«Дар освобождения», курс 6 «Ретрит страсти», занятие 4

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 0:12)
We were just gonna do like maybe 20 minutes of question and answer and then hit the sack. So, any other questions? Yes, say it loud so everybody can hear you.

[Говорящий 2] (0:12 - 0:26)
You mentioned earlier in the week that this gift of liberation was better, I believe, I'm quoting correctly, was the right one for us versus the long-winded change. Could you explain what you meant by that?

[Говорящий 1] (0:26 - 3:34)
Okay, so his question is, earlier this week you said that the text that we are studying is better for us than a book called The Great Book on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. LAM RIM CHEN MO means The Great Book on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. That was written by the teacher of His Holiness the First Dalai Lama in 1412, I think.

Something like that. He mostly pieced together parts of older scriptures, many of them from the time of the Buddha. So that was 1,000 years before him.

And then, sorry, 1,900 years before him. So that book is a little difficult to read. A lot of the language is archaic and it's beautiful and it's very powerful.

But because of the language, I think it wouldn't be as useful as this one. Then that's a phenomenon in the Tibetan tradition, which is that in many literary or spiritual traditions, the longer it goes on, the less pure it gets. The corruptions enter the teaching and mistakes and misunderstandings enter the teaching.

The more centuries go by, the more sloppy the teaching gets. It's an interesting phenomenon in the Tibetan tradition that with each generation that goes by, it has been clarified and refined further. So the presentation as it's given in the last century, this is from the last century, right?

I think it's more helpful to us than an older scripture. Because there's a process of refinement and of presentation. The information is the same.

Emptiness is the same. But if you can hear it from a living person who understands it well, you can learn it faster and better than if you read a book that's 500 years old. Once your understanding gets sophisticated, you will see that it matches the original presentation.

You won't feel uncomfortable. It's not a different presentation. The information is the same and the subject is the same and the emptiness that's being explained is the same.

But to get it in your own vernacular is much more powerful.

[Говорящий 2] (3:35 - 4:06)
What does it mean, from our point of view, if terrible, terrible things happen to, let's say, a really good friend, like just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine was raped? And what does it also mean for terrible things to happen to people that I hate? Not to hate, but just like, you know, bad people, let's say, like Osama Bin Laden killing.

What does that mean to me and my karma?

[Говорящий 1] (4:11 - 21:21)
There's a famous Bible quotation, why do the wicked prosper? If your system is correct, why do bad people become rich? And why do good people get cancer?

You have to address that question or someone can't really follow. This system says that whatever you want in your life, anything you want in your life, you can have if you provide it to someone else in a certain way, with a certain knowledge and with certain techniques. So then we see, my mother, she was one of the nicest people I know.

We didn't have a lock on our door and anyone could come in and sleep and eat the food. Anybody. And they did.

It was weird, like you came home, you didn't know if your bed was available. She just did that. Then she got a terrible cancer.

How does that work? As far as people doing good things and not getting a result, like oftentimes I meet people, they say, how can I become financially independent? Which I think is a worthy thing.

I think it's good. In my whole life, I've made a lot of money. The company that we started is a quarter billion dollars now.

It was just bought by Warren Buffett. That's useful to have that money. We saved eight million pages of Tibetan scriptures.

It took 14 years just to catalog them. 200,000 books. Then just start scanning them.

With money, if you have money, you can help people. Money is like fire, right? It can cook your food or it can burn your house down.

But if you have a vision and you want to do something for the world, if you have great resources and you can resist the negative side of the money, then it's very good to have it. It's a very good thing. So I have people come to me and they say, how do I get money to do good things?

I just want to do good things. I have more people come to business talks and ask me how to make money to do good things in the world than other people. It's interesting.

It seems like there's a lot of people in the world who would like to make a lot of money to help people. A lot, more than you think. More people want to do that than just want to get rich to have a Jaguar or something like that.

It's interesting because we meet thousands of business people every year. So they come to me and they say, okay, how do I make a large amount of money to help people? Then I'll say, you have to help someone else make money first.

That will plant a seed. Then they will say, I've done that. What's his name, the hip-hop guy?

Russell Simmons came to me and asked this question. Then they'll say, I gave a lot of money to good causes, but I didn't make more money. Then I'll ask them some questions about the technique.

Growing money is like growing vegetables, or what do you call it, watermelons. Sandia or shikwa. In each country we use a different vegetable.

The seed can be a good viable seed, but if you place it in the wrong place, it won't grow. You can have a good watermelon seed. Then Jesus went off on that.

If you read the New Testament, he went off on that. Don't plant seeds in rocky soil. If you plant a seed, if you are good to people, and you do good things, you help them financially, or you help the sick, or you help the lonely, that's a good seed.

Helping people financially should result in more money. Much more money. Because a watermelon seed is much smaller than the watermelon.

If you help the sick, you should enjoy good health for a long time. If you help the lonely, the elderly, then your partner, your relationship with your partner should be beautiful and problem free. Because those are the proper seeds to get those things.

But if you don't know how to plant the seed properly, and you don't know how to take care of the seed properly, it won't grow. That explains why. We're going to do that tomorrow.

We'll talk about how to plant it properly, and how to take good care of it. Because if you don't, you can be generous, or you can help the sick, or you can help the lonely, and nothing will happen. Because the seed is planted on a rock, on stones.

That explains why. The case of my mother, who was very generous, and didn't have a lot of money. Then looking back, I understand she didn't know how to take care of the seed.

I'll teach you that tomorrow. Why do good people seem to make money? This comes up, we speak in...

We just got back from Eastern Europe, right? It came up a lot in Ukraine, in Kiev, right? Because everyone's bribing somebody, and there's huge corruption.

I was on a highway, I was driving to the airport, and I said, this is a beautiful highway. They all laughed, they're all roaring in the car. I'm like, what's wrong?

They said, this is the nine miles of highway from Kiev to the airport. I said, yeah, it's beautiful. I don't know what you're worried about.

They said, this is the only highway in the Ukraine. I said, but I heard the Ukraine was the largest country in Europe, physically. They said, yes, it is.

You don't have any other highways? No. I said, well, don't you have taxes?

They said, yes. Then government leaders take the money. Every single dollar of tax money, they steal it.

They can't build a highway. They don't have enough money for a road. Then they say, Geshe-la, in your system, these people are corrupt.

These people are bribing people. The people who bribe people get rich. There were guys in the audience who said, if I stopped bribing the government today, my company would fail.

What's that all about? How do you explain that? That's a long story.

You need a big poster, right? But basically it goes like this. Here's 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.

In 2008, you are very generous to somebody. You help somebody out of financial problems. In 2009, you bribe a government official in Kiev.

In 2010, your company takes off. Very successful. Then people draw false lines of cause and effect.

The human mind draws false lines of cause and effect. Science also does. That's what I'm going to tell Stephen Hawking.

Grossly false lines of cause and effect. Then they said, give us an example in Kiev. I said, okay.

They said, what are you doing? I said, I do this every night. It's very necessary.

Then they say, why? I say, this makes the sun come up in the morning. They're like, why?

I said, well, I've been doing this every day. Then every morning the sun comes up. Therefore, I'm causing the sun to come up.

If I ever forget one night to bang the clock on the computer, the sun won't come up. Then because I did it before the sun came up, does that prove that it's causing the sun to come up? That's what science is having.

They have a basic problem there. Something precedes another thing. It appears to be the cause of that thing.

It appears that bribing the government official in 2009 caused the company to get a contract in 2010. But what really caused the company to get a contract in 2010 was that you were generous in 2008. Between that time, something random happened.

Between. Then its human mind wrongly grasps to a cause and effect relationship between the bribe and the company doing better. What happens in 2011?

The bribe ripens. The negativity. The essence of paying a bribe is that you are stealing money from every single person in the country.

You are stealing the taxes. If I bribe a government official, if he steals all the tax money for the highways, he's hurting every person in the country. Then he'll have some terrible, terrible ripening in 2011 from accepting the bribe in 2009.

My company will fail. It was very poignant here. We were going through this in Russian.

They got it. I felt this wave go through the room of understanding. They got it.

Because they are now observing in their country that the bribe takers and the bribe givers are failing almost universally. Huge companies are collapsing. Huge government enterprises are collapsing.

Famous wealthy politicians are being put in jail. It suddenly clicked on them that these are the people that were taking bribes and these are the people who were giving bribes. They started counting the companies that had failed and the ones who had taken bribes or given bribes.

They were very excited. The whole room got, what do you call it? It was electrified.

The whole room was electrified. Then you felt this huge wave of relief go through the room because it's a lot of pressure on the human spirit to keep doing something that you know is wrong because that's the custom of the country right now, to give bribes or to be corrupt. Then suddenly they were released to be moral.

It was cool. In Kiev I went to a mafia restaurant with a major mafia organization leader and we had a very intense conversation. He truly wanted to change because they feel, people aren't stupid.

Deep down they sense that something bad is going to happen. If I keep hurting people, something bad is going to happen. You just have to draw, you have to demonstrate where the real lines of cause and effect are.

It's very beautiful. You can. People get it.

People get it. Your friend has a terrible thing happen to them. We don't believe that a negative experience can come from a positive seed.

We don't believe it's possible. It's impossible. That's a really basic principle that you have to try to wrestle with.

You cannot have a negative thing happen from being kind to someone. It's not possible. If you're kind to someone and something bad happens after that, that's coming from something older.

The kindness came before the disaster but it didn't cause it. That was caused by something earlier. The kindness can only result in something good.

That applies to everything that happens to people. You have to struggle with that. But if you work on it, you'll be happy.

After a while you'll see it clearly. All the religious figures have said that. You don't get grapes from thorns and something from pistils.

You don't get mangoes from watermelon seeds. It takes some training and it takes some observation. It takes some experimentation to confirm that in your own life.

Now you can start the process. You plant certain seeds and you see. But after a few years of experimenting, you will have all the money you want.

I call it oxygen money. Oxygen money means you're not worried about is there enough oxygen in the room. No one's sitting there and...

Maybe you should ask a few of the students to leave the room, Geshe Michael. There might not be enough oxygen for the rest of us. If you understand these principles, you can have unlimited personal resources and not have to think about it.

I don't mean you're going to have three jaguars and live in a big mansion. That's not the point. You can if you want.

But to have enough resources and not have to worry about it or think about money and just to have enough to do good things, then you can do that. But you have to plant the right seeds and you have to take care of them. Then you can have a relationship.

You can plant a beautiful relationship with another person and you can sustain it indefinitely and you can make it get more beautiful every year. Just if you understand seeds. We're going to talk about that tomorrow.

But a basic principle is that a good deed cannot result in a problem. It's not possible. If a problem comes, it's from something earlier.

As you grow in this knowledge, you'll see that. A lot of the suffering in the world comes from thinking that something good could come from something bad. I could lie and my boss will give me a raise.

It's not possible. It doesn't work. If he gives you a raise after you lie, it's not cause and effect.

People will start lying to you next year. The money came from being kind to someone last year. There's no cause and effect relationship between lying and getting a raise.

You'll get sophisticated at it. Then you'll get very successful at whatever you do. Relationships or financial or health, you will be able to cause the things happen what you want.

That's really beautiful because then you can help other people do that. If you wanted to help the world, to understand this would be the best way because then they could get whatever they want. One more question.

You're here all the time. She had one before. You go.

A little bit loud so people can hear.

[Говорящий 2] (21:24 - 21:28)
When we're doing meditation, I think I give up to one or two.

[Говорящий 1] (21:30 - 21:33)
I usually don't get past three myself.

[Говорящий 2] (21:34 - 21:55)
Sometimes a lot of ones. Part of the problem is I have chronic insomnia. My time maybe has to do with growing up in a family where raw potatoes, cooked potatoes, and roasts and knives were thrown around on holidays.

It's when you come out a little anxious or something.

[Говорящий 1] (21:57 - 29:59)
What can help? I can actually accomplish the meditation so that I can actually help out. Yeah, good.

We'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. There are four steps to planting a seed properly in your mind, a karmic seed.

Say, shi, sampa, jorwa, tar tok. There are four. We talked about planting a seed in the proper way.

You can do kind things and not get good results if you don't know the technique. You can have lots of viable, powerful seeds. If you don't know how to plant them or care for them, then they won't grow.

Tomorrow I thought we should cover that. We will cover how to take care of a seed. I have rose plants.

I went to a rose class. We had a lottery in the class. They said, whoever wins the lottery, the teacher of the rose class will come to your house and help you plant your first roses.

So she came. We planted them. It was a long day.

We spent a long day. She helped me design the garden and it was really beautiful. She's like 90 years old.

She's been growing roses her whole life in the desert, so she knows. Then she was getting ready to leave. The last thing she said was, now you sit down, young rippersnapper.

I got to tell you the secret to roses. I'm like, okay, I'm ready. She says, don't water them.

I said, excuse me? I'm going to water them. I'm like a class, what do you call it?

Type A person. I'm going to water them day and night and they're going to be higher than other people's roses. She said, something about roses.

They don't like to be overwatered. You will kill them. If you do your Type A thing on these roses, you will kill them.

They want enough for the desert and they will grow very strong and big. If you overwater them, you will kill them. Then she said, I'm leaving.

She never came back. The roses are about seven feet high. Yesterday I cut some of them because they're getting too high.

I had to trim them. They start to invade the house. They sent a bouquet out the other day.

It was really cute. A whole bouquet through the porch. Then I was like, this is getting out of hand.

But there's a way to take care of them. The way to take care of a karmic seed isn't, what do you call it? We call it when it's self-evident or intuitive.

It's counterintuitive. It's like refusing roses water. To take good care of a karmic seed is not what you thought.

It's not what you might think. The most powerful way to take care of a karmic seed is to lay down on your pillow at night as you go to sleep and think certain series of thoughts about the seed. Then you can make a quarter billion dollars out of seven dollars.

Or you can have the man of your dreams. Or you can stop the war in Afghanistan. Or you can spread solar power to Mexico or something like that.

You can do amazing things. But there are methods of working with the karmic seeds that are done quietly and internally and as you fall asleep because the mind is more open. The mind is much more vulnerable in the final hours, in the final minutes before you fall off to sleep.

You can make things happen thousands of times more magnitude than they would have happened simply by thinking certain train of thoughts as you fall asleep. That also has the effect of stopping insomnia. I thought we'd do that tomorrow.

It's very cool. It's very, very, very powerful. It was taught 17 centuries ago.

It's very beautiful. Anybody can do it. You actually lay down and you put your head on your pillow and you start going through a certain series of thoughts about goodness.

Then that does very strange and extraordinary things to the seeds in your life. That's like a trick and I'll teach you tomorrow. There's four tricks.

The last one, which is the most important one, prevents insomnia completely. You won't have insomnia anymore. I think even just as an insomnia cure it would be worth it.

Even if it didn't do all that other stuff. We'll do that tomorrow. It's very beautiful.

If you want to help people, that's such a precious thing to teach somebody. We'll do that tomorrow. Tomorrow there will also be a fire offering in the evening.

That's a traditional, very ancient custom, Homa. That started 5,000 years ago. During the fire offering you can practice these trains of thought that we're going to learn tomorrow, that affect your world and the way your world goes into the future.

It affects the course of your life. Certain meditations. We'll teach the meditations in the afternoon and in the evening we'll do a traditional fire offering.

This is a very ancient and very beautiful way of helping the world. How it works we'll talk about tomorrow afternoon. But everybody has to help.

Everybody who wants to can help. We're going to do a new thing. We're going to have three fires going at once because it's cold.

Also because I thought it would be nice if everyone had the experience of performing it together. It's a very beautiful and effective way to help the world. It's a very strange thing.

Very beautiful. Here we go. SANG SHIN GUK GYI CHU SHIN NYE THO THAM RIG RANG NIM SHI NENG NENG YEN PA NI SANG GYEL SHIN DU MING TE WU WA NI RO BU NAM DA SHING NA CHOD PA SHOK YI RANG BU LA NA NA NAM TA YANG NI NI GYEO BU SEUNG RANG YI SHI SO CHO SHING SEUNG RANG YI SHI NAE CHUNG WEI NAM PA KUN NI DO PA SHOK

[Говорящий 2] (30:31 - 32:43)
SANG SHIN GUK GYI CHU SHIN NYE THAM RO BU NAM DA SHING NENG NENG YEN RO BU NAM DA SHING NENG NENG YEN RO BU NAM DA SHING NENG NENG NENG SANG SHIN GUK GYI CHU SHIN NYE THAM RO BU NAM DA SHING NENG NENG RO BU NAM DA SHING NENG NENG NENG RO BU NAM DA SHING NENG NENG NENG And so, and I'll give out the sort of what your particular job is.

So, but actually in that corner, so it'd be Johnny O, Angelo, and Adam, Brian Stricker, Nick, Alejandro, Mark Ross, Jeff Eddy, and Ryan Caputi. And then Darcy I'll catch up with. If you can stay, it's good.

If you can't, it's okay. Darcy, Anna, then Chelsea, Bailey, Sheree, Esther will be in that group, but she's going to help Eden. Ami and Pete.

And then Giselle, Venerable Droma, Tahiya, Ula, Jane Schwab, and Jamie Alexander. So we'll meet over there and we'll go over what we're going to do tomorrow. And I think that's sort of about it.

And then the schedule will be posted for tomorrow in the kitchen. And then in the afternoon we're going to actually have Eden Full, who just arrived over there. She's sort of going to give a talk about her passion about solar technology and stuff that sort of for her life has boasted her creativity in her own world.

So that'll be actually two nights, tomorrow, Friday, and then another one on Saturday. One will be more of like her creativity, and the other one will be more of like the technological part of the business or her dream or her vision in the solar industry. And I think that's it.

Yes? Can I have a thought?

[Говорящий 1] (32:46 - 32:51)
For those of you who are sponsoring the public setup, how would you convene that meeting?

[Говорящий 2] (32:55 - 32:57)
Actually, if you convene that meeting too, that would be helpful.

[Говорящий 1] (33:03 - 34:20)
Just to remind you that if you're feeling some pain in your back or your legs, or you're feeling anxious or tired, or any kind of physical stuff going on, or emotional stuff, I encourage you to get a massage. There are, I think, three or four really good massage therapists here. They charge.

If you don't have money, you can have a scholarship. You can just have it for free. So don't worry about it.

And I encourage you to have one if you need one. Don't feel like I don't have any money or like that. So just do it.

It will help you a lot. Where's Nicola? Oh, hi.

Nicola also does a thing with healing balls. Puts special balls on your body. This is an old Tibetan custom.

I've had it done to me. It's good. So if you'd like to do that, she's offered to help people with that.

So you can talk to her afterwards. Want to raise your hand again? Yeah.

So if you'd like to try that, you're welcome to try that. Thank you.