, in the first half? You won't be able to move your mouth at that point.

But when you're practicing Oh yeah, people around you should be reciting a mantra which is familiar to you, like Vajrayogini mantra or something like that. I haven't heard people emphasize that. It's mostly, if you try to do two things at once at that moment, you won't be, I mean, you're lucky to be able to do one.

It's very important not to get distracted. Concentrate on what you're doing. You see what I mean?

Then they could say also do three mudras and ring your bell. You know what I mean? It'll be very hard to concentrate on one thing at that moment.

No, and concentrate on taking pain. That's a whole other story. How to die Tantric way, you have to study from your Tantric Lama.

And there are very detailed instructions. And you have to study those. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Is there a sort of an abbreviated form of this that you could use to help a non-Buddhist who's dying?

[Speaker 1]
You know, in my experience, you can teach it to anyone. You know, that part, like I have a very dear fellow student, Janet Meiser. She's been like 15 years, 20 years, a student of my Lama.

And her father got a fatal disease. But he knew about three months ahead. And this incredible thing happened.

You know, he asked her to start teaching him how to die. And then we were called in as consultants. Me and Rinpoche were on the phone.

On alternating days, you know, telling him how to do all this stuff. And he was an intelligent atheist, you know. And he didn't believe in Buddhism or anything.

But he saw that it was probably worthwhile to try something. And it wasn't, you know, suddenly become a Buddhist or anything like that. He just said, show me how to die.

Teach me how to die. I had another student with AIDS who asked me the same thing. And we went through it time after time after time.

And this man, I spoke to him a few hours before he died. And it was a most extraordinary conversation. We were at LMB.

I think some people were there. And we're on the phone. I'm about to walk into class, you know.

And he's like, okay, let's go over it one more time. First I do that, right? I said, yeah.

Then I take the pain, right? I said, yeah. Then I imagine that I took all the pain and I destroyed it, right?

I said, yeah, you know. And then I'm going to see this thing. I said, yeah.

And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he did it, you know. He actually did it.

It was really cool. It was really amazing. And to be so calm, you know, an hour before he died.

He died while we were in class. You know, I got the call afterwards. And it was amazing.

It was really good. So I think to set it up in a calm way, in a compassionate way and prepare yourself, it's very powerful. It's very good.

Yeah, anybody can do that. He did it. One last question.

So Geshe Jigawa is being forced by his karmic karma to see the pure paradise. Yeah, he doesn't want to go there and he's being forced to.

[Speaker 2]
So how does the Buddha see suffering then?

[Speaker 1]
Matthew's going to ask. Yeah, he did turn into me. But my, again, my own sense about it is that he realizes that from his own side he can't perceive himself suffering.

And he also realizes that other people are looking at the same objects he's looking at and are perceiving it as suffering. And that proves the emptiness of suffering. See what I mean?

That two people can look at the same objects. One of them is about to be dragged into a tantric paradise. The other one, you know, is about to die a normal death.

And he's aware that that's how they see it. But he can't see it that way for himself. See what I mean?

I draw the distinction that way. We'll see what Geshe Thich Nhat Hanh says. Okay, we'll do a prayer.

O Sarjipati Jukshin Medho Tram rira lingji Ni de gen pa di Sang gye shing du Mi pe wu wang Gyi dro kun na Shing la chok pa shok Di dom guru ratnamandala Gyalwa di kye mokku Svona vyeshe Gyalwa di kye mokku Sang gye shing du Mi pe wu wang Gyalwa di kye mokku Sang gye shing du Gyalwa di kye mokku Sang gye shing du This is the end of session six.

[Speaker 2]
Session seven.

[Speaker 1]
O Sarjipati Jukshin Medho Tram rira lingji Ni de gen pa di Sang gye shing du Mi pe wu wang Gyi dro kun na Shing la chok pa shok Di dom guru ratnamandala Tram rira lingji Sang gye shing du Mi pe wu wang Gyi dro kun na Sang gye shing du Mi pe wu wang Okay, we're on to the seventh part of the seven-step mojo. And here they wrap up with some advices. To me, the advices and the pledges that we had earlier sound sort of similar.

And as a practical thing, you might want to combine them. You know, like if you're going to be watching them or keeping track of the pledges, the eighteen pledges, you know, personally, I would go through these and throw in a few of them, okay? I counted it up.

If you add them all up, it's something like forty-three or something. So you can do a couple a day or something. Do three a day for two weeks or something like that, okay?

And these are just sweet final advices that they have. They start out with a bunch of ones, and then a bunch of twos, and then a bunch of threes. Okay, the first two lines say, nyel dzor tam je chik gi ja, lok nun tam je chik gi ja.

Nyel dzor means yoga, and it has many meanings in Tibetan. Here it means like your daily practice, okay? All the things that you do.

Tam je means all of them. Chik gi ja means do them with one, with but one. And you should make notes on your original, because otherwise you can't understand what they're talking about.

And the commentator doesn't put anything, okay? It says do all your practices with one. One here means exchanging yourself and others, the practice of switching yourself with others.

Like when somebody comes in the room, you change bodies with them mentally, okay? And this is a very fun practice. You know, somebody comes in the room, and you put yourself in their body, and you pretend that they move to your body, and then you try to do what they would like to do, because now you are them, okay?

And that's a very basic way to do exchange yourself with others. If you want some more details on it, we did a whole class on it. Where was that?

North Carolina. And it's in the courses. I'll talk about the correspondence courses later, okay?

So mainly it means whatever you do, eating, drinking, all the way up to your meditation, try to put yourself in other people's bodies, okay? The next one says, LOK NUN THAMS CAD CHIG GI BYA And I had a lot of trouble with this when I read the Tibetan first. And I had to check a lot of commentaries.

Pabongka Rinpoche's Lam Rim is a good source. And then there's a very nice commentary by Gyelse Tome Sangbo. Tome Sangbo is a Tibetan who lived about 200 years after Geshe Chakravarti.

And he wrote a famous thing called the 37 Practices of the Bodhisattvas. His Holiness often teaches that. And he also wrote a commentary on this text, on this lojong.

And that commentary became so famous that a lot of people confused him with Geshe Chakravarti. The other one is called Gyelse SO DUM PA, which means 37. And if you take out the T in Tibetan, it comes out like the 7.

And then people started saying that Tome Sangbo wrote down the 7 limbs, the 7-part lojong. Anyway, in his commentary and some other commentaries, it's pretty clear. All the mistakes should be made by one.

You see, that's the second one he's mentioned. It means that once you start to practice these things, once you try to do this weekly meditation thing every morning, you'll start to notice that things get worse for a while. Things seem to get worse.

And there are two reasons for that. We talked about it the other day. One is that you've always been very selfish, and you just never noticed it before.

It's very common for people who first start practicing Dharma that they think they're trying to become less selfish, and then they start watching their mind to check how selfish they are. And then suddenly, after a week or two weeks or three weeks, it seems like you're getting worse and worse. And that's just becoming more sensitive to how you really are in the first place.

And that can be upsetting, and you shouldn't get depressed by it. To notice it is a good thing. And then later you can get over it.

Secondly, as you start to improve your karma, and as your karma starts to get better, you start to burn out your old bad karma. And even though old bad karma doesn't burn out completely, it doesn't just disappear. It ripens as some smaller bad thing.

So you might find yourself having problems that you never had before, in the short run. You might have some accidents. People might be mean to you.

People might react to your new Buddhism in a negative way. And these are all very common purification. So in either case, he says, it has been typical, says Geshe Chakravarti, in the past, that people encountered these obstacles like in the month or two months after they started studying Dharma, and then they gave up.

They said, I was happy when I was a college student, and I never heard of this Dharma stuff. I had my friends. We went out.

I lived a normal life. I went to good movies. I wasn't like a Bodhisattva or a Buddha, but I was just a reasonably happy person with a reasonable job and reasonable friends.

And now there's all this psychology. There's all this philosophy. I have to do this.

I have to do that. I actually don't feel any happier than I did before I became a Buddhist. And now I have all these schizophrenias.

I can't walk to the bus station without checking my mind 20 times. And I used to be happier in the old days before I knew all this stuff. I think I'll just leave it.

You see, that's the mistake he's referring to here. And he says, if you get to this point someday that you're feeling like maybe the good old days were better, you know, a little marijuana now and then, a bottle of wine now and again. You know, I wasn't greedy, but I had a decent little job.

I had friends, and we hung out together, and we talked about nice things. He says, when you catch yourself and you correct yourself... By the way, the method is to do the third of the Sunday meditations.

What is that? The six sufferings of the first panchalama. No, I mean, you just go through those six.

If you're lucky, one of your parents or one of your brothers or sisters dies in your arms, you know. You can't wish for the good old days anymore. You wake up.

It's a wake-up call. And you can't deny it after that. But if you do that meditation on those sufferings, and then you really admit how your life really is, you can't go back.

You really can't go back. You have to go through all this Buddhism stuff. Then when you catch yourself and you correct yourself, you say, now I have this bad karma of almost rejecting the Dharma.

So, be made by one. And let all the mistakes be made by oneness. He's talking about a specific practice then, den du tong len, for all the people in the world who made the same mistake.

Like, they heard a little bit of Dharma. They went to some teachings by His Holiness. They met some Lama.

Then they saw the Lama pick their nose or do something normal. And they lost faith and they gave it up. And they went home and went back to the good old days.

You know what I mean? And he says, let me take all the karma of all those people and take it on myself. That bad karma I just did from almost giving up, let me take all the karma of other people who almost did that mistake or did do that mistake and let me take their karma.

So, that's like a tong len. That's like a practice of compassion. And that's what he's talking about.

So, you need a commentary to understand this mojo.

[Speaker 2]
Is there a commentary that refers to the first line? The one in the first line?

[Speaker 1]
Pabongka Rinpoche does. And says that it refers to that everything you do from eating up to meditating should be done with bodhichitta. That's all.

The one means bodhichitta, and specifically the exchange of self and others. The next two lines say, tok tar nyi la chawa nyi, nyi po kang jung su pa ja, sok dang du la sung. Sorry, nyi po sok dang du la sung.

So, he's got one, two, three, sorry, one, two, three, four places he's mentioned the word two, you see? So, these next two, three lines have, in the Tibetan they have three, four twos in them. The first of these lines say, do two at the two of the beginning and the end.

Do two at the two of the beginning and the end. What he's talking about is what we call sem chupa. Say, sem chupa.

I'll write it up here. Actually, it's kun lung. Say, kun lung.

Chupa. Kun lung. Chupa.

Kun lung means motivation. The reason why you do something that you do. Chupa means fix it.

And it means to get your motivation straight before you do anything. So, what he's saying here when he says do the two at the beginning and the end means before you ever do anything, before you undertake any activity, especially a dharma, you know, like a dharma class, or before you open a book and study it, before you do a meditation, you sit down and you check your motivation. Am I doing this because everybody else is doing it?

Am I doing this because people will respect me if I know more Tibetan? Am I doing this because I don't have anything else to do? You know, check your mind for your motivation.

And then the motivation, chö. Chö means if you find it wanting, then fix it. You know, like, say, I'm doing this so I can become a better person, so I can fight my mental afflictions.

Especially the main one, which in Lojong is what? Self-cherishing. Yeah, in Lojong the main one is self-cherishing.

Okay, thinking about yourself first. In Lamrim, what is it? General Lamrim.

General open teachings, what's the biggest enemy? Seeing things as self-existent. You know, misunderstanding the pen.

In Tantra, what is it? Tamil Nangshan. Okay.

Seeing the world as ordinary. Believing that the things and the people around you are something ordinary. Okay.

The whole focus shifts as you move up to the teachings, but it's more about building on a foundation of the first two. Okay. You can't really get to the third one unless you understand the first two.

Okay. So, check your mind before you start anything. Like, before you do anything.

And this is why we do prayer, you know, chö dang chö dang sangye la. Sangye chö dang sangye. Sangye chö dang sangye.

Just kidding. Okay, just kidding. Sangye chö...

My lama does that to me all the time. I got through my pre-geshe debate, and I came upstairs. I was real proud that I made it.

He said, next time don't do pig pig. You know, I said, what's pig... You know, pig pig means gelatin, in Jell-O.

And I was so scared, my feet were shaking, my legs, you know. I was standing there debating, but my knees were shaking. And he said, next time don't do Jell-O, okay?

That's his comment on being the only American to pass that. You know, anyway. Kun long chö means fix your motivation before you start anything.

And this is really useful. I think Lama Zopa is really good at this. Like, he takes time.

That's why he's late to everything. He takes time. Before he eats lunch, you know, his attendants told me that's the only time they get to sleep because it's an hour-long prayer before lunch, you know.

So the minute he starts doing the grace, they fall asleep. And then they're tuned in to when he stops and they wake up and they serve him food, you know. So, you know, it's like that.

Before he does anything, he's very careful to check his own mind and make sure he's doing it for the right reason, okay? That's what this line means. The second thing, we'll do it down here.

Say ngoa. Ngoa. Ngoa.

Ngoa means at the end, when you finish the thing, you know, like you sat down to study emptiness for a half hour to make up for some thing you did. And, you know, when you're done and you close the book, then reflect for a moment. And I like to call it the stone in the pond.

Like, I try to imagine a pond like that, and you imagine that the good karma you did just now is like throwing a stone in the middle of the pond. And then I imagine these ripples coming out, very slow, very small ripples, you know, like, if you studied, if you were here for this whole week, and if you've honestly been trying to practice Dharma, which means trying to lower your tendency to take care of yourself at the expense of others, then we just created some kind of ripple, you see? And you will look different to somebody in the airport tomorrow, when you go to the airport.

And then when you meet those Tibetan monks in Bangalore, they'll look at you and there'll be this subconscious awareness that your eyes have changed slightly or your body language is, your body language is just a few millimeters different, you know? There's this look in your face. There's all these body language and gestures and hints that go across your face that say you have at least thought about taking care of other people for a few hours this week.

And they pick up on it. And it makes the ride to the monastery a little sweeter. Like how you treat the coconut guy when we stop for coconut juice and stuff.

And then the monk picks up on that and he treats his student a little bit nicer that night. And then, you know, and this is a ripple effect. So be aware of it.

And at the end of every virtuous thing you do, you know, at the end of some happy thing that you just did, say, okay, ripple effect, you know? I pray for that ripple effect. I dedicate this to the ripple effect.

I'm looking forward to the ripple effect, you know? And then it just goes like that, okay? The consequences of what we're doing today are very far-reaching.

You know, like, especially those of you who have been in a lot of classes for the last seven years, you know? The fact that the whole Geshe course has been spoken in New York City and that a few hundred people have heard it has this ripple effect, you know? Like, we often travel to other states and countries and people come up and say, thank you for the correspondence course.

You don't know me. You never saw me. I got a tape that one of your students made three years ago and handed it to somebody in Australia and they gave it to somebody in Singapore and they brought it to Copan and it reached Holland and I heard it, and thank you.

You know what I mean? And, you know, every time you print things out, every time you make a tape, every time you make a video, it has this ripple effect. Every time you yourself listen carefully, then there's this immense consequences that you're not even aware of.

There's this immense effect on the whole world that you don't even know about. And I get to see it, like I went to the Kalachakra this year and at least thirty, forty people came up to me from the weirdest places, you know, Iowa, Alaska, you know, Morocco and said, oh, I got this tape that somebody made a copy of a copy of a copy. And you have to imagine that the things we do are like that.

You know, just to stand here and, you know, sixty-five, seventy weird people talking about trying not to be selfish. It has an immense effect on the world. It has an immense hidden subconscious effect on the world.

And you should be happy. You should be conscious of it and believe in it and at the end of this course, especially, you know, send it out to other people. Okay.

Next one says, bear with whichever comes of the two. Okay? Two commentaries have two different, slightly, two slightly different takes on this.

One of the commentaries says, bear with it whether you have money or you don't have money. Okay? So the two in the second line means, you know, if you have enough money to do what you need to do, then be happy.

And if you don't have enough money, then be happy anyway. Okay? There's not much you can do about it.

By the way, the perfection of giving states that the way to maintain a good financial situation, okay, is to keep giving. But then giving is defined as the attitude of giving, being willing to give. See, what happens to people in the desire realm, what happens to stupid people like us is that when you get in trouble financially, you shut down all your charity.

You know what I mean? Mentally, somebody comes up to you and asks you for five dollars, they asked you for five dollars six months ago, you had lots of money, you said, here, sure, here's five bucks, here, take ten, you know, it's okay. But then when you just had two arguments with your credit card company and, you know, friend Diane's coming and saying, where are we going to pay for this?

And you're feeling tense about money, you know, and then somebody comes up and says, where's the five bucks? And you're like, I'm broke, you know, you can't say I'm broke, are you kidding me? You know, you think I didn't buy new shoes because I didn't have any money, you know?

Then you just broke the perfection of giving. You see, it doesn't matter so much whether you give the five bucks, it's your attitude. You see, I mean, you have to be happy.

All the time, have money or you don't have money, somebody comes up to you and says, can I have five bucks? You say, look, honestly, I don't have five bucks, but I can give you two, I can give you three, you know, and do it. You see, I mean, but always stay in the frame of mind of being willing to do it.

You see, I mean, then you won't be poor. You see, then the financial problems won't last. If you do the opposite, which is like yelling back at the boss, if you get cheap when you don't have enough money, even in small things, then you'll keep the karma up of not having enough money.

Okay? So the important thing is not to get cheap mentally. Then the second commentary says, the two here doesn't just mean money and no money, it means happy or sad.

And I remember, I went to Dharamsala, I started getting teachings from Geshe Dargye and other lamas, and 1975, I had to go home because my mom was dying, and I remember sitting in her room and we watched daytime TV for the first time in my life, you know, and I remember this Christian show came on, and the guy said, God doesn't care whether you feel happy or sad. You still have to act the same. You know, he said, God doesn't care whether you feel good or you feel bad.

You still have to do the same things. You still have to be generous to other people. You still have to be a good person.

You still have to be a moral person. And it was very, it very much struck me, you know, that's what this is saying. You know, a lot of people, me included, after I've had a hot chocolate in the morning, I'm the most compassionate person.

You know, I feel really good, I'm smiling, I'm like, anyone can come in and bother me, and I'm like, that's okay, you know, I don't get upset, you know. And then if I didn't get lunch because some meeting went late, or, you know, something like that, or, you know, or somebody forgot the hot chocolate in the morning or something like that, then I'm like, then I get grumpy, you know. The idea here is, and I remember I was in the Varanasi train station, and we were waiting on the station and in the hotel for a total of eleven hours, eleven hours, something like eleven hours we were waiting for this train, you know, and this place at one in the morning is dangerous, you know, all these weird people walking around and trying to accost us, and, you know, we're like, you're starting to get cranky, you know, and the point is you have to keep up your lojong practice no matter what the outer situations, you know. It's easy to do lojong on the beach in Goa, you know, it's harder to do it in the Varanasi train station at one in the morning with a lot of strange people. But actually, you know, your responsibility or karmically what you have to do is you have to maintain lojong.

You can't lose it just because you didn't get dinner, or you don't feel well, or you have diarrhea, or, you know, you didn't catch the train you wanted, and then suddenly all this compassion stuff goes out the window, you know, you can't do that. I was very aware in Varanasi as the hours crawled on. I was due in Bodhgaya the next morning, 350 people waiting for me, you know, and the hours are crawling on and on and on, and I'm starting to get nervous and upset, you know, and then I'm trying to control it, you know, I'm like, why do you have to get to Bodhgaya?

I have to teach self-control, you know, and, you know, you know, but you, when you don't feel well, or you feel a little sick, or things aren't going right, you lose it, okay? That's what, number two, that line, bear with whichever comes, that's, that? Yeah, that's what it means, okay?

The next one says just keep the two at the cost of your life. That's the last of the twos, okay? This is referring to, Purple Haze, this is referring to your pledges in general, okay?

All the pledges you have. Pledges in this case, it means damsik. The definition of damsik is samaya, is doramirunga.

Doramirunga means something you can't give up even at the cost of your life. The definition of a samaya is doramirunga. It means you can't give it up.

You know, once you've made this pledge to your lama, once you've made this connection with your lama, once you've taken the pledges of the lodong, the eighteen pledges, you know, mentally, once you've taken initiation, once you've taken refuge vows, or layman's vows, or bodhisattva vows, or tantric vows, then you have to live by them, okay? You have to live by that code. You have committed yourself to that code, okay?

So it says keep the two at the cost of your life. The first of the two is your general, all the dharma promises you ever made. If you understand that this is a list of powerful good karmas that Lord Buddha drew up to help you change your arm into Tara's arm as quickly as possible, then I think your relationship to your vows and your commitments will be different.

You see, I always tell this joke, you know, that if you really knew what the vows did for you, you would get up at night, like Christmas Eve, you know, and you'd sneak over to your table, and you'd peek at your vows again, and, you know, you know, you'd get all turned on by your vows. You'd be all excited, you know, then you'd put them back, and you wouldn't be able to go to sleep, you know, you'd be thinking, man, I got the list, you know, Lord Buddha gave me the list, you know, I got the stuff I need to turn my arm into Tara's, you know, and that should be your relationship to your vows and commitments. They should be like something that turns you on, you know, how you look at your high school girlfriend's picture, you know, and you're like, wow, you know, you should be happy like that.

They're going to turn you into this thing, you know, they made Goa, they made Namgyal and Sandra bring us to Goa, you know, Mr. Karma, Mr. Vows, you know, so you should be happy and keep them. So it means vows in general, and then it means the 18, the 18 pledges of the lojong, okay, so keep the two at the cost of your life, okay. I mean, theoretically, if you got into a situation where somebody said, you know, if you don't get out of here, I'll kill you, and you say, my vows are on the table, can I just take them, you know, and they say, no, I'll kill you, then what you should do, you know, what should you do?

You should go for the vows. I was in, what was that city in Japan? Kyoto, and there was a big earthquake, it killed hundreds of people, and it started in the morning, I was just dressing, and then my laptop with 3,000 Tibetan books is on the middle of the room, and I ran to the corner of the room, because I figure if the room collapses, the middle will collapse, which I don't know if that's logical, but when you're really scared you do that, you know.

Then I'm looking at my laptop, you know, and I'm like, oh my god, you know, I won't be able to study today, and I was like debating with myself to run out and get it, and I didn't get it. But you're supposed to, okay? Okay, next one says, gawa sum labpa cha, gyu yi tso nam sum lang, nga ban me pa nam sum gom, drel me sum dan denpa cha.

Those of you following the root text, you don't have this reading yet, anyway, it says train yourself in the three kinds of hardship, okay? Three kinds of hardship here are not so hard. I mean, they're hard, but they're not really such a hardship.

The first of the three hardships is the art of recognizing when you're having a mental affliction, okay? So it's the art of being able to ring the alarm on yourself and say, I'm having a mental affliction, okay? Which is difficult, okay?

It's difficult. It's difficult to catch yourself when you're having it. It's probably the worst time that you could ever try to catch yourself.

Like when you're getting angry, the last thing you're aware of is that you're angry. When you're getting jealous, it takes like an hour or a day to figure out that you're jealous. Everybody else in the room knows you're jealous except you.

Okay? And you have to stop. You have to catch yourself.

That's the first of the three hardships. Second one is called, you know, take some steps to apply the antidote. You know, undertake to stop, okay?

Like, do what you have to do. For jealousy, you know, rejoice that this other person is getting what they want. You signed up as a bodhisattva a few months or years ago.

You took all those bodhisattva vows to make everybody in the world happy. Now some suffering, dying little guy has gotten some crummy little happiness that's going to go away in a week or two and you can't even give him that and you're a bodhisattva, you know? And so, you know, just that's an antidote, applying the antidote, okay?

Then gyun chupa is the third hardship. Gyun chupa means try to stop the flow. Stop the flow means normally at least interrupt the flow.

If you're having a mental affliction and it's too strong for you, like you know you're jealous, you know why you're jealous, you know who you're jealous of, you know what the jealousy is coming from, you know what the jealousy is doing for you, and you know you can't stop it right now, at least put up some fight. At least, you know, do sniper attacks on the jealousy. Even if you can't stop them, at least harass them, you know, and from time to time think I'm not doing the right thing.

Okay, that's called interrupting the flow. Okay, next line. Take to yourself the three main causes.

Okay, take to yourself the three main causes. This means you have to go out and collect the three things you need to have a successful Dharma practice. Guess what the first one is?

Lama. Okay, you got to find... It's one thing to order tapes and books, which I'm going to tell you about.

It's one thing to talk to other people. But really, doing all this stuff well is like learning to play piano. And learning to play piano without a piano teacher, I mean, it's possible.

If you ever heard Harish Prasad Taurasia taught himself flute in the basement, he's the best in India. Okay, but that's abnormal. That's not the way it usually goes.

In music and in Dharma, you normally need a very fine human being, living teacher. And there's this interaction that takes place between you and the lama that you need. And it's not all hunky-dory.

Those of you who've had a close lama, a very qualified lama, it's not all pleasant. In fact, much of it is not pleasant. Put yourself in their perimeter and say, you know, I give up my will to yours and I'll do whatever you tell me.

Especially for Americans, it's really difficult. And then when they tell you something you don't want to do, there's this crisis. You know, like, do I leave or do I stay?

And if I stay, can I at least disrespect them a little so they know I'm not doing this voluntarily? You know, or something like that. You know, I mean, there's this thing that comes into your mind because it's just very hard to...

It's very hard to do what they tell you to do. The more work a lama is doing on you, meaning the faster they're pulling you up, the more it hurts. You see what I mean?

The more trouble you can expect. You know, if it's easy and smooth, you're probably not going fast enough. You see what I mean?

And if you're going pretty fast, if they're bringing you up pretty fast, there should be... there should be arguments late at night with them, there should be tense moments, there should be throwing the cup of tea on the floor. I mean, if they're really pushing you to your limit in a dharma way, if they're demanding of you a certain level of dharma behavior, then there should be some tense moments.

Okay? It's like weightlifting or jogging. You know, if you don't hurt after a session, then you're not really improving.

You know what I mean? And that's their job. That's what they're supposed to do.

And they have to do it. They have to push you as far as you can go. You know, and that's...

You have to... You have to know that and you have to... You have to...

In the back of your mind, you can't break samaya. You can't break your relationship. You know, in the back of your mind, you can say, I hate this guy.

He's pushing me too hard. I can't believe he asked me to do that last thing. I think...

Sometimes I think he's just crazy or a bad person. And then you just have to... You have to catch that thought and say, I don't believe you.

And then it'll come back again and you have to stop it again. Okay? My Lama...

I'll tell you a true story, okay? I... I raised...

I worked for 16 years. I went to New York City on this two-hour bus ride every single... Well, three or four days a week.

And, you know, we built many buildings at Sarah Monastery. We support now 2,000 monks there. You know, I translated texts.

I trained myself. I meditated. I did hours and hours.

I didn't go to a movie for eight years or something. I didn't go to... As I mentioned, my mother's funeral, my brother's weddings.

They thought I was crazy, you know. I just stayed there, studied, meditated, did everything he asked for, built his house with my own hands. You know, he didn't say, good job, once.

He didn't thank me once. And he didn't say I did the right thing once. And he didn't, once, say, you're doing okay or you're doing pretty good, you know.

And then, I remember, Palma was there. Some friends came from my company to meet him. And we were downstairs having a cup of tea before, and I said, you know, he's never once told me I was doing anything right.

And he's never once thanked me for all his things, you know. And then I went upstairs and we had this meeting and the first thing he says is, Michael's so wonderful, you know. He does everything right, you know.

And he went into this long thing, you know. And I felt really bad, you know. And that's their job.

Their job is to kick your butt and they will continue. If they have, if they love you, which my Lama really does, you know, they'll continue to pressure you and put a lot of pressure on you and a lot of conflicting pressures. You know, first they'll tell you to do that, and then when you do it, they'll say you're crazy.

And then when you change, they say you're crazy to change. And then they'll tell everybody else you're crazy. And then, you know, and you start to go crazy.

Anyway, this is their job. So first one is Lama. Second one is guest.

I mean teachings. You've got to have teachings. Dharma.

Somebody has to teach you. There has to be something that gets taught to you. We have in this lineage the incredible tradition of teaching the contents of the five great books.

That's why the name Asian Classics. Asian Classics refers to the five great books. Okay.

That's the Perfection of Wisdom, which is by... And the book we use is Something by Asanga for 12 years. Middle Way, Madhyamika for 4 years.

Abhidharma for 2 years. Vinaya for 2 years. And then Logic for 7 years.

During the whole course. And those are... Those are all contained in the Lam Rim.

So I know... So in the FPMT I know that the Prabhupada Rinpoche's Lam Rim is a very important foundation of the Dharma. The same material is found in the curriculum in all the great Galupa monasteries, which takes about 18 years to finish.

And you get more detail, and you get it much deeper, and you get it in more of a philosophical presentation. But the same material. So you have this Dharma.

Okay. You have to understand that you have that. And then you have the whole tantric teachings, which is mainly Je Tsongkapa's presentation of Tantra.

Okay. And you have all that. You've been exposed to that.

It is pure. It is totally... If you start to read Sanskrit, or you can read the Ten-Year Incarnation, the presentation, which exists in our lineage, is absolutely, incredibly pure.

And I'm not making an advertisement. I'm just making an observation. You know.

I studied the Abhidharma for 10 years. I got the Abhidharma Kosha. I compared every syllable to the Tibetan and the Sanskrit.

And I mentioned it in Kamandu, I think. There were three syllables different. They added three syllables.

Because they needed to... The word was kind of difficult, and they needed to stretch it out a little bit. So that's very typical.

The tradition you're in, the lineage you are being fed, the Five Great Books, it covers everything, and it's just extraordinary. It is the ancient teachings of the Buddha in a very pure form. And the notebooks you get, is the original books there.

They're translated for you, and that's all. There's 4,000 or 5,000 pages of the original teachings. There's nothing in the notebooks that I wrote or anybody else.

It's just the originals. So that's a pure lineage. The third one is Tunkhen.

Say Tunkhen.

[Speaker 2]
Tunkhen.

[Speaker 1]
Tunkhen means to have a place to do all this, and to have enough food to do all this, and to have enough mula to do all this. Tunkhen means conducive circumstances. And if and when you become teachers, then it's your responsibility to make sure that you are number one, and that you give your students number two and three.

Number one meaning you have to be a qualified lama. There's ten characteristics of a qualified lama in sutra, and there's ten characteristics in tantra. And you have to try to master all those personal qualities.

You have to try to get those qualities. Secondly, you have to find an authentic dharma to pass on to people. Here I'll do a little advertisement.

We've taken the Geshe course, turned it into a seven-year course. It comprises 18 different notebooks like the one you have, except more detailed. And we've turned them into correspondence courses.

And so if you're here just on a fluke, and you're not going on to Sara with us, which you should, then you're welcome to order those courses. Is there an address somewhere? Do we print that thing?

We didn't print that thing.

[Speaker 2]
No. Oh. Oh, where's Marie?

[Speaker 1]
Marie Tassi is right here. Do you have those? Are you going to pass them out?

Okay. She has a list of the 18 courses, but anyway, it covers the whole Geshe thing. We've been doing that in New York for seven years.

There's a couple hundred people in the courses at any given time. And four people have finished the whole course. And they have qualified as Geshes.

They've finished the Geshe course. They could be in a debate in Sara, and they could pass. I'd like to introduce them because three of them are here.

And they all happen to be women, which is sort of amazing. Okay. The first women in history to be taught the Geshe course and to finish it.

Okay, so Vilma is one. That is a her. Marie Tassi is another.

Hello. Hello. Where's Fran?

Fran Diana is the Fran. Anyway, they finished seven years. Fran didn't miss a class until I bragged about it, and then she missed a class.

Oh, Vilma. Okay, anyway. They finished Madhyamika, Abhidharma, Vinaya, Prajnaparamita, and Logic, and they did the whole thing.

They're going to have their final exam on the first week of February. Oral, in front of everybody. Don't be nervous.

There's 18 correspondence courses that cover the whole Geshe course, and there's 10 meditation courses. If you want stuff to meditate on, you can take a meditation course. I'm going into retreat for three years in March.

I made a deal with my students that if they passed all 18 courses, which you can do by correspondence, then I would consider starting the tantric course, which I anticipate would take five to seven years in itself. So there's your incentive. So you have to talk to Marie.

Those courses, we charge for the materials what they cost, and we have a rule that if you don't want to pay or you can't pay, you don't have to pay, and you can just take it. We lose like $15,000, $20,000 a year, and people show up at the last minute and bail us out. That's the way it works.

In general, I don't charge for teachings. When I teach at other places, I respect the fact that they're trying to help me with my airfare, and they have given me money for my airfare, and I have to respect that when you go someplace that costs money... In other words, when you sponsor something like this, most people go into this financial hole, or they go out on a limb.

They don't know if 10 people are going to show up or 60 people are going to show up, and then they spend a lot of money, and they give the lama the airplane ticket and things like that. So in general, I don't charge anything for teachings, and you shouldn't charge anything. My lamas for 25 years have never charged me a penny.

I mean, in Sara, there's this very interesting system where once you take someone as a student, you have to pay their bills. You have to pay for their expenses, and it's a very serious thing. And the lamas in Sara don't get paid anything.

The abbot of Sara makes 60 rupees a month is the salary from Dharamsala for the abbot of Sara. So, you know, I think that's the way it should be. I think it's very nice if money is never mixed up with dharma, and in general, whenever I have a class or a teaching, it's free, and it should be like that.

And if you start to have expenses... People ask me in California, you know, well, how do you expect us to pay for this? And I said, how about you go get a job and you pay for all the teachings?

And they're like, wow! And that's okay for smaller teachings. This one's a little difficult to do like that.

But when you get to be a teacher, I encourage you never to charge anything. If you have to charge something, which was done here for the cost of the thing, go ahead. But have this thing where if people can't pay, make sure they can get it for free, okay?

That's the way to do it nicely, I think. When I went to my lama, I gave him my bank book and asked him to teach me, and he threw it back at me. And that's the way it should be.

And then I built him his house, but he didn't ask for anything. Then I had to beg him to stay in it. You know what I mean?

And he didn't want to. So it should be like that. That's the relationship.

That's how it should be. Sweet. Sweet relationship like that.

Okay. Also, we have a project to input all the Tibetan books. There are about 200,000 holy Tibetan books.

Many of them were burned in Tibet during the occupation of Tibet and were destroyed. We go around the world to Russia, Mongolia, Japan, and other countries, and try to recover them. And then we pay Tibetan refugees to type them into the computer.

So we have about... In India, we have I think a couple of hundred Tibetan refugees now are working. We teach them computer.

We teach them how to type in their old books. We ship the copies from Russia or libraries in America or Mongolia here to India, and then they input them. We have two main groups.

One are in the major monasteries. We have a lot of input centers. And then we have Tibetan women's projects in several villages in South India for women who are unemployed.

The unemployment for Tibetan women in South India is like 90% or something. And so we employ them, and we help them. We pay them, and we pay the monasteries when they work.

This is the last release we did. It's called 1,000 Books of Wisdom, but there's 3,000 actually in here. And you can come up and check it out.

And if you're interested in helping, talk to Elizabeth Prather. She's going to be working on this project while I'm in retreat. So I'll put a couple of these up on this bed, and you can check it out.

We think it's good luck to open it up anywhere and read. Oh, boy. Method to avoid breaking the vow of abstinence from nighttime food during assemblies that go on too long.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Anyway, we go through there, and it's good luck. So come up during the break and just open it up in the second half and read one and see what your future is, okay? And the Dalai Lama has got very excited, and now we do.

He splits half the cost now, all the centers we build. He pays for the computers and the buildings, and then we pay the salaries, and we make like a five- or ten-year agreement. Now the women are outproducing everybody else, actually.

There's 40 women in South Indian villages. We'll stop at their center, and you can see. They're, like, wiping out the monks, actually.

Okay. And tungen. Tungen means, the last one means, you've got to have a place where you can do it.

The place should be quiet. The place should not be a busy place. The place should have decent food.

The place should have a corner where you can meditate. The place should have a lama there. There should be books that you can read.

And this is another advertisement. We are buying a large parcel of land in Arizona, which is where I came from. It's out in this beautiful mountain in the high desert, and we plan to have there three things.

One is a retreat center where you can have your own cottage, like an adobe cottage, and you could meditate for one month up to three or four years. And we would try to do these things for free, although we have to figure out how to do that. But mostly we've been doing them pretty free so far.

Secondly, there would be a university modeled after the Mongolian. We stole it from Batbul's hometown, where there would be eight colleges. One would be a philosophy college for studying these courses.

One would be a Tibetan medical college to learn Tibetan and Mongolian medicine. One would be a thangka painting. One would be architecture.

One would be music, dance, sacred dance. One would be tantra. One would be something called a college of helping other people, where you learn how to do tax exemptions, you learn how to organize a thing without losing money, you learn how to keep accounts, you learn how to do hospice work or prison work or drug or alcohol abuse work, and things like that, which is what we're doing in New York.

But I thought it would be cool to have a school where you actually learn how to do it properly. And then a center for children's education, a business school for learning how to use Dharma in business. And that would be a university, a school for how to meditate.

And then on the third part of the property, the property is like, if we get the one we're trying to, it'll end up 9,000 acres total. The third part of the property, we would like to build a retirement community for old hippie Buddhists. Like me.

And so actually, you would have your own cottage, and you'd be on like an acre or two of your own land, and you could just live there, and there'd be lamas, and there'd be a school to go to, and you'd just live there quietly. And the electricity is all solar, and the water is all pumped up by windmills there, and you wouldn't have to spend much, maybe $100 a month or $150 a month. The idea is you could live quietly your last 10, 20 years, and enjoy yourself, and be around other Dharma people, in good weather, and die quietly, and having meditated a lot, and prayed a lot, and things like that.

That's the plan. So if you're interested in that, talk to Winston. Where's Winston?

He's got some blurbs too. I'm not trying to hit you up for anything. I know nobody here has any money, and neither do I.

I just want you to be aware of it. If in 5 years, or 10 years, or next month, you don't know what to do with yourself, or you're feeling sad, or you're broke, or you suddenly got cancer or something, then remember this day, and that you're welcome to come there, and hang out. The idea is that there's a place that you can go.

We want to make it for free. We're trying. And just that you can do all the Dharma things you have to do.

That's called Tunkin. That's the third of the main causes. We'll do one more, and then we'll take a break.

This is our trees. If you didn't notice, we're on a bunch of trees now. Next one says, Live in three ways that never get weaker.