«Дар освобождения», курс 6 «Ретрит страсти», занятие 5

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 0:16)
I thought we would do questions and answers, if you want to do, okay? You're always a good thing. Anybody who doesn't usually get...

Yeah, loud, loud so these guys can hear.

[Говорящий 2] (0:17 - 0:50)
I have a question about the person that I live with, my sister. And I feel like a lot of me and my mom and my dad, when we're teaching, we're not really paying attention to how they're looking for the work. And so I'm wondering if there's a thing, kind of like, super interesting, but I think it's helpful, but it's either it's like, blinding me up in a sense, or if it's better to focus in a different way.

[Говорящий 1] (0:53 - 7:40)
Okay, good. Did everybody hear okay? So basically, this is a pretty common thing.

One or two people in the family get, if you're not in the Morris family, even their dog comes to, I mean, but anyway. But if you... Sometimes it happens and a Dharma interest can split a family, right?

It can hurt a family. So the husband gets really excited and the wife doesn't care about it. So what do you do about that?

In general, as you saw in the teaching, we're not allowed to proselytize. We're not allowed to push people. We're not allowed to grab your husband and force him down and say, you're not getting dinner until you learn the four measurements.

If he's just not interested, then it's... And it doesn't work and then they get, what do you call it? They get turned off.

They start to resent you and resent what you're doing. So if you have a family commitment that you made prior to becoming interested in this path, you're obligated to keep that commitment. You can't just say, I'm interested in the Dharma now.

You cook your own dinner or something like that. You have to accommodate commitments you made. Because if you break your old commitments with your family, you will break your new commitments with your path.

You can't get into the habit of breaking commitments. So honor the relationships and the commitments that you had. You may not be able to do it as much.

Maybe you can't visit your aunt once a week like you're used to, but you should still honor your aunt and be nice to her. Don't say, you're just a person and I can go see my guru, or something like that. That's just bad manners and it will spread to your other behavior.

It will spread to how you act in the class and on the path. So honor your old commitments. Compromise with your spouse or other family members about activities you would like to go to.

You may not be free to go as many things as you would like to because of your other commitments. But you should honor those commitments. Then work on it on a seed level.

Should I talk to them or should I not talk to them is the same as should I buy red lipstick or should I buy pink? It's a false choice. Don't present yourself with false choices.

Should I try to get her interested or should I give up? These are false choices. Make a sentence, a single sentence about what you would like.

I would like her to be mildly interested in what I'm doing. I would like her to be open-minded to what I'm doing. If she's not open-minded, it means you're not open-minded somewhere.

If you perceive someone in your life who's not open-minded, there has to be a seed for that inside of you. The good news is you're much less close-minded than they are because the seeds are smaller. The seeds are always smaller.

It's true. Actually, it's true. You are not being open-minded in some small way in your daily life.

That's creating a seed in your mind. That seed... I'm growing irises, right?

In my garden, not far from here. My soil is special. I live on a mesa.

I live on the edge of a mesa. It's very beautiful. The whole acreage to the horizon on most of it is national park.

There's no lights at night and there's no people. Just deer and things like that. That means that the soil is...

If you dig a hole for a rose and you dig out the rocks, then there's no dirt. You have to go buy dirt because it's all rocks. But if you plant an iris, right?

I don't know. I didn't know this. They multiply under the ground.

Even during the winter, they are splitting and they are multiplying under the ground. Then there comes a problem. They start to choke each other out.

You have to dig them up, split them, and plant them in different places. They will clone themselves so much underground that after three or four years you have to dig them up and split them and break them into pieces and spread them because they choke each other out. Seeds are the same.

You are being closed-minded in some small way with somebody. Lightly. Then that gets into your subconscious and it splits like an iris.

It starts growing like an iris. He's going to say later on that it doubles every 24 hours. Iris takes a couple of weeks.

You are being closed-minded in a small way, occasionally at work with somebody. Then you come home and your sister is very closed-minded. You see what I mean?

If you want to change your sister, the thing is to keep in mind you can change her. You see what I mean? You can allow yourself to want the most cool solution possible.

Sometimes we tend to limit ourselves. Oh, she'll never be really interested, so what's the best way to handle her when she's not interested? Can I make her at least neutral?

Don't think like that. Make her a rabid Dharma fan. Make her the one who pulls you out to do yoga in the morning.

How do you do that? Then plant the seeds. What are the seeds?

Find where you are being slightly closed-minded and take out that seed. Destroy that seed. Stop doing that.

Then suddenly the sister will say, I decided I'm interested in what you're teaching. We had many cool incidents like that. It's very nice.

In the meantime, don't aggravate other people with your spirituality. It's very common. It's a personal practice.

You don't have to try to sell it to your cousin or something. Talk to them if they're interested. If they're not interested, leave them alone and don't irritate them.

So plant the seed and get everything you want. Yeah. Miriam.

[Говорящий 2] (7:44 - 8:30)
I've had the experience when I try to clarify what you do in my practice that it seems that I've opened up. It's like I've opened a Pandora's box and I've driven into a neighborhood full of all kinds of people. It's like opening up.

Yeah. So it's overwhelming. So I've expressed what you're speaking about.

Protecting the primordial plant. After I retreated many times, I have the experience of being extremely challenged. I have worries.

[Говорящий 1] (8:32 - 24:54)
Okay, so this gets into the question. It's from the Diamond Cutter Sutra, right? I guess we have to cover this.

I mean, we always cover it in DCI before we leave, right? On the last day, we normally cover how to take out a bad seed, how to remove a bad karmic seed. So you know you made a mistake.

You did something in Sycamore Canyon when you were 17 or something. It wasn't just the meth crime, anyway. So you have some mistakes that you made when you were younger.

Can you remove those seeds? Then that's relevant to your question. So I'm going to go quickly through that because some people didn't hear it before.

There are four steps that the Buddha outlined to removing an old negative seed. Step one, just review the idea that seeds are creating the world. That's step one.

Just review the idea that seeds are creating your world and everyone you meet around you, like your sister who's mildly not interested or something like that. They're being created by seeds in your mind. Review that.

Say, I made a mistake. Okay, I'm going to clean it. I'm going to clean the seed.

So first step, why? Well, seeds rule the world. Seeds create everything around me because of the pen.

That's why we always start with the pen. DCI talks always start with a pen. I see a pen because I have that seed in my mind and a dog sees a chew toy because they have a different seed in their mind.

Therefore, seeds are deciding what I see. That's step number one. Just go back to review the seeds.

In the scriptures, it's called taking refuge or shelter. But that's the meaning of it. It's not that you go to a Buddha picture and say, I'm sorry.

Then step number two. We call it intelligent regret. Geshe Michael said in the class that Pabongka Rinpoche is about to say in the class that every 24 hours I leave that seed in my subconscious, it's doubling like an iris bulb.

If I don't remove that seed of that mistake, it will double every 24 hours. I have to get it out. I have to get that seed out.

How do you know when you have a bad seed? We should have talked about that first. A, you remember.

You did something. I did an abortion. I was involved in an abortion when I was in college.

I was told by my teachers in my high school, and my family, and everybody that it was okay and it wasn't a bad thing. I was involved in one. Then I entered the path.

I started studying with lamas. My current belief is that life begins at conception. That I was involved with the murder of a human being.

Whether you believe that or not, that's your business. I'm not trying to sell that. I'm just giving my own example.

I decided I had a seed in me from killing a defenseless person. Then I know I have that seed. It hasn't ripened yet.

It will be some terrible life-threatening thing, or it could be a fatal accident or something. If the power doubled every 24 hours, then I have to be concerned. I know I have that seed.

I know it hasn't gone off yet. I have to take it out. The other example.

Sometimes we just have something bad starts to happen and then we know we must have that kind of seed, although we don't remember planting it. I had an example. A lady came to me and she said, I had a lump in my chest and I went to the doctor yesterday, before the retreat.

They did some tests and I get the results on Monday. Then I said, you should change the seed now. You have an indication that you have a seed that you don't remember planting.

You must have threatened someone's life. You must have done something very serious to somebody. To have a tumor that's potentially, what do you call it?

Malignant. She's like, well, then in theory I could work on it this weekend and it would change the doctor's report on Monday. I said, that's absolutely correct.

And she did. She worked really hard on it over the weekend. What the report would have been, we don't know.

She didn't remember hurting anybody like that, but the evidence is there. She has a tumor. She has a thing, so she has to deal with it.

Then you purify the seed. The boyfriend starts to show interest in some other lady. You see what I mean?

Then do something. Work on the seed. Then it will change.

Then you have to know how. Second step. Second step is, if I don't take that seed out, it will continue to increase.

Number three is the main method for taking the seed out. NYES PA LAS BLANG DOG PA'I STONG Very famous. Make a commitment not to do that kind of thing again.

In my case, I became a monk. Then I said, I won't get into the problem because there will be no chance. It's not possible that I will have that happen again.

You see what I mean? Like that. Make some kind of commitment.

A serious thing like an abortion, you can say, I'll never do it again in my life, and you can keep it. Then what about, I will never get mad at my husband again. My partner.

I will never be upset with my partner again. It's too big. Don't make a promise which is going to lead you to make another bad thing.

Because you're going to lie. It'll be a lie. You'll get angry again.

You can't stop it. You can't say, I'll never get angry at my partner again. It's not realistic.

The instruction of the lineage is make a realistic limit. Say, I will not do that. Then really control yourself.

Really work on yourself to control yourself. I won't yell at my husband for three days. I won't have a fight with my husband for three days.

Then work incredibly hard not to have, do anything not to have a fight. Take off your clothes and dance on the table. It works, by the way.

But do anything you can to stop the... When you're in a really tense situation, some customs officer is holding a gun in some guy's head, start singing a song or doing something goofy. Everyone's like, what the hell?

Anyway, it's a nice trick when you're traveling. Make a small doable, but then really strict. Three days, I won't say a word unkind to my partner.

That destroys the seed. Number three destroys the seed. Or does it destroy it?

We'll talk about it. Then number four, step number four. Do a, what do you call it?

A balancing action. Balance the karma somehow. I was involved in abortion.

When I got to my lama's temple, I had classes for the children in the community for five years or something. We did classes for children in the community to balance the karma. You see what I mean?

How does number three different from number four? Number three is, I won't get in a situation where I could have a need for an abortion again. You don't have to become a monk, but you just have to do...

read on the internet about a thing called birth control. Do whatever you have to do. Then step four is a different thing.

I will balance that by serving in a hospital. If I've been yelling at my husband, I will take somebody out to Starbucks who's having trouble with their husband. Something like that.

Something to balance the karma. That's step number four. The answer to your question, according to the Buddha in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, is that he seems to say you don't really destroy the seed.

You can't destroy a karmic seed actually. You just short-circuit it. The seed remains in the mind and you damage its capacity to grow.

It's like you have a pumpkin seed or something and you scratch it or you burn it. You burn it a little bit. The seed is still there, but its ability to create an effect is diminished in the orders of thousands of...

it's a thousandth of what it was going to be. Lord Buddha said, if you had killed a person and you did the four steps wisely, then you would get a terrible migraine for 24 hours or something, rather than getting in a fatal car accident. Then people ask me, and I think it's important when you teach this, which is one of the main teachings we do on a DCI tour, by the last day, they're sophisticated enough that they want to know how to take out a bad seed.

Then people come up to me and say, I have a question. If I get a migraine for 24 hours, how do I know it's not just a plain old bad karma ripening? Or it's the purification of a karma that I was working on?

What's the difference? Then there's a lot of questions that wrestlers come up with that have never been asked in Asia, that should have been asked. Nobody asked the Buddha that question.

But by reading and studying carefully, you can derive an answer. When a karmic seed that was going to do something very bad to you is short-circuited, and your application of the four steps triggers a small... When you do the four steps, it will cause the seed to ripen in a short time.

It will force the seed to ripen in a short time, in a defective way. You finish the four steps. They're called the four powers, right?

Finish the four steps. Then within a short time, there'll be some unusual weirdo disaster. That you can classify as an old karmic seed going off much less.

That's basically it. There will be two signs. One, there will be an intense, short, and unusual pain in your life.

Something. Something in your life. Like someone you really love and trust will get angry at you for 24 hours.

For the first time. Or one lady was doing the purification in her car. Listening to the diamond cutter in her car.

She got to this part. She did a little purification. The car blew up.

Before she got home. Listening to the tape. It caught on fire.

She pulled over. She wrote me and she said, Is that a purification? I said, Yes.

She said, Could you send me a new tape? Something weird, brief, and intense. Accompanied after it by an intense feeling of relief.

Accompanied shortly afterwards by a sense of well-being that you haven't felt since you did that seed. Since you made that seed. We all have old seeds that are weighing down your heart.

When you purify one, even if you... Because you live with it. There was a guy in our monastery.

He had a tumor. Tibetans don't have any money. Refugees don't have any money.

They just let it grow. It got this big. He had a tumor like this.

On the side of his stomach. It just got to be that nobody noticed it anymore. It was really weird.

It didn't hurt him and he was okay. Then he just learned to accommodate. He would hold his hand down here and walk around.

He'd have to squish by people. We're like that. We have all these bad seeds.

We get used to the weight of them. We live with it. You go on.

You have an abortion. It's not like you die the next day. You just go on.

But something is weighing down your heart. Then when you have the little trigger and the karma goes off, you'll feel suddenly like they cut off the tumor. You're like, damn, that's nice not to have that baby on there.

You know what I mean? For the first time in six years, your heart is loose and released from this burden. You'll just feel there'll be a sensation of lightness and happiness.

You say, God, I haven't been this happy in years. What is that? Those are the two signs.

Some kind of disaster followed by a feeling of extreme lightness. If you go to a teaching and you collect many good karmas, they will trigger old, small, bad karmas to go off in lesser ways. It's very, very common that a person who's had a good retreat, a nice, good practice, or they started a center and it's going well.

Then your head comes up on the radar, the demon radar. They're like, damn, that city never had anything going on. Now they got this cool stuff going on.

Things will happen. Old, negative karmas will ripen. Influences, demon influences will sweep through that center.

All these people go crazy for a week. Expect it and be ready for it. Don't get discouraged.

It's a cleansing. It's garbage that you never noticed before. When I clean my windows at my house, they look dirtier than before because now they have streaks on them.

Before, they were all equally opaque. You see what I mean? It's exactly the same in your heart.

You start the process of cleaning and then the places that are not exactly clean, they look worse than before. It's a common thing in spiritual practice that when you learn something powerful and you start applying it to yourself, it feels like you're becoming worse than you were before. That's a very common phenomenon.

Don't get discouraged by it. You start meditating and then your mind seems more crazy than before. Your mind is just struggling against the attempt to clean it and it'll go away.

Expect crap to happen after a nice program, probably at the airport on Sunday night. Okay, one more question.

[Говорящий 2] (24:55 - 25:06)
It kind of gets to the question, why does karma grow? I know it's because the laws conquer it. Why does karma grow?

Why does it grow?

[Говорящий 1] (25:07 - 31:29)
Good question. Are the laws of karma fixed or are they like the pen? That's an interesting question.

Basically, there are four laws of karma. One is that if you do something sweet, something sweet will come back. If you do something nasty, something nasty will come back.

There's a content consistency between cause and effect. First law of karma. Second law of karma.

Karma grows exponentially in the subconscious. Third law of karma. If you do commit an action, it will have a result.

That's almost like physics. If you commit an action, it will have a karmic result. Fourth law.

If you don't do anything, you won't get anything. Don't be upset if nothing happens. People come to meet me over there.

I tell them the same four things over and over. It ends with coffee meditation. It starts somewhere around Starbucks.

Then I meet them six months later. There's only two kinds of people. One says, I did what you said.

I got the boyfriend. Iskra. Somebody is telling me during the break.

The lady in Bulgaria. She got a fantastic boyfriend. She sent her friend to tell me.

Then the other people, I meet them. I say, did you find a boyfriend? They say, you know, I was really thinking about going to Starbucks.

I thought you gave me a really good suggestion. I say, yeah, but did you go? Then somehow they don't want to answer me.

Then it comes out they didn't go. Those are the four laws of karma. Now, Tim's question.

Are they fixed? Would it be possible to perceive the four laws of karma differently? Yeah, I think you have to say so.

If they are empty, which all things are, it means how you perceive them is up to you. How you perceive karma. That said, there's a thing called patterns.

There are patterns. There are only so many permutations of human activity. There are only so many mean things you can say.

There are only so many ways you can hurt somebody. There are only so many ways that karma can come back to you. But the other question you asked, I mean the question below your question was the question you asked me the other day.

What was that? I think it was, why do you need somebody else to plant it? Didn't you?

Or somebody else? I don't remember. It's...

Something can be empty and still act in a consistent way all the time. You got to understand that. Something can be coming from you.

Something can be perceived in different ways by different people. Sorry. Something can be perceived by many different people who have many different seeds in their mind and something about it will always be consistent.

Because there's karma for consistency as well as karmas for inconsistency. So it's possible that everyone who ever does something gets a result which is more than what they did. And that doesn't break the laws of emptiness.

It's just the pattern in the possibilities, in the realms of possibilities. So there are patterns. The fact that something always works the same doesn't mean it's not empty.

Every being who has a visual consciousness who enters this room will see a stick. They'll see some, what do you call it? Elongated object.

And then some will see it as a chew toy and some will see it as a pen. But all of them see an elongated object. There's a common karma that people have.

The dog and the human both have a karma to see an elongated object. The dog has the karma to see it as something to chew and the human has the karma to see it as something to write with. But they both collected karma to see an elongated object.

All living creatures have created a common karma to see karma grow. That doesn't mean it's not empty. It just means that in the ways that you can act, there's no way you can act in which the karma would shrink.

Does that mean it's fixed at being growing? No. It's growing because you perceive it that way and everybody else does too.

So something can be constant and not be self-existent. It's okay. Every animal with an eye who perceives this of a certain size will see an elongated object.

It doesn't mean it's not empty. One will see it as a pen. One will see it as a chew toy.

But the fact that everyone sees an elongated object doesn't mean that elongated object is self-existent. It's just that given all the karmas that those animals can do, they will all see an elongated object. Okay?

Which means there can be loss, such as karma always grows, and it doesn't mean it's not empty. Got it? Is that okay?

There can be constancy within emptiness. Chew on it. Maybe let's do another.

Let's do one more question. Let's do one more. We'll do some more tonight maybe.

My question is, if you could talk a little bit more about that collective. Because on the first retreat and throughout, many of the teachings, we talked a lot about emptiness, how everything is like this. And seriously, after the first retreat, I became a little egomaniac because I was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (31:30 - 31:51)
And then when you start a service and think that actually everything is not for you, but for others, that is like, I became egomaniac and it's a little bit opposite of that. It crashed my head. The answer maybe for that is more in the collective karma.

Is it personal?

[Говорящий 1] (31:54 - 47:17)
I'll give an answer that you should know. You should have it in your toolkit for when people ask you the question. When you start teaching, there's a bodhisattva vow against teaching emptiness to people who are not properly prepared.

There's a vow against teaching people that things are coming from them without being careful. You can break a vow if you teach it without being careful. What does it mean to be careful?

If you get up in Beijing and you convince everybody that the pen is coming from them, then a few very smart people in the audience will figure out that everything is coming from them, including the people around them. Then they come up to me in the break, they get their photo and then they say, I feel so lonely. You're like, why?

They say, well, you said everything is coming from me. That means I'm the only person in my reality. Everyone else is coming from me.

How can I interact with people who are coming from me? They must not exist. Or they are just figments of my imagination.

I'm living in my head. Like, what's his name? What was that movie?

The older one. Something's World. Truman's World.

Am I living in a fishbowl called my mind? Then everybody I meet is just some kind of dream of my mind. This question came up many centuries ago by a master called Dharmakirti.

Nyingpo taught a class of Dharmakirti here. That master, he thought it was an important question that he wrote a book about it. It's called, what's it called?

GZHAN GYI SGRUB PA'I The Proof of Other People. It's a book. It's one of his books.

It's in the Tenggyur. He proves that other people exist outside of you. Why?

Because your mind projects them as outside of you. You got to get used to that. It's not just some kind of blah blah.

It's not some philosophical blah blah. My mind is creating the people around me as independent people of me. You got to chew on that.

The pillar that's holding up this building ultimately is coming from my mind. Its tensile strength and its physical properties are not a matter of the chemicals in it. Whether or not that holds.

I gave this talk a year before the World Trade Center fell. Then I left New York for the time being. What holds up a building?

This has great applications in science. Profound applications. If you were young enough and you got it, you could change the whole series of engineering.

What holds up the roof, what gives that wood the ability to hold up this ceiling, is not in the wood any more than the pen is in this thing. It's coming from me. The tensile strength of the substance is not provided to it by its chemical content.

It's not the cellulose in the wood that's keeping up the ceiling. That's all an expression of a more fundamental force, which is moral, ethical. That's profound.

That's really profound. The physical dynamic forces of physics, gravity, inertia, conservation of energy. These don't exist independently of a deeper force, of a deeper power, which is how you've treated your neighbor.

That's very cool. That's really profound. That's another realm of human endeavor which, if it were understood, practical applications of it would be very interesting.

You could have a whole group working on a new kind of pillar for buildings, where the person who bought it had to make promises to act in certain ways. You laugh because you don't believe it. You giggle because it seems weird.

But if we really understood this stuff, there should be an instruction label on all the property. If you want it to look good, go to a nursing home first. It's mind-boggling.

It'll say cotton content, country of origin, and suggested nursing homes to go to, so the clothing will look good on you. If you want to look sexy, wear it to a nursing home first. See what I mean?

The people around me are coming from me, but as independent of me. In the way that this pen is an elongated object coming from me as a pen, or as a chew toy. It's my mind that's making it that way.

If they were in your head, they would really be in your head. You could pull one out of your ear or something, I don't know. But it's a very important question or he would not have written a book about it, which is still preserved in the canon.

It's still part of our Buddhist canon. So you are separate from me. Can I serve you?

I can. And this gets into the mugging in New York question. This gets into the famous mugging in New York question.

I see a lady on the street in New York. Somebody is hitting her and trying to take her purse away. Should I try to help her?

You might get into this idea that she's coming from me and what she's experiencing is coming from her. If I run over and grab the guy, he might pull out a gun and shoot both of us. If I run over and grab the guy, he might run away and leave her alone.

Which one happens is up to her seeds. Whether I can help her or not depends on her seeds. It's a very interesting moral question.

Should I run over and try to help her when I can't affect what's going to happen? Then the answer is, of course, you have to try. You have to run over and you have to try to help.

Because you are creating new seeds to not see violence in your world. It's very profound. It's very delicate.

You have to be very delicate. Lama Aura's mom was part of a religious movement. I forget the guy's name.

That's why she got a name like Aura. Anyway, then she tells a story. Her mom tells a story that she was jealous of some other lady in the movement and the other lady made a nice dish for the guru.

Then the other lady approached with the dish to the guru and spilled the dish and tripped and lost the dish. Then her mother was like, ha ha, that's your karma. Then the guru came over and smashed her foot with his foot and said, ha ha, that's your karma.

Her mother, Aura's mother. See what I mean? It's possible to serve people who are coming from you.

In fact, that's the highest form of service. Tsongkapa, the teacher of the first Dalai Lama, there's a mantra to him. It's the only Tibetan mantra I'm aware of.

How does it start? MIG MED TSE BA Love for people who don't exist. The mantra is called Love for People Who Don't Exist.

It means love people, understanding that they are coming from you. Because then you can change them. It's very interesting.

AHIMSA PRAKASHTHAYAM THATSA NI DANG BAR DU BYA RGYAS If you want to stop violence in the world, stop being violent. The violence that you see people doing in the world is coming from you. Does that mean you shouldn't stop a person from mugging another person?

It doesn't mean that. Quite the opposite. If they're coming from you, you have to help.

I think that's okay, right? Then a common karma, the collective karma means, for example, collective karma is responsible for all international borders which exist at the present time. You can go down to Mexico.

You can go down to Nogales or Douglas or Arapueta or Tijuana. I did it. It's fun.

You can stand with one foot in Mexico and one foot in America. I did. I lingered there for as long as the guards would let me.

I looked down the line and I tried to see if there was anything different about the two. The dirt on one side and the dirt on the other. It looks the same.

The line is arbitrary. The line is a creation of karma. It's interesting.

On one side of the line, people are eating themselves to death. On the other side of the line, some people don't have enough to eat. That line is created by the karma.

It's very interesting. Everybody on one side was generous with food and they have too much to eat. Then on the other side, people were not generous with food and that created the border.

It's very interesting. It's very interesting. How do you make a collective karma?

It comes in the Abhidharma Kosha, right? The fourth chapter. There's a discussion about it, 17 centuries ago.

The example they give in the scripture in the Abhidharma is someone is concerned about the karma of their country waging a war. Someone asks a question to Master Vasubandhu. If my country wages war, what kind of karmic result do I get?

How many seeds do I collect? Then he says, did you support the war? If you supported the war and then your taxes went to the military expenditures, the guns, to buy the guns, and then if a young foolish man was sent over there and told to shoot this gun at somebody else, because only young foolish people would do that, do I get the karma?

When he pulls the trigger and kills an Iraqi citizen, does Michael Roach sitting in Wimbledon, Arizona, get any karma? The Abhidharma says, yes. Then they say, how much?

They say, exactly equal to what he got. Exactly equal to pulling the trigger. If you supported the war and more.

Then you're like, wait a minute, that's bad enough. I pulled the trigger myself. No, it's worse than that.

You paid for him to go over there. He was an innocent young man, minding his own business in his little community college in Pittsburgh. Then he didn't have enough money, so he got into the army.

You paid for him. You got him to pull the trigger. You have double.

He only gets one murder on his hands. You have two. You have the murder and you have the karma of making him murder somebody.

Paying for it. Then the question comes, well, what can I do about that? Then they said, it's sufficient to express to the authorities of your country that you don't support that.

You say, I don't want my tax money spent on that. But you have to make a formal karma. You have to create a formal karma.

I thought one day, maybe in February, we should all sit down and write a letter to our congressman just to clear the karma. I don't want that karma. You can shoot people.

I'm not involved with it. I don't support it. I don't want my money used for that.

Do I have to go further? Do I have to refuse to pay my taxes? Do I have to go to jail?

I think it would be good. But maybe you have other things you can do that are better. I've gone to jail briefly for that.

Anyway, everyone who supports the war happily, they say, oh, kill those Arabs. They are bad people. Then they collect the same karma.

Then later, in their city, for example, there's lots of crime. And it's dangerous to live in the city that they live in. It's dangerous for everybody in the city.

Because before, they were all supporting an act of violence. Like that. If there was one person in the city who didn't support that act of violence, and they went out walking at night in a mini skirt at midnight through the worst part of his town, nothing would happen to them.

They would feel perfectly safe. Nobody would bother them. It's very interesting.

Karma is very interesting. We can, in groups, collect karma. We can collect karma so big that we all see karma increase in our world.

Like that. It's a communal karma. But it's also important to say that each person experiences it separately.

You will get mugged on a different night than I get mugged because we supported the war. You'll be beat up in a different way depending on how enthusiastic you were about the war. Got it?

We might as well do one more question. We're out of time. Ian?

[Говорящий 2] (47:18 - 47:20)
I have a question about plans.

[Говорящий 1] (47:21 - 47:25)
Good. Is it more effective to plan the same city for all the people?

[Говорящий 2] (47:26 - 47:34)
First part of the question. Second part of the question is, is it less effective to develop reciprocal co-relations? I kind of see it here and you kind of see it there.

[Говорящий 1] (47:35 - 53:08)
Oh yeah, good. Okay. Everybody heard it?

Let me see if I can stand again. I'll just repeat it. Somebody asked me the other night, they said, is it more karma to teach 100 people than 10?

And I said, are all other factors equal? Is the motivation equal? Is the teaching the same teaching?

Is it given by the same person on the same night? Is it all other, what do you call it? Variables.

All other variables equal. Is it more karma to teach more people? And yes, it is.

Yeah, it is more karma. It's more good karma to teach more people. We should really be thinking of ways to affect more people, help more people.

I think DCI helps. I think a smart use of the web would probably be really good. Like that.

Given everything equal, it's more karma to do something to more people. You do get more karma. But if you have an extraordinary motivation and you're teaching one person, that can be better than someone else teaching 100 other people because they want some attention.

You know that. Let's say I want to get wealthy and there's another person that wants to get wealthy. The way to have my new enterprise be more profitable is to help someone else make their enterprise more profitable.

Could we just make a karmic... What do they call that, two companies? Merger.

No, it's a no. It's like a collaboration. I'll advise you on how to make more money and you advise me on making more money.

Can we do mutual seeds like that? Generally speaking, be careful about the distinction between planting a seed in another person and planting a seed with another person. You can only plant seeds with another person.

There are a few rare examples. They're so rare that I can say it. You always have to plant a seed with another person.

If you commit suicide, that's a very serious bad seed. That's just done to yourself. Except for a few things like that, generally you have to plant karma with another person.

When I'm speaking in a foreign country to 100 or 500 new people, I like to say you have to plant your seed in another person because it's more graphic. It's like you're opening up their chest and you're putting your seed in there and you're waiting. It feels cool to me.

But whenever you teach seeds to other people, you have to be very explicit. You have to be very clear with them that it's not possible to plant a seed for another person. Somebody told me my father has this problem, this medical problem.

Then he has to do something. He has to plant a seed. The best you can do is help him to plant a seed.

You can't plant a seed for him. You cannot transfer seeds. You know the classic proof.

The classic proof is Geshe Michael had to go to the dentist last week. That proves that seeds cannot be transferred. I had a headache yesterday.

That proves seeds cannot be transferred. Then people say, what do you mean? I say, there have been countless holy beings in the past who perfected themselves.

We don't believe there's one Buddha. We believe there are billions and billions of Buddhas. Then part of being an enlightened being is that you are compassionate and you love other people.

If it were possible to transfer seeds, surely they would have transferred some to me. I would not have had to go to the dentist. If it were possible to transfer one's own seeds to someone else, then obviously all the good people who have come before us or who live in the world now would just effret access some seeds.

Then we wouldn't have had to go to the dentist or we wouldn't have got a headache. The fact that you got a headache proves that it's not possible to transfer seeds. You have to create your own seeds.

I think you've got to be really careful with your language. You can always plant a seed with someone, but you can never plant a seed for someone. Whether you can plant a seed in someone is kind of a neat question.

I think so. I think it's nice to think of it that way. You can't get a boyfriend unless you take care of a lonely person.

You must plant a seed in an elderly, lonely person. It could be a child, right? It could be somebody at work.

It doesn't have to be an elderly person. They're just more available. Did we cover it?

Go ahead.

[Говорящий 2] (53:08 - 53:16)
Say for example, I find someone with the exact same condition and say, okay, I'm going to help you do your monthly exam.

[Говорящий 1] (53:16 - 54:01)
It's perfect. It's perfect. There's no lessening of the seed planting because you're getting something from them.

It's even more. If it's mutual, it's even more. That's why it's so cool to do a Dharma collaboration, which is what you're going to talk about with somebody at dinner.

Plan some cool thing. Don't be small-minded. Go somewhere.

Teach. It's fun. Those collaborations can last for many years.

They can be like the Tad and Joe show. It just gets to be a popular thing. So try that.

Johnny. Oh, I always get this in me. Go ahead.

[Говорящий 2] (54:04 - 54:09)
Yeah, good.

[Говорящий 1] (54:10 - 1:01:22)
I always give the example. My father got cancer. Actually, he taught us to hunt and fish.

I cleaned countless fish. I caught countless fish and I cleaned them. You have to cut them here, and then you slit down to where they pee-pee, and then you rip out their guts.

Then he got this heart condition. We went to the doctor and we said, what can we do? He said, we will slit your leg from the groin to the ankle and we will take out an artery.

Then we will make an incision from your groin. I was getting goosebumps. I'm like, ew.

It came back to him. He had it. Then he got another cancer.

Then they said, we have to open up your back and break all your ribs to get to the cancer. So they opened up his back. They broke all his ribs.

They looked at the cancer and they sewed him back together and said, we couldn't operate. Then he was dying. This is a good Dharma trick to know.

You trick people into making good seeds or you trick people into cleaning their old seeds. My dad wasn't against me being a Buddhist. He just said, I wish you had gone to the Archbishop of Canterbury rather than the Dalai Lama.

He wasn't against it per se. He just didn't believe in it. He would never believe in it.

He wasn't religious. The way he found out he had cancer was he fell down on a hunting trip. He hurt his ribs.

He went to a Mormon hospital in Utah, out in the nowhere. The doctor came in and said, he's a Mormon guy. He said, God be thanked.

My father's like, why? He says, if you hadn't fallen down, we never would have realized you have cancer. My dad's like, he was a very unreligious guy.

He says, well, why the hell did God give me cancer in the first place? Then it was all this. We were all kind of tense.

So anyway, he's never going to go through the four powers. He was in World War II. He killed a lot of people.

So he was dying. I went to stay with him. All he could do was watch football games.

I watched hundreds of football games. We made him orange juice because that was all he could take. Then I thought, I should try to trick him into cleaning his karma about killing people.

We were watching a football game and I said, Dad, you never told me the whole story about the war, like what you did in the war. He started talking about it. His job, he was on a submarine.

He lied. He was 15 years old. He got put on a submarine at 15.

His job, after they torpedoed and sank a boat, they came up and they machine gunned everybody who was still in the water. That was his job. A helpless person in the middle of the Pacific who can't swim anywhere just to make sure they get killed.

Then I said, Dad, tell me the story about what you did. He told me the story. Then I was like, that must be a heavy thing.

He's like, yeah, that's a heavy thing. I said, probably you wouldn't do that again, right? He's like, no, never, never.

I got him to say it. You can trick, it's good to trick people. I have another guy.

He's an old diamond friend in the diamond business. He was very wealthy. Then his company started to get in trouble.

I was like, how do I get him to be more generous? Because he has to be more generous or he's going to lose his company. I took him out to dinner.

I said, let's give the waiter a big tip tonight. He said, I never do that. I don't like that.

I'm like, oh, man. He's got hundreds of millions of dollars. Then I'm like, so we ate.

Then I said, let me pay tonight. He said, OK, you can pay. I said, I'm going to give the guy a $100 tip.

The dinner was like $50, $60. I said, I'm going to give the guy a $100 tip. I get the $100 bill ready.

Then we called the waiter. The waiter's headed across this big street. I said, jeez, I've got to go to the bathroom really bad.

Here, you give him the money. I'll be back. Then I go to the toilet.

I look out the window. I'm watching him. He gives the guy.

Then the guy's like, you want change? He's like, no change. You're giving me $100 tip?

Here you are. Here's your $100 tip. Thank you, man.

That makes all the difference in my life. Happy Merry Christmas to you, too. Then he's like, I'm like, how did it feel?

He's like, God, that feels good. Now he does it on his own. That works for children, too.

Not like if a child is ill. They're too young to explain about the seeds. By the way, when they're old enough, they do better than adults.

They're much more skilled at planting seeds than adults if they get taught young. They're much better at it. But if they're too young to teach and they have some illness, then you can say, let's go to the hospital.

Let's take some toys to the other children who are sick. They're too young to tell them, we're going to plant a seed with the four ways and the 16 aspects. Let's go to the hospital and you help me get the toys.

You pick them out at the store and we'll do it together. You can collaborate with non-believers. Then they get into the habit.

They make a new habit. That way you can change them. Then after a while, they soften up.

They're like, hey, that's fun. That's fun to give people huge tips. Then they start to collect their own seeds.

Now he makes his own seeds. He's made a lot of money. He's an independent roller now.

He's rolling on his own now. But you can and you should trick them. It's called upaya in Sanskrit.

In Tibetan, it's called what? THAB KHAY Skillful means. Dharma tricks.

You can trick people into doing good things. That's a good kamma. That's a beautiful kamma.

You can get really good at it. We're going to stop there, I think. Let's do tonight, I thought.

Or go ahead. Quick.

[Говорящий 2] (1:01:22 - 1:01:29)
I just want to know if you can double dip. Like, you have a stick of gram on the whole butt. Or you have a...

[Говорящий 1] (1:01:29 - 1:04:30)
That's easy. This is the guy in Detroit. Who was in Detroit at the DCI thing?

I don't know. Did you remember the guy named River? A guy named River?

He's kind of a hippie who just wandered in. By accident, he heard about it on the radio or something. He's this kind of hippie young guy.

He's listening to the whole retreat. Then the last day he comes in and he says, Geshe Michael, Geshe Michael. I'm like, what?

He says, I did it. I'm like, what'd you do? He says, I found a person.

I'm like, who? They said, she's old. She's sick.

She's broke. And sometimes she's lonely, she's sick, and she's broke. Sometimes it's the innocent people who have the right answers.

And that's perfect. That's perfect. That's perfect.

You do collect three different karmas at the same time. That's perfect. So do the River thing.

Alright. Jonny O, did you do it yet? I did.

. Pick your three cities for tonight. Then you get the link to send the email.

And what's the other thing? You owe me a course by... No, by...

When's the next Ten Day in Phoenix? Oh, June? That's a long time.

Okay, you owe me a course by then. Seriously. It's a no-brainer.

Don't be greedy. We'll get them in the habit. And I want collaborations created tonight and tomorrow.

I want some sexy international collaborations created. Where is it?

[Говорящий 2] (1:04:33 - 1:04:33)
It's the humidifier?

[Говорящий 1] (1:04:35 - 1:05:19)
In the next 24 hours, please write down the name. If you've found the Ney Lama, or try to find the Ney Lama, but in the next 24 hours, please give me the name of the Ney Lama. And your name, of course.

In the humidifier box. Down there. I need to know who your Ney Lama is.

Unless you tell me, you will never ask me another question, or you'll never send me another email. If you're afraid that someone's going to read it out of the box, and you don't want them to know, then you can tell me privately, or you can send me an email. But I need to know who I can turn to, to help you.

You can send me an email. If you don't want to cooperate with the system I've created. Okay.

[Говорящий 2] (1:05:22 - 1:05:22)
All right.

[Говорящий 1] (1:05:23 - 1:05:25)
Okay, thank you. Okay.