«Дар освобождения», курс 11 «Искусство ценить себя и свою жизнь», занятие 2

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 18:55)
Okay, we'll start. So, we don't have a lot of time tonight and that's okay. We had a lot of heart opening.

That's the main thing. And I was very grateful for the kind teachings that we received tonight, today, from everyone. Isn't that awesome?

And also, Alejandro, there's extremely, to me, very beautiful teachings all day long. And for me, it was like dessert. You know, I feel like a proud daddy and I feel like all the hard work was worth it, right?

Do parents feel like that? I don't know. Probably, at some point, when they get to be 40.

But I feel like that and I feel proud of our university and I feel proud of their state of mind that is growing here. And really hard work in many ways. In Tibet, they call dukde, say dukde.

Dukde, de means, debu means the results of your labor. Dukde means siddhi, siddha, right? It means the results of your hard work.

And I feel very happy with the results of our hard work, of everybody's hard work, you know. And the results are very pleasing to me and I'm very grateful. Okay, stop crying.

Okay, so then he's continuing with his text. duk shak dey tsik sen la, top shik shikak tsang yuk So there are special prayers called duk shak. Dukwa means to fall down.

It's related to a word sungwa. The Sanskrit root is pat, as in, Patanjali, okay, Patanjali fell into the water, right? That's how he was born.

So anyway, tung means to fall down. Shak, you know, means to confess. So tung shak is a genre of literature which means to confess your mistakes that you've made in your life and continue to make.

I thought I'd read you a little tung shak that we do, the monks and nuns do, you know, twice a month, supposed to do sojong. And there's a small, I like it, you know, there are bigger ones and there are more, there are longer ones, but I personally like this one. And someday we should translate this.

It's part of a longer ceremony, a sojong ceremony, which is very complicated and very rich. It has many, many components. Over the centuries it has grown and flourished like Dennis's flowers, and it has become a very beautiful masterpiece, the sojong ceremony.

And I learned it from Khen Rinpoche. It took me many years because he would not let us take a book into the sojong. We had to memorize it.

And it's exquisite and we should translate it someday. But it's very beautiful. And I assembled it.

Over many years' time, I got all the pieces and put it together. And it's in the ACIP database, the whole ceremony. I got, after many years, I got the whole thing pieced together.

And it's in there. It's a very precious thing. So we should work on that someday.

But here's the tung shak part. You take the youngest little monk in the monastery. I don't know why, he's got to have a voice like the Vienna Boy's Choir.

And he goes, he's like, I don't know, he's like ten or something or eight. And he goes, ,'JOD GYI MA ZHUGS PA'I SANG YAS DANG, And then everybody goes, ,'BYANG CHUB SEMS RANG RANG, But it's so sweet. If you ever get a chance to hear the sojong.

Sojong is one ceremony that all the Sara monks do together. So Sara Jae, where the, I mean the other half of Sara, which are not so, you know. That's the one time we all get together and do our ceremony together is sojong.

This is kind of awesome. It's like 4,000 monks screaming at the top of their lungs. So this is what they say.

,'JOD GYI MA ZHUGS PA'I SANG YAS DANG, ,BYANG CHUB SEMS RANG RANG, ,BYANG CHUB SEMS RANG RANG, I bow down to the Buddhas, the enlightened beings, and I bow down to the Dharma, and I bow down to the Sangha, of all the corners of the universe. ,BDAG RGYAL LO MIN GYI ZHIG RGYAS BA LA LTUNG BA PHANGS PA'I DE TSEN LAS, My name is Los Angeles Zen, or you say your own name. And then you start confessing the different parts of the monk's vows, which I can't go over with you.

But you go through each part of the monk's vows. There are five categories of vows. We have 253, ,GNYIS RGYA SNGABS BYUNG NA GSUM RNAMS, And the nuns hate it when I say, but it's such fun to say.

And we've been told to have fun. The nuns have 364 vows. The monks only have 253, because they're more naughty than the monks, and they need more vows.

So, we confess our five sets of vows. And then we say, ,GZHAN YANG GNAS KYI LAM MA MA BSTAN PA DANG, I think those are useful for us. These are the concluding statements during a tungkhyak.

I have not properly relied on my GNAS LAMA. GNAS LAMA means, we had a pretty strong system at Diamond Mountain. I think after the three-year retreat started, it got kind of harder because everyone went somewhere.

But GNAS LAMA means a mentor, a personal mentor. In AA, it's called a sponsor. So, it would be an older monk in the monastery agrees to be your sponsor.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, it means a person who's got a little bit more seniority in AA will agree to be a sponsor for a newer member of AA. And then the basic job of a sponsor is, if the younger person feels like they might take a drink any time of day or night, they call the sponsor, and the sponsor comes to their house, and they take care of them, and they help them. And so a GNAS LAMA is very similar.

GNAS LAMA means, GNAS means the place, meaning it should be one who lives fairly close to you within Skype range. It's got bigger now. And they are supposed to help you through crisis periods.

When you have a crisis, any monk, all monks have to have a GNAS LAMA, and they are high priority. It's a high priority. In the priority of monks' commitments, GNAS LAMA is probably first, meaning it's more important than all other monks' vows.

And the test of that is, if your GNAS LAMA dies or is on a trip, within 24 hours, you have to find a replacement. The GNAS LAMA should normally appoint a replacement before they leave, if they can. So there's never a situation in a monastery when a monk doesn't have a personal mentor available for a crisis period, when they're in a crisis.

And that's a very good system, because that means everyone has someone above them that they're supposed to be listening to when they're having a personal spiritual crisis. So we had that system here at Daimyo. I think it got a little difficult to keep it going after the graduation and the three-year retreat started.

But I think it would be nice to continue it, right? I assigned someone to keep the names of the GNAS LAMAS. On a spreadsheet.

Okay, but I'm sure that will be done. Okay, LAM NAM DEM PHAN PO'I BYA BA RNAM MA ZHUGS PA BYAS PA DANG BYA BA RNAM MA ZHUGS PA BYAS PA means I confess things I've done without asking permission of my teachers. BYA BA PHYIR GCOGS SU ZHIG BAR MA BYAS PA I confess not bringing back two sides in some kind of dispute or argument in the spiritual community.

That's a high... Those are three high responsibilities in a spiritual community. ZHIG BAR MA BYAS PA LA SOGS PA ZHIG CHUG TU DANG LUNG RNAM BYAS DANG LUNG BRTEN ZHIG DE BZHIN DAG PA DANG GYI SKABS NAS BYUNG BA'I GNYIS PA PHAG TU MED PA BYUNG BA DANG means then they quote the sutras from which these rules came.

I didn't follow those sutras. KYAM DU LAG BYANG DANG DGE BA DANG I didn't take refuge properly. MI DGE BA CHUG PONG GI TSUL KHRIMS DANG DGE BA'I GNYIS PA PHAG TU MED PA BYUNG BA I have broken the ten non-virtues countless times.

DOR NA SANGS RGYI GYI BYED PA DANG DGE BA DANG I've not... To put it briefly, I broke everything the Buddha advised us to do. I love in the Christian...

I grew up Christian. I love it. I love the Christian ritual.

But it says we have done those things which we ought not to have done and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and there is no help in us. Those are awesome words and they stay with me. It's exactly the same wording.

It's very beautiful. RGYEN DU GYI SNANG PHRIN DU DGE BA DANG I broke the... What do you call it?

The rules by which the spiritual community has agreed to live by. I have broken those. DGE BA DANG RANG BZHIN GYI GANG NA MA THO BA'I GNYIS PA PHAG TU MED PA And I have broken the general morality which is common to all peoples of the world.

Not to harm other people. BDAG RGYAL LO MIN GYIS GYI DGE BA Then you say, I, monk Michael Roach, GNYIS PA DE RNAMS CHOG CHUD NA ZHUGS PA'I SANGS RGYAS DANG BYANG CHUB SEMS PA THAMS CAD NI RGYUN DU TSUN PA DANG GYI CHEN NGAG THU LO MI CHA PO I open my heart to all the holy beings of every corner of the universe and I admit my mistakes. THU LO CHA PO I don't hide anything.

CHAGS SO I confess everything. CHIN CHE KYANG SDOM PAR LAS LAG SO CHIN CHE CHIN CHE Say CHIN CHE KYANG SDOM PAR LAG SO CHIN CHE KYANG SDOM PAR LAG SO And in the future I will restrain myself. That's the final words of the DUNG BZHAG.

CHIN CHE KYANG SDOM PAR LAS LAG SO THU BZHIN BZHAG RNAMS DAG DE BA LA REG PA GYUR GYIS If I open my heart and openly confess my faults, which we all... I like the talks because everyone was opening their hearts and confessing their faults. I think mine are just being very stubborn and etc.

Unforgiving of foolishness sometimes. And I confess that, being a little too hard on people, perhaps. THU BZHIN BZHAG RNAMS DAG DE BA LA REG PA GYUR GYIS I will feel better if I open my heart and say what mistakes I've made.

MA THU MA BZHAG RNAMS But if I don't, MI DGYUR BA LAG SO I will not be happy. And that's the end of the DUNG BZHAG. Why did I read the whole DUNG BZHAG to you?

Because Pabongka Rinpoche says, DUNG BZHAG DI'I ZIG ZIN LA STOB ZHIG RGA TZAM YANG If you study the DUNG BZHAG carefully, you will find the four powers there. You will find all four powers there. The most important one is KHYING RJE KYANG SDONG PA LAG SO which is what?

And in the future I will restrain myself. That's the real part of confession or purification which destroys all bad karmic power. It's the decision to restrain yourself in the future.

I'll try to do a better job. I'll try to be more, what do you call, patient with my kids. That would be a good, what do you call, restraint.

Okay, KHYING RJE KYANG SDONG PA LAG SO and be more sensitive to their needs. Okay, KHYING RJE KYANG SDONG PA LAG SO RGYUD LA SO BYAS DAG NI CHEN PO CHEN NAS RNAMS SKADAG NYAMS PA If we take, for example, Je Tsongkapa, the teacher of His Holiness the First Dalai Lama and the founder of our lineage, how do you tell a follower of Je Tsongkapa's monk's robes? We got this blue thread here.

It's like blue angel's helmet. Other people don't wear the blue thread. We got the blue thread.

Just so you know, if you ever check somebody out, they're cool if they have the blue thread. Okay, BYAS DAG NI CHEN PO CHEN NAS RNAMS SKADAG NYAMS PA Je Tsongkapa's activities, his influence was equal to space. The extent in which space continues through the universe.

Okay, his influence on the happiness of living beings in different worlds was equal in extent to outer space. Okay, even he would recite this dungshak in the form of PHUNG PO GSUM PA'I DANG Say, PHUNG PO GSUM PA'I DANG PHUNG PO means heap, skanda in Sanskrit. GSUM means three, tri, tri skanda sutra.

It's called the tri skanda sutra, the three heaps of sutra. And everybody talks about it, but no one ever reads it. So of course, I went and got it out of Dan Steyer's database because Jigme cataloged it.

She's cataloging the kandiya single-handedly. Ningbo's doing the sumbo. But I thought you'd, I didn't, we don't have time to go through it.

Someday we can. I know it's like 50 really squashed pages. So I mean, it would take itself probably six months, I don't know.

But what I did was I read it carefully because we always talk about it, we never look at it. And this was Je Tsongkapa's favorite way to do his dungshak. So I thought it'd be interesting to look it over and see what was so sexy about it.

And I noticed a pattern and then I worked on it and I chopped out the pattern. So I'm going to tell you the pattern and you're going to tell me what is the pattern of. Okay, so here's the sutra that he would recite for his own dungshak, okay?

Actually for his sakhjang, also to collect good karma, to clean his bad karma and to collect new good karma, he used to read this. So what's in it? The first whole part is dedicated to chaktsal, which is prostration.

That goes on for four pages. Then he does chöpa, which is what? Making offerings.

I mean, who's this? This is Lord Buddha prostrating to other Buddhas and then making offerings to them. Three pages later it starts confession, chakpa.

Third part is chakpa. That goes on for, I don't know, 10 pages. The fourth part is rejoicing, yi rangwa.

That goes on for a long time. It's just another form of fun. It's really just fun, right?

The Tibetan word for fun must be rejoicing, I think. Thirteen pages into it, asking your teacher to teach you. And then finally asking them to stay with you.

Where do we know this pattern from? Yeah, these are the famous seven-limb puja. This is the seven-part puja, which we are in the middle of learning, duh, okay?

Which is the fifth of the six jorchas, the fifth of the six preparations for. So I think what's interesting that we learn from this is that Je Tsongkapa drew the teaching on the seven limbs from a sutra, from the Three Heaps Sutra. Then at the end, Lord Buddha kind of wraps it up, okay?

He just repeats himself again. But that's the structure of the Three Heaps Sutra. If you ever want to study it sometime, you know, as Ted Lemon says, in our copious free time, we'll do that.

But it's a very powerful sutra. Okay, he took the time to do that whole ceremony, that huge sutra, to recite it. And Pabongka Rinpoche, to me, seems to be saying, if you do a good tung shak, everything's also in there, from that sutra, from the Three Heaps Sutra.

If you don't have time to do the Three Heaps Sutra, you could just do a good tung shak, and that would be enough, okay?

[Говорящий 2] (18:55 - 18:56)
All right.

[Говорящий 1] (19:00 - 52:34)
DE PHYIR LTUNG ZHAG DANG PHYAG BDAG DE ZHAG PA BYED PA BYED TZAM KHA PA CHEN PO'I KHRAG ZUL YIN Therefore, the custom of doing prostrations while you do your confession was dear to Je Tsongkapa's heart. PHYAG ZUL means his custom. It was his personal custom that when he did his confessions, he would do prostrations at the same time.

I don't think it's inappropriate to do Surya Namaskar and do a confession thing. Like if you have something you really want to get off your chest, I think it would be very appropriate to find a yoga teacher who was interested in doing 48 Surya Namaskars in a row this morning, whose name sounds like Anatole. But I could see Anatole making a whole practice out of that.

I don't think it's at all inappropriate to do Surya Namaskars, and then you could recite the names of holy beings as a confession. While you're doing, you could do like, I don't know, 10 or 15, 20. I know, is Lisa here tonight?

She's here last night. She does a hundred and something, 108, to stop war and stuff like that. That's nice.

I could do the first 20, I think. So I would consider that. If I was stuck in a small hut for a couple months, I might, if I was really, you know...

Anyway, I think that might be kind of cool to try in conjunction with the sutra we're going to hear about shortly. SDUG BSNGAL ZHAG PA BYAS PA BRTZO SOGS RGA PA'I SEMS GZUN NUS ,'PHO BDAG GDUG CHEN RNAMS SKABS RGYAL MTSAN, ,'PHO BDAG GDUG CHEN GYIS KYANG, ,DI DGONGS NAS SDIB BYANG RJES, So there was a famous lama named PHO BDAG GDUG CHEN, the great Siddhi from PHO BDAG. PHO BDAG is southern Tibet, just near the Bhutanese border.

Marpa was from PHO BDAG. So there was a lama named PHO BDAG GDUG CHEN. His real name was RNAMS SKABS RGYAL MTSAN.

His dates are, if you care, is 1326 to 1401. I will continue to tell you details of lamas, even if you don't care, because somebody has to keep them. Okay, ,GYIS KYANG DI DGONGS NAS SDIB BYANG RJES, He used to favor this practice also of doing his prostrations and doing his confession at the same, during the prostrations.

And so RNAMS SKABS is a true prostration. RNAMS SKABS means to make prostration, right? ,DE BZHIN GCOD KYI KHYAD RUB KUN KYANG, ,DI RGA TSE, Many later sages also favored this practice.

Sages and scholars. KHYAD RUB means sages and scholars. The bookworms and the yogis.

Asana people. They both did that. KHYAD RUB DI RGA TSE ,DUG MCHOG BLO SANGS RNAMS RGYAL GYI KYANG, ,DI RANG SANG BAR GSUNGS, Then there was a lama named DUG MCHOG BLO SANGS RNAMS RGYAL who also favored this practice.

I hate to see a lama not get credit. You know, we could just go on, but I looked him up and I read his life story and I thought it interesting. TBRC never found all his information.

He's not there. So I worry about lamas like that because they're going to get lost. So here you go.

Like two minutes on his life. His life shortened to two minutes. He lived 1670 to 1741.

He was also called CHA DEL. CHA DEL means a hermit. You are all CHA DELs.

CHA means to do a lot of busy stuff. GYAL means you don't. Linguistically, GYAL is related to SHAL.

Excuse me, which is this sound. That's called SHAL. And CHAL came from that.

So CHA DEL means you have separated yourself from busy, being busy, hopefully. He studied at Tashi Thumbo Monastery, which is the fourth of the... There are three great monasteries of Tibet in our lineage, which is Jebun, Ganden, and Sera.

And then the fourth is counted as Tashi Thumbo, which is the seat of the Panchen Lama. He studied the five great books. He did the ACI 18 courses.

He studied under Panchen Losang Yeshe. After he finished the five great books, he studied Lam Rim in its entirety with the second Panchen Lama, Losang Yeshe, who lived 1662 to 1737. And he studied Bodhicharyavatara with him, which is not one of the five great books in the traditional Geshe course.

And he studied Narayana Chamo, the great book on secret teachings by Je Tsongkapa. He became a full monk from the second Dalai Lama. He became a master of Vajrayogini, Chakrasambhara, Hevajra, Bhairava.

These tantras. He studied the great tantras. And Kala Chakra.

And Amitabha. Amitabha. He studied Akirim and Dzogrim.

Finished his studies. Then he studied Naro Chudug, the six yogas of Naropa, okay, which you guys studied. He basically went to the same course, if you notice.

Then he went to Ra Deng and went into meditation. He did a long meditation retreat outside of Ra Deng Monastery at a place called Senggye. Chak Seng.

Chak Senggye. Shul means at the base of this famous rock formation, which is called Chak Senggye. Chak means a huge rock formation.

We have lots of chaks around here. Senggye means lion, right? Like Singapore.

And he went into deep retreat there. After he did his ACI courses and he did his tantric courses and he did his yoga study, then he went into deep retreat at the foot of Chak Senggye. Do you know this place?

It's the place where Je Tsongkhapa had a vision of all the teachers of the Lamrim, which inspired him to write the Lamrim Chimal. Okay, he was sitting under the same rocks. I mean, their rocks and our rocks ain't much different.

It looks a lot like, it looks a great deal like the retreat valley, that area of Tibet. If you were transported there, it would look like Arizona. It doesn't look any different.

It's the same, except you can't breathe. Okay. Then when he finished, he stopped off at Ulka and did some more long retreat.

Who's Ulka? Ulka. That's where Je Tsongkhapa went with eight disciples and did his long retreats.

Okay, he did his, he did a very long retreat there. We'll hear more about that later, maybe tomorrow. Okay, but Ulka is a river and he crossed it in a leather coracle, which is a ring of bamboo covered with yak hides.

And he could only fit eight students and they went off for a couple years retreat. And that was, he topped off their study with the cherry like that. Okay.

So this Lama also went there to Ulka just to honor that place and did a long retreat. So they had the same course of training that you did. And then he went to the same place as Je Tsongkhapa when he did his great retreats.

Then he went to, to top it off, he went to Ngulchu Ritra. Ritra means the Hermitage of Ngulchu, which is quicksilver. Ngul means silver, chu means water.

And we studied Ngulchu's works extensively during your seven years of Tantric training. Then he went back to Tashi Thunpo and studied some more Lam Rim with the Second Pension Lama. And he wrote some famous books.

One is on chud. Which is, we've studied that a little bit. We didn't finish it.

Like that, okay. And he's considered the 50th lineage holder of the Lam Rim teaching. So if you count all the Lam Rim teaching lineage holders, it's number 50.

But I think his life is interesting because if you are a Buddhist of the Dalai Lama's lineage, if you started out in that lineage, which we have, then that's the normal course of your spiritual career. You study the five great books, which is exactly the same as the ACI courses. Then you go through the Tantric training, which we did for seven years.

Then you do the yogic training. And then you do your deep retreats. And that's just our custom.

And that's different from the custom of other religious traditions in this country, for example. But I think we have to be more sensitive to how odd it might seem to them. If you've never, if you haven't grown up in a country hearing, what do you call it?

Your parents talking about these spiritual heroes of their country and what they went through. I think in time, Western culture will appreciate Buddhist culture, but it will take a while. And I think so.

In the meantime, there will be some, what do you call? Cultural disconnects until Buddhism is respected as a valid and useful path. Not everybody has to follow it, but it's, what do you call it?

It's a real thing, just like Judaism and Christianity and Hinduism. But people just aren't familiar with it yet. So, but that is a normal course of a spiritual training in our tradition.

And you're doing exactly that by the letter. DE NA, BOD LEN GZHIN TU CHE BA'I SKYE RGAG CHE PA BZHIN SDIG BYANG LO BDE BA ZHIG DE DGONG NAS CHE If you think about it, whenever we make a mistake and upset someone else or hurt someone else, then the clock starts, right? That karma doubles every 24 hours, right?

The power of that karma doubles every 24 hours. It's like a Bank of America credit card, you know, which I can tell you about. And, you know, you're like cruising along, you get a couple of credit cards because you're like, you got all cocky about your finances, you know, and you're like, I'm going to pay it off every month.

And then, you know, you lose your accountant and suddenly you can't pay your bills and boy, that thing doubles, triple, quadruple, like boom, boom, boom, you know? Karma is like that, okay? Every day it's doubling exponentially, right?

And he says, if you do a good four powers, it's like paying off your credit card because the interest payments stop, you know, and you should get some feeling of relief. If you do your Surya Namaskars and do some good confession at that time, then one of the signs of success of a confession is a feeling of relief. You know, my card's back to zero.

I'm not paying interest. It's not doubling, quadrupling, you know, like that. It's a good feeling.

I've done it a few times with my credit card. Not recently. PHYAG SOGS CAN DAG GIS BSKYANG PHYAG RTZA BA'I NYES NA SKABS SANGS ROL LAS PAR DANG STE LUS KYI THAL MO BYA BA TZAM BYAS NI PHYAG DANG SOGS RUNG BA ZHAGS PA'I SKABS DANG DRAG NA SANGS He's just encouraging people.

There are people in Tibet who as a spiritual practice tried to do a certain number of prostrations, like a hundred thousand or ten thousand or, you know, five thousand or they tried to prostrate around the Potala Palace which takes, I don't know, a month. Some cult activity like that. Then that was a tradition in our lineage to do that.

You would have leather gloves, huge thick leather gloves and then you would have like hockey knee pad things and you would prostrate around the Potala Palace and it takes a month or something, you know. Or you might prostrate from Jetsamkhapa's monastery in East Tibet to Lhasa, which is, you know, a thousand miles or something. People have done it.

And it would look strange to us and it doesn't look strange to them. They think it's quite beautiful, okay. Anyway, so if you're one of those people, he says, don't waste your time counting.

You might as well get in some good confession while you're going, you know. Probably we have enough bad deeds to cover from, you know, Tsongkha to Lhasa, a thousand miles on each prostration to think of one mistake we made in our life. Probably we could use the mileage, you know, okay.

So he's encouraging us, you know, if you're going to do mundro where you try to collect a hundred thousand prostrations or a hundred thousand, you know, then why not say one of those Buddhist names and think of some mistake you've made in your life and purify it while you're doing even your yoga? Why not use a Surya Namaskar? You know, I've experimented with it and I'll tell you my own experience.

I don't enjoy doing yoga and trying to focus on something else. It's difficult for me, you know, like I can try to dedicate the yoga practice to another person, but for me to go through the asanas and simultaneously try to think of all the bad things I did, it doesn't work. For me, I'm just being, I'm just telling you from my own experience, it doesn't work.

I can't focus on my breathing. I can't get the movement right. You know, I can't watch my channels and think about, you know, somebody I hurt.

You know, it's too upsetting. I can't do it. But I think you, what I personally do is before the yoga, standing in Tadasana, I think, okay, I dedicate this to cleaning that boo-boo I made in my life.

And then I'd go through the whole yoga session and I might think of it a few times now and then. And then in Soya, even in Shavasana, I don't like to mess up my Shavasana by thinking about all the boo-boos I made in my life. So I kind of wait till the end of the Shavasana.

I think you should enjoy your Shavasana. You should go deep into your Shavasana. And then after the Shavasana, while you're standing up, rolling up your mat, you can sit for a second and say, okay, I dedicate that to that mistake I made in my life.

And for me personally, it works better. You can come back to the motivation a few times during the series. But during the whole series, to think of a whole story, as Gyelse would say, of something I did in my life, to me it's distracting.

It distracts from the yoga, personally. So that's my own experience. I think before you start, when you're sitting or when you're standing, you make a very powerful intention.

Then you move to the asanas. And then if it occurs to you a few times, you let it come. And then at the end, you dedicate it strongly.

Okay, that's my suggestion. DE'I TSUN NI DANG PO'I RGYUR NAG Okay, I want to do RGYUR NAG. He says, as you do your first three prostrations, you should do a RGYUR NAG.

Okay, say RGYUR NAG. RGYUR NAG RGYUR can mean to change. RGYUR can mean to translate, as in GANG RGYUR and DENG RGYUR, right?

And RGYUR can mean to change money. What do you call that? Change money, right?

And RGYUR can mean to multiply. So multiplication, mathematical multiplication in Tibetan is called RGYUR. In this case, it's multiplication.

And NAG means mantra, a mantra or tantra. Tantra is sometimes called mantra because it emphasizes mantra practice so much. So that's another word for tantra in Tibet.

There are several words for tantra in Tibet. One of them is NAG, okay? We were in, but by just a side note, I know there might be a few new people here.

We were asked to fly to Uruguay, to Punta del Este, to teach a soccer team owner and his 60 wealthy friends at their beach mansion, which was a lot of fun actually. We flew there from Buenos Aires, which is just across the river. And then we flew back.

But what I remember from, and it was a wonderful teaching and we stayed up till two in the morning. They stayed with us. They wouldn't stop asking questions till two in the morning.

And we had a wonderful time. They were very, very beautiful. But I remember on the way back to the airport, we were exhausted.

It was in the morning and there was a big magazine for sale called Tantric Secrets Magazine. And there was some sexy lady on the front. And I was like, oh my God.

And just for your information, the word tantra refers to very gentle, beautiful, holy, religious practices, such as pretending your mother is the Buddha. Okay, seriously. And then trying to live by that code in your daily life.

And that's the meaning of tantra. Okay. And where they got the sex thing and killing chickens and stuff is being created by some media thing, I guess.

Or I don't know how it started. But it's not at all a Buddhist practice and it's offensive to a Buddhist to refer to tantra in that way. Okay.

Because it's totally the opposite of everything we value and everything we practice. Okay, anyway. I mean, it'd be like going to the Catholic Church and writing an article about the priest is drinking some wine out of a gold cup up there and handing it out to everybody.

And they're all drunkards, you know. I mean, it would be as foolish and as inappropriate to a Buddhist and as offensive to a Buddhist. All right.

So you should keep your mind on your goals as you do your prostrations. And you should do gyur ngak. So I'm going to give you two multiplication mantras.

So this is like in the category of stuff that traditional Buddhists do and that I don't like, you know. It's like, oh, say this mantra. Then everything you do after that is a hundred thousand times more powerful, you know.

And I'm like, yeah, sure, you know. It looks like it's, no, never mind. So I kind of discounted this whole thing of a special mantra that you do before you do your 10 namaskaras.

And suddenly you get the credit for 50,000 of them, you know. Like, it just seems too easy to me. I agree with what Bikram was quoted as saying about hard work.

There's no shortcuts, you know. In the diamond business, sometimes like once in five years, we used to buy huge amounts of diamonds. I have never been to Africa.

I have never dealt in those diamonds. I've been to Morocco to study Koran, but that's the only time I've been to Africa. But sometimes a guy would come with a big package of diamonds and he would offer to sell it for half of its value.

And then we would say no. We're just trained to say no. Why?

They stole it, okay. And we don't want to deal with those people. You know what I mean?

There's no shortcuts, you know. If someone says you can get 50,000 prostrations in five by saying this magic mantra, I'm like, yeah, yeah, you go sell it somewhere else, you know. But then I, as usual, the thing which I was criticizing turns out to be true.

And that happened with yoga also. You don't know how many students I talked out of doing yoga when I first started. Anyway, and I apologize to them because they're still not doing yoga.

But anyway, but anyway, there is such a thing as a girangak. It's from Lord Buddha. Lord Buddha taught it, okay.

And I checked it out and I found it in the Kangyur because of Dan and John's work. So I actually found the sutra which explains the multiplication mantras, okay. So if you ever want to know, I can show you the sutra.

What I concentrated on was getting the mantra correct because when mantras came into Tibet, they often got corrupted as the Tibetans forgot Sanskrit, which is happening in the Buddhist world in America as people get too lazy to study Tibetan because everything's already in English. So then people will forget the Tibetan more and more and then later they'll come up with some weird Tibetan that's not correct. So what I concentrated on was getting the two mantras correct.

So I'm going to give you the correct mantras. I advise doing it. That's why I changed my tune.

And here they are. Maybe I'll write them out for you. That'd be easier, right?

Because I did a lot of work on them. The first one is sort of an all-purpose amplification mantra. It was corrupted, okay.

Lord Buddha taught it and then it got totally corrupted and they added another mantra before it, which is a corruption of the first one. So they took the real mantra, they corrupted it and added it to the beginning of the other one. So I just reduced it back to its original form and it's in here somewhere.

Let me make sure. I really like it. I tried it out.

It's kind of cool. It worked, okay. Which is, I guess, what you're supposed to do before you teach something, right?

Okay, let's repeat it just for fun, okay. This is an all-purpose amplification mantra. It works with all virtuous activities.

Whatever you do, you can do this before. You can say three of them and then just do whatever you're going to do. All right, ready?

Here we go. You can talk for that, okay. It's like not talking, right?

Say OM SMARA SMARA VIMANASKARA MAHAJAVA HUNG Three times, ready? OM SMARA SMARA VIMANASKARA MAHAJAVA HUNG OM SMARA SMARA VIMANASKARA MAHAJAVA HUNG Okay, now I'll tell you what it means, okay, which is nice. SMARA means I think of you.

SMARA SMARA means I think of you. I think of you. I can't stop thinking about you.

It comes from the root SMR. Oftentimes a Sanskrit root loses its initial S and it became MR. And then there's a process called reduplication which means that you double the root if the activity is done over and over again. So that becomes MRMR, okay? And that became memory or memorial, okay?

So memory is a reduplicated root. It's a double M root. It's a double MRMR, okay?

Memory or I remember. So it means I'm thinking of you. I'm thinking of you.

It's like you're to your heart angel, okay? To your personal angel. If you have one, you can say SMARA SMARA, you know, okay?

Seriously. OM SMARA SMARA, you know? I'm thinking of you.

I can't stop thinking of you, okay? If you don't have a heart angel, you can imagine one that you'd like to have and you kind of create them by doing the mantra, okay, OM SMARA SMARA, okay? I'm thinking of you.

I can't take my mind off you, okay? VI MANAS GARA means YI LA BYAS PA in Tibetan. MANAS GARA, MANAS means mind, right?

Mental came from that. GARA means to make. Create came from that.

MANAS GARA means turn your mind. VI MANAS GARA means tear yourself away from what you're concentrating on. You're saying that to your angel, okay?

SMARA SMARA, I'm thinking of you. Tear yourself away from, you know, whatever you're doing. I don't know what you're doing in your Buddha paradise, but can you VI MANAS GARA just a few minutes and pay attention to me, okay?

VI MANAS GARA, okay? SMARA SMARA, I'm thinking of you. VI MANAS GARA, drop what you're doing, come.

JAVA, okay? Say JAVA. It's cool because JAVA means coffee, right?

And programming company. Anyway, JAVA means quick. MAHA JAVA means come really quick, okay?

I'm thinking of you. Tear yourself away from what you're doing and get your rear end here fast. You're saying that to your heart angel Lama, okay?

It's a beautiful mantra, right? And that will amplify every good thing you do. So if you're about to do some cool thing, then OM SMARA SMARA VI MANAS GARA MAHA JAVA HUNG.

HUNG just closes a mantra, right? OM starts a mantra. So that's the whole mantra, okay?

That's a general all-purpose multiplication mantra. You can check it out. Test it out.

Test drive it and see how it works. We have all these guinea pigs here. It's the guinea pig retreat.

We can ask them to try things and then see if it works. Okay, quickly, because I know it's late and I don't want to burn you out any more than I did already. There's a specific amplification mantra for prostration, okay?

For doing prostrations. And that's also from, that's specifically taught by Lord Buddha and it's in the Kungyur. It's a separate work in the Kungyur dedicated to simply that mantra, the one mantra.

It's in a special section of the Kungyur called the mantras that are difficult to, what do you call it? Categorize according to a certain tantra. So they put all those in a separate mantra section of the Kungyur, okay?

And this is a prostration mantra. So if you're into prostrations, if you want to try to do prostrations, if you're into Surya Namaskars anyway, you might as well get some mileage out of them. Really, why not?

It's not dumb. It's not useless. We're all going to do 10,000 more Surya Namaskars, especially if Anatole's still around.

And we might as well make them more meaningful before it and afterwards, I think. Then do the mantra once or twice, okay? He says three times before you start.

Here's the mantra. Same OM, Namo, Manjushriye, Nama, Sushriye, Nama, Uttama, Shriye, Swaha, One more, two more times. Okay, ready?

OM, Namo, Manjushriye, Nama, Sushriye, Nama, Uttama, Shriye, Swaha, One more time. OM, Namo, Manjushriye, Nama, Sushriye, Nama, Uttama, Shriye, Swaha, Okay, good. Obviously that's about Manjushri, right?

The prostration amplification mantra is based on Manjushri Tantra, which is the angel of wisdom. I think he has a button-down white shirt, NASA style, with a plastic pen holder, and he's got a pen there. That whole sword thing is a mistake.

He's got a pen protector there, so his white shirt doesn't get, you know. That's Manjushri, the lord of wisdom, of emptiness teachings. Nama means I bow down, right?

Namaskar. Sushriye means lovely glory. Su means good, right?

Shri means glory. The Tibetan of Shri is, palma, hot, burning, blazing. Okay, that's the meaning of palma.

I don't know why Mipham Rinpoche gave her that name. Uttama, Shri, then Nama, Uttama, Shriye. Uttama means like Uttanasana, right?

It means extreme. Uttam means extreme. Tanna means to stretch, like tendon comes from that.

Or tenuous comes from that. So anyway, Uttama, Shriye means highest glory. So here's my translation of the mantra.

OM, I bow down to the glory of gentle voice. I bow down, I bow to that lovely glory. I bow to that glorious supreme, Svaha.

And that's the meaning of that mantra. I'll put it on a piece of paper for you. And I'll give you the correct spelling and stuff, okay?

So those are the two amplification mantras before you do. First one before any virtuous activity. Second one before frustrations.

And they were taught by Lord Buddha and they are found in the Kanya. All right, I know you've been sitting here all day. And thank you for being patient.

And I'm sorry I kept you late. I didn't want, I try not to do that nowadays. So we'll do tomorrow.

Hopefully we'll get a little bit into the next practice, which is rejoicing, which is more fun to teach. Because I believe that people focus too much on their negative karmas and not enough on what the good things they're doing. I strongly, from many years of teaching, I believe that that's a major spiritual obstacle.

That people don't appreciate themselves enough and the good stuff they're doing. So we'll push it in tomorrow somehow, okay? All right, you ready, Uncle Phil?