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

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

[Speaker 1]
Say it, Seichik? Jiddle. Seichik?

Jiddle. Seichik Jiddle means special meditation you can do all day long. How to do meditation all day long.

You see, technically you're only meditating for one hour in the morning or something. What are you supposed to do the rest of the day? Okay, when you go to work, is there a way to meditate while you're at work?

Is there a way to meditate while you're cooking in the kitchen? You see what I mean? And there is.

And this is a special way to meditate. It's five steps of a meditation that you do all day long, and while you're in the kitchen, or while you're with your family. OK?

What's interesting about this meditation is that as you die, on the day that you die, let's say you get hit by a car going out here tonight, while you're on the street dying, and I'm not being morbid, it can happen, right? It can happen to any of us. What to do?

What should you do? How should you think? How should you act?

And the same meditation that you use for the whole day, for your office or your family, when you die, you turn it just a slight, you make a slight change in that meditation, those five steps of that meditation. You just slightly change it, and then you use it as you die. You see what I mean?

That meditation is a very powerful one, and it's very, very similar to what Jesus did on the cross. I mean, Tibet is thousands of miles from the Middle East. It's impossible to climb those mountains, I think, in the old days, you know, in Jesus' time.

But I think as you study this number four, and you see how this meditation goes, you can see, I think it's very similar to what Christ did on the cross. I mean, it just strikes you when you read it, you say, my God, you know, that's what, Jesus did, you know? And it has to do with taking on other people's sins and things like that, okay?

There's some special meditation you can do as you die, and it's very similar to what Jesus did, and very, very powerful. You know, if you want your death to go well, everybody has to die. Let's face it, you know, don't be polite, okay?

Everybody here, if you don't train well, you have to die a certain way. So how do you make the best of it? How do you, can you go to heaven as you die?

You see what I mean? We say, you can do special things while you're dying. Think special thoughts, and then you have a very good chance to go someplace good.

And that will be number four. Some people told me I can't come to everything. What day are you going to cover that?

That'll be Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Okay, so 7.30 Saturday night and 1.30 on Sunday. We'll do it on two different classes, okay?

So if you don't make it to anything else, I suggest this one. Mostly Saturday night, okay? By the way, the schedule is something like, correct me if I'm wrong, Kevin, 1.30 to three?

I mean, tomorrow night is 7.30 to nine, but you know nine is a little bit late now. And then Saturday and Sunday, it'll be 1.30 to three, four to six, and then we thought we should give you a little bit more than an hour for dinner, so maybe 7.30 to nine or something like that, okay? So Saturday and Sunday.

But the most important thing, if you can only come to one or two things, I think Saturday night is a good one. That'll be about this one, when you're dying, as you're dying, what to do. And also, if you know someone who's dying, it's very helpful to know this.

Like, I've had close friends die in the last three months, even, and we trained them ahead of time. Somebody got leukemia, we trained them for almost a year. And then very nice death, very, it went very well.

And so you can help yourself and other people, too. Number six, say damtsig. Damtsig.

Damtsig. Damtsig. Damtsig, the sixth part of these seven steps is certain commitments.

Okay, damtsig means commitment. And these are special kind of promises you make to yourself, okay? And they're like special ways of behaving during the day.

And they're fun, okay? They're very nice. I think they take some time to teach, and I haven't, my normal students haven't had a chance to do them yet.

They're very fun, we'll go over them, okay? Last one, and then we'll stop. Say mengak.

Mengak.

[Speaker 2]
Mengak.

[Speaker 1]
Mengak. Mengak means like special advice. Special advice.

You know, you're going to get all these ideas, how to die, how to meditate, how to act at your office, how to use this stuff to make money, how to use this stuff to be successful in a normal sense, how to use it to be successful in an ultimate sense, go to heaven, die the right way, things like that. It covers everything, okay? Mengak means after you get the basic instructions, then you get like personal advice from the Lama.

You see what I mean? Like we say it's not enough to study things out of a book. You know, like you can buy a book about Tibet, or you can buy a book about meditation, but it's a different thing to have somebody there who says, hey, get your head up, or your shoulder's too high, or you know what I mean?

You need like this special touch that you only get from a human being, and we don't believe that you can learn meditation or how to actually get to heaven without a human being to sit there and say, okay, look, in general, you have to be generous. You have to give other people what they need, what they ask for, but you need, you know, somebody's going to come up and say in New York, they're going to say, can I have $5 because I want to buy some drugs, you know? And then you need mengak, you need a lama to say, by the way, if someone asks you for $5 for drugs, you don't have to give it to them.

You need somebody to give you advice about special cases. You need someone to tell you advice about your own situation. Like you're special, you're not like the other people here.

You have your own situation, you have your own problems. Your life is not exactly the same as everybody else here. So mengak means like special little advices that the lama gives you about doing this process, okay?

You have, as I say, to learn to do these seven steps, to learn to use them as you die, to be successful in your life. And I'm talking very successful. I don't care anything about business.

I don't have a penny, I used all my money, okay? But we made millions of dollars, you know what I mean? How?

Just following these advices, you see what I mean? Just following this kind of behavior. And then we gave it to the poor people and stuff, you know?

So that's okay. And it's not bad to make money like that. It's a good thing.

Make money, help other people with it, you know what I mean? So worldly success, ultimate success. You know, you can see angels, you can go to heaven, you can die well, and then you can have a wonderful experience after you die, as you die and after you die.

All of those things you can do. You just need, and so they're all in the Bible too. But I think to have a living tradition, you know, you have a living tradition which has come down through generations and generations and still alive, you know, still people telling people, this is how you do it, this is how you think, this is what you do at the last minute, this is how you, if you want to see those things, you have to do this and this and this.

This exciting thing, I think it's very exciting, you know? When I was growing up and I went to school, Sunday school, and they taught us Bible stories, it was always like, this thing doesn't happen anymore. You see what I mean?

You heard the story of Elijah, you heard the story of so-and-so, and you heard Daniel with the lion, and you heard all these stories, Jesus walking on water, and it's always in the context of, it doesn't happen in modern times, you know? Up to the 20th century, maybe, but not in the 20th century. You know, it was always like somebody else, and it had to happen in Israel, you know?

It couldn't happen in Ireland, you know? And it always felt like that, you know? It always felt like, it's not like that, you see?

These instructions are still alive, people are still telling them to other people, people are still using them to do miracles, you know? It happens, and it's a very, very beautiful thing. Those things you heard about in the Bible school are true, and miracles can happen, and you can actually do it.

There's a living tradition of people who are doing it, you know what I mean? It's still there. So we'll be going through those seven, starting tomorrow.

And I like to teach it because I met this lama when I was 20 or 21, I lived with him for 20 years. He trained me, and it's a great blessing, you see what I mean? To have a living person who will spend 20 years, let you stay in the house, teach you every day, and to have that opportunity to meet a living person who's still doing these things is incredible, you know?

So I was very fortunate, and I think one thing I've learned is that if you teach it to other people, then it comes back more, you see what I mean? I will learn a lot of things from you, and so I like to talk about these things because what I learn from the people who come here and what I learn from each person who talks to me is also a teaching for me. And for me, I like these things because it's a chance for all of us to talk about it.

And then I often feel like I'm the student and that's the way it should be, I think. I mean, real knowledge or wisdom comes both ways. It's just an excuse for us to talk together, and then the wisdom comes both ways.

So I look forward to that, and thank Kevin for having us. He's been very patient with us. We have a big group of people who came, and everyone got settled down yesterday, and it was a long journey.

We came from Mongolia, but he's been very kind. And thank you for having us again, okay?

[Speaker 2]
This is the end of session one. Session two.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, we'll start then. It has seven short parts, and so it's called The Seven Points. And it's a special book that was written down about the time that Buddhism came to Tibet, and the Tibetan people at that time were just yak herders.

They were just sheep herders and taking care of their yaks, and they didn't have a language. They didn't have an alphabet. And they heard about this book, and they heard about things like that, and they got very excited.

The king said, we need an alphabet to write this down. He sent 20 young men to India to pick up an alphabet. Only one came back from the journey, and they started to write things down, and then they started to carve them into books, and that's how this thing started.

And I thought that if I only had a few days to be here, that we should read this book. This book is supposed to be the way to be happy in your life, you know? And I was saying last night, I didn't become a monk until I was 30, so I tried everything before that, you know what I mean?

And I was a normal American young person. I grew up in, part of the time in California, we did surfing, we did wine, we did marijuana, we did, we tried everything. Not much, okay, just a little bit.

But, you know, whatever you can try, I tried. You know, scuba diving in Hawaii, you know, everything. And I don't know, the things made you a little bit happy, you know, like different things make you a little bit happy.

I also tried academia, you know, I went to a very great university and studied with great people there. After that, I tried business for over 15 years. I was in the diamond business.

We had a very large business, 1,000 workers. We did maybe a million diamonds every year. And so I've tried all of those things.

I think almost everything, you know? And I think each thing was challenging. You know, I don't say it was like stupid or something like that, it was interesting.

I mean, to be in business and to run 1,000 people around the world and to have, it's exciting. And surfing is exciting, scuba diving is exciting, university was exciting. Everything that I tried, it was exciting and interesting.

But I think as far as my happiness, like what you can say, real happiness, it didn't give it to you. And even when I was very young, I think maybe 15 or 14, I had this idea that those things won't really make you happy. You know what I mean?

Like you can, you're always thinking that if you make some slight adjustment in your life, like maybe I don't get enough exercise, maybe I'm eating the wrong food, or maybe my apartment is not the best one, or maybe if I spend time with other friends, or maybe if I had a different wife or different husband or something like that. I mean, you tend to think that some adjustment in your life might make things happier. And in fact, most people are living for that.

That's why you get up in the morning, that's why you go to work. You're hoping that there'll be some slight change in your life that will make you happy. And I found, until I met this particular teachings, that my basic level of happiness didn't change much.

You know, I've gone to live in different cities, I've been in Brazil, all over the country, all over the world, I've lived in different cities, worked in different cities, and each time I thought maybe a little bit different city would be better, or a different country, or a different language, or different people, and it didn't change. You see, your basic happiness doesn't change. It doesn't matter where you are, because you bring your happiness in your own mind.

You know what I mean? So, this particular book that we're going to study, I think it's very profound, because even if you try it a little bit, it's some kind of meditation, and it's some kind of way of living. It changes your happiness, you know?

Your happiness changes noticeably, quickly, and you feel better, you feel happier. Things go wrong, it doesn't bother you very much, and things like that. It's a very, very beautiful system.

It's something that you can do every day for the rest of your life, by yourself. You don't have to go to a special church, or... You know, we do this practice in our own home.

We do it in the morning. We sit down, we meditate quietly in your own room, and then you do this practice, and you don't have to tell people, you just do it. And it actually changes your life a lot.

It makes you a lot happier, okay? So, that's my goal, you know? It changes your very basic level of happiness.

You become a happier person, and that's all. You can also use it to make money, okay? And I did, you know?

We started our business with $50,000. Now it does $125 million a year. I'm not owning it, okay?

I gave away all that money to charity, and things like that. But, you can use these same principles for anything in your life, you see what I mean? And then, ultimately, we'll be talking about how you can use it for more high things, higher things.

How you can even... We believe you can reach heaven with it. We believe there is a heaven.

We believe that if you do this practice very carefully, and very, with a little bit of, how do you call it? Determination, and steadily, that you can actually cure sicknesses in your body, and also that eventually you could use it to reach heaven, and see miracles and things like that, meet angels like that. We don't think that's foolish or impossible.

And I, my goal during the next three days is to show you that it's possible. All of those things, you know? Whatever makes you happy in a worldly way, whatever makes you, your life successful in a worldly way, should also make you happy in an eternal way.

And you can have, in America we say you can have your cake and eat it too. You can do both. You can have success in your worldly life, and also the same principles can make you successful even after you die, for example, okay?

And this is the book that I'm going to teach. I would like each session to start out with some meditation and show you how to meditate. It doesn't matter what faith you are.

It doesn't matter what religion you are. Meditation or prayer is very useful. You see what I mean?

So, even if you don't get anything else out of this class, I'd like you to learn how to meditate. This is just a nice way to pray. When I was growing up, they would take us in the church and they'd say, get down on your knees.

And it was a little bit uncomfortable for me. We had to kneel for maybe 20 minutes, half an hour, begin to hurt, and you begin to lean on the pew in front of you, try to lift one knee and then the other knee, you know? And they didn't tell us what to do exactly.

They said, talk to God, you know? And then you'd think something and you'd say, you'd wait for an answer and nothing would happen, you know, and then you'd think some more and maybe he's sleeping or something and still no answer. And, you know, they didn't teach you very clearly what to do.

I think meditation is a nice way to pray. I think you can use it all the time. It doesn't matter where you are or what your religion is.

It's a method to pray and it's very beautiful. It works very well. It's a method of contemplation.

So what I'd like to do is start with that. And then each time we meet, we'll do a little bit of meditation, okay? Sometimes in New York, they have like 10 of these things.

Okay. So first thing is to sit and sit with your back very straight, okay? And we talked about it yesterday.

Your shoulders should be level, okay? Not one shoulder is higher than the other, okay? Head should be like erect and straight, looking straight as if you're a soldier or something.

Okay, you shouldn't be too high. Shouldn't be back like that and shouldn't be down like that. One makes you distracted and the other one makes you sleepy, okay?

We mentioned last night that you have to take good care of your health to meditate. For example, you have to have enough sleep. If you try to meditate after you don't sleep enough, it's almost useless, okay?

So you should have a good night's sleep. And also very important for meditation that they don't teach much is that you have to be leading a good life, okay? The most important thing for meditation is a clean conscience, you see what I mean?

So if you are doing something sneaky or if you're harming other people or speaking unkindly to other people or things like that, your meditation will not go nicely, okay? I mean, we believe that you have to, you see, you might meditate for one hour in the morning, but you have to spend 23 other hours of your day. Those 23 hours have to be clean, you know?

You have to be speaking kindly to other people, thinking kindly about other people, not like doing financial business or hurting other people or things like that. If your life is not well-led, then you won't be able to meditate. If there's something on your mind, if there's something on your conscience, then we believe it creates an internal obstacle to meditation, can't meditate then.

So I have a lot of Americans come to me and they say, you know, I know how to sit properly and I eat properly and I sleep properly and I know the instructions for meditation, but it's not working. You know, I can't get deep into meditation. So then I say, well, do you gossip a lot?

Or do you, you know what I mean? Are you in some relationship that you're not supposed to be in or, you know, something like that? And they say, you know, something comes up and you won't be able to meditate well.

So you have to, the 23 hours that you don't meditate, you have to be a good person or you won't be able to meditate, okay? So then you can sit in a chair like this or you can sit cross-legged, it doesn't matter. If you choose to sit on the floor, then the custom is to put your right leg up above your left leg, okay?

If you do what we call a half, this is called like a half lotus, and it means your right foot will be up on top of your left leg like that. Then if you do a lot of yoga, there's something you can do like this, and that's a full lotus. And then it's very convenient because your soles of your feet are here.

But the most important instruction about meditation is that it should be comfortable, okay? Like, it doesn't matter what you look like, it matters how well you can concentrate. So you should sit in whatever's most comfortable for you.

If you're trying to look like a big meditator and your knees are torturing you, you lost the point of meditation because you will meditate on what? On your knees, you see? So it's important to sit comfortably.

The goal of meditation is to reach a state of concentration and when you're reading a good book or you're listening to your favorite music or you're thinking about something you really like, that's a state of meditation, okay? When you're watching a good television show or a movie and the popcorn is in your hand and you don't remember anything else and somebody says, come to dinner and you don't hear them, this is a meditation, this is a state of concentration. So the idea is to reach the same state of mind for something meaningful, you see what I mean?

Like, you can do it with a good novel, you can do it with a football, you can do it with a movie, you can do it with your favorite music, but it doesn't change your life, you see what I mean? Meditation is the same state of mind, but it's meant to change your life, okay? So you sit straight.

Back should be, they say, like a stack of coins. People ask me, should I close my eyes or not, okay? If you didn't get enough sleep, I suggest you keep them open.

If you have a lot of people running around your house, I suggest you close them, okay? And noise is very important, the place should be quiet, all right, the place should be as quiet as possible. The more quiet the place is, the better your meditation will be, okay?

Later, if you get good at it, you can block out the noise, but otherwise, sound will always take you out of a meditation. If somebody coughs or somebody shifts or somebody drops a pan on the floor, you lose your meditation, okay? So that's why we like to do it in the morning, hopefully before the other members of your family wake up, something like that, okay?

Try to find a time that's quiet. The quiet is most important, okay? Then you take your left hand and put it down, palm up, and then you take your right hand and put it on top, and then you hold your thumbs like this.

There are many systems of meditation. This is the ancient system of Buddhism. This has been taught for 2,500 years.

And what I teach you about meditation comes from books that have been here for thousands of years. And we have the books, and we've made a course from those books, okay? Then it's important to loosen your face, like your forehead, and around your mouth here.

You tend to get tight here. Always breathe through your nose and not through your mouth. Your mouth will get dry, and you'll get distracted, okay?

If you have a bad cold, the lama said it's better to breathe through your mouth, okay? Maybe you'll choke, you know? Then we'll try a little bit.

Yesterday we talked about watching your breath, okay? This is an ancient custom. It started 16 centuries ago.

And you put your mind on your nose right here, and you try to feel the air touching the inside of your nose, okay? So when it comes in, you'll feel some cold air here. And when the breath is coming out, you'll feel some warm air here.

And the idea is just to, they say watch your breath. It means be aware of the sensation of the air on your nose, okay? So you concentrate your mind on this place.

We'll do it for a few minutes, okay? If you close your eyes, they say close them halfway and glance downwards without moving your head down. You see what I mean?

And that's a lot easier to concentrate that way. If you close them all the way, your body says, oh, time to sleep, okay? And so keep them open just a crack and look downwards if you want to keep them, okay?

So we'll do a few minutes. Try not to move. Try not to make any noise.

Put your mind on the two nostrils here and feel the air as it comes and goes. Every time you think about your home or your work tomorrow or what's for dessert after this class, bring your mind back to your nose. Say, no, no, no, you can't go there.

You have to come back. And you bring it back to your nose, okay? So try for four or five minutes.

Try to be very quiet, okay? We'll get more sophisticated each class. Put your mind on the breath in your nose.

Now we'll do a second step, which is counting the breath. The way you count the breath is to, when you breathe out, that's the first part of the breath. And when you breathe back in, that's the second part of the breath.

So when you feel the breath going out, you say one, and then it comes back. And that's the end of breath number one. And then when it goes out again, you say two in your mind.

And this is a game that we play in the monastery when they teach us how to meditate. They say, see if you can reach 10. And when you first go to the monastery, maybe you're 15 or 20 years old, and they say, do you think you can count 10 breaths?

And you say, don't be ridiculous. This is very easy to count 10 breaths. But they say, no, no, there's a special game you have to play with your mind.

If your mind thinks about something else, you have to start over again at one. And I think you'll find it's very hard to reach two or three, okay? So now be very honest with yourself.

The out breath is the first half of breath number one. And then the in breath is the second half. And count them, and see if you can reach 10.

If you think about something else, if you think about the person next to you, or you think about something that happened today, or you think about what kind of thing you have to eat or drink at home afterwards, you have to start over again. If you catch yourself thinking about something else, you have to start over again. So we'll start now.

We'll take about four or five minutes. Play this game with your mind. It's very important for concentration.

It's very important for prayer and meditation, is to be able to concentrate and fix your mind, meditate. So this sharpens your mind. See if you can reach 10.

If you catch yourself thinking about something else, you have to start over again. If you're really honest, I think you'll start over 10 times after the second breath or something, okay? So try.

Try. And don't be discouraged, okay? It takes some practice.

Okay, that's good. Can we relax? It's very quiet, that's good.

It's important to be quiet. So I'd like you to try it tonight and tomorrow, you know, just when you're by yourself. We say, we do our meditation in our own room, and it's important to make a separate space for it in your room, some room in your house, okay?

We say it's not too good to meditate on your bed, okay, because all that sleep is staying there, and you'll get sleepy. So choose another place in your house, someplace where you can meditate quietly, and it should be that your body is very comfortable. Wherever you're sitting or wherever you meditate, it should be very comfortable, okay?

You don't have to sit on a stone floor and be cold and look like a big Tibetan meditator or something like that, because it just will hurt. You know what I mean? It should be, a good test is when you sit down, is it very comfortable already?

Because if it's not, it's going to hurt after 10 minutes. Okay? So you figure out what's the most comfortable way.

We'll talk a little bit more about it each time, okay? I'm going to start on this book. Okay, then I told people last night, the first Dalai Lama, he lived 500 years ago.

This one is number 14, okay? And his advice on teaching was, first, always put some foreign language like Latin up there to impress all the other people, so they think you know what you're doing, okay? So I'm going to follow that.

And I like to put some Tibetan here so that you know it's authentic, okay? That the book is real. We did a little bit of this yesterday, and I'm going to repeat it a little bit for people who weren't here.

Also, when I, you know, many people would like to have a course like this around the world, and so we're traveling all the time, and then I found out that people usually forget after three days. Three days after I leave, they usually forget everything. So what I found out was that if I have some kind of homework assignment, people learn much faster, and they learn much better.

Then they actually pay attention, you see what I mean? So whenever I teach any place in the world, and I'm teaching every night somewhere in the world, I make people do homework, okay? And about a quarter of the people resist for one or two days.

So don't be like that, okay? Just do it, okay? So we're going to hand out some little paper after the class.

Go home tonight, just fill it in. It's not hard, but it makes you concentrate. You know, I had many people come to me and say, I didn't do that for 25 years.

I said, don't worry about it, just try it. And then you find out that you remember everything, you see what I mean? So take good notes, and you don't have to write Tibetan on your homework.

It's a few people if you want to, okay? You can write it in Tibetan. That's a choice that you have.

But it's just so you remember everything, okay? We say that when you come and hear a book like this, which is very precious, and it takes sometimes 20 years to get this from a lama. Sometimes a lama won't tell you for many years.

You should learn it well, because someday you might meet someone else who wants to learn it from you. You see, you become the next link in the chain. So it's important for you to learn it well, because you might have to explain it to someone else.

If this thing really works, if it makes you very happy, if you find out after six months that, oh, that thing really works, then it's like your responsibility to be able to explain it to somebody else. You see what I mean? There's so many unhappy people in the world.

So, and there's very few lamas, really great lamas alive, left. Many, many were killed. One million people were killed when Tibet was taken.

And very few left. So it's almost like your responsibility to learn it well, and be able to explain it to other people. So take some nice notes, and we're going to give you homework assignment.

And I think Mercedes, you're going to do the grading?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, we'll make an announcement after the grade.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, and she'll make a little announcement. We need people to help grade them also, okay? And last time, a few people from Galway helped, and I think one Dubliner.

And they did a nice job. So we probably need a few more people to help, okay? Okay, here we go.

And I'll ask you to repeat the sound with me, okay? We say that this teaching has been given for two and a half thousand years. It has never been broken.

It means, I learned it from Khen Rinpoche Geshe Losantartin, who was born in 1921. He entered the monastery when he was seven years old. He's been there ever since.

He's almost 80 now. He learned it from Khyabje Thichar Rinpoche. He learned it from Pabongka Rinpoche.

He learned it from Dukkhang Rinpoche. He learned it from, you know, and we can trace our lineage back two and a half thousand years. So, I'll say the word in Tibetan, and it's just good for you to hear the blessing.

It's a blessing of the word, okay? And then I'll explain everything in English, okay? But it's good for you to just hear that word which has been spoken for two and a half thousand years, okay?

Say lo. Lo. Jong.

Jong. Lojong. Lojong.

Okay, lo is a certain kind of meditation. It means mind, okay? It's a special state of mind.

It's a special kind of meditation. And it's the goal of this weekend, okay? Is that you learn how to do this meditation, all right?

This meditation, if you do it regularly, it will make you extremely happy. A, you know, I was in Dublin, you know, I said, by the way, you can use this meditation to make millions of dollars. And the lady in the back, finally she got impatient with me, and she said, it sounds sort of crass, you know, materialistic, you know, using spiritual things to make money, you know?

And I said, she said, do you have any other reason to study this thing? I said, I'm also the happiest person I know. That's okay, you know, that's...

Lo means a special kind of meditation that if you learn it, you really will be a very, very happy person. And that's priceless, you know? You can't buy that anywhere.

It's just if you have the blessing to be, to meet someone who knows about it and explains it to you, you learn it, you know? So lo means special state of mind that we're trying to reach, okay? People ask me, how soon is this going to work?

You know, especially Americans, you know, they want dinner in half an hour. You know, they want McDonald's. They don't care if it tastes good.

They don't care anything, if it's healthy or not. Just if you can get it in half an hour, you know? So they say, how fast does this work, you know?

And I said, well, it's about like learning piano, okay? And I'm not kidding, all right? Some people will immediately be daunted.

They'll say, that's too much, okay? Especially in America, they don't want to hear that. And I'm not going to be...

I'm going to tell you the truth, you know? You have to spend about as much time as it takes to learn piano, okay? Well, and that means some kind of commitment.

You're going to have to be practicing it every morning, meditating like we did for a while. Maybe after a few months, you can make something that you find fun and it tortures other people's ears, okay? And then maybe after six months, it starts to, you can do some nice songs.

Winston, how long did it take? I don't know. 13 years.

No, he's a good pianist. Not that long, okay? Year or two.

And I'm not kidding. I don't say, you know, it's not going to work in two months or something. You will find a big difference and you'll be able to please yourself with the piano.

But to really play nicely, you have to practice. And it takes that much effort, you know? And it does work 100%, you know what I mean?

I've tried everything. I've tried things you never dreamed of. And this really works, okay?

It really does work. And I spent years on other things and this just works, okay? It's been working for thousands of years, okay?

So lo means that kind of mind. Zhong means to practice and to get good at that thing, okay? Like zhonging piano, okay?

Zhong means practicing, okay? And developing that skill, okay? That skill of happiness, which is difficult, okay?

And that's called lojong. That's a kind of book that was written down in Tibet about a thousand years ago. There are many different kinds of lojong and we're going to study one of them, okay?

Just one. I'm going to give you the name of it. I had an embarrassing incident in my life.

I was 21. I met the Dalai Lama's teacher, who has now passed away, in a train station in India. And he asked me, what are you studying?

And I didn't know the name of the book. And it was a very embarrassing moment. So I always say, everyone should know the name of the book, okay?

Please say lojong. Dun. Dunma.

Lojong. Dun. Dunma.

Okay, good. Lojong, as I said before, means practicing this state of mind. And it's a special mental exercise.

And you will learn it. And actually, even within a few days, you'll find that you feel much better, much happier. And it's a special skill.

It's very beautiful. It's very easy. You know, people have different kinds of foods that they eat.

People try different kinds of exercise. People take different kinds of vitamins. But to have somebody come to you and say, just think this way for 10 minutes a day.

Or just think this way for half an hour a day. And try it. And it will change your whole mind, and make you happy, make you happy.

It's kind of interesting. It's like a recipe, and it works, okay? That's lojong.

Dun means step or point. Dun, the second dun means seven, the number seven. And these are seven steps that you can do.

So we're going to be learning a meditation. And then every morning, you just get up, and you sit down, and you do these seven steps. You go through these seven steps.

Ma means the book about the seven steps. And as I mentioned last night, ma is the feminine ending in Tibetan. It means like the lady of seven steps is the name of this book.

And in this system, women and the woman's energy is important. It means wisdom. It means knowledge.

So the woman's kind of thinking or personality or nature is what we call wisdom nature. And then the man's nature in this system is like love or compassion. So these are two things that go together very nicely.

But every book, the great books in Tibet and India are named with a feminine ending, because it involves wisdom, knowledge. So lojong du du ma. You can say it's seven steps to developing like that good heart or a special heart, a special kind of heart.

The person who wrote it down, his name was Geshe Chikawa. It's 1175, I think. Say Geshe.

Geshe.

[Speaker 2]
Chikawa.

[Speaker 1]
Chikawa. Geshe. Geshe.

Chikawa. Geshe is a title in Tibet. For about the last 600 years, it means somebody who finished like a 20-year course in the monastery.

And then before that, it meant like a great meditator or a great spiritual teacher. So he was called Geshe. And Chikawa was his personal name.

Now, it's interesting, when I was studying this book for the first time, I found, oh, this book was written down by Geshe Chikawa in 1150 or something like that. And then I found other books that were written before he was alive. And they start teaching this thing.

And then I started finding older and older and older books. And then finally, I'm tracing it all the way back to the Buddha. It's 2,500 years.

They didn't write it down for 1,500 years. You see what I mean? And then I'm wondering why.

Because all the books say Geshe Chikawa wrote it down. And then you start to find out that it was passed on by secret before him for 1,000 years and a half. They passed it down.

Each lama taught it to the next person privately in their home. And they said, don't write it. Don't teach it to other people until other people are ready.

And it wasn't taught publicly until in the 1100s. Why? We have in Buddhism, we have these secret teachings, and very deep secret teachings.

Like maybe you can learn it once in your life from a lama. If you study with that lama for 5, 10, 20 years, then one day they take you in their room and they say, listen, there's a special teaching I'm going to teach you. And don't tell anybody else.

And they teach it sometimes one person, two people, five people in their whole lifetime. This is not one of those teachings. This is like a teaching on how to be a good person, how to love other people, how to really be happy.

So why should this be secret for 1,000 years? Why don't they teach this to people? If it's so nice and if it's so helpful, what's so secret about it?

And then I found a very beautiful explanation. And it said, for 1,000 years we kept this book secret because it was so difficult for people to learn how to think. That lojong, how to think like this.

So then I'm reading further and I say, well, what's so difficult about it? And at the heart of this teaching, there's a very deep meditation where you choose another person and you exchange minds. You exchange bodies.

Like you put your mind in their body and you put their mind in your body. It's very interesting. So if I'm doing it with Phil, then I think that I've moved Michael's mind into Phil's body and I've moved Phil's mind into my body.

And now I'm Phil looking at Michael. I was just in Mongolia. We taught this national TV, half a million people watch every night.

And the translator was going crazy. Because it's like, I'm you and you're me. So now I'm you looking at me.

So what does you want me to do? I, who is you, wants me to do what? And it's this practice where you put your mind into someone else's body.

And then you just forget yourself. Now, can you really move your mind in somebody else's body? Not really.

It's a special thing. You can do it many years later. We're talking imagining.

We're talking just pretending. So I pretend that my mind is in your body. And then I open my eyes, and here's this strange American guy.

And I'm listening, and some of it I get, and some it's a little confusing. And I'm wondering if there's scones for the break. And you really put your mind in the other person's body.

And then you try to think very hard, what do I want now? You see what I mean? And it's a kind of way to develop love.

It's a way to develop a very deep kind of love. We're going to talk about three special steps. But that's the second one, and it's a little bit difficult.

You can imagine. And you can practice this slowly. We'll talk about it.

But I do it like this morning, I'm trying to put my mind in one of my friends' bodies. And then I'm wondering, what do they want? You see?

It's an exercise. Jong means an exercise, lojong. It's an exercise to try to develop empathy or compassion for other people.

So you stop thinking about yourself, and you start thinking from their point of view. And it's very difficult. It means you have to think very carefully, what do they want right now?

You see what I mean? And you actually go so far as to put your mind in their body. And you look at yourself.

What do they want from me? What do I want from me? I mean, you get a little confused sometimes.

Did you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
Sorry, I'm just trying to read the other person's mind.

[Speaker 1]
You're not trying to read the other person's mind. By the way, if you meditate a lot, you can read other people's minds. It's quite disconcerting, because most people are unhappy.

It's not a blessing to be able to read other people's minds. And actually, the lamas don't teach it to you for a long time, because it's actually painful to read other people's minds. So it's not like that.

It's more like, you just pretend you're sitting there in their body. And what it means is you have to think, what do they want? You see what I mean?

And it's a meditation to consider very carefully what other people want. We're going to talk about karma later. We're going to talk about this principle like gravity, that means if you do something nice for somebody else, good things happen to you.

The nicest thing you can do to somebody else is to pretend you are in their mind. And then you're thinking, what do I want? You see?

You don't just watch them and see, oh, do they like jam or honey on their scones? You see what I mean? You actually put your mind in their body and say, in my whole life, what do I want?

What do I want each minute of this day? And that exercise is incredibly good karma. It's fantastic karma.

With that kind of karma, you can make millions of dollars. With that kind of karma, you can heal the sick. It's a very interesting thing.

You see what I mean? It is the most powerful goodness that you can do. So it's appropriate to learn it as your first meditation.

Anyway, I don't intend to talk about all that right now. We'll start that tomorrow. Why am I talking about it now?

They didn't teach this for 1,000 years because they were afraid that people would think it was crazy. If I tell you the best way to take care of yourself is to take care of other people, you see what I mean? The best way to get rich is to take care of other people.

The only way to be happy is to think about other people what they want. You see what I mean? It's almost like a contradiction.

The only way to make me happy is to stop thinking about me. You see what I mean? The only way to make me wealthy is to take care of other people's needs financially.

You see what I mean? And it sounds crazy. It sounds just contradictory.

The best way to feed yourself is to give away your food. It's something like that. And it just sounds crazy.

It sounds like the stupidest thing you could do. You see what I mean? The best thing you can do to take care of yourself is to stop thinking about yourself and to take care of other people.

And then all your wishes will come true. And if you go and tell people who are not spiritually minded this kind of thing, they'll just say, you're crazy. You want me to write you a check, right?

No, I mean, it sounds like crazy. The best way, I'm talking, I'm a person who started a $100 million company. And I'm telling you, the best way to make money is to be generous to other people who are in need.

You see what I mean? And then money will come to you like crazy. I think last week, someone gave us a $3 million property for a dollar.

Here, take it. Please take good care of it. It comes from taking care of other people.

I don't have anything to do with this thing. It's not like I want it. I've rented a $50 room for 25 years.

I live in this little room for 25 years. And that's all I need in a monastery. And it's not like I'm going out and trying to get this thing.

If you follow this idea, all your wishes can come true. All of them. And I'm talking from experience.

But it sounds crazy, right? The best way to make money is to give away your money. The best way to take care of your health is to stop thinking about it and help other people.

You see what I mean? You will never get sick. You'll be healthy all the time.

If you don't go to the gym, you don't eat organic foods, you don't take vitamins, you take care of other people first. And this idea sounds crazy. Now, if you try it, it works.

If you disrespect this idea, we call it very bad karma. Very bad things will happen to you. If someone says, look, this is a great idea.

Try it. And you say, you're crazy. You're stupid.

Then saying that is a very big sin. You see what I mean? If someone explains to you the most important teaching of Jesus, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and then you say, that's stupid.

That's just ignorant. That's bad. It's a bad idea.

It sounds stupid to me. Well, you say, I should give away my money. I'll get rich.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Sounds crazy. You probably want me to give it away to you, right?

It's not like that. This stuff really works. This thing really works.

But if you disrespect it, if someone explains it to you sincerely, and then in your mind, you say, this is really stupid, and you don't try it, it's a very serious, we say it's like a sin. It's a very serious bad karma. That's why they kept it secret for 1,000 years, OK?

That's on your homework, OK? That's how I get people to pay attention in New York. They were so afraid that someone would commit the sin of disrespecting this idea, which is the holiest idea ever.

The Golden Rule is the most holy idea ever. They were so afraid that someone would disrespect it, that they didn't teach it publicly for 1,000 and a half years, OK? That's why this book wasn't written down for 1,500 years, OK?

They were so afraid that someone would think it was stupid, and then that's a great sin to think that way. Better not to hear about it than to think that. Did you have a question, Angela?

[Speaker 2]
Would you look after somebody to the degree to which you neglect yourself?

[Speaker 1]
Angela said, should you neglect yourself to look after someone else? In this tradition, for thousands of years, they're very careful to say, to your capacity. Within your capacity, OK?

And the ultimate book on this says that it was written 1,200 years ago by Master Shantideva. It says, start with potatoes. Give someone a potato tomorrow, OK?

That's not too much for anybody. You say, I mean almost anybody, OK? And they say, get used to it from a very basic level.

Get used to taking care of other people with small things, you know? Make someone else a cup of tea. It's a very holy practice, you know?

You put your mind in Angela's body, and you say, what kind of tea do I want, OK? Do I like it with one or two spoons of sugar? You see what I mean?

And you learn it for each person that you know. Because you practice every day. You put your mind in their body, and you say, oh, do they like scones with butter or without butter?

Do they like tea with one spoon or two spoons? Do they like milk in their tea or not? And you start like that.

They always say, within your capacity. Why? What happens is when people first hear about this stuff, they get all excited.

They go home. They get their bank account book. They write a check to charity for everything.

And then they wait to see if the million dollars is going to come, you know? And it doesn't come right away. And then they get angry, or they get upset, and they regret what they did.

And then that's a very bad sin. That's a bad karma, you know? To do more than you're capable, and then to regret it after a week, is considered very dangerous.

You have to start within your capacity. What's interesting is, like jogging, like exercise, like playing piano, if you practice every day, then after a year or two, you'll be able to give away very big things without any hesitation. You know, someone comes to you and says, I like that most beautiful piece of jewelry you have.

And you're just, oh, here, you know? Take it. And you'll get used to it.

You see, you have to practice. You have to build up strength. And then after a year or two, you'll just be totally generous.

[Speaker 2]
Does it matter whether you do it to somebody you like or you don't like?

[Speaker 1]
They say, start with people you like. And then work up to neutral people. And then go to your enemies.

Yes?

[Speaker 2]
Do you think why you can have to give the opposite kindness as opposed to the other kind of person?

[Speaker 1]
They say four different ways, OK? They start with material things, like money, food. And then you could work up to what we call love, giving them attention or helping them emotionally.

And then they say giving them protection, like all kinds of protection, physical from people who are trying to hurt them or emotional protection from their boss at work. And then the highest kind of giving is to explain these things to other people in a nice, gentle way. We don't believe that these things should ever be taught to people who don't want to listen.

You see, I mean, we're not allowed to go door to door and bang on the door and say, oh, you have to listen to this. But if you meet someone who is sincere and if you think they are spiritually inclined and you think they have, we call it kelwa. Kelwa means they have a good heart to start with.

Then you can gently explain these things to them. And that's the highest kind of giving. So all four kinds, material things, emotional support, protection from fear or danger, and then explaining these holy things to people.

And we call them the four gifts, four different ways of giving. So that explains why they didn't explain it for 1,000 years. They were afraid that people would think it was crazy.

It does seem crazy. Sometimes I sit in my bed and I think, how did this start? Who figured this out the first time?

Can you imagine a caveman who's killed some buffalo for dinner? And he figures out that the best way to get a buffalo tomorrow is to give away the buffalo he just killed. You see what I mean?

Who figured it out the first time? Who had the brains to go to the next caveman and say, here, I just killed this buffalo. You have it, knowing that he'll have two buffalo tomorrow?

It's totally against human nature. Human nature is take it, protect it, keep it from other people. Who figured it out that the best way to get two buffaloes is to give away your buffalo?

Sometimes I wonder how many millions of years it took. Probably it was an accident the first time. I don't know.

I think so. And then somebody figured it out. By the way, we'll take a break after this piece.

OK? Say, ngun dro. Ngun dro.

Ngun means before. Dro means go. Go before means there's some kind of preliminary meditation.

OK? It's some kind of preparation meditation. OK?

And that's the first of the seven points. I'm going to try to cover one point every class. So tonight we have to cover what we call the first of the seven steps is called the preliminaries.

And in your handout, it's just one line. It says, train yourself first in the preliminaries. OK?

This is the one page. We handed it out last night. It should be in your notebook, I hope.

And it says, it's just the whole, this whole seven steps is in one page. OK? I think it's in the back, maybe.

I'm not sure. And way down at the bottom, it says, train yourself first in the preliminaries. Before you start learning how to do this special meditation, where you put your mind in somebody else's body, OK?

There's three steps you have to do before that. OK? Three steps you have to do before that.

So in the morning, when you do this meditation, there'll be three other parts that you do before that. And you just sit there, and in your own quiet, in your own mind, you think about these three parts. OK?

So we're going to be talking about three small meditations that you do before that. I'm going to put the first one here, and then we'll take a break. OK?

We talked about them briefly last night. So you can say 1A, or something like that. Say, down door.

Down door. Down door. Down door means opportunity for a spiritual life.

You see what I mean? Opportunity to have a spiritual life. And this is the first meditation.

And we'll practice it probably tomorrow. OK? What does it mean?

It means that in most of history, most of mankind, for the whole history of our Earth, has been unable to have the time or any opportunity to meditate or pray or study in a serious way. They've been involved in wars. They don't have enough to eat.

They have some kind of sickness. It's illegal to meditate or pray in that country the way you want to. You know what I mean?

If you look at the history of mankind, almost every generation in almost all countries has not really been allowed to pray the way they want. They've not had the leisure until recently to have any time other than just trying to feed yourself. You see what I mean?

To have time to think about these things is very rare. In the history of mankind, for people like us to get together and to sit for a few hours and talk about these things is almost impossible. It didn't happen much.

And then in many countries, it's just illegal, or it's just not allowed. And in many countries, it would just be crazy. In many times, in many countries, it would have been especially considered stupid to talk about giving other people things first before you take them.

You see what I mean? The idea of taking care of other people first and yourself second. In America, 10 years ago, the number one book selling was called Watching Out for Number One.

And it was a philosophy and a very successful book about ignoring other people and watching out for yourself first and why that was healthy psychologically. You see what I mean? So to live in a country, and Ireland is an exception in general.

I mean, you have a strong Christian background. You have a strong Christian philosophy. Whether you believe in Christianity deeply or not, whether you accept Catholicism in its entirety, whether your heart is in it, it doesn't matter.

Your culture is steeped in the ideas of Jesus of taking care of other people first. And that's extremely rare. In the history of mankind, to believe that that's a good thing is very rare.

And in the history of the modern world, to believe that you should take care of other people before yourself or that it's intelligent to watch out for other people or to take care of other people is just rare. Like in America, we call ourselves Christians. And we have thousands and thousands of churches and thousands of different religions, right?

But to really find a person who believes that it's intelligent or to find a businessman who says the best kind of business is to take care of other people, it's rare. It's extremely rare. So to be born in a place where this idea is taught, to be born in a culture where all the movies end with the noble guy being the hero is rare.

That doesn't happen in most countries. It doesn't happen throughout history. This whole thing in American movies or Western movies where the honest guy wins at the end with a big heart.

He stops and pulls the other guy out of the, even the bad guy, he refuses to kill him. This is rare. That whole kind of thinking that it's good to take care of other people and good to be moral, good to be kind, is rare.

And that's Delta. The first meditation that we'll be doing is just to be aware that for you to be sitting here and listening to this happens in history once in a generation. You see what I mean?

Very rare that 50, 60, 70 people want not to go to the pub tonight. They want to come and try to learn how to be kind to other people or something like that. It's very rare.

You are very, very special people. In Tibetan thinking, you have had thousands of years of training to get here. Many, many lifetimes.

You were trained by great teachers. You were exposed to great religious teachers. And that's why you made it here tonight.

And I'm not kidding. And I'm not exaggerating. They believe that you have lived many times before.

This is just one more life. And you are special. You're a very special person.

To be in this room tonight, you have to be some kind of special person. To be interested in this thing is one in a million. You know what I mean?

In all the people in Ireland or in Europe at this moment, those who are really sitting down and considering the idea that they should take care of other people before themselves, it's seriously to think that. And to explain it, why it will make you successful, even in a worldly way, is rare. It's extremely rare.

And to have someone prove it to you, which I will, OK? And I'm not kidding. You know, I'm not saying this because of some noble thing and, oh, you accept it with your eyes closed or something like that.

I can prove it to you that this is the most intelligent way to live. And it will make you very successful. I can prove it to you.

Even if all you care about is business, this is the best thing to do, OK? To have someone prove it to you is extremely rare, OK? And you made it.

You see, that's delngyo. So delngyo means to meditate about how special you are, OK? That you even want to listen to this thing.

You see what I mean? You're one in a million, really. Out of a million people, only one of them will be interested, you know?

999,000 and nine, ah, whatever. That many people are not at all interested. This whole thing sounds crazy to them.

You mean I'm supposed to give other people money and I'll get more money later or something like that? And that's the only way to get money? I say, yeah, that's right.

They say, come on, you know? And they go back to the pub, you know? So, OK.

Maybe they think I was at the pub too long. I don't know. OK.

Take a break. Have some tea. I have to sum up our minute yet.

I don't know. And come back in about 10 minutes. I'll be sitting up here.

If you have a personal question or you want to ask a question, just burst in and ask me, OK?

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