«Дар освобождения», курс 4 «Ретрит об энергиях», занятие 12

[Говорящий 2] (0:00 - 1:55)
Okay, we'll meditate. Please come to your breath. Watch your breath.

Try to settle down, not move. Then we'll go through a present moment meditation. Please split off a piece of your mind.

I like to do it towards the back.

[Говорящий 1] (1:57 - 2:14)
And have that part of your mind watch your mind. Don't think it's thoughts. The watcher shouldn't be thinking the thoughts.

The watcher should be aware of the subject who is thinking the thoughts.

[Говорящий 2] (2:17 - 9:54)
The watcher shouldn't ever be the one who's thinking the thoughts. Just see what thoughts are coming up. Don't judge them.

Don't try to stop them. Just see what thoughts are coming up. Then block any thoughts about the future.

Like a transparent wall in front of your mind. And then block any thoughts about the past, with a transparent wall behind your mind. Then come to rest in the present.

Keep watching for thoughts of past or future. Then slowly come back to your breath. And then you can open your eyes and stretch.

[Говорящий 1] (10:02 - 1:03:26)
So, the theme of the retreat has been energy. And we had some methods already. One was to give energy to someone else, match their prana up and down their spine, as a kind of tonglen, right?

As a kind of helping another person through meditation and collecting seeds. And then we had a meditation where you ask for energy from your teacher. Especially in the form of Amitayus.

Meaning, you can say the mantra once in a while and ask your teacher to give you energy. Then we had a present moment. And I'd like you to think of that as a way to preserve energy.

A lot of energy is drained away from worrying about the past or expectations about the future. A lot of personal energy is drained away by... You have some vision about what's going to happen.

We travel all the time. We have this thing, I don't know, we get on a plane and we're like, we're going to be switching planes in Chicago. We'll have a big Mexican dinner.

We'll hit America and we'll hit Chicago. You can't get one in Bulgaria, okay? Right?

Not really. And then if you wait four hours you can get an Indian dinner. Then we get our hopes up.

Then we hit Chicago, the plane is late. We're running past the Mexican restaurant. All we can do is say hi.

And then everybody gets grumpy, especially Geshe Michael. And then it's all wasted effort. All energy is drained out of you.

You have this vision of what you want to be. You have this plan about, I don't know, food especially. You have a plan about something.

You're going to go to some restaurant and it's going to be really good. And you're going to be really happy. And then you get there and they don't have what you want.

Or, you know, it's not cooked the right way or you don't like it. It's just the whole exercise of anticipation and expectation for the future is exhausting. And it drains a lot of your energy.

The same for the past, which is mainly about 70% ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. And I meet so many people. You know, you're not unique.

A, you're not unique. B, in every country of the world, every single city in the world, it's the same story. And people waste a good 10 years angry at their ex.

Just let it go and don't worry about the past. Move on. If you're studying tantra, you hope to study tantra, every ex-boyfriend or girlfriend who dumped you was directing you to a better place.

And you just have to see what it is, rather than living with this pain that you had or this problem that you had. So I think just right there we just cut off 50% of your future thoughts and your past thoughts. Restaurants and exes.

You see what I mean? And not really. And then you have all this extra energy that you're not wasting.

Because it just leaks out when you're worrying about the past or hoping for a nice dinner in Chicago. So those are some... We talked then about three different ways of getting energy on a seed level.

And we'll talk more about it later. Getting energy on a seed level is again, as we said at the beginning, is what makes the kidney flush work for you. And it's what makes the Anatole's food work for you.

And it's what makes Andriana and Beth's teachings work for you. You got to plant the seeds or the rest doesn't work. And you know that by now.

It was really a little tense when Herbal Life Corporation Taiwan asked us to teach 300 of their leading young entrepreneurs. And we did a three-day retreat in Taichung. And the first hour is to explain to them why the products they are selling don't work.

And they're all like, why did corporate office send us these guys? And by the end they understood and they were really happy because then they knew how to get their products to work. And instead of being upset, they were really joyful, really happy.

Then we were in the airport and we're going to customs and 150 of them mobbed us. It was really cute. They were going to some conference in Singapore.

And there was this huge mob scene. It was just like the Beatles. And Mercedes was fighting them off.

And Ningbo was like, ah. Because they understood. By the end of the weekend they were so excited because they knew.

People would say, I sold this stuff to my brother for six years and nothing happened to him. And I feel so bad because I took his money for six years. And now they're like, oh, now I know how to tell him what to do to get my stuff to work.

Then he'll buy more and monster. Okay, all right. All right, we're back to Lord Atisha's.

I'm really proud to be teaching this. I was a little worried that you would find it boring or that it would seem irrelevant to you. But later when you teach it, you will feel this confidence about where it came from.

You'll know where it came from. And you'll know all the details. And it will come out in your teaching.

You will have a confidence in your teaching from knowing how it came to be. That's why he spends so long on that. Then you have a confidence about where it came from.

You can tell them more than they ever wanted to know about. Where it came from. All right.

Okay. So in the old days, the lamas in Tibet used to wear a thing called a thangsha and a daching. And I forgot to tell you what they were because as the stampede was approaching, Lord Atisha, right?

They're chasing the guy who was et cetera. Okay. And they had thangshas and dachings.

So daching is a cloak. It was an old horsehair cloak that they wore in Tibet. It looks like wings or something like that.

And then thangsha is a beautiful word because it looks like an old cowboy hat or something. It's a round hat with sort of a round thing here. And lamas used to wear it in Tibet.

Pre-Lord Atisha, this was a Tibetan lama's costume. Thangsha Marmo is the name of Jetsun Krapa's spiritual partner. She wore a red thangsha, this kind of special hat.

She always showed up in this special hat. It looks a little bit like those Aussie hats. You know, that curl up on one side?

Okay. Anyway, you should know thangsha. DE NI RIM BZHIN DUS PA'I GNAS BCUG GI KHOR LO RGYAL CHEN PO'I KHOR Then gradually Lord Atisha, with the help of the cavalry, made his way into central Tibet.

TEN GRUB DUR NA PO CHE'I TSE He served the teachings and people. DE YANG SNGA RIG TU DU LO GSUM So if you count up his time in Tibet, there were three years in the kingdom of Ngari, in West Tibet, with the nephew of the king. Then he spent NYE THANG DU LO DGOS He spent nine years at NYE THANG, which is south of Lhasa.

It's about 10 to 15 miles south of Lhasa. And then UTSANG GZHAN DU In other parts of central Tibet, he spent five years. So how many is that?

Fourteen years. Seventeen years. I told you 19.

I think on the homework I put 19. But I'll explain why I said that. BYAS KHRIMS LO BRJUD DUNG GI PAR DU PHOS DU ZHUGS PA RE So he stayed a total of 17 years in Tibet.

KHA RAM CHOS BYUNG SOGS SU LO CHU GSUM LAS MA ZHUGS PAR GSUM PA SO YOD KYANG We do see references like KHA RAM CHOS BYUNG. KHA RAM CHOS BYUNG is a history. It's an ancient chronicles of the Kadampa's, the early Tibetan Buddhists.

And in there it says he only spent 13 years in Tibet, but that's wrong. According to Pabongkha Rinpoche, that's mistaken. RANG LUG BYA TZON KHA PA CHEN PO'I ZHES PA'I DI RANG YIN TE We accept what BYA TZON KHA PA believed about how long Atisha spent in Tibet.

NAG TSO RGYA RGYUR Because NAG TSO once said, I spent two years serving Lord Atisha in India and I spent 17 in Tibet, which was 19 years total. So I told you 19, but I added the two years in India. ZHES SUM PA LTAR YIN DE LTAR BYO BA CHEN PO'I PHOD DUR DE PA CHEN PO'I DEN DRANG PA'I DGOS DUN GYI SNYING PO BYO BO GSUM PA'I CHUG GI TSO BA NI What was the greatest fruit of inducing Lord Atisha to come to Tibet?

It was his little lamrim, his three-page lamrim. BYANG CHUB LAM GYI BRDZUN PA DE NYID YIN Nothing more, nothing less, just those three pages. We taught it in New York.

I remember because Richard Gere came and sat in the front and I was trying to impress him. Long time ago. I don't know, it was like 15 years ago.

Yeah. DE YANG SBYOR PO'I DUR PHAD PA'I PHAR BYED TSUN DRU MA DANG SBYOR LA MA BANG PA'I LTAR HA LA GNAG PO ZHES PA'I SBYOR PO'I DUR PHAD PA So about, how do you say? As Lord Atisha was first coming into Tibet and later on one of his teachers named HA LA GNAG PO, HALA Krishna, Krishna Hala.

This is one of his Indian teachers, I think. So as he was first coming to Tibet, they made a prediction. PHAR LAS BUD ZIG That the sun will be more, the suns will be more...

ZIG PO means like resplendent. Like if I had to dress up for a business conference and Rinpoche saw me, he would say, oh, ZIG PO DU, you look, you know... ZIG PO means like sharp today or something like that.

He bought me my first suit and forced me to wear a suit. I don't know. That's another story.

And it was ugly. Because there was Tibetan sense of color. Oh boy.

So if you've ever been in a Tibetan temple, it's kind of like it hurts your eyes. PHAR LAS BUD ZIG BU LAS RTZA BA'O RGYUD The neph... RTZA BA'O, how do you say?

The cousin will be more resplendent than the sons. The cousins will be more resplendent than the sons. The second cousins will be even more resplendent than the sons.

Resplendent than the first cousins. And the third cousins will be more resplendent than the second cousins. So you've got father, son, first cousin, second cousin, third cousin.

Each one will be more resplendent than the last. This was a prediction that was made. What does it mean?

Oh, and then it will go downhill. ZHES RLUNG BSTAN PA'I PHAR NI BRJO BO RANG NYID PHAR BRJO BO RANG NYID The father is Lord Atisha himself, Rangyir himself. I'll tell you, there is a funny story.

I went to study in Dharamsala. I was like 20 years old or something. And I wanted to get into the Master Shantideva class.

And it was starting like two days after I got there. So I had two days of Tibetan. I had a lama, a very beautiful lama named Sharpa Rinpoche.

And he really wanted me to be in the class. But there was an examination to get into the class. So then I went in and I was all scared.

And he said, OK, how do you say papa and mama in Tibetan? And I'm like, and then I said, pa and ma. He said, you passed.

OK, that's why you got to have Shantideva, OK? That was all from there. So pa means the father.

He's Lord Atisha. Puni, the son is... The two sons are Dromtönje and Ngogle Peshirab.

So that was one of the other survivors of the first trip to India, right? The Tsawwonis, the cousins, are the three brothers. OK, three brothers.

They're not really brothers. They're just three famous lamas. I'm going to give you their names.

You don't have to know about them. They are the early Kadampa Lamas. One is named Potowa.

One is named Jengawa. And one is Puchungwa. So these were three famous Kadampa Lamas.

Around the time... Well, then the second cousins you know are Langshar. Shar is Sharawa.

Lang is Langri Tangpa. Just ring a bell. Dorje Senggye.

Yeah, he wrote the eight verses of the mind. So the total literary production of a Kadampa Lama is sometimes eight verses. They just believed in passing it on mostly by word of mouth.

So those are the second cousins. The third cousins are... You don't know them very much, but they are lamas such as Sangye Winton and Sangye Gompa.

So these are five generations of early Tibetan Lamas, Kadampa Lamas. Zikpa, then he goes into the meaning of zikpo. What does it mean to be more resplendent than the one before?

It just means that during each one's generation the dharma will spread further and further. It's not like that Romton Jay was a better lama than Lord Atisha or something like that. It just meant that it spread in each generation.

It spread to all of Tibet. And that's why the Dalai Lama now is teaching Lamrim. DE NAS LAM GYI RIM PA'I DI'I SGO MI SPYOD PA SNGAGS RE DANG BYAS NA RE NYON PA RGYAS PA'I Then people didn't really get the Lamrim very clearly.

And they started to tack on stuff to it. Some tantric things and some tantric initiation things. There came to be like initiations around the Lamrim.

CHUNG SRE'I PHYAL TE SONG BA YIN And it kind of degenerated. It was meant to be brief. The commentarial literature on the Miktema Mantra, MIG MED TSE BA'I BRTAD CHENG, the five lines, is thousands of pages.

I got some of your stuff here from the Miktema commentaries. It was meant to be a five line thing to make things simple. And then it turned into a couple thousand pages thing, which is how I like it.

DE DAG SBYOR BA CHEN PO'I BSTAN PA'I GSOS GNOD PA RNAMS SAR TU TSUL So Lord Atisha was able to revive Buddhism in Tibet. GSOS BYUNG TSE YOD PA RNAMS PA'I BAR MDZAD And he was able to enhance the traditions, the good traditions that still existed. So he was able to revive traditions that had been lost.

And traditions that had not been lost, he was able to further. LOP PAR RTOG PA'I PHYI MA'I BAPA RNAMS NAG PAR BSAL TE He was able to remove people's wrong ideas about spiritual practice. He uses the word BAPA.

BAPA means pollution. He was able to clear away pollution. BSAL TE BSTAN PA RTOG PA'I PHYI MA'I BAPA RNAMS NAG PAR BSAL TE He took the jewel of the Dharma and cleaned it of its impurities.

That's an inside joke. Do you know why? Not the pot.

You're warm. It's a chintamani, a wishing jewel. So in Tibet, there's a story of a jewel that's like an Aladdin's lamp.

And if you get a hold of one of these jewels, you can make wishes with it, right? It's called chintamani. But you find it in the mud and then you have to clean it.

So there are three cleanings and there are three rubbings. There are three washings and three... What do you call it?

Polishings. There are three washings and three polishings. So he's making a...

And then you clean it of its impurities. And then it will work. Then you have to do all this special stuff and then it will work to give you your wishes.

We can go into it someday. Zen Maitreya Rinpoche wrote a commentary on it. Zen Maitreya Rinpoche is a very great Lama from Ganden.

He was probably Thich Nhat Hanh Rinpoche's closest disciple in India. And he's Geshe Thuc Trinjimpa's teacher. He made Geshe Thuc Trinjimpa.

Geshe Thuc Trinjimpa served him. Geshe Thuc Trinjimpa is His Holiness's translator. And he's a great scholar.

He's a fierce debater. Our team fought his team in the debate. And he ran out in the middle of debates and started...

He was supposed to be the coach. It's like a basketball coach running out and grabbing the ball from the player. But he's a very fiercely competitive guy.

But he was trained by Zen Maitreya Rinpoche, who's probably the greatest modern poet of today. And he wrote beautiful commentaries about things like how to wash a wishing jewel. So he has a commentary on that.

He's good. In his later years, he had a stroke. And he lived next door to Thich Nhat Hanh Rinpoche.

And I used to go to live in Thich Nhat Hanh Rinpoche's house during the winter debates. And then they told me he had a stroke and he can't write anymore, which was a terrible loss because he was the greatest poet of modern times. And he couldn't speak.

So then I went to visit him. And I saw he could move his arms and everything. So I said, can I bring you something that might help you write and speak?

And he's like, okay. And then I got him a laptop. And I put a Tibetan program on it.

And then I took his hand and I was like, you know, see, you could write some more poetry or you could communicate with people, you know. And then he goes like this. He goes.

Then I was like, I wonder if he can talk. And he didn't use, he wouldn't use it. Anyway, I think he was just tired.

He wanted some time off. DE LTA BU BYAL DZIN LANG GI RIN But now we're on class 10, which is going, this is really unusual. Like we're on schedule.

I finished all the homeworks. Nicole is oversized with her hair. Okay.

DE LTA BU BYAL DZIN LANG GI RIN PA'I DE NYID SBYOR DROM LA SNANG PAS Then one day Lord Atisha made this big deal and he passed on the lamrim that he had written. He granted its transmission to Dromtönche. One day he granted his transmission to Dromtönche.

Here's Dromtönche's writing. Here's his reaction. DROM GYI GONG GZHAN LA SNGAGS KYI DANG PO'I NANG BA'I SMOD LA SNANG RIM BDE'I NANG BA GANG YIN ZHUGS PA GANG YIN ZHUGS PA means, well, why did you give me this little three-page text and you're giving everybody else all this tantric stuff?

That was his reaction. I've seen you giving tantric teachings to, you've given the transmission of all these tantras to other people and you're sticking me with this little three-page open text. And then NGES KHYER MED PAR GZHAN LA DE SA MA NGES And then Lord Atisha said, I couldn't find anyone else who was worthy of it.

You're the only person I know who's worthy of these three pages. So I'm giving the transmission to you. DE SA MA NGES KYI GSUM PA DROM LA GOG CHOS SU NANG And then he gave him the transmission secretly.

You know GOG here, right? So GOG CHOS, this is a GOG CHOS. Secret transmission.

DROM NAS TSOG BSHAD DU BRJED CING From the time of DROM, it already became a TSOG BSHAD. TSOG BSHAD means permitted to be taught in public to large groups of people. Lady Niguma's yoga for seven generations was, you were not allowed to have a TSOG BSHAD.

You were supposed to pass it on to one person. You were not allowed to teach it in a group. But DROM TSUN CES immediately started teaching the Lamrim to large groups.

He was allowed to. DE YANG RGYUD PA GSUM DU BYUNG STE Then there came to be three lineages of this Lamrim from the time of DROM, right? 1,000 AD.

BYANG CHUB LAM RIM GZHUNG CHEN PO'I BSTENG NAS BYAS PA PO'I RTO BA NA'I ZHAR BA LA RGYUD PA'I DKA' DAM GZHON PA We kind of went over this before. This is a kind of a repeat of before. DKA' DAM GZHON PA means classicist.

DKA' DAM PA, classicist. GZHON PA means major text. And like one of the five texts that we studied for the Geshe course.

In the Geshe course, you cover five topics from five great classics. And those are called GZHON PO'I RTO BA NA. These are the five great classics.

Okay. I once saw... Who is that Lama who came to Vajrapani late in his life and passed away?

Rilbur Rinpoche. So he went to His Holiness's teaching in New York and I met him there. And I came and we had a good talk.

And then there was a monk there and Rilbur Rinpoche mentioned SHUNG CHEN PO'I RTO BA NA. He said the five classics. And then the monk said, what?

Then I was like, this is the subject of all Tibetan galukta monasteries. You spend your life doing the five great books. And he was like, five great what?

I was like, oh man. Okay, anyway. Western, there's a Western monk.

CHEN MED DANG NAS BYAS PA So there came to be a custom of teaching the Lamrim on the basis of the great classics. Okay. And that came through Potawa to Sharawa.

And those Lamas were called Kadam Shumba. So Kadampa classicists, something like that. DE LA'I CHUNG ZAD DUS PA'I LAM RIM DE YIN TE RIM DANG BYAR NA'I CHE PA KUN PA'O LA'I NYUSIR PA RGYU PA Then there came to be a lineage called the Kadam Lamrimbas.

Okay, so they studied Lamrim mostly on the basis of shorter abbreviations of the five great classics. So in a Geshe course, you study the five great classics. I designed the ACI 18 courses around that.

If you go through the ACI 18 courses, you study the essence of the five. You do a lot of the five great texts. Then if you don't have time for that, or your students don't have time for that, or they don't have the capacity for that, then you should teach them Lamrim.

You should teach them these courses. So that was the second kind of lineage. It was like a...

Nowadays you would call it a Lamrim lineage. They were called Kadampa Lamrimbas. 18 courses of ACI would be a Kadampa Shumbawa.

That would be a classicist lineage. Then the second way of teaching would be Lamrim, to go through the Lamrim, because it's easier. And it's less detailed, and the questions that a very sharp student might have don't come up.

So I encourage you to do the 18 courses. Then I encourage you to learn the 20 Lamrim courses. Of which only one and a half are finished.

Because then you can teach more people. You will meet people in Bulgaria who are not ready for the 18 courses. And then you will meet people in, I don't know, Singapore.

Where are you? Who get upset if you teach them something easy. So the Lama who taught that was Lamrim style, was started with a Lama named Gombawa and came down through a Lama named Nyusirpa.

At this point we're going to go into some heavy historical stuff and you can just forget everything. Once in a while we'll have a nice story and there'll be a lesson in the story. And that's all I want you to...

That's all you really have to learn. I mean two days after I teach this I won't remember either this guy's name. But you should hear it.

At least you should hear it. ,RTEN DANG SNYING PO'I PHYI SOGS, ,BLA MA'I MEN NGAG DANG SBYAR BA, ,BYAR NAS BYAS PA CHEN NGA'O NI, ,BYAR YUL PA LA RGYUD DE, ,GA DANG MEN NGAG PA, Then there came to be the GA DANG MEN NGAG PA. MEN NGAG PA means personal advisors school.

It's like they passed on the teachings through personal meetings between the disciple and the Lama. So they didn't do these big homeworks from ACI. And they didn't even do the little homeworks from the Lam Rim.

They just sat at dinner or they went out for a walk. They sat around after a fire puja and they talked about stuff. And then that was a personal advice lineage.

In the Lam Rim that was passed on through CHEN NGA'O to BYAR YUL BA. So those are the three styles that developed. So you're really getting the first two styles.

And then I guess the third style is sort of by osmosis. Those who are persistent and hang around close, they get the third transmission. ,DE YANG MING NGOS SU MA RTAG KYANG, ,THEG SANG MED PA MIN TE, Then Pabongka Rinpoche says, we don't speak of those three kinds of lineages nowadays directly.

We don't use those words, classicist, Lam Rimist, personal advisors. We don't use that language nowadays. But it's not that they don't still exist.

MED PA MIN TE. It's not that they don't still exist. ,GZHUNG RGA BU'I NGA LA BLOB NYER GYI, ,DE RNAMS LA RIM DU BYUNG NAS NYAMS SU LAM PA NI, ,GA DAM GZHUNG BA BA DANG, People who go through the Geshe course, they study the five classics.

And then they are able to abbreviate those into a Lam Rim presentation on the fly. Those are classicists. ,DE TZAM MA NUS KYANG, ,BLO RUD DANG SEMS PA CHE BA'I LAM RIM, ,CHOS CHUNG LTAR PA THOS SANGS CHE, ,DE NYAMS SU LAM PA NI, ,GA DAM LAM RIM PA, People who are not capable of going through that detail, but nonetheless have a good level of intelligence and effort, they can study the longer or the more brief presentations of the Lam Rim.

And then they can meditate on it and practice it. And they are the equivalent of the old time GA DAM LAM RIM BAS. ,DE YANG MI NUS PAS, If someone's not capable of that, you could take them through, you could give them personal advice drawn from Lam Rims like The Path to Bliss and The Quick Path.

These are the two Lam Rims taught by the first and the second pension lamas. You could take them through a brief presentation of one of those. ,DE NYAMS SU LAM PA NI, ,GA DAM LAM RIM PA PA YID, ,DE NYAMS SU LAM PA NI, ,GA DAM LAM RIM PA PA YID, as personal advice.

You gave them DE LAM, but you sort of just took off on your own personal advices designed for that particular student in a close relationship. CHE CHEN RANG BA NOR BU GSUNGS RGYUN YIN TSUL BDAG GIS KHYAB CHEN LAM MA RIM PO CHE SHES GSUNGS Then BDAG PO BYAMS PA'I LHUN DRUB, which was Pabongka Rinpoche's teacher, I don't think of whom we have a photo because that was before photos. He, at least in Tibet, he said, he made that correlation.

He said, nowadays you can find all three kinds of lineages even though they're not formally called that anymore. And he said that based on his teacher teaching all Norbu's instructions. DE LTA RGA DAM GYI RGYUD PA GSUNGS PA YANG NGAR ZHUGS PA LTAR BYA TZON TZONG KHA PA CHEN POS NAS CHU BO GCIG DRE SU RGYUR Then, BYA TZON KHA PA, who lived in the early 15th century, in the 1400s.

He was active in 1400s. He was particularly active around 1400. CHU BO GCIG DRE SU RGYUR He took those three streams of teaching and combined them into one.

He used all three styles in his own teaching. He wrote huge classics that are extremely difficult down to the Three Principal Paths, which is 14 verses. LAM RIM CHEN DRING CHUNG GSUM RDZAS TSUL NA ZHUGS PA LTAR Then I already taught you, said Pabongka Rinpoche, about his...

he wrote the greater lam rim, lam rim chungmo, and he wrote the lam rim dring, the medium length lam rim, and then he wrote the briefer lam rims, such as his Song of His Spiritual Life. ZHUGS PA LTAR DE YANG RJE RIM PO'I PHYIR LA, BYAMS PA'I YANG SDUG BDAG TU LAM MA DANG BLO MED TSUL DU BYA'O Then he goes off on a very interesting thing. This dessert is hot chocolate.

He went off on a very interesting thing. He said, think about it. Most of what Je Tsongkapa wrote was stuff that he had learned directly from Manjushri.

Manjushri is some kind of tantric angel, the angel of wisdom. He has this sword, right? He carries this sword around.

Je Tsongkapa's own heart lama was Manjushri. He took teachings directly in the divine realm from a divine being. So, don't forget that, he says.

SDUG BSNGAL GYI SA BCAD THA' YIN PA ZHIG RTZEL GSOL He heard countless profound teachings that we can hardly imagine. He wrote, what is it, 10,000? I told you, 10,000 pages.

His whole works with his students are 20,000 pages. You can spend a month debating one page and not finish. You won't finish.

It's so... I can't even describe to you. You can't imagine what it's like to take...

It's like an acid trip. Not that I ever did an acid trip. But I did some, what do you call that other stuff?

It's close to peyote. Mescaline, yeah. It's like a mescaline trip.

I mean, to do it when I was very young. In a canyon near here. But it's like a mescaline trip.

It's like you open the book and then you're back in 24 hours and you're like, whoa. I can't describe what it's like because you've never read someone like that. In English, there's nothing like that.

It's like the best of Shakespeare, but every single page. It's hard to describe what it's like to read it. But it's just extraordinary.

I hope we can get it all into English someday. So, DE NAS LA MIM DI BYAS RIM PA BYAS BYAMS PA You can read in his biography how he studied with Madhusri. We have that big red picture book.

That is the most complete biography of Je Tsongkapa anywhere. You should look at it sometimes. NAM THAG LA'I CHUNG BA'I THAR DE NA LAM RIM GYIS BYAS RIM PA BYAS ZIN BYAMS PA'I YANG LAS SEMS PA YIN BYAS KYANG CHOG DMOS CHOG DMOS means...

So you could probably just trace the lineage of this LAM RIM back as far as... I mean you don't have to go to Atisha and then back to Lord Buddha or something like that. You can just go to Tsongkhapa and say it started from Manjushri.

And he says CHOG DMOS, you could leave it at that. You could not tell Lord Atisha's story. I mean after he told us the whole story, now he's telling us he didn't have to tell us.

He's saying something rather... what do you call it? Radical.

He's saying, I just taught you the whole story of Lord Atisha. But you know, you could just trace the lineage back to Tsongkhapa and leave it at that. Because he got it directly from Manjushri.

CHOG DMOS BYAS RNAMS PA BYAS PHYIR GYIS THAR THUG STENG PA THUG PA'I DBANG PO LA THUG PA'I RING YUL LA TSOG BAR MDZAD PA MA RTOG DAG NANG DANG NYE RGYUR CHUNG CHUNG SOG BRTAN NAS MI SONGS This is a very interesting sentence. So then he's going off on some kind of speculation. He says, so why did Jetsamkhapa, at the beginning of his great LAM RIM, etc.

trace the lineage back to Lord Buddha? Why did he bother? Why did he write this whole thing about Lord Atisha and the Buddha and all the lineage Lamas back to the Buddha?

Like Pabongka Rinpoche is questioning, why did Tsongkhapa bother to present a whole lineage that didn't exist? And then he said, DAG NANG He didn't want to reveal to everyone his personal experiences. He experienced the world as DAG NANG.

DAG NANG means you get to a spiritual state where everything is divine. That's the point of tantra. That's the goal of tantra.

You get into your car, you turn on the radio and the song you've been practicing at Mercedes and Ningbo's house comes on. Where were we? It was really cute.

Everywhere we go in the world, on the plane they'll be playing the song we're working on, the same version. And we're like, wow. This just happens constantly.

If you're practicing well, then the world is tantra to you. Meaning, people come up and say divine things to you on the street and divine experiences happen to you all the time. This is the goal of practice.

So he said he didn't want to talk about it publicly, openly. He never publicly admitted to talking to Manjushri. His students, Khedug Je, especially, afterwards wrote a thing called Sangway Namtar, Secret Biography.

Then he would confide in his students experiences that he had. Then they wrote these experiences down. But Tsongkhapa himself didn't want...

What happens if a big Lama reveals close important experiences is that people don't believe them or they doubt them. And then they make a very bad karma. So he didn't want to get into it.

Also, he wanted to stay humble. NYE RGYUD CHUNG CHUNG SOGS BSTAN NAS MI GSUM Close lineage experiences, meaning that the lineage is shorter than you think. It doesn't go back to Lord Buddha.

It doesn't even go back to Lord Atisha. It goes back to one person before Tsongkhapa, one being before Tsongkhapa. He said, MA GSUM, he didn't talk about it.

He never talked about it. MI GSUM BA DE But you can read it in his disciples' biographies. There's a biography written by one of his disciples who started the biography on the day that Je Tsongkhapa was passing away and all these extraordinary things.

You can read it sometime. It's in the Big Red Book, if you have time. ROL TZAR CHE, LAM RIM CHEN PO'I LHA GTONG YIN RDZE NAS So then there's this beautiful story.

So where did Je Tsongkhapa... What's the shortest Lam Rim he ever wrote? DI, DI, DI, DI, DI, DI There are three principal paths.

Where have you seen this book? ACI Course 1, page 1 of the 20,000 pages is the short Lam Rim. By Je Tsongkhapa.

LAM TSUM LAM TSUM, three principal paths. He copped that from Manjushri. There's a big confession here.

It's not like he really wrote it. He was just kind of, what do you call it? Plagiarizing Manjushri.

So apparently there was an incident where Manjushri came to Je Tsongkhapa and taught him these 14 verses which include all the Buddhist path, hundreds of thousands of pages. He outdid Lord Atisha. It's one page.

He didn't even write that. He just kind of copped it from Manjushri. And then you studied it in ACI Course 1.

And you studied the commentary written by Pabongka Rinpoche. That's a tough question. Okay.

By the way, that's why we started with that. The whole 14-year course, it starts with that. So anyway, one day Je Tsongkhapa LHAG STON YIN ZIN He finished Lam Rim CHEN MO.

LHAG STON YIN Up to LHAG STON. Meaning what? Up to the section on how to meditate and emptiness, which is called LHAG STON CHEN MO.

That has its own name. It could be published as a separate book. The part in the huge Lam Rim of Tsongkhapa where he talks about meditation and wisdom, emptiness, could have been treated as a separate book.

He wrote it later. Then he wrote the first four perfections earlier. But it's huge.

It's, I don't know, 500 pages. Just to remind you, for dessert, we're having those 500 pages. Ten years from now.

For dessert, we're going to go back to meditation and emptiness. But we're going to do it from Tsongkhapa himself. Just for fun.

But when he had completed the first 500 pages, then he was kind of showing off. It happens to me a lot. So he went to Manjushri and he said, yeah, look what I did.

Check this out. And he was reading him from his 500 pages. And then, BYA TSUN NAS KU RE Manjushri laughed out loud.

Tsongkhapa was like, what's the problem? And he said, NGES KYI BRTEN PA'I LAM SOGS SUM GYI NGON DU MA GDUG PA DUG AM? Say, DUG AM?

Is there anything in your big fat book that I didn't already tell you in the Three Principal Path? In the one page that I taught you that you stole from me. Was there anything in your big 500 page book that's not in there?

And Tsongkhapa was like, Okay, all right. It's a really cute image. It would make a good movie one day or something.

Anyway, MA GDUG PA DUG AM KU RE GSUM GSUM BRDZAD PAR BYA TSUN GYI GSUM PA'I LAM SOGS SUM SOGS DU BYED Then they start to describe how I believe Tsongkhapa was writing his teacher, Randhawa. He had a Sakya teacher. So he was telling Randhawa how he wrote the Lam Rim Chom Mon.

He said, BYA TSUN GYI GSUM PA'I LAM SOGS SUM SOGS DU BYED As the soak of my presentation, I used the Three Principal Paths that were taught to me by Manjushri directly. Soak means what? You had it.

Not tsok. Soak. You had it all weed, so.

It's the sap in the tree. It's the lifeblood of the tree. Soak.

Soak means... When you say prana vayu as opposed to prana, the prana vayu, that prana means life. When you say the separate pranas, those are in inner energy.

So they're not the same word. Prana vayu is not the same as prana. So prana vayu means sok lung in Tibetan.

It's the life energy of the tree, for example. What do you call the juice? The sap of the tree is sok.

So what's he saying? The soak of my huge magnum... Opus magnum?

Magnum opus? Opus magnum. Big book.

It's those Three Principal Paths. That little one page thing. SOG DU BYED LAM BDUN ZHES PA'I TSAR BA'I ZHUNG DU BYED Then I took the Three Principal Paths as the lifeblood of my presentation.

And then as my scriptural reference, I took LAM BDUN. Lord Atisha's book, the Three Principal Paths. LAM BDUN ZHES PA'I TSAR BA'I ZHUNG DU BYED DE'I RTEN DU DKA' DANG GI ME NGA GZHAN DU MED GHA GANG GHA GANG means...

What do you call that? It's an addendum which fulfills the whole book. I don't know what you call that.

It's something you add at the end of a book which somehow completes the book. It's like an appendix. It's like an epilogue, but it has the specific function of completing the subject matter of the book.

Anyway, maybe we don't have that. Anyway, we call it the icing on the cake, I think. As the icing on the cake, I use the personal oral instructions of the Kadampas that I learned from my own Lamas.

The life of my great Lamrim is the Three Principal Paths. The original source which I refer to is Lord Atisha's text. And then I have put the icing on the cake from the personal advices that have come down through the last...

At that time, it was four centuries. ,LHAG SDONG PHYED MO NI, ,DZAD KYANG, ,GRO DUN PHYED MI YONG, ,GONG NI MA RDZAS PA NA, There's this weird story where Je Tsongkapa looked into the future and tried to decide whether it would be useful to write the second 500 pages about meditation and emptiness. And then he decided it would not.

He said nobody could get it. The pen thing. He thought nobody would be able to get it.

So he didn't do it. He didn't finish it at the time. ,MA RDZAS PA NA, ,LHAG SDONG GI GOR YANG TSONG ZHIG DANG, Then Manjushri, as usual, told him, get to work.

You should write the second half. And DING benefit will come. DING.

What's DING? Like medium. It'll be pretty useful for people.

DING YONG. Why? Most people can't handle that.

That's why I'm giving it to you at the end. It's hard. It's really hard.

But you'll be ready by then. His presentation on emptiness is hard. And his presentation on meditation is hard.

,GSUM PA'I SOGS, ,SANGS RGYUD MI KHYAB PAS RNAM DANG, ,CHI PA SOGS, I could go on telling you amazing stories about Jetsun Krapa. ,TSAM DU BYAS RNAM DANG ZHUGS DGOS KYANG, It would... Really, when you're teaching Lam Rim and you get to this point in the Lam Rim, what is this point?

We just finished describing how the whole thing started with Lord Atisha. We gave the whole life story of Lord Atisha. We finished that.

Then we were tracing lineages after Lord Atisha, from 1000 on. Ending with you. I'm going to give you a pep talk tonight, but it's your problem now.

I'm done. So, ending with you. It's an unbroken lineage.

It's a living unbroken lineage. So, Pabongka Rinpoche says, if we, by rights, we should pause and do two ten day retreats on Jetsun Krapa's life. We should pause and we should examine Jetsun Krapa's life.

,GYANG DAG LAM ZHUGS KHONG MA BYUNG BA'I, But we don't have time. Even in 1921 they didn't have time. In the Tibetan monasteries.

,DE RNAM DAG NI CHAGS PAS ZHIG PA RDZOD, That's the last thing, then we'll take a break. So then you guys must, as teachers who are passing this lineage on, you better know that big bump in the lineage, called Tsongkhapa. You better know about him and study about him.

It's easy, just buy that big picture book. It's out of print by the way. We printed a thousand copies and we gave all the money to my teacher's temple in New Jersey.

And it was cool. We gave them, so far I think about $70,000. And it's just about out.

So we're printing a paperback one for bookstores. And this really cool comic book artist in New York named Christopher Mauch. He's a painter of, he does those, what do you call those?

The ones that Ningbo reads. Such as the reading in their hands. Graphic novels.

But he did a graphic novel cover. And it's really sexy, it's really beautiful. It's Tsongkhapa, just before he saw emptiness directly, having a vision of all the great teachers of emptiness.

And it's really, really beautiful. He did a really beautiful job. I think he's going to finish tomorrow or something.

It's been quite a while. Okay. But what I'd suggest is get a hold of that book.

And it's a pleasant book. It's easy. Because it's all in pictures.

It's from paintings of Tsongkhapa's life. There's a biography in the back which is translated, which is a little difficult. And then in the middle there's a huge part about how you could be like Tsongkhapa.

How you could use his life as a pattern for your own life as a yoga teacher in Manhattan or something. In a normal modern life. How would you use this 15th century monk's life as a model for just a business life or something.

You know what I mean? So I would try to get that. If you're going to teach this course, try to get that book.

There's still some of the red one available. And it's going to be rare now, I think. We're not going to reprint it.

It has a book. What do you call it? What do you call it?

Sleep? Yeah, it's like we spent a lot of money on it. And it's nice.

I think there's a few copies. Try to get it. Or you can wait until the paperback one comes out.

You can get it on Amazon, I think. That's more trouble. They're very slow.

You can get it on Amazon. No, the text is exactly the same. It's just a new cover.

And it's much cheaper. I mean, it'll be sold in bookstores and stuff like that.