«Дар освобождения», курс 8 «Учимся быть тихими», занятие 3

[Говорящий 1] (0:01 - 33:25)
So again, the context we're in is that we're learning how to set up for meditation. All of this is how to set up for meditation. Clean your room.

Do you have to clean your room if it's not dirty? What did he say? He said yes.

Just go through the motions. It also gets you out of bed and moving. Using a broom, it gets you warmed up for your meditation.

It's not good to jump out of bed and sit on your cushion. You'll just fall asleep. So it's good to get up and move around.

You can always find some fuzz balls somewhere in the house. They multiply in my house. I don't know where they come from.

So then you put out your offerings on your altar. There's a thing in ballet. I did ballet for a while.

I still do a little bit. They say that the focus with which you do the first two or three exercises, it will decide the whole thing. The first two or three motions that you make will decide the whole hour.

It's like that with meditation. How you put your bowls out. How you choose the fruit or the flower for your altar.

That's also a state of mind, right? How careful are you? How grounded are you?

How peaceful are you when you fill up your water bowls? It's pretty much decided before you start meditating how it's going to go. Just from how you get up and sweep and put the first fruit down on the altar.

So everything should be done with awareness and gentleness, peacefulness. Then you're supposed to picture those people who can protect you in your life. They're called refuge, right?

Who can protect you. Mainly it's just someone who will keep reminding you that things are coming from you. And that you have to plant the seeds.

So that's protection. There's a whole separate section on protection later. There's a very long teaching on the idea of refuge later in the text.

So he will make the point soon that the goal of this section right here is not to discuss how you take refuge. It's just to get the picture in your mind correct. All right, let's start again then.

Okay, so where we left it was that when you visualize your heart lama, they are not static. They are not flat, cardboard. Sometimes I walk into a talk like in Kiev or Moscow and there's Geshe Michael standing there.

And then I realize he's all flat and he's just a piece of cardboard. So don't make it like that. Your lama shouldn't be a piece of cardboard with a stick behind him.

And then it should be active. There should be stuff going on. Like he or she is busy.

She is taking care of the universe. She's not just sitting there. There are emanations coming and going.

They happen spontaneously, okay? They're called tundra. The lama doesn't have to think, I have to appear on Mars at 4 o'clock to help somebody.

They don't think like that. And you can't see emanations coming out of them. But when you practice meditation, it's considered fun to imagine and to see emanations jumping out.

Okay, I'll take care of that. I'll do that, okay? Sur duwa sok zelpa shimpa.

Partowa means they are sending out the emanations. And sur duwa means they are withdrawing those emanations back into them. That relates to a practice in the secret teachings called laya, right?

Where you emanate the universe and then you withdraw the universe, okay? And we'll talk more about that sometime. Sur duwa.

Kuyi pabu kumbur yang sanggye gyi shing gi tampa. I like this. Pabu.

Pabu means the pores of your skin that the little hairs come out of. Okay, so little pores that the hairs come out of, like on your arms and your neck. Kuyi pabu.

Each one of those on your lama is crammed full of Buddha paradises. Okay, each. I like to think of it sometimes.

By the way, if you have trouble concentrating, if your mind is wandering, try to picture that. And it brings your mind tight and strong, okay? Picture the pore of your skin.

Look into the pore of your skin and see countless galaxies of Buddha paradises there. Okay, it's a very beautiful practice and it brings your mind, it sharpens your mind when you're distracted, okay? Sanggye gyi shing gi tampa.

Tampa means filled with, overflow. So, rang gi lo kang chok sam gu. Rang gi lo kang chok is important.

La chok is up there I think. It's an important expression in Tibetan and it means, we're going to talk more about it, but it means according to the capacity of your mind. Some people's imagination, their capacity for imagination is higher.

And some people not. So, whatever is possible, whatever is within your range. Is it getting hot in here?

This is strange. No, it's not hot? Am I just hot?

That's not, I don't know. Crack it a little bit I think. If you get cold you can come sit up here.

Anyway, chok means, it's an important word in spiritual practice in Tibet. And it means according to your own capacity. And everybody's capacity is different.

Kang chok sam gu. De tar chok shing nam kyang rang la. Thug shing du gyur shing shug par sam.

It's important to always stay aware that those beings in those universes, in the pores of your body, and the beings in whom you are taking refuge, they love you. And they have a crush on you. They're all like, you know.

And they say it's very important to imagine that. That they're just so happy with you. And after all these zillions of years, now you're meditating and you cleaned your room finally.

And, you know, they're really happy with you. It's a big deal in Tibetan practice that you're supposed to think they are really, really happy with you. And that's healthy, I think.

Thug shing du gyur shing par sam. De la je drup pa kangpa gelak gyat soo di tar sung te. There was a lama named Drup Kangpa Gelak Gyatso.

Drup Kangpa means hangs out in his hermitage house. Gyat soo di tar sung te. Chit gyalwa se che.

Se che kyi chak sungpa rang gi mi che. Mi chak sungpa tham jay chen ne rang la gyi pay kap me kyang. I grew up in the Christian church.

I grew up in an Episcopal church. And I go there sometimes. I go there.

I like it. And there's a prayer. It says, we have done those things which we ought not to have done.

And we have left undone those things which we ought to have done. And there is no help in us. It's very, it struck me even when I was a kid.

They're like, that's what he says here. De dar sok shing dum. Generally speaking, this teacher said, generally, those things which they tell us we should be doing, we don't do.

Those things which they say we shouldn't do, we do all of them. Rang la gyi pay kap me kyang. So in reality, there wouldn't be any chance that they'd be happy with us.

But, he says, da lam gyi gyu chung se yod te. But in this particular instance, there's a little reason for them to be happy with us. pe na ma shig la bu shi ngen chawa ma yin pa shatak che khen.

He says, for example, suppose there's a mother who has a child who's, she, she ngen pa. This is one of the few cases where she is ever used outside of dashi de le. So that's a very rare use of the word she means.

This she means the child's nature is ngen pa. Ngen pa means bad. So they have a child who's by nature a bad kid.

And chawa ma yin pa shatak che khen, who only does what she tells him not to do. Okay, shig yona. Suppose that there was a mother like that.

de kap shig chawa lek pa len chig chena. And then if the kid does once, one time, does one good thing, then of course the mother would be happier than other mothers. Okay.

Okay. They're talking about us. rang re kyang gyu nge chawa ma rung pa shatak che pa la So rang re, as I mentioned previously in these classes, he, Pabongka Rinpoche, he's giving a public talk, right, in Plasa in 1921, I think, three.

And he's, he keeps using the inclusive personal pronoun. He keeps saying all of us guys. He says all of us guys.

rang re kyang, we are always doing bad stuff. Okay, he uses the specific Tibetan word rang re, which means all of us guys, which is a joke. You know, he's a great lama.

He would never do anything wrong. But he keeps saying that, you know, guys like you and me, you know, we don't, shatak means, those of you who want to learn, shatak is a good word. Shatak means all the, 24-7.

Shatak means 24-7. We are doing bad stuff 24-7. Okay, shatak che pa la.

pa ren lam rim gom kul But now we are, one time we are going to sit down and gom on the lam rim. What's gom? Meditation.

But then he adds the word kul, which is not the German word, cool. Okay, there's the kul. Kul means, I got to get it right, pretend to meditate, you know, like, try.

Kul means try. So kul after a verb in Tibetan means, you know, you claim you're meditating. So okay, you're going to take a shot at meditating on the lam rim.

So he's happy, your lama's happy. You're pretending to try to meditate. gom kul che, nen chik, one time.

di la gyelwa, should be gyelwa, there's a printing error. se che shen la tu gyelpar sum, shen la tu gyelpar sum So of course the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas would be more pleased than normal with us. Because we're taking a shot at meditating.

Okay, all right. That concludes class four, which was supposed to be done a couple months ago. So now we're on class five.

So you're ready to do homework four, okay? You've had everything on homework four, so you should hand out homework four tonight, okay? Here we, we'll keep going.

dun char, dun here means, what do they call it? The Sanskrit is svadhyaya. Have you met svadhyaya?

It's one of the yamas and niyamas in the Yoga Sutra. And everyone mistranslates it as, they call it study of yourself or something, which is completely mistaken. But so is every other translation that they do of the Yoga Sutra.

Svadhyaya means, dun char means recitation of the scriptures. Okay, so dun char means when you do the recitation. Now this section, there's a traditional text called, say, Georgia?

Georgia. Kelsang? Kelsang.

Dhingen? Dhingen. So Pabongka Rinpoche's teacher wrote a text on the preliminaries to a meditation.

He wrote a recitation text. You can recite it before you meditate. And it's called Georgia, Kelsang, Dhingen, okay?

Georgia means, we are studying the Georgia. We are studying the six preliminaries. Then Kelsang means, kelwa sangmo means, Tibetan name, right?

Common Tibetan name. Kelsang means fortunate, good luck. Kelwa means you have enough karma deep down inside.

Probably that you collected when you were riding a cow pie. Okay, so Kelsang, yeah. Kelsang means you have a little bit of good karma in there somewhere.

Kelsang. Dhingen means a necklace. So it's a necklace for people with good karma.

So his teacher, Pabongka Rinpoche's teacher, wrote a short text that you can use to do these practices, these six practices. And it's very, very eloquent. It's very beautiful.

So today I was trying to get you a copy. I thought maybe you'd like to... Rinpoche taught it to us first, before anything.

He had a tantric track to get to tantra in studies in like five years. And then first you had to work with that text for a long time, how to prepare for meditation. So anyway, normally you would be reciting that as you do the preliminaries.

Dunchar. So in that text, DE NA DAG DANG MA SEM CHEN DANG RJE TOB MA MED PA NE DAG DE BA RUG CHIR GOR BA DANG It goes like that. It's a song.

And it starts out, I and all other living beings who have all been my mother at some point, MA SEM CHEN DANG RJE TOB MA MED PA NE For time with no beginning DAG DE BA RUG Until the present instant, until the present moment CHIR GOR BA DANG We have experienced the sufferings of GOR BA What's GOR BA? Yeah, SANG SARA. SANG SARA What's an example of a GOR BA?

A SANG SARA The boss yells at you. You yell back. You yell at your spouse.

Then next week the boss yells at you because of the seed you planted. And then you yell back at the boss. And then your partner criticizes you.

And that's a A SANG SARA. So you can talk of all of our way of life as SANG SARA. But you can talk about many SANG SARA that are going on all the time.

You get into it with somebody. They criticize you, then you criticize them. And then you make the karma to have them criticize you again.

It just doesn't finish. So you say, I and all my mothers are suffering in this cyclic kind of pattern. We have this pattern where we perpetuate our own trouble.

I like the word perpetuate for GOR BA. I think that's a pretty good translation of it. Okay.

DE NA DANG DANG MA SEM TSUL KHOR BA DANG CHIR GOR BA DANG SHES PA NE KYAM DO GYUR SEL DAG PA TE Okay. He's getting into, say, KYAM DO. KYAM DO GYUR GYUR So, those of you who are studying Tibetan, KYAB, KYAB.

KYAB in logic means, what? A necessary case. Yeah, a necessary case.

But it means coverage. Subsets are covered by sets. KYA BA.

In the Lam Rim, KYA BA means protection. Okay? The protection.

KYAM DO means to go for protection. And for no good reason at all, those of you who care, the prenasal is wrong. It's an M.

And it should have been an N or an NGA. KYAM DO. They say KYAM DO.

And it's worse than KAM. Eastern Tibet does say CHAM DO. So, good luck.

Okay. So, KYAM DO. KYAM DO GYUR means, why do you go for shelter?

What are the reasons that you are looking for someone to protect you? Okay, this whole theme of this part, we haven't got to meditating yet. These are just warm-up for meditation.

You're supposed to think about protection. I need protection. Then there are classically two reasons why you go for protection.

Why do you look for protection? I once started a book about that. I think it'd be a nice book just to talk about the idea of protection.

Who can protect you? Police, judges, firemen, doctors, dentists? Who do you go to when you have a problem?

And they fall quickly. When you really have a problem, the doctors, you know, they say, sorry, I can't help you. If they're honest.

If they're not honest, they just suck your money out and say, I have a new treatment. Let's try this one. And then after a while, you realize, and you go to the police for help and they arrest you.

They ask you for money. All the worldly types of protection that you have are very fragile. They don't last.

So anyway, the idea of protection is interesting. This one, KYAM DO GYUR, there are two reasons. And before you meditate, you should remember those two reasons.

KYAM DO NAM PAR DAG MI DAG DI LA RAG LAS Whether or not you are seeking protection in a high way or not depends on these two reasons. If you have these two reasons in mind, you are looking for protection for the right reasons. And if you don't have them, it's just blah, blah.

There's a Buddha, Saranam Gacchami, Sangha, Saranam Gacchami. They do it in, where is that? Like Sri Lanka or Thailand.

Over and over, they drive you nuts. It's on the loudspeakers. And those are the words of refuge.

They are taking refuge. And whether or not they're thinking of these two reasons, I don't know. Anyway.

DENDE GYUN NI What are they? JIG PA DANG DE PA Say Jigpa. DE PA Jigpa means fear.

Obviously, you go to a policeman because you're afraid of somebody. You call the police because something bad happened. Or you go to a court to have a legal case because someone has hurt you.

You call the fire department because your house is burning down. You're afraid. Protection assumes that you're afraid of something.

Jigpa. Depa means what? Depa.

Faith, that you believe these people can help you. That's what happens. And that's such a big place of disappointment in life.

Even with your partner. You say, I feel sick today. And they're like, I'm going out to yoga.

I'll catch you later. You know? And you have faith.

You thought, oh, they would want to help me. I've been there. That's really hard.

Depa means you believe that they want to help you and that they can help you. So these are the two states of mind which are always required in order to meditate properly. You have to be going into the meditation with some kind of concern for the way life is going.

And then some kind of hope that these beings can protect you, can help you. And that's part of meditation. If you have trouble getting yourself to meditate every day, you might look at whether you have those two states of mind or not.

You should have. If stuff is going well right now, what is that? There's a joke in Tibetan medicine.

I translated for the Dalai Lama's two doctors. And there's a joke. Health is defined as an accident.

A temporary accident. Like it's not normal condition of a human being. The doshas.

The three doshas. Dosha means bad. The word means bad.

Dush means bad. It came into Greek as dys. Functional.

Dysentery. All those dyses. So the normal condition of a human being is to be in trouble.

And to have problems. If things are going well now, it's kind of a mistake. If you're not scared right now, it's just hanging in there for a while.

Something will come. Okay. So, the first of those two is to reflect on the way things go in this world.

The best you can do is to be young, healthy, and successful. And you will lose all of them. They always depart.

Okay. And you can sit there and tell somebody to their face and they don't get it. Until something happens, they don't get it.

Your body will fall apart. Whatever success you have will fall apart. Every possession you have will be taken away from you.

You will die naked without anything. You should be concerned about that. You should try to find something to get out of that.

And we sort of assume there's no way to get out of that. So we don't try to practice. But these practices, Buddhist practices, as opposed to pop psychology, etc., are aimed at saving you from that situation. Is it possible to stop the aging of the body? Is it possible to change the death itself? This is the goal.

This is the level that we're playing at. We're at the Olympics. We're not like, you know, sixth grade baseball game or something like that.

Which is, in my mind, a lot of psychology, etc. We are dealing with the important questions of life. Can you overcome death itself?

Can you overcome the gradual destruction of the body? These are the questions. When you go into a meditation, you should be playing at that level.

You're not just trying to feel good today. Because death doesn't last. There'll come a time when you can't sit up to meditate, even if you want to.

There'll come a time you can't do any asanas at all. People are so proud, I can do a double backflip and hand on one knee. You know, like, okay, wait a couple months.

You'll hurt yourself. There'll come a time when you can't do shavasana. Okay.

That should be in some quote somewhere. Okay. Then he says, the general problems of life, which are death, etc.

And then chedak means the specific sufferings of each kind of life. Animals have certain sufferings that we don't have. Just think about water.

I put out water for my birds. I'm worried about them because I'm not there for four days. I put out water for them every day.

And I don't clean the thing every day. And they poop in it. They're too dumb not to poop in it.

And then they have to drink it. So animals have this... They can't even drink...

Think about it. There's no place they can get a drink of good water. They have to drink whatever water they can find.

And it makes them sick. They get sick from it, but they don't have a choice. And like that, every form of life has its own special suffering.

Chedak. Chima ni de la kyo pe nupa, konjo la yupa, yi che pa nyi yin. De la kyo pe nupa is very important in the study of refuge.

And refuge is a big subject in the scriptures. Kyo pe nupa means, I believe that these beings have the power to protect me. So that's faith.

Faith doesn't mean, oh, just tell me what to do, Lama, I'll do it. Which, by the way, Buddhism doesn't require. You're supposed to say, I'll do whatever you say that makes sense to me.

And is moral, etc., etc., etc. Kyo pe nupa means, I believe that the Lama can, I believe that these people can help me. So those are the two states of mind with which you should start a meditation.

I'm sitting down on my cushion because there's a problem going on here. And I believe that this can help. And most people don't start spiritual path until they have some trouble, right?

Big trouble. If a well-dressed, handsome young person comes to Dharma class, you know they have AIDS. In New York, I used to sit there and I'd say, this guy has AIDS.

And then they would tell me, you know, like a couple weeks later, you know, I have AIDS, you know. And I said, I knew, I knew you did. Because there's no other reason for you to be here.

If you're healthy and happy and you're successful and you don't practice. So this is before meditation. You should think about those things, okay?

Oh, then he says there's a third reason, okay? So classically there are two reasons to take refuge. You're afraid, and you think they can help.

But then there's a third reason, okay? And this is called Thekchen Tumma Mayinbe Khyamdrong. Thekchen means Mahayana.

Big capacity people. High capacity people. Who are they?

They have a vision. They're going to save the world. They are Spiderman.

You know, that's all. They want to do that. They have a big vision.

And that's all. Mahayana, that's all. Don't worry about it, Sanskrit word, blah, blah.

They want to be Spiderman. They want to help the world. I want to save the whole world.

Okay? They have that vision. Tumma Mayinbe means unique.

There's a unique form of, there's a unique reason for taking refuge in the Mahayana. People of high capacity. What is it?

They think, on top of the other two, that's important, okay? On top of the other two reasons for taking refuge. They can't bear to see other people in pain.

That's the third reason to take refuge. So that's a higher element for some people who have that capacity. They like, they're going to meditate because they don't want to see their parents suffering.

They don't want to keep seeing their parents suffer. Or their family, or their friends. You see what I mean?

They're sitting down to meditate. They're afraid of pain. They think the Buddha and all this stuff can help.

But also they have this other thing going on in their mind that they can't bear to watch other people in pain. A lot of times people come to me about their parents. They say, I can't bear to see my parents getting old and losing everything.

And then that's a reason to meditate. That should become a reason to meditate. Mayinbe khyam dro la dey tun shing ne.

Un khyam dey bak gyepar ok gi khyam dro la dey tun shing ne shi kap su dun bar che do. Un khyam means but or however. We're not getting into that now.

Why? It's not the section of the lamrim. That comes later.

You know, how to take refuge, the teachings on taking refuge. That's not where we're at. We are studying how to do meditation.

We're studying how to prepare for meditation. He says, so let's cover that later. You know, I don't want you to get all weepy now.

Let's get done with the six preparations for meditation and then later we'll get into that stuff. Ranggit thakur du pa may chun sem chen tam che. I love this section.

To me, this is one of the most beautiful sections in all of scripture. Did I ever say that before? I don't know.

But I love this part. I love this part. In this particular part of the meditation, you're supposed to imagine that you are on a huge plane, a huge flat plane.

I like to think of it almost like another planet. There's a huge plane of earth, like red earth or something. I see the sun going down and then there's my lama and whoever it is that you think can protect you is up there in front of you.

You and some friends are taking refuge. The friends are every living creature on this planet. It's like Noah's Ark or something.

You're in the front and you're taking refuge. To your right is your father and to your left is your mother. They're here with you.

Your father and your mother, whether they're alive or not, they are with you. Right here. Then behind them is every other living creature on this planet.

If you turned around and you looked, it would just be this massive... By the way, they say dogs, animals, birds, they get to be people in this visualization. All the dogs you know, all the squirrels you know, they would look like people.

If you turned around, there would be billions and billions of people behind you waiting for you to start the prayer.

[Говорящий 2] (33:27 - 33:29)
They're like...

[Говорящий 1] (33:30 - 53:42)
Beginning with your mother and your father and then everybody else. I just get goosebumps. You're on this huge plane.

There's billions of people behind you and they're waiting for you to start the prayer. They're waiting for you to say, I take refuge. Okay, it's just really cool.

Okay, anyway. SEMS CAN THAMS CAD NGO DRO BA RANG RANG GI DUNG YANG YONG SHIN PA They are experiencing the suffering of their particular life form. Those who are animals don't have any clean water, for example.

And I don't know if you noticed, but they run away when you come up. And they're always going like this. If you're a bird...

I feed birds all day. Even after three years of giving them... I got all these...

The bird food company has given me all these awards for purchase of bird food. And you get an extra bag because you bought 48 of them. And the birds are still like this.

If I sneeze, they all fly away. And they're always like this. Because you've got to look over your shoulder if you're a bird.

Somebody will eat you. If you're lazy, you'll get eaten. You better be aware of who's behind you.

You know what I mean? You better be looking every few seconds. So the beings on the dark green plane behind you are...

They look like humans, but they still have their own... the fear of their own form of life. Of their own life form.

Nambah Mache Tunggawa. Say Mache. Tunggawa.

What's that? Nimble. Do you know?

I'll take a tea and you will decide. Mache means they know how to talk. Tunggawa means they know what speech means.

They know the meaning of speech. They know how to speak and they know the meaning of speech. And that's the definition in Buddhism of a of a human.

In Buddhism, that's the definition of a human. Then somebody always says, what about dolphins or whales? I'm like, okay.

But someone who has the capacity of speech and the capacity to understand spoken communication is the rough definition of a human in Buddhism. So, rather than saying they are all in the form of humans, he says they are all in the form of someone you can communicate with. Which is to say they are all in the form of a human.

Okay? But they are experiencing the suffering of their own life form. Insight.

Mache Tunggawa. Mookshike. Those of you studying Tibetan, Mookshike means big brown fuzzy mass.

Mook means brown. And it just means when you look behind you, it gets to so many that you can't distinguish the people anymore. They're just little dots behind you.

I gave a talk like that somewhere in Florida. 1,200 architects. Each one had a table in front of them.

So, the ones in the back were about this big. It's like that. You can't even make out their faces.

Shige. You should visualize that. Khyamdo Dönpé Tse.

When you do the actual recitation, Ranggi Chang Dön. Those of you who are studying Tibetan, Chang Dön is an idiom that means, I am the leader of the recitation. Everyone's waiting for me to start.

Billions of creatures are waiting for me to say, I take refuge. Dön ché ne. Sem chen tam ché kyi khyamdo ché par samgö.

Then you should think that when you say, I seek protection in this path. I seek protection in these people who can teach this. Maybe they can help me.

Because nobody else can. There's no doctor who can keep you alive. There's no judge who can get you justice if you don't have the karma for it.

They will cheat you. There's no policeman that you can trust. Ultimately.

You can't. You're about to say, I'm going to try to see if you can protect me. As you say those words, you have to imagine that billions of people are standing behind you.

They're following you. Chang Dön means you're the leader of the recitation. It's a very powerful idea.

That relates to Bodhicitta. I wanted to talk about that a little bit. I think it was Pavel, I don't remember.

I think we were in Kiev. He was translating, I think. He translates during the breaks when I have to sign books and take photos and look happy and not exhausted.

Then, I don't know. Every night 20 people come up and ask their personal questions. At the end of the program, after four or five days, we have a dinner together and we all sit down.

We call it a debrief. We talk about what we can improve for next time. He's like, I think it was you, I don't remember.

He was like, do you know Geshe-la repeated the same advice to 300 people at this talk who came up for private appointments. He's so patient to just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Somebody else was like, maybe you should just have a recorder.

When the person asks a question, you go click and then you could drink tea and relax. Because it happens to be the same thing that you just finished teaching for two hours. You see what I mean?

Always. I don't mean to be flippant. People's problems are serious to them.

There's always a... What do you call it? There's three.

That's okay. There's three problems that the whole world repeats. No, just kidding.

Their partner, their back, and money. You can say money. But anyway, there's four steps and they're always the same.

And they're beautiful and they work. And nothing else works. And I have nothing else to advise you.

Everybody's waiting for me to give some other advice. And I'm like, I don't have any other advice. Just do the four things.

Number one, decide what you want. Tell me what you want. I want my bad back to go away.

I want my partner to be nice to me. I want to get out of debt. Number one.

Number two. You must choose someone else to help who has a similar problem. And there's no other way in Buddhism.

I can't give you a mantra. These Chinese people kept bugging me. We want the mantra, we want the mantra.

Don't give us these four steps. I'm like, okay, let's do a mantra. Whatever I want, I will give to someone else.

Whatever I don't want, I will stop doing to somebody else. And they're like, you're cheating us. And I'm like, no, no.

Okay. Number two. Find someone else who has that problem.

And make a plan to help them. Step number three. Help them.

I like to say at Starbucks. It means take them out to a coffee shop. Offer to help them.

Take them. Sometimes I call it the four Starbucks steps. So number three is take them to a coffee shop.

Say, I understand you're having financial problems. Or I understand you have a back problem. Or I understand your partner is giving you a hard time.

So let me be a support for you. I'll give you support. I'll help you.

You come to Starbucks with me every week. And we'll talk over solutions. Then I kept doing this over and over in Argentina.

Who's from Argentina? Where are you? Yeah, yeah.

So I did it over and over again in Buenos Aires. And then this well-dressed guy comes up after the talk. After five days, he's like, I have to shake your hand.

I say, why? And he says, I'm in charge of all the Starbucks in Argentina. So he came to all the talks.

Anyway. Number three, take them out for coffee. Help.

Give them some kind of support. Number four, before you go to bed at night, as you fall off to sleep, think about the good things you did. Think about that means be happy about number two and be happy about number three.

What does that mean? Be happy that you chose someone to help. Be happy that you took time to plan how to help them.

Be happy that you took them out to Starbucks. So step number four, I had somebody, who was that? Yes, somebody who had a medical problem here.

And I said, well, you should help somebody with a medical problem. And they're like, Geshe-la, I'm a doctor. Then I'm like, oh, well, then you have to do step four.

You have to work more on step four. Step four is the good seeds which you have, you must, what do you call it, reinforce them before you fall to sleep. As you're falling off to sleep, think about the nice things you're doing for other people.

That increases the power of those seeds by hundreds and thousands and millions. I helped to start a company which reached $250 million in annual sales. People always ask me, what did you do?

And I say, it was all, before I fell to sleep, it was all on my pillow. That's where you get the crank up of the karma. The karma, that's where the secret lies.

It's one thing to take one person to Starbucks. It's a different thing to have your mind multiply those seeds by thousands or hundreds of thousands all night long. Most of you are good people and most of you are doing good things all the time.

I think you're not doing number four enough. I think you're not appreciating yourself enough. Before you sleep, think about the good things you've been doing and your life will change drastically.

It sounds dumb, right? It sounds like it should be more complicated. It's not.

There's this theory of mathematics that complicated solutions are always wrong. You know, the easiest things and the most pleasant things are the highest spiritual practices. So anyway, the fourth one is be happy before you sleep.

Count the good things you've done. If you don't have any from today, count the last ten years or twenty years. They don't have an expiration date.

No, if you did some wonderful good deed that you've never been able to do again in the last ten years, then work on that one. Concentrate on that one. I'm serious.

Pick the good biggies, big goodies. Anyway, and work on them. Step number four.

Why did we get into that? I'll say and then we'll take a break. Am I supposed to shut up?

No. Then inevitably in every city of the world, whether it's Beijing or Lima or Paris or Kiev or Sofia, Tel Aviv, somebody will raise their hand and say, those four steps sound selfish. You're just doing things for people so you can get something.

The way to find a partner is help a lonely person. Go to a nursing home. If you want to find a partner, go to a nursing home.

And then people say, oh, that's so selfish. You're just helping old people because you want a boyfriend or girlfriend. You're just helping somebody out financially so you can get money.

What's the other one? You're helping a sick person because you have a bad back. You want to fix your bad back.

You don't care about those people. You're just using them. And that's true.

So step number three has to be done with a different state of mind. When you go to Starbucks with the old lady if you want to partner with the sick person if you have a bad back and with the broke person if you have financial problems. I was in Detroit.

This guy goes, I found somebody. I'm like, what? This is an old lady.

She's broke. She's sick and she's lonely. I get all three with one lady.

He was all excited. When you go to Starbucks with your lady, right? And I have a lady.

I was with her the night, the morning I came here. I just was at her house. I spent the night there.

She's 86 and her 95-year-old aunt had just passed away that day. So we worked on it together. But anyway, I'll tell the story.

I like to tell the story. You heard it before. It's good if you're teaching normal people which were not in this retreat.

When you take the lady to Starbucks, let's say you want to find a partner, your girl and you want to find a boyfriend. You take a lonely person to Starbucks. You give them some of your time.

That plants seeds to meet a boy. Nothing else works. Then while you're there, you have to think, if I try this new system of finding a partner, rather than scouring the Internet or going to what's that place called?

Sephora. And if you walk into Sephora, you can't get out for less than $100. It's true.

So you're going to Sephora. People work so hard to choose their clothing or to buy makeup or to look good or whatever, and then none of it works at all. It doesn't have anything to do with getting a boyfriend.

The only way to get a boyfriend is to help a lonely person. So if you try this new approach to finding boyfriends, you try this new approach. If you succeed, the nature of success is that people copy you.

People will imitate you. People will say, you haven't had a good boyfriend for five years, and suddenly you have this handsome, intelligent, loyal person. How did that happen?

And you're going to say, I went to the nursing home. And they're going to say, he looks younger. I mean, you're going to say, I tried a new system.

I went to this Swahili Buddhist talk. The guy said, you should try helping a lonely person. It hasn't got anything to do with what color lipstick you have.

It's all karma. It's 100% karma. Help a lonely person, and you will find a new boyfriend.

Like that. That's all. That's the only way.

So I tried it out, and it worked. Then they're going to copy you. Right?

And if they follow the method correctly, then they will succeed. Then what will happen? I was in Sofia, down in the basement, and there was this very intelligent lady there.

She's a very famous TV announcer. And then she's like, her name is Iskra, which means spark, and she's like a spark. And she's like, if I succeed, then all my friends will also try.

Then they will get boyfriends. Then people will copy them. And people will say, we can have a revolution.

We can have boyfriend revolution. And I don't know, something about Bulgarians, they love to have revolutions. And she was like, we can have revolution.

By the way, she got married last month. She was single, very famous, like the, what do you call it, David Letterman of Bulgaria. And she was famous because she could never get married.

And she got married. Then she's all excited. She's like preaching on TV now about the system.

But anyway, that awareness, as you serve her the coffee, as you go to stir in her sugar in her coffee, and while you're stirring, you think, if I succeed at this new system, people will copy me. And then people will copy them. And pretty soon, there will be long lines outside of nursing homes.

And there won't be any lonely old people. There will be long lines of people. They'll say, take a number.

She's busy this week. Maybe I can get you in next week. And you laugh because it's so wrong.

It's so not what's happening now. They are desperate to have a single person come into the nursing home. They reach out.

You walk into a nursing home, they all go like this. And they just want to touch somebody who's warm. And imagine that the opposite was happening.

That thousands and thousands of people were waiting outside of nursing homes for a chance to plant some seeds. You know? To imagine that happening while you're stirring her coffee is bodhicitta.

And that's compassion. And it's nothing else. And it's all based on you as an example.

You as a successful example. You can teach all day. You can learn all the Tibetan.

You can teach meditation year after year. But if you can't meditate, and if you're not a nice person, nobody will care. Nobody cares.

Oh, they're talking about success, but they're all miserable. You go to the infirmary and they're all bickering with each other. All the senior staff.

I don't know what kind of meditation you do, but please don't teach it to me.

[Говорящий 2] (53:42 - 53:43)
You know?

[Говорящий 1] (53:43 - 55:42)
You know what I mean? Ultimately, bodhicitta, compassion for the world, assumes responsibility to be a good example. And good example means successful.

You should be a successful person. You should have a good meditation practice. You should be a happy person.

That's the best advertisement. You can say Sanskrit words for weeks and people will see through you eventually. They'll say, he's all nervous all the time.

He knows all the words for meditation, but he's nervous all the time. So, what I'm trying to say is this meditation, visualization, where you are sitting at the apex of a triangle of billions and billions of people counting on you, waiting for you to start, to take the first step. It's all bodhicitta.

You must be an example. You must use this knowledge to be successful. Successful means a happy person.

The hardest thing in the world is to be a happy person. To make money, to make a million dollars is easier. You know, to win the Olympics is easier.

To be happy is extremely difficult. It's the most difficult thing. But if you make it, then that's bodhicitta.

And that's why in this visualization, you're in the front of the crowd, because they're looking to you as an example. Teaching always comes down to example. You can learn all the system, you can read all the homework, people will just do what you do.

They'll ignore what you're teaching, they'll do what you do. That's life. Okay, I think we should take a break.