«Дар освобождения», курс 13 «Джорчо: песнь медитации», занятие 2

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 18:00)
All right, we'll do a little bit more about the meditation song. I think we're on verse five. So when I say verse, I'm talking about the numbering braces on the side.

We've cleaned up our room and prepared a meditation space in our home, and then the second of the six preparations for meditation is to put forth offerings. And I went through the text of the gift of liberation, thrust into our hands, and I took out the highlights. So tonight, we'll just talk about the highlights of making offerings to your Lamas, which you put on your altar before you meditate.

Okay, so I took out the highlights from what we've covered before in the last few years. Those offerings are supposed to be yo-me, which we talked about yesterday. Yo means dishonesty.

What do you call it? Dishonest livelihood or something like that. Wrong gotten, honestly gotten.

If you're going to offer something, it must be honestly procured. And then secondly, it should be kopitzepa, which means it should be arranged in an attractive way, in a pleasant way on the altar. So we're going to talk about tonight, we'll talk about those two subjects from the gift of liberation.

Okay, for spiritual people, there's one sort of dishonesty. And for people who are not actively practicing a spiritual path, there's another kind of dishonesty. And there's a physical dishonesty, and then there's an inner dishonesty.

So he discusses it that way. So we'll go that way. So the outer honesty, the offerings should be obtained in a sweet way.

And inner honesty means they should be presented with a good heart. So we'll talk about those two. And then we'll go on to beauty of the offerings.

I'm going to run a video, which is my garden this year. Every year I do a video of my garden to show off. Because gardeners and parents love to show off their kids.

So I've been showing off my kids all day. And now I'm going to show off my garden. So just start it.

And I was too busy to take it in the full bloom. So it's a little bit after the full bloom. So I apologize for that.

And that's going to go on for quite a while. So don't worry. Anatole, that's my fresh greens, okay?

Just so you know. And that's so the raccoon won't get them. Or the skunk.

I'm not sure which one. Somebody eats it around two. All right.

So don't get too distracted. Let's go through honesty. For a spiritual person, it's traditional to try to avoid five kinds of dishonesty.

All right. This is called LOK SO in Tibetan. LOK means wrong and SO means making a living in a wrong way.

Okay. So we have to try to avoid these five. Which brings me to a big subject.

And it's on my mind a lot. And I'm going to share it with everybody. And I hope you guys don't mind.

But when I look at Diamond Mountain, how we have been in the last 10 years or so, I'm happy about everything. The course of study is extraordinary. The people who have come out of this place are extraordinary.

The work they're doing in the world is extraordinary. Truly extraordinary. And truly changing the paradigms of an entire culture of civilization.

And that was always my dream. So I looked back on... I was driving away and I looked back at this little box called the temple.

And I was saying, that's an idea box. And there's nothing here except that little box. There's just dirt and rocks.

The only thing that we have a lot of here is rocks. Somebody built a rock up near the Stump's house. I'm like, why would you build a rock here?

They made a fake rock to cover something. And I'm like, that's extraordinary. Ken Rinpoche, while he was still alive, he made a rule.

Nobody could bring him heart-shaped rocks from Diamond Mountain anymore. Because he had too many. But I was just looking back at this little building.

Little building is a dumb little building out in the middle of nowhere. People keep saying out in the middle of nowhere. But from that little place is pouring, in my opinion, very precious things that are changing civilization of the world.

I believe that. Somebody called it insidious the other day, meaning people aren't aware what's happening. But you watch a movie and there's a guy explaining why a penny could be something else.

It means he heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody and it's already in a Hollywood movie, you know, and things like that. It's just spreading through the culture anonymously, which is the way I like it. I prefer to think that after the world is being run by these principles, which basically can be summarized as you get only what you give to others, right?

That's all. No more complicated than that. But if the world ran by those principles, when it runs by those principles, our work is finished and people will forget who started it.

And that's fine. They will just act that way. The whole world will act that way.

So our goal is just that the whole world in dealing with their problems or in dealing with their goals, simply makes sure that what they want they offer to someone else first. They make sure someone else gets it first. And then that becomes the modus operandi of the whole world.

The whole world believes that the only way you could get money would be to help someone else who was in trouble. The only way to be healthy would be to help the sick. The only way to find a partner would be to help lonely people.

The only way to make world peace would be to be peaceful to others. And when that is truly the way that people act, then the purpose of this institution is finished. And that's my dream.

And it's happening. And people can say not, but it is. It just is happening invisibly.

And it's spreading like a very healthy virus. And that's all. That's all we ever wanted to do.

So I like that. But in the process... So I'm happy about those things.

I'm really... I feel fulfilled and I feel... I don't know how you say...

You started out to do a big thing and it's happening and you're like... You kick back and sit on your porch, which is up there somewhere, and you just make your garden and relax and think about how cool the world is. Stuff is happening.

Cool stuff is happening. Costco just put in a gluten-free section. Okay.

Anyway. So anyway, like that. Stuff like that's happening.

The only thing I'm not proud of and the thing I think we have to straighten out at Diamond Mountain is how we make our living, how we support ourselves. And I think because we had to have courses here, they had to go on for five weeks at a time for seven years. Three times a year, I think it was.

So necessarily, anyone with a real job had to pretty much leave it. And then we just got into this mode of sleeping on people's couches and raiding their fridges. And then for you guys, I think the temptation or the habit will be more dangerous of a welfare mentality that you've been supported for three years and it's going to be hard to come out of that situation.

It's going to be challenging to not do the five kinds of wrong livelihood. I see your progression as you come out in three steps. One is for the first six months or something.

Our plan for the first six months is that you could stay at someone's house and they could help you, drive you around, take care of you, feed you. The first three months of those six months, we are intending, if we can finance it, to support you at the same level you were supported during the retreat. And I think we can pull it off.

It's like squeezing water from a rock. Stranger things have happened. And I think we'll be okay.

So I think for the first six months, you just have to kind of get used to the world. And then after that, I think my dream is that you enter a stage where you feel like you should stand on your own and you just make it a goal in your life. And I believe anyone can do that.

I did it. I went to 30 jewelry stores and applied for a job and I got thrown out. And then I just went to some guy and begged him.

I said, I'll work for anything. And he hired me. And then I counted diamonds for 10 years.

People say, oh, that was such a glorious time of your life, Geshe Michael. You know, you were a big executive. That comes after 10 years of counting little pieces of diamond chips on a white piece of paper for eight hours straight, counting thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of diamonds.

And then you just got a... And I didn't feel... How do you say?

I never felt unhappy or bored. I felt really happy because I was giving the money away. All the money I was giving away to the monastery, supporting my teacher.

And I was so happy to count the diamonds all day. And I just felt really fulfilled, you know. And then that leads to the third stage that I want in your lives, which is...

Some of you have been there already. John did that. But to support other goals, you know, financially.

That you get so strong financially that you are in a position to support other worthy goals. Whatever you think is worthy, you know. Whatever is...

But I think it's not only a goal for you as you come out to reach self-sufficiency. You should reach a point where you could fund other projects. The book in your hands was funded by people like that.

They worked hard. They worked extra. And they funded it.

And it was expensive. Really expensive. I mean too expensive.

But then there were people who had extra money because they were working. And they were being frugal. And what I mean is, in my life, it's been very pleasant to work hard to support myself.

I never asked my mom for money, I don't think so. I've never asked you for any money. You give donations, huge, but not to me.

So I think, you know, you reach this place. But then go further and reach a point where you can fund your teachings, basically. And it never ends, okay?

You will always have to fund them, probably. And that's cool. And what I'm trying to say is, it's very enjoyable to reach self-sufficiency.

And there's a kind of honesty about it. There's a kind of integrity about it. And then go further than that and build up extra that you can give away to support Dharma in many forms.

So that's my dream for you. And we haven't done that well at Diamond Mountain. And it's something we should do, okay?

Each of us. So I just put that seed in your head. What are you doing wandering around here?

It has to go down, up. Okay. So put that in your heart.

That's the only thing I'm not satisfied about at Diamond Mountain. The rest is a miracle. But that we have to do, okay?

And we shouldn't impose on other people. After we, when you're in retreat, it's proper. And when you come out, it's okay for a while.

But then you should be the person who pays for the retreat for the next guys. That's what I'm saying. Okay.

So I just put that seed in your mind. And any fool can go to 30 jewelry stores and, you know, on the 30th one, you get a job. And then you do it for 10 years and 20.

I did it for 25 years. 25? 19 years.

So, you know, anybody can do that. Okay. And it can be your mandala.

It can become your mandala. Burger King. I'm not kidding, you know, can be a mandala for right livelihood.

Okay. All right. So here we go.

And I, you'll be so talented and in demand that you will, people will ask you to come and teach. But garner your resources carefully and give. Because then what happens is, more comes back and you have more to give.

And we'll talk about that. Okay. So let's go through livelihood.

It's not my choice of topics. We're just there. Okay.

And it happens to fit the day, which is very strange. Okay. Five kinds of wrong livelihood, especially for spiritual people.

Okay. People who are on a spiritual path. First is called sutra.

Sutra means to pretend to be someone you're not. Okay. So I think in our context, you have to train yourself so well that you don't have to do tsultrim.

You know, you are more than you seem. That's very nice. Okay.

Rinpoche used to say, when you go to the dollar store, take $99. And what he meant was, train yourself so deeply that you could say a hundred, you could do a hundred hour teaching in the hour that you have. You know, you have a hundred hours of stuff in your mind to teach an hour teaching.

Okay. You're that deep. Your training is that deep.

In ballet, when they train a dancer to do like Swan Lake and they have to do 12 pirouettes across the stage, which is very demanding, they always do 20. They train them on 20 until the night before. And then 12 is like nothing.

You see what I mean? So in our business, make yourself that you don't have to pretend to be somebody you're not. Okay.

Meditate hard. Have a daily, strong, hard meditation practice, even after you get out. We have prisoners.

I heard one recently, beautiful Navajo guy. He was one of our first prisoners, I think 10 years ago. And he got out and he's teaching meditation now in Scottsdale.

And he owns the most chic beauty salon in Scottsdale. And the only reason I know is because one of my employees came to work one day with a beautiful hairdo. And I said, that's really nice.

And she said, yeah, I got it done. The guy knows you. And then I found out it was this guy that I taught in the prison.

And so I heard this story that he was telling people that he wishes he was back in prison, because his meditation was so good. So I'm saying, do it now. Make hay while the sun shines.

And so that you don't have to pretend to be somebody you're not.

[Говорящий 2] (18:00 - 18:00)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (18:00 - 1:10:42)
And it's a lot better to under-present yourself, you know, than to exaggerate and present yourself as something that you're not. Okay. And you don't have to worry.

People will figure out who you are eventually. So, okay. So we don't need to.

The best way to avoid having to pretend to know something, or be something, is to know it and to be it. So study hard, meditate hard, do your yoga hard, you know. And you can tell a yoga teacher, you walk in, you can tell from their body and from their face if they're practicing every day, you know.

And then I feel a little uncomfortable in a class when the teacher's obviously not practicing every day. And my own colleagues in our teaching, when I feel that they're not practicing regularly, I feel uncomfortable, you know. So let's be who we say we are.

Okay. That's the first one. Number two.

Khasak. Khasak means to sweet-talk other people so that you can get what you want, and to flatter them, or to say things about them which are complimentary, in order to get things out of them, okay. And we do it.

If they're here, we do it. We all do it, to some extent, you know. Somebody, it doesn't have to be financial.

It could be emotional, or you know, we flatter someone because we need them around, or something like that. Even with our students, we have to be careful with that, you know. Like, it's very tempting to look at your students as resources for your projects, or things that you want, and forget that the reason they came was they need you for something.

So we have to be really careful with that, you know. So we don't look upon people as resources for what we want. We keep in mind, it doesn't mean you can't give them jobs, but the purpose of giving them a job is to help them, and to help them grow.

So that's number two. Third one is called Sholong. Sholong means you hint to somebody what you need, okay.

Like, it's not considered wrong in Buddhism to approach a sponsor honestly, and say, you know, we'd like to, we can't finish the kitchen without more donations, and would you like to help, you know. But to go and beat around the bush, and sort of trap them, you know. Like, they say, oh, I'm going to be there on April 4th, and you'll say, well, bring, be sure to bring a box lunch, you know.

And they're like, why would I need to bring a box lunch, you're building a kitchen. Well, you know. Okay, like that.

So you should be direct. If the person is not well disposed enough to help you when you're being direct, then you shouldn't approach them, okay. It should be very straightforward.

If they're not ready to help, and happy to help, we're not allowed to ask. If we know they're not happy to help, and willing to help, we're not allowed to hint and entrap them like that, okay. And if it means you can't finish the kitchen, then you, you know, you put up a temporary plywood wall, and you do it later when you find some sponsors who are happy to do it, okay, like that.

Number four is called toki jelwa. Toki jelwa means pressuring someone into giving. And there are a couple of variations on this.

One is, we're specifically not allowed, in Buddhism, the funds or the property of a couple is considered to be held in common, okay, so that we're not allowed to approach one of the couple who's sympathetic to Buddhism for financial help if we know the other partner's not sympathetic, or that they would disagree, and that would cause division or schism in their relationship. So we're not allowed to pressure one of the pair of the couple for help, if we know that the other partner wouldn't be as supportive. We're supposed to get them both in a room, and ask them both, and then let them, give them the space to say, you can get back to me next week, if you want to, and if you don't, that's okay, we still love you, and you know, still hope to see you, and like that.

So give them an out, let them get out. We had a sponsor in Connecticut, and I said, they offered, I think, $25,000 a year, I said, if there's ever a time when you're not proud of what we're doing, you can cancel it, you know, and that's like that, you should, don't force people, don't put them in a, in a, like almost an embarrassing situation, where they have to do it, because they might be embarrassed, if they don't do it, or something like that.

Okay, the last one, the fifth one, is called Ngepe Ngepe Tsuwa. Ngepe Ngepe Tsuwa means baiting, and this is very common in Asia, and I'm often asked to do it, and it's very uncomfortable for me. It's a tradition there, for a religious teacher to make a gift to a sponsor, of like an expensive thangka, or painting, or a sculpture, or beads, or you know, you have to, you're supposed to butter up the sponsor by offering them something expensive, and then in the hopes that they will give you something, that you won't lose money on the deal, you know, and so we're not allowed to do that, we're not allowed to give a gift with the intention of getting something back. In Tibet, they call it Chakyushak.

Chakyushak, chak means iron, kyu means hook, shak means to set it in the fish's mouth, and Chakyushak means to, to offer like a gift to a sponsor, knowing that you're going to hit them up a week later or something, and, and it's not sincere. A sincerely offered gift is fine, you know, if it's that you just really want to honor them, for example, with a waffle breakfast tomorrow morning, that's, that's okay, if it's done directly and honestly, okay, like that. So these are the five, these are five guidelines that stem from the Vinaya system, the monastic system, for relating to people who sponsor religious organizations or religious projects, okay, and they're good to know, you've heard them before, but as, as it seems to be fortuitous that it came tonight, because I think you're going to be faced with these temptations when you come out, and you have to be careful. The bottom line, of course, is that no kind of dishonest fundraising could ever raise funds.

According to our worldview, every time you do something dishonestly, you lose money, you lose, you lose things, so it's just foolish to be dishonest, to gain something, because you will lose things. It's not logical, but, but we are, we're not logical people, okay. Then Pabongka Rinpoche goes into, don't forget the context, we're talking about offerings that you make, how you pay for the banana you put on your altar, okay, and that's why I showed my garden, because that's, that's something I do, to make sure it's honest, I grow the flowers a lot, hundreds and hundreds of flowers, and it's fun, it's very, it's so sweet to grow flowers only to give to your teacher, or only to give to your friends who are helping you in your Dharma projects and things, and it's very, very healthy, and you're outside, and you're in the fresh air, and Kat knew this a long time ago, but I caught on, okay.

All right, for lay people, there are two guidelines that he specifically mentions. One is called marke, mar, I think you know marpo, what's marpo? Red color, okay.

K is a short for kepsang, kepsang means profit, okay, so marke means any business or, or profession or career which hurts other people, and specifically animals, the killing of animals for food, or for their skins, or to make things, leather products and things like that, but it extends to selling weapons, selling drugs that will hurt people, being involved in the alcohol business, these are things that hurt other people, and then there was a woman who came, there's a famous story of a woman who came to Lord Buddha, she was a prostitute, and she came to Lord Buddha and said, is it okay to be a prostitute? He said no, and then she said, but I have kids to support, and he said, okay, then you work your way out of it slowly, you know, on your, on a comfortable schedule, get yourself out of this business which hurts people, okay, so if you're involved in like bartending or, Starbucks is okay, all right, it's just a little zing, you know, uh, no, we have a guy here who's like running a Starbucks near me, uh, and, uh, but weapons or things which involve killing animals, selling things, uh, their meat or things like that, those are specifically, uh, wrong livelihood, okay, and of course it's not that it's a morale, morality, it's that it hurts you, okay, the definition of Buddhist morality is that doing something, immorality is doing something which hurts you, that's immoral, you see, it's very interesting, the definition of bad karma is any action which hurts you later, so it's just protecting yourself, right, Dalai Lama calls it, what do you call it, intelligent self-interest, enlightened self-interest, right, uh, the second kind of, uh, wrong livelihood would be anyone which involves dishonesty, uh, like I can think of, uh, I don't know, in the diamond business it would be under, you know, giving people not the real weight of the diamonds or, or less gold than 14 karat or, uh, there's many examples in banking or finance or real estate where you can cheat people in subtle ways they never know, people can't weigh the diamonds in the diamond ring without breaking it apart, so it's a trust thing and, uh, you know, you have to be honest, okay, you shouldn't work for a company that's not honest, okay, it's stupid, uh, I mean, if the boss is asking you to do something dishonest, it always strikes me, it's so funny, there was a guy in our community in Manhattan, the diamond dealers, uh, there was a guy from Persia, Persian guy, and he, he would train his people to cheat their customers, you know, and we, we knew, we figured it out after a while, we didn't deal with him anymore, but, but I always thought it was so stupid to train your employees to cheat people because, well, what happened then, they'll cheat you, one day he got all his stuff stolen, everything, all his stones were stolen, you know, by some, one of his employees, and that was it, he was out of business, and I always thought it was so weird, it was so stupid to teach people to be dishonest, you know, so, uh, so don't work for a person who asks you to be dishonest, okay, if you need the job and you have two kids, where are those little mat rats, they're so cute, uh, then, then work your way out of it, be like the prostitute, you see what I mean, like, take six months and, and start to switch over to another profession or another job, okay, all right, then he says, he says a beautiful thing, and I, it, it really, I, I find it very sweet, he says, DE LTA BU CHUG PA'I PHUL BA LAS MA PHUL BA LAS, okay, this LAS is the comparative, rather than that kind of PHUL BA, PHUL BA means, PHUL BA to offer, DE LTA BU PHUL BA LAS, other than, rather than that kind of PHUL BA, MA PHUL BA LAS, it'd be better not to offer anything, it'd be better to, to come to your Lama empty-handed than to offer something that was earned by cheating people or by killing animals and things like that, he says, better not, better come with nothing than, than something, people often ask me also, uh, could they borrow money to make an offering, um, that's okay, you can borrow things, I mean, I use my credit card to buy things for my Lama all the time, and then I pay it off, to, if you use it and don't pay it off, that's not, that's dishonest, but if the bank offers you money at 20% interest per hour, which is what my bank does, uh, then you, that's okay, you can borrow money, okay, but if you're in a family, or if you've committed that money to your mortgage or something like that, and then you default on the mortgage, or you, you hurt someone to whom you have promised money, including a credit card company, then you shouldn't borrow more, okay, you should pay off what you borrowed before, and then make an offering, okay, but don't, don't think it's somehow noble to, to declare bankruptcy, for example, so you can get out of honest debt that you agreed to, that's just lying, okay, and it's a bad, it's a bad custom in this country, you know, it's better to be in debt for 20 years and pay it off slowly than to go bankrupt, okay, because you're just cheating other individuals who, who put their money in that bank, it's not a big credit card company, it's people, okay, even if it was just a big credit card company, it'd be immoral, because you agreed, so the moral of the story is don't get a credit card, okay, uh, there's a Christian church, I really admire it, they, they don't allow their, their members to have credit cards, they, they're very strict about it, and I think it's great, my credit card was HSBC, which is taking over the world, because it stands for Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, this Chinese bank, and I tried to use my credit card the other day, and, and the people said, no, it's, it's no good, and I said, what do you mean it's no good, I haven't used it at all, and they said, no, no, you don't understand, the card was cancelled, and I, I called the bank, you know, someone called the bank for me, and I'm like, what's going on, why is Kish and Michael's credit card cancelled, they said, we cancelled all our credit cards, the Chinese bank who owns the United States has cancelled all credit cards, okay, why, you think about it, okay, uh, they don't think we can pay it, they, they gave away their credit card balance, all of it, it's amazing, it's incredible, you know, anyway, in Tibet, it's traditional to describe, to, what do you call, give the etymology for the in a certain way, which is called nyepa, say nyepa, nyepa means to please your teacher, okay, the, the word puja, the root, puj, is considered in Tibet to mean to please, so that puja, making an offering to a teacher, or to, uh, to people is called puja, because it's, the offering should please the person to whom you're giving it, uh, de tabu pulna gyepar kala gyal, de tabu pulna, but if you were to offer one of these kinds of gifts, kala gyal, how on earth could they be pleased, then that's not a puja, that's not a gift, that's not a spiritual offering, if it was obtained by hurting people, then it's, it won't please them, so it's not puja, so it's not a gift, it's some kind of dirty thing, okay, all right, then he goes into inner dishonesty, okay, so that's outer dishonesty, that's financial dishonesty, then inner dishonesty is, is lesser motivation for making a gift, or what gift are we talking about, by the way, the banana on your altar in the morning, okay, we're talking about that, we're talking about the flower you put on your altar, how did you pay for it, okay, that's the outer honesty, now we go to inner honesty, what, what are your motivations for putting the flower on the altar, okay, here we go, number one, and I love, Lady Ruth wrote a book about, it's called the leaf, offering of a leaf, offering of leaves, and I went to the book release party, and she gave a very moving talk, the way, the reason she named her book that, is that, as I remember, there's a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, where Lord Krishna tells Arjuna, that if you pick a beautiful leaf up off the ground, which at that moment would be a rock, I got all these rocks, I put it, they have a place in my garden, I have a stack of them, but no, I keep them, and I look at them, and no, I do, I really do, but anyway, if you pick a leaf, Krishna says, if you pick a leaf off the ground, and offer to the Lord with a good motivation, then that's, that's like gold, okay, so here are four inner kinds of dishonesty, that we should avoid when making an offering, number one, and this is big in the Bible, the Bible talks about this, we shouldn't do our good deeds to impress other people, okay, so the offering should not be made to impress other people, you know, they, and I meet people like that, especially in Asia, I teach a lot in Asia, and wealthy people often take me to their homes, and they'll try to impress me with their altar, and they'll pull things off their altar, and describe to me how expensive it was for hours, and it's like torture, and you know, so, so making an offering in the hopes that someone visiting your home might see it, and or how cool it looks, or you know, or that you could tell people about it, that's, that's a wrong motivation, and you know, the famous example from this book is, is what, I'll read it to you, Geshe Ben Ki Nyingchi Yendakshi Gyel Duyong Serwe, there was a Lama a thousand years ago named Geshe Ben, okay, Kramer probably, and he heard that a sponsor was going to be visiting his house, so, kway chok kyi chepa chi, chi sang sham, so he set out a lot of nice offerings on his altar to impress the sponsor, ten la shug ne, kun lung la tak pe, then he sat down to do his morning meditation, and he, he stumbled, it says he stumbled over his motivation, he, he, his motivation hit him in the face, he, he realized what he had been thinking, okay, and then, yin dak gi ngur dze chosu songwa sig ne, he said, he realized that he had just been trying to impress his sponsor, that he was such a good monk to put out his morning offerings, you know, har te sheng, he jumped off, har te means in a flash, he jumped off his meditation seat, got up, talwa bar kang tor, he got, he grabbed a handful of ashes out of his fireplace and threw it on the altar, okay, he just covered the altar with dirt, gyelang rang sok ma che bar shug shik, he said, quit fooling yourself, quit cheating, you're just cheating yourself, you're not, you are misleading yourself, not the sponsor, he said that to himself, ma che bar shug shik sung ne, talwa pung er chun ne shak, and he left the, he didn't clean it up, he left it there, okay, pung er shak, de la tut ding ri lang kor du pa dam pa sang gye kyi sem pe, then you heard a little bit of pa dam pa sang gye in Lama Kristi's classes, because I helped her translate, he's a very famous lama from India who, who spent the rest of his life in, in ding ri, in Tibet, okay, and he used to, he had like miracle powers, and he was very wise, and somebody told him this story, okay, and then that this monk had thrown dirt on his altar, and he said, pho kyi chupa tam che kyi nang ne, beng kun gyal kyi chupa de sangwa chung, that's the best offering I ever heard of in Tibet, that, that ash is thrown on the altar, that's, that's the best one I ever heard of, de chi yin she na, people, then his students were shocked, and they said, you know, why, why do you think that's the best offering, he said, kong kyi chikten chukye kyi kala talwa dep, he has thrown ashes into the mouth of the eight worldly thoughts, okay, these are eight worldly attitudes from, you know, like wanting to be famous and unhappy if you're not famous, people say bad things about you, you feel bad, they say good things about you, you feel good, these are, he threw dirt into the mouth of that demon, okay, okay, so let's go back to the second wrong motivation, right, inner dishonesty, okay, good, the first one was trying to impress others, or, you know, how, what a good offerer you are, okay, people do that to me, anyway, okay, we make, that you have sort of lesser motivations for it, like, you like feeling sick, and you think if you make an offering that maybe the karma will kick in and you'll feel better, or short-term goals, okay, and it's not that they are evil or wrong, and I think you have to understand why they're wrong, they're not big enough, okay, it's not wrong to wish that you were healthy so you, but you have to wish that you were healthy so you could do something with it, and help people, you know, or it's not wrong to wish you were wealthy if your intention is to, that you could save Tibetan culture or something like that, that's okay, but small wishes, small desires are foolish, okay, so that's an inner dishonesty, best, the best one would be, right, to think that somehow you're serving the world with this offering, okay, okay, the third one is to limit your goals in another way, which means to your own desires and your own goals, okay, so the third kind of inner dishonesty when you make an offering is to think, may I reach happiness to the exclusion of others, you see, and not include other people, so I want to offer flowers on my altar because I would like to be happy, and I think when you're in retreat this is also a danger, this is also a, what do you call it, it's a retreat trap because you're so focused on yourself in retreat, you're in your cabin, you're doing your practice, and I know I did it for three years, and it's very easy to fall into a concern that my practice isn't going the way I want, or you know, and to become very self-centered, it's not uncommon for retreatants to become, you know, not intentionally, but unintentionally very self-centered, and then you have to try to fight that.

When you're only with yourself it's hard not to do that, but an offering on the altar should always be made with the hopes that other people would be happy, and you break the lower motivation just by briefly thinking that someone else should be happy, you know, that's enough. Any kind of depression, sadness in your life, if you can just think of someone else for five minutes you break it, it'll be broken, you see. It's a very interesting solution, cheap also.

Just think of someone else and what they might like, and then suddenly your problems are, you forgot your problems, and you forgot your sadness, or your own situation, or things aren't going well, or you're having some kind of trouble. The thing to do is to force yourself to think of someone else's problems, and suddenly the whole thing dissolves, okay, so the third inner dishonesty is not to think of others, okay, just to think what you want, and in retreat you have to be careful with that, because you're just absorbed in yourself, and your practice, and your progress, okay. Number four, they always say you might as well just go straight to the higher path, you might as well, you know, don't fool around, there are lower spiritual paths, but why mess with them, just go straight to big time, you know, and that's Mahayana, which means that may my actions affect this whole civilization that I live in, okay, and don't think less than that, okay, don't think less than that, and it doesn't mean that you organize talks in more cities, and that you get bigger crowds, that's not that, it's tempting, right, it seems to be progress, and that seems to be the way to change the world, but really, and someone was talking about it tonight, I don't know, you become an example of yourself, you make your life exemplary, and people will copy you, you don't have to worry, if you come up with a better mousetrap, or skunk trap, people will buy it, you know what I mean, like, don't worry, people aren't stupid, you know, if they see that you're extremely happy, and well balanced, and you know, cheerful, and joyful, they'll ask you what are you doing, or they'll copy whatever you're doing, you don't have to go trying to sell it to people, people are not stupid, people know, people can smell a good thing, anybody can smell a good thing, so our job, if our goal is to change our civilization, the only way to do it is to start with yourself, and make yourself, the most difficult thing in life is to make yourself a happy person, it's extremely difficult, it's the most difficult thing in life, is to make yourself a happy person, but, and if you can do that, the rest, the world will change, because they will copy you, whatever you're doing, they will copy you, if a person looks like they're high all the time, they'll ask you how you do that, you know, and you don't have to go selling it, you see what I mean, but if you're obviously unhappy, and unpleasant, or nervous, or you know, abrasive, then it doesn't matter how well you talk, or it doesn't even matter how well you know the path, and can express it, if you're not that yourself, then nobody will practice it, nobody will try, I signed up in college for psychology, I was supposed to be a psychology major, and I took the first year's courses, you know, and we, I was, you know, we all took abnormal psychology, because that was sexy, and you didn't have to cut rat's heads open, and in Princeton, they had a lot of money, and they hired the best psychologists in New York to come and give us lectures, each lecture was by a famous psychologist, and I think it was the third one, who couldn't help spilling coffee on themselves, because their hand was shaking so bad, that I quit the psychology department, you know, like I just said, no, this is not the thing, this is not it, whatever I was looking for, this is not it, you know, I quit, and I lost all those courses, I just quit, you know, I said, because I remember this person looks so unhappy, and so ill-balanced, unbalanced, that I just quit, you know, and I went and looked for something else to do, and so when you make an offering, if it's done with elegance, and grace, and happiness, and kindness, that's bodhicitta, because people will copy you, and the world will change, you see, and nothing else is, okay? All right then, that was number four. Yes, it was, that was bodhicitta.

Yes, madam, okay. Me and Lady Ruth talk that way, because we are old India hands. All right, now I'd like to review a little bit about what Pabongka Rinpoche says about kopar dzepa.

Kopar dzepa means the arrangement should be beautiful, so the offering should be nice, but there should be a grace, and an elegance, and a beauty to the offering, okay? Not just that it should be honestly obtained, and given with a good motivation, it should also be exquisite, okay? So this gets me into the subject, I like the subject of exquisite offerings, okay?

It's kind of irritating that, to be frank, I used to talk about it with David and Sharon, because they have a lot of students, and they call it knickknacks, they say, and they really oppose to them violently, especially Sharon. I mean, if you offer Sharon a knickknack, she might throw it at you, and I say, God bless, and it means you shouldn't just run out and get some piece of junk, and offer it. It should be something exquisite, and something beautiful, even when you're giving a Christmas present, or a birthday present, and Tim, we're doing it tomorrow, okay?

And Chuck, you'll just have to send you the cake, but anyway, even a gift, a birthday gift, or a Christmas gift, if you, in my opinion, it's better not to give one, if you're just giving one, which is rush, in a rush, you went out and got it, and it's better to wait a year, or 10 years, right mom? And give something that's exquisite, you know, wait till you see something exquisite, and it should be, it shouldn't be something junky, okay? That's all.

And here's Pabongka Rinpoche, okay? Some people say, some people claim that it's unspiritual to be concerned with the beauty of the offering, or the elegance with which it's placed forth, right? And he says, but he says, that's wrong, that's a wrong idea.

It should be elegant, it should be beautiful. It's not that you're more of a yogi if you give a cheap, poorly offered gift, okay? It should be, yogis should give beautiful things, okay?

It doesn't relate to the price of the thing, okay? We'll get into that, all right? We'll get to there.

But he also gets into a very interesting subject that, I don't know, I grew up in the hippie days, 1960s, 1970s, 19, okay, not 18, and just in case you're wondering, and it was considered, I don't know how to say, it was considered crass to be well-dressed. We should look, what do you call it, bourgeois, I don't know, anyway, we should all wear jeans and have holes in our t-shirts, and then that was a kind of lack of pride. And to dress in a beautiful way, in a thought, in a purposely beautiful way, was being proud.

And that's true. I think there's a, there is a point where if you try to impress people with your clothes, or you spend all your money on clothes, or you spend all your time in malls, which is a high price to pay for fashion, then that's pride and that's wrong, okay? But Pabongka Rinpoche makes an argument for, he calls it being a flower in the world, meaning dress in a way, and present yourself in a way which is not selfish, you see, in which you are considering how other people will feel when you're around them, you know.

It's like cleaning up your room, okay? It's not wrong to try to be attractive or well, not well, not fancy dressed, but dressed in a way which would be pleasing to the people whom you're going to be around, you know. And that'll change, you know, in a business setting that would be, I have an employee in the DCI who refuses to wear a suit.

They showed up, we hired an accountant, they showed up to the interview in gym shorts and a t-shirt, and, you know, it's not appropriate. It hurt the accountant. It hurt the person who wanted to work for us.

It made them doubt us and made them uncomfortable. So the way you dress, the way you present yourself should be, it's not thoughtful not to look in a way that's comfortable for the people you're going to be around, okay? And then to wear that suit with your ACI friends, ACI, right?

That would be wrong also, you see, to dress with a tie and or wear a business dress, suit, women's suit, overdress, to a meeting of your friends at Diamond Mountain to discuss the compost toilets, which is not a small matter at this point. They've been cranky. They've been acting up lately.

I don't, I won't go into it because it's not pretty. But anyway, that would also be inappropriate. The point is to make other people happy.

Our goal in life, the spiritual goal, is to make other people happy, please other people. So you have to forget your own pride and dress in a way and present yourself in a way which would be comfortable for other people. You know, there's a place for making them uncomfortable to teach them.

That's different. But if you're not doing that, then if you're just being lazy and you don't want to make them comfortable, then that's wrong. You should try to make other people feel happy.

That's your goal, okay? All right, cupa dzepa. We got seven more minutes hanging there.

At this point, Pabongka Rinpoche mentions getting your hands dirty, the principle of making offerings. At a certain point in your life, when you start to get students, for example, you can have them make the offerings, you know. And the example in scripture is of Lord Atisha, who in the late 900s brought Buddhism to Tibet, some forms of the Lam Rim.

And then he was getting old, and he had many thousands of students. So one day, they grabbed the offering bowls out of his hand, because he was having trouble walking. And they said, don't worry, Lama, we'll make the offerings for you.

And then he got angry, and he said, you're also going to eat my dinner for me? He said, this is my karma, this is my pleasure, this is my honor. I have to do it.

So there's a big deal in the scriptures about you sweat to make the money, you buy the offerings, you go out and buy them. Rinpoche had a rule, like you couldn't come to Seichu with something less than a certain dollar amount. He wouldn't let you in.

It meant you didn't care about it. So you should work for the money offering, but do something nice. And don't let other people do it for you.

You can send somebody out to the shopping, but it's better if you go yourself for offerings. Okay, last thing, and then we're done with this section. He does go into the leaf on the ground thing that Lady Ruth taught us.

So I don't need to repeat that. People who don't have money, don't have means, are in retreat trying to economize, go out and find a nice rock. Spend a few hours and get some nice dried flowers and that's okay.

He praises that. That fits in perfectly. Make some nice rock formations or something.

Okay, all right. And he's very insistent that, he even says the best offerings are free. So in Tibet, because it's covered with snow, and it's the source of four of the world's greatest rivers, start there in the Himalayas, they had water and lots of good water everywhere.

And it became a custom in Tibet to offer water because you don't get attached to it. You don't think I have, I'm offering better water than Earl. It's just water.

And Lord Atisha used to praise the water in Tibet as an offering. And he said, if I had your, it was a certain flower in Tibet, if I had that Tibetan marigold, I would have paid gold for it in India. It's so beautiful.

It's worth its weight in gold. I would pay gold for that flower that you pick off your meadows. So he really praises growing flowers, growing your own flowers, or finding things in nature that are beautiful and offering them.

Okay, that's okay. Okay, last. Well, two things.

Okay, not quite last. There's also a thing in Tibet. So offering water is a big custom in our immediate lineage because it's clear, it's clean, it's crystal clear.

It represents emptiness like a diamond. And it's a custom to offer water. It's a beautiful offering.

It's a very, very appropriate offering for enlightened beings. Water, just bowls of water. Then there's this big teaching on how you put the water in the bowl.

Don't set the bowls down with a clang. Don't let them bang each other. They have to be the width of a barley grain separated, the lips.

If they're too far apart, you will create the karma to lose your lama. If they clang because they're too close together, you create the karma to have disharmony in your life. And I've had friends who said, they quit the lamrim course at this point.

They said, this is just BS. This is not, this is too much. I'm going to go to hell if I offer my water bowl wrong.

This is too much. I'll lose my lama if I put the bowls too far apart. It's not the point, obviously.

The point is that when you put the bowls down, you put them down with the hopes that you could be near your lama. So you're very careful about, it's a practice. And it creates the karma to be near your lama.

You purposely spend some time getting the spacing right and you dedicate it to being at the right space from your lama. You see what I mean? And then that becomes a lama, a guru yoga.

That becomes one of the most powerful practices there are, rather than just setting down a bowl. Like everything becomes symbolic and everything has deeper causes. Don't think it's silly that by setting the bowls too far apart knowingly, it could cause you to be separated from your teacher.

Don't think it's silly. I read this thing, I was very impressed with it. It was Hawking's, Stephen Hawking.

So I'm writing a book called A Better History of Time. And I actually had a fight with his publisher. He came to the first talk to the physics people at Princeton.

And that was cool. I think he might want to publish it actually. But anyway, he said a very beautiful thing.

The quantum physicists say a very beautiful thing that if there was a Big Bang, then necessarily it could not have been uniform. There must have been some infinitely minute inconsistencies in the first explosion, or the stars wouldn't have formed. There would just be equal amounts of dust everywhere.

And the gravity between them, the forces between them would be perfectly balanced. And there would always have been dust in the universe. So there must have been, according to their thinking, in a space in which they say is as large as a thumbnail, all the matter of the universe was contained originally in a space as large as your thumbnail, in infinitely mass.

The mass was infinitely high. But in that thumbnail, there were some inconsistencies in the pattern. And when it blew up, more dust was over there, then over there.

So they clumped together and formed planets. So that's what they believe. And galaxies formed from that.

And there's a page in Georgia. That's a galaxy. And those are stars forming.

That's a real photo from the Hubble telescope. That's stars forming. That's the birth of stars.

Those stars are already dead. The light is just reaching us. But they form because of this inconsistency.

Karma is the same. Tiny, infinitely tiny inconsistencies in your life, in your thinking, in your motivation, in how you act towards other people, in the amount of love you have, can create 10 years of suffering at your job. Because the job came from that.

Try to understand that. You have to be very delicate with everybody. You have to be totally kind to everybody.

Or else you create lumps. And they blow up. And a million years later, they're a galaxy.

And that's how karma works. Karma starts from infinitely tiny thoughts in your mind. Tiny motivations with which you offer someone a cup of tea.

Or the way you do your offering bowls on your altar. Don't think that's stupid or crazy. I mean, even a quantum physicist says that.

All big things came from infinitely small things. And all patterns come from tiny patterns in the original material. And so it's not foolish to spend a lot of thought on making the offering elegant.

You see? And it could create an elegant life. Don't think it's dumb or superstition or like that, culty.

That's just stupid. That kind of thinking is stupid. They don't get it.

It's a very holy practice. And it creates a holy universe to pay attention to small details. Last thing.

And we ran over. I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. Make everything high quality.

Make everything high quality. So I make meals for my Lama. It takes three days.

To make one meal takes three days. I get the Connie's brass, I say copper French pots out. I think of you every time.

And I do. And I get them out. And then I go or I send somebody to buy the best of everything.

People have driven to Phoenix to get an ingredient for a sauce for our round trip. And I blow all my money. I don't have any money.

I spend it all like that. And make it perfect. And then they don't know.

I mean, that's part of the thing. They shouldn't know that it took you three days. It's just there as if it just appeared.

And then they're not allowed to see the dirty dishes. The dishes go into like another room. And when they leave, then it's like the next morning I do all the dishes.

Because there's hundreds of them. And you have to do the rue, right? And all this stuff.

So it should be exquisite. If you're going to offer something, make it exquisite. If you're going to offer a meal, like spend three days on it.

And don't tell them. Never tell them. It's just as if you did it in half an hour.

As far as they know, you did it in half an hour. And then you should put all. I know, I think Connie cooks that way.

But you put in all these tiny secret ingredients that change the taste slightly. And if you ask them, is it different? They'll say yes.

And if you say, why? And they say, I don't know. I don't know what it is, but it tastes different.

You see, you put in some thyme and you put in some rosemary. And you make it exquisite. In the diamond business, there's this thing called, if you buy a diamond for $10 cheaper in a well-run diamond facility, the customer can tell the difference subconsciously.

If you say, choose between these two diamonds, they'll always pick the one that was $10 more. You see? And they don't know why.

They can't understand why. Subconsciously, they recognize something. And it should be the same with the offering.

If you offer a meal, it should be exquisite, special. Something in there, I don't know what you put in there, but it's something special. It should be first class, world class, like Diamond Mountain.

It should be like that. The course of study here is world class. There's nothing better in the world.

I know that. There's no more authentic teaching system in the world than what you went through. So make the offerings like that.

Take the time, spend the money. The last thing. There's this story that Pabongka Rinpoche relates about a monk who says he started with sage that he picked on the rocks behind his hut.

And because he offered the sage, he was able, then someone gave him this better incense, you know, like agar agar. And then because he offered the agar, someone gave him frankincense. You see what I mean?

People say to me, you're foolish. You're spending all your money on offerings. And then I'm like, duh.

Why do you think money flows in? You know, if I stopped, the money would stop. You see what I mean?

It's foolish not to offer the best you have, to hold back something for an important guest. Who's the important guest in this case? Your altar.

Just your altar. Like it's foolish to say, okay, you know, here's some pudding from yesterday, you know. And it's, you know, it's a day old, but they're not going to complain.

You know, let's just put it on the altar and I'll eat the other one. You know, it makes sense, right? It doesn't make sense, okay?

If you know what you're doing, it doesn't make sense. Take the one which is freshest, put it on the altar. And take the one that's a day old and eat that.

Got it? Because next time you'll get 10 fresh ones. Even for a selfish person, it's wiser.

Got it? Okay? All right?

Just offer the best on your altar, even if no one, quote, ever sees it.

[Говорящий 2] (1:10:43 - 1:10:43)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (1:10:44 - 1:11:22)
All right? Got it? Pick your best flowers, put them on the altar.

Take the rest and keep them on your desk. You see what I mean? All right?

Got it? Okay. We finished Georgetown number two.

You guys are obviously not going to get past two and a half or something by tomorrow. So I encourage you to try to get the audio or something from it. I think Venerable Jigme does that.

She's a dealer, audio dealer. So we'll be finishing this in the next 10 days, over the next 10 days. Okay?

All right, Venerable Phil, Vetosh.

[Говорящий 2] (1:13:50 - 1:14:05)
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[Говорящий 1] (1:14:05 - 1:14:53)
Just one thing I'm thinking... in America, it's not money, it's time. You know.

Like, if an offering would take an hour, we avoid it. You know, like some of us are able to spend lot of money on an offering, but if you say, spend time, and they are like, no, no, no, not time. I can do money, but not time.

So I think for us, for Americans, to make an offering that requires a lot of time, to prepare the one on the altar, like the garden takes a lot of hours, that's also sweet. The more hours you have to invest in it, then the more beautiful it is. Okay, all right, good night.