«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 15

[Говорящий 2] (0:01 - 12:08)
Watch your breath, just one object in a row, your breath. Tie the mind to the breath, try to feel a sensation of the mind tied to the breath. Come to the golden moon, golden light, late afternoon sun, morning, very beautiful sky, blue sky, outside, very beautiful valley, very beautiful valley, covered with the light and mountains in the distance.

Come inside the room, ask your teacher to come, please come. Look up into their face, which is also covered with the golden light. Look into their eyes, so much love.

Just stay there with a feeling of contentment, that I don't have to go anywhere else, I don't have anything else to do. What I need is here. If you lose your teacher's eyes, use your session to detect it, use your camera to bring it back.

Try to feel love. Come back to your teacher's eyes, a sense of contentment. Slowly come back to this room, open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1] (12:30 - 31:00)
That was much longer and it felt good. I think you're ready for that, it felt good. I think now I can start increasing the time a little bit, yeah?

So it felt, it felt really, really good in the room and it felt very, very concentrated. You know, if you move, or if you sniffle, you disturb the, what do you call it? You disturb the Tao of the room, right?

But also if you think of something else, you disturb the room. And I like it, because everyone's thinking of the golden room at the same time. And to me, the golden room for me is much brighter than it's ever been.

And I feel like we're supporting each other mentally, right? Inside the mind. So in the same way that you wouldn't want to crinkle some potato chip bag during our meditation, feel a desire not to want to disturb the other mind by not being there in your own mind.

You see? Because we feel, everyone feels it, right? And right now, it's fantastic.

Right now, my meditation strength is really beautiful. So we'll do a little more, let me think about it. Let's do one or two questions.

Those are entertaining, right? Okay. I am in a meeting with a certain person, and my holy lama comes into the room and says, you stole a book.

My immediate reaction is, I did not. But because I just came from these teachings, I realized the emptiness of all concern and the karmic relationships. However, my lama, whom I project as God, and I can because that lama is empty, says I must leave the most important thing in my life, these teachings.

Of course, I know this came from something like my stealing candy when I was 10 from the 7-Eleven. I regret that past karma and I've tried to do the full path, all fine and dandy intellectually. But what must be dealt with on a deceptive level to be able to get the teachings now to stop this?

And then there's a word for poo-poo, but not the one you're thinking. That's easy. I mean, to have teachings on emptiness especially is one of the most expensive, credit cardly, expensive events in a human existence.

So you're born with a certain credit card. It's a debit card actually. It was loaded in your last life or that and the previous life.

So the card was loaded and then you come into this life and then you start experiencing things. And every time you experience anything, you're using up your credit card, your debit card. And it's approaching zero.

When it approaches zero, you die. I don't know if you've ever noticed how a person's life wraps up in many different ways in the final weeks of their life. Just everything starts messing up.

Not just your health, but there's family problems. You lose your house, you lose your car, you lose your spouse. Everything, when karma winds down, it winds down in a comprehensive way.

And then everything starts to go at the same time. And then your debit card is cashed in. That's it.

It's at zero and you die. But everything winds down at the same time. We feel upset if someone takes something from us or breaks something of ours or scratches my body or calls me names.

But on the day that you die, all the insults of an entire life are rendered in a single hour. Not only do they scratch your body, they take the whole thing. And not only do they yell at you, you can't hear anymore.

And all of those little injuries are all wrought on you in an hour. A whole life's injuries are piled on you in the final hour. And then the card runs out.

And to have teachings is one of the most expensive uses of the card. Okay, so like having a teacher, a living teacher, who you can be around. And having teachings on something extraordinary.

These are like, I don't know, walking into... What's that place on the park in Phitsanulok? Bergdorf Goodman, you know?

Like you can't even walk in there for less than $500. Like you say, I'm going to buy my friend a gift from Bergdorf Goodman and you walk in there. And the only thing you can afford is some gloves or a scarf or something.

It's already $300, $400. So being around a living teacher, especially your heart teacher, and also receiving teachings, especially on meditation or emptiness, these are extremely expensive. And whatever you, whatever...

I love that song from Sound of Music. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Something, somewhere in my life or childhood, I must have had something good to say.

And you're like, what did I do to get a teacher in my life? What did I do to get these teachings? And then, because just by sitting here, you are running up huge bills.

I mean, the karma to be in this room is the most expensive karma on earth. And it uses up the most good deeds of any karma. To be in the presence of a living teacher and to study emptiness or meditation is the most expensive.

It's the fastest way to draw down your debit cards. So then you have to do something to keep it charged up. You have to fight that tendency.

You have to have a wealthy friend who does direct deposits. And that's teaching. That's teaching.

Teaching other people what you've heard. It's a wealthy friend who does direct deposits. And that's all.

So whoever wrote that paper, actually I know who wrote that paper, all problems with karmic seed deficits or karmic seed drawdowns, they can be fixed universally by teaching. And also teaching is a lot of fun. I mean, to sit there and try to concentrate for two hours is excruciating.

But to sit up here and to blab for two hours is easy. Because you get to be, it's so egotistical. You get to be annoying.

So it's not only karmically powerful, it's also, I mean, it's the best thing for your ego and it's the best thing for your debit card, your karmic debit card. So it's kind of a happy coincidence that the best thing for your debit card is what's most fun and does the most for your ego. In a good way and a bad way.

So teach. And then you will have teachings. Like I teach constantly.

And I don't always teach with a perfect motivation. But because I teach constantly, I always have people teaching me all the time. And it's wonderful.

I go to yoga classes, or I try to learn languages, or just I try to learn how to grow roses, and always a teacher shows up. And somebody beautiful, somebody wonderful. And people come to my garage and teach me yoga.

And so if you have a problem with some obstacles to go into teaching, so I'm taking teachings, then the best thing and the funnest thing and the most effective thing is just to teach. And teaching doesn't have to be 200 people. Teaching can be a lot of...

I think a lot of the best teachings go down between friends over coffee. I think some of the most significant teachings happen between friends over tea or coffee. And maybe they are more powerful than group teachings or formal teachings.

I think you're more likely to accept something from a person who is speaking to you one-on-one, sincerely. Then it changes your heart more than going to a big retreat and like that. So teach, just teach.

And then you will have all the teachings you want. And it's fun. And it's fun to be taught.

I crave being taught. I love being taught. I don't know.

I just really enjoy it. So I went to Allison's class in New York. We know each other for, I don't know, longer than we want to say.

But I've never been to her class. And then Ellen took me one day. And it was really, I don't know.

I just feel like I'm in somebody's arms when I go to her class. And I love the feeling of being taught by somebody. So the only way you can get that is to teach.

You have to teach. And if you don't have enough teachings, you have to teach more. That's the good thing about karma.

Rinpoche used to tell me, I remember one day I walked into his room and he looked at me and he said, Samsara is so great. He was ebullient. He was bubbling over.

He said, Samsara is so great. And I'm like, what? I just got back from New York.

I was all tired. And I was like, what? And he said, Samsara, the design of Samsara is so perfect.

And I'm like, what do you mean, Rinpoche? And he says, well, whatever you need, Samsara tells you. So I said, what do you mean?

He says, if you needed teachings and you weren't getting enough teachings, Samsara would tell you that you needed to teach more. You see what I mean? What you're not doing, Samsara will tell you to do.

That's what I mean. If you're not getting enough teachings, Samsara will inform you of what you need to do, that you need to do something more. So if something happening to you is not enough, Samsara will inform you that you have to do more of the opposite for somebody else.

You have to do more of that for somebody else. And Rinpoche was so happy. It's like, you don't have to figure out what to do.

Samsara will tell you that you're not teaching enough because you won't get enough teachings. Okay, let's go back to the, and we're up to 24. Sorry, we finished 24, right?

And now we're moving on to 25. What has happened to the elephant? For the first time, he's all white.

Like, I don't know if you notice here, but between 24 and 25, the back of his leg is all black, right? And then it goes away and in 25, the elephant is all white again. So I'll read you the translation of the Tibetan here.

Here the fact that the elephant has lost all the black and left behind the monkey as well. Ah, the monkey got left behind. It looks like he's paying to go.

He got left behind here. And left behind the monkey as well represents your ability to engage in one point of concentration in an uninterrupted stream. And we talked about what one-pointed means, right?

What's one-pointed mean? One object, okay? Just, it's so easy.

It's so uncomplicated. Meditation is just putting your mind on one thing and that's it. That's all.

And I go to Shivananda Center and teach. Sometimes there's a nice swami there called Brahma Rupananda or something. Their names get longer the longer the lineage goes on.

I don't know, Brahma Rupananda. Who's Swami Swa Rupananda's student, the tall guy, Israeli? Brahma Rupananda.

Okay, anyway, he's, they're kind of simple there. They don't have like very, you know, they don't have teachings like we have, which is too bad. But they have really, really good, some beautiful things are happening there.

So he will get sit down and he'll lead a meditation. And he's just saying, you know, forget about where you have to go. Forget about what's for lunch.

Forget about the temple. Forget about everybody around you. Just think about this one thing.

And that's a good instruction. That's meditation. Just put your mind on a single thing.

If you can't do anything when you go home, you know, on Sunday or Monday, just try to remember that meditation means the ability to put your mind on one thing and one thing only. That's all. Then whatever you're doing is meditation.

Just one thing in your mind. So anyway, he reached cetik, one-pointed concentration. If you apply just a little effort to bring your mind to the object and to maintain watchfulness, then dullness, agitation and distraction can no longer interrupt your meditation.

So with minimal effort at number 25, nothing can interrupt your meditation. You are one-pointed. And then at 26, he's called samsetikpa.

Setsikta-cyepa, which is level eight. Single-pointedness, ekagra. Ekagra is eka plus agra.

Agra. Agra means a point. So here's how it's described in the text.

This level eight. We're at level eight now.

[Говорящий 2] (31:00 - 31:00)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (31:02 - 39:20)
It's getting increasingly theoretical for most of us. All right, anyway. A minimal effort at the start allows the entire session to continue without even the subtle forms of agitation and dullness.

No expenditure of effort is required by sheshan at all. There's not the slightest expenditure of effort by the state of mind, which the alarm state of mind. It doesn't, it's effortless now.

And so this level is differentiated or distinguished from the previous level in that you have no forms of dullness or agitation anymore. There's no, not even subtle form. Nothing.

No dullness and no agitation at level eight. Level eight and level seven are accomplished through the power of making effort. Subtle effort.

And there's a new state of mind here. There's a new feeling of the meditation. We've, what have we had as far as feeling of the meditation?

Jinde jupa. You have to sort of, what do you call it? Set your mind to it.

Okay, and then you meditate. So some conscious effort to meditate. And then in the second level, it was what?

Oh, no, that was the first two levels. I'm sorry. First two levels, you have to screw up your concentration.

Screwed down? I don't know. You have to gather your concentration.

And then from level three to level seven, you have this sensation of meditating but being tapped on the shoulder more or less frequently. Okay, more or less frequently. And now we're on level eight.

It's called chepa merpa jupa yuja. Chepa merpa means there's no more, what do you call it? Tap on the shoulder.

There's simply no, the mind is flowing. The meditation is flowing. And there's no longer any gap.

There's no interruption at all. Nobody's dullness and agitation are not there. And there's no interruption in the flow of the meditation.

How could it get better than that? Remember, our goal is to get to nine plus. We're supposed to get to nine and then we're supposed to go a little farther somehow, which we have to talk about, okay?

We have to talk about that. This is ting and dzin. This is samadhi.

This is single-pointed mind. Level eight is already samadhi, okay? So where are we going after that?

What do we have to do now? How come that's not enough? What could be better?

We'll go, what's next? Yeah. Oh, sorry.

What does 27 say? Let me see. The power of complete habituation which allows you to reach the ninth mental state.

So 27 over here above the fruits, that's called yong su dipa'i tok, okay? Yong su dipa'i tok. It's the last impetus that's required to get you to stage nine, to level nine, okay?

And that's, yong su dipa means you are completely familiar with the thing. You just, what do you call it? Total habituation.

Fluid. You are fluid. You've been through the process of the first eight levels so many times that that is just, you're on automatic, okay?

So yong su dipa means constant practice and habituation, okay? You're so used to being in a groove that you get there automatically with no conscious effort, okay? That's yong su dipa.

And then that's the only thing that's required to throw you into level nine, okay, to get you to level nine. What is level nine? The name is nyamba jopa.

Nyamba jopa is, nyamba means sama and jopa means being. So nyamba jopa is samadhi, right? Samadhi, okay?

Samadhi has a lot of different meanings in different traditions, okay? In the Yoga Sutra, samadhi has a unique meaning and even in different chapters it has a different meaning. So what samadhi means here is we'll call it du sem tse chikpe shi ne je tu ma, okay?

Du sem tse chikpe, this is how the text describes it. Du sem tse chikpe shi ne je tu ma. Du sem, okay, now we get into a new subject.

Should we meditate first? Yeah. We'll do it tomorrow, okay?

We'll do it tomorrow. A state of mind which is still in the desire realm. And then we have to, that's going to open a can of worms tomorrow, okay?

This is the highest state of concentration which you can have and still be in the desire realm. What's a desire realm? It's a world where people's interests are driven by food and sex, basically.

A whole realm of people who are here and whose most primal desires are food and sex. And then why that level nine is called the desire realm state of mind or the highest desire realm state of mind will give us a clue of how we get past level nine and go to where we got to go to reach the meditative platform that is necessary to see emptiness directly. So just those words.

Level nine is the highest state of meditation in the desire realm. And then tomorrow we'll go, I think what's really interesting to me is why do you have to go past level nine? What is it?

What is left? And what do you have to do? What extra thing do you have to do just to get to the degree of meditation that you require to see emptiness directly?

Because that's why we're meditating. Okay? All right, let's meditate some more.

Some people told me they're having trouble sitting so long. Then sit on a chair. If there are not enough chairs, talk to Jared.

Okay, but don't suffer. You don't get any points for how you look because you're not looking. You've got your eyes closed.

And while you're meditating, the rest of us are eating these cookies. So we don't care what you look like. It just doesn't matter at all.

It doesn't matter if you're sitting on the ground. It just doesn't matter at all. What matters is if you sit in a place which is uncomfortable for you and then your body is screaming, you won't be able to concentrate.

So that's counterproductive, right? That's the opposite of what you want to do. You want to find a position which is completely comfortable without lying down.

[Говорящий 2] (39:21 - 54:10)
Okay. Watch your breath. Okay.

Come to the golden moon. Look out the window at the sky. In this blue sky.

Look at the mountains. It separates you from me. Then come back to the golden moon.

It's warm. It's bright. Soft golden color.

All the objects in the room are covered with a soft golden light. And you request your teacher to come. They sit in front of you.

Meet me. Now, once again, just focus on their presence. Just feel a single object of your meditation is their presence.

The feeling of their presence. Bring on a sense of contentment to be in this room with your teacher. I don't need to go anywhere else.

I don't need to be with anyone else. I don't need to think about anything else. I don't need to look at anything else.

Just feel the presence of my teacher. That's enough indefinitely. And slowly come back to this room.

Then you come out from this. Ah, that was awesome. That was really awesome.

[Говорящий 1] (54:14 - 1:02:39)
I'm sad. Really awesome. Really good.

Amazing. Yeah, good. If we were really engrossed in the...

I'm rephrasing it, okay? If we were really engrossed in the object, why would we need the watcher or the other guy? The polar backer guy.

Why would we need the watcher guy and the polar backer guy if we were totally engrossed in a virtuous object? Frankly, I never noticed it before. But, do you notice anything different about the monk between 22, 24, and 26?

You can't answer, right? What? Yeah, he's not holding anything anymore.

Okay? He's not holding anything anymore. I think at 22, when your watcher mind becomes most fully developed, right?

Which brings you into level seven. I've never really noticed it before, but he doesn't have anything in his hands anymore. And they say, let's go back to the five problems and the eight antidotes and our answer will be there.

Okay? So, we haven't talked much about them recently. That's not on the chart necessarily, okay?

What was the first problem of meditation? Yeah, Brandy went like this. Maybe you should go like this, you know?

Maybe tomorrow. So, number one meditation problem is I just don't feel like it. It's not evil, but it is evil.

It's an innocent state of mind, right? I just don't feel like it today. I'll start tomorrow.

I'll start my Spanish studies, my Chinese studies, and my meditation tomorrow. Because today I'm tired. I just got off the plane and, you know, I don't feel so good.

And let's just do it tomorrow, okay? So, that's the first meditation problem. I don't feel like it.

It's such an innocent thing to say and it's such an innocent state of mind. And it ruins you. It ruins everybody.

It keeps you from, you know, why can I teach this? Just my teacher pushed me, you know? He didn't give me a break.

I didn't have a break for 20 years, 25 years. He pushed me, you know, really hard and never satisfied and never praising me ever. He just pushed, pushed, pushed.

And wouldn't give me like, I didn't have three minutes break, you know? I went to work for the Israeli, the crazy Israeli in New York. Who worked us 18 hours a day.

I felt flat. You know? I was like, ah.

People thought I was crazy, but I'm like, this is heaven. So, Leila was like, I just don't feel like it. And then we said the antidotes are, what is it?

DE PA BDUN PA TSUL BA BZHIN BYANG Which means, think about how cool it is if you learn to meditate. I don't know. If you ever have any special experience in meditation, then you've got that covered.

If you ever like see the future or, you know, something extraordinary happens to you, you've got that covered. BDUN PA means I want it. TSUL BA means I'm willing to work for it.

BZHIN BYANG means once I get good at it, it's going to be cool. Before we went into three-year retreat, Lama Krishna and I went to see Lady Ruth Lauer at Jiva Mukti, because she was one of our teachers, yoga teachers. And we said, she gave us a class in that little side room, which is kind of a difficult place to have a class.

It's a little corner, tiny little room. It's not even a room really. It's like a closet.

And so we have, you can't have two people do asanas there. It's kind of, anyway. So we went to the asanas and then we were saying goodbye for three years.

And then we said, by the way, can you show us how to do some assists? Because maybe we'll have to assist each other in the yoga in our year. Maybe it'd be helpful to know how not to hurt somebody in an assist.

So then she said, okay, I'll be the student and you be the teacher and I'll show you what to do. And then she started to, she said, okay, I'm going to take this pose and then you're going to assist me like this. And then she would take the pose and we would do the assist and she'd go, ah.

You know, every time we touched her, every time we just pushed her a little bit, like just twist her a little bit further, she'd go, this involuntary ah would come out. That's shinjang for yoga. She's at such a high state of yoga that every pose is pleasurable to her.

So that's number four. Once every pose is pleasurable or once every meditation experience is highly pleasurable, you won't want to not do your meditation. All right, so that's the four antidotes to the first problem.

What was the second problem? You can't think, what was I saying about? Yeah, it's called forgetting the instructions, but what it means is losing the object, okay?

And what's the fix for that? Tenpa, which is bringing your mind back to the object, okay? It's just the left-hand thing.

It's just the chin, okay? Then the third meditation problem is jingga-nyi, jingga-nyi. It means dullness and agitation, either and or.

Either or? Either or and. I don't know, we had this big debate, all us yogis, about the inner body, about whether you could have a pada vayu and udana vayu operating at the same moment.

Because udana vayu is what raises things to the body, like speech. And then a pada vayu is what eliminates things from the body. And every vayu is the momentary gathering of all the other prana of the body to accomplish a purpose.

So we had this very serious debate going about whether you could have udana vayu and a pada vayu working at the same time. And then we went to this tea shop in Varanasi and we ate the... We ate the deep-fried things there and we got out the door.

I got to the other side of the room. I don't know if Laura Christy got to the other side of the room, but we got out the door and then I ran to a ditch on the other side and I had udana and a pada vayu at the same moment. But maybe it was toggling, I don't know.

Why did I talk about that? Is there a meditation problem? Oh yeah.

Could you have dullness and agitation at the same time? That's an interesting question. Probably we could manage.

Could you think about lunch and fall asleep at the same time?

[Говорящий 2] (1:02:42 - 1:02:43)
Let's try.

[Говорящий 1] (1:02:48 - 1:20:06)
Then traditionally they say that traditional antidote for number three is not the real antidote. By tradition, we're supposed to tell you that the traditional antidote for number three is not the real antidote. Because the antidote for number three is the thing in his right hand which is sheshan or the alarm.

Just being aware you have a problem doesn't fix the problem. So technically speaking, the awareness that you're having a problem doesn't fix dullness and agitation. And then all the great lamas of history starting with Arya Sangha I think, they said, okay, look, I know.

I know, I know that this is not really the antidote but you have to have it to get to the antidote. Then the real antidote is the antidote to number four. So number four, the problem number four is number dumichepa.

Dumichepa, which means failing to take action when you detect dullness or agitation. Failing to take action. Not taking the required action when you detect that you're dull or agitated.

What would the actions be for dullness? You can think how lucky you are. You can think of your boyfriend.

You can think of something bright. You can even think of a gold... The point of the gold room is even something physically color bright, imagined in the mind, can raise the mind out of dullness.

You can't get enough sleep. You cannot eat meals before you meditate. There are lots of fixes for dullness.

You can sankhyapa, uplift the mind. What's the fixes for agitation? Bring the mind down a little bit.

I find that a list of five people I know who've died, and I'm not a morose person. I don't spend my time thinking, I've had lots of people die in my life and I got over it and I'm doing my life. I wish them well, but I can't do anything about it and I don't worry about it.

But just thinking of five people who died is enough to bring my mind out of lunch. You can't think about lunch and about three people who died in your life at the same time. I don't think it's possible.

So it'll bring your mind down. Or something like that. Those are the antidotes.

Okay, so number dumichepa, not applying the antidote, is problem number four. And it's fixed by applying the antidote. So fix number four is applying the antidote.

Why am I talking about this? Because in my usual long-winded Geshe Michael way, and sometimes I forget where I was going and I just go somewhere else. But now I do remember where I was going.

Problem number five is dumichepa, which means taking action when it's no longer necessary. That's a cool, it's cool that they recognize that as a problem, right? It's cool that that should be the final problem of your meditation.

We had a huge factory. We did 30,000 rings a day. That's 300,000 stones a day.

If you have 300,000 stones, that means you have to sort a million stones a day. And we did it. And we had a huge factory and we were pumping big bags of diamonds down to the factory.

We'd have these really huge meetings about how do you make 30,000 pieces of jewelry in a day and not have any defects? And then we would look into each department and try to, we'd have a big meeting. The reason we get a package of ring back from JCPenney, they say they're scratched.

We'd have a big meeting. We would decide to investigate all the departments of the factory. And then we'd go down and tell the factory manager, we're going to investigate all the departments of the factory, find out where the scratches are coming from.

And he'd say, he'd look at us. He's this big, fat, lazy guy. And he'd say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like, okay, you're going to deal with scratches. But if you mess around with every department, you're going to get more.

So there's a point in your life at which you should learn to not mess around. If it ain't so bad, just leave it alone. Because sometimes trying to fix it will make it worse.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So problem number five is overdoing the corrections. And that's the answer, eventually, to the person's question.

Would you still need the sheshin endeavor? Would you still need watchfulness and the ability to pull the mind back if you had a very sexy object that you were in love with and you were engrossed with and you were on a roll with that object? Yeah, the answer to your question is meditation problem number five.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you meddle into the flow, which is going nice, if your mind is flowing easy on this highly attractive object to you, like your teacher, and then suddenly you're like, hey, are we having any agitation? Hey, are we having any agitation?

And you're like, shh, I'm meditating. Is the mind off the object? Shut up.

Okay, so yeah, you do get to a point where checking becomes an obstacle. And that's number five. That's classical problem number five.

Actually, I think you just got your whole thing. Well, not quite. We don't have nine plus yet.

So you got the nine levels. You got the six powers. You got the four states of mind.

I got one more state of mind. And you got, but you did get the five problems and the eight antidotes. You should be able to rile them off by the end of the week, okay?

All right, one more question? No. Yeah, let's do one more.

I like the yellow one. I don't know why. Okay, this is a tough question.

This person, basically the question boils down to, it's a great honor and a great goodness and a great pleasure to serve your teacher, you know? Even if it's not your heart teacher, like it's just a meditation teacher who's doing the meat, okay? And then you want to get an opportunity to do anything for them, you know?

But there's this crowd of, you know, what do you call it? There's an in crowd and they're like, we don't need any help, thanks, you know? So what should I do about that?

Well, my own experience, you know, I was Rinpoche's attendant for, I don't know, well, we had other attendants later that helped, but, you know, I don't know, 20 years, 25 years. And I would say a couple of things. One is that if you are an attendant or if you're close to the Lama and you want to stay close to the Lama, what do you have to do?

I mean, you have to allow access, you know? Your main goal as an attendant, your only goal really is to allow responsible access to the teacher. So the teacher shouldn't get burned out or, you know, have thousands of people like crowding into their realm or something.

But I always felt that my job with Rinpoche was that anyone who wanted to see him should see him, you know, even if they were like really irritating people. And if they were super, unless they were going to hurt him or something. But I always felt like my job for 25 years was make sure everyone can get to serve him or gets a chance to help him or gets a chance to see him or anybody can get in to be with him.

And I really did do that. And it was fun. And I didn't feel like I was being shortchanged or something because by doing that karmically, you get to be closer than anybody else.

And that's what happened, you know? So he was, I was the only person that could go up and like, what do you call it? Talk baseball with him or gossip with him, you know, that he felt comfortable enough to sit there and gossip with me, you know?

And it was fun. So I think from the attendant point of view or the helper point of view, if you make it your goal that people should have access and you find ways to create that access without burning out the teacher, so that's a balance, right? Then from the point of view of a person who would like to serve or who would like to get into the service area, you know, I would say, in my own opinion, is the willingness to take on really dirty jobs, really thankless, dirty jobs.

For example, accounting. So I was Rinpoche's attendant, but I was also his accountant for 25 years. And I took care of all his finances.

He didn't know anything. He never saw a bill. And he didn't know where the money came from or he didn't know anything.

And it was hard. And I kept very careful books. I had a computer program and we kept books and he never saw them.

And he got social security. You know, we did, you have to have 40 quarters to get it for the rest of your life. We squished him in.

We got him in the last week, 40 quarters. We got him in. He got social security for the rest of his life.

He didn't know anything. He just said, this is so nice, the government sent me a checker. And it took like months of work to make it happen.

It was really hard to make it happen. So I remember complaining to my other teacher, Geshe Thubten Rinpoche. And I said, he said, how's it going?

You know, I said, I don't know, you know, this accounting, everything's okay, except I hate accounting. I really hate accounting. And I have to do the accounting.

And he looks at me and he says, oh my God, don't you know who was the accountant for Nalanda Monastery? And I said, no, I don't know. He said, Nagarjuna, you know.

And I said, I didn't know that. He said, yeah, yeah, Nagarjuna was the accountant, you know. And I said, well, why?

And he said, misuse of dharma funds is one of the most serious bad karmas a person can do. You know, the misuse of funds collected for the purpose of propagating the dharma is one of the most serious bad karmas a person can do. So they assigned Arya Nagarjuna to take care of the books because everybody else was afraid to touch that karma.

They didn't want to make a mistake with the assigned as money. And then, to tell you the truth, what happened after that was Arya Nagarjuna, they had a financial pinch, which is typical in religious organizations. And so he thought, well, I'll just make some gold.

And he was an alchemist. And so he made some gold. And he paid off the bills.

And then the monastery found out. And they dug out some ancient rule that said monks aren't allowed to do alchemy. And they fired him.

And they asked him to leave the monastery. He had to leave the monastery. But anyway, Geshe Thuthor Rinpoche was like, guy, you're Rinpoche's accountant, that's an honor.

It means that they really trust you. And they believe you're the person who can handle that hot karma. So he was like, you should be happy.

So I would say to get close, it would be, in my mind, the willingness to take on the really lousy jobs. To sit there and make a namaste, and then you get to sit there with them and chat with them. That's one karma.

But doing the accounts for this retreat, now that's a big karma. And then that would propel you into the making tea job, I think. Personally, I'm just saying generally, okay?

I'm not talking about myself. Personally, if you want to talk about me, I have endless projects. I have 200 projects.

I have at least 200 projects, closer to 300, maybe. And I'm dying for help. I would die to have help.

So just write your name on a piece of paper and hand it to me through the attendant. I love to work with people. I love to, like Rebecca came to me a year ago and said, I need a job.

I guess I said, we got to do this retreat. And I said, are you up for it? She said, yeah, I'll try.

And she's never done this kind of thing that I know of, ever. And she said, let me take a shot. And now she's in my room whispering to me all day.

We're trying to figure out what to do with the garbage and stuff. And so I would say that. I'm very happy to give jobs and I'm very happy to have people close.

So just let me know. Just let me know what your, you know, what your comments, what are you good at? What would you like to try?

Like DCI needs, we have like a hundred invitations to different countries and I don't have the people to organize those tours. I would love to, that's a real fun, to organize a tour. Yeah, it is fun.

It's tiring, but it's very fulfilling and rewarding. Because you touch thousands of people and anybody can do it, I think. So I need that and a lot of other things.

Maybe I'll give you a list towards the end, okay? I really need help. What we can do is not limited by the opportunities, it's just limited by the people, by the number of people.

All right, okay, let's stop there. You also have to be persistent, okay? I'm a Vietnamese lady from Southern California.

I talked to you for 15 minutes after I was screening Prescott and don't forget I won a project, you know? So then you have to keep sending that email like six times and then sometimes I forget. Okay.