«Дар освобождения», курс 7 «Учимся быть тихими», занятие 1

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 1:02:07)
Hi, so we spend much of the year traveling around the world. Our last trip was to Colombia, and Lima, and Buenos Aires, and Mexico City, and Guadalajara. Next week we go to France, Paris, Montpellier, Israel, and here, I think.

Is that right? Something like that. And then we teach, in Colombia a thousand people came to the talk, and in Guadalajara a thousand people came to the talk.

He organized it. So that's sort of more like how to succeed in your life, and how to be happy in your relationships, and how to have good health, that kind of thing. Then four times a year I get to teach what I want to, which is what I was trained in, which is ancient Tibetan scripture.

And so four times a year I get a chance to teach in the old way. And I think it's a good balance. I appreciate the other work, and I think it helps thousands of people.

But I think the wellspring of it, or the source of it, is the ancient original scriptures. And I think it's important for those of us who are serious, or those of us who are teaching, I think it's good to get the original scriptures. So I'm happy that you came.

Some people came from Germany and other countries, Mexico City, Tepoztlan, Guadalajara. And I'm grateful that you came, because I think these 10-day sessions, they give you the foundation of the rest. And I don't teach this way in the rest of the world.

It's only in Phoenix that I give the original presentation. So I'm glad you came, especially those of you who are teaching, because I think, first of all, you will get the foundation that you need to teach well, and the foundation for your practice. And I think you'll also find that as we go through this text, even this week, many of the things that I teach, that I've taught you over the last, I don't know, zillion years, they're here.

So you'll say, oh, we heard him say that. And I was trained in this text. I think this text is the most beautiful.

I was having lunch with some people a while back, and we were all telling our favorite book. One person said the Bible. One person said, I don't know, some kind of novel, James Michener novel.

I said, mine is Nambu Makhchang. Mine is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. And I think it's the greatest book ever written.

And I'm a student of books. We just finished 14 years of cataloging books in Russia, Tibetan books, 134,000 books. And I had to look at them and help catalog them, but I think this is the greatest.

So I think this is an important book for your practice. Today, by the way, it was written by the teacher, my teacher's teacher, who was also the teacher of His Highness' teacher. So the current Dalai Lama's teacher, his teacher wrote this book.

And the current Dalai Lama's teacher, this was actually a series of lectures given in Tibet in, I think, 1920s. And then he wrote down the lectures, human tape recorder. And he spent much of his life organizing this book.

And then he was selected as the teacher of the Dalai Lama because of that work, I think. It was such a great book and such a blessed thing. So we'll be going through, we've gone, this process of going through this book will take 10 years.

It's about 800 pages Western way. And I think we're in the second year. I don't remember.

We're in the second year. Yeah, just starting the second year, I think. So we have eight more years to go.

Maybe it'll be 12 years. I'm not sure yet. But it's a beautiful book.

My teacher taught it to us for 20 years. He taught it twice through. And then I heard it a third time because he taught it to another group and I was his driver.

So I got to hear it the third time also. So I love this book. So tonight, the subject that we are starting for the next 10 days is how to prepare for meditation.

And that's a beautiful, beautiful, important subject for anybody. I don't think you even have to be a Buddhist to listen to this lecture, to listen to these teachings and appreciate what it is to learn to meditate. So he's not actually going to get into the meditation instructions.

We sort of did that. But he's going to talk very carefully about how do you prepare for a meditation session, which, you know, like in sports or anything else, it's the preparation that makes the meditation great. If you know how to prepare for meditation, then your meditation will be fantastic.

And if you just sit down and try to start meditating, it's like trying to run a race without warming up, without knowing how to warm up. So it's very important to learn these six steps. They're called jor-chö-drub.

Say jor. Chö. Drub.

Jor-chö means preliminary practices for meditation before you meditate. And drub means six. So there are six special practices that you do before you start a meditation session.

If you learn them, this ancient teaching, and if you do them, your meditations will be awesome. And if you don't learn them, and you just try to sit down and meditate, it's like, I don't know, trying to start a car on a cold day, and just starting it and taking off, and it will hurt the engine. So you should learn these six.

That's the goal of this week. Try to come every night, okay? I'm teaching this once in my life.

This is it. Then it's your problem, all right? So you should try to come to all the sessions.

There are homeworks, okay? And you should learn them well. You should do the homeworks.

I had a guy in Boston, I don't know, 15 years ago. He said, I refuse to do the homework. I said, then you have to leave the class.

He said, okay, I'll do the homework. Then that was on the wheel of life. He was so happy afterwards.

He wrote a symphony. He was a conductor, and he wrote a symphony about the wheel of life and about the homeworks, okay? I'm not kidding.

So take the homeworks home. Learn the homeworks. There will be meetings with, I don't know, at Starbucks or at Paradise Cafe.

You can sit down with other people. You can do your homeworks together. It's an excuse to hit on somebody in the class if you like them.

I encourage it. I mean the homeworks. And you'll learn a lot more, okay?

If you sit with your fellow students and you talk about the ideas and what you've heard, you'll learn a lot more and you'll have a lot more fun, okay? And you'll meet other people. I always say you might meet somebody from Germany or they might invite you to Hamburg or somebody might invite you to Mexico City, you know?

And then nice collaborations take place between people. So I encourage you to go to the sessions. We'll talk more about them before the end of the class.

Do your homework, okay? It's not difficult. I know you didn't do it since high school.

I don't care. It's good for you. It's really good for you.

You can sit through these lectures for 10 days and not learn anything and not remember anything. I've seen it many times, okay? If you take yourself through the homeworks, then you'll be able to teach it, okay?

Like I listened carefully to my teacher and I learned every single Tibetan word in almost 1,000 pages, right? And now it's your job. You don't have to learn the Tibetan, but you should at least learn all the ideas clearly.

And then it's your responsibility to teach it to other people. I consider in the Tibetan tradition, if you take a teaching like this, it's your responsibility to pass it on to other people, okay? So take notes as if you were going to have to teach it tomorrow.

We consider that in the Tibetan tradition, that's your responsibility to get it straight so that you could teach it tomorrow. If someone asks you tomorrow, what did he teach last night? You should be able to teach it accurately, clearly, okay?

So please take it seriously, all right? Buddhism has continued for 2,500 years. I think it's like 42 generations.

And it's because people have learned it and passed it on to the next generation. You don't want to be the losers who break a 2,500 year tradition, okay? You have to pass it on to the next generation.

And it's hard because it's changing countries, right? It's going from Tibet to America or Germany or Mexico. And you're going to have to work a little harder to inject it into your culture, okay?

The jump is a little bit harder. The next generation will be easier. I think it's fun to be the pioneering generation, to be the first generation in a country, okay?

But you should get it straight. You should have a notebook. You should be taking notes, okay?

All right, and I'll ask you, I'm going to go straight through. I'm doing it the old way, okay? There was an advertisement on TV when my Lama was watching TV.

I never had a TV in my life, but I used to sit with him and watch his TV. And it was some Merrill Lynch or Smith Barney, and there was this old guy and he said, we make money the old way, we earn it. And you have to earn it, okay?

I'm going to teach you the old way for a week. And you got to hang in there, okay? It's going to go fast and it's a lot of material and it will be tiring, but you have to be a little bit tough, okay?

In Tibet, this class, the original class took place, in the snow and they did it for 12 hours a day. And there was no loudspeaker and there was a couple thousand people there and they toughed it out. They sat on the gravel in the snow and toughed it out.

So you can tough out a little bit of heat in Arizona or something like that. That's not so bad, okay? So work hard, all right?

And pass it on. Learn it well enough to pass it on, especially the hamburgers. Okay, so of the six preliminary practices, the first one is straightening up your room.

The first preparation for meditation is to straighten up the space where you are going to meditate. And the Lama, Pabongka Rinpoche, who taught this, he was answering complaints. People said, oh, come on.

I can clean up my room on Monday. It will still be clean on Friday. I don't have to clean it up every morning.

That's not a very important practice. And he was ragging on those people. He was saying, they don't understand anything.

Straightening up your room and your house before you meditate is perhaps the most important meditation practice of all. And he quoted a famous story, Chuddhapandaka, okay? And we went through that already.

This was a guy in ancient India who was so stupid, he couldn't learn a single verse of scripture. You're talking in a country where people would memorize tens of thousands of pages. He tried to teach him a simple mantra, like OM MANI PADME HUM, right?

And when he got the OM, he forgot the money. And when he got the money, he forgot the OM. He was so stupid.

So Lord Buddha asked him to sweep the temple where the monks stayed. So the monks make, they're messy, okay? When you have a big prayer with the monks and you send out tea, Tibetan tea and bread, then afterwards everything's a mess.

The monks all go home and then the young monks have to clean up. So he stuck this monk with the young monks and he had to take a broom and sweep up the temple every morning. And he gave him a little thing to recite while he was cleaning up the temple, which was sort of like clean the dirt, get rid of the dirt, okay?

It was just that. And at the beginning, he learned clean the dirt and he forgot get rid of the dirt. And then at the end, he said, he got get rid of the dirt, but he forgot clean the dirt.

And then he was working really hard, okay? Then in the story of these nuns, okay, in the old days, this is the patriarchal society of Buddhism up to now. It's changing.

But up till now, it was very male-oriented. We're trying to change that and we're getting some resistance. But anyway, in those days, a nun could not teach the nuns.

A monk had to teach the nuns. So they would select one monk to teach the nuns. So the nuns in Lord Buddha's time came to him and said, we need a monk.

We'd like to have some teachings. Can you send a monk to teach us? So he said, yeah, I got this guy named Chudapandaka.

And then the nuns were really, excuse me, pissed off. And they said, yeah, yeah, we heard about him. He's the guy who can't remember OM after he's his money.

He's the guy who can't remember anything. You're going to send him to teach us? And they were very angry.

So they prepared a surprise for Chudapandaka. They made a throne that was too big. Very high throne.

It's traditional to teach Dharma on a throne like this. You're not supposed to teach sitting on a chair or standing up. You're supposed to sit on a throne.

Not because you're important, but because the teaching is important. That's tradition. So they made him a really high throne and they made him no way to get up to the top.

And they thought, oh, we'll embarrass him. So he came in to teach the nuns. Oh, and they also went around town and invited thousands of people to the teaching so he would be more embarrassed.

They said, this guy can make you see emptiness in one night. So everybody in the town came and there's a big mass of people. And then he walked in and he looked up at the throne and he asked himself, did they make the throne high out of respect or did they make it high to hurt me?

What do you call it? To embarrass me. Because I'd have to climb up on it.

And then he read their minds and he saw that it was malicious, that they had made the throne high out of maliciousness. Then he walked up to the front of the throne. You're supposed to bow to the throne before you teach.

And then suddenly he flew up to the top. He was sitting on the top. His body levitated to the top of the throne.

And then that's where we're picking up. That's where we ended in the Prescott retreat last time. And that's where we're picking up now.

Ready? Here we go. Now we're starting the class.

Senggye Chir Dukde. He sat down on the lion throne. Sometimes we call it a lion throne.

In the old days there were four or eight lions holding up the, there were pillars carved like lions. Nowadays you can see if you go to Hong Kong, every bank has two lions out front, snow lions. So this was the old custom.

ZIN MO BDAG ,'KHO BO BDAG PA GSUM DU, ,'TSIG CHAD GCIG GSUNG BA DE, ,DE NYON SEMS SDUG BSNGAL GYI BAR DU BYAS PAR MTHONG, Oh, sisters. ZIN MO BDAG means, oh sisters. Would you enjoy it if I were to explain the meaning of the single line of scripture, which it took me three months to memorize?

Would you like me to teach that? Okay, MTHONG. ,DE LA, ,BYAMS PA'I DE'I KYI LUS NA YID GYI, ,DIG PA MI CHA ZHING, There was the meaning of that line that I was taught, sweep the dirt, clean the dirt.

,BYAMS PA'I DE'I KYI The Buddha, ,LUS NA YID GYI, ,DIG PA MI CHA ZHING, That's explained in a verse by Lord Buddha where he said, don't do anything wrong in your actions. Don't do anything wrong in your words and don't think wrong. Don't do those things.

MI CHA ,ZHES PA'I MI DGEL BAR CHU PO BAR BSTAN TO, means Lord Buddha was, when he taught me to sweep the temple, he was teaching me to give up the 10 bad deeds. So Buddhism like Christianity has, what do you call? Commandments.

10 commandments. They're almost the same, which is very interesting. No killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, no splitting up people with your speech, no harsh words, no idle gossip, no being sad when other people get something good, no being happy when someone else has a problem, and understand that the world comes from you.

No wrong thinking about where stuff comes from. Somebody hurts you, understand that it's coming from what you did last week and don't get upset. Just stop what you're doing.

Those are the 10. He said, when the Buddha taught me how to sweep, he was really teaching me how to keep the 10 good deeds. BSTAN TOG ,'JIG RTEN KUN LAS ZHES PA'I PHUNG PO NGA DANG, ,YONG DZIN ZHES PA NI, ,DOD CHAGS ZHES DANG, ,DI DMOS GSUNG GI YONG DZIN BSTAN TOG, Then there was another verse of scripture by Lord Buddha that said, ,JIG RTEN KUN LAS, He was talking about the five parts of a person.

,YONG DZIN ZHES PA NI, And then there's a word called YONG DZIN. Say YONG DZIN. So there's an ancient teaching in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra.

It's called YONG DZIN. YONG DZIN means takes care of you in every way. And it's a teaching on guru, or it's a teaching on teachers.

YONG DZIN means teachers. Nowadays in Tibet, in this last generation, there are only two YONG DZIN. YONG DZIN has become a title for the teacher of the Dalai Lama.

So the Dalai Lama is born. The old one passes away. The new one is born.

They test like 50 kids. Every parent wants their kid to be the Dalai Lama so they can live in the White House, which is the Potala, right? And so there's big competition to see who's the right kid.

They give the kid all these rosaries and bells and stuff that the old Dalai Lama used to use, and they mix them up with other people's rosaries and bells. And then the right kid will say, this is my rosary and this is my bell. He's like three years old.

So YONG DZIN came to be a name for the teacher of the Dalai Lama. In what the Lord Buddha taught the Dal Monk, YONG DZIN means the leader of DOD CHAGS. Say DOD CHAGS.

SHES DANG SKYES MU DOD CHAGS Okay, we got to talk about something. In the monastery, if you don't recite what the teacher asks you, they hit you on the head with a rosary. And I've been known to do that.

So you have to speak a little louder or I might have somebody do it on the way out just to everybody. DOD CHAGS SHES DANG SKYES MU That would be democratic. These are the three root negative emotions in the human mind.

DOD CHAGS means to want things and not understand where they come from. To want things and not understand where they come from. That's wrong.

Is it wrong to want things? Is it wrong to enjoy donuts? No.

Is it wrong to enjoy good music? No. Is it wrong to enjoy our music?

It's also not wrong. What the word means, not wanting, means not wanting ignorantly. What's ignorant?

Ignorant means you get upset or you try to take something from somebody else that you want, like a boyfriend or like some money or something like that. What's the intelligent way to want something? Give it to somebody else.

The thing you want, then give it first to someone else. Is that wrong? No, that's enlightened.

That's enlightened action. If you want more donuts, what do you call it? Churro?

Or yóu jiāo? Nǐ xǐ huān qì yóu jiāo ma? Then you have to give them to somebody else.

The thing that you want, you should give to somebody. That's not wrong. In this case, it's ignorant liking.

Try to take something from somebody else. I want more oil for my country, so we will have a war. You see what I mean?

That's wrong. Shedang means hatred. To hurt other people.

People bother you. People hurt you. People criticize you on the television.

You get this reaction. You're like, oh, I'm not a bad person. They're wrong.

I should write a letter to them or I should debate with them or argue. Something comes up in your heart like, oh, they said something bad about me. I should attack them.

They're also bad people. I should attack them. That's shedang.

Shedang means hatred. If you don't like something, if something's happening to you that you don't like, if someone's criticizing you, for example, where is it coming from? You've been criticizing other people last week, last month.

If you don't like being criticized, then examine your own heart and stop being critical of others. Then the TV will say, oh, you're wonderful. Okay, all right.

That's just basic. He taught the nuns about these ideas. DMUGS means the ignorance behind attacking when you are attacked and the ignorance behind hurting other people when you want something.

He taught the nuns about that. ,DU LTAR SHES DE LTOS MO SIG GI YONGS SU BSTAN TOG, ,ZIG CES CHAD SANG GI BDUN RGYAL CHER BSTAN PA, He taught only two lines of a four-line verse of poetry. He didn't even teach the third and fourth lines.

He didn't get to it. ,GSOGS CHAGS KYIS GNYIS STONG LDAN PA RTOG NAS, 12,000 people saw emptiness because of his teaching. 12,000 people saw emptiness because of his teaching on the first two lines.

,BSTAN PA RTOG NAS, ,KHA CIG GI BDE PO ZHIG PO CI RE DGON DU BYED, There are four levels after you see emptiness. Emptiness is the first one, right? ,BYUN DU ZHUGS PA, Stream-enterer.

,PHYIR RONG BA, Come back once to the desire realm. ,PHYIR MI YONG BA, Don't come back to the desire realm. ,DRA BCOM PA, Reach nirvana.

There are four levels. Some of his listeners reached all four levels. The first one is seeing emptiness directly.

Some of his listeners, from hearing his explanation of the two lines, reached nirvana in that city. That's kind of cool. ,GNOD DU BYED, ,KHA CIG GI NYEN TE DANG RANG SANGS RGYAS DANG, ,THEG PA CHEN PO STE, ,SO SO BYANG CHUB TU SEMS KHYAD, Many people got SEMS KHYAD.

What's SEMS KHYAD? Bodhichitta. What's Bodhichitta?

They call it ultimate love. There's some really bad translation. What is that?

What do they call that? Really bad. What do you call it when you give lots of money when you're a nice person?

Altruistic mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody's like, what's altruistic?

I haven't heard altruistic since I was six or something like that. What it means is very simple. We talk about it a lot in the DCI.

I'll give you a quick example of Bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is ultimate love. Love for the entire world.

Love for every living creature. But in a practical sense, how do you get Bodhichitta? What is Bodhichitta practically?

How could I have Bodhichitta? It's not to sit there in front of your altar and say, oh, ,BDAG NI SEMS CAN THAG CIG LA, ,YOD SHING RNAM PAR LAS LHAG, ,DE PHYIR DU RIGS LHAG NA, It's not this kind of just blah, blah verse. What would real Bodhichitta be?

Sometimes I think about it. We teach these seminars. We try to teach people to get prosperity or we teach them how to have better health.

If I give a lecture on Buddhism, 80 people come. If I give a lecture on yoga, 200. If I give a lecture on business, 500.

If I give a lecture on how to find a boyfriend, 800. St. Bartholomew's Church, not kidding, in New York. It's the record for New York.

It was about how to find a boyfriend. Then we say, I'll tell them, of course, if you want a boyfriend, you have to make the karma. How do you make the karma?

You take care of a lonely person. You take care of, for example, an elderly person. I'm going tonight after the talk to take care of an elderly person.

I have one on call. I sleep at her house tonight and tomorrow night. I cook for her and I take care of her stuff, fix up her house.

We tell people that. If you want to find a partner, then help an elderly person. Help someone who's lonely.

Bodhichitta means what would happen if the whole world believed that was true? What would happen if the whole world believed that to get rich you have to give away lots of money? What would happen?

You'd have a perfect world. You'd have a world where everyone was competing to give away things. There would be long lines in front of the nursing homes of people waiting.

She's busy today. She can't see you until Friday. She has 40 people are signed up to see her this week.

It would be the opposite of the current situation where people ignore people who are elderly. Bodhichitta in this case would be thinking, when I go tonight to visit the old lady, thinking what it would be like if my action triggered a larger movement among other people. What would happen if Geshe Michael did something and it worked and everybody else copied him?

In the world, what would happen? There'd be long lines outside of nursing homes. I think the young ladies and men in the lines would get to know each other.

But to imagine that, imagine being at ground zero of a movement where people try to share with others the things they want. That's bodhichitta. So don't think it's like somebody, oh, this, this, this, this.

That's nothing. That's just blah, blah. Just practice the teaching of providing for someone else the things you want and imagine as you do it that you are changing the culture of the world and that's bodhichitta.

You are changing the behavior, the way in which the world gets things. Think that. That's real bodhichitta and then you can have it.

It's not some thing you can't have or you have to practice for 20 years to get it. You can have it tomorrow. I'm going to act in an enlightened way.

The things I want, I will give to others. The things I don't want, I will stop doing to others and other people will copy me and the world will change. I will help start the change in the world.

That's bodhichitta. Anyway, he got people to reach bodhichitta. Now some of you may not know there's three levels of bodhichitta.

There's three things called bodhichitta. To want the enlightenment of three different tracks. I'm not going to go much into that.

There's lower motivations. I would like to have a happy life. It's the lowest motivation.

I think it's great. It's not like you have to skip it. It's like you have to build on it.

There are three levels of motivation. You're not supposed to skip the first one and go straight to the third or something like that. You're supposed to build on them.

What are they? Number one, I would like to have a happy life. I would like to have enough money.

I would like to have companionship. I would like to have good health. That's number one.

Number two would be something like after I die, I would like to have beautiful things happen to me and not terrible things. After I die, I would like to have nice things happen. Then number three, I would like to have all people protected from all forms of suffering.

Like that. He got his listeners to those three motivations in his one little talk. BYANG CHUB SOGS KYI SEMS RIGS PHYAG CHEN NI GONG GYUR SEMS LA BDE PAR BYAS SO Then almost everybody in the audience began to understand the idea of shelter, going for refuge.

Buddhism says if you're a Christian, you become a Christian by what? What makes you a Christian in Christianity? In most Christianity, what's the thing that you have to do to become a Christian?

You got to get baptized. They got to sprinkle your hand. Then you're a Christian.

In Buddhism, the way you become a Buddhist is to take shelter. Take shelter. Then what does that mean?

Lower school Buddhists have said, you have to find a Buddha picture or a Buddha statue and you have to go in front of it and say, I like the Buddha. I take shelter in the Buddha. What do they say?

BUDDHA GACCHAMI SHARANAM DHARMA GACCHAMI SHARANAM SHANGA GACCHAMI This is the big thing. For millions of Buddhists. That's sort of a lower idea.

It's not going to protect you too well. To keep a Buddha picture in your house is not going to save you from indigestion or other problems. It's not very practical.

What is real shelter? We talked about, we were in the prison last week. We visited the prison.

These guys are doing great work in the prisons. They're really popular now in the prisons. They're trying to get them to do something wrong so they have to stay there.

We talked about it on Sagan Dawa. We had a ceremony for some of the prisoners who took refuge. Shelter means what?

If you don't like being criticized by people, then stop criticizing other people. That's shelter, that's all. You don't have to keep a Buddha picture in your house.

It's not going to help you that much anyway. If you like it, if it's pretty for you, go ahead. That's okay.

But that's not going to protect you. What will protect you is knowledge. Understanding.

I'm criticized this week by many people because I was thinking critically of many people. That's protection. Then you can stop it.

That will protect you. He got most people in the audience to understand that much. They didn't see emptiness, but at least they understood that.

Almost everybody understood the shelter thing. That's really great. DE NAS LAM PA RGYAL CHE TSE RU'ONG PA DANG Then he finished the teaching and he came back to, there's an ancient city in India called Shravasti in the north.

I went there. I spent a millennium there sitting where the Buddha taught the diamond cutter. It's very powerful.

I spent the midnight I was there sitting on that stone. Nobody else cared. It's hard to find it.

But anyway, I went to Shravasti and I was sitting there. That garden is called Jetavana. It's 2,500 years old.

It's still there. You should go sometime. It's a beautiful garden.

It's a fantastic garden. That's where the Buddha taught the diamond cutter sutra. So anyway, he went back to the Jetavana garden to see Lord Buddha.

RGYAL CHE TSE RU'ONG PA DANG STON PA'I LAM PA DE NGES NYIN TU SEMS RGYUR BA LA KHYAD PAR RNAMS KYI CHOG YIN NO ZHES RLUNG BSTAN PA RE The Buddha declared, Chudapantaka is the greatest of my disciples. He is most skilled at teaching and changing other people's hearts. Of all my disciples, he's the best.

How did he get there? Sweeping. What?

His meditation space. Don't forget why we're talking about this story. Don't forget.

He cleaned up his womb. He swept up his meditation space. What's the big deal about the meditation space?

Why do the lamas insist? They insist that you do it. In the monastery we have clay floors.

They are made from mud and they shine. Why? You get two towels and you're barefoot in the monastery.

You skate around your room on the towels. They teach you to do this. It's really cool.

You should do it on your linoleum. You put your feet on the two towels and you skate through the house like a skateboard. It shines the floor up really nice.

They teach you to do this before you meditate. You have to do that. Why?

I have friends. I have good friends in this very room whose houses are a disaster. Their rooms are a disaster.

Everything's stacked and thrown around and big piles of junk. You walk in and it's disturbing to the mind. They say in the scripture that the condition of your environment will shift your consciousness.

It will determine your level of consciousness. That idea of Zen temple is a very good idea. Beauty.

To have beauty around the room. Garden around the house. The room should be very, very beautiful.

Elegant. I like to say elegant. The place where you meditate should be elegant.

I had this dream to make Diamond Mountain elegant but it's going to be a while. But I'm working on it. It should be elegant.

The room should be elegant. Think about that. Try to make your room elegant.

Then your mind state will be elegant. Then you sit down and you meditate and the meditation is unbelievable. Start at least with picking up the underwear off the floor and stuff.

And the socks. You can just throw them in the closet and try to close the door. But as your room is, so shall your meditation be.

If the room is clean, orderly, it doesn't have to be, what do you call it, anal. We had a lady who lived next door to me, Seventh Avenue, and I think you're near there, you guys. I was at Seventh Avenue in Glendale.

I lived there. And there was a lady next door and I hated to visit her house because my mom made me go over there. She had this beehive hairdo and she had beautiful carpet and beautiful sofas and stuff, but she covered them in plastic, in vinyl, because she didn't want them to get dirty.

So to walk across the carpet or to sit on the sofa was very uncomfortable. We're not talking about that. I think if you do that, then your mind will become sort of like vinyl.

So the room should be elegant, clean, cool, and it can be your style, whatever your style is, retro, sick. My style is 1968, whatever your style is. We're going to sing you 1968 songs this week.

But make it your own style. I slept in Alejandro's room that he grew up in and it's cool. It's very clean.

I think his mom probably cleans it before I get there, I don't know. But it's not cold, it's warm and there are nice photos around. It has a warm feeling.

Make it your own. Make the room your own, but make it elegant. In some way, make it elegant, because your mind will be the same.

If you try to meditate in a messy room, it's hopeless. You won't be able to. Make the room elegant with your own style.

That's actually where we stopped last time. So here we start. By the way, Nyingpo, we're going to need that in a while.

,DE NA BSGOM DUNG GAL CHE BA LA, ,SKYE DAG SOGS GAL MI CHE NYAM CHE MI NYEN, Therefore, says Pabongka Rinpoche, if somebody tells you it's not important to clean up your room before meditation, don't listen to them. MI NYEN means don't listen to them. They're wrong.

,SKYE DAG DGON MED ZAD CANG, ,RGYAL CHE GYI RTZAL GYI DGON DGAR BA BAR, ,CHAG LTAR BYAS PAR NYID RAY BZHIN DBANG PA LA, There was a SKYE DAG. SKYE DAG means he was not a monk. He was a householder.

His name was DGON MED ZAD CAN. Say DGON MED. ZAD CAN.

ZAD CAN. ,ANATTA PINDADA, ,RGYAL CHE GYI RTZAL GYI DGON DGAR BA BAR, He was a wealthy person who helped build that garden called Jetavana. I'm dying to build some gardens at Diamond Mountain.

I would really want to build some beautiful gardens. We started, right? Dennis and Sierra put in some rose bushes.

It's a start. Of making it elegant, right? So anyway, ,RGYAL CHE GYI RTZAL GYI DGON DGAR BAR, DGON DGAR BAR means a pleasure park.

Like kings would go there to read a book or play on their lutes or hunt foxes and stuff like that. ,DGON DGAR BAR, ,CHAG LTAR BYAS PAR NYID RAY BZHIN, He used to come, that wealthy man. He was like Bill Gates or something like that.

He paid for that garden, which is still there. He bought it for the Buddha. And it was very expensive.

I think he had to give his weight in gold or something like that. But he used to go there every morning to sweep up, to clean up the leaves in the garden. He went every morning to sweep in the garden.

,'ONGS PA LA, ,NYIN CI KHYIM BDAG MA GOMS SHING, One day he didn't have time to go to the Garden of Jetavana and clean up. You know you got to clean up dead leaves and deadhead the roses, if you know what that is. ,CHAG LTAR BYAS KHYIM BZHIN MED PA LA, He couldn't find anybody else to do the sweeping.

So, ,SANGS RGYAS RANG NYID, means what? SANGS RGYAS The Buddha himself heard that no one was sweeping that day. ,CHAG BSAL GYI YAL DAG LTA BU, He extended his hand, which was like the bow of a golden tree.

He took the broom and ,CHAG LTAR BYAS KHYIM BZHIN MED PA LA, The Buddha himself, an enlightened being, the only one in the universe, I mean in this part of the universe. He said, nobody's sweeping today. I have to do it.

He swept himself, swept up the place. ,CHAG LTAR BYAS KHYIM BZHIN MED PA LA, ,BDO NA GSUNG YOD, There's a mistake in the text. Those of you who care, it should be ,BDO NA.

That's stated in the sutras, that he swept the garden himself because no one else was there to do it. ,BDAG GIS LAM MA RIM PA BYAS, Then my teacher, who's me? ,PHA BOG RIM PA BYAS, His own teacher, ,BDAG GIS LAM MA RIM PA BYAS, My Lama, he gave us the following story.

,KUN ZIG RGYAL BA'I DBANG PO, ,KUN NA RIM GYI SBYOR, ,GAL BA'I DBANG PO CHEN YAM ZHED ZAD PAS, ,KUN ZIG means, any guesses? ,KUN ZIG, ,THAMS CAD KHYEN PA, ,KUN KHYEN, All-knowing, the omniscient one, the Buddha. But in Tibet, it's a word for the Dalai Lama.

,KUN ZIG means sees all things. ,KUN ZIG, ,GAL BA'I DBANG PO means the Lord of all Buddhas. In Tibet, it's used for the Dalai Lamas.

,KUN NA RIM GYI, Successive generations of Dalai Lamas, ,BYOR CHUD NYAM ZHED ZAD PAS, They studied these six preparations and they followed them. The lineage, the succession of Dalai Lamas. What's this current one?

What number? 14. My Lama was ordained by the 13th.

He was a little kid. Dalai Lama was old. Anyway, ,ZAD PAS, ,PHYI RDOG GI CHAGS MED PONG PO, ,TSE MO SRED NAS, They swept the Potala Palace.

These big Dalai Lamas. They got up every morning and they swept the palace. The Dalai Lamas swept the palace.

And they had kusha brooms. You ready, Jigme? I need those kusha brooms.

Where are they? Yeah, but I'm over here and the altar is over there. It's a yellow cloth in the back.

Okay. I actually made you a demonstration of what those brooms look like. This is called kusha grass.

It's a holy grass from India. It's very fragrant and it's considered very good under a meditation seat. You will have powerful meditation.

We buy these brooms and we take them apart. It's good if you can find one that's all kusha grass, the handle also. And then you take them apart and you spread the kusha.

We'll talk about it later. But it's considered a very holy grass. It has a very fragrant smell.

So anyway, the Dalai Lamas would sweep the Potala Palace with these kusha grass brooms. But after a while, they would wear them down. The text says, chakme pumbo.

What do you call this part of a broom? I don't know. The end of the broom.

The end of the broom, chakme pumbo, became like, se ne means it wore out, pombudjuma taksoma. And it became, you ready, Ningbo? Not ready.

It became shaped like a donkey's tail. Pombudjuma means the donkey's tail. I never saw a donkey's tail up close.

So I went on the internet. And the point is that their tails are truncated. They don't go out like a horse's tail.

They just stop. And the Dalai Lamas' brooms always ended up like that. So now you know if you read this text and they're talking about donkey's tails, what they're talking about.

It means they wore down the brooms till nothing. They wore out brooms on the floor of the Potala Palace which has a thousand rooms. I don't think they did all thousand rooms.

So you are, SANGS RGYUD ZER PO'I PHYI PA'I MANG PO'I BLANG BSTAN DU BYAL GYUR YOD PA BZHIN DU GNAS BYAS BA Then they would take the brooms and they would wrap them in yellow silk. This is supposed to be yellow silk. It's really just cheap cotton.

And then they would place that on the altars in the Potala Palace and people would worship them. People would worship the worn out brooms on the altar. And the Dalai Lamas thought that was worthy of worship.

Why? Step number one is straightening up your room before you meditate. And the instrument with which you clean up your room becomes holy.

It's cool. It's really cool. PHYI PA'I MANG PO'I BLANG BSTAN DU BYAL GYUR YOD PA BZHIN DU GNAS BYAS BA'I RNAM THAR YIN PAR GSUNGS My teacher, whose teacher?

Pabongka Lama's, Pabongka Rinpoche's teacher used to say GNAS, that's a GNAS, a personal practice, GNAS. What's GNAS? In Sanskrit, MARMA HATTA.

GNAS DU MYUR Crucial point. For example, in the middle of a chakra, when you're doing yoga, you're supposed to hit a GNAS. There are GNAS in the body.

MARMA In Sanskrit, MARMA, sorry, MARMA. MARMA, the root of it is MYUR, which means what? What's A-MYUR-THA?

No death. A-MYUR-THA means the thing that gives you no death. MYUR means the Sanskrit root for death, like mortuary or murder.

It comes from that. So MARMA means the place on an enemy that if you hit them with the sword in the right place, they die within one minute. That's called MARMA.

So MARMA means crucial point. In yoga, it means when you do yoga a certain way, you're supposed to hit these crucial points in your chakras, and then your body will change. Why did I bring that up?

I was talking about MARMA HATTA. Striking the crucial point during a yoga practice inside the chakra. Why did I talk about that?

Because he uses the same word here, and he says cleaning up your room is a MARMA HATTA for your meditation. You want to strike to the heart of your meditation, clean up your room. Straighten up your room before you start the meditation.

By the way, on a practical level, just do a little bit every day. Don't go crazy the first day and then quit. Do five minutes every day, and after a week, the thing will be clean, and the maintenance is about zero.

You're supposed to do a little bit every day, we'll get into it, but don't go crazy. Clean out a square foot every day of your junk, and then after a couple of weeks, it's elegant. The room will be elegant.

So don't go crazy. Just do a little bit. Force yourself.

All right. CHE RIN RNAM DANG YIN PAR GSUNGS By the way, I'll stop in about 10 minutes. So we'll take a break.

DE NA RANG RES LAS DANG PO BA'I NYAN TAN BYAS DGOS Therefore, those of us who are LAS DANG PO BA, say LAS DANG PO BA. LAS DANG PO BA What's LAS mean? LAS means karma or work.

DANG PO BA, do you know DANG PO? DANG PO means first. LAS DANG PO BA is the Tibetan word for a tenderfoot or a beginner.

Like someone who's just starting. What? Their meditation practice.

Compared to? Who did he just talk about? Who was sweeping the papaya?

The Dalai Lamas. Compared to the Dalai Lamas, we are LAS DANG PO BA. He says, those of us who are just beginners, meaning those of us who aren't Dalai Lamas, LAS DANG PO BA.

NYAN TAN BYAS DGOS We got to really work hard on this practice. We got to concentrate on this practice. We have to learn to straighten up our room.

If your mom didn't succeed, Pabongka Rinpoche is trying again. DANG PO BA'I NYAN TAN BYAS DGOS SKYE NYID YOD MED LA MA STOB PAR RAB TUN RE He said, this is an interesting point. It doesn't matter if the room is already straightened or not.

You should straighten it again every morning. It gets to where you're picking off single fuzzballs from the corners. I have these fuzzballs.

I asked my Lama where they come from. It's an interesting philosophical question. You just walk in your room and there's fuzzballs there.

You lean over to get them and the wind from your body pushes them ahead and you chase them around the room. You catch all the fuzzballs and the next morning there's more of them. I don't know where they come from.

We were talking about it. It's interesting. Anyway, probably you can find a fuzzball even if you cleaned up yesterday.

Go around the room, look for something. He says, I don't care if your room is already straight. Look for a fuzzball.

Go around and try to find a fuzzball or try to find some dust on a counter or something. You can use all your ACI scripture books. They have dust on them.

You can clean them off a little bit. Find something to clean in your room. After you get the basic thing straightened and everything's clean and elegant, every day keep looking for something.

Don't stop. Never stop. Never don't do it.

You're going to get trying to find little specks of lint on the carpet and stuff like that. Go for it. Take them up.

,LAM LTAR DE NA MA THOB PA, ,RAB TUN RE, ,THAR MA YIN RE BZHIN DU MTHOR BYA, ,CI MTHOR BYA, Some people do more than one meditation session in a day. Some people do two, some people three, some people four. Some people do in the morning and then again in the evening.

Some people do during the afternoon. He says, at least once a day. You have to do it at least once a day.

But if you can, do it before every meditation session. If you're doing four sessions a day, clean the room four times a day. How long?

You can just do it for three, four, five minutes. It's okay. But there's a certain kind of thinking you have to do.

There's a certain kind of thought process you have to follow while you're cleaning. If you do it, you'll end up like that guy who taught the nuns. ,CI MTHOR BYA, ,CI MTHOR BYA'I TSUL YANG, ,KHUN LUNG GONG LTAR GZAL GTABS NAS, ,RANG CHEN GYI RGYU KHYOD JI PAS ,RNYAL YOD NAM CHAGS MED DMOS PA DANG, While you are cleaning...

Let's say I have this thing, okay? I have a little carpet that I bought with my lama. It's dark, and every day there's lint on it.

I don't know where it comes from. I think there's little creatures that come out at night and spread lint on it. But little pieces of white lint.

and they look bad. Like, before Lama comes over, I spend a lot of time cleaning the carpet. Picking them off because they, I don't know, there's something about the vacuum cleaner, you run it like this and the lint stays there.

So you get down on your hands and knees and you pick the lint out, piece by piece. You go like this, you know? And you wrestle the little pieces of white lint out of the carpet.

But while you're doing it, think that you are cleaning your heart and other people's hearts, okay? That's important, okay? I'm, oh, my friend's a little bit angry sometimes.

Ha, I got it, you know? My other friend eats too much. Pop, I got that one.

My other friend is too lazy to come to meditation and yoga on the second day of the program. I got that one, okay? And then you go through the carpet and you pick out stuff.

It's very healthy exercise, okay? You are serving yourself and other people as you pick the lint out. So it's not enough that you do it mindlessly.

The cleaning of the room becomes a meditation in itself, got it? It becomes a pre-meditation. You're already starting to clean your mind for the meditation as you pick the lint out of the carpet, okay?

It's very beautiful, all right? All right. We'll go for about another three minutes.

Okay. THA MA NYON NAS CI LTAR BYA CI LTAR BYA'I TSUL YANG KHO NA GZO MIN BYANG GSUM GYIS YA RGYAL SANGS RGYAS KYI ZHING SBYONG BA'I RGYUR MIG TE This is beautiful. Say ZHING SBYONG.

ZHING SBYONG. ZHING means a field, but it's the Tibetan word for a Buddha paradise, okay? ZHING means a paradise.

A world, an entire earth, which is a paradise. ZHING, it's called ZHING. SBYONG means to create it.

There are certain karmas you can do which are specific to ZHING SBYONG, okay? One of them, for example, is to help build a temple or a retreat cabin. These are ZE LAS CHUNG BA'I DGE BA, special kind of karma.

It creates your Buddha paradise. If you help, a lot of people here I know helped at Diamond Mountain, they helped build the retreat cabins, which are big and comfortable and expensive, okay? And beautiful.

But that's a special karma. If you do that kind of service, you are creating your Buddha paradise. You are creating the physical environment in which you will live when you are enlightened, okay?

CHAG LTA BYAS PA, cleaning up your room, is the same karma, okay? The act of cleaning up your room before meditation is a specific karmic seed which will create the environment around you when you become enlightened, okay? It will create the physical environment around you when you become a Buddha.

It's very cool, okay? That's called ZHING SBYONG. And that's part of a three-fold practice called RDZOG MIN BYANG.

Say RDZOG MIN BYANG. And he mentions it here, and I'll explain that and then we'll stop for it. We'll take a break, okay?

Say RDZOG MIN BYANG. So I'm going to give you a... In the scripture, when stuff comes that is not explained, I go to other scriptures and extract things, and then I will bring them to you.

I'm not going to skip over a single word, okay? I'm going to give... Now I'm going to a different scripture to explain to you what those three steps are, RDZOG MIN BYANG.

This particular scripture is... I don't know what that is exactly. DE DAG RDZOG MIN BYANG GSUM LAS MON NAM YONGS SU RDZOG PA'I TSE NI The first step, RDZOG means to complete your prayers, okay?

The coming true of your prayers. Your prayers are answered, okay? It means RDZOG.

CHOS NI BDAG TSE GYIS DU NYAM PAR ZHAG BZHIN PA'I NGANG NAS GZHAN DUNG DPA'I MA'I GZHON DU DU BYAS PA'I RGYUR GI DGE BA'I RTZA BA NUS PAR YONGS RDZOG PA DANG It also refers to the ability to serve others spontaneously, okay? There's a word called GZHON DUG. Say GZHON.

DUG. GZHON DUG. It's a common Tibetan name, okay?

So a lot of monks are called GZHON DUG. GZHON DUG is a very beautiful idea. I don't know if there's an English word.

It means if you pray for many years that you could help other people, many other people, then there will come a time in your life when it becomes automatic, okay? Thousand people will show up at your talk. Okay?

It will just happen. You don't plan it. And you don't do much.

You just show up and a thousand people show up. That's called GZHON DUG, okay? Buddhists have it at an extreme level.

They don't have to think to help others. The moment they wake up in the morning, a billion bodies burst forth from their body to billions of planets. And they're just having English muffins, okay?

Like they're not thinking about it. And suddenly there's a billion bodies on a billion planets taking care of people, okay? That's called GZHON DUG.

That's GZHON DUG, but to complete that is the meaning of GZHON, okay? That's another meaning of GZHON, okay? GZHON.

,GZHES SOGS DU BYA SEMS CAN YONGS SU MIN PAS TSAD, ,GCOD KUS ZHING BSKYED PA CHEN GYI BYAMS PAS TSAD, MIN means the capacity to teach other people and to ripen their minds, okay? People's minds are like, I don't know. There's some kinds of glue, right?

Where you have to heat it. What's that stuff inside the glue? What's it called?

No, there's a word for catalyst. MIN PA means all beings have in their mind an immature substance, an unripened substance. And then when you become skillful at teaching, you can trigger that catalyst and their mind will change.

Okay, so that's called MIN. So now we have RDZOGS, BYANG, and MIN. These are three high practices.

These are three kinds of high practices. RDZOGS means in the end, you are able to serve billions of people spontaneously. MIN means when you teach, you are able to trigger a catalyst in people's minds and their minds change, okay?

And then BYANG means what? SHING BYANG means what? SHING SBYONG.

Yeah, but SBYONG it, create it, create it. Build retreat cabins. You know, clean up your room before meditation.

And that's the karma that's going to create a Buddha paradise for you, okay? Very beautiful, okay? I feel like it's kind of lame just to study all the time and meditate all the time and not do any hands-on work to help other people.

And I think you can start to get kind of unreal if you just meditate all the time or you just study all the time. So I'm really encouraging people to do some hands-on stuff. There should be a balance, right?

You should do some hands-on stuff. So, no, but I think it's very important. I think just to, in my life, I've seen the unbalance that can come if you just meditate all the time or you practice all the time and you don't serve other people with your hands.

So I encourage you to come tomorrow and you can learn more about volunteering with them, okay? It makes you happy. It's the secret to happiness.

To do something like that every week, okay? You can't just meditate. You got to meditate and you have to serve.

And then you're a complete balanced person. And if you just meditate all the time, you get really weird. And you get unbalanced and unhappy and you do strange things.

And then if you're serving other people also, your life is balanced and you become a nice person and a happy person. So like if you can't sleep or you're not particularly happy, come tomorrow. And I think it's the magic thing that will make you happy all the time.

2.15 tomorrow, okay? All right.