Занятие 8, часть 2

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 10:25)
Okay, this is a nice, this is a nice section. There's a thing, and then we'll stop, okay, we've got like 20 minutes. There's a thing in Buddhism called the Three Jewels, right?

Kwanjus. And it's important. We named our community centers the Three Jewels.

There's one in Tucson, there's one in Vancouver, there's one in Panama. So Three Jewels means... You know, when they say, is Buddhism a religion?

And you say, well, sort of. And they say, well, do you worship any religion? And in a way, we worship the Three Jewels.

The Three Jewels are the object of worship. What does worship mean in Buddhism? I mean, I grew up in a good church, and I had good Christian training.

And worship to me as a child meant there were people on the altar, or there were things on the altar, and then you kind of bow to them and make prayers to them and respect them. And that was what worship was to me. My church had an awesome altar.

It's like 80 feet high or something. And it was a very emotional thing. Worship to me, I did worship.

And I liked it. I enjoyed it. I still worship.

The closest thing in Buddhism is going to a refuge. They say going to a refuge, or going to a shelter. Seeking protection from certain entities is the closest thing that you have to worship, I guess.

Well, it's the main thing. Supposedly, if you take refuge properly, it makes you a Buddhist. So in the Christian church, we have a couple of confirmations of baptism.

Baptism, you know, if you're not baptized, then you're still not confirmed, you're still not a Buddhist. In Buddhism, if you take refuge, you're not a Buddhist. And if you don't, then you're not a Buddhist.

So then, refuge means when you have a problem, you seek help or refuge in these three things. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Buddha, the enlightened founder of Buddhism.

Dharma, the teachings. And Sangha, the community of monks and nuns. These are the standard three jewels.

And they're called three jewels. Then, you know, I understood that. I got that teaching.

I understood. I turned over. I knew that to take refuge was what it was to be a Buddhist.

So coming from my Christian background, I thought if I went into the temple and bowed to the photograph and the statue of the Buddha, you know, and I respected the books there in the temple. Every temple had books in it. And, you know, if I'd gotten along with all the monks and nuns, I would probably be taking refuge, right?

Then I went to learn with Khenpo Rinpoche, and he started to teach us the Perfection of Wisdom scriptures, which is a 12-year course in the monastery. And he took us through the scriptures on the Perfection of Wisdom. And then, I don't know, at some point in those scriptures, there's a discussion of what it is to take refuge.

And that gets into the three jewels. Who are the three jewels? Then what I learned in that course was that there are the apparent three jewels, and then there are the real three jewels, right?

So there are, the word they use for apparent is deceptive in Tibet. There are, there's one version of the three jewels which everybody is saying, this is what the three jewels are, and that's not right. And then there's the real three jewels.

And then to take refuge in the apparent ones doesn't have a great effect. And to take refuge in the real ones has a great effect. So let's take Tibet, 6,000 people, Buddhism rate 99.999999999% There are some Muslim Buddhists and Muslims, OK?

That's about it. And in the office. So among those 6 million people in Tibet, traditional Tibet, old Tibet, right?

Probably 5.9 million were taking the apparent refuge. They considered themselves Buddhists. They went to the temple, they bowed to the statues, they respected the physical books, and they respected the monks and nuns.

And then they considered themselves Buddhists. What can limitate us from the professional Muslim scriptures is that they were taking refuge. And they were Buddhists.

Didn't they? Because they didn't know what refuge really was. And they didn't know who the three jewels were.

There's the apparent Buddha, and there's the real Buddha. There's the apparent Buddha, and there's the real Buddha. And then there's the apparent son of a community, and then there's the real community.

So then, you know, naturally we were all confused and concerned. It's a pretty big thing to say that none of the people are Buddhists. You know, like, can you explain?

And he said, well, technically, the Buddha and the Buddha jewel is a different thing. And the Dharma and the Dharma jewel is a different thing. And the Sangha and the Sangha jewel is a different thing.

The things you take refuge in are different from the standard things you think about when you say Buddha. For example, OK, I'm going to start with Dharma. I've got teachings, right?

The jewel of the teachings is the direct perception of entities within a person's mind. And that's all. It's not in quotes.

This is not the Dharma. This is not the Dharma that I'm going to talk to. And this is not the Dharma that you go to refuge for to be a Buddhist.

You must take refuge in the knowledge that your husband has given you. And it makes a heck of a lot more sense, right? Because it would protect you.

It would shelter you. It would give you refuge. If you understood that the boss at work who is criticizing you is coming from you.

If you understood the emptiness of that boss, which means to understand he's coming from you. And he's empty of coming from his own side. If you understand the way that people treat you is only coming from how you treat other people.

Then obviously that would be a kind of protection. Why? You won't yell back at each other.

Or you won't try to kill your boss. Okay? Like you protect yourself if you understand that things are coming from you.

And wouldn't that make more sense? Someone who's about to get in an argument with another person and who refrains from arguing because they grasp that this person is coming from them. And from how they've treated people in the past.

That person is a boss. Okay? It's very interesting.

Because they have sought to protect themselves through the understanding of emptiness. And they have protected themselves. If they fight back with the person who attacks them, they are creating another person to attack them.

So to cease and desist, because you understand that the person is coming from you, is a refuge. And that makes you a Buddhist. Now I have an interesting thing for you.

Okay? I'll throw this out to you. I got a complaint from one of our city directors in the foreign countries.

They said, Yushlo, I don't want you teaching business. I want you teaching Buddhism. Could you come and teach Buddhism?

You know, in our country. And I think, at least I think I respected them. I did not have to give up on this teaching.

Now, consider, now that you know what refuge is, if I give a business talk, right? And 1,400 architects come here, Orlando, Florida, and by the end of the talk, they all believe that their wife is coming from them. And the next time they're in a position to have an argument with their wife, they desist.

And they protect themselves. And technically, they have become Buddhists. And I have just given a Buddhist talk.

Okay? I would much rather do that. Okay?

I'm not selling pictures. I really upset people. I don't give a damn what picture you have hanging up in your house.

You know, Muhammad, you know, and so on, and Mr. and Mrs. O.S. I don't care. It really doesn't matter to me. I don't keep pictures in my house.

[Говорящий 2] (10:26 - 10:27)
You know?

[Говорящий 1] (10:27 - 34:54)
If you have them, I'm going to go live near them. If you want to look at them, you walk outside and look at them. You know?

You know, I don't need pictures in my house. Muhammad, someone gave me a very beautiful so-called statue. It belonged to me.

I keep that. I have the Tara statue. My ribcage gave me it.

It's my diamond ring. Because I held the idea that he gave it to me. I don't have any other pictures in my house.

It doesn't matter to me. That's that. Buddhism.

It's not at all. So that's refuge. Okay?

That's real love. It's what I taught to the 1400 Archbishops. And they all agreed.

It's a difficult problem. Anyway. And I don't care if they come.

I'm not trying to say I treat them as being Buddhists. I'm not saying that. I don't care if they are Buddhists.

It doesn't matter to me. I think it's irrelevant. If they are happy and successful, and if their soul is made pure and clean and happy, I don't care if they come or not.

I don't care if they come or not. It doesn't matter to me. You know.

It just really doesn't matter to me at all. I just want them to be happy and successful. And to be kind to other people in the world.

To make the world a better place. That's all. So anyway.

Now you understand the idea of refuge. The next point that he makes in the scripture. You can tell the difference between a person who has gone through formal spiritual instruction and those who have not.

Even in how they understand the three jewels. Just in that one subject. There's six million people in Tibet.

Over five million who didn't know what the three jewels were. How did they take refuge? You see what I mean?

So the ones who did some formal study, and someone explained to them about the criticizing wife thing or husband thing, and those who understood it, then they are Buddhists. They have taken refuge. Even in the most tiny, basic, beginning idea of Buddhism, do you take refuge?

Those who study do. And those who don't study do not. And they're not Buddhists.

They're not Buddhists. So even in just the very dumbest thing of Buddhism, whether you study or not, it changes the whole thing, right? It changes the whole thing.

Are you going down to some holy ground for some behavior? Or are you refraining from criticizing your husband when you need to ask him? Which one makes you a Buddhist?

And you need training to understand that. So is it wrong to tell people, okay, you're an author, and you have teachers on there, and you're not telling them? If they are not in a position to study or to learn, then I don't know.

Obama was supposed to have written him down to Congress. Maybe I will plan to see him later, right? It's not a bad thing.

But technically, they're not Buddhists, okay? So study is important from the very beginning. Okay.

In the monastery, there's a whole class of older monks who have decided to become gergen. Gergen, in one sense, means house teacher. House teacher means you're pretty much a babysitter.

Gergen's father, when I met him, he had 30 kids sleeping in a small room in a well. Refugee kids with fleece and huge open swords on their hands. And the skulls were written from malnutrition.

We took in 30 kids like that. And you don't. You put them in the...

You put them, you train them to do their basic prayers, and you don't like that. Basically, you're responsible for feeding them, clothing them, making sure they do their basic prayers, disciplining them, making sure they are calm enough for things. They understand a monk's calmness.

So there are people who just do that in the monastery. They are not Geshe's monks. They are sort of like super babysitters.

They are house monks for the first 15 years of a monk's life. So that's called gergen, in one sense of the word. So he said some of you may be gergens.

Some of you may be house monks. And then you don't... You're not engaged in the study of the classics.

You're not in the Geshe course. You have other responsibilities. There are also cooking class of monks.

There was a police class of monks, folk monks. In Tibet, they had... You know those things that football players wear?

They wore things under their nose to make them look bigger. And then they had staffs. And they were the security...

They were the police department for the monks there. So anyway, there were different classes of monks. Those of you who are house monks, he says, even though you have decided not to undertake a study of the great scriptures, don't shortchange your students.

Don't... Then send your student to another teacher during the day. That's a monastic thing.

So again, don't choose the right students and say, you go to so-and-so during the day to be trained. Because I don't have the skills to train you. So he said, don't repossess those young monks.

Send them to someone who can train you. I used to sleep in that room. Because there wasn't any other rooms.

And every monk got one oba. Oba means... It's a piece of bread that's the size of a frisbee.

It looks just like a frisbee. It's called a whole meal pound. A pound of flour.

So you got, basically, one pound of flour. And the amount of bread. That was your food for the day in the refugee camp.

Because they're easy to hand down. You're actually surrounded by monks. Because they fly them frisbees, you know.

And everybody got an oba. And that's all you got to eat in the early days. You've got a potpourri in the morning.

That's it. And then the fishing time, they would take away their potpourri. And he would split it up and give them some in the morning.

Enough to eat in the morning. And then he would take all the other potpourris. And he would put them in the rafters of the house.

Where the kids couldn't reach them. So, you know what I mean? There'd be all these potpourris.

You could see them, but you couldn't reach them. And then we'd go to bed. And all these kids would come out with sticks.

And they'd be trying to knock down the oba. And they would land on the oba monks. And it was a long parade.

And it was really hard. You didn't get any sleep at all. It was like rats.

Which also were normal. Anyway, it's better now. Things are better now.

Thanks to Kennedy. We all have food. Everybody has food.

Because of Kennedy. All right. So he's saying to the older monks, don't shortchange the other monks.

What it means as a teacher for us, let's say you're more attracted to yoga. You're not so attracted to the ACI courses. You kind of like tantra.

You think it's more interesting. ACI courses don't interest you so much. If you have given up on the ACI courses for yourself, don't cheat the people who are looking to you as a teacher.

You see what I mean? Even if you've decided you're never going to finish them, encourage your students to finish them. That's what he's saying.

Don't cheat them out of yoga. Train them in how important it is to finish the courses and help them finish them. It's like a six times rule.

If you've decided you're too advanced to teach them, then I'll six times better. It doesn't mean you can stop teaching it to your students. Give them a chance to keep their balance.

Even if you've decided not to. Train them. Give them proper practices.

Even if you can't do it yourself. Of course that's pretty weird. You should finish the courses and you should keep yourself.

Okay? Alright. That's such a bad example.

He says a funny thing. He says, if you send your students to another teacher who can train them properly, then maybe the next time you'll have the wisdom to study. You'll create the karma.

Then you'll study. ... So he says, there are monks in the audience who are too old to start the Keshe course.

You don't have 25 years left, and everybody knows it. He says, there are those of you in the audience that you're just too old to start the Keshe course. And also, one or two monks, you just don't have the intellectual capacity to study the ACI course.

That doesn't apply to any one of you. You can finish the courses. I don't see anybody who's too old here to finish the ACI course.

But he's just saying the monastery, there are cases where people don't have 25 years left, and everybody knows it. Or they just can't get it. They're just too...

A lot of times the monastery attracts people who can't cope on the outside. You know, they can't get a job, they can't feed themselves, they have a handicap, and they might be physically handicapped. And the monastery takes care of that.

And they take care of that. And many of them become great monks. But then there are some who are just, like, they're weak-willed.

Not quite retarded, but they're weak-willed. They're never able to believe in anything. And we take people in and we give them jobs.

They become monks and like that. So anyway, those of you like that, I admit that you couldn't... that you wouldn't be able to finish the Geshe course.

But... I'm not sure they normally achieve it. But it could happen that without being able to make a great examination of the great scriptures, you'd be darned.

You're done. That will happen, right? And then there may be...

So people like that, I admit, there are people in the audience who will never be able to finish the five great books. There's nobody in the room like that. I'm just reading the scriptures.

Young... But at least you should study the monkhood. He's saying.

If you can't do the ACI courses, at least study the monkhood. Then you will get a general picture of the whole spiritual path. ...

Then, His Holiness, the first Panchen Lama, who wrote Deva, which is all study, Millennium, he had a dream one night of Jatama. By the way, if you're trying to read the scripture, there's a difficult carving here. There's a carving child here.

It says, are we at Panchen? Can you see Panchen? Panchen means the Panchen Lama, right?

Chögyen means, Chögyen is an abbreviation for Lobsang Chö Kyi Khyang San. Chögyen is an abbreviation for Lobsang Chö Kyi Khyang San. If your Tibetan is not very good and you see Chö Kyi, you will spend $2 on a dictionary and you'll come up with Dharma Jewel, which is not at all his name even.

They shortened his name. It's like George Washington got shortened to Jeowon. Okay?

You have to know, you just know. Then he's got the word Zen hanging there after, okay? He has already wiped out the word Zen in the name Chö Kyi Khyang San.

That Zen has nothing to do with the name. That Zen is not the word Khyang San, which means victory band, right? That Zen means nighttime.

Okay? It's a totally different word. And Lama means path.

Nighttime path is the honorific for dream. Moksham. If you study Tibetan, this is why we are here.

So I'm just trying to help you. When you read the Dharma, you don't say, did you have an ice cream last night? Spring is for most other people.

You don't say that. You say, you say, did your honor of nighttime path last night? Okay?

And you have to know the honorific language is a different language for talking to high monks. So he changes the word for dream. The honorific for dream changes to dream.

It's a different word. And you have to know that language. That's another challenge.

There's like three or four languages inside of that. Anyway, Zen Master, Jetsil Khamme, so Jetsil Khamme said during his dream, Rang Rang Shen Nong, if you want to help yourself, and you want to be in a position to help others, Chenpei Lombok, never be satisfied with your study, spiritual study. Keep pushing hard.

Okay? Keep pushing hard. Don't stop.

Don't let up. Okay? Get in the car and take a rest in Moshe's house and pull out the laptop and study at home.

Because you've got 16 minutes. And do it. I used to drive all the way to Ukraine.

Anyway. I say, you've got five minutes now. Open the door.

You've got five minutes. Don't waste five minutes. You've got five minutes of human life.

This is extraordinarily precious. Don't waste five minutes. Just use it.

Jetsil Khamme is saying, be insatiable in your search for spiritual realization. Don't waste five minutes. Don't let up on five minutes.

It's hard on your mind and your health. Keep driving. Don't let up ever.

Whatever age you are you're in an airport. We always do our yoga at the gate. They won.

We're always the last one out. And people always think it's Camry and Mercedes always thinks they're the best one. But we do our yoga at the gate.

We do a session at the gate. And you've got to push. You've got to keep pushing.

Because people are waiting. They don't need you. You can't let them.

Even those bodhisattvas who have reached the high levels. They also never let up. They don't stop.

They don't say, now I'm good enough. Or now I know I'm good enough. Keep going.

Don't stop. Don't let up. Keep driving.

Because we have the example of bodhisattvas, high bodhisattvas. They don't stop. They don't let up.

The Heart Sutra was spoken by two great bodhisattvas. They were if they had not asked, they would never ask. If they had sat at Paradise Cafe and talked about politics that day, like we do, we would never have asked them that.

OK? Oh, shucks. I'm going to just go a little bit further.

It doesn't matter how small your mental capacity is and your spiritual capacity is. You could take one of those small, long hands and there's nobody who couldn't memorize that or learn it. You can do it.

Anybody could. Even if it's Shakyamuni Buddha, that's the source of all we learn. I mean, anybody can memorize that.

You don't have to be Jetson Hopkins to memorize that. It's just no matter how small your capacity is, you can memorize a small one. Four.

You can't say you don't have time to practice 14 verses on those three control paths. Nobody is that bad. Nobody is so dumb they can't study the whole thing.

And nobody is so lazy that they can't read the whole thing. Everybody can. So, those of you who say I will never be a great scholar, a great sage, I will never learn all the practices I'm not capable of.

He says you're just selling yourself short. Anybody can. At any age, you can study.

Think of the hearts of 10 members. We did that during the retreat. Use your time.

It will come in handy later. Then we did what? We did 12 verses in New York.

Hundreds of people. If you add up all the people, it's thousands of people. And that was because we took the time during the retreat to memorize a small one.

So you can do it. Just try. Anybody can do it.

Try. You have to be relentless. You can't stop.

You can't say I know enough. You have to keep going. So he says you're just cheating yourself if you say that.

No, that's wrong. All the horses in Tibet, and all the oxen in Tibet, and all the sheep in Tibet, they each have been trained to carry the load that they can carry. Horses carry a horse's load.

Oxen carry an oxen's load. Even sheeps in Tibet have to carry loads in Tibet. And you hear the We're just like that.

You should be working every day with new spiritual study according to your past. If you're a sheep, you're an ox, you're a horse. Okay, and that's a good place to stop.

So what he's saying is what I'm trying to get you to feel is that it's spiritual learning is not like high school or college. It's not like you reach 12th grade, you take a final exam, and they give you a diploma, and you're finished. It's not like that.

It's a continual process. It's an ongoing process. No matter how old you are.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama gets up at 4 o'clock every morning and memorizes something new. At the age of 17, he still gets up every morning and learns something new. And he invites lamas to come to his house and teach him all the time.

He's extraordinary. He's the Dalai Lama. And he finds like 50, 60-year-old lamas who know something he hasn't learned yet.

And they come to his house every day, and he learns something new from them. And that's why he's so great. So the process is ongoing.

You keep learning because then you will have more things to share about it. And you might learn this week something which saves someone's life next week that you didn't know last week. Okay?

So don't stop. And don't think you're going numb. It never ends.

Keep going. Keep learning. Why?

It's not for you. It's so that you will have something to share with others who need it. There are thousands of different personality types.

[Говорящий 2] (34:55 - 34:56)
You know?

[Говорящий 1] (34:56 - 38:30)
You can't teach this to a younger person. They need to listen to it. Okay?

And you need different skills. And you need different trainings to be able to help a wider variety of people. You know, you can't be like a psoriasis specialist.

You've got to be a family practitioner. You've got to be a family practitioner. You've got to know everything.

Because somebody younger than you will show up in your life and they'll have a problem, which is serious to them, which you didn't have in your spiritual journey. Okay? And you've got to have the the antidote for them.

It's even up to like suicide. People come to me and they say, I'm killing myself next week. You know, and I'm like, why?

And they say, I'm depressed. And I'm like, damn, I've never been depressed. I don't know what to do.

You should have studied it. You should have learned the meditations that are used for people with depression, even those who don't have that problem. See what I mean?

So you have to keep learning more things. It's not just for you. It's your responsibility.

There are other people who who have extraordinary needs, life-threatening needs. And you can help them. But you need the tools.

You need to learn them all. So don't stop. And some people say it's like daunting, you know?

It just lasts like thousands of pages. You know, like it's overwhelming. 18 days, 9 courses, 10 courses, thousands of them.

20,000 pages. It's too much. It's like I it's overwhelming.

I don't want to start because I can't do it. It's too much. Just start with something.

That's the trick. Start with one small thing. Say I'm going to learn the 14 verses of the principle teachings of Buddhism, right?

The three principles. I'm just going to learn the 14 verses. I'm going to ignore the other 200,000 scriptures.

And I'm going to concentrate on this one page. And that's the way to do it, okay? Start with something small.

Start with something small. And before you know it, give pity to karma. But don't think you're going to start with the karma.

Don't do that. Start with one small thing that you would... I'm trying to learn Chinese.

My mind is too old, okay? I've been struggling for a year. So I'm learning the Heart Sutra, okay?

And that's all I know in Chinese. Then I go to Singapore. Here's what I teach them in Chinese.

The Heart Sutra. But it's good I have one big page, right? It's like five pages long.

And I have that in my head. And I can teach it. And it's very valuable because it helps hundreds of people in Singapore.

And I started it at age 57, okay? So it's not too late. Learn one small thing.

Start with one small thing.

[Говорящий 2] (38:33 - 38:34)
And learn it well.

[Говорящий 1] (38:36 - 44:22)
And every day, learn it from my brother. And you won't regret it. And if you just say, I can't do it, then you don't have to do it.

Don't give up. Don't say it's over. I can't do that.

And finish your 18 courses. It's a tremendous error not to do. It's an unbelievably foolish not to finish that.

You're a fool if you don't finish that. You're a fool. I mean all the words certified by Adelaide.

Really. Seriously. If she tells me you're not going to finish, you're not going to finish.

I don't care what happens. It has to be on record. Which might mean you have to do some stuff.

And that's not going to happen. Alright? There was a Deku.

What's a Deku? Disciplinarian. He's the guy that groups you in the room.

The disciplinarian at the center made got up while I was there with me. If you sneak into the local village, if you walk across the cornfields in the middle of the night, to sit in the back shed of an Indian appliance store and watch crime movies from the U.S., it takes some planning. Like lights out of the monasteries like United Kingdom and England and then they make a goal.

And you have to have your shoes ready and your money for the movies. And you have to know which shed to go to for the movie. And you have to have your friends all ready to come up for you.

So if the American comes in to check, he won't know you're there. So then you have to... Then you sneak.

And you walk and you find one of those cornfields. And you run into wild dogs and all kinds of things. But then you get to Kushalagar and you pay this Indian guy ten rupees and you get to watch Starsky and House of Cards.

With episodes in the back. And then it's like 2 a.m. and you're all finished. My bare idea of a merry-go-round illicit beverages is some Tibetan tea while you're watching Starsky and House.

And then you have to walk home before dawn. You walk into the monastery and then you get in and there's a stick. It's called a monkey stick.

Do you know that? It's a bamboo stick that's long. And you can slice a person's body open with it.

You can lay their body open with it. Indian police don't have guns. They have money.

And he's waiting there in the park. So you get body stick on your body and all of a sudden and then they make you go to the sultan to the main temple. During the morning tea there's 1,300 bucks sitting there and you have to hold up like a Gone with the Wind poster for 2 hours, 3 hours.

You can't let it down. And your arms are shaking. You have to hold up this movie poster.

That's your punishment. And then you have to do prostrations. You have to do like 1,000 prostrations to all monks.

I mean you have to get behind all the monks and you have to prostrate them. So the giku when I was there he objected. He tried to get that punishment changed.

He was strongly against that punishment. And then there was this, I was in the board room and there was a terrible argument going on. Even so they were bored.

Big arguments. So then everybody was screaming and I said, what's going on? And they said the giku wants to change the rule punishment.

I'm like, what's he going to do? He says, he objects to the prostration. And I said, well why?

He says it's an honor to prostrate to the monks of Saturn. And these people should not be allowed the honor of prostrating to all the monks. They are not worthy to prostrate to all the monks.

Okay? It's not a good punishment because it's an honor. You know.

Anyone would love to prostrate to all the monks of Saturn. 1,000 times. It's an honor.

So that's like the ACI courses, okay? You know, having to take a roller because your teacher lost your roller is an honor. Okay?

It's an honor. It's not like a bad thing. It's an honor to have to take a roller.

Agree? So please finish your courses. I mean, they're still drumming.

They're still drumming. It's like the Arizona drumming test. It was so funny.

It was multiple choices. I took it last week. During the course, I had to choose and it was if there's a car in front of you, should you stop, A, six feet away, two or three miles away, C, in your mother's house.

And I said, no, they're all like that. I mean, the ACI courses are not much more difficult than that. You're just taking and you're running.

Okay? Finish. You're running your studies.

Finish. Fine.