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

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 37:36)
Okay, let's start. So, we're planning, right? We're on a 10-year journey through an important classic of Buddhism.

I think it's the best book ever written. And I love books. Books are everything for me.

And it's a book which gives step-by-step instructions on how to become enlightened. But I think that's like on a macro-cosmic level. On a micro-cosmic level, our own lives, right?

This text lists, it's called Lam Rim, which means a series of steps on the path. Rim means steps and lam means path. And on a micro-cosmic level of your own life, each of our lives, you can relate those steps to achieving anything you want in this life.

I think people, we travel the world constantly. We hear the issues of thousands of people every year. We talk to them personally in every country you can imagine.

And basically people's needs boil down to two things. Some people have a problem in their life, an issue that they're trying to get through. And then some people have a goal in their life, something they want to achieve.

Some people have both. But either you're having maybe a personal problem right now or you have something in your life that you want to achieve. It could be at work.

It could be financially. It could be with your health. It could be with your marriage or your relationship.

It could be many things, okay? You can take these steps to the path and you can kadampa. So we talked about an idea called kadampa.

Kadampa means if it's a really good spiritual book, you can open it up anywhere and read a sentence and suddenly you will find an application to your personal problem or your personal goal at that moment, right? So we could consider this whole 10-year teaching to be learning a methodology that you can apply every day of your life to the problems of your life and to the things you would like your life to be. Then we chose something that was sort of thematic to where we are in the text.

And we decided in these 10 days of teaching and then the retreat to follow. So this is the first half. Then there's a 10-day retreat which will happen in January.

Then we felt that what was appropriate in the text at this time as a theme was finding passion in your life, excitement in your life. Going back to the intensity of life and emotions and perceptions of color and sounds and music and the touch of people when you were 17 or 16, right? Could you go back to the excitement or the depth or the passion that you had or the beauty you saw in the world when you were just starting your journey in life and you had such great hopes and such great dreams and such wonderful experiences?

Because the body and the mind, the karmic seeds for body and mind in many people peak around the age of 16, 17, from your past life. Then if you're not working on new seeds or you don't know how to work on new seeds, it starts to go down from there. You have your first death in your family and then you have your first breakup with a serious partner and then you have your first serious health problem and maybe your country gets into a war or something and you begin to, life begins to wear you down.

The seeds from your past life begin to wear out which causes all those things I mentioned. So what we thought we would do in this series of teachings, these 10 days and the 10 days in retreat, is answer the question, how would you plant new seeds to go back to the level of intensity? What do we call it this morning?

Tantalizing. Yeah, I like that word. Life is tantalizing when you're in like a sophomore in high school or junior in high school.

I know you have your crises. We said it was mostly pimples. But you have a sort of, there's a beauty of life at that age.

And that's because the karmic seeds from your past life have peaked out and then they start to wear out from there. So could you at age 30, 40 or 50 or more, could you learn to plant a new supply of seeds that would bring you that intensity of life within six months or so back at the age of 30 or 40 or 50? In this tradition, spiritual tradition, it's quite possible.

You just need to know how. And then you just do it and it changes. Your life changes.

And then almost unnoticed, you go back to the intensity you had when you were quite young and you have the kind of energy that you had. So the goal of this series of teachings is to recover that energy, to replant the seeds consciously. Because the seeds that sprouted when you were 16, you didn't know about them.

You just enjoyed them. They were planted by Joe. Do you know who Joe is?

I have a beautiful friend named Salim in Perth. And one day I was praising him. I said, you're so calm and you're so intelligent.

And he's an architect and he's a Buddhist teacher and he builds compassionate nursing homes where the grandkids get all involved in running the nursing home. And it's beautiful. I said, you're so amazing.

He said, Geshe-la, it's not me, it's Joe. I thought he was talking maybe about some teacher he had in his life. I said, of course I started to get jealous of Joe.

Then I'm like, who is this Joe? I have to explain to him, he doesn't know as much as me. And then he said, no, Joe is my past life, Geshe-la.

I was Joe in my past life. So I can't take credit for anything. I'm just riding on his seeds.

And that's what happens when you're 16 or 17. You have these beautiful experiences. You don't know why seeds are ripening from your past life.

And then they wear out and you don't know why they wear out either. And you start to encounter life's pains and tribulations. And life starts to wear you down.

So what we propose in this series of teachings is that if we were well trained, we could reverse the process. We could plant seeds, this time consciously and purposely, that would bring our excitement back in our career or back into our relationships. Then nothing that you're doing now that doesn't excite you is unexcitable.

Everything can be changed. You can change the seeds for everything in your life now and it can all become tantalizing. So we went through the beginnings of the process of the formal training on how to plant seeds like that.

We're now talking about four qualities of those instructions. The instructions that you need to bring back the passion in your life have four great qualities. There are three sets of four here.

There are four steps you need to do to plant those seeds. We are covering that in the morning at 9.30 in the meditation classes. And in those classes, we are covering the four ways to plant a seed by going through four different meditations that you can use to plant those seeds.

To learn in meditation how to plant a seed in four steps that will bring back the passion to your life and your relationship. Then in this class, in the evening class, at this point we are covering four qualities of those instructions. We are talking about four qualities of those instructions so that you can appreciate how authentic they are and why they work.

It's a sales job. We're talking about four qualities, the four instructions that you get in the morning that make them worthy of your attention and your belief. What's really sad is that the instructions are available.

They haven't been available in America or in North America or South America. They haven't been available. And then, I don't know, they got here 10, 20 years ago because of Tibet was lost.

All these teachings were forced out of Tibet down into India and then they started to spread. They weren't available before. Now they're available.

Now you can get them if you know where to look. But then there's this thing like some people don't try them. Like it's for me, suppose all this stuff that I'm talking about works.

I'm not asking you to believe it, but just suppose. In Tibetan logic they call it, do you know Nyingpo? Suppose it all works.

TAPA TASUM GYI RIG PA Say TAPA TASUM GYI RIG PA It's a very strange logic and debate word. It means suppose that it were true. It means take a hypothetical case.

Suppose it works. Suppose what I'm describing works. Suppose anybody in this room, if they came to the morning meditations and if they listened carefully in the class, could within six weeks or eight weeks have all the passion they had when they were 16 and life could be as tantalizing as it was.

Suppose it's true. I'm just saying TAPA TASUM GYI RIG PA. Suppose.

I'm not saying it's true. Suppose it's true. And suppose you know it's true and suppose you go around the world teaching that.

Then how does it feel when you see somebody who doesn't try it? How does it feel when you see someone who doesn't try it? And they're headed for another 30 years of a dry relationship.

Or they're headed for another 30 years in a company that they don't really like. And you see them walk out the door and you know that's the way it's going to be. It breaks your heart.

It's heartbreaking. So try. Listen.

And KA DAM PA. Apply it to your life. Try it.

If you don't, for me, it just makes me really sad. I sit at home sometimes and I feel really sad. People could have this thing and they didn't try it.

And then I meet them two years later and they still look dry and tired of life. And I feel like somehow I failed or maybe I should have done a striptease or something to get their attention. Maybe I should have done something more to get their attention.

I go home and I think, maybe I should have stood on my head and taught her. I don't know. So anyway, try it.

Then this text at this point in our flow through the text is describing four reasons why it might work. The first reason was BSTAN PA THAMS CAD RGYAL MED PA'I RTOG PA BSTAN PA THAMS CAD RGYAL MED PA'I RTOG PA which means once you study the methods of planting the seeds to renew the excitement in your life and someone explains them to you carefully, you come to a realization that it's all perfectly consistent. Like people, even people who don't like me or people who don't like these teachings, they still come up to me and say, it's consistent.

Everything you say fits everything else you say. I don't believe your whole system. But you are consistent.

And it is. It's all consistent. What's consistent?

We say, you know the old example, right? Where is that? Anybody got a pen?

Not the pen you're writing with. I don't want to be responsible for the lineage being broken because you didn't write your notes. I'll go through the whole system in five minutes.

25 years reduced to five minutes. It's kind of nice. So what's this thing?

It's a pen. If a dog comes in here, they'll see it as a chew toy. By the way, once you've heard it 3,000 times, just learn how to teach it.

Observe how to teach it. Observe how it flows. Because you can do it in not such a good flow and it's not as convincing.

Who's right, the dog or the person? Both are right. Now, if I put the thing here and all the dogs leave the room and all the humans leave the room.

By the way, if you're teaching this, it's important to ask a question now. It's important to say, which one is it? Don't say what is it or like that.

Keep them on this dichotomy. Which one is it when the dogs and the humans leave the room? Is it something to chew or is it a pen?

Then everybody in the audience, even if you're in Malaysia for the first time and you never met a Malaysian in your whole life and there's a big group of them and you ask that question, everybody goes like this. I don't know the Malaysian word for nothing but they say it. Everybody gets it.

At that time, it's nothing. The Buddhist idea of emptiness is nothing more than that. Forget everything you ever heard.

It's not some kind of black hole or illusory thing or nothing matters or watch your thoughts as they flow off into space or anything like that. It just means, by itself, this object is like a white movie screen until someone comes in the room. If a human comes in the room, it returns to being a pen.

If a dog comes in, it returns to being a... So then the next question you ask people is, I'm not going to ask you because you're all experienced, but I ask them to raise their hand just to make sure they're awake. Then I say, show me with your hand, is the pen, if you see a pen, is it coming from you or is it coming from the pen?

I just ask them to go, is it coming from you or is it coming from the pen? Then 30% of people sit there like... And I go...

And they go... And I'm like, no, no, which one? And they go...

I don't know how to do that better. Then most people will say, oh, it's coming from me. I understand it's flowing from me.

I understand it must be coming from me. If the dog sees something different, the pen cannot be coming from the pen because if the pen were coming from the pen, the dog would see a pen. That's a no-brainer.

Then you go into this thing, the reason you see a pen is not because you can close your eyes and you wish it was a pen because that doesn't work. Nobody in the world ever had a problem that they didn't wish wasn't there. It's coming from your mind, but it's not just what you want.

There's a difference between it's coming from your mind and it's whatever you want it to be. I'm not selling positive thinking. Positive thinking doesn't work when you have a really bad thing going on, as you know.

Maybe it will improve it slightly, but why bother? Why not just stop the bad thing? Then you don't have to positive think about it.

Really, that's my thing. Then you say, okay, it's not coming from your imagination. It's coming from seeds in your mind.

How do you plant the seeds in your mind? Oh, well, if you want a seed for a pen in your mind, you can only plant a seed with another person. You need a field in which to plant your seed.

The field for planting mental seeds must be another living being. Normally a person, doesn't have to be, but then if you want to plant a pen seed, you must offer a pen to someone else who needs a pen. Then when you put it in their hand and you release your grip on the object, that plants a seed in your mind because you are witnessing your act.

You are aware of your act and that plants a seed in your subconscious. You are watching your own hand through the lens, through the glass of your eyes. Your mind records the event and that plants a seed.

I haven't ever, in talking to thousands of people, even this year, talking to thousands of people, I haven't had a single person tell me that was not acceptable to them. In thousands of people, I haven't had anyone object ever to this, in any country, South America, North America, Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, nobody. Not one person.

Then I say, they feel comfortable with that. Then I say, so if you want money, then just plant a seed for money. How would you plant a seed for money?

They say, well, I would have to give money. I say, okay, if you wanted a better relationship, what would you have to do? Help lonely people.

If you wanted to solve a health problem, help someone who's sick. Nobody has any problem with that because the whole presentation is internally consistent. That's what I want you to appreciate.

I just summarized the whole Lamrim. It's airtight. There's no contradiction in anything I've said.

Anybody in the world, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, Muslim, we taught a lot of Muslims this year in Indonesia and in Canada. They didn't have any problem with that. We taught a lot of communists.

They're like, that sounds good to me. We taught French Catholics. It doesn't matter.

We're in Israel a lot. People there, they don't have a problem with it. Nobody has a problem with it because it's internally consistent.

That's the first high quality of this teaching. It's a beautiful system because it all makes sense. When we say internally consistent, really what we're saying is it makes sense.

You can say, I don't want to try it or I'm lazy or I don't want to be happy. That's your business. I don't want money.

I don't want a relationship. I want to continue to be bored in my job for the rest of my natural life. I like being in a relationship which is dry and worn out.

That's your ride. But the system is consistent. Second, step number two, kadampa sharwa.

Once you learn the system, then every part of the system is immediately applicable to your immediate life. If you have a good heart, if you are helping others, if you are kind to others, if you take care of others, and then someone teaches you any small part of this system, it will strike you as something reasonable and beautiful. And then we said that that quality, number two, kadampa sharwa, it might actually expand in your life to where whatever your mother says on any given day strikes you as profound spiritual advice.

Why? Take a pen with you when you teach. Teach them the pen thing first.

And then anytime the audience is confused, you can just hold up the pen. Why is it that at a certain advanced point in your spiritual journey, anything your mother says might strike you as advice from a divine being? Because it's coming from you.

And if you've been good, then you will hear beautiful things, not just in a Buddhist book, but on the street and in the supermarket and on the radio, in the songs that you hear. You will get messages constantly throughout your life. By the way, and that's the first step of tantra.

You want to know what tantra is? It's just that. It's nothing more than that.

Song comes on the radio, you've been planting good seeds, and suddenly it's Chakrasamvara talking to you. And it's real. It's for real.

And you keep bumping into angels. I just blew the whole secrecy thing. Don't tell anybody.

You see, it's not like you get an empowerment and you suddenly get this stuff. You're so good that you're so nice to other people that there comes a point in your life when everything you meet is beautiful. That's all.

And then you slide into a tantric paradise. Just like that. I don't think you need somebody to bang you on the head and pour water on your nose.

You can slide into... There's people you can bang on the head with a Vajra and pour holy water on them and they still won't get it for 16 lifetimes. And then there's other people who just they just try to do those things, be kind to others, plant good seeds.

And then they slide into a tantric practice, sort of unnoticed. And then everyone around them is saying everybody around them is like some beautiful, exquisite being. And they're in tantra.

And then the other people are not. Got it? Maybe that's the secret part, that those people who get empowerment don't get it and those who don't do get it?

I don't know. Anyway, so that was the second quality. First quality, this explanation about the pen is completely consistent.

Nobody in the world has... Nobody has ever objected to it that I can recall out of thousands and thousands of people. If you present it skillfully and clearly and if you understand it clearly and you simplify it to human terms, there's no human being in the world who's going to have a big problem with it.

Secondly, if your heart is pure, you will find these advices everywhere. You will hear it everywhere. That's Kadampa Shala.

We are now to the third quality, which means, RGYAL BA'I GOM PA DE LAG TU NYED PA Say, RGYAL BA'I GOM PA DE LAG TU NYED PA It means, if you receive this training, if you receive this training, if you receive a good explanation of the pen, you can open any one of 200,000 Buddhist books on this planet. And you will understand immediately what they're talking about. You can crack the secrets of the enlightened ones.

DE LAG means, what's DE LAM? Path of Bliss. But DE can also mean easy.

Easy as pie, they say. As a piece of cake, sorry. Do we say easy as pie?

I don't know, my mind is on pies and cakes. As usual. Anyway, piece of cake.

If you get this training properly, which you just did and it took five minutes, really, it doesn't take more than that. Somebody asked me to come to their city and could I teach something more complicated? And I'm like, wow.

I don't know, I guess I could, but why? So anyway, step number three is once you have this foundation of the pen thing, you can grasp any Buddhist teaching and you can understand the highest ideas of all the enlightened beings. Easily.

DE LAG. So here we go. SUMBA RGYAL BA'I BSGOM PA DE LAG TU NYES PAS CHE BA NI So he repeated those words.

The third quality of these instructions is that you will easily, once you have the framework, which I just gave you, which was a short long rim, maybe I beat Tsongkhapa. He did 14 verses, I just did the pen. Sorry.

Once you get the structure, then any deep idea you read about or someone teaches you, you will grasp it easily. Why? Anytime a student stumps you on something, you can just say, close your eyes and look wise and go, hmm, and say, it's all in the seeds.

Because you'll be right. Okay. RGYAL BA'I DKA' DANG GONG BRAL NAM NGAR ZHUGS PA BZHIN DANG SNGAGS KYI CHOG YIN MED The highest form of teachings in this planet are those of enlightened beings.

It doesn't have to be what we call Buddhism. It could be what we call Christianity. It doesn't matter.

Anything an enlightened being has taught. DE DAG GIS GCOD BYAR RGYAL BA'I GOM PA THAR TUG ZHUGS KYANG LAM MED MED NGAG BYANG CHUB LAM GYUR RIM PA DI LTA BU LA BSTAN PAR ZHUNG CHEN PO DE DAG LA BSTAN NAS RGYAL BA'I GOM PA THAR THAR TUG GNAS PAS Okay, this is beautiful. I want to draw your attention and maybe Nyingpo you can...

Are you blocking things? Can you block LAM MED MED NGAG? ZHUGS KYANG LAM MED MED NGAG in that line?

LAM MED MED NGAG. Has he got it blocked out? BALAMI?

BALAMI? Okay. LAM MED MED NGAG.

He does a tricky thing here that I want you to appreciate because it's on your homework. He says, if you go through this train of thought, if a person guides you, if a teacher guides you through this train of thought, which is pretty much just a pen thing, if someone guides you through that train of thought, because of the Lama's guidance, because of the Lama's guidance, you will be able to understand any deep teaching you encounter. Because of your Lama's guiding you through the thought process of the pen, you will be able to understand any deep concept that you encounter in hundreds of thousands of Buddhist teachings.

And they are deep. Yesterday, I don't know about you, I went home with a smashing headache. I didn't sleep at all.

We all were grumpy in the car. We kind of agreed it was too much. I mean, it was beautiful, but it was a little too much.

Maybe we should have had a break, I think. So anyway, if you've done the pen thing, you can sit through a class like that. You can get tired from sitting so long, but you understand everything.

You understand the basic point of everything. Which was what? Yesterday it was, what's nirvana?

The end of your negative emotions forever. How does understanding emptiness help you reach that? Is understanding emptiness necessary for a person to end their negative emotions?

Yes. Why? If your husband says something unkind to you, if you understand emptiness, then you're totally sensitized to the fact that what you hear is coming, right?

The pen thing, we already covered it. It's coming from you. You were unkind to someone a month ago.

You planted a seed for that. And now you hear your husband saying something unkind. Is it possible to be angry at a person who's saying something unkind when you understand that it's only coming from your deeds?

It's not possible to be angry at them. Maybe you could be angry at yourself. You could probably be disappointed in yourself.

I don't think angry. Nobody yells at themselves, mostly. You could look at yourself in the mirror and say, why did you mess up?

But you couldn't be angry. You see? That's how understanding your husband could get you to nirvana.

You wouldn't be angry anymore. You couldn't be angry. The more you understand seeds, the less capacity you have for a negative emotion.

And eventually that pushes you into what we call nirvana, which is the end of your negative emotions forever. It's not like they can come back. That's different from anger management.

There are anger management techniques. Understand that anger is bad for your stomach and your heart. Understand that anger is not productive.

Understand that anger hurts your children. Or something like that. They won't stop your anger.

They can block it for a while. They can suppress it. But they don't tear out the root of the anger.

The root of the anger comes from misunderstanding why your husband is saying those things. If you understood why they're saying those things, you couldn't be angry with them. That's different than anger management.

That's the end of all anger. It's the impossibility to be angry. So if you get those instructions from your Lama, he's doing a clever thing here.

He did a clever thing. He said, LAM MED MED NGA. He didn't say, BYANG CHUB LAM GYI RIM PA, which is the next words up there.

Are they? BYANG CHUB LAM GYI RIM PA He didn't say the teachings on the steps of the path will allow you to crack any deep idea you ever come across. Got it?

He didn't say that. He said, the teachings on the steps of the path granted by your heart teacher will allow you to crack any idea you come across. Got it?

It's very interesting. By the way, I'm not just talking spiritual ideas. If you understood seeds well, then when the gentleman gave the beautiful presentation today from the solar company, to me it was like candy.

It was beautiful. It was so beautiful. It was fast.

It was succinct. It was comprehensive. It was well thought out.

I learned a lot. He packed the whole hour. He used the whole hour.

And then he took questions and did a beautiful job with the questions. If you understand seeds, then even just sitting in on a business discussion of solar energy, you just get it. You get everything because you understand the seeds as they were presented to you by your heart teacher.

Why did he throw in that last line? Because that's what really makes it happen. That's what plants the real seeds.

You can read a book on the steps of the path. You can go to Amazon and buy a couple of books on the Lam Rim. You can get them.

You can buy them. You can read them. It's not going to work.

It's not the information. It's how the information is given to you as a blessing from your teacher. It's not the list of information that makes it happen, that allows you to crack the deep thought in any scripture.

It's your Lama's blessing. It's your heart teacher's blessing. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful that he snuck that in. It's so wise. Who snuck that in?

You snuck that in. You made the pen and you made that last line. Congratulations.

You're very good. You're very wise. ,RGYAL BA'I BSGOM PA THAR TUG, ,GNYEN PAR MI NUS LA, THAR TUG means...

We're going to have THAR TUG the next time we get together about meditation. What is THAR TUG? ,ZHI'I SANG PA GYUR BA THAR TUG, The end or the conclusion of a full karmic deed, a full karma, not just a karma, a full karma, needs four steps.

The last one is called THAR TUG. But here you see the word used as a vocabulary word. It's nice.

It's very convenient. It's almost as if it were planned that THAR TUG has come just before you learn THAR TUG. Tartuk is the fourth meditation you're going to learn.

We got to the third one today, right? Tartuk is the fourth. Here it is in the book.

Do you have it blocked out?

[Говорящий 2] (37:38 - 37:39)
Yeah, okay.

[Говорящий 1] (37:40 - 48:34)
So Tartuk means, unless you are granted the training on the seeds, through your Lama's kindness, through your heart teacher's kindness, you will never understand the Tartuk idea of the Buddhas. Which means the final or the ultimate, right? You won't be able to crack the highest ideas of the spiritual path without your heart teacher's blessing.

By the way, the minute I talk about heart teacher, I feel two reactions in the room. I have this instinct where I kind of feel reactions in a room. One is the people who have heart teachers are smiling in their heart.

And then people who don't have heart teachers are sort of feeling left out. Or like, how do I get one of those? And then I just told you how to answer any question.

Which is, yeah, plant the seeds, okay? What would be the seeds to find a heart teacher? Well, a heart teacher is someone who will take care of you unconditionally for your whole life and beyond, right?

So maybe we have to give care to somebody else unconditionally. I had a spiritual breakthrough this morning. We did a tonglen meditation, right?

I've done thousands of tonglen meditations, okay? Then today it just struck me that maybe we should meditate on going to Starbucks with the other person, rather than, I'm an invisible being and I'm in your bedroom and I hope you're not undressing. Okay, that's how we usually do tonglen.

But it just occurred to me today, how about we do it, I'm taking the person to Starbucks, we're buying a drink, we're sitting down with our coffees, our hot chocolates, and I'm listening to their problems and I'm trying to help them. And we did the tonglen that way this morning. And somewhere about halfway through, I actually started to think of someone that I would like to take to Starbucks to help.

And that might be the first time. I mean, that it really came to me, yeah, I could take this person to Starbucks. And then I'm like, duh, how many tonglens have you done?

Now here's the first one where you actually made a plan. And I imagine that if you fantasized about taking a certain person to Starbucks over and over, that it would probably happen because that's what happens in high school when you fantasize about a date. Sooner or later, you ask the person.

Okay, so I'm thinking, that's a nice tonglen. Sooner or later, you will ask the person, right? Okay.

Okay, nuna, without doing that, you can't crack the high ideas. Oh, so that's how you find a heart lama, right? You would be there unconditionally for someone because that's what heart lamas are, okay?

All right, and you could plant the seed that way if you haven't found one. It's not a question of going to India and getting diarrhea and looking through dusty towns for somebody. I did that.

That's not how it works. When I came home, I found them. ,GAL TE NYE DU CHUG KYANG, ,DU YON RIN PO DANG, ,RGA TSEG SHIN DU CHE BA LA LTOS DGOS, Even if you were able to somehow figure out the higher ideas of a spiritual path without, what?

Your heart teachers teaching you the pen, okay? It's two things really, right? Your heart teacher teaching you the pen, right?

Then, YON RIN PO, it would take a long time. RGA TSEG SHIN DU CHE BA and a lot of hassle to try to do it off the web or something, okay? Take you a long time.

It's like trying to learn a musical instrument off the web. I'm trying, okay? I bought a pedal steel guitar because there's a song I want to play called, Kind Woman because, and I already bought the cowboy outfit.

No, and I keep wanting to wear it. But I can't learn the song because it's like, I said, I'll just buy a steel guitar and I'll figure it out. Then it came in the box and I got this little bar thing and I'm like, it just sounds like cats getting killed And then I'm like, dang, you know.

Then I broke down, I said, I'll YouTube it, you know. If Will Duncan can build his cabin off of YouTube, you know, I can play steel guitar off of YouTube, you know. And then I get to all these YouTube things and they're going like, oh, and I'm like, yeah, but what are you doing?

I mean, show the guy's hands. And it didn't work, okay. You need a person.

It looks like you need a person. I'm still working on it. Okay, Shinducharya Lathunga, what he's saying is that it's a lot more work if you try to do it off of YouTube than if you find a qualified teacher, okay, a hard teacher.

,LAM RIM DI LA BSTAN NAS, ,ZHUNG CHEN PO DE DAG LAS, ,GSUNGS PA'I RGYAL BA'I BSGOM PA, ,GA TSEG MED PAR, If you learn the pen thing, the steps of the path, then you go to the great classics, right? Like what we covered yesterday, right? Easy, piece of cake, okay?

Piece of cake. GOM PA, GA TSEG MED PAR means without a big hassle. DE LAG TU means easily.

NYE BAR GYUR RO means you will find the deeper ideas and you will grasp them without a big hassle if you have a heart Lama who's involved, right? It doesn't have to be like a heart Lama who's standing there and reading each word to you in the Sanskrit, right? It's that you have their blessing, right?

Maybe you cook a meal for them, right? And you get a blessing by serving them. And then you open up a book and you understand it, okay?

It doesn't have to be formal instruction in an Asian language, okay? It's the blessing of whoever you consider your heart teacher. And they don't have to be some Lama or something like that, okay?

It could be young, old, could be your mother, could be your sister, could be your high school girlfriend, okay? Doesn't matter. If you have that relationship and you serve them and then you can pick this up and understand it, okay?

WOD DE DAG WANG NA DE DAG GIS RGYAL BA'I BSGOM PA DE DAG GANG YIN NYAM NA This is a beautiful, he threw in something, okay? He's kind of cheating. He says, if it's true that you can understand the highest ideas of all the enlightened beings whoever live simply by your heart Lama's blessing, right?

Well, what are those ideas? That's sort of what you do in a debate when you're stuck. You change the subject, okay?

So he's supposed to be talking about how easy it is to grasp the highest ideas of the enlightened beings. But then he throws in a question right here. He says, WON NA.

WON NA means, WON NA is what it sounds like. WON NA, well then, what would those ideas be anyway? You know, like now he can say anything, okay?

Well, what would be the highest ideas of the enlightened beings? Well, let me tell you about that. Okay, then he goes off on a tangent.

BDAG GIS RGYAL BYO LAMA RINPO CHE My own highest of spiritual guides and shelters of ultimate reality, meaning his own precious Rinpoche Lama, his own teacher. He's my teacher said, my heart teacher, who's a BDAG PO BYAMS PA THON DUG, okay? BDAG PO BYAMS PA THON DUG SKYES BU GSUM GYI LAM CI DANG SKYES PAR LAM GYIS TSO'O RNAM GSUM LA BYAS DGOS GSUNGS The teachings meant for people of three varying capacities, which could be called in short, if you wanted to summarize all of them, you could call it, SKYES PAR means most especially LAM GYIS TSO'O RNAM GSUM LAM TSO RNAM GSUM Say LAM, TSO, RNAM, GSUM, okay?

I'm learning Chinese from a beautiful scholar of Chinese from Shanghai, and we're exchanging wisdoms. I get half an hour wisdom, then Liang gets half an hour wisdom, and we make this deal. So we went through the whole Heart Sutra.

I'm just about done, she's done. She's done with the Tibetan. I'm almost done with the Chinese, right?

And then I said, well, what do you want to do next? What do you want to learn after that? And she said, you're the teacher.

You're the Tibetan teacher. I can tell you what I'm going to teach you, but you have to tell me what we're going to do in the Tibetan. And I'm like, the highest thing I could think of would be the three principal paths.

ACI course number one. Because it's course number one, everybody thinks it's too dumb. Teach me course 13 or 15.

Don't say you're going to make me memorize course number one. But that's why it is course number one. Lamso Namsum, the three principal paths.

The three paths that you need to get enlightened. All of Buddhist wisdom put into 14 verses. So if I had a student who was serious and they were willing to memorize what I asked them to memorize, I would ask them to memorize that.

And that's what we're doing. So Lamso Namsum. You can memorize it in English.

It's very good. So I think now we'll take a break and then we'll continue.