«Дар освобождения», курс 12 «Ретрит «Главный магнит»», занятие 4

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 0:05)
Anybody has a question? Yes, please. Loud, loud.

Or if Jonny has a...

[Говорящий 2] (0:15 - 0:28)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, God, I hate this question.

[Говорящий 1] (0:29 - 7:20)
Okay, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So, when we're thinking about the boyfriend or girlfriend who hurt us in the past, many of us have those stories.

Then I was encouraging you to think that the boyfriend or girlfriend who had a choice didn't exist. You can only get upset at someone who's hurting you if you believe they have a choice to either hurt you or not hurt you, and they're choosing to hurt you. So, if they were somehow compelled to hurt you because of something you did, then you couldn't be angry at them.

If it was your fault somehow, you couldn't be angry at them. And that's the case. They're always your fault.

Everything's always your fault. But the good stuff's also your fault, so don't feel so bad. So, Kim's question is, doesn't that negate free will?

And what I learned in Humber, right Martin, where are you? Somebody raised their hand and said, we have no choice but to accept free will. But more seriously, the Chinese are obsessed with this question also.

They bug me about it all the time. If everything is coming from your past seeds, then the decisions you make are preordained by your past seeds. So that means you don't really have any choices.

You will always make the decision that's based on your past seeds, and it's not really a decision then, is it? It's just coming out of your past seeds. And my answer to people is always that thing about outside people.

Like, is everything coming from you? Yes. Are the people you meet coming from you?

Yes. Does that mean you're living in your head and you're the only person in the universe? No.

Well, why not? Because they are projected from your seeds as people who are separate from you. Your seeds project them as other individuals.

So you can have a relationship with them. You can love them. You can be friends.

You can be Dharma students together. You can have a relationship with other people only because they are external to you. And then Dharmakirti, Master Dharmakirti, asked that question.

He was also very concerned with that question, and he answers it in a famous book called Shinggye Drupa, which is The Proof of Other People. It's a weird name of a title, right? The Proof that Other People Exist.

And I think that has to do with free will. I think the answer to the free will question is very similar. You project a feeling of free will, and you make choices based on that.

You have a free will which is forced upon you. Does that make sense? You do have a free will.

You do make decisions. What you decide is decided by the earlier decisions you made. But they're still decisions.

You still have choices, and you still sweat over it, and you still make a decision. So in that sense you have free will. From the other person's side, they did have a choice to say something to you or not, or to break up with you, or whatever it was that they did to hurt you.

They had that decision. How you perceive them was preordained by what you did in the past. How they see themselves, we have no idea.

And we won't know until we can read minds. ,SNGAGS DANG SNGAGS BDAG BAR GZHAN GYIS TSUL BSRUNG BA MI CHAG, ,DE NYON PAR BRGYUD DANG NAS, A very famous logic statement. It's, if you are not me or someone like me, don't try to guess what's in other people's minds.

Because you don't know how they're seeing. It's the dog, chew toy, and the pen thing. Everything's a chew toy and a pen.

They were maybe trying desperately to be kind to you and help you and support you, and then you heard it as criticism or breaking up with you, or stuff like that. We don't know what they were thinking. We don't know what they were trying to say to you.

All we know is what you heard. I like the example of when Lord Buddha was under the Bodhi tree, and he was about to become enlightened, and there's a story that all these demons shot arrows at him to distract him in the last moment before his enlightenment, and they turned to flowers halfway to his face, and they just shower flowers down on him. They're throwing spears and shooting arrows.

I think that whole story is a big metaphor for how you see other people. They could be trying to help you. It happened to me recently.

I was with someone, and I was sincerely trying to keep them from being very badly hurt. I spoke to them, and then they got very angry at me, and they took it the other way, completely opposite way. It was very disturbing to me because I tried really, really hard to help them and to serve them, and then it got all turned around.

It's the opposite of that. I was throwing flowers, and they turned into arrows. This is my karma, right?

So I think from your side, you don't have any choice but to see what you planted. From their side, they could be trying to be kind to you and help you. And you won't know until you get close to enlightenment, and you can read their mind.

Okay. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (7:28 - 7:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (7:33 - 7:33)
Yeah, good.

[Говорящий 2] (7:39 - 7:39)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (7:51 - 11:37)
MIG MED TSE BA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have the form that we worked on today?

Is it ready? Can it be ready? No.

Yeah. Is it printed? Yeah, well, what's that got to do with anything?

How about a dinner or something? Hand it out at dinner? How's that?

Okay. Okay. So how does that change if you know they're coming from you, right?

Oh, I'll give the example of a relationship with someone, right? So you're having a relationship with someone, and you're feeling very good about them. You're in love with them.

And then they start saying terrible things to you or bad things to you, and then you're like, no, no, I love you. I really love you. And then if you don't understand emptiness or that they're coming from you, I think I know from experience that's very painful.

You are deeply in love with them, and they are saying terrible things to you about you. And you're like, no, no, you don't understand. I'm totally in love with you.

And they're saying terrible things to you. If you don't understand that they're coming from you, it throws you into some kind of despair, or you feel very hurt. And you think, oh, this is crazy.

I love them so much, and they don't like me, and I don't understand. But if you've studied emptiness, and you understand that they're coming from you, your reaction in that situation is to automatically think, who am I hurting in the same way? Who do I speak to in the same harmful, hurting way?

And then you, rather than focusing on this partner who's not in love with you or something, you just try to love somebody else better. That's the reaction of a yogi who understands emptiness. They will, to fix the partner, they will try to show more love to someone who needs their love, and then the partner will change.

Try to understand the implications of that. All problems in your life can be fixed by doing something pleasant to a third party. You see?

So the yogi's way of life is delam. Delam means path to bliss, but it also means a blissful path. It means once you understand that things are coming from you, your reaction to things you don't like is to do the opposite to third parties.

And then the partner changes from that. So the method of a person who understands emptiness is always pleasant. Like, my husband's always getting angry at me.

Well, so be more patient with your children. And that's pleasant to do. You see what I mean?

I don't have enough money. Also help someone else make money. It's a very pleasant exercise.

I don't have a partner, so help a lonely person. And the required deed to plant the seed for the things you want is always pleasant. It's so crazy that we don't do it, I don't know.

[Говорящий 2] (11:38 - 11:41)
Go ahead.

[Говорящий 1] (11:41 - 11:42)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (11:53 - 12:00)
Nagarjuna. Oh yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (12:08 - 13:46)
Yeah, only a Buddha. They're mutually exclusive. To a non-Buddha, the direct perception of ultimate reality and the perception of normal reality are exclusive.

You can't see both at the same time. It's not possible. To put it, I mean, in simple, very simple basic terms, one is an absence of something and the others are mostly positive things.

You can't see a person if you're only focused on the absence of something. So they're mutually exclusive experiences for anyone who's not a Buddha. Something happens when you break through to enlightenment that you can focus on the absence of the person who was never there and could not be there, and the person who is there.

You can see the yugya-dhaka and the megya-dhaka at the same time, and only a Buddha can do that. What happens to their mind? I think that question is best explored by discussing the causes of their mind, the karma that has created their state of mind.

So I think somehow, if you explored what has created an enlightened person's mind, the karmas which has created that mind, you would understand how they could be in both realities at the same time. Go at it that way. Explore it that way.

[Говорящий 2] (13:48 - 14:15)
Aisha? Aisha? It takes a...

[Говорящий 1] (14:15 - 15:30)
Every second spent in the direct perception of emptiness takes trillions of good karmas. Trillions of good karmas. Every second you're in the direct perception of emptiness takes countless good karmas.

So it can't go on very long. For a normal person, it can't go on for more than 20 minutes or something. And that's the result of countless lifetimes of effort.

So countless karmas have been collected to reach that place. And then what about the second time? What about the next time?

I can only answer from scripture. Experientially, it might not happen again in that lifetime. But according to scripture, it does happen.

It begins to get more frequent, and you do it again, and you can't move up unless you perceive it again. So that's a scriptural answer. Scripture says you have to keep seeing it.

Experientially, I think it could take more than one lifetime to see it again. Is that okay?

[Говорящий 2] (15:32 - 15:42)
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

Oh. Yeah. Okay.

Just continuing with the same question.

[Говорящий 1] (15:43 - 15:43)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (15:43 - 15:48)
So maybe you can have a direct perception of emptiness in a previous life, where reality didn't exist.

[Говорящий 1] (15:49 - 20:07)
Not possible. You would know. You would know, yeah.

But there's a childhood, right? There's a period that you're a child. So up to the age of about 16 or something.

It seems to be the case. There's a thing called bhagyak serpa, bhagyak serpa, which means your past life seeds suddenly open from your past life. But as a baby, as an infant milk drinker, breast milk drinker, I don't know how conscious it is then.

I don't think it's very conscious at that point. But there's an age, in the monastery they would say between 12 and 16, that suddenly it all comes back to you, what you've done and who you've been and if you've seen it before. I can say that if you've seen emptiness directly, then you will see your future lives and you will see that you will be taken care of from the time you're a baby by high masters.

You will always meet high masters and they will take care of you your whole life. Typically seven more lifetimes is typical, after you've seen emptiness, directly to become enlightened. And you can experience that.

It's a weird thing, right? That a number should come into your head right after you've seen emptiness directly, like, seven more. But it does.

Very typically it does. And then later in my life I found in the Abhidharma there's a thing called Lendumbawa, which is a seven-timer. It's called a seven-timer.

So that number is in, you can find it in scripture, but I think most of you will hear it before you read it. There's somebody who was whispering in your ear and now seven more to go. And apparently that's typical.

It's nice, by the way, to work on your meditations, have something happen, and then confirm it in a book like ten years later. Find it in a book like ten years later. It happens a lot if you practice regularly, not even very, what do you call it, fanatically, but regularly, which is better than being a fanatic.

Every day you just, what's his name? Swami Sivananda called it asinine persistence, jackass persistence. If you've ever seen a jackass in India, in Tibet they're called pungu.

My lama used to call my other teacher, his nephew, pungu, jackass. That was his nickname for him. And when we were driving around in a car, he'd always tell the driver to stop and he'd point out all the donkeys we ever saw and say, look, there's pungu.

So I know, that's how I know the word. And they just plod along. And I had a couple of donkeys when I was young, we used to go camping in the mountains and we'd take a couple of mules with us and you load them up and then you say, okay, let's go and they decide they don't want to go.

And there's nothing you can do. There's just nothing you can do. You can hit them, scream at them, pull their ears.

They'll just ignore you. And they'll just stand there. When they decide to go, they will go.

But when they go, they just keep going. That's why you take them. Because they'll carry your stuff for like 50 miles and they won't say anything.

And they don't go fast. They just keep going indefinitely until you tell them to stop. So Swami Sivananda said, just keep going like a donkey, slow and steady.

[Говорящий 2] (20:09 - 20:41)
Like that. It's hard. Yeah, good.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, good.

[Говорящий 1] (20:41 - 29:04)
Okay. The image that always comes to my mind is a poor movie that I saw. It must have been on an airplane.

I think it's called Broken Arrow. It's John Travolta at the end of his career. And there's a nuclear weapon at the bottom of a salt mine.

Right? And then I can never get this image out of my head. He's straddling it.

It's between his legs. And he's trying to pull the wires out. And it's ticking down.

And I'm just thinking how much that's going to hurt when that baby goes off. It's the weirdest image. I always have it in my mind.

And then, of course, he tears out the right wire. And it saves 50,000 people and his equipment. And then he's...

But the bomb's still there, right? The metal casing and all the plutonium and all that stuff, it's still there. It just will never go off.

So there's a big debate. Even in the fourth chapter of the Yoga Sutra, there's a discussion about it. karma shukla krishnam yogines tri-bheda mitre sham It means it'll just never go off.

But whether or not those potentials are destroyed in your mind, the scriptures say no, they're not destroyed in your mind. And I know where your question's going, but I'll just say a little bit more. If you could, at will, destroy a seed, then there would be no justice in the world.

You got to get what you do. It's got to come back to you. And that's better.

It's better than having someone who makes random decisions either way. I feel a lot safer just knowing that I'm going to get exactly what I give than trusting some fickle person who may or may not decide that I should die in a fiery car crash. I'd rather...

In the end, it's better that you can call the shots yourself. Then you have your chance. But it should not be the case that if you do something wrong, you don't get hurt.

It should not be like that. You should get exactly what you give, or else everything gets crazy. So it's easier for me to live in a world where everything's logical and you get what you give, and that you can't destroy the seed.

But I think Todd's real question, which I'm trying to avoid, is isn't it ruining the justice of things if you can scorch a seed or disarm a seed? The Diamond Cutter Sutra says it will open in any case. When I give DCI talks, especially to Chinese people, because they're into Diamond Cutter Sutra for the last 1,200 years.

That's their big book. So they appreciate the Diamond Cutter Sutra. But in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, Lord Buddha says rather than thinking as a seed that you destroyed, think of it as you impelled the seed to go off too early.

So those of you who are gardeners, you shouldn't plant a seed too early. And I can think of, you put a watermelon seed on my porch. I have a wooden porch.

And then you put water on it. It will try to open. If it gets sunlight, it will split open.

And this little thing will come out, and then it'll die for lack of sustenance or nutrition. What do you call it? Nutrients.

It'll die for lack of nutrients. I think maybe that's an answer to your question. Because in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, the example is, you're supposed to die in a car accident, but you do your four powers.

And so doing the four powers, maybe it's better for us to think of it that we trigger the opening of the seed prematurely, and then you just get a terrible migraine. And by the way, unexpected, never-before-happened, intense problems in your life are very often successful confessions. It feels like that.

Like the seed opened too early, and there's this sudden, bizarre problem in your life, and it goes away in two days, and that's the end of it. And that's how it feels when a karma opens too early. When you push a karma to open too early.

So maybe justice is still there. There's still a justice. That's as close as I can get.

You don't get the full power of what you're supposed to get. But maybe that's okay because it went off too early. Oh, can you pick your seeds to go off too early?

You can. I mean, you have to be able to do that. So that gets into another question, which I'll do.

You either remember a bad seed that you planted, or you can deduce that you planted a bad seed because something bad is happening to you now. So I get a certain kind of headache, or the doctor says I have a certain illness. Then I don't remember planting a seed like that, but logically I must have.

And then you can do purifications on a seed that you don't remember planting, based on what's happening to you. Those kind are good to do fast. Like heavy duty purification fast, because you didn't have time to, what do you call that?

Preempt it. You didn't have time to anticipate it opening. You forgot that you planted it.

So then once it starts opening, you have to act fast. The doctor says I might have a breast cancer. They did a biopsy.

I'll find out on Wednesday. Between now and Wednesday, you better do some goddamn good forepower. And you can change the reality.

That's the cool thing. You can change the reality. If you work really hard between now and Wednesday, the, what do you call it?

Verdict or what do you call it? The results of the test can change. We had an example at Diamond Mountain.

One of the regular staff at Diamond Mountain, his wife had a heart attack, a very serious heart attack, stroke. They went to the hospital and they drew a blood sample. They said, yeah, put her in immediately.

Give her all these drugs. They had her all drugged up and all this, what do you call it? Intervenous.

Then we did some really powerful prayers. We really worked hard on it. Then the next morning he went back and the doctor takes him in the room and he says, I'm so sorry we freaked out yesterday because we did a blood test this morning.

There's nothing there at all. I'm so sorry and I really apologize because they jammed all this stuff into her and she was laid out. They said she couldn't go home for weeks.

He said, take her home. It was a misreading of the blood test. So you can change those things.

And we should, right? We should try. But based on a deduction of the problem, the nature of the problem, I must have done blah, blah, blah, even though I don't remember.

I think we stop there.