«Дар освобождения», курс 6 «Ретрит страсти», занятие 3

[Говорящий 2] (0:00 - 0:15)
Thank you very much. You tend to make a leap into karma very quickly, as kindness is the staple to the karmic state. What makes kindness work?

[Говорящий 1] (0:17 - 15:17)
I like that question. Why does kindness work? And this got into a question.

You know, 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. And China is strange.

China has gone through 50 years of, you can call it, 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. And there's been a mindset of taking care of each other for 50 years.

They were real communists. And they determined to stamp out poverty, and they did. And it was equal.

The way it got started was violent. And 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.

And so they've created an interesting karma. Some of their karma is quite good. There will be an economic power because of that attempt, karmically, to take care of everybody.

And a lot of that was violence, and that was wrong. But a lot of it was pure. And they're gaining that karma resolve.

And they will be the world's leading power because of that. They don't even understand that. But they will be.

And what do you call it? The censorship means they haven't been exposed to a lot of like 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. So some of the censorship methods are bad. The result of the censorship is good.

They think clearly. And they think more clearly than Westerners. And 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. So 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? And they ask questions like that, like 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. He's like, first talk in Guangzhou. He's never heard anything Buddhism before.

He's like, let me get this straight. I said, OK, 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, ah. 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. All right. So anyway, they asked this question.

It's intention, right? It's mostly intention, right? 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 a seed for me to have a boyfriend? Why do I always have to plant a seed 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.

Let's say I really like donuts. Then you ask somebody, where do donuts come from? Then some people will say, from a store.

Then you say, well, how did they get in the store? 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.

Then you say, how do you get one of those donuts? 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. Then logically you can say, 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? They're always running out of your favorite donut.

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. That's very, very, very profound.

You think it's just some silly thing, and you're like, 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 lipstick, 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, functionally?

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. Fantasy. 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 say 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've 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. That'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.