«Дар освобождения», курс 6 «Ретрит страсти», занятие 14

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 36:22)
Twenty-six people to whom you should not teach the Dharma. Are you ready? This is old school.

This is Vinaya. Someone who is standing, number one. Somebody who is lying down.

Somebody who is seated higher than you. Someone who is walking in front of you. Maybe it hurts their neck, I don't know.

LAM GYI BRAM NAS LAM U SOG DO BA LA SPYOD PHYIR PA If you're traveling with a group of disciples on a path in a group, the teacher shouldn't be on the right or the left and talk inwards. They should be in the middle and talking outwards. Does that make sense?

If there's like five students walking in a group, then the teacher should be in the middle. If they're talking while they're walking. SGO LA SOGS YOD PA SGO LA SOGS YOD PA means wearing something on their head like a shawl or a hat also.

You shouldn't teach to someone wearing anything on their head. It's okay. It's your custom.

That's all right. DGOS RDZAS PO LA means somebody's dressed up really fancy, like out of place. DGOS PHRAG PA GNYIS LA GSAR BA means...

How do you say? We have a monk shawl, right? Then technically, you're supposed to leave your right shoulder free.

Then when you request the teaching as a monk, you're supposed to drop the shawl and ask. Is it like that? If it's cold, some monks will go like this.

Then that's improper to teach them that way. They have to drop the right shoulder. Like last night, it was pretty cold.

We had to do it. All right. LHAG PA GNYIS NYAR GONG TU NUS This is this, right?

Fingers behind it. Shouldn't listen like that. That's behind the neck, right?

Then the next one is behind the head. This is vinaya. It gets a little anal.

All right. BRTAR THOR CHOG CHOD PA Someone who has tied their hair up into a... This is an old custom.

It was a warrior's custom. It was improper because it was a warrior's thing. They were like...

It'd be if they wore a helmet to class or something. THAR GYI CHOS PA'I CHING BA Then this is a kind of silk. It's a silk, what do you call it?

Yeah, like a silk turban. SHAR GYUN PA means a normal kind of hat. CHOS PA'I CHING BA means, what do you call it?

Jimi Hendrix headband. They all had meanings in those times. I don't know what they were.

They all had connotations. I know that to wear this tied hair meant you were ready to go to war and it wasn't inappropriate in a class or something like that. I don't know what it would be nowadays.

MED TOG DRANG BA LTAG PA LA Somebody wearing a mala, a string of flowers. Because that was a show of honor that was paid to the teacher. Something like that.

LANG PO Somebody sitting on an elephant. That's a long story. Elephants used to be a big deal.

They used to be important for the defense of the country. An elephant with armor properly worn is almost unstoppable by a group of people who's been trained to maul people. LTAG means sitting on a horse.

DE LAS ZHIN PA ZHIN PA ZHIN PA Riding, anything else. KYOG means, what do you call it? A sedan chair?

Four guys carry the chair. Like Colin Quinn. LHAM GYIN PA LA Someone who's still wearing their shoes.

Somebody with their shoes on. Which in the old days was very disrespectful. LHAG NA GAR BA Somebody has a staff in their hands.

Holding a staff. They should set the staff down and take the teacher. They should set the staff at the door.

It's like wearing a pistol into a saloon or something. DUG means an umbrella. Somebody has a parasol in the class.

TSUN BYA means another kind of weapon except a sword. A couple of weapons come later. TSUN BYA means any kind of, like a knife.

A knife for fighting. Like a switchblade. RGYAL SPRING means a sword.

Somebody wearing a sword. When Pabongka Rinpoche got to this part in the teaching, there's an oral tradition that the minister of war of Tibet was in the audience. The secretary of defense was in the audience.

He came up afterwards and he put his sword on the altar. He offered it. Then later he said he resigned after the teaching.

It was very beautiful. DGRA LTAR THOB PA DGRA LTAR means a battle act. Battle acts.

We're probably up close to 25, right? DGOS KHYON PA LA There's a mistake in the text, but anyway, I corrected it. It means somebody wearing armor.

Somebody wearing any kind of armor, body armor. Those are the ancient ones, the traditional ones. DGOS KHYON PA LA That completes the instruction for teachers really.

You could go off on that. You could do it for a couple of weeks. But that's the basic instruction for teachers and etiquette protocol for teaching.

I think it's really important that you pass it on to your students. I don't think the elephant one is so important. The one about not teaching, examining your own heart to see if you have jealousy before you teach about jealousy or something like that.

That's very important, right? That kind of thing. Then there's a third category which is called there were things the student had to do and then there were things the teacher had to do and now we're on to things that they both should do together relating to a formal teaching.

GONG GI SA BYAS GSUNGS PAR JUG TU THUM MO'I DU JI LTAR BYA BA NI What should the teacher and student do together at the conclusion of the teaching? STANG RAG GI MAN DAL GYI STANG RAG GI MAN DAL Say STANG RAG. STANG RAG GI MAN DAL This is a mandala, right?

In fact, the word mundane comes from the same root. Mundane and uno mundo. Manda means world.

Mandala means a sacred world. The root means a world. Then you should offer a second mandala.

You should offer the world again. The first one was to request the teaching. If you don't offer the mandala in a Tibetan context, the teacher doesn't know if you want the teaching and then they're not supposed to teach.

They're supposed to wait until you do the mandala and then they know you are requesting the teaching of the mandala. Then it's okay to teach you. The mandala at the end is STANG RAG.

STANG RAG means Thanksgiving. It means an expression of Thanksgiving. There should be a STANG RAG mandala at the end.

I think it's very beautiful and important to imagine that the world you are offering after the class has been made perfect. It's a, what do you call it? Perfect world.

Perfect world. That's the vision of bodhichitta. There's this big word bodhichitta.

I call it mangle translated. Mangle translated. Anyway, really bad translations of that one.

What it means is if I sit in this teaching and I learn how to get a boyfriend or a million dollars or whatever you want, cure the ill, cure the sick, then if I'm successful, as an example, then other people will copy me. Anytime you make anything cool, people will copy you. Wait until you see how many spring-loaded solar turners are around in a year.

People will hear and then they'll, oh, that's cool. In this field of human activity, if you succeed as a Dharma person, if you go to the nursing home and get a nice boyfriend, and if you visit the sick and then suddenly your yoga is twice as good, then people will copy you. People will copy you.

Then it will spread. Then slowly we will live in a world where people believe that the way to make money is to help others make money. The way to have enough energy for your country is to assure that poorer countries have enough energy.

See what I mean? That's the only way you will have enough energy for your country. It has to be national also.

Imagine that. Imagine the repercussions of that if that spreads. If all the governments believe that the only way to assure their energy needs of their country would be to serve the energy needs of a poorer country, then try to imagine what the world would be like if the leaders of the countries held that view of the way things work.

Then you offered that. At the end you are offering a fixed world, a repaired world where all the governments are competing to serve the poor. Like that.

All right. ,MAN DAG GIS BCUG TU CHOS NYAN ZHES PA'I, ,ZHES BYED, ,CHOS NYAN ZHES PA'I, ,SKYE TZAM RNAMS RING PAS MA SOGS KYI SGO NAS, ,STAN PA RGYAS PA'I RGYI DANG, Then you made a certain karma by being together, especially for a week or ten days, by being together for a concentrated purpose, which is ultimately to make the world happy. We want to contribute to making the world happy and that's why we got together here in this little Boy Scout camp out in the middle of the forest.

We want to make people happy. Then we made good karma. We made a lot of good karma.

This week you made a lot of good karma. Then they say you should bank it. You should put it in a safe place.

Why? The first time you get seriously angry at somebody else, anger has the special capacity to destroy good seeds. If the seeds are not protected, the seeds that you made here, the seeds that you planted here, if they're not protected, then the first time you get really angry you'll burn them.

They will burn. In the subconscious they burn. It's good to bank them.

What does it mean bank them? Offer them mentally to some higher purpose. This week I worked hard.

I did everything they wanted me to do. I meditated hard. My butt's sore.

My knees are sore. My back is sore. They beat me up in yoga every day.

I got the 14 misses and the 18 baths. I thought through the whole thing. I froze out at the fire.

You're going to tell people you froze at the fire often and they're going to go... Anyway. Then all that good karma you have to send it somewhere away from where your anger can't touch it.

He suggests here you could send that good karma to praying that these ideas spread in the world. It doesn't mean we want everybody to bow down when we walk in the room or everybody has to wear a red suit. It doesn't mean that.

What we're praying for is that people around the world come to think. It becomes a commonly held opinion that if you want money you have to give it and that if you want to be healthy you have to serve the ill and that if you want not to be lonely you have to find lonely people and serve them. That viewpoint.

We would dedicate the karma of this week to that viewpoint slowly spreading around the world. Then he mentions a text called RIGS SPRAS MA. RIGS SPRAS MA is a small text by Je Tsongkapa where the name of it means I tried for a long time.

The name of the book is I tried for a long time. RIGS SPRAS MA It's a prayer about may the teachings stay in the world. Like that.

RIGS SPRAS MA. What I mean to say is when I say teachings stay in the world I mean that viewpoint. A lot of viewpoints of Western society are Christian or Jewish.

A lot of our viewpoints, a lot of our systems are actually an outgrowth from religious viewpoints. The code of law is an outgrowth from the Jewish Ten Commandments. It has allowed this civilization to grow because it's a good code.

It prevents people from hurting each other. A lot of the ideas have come through the Christian tradition. You don't realize it but a lot of what you live by is either Jewish or Christian.

A lot of your laws of your countries in the West. That's why there's such collisions when you try to impose them on Muslim people or you impose them on Chinese people. They didn't grow up with those underlying beliefs.

They grew up with other underlying beliefs which are probably also good. They're just different. What you're praying for, what I would pray for is not so much that Buddhism becomes a world religion and Dalai Lama becomes king.

It's not like that. It should be that the viewpoint, that the place where things come from is from serving other people. Things come from your mind, from seeds put there, by serving other people.

Then our hope, what I would pray for is that that viewpoint becomes so much a part of our global civilization that people don't notice it anymore. It's just the way it is. People say, General Motors profits for the quarter dip.

The board gets together and says, we have to give more cars to poor people in Africa. It's their naturally held opinion on how to solve their lower stock price this quarter. We got to send more cars to Africa fast.

The stock price is dropping. I really like how your boyfriend looks, so I'm going to leave him alone so I can get a better one. You see what I mean?

Like that. If that were the commonly held viewpoint of how things work, then there would be peace in the world. As we have forgotten that many of our laws are based on the teachings of Judaism and Christianity thousands of years ago, I'm hoping for a day where they just forget where it came from and people just live by that way of life.

Whatever I want, I will have to give to someone else. Like that. Okay, ,GYIS PA'I GYUR DU, ,RDZOGS BYANG GI GYUR LOR MDZAD, You can also dedicate it to your own enlightenment.

That's a long story. That you could slowly gain enough karma that you would perceive yourself serving an entire world in the way that great religious figures have in the past. Like that.

I would like to... We're going to give away cities later today. But in this prayer, you would say, give away planets.

Who's covering Earth? Nick's got it covered. Alright, well then I'll work in another galaxy.

You know what I mean? Like that. Like that.

Think like that. Dedicate it to the day when they will give you your planet. Say, okay, here's your planet.

Take good care of it. Everyone complains about God, but what if you were God? Would you mess up probably?

All right. ,RDZOGS BYANG GI GYUR LOR MDZAD, ,DRO BA'I TSE, ,DEB DGOS MI BYAS PAR LAM MA DANG, ,CHOS LA DRANG BZHIN DU RIM GYI RIM GYI, ,DRO BA'I LA BYANG LEN, This is funny. In the monastery, these teachings go on 10-12 hours.

It's really painful to sit through the whole thing. In our monastery, if there's a big crowd, we have to sit on the ankles of the person behind us. It's that close.

It's hot. It's India. You're sitting on it and his ankles are being sat on.

The teaching is going for like 10 hours. At the end, they do this thousand prayers and everybody's suffering through the prayers. Then they say, okay, you can go.

Then there's this huge burst of people running out the door to go to the bathroom. Some temples in India, there's a... Well, that's another story.

Sometimes you don't have time to get to a bathroom. Anyway. He says, when the class lets out, don't everybody rush for the door.

Leave the teaching as if you're leaving your high school girlfriend at 12 o'clock and her dad's waiting at the door and you're like... You just whisper one more thing in her ear and then you start to go in and say, oh and also honey... You should be not quite willing to leave.

There shouldn't be a big rush for the door, he says. Then leave in a dignified manner. Some people leave, a few hang around and then most people leave.

It just trickles out and comes down slowly. We've reached day four of the original teaching. Now we're starting day four.

Everything I taught in Phoenix for the last ten days and these ten days, he taught in one day. So now we're on day four. The whole teaching I think is 24 days, if I'm not mistaken.

Then T.J. Rinpoche, who is second from the left, who edited this text and also trained this Dalai Lama and trained my teacher. Next to him is Pabongka Rinpoche, on the left. The last photo on the left is Pabongka Rinpoche who wrote the text, who spoke the text.

So T.J. Rinpoche recorded the comments that the teacher made before he started teaching. He made some comments to the crowd. NYIN ZHIG PA, on the fourth day, LHAG LDAN BDAG PA'I which means Chandrakirti said, an ancient Indian emptiness master.

GANG RTZA'I RANG BA'ANG SGRUG CING THON NAS PAR, KHYAL TE DIR DANG TSIN PAR MI CHE NA, YANG RTZAR THON BA'I GZHAN BA'ANG CHUG RGYUR BA, DE LAS CI NAS GANG GIS LONG BAR GYUR, ZHES GSUNGS PA LTAR RANG CHAGS RNAMS Those people like you and me, MI KHONGS PA'I GNAS LAS THAR TE we have been able to take a birth in a place, in a situation where we are able to practice. In the short view of things, this country enjoys an unprecedented amount of religious freedom. You can go to any country in the world, almost any country in the world, and the amount of freedom here to practice what you want to practice, in history, there's never been something like this.

It's just extremely rare. We are very lucky to have been born. Traveling overseas, I went when I was 20, and I lived in India, and in other countries.

It makes a big patriot out of you. Because you come home, you can go to New York and hear 16 languages on the street and nobody's burning anybody's house. Not much.

Killing somebody because they don't believe in this god number A instead of god number B. That's extremely rare in the world. The freedom to not be looking out the windows and worrying if the police are coming.

We teach in some countries like that, where everyone's nervous, and I have to edit my sentences on the fly. There's a quotation by a very nice person. It makes you feel really bad inside, not to be able to say what you want to say.

We grew up no one telling us we couldn't say anything. We're very fortunate to be able to practice in those circumstances. You don't live in a country where you have to be careful what you put on your altar, in case the police come.

That's very unusual. ,GAL TE DER DANG ZIN PA, ,MI KHO MA'I GNAS LAS LTAR DE, We've been freed from those conditions. ,DE'ANG SBYOR GYI BSTAN THOB NAS, We possess a body and mind which are extraordinarily fit for enlightenment, to study how to get to enlightenment.

We have a good basic education. We have sharp minds. We have healthy bodies, mostly.

,GZHI SEMS DANG, ,CHOS BYED PA'I RANG BA YOD PA'I SKABS, We are free to do whatever practices we want. ,SKABS DER, ,BSTAN GYI SDUG MA ZHIG MA RDUG NA, If with these kinds of circumstances we don't achieve our highest dreams, ,MA RDUG NA, ,SDUG MA ZHIG MA RDUG NA, ,PHYI NAS NGAN SONG GI YANG SAR THUN, Who knows where we go after we die? We don't know.

We talked about it the other day. We were talking about... You got a pen?

An extra pen. Wait, I got one. We were talking about the pen.

Just very briefly. A dog sees it as a chew toy. A human sees it as a pen.

If you think about it, when there's a dog in the room focusing on a pen and there's a human in the room focusing on the same pen, then there's two realities running in parallel in that room. If you think about it, the physicists are right. You got to 18 or 19, I don't know what it is.

There are two realities running in the room at the same time. So to die and go to a different place is no more than to switch from one layer of reality to another layer. And there are countless layers there right now.

You could be experiencing this room as... If you were autistic, then you would experience it as people screaming or just bright lights that are overwhelming you. You know what I mean?

So you're at a certain tiny sliver of the whole spectrum of experience. And it's foolish to say that... See, after you die, lots of karmas wear out at the same time.

And then your perception of the same objects changes radically. And that's a rebirth. It's not that you die and they take your soul out and then they look around for a bug's body and they try to stuff it in there.

It's not like that. It's more dangerous than that. You just slide to a different level of reality.

And people do it all the time, people with Alzheimer's. They're in the same house that they lived in for 30 years and then suddenly it's a dangerous place. And it can kill them.

It's just that their mind slid just slightly. So it's possible. We don't know when that slide will happen with us.

So you got to grab the chance while you got it. You get irritated that we have to meditate an extra 15 minutes, but there will come a day when you will die to have a chance to meditate for 15 minutes because you won't be able to. Your back will hurt too much.

You complain about that yoga class, but it's too tough. But there'll be a day when you can't get out of bed to do a yoga class. So enjoy it while you're having it.

Have a good time while you're having it. ,RDANG SROG GI RTEN THOB NAS PHYI PHYIR, ,YID BLO RANG BA YIN PAS THOB NAS, ,SDUG BSNGAL GYI GZHAN DBANG TU GYUR, And then you lose your freedom. Events overtake you.

Events call the shots. There was a disciple of the Buddha called Udayana. He told the teacher, I would like to go to a different city.

I would like to do something in a different city. The Buddha saw that he would have suffering in that city, but he also saw that if he said anything, the person wouldn't believe him or it wouldn't change their opinion. So he said, go, do what you have to do.

And then the scripture calls it, and then he was herded by his karma to the next city. You see what I mean? The karma forced the disciple to the next city.

And he was murdered in the next city. ,LAS KYI BDE BA means like a sheep herder. What do you call it?

They force the sheep in front of them. Drive the sheep, driven by your karma. ,GZHAN DBANG means you don't have a choice.

It's not up to you anymore. Karma is forcing you into certain really bad situations. And we don't have that right now.

We can make decisions. We can decide to practice. We can decide to teach.

We can do other beautiful things, but that doesn't last forever. And then karma starts pushing you into something you don't want to do. ,GZHAN DBANG DU GYUR, ,CHOS KYI DRA TZAM YANG THOD PA'I RGYAL BA MED PA'I GNAS SOGS BSRUNG NA, There are places in the world and in the universe.

I think of Mongolia. I studied Mongolian. I lived with Mongolians for years, many years.

And then I was interested to study Mongolian history because I was living with Mongolians. And then I thought... I studied something about Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan's father, the reason Genghis Khan got so tough was that his family was invited to their neighbor's house and their family poisoned their family. The neighbor poisoned his father at dinner, with dinner. Invited him to dinner and then poisoned him to death so that they could just walk across the street and steal all their stuff.

Then Genghis Khan and his mother... Genghis Khan was a little kid and his mother and he escaped to the mountains. He lived like an animal for like 10 years in the mountains, just living off of berries and roots and killing animals with his teeth.

That's what made him tough. Then in those days, in the Mongolian society at that time, that was normal. That was normal behavior.

If you can, invite your neighbor to dinner, poison them and then you can walk across the street and get their television. Like that, it was just like... There are places in history and there are places in this world where the idea of morality is completely gone.

It's completely gone. I was in Russia when it first fell, the Soviet Union. We were working on a project to save Tibetan books there.

I was sitting in the St. Petersburg airport and this guy sat down next to me and gave me his business card. It didn't have the name of his business on it. I said, well...

He says, well, give me a call if you need it. I'm like, what are you doing? He says, oh, I didn't tell you?

I said, no, it's not on your card. He says, well, of course it's not on my card. He says, I kill people.

He says, 75 bucks. Just give me the address, give me the name, I'll take care of it. Anybody you want.

75 bucks. I'm like, okay, I'll be in touch. It's just no moral sense.

There are places like that. We are in a very weird moral pocket. It's very cool in some ways.

Except for the idea that you should go and kill other people in that country. Which is also kind of weird. CHU BYED PA'I RANG BA YIN PA'I SKABS DGYUR SNYEN SONG DE LAS LONGS PA'I THOB TZAM YANG GZU BYED It's also extremely difficult to get out of a situation like that.

Once you're in a country, once you're born in a country, or once you live in a country where there's no moral fabric, it's hard to pull yourself out. Because everybody's doing it. We were in Ukraine and we were trying to talk people out of bribing people.

Because everyone depends on bribes, they don't know who's going to start first. Who should start not bribing? Everyone's confused.

They say, just let us keep bribing each other. It's okay. There's no way to pull yourself out of it because everybody's doing it.

SNYEN SONG DE LAS LONGS PA'I THOB TZAM YANG GZU BYED DE BA'I RANG BA YIN PA'I SKABS DGYUR Right now you have power to do what you want. DGYUR CI NAS KYANG, BRTEN GYI SDUG PA BYA Work towards high goals. Pick high goals in your life and work towards them.

Because you have the freedom. You have financial freedom. You have political freedom.

It may not last. Every empire that ever existed thought it was going to go on forever. People were sitting in Rome the day it fell and thinking, what's playing at the stadium tonight?

What lions are going to eat which gladiators today? That's all they were worried about. Then their city fell that night and they were all killed.

The city was destroyed. It happens generation after generation. It happens all the time.

America is not some thing that's going to last forever. Somebody could walk in and you would be... You'd say, I want to go to a ten-day retreat.

They'd say, okay, well, we have a special prison for people who want to go to ten-day retreats. You could break extra rocks there. It could happen.

It happens. Use the time while you have it. Use the situation while you have it.

SANGS RGYAS BSTOD PAR BYA Gain some high goals. DE PHYIR DU BYANG CHUB LAM GYI RIM PA'I PHYIR NYAN DU NYAMS SU LEN PA'I NYAMS PA'I KUN LONG ZAL BTAB DE SEMS PAR ZHUG Pabongka Rinpoche is saying, please, I ask you. He uses the honorific for his audience, which is very Pabongka Rinpoche.

He got in trouble in his lifetime. He taught the common people. It was unheard of.

He invited common people to his teachings. He used the honorific to them. He used the high language to the common people.

It freaked out a lot of people. They tried to kill him in his lifetime. Anyway, he says, while you are here, think, I might not get this chance again.

This chance is very rare. Let me do something important with what I've learned. BTAB PA ZHUG GANG SEMS PAR BYA BA'I CHOS NI Then what are you learning here?

What are we learning here? KYANG LDAN GYI SKYE BU SANGS RGYAS KYI SA GRUB PA THEG PA CHOG GI CHOS LUGS SHES SOGS NAS SA CHE DRAM PA'I BAR NGAR BRTAG LA Then he reviewed the outline of the teachings that he had given so far. KHA SANGS RGYAS SHES PA RNAMS LA RGYAL SHES DOR DU GSUNGS NAS Anyway, he repeated and summarized what he had taught the day before in a few minutes time.

DE RING GI SHES PA LA Then he said, okay, now let's get on to what we're doing today. Let's talk about what we're doing today. We're about to start the first major section of the actual Lam Rim.

This is the beginning of the Lam Rim. We're about to start the Lam Rim after, what, a year? Okay, let's take a break before that.