Базовый курс ACI 1: Основные учения буддизма (2019, Аризона), занятие 10

[Speaker 1]
Hi. So before we start, I just wanted to give you an update. Geshe Michael's fine.

We think that the antibiotic that he's been taking is not really working. And so he feels, and Sarani, who's been taking care of him, feels they better go and check it out, and they're taking him to the doctor right now. There may be a gallbladder infection, which has been an ongoing minor issue.

But believe me, everything is fine. And I think you need to rest assured that I felt strongly the other day that it was such a crashing moment of impermanence that we have to get ready, all of us. It's not just about us.

We have to get ready. And I think that was maybe truly one of the beautiful lessons for me that he was teaching us, and for me especially. But what would be the antidote for us?

And I think we could just take a short meditation, five-minute meditation, on I think rejoicing about Geshe Michael's extraordinary way of bringing these beautiful teachings into the world and not holding it in a sanctimonious academic session of a few people. He's given us clear insight and really deep understanding with examples of the pen and the two husbands. And think about all the extraordinary gifts he gave us this week, the last 10 days.

It's remarkable what we can take home and rejoice about. But I think if we took a few minutes and just rejoiced about the last 10 days here, and think about what he gave you personally, just tune into what you feel you can take home in your minds and hearts. And rejoice in that, because you are not the same human being that you walked onto this land 10 days ago, OK?

You are not. And you will know that maybe in a little bit more of a distant of time from here. But I think it would be a gift to him to just take that minute, a few minutes, and give him and give all of us together this gift that we're learning truly the deep, deep universal principles that function and that can be changed.

We can see our lives improving, and we can see our world improving. And wish him good health at the end. Send him your beautiful seeds for health.

So let's just take a few minutes. I think it would be a gift that we can always give our practice. It's a strong, powerful gift.

So we're at the final ACI class. It's called Correct View. And actually, I quickly read through my notes and Connie's notes that we've taken.

And Geshe-la really spoke on all the points already. So I'll just re-emphasize them for the purpose of the class. But we covered many of the points that this class does cover.

And there's only two homework questions. It's pretty cool. You're off the hook.

Two homework questions. You could do that before you get on the bus or on the bus. OK.

And so in the process of the correct view, what is correct view? Mark. Mark did it.

He just had to do this. We know. Go ahead.

Yeah. To see things. I mean, actually, the principle is to see that things are coming from you.

Everything, ultimately. The good, bad, the so-called unfair, and the most beautiful things are all coming from you. And we understand this idea, correct, of the two realities.

We know the pen. We know the whole story of the pen is really expressing the simultaneous realities in the same space. Right?

So when we teach in DCI or when you teach in ACI the pen, you get to this place, right, where the puppy comes into the room and they take the pen and they chew on it. And that moment, we say in DCI language, who's right? Is the pen a pen or is it a chew toy?

And usually people get it and say, well, both are right. They're two realities coexisting in the same space. But they're more than two realities coexisting in the same space.

But the example of the pen and the chew toy is really a beautiful metaphor to understand that simultaneously these two levels of reality are coexisting all the time. All the time. What about other realms?

You know, we know these realms exist. We have to kind of maybe trust the scripture, right? You know, I remember people in three-year retreat coming to me and saying, you know, I went to the form realm.

My God, it was incredible. Like, my mind was in the form realm for a while. It was really cool.

But unless you have a valid perception of that, it has to be taken, what? For, you know, okay, we believe that the scriptures are saying there are other realms that are coexisting simultaneously. Even the state of nirvana, even the state of nirvana would be, any of you who could be undercover arhats would be directly experiencing the whole room and the environment and all the beings in this room in a completely different perceptual reality.

It's not somewhere else. In other words, it's here in this very space, simultaneously. We just don't have the seeds to actually experience it possibly.

Maybe you do. I'm just speaking of myself. And so these two truths, are we, you know, are we in a sense stuck in the conventional truth or what we labeled the other day as deceptive truth?

We're being forced pretty much on a daily basis to experience the world this way. Pretty much, I mean, you know, you have intellectual perceptions of this, right? I mean, the whole point of what we're teaching about emptiness is to intellectually, on our highest level and any of the school's levels, to get those seeds to be proactively reminding ourselves that we're stuck in this reality.

We have to continue to remind ourselves during every event, during a so-called normal day, that the world is totally not doing this. It's coming this way. And when we study emptiness in the Buddhist systems, one thing Geshe Michael reminded us, that the more we hear this pen, the more we understand in meditation when we analyze emptiness, the more we study.

The quality of those seeds prevents us from what? Yes, going to the lower realms. Not taking a rebirth in a lower realm.

And that's a remarkable gift. If we really get our hands and our heads around reality and the pen, and understand these ultimate two realities, ultimate and conventional or deceptive reality, constantly working in our mind. You know, we're doing this more than this.

But if we're doing... We're on the right track, you see. And that's where the laboratory of life kicks in and we begin the practice of remembering emptiness in our so-called normal daily routines with family and business associates and traffic jams and, you know, constipation.

All of the above, we have to remember this, right? And it slips the mind maybe three to five thousand times a day. I'm not sure.

But there is this possibility, right? That we can really... It's almost as if, like, sometimes we have to do this, like, you know...

You know, it's like... It's just like going to the Hilton gym, right? You're like...

Okay, I will restrain myself. I won't let that emotion overcharge me. And the charge is essentially always neutralizing if it's negative.

We're trying to understand not to have the overwhelming emotion that's charging the perception of this take us over so we do this and then create more suffering in our future. And so... If we could really understand the pen and we're going to talk about the conditions and the seeds that we have to plant in order to actually have a direct perception of the pen in this class, which a couple of you asked me about today.

Then we have some really foundational launchpad to go into our world every day with a very precise map of how to handle ourselves. You know, in the... I call them the mining fields of a given day.

You know, I became a news junkie recently. It's crazy. There's a radio station called NPR, which is somewhat unbiased, but I suddenly, when I'm not having my hit of news, you know, like when I'm not listening to any given day in the White House, I get kind of like...

I don't know, like I need to hear the latest buzz on what's going on in the Trump world. And then I realize that it's just pure... It's pure almost gossip, right?

It's almost like... I call it now the ultimate reality show, that it's actually a reality show that I'm actually looking for. I want the entertainment of it as opposed to the shocking value of what is going on inside our country.

And I love the entertainment of it. And it... You know, that's kind of a...

I fooled myself into thinking that I need to know about what's truly going on conventionally in our country by actually getting entertained by the sound bites that are very dramatic and very shockingly emotionally tangible. You get excited or something pulls you in a certain direction. And maybe my test today will be when I'm starting to drive to Phoenix, I don't turn the radio on.

And maybe we'll listen to Geshe Michael's teaching on emptiness from DCI-7. That's my struggle, is how do I flip that over? I mean, how many times could I hear about the Mueller report on the fixing of an election in 2016?

Can I take that habit and then just, okay, let's listen to DCI-7, Che Chedrak, and really get another spin on how to understand what Geshe Michael is teaching us? So that's my struggle. Not wasting a single minute of time on the crap that's invading our minds on any given stimulating moment.

Even at the gas pump, you're getting stimulated by some video to get a free car wash if you get four refills on your gas tank. There's stimulation that just takes us into this world all the time. The whole process is this.

It's to keep you here. It's to stay in the deceptive reality. And Diamond Mountain is kind of beautiful, but Connie and I believe that it could be a mixed blessing to have internet in your cabin.

We feel that it, you know, the seduction is there to go online and watch something that is not relevant to what your retreat is all about. And if we did a retreat, we'd totally turn it off. So when, you know, when you see the direct perception of emptiness for 20 minutes, everything you've done up to the point of seeing emptiness has contributed to that direct perception.

All the countless hours of classroom study, all the homeworks and quizzes, and final examinations, all the meditation hours that you've put in, all of these are contributing in subtle and not so subtle ways to your ultimate direct experience of a 20-minute higher reality. And we don't see that when we're in the trench of doing the work. We're not actually, I'm not like keeping an accounting book on how many hours I do a meditation a week or a month, or how many hours I've spent teaching, or how many hours I've spent listening.

The accumulation is subtle and we're not listening to or experiencing. I don't, I'm personally saying this, we're not experiencing radical change in our practice. But in another personal experience, and we kind of call this like throwing karma, things can ripen so quickly.

And we say certain parts of your life do that. Getting married, having a child, being born, getting a divorce, having a tragic accident, getting the best job of your life. Those karmas that accumulate and suddenly come out of nowhere is something that I think you have to expect on one level in your practice.

And the honesty of a good meditation practice really is five days of just struggle and then maybe on the sixth day you have like four incredible, just inexplicably beautiful minutes. You see. You know, just, you've done the struggling and the effort of staying on the cushion and staying on the object for, if you've done a 50 minute meditation, you've stayed on the object for eight minutes or 12 minutes and it was hard.

And then the day you least expect it when you don't want to sit and you sit on the cushion, you get these eureka moments, these four minutes, these three minutes where something is opening up in your heart and you see something that is so exquisitely beautiful. It may not be the direct perception, but it could be a depth of understanding the direct perception or dependent origination. And that's where the hard work comes in, but when you get those tastes, it is the ultimate carrot.

You know, it is this thing that just teases you along to say, oh my God, it's worth the seven hours this week to get those four and a half minutes. It's just like unbelievably sweet. Thank you.

I'll do another eight hours next week and we have to remember, it balances out eventually where you can go deeper quicker. But in my life with meditation, it still consists of a good 20 minutes of grunt work before I can drop into a place where I feel that the subtle mind and body become aware again. It still to this day takes me that long.

And it's just a reality check for those of you who are obsessively wanting to have the direct perception. No less than one hour a day. No less than six days a week.

Honestly, that's the way it is. The 15 minute, you know, cookie class DCI idea is just to hook people in. But by DCI 7, it's like, okay, you're grown up.

You've been given financial freedom. You've been given teachings on health and relationships and inner peace. Now, this is what you need to do.

It's an hour or more a day. And that doesn't include your yoga. Yoga is the perfect complement to your meditation.

It's so true. Esoteric systems like Tai Chi or Qigong or Aikido where you're really moving Chi and you're really feeling the energy transference through the subtle mind and body. It is essential, I think, to meditation for fast tracking meditation.

And so that's kind of the reality of wanting to see emptiness or one of the components that contribute to seeing it. But if you have the indirect perception of a higher level of reality, the understanding of the higher schools of emptiness, you're on the path. You are on the path.

And a lot of people are kind of tuning in to the six flavors of emptiness that we began the classes with earlier with Geshe Michael. It's a beautiful entry into the stream of emptiness to get the flavors of emptiness from the different schools. Listen to that teaching.

I think there's one main ACI practice listed under practices. That happened in 1998 in California. I was there and it's online.

Listen to it. It's a beautiful introduction. I say to remind us of the different schools and the flavors because each of us are doing those flavors all the time.

We're all not at five or four or six. We're doing one and then we're doing five and we're doing three. But we're doing it, you see.

We're using our perception of the logic of understanding emptiness to go higher and deeper. And then go on the cushion. You see, don't leave it intellectually.

Go deeper and analyze it for you. And the class just now about me and mine, incredibly beautiful opportunity to start doing a meditation on me and mine. Go looking for the me.

Go looking for the mine. You know, spend 40 minutes like searching it. Where is it?

Deductively come back to the place of where it's not. Go backward. Like, you know, am I my fingers?

Am I my toes? Am I my eyes? Am I my consciousness?

Where is me? Where is mine? That's a great meditation on emptiness.

And give yourself patience with it. It can take you into deeper parts of the equation of single-pointed concentration. What's the other side of the coin from emptiness?

What's the flip side of the same coin? Yeah, interdependence or dependent origination. We have to learn karma.

And the realizations of karma are also equivalent to the full package to gain a higher understanding of emptiness but also to actually have the direct perception of emptiness. And we're going to do something later. How many of you have not heard the two husbands in the kitchen?

One. Oh, my God. You all have.

Okay. I think we should still do it. We should still do it.

Yeah. Not yet. Not yet.

But I'll get ready in a minute. But when I heard it in Singapore when I came out of retreat, I thought it was a stroke of genius. It was just, oh, my God.

This is remarkable. It just put everything into perspective for me. We were also in a teaching in Beijing at the Beijing Opera House.

There were 2,800 people in the audience. And on the stage were two Buddhist scholars from University of Beijing. Do you remember that, Stanley?

It was just incredible. One of them was like this renowned scholar who had written books, you know, like 28 books on Buddhism. And he got up onto the roster, and it was just pain.

He spoke for like an hour. And you were trying to, Stanley was trying to translate, you know. And it was just, it was so abstract and obtuse that I couldn't get my head around any of it.

And then Geshe Michael got up and taught the two husbands in the kitchen to an audience of 2,800 people. To teach dependent origination. And I just remember the faces of these two scholars.

They were like, you know, like, what the hell is he talking about? And it was so beautiful. It was a moment where I think the audience kind of like got relaxed and started kind of clapping.

And it was just a beautiful lesson to understand that there's so many ways to, you know, transmit dependent origination and emptiness. And I'm not saying one is valid and the other isn't. But it was certainly a confirmation that people understood the two husbands.

And the reality of its complexity about emptiness, the gaccha, dependent origination, karma. It's all in the kitchen. And that to me is worth doing at least 150, 200 times.

So I've gotten in the mode of doing it, and we're going to do it in a minute. Okay. The good news is, yeah, all of us in the room have the opportunity to have the direct perception.

The good news also is that you have to have an incredible banking of good seeds to see it directly. I mean, it's just amazing. You know, you have to have merit, merit, merit.

It's like you have to have the 1K membership for United Airlines. Something like that. Like all the time you have to have 1K, where they pick you up when you get off the plane to take you by car to your next plane or something.

You have to have that kind of karma to see it. But I think you're in the room, so the karmic seeds are there. Can a Buddha see emptiness directly at the same time as omniscient mind?

Right, they can see emptiness directly. They're perceiving emptiness directly every moment, simultaneously. While they're being omniscient, you know, let's go out and have fun and let's see who needs us in Phoenix on Easter Sunday.

Some kid is crying because the Easter egg that they got in chocolate wasn't their favorite flavor. All right, let's do something about it. Let's send an emanation to them.

Or, oh my God, you know, there's so many people having dinner alone. Let's see, let's send them some visitors. Maybe they can have a nice Easter.

So the idea of omniscience is such a cool idea. That the other two bodies of the Buddha, you know, the nirmanakaya, the body of the Buddha that can emanate in any place, time or planet, is constantly sending out perfect karmic correlations to you to help you out in forms that are, I don't know, heavy winds at Diamond Mountain or, you know, I don't know, cute little javelinas that, you know, come around to your cabin. The other day there was beautiful rain at 4 a.m. in the morning. I thought it was gorgeous. The moon coming up here the other day was just spectacular. Those are the nice things.

They come in nasty packages too, right? There's not, you know, the equanimity of karma is, you know. Buddhas can appear and give you really tragic, so-called appearing tragic things to happen.

Divorces or, you know. People say, you know, after five years, after my divorce, God, my husband was so wise. Like, if it wasn't for him, I would have never met my perfect partner.

People say that to us, you know. Like, it's incredible, you know. I hated that guy or that girl.

I hated, you know, we just hated each other. But at the same time, he knew I had to move on. She knew I had to move on.

So, it's not like in pretty packages all the time. The tough stuff has to happen too. And holding this view is so crucial in those moments.

The true trials where you're being tested on those levels are essential to ripening and purifying enormous seeds in order to launch you to a higher understanding and to a happier life, actually. So, we said, you know, an hour a day is really, including the preliminaries. You know, we did some beautiful preliminary practices here.

And, you know, those can be considered warm-ups, but they're also very powerful seed planting objects. You bring a teacher in front of you and you do the preliminaries every day. You're fast-tracking your practice.

We have to be serving other people. That's number two. And this goes with meditation.

This is like another aspect of your meditation. How do you serve and how do you find that perfect place to serve? Well, Diamond Mountain is a great place.

I always think of karmic objects being on certain levels to serve. And I don't know. In my early days, I used to serve.

My company got behind an organization that goes to shut-ins or lonely people who can't cook for themselves. So, every Friday, we would go and serve meals to them, bring them meals to their house and usually clean up their kitchen or help them kind of clean up their house. And it was really beautiful.

You saw the sadness of lonely people living alone in small little apartments in New York City, just surviving on a thread, literally, because they're not having support from family and not being fed or properly hygienically taken care of because there's no money for them. And so that was always a beautiful thing for me to do when I was working full-time. I didn't have time to do much more, but I think it served beautifully.

And it opens you up to understanding the suffering first-hand. But most of you have that already in your bag. You have service.

It's almost like you could teach service, all of you, because that's who you are. It's innate in your process. You know you need to serve beings.

No matter what form it takes, you need it. It's like, you know, it's just essential for life. You're creating beautiful seeds for being alive by taking care of others constantly.

Oh, no, by the way, you're building seeds for health, both mental and physical health. But serving is cool. Geshe Michael just saved my butt.

I was a guy living in New York. He saved my butt. And I wasn't really looking for him.

Like Maria said, I could care less about teaching Buddhism before I met Peter. But it was this thing, right, where I was living a pretty cool life. I was, you know, pretty cool life.

I had, you know, a penthouse apartment and a BMW and a great job. And I was flying around the world. And I had, you know, a really cool partner.

And all these kind of seductive things came into my life, you know. I never had to take the subway. I just take taxis and, you know, time.

Oh. Okay. Fifteen, please.

Okay. Anyway, long story short, I wasn't happy. And when I bumped into Geshe Michael, he sort of knew that.

I knew it, but I didn't want to admit it. And he did basically reflect that deeply in my heart that it was really something really was missing in my life. And my own suffering was in denial.

And two years later, it radically happened. I quit my job and took over ACIP, which is for me a karmic object that is so essentially important to the world and to him and to our organization in general. And so I was fortunate enough to have that cusp of karma ripen and then radically shift my life within 18 months.

Everything changed. The whole paradigm of my life changed completely. And I never looked back.

And I was grateful for that process. And all of you are plugging in like that on projects throughout the world. And please don't stop.

Just dedicate the hell out of it. Just work it for all it's worth. Work it.

Three Jewels. This man and his partner have basically made the Three Jewels in New York honestly one of the most beautiful, pristine, successful, struggling but paying bills center in New York City. It's incredible what's going on in that place.

And it's magical to go back to New York and have a Three Jewels that is functioning for hundreds of people who go and take meditation training and yoga training and ACI teachings. And Stephen, my God, thank you. Amazing.

So maybe in three years you guys would be teaching there. Honestly, you could probably do a gig at the Three Jewels in your ACI careers in your future. Okay.

Study, study, study. You got to keep studying. That's number four.

Let's do the two husbands. So we're going to teach you two husbands and talk about dependent origination, the gaccha, emptiness, karmic correlations. And we'll do it quickly.

Peter, maybe not. Seiji. Who?

Yeah, Maria, come. So Jenny's my kid. Luke is my kid.

Okay. We set it up this way. I'm a working mom.

I'm a liberated new woman of the 21st century. You know, birth control didn't work for me. In any event, you know, being liberated woman means pretty much basically my husband stays at home most of the time.

He makes a little money but essentially I take care of the kids. I bring home the financial support to pay the bills. And I cook.

I mean, it's a full 20-hour day. And so that's my life. But I'm happy and I'm exhausted.

And the setup today is that my boss called me in today and she said, be ready tomorrow at 630 in the morning. Come to the office. You better not be late because we have an important meeting with a new client who's based in Los Angeles.

I'm in Guangzhou. I said, okay, I'll be there. Like a brand new client could change the business for the fiscal year 220.

So what do I do? Well, first I got to get the kids ready. So I'm going to go to the kids' room.

They're back from school. Hi, kids. How are you?

You good? How was school? Yeah?

How's your grades today? Did you have a test? Okay, listen.

Mommy's got an important meeting tomorrow. I want you to listen. Put everything away.

Take that laptop away. So mommy has got to be at the office at 630. You need to be dressed and ready for school by 6 a.m. I'm going to set the alarm in your room. I'm going to come into your room, and you promise to be ready. You promise. Your homework's going to be done.

All right, good. All right. Okay, so, you know, I make husband, you know, I make the husband happy that night, you know, and even I made him dinner, you know.

Everything's cool on that side, you know. I wake up at 6 and 530, and I go into the kids' rooms. Hi, kids.

Are you ready? They're having a pillow fight. Kids, what are you doing?

What are you doing? I told you yesterday. What did I tell you?

You were supposed to be ready with your clothes on and your homework, and you're a mess. Get dressed. You are the two stupidest kids in Guangzhou.

My God. What do I do? I get to work.

We cut the deal. The client loved it. He loved the presentation I made.

I'm, like, really happy about that. I'm exhausted. I go.

I thought, you know, I'll make some nice dinner for my husband and my family. I go to the store. I'm going to make some sushi from scratch and maybe some amitofo.

We'll have a beautiful dinner. And I just want to spend some time with him, and I just want a hug. I just am so tired, and I just want him to hold me.

So I go shopping, and I drag my stuff in. I'm pretty much ready to open the door, and I'm just thinking, you know, I can't wait to see him, you know. He's been so good up until now, and I just want a hug.

Hi, honey. How are you? How are you doing?

What? What did you say? I'm stupid?

I didn't do anything. He's calling me stupid. I just went shopping to buy this whole beautiful dinner.

I was coming in and just wanting a hug. It's not my fault. I didn't do anything.

I just simply wanted a beautiful night with my husband and my kids. Why did that happen? What was the point?

They came out of nowhere. He came out of nowhere. Why?

Why did you do that to me, honey? I don't know. I'm stupid.

It's not my fault. So what just happened? Three main things happened.

Why is there a second husband in the kitchen? Which husband came from my seeds? This one or this one?

Yeah, Maria came. Well, she's my real husband. I planted that husband.

What about this husband? Which husband is this? It's not my fault, husband.

It's not my fault. My God. Husband number two, not my fault.

But how did that not my fault husband get into the kitchen? Well, no, that's how my real husband got into the kitchen. I yelled at the kids last week because they were screwing around, not being ready.

I called them stupid. Hi, honey. You are stupid.

You see, so, yeah, I planted the seed for this husband, husband number one, the blonde, to actually, you know, have the moment of what? Resulting, right? Dependent origination come back to me.

But what about this husband? Number two husband. Say what?

Yeah, this husband coming this way. It's not my fault. Could never exist without me planting this husband.

Okay, five minutes. I get you. So, what is that called?

Well, there's a word called the Gakcha. Say Gakcha. I'm sure it's one of your 21 words, right?

Yeah. Gakcha. So, the Gakcha is the thing that emptiness is empty of.

Remember that. The thing that emptiness is empty of, the Gakcha. The second husband could never exist, has never existed, and will never exist, you see.

But we put that husband there because why? Yeah, because we're hardwired. We're born, as Geshe Michael said today, to have the world coming this way.

And that's really profound. And that happens today, tomorrow, and as many times as our lives exist if we don't see the direct perception of emptiness. We're hardwired that way.

Thank you, husbands. Thank you, kids. Okay, I have five minutes.

So, to wrap it up, that's dependent origination. That's emptiness. That's the Gakcha.

Let's see if we're finished with the class. I think that's enough. Tim needs to keep me on time.

Questions? Anyone? Yes.

[Speaker 2]
I really like how during the lecture you said deceptive reality. Somehow this term really kind of struck me. And I was thinking what could be the seeds for us to see this reality as deceptive?

What are the subtle things that we do to keep this ignorance going?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. We could call it all pervasive ignorance. Beginning as lifetimes of misunderstanding the pen, essentially.

You have to remember we always come in with the seeds from our past, right? Constant, countless seeds that are being pushed into your next life with you. So, we're in this circle when we're born, automatically.

We're already in this circle. Unless you have attained an extraordinary past life of an arhat where you could potentially rebirth by your decision to help other beings. But other than that, all of us are still having the world this way, being forced by beginningless lifetimes.

In a short, precise way, that's the answer. But you're here, you see. You've done some serious work in the past.

And you've gotten seeds to be in this room talking about these profound ideas. So, something is up. And you've got to trust it fully to know that you have seeds from your past that also is trying to understand the ultimate nature of all things.

And that's cool. That's all you need to know, really. Okay.

Okay. I guess we'll do the prayer. Just one word.

Bhukhi jukshin me thobdhram Vairagmin shi nindeg nbadhi Sanghe shindhu mikthe awadhi Droghun namdha shringla jhupar shok Yidam guru ratnamandala kaminiyatayami Tige okun sunam yashe sososhin Sunam yashe lejonwe Champa kuni jhupar shok Okay. Thank you so much.