Серия ежедневной практики, курс 10 — Мантра Чже Цонгкапы (Ганден Лхагьяма) (1998), занятие 6

[Speaker 2]
Session 7 Small new part for the visualization, okay?

[Speaker 1]
We finished Madhak-tri, which is where you do mande and yande, okay? Clearing the negativities about your six perfections one by one down, and then the last part of them being cleaned out as it comes up. And you've been doing that for the perfection of giving, for example.

And then you were doing mi she seo, which is clearing away your lack of knowledge or something like that, about the six perfections by having the wisdom nectar come down, and each drop being a globe, and inside the globe there was a golden light, okay? The first one was done with five-colored water. In the commentary it says if you can't handle five colors you can just do white, okay?

And the second one, the light, when the light was spreading, that's a golden light. That represents Manjushri's light. The first one represents Vajrasattva's purity.

And by the way, there's a lot of tantric ways of explaining this practice, and I'm not doing that in public, okay? Because that's not the way you're supposed to do it. So I'm giving you the sutra version, which is wonderful, and then it's very close to the tantric version, but then you have to get that from your qualified tantric lama, okay?

And that's a whole relationship you have to have with somebody that's totally different than a public classroom, like that, okay? Then there's a third part, called ngu duk duk. The commentaries are sort of mixed on this point.

Some commentaries put all the miche cel. They have all seven steps in miche cel. So some people would say that the third part, which is ngu duk duk, which means accomplishing your goals, ngu duk means like siddha, okay?

Spiritual accomplishments, spiritual achievements. Some commentaries only have two sections. One is madhak tu and miche cel, and then inside of miche cel there's seven different categories.

Some lamas have explained it as seven sections within the ngu duk duk. But either way, there's seven visualizations. And some of them are tantric, so we won't go into that.

I'll give you the sutra version. When you're doing ngu duk duk, which is trying to attain spiritual attainments, okay? In the most common version of this practice, and there are many different written versions of the Ganadhar Gyalma, but in the most common version, then you have three verses called pel nen tsawe lama renpo che, daki nyingar pen ne dan shur la, karin chenpo go neng je sum te, kusum thukyong ngu duk chal du so, and then chok ten thumong ngu duk chal du so, cha chen yinpa ba du tenpa shuk.

There's three different verses ending in those three verses, three lines. And we will do a... I will recite it once for you at the end, okay?

The whole thing. Those verses are requests for what they call chok ten thumong ngu duk. Chok ngu duk means ultimate spiritual attainments, which is nirvana and enlightenment, the removal of your mental afflictions permanently, and total Buddhahood.

Those two things. And then, thumong ngu duk... There's two ways of explaining thumong ngu duk.

Thumong ngu duk means normal attainments, or not the supreme attainments. One way is to explain it as the eight minor siddhis, which is like the ability to walk on water, the ability to fly through the sky, the ability to pass through solid objects with your body. These are all basically meditative abilities.

The ability to take a drop of a pill and not eat anything else for the whole day, and things like that. And then the other way of explaining it is just the normal attainments of your everyday life. And you're requesting both.

May I get along with my friends. May I get a promotion at work. May my children be happy today.

Like that. Those are normal attainments. So, those are covered when you do the Six Perfections.

You don't have to do a separate visualization for those. You will get them as a by-product of practicing the Six Perfections. So, those are those three verses, requesting normal achievements, highest attainments, and then highest attainments.

Then there's an expanded version of the Gandantagyama. The verses can be found in Pabongka Rinpoche's commentary. He wrote several commentaries.

And this is where Rinpoche has added... He taught us this practice in 1976 or 7, I don't remember. But then around 1990-something, he threw in some more verses, you know.

And so, those are the te-sam gomishera pedu-su, ceto-tsombi lo du-gesu-su, and then those other verses there. Those are part of these seven visualizations, not the whole thing yet. I suppose he's planning that for 2010 or 20, I don't know.

But we've already done te-sam gomishera pedu-su, which means, please give me wisdom, which is the lights. So you did the lights. That's mi-she-sel.

That's clearing what you don't know with light. We've finished that visualization. Now we'll start the final visualization.

It goes in three steps. And we'll just do the first one this afternoon. So for each of the Perfections, you do cleaning, ma-dak-dru, with yonde going down, sorry, mande going down, yonde going up.

Then you've done the practice with the lights, which is knowledge. Some lamas teach it as darkness in your body, and then it's like a flash with a camera, and it's called bungde, and you destroy your ignorance like that. Now we're going to start the third stage, which will be a few of those seven visualizations.

So I've been trying to see it in this painting. I can't see. On Je Tsongkhapa's left and right should be a sword and a book.

Is it there? Yeah, I can't see it from this picture. So off to his right here, right inside the circle there, is a lotus flower with a sword.

And then on the other side is a book, a Tibetan-style book. And you can look at it more closely. We're going to talk about this sword.

This is called the jang chen gi mikpa, which means a visualization involving his akutamo. And on his right is the sword. The sword represents the che in Je Tsongkhapa Lodro Gyatso.

So when you learn the verses more, you'll see Je Tsongkhapa Lodro Gyatso, and this represents the che. This gets into, now that you have wisdom for yourself, how do you learn to communicate it to others? So the next day and a half, two days of visualizations will be the final step for each perfection.

You've cleaned out your gross problems with this perfection. You've meditated on how well you're doing on it. You've rejoicing on your progress, which is the second visualization, when you fill up with nectar.

And it's important that they're equal. It's always important to think of the dirt half the time and think of your progress half the time. So you cleaned out the dirt.

You filled yourself up with progress. Then you ask the blessing for like supercharging your practice of giving. You're asking them to light up in you abilities of the perfection of giving that you never dreamed you had.

And you're asking for their help. And you're constantly asking them to give you abilities that you never knew you had, and that are way beyond what you thought you could do. That someday somebody needs a finger, you could just hear an eyeball, and take my eyeball.

Like that. Or your dearest friend, or your house, or whatever is dearest to you, that you just unhesitatingly be willing and able to give it to somebody without the slightest hesitation, anything. You've been asking for a blessing like that.

And that was the lights inside the globes, which is every single drop of that nectar. Now we move on to, suppose you had perfect giving, and you were able to perfect your giving. Now you're asking Jetsong Khapa for the ability to convey it to other people, to communicate it to other people.

And that's the last part of the visualization. And the first part of that, che, is very simple. You just, when the nectar comes down, this will be the fourth time, right?

When the nectar comes in the fourth time, right? This time the globes are filled with a, there's a lotus, and then there's a sword, okay? Standing like that.

And very beautiful, like Excalibur or something, okay? They're called nam chak. Nam chak means sky steel.

Tibetans say that there were these, rocks used to fall out of the sky and hit the earth, and then if you found the steel that was, they would burn the ground so hard that it would make a kind of metal. And if you took that metal and fashioned it into a sword, it was like the hardest sword you could find. And in fact, it's a source of some diamonds on this planet.

The impact of small meteors and stuff is that there's diamonds in the craters and special kinds of steel with diamond in it. So I guess there's some basis for it. I mean, that's where we find some diamonds.

So you're going to visualize pouring into you more nectar, still golden color, and globes, each drop is a globe. So inside the globe is a lotus, pink lotus, and then a sword. And then there should be fire coming out of this sword, okay?

The sword should be wrapped in fire, flame, like burning, okay? So a really beautiful Norman sword, okay? And fire burning on it.

And this represents the che of chetsutsombe, lodugyesa-so, which is the second line of that special verse that Rinpoche adds. Chetsutsom, you're going to be asking for the ability to communicate Dharma to other people. And it doesn't have to be in a big class with a hundred people or something like that.

It could be at lunch with somebody you work with. It could be with your children. It could be with your parents.

And it could be not more than a few sentences. But you're asking for the ability to do it. And that's the che.

Che means verbally explaining Dharma to people, okay? So in a situation where, when it's right, you're asking for the ability to be Dharma eloquent. And it could be, you could be talking this kind of language, you know?

I mean, it's just you asking for the ability to relate to people perfectly and say the right thing at the right time. And not proselytize, but to say the right Dharma thing at the right time. When it's very natural and very right and the time is just right, that you're able to express yourself clearly to someone else about the six perfections, okay?

So you'll take them one by one and then you'll be meditating on them, okay? So that's now the fourth time the nectar comes down. Retreat note.

About 75% through a retreat is when it gets really hard. You get really tired. If you're going to get lung, you've already had it by now, or it's coming, okay?

You start to giggle a lot. And your mind will do something crazy. You'll have an outburst of hatred towards somebody, or anger, or weird things.

It's coming from the wind, okay? And it's not bad. It means you're into that right place.

You're just a little too far. So this is the time when you separate the men from the boys and the girls from the women, okay? And you have to bear down.

This is when you make a lot of progress. You have to work very hard during the next day or two. This three-quarters, for me, it's 70% to 75% through.

It doesn't matter whether it's a month long or a week long. It's always kind of a down, and the energy is not there, and getting a little lungy, and wanting to sleep more, and not able to focus. This is when you have to bear down, okay?

Ask for blessings. The worse it gets, then ask for more blessings. And just visualize Je Tsongkhapa more and more.

And ask them to help. That's why you're doing it, okay? So just keep pouring that nectar down, okay?

All right. New York Times makes corrections every day. I think lamas should do the same.

I'm sorry, that's the next visualization. This one is just a Dharma book, okay? So for the explaining, it's just a Dharma book.

So you see in the bubble a Dharma book on top of a lotus, okay? Golden wrapper. Golden cloth wrapper.

Personally, I visualize the Diamond Cutter Sutra wrapped up on a lotus flower. And that represents explaining the Dharma. I got ahead of myself.

Is it open? Is the lotus still pink? Yes.

I don't visualize it open personally, but I think you could. One tradition is to... You could visualize it open or not.

One tradition is to hear it speaking itself. It is reading itself to you. But I got ahead of myself.

That's the next one. I just like the sword so much, I went straight for the sword. The explaining Dharma is the book.

Okay, so it's a Dharma book wrapped up in cloth on a lotus in a globe. And that's asking for the blessing to be able to explain in its correct order, the Dharma, to people. Okay, all right.

Okay, just a very brief thing. Then we'll do like another half hour. An important part of retreat is when it's coming outright.

And the texts say a lot about it. They say you should start gradually and then you should come out gradually. And one of the first steps is thinking about what you're going to do after the retreat.

And this being January 1st, whenever you come out of retreat, you should make a list of things that you want in your life, that you want to change about your life. Your mind right now is clearer than it's been in years from the silence. And you're able to think clearly.

And when you start talking again, you'll lose that. And from the meditation. So you'll start to have surprising insights into your life and you'll have some unusual insights that have come up about your life.

And you can trust them. That's the first thing to know, you should trust them. A week from now they will look naive or crazy to you.

But your mind right now is cleaner than normal. So it's a good time to make decisions about your life, about important things in your life. So it's important as you get out of retreat, start thinking tonight, start the process tonight of thinking about your life, the things you're happy with, the things you'd like to change, and start formulating some kind of a plan.

Personally, most of the big decisions I've made in my life for the last ten years have been right during this period. And they've been very, very fruitful, very important. This place wouldn't exist.

The classes wouldn't have happened. That all came from some retreat I had years ago. So, trust it.

And try to now give some time to thinking. As you go through the perfections, you can start thinking about things that you'd like to adjust. And by tomorrow night we'll try to clarify that into a list of...

Don't make it too long, and don't make it extravagant. Make it modest, and the important thing is that it should be doable. Don't say, I'm going to spend four hours a day meditating.

And don't say you're going to get up at 4.30. Say, I'm going to do 15 minutes more, and I'm actually going to do my meditation every day. And think like that. They say you should restrict it to five or six modest goals for your life.

That's not to say that if you see there's an opportunity for a big decision in your life, you can do that as well. And don't be afraid, because your mind now is more clear than it will be in a long time. The monks have a thing called durden.

It means every morning we have to recite a certain number of verses that is basically resolutions for the day. And towards tomorrow evening we'll try to formulate two lists. One is things you're going to do with your life.

Things about your practice or things about your personal life. Decisions you can make now that you won't be able to make in a week as clearly. And after you start talking.

Secondly, a durden, meaning something you can recite every morning to yourself. Like five things you don't want to forget about your behavior and your activities. So something short that you can get up in the morning and say, I remember back on January 1st I resolved the following five things.

And don't make it more than five or six things. And start that process now. Start thinking about your life and what's important in your life.

And maybe some new ideas about what you could do with yourself. And then some resolutions. It happens to be the perfect night in the retreat.

And it happens to be January 1st. So that's very auspicious. Okay, so we'll do half an hour.

It feels, I mean, it's normal to feel very exhausted as you come out of retreat. And sort of when you start talking again it'll be very exhausting. And you'll feel like hollow or very tired just from talking.

Okay, so expect that. And it's good to do that like the night before or something like that. It's not good to go out of retreat and go back to work the next morning.

So it's good to, like tonight, after the eight o'clock, after the last session we'll open for talking. And also start back easy. Don't start, you know, gabbing right away.

And, you know, work into it. But try a little bit tonight and then a little bit tomorrow. And try to talk about meaningful things.

Okay? And expect that you'll feel tired. So it's very unwise to finish your retreat and go straight back to work.

Or give yourself like a day to think and be by yourself, even if you're talking a little bit and things like that. So we'll loosen up a little bit tonight after the night session. Okay, so you can, when we stop tonight around 9.30 you can speak again. Some people are having wind problems. Another good thing to do is read a book or something like that. Like a science fiction book or a romance novel or something like that.

Okay? It breaks the wind. It breaks the mood actually.

And then you relax. You know, it works. So I thought I should tell you that.

So if you've tried, you know, some kind of oil on your chest or your back, eating lots of oily foods. You know, looking out the window at the sky is okay. That's actually in the medical tantras.

That's a treatment for lung. Is to look at the stars or look at the sky. And like that.

So those are things to do if you get wind. Actually, since we're so close, you might as well just go for it. Okay.

Next to the last part of the visualization. Now you get to do the sword thing. So, so far we have madhartu, which is, the first part is mande, cleaning out.

You know, when you clean out, it's like, it's like you've been constipated and you're having a big ugly crap or something, or pushing a baby out or something. You know, think of it as some very ugly dirty thing and you're like working to get it out and then you push it out. Okay.

And some ugly, all your bad part of you. You know, even if you don't feel pure, do it anyway. You know, just, it's the visualization of being pure.

You know, take your worst chronic mental afflictions and see them really going out and like spitting on Lord Death. You know, here, that's all you can have, you know, and give it to him. And then see the earth close, double Dorje.

And then yande, the last remnants come up floating on top of the nectar and come out the top, right here. This is called chitup, okay. Comes out there and pours out.

And then the third one was, then see the nectar come in again and with each drop being a globe and inside each globe a lamp. And that's new kinds of knowledge, new kinds of spiritual strength and wisdom that you don't have now and that you would like to have and that you can't even imagine now. So you do that.

Then the next one was requesting the ability to explain these things to other people, gradually. Learning more and more about how to explain it to others in a taptsul, right, from the Chang'e class. In appropriate, creative, clever ways that fit the situation, fit your culture, fit the people you're talking to, fit the situation you're in, okay, without pushing, without being proselytizing and things like that, but just when the time comes that you're able to speak what's right at the given time and what's going to help that other person's life.

Now the next visualization, you get to do the sword, okay. And you ask again for nectar. This is a sword on Jetsun Kapha's right.

And Manjushri has one here, and has that volume coming up over here, okay. And this one represents the ability to argue your case, okay. Like, you know, if you've ever tried to sell anything, or they call it answering the customer's objections, you know, like you have to have all the grant proposals, you know.

You have to have in your mind ready all the answers to a person's qualms or hesitations or objections, you know. So especially in a culture which is not Buddhist, people are going to be coming up with, because of their unexamined cultural suppositions, which they grew up with, so they believe in them. They will ask standard questions, you know, and then you have to be ready to address them.

So, when the verse, in the verse it says, tse tsam gom pe, she rang pe du su, che tsu tson pe, lo du ge su su. We're up to the tse, che tsu tson pe, lo du ge su. Tse means debating, like when the monks go to the debating ground, they go tse pa tse ga.

Tse pa tse ga means to debate. And tse can mean also legal disputes, tse can mean arguing, tse can mean quarreling, but here tse means the ability to answer people's objections in a logical way, and in a strong way when it's necessary. But always logical.

And especially in your culture, which is so, so many of the ideas are so foreign to our culture, and not for logical reasons, but for reasons of the way we were brought up. So you have to be able to anticipate those questions, and then you have to be able to address them logically. And as a rule, the first rule of tse pa, is always to never go beyond the other person's own understanding, meaning you can't use as a proof anything that they don't already accept.

Perfect logic in Buddhism, ever since the days of the Buddha and Dharmakirti, is to prove something to somebody using what they already accept. You see what I mean? You're not asking them to accept anything new, you're just showing them a new way of organizing what they already believe, and then they must come to your conclusion.

So, perfect tse pa is always only using what the other person already believes, but showing it to them in a new light, so that they come. You can prove past lives and future lives, you can prove that the mind doesn't end, you can prove that the mind and the body are separate, and the mind doesn't die. You can prove emptiness and you can prove the principles of karma, without resorting to anything that a normal American person doesn't already accept.

You just have to be wise at how you present it. You can present it to them using only the beliefs that they already hold. And so you're asking for the wisdom to be able to do that.

So then you see the nectar coming down again, nectar comes down, each drop is a globe, inside of each globe is a lotus, pink lotus, on top of that vertically is a very beautiful, strong, I call it Norman's Thorn, out of nam chak steel, sky steel, and blazing with fire. And it represents cutting the wrong beliefs that other people hold, wrong worldviews, wrong ways of seeing the world that other people hold. Like tip classic is to think of some problem you're having at work with somebody, and to believe that either that it's their fault, that it's coming from them, or that you can affect it with external means.

Which means in both cases, to believe that the person is bad from their own side, to believe that you can change them from external ways, are both kinds of holding them to be self-existent. That's ignorance. That's the classic ignorance.

And then realizing that they have come from something you've done, similar to someone else, and changing them by not doing that anymore. In other words, that you could fix all the problems in your life, physical and mental, by keeping your vows, and not by more exercise, or better arguing with people, or things like that. But just keeping your Buddhist morality, your Buddhist lifestyle, would actually make all your problems go away.

And not that you can solve them any other way. To be able to express that to people, and to be able to demonstrate that to people, is what you're asking for. And the sword represents cutting off those other worldviews, cutting them and stopping them in yourself and in other people.

Where do things really come from? Where do your problems really come from? And then teaching people, Master Shantideva said, it's either God is torturing you, or it's just random acts of violence in your life, or you made it with your karma, one of the above.

And then act on that, and be able to demonstrate that to people, and to cut off their wrong views and your own wrong views. So that's what you're asking for, when you see the sword. And that's the next and last visualization.

We have one more we'll do tomorrow morning. And then it will be complete, and you can use that practice yourself anytime, and you know how to do a proper retreat anytime. So you have a whole module that you can pull out and use anytime you have three days, or a week, or a month, or three years.

Free. We'll talk a little bit about for the next half hour, for the next half hour we'll be doing a process which I found very useful. It was taught to me by a very great lama.

And as you go out of retreat to examine your life, because right now your mind is very clear, relatively clear. And before you start talking again, before you start other activities, one of the great things about a retreat, I think, is the distance it gives you from your life. Rarely do you take a week away from your life and then have a week of distance to look at your life.

And then rarely do you not have talk jumbling up your mind for a whole week. So then your mind is pretty clear. And also you've gotten some kind of sweet taste, they call rasa, from the practice.

And maybe you've had some insights into what could be possible if you did more practice. You know what I mean? So it's a very good opportunity to look at your life and make some changes.

And there are different kinds of things I want you to work on, okay? There'll be like three or four lists by the time we finish. Maybe I'll keep a list of them.

And they don't have to go in order. We'll take a little bit of time in the next few sessions. I think one is, I keep a list of retreat notes, and I go over my notes, and I look at the...

I make notes about how I did the retreat, things to watch out for, like one time I drank Coca-Cola, and I giggled for about an hour. And one time I had loong, and Lali Gewissler made me lasagna, and it went away. One time I had loong, and I read a short story, and it just went away.

Notes like that. Also what you need to do your retreat. I have it, like from Boy Scouts, they gave you a hiking list, like flashlight, band-aids, snake bite kit, and make yourself a checklist for your next retreat, because you won't remember next time you do a retreat.

But I hope you would do this, at least a ten-day retreat, three or four times a year. And later on, personally, I found it very important to do a lay-loong twice a year. Like, that's about a month or five weeks each.

And there'll come a time in your life when, you know, work your way out of the 40-hour thing. I mean, work your way... I did 16 years of the corporate thing.

You know, work your way out of it slowly. Don't quit tomorrow. Just find a way that you can do it.

Like, I went to my boss and I said, you know, you can pay me three quarters and just give me a month off. And he was ecstatic, you know. And, you know, you can make deals like that.

You can find deals like that. Not in a week, but in a year or two years you can work out. You should have an honest living.

You shouldn't grub off other people. You shouldn't be in a situation where you're always desperate for rent money. But also, I don't believe in America you have to work 50 weeks a year to feed yourself.

Even in Manhattan, you know, you don't have to do that. But you have to meet your obligations and you have to be responsible. So you work your way out of it.

You know, you work your way into a situation where it works for you well and it works for your employer well. And you're both happy. You know, like timeshare a job with somebody or something like that.

Or lower your expenses. There's two ways to get rich. One is to not spend anything.

Okay. All right. So first one is retreat notes.

You know, general notes to yourself next time. What to take with you. What to avoid.

What to do. Second would be what I would call a du-jen. D-U-D-R-E-N And this is like when you wake up you're going to tell yourself six or seven things.

You know, like I refuse to get jealous. These are like general principle things, you know, that you're going to have for yourself. Like mine have been like don't get jealous of other Buddhist teachers or, you know, don't eat sugar at all.

You know, I kept it for a year or two years and, you know, you know, split my meals with somebody so I don't... You know, or stuff like that. They work.

By the way, du-jens work really good for about a month. And then... I'm just speaking from experience.

Then they go down. And then it's important. They reach their bottom about the time you do your next retreat.

And then the purpose of the next retreat is to get up a little higher than the last one. And then you go down again. But you keep making...

If you make a graph of all the peaks, you're going up. You go down last each time. You know what I mean?

So, doing retreats is a continual process of improvement. But you're still having peaks and valleys. But you're going...

It's going up, you see. So, you'll do your du-jens really well for a few weeks or a month or two and then it'll start to degenerate. You'll start having a cookie now and then.

That could be like how much sleep you're going to get, how much retreat time you're going to do, meditation time you're going to do, or just general life problems. You've been working on your six perfections. You've identified...

I was going crazy because I was getting bored of the 500th time to the perfection of giving. You've probably identified some major problems you have with your six perfections. So, you make a du-jen for that.

Thirdly, I've found it useful to make a schedule for myself. Redo my schedule. Like, after one retreat, I flip my whole daily schedule around, you know.

I used to not eat in the evening for many years. And then I tried not eating in the morning and then I, you know, instead of doing memorization in the evening, I did it in the morning or something like that. I switched the whole day around and tried that for six months and it worked really, really good.

So, look at your schedule and consider making some really major changes in what you do, you know. My personal schedule now, I don't see anybody until one o'clock. I do all my practice.

Then I work until eight or something like that. Because I've found personally that I can do stupid work in the night but I can't meditate very well in the evening, you know. So, I just push the whole day back, you know what I mean, like that.

So, consider it. Consider making some change and then write a schedule. That would be a daily schedule and a weekly schedule.

And then I make myself a fourth list which is, I write down all the things I'm doing like projects and job and other obligations. And in a clear state of mind, I try to prioritize them, you know what I mean. I try to decide finally which is more important and which is going to get cut off if I don't have time, you know.

So, I think you could say, you know, your life tasks or tasks, task priorities or something like that. And it's just a statement that these things are important to me and these things are not important to me. And then you make the, like if it comes a choice between keeping your daily meditation or finishing a project, three months after you do Dren, you're choosing the project, you know.

And you're saying, oh, I can meditate tomorrow, you know. And this is just where you just write down all the things you're doing and then you give them an ordered number. And when there's a nang dom, nang dom is a priority conflict, meaning it's in the Vinaya.

It means, the Vinaya says that you have to do sojong every two weeks if you're ordained. The Vinaya also says that you're supposed to have a monastic tutor for the first ten years of your ordination who's supposed to guide you hour by hour. And if you lose your mentor, your Vinaya mentor, you're supposed to go get a new one immediately.

You know, like if they died or if they went away, you're supposed to, within an hour, you're supposed to go find another one. So, this is in the Vinaya, right? So, suppose your mentor passes away and it's time to go to sojong.

That's called a nang dom. That's like a, there's a priority conflict. And then you have to decide which one is more virtuous and which one is more important.

So, in that case, finding your mentor is more important and you're allowed to miss, you're required to miss sojong. You see what I mean? So, you have to do that for your, make a priority list of what's important in your life and then live by it.

You know, that's the hard part. You're going to put meditation goes number one, tantric commitments goes above meditation, or something like that. What my tantric Lama tells me to do goes above what I might appear to be for other people or what might be comfortable for me.

You know what I mean? You make a priority of what's important to you and then, in a clear state of mind. And then later, you try to stick by it.

And you can include there your projects, you know, like working on this project and working on this project. For a Buddhist, this is mainly an exercise of deciding which virtues are more important than other virtues. You see what I mean?

The du-gen is more addressing your bad habits. The priority thing is more addressing, okay, it's important to serve my family. It's important to get enough sleep.

It's important to do my tantric commitments. It's important to do my monk's commitments. But then you have to decide which ones are more virtuous.

And I think a lot of American Buddhists who are pretty good Buddhists get to a certain point where they, everything they're doing is virtuous, but then they have to choose, you have to learn the art of choosing what's more virtuous than other virtues. You see what I mean? So that'll be number four.

So work on it for, we have about 20 minutes. Start collecting your thoughts. Look through your notes.

Maybe you want to start with your retreat notes or start with whatever's comfortable for you. But by this time, or by tomorrow afternoon, try to have four lists, okay? I'll say the four again.

First one would be, you know, things I learned during my retreat about how to do a retreat. And checklist for next time. You know, don't forget to bring lots of Kleenex.

Okay? Okay? You'll be surprised.

I mean, you get into a one-month retreat and you realize you don't have any Kleenex. And, you know, okay. I ran out of toilet paper once, that's what I got.

Okay, number two is du-dren, meaning, this is like a list of personal goals that every morning when you get up, you're going to look at it. I even memorized mine and recited it every day. And, you know, it's like addressing your personal weaknesses and what you want to do with your life, okay?

Like, those are very noble, high principle things, okay? And you look at them every morning. Number three is your schedule, daily schedule, weekly schedule.

Do you want to make any changes? And, you know, write it out in detail and put it somewhere, you know, like on the refrigerator or something and try to stick to it for a while. And make it realistic, okay?

Don't say, meditate at 4.30, you know, eat at 7 for 15 minutes, you know. I mean, be honest about what time it takes. What you'll find out when you do the schedule is that you're having task priority conflicts, you know, like you don't have enough time to do everything you thought you wanted to do.

And then you have to cut some things and then just admit it, okay? Admit it now in a clear state of mind rather than not doing them, you know what I mean? Also, personally, I've found that daily schedule, throw in a little bit of week thing, you see what I mean?

Like, you'll have a daily schedule, but say, on Wednesdays I change it to that. You see what I mean? Because just sticking yourself to one day can be pretty, it can be, it doesn't work seven days a week, you see what I mean?

You do need to take a day off every seven days or so. You do need to break your schedule every seven days or so, you know. And leave yourself some goof-off time, you know, like, you know what I mean?

Don't pack every 15 minutes, okay, Winston? You know, like, time for a movie, or time for walking around, or time for just goofing off, okay? I mean, leave yourself, you know, every other day or every third day, you know, that's what I'm saying, don't make a daily schedule that hasn't built into it some other outlet, pressure outlet, okay?

And for unexpected things that come up. And then the last one is a list of what you do, you know, your activities in your life, and decide now, in a clear state of mind, what's more important. And then when the nangdongs come, when the priority conflicts come, you choose on the basis of that list, even if you're not thinking so clearly a week from now, okay?

All right? Okay, go ahead. Okay, very last part of the visualization.

The text says, tösang gombe kṣerabh pĕr duṣu, cetsat-sambhilo du-gyetu-so, tösang gombe kṣerabh pĕr duṣu means, please bless me to increase my amount of learning. tösang gombe kṣerabh pĕr duṣu means, töpa means hearing, or learning classroom hours, okay? And frankly, it's just raw classroom hours, maybe 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 hours in the classroom hearing the subjects of Buddhism.

And you have to go through that. It's like playing piano. It's like doing your scales.

You have to do it. And it has to be repeated over and over again. And you keep hearing it.

So that's the tuh. Sam means the process of integrating it in your mind by thinking about it a lot on your own, you know, considering it. And that's like Buddhism going on in your head all day long.

And then gompa means when it gets internalized and it just becomes part of you. And that also means meditation. So it means internalizing it on the point of, to the point of where it's part of your being and also meditating on it.

Learning to go into deep meditation, which means you have to learn to sit quietly for an hour or two without moving and with concentrating. And you have to be able to do that. To see emptiness directly, you must be able to do that, or else you can't.

So you have to get to a point where you can do that. The next line, and then it says, shera means wisdom. Peldusul means please bless me, that it increases.

That's the meaning of the first line. Then it says, the second line is, how do you communicate what you've learned to other people? Cher means, is the book, in the lotus flower, the book on the lotus flower, meaning the ability to explain verbally to other people what you've learned.

Cher means the ability to address objections, like a good salesman. Like the customer says, this is the wrong color, and you say, but it'll fit your living room. And then they say, I didn't want it.

And then you say, but you need it. And then they say, it doesn't work. And then you can say, well, you can fix it.

And this is learning to address people's concerns. And in the West, even more necessary than in Tibet where it was already part of the culture. And then that's the sword flowing through the nectar.

Now the last, very last part of the visualization. You do the duti. This whole thing is called duti bheb jang.

When you do a Vajrayogini retreat, there's a whole section at the end relating to this, so it's good to practice it now. Duti bheb jang. Duti means nectar.

Bheb jang means, bheb means coming down. Jang means making you pure. Duti bheb jang.

All of these visualizations are called, duti bheb jang. Then you imagine nectar coming down one last time, and there's a book with a sword. So that's just the last visualization is a globe.

Each drop of nectar is a globe, like a crystal globe. And then inside of it is a lotus flower, pink. And on top of that is a book wrapped in a golden cloth, Tibetan style, or you can do Western style, doesn't matter.

And then the sword on top of it. So it's a combination of che and tsu, a combination of the ability to explain yourself about Buddhism, and the ability to address other people's objections or concerns about it. The ability to debate, basically.

And those two together represent tsum. I'm sorry, tsum. So, che, tsu, tsum.

Che, tsu, tsum, bhe, lo, du, gye, so, so. It's what you've been reciting when you do your dake and tundra recitation. Che, tsu, tsum, bhe.

Che, tsu, tsum. Tsum means the ability to write about Buddhism. The ability to compose books.

The ability to write articles. The ability to send someone a letter and explain Buddhism in it. But it's basically the ability to put down in writing.

Which requires a combination of explaining and addressing concerns or debating. So you have to have a little bit of both. So that's why there's a book and a sword.

And then that's the... You're praying to Je Tsongkhapa for the ability to do that. Je Tsongkhapa, in his own lifetime, wrote 10,000 pages of scripture.

His works and his students' works, which are in the temple on 6th Street, up on the wall, 38 volumes. There's probably about, I don't know how many, about 500 to 600 different books there. And he didn't live that long.

I mean, he lived 60-something. So, I mean, it was... It's amazing that a person could write that.

So, he obviously had it. And then you're asking for it. I think it's very important, especially in the West, that people start writing authoritative books about Buddhism.

There are a lot of books available. They're sort of like... I see two extremes.

One is books about Buddhism from a scholarly point of view, meaning looking or writing about Buddhism as a subject of study, almost like anthropology or something like that. And then a lot of foreign words and a lot of technical explanations of the philosophy, without much reference to your personal life. And then on the other extreme, simplifications that miss the great wealth or the richness of the scriptures, where all the detail and all the helpful questions that come up and are addressed and treated with beautiful detail in the scriptures are just...

the people don't know them, so they just simplify it. And I think there's an important place for... there's a big gap in the middle for the scripture and the sword, where you give them the wealth of the information, but you also apply it to people's daily lives in a clear way, which doesn't involve a lot of foreign words and technical comparisons to Schopenhauer and whoever it is.

You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Just clear, factual Buddhism.

And I'm not criticizing. You know, Buddha started, you know, three turnings of the wheel. First one was simplification, you know.

Third one was too complicated. Second one was fine, if you're a middle-weight person. So you know that.

And they could be Buddha's writing though, I'm not saying that. But I think there's a big place for it in the middle, which you are trained to fill. And you have to...

You know, you may be a person who never imagined you'd write anything, but there are students in this room who... I've seen, like, two, three-page things they've written in magazines that people... you know, five years later, people are still talking to me about them and saying, oh, I read that thing.

So you can do it. And even if you think you can't do it, you have to ask for the blessings to do it. There are thousands of pages of stuff that...

like what Aura's working on, that you can help. And then eventually those have to be edited and cleaned up, and we'd like to put them on the web. And that would be very appropriate.

That would be something that Je Tsongkapa would like to do if he were alive today, okay? I think the last thing to say, that I didn't talk much about, is that in Tibet this mantra is considered very, very powerful against all kinds of obstructions. So, like, if you had a health problem, or are depressed, or anxiety, or something like that, that in Tibet, you know, the Lama would say, oh, you need to go do some miktsema.

The mantra is called miktsema. And there are, as I said, there are volumes and volumes written about miktsema. There are, you know, a couple of hundred commentaries written just about miktsema, so that the doctor would order, you know, oh, you need three, four, five hundred miktsemas, you know.

So, you can use it if you have a problem. It's especially powerful with regard to problems, you know, to personal problems, or other kinds of problems that you have. It's considered a very powerful mantra with regard to personal problems.

So, people would be reciting it all the time. And you don't have to do a two-hour retreat, or a two-week retreat. If you have five minutes extra, then do some miktsemas.

You know, if you have a minute extra, do some miktsemas. If you have... It gets burned into your mind.

You know, the VCR of your karma-collecting mind is open all the time. It's on all the time. It's collecting all the time.

It's taking in imprints constantly. So, you might as well fill them up usefully. You know what I mean?

If you have an extra minute, or two minutes, you know, you're waiting for the dentist or something, then don't waste the time. Because, you know, the brain is only alive in this life for a certain amount of time. So, you want to keep sending impressions to it, filling it with impressions, karmic impressions.

So, in Tibet, they'd be doing miktsema all the time. And then they say the demons were upset by this, so they invented Tibetan cheese. And this is like dried Tibetan cheese.

It's very, very, very hard. And it comes in little pieces like that. And it's like bubble gum.

If you start eating one, it's very hard to soften it. It takes like an hour to get it soft. And during that time, you can't recite anything.

It's like a big piece of bubble gum in your mouth. So, they say that the demons were upset by miktsema and invented Tibetan cheese. Tibetans love to eat the cheese.

If they get a bag of it, they'll spend all day on it. So, like that. Okay, we'll do meditation.

I'd also like to thank the protectors. Normally, at least a few people really go crazy. And we've been very fortunate.

Usually the fire breaks out, or someone goes really nuts. Patrick can tell you.

[Speaker 2]
So... Anyway, so, thank them.

[Speaker 1]
And then, this teaching, Ken Rinpoche gave it to us in, I don't remember what year, but early, 75, 76, something like that. So, it's really through his kindness that we have this place, or that any of us are here. So, we'll do his long life prayer for that.

The idea is to do it slow. In Sara, they do it very slow. And they do it at Sara.

Every time they do a prayer, they do Ken Rinpoche's long life prayer. NAC CHEN TRIN DE WU NAM TRAM KYANG CHI DU MÖN PE MA RUNG TRUN CHEN TRIN

[Speaker 2]
TSE PE DANG GYE GANG TSE CHE PE NEN DE DE SHING GYI NGÖN PÖN GYI LES SU TSUM ME LO DANG SANG PÖN GANG CHEN GYI RUNG NAM CHEN PÖN GYEL TSE THAR SUNG DRE

[Speaker 1]
NAM DANG DE PÖN CHEN CHEN SANG PÖN TSUM KYE LES SU NAM MA SUNG WANG DRE NAM DANG DANG DE CHEN GYI SANG PÖN

[Speaker 2]
DEN DU SANG PÖN GYI LES SANG PÖN GYI DU CHEN DEN DRIN LEN YEN NAM CHOK KUN DU YON KYA PAK SANG WANG PO CHAK DEN CHOK DU CHIN CHIN WANG GYE CHIN MUNG GYI CHUNG DRO LA YIN TSE GYÖNG LES SU DONG GYI NAM GYÖ LAM SANG DONG LA DANG LEN PÖN DEN CHOK CHEN YIN CHEN PÖN SANG DEN CHOK DU CHIN CHIN MUNG GYUR PÖN DIN GANG NEN NEN CHEN CHUN SANG ZEN MED TANG CHUNG WE YEL DEN GYE WE LO TOK YUNG LEN WE DIN CHEN LAM LA GYÖNG DANG SHAK DEN CHOK DAK SO NAM KYANG KYUNG GYI LES SU DU MI CHEN YIN GYI CHEN PYIN SANG DEN SU CHEN DU PEK DEK SANG YUN GYUR DEN YANG SONG DRO WE LAM MA CHOK DU CHOK

[Speaker 1]
NUNG RIN GYEL WA SE CHEN CHEN NAM

[Speaker 2]
DANG NAM TOK GYEL MED CHEN YIN DEN GYEN LO DAK SHAK SE CHEN YIN MÖN PEK DEN CHUN YIN GYI THAM MÖN PEK DÖN DIN MÖN LÖN CHOK

[Speaker 1]
You've had all the teachings on his worldview and the best thing is to carry it and teach it, and hold it yourself.

You know that the main thing that's causing your world is your karma. And that everything is empty. And that what you see around you, whether you like it or don't, is coming all from that.

So the only way to change it is to keep your book. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Dharma. Can you please do more retreats with us? Yes, please.

[Speaker 1]
If you meditate every day.

[Speaker 2]
Until then. Maza. This is the end of session 7.