Серия ежедневной практики, курс 06 — Четыре силы для устранения негативной кармы (1999, Институт Ваджрапани, Калифорния), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
The Asian Classics Institute presents The Four Powers How to Get Rid of Your Old Bad Karma with Geshe Michael Roach Recorded live at Vajrapani in California Session One I'd like to meditate for a few minutes first, okay?

[Speaker 1]
Maybe a four or five minute meditation, okay? Shh, shh. I think we'll do a mandala.

[Speaker 2]
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[Speaker 1]
shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh

[Speaker 2]
shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh

[Speaker 1]
Sange. Sange. Sange.

Sange. Sange. Sange.

Sange. Okay. We're a little spaced out.

We got a few hours sleep. The plane was messed up last night. We just got here and spent the night in Phoenix.

They said we could sleep on the floor in the airport or go to their expensive motel so we did that. But anyway, we're here, and before that it was a really amazing Kalachakra initiation, and before that it was a really amazing talk by Lama Tsongkhapa in New York, this fantastic thing happened, and before that it was amazing teaching at Central Park, 40,000 people, and before that, Beacon Theater, amazing teaching, and like that, so it's been kind of a stressful week, you know. Then, this class, we were talking about doing a class on the four powers, how to purify your old bad karma, and we were joking in the car that we'd come to a conclusion that personally, after 25 years of trying to stop my mental afflictions, I decided to give up, and just let them run wild, you know, it seems to be impossible, so just get angry, jealous, everything, stop trying to control it, and then get really good at purification, you see, I think it's easier, you know, so this class is about purification, it just seems more practical, you know, than trying to fight 84,000 mental afflictions, because there's only four powers to remember, and so we're going to do purification, okay, and by the way, it's not that easy, okay, I don't want to leave you with that impression in case somebody dies before tomorrow, they say you can remove bad deeds completely, you can remove the bad karma completely, but it retards your progress spiritually, you see what I mean, you can't just collect bad karma and purify it, because although it's true that you can wipe out the old bad karma, it retards your progress in the future a lot by having done it and cleaned it, you see what I mean, so it's better to clean it than leave it non-unclean, but it's better not to have done it in the first place, so really you do have to fight your mental afflictions also, but this weekend is about how to get rid of your old bad karma, I figure if you take care of your new karma, you know, if you only collect good karma from now on, which you know how to do, and then you clean out your old pockets of bad karma that you don't even remember, I mean it was done by some schmuck, you know, 50 lifetimes ago, you know, you don't remember those things, and you can't, so you don't know what's in your pocket, there's lots of stories in sutra, King Udayana, he reaches arya, he reaches arhat, and then his son goes and kills him, and he can't do anything about it, because he's got this old little karma that he didn't know about, you know what I mean, so you have all these karmas from before that you have no idea what's there, it doesn't matter how good you are now, you know what I mean, they could trigger any moment and cause you a lot of trouble, so we're going to talk about ways to remove bad karma that you know about, and remove bad karma that you don't know about, and I think the first thing to say is, there's a discussion in the sutras, is this for real, or did the Tibetan lamas make it up, okay, because if you read some of the Hinayana lower way sutras, it says, forget it, you can't purify karma, you know, there's karmas that are called nyong-e, say nyong-e, I like to write the Tibetan off on the board, it impresses you, also it gives you a feeling that it's authentic, okay, if you don't know it, but if you want to try it, I think it's good. There's this one nun who 10 years ago said she would never learn Tibetan, and now she, there she is, now she can read almost anything, okay, she swore she would never do it, okay, so you never know. Say nyong-e.

Nyong-e.

[Speaker 2]
Nyong-e.

[Speaker 1]
Nyong-e means, nyong means experience something bad in the future, okay, like go to a lower realm or, you know, have a bald spot or something like that. Ne means definite, okay, so nyong-e means definite you're going to get an experience, okay, and this is a phrase that's used to describe really heavy bad karmas, like killing your father, killing your mother, trying to hurt a Buddha, okay, things like that, those are called nyong-e, Nyong-e means the kind of karma that's so heavy that you must experience the result, okay, there's no way that you're going to get out of it, okay, and the Hinayana, the lower schools, particularly the Abhidharma schools, they say that those kinds of karma you can sap, say sap, sap means you can make them less, sap is the Tibetan word for erase, or to make something a little bit less, you see what I mean, but you can't get rid of them, you see what I mean, they say you can work on them, and you can kind of reduce their power, but you can't get rid of them, okay, like those very heavy bad deeds, you can't get rid of them, that's what the lower schools say, okay, higher schools, Majjhimika Prasangika, that school of Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna, the school of the Dalamas, the school of Lama Yeshe and Lama Serpa, okay, the higher school, they say you can, okay, you can remove this kind of karma, even this kind of karma, much less those lesser kinds of karma, which even the lower schools say you can erase, okay, those are called the nyong mang e, say nyong mang e, that means not definite that you have to experience, so every school, that's like, you know, making like a sort of a bad joke about some, one of your fellow students or something, okay, like that's not going to be such a heavy karma that you can't erase it according to any school, every school says that's an indefinite karma, but to tell a big lie, like a lie about your spiritual life or something like that, that in the lower schools would be nyong mang e, which means you must experience a bad result, the karma cannot be removed from your mind, okay, it can only be like lessened a bit, and that's all, okay, now the higher schools say, okay, you can get rid of any bad karma, it doesn't matter, they have examples of people who killed their father who was also an Arhat and things like that, okay, and they say you can get rid of it, the lower schools say you can't do that, so we have to decide whether who's right and can they prove it, you know, and then can we do it, you see what I mean, so I want to, the first reading you're going to get today is the original sutra in which the Buddha taught you can erase any bad karma, okay, you can get rid of any bad karma, and that sutra has a name, say chu shi, den pe, do, chu shi, den pe, do, chu here means practice, shi means four practices, okay, four practices, den pa means teaches, or the instructions, and do means the sutra, so it's called, the name of the sutra is the sutra on the instructions of the four practices, okay, the instructions on the four practices, so to get rid of any old bad karma, four things you have to do, okay, and I'm not teaching this class for intellectual reasons, or you know, just for fun or anything like that, I really want you to think about the bad karmas you've done even in this life, I mean, I have been involved in killing people, you know what I mean, and things like that, before I became a Buddhist, you know, so I have them too, and I'm intensely interested in whether this thing works or not, so I want you to consider this class like a very practical thing, like something that you are going to actually try to do yourself, because you have karmas in your mind stream, they are very powerful, we are going to talk about later today, later in this class, how they multiply in your mind stream, okay, Pabongka Rinpoche has a few paragraphs about the process called le pel che wa means how karma increases, basically it doubles every 24 hours, then he's got this number, hey look, in 15 days, the karma of killing one fly is 16,000 times as strong as it was when you did it, if you don't purify it, you see what I mean, and then he says, you might as well just kill a person and get it over with, you see what I mean, he says the same thing, it's the same energy, you see what I mean, and that's true, and you have all this karma in your mind, and it increases, its quality of karma is to increase after the day you do it, every 24 hours, doubling, okay, we thought his arithmetic was off, we figured it out in the car on the way up here, because Tibetans can never add or multiply, but he could, and it's 16,532 or something like that, on the 16th day, that karma has multiplied to that much power, and if that's the case, then you and I have trouble, and it'd be very interesting to know how to eliminate the old bad karma in your mind, and my experience is that as you start this process, and as one by one you identify and pick off your old bad karmas, you start to feel better immediately, like these karmas are weighing you down, these karmas are going off in your mind as we speak, that's why you can't see me as the Dalai Lama or something like that, okay, you're bad karma, okay, they're weighing you down, they're making you see all the crap in your life, according to Tantra, they're choking your channels, they're responsible for every wrinkle you get, they're responsible for you losing the vitality of your youth, okay, they're responsible for the aging process itself, and if you could learn to eliminate even 1% of them, you would feel totally different, your body would feel much lighter, you'd be much healthier all the time, your mind would be happy all the time, you see what I mean, if you could just figure out how to get rid of a tiny percentage of those bad karmas, they weigh you down all day long, they are going off as we speak, and they're making you see life crappy, you know what I mean, that's their function, and samsara is created by these karmas, the fact that you have to get old and die is created by those seeds in your mind, if you could eliminate 5% of them, by learning how to do a good purification, which is the point, that's why we're here, then you would immediately start to feel different, even if you didn't do any new good karma, you see what I mean, like you can either, Franklin said, a penny saved is a penny made, you see what I mean, like, okay, so we're too dumb to collect new good karma, but you could just do this practice to get rid of a little bit of your old bad karma that's been weighing you down your whole life, and you'd immediately start to feel different, according to Tantra, the actual channels in your body would start flowing better, and you would actually get younger, you know, like whatever problems you have physically would just start to go away, you know what I mean, and the end of that process is that you become a tantric daddy, so this becomes a very, this is a real thing, this is a very real practice, okay, by the way, there's an associated practice that was taught in many tantras and many sutras, and most recently there's a great text by Keduje, one of Je Tsongkapa's students, about how to do a little fire offering, and think about the four powers, and I'd like to do that tonight, I think night time is a good time for that, and there's this cool thing where somebody here, Maya, where is she? She's hiding there. She's organized a group of people who have made you little kids, okay, so this is a little fire that you do, there's a special can, and you put it on a special tile so you don't burn your house down, and you put in some ghee, melted butter, and you start a fire, and you put all the bad deeds into these special seeds, and then you throw them in, and you write down the thing on a piece of paper, and you throw that in, and you just sit there, it's kind of cool, the fire burns, and you sit there and you look at it, and you go over the four powers in your mind, okay?

It's a good excuse to do the four powers. So I figured if you actually had the can, and the matches, and everything, you'd be forced to try it. So Maya went out and did it.

We're trying to find a sponsor to pay for it, it's like $10 each, okay? If we can't, I'm going to hit you up for it. Because she doesn't have any money, and I don't have any money.

But we're going to see if someone... We asked somebody to sponsor it, I don't know if they're going to do it, but I'll let you know by tomorrow, of course. But we're going to try that tonight.

And that's an actual meditation that you do in your own home, you put this little fire in a can, you start it, and you meditate on the four powers. And it's a very, very beautiful system. I have students who do it every day.

I have students who do it more than once a day. And it's not stupid. Lord Atisha, who brought Buddhism to Tibet, he used to carry a similar thing around with him on a horse, when he was going anywhere.

And every time he had a bad thought, he'd stop his whole entourage. And he'd say, I've got to confess something. And he would get off the horse, and he would put this stupid thing down.

If you ever see a picture of him, he's always got this thing in his arm, because he took it everywhere. And he sat there, and he did the four powers. And you should get in the same habit.

Not at work, you can't start the fire. But something like that. You've got to get in that habit.

So I'm talking practical. You've got to be in the mode, while I'm up here spieling, you've got to be remembering all the worst karmas you can remember about this life. Bring them back in your mind.

Go over them again. Think about them. Start getting ready to destroy them.

Because this class doesn't mean anything if you don't do the four powers. I think if you get this little kit, and you actually do it once or twice, you'll get in the habit of it. If you do good purification, if you learn to do it, and you get good at it, you'll see changes in your body, and changes in your life.

Changes in lots of things. And then you won't need me to advertise it to you. So I'm figuring if I give you the kit, you'll try it once or twice, just out of curiosity.

And then you'll be able to do it. It's a lot more fun than trying to sit there and meditate, and not fall asleep, and think about the four powers. It's a lot more fun to start a fire and watch it.

For those of us who burned our parents' homes down when we were kids, it's actually a lot of fun. So you can sit there and try it. I think night time is a good time to try it.

So I'm going to ask Elizabeth, where are you, to demonstrate it. We did it in Mongolia on national TV. They were up there showing people how to do it.

Half a million people watching how to do it. So I think they have some experience, these guys. So that's the original...

What I want to say is, this is not made up by Tibetan lamas. There's this rumor that Tibetan lamas made this practice up. It's not.

Lord Buddha taught it. This is the sutra where Lord Buddha explained it the first time. And we went and found the sutra.

And one of these ladies typed the whole sutra in in Tibetan, and then we translated it. So you're going to get that whole reading. Now that was done last night at 2 o'clock, and we won't have it for you until tomorrow morning.

I mean tomorrow's class, because it's going to go to Kinko's tonight. But the whole sutra is finished, and you can read it and enjoy it. We put in there also a sutra...

There's a selection from the Diamond Cutter Sutra. For those of you who remember the class... That was like the highest time I ever had in my life, I think.

We tried to repeat it, but it didn't happen. By the way, thank you Vajrapani for that. That was very beautiful.

Anyway, there's a section from there. I don't know if you remember. It says, whosoever reads this sutra, whosoever memorizes it, whosoever teaches it to another, whosoever figures out its meaning, you can expect to suffer.

And then it says intensely, karma, suffer intensely. I remember the day we started that sutra here. One person got in a car accident, and another person dropped a big log on their toe.

Somebody else from California, I don't remember who it was, their car started burning up when they got to that point. They were playing the tape on the... And then they sent me this note, it said, you know, car burned up, please send new tape.

Anyway, that's a sutra, that's another sutra, the Diamond Cutter Sutra, very, very famous, maybe one of the most famous sutras of all time. Lord Buddha says, look, the good karma of studying emptiness will wipe out all these bad karmas that were going to take you to a hell realm, and you'll have a little disaster in this week, okay? Like, you know, you'll drop a log on your foot or something.

But it's better than going to a hell realm, okay? And that's not chong dun, which means what? It's not figurative, it's nge dun.

It's literal, okay? Lord Buddha's not being nice. He's saying it the way it is.

He's saying, you can wipe out your old karma. And by doing certain extraordinary virtues, you can wipe them out, and then they wipe them as some stupid little thing that you don't have to worry about, okay? Now, how does that work exactly?

I had lots of people come up to me and say, I had a disaster last week. Does that mean I'm getting better? Listen, how can you tell a disaster that's coming from getting better than just a plain old disaster, you know?

And then I got into that question, and we went to the computer. We have like 150,000 pages in the computer now. And the last class, which means tomorrow afternoon, will be from the sutras, this beautiful discussion of how this process works.

Because Americans want to know how it works, you know? Tibetans say, okay, if you say, stick this book on your head and say Amitabha's name, and you'll never go to a lower realm, and then you have a car accident, you know? And you're like, wait a minute.

You know, and Americans want to know how it works. So we collected it all from all these different, from the 6th century up to now, there have been like 10 explanations of how it works. And so we took a little bit from each author, and so you're going to hear from the Panchen Lama, you're going to hear from some early Indians, you're going to hear from Pabongka Rinpoche, and all between there, how does this stuff work?

You see what I mean? Because then I think you'll be more likely to try. If you understand exactly the process, how is it that these four powers can destroy your old bad karma?

You know, how does that work exactly? So we're going to go through today, what is it, the first two powers, and then tomorrow, no, three. And then tomorrow we'll do this fourth power, and then we'll do, in the last class tomorrow afternoon, we'll do a discussion of how this stuff works.

Like, what are the arguments for why this thing should work, and remove my old bad karma? I think tomorrow evening we'll have a question and answer for people who don't have to get home. And if you have to get home, then my idea is you could leave after the afternoon class.

So then, if you have a long drive ahead of you, or something like that, okay? So this is the first scripture where you can see the four powers. Then you've got the Diamond Cutter Sutra that says this stuff really works.

And then you have a commentary, a very rare commentary we found in Russia, which is the only Tibetan commentary, native Tibetan commentary on the Diamond Cutter. And in there it explains other sutras that talk about, there's one called King of Samadhi Sutra, King of Concentration Sutra, and in there it says, you may have committed a karma that would take you to a lower realm. But if you do this purification well, you'll just get a headache.

You'll just have a headache. And it's there. It says that.

And those are beautiful references from sutras. So it'd be nice to know how to do it, right? It'd be better to have a lot of headaches than have a lot of car accidents, or get old, and stuff like that.

So we're going to go through some of those sources and explain why this thing is for real, and then explain how it works. And then you have to, in the meantime, today and tomorrow, you've got to be mentally reviewing the worst events of your life, karmically. Okay?

You have to be mentally thinking about... I mean, the most common are like an abortion, or being involved in an abortion, before you knew that beings are alive at conception. You know, things you might have done against lamas before you knew any better.

Things like that. Things you did against your parents are very powerful. Whether you liked them or not, whether they were nice to you or not, those karmas are very powerful.

So, you know, any kind of murder, any kind of actions like that, you have to go over them in your mind. Think about things you might have done. And then you have to get them ready for tonight.

Okay? This thing is, you write them down on a piece of paper, and then you throw them in the fire, and then you meditate on the four powers. Okay?

In this sutra, they say you can even get rid of chasing sattva. So, say, cheshing sakpa.

[Speaker 2]
cheshing sakpa.

[Speaker 1]
The original sutra, the sutra on the four instructions, sorry, the four practices, okay, the instructions on the four practices, it says this stuff even works for cheshing sakpe karma. Okay? cheshing sakpa means, che means committed, shing means and, sakpa means collected.

Okay? Karma which is committed and collected. All right?

And then there's this big argument throughout history. What did he mean when he said committed and collected? Okay?

And then there's a commentary by Gyaltsabje, which was Jatakapa's principal student, disciple. And he's writing a commentary to Master Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, which by the way is a beautiful source for the four powers. Okay?

What I chose to do this weekend was to give you something new on the four powers that I haven't done before in the classes. But you can go back to course 10. And the fourth and fifth classes, I mean a lot, there's like 100 pages on the four powers.

So, we're going to repeat a lot of that, but if you've done that course, you've heard a lot of this. Anyway, Master Shantideva and the commentator Gyaltsabje says, what did the Buddha mean when he said you can even get rid of karma which is done and collected? He's talking about nyong-e.

What's nyong-e? Definite karma. Karma that you must experience.

Karma that, if you don't do a purification, you must experience some really terrible result. Okay? We're not talking wimpy karmas here.

We're talking very powerful karmas. Cheshing Sapa, committed and collected, is referring to that idea nyong-e. Nyong-e means karma that must give you a very bad result.

Okay? That if you leave it unattended, if you don't try to do the Four Powers, if you don't try to treat it, then it's going to give you a very, very bad result. Like normally a hell realm rebirth or something like that.

How does a hell realm rebirth go? Like, before I studied Buddhism, the hells were some kind of mythological thing, and that's where you went if you stole your mom's cookies, and that's what they told you, right? And stuff like that.

It was just this imaginary thing. And it's supposed to be... In high school we studied Dante, and it's somewhere down there, and it's 14 levels, and 46 places, and all this stuff.

And it just was a myth, you know. We read it along with Shakespeare and Milton as myths, you know. You have to understand in Buddhism how it really works.

Karma... You hurt some other being. Your mind records the event.

The event stays in the subconscious like an imprint, okay? And then those imprints are always, after some kind of maturation period, they are rising up to your conscious mind. And they color how you see the world.

So you have imprints in your subconscious that you place there when you did something to somebody else. Then as you go through life, they start to recycle back up to the conscious mind, and they actually color how you perceive reality. Like, something you do this week can color how you see reality six months from now.

Now is that something just like some kind of... What do you call it? Mood thing.

They make you be in a good mood, or they make you be in a bad mood, or something like that. No, I'm saying more powerful than that. They make a car accident out of two cars passing each other.

You see what I mean? They make those two cars hit each other, rather than just pass each other. They make you get the virus that someone else doesn't get.

They make you get the cancer that somebody else doesn't get. These are coloring your reality in a very powerful way. They are creating your reality.

They're not just making you feel good or bad about this stupa. They're making it appear to you in the first place. You've got to think of it like that.

There are seeds in your subconscious that rise up to what we call your six consciousnesses. Your five sense perceptions and your thoughts. They rise up to that, and then they're standing between you and that reality, and they make you see something.

And they make you see things the way you see them. And you can't get away from them. You must experience them.

They create your reality. They create your world. If you know how that works, then constantly, every detail of your life, whether you have a freckle or not right here, is determined by this seed that comes up and ripens in your mind and makes you see that.

Out of what? What was really there? A red circle.

But it wasn't a freckle yet. Get used to that. You can't think of it as a freckle until this karma comes up in your mind and tells you, hey, interpret that as a freckle.

Got it? Otherwise you'd just be walking around seeing colors and shapes. That's the emptiness of colors and shapes.

If you didn't have karmas coming up in your mind, forcing you to organize information, you'd be going around like a kid, like a one or two year old, and you'd just be perceiving things in a very primitive way. Their karmas are still not yet ripening and making them see things in a certain way. Now your karmas are ripening and they're forcing you to organize information a certain way.

What's the way that thing was in the first place? Before your karma started bossing you around. What's this?

A cylinder. It's a black or white cylinder. Then your karma from the past ripens in the subconscious, comes up to the conscious mind and says, hey, let's call it a pen.

Is it suggesting or is it dictating? Dictating. You don't have a choice.

If you're a dog, you start to slobber. Something to chew on. We can test it.

And then a human is being forced to see it as a pen. And a dog is being forced to see it as a... What is it by itself?

It's just a cylinder. It's a blank cylinder. That blank is tombanyi shunyata.

That's emptiness. It's just a blank screen. What you see is coming from you.

Otherwise the dog would stand up here and write something. Or I'd be going... It's not coming from the cylinder.

What you see is not coming from the object's side. It's coming from your side. Otherwise the dog would be interested in writing or we'd be interested in chewing.

Seriously. You've got to get used to that. Karma is coming up in your conscious mind and forcing you to interpret this cylinder in a certain way.

Okay? And get this. This is hard.

That's what a dog is. Okay? To be a dog is to see things as a dog sees things.

And then you is a dog. You've got to get used to that. Forget this dog rebirth crap.

You know, forget this thing that there's a factory out in Kansas. I think it's in Kansas. We were circling Kansas.

And they make dog bodies. And then there's these spirits running around in the Bardo after they died. And then Mr. Karma catches them and zips open the dog's body and pushes the spirit in there and closes it. And then they run around like a dog. Don't think the dog is like this pre-created body. And then the spirit gets shoved into it.

When you hear rebirth, that's what you think, right? Deep down inside, that's what you think. Somebody's manufacturing dog bodies and I might get pushed into one of them by Freddy or something if I'm not careful.

That's how you think of rebirth. Forget it. Don't think like that.

The minute your karma shifts one degree and you start seeing this as something to chew on, you are a dog. That's what makes you a dog. Then you are a dog.

And the difference between our perception being forced on us at this moment and that perception being forced on you is five minutes. Everyone here is eligible to see it that way. In fact, it takes a few seconds to shift from one to the other.

And then you are a dog. And then you look down at the same empty cylinders and see paws instead of hands. That's the emptiness of your body.

Your body is just four sticks and a round thing. Really. If you think about it, and then your mind is being forced to interpret it as a human body.

And the same mind can see it as a dog body. No problem. If you let those lousy old bad karmas stir in your mind, you're eligible.

You see what I mean? You've got to go on a search and destroy mission. You have to go purposely, consciously, go after all the seeds in your mind that would make you see this thing as something to chew on.

Because that's how easy it is to get reborn as a dog. There is a rebirth as a dog. It happens to people.

It happens to nice, normal people. Because they didn't clean it out. And they didn't know how.

I think this is a very revolutionary weekend. I really think that. Because you'll spread it to other people.

You see what I mean? If you really get it, and you understand the mechanics of it, then you'll be happy. You'll be willing to spread it to other people.

You'll say, look, I understand how this karma stuff works. And I understand how to wipe out karmic seeds. And they really could make you see things as a dog.

And then you really would be a dog. Or you can forget the dog. I don't care.

What about old age and death? You see what I mean? For me, that's very interesting.

As I get older, right? And the condition of your body is also a coloring of your perceptions by your old karmas. You see what I mean?

If you could go after them and wipe a few out, very selectively, you'd start to see yourself as a tantric deity. And that's the whole point of Buddhism. That's the whole goal of Buddhism.

His wholeness finally came out of the closet in the cloud chakra. He's like, hey, this is what we're going to do. You've got to do this and this and this.

And I'm like... He's like 5,000 people in Indiana. And he's talking about these subtle channels and what we're going to do with them and how to do it.

And I couldn't believe it. It's wonderful. But anyway, that's the bottom line.

You've got to pull this off in this lifetime. You have to do it. And half the task is collecting new good karma.

We already did that in courses here. And half the task is wiping out the old bad karmas that are stopping you. They're preventing you.

And they're making you older. They're responsible for the aging process. It's amazing.

If you could wipe them out, something very interesting would happen. What's that mean? Go to blissfully.

Meaning, it's also the most fun thing you can do in your whole life. It's to be good to other people. You know what I mean?

The thing that's created the bad karmas in your mind stream is all the crap you've done to other people. And if you just stop it and be good to other people and then get rid of your old bad karmas, you would end up a tantric deity and you'd have the most fun that a person can ever have doing it. So why not?

You see what I mean? The mental afflictions are just causing you problems. They're just making you unhappy.

What have you got to lose? Except all this jealousy and desire and hatred and pride and things like that. What have you got to lose?

Even if all this kind of stuff is made up by a bunch of Buddhas, all you end up being is a very happy person. So do it. By the way, the process of purification involves a lot of making good new karma too.

So we're going to cover both. You see what I mean? And then you're just happy all the time.

And then, incidentally, you get to have a tantric deity's body. And that's cool. Let's take a break there.

I like to take a break in the middle. It makes people more fresh. And then when you get back, I'll actually list the four powers and we'll talk a few more details about the general stuff.

Then we'll break for dinner, I think. Or not. I don't know.

One more session. One more session. Maybe a snack, I guess.

And then in the first session, after this, we'll do the first two powers. So take a break now. Take a 10-minute break and please come back pretty soon.

I'd like to just list the four powers and then we'll be doing more detail on them later. But I thought you should just get down the general structure of the four powers. One of the texts we're going to use a lot is called the Tenrim Chemmo.

Say Tenrim.

[Speaker 2]
Chemmo.

[Speaker 1]
This is a book that was written about a thousand years ago by a lama named Geshe Drolungpa. He was a Kadampa Geshe. Kadampas were the early Buddhists of Tibet.

They were like you guys. You are the Kadampas of America. They were the first generation of Buddhists in Tibet.

So they were very interesting people. They weren't born Buddhists. They became Buddhists because they thought it was cool.

And they were very interesting. They loved meditating. They got very excited about teachings.

Like, you know, two or three guys would get together and go down to India and get the teaching on the four powers and come back to Tibet and start teaching it to other people. And that's how Tibetan Buddhism started. Geshe Drolungpa was a very famous one.

His teacher was named Lok London Sherab. He was the great translator from Sanskrit. We think that his teacher might have written the original Tenrim Chemmo and then he wrote a commentary on it.

We don't know exactly. But we found this thousand page text which is the greatest Kadampa work ever written. It was lost until about a couple of years ago.

And in Je Tsongkapa's time he found it. And we have a painting of him finding it. And he was all excited about it.

And then he read it. Then he taught it to his students. And then later he copped the name from Tenrim Chemmo to Larmrim Chemmo and used that as a basis of the greatest book ever written in Tibetan, Larmrim Chemmo.

So this is a very important book. So I thought you'd be excited to get the four powers from there. So it's like the earliest book in Tibet that you could get it from.

So we've got a copy of it and we put it in the computer and you can see it. There's one copy from Siberia that the Dalai Lama found. And then we found one in southern India.

So comparing the two copies we've prepared the translation for you. So you'll get the four powers mainly from the Tenrim Chemmo. And it's an incredible book.

Last time I was here we did a meditation. And people donated money and we're going to print the Tenrim Chemmo. So it's just about done, right?

She's finishing it. It's like a thousand pages to lay out and all that. And I think she'll finish this week.

And then it will go to India for printing. And then all the copies are being donated to Sri Jaya Rinpoche and his labrang. Because they're broke and they still have all the last life's attendants are still there getting old and they can't feed them.

We found a book in his library, in his former life's library. They didn't know it was there. So we made this deal.

If you let us print it, we'll give you all the copies. So it's like that. So here's the order that you find it in the Tenrim Chemmo and in the original sutra.

Later we're going to find out that the order has changed by the time you get to Pabongka Rinpoche. But in the meantime, this is the order that you should learn it in. First one.

Say sun. Jinpe. Top.

Sun jinpe.

[Speaker 2]
Top.

[Speaker 1]
Those of you who have had the Bodhisattva Charita teaching, you know what it means. Sun jinpe is a very nasty word in Tibetan. It means like to tear somebody's throat out, or to rip something out of the ground, or to rape somebody, or something like that.

It's a horrible word in Tibetan. It means like to grab something and rip its roots out, something like that. So I call it the force or the power of destruction.

But there's probably a better word. I don't know. If you saw the last of the Mohicans and the Indian guy said, I'm going to tear the general's heart out, and he did, it's like that.

This rips the force out of the bad karma. It's a special practice by which you tear out the force from the heart of the bad karma. I'm not going to go into much detail now because we'll do it in each class.

But in general, it refers to a well-educated Buddhist's understanding of what they just did to themselves. Like the minute you do a bad karma, even as you're doing it sometimes, because right at the beginning, I gave up on controlling my mind. Now I'm just trying to get purification down right.

Like you can't control your mind. Even while you're doing it, you know what you're doing. You know what I mean?

But if you understand that thing by Pabongka Rinpoche, that once you plant a karma in your mind, it is going to double every 24 hours. And he says within 15 days, it's 16,532 times the energy that it was when you planted it. If you don't use the four powers, then killing a bug becomes killing a man in 15 days.

You see what I mean? The power of it left untouched, left untreated, is 16,000 times more than when you did it. Then you get people coming up and saying, I don't know why so-and-so got cancer.

They weren't such a bad person. It's totally plausible according to this. You see what I mean?

And if you know this principle, if you know how karma works, then the minute you do something wrong, you feel stupid. I remember my Lama and me, when we first started, we didn't have a penny. And we had this Volkswagen with 200,000 miles on it.

And I bought this book, Complete Idiot's Guide to Fixing It. I didn't know how to do anything. I didn't literally know how to do anything.

And I read this book. It's a great book. And it says, you know, if the thing breaks down, pull this off, pull this off.

I got to where I could strip it down and get it going again in like an hour. One night on the Verrazano Bridge. This is like 500 feet off the ocean, you know, with the wind blowing and New York cars speeding by.

I got to where I could really do it. So one day I'm there and I'm tightening down the piston things. And I didn't know Volkswagens have aluminum heads, which is like Jell-O.

So I'm tightening it. I go whoop! And the whole thing goes whoop!

And all the metal comes flying out. It's just a tiny difference in how tight you use the wrench. You know what I mean?

A tiny difference. And then it's just $500 damaged in a minute, in a second. You know what I mean?

And you look at it and you're thinking, if I had only known, if I had just known enough not to do that. And that's the feeling of senjan peto. You have to feel this like, oh, I really blanked out big time.

Like you know clearly that you've just ruined something very expensive. By a small thing. By a small thing.

You know how karma works. If we have time, we should do a whole karma course. You know what I mean?

Which means, you have to know how your mind records what you do. It's infallible. The mind is irrepressible.

The mind is always conscious of what you're doing or saying, or thinking. The recorder is always on. Sleeping, waking, pooping, walking.

You know, it doesn't matter. The recorder is on. You can go in a room and close the door and do your bad stuff there.

It doesn't matter. Because the karma is determined by the mind. And the recorder is always on.

In Buddhism it doesn't make the slightest difference whether you close the door or not. You might as well leave the door open. Because it's not other people who are going to hurt you.

It's your own recorder. It's going to play it back later. You know, 15,000 times stronger.

So, it doesn't help to do that. You know what I mean? You got to clean up your life in reality, not just in appearance.

You see what I mean? Because the recorder is your own mind. And every time you say something, every time you have a thought, the record is made in the subconscious.

Some kind of imprint is made in the subconscious mind. All the time. And if you really appreciate this, and then because you can't control your own mind, which I'm saying it happens to me every single day, every hour of the day, I know it.

Like, the mental afflictions are pushing us around. And you say, I'm not going to get angry today. And then they like that better.

Just to flaunt their power. You know, oh yeah, well, what's this? And your mama says, could you pick up that?

And you say, no. And then at that moment, to know the power of the karma that's been planted in your mind. You know what I mean?

To realize fully the trouble you've just started for yourself. The terrible trouble that you've just set in motion. To understand clearly the process, how that imprint is made on the mind.

And that just a minute ago, because you lost your temper for a second, that karma is already there. And if you don't do this special, like, chemotherapy, really, it's just like chemotherapy, if you can't do it successfully, then it's going to ruin your life for six months. Okay?

Something like that. I mean, that's the kind of regret. It's the $500 engine block thing.

You know, you have to have that, you have to understand how you cause trouble for yourself. Just by little things, okay? Just by...

You don't get... You don't fail to reach nirvana, and you don't get old and die because you went and murdered people, and, you know, where is it nowadays? Kosovo or something, you know?

That's not why you are getting old and dying. The process by which your channels are being choked by your mental afflictions is happening by the little tiny irritations throughout the day. That's what's making you old.

That's what's going to kill you. It's not some... It would almost be more glorious if we could take credit for some big murder, you know, serial murder or something.

But we're going to ruin our lives by little irritations on the airplane at the stewardess. You know what I mean? And die for that.

You know what I mean? And that's how it happens. And once you understand that, then you feel like...regret. You feel like, you know, this is stupid. It makes me unhappy, even if there's no such thing as karma. And on top of that, it's going to kill me. And who cares if the stewardess burned the dinner or not?

You know what I mean? What's the point? That's the regret.

That's number one, in the traditional order. Later we're going to get some comment by Je Tsongkapa, and he's going to switch the order around. Okay?

Second one... What is that? Okay.

It says, Nyenpoyto. Nyenpoyto. Let me check this.

Nyenpoy means like an antidote. Like if you've eaten some poison by accident, and you go to the hospital and they give you some kind of pill and then it counteracts the poison. That's called a Nyenpo.

Nyenpo means like a counteraction or an antidote or something like that. Toht means power. So this is called the power of the...

I call it the power of the antidote. And this means some kind of makeup activity. And there are six classic ones.

And we'll go into it later. But it's something that you do to make up for what you've... for the bad karma you've committed.

For example, my Lama... We had a student in our group who was Mongolian. And he had been sent...

They came and immigrated to the United States. Two weeks later, he gets his draft notice for Vietnam. He gets sent to Vietnam.

And he was in a lot of firefights. He was like shooting machine guns into the forest. And he doesn't know if he killed anybody.

So he came to my Lama, and he's a very fine student. And he said, What would be a good Nyenpo Toht? So my Lama says, I know that your father likes to eat sheep.

And he grows sheep. This is where I live in New Jersey. In the backyard, they grow sheep and they kill them, the Mongolians.

So they like fresh sheep meat. It's their thing. He says, I know your father has two sheep like that.

I want you to buy them. And I want you to keep them until they die. Do you know how long they live?

It's like 15 years. So anyway, he did it. And he fed them every day, took care of them every day.

I remember when the first one died, after 15 years. And then the second one was its mate. It died of a broken heart a week later.

It was really sad. He kept them for all that. That's a Nyenpo Toht.

That's a very basic antidote activity. Now, there are better ones and cheaper ones. Mainly involving emptiness, the study of emptiness.

And we'll talk about that. But the most powerful ones have to do with emptiness. And we're going to go into that in detail.

But that's the second one in the traditional order. Can you see it okay? Say, Lan.

[Speaker 2]
Dope. Dope.

[Speaker 1]
Those of you who are studying Tibetan, this is a pre-nasal. Lan dope. Dope.

I have Christian friends who say, Buddhism is very convenient, you know. You can do anything you want the night before. And then, just do your four powers in the morning, and the karma is gone.

You know, it's very convenient. It's like a morning after pill or something, you know. They see it as, they like make jokes of me.

They say, you know, you can justify anything you want to do at all, because then it's just to wipe out the karma the next morning, you know. It's okay. I say not really, because the purification doesn't work, okay.

You cannot get rid of the bad karma unless you do number three. Lan dope be dope means to stop yourself in the future from doing it again. So unless you could pick a different bad deed to do every day, you couldn't do what they're accusing of.

You see what I mean? You'd have to agree to stop it. Or else the purification doesn't work.

You see what I mean? This just basically means to agree to stop doing it in the future. Now, most of all bad deeds, as I said, the ones that kill you, literally, are the little ones, getting irritated at the person sitting next to you.

Okay. Now, can you honestly swear, take a vow that you're not going to get irritated at that again, at that person again? Yeah, maybe if I move to Alaska, you know, and they don't write me, or something, okay.

You know. But under normal circumstances it's not practical. You will collect what?

A new bad karma of lying. So, the lamas say, the oral instruction is, this one should have a time limit on it, okay, for the next three minutes. If I don't see them, you know, I agree not to get irritated at that.

Or, you know, if it's something like an abortion, you can say never again in this lifetime. You know what I mean? That's easy.

Something like that. But the subtle ones, which are the deadly ones, those you have to kind of put a reasonable time limit on. I won't do that again for the next 24 hours.

And then you have enough mental strength to keep it up for 24 hours. And then you kind of relax, and then you do it, you know. So, that's called laṇḍobhito, to stop yourself, okay, from doing it again.

We've also found some cool references about that concept, and I'll go over that with you when we get to it, okay? Now the fourth one. Say, teṅgīto.

Teṅgīto. Teṅgīto. Teṅ means the foundation.

This is called the power of the foundation. Sometimes it's called the power of the basis, okay? Or the power of the foundation.

This refers to certain very basic practices that you have to do as part of the purification. There are two. And I'm going to go into them in detail in the next class, okay?

But they are going for refuge and developing bodhicitta. Developing the wish to become an enlightened being to save all living beings, to help all living beings, okay? So it's going back to the basics, or back to the foundation of your practice.

Okay, those two practices. Now I'm going to go into more detail on them. And also, when you actually do the fire, or when you're doing a purification for your old bad karma, you're going to want to do it in a slightly different order.

This is the order for theory. The order for practice is a little bit different, okay? And we'll go over that tonight when we try to burn down this platform here.

So, I think that's a good place to stop today. Does anybody have like a few questions? I'm going to do questions and answers tomorrow evening about this series of talks and also just in general anything you wanted to ask about.

But does anybody have a specific question about... We'll do like three or four, and then I want you guys to rest, and then we'll do another class after that. Sometimes I have a bad thought, or I experience a bad thought, and then I have the thought.

That's not my thought. Somebody else in the room here thought that, and I heard it. What do you think of that?

This is a popular thing nowadays. I don't know. There are some Buddhist centers that draw a distinction between having a thought I've heard that distinction made.

That is not anywhere in scripture that I've ever heard of. I've never heard of that. There's no such thing.

There is a thing in scripture about rejoicing in the thought later and owning it in that way. You see, like if you say, you know, I slashed his tires. There's a cause.

If you want to have a good karma, you've got to have all four. Shi means you recognize his car. Sapa means you plan it out that you're going to slash his tires.

Droya means you go there with a knife and you slash his tires. Then tatuk means you own it afterwards. You go home, you make yourself a big cup of coffee and you say, that was great, you know.

And I'd do it again if I had to. You see what I mean? In that sense of owning the thought, like rejoicing about the thought or taking active possession of the thought is an additional bad karma.

But the idea that you can disassociate yourself from a thought that's going to your own mind is nowhere in scripture. There's no such thing. I don't know who made that up.

But frankly, I've never seen anything like that. If you have the thought, it's recorded in your mind stream, period. If you want to distance yourself from the thought afterwards and say, I'm ashamed that I thought that thought.

Or, you know, that's a really crappy thought. Maybe you should stop thinking like that. That's very useful.

That's almost like a four powers to disassociate yourself in that way. But just to say, oh, I heard it in my mind and maybe that was... Son of Sam was doing that, you know.

I've never heard anything like that. But to distance yourself in the sense of saying, I'm not proud of that thought and I'm going to try as hard as I can not to have that kind of thought again, that's a big virtue. That's almost like a four powers.

But the idea of sitting there and watching thoughts pass through your mind and not associate with them and then there's no karma is directly... it directly contradicts the Abhidharmakosha and all other basic scriptures. SEMS PA YIK GYI LAS YIN NO LAS LAS GYIG TU NA TSUG KYE DE NYID SEMS PA DANG DE'I PHYIR SEMS PA YIK GYI LAS YIN NO The whole world comes from your past karma.

Your past karma is everything you thought, mainly. And then, incidentally, everything you said or did. You see what I mean?

And then it goes on to say that karma is your thoughts, raw karma. The most basic, vital, dangerous form of karma is your thoughts. Whether you ever say anything or do anything or not, by thinking it, you've already committed the karma.

And that's a... that's the first line of the most important teaching on karma. So the minute you've had the thought, you have to use these.

You have to do something about it. Or else it collapses and it gets to 16,000 times stronger. But, you know, that's a pain.

[Speaker 2]
Geshe-la, if what arises in our mind we don't have any control over...

[Speaker 1]
Oh, no, I was afraid you were going to ask me that. Somebody asked this earlier this time.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, did they?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
It gets back to the idea of free will. Even the idea of coming here to this course to create virtue is not a purify. Isn't the thought to be here and the thought to actually take the fire and do that, that also comes from past karma.

So how do you... Where does free will come in?

[Speaker 1]
She's asking about free will. It's a question about free will. Somebody asked His Holiness the same thing.

His Holiness distinguished between main factors and then secondary factors or something like that. Saying that, you know, maybe you can't control a karma which is already in your mind, like a major karma from the past, but you can decide whether or not you supply it with the additional mental afflictions that load the karma and make it active. You see what I mean?

And that's one way to present it. I would say also that you do have free will, and that free will is a result of karma. You have to get used to that.

You have to get used to that idea. You do have a decision. You can make a decision.

It's up to you to make the decision. There are things called decisions, and they are also projections. You see what I mean?

Do external objects exist? Yes. Are you telling me that's not a projection of my mind?

No. It is a projection of my mind. So it's not an external object, right?

No. It's an external object because I'm projecting it as an external object. You got to get used to that.

Do you have decision-making power? Yes. Is it determined by your past karma?

Yes. Is it just a projection of your mind? Yes.

Is it still a decision? Yes, because it's projected as a decision, in the same way that a car is a projection. And when that projected car hits your projected legs, it breaks your projected knees.

You know what I mean? And you go to a projected hospital and pay a projected bill. So, yeah, it's all being...

You're perceiving those things because of your past karma, but that doesn't make them unreal. It makes them real. The ultimate Mahayana maker argument is they are real because they're projections.

They're not less real because they're projections. They're real because they're projections. Something that didn't run on projections is impossible.

That's unreal. You see what I mean? Because if it wasn't depending on your projections, it would never change.

But I'm moving my arm. So there must be something changing. It's not my arm.

It's your projection that's changing. You see what I mean? You got to get used to that, or else you'll never get out of samsara.

You got to understand that or you'll never get out. You see what I mean? The whole show is run by your past karma.

And you have the power now to decide what's going to happen six months from now. Do you have much power over what's going to happen today? No.

All you can do is purification. If someone comes up in your face and starts getting in your face today, it's too late. It's basically too late.

All you can do now is not perpetuate it by getting angry back at them. Half your world is out of your control. All the things happening to you right now are ripening from your past bad karma.

And in the moment, you can't do the four powers. It's too late. The person is going to be in your face and yelling at you.

You know what I mean? But you have total power over the future. And that's our only hope.

If you respond the automatic way, the natural way, that's the natural desire realm, broken reality, doesn't work here, system. The minute you get angry back at a person who's angry at you, you've just set up another lousy future. You see what I mean?

You always have the decision at any given moment to stop. Unilaterally, by the way. Okay?

You can't control the other person. And if you're like a perfect Buddhist and you say, you know, I'm not going to get mad at you, you're my teacher. That's like the ultimate insult in New York, in our classes, you know?

Like, you're my teacher. You know, you can do that, but don't expect them not to hit you. That's what Jesus meant when he said, turn the other cheek.

You're going to get hit on this cheek, and then you just have to be patient, and they're going to hit you on the other cheek. If you keep patient, you eliminate them. Karmically, within six months, they'll be transferred to Kansas or something.

Seriously. And if you respond with anger, then you perpetuate them. Master Shantideva says, whosoever understands this concept can gradually eliminate all the schmucks from their life.

You know? He says, go around and say goodbye to them. Now, now that you understand this principle, I suggest that you go around and say goodbye to all the irritating people in your life, because they'll move, die, have a heart attack.

They'll just be gone in six months. And he actually says that, and it works. I did it at work.

I got rid of like six supervisors this way. You don't have to take a gun or anything. It's not the post office method.

It's really true. It's amazing. It's really fun, too.

It's really cool. I'm not suggesting that you might be happy that they got a heart attack or something, but gradually you just eliminate them. It's amazing.

People think it's somehow less compassionate because you're doing it purposely, but it's not. It's just making a perfect world, consciously, purposely, knowingly. Perfection of wisdom.

That's what it means. I understand you're empty. I understand you exist because my karma is making me see you this way, and I don't like you.

So I'm not going to be mad to you. I'm going to be nice to you. And karma will shift.

And then you'll either be my friend or you'll be transferred. But either way, you'll be out of my face. You see what I mean?

And it's very conscious. It's very knowingly. That's the meaning of perfection of wisdom.

It's rather than being patient because you're noble. It's to be patient because you want to get rid of this guy. You know?

And it works. And that's the process of creating a tantric paradise. That's how you do it.

That's the method. And, you know, you can come back and get him later. That's the bodhicitta part.

Come back and pick him up. Yeah. If I wanted to set up an office, we'd call it, Four Powers Pure.

And some guy comes in, and he says, I've been working at a slaughterhouse for 10 years. And I went through a power chakra, and I realized I don't want to ever do that again. I need to get a quick fix so I can start on the path.

How would it work? What would you set up for him? I mean, you explained one situation where there's a veteran.

I'm just trying to get an idea of how you do it. Yeah, Alan's asking, you know, someone's been basically working at a slaughterhouse for 10 years or something. Then, I mean, practically, what would they have to do?

Now, when we get to class number 5 tomorrow afternoon, we're going to go into the nitty-gritty of the mechanics of how this works, okay? Oftentimes, I'm frustrated when you go to teachings, they only cover the first four classes. Do this, do this, do this.

Everything will be okay. Why? How?

How does that work? No time. Check with you later.

We're not going to do that. Class 5 tomorrow, we'll talk about the mechanics of it. But one of the details in the mechanics is that if the karma is heavy, it has to be done well.

The four powers have to be done very, especially well. And in the case of a very heavy karma, they have to be repeated, okay? Like, you can't just take 10 years of slaughtering cows and do one nice little fire and then go see a movie and, you know, which is what I'm going to, no, and not worry about it, you see what I mean?

It doesn't work like that. They go into how you have to do the four powers, which one of the four powers is best for slaughtering cows, you know, depending on what result you don't want to get. And then they basically say, and the great mamas that I've talked to about this practice have said, something like that, you're going to have to repeat it over and over again.

You know, that's going to have to become a part of your life, for the rest of your life. You know, okay, once a month I do a little fire for those cows, you see what I mean? That's going to have to be something that you're going to have to do serious purification of.

It's not like you can do one little four powers ritual and it's going to go away. It's not like that. If it was, we'd all be enlightened by now, right?

But if you seriously dedicate a certain energy of your life to doing something the opposite, I was involved in an abortion, you know what I mean? So I became a monk, and I think that's a, dedicate all that energy to that, you see what I mean? And that's the kind of thing, you're going to have to find some kind of thing that you can repeat, or dedicate some part of your life.

Like, in that case, you might want to work in a hospital for 10 years, or longer, as a volunteer in the evening once a week, or something like that. And it's important to pick something that you can really do. Okay, don't do something like, oh, okay, I'm going to never step on a fly again.

You know what I mean? You have to do something that's practical for you. Okay, once every two weeks, I'll volunteer on a Saturday to work for two hours in a hospital.

Something like that. But then really do it. That would be something.

But you'd have to keep it up for a while. It's not enough to... It doesn't work on just one.

There are tantras that say, say Amitabha's name once and everything's okay. And then there's a small print, which I was reading today. It says, if you're a bodhisattva in your last life.

You know? Okay, really, it says that. Can you explain how prayer works in Buddhism?

I mean, if Buddhas are not omnipotent, and we all have our own karma, how can prayer for another person work? Yeah, that's a good question. He's asking how could prayer work.

If karma works like that, you know, basically I can't affect your karma. You've got to get used to that. Nobody can.

I have another quotation from scripture, which you'll get when you get the readings tomorrow, that says, Lord Buddha could stand there and say, I would like to take your karma away. And he can't do it. Cannot do it.

Cannot take an iota of your karma away. What's the proof of that? We're here.

Okay? I mean, you can argue about an omnipotent God all day long. The proof that there's no such thing is that, you know, I had a headache yesterday.

Period. He's either sadistic and omnipotent. You see what I mean?

You know what I mean? No, I'm not berating that belief. I'm just saying, it's obviously false.

It's obviously wrong. There's no such thing. Or else he's just crazy.

You know what I mean? Killed children. Killed 10,000 people in Turkey with cheap housing.

You know, what's the point? Oh, I was testing them. Why don't you make them untestable from the beginning?

You know what I mean? It doesn't make any sense at all. It just doesn't make any sense at all.

So why do prayer? He says. So why should I pray for another person who's sick?

What's the point? You know what I mean? You can affect them, okay?

How does it work? Nothing like you think. How does tonglen work?

How does it work when you breathe in the sufferings of the other people and destroy them at your heart? You see what I mean? It doesn't work directly, and it can't.

And you can try it, and it won't. You know what I mean? I mean, you discovered that at 12, when you went and prayed for your aunt who died anyway.

You know what I mean? It doesn't work like that. It changes your karma.

Okay? And then you start to perceive the world differently. And maybe in that world that person is suffering less.

It's very interesting. You see what I mean? It's very interesting.

Your perceptions are changed. And eventually you're in this Buddha paradise with 10th level bodhisattvas surrounding you. And you can't see anybody get sick.

You know what I mean? Because nobody to get sick. You see what I mean?

And then ultimately you perfect your own self, and then you teach other people how to perfect themselves, and that's how you help people. But not by some kind of magic prayers or something. We don't believe in that.

We just don't believe in it. So is it useless to give the Dalai Lama $100 and say, please pray for Rodion Chermov, which we did yesterday? No.

Why? He collects the good karma of asking His Holiness to do a virtue. You know what I mean?

And then his health improves. Because he did a good karma, not because His Holiness did a good karma. Okay?

You've got to get used to that. The only way you can change anything is to change yourself, actually. Okay?

Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
I've heard about praying to Tara. That Tara is like the remover of obstacles. So how does that...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, how does that work? It's the faith in Tara that removes your obstacle. Tara can't do anything without your karma cooperating.

You see what I mean? It's very interesting. So the more faith you have, and the more knowledge you have, the more Tara can help you.

It's very interesting. It's the karma of your belief in an enlightened woman, Buddha, that allows her to help you. It's very interesting.

So that's actually how Tantra works. Karma can ripen in three stages. One is before you die.

One is in the very next life. And one is in all other lives. It's called the tong gyur kyi le, kye ne nyong gyur kyi le, and shen lan nyong gyur kyi le.

And very powerful karmas can ripen next week or next month. But you have to know how it works. And then you can just design it.

So you say, I would like Tara to help me get rid of this problem. And then you have faith in her with knowledge. And it's the faith, it's your own faith that wipes out the obstacles.

So your faith creates her who moves her hand and wipes out the obstacles. It's very interesting. And the basis of Tantra is the first kind of karma, that very powerful deeds done with true knowledge in an earlier part of your life can change your body and mind in the later part of your life.

And that's the basis of all Tantra. That's why you can reach a Tantric paradise before you die. And if you don't do it, you're in trouble.

People think Tantra is some kind of esoteric thing or some kind of advanced thing. Hey, you either do it now or you're in trouble. I mean, it's like that.

It's not like some choice you have. You have to master those things. And you have to learn them from a person who knows how to do it.

Or you're in big trouble. You're going to die. And that's the only thing that works that quick.

That's the distinction between Tantra and other paths. The other paths are too slow. You'll die before you finish.

Minimum is 75 plus 76 plus 77 times 10 to the 60th power eons. After you get bodhichitta. Okay?

That's what Chakramuni pulled off. We ain't got time. I don't want to spend it.

We're fast food culture. I think we stop there. It's auspicious.

Okay? And I don't know when's the next session. When is that?

What time is it now? 4.15? 4.45. It's a quarter to four now? Let's do 4.45. Take an hour. Okay? Because you have to finish your homeworks.

And when you get back, there'll be a quiz. Okay? Why do I do that?

Trust me. Okay? Just do it.

I had a guy in Boston. He said, Kurukula Center. I refused to do that.

I said, please, just try it. Afterwards, he's writing me all these love letters all the time. Oh, thank you.

They did dependent origination, and he's got it down. He knows it backwards and forwards. This way you'll learn it really well.

It's your karma that you've got to get rid of. So learn it. Go and have a nice big cookie, and something to drink, and then do the homework.

We'll do a mandala.

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