«Дар освобождения», курс 9 «Семь дверей медитации», занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
All right, then we'll start. There's a second quotation by Je Tsongkapa on the importance of the field, the lama field. ,ZHING GI CHO LA THAR MED PA'I ZHING GI MTHONG TZAM YANG MED PA, There's a mistake in the Tibetan, but there's no one to show the Tibetan.

I understand. The mind that starts with MED PA. D-O-KUL is misspelled.

It should be D space O. Possibly D-I space, possibly O. D-O-KUL DANG TZAM YANG MED DU.

So ZHING GI CHOG. Here's the CHOG spelled with an M, which means supreme. So the highest of all fields, ZHING GI CHOG LA THAR MED.

THAR MED you know because THAR MED NANG BZHAN is the greatest sin in the secret teachings. Yeah, see things as ordinary. My world is not magical.

It's more dangerous in the secret teachings than murder. THAR MED KYIS, of course murder is very bad also. To see things as ordinary is worse.

THAR MED KYIS ZHING GI CHOG LA THAR MED PA'I ZHING GI MTHONG TZAM YANG MED PA means we don't even see our teachers as a potential ordinary field, much less a special one. We don't consider them. When our teacher walks by, we don't say, oh, wait, I got a chance to plant a seed.

Slow down. Can I do something like that? We don't even think of them as a normal field, much less the highest field there is.

Like you see an important person, Richard Gere comes to your teaching in New York, right? And you're thinking of things to ask him to support. Like you're looking at him like, this is a field.

I could plant some seeds here. And then not to see your teacher as that, as a big opportunity. He says, MTHONG ZHANG BA MED DU MTHONG means a way of behaving.

Literally, it means a way of moving, and typically with a horse. So horses have different kinds of MTHONGs, a gallop or a gait, I forget, I don't know. So MTHONG means the way you move in a dance also.

So he says here, that's not a very good MTHONG, meaning it ain't a cool move. Literally, to not be aware that when your teacher's around, you have a good opportunity for planting. MED DU BYAS GSUNGS PA LTAR RE That's the end of his quotation.

By the way, that quotation comes from his lamrim, DING, the medium-length lamrim. So he did three major lamrims called shorter, medium, and greater. And then he did a bunch of small lamrims like LAM MTSON NAMSUMS, Three Principal Paths, etc.

YIN DIN ZHIG RIM MA could be considered one. What's that one? Source of All My Good.

Okay, here we go. NGO NA TSOGS SHING SEMS BDAG PA GZHIN DU GAL CHE BA DE LTAR YIN NA If asking the field of the lamas for help is so crucial, DE SEMS BDAG SOGS JI LTAR BYA'I DGOS Well, how do you do it? So how do I, sorry, SEMS BDAG is not the same as SUM BDAG.

Okay, be careful, I just made that mistake. SEMS BDAG means to visualize. SUM BDAG means to ask for help.

It's only one vowel difference. The rest of the spelling is the same. So how do you want me to visualize these people?

And for us, practically speaking, the question would be, how does it differ from the visualization for the refuge and taking bodhichitta? JI LTAR DGOS NYAMS NA GZHOR CHOS SO SO LA TSOGS SHING MIN DAG BA RE GSUNGS Each different version of the preliminary practices in the different lamrim texts has its own visualization for this practice, and they differ. They are not the same.

So it depends on which lamrim you want to follow. DA RE GSUNGS PAS Therefore, THOG MAR here at the beginning, SHU NA means how about I teach it to you according to LTAR NYUR LAM. Okay, what's NYUR LAM?

Quick path, also known as, in Tibet, also known as MAR CHI, which is written by Second Penchen Lama, which Tim is going to show right now, eventually. Okay, I think it's out of order. It's probably very early.

Second Penchen Lama, Losang Yeshe. SOGS SHING MA RGYAS GONG SNGA RGYAS KHYAB YUL DU LUG SOGS SHING MA RGYAS GONG means before we move on to visualizing the field of our lamas, SNGA RGYAS KHYAB YUL DU LUG, how are we supposed to dissolve the visualization we've been in of the refuge, of the people that were going for refuge? So we have to dissolve that visualization, and then we have to move on to the second visualization.

So how do we? There's the Second Penchen Lama. Who was the first one?

Losang Chekyi Gyatson. Who wrote? BELAN.

Okay, good. And billions of other things. DU LUG YIG CHAR SEL KHA'A MA GSUN YIG CHAR means in the traditional text, especially the monastic text, SEL KHA'A means clearly, MA GSUN.

It's not described clearly in the text. It's like, what are you supposed to do with the visualization you're on before you move on to this new visualization? It's not clearly stated in the text.

YOD PAS BDAM SNGA, say BDAM SNGA. It's probably misspelled actually. It's probably BDAM KHA, but anyway, BDAM KHA means you have a, what do you call it?

An option. What do you call it? BDAM KHA means you can choose.

Whatever's DE BA. Whatever's convenient for you. So there are options.

BDAM KHA means there are options in how you, what? Dissolve that first visualization. SEL KHA DE BA'I SEL KHA'A MA GSUN PA YIN This, I'm sorry.

Yeah, anyway. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

It says, I skipped a line. DU LUG MEN LAG MIN DRA BA GSUM YOD PAS There are three different ways according to oral tradition that you can dissolve that visualization. So you can choose whichever one you like because it's not clearly stated which one you should do.

DE GSUM NI, what are the three? SKYAB YOD NAM U ZER POR GYUR TE RANG GI MIN TZAM GZUGS BSTAN PA GCIG I showed a MIN TZAM, Mr. Tim, it's called Bindi or something like that. I picked it out this morning.

It was really cute. There she goes. So the opening of the central channel in the skull is here.

And that's a good place to meditate, Ajna Chakra. But in Tibetan, it's called MIN TZAM. MIN PA means your eyebrows.

TZAM means between, two eyebrows. But it's actually up a little bit and it's in about half an inch. And Indian women traditionally put a mark there called Bindi, a very old tradition to put it on that particular MIN TZAM.

So you can dissolve the first visualization into golden light. And then DIM PA means dissolve it into your MIN TZAM. Right here.

So the whole visualization can dissolve into golden light and then sucks in here. That's your MIN TZAM. So you can see where it is there.

I think it's an interesting custom. I don't know why it started, but it's an interesting custom. I believe it means you're married in India.

I don't know. Anyway, MI MED PA'I DGE DAG PA GCIG Or you can... The GCIG, by the way, means first you could do it this way or you could also do it this way, meaning one.

One way to do it is blah, blah, blah. One way to do it is blah, blah, blah. GCIG, GCIG, GCIG.

MI MED PA'I means what? MI MED PA'I. MED MED TSE BA'I DGAR CHEN CHEN MI ZHIG.

MI MED PA'I DGE DAG PA GCIG Yeah, MED PA'I is a verb, it's high tone. MED PA'. Here's MI MED PA'.

MED means I, low tone. MED means I. MED PA'I means to I.

You see what I mean? To look at. MI MED PA'I means not looking at.

Near Alambana. In yoga means what? What's a headstand near Alambana?

Yeah, no hands headstand. It's with no support. So MI MED PA'I means you can dissolve it into emptiness where you don't see anything anymore.

MI MED PA'. DGE DAG means you can visualize it that way. Or, YANG DIR BSKYAB YOD NAM NAM GAR BDEGS NAS OKHIT SOGS SHING SEL THAMS CAD NAS Or he says, you can take the previous visualization and move it up so you have space for the new one.

Okay, like raise it. Okay, raise it up. And then below you can visualize the SOGS SHING.

Okay, yeah, the second visualization. And then later you can YESHI BA CHUG PAS SKABS when you jam in the wisdom beings. Okay, what's that mean?

There's a tradition that you visualize a Lama and then you invite the real spirit of the Lama to come and, what do you call, occupy the visualized Lama. Which they say is really just a trick to get the disciple to grasp that the visualized Lama is real, is really there. So, it's an unnecessary exercise which is meant to sensitize the disciple to the fact that the visualized Lama is real.

And we'll get to that later. But the point is, you can raise up one set of Lamas, visualize a new set of Lamas, and then you can bring the real ones into the visualized ones and you'll believe that they're real. Okay, got it?

CHUG PAS SKABS SKYIMS DE GCIG DE GSUM DMAN NGAG ZHAL LA LTOS GCOD DKA' PA YIN DMAN NGAG ZHAL LA LTOS GCOD DKA' PA YIN I don't know what that means. I'll look it up. DMAN NGAG ZHAL LA LTOS GCOD DKA' PA YIN I got to look that up.

TSOGS SHING SANGS BDAG PA LA When you visualize the TSOGS SHING, DANG POR SA ZHIG CHEN LAB NI Now we're starting a huge, beautiful visualization of the field, of the garden, of your teachers. And first we have to bless the land on which they are going to sit. So first you bless the place.

DANG POR SA ZHIG SA ZHIG means what? Did you ever hear this expression before? SA ZHIG PO RGYUN GYUR ZHIG MOD TOG Say SA ZHIG.

The foundation of the earth. Now say SA ZHIG. The earth died.

So don't say SA ZHIG, PO RGYUN. Okay, SA ZHIG, PO RGYUN. Okay, SA ZHIG.

That used to be one of Rinpoche's pet peeves. Stop killing the ground. CHEN LAB NI So we're going to bless the surface of the earth before we allow our Lama to step upon it.

It's nice. Okay, SA ZHIG NI THAMS CAD DU NI Now he starts quoting a thing called, say, GYOR GCOD, GAL SANG, RGYUN YIN. This is a whole separate text for doing the Six Preliminary Practices that was composed by Pabongka Rinpoche's own Lama.

And we got that, what do you call it? We got that transmission very sweetly. Before Rinpoche would teach us Tantra, he required that we learn it, and I memorized it.

He asked us to memorize it. So in his summer retreats when he taught Tantra, the first year or two, he just taught the GYOR GCOD. He taught the six preliminaries, and he taught it from this text called GAL SANG, RGYUN YIN, which I'm having typed in in India right now, so they're typing it in.

Then maybe if you are good, we will go through the whole thing, maybe, all right? Maybe if we have time. I mean, let's just do it in Guadalajara or something.

Maybe I'll try to translate it or something, but it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful text. And so he keeps quoting it here, all right? He'll keep quoting it, but it's a very nice thing to memorize and to learn, especially before you learn Tantra.

So here we go. THAMS CAD DU NI SA ZHIG This is, he's quoting from the original, from the GAL SANG RGYUN RGYEN. GAL SANG means people who have good karma.

RGYUN means your throat. RGYEN means a necklace for your throat. Meaning if you have good enough karma, you will be able to sing this text.

It's sung in a very beautiful melody. Then that melody will be like a necklace on your throat. You see what I mean?

THAMS CAD DU NI SA ZHIG GYIS RANG GI ZHAG KU RTOG PO I put a ZHAG KU RTOG PO jigme. There's a ZHAG KU RTOG PO in there. It says small room or something like that.

This is all at Christine's house at the last minute. Say KU RTOG PO. KU RTOG PO This is a ZHAG KU RTOG PO.

ZHAG is the Tibetan word for a monk's cell. So in the monastery, they'll say, where's your ZHAG, man? And they say, I live over in Giron house, third floor.

That's ZHAG. It's only used for a monk's cells. KU RTOG PO means, RTOG PO means, how do you say?

Like an alleyway. Narrow or crowd. What do you call that?

Cramped is really good. What do you call that? People who don't like to be in small places.

Claustrophobically cramped space is called KU RTOG PO. So he refers to your ZHAG as KU RTOG PO. So I put a KU RTOG PO ZHAG.

Like there's no room for anything. This is a big hotel room on a DCI tour. Usually the bed touches both walls.

You just climb in with your luggage next to you and kind of try to sleep. Okay. So anyway, ZHAG KU RTOG PO.

By the way, there's a related word to say BUD ZHUG RTOG PO. BUD ZHUG RTOG PO. BUD ZHUG RTOG PO means a person who is claustrophobic mentally.

And it's a common expression in global Tibet. And it means someone who's just like uptight. It means uptight.

Narrow-minded, but not narrow-minded in the sense of not being open-minded. Narrow-minded in the sense of being too tight all the time mentally. So there's a word for that.

So this guy's BUD ZHUG RTOG PO. He's like uptight all the time. RTOG PO.

RTOG PO BSTAN DAR MI BSAM PA MI BSAM PA When you're visualizing the merit field, I hate to use that word, the Lama field or whatever. MI BSAM PA, KU RTOG PO. Yeah, don't think it's like some little place, like your room, like your monk cell.

Don't think, the visualization shouldn't be cramped. It should be, what do you call? It should be expansive.

Yeah, like it should just go on and on physically in your mind. And it's a good mental practice. I'm standing next to a mountain, chop it down with the edge of my hand, like that.

Like you should just be throwing around mountains and stars and planets and, oh look, these stars are a little too, not enough stars, let's put some more stars there. Your arms should be as big as the universe. And you're like, oh, I'd like Jupiter over there, Saturn over there.

Don't think your room. Don't think the new vision's windowless space. I was going to pay them to break some windows out.

But anyway, CHAG KU RTOG PO. Don't think like that. SHIN DU YANG PA Expansive, very expensive.

SHIN DU YANG PA THANG YANG PO GYUR LTA BU GOS THANG means a vast plain in the middle of Tibet. It's a THANG. THANG means, you know a Geshe named Langri Thangpa?

Who's that? He wrote the eight verses. He was from a place called Langri Thang, meaning the plains of Langri.

Meaning something like Kansas. Have you ever driven through Kansas? Like you fall asleep.

The roads are straight and there's nothing to distinguish one part of the state from another. It's just all dairy creams across a couple hundred miles. There's no other thing different.

So you should think like a THANG. That's a THANG, a plain. YANG PO means vast.

GYUR here means in the middle. So you should think of it, this whole visualization is going to take place in the middle of a vast plain. LTA BU KHO NYON PA KHO NYON PA means level.

It's very even. The place is very even. So now we're getting into what the world would be like if your karmic seeds were different.

What makes places, what gives places distinction topographically? Topography is created by your karma. The topography of where you live is created by your karma.

If you have a good karma, it'll be smooth and easy. Like my place, I bought a skateboard. I didn't buy a skateboard.

I wanted a skateboard. I planned it to be, the next day I met a guy who owned a skateboard company. He put a diamond on one and gave it to me.

But I don't have any place to use it because I just have dirt roads with stones on them. But your karma will change. If you collect good karma, your karma will change.

So KHO NYON PA means it'll be nice and level. SER GI SA ZHIG LA SER GI SA ZHIG means what? SER GI SA ZHIG.

According to Buddhist cosmology, the planet itself is made of gold. The core of Earth is made of gold. And like the magma inside the planet is gold.

Except it's a disk and it's not a ball. BA'I DOR YA BA'I DOR YA is the Tibetan mispronunciation of BA'I DOR YA, which means lapis lazuli. Lapis lazuli.

I have some. You ready? Okay, so this is a typical chunk of lapis.

Usually it comes from, a lot of it comes from Afghanistan. I used to buy it. I used to buy tons of it.

Then you cut it into jewels. So MIG MANG. MIG MANG in Tibetan gemology means these spots of gold, which are pyrite in the lapis.

So those spots of gold, or the eyes on a peacock's feather are called MIG MANG. So it means a pattern on a stone or on a feather. MIG MANG.

RIG SU GCIG PA'AM You can either picture a golden... Where are you going to put your Lama when you visualize your Lama? Make the floor pure gold and then spread lapis through it, lapis veins through it.

Or you can just make the whole floor lapis and have designs in it of gold. You have a choice. So you're designing the floor on which they're going to stand.

But it's not stone. GNAS NA NIM When you step on it, it has a little gear, like rubber or something. THEG NA BAR BYED When you lift up your foot, it comes back to normal.

It's like walking on a really good pair of running shoes or something. Or, okay, it's like it's stone, it's lapis, but it gives, it has give. This is supposed to be a description of Buddha paradise.

That's one of the features of a Buddha paradise. Everything is mellow. When you walk on the stone, on the lapis, on the gold, it's like walking on foam or something.

Pleasantly gives way. SREG NA DE BA SKYES PA SREG NA DE BA SKYES PA If you touch it with your feet, immediately you feel pleasure. It gives you a sensation of pleasure to walk on it.

BAR BAR DU RIN PO CHE BRJUN ZHING LA SPYUR PA'I BYANG NA TSOGS KYIS BAR BAR DU here means, what's BAR DO? The in-between state, right? BAR DO, okay, BAR DO.

BAR BAR means every once in a while, as you're walking across it, you would run into a RIN PO CHE ZHING. ZHING, not ZHING. What's that?

A tree made of jewel, like ruby. The whole tree is ruby. The whole tree is sapphire, like that, the whole thing.

RIN PO CHE, BRJUN ZHING means a fruit tree or ZHING. SPYUR PA'I BYA, then there are emanated BYA. This is the BRTUL in BRTUL KU, by the way, BRTUL KU.

BRTUL means emanated. So SPYUR PA'I BYA, what's a BYA? Bird, okay?

So there are magical birds. NA TSOGS means all kinds of magical birds. And they are not quacking or chirping.

They are SPYUR KYI BYA RGYOP PA. They are singing the Dharma. They are singing songs about emptiness or singing songs about compassion.

The birds are, when you listen to the birds, you hear, sometimes when you're in a real altered state, I know when my mom died, for like a day, all the winds sounded like her, her voice. Or you go to the ocean and you're in a good state of mind and the waves are teaching you something. The sound of the waves are teaching you something.

So in this exquisite place where you are going to invite your Lama to sit, there are trees made of jewels and there are birds in the trees and they are singing emptiness teachings. And they're singing. And I don't think it's verbal.

I think it's like you hear their song and suddenly you're transported into some kind of compassion. So it's a beautiful visualization. People complain, I don't like to visualize.

Why? They are visualizing a flat canvas covered with acrylic. And they're not visualizing a magical world where the birds are singing.

You hear the birds singing emptiness and stuff like that. Or you hear the, sometimes I hear a rock and roll song and I start to cry, like that. I mean, you hear something in the song, right?

Something like that. DGRA DU, THOB KYI DZING POR GZER GYI BYAS MA BRAL BA I have a bathhouse, you ready? Oh, by the way, that tree, that's a magical tree up near where I am now.

Very important tree. Next. So now, this is cool.

You're going to start, before you can visualize your lamas, you have to bathe them. You have to bathe them. And it's a beautiful, beautiful practice.

It's a very, very beautiful practice to imagine bathing somebody that you respect, just out of respect. So THOB KYI DZING POR means a small lake or a pond, but filled with crystal water. And you can think of something like that.

That's like a Turkish bath that I found online. THOB KYI DZIN POR GZER GYI BYAS MA BRAL BA means there's a little bit of sand on the bottom made of gold dust. It's very similar to the sand in my mother's bathtub for the first 20 years of my life, Kent, when I was surfing.

She would go driving crazy because the whole bathroom was covered with sand for like 20 years of my life that I was in my surfing phase. So you can imagine that it's all gold dust. It's not sand, it's gold dust.

GZER MI DANG PO DANG, THA KHO RO RIN PO CHE RIGS BU GZHOR BA And all around there are jewel mountains. Like off in the distance, the Camelback Mountain is made of jewels, sapphire, or emerald, or like that. GNOD ZEG GCIG GI DANG YOD NA GZOR BA So, THAG ZHING GI BSKOS PA THAG ZHING, say THAG ZHING.

THAG ZHING. ZHING means field again. THAG means total purity, absolute purity.

So THAG ZHING is the Tibetan word for a Buddha paradise. So if you want to say Buddha paradise in Tibetan, you can say THAG ZHING. THAG ZHING.

Don't say DAG ZHING, which would mean a mud field. All right? THAG, THAG, DAG ZHING.

DAG ZHING. All right. You know the word DAG SNANG.

What's DAG SNANG? It's one of the most important practices in this whole Lam Rim. In 1,000 pages.

What's DAG SNANG? Pure vision, okay? Pure vision means even in this Lam Rim, even in the non-secret teachings in this Lam Rim, you are encouraged to imagine that the person sitting next to you is already enlightened.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Like that. That's like a vision of your life, that the people you're hanging around are, they're suspicious. There's a certain number of them who are not normal people.

I mean, you knew they weren't normal, but they might be enlightened. DAG SNANG. That's called DAG SNANG.

Here, DAG ZHING, Buddha paradise. So he says, when you visualize your lamas in this practice before you meditate, right? You should bring to mind a Buddha paradise as described in the scriptures, as described.

I think we got a Buddha paradise jigme in there somewhere. This is Tibetan version of a Buddha paradise, which would mean that you are wealthy enough to build lots of things similar to what wealthy Chinese would have in the 16th and 17th century. Their idea of a perfect world was the Chinese emperor's palace in Beijing or something.

For us, it would probably be a Lexus and a luxury condo or something. You know what I mean? I mean, what I'm saying is don't limit your imagination to what a Tibetan thought in the 17th century would be a Buddha paradise.

Like you'd have real running water and stuff like that. It says to imagine it as we see descriptions of Buddha paradises in the sutras. Geshe Michael went to the sutras looking for lapis lazuli floors.

I found a good one, and I think this is a source for a lot of those descriptions, which is called Sangye Phelpoche. Sangye Phelpoche means the broad sutra, which is a collection of sutras. It's a single title in the Kangyur, but it's a collection of sutras inside.

It describes those kinds of Buddha paradises. You can see it in that sutra. You can also see it in the Lotus Sutra.

If you go looking for lapis floors, there's a similar one described in the Lotus Sutra. It would be nice to study the Lotus Sutra someday if we had time, okay? Pundarika Sutra, right?

It's extraordinary. It's really extraordinary. The part, one of the parts I like the best is a long list of flesh that you should not eat, including, see?

Yeah, you too, including dog flesh, and fish flesh, lamb flesh, cow flesh, horse flesh, human flesh, and then at the end it says, don't eat it, okay? So if you get some story that Buddhists aren't supposed to be vegetarian, you can refer people to the Lotus Sutra. It's very clear.

He lists like 50 kinds of meat, and he says, don't eat them, okay? Sekhma-ni-jam-sek-dam. So in the original recitation text, which I'm offering to maybe teach it to you at some point, maybe in Guadalajara or something.

It'd be nice to go through the whole thing in one teaching. It's extraordinary. It's very beautiful.

It has the six preliminary practices. And Rinpoche spent a long time teaching this, but in there it says, there are no sekhmas on this ground, okay? So sekhma is a very unusual Tibetan word, and Pabongka Rinpoche felt that he had to explain it to his audience.

So here he goes. Sekhma refers to tramsek. Tramsek means like little pebbles, like gravel.

Meaning there's no, what do you call it? Loose little pebbles on this lapis floor. The lapis floor is spotless.

There's no like something you could trip on or little rocks, okay? And there's no do-shob. Do-shob means bigger rocks, okay?

Like Diamond Mountain, okay? It has lots of sekhma and it has lots of do-shob. And it makes it hard to walk.

There are little stones and bigger stones that you could twist your ankle on or something like that. So there's none of that. It's totally flat and nice to walk on, like Vans surfer shoes, right?

Then he explains the word kyomo, which appears in that recitation text. Kyomo means dza nu chak tun. Dza means clay or ceramic.

Nu means a park. Chak tun means a broken shards, shards of pottery. So in a typical non-industrial culture, there are lots of broken pottery everywhere, okay?

I have anastasi, anastasi? Ruins around my house, 1,500 ruins, different sites in the area that I live. And it's too expensive for the park service to watch them.

So you can just walk up on any hill and it's covered with pottery shards because that was the garbage dumps for a thousand years. You broke a pot and you threw it into this pile. So there's not even any of those on this floor.

In modern times, it would be broken glass in a parking lot. I did a good video of the broken glass at the parking lot that we're thinking to build the mission on, and I couldn't find it. But the equivalent would be broken glass, vodka, whiskey bottles, broken car glass on asphalt.

Think that, okay? Not there. ,RGYA RGYUR DU, ,GNOD CES SNYING PA PHYIR DOR BA DE LTA BU, ,GAL DU MANG PO'I GANG BA, So that's a reference to the old days in India when a settled place, a village or a town, would be surrounded by a garbage dump having lots of shards of pottery there.

Because they didn't have other garbage like we do. ,NAM GROG NI, Also the original text says there's no NAM GROG there, and that refers to ,SKYE YANG DE. SKYE YANG means like crevasses and what do you call things in the ground that go like this?

Ravines or like that. This vast, many miles wide place where you're going to visualize your lamas doesn't have any imperfections in the topography. It's totally smooth.

It's a reflection of your karma. They say that to live in a place which has a lot of crevasses or washes or ravine, ravine, is a reflection of your own state of mind. We had friends at a place called, what's that?

Vajrapani Institute, right? And they had a dirt road to get there, which was often four feet deep in mud. You could not get back there in a vehicle.

And then they, this is a famous story. They asked me, what can we do karmically to change that? And I said, well, Geshe-la says to have a road like that is a reflection of divisive speech.

The people who live in your center are creating seeds by speaking in a divisive way. So they said, okay, Geshe Michael, we'll do a karma experiment. We'll watch our divisive speech for a couple months and see what happens.

So they did. And it was weird that they agreed to do it or they thought to do it. I didn't ask them.

They just decided to try. So they didn't speak divisively for a couple months. They were very careful.

Then the county came to them and offered to pave the whole thing, which was way beyond what they could afford. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they paved it all to the highway, right?

Or some of it, most of it, four miles, which would cost, I don't know, millions of, a million dollars or something, I don't know. So anyway, they paid for it. And maybe they have to finish, I don't know.

Okay, anyway, so there's none of that. It's totally smooth, like Kansas, which to me would be boring, but that's another thing. DE NAS CHOS PA RDZIN GYI LABS DGOS PAS Now you have to bless the offerings which you are going to offer to the Lamas before they arrive.

We have to bless the offerings. Oh, by the way, I didn't finish the last sentence. GNOD KYON DE LTA BU MA DGOS PA means the land is not marred by any imperfections of topography.

DE NAS CHOS PA RDZIN GYI LABS DGOS PAS How do we bless the offerings? NGOS SU BSHAMS PA YON CHAB DON TSAR DANG The ones which you actually put out physically, that's a MA YIN RGAG. What's a MA YIN RGAG?

MA YIN RGAG implies something else, which is what? You're going to make a lot of offerings mentally, but now he's referring to the ones that you physically put out on your altar. Then he'll get to the ones that you only imagine.

Imagined offerings. NGOS SU BSHAMS PA, what you put forth physically, YON CHAB DON TSAR, a set of seven offering bowls. YON CHAB DON.

YON CHAB means offered water, liquids that are offered. So it could be water bowls, seven water bowls. YON CHAB DON TSAR, one set of seven water bowls.

BOS GANG RE LTA BU LAS MED KYANG BOS GANG RE means a single stick of incense. GANG means a leg, but here it means a stick. LTA BU LAS MED KYANG Even if you have no more than that, you possess no more than a single stick of incense and one set of seven water bowls, don't worry.

Why? Because GOM BDUN LA, in your meditation, in your visualization, you can BAR SNANG RNAMS SKAG BSA SHI'I THAMS CAD SPYOD PA'I DRIN CHEN PO You can fill the entire sky with offerings, like Christmas presents, spread across the whole sky, spread across the whole ground. Millions of Christmas presents.

Or whatever you like, whatever your Lama likes. If your Lama likes avocados, then the whole ground is covered with avocados. Like that.

Whose custom was it to do that in sutra? They call Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra was a bodhisattva who was very hot on this practice.

Offer a single rose to your teacher because that's all that your garden will grow. But in your mind, multiply enough of them to fill the whole sky. And it's a beautiful practice.

It's especially good for those of us who don't have a lot of money. So you do the best you can. You buy a banana and you offer it.

But in your mind, you fill the sky with bananas. RNAMS SKAG BSA SHI'I Cover the sky, cover the whole Earth, the surface of the planet Earth with a cloud of offerings. THAR PA KUN DU BSAM PO'I CHOS CAN THAR In the same way that the Arya Kunda Sambho did.

Kunda means samantha. Sambho means bhadra. Samantabhadra.

In the same way that he did. BSAM NA DE CHOS KYI Misspelling in the text. It should be CHOS KYI.

T-S-O-D and not C-H-O-D. DE'I TSOS KYI SOGS SOGS You will SOGS SOGS, SOGS SAG in direct proportion to the number of bananas you can cover the sky with. Got it?

You get karmic seeds equal in number to the number that your imagination can produce. So it's not a limit imposed financially. It's a limit imposed by your ability to fantasize.

I say, why do the sky? I mean, have them all the way to Mercury, or to Pluto, or to some other Andromeda galaxies covered with bananas, like Star Trek would pass through light years of bananas. You see what I mean?

Like, why settle for less? Because it says you get as many karmic seeds as you can. TSOS means how many square feet can you cover with bananas?

You get that many karmic seeds.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, TSOS.

[Speaker 1]
TSOS comes from TSE, which is related to TSE MA, which means what? Pramana, right? Meaning the ability to conceptualize.

Okay. SOGS SOGS, you get that much karma. So don't short yourself.

Don't put one flower on your altar because you don't have a lot of money. Put one flower on your altar and spend a few seconds multiplying it out to the edge of the universe, or beyond. And it doesn't cost you anything, and you get that much more karma.

DE YANG RDO DE PHAL BO BYED NAS SUM PA This is again the PHAL BO BYED RDO, which is called, I don't know. It's a single sutra, which includes many other sutras in the Kangyur. PHAL BO BYED means majority or like that.

I don't know why it's called PHAL BO BYED. Maybe because it has many sub-sutras.

[Speaker 2]
I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
SUM PA, CHOS YIN PHAL CHOS YIN LA RE DANG There's a quotation there that says, well, there's a PHAL CHER, so maybe that's where it comes from. PHAL CHER means majority or a great number of offering bowls. And then offer also, LA BRE, say LA BRE.

That's a case where you mispronounce it on purpose. It's LA BRE, right? Can you find it anymore?

It's LA, the spelling is LA BRE, but we pronounce it LA BRE. Okay, it's just an exception to the rules of Tibetan pronunciation. LA BRE means those little canopies that you put over a Lama when they teach.

So it was a, in India they had to have them because it was out in the middle of the sun and there would be a little canopy above the Lama. So they still put them there in Tibet. In a temple, they will put a LA BRE.

Okay. ZHES SOGS LTAR CHOS YON GYI GDUG DANG LA BRE DANG You can offer parasols. You can offer LA BREs.

You can offer GYAL TSEN, means victory banner. Like that Iwo Jima picture. Like we have shed blood and we have won and we're putting the flag up.

So that's a big deal in ancient India. There was a special flag. Once you won a battle, you would start waving this flag.

GYAL CHEN DANG DE BZHIN DU Also put forth MED DOG, flowers. DONG POS means seven incense. I guess it's incense with seven precious ingredients.

MAR MED, MAR MED, yeah. Lamps, DIPA, right? CI CHAGS, scented water, perfume water.

GYAL TSE, food, NAI VIDYA, right? GNYUD DI, ZHES SOGS LA, BYAR GUD SOGS SUM So you can, in the recitation text, BYAR means you can substitute the word banana with apple, plum, peach, victory banner, butter lamps. You just insert as you like.

MED DOG, DONG POS SUM GZHEL TSE LTA BU MI BYA MI BDE BA'I RIGS LA UR ZAD KYI BYA BA'I SEBS NAS THON PA LA BYA DGOS If you get to something which is not too DE BA, to offer, what do you call it? GZHEL TSE means a cooked meal, like, what do you call it? Beef bourguignon, okay?

That's BYA MI BDE, MI BDE BA. What's BDE BA? Happiness, BDE LAM, happiness.

But it can mean convenient, MI BDE BA. Not convenient to make a beef bourguignon when you got to get to work, okay? One of the seven offering cups is supposed to be a cooked meal.

If you got to get to work in the morning, you can't make a beef bourguignon because it takes four or five hours, okay? Got it? He said some offerings are not easily made and are inconvenient to cook just before you do your meditation because it takes five hours.

So, RIGS LA means that type of stuff. That RIGS means that type of stuff. UR ZAD KYI BYA BA'I SEBS NAS THON PA You can draw it out of a vast network of golden light, mentally, okay?

All right? What do you call it? Argam, padi, pude, dupe, aloke, gende, new day, when you get to new day food, naividya, you can say, beef bourguignon, coming up from a vast network of golden light in my imagination.

Then you see the beef bourguignon coming out of golden light and into your hands and you, okay? He said that's okay for the stuff which is difficult to throw together on short notice. Got it?

All right. SPYOD PA'I DBYUN GSUM GYIS SPYOD PA RGYUN LA BSTAN Then you can bless the offering with the SPYOD PA'I DBYUN GSUM Say SPYOD PA. DBYUN GSUM SPYOD PA means what?

Offerings. DBYUN Cloud. Vast cloud, okay?

GSUNG is an alternate word for SNGAG. Yeah, or SNGAG means what? Mantra, mantra.

So GSUNG, you should know that, okay? GSUNG is an alternate Tibetan word for SNGAG, which means mantra. Secret Sanskrit words that you use for special purposes.

Originally they were spells. You would do a SNGAG on a, somebody wanted a girlfriend and you would do a SNGAG for them and then suddenly she would be interested or something like that. You see what I mean?

It used to be that, or you wanted to fly in the sky, then you would do a SNGAG on your Nikes and then you'd be able to fly like that. Then it developed into spiritual purposes, right? So you would do SNGAGs to heal people or, okay?

Here's a SNGAG, a mantra for what? SPYOD PA'I DBYUN Yeah, when you want to send bananas to Andromeda Galaxy, you can also use a special mantra and it makes it more powerful. So you can use Samantabhadra's mantra, which comes from the Kangyur, okay?

It's in the original sutras. So he doesn't give it, so guess what? I went and got the mantra for you, okay?

And I thought you would like to learn it. Or you can use it sometimes when you want extra bananas to offer, okay? So maybe I'll give the, I gave Jigme the whole spelling, the technical spelling of it, okay?

So I corrected the spelling of the mantra in the Tibetan literature. So now it's correct, okay? But I'll just say it for you for good luck, okay?

And then I translated it for you for good luck, okay? So here we go. NAMO RATNA CHAYAYA NAMO BHAGAVATE VAJRA SARA PRAD DAR MAR DE LAS THETA RGA' THAYA ARA HATHAY SAM YAG SEMS BU DA'I YAL THAD YOD THAR OM VAJRA VAJRA MAHA VAJRA MAHA THETA RGA' THAY JA VAJRA MAHA VIDYA SVAHA MAHA BORI CITTA VAJRA MAHA BORI MAN DOG PA SANGS KRAM MAN NA VAJRA SARVA KARMA AVARANA VISHOD DANA VAJRA SVAHA That's the whole mantra of Samantabhadra, okay?

Now I'll translate, I'll do it in English, okay? The slurps are extra. Okay.

Okay, rough translation. I didn't have time to do a final. I bow to the three jewels, right?

NAMO RATNA TRAYAYA I bow to the conqueror, NAMO BHAGAVATE I bow to the heart of diamond, the destroyer. VAJRA SARA PRAD DAR MAR DE LAS I bow to the heart of the diamond, the destroyer. THETA RGA' THAYA I bow down to the one gone thus.

ARA HATHAY SAM YAG SEMS BU DA'I YAL To the destroyer of the foe, the totally enlightened one. THAD YOD THAR May it be so. May it be so.

OM VAJRA'I VAJRA'I OM to the diamond, the diamond. MAHA VAJRA'I To the great diamond. MAHA DEYJA VAJRA'I To the great diamond of glory.

MAHA VIDYA SVAHA These the secret words of greatness, SVAHA. MAHA BODHICHITTA VAJRA'I To the diamond of the wish for enlightenment. MAHA BODHI MAN DOG PA SANGS KHAR MAN NAYA VAJRA To the diamond of the great enlightenment, which is the very essence.

SARVA KARMA AVARANA RIGS SHO DAG NA VAJRA'I SVAHA To the diamond which purifies us of every karmic obstacle. SO HA SO HA is like a dagger at the end. It's said to be SHI TZUG.

Say SHI TZUG. SHI TZUG means damn. You're like SO HA.

It's just like at the end of a mantra, you're supposed to go SO HA. Even now in India, if you go see a Hindu Homa, they will go SO HA, SO HA at the end. All right, so that's the whole mantra corrected from the Kangyur and the Tengur.

So I had to go to different sources to correct it. The Tibetans had the mantras, but they sometimes misspelled them after a few centuries. So that's the correct one.

I like it. Okay, and then you could probably spend a year thinking about why that would create more bananas between us and the Andromeda Galaxy. Why would saying those words make the bananas more powerful?

It'd be nice to think about it. I didn't do it, okay? I think it'd be nice to think about it.

Okay, what time am I supposed to finish? One. We're right on schedule, which is bizarre.

Okay, sorry. So now I'm starting class two. I've scheduled it the next six months that we will have two sessions for each of the 10 classes.

So we'll have 20 sessions total. We finish two sessions, we're done with the first class. I'm starting the second class, okay?

But you can now do your homework. Why should you do the homework? You have to pass this on, okay?

Somebody told me, oh Geshe-la, not as many people came this time. I said, I don't care, okay? If two people show up, I'm going to transmit for 14 years this text because it's important, okay?

It should exist in the world in a living transmission, okay? And it's my duty. It's my responsibility to pass it on to whoever will come.

I should pass it on because I think it's the greatest book ever written, okay? And you're insane if you don't come, but who am I? So I feel like I have to pass on the whole thing correctly.

And so anyway, if you're going to pass it on correctly, you should do the homework, okay? So my job is finished up to folio 95 or something, okay? I probably won't have time to teach it again.

Now it's your problem, okay? So whether you're going to do a good job or not is your problem. I suggest you do the homeworks.

I suggest you keep them and you do them, okay? I take the five most important points out of each two lectures, okay? And I demand that you should know them, okay?

So out of four hours of teaching, there are five sentences which were really important. And you should know the answers to the questions about those five sentences if you're going to pass it on responsibly, which you should do, okay? Is it going to be that after, I don't know, 1,000 years of Lam Rim in Tibet, the lineage breaks down with nit, you know?

Like you can't let that happen. You can't be the person who didn't learn it and pass it on, okay, because every generation has passed it on. And this generation is done with the first 95 folios.

Now it's your generation's problem, okay? Like I will probably go have a nice coffee, latte at Starbucks, and then you have to be teaching Lam Rim during that time because now it's your problem, okay? So you must learn it and pass it on correctly, okay?

So I think doing the homeworks is part of that process. I like the homeworks to be done in a group because then you compare notes, you know? You were looking at the dog when I explained the third line of the mantra and you didn't get it.

But somebody else sitting next to you was looking at the dog doing a different line. So you can compare notes if you do your homework together. All right, so we have four minutes.

Don't waste it. We'll start the next class, okay? Here we go.

At least the first sentence or two. SOGS SHING NGOS SHI SEMS BDOD TSUL LA Now we get to the real visualization of the people as opposed to the floor and all that, okay? Here we go.

NYUR LAM NAS He's going to quote NYUR LAM, the quick path, the Lam Rim called quick path. MAR TI DI RGYAS LUGS KYI SOGS SHING SEMS BDOD TSUL DANG There is a way in which you visualize the people in the SOGS SHING according to this book, meaning MAR TI, the red instruction. And there's a Lama Chöpa system.

What's Lama Chöpa? Offering to Lamas, written by, His Holiness the First Panchen Lama, which we recite in Prescott twice. Every time we're in Prescott, we recite the whole thing twice, okay?

It is the most famous ritual in Tibet, Lama Chöpa, offering to your teacher. There's two systems. So there's the MAR TI system and there's the Lama Chöpa system.

You can visualize the people in this visualization, either according to the Second Panchen Lama's Lam Rim, or you can do it according to Lama Chöpa. Guess which one he's choosing? Lama Chöpa.

He's going to follow the Lama Chöpa system, which is called Je Lama Chöpa. Say Je. Lama Chöpa.

Lama Chöpa is a ritual, the offering to Lamas. What's Je mean? Like Je Tsongkhapa.

The Lord. So the Lord of Lama Chöpa is the visualization that we use in this particular tradition. So we're going to describe Je Lama Chöpa, the Lord of the Lama Chöpa.

It's a person that you visualize. And then you do all these offerings to them. Lama Chöpa.

ZHING CHA BAR GSUNGS PA DE NAS BYAS TE Why did we choose the Lama Chöpa system? Why did we choose to visualize it that way? GNAS BYAS What's that?

GNAS Very crucial. Yeah, it means crucial. The reason we use the Lama Chöpa is crucial.

Why? RGYAL BA BSTAN PA DANG GRUB CHEN CHOD KYI MDOR BYAS RNAMS LAM MED NYONGS GYUR TSEM PA GSOS ZIN GYI DLA BRTEN NAS TSE CIG LA GSOS GYI DGOS PAR MNYED PA I get this question sometimes. People say, okay, you say this is the Lam Rim.

These are the steps to enlightenment. How many people actually got enlightened using this? How many people are walking around with big ears and bumps on their head?

Show me somebody who used this Lam Rim. And if this is the Idiot's Guide to Enlightenment, I assume that there are lots of former idiots walking around enlightened. So let's see them.

Where are they? And in Tibet, there was a tradition that two lamas in particular had reached enlightenment using this particular visualization, the Lama Chöpa visualization. And I mentioned before that the relics tour of the FPMT and Lama Chöpa's group had a, they had a relic from Gyawa Wensapa.

So Wensapa was a Tibetan lama who is said to have reached enlightenment in his lifetime. So there are two. One is called Chökyi Dorje, okay?

There were two lamas who are said to have reached enlightenment in this lifetime. Can you show one? I think you have both of them.

One of them has a beard, so I thought Nick would like that. But it's not allowed to have a beard for a monk, and I don't know how he got away with one, but maybe after you get enlightened, it's okay. There he is, in fact.

Wait. That's Chökyi Dorje, okay? And his is not quite as straggly, but it's similar.

So, wait, leave the first one. I want to read, this is the caption at the bottom, right? It says, GSUNGS RJUG KU NYE CHÖKYI DORJE BZHAG BZHAG means the holy feet.

I bow down at the holy feet of Chökyi Dorje. NYE means who found. The GSUNGS RJUG, what's GSUNGS RJUG?

It's enlightenment according to tantric system, okay? So, enlightenment in the open teachings is called SANG NGES or Buddhahood or something like that. In the secret teachings, it's not called that.

It's called GSUNGS RJUG, the union of the two in honor of Big Brother and the holding company, which goes over everybody's head. Janice Joplin's original band did a song called The Union of the Two, which is really good. But anyway, KU means holy body.

So, what the union of what two? Enlightenment. I'll buy the body made of light.

What's that? Clear light and omniscience, okay? That the combination.

Your body is made of the clear light and your mind is made of enlightenment. That's GSUNGS RJUG, right? RGYUD LOD, miracle body of KUN CAN, okay?

All right. That's one of them. Let's see the other one.

So, that's KUSUM LUN GYUR, he who attained the three bodies of a Buddha. RGYAL BA means the Buddha, WEN SA PA. WEN means, WEN SA means, what do you call?

Out in the middle of nowhere. WEN means out in the middle of nowhere. Diamond Mountain is WEN SA, okay?

It's supposed to be. It was planned that way, okay? I got this, that's a long story.

I got this very, what do you call? Insistent email from a newspaper, why did you put Diamond Mountain out in the middle of nowhere? Duh.

I mean, WEN SA means, it's supposed to be in the middle of nowhere. You can't even get cell reception there. That was the idea.

It's like between, it's the only place in the United States where you don't get cell reception. So, there's not somebody's conversations going through your body, all right? Or whenever somebody's looking out on the internet at that moment, going through your body, which it does, right?

Anyway, his name was Out in the Middle of Nowhere. This Lama's name is Out in the Middle of Nowhere. He's one of the two Lamas that is thought to have achieved enlightenment in their lifetime using this practice that we're going to describe in the next class, okay?

Using the practice of the TSOG SHING, these two Lamas achieved enlightenment. So, then that's like an advertisement for the visualization, which we're going to learn starting in the next class. Okay?

Good? All right, then.

[Speaker 2]
DUR GYI BYUNG ZHIG MED DO BRTZAM SREG RANG NYID SHING RIGS CHUNG DANG DANG KUN YID DROG PA ZHIG Okay, cool.

[Speaker 1]
So, this week is very important. This week in the Guadalajara is very important. If you want to meditate, this is the best explanation of those seven steps that exist in the world, okay?

So, YIN LAG BDOD, right? The seven limbs. They call it seven limbs?

Bad translation, but anyway. Seven limb puja. This is the best explanation of it in the world.

So, we'll do it this week, okay? All right.

[Speaker 2]
Bye.