Базовый курс ACI 1: Основные учения буддизма (2019, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
We have 45 minutes okay, just hang in there. Learn the deep DCI teacher secret, how to sleep in the class with your eyes open, okay? The people who didn't finish the DCI teacher training, they will go ...

but the real teachers will look like that. What do the super advanced teachers do? No, they go like this ...

every five minutes? Then definitely they look like they're awake you know, so I'm just teaching you this, this is a high teacher skill, okay? Alright, you can practice it tomorrow or tonight.

Okay, I'm gonna go to your homework, which is here somewhere, okay, I would like to teach this class in the traditional way, okay? I don't want to just go through the homework, okay? So, one class, let's do it the old way, okay?

Just for fun, I looked at this class and I said it would be fun to teach this class the real ... the real way, okay? So, I'm gonna do it the real way, okay?

You okay with that? Probably take the rest of tonight and tomorrow, okay? So, we're behind as usual, Tim told ...

I promised Tim I wouldn't do this, but ... I did. Let me see here ...

yeah, okay. Here we go, I'm gonna teach it the old way, okay? Ready?

RGYAL BA'I GSUNG RIM GONG GYI GNYIS MED DANG, RGYAL TE DANG PO RNAMS GYI SNGAGS PA'I LAM, RGYAL LDAN PAR DANG GI SBYUNG NGO STE, JI LTAR GNYUD ZHIN BDAG GIS BSHAD PA BYA, this is a very famous part of the ... Three Principle Paths, okay? PLE, right?

Tim yelled at me, because ... you didn't fix your own mistake in the homework, I said I'm sorry, you'll all have to do it with your pencil or whatever, okay? Alright, so, this is one of the important beginning lines of the Three Principle Paths, and I'd like to go through it with you in a traditional way, okay?

RGYAL BA'I GSUNG RIM GONG GYI GNYIS MED DANG, I'm gonna teach you the very heart of all the teachings of the Buddhas, okay? First line, I'm gonna teach you the heart of all the teachings of the Buddhas. RGYAL TE DANG PO RNAMS GYI SNGAGS PA'I LAM, I'm gonna teach you the path which all the bodhisattvas think is so cool, that's the second line, okay?

Third line, RGYAL LDAN THAR DU RNAMS GYI SBYUNG NGO STE, I'm gonna help you enter the SBYUNG NGO, okay? SBYUNG NGO means a special word, right? Word for $100?

Damn! Slow down, you're making me poor, okay? Yeah, it means in Tibet there's many many rivers, because there's snow everywhere, and there's no bridges because they didn't have cement and steel, until now.

So, you had to find the shallow part to ride your horse over, and that's called SBYUNG NGO, okay? It means an easy place to enter a stream, an easy place to go across. So, Tsongkapa calls his own book, this is the SBYUNG NGO for people who have really good karma, okay?

And who are THAR DU, THAR DU, who want to reach enlightenment, THAR DU, okay? Why am I emphasizing THAR DU? That's Geshe Lodh Thar's real name, so if you want to impress him, you can say, we studied THAR DU the other night, he'll go, aww, that's my name!

You say, really? Okay, his name is Lobsang THAR DU, okay? Who seeks for freedom, okay?

What's the Lobsang? Pure mind, where did he get the name? Yeah, Khenpo Rinpoche's first name, he inherited, okay?

He made him a monk, okay? Okay, then the last line, JI LTAR NUS SHIN BDAG GIS BSHAD PA BYA, say JI LTAR NUS SHIN BDAG GIS BSHAD PA BYA, okay? By the way, many people come to me and say, I would like to learn Tibetan, and it's a good idea, okay?

Now listen, there's ... we have three teams trying to find the Sanskrit originals, okay? Which were destroyed in India.

Maybe we think we can find a hundred, we have three teams, they've been working for 12 years, we've been paying them for 12 years, big teams, and they only input like less than a hundred books, okay? It's very difficult to find the Sanskrit books, okay? In the Tibetan language, including the originals from India, there are 300,000 books, each one is incredible.

No ... no fluff? What do you say?

There's no detective novels in Tibetan language, it's a hundred percent heavy-duty incredible books, okay? It's by far the largest spiritual literary tradition in the world, okay? People just don't know about it.

John Brady's working to stop that, okay? Why did I brag about that? Oh, I don't remember.

Anyway, oh yeah, so people ask me, they want to learn Tibetan. Memorize this poem. It's 14 verses, okay?

It takes about two minutes to recite, okay? And normally, the books we memorize are an hour and a half to recite, two hours to recite. You can recite this one in about, I don't know, three minutes, okay?

So, if you're interested to learn Tibetan, learn the prayers first, you know, sushi ... oh, sashi, and learn those first, okay? And then go on to this book, okay?

This is easy, okay? 14 verses, and I'd like Nick, he asked me how can I start my Tibetan, I said memorize this, and he did, and his Tibetan is pretty good now, okay? So, it puts a big seed in your mind, okay?

By the way, I think Jenny's coming to the translation, you're all welcome to come to the translation course, you don't have to be a translator, we have secondary translators who are going to translate the English into Spanish, Russian, German, French, Mandarin, okay? You're always welcome to come to the college. It's tough, okay?

It's tough, it's ... I don't know, five hours a day, six hours a day, heavy, heavy, heavy, but your mind will grow like, really big, okay? Then you can teach like Stanley, okay?

I'm not kidding, okay? He's got all this stuff in there that's going to grow. His head's got bigger already, okay?

I'm trying to give him a lot of pride so I can break it later. Okay, so the last verse means that ... the last line is, GCIG RTAR NUS SHING BDAG GIS GYUR BYAG means, I will do my best to explain, one, the essence of all the Buddha's teaching, two, the path that all the Buddhist Saphas think is super sexy, number three, the entry point for those who want to go to freedom, I will explain it, you know, as best as I can.

He goes like this, Tsongkapa goes, as best as I can, you know, I'm just a dummy, okay? And that's a traditional way to start a scripture, it's called ... say Khenpa?

KHYUNG. Khenpa? KHYUNG.

Geshe Michael says, get up on the altar, get up on the throne, teach Abhidharma, mental functions, whatever, okay? Traditionally, the first thing you do, traditionally, for 2,000 years, you get up on the throne and you say, I have all these negative emotions more than anyone in this room, and thank you for letting me teach, and Geshe Michael says to you tonight, thank you for letting me teach, I know you're all Buddhas, I know I'm the only not Buddha in the room, and it's fun to teach, so thank you for that, and I'll do the best I can, okay? So, Tsongkapa is being ...

what do you call? Humble, okay? But it's true also, and never forget it, you're gonna be an ACI teacher right?

It's very possible that every student you ever meet is already a Buddha, and they're just trying to get you to talk about it, okay? If Geshe Michael talks about jealousy 10,000 times in 40 years, maybe he'll get it. Don't look so Buddha, okay?

Just go like, I'm not a Buddha Geshe-la, maybe these other guys are, okay? Anyway, thanks for letting me teach. So, that's traditional.

By the way, what's the other thing happening in that line? Traditionally, he's promising to finish the book, and this is a comment on Buddhist commitments, okay? And this is traditionally one of the most serious commitments a Buddhist can make.

I pledge to teach this class, I will make you do these yoga poses in the same order over and over again, unless I die before the end of the class. You see, that's a commitment, okay? It's a Buddhist teacher's commitment, okay?

I will ... so, you're gonna go to your own students this year right? You're gonna say I'm going to teach you a course one, and in your mind you've got to say, I will not quit unless I die, okay?

And it's very interesting, in the canon, in the scriptures, there are books that end halfway through a sentence. Why? The guy died, okay?

He got hit by a car, or whatever, elephant, okay? And it's considered one of the most serious promises you can make. Like, Seiji's gonna finish his Crown of Knives translation, or die trying, okay?

And it's always in the first verse, it's always in the first verse, I will do it, I will complete this, I promise, I will finish, or I will die first, okay? Stanley's gonna have to ... he's got like 25 years ...

good luck, okay. Alright, now, the big ... how much time we got?

Okay, good, we still have half an hour. The big fei chang pang thing about this verse ... fei chang ku?

Same. The cool thing about the first verse of the Three Principle Path is that Tsongkapa, anyone want to guess what he did? He put the Three Principle Paths in the first verse, he hid them in the first verse, okay?

We already covered the Three Principle Paths. So, I give you permission to memorize the Three Principle Paths by just memorizing the first verse, haha, you can play jokes on people, you want to hear me recite the Three Principle Paths? Yeah.

Then just say the first verse, then they'll say, but there's 13 more verses, you say, nope, the first verse has everything in it, Pabongka said so, it's true, okay? Let's look at it, okay, ready? And I'm gonna switch to English, okay?

As far as I'm able, I will explain, okay? Which line? Last line, okay?

Tibetan syntax and English syntax is opposite, okay? In Tibetan you say, to this door go, I will. To this door go, I will, okay?

So, you have to translate the last line first, I promise I will write this book which is the essence of all the high teachings of the Buddhas, okay? What's that? Which of the Three Principle Paths?

Hmm? Renunciation. NIS SRANAG, I looked it up, you asked me, NIS SRANAG, yeah in Sanskrit, NIS means definitely, like NITARTA, and SRANAG, you know from Prasarita, what do they call it?

Spread your legs out, Prasarita what? Pada Uttanasana. Anyway, Prasarita means spread out, the word sansara comes from the same root, spread out.

Can also mean to flow in a straight line, okay? The word surge comes from that, and the word right comes from that, and there used to be a G on the end of it, and that's why right is spelled with a CH or a GH, Richtung in German, you don't care, okay? So, the essence of all the high teachings of the victors is renunciation.

I'm tired, I'm tired, okay? I'm tired, there's too much pain in this world, you know? Yoga teachers giving pain to their students, just kidding, I like to make fun of Andreas, okay?

The path that all the holy children recommend ... by the way, I translated this so long ago, you were supposed to say the male pronoun, HE, I'm going back and changing them all today, okay? But I didn't get there, okay?

So, who's the children of the Buddhists? Bodhisattvas. What's the Tibetan for that?

Gyaltsé, okay? We named her, when I gave ... I gave you that name I think, it's child ...

you are the child of the Buddhists, okay? It means bodhisattva, okay? So, guess which of the three principal paths is the path that the bodhisattvas recommend?

It's ... yeah, bodhichitta. The wish to become a planet, okay?

Alright, and that's the entry point for those who want to reach enlightenment. What's that secretly referring to? There's only one left, yeah, emptiness understanding, the pen, okay?

The last line is about the pen. If someone teaches you the pen correctly, you entered the ocean, you started across the stream, okay? You might get free, okay?

So, the three principal paths are already hidden in the first verse, so I could actually stop the class early, but I'm not gonna, as you knew. Okay, now I'm just gonna go through, you know, sweet points. He talks about the first line, which is the essence of all the teachings of the Buddhists, and the way he wants to talk about it, Pabongka Rinpoche in his commentary, is that he wants to talk about what's not the teaching of the Buddhists.

So, it's interesting that on the same day, our morning lamrim and our evening lamrim hit the same point, which is, don't waste your valuable mental real estate, don't infect it with a wrong idea that's going to stay there for 10,000 years, okay? Be careful what you study, okay? So, that's a subject here.

And they have a letter that ... they put a letter that Tsongkapa wrote to Lama Umapa. Anybody accept word for $100?

Who's Lama Umapa? Yeah, okay, let's go, let's go. Yeah, she got it, she got it.

Wait, wait, wait, don't tell her, you're losing money for me. Ronin? Oh, that's Dharma Rakshita.

Okay, you want the $100? You're like the director, that's not fair. Okay, go ahead, I'll pay for your lunch.

Yeah, what was his occupation? He was a shepherd in the mountains, okay? And he was just a plain old dirty shepherd, and people said he had met Manjushri directly.

So, there's a story that Tsongkapa went to him, and he said, did you really meet Manjushri directly? Can you have really direct line to, you know, Manjushri? And Umapa said, yep.

He's like this old man, dirty shepherd you know? He said, yeah, I have a direct line. And Tsongkapa says, do you mind if I just ask you some questions to check if you're telling the truth?

I think if I was the Lama Umapa I would have said go to hell, but Lama Umapa said, okay, ask me some questions, and so Tsongkapa asked him all these super difficult points about emptiness, you know? Like, what's ... what's the mind-only version of emptiness between consciousness seven and consciousness eight, you know?

And then Umapa's like, oh, you know, and he gave ... every time he gave a perfect answer. So, Tsongkapa used to go to him to get advice from Manjushri, and then guess what he did after that, like a year later?

Yeah, he said to Umapa, you know it's a waste of time to me to climb up here, be with all these stinky sheep, why don't you just teach me how to do that? And he did, and they say that's why Tsongkapa wrote such good stuff, okay? Direct line to Manjushri, alright.

Later people said he is Manjushri, okay? MIG MED TSER BA'I DE'O CHEN CHEN MI ZHIG, PHYIR MED KHYENT PA'I DBANG PO BYAMS PA'I YANG Okay, so anyway, he wrote a letter to Umapa, and in the letter he said, you know what? People are asking me to teach all the time, and I decided to just teach Atisha's two-page lamrim, and I called what?

Bodhi Pada Pradipika? Pada is the same in English, yeah, Light on the Path to Enlightenment. He said, you know what I realized?

So, he's writing to his old mentor, you know, ten years later and he says, now I'm a famous teacher, everyone's asking me to teach, I get invitations everywhere, and I figured out the best thing to teach is lamrim, and little lamrims, okay? Alright? So, this is Tsongkhapa talking after many years of teaching, he said, you know, I realized the best thing that helps students, and has everything in it, is a little lamrim, okay?

Got it? Okay, that's the next part of your class here. Even a single teaching session devoted to the steps on the path will cover every Buddhist teaching that exists on this planet.

OM MA NI BUD MED PA'I ... yeah, okay, I'm trying to at least finish this part. Yeah, and then he mentions the Guhyasamaja, which is a very famous tantra, and he also mentions Arya Sangha's Abhisamavankara, the Jewel of Realizations, right?

The first topic in the monastery for 12 years, and ... and he says, those books are not complete, they don't have all of Buddhism in them, you see? The Guhyasamaja tantra doesn't have the open teachings in it, and Maitreya's book that we spent 12 years on doesn't have the secret teachings in it, but the lamrim has both.

So, he says if you think about it, it's superior to the tantras and the non-tantras, okay? Got it? Who said that?

Tsongkhapa. Okay, then he says a cool thing, okay? I'm just covering roughly the paragraphs, okay?

Since we have 25 minutes in which you are going to look attentive, and sleep with your eyes open, and nah, Stephen's got it down, he's like ... okay, he says, he says that way and this way it's the best, that way and this way it's the best, okay? And it's very interesting, let me get it straight, yeah, if you study the lamrim first, you can read all the other books of the Buddha, you see I mean?

It's like a key that opens up all the other books, okay? Study the lamrim first, ACI course number one, it will help you understand all the other 17 courses of the foundation series, okay? So, the lamrim is like a key to all the other courses, okay?

That means going from here to there, what about going from there to here? Yeah, everything out there, all the Buddha's teachings, 300,000 books in Tibetan, are packed into this little lamrim, you can find them packed into this lamrim, okay got it? So, going that way, if you want to study pramana, or you want to study lower middle way, or you want to study higher middle way, learn the lamrim first, and then that's the key to all those doors, and if you want to go from all those doors back, everything is packed into this little poem, 14 verses okay?

By the way, I'll tell you from personal experience, I memorized a Sangha's work, 75 pages, and something happened to me afterwards, I'm just selling you on the idea of memorizing this okay? Even in English, you can memorize, or Chinese, doesn't matter, memorize it in your language, Spanish, doesn't matter, but I'll tell you something cool, if you memorize a book, it's talking in your head all day long okay? And weird stuff happens to you okay?

You have Tsongkhapa talking in your head, you have Maitreya talking in your head all day, you know, he's like ... and you're like, what? I was thinking about breakfast the other day, you know, and little pieces, it's like rock and roll songs, they'll come in your head ...

we listened to that this morning, we were having fun on the way here, komo mait ... I don't know, so anyway, little snippets, in English we call it snippets, little pieces of the song called Three Principal Paths, will ... they just come in your mind, and you know, you're in the middle of an argument with your girlfriend and and then Tsongkhapa says, the path which pleases the Bodhisattva, and you're like ...

So, I'm just telling you from personal experience, I didn't, nobody told me that, I experienced it okay? And it's cool, it's fun, I believe if you memorize a book by a Buddha, it changes your brain okay? My brain by the way, I mean not to brag, but it's getting smarter every year, you know, I don't know when it's going to stop and I'll forget things, but there's a karma if you memorize those books, it does something to your IQ, and your IQ keeps going up okay?

It's kind of cool, you should try it, it's kind of cool, and then you can use it for a business and stuff, you know, you're like a better business person and ... it makes you more capable, if you have Manjushri, Maitreya talking in your mind all day okay? Okay, like a rock and roll song, I decided 50-50 is a good balance, 50% rock and roll songs in my head, and 50% Tsongkapa talking in my head okay?

That's my suggestion. Okay, yeah, he's just selling the Lamrim, then he does talk about the first Lamrim in Tibet, which was the ... Light on the Path by Lord Atisha, and then he says, by the way ...

here he repeats what you learned this morning, I think it was this morning, who made the Lamrim? Yeah, Buddha, because it's called the Lamrim okay? That's the proof, okay?

Interesting, okay, good. So, traditionally, if they ask you for the source of the Lamrim, the answer is bodhubuddha-middle, the answer is the perfection of wisdom, does that refer to the lower Middle Way school? No, it refers to the tens of thousands of pages, ancient pages, the 100,000 verses, the 25,000 verses, 20,000 verses, the 8,000 verses, the Diamond Cutter Sutra, which is sometimes called the 300 verses, and you know, 700?

It gets less and less, okay. Alright, what's the shortest one? YI SKAD GCIG PA, yeah, ARM A, there's a sutra which is called A, and it's one word, and it's A, so if you want some cocktail party ammunition, memorize that one, go to the cocktail party, you see a cute boy, say, I memorized the sutra, he'll be impressed, you don't have to tell him it's A.

Okay, alright, mmm ... and he quotes the perfection of wisdom, and he says that's the source of the word Lamrim, and I'll read it to you, it is this perfection, nothing else, which is the path which is shared by all the victors, whether they are in the past, the present, or the future. This is the path which all Buddhists have traveled, past, present, and future.

This is the Lamrim. That's a quotation from the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, okay? Anybody for $100?

Words like DING! There's three things you can learn to do in the class, you know, one is to sleep with your eyes open, you can smile is also good, you know. Second level is nod your head, you know.

Third level is, only wake up when Geshe-la says $100, like, word. Okay, now, what was the $100? Yeah, okay, here's the question, he's like, I'm ready, I'm ready, he's like, he's like those cowboys with the gun, I'm ready.

Does the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras really possess the Lamrim? I mean, supposedly they are the source of the Lamrim, the ancient Perfection of Wisdom Sutras spoken by Lord Buddha are supposed to be the source of the Lamrim, but are they really? I'm saying really.

Well, if they did we wouldn't know. No, it's a different answer. Say again?

Yeah, you can say that, but there's a better answer. There's a problem here, there's stuff in the Lamrim that isn't in the Perfection of Wisdom, mainly. What's the main topic of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras?

Yeah, the shortest one is the Heart Sutra for example, if you don't count A, okay, it's emptiness, they don't talk about ... I mean, it's not the subject, it's not mainly bodhichitta or compassion, it's not, okay. So, say BAD DUN, so I get my money back right?

You're just sitting there, you just woke up for real. Say BAD DUN, NGOS DUN, BAD DUN, NGOS DUN, NGOS DUN means explicit subject matter, okay, obvious subject matter of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, bodhobodhamittho, is emptiness okay, but compassion is implied okay, it's not stated directly. So, when you study these great scriptures, we often talk about what are the two levels in the scripture, what's the obvious level and what's the underwater level okay, what's going on underneath, and it's all compassion okay, got it?

So, if you want to have a debate on the debate ground, you can say, does the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras talk about both streams, compassion and emptiness, and you can't lose the argument. If he says yes, you can say no, it doesn't have compassion directly stated, if he says no, you can say of course it does, it has both of them, it's a perfect debate question, you win every way, you can use this kind of logic with your husband or wife. Okay, so Tsongkhapa, Pabongka states that the source of the word Lamrim is that quotation from the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras okay, that's a big deal okay, and that's ...

you can answer people who say Lamrim was invented by Galupas, you know, it's not true, it was invented by another guy. Okay, then he goes off on not wasting your time, not ... what's the idim by the way?

Yeah, glass flower, because it's beautiful and it's fragile, what is it? Yeah, your mind, don't mess with your mind okay, thank you. Okay, so he gives a verse from Sakya Pandita I think, yeah, this is a great Sakya Lama, the first ...

well not the first, but the greatest of the Sakya Lamas okay, before Tsongkhapa, 200 years before Tsongkhapa, during the time of the Mongols, Chinggis Khan okay, at least Chinggis Khan's nephew okay, Godan Khan, so anyway, I'll read it to you okay, just for good luck, I'm trying to stall for 13 minutes, even in ... okay, anyway, I'll summarize it for you, when you buy a horse or a car okay, nowadays it would be a car, you ask everybody you know, you save your money, you ask everybody, you say you know, I'm thinking to buy a car you know, and you ask all your friends, did you ever have a Toyota? Yeah, what was your experience?

Ah, they suck, forget it you know, actually my experience was very good, I always buy Toyotas okay, but I don't know, and I had a good experience with a Honda okay, and then you could say you know, Ford, avoid Ford, avoid Chevrolet, you know, you ask people you know, is the 2019 model as good as the 2018 model you know, I don't want to buy the wrong car okay, same if you're going to rent an apartment you say, is there coffee shops in the place you know, is it safe, is the neighborhood safe, you ask people you see, people who buy a diamond, often people call me, I've been out of the diamond business for 20 ... exactly 20 years, and people still call me, can you check this diamond for me?

Because you know, it's a big deal, it's a lot of money, and you don't know a good diamond from a fake diamond you see, so when people make a big purchase, they always ask a lot of people, this is Sakyapandita okay, but when people buy some Dharma, they take anything like a hungry dog, you know, anything they see on the street they eat it fast, you know, he says you're all like hungry dogs you know, somebody comes into town, somebody says they're giving initiation, you run there, you pay your $35, you take a high tantric initiation, which you weren't supposed to be given unless you passed seven years of courses, and ...

and you just gobble it down, you don't ask if it's gonna make you sick or ... okay? Like that, he says we are strange people, we care more about our car than our Dharma, you know, we'll take any kind of Dharma, we'll go into the yoga class, the teacher says let's meditate about ...

I don't know, some weird thing, and you're like okay, and we don't ... we don't discriminate, we don't ask is that a good product or not okay, got it? And what he's trying to say is be more picky, be more picky, be more demanding, don't just take any teaching someone wants to give you okay?

It's the same thing we talked about this morning, maybe you will get a mouthful of ... okay, I was sitting with my friend last night, after I ate the mapo tofu chocolate cake already, and almost threw up, and they had a chocolate cake on a piece of ... on a dish, and they said Geshe-la, this is a real one, this is not the mapo tofu chocolate cake, I'm like oh cool, give me a bite, and I ate a big bite, and it was the mapo tofu chocolate cake, and they're like, I'm so sorry Geshe-la, I said you're gonna go to mapo tofu hell you know, don't worry I'll come and get you, all right, so Sakyapada says, don't take anything you get okay?

Then he has a quotation from Milarepa, who's famous ... now Milarepa's an interesting guy, and I think it's important to know something, Milarepa is the most famous meditator in Tibet okay? Everybody says that, every tradition says he was the most famous meditator in Tibet, and his gurbum, his hundred thousand songs, which is a bad translation of the title, which because it's not a hundred thousand songs, it just means a collection of songs, is one of the most famous pieces of Tibetan poetry, Daniel's all nervous, okay, I hereby cleanse you of this bad deed, he's the one who gave me the cake, okay, Milarepa, the nice thing about Milarepa, who became the most famous meditator in Tibet, is that he didn't start his serious meditation until he was 50 okay? Ten years after the average lifespan okay? Nowadays it would be 80 okay?

He was 50 before he did his great retreats okay? So, don't tell me you're too old to do retreat, or don't tell me you're too old to start meditating okay? You can teach an old dog new tricks okay?

It's possible, it's always possible to start, don't say you're too old to start meditation okay? Milarepa, the most famous meditator of all time, was 50 before he did his major, and before he started writing okay? So, Kuma, okay, so do it.

Then he said, and and I told you about his poetry yesterday I think, normal Tibetan poetry is dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, and you can tell Milarepa without knowing who wrote it, because it goes BAM! Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. BAM!

Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. So, I translated it that way okay? Here we go.

The point, that's the DUNG, the point, if you don't meditate on advices passed down from ear to ear, or real tradition, real lineage, the place, BAM! Got it? The point, the place.

What about the place? It's like those hip-hop songs, you know ... you can sit in a mountain cave but you're just torturing yourself okay?

You can sit in a cave in the Himalayas and you can meditate, but you're wasting your time okay? You're just hurting your legs okay? Who said that?

Yeah, the greatest cave meditator of all history said, don't waste your time if you don't have a good tradition. If you don't have a good oral tradition, if it's not an authentic scripture, if it's not a real teaching, don't waste your time man, I've been there, I've been in the Himalaya caves you know, I'm the number one Himalaya cave dude okay? Got it?

Alright, I still got six minutes and I'm gonna use it. Okay, I'm ready to ask homework, the first homework question, yay! I'm not gonna do the whole homework tonight, really?

Well, I'm doing it at my own speed, and if you don't have a homework tomorrow and you have to relax, I'm really sorry. Okay, three qualities of a buddha, of a practice, someone tries to sell you a meditation, someone tries to sell you a teaching, it should have three qualities, if it doesn't have them, don't do it, don't put it in your precious real estate okay? Don't break the glass flower okay?

Got it? Ready? Number one, it should have been taught by the Buddha okay?

Why? Why is that superior? He's omniscient, he knew you were reading the book when he wrote the book, got it?

He was reading your mind when he wrote the book, maybe he knows what you need. Number two, and this is important, and I'd like to say something about the Buddhist lineage okay? Like, I grew up Christian right?

I grew up as a Christian, and I'd studied Christian ... my degree from Princeton is mainly Christian studies, and so I studied a lot, and there's a big tradition, and I was signed up to be a priest, I was already accepted by the seminary, then I made the mistake to go to India, and I never came back, and that's another story okay, but in Christianity, in the study of Christianity, the farther back you go, the better the information is, you see? So, there's a big thing in Christian studies at Princeton for example, to learn Greek, learn Latin, I studied the Bible in Greek at Oxford, next to Oxford okay, we say in the town of Oxford, but to be honest it wasn't Oxford University, but the idea in Christian studies is, the farther back you go, the more pure is the information, and I'll tell you something interesting about Buddhist studies, the closer you come to Pabongka for example, the more pure it is, it's very interesting, it's very interesting, if you really want to understand Buddhism, go backwards from Tsongkhapa, or go backwards from Pabongka, because they made it more clear, because they made it more and more clear, more and more easy to read, more and more easy to study okay, and I'll tell you something, you will be very disappointed if you try to read a Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, it's totally ... you can't understand anything okay, forget it, don't waste your time okay, that will be the last thing we ever translate in this school, will be the Buddha's own sutras, except for the Heart Sutra and Diamond Cutter Sutra okay, but if you translate the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, and you publish it, no one will understand it at all okay, you need ...

you need each generation of explanation okay, you cannot read Kamalashila, forget it, Kamalashila has not been taught in 1,300 years, that I'm aware of, you can't read it, forget it, you need Tsongkhapa, and you need Pabongka, and you need HCI okay, because it becomes more and more clear okay, then you can understand the next generation back, so it's the opposite of the Christian studies, you see what I mean?

In this tradition, the more years that went by, the better the presentation became, more and more clear okay, it's really weird, it's really weird okay, so if you start a translation committee or something, go for the ... go for the Choney Lamas, maybe go for the Tsongkhapa if you spent 30 years doing it, but don't go past that, you won't understand it okay, it's too difficult okay, so in this tradition, as the years went by, it got more pure and more clear, and that's the second advice of what book to read okay, here's the second advice, read books which have been through the process of purifying by each generation okay, read the recent books, read Tsongkhapa, read Pabongka, read HCI, read DCI okay, that's the suggestion, the second suggestion, what was the first suggestion?

Yes, take the things that Lord Buddha talked about, but study it through a tradition where the presentation was made more and more accessible each generation okay, and by the way, the presentation of Chandrakirti was clear to people in his time, according to Buddhism people get stupider in the last 2,000 years, every generation, just because they didn't have cars and airplanes, don't think the older generations were stupid, they weren't, they memorized the book while the Buddha taught it, we can't do it, you see what I mean? So, Chandrakirti's commentary is clear to his students, and Buddha's sutras are clear to his students, but they're not clear to us, you need a recent commentary okay, got it?

So, that's the second advice okay, go backwards through the generations who made it more accessible to you okay, don't forget the relationship between accurate and accessible, otherwise you're making chocolate marble tofu cakes okay, got it? Make your presentation as an ACI teacher accessible, modern, sexy, interesting, play rock and roll if you have to. Can you get me Tim by tomorrow?

The guy who did May Day in Taiwan, you can ask Scott okay, I need some video of the guy who did May Day in Taiwan okay, you do? Video? Okay, can we show it tomorrow?

Tomorrow evening? Okay, she has. Right, I don't mind, when you do rock and roll it doesn't matter okay, so make it fun, make it accessible okay, but don't corrupt it, don't corrupt it, don't say the four principal paths, or the two principal paths okay, don't fix that, just play rock and roll and then teach three okay, alright got it?

Okay, last thing, the third requirement of a good Buddhist teaching, don't open your mind to this teaching unless it was taught by the Buddha or comes from the Buddha, and secondly, it's been passed on in a pure way okay. Thirdly, there should be people who used it and got the results, there should be success stories, there should be ... what do we call it?

Testimonials. There should be people ... if this went on for 2,000 years and nobody saw emptiness, then maybe we should cancel it, you see what I mean?

Like, did it happen to anybody? Did anybody who studied Tantra meet Manjushri face-to-face, or Vajrayogini, Diamond Angel, Chinggang Yu Jom Mo, did somebody meet her or not you know, and the answer is yes, in our lineage okay, Pabongka, Trijang Rinpoche, Mucha Dharmabhadra, Tsongkapa, all these dudes met her, because they studied the 18 tantric courses, you understand? Okay, so, that's the third requirement okay, it should have worked for people, and they passed it on to the next generation.

There's two parts of the third one okay, here I go. It should have worked for people, there should be evidence that it worked for people, and then secondly, what worked for them, they should have told their students about it okay. So, for example, spiritual partner, you know, Lord Buddha had Tilottama, Tsongkapa had Thangshama, then Pabongka Rinpoche had his own Vajrayogini, and they passed it on, it really happened to them, they met her, they studied with her, she trained them okay, there's real stories, there's real books about their conversations and stuff, so we want this kind of a ...

really work for somebody, there should be some ... really work for somebody, okay? So, that's your first homework question, unfortunately you won't be able to do your homework tomorrow, and I have to write the part about the four courses that we covered, and the Geshe period, how long on each course, I won't do all of them, I'll sneak it in okay, and it's in your reading, it's in your manual okay, all the information is in your manual, but the first homework question for the day after tomorrow, the day after your big rest day is, I mean kind of rest day, I think Tim has stuff for you, what are the three qualities of a good Buddhist teaching? Number one, Buddha taught it, number two, yeah it got more and more pure, it's been ... got more and more clear, people cleaned out the stuff that people added okay, like somebody asked me to translate Yoga Sutra, it was very difficult, it was very frustrating, it's clear to me that most of the fourth chapter was added by other people, and there's many scriptures like that, you don't see them in Buddhism, you don't see sutras where people added stuff, you don't see it okay, people don't do that okay, and then the third one, there should be some success stories, there should be success stories okay, got it? Alright, that's a good Buddhist book, we'll continue that tomorrow. Alright, we're going to finish class four, I gave you a little vacation yesterday, I tried to teach the whole thing slowly and it's not going to work, so we're just going to go mainly focus on the Masters, on the Homework Masters, and you know, you can read this, the text yourself, this is probably the longest reading of all the ACI courses, because I was lazy, I didn't translate anything for the course, I just put my old translation, which I already published in the course, so I didn't have to do anything, but it's long okay, the other courses are not so long okay. Alright, we reached 400 verses written by Aryadeva okay, they say he was a student of Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna, or maybe he was close, and he wrote a very famous book about emptiness called 400 verses, probably I guess around 300 or 400 AD okay, and in there he describes the ... we did the definition of a teacher, so now we have to do the definition of a student yeah, what are the student's qualities okay, and this is traditional in the Lam Rim, before you study the Lam Rim, you talk about what's a qualified teacher, and then the teacher gets to say yeah, but what's a qualified student okay, so then they have a nice list of the qualities of a student.

This is probably the shortest list, it only has three parts okay, there are many other lists that are very long, but you know the goal of ACI course one is to present these things in ten classes, the whole Buddhism okay, so we can't go into big lists okay, here we go. First quality, say SOR NAS. Do you know SOR NAS?

Do you know SOR? Yeah, SOR means corner, and it also means ex, like ex-abbot, Khen Sur Rinpoche means ex-abbot, it means in the corner, no longer active okay, and SOR KHUL we talked about this morning, SOR NAS means open mind, and it means you don't take a position, you go to the class ... a good student in Lam Rim comes to the class with an open mind okay, and they ...

by the way, it doesn't mean they accept everything, no, not at all, but they listen okay, they listen, so they are unbiased, SOR NAS means unbiased, they walk into the class, they are open okay, they're open for new ideas, that's how they approach the class, that's the attitude they have when they come to the class, they are open to new ideas okay, and Maitreya said ... yeah, don't accept them right away, you know, ask questions, see if it fits, see if it fits what you know. There are three famous tests for a hundred dollars, yeah gold, gold, I like the gold, there's three actions and three meanings, yeah you let somebody else try, wait wait wait, burn it, cut it, and file it okay, burn it, cut it, and file it yeah, but what are those referred to?

Three tests of new information, how to check new information, I'm like, I don't remember myself, we had it in CSP, say again? Say again? Yeah, does it conflict with something the teacher said earlier okay, if the teacher said on Friday don't eat meat, and then on Saturday says eat meat, then it doesn't pass the third test?

Okay, what's the first one? Yeah, it fits your own experience, like yeah, I noticed when I eat meat I feel terrible, and my cholesterol goes up, and there must be some bad karma there okay, what's the second one? Cutting.

Logic, yeah, use logic you know, does it make sense? Does it make sense? Okay, is it logical?

Okay, so those are the three tests alright, so a student is BSUR NAS, they walk into the room, open, they have an open mind, and they check, but still they check everything okay, which is part of the second quality of a student, say LON DEN, LON DEN, it means smart, high IQ, but what kind of IQ? Yeah, spiritual IQ, and you know, I'll tell you honestly, when I started the ACI courses in New York, this course, the first course, I think we had five people or six people, and I was giving out the homeworks, this is the first time anyone gave homeworks for a Buddhist class, and I noticed there's two kinds of people you know, one kind, they always get 100 on their homeworks, but they're very irritating you know, like they're the most unfriendly person in the class, they're very smart, and if you say the best teacher gets the highest score, then they would be the best teacher, they got all hundreds, but they're irritating people, and they're not nice to the students, and then there's people who got 90 and 89, and they didn't, they weren't number one in the homework category, but they were number one in the nice to other people category, which is an ACI teacher okay, got it? So, I think those are two different kinds of IQ, that's two different kinds of IQ you know, in America we learn to take tests, I was really good at tests, I was the number one student in Arizona, my scores were the highest my year, and I went to meet the president and all this stuff, so there's a kind of intelligence for taking tests, but it doesn't mean you have emotional intelligence or kindness, that's a different kind of IQ, so here we're talking about the second kind of IQ you know, are you spiritually high IQ okay?

And by the way, there's an ancient test in the Majjhimaka Avatar of spiritual IQ, for zero dollars, because I think he might get it. Okay, I will offer money, no I won't, yeah, they say they start to cry in the class sometimes, and a BU DANG BA, BU DANG BA means you get goosebumps, like Geshe-la is talking about emptiness and you're like ... it's like when Geshe-la eats a youtiao, so if you have a high spiritual IQ and they start talking about emptiness and you're like ...

okay, it's like listening to your favorite song, and they say they start to cry, people ... if you have a real seed, you will cry in the class, so don't try to cry in the class okay? You could hide an onion in your ...

hide an onion in your purse and everyone will think you have a high IQ. Okay, alright, that's why Haso puts onions right in the ... oh, he gave me his mother's enchiladas, I went to heaven last night.

Okay, third quality of a student, say DUN YER BA, big vision, big vision okay? Big vision. I'm talking other planets okay?

You're the kind of person who likes to go out at night at Diamond Mountain and stand for a while okay? You can go back and look at your phone later, but there is a world out here, it has stars you know, it's not two inches by four inches where most people live, and go out and look at the stars and think big, say NAM KA'I SPANG, jump across the sky, it's a beautiful word, jump across the sky okay? It means think big okay?

This ACI teacher training you know, we're talking, the professors and me are talking every lunchtime, and we have a feeling that if the teacher training goes well, it's going to quickly spread to many places, we just never organized it before, now we're trying to organize it. So, have this kind of vision okay? DUN YER BA, DUN YER BA means you have a big vision in mind, big vision in mind okay?

You want to help every person on this planet okay? And again, it doesn't mean that every person becomes a Tibetan Buddhist, it doesn't mean that okay? It means people start using the four steps, people start using these ideas that you can become successful by sharing, and by giving to others, and then hopefully the whole thing becomes the culture in the world, and people forget who started it, got it?

That's my goal you know, I want the culture of the world to change, and I want to change the culture of other planets, and I want everyone to forget who started it okay? Got it? Who started sidewalks?

Benjamin Franklin. Who started public libraries? Benjamin Franklin.

That's cool, you see, most people don't know. It used to be you couldn't, you had to be extremely wealthy to own one book, because they had to be written by hand on vellum, parchment, and only rich people had books, and they would never let other people read them. And then he's like, let's all the rich people put their books in a building, and we'll control it, and people can borrow it you know?

He had this idea, and now I don't know, at least in this country, probably all over the world, there's public libraries, you can go and check out a book, and they forgot who started it okay? So that's the goal, we want to be spiritual Benjamin Franklin. Where's his picture on the hundred dollar bill okay?

Not the one dollar bill, he's on the hundred dollar bill. That's proof he's cool. Alright, we finished class four.