«Дар освобождения», курс 8 «Учимся быть тихими», занятие 12

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 12:37)
Okay, so we finished the three protectors for the three great divisions of the Lamrim teachings. Now we'll continue from there. Nying, we're on 92A, one, two, third line.

,'CHOS KYI'O LAM GYI BRDZOD DANG, ,THON PA BYAR TSOS DE DAG YIN CING, So that's how we apply those three guardians that you are visualizing to the three great divisions of the Lamrim teachings. ,GZHIN DU NYUR BAR SANGS RGYAS BA LA, But if you really want to get enlightened fast, ,LAM MA YI DAM SOGS KYANG, ,LAM GYI BRDZOD DANG, ,THON PA BYAR TSOS Then there's a way that you should ask your own teacher to be your Dharma protector. And then their advices and their activities will relate to each of the Lamrim steps.

He doesn't say teacher, he says Lama Yidam. Lama Yidam means your close angel, your teacher. I like it when they use the words together.

Lama Yidam. ,SOGS KYANG LAM GYI BRDZOD DANG, ,THON PA BYAR TSOS ,GZHIN BYAM YANG GI TSONG KHA PA CHEN PO LA GSUNGS PAS, ,SABSANG THA YAS PA YOD KYANG, On this point of how your own teacher can be your Dharma protector. Again, we're not talking about the current controversy about one odd protector that you never heard of and don't worry about it.

We're not talking about that. We're talking about your own teacher protecting you. He says, Manjushri, who's the embodiment of all the enlightenment of the Buddhas, he was Jetsun Kappa's lama and Yidam, his close angel.

There's a beautiful story of how Jetsun Kappa tried to find him and tried to make contact with him. I also have spent days crying on the stairs outside my house because I can't be close to my lama that day. Something like that.

He had to work very hard to be physically close to his teacher. Physically close. The story is very beautiful.

We did an art book. It's a big, beautiful art book with some rare paintings. You can read the story in there sometime.

I think it's going to come out in a paperback like two years ago. I mean, we're working on it. I don't know exactly what's happening, but it's supposed to come out.

Dear Judamirung, He says there are infinite secret exchanges that went on between Jetsun Kappa and his lama on the subject of protection. Dear Judamirung, it would be improper to describe them in a public lecture. Okay.

GONG GI YED YONG GI CHOS KYONG RNAMS DANG The general Dharma guardians who are in this particular visualization and the SKYE BA GSUM GYI CHOS BDAG DI RNAMS The particular protectors of these three sections of the Lam Rim GONG NGOG THEG KAR GAL BA BYAL DGOS They should be at the same level. There's this big deal in visualizations that people of the same status should be at the same level. BYAL DGOS RGYAM DU MIG RNAMS NGAR BSTAN PA DANG OG NAS KYANG BYUNG ZHING I want to draw your attention, if you're studying Tibetan, to the word MIG MIG RNAM here.

Where is that MIG? Oh, it's the last word of the third line and the first word of the next paragraph. So there's a paragraph that ends in MIG.

Yeah. That MIG RNAM, okay, the word MIG PA is difficult. It can mean Alambana in Sanskrit, meaning the thing that you are focusing towards.

Then there's a headstand called NIR ALAMBANA. SHIR SHASANA, right? Which means you don't have...

Alambana means the support for consciousness. But in yoga, asana, it means the support for the body. So that means you do a headstand without the arms, like Dharmamitra.

It's the only person I know who can really do it. Few other people play with it. Then that's called NIR ALAMBANA.

Then I think there's a thing in the... What is that? Anussara, the invocation?

How does that go? NIR ALAMBAYA Yeah, I don't think they know what it means. But, I mean, frankly, I'm not criticizing, but NIR ALAMBANA means MIG MED.

MIG MED. So what's MIG MED, sir? This is the mantra of Je Tsongkapa.

And MIG MED TSE BA means NIR ALAMBANA. That's in the Anussara invocation. NIR means no, none.

Like nil comes from none. ALAMBANA means support. What does that mean?

It means that, specifically, is it possible to serve and love other people and at the same time understand that they're coming from you? That's a little tricky. This person's angry all the time.

I have to help them. And then at the same time that you're giving them advice about not being angry, you have a full understanding that you're seeing them because you're an angry person. Is it possible to take someone to Starbucks and give them advice about their financial situation or their anger and at the same time have a full realization that they are coming from your anger and from your lack of generosity?

That's why you're seeing them. So Je Tsongkapa had this extreme ability to help someone even as you realize that they're coming from you. And that's called MIG ME.

Know ALAMBANA. NIR ALAMBANA. And it's the highest form of love.

Can you love a person and all their weaknesses and still know that they're coming from you? Or could we say even more deep, can you love another person perfectly with all their faults unless you know that they're coming from you? Can you really love them fully if you don't understand that every fault you see is coming from you?

That's a beautiful idea, I think. Anyway, the reason I got into that is we have ALAMBANA here. MIG RNAM means ALAMBANA.

But in the study of the Lam Rim, ALAMBANA means how you practice those subjects. The Idiot's Guide to Enlightenment. Each step.

Generally MIG RNAM means an object of visualization. But in the Lam Rim, you have to understand that the word kind of morphs. And it means the spiritual subjects which you must master.

Like impermanence of your body, or compassion, or shamatha, perfect meditation. These are all MIG RNAMs in the Lam Rim. Those of you who are studying Tibetan, don't get stuck on this word, which normally means an object of meditation or an object of consciousness.

In the Lam Rim, it means an object of practice or of realization. All right, where were we? MIG RNAM.

SNGAR BSTAN PA DANG OG NAS KYANG BYUNG ZHING I'm going to tell you more about taking refuge in the sections to come. I'm not trying to teach you refuge here. I've said some things about it.

In Tibetan they say GONG and OG. GONG means upper floor. And in scripture it means in the pages before.

And when you say below, bottom floor, you mean the stuff that's still to come. I'm going to tell you more about refuge. It wasn't my intention to talk about refuge here.

I said some things, but tune in for more. LAM MA DANG KHO YON GYEL RIN PO CHE SHES PA NAS MDZAD DU GZU SHES PA'I BAR DU Then Pabongka Rinpoche made a point that one of the sections in the recitation text, which I'll try to give you next time, MDZAD DU GZU SHES PA'I BAR DU where you say I take refuge in the Three Jewels and in my Lama up to I take refuge, that this was a tradition of the Sakya lineage, which we have copped. That was a nice section, so we took it into a Gelugpa refuge text.

He's probably making a statement about that Sangha thing. He's crediting another tradition. It's like this is an idea from the Baptists that we thought was cool, and so we put it in.

Again, it's his attempt to be ecumenical. You'll notice that in the Tibetan, where are we? SNG SO You got that?

End of the fourth paragraph. Last of two words. SNG SO See the SNG SO?

SNG SO means he said. SNG SO means he said. Every once in a while, the editor of this book, who is?

Chidam Rinpoche, the teacher of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and my teacher's teacher. Every once in a while, he will say he said. Why?

He wants you to be sensitive that this is a transcript. This is a recording of a lecture in the days before tape recorders. He wants you to know.

He will throw in every once in a while, SUNG, which is the honorific for he said. It's like he honorably bespoke. Every once in a while, he'll throw in a SUNG to remind you that you are listening to his teacher teach.

This SUNG comes here because the next part starts with NYIN NGAPAR. Say NYIN. NGAPAR.

NYIN means day. NGAPAR means on the fifth. So, we finished four days now.

In what? Two and a half years. We have finished the first four days of teaching.

Yay! Yay!

[Говорящий 2] (12:39 - 12:40)
All right.

[Говорящий 1] (12:47 - 12:54)
If you think these classes are long, normally he would teach for 12, 14 hours a day.

[Говорящий 2] (12:54 - 12:54)
Like that.

[Говорящий 1] (12:55 - 28:55)
And it was a killer. The last two hours, you got to go to the bathroom and do it. That's hard.

In the monastery, these things can go on forever. Lama Sopa teaches sometimes till all night, right? Anyway, we're on the fifth day.

Oh, yes I do. You want to get it up? NYIN needs more of the text.

Okay, fifth day. ,BAL DANG BAPA LUS GRUB KYI SRUNG LAS, It's a tradition when you start a new day in Tibet, when you have some rough times in your life, it's good to tighten down on your morality. Just in general.

That's just a general good thing to do. On the fifth day, he will quote some inspiring person to start his lecture. And he will also review from the day before.

So when you are teaching, you should appreciate that it's good to pick up on the last 10 minutes of the day before and get the students' minds back onto what you were talking about. It's also a tradition in Tibet that you should review everything you learned three times before the next class. And that's challenging, right?

When you're on a packed schedule. So you can just do it quickly. When you're eating or something, glance at your notes or something.

It's much more powerful if you can look at it three times. It's good to do it once right after the teaching. Like within a few hours after the teaching.

Just try to flip through your notes and look at it. A great way to fulfill this tradition is to sit with friends and talk about what the Lama said. Because everybody hears something different.

And you will learn a lot from sitting with other people. I think as of this evening you can talk, right? When can we?

At dinner. So at dinner you can talk. And I apologize that I haven't kept silence very well outside of the classroom and the organizers.

Because it's a lot of stress to organize everything. And we could probably be better at it and we'll try. So try to review things three times before the next class.

Also you'll be getting today an evaluation form about this retreat. And I'd like to ask you to take it very seriously and fill it out. It's more helpful for us, your criticism, than your praise.

It's more helpful for us if you tell us what needs to be improved. So you can write down that Geshe Michael is amazing. That's okay.

But after that, it would be more helpful if you really thought carefully about what could be improved. And any complaint you have is allowed. You don't have to write your name on the evaluation form.

I would like to know personally what I'm doing good and what I'm not doing so well. That would help me. And each teacher that you've had, yoga teacher or massage therapist or Dharma teacher, it would be more helpful for all of us.

Right, Daniel? If you'd just be honest and say, say one thing you liked so that it's softer. And then say something that you felt could really be improved.

Because we all need to improve. And in your own teaching, you should encourage that also. In DCI, we always hand out an evaluation form.

And then on the last day, the staff always gets together and does a self-criticism of our own performance and of each other. And then the thing gets better and better. If you just write down, everything was nice and I love Geshe Michael.

It's okay, but it doesn't help us improve. So be brutally honest in what you really thought and what you want to be improved. And you don't have to put your name.

And we do read them. We studied them. The last ones we studied for this time.

Everybody. They went around. There was like 300 pages.

And it was very good. You made good suggestions. And it helps get better every time.

Okay. Okay. Seungri.

So he's quoting, bhagpa means? Arya means, okay, so the Nazis used Arya for a bad thing. And what do you call the neo-Nazi guys in America?

Arya means superior person or something? In ancient Sanskrit, it means a person who is special because of something they saw, something they understood. So Arya means a person who has seen emptiness directly.

In Buddhism, it means that. And it's a beautiful thing. Okay.

I think the most beautiful words, the demons tend to corrupt their meaning in the world. Like guru. Guru comes from a root, gru.

U's change to A U's, grao. They get, what do they call? Enhanced vowels.

And then the A U change to A V before a vowel and it becomes gravity. And it means gurus are heavy. The root is the same.

And it means if you do something good towards them, you get lots of powerful good karma. And if you do something bad towards them, you get lots of powerful bad karma. Can you disagree with them?

Yes. Can you question them? You should.

You have to. But not disparage them. That's different.

Just to say he's a stupid head, that's bad karma. To say, I don't understand what you said about that and I'm not sure I agree with that, that's good karma. To question a guru is good karma.

To just say bad stuff about them is bad karma. All right. BHAG PA LUD DUG GI SUNG LAS NAGARJUNA SEMS LUD DUG means Nagarjuna.

Arya Nagarjuna said, GANG ZHIG SEMS DU RIN CHEN BYAS PA'I NGAN CHUG CHAGS PAR RGYIS PA DE BA'I KHYANG GANG ZHIG MI RGYUR BSKYEN NAS SDUG PA'I LAS RGYIS PA DE NI CHE RAB LUNG PA LA Okay. I'd love to do some Nagarjuna. I think we might have some free time in New York in the spring and maybe we'll start some Nagarjuna.

Okay. We're thinking about it with three jewels. Because I've never really done Nagarjuna, straight Nagarjuna.

It'd be nice. Anyway. Maybe we could do the Letter to the King, which is very powerful.

I'll think about it. Anyway. GANG ZHIG SEMS DU RIN CHEN BYAS PA'I Anyone who takes a golden bowl, a bowl made of pure gold.

RIN CHEN BYAS PA means studded with precious jewels. NGAN CHUG CHAGS PAR RGYIS PA and uses it to keep poop and vomit. The verb comes later.

LUNG PA LA is a fool. They are a fool. The way, the instrumental is the comparative.

DE BA'I KYANG means more stupid than them. But there's someone more foolish than them. GANG ZHIG MI RUG BSKYED NAS A person who has taken a human life, who has been born into a human life and then hurts other people.

A person who has been fortunate enough to be born as a human being and then hurts other human beings or other living creatures is more of a fool. BYAS RAB means infinitely more foolish. So the idea is that our life is a vessel and how are you going to fill it?

With poop and vomit or with noble things. ZHES LUNG BYANG DE He quoted that text. KUN LUNG CHUB PA'I DOR DU ZHIG GSUNGS NAS Then he reminded us that we should be here for the right reason.

We should be here for the right reason. What? I think it's a fine motivation to say, I want to be happy.

I'd like to learn Tibetan verbs. That's nice Geshe Michael. I want to contribute to the Refugee Project also.

But really your goal as a Buddhist and your responsibility is to become a well-balanced, happy person. That's your goal. An example for other people.

Successful, well-balanced, happy person. Successful as a person. Kind and attentive to others.

And attentive to your own needs also. Healthy. So he reviewed why you should be in the class.

I'm here because, not because I want to learn more Tibetan verbs or like that. I want to be a famous teacher. I want to learn everything.

It should be that I want to be a happy person because that's the best example. People learn by example. They don't care what you know.

They ignore what you say. They even do the opposite of what you say. In many cases.

But they will follow your example. If you're happy, if your goal for being here is to be happy, be happier, then that's a successful motivation. I want to be a happy person so people can learn from me by example.

By living example. DOR DU ZHIG GSUNG NAS KUN LONG DANG KUN CUNG LAS PAR SEL THAB PAR SEMS PAR ZHUG And then he said, look, as we go through this next day of teachings, day number five, please maintain that motivation. I want to be a good example.

I want to learn to be an exemplary person, which means a very happy person. KUN LONG DANG KUN CUNG KUN CUNG means, and please maintain your, not only your motivation during the next day, but also your behavior towards the other students, your behavior towards the teacher, your behavior towards the support staff, your motivation, and your personal behavior should be especially good during a retreat or during a teaching. SEL THAB PAR SEMS PAR ZHUG SEMS PAR ZHUG means I beg you to listen that way.

It's very powerful. SEMS CES CHOS NI What are you going to listen to? KHYAM DANG GI KHYAB PO SANGS RGYAS KYI SA GRUB PAS The steps on the path to enlightenment for people who have enough good karma to hear them.

Jesus used to say over and over what? Yeah, if you have ears to hear. If you can hear what I'm saying.

And many people couldn't. KHYAM DANG in Tibetan means if you have enough good karma to even hear how to make good karma. If you have the karma to be interested and turned on by this stuff, then you're KHYAM DANG.

It's a nice idea. ZHUG SANGS RGYAS KYI SA GRUB PAS SOGS KYI SA BYAS BSTAN PA'I SNGAR BRTAG LA So he went over some of the general outline that he had already covered. Then he said ZHIG PA means big section number four, which we're not reaching.

He's just referring to it. BSTAN PA'I SNGAR BRTAG LA LO MA JI LTAR TU'I RIM PA LA NYID YOD PA'I LAS YOD PA'I There are going to be two huge divisions of the Lam Rim when we get to it. We didn't get to it yet.

I mean, not really. The first one of those sections is called the actual stuff, the actual teaching, which we didn't get to yet. How to lead disciples with the actual teaching.

We didn't get to that yet. The first part of that is going to be, say, GZHAN YIN GZHAN YIN GZHAN TSUL GZHAN YIN GZHAN YIN GZHAN TSUL GZHAN YIN is an abbreviation for DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN Are you on it, Ningbo, GZHAN YIN GZHAN TSUL? GZHAN YIN is short for DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN.

DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN is long for GESHE. You can say GZHAN YIN, or you can say GESHE, or you can say DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN. They all mean the same thing.

It means a spiritual friend, a spiritual guide. Then recently it became a title. So I'm not sure that all GESHES are DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN.

Because we can be very proud, and arrogant, and stupid. They keep giving you awards and you get worse and worse. Then they give you that big yellow hat and it's over.

So anyway, GZHAN YIN GZHAN TSUL GYIS SBYOR BA LA Now it's interesting. He's doing a bait and switch. He's switching it on you.

He was telling us, I'm teaching you the six preparations for meditation. The six preliminaries for meditation. We've done three, which were cleaning your room, setting up your altar and making offerings, sitting down properly and taking refuge.

Those were the three. So we've done three of the six. Then now he's switching.

He's not saying, I've been teaching you the preparations for meditation. Now he says, I've been teaching you preparations for a session of relating to your Lama. Okay, that's cool.

I've been teaching you. Halfway through the preliminaries, he switches horses. In Tibetan they say, switch horse in the street, halfway down the street.

Anyway, now he's calling it three preparations for a session on being with your Lama. SBYOR LA CHUD DU LAS NYUR LAM MAR THI'I SKABS SBYOR CHUD DU GANG NGON DU BYUNG BA LTA'I ZHUGS NA So I'm going to follow the tradition called NYUR LAM, which means fast track. MAR THI, and we talked about MAR THI last time.

Anybody remember? Yeah, red teaching, which is what?

[Говорящий 2] (28:55 - 29:13)
When the teacher puts a dead body in front of the students and cuts it open to work with the organs so that it's a real teaching and so their hands get red from the blood. It's a symbol of when a Tibetan Lama will do the teaching where they didn't get any discussion of it.

[Говорящий 1] (29:14 - 1:04:38)
Got it? MAR THI means red teaching. It's a reference to medical school, Tibetan medical school, where they'll take a corpse and to illustrate the organs, they don't show you a drawing.

They cut open a body. It's like, what's that exhibition nowadays? Body?

Yeah. And I didn't have the guts to go. But that exhibition is a MAR THI.

MAR THI means, oh, look, here at the... I did go to a yoga anatomy class and they were doing bodies there. They were showing the muscles of a person who did do yoga.

Oh, yeah. And a person who didn't do yoga. And there's all this fuzz between the muscle strata, the levels of the muscle on a person who didn't exercise.

It looks like fungus or something. It looks like mold. And then a person who's been active or doing yoga, although they died, they don't have the mold.

So, KA SANG means yesterday. Okay, KA SANG means yesterday. I went over with you three of the six preliminaries, which the Red Book says you should do before a Lama session.

Okay, now we're reaching step number four. Yay, you're on preliminary number four. Here we go.

By the way, I mean we're scheduled not to get through with the six until the end of next retreat. The next teaching in Phoenix and then the next retreat will probably be done with the six preliminaries. Then we can start the text.

This is the most detailed presentation that I'm aware of in Tibet of the preliminaries. It's wonderful to have it in your toolbox. All right, how are we doing?

Half an hour, 35 minutes. Okay, 34 minutes. ,'BYOR BA'I CHOS SHIG PA TSOGS SHING SEMS BDAG PA LA, Now we're going to visualize the garden.

There's a visualization called the garden. Technically it's called the karma garden. The karma garden.

What's that mean? He'll talk about it. But it means, as I said, before a meditation, just before a meditation, you try to do some last minute good karma collection.

You try to do some last minute bad karma cleaning. In the few minutes before meditation, you try to crank up your karmic seeds. That's called karma garden or TSOGS SHING.

SHING means a field, a farming field. And TSOGS means collecting good karma. But it's short for TSOGS SAK DRIB BYANG.

SEMS BDAG PA LA, ,'JET SONG KHA PA CHEN POS, Then he's going to quote Jetsong Khapa, which is tradition in our lineage. If you're going to give a talk, then when you reach a new subject, you would quote Jetsong Khapa, who is the teacher of the first Dalai Lama and the greatest Lama ever to set foot on this planet. I think.

He said, ,GNYEN NA ZIG MI ZIN, ,SAM NA DON MI DGOS, ,DGOS NA RGYUD LA MI BSKYED, Very depressing words. GNYEN NA ZIG MI ZIN means I listen, but I can't retain anything. SAM NA DON MI DGOS By the way, he's referring to the three great practices of Buddhist pedagogy.

What's the other fancy word for education? I don't know. These are the three great steps of all Buddhist educating systems.

The system of education in Buddhism. What's that? Another fancy word.

Maybe it's pedagogy, but anyway. The way how to learn something in Buddhism always has three steps. THOS SAM GOM Say THOS SAM GOM In fact, my monastery is called THOS SAM GOM GYIL NENG, a jewel island for THOS SAM GOM.

THOS means classroom hours. Hours in front of a qualified Lama. Hours sitting on a seat suffering in front of a qualified Lama.

It's just hours on the seat. It's probably like dance. It's just your progress is directly related to how many hours.

So THOS, how many hours? SAM means time you spend at home thinking about it. On the bus, on the plane, on the shuttle to the airport, at dinner with your friends is SAM.

Going over it in your own head. That process should take place now. It should start now.

The first week is very important. I'm asking Venerable Jigme to get the audio up online immediately so that when they're on the way to the airport, they can get their personal hotspot going. Download them.

Download them. You must, in the next two weeks, listen to them at home. What I do, I'm trying to learn Chinese.

I just turn on my stereo and I cook and I do stuff. I garden. I blast it out.

It makes the neighbors really happy. I blast it out the window. I just walk around the house and brainwash myself.

So do that. You got to have it ready. Venerable Jigme, even just the first couple ones.

The link should be live the minute they leave this place. Say again? It's up.

There's a table in the bookstore with CDs. But anyway, it's all free. You can go online.

You can hear thousands of talks. You should, in the following week, just play it a couple times. Play it a couple times over.

Then try to play it three times in the next month. You don't have to concentrate on it. Sometimes you listen better if you're not concentrating.

So turn it on and make a nice Spanish quiche or something with Julia Child. It works. All right.

Where are we? Oh, yeah. We said to some gom.

Gom means meditate. That's the process of Buddhist learning. There's a word.

What is that? The process of education. I'll think of it after we leave.

So first we spend hours with our teacher. Then we spend hours staring out the window and thinking about it on the shuttle. And then we spend hours in meditation on it.

And that's the method of education in Tibet. And it's a good method. Anyway, he says, our problem is when we listen, we can't retain anything.

When we think about it, we don't understand anything. And when we meditate, nothing happens in our heart. Then he says, LO'I THOS GZHIN DU MYUR BA MYUR BA THOS GZHIN DU CHUNG BA We don't have very powerful minds.

DUS SU And if that's what's happening with you or with me, GZHIN GYIS THOS LA BRTEN NAS MEN NGA' IN then we should ask for help from the garden. We should ask the garden for help. We should go to the garden.

So this whole thing is going to be about who is the garden, what happens in the garden. You should seek the garden. THEN MEN NGA' IN MEN NGA' IN means this is the private advice of all the lamas.

This is what they whisper to you in private. MEN NGA' IN GSUNGS PA LTAR RANG RE'I RNAMS LAS KYI BRGYAD PA THUG PO RANG RE, again he uses that, what? RANG RE Yeah, he uses the inclusive first person.

People like us, which is a joke. He doesn't have problems like that. But he's like, oh, guys like you and me, we have LAS KYI BRGYAD PA, we have karmic obstacles in our mind.

THUG PO What's THUG PA? THUG PA is Tibetans rag out stew. You throw in all your leftovers and you make a stew.

THUG PO isn't the same as THUG PA. THUG PO means thick. So we have karmic obstacles.

THUG PO Not THUG PA THUG PA is also a karmic obstacle if you eat too much before class. Okay, THUG PA. THUG PO NUS PA This NUS PA is the same as GNAS DU NUS PA MA MAHARTA MA MAHARTA, sorry.

Yeah, to press on a crucial point. So in yoga, in tantra, when we do yoga, we are trying to reach certain crucial parts in the chakras that will change your meditation. So NUS means to press.

But here, what's pressing on us is very thick karmic shadows or blocks. THUG PA BYAS KYANG Even though we sit in the class, GCIG MI BZIN means we can't retain things. In Tibet that can also mean we have trouble memorizing stuff.

But I'm not even asking you to memorize, so don't. You're worse than that. Okay.

SANG KYANG SANG KYANG DON GYUR BZHIN MI DGONG means and I think about what the Lama said, but I can't get all of it. DGONG KYANG THOB PA RGYUD LA MI KHYAD And I meditate, but I don't have any breakthroughs. MI KHYAD BAR MI KHYAD BAR U THUG Those of you who are learning Tibetan, that's a pretty cool idiom.

It's the last word. Say U THUG. U THUG means let me get it right, desperate.

U THUG PAS SKABS means we are in a desperate straits. Desperate straits. We are in desperate straits.

Our situation is desperate. U THUG like I'll give you a good example of U THUG. I used to go hunting with my father.

He trained me when I was a kid to shoot guns and high-powered rifle later. Then he took me out hunting and we went with two other people one time in the snow, deep snow, on a mountain and they got lost. They got lost in the forest and we looked for them all night.

We couldn't find them. So they were huddled under some bushes and trying not to freeze to death. One guy had to poop.

So he pooped. But the only paper he had in his pocket was dollar bills. U THUG NAS He used them.

That's a good example of U THUG. U THUG means like Okay. Alright.

It means when you are really desperate. Okay. Okay.

U THUG PAS We are U THUG PAS. We are U THUG because we have these karmic blocks and we study and we can't remember anything. And we meditate and nothing happens.

GAB SHING KHYER PAR CHEN There was a good ending. I mean, we found them the next day and I stopped hunting. I shot one deer and I cleaned it with my own hands.

The heart was still beating. And then I told my dad I can't do this anymore. He was really angry.

Not a terrible thing to do. Okay, anyway. KHYER PAR CHEN LA SU BWAN DAB ZHING So we have to find a garden.

We have to find a special garden. We should plant our prayers in that garden. And we should clean the weeds from that garden.

I spent all day yesterday cleaning weeds. I have a special method. The ground is so hard at my place.

It's all rock that I use a hammer to weed. The claw, the back of the hammer, I just... And maybe I can get a little weed out.

I spent the whole day yesterday. Anyway, that's cleaning out. I also went skateboarding, Alejandro, because I'm trying to get it back.

Soksak. We have a plan, but it's going to take a while. Soksak Jipjangne.

I went to Nyingbo's house and skateboarded. If your neighbors tell you somebody was there, that's the only sidewalk around in about 20 miles. Soksak Jipjang.

We should weed our garden. NYUR DU BA GNAD DUG DRO YIN And then you'll be able to make quick progress. Go to the garden, plant some seeds.

Go to the garden, pull out some weeds, and you'll be able to make quick progress. NYUR DU BA GNAD DUG DRO YIN DE YANG BRJOD TSUN BRJAMS PA'I YANG RANG RTSUNGS SKABS PAR CHEN POS One day, RTSUNGS SKABS PAR said to his Lama, who was Manjushri, THOB PA NYUR DU RGYUD LA SKYE BA'I THOB GANG LA PA'I DGOS This is the kind of thing you can ask your root Lama. How can I get realizations quickly?

How can I make a breakthrough quickly? Like for someone who's been studying, he had been studying for 20 years at that point, it's like a question you'd be embarrassed to ask anybody else. How can I get things moving?

It's not happening for me. RTSUNGS SKABS DRIB BYANG LA BAS PA DANG You have to plant special seeds in the garden, and you have to pull weeds out of the garden. BAS means you have to work on that.

NYER LEN GYI RGYU MI RNAMS KYANG BA GSUM BRDZI LA BAS DGOS NYER LEN GYI RGYU means that you have to work on the things that will trigger. You have to work on the actual practice, three practices that will trigger progress in you. There are three things that will trigger progress in you.

GSUM BRDZI LA So I guess he's going to list them now. GSUM BRDZIL The word BRDZIL, those of you who are learning Tibetan, BRDZIL means all wrapped into one. When you use, what do they call that stuff?

Glad wrap? To wrap up cake or something? That's BRDZIL.

But in practice, it means to do two or three things together, wrap them together. GSUM BRDZIL LA BAS DGOS GSUNGS PA LTAR SOGS SOGS GRIB BYANG GI RGYU MIN PA DANG GZU BA LTA BU'I CHEN LAB ZHUGS PA MED PAR MIG RNAMS KYANG BA LA GSUM KHUL BYAS KYANG LTA BU'I KHYO BA LA GZHIN GYIS BU ZHING GYIS MIN SOGS SOGS Say it, SOGS SOGS GRIB BYANG So we talked about that idea already when we talked about sweeping your room. You're supposed to think, the mantra that the guy got, little path, the mantra he got was SOGS SOGS GRIB BYANG.

SOGS SOGS means try to make more good karma. GRIB BYANG means try to get rid of your negative karmas. GYI RGYU LA MIM PA And that will ripen your, RGYU means your mental continuum, the stream of your mind.

In Sanskrit it's called, Santana. Seriously. The word for mental continuum in Sanskrit is Santana.

Okay. Now you won't forget. GYI RGYU MIM PA So that will ripen your Santana.

SO BA LTA BU'I GYIN LA GZHUGS PA MED PAR MIG RNAMS KYANG BA SO BA LTA BU'I means ask for help. Okay, ask for help. GYI RGYU MIM PA GZHUGS PA MED PAR MIG RNAMS KYANG BA LA TSUN KHUR BYED KYANG If you don't do these three things, so now we have the three things, okay?

Collecting new good karma, just before you meditate. Cleaning out the old bad karma, and asking for help. Okay, those three things.

So GYI RGYU MIM PA If you don't do that before a lamrim meditation session, or before trying to practice the Lam Rim. MIG RNAM KYONG BA LA TSUM KHUL BYAS KYANG You can try. The KHUL we talked about before, right?

A couple days ago. KHUL means, you know, supposedly you can meditate. Okay.

KHUL DGOS DZIN THA'I LAS BU RGYUR How do you say in Spanish? Salud. Yeah.

Zdarong. TSUM KHUL BYAS means, we had it a couple days ago. KHUL means, you can say you're practicing, but nothing's going to happen.

KHUL means, you can say, I mean, you can try, but nothing's going to happen. BYAS KYANG THOB PA SKYE BA LA GZHIN DU BUL It's going to be GZHIN DU BUL. GZHIN DU BUL means slow-mo.

It's going to be extremely slow. Okay. Progress will be very slow.

So this kind of should have caught your interest now. A lot of us have been practicing for a long time. And we go through good periods and then we go through lousy periods when it feels like nothing's happening.

Like we're doing our meditation, we're doing our yoga, and it just doesn't feel like anything's happening. There's no big progress. We don't feel these big breakthroughs that we had the first year that we were practicing, right?

So then you have to pay attention to what he's going to say here. RGYUD MIN NA RGA TSE BLA MI LTOS PAR THOB PA SKYE BA NYUR BA KHYON MIN PA SNAM KHYON MIN PA, not MIN PA DUL LA BA LTA BU DANG NYIN TE MIN PA SHIN TOG MIN PA NA RANG ZHUGS KYI RTZA LA SDUG BSNGAL GZHING RGYUD MIN NA RGA TSE BLA MI LTOS PAR THOB PA SKYE BA NYUR BA If you want to ripen your santana, your mental stream, and if you don't want to go through a lot of hard, if you don't want it to be difficult, RGA TSE means difficult, okay? It's an old word for difficult. If you want things to happen quickly, then there's something you have to do, okay?

What's KHYON? KHYON MIN DU KHYON means problem, okay? There's a joke in Tibet.

KHYON MIN DU means no problem. And the Tibetans in India, they got to India and they learned, the Indians would, they'd say, can we get some rice today? And they'd say, no problem, sir.

And then the Tibetans would say, what's he saying? Oh, he's saying KHYON MIN DU, okay. No problem means KHYON MIN DU.

And then there came to be this joke that in India, when someone tells you there's no problem, there's a problem. Can I get to Delhi by three o'clock? Oh, no problem.

Mr. Smith was on the train platform in Mumbai with Mr. Raghu. Mr. Raghu was explaining to Mr. Smith that the trains are always late and not to be upset. The train was supposed to come at three o'clock.

This is a true story. And at three o'clock, the train rolled into the station. And Mr. Smith said to Mr. Raghu, you told me the trains were always late, but it's right on time. He says, Osler, this is yesterday's train. Okay. Anyway, so you won't forget KHYON now.

KHYON means no problem. KHYON means problem. KHYON MIN PA When your problems are ripe, when you've lived with your problems long enough.

GNOG MIN PA It's like a blister when it's old. Like, I don't know about you, did your parents ever tell you, don't pop the blister too early. Let it sit for a while and it gets more and more, I don't know, mature or something.

It gets, I don't know. They say don't pop a blister. Just let it sit for a while, right?

And then it will, underneath the skin will strengthen and then it will be, you won't get infected. So don't pop it for a while. If you don't relate to blisters, then you were never a teenager maybe.

And sat in high school, sit there with a needle and alcohol trying to get all the zits popped before you went to school. And you have to wait till they're ripe. If you pop them too early, they just get worse.

So you use Claracil until they're kind of puffy and then you pop them. You see what I mean? Okay, I don't know.

That's what I did in high school. I didn't think there'd ever be a day when I didn't have zits. But anyway, now I wish I had the zits when I was 16.

Okay. Anyway, it means wait until the blister is, is, what do you call that? Ripe or something, okay?

Before you pop it. Dunlawa means, dullawa means, then it's easy to pop, okay? Dull means to pop a blister.

Lawa means easy. Tabu dang. Nyun den minpa.

And on the other hand, when you're trying to develop a good quality, shing thok means, shing thok means a fruit of a tree, like apples or oranges are shing thok. Min na, if it's ready, if the fruit is ready, rang shuk gi sa la tung. It will fall on the ground by itself, okay?

When, when the apple falls to the ground or the plum falls to the ground, it's, it's, it's totally ripe. It will tell you, I'm ripe. It will fall.

shing long chu du rungwa tabu yin And then it's okay to eat it. je tsongkapa chenpoy kyang What it means is you have to get your negativities to a point of a good zit to pop. And then you got to get your good qualities to the point of a totally ripe banana or something like that, okay?

And not try to eat it too soon. He'll explain more. je tsongkapa chenpoy kyang rang chak la dangpay chir ulga chu rungwa chak dang mendel sok sak chang labo ched zeb pa na papa yab se nga shal shik te Then he's going to tell a story about Je Tsongkapa, okay?

Je Tsongkapa in his lifetime did do a three-year retreat. He did do a long retreat with his students. And he had at the time hundreds of students and he chose eight.

He only let eight students go with him. And if you look at the paintings in the painting book, there's a cute little painting of them in a koa. Koa means a coracle in English, which means a leather, a boat made of leather.

You take a big yak hide and sew two or three of them together. And then you have a frame which is like bamboo. And this is how you cross a river in Tibet.

Because Tibet at that time didn't have bridges. So it was very common to, and Tibet's full of rivers and creeks and streams because of the Himalayas. So if you're just walking 20 miles, you might have to cross five or six major rivers without bridges.

So there'll be a guy, there'll be an old guy sitting there with a koa, you know, and he'll say 20 bucks and you'll say 10 and then he'll say 18. And then they can also carry horses. And one man can carry them on his back.

They're very interesting. Anyway, there's a nice picture of him crossing the Tsangtse River to go to Uga. Uga is where he did his three-year retreat, his long retreat.

Uga Chulung Du, he went to Uga. I'm not sure it was three years. It might've been a little shorter.

But he did take off in the middle of the height of his fame. He took off for a long retreat with eight of his students. Nam dak kye, the pure eight.

He went to Uga. And then you'll notice, I want you to draw your attention to something in the Tibetan. It's rang chak la dam pa'i che.

You got that, Nina? It's at the end of the second paragraph. Rang chak la dam pa'i che means, what's dampa in kadampa?

Dam means to instruct somebody. Rang chak means us guys. Yeah.

But rang chak la dampa means, he was sending us a message. The idea is, oh, he was enlightened a zillion years ago. It's not like he needed to do all this stuff.

But he's just showing us what we should be doing. That's the idea. Rang chak la dampa means, cheer.

Cheer here means for the purpose of showing us what to do. But not because he needed to do it. Okay.

Sometimes namas do that. Rang chak la dampa che, in order to show us what to do, he went to Uga. He did a long retreat.

And he did chak and mandalas. Chak tselo. He just did like hundreds of prostrations.

Khenpo Rinpoche, until he was quite old, did prostrations in the temple. And he had a special board. Like a 10-foot board.

And he would do the prostrations on there. And he had two sheepskin hand holder things. And he could slide better.

Like that. So he did a lot of prostrations. And mandala.

Mandala. He did a lot of mandala offerings. The long ones.

23 piles of stuff. Mandala. So sak chak lapo che dze pa na.

And then that was for the purpose of collecting some good karma. Extra good karma. Before he did his retreat.

You see what I mean? Going into his retreat, he did all these practices to collect some good karma. Tse pa na, BAB PA YOD SEMS NA GZHEL GZIG STE Because of that, because of those offerings and because of those prostrations, he had a vision.

He had a vision. And he saw BAB PA YOD SEMS NA. BAB PA means the Arya.

Who would that be? Nagarjuna. He saw Nagarjuna.

And his spiritual son. Aryadeva. He saw Arya Nagarjuna and his spiritual son Aryadeva.

Then there were three other guys in the vision. I can't remember. Chandrakirti must have been there.

Buddha Palita was there. And I think it was Vidya Kokila. Anyway, there were five great Indian masters he saw in a vision.

Because he did the garden. That's garden activity. He did garden.

He went to the garden. Garden means he did his prostrations. He did his mandala offerings.

He tried to collect some good karma. And then he has this vision of the five great masters of emptiness in ancient India. It's in the book.

It's in the art book. There's a nice... And I think Ori did a painting of it, right?

Buddha Palita. Her son did an extraordinary painting. He did about five or six really extraordinary paintings for that book.

Baroque style and big, like 10 feet big. And extraordinary paintings of what was going on. So he did that vision.

SIGS DE DE SNANG GI SANGS RGYAS KYANG GYI BRAL BA BUDDHA PALITA'I RGYAS PA'I PHYIN GYIS BSLAB PA'I SIGS SNANG BCUNG BA DE SNANG GI Of the five great masters, SANGS RGYAS KYANG SANGS RGYAS KYANG is a master who wrote a book about emptiness. After Nagarjuna. And he wrote a book called Buddha Palita.

The book is called Buddha Palita. The author's name is SANGS RGYAS KYANG. The author's name translated into Sanskrit is SANGS RGYAS BUDDHA KYANG PALITA The book is called the guy's name.

It's like calling Nick's commentary on emptiness, Nick. Okay, got it? The book is called Buddha Palita.

The Lama's name was Buddha Palita. RGYAS PA'I Those of you who care, we got like two minutes, hang in there. I'm not trying to confuse you or overwhelm you, but you should know the history of things.

The Buddha taught emptiness. It got corrupted after 700 years. Nagarjuna came and cleaned it up.

Then people started explaining Nagarjuna. Buddha Palita explained Nagarjuna. Then somebody criticized Buddha Palita and said he didn't do it correctly.

That was Baba Viveka. Then Chandrakirti came in the 7th century or something. 6th, 7th century.

And he defended Buddha Palita against Baba Viveka. They're both gone for a long time, right? Then that defense of somebody's explanation of Nagarjuna became the basis of all emptiness teachings in all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.

That's why it's important. Anybody who studies emptiness in a Tibetan tradition is studying Chandrakirti, who was defending Buddha Palita. So Je Tsongkapa, because he was doing all these mandalas and stuff, he has a vision of Buddha Palita.

He sees Buddha Palita's book written across the sky. That'd be nice in a movie too. I don't know.

He sees the words written across the sky. ,GZHEL GZIGS TE, ,DE NA SANGS RGYAS GYENGYI BRTAG PA BUDDHA PANIR GYI, ,RGYAS PA'I CING GI LAS PA'I GZIGS RNAMS, He saw it in the Sanskrit. ,RGYAS PA'I means the...

,RGYAS DGAR GYIS PA'I means the Sanskrit, the original Sanskrit. And he got the blessing of that. And it's said that he saw emptiness directly shortly after that.

What they're trying to say is that Je Tsongkapa himself saw emptiness directly by going to the garden. He went to the garden. It wasn't from the study so much.

It was from these practices that we do to collect good karma before we meditate. That's pretty powerful. Then he saw emptiness.

They say he saw emptiness directly. I'm going to stop there because we can pick up from there. There's a little bit more of that story here.

[Говорящий 2] (1:04:39 - 1:04:39)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (1:04:39 - 1:04:40)
You ready? Are you sure?