«Дар освобождения», курс 11 «Искусство ценить себя и свою жизнь», занятие 5

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 26:38)
Okay, we're still in the middle of rejoicing, appreciating ourselves, learning to appreciate ourselves. Those of you who might not have been here the last night or the nights before, in preparations for a meditation session, the traditional warm-up for a good meditation. We're in the middle of a warm-up called learning to appreciate yourself and other people as a preparation for meditation.

So if you want to follow the Tibetan, you don't have to. But if you want to. Tibetan has a lot of silent prefix letters like I know, I know.

You don't say I can now, I can now. So it's a little hard to follow, but you can kind of guess. MNGON RGYAL PO SEL RGYAL GYI SANGS RGYAS LA ZHUGS TE Long ago, a king named Selgyal asked Lord Buddha a question.

Who's Selgyal in Sanskrit? We had him yesterday. PRA SRENA JIT PRA SRENA means like clear line or something.

We had it in the DM courses. SANGS RGYAS LA ZHUGS So he asked him a question. RGYAL SRID KYANG BZHIN DU CHOS BYED CHOG PA'I CHOS NA Can you give me some spiritual practices that a person could use if they were busy all day running a country?

So for a person who has... Oh yeah, so if you're busy running a country or a family. Like you have a regular job and you have a regular family and you're busy.

You're a very busy person. So he's asking the question, suppose you're a person who's very busy. You have a full life.

This was common in India. Great kings, Dharma kings, religious kings, meditator kings would come to Lord Buddha and say, give me something I can do. What are the practices that I should do if I can't become a monk or a hermit or a three-year retreatant?

If I'm out in the world in a job and if I'm supporting a family and I have children, then what kind of practices are good for me? And by the way, just so you know, those of you struggling to help support a family, etc. Lord Buddha gave those people the highest practices.

Most of the secret practices, Vajrayana, Diamond Way, were created for Dharma kings, for busy people, presidents of countries. The secret teachings, which are faster and more powerful, were granted to these people who had the karma to be helping a lot of other people, such as a mom in a family or the president of a country. So don't think that you can't achieve high goals.

Don't get into that wrong idea about Buddhism, that if you're not in a cave somewhere meditating, you'll never be a Buddha. That's a wrong idea about Buddhism. That's a very, what do you call, low-level teaching.

And the highest level teachings are very clear that the more active you are, the more serving people, you can also achieve high goals. It depends on your own personality and your own aptitude. But it's very possible, as in ancient India.

For example, the Kalachakra empowerment, which only is given by the highest lamas in the world, was first granted to a king, to a politician, to the leader of a country. And up till now, over a thousand years later, it's still one of the highest secret teachings you can get. And that lineage comes down through a politician.

So anyway, this politician asked Lord Buddha, GZHUS TE, what are some particularly powerful practices for a person who has a full work life and a family life? And Lord Buddha said, RJES SO YI RANG DANG, BYANG CHUB TU SEMS BSKYED PA, NGO BA DE GSUM NANG BA He granted the king three practices. He granted him.

NANG BA here means, you should know, it means to grant. It's the honorific for giving. He granted three practices to the king.

The second one was BYANG CHUB TU SEMS BSKYED PA, to keep in your heart the vision that you'll help start a revolution that changes the whole world. A new way of making things happen. You want to make money?

Then give money to others. Help others to make money. You want to have a partner?

Then find lonely people and serve them. You want to be healthy and strong and young and vigorous? Then adopt a sick person and spend time helping them.

This view of how things work can spread throughout this planet. Planets evolve the same way that people do. Whole planets evolve.

We're like, what do you call it, Stone Age. Spiritually, we are Stone Age people. We have nice machines, like the one that was irritating us just now.

But spiritually, and in the way we work, get things, do things, we are cavemen. We're still wandering around the forest looking for berries. We still think that we should compete and fight with others to make more money and that's how we'll be successful.

Whereas the truth is, if you want to be successful, you have to plant the seeds in your mind. Those are planted by helping others to get the things that you would like first. The first is important, right?

To have a vision that you could change the world by learning to think a different way is the first practice he gave the king. You king, well, the second technically, because I want to save the first one. The first practice, well, oh king, a good practice for you would be to start living your life along these lines and then people would imitate you.

If you became wealthy and healthy and had beautiful relationships, then of course the people in your kingdom would also ask you, what are you doing? How do you do that? We fly on planes, we're on airplanes about three quarters of our lives and it's very common for the stewardess or steward to come up in the middle of an intercontinental flight somewhere in the Atlantic on the way to Barcelona, which is where we're going next month, next week, two weeks from now.

They'll be sitting there and they'll sneak up in the quiet of the late night. Everyone's asleep or watching their fourth movie and they'll say, what do you guys do? Where are you from?

Why are you like that? It happens. Anyway, he tells the king, live by a new way, live in a new way by which you get your dreams come true by helping others to get their dreams come true.

That's his first advice. Second one, LOWA. LOWA means when you do something nice, even just opening a door for somebody, then immediately take that good karma and send it to a higher goal.

That's called LOWA. It's directing good karma to higher goals. At the end of the day, think of the good things you've done.

You can send them to a sick person. You can send them to people who are having trouble in their relationship with their spouse. You can send them to a place in the world where there's war, but learn to gather your good karmas at the end of the day and send them somewhere.

That's LOWA. Now the first one, he says, you know what he's going to say. What?

The very highest practice for someone who's very busy during the day. You have a family or you're running a kingdom. Rejoicing.

What is that? Just be happy about the good stuff you're doing and be happy that other people are doing good stuff. That's all.

If you are busy, you're running a kingdom or you're running a family or a company or something, then these are three practices you can do all day, standing around, running around. Everyone has to go to the bathroom sometime. You get to sit a little bit and then do these three practices.

These are practices you can do sitting on the john or running around your company or while you're on the phone telling the Secretary of State to get to North Korea or whatever. All right. LOWA TE GSUM NANG BA LTAR Now he says something very important.

He says, you can see on the last line there, PHRAG RTOG Where's PHRAG RTOG? It's at the end of that line after the blue part. PHRAG RTOG DANG BRTAN SEMS MED PA YID RANG BYAS DGOS The practice of appreciating yourself and others involves no PHRAG RTOG and no BRTAN SEMS. What's PHRAG RTOG?

PHRAG RTOG means jealousy. Envy. And BRTAN SEMS means competitive attitude.

A competitive attitude. We are trained in America, especially we are trained by the culture. They don't take us in class.

Well, they do. But anyway, the culture is a football culture. It's like if you want to make it in business, you have to be smarter, faster, better advertising, better finance, better product, better.

And you have to criticize the other companies and this is how you get successful. We are trained. If you travel a lot in the world and you meet a lot of the world's people, Americans are the worst.

And I'm an American and I'm proud of being an American. I like America. But as far as a competitive attitude, we're like zero in the world.

We're like the worst one in the world. It's this we are trained that we have to compete with other people. And that causes a lot of trouble internationally.

YID RANG CHE DGOS You must appreciate your own goodness and the goodness of others and try to overcome the feelings of jealousy and competitiveness. RANG RNAM MI DGA' BA ZHIG GI DGE BA CHE NA He goes into a depressing part. I left it off the homework.

RANG RNAM MI DGA' BA ZHIG GI DGE BA CHE NA If somebody we know that we don't like does a good deed, if somebody we know that we don't like does a good deed, RANG TSUL KHOS BYED GO BYED PAR NAS especially towards us, for example, then we say, he didn't do it sincerely. He's not sincere. He's not really trying to help me.

He's just trying to show how cool he is or something. Like that. BYED PAR NAS GANG YANG PHAN DOG MED He doesn't really want to help me at all.

Nothing good came out of it. PHRA DOG BYED MOD We tend to be jealous or envious of a person who does a good deed. We want to somehow criticize that good deed or we want to play it down.

They make a donation to a church or something and then we say, yeah, he just wanted to get his name on a plaque. Like that. We try to find reasons.

In a single sentence, you can destroy everyone's admiration of another person. And we do. It's amazing.

We have DCI. We travel the world. We log tens of thousands of miles.

We really, really work hard to help people. And then I can be, I can get home or be on a plane and somebody will turn to me and just say something like, that was worthless or that was no good. We only got 400 people tonight.

And in a single sentence, all that goodness is canceled in their mind. So we have to be careful not to do that. We should be upplaying the good that we do and not downplaying it.

It doesn't mean you have to lie and say that 4,000 people came when 400 people came. But if three people came, you should be happy. And you should think, God, that's so cool.

And not get into this small mind. Small mind. DE DAG MI BYAR MTHRA DO BYED MOD DE DAG MI BYAR We shouldn't be jealous of other people.

We shouldn't be competitive. RANG SOGS DRAG KYANG LTA BU Say DRAG BA DRAG KYANG DRAG BA DRAG KYANG When the Dalai Lama runs around the world and says, everyone's cheering for him and he gets the Nobel Prize and he stands up and says, I'm just a simple monk. I'm just a plain old simple monk.

In his mind, what he's translating is DRAG BA DRAG KYANG. So say DRAG BA DRAG KYANG Here we just have DRAG KYANG. He's shortened the idiom.

DRAG BA means a monk or a nun. DRA means a fence or a wall. In Tibetan, the short name for a monk is one who stays within the walls.

DRAG BA DRAG KYANG means single, solitary. The ida channel in the body, the left hand channel in Tibetan is called KYANG MA which means solitary channel. DRAG KYANG means a solitary monk.

So when the Dalai Lama says DRAG BA DRAG KYANG he's thinking this word, DRAG BA DRAG KYANG. What's the word for debate ground? Starts with CHOS.

CHOS DRA. That's a corruption of CHOS DRA. CHOS DRA.

The Dharma wall. And the DRA got shortened to DRA. CHOS DRA.

Then we have DRAG KYANG LTA BU. LTA BU means people like us who are just simple monks. We don't have much money.

We don't have much place to stay. We don't own a lot of things. LTA BU.

RANG GI ZHANG DAM DU GNAS PA DE ZHANG DAM ZHAG means, ZHAG is the Tibetan word. You know ZHAG PA meaning to confess. But there's a word ZHAG which sounds the same.

It has nothing to do with ZHAG. ZHAG means a monk's cell. A monk's little tiny room is called a ZHAG.

ZHAG ZHAG. It's called ZHAG ZHAG. ZHAG DAM means the guy who lives in the ZHAG next to you.

ZHAG DAM DU GNAS PA means the guy who lives in the next cell down. Because there's a lot of cells in one building in Tibet, in the Tibetan monastery. We have like six feet between ZHAG.

Every ZHAG is like six feet. There's lots of ZHAGs. ZHAG DAM DU GNAS PA DE RGYA CHOS means a hundred offerings.

It means like a hundred butter lamps or a hundred bananas or a hundred flowers. It means in the monastery, it's not a big, big deal. It's an offering but not a big deal.

He might offer a hundred flowers on his altar. The guy next to us does some kind of not such a big deal, good karma. GCIG BU SONG NA'ANG They make an offering like that.

DE LA YI RANG LEGS ZHIG BYAS NA If we try to develop the capacity to be truly joyful that our neighbor did something cool, good karma, BYAS NA RANG LAS KHONG YUL RTEN MA NA Three things are possible. Three things are possible. If we are just happy that another student in our Dharma group did something nice.

There are three possibilities. RANG LAS KHONG YUL RTEN MA NA YUL RTEN is a very difficult word here. YUL means country or object.

RTEN means a basis for something to rely upon. In ancient Vinaya, YUL and RTEN refers to the person who does a good deed and the person they do it towards or the person taking an ordination or the person granting an ordination. So YUL RTEN here means, we can translate it as if the person involved in that good deed or the person towards whom they did it are apparently lower in level than we are.

If they seem to be lower level than we are. If they are lower spiritually. We cannot judge in truth.

But if actually, however they seem to be, if actually they are lower than you in spiritual level, RTEN MA NA DAB GYUR If you're happy that they did something good, you get DAB GCIG. DAB GCIG means double. You get double the karma that they got.

If they are, we never know for sure, but if in fact, their spiritual capacity is much less than ours. We never know for sure. So until you're a Buddha, you won't know.

But if it happens that they are not very well trained and don't have great motivation, etc. and they do something nice and you're happy about it, you get 100% more karma than they do. It kind of makes sense, right?

I mean, philosophically, it makes sense. Because they're not fully aware of what they're doing. They're not fully aware of the emptiness of the situation, or things like that.

They have not been trained how to do a great karma yet. NYAM NA DE MTSUNGS NYAM NA DE MTSUNGS means, you guys okay over there? Nope.

Yeah, there you go. NYAM NA DE MTSUNGS means, if you are on the same spiritual level, you make exactly the same karma as them. What do we always say?

What percent? We keep saying 10%. Why is he saying equal?

Why is he saying 200%? He's getting there, don't worry. YUL DE BSTAN TOG YANG BSTAN TOG YANG PHRAD TZAM BU BAS PHAN YIN NGES PAR THOB PAS If they are higher than us, if their spiritual level is higher than us, and the person they're dealing with is higher than us, then we get half.

We can get half the karma just by being happy about what they're doing. PHAN YIN NGES PAR THOB NGES PAR means no question. Definitely you will get.

Does that sound like a good deal? DE LAS SKYE CHE BA CI ZHIG BYAS What more profitable business could you be engaged in? You're just sitting on your butt being happy about the guy next door and you get double or equal or half.

Even half is okay. You didn't have to buy anything. You didn't have to do anything.

You didn't have to get up early to get it ready. He did everything. You just be happy about what he did.

Then what better investment is there? He uses a business word here. SKYE CHE BA means what business could be more profitable?

What's the higher return on investment than ROI? DE NA SANGS RGYAS BYANG SEMS SOGS SNGA MA RNAMS KYI RDZAS PA LA YID RANG BYAS NA So really it would be in our business interests to try to find people around us who are doing the most amazing things, who are the highest because their good karma is infinitely higher than other people's good karma. If we could get even 10% of that, we'd be ahead.

DE NA SANGS RGYAS BYANG SEMS SOGS Therefore, if we think about Buddhas of the past or Bodhisattvas of the past, etc. SNGA MA RNAMS KYI RDZAS PA LA YID RANG BYAS NA If we just be happy about holy beings that we heard about who lived in the past, who came before us. BYAS NA RGYUD TSUD TOG MA BA'I DBANG GIS Because their mental capacity is extremely beyond ours, DBANG GIS, due to that, DE'I PHAN YIN CHU CHAG TZAM THOB we can definitely get 10%.

So if you want to know where the 10% came from, that's the lowest possible. It's being conservative. People all over the world, we teach this 10% thing to thousands of people and they're all really happy.

Oh, I can get 10% of Obama's good karma, the good karma that he's doing. I mean, he can pass a law that helps millions of people. If I am happy about it, I get 10% of his karma.

By the way, does he lose 10%? No, don't think like that. Don't think like that.

When you're happy about his good karma, it goes up to 110 and you get 10 and he gets 100. Got it? Don't think you're cheating anybody.

That means if 10 people were happy about him, he wouldn't get anything. So anyway, CHU CHAG TZAM THOB means you get about 10% even on a Buddha. They're much higher than us, but you don't get less than 10%.

Got it? You look confused. If they're higher, we get half, right?

If they're infinitely higher, you get 10%. You also get the karma of being happy. Maybe it's because in your mind you are playing a video of what they're doing and then you're happy about it.

So really, karma in the mind, karmic seeds are produced by the videos in your own mind. So when you frame a thought, in English we call it framing a thought, right? I'm not saying the health care bill was good or bad.

I don't know enough about it. But suppose the health care bill was a really good thing. Then if someone says, how do you feel about the health care bill?

And you run a video in your mind about all the things you heard about the health care bill and you come up with a beautiful impression. Oh, millions of people who can't afford insurance will get their insulin for their diabetes because they all overeat. Then that's a good thing.

But to think it's a good thing, you have to consider what it is. And that makes karma. Then after that process, when you're happy about it, you are also planting seeds to be happy.

So it's two separate karmas. CHU TZAM Anyway, there's the 10%. If anyone ever challenges you when you're teaching, it's page 113B or something.

There it is. 114. So don't say Geshe Michael made it up.

By the way, I never make up anything. Everything is direct from scripture. But if I go around teaching direct from scripture, three people will come instead of a thousand.

Okay, CHU TZAM THOB SANGS RGYAS KYI DGE RTZA LTA ZHOG RANG RES Forget about the karma that a Buddha makes. Let's not even consider being happy about the good karma that a Buddha makes. Let's just think about a BYANG SEMS...

[Говорящий 2] (26:39 - 26:40)
Where is that?

[Говорящий 1] (26:44 - 1:04:01)
BYANG SEMS SA DANG PO BA Can you block that out? BYANG SEMS SA DANG PO BA Two lines down. End of the next line.

Got it? BYANG SEMS SA DANG PO BA Say BYANG SEMS SA DANG PO BA He says, let's not talk about Buddhas. I mean, that's too high.

Let's talk about a BYANG CHUB SEMS PA SA DANG PO BA LA NAMS PA What's BYANG CHUB SEMS PA? Bodhisattva. What's DANG PO mean?

Like Angi DANG PO means first. What's SA? Level.

BOD MED. Bodhisattva BOD MED. So let's consider a bodhisattva, not ninth level, not tenth level, not sixth level, who's just on level one of the bodhisattva levels.

What makes you a person on the first bodhisattva level? By the way, you can become a bodhisattva long before that. Yeah, you see ultimate reality directly.

There is a reality which is around us all the time, which sustains and supports the entire world, universe, which if you saw it, you could change anything in the universe and yourself. When you see that thing once, you must become a Buddha within a short amount of time. It's not possible not to be.

A person who saw emptiness this week would probably be my Treya in this world, would be the next Buddha to come to this world. Almost certainly. BYANG CHUB SEMS PA DANG That's a BYANG CHUB SEMS PA DANG PO BA A bodhisattva who's on the first level, not the tenth or the twelfth or the ninth.

Then he says, RANG RES MI TSE SHOS POR DGE SBYOR LA BAS KYANG People like you and me, we could spend an entire lifetime trying to do good karma. BAS KYANG, BYANG CHUB SEMS PA DANG BYANG CHUB SEMS PA DANG PO BA'I SNYING GCIG GI DGE TZA CHA SHES TZAM YANG MI SBYUNG We can't even get in a whole lifetime of sincere effort the amount of good karma that a bodhisattva who has reached the first level collects in a single day. We can't get a small sliver of what they collect in a single day.

Not possible in a whole lifetime of effort. Good effort. Not possible.

MI SBYUNG ZHING YID RANG GIS YID RANG RGYI NA DE CHAD CHAD TZAM THOB PA'I But if we can cop half of their karma just by being happy about what they're doing, DE NYID SEMS KYI GYUR LUGS GCIG GIS TSOR BSLAB PA PHYOD DUG PA'I what would be more powerful than that? What would be a better practice? And you don't have to do anything.

You just be happy. Just enjoy them. Oh, that's cool.

I like them. And you get half their good karma which is more than you can do in your whole lifetime. Then why not?

Go for it. It doesn't cost you anything. You can do it at night on your bed.

BSLAB PA PHYOD, extremely powerful. DUG PA'I THABS KHAS Skillful means, skillful means. That's a very famous Buddhist word.

Skillful means. It means tricky ways to get great good karma. Like, I don't know.

In my own case, I have lots of lamas. I had 12 major lamas, 13. But if I just make a nice dinner for one of them, then I collect more good karma than I can do ever in DCI.

Traveling to 30 countries, teaching endlessly. If I make one dinner for my teacher, I get more karma from that. That's THABS KHAS.

Go to Safeway, buy some stuff. That's THABS KHAS. Skillful means, means people who know what they're doing can make more good karma in Safeway than flying to 29 countries.

You see what I mean? If you know what you're doing, that's called skillful means. THABS KHAS KYI KHRUL CHEN PO is a nice word.

See, you see KHRUL CHEN PO? Say KHRUL. CHEN PO KHRUL CHEN PO means karma making machine.

Okay. Going to Safeway is a big karma making machine. Like a tank, a karma tank.

It's a karma nuclear bomb. Going to Safeway to buy some dinner stuff and then spending all day. That was so cool that we could do that French dinner, right?

That was wonderful. That was such a good idea. Whose idea?

Was that Mercedes? Whose idea? Was that your idea?

Somebody sent five of us to a cooking class in Paris and then we can do that for our teacher. We can make that meal for our teacher and nobody else knows how to make it. THABS KHAS KYI KHRUL CHEN PO ZHIG YIN U CHOG DIR U is the...

Tibet is divided into three great... Traditionally, Tibet has been divided into three great areas of the country. They're called U, Amdo, and Kham.

Utsang, Khamdo, Amdo, and Kham. Amdo is like southeast Tibet. Kham is much of the...

Sorry, yeah, southeast. Kham is much of the eastern and northeastern part of Tibet. Traditional Tibet.

And then Utsang is the central part of Tibet. Hasa is located in Utsang. So he was sitting at Sara Monastery.

So U CHOG DIR means here in the region of U. Utsang. If you look in the dictionary, U means middle and you're going to mistranslate this.

U is a state, name of a state, like Kansas. All right. What do they call that one?

What's the one that Guadalajara is in? Jalisco, yeah, okay, good. Mexico is in Mexico?

Okay, the state is called Mexico also? So, yeah, so you live in Mexico, in Mexico, in Mexico. People from Mexico City don't say Mexico City.

They say, I live in Mexico. It's like New Yorkers say, I live in the city. Okay, I think it's cool.

But it's confusing for foreigners for a couple of days. U CHOG DIR, here in U, RGYAL RTEN DAG BA'I STOBS KYIS RGYAL RTEN means the teachings of Lord Buddha, the teachings of the victorious ones. DHAR BA means they have spread.

STOBS KYIS, and because of that. So Buddhism is very popular in all of Tibet. He's saying, look, Buddhism is popular everywhere in Tibet.

So you can see people doing CHAGS CHOS. CHAGS means prostrations, like a hundred prostrations or a thousand prostrations. CHOD PA means making offerings in the temples or making offerings to monks and nuns or making offerings to each other or making offerings to the poor.

You can see it everywhere. GOR BA means, in Tibet, it's considered a spiritual practice to walk around a holy place, just to walk around a holy place. So in my temple that I lived in New Jersey, me and Rinpoche built a sidewalk.

We ripped our hands up building a sidewalk, pouring a sidewalk, and then it's still there. I'm very proud of it because we didn't know how to make a sidewalk. It was kind of experimental.

But then the Mongolian congregation could walk around the temple all the time, and they did. So that's called GOR BA. And you make good karma.

You want to hear a famous story about that? This is kind of funny. The older students know.

Lord Buddha had a lot of people come to him and they want to be his student, two and a half thousand years ago. And it got kind of out of hand and he had to have handlers. He had to have his disciples around him buffering all these people who wanted to see him.

By the way, it's a very unpopular thing to be a lama's handler and cut them some slack. They have a hopeless job. The lama's trying to get more people to come and the handler's trying to save the lama's health and nobody's happy.

Anyway, I was my lama's handler for 25 years. So anyway, Lord Buddha told his disciple, I think it was Maudgalyayana or Sariputra. He said, look, when people show up and they want to be a monk or nun, can you do a pre-check?

You interview them and do a pre-check. Then if they're okay, let them through and let them talk to me. So this guy came and he said, I want to be a monk.

I think it was Maudgalyayana, maybe Sariputra, but he goes like, and he reads the guy's mind. He always reads the guy's mind. He's like, is there any past karma there?

Is there any past karma there? Does he have the karma to become a monk and keep it? And keep it.

Then he's like, nope. He's like, this guy's mind is clean as a whistle. Nothing there.

He goes to Lord Buddha. He goes inside and he says, you can forget this guy. There's no good karma there anywhere that he could be a monk or keep it.

Then Lord Buddha's like, you made a bubu. Let him in. He's like, what do you mean I made a bubu?

He said, check this corner of his mind. Go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. Look at that little tiny seed there.

He's got this little tiny seed there. Maudgalyayana's like, he's like, oh yeah, I can see it. It's like as big as a piece of dust.

In his mind, this little tiny seed. He said, how did he get that seed? Lord Buddha said, he was a fly in his past life, a zillion years ago.

He lived on a hill. There was a temple down below. There was a little temple down below.

One day he landed on a cow poop. He landed on a cow poop. Then there was a big rainstorm.

A big flood came down the hill. The fly's holding onto the cow poop. Then the cow poop got pushed down in the flood.

The flood went around the temple. The fly is riding on the cow poop around the temple by accident. Enough karma to become a monk and keep it.

Let him in. That's korwa. That's like to circle a holy place once.

It means there's hope for us, right? That's good news. Nyenkor means honoring lamas, honoring teachers, honoring monks and nuns, like that tradition.

Gom druk means meditating and doing our other practices, like Vajrayogini practice, or doing refuge practice, or doing bodhichitta practices. Druk means any kind of practices. Lob nyer means study.

You are right now making lob nyer karma if you're not asleep or thinking only about dinner. Okay, that's it. I'm halfway there.

Lob nyer sok means et cetera. Chepa mangway. Here in Tibet, you just look out your window and somebody's doing some spiritual practice.

We're lucky because there's lots of stuff to be happy about. There's lots of things you can see all around you, people to be happy about. Mangway, dey dak la yi rang chen na.

If you're happy about what everybody's doing in Tibet, ge tsar lak chen thobpa ong. You will get an extraordinary amount of good karma. We're lucky.

We're in the same situation. We just came back from Diamond Mountain. There are 32 people there, two years into a three-year retreat.

They built the cabins themselves. They spent every penny they had. They know they're going to give those cabins up in one year and give them to Diamond Mountain forever for other people.

They're not going to be living in those cabins after one year. They spent all the money they had in their life. They spent years of their life knowing that they can't keep those cabins.

They're working through a very difficult three-year retreat. Then they came and gave a talk to us. Five of them came and gave a talk to us, blindfolded.

That was awesome. To talk about them and to think about them, how cool they are, 50%, 100%, 200%. We don't have to build a cabin.

We don't have to spend all our money. You know? Okay.

DE LTAR LHAG PA BYAS OM What I mean is we are in a Dharma group. We are in a Sangha. There are lots of people around us who are struggling to be good people.

I don't think the offerings is okay. Making prostrations is nice. I'm more impressed when people are struggling not to be jealous of each other or not to feel competitive with the other Dharma students or other Dharma groups.

They are trying to work together. That attempt to be a nice person, we have those examples around us all the time. Everyone in this room is struggling to be a better person.

We are so lucky to be surrounded by other people. We are not perfect. Nobody is perfect.

But we are all trying. We all feel bad all day because we are not doing well enough. That's a virtue.

To appreciate anybody else in this room, how hard they are working to try to be a good person. Who else in the world would sit for two or three hours of obscure Tibetan in Mesa, Arizona or Bowie, Arizona? It's amazing.

Those people are all special. You have around you karma machines, many karma machines. Just be happy about any of them.

I think it's more glorious to be trying hard than to be successful. It's more to be happy about. That person is making more effort.

It's like a person who is in their first day of yoga class is more amazing than Anatole. Really. Because for them it's totally different.

It's totally difficult. It's strange. It hurts.

They don't know how long it's going to go on. Everything is confusing, even left foot and right foot. You walk into yoga class, your first class, and you forget which is your left foot.

Everyone is looking at you like they're backwards. Do you know you're backwards? It takes more guts to be in the first day of your yoga class than to do a one-arm handstand.

That's the way it is. We can be happy about those people who are trying and failing sometimes. SANGS RGYAS RNAMS KYIS BDANG PO THUG BSKYED PA LAM MED CHAGS SHES LA CHAGS SHES means the custom.

It's the honorific custom. The word custom or tradition. Lama means lama, right?

It means here, my lama used to do. My lama used to do. LAM MED CHAGS SHES It can mean the lama's tradition, the tradition of the lamas.

But here in this context, the feeling of the grammar is that Pabongka Rinpoche is talking about his own heart teacher. My lama's custom. I'm often quoting Ken Rinpoche.

I'll say, Ken Rinpoche used to say, or Ken Rinpoche used to do. Then people are like, what did he used to do? What was I talking about the other day?

I don't remember. We were talking about, anyway, we shouldn't talk about that. My lama had a custom.

At this point in his practice, he would actually review in the teaching some cool old stories about Buddhas so that everybody in the room could cop 10% or 50% right now. Why wait? Why go home and try to find a Buddhist book and be happy about Nagarjuna or somebody like that?

Why not here in the teaching review a few cool stories, swap a few stories, and we all can make some extra karma? Like right here, right now, 50%. Let's go for it.

Here we go. He gives several examples of stories that his teacher used to tell. The first example he gives is SANGS RGYAS RNAM GYIS DANG PO THUG BSKYED PA How it was that our Buddha in this world first got love in his heart.

The first moments of real love in the heart of the current Buddha, the Buddha who lived in this world. Going back many lifetimes, there must have been a moment in his life, a breakthrough moment, when he got real love in his heart. Similar to bodhichitta, almost bodhichitta.

Some people say it was bodhichitta. But is there a story, is there a record of the first moment that the current Buddha had a breakthrough and started loving others in an intense way? And there is such a story.

It's recorded. We have such a story. I'm going to give it to you.

I went and got it for you because I like it. The story comes from a sutra called THUG BSKYED PA CHEN PO SANGS RGYAS CHEN NA'I SRAB PA'I DO What's THUG BSKYED? Yes, CHEN PO means upaya.

CHEN PO means great. The great THUG BSKYED PA'I The great skillful means ZER. The guy who was best at using tricky ways to make good karma.

Who's that? SANGS RGYAS. Our Buddha.

The Buddha. CHEN NA'I SRAB PA means the sutra devoted to paying back the kindness of Lord Buddha. That sutra's name is Paying Back the Kindness of Lord Buddha.

It's a beautiful name for a sutra. They're trying to make a film out of one of our books. They're trying to choose between two books.

One is called How Yoga Works but the other one has never been published yet. It's called Kachin. Kachin means...

And it's a trick because it means Catherine but it also means, in Tibetan, Kachin means the kindness of your teacher. The kindness of your heart teacher. It's called Kachin.

This book's name is Paying Back the Kachin of Your Teacher. This sutra is called Paying Back the Kachin of Your Teacher. In that book, Lord Buddha describes...

I'm going to just read it straight to you. It's so beautiful. What's your job right now?

Be as happy as possible. All right. Here we go.

,DE BZHIN GSHES PA NGON KHO BA NA, ,KHOR BA'I TSE, ,THOG PA NGOS PO CI RGYUR, ,BYANG CHUB TU SEMS SKYES PAR GYUR, One of the Buddha's disciples rises at a teaching. I'm sure the Buddha asked for questions. He said, Oh Lord Buddha, you also suffered earlier in your lifetimes.

You also were stuck in the cycle of samsara. You were also stuck in the cycle of pain. When you were still stuck in that cycle, ,THOG PA NGOS PO CI RGYUR, what was the thing that triggered the first time in your heart, ,BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS, SEMS, bodhichitta.

What was the thing, what was the event, and what was the object that triggered bodhichitta in your heart finally? Because that's a big, what do you call? Milestone.

Then you're going to become a Buddha. ,BCOM LDAN DE'I KHA TSAL PA, Lord Buddha answered, ,RIG GI BUD, Oh child of noble family. Anyone who understands anything about the pen becomes, in Buddhist terminology, a child of noble family.

It's cool. You are all children of noble family. You belong to a different family now, a high family.

You are nobility. By hearing the pen, you become nobility. Anyway, ,SNGON GYI RGYAL PA THANG MED KYI BAR DU, ,SKYE SHES KHOR BA NA, For countless millions of years, I also circled in the cycle of pain.

I also wandered in the world of pain. ,KHOR BA NA KHOR ZHING, ,LUS DANG SNGAGS DANG, ,YI NI NYON MONGS PA'I LAS CHEN POS, Then I also said bad things, and I also did bad things, and I also thought bad things, and because of that, I collected some very serious karma. ,GNYEL BA CHEN POS RGYAS NYONG BAR GYUR TO, And I went to the hell.

I went to hell. No, not to hell. I've been to all the hells.

In Buddhism, there are eight great hells. So he says, I went to hell. No, excuse me.

I've been to all of them. Many times. This is Lord Buddha talking.

Then he names the eight. ,AHA AHA SEMS CAN GNYEL BA, It's a cry of pain. The hell called cry of pain.

,A LHA LHA SEMS CAN GNYEL BA, It's a different cry of pain. More serious. There are more serious ones.

Screaming and screaming terribly, and screaming your heart out, and screaming your guts out. These are the names of the hells in Tibetan, in Sanskrit. ,A THA TSE SEMS CAN GNYEL BA DANG, ,GZHANG GZHUL KU MA'I SEMS CAN GNYEL BA, The hell where molten metal runs free.

,GZHANG KU BA CHEN PO SEMS CAN GNYEL BA DANG, ,RDO NAG PA'I SEMS CAN GNYEL BA, The hell of mountains, where you are crushed between mountains that fall. ,RDO NAG PA'I CHEN PO SEMS CAN GNYEL BA DANG, ,ME ZHING DE GNYEL BA'I BAR DU'O, Then I was born in the hell called Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire.

,NGAG DE TSE NAG ME ZHING DE GNYEL BA LHUNG NAS, I can remember there was a time when I fell into the hell of Chariots of Fire. These are chariots that are drawn normally by horses. In that hell they are made of iron.

The whole chariot is made of iron. They are burning, they are glowing with fire. ,GNYIS KYI ME ZHING LTA BRAL TE, Then when you are born into that hell, you are required to pull that wagon.

They don't strap horses to the wagon, they strap people to the wagon. They strap people to a metal wagon. Then hell guards, they are like the people, never mind.

There are people who run the hells sitting on the chariot and they whip the people to pull this thing which weighs as much as a car. ,GNYIS ME ZHING LTA BRAL TE, ,GNYEL BA'I ZHING LTA, ,'A BAG NI ZHING STEG NA, ,DUG CING MIG STE, There was a guard of the hell. It's like the guard in a concentration camp or something.

His name is messed up in all the scriptures. I can't figure it out. Sometimes it's A-BA, sometimes it's A-BA.

Here it's A-BANG. And I haven't been able to find it. What it's supposed to be, I don't know.

One text says he has the head of a... the body of a scorpion and the head of a snake, or something like that. Anyway, ,ZHING STE STEG NA, DUG CING MIG STE, His eyes are glowing in fury.

,SOGS RIGS, He shows his fangs. ,ME BU KHA, Fire flies from his own mouth. ,MIG DANG NA BA DANG NA NAS MED PAR, Fire burns from his own eyes, his ears, and from his nose.

,DUG PA THUL TE, Smoke rises from his body. He's made of fire. He gives off fire.

The guard. ,GSUM MA DE YANG LUS SHIN TU CHE ZHING, And he was monstrous in size, like 50 feet big. ,CHE ZHING NAG LA, And his body was pure black.

,ZHING STE STE NA SKYES MO DUNG BYAS TE DUG, And he sat with crossed legs on the top of the chariot that we had to pull. ,BYAS TE DUG, ,BLAB PA NA CHAGS KYIS YUL PA THOG STE, And he had a club made of steel in his hand. A club made of steel in his hand.

,NGA LA BDE GO, And he was beating me. I was pulling the chariot and he beats me with the iron club. ,DE TSE NGES PA'I SDUG BSNGAL MA SOS NAS, ,THOB CHI NUS KYI ZHING RTAG DRANGS SO, Then only because of the intense pain I had from being beaten with the iron club, I had to run.

I was trying to run from the club and then I pulled the cart. So I was trying as hard as I could to pull because I was just trying to get away from the club. ,NGA'I GROG ZHIG NYAMS SBYUNG STE, ,RDZIN MA NUS PA'I NYAL BA'I GSUNGS MA, ,ABS PA'ANG GI CHAGS KYIS BSRUNG TSE GSUNGS PA MTHONG NAS, Then I had a, there was someone strapped into the other side of the, what do you call that thing?

Harness or the yoke, yeah. There was another person strapped in on the other side. And the hell guards would, they also had a trident, a three-pronged metal spear.

And then, ,TSE GSUNGS PA MTHONG NAS, ,DANG DU TSUG STE, And he jammed it into that person's chest and CHOG TU BDEG and he smashed him with the metal club. And then blood spurted out of the holes of the person like rain. ,DE'I TSE MI DE NA SDUG BSNGAL, ,MI SOS PA'I NA, ,NA TSA BA'I SKYE CHEN PO CHUNG NAS, And then screams were coming out of that other person.

Terrible screams. And he was crying out the names of the two people who had been his mother and father before he came there. So the only words he could remember from before, his human life, was the name of his mother and the name of his father.

And he was screaming those two names. ,BAR GA NI CHUNG MA ZHES BOS, And then once in a while, he would scream out the name of his wife, the person who had been his wife before he died, and his children's names. Just out of sheer agony, in his pain.

It's all he could think of and it's all he could remember. ,ZHES BOS KYANG PHAN PA MED DO, But it was hopeless. It didn't help anything.

,SNA DE'I TSE NA DE LTAR PA'I SDUG BSNGAL CHEN PO MYONG BA MTHONG, Then I was looking at him, thinking about him. ,SNA DE'I TSE NA DE LTAR PA'I SDUG BSNGAL CHEN PO MYONG BA MTHONG, And I was thinking about how much pain he was in physically and also in his heart because all he could remember was the name of three or four people who he had loved before and he was screaming them. ,SNYING RJE SEMS KYI SOR, And I got compassion.

A moment of compassion rose in my heart. In that moment, when he screamed his children's name and his wife's name, ,DE LTAR SNYING RJE SEMS CHEN PO SKYES PA'I KHYEN GYI, ,CHANG CHUB TU SEMS SKYES PA, And I got bodhichitta. It triggered bodhichitta in my mind.

In that moment, when he screamed his family's names, I got bodhichitta. ,DE NAS SDUG BSNGAL MYONG BA DE PHYIR, Then I thought maybe I could do something for him. ,GNAL BA'I GSUNGS PA'I DBANG RAG SDUG BSNGAL MYONG BA MI DI LA, ,SNYING RJE SEMS CHUNG ZAD SKYES, And I said to the hell guard, I will pull the chariot.

Let him go. Just cut him off of the traces and let him lie on the ground and I will pull the chariot myself. I told him that.

Then, not in this sutra, but in another sutra they say, the guard screamed at him and said, who are you to tell us who suffers and who doesn't? Karma tells. Who are you to decide this man gets to be cut from the chariot?

Who are you? He took the club and he killed the Buddha. He killed him in that moment.

Then he was born in the Deva realm. The next moment he's in the Deva realm. Because of what?

Because he had bodhichitta. Because of that moment of bodhichitta. And then slowly he worked his way up to Buddhahood.

So that's the story of our Buddha in this world. That's the story of how he got love in his heart for the first time. If you hear that story and your heart goes out to him and you think, oh, that was such a noble deed, then you get 10% of his karma and you don't have to go there.

So to talk about... We had a rough year and people were all talking about these negative things. I finally just leave the room.

I say, I have to go to the bathroom. People are talking, this person's bad or this person's bad or this reporter's bad or this newspaper's bad. I finally, I just got tired.

I don't want to hear those stories. I want to hear stories about the Buddha. I want to hear stories which are uplifting and high and make my heart fly.

I want to be around people who are talking about the amazing things that are happening and the beautiful things that are happening. I don't go on the internet much. I haven't seen those things.

I don't even go there because there's no karma there. There's no goodness there. Listen to the stories of beautiful people, beautiful Buddhas, bodhisattvas, three-year retreatants, people in this room who are struggling to be nice people.

Talk about those. If you get in a room and you have 10 minutes, talk about the inspiring things. Talk about Guadalajara.

God damn, 20 people there, two and a half years ago. Now there was a thousand people at the last event. Could we talk about that?

That's a little bit cool. You can also talk about your own progress. You can sit down.

Many, many people have said that at Diamond Mountain University the more education went on in the kitchen yard than in the temple, which makes me kind of irritated because I wasn't teaching in the kitchen yard. But I believe it. You learn more things by talking to inspiring people than you do informal teachings.

If we get together as friends, let us talk about inspiring things and beautiful things and we can make some cheap karma. It's also just a lot healthier and more fun. If something bad happens and it's necessary to talk about it, to process it, do that and then let it go and then talk about beautiful things.

The more you talk about beautiful things, the more you realize there's more beautiful things to talk about than bad things. You have a choice when you go to bed and you lay your head on your pillow. You can think about all your problems.

Your credit card debts. The fact that my credit card company would not take my other credit card's number today even though it was perfectly valid and had lots of money on it. It was a debit card.

They wouldn't take it. I'm like, I can think about that when I put my head on my pillow. Is it true?

Yes. Did it happen today at Paradise Cafe? Yes.

Is it better than thinking about the story of the Buddha in the hell realms again as I go to bed? I don't think so. I don't think so.

When you go to bed, when you put your head down on the pillow, make it a habit. Think about some high, beautiful, inspiring thing and not some problem you've had or you've heard about or some controversial thing. Make some good karma before you go to bed.

It will make you a better person and a happier person. That's what he's advising. He's advising us to gossip, which is not normal for a Tibetan Lama to do.

But he's advising us to gossip about all the cool stuff we saw today. Got it? It's a lot more fun.

A lot more good karma. We'll take a break.