Серия ежедневной практики, курс 09 — Пустота ума (махамудра) (1999, Сокел), занятие 9

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

[Speaker 1]
Satsang with Maitreya Satsang with Maitreya Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit about, you know, if worldview number six is the right one, okay? If flavor number six of emptiness is the right one, then what are its implications for living your life, okay? Is this just something you think about while you're doing meditation?

Or is this something that has implications in what you do at work, or with your family, or with your friends, or everything else? So, to me, that's the bottom line. If it's a worldview, it should be something you can apply all the time.

And don't forget, we're talking mainly about the fight between worldview number five and worldview number six, okay? It doesn't take Einstein to figure out that, you know, the last car you bought is going to wear out sooner or later. That's worldview number one, okay?

But between five and six, it's very delicate, okay? I'll get you back in the mood of number five. Number five says, half of the reality of something is coming from its side, and half is coming from my side.

This cylinder is looking pennish, and I'm taking it to be a pen, and somewhere in between, it becomes a pen, okay? And that way of looking at reality is expressed in your everyday life by saying, crap happens, and I learned to cope with it. You see what I mean?

So, crap is coming from its side. You know, the world is... samsara is being itself.

In Tibetan, they say, chennyi tenggyo re, rangyat chennyi tenggyo re. Samsara is being itself, and then you're trying to cope with it, okay? Like, disasters happen, and then you try to make the best of them, and that's transforming problems into something better, like opportunities, okay?

And that sort of approach is based on that view of reality, that half of the reality of thing is coming from its side, and then half of it is coming from my side, and then I can try to make the best of things, okay? Then the sixth worldview, the prasangika, the highest monimic worldview says, fortunately, nothing is coming from the other side, okay? It's just a cylinder, there is a cylinder, and then I'm making it what it is, 100%, okay?

100% of what that is, is coming from me, okay? Now, how do you live your life based on that? You know, if number five leads to a way of life where you do your best with all the crud, you know what I mean?

If number five expresses itself in your life as doing lojong, a hell of a lot of lojong, the older you get, the more lojong you're going to need, right? Or is it... So, if that's what you do in number five, what do you do in number six?

Number six, there are certain principles to number six, how you act. If number six is true, your behavior has to shift, your behavior has to change. And don't forget that the goal in number six is to remove the crud permanently forever.

That there doesn't happen any crud that you have to do lojong towards. You see what I mean? It's not that you become a lojong master in number six.

It's that there's nothing else to do lojong about. You know, Master Shantideva says in his Patience chapter, he says, kiss him goodbye, you know? And he actually...

there's a line where he says, call all the people who irritate you, get them in the room and say, it's been really nice knowing you. And I'm going to eliminate you, you know? I always tell people, you know, pick a person at work who irritates you.

Act towards them in an enlightened way, and you will definitely get rid of them. You see, you can exterminate them. And you don't need a...

you know, postal workers think you need a gun, it's not true, okay? You can just... by acting Dharma intelligent, you know, acting number six way towards them, worldview number six, you can deal with this person.

I mean, one of three or four things will happen. They will suddenly become some kind of nice person, you know? Two, they'll get transferred to, you know, Kansas or something, you know?

Three, you'll get your own job and you don't have to work for this guy anymore anyway. You see what I mean? Something will happen, or they'll have a heart attack, okay?

But that's not the best way. But anyway, they'll be out of your life. You see what I mean?

If you keep patience towards them, if you... There's a difference between patience and the perfection of patience. Patience is worldview number five.

The perfection of patience is worldview number six. Big difference, okay? Worldview number five is, you know, you're the most irritating person I ever met and I'm not going to get mad at you because I understand it's a wrong thing to do and I'm going to try to be patient with you and it's really hard, you know?

And then worldview number six is I refuse to get angry at you because I want to get you out of my life, okay? It's much more enlightened, okay? It's like, if I can keep my cool with you, then sooner or later you won't exist in my life, as the way you are now.

You know what I mean? And this is like the intelligent way to... See, you're not dealing with irritating people, you're eliminating them.

It's not like Buddhas in the Buddha Paradise has irritating people around them and they've learned to cope with them really well and, you know, they keep them over there and they just cope with them or something like that. They don't exist in the Buddha Paradise, you see? You see the distinction?

The difference? It's not like trying to put up with samsara, it's eliminating samsara. And a big difference.

So number six allows you to eliminate samsara. But you have to learn the difference between manipulating samsara with a robo-cloth and doing some intelligent gardening. Like, there's a big distinction between trying to manipulate things self-existently, okay?

That's like the equivalent of trying... Remember number five? What did we do in the Mahamudra meditation?

We moved the mind up through... We moved your feelings up a click. You know, oh, have a mild good feeling.

You know, think of the tea you had for breakfast, you know. Then move it up a click. Think of Mrs. Amos' cookies, you know, for me. You know, and then move it up a click, you know. Think of your high school girlfriend, you know. And then move it up a click, you know.

Think of the most pleasant moment you ever had in your life, you know. And then, it seems like you can... you can make things happen that way.

Did it work for you? But did it work perfectly? You can't.

You see, I mean, you have some influence on how you feel. But you know that when you're feeling... I mean, tell a manic-depressive to move their mind up a click, you know.

You know, it doesn't work. My Lama... These people used to come in, you know, manic-depression, and he'd say, just be happy, you know.

And he'd go... They'd go downstairs and say... What did he say?

He said, just be happy, you know. And they're like... You know, you can't do it, you see.

That's Roboclause. They call it Roboclause. Roboclause means, you know, self-existently trying to improve the state of your mind.

Your mind also is just like the pen. You've got to get used to that. Since we're on the subject of Mahamudra, we might as well talk about your mind, you know.

You can't manipulate your mind. This is important. According to worldview number six, you cannot manipulate your feelings in the present moment.

Impossible. Impossible. Doesn't exist.

That's self-existent fiddling with your mind. And it will never work. What's the evidence of it?

You can't be happy when you want to be, okay? Proof, okay? It's so simple that you miss it.

That manipulation, that kind of manipulating your mind, oh, if I had a cookie I'd be happy, you know. Manipulating your mind in the present tense assumes ignorance. It assumes a wrong worldview.

It assumes a misperception of reality. You can't, in the present tense, that's what I call Roboclause, you know. It's this huge, you know, you're trying to manipulate things in the present time.

Doesn't work. According to worldview number six, if things are a projection of your karma, then it won't work, okay? You have to plant, you have to go gardening.

Now, Americans hate gardening because it takes a long time, okay? I hate gardening. I can't do gardening, you know.

I'm not patient enough to just plant something and watch it. I'd rather go to the nursery and buy a tree and plant it, you know. And then I have a tree, you know, next morning.

You know, it takes some kind of wisdom, perfection of wisdom, to realize that, frankly, you can't do much about your current situation. You see what I mean? That's difficult to accept, okay?

And never forget that thing about the money, okay? Never forget, there's the $500 I got after I lied, okay? But never say because.

Big difference, you know. I got the $500 after I lied is a big difference from I got the $500 because I lied, okay? We teach a children's class in New York and we try to teach them the difference between how and why.

Like, how did I get the $500? It happened after I lied. Why did I get the $500?

Because I gave something away to somebody. Giving. You see, and this is the real cause, and this is the apparent cause.

And this is an illusion, okay? This did not cause the $500. Now somebody will come up and ask me, usually, Are you telling me that if you'd gone out there and not lied, that you would have gotten $500 anyway?

And I say, exacto mundo. That's exactly true. That's exactly the truth, you know.

This is a fallacy, this is an illusion, okay? If you're going to get the $500, you're going to get it whether you lie or not, okay? There's no connection here.

There's no relationship here at all. This is... The apparent cause is...

is a gaccha. Doesn't exist. There's no such thing, okay?

Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
You're saying it's not causal, so what's the time-lapse between the lie and the...

[Speaker 1]
and what you get from it? Yeah, these are like... Oh yeah, no, this depends on like five different factors.

Shi, sampa, jowa, dharthuk. And within sampa you have kunlong and nyomong, and like that. Shi means, did you tell this lie to Lama Tsampa or did you tell it to wolf the dog?

Okay? You know, no, it will accelerate. You see, it accelerates depending on the shi, meaning the object.

Sampa means, what was your motivation? You know, did you tell it because you thought it might help somebody, in which case the karma is less, or did you tell it to really screw somebody? Then it accelerates the ripening.

What was your mental affliction at the time? Was it strong or weak? You know, did you do it with great anger or just mild irritation?

Shi, sampa, jowa means, what was the method you used to tell the lie? You know, while you're telling it, did you tear the skin off their fingers? Or, you know, were you torturing them while you killed them or you just killed them quickly?

You see what I mean? You know, how did you do it? And then dharthuk means, at the end, were you like, all right, I told a really good lie, or were you like, maybe I shouldn't have said that.

You see what I mean? So, those are the factors that determine the acceleration of the result. And the process of tantra is to manipulate those factors so that you have billions of unactivated karmic seeds in your mind.

And then there's a process by which you activate them. And the idea is to activate the right ones and leave the other ones forever unactivated. You see what I mean?

In the Wheel of Life teaching, it's the difference between, if you were in San Francisco, number two, which is basic, fresh karma, and unactivated, and then number ten, which is activated karma. So, the idea is to learn how to activate the right ones in this lifetime. And to get them, there's a priority thing like planes taking off from airport.

And some can move up in priority if the control tower tells them it's okay. And karmas ripen like that. You can move up the right ones and let the later ones, you know, sit on the ground indefinitely.

Okay? Yeah? Just to backtrack for a moment, could you describe for us amateurs what Lojong means?

I'm sorry, yeah. Lojong means, if this old Kadampa... Kadampa is like a thousand years ago.

The first Tibetan Buddhists, they had these special tricks for dealing with problems in your everyday life. You know, like, okay, somebody screws you, think of them as your teacher. You know, this lady breaks up with you, say, okay, I'll take it as an opportunity to go find someone else.

You know, instead of sitting home depressed, you try to make, you try to transform it into something useful. Yeah, exactly. It's putting band-aids on samsara.

Yeah. So, thank you. With the line of $500, you're saying that there's absolutely no connection between the line of $500, not even in a contributorist or a secondary sense, in any kind of way, in any way whatsoever.

We're going to talk about that. I'll talk about it right now. It's a very, very, very good question.

And you hear people waffle on it when they get to this point. And I object to the waffling. And I waffle myself, and I catch myself, and I say, don't waffle.

If you're going to be... And in fact, it's on your homework question, number... Three.

What percentage of what happens to us in the present moment comes from our past thoughts, words, and deeds? And what percentage happens from what we are doing now? Which is to say, what percentage of things have emptiness, and what percentage are self-existent?

You see what I mean? You know, is it that... You see, where do you draw the line between what you call a contributory factor and a cause?

You see what I mean? Where do you draw the line? Is it that this is the main reason to get $500, and then the lie triggered me getting it?

You see, you tend to think that. That's number five worldview. Dump it.

Okay? If this triggered this, then this must also have come from past karma. You see what I mean?

This also is a projection. Nothing. You can't say that 60% of things exist by my projections, and 40% are these contributory factors that have their own existence from their own side.

Then you're slipping down to lower Madhyamika. Stay up in higher Madhyamika. Okay?

Everything. You know, if this happens to trigger this, or it happens to appear to trigger this, then that's also a projection. You see what I mean?

That negation was very big on that. Everything's empty, everything's an illusion, and everything works. Therefore.

You know, there's a waffling way that says, even though things are an illusion, get this, get the difference. Even though things are an illusion, and even though they're empty, they still work. That's waffling.

What's the real one? Because they're empty, they work. Okay?

Get the difference? Like, one is apologetic, you know, like, gee, I'm, you know, I have to say everything's empty, but please, it still works, you know. And the other one is, you know, they work because they're empty.

Get it? You know, all right. Okay, that's very delicate.

This is very hard to live by. Okay? Very, very hard to live by.

Like, I gave this lecture in Central Park. We debated it. A thousand people were there.

Proved it. We held up a big sign with this thing on it. You know, everybody, everybody got it.

Immediately afterwards, some guy came up to me and said, can I ask you a question? I said, what? He says, I need to get a green card.

Do you think it's okay to lie to get a green card? And I said, you didn't get it, you know. If you get a green card, it's because you helped someone, you know, immigrate somewhere before, and the lie is only going to have one result, which is what?

Nobody believes me. You know, this is this thing, if you've ever been in a corporation, worked in a corporation, been around a boardroom table, had four-hour, five-hour discussions with all the VPs, and there's this one guy there throwing out these brilliant ideas, and nobody believes him. You know, nobody, everybody thinks he's crazy, and then two weeks later, the company's going under, and you're saying, hey, what that guy said was right, but we didn't believe him.

You know, why? It's because he lied a lot in the past, okay? This is, by the way, this is responsible for that phenomenon in your life, when you're finally telling the absolute truth, and somebody doesn't believe you.

[Speaker 2]
Okay? Yeah. I know, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Because the apparent thing is, Nagarjuna said, he said a very interesting thing. He said, he said the time gap, this thing here, is responsible for all suffering of humanity. You know, people ask me, can I kill the roaches in my apartment?

You know, aside from my attachment to roaches, they say, Nagarjuna would say, and it's in the Surlekha, that if as you stepped on them, as you lowered your foot slowly, if your own ribs started to break, would you ask me this question? I mean, the world would be perfectly moral if there was no gap. It's the gap that screws us up.

It's this gap right here that causes all the trouble. If as you crushed the bug, your own ribs started to break, you'd let off, and then your rib would stop breaking. You'd say, whoo, you know, that was close.

You know, or, you know, if when you lied, and as you pocketed the $500, your bank account, you suddenly got a letter from the bank, says, we made an error, and you have $1000 less than we thought. You know what I mean? And if that always happened, every time, then you could figure it out.

But there's this very evil time gap that it takes between the planting of an imprint in your mind by doing something to somebody, and the flowering of that imprint. It takes time. That's why karma takes time.

It takes time to ripen. And that screws up everything. That screws up everybody.

Okay, I'm going to go back to this. When we teach the children's class in New York, we try to distinguish between the how and the why. Okay?

So, how did you get the $500? Well, we're teaching them, like, you lied. Okay?

I mean, the lie was the vehicle or something like that. But why did you get the $500? Because you were generous in the past.

You have to deal with the whys and not the hows. Okay? How describes the temporary circumstances that brought it to you?

They are not the cause. The why is different. You see what I mean?

The example in the homework is, you know, and one of the children had a friend who died in a car. Okay? So, you say, why did your friend die?

And he says, because his head hit the windshield, and the windshield was too hard, and his head was too soft, and his brain was damaged, and he died. And we say, no, that's the how. Tell me the why.

And then you say, well, you have to say because he hurt someone in the past. You see what I mean? So, distinction between the way in which karma comes to you, and why it's coming to you.

And you have to deal with the whys and not the hows. And RoboClaus is dealing with the hows. You know, like, if we made windshields softer, everything would be okay.

You see what I mean? And why is dealing with, let's teach children not to hurt other creatures, and then they won't have to go through windshields. You see what I mean?

And it's very profound and very difficult to live your life that way, and if you did, there wouldn't be any samsara. Okay? That's the beauty of it.

You're not trying to make the best out of having your head go through the windshield, which is number five. Number six says, no, number five says, let's fix windshields, or let's make them softer, or, you know, something like that. Number six says, or make people wear seatbelts, or something like that.

Number six says, teach people not to hurt other people, and they wouldn't have to wear seatbelts. You see what I mean? There wouldn't be any car accidents.

It's very profound. It's very, very profound. I mean, what you in mind should be thinking now is, oh, well, what's the right things to do, and what's the wrong things to do then?

Then it's perfect. Lord Buddha set forth those three sets of vows. You don't have to worry about it.

You don't have to decide what kind of karmas would eliminate seatbelts and car accidents. Lord Buddha already made a list. You know, there's the ten virtues, there's the...

you can take pratimoksha vows of different flavors, lifetime five layman's vows, you can get up to monks or nuns vows, doesn't matter. Then you can take bodhisattva vows, I mean, and then tantric vows. So, Lord Buddha has already made a short list, out of 84,000 possible behaviors, the ten is a list from 84,000, okay?

And just stick to these, and you'll be okay. You don't have to worry about it. You know, Lord Buddha has already figured out and given you a list.

And I don't even call them vows. When I give them in New York to new people, I carefully refrain from calling them vows. Vows sounds like frustrated Christian nuns in a European abbey, you know, and overeating because they'd rather be doing something else but they can't or something, you know what I mean?

And then, that's what vows feels like. But if you say, here's a list of activities, if you undertake them, there won't be any more car accidents in your world. You have to say your world, right?

If you really believe Worldview No. 6, you will be experiencing Land of Medicine Buddha as a Buddha Land. And then, somebody else might be experiencing it in a very crappy way.

And there's no contradiction there because of Worldview No. 6, okay? There's no contradiction at all that somebody in this room thinks everybody else is a deity and sees them that way.

Truly. They're not pretending, okay? They truly see them that way.

Pretending is Worldview No. 5, okay? Worldview No.

6 is, they is. Okay? And then, somebody else is in this room and seeing a bunch of schmucks.

Okay? And there's no contradiction there at all because there's no base reality. Worldview No.

6 says, you're not one way or the other. You are as you see it. Does that mean you can see it any way you want?

No. We're not talking about pretending. We're talking about it actually being forced by your karma in order to see it a certain way.

Yeah? So, when I get in my car, how do I justify putting on my seatbelt? The interesting thing is this.

I mean, whether or not you put on your seatbelt, you will or will not die according to your karma. Lots of people die because they have their seatbelt on and they can't get them out. You know what I mean?

And, by the way, very simple. The indication that seatbelts are not why you don't go through the windshield, the indication is that they don't always work. And it's so simple that it goes over your head.

There's a homework question here somewhere. Statistics prove they save lives. Ah, now we'll be there in a second.

What is the very simple and obvious indication that RoboClaw's approach to life is wrong? And then the answer is it does not give consistent results. If something really caused something else, then it would always cause it.

In science, you call it replication. In the diamond business, in laboratories, we call it replication. Meaning, every time you have these causes, you always get that result.

And it doesn't apply to this approach to things. To the present manipulation of your reality self-existently, it doesn't work. Whereas, giving, get this, it's called Miluwa in Tibetan.

Miluwa, say Miluwa. Miluwa. Infallible, airtight, never, ever varies.

If you give something, you will always get a good result. It will always come back good. You will always get something desirable from it.

Okay? It's impossible for it to ever happen to anything else. Conversely, any time you get a penny, a single red cent of money, it must have come from being generous to someone.

There doesn't exist money in the world that didn't come from giving. By the way, the implication of that is that the theory of sharing wealth is a fallacy. Everyone could be comfortable in the world simultaneously.

You know, if everyone in the world was generous, then suddenly scientists would perfect fusion and you could run L.A.'s light system from a couple of teaspoons of water. You see what I mean? And things like that happen, don't they?

The invention of the personal computer. That's not a self-existent, robo-claw invention. You created the personal computer.

And that's why you're able to do a lot of things that people weren't able to do in the past. You invented it. It's a result of your karma.

It's not like Bill Gates. He shouldn't get all the money, I think.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I have a question for you. It's true you can disprove that lying leads to money, because it doesn't always work. But there is no evident proof that gain leads to receiving money, because you can't tie the event of the past to the event of the present, say.

[Speaker 1]
So is it enough to just disqualify the other options, to say that this option is the one? It's a good question. What he said was, okay, suppose we buy into your idea that because lying doesn't...

And by the way, at a certain point in business, this dawns on you. You may be 50 before it dawns on you, but that lying doesn't always produce money. If you're good at lying in your early life, which means you were generous and more of your lies work, okay?

As that karma wears out, less of your lies work later. And people say, oh, you know, I used to think he was an honest guy, and now I understood he's not. You see what I mean?

So it's... John said it's easy to establish that lying doesn't cost $500 because it's inconsistent. It's the...

It's the waiver at the door of the airplane thing. You know what I mean? You don't get on the airplane if the results aren't consistent.

If they can't replicate the previous flight of this piece of metal, you don't get into it. Okay? That's...

That's okay. But how do you prove that giving makes the money? How do you prove that?

You see what I mean? So, okay, you've destroyed my old worldview, but you haven't proven your new worldview. Okay?

Um... There's... Say...

Say... Ngungyur? Gokyur?

Shindu Gokyur. Okay. Ngungyur?

Gokyur? Shindu Gokyur. Okay.

Ngungyur means obvious. Real... Obvious level of reality.

Apparent... What do you call it? Obvious...

This... The white of this blackboard. Do you have to be Einstein to see it?

No. Okay, you just have to eyeball, okay? I mean, that's what we call Ngungyur.

Ngungyur means obvious level of reality. Gokyur means a little bit hidden. By the way, into the category of Gokyur we put emptiness.

Emptiness is considered difficult to perceive. To see Ngungyur, all you need is your sense organs, or something like that, okay? To see Gokyur, you must use logic.

On... On a beginning level. Like, when you get higher, you can see emptiness directly.

But before that, you've got to go through these dumb classes with this dumb guy, and hear it over and over again, and he has to prove it a thousand ways, and you have to think of it, and... Ritmataya bhagone means prove it a thousand ways. And you need somebody to convince you, and talk you into it, and prove it, and...

That's the only way you can see emptiness at a beginning level. So you can't see those level of things. That level of reality is...

is beyond the pale of normal eyes. You need logic. You need the eye of logic.

That's why they put this... they draw this eye on the deities, okay? Now, Shindu Gokyur.

Shindu means very, okay? Extremely. Extremely Gokyur.

There's something more difficult to see than emptiness. And that's the connection between these two. Djembe Longchud Chim Gyi De, the subtle workings of karma, are more difficult to perceive directly than emptiness, okay?

So how do you... how are you supposed to live by it, if no one can prove it to you? You see what I mean?

There's a process. First of all, logic, okay? Like, you hear it explained enough.

You take the course on karma, and you understand how karma is planted. That's a level A way to prove it, okay? You can't prove it with your eyes.

You can smash all the roaches you want, check your ribs, they're still there. Okay? I mean, you can't see that with your direct senses.

It's not going to ever happen. That's why samsara is so endemic. That's why it keeps going on.

Because it's just not obvious. It's not wung-gyur. So go up to ko-gyur.

You can... you can prove it logically. Teach somebody about karma, teach somebody how their mind works, teach somebody...

And then, on a higher level, we call authoritative person. You find a person that you believe, okay? Now that can be very dangerous, and you know that.

You know, just to believe what a person says is discouraged in Buddhism. They say, don't... Buddha said, don't accept what I say just because I'm Mr. Buddha. You go prove it to yourself, okay? But on a certain level, the process is logical. You prove that this person is someone who doesn't tend to lie.

You see what I mean? You prove that Lord Buddha is a person that you can probably believe what he said, okay? How do you establish that?

It's very beautiful in scripture, and I love it. I buy it. Only the Buddha described our suffering accurately.

Out of all the people you ever met, everyone's like smiling. It's the doctors who lie to you, you know? Oh, everything will be all right.

It's not so bad. But then your own experience tells you that every good thing you get tends to collapse, over and over. And then at some age, some people get it at 20, some people get it at 30, some people never get it.

You just get tired of it. You know, you say, things don't work the way the New York Times said, you know? There isn't anything in my life that's steady, or lasts, or doesn't get worse, you know?

There's got to be some other option. Then you read this Buddhist book, and this guy is saying, things start to collapse when they start. You know?

The beginning of things destroys them. And then you're like, wow, this guy knows what he's talking about. What else he got to say?

You know? And then you get to the karma part. That's the classical answer to that.

Personally, try this way of life for a while. See if you don't start getting that experience of surprising, amazing, impossible. You know what I mean?

That things start to happen to you. I'd say that, you know? And my argument is, you have nothing to lose.

You're dying anyway. You're going to lose everything you have anyway. Your experiences are, you know that.

You can confirm that. You need a radical change in your worldview. I say try it.

And then, you know, the final proof is that you get results. You say, wow, this works, you know? And then you know you're on the right track.

And what I say is like six months of being strict with your book. Okay? Tundu.

Not saying, Okay? That's not tundu. Okay?

Just to mutter something twice a day. Twice a day? I thought it was six a day.

Okay? Quickly. That's not tundu.

Tundu means stop six times a day, every two hours. Check the next vow that you have. Check it.

Do that for six months sincerely, okay? I have people, I have this new class of students developing. Did you do your book?

Yes. Do you check your vows six times a day? I do.

Do you think about it? Nope. Okay?

It's just like, how fast can I finish it? You know, I told Michael Roger I'd do it. You know, and they don't really search their hearts.

They just try to find something you can write within five minutes because I got to get to the dentist or something, you know? Okay. Anyway, let me see if I...

Then I say, just try it. That to me is the answer. Try it for six months and some amazing things will happen.

And I'm talking on the order of very, very weird stuff starting to happen. Like literally people handing you a million dollars. Or, you know, bumping into Bhaji Yogini on Second Avenue or something.

You know what I mean? I'm talking on that level. I'm really talking on that level.

And isn't that what you always wanted from your religion? Okay? Alright.

Oh, what does this theory lead to in your real life? I want to talk about what's called an act of truth. Okay?

Gandhi was very good at it. In Sanskrit, it's called satyachara. It's an act of truth.

Okay? And I think that once you buy worldview number six, you're going to have to be doing acts of truth rather frequently. Okay?

I'm going to describe an act of truth. Act of truth is this. Gandhi wants to liberate India.

Okay? From the British. So, he's trying to figure out the best way to do it.

And his friends are saying, let's plant bombs under the trains, you know, let's shoot British officers from the tops of buildings, and let's see if we can do it that way. And then he's saying, no, the way to overcome violence is non-violence. You know?

Like, if you want to remove... They're talking number five worldview. Right?

Like, shoot the British officers enough, they'll go away. You know? And then, he's talking worldview number six.

It's very beautiful. Okay? And that's the difference.

You see, worldview number six says, if I am actively, consciously, purposely, purely, non-violent long enough, violence will go out of my life. Okay? If I'm purely, consciously, purposely, informally, with perfection of wisdom, right?

Which means informally. If I'm patient with this guy at work long enough, I can exterminate him. Okay?

But that's the worldview. So, Gandhi is saying, you want to get rid of violent people in your life, meaning British, you know, overseers, then just practice non-violence purely. This is an act of truth.

Okay? So, you see the movie, right? These guys, they're trying to close, they're walking up to the salt place, and they're walking, he's sending guys up in threes to stand there so the British soldiers and their workers can just beat them on the heads and break their heads and then they fall down and then the next guy comes up and they...

But they're strictly, purely non-violent. This is the way to liberate India. According to worldview number six, this is the way to liberate India.

It's very interesting. Very, very interesting. Act of truth.

It's the truth of what he's doing. The purity of understanding emptiness perfectly that allows him to... He did the right thing.

That's the only way to liberate India. Get it? You know, like you walk up and let them hit you.

In the apparent reality, is that a good idea? It's very dumb. I mean, I'm sure there were followers who were like, You sure you want to do this?

You know, what I'm saying is that if you buy into worldview number five, then standing there and letting them hit you is very stupid. If you buy into worldview number six, this is the only thing you can do. So we talk about act of truth.

Meaning, in the short run in your life, it's very, very trying. It's very hard to live this way. You know, it seems like just a white lie, everything will be alright.

And to refuse to lie at that moment, to hold the sins... We call sinsam, means to hold that line of your worldview and say, a lie cannot produce a good result. Even in this circumstance, when it seems like a lie would be useful or beneficial, I refuse, because I have the perfection of wisdom.

I know that it cannot cause what it appears to cause. It's very difficult to live that way. You know, you're constantly having to tell your boss the truth, you know.

But what you'll find is, the other behavior was causing your suffering, your samsara. And this new behavior... By the way, if you do it with knowledge, perfection of wisdom, and not because your mom...

You grew up in Burma, and your mom said, Johnny, it's bad to kill bugs. But you do it because you understand it. You understand emptiness.

It's very powerful. You don't have to wait very long to get results. You see what I'm saying?

Like, tell your boss the truth three times when you shouldn't have, and then suddenly, you're a vice president. You know what I mean? It's very weird.

But the degree of knowledge with which you do it is everything. If you do it half-heartedly because Michael Rose said to do so, you're going to be back to white lies to your boss in a week. If you do it because you understand emptiness, you'll be a VP in six months.

What about the situation where you're in a conference room with your boss, and a third person, and the boss is saying something which you know is not true, is falsifying what you think reality is for this third person who doesn't know? What's the appropriate behavior? What's the appropriate behavior if you see someone else lying, and you, you know...

What should you do then? I mean, you have to judge the circumstances. I mean, one thing is about morality, is that it's personal.

In other words, we go back to worldview number four, I think it was. You can't really judge why someone else is doing something. I mean, the appropriate thing to do would be to take them off afterwards.

You know, try to convince them of how counterproductive lying can be. And then ultimately, if they have the patience and the time, explain to them worldview number six. Okay?

But it's not going to work all the time. I mean, in that level, you have to try to encourage the person. Try to point out to them how lies...

I mean, sooner or later, lies are just impractical, in business or in anything else. Sooner or later, you're going to have to lie to another person because you lied to this one. And then you got to remember which story you told this one.

And then sooner or later, people don't believe you. You know what I mean? So...

So, that's all you can do. But one point there is that it's important to judge the lie and not the person. You cannot judge their state of mind.

Unless you can read their mind clearly, you can't judge them. You don't know what they are, who they are. But you can judge the action and you can say, I don't think you should have told a lie in this case.

Yeah? So, I see speaking to the thoughts afterward, but what responsibility do I have for making that lie if it's being made in my presence? Yeah, I would say this.

If you're being called upon to participate in the lie, you face... Okay, that's a classic example, okay? Like, if you refuse often enough, which I know, to participate in a lie, you know, you're going to get demoted or something.

You know what I mean? Now, question. Did you get demoted because you failed to participate?

You got to stop thinking that way. Okay? It's very hard.

It's very hard. And then your independent group, Madhyamika School mind, wants to say, Yeah, but it's a factor. You know what I mean?

If I had just kind of kept my mouth shut a little bit, I wouldn't have got demoted, you know? That's the 50% of the things in the world are empty and 50% are not state of mind. You see what I mean?

And you hear people teach that. It's very delicate. You have to realize that there's nothing that's not empty.

You can't say 50% or stuff like that. Okay? Get out of that state of mind.

I'll say it again. If you go to your boss and say, Look, I really can't, you know, I understand that there's a corporate lie. I was there, I know, 15, 16 years.

There's a corporate lie. Don't tell Macy's that Sears is getting it for 10% less. Nobody tell Macy's.

If Macy's asks you, lie. And then this is policy of the company. And then you say, I can't do that.

Then they say, okay, then you stay down in the third floor in the factory, okay? You can't be in the executive offices anymore. And you say, okay.

But going to the third floor is not related to not participating. You've got to get used to that. That's not true.

If your karma was pure enough, you'd be on the executive floor whether you lied or not. You see what I mean? You've got to get used to that.

Yeah. And it's hard. I'm not saying it's easy.

It's very hard. It's really hard. But in the long run, it's gardening rather than RoboClaus.

Okay? RoboClaus, the results are unpredictable and crazy because that's not what's happening. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
In your multidimensional meditation, you've got six quid of meditating on your mind. Maybe I just never understood it very clearly. I never had a good teaching on it.

But I always thought in some way you were meditating on that your thoughts were projections and your mind itself was projections.

[Speaker 1]
We're going to get that in the next class. Okay? That's the last.

I'm saving that for the last class. Yeah, Janice. Okay.

Janice is talking about how do blessings work then. You know, like, like, like when the Dalai Lama... Why does the Dalai Lama bother to touch people on the head if nothing can happen that way?

Okay? It's basically a question of why tantra works. That's, that's asking the same thing.

And, and tantra is a very interesting example. Tantra is a case of, of almost instant karmic results. You see what I mean?

That devotion and the belief, un, unwavering, totally unwavering devotion and belief in your Lama, that karma of that is enough to create karmic results instantly, or nearly instantly. You see, that, the object is so intense, and the emotion is so intense. And if you do it with knowledge, with what I've been describing, you can have results happen in a matter of months or years that normally would take eons.

You see what I mean? So, it's the, the reason someone can get a blessing from the Dalai Lama has nothing to do with him. You know, it's their devotion in him.

It's, why do the sungdus work? You know, why wear a piece of string around your neck to keep yourself out of a car accident? If that really worked, I'm sure it would be all over the world by now.

You know, if it were well known that Buddhists never went through windshields, you know, that everybody would become a Buddhist, you know. It only works if you, if you have devotion and belief in the Lama who gave it to you. You see what I mean?

It's very interesting. And it's not the string, it's the good karma of the devotion that makes it work. So, blessings, you know, someone wrote to me this letter and said, I can't believe you destroyed my belief in tonglen because you proved it didn't work.

And I said, no, I proved why it did work, which isn't why you thought it worked, okay? It doesn't work because you're sending good thoughts to somebody or something like that. The karma, the virtue of the good thoughts makes you become an enlightened being who can truly help people.

And that's all. So, to answer your question, if you give a group of a hundred people penicillin and you give another group of a hundred people who have the same disease placebo, like nothing, then according to this theory, the number of people in each group who get cured should be the same. Right?

I mean, that's what you're saying, right, Michael Roach? And this is an interesting thing. If you have the karma to have the money to go to a good doctor and get treated, you also have the karma more likely to be cured.

Get it? You see what I mean? Like, it's a good karma to have the money to go to a better doctor.

And what it means is it's a pattern of karma. You see? It's not that the good doctor cures you more likely than the bad doctor.

It's that the karma to be a person who has the money to have the good karma, the good doctor, is of a pattern of the karma to be cured by that person. And it's, get used to the idea that it's not the better doctor who's curing you. So does it make sense to go to better doctors?

Yes. Okay? Does a better doctor cure you?

No. You got to get used to that. It's hard.

It's very hard. Does, question for you, does penicillin work self-existently? No.

Why? Prove it. Because it didn't work all the time.

Exactly. Okay? Does penicillin work more often than no penicillin?

Yes. Yeah. Will penicillin always work that way?

No. Very interesting. Very interesting.

The efficacy, the ability of penicillin to cure, is changing in the world as we speak. Is that self-existent? No.

No. It's the karma of the people who are getting it. Was it just that people in the 17th century were stupid and couldn't figure out penicillin?

No. It didn't start working until the 20th century. Get it?

It wasn't the karma. Otherwise penicillin works from its own side and in the 21st century it would work as well as in the 20th century. See, it doesn't exist from its own side.

It's a result of karma. Very interesting. It's very interesting.

And if everybody respected life, then chocolate chip cookies would work as good as penicillin. Which is my theory. One more question.

We'll have a question and answer later today, by the way. So, one more question. I want you to have a nice...

Try to eat fast and then your mind will be more clear in the afternoon. So you're saying that penicillin is better than no penicillin? At the current time, given the basic karmic propensities of people in the world today.

Yeah. And so then it would call a good doctor better than a mediocre doctor? Or a fraudulent doctor?

More frequently because the karma to have a good doctor is similar to the karma to get cured. Get it? Sorry?

I could go to that doctor on The Simpsons. Yeah, if your karma was to be cured... Yeah, exactly.

If you had respected life in the past, you could go to the doctor on The Simpsons and get cured. And if you had not respected life in the past, you could go to DeBakey or something and he'd kill you. Which happens.

So, you've got to get used to that. And it's hard to believe, but I propose that your old worldview doesn't work anyway. So why not give it a try?

Let me see if you've got any other questions here. So, it says, what's the difference between roboclause and gardening? Roboclause is saying like, I'm going to affect this thing in the present time.

Now we go to Mahamudra, right? Feelings. We'll talk about feelings.

How do I get a good feeling to occur in my mind? Cimgye... What does it say?

Cimgye Longju, Cimgye De, Buddha said. Cimgye Longju means, want money? Give money.

Cimgye De means, want to feel good? Keep your vows. Very interesting.

So, does it always work to make yourself feel better, to try to remember something that made you happy in the past? Does it always work? That's a sign that it's not what's happening.

You can't make your mind feel better unless you've kept your vows. Period. You will never have a feeling of contentment, satisfaction, well-being, peace, except for karmic projections on your mind that are coming from your past doing good to other people and keeping your vows.

It's very interesting. The only cure for depression, anxiety, schizophrenia is to keep your vows. It's very interesting.

You can give them this drug, that drug. Does lithium work from its own side?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
No, okay. Does it seem to help? Yes.

When it helps, how does it help? Oh, this chemical inhibits that chemical and blocks this chemical. Yeah, but why does it help?

You see, how versus why. Scientists are in the business of describing how. We're in the business of describing why.

They can tell you why this drug works. You know, this blocks this chemical, this blocks that enzyme, you know. But why does it do that?

Because you have the karma. Because you protected life in the past, or you kept your vows. So it's very interesting.

Give up trying to make your mind happy. It doesn't work, in the present tense. You can try to imagine cookies all you want.

It doesn't work. The only way to be contented and happy is to keep your vows. That's the only cause.

It's like the difference between this and this, okay? One last question.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, so if the karma of getting penicillin is close to the karma of being cured for it, and most executives and very successful people are ruthless, therefore the karma of being successful, which you would think would come from a good thing, and the karma of being ruthless are obviously connected. How does that work?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, she said, given your thing about penicillin, you know, if you can afford the penicillin, then it's more likely it's going to work because of similar karmas. Then what about the fact that most successful businessmen seem to be pretty ruthless? Are you saying that the karma to be successful and the karma to be ruthless are similar?

Yeah, I can't say that. And I think that depends on your perceptions also. My perception in business, and I was in business for 16 years, big business, billions of dollars in the diamond business.

The Indians move two billion dollars a year to like 15 families, Jain families in Bombay. And my personal experience was that over the long run, the ones who were strict, I mean, people have met my diamond dealer friends in Bombay, the students I travel with, they were just struck by their honesty and their kindness, and, you know, the really, really successful businessmen over a period of time are the ones that are very ethical and honest. I think you'll find that if you're in the business for a long time.

The idea that to be ruthless is how to succeed in business. I've seen many ruthless businessmen go down, much more often than the other kind. And the ones who were truly concerned about the people in their city, or they're building big hospitals in Bombay and they're helping poor people, and they just seem to go on and on and get richer and richer, you know.

That's my personal experience over a long period of time. I don't say that there aren't ruthless businessmen who seem to be prospering. The Bible says, Why do the wicked prosper?

And it doesn't give a satisfactory answer. And that's the answer, you know. They're experiencing the result of great generosity in the past, and they're setting up the causes for great suffering in the future.

And that's all that's going on. There's no connection between the ruthlessness and the profit. Okay, we'll stop there.

[Speaker 2]
By the goodness of what I have just done, may all beings with human collaboration have merit and worthlessness, and that the same truth holds good bodies that merit and worthlessness. Okay, thank you. This is the end of session five.