Серия ежедневной практики, курс 05 — Медитация о смерти и о конце смерти (1999, Роли), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
Session Four We reached now the second major principle behind death meditation. So the first one was that you must die. And then that had three parts.

And personally I have trouble remembering them. Like there's nine rationales for death meditation. And I did it for even a month at a time in retreat, and I still can't remember them.

So if you visualize it as this building, and with all those things, it's kind of much easier. So, okay, there's this big dog, and that's can't stop death. And then there's this hourglass, which is clear that death is leaking away, I mean life is leaking away as we speak.

And then third one, you know, you're running down the hallway and you don't have time to look at anything. And that's like, you know, even when you are alive, you don't have time to study. You'll die without having had time to do your practice.

And those are the three meditations, the three lam rims, within the lam rim called death is certain. And now we're going to reach to the second one, which is what? The timing is not certain.

The timing is not sure. And again there'll be three rationales for that. And later we'll connect it to a scene in the visualization, and then you'll be able to remember it.

This, if you maintain it, like meditate on it the first week every day, and then after that, like every few days, you won't forget the rooms. And like you'll come across this dog, and you'll say, what's this dog for, you know? And then you'll remember after a while, you see what I mean?

And it's a good way to... Otherwise, to just flat memorize the lam rim is a little hard. And after you do it, you forget it.

So, okay. So, here's the first one. For those of you who can't see, it's a dzam ling, D-Z-A-M-L-I-N-G, tse la, T-S-E-L-A, ngepa, N-G-E-P-A, me, M-E.

Say, dzam ling. Dzam ling. Tse la.

[Speaker 2]
Tse la. Ngepa. Ngepa.

Me. Me.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Dzam ling is the name in Tibetan for our world, our continent. There's supposed to be four continents around the central mountain called Meru.

And we're in the southern continent called Dzambuling, which is the land of Dzambu, the continent of Dzambu. And it's named Dzambu because there's this big tree that goes at the side of the ocean, and when the fruits drop off and drop in the water, they go, taboop.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. And...

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Really.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Say, dzambuling means in our world, in our current reality, in our current plane of reality. Tse means your lifetime. Okay, the time of life.

Lifespan, in this case. La, it has no ngepa. Ngepa means fixed number of years.

Okay. So, this is a maingak. What's a maingak?

A non-affirming word. Yeah, it's a logic word. It means, by saying that there's no certainty in this realm, what are you saying?

There is certainty. That there is certainty in other realms. Okay, so there are...

Think of reality as a broad spectrum, like the light spectrum, you know. Think of it as all kinds of different light, like ultraviolet, what's the other ones? I don't know.

Infrared. Infrared, and everything in between, all the colors. And then there's x-rays, and then there's ultraviolet rays.

I mean, all these kinds of things. And think of the level that you're on as one little slice out of the spectrum. And we are...

Reality is like that. There's thousands of other realities going on parallel to this one. We are one...

I had a friend who said, don't be so parochial, you know. Don't think your reality is the only possible one. You know, Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, you know, is that...

Is that the only possible reality going on right now? I mean, we tend to think so, right? But think of that there are thousands of realities going on as we speak at different levels of reality.

To get there, how do you get there? How do you get to a different one? Your mind shifts slightly.

You see what I mean? It's not like you got to get into a special bus and go certain... You see what I mean?

Shambhala isn't in a separate place. It's just a different perception. You see what I mean?

So you could go to any one of those levels in the next ten minutes. You see what I mean? But on this particular...

In this particular slice of the reality spectrum, life is not fixed. On some slice... At other places it is, 500 years, for example.

Okay? But in the world that we're living, there is no fixed lifespan. And this thing about average life expectancy is very, very evil and bad for death meditators.

Seriously. Very bad. Try to get it out of your mind.

It'll be hard. They have... By drawing an average, they have cheated you into thinking you're going to live that long.

And it's not true. You got to get... You got to clean that one out of your head.

It's just not true. Okay? There is no average life expectancy for any single case.

You see what I mean? Forget statistics. You're one person.

You could die anytime. You see what I mean? It's irrelevant for you.

Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Dzamling means this continent, or meaning this slice of reality. Tse means lifespan. And lang epa me means there is no fixed number of years.

Okay? So, statistically speaking, yes, it's true. Average is 72 years or something.

Individually speaking, you're in trouble. You see what I mean? Individually speaking, nobody can tell you how long you're going to live.

And nobody can even give you an indication of how long you're going to live. It's random. It's crazy.

It's not just. You know? Good people die young.

Slobs die old. You know? It's unpredictable.

It's totally unpredictable. You can't... Forget...

When you get to this... Where should we put on the... I think we'll put an average life expectancy notebook in a dead man's hand or something.

[Speaker 2]
But... 1.2 children. Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Anyway. The main thing here is forget the thing about average life expectancy. You can expect to live exactly as long as your karmic perceptions allow you.

And that's unpredictable. That's a... That's totally insane the way that works.

You know? Healthy, good, nice people die quickly. And nasty, mean, sick people die old.

And that's the way it goes. Yeah? Do you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
I don't know where I got this thought, but that somewhere in another realm we know how long we will live. Like it is determined, predetermined.

[Speaker 1]
There is... They say there... Like Chang Jiamin Yan is a certain slice of the reality pie.

And on... In that slice it's fixed at 500 years. Okay?

So... But not this one. According to scripture.

No, not here. Not this. Not here.

Okay, so that's the first one. Forget average life span. Okay.

For those of you who can't see it, I'll spell it out, okay? Chi, C-H-I hyphen, Ken, K-Y-E-N Shintu, S-H-I-N-T-U Mang, M-A-N-G La, L-A Sun, Ken, S-U-N hyphen, K-Y-E-N Nyung, N-Y-U-N-G Okay. And I'll ask you to repeat it.

Chi, Ken Shintu Mang, La Sun, Ken Nyung One more time. Chi, Ken Shintu Mang, La Sun, Ken Nyung Okay. Chi, Ken means things that can kill you.

Technically it means factors for death. Okay. But here it means things that can kill you.

And you know, I try to make the answer shorter for the homework. And I wanted to cut out the Shintu, but I left it in. Shintu means very.

You know, when Tibetans get mad, you hear a lot of, Shintu, Nyunge! You know. He really is going to, really, really.

Shintu. Mang, La means many. Okay.

Extremely many. Okay. The things that can kill you are very numerous.

La, but Sun, Ken means the things that help keep you alive. Nyung, Nyung means very few.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. The La?

[Speaker 1]
I'm sorry. Let's throw one in there. You guys are getting too good.

I was just testing, that's why I left this.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Nyung means few. Only few. Sun, Ken means things that support life, things that can keep you alive.

I mean, the things that can keep you alive are only Cheerios, you know, French fries, sugarless chocolate ice cream. I mean, there are very few things. Honestly, there are very few things that can keep you alive.

As a human being, you require feeding, and air, and water at a certain rate, or you don't last, or you die. And those things are hard to come by. I mean, they require a whole day's work in most countries.

Okay. Or more than a whole day's work, and then you die. You see what I mean?

And, in India, I used to see the people crowding the market at nine o'clock, at ten o'clock at night, you know, the vegetable market is packed. And you say, to the Tibetans, you say, this is weird, you know, don't they get indigestion from eating so late at night? You know, they must not eat till midnight.

And they say, that's true. And I say, well, well, why don't they come earlier? And they say, they can't.

And, they have come to the market with the money they earned that day to spend it. And, and, they don't get off work till seven or eight o'clock. And then they go buy the food for today.

And the money is gone by tonight. And that's why the vegetable market is full at ten o'clock, nine o'clock at night. And that's why they eat so late.

Because they just have enough money to, and, and the, the whole effort, if you imagine a whole continent filled with farms and cities and production networks and service networks and transportation networks and delivery networks and, and all of this boils down to the sandwich you had tonight. You see, I mean, like thousands of people's effort and, and all this machinery and all this whole day's work boils down to you must have food in that particular, what do you call it, configuration at this, within these particular hours or you die. You see, I mean, so that the things to keep you alive are, are very rare.

Like they're very concerned about Y2K because if the distribution network breaks down for more than 24 hours the, the grocery stores in New York for eight million people are empty. And the, the supply is that tenuous and that fragile. I mean, the dependency on, on computers to figure out the best way to ship things and stuff like that has become such that, that in, in 24 hours or 48 hours the, the store is empty.

It's called, in, in industry it's your dream to have what they call no, no stock. You know, like, that the, the cookies come in on the truck that as the last person takes the last one off the shelf because you don't have to pay for storage space. And now computers do it very well.

It's called supply, last minute supply. but, but if there's a disruption, what's it called?

[Speaker 2]
Just in time.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, just in time. And we would try to drill, they'd try to drill it into us. Like, I shouldn't keep a two million dollar inventory of diamonds because we could just buy it and ship it out the next day or something like that.

And it's a dream of every manufacturer to only have enough that it would run out the next day. And most of our supply is like that. And, and any major disruption would cause a lot of pain.

and that's how few things can keep you alive. Gas. Or, you know, the gas lines.

And I remember, you know, I remember being in India and watching these people fight for gas and saying, we're civilized in America, we don't do that, you know. And then I went home and it was 1975 or something and people were shooting each other with guns to get gas, you know, and, and it was weird. So, the things that can keep you alive are very hard to come by, they require intense effort by huge teams of people directed in a certain way, and the final outcome of thousands of people's work and, and tons and tons of fertilizer and dirt and water and everything is this sandwich that you got.

And, and if you don't get delivered food, water, and, and air in that exact time, at that exact place, in that exact format, you can't eat it. It won't digest. And you'll die.

And, and so the things that can keep you alive are really hard to find, hard to, it's hard, the conditions that can keep you alive are very difficult to maintain. And there'll be some kind of disruption maybe in this country and you'll appreciate it. You know, like just if there's a short disruption, 48 hours of, of food supply, you'll see how, how difficult it is.

You see what I mean? So, that's a Sunken. Chiken means things that can kill you.

Okay? And as we said at the church the other night, the, the ironic thing is that if you don't die from the inside, I mean, meaning if one of your organs doesn't malfunction and kill you, then, then something outside of you will kill you and it will very likely be something that you spend a lot of money to buy. You know what I mean?

Like, a lot of your life went into getting it, like a nice car or your house, like the staircase in your house will kill you. You know, you wanted a split-level house. You wanted extra space.

you know, you wanted to have this extra place to enjoy and then it kills you. And, and you wanted to have a better car and you're still paying it off and you die in it. You see, it kills you, the windshield kills you.

And Tibetans, the Buddhism says, look around at the things around you. You know, something in your house, you can get really paranoid, you know, something in your house is ready to kill you, you know, something you bought, something you own. I was reading Isadora Duncan's biography, you know, first her two kids get killed in a car because they fall off a bridge.

These are her beloved children. And, and then she spends the rest of her life like, just blasted out by it. Comes home one night and finds them dead on the table, you know, and then, and then she has this beautiful, expensive Cartier scarf on and she gets in a car and the scarf touches the wheel as it's spinning and gets caught and rips her neck off, you know.

I mean, like, it's just a Cartier scarf, you know, and this is like one of the most beautiful women of her time and, and the beautiful scarf kills her, you see what I mean? And, and everybody is killed by something around them. You know, you'll be killed choking on the food that you eat.

You'll be killed by a doctor who's trying to save you. You know, you'll be killed by the car that you bought. But, but if you think about it, the very things that you work so hard to get and the things that you collect so, with such effort, one of them will actually, what do you call it?

Traitor, what do you call it? Betray you and kill you, you know, and it'll be something around you, you know, it'll be something that you use to live and, and it'll kill you and, and the very organs that are making you alive now, one of them will, I guess oftentimes it just starts working too well and overcomes the other ones, you know, and, and it kills you, you know, and like if they get bad, they all have to get bad equally or one of them gets the upper hand and you die. So, in Tibetan medicine your organs are working not in this beautiful harmony, they're actually competing with each other and when one gets too strong and the other gets too weak, then they kill, your body kills you. You see, I mean, the body that, that you're taking so much time and effort to take care of will, will betray you and kill you, okay?

So, that's the chiken shindumang. And this part of meditation can be a little depressing, okay? Like you don't want to go home, you know, you're looking at the quilt on your bed, you know, like, can I trust you, you know?

A lot of people have been killed by their blankets, right? I mean, the modern flammable, you know, blankets, you know, if you've ever had one catch fire, it's really scary. They go up like nothing, you know?

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
When they say the kindness of the Buddhas is keeping you alive, it's always teaching. And they taught you virtue, and then you performed it, and then that's protecting you, that's keeping you alive. It has to be like that, you know, it's always like that, indirect, because if they could give you life, they would have done it to all the dead people and they wouldn't be dead.

You see, I mean, it's very, that, you don't have to go to theological school to disprove the existence of a, of a, of a compassionate creator being, because we are the proof that they don't exist, you know what I mean? Because if they existed and if we were, and if they cared, then we wouldn't be suffering. You see, I mean, you don't have to have a, a big conference to discuss it, you see what I mean?

It's, you prove it. You see what I mean? Okay, number three.

I'll read it for the people that can't see it. The first word is lu, l-u, shintu, s-h-i-n-t-u, which now you know what it means. nyam, n-y-a-m, chungwa, c-h-u-n-g-w-a.

So please repeat, lu, l-u, shintu, nyam, nyam, chungwa, lu, l-u, shintu, nyam, nyam, chungwa. Okay, lu means your body, okay, your body. Shintu means, very, very.

Nyam, nyam, chungwa means, nyam, chungwa means fragile, fragile, okay. And the way they teach this is always the same. They say, you know, take your, take your two fingers here, you know, like that, and, and put them here, and, you know.

No, and, and, if there, this is about a half inch of space. If there's not this ineffable air stuff going through here, within every four or five minutes, you die. You know, I mean, that's no, like, miracle of construction.

That's a pretty lousy design, I think. You know, you know, there's two little holes there. You know, don't cut your mouth, but if there's two little holes, and, and this stuff has to move through here every four or five minutes, you know, or you're dead.

You know, and it's like a miracle that you've been able to keep it going. You know, it's like, they say, think about the odds that there's been no disruption in the air supply yet that lasted for more than four or five minutes. Like, your body is really like a disaster waiting to happen.

You know what I mean? It's just, it's so breakable. You know, and it depends on, it depends on such a, even the food you eat has to be so refined.

It has to be right temperature, it has to be exactly refined the right way, or you can't digest it. Like, the body is really very picky, and the things that can keep you alive are very, are very few. The fact that you could, that you didn't have a disruption in the supply of food to me for more than a few days in your whole life is a miracle.

You see what I mean? That you got, they say if you add, if you made a pile out of all the sandwiches you've eaten, it would be like as big as, easily bigger than this building. You know what I mean?

And somehow, over the course of 40 years, you know, 12,000 days or something, you've been able to get one down to here every single day. You know what I mean? And it's like a miracle.

And it's such a, it's so, it's so fragile. The whole system is so bound to failure that you don't get it. Or a small bubble is going the wrong way, you know, somewhere in your body.

Or in the case of cancer, I mean, when I really studied cancer, we had gemstones from Sri Lanka, topaz, and we wanted to make them blue. And there is no blue topaz in nature except for little pieces that grow next to radioactive material, which is very rare. And you have to radiate them.

So I'm like calling the FTC, Nuclear NRC, and I'm like, is this stuff dangerous or not? Like, we're going to shoot it with neutron radiation, and then we're going to bombard it with electron radiation. And, you know, everybody's doing it in the industry, but I just wanted to check in with you because it's my people who have to handle 10,000 pieces a day.

And we want to know if it's dangerous or not. And they say, well, we're not ruling on it. Meaning, they don't want to be responsible.

And I say, well, can you give me your private opinion? And he says, well, we're not supposed to say anything except big stuff like nuclear reactors and stuff. And that's low-level radiation.

And I say, well, what's that mean? And he says, well, it's giving off gamma rays just the same as a nuclear reactor, but it's very few. So I said, then it's safe.

And he says, well, not really. You see, it's because it only takes one to hit one cell in your body to break one chromosome, one piece of your chromosome chain, and then you develop cancer. Then that cell starts to split wrong.

So I said, well, then we shouldn't carry it, right? And he says, well, bricks do the same thing. Sunlight does the same thing.

When you build a basement, the basement's doing the same thing. He said, that's the way it is. Everything around you, clay is producing gamma radiation.

And if you get one unlucky shot from standing next to a wall, now you've got to sit in the middle, okay? And it's just a matter of luck. Some things are more likely to cause it, but it's just totally, a single emission of a single subatomic particle can give you cancer.

You know? And your body's just not, you know, they're not made very well like that. The body's condition is very frighteningly destroyable, okay?

And it's like some kind of miracle you've lived this long, okay? And the odds of something happening are very serious. You know, I have friends who are hypochondriacs, and then, you know, I get frustrated with them because they won't go out with me to, you know, have a milkshake because, you know, the place is not purified and all that.

But then, then I, after understanding all this stuff, I realized they're true, they're right. But they can't avoid it anyway. You know, you stay at home, you still got those things hitting you.

So, that's the condition of our bodies. The body is not made very well. The body is prone to break down.

It will break down, okay? And that's nyam chungwa, okay? Oh, I'm sorry, chungwa means small, and nyam means like strength or something here.

So, nyam chungwa means fragile or... It's not very resistant to death-causing things, okay? Did somebody have a question?

Did you shoot the toe passes or no? Oh, we did. But we found out that, if you want to know, honestly, we took great care, and we sent them...

There's a special ore that only grows in Sri Lanka, and it doesn't get radioactive. And then we brought it to the United States and we used that. And then every stone we had, we passed it to the nuclear...

We actually got the NRC to license a lab, and then we sent them all to the lab. And then we made a big deal in the industry how everything else was dangerous except the ice. You know.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Just... Okay, now they... The third principle.

What was the third principle of death? Nothing but the Dharma can help you. Okay, so now I'll write up those three.

Okay, now they... The third principle. What was the third principle of death?

Nothing but the Dharma can help you. Okay, so now I'll write up those three. I'm not going to do this in Tibetan because we don't have time.

So those of you who grade, have mercy on this question, okay? All right. For those of you who can't see, number one, the first argument for proving that nothing but the Dharma can help you is that friends and relatives can't...

They can't come with you, okay, when you die. Friends and relatives cannot come with you. And the image in the Lam Rim is of a guy dying on his deathbed, and the relatives actually holding on to your arms and begging you not to go.

And you go. You see what I mean? And I think one of the parts you should do here is just to think of how alone you will feel.

You see, like, all throughout your life, especially if you have a family or twenty students who follow you around everywhere, you're never alone. You see, you're never truly alone. But on that day, totally alone.

You see, one thing about bardo beings, one feature of a bardo being is that you're totally, completely alone. You know what I mean? You're really on your own.

Two seconds after the breath stops, you are on your own. You know what I mean? And that's one of the features of dying.

Okay? So, it doesn't matter. Don't put your hopes, too much hopes, in friends, relatives like that.

Okay? And you will be forgotten. I mean, you want to think that your loved ones will remember you, but not really.

You know what I mean? If it takes a year or two years or five years or ten years, they'll forget you. You know what I mean?

You will be like a very dim memory. My mother was extremely dear to me, my closest friend, and I can hardly remember her face. You know what I mean?

It's been some time, and it goes. Even the people that you think love you the most, life will go on here in the desire realm, in this sector of the desire realm, and you will be forgotten, and you will be alone. And, you know, if you're a good death meditator, you have to give up putting much hope in those things.

And your paths will not cross much after that. Chronically, you will bump into them from realm to realm, but not much, and you'll have new parents and new children and new... You know, it's all very fragile and very fleeting, and it will just be gone.

And the main thing is you're alone. You can't count on those things. You can't hope for those things.

People ask me... I mean, people still want to know, can I take someone with... You know, what will happen to my relatives?

Will I meet my mother again in my next life or something like that? I mean, if you practice tantra, you can have your cake and eat it too. The idea being that Mr. and Mrs. Chakrasamvara thing. You know what I mean? You can't be with them forever if you both get enlightened around the same time. Seriously.

So, go for that. But otherwise it's going to be a brief meeting here and then you definitely won't remember them a few minutes after you die. You know, maybe a day or a couple days and then it's over.

And you won't remember who you were with. People ask me why you can't remember your past lives. Death consciousness, the consciousness you will have in the bardo, is very similar to your dream consciousness.

Now. You see what I mean? The shift in consciousness between 7 o'clock and 2 o'clock in the morning is about the same as between now and death.

You see what I mean? So, as much as you relate to your family in your deepest dreams, which is, you know, maybe you might think of your friends or brother or something in your dream and then it's gone or something like that. That's how much you will remember when you die.

The level of consciousness is very, very similar. Okay? And you got to realize that.

You have to think about that. So, you know, how much during your dream period, and they divide in the tantras between deep dream and light dream periods, but in either case, the amount that you remember about your life and your loved ones and your activities and your job and everything else, the amount that you are actually, you know, lucid about your bank account and, you know what I mean, the details of your life will be very similar, is very similar to the amount of consciousness and memory you can take with you after you die. You won't remember. What I'm trying to say is you won't remember this life much more than you remember it in a deep dream.

Because the level of consciousness is almost exactly the same. You will have... And then you won't remember it.

I mean, 49 days later, you're reborn. Five years later, you're able to talk. And, you know, if you've been in a dream for five years and 49 days, deep sleep, how much will you remember about the...

what was going on at the conscious level five years and 49 days ago? You see what I mean? Even a few days after you die, it's all a blur, you know?

So, realize that. You can't take refuge in those things. It won't help you, okay?

They cannot contact you. And you will not remember them. And you'll pass on...

Supposedly, everybody in this room has been that thing to you all so many times, and you don't remember anything about it. And you won't remember 10 minutes, 20 minutes after you die. You won't remember much.

Okay? Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
How does that explain people having visions of past lives maybe a few years ago?

[Speaker 1]
There is a thing in... If you do deep meditation, if you reach like a certain state of samatha, and definitely, well, I should say, after you've seen emptiness directly, right after that, you can have a direct perception of, for example, your future lives, okay? And in deep states of meditation, you can remember some things about your past life.

But the fact that it's so rare... How many people have you met in this life who claim to have a memory from their past life that you trusted, that you believed them? Semi?

How many... You know, there have been books written about the 700 confirmed incidents out of 5 billion people. You know?

And, you know, it happens, but it's extremely rare. Okay? In a dream, it's possible you can think of the exact amount of your bank account, but unlikely.

Okay? The point is that you can't hope for those things. You cannot take them with you.

You will be alone, and they will be forgotten within, what, a day, five days? You know? You move on by yourself.

Number two. The text actually says that. Durchen kyan me pa.

Okay? The English says here, cannot take a molecule of your stuff with you. Okay?

Durchen means molecule. Atom bomb in Tibetan is durchen bom.

[Speaker 2]
Okay? Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Alright. So... And this is kind of also depressing.

I mean, you work your whole life. I mean, the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you move the leg off the bed... We were talking about New York the other night.

There's two kinds of people. One kind gets up in the morning, puts the foot off the bed, and touches the ground. When that foot touches the ground, it's because you want something.

You see what I mean? Noble, ignoble, whatever. That foot touches the ground because you want something.

And then there's these totally depressed people who just stay in bed all day. And really... And you know them.

Maybe you've been one. Or you've had days when you were definitely like that. And the foot doesn't touch the ground because they really don't want anything because they feel everything is useless.

There's no meaning. They don't put the foot off the bed to touch the ground. When you hit the ground, it's because you want something.

You see what I mean? And then you run, you literally race through the whole day to collect objects. You want something.

You're after something. And the fact that you have shoes proves you want something. You see what I mean?

Because it hurts to walk that far without shoes on. Really, I'm not kidding. The fact that you have shoes proves that you want something.

That you're going to be walking someplace during the day to get something. You know what I mean? And all of that stuff that you're after...

And we're not greedy people here. You wouldn't be here if you were. You're not like the people who are obsessed with wealth or got to have a Lamborghini car, whatever they call it, or got to have this kind of clothes or this kind of clothes.

I don't think there's people here like that. But we have a low level of that. You do have possessions.

And you do put a lot of hope in them. And you are definitely willing to work day after day and devote 90% of your quality time to earning little green rectangles of paper so that you can exchange them for a better car or something like that. You're willing to spend, at a rate of X dollars per hour, your precious life for those objects.

You're willing to exchange life for objects. My boss... I hate to talk bad about him.

He also sponsored a lot of buildings at Sarah May. But anyway... He's Israeli.

I said, why do you do that? He says, I'm covering my bases. But...

I forgot what I was going to say. I went in one day. I said, you know, all these diamond stoners have sore eyes.

We get up... You're supposed to do 10,000, 30,000 stones a day. You go through them with a pair of tweezers.

There's a pile of diamonds in front of you. And you've got this thing. It's like this.

And you're just grabbing them with these tweezers and checking and throwing them in the right pile and grading them by color and all that. And then I said, people can't see when they get out of here. How about we give free eye exams to everybody?

He says, how much would that cost? I said, you know, X hundred dollars. He says, forget it.

I said, well, you really should because you're using up their eyes. He says, they are selling me their eyes. He said it right out.

It came out of his mouth. He says, they are selling me their eyes. I pay them, I get their eyes.

They are selling me the life in their eyes. And that's the arrangement. And you're doing that all day long.

You're selling your body, some part of your body, for those pieces of paper in order to get something else. You see what I mean? And that's the way the economy works.

And it's crazy in the life that you're going to die tonight. You can't keep any of those things. You see what I mean?

Of all the things you've ever earned and ever acquired, the irony, I think, is that 20 minutes after you die you probably won't remember any of them at all. You see what I mean? Not only do you lose them, you won't even remember.

By the way, the scriptures say the only thing you have left is the bad karma you collected to get them. You see what I mean? Like whatever lies you said, or whatever backbiting you did, or backstabbing to other employees.

All you've got left is the karma from the effort of collecting the things. And then the things themselves are going to go look for new owners. You know what I mean?

So forget it. By the way, this does not... This does not represent a rationale for grubbing off other people.

You do have to have yandape tso'a. Say, yandape... yandape tso'a tso'a Right livelihood.

Okay? I mean, it's a Buddhist responsibility to have a livelihood that does not grub off other people. Okay?

A Buddhist is not allowed to just say, oh, everything's impermanent, I'm going to grub you off you, just send me a check, okay? It's not right, okay? It doesn't work that way, okay?

You're responsible to have your own right livelihood. It should be healthy. You have to feed your body well, sleep it well, rest it well, you know what I mean?

And take good care of it. And it's your responsibility to have... I mean, the idea of charity in Buddhism comes down to, you as a Buddhist are responsible for arranging a conducive meditation and sleeping space and study space and reasonable amount of food and other things you need for your practice, and then the rest you can give away.

But you are required to arrange that for yourself. Now, you can do it from a sponsor under special conditions. You know, you can't suck up to them, you can't lead them on, you can't pretend to be someone you're not.

These are all those five bodhisattva vows about wrong... And they mostly apply to people who are looking for sponsors. You have to be totally honest, totally up front with them and totally frank and take what they give you and use it properly and all that.

But the idea that I'm trying to talk you into quitting your job and grubbing off other people, that's not the goal. That's a breaking vows. That's actually doing a kind of violence to the people around you.

You see what I mean? And that's not right. So you should be careful to pay your own way.

But it don't take 50 weeks of work in the United States to pay your own way. That's a myth. That's a dangerous myth.

I mean, it's amazing. It's extraordinary that a culture has developed on this planet that has convinced the people who live in that culture that they should work 96% of the time to have 4% of the time. You see?

That's just extraordinary. I mean, I think people will dig up our civilization and they'll dig out these work rules from the corporations and say, this is amazing. These people, they worked 50 weeks a year to get 2 weeks off.

What were they thinking of? And they went to exercise because they ate too much. They had so many things that made them sick.

And then they worked 96% of the time to make sure they could have enough to make them sick. That's crazy. It's wild.

Find a 30-hour week job. Find a 20-hour work job. Tell me you can't do it.

Come on. You know what I mean? Make an honest living.

Make sure you have a conducive space to practice in and to study in. But don't kill yourself for 96%. That doesn't make sense.

You don't need that. That's some kind of compulsion or addiction. We were out in Arizona at this new place and we didn't have electricity or these other things.

We didn't have a refrigerator and stuff. And we found out within 5 days we can live without them. And then we're like wondering, who foisted this on us?

Who convinced me that I need those things? You know what I mean? And then it's you.

You know what I mean? Who talked us into having all this stuff that you don't really need? And it's amazing.

You don't have to work like that. You should object. You should refuse to do that.

You know what I mean? And take back some of your time. It takes a little bit of time to pull it off, but you should do it.

[Speaker 2]
I think my teachers would say that's a wonderful fetish.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, I've had friends who had that fetish and the teachers were like, go for it. You know, fine. You know, work an extra week.

That's okay. They said anything you spend for Dharma books is special. That's different.

That's not what I'm talking about. That'll get you enlightened. All right, number three.

Number three says, can I take your own body? Like relatives can't go with you. Can I take a molecule of the stuff that you own?

And you can't take your body. Now it seems obvious, but if you've ever been done violence to, you know, like women getting raped or a man getting punched or something like that, someone grabbing onto your arm and holding it and refusing to let go who's stronger than you, and there's this sense of violation, you know, there's this sense that your holy space has been violated by this other person, and there's this outrage that you feel in your heart, even when you hear about a rape or something, that someone would violate another person's body. You see what I mean?

And then when you... The idea of losing a piece of your body is so repulsive to most people, you know, like I had an old Mongolian man that I used to take care of and he had diabetes and I would go back and give him his shots every morning and he got gangrene in his foot and he went to the nursing home and they said, you have to have this cut off at the knee, and he refused. You know, he said, I would rather die.

And they said, you have to or you will die. And he said, then I'll die, I don't care. And he refused.

He said, I cannot go... He had this... I don't know why, but he had this belief that he had to die with a whole body.

You know what I mean? This was very important to him. And that's that sense you have.

You feel like... Like the minute someone comes within two feet of your space in America, you're like... You know, but then when they actually violate your body space, you feel this outrage and this anger comes up in your heart, you know.

And then imagine losing the whole thing at once. You see, one big shot, one big violation of every single piece of your body. You know, like this thing that you take so much for granted will be ripped away from you mercilessly.

You see what I mean? And they say that you can even watch it, you know, like you're up there for the first few minutes looking at it and thinking, this is not fair. You feel...

Bardoas feel lots of anger and injustice and violation. You see, they have these feelings of hatred and anger and being cheated of something that they used to own, you know. And they watch people handling their clothes and their possessions and they get angry and they're like screaming and they're like banging on this space in front of them in like a window or something and they feel very violated, you know, and that their body has been taken from them.

And that's the... you cannot... that also will have to go.

You see what I mean? And then there's this weird thing where especially you're attached to your face, you know, you equate your face with you a lot. Because you equate other people so much with their faces, Petra is this face, you know, that when your face is torn away, like when you get it cut on your face or something happens to your face, especially in America you're very careful to fix it, you know, and...

but just think of your whole face being ripped, you see what I mean? And then your identity is broken, you see what I mean? And then you start to forget your name.

You see? And within a few hours or a couple of days you can't remember what your name was. And then the whole thing is stolen, ripped from you and you feel this sense of violation and the Bardoas are...

those beings in the Bardo are like angry and hateful because this thing has been done to them and you can't take anything. You can't even remember your own name, you see what I mean? and so forget thinking that those things are going to help you.

They can't. Okay? Don't put so much...

I think it was Socrates that said, you know, the more attachment you have to each one of those the harder it's going to be for you when you die. You see what I mean? The prettier your face, the stronger your body, you're setting yourself up for more suffering, you know?

It'd be better to be ugly and weak because the sense of anger when you die won't be so bad. But he said with each sense attraction you're nailing your body, you're nailing your soul, even Aristotle, you're nailing your soul more to hell, you know what I mean? Because of the anger you'll have.

You can't take any of those things with you, okay? Like the body, the things and the friends and the family and the people around you, ultimately even your own name. And your face, your identity.

And they'll be gone. And then the only thing you're stuck with is your mental continuum chock full of all the karmas you collected in this life. You see what I mean?

That's all you get to take with you. And you can't leave any of those behind. So it's a big, it's the opposite of what you think.

You know, you think it'd be some comfort to have more things or some comfort to be healthier or some comfort to have more friends or family. But the truth is the pain will be more when you die. And the effort you took to get those things, which normally involves more negative effort than positive effort, means that you will enter your next existence with more bad karma in your mind than good karma.

Okay? And that's all you can take with you. You see what I mean?

So what you really should be concentrating on eight hours a day, 50 weeks a year, is making sure that the right things are in your mental continuum. You see? Because that's the only thing you can take with you.

So what we do is reversed. We spend 50 weeks a year making sure we have the outside physical things that we can't take with us, and that my physical body is pretty and healthy and all that, and at the expense of the Dharma time. You see what I mean?

And it's the reverse of what a death meditator would do. Okay? If you're a really good death meditator, you'd be spending 50 weeks a year, eight hours a day, on filling up this mental continuum with nice karmas.

And then, you know, living with whatever external circumstances keep you alive, minimum. And I don't mean just alive, I mean comfortable for practice. Okay?

Comfortable bed, comfortable cushion for your meditation, healthy food, nice air, you know, but not more than that.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Like that. Okay? Yeah?

I was going to tell you the story, but I didn't want to distract from the meaning of the story. He never did. And this was, I'm sorry, he just recently did, but this was 1976 or something, and he lived in the nursing home for 20 years, and they gave him local antibiotics.

And he was the first person in a long time to refuse to have an amputation when he got gangrene, and it never spread. And I visited him for 20 years, and, you know, they bandaged it from time to time, and it never got worse. And they were sort of...

And every time I met him, he looked at me, like, you're the guy who tried to taunt me in the game, and there you go. And, you know, and look, it's fine, you know. And I felt really bad.

He never got over the gangrene. I guess you can't get... Oh, I don't know.

It never went away. And then eventually, I think two years ago, they cut it. But, you know, and he was too old to fight it or something.

So... Okay. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
So the bardo, you don't see or recognize other bardo beings?

[Speaker 1]
You can in the bardo... He said, can a bardo being see another bardo being? You can.

And apparently, there's a lot of... In the Abhidharma, there's a lot of detail about it. You know?

They travel, certain ones of them travel upside down. And, yeah. And you can tell from the physical color and shape what they're going to be in their next life, and things like that, if you can remember.

But you can't. You know? So, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
One of my lamas one time told me that when... You're saying you can't take your relatives with you, or they can't come with you, but... One of my lamas said, was that the same person stays with you.

That very lama will be with you.

[Speaker 1]
You mean a lama?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
That could travel with you from life to life?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, exactly.

[Speaker 1]
That's a whole different thing. That's absolutely true. Okay.

Yeah, no. No, I mean, when you say you can't take your relatives and friends with you... No, lamas for sure.

They stick with you from lifetime to lifetime for thousands and millions of lifetimes. You know? They are at your side.

Whether you recognize them or not is another thing, but they stick with you, and they have the power to do that. Okay? And you may not recognize them.

So when you're in the bardo, are they there too? I would say that they are aware of you being in the bardo. They cannot enter a bardo as a bardo because they don't have any bad karma like that.

You see what I mean? But they can be there in the bardo, and you may not recognize them. But they can emanate into the bardo.

You can see them in some form in the bardo. They know for sure. Yeah.

And they follow you. She said, can a tuku go into a bardo? Yeah.

Do they experience a bardo as a bardo? No way. You see what I mean?

But they can understand your experience of the bardo, and they can emanate so that you see them in the bardo. And they can do that. And that's a practice.

They say in Tantra, you know, the best thing is to take care of everything in this life, but if you don't, at least get enough energy that in the bardo that you can go, that you can move into Nirvana in the bardo.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah? What about, so that it doesn't have to be unpleasant, so Buddhism doesn't say that it's always a miserable experience in the bardo?

[Speaker 1]
In the bardo, apparently, you have some extraordinary powers. You can walk through walls. You move at the speed of thought almost.

And you bring love. What about great bliss? They don't say that a bardo being has anything like that.

You know, in the Wheel of Life, if you have one, they're right there stuck in the next wheel out from the rooster and the snake and the pig.

[Speaker 2]
When my mother was dying, I got a sense of her. She shared part of it with me, and it was great love. She was slipping away.

She was still alive. I don't know if she was dead or alive.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, I think we talked about in the Church that a great, a person who's been very pure and very loving in their life can have pure experiences at the end of their life. And that's why they do a death meditation. That's why we're talking about it.

You know what I mean? But normally the process of death is very, almost always unpleasant, great pain. I mean, at the point that you saw her, she wasn't into that yet.

But then, beyond that, it's always like that. There's five standard steps you go through and everyone goes through them and they're very painful and they're very disorienting. Yeah, theoretically you might have some on the other side, but not in practice.

You know, remember? You know, very unlikely, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
You know, I wonder, and I've experienced and known people who actually look forward to death. As you get older, you realize the deterioration that has taken place in the body and the mind. And you want to accept, you want to accept the escape that you want to in some case.

[Speaker 1]
That's a common statement, you know, that if life gets to be past a certain age, such a burden and such a repeated boredom, that it would be a relief to die. But here again, you're assuming that five minutes after you die you're not in a hell realm or something. You see what I mean?

And you can't assume that. The book I chose out of the catalog just before we stopped was a reply by a high lama to a question of was the Buddha being literal when the Buddha said your odds of having a nice rebirth are about that much compared to the mass of the planet? You know?

And then the question was is that literal? And they said yes. So you're making a very grave assumption that things might be better than that five minutes after you die.

You're making an assumption so much as you're accepting. You know, in the prayer, the Christian prayer, God will be gone. You just simply accept it.

In Buddhism we don't. We fight it. Like a tiger.

You know? What can you do about it? That's why we're having this class.

Tomorrow afternoon's class. For sure.

[Speaker 2]
I was looking forward to death too until I became a Buddhist and realized I have to do it over and over. Anyway.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I'm not saying that if wealth comes to you, easily, you know, that it's not a very valuable thing. And the idea that to be a good Buddhist you have to be poor is a fallacy.

You know, it's actually, once your head is together, it's preferable to be very wealthy. Because you can use it for other people. So I'm not saying that, you know, the only good Buddhist is a poor Buddhist.

And the only good Buddhist is a semi-employed Buddhist. I'm not saying that. It's ideal at many spiritual stages, especially at the beginning, to be, to have a lot of time to yourself for your practice and not to have too many other things to think about.

But once you are strong enough and your practice is good enough, then bodhisattvas are supposed to be busy. You know, you're supposed to have as many projects going on as you can handle. That's Thek Chen.

That's Mahayana. Big capacity. But you have to be careful not to mistake your capacity.

You see what I mean? Which will kill you. You see what I mean?

So, you have to take care of your spiritual life first, and when you do, and as you are able to, then you can add other responsibilities, other spiritual responsibilities, and you must. And in the end, it would be very desirable to have a lot of money and a big piece of land, for example, and not out of any desire, but just that you can help more people with that. but spiritually you're capable of saying, I practice till a certain time of day, and nothing changes it.

You know, and you have to keep that space. Benjamin Franklin did this thing. He did a very interesting thing.

He was amazing. You should read his autobiography. But, he, he wouldn't open his shop till 11 o'clock.

It was something like 11 o'clock. And he said, I do my experiments in the morning. I do my private life.

I take care of my moral life. You know, I take care of my needs. I do my prayers.

I do my... He basically was saying, I do my own practice till 11. And let the world adjust to my schedule.

You see what I mean? They'll know that Ben Franklin is not in the shop, the printing shop, from 9 to 11. They'll get used to it.

You know, I took every Wednesday off for 16 years in corporate life, vice president of a company. And people got used to it. They didn't call me on Wednesday, you know.

Then they would catch me. I'd say, let's finish this deal tomorrow. They'd say, no, Michael, it's Tuesday.

You know, you know, you know, I had that trick. That trick didn't work after a while.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Very quickly, here are three resolutions to make. Okay. So, in the end, we're going to have three spaces going up to the door.

Then we're going to go through the door of death is certain. There's going to be a room with three elements in it, which are the three reasons why death is certain. Then we're going to come to another door, which is the time of death is not certain.

And there's going to be three things in that room to remind us of that. Then we're going to come to another door that says, when you die, only Dharma can help you, because the only thing you take with you is your karma. And then when we get through that door, there's going to be three things to remind us of that.

And then we're going to pass into another room, which is called the three decisions to take once you know you're going to die. You know, once you've done a good meditation on death, there's three decisions to make. Okay.

And we won't do the visualization of these three tonight, but I'll list them for you tonight. Okay. Since they're on your homework.

Is that the homework? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. For those of you who can't see, number one is knowing that you have to die, right? Having done the first meditation, that death is certain, decide you must begin your practice now.

Okay? It's time to begin. I'm sorry.

Decide to begin your practice. Because I repeat, it's only those things that you stick into the ineffable, invisible, untouchable mind stream that you can take with you. You see?

It's only the good or bad that you stuff in there during your life that goes on. And knowing that, you should put your... I mean, knowing you're going to die, you should start working on it.

Okay? Number two. Number two, for those of you who can't see it, is a reaction to the second stage of the meditation, which is that you never know when you're going to die.

And that is knowing you could die at any moment. Quit your worldly work immediately and start practicing today. Okay?

Knowing that you could die at any moment, quit your worldly work today, now, immediately, and start practicing. Again, worldly is a touchy word, okay? Personally, my Lama forced me to go to work, okay?

My Lama demanded that I go to work. I didn't have to go to work. I had enough money.

I had inheritance. I wasn't rich, but I had my practice space in my bed. And he said, this is the best thing for your practice, you see what I mean?

Is to be in a normal office and see normal people's pain and be around normal stuff and don't tell them you're a Buddhist and use it as your laboratory for your Dharma practice. And it was wonderful. There's nothing like it.

So, I'm not saying, worldly doesn't necessarily mean that all work is worldly. You make it worldly or you make it Dharma practice. Depends on you, okay?

A job, a 40-hour job can be a great Dharma opportunity. And for me personally, it was the most precious thing I could have done at that time. I resisted him, which I never do.

And finally, one day I remember he gave this very moving lecture at Rutgers University. I was driving home and I said, I'll do anything you want. And he said, okay, go to work.

And it was very wonderful. So, worldly doesn't necessarily mean that you can't work. It just means stop your worldly activities.

Stop seeing it as something just for money or things like that, okay? Number three, for those of you who cannot see, since nothing else can help, concentrate exclusively on spiritual practice. That's the reaction to understanding that you can't take anything else with you except your spiritual practice.

And again, don't confuse external spiritual practice with internal spiritual practice, okay? You can sit there and memorize all the books in the world. You can pass all the ACI courses with all hundreds.

You can be doing all the right sadhanas word for word every morning and not be changing your internal state a bit. You know what I mean? It's possible.

I can say. I used to do it. I did tundra for 15 years religiously every night at the same place at Perth Amboy on Highway 9 on the way back from work.

And I can honestly say I didn't think about it much. You see, I did not. I recited it every night in Tibetan.

I can do the long sadhana in Tibetan from memory. And I was able to, I'm being honest, sit through a whole satru ceremony without thinking about it more than three or four times. And no immediate effect on my inner life.

You see what I mean? And actually, then I started keeping the book and it changed. You see what I mean?

I started doing tundra that way instead of just reciting it. You see what I mean? And I like the book because it forces you to examine whether you've really done anything internally relating to dharma or not.

And I think especially for people who are involved in the dharma business, meaning translating, running centers, printing correspondence courses, stuff like that, it's very easy to confuse that with changes in your inner life. You know what I mean? It's very tempting to...

I mean, a lot of the students I have who are involved with the administration of the classes end up not taking the classes or not doing their homework or not doing their quizzes. And somehow they think that because they're involved with running the class that they don't have to do that. But then they're cheating themselves out of the main reason to do that.

You see what I mean? So I think especially for people involved in the running of dharma, it can be very dangerous. It's for a teacher too.

You know, for a long time I put in my book, I taught an inspiring class tonight. And then it dawned on me one night, that didn't change my inner life at all. You know what I mean?

That's not... It's much better to write down that I almost got jealous of this other teacher but I stopped myself. You know what I mean?

That's more important than teaching a three-hour class. That's a more important spiritual event than teaching someone else something. You see what I mean?

And that's all. We're talking inner life. Now to do that, you can do it at work.

And you can do it as a housewife or whatever. That's a decision to focus on what you're cramming into your mind stream that you've got to take with you when you die. That's all.

So your outward activity may not have to change very much. But you must change the inward activity. It has to be all focused on am I having a mental affliction right now?

You know, can I change something about it? How can an understanding of emptiness affect how I'm feeling right now about this other person? And so actually it becomes a blessing to be going to work.

A blessing to be a busy mother in a household or something like that. Anything can become Dharma practice. And many things which are externally Dharma practice ain't Dharma practice at all.

Okay? Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
I just got a question. You were talking about you were repeating whatever you call this periodically.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I was down in Miami listening to the Dalai Lama and he used a similar example that for years he was doing X, Y, and Z. And it wasn't until about 15 years later that he really started to begin to understand and really started to put some things into practice. Is that part of the transition when you're going from non-Buddhist that you think that you're doing something when it's not really happening?

Or is it... I'm trying to get a perspective.

[Speaker 1]
No, I know what you mean. Let's put it this way. Is it necessary to recite Tundra for 15 years and not think about it to trigger the years where you are thinking about it?

And I think it maybe is. But I think you could shorten the time. Seriously.

I think being faithful to the practice for 15 years caused me to really understand what it was about. But I wouldn't want other people to take that long. And I'm being very honest.

I'm not like gushing out something that's not true. I'm honest about it. And I didn't think about it.

And that's a very dangerous thing. Alright. Take a short break.

And we'll do a short meditation. We won't do all nine new elements, but we'll add like one room or two. Okay?

Alright, so take a break. Okay, we're going to do a brief meditation on some of the last points. Okay?

We're going to continue through the... We'll start at the first door, the yellow door. Okay, ready?

So sit up straight and watch your breath. Rather deep breaths, but not forced. One of the things you can do when you're doing a breath meditation, and it's a little tricky, you have to practice a little bit, but to be aware of your breath going in and out, you can close your throat.

Okay? And watch, okay? And actually you're constricting something here.

Okay? And it's not with your nostrils, okay? It's like down here.

And you don't do it to your mouth, but you do it like this. Listen. Can you hear it?

Yeah. It's real loud in your own ear. Okay?

And make it soft, but it's a good way to regulate your breath. You know it. It'll make the breath...

You can either... When you drop to a more subtle level, it can be the hairs in your nose, which sound the same when you're at a good level in meditation. But if you don't get there, then do it this way.

And you just close the... It takes a little practice. People mistake their...

That's not it, okay?

[Speaker 2]
That's not it, okay?

[Speaker 1]
That's just a boogery nose, okay?

[Speaker 2]
But this one is...

[Speaker 1]
And it helps you regulate your breath. It helps you slow the breath down. Because you can...

If you're not doing a good breathing... You know, you can feel it. So try it at home, maybe.

And not too loud. Not so loud that it bothers someone next to you. But it's very good for breathing meditation.

Okay? Now look at the door in front of you, the big oak door, golden-yellow color. It represents that you must die.

You go into the first room and see the huge, shoulder-height, wild dog chained to the wall on the right and think that death cannot be stopped, the karma wearing out cannot be stopped. Then move on to the stand, and on top of the stand is an hourglass. And you look at it, and you see the sands running through.

Most of the sands are gone already. And it represents that your life is leaking away, even as you sleep, even as you talk to others, even as you sit in a Dharma class. You're getting older, and your life is leaking away, all the time, at the same rate all the time, never pausing.

Now as you pass down the corridor, you're running, and pictures on the wall with little lights above them are passing by quickly, and you have only a few fleeting seconds to recognize one of your teachers or one of the teachings they've given you on a certain date in a certain place. And your life is too busy and moving by too fast to stop and look at them and appreciate them and to learn deeply what they had to teach you. You're running down this corridor that way, representing the fact that even if you do decide to study or to practice, you don't have much time.

You never have enough time. And at the end of the corridor, there's a green door, a huge green door, rectangular, and that represents the second step of the meditation, meaning the second main division, that the time that you're going to die is not fixed. You don't know when you're going to die.

And you look at the door for just a second and think, now I'm entering the meditation on how the time of death is not fixed, not certain. And you come into a room, it's triangular. It's an elongated triangle.

So you're walking in at the top of the triangle, and then it opens into a larger room, so the top of the triangle is farther away from the other two corners. So you're walking into a room that basically opens out wider as you go. And right in front of you, as you walk in, is a garbage can.

And in the garbage can at the bottom, like a big calendar with the number 72 on it, in black, and it's in the bottom of the garbage. That means, forget this average lifespan thing. Seriously.

You look at it and you say, that's a lie. That whole expectation that it builds in your mind that you will have until 72 years old or something is a very cruel lie of your culture. And there is no average for any single person.

There's no reason why you should expect to live any longer than this week or today. It's an unreasonable thought to say, I have so many years left until the average. Then as the room widens out, then you're walking through an area, and it's a normal room.

It has furniture all around, chairs, carpet, objects like a TV, books. And you're walking through them towards the other side of the room. And you're aware that there's like a tripwire somewhere that if you touch it, you'll die.

The bomb will go off, the place will explode, you'll die. And one of these objects around you, you're looking at, look at the objects one by one, like the blanket on the bed that might catch fire one night and burn you. People say, in your mind, you're thinking, that's not going to happen to me.

I have a student whose mother was sitting on a couch, a normal person, and the cord was behind it, and the cord frayed, and the couch went up, and the house exploded within a few minutes. I mean, just everything made of plastics, and a blanket could very easily kill you. A chair could kill you.

Look at the chair, think, would that kill me? Is the bomb there? How many people died slipping off a chair?

And look at each object like that, and think that they could kill you. Food on the table, and that something in there could kill you. And walk through the room realizing that all the things that you need to keep you alive, one of them will probably kill you.

And as you're walking towards the, there's a door at the base of the triangle, in the middle, and as you get down to it, you start to approach the door, and you step on a thorn, and you lean down, and you take it out of your foot, and there's a little tiny spot of blood that comes out. And look at it and think, I was thinking about, I read about Theodore Roosevelt's son, he got a thorn in his foot, a tiny thorn like that, and it got a little bit infected, and then it got worse and worse. And this happened in our monastery also, to a boy, a young boy in the fields, and he died from that.

I saw him die from that. And it also happened to Theodore Roosevelt's son. And just look at it and think how fragile your body is, how little it takes to kill it.

And that's the meditation on how fragile your body is, how many little things can kill your body. Think about little things that can kill your body. A little virus picked up from someone else called HIV, a little break in the chromosome of a single cell in your body which kills you of cancer.

Think about it. And then you look up and there's a red door leading into another room, and you look at it for a moment and reflect, this is the third of the main meditations, and I'm going to meditate about how when I die it's only my spiritual life can help me. Then you open the door and you enter, it's sort of like a greenhouse, and there's an arched corridor of glass that goes down the whole length of the room.

It's like a rectangle. And you can see on the other side there are things outside the glass. So it's like a little tunnel or something, and you can stand up in it.

It's pretty tall, and the room is well lit. It's like a greenhouse, and there's sunlight coming in from the outside. So you can clearly see the things outside of the little glass walls of the hallway you're walking down.

And then there's more glass on the outside walls, and then in between the two you can see certain things. And the first thing you see on both sides walking down the hallway is our friends that you have, people that you love. And put there the three or four people who are closest to you.

And they're talking to each other and they're laughing and having conversations, and they cannot see you. And you're like knocking on the glass and trying to get their attention and banging on the glass, and they can't even see you, and it makes you frustrated. They can't hear you.

They don't pay any attention. It's like you're invisible. It's like they don't hear you.

And this represents the Bhano and the fact that you can't take those people with you. The moment after you die you will be alone. You may perhaps even be able to see them, and they won't be able to interact with you at all.

They won't be able to reach you or contact you and reflect on that. And then as you move down, halfway down this rectangular hall, the room, and you're still in this hallway, you can look at each side of the glass and you can see all the objects that are dear to you. And for me it's, of course, my laptop and maybe a car that I use.

And then some kinds of furniture in my bedroom, and the blankets and the sheets that I use. And some of my old work suits. And I think especially for me, photographs on the ground, scattered, you know, of things I used to like, photographs I used to enjoy, of people I loved.

And then my books strewn about the room. And you're walking down the hallway and the glass is between you and them. You cannot reach them.

And this represents the fact that you can't take any of them with you. They will be left behind and it will be frustrating for you. At that moment you'll be quite upset and off balance and almost angry that you can't reach them anymore.

And then down towards the end of the room, off to the right side, a dead body, naked, your body. And when you look at the face, it's face up on its back, and you look at the face and the face is just, no features on it. It's just like, still the contours of a nose and an eye and a mouth, but unrecognizable, like no clear features, just pits where the eyes were and a bump where the nose was and a hole where the mouth was, but you can't recognize it.

And this is the stage in the meditation where you realize that you have to leave behind even your own body and your name and your identity. And no one will remember you shortly after you die. Even the people who are really sensitive and compassionate and attached to you will slowly forget you after you die.

And then bring your mind back to the lama in the chamber of your heart, behind your heart, and thank them for their blessing and just be with them for a short time. And then dedicate it to other people. Think about the good karma we did today.

Nobody talks about death like this. I doubt that anyone in the United States or this kind of a group of people has talked about these things today. Rejoice and send out the energy to other people.

Good karma. Light from the pores of your body. Imagine people, just normal people around Raleigh, one of them gets hit here and there.

Very happy, something happy comes into their mind. Okay, relax. We're going to go through it one more time.

Very first thing, what? On the outside. I mean, let's start from the preliminaries.

Yeah, really it's all the way up to the tables, okay? The dangers of not having death meditation. Right?

All the way up to the table. And trying to get to the food and hurting other people because you're bumping them. Okay?

Being miserable. Not really going for what you want to go for. And then the bridge.

Oh!

[Speaker 2]
Divesting.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, the benefits of thinking about your death. Okay? Dumping stuff.

All right? Unnecessary activities, relationships, and objects. Okay?

Next one. It has two parts. Yeah, the right way to meditate on death and the wrong way to med...

Sorry, wrong and then right. Right? So the wrong way is to get some kind of paralyzed by thinking about how hard it's going to be.

And then the right way is like floating across that meadow, you know? And really, if you get good at this meditation, it's a big gift I'm offering you, if you take it. You'll be really...

Your life will be really straightened out. You know? Your priorities are in order.

And you just naturally get happier. Okay? Immensely happy.

And every day is like a continual Christmas. Okay? Christmas morning, every single day.

Okay? Seriously. Okay?

It feels like that. Okay? First door.

Meaning... Must die.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Walk in, first thing on your right. Big dog. We had this friend, Dr. Taylor, in Washington. He's like, every single dog he sees, good dog, good dog. I said, Dr. Taylor, you realize you say that about every single dog you meet? He says, if they don't bite me, they're a good dog.

Okay, next thing. Yeah, hourglass.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Even as we talk, we lost an hour. Okay? And the body's getting weaker.

I don't care what they tell you in exercise class. You are weaker tonight than you were this morning. Unless you're practicing...

Unless you're keeping your vows well and doing good tantric practice and like that. Okay? Third one.

Hall of pictures. Yeah, hall of pictures. Moving by too fast.

Okay? Meaning, even when you're in the mood, you can't really... you don't really have time to practice.

Even when things are going well, which is just about never. Even when you have a day when no one calls you on the phone to interrupt you, you know, you don't feel bad, you know, your back's not hurting. Still, things...

life is moving too fast. Next door. Green, representing...

time of death is uncertain. Shape of the room. Yeah.

You come in at the top of the triangle. It's sort of like a lengthy triangle, right? Elongated triangle.

And you come in here. The first thing you see... Yeah, Trish Cameron is 32, okay?

It's the big lie. And we really think that way. You really...

Everyone I ever met, and myself, says... thinks in terms of average lifespan. You know, I got 30 years left.

I got 25 years left. Okay. Second thing.

Oh, by the way, meaning that you... there's absolutely no certainty you're going to live beyond tonight. Okay?

You don't... there is no average for a single case. You see what I mean?

Second thing. Yeah, all those booby-trapped things. You know, you're walking through the room, and it's like, which one of you is going to kill me?

You know? I was thinking to put a ham sandwich on... or, you know, vegetarian ham sandwich there somewhere.

Meaning, you know, that's the only... that's the one thing that can keep you alive. You know?

Remember there's two parts. Many things can kill you. A few things can keep you alive.

I've made maybe one smoothie... in the room. Seriously.

Because you've got to remember each point of the enlargement. You know what I mean? And this is a very easy way.

You know, I've been trying to do it for years, and this is a very easy way. And then you're just walking through, and you're looking at each object, and saying, which one of you is going to kill me? You know?

I would put your car there. You know? And which one is it going to be?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Next thing in that room? Yeah, just a simple thorn. Tiny little thorn.

I see a stone floor. This is kind of a weird room, like a dungeon room or something, and there's a stone. And a little tiny...

In Arizona where I grew up, we called them stickers. And there's these little things that are about this big, and they have little... They're very hard, and sticky, and you see a little piece of blood, a little drop of blood come out.

And that just represents that the tiniest thing can kill you. Your body is just very fragile. Four minutes without this thing going through here.

Out these two tiny holes, quarter inch, half an inch. You know, it's amazing. In the Lam Rim, they say it's a miracle.

If you think about it, it's just flat miraculous that you're still alive. Okay? That you fed this bag, you know, two or three times a day for thousands of years.

Thousands of days in a row. It's amazing. Been able to feed it.

It's a big success story, actually. Okay, next thing. Red door.

Red door meaning nothing can help you when you die except Dharma. And then we're going to eliminate all the things that you thought could help you. You go down a...

What kind of a corner? It's like a glass... A glass corner like that, going down.

And then a... Then, you know, greenhouse kind of glass house. Between you, between the hallway and the outside glass, there's people standing there.

Which are? Your friends and relatives. I mean, actually see them.

Make it specific, you know. And then think of them one by one and say, I can't take you with me. And I will forget you after a few weeks.

You know? How much of them do you remember in a dream? Because that's how much you remember after you die.

And that dream will keep going and it'll get worse. It'll fade faster and faster as you go on. So you're just looking at them and thinking, they can't help me.

You know? It doesn't mean you should divorce your wife immediately and stuff like that. No.

But it means just don't put your hopes in that. You know? Get your wife and yourself to practice more.

That's all. And love each other and be close to each other, but practice more. Okay?

Next thing. Yeah, all scattered around. All the stuff you used to care about.

I have favorite photographs. I have my laptop. I have certain books that I really love.

Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. They're just spread out and just junked all over the floor. Okay?

Can't keep them. Can't take them. Last thing in that room.

Yeah, on the right, your body, face up, naked. And then the face is like smoothed out and you can't see any particular identity to the face. And that's the fact that you want to remember who you were.

Okay? Much less your body. That's the sort of depressing...

Anyway, we're finished with that room. So we finished actually three preliminaries and nine steps of a death meditation. Very easy, you see?

Very easy to remember. If you do it, if you go through these rooms two or three times a day for the next week, you won't forget them very easily after that. Okay?

And then we're going to go to the three resolutions, but it's too late. We'll do it tomorrow. And we're still going to do Ken Rinpoche's What to Do When Somebody Dies, and we'll do that tomorrow in the first class also.

Did you have it?

[Speaker 2]
Why is this door open?

[Speaker 1]
I don't have any, you know, conscious symbolic meaning about it. Okay? I think it has meaning, but I can't, I don't have any, like, it just came that way.

No special meaning right now. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
When you talk about needing to do an hour or two of meditation a day, are you speaking specifically of this type of analytical meditation? Or...

[Speaker 1]
You know, I always, people ask me about seeing emptiness directly, and I say you need an hour, a day of shamatha, jogam. Okay? One-pointed fixed meditation on a single object.

Very, very deeply withdrawn from your senses, deeply into your breath. Like, regulated in conjunction with your breath, your heartbeat, the sound of air hitting your eardrum, and then going deeper than that. No, you can't do this during that time.

Okay? You can't do this. It's this, a qigong, in a qigong, your whole physiology is different and your whole mindset is different.

You're like, you know, you know, okay? It's not like, I don't think you can do a qigong and get that same one-pointedness.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Because you're necessarily going through each object. Eventually you'll be able to. You know, my Lama asked Chidang Rinpoche, we do these two-hour sadhanas, you know, doesn't it ruin my one-pointedness of mind because I'm going through visualization after visualization?

And how can you call that a one-pointed state of mind? And Chidang Rinpoche's answer was, the whole sadhana is one-pointed. But that's really a high level of qigong.

That's a really high level of analytical meditation. And we don't have that yet. so I'm...

No, you have to do this in addition to... Okay? Which means you might have to find a new job or something.

[Speaker 2]
Why are people considered to be holy? And what's the purpose of bowing down to them if they really can't help you through anything but knowledge?

[Speaker 1]
I mean, is it just a matter of respect? Oh, why do you bow down to a teacher, for example, or something like that? Or to an image?

Images only because they represent holy beings. Okay? So, you could just as well bow down that way.

It doesn't matter. I mean, enlightened beings are all over the place. There's no more enlightened beings this direction than there are in that direction.

You see what I mean? And these are not enlightened beings. These are lousy representations of those beings.

I mean, the real thing is a zillion times sexier. You know, amazing. You know?

But they represent what... They represent them. Okay?

And so, just to remember them. If you bow down to these things and you don't think about the real thing, you haven't done much of a bow.

[Speaker 2]
For what purposes do you serve if the real thing is here?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, if the real thing was here, you know, if Jesus Christ walked in the door and I bowed down to him, then what's the use? First of all, the first question is, does it help Jesus Christ any? He doesn't need it.

You know? Dalai Lama doesn't need your bows, or he'll be happy up in Dharamsala in his little house meditating. He doesn't need you in that sense.

So, it doesn't help them. Now, does it help you? That depends totally on your state of mind.

If you are thinking, I would like to be like Jesus, you know, I'd give anything to have one percent of Gandhi's honesty, or something like that. And then you bow down to them. There's a great benefit, you know, to karma in your own mind.

Don't forget the definition of karma. Which is? Eh, Tibetan.

De ni senpa dang de che. Definition of karma Raw karma is thinking. It's not just what you do and say.

It's whenever you think anything. So, if you bow down to a Buddha image, and simultaneously think, I wish I had one percent of your honesty, you know what I mean? Then you've done a real prostration.

And if you just bow down and don't think about anything, then you'll probably be born as an inchworm in your next life, or something like that. Okay, I mean, it's not really, but, to do religious things without, with the form of religious things, without any kind of accompanying thoughts, is almost worthless. All right, we'll do a short prayer, and then I'll see you tomorrow at twelve?

Okay. Don't forget you have a quiz if kinkos can get their acting together. Okay.

Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Okay, thank you. Have a good death meditation tonight. All right?

I mean, going out, do it. You know what I mean? Just start doing it.

Okay? Do I want to do this if I'm going to die tonight? Okay?

Now, start it tonight. The best time to start this stuff is tonight. Okay?

Start thinking like, do I want to do what I'm doing right now if I'm going to die tonight? Okay? All right.

Thank you.

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