«Дар освобождения», курс 5 «Обрести то, кем нам всегда суждено было стать», занятие 4

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 1:18:53)
All right, let's start. Again, I'm going to be going through the Tibetan. I don't mean to, what do you call, overwhelm people.

You don't have to worry about the Tibetan. If I were you, I would like to know it's coming from a real source, an authentic source. There are people in the room who I have hopes for becoming translators.

I feel like it's my responsibility to pass it on the way I was taught it. But you can tune it out if it's overwhelming for you. I don't mean to overwhelm you.

I just think it's a big blessing to do it in the original. All right. Then we were talking about the idea of kadampa.

We were into a subject of the four wonderful qualities of learning this particular spiritual presentation. There are thousands of different spiritual presentations in many different faiths. This is just one of them called the lamrim or the steps of the path to enlightenment.

It is advertised as a spiritual method which could get you to enlightenment. It's advertised as an instruction book to enlightenment, step-by-step, it's called step-by-step, like a lawnmower manual. Before the lama goes ahead and starts into the actual lamrim, the steps of the path, which are maybe you could say 20 or 30 realizations that are helpful to reach in order to become enlightened.

Before we go into that, it's traditional to sell the lamrim itself. You're not going to be interested in attending the whole teachings if you don't think it's going to do anything for you. It's traditional at the beginning that you talk up the lamrim, the idea of lamrim, the idea of a step-by-step instruction book to enlightenment.

Traditionally, they go through explaining four beautiful qualities of this spiritual presentation, lamrim. We finished one and a half. The first one was, what was that?

Huh? Yeah. Gelmeditempa means you will, there are, yeah, there are about, I mean, we have scanned, we and our sister organization, TBRC, we have scanned eight million pages of Tibetan spiritual books.

That's not, I don't know what percent that is, maybe half. In eight million pages, if you study the lamrim, you will come to see that there's not a single contradiction within those eight million pages. As you get more mature and as you study more and more and as you go through your life, you will come to appreciate a system which is really water, what do you call, airtight, waterproof, airtight, and it's just tight and it's, what do you call it, logical.

The whole thing makes sense. The whole system makes sense and every part of it makes sense. No part of it contradicts any other part of it.

As you get older, you begin to appreciate any system which is coherent. As we start to question science itself or banking systems or the idea of democracy or as we start to question these systems which have served us and which may be showing false lines, then it's comforting to have a system which is coherent, completely coherent and applicable to your life, which is the second great quality. Tamlak tu shama.

Every part of it is immediately applicable to your life. Then we talked about a spiritual stage that you reach where you're sitting in a teaching and they go through two hours of scripture and every sentence, every time the teacher speaks a sentence, you think, oh, I could use that with so-and-so who bugs me or I could use that with my partner, on my partner. There's a state of, it's a blessing, right?

That you can reach where everything a teacher says is something immediately relevant to your own personal challenges and your own personal goals. That's called kadampa. We were talking about that concept of how do you reach the state in your yoga practice or meditation practice where everything seems to be a teaching that you could use for the problems in your own life and the things that you want to reach in your own life.

That's called kadampa. We were talking about that. Now we continue.

CHOS DE TZAM LA BRAL BA'I TSE ZHUGS RIM GANG GZHEL BYAS NA NANG NYAM LEN DU DUL THUB PA ZHIG DBANG You can be, he's continuing a line of thought about you could see where everything you heard is not only relevant to your life, but if you study the lamrim carefully, you will have within your mind all the steps of the path and you will know where any particular thing you hear, like Jenny said some inspiring things in the yoga class today, which were inspiring for me. And then because I've gone through this training, I can put her statements in the context of the whole trip to enlightenment, the whole journey to enlightenment over a person's life.

I can say, oh, she's talking about step 14 or something. And that fits beautifully there. So he says, CHOS DE TZAM LA BRAL BA'I TSE In the monastery we're required to do a lot of, there's a, what are the yoga sutra, what are the kriyas?

Abhinidhi, what is that? No, I mean, what's the verse? Oh, well.

Svadhishthana, I'm talking about, no, svadhyaya, okay? In the yoga sutra it's called svadhyaya. It's the last of the kriyas, I think.

No, it's a, what is it? Niyama, it's the last of the niyamas. What are the first ones?

Svabdhi, santosha, tapas, pranayaya, ishvara pranayaya, pranidhana. So svadhyaya, people misunderstand. They say self-study.

Svad means self, adhyaya means study. Then it's just a word that means to memorize scripture and to learn scripture. They just didn't know what it refers to.

I don't know, it's like saying laundromat means to clean a guy named Matt or something. No, they took it apart and they didn't understand it. So svadhyaya means to learn and commit scripture to memory so that it's part of your consciousness.

In the monastery, we do a lot of memorizing. By the way, memorizing is a skill that you can get better at. If you start doing it, you can do it more and more.

It's useful because when you're meditating, you can go through the library and you can pull out the whole essence of memorization. I'm not trying to sell memorization because nobody will do it anyway. In the monastery, the first thing we're required to memorize is a teaching by Maitreya, who is the next Buddha to come on this planet.

I have in my head somewhere 75 pages of Maitreya. It talks to me sometimes. You see, Maitreya comes up in my mind sometimes.

In the way that rock and roll songs come up in your mind sometimes. He just starts talking. Hello cowgirl in the sand.

It's nice to have Maitreya talking in your head. Anyway, he says, CHU DON TZAM LA You can just be reciting something. DRO BA'I TSE, SEMS RAB GANG ZHAL CHEN NA NYAM NGAN DU BRAL THUB PA ZHI'O You can be just reciting something and you hit a line and then suddenly you will know where it fits in a lifetime of spiritual practice.

Like Jenny's comment before the yoga class today. THA NA TZAK GANG NANG GI ZHOG GAL GCIG GNYER PA CHUN BYAS KYANG RANG GI NYAM NGAN GYI MI GOS DU NUS CHO CHO'ONG It means, there are special little, how do you call them? They're like sheds or something.

They're bigger than a shed. They're made of like adobe walls. And they're like little storerooms.

And they're called satakang. Satakang. Say satakang.

So satakang means, it's like little recyclable bins around Tibet. There are little recyclable bins around Tibet. They are little buildings, tiny buildings.

And when you have like a painting, a religious painting, or you have a statue or something like that and the arm breaks off and your dog eats it or something. Or something like that. The painting fell apart and it's too old to use anymore.

It's considered bad luck to throw it in the garbage. So you take it to a satakang and you just put it there. You just set it there.

It's like a blessed place. Nobody will step on it. Nobody will abuse it.

And it can rest there. Or if you have a scripture, see what happens with these scriptures. They're this shape because they used to be palm leaves.

And they kept the format after paper was invented. But they don't bind them. So it's common that you would hand out pieces to your students.

You memorize that by tomorrow. And then the kid forgets to give it back to you and you forget to get it back from him. And then pretty soon the scripture is rendered unusable because every third page is missing.

Then you would take that, you would buy a new one. They don't even use the word buy with holy objects. They say ransom.

You ransom a new one. And then you take the old one and you throw the pages in the satakang. You see?

It's like your old ACI notebooks that are gathering dust on your shelf. So he says, THA NA means you could even get to a point where you could go to a satakang. Satsa means those little clay images, right?

That the FPMT overproduces. No, I mean, because Lama Zopa tells them you have to make 10,000 in six years or something. But if they break, they break easily.

So you take them and throw them in a satakang. The place is called a satsa repository, meaning broken satsa repository. SHOG GYUR You can go there.

You can pick up one page of scripture at random. An old page of scripture at random. KYANG RANG GI NYAM RANG GI MED KHO DUS NON CHO CHO'ONG And you can add that to your toolkit.

You can add it to your daily spiritual practice. There will be enough information on one page to become a useful addition to your own personal practice. It happened to me when we got the place on Sixth Street in New York.

I was walking down the street, on the sidewalk on Sixth Street, on the north side, headed east. There was a page of scripture there, Tibetan scripture on the ground. It was a sadhana for Dukkar.

It means the deity of the white umbrella. I kept it and I read it and it became part of... It becomes part of your practice.

That's kadampa. Got it? KHO BA SNGAR CHUNG DU SKABS DGON PO LING KOR GYI RTZA ZAG KHAR NON GI ZHOG KHAR GCIG LA BSTAD PAS And then Pabongka Rinpoche says, when I was a child, I was doing...

LING KOR means I was doing circumambulations of the monastery. They do that for exercise, especially older monks. They walk around the monastery in the evening and they gossip.

ZHIG LA BSTAD PAS Then I saw a page on the ground that had flown... the wind had blown it out of a satakam, out of a store shed. I picked it up and it turned out to be a quotation from Gyaltsho Khelsang Gyatso, which is the seventh...

His Holiness the Seventh Dalai Lama, who was a very great tantric practitioner, very famous. Gyaltso Sungur and it was from his spiritual songs. It was a page from his spiritual songs.

And it said, RTAG CHUNG KYI PHUNG BA GZHON NUS TE DANG LDAN GYI MED DO GCIG NAS GCIG YUL TZAM LA MDOR LEN BYAS PA MTHONG PHAN DI DANG GSOS PA'I DON GYI LUS NYID DUG GIS SKYE BA'O MANG PO ZHIG SEMS MA BDAG RANG GI SNANG GZUGS KYIS SKYE GCIG LA BRTAG NYAN GYUR SKYE GCIG LA BRTAG NYAN GYUR That's the problem with the text. Anyway, somebody put in an extra syllable. SKYE GCIG LA BRTAG NYAN GYUR MTHONG LO BSTAN PA'I DROG PO NGES MA NYE There was a little poetry there.

RTAG CHUNG KYI PHUNG BA GZHON NUS TE This little, what do you call? A bee or a fly. We call it a bee.

A bee from RTAG CHUNG. A young bee from RTAG CHUNG. DANG LDAN GYI MED TOG Lands on a DANG LDAN GYI MED TOG.

It means like a saffron colored flower. And he flies from one to another. Like if you watch a bee.

I have bees and I have zinnias. And they like the zinnias. They come for the zinnias.

And they don't like roses. I don't know. I guess what they like is not in roses.

But they go bzzz and they land and they do something. I don't know what they're doing. Then they fly and they go to another one.

And then they go and they fly. And then, what do you call the birds? The little new nick birds.

Honey birds. They also, they go like bzzz. And then they go like bzzz.

So he's describing a bee like that. YUL TZAM LA MDOR LEN BYAS PA MTHONG You can see how they grab a flower and then they just like, it's like throwing somebody's leg off your chest today. That was a weird experience to have your legs thrown by somebody.

So they look all interested. And then they go, ah, not this one. And they fly to the next flower.

PAS DI DANG GSUM PA There's a case in our life which is similar to that insect. BDUN GYI LUS GNYIS BDUG GI SKYO BA MANG PO ZHIG Nowadays, in the days of dark, GNYIS BDUG means these are considered dark days from one point of view in that the teachings of this Buddha are scheduled to get lost in the world within the next, I don't know, let's call it the next 2,000 years. They will die in this world.

The teachings on enlightenment will disappear from this world. This is called the bad times. These are the late times in the history of these teachings and this planet.

GNYIS BDUG GI SKYO BA MANG PO ZHIG And a lot of people in these dark days, SEMS MA BDAG RANG GI RNAMS SU KYI their minds are impure. And then we can see that someone that we thought was our friend becomes in a few days our worst enemy. This is very common with boyfriends and girlfriends.

Someone you thought was the dearest person in your life, once they say they don't want to go out with you, is now the worst person that you know. Whether they changed or not is another question. But we can see inconsistency in people in these times.

You don't know who's your friend and who's your enemy. BLO BSTAN PA'I GRONG PO NGES MA GNYIS I have not found in my life a companion or a friend that I could really put all my trust in, all my faith in. Of course, that's the person's own karma.

They haven't been faithful or loyal or consistent with their friends and therefore they only meet that kind of people. Why it happens, we understand. He's not criticizing humanity.

He's just making a comment on himself really. BYAS DUG PA SKYE BU SBRING GI NGES PA MED PA NGES PA MED PA'I NGES PA LA BYAR CHOG CHOG RE But when I read those lines, it occurred to me that it fit perfectly into the teachings on the people from medium capacity, where you discuss the faults or the problems of this cycle of life called samsara and it says things are uncertain. Things change.

Friends become enemies, enemies become friends in a few months. It happens with your enemies also. People that you thought were incorrigibly against you, oftentimes when you open your heart and you talk to them, then you turn out to be your best friends.

It goes both ways. But anyway, life is unstable. That's our fault, but that's the way it is.

What he's saying though is that even as a child, picking up a single page of scripture that flew out of a garbage bin, he realized he could apply it directly into that part of the whole flow to Buddhahood. DE LTAR KA'A DAM GONG BRAL THAMS CAD LAS YIGS KYIS NA GCIG YANG DOR DU MED PAR DAM LA THUG CHA'O THUB PA LA KA'A DAM ZHES BYA STE Now he's explaining the word KA'A DAM, KA'A DAM PA. We did it already.

I did it as an introduction. Now he got to the actual explanation. He says that kind of experience where you can pick up any scripture, whether it's by the Buddha or some commentary, and you can take even just a few syllables out of it and see that none of it is...

DOR DU MED PAR means... Do you know the definition of samaya? We got to talk about samaya, right?

That might be the subject at the next Great Retreat teachings. We're not sure yet. But the definition of samaya is...

DAM ZIG in Tibetan is DOR DU MI RUNG BA. DOR DU MI RUNG BA means you can never... What do you call it?

Disavow. That's a good word, right? Dis-a-vow.

You can never disavow it. It's the definition of a samaya or a pledge, a sacred pledge. He's saying he doesn't use it for pledges.

He uses it for any few lines out of any true sacred book, our DOR DU MI RUNG BA. You can never discount them or disavow them. If you are in the right frame of mind, even Time Magazine and even the New York Post can teach you something.

It can be some kind of... We call it not just teach you something, but it can be a message from divine source. Then he says, and that's what it means to say kadampa.

That's the meaning of kadampa. Then he's going to quote something to back him up. In Buddhism, you normally support a statement in two different ways.

You quote an authority and then you prove it logically. Especially in the case of someone that you're talking with who doesn't accept that authority. But he's going to tell a story.

DE BYAS DAG NI CHEN PO The Mahatma. Who's he talking about? Who's the Mahatma?

That's the Tibetan translation of Mahatma. If you were Pabongka Rinpoche, who would be Mahatma for you? Je Tsongkapa.

The teacher of His Highness the First Dalai Lama who started our lineage. He invented this vest. I don't know why.

Kind of weird. He put the blue thing on there and everything. DE BYAS DAG NI CHEN PO DKA' BCU RIN CHEN PHAL He had a student called DKA' BCU RIN CHEN PHAL.

RIN CHEN PHAL is a personal monk's name. DKA' BCU PA means it was like a Geshe in the old days. It was like a little bit less than a Geshe.

It meant someone who had mastered ten different subjects. DKA' BCU means ten different subjects. DKA' BCU PA RIN CHEN PHAL NA DKA' BDAM ZHES PA'I DUN, GANG YIN, DKA' DRIN NA BA Je Tsongkapa asked his student, what do you think is the definition of DKA' DAM?

How would you describe DKA' DAM PA? It's cool, right? It's interesting.

RGYAL BA'I DKA' LAS YID GYI NA JI RKYANG MDOR DU RUNG BA MED PAR DANG NA DU BYA BA LA ZER YIN ZHU He said it means if you took all the teachings of the enlightened beings and you took even a single line out of it, you would never disavow that line or you would never think that was a waste of time or not relevant to my life. It's the perception that every single sentence of a spiritual teaching is relevant to your personal situation. That's how he answered Je Tsongkapa.

DAM LAG TU CHAL BA strikes you as relevant to your personal struggle right now. The issues going on in your life today, this week, every sentence of this teaching should be directly applicable. If they are, then you reach DKA' DAM PA.

JE RUNG PO CHE YIN ZHU ZHU is very beautiful. YIN ZHU means he preferred this response. We don't say to a high lama that I told him.

You say, I offered him my words. He offered those words to Je Tsongkapa. JE RUNG PO CHE JE RUNG PO CHE SHIN TU NYE What's SHIN TU?

SHIN TU means a lot, very much. SHIN TU I like it because it sounds like what it is. SHIN TU NYE NYE means he was really pleased by the answer.

SHIN TU NYE NYE Which is really rare with a lama, with your teacher. DKA' BCUG GI TSOR SU YANG DE RING DKA' BCU BLO SKYES CHEN PO'I CING CHUNG Then he announced in the teaching, today I got a nice teaching from my student. Today my student has given me a nice teaching, which itself is a kadampa.

Got it? There's something deeper here. The teacher is saying, my student gave me an answer and it sounded to me like the Buddha himself was talking.

Which is, if you're a real kadampa and you start to teach, you will have this experience constantly. If your heart is open, that your students are teaching you all the time. Then you start to wonder who's who.

It's supposed to be like that. The whole exercise of being a teacher, ultimately, in the end, you realize you were the student all along. Thank you.

It's been fun. DE DAG SER ZHES GSUNG NAS I like what he said. SNGAGS SBYUD ZAD He praised him.

SNGAGS SBYUD ZAD DE DAG CHUNG NA, TSAR KHAN NANG GI ZHOG GYEL CIG TSUN BYED KYI GSUNG RAB THAMS CAD GANG SAG CIG TZAM RGYAL BA'I SMRNGAG TU ZHUL GYI BRAL You can even begin to see, you begin to see, on one hand, that every sentence you ever hear in a teaching has its place in the whole flow of a lifetime of spiritual practice. You can position it in the flow of a lifetime of spiritual practice. I guess if you're a really good Kadampa, you might see the whole flow within that teaching, within that sentence.

You should be able to go both ways. We talked about it with the dice and the cushion. You should be able to see that anything someone says applies to the path as a whole, but you should also begin to have the experience that anything someone says contains the path as a whole.

DE YANG RANG GCIG BU TSAM RGYAL BA'I SMRNGAG ZHUL GYI BRAL Then he says, he does an interesting thing. He says, anything you learn strikes you as being relevant to the flow of a person's lifetime spiritual practice. Then he says, or rather, should I say, my own.

You see? He says, not third person. Oh, it strikes me as relevant to my own journey, my own lifetime of spiritual practice.

DE THAMS CAD SANGS RGYAS LA SOGS PA'I RANG KHO NAS CHE DU GSUNGS PA LTA BO ZHIG HO NAS DE THAMS CAD LA GUS PA YANG SHIN TU CHEN POR SKYE YONG If you reach a point in Kadampa, and this is where I, there's a homework question I think at this point, and it's a phenomenon we talked about yesterday, and now he mentions it here. Very commonly in a large teaching, more than a few people in a group, you'll be sitting there in the back row. You go to the Dalai Lama's teaching in Washington DC and you're sitting in the back row of 5,000 people.

He's about an inch high. Then he starts off on some, like you had a fight with your boyfriend that morning and your boyfriend was telling you that you never listen. You're always interrupting her.

Sorry, him. He can't get a word in edgewise. Then you're like, no, that's not true.

I'm a pretty good listener. Then in the afternoon you go to the Dalai Lama's teaching and he gets up there and they go through the three hours of prayers. Then he starts talking and he says, today I'd like to talk about not listening to people.

You're like, damn, how did he know? Then you get this weird impression that he's criticizing you directly and your boyfriend called him before the talk and said, could you first talk about this? Because she'll be sitting in the back row.

You know what I mean? I wanted to mention the phenomenon because it's considered a high blessing. See, if the person giving the teaching is supposed to be some special being or if the scripture is some kind of special message from enlightened beings, then two and a half thousand years ago, Lord Buddha arranged that that sentence would be the first one taught by the Dalai Lama in the talk you went to because he knew you would need it.

Because two and a half thousand years to an enlightened being is like looking at the palm of your hand. It's nothing for them. Then you start to get this really beautiful appreciation of what it is to be enlightened.

A person two and a half thousand years ago sitting in an Indian village under a tree says something because he knows that on such and such a date in a land called Amegwa much later, you will be sitting in the last row. You should appreciate that it was designed for you. You're not crazy.

What's the opposite of paranoia? Huh? Like, everyone's out to help me.

I'm sitting in a bunch of... Everyone's enlightened except me. There's all Geshe Michael, you teach today.

You see, I don't know. Benign paranoia? I don't know.

It's healthy. It's a good thing. It's probably true.

Okay. Anyway, thanks for letting me teach. I enjoy it.

GZHIG RKUN DANG THAMS CAD Then you will automatically get a greater love and affection for these teachings. You will come to really enjoy them and love them. You say, oh, let me have some more.

Maybe he's got something else in there that I was supposed to hear today. Got it? Maybe two and a half thousand years ago he had something else in mind for me to hear today.

Got it? Then there was a famous nama. NEL SPYOR PA means, the Tibetan translation of the word, yogi.

The yoga practitioner named Chandra Rinchen, he was trying to explain what it meant to receive personal instruction. What does it mean for a realization to be triggered in your heart by something that is in the scripture? What's happening?

SBYOR BUM LAG MTHIL TZAM LA NYES PA NYES PA LA MI ZER He said, it's not that you're holding in your hands some rare ancient book of scripture. SBYOR BUM means annals, like annulates or annals. Some ancient weird book.

It's not that you crack an ancient book and discover its meaning, he says. SEMS RAM THAMS CAD DAM RA THUB KHO BA LA ZER To receive personal instruction means that you understand that all the teachings ever given were designed as personal advice for you. The 200,000, the 10 million pages of scripture in Tibet, or including the Bible and whatever was ever written in any language in this world, anything you've ever heard of, what's his name, Rumi, doesn't matter, okay?

Anything you ever read, you will reach a state in your life where you will appreciate that it was a message sent to you by an enlightened being. Any book you pick up at the airport bookstore and glance at a page and then run to the gate, that page was meant for you, and it was put there in the airport bookstore by an enlightened being for your benefit. You will reach a point in your life where you will get that, and then you're a kadampa.

Oh, good. ZIG DE'I DIT SA BA LTA BU YIN You can consider that the main teaching on this subject, just that last line about the airport. He says, DE YANG SOS RANG THAMS CAD DANG SNGAGS TU BYA BA NI GNAS BYIN DAG ZHIG DGOS LA MI'I MTHIL PA TZAM GYIS CHOG GANG YAMS NA How do I get to RIN PHYIR BUD DANG ZHIG NI DE'I DE'I SA BYED RGYAS DU JI LTAR YIN GYUR DANG Okay.

What do I need exactly to reach Kadampa? Somebody ask him a question. How much do I need to reach Kadampa?

What do I have to do to get to that? To where I can walk into an airport bookstore and see a few lines in a book and it strikes me as meant for me. What do I need to get there?

LA MI'I MTHIL PA TZAM GYIS CHOG GANG YAMS NA Do I really have to go through this whole book? Do I have to go through the whole Lam Rim? What's a minimum?

DE NYID SU RIM BSGOM BRAL DANG BYAS PA'I DUS ZHING YIN RTEN TSUL NAS ZHIG LAG GI BAR GYI LA MI'I RIM PAR BDUR All of that information is included in the various teachings called Lam Rim. Some of them are very short. We mentioned one yesterday that's 14 verses.

It fits on a single side of a page. DE SA BYAS RGYAS DU JI LTAR YIN KYANG It doesn't matter whether it's a very long book, like this is one of the longest Lam Rims, or it's a very short thing like a single page Lam Rim, like Lam Tzum, the Three Principal Paths. GANG DAG CHA TZAM BA ZHIG BLO YUL DU NGES PAR BYAS NAS It doesn't matter how big it is, but you must grasp its contents in full.

If it's 14 verses, you have to understand all 14 verses. I think 14 verses is the record for a Lam Rim. Of course, it's held by Je Tsongkapa.

He did it. He got the whole thing into 14 verses. We translated Pabongka Rinpoche's commentary to that.

I think it's one of the first books we ever printed. I think it was 1979 or something like that. It's called the Three Principal Paths.

There's a nice commentary by Pabongka Rinpoche on those 14 verses, and that's the shortest you can get. But if you grasp the whole thing, you can reach Kadampa. If you know the 14 verses well, then you can reach Kadampa.

NGES PAR BYAS NAS, CHE BSGOM DGOS PA LA CHE BSGOM SBYOR BSGOM DGOS PA LA SBYOR BSGOM GYIS NYAL LEN DU KHYER SHES PA ZHIG BYUNG NA If you learn to CHE BSGOM the things that need CHE BSGOM, and if you learn to SBYOR BSGOM the things that need SBYOR BSGOM. Got it? Here's an interesting line because it includes a traditional explanation of the different types of meditation.

Our tradition recognizes three different, vastly different types of meditation. One is called DGOS GOM, and that's where you put your mind on a single object and you hold it there. This morning we were doing kind of a DGOS GOM.

If you, for example, put a vision of your heart teacher's splendid, beautiful body and being in front of your mind and just sit with them and enjoy being with them, that would be DGOS GOM. CHE BSGOM means problem solving meditation. Like somebody says, it's possible to reach a point in your spiritual evolution where you can walk into an airport bookstore, close your eyes, go to a corner, pick out a book, open the page at random, and there will be a message on the third line for you from God.

Then you're like, I don't know about that. I don't know if that really makes sense. I got to think about that.

If you take that statement and tear it down and examine it and debate it in your own mind, that's called CHE BSGOM. That's the second kind of meditation, CHE BSGOM. DGOS GOM, single-pointed meditation on a single object.

CHE BSGOM, work out a problem in your mind. Then SHAR GOM. SHAR GOM means take your mind through a preset series of thoughts and burn a new synapse for it.

You know, like, I don't know. We did yesterday in the meditation class, we did seven steps for warming up in a meditation. Then you might go through them over and over until they become part of you.

That's called SHAR GOM. A new synapse is burned in your mind. It becomes part of your character or your being.

You burn it into your being. Those are the three. He says, you got to learn to DGOS GOM what you have to DGOS GOM and you have to learn to CHE GOM what you have to CHE GOM and you got to learn to SHAR GOM what you have to SHAR GOM.

You have to learn to SNYAM LEN DU GYUR, how to put it into practice at work with your girlfriend. ZHES PA ZHIG CHUNG NA If you get to that point, TSUL RAB GANG RJE'ANG RANG GI SNYAM LEN GYI DMOS KHO DE DANG DE PHAS SO SOGS Then you'll be able to, then you'll reach a point in the Lam Rim where anything you hear will be something you can assign to the whole flow of a lifetime of spiritual practice. CHOG CHOG is a nice word.

Those of you who are learning Tibetan. CHOG CHOG, say CHOG CHOG. No, you got to do it right.

CHOG CHOG. CHOG CHOG means, I want to do it right. SA CHOG CHOG RE means it's totally ready to eat, just bite.

CHOG CHOG means totally ready. SA CHOG CHOG means totally ready to eat. DRO CHOG CHOG YIN Yeah, I'm totally ready to go.

Just let's get in the car. BYAR CHOG CHOG means totally ready to apply it to my spiritual practice. The last line here says DE YANG, JOG.

The last line here has three words. JOG, DE YANG. You should also meditate single-mindedly.

So I look at that line. I look at those three words. I'm BYAR CHOG CHOG.

I can BYAR CHOG CHOG that. I can BYAR CHOG CHOG that. Yeah, I can apply that.

Yeah, it's talking to me. Geshe Michael, you got to be more focused. He's talking to me.

That's BYAR CHOG CHOG. I'm ready at any moment to apply any three syllables from this book to my personal life. Maybe you got too many projects going on.

How are you going to do the guardian angel thing? I mean, you got to get behind. Maybe you want to JOG CHOG CHOG.

Okay, all right. That means you got to be ready on a moment's notice to apply something to your own life. You go in the store.

You catch a little bit of a conversation between two people in aisle three. You're like, they're talking to me. Okay.

Where's the oatmeal? I don't know. Anyway.

DE YANG GO DE PHYIR, BDAG GIS LAM MA RIN PO CHE SUM SHING PHAIR BZHIN NA If you want to make this point more easy to understand, we could go to a metaphor that my own dear Lama used to pull out to demonstrate, to illustrate this teaching. MI ZHIG LA BDE DANG CHOG DANG, SEMS MO SOGS GANG YANG MED NA If you're a guy who's in the middle of a famine, and there's no rice, and there's no wheat, and there's no beans, which are the three main things in Tibet, next to barley. BDE LTA BU BAR BA GANG NYE KYANG Then somebody comes up and gives you a teaspoon of...

let's say they give you a tablespoon of rice. You and your family are starving. Someone says, we're delivering aid to you.

Aid is coming. You're like, yes! Then some guy knocks on the door and says, I got the package for you.

You're like, okay, let me see. He holds out a tablespoon of rice. Got the image?

NYE KYANG, KHA YANG CHE RIN MED PA It's not worth it. There's nothing you can do with it. MED PA'I DOR BA LAS DGOS MED DOR BA LAS DGOS MED The only reasonable thing to do with it would be to toss it out.

What the hell do you want me to do with a teaspoon of rice? You wouldn't even try to eat it. You're just going, how's this going to help us?

You just throw it. LAS DGOS MED DE BZHIN DU LAM GYIS GANG SBRANG MA TZANG NA GSOS RAB BYAS LYANG GANG GI THEG DU BYAR DGOS MI SHES PAS NYAMS SU LEN MI SHES Then some people don't go through the whole instruction. They get part six.

Or they get part seven. They don't learn the flow. They don't learn all the steps.

They just get a little bit here and a little bit there. He said, just dump it. What's the use?

He's not going to be able to use it. Which gets me to a point. One day Rinpoche gave me this lecture.

We were leaning over. This is a cool thing, if you really want to know. The Dalai Lama's senior tutor is named Kyabje Ling Rinpoche.

He passed away. I forget. He came to the United States.

I was his driver for a day when I was 26. I don't know. It's 1978 now.

Then he passed away. Of course, they founded his reincarnation. At a certain age, the reincarnation comes to the home monastery, which was Ganden.

Jebun? I forget. It was Jebun.

Anyway, they are installed on the throne. They become the new incarnation. There's a big ceremony.

There was a lot of... We were in a line of cars that went from the airport to the monastery. It was like 40 miles or something.

It was a huge line of these cheap Indian ambassador cars. In those days, they only made one car in India so that you could interchange all the parts all through the country. It was a national policy.

You couldn't have other cars. If you broke down on the road, you could just go and take one out of somebody else's car. Anyway, we're in this long procession and our car breaks down.

Lati Rinpoche is in the car, very high lama from Ganden. The thing is smoking and there's water overflowing. We're all like, oh dang.

All the other cars pass us and we're not going to make it to the internment. The Indian driver gets out and he opens up the hood. All these high lamas are in the car, and me.

They all cluster around the engine. I'm like, what are you doing? You don't know anything about a car.

You never saw an engine in your whole life. Rinpoche never saw a car until he was about 40 or something? At all.

Then I'm like, he says, then they start to ask the driver, what's this thing? That's ignition. What's it do?

It starts the car. What's this thing? It's a fan.

What's it for? It makes the car cool. Then Lati Rinpoche goes like, it's a cylinder, number three.

He just understood. Then they went and stole one or got one. They replace it right there on the road.

You don't go to a garage. Then we made it to the internment. I mean, they made it.

They made me stay in the car. It was like 200 degrees in the car. They all ran and got in the front row anyway.

Why did I talk about that? What was he teaching me? I don't remember.

Oh yeah, it was Ken Rinpoche. Ken Rinpoche used to talk about it and say, if you had a car engine and you just took out two or three parts at random, would it work? Would the engine work?

You got to say no. Would it look like an engine? If you took out a couple...

Well, you can take a piston out. If you took out a couple of crucial parts from the inside and just threw them out, would the engine work? You say no.

Would it look okay? Then you say yes. He said that's the danger of a lot of different spiritual approaches or techniques is that they are missing one of the crucial parts.

It's a belief in the Tibetan tradition that to reach the goal of your spiritual journey, there are certain parts that have to be there. If one of them is missing, you will die before you get there. You won't get there.

It's just like a car with a crucial part missing. The teaching can look good. The book can be interesting.

It can be sensitive. It can have a lot of good ideas in it. But it's not complete.

It won't work. In the long run, it won't take you where you want to go. If certain parts are missing, you cannot succeed.

You will die before you get there. That's what he's saying about the teaspoon of rice. It's not enough to learn a few of the steps.

Like to be really good at meditation, but you don't know anything about impermanence. Or to be really good at emptiness, but you don't understand the seeds. Or something like that.

If one of the crucial parts is missing, you won't make it. That's what he's saying. DE YANG, GANG GI THEG PA BYAR, KHO MI SHES PA'I NYAMS SU MED MI SHES If you can't, in your mind, picture the whole flow of a lifetime of spiritual practice, what you need to do to get someplace, if you don't have a grasp on all the steps you need to get there, then your practice won't succeed.

So you have to have in your mind a general picture of where you need to go and what you need to go through to get there at the beginning. Or you won't make it. Your practice won't make it.

You'll die. You'll get old and die. And that will be the end of it.

DE DANG PHRO DANG SEMS MO SOG DE DAG SOGS SU NAS, DE GANG RIGS TZAM YOD NA, DE LA DROD PA LA GANG NYE NANG, RANG GI DE STONG DU NON CHOG If you already have a couple of big jars of rice and beans and what was the other thing? Wheat. And then someone gives you a handful of rice, what do you do?

You go open that rice jar and you throw it in and you have a little more rice. You see what I mean? So he's saying first get everything.

And then every new thing you learn from Rumi or from Book of, what's it called? Book of Miracles or something. Course in Miracles.

Or whatever you hear. We went to a Muslim service in Montreal. And then you can take some wisdom that you got from the Muslim service and you have a place to keep it.

In the whole flow of your lifetime plan for where you want to go in your life. But first you need the plan. Then you can go shopping and take a little bit out of here and take a little bit out of here and add it in the right places to your program.

But you have to have a program. NON CHOG DE BZHIN DU MED KOR GYI GANG DANG SANGS NA GSUNGS RAB NAS, GANG BCAL DE'I THEG DU BYAG CHOG CHOG YOD PA LTAR There's CHOG CHOG again. CHOG CHOG YOD PA LTAR YIN Same thing with your plan for your life's practice.

It's like the grain. If you have a plan, then if you go to a yoga class and the teacher makes some inspiring remarks before the class, you have a place to keep them. The treasure.

It's like a treasure. You can go put them in your... What do you call that?

Ladies keep a jewelry box? What do you call it? You keep all your jewelry in there.

It's usually a nice wooden box or something and you go digging around for the other half of those earrings. If you have a box, then you have some place to put what you hear in the world from everybody. You can say, what Jenny said this morning, that's a reminder to me that I need to work harder on step number three.

But you have all the steps ready in your head and you know where you're going. It's like Google Maps before you take a trip. You got some weird address, you don't just take off.

You go online and you get a... I don't know about you, I go through the whole thing in my head. I imagine all the streets and I kind of get it into my head.

Then I write it down also, but I don't trust it because I might not have time to look at it. So I have a general knowledge in my head of how to get to the new vision center from Rimrock. You need that.

Then if Ningbo says it's another two miles, I know where to fit that statement into the whole map. ,RTEN PA THAMS CAD RGYAL MED DOG PA DANG, ,YI ZHING ZHING MA, We'll go another few minutes, then I'll give you a break. ,GANG DANG ZANG NA, ,SKYE DUS GANG GIS KYANG LAM BRDOD GNYUD PAR, ,DE'I PHUN DANG, This is cute.

,JA RGANG YI ZHAG CHE GYI DE LA BYA NA, It doesn't matter if the Lam Rim you study is short or long. It should have all the car parts should be there. All the engine parts should be there.

The essential engine parts should be there. The furniture in the mansion of a wealthy nobleman and the furniture in the cell of a solitary monk are both enough. Their residence is fully furnished.

It doesn't matter which one. Got it? Each residence is fully furnished.

So you can do this 10-year Lam Rim or you can go to the Casa Hardin in Glendale where the teachers here are teaching the briefer works and you can go for a three, four day thing. And that's it. You are a monk with all the furniture you need for a small place.

But it's complete. It's enough. ,RTEN PA THAMS CAD RGYAL MED DU RTOG PA DANG, ,ZUR LA MA LUS PA DANG NA DU BYA BA LA, ,KHYAD PAR YANG DE YIN, I'm going to pose a logic question to you.

This is a typical debate question. If you grasp the first of the four greatnesses, do you automatically grasp the second? If you realize that all these teachings are internally consistent, do they necessarily strike you as personal advice for your own situation?

Good. I don't think so. I think you're correct.

What about the opposite? If everything you learn strikes you as personal advice, do you come to appreciate that all those teachings have no internal inconsistency? Good.

Yeah, that's the point you're right. We say, ,KHYAB PA GO CIG, ,TSUL KHYAB NA YANG BAR MA KHYAB, It's true this way, but it's not true that way. Got it?

If they all strike you as personal advice, they must be consistent. Because your life is one life. And they all apply to that one life.

But if you have understood that they are consistent, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have struck you as personal advice for your own situation. He's just trying to get your mind a little more flexible. And you learn in the monastery to think like that.

Does number one imply number two? Not necessarily. Does number two imply number one?

Always. Got it? That's cool.

You got that easier than I did. GSUM PA RGYAL BA'I BSGOM PA DE LAG TU GNYER PA'I PHYIR BA NA He has reached the third of the wonderful qualities of this spiritual presentation. I'll give you the name of it and then we'll take a break.

RGYAL BA'I BSGOM PA DE LAG TU GNYER PA Say RGYAL BA'I. BSGOM PA DE LAG TU GNYER PA Buddhism, I don't know, people ask me sometimes. This is a religion.

People ask me, why are you going out and teaching thousands of business people? Why don't you just have a couple of Buddhist teachings around? I've come to realize that I view Buddhism not so much as a religion, as a collection of cool ideas.

For me, it's not so much about worshiping someone or following certain rituals or things like that. For me, nowadays, in my, I think, mature thinking about Buddhism, it strikes me as a collection of extraordinary ideas that could be shared independently of the traditions which have carried it before. I don't think you have to drink butter tea and eat roasted barley flour to study these ideas.

Or keep a particular picture in your house. I don't see where it matters much anymore. In my life, I don't think it matters much.

Buddhism is really, or at least what I was taught or what you're learning, it's really just a number of car parts, engine parts. It's a bunch of beautiful, exquisite ways of seeing life and ways of understanding how things work that can bring you whatever you want. You want health?

You can have health. You want an exquisite relationship with someone? You can get it.

You want money? I made a $250 million company with no business experience. I don't know anything.

You can make things happen in your life that are extraordinary because those ideas allow you to tweak reality. They allow you to change the course of the future. You can adjust the course of the future.

You can change the future if you understand these concepts. You can save the world. You can contribute to the happiness of every person on this planet.

To me, it's a collection of ideas like that. I don't care whether you accept the Dalai Lama. I don't care.

I don't care if you think about Tibet or not. I've never been there. I don't care.

All those things don't matter. Whether you meditate with your left foot first or your right foot, all these things, I don't care. I just like to take those ideas like little candies and spread them around the world.

They help people. People become extremely happy and successful and peaceful. But to do that, you have to master those ideas.

You have to learn them. You have to hear them and then you have to mull them over and then you have to try them out in your own life because people don't listen to what you say. They listen to what you do.

You can talk all day and I am. But in the end, people will watch you and they will do what you do. People are like children.

You can't teach children. You can only be something and then they will try to be that also. How do you get into the mind of an enlightened being and pluck those fruits from their head?

How do you get into the mind of an enlightened being and into the candy store? Like loose in a candy store with a, what do you call it? White, what do you call it when you can spin?

You have carte blanche. You have a white card. You have carte blanche.

Here, here is the key to the candy store. Take what you want. See you tomorrow.

Then you are like a kid alone in the candy store and your mom said, we own the store. You can take whatever you want. How do you get into the mind of an enlightened being to pluck the things you want?

How do you get carte blanche? Learn this. Learn the lamrim.

Because there are teachings about how to enter the mind of an enlightened being and pluck what you want. Got it? There is a system, there is a method to getting into the mind of an enlightened being.

There is like a combination to the same. Then you can go in and just take what you want. The next great quality of this tradition of teaching is that it gives you the skill, the skill set to break into the vault of an enlightened being's mind, okay?

Got it? It's a beautiful idea, right? So we'll do that after the break.

Okay, well, I thought we'd do some question and answer. We have like 20 minutes. And in the afternoons, I thought to pep you up, maybe we would do some questions and answers.

If you don't have any, I'll just do more scripture. But I felt like, I don't know, sometimes a lot of beautiful things come out for everybody's sake. So anybody have a question?

And please, do you have a mic that works? Okay, please speak into the mic. This is not speaking into the mic, you see?

You hold it right up to your mouth and ask a question. Then everybody can hear. Okay, I wanted to ask it this morning during the meditation question and answer.

I was wondering if there's a scriptural definition for the present moment, because definitions are always very helpful. Okay, is there a scriptural definition of what the present moment is? One thing to repeat is that there's a teaching in the Abhidharmakosha.

You've heard the word Dharmadhatu, right? There's a teaching in the Abhidharma system which says that we are always a millisecond behind. It's like when we don't get the light from a star for 300 years or something.

The star might be gone before the light reaches the earth. It's the same with what someone says to you, right? Your ear picks it up.

The eardrum vibrates. It's transmitted to the audio nerve. It goes through your jaw.

It reaches your mind. By the time you process it, the original words are finished. You're living a moment in the past.

But it's so short a time, I don't think it really matters much. It's useful to explain certain parts of your consciousness. So that's one part of the answer.

The other part of the answer is where they get into the answer of your question about what is time or what's the definition of the present moment is treated in Madhyamika, right? Middle Way, the highest of the schools of ancient India. And the debate is, are the three times things?

Is the future and the past and the present a thing? And then you say, yes, they are an existing object, right? They are an object.

Then the question comes up of, are they unchanging or are they changing? What would you say? Are they momentary in their nature?

Anybody agree? No, I mean time is passing. Time keeps on flowing, flowing, flowing into the future.

That's before your time. That's Steve Miller. No, it changes, which means that it does something.

Does the past function? Does Lincoln's assassination affect you now? Yeah, it does.

I mean, or the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the fact that Gaddafi was murdered two weeks ago or something. These events still affect us. So according to scripture, they are functioning things.

That means they exist in the present because they affect the present. You can't take something which is gone already and say, it changed my life. If it changes your life, it means it must be there somehow to change your life.

So the higher schools recognize that past, present, and future could be considered functioning things and in a sense present, existing in the present. Because the past affects you and what's going to happen on your credit card bill is also stressing you. You see what I mean?

So it's very interesting. The higher schools say that you could see the present as including the past and future because they are functioning in the present. Then in that sense, they agree with a school called Sarvāstivādan.

So Sarvāstivādan is the particular lineage, I think it's 18 lineages of Vinaya that we follow. So Tibetan monks are all one of 18 groups of monastics that existed in ancient India and we're all Sarvāstivādan. Sarvāstivādan means they say.

Sarva means everything. Asti means is. They say everything is school.

The they say everything is school is what we are. That's where our monastic tradition has derived from. And the other schools like Neopar, like that, they have slightly different vows for monks.

So we are following a certain tradition of ancient India. Ancient Indian monasticism, which is called they say everything is. And what they say everything is, is time.

They say the past and the present and the future all exist now. So in that way, a very low school, which is an Abhidharma school, Vinaya school, they are agreeing with the higher school and the two middle schools don't agree with them. So it's a very rare thing.

Why they say the past and present and future exist now is all, it's a different reason. But it's an interesting thing. So you have to study time.

Like mind only school would say that the past doesn't exist anymore because it's gone. And the future is yet to come. Then you get into the present.

How big is the present moment? Does it have a front end and a back end? Is part of the present moment closer to yesterday and part of the present moment is closer to tomorrow?

It would have to be. Otherwise it would have no duration. If you could not divide that time into a beginning of the present moment and an end of the present moment, it could have no duration.

And then you couldn't experience it. It must have a length, however short. The present must have a length.

The present moment must have a length to it. Even if it's tiny. Because there must be a part of it which is closer to yesterday and a part of it which is closer to tomorrow.

If it didn't have that and you closed it to a single point, it would have no duration and you couldn't perceive it. You wouldn't feel time because it would be no length. In the highest schools, you can examine time.

If you want a definition of time, check this out. Present moment has to be a point in time. A point is a mathematical idea.

It has no reality. There cannot be a point observable because you couldn't... It would never be a point.

It would always be a stick because it would have to have a beginning and an end. So, it would be a point that was squished out into an oval. You see what I mean?

So, you cannot be perceiving present moment in Majjhimika. In the highest school, it's not possible that you are perceiving a present moment because it would have to have duration and then part of it would be in the past or the future. Yeah, it's the same thing.

There's no such thing as a present moment. There cannot be such a thing. If it had no duration, you couldn't perceive it.

If it had duration, part of it would be in the past or the future. It's not possible that you are perceiving a present moment. But you are.

So, it can't have an external reality. It must be coming from your mind. That's another proof for karma.

It's just another proof for karma. What you perceive as a present moment is coming from you and there's no present moment out there. So, in the highest school, the definition of time would be anything your karmic seeds convince you is time.

Okay? No problem? Next question.

By the way, I'm not just making fun. I'm not just making fun. It's a very serious question.

It's a very serious question. By the way, the fact that time is coming from your karmic seeds. And you know that time can be stretched, right?

Time spent at the dentist and time spent kissing your girlfriend have much different duration. So, I'm not just making fun. I mean, it's a serious question.

Time is... Where are you going? Malleable.

It can be longer or shorter. You can experience time as longer or shorter because it's coming from your own mind. Why is it relevant to us?

Why do we spend time thinking about the nature of time? If you want to be truly helpful to people, they say if you wanted to be a supreme physician. Who's a supreme physician?

It's like Lord Buddha, okay? Why? If you walked into a doctor's office and they could see forward into the future and see which medicine cured you and look back in time and see which candy bar you ate six years ago that caused you to be sick right now, then that would be a perfect doctor.

They wouldn't be guessing about what hurt you or what caused your current kidney stone or something. They would see in the past what you ate that caused it and they would see into the future of what would help. If time exists around us, then we couldn't change it.

If time is malleable or... What do you call it? If time can be longer or shorter depending on who you're with, that's an indication that it's coming from you.

And that it doesn't have an external reality. Given that information, that time is coming from you, you could change how you perceive time and you could see the past and the future. You could come to see the past and the future if you learn to meditate well.

And you can. It's a wonderful thing. It's an amazing thing.

You see, then the limits are... I'm not talking tomorrow. I'm talking 500 years, 1,000 years out.

If you could sit in the Montelucia hotel's refrigerator and see 500 years out, wouldn't it be an extraordinary experience? That would convert you to whatever we're doing. And it does.

Because that time is coming from you. Therefore, you can perceive. You can have a vision of what's happening in 500 years.

And then how do you relate to a person who is acting on a 500-year lead time? How do their actions look to you with a half a millisecond lead time? You see, you're stuck in a closet.

They're walking on the Gobi Plateau. They have a completely different set of values and reasons for doing what they do as they are seeing 500 years ahead or 1,000 years ahead. So you have to be careful with your own teacher or whoever you're...

You have to be careful judging what they do and why they do things. Because they may be acting on a much different set of values based not on any of the countries that exist right now, for example. Another question?

[Говорящий 2] (1:18:55 - 1:19:17)
So since I was a child in meditation, I've always been taught to let thoughts come and then release them. And this morning in step three of our meditation, we talked about trolling our thoughts. Can you reconcile that or help me understand?

[Говорящий 1] (1:19:17 - 1:23:26)
Yeah, okay. That's this. A lot of schools of meditation which are being taught in the world today, and I've been trained in them, many years ago in Burma from Burmese master.

Okay, so in the southern countries, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, ujjumu, right? Watching your breath. And the present moment meditation.

They were very popular. What I'm trying to say is the instructions weren't complete when they went to those countries. Buddhism in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka is very late.

It's only 300 years old in Thailand, for example. It's only in the 1700s that Buddhism was translated into Thai language. And I helped with the computerization of it at Mahidol University in Bangkok, so I know.

And it was partial. They only got partial. So there have developed schools of meditation which only do those two meditations.

You watch your thoughts and you let them go and you don't try to control them. That's a preliminary. That's like, what do you call it?

Samsaya, Surya Namaskar, right? It's just a warm-up to the main thing, you see? You eventually have to learn to modify your thoughts because right now they are random.

You have to learn to direct your thoughts. So it's important and it is a traditional meditation to watch your thoughts and not mess around with them. And then later you are trained further to...

I prefer not to call it controlling your thoughts. I would say to select an object of meditation consciously which will have a major effect on your consciousness. You see?

You select certain objects which when placed before the mirror of your mind change that mirror. You see? Like you put an object in front of your mind and then the mind reflects it like a mirror.

You see? So after we observe the mind for a while then we select an object which is highly... what do you call it?

What do you call a liquid which is highly volatile? You pick a volatile object to place it before the mirror of the mind to be reflected in the mind because it gets embedded in the mind. So you select certain objects of high spiritual power and you learn to focus the mind on those.

And that involves directing the random thoughts. You see? To bring the mind to that object you have to learn to corral your thoughts towards that object.

So it's not like an exercise in wrestling with your mind. It's an exercise. You don't really fight them and block them.

You kind of ride them. And you kind of say, wouldn't you like to think about stopping hunger in the world? And then you take those random thoughts and you...

on a... what do you call it? On an ellipsis you coax them towards thoughts that are uplifting and important thoughts.

And then your mind changes. The nature of your mind changes. So that's an initial step which came to be a whole tradition because the whole instructions didn't get to those countries.

Okay. Especially the breathing meditation. It came to be a whole story in itself but it was only the warming up the car.

It wasn't going anywhere. Okay? So, yeah.

Okay. One more from the back and then we have to stop.

[Говорящий 2] (1:23:28 - 1:23:38)
You've been speaking about Kadampa for the last few days and I'm wondering if there's a relation between that and something that I've heard you speak in the past about which is kam.

[Говорящий 1] (1:23:39 - 1:23:39)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (1:23:40 - 1:23:50)
And I want to know if they happen at the same time or if the experience of Kadampa kind of is a prelude to discovering the kam.

[Говорящий 1] (1:23:51 - 1:28:41)
Yeah, okay. So there's a Tibetan idea called kam. And kam means your hidden talent.

I always, when I hear the word kam, I think of a vein of silver or gold coursing through a large boulder. So it's like inside the boulder. Like those geode things, right?

Like on the outside you don't see anything and then you break it open and there's all these crystals inside. So kam is like that. So every person has inside of them from their past lives certain talents, hidden talents and great mastery of certain things.

I met a guy in Tokyo. He's from Sweden. He's a very beautiful man.

We're the same age. He's 50 something. And then we were kind of bonding because we realized we were born within a month of each other.

And then I said, well, what's your story? How'd you get to Tokyo? Why do you live in Tokyo?

And he said, well, I was the head of American Airlines sales in New York for 20 years. In the whole United States he was the manager. So I said, okay, you've had a corporate life.

I can appreciate that. And then I said, but how did you get to Tokyo? What's that got to do with Tokyo?

And he was kind of shy. And then he said, well, from the time that I was 17, I've been a Japanese sword master. And I'm like, whoa.

And then I found out he's really pretty well known at it. And he cracks people's heads open with swords and stuff. And his whole life, 40 years, he's been a sword master.

So he found his calm. That would be calm. Calm means, for some reason in Sweden he bumped into a Japanese sword fighting teacher when he was 17.

And he's been doing it ever since. Very well, extremely good at it. And he found his calm.

He bumped into his calm. And we all have calms like that inside of us. And part of the purpose of this teaching and the retreat is to try to find your Japanese sword master calm that you don't know about.

You feel sort of dissatisfied sometimes. Like, I think there's something great in my life that I was supposed to do. I'd like to be like that guy, to find that special thing that he's really good at.

And that's the purpose of these teachings. We're going to try to help you find it. It may be something really miraculous and wonderful.

So that's calm. And then kadampa is a little bit different. Kadampa means stuff happens to you.

Incoming missiles. What do you call it? What do they call it in the military?

They just call it incoming. They say incoming and you duck and you hold your head. They say incoming means a missile, artillery is coming down on you.

And you jump and you hide under something. So incoming means, stuff is incoming at you, right? Stuff comes to you.

People say things. You see things on the internet. You read things on the headlines.

You pick up a book in a bookstore and you see something, right? The experience of that striking you as personal advice from a divine source is kadampa. So I think we can do that both ways, think.

If you have kadampa, do you have calm? You have a calm for that. So you can say that a kadampa is one calm, right?

If you have calm, do you have kadampa? Not necessarily. If you're a Japanese sword master, it's not necessarily the case that when you're on the subway and see a sign in Japanese, it strikes you as personal spiritual advice.

Got it? So you can always play that game with two ideas to see if they are khyapa go tsung. We call khyapa go tsung in Tibetan.

Does the khyapa go both ways? Is it true that if it's a calm, is it necessarily a kadampa? No.

If it's a kadampa, is it necessarily a calm? Yes. Because if that happens to you, you must have a calm for it.

Got it? It may not be your only calm. If the sword master gets personal advice, he has two calms.

Got it? All right. Let's do a mandala.

Darci, you ready?