«Дар освобождения», курс 7 «Учимся быть тихими», занятие 3

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 46:36)
So we're still talking about the altar and the painting that you might put on your altar. Thank you. And Vinny's going to quote, ,RDOG PA'I MA GAR PO LAS KYANG, Padma means what?

Padma. Lotus, right? Garpo means white.

What's the most famous mantra in Tibet? OM MANI PADME HUM Which is a mantra for partner practice. The Padma is the lady and the Mani is the man.

The jewel is the man and the lotus is the lady. So anyway, that's a long story. So every Tibetan is saying that all day.

,RDOG PA'I MA GAR PO LAS KYANG, ,DE SHES KUSO TSIG NGO BYIS PA LA, ,CHUG BZHIN PA'I Oh, by the way, if you want to know the Buddhist position on, Lord Buddha's position on eating meat, that's the White Lotus Sutra. Okay, that's called the Lotus Sutra, the Sutra of the White Lotus. There's many pages there about eating meat and it says don't, all right?

So if anybody asks, you know... So I asked my teacher once, why do Tibetan monks eat meat? And he said, in ancient India, the monks, and even in Thailand, if you go to Thailand, you can see it, but monks go to door-to-door with a big bowl.

I went with the monks in Sri Lanka one day. The bowl is this big. And they put in a whole dinner with ice cream stacked on top.

And it takes like two hours to eat it. But anyway, you were supposed to accept whatever they threw in your bowl. So if they threw meat in your bowl, you were supposed to eat it without complaining.

And then when they got to Tibet, they say they don't have enough vegetables, at, I don't know, 10,000 feet or whatever it is, then they said it was okay to eat meat. And in recent years, in my monastery, there's been a movement not to eat meat. And officially, none of the monks at Sera may eat meat anymore.

They don't serve meat anymore in the monastery. I think people still eat it at home, but... That's a long story.

One monk told me, he said, I don't kill animals, I just buy meat. And I grew up in the farm workers' movement here in Phoenix. We got people to stop eating lettuce that was...

Farm workers who weren't paid fairly, we got people to stop eating the lettuce of those companies. And then they were going to collapse and they started paying the farm workers a decent wage. So you can affect...

If nobody bought meat, there wouldn't be any meat being sold, right? That's just a basic thing. And then I asked that person, that lama, I said, so if somebody offers me a stolen radio, it's okay to buy it, right?

He said, no, no, you can't buy a stolen radio. Then I said, but the meat is stolen. If it's not killed, at least it's stolen.

It's still stolen goods, isn't it? And because the word in Tibetan for stolen is what? MA JIN LEN Which means you took it but it wasn't given to you, right?

So meat is like that. Anyway, in the White Lotus Sutra, they list every possible kind of meat. Chicken meat, cow meat, goat meat.

It's like 50 kinds of meat ending with human flesh. And then they say, don't eat it. Lord Buddha says, don't eat it.

So that's the original. That was Lord Buddha's position. Anyway, I like this particular sutra.

It'd be nice to work on it someday together in our free time. DE SHES KUSUGS SIGS SNGON CIG PA LA You can hear the poetry, right? DE SHES KUSUGS SIGS SNGON CIG PA LA THUGS BZHIN PA'I SEMS KYI BSTAN PA'I BRTEN NA YANG DE DAG RIM GYIS SANGS RGYAS CHE BA THONG ZHES GSUNGS DE SHES KUSUGS means a representation of Lord Buddha, whether it be a statue or a painting.

SIGS SNGON CIG PA LA means painted on the side of a wall as a mural. SIGS SNGON CIG PA LA THUGS BZHIN PA'I SEMS KYI BSTAN PA'I BRTEN NA YANG Even if you gaze upon an image, a mural of Lord Buddha's image painted on a wall, with thoughts that are upset or angry, with angry thoughts, not with a pure mind. DE DAG RIM GYIS SANGS RGYAS CHE BA THONG Eventually, because of the seed of that moment of looking at the mural, you will see 10 million Buddhas.

That seed of looking once with an angry state of mind at a Buddha's painting will cause you to meet 10 million Buddhas. That's the quotation from the White Lotus Sutra. ZHES GSUNGS SDO NGO MA'I PHYIR NA YANG SDO NGO MA'I PHYIR NA YANG ZHES SNANG YANG GSUNGS RGYUN DI LTAR CHUNG Then he says, if you go look at the original sutra, the wording is slightly different, but it doesn't change the meaning.

So I did. I went and looked at the original sutra because we have it all on computer, right? The Tibetans have been, the refugees have been typing for 25 years.

They finished all the sutras. There are 4,600 sutras and shastras, and they finished them. So I just looked it up to find out what was the other reading.

What was the original reading? The original reading is like this. DE SHES RGYUN ZAL The whole thing goes like this.

I just thought you'd like to hear the whole thing. DE SHES RGYUN ZAL LA NI CHUNG ZAD DANG ZHING YANG GCIG TU'I BA'I BRTAG CHUNG RNAMS MED TO GCIG TZAM GYIS NI CHOS PA DANG DE SHES SU LTAR TSIG RGYUN The whole verse is longer. And it says, DE SHES RGYUN ZAL LA NI CHUNG ZAD DANG When a Buddha passes from this world, they don't die like normal people.

They disappear. And then there are these little, you know, because she dragged them around the world. They're called a ring cell.

And they look like bone or ivory. And they're shaped like an anise seed maybe or something like that. They're about that size, like the sprinkles on a cupcake.

Maybe that's what they really are. But it's called a ring cell. And it's believed that when an enlightened being passes, that's all that's left.

So obviously these things are very valuable and people trade in them. And I'm sure people make them in North Tibet somewhere with plastic or, you know. But of course there's big fights about who's got the real ring cell.

Anyway, if you even made a small offering to a ring cell, not even to a Buddha, okay? So Lama Zopa had a project to take ring cells around the world and show them to people. And they went, they're still going, I don't know, many countries.

People really were affected by them. CHUNG SRED DANG, ZIL NYAN GCIG STONG PA'I DGRA BCUNG NGAM Even if you take a single, you know those Tibetan ting shot? Ting.

They use them in yoga studios more than in Tibet. You knock them, they're called ting shot. Even to hit them once and offer it to the Buddha.

MED TOG GCIG TZAM GYIS NI CHOD PA DANG Even if you offer a single flower, one flower to a Buddha statue, DE ZHEGS SUG DANG ZIG NO GCIG PA LA Even if you see images of the Buddha. By the way, the original says plural. It's plural, okay?

Even if you see images of the Buddha painted on a wall. THUG BZHIN PA'I SEMS KYI CHUN NA YANG And even if you, it doesn't say look at it, it says if you offer something to it. If you set an offering in front of that mural.

DE DAG RIM GYIS SANGS RGYAS CHE BA THONG That part's the same. You will see 10 million Buddhas, okay? So this is, he says, look, it doesn't matter whether you look at it or you offer something to it.

It's the same. DE LTAR SANGS RGYAS KYI GUS LA MTHO BZHIN TE NA YANG Even if you are upset or angry and you happen to look at a Buddha image. PHEN YIN DE LTAR GSUNGS NA You get those kinds of benefits.

That's going to happen to you. You will meet real Buddhas. THA LTA RANG RES DE'I PA'I RGYAL NA If we rather, RGYAL, what?

Meet the image. Meaning if you approach it respectfully and you bow to that image, right? DE'I PA'I RGYAL NA PHEN YIN DE LTAR BU LUS BYUNG Then of course you would get extraordinary benefits if you were not angry, but rather had a heart full of faith and devotion and you bowed to the image.

PHAR PA SHARI BU SANGS RGYAS KYI CHOG GSUM DU GYUR NAS KUN ROL DANG BRAL BA MED PA BYUNG BA YANG Then there's a beautiful story. It's called, how should you say? Who Spoke the Heart Sutra?

A sutra is required to be spoken by a Buddha, but it was spoken by Shariputra, one of the Buddha's main disciples, Shariputra. So there were two close disciples of Lord Buddha. One was called Shariputra, and one was Maudgalyayana.

And these two were very close to Lord Buddha and stayed with Lord Buddha most of the time. So now he's going to talk about what happened to, how did they get that karma? Shariputra in particular, who speaks the Heart Sutra.

So why is it still a sutra? Sutra is supposed to be spoken by a Buddha. Yeah, Lord Buddha was manipulating him, and causing him to say the sutra.

DBANG CI RTZA'I BUL SA ZHING CHEN PO LO BO LO ME RUNG GONG BYAO CHEN MU YON GYI GONG DU NYID KYIS KHAR BYA RI RTZA Anyway, PHAR PAR SHARI BU SANGS RGYAS KYI CHOG GSUM DU GYUR Say CHOG GSUM. CHOG GSUM CHOG GSUM So there's a special word in Buddhism for those two disciples. They have their own name as a pair.

They're called CHOG GSUM. CHOG means supreme, right? And GSUM means the two, the pair.

So they're often just referred to as the supreme pair. Shariputra and Maudgalyayana. Okay?

You know the word GSUM because it comes in SUMJUG, which is tantric Buddhahood. Tantra is supposed to be, according to Buddhism, Buddhist tantra, as opposed to Hindu tantra, is supposed to be the only way to get enlightened in one lifetime. And they give it a new name in the scriptures.

They don't call it enlightenment. They call it the union of the two, meaning an angel's body and an angel's mind. Okay?

But that's another story. So in GSUM DUG BSGYUR NAS, KU NGOS DANG BRAL BA MED PA CHUNG BA Shariputra never left the side of the Buddha. Okay?

After he became one of the two, he never again left the Buddha's side in his life. NGON, how did that happen? How did he get the karma?

NGON SANGS RGYAS KYI KUS SUGS RIM PO'I PHYI PA LA NGO TZAM NYAMS KYI DE PAS Okay? There was an incident in his former life or earlier in his life where he saw an image of a Buddha painted. Okay?

And he looked at it with NGO TZAM. NGO TZAM means wonder. He looked at this image with wonder.

And then the karmic result of that was that he could always be inseparable from Lord Buddha during the latter part of his time on this earth. Deyang, now he's going to tell you this story and I kind of like it. Okay?

This is the story. I didn't know this story until I studied this book. Deyang, Bhagpa Shariputra, he's called a Bhagpa.

What's that mean? Someone who has seen emptiness directly. Shariputra, NGON BANG MI ZHIG GIS BSKYED BAR BSHAD PAR In a previous life, when he had been born as a BANG MI, BANG MI can mean like a pony express rider.

Okay? In English, it's like a messenger. A synonym for that is PONYA, which in the secret teachings is a name for your partner, for your spiritual partner, a messenger.

Okay? So BANG MI is a special word. He was a BANG MI.

He was a messenger. He was out on a message. He's sending a message.

They didn't have telephones. You sent a guy with a note. In my monastery for, I don't know, 20 years, they just had BANG MIS.

They were the little guys, the seven-year-old monks. And their only function in the monastery is as a telephone. So you give the kid a little note.

You say, run across the other side of the monastery, give this to Geshe Sansang. He takes off. Then he starts playing marbles halfway and loses the message.

These are all interesting things that happen. Okay, BAB PA ZHAR BUD MNGON BANG MI ZHIG GI SKYE BA ZHIG PA NUS GCIG LA GANG STONG PA ZHIG GI NANG DU DE One night he got off his horse and the only place he had to stay was in an abandoned chapel, like a small chapel, stone chapel in the middle of the plains in Tibet. He got off his horse, it was dark, and he found this abandoned chapel.

DE SPAR MAR MED SHIN TU SEL BAR BYAS NAS He lit a very clear butter lamp. LHAM LA RDOG PA RGYAGS SHIN DU And then he had to do a repair on his boots. Okay, he was fixing the heel on his boots.

SHIN DU NGAL SO BA'I SKABS And he was like taking a break. RGYAL LOGS SU DE BZHIN ZHIG PA'I GUS SUG GI DE BRGYUR MTHONG BA'I While he was fixing the heel on his shoe, he happened to look up on the wall of the chapel and he saw a painting of Lord Buddha. He saw a Buddha painted on the wall.

MTHONG BA'I DI LTA BU SKYES BU NGOS TZAR CHEN YOD PA Wow, he looks cool. He was like, wow, he looks really great. He's amazing.

He didn't know who it was. It's like, wow, that's amazing. NGOS SU BYAS NA CI MA RUNG It would be nice to meet him in person.

He thought that. He just thought it to himself. NYAM DU YID LA RMOS PA'I YANG YANG BYAS PA'I BRAL BU And all night long, he kept, like he fell in love with the painting on the wall and he kept saying to himself, I wish I could meet him.

I wish I could meet him. I wish I could meet him. Then he died, of course, and then, not that time, but eventually.

And that was the karma. Just looking at that painting on the night that he was fixing his shoe on the way to send somebody a message, he had the karma never to be separated from Lord Buddha's side in his later life. KUR BRTEN, BYAS PA'I BRAL BU YIN PAR GSUNGS KUR BRTEN RNAMS RANG RES DAM DANG SANGS SOGS SU THOB MA DE CHUG YIN GYI RTEN GYI RDZIN THOB NA CHOG KYI THUG KHUR BRAL ZHING Okay, this gets into a really heavy thing and it's on your homework, okay?

We said there were five steps in the spiritual evolution of every human being. They're always the same, okay? Number one was what?

Some kind of disaster in your life. It wakes you up, okay? My best students over the last 30 years have been the ones whose mother hanged themselves in the basement or somebody came in and shot somebody or their child was run over by a semi-truck at the stop on the highway, like that.

People like that. People have had a really hard time. Those are the best students because they're very serious.

They don't fool around. I had a student who had AIDS in New York and he just came to me and he said, look, I don't have time to fool around. I'm dying.

I need to know what's going to happen and I want to practice now. And I don't need superfluous stuff. I need the guts of the stuff because I have a year.

And he died. We took care of him all night for months and then he died. So first step is something happens to make you serious.

Second step, what? You get an understanding the stuff is coming from you. Direct, direct emptiness.

Third, you see emptiness directly. 20 minutes, right? By the way, I didn't tell you four and five.

Four is after you see emptiness directly, you use that on your own negative emotions for many years after that. Basically, it boils down to every time your boss yells at you, you understand that she is coming from you. And then slowly that makes you incapable of anger.

I call it the water on the bathroom floor syndrome, which is what? I mean, I used to live in New Jersey, right? And it was cold and I had one good pair of wool socks.

And so I would go into the bathroom like at 10 o'clock and there'd be water all over the floor. Somebody took a shower and poured water all over the floor. So then I would step in the water and then my feet were miserable for the first half of the morning.

And then I would go out to talk to the monks who were having breakfast. I was the cook for eight years, okay? Because I was the youngest monk.

So I'm out there and I'm like, okay, who took a shower this morning? Just tell me. And I'm angry.

I'm like upset. I'm like, I told you like 10 times. You're in America now.

You have to close the, there's this curtain thing. It's not like some bucket of cow dung. And they're like, everybody looks around and then one of them said, oh, Mike, you, they used to call me Mike, okay?

Oh, Mike, you took a shower this morning. And then I'm like, oh yeah. And then you can be angry at other people for putting water on the kitchen floor, but I mean, sorry, the bathroom floor, but you can't, once you know it's yourself, you just feel foolish, right?

You feel dumb, okay? But that's what the fourth path is like. On the fourth path, every irritating person you meet, you understand directly that they are your shower this morning.

You created every, that lady said it today. Wasn't it cool? She's some kind of Buddha, I guess.

The homeless shelter lady, she said, what'd she say? She said, there comes a point where you realize everything you see in a homeless person is coming from you. And so at step number four, you realize it so well that you start to reach nirvana because nirvana means the place where you can't get angry anymore, okay?

The better you get at understanding where things come from, the less anger you can ever have, okay? That's just the way it is. Bad things happen around you, unexpected disasters, and a well-trained Buddhist is like, oh, I took a shower this morning.

And they don't get upset. The world can collapse around you. I got all these emails today from people I haven't heard of in 30 years.

And you're like, it's my fault. I made some kind of karma, okay? Like that.

And you don't get all upset or angry or... You can't blame anybody else for the water on the floor, okay? It's you.

If you keep that up long enough, then step five is you reach nirvana and Buddhahood, okay? Why did I bring that up? Oh, at step one, which is divided into three or nine levels, once you reach the higher levels of the disaster stage, meaning you've been trained for a while now.

You've been trained for a while. And if you meditate carefully, you reach CHOS RGYUN GYI MTHING NGES ZIN. Say CHOS RGYUN GYI MTHING NGES ZIN.

CHOS RGYUN GYI MTHING NGES ZIN. I like this word. I really like this word.

It's a kind of state of mind where everything, every teaching you ever heard in your life starts to pop up in your head at odd moments, okay? Like something you heard 10 years ago. You could be washing dishes, for example, you know?

You could be washing dishes 10 years from now. And it's a spaghetti dish, okay? And you left it since yesterday.

Obviously you weren't cleaning your room. And there's a stuck piece of spaghetti sauce on the plate. And you have to scrub it, right?

You're scrubbing it. And you say, these are like fuzz balls. Fuzz balls, that's my jealousy.

Let me get it off, you know? I remember Geshe-la talking about fuzz balls 10 years ago. I haven't thought about the fuzz balls for 10 years.

And it's just like the spaghetti thing, you see, like that. And when you reach CHOS RGYUN GYI MTHING NGES ZIN, your whole life is cool because the Buddha starts talking in your head. All the teachings you ever got, they start whispering in your head.

It's very beautiful. It's a very beautiful state. And just at odd moments, you start to get angry.

And then Geshe-la is saying, it's coming from you. Water on the bathroom floor. And you're like, ding.

And like that, okay? So this is CHOS RGYUN GYI MTHING NGES ZIN, very famous. And it happens at SOGS LAM.

It happens in the first stage, towards the end of the first stage. Okay, so you can look forward to that. It's kind of invasive, actually.

KHO SOGS TOG DANG NAS So at that point, you will start to see outer forms of people to get more and more Buddha-like, okay? The people around you, people you meet, you will start to see glimpses of their divinity, okay? In their outer form.

You will start to get little glimpses of other people as being divine, okay? Even at the end of the first of the five paths. And that's called, he calls it CHOG KYI THUG RGYAL CHOG KYI THUG RGYAL, right?

You know the word, RGYAL, now. So you will start to meet people. How does it feel?

What does it manifest itself as? Mostly in teachers, okay? And it doesn't have to be a Buddhist teacher.

It could be a yoga teacher. It could be someone who's teaching you woodworking or someone who's teaching you dance. It mostly manifests in teachers or in friends who are teaching you stuff.

It could be a partner who starts to teach you stuff. And it could be a boss at work who starts to teach you. And you start to get glimpses of them as a Buddha or as a divine being.

And what he's trying to say is, if you set holy images around your house and on your altar, and if you gel them frequently, then that's the seed for starting to see people as divine. And that's a pleasure. And that's Tantra.

If you want to know what Tantra is, it's nothing more than that, okay? First stage Tantra, which is called Kirtan. It's not some weird sexual, you know, I don't know what those things are.

They made them up. Somebody made that up. The first level of Tantra is where you start to see more and more people as divine around you.

And you start to see the godness within other people. Okay? And that's Tantra.

That's first level Tantra. So the seed for that is planted by putting a picture on your altar and respecting it nicely. Got it?

It's cool. It's really cool. So you're not just putting some weird picture on your altar.

You are planting seeds. Like, who did? Shariputra, fixing his shoe on the way to, on a horse pony express trip.

Okay? So don't treat the altar as a light thing. Make sure you have an altar and put some beautiful images on it.

Because you are setting yourself up to live among angels. And that's a pleasure. That's a beautiful thing.

Okay? So do it. And it's not just some Tibetan custom or something like that.

It has deep significance for your future. All right. GZHUGS KYI RJES SHING SVAG DANG PO MTHONG DANG LONG DGOS NGOS BYA BA YIN When you reach MTHONG DANG, which is which of the path?

What number? Number three. When you see ultimate reality directly.

Which is the goal of all Buddhist practice, basically. During that day and on that occasion also, you meet the Buddha at a higher level. You become, you confirm the existence of Buddhas.

On that day that you see emptiness directly, you also directly perceive a Buddha. Who? The first one is somebody else who is already a Buddha.

A few minutes later, maybe within half an hour, you see yourself 500 years from now, you see yourself as you will be. And that's cool. That's one of the four truths.

You see yourself as you will be. On that day, you confirm the existence of enlightened beings. Up till now, you can say you're a Buddhist, but did you ever meet a Buddha?

Like, all you got is a bunch of old books that say this guy was around. You can't really say, you can say, I mean, it's reasonable on the debate ground, right? Somebody could say, are you a Buddhist?

You'd say, yes. Then they'd say, do you know for sure that Buddhas exist? No.

On that day, you know for sure. And only on that day, to be honest. The rest is just hearsay.

Legally, you'd have to say hearsay. I trust the people who told me that, but I can't confirm it. I didn't meet them.

On that day, you meet them. So what he's saying is plant the seed now by keeping a holy image on your altar, all right? And that will cause you, after you see emptiness directly, to meet a Buddha directly.

Then you can become a real Buddhist. You say, I'm a Buddhist. Did you see them?

Yes. They're cool. In fact, I saw myself, okay?

And after that, you can't worry too much about stuff, okay? Really strange stuff can happen. You're like, okay, okay, that's okay.

But I saw something cooler, okay? All right. SA BDAG PO'I THOG MA LONG BA'I RGYUR BA'I YIN DE NA KU MYUR GYI DU SHES SBYOR PA GAL CHE SU Then he wraps up his presentation by saying, when you see, when you look at a statue on an altar, reflect that this is the real thing, okay?

That's not just a statue of Jetsun Kappa. That's Jetsun Kappa. If you treat it as Jetsun Kappa, it will happen faster that you meet these beings all around you.

Everyone has divinity in them. We can't see it. We just don't have the karma.

If you keep a nice altar, you make that karma faster. And it's a pleasure to be, you walk into a restaurant in New York on 6th Street and 2nd Avenue. Where's Caravan of Dreams?

2nd Avenue? 1st. At 1st Avenue.

And you're having lunch with somebody. And you say to the, and the waitress is an old Jewish lady, old and chubby with short gray curly hair, right? I'm just making up a story, okay?

And you finish your meal and then you say, give us the bill, right? And the old Jewish lady looks at you and says, how could I ever present a bill to someone who is practicing the Vajrayogini? And she just turns around and goes back in the kitchen.

And then you leave her an $80 tip. So anyway, those things will happen, okay? Nice things.

It's fun if things like that happen, okay? It's really nice. So it starts with keeping a nice image on your altar, all right?

Okay. SNGON GYI BDU ZHIG SBYOR PA GAL CHE GSUNGS We finished the second, sorry, the first step of the six, the first of the six preliminary practices, okay? Which is now you know it has two parts.

First one is cleaning up your room and the second one is making a nice altar. But now you know it's much more than an altar. It's the beginning of a process at the end of which you are meeting angels on a daily basis, okay?

And it's nice. It's a sweet thing. You don't have to go, there's a guy where I live, there's a guy who stands on the side of the road in the middle of the desert all day and he waves a Bible and he yells on the highway, he yells at people driving by.

And I don't know whether to admire him or what. He's in this really beat up cowboy hat and he's got this huge beard and he's totally fried by the sun. His skin is like peeling off and he has a Bible and he's yelling at the highway.

I don't mean like that. I'm not saying that, okay? I'm not saying that you go out and knock on doors and tell people if you want to meet angels, you've got to have a Buddha picture on the kitchen table or something.

That's not where we're at. I think what I mean to say is, gently, quietly, privately, take care of your altar. You don't have to tell anybody.

Nobody ever has to see it. But treat it as if they are visitors from another world. And then you will have special experiences in your life.

So we're not talking about, Alanis Morissette has this song where she disses, do you know this song? She disses Buddhists who are keeping makeshift altars in their living room. And I felt bad about that song.

It's a much different thing. You can set up a portal to another world in your bedroom, in the corner. And just take care of the images properly and honor them properly.

And then beautiful things will come. And it's not just a couple of pictures on the table. Okay, we're on to class homework two now.

So now you can finish all of homework one. Hopefully we'll do some homework two tomorrow. I'm going to go for another 10 minutes and give you guys a break.

Because after that, you're going to be cranky and tired. So here we go. I enjoy, this is very grounding for me, when I have adversity or things are troubling me, I love to listen to these things.

It makes me very happy. Okay, here we go. NYID PA CHOS PA YOD MED CING KHO PA RDZAS PAR BZHAG MA NI The second of the six preliminary practices before a meditation session is to put forth offerings on the altar.

It could be a flower. It could be a single flower. Whatever it is.

After you put the pictures there, or the statues, and the book, and the bell, and the Dorje, then you should put some offerings on the altar. You should put some nice offerings on the altar. And he's going to discuss the offerings.

And this is one of the most beautiful discussions in all of Buddhism. What kind of flower is most beautiful? And I just really love it.

This is one of the most precious teachings in Buddhism. And it's in this book. This is the source of it.

It's so beautiful. Okay, so here we go. He says, by the way, that the offerings are, say, YOD MED.

YOD MED. Stilwell's email is what? Vajra, YOD.

YOD means, in Tibetan, high tone, right? Say, YOD. Then say, YOD.

YOD means, this is the one here, YOD MED means, the offerings should have been paid for with honest money, clean money, okay? And we'll talk about what that means, okay? The offerings have to be clean.

The money that you use to buy them should have been made with 100% honesty, okay? Total honesty. That's called YOD MED, okay?

BYING DGOS PA RDZAS PA DGOS PA RDZAS PA means, they must be beautiful and lovely, okay? They must be lovely. And he's going to go in great length to what those two things mean, and I like it.

I think it's really sweet, okay? So here we go. You ready?

BZHAG PA DE YANG YOD MED CING ZHES PA'I YOD LA RGYUD YOD DANG KUN RUNG GI YOD NYID He says you can divide YOD into two kinds. What's YOD? YOD means dishonesty, okay?

Or wrong livelihood. Money which is gotten from ill means, okay? It's called YOD.

YOD can also mean to deceive somebody or like that, okay? Sneaky ways, okay? YOD.

He says there's two kinds of YOD in the world. One is RGYUD and one is KUN RUNG. RGYUD YOD means the substances of the offering are polluted in some way.

They are tainted by some kind of dishonesty, okay? And they should not be offered, okay? The other kind of YOD is KUN RUNG GI YOD.

KUN RUNG GI YOD means the reason you make the offerings should not be lesser motivation. It must be a pure motivation, okay? So for an offering to be nice on the altar, the money must have been earned honestly and cleanly.

And then the motivation must not be lesser motivation like, oh, if somebody sees I have a nice altar, if I have a nice cupcake on my altar, they'll think I'm more spiritual. Like that, you know? People will be impressed by the offerings I put on my altar, okay?

Like that. That's a defective motivation. Or the substances can be tainted by dishonesty, okay?

All right? And we're going to go into it. RGYUD YOD NI CHOS PA'I RGYUD DE'I RGYUD PA'I SKABS SU KHYUN ZHUGS PA STE What do you call it?

Pollution of the substances to be offered refers to when you obtain those offerings, meaning when you went to Safeway or Bosh's, okay? You used money which was ill-gotten, all right? SKABS SU KHYUN ZHUGS TE And then the offerings became polluted, all right?

RAB BYUNG RNAMS KYIS RAB BYUNG means, in this case, monks or nuns, okay? LOG SOGS NGA'I DGON NAS SGRUB PA DANG There are five wrong ways of supporting yourself in Tibet. Okay?

There was a custom. They're called five wrong ways of supporting yourself, okay? And they apply to monks and nuns mostly because they apply to how you relate to your sponsors, okay?

I think it's not a big stretch, and I'm looking forward to using this in our business management teachings. I don't think it's a big stretch to apply these five to a business life or your work life or your office, okay? So I'm going to explain to you the traditional five wrong ways of making a living or getting things.

But I want you, on your homework, to apply it to an office situation or to a business situation, okay? To a modern life situation. I'll give you the five for monks and nuns.

And then on your homework, it's going to say, give the five for monks and nuns and take a shot at what that would be in a real life office where you have a job, okay? All right, here we go. KHYAD PA'I KYANG MA RKA'I DANG PHRAD LOGS SANGS RGOGS RDZUGS PA LTA BU GZHIN DU BYA BA NGAN PAR RGYEN PA'I GZUGS PA'I RGYU LTA BU LA ZER He's going to explain the five, but he has a small comment before that, okay?

And we'll take a break in three minutes, I promise. Even if you're not a monk or nun, I'll give you some examples of wrong ways to make money. And he has a small list here, okay?

MA RKA'I means to make money from selling flesh of animals, to kill, butcher, to be a butcher, to kill things and then sell their flesh, okay? MA RKA'I MA means red, crimson. RKA'I means to profit.

MA RKA'I means to make a living off of killing animals, okay, and selling their flesh. DANG PHRAD LOGS PHRAD is an ancient word for, what do you call? With those weights that you use on a scale?

It's called PHRAD, what do you call that? The box, like if you're, old time you weigh how many pounds of stuff they want and then you have a weight on the other side, okay? So either you mess around with the weights or you mess around with the scale.

That's called PHRAD LOGS or SANGS RGYUD. RGYUL PA LTA BU BZHIN DU BYANG BA'I RGYUL PA RGYU LTA BU LA ZER So you can't offer things that you bought with the money that you made from hurting animals, selling liquor, selling weapons, like that, okay? You can't use that money to buy offerings, okay?

LTA BU ZHIN DU BYANG BA'I RGYUL PA DE LTA BU CHOS PA PHU BA LAS MA PHU BA LAS This is very powerful. He says, DE LTA BU CHOS PA PHU BA LAS MA PHU BA LAS If you have a choice between making an offering that you bought with money that was made by hurting someone, or you have the choice of not making an offering at all, which do you think is better? Don't make it at all, he says.

Better not to make it, okay? Better not to make an offering, okay? CHOS PA'I SKAD DOD BU BYA ZHES PA NYES PA LA RGYUL PA'I RGYUR PA RGYAL BA ZAD CES RGYAS PA LA CHAR DGOS He said, SKAD DOD, if you're going to learn Tibetan, the word SKAD DOD is very important.

SKAD DOD means the Sanskrit equivalent. Of a Tibetan word. SKAD DOD means, so if you say the word CHOS PA, which means offering in Tibetan, if I ask you for the SKAD DOD, it would mean what's the corresponding Sanskrit original word?

And it's PUJA, okay? PUJA. Like Lama CHOS PA is called Guru Puja, right?

So PUJA means an offering. But in Tibet, the root of the word PUJA was thought to mean to please. So the word offering in ancient Sanskrit meant something to please somebody.

The word PUJA means to do something to please another person, okay? That's the literal meaning of the word PUJA, which came to mean offering, okay? RGYUL PA'I RGYAL BA ZAD CES RGYAS PA LA CHAR DGOS So it wouldn't make sense to buy an offering through an action which would displease the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, okay?

Got it? All right. Maybe a few more than three minutes.

I'm almost to the five. I'm going to give you the break and then we'll do the five. DE LTA BU BU NA RGYAS PA KA LA RGYUR How could you imagine that a Buddha would be pleased if you bought a cupcake by slaughtering an animal and selling their flesh?

Okay? Not possible. DGON KYANG LDAN DU'I RGYUD GRUB ZIN PA YOD NA RANG BZHIN GYI SDIG PA BDAG PA'I PHYIR DU BU BA LAS Then he says a very interesting sentence, okay?

And I'll tell you a story. I learned all my Buddhism just by being around lamas, right? You learn more by being around your teacher all the time, if you're a good teacher, about what you should do, especially in gray areas, okay?

So we had a gray area in New Jersey, like in 1978. And there was a, I was living with Mongolians, right? And they are Tibetan Buddhists.

So I was studying with a lot of Mongolian lamas. And then Ken Rinpoche was there. And then a Mongolian family came to us and they offered money for the air conditioner for the temple, okay?

And then we took the money and we started to arrange for the air conditioning. Central air, it was expensive. And then somebody came to us and said, do you know where they got the money?

And we're like, no, we don't know how they got the money. Because most of the Mongolian families were very poor. They were refugees.

And then they said they own a liquor shop. They own a liquor store. That's why they're the only karmic family who has any money, you know?

And then we're like, we had a moral crisis, you know? We're like, Rinpoche, what do we do, you know? They got all this money by selling liquor to people.

Here's the answer, okay? This is a delicate, okay? Be careful.

You have to be wise in how you apply this answer, but here's the answer. ,RIN PA'I RGYUD GRUB ZIN PA LA, If someone has already purchased the thing, and there's no way to take it back, ,RANG BZHIN GYI GRIG PA BTAB PA'I PHYIR, you should go ahead and use it for the offering because it will help them clean themselves of the bad karma, okay? If they already bought the air conditioner and it's already installed, you shouldn't rip it out.

You should leave it there. And then every time the congregation is cooled, they will get a little good karma, got it? And it will sort of clean their liquor selling karma.

Got it? Okay, that's the conclusion. So if they've already bought it and they offer it to you, and your choice is to throw it out, you should use it for their sake, okay?

All right? That's a little touchy. Then he goes into the five wrong livelihoods, okay?

And we'll do that after the break. Okay.

[Говорящий 2] (46:41 - 46:45)
,GZIN RANG GI MA YOD KYI TSUN, Oh, okay.

[Говорящий 1] (46:48 - 46:55)
It says, before you meditate, you must always look at your motivation. Kind of.

[Говорящий 2] (46:59 - 47:01)
Okay. All right.

[Говорящий 1] (47:08 - 47:58)
Okay, here we go. We're going to do a tap-kyu. Say tap-kyu.

Tap-kyu means a horse race. And in the monastery, it means the Lama didn't go through the material fast enough in the first half and then he has to race through the second. The Dalai Lama does this a lot.

He does the eight verses. He spends the whole time on the first one and then he finishes the last sentence in the last seven minutes. Okay, here we go.

These are LOK SOGS RNGA. LOK SOGS RNGA means five ways of making a dishonest living. Okay?

And we have to try to avoid them. Say, kasak, shoglong, nyepe nyepa tsuwa, top kyi gelwa, and tsul chu. These are the Tibetan words for the five kinds of wrong ways of making a living.

[Говорящий 2] (47:58 - 47:59)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (48:01 - 1:18:50)
And again, remember that these are in the context of monks and nuns because his audience was 100% monks and nuns. Okay, well, mostly. He was one of the few Lamas in Tibet who tried to teach lay people in large audiences, like a thousand people at the time.

And he got in trouble for it from the authorities, the religious authorities for teaching lay people. But anyway, these five are in the context of monks and nuns, as you will see. They most relate to how to relate to sponsors.

Okay, so here we go. Kasak nyi, the first one, which is kasak. By the way, that means to obtain things by flattery.

DBYIN DAG SOGS KYIS CHEN PO'I DBYIN PA RE BA'I CHIN DU RE BA'I KHA THER THER BYAS PA STE So you hope that some sponsor is going to give you some crummy little thing. So you tell them how handsome they are, et cetera. Okay, I was a diamond buyer for 15 years.

This is one of the most powerful positions in the business because you're dealing with millions of dollars every day. You're making deals on $10 million deals. Most diamond buyers have a Swiss house and a swimming pool because they skim a certain percentage off.

I'll buy your million dollars of diamonds if $20,000 goes into my bank account tomorrow, like that. And it's very, very common and very, very difficult. I think one of the reasons our company succeeded was that we were all honest because there wasn't that leakage of corruption.

So anyway, but diamond sellers used to come to me and tell me how handsome I was and how smart I was and what a nice suit I had on. And then one day I said, let's be honest. If tomorrow I lost this job, would you ever talk to me?

And they're like, no. So, kathetera means to compliment someone lavishly. Dey norsok jinna loktoyen.

And then because you have kissed their rear end or you flattered them, then they try to give you things. That's the monastic version. A sponsor approaches the monastery and you tell them how handsome they are, how smart they are, just because you're hoping that they will give more to the monastery or to you.

That's kathak, that's flattery, using flattery. If you make money that way or if someone gives you things that way, it's inappropriate to offer them because they're tainted. On your homework, then you have to work out what would be the real-life job equivalent in America.

Number two, yang dimpe kunop meypar rangshin drangpo kakye chen na jin kyang lok tso min gyur He says, but it's not wrong to be persuasive when you are fundraising. He says, if you are sincere and you're trying to raise funds for something important, it's not wrong to be persuasive. That's not wrong livelihood.

That's okay. Gandhi has an interesting section in his Atma-katha, his autobiography, which I read in Gujarati 100 years ago, or I started to anyway, about fundraising, about the ethics of fundraising. And you should read it sometime.

It's very beautiful. It's a very beautiful essays in there. Anyway, shoglong ni, ngey kor dupe, jin tat sok na, nga la ten kap ja mar yu Number two is called hinting.

Hinting to a sponsor. It's called shoglong. ngey kor dupe, because you want either money or people's respect, you are looking for either donations or people's adulation.

du ne, jin tat sok na, you say to sponsors who are around you, nga la ten kap ja mar yu te, dru chung kunpar du So look, in a Tibetan monastery, the only thing that monks eat is Tibetan tea with sampa. You know sampa? Sampa?

Sampa is parched barley that you, you go out all night, you have a barley parching party, and you sing barley parching songs together. And you, over a fire, you, you, what do you call it? You cook the raw wheat, the raw barley.

What do you call it? Roasted, sorry. You roast it, and then it gets dried out, and then you grind it up.

And that's half of a Tibetan monk's diet. They mix that every morning, afternoon, and evening with butter tea, and that's all they eat. Most, a lot of monks survive the whole Geshe program on just sampa.

Anyway, so basically all they need is barley and tea. All right, so guess what? That's all the run I think of.

Jamar Yontey, you tell the sponsor, I'm really fortunate, you know, I have lots of tea and butter. You know, barley's a little tight. Okay, got it?

Hinting, all right? I got lots of butter and tea, tea blocks of tea, but barley's been a little problem lately. Okay, Tsobutuk Serwatabu.

That's shoglong. GNAR LO SKYE GYIS BYIN PA'I TZAM PA DE BZHIN DU PHEN PO CHUNG Means, that sampa you gave me last year was a big help. BYIN PA'I TZAM PA DU DANG TZAM PA ZHUGS KYI LONG BA LA ZER ZHUGS KYI means to, what do you call that?

Imply that you need something without stating it directly. Okay, you're hinting that you need something, okay? How you apply that to an American office work situation is an interesting question, and you're going to answer that on your homework, okay?

YANG NGES DUS GYIS KUN LONG MED PAR RANG BZHIN DRANGS MOR DE DAG BRJUN NA ZHONG LONG DU MIN GYUR If you are not being deceptive or insincere, it's not wrong to state directly to a sponsor, I have tea, I have butter, I don't have sampa. I need sampa, okay? That's okay, that's not wrong.

It's the hinting, it's the being deceptive or being insincere to the sponsor. So there has to be an element of insincerity. If you say directly, you know, I don't, I need this.

I need a computer recently, my computer broke, and then Rebecca went on Facebook and raised the money, and that's fine. He told people he needs a computer, he doesn't have any money, so that's okay, okay? That kind of thing is just honest whining and begging, okay?

All right, that's not wrong livelihood. It's wrong to be insincere about it, okay? Number three, it's called baiting.

NYES PA'I NYES PA TSUL WA Literally in the Tibetan, it means to seek a gain by giving a gain, okay? To seek a gain by giving a gain. Give something in hopes of getting something back, okay?

BAR CHUNG BU ZHIG BRDZIN NAS TSOR DE LAS LHAG ZHIG YONG THAB CHE PA YIN You give a little gift hoping to get a big one back. And this is a big custom in China. I've been told by countless Chinese friends that if I'm a monk and I'm teaching people in China and I expect a fundraise for projects, I should bring with me 14 gold Buddhas and 24 Tibetan paintings and that that's expected.

And then it would be odd to ask people for money for a homeless center in America if you didn't offer them a little gold Buddha or something like that, that this is just normal thing. And I still haven't done it. I don't feel comfortable with it.

It is the custom in China for ordained people to do that but I don't feel comfortable with it. It feels too much like this to me. But there is a Chinese custom which is very sincere where you might give a sponsor a book or something and then you ask them, will you pay for our monasteries?

You know what I mean? And that's okay. If it's honest, then it's up front.

So anyway, ,DBYIN DAG LTA BUR GA LTA STANGS, ,BYA STIR SOGS KHYER ROL NAS, So Lama Sipa Rinpoche, one of her Lamas, sweet Lama, very great Lama. And he once told me, there's a thing in India called orange squash. Nobody had money.

When I'm in my time in India, people didn't have money to buy Coca-Cola or what do you call it? Soda drinks, right? Because they're too expensive for poor people.

And then you would make your own. So it's a British custom. You buy a bottle of concentrated sugar water with orange in it.

And then you mix it with water and you make, it's like Kool-Aid or something like that. It's called orange squash. And it's a wonderful way to get diarrhea because they will invite you to their house and they'll pour out an orange squash.

They mix dirty water. They mix black dirty water with the orange squash and you can't tell it's dirty and you drink it. And Rinpoche got, our Rinpoche got very, very sick that way, many times.

So anyway, I met Lama Sipa one time in Sera, I think. And he said, I said, how are you doing Rinpoche? He says, oh, this place has the most expensive orange squash in the world.

Meaning every monk would come to him with a bottle of orange squash and then ask for $50,000 for some new housing for the little monks, for the young monks and stuff like that. So anyway, that's what this is about. He says, you offer a sponsor a khatak.

What's a khatak? It's that Tibetan silk white scarf that you offer to people. They cost like 50 cents in the monastery.

By the way, those of you who care, this might be the only place you'll ever find it spelled. If you care. And jatir, jatir means a small teapot, like a ceramic teapot.

So khyer ne, you offer the sponsor a little scarf or orange squash. Khyer ne, ne len ched te, you offer them hospitality. Lo phuk tu, but deep in your heart, tong go lak tak sok chenpo yong gyu re wa chepa la ser, you're hoping you'll get some big offering from them.

Like they'll offer you a bunch of gold coins would be a typical thing or something like that. You're giving a small gift in the hopes of getting something big. What do you call that?

Baiting, baiting, okay. DANG SANGS RANG RE DE DAG BYED NAS CHAGS RGYU'AM Say Chagky Shark. Chagky Shark.

Chag means iron, gyu means hook. And it's the Tibetan word for a fish hook, a barbed fish hook. And in the monastery, to set the fish hook means to approach a sponsor successfully.

And it's an expression in the monastery. They'll say, why is this lay people in the monastery, oh, they're trying to Chagky Shark them. They're trying to get them to sponsor something.

By the way, it's not evil. I mean, they need a hospital or they need a library. It's not insincere.

They desperately need things. There are many monks who are dying from malnutrition when I was there. Many monks died from tuberculosis, which is brought on by not enough food.

The only people who get tuberculosis in the West are drunks because they don't get enough nutrition. So a lot of monks in my monastery had tuberculosis from lack of food. But still we would joke around and we would say, did you Chagky Shark, did you set the hook?

And Chagky Shark means, I really set the hook. Then Serenay Lok Sola Nen Ten Cheboyo. Then Pabongka Rinpoche says, that's wrong thinking.

That's a wrong way to think of other people. You shouldn't look at a person walking in to the monastery judging how many donations they might give you. And I think we have to be really careful with it.

A lot of our projects, the refugee project, homeless projects, prison projects, countless other projects that we're doing, they depend on donations, right? And we have to be careful in how we raise those donations. That's just a very serious karma.

That's a very serious karma. And it's also important not to overwhelm sponsors. You have to be very considerate in how you approach people for a donation.

Sometimes people want to go, we're having a program in Japan and they want to go to Japan and they approach a sponsor. Or they're living in, I don't know, Southern Arizona and they have to come up to Phoenix and they ask, they're sniffing around for a place to stay. Couch surf for a couple of weeks.

And I made a rule, and I will repeat the rule. You can couch surf for up to three weeks and then you cannot do it after that. If you're moving here or anywhere else where there's a center and you don't have a job yet, you can couch surf for three weeks.

And that's the limit. Then you have to go, whatever you can find. Droma, is she here?

Where is she? She's probably out at, what's that place she works? Olive Garden or something.

So Ningbo's sister moved to Phoenix because she wanted to be in the group. She got three jobs to support herself. She's a waitress.

She's an RN and she's a CPA. And the only job she could get was waitressing. And she took it.

And she's working at it. And she does midnight shifts. And that's what you should, that's honest.

It's dishonest to like park in somebody's house, like sniff around a teaching like this and see who's new. And might have an extra room or a couch and then raid their refrigerator all day and like that. That's not appropriate for us.

That's wrong livelihood. It's better that you go get an all night shift in a restaurant at $4 an hour or something than to impose on somebody else. That's not honest.

And I ask you not to support it. If people come up to you and ask you for that, you can quote Geshe Michael in the three week rule. And it's better to, Rinpoche made me, he forced me to go to work.

I didn't want to go to work. I had money. I inherited money.

And he said, you need a job. You need a livelihood. And he told me which business to get into.

And he forced me. And I fought it. And I had money.

We offered all the money to the refugees. He offered it all to the refugees. We did it together.

And then he said, go to New York and get a job. It should be diamonds. And I didn't want to.

I desperately didn't want to. And it was very tense for several months. And I said, why do you think I came to a monastery?

I have money. I can stay here. And he said, no, you have to support yourself.

And I think it's important. Michael Moore said that, I don't know how many years ago, in New York, 1997. So now I support your view.

It's just a little late, okay? It's important to support yourself and not to impose on other people. All right.

,LTAR LAS ZIN NA'I LOG SO LA NEN TAN BYAS PA YOD, ,YANG DE BAS KUN LONG MED PAR RANG BZHIN DRANG PO ,BYIN DAG LA GNAS LEN SANG PO BYED KYANG LOG SO MI'I RGYUR, It's not wrong livelihood to give a sponsor a sincere gift and thank them for helping. By the way, also, if you ask a sponsor for money, and in our organizations, the finances should be transparent. ,LOG SO MI'I RGYUR So it's not wrong to give a small gift if it's sincere.

Number four is called what? Forcing. ,THOG CIG BYA BA ,THOG CIG BYA BA means twisting the sponsor's arm.

The sponsor doesn't really want to give it, but you use your relationship and you sort of put pressure on them. Unfair pressure on them. ,THOG CIG BYA BA NI, ,MI DUS GZIN DU NEN GYI RLONG BA, Twist somebody's arm to get a donation.

,GZIN LA BUD GYI RANG LA RGYUR BA DANG, It also means to take a donation which you divert to yourself. You take a donation for the ritual people and then you make up all these expenses of why it should. I had to have a lunch on the day I went to make the donation.

You know what I mean? And you pay for your own expenses like that. Like politicians or something like that.

Some politicians. ,DBYIN DAG CHE DGOS MO'I NGOS LA, ,BYA MA BYIN PA BZHIN DU DANG PO'I CHUNG ZHES, ,ZHUGS KYI RLONG BA LTA BU LA ZER, Or you create a competitive situation between sponsors. You go to one sponsor and say, he gave me 500.

I can't believe you would do less than that. Like that. You put pressure on sponsors by comparing them to other sponsors.

We're almost done. Have hope. ,ZHUGS KYI RLONG BA LTA BU LA ZER, I just want to finish the five tonight because then we can go on tomorrow.

,YANG NI DE'I THUG KUN LO MED PAR RANG BZHIN DRANG PA, ,DE'I RDAG BRJOD PA NI THOB BYAL DU MING GYUR, But it's not wrong if you're sincere and the sponsor asks you, how much did the other guy give and you say 500. And you're not twisting his arm, but it's not wrong to tell him honestly what the other sponsors are giving. That's okay.

Last one, which is called pretending. ,TSUL KHRUB means to pretend to be what you are not. To ask for a donation and pretend to be something you're not.

Here's the example. ,GZHAG TU GANG CHUNG BYAS NAS, ,BYIN DAG SOGS KYI BRDOD DU, ,CHAD TZAM TSUL RDOG, When you're alone at home, you do whatever the hell you want to. But when the sponsors are around, you act particularly religious.

,DUL DOG CHEN POS BYIN AE YONG GYI RGYUR BA CHEN, And you're hoping they will be impressed and give you some little gift. In Tibet, in China, when a person meets a monk, they often give them a red envelope with $50 in it or $100. This is normal.

So you try to wear your robes especially straight and you're looking for the red envelope and like that. ,YANG DE DE KUN RLOG MED PAR KHYIM PA SON CUN CHEN NA, ,MI RUNG NYAM PA'I GZHAG TU BRDOD DU LAS, ,TSON DOG DKA' BA BYAS KYANG TSUL KHRUB MIN GROB, But if you are normally naughty, but in front of a sponsor, you don't want them to lose faith in Buddhism, it's okay to fake it. Okay.

All right. So you're not in such a great wrong, but in front of lay people, it's a monk's vow and it's a Bodhisattva vow not to disillusion people through your behavior. So you should try to be, it's not wrong to try to be better than normal in the presence of people who might be disillusioned if you're not, okay?

And it's not faking. If the intention is to protect their faith, it's appropriate to try to be more subdued than you normally are. Got it?

Okay. CHOS SU MIN GROB ZHES BDAG GIS KHYAB CHOG LAM RIM PA BYAS SU My Lama said that, okay? That's his own Lama's advice.

Who? Pabongka Rinpoche's Lama's advice. DE BZHIN DU RANG RE RAB CHUNG By the way, I'm not making this stuff up.

I'm reading you straight, directly from a Buddhist text, which I have done for 30 years, right? Every single teaching, directly from the text, right? Okay?

You know that. 20,000 pages translated. And I haven't taught anything else.

Okay, here we go. DE BZHIN DU RANG RE RAB CHUNG GI DANG GI SDOM PA GSUM GYIS BYAS TZAM KHAR REL NA REL DU SDANG NAS TSUL TSUL GYI RGYUD GRUB NAS BYAS PA PHUL KHYAM PHAN YON NAS NYID MI CHI BAR CHUNG If you engage in an enterprise which would damage your vows every which way, three sets of vows, what are the three sets of vows? Pratyamoksha vows, which are morality vows, basic morality vows.

Second set of vows, bodhisattva vows, and then secret vows, tantric vows, okay? I have, I don't know, 527 vows total. 364 monks vows.

You got lots of, 253 monks vows, et cetera, okay? And we have to check them every couple of hours, right? Okay, BYAS TZAM KHAR REL NA REL.

And then to go out and do some kind of thing like business in which you are required to be dishonest, then it's better not to do it. And you shouldn't be offering that kind of money, right? Or you shouldn't buy offerings with that money, that kind of money.

I'm going to stop there. He's going to get into, he has finished the discussion of making offerings from materials which were bought with bad money, dirty money, okay? Now what's the second half?

Bad motivation. He promised us two parts, right? First part was, don't make offerings that you've bought with dirty money.

The second half is going to be, don't make offerings with which your motivation is lesser or unclean, okay? We will, so just to remind you on your homework, so now you can start on the second homework, right? The first question, which is kind of long.

Five kinds of wrong. Livelihood, right? And you're going to try to answer the question, maybe that's a good thing in your discussion groups, okay?

Figure out some real examples in business. It's a little hard in a business setting to distinguish between the five. I'm warning you, okay?

Like sucking up to your boss is which of the five. You see what I mean? You got to think about it carefully.

And it's good to put your mind on this. We should be clean with money matters because they are so sensitive. Sex and money are two things that people are very sensitive about.

People go crazy over financial irregularities and sexual irregularities. So we have to be super careful in those two things especially. So I think our groups, we should be careful in our accounting.

Very, very strict, okay? I was forced to do the accounts for the monastery for many years. I was forced to do the accounts, okay?

In the first two years, I had a partner. This was the original Pabongka Rinpoche's closest assistant, okay? The Pabongka Rinpoche who died in 1941 left his assistant.

And he was an old man when I got to the monastery. And we did the accounts together for the monastery. And he used a chip and an abacus.

You know? You know? He was switching, what do you call those little beads on a string.

And we had contests. I had a calculator, he had an abacus. And they'd say, go, and I'd go, I'd go like this and he'd go, 457.

And I'm like, 457. He would always beat me. Then I went to Geshe Tutu Rinpoche and I complained.

I said, I'm so sick of doing accounts. It's like the most boring, stupid thing I can imagine. And I did all of Rinpoche's organization's accounts for 15 years.

And all his taxes. And I hate accounts. And I went to Geshe Tutu Rinpoche and I complained.

And I said, I didn't become a monk to be an accountant. I don't want to do this. And he said, do you know who the accountant was at Nalanda Monastery?

Do you know? It was Nagarjuna. It was Nagarjuna.

The greatest philosopher of emptiness in history after the Buddha. In the two and a half thousand years, the greatest philosopher of emptiness ever. And I said, Nagarjuna?

I said, why? Why did they waste his time doing accounting? And they said, he said something interesting.

He said the karma of misappropriating Dharma funds is so serious. The karma of making a mistake in the books of a religious organization is so serious. They thought only he could take the karma.

Only he was good enough to take that karma if he made a mistake. Because any other person, it would destroy them. You see what I mean?

They've been talking about an honest mistake in math. They felt like no other monk should be exposed to that risk, you know? Right?

She's the accountant for the refugee program. Don't, no pressure. Okay, but we should be very honest.

We should be very clean. We should be upfront. It's better to lose, you know, it's better you don't have any food and do the accounts clean.

You know, I did that for many years. I didn't have any money. And keep the books clean, okay?

That's just a very honorable thing to do. And if you have time, you should read Gandhi on that subject. He said another thing, and then I'll stop, I promise.

He said, if you build a building, or if you buy property for a purpose, such as Diamond Mountain, I'm thinking about Diamond Mountain or something like that, you should not have operating cash. He was against having stockpiles of funding. He said, you should only collect the amount of cash that's needed for that month.

And you should never collect more. And you shouldn't store money. And if a day comes when there's not enough people to give that month's money, the place should close.

He said, it's too dangerous to keep stockpiles of funding. You should work month to month. And if it ever happens that there's not enough people who want it to stay open, it should close.

You know, it's very interesting. He refused a lot of donations, okay? I think that's sort of an interesting approach.

All right, anyway, we should be super clean, okay? It's a pleasure. All right.

[Говорящий 2] (1:18:56 - 1:19:58)
Michael, you up for that? Thank you. OK, sorry to keep you late.

[Говорящий 1] (1:19:59 - 1:20:07)
But I have to teach all this lightweight stuff all year and this is my only chance to get to do an old-fashioned scripture. See you tomorrow.