Серия ежедневной практики, курс 04 — Семичастная практика развития доброго сердца (1999, Гоа), занятие 8

[Speaker 2]
This is the continuation of session 7.

[Speaker 1]
Next one says, live in three ways that never get weaker. Live in three ways that never get weaker, okay? The three ways are three kinds of behavior for lojong.

Okay, someone practicing lojong. The first one is called Lama Lamogu. Lama Lamogu means never lose your devotion and your faith in your Lama.

Okay, be very, very, very picky on who you choose as your Lama. Like, don't do it easily. Tradition in the old days was to wait 12 years.

Check them out for 12 years, you know, and then go to them and say, okay, I'd like to take you as my Lama. There's a joke. There was a great Mongolian prince who came to a Tibetan Lama and said, I've checked you out for 12 years and guess what?

Lama said, what? You know, he said, I've decided you're okay, and I'm going to become your student, you know, and then the Lama said, well now I'll check you out for 12 years before I agree. And then the Lama says, don't wait too long, okay?

Like, 12 years is maybe extreme, you know? I mean, but check out this person very thoroughly, okay? Be like a private investigator, you know, talk to their students, talk to the people who used to be their students that don't like them anymore.

Talk to, you know, people who they've taught, talk to people who are sponsoring them, talk to people that know them, where they live, or, you know, and investigate them and find out if this is the right teacher for you. There are thousands of different kinds of personalities, and there are thousands of different wonderful, beautiful, holy teachers in the world, and you just have to find the one that fits your personality. And it won't always be that every teacher is the right one for you.

You have to find the one that you really connect with. And don't be embarrassed to ask questions, and don't be shy about it. It's your life at stake, and you know, make sure that this person is the one that fits you.

After you've decided, then go for it. You know, don't, this one means don't lose your devotion after that, okay? Once you've made the commitment, normally the next day you'll find out some terrible thing that, okay, this is normal.

This is like after getting married, you know, like the day after, and something will always come up. After that, you have to be steadfast. Second thing is lojong lakdro.

Lojong lakdro means love this lojong, okay? I mean, get to, let it become your friend, and develop a love for it, where you enjoy it. Be happy doing it.

Don't see it as an obligation, okay? In the monastery at Serra, if you get caught going to Kushal Nagar and watching a movie in one of those little video huts, which I've never seen, they call your name during an assembly, and you have to come up to the front, and they give you this huge movie poster, and you have to hold it up like that for like an hour, you know, and everyone's making fun of you and laughing at you, and then they make you do like a thousand prostrations or something to the monks, you know, and then I remember the disciplinarian got up one day and said, actually, this is not fair. You know, everybody's like, oh, come on, it doesn't hurt anybody to hold up that poster, you know, and he's, no, no, it's the prostration thing.

It's not fair, you know, and they said, why? He said, that's the most fun I can imagine is doing a thousand prostrations to all the monks of Serra Mae, you know, that's no punishment. This is an honor.

This is a good time. This is, it's real. I'd love to do it myself, but I don't want to go to the movies, you know, and he was very sincere, you know, he was like, this is not a punishment.

This is an honor, you know, and anyway, that's what Lojongla Dora means, okay? Third one, dren shen gyi lapja sunga means keep a high degree of mindfulness about keeping your vows and keeping your pledges, and the book, there's nothing like the book, okay? You can say, I know my vows, which nobody does.

You can say, I keep them pretty well, which means you don't even check, and and then, you know, people who keep tundruk, six-session yoga, which means checking your vows every two hours, every two and a half hours, then that's real mindfulness. If you get to where you check your vows every two hours or two and a half hours, and I don't mean all of them. For a fully ordained monk with tantric and bodhisattva vows, it's 484 vows, if you don't count these Lojong commitments, okay?

It means just check, make a rotation, you know, check one or two every two hours, every two and a half hours. That is mindfulness. That's the third training here.

There's no other way to do it, you know. You meet nice people who are in Dharma centers, and you say, are you keeping your vows? And they say, pretty good.

And you say, be honest, do you even know your vows? And they'll say, you know, I can't remember all of them, but I know most of the main ones. And you say, you say, well, just how do you check your vows?

And they say, well, I don't have any formal system. I just generally try to be a good person. I try to do what Lama Sipa tells me, you know, and and that's not enough.

It won't get you into a tantric paradise. It doesn't work that way. That's why in every uttara tantra initiation, unuttara yoga initiation in the tantras, the highest tantric initiations you can take, they all require that every two hours you stop and check your vows.

It's called tundra lama nildzara, six session yoga, you know what I mean? Every two or two and a half hours you stop, you check one of your vows, and you check how's your mind doing right now. How are you doing on this vow?

And that's the only way you're gonna change this into Manjushri's arm. There's no other way. There is no other way.

That's why the highest tantras require that. All the highest unuttara yoga initiations require that you do six session yoga. So it got corrupted in Tibet.

Some lama wrote a thing called, you know, you can do six sessions twice a day, which is in itself a contradiction. It's like jumbo shrimp or military intelligence. You can do a two-session, six-session yoga.

You see what I mean? And it became a custom to speed through it in the morning for ten minutes, and speed through it in the evening for ten minutes. And they wrote out a little recitation that you could do, you know, and then you're just wandering.

I used to do it on the bus from work, and I'd just be staring out the window. And like a week later, I'd say, I did it seven times this week, and I don't remember doing it once. You know what I mean?

I kept my vow, meaning I recited it, but I didn't think about it at all. And frankly, not much changed in my life until I started keeping a book and tracking it carefully. You know, that was like seven years ago or something.

It's a very good thing. You should do it. You have to do it, okay?

This thing about vaguely knowing your vows and vaguely trying to be a nice guy, that's not the same thing. You know, you have to check them every two hours or so. That's how that system works, and that's how your karma gets good enough to change into a Tantric Danny.

Because your arm is empty. Okay, good. Take a break.

If you want, come up and see this stuff, and they'll hand out some stuff too, okay? Okay, next line says, keep the three that should never be lost. That's easy.

That's virtues in your speech, what you say, virtues in what you do, and virtues in what you think. Okay, that's easy. Now on to the next section.

It says, act towards each one free of bias. Spread your love and make it deep. Constantly think of the special ones.

Okay. This is mainly referring to the fact that once you've signed up for Lojong practice, you have to try very hard not to be biased towards other people. So try to behave the same towards your people who try to hurt you, and towards people who are nice to you.

In the text it says, you know, don't try to be kind to people who are Dharma practitioners, and then be unkind to people who are crazy and bad to you, and things like that. Then you don't understand Lojong if that's how you're acting. The special ones mentioned here, he says that could be your mother, your father, your family, your lama, the person who gave you your vows, but most especially the people you don't like.

Okay, in other words, people who try to hurt you. Okay. Don't let it depend on circumstances means, that's a thing about the Varanasi train station.

If things are going well, people tend, I think it was Nietzsche said, anyone who's just had a good meal sees the world as all nice people or something. I mean, most people's perception of the world depends on what kind of lunch they had. And you can't be like that.

If you're studying Lojong, even when you have a headache, even when your back hurts, even when you just had a fight with somebody, even when you just got refused some position you were hoping for, even if you just lost a lot of money, you have to be acting the same towards everybody. You have to be free of circumstances around you, especially when you're not feeling well. Okay, I had this one dharma student I didn't like, and they used to give me a hard time.

And then later I found out that they had this terrible backache all the time. And when they got over that, they were very sweet. You see what I mean?

And you know, don't be like that. Don't be nasty when you have a backache. And also, conversely, try to be sweet to people who are irritable, because maybe they just have a backache, or maybe this morning they had an argument with their wife or something.

And try to understand that other people probably act the same way that you do, which is that normally when people are being mean or grumpy, it's because something went wrong today already, and you're just seeing them afterwards. Okay, so be sensitive to that and try not to be like that. Okay.

All right. Now we're on the last verse. It's got about eight lines.

These are short, but sweet. I'm going to read the Tibetan just for purposes of a little thing. yu la chokme da du chok khyak dang ting jom kun la chep kuwa nam la tat gom khen shen dak na du mi cha ta re tsok nyam su lang go dok mi ja These are the advices to start.

You can hear them starting, right? It's like poetry. Listen to the poetry.

yu la chokme da du chok khyak dang ting jom kun la chep kuwa nam la tat gom khen shen dak na du mi cha ta re tsok nyam su lang go dok mi ja ren jom mi cha du chok mi cha ta re tsok nyam su lang go dok mi ja ta re tsok nyam su lang It's like, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. Sounds like it's holiness. Okay.

Act now, do the most important thing. Okay, that's the first one. Act now means now that you have a lama, you have a human being teaching you, you have the dharma, you're alive, you're healthy, you have a brain, you got fed enough today, you're at Goa, couldn't be nicer, so get moving.

Do the most important thing. Most important thing, try to stop your tendency to take care of yourself first. Try to replace it with this constant attitude of how can I help other people.

I see bodhisattva dharma students sitting on a bed, typing away at their computer, somebody comes in the door, their arms are filled with things, they can hardly open the door, they're stumbling along the floor, things are falling off the tray, and they're just staring at them. That's interesting. It's just a basic failure to put yourself in another person's shoes.

Often times the most basic test of whether you're doing bodhisattva work is what is your ability to stand up and move forward when someone needs something, and put your hands on. It's not very glorious, or sexy, or anything, it's just how fast can you get out of a chair to help somebody. It seems to me a direct correlation between people who are trying to act out the bodhisattva ideal, and people who are able, quickly, to get up out of a chair and move ahead and help somebody.

There seems to be a direct correlation to me. Let's see. Second one.

Don't get it backwards. There are six backwardses. They're on your homework.

Here are the six backwards kinds of behavior. First one. When it comes time to your job, your worldly stuff, you can undergo any kind of hardship.

And I can tell you that. I used to get up at 5.30, 5 o'clock, eat quickly, stand out in snow, rain, heat, wait for the New Jersey Transit bus, getting soaked, or out there for 30 minutes, whatever it took. Then this ride to what they call Cancer Alley, which is an hour and a half through the refineries of northern New Jersey, choking on this pollution.

And then you get delivered at the Port Authority, which is the scummiest place in the world. Well, anyway. And then you go downstairs and get into the subway, which is the worst place in New York.

And then another half hour ride trying to beat off drunks and trying not to smell the things. And then get up, have to walk another half hour through the snow or the rain or whatever. And then just after two hours of that, you're totally exhausted.

You fall into the door of this company, and it's time to begin work. And you do it. I did it for 15 years.

People do it. People do it happily. I mean, not happily, but they do it.

They don't think it's strange in New York City to get up at 5, come home at 8, eat, watch the news, go to bed, and go and do it again tomorrow. And that's... People are willing to do that.

Then you say, OK, now we're in Goa. Can you get up at 5 o'clock and meditate for an hour? Then study for 8 hours?

And then we'll even let you have a half hour on the beach. Then you're like, Are you kidding me? I'm in Goa.

I'm in a Dharma teaching. I'm going to get up at 9. I'll have some hot chocolate.

I'll get out to the beach. I'll look over that Lojong thing from yesterday, just finish the homework as fast as I can, and then maybe catch the second teaching. Something like that.

I mean, the whole Western thing about work... Work is sacred. I got in trouble if I was 10 minutes late.

It's a 2-hour commute. I got in trouble if I was 10 minutes late. Then they would keep me 3 hours late.

And I couldn't understand it. I used to go to the bus. I said, How come if I'm 10 minutes late, I get in trouble, but you can make me stay 3 hours late?

And he said, This is not Citibank. Meaning, this is a real company. Like that.

So you're willing to undertake these kinds of hardships, day after day, year after year, for something that you can't keep. Whatever salary I made, I only had an afternoon to spend it. That was Saturday afternoon.

Sunday I had to wash the clothes, and be nervous about Monday. And that's it. You know that's how it is.

So if you're willing to do that, the first backwards is, willing to do it for your job, but not willing to do it for the Dharma. I was worried when I quit the company, because I thought I would get soft. Because Dharma doesn't push you.

You meditate or you don't meditate, nobody is yelling at you. You don't cut your paycheck. It doesn't show up anywhere.

And I think you have to learn to be disciplined. Yourself. Second one.

Enjoy the flavor of worldly things, and not the flavor of the Dharma. If you really understand Lojong, or emptiness, or something like that, and then to sit down and read a text about it, it should become eventually, as pleasant as going to a good movie, or something like that. And you should reach a point where you can't put it down.

You just can't stop. People say, could you just take a break and go swimming? And you're like, no, I can't.

Because I don't want to. This is more fun. And you should reach a point where they're about the same for you.

Third one. You feel sympathy for those who are working hard on Dharma, but not for those who are doing bad deeds. Meaning, it's very easy to be a good person around good people.

My Lama, we were at Sara, and I was at this Mongolian monastery for eight years. And just meditating, studying, perfect circumstances, perfect temple, no other problems. The greatest Lama in the world.

And just sit there all day long and give teachings, and meditate, and things like that. And then he said, now you have to go to work. And I said, Rinpoche, I don't have to go to work.

My mom passed away. I still have some money. He says, no, it's time to go to work.

And I said, I don't want to go to work. And he said, no, you have to go to work in New York. Go work in an office in New York.

And I'm like, no. And he kept this up for like six months. And then one day, I remember, he went to Rutgers and gave a beautiful talk.

And on the way home, I said, I'll do anything you want. He said, go to work. And so I went to work.

And it wasn't pleasant. It's easy to be happy when all the people around you are trying to do Dharma. Sometimes I think to be a Lama is a very dangerous thing because you only meet devoted people who are crazy enough to study all day and try to practice Dharma.

And you don't really get to meet normal people who can be very rough. I mean, in business in New York, half the people you meet during the day might be very, very rough people. And I think you need to do that.

I think it's very healthy. My Lama used to encourage people to have a real side job that they did in addition to their Dharma. Not just for the money, because I didn't need the money, but partly it was to learn how normal people think, which I think helps your teaching and your translation.

If you're going to be a translator, have a normal job, see how normal people talk. It's not at all what they talk about in Dharma class. Learn to say things in a normal way to normal people.

This is very useful. Okay, number four. Try to succeed in your Dharma work rather than your worldly work.

Meaning, try to be a Dharma success and not a worldly success. We talked about yesterday what it means to be a Dharma success is only one thing in the Lojong. Are you happier than you were six months ago?

Okay? Do you have fewer mental afflictions than you had six months ago? Is your tendency to take care of yourself first less than it used to be six months ago?

It has nothing to do with learning a tantric sadhana by memory. It has nothing to do with Tibetan grammar. It has nothing to do with how many Tibetan words you know.

It has nothing to do with where you can ring your bell at the right time or not. It has nothing to do with being the administrator of a project or doing some project for your lama or something like that. It's with how have you changed your mind.

Are you happier six months later than you were six months before? And then we can say you're a Dharma success. If you've memorized all this Tibetan and you know everything up and down and you're in charge of the biggest project number 53 and you have red robes on and you ring your bell at the right time, but if you're still a schmuck then who cares?

What is it? What's the Dharma? What's the point?

And I'm speaking as a person who's gotten caught up in all those other things. And you mistake all those other activities for progress. Progress means are you happier than you were six months ago?

And are you a nicer person? And do you think of other people more than you used to? That's all.

So don't give that up for worldly success. And there's a lot of worldly success to be found in the Dharma. It becomes a business for people.

How many verbs do you know? I understand you're trying to practice Tantra but are you well aware that you ring your bell with the wrong hand? You know what I mean?

No, it becomes a thing like that. Be careful. Alright, you have to ring the bell with the right hand but that's a different thing.

Which is your left hand. But anyway, I think. Somebody comes to you for Dharma help and instead you give them worldly stuff to do and worldly advice.

And this is a tendency. Again, Lama Tsopa is a very good example. You can go to Lama Tsopa and ask him about your car business.

You can go to Lama Tsopa and ask him about a translation. You can go to Lama Tsopa and ask him about the administration of your Dharma center. And he just twists it around and asks you how you're doing personally.

Immediately he's on to some deep Dharma thing. He refuses to talk about shallow things. Everything to him is deep.

He can't even eat a hot dog in New York without two hours of prayers about it. We've seen this. It wasn't a hot dog.

It was some vegetarian thing. At three in the morning. Everything to him is a sacred thing.

He refuses to turn the sacred into the worldly. I think we tend to do the opposite. People come to you for advice.

You have an opportunity an honest opportunity. I'm not saying that you're selling the Dharma to people or you're pushing people, but someone comes to you sincerely and they ask you a sincere question about Dharma. It's a perfect opportunity to talk about emptiness or karma or tantric deities.

And you start talking about some movie or something. You see what I mean? That's the next kind of backwards.

What number are we on? Four, right? That was five.

Number six is backwards means rejoicing in other people's problems and their failures instead of rejoicing in their virtues and what they do right. We did an interesting thing in Ireland. We started translating the ten non-virtues in a positive way.

So instead of saying don't kill, don't steal, don't do sexual misconduct it was respect life respect other people's property and strive for sexual purity. You know what I mean? And we switched the whole thing around.

And it got to be a very interesting feeling. The whole feeling was different. And it was great.

Respect life gives you a different if you get up in the morning and say I'm going to respect life today rather than I'm not going to kill anything it seems more powerful to me. Anyway when we got to number eight and number nine two of the three mental deeds we just had this insight into it. People call it craving and ill will.

You know what I mean? But I think to say that the craving part is to be unhappy when someone else gets something nice. The eighth non-virtue of the ten is to be unhappy when something else happens good for somebody else.

And then number nine is the opposite. Which is what? Taking some kind of pleasure out of other people's problems.

And you have to watch out for those things. I went on an eight and nine binge like the last few months. It was like in the winter in New York.

I realized I had eight and nine and I went on a binge and did them for like two months every day. It was really good. And you should try it.

Try it sometime. I mean not doing them, right? Okay, what's the next thing?

It says don't be on and off. Dharma practice is like jogging or dancing or yoga or any other kind of exercise. It has to be daily.

It has to be at the same time every day. It has to be a modest reasonable practice that challenges you. And if you don't do that you won't get anywhere.

So it's better to spend twenty minutes a day regularly than it is to go on a big Dharma push for three weeks and then you just stop for six months. So build up something modest. I think we mentioned the other night don't make your practice too complicated.

Don't do forty-six different things. I have people come to me all the time and say I do Vajrasattva, then I do Maharaja, then I do Yamantaka, and then I do fourteen Atara and then I do sixteen this and eighteen that and forty-eight of that. And I run through these three sadhanas.

And I say, do you really think about those things while you're saying them? And they say, no, never. I'm just trying to get to the next one.

You know what I mean? And make it simple. I don't mean make it stupid.

Make it sweet. Make it leisurely. Make it profound.

Make it very sacred. And the trick is to do it at the same time every day. And just let people know that you're not available at those times.

I think in New York we've gotten pretty good at it recently. We have a Dharma policeman who enforces it and, you know, we get all these invitations. People say, do you want to meet the Dalai Lama at 12.30?

I say, no, I'm not done with my practice until 1.00. You see what I mean? You just make a rule and you don't break it. And then people stop calling you before 1.00 because they know you're not going to answer the phone. Like that. Make it time. Same time every day.

More powerful. Next one. Make up your mind and stick to it.

The commentary says at this point, decide what level of Dharma practice you're capable of doing, and then stick to it. dukma dupa chen ne, te rang la shak means decide where your level is at and then stick to it and go for it. And you have to be...

this is that thing about challenging yourself. If you've done sports before, you're always supposed to... I used to row.

We had to do one year of sports in my college and it was, you know, I hated it. And I decided that the closest thing to swimming or surfing would be, in New Jersey, would be rowing. And it was a skull thing with eight guys and these long oars.

And every day we went out for practice and they would make us do a little bit more than the day before. It was always five minutes more than the day before or five pounds more or one lap more. And it was very...

That's what this one is talking about. Set yourself a practice which challenges you and then keep pushing the envelope a little bit each day. Don't be satisfied.

Especially with the priority of your practice. A lot of people say I'm set. And you say, what do you mean set?

You say, I live in a Dharma center, I recite Yamantaka for two and a half hours every morning and I ring the bell at the right time and that's it. And I became a monk or a nun and I'm satisfied. And then you say, well, did you do Kirtim?

And they say, no, I'm not doing Kirtim. I'm just reciting the thing. And they say, well, did you do Dzogrim?

And they say, that's for people who are better than me. I can't do that. I can't go to highest tantric practices.

I like this sadhana thing because I finally learned how to ring the bell and where to ring the bell. And they get stuck. They get attached to it.

I finally memorized the Vajrayogini sadhana. I finally figured out where Rinpoche wants me to ring the bell. So, I'm set.

That's it. I don't need anything else. I don't want to go further than that.

But you have to keep pushing the envelope until you get up to the most powerful practices you can. That's your responsibility. Once you took Bodhisattva vows, which you did from His Holiness, once you've taken a tantric initiation, you can't just cruise.

You have to keep reaching for the next thing. And you have to try to get enlightened faster. You can't be satisfied and just comfortable with what you've learned and just stop there.

I'll tell you a true story. Geshe Galden, he's a Mongolian, Inner Mongolian. He taught me some Abhidharma.

He was getting old and he was dying. I helped him fix his room before that. I helped him put up some new walls and stuff.

He lived in this very tiny, simple room. I used to go there and he would teach me. One night, he's obviously going to die in a week or something.

He was wheezing. He's flat on his back. He didn't have the power to put his robes down.

I felt really embarrassed for him. You know what I mean? How you see somebody naked who is like your teacher or something and it does something to your heart.

I pull his robes down and say, Geshe-la, what's going to happen? He's reading this book and I figure it's probably a poem practice or something. He puts the book down and he says, here, you can have this book.

But let me keep it for a week until I die. I'm like, what's the book, Geshe-la? He says, Oh, it's elementary logic.

This is what they teach kids 15 years old in the monastery. I said, Geshe-la, you're passing. What are you reading elementary logic for?

He says, I'm getting ready for my next life. He's like, this is profound stuff. He says, you don't stop.

Your mind doesn't stop. I'm trying to load everything in before I die. He's very adamant about it.

He's like, I want to review everything before I die. He's like pushing. Even up to the moment of death he's pushing his mind.

He's pushing his body. He can't get his robes down but he can hold up this book and he's reading. He doesn't want to die without it in his mind.

It's very cool. You've got to push like that. You've got to be willing to undertake some pain sometimes.

That's one of the kinds of the fourth perfection is to be willing to put up with some pain when you're doing Dharma. No pain, no gain. A lot of people, because Dharma work is not like your worldly work, I knew lots of people at work in my job we didn't have health insurance and if you missed a day you didn't get paid for it.

So people would be throwing up in the corner. People would have migraine headaches. People would come to work with horrible colds.

You can do it if you have a family and you need the money. They just come. You just go.

You don't think about it. You go. And then when you do your Dharma you're so wimpy.

Like, I don't feel like meditating today. Why? It's too hot.

Next day, I don't feel like meditating today. Why? It's too cold.

And then it's just like that. You're just wimpy when your Dharma is done. Because there's nobody checking.

You still get your paycheck. Stuff like that. Next one.

Figure out both and for yourself. We're just about finished. Figure out both is very interesting.

It means figure out how it is that your last big mental affliction incident occurred. Do some research. I got angry yesterday at one of my students.

So, go back and try to recreate the situation. What was it that made me angry? Why did I get angry?

What was it happening three minutes before that? What was happening two minutes before that? What was it that pushed me over the edge and got me angry?

What was it that I said something? Go back and study your old failures. And then the second part of that, it says figure out both.

Figure out how you're going to deal with it next time. In advance, proactively figure out how you can prevent the same series of mistakes from happening. That's a lojong practice.

Analyze your past emotional failures and then plan for the next one. And free yourself. Next one says stop thinking about how wonderful you are.

There's times when you're supposed to meditate on how wonderful you are. This refers to like you finally got off your butt and you're doing some kind of service of other people. You finally are volunteering to help at the Dharma Center.

Or you're finally working at the Three Jewels to help people there. Or you're finally doing something. Then you get this feeling like I'm the greatest.

I'm really a major bodhisattva. And the author Geshe Chagall, he says there's two reasons why you shouldn't think like that. There's two reasons why you shouldn't get some kind of big pride about being a major bodhisattva just because you've just started to help other people.

First one. They need it really bad. Okay, I mean if you, we recently I don't know, we were in Ireland, right?

And we were following a car. Right after we got off the flight and I'm watching this car, I'm driving behind this car and the car veers over to the side the wrong side, which in Ireland is the wrong side. And it hits a wall.

You know? And we're like freaking out. And we all stop, we all jump out, we all run over there.

And there's an old nun in the front seat and her sister is on the other side and they're on their way to the hospital and she falls asleep and you know, it's like really trouble. So everyone's there and everyone's trying to get the door open and trying to get them out and trying to help them and then at that moment you see, you're not going to stand there and suddenly stop and say, you know, I'm a really great person. I can't believe I'm out here doing this.

For an old nun. We're really good Buddhists. And I hope they find out that we're Buddhists.

And you stand there and praising yourself or congratulating yourself. It's inappropriate when the other party is suffering badly. And that's always the case in samsara.

The people who don't understand about karma are in the process of killing themselves. And you shouldn't have time. I mean, your mind should be more on how can you help them than on how great you are.

That's the first thing to think. Second thing is when you took bodhisattva vows, there's a line in there that says ngā rāṅgirāṅgirāṇḍakū ngā rāṅgirāṅgirāṇḍakū ngā rāṅgirāṅgirāṇḍakū means I hereby decide that I am the slave of the entire world. I hereby offer my body into the service of everyone in the world who needs it.

I am now the slave of everyone in the world. Just tell me what you need and I'll do it for you. Having said that, when you took your bodhisattva vows, that's why they do them in Tibetan so you don't know what you're saying.

Having said that, now, it's too late to be proud about it. You're an employee, you know. The world owns you.

And, you know, you can't get proud about it. That's your responsibility. You made that commitment already.

So why are you getting proud about it? It's like proud about being the waiter, you know. You already agreed to be the waiter.

So you can't, like, go up to the people eating the food and say, aren't I great, you know? I'm feeding you. I'm delivering your food, you know.

I'm such a good waiter. You know, I said, no, that's your job. All right.

Next one says, don't let little things get to you, and it means when you get into the Dharma business, 30% of the people will love you and send you these nice notes and flowers. Right, right, Babbold? 30% will say you're a really bad person.

Babbold didn't want to be translated on Mongolian TV because he said, half a million Mongolians the next day are going to expect me to be a saint. You know, and they did, and he's, anyway, I think he is. But anyway, you can trust in advance that due to your own karma, you know, 30% of the people will love you.

30% will think you're bad or crazy, and 30% won't care about you at all. And if you go to another country, after two weeks, it'll be the same percentage. Master Shantideva said, if you go into a room with 10 people, you will be attracted to three of them, you will find three of them disgusting, and then you won't care about the other four.

And then if you take the three people that you like, and you put them in another room with six other people you like, then after a week, you will hate three of them, like three of them, and feel new to about four of them. You see, I mean, it's not a function of those people. It's your mind.

It's your own mind. Anywhere you go in the world, due to your own karma, a certain percentage of people are going to criticize you. And you should just be...

When you get in the Dharma business, just get used to it, especially running a center, right, Nambila? You know, one third of the people will start to criticize you. You're teaching Dharma for free.

You spend 20 years of your life training yourself. You paid for all the materials. You're paying for the rent.

You know, you're doing all this stuff for free. You go to work for 16 hours so that you can teach for an hour or two afterwards. And people will still complain, I don't like the Xerox.

You know, the Xerox is crooked, you know. Or, you know, I don't like the refreshments that Palma makes for us. You know, I can't believe you don't have tea without milk in it.

You know what I mean? Or I can't believe you're robbing me blind. You know, what's robbing you blind?

Oh, there's a donation box in the back. You know, and stuff like that. And you'll get accused of every strange thing.

The point is, don't be discouraged, okay? This happens in every Dharma center in the world. There's always two or three people who think that this whole thing is terrible, and the teacher is terrible, and everything like that.

Probably they're perceiving it that way, okay? And just chill out. Just help the people you can help.

Don't worry. You know, smile to the other people. I'm sorry you're not happy.

I'm doing the best I can with no money, no help, no place to teach you, and nobody to pay for anything. But I'm just doing the best I can. And if it's not good enough, then I'm sorry.

You know, I hope you're happy. You know, and like that. Be happy.

That's all you can do. There will always be situations like that. Next, don't change from moment to moment.

That just means don't get on this thing of happy-sad, happy-sad, happy-sad, okay? You can't control your past karma very well. It's like a wild bull.

And you can do the four forces, and you can follow Dharma. It's not going to have a major change in your world immediately. It takes time.

So be patient with it. And things will continue to go up and down. Good things will happen.

Bad things will happen. On the whole, everything will go up. You know what I mean?

On the whole, your life will become amazing. But deal with the troughs. You know, deal with the ups and downs.

And don't be much happier or much sadder than you were, okay? I mean, in the sense of being upset. And don't get too excited about things either.

You know what I mean? The person who wrote you that last note and told you what a great lama you are might very well write you in three weeks and tell you what a bad lama you are. And just, you know, it's okay.

Just take it and do the best you can and help people the best you can. Okay. Last one.

Don't expect any thanks. That's pretty self-explanatory. The commentary gives three kinds of thanks that you shouldn't expect, okay?

Thanks number one. Don't expect any help from these Bodhisattva Dharma students, okay? I got this letter.

I sent a guy in New York. I sent him to Sarah Monastery to study. I got a letter back the first night.

It's this 12-page letter from this guy, telling me how horrible the monks treat the young monks, you know? Which means they hit them once in a while with a rosary, okay? It's called dots on your head.

You know, you come home from the debate ground and you got this... You can't hide it, you know? You're like, you're like, how are you doing?

They say, you got dots, didn't you? And you're like, yeah. And you know, that's discipline in the monastery, you know?

You goof off, they whack you, you know? And you got this dots. It doesn't hurt so bad.

I mean, it's just embarrassing mostly. So I get this letter, you know? The people here are really cruel and I don't like this place and like that, you know?

And why did I bring that up? Anyway, it was like... Anyway, if you're in...

I forgot, I'll try to tie it together later. Yeah, well, just in general, the first one is that don't expect help from people, okay? Don't expect help cleaning up Namgyala after the course.

Don't expect them to donate the money that is obviously needed to run the place. Don't expect... Just don't expect much from other people, okay?

And don't get mad about it. Oh, now I remember. Now I remember.

So the guy wrote me this letter and I wrote him back and he said, these monks are weird because they actually beat the kids up, you know? And I said, they're not beating them up. They're disciplining.

That's why Jampa is so nice, because he got 20 years of it. And don't think that... What's I said?

I lost it again. Anyway. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The reason you go to a monastery is to fix yourself. You see what I mean? Don't be surprised at Sarame if you see somebody yelling at some kid or two monks arguing, or...

Don't freak out, you know, that they're not all going around like, Oh, money, baby, oh, you know. The reason people like me take ordination is that we need to fix ourselves, you know? So don't expect monks and nuns to be like saints.

We became a monk or nun so that we could become a saint later by being a monk or nun. And the reason we became a monk or nun is that we're not saints. And you see what I mean?

So, you know, the reason people join a Dharma center is because they're trying to fix their mind. And by definition, in the first few years, they don't have a fixed mind. So they're not going to help you, you know?

It's the older students or the more mature students who understand that this thing is important and beneficial and sweet, that they should take responsibility to run things and not feel bitter when people don't help you, okay? If they're not helping you, it means they should be in the Dharma center. Get it?

You know, if they're incapable of the least movement to help you with anything, it means they belong here. Okay, you get it? Okay, all right.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I think it's like 76 kalpas or something.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
The point at which you can kick them out of the Dharma center when they don't help. There's no give up point. You can't give up.

Okay, unfortunately. Okay. Second one is praise, okay?

Don't expect any praise. Don't expect... It's the nature of things, you know?

Rinpoche taught us for 25 years. I remember distinctly him in the bathroom after Seichu cleaning up the toilet and then going out to sweep the floor because people eat the offerings. They trash the place in a way that you would never do in your own home and then they go home.

And we would often stay up for two or three hours after the students left for this high tantric ritual, cleaning up after all these bodhisattvas who just didn't occur to them that somebody had to clean it up. You know what I mean? And no one thanks and no one prays.

Don't expect people to praise you. Most likely, the only people who communicate to you will be the people who criticize you. And just be happy.

Say, okay, I have my failures. I have my faults. I'm just trying to make this place go.

And you know, if it's good for you, come. If it's not, it's okay. I'm sorry.

You know, try to make them happy. Okay, last one. Fame, you know, don't try to get any fame.

Fame is very dangerous, you know? As I get more well-known, good or bad, okay? In the world, more and more people opening doors for me, more and more people sending a car for me, more and more people overfeeding me.

And it actually gets to be, I think, very dangerous. It gets to be a big obstacle. You know what I mean?

Like, then you're like expecting people to do that and you get upset when people don't do that. And I think it's... And then what's strange is I miss working because at work people used to scream at me.

You know, if people... If you don't perform in a corporation in America, they go after you. And if you don't perform long enough, they get rid of you.

And there's no mercy. It's not like some countries that have social welfare systems. It's very...

I kind of like the purity of it. I like the honesty of it. You either perform or you're gone.

And there's no like, oh, sorry, you know? It's nothing like that. And I think in the Dharma it's the same way.

You know what I mean? I miss having healthy, you know, honest people around who can criticize you honestly and say, you know, maybe you should do this or that, you know? And that's very helpful, actually.

So what I'm saying is that fame is actually a very dangerous thing. And it's not a very desirable thing. And you have to be careful not to expect it.

And I think if you ever get it, you'll find it's quite uncomfortable, actually. I'll give you an example. I'm not criticizing anybody.

We were in Indiana. It was the last day of His Holiness's teaching. And this huge limousine pulls up.

We're all sitting on the ground in the parking lot, eating off the ground, you know, like pizza or something. And we joke into this limo driver. We say, I'm here, I'm here.

And he says, your name Geshe Michael? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And he said, yeah, somebody, one of your students paid for it and doesn't want you to know who they are.

I'm here to, this is the limo, you know. And I said, well, I was going to go in that van, you know. And they said, no, no, you got to get in the limo.

So it's a stretch. I get into the limo and 17 students follow me into the limo. You know, I've never had such an uncomfortable ride in my life.

You know, I'm not kidding. I'm crushed into the corner, you know. And all these students are having a good time watching the TV and drinking all this puff eating all the peanuts.

I've never been so uncomfortable. It's like this two-hour ride, you know. And that's what starts to happen.

And some other people had to go in the van and they had the most comfortable ride. And so anyway, that's the kind of thing you can expect. All right, last.

In the closing lines, he says, turn these five signs of the days of darkness around us into a path to enlightenment. These words of advice are like the essence of nectar. They were passed down through Serlingba.

He says the last thing because he wants people to know that even though these instructions were kept secret for so long, he didn't make them up. He says, ultimately, they came from Lord Atisha, back from Serlingba and Maitreya. And this is not something Geshe Chekawa made up.

I wrote it down because I thought it would be useful. Okay, the sign...

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, which part?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, anyway, he's crediting Serlingba, which is Lord Atisha's compassion teacher from Indonesia. Oh, it says, these words of advice are the essence of nectar. They were passed down through Serlingba.

Oh, the first part I'm going to cover. Turn these five signs of the days of darkness around us into a path to enlightenment. They're supposed to be that these are dark days, you know.

People in the world, this is the best crowd we can scrounge up. Out of 5 billion people or something. You know what I mean?

There's only 50, 60 people interested in learning how not to be selfish. You know what I mean? And for every one of you sitting here, there's 10 million or 50 million people who could care less about this stuff.

You know, you say, guess what? I can teach you how to take care of other people before yourself. And they're like, why?

You know what I mean? And they just don't... Not at all attracted to it.

And these are called dark days. Okay, Dharma-wise, you know, it's nice to have such a beautiful group. And we had an unbelievable time here.

It is the most unbelievable place I've seen in India. And it's definitely one of the nicest places I've been in a long time. But what is it in the world?

You know what I mean? I mean, there's billions of people in the world. For every one of you, there's 10, 20, 30 million people who could care less about this stuff.

You know what I mean? That doesn't interest them at all. It doesn't sound interesting to them at all.

That's a barometer of where our world is at right now. Okay? Then the positive end of that is that, those of you who are studying Vajrayogini, there's this teaching, there's this tradition, and I truly believe in it, that there's a mandala of Chakrasamvara over the world, still facing this world, you know?

Like, I imagine it over New York City. I imagine the Twin Towers are like the axis of the mandala or something. Sometimes I think like that, or the World Trade Center.

And I can actually, you know, pretend that I could see this mandala. And they say that... I don't know if you know this history of Chakrasamvara's mandala, but he swiped it from an evil deity.

And it used to be inhabited by this evil people. And the 64 deities of this mandala are actually... The bodies are left over from the old days.

So that's why it's Uktoma, Kinoma, Pagoma, Shagoma, you know, Dog-Faced Lady, Owl-Faced Lady. You know, there's these horrible names for them. It's because they decided to keep the old bodies, and they moved into this mandala.

So there are these 64 enlightened beings, took over this mandala, and they kept these ugly bodies. They still have these ugly... But they're totally compassionate enlightened beings, okay?

And they say that the reason they kept it that way was in anticipation of our times. Meaning, the way this mandala works now is that the worse things get on this planet, the more corruption morally, you know, the more selfishness, the more people have very cruel minds, and the worse things get, that this mandala gets more and more powerful. You see what I mean?

I like that vision. You see what I mean? They say Chakrasamvara's power and the power of goodness of this mandala becomes more and more.

The worse things get on the planet, then this thing becomes more glorious and more shining, and then more and more energy is coming down in the form of dharma and things like that. You know, it's like that real dharma practice should feed on negativity. You see what I mean?

And they say like a flower, like a lotus feeds off of mud. When you go to Surrey, you'll see some real lotuses by the side of the road. We jumped out to try to get some, and then just as I'm heading across this the shore of the lake, I saw a bull, and he took one step, and he sank down to his stomach.

You know what I'm like? Whoa! You know, and then we paid some kids to swim out and take the lotuses, you know?

You know, but the thing is, it's got to be pure, filthy muck. It has to be, it has to have crap in it, it has to have mud in it, and then lotus can grow. You see what I mean?

And Lojong, the whole point of Lojong is this Chakrasamvara theory that the worse things get around us, the more corruption, the more selfishness, the more war, you know, the more that people are less interested in compassion, then this teaching gets more powerful. And, you know, then you just come in on your white horse and save everything. You see what I mean?

There's so much to save, you see what I mean? You come in like a hero, a bhakta, you know, and it's really true. You know, it doesn't take much to be a good person nowadays.

You see what I mean? Like, if you just practice pretty good, you know, and you're pretty sincere, and you teach people a little Lojong, you know, it feels so wonderful to people, because things are so bad. You see what I mean?

Life is so bad. People are so selfish that you teach them just a little bit of saying about your happiness will increase every inch that you lower your selfishness. You see, every inch that you can try to imagine how the other person is thinking and what they would like to have at this very moment.

Every time you think about it, then huge progress is made in the world, because the world is so bad right now. You see what I mean? And I'm just saying, you can check it out, okay?

Every 30 seconds, you can try to think of what somebody else would like. Even if it's like, what would they like to eat right now? Or what would they like to drink right now?

Or what would they like me to say right now? Every time you think that your happiness level like doubles, okay? So just if you want to be a happy person, you know, and you see people just going around with smiles on their face all the time, just try to think about other people.

Think about what they want. Watch them. There's a thing they teach young monks in the monastery.

It's called watching other people. They teach you to spy on people. And they get so good at it that you sit down and there's a cup of tea in front of you, and you're like, how do you know I like this kind of tea?

I've never been here before. And what they do is they teach the young monks to watch your eyes. So you got to be careful when you get there, right?

Like if you're admiring somebody's mandala, then next morning you find it in your door. You know what I mean? Because they train the monks to watch people, to see what they like, see what they want, see where their eyes hesitate, you know?

And then give it to them. Make them happy. So you have to try to start doing that, okay?

Be a Dharma spy. Watch people's eyes. And make it your career to figure out what other people would like, and then give it to them.

You see what I mean? And it makes you happy. It's just like the neatest thing to do.

It's the happiest thing you can do. Okay, one question. Why did they anticipate that?

Their omniscience. Not really. Tradition.

Yeah, okay. Did you have a question? The five signs.

Oh, I wrote them in the reading. I took them out of another commentary and wrote them in the reading. Generally, lifespans are less.

People fight more. People have more mental afflictions. There's less compassion.

And by the way, we're talking billions of years. I mean, I can't say that Genghis Khan killing, you know, a million people in 1200 was much less cruel than what goes on now. You know what I mean?

I mean, cruelty is on the level that exists now. As far as kalpas or eons, we're just about the level that we are in the caveman days. I mean, that's what it means in the Dharma.

I mean, these things change very slowly. Things stay around for a few thousand years. You can see a pattern.

Okay, last thing. I'm not being... How do you say?

Pelegya in Tibetan means I'm not trying to flatter Namgyala and Sandrala and Sanila. But, you know, we were a little... I was a little hesitant to come here because I heard it was just hippies on the beach.

And I thought maybe we wouldn't be able to have a course here because nobody would be serious. And then Petra talked me into it, actually. No, it's not like that.

Just go, you know. And so we came. And physically, I mean, I can't...

Especially after having been in Bihar a lot. And I'm not putting down Bihar. The word Bihar means sacred place, temple.

And I believe it is. But it's good to take a rest sometimes, too. It's a Dharma thing to take a rest.

So it's the most beautiful place I ever taught. And I really wanted to thank Namgyala and Sandra for bringing us here. And the room they put me in is unbelievable.

And the food is really good. And that's due to... Mercedes worked on the food.

So I'd like to thank her. And Ian. And I'd like to thank Elizabeth Prather, who...

You know, and Fran Diane, who did all the tickets, all the arrangements, all the hassles. It's incredible hassles. I took 15 people to India in 1995.

I swear I'd never do it again. They've done like 50, 60, 70, 80 people. So I'd like to thank them.

And I'd like to thank my own direct assistants, who... You know, they mostly get abused by people who think that they get to talk to me all the time. They don't.

They sign up for an apartment, they get it six months later or something. But really take care of my whole life in a very sweet way, in a very beautiful way. So I'd like to thank Christy and Aura.

And Ian Lau, who helps a lot. And Rob, who helps a lot. And Debbie Bry helps, Amber.

Anyway, everybody does. In New York City, the last class we had there, there were 70 people there. And I went around the room and started to thank all the people who are working as volunteers on major projects.

And it was 50 of them. And it's beautiful. It's really beautiful.

We have a very sweet group. And everyone is doing the right thing. Everybody is helping.

And it's very, very sweet. So I'd like to thank all of you for that. Also, we'd like to give a present to Namgyal Asandra and Sunny.

Which we're printing out on special paper. Some special sutras that we translated. And it's not ready yet.

And we're going to give it to you later. So later, okay? Namman, thank you.

It's the most beautiful place. The most amazing place. Thank you for having us.

Okay, we'll do a dedication. Do a good job on the dedication, okay? Very important.

All the karma we collected here. All the sweet stuff. By the way, especially Sunny.

Thank you for all the food. And he used to sneak in every morning with croissants and other impossible things. I'd like to thank Venerable Phil also for the beautiful chanting.

And my hope is that he learns chanting well from some of the chanting masters. He's learned a lot already from Geshe's in Italy. But my dream is that he learns a lot more.

And then that he writes more chants in a western tones. You know what I mean? I think the one is really beautiful that he does.

So request that you do that one. Okay, all right. Here we go.

Do a good dedication, okay? Really get that karma out there. Then we don't prostrate on the last teaching.

And it means we have unfinished business together in Goa around 2003. Okay. Ah.

This is the end of session seven.

[Speaker 2]
You have been listening to The Seven-Point Practice for Developing a Good Heart with Geshe Michael Roach, recorded live in Goa, India. To contact us on other courses available or for further information, please check our website at www.world-view.org.