«Дар освобождения», курс 8 «Учимся быть тихими», занятие 14

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 10:42)
We just started talking about the garden. There's a visualization called the garden. It's the fourth step of the six steps for preparing for a meditation.

First one was cleaning your room. Second one was setting up an altar, taking refuge. No, sorry, setting up an altar, making offerings.

Third one was taking refuge and learning to sit correctly, posture. Then now we're on to the fourth one, which is called the garden. Meaning, just before you meditate, you should crank up your good karma and you should take care of your bad karma.

Any immediate bad karmas, like maybe the day before or that morning you yelled at somebody or something like that. Then you won't be able to meditate well. You have to do this garden thing.

DE LTA BU SOGS BYANG SON DEP We're on 93B, fourth line, Mingpo. 93B, fourth line. DE LTA BU SOGS BYANG SON DEP GANG LA BYAS YUL When you do these three steps, which were collect new seeds, clean out all bad seeds, and ask for help.

Those are the three steps that we're going to be doing here. When you do those three, you will be doing them towards somebody. In the visualization, there'll be somebody towards whom you're doing that.

You need to do them with a powerful object. That object is called SOGS SHING. Say SOGS.

SOGS SHING What's that mean? I'm calling it garden, right? In Tibetan, it's called SHING means garden or field, a farmer's field.

And SOGS means collecting good karma. Then he says, it's very important, he says, to do the practice of the garden. It's crucial before you meditate.

You must do the practice of the garden. Therefore, he says, we have made a whole separate category of it. It gets to be one of the six.

It's so important that it gets to be one of the six. ZAD PA YIN SOGS SHING ZHAD PA I like this part, and maybe it's very, what do you call it, auspicious that we end on this part. He says, why do we call it the garden?

Why is that visualization called the garden of good karma? Why do we call it the karma of good garden? It's because it's a garden where you collect karma.

Then he's going to explain more. ZHES BYAR SHING DE YANG JIG RTEN NA SHING STON THOG LEGS POR SKYE BA ZHIG YOD NA DE LA BYAS TE SU BRDZIN PA LTAR I have a small house, and the land around the house is a little bit bigger than a postage stamp. It's all really bad soil.

It's all rock. I'm on the very, very top of a mountain, on a mesa. It goes like this, and like this, and I'm on the edge.

Then there's a cliff down to a very beautiful river. There's a little tiny deer trail and you can kind of get down to the river, take off your clothes, nobody's there. It's really beautiful.

The river is very deep in Arizona. You can sit like that. It goes up to your chest.

You can almost get under the water if you're up flat. Anyway, I have been pulling rocks out of there for three years now. I have a huge pile of rocks, a very, very big pile of rocks.

Now it has a beautiful, beautiful garden. The whole thing is spread with roses and flowers. Very, very, very beautiful.

I love the land. I've come to love the land because there's so little of it. I got all the rocks out and there wasn't much left.

But now that's very dear to me. So he says, that field, you should feel like it's dear to you. CET RJES SU ZIN PA means the field that should be very dear to you.

Because this is where you plant your garden. The field should be very dear to you. DIR YANG SRAGS CAN SEMS DEB LA BO CHE ZHING DI LTA BU NEN DEN GYI SEMS DEB DGOS So then you have to work the field.

You have to plant the field. And a good garden is a living thing, right? You go away for three days and you come back and it's full of weeds again.

And you're like, who's planting all the weeds while I'm gone, you know? And you can't leave it. It's a living thing.

And you have to spend, as the summer goes on, you live with it. And you come to love it. DI LTA BU NEN DEN GYI SEMS DEB So you have to work hard to plant your field.

Which means, as you meditate, you have to focus on this field, this garden. JIG RTEN GYI ZHING LA THUN GYI GAL GAL BUD GAL LAS LHAG MIN BYUNG YANG Then in a worldly field, in a worldly garden, you can plant seeds and they will grow. Like I planted, what do you call, watermelon, right?

And basil and chilies and roses and, I don't know, hundreds of things. And the seeds are amazing, right? Like, it's maybe the smallest thing you can buy, I think, right?

In the normal world, you go to buy seeds and there's a big package like this and you open it and you have to, you know, and in the little corner, in the bottom, there's these little black things and you're like, where's the seeds, you know? And they're cheap, right? They're like 10 cents, you know?

And they're so common. And you take those little tiny seeds, like watermelon seeds, you know, and you plant them. And it's just a little bump like this.

You plant them in the dirt and you, watermelon, right? And then after like three months, it's half the size of this room. It's spreading all, like you plant like 20 watermelon seeds and they're spreading everywhere, okay?

So you get a big return on tiny little seeds, right? In a garden, in a normal garden. But, dirni, in this practice, saban dramo chön la'ang, even if you just plant tiny seeds, what's that mean?

You are visualizing your teacher, right? And you are asking them for help, like that. And you are saying, I would like to clean out these little bad things I did yesterday, okay?

Those tiny seeds, just five minutes, watching your teacher's eyes love you in the golden room, right? Just looking at how they love you, their eyes, right? Just for five minutes.

That's a tiny little, right? Seed. LHAG PO BYED PAG TU MED PA BYUNG Infinite results.

He says, forget those worldly seeds. Little tiny watermelon seeds make huge garden. He says, that's nothing.

DREG BSKAL BU SKAL means, you might get a, what do you call it? In Tibet, they measure grains by, BAMO means this. How much result did you get from your seed package?

And they'll say, look, I got a BAMO. Or I got a SKAL. SKAL is a little box like that.

They measure grain in little boxes in Tibet. They measure the result in little wooden boxes called a SKAL, okay? So maybe, like Jesus said, right?

A lot of this stuff about seeds, if you grew up as a Christian or you live in a Christian country, Jesus, a lot of that stuff is really good. He talked a lot about seeds. Don't plant seeds in rocky places.

And then he talked a lot about how much yield you get. So he's talking here about yield. A normal seed, you might get 10 times yield, 30 times yield.

But with karmic seeds, with visualizing your teacher and watching their eyes as they love you, you're talking. He says, PHAG TU MED PA. PHAG TU MED PA means 10,000, 50,000, 100,000.

The karma is more powerful. Mental seeds are more powerful. The yield is high yield.

JIG RTEN PA'I ZHING LA SOGS NAM DU RE LAS MI BYUNG RUNG In a worldly field, you are limited by the times you can plant. Where I live on the mountain, the winters are severe. We can't plant a lot of things.

You have to plant early in the... We have to plant at the right time. And if a freeze comes, it kills everything.

Then you have to try to plant fast again. And then maybe by October, you have something to eat if the raccoons don't get it. This year, they took the corn and the plums.

And I'm watching... Him and me are watching the watermelon. I told my garden teacher, I said, they have some kind of clairvoyance, you know.

And they know the day before you're going to pick the watermelon, they eat it first. So anyway, there is a timing. By the way, some people bought me a tree and thank you for that.

There's a tree called the carob tree, which only grows really well in deserts in Italy or Spain. And so when I was growing up, I had a carob tree. Where I met my teacher was...

[Говорящий 2] (10:43 - 10:43)
Where?

[Говорящий 1] (10:44 - 16:10)
Under a carob tree, some picture. And so I'm trying to grow a carob tree there, which is illegal. It's too cold for them.

But some people got me a tree, so thank you for that. It was on a 120-foot crane. It's a 20-foot tree.

They lifted it off the cliff, the top of the cliff, and then they went over the house and they put it in the back. It's really beautiful. It's scary.

Anyway, DE NI DE LAS KYI SA BON DU SHIG YON CHEN MED PA But these karmic seeds, you can plant all the time. DU SHIG means the four seasons, right? Winter, fall, whatever, spring, summer.

You can plant karmic seeds all the time. There's no limitations. It's like Phoenix.

Okay. It's hot all the time. CHEN MED PAR BTAB CHOG PA DE LTAR BU ZHAG ZHING LA GSON NAM KYI SA BON CHUN GYUR MA CHUNG BA LUS NA SHIN GYUG PANG PA YIN TE If you were to leave that field fallow, if you were not to plant in this field when you had a chance, it would be like leaving a good field empty all summer, and the weeds would take it over.

I guess it's the same in your mind too, right? There's a negative side. If you're not visualizing your teacher or beautiful things, then the mind tends to fixate on little problems and stupid people, right?

Your whole mind space is taken up by irritating people in your life, right? So there's kind of a, if you plant it with good things, you also don't have time to think about the stupid people in your life. Okay, like that.

So it's useful. Okay, last thing. DI'I PHYI LAS CHE He's going to quote Je Tsongkapa, which I think is a nice place to end the class for the week.

You remember. ZHAG ZHING LA GSON NAM KYI SA BON CHUNG PA YIN TE JE TSONGKAPA CHEN POS DI'I PHYI DE LAS THAMS CAD SBYUNG BA'I ZHING SA THAMS PA THU ZHIG THAMS CAD DU RGYUN CHEN MED PAR DE LAS KYI SA BON THAB PA'I CHOG PA DE LA YANG THEG PA'I ZHUL GYIS SON NAM KYI ZHING MED PAR GCIG CHE SDO LAS ZHING PA LTAR BYA RGYUD MA CHUNG NA CHE ZHING DU SPANG PA YIN NO Okay, last words of the text, okay? And I have to mark it because I always forget where I stopped.

So quoting Je Tsongkapa CHEN POS DI'I PHYI DE LAS THAMS CAD SBYUNG BA'I ZHING The place where you plant all the happiness of this life and after this life, that highest garden of all, which you can plant in all seasons. DE LAS KYI SA BON THAB PA'I You can plant the seeds of your happiness using the plow of faith. ZHUL means plow.

Okay, using the plow of faith where you can plant your good karmas. The sutras tell us, don't waste it. Don't waste the chance, okay?

If you have five minutes on the subway, or if you're stuck on Senator Highway in Prescott behind a big earth-moving machine for half an hour, don't waste your time. Then think of your teacher and plant some seeds. Plow your field.

And huge results will come, okay? You never have any wasted time anymore. The plane is delayed by half an hour.

Rather than wandering around the Cinnabon place. It's really cruel to send the Cinnabon smells throughout the airport because they're so bad for you. So sit down, don't wander around.

Just think about your teacher and plant some seeds because the results will come. Huge, fantastic results will come from little seeds, from five minutes thinking about your teacher. BYA RGYUD MA BYUNG NA If you don't take those little chances to think about your own teacher, whoever it is, or if you don't have a teacher yet, then imagine one because it will plant them.

They will come. Maybe they'll be on the plane if you don't eat the Cinnabon and meditate a little bit. Okay, CHE BZHIN DU SPANG PA YIN NO Then you would be a fool to waste that time.

He doesn't say that. SPANG PA means it would be a shame to lose that chance. The field is precious.

The season is now. The field is available. Plant something there.

Take the chance, okay? Gonzalo asked me a question. I got to answer it.

I promised him. Where, where, where? Oh, dang.

What was that question? Do you remember, Floppy? Do you remember the question?

[Говорящий 2] (16:10 - 16:16)
The question was, how can we do to plant seeds in his life for not being corrupted?

[Говорящий 1] (16:18 - 24:28)
Oh yeah, good. And I had a good answer but I don't remember. We were talking about like creepy businessmen or creepy government officials and it was...

How would you... What seeds would you plant? Oh, okay, I got it.

I remember. Can you plant a seed which gives you a guarantee that you won't have something crummy happen to you in your next life? Basically the question was that.

Like, is there a seed that you can plant which is sort of like a guarantee? Is there a special seed you can plant? I don't care.

I can be born as a, you know, exotic dancer in a bar or I could be born as a, you know, soccer player in, you know, some terrible place in some place. You know, like, I don't care. All those are okay.

But I don't want to be a corrupt businessman or I don't want to be a government official. I don't want to be a creepy guy. Is there a guaranteed safety karma?

That, okay, anything else I don't mind but I don't want to be a creepy guy, you know, doing this, hurting the people in the government or something like that. Are there seeds that are sort of like guarantees that you're not going to be something? And there is, okay?

There are things called gokpa saban. These are seeds that guarantee that certain bad stuff won't happen to you in your next life, okay? And there's a list, okay?

But the most important one is jolam chö. Jolam chö means after you start coming to class and you reach a certain point in your practice of understanding the pen, okay? So it's an interesting answer, okay?

The only thing that can guarantee that you won't have weird bad karma to have something happen to you after you die is keep thinking about the pen. And I would say with that, really, it's thinking about this and it will protect you from weird bad rebirth happening to you next time. It cannot happen to you that you will have some really weird bad rebirth if you get hit by a truck or something, okay?

Think about how things don't work, okay? Think about how things don't work. You could take the example of an aspirin, okay?

So everybody gets headaches, I think. I haven't met anybody who didn't get headaches. And I get some sometimes.

I had a really bad one last week. I was throwing up, you know? I do that like every six months or something.

And I think most people get occasionally a really bad headache, right? And then you're like desperate, you know? You've got all these bottles.

You open the cabinet and there's bottles in the back, you know, because I don't get them very often. And I'm like, show everything else. And I'm looking at the choices, you know?

There's Tylenol, Excedrin, Advil, Bayer's, you know? You have a selection and you're desperate. And you're like, which one's going to work?

And a Buddhist person protects themselves from weird lives next time by remembering that none of them works, okay? Look at the whole row of bottles in the medicine cabinet. It's kind of hard when you have a pounding headache, you know?

I mean, doing this practice when you have the headache, it's not too easy. But you're like looking there and it's none of them will work, okay? What do you do?

At that moment, dedicate yourself to helping other people who are in pain, okay? They don't know what to do with their life. They're having trouble with their boyfriend.

Their mother is very sick and they're very worried about her, you know? Think, you know your hand reaches for one of the bottles, right? And think, none of this stuff works anyway.

It's all just neutral chemicals. They do not work. Take the bottle.

Look at the bottle. Say, you know, I'm going to help other people with what I know, okay? With what I learned, I'm going to help other people.

Then take the aspirin, okay? Because that's the active ingredient, okay? There is no active ingredient in the aspirin, I swear.

The more you understand that, the more you can protect yourself in your next life, okay? There's nothing in the aspirin that can help me, nothing. There's nothing in steel or concrete that can hold up a building, nothing.

There's no chemicals in there. I gave a talk at Princeton to the physicists. I told you, like my next book is...

Stephen Hawking's publisher came. I said, listen to this. Tell Stephen Hawking.

There's a guy, there's a Buddhist monk in America writing a book called A Better History of Time, okay? Because the truth of atomic forces is that steel doesn't work. Concrete doesn't work.

It does nothing, okay? It does not hold up a building. There's nothing in steel that can hold up a building.

There's nothing in concrete that would hold up a building. The first time I gave this talk was in New York in 2000. And we were all looking at the World Trade Center.

And I was saying, even that cannot stay up. There's nothing in the steel in that building. And there's nothing in the concrete in that building which can keep it up if the karma runs out.

Then it will fall. Even that will fall, you know? We were there.

I was pointing to the building. It was weird after I got out through the trees. People were telling me about 9-11, okay?

What keeps a building up is helping homeless people. What keeps a building up is helping homeless people. And if you don't, the building will fall.

It has to fall, okay? All right? So how do you protect yourself?

Just understand what's keeping things up, okay? Then nothing bad can happen. You will not be a corrupt government official, okay?

All right? That's my answer for Kosala. You have to tell him.

All right, let's do a mandala. It's also a custom at the end of a course not to bow to the teacher. That's a Tibetan custom.

And it means we have unfinished business between us. So we will have to meet again, okay, to work out our unfinished business. Mark, you ready?

Okay, good job.