Занятие 8, часть 2

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 47:19)
But this is a sales job, right? I'm trying to sell you on what? Teaching, okay?

But it's not me, it's the Buddha. The Buddha is saying, 20 cool things will happen to you if you teach. He's got finished with six, right?

The next are called, DRAL DE ZHI ZE BRAL DE ZHI These are not traditionally types of results that are presented when you talk about karma. So I didn't talk about this kind of result yet. There's four of them.

They're called DRAL DE. DRAL DE means karmic result where you lose something. We didn't cover that in the four that I mentioned.

You can call it a fifth. But it's rarely presented among the karmic results. But Lord Buddha threw it in there.

If you want to study that, you have to study Abhidharmakosha, second chapter. I think it's second chapter. There will be four kinds of karmas if you teach, where you will start to lose something.

Number one, you will want things less in a wrong way. Like you won't want a third biscotti. You won't want to take someone's partner away from them.

Or you won't want to injure someone who attacks your country, or something like that. Your desires to do things that are harmful will slowly disappear. Then you become a much more contented person, a happy person.

It doesn't mean you can't have a jaguar. If you want a jaguar, plant the seeds for a jaguar. The planting of seeds for a jaguar always involves helping other people.

So it's not a bad thing to get a jaguar. Because you can only get one by helping other people. So don't stress about being...

This thing about no results. Read the Bhagavad Gita more carefully. It's all...

people misunderstood it. SHES RANG CHUNG BA RGYUR Number two of the separation results. They call them separation results.

Your capacity to be angered will start to diminish, or to be upset. If you teach other people, the karma of that is that your capacity to be upset will start to become less and less. It takes bigger and bigger things to upset you.

And we know why, right? Traffic jam happens. Your husband says he doesn't like the dinner that you cook for five hours.

A well-trained person understands that this is coming from them. But it's not some kind of... what do you call it?

Resignation. It's not like you're, Oh, he's telling me he doesn't like the dinner because I complained to my mother about the birthday gift she gave me. Something like that.

Oh well, I'll just have to put up with it. It's not that. Let's fix him.

Let's upgrade him. It's always positive. And you never get angry at him.

You're not like, Oh, I cooked it for five hours. You're like, Oh yeah, I have been mistreating my mother. So I'll treat her better.

And then this schmuck will change. No, really. So it's always positive.

It's never like, Oh, it's all my karma. It's not like that. Let's fix him.

But that means you don't get upset. You're just thinking of how to fix him. You're thinking rationally about how to fix him.

Number three. SKYI MUG CUNG BA RGYUR BA Your misunderstanding of where boyfriends come from will get less and less. Your ignorance will get less and less.

That means you'll be happier because you'll stop doing things that only make you aggravated. Like going to clubs and stuff. All right.

Number four. GDUG GIS DE LA LHAG MI NGES PAR GYUR BA Pabongka Rinpoche gives it. And then there's another commentary which clarifies it.

I'm going to give you the clarification. The other commentary says, there's a wonderful commentary to the Lam Rim Chenmo called the CHEN GZHI. CHEN GZHI means there were four great commentaries on the Great Lam Rim.

And somebody took all four of those and interlaced them. So a 1,000 page text became a 4,000 page text. And they interlaced on carving.

They carved it. Four people's comments on every phrase. And it's beautiful.

If you want to teach that, it would take like 50 years. Really. So anyway, I'm quoting that.

It's a beautiful text. So anyway, GDUG GIS DE LA LHAG MI NGES PAR GYUR BA means there are negative influences which are persons. What do you call them?

Spirits. There are such things. You don't believe in them because you grew up in America or something like that.

So they have their will with you. They love you. They love the fact that you don't believe in them.

But there are spirits who can affect your moods and affect your actions. When you are overcome with a sudden... What do you call that?

It's not an urge, but it's a... You just overcome. Like your day is going perfectly well.

And you're having a good day. Let's say you're an alcoholic. Or let's say you're a sexaholic.

And your day is going very well. And you're having a good day. And you serve people and you're happy.

And then suddenly you open the fridge and somebody has put a beer in there. And then suddenly your mind is just torn away. Your whole goodness is torn away.

And you lose control. And you drink the beer. Or you go on the internet and you're looking at girls.

You eat the whole... You go to have one Pringle. And then suddenly you're swept away.

And you're like... And you did it. It's something you've been doing well on your food cravings.

You haven't done that for three weeks. And then just suddenly it seems like the right thing to do. And you even have a discussion with yourself.

You're like, wait a minute. I thought we were over the Pringles dump stage. And you're like, yeah, I am over that.

I don't have to worry about it anymore. And then you know those things. You're doing pretty well.

You have a problem with anger. You're doing pretty well. You haven't gotten angry for three weeks.

And then suddenly somebody says something. And then this righteousness comes over you. Like, this person deserves my anger.

And you get all angry. And then three days later you realize it was just some... We say it's a demon's influence.

We say it's a spirit influence. They grab your mind and they trash it. And usually you're not even fully aware of it until two or three days later.

I can't believe I ate a whole can of Pringles like that. What got into me? It's the thing that's responsible for what got into me.

And we say there are such spirits. Their ability to influence your moods is greatly decreased if you teach other people. You become shielded from that kind of influence.

The fact that you are teaching others on a regular basis shields you from that kind of sudden impulse. Impulse is the word. Impulse is to do something unhealthy.

You are protected from them. It's cool, right? That's a nice karma.

Now there are nine... dakpa dhirbu, right? What's a dakpa dhirbu?

Dakpo. Dakpo means owner. And it means environmental because you own the place where you live.

So here are nine environmental results that will come to you if you teach. I don't think they're so environmental, but I'm just following the text. I think they kind of stretched it.

But who am I to say? I'm going to skip to where somebody explained them in more detail. This is the more detailed version from another Lam Rim.

It's much more detailed. We're never going to finish the ten classes. You know that.

You knew that. I mean, I just trashed it. All right, here we go.

SANGS RGYAS CHEN PO'I DE'I RNAM GYIS BSGOM PA RGYUR BA And then the commentator has added, LUS GCIG PA'I DUG PA LTAR The Buddhas of the universe will always... How do you say? Will look upon you with special love and special attention.

And then the commentator said, as if you were their beautiful only child. So you get extra attention from all the enlightened beings. You come on the radar.

When you start teaching, you come up on the radar of the enlightened beings. Oh, this person is special. We have to take care of this one especially.

They take care of everybody, right? But you come up on the radar as high priority. You're like, oh, this person is teaching.

This person has got to the highest activity there is. And then they're like, they're really happy. And they really feel even more intense love for you.

And they help you. Wait. The next one says, MI DANG MI MA YIN PA'I RNAM SUMAR GYUR BA So the text only says humans and non-humans will protect you.

The commentary expands on that. CHOG KYONG CHU LA SOGS PA GAR CHOG GI LA RNAM PAR DGA' BA'I MI DANG MI MA YIN PA'I RNAM GYI DE LA SUMAR GYUR BA There are guardian angels or high beings whose duty, sworn duty, they took a vow to protect the teachings and to protect the people who are teaching. When you start teaching, you also come up on the demon's radar.

And they will start causing you problems. We were in Taiwan. I opened my mouth and then the wall bursts open and water starts pouring out.

And they're like... Then the owner came and said, you are such a holy person. And I'm like, huh?

And he says, look, water is pouring out on the wall. That's ultimate good sign in Chinese culture. And I'm like, okay.

Anyway, there are beings who are sworn to protect teachers. And so they will protect you. They shield you.

There are beings, holy beings, whose main duty is to protect people who are teaching. And they will come protect you. Okay.

LHA RNAM DE LA TSUL KHRIMS BSKYED PAR BSGYUR BA LHA RNAM DE LA TSUL KHRIMS BSKYED PAR BSGYUR BA Then the commentator expands it to TSAMS PA DANG RGYAL CING SOGS LHA RNAM DE LA TSUL KHRIMS DANG LDAN MTHOB BSKYED PAR BSGYUR BA There are other beings who are very powerful, devas, that if you start teaching, because of the pleasure it gives them that you're teaching, they influence your appearance. And you start to take on a more... We had a lady in Guangzhou.

I don't think she'd mind if I mention her name. It's Vivian. You know Vivian, right?

Vivian came to Hong Kong when I was teaching there. She was a wreck. She was a TV commentator, a news commentator in China, southern China.

And she was overworked. She was overweight, low energy. And she wanted us to do a talk in southern China.

And she was obsessed with the money. We spent hours talking about the money. I could care less.

And then she spent $30,000. She tried to get $30,000 out of it. And we're like...

Then she started teaching. And you wouldn't recognize her. She looks about 25 years younger.

She shines. Totally peaceful. The last time we sat down to negotiate the money for the talk, she's like, you take it all.

I don't care. Give it to some charity. And I'm like, excuse me, what did they say in the Harry Potter movies?

Where did you put the real? What do they call it? What's her name?

Where's the real Hermione? What have you done with the real Hermione? I'm like, what have you done with Vivian?

Where's Vivian? And she's shining. She's totally shining.

You get this. SI RGYUN means... When I was learning that word, I asked Rinpoche, what does SI RGYUN mean?

He said, come, look at the news. He would watch the 5 o'clock, the 7 o'clock, and the 10 o'clock news. He'd say, come up to my room at 10 o'clock.

And there was a program where Queen Elizabeth went to Sambal. Or it was Princess Diana. I think it was Diana.

Anyway, she got up on stage with seven other nice-looking ladies. But she was... She had a...

She was shining. She had a... What do you call it?

What do you call it in Celtic culture? She had a glamour in the Celtic sense. She was like...

And that's the third result. You come to take on a special shine. What do you call it?

A shine. DANG MIG SHIN SI RGYUN means a sense of authority. A look of authority.

People see you as a person of authority. And of resplendence. Splendor.

Alright, number three. Number four. MI RTZA BA DRA LA SOGS PA RNAMS KYIS DE LA THOB TZAM DANG PHYAG RGA' DOG PA SOGS KYIS LAG GNAS PA MI'I RLO You become unassailable by people who would like to screw up what you're doing.

Like people who don't like you. People who don't like you. People who don't like what you're trying to do.

If you teach, you are automatically protected from them. People can attack you. I had that.

I got attacked by somebody. My book sales doubled. Anyway, it's like that.

And then the Chinese let me in to teach 1.2 billion people. What I mean is... There's this thing in...

The Buddha was under the Bodhi tree, right? And he was about to get enlightened. And all these demons came with spears and arrows.

At the moment before his enlightenment, they all threw a spear and shot an arrow at him. Halfway to him, they changed into flower petals. Then he got enlightened.

So it's that. The karma of teaching is so powerful that even if somebody tried to attack you, it would change to flower petals by the time it hit you. It's very beautiful.

It's a very strange thing. All right. Number five.

,GAL BA'I GZHAN YIN DANG, ,DZAR GZHAN RNAMS, ,YID CHE GZHAN PHYIR BDEG PA RDZE BA RNAMS, ,YI PHYIR PAR RGYUR, Your own teacher and your friends, those who are close to you, your teacher and your friends, will have even more faith in you and even more love for you. And you will never be separated from them. That's almost worth it just for that, right?

So you'll never be separated from your teacher. And your teacher and those close to you will have even more faith and devotion for you. If you teach.

You will come closer to your friends, family, and your teachers. And they will be happy with you. And they will love you.

They'll have even more faith in you. That's beautiful. What was that?

Number five? Number six. ,RANG SDUG BSNGAL GYUR, ,SDUG BSNGAL MED PA'I GZIGS TSUN PAR BDE, ,GSUNG BA'O PA TSUN PAR GYUR BA DANG, GZIGS TSUN PAR GYUR BA means people will respect what you say.

That's a really cool karma. And it's just karma, right? Some people give a perfectly good suggestion, but they don't have good karma.

And everyone says you're stupid. Other people give a foolish suggestion, and they have good karma, and everybody's like, you're a genius. It's nice to be the second kind of person.

So it's nice to have people respect what you say. It's nice to have people listen to what you say and think what you say is good and important. And it's very frustrating if you don't have that karma.

And you're giving good suggestions, and you have important things to say, and you can make a great contribution, and people just don't hear it. If you've ever been in any kind of company, that's a common karma, right? With your boss.

Like, why don't we do it this way? No. But I had this idea.

No. Go sit down. Go back to typing whatever I told you to do.

If you teach, then suddenly, karmically, people will think that everything you say has value. Everything you say has meaning. Even if you're just blabbing, and you're just joking, and they say, oh, Geshe Michael has such profound jokes.

And you didn't even intend it. Like you burp, and they're like, oh. It's a teaching on karma.

And really, it's fun. It's fun. It's much better than not having anybody listen to me.

,GZHAN RABS PA'AL ZHIG NYES, ,KHUR DU NYON MED PA'I RTEN, ,DE BA'I SKAD PA'I DON TZAM MI BYAS PA, ,GRO BAR GYUR BA, This is cool. If you teach other people with a good heart, you will gain the ability to address large groups of people with fearlessness. Like you can get up in front of, I don't know, Christine Walsh used to be nervous in front of two people.

Now I put her up in front of 800 people, and she blows them away. No sign of nervousness at all, nothing. And it happened on the last tour, right?

We had some Chinese ladies, Jenny and Candy. They're very shy, they're very quiet. Wei Qi.

Lun Shan also. Wei Qi was up there. She's from Taiwan.

She's a short Chinese lady. I said, she was supposed to be in a debate. And I'm like, hold on, hold on, hold on.

And she's like, No? And then I said, then I'm like, Wei Qi, we got to do something here. I took her in the, they give us a dressing room.

Usually it's a big theater and they have a room with all the lights on the mirrors and stuff. And I sat her down and I said, listen, pretend I'm your ex-husband and we're having a fight out there. You've got to do it.

There's going to be like 600 people there tonight. You can't sit there like a mouse. No.

I want you to pretend that I'm your ex-husband and we're having a fight. And then we went out there and it was great. And she just ripped it.

I think Ningbo put it on YouTube or something. It was so funny he put it on YouTube. Maybe you can find it, but it's really funny.

And she did a great job. So if you teach people with a good heart, your karma will change. And you can very comfortably address a thousand people without any nervousness.

You won't forget what you're supposed to say. You feel totally at ease addressing a thousand people. He adds that you also gain the capacity to speak to people who really know what it's all about comfortably.

It's one thing to give a talk to a thousand people who never came to a Dharma talk. It's another thing to get up in front of all your peers and teach a yoga class, when most of them are yoga teachers. And there's a special form of number seven where you are fearless in the face of your peers and your superiors as far as your teaching.

So you can teach in front of the Dalai Lama and you don't get nervous. You're just fearless. You know what to say, even in front of people who are very well-trained and great teachers in their own right.

You don't have any hesitation or nervousness. All right, number eight. ,NYES MA LA ZIN PA'I RGYUR BA DE LA, ,YID BLO MA BA'I RGYUR BA DANG, You will be in a constant state of happiness and small things will make you happy all day long.

Just small things. Somebody gives you a hot chocolate and you're like, God damn, it's the best. Lady Ruth has this.

You know Ruth, right? She teaches all these people yoga with a very good heart. Me and Lama Christi, before we went into a three-year retreat, we had a private class with her.

We said, look, we're going to be in this hot for three years. Can you teach us some yoga assists that we could do on each other? She said, okay, I'll teach you.

She said, okay, first get me into a twist. Then she said, do this and do this. Put your hand here, put your hand there and twist.

We tried. We didn't know what we were doing. We just kind of went like this.

Then she goes, ah. We're like, ah. Then she said, okay, now twist me back.

Do this kind of thing with your knee. We did it and she's like, uh. Her karma is that any little thing is blissful.

Every little thing is blissful for her. You give her an old flower that's already half dead and she's like, ah. It's just because she's teaching without any negative motivations.

Little things throughout the day will give you intense pleasure. That's true and it's very sweet. Number nine, this is the last one.

It's supposed to be environmental. I don't know. They don't sound environmental to me.

Anyway, maybe it's that the whole world will be like that. I don't know. SANGS RGYAS BYANG SEMS DANG BSGOM PA SKAD PA YIN RTEN GYIS SNGA PA RGYUR BA DANG You will be praised, especially by people who know what they're talking about.

It's one thing to be praised by a foolish person because they'll probably criticize you tomorrow. They're praising you for the wrong reasons and they're going to criticize you for the wrong reasons. But to be praised by somebody who's really a master or a great teacher or a very fine person.

For example, your teacher. If you have a great teacher, then my teachers throughout my life have not praised me easily. Rarely.

But when they praise you, it means a lot. The ninth result is that your teachers and other people who are wise will praise what you're doing. They will congratulate you.

They'll support you. That's very beautiful. It's a beautiful karma to have somebody who really is wise tell you you're doing good.

That feels great. So that will happen. That's another karma.

How many we got? We got one more? Yeah, let's do it.

We have five minutes. Okay, but we'll finish that and then I have some other things to talk about. Okay.

One, NAM NGES RGYUD DER BU NAM NGES RGYUD DER BU is supposed to be the one that determines the birth that you take later. There's one. NAM NGES RGYUD DER BU PHYI'I PHYI'I RGYUN PA BA DANG YONGS KYI GSUM PA BYA BA You will always be surrounded by fine teachers in your future lives.

That's the biggest thing of all. So you don't have to worry anymore if you teach with a good heart. Even in this life, you will always be exposed to the greatest and the best teachers and they will love to teach you.

That's a beautiful karma. Anything you want to learn, you have the best teacher in the world and they devote themselves to helping you. There will come a time when you will see this result directly in meditation.

You can see your future teachers in your future lives. There's usually this dumb period until you're like 12 years old in your next life where all the karma is just getting its act together and nothing much is happening. If you teach, that karma kicks in immediately and never stops.

The minute you're born, you have a tutor. You have a spiritual tutor. High one.

In Tibet, they call it YONGS RIN. YONGS RIN means a tutor from birth. The Dalai Lama has two YONGS RINs.

You will have a YONGS RIN. You will have someone instructing you in deep spiritual things the day you are born and they will never stop. It will be constant throughout the rest of this life.

But it's very comforting to know that you will never be without your root teacher beyond this life. If you get in a car accident, it's not a big deal. They'll pick up in a few days or whatever.

They'll start again. You see what I mean? It's very comforting to see that directly.

To know that you will be in the care of a great heart teacher forever. That's very comforting. You never feel sad or alone.

You're always in the arms of your teacher and it never goes away. It never stops. That's a beautiful karma.

That's the greatest happiness you can have. Comfort. To know that there's someone karmically that you cannot be separated from and they will care for you until you get enlightened and after that.

It's a very beautiful feeling to know there's someone like that. If you teach, you will have that. So that's 20 karmic results of teaching.

I think you should have bought it by now. Those are amazing. I think the last one is maybe the best.

It's a very wonderful feeling. That's all. And then Pabongka Rinpoche says, sorry, Chidam Rinpoche says, who's the second Lama from the left there, one of the two lifetime tutors of the current Dalai Lama, and he was my teacher's root Lama, my Tibetan teacher's root Lama.

So he says, the teacher then went on to describe how the 20 could be divided out into separate kinds of karmic causes. And we did that already. So it's not in the text.

It's in the other text and you have to import it. I think, let's see, that's a good place. I think what we'll do is, I want to talk to you about the program for tonight and then I'll take questions.

So we have like half an hour left. So monks and nuns are required by their vows to meet together twice a month and admit their mistakes to each other. It's an ancient custom called SO SBYONG.

Say SO SBYONG. SO SBYONG means monks and nuns are required by their vows to get together on the full moon and the black moon. So it's automatic.

You just look up in the sky and you know it's time. It's kind of fun. It's tonight.

Tonight I have to go. It used to be a very beautiful custom. Maybe seven, eight monks would get together and seven, eight nuns would get together separately.

They would all sit around and say, okay, I was checking out a girl in the bus station the other day. The other guy will say, my uncle gave me some money and I didn't report it to the monastery. I was keeping money, which is breaking a vow.

And like that, they will confess to each other. I think it's a very beautiful custom. It obviously required a lot of, what do you call it?

What do you call it when you don't rat on somebody else? Or you don't advertise somebody? Discretion.

Which is lacking nowadays. You can't have a really open confession group if you know somebody in the group is not discreet. They're going to blab it to everybody else.

In the old days, in the monks vows, it was very discreet. You could even say, I had a thought at 2 a.m. I started daydreaming about some sexual fantasy thing. Everybody will listen to you very seriously.

Then they will help you keep it for the next two weeks. They'll grab you at breakfast and say, hey, what happened last night? You say, oh, it was good.

They'll say, good for you. It became a support group. It was a nice support group.

Nowadays, it got corrupted. I'm sorry to say. SO SBYONG in a monastery like Sarah, 2,000 guys come into the temple.

Then somebody gets up and says, CHOG CHUD NA GZHUGS PA'I SANG YID NA, BYANG CHUB SEMS PA'I THAMS CAD NA, RGYUD NI TSUL PA DANG, DA LA DGOS SOGS DA, RGYUN PO'I SEMS PA'I TSUL GYI BA, THAMS CAD NYID NA, SNANG PO'I SEMS PA'I RNAMS, Rip it into six equal pieces. Write down three things you're really proud of in your life. Let's make it your whole life.

Three things you did that were really good, that you're happy about, and you would like other people to know about. By the way, it's going to be anonymous. Nobody will know whose is whose.

Then we'll have three pieces of paper with three of the worst karmas you did in your life that you would like to clean. Like something serious. Anything you'd like to clean.

The act of writing it down cleans it. The act of admitting it. Sojong is a very powerful rite.

If it's done well, you can remove those karmas. The fact that nowadays they don't really do it in a monastery is a very sad thing. They're not getting rid of those karmas.

Take a lot of time. You've got, what, three hours? Take your time.

Think about it carefully. Three pieces of paper with the things you're most proud of in your life. Or recently.

Then three pieces of paper with things you really want to clean. Then bring them at seven o'clock. We'll meet here.

We'll have two big boxes. You can throw all of your good ones in one box. We'll throw all of our bad ones in another box.

Don't sign it. Which assures anonymity. You'll remain anonymous.

If you want to do sojong together, I've done that in past years. I had a little club, sojong club. Maybe two or three monks who were serious.

After sojong, we'd go do a real sojong together. It's something you can continue if you wish. You can do it on the full moon.

You can do it on the black moon. You get together with your little sojong club. First you write all your good stuff.

Since the last time the sojong club met. Then you write down all your bad stuff. Then you put it into two boxes.

If you're doing it with other people that you trust, you can actually tell them what you did. That's what we do. My sojong club.

You go around and everybody... We always make a fire. We always have popcorn.

We always have hot chocolate. We have tormas. There has to be two plates of nice offerings.

Then you can do it yourself. First you make a fire. Then you invite all the Buddhas to come listen.

It's a very moving moment. Somebody gets up and says, we would like all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in this galaxy to come and be here around our fire with us in the air. They don't like to sit on the ground.

Then you try to feel them because they will come. Try to feel that they are there. They are listening to your confessions.

Then you tell your things. We go around in a circle. We don't do all three.

I do one. He does one. He does one.

He does one. Then I do my second one. Then they do their second one.

You just listen to the other person. You give them a chance to admit what they did wrong. You support it, obviously.

Then you take all those together and you start burning them one by one. We like to throw them in one by one. We don't just throw them all in at the same time.

Throw the worst one in and watch how it burns. Because that's a sign. We think that's a sign.

Like if it goes... I like to think, this is not in the scriptures. This is just my Sojong Club thing.

We all sit there and go. If it burns really fast, we're all like, yay! Then sometimes you throw it in and it floats off over there.

Then you throw it in again. Then finally you throw it in and it just sits there. You can still read it.

Then you throw coals on it and it won't burn. Then everybody's like, I think you've got to work on that one. It's like, I don't know.

Anyway, that's just not in the scriptures. That's a superstition of my Sojong Club. Then we always have a break.

We drink the hot chocolate and we have some popcorn. We enjoy. We sit and just enjoy each other.

It's like a bridge club. Then after that, we all read our good deeds. We end on a high note.

We all go around one by one. It's three rounds around the fire. Everybody says the cool stuff they did.

Then you burn those. If they burn fast, you think, oh, that means I'm going to be able to do that more. Like that.

I don't know. We just have that idea. Then you set out offerings for the holy beings.

They are also eating while you're eating. Then you leave the offerings for the spirits and the animals. You leave them out there.

The last thing you have to thank, thank the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. You don't just leave them there and all walk home because they get stuck there. Thank them for coming.

Ask them to come again. Ask them to help you keep your... You should come out of a Sojong with one, what do you call?

Resolution. You should come out of a Sojong with at least one resolution. The last thing you do is you say, okay, I have a resolution.

It's one of the four powers. You say, okay, I have a problem with so-and-so. I tend to get angry with so-and-so.

That keeps coming up in my Sojongs. If you do Sojong regularly, it starts to get repetitive. You're like, I got to tell you guys something really bad.

They're like, what? You say, I yelled at someone. Come on.

That's been the same every week for like six weeks. You're like, yeah, but I can't stop. It actually starts to get repetitive if you're honest.

By the way, honesty is key. People tend to admit their second worst thing and not their first worst thing. Try to figure out what's your first worst thing.

But then make some kind of plan at the end. Say, okay, I have this problem. This person irritates me.

This person does this thing. I don't say anything, but I go home and I grump about them. This next two weeks, until the full moon, I'm going to try to reflect on how they're coming from me.

You make some little resolution at the end of Sojong. You have to do that tonight. Our plan, Robin, my plan, we'll come here.

We'll throw all the good deeds into one box. Don't get it mixed up. It's kind of disturbing.

You picked somebody's good deed out. It was like yelled at so and so. Then we'll pass the box around.

You take one good one out and you take one bad one out. Then we'll pass the microphone around. You read the good one.

Sorry, you read the bad one first. After all the bad ones are finished, we'll take a break. Then we'll read all the good ones.

Then we go down and burn them. I don't want you to sit out there for two hours, so we'll do part of it here. Then we'll go down and burn them.

You can stay as long as you want. There will be some more there. Besides those some mores.

Where are those some mores? There's always some mores. There's Chere, Summer, Bonnie, Michael.

It's always more. But we'll have refreshments down there. Then you just come down silently.

You will offer to the fire the good one and the bad one of that person that you chose. That means there'll be excess left over in the box. Rob will burn those nicely.

Then what I like to do, to me, fires are very meditative things. You can stay at the fire as long as you want or you can just go home. Then just stand at the fire and watch the fire.

Look at the stars and think about your resolution, your plan for the next couple weeks. Then that's a real sojo. We have about 15 minutes left.

Let's do questions. Anybody has any questions? Jared?

[Говорящий 2] (47:19 - 47:36)
Thank you very, very much. You tend to make a leap into karma very quickly. As kindness is the staple to the karmic staple, what makes kindness work?

[Говорящий 1] (47:37 - 1:03:50)
I like that question. Why does kindness work? This got into a question.

When you're going to countries like China and you're teaching thousands of people who never heard anything before, you get the best questions. You get really, really good questions. China is strange.

China has gone through 50 years of... The American press calls it repression. But when you go there, you appreciate a lot of what happened there in the last 50 years.

Before, there were tens of millions of starving people. Everybody has a car and a refrigerator now. People have prosperity.

There's been a mindset of taking care of each other for 50 years. They were real communists. They determined to stamp out poverty and they did.

It was equal. The way it got started was violent. There was a lot of violence done.

But they had this incredible karma of having tried to take care of everybody in the country, feed everybody in the country, in a country that didn't have enough food for 5,000 years. They've created an interesting karma. Some of their karma is quite good.

They will be in economic power because of that attempt, karmically, to take care of everybody. A lot of that was violence and that was wrong. But a lot of it was pure.

They're gaining that karma resolve. They will be the world's leading power because of that. They don't even understand that.

But they will be. What do you call it? The censorship means they haven't been exposed to a lot of super violent movies or sex and things like that.

It hasn't been part of their culture to sell Coca-Cola with sexy girls or motor oil. They haven't had that for 50 years in their country. Some of the censorship methods are bad.

The result of the censorship is good. They think clearly. They think more clearly than Westerners.

It's interesting because they haven't had all that crap in their head about consumerism. Now they're getting 110% of it, which is sad. But anyway, they actually think more clearly and faster.

Somebody asked that question. A Westerner might not ask that question. Why does karma work?

Why do I have to do this for somebody else for it to come back to me? Why does kindness have an effect? They ask questions like that, very basic questions.

I'll tell you the coolest question, which is not on the subject. A computer scientist, a kid, he's like 20 years old. First talk in Guangzhou, he's never heard anything Buddhism before.

He's like, let me get this straight. I said, okay, what? He said, if I want an aspirin to work for me, I have to help someone else with a headache.

Is that correct? I said, yes. And he said, and that explains why some aspirin work and some aspirin don't work, and you have a headache.

I said, right. So he said, when an aspirin works for me, it's because I've helped someone else with a headache. And when it doesn't work for me, it's because I didn't help someone else with a headache.

I said, that's correct. Then he said, then you said, if some of my friends got a headache, I should offer them an aspirin. And I said, yeah.

And then he's like, ta. And then he said, you're telling me that to give someone a thing that doesn't work is going to make your aspirin work? Like he got it.

It was a very sophisticated question. You're giving somebody a pill that only works half the time. And that's going to make your pill work all the time?

I don't get it. But I'm not going to tell you the punchline. So anyway, they asked this question.

It's intention, right? It's mostly intention. It's intention.

If the person was close enough to you, you could explain to them about how they should help other people with aspirin that didn't work. Anyway, it's this cool thing. We call it the donut debate, right?

We do it in the DCI training to explain why karma works. Why do I have to plant a seed with someone else? Why is that?

Why do I have to help someone else? Why do I have to go to a nursing home to help a lonely person to plant the seed for me to have a boyfriend? Why do I always have to plant seeds with somebody else?

Then you get into this thing. It's a logic flaw. It's subtle, and it's beautiful.

I like donuts. I used to before I met Anatole. He ruined everything.

So let's say I really like donuts. And then you ask somebody, where do donuts come from? And then some people will say, from a store.

And then you say, well, how did they get in the store? And they'll say, there's flour, there's water, there's sugar. A guy gets up at 5 o'clock in the morning.

He makes them. And then they put them out in the store. And then you say, how do you get one of those donuts?

And the person says, you take money, and you go to the store, and you buy the donut, and that's how you get a donut. So then logically you can say, so are you saying whenever you have the money and go to the store, you will get the donut that you want? What do you say?

It's not the case, right? I mean, they're always running out of your favorite donuts. Am I right?

Every other kind is there, and there's a big hole on the kind that you like. So you can have the money and not get a donut that you want at the store. If something can fail sometimes, it means it's not the cause.

If an action can fail sometimes, it's not the real cause of something. If money were the way to get a donut, it would never fail. If it were truly the cause of getting a donut, it would never fail.

If it's possible to go to Dunkin' Donuts, and they're out of maple-covered donuts, and you have the money, that means the money didn't cause the maple-covered donut. And that's very, very, very profound. You think it's just some silly thing.

You think, okay, Geshe-la, just have another kind. Don't be so stuck on maple-covered. By the way, I don't like maple-covered anymore.

It's just an example. No, I get all these. Also, it's the case that if you go to your friend's house, and they're the one that bought all the maple-covered donuts from the store before you got there, and even if you don't give them money, you will get a maple-covered donut.

In two ways, that proves that money is not how you get things. The exchange of money for things is not the reason you get them. Which calls into question working, but I won't go there.

Forgetting things. For obtaining things. It calls into question normal working.

Which calls into question the activity of 7 billion people, except for you guys. But we won't go there. We won't say 7 billion people are working for nothing, or don't know what they're doing.

Because that would be weird. So what's the real cause of a donut? According to this system, if I want a donut, I must cause someone else to get a donut.

The only way, every donut you ever ate, came from giving someone else a donut. In this system, you will only eat as many meals as you offer to others. Throwing in the exponential effect of karma.

It's not technically true. You can give one meal and get a hundred back. So if it's true that all the donuts I ever ate, ultimately came from a seed in my mind, which was planted when I gave someone else a donut.

Is that correct? In this system, yes. That means that to see a donut cross into my mouth, I must cause a donut to cross into someone else's mouth.

Am I right? If this system is correct, for a donut to cross into my mouth, cross the border of my lips and teeth, then I must cause a donut to cross the same border in another mouth. Am I right?

In this system, that's how it works. Then the next question comes. Jhana has a mouth.

I have a mouth. Her mouth is over there. My mouth is over there.

Is Michael's mouth, Jhana's mouth, visually? No. Hers is over there.

Hers has lifting, I think. Mine doesn't have. Mine's over here.

So visually, her mouth is over there. My mouth is over there. They're not at all the same mouth.

Visually. Now I'm going to ask you again. Is her mouth, my mouth, functional?

Do I have to put a donut in her mouth to get a donut in my mouth? In this system, there's no choice. No donut ever existed that wasn't created by putting a donut in someone else's mouth.

By causing a donut to go into someone else's mouth. There is no such thing as a donut that came any other way. That's emptiness, by the way.

So when I put a donut into her mouth, whose mouth am I putting a donut into? Both of our mouths. Functionally, is her mouth different from mine?

Functionally. No difference. If I'm hungry, and if I like maple-covered donuts, and I want a maple-covered donut, don't take money and go to the store.

Don't put on red lipstick and go look for a boy. Plant a seed. By putting a donut in her mouth.

By seeing that she gets her favorite donut. Then you have put one in your mouth. Functionally, Jhana's mouth is Michael's mouth.

It's very difficult. You get new age people saying we're all one. And you're like, okay, then give me all your money.

You know? No, I mean like that, right? But in this system, logically, you are me.

You are me. And somewhere in there is the answer of why you have to give someone else a donut. Or why you have to be kind.

Why kindness is the glue that binds karma. Somewhere in there is the answer. Because you're not giving it to someone else.

Kindness, to give to yourself is to give to someone else. And to give to someone else is to give to yourself. And you never were different from them.

It's very interesting. Kindness, to render kindness to someone is to acknowledge that they are you. And that that's the real condition of our world.

And only when you pay a kindness to someone else do you admit who you really are. And all the rest of the time you're deluded. And somewhere in there is why karma works.

That's subtle, so you have to think about it. Work on it. Work on it.

Karma requires that you do something for someone else because they are not someone else. How's that? And only by doing it do you realize that.

Or do you recognize that? You got to work on that. It's very profound.

If that were the case, then the whole usage of modern language in the world, every one of the languages in the world is defective. There's no word for John and Michael's mouth. Maybe later language itself will change.

The fact of pronouns in every language on this planet, me, you, I, we, is mistaken. And it's just another reflection of the fact that no one knows what's going on. It's very interesting.

Probably as this worldview spreads in the world, language will change to accommodate it. And there will be no new pronouns for John and Michael, you, me. You, me?

You, me? How do you say corn in Chinese? Corn.

Corn. You, me. That's what I said.

It'll be a new word. You, me. There'll be a new word.

There'll be a new pronoun. You, me. Really, language itself will change.

Maybe enlightened people don't have to talk much. Let's stop there. It's very profound.

Very, very profound. Probably they won't use language the way we use it. Why haven't they contacted us?

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