«Дар освобождения», курс 7 «Учимся быть тихими», занятие 5

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 22:57)
Well, I hope you had a nice day off. I had a really nice day off. Mostly gardening.

Et chi. A couple of things. When I came down from my house last Friday, I forgot to bring the Tibetan scripture that we're studying, which I always open up and put in front of me because it impresses people, but which I never use personally.

Because I have the input from our computer centers in the refugee camps and it's much easier to use because then I can stick in pieces from other scriptures in the flow of things. But I like to, I don't know, I think there's a blessing to the woodblock prints. And I thought I'd pass it around just for fun.

Udo, you want to just start it somewhere in the corner. You can pass it from person to person and take a look at it. I think this one is particularly well carved, but you can get a feeling for why we have to type because it's plastic.

Every letter is a different shape and you can't OCR. I mean, eventually you'll be able to, once you have enough input to use artificial intelligence, but that will mean you'll have to type for another 50 years before you can teach the computer to do it. So anyway, I thought you'd like to see the scripture.

I just like to touch it and feel it. It's not Tibetan paper, it's cheap Indian paper. Tibetan paper uses a certain bush that goes into that.

It's probably a little bit like mesquite and it has a high fiber content and it's slightly poisonous. So it tends to burn your eyes a little bit, but the paper lasts for a few hundred years. And I have scriptures from 300 years ago.

I mean, they're the same as when they were made. They're cool. So anyway, I thought you'd like to see.

What I thought to do to start today, Pabongka Rinpoche already mentioned making butter lamps. And in fact, today we're going to get to the section where he makes reference to a sutra where they explain the benefits of offering butter lamps and incense. So I thought when we get to that section, I'll show you how to make a butter lamp because there's a skill to it.

And they're very beautiful and they're fun to know how to make because they use ghee and they last for a long time, like much more than a tea candle. Tea, what do you call this, tea light. I think tea lights are mostly paraffin or petroleum.

And I personally don't like to use them much, especially if I'm doing a retreat or a lot of meditation. To have them burning around you is slightly carcinogenic. And I also don't like the smell of them.

But butter lamps are very, I don't know, the ghee smell is very, I don't know, beautiful and comforting. And if you've spent a lot of time in Tibetan temples, when you smell burning ghee, you feel spiritual, like Christmas tree smell or something. So for someone who's been in Tibetan culture for a while, that smell has many connotations.

Smells are the most powerful mnemonics, right? You smell melted butter and you think of the best movies you've ever seen. And when you smell burning ghee, it will come to mean that it's time to meditate or something and you'll enjoy the smell.

And I think it's very, Ayurveda says it's very good for you. It's also why all Tibetan temples are covered with black soot. And if you make the wicks wrong, it makes soot all over your house.

So we have to do a little side training on butter lamp wicks, okay? So we'll do that tonight. And we set up some cameras and we'll do an experiment to see if we can broadcast that and you can see it, okay?

I think it's very beautiful. On the most important day of the Tibetan Buddhist year for glugpas, which is called, say, ganden? Nam chö.

Ganden. Nam chö. Ganden means ganden, paradise, Tushita.

But it came to mean the glugpa lineage. It's centered at ganden. That was Je Tsongkhapa's home monastery.

He named it Tushita, just sort of, what do you call it? Kutspa, right? Anyway, ganden.

So ganden means the glugpa lineage. Nga means, nyer nga means the 25th day of the month. So I believe it's the 10th month of the Tibetan calendar, which is Mongol.

And the 25th day, which is the Sechu, we celebrate Je Tsongkhapa's birth and enlightenment and Nirbhara Nirvana, right? So on that day, it's a tradition to offer 100 butter lamps. And in our particular lineage, Sera, both Sera Je and Sera Me, on the night before, on the 24th, on the night of the 24th, you take 50 or 100 lamps out of 1,000.

It's tradition to make 1,000 butter lamps, which is called tong chö, the night before, to burn on Je Tsongkhapa Eve, okay? But the night before that, which is the 24th of the 10th month, it's a tradition in our immediate tradition, our immediate lineage, to offer 50 or 100 butter lamps to Jamchen Chöje, who was a disciple of Je Tsongkhapa who founded Sera. So just so you know, that's a tradition, all right?

Rinpoche would start making the butter lamp wicks by hand about two months before. So he would watch the New York Yankees and make wicks hour after hour until he got up to 1,000. You see what I mean?

It would take a couple months. And so I got a lot of practice because he made me sit there and watch the Yankees. I also learned a lot about baseball.

But I did thousands of those also. So it's a nice thing to know how. And it's nice to have one burning in your home.

So here we go. We're talking about a sutra which Pabongka Rinpoche alluded to but did not include in his book. And so it was describing 10 different benefits of the traditional offerings.

There are eight, right? Argam, water to drink. Padhyam, water to bathe the feet of a master or a disciple.

Pushpe, which is flowers. Dhrupe, which is incense. Dipe, which is butter lamps.

Gande, which is perfume to place on the Lama's body or the body of the Buddha, right? Then Rasa, which means what? The taste, meaning food.

Julia Child, or Mexican tacos. Okay, and then Shabba, which is music. Can you hand me the bell, Rinpoche?

Is it there, is there? So there's a custom to make those offerings with mudras or hand gestures, and you can learn them, okay? Traditionally, you hold your bell in your left hand.

You hold your Dorje in your right hand. You got to hold the bell with your thumb or you also drop it, okay? And so you go like this.

Argam, which is offering water to drink. And then Padhyam, and you spray your fingers, you see? I'm washing your feet, okay, Padhyam.

And the Tibetans mispronounce the Sanskrit slightly, like they say Padhyam or something, okay? Argam, Padhyam. Pushpe, you go down, in, and come up.

And that represents how flowers grow from the earth, and then they open. So it's like dramatic. You go like, and that's the opening of a rose or something like that, okay, Pushpe.

And then you stick pieces, you stick sticks of incense into the sand. You light the tops, and then you stick them into a bowl of sand, right? So you're like, Duppe, Dupa, which still in Hindi, they call it dup, right?

It means incense. And then Dipe, okay? You've got to stick your thumbs up.

These are the width of the light, and these are the flames. You go Dipe. If you're doing a male Tantra, you say Aloka, which is another word for lamp.

If you're doing a female Tantra, you say Dipa, okay? Then Ganda, which means, Ganda means scent, perfume water, like rose water or something like that, saffron water. And then you say Rasa.

You do your fingers like this, okay? Rasa, which means a meal, like a Big Mac or something, okay? And then you flip your right hand, okay?

You can practice. The right hand comes in towards you, and that represents music. And then when you do that, you play your bell, okay?

We'll do it one more time, okay? Ardham, Ardham, Pushpa. By the way, some monasteries go like, and if you come from a Gyumay lineage, which you do, what's Gyumay?

Gyumay is one of the two Tantric colleges in Tibet. There were only two in the Gelugpa lineage, and only a Geshe was allowed to go to Tantric college in the old days. And they said your movements should be economic and secret, so you shouldn't go like this.

If you're from Gyumay, you take great pride in not doing what those other shpaks do, okay? So it's like Ardham, and you keep it close, you see? You don't go like, there are some lineages where they're like, we're much more sophisticated.

Ardham, Ardham, Pushpa. You do it in front of your heart chakra, by the way. Upe, Vipe, Gande, Nai Vidya in Sanskrit, which the Tibetans corrupt in Nidhi, and then Shabda.

And then it's a tradition to ring the bell in front of your heart chakra, and it's supposed to have an effect on your heart chakra. By the way, you just counterweight it, okay? You don't use your first finger.

You use your thumb and maybe two fingers, and you keep the fingers off the body of the bell, which would mute it, right? And then you just let it, you go like this, and you don't go like this, you know what I mean? You just let it like a, what do you call it?

Like a pendulum, okay? And then if you want, you can put your finger on the top here, but if you hold it too tight, you let it, you see? So the idea is to let it, and just do it like a pendulum.

And then at the end, you're supposed to speed up. And then you're supposed to let it go, and take all your fingers off, as much as you can. And it goes for a long time.

And then you think of emptiness as the sound of the bell dies out. When you put a bell on a Dorje down, you always put the left down first, and then you put the right on the left. You put the Dorje on the left.

So you can tell if someone has had training or not. Most people will just put it down like that, but a real trained person from Gyumri, that's just tradition, okay? All right?

Okay, here we go. I'm going to describe from the sutra. So where did I get this sutra?

Our ladies, our Tibetan refugee ladies, they just finished all the sutras. It took them about 20 years. And they just finished this year, okay?

They did 1,500 ancient sutras. And they just finished typing them. They're not properly divided yet.

The data's all in one big lump, and that's something we're working on, raising funds to do that. So I found the sutra, because it's all on the computer now. So here's what it says.

YANG DE BZHIN BYAS PA'I CHOD DANG, which really irritates me with all the publicity we've been getting. We're doing 25 years. We are probably the major supporter of Tibetan refugees for 25 years, and there's no mention of it anywhere.

It really irritates me. Anyway. YANG DE BZHIN BYAS PA'I CHOD DANG, LA SPOS BU BA'I YIN TEN, PHEN YIN CHOD DE.

So there are 10 benefits listed in the sutra, karmic results that happen to you if you offer incense, okay? Incense can be chema, which means powdered incense that you make a little pile and you light it with a piece of charcoal, like the Catholic Church does. Or you could do sticks of incense, which is called buh or simpuh.

And then you can do sung, which is natural leaves, like juniper leaves or pine resin, like that. So there are different names for incense. So the benefits of offering chukangchena, JIG RTEN NA BUH THA BUH GYUR PA DANG.

So if you make it a custom to offer incense on your altar, then you will become, as you move through Phoenix or wherever you live, you will be sweet to the people around you. You will strike other people like incense. See what I mean?

You walk, you go to a store, you go to a restaurant and you just interact with people there, then they'll say, oh, I like this person. It happens to us on airplanes sometimes, like we're just having a really good time, a sweet, honest, good time. And then oftentimes a stewardess will say, where are you guys from or what do you guys do?

And they're just curious because you sort of spread some little happiness on the plane when we're not bickering at each other because we're jet lagged. But then that's how you will be in the world. You will pass the world like a piece of incense.

A good Buddhist is passing to the world like a piece of incense. And even just a five-minute interaction with a cashier in the grocery store is sweet. And it makes the person feel happy.

Number two. Nai wangpo nampa thapa gyurwa. Your olfactory powers will always be strong.

You will be able to smell things well, especially good smells. Like, okay. Number three.

Ryukyu chi mi shinda nampa thapa gyurwa. Did I do this before? No.

I did flowers, right? You will never need deodorant. No smell from your body.

You can do two hours of yoga and you don't smell bad. You don't even sweat much. When you sweat, it doesn't smell bad.

It smells sweet. Taktu nod chi shinda gyurwa. And rather, it's the opposite of the last one.

Rather than a bad smell coming out, a sweet smell will come out of your body when you sweat. Number five. Sukh samwa gyurwa.

You will look more pleasing. Your physical appearance will be more pleasing. Number six.

Jigten gi gundu do gyurwa thang. You gain some capacity for protecting other people. That's probably a reference to incense has some kinds of powers of protection.

Certain unseen spirits like the smell of incense and they will help you and protect you. So when you offer it, they can smell it. A really well-trained Buddhist who's meditating a lot is aware or becomes more aware that even in this room, there are thousands of beings which you can't see.

There are thousands of spirits in this room that you can't even see, okay? Like in Ireland, all those leprechauns and fairies and sprites and you know, in Buddhism, we say they exist and they are spirit beings and they're everywhere. They're attached to buildings or places and especially a spiritual building.

And so when you offer incense, you are protecting them in a sense. And then you gain the karma to become a person who protects the people around them, okay? Dukpe chönnam thopa gyurwa.

Number what? Seven. You will always have beautiful things around you, okay?

We talked about it. Beautiful, tasteful, elegant things will come to you, free, okay? Like beautiful flowers or small, beautiful objects will show up in your life, like that.

Like you'll be walking on the beach. We were walking on the beach in Bahamas and I was teaching a program there and we went swimming and some of us dove down underwater and there were these beautiful conch shells, big ones like this, white ones. And in Buddhism, these are very important, very auspicious.

You drill a hole and you blow them as a horn. And they are a symbol in Tsongkhapa's teachings of spreading the Dharma. So you know, you're just at a beach, nobody has any conch shells.

You go swimming and you step on one and you bring it up and it's the most beautiful, precious little thing. Like that, weird, precious little things will come to you. Look, the text here, by the way, anybody who ever reads it, it's corrupt.

It should say longchö, it says longchö in the text. Longchö khyewa gyurwa means your financial situation will improve, okay? Number nine.

Choday sakhyewa gyurwa. After you die, your mind will pass to a better world. Number 10.

Thar yongshin nyongyen ney dawa te. It will contribute in a broad way to your enlightenment, okay, to offer incense. So these are the benefits of offering incense on an altar, okay, on an altar.

By the way, two of the offerings, the butter lamp and the incense, are flammable. And you don't know how many temples have burned down around the world, including a nice Western monastery or nunnery in France, Vajrayogini Nunnery, right, burned down. Someone was slopping with a butter lamp.

His Holiness was almost killed in Bodhgaya, I think, when the tent caught on fire, and there were like 3,000 or 4,000 people under the tent, and the whole tent caught on fire. And when you offer more than a few butter lamps together, you should spread them out. Like if you try to offer 1,000 butter lamps, spread them out, because they tend to join together and create one big flame.

So be careful with these things, okay? At Diamond Mountain, we don't allow open flames or open incense. People have to keep them in.

We made a rule. I think it's a 14-inch plate or something. You see, it has to be, you have to be careful about it.

And like this candle is dangerous, when it's burned down, okay? It's just a thing you should be aware of, okay? All right, now we have the 10 benefits of offering butter lamps, okay?

Butter lamps. Let's make a butter lamp wick together. Okay, you ready, Scott?

Are you ready? Okay, here we go. Do you have all the stuff, Jigme?

Where's the stuff? There was a bag of stuff. You ready?

Okay. What's that little bag of stuff, Jigme? Oh, saffron, I bet.

[Говорящий 2] (22:58 - 22:58)
Okay, good.

[Говорящий 1] (22:59 - 40:56)
All right, you ready to learn? Can you see? All right.

Is that a good place for me to do it, right there? Okay, good. So this is a butter lamp cup.

It's called a thing, say thing. And it has a hole in the bottom, okay? So you got to get a, you can buy them online.

If you want to know, the ones from Nepal are better made. Normally. And silver is better.

It just does better with the cleaning and stuff like that. You can buy steel ones, but they get dirty and it's hard to clean them, okay? So silver is nice.

I like to keep one like this, okay? I just enjoy having one nice butter lamp going in my house. There was a tradition.

Lord Atisha, whose name in Sanskrit is, Atisha is Sanskrit, but his monk's name was Marmain Dze, say Marmain Dze. So he brought this lineage to Tibet. This Lamrim lineage was brought to Tibet by Lord Atisha.

His monk's name is Marmain Dze, which means what, Nyambo? Marmain and Dze. Butter lamp maker.

The guy who likes to make butter lamp, okay? His name was Dipankara, Dipankara. Kara means to make, like karma, right?

The word create comes from that. And the word cereal comes from that, because it's a creation of the earth. And crescent comes from that because it's expanding.

So anyway, kara means to make. Dipa means a light, a butter lamp. So his name was Dipankara.

Who was his main disciple? Yeah, Dromtonche, who's the most famous lay person in Tibet. He never became a monk, okay?

And he served his Lama for his whole life. And he felt that he could do more good as a lay person. He could reach more people.

And one of my great hopes in my life, and one of the things I've done for the last 30 years, is to try to train lay people as teachers. I think we're in a time in history when it's more beneficial. If normal lay people who don't shave their head and don't look weird, they don't have their head burned with incense sticks.

You know, they just look like normal people, normal couples oftentimes with children. And I believe it's the time in history when Buddhism should spread to normal people, normal family, normal lay people. So I think Dromtonche is a good example for us.

And he served Atisha his whole life. And especially logistically, he was like a magician. If Atisha needed butter for his butter lamp, suddenly some nomad showed up with five pounds of butter.

And Dromtonche, in later centuries, he's considered a tantric deity in disguise, which I think is kind of cool. I think John Stilwell's Dromtonche, but I'm not saying for sure. So anyway, Dromtonche decided at some point in his life that every night he would put a butter lamp next to Lord Atisha's pillow to his teacher.

So he was never separated from his teacher. And every day of his life, he made a butter lamp and set it near Lord Atisha's pillow. It's a very beautiful story.

Normally, when you're close to a lamp all the time, you get a little bit, you start to see them as normal, but he did the opposite. Okay, so anyway, here's a, this is a kind of flower called a star flower. Buddhas like star flowers.

These are a little too thin. They shouldn't be floppy, okay? They should be a little more, what do you call?

Straight, yeah, because this one might be too thin, okay? So I encourage you to find something which is a little thicker. You can use a very thin toothpick, but it burns a little too hot.

You can use a toothpick if you want to try it, but I think better to find something between this and a toothpick is best, okay? And that's important. So the first thing you do is break the, you break the stick high enough to reach over the level of the lamp.

After you stick the stick into the hole, okay? So there's a hole here for the wick, and you should measure with your eye. It can be too high, but it shouldn't be too low.

If it's below the rim of the cup, it won't burn, right? Because it'll be covered with the butter. So it's important.

You can make it almost as high as you want, but don't make it lower. So I'm measuring, and I'm going to cut it off about here, okay? So you break the wick, and you can keep this for another one, okay?

Then you get the cotton, okay? You can buy cotton balls at Walgreens. They're fine, okay?

But I warn you, read the package. There's two kinds of cotton balls on the market. This says all natural, 100% cotton.

There are also synthetic ones, and they don't burn. And you'll stand there all day trying to get it to burn, and you'll think the demons are stopping you or something. And don't feel bad.

Just read it. It's synthetic, probably. Half the cotton balls on the market are synthetic.

So be careful that it's real cotton, okay? Then you... Can you see my hands on the thing?

So then, I don't know, maybe you're not supposed to lick your fingers, but it works good. And you coax the cotton out to a little bit of a... Can you see?

You coax it out flat. You pull some of the cotton out flat. Can you see it?

So see, it's become like a sheet of cotton, okay? Got it? And then you get your little stick, okay?

And you... Now you're wetting your fingers. And then you stick the stick under the cotton, and you start rolling the cotton over the stick, okay?

Got it? Here's the tricky part. Then you flip the stick over, okay?

Like that. Like, you've been... The stick was on the right and the cotton was on the left, and I started the cotton, and then you switch it over to the left.

Now the stick is pointing to the left, and the cotton's under my right thumb. And you sit there for a while, and you make that part fatter. So it's like a spindle, and you're spinning cotton onto the stick, okay?

And that should be fatter. Why? Why?

There should be more cotton there. That's going to stick in the hole, and it keeps it straight up. If you don't put extra cotton on the bottom, it will fall over and burn down your house, okay?

So, by the way, the cup should be on a plate that's not less than 10 or 12 inches wide, in case it spills, okay? Then you just start rolling. Can you see what I'm doing?

Is it okay? Is it clear? You coax the cotton out, and you start rolling it towards you, okay?

You pull out little sheets of cotton, and you roll it towards you. You spin the flower stem towards you, and you work your way down the stem, okay? Can you imagine making a thousand of these for Tsongkhapa Day?

You can get to where you can watch New York Yankees and do this with your hands. It's like knitting or something, and you just keep coaxing cotton out. Can you see okay?

I'm spinning it towards, see what it looks like so far? It's not too fat and not too thin. And then you come to the end.

When you get to the end, coax a lot of cotton out, okay? A lot of extra cotton. And then pull it off of the ball, okay?

And then close up the top so that you have, then you twist and you have, see all your little extra piece hanging out? Can you see it? That's where you're going to light it.

So if you don't add that extra piece, it won't light well. So that's a, they call it, what do you call it? Dong chak, I think.

Dong chak is the, what do you call, wick. A cotton wick, got it? See how the bottom is fatter and the top has a little extra on it, without stick in it, right?

Then what do you do? Yeah, do not pour the butter in first. Aha, okay?

I'm just telling you what you're going to do because you'll be going like this. Then you, can you see? You stick the fat part down into the bowl and it has to be seated firmly or it will fall over when you pour in the butter.

Got it? See how it, it's a nice wick, right? Then you, I'm not going to do the ghee.

You pour the ghee in there, okay? Don't pour it on the wick, pour it away from the wick. And I wouldn't fill it up all the way because you'll spill it when you carry it around, okay?

The ghee is a little hot when you pour it. You have to melt it. And then it will get hard, okay?

The last few drips of ghee spill some on the wick, on this part. And it will fold over and then you straighten it back up again and make the ghee, okay? And then it'll be, the cotton will have ghee in it so it's easier to light, okay?

So make sure at the end that when you put the ghee in, you pour a little ghee on the wick and it will flop over and then you straighten it up again. But then it's got ghee all over it, it's a lot easier to light, okay? All right, now I want to show you how to make one the wrong way.

So you take your stick, you pull off the flower. It helps to lick your fingers a little bit. You coax some cotton out.

You make the bottom very fat, right? The stick is facing to my right, okay? I'm starting on the left side with the cotton, right?

Got it? And then you do this part correctly, you make the bottom fatter so it'll stay up, right? Then you flip it over.

Now the stick is facing to the left. The top of the stick is facing to the left. Then you start feeding cotton on the thing, but you make it too thick, okay?

You put too much cotton on it. And some parts you make too thin, okay? I'm showing you the wrong way, okay?

Don't quote me out of context. Then you finish, right? You see how uneven it is?

You see there's fat parts and there's thin parts? So when the fire reaches the thin part, it will die. The aloka, the butter lamp will die.

And when it reaches the fat part, it will burn too much. And this will get all black. And it will make your house black, all right?

Not in one day, but of course you're going to be offering these for the rest of your life. So this will get all black and dirty. And then it's hard to clean.

Those little pieces of soot that are left after the thing has burned down are terrible. They're like, if you get them on carpet, you can't get it out ever, never. Rinpoche used to say, never ever.

He invented this English thing, never ever. Like, take those little pieces of soot and throw them carefully in the garbage, okay? Because if one of them lands on your bed or something, or your clothing, it'll be black forever.

You can't get it out, okay? All right? Now I have warned you about everything.

But it's really a sweet custom to offer one every night. I used to do it for my Lama every night. At some point I got lazy and stopped, okay?

Maybe I'll start again. I think it's a beautiful custom. As with every spiritual practice of this sort, don't cram them into your day.

Don't promise to do something that you don't have time to do. Make a commitment, say, for one week or for one month, I will offer a lamp every night for my mother, who taught me as a Lama, you see? For my father, or for my teacher, or for my children, or whoever you want.

Maybe someone who died. You can offer one every night for them. But don't make a promise that's going to make you nervous.

Like, if you commit to a 20-minute practice every night, you should cut 20 minutes of something else. What do you call it? Purposely.

You should say, okay, for one month I'm going to offer this every night. It'll take me 20 minutes to prepare it. So I'm going to cut, what's a 20-minute thing you can cut every night?

Pooping? No, what's something you can cut? Facebook.

You can say, I will cut Facebook for a week. I won't do Facebook for a week. Or make some other 20-minute thing, you know?

I'll let my mother wash the dishes or something. Okay? Something reasonable.

But my suggestion, with all of these practices, don't try to do too many. Don't make commitments you can't keep. Do a trial period.

I will offer a butter lamp every night for a week. And then I'll see if I have time to keep it up, okay? The ghee cooking takes time, okay?

You buy a pound of butter. It should be, I forget, I forget, I think the sweet unsalted is better than salted. Okay?

So be careful not to buy the salt. Try to get the unsalted kind. You put it in a pan and you boil the butter at a very low temperature.

So you get it to boiling and then you take it at a low temperature, all right? Then you watch it carefully. You stand there and you watch it and you keep stirring it, okay?

To make ghee. And I don't know, it takes maybe 10, 15 minutes. And the way, what do you call it?

If the kernel part, the milk cream, will solidify on the bottom of the pan and then the ghee will rise to the top. So the top three quarters or more of the pan will be clear, golden, okay? If you undercook it before the ghee separates out, it won't burn.

And you'll go crazy. You'll think Buddha doesn't like my offerings or something. You will get all superstitious worries, you know?

So cook the ghee long enough. If you burn the ghee, it won't burn either, okay? If you smell a burnt smell, if you overcook the ghee, it will burn.

You'll see black stuff on the bottom. Just throw it out. You can't use it, okay?

It won't burn, okay? So ghee cooking is a skill you have to learn, okay? And that's my, what do you call it?

Transmission of butter lamps. And it's a sweet, sweet custom. But only do it if you have time, okay?

Don't jam your, don't commit to too many spiritual practices or you'll get all nervous, okay? Venerable Ali, can you give me one, can you guys pour the water out of one water bowl and bring me one of the water bowls? Pour the water out.

Why don't we do all the, let's do all the bowls, okay? Let's do all the bowls. Can you bring all the bowls, like pour the water out?

Can you see it if I do it here? Is that good, Scott? Scott, if we put things here, can people see it?

[Говорящий 2] (40:56 - 40:58)
Okay, okay.

[Говорящий 1] (40:59 - 41:01)
Yeah, do you have the sticks of incense?

[Говорящий 2] (41:08 - 41:15)
I have a flower, I have a flower.

[Говорящий 1] (41:18 - 45:12)
It's probably easier. Can you bring it? Wait, we're going to use other water bowls.

Can you put these back on the altar? Sorry, these are difficult. So there's eight traditional bowls, right?

There's eight bowls, argam, parin, puvve, duve, alaka, gandini, vipshakta. Okay? And these are very traditional.

So these are Darcy's, I guess. And these are traditional. They're silver, which is nice, okay?

They're easier to clean. They don't get dirty. They're not so expensive, so don't stress, okay?

And they're nice. So these are very traditional bowls. And could I have a pitcher of water, you have?

You can get some more water, it's okay. Oh, we have water, here, here. We have Voss.

So here's, if you're just going to offer eight bowls of water. Thank you. Om argam kukki ahun.

You can, here's how you do a traditional water bowl often. So you pour the water into the top, into the top bowl until it's about two millimeters, but a little bit less, three sixteenths from the top, inches, eight inches, okay? The length of a rice grain from the top.

Then you take the uppermost bowl and you pour most of the water into the next bowl. And you set down the first bowl on your left. You are the Buddhist.

I'm the guy offering the water, okay? And then you take the second bowl and you pour the water into that bowl. And then it's got about a quarter inch at the bottom, okay?

And you don't have to be fancy. First you lay them down out of whack and then you straighten them out later. So don't stress, okay?

First they're all messed up. You just get them on the altar. It's bad luck to put down an empty bowl.

See what I mean? The point of doing this is that you're never putting down an empty bowl, okay? Because it's considered bad form to offer something to a teacher or a Lama or to an enlightened being which is empty.

And there are stories in the scriptures, who was it, Milarepa offered his teacher a bowl that was empty and he got all these problems later. His teacher made him build lots of buildings and then he tore them down. Anyway, except for one, it's called Guto which is still there, nine-story rock building.

So you keep pouring them in. You can think of lineage, right? You can think of one teacher pouring their knowledge into the next, okay?

As you pour. Then you're down to the last bowl. How many bowls we got here, seven?

Oh well, right? Yeah, sometimes you can have seven bowls, okay? We'll talk about it later.

Sometimes you can just put music like this, okay? And it doesn't have to be in a bowl. Then you take your water, you know?

And you start with the left-hand bowl, your left, okay? And you fill them up. You're supposed to start slow, right?

Increase and then, oops, I'm spilling it. That's bad luck, right? Anyway, you got it.

I'm going to stop. But these are not so good for pouring, I'm telling you. You do it and then you straighten them out, okay?

Then you get them all straight.

[Говорящий 2] (45:13 - 45:15)
I think these are not so straight.

[Говорящий 1] (45:17 - 46:30)
And it's a practice in awareness, right? This is all before you meditate, right? It's a practice in getting your mind calm and thoughtful and doing things sweetly, okay?

Can I have the pitcher? Do you have the empty pitcher? So, there's also a custom of not putting out eight bowls of water.

And some of them you can replace with rice, with uncooked rice, okay? So, I'm going to show you the third one. Well, I would, I don't know if I can prove it.

I'd put a little water, maybe half water into the third one, which is what? Flour. And then the fourth one, you can leave empty of water.

Gande. What am I doing? The fifth one.

The fifth one is perfumed water, so you can fill that full of water. And the sixth one is food. Sorry, argam, parin, pubis, jubilee, aloe vera.

Number five is not water. Number six is water, I guess.

[Говорящий 2] (46:31 - 46:31)
Gande.

[Говорящий 1] (46:32 - 57:39)
Okay, so number one, number two, and number six you can fill with water, okay? Got it? That's Ken Rinpoche talk, by the way.

Then you got to go like this. So, then you get some incense. I'm sorry, saffron, okay?

Saffron is really expensive. It's a nice offering. You can buy Spanish saffron or you can buy Indian saffron.

I think a box of Spanish saffron can be $50 or $60. You can buy little packages of saffron in the spice rack at the store. So, then it's a custom to put a little pinch of incense.

All it takes is a tiny, tiny pinch and you put it in the sixth water bowl, which is what? It's supposed to be perfumed. So, you can put a little bit of Chanel No.

5, which I have a bottle of. Sometimes I do that. Or you can put a bottle of, you can put a drop of rose water or an essential oil, whatever you like.

Tradition is saffron, which is called gurgum. Say gurgum. It's probably a Kashmiri word.

And it's a tradition to soak it the night before. So, if you're serious about your water bowls, you soak the saffron in a bit of water and it will turn orange overnight. It will turn a really beautiful color, like honey.

Okay, so that's tradition. So, we have the first two bowls are full of water, argum and baring. Water for drinking and water for washing the feet of the teacher or the disciples, right?

We talked about that. The third bowl is, I filled the third bowl with some halfway with water. Can somebody get me a lily and cut the top off?

Cut the top off a lily. So, you can, this is a little bit big, but you can put a flower in the third one, okay? Like that, put some water.

Argum, pati, pube, flower, puste, then dhub, incense, okay? So, incense, the tradition is you put the bowl in a bag of rice and then you, it should be slightly, not quite flat. You know, those of you who are serious bakers, when you measure a half a cup of flour, what do you do?

You run a knife across the top. If it's a very delicate recipe, like a French pastry, you can ruin it if you don't run a knife across the top. In rice, for your offerings, it should be slightly stacked, okay?

They call it pungpa and the rice should be, it should be a little bit convex, right? Like it comes out in a bit of, so you go like that and you make it nice. Then you place it down in position number four.

Then you take two incense sticks and it's tradition to, there's two of them. And then you like, you can't have coffee before you do this, okay? Then you got to like stick them down into the rice.

And slightly separate it, okay? I used to think they looked like the World Trade Center, you know, the two towers, so like that, okay? Aragampare pushpe dupe.

Then what's the next one? Aloke. It's the light, so you would have a small butter lamp, one of those little tiny ones, and you place it in the fifth cup, okay?

You place the whole butter lamp into the fifth cup, okay? And that's the, you don't use rice, okay? Because it would be up too high and it might fall over and burn down your house, okay?

Dupe. Aragampare pushpe dupe. What's next?

Next is the perfume water. Do you see how it's already changing color? It's two or three tiny strands of saffron.

And it also takes on a very wonderful smell. It's supposed to be good for you, the smell of the saffron water, okay? What's the next one?

Food, okay? Naivedya in Sanskrit, Tibetans corrupted to new day, okay? So, by the way, you're not supposed to throw the water on the floor.

Like if you have drips of water, you're supposed to throw it into a paper towel or go out and stuff. It's bad luck to step on that water. It's considered very bad, especially in Tantra.

To step on that water, throw it on the floor like this, and to step on those drops is considered very profane, okay? So then you fill this one up. This is the food one, okay?

You can fill it up. And that one you can, that one you can smooth off the top. Watch, you see?

See what I mean? So, I cut off all the rice. It's flat.

It's not like the rice for the food, okay? Sorry, incense. Then you set this down, and then you can put a cookie on top of it.

Okay? So that's supposed to represent a nice French dinner that you make for your Lama, okay? By the way, if you're living close to your Lama, or you have the opportunity to serve your Lama frequently, the Lamrim says, forget all this stuff, you know?

You are cooking for your Lama. You are buying airplane tickets all day on kayak for your Lama. You know, you are driving them to the airport.

You are, you know, buying their medicine for them. You are cleaning up the toilet for them. You are, you know, you don't need all this stuff.

If you're with your Lama, which is preferable, whoever your Lama is, okay? Then direct service is better. These are almost just so when you're not around your Lama, you can offer these things, okay?

It's better if you're around your Lama. And I'm not saying me, because I already have enough problems. But I'm just saying, in your life, if you can find your heart teacher, if you find a person who strikes you as the one, then try to live near them or with them.

I moved in with my Lama, you know? I gave him my bankbook. He threw it back at me and he hit me with it.

And then I cooked him some momos. And later he told me he went out in the forest and threw them out, and even the animals wouldn't eat them. He told me that like 10 years later.

And then I said, Rinpoche, I'll serve you. I just want to serve you the rest of my life. I'll do anything, you know?

Let me live with you. And he said, no. And then I said, can you help me find a place to stay near you?

He said, no. He said, if you find one, that's okay. But that's your problem.

I'm busy. And I think for like three or four years, I had to sleep in a garage on a cement floor. With a crazy Mongolian, a drunk Mongolian, who one day walked out on Highway 9 and killed himself.

I think he committed suicide. But anyway, that was my, you know? Then he said, okay, you can stay in the house, which I built.

He said, okay, you can stay in the house. Like that. It's good luck if you can stay near them.

Whoever your teacher is. I don't know who your teacher is. It doesn't matter.

But if you find them, then try to stay near them. Then you don't need all this stuff. This is all just for when you're not with them, okay?

Got it? There's a custom to offer even two or even three or four rows, okay? If you still have time before you go to work.

Ha ha. If you have extra time in the morning and you're not stressed. There's a tradition to offer a second row, okay?

That's called a dunke and a dakke, okay? Say dunke, dakke, dunke, dakke. This is a very interesting custom.

You can offer one row backwards. You can start from the right, okay? That's because you're offering it to yourself, okay?

As the Buddha. And this is a template custom, okay? But it's not so big secret, so I'm telling you, okay?

You can put another row out on this side, which faces you, okay? And then you have to think, I'm already enlightened, okay? I'm already helping the whole world, you know?

And when I go to the prison to teach, I'm Lord Buddha's representative, like that. I have status, you know? I'm teaching at Silvara Prison today, right?

I heard there was some excitement yesterday. Probably there was a lockdown in the middle of the class. I don't know.

Anyway, you can say, today I'm Lord Buddha's representative. I deserve a row for myself, okay? And it's considered a healthy practice, you know?

I'm offering a row to the divine in myself. I'm not a great person. I'm not perfect.

But I do have a Buddha's seed in me. And if I work hard, I will become a Buddha. So heck, let's do a pre-offering, like a pre-halftime show, you know what I mean?

Like, let's do an offering to the Buddha I will be. And it's supposed to be a healthy kind of practice. I'm not perfect.

I'm a normal schmuck, and I make mistakes. But hey, at least I'm trying. I deserve a row also.

So if you're in the mood and you have time, you can start a row from the right. And then that means the Buddhas are offering it to you. They're like, oh, here's my new daughter, or here's my new son, and I'm proud of them.

They're trying to practice. They're not perfect, but they're trying. And you can imagine that the Buddhas are offering you a row.

That's a nice practice. That's a tantric practice. All right, we finished.

I'd like to leave them here while we do the rest of the classes, okay? I'll offer it to you guys. We're going to take a break.