«Дар освобождения», курс 11 «Искусство ценить себя и свою жизнь», занятие 6

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 1:12:13)
So we've been talking, we're in the section where you're preparing for a meditation session by appreciating things. And you can appreciate yourself and you can appreciate other people. As far as appreciating yourself, you can appreciate what you're doing now or you can appreciate what you must have been doing if good stuff is happening to you now.

So we finished talking about that, nice things, any good thing that happens to you during the day. At the end of the day, when you lay down on your bed and you put your head on your pillow, you're supposed to think about all the good things you've done that day. Some of us can't think of anything.

Then you can always just look at the good stuff around you. And that must have been produced by you, by doing something good earlier than today. So you can always fall back on that.

You can always be happy about the good you must have done to get the nice things around you. If you live in a house, if there is a blue sky above your head, if you have the miracle of water around you to drink or to bathe in, you have done extraordinary virtues in your past life. Just water, just the miracle of this substance or light is all being created by very powerful good deeds that you did in the past for others.

Some beings in this universe are born into darkness and live there their entire life. And some are born into places with no water but they can't die. And you have these miracles, blue sky, flowing water, friends around you, house.

You're special. So if the end of the day comes and you lay your head down and you can't think of anything that you've done today that you should appreciate about yourself, you can appreciate that you have glasses of water and that you have a sky above you. Because many, many beings in this universe don't have those things.

They didn't have enough goodness to have those things. And it sounds dumb and it sounds artificial but it's not. It takes hundreds of thousands of acts of kindness to have water in your world or to have a sky over your head.

And you did them. GNYIS PA NI, so we talked about being happy about things you must have done in the past. And now we're on the second section.

GNYIS PA NI, RANG GI MUN TSUM DU MYO BA'I Then you can be happy about things you have done today. And he gives some examples. RANG GI means by you, by yourself.

MUN TSUM DU MYO BA'I means things you have experienced yourself doing directly. GAT-DON, he gives an example. GAT-DON is svadhyaya.

Have you heard of svadhyaya? From where? Yoga Sutras.

I chose that because everyone misreads it. Everybody. They say something like, what is it?

Study of yourself or something. Weird thing. It just means GAT-DON.

GAT-DON means reciting scriptures. Memorizing and reciting scriptures or mantras. That's all it means.

And that's a very holy practice. It has been forgotten in America. People don't memorize things.

I think in all my training in school I had to memorize a little bit of Shakespeare, right? And I still remember it. But in Asia, to memorize books is very important.

And then you have them in your head. And if you're stuck in traffic on the 101 South before 60 from Thomas Road and it's all going five miles an hour, you can relax and listen to a book in your mind. You don't need the book.

You can keep your eyes on traffic. It's safer. And you can listen to Maitreya singing the Abhisamankara in your mind when you're stuck in traffic.

And this is considered a very important part of life in Asia. It has been forgotten in the West. So maybe sometime you should try to memorize just a few lines and run them through your mind.

Keep them in your mind. And then you have them your whole life. You can listen to Maitreya any time you want.

Just say, okay, start talking in my mind and he does. So try to learn at least a few small things. Like the Heart Sutra is very good to learn, something like that.

The Eight Verses is very good to learn. Lamsa Namsum, the Three Principal Paths. If you make it a habit, like 15 minutes a day, you can memorize hundreds of pages.

It's just a habit, like brushing your teeth. Jintong means, so you must have, in a monastery you would have memorized some things and recited them. Jintong means you must have given things to other people, small gifts.

Make a cup of tea for someone. Give them cheesecake with cherries on it. Nyenkor means to honor teachers and other spiritual practitioners.

So just your Dharma friends to make them little gifts and tell them you like their Krishna song, and things like that, if it's a sweet song. To honor, in Tibetan they're called wöpa, cha wöpa means to honor those who are worthy to be honored. Like someone who sings a nice meaningful song for other people, then that deserves, we should honor and thank them, right?

Thank you. Okay, all right. TSOS SAM GANG PHYIR PA means, TSOS SAM means whatever study you have done, ACI courses, DMU courses, Lamrim courses, okay, whatever study you may have done today.

TSOS PHYIR BAR DGA' PHYIR JI LTAR PHYIR PA, TSOS means in the morning, TSOS means in the secret teachings, it means a ceremony dedicated to the divine being that you are trying to reach. But in the monastery, the word TSOS generally refers to going to assembly of the monks. So every morning there'll be a TSOS, either in the main dukang, sorry, chikung, the main temple, which is both saras together, or in Saramay's temple alone, or in your own college's temple.

Then every morning, I don't know, 4.30, 5 o'clock, you go to TSOGS. There's a big incentive in the monastery because you don't get breakfast unless you go to TSOGS. So a lot of people go to TSOGS but they not out.

Okay, TSOGS CHU RA, you know, CHU RA, debate, to go to the debate ground, okay, the debate park. Until recently at Sera, at my monastery, it was a huge open public park, and there was a simple wall around it, and just flagstones on the ground, and we spent many, many hours there every day, sometimes five hours, sometimes overnight. It's called SEMPADAMCHA, all night debating, and it's extremely pleasant.

It's under the stars. In those days we had no electricity, and some guy's yelling at you in the dark, and you're answering in the dark, and all you can see is Orion over his head. It's very beautiful.

It was very moving to have someone yelling Dharma questions at you, and to watch the constellations slowly turn over their head. So that's CHU RA. CHU RA up here means in the debate ground, okay, in the debate ground.

You do KHA CHE. KHA CHE is, where is that? KHA CHE means, KHA THUB means tapas, right?

Tapas means sweat. You sweat it. You did difficult things.

In the TSOGS, it's many hours. You have to try to concentrate the whole time. You have to try to meditate for many hours, sitting among a thousand other monks.

It's hot. It's India. If it's the monsoon, it's terribly humid.

It might be dripping on your head, and you can't move because there's monks crushing you in for like two, three hours. To sit there and concentrate is KHA CHE. KHA CHE means tapas.

It's a Tibetan word for tapas. KHA means difficult. CHE means activity.

So in the CHU RA, in the debate ground or in the temple, trying to meditate with a thousand other monks, we did KHA CHE. It takes guts to stay there and to concentrate, especially the debate ground. Maybe 90% of the monks drop out over the Geshe course, and it's hard.

It's really hard. KHA CHE JI LTAR BYAS PA DANG So you can be happy about the hardships you are undertaking for the Dharma. Like trying to get a flight at the last minute, connecting Colorado, get here by seven o'clock.

That's a KHA CHE. That's a tapas. When you have 10,000 other things to do and you probably can't afford to take it.

Okay. TSUL KHRIMS JI LTAR GSUNG BA means trying to honor our morality, trying not to hurt other people, trying not to be dishonest, trying to be truthful, trying to be harmonious with other people. These are TSUL KHRIMS. GSUNG BA here means to protect. So the Tibetan word for keeping your morality is to protect your morality. It's difficult in a Dharma group, because there's a lot of intense emotion going on often. I think this last weekend it was very intense.

There was a lot of... We were all crying. It was beautiful and it was very cathartic, and it was intense.

It was very difficult. You can be happy that you did that. Also under those circumstances, under the circumstances of hearing about death, hearing about how life really is, then it's difficult to relate to other people in the group.

There's oftentimes jealousy or competitiveness or emotions come up because of the amount of prana being processed. It's difficult to remain harmonious and to keep your morality that way with your Dharma brothers and sisters. Strangely it's quite difficult, even though you're all supposed to be striving towards some high spiritual goals.

But I think that striving itself brings up a lot of emotions, and it's difficult to keep your kind state of mind, morality, in a Dharma group. It's hard. The heavier it gets, the harder it is.

SONG BA DANG DRAN DE LAM SEMS MED PAR At night, when you go to sleep for example, remember all the nice things you did today. Remember the hardships you undertook to make yourself a better person. Not always successful, but honest hardships.

DRAN means think about them, and then DGA' BA GOM. Say DGA' BA GOM. Meditate on happiness.

It's a cool expression in Tibetan. You should learn it. You can do that on the highway.

Say DGA' BA GOM, DGA' BA GOM. DGA' BA means, GOM means meditate, right? DGA' BA means just being happy.

Appreciating yourself. Appreciating how hard you're working. Every person in this room doesn't do it enough.

Every person in this room doesn't appreciate themselves enough. You are special. Anybody who comes and sits for three hours and listens to some strange language in a church in Arizona with no windows, I mean, you are...

By the way, I'm grateful for the church. I'm very grateful, and I like the church. It's kind of sweet to me, right?

It kind of fits us, the size, and it's kind of intimate. I love the children's room. If you have time, you should sit out in the back.

It's very beautiful. It's very sweet. It's a nice place.

But DGA' BA GOM, be happy about what's going on, because you're having a special life. You are having a special life. It's very hard to convince people of that.

They are determined to think about their credit card balances, and to worry about one person they don't like, and out of 200 or 2,000 or 20,000, there's 9,999 really sweet people, and they focus on the one troubled person, and they ruin their sleep, and they ruin their evening. And they is me, right? We all do that.

Last night I did it, I can confess. In the middle of the night I did it. I woke up at three to four, thought about problems.

There's always a few problems, right? And there's always about 99% miraculous things, like the sky, and water, and the fact that you made it into this lineage. This lineage was, what do you call it?

People were executed for trying to get into Tibet. Sarat Chandra Das, the guy who wrote the dictionary, his sponsor had his legs and arms cut off, and his body was dragged through the streets of Hassa. And here we are, studying the same thing.

It's a miracle. I mean, have a little sense of gratitude, or you are special. You didn't get any limbs cut off to have this Dharma.

You just came to Mesa. You got down Highway 60, and it's a miracle. It's wonderful.

You're lucky. And who knows how long it will last. So, enjoy it.

Be happy. Enjoy it. It's like a nice meal, an ice cream or something.

Even better. Okay. Sarat Chandra Das, I want to attend it.

LOM SEMS MED PA But without LOM SEMS. Say LOM SEMS. LOM means bad pride. LOM SEMS means bad pride. Oh, yes, I'm one in a million people in America who's hearing the Lam Rim tonight, because everyone else is a schmuck.

All those people who are sitting there watching, you know, we tend, our group and I do, tend to judge the rest of humanity who's not here tonight. Oh, they must be dumb people. They're at the baseball stadium drinking beer and eating hamburgers.

And they don't have any deeper thoughts than that. And they don't have any spiritual experiences. Only we are special.

And that's called LOM SEMS. LOM SEMS means, of course, we should be happy that I know the Heart Sutra in three languages, because those schmucks on Highway 60, the other ones who were driving bad around me, they don't know anything. You know what I mean? We tend to get into that state of mind.

It's easy to go there. They never heard of the Heart Sutra. Or if you ask them what Lam Rim is, they'd say, I think it's an Asian fusion restaurant in Glendale.

And it's very easy to delude yourself that someone who's lived for 40 years hasn't had some deep spiritual experience that you don't know about. Who knows what happened to them? And who knows what the people driving on the highway next to you are thinking at that moment?

Maybe they became a Buddha a long time ago. We don't know. LOM SEMS means to appreciate yourself at the expense of others.

At the expense of others. And we can't do that. We shouldn't do that.

Appreciate yourself. Think that you're special. But that doesn't involve thinking everyone else is dumb.

And I think as a group we have tended to do that in the past. I think I've even fostered that kind of thinking. I think we have to be careful.

LOM SEMS MED PAR LOM SEMS CAN NA RGYAS TZA CHUNG DU RDOR LOM SEMS CAN NA RGYAS TZA CHUNG DU RDOR When you're trying to appreciate yourself and feed your positive karmic seeds by doing coffee meditation at night, as you lay down, thinking about the good things you've done, if it's at the expense of others, if it means nobody... I'm special, but other people are dumb. If you add the second half of the sentence, CHUNG DU RDOR, RGYAS TZA CHUNG DU RDOR means it ruins the karma.

You're trying to enhance karmic seeds by appreciating your life and others around you and yourself as you fall off to sleep. But if it involves LOM SEMS, but nobody's like me. Everyone else is stupid in this world.

They're all just watching videos. Who knows what they're thinking during the video? We don't know.

If you make that judgment about others, it ruins the karma that you're supposed to be enhancing. Okay? Like that.

Okay. Then he gets into TSI SHAR. Say TSI SHAR.

TSI means calculation. For those of you who care, say GAR TSI. GAR means, in Tibetan, karma means star.

In Sanskrit, it means karma. Okay? So in Tibetan, karma means star.

GAR TSI means calculating the stars. So what's that? That's astrology.

But in Asia, in Tibet, it's a high art. Vedic astrology, Buddhist astrology, Kalachakra astrology. These are high, serious, very important fields of study.

They're nothing like the newspaper. Okay, but did I just do a judgment thing? Anyway, you have to be careful.

TSI SHAR means... Here, TSI SHAR means... What do you call that?

Calculating how much money you have. You come home and you spread out all your credit card bills, and there's like 20 of them pieces of paper, and there's one piece of paper called your bank account. It's like unfair fight.

You're looking at all the credit card balances, and you're like, let's see... And then you look at the little number on the bank account thing, and you get nervous, right? That's called TSI SHAR.

What do you call that? I don't know. Calculating your finances, right?

Figuring out how your finances are doing. It's not obsessing, it's just... Oh yeah, it's like assessing where you're at financially, which is a very depressing thing.

Like one credit card balance is okay, but to lay them all out, and to have the one account thing, then to make that... What do you call it? Calculation.

Calculation of your finances. Let's put it that way, TSI SHAR. He says if you're going to do calculation of your finances, do it with your good karmas.

Calculate your good karmas. Don't calculate your money. Don't worry too much about money, okay?

None of you, I can say none of you is going to starve in the next 10 years, okay? Just become relaxed, okay? If you need a donut or something, come to my house.

We'll all take care of each other. Nobody here is going to die from lack of food, so you don't have to worry too much about money. Don't get all stressed out about pieces of paper.

You're okay, you're going to survive. TSI SHAR CAN NA. But karmically, maybe not.

Karmically, you have to keep counting. How's it going? Am I ahead today or behind since yesterday during coffee meditation?

Has my debit card dropped or has it gone up? How am I doing karmically? That calculation you should be making constantly, all the time.

You should be thinking, am I ahead from yesterday or not? RANG RES DNGUL SOGS LA TSIG RGYAGS MA PO'I PHYIR MOD DE You know, people like you and me, we're always calculating our finances. DNGUL means finances, right?

DE YAR SKYE NA JI LTAR BHAG KYANG SRED PA'I BDE'I RGYI BRTEN BU TZAM LAS DBANG TZAM MED SKYE NA here is an interesting word. It means, what do you call when assets increase or something? Appreciate or get more valuable.

If your finances, what do you call? Increase? If your worth, financial worth grows as the days go by.

YAR SKYE NA JI LTAR BHAG KYANG means no matter how high it goes, no matter how high it goes, all you can get out of it is a little bit. BRTEN BU means a little bit. BRTEN BU TZAM means a little bit of pleasure in this life.

You can have a slightly better car. So I used to have a, what was the year, Jigme, the Volvo? 18?

1980. She gave me her own car, a 1980 Volvo. This is my car from, I don't know, five years.

And it was scary. I mean, it was really scary. No air conditioning, oh man.

And it used to break on the highway all the time. Then somebody, my students fundraised and I got a really nice Toyota RAV4, 2011. The first car I ever owned in my life.

And so it's a little more comfortable. It has air conditioning. The seats are more comfortable.

It actually goes when you press the, it always goes so far. The gears don't get stuck. But that improvement is the best you can hope for by calculating your finances every night.

That's the biggest jump in your happiness level you're going to get. Volvo to RAV4. That's all that money can take you.

That's as far as money can take you, unless you get a German BMW that I was in. Because one of our students, Holger Wulf, he's one of Lama Marut's students, who was very kind to us in Munich. So he has the latest BMW.

Bavarian motorverken, right? Because he's Bavarian and he runs part of BMW. So he's got the latest BMW.

And it was kind of cold. And he said, do you want this button on? And I'm like, what's that button doing?

He says, wait and see. And he pushes the button and it warms your butt up. It direct warms your butt.

So if you spend all your time working on increasing your finances, the best you can hope for is a warmer butt. And no, that's the biggest move you can make, is from Volvo to a warm butt. That's the most you can go by spending a lot of work on that kind of financing, that kind of calculating.

But if you pay attention to your accounts of your karma, your karmic accounts, if you pay close attention to your karmic accounts. What? By appreciating all the good stuff you're doing and by confessing all the negative stuff you've done.

That's like management of karmic accounts. Then if you make some gains there, LHAG MI BSTAN BSANGS NAS GSUNGS DE'I TSANGS RGYAS BA'I BAR DU RDO, you will assure happiness after death. You're taking care of things after death which no money can do.

No money in the world. Nobody's money. Warren Buffett's money.

Bill Gates's money. Carlos Slim's money. In the Sumaya Museum, you know, $850 million.

The moment you're dead, it can't help you anymore. But the stuff we're dealing with, the finances we're calculating, every night when you lay your head on your Am I ahead since yesterday or am I behind? That kind of stuff helps you after death, on up to Buddhahood.

After death, on up to ultimate happiness. That's a wise investment. If you have to choose between calculating money all the time or calculating how's your karma going all the time, work on the karma.

It makes more sense. The other one is short-term gains. The other is long-term gains.

If your bad karma accounts get too high, then that will take you to the hell realms. Yesterday we had a little taste of the, no, Tuesday night of the hell realms. That was scary.

We never talk about that stuff. We were telling the story of how the Buddha helped another person in the hell realms. That's when he first got bodhicitta.

But the story itself was frightening. I told it to someone on Wednesday and they actually asked me to stop. They said they couldn't take it.

They didn't want to hear it anymore. If your accounts get out of balance karmically, then you're in trouble. Because you might end up in a place like that.

Then I like this. Are you on Moon? Can you say Moon?

Geshe Ben? Yeah, good. Moon, there you are.

Yep, say Geshe Ben. So there was a Geshe named Ben, okay. I don't know if it was Galmi or Kramer, but there was a Geshe Ben.

He lived in the times of Atisha. He was a Kadampa, like a thousand years ago. I couldn't find his dates.

In the lineage trees, he comes after Lord Atisha. So that means around 1050 or 1025. Geshe Ben ki, ge diktsik gyak chepe rab sung.

Rab here with an S means a story. Jataka tale is called kye rab in Tibetan. Jataka means kye rab.

Rab without the S means big, like ri rab means Mount Sumeru, for example. Big mountain, ri rab. This is a rab with an S.

Jik gyak chepe means he used to calculate how he was doing in the day. Was he doing more good deeds or bad deeds? Then he, all our authors, all our editors says, who's the editor here?

Teacher Rinpoche, is he there somewhere? Which one from the left? Third from the left?

Okay, I can't see from here. Third from the right. That lama, who's the Dalai Lama's junior tutor, he says the lama, meaning Pabongka Rinpoche, his teacher, told us again, he recounted the story of Geshe Ben doing his calculations.

Then he doesn't tell us what the story is. So I went and got it for you. Okay, just kind of cool.

Which I can only do because of the ACIP work, 25 years of input of texts. I have half a million pages I can draw from in a few seconds. DUN GYI SKABS DGE'I SDIG GI RNAM SHA'I YANG YANG SANG PA So here's from a...

I'm going to give you a couple of selections about Geshe Ben. Because as I was looking into how did he calculate his good deeds, I saw a lot of other sexy stuff. So I thought you'd like to hear it.

Maybe Geshe Ben could be like a cult hero or something. DUN GYI SKABS DGE'I SDIG GI RNAM SHA'I YANG YANG SANG PA While we are in our meditation sessions, we should think about, am I doing good stuff in my life or am I not doing good stuff in my life? CHEN TZAM SU BRAL ZHES PA'GYUR GYI BLANG DOR BYAS PA Then between meditation sessions we'll be more careful about what we do.

For example, Geshe Ben used to keep track of his good deeds and bad deeds by what? Do you remember? Some of you know.

Yeah, he had little stones. He probably lived in Diamond Mountain. Diamond Mountain people come to your house and I got a gift for you and it's always a rock.

I got like 35 different shaped rocks. And the longer you've been stuck there, the more a rock looks significant to you. And they give you, look at this rock.

And I'm like, yeah, that one has a bump on it. And they're like, you know. So anyway, I put it in my garden now.

I have a place. Don't tell them. So anyway, where Geshe Ben used to live, he was near a river, a wash, and there were lots of little pebbles.

And half of them were white and half of them were black. So he would get a bunch of black ones and put them in one pocket, and then he'd get a bunch of white ones and put them in another pocket. And then every time he did something nice for somebody during the day, he'd take a white pebble out of his front pocket and put it in his back pocket.

And then every time he yelled at somebody or criticized somebody, he took a black pebble out of his front pocket and put it in his back pocket. And then at the end of the day, he would empty out his back pockets and do his accounting. Yeah, like, how am I doing today?

More white or more black? Okay, that was Geshe Ben's system, okay? DU, if you're interested, comes from DO.

DO means like rock, right? Like Dorje. Dorje means king of rocks, right?

Diamond. And DU is the diminutive, so it means little rocks, pebbles, okay? GANG NAGS KYI TSIG RGYAS GYI RANG LTA BYAS PA BYUNG RGYA Then I don't know, I went on a little bit of a tangent, which is really unusual for me, and I thought, what else did Geshe Ben talk about?

And here's some, I just like it. Okay, here's some more Geshe Ben for you. Maybe we should have a Geshe Ben anthology or something.

We could make a book. Okay, so here's Geshe Ben. Here's another.

CHE MAR SOGS BYUNG TSE PHYEL DU PHYUN NAS If he got any kind of offering from a sponsor, in Tibet, a monk would get a bag of flour or a bag of salt. And he gives the example of a bag of, CHE MA RGA RA means white sand, which is what? Sugar, because it was rare in Tibet.

It was very expensive. It came from India, right? You can't grow it in Tibet.

CHE MAR SOGS BYUNG TSE If he got it, PHYEL DU PHYUN NAS, immediately he would start sharing it with people. KUN BYUNG LA SPYOD PA First he'd offer some on his altar. Then GNAS NAS RGYAS TSUL DANG RGAN DU RNAMS Then his disciples, the novices and the monks, he would start to say, hey, look at this cool sugar I got.

You take some, you take some, you take some. LA STER BA MA RTOGS PHYEL CHER MI SHES PA NI And then he always forgot to take some for himself. So by the end of the day, the sugar's all gone.

He kept doing that over and over again. And then he made a poem. SNGAR NGA'I KHA'I SEMS NYID THAR THA ZAD GYIS NGES KHAR MI NYID My mouth used to have a problem getting food.

Now the food has a problem getting to my mouth. Something like that. THAR THA ZAD GYIS SOS PA'I KHYANG MI BRTZE KHYUNG PA'I KHYANG MI YOD But a weird thing is happening.

The more I eat, the more I give it away, the more it comes. Like he said, there's a weird thing going on. I keep giving it away and then it just keeps coming back more and more.

Like you could summarize all of DCI in that one sentence, right? I keep giving it away and then tons more keeps coming to me. And I never run out anymore.

I never run out anymore. Okay, one more. Okay, that's all.

TSIG RGYA... TSIG RGYA... Are we there?

TSIG RGYA THA THAN NAS TSIG RGYA, yeah. TSIG RGYA THA THAN NAS RANG GI CHE NA SANG ZHING It's better that you do your karmic accounting now by yourself because PHYI MAR Later on, SHIN RJE'I MTHUNG DU In the presence of the Lord of Death, TSIG RGYA CHEN MO TSUD KHAB There will be the great accounting. TSIG RGYA CHEN MO There will come the great accounting.

KHAB CI BYAR MED PA'ONG And at that point, it's out of your hands. It's too late to do anything. On the final accounting before the Lord of Death, there's nothing else to do.

You can't do anything more. You just have to accept how it works out. And so, it's better that we do our own accounts now than wait for the last one to do his accounts of us.

Okay, got it? NYID PA SHING GI DGE BA YI RANG BA LA Second section that we were talking about. So that concludes appreciating ourselves.

It came in two sections. One was appreciating what we must have done if anything is going right now. And then secondly, appreciating what we know we are currently doing.

Okay, on your pillow. By the way, the process is quite interesting. Okay, if you study a lot of scripture, especially the fourth chapter of the Abhidharmakosha, every time you think about a good thing you did, it defines the karmic seed more clearly.

Okay, it's like a microscope or a telescope on the karmic seed. So you do a nice thing for somebody, that seed is imprinted into your mind because you were there watching yourself do it. And you were there listening to yourself do it.

So that awareness of yourself as you do something nice for somebody else plants a karmic seed, but it's fuzzy. It's just a fuzzy karmic seed. And it might take a year to come back or it might take 10 lifetimes to come back.

If you go home at night and when you lay your head on your pillow, please, I beg you, think about the good things you're doing and think about the good things you saw today. And it clarifies those seeds and it defines their sharpness and they become a thousand times more powerful. Okay, but if you don't do that, it's like putting a seed in the ground and not watering it.

You see what I mean? The seed is good, but it will never change your life much and your practice won't change much. Appreciating yourself is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

You must do this practice. You must, at night, when you put your head down on the pillow, you must review all the good things you're doing and all the good things you're seeing other people do, because all the other karmas you do will not have much effect unless you think about them. You see what I mean?

Unless you review them and mull them over. Play back the video exactly, okay? I went and picked her up.

The cat tried to get out. We both kicked at the cat. We got out the door.

The cat didn't. We closed the door. We put the padlock on her door because she lives in a slightly rough area with the, what do you call it?

The bars. Then we went out to the car and I opened the car door and she said, I like your car because it has more space, because I have a RAV4. Then we drove to the cheap Italian restaurant down the street because we didn't have time to take her to Vincent's.

Because I had to get here. Then we sat down and this big guy, this big, rough, tough guy, he came over and suddenly he falls in love with her, the waiter, in his t-shirt and jeans. Think about the good things you did for somebody.

Run them through your mind again and again and your life will change radically, okay? Your life will change radically. It's not enough to do good things.

You have to do coffee meditation on them. Or the seed just kind of fizzles out. It just kind of fades because it's not clarified in your own mind.

It's not clear. It's not defined well. And then it doesn't act as a seed and it just kind of makes you feel vaguely better and nothing else amazing happens to you.

So try. It's an extremely pleasant process. And shouldn't it be that way that the most powerful karmas you can do are also the most gratifying and pleasant?

You see? We grew up in Judeo-Christian culture, right? You must suffer, you know?

Sorry, you have to get yourself nailed on the cross or you're not a good person, you know? And we believe that. And this approach is completely different.

You're not a good person if you don't think nice about yourself at night. And that's the highest spiritual practice you can do. Not like going into a cave for six years and not eating anything, you know what I mean?

And memorizing 10,000 books and standing on your head. In this lineage, in the Lord Buddha's lineage, the highest good you can do is to appreciate yourself and other people. And that just makes it all happen.

It makes all the karma blow up. It makes it trigger. Your duty, your job, if you love the world, if you want to help people, is to appreciate yourself.

Because you're amazing. You're really good. Without lomsam.

What's lomsam? At the expense of others. I'm nice because everybody else is dumb.

Then you ruin it. So we're on to the second part, which is to appreciate other people. When you lay your head down on the pillow at night, appreciate yourself.

And then appreciate what nice things you saw other people do today. Appreciate other people. Then there's the whole thing, what it does to you while you sleep.

I mean, the karma is multiplying in your sleep. Your mind is concentrating on something sweet when you go to bed. You wake up refreshed, happy.

You sleep well. You don't need to take drugs anymore to sleep. The older a lot of people get, they actually become quite dependent on drugs to sleep.

And as you get older, if you do this practice, the sleep will be sweeter and sweeter. And the dreams begin to become cool. You're taking 500 old ladies out to a restaurant.

Weird things. Good dreams. It's fun.

It's a holy practice. All right. GNYIS PA GZHAN GYI DGE BA LA YI RANG BA LA By the way, we'll go 10 more minutes and we'll take a break.

Second, we should appreciate other people also. What they're doing. Nice things that other people are doing, we should appreciate.

NYEN GYI DGE BA BAR MA'I DGE BA We can appreciate even the nice things that people we don't like are doing. And that's what he mentions first. He mentions that first.

In the search for cool things that people are doing that you can think about when you put your head on the pillow, you're supposed to start with the people you don't like. Okay, they're 99% evil, but they do this one nice thing. They have a good headstand or something like that.

Think something good about, find something good about the people you don't like. And don't worry, it doesn't hurt anything. They're still bad.

They'll never be good. But just appreciate one little good thing they do. Start with that.

You might change after a few months of this practice. BAR MED DGE BA means, you know BAR DO, right? BAR DO is BAR DO, means the in-between.

BAR MA means not quite friend, not quite enemy. BAR MA means neutral people in your life, people that you see on the sidewalk, people you see in the grocery store, people you don't know on the airplane, people you see on the airplane. BAR MED DGE BA And NYEN GYI DGE BA means those loved ones, people you care for, relatives, friends.

You can be happy about those three categories of people. Try to find nice things they're doing. Personally, I find it very gratifying to try to pay attention to the virtuous things that strangers are doing around me.

I don't know them. I will never meet them again. We're just sitting next to each other in a coffee shop.

Me and the old lady were sitting in the restaurant and there was a guy next to us with three children. I don't know where the mother is, but the guy is trying to feed the three children. And it was beautiful.

He was doing a good job. And he was young and obviously it was kind of overwhelming for him for the last five years. He was doing really good.

And I was thinking, good for you. Mom's either gone forever or out for the night and you took them all out for pizza and you're being kind to them. And he got them all special cups with cartoons on them.

I'm like, that's cool. So the good things that strangers are doing around you is a very good place to mine karma from. A very pleasant place to mine your karma from.

GANG ZAG SNGA'I DGE BA YI RANG BA You should also be happy about the good deeds that the five different kinds of people are doing. Then I had to go look for this in the scriptures. Who are the five different kinds of people?

It took me a couple of days, but I found it. It's from a verse from the Georgia text, GAL SANGS RDZIN GYEN, which Nick is working on. Who else?

Jigme? You guys are carving it, right? It's been going about that speed.

They're trying to input it. There's a joke in Tibetan, they say, if someone's riding too slow, you say, you don't have to carve it, just ride it. There's a beautiful poem, an extended poem, that you can sing before you meditate.

I'll teach it to you next time. What is that, August? If they finish, I promise to teach it to you in August.

We'll be ready in August. We'll be done by Sunday evening. We'll be done with this.

Then we can learn the poem. Anyway, the five people whose good deeds you're supposed to be happy about are mentioned in that poem. I finally figured it out.

Ready? PHYOG CHU RGYAL BA KUN DANG, SANGS RGYAS ZAS RGYAL BA, RANG RGYAL NAM DANG, LOB DANG, MI LO DANG, SBYOR BA KUN GYI SON NAM GANG LA YANG, DE LA KUN GYI BYAS SU BDAG YI RANG, I rejoice in the good deeds of the five different types of people in the universe. Who are they?

Number one, RGYAL BA, the Buddha, JINA. It's not up there. I just found it for you.

I rejoice in the good deeds of enlightened beings. Number one. Two, I rejoice in the good deeds of their children and of the other arhats, meaning bodhisattvas and lower level arhats.

They seem to be clumped together. That's the second group. Third, LOB PA.

That's not LOB DPAN. LOB PA means anyone who's on one of the five paths. Someone who's actually on any one of the first four paths is called a LOB PA.

They have reached the path of accumulation. They haven't reached the fifth path yet, which is MI LOB PA, no more studying. That's the fourth group.

Basically, people who have started on a spiritual path are the third group. Then the fourth group is people who have reached the end of the spiritual path. Then the last group is all the other schmucks in the universe.

Everybody else. Everybody else. You can be a MI LOB PA and not be a SANG NYID, lower arhats and stuff like that.

But he's treating all people who have reached nirvana. You can say that. All people who have reached nirvana.

I don't think the groups are exclusive. I don't think they are. You can be in more than one group.

Obviously, because actually the name of the last group is everybody. That's all right. SKYE BU DAM PA'I RNAM THAG LAG NAS, DE DAG GIS BRAS PA LA YID RANG BYAS You can read the life stories of holy beings and you can be happy about their great deeds.

I like to watch that movie Gandhi. Every time the guy says, if you tear up your racial card, I'm going to hit you with a stick. He goes like, he burns it.

The guy breaks his arm. Or they stand there and allow the British police to beat them, to knock them on the head. Just to look at that kind of movie, to think about that kind of movie.

Iron Man 3 is also okay. You can appreciate an Iron Man movie. It's a fictional movie.

But you can appreciate the fact that in American culture, whatever faults we have in Western culture, we value that the good guy wins. We think that's important. The guy who follows morality and kindness and compassion and is trying to help the world, in most movies, he or she wins.

The fact that we live in a culture where that's the case, you can be happy about that also. You can sleep on that also. They don't make movies called Evil Man or something.

They don't. You should be happy about that. There are places where Evil Man is.

DE DAG GIS BRAS PA LA YID RANG BYAS DE'I SON NAM SA DU SKYES LA, RANG GIS SKYE BAR YID RANG BA'I NI, GONG PHEL DU CHUNG BA YIN If you're happy about other people's good deeds, you're getting fresh newcomer. If you're happy about your old good deeds, you are getting interest on them. They're not fresh, but you're enhancing them.

I'll start a verse and we'll continue it after the break. Just two more lines. Here we go.

BYAS GUNG THANGS PAS GUNG THANGS PA is a place in Tibet. THANGS means a plateau. Dorje Senge was from...

YID RANG THANGS He was from YID RANG. What's it? YID RANG?

LANG RI THANG He was from LANG RI THANG. This Lama was from GUNG THANG. They call him BYAS GUNG THANG.

Mr. Kansas. Which guy from Kansas is it? I don't know.

I checked. I tried to find for you. I think it's KUN CHOG BSTAN PA'I DUN MED who lived 1762 to 1823.

As far as I understand it, he's the most famous GUNG THANG PA. The most famous Kansas guy. He has a quotation here.

NYAL BZHIN DGE CHEN ZHIG CHEN NA, RJES SO YID RANG RANG BSGOM ZHIG Say, NYAL BZHIN DGE CHEN ZHIG CHEN NA RJES SO YID RANG RANG BSGOM ZHIG If you want to know a karma that you can collect, laying in bed, appreciating yourself and other people is the best. So he's like, you want to know a good karma you can make laying in bed? It's appreciating yourself and other people.

So if you think Geshe Michael made up coffee meditation, it wasn't. It was GUNG THANG PA. And here it is.

And he's going to go into detail on it. But if you want to know a good karma you can make laying on your back, here it is. Got it?

I'm going to do about 15 minutes more. If you have any questions, I'll take questions. They can be about this subject or they can be about any irrelevant thing.

See if it works though. I'm just curious. So, GUNG THANG RJES GUNG THANG PA, right?

The Lama from GUNG THANG, we think it's Kwanjante Medbule. He said, if you want a practice you can do lying on your back, try appreciating yourself and other people. GSUM PA BZHIN RANG RE PHOS CHEN DANG GI ZHING DU SGRUB PA DI RDRO SHOR DUG SHOR DANG MNYAL TE NYAN NAS YID RANG BYAS PA'I PHYO Look at the word SHOR, Z-H-O-R.

You got it there? Z-H-O-R It happens twice somewhere around there. RDRO SHOR DUG SHOR Say RDRO SHOR DUG SHOR Those of you who care, Tibetan has two S-H sounds.

One is say SHOR. SHOR SHOR SHOR Then we don't have two in English, so we use Z-H for the low one. But it doesn't mean that you should say ZHOR.

And poor Lama SGRUB PA got his name messed up that way. There's two S's and there's two S-H's in Tibetan. One is high SHOR and one is low SHOR.

This is SHOR. SHOR means I lost my money. SHOR means by the way.

What's by the way mean? RDRO SHOR DUG SHOR means whether you're driving somewhere or walking somewhere or whether you're sitting somewhere, SHOR LA means by the way you can appreciate other people. You can use your time to do a spiritual practice.

Somebody asked me, how did you translate 20,000 pages? I said DUG SHOR, DRO SHOR. In the car, I translate.

Waiting for the dentist, I translate. That's more time than you have to translate. It's cool.

If you realize that, you can do lots of stuff. Sitting in the car in traffic, waiting for dinner to cook, waiting for the dishes to wash themselves. This is SHOR LA.

You can use that time. In our lineage, the time is best spent by thinking about the cool stuff you saw other people do and the cool stuff you did. So tonight, it's, what do they call that?

Your choice. What do they call that? Huh?

Anyway. Is it in a bar? They say your choice.

I don't remember. Your call. Anyway, there's some English expression.

We have to find it. Anyway. Things you're doing now that are nice for other people.

Things that you must have done if nice stuff is happening to you now, even if you don't remember. But logically, what you must have done. And then thirdly, what?

Cool stuff you saw other people doing. So tonight, you have your choice. One of those three things, when you lay your head down, I am cursing you for the rest of your life.

Ho ho, ba-nga, du-bung-ga, hang-du-bung-ga-ha-yo. Okay? When your head hits your pillow, you will think about the good things, or the good things you're doing, or something nice you saw somebody else do.

I'm cursing you. Never again will you think about your credit card balances when you go to bed, or what somebody at work said to you, or what your ex said to you 12 years ago. Okay?

You are going to change now. Okay? You will always go to bed, you will always fall asleep happy about something good you did, or something nice you saw somebody else do.

This will start to take over your mind, and you will start to focus on the nice things in life. And your whole life will change. Your whole existence on this planet will be 10 times better than if you didn't do the sleeping meditation.

And it's so cheap and easy, right? You don't have to sign up for anything. You don't have to memorize anything.

Just when you put your head on your pillow, think about the nice things that other people are doing, and that you're doing. And your whole life will transform. Next year you'll all be chipper and cheerful and happy.

Nothing can make you unhappy, because you don't focus on it. I curse you not to think about bad things when you fall asleep, or when you wake up at night. Sometimes we wake up at night, we start worrying.

The demons love to wake you up in the middle of the night, because your mind is open and vulnerable. So they try to get you up. They make your partner pull off your covers, or get up and go pee-pee.

In my house they make the raccoon come and start eating the bird food at 3 o'clock. And he's hanging on the bird thing like this, and making noise. Or when you wake up early in the morning, right?

Too early, before you intended to. The day after you stayed up all night? You know what I mean?

Like that's the one day you wanted to sleep. And then fight with your mind. Fight with your mind.

That fight is called compassion. That struggle to force your mind to think of any good thing you saw today is the essence of meditation. Because meditation means wrestling with your mind.

Mind wants to think about credit card debts, what somebody means that you're at work, and your ex's statements from 12 years ago. Your mind wants to think about that. In Buddhism, you're going to force your mind to think about those three things.

Good you are doing. Good you must have done if anything nice is happening around you. And then good you've seen other people do.

The struggle to get your mind to think about something positive that you're doing is meditation. And it's nothing else. Sit there and think about nothing.

My Lama used to say, you want to think about nothing, have six dosa kis. Dosa kis. It's the plural.

It's the plural. Dosa kis. My Lama used to say, if you want to think about nothing, just buy a pack of dosa kis, which is 12 dosa kis.

Then you won't think about anything. That's not meditation. Meditation means to grab your mind and force it over to these nice things.

Think about these nice things. That is the holiest meditation you can do. And it will make you happy, and that happiness will spread to the people around you.

Ain't that the point of what we're doing? He says, dro shor duk shor. Whether you're sitting around somewhere, whether you're walking somewhere, whether you're driving somewhere, and even nyal.

Nyal means even sleeping. Nyen ne yi rang che. Nyen ne means anything you heard about that's nice.

You can just think about how cool it is. You should become a... Everybody thinks, if I'm going to become a great yogi, I should be a flyer.

I should fly in the sky. Or I should do one-arm handstands. And then I'm a, what do you call, master yogi.

But you're supposed to be a master appreciator. Then you're a master yogi. Then you can sing Krishna Radha songs with authority.

Because then you're a real yogi. What are you good at, meditation? What is it?

What are you? I'm an appreciator. What do you do for a living?

I'm an architect who's actually an appreciator. I'm an appreciator who also does architecture. Like that.

Your self, what do you call it, image, should be I'm an appreciator. I'm spending my whole life looking around the world for good stuff that people are doing. And that's my job.

And that's my occupation. Then whatever you do, anesthesia, that's secondary. I'm an appreciator who does anesthesia a couple times a day.

In the case of Dr. Moore. All right. YI RANG BYAS PA'I CHOG CHOG means you can do it anywhere.

That CHOG means you can do it anywhere. BYANG CHUB SEMS PAS YI RANG GI RGYUD LA Oh, sexy. And it's just at the right time.

Here we go. BYANG CHUB SEMS PAS YI RANG GI RGYUD LA GZHAN DUN DON GNYER GYI LO DGOS How does a bodhisattva appreciate? He's going to answer the question we asked at the beginning.

At the beginning of this section, he made the intriguing statement that appreciating yourself and others is a bodhisattva's practice. And therefore, it's difficult for the rest of us. This is a high bodhisattva's practice and the rest of us find it difficult.

And then we had long discussion about why. And I think everybody's idea was true. I think they all had some truth in it.

Here's a clue about what his opinion would have been if Pabongka Rinpoche had been in the audience and he got to say his idea. There's a clue here. How do bodhisattvas appreciate other people?

Their appreciation is infected with GZHAN DUN DON GNYER GYI LO GZHAN DUN DON GNYER GYI LO Lama Aura is really good at this. I remember from... What's that place in Australia?

Bendigo. What's the definition of bodhichitta, Lama Aura? SEMS SKYES PA NI GZHAN DON GYUR YANG DAG RDZOGS PA'I BYANG CHUB DU How long has that been?

Fourteen years ago. She memorized that. SEMS SKYES PA NI GZHAN DON GYUR YANG DAG RDZOGS PA'I BYANG CHUB DU What is bodhichitta?

What is ultimate love? GZHAN DON DON GNYER GYI LO The intention to be of benefit to others. The intention to make others happy.

Basically, GZHAN DON DON GNYER GYI LO Now he gives an example and it's so cool and you have to go home and think about it. But all the answers are here. I won't interpret it for you.

I'll just give it to you. I want you to go home and I want you to tell me tomorrow. Then we'll answer questions or something.

We're concluding this section now with this sentence. How do bodhisattvas appreciate other people? For example, here it is.

DPER NA means for example, MI TZAM DE MI THAMS CAD KYIS RTOG DGOS PA GCIG PA DE GRUB DGOS PA LA In Tibet, suppose there was a family with lots of kids. There's a big family. In Tibet, the father had to take responsibility.

Had to find the money or the yak cheese. It was the father's problem. In traditional Tibetan culture, it's the father's problem.

MI TZAM DE MI THAMS CAD RTOG DGOS means clothes, food, everything. The father has to worry about it. It's the father's responsibility.

In the end, they lose the hair, right Michael? Still worrying about how to get food and clothing for their family. DE NYER GYI PA GCIG PA DE GRUB He's alone.

In traditional Tibetan culture, he's alone. It's his problem. It's his responsibility.

It's all on him. Then DE BU CHE BA'I RANG GI RTOG DGOS RANG GI GRUB THUB PA ZHIG BYUNG NA Then one of the older children decides to go out and get a job and help the family. One of the children gets it into their head that they're going to go out and make some money and help the dad, support the family.

CHE BA'I RANG GI RTOG DGOS RANG GI GRUB THUB PA ZHIG BYUNG NA Then he says, how does the father feel about that particular child? How does the father's feeling towards that? The father loves all the children.

But how does the father feel about the one child who decides to share the burden of taking care of everyone? How does the father feel about that child? RGA' BYED PA BZHIN Some kind of exceeding joy about that one child.

YID RANG CHA LUG CI DANG RNAM PAR CHUNG ZAD MIN DAG He ends the whole section with a single sentence. It's a little bit different than the way you and I appreciate others. It's not quite the same thing.

And he doesn't say anything else. So cook it. My Lama used to say, cook it.

Sleep on it tonight. Sometimes in the morning, your mind works on it overnight, right? In the morning you wake up and you realize, oh, that's what real appreciation is.

So think about it. Think about the example of the father who suddenly got help from the child, who took it into their head to share the burden of the family. Questions?

Any questions? If you don't have questions, I'll go on forever. Do we have a mic?

It's coming. Erin has questions. She wants to know who's going to wash her brother's truck.

Did we wash it? No, the bricks are in the back. We should wash it.

Okay, after the bricks. They don't want to dump money. Yeah, okay.

[Говорящий 2] (1:12:15 - 1:12:22)
I was wondering how when you taught meditation yesterday about the three gates, gateways, how that...

[Говорящий 1] (1:12:23 - 1:12:24)
Moksha Dvara.

[Говорящий 2] (1:12:25 - 1:12:29)
Moksha Dvara. Is that related to what you're teaching now?

[Говорящий 1] (1:12:30 - 1:14:37)
In this section? Yeah, absolutely. But we were more focusing on things you had done yourself.

So that kind of went under the category of appreciating things you've done yourself. Either through deduction about what you must have done in the past or you wouldn't have had this handsome guy or stuff like that. Or the evidence that you did something good in the past is that you have something now which you value or you find precious.

So that proves you must have been good in the past. That's one thing. The things you're doing now are also going to create...

You could be happy about the things you're doing now because they're going to create things in the future. But I'll give you one more. The appreciation of what you must have done in the past to have something which is precious to you is itself the appreciation of what you did in the past is itself acting as a cause for good things in the future.

You see what I mean? So it's a whole nest of... What do you call it?

It's weeds. It's growing like weeds in my house. No, it's like...

Because the weeds... Every day the weeds are making seeds and those are dropping off the weeds. And my Lama's like, get out there and do the weeds or you're going to have a hundred next week.

But this is a good weed. If you're happy about what you did in the past, must have done in the past because you have something beautiful now, that's going to create thousands of beautiful things in the future, being happy. So all things, all changing things in the world are both results and causes and you can use that to create a paradise.

Okay? All right, next one. Yes, please.

[Говорящий 2] (1:14:39 - 1:14:44)
Geshe-la, I remember in Guadalajara you were going to tell us how we...

[Говорящий 1] (1:14:44 - 1:14:47)
Uh-oh. I hate it when they say...

[Говорящий 2] (1:14:48 - 1:14:49)
Well, maybe you said it right.

[Говорящий 1] (1:14:49 - 1:14:49)
No, I'm just kidding.

[Говорящий 2] (1:14:50 - 1:15:05)
Maybe I didn't hear. You were going to tell us how we can decipher between... Like when we do a purification and maybe we get a headache or we feel sick and just a bad karmic seed that's giving you a headache.

How can we tell the difference?

[Говорящий 1] (1:15:05 - 1:27:18)
Good question. Thank you. So I'll restate it.

If you do a good purification, the Buddha said, for example, in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, that you don't really remove the bad seed. Sometimes I'll say the four powers for removing a bad seed. It's not exactly that.

You just cause it to open too soon. Okay? You just cause it to open too soon.

So like I have... Next to my front door I have a huge box of seeds that people gave me all over the world last year. And if they get wet inside the packet, they open inside the packet and then they die because there's nothing there to...

What do you call it? To give them sustenance, right? I forget.

Nourish them. They die for lack of nourishment. So the goal in purification is actually not to remove the seed because you cannot.

Nothing... What's it? The third law of karma?

LAS MA BYAS PA RNAM MA LAS BYAS PA CHEN PO'I SA BA The fourth law of karma says that once you commit a deed, good or bad, it must have a result. And God cannot change that. That's more powerful than God.

The law of karma is more powerful than God. Even He cannot change it. It is perhaps God, but that's another story.

We don't get rid of the seed, we just cause it to open too soon and it gives some wimpy little result. The Buddha says in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, if you do a proper purification, the seed opens too early and you get a headache. You get a migraine, a brutal migraine for two days when you were supposed to get in a fatal car accident.

You see what I mean? Like that. If you do a proper purification, you can make a seed open up too early and give a quick, brutal, but not as bad as dying in a car accident.

You see what I mean? So her question is, what's your name? Monica's question is, and it's something we mentioned in Guadalajara, how do you tell when something really bad happens to you if you are purifying an old karma or if it's just a sucky karma that's just opening?

You know what I mean? How do you know if you succeeded? Should you be happy that you succeeded in making the seed open too early?

Or is it just a plain old bad karma that's opening? How do you tell the difference? If I get a migraine, should I be happy or not?

And I think it lies in the other, they say it's called tak. Tak means a sign. It means a sign that it's a purification.

It's an accompanying feeling of relief, of a burden that has been lifted from your shoulders. So if you have something really bad happen to you, Rob Resinger, right? He gave one of the most moving talks I've ever heard in 40 years of Buddhist practice.

He walked outside, fell down, smashed his nose in multiple places, broke a rib, walking to the car to drive the retreatants back to there, across the gravel that he walked across 10,000 times. But it happened shortly after he gave that talk. So we would say that's a purification.

He wiped out all this weird karma by doing some extraordinary virtue in that moment. And then after that, so my answer is, how do you feel afterwards? I have this backpack.

Every country we go to, I have to have a different cord for their electric. So it gets heavier every year. There's more electrical cords.

Now it's up to like 40, 50 pounds. The same backpack. And I carry it around all the time.

I never don't carry it around because it has my laptop and I want to dros shor thug shor. What's that? If I'm stuck at the dental office, I want to work.

If I'm stuck in a car, I want to work. Then sometimes, like once a year, if I'm going to a ballet class in Paris, I will leave it behind. And then I walk down the street, I'm like, what is that?

I feel so light. And they say, after the migraine, if you feel suddenly light, that's a sign that it's a purification. So that's my answer.

But it's always a long-winded answer. So see how you feel afterwards. Ask Rob if he feels better.

I don't know. I think so. He had two black eyes.

It was really cute. Okay. See, Benny?

Geshe-la, on Tuesday, you asked us a question about why is appreciating yourself more powerful than appreciating others? I think I understood that question to be that way. We had a lot of beautiful answers from the audience.

And I was wondering, scripturally, was there a reference about why appreciating yourself was, I guess, higher practiced than appreciating others? Yeah. Let me think about that.

I'm just going to take a shot, okay? And maybe it will come up. But we do DCI tours.

Mark and me, we were in Zurich, right? We had a good time there. That was really fun.

We did a magic show with a very famous magician in Switzerland. And we mixed it with dharma and jazz. So that was inspired by some guy in Guadalajara.

And so we're going all over the world. We were in one, in two, three weeks, we were in Paris, Munich, Hamburg, Zurich, Oslo, and Stockholm. It was crazy.

You get up and you say, I'm so happy to be in, it's really special to be in, what city are we in? Stockholm. Stockholm.

And we meet thousands of people. We have the good karma, the blessing to meet thousands of wonderful people. And every single one has a problem appreciating themselves.

It's weird. It's really strange. And I go back a year later and I say, how are you doing?

And they say, I'm doing pretty good. It's better than last year. But it's not like a miracle or anything.

And then I ask the same question. How's your coffee meditation going? When you lay your head on the pillow, are you thinking about the good things you've been doing or did do or others are doing?

And they all say, not really. Every single person says, not really. A few people will say, I'm really trying, but it doesn't come very easily.

So my guess, my answer to you, my guess is, we even appreciate others more than ourselves. We all have some kind of problem appreciating ourselves. I'm not talking about lonesome.

We all have lonesome. We all think we're better than other people. That's a different thing.

But truly appreciating our goodness, it's a huge amount of karma and none of us is using it. So I'd say that's the answer. It's more powerful to appreciate yourself because you do it so little.

It's so natural to do it so little. An honest, healthy appreciation of how kind you really are. People made fun of me in the past, which is really unusual for me.

But they were, somebody said, what was it? He's talking about making money all the time. He's always talking about people making money or something like that.

It's something that Lord Buddha said we're supposed to do. We're supposed to start people with something simple and measurable and like that. Then it's universal.

When I give a Buddhist teaching, what, 70 people show up? When I give a business teaching, like John knows, 500 people. For him it's like 3,000 or 30,000 or something.

But then, and if I give a relationship talk, then 1,000 people will show up. But as far as money, if you use these ideas, then you could make a lot of money like that. Then people criticize me.

They say, oh, he just goes around the world trying to get people to make more money. But I'll tell you something very weird. It's really weird.

When we have our small breakout groups with corporate leaders and we get them in a little room and we have 15 corporate leaders that each one of us has to help for two hours or something. Then we say, they all say, I want more money. Can you help me to make more money with karma?

We say yes. Then we ask them, what are you going to use the money for? Why do you want more money?

And every single one says, I want to serve more people. Every single one around the world. It's amazing.

It's weird. It's supernatural. You're waiting to meet a greedy person.

Oh, I found a greedy person. I'm in Zhengzhou, China. Oh, look, these are all greedy people.

They all want to talk about making money. And then they blow it. You say, why do you want to make money?

Well, I want to help poor people, of course. I need money. And then you're like, wow, people all over the world, everybody wants to make more money so they can help more people.

And that's who we are. That's who we really are. Why do they make three Iron Man movies?

Why are they on Iron Man number three with no substantial change in plot? Why do they do that? Because we all want to save the world.

We all have this deep desire to save the world. And we don't appreciate ourselves. Everybody here has a deep-seated urge to be Iron Man.

And we don't get a chance. We're just waiting for a chance. And we don't appreciate that.

That's who we are. We are much better than we think. And if we started to think that we wanted to save the world, that would be a huger karma than we could ever make thinking about other people.

That's a long answer. Everybody wants to be Iron Man. Why don't they make an Iron Woman?

I don't know.

[Говорящий 2] (1:27:19 - 1:27:34)
Geshe-la, I have a question. I'm wondering, we have this wonderful karmic correlation charts for working backwards for the negative. Has anyone put together a karmic correlation chart for the positive?

[Говорящий 1] (1:27:34 - 1:31:26)
No, they haven't really. So Ami's question you understand, right? We have very sophisticated charts about if you break your neck, you must have stuck your tongue out at somebody.

We have these massive charts about that kind of thing. But we don't have these charts about if the sky over your state is blue most of the time, what nice thing did you do in the past? We don't have big descriptions like that.

And we don't. And there has been historically, what do you call it? What do you call it when you favor one thing more than others?

A bias towards negative things in Buddhism. Like don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And there's been a...

It's because of the people who got a hold of Buddhism. And also in Christianity, the same. Somebody named Paul got a hold of Christianity and made it all guilt and negative and don't do this and you're a bad person if you do this.

And I guess that's just who we are. We're all like that. We can't appreciate ourselves.

We're always thinking about how bad we are, or why we didn't do something, or why somebody hurt us instead of... Many more people are helping you than hurting you, but you focus on the people who hurt you. Why?

I guess that's part of not being an enlightened person. So yeah, it'd be nice if someone... I think a big breakthrough in our particular group, in our immediate lineage, was that we started to list vows in a positive way.

Rather than say, don't kill, don't steal, don't commit sexual misconduct, we were like, protect life, honor other people's property, honor other people's relationships. To make it all, cast it all in a positive light, I think it was one of the biggest breakthroughs of our group. One of many breakthroughs.

So anyway, yeah, it'd be nice if somebody wanted to work on it. By the way, most of those correlations come from the Jataka Tales and the Avadhanas. These are two large sections of the traditional Buddhist literature.

The Jataka Tales are devoted to incidents when Lord Buddha was teaching and related something he did in the past that made him what he was. We spoke about the Hell Realm incident, right? So that's like a Jataka Tale.

Avadhana means similar stories about other saints, like what nice things they did in the past that made them be here now like this, or bad things, right, both. And unfortunately they all got, those are where you can draw correlations from. That's where you can, they were meant as two huge genres of literature that were meant to supply us information for correlations.

Do this, you're going to get that. Don't do this, you can't get that. But they've always been cast in a negative light and they don't have to be.

So yeah, it'd be nice if someone had a lot of spare time to maybe just start a small list. It'd be nice. Why do you have a beautiful voice?

Like we've had some nice singers this week. Why does a person have a beautiful voice? And it's by not criticizing others.

I like that. So that would be nice. Maybe one more.

Whoever Rob wants.

[Говорящий 2] (1:31:27 - 1:31:28)
I have a question.

[Говорящий 1] (1:31:28 - 1:31:29)
Go for it.

[Говорящий 2] (1:31:29 - 1:32:07)
So sometimes I'll meet someone who's stuck. Sometimes it's me. And sometimes I'll hear, or I'll think, not this life.

I can only do so much. So I'm wondering what your opinion is on if a person has planted the seeds or amassed the causes to hear these ideas. Is it possible that a person could have those seeds and yet actually not be able to do anything with the information that they have planted?

Is that possible?

[Говорящий 1] (1:32:07 - 1:33:18)
Yeah, you know that from, what are those guys called? Nyen tu, shravaka, right? There's a category of saint called listener.

And then in scripture they say, why are they called? By the way, there's general shravakas and there's specific shravakas. Just for you who are learning Tibetan.

Nyen tu, listeners. There's general listeners, which can mean disciples. And then there's a specific class of saint called listeners.

And they are spiritual people who are successful personally in their personal practice. But when they go and hear teachings about serving others, they can record them, they can transcribe them, they can make books about them, but they don't think to do it. You see, they can't use it on themselves.

Then yeah, so based on that historical example, we must be like that too.

[Говорящий 2] (1:33:18 - 1:33:21)
I'm talking about a person who wants to help others.

[Говорящий 1] (1:33:21 - 1:33:23)
Oh, but they find themselves incapable.

[Говорящий 2] (1:33:23 - 1:33:28)
Yeah, so how can they shift? What can they do?

[Говорящий 1] (1:33:28 - 1:36:50)
Yeah, okay. So let's say I heard some inspiring story about serving others, but I still have some kind of block about it, like I can't do it myself. I understand that I would like to be able to do it, but I can't do it.

Then it's four steps, four Starbucks steps, which means that you must identify someone else who would like to be able to... It's very common in your life to find people who feel that they are not loving others enough, and they have some block. They say, I would like to be a lover of humanity, but something's holding me back.

I would like to know what true love is, but something's holding me back. So if you identify a person like that, which is easy to find if you start looking, take them to Starbucks, support them, talk with each other about how to be more loving, and then you will find yourself better able to carry out the instructions for loving. Okay, got it?

As usual, it's by helping someone else. If you want money, you must help someone else make money. If you want to be a better lover of humanity, you have to help someone else be a better lover of humanity.

As usual, right? Got it? Okay, just nod so they can go home.

Okay, think about it. Okay, we're done for tonight, but I leave you with one thing, and we'll do some announcements. I leave you with one thing.

The last section here said the way bodhisattvas appreciate others is different than the way most of us do, and it has to do with the father whose son suddenly decided to help the family. You're supposed to figure that out somehow, by tomorrow, because his last sentence was the way they appreciate others is different than how the rest of us appreciate others. What's that mean?

Okay, what's that mean? No, tomorrow. No, it's mostly others.

In this example. Esther's going to do some announcements. I just did a video today of my garden, and I'm really proud of it.

For me, it's been a big metaphor about planting karmas. My main teacher has been focusing on this as a practice because of all the applications to planting your own karmas and rejoicing in your own karmas and fertilizing your karmas with appreciation. So while she's talking, we're going to play that, if you don't mind.

It's like three minutes. Or you want to play it first? It's boring for you, but any gardener, it's like a grandmother who keeps showing you photos of their grandchildren.

This was today.