Серия ежедневной практики, курс 05 — Медитация о смерти и о конце смерти (1999, Роли), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
We'll go through a very brief preliminary, so I'll go through the preliminaries in a very quick way. The Tibetan word for meditation is gompa, and it means to get used to something by doing it over and over again. This meditation will not affect you much unless you do it over and over again.

And if you do it over and over again, then you'll get to chiwa derma, chi den, and a very, very sweet state of mind. I can't describe it enough. I can't really give you the sense of it, but it's like being at a festival or something your whole life.

Benjamin Franklin called it a continual Christmas, and it feels like that. It feels like Christmas every morning. You get up, and your mind is clear, and your life is clear, and no junk.

You know it, and you feel good, and you feel right about it. And there's this joy all day long, exhilaration all day long. It's not what you thought when you saw the advertisement for a death meditation, right?

So it's very exciting. So here we go. Get into proper meditation posture.

If you don't know, then go to Kadampa Center and ask them to teach you. Basically, right leg on top of left leg. If you do a half lotus, which is all I can do.

Get your shoulders straight horizontally. I carry this heavy briefcase, so I want shoulders always like that. Head should be erect like that, straight forward like that, as if you were looking at Viviana.

And then put your eyes down a little. See what I mean? Then you get that neat Buddha look.

So don't put your head down. Don't put your chin down. Just normally, not too high either, but like a soldier.

And then your eyes down like that in contemplation. If it bothers you to see things, then close them. But if you can keep them about halfway open, and just unfocused, that's ideal.

Because then you won't get so sleepy. Then left hand down first on your lap, and right hand on mat, palm on palm. And first watch your breath.

Watching your breath means watching the feel of the breath in the inside of the nose. And try to take rather deep breaths. Try to breathe rather deeply, and then release it in a very relaxed way.

And try to get all the air out. So don't force too much, but take a good deep breath, and then take a good deep breath out. And then we'll do that for a while.

We'll watch. And then stay in there, and I'll be leading you through the preliminaries, and then into your first death meditation. The first step is to take refuge.

Taking refuge, in this case, we can just think of the difference between worldly refuges like money, family, food, and think about the other refuges like being prepared spiritually to die. So compare in your mind worldly refuges, and then spiritual refuges that can help you after you die, or as you die. And we spend just a few breaths thinking about that, and then we move on to the next preliminary.

These preliminaries set your mind up for meditation.

[Speaker 2]
Next preliminary, think about bodhichitta.

[Speaker 1]
Think about someone who needs something physically, mentally ill, or sick, or some other kind of problem, and think about being able to help them.

[Speaker 2]
Someone specific.

[Speaker 1]
Next preliminary, invite a holy being before you to meditate with you. Anyone you consider especially holy. The Dalai Lama, or Jesus, or Lama Tsogpo, or whoever you can imagine, that you feel very close to, and bow down to them mentally, which means to think about their holy qualities, something about them that you can recognize, even at your current level, and think about how holy they are for that, and praise them mentally.

Make some beautiful gift to them, some beautiful offering, something beautiful that you can see, or feel, like a flower, or the ocean, or the side of the moon. If you like, then the holiest offering you can make is something about your practice that you're working hard on, and that's the one that pleases them the most.

[Speaker 2]
Sometimes I make it in the future because I haven't done it yet.

[Speaker 1]
Think about something negative you've done, or said, or thought about someone in the last 24 hours or so, and admit it, and see how wrong it was. Now something positive. Rejoice in something right you've done, something good you've done in the last 24 hours, even if it's small.

Make it specific. Some specific word you said to someone, specific thought you had.

[Speaker 2]
Then ask for teachings, some kind of good teachings.

[Speaker 1]
Teachings can be formal teachings, or something someone teaches you, someone in your family, or someone at work that teaches you about patience, or teaches you about compassion.

[Speaker 2]
But ask to stumble across these teachings.

[Speaker 1]
Last preliminary practice is to think about your Dharma teachers and other kind teachers throughout your life. Also your Dharma friends, the ones who influence you in a good way. And to pray for their long lives and pray that they stay near you.

[Speaker 2]
A lot of what we are is determined by who we stay near. That concludes the preliminaries.

[Speaker 1]
Usually if you need to scratch something or move your leg or something, it's a good place to do it right now.

[Speaker 2]
Then we'll start the actual meditation. When you're by yourself, this is where you can shift a bit. The preliminaries make your mind clean and ready to meditate.

Now we'll start the real meditation. Go back to your breath. We'll be doing what's called a Sargam.

[Speaker 1]
Sargam is a kind of meditation where you review a certain series of steps, a series of thoughts, over and over again, until they become second nature for you. It's very good to connect it to what they call a mnemonic device, or some kind of picture that you can follow and remember where you are. Like if you're memorizing a text in Tibetan and you have trouble, you can connect each chapter to a different part of your hometown.

You go from house to house. It's easier to memorize a long text. They use that in the monasteries.

We're going to connect the death meditation to a picture. We're going to be moving from place to place. Then each time you come to a new place, you'll remember that, oh, that's where I'm supposed to think about that.

Those of you who did the Lam Rim Mandala, we entered from the west side of that place. Now go to the east side. The place we're going is the same.

Imagine that you're in a place where there's a large building, almost like a castle.

[Speaker 2]
It's made of earth, earthen brick.

[Speaker 1]
It stands on almost like a small island. In the center is an open courtyard. Around the place is a moat, like water.

Then on the far side of the moat, on that bank, is empty clearing.

[Speaker 2]
Then forest begins.

[Speaker 1]
This will make it much easier for you to do the meditation. It's a lot more fun, and you can remember it easily. Imagine that you are struggling through the forest.

It's thick forest, very like wild forest, very hard to get through. You're carrying all these things, like a heavy backpack, and a lot of, like those soldiers in Private Ryan, all this junk on them. Imagine like a big canteen, and a sleeping roll, and all these things hanging off you, and heavy.

Then you're trying to get through the woods, and then you break out into the clearing in front of the moat. You're standing there in a clearing, and you're tired, and you're hot, and sweating, and you're dirty, and have all these things hanging from you, and it's heavy, and you're tired. Then there's a bridge crossing the moat into the building, and you're on this side of the bridge, the far side.

Just in front of the bridge at the opening is like a table, tables covered with food and drink. There's a big mass of people milling around, and you're thirsty, and you're hungry, and you're hot, and you're tired, and you have all this junk on you, and you're trying to reach some of the food and the drink, but there's many people, and it's hot, and it's crowded, and you're having to push people out of the way to get to the drink, and you do. You're pushing people out of the way, old people, young people, and you're trying to reach these things.

Think about, while you visualize that, think about living a life of a person who doesn't remember death, who doesn't recall death, and who has no death awareness. They're just grappling after small things, petty things, and hurting other people while they're doing it, and collecting bad karma while they waste their life. That represents the first part of this lam rim, the first meditation, which is on the problems of not remembering your death.

You're just grasping after small, petty things of this life, and hurting other people to get them. So next time you do this meditation, you connect that to the table and the food and the people milling around, and the junk on your back is all the unnecessary possessions, and unnecessary relationships, and unnecessary activities that you're engaged in that don't really make you happy.

[Speaker 2]
They just fill up time.

[Speaker 1]
If you have time, identify the possessions. The backpack is the house mortgage payments that are weighing you down. The canteen is big and bulky, and that's your car.

[Speaker 2]
Connect it to things like that.

[Speaker 1]
The next part of this lam rim is to think about how good it would be to have a good death meditation. Here you're breaking out of the crowd, and you're making your way towards the bridge, like a drawbridge that's going over the moat. You're tired of that scene.

You're tired of living like that. You're breaking out, and it gets thinner and thinner, and then you finally made it to the bridge. That whole bridge is going to be the next step in the meditation.

It's very useful for memorizing where you are. These are the benefits of divesting, the benefits of a good death meditation. Go across the bridge slowly.

Take junk off your back, off your belt, off your chest, and throw it off into the water. It represents getting rid of those unnecessary, those extraneous possessions, extraneous activities, useless things that you work for and spend your time on. Take the New York Times especially and throw it off.

All those things, television, one big albatross around your neck and throw it off, and things like that. Just start throwing them off and feel lighter and lighter as you cross the bridge. Give each object a meaning in your own life.

You are coming to the end of the bridge, and you're light, you're very light now, but still pretty dirty and scratched up from the forest, and still tired. Then you come to the end, and imagine some people with a gauntlet, a few violent guards of the place or something. You're going to have to get through them.

There's some kind of big rough guys with knives or swords or some kind of blades. You start to pick up speed and you burst through them and you get through them. That represents the normal fear of death, which is a lousy death meditation.

That represents the third part of the outline, which is, what is a good death meditation? What would it be to have a good death meditation? First we get through the wrong one, which is to be afraid of death, to fear it in a normal way, in the way of a person who's suddenly faced with a life-threatening situation, and they're reduced to some kind of knee-jerk reactions to save their life.

Afraid, or a person who just found out they have cancer. I went once with a student who was going for an AIDS test and thought they had AIDS. It was very cruel.

They made a mistake on the first try and said, we think you have it, and then come back in half an hour and we'll try again. The second one was clean. But the whole experience of fear and panic, that's not death meditation.

That's the next step in the Lam Rim. The next meditation is to overcome that fear and drive past that fear and not think of death that way. So we break through that kind of negative death meditation.

[Speaker 2]
You break through these people with the knives and they don't touch you.

[Speaker 1]
Then suddenly it's as if you took a bath and you're very clean, and you smell good. Your body is covered with some kind of scent. I like personally an amber scent or a sandalwood scent.

Your body is totally clean and you feel light and strong and happy. You're covered with these light clothes like silk. There's a grassy section in front of the building that we're going to enter a door.

But before that door there's this meadow, beautiful grass, and you're just dancing across, very light, very happy. That represents a good death meditation, the kind of death meditation we want to do, which is really just some kind of unencumbered feeling. Every moment living as if that was your last moment, and feeling free and unencumbered by things you don't need or activities you don't need to be doing, and feeling light and happy and lean and dancing across that meadow.

That represents a good death meditation.

[Speaker 2]
Then you're standing in front of a door.

[Speaker 1]
That will be the beginning of how to do the death meditation. We'll be studying that tomorrow. Now I'll go one more time quickly through what we've been through.

We've been through four steps of death meditation so far. The first one was coming out of the forest, weighed down and struggling with the people at the table and hurting some people on the way. This is what happens to you if you don't think about your death or you don't believe you're going to die tonight.

Then crossing the bridge and getting lighter and lighter was the benefits of doing death meditation and divesting yourself and feeling lighter and lighter as you go and being happy that way. Then the third step was the people with the knives and the meadow together. That's number three.

That's what is a good death meditation. It's not the people with the knives. It's not being afraid of death and worrying about death and being panicked about death.

Rather, it's the meadow. A person with a good death meditation is feeling free and happy and light and joyful and vibrant, feeling that you have, that you're doing the right thing and you're not wasting your time. Every day is like a big Dharma party.

Feeling like that. That's the third part of the death meditation. The knives and the meadow are the third step, which is the right way and the wrong way to do a death meditation or what the goal is, the state of mind.

The state of mind that we're not trying to get and the state of mind we are trying to get. Tomorrow morning or in the afternoon we'll enter the building, which is the actual meditation. It will have nine different steps there inside the building.

[Speaker 2]
Now you see yourself in front of the door of the building.

[Speaker 1]
The building is made of adobe or something like that. It's low and it has a courtyard in the middle. But there are many rooms that you have to go through to get to the courtyard.

You're coming in from the outside. You came over the drawbridge and you came across the meadow. Now you're at the first door and you go into the first door.

[Speaker 2]
The first door is like a yellow color, gold colored, and big. Then when you come inside the first room, it's like cruel inside of an earthen home.

[Speaker 1]
To your right, a chain to the wall with a huge chain. It's like a huge dog about standing to the size of your shoulder, like a five feet high dog. Think of the nastiest German shepherd or pit bull.

In my mind it's a German shepherd from the Nazis or something, but it's big and it's tall. If it got loose, it could certainly tear you into nothing. It's like rabid and it's wild and it's trying to get to you.

That represents the first part of the meditation on the certainty of death. That death is unstoppable. If this dog touches you, if this dog gets away, there's no way you can live.

Look up at it and think about it.

[Speaker 2]
If your karma wears out, nothing can help you.

[Speaker 1]
Then you walk towards the center of the room. To my mind, the room is like circular, not square. You go straight across to the center.

There's a waist-high stand or something. On the stand is an hourglass. You look at it and most of the sand is gone already.

The sand is moving, flying down quickly. This represents the second step or the second justification for meditation that death is certain. You're looking at the time of your life and it's flying by.

Nothing can stop that flow. Even as you look at it, you're losing more time. Get a sense of your life flowing on.

You can't take a rest. You can't stop. It's not like you can sit down and not have another hour go by.

You're losing time as you sit or whether you're eating or whether you're enjoying yourself or not. Get the sense that your time is flying. You can't even slow it down.

You're moving closer to your death.

[Speaker 2]
Think of those things as you look at the hourglass. No rest, no time to stop. Even while you sleep, you're dying.

Then you're entering a long corridor.

[Speaker 1]
I think of it as stone on the sides. You're running down the corridor. On the walls are pictures of the teachers you've had or the Dharma books you've read or different teachings you've been through.

You're running. Like the teaching you had with Lama Zopa one time or the teaching you had with Geshe Tsoga, each teaching, you can see it on the wall like a painting on the wall. You're running and you don't have time to even think much about it.

Then it's gone again. Then you're still running. Then the next teaching is going by.

You don't have time to stop and learn it well or study it or meditate on it. You're running on to the next thing. The thing has gone already.

Imagine some of the teachings you've had and how little time you've had to think about them or study them carefully or meditate on them properly or do a retreat on them. You're just rushing by them. Then they're gone.

Then the next one. Then that's gone. This represents the fact that even while you're alive, you have so little time to study Dharma, so little free time, so little time that you really want to study Dharma.

That's what this corridor represents. This is just an easy way to remember the three parts of the meditation on the certainty of death. Think of some of the specific teachings you've had that you didn't really digest or didn't really internalize because you were rushing on.

[Speaker 2]
At the end of the corridor, there's a green door, a huge green door, rectangular.

[Speaker 1]
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. 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.

[Speaker 2]
You come into a room.

[Speaker 1]
It's triangular. You're at the... It's an elongated triangle.

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.

Right in front of you as you walk in is a garbage can. In the garbage can at the bottom is a big calendar with the number 72 on it in black. 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. 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.

[Speaker 2]
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 to an area.

[Speaker 1]
It's a normal room. It has furniture all around, chairs, carpet, objects like a TV, books. You're walking through them towards the other side of the room.

You're aware that there's a tripwire somewhere. If you touch it, you'll die. The bomb will go off.

The place will explode. You'll die. One of these objects around you, you're looking 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. The cord frayed and the couch went up.

The house exploded within a few minutes. Everything made of plastics. A blanket could very easily kill you.

A chair could kill you. Look at the chair and think, would that kill me? Is the bomb there?

How many people died slipping off a chair? Look at each object like that and think that they could kill you. Put food on the table and that something in there could kill you.

Walk through the room realizing that all the things that you need to keep you alive, one of them will probably kill you. As you're walking, there's a door at the base of the chayimu, in the middle. As you get down to it, you start to approach the door.

You step on a thorn. You lean down and you take it out of your foot. There's a little tiny spot of blood that comes out.

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.

Then it got worse and worse. This happened in our monastery also to a boy, a young boy in the fields. He died from that.

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

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.

[Speaker 2]
Think about it. Then you look up and there's a red door leading into another room.

[Speaker 1]
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.

You can see on the other side, there are things outside the glass. It's like a little tunnel or something. You can stand up and it's pretty tall.

The room is well lit. It's like a greenhouse. There's sunlight coming in from the outside.

You can clearly see the things outside of the little glass walls of the hallway you're walking down. Then there's more glass on the outside walls. Then in between the two, you can see certain things.

The first thing you see on both sides, walking down the hallway, is our friends that you have, people that you love.

[Speaker 2]
Put there the three or four people who are closest to you.

[Speaker 1]
They're talking to each other, and they're laughing and having conversations, and they cannot see you. You're knocking on the glass and trying to get their attention, and banging on the glass, and they can't even see you. 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. This represents the Bardo and the fact that you can't take those people with you. The moment after you die, you'll 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.

[Speaker 2]
Reflect on that.

[Speaker 1]
Then as you move 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. For me, it's, of course, my laptop, and maybe cars 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. You're walking down the hallway, and the glass is between you and them.

You cannot reach them. 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. 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 has 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.

This is the stage in the meditation when 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. Then you have in front of you a white door, the same size as the other, big, set in like a solid wall, and this represents the decision that you'll have to make after this meditation, three decisions to be made.

Look at the door and remember, it means three decisions you will make. You open the door, and you're in a very small, round room that's a turret, and there's like a tower going up, and there's like slits for windows, and there's sunlight coming down into the room, into the center, but you're not in the sunlight yet. And then to your left, this time to your left, leaning against the wall is a long staff of wood, very strong wood.

[Speaker 2]
The staff is even a little higher than your body, but it fits your hand well, and it looks familiar.

[Speaker 1]
And you take it with your left hand, and taking it represents the first decision, which is, if it's sure that I'm going to die, then I'm deciding to start my practice. My decision is to start my practice.

[Speaker 2]
That's taking up the staff in your left hand.

[Speaker 1]
And then you take one step forward towards the circle of sunlight, but you're not in it yet, and you slam the bottom of the staff down on the ground, and you hear this sharp noise, and that represents the second decision, which is to do it now.

[Speaker 2]
Start your practice now, today. Start the process of thinking and acting as if you were going to die tonight.

[Speaker 1]
And that's a response to the second room, the second division, which is that you don't know when you're going to die, so you have to start now. When you hear this sharp rap of the stick on the floor, then remember that you have to start now. And that's a response to not knowing when you will die.

Each time, by the way, you're stepping forward with your left foot. Then you step forward again with your left foot, and you're in the sunlight. And you take the stick up, the staff, and hold it in front of you up high, like with some kind of power.

And that represents that, given the fact that nothing else can help you when you die, this is what you will do, this one practice. Decided to concentrate on one thing, and that's your spiritual life. And holding the staff up high and looking up to the sun represents this is the one thing I will do now with my life.

I will practice. I will do the holiest practices I can find. And I'll cut down, I'll cut away all the useless things I do.

And I'll even start to cut away the practices I do which are not as powerful and not as likely to get me enlightened quickly. Even those people who decided to do Dharma have to continually move up the ladder of practices and try to go ahead as strong and as quickly as you can, because you have the responsibility to others. So you hold it up high and decide to concentrate on your practice, only your practice, and only the practices that are the most powerful you can do at that time.

Then you look to the right and there's a door, sort of a royal blue, not too dark, not too light, but a strong blue color. And you turn your head towards the right, but not your body.

[Speaker 2]
And then you bring the staff down in your right arm and point towards the door.

[Speaker 1]
And you go to the door and you look at it and you reflect that this is going to represent the practice of exchanging myself and others.

[Speaker 2]
I almost like to call it redefining myself and others.

[Speaker 1]
You go to the door and the first room... These are much larger rooms and in the middle of the first room is a big table and there's a person sitting there on the other side and there's one of those checkered tablecloths. And it's all laid out for eating something.

And there's a stand next to the table on your side and on top of the stand is a nice plate of food and a cup of something to drink. And then you approach the table and you sit down opposite them and they're looking at you. And you pull your magnifying glass out of your pocket and you lean over the table and you look at them through the magnifying glass at their eyes.

[Speaker 2]
And then they're glancing over at the food in their cup and there's dessert there, of course.

[Speaker 1]
And then you realize that's what they want. And then first you give them the plate of food and that represents fulfilling other people's physical needs, what they want, physical desires, which are legal and moral.

[Speaker 2]
Then you hand them the glass, which is fulfilling their emotional needs, anticipating and fulfilling what they need emotionally.

[Speaker 1]
And then finally you fulfill their spiritual desires, which is dessert, and you hand them dessert. And this is like giving them sweet teachings on Dharma or getting them interested in a book or something basic. It doesn't have to be a Dharma book.

Maybe they have to start with a movie that has an uplifting moral to it or something like that. A song that has some good lyrics to it. It doesn't always have to be blatant Dharma.

[Speaker 2]
These rooms are like large ovals and you're actually working around the courtyard but you're still inside the building. And then the next room you come to is another large oval room and it's a very similar person sitting across the table. Same things there.

And this time you go around to their side of the table and ask them to sit on your side and you sit on their side. Musical chairs.

[Speaker 1]
And then they reach for the food themselves and the drink themselves and the dessert themselves. Don't forget this represents putting yourself in their mind. The first one, in the first room, you're still maintaining the distinction of you and them and you're watching them from another side of the table.

And you're seeing what they want and you're supplying it, anticipating it and supplying it. And then in the second room, you're actually putting yourself inside of them mentally and trying to think like them, trying to understand what they like, but from a much more intimate viewpoint, that you're actually inside of them. But you're still maintaining the distinction between you and them.

[Speaker 2]
It's you in their body.

[Speaker 1]
And this is in practical terms, instead of just observing them and giving them what they seem to like, it's really trying to understand their lives, their background, their preferences, where they're coming from, and trying to think like them to try to figure out what it is they really need. And when it comes to the dessert, it'll be much more profound because you'll be much better able to give them what they need spiritually. Then enter the third large oval room.

By this time you've worked around all the way opposite to the turret room, so now you're in the exact western part of the building.

[Speaker 2]
You still haven't reached the courtyard. You're traveling around parallel to the edge of the courtyard inside the building.

[Speaker 1]
And there's a little cafe table, those little round ones, and there's two seats facing each other. Again, there's a person on the other seat, and there's this big nice cake in the middle. And the first thing you do in the room is you have this little ball of string in your pocket.

It's a red string. And the first thing you do when you get in is you take the string and pull out some of the string, and you walk around to the left of the table, like counterclockwise around the table, and you're laying the string out on the ground and making a circle that includes both chairs.

[Speaker 2]
So it's a big circle of string on the floor that encompasses the whole table and the chairs.

[Speaker 1]
And then you come back and finish it, and you stoop down and tie it. And that represents breaking down the distinction between you and other people.

[Speaker 2]
Now you and me is me. Then the guy says, why didn't you put the string between us on the table?

[Speaker 1]
You said, well, you know, it really is just arbitrary. Let's put it around both of us. And it doesn't wreck the cake that way anyway.

Then you sit down and you lean over the cake, and you tap on their forehead, and they tap on your forehead with their finger, first finger of your... make it third finger of your left hand. And just tapping on their forehead like three times.

This represents the meditation on the common enemy. It won't really help just to remove the mental afflictions from your own mind. We've got to work on them, all of them, in everybody's mind.

It doesn't matter where they're parked right now. If you allow the people around you to have mental afflictions, if you encourage mental affliction in the people around you, sooner or later it will hurt everybody. So it represents helping each other against the common enemy.

And the last thing in that room is that you take one fork, and you both hold it, and you take a big piece of cake out with the fork, and you both eat it off the fork at the same time. And that represents that it's incomplete to just work for what you want, and your own happiness. It's not really very satisfying to be happy when everybody around you is miserable, and that we're working for a common goal, that everybody's equal in wanting to be happy and not wanting to be unhappy.

[Speaker 2]
So it represents that really everybody's the same. When you get up, you walk around the table, and you go to the next door, just like a silver door, and you open it, and there's a strange room, hexagonal, six-sided.

[Speaker 1]
In the middle is a big incense burner, like a big pot, and the smoke is coming out of it, this really beautiful, lovely smoke. And this represents bodhichitta. I think when Americans hear the word bodhichitta, they think of some kind of ultimate love, or someone who really loves everybody, or something like that.

It's really something much more specific, which is that I will try as hard as I can to become an angel, a tantric deity myself, so that I can really be of service to others. I can really help other people. And I'll try to be the one happy person in the world, truly happy person in the world.

I'll try to mold myself into a happy person, ultimately happy person, so that I can have the best influence on others and lead them to that. But the idea is you must do it yourself first. And that's real bodhichitta.

When you look at the incense and the smoke coming out of it that's permeating the room, the sweet smell, it's bodhichitta. And it's the idea that I will myself stop my own death and my own aging, and I'll stop all the unhappiness in my mind. And then I'll be able to teach other people.

Imagine the influence of a person who has done that.

[Speaker 2]
Then bring your mind back to the lama in your heart and enjoy them for a while.

[Speaker 1]
Then there's some light, diffusing, liquid light, warm, beautiful, golden, spreading throughout your blood veins, throughout your body.

[Speaker 2]
And then bursting out of the pores of your skin like needles of light, great needles of light. And I'll dedicate the whole karma of this whole class that we've had.

[Speaker 1]
Very unusual karma for a good-sized group of people to get together and talk about death all day for three days or something. And in the end to come out with some kind of feeling of love and breaking down the borders between myself and others. To reach that state of mind by thinking about corpses and stuff, some kind of huge, big karma.

Very unusual. I don't think there's been another discussion like this in Raleigh today. And think about it.

Think about the good karma of it, the rarity of it. The light bursts out of the pores of your body and touches people around this city.

[Speaker 2]
And then suddenly they feel happy and they don't know really why. And then relax.