«Дар освобождения», курс 1 «Глубочайшая медитация», занятие 1

[Говорящий 1] (0:02 - 15:29)
I'm just trying to get high enough that the people in the back can see, because I hate to see people going like that. So, I don't know, I started... People started asking me to teach around the time I finished my Geshe degree, 1995 in New York, and people asked me in New York if I would teach them what I learned in the monastery.

You know, the Geshe program. So, in the monastery it takes 20-25 years. And we study very difficult textbooks, which are not available in English, hardly available in Tibetan.

And so, I undertook... I think we started in 1993 in New York, and I tried to translate the most important parts of the Geshe course and teach them for the first time to Western people, especially women. There weren't any Geshe women in Tibet.

Now there are a few in Dargsela, just starting. So, I thought it would be nice if a group of people, especially lay people, you know, could master the Geshe course, which is quite difficult. And then it would be nice if they could pass it on, if those women and men could become teachers.

You know, lay people especially. Because I don't think monasticism is going to catch on in America. Maybe it's better that it doesn't.

I think if people could, in their own homes and in their own jobs, exemplify the high ideals of Buddhism, then that would be fine. And if lay people, very well-trained lay people, could pass it on, it would be very beautiful. So I taught 18 courses in New York.

We translated about 10,000 pages of text. And it was beautiful, and a nice crop was harvested. Then I went into a three-year retreat, and when I came out, people asked me, would you do the same for the higher teachings of Buddhism, the secret teachings called Diamond Way, Vajrayana.

So then I helped start Diamond Mountain University near Tucson, and we undertook a course of study, six or seven years, 18 courses of the secret teachings of Buddhism. So the kids graduated last June. And I think we've been very lucky.

I know Fran Diane was in the first class in 1993. She hasn't missed one, I think. She missed one class out of many hundreds of classes.

So there are people here who survived the whole thing. And we are lucky, I think, to have been able to complete such a grand undertaking as to train a bunch of people in the Geshe course and then do the whole secret teachings. So we finished.

We graduated 134 people, graduated last June. Then I became unemployed, you see. And I was casting about for things to do with myself.

Because, you know, my idea is you train the students to be teachers. And it's not my intention to just redo all those courses. I would rather that the students become the teachers and teach them.

So I think a good piano teacher makes themselves superfluous, right? And the students play concerts, and that's fine. But then I thought that would be boring, so...

There's one beautiful, beautiful teaching that I was granted by my teacher over the course of over 20 years. And that's a book called A Gift of Liberation Thrust into the Palm of Your Hands. It's called Nangun Lakchang.

And it's a very beautiful teaching. It's 800 pages long. It takes about...

It took him... Each time he taught it took about 8 years. And it's a very, very beautiful book.

I was sitting in a group of people the other day, and we were having lunch together. And everybody said, what's your favorite book of all time? And somebody said, God, with a...

What? No. I don't know.

Anyway. We were going around. And I said, oh no, Nangun Lakchang is the best book in the world.

It's the most amazing book in the world. And I love books. And I spent my whole life translating and studying books.

There are 200,000 Tibetan classics. But this one I think is the greatest. This book I think is the greatest.

So then I thought, since my own lama spent so many years to load me with that teaching, that it would be remiss if I didn't unload it into some other people who could pass it on. So my dream, the reason I'm sitting here, is that my dream is that you are sitting here in the next generation, which could be six months from now, or six weeks from now, that you start teaching what you have learned each time to other people. My fondest hope and my dream is that you pass this teaching on to other people.

It's a very, very beautiful teaching, and it would make a person's life perfect. If you study this teaching, and if you learn it well, then all these beautiful things come to you. Beautiful, beautiful dreams beyond what you can even imagine.

People talk about angels coming to you, and having visions, and being really, really happy all the time. This book can do that. This is what this book is.

If you study it well, it contains all the essence of the Geshe course and the secret teachings. So the last 36 courses, or the last 12,000 pages of translation we've done, it can all be learned in this one book, and in a very gentle and beautiful way. It's a very, very beautiful teaching.

So my dream is that we could get together twice a year like this, and do 10 days like this, and work through that book. My idea is that we do 10 days teaching the theory of the book. And then there's a tradition in Tibet called nyam ching.

Nyam ching means all the people who study this particular book, they go out in the forest somewhere together, and they meditate together for 10 days. And they try to gain an inner experience of all the knowledge in the book. So in this particular style of teaching this particular subject, there's a tradition that we're going to undertake 10 days of explanation.

And you're going to do homework and all this weird stuff. By the way, why homework? Just so you can teach it responsibly later.

I want you to teach it responsibly. I have a mechanic working on my car right now. He didn't study very well.

He rents it every week, and I take it back every week. To deal with people's souls is a little more serious than a Volvo. A 1980 Volvo.

So you are dealing with people's lives, and I think you have to... I ask you to do the homeworks, okay? And there will be...

They're easy homeworks, okay? I made them short because this is going to be intense. This will be an intense time.

You won't have a lot of free time. So then you will... It'll be a pretty easy homework, and I'm asking you after each night that you do the homework.

The idea on the homework is that you cheat, and you do it with somebody else. So I'm asking you to do the homework with at least one other person in this room, okay? And hopefully someone you don't already know.

So that's why you have these stupid name tags on. So you're supposed to do it during the break, which will be shortly. Not too shortly.

But during the break, you will go up to somebody, you know, that you're milling around next to the refreshment table, and you'll say, you know, do you want to get together and work on homeworks together? We've arranged the nearest Paradise Cafe and Bakery, which is the address is on your sheet or something. But there will be gangs of people there whenever we're not here, okay?

So they can sit and help you with your homework. They have the answer keys. You get the answer keys after the class is over, okay?

So that you can teach from the answer keys, all right? So there will be teaching assistants, TAs, at Paradise Cafe, which is paradise. And then you just, if you want to go there and hang out and do your homework with other people, but what I really want is that people sit and talk with each other.

And you say, I was kind of bobbing off when he was talking about this, and do you remember what he said? And they'll say, I was nodding off, too, because I flew in from New York, and it was three hours later for me, too. There'll probably be one person in the group who was awake.

And my hope, then you sit and do the homework together, okay? I really want that. And I want you to meet people you don't know, okay?

So don't hang out in little cliques of Diamond Mountain or ACI New York or Lake Tahoe people. Like, try to talk to somebody else. It'll be fun.

What happens is you end up teaching in Argentina or something with them. You know, like, they know yoga, and you know long rim, and they need somebody. It happens.

It's happened a lot. So please do the homework. There'll be a certificate at the end.

Certificate means you finished all the homeworks, you attended all the classes. And I feel that you could teach it to somebody else, all right? And that means you'll have to catch all the classes.

If you have to be away for one class or two classes, like, you can't get here on Tuesday night or Thursday night. Like, you're from, I don't know, Taiwan, there's people? Shanghai?

You've got to go back to Shanghai during the week. I don't know. Or Norway, wherever you are.

Then you can catch those two classes. There's supposed to be a live streaming video, and there's also a video. We'll store it online, and you can get it.

And then you catch up. If you catch up and do your homeworks, then still you can get a certificate, okay? But I would like to hand out certificates, and I would like to people who have them could then teach other people.

Teach other people what? This whole text, okay? I was honored enough to borrow my teacher's copy.

This is Ken Remiche's copy. So as you can see, it's kind of fat. And it's going to take us 10 years to finish.

I count it. It's 20 courses like this over the next 10 years. I think it's a really nice, fine thing.

I think we will bond. And I think we will get together twice a year and have this kind of theory course. And then twice a year we'll do a 10-day retreat, okay?

And Rebecca has been, where is she? She's managed to find a really nice place in Prescott, Arizona. We weren't sure if 10 people would sign up or 50, so we got a place that fit 120, and we're booked.

But we're trying to make it bigger. She's working on the walls, and we're asking people to eat not so much before. But anyway, my dream is that 20 times we will meet in the next 10 years for this course.

And then 20 times we will go on a retreat. And it's so beautiful and so powerful to study an authentic, beautiful, well-preserved tradition on meditation, for example. Get it from a person who got it from, you know, one of the last great lamas of Tibet.

And then do a retreat in silence together on that. And it's very powerful. It's really, really beautiful.

And I think, I hope, I believe it will make your life very happy for the next 10 years. Okay? It will make you very happy.

Just, it's like, I feel like it's going back to a gas station every few months. So every three, four months, you will come back for gas from the texts. And we'll do the next great subject.

And as you learn and then meditate, your heart will change, and your life will change. And wonderful, beautiful, amazing things will happen to you. And your life will be, will just be like a dream.

You know? And like an incredible dream that you could never imagine. So I feel like, very strongly I feel like this is a, that some karma has brought us all together tonight.

You know? Like, I don't even know a lot of you very well. But some karma has brought us to be together tonight.

And we will be together for a while. And we will do some very beautiful things together. And in the process, your life will start to change radically.

The courses we did before were sort of advanced analytical courses. And this one is a very strong, powerful heart course. And it changes your heart.

And it changes your life. And it's very, very beautiful. I was reading it, and I was so happy that we're going to do this thing together.

So, without more ado, right? Let's start. We have to keep on a pretty tight schedule to make it in ten years.

[Говорящий 2] (15:31 - 15:32)
I'm not kidding.

[Говорящий 1] (15:32 - 19:47)
I figured it all out. So, we have to go pretty well. I'm going to do the old, you know, the old way.

The old Tibetan way, which I don't get to do much. Because I always have to do business seminars and partner seminars and all this stuff. So, I just like to do it the old way.

I will read the Tibetan sentence, and then I'll explain it to you. And it will also be on loom. Loom means the teacher gives an oral transmission of the text which they have received in whole from their teacher.

So, I received this teaching three times from Khen Rinpoche, my teacher. So, I have all the words in me somehow. And then I will somehow give them to you.

And then you can pass it on. So, you have to listen when I read the Tibetan. It's the blessing of a thousand years of transmission.

Okay? So then, take it. You never know from there.

So, this text is called... Oh, I'm just going to do one thing. Not do it at the end, right?

I always do it out of order. Can we start the Tibetan text? Are you ready?

Are you good at Squaw? Okay. Okay.

I'm just going to put the Tibetan text up there. You don't have to read it. I don't care about it much, okay?

Those of you who know Tibetan or want to know the Tibetan, you can follow the Tibetan text. But the rest of you don't worry about it, okay? You're not going to teach it in Tibetan or Latin.

You're going to teach it in your mother tongue, whatever it is, okay? So, that's just for the benefit of the people who want to learn Tibetan. Okay.

So, the first line there is the title, and it says, Nam-dol Lak-chang Tsu-tu-gyen-me-wa. This book in Tibetan is called Nam-dol Lak-chang. Please say Nam-dol.

Nam-dol. Lak-chang. Lak-chang.

Nam-dol. Nam-dol. Lak-chang.

Nam-dol means liberation, okay? And we'll talk about four kinds of liberation. You can say reaching a mandala or reaching, I got it wrong already.

Reaching a holy mandala, okay? Reaching a paradise in this world, okay? Nam-dol.

Lak-chang is very beautiful. Lak-chang Tsu-tu-gyen-me-wa. There's no other book called that, and it's very unusual.

And it means the lama comes, he says, put out your hand, put out your hand. Just put out your hand for good luck. And then the teacher comes and goes, bam, there, liberation, take it.

You know, that's Nam-dol Lak-chang, okay? So the name of the book is, bam, liberation in the hand, okay? It just means like, they translate all these wimpy translations, I don't know, it means a gift of liberation thrust into your hands, thrust into your outreached palms, okay?

It's very difficult to translate, okay? Lak-chang Tsu-tu-gyen-me-wa-sa-mo. This is a profound instruction.

Sang-la-wa-no-wa. It is complete and it has no error. Sung-me.

It is without equal. Chu-gi-gya-bo. Tuk-ju.

It is the cream of the cream within the holy heart of the king of the Dharma, Jetsun Kapa. Chang-ju-lam-gi-rim-ba. We have to talk about that, okay?

Chang-ju-lam-gi-rim-ba. Say Chang-ju. Chang-ju.

[Говорящий 2] (19:47 - 19:49)
Lam-gi. Lam-gi. Rim-ba.

[Говорящий 1] (19:49 - 26:21)
Rim-ba. I'm not saying that when you teach this you have to say all this gibberish, okay? And I'm not trying to confuse or discourage people who are new, okay?

I want you to know that it's authentic and that it has come from a tradition of thousands. This tradition, a lot of men really started two and a half thousand years ago. So I just want you to know it's authentic.

Mmm. My dream. Now you can do the BA thing.

You ready? You thought I was going to do that, right? Okay.

My dream is the following, okay? Where is that? We got this weird email, like, I don't know, five months ago from British Airways.

And, you know, this is a $12 billion company. And they have 43,000 employees around the world. And so we got this email and they said, would you come help us?

You know? We're having financial difficulties. We're having labor disputes.

You know, we would like to see if your approach could help us in our business, you know? And then we went, they flew us to London, I don't know, two months ago? No, I mean two months ago.

They flew through us to London two months ago. They had 12 of the senior people in the company, like people who run, they each run 10,000 employees, you know? And then they said, you have one hour to convince us that you can help us.

You know? And I gave them number lockdown in one hour. You know?

And we just gave them the beautiful ideas. And obviously in front of a group of labor union tough guys and management tough guys, you can't get up and give some new age, you know, Buddhist thing. You can't do that.

And it wouldn't be appropriate. They were saying, do you have ideas that could help our company, regardless of our orientation, you know? Like, can you present the ideas that you've learned and that you speak about, can you present them in a way that a $12 billion company could implement them and turn the company around?

You see? And that's my dream. You see, I would like to see you take this Buddhist-Tibetan-Milky Way lockdown, long thing, right?

And you study it well. And you digest it well. And then you spit it out as some kind of help for normal people, without the baggage, okay?

Got it? So I'm going to sit up here and throw Tibetan words at you, and you're going to hear weird stories about some Buddhist meditator from a thousand years before decay. But what I dream of, and what I want, is that over the coming years, you go to work, you go to your family, you go to normal people like British Airways vice presidents, and you regurgitate just the ideas and not the religion, okay?

Just the powerful, sweet, what do you call it? They work, you know? Ideas that can change their company, or change a person's life, or change a person's marriage, or change a person's, you know, finances or their health.

You see, can you, without the, what do you call it? Tibetan rigmarole, which I'm giving you, I want you to leave it at the door when you leave the church, you know? And then you just load it with these powerful, beautiful, sweet ideas and practices.

We had all those executives in a retreat for three days. By the way, this is at their headquarters. This is at the auditorium at Henry.

So first we gave them two days of just the ideas that could change their company without any mention of Buddhism or Tibet, okay? Then we took the people, you got some of this stuff? Yeah, then we took six people over there, they gave us five days with their top people.

We took them out in the British countryside and we drilled them, you know? And we gave them yoga, and they did meditation. And then they had eight hours of, you know, very powerful ideas for their company.

You have more? Kevin came. He's good because he speaks, he grew up in London.

Beth came, fantastic. Scott passed it. And then, oh, that's Beth, yeah.

That's Mercedes leading a breakout group, actually in another country, but that's okay. So, but what happened was, we got a letter from the Vice President yesterday or the day before, and they said, you know, fantastic. And they said, you know, how can we, now how can we make this part of the culture of our company without the baggage, you know?

How can we just take the sweet ideas and the sweet ways of doing things, different way of doing things, and make it part of our civilization? That's my dream. I want you, over the next 10 years, to master this thing.

And then I want you to take it to the normal world and change the world. And I don't care if you don't have a Buddha picture in your house, or I don't care if you can ring a bell, or I don't care if you know Tibetan grammar. It doesn't matter to me at all, okay?

I'm going to use it because it's the tradition. But I want you to take it to normal people and help them, you see, and make them happy. And isn't that the point, okay?

I don't care if you know the Tibetan grammar or not. I'm going to give it to you because it's the tradition. But I want you to give it and change people, make people happy, okay?

Give people a really happy life, and a really deep and beautiful and meaningful life. And they've tasted it, and they've got it. You know, these big, big executives, they've got a taste, and they're so excited.

And it's so fun. There's a guy writing receipts every day. He's in charge of all European operations, and thousands and thousands of employees.

And he's like writing every day about the cool stuff that's happening to him. And he's so happy, you know? And his life is changing.

And that's what I really... I want you... I want to upload you with this stuff.

And I want to see you at American Airlines, okay? Something like that. I probably...

There's some kind of non-competition thing. I mean...

[Говорящий 2] (26:21 - 26:23)
I don't know. Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (26:25 - 29:18)
So that's my dream. I want you to take it to the normal world. Use it in your normal life.

How do you best affect other people? How do you best affect... I went to a teaching in Tucson.

His Holiness came. He taught Master Shantideva's chapter on patience, right? And then he said, Are there any questions?

And a friend of mine raised her hand. She has two... At the time, she had two small children.

And she said, Oh, Your Holiness, you know, how do we teach these high ideas to our children? And he was like, Hmm... And then he said, You can't talk to them, because they don't listen.

And then he's like, You know, you just have to be a good example. Like, your kids will do whatever you do. No matter what you say, your kids will do what you do.

And my friend's face fell. Because it was so difficult. It was such a difficult instruction.

Like, you have to do it. You have to do what I'm teaching you. And then your children will learn from you.

From your example. What I'm asking is that, as we go through this book, you master the way of life. And then you reflect it in your life.

And you become that way of life. And it's very beautiful. There's a guy named Maroon, right?

In Ireland? You guys know him? Maroon, right?

He's from Beirut. And he's married to an Irish woman, right? And he told me, he was driving me in the car not long ago, and he said, Geshe-la, you know, my daughter asked me why am I doing this meditation every day?

She's, how old? Ten or something, at the time. So, you know, he said, Well, honey, I'm trying to be a better person.

And she said, Well, what? What kind of better person? He said, Well, I'm trying, you know how angry Daddy used to be all the time and yelling in the house?

And I decided to try to change myself. And so I'm meditating every day. And she said, Oh, yes, Daddy.

And then he said, Have you seen me get angry in the year that I've been meditating? And she said, Daddy, you haven't been angry in the year that you've been meditating. It's amazing.

And now I, you're right. And then she said, Daddy, do you have to take a whole hour to get to that? But what I mean is the child changed, right?

The child's life was changed by her father's behavior and not by what he said. So I hope that you take this teaching and become it and that you teach by example. But it's also good to explain the book, too.

From a point of view of being an example. Both, okay? At the same time.

All right. Now we'll start the class and you're going to stay late. Somehow you knew that.

[Говорящий 2] (29:18 - 29:19)
All right.

[Говорящий 1] (29:20 - 29:36)
We will take a break, right? We'll have a break, right? At some point.

I'll give you a refreshment break, okay? So this book is Nambra Lakcha and it means liberation thrust into your hands. It is a Lam Rim.

Say Lam Rim.

[Говорящий 2] (29:37 - 29:37)
Lam Rim.

[Говорящий 1] (29:37 - 29:38)
Lam Rim.

[Говорящий 2] (29:38 - 29:39)
Lam Rim.

[Говорящий 1] (29:39 - 29:44)
If you don't learn any other words in life, you should go home with Lam Rim. Say Lam Rim.

[Говорящий 2] (29:45 - 29:45)
Lam Rim.

[Говорящий 1] (29:45 - 30:09)
People remember this word because it's one of the only Tibetan words that you can pronounce in English. So Lam means path and Rim means a step. Lam Rim is a style of teaching that was actually begun by Lord Buddha two and a half thousand years ago.

And it's a, what do you call it? It's enlightenment for dummies.

[Говорящий 2] (30:10 - 30:10)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (30:11 - 49:59)
It's an enlightenment for dummies. It says step one, do this. Step two, do this.

Step three, do this. You get to step 21, you are enlightened. You see?

It's like fixing a car or something. It's like a manual for enlightenment. Just do these things one by one that I teach you.

Don't ask questions, you know. Just do one. Just do two.

Just do three. By the time we get to 25, you'll be enlightened, okay? And it's very beautiful.

So this is a Lam Rim. Steps of the path. Changchun means enlightenment, okay?

Nyangchi. Nyangchi is sentient. Nyangchi means, this teaching was given in 1921.

In 1921, a Lama named Pabongkha Rinpoche, Pabongkha, P-A-B-O-N-G-K-A, Pabongkha Rinpoche, which is a long story, but there's a monastery near Lhasa called Pabong. And he was the reincarnated Lama of that monastery. Long story.

So, Pabongkha Rinpoche, in 1921, gave a teaching. It was 24 days long. It was probably 8 to 12 hours a day.

And 700 people came, which internet was a lot. Why in 1921? There was no microphones.

No microphones, okay? So that was about the max, in a well-designed temple. If you scream, 700 people can hear you, okay?

And then 700 people came. He taught for 24 days in a row. And he went through the whole steps of the path to enlightenment.

There was a 21-year-old, 20-year-old, precocious little reincarnated true cool Lama named Chidja Rinpoche. Do you have pictures? He was sitting in the audience, okay?

He's there, yeah. That's Chidja Rinpoche. He was sitting in the audience in 1921.

He was 20 years old. And he decided he was going to be the tape recorder. So he wrote down notes.

He took down... Sinji means notes. He took down notes of the teaching and he recorded the teaching.

Then I think he spent many, many years of his life. He dedicated much of his life to cleaning up those notes. It was a thousand pages of notes.

And he cleaned them up and then he presented them to Pabongka Rinpoche. Do you have a picture of Pabongka Rinpoche? That's Pabongka Rinpoche.

So he was born in 1878 and he passed away in 1941. He gave this teaching. He's the one who gave this teaching.

But this Kyabje Chidja Rinpoche, can you show him again? He wrote it down. And then later he became the teacher of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama was born in 1935. Chidja Rinpoche was already one of the greatest lamas of the country. And they asked him to be the Dalai Lama's teacher.

So he became the Dalai Lama's teacher. He also became my teacher's teacher. You've got Ken Rinpoche.

Geshe-la Tsongkhapa. So Chidja Rinpoche taught my teacher and he taught the Dalai Lama. And then Ken Rinpoche is the one who taught this to me.

So you are now your fourth generation of this teaching. You are the fourth generation of this teaching. The structure of this lama is based on the one that came from Tsongkhapa who was 1357 Do you know who Tsongkhapa is?

No, I didn't warn you. Did I? I didn't.

Yeah, oh there you go. That's Tsongkhapa. He wrote one of these lama teachings back in 1409 or something.

And this book is based on what he's writing. That's a real image that was created during his lifetime. And he designed this kind of teaching.

And there's a very powerful element which came from Indonesia. Serlingpa. And that was brought to Tibet by a lama named Atisha.

I think you have him. And there's a very powerful element and he designed the lamrim that came into Tibet. So these are the people from whom this book has been passed down.

Now, you're supposed to go through the manual one by one from the beginning. We're not going to because we're Americans. So, I thought let's start at the back.

Because at the end of this text, they teach you how to meditate. But then they tell you now go back and do the whole thing over again with what we taught you about meditation. So I thought, why not save you some time?

So, we're going to do the section on how to meditate first. Because you're supposed to take back and then go study the rest of the steps to enlightenment. So I thought let's give you that powerful instrument called meditation first.

Combined with his teachings on emptiness. So you will go through the whole steps to the path to enlightenment. But you will be doing it with these very powerful tools called meditation and an understanding of how reality works.

A deep, deep understanding of how reality works. Why did British Airways call me? The company I created to help the Tibetan refugees is the fastest growing company in the history of New York City.

I worked half time. And I always went home at 5. And the company was just sold to Warren Buffet for a quarter billion dollars.

10,000 employees. And they were like, how did you do that? And I said, you have to understand emptiness.

You learn to meditate and you understand emptiness and you can do anything. If you want to make a big company, you can make a big company. If you want to make a perfect boyfriend, you can make a perfect boyfriend.

If you want to be healthy and strong and young, you can be healthy and strong and young. If you want to stop Afghanistan and stop Iraq, if you want to see the world lifted out of poverty and war, you can do that too. But you have to understand emptiness.

You can do anything if you understand emptiness. To understand emptiness, you have to learn to meditate. So where are we starting?

We're starting with meditation. Because you have to apply it to emptiness. And then I swear you can do anything you want.

And people are starting to believe it. British Airways called me because they... They're not quite sure, okay?

But they figure what the heck. And they said, okay, tell us how you did what you did and maybe we'll try. And they're being actually very scientific and very tough.

They make us prove everything. There wasn't a Buddhist in the room. They don't care about the Buddhist aspect.

They said, can you teach us to improve the employee's capacity of thinking and working out problems? And can you give us some insights that will help our company make more money? And also make the employees more happy, you see?

And what that means is understanding how reality works. Understanding how the world works. You can only get to that if you can meditate, okay?

You can only learn that if you meditate. So we took them out in the countryside. We locked them into a room and made them meditate, you know?

And they're so happy. They're really happy. We have to start with meditation.

And then we'll go to how reality works. Which reality means companies, your girlfriend, your parents, your dog, your boss, you know, your city, your country. This is reality.

And if you learn to meditate, you can unlock the keys to those things and you can change them. And you can make the world a better place. You can fix the world.

You can make the whole world happy if you understand these things, okay? So we have to start from meditation. You have to have a state of mind in which you can understand how the world works if you want to save the world, okay?

Otherwise you're not helpful. You're not helping anybody, okay? So you have to learn to meditate.

Okay, here we go. Wait, is there anything else on the title that I didn't do? Tuk chik chak chih lon rung nyong chih.

Tsun chi means chih chak chay may nay rak kut. Tsun rak kun kyi chih du. Inside this book is all the cream, the nectar of all the words of all the Buddhas.

These are hard advices. Duk chih nyingpo is the other name for this book which means the essence of the nectar of deathlessness. Shei jang shik sok.

That's the name of the book, okay? I'm not making you memorize the whole title, which is that whole thing. All you have to do is say, a gift of liberation.

A gift of liberation. Here we go. So we're skipping to day number 21.

Day number 21. Nying ney chik par. On the 21st day, Gyatsab janggong gogo sung le.

The Lama Avalokiteshvara quoted Gyatsab means the, what do you call it? Regent but next in line for the throne. Which means the future Buddha.

His name is? Maitreya. And he's hanging out in some paradise and he's waiting to come down.

The next Buddha is close, okay? The next Buddha in this world is very close, okay? And he said, I'll turn to this one.

Dina dangor tun pala dene sushin yi la chepa jung. Sushin yi la chepa leni yangda du yu yeshi jung she sunga denpa ze. The Lama quoted Maitreya, the coming Buddha, who said first, you should go to a theoretical class.

Sushin yi la chepa. Then you should go home and think about what you learned in the theoretical class. Sushin yi la chepa leni.

And then you should, when you've taken it home and thought about it, yangda du yu yeshi jung. You can go into a 10 day retreat in Prescott. Did you say Prescott?

And then you can grasp the meaning of reality. How the world works. And again, I'm not saying something in a cave, okay?

I'm talking about standing in the boardroom of British Airways and helping 43,000 workers. It's something you can do if you learn this. Because they'll smell that you have something.

Got it? They kept saying, we don't know what you have, but there's something there. Okay, shi sung.

Guno che shi do chok sung. Then the Lama went over the preliminary practices, which you haven't learned yet. We will learn them next time.

How to start your meditation and how to start your practice. jidam gundu sula sa chen grom ten jey. Then the Lama went over all the teachings he had given in the first 20 days.

gyel se kyi chepa chila lo tsu dak chen sok dang po shi la gyel se dor du nang ne. He went over the first four days, first four perfections. You are about to undertake the last two of the six perfections.

These are six high practices. Six high spiritual practices. For people, it's called for people of greater scope.

Greater scope means you are the kind of people who want to take what you learned in this little church out in the boondocks of Mesa and go change British Airways with it. You want to go change the whole world. You want to fix the world.

You have this motivation. You are not just thinking to go home and meditate in the corner of your house and maybe feel a little happier. That will also happen.

But the goal is bigger. The goal is can we make a world which has peace and actually a world which no longer has death? Can we make a world like that?

No war, no hunger, no poverty, no death. Can we make a world like that? That's our goal.

If you have that motivation, if your mind is on that level, British Airways level, then you should learn six holy practices. There are six high practices that will help people in the world. Again, it doesn't matter that they're Buddhist or they could have come from anywhere.

It doesn't matter. You can call them lunar. They came from the moon.

It doesn't matter to me. I don't care at all. You see, it doesn't matter.

The ideas are great. The ideas will help you run a $12 billion company. You don't have to know where they came from.

It doesn't matter. You see, people of highest capacity learn six different practices. You are about to undertake the last two of those six, which are meditation and then delving into how reality works so that you can manipulate it to make beautiful things happen in the world.

So these are the last two perfections. They are founded on a lower teaching called the Teaching for People of Medium Capacity. And we're going to be doing that later.

And those aren't meditations like you're going to die or make your life meaningful or things like that. And then those are founded on teachings for people of least capacity. Least capacity people are just worried about what's going to happen to them when they die.

Medium capacity people are worried about getting out of this whole cycle no matter what happens to them after they die. High capacity people like you are trying to make the world a perfect place for everyone. People like you need to study six different practices called perfections.

The last two of those are called meditation and understanding how the world really works. So the Lama went over the first four perfections. Dorje Tsongkhapa Nyi pa kye pa du par chit Now I'm going to teach you how to study the last two perfections.

I'm going to teach you a practice called stillness. Perfect stillness. Okay?

In Sanskrit? Shamatha. Say Shamatha.

Perfect mental stillness. Absolute, perfect you know, what is it? Did you find a lake?

What's on the cover of your notebook? Did anything make it? No.

Okay. That's probably a lake. A clear, crystal lake.

Your mind will become silent, still, ripple-less, absolutely, totally, perfectly silent. Okay? That's shi-ne.

Shamatha. She-ram-ki. She-ram-ki-mo ha-tong-la-lop-so.

Then after that we'll go on to wisdom or how to know how the world works. Even on an international airline level. Or your health.

Or your relationships. What are you going to use this for? I mean, take it home and use it for something.

Use it for your relationship problems. Use it for your financial problems. Use it for your health problems.

Fix the war in Iraq. Do something with it. Okay?

Got it? But you have to know how reality works. That's step two.

In Sanskrit, call it? De-pa-shyan. Say De-pa-shyan.

If you want to mispronounce it, you can say De-pa-shyan. Okay? Alright.

Dhamma-la-tuk. There are six steps to learning how to meditate. Now we're getting into the nitty-gritty, okay?

There are six steps to learning how to meditate. Shi-ne-gi-tsok-ten-pa. There are certain what do you call it?

Conditions you've got to get ready to meditate. Before you sit down to meditate, you've got to get together certain stuff. Certain things got to be ready before you start to meditate.

Even before you start to meditate. Like you're going to need a cushion. You're going to have to get your family to shut up for an hour.

Stuff like that. Okay? That comes first.

Before you even sit down. Shi-ne-gi-tsok-ten-pa. Number two.

Shi-ne-ju-tsu-ngu. Shi-ne-ju-tsu-ngu. Then I'll give you the actual instructions on how to meditate.

The real instructions. Number three. De-la-de-ne-se-ne-gu-ju-tsu.

Based on those instructions, you are going to go through nine different levels in your meditation. In the next few years, each one of you will climb in your meditation to nine different beautiful levels of achievement in your meditation. Until your mind becomes perfectly clear.

Perfectly strong. Now, there's a cool thing. Teacher Rinpoche, who is the Dalai Lama's teacher and my teacher's teacher, he said, you know it would be cool if we had a picture of all of these meditative levels.

Like if there was some kind of drawing that we could use to learn the level, it would be easier for people to learn it. You want to give me a copy? Can you flash it up there?

Just a picture? She got it. Okay, anyway.

I'm the projector. This is a poster that was designed by Teacher Rinpoche, who wrote this whole book. He wrote down the whole book.

And in the Tibetan on each side, it explains the classical problems of meditation that you will encounter for sure. And then it explains the antidotes that you are going to use when you hit those problems. And then it explains the cool states of mind you're going to get into when you use those antidotes against those problems.

And that's the whole picture. As you notice, the elephant is black at the bottom. And there's a black monkey which represents your distracted mind.

And then they get purer and purer until at the very top the monkey's flying in the sky and the elephant has a big smile and he's all white. And that's the purification of your mind. And then below here we translated it some years ago.

And then I thought it would be cool if I called Kinkos. We called Kinkos today and said, can you copy this? And they said yes.

And so we have an idea to if you want to order I'm going to start teaching that tomorrow afternoon. I thought it would be cool if a hundred and something people were trying to unroll one right next to each other. So if you want one, talk to who?

Should it be you?

[Говорящий 2] (50:00 - 50:01)
Who?

[Говорящий 1] (50:02 - 1:07:04)
Who? Okay, this is Angelo and you can talk to him. We're going to overcharge you.

We're going to add a kickback on top of the charge and we're donating that to the construction of the cabins for the three-year retreat. They're in a desperate stage right now, financially. They've got one month more to go to build, you know, a couple million dollars of cabins.

And they're close. They're very, very close. We just did a long review of all the progress two days ago.

It took five hours to look at 29 cabins. We spent five minutes in each cabin. It was like unbelievable.

There are 30 beautiful, homemade, legal meditation cabins going up. And just each yogi is doing his or her own cabin. It's amazing.

And they're hardcore. And then they're going to start a three-year retreat on New Year's or something like that. So, we're going to overcharge you and we're going to send the money there.

If you want one, you're welcome to order one from Angelo. And if you don't want one, that's fine. You'll still get the whole thing.

Okay? Alright. Let's see.

Okay. So, you will reach nine beautiful levels of mental peace by learning meditation. And those are reflected in the poster.

Dey tok drupi drupluk. Did I tell them how much? Twenty-five dollars.

Twenty-five dollars. I think it costs five or six dollars to reproduce it. Nine.

Nine dollars. So, we're gouging and just double. Okay.

Dey tok drupki drupluk means you will use six powers of the mind to reach those nine levels. You don't have to worry about that part now. We'll get to that.

Dey lai yi che shi yu tsok. And then your mind will change in four different ways. Dey lai shi nengwa kye tso lo.

And then you will get to perfect stillness of the mind. Don't worry about all the numbers. We'll be doing it over the next few days.

By the way, if you want the poster at all, you'll need it by tomorrow. Okay? Because we're going to finish it in two days.

Saturday and Sunday, we're going to finish it. Then by Tuesday, we're moving on to another subject. All right.

Here we go. Mmm. kye bu jing gi kap ting-yin zin tam Is that where I am anymore?

Dey yam. kye bu jing kap ting-yin zin tam sherak gi laba ma sum pa pa ching tham ma nyi gi kap che pe wang gi ze. You may wonder why I didn't explain meditation and an understanding of how things work for British Airways in the part of the in the 400 pages that already came in the book.

I was holding it back for now, he says. I wanted to hold it back until we got to the people who wanted to save the world with it, rather than sit in the corner of their house with it. Got it?

Okay. I've been waiting for you. shi ni rak gi mo ni What is shamatha?

What is the essence of meditation? How do you define the highest and deepest form of meditation? chi ru pa ta tu mo wa te Even people from other traditions, my lama used to watch the New York Yankees.

He used to watch Daryl Strawberry. Why do you think the Mets Sorry, it was the Mets. Why do you think the Mets won the 1981 World Series?

Why did What was his name? Bill Buckner dropped the ball at first base and let the Mets win after they got the record for the worst team in history the year before. My lama was there with his rosary.

All this weird stuff happened in the World Series. Especially the last play. I saw it on Google the other day.

YouTube. My lama was going like this. He says, look at Daryl Strawberry's eyes right now.

And the camera zooms in on his eyes. And the pitch is coming towards him in the playoff game. Last in the playoff game.

Not the World Series. And his eyes go like this. And then he just swings.

And the ball is a line drive to my field. And then it goes like this. And then it's supposed to come down, right?

And it goes And Remy Chase I'm going like this. And it hits the top of the wall. Just inside the foul pole.

And it drops over. And they win the game. Anyway.

Why did I talk about this? But yeah. He says anybody can learn to meditate.

It's not a religious thing. And my lama used to say, watch Daryl Strawberry's eyes. He's meditating.

He has shamatha. In the moment of swinging. And they interviewed him after the game.

And they said how do you keep whacking home runs out of the park? He says, well today was kind of weird. But then he said when the ball comes to me it looks as big as a watermelon.

He said, I have this thing. I go into this zone. You see zone means shamatha, right?

I go into this zone. And there's this watermelon coming at me. And I just swing.

You know what I mean? So what they're saying here in the text, anybody can learn to concentrate. Meditation is being in the zone as anyone can do.

Sports players can do it. The kind of meditation that we are seeking to develop is in fact one of the lower ones in the world. It's not like the highest, highest, highest one.

But we are going to pepper that meditation with some seasoning called renunciation. We are tired of living in a world where people are hungry. We are tired of living in a world where people are fighting with each other.

We are tired of living in a world where day-to-day people have anxiety and stress and people are dying. We are tired of that. We are sprinkling what's actually not the highest level of concentration with those thoughts of wanting to help people.

And then that boosts it up to a higher level. That becomes a high spiritual thing. Got it?

If we sprinkle it with the idea that we are seeking higher forms of shelter. What is a higher form of shelter? Someone who can save you from death itself.

You go for shelter nowadays, right? You have a problem, you call the police, right? You have a legal problem, you call a judge.

We call on higher truth and then the meditation that we do is transformed into a higher thing. Got it? So our meditation is differentiated from Dale Strawberry's concentration by these seasonings.

Okay. And if you don't learn to meditate with these extra seasonings, then you can study the older teachings and you can study the secret teachings. You can study the highest, first and second levels of the secret teachings, but you will never get it.

You will never grasp it. You'll understand the words, but it will not happen to you. In the higher teachings, there are teachings on how to meet angels.

What do you call it? Safeway. You go to Safeway and you meet an angel in aisle three.

You say, today I'm going to meet an angel in aisle three of Safeway. Like, I don't need a burning bush or anything. Just be aisle three in Safeway.

And then you just go and they're there. You can predict it. You can make it happen.

But if you can't meditate, it's not going to happen. Someone can sit you up here and tell you, oh, you know, there's this practice you can make angels appear in aisle three of Safeway at four o'clock if you can get there on time. And then you say, yeah, teach me how to do that.

And then I'm going to say, if you can't meditate, I can't teach you. If you don't have that level, stillness of a silent lake, stillness of the surface of a silent lake, if you can't reach that level, you can't do the Safeway thing. So if you don't want to do the Safeway thing, okay, don't learn to meditate.

I don't care. Okay. You want to know what shamatha is?

It's like you go to the edge of the river and you want to bring back a bucket of water for your house, which is half a mile away from the river. You better have a bucket. Okay.

Okay? What's he saying? You want to bring those ideas back to your mind?

You need shamatha. You need to meditate. You need that perfect still lake state of mind to get the water.

Or it's not going to happen. All those realizations will never... You will never have a Safeway experience.

And they are fun. They are really fun. Okay?

They are really fun. That's what shamatha is. You want to know what shamatha is?

It's that. You have to learn to meditate so strongly, perfectly firm, perfectly stable. You could have your eyes closed, someone could wave McDonald's french fries in front of your nose, and you wouldn't smell a thing.

Got it? Okay? That's what it says right here.

If you want to see the world safe from war, hunger, suffering, tarpa tsar tova la'am, if all you want to do is save yourself, toni toka harto ke guh, you must reach the direct perception of emptiness. You have to see emptiness. If you want to save the world, or if all you want to do is save yourself, you have to see emptiness directly.

den kevala shi ne ta oshi toka To get to that, you need shamatha. You need perfect meditation. You cannot see emptiness directly without perfect meditation.

It's never going to happen. So, we are learning how to see emptiness directly. We are learning the platform or the state of mind from which you will see emptiness directly.

I'm going to give you a break in about 10 minutes, okay? I'm trying to get as much mileage out of you before you cark out. Okay.

Before you can see the real nature of reality, so you can go to the British Airways, you need a stable and perfectly silenced state of mind. You must have a perfectly silenced state of mind. And then he gives an example.

If you're in a Tibetan cave, and in Tibet, the meditators over hundreds of years, they have been drawing beautiful paintings on the sides of the cave because they're too bored to meditate. It's called debri. Debri means mural, cave murals.

So they've been painting these beautiful murals on the sides of the caves. But the problem is, you go into the cave and you can't see them because it's a cave, and it's dark. So he says, if you want to see those murals, you have to take a lamp.

In Tibet, it would be a butter lamp, right? You would carry a butter lamp in. But if there's a wind, right?

What do you call it? Draft. If it's drafting, then the butter lamp shakes, and you can't see the picture beautifully.

You need a state of mind. You need a state of meditation which is absolutely perfectly still. And only with that can the light of your mind see ultimate reality.

You cannot get to the guts of reality if you don't have the capacity to bring your mind to total stillness. It won't happen any more than you could see a mural on the side of a dark cave if the wind was blowing through the cave. Got it?

If the mind is unstable, you won't be able to get what I'm saying when I went to British Airways. When we all went to British Airways, we had to meditate with them in the morning. Because that was the only way they could get it in the afternoon.

Got it? Okay. Hmm.

Thereby say, shi ne du ma la deo drip me ka ta mi ta bom pa la do pa chun kyi tun pa la Moreover, if you learn to meditate well, then as you go through the rest of this book over the next 10 years, you will get it. You will be able to meditate on each one of those steps, and you will rise through the steps to enlightenment. You will walk up a steady stairway to enlightenment, if you can meditate.

And if you can't, you won't. Got it? I'm telling you, this is the first night of 10 years.

You see? This is the first night of 10 years worth. And these are the first sentences of 10 years of blabla.

You know? And I'm telling you now, don't come back to me in 5 years and say, you know, back in 2010 you told us to meditate, and I didn't do it. You know, don't be one of those schmucks, okay?

And come to me in 5 years and say, yeah, you know, back in 2010, at the very first night, you said we had to learn to meditate, but I didn't have time. Don't drive me crazy. This is the time.

We're starting fresh. A lot of you have had some training before, or a lot of training before. Now let's start fresh.

I'm saying, from the first night you won't get any better unless you have a daily meditation practice. And a good one. And you're going to get the right instructions.

You can get yoga asanas anywhere, for example. Good teachers of yoga asanas are all over the place. It's very exciting.

I went to Flagstaff the other day with some friends, and we had a great class. You know, in a small class, in a small town, there were like 15 people doing handstands. That's like, wow!

You can get yoga anywhere. You can't get meditation anywhere. Nowhere.

They sit down and say, empty your mind. You know, or something. Anyway.

You're going to get the real thing. You're going to get the real poop. And you can use it.

It'll be nice, but you've got to do it. And then the rest of the 10 years will be, he says, kye la means, it'll be a cinch. Everything will be easy after that.

But starting tonight, you've got to make a commitment to learn to meditate. Because without that, we won't get anywhere. Five more minutes, okay?

I'll give you a break. I promise. You know, he says, there are books, even by Lord Atisha, The Lamp on the Path.

Where he says, hey, look, you could learn to fly. If you could learn to meditate, you could learn to fly. Or you could see the future.

You could see next year's lobby numbers. You could see the steps the British are going to have to take to get out of their financial crisis. Ahead of time.

And then just shelter. You see, you could do weird stuff. But, he says, kye la, but, den tsen sar le.

That's not the important stuff. Gun de tso ni, the main reason you and I want to learn to meditate, shi wi la. He calls shi wi la, who's shi wi la?

[Говорящий 2] (1:07:05 - 1:07:06)
Shantideva.

[Говорящий 1] (1:07:06 - 1:10:37)
He calls Master Shantideva. shi ne rok de dengpay pha tong kyi nyamong lampar dzongpar she chen ne thogmar shi ne tsao ja she sungpa di yin le He said, Master Shantideva said, you're going to use vipasyana, you're going to use your knowledge of how the world really works to destroy your own negative emotions. You're going to use your understanding of how reality works, not for financial gain, but to destroy your own negative emotions.

shi ne thogmar shi ne tsao ja So, I advise you to start with meditation. Start your practice by learning how to meditate. Because you will use your meditation to see the nature of reality, and with that, you will destroy the negativities in your mind.

Your mind will become pure and happy. Your mind will become totally pure and happy. Okay?

But you've got to learn to meditate first. thogmar shi ne dzong sum yin re thogmar shi ne dzong gyur la So we must start with perfect meditation. de yang sem gye gyi je kong nang mi gyur par nga chi kang du gyang chok There's another attitude, and then we'll stop, okay?

There's another attitude called bodhichitta, right? It's a love for the whole world. A love for every person in the world.

There's a high spiritual attainment called bodhichitta. Love for every person, living creature in the world. And not just this world, but many, many worlds.

Countless worlds. There's a high spiritual attainment called true love for all living creatures. And he says nga chi kang du gyang chok You can pick that up before you learn to meditate or after you learn to meditate.

It doesn't matter, okay? So, you have to start meditating now. Whether you get good at that first, or whether you develop ultimate love first, we can't say, and there's no...

It's not necessary to worry about it, okay? Maybe you will hit the peaks of meditation first. Maybe you will hit the peak of compassion first.

Don't worry about it. Either way, it'll be okay. That's what he says.

Chi kang chok. Okay, so I think now that half the people are asleep, we should take a break. Is that a Sera thing?

It is? Sera Food Fund? Okay, so anyway, we're selling...

Okay. So every year, we send a group of young people to my monastery, Tibetan monastery, and we pay for their trip, and we pay for their airfare, and then they spend a month there, and my hope is that a couple of them will be sitting up here in 20 years. I'm trying to plan ahead.

So, really, so we have these little dumb bake sales, and we overcharge you for very bad food, and then just the money all goes to their airfares. So try to eat a lot, and overpay as much as you can. And we always...

It's going very well. How many years now? Five years, I think.

Six years now. They've been going, and it's been very beautiful. So we'll be doing that.

[Говорящий 2] (1:10:42 - 1:11:14)
So for the posters that people are going to order from Angelo, we're ordering them tonight, and we're getting them pressed tonight, so if you want one, you must tell Angelo tonight, and he'll take your name down, and then we'll bring them tomorrow and give you them tomorrow, but we're only going to print exactly as many as people ask us for. So please tell Angelo, and he'll write your name, and that will be an order, and then you can pay for the poster tomorrow. Angelo will be standing somewhere around the stage, waving a notebook.

[Говорящий 1] (1:11:15 - 1:38:04)
Alright, have a nice week. Oh, if you want to come and talk for a moment, please feel free. I'll stay here.

And then try to be considerate of other people who might want to, you know, maybe they have a serious medical problem or something. Just imagine that the person behind you in line has a very serious problem they have to talk about. And then if we can't talk tonight, I'm happy to talk around here for ten days, and we can talk anytime.

So, just make a line, and then we can talk a little. Okay. Please have a nice...

We'll come back in ten minutes, okay? Okay, let's start. Mm-hmm.

It means whether you are whether you are seeking goals for yourself, whether you are seeking goals for others, or whether you are practicing secret teachings to help others in a single lifetime. If you learn to meditate with complete stillness, then you can achieve all these goals. What do you call it?

In great balance. It means jumping across the sky. But if you want to learn to meditate to meditate deeply, you have to start out with the proper conditions to meditate deeply.

And if you don't, you will never get good at it. The lamp on the path by Lord Atisha says if you can't get together the proper conditions for learning to meditate, or for your meditation practice, you can make efforts for a long time. You can try to meditate for a thousand years.

If you don't get the proper conditions ready ahead of time, you can try to meditate for a thousand years. But you will never achieve perfect concentration. It's not going to happen.

So, what are the conditions that you need before you sit down on your pillow, on your meditation seat? What are the conditions you have to what do you call it? In Tibetan it's assemble gather all the right conditions even before you sit down on your cushion.

So we're going to cover six different things, six different conditions that you have to get together if you're going to get serious about your meditation, even before you meditate. Six things you have to assemble, or gather, or conditions that you have to put together. You will need a place to meditate which is conducive for meditation, number one.

Number two, you have to reduce your needs. You have to learn to be happy with what you have already. You have to start giving up excess stimulation, excess activity.

This is very interesting. You must become a more highly ethical person. You have to watch your ethics if you hope to meditate well.

You can't cheat on your taxes even slightly. You can't lie to your brothers and sisters even slightly. You can't mess around with someone else's partner even slightly and expect to meditate.

It's not going to happen. That's one of the preconditions. How's that?

Preconditions. You should try to clean your mind of all those random thoughts like, I want ice cream. Like that.

He's going to cover those six in detail. Ready? What was the first one?

What do you call a conducive place? The place where you hope to meditate should have five qualities. So this is a typical Garupa list.

There's going to be six preconditions that you have to get ready before you meditate. And the first one has five parts. Got it?

The place where, the conducive place where you're going to be meditating is going to have five different qualities. He's quoting the Sutra Alankara which was written by written down by a Sangha taking dictation from the next Buddha to come in this world. Very close.

Within 500 years. Or maybe not that long. So he gives a verse spoken by the coming Buddha to describe the five qualities that the place where you're going to meditate should have.

You should look for a place to meditate that has these five qualities. I'm just going to mention the names of them and then we'll go into what they are. And this is from a verse.

Stuff should be easy to find. Number one. Stuff should be easy to find.

What stuff he's talking about is coming. It should be a perfect place. What that means is coming.

It should be a perfect location. How does that differ from a perfect place? We'll talk about it.

You should have perfect companions when you meditate. How many is that? Uh oh.

And you should have all the required articles for meditating. What that means, we'll find out. So now he's on to the first one, which was?

Stuff you're going to... easy to find. Stuff you need is easy to find.

Like Rob Rossinger has your three year retreat called Pain Needs Cover. Okay. If you are trying to undertake some deep retreat or you're trying to...

Let's say we're going to Prescott for 10 days, right? We're going to reserve 10 days for learning to meditate. If during that time we can't have the...

what do you call it? The basic necessities of life that you need. Like food, heating, it's going to be cold.

You know, a place to sleep, stuff like that. If you don't have these basic necessities of life, you're going to have to get in the car and go to Prescott and buy stuff. So you don't want to do that.

You want to be... Your place should be well stocked ahead of time. Or you should have an RTV already.

Okay? The food and other materials that you use for your practice should be pure. They should not be tainted by bad deeds.

For example, the killing of an animal. If you want to learn to meditate well, and you're just trying to decide what to eat while you're trying to learn to meditate, if you put into your body a substance which was derived from the murder of an innocent creature like a dumb, pleasant cow who never hurt anybody and didn't know what was coming, innocently befriended you and lived in your pasture and ate your food and then you came out one day and slit its throat, then if you eat that kind of thing and you put it in your body and then you try to meditate, it's not going to happen.

So the articles and the food that you use while you're trying to learn to meditate should be gotten cleanly and honestly. And without harming other creatures. You can't steal things.

You can't be living in a house which is not paying rent. You know, something like that. Cheating somebody or something like that.

All that stuff around you when you want to become a meditation master has to be cleaned. Almonds are really good. Almond milk is really good.

Fresh oranges are really good. Fresh vegetables are really good. Minimum harm to other beings.

Okay. All of us have said that. When we say stuff is easy to find, what we mean easy to find is easy to find in a clean way without hurting other people.

Without hurting other beings. So when they say easy to find, it doesn't mean that there's a mall next to your retreat camp. It means the people taking care of you through your retreat are careful to select foods and objects which have been gotten honestly and without harm to other beings.

They've been acquired through honest means. The accounting is good for the money that was donated. Everything is clean and pure.

And then your meditation will go well. As we got to the actual place where you meditate, you should try to find a meditation cabin or a spot where some holy person has meditated before. Try to find like we don't have in this country many places because we don't have a custom of meditation yet.

But insofar as you can, try to find a place which has been blessed by the presence of a great meditator before. And if you go and sit... I slept on Rinpoche's bed for 25 years.

I had incredible dreams and stuff. When I got there, he gave me his bed that he had been using. And it was extraordinary.

Every night was a trip. Or use a cushion that some holy being has sat on. Try to get something that has a blessing.

For beginners, or for people who are just starting out on their journey in the practice of meditation, it's important that the blessing comes this way. Got it? What's the implication?

When you get good at meditation, you'll be doing the blessing. You'll bless somebody's house. Somebody invites you to a Thanksgiving dinner, which we're going to do shortly, and then you come to the house and you bless the house because you're a good meditator.

Got it? But at the beginning, you're trying to get the process to come this way. You're trying to find stuff and places that have been blessed by more experienced meditators.

Later, the implication is that later you're going to walk into somebody's house and bless it just by the vibes of your good meditation. If in your particular country there hasn't been a thousand years of meditators, at least don't meditate in a place that has a negative energy. Avoid places that have a negative energy.

He gives the example of a place where someone is living who has broken their commitments and vows. For example, in the Abhidharma, it says someone who has taken a military vow to harm other beings. Someone who has stood and sworn that they will harm other beings and made a promise.

Then there's a negative energy about them. You wouldn't want to do your meditation in a house like that or something like that. If there's a negative energy where people have been hurting other people, then you would want to avoid that kind of influence, vibes.

Sitavu Nila. Then there are places where there has been great conflict. We have a place like that in Vietnam, right?

At our university there is an area where the native people were killed and Geronimo was captured there. And there has been a kind of a negative energy there, which I think has been cleansed now. But you as a beginner, you shouldn't just park down on a place where lots of native people have been slaughtered and expect to have a good meditation.

Don't go to a place without vibes. Chemsen Dong. Watch out for places that have a lot of lions and tigers and bears.

Chokun means bandits, but we don't have that. We're lucky in America. You're really lucky in America.

I mean, most countries, most meditators, have had to worry. They go out in the wilderness and they're worried someone will just show up with a gun and shoot them and take all their food. You know what I mean?

We're lucky to live in this country. Chokun. Watch out for places that have negative spirits, like haunted places or like that.

You need a place which already has a nice message. Chi ne ne par gyurwa. If you stay in a place which has a negative energy and which even may have spirit beings, negative spirit beings, and you just kind of innocently say, I'm going to do it here anyway, without any real appreciation of the dangers of that kind of place, chi ne ne par gyurwa.

You will have problems. You will have problems about it. You know, you can approach a negative place with kind of an innocence, but it can come back to haunt you.

Don't try to take on all the spirit beings in Mesa, Arizona, okay? Find a place in Mesa which is pure. Ngar lama shikla, sen ki chi ne, lak ne de gham tanya.

Then the lama Avoka told a story about a good practitioner, a lama, who had ignored warnings not to do their meditation in a place with negative energy, and then later they had a real problem. Some kind of spirit came and harmed them. Avoka Rinpoche himself was harmed by spirit, and he had wars with spirit.

Later in his life, according to tradition, you can see the effects on his body. If you see a photo of him later, he was all blown up, and he had had major struggles with spirit, and he had prevailed, but it had ruined his body. So, it's important.

Rang du ne sum nyi rung ne la, chi ni chok par. How do you get rid of negative forces or negative spirits if you sense them in a place where you're meditating? He says, contrary to what you might think, you should try to be kinder, and you should try to have compassion for them, and you should try to be gentle with them.

Tab ki. Try to get to know them, leave out little offerings for them, talk to them kindly, and try to... people do this with roaches, right?

It works. Okay. Koi gyur du tab kye pa kya kye.

Try to get the spirit to be on your side, okay, by being gentle and thoughtful, and talk to them, and try to become friends, rather than try to, like, harm them. Now we came to sa-sam, which was a... we said good location as opposed to a good place, right?

And we said, what's the difference between a perfect location and a perfect place, right? Say yes. Okay.

That way I know you're awake. Okay. Sa-sam, say, sa-lam ni ne ne mi kye chik, sa-chu chu-pa.

Good location means it shouldn't be too hot, and it shouldn't be too cold. It's not even on this book, right? But anyway, generally you should try to find a place where it's rather temperate, where the temperature fits your body, and fits your personality.

And if it doesn't, you should take some steps and make it that way. As far as you can. Don't suffer.

Try to make your retreat place comfortable, temperature-wise. And then, especially if it's so cold or so hot that it might cause illness or some kind of imbalance in your body. Mmm.

Kye chik, sa-chu chu-pa. The place, the soil of the place and the water of the place should be healthy. Okay?

Like I live in a place where the water has been tainted with arsenic, and we have to be very careful. We have to clean it carefully. And so, make sure that the environment around you has been taken care of nicely.

You know, that people are respecting the environment, and they're not harming the environment. Like with chemicals or things like that. Dro kye, sa-chu tu-la-dong.

As for your companions, okay, people that you choose to meditate with, they should be people that you get along with, and people who are interested in the same sort of activities that you are. You know, like, if you are interested in doing a meditation on on shamatha, after having trained yourself in the details of it, well, then you should try to meditate with people who have had a similar training. And who have similar, what do you call them?

Aspirations. Okay? Try to meditate with people who have similar aspirations that you have.

De-yong gyu-ma-ni-ping to-tang hen-chik-tu. There's an expression in Tibetan. It says, meditate with a second shadow.

It's meditate with a meditate with a shadow. Meditate with a shadow as your friend. It's an old Tibetan expression.

Meditate with a shadow as your friend. And then he says, some people misunderstood the meaning of it. Meditate with a shadow as your friend.

And I looked it up, you know, because of the kindness of many, many people over the last, what, 22 years. We have, in their computer, we have, I don't know, a million pages of scriptures? Tibetan scriptures have been input.

So I can look up something like this, and I found out who spoke it. It was spoken by the Fifth Dalai Lama. He said, he said, meditate with a shadow as your friend.

And then, you know, what, 400 years later, no, 300 years later, Pabongkha Rinpoche is quoting you. And he says, people misunderstood what the Fifth Dalai Lama said. Because they thought he was saying, meditate, always meditate by yourself.

Right? With your shadow. If nobody's in the room by your shadow, you're by yourself, right?

So, people have misunderstood the quotation by the Fifth Dalai Lama. Pabongkha Rinpoche says, that's not what the Fifth Dalai Lama meant. He says, kye sum ma drong ni le me pa dam It doesn't mean, chi pa ne gupe dun nim It doesn't mean you have to meditate by yourself, and there shouldn't be anybody else in the room.

Nim bar, rang dam lo tum pa la che Rather, it means, and I looked up some other scriptures. It means, when you get up, what does your shadow do? When you go to the refrigerator to get some pie, what does your shadow do?

It goes to the refrigerator to get some pie. Got it? When you want to do yoga, you know, you want to do a headstand, what does your shadow do?

It does a headstand. So he's saying, it means you should find meditation companions who are as like-minded as you, as your shadow. You know, when you want to meditate for an hour, they're like, good.

You know, when you want to meditate extra in the evening, they're like, great. They are following you as much as your shadow. Got it?

Okay. le damo drong me chi pa du pa dun che wa He is very adamant here, and it's unusual, I think. He says, people who are beginning a practice of meditation should not do it alone.

He says, kin che wa He says it would be a problem. It would be a serious problem. People who are learning to meditate should not try to meditate alone.

troks troksun le mi nyunga He says, I think groups of at least three meditators is good. At least three. chup tun chung la drok mang yang lek If you can find a group of people who have similar spiritual aspirations, then the more you can get together for your retreat, it would be good.

If you were doing retreat in a group, or if you were doing, like in January we're going to do a retreat, if you can get a whole room full of people who have the same aspirations, and if you meditate together, it's much more powerful. My first Lama, Geshe Ngon Dargye, he when he got to this point, he took a pencil, he grabbed the pencil and he broke it, and he said, that's one person meditating. And then he grabbed ten pencils, and he went, and he said, you know, look how much stronger I can art.

So like, if you can find people that you are really tight with, then it's good to meditate with other people. I do that almost every day. I try to meditate with other people.

It doesn't mean that it's not useful to have long periods where you do meditate alone. You can also make great progress alone, but in a beginner, if you have the support of other people, I guess you're more likely to do the meditation. All right.

Chok mangyong jitar yang mik sul la chi yor wa re la ten guh ki. This was a, I almost said a bitch, but I won't say that. This was really hard, and I looked through thousands of pages, you know, and I found it, but it's very rare, extremely rare.

He says that no matter how many meditation companions you choose to have, they should be people that, when you look out of the corner of your eye, they are heavy. And then, what it means is they should be hardcore. If you choose someone to be your, even with yoga, right?

Like, if you choose to do your yoga with other people, it's good to do it with hardcore people. I used to play tennis in high school, which is not hardcore. But our coach, during the season, he had a rule.

We were not allowed to play with anyone who was not better than us. You see? We were never allowed during the season to play a tennis match with someone who wasn't better than us.

You see? And in meditation, it's the same. In choosing your meditation buddies, look for hardcore.

Look for heavyweight. He says, look for heavyweight. You know how you go to a restaurant and you like, sense this presence over here?

And you're like, you're like, you're afraid to look at like a biker, you know? That's what he's talking about. That's someone that you would just look out of the corner of your eye and they look heavy.

And you're afraid to like, you know, like, what kind of beer are you having?

[Говорящий 2] (1:38:04 - 1:38:05)
Like, okay?

[Говорящий 1] (1:38:08 - 1:44:25)
Hardcore. Pick a hardcore person. He says, don't hang out with lightweights.

He says, just sort of play people, you know what I mean, who are not very serious about their practice. Don't hang out with that kind of people. Because they will rub off.

Hang out with people who benefit better than you. Hang out with yoga teachers who are better than you. And they'll push you.

Right? Okay. This is a beautiful line.

It's all beautiful. We should do the whole thing tonight. This is what we were talking about the other day.

Say, say something. The thorn of meditation is noise. Okay?

The thorn of meditation is noise. The one thing that can destroy your meditation is cells. Like random cells.

Try doing a retreat with one of those battery clocks that clicks and ticks. You know? You're like deep into it, it's going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

Or, I don't know, with a mouse in the room? You know, that's really bad. Like you're meditating and then there's a...

The refrigerators are really bad. You're going to spoil a lot of food if you get serious about meditation. Because you'll unplug the fridge before you start and you'll forget to plug it back in.

And then suddenly you have a puddle in your room from the ice that melted. Okay? It should be like that.

Okay? I mean, stop all the noises in your... You've got to stop, you've got to deal with noise.

You've got to... I have friends who just use... They carry around earplugs like...

You can buy packs now, like 20 earplugs for $3. And just carry them around like that. That's very good.

It's very useful. Okay? Try to find a place that is quiet.

During the day you get people blabbing. During the night you get dogs barking. Oh, chudru means the noise of a stream nearby or something like that.

Okay? Although I found that that can be kind of helpful sometimes. But anyway.

This is what I used to say. You should take the subject that you're going to meditate about and you should analyze it carefully. But also you have to get all your stuff ready.

So he's on to number... Five. Okay?

Here's what my Lama said about getting your stuff ready. Who's Lama? Avalokiteshvara Lama.

Deva Yoge Dampate. You've got to get your stuff together. What is that?

Before you start your three-year retreat or before you start a serious meditation session, you should have gotten the proper empowerments. You should have gotten the proper teachings. You should have in your hand all the sadhanas and all the books that you're going to need.

Okay? Everything should be... That's what it means, okay?

All your stuff. All the stuff should be ready. Good, Khyal?

Jigpa. Say, uh... Say, Khyapa Dampa?

Khyapa Dampa. Menda Lepa? Menda Lepa.

Menda Dampa? Khyapa Lepa. Okay.

This is a famous Ken Rinpoche story when he got to this point. See, you have this benefit of all of Ken Rinpoche's stories, which you probably heard from Chitra Rinpoche, which you probably heard from Avalokiteshvara Rinpoche, which is cool, right? So you're getting all the inside info.

So there was a guy in Tibet who went to fight with an invader to his country, and you know, the Tibetans are not... They had flintlocks with yak horns, you know? And you know, you load the thing, and you put gunpowder in, and you put in a...

What do you call it? A ball. A metal ball.

And then you pull back the flintlock, and then you go and then you go and then the ball goes, you know? And they weren't very good at fighting. So anyway, so just rag-tag people go to protect the country.

They go with guns, and they just go from their farm, and they walk towards the front lines. And then the guy had to go to the bathroom, and he saw an outhouse. So he went in an outhouse, and he he pooped, but he left his gun there.

And then he went to the front, he reached the front lines, and here comes this massive horde of enemy soldiers, you know? And he's like, ah! And he looks for his gun, you know?

And he's like, he left his gun. Then he pooped out of fear. He pooped, right?

And then he was like, just a minute, I'm I'll just go back and get my gun, you know? I left it at the outhouse, you know? It means, so in Tibetan they say, he shot he shot he shot where he was supposed to poop, but then he pooped where he was supposed to sleep.

Something like that. Anyway, it means, get everything ready ahead of time. Right?

[Говорящий 2] (1:44:28 - 1:44:29)
And then they would disappear.

[Говорящий 1] (1:44:29 - 1:47:03)
Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter In Chinese, the main point, he says very beautiful, the main stuff that you have to get ready for your meditation is training. Okay? You have to be trained in meditation.

And you have to know what you're going to practice. Before you close your door for the three-year retreat, you better have six or seven years of training, and texts ready. Right?

And you you know what you're supposed to do when you close the door. Got it? Okay.

DANG SANG TSO BA'I SOK TSO DAG GIS NE. Nowadays, he's complaining. What is nowadays, 1921 in Tibet, right?

He says, people are all freaked out about their cabin, and their propane, and their refrigerator, and all their other stuff. And they don't even know what they're going to do when they close the door. They don't have any plans for what they're going to do when they close the door.

They don't have any practices ready, they don't have any training. They're just all worried about, am I going to have my yak meat ready, you know? They're not thinking about, well, where is the yak meat, right?

U TUB DE. He says, this is a... What do you call it in pitiful.

This is lame. Utuk means, this is lame. These people are lame, okay?

Like they're all worried about their cabin and they're not thinking about what they're going to do when they get to the cabin. But you guys don't have both, right? Okay.

Mondad Gopakam. Some of them are so bad that just before they go into their cabin to do their free retreat, they go to the lama and say, could you do a vow for me about what I should practice in the retreat? Like they didn't decide until the last day to ask the lama to just sort of guess at what they might like to do, okay?

But look, there are people like that. You see now this. DED DANG NI CHE BANG NYAM SU LAM RJE CHOS LAG DAG GIS LAS PAR BYED DGOS You've got to get your practices ready before you shut yourself away, okay?

That's why we're doing this class before we go to Prescott, okay? Because then when you get to Prescott, you'll have everything in your head. Then we're going to sit down and shut up and meditate, right?

Which you'll probably, you probably don't believe I can do that, but we're going to try.

[Говорящий 2] (1:47:04 - 1:47:04)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (1:47:06 - 1:53:00)
I want to make sure I don't go too far. Okay. I'm not stopping until we finish the material, okay?

If that's, if you don't like that, you just don't come back, okay? All right. I'm just going to, we have to do three and a half pages a day for the next ten years, or it's going to be twenty years.

I don't know if we can make it. Okay. But it's not going to be long, don't worry.

NYIPA DEGWI CHOR So he finished the discussion about the conducive place for meditation. What's number two? What?

Perfect place. So he finished all that. Reduce your needs.

Yeah, reduce your needs, okay? Reduce your needs. Reduce your, the needs that you have in your life, okay?

NYIPA DEGWI CHOR SEGYO SO SANGHO DANG MANGPO LA CHAKPO ME DEGWI CHOR Don't be so worried about having a lot of food or very good food. Don't be so worried about having nice clothes or, you know, a lot of clothes. That's all.

He just says reduce your needs to a minimum. The more stuff you have, the more maintenance you have to do. The more maintenance you have to do, the more meditation sessions you will miss.

The more meditation sessions you miss, the closer you are to just dying with a meaningless life, okay? You have to set up your, you need a nice place to live. You need a comfortable place to live.

You need a place where the water's not dripping on your head and the mice are not running around on you. Because you can't meditate. You need a decent, quiet, modest, clean, quiet home.

You need a place to meditate. But then stop there. Because every extra object you accumulate, you have to take care of it.

And then that wastes time. And it fills up your mind, okay? All right.

Summa chokshepa. Chokshepa means, number three means, be happy with what you get. Be grateful and happy with what you get.

Se gung nge ngong san nge pe chokshepa te. If all you get is some, you know, what? Lousy food, you know, like whatever food you can get in retrieve.

They're going to deliver something. There's a thing for monks in the monastery. Very strong tradition.

Eat what you're given and be grateful. And don't whine about it, you know? Think, God has given me this food or whoever, you know?

And it's not what I wanted, but I'm grateful. You know? I'm grateful for the people who worked to make the food.

I'm grateful to the people who cooked it. I'm grateful to the people who brought it here. People lost many hours of their precious, irreplaceable lifetime to deliver that food to your plate.

Be grateful for God's sake. And stop worrying that it's undercooked or it's overcooked or it's too greasy or it's not exactly what you wanted. Don't look at food that way.

Look at food like, oh look, a gift from thousands of people in the chain of, what do you call it? The market, right? Thousands of people have worked, they've lost their lives to bring me this plate of food.

Then be thankful. Don't look at it like, oh I don't like that. Or that has too much salt.

Or that isn't what I wanted. Like that, okay? It just makes your life happy.

Be grateful with what you get. And be turned on by what you get. And think about, wow, you know?

Hundreds of people worked to make this for me. To get this food to me. It's not just the people who delivered it on the, what is it?

RTV thing. What's RTV? Rough Terrain Vehicle?

Something. Is it? Nobody knows.

But anyway, it's not just the people who delivered it to the door. It's hundreds of people in the production chain. And be grateful to them.

They sacrificed their time and their life. And don't sit there and whine about, oh it's got too much grease. Or I don't like it, it's too cold.

Don't look at food like that. Look at it like a miracle. Because it is.

And a sacrifice by other people, right? And the same with your clothing. Dön çün çok şey çevresi maçımda.

If you're not a person who can reduce their needs. And if you're not a person who can be grateful with what they get. Döyün la çak de.

Lanze sok, son sok, dön la yenge. If you just try to collect more stuff for your house. If you just try to collect different kinds of food for your refrigerator.

And you get into the process of, it's called, in Tibetan it's called soksun. Say soksun. Soksun means collection and protection.

First you get the food. Then you have to, I mean my refrigerator is like, now I have a refrigerator. I never had a refrigerator.

And now I'm in the soks, wait, soksun. I have to check which vegetables are getting old. And I have to eat those first, you know.

And then my mind is all like, oh the zucchini are, is the zucchini older or the carrots are older? And then, you know, just lower the amount of stuff in the fridge. Okay.

Yeng ne. Because otherwise, yeng means you will be distracted. Ting yin zing mi kye.

You will not be able to get to deep states of meditation. If you are worrying about, are the carrots older or are the zucchini older. Tsu chun dak pa la.

What's our next one?

[Говорящий 2] (1:53:03 - 1:53:03)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (1:53:04 - 2:20:31)
You should be living a highly ethical life, otherwise you won't be able to meditate. Hey, he's got it out of order. It's not my fault.

It's coming. It's coming. I think he wanted to talk about tsu chun dak pa first.

Chir tsu chun la ni yun neng tang chen gyi shi. Generally speaking, being an ethical person, is the foundation for all spiritual success. Generally speaking, being a nice person, is the basis of all spiritual success.

Na ni yena, chan mo shi wa ni, chu kyi yen wa rak pa pongwa la te shing. Removing your subtle inner distraction, relies upon removing your gross outer distraction. Okay.

Pongwa la te shing. Nang to rak pa she chen, san la bu mi ne pe. If you are plagued by your conscience, then your mind won't be centered.

Na tu mi ne pa. Tsu chun gyi dung la gyi ngey chik dang ne. So try to get some self-control over the things you say and the things you do and the things you think.

Okay. Try to reach some level of self-control about the degree to which you harm other beings. And dang ne shi wa chen.

Your mind will become peaceful. Make your mind peaceful by being very careful not to hurt other people and other creatures. Then your meditation will be good.

Now, dun zi ma pongwa. If you fail to give up overstimulation, he's coming to that one. He's on that one.

Dun zi is a very nice to have word, those of you who care. Where'd it go? Is it up there?

It's the very first word though, okay? Dun zi. Say dun zi.

He's doing a good job, okay? You should thank him. Dun zi means, dun zi means busyness with a Y.

Busyness with a Y. It's dun zi. Like, ah, yo, yo, ah, I've got so much stuff to do today.

That's dun zi. Dun ne di ja jen tang. Useless things that you've made for yourself to do.

Oh, he made a list here. It says, e-mail. Yeah, e-mail.

And surfing the web. Tang so ki dun dao. If you waste your time just blabbing with other people about stuff, that's called chat rooms, right?

Chatting. Uh, texting. Dao zhu la.

Nam yang mei bei dun yung wai chan yung wei chen gua fang. Sam ten kye wei che yin mei. You have to look upon e-mail, and texting, and chatting, and surfing in the context of something that could prevent you from succeeding in your meditation forever.

Okay? Like, you have to gravely consider the importance of what you're doing with your e-mail and the other stuff. You know, don't send fluff to other people.

I have, I have, what do you call it, a spam filter on my Google account? But I have a fluff filter in my head. You know?

And I just see what it's from and I don't even open it. You know? It's like, this person sends me fluff.

You know? They sent me something their grandmother said. Just, don't send anything that's not important.

Okay? Or meaningful. Or even loving, you see?

Meaningful in a loving way. Something that has content. Don't send stuff that doesn't have content.

Dun yung jao yung. Keep your activities few, keep your needs few. Good.

In order to protect your meditation, he says. Not just for, you know, good luck or something. To protect your meditation, watch how much you take on.

And watch how much busy stuff you do. To protect your meditation. See it as a way of protecting your meditation.

du ching chok shei chen na, dun yung jao yung shi, ram shu gyi om. If you stick to the principle of not wanting too much stuff, and if you stick to the principle of being deeply grateful for whatever comes to you, automatically your activities will be less. You see, automatically your level of busyness will decrease.

If you don't need a lot of stuff, and if you have this heartfelt gratitude for whatever comes to you, you will find that automatically you need less stuff. And you want less stuff. Got it?

Okay. du pa tse chi che pa la, kar si dam me mong de, tong chok sok yam gung di, yun me pong gu. In Tibet, there were other secondary spiritual practices, spiritual arts, what you could call minor spiritual arts.

One of them was kar si means like Vedic Astrology. Like telling people's future from the stars and stuff like that. Which has a deep philosophical foundation in Tibet.

But it's considered a secondary spiritual thing. It's not like meditating or trying to develop compassion. Kar si.

Lam means the practice of medicine. Which was a secondary what do you call it, application for many monks. Many monks were healers.

Mong de means what do you call it? Doing divinations for people with dice. People come and ask me what nation I get married on and you go, oh.

Okay. Tong chok means people say in Tibet there grew a custom where, and I was a victim of this, the monks somebody would call the monastery and say I want 18 monks in my house to recite the Dhammakaya Sutra from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. And then I'll promise I'll give them a turkey dinner or something. And this was some kind of custom in Tibet.

And I had to do it for years, for 20 years. And that's called Tong chok. Tong chok means town rituals.

You have to walk the town and read Dhammakaya Sutra to people who are half asleep. And it's like Latin to them. They have no idea what you're saying.

And then you get a turkey dinner. Okay. Okay.

He says give up these things also. Give up the minor spiritual things that are not really important. Because they are also busy nerds.

Minor, slightly spiritual engagements and activities are not only dangerous for us beginners, he says, but even those high lamas, high spiritual practitioners, they are also endangered by this kind of thing. They also have to be careful. They can also be tempted by these minor spiritual things.

He gives an example. Who is that? Okay.

1290, 1364. You know him. He was an influence on Jatakappa.

Jatakappa was too young to meet him, but he was strongly influenced by him. He assembled the Kanye Finger, the canon of Buddhist practice. Four and a half thousand texts.

And Lama Dampa, Lama Dampa means Holy Lama, okay. But it's a particular person named Sunim Gyaltsen who lived 1312 to 1375 and he's an important Sakya Lama. Anyway, these are two important major lamas of their time, of the 1300s.

Gyalpo Pekar Ki Totsamne There was a spirit What do you call it? You're going to get a lot of this stuff, okay. I don't know if you believe it or not.

But anyway, there's a spirit being called Pekar in Tibet. The name comes from Pekar, which is a corruption of Bihara. So Pekar comes from Bihara.

And this was a spirit being who lived in Tibet. He wanted to ruin these two high lamas' practice. He went after these lamas were getting too good at meditation.

They called, in Tibet they called what do you call it? Their head came up over the, what do you call it in the radar? In English you say They came onto the spirits' radar.

Bad spirits. Oh, these guys are ready to meditate. Let's hit them.

What do you call it? Keep your head down. They They like They say if you start getting serious about your practice, you will attract trouble.

They don't like it. There are spirit beings who don't like it. So, the minute you start getting serious about your meditation, they start doing a construction project next door.

With a tractor. Those guys, they look like these fat construction guys, but they're not. They are spirit beings.

Probably they are. Okay? The minute you start doing something right, they will come.

Really, they will come. In all sorts of forms. They don't want you to meditate.

So anyway, he wanted to ruin these two high lamas' meditation. So, he gave them an iron pen. In Tibet, it was a big deal to have an iron pen because you used bamboo stick.

The word for pen is nyuku, which means bamboo. And, you know, 99% of the population used a bamboo stick and they dipped it in ink and they wrote things, right? But if you're a really big person, you got an iron pen.

So, he offered them an iron pen. The demon offered the two high lamas an iron pen. Each.

And he taught them how to do complicated astrological charts. And they each used up a thousand metal pens in their life. Doing complicated astrological projections.

Got it? And they didn't get to their spiritual goal. Nowadays, it would be something like Facebook.

Okay? Unless you were using it for spiritual purposes, okay? But really, I mean, nowadays the pay-hard would offer you a Facebook account.

Okay? Something to kind of waste your time pleasantly. And then suddenly you're old and it's too late to meditate, okay?

It happens. I've met people, recently I met a guy, I think he was in Pennsylvania, he says, you don't remember me? I came to Howard, New Jersey the same year you did.

And I was in Ken Ripperchase's kitchen the same day you were when you started. And look where you got to, and I wasted my whole life. I wasted the last 40 years, you know?

And I was in the kitchen with you on the first day and I should have stayed. I wasted my time. I blew it.

You see, I blew it. And then, so don't let Facebook, I mean now, okay? Don't let pay-hard come and Facebook you, okay?

I'm not kidding, right? And it should be something rather challenging and interesting, right? I mean, a good demon won't come to you with a world, what do you call it, Super Bowl on TV.

He'll come to you with something kind of deeper and interesting and sophisticated. Okay? And so you can waste your life, like feeling you're doing something when you're not, okay?

Got it? Like doing astrological calculations, right? Yeltsin Tome Sambho.

Yeltsin Tome Sambho, his name was the Bodhisattva Tome Sambho. He lived in the same era as those other lamas, 1295, 1369. He wrote a wonderful commentary on Master Shantideva's work, Bodhicharyavatara, and we studied it, the first classes I ever had we studied it.

It's very beautiful. Tome Sambho, he was meditating on compassion, okay? And love.

He, rather than learning programming, he sat in the corner and meditated on love and compassion. They larmanye, and the demon never touched him. The demon couldn't get to him.

The demon tried, and he couldn't get to him. He tried to tempt him with, you know, like power and knowledge and fame, and all he wanted to do was sit and meditate about people, love for other people, and the demon couldn't he wouldn't take the iron pen, got it? He refused a Facebook account.

And he sat in the corner and he meditated on the suffering of the world. And the demon couldn't touch him, got it? Larmanyeva.

Jai Nirmachai Khyentse, Su Bhojichogye Bolaan. Jetsam Kapha himself wrote 18 volumes of scripture, totaling 10,000 pages, okay? Ula Sumpab Sogma Zepa.

And it was a custom in Tibet that when you wrote a heavy scripture, at the front you would put the title of the book in three different languages, okay? Tibetan, and then two forms of Sanskrit, called Vartu and something else, Lansha. Vartu and Lansha.

These are very ornate, they take a lot of years to learn. I learned some of them. They take a long time to learn, you have to use a special calligraphy pen, and it was a sign that you were a great scholar, right?

That you could write the title of your book in three languages, okay? Jetsam Kapha never did that, okay? Why?

Kongi Vartu Tanjati Ma Kyelam Mim. It's not that he didn't know Sanskrit. Vartu means, Depchor means Sandhi, the proper composition of Sanskrit syllables.

And the Jati means the proper Sanskrit poetical meter, which is very, these things are very difficult to learn. The rules of composition and the rules of poetic meters. It's not that Jetsam Kapha didn't know them.

Rather, he was afraid that getting sidetracked by minor knowledges would ruin his practice. He was worried about getting sidetracked to minor subjects that would ruin his higher practice. So he didn't do those things.

I myself, who's I? I myself was trying to do Sadhrup. Sadhrup is very difficult.

Sadhrup means a complicated astrological chart, okay? Considering many planets' movements at the same time. Now there's computers.

If you go on the internet, you can find it. They do it by computer, but in the old days, it took a long time. Khambok Rinpoche, Sadhrup Namtar Chitpu I spent one year doing one astrological calculation.

One chart. One good, complicated chart. Khambok Rinpoche says I took a year on one.

Chit Sam Jangme Dzungmo Bugak Dzungmo Bugak Ching I wore a hole in my finger on the paper, you know, like tracing the movement of the planets and stuff. I got a ulcer on the tip of my finger. Like an open wound from trying to do that.

I wore my finger out on this calculation for a year. Samta All I was able to do the only benefit I got out of it was I wore out to Samta. Samta is a special wooden board that they use for doing the astrological calculations.

It has lines drawn on it, and you see, I just wore out a couple of blackboards. Deda Kyang Junsir Solonay Even those spiritual endeavors were a waste of time. They were a busy mess.

Nyam Lela Phepa Vachung. It didn't help my practice at all. Deda Bela Pachak Kyang Detsam Sik Detsam Sik le untong dang mele la pachak dupa mila You don't even get any good seeds from that.

Like some practices, they don't have an immediate result, but you get some kind of seed. He said, I didn't even get any seeds from that. Dena Buram Buram mila ba goshing la chakla ta dundi nimbo bin dupa Don't be the kind of person who goes out to a sugar cane what do you call it?

A stalk of sugar cane and tries to eat the leaves. Break it open and eat the inside. That's where the what do you call it?

That's where the sugar is. Don't waste your time on peripheral peripherally interesting spiritual stuff. Someone today gave me a book.

This morning, somebody gave me a book. They said, oh, you're going to love it, Geshe Michael. I said, what is it?

They said, you know this neuroscientist neuroscientist neuroscientist has figured out that Buddhism is okay. And I thanked them, and then I just threw it. I mean, I just threw it.

As soon as I got home, I just threw it. I opened my book and I threw it away. It's not going to help you.

It's just some guy's speculation about Buddhists are okay now. It doesn't mean anything. It's peripheral spiritual junk.

You don't have time for that. Let's call it, let's call it dunzi. Let's define it as peripheral spiritual junk.

You don't have time. Go for the marmahata, right? Go for the what do you call it?

Jugular. Go for the spiritual jugular. Learn to meditate deeply and go to emptiness.

And don't waste your time on this new age stuff. Okay? There are people who spend their entire lives on minor scholastic points or peripheral spiritual junk.

Okay? And they get old. They become, what do you call it?

Genkok means Genkok means Sina. Physically. What do you call that?

What? Their bodies get used up. Like they're infirm.

They're walking like this. They're old. They're 80 years old.

And they have wasted their life on this new age junk. And they know nothing and they have no accomplishments and they don't understand anything. And they've just got old.

And they've wasted their whole life on that. We have it in Sedona, right? Near where I live.

There's a bunch of places like that. Okay. And you still see them.

It's a sad thing. You see these hippies where I live. Ex-hippies.

They're like 70 now, 60 years old. And in the local food market, tiny food market. If I ride my bike, it's like a long drive.

It's half a wine. Half the section, half the store is wine. Different kinds of wine.

So these people who started out their life in the hippie movement and they were all what do you call it? Inspired to hire things. Now they're just like hanging out in the store and drinking wine.

And he says and he says it's pitiful to see. A person who started out with high spiritual aspirations, they wasted their time on peripheral unauthentic stuff and now they're sitting at that local store drinking wine all day. And he says he says it's so sad to see.

It's sad to see. Okay. It's really he says they are old and they're just trying to get a little physical comfort from the wine.

And that's all that's left of their life. That's all they have left of their life is to sit and talk about the old days and have a wine. And he says say means breaks my heart to see it.

They started out with such hope in the 60s or whatever and now they're sitting around talking about old times and drinking wine and they didn't they didn't do anything. Between they didn't gain anything. They didn't have any real what do you call it?

Strength. Spiritual strength. They didn't get anything all that time.

There was a sutra I'm getting there, okay? You're almost home. So we're not far.

There was a sutra named you know usually a sutra is named by the person who requested it, right? Like somebody went up to Lord Buddha and said, what do you think about this? And if his name was Joe then it's called the sutra requested by Joe.

Okay? So there's a sutra requested by Surata. Somebody named Surata, okay?

And he was a beggar, okay? He was a beggar. The beggar Surata he found a chitamani.

What's a chitamani? Chitamani or chitamani? It's a wish giving jewel.

It's like an Aladdin's lamp, okay? If you rub it you can get anything you want. You just ask it and you get anything you want.

I have a bunch of good jokes about Aladdin's lamp from the diamond industry but I can't tell you. They're really funny though. Any guys I can tell you.

So anyway he found a wish giving jewel that they will give you anything you want. You just ask this jewel and anything you want. He wanted to give it to the most needy person in the kingdom.

Okay? He decided I will search the whole kingdom for the person who is the poorest. So he gave it to Prasenajit.

Prasenajit was the king. He was the king of the kingdom. And so this beggar Surata went to Prasenajit and said, look I've been looking for the most miserable person in the whole kingdom and that's you.

And I'm offering you this jewel. I'm not using up the three riches I'm giving it to you, okay? Because you are the saddest person in this whole kingdom.

And the king said, why? Kyu yu chok du du pa che she u shu yin You are the poorest person in this kingdom because you have the most desire of anybody in this kingdom. Got it?

You are the biggest pauper in this kingdom because your wants are so fantastic. Your desires are so fantastic. Unfillable desire which makes you the poorest person in this kingdom.

Rishiyun jyot santa geshe ben gi ruk chok ki logi che suru Then Baba Babachev told a story about somebody named Geshe Ben, okay? That's not Ben Gombe. So Geshe has been a title for a thousand years, right?

And Ben was a famous Geshe of the old days. His full name is Gombe. Ben Gombe, okay?

Anyway, he was going out a lot. Something happened. Oh, there was a report that a big group of bandits was coming to a certain place in Tibet, okay?

And then everybody got scared and started cleaning out their stuff and packing it and putting it into, what do you call it, yak carts and, you know? And, you know, the whole city was loading yak carts and taking stuff out to hide it in the countryside, which also happened before the communist invasion in 1959. Thousands and thousands of books were buried.

Thousands of statues were buried. You know, so people were loading up big carts and taking them out of the city. And then Geshe Ben picked up his monk's ball and he put on his monk's shawl and he left.

Because that's all he had to think about. That's all he needed. Got it?

So he says you should be like Geshe Ben. Like, the only stuff you need you should be able to take in your hand and walk out of the city. Got it?

That should be enough. Okay. And hmm We're almost, I think almost done.

Let's see. Yeah. We've got like five more minutes.

That's almost all the time. Alright. We're up to the last one.

I think it was getting rid of lots of useless thoughts. Right? Am I right?

You better say yes or you can't get home.

[Говорящий 2] (2:20:31 - 2:20:32)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (2:20:32 - 2:27:05)
This is only the first night of ten years. Okay. It gives me a wreck when you're with me.

Alright. I like that. Döpä yinig Döpä yinig umitabhasu sammededha me lo lovate Try to stop sometimes and think about how wanting so much stuff that's the stuff of.

That's probably one of my stuff. Think about how wanting so much stuff uh causes you problems. Alright.

I'll answer it. Not enough. Oh yeah.

Alright. Okay. Mitapetsu.

Try to remember how everything is passing. Your life is passing. Whatever you're interested in now that's stopping you from meditating whatever thing you're engaged in that is preventing you from meditating it will pass.

And you won't remember it. You know. You're working on a new house or you're working for a new car or you're working for a new boy or you know.

Whatever it is you're working for that leaves you too busy to meditate for an hour every day you won't remember it five years from now. You won't have it a year from now but five years from now you won't even remember it. So all those things are just what do you call it?

Transitory. They're just they're all going to leave you. All the stuff you're worried about that keeps you awake it's not going to exist in five years.

And then you still won't be able to meditate. Okay. So just leave it and learn to meditate because that will stay with you and that's a valuable thing to have.

And a car is not. And a house is not. And most of your friendships are not.

You learn to meditate and you have a real valuable thing. That will help everybody. Okay here's the punchline and you get to go home.

This is a very famous quotation. I'm not sure I agree with it. We have covered the prerequisites for meditation.

We have covered all the stuff you should get ready before you sit down. Right? This whole night, this whole evening we covered all the stuff you should get ready for your meditation.

Before you start to meditate. Samasthi. If you get them all together if you get to a point where you have all that stuff you need.

You've got a good place. You've got good meditation. Hardcore heavyweight meditation buddies like bikers.

Heavy big bikers, you know. And you've got a quiet place to stay and you've got honestly acquired housing and food and everything's set. Okay?

And you're keeping your morality. And everything is set. Samasthi.

Now if you make effort and try to... Now if you really bust ass to meditate. If you really work hard to meditate, means you will achieve Samatha within six months.

Okay. It's very famous. It's very famous.

I don't know because maybe nobody I know has ever assembled all those conditions. Like everybody says I didn't get to Samatha in six months. If you question them, you'll find out they're trying to meditate in a noisy place or they didn't clean up their taxes or there's something in their life that they didn't clean up or they didn't get the instructions ready or they're missing something out of these things.

Okay? So spend some time tomorrow. Think about think about do you have these prerequisites?

What do you need to do to get them? What is it that you lack before you sit down to meditate? Okay?

We will not go through these pages again. In ten years we will not repeat these pages. Okay?

You have to keep up. It's like in school when you're doing math and you don't do... What do you call it?

You don't do geometry and you try to go on to algebra or something and it's not going to work. Okay? Every time we have a class, you're going to have to work on it a bit because you won't have time next class because we'll be on to something else.

So in between tonight and tomorrow afternoon, God knows when, think about do you have all the stuff ready to start your meditation practice? And study these and think them over. Okay?

It'll be online, right? This class will be online. Right?

Yeah. So if you need a link, talk to Jimmy, but you can look at the whole class again or you can listen to an audio again, but get it straight and then examine your life and see if you have everything you need to start your meditation. If you do, maybe six months is possible.

If you don't, then maybe it's never going to happen. Maybe what you've been doing wrong is not in your style of meditation. Maybe it's in the...

What do you call it? In the prerequisite stage. Maybe there's something about the conditions that you don't have together.

And so look over those conditions and see what you have and what you don't have. And maybe that's what's holding you back. Maybe it's not that you're not meditating long enough or, you know?

Maybe that's nothing to do with your style or your technique. Maybe it has to do with something wrong with the place or something. Got it?

If you're not, you have to go home.

[Говорящий 2] (2:27:05 - 2:27:07)
Congrats!