«Дар освобождения», курс 13 «Джорчо: песнь медитации», занятие 3

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 49:28)
Here we go. SUM PA BSTAN DE BA LA LUS NAM NANG GI PHYIR BDUN BSTAN DU GOS TE DGE SEMS BSKYED PA CHEN GYI SNANG NAS SKYAB SEMS SOGS BYA BA LA THOB MAR BSKYAB YUL SEMS BDE PA NI So we're at the next part. I think it's probably section six.

Yeah, in your book. If you didn't get a book, we ran out of them because not everybody registered who's here. I should probably just tweak your nose on the way out if you didn't register.

I don't know how to get people to register. We gave up a long time ago. We're like, how many tortillas should we buy?

And they're like, somewhere between 10 and 300. Well, how many people registered? It doesn't help.

Anyway, I don't know what to do. Anyway, please register, okay? It's just really painful.

And it means everyone doesn't get a book. It means they didn't get a book. Six of them didn't get a book.

Not to make you feel guilty. Okay. The third preparation is to seat yourself upon your meditation cushion and place your body in the seven-point posture of Vajracana, the angel of appearances.

Put your mind into a particularly sacred mood. Then start the practices which begin with going for refuge. For this, we first bring to mind the vision of the places of shelter.

So the third of the six preparations in our lineage, in our tradition for a meditation session on the lamrim classically, about the lamrim, steps of the path to enlightenment, is to prepare a meditation seat, sit down properly in the proper meditation posture, and then prepare your heart with two practices. One is called gemdo, taking refuge, going for shelter. And then the second is called semke, which is bodhicitta, or thinking about how we could affect the world.

So these are two inner preparations in addition to a bottom preparation. What's bottom? What's bottom in Chinese?

Come on. Who was there in China? Oh, anyway.

Piku. Somebody said, this will pique my interest, and the translator said bottom. Anyway.

So how to arrange your bottom on the seat. So we're going to go to the text, to the larger text, the liberation in your hands, and we'll take some highlights out of that text. All right, here we go.

,RTEN GYI RGYAB MTHO BZHIN GDUN MA BA ZHIG BYA STE, The back of the seat, classically, should be higher than the bottom of the seat. Nick said it nice today. Oh, sorry.

Johnny Yeo, in the meditation he led, which was so beautiful this morning, that the knees should be below the hips. Somehow the seat should put your knees below your hips. For most people.

Everybody's body is different. Everyone has different joints, and for you it might be different, but that's classic. ,DE LA SNGAGS KYI SEMS NAS KHYER PAR CAN ZHIG YOD, There's a particular ne, right?

Crucial significance to that in the tantric practices, in the secret practices. Sorry. There's an importance to getting your spine straight in the tantric practices.

,DE KYANG, Also, ,THUN RING PO DE KYANG, Also, if you sit for a long time, ,PHUNG MI NA BA, your bottom won't hurt. ,BSTAN GYI OG ZAG RGYUR GYI YONG DRIN GCOD DU PHYI, Then it's a tradition in India, ancient India, to draw a swastika under the seat. I remember in our temple in New Jersey, we had swastikas on the Lama's throne, where His Holiness would sit or his teacher sat.

They mean that we are praying, swastika is a sign of long life, stability of a Lama's life. Then we had some Jewish friends come and it took us like two hours to explain why we had swastikas on the throne. So swastika, su means good, right?

Astika means it is good. Su astika means it is a goodness. So the sign was, what do you call it?

Purloined by the Nazis, but it's a very beautiful symbol and it's very meaningful. And then we say it should be drawn, GCOD DU PHYI means it should be drawn, start with the upper left-hand corner, go down, then go across and go down. That's the proper, it shouldn't turn the other way.

If those little things were jets, the thing would turn in a counterclockwise or left-hand way. That's tradition, it's just tradition. And it's tradition to draw it on the floor with chalk, white chalk.

GCOD DU PHYI'I DOR BYED RGYAL RUNG DU YIN PAS DONG PA'I DOR BYED BSTAN DU SNGON PAR SANGS RGYAS PA'I RNAM DOR BYED SU DONG PA And it's also meant to recollect how the Buddha himself attained enlightenment at Bodhgaya, whose old name was Vajrasana, the Seat of the Diamond. So the original name of Bodhgaya was Vajrasana. RANG GI GRUB PA BRTEN PA'I SGO PA YOD And it means that your practice should be stable.

It helps make your practice stable. Then there's another advice about the meditation seat. KUSHA DINI TZANGS RGYAS It's a very famous quotation.

If you've been doing a lot of fire offerings, that's homas, you know. When you put the kusha in, this grass, sacred grass, you say a verse which starts with that line, KUSHA DINI TZANGS RGYAS The kusha is both purity and goodness. The kusha represents purity and goodness.

So there's a special grass in India called kusha. And you can buy it in the United States very easily because they make brooms out of it. So if you would like some kusha, go to an Indian grocery store.

They're everywhere. And ask for a kusha broom. And there'll be like this long, a hand broom that you bend over and you use like that.

So you can buy them. It's easy. It's nice to have, it's traditional to have kusha grass under your meditation seat.

So if you can find it, it's good. It has a very sweet smell. And by tradition, it has been used by yogis for many centuries.

It establishes, and I think, I learned a lot about that from David and Sharon when they were teaching me to do yoga. And Lady Ruth, they were talking a lot to me about making a connection to the earth or making a connection to nature or making a connection to Mother Nature during my yoga practice. And they would encourage me to think of my feet going down into the ground, especially in like a virkshasa tree, something like that, which worked for a while.

Keep me up. So that's a very good tradition that you have a connection through the kusha grass to nature, to the nature around you, and to the earth, and to Mother Earth, Mother Nature. And that's a very nice tradition.

So under your meditation seat, it's a tradition to put kusha grass. Kusha grass comes green, and then after about a year, it gets brown. And then traditionally we burn it, and then we put some new grass under there, green one.

So it's a very sweet smell, and it establishes connection to Mother Earth. It's a very nice custom. Then we are supposed to take the seven-point posture of vairojana.

Vai means various, and various comes from that. Roj means light. R's and L's get interchanged in Sanskrit, so it came into, it went from roj to loj, and then loj is like loka or world, meaning the shining world.

And then it came into Latin as lux, or lucid or lucent, pelucid, translucent. So it means, vairojana means the one who appears in many aspects, physically. And that's the Buddha who is related to the purification of your body, of the five parts of a person, what we call the five skandhas or five heaps.

The first is your physical body. And this Buddha, vairojana, relates to the purity, the purification of your physical body. Right now your physical body is made of blood and bone and flesh.

And I don't know about you, but when I'm doing a lot of yoga, I feel good in my body, and I feel, what do you call it, connected and happy with my body. But unless we do some extraordinary practice in this life involving deep retreat also, that body will kill you. The body which you are strengthening in your yoga poses and opening up and stretching with your yoga poses, that body will kill you in time it will kill you, no matter how much yoga you do.

So we have to purify this body. The practices that especially they are engaged in are meant to purify the body. What does the body feel like after you purify it?

It has this beautiful quality like rainbow light. It still retains its outer outline. The outline is like two arms, two legs and a head, although it's very exquisite and very beautiful.

And it has this wonderful quality of appearing physically wherever anybody needs you automatically. Without, what do you call it, premeditation. You just appear.

If someone needs you in Tokyo, your body appears there and you help them. Or on other planets. It doesn't have to be only this planet.

But that's who Vajracana is. That's why he's called various forms. Because spontaneously you appear wherever someone needs you.

So because that Buddha is related to the purification of the physical body, when we're talking about the proper posture of the body in meditation, we name it after that Buddha, because he's related to the physical body. So when we're talking about the proper physical posture for meditation, it's called the seven points of Vajracana. So I'm going to go through the seven points of Vajracana.

Sometimes there are eight and we'll talk about that. Number one, the legs should be put in a comfortable position. That could be a full lotus.

I was very impressed with Earl yesterday. The most I ever got up to full lotus was an hour in three-year retreat. Then it was like, oh.

So it could be a full lotus. It could be a half lotus. It could be sukhasana.

A lot of the reason to have asanas in the old days, asana means meditation sitting. It's related to the word as. Seriously.

Because you sit on it. So asana means seat. Originally the yoga poses were largely meant to assure that you were comfortable while you were sitting for long periods of meditation.

That was the original reason for asana practice. So any comfortable place that your legs can be in. If you have knee problems, if you have leg problems, if you have lower back problems, then for God's sake, sit in a chair.

Sit in a comfortable chair. A lot of people find then that a nice trick is to put a rolled up yoga mat under your feet. So try that.

If you have problems sitting, if you have knee problems or it's uncomfortable to sit in a cross-legged position, then it doesn't matter at all if you sit in a chair. You don't get extra points. Earl gets extra points, but other people don't.

You don't get any extra points for a full lotus. Just the idea is that you can park your body and leave it. So if you take a pose to meditate in, which causes you pain, then you failed in taking your pose for meditation.

You should park your body and leave it. And if there's something in the body, like a car alarm going off after you park the car, then you failed in choosing, in selecting a way of sitting. The idea is that the body is there, left parked there in the parking lot, and the heart goes somewhere else.

So don't take a posture in meditation which will hurt after half an hour. The car alarm will go off in half an hour. It looks good to other people.

It doesn't help you at all. So just relax. Relax, as our friends used to say.

I saw him do that to somebody. The hands, the position of the hands is the second of the seven-point posture. Tradition, Buddhist tradition, is to put the left hand down first, and then put the right hand on top of it, and then to touch the thumbs together somehow.

I tried for years to get the thumbs to stay up. And they didn't. They would flop down.

And then I felt guilty. We're all really good at feeling guilty about our practices, aren't we? Extremely good at that.

So if you want to stick with the thumb thing, move your elbows forward, and the thumbs will stay up. That's something I learned with most skeletons. And then I also learned it probably doesn't matter, and you can just let the thumbs flop down.

So left hand down first, right hand down on top of it. It's very appropriate if you want to take a chin mudra. If you take that...

You know, I used to sit like that, because it felt like it looked cool. But then I felt... Later I learned that it hurt my back.

So push your hands... If you take a chin mudra with your hands, pull them back on your thighs towards your torso, and puff your chest out. And then pull in your tummy and tuck your tailbone, which are almost contradictory, but you have to figure it out.

Pull your hands towards your... If your back is really straight, your hands can't be like this. I don't think so.

They have to be like that. So try that when you take your... You can just choose about your hands.

I personally, my personal body that I'm in right now, if I sit like that, my hands fall asleep after a while. So I found that if you rotate the hands slightly so that the thumbs are up, you see, try that. And they don't fall asleep so much.

It doesn't look like the classical thing, but for me it works better. My hands don't fall asleep and they don't hurt. Okay.

Number three. Your back should be, quote, as straight as a stack of coins. David told me a nice story one day, David Lai.

He said somebody... He was in India and he was doing yoga, and so he meditated. And some teacher looked at his posture and said, you're not sitting straight.

And then he said, you'll never get to enlightenment, ever. It's impossible. Your spine is not correct.

And your spine has a natural curve in it. So let's just live with that. They say straight as a stack of coins, but it never will be.

The point is to get your shoulders back and to get the prana flowing so you can feel yourself when the prana is flowing. I think a typical error is to put a kink in the back like that, in the lower back, in many yoga poses also. And you have to learn to tuck your tailbone slightly, which can be a natural result of gluing the navel to the spine.

So a slight tension here, slight gluing the navel to the spine. And then you don't get a kink in your lower back and the prana flows better. So check it out.

And also how you treat your neck. If the neck's too far back, it kinks the central channel, the sushumna. So check that out.

You might have to, they say keep your chin parallel to the ground and don't put it down and don't take it out because it will kink the central channel. Number four, the teeth should be clenched, not be clenched but kept natural and soft. So the scriptures just say, keep your teeth away, whatever is natural for you.

But be careful not to clench your... I tend, when I concentrate, I've seen pictures of myself. It's kind of ugly.

Like when I place it down, or when I'm on a computer. So the scriptures say, keep your teeth loose, keep your mouth loose. So don't tense up here.

Watch tension here, watch tension here. The ultimate for me, this is my personal practice after many, many years, 40 years of meditating. I find that if I check in with my eyelids and if I find any tension in the eyelids, then I'm tense.

And it will hurt the meditation. So my final flight check thing in meditation before I go inside is to check my eyelids. And I let them go.

It's like when you're doing a forward bend and you got your head up, you're tense with your head. So you just let your head fall. We were having yoga class this morning.

The teacher said 40 pounds of hardwood, just released. Let your head drop. When you're meditating, let your eyelids...

If your eyelids are relaxed, the rest of you probably is. Then the tendency is when you start to meditate, everything tenses up again. The moment you pick your object, the moment you go to your object, then everything you just checked in with reverts back to tension.

So do the flight check on all the parts of your body. Is the forehead soft? Are the eyes soft?

Are the corners of the mouth soft? Are the shoulders soft? Is the stomach tucked in slightly?

Are the hands not tense? Then take your meditation object and start meditating. Then check in again with all those.

The concentration hasn't caused you to tense everything up again. Because it will. Then there's all this thing in the scriptures, part four.

It says, gen means your palate. It's that you should park your tongue softly against the upper palate. Then you won't get thirsty and you won't swallow.

I just never figured it out. So you work on it. You let me know.

I still have to swallow from time to time. It's supposed to keep your mouth from getting dry. So maybe if you had, I don't know, a couple months left in a long retreat, you could play around with it.

Let me know. There are actually three parts to number four. Teeth not clenched.

Lips held loose and natural. And the tongue slightly touching the top of the mouth. These three parts are considered number four.

Number five. Keep the chin parallel to the ground. It is believed in the Buddhist tradition that, I had a friend who meditated like this.

According to Buddhist tradition, then your mind would get distracted. You start thinking about lunch or what somebody said to you 20 years ago. That's the nice thing about getting old because you can think what they said 30 years ago or 40 years ago, which I do.

So anyway, don't meditate. They say if you keep your chin up too high, the mind will get distracted. And if you drop the chin too low, you'll get tired.

You'll get sleepy. You can use that like a throttle. Like if you're getting sleepy, you can bring it up a bit.

And if you're getting too distracted, then bring it down a bit and try it. It works, kind of. That also includes, be careful not, I have a friend who meditates like this.

Don't tilt the head either way. Try to keep the head centered. If you want to know, it's interesting, your emotions, the situation on the side channels, ida and pingala, over the length of your life, they will twist your head to one side or the other.

If you're a more angry person or you're a more desirable person, it will affect your, what do you call, carriage of your body. And your body will change. And you can have a friend look at you when you're in shavasana.

I think David used to tell me about that. And I tried to learn what he was talking about. And I think I got some of it.

You can see a person, you can watch a person in shavasana and they will tilt their head to one side or the other, like this. And when they're at rest, when they are totally at rest, a lifetime of either wanting or being angry has twisted their body. And they're not equal anymore.

It's not, what do you call that? What do you call it? Same on each side.

Symmetrical. They're not symmetrical anymore. Then you have to pull their head back.

If you're massaging their forehead, you have to like... Watch that. Watch that when you meditate.

Try to keep the head equal. Not like that. What number are we on?

A, B, C, D. Six. Okay, number six.

This is about how you keep your eyes. I experimented with many things over many years of time. I personally, if I glue my eyelids shut, I get sleepy.

Duh! Because your body was conditioned over your entire life that when you shut your eyes for more than a few minutes, you're supposed to go to sleep. So I personally get dull if I close my eyes all the way.

So I encourage you, and the book encourages you, to experiment with cracking them open slightly. And then you either keep the eyes down, but not focus on anything, or you can keep them up. Park them up there.

You can look at your third eye or something. Be careful it doesn't stick there. You can park them up, or you can put them down and not focus on anything.

When you put them down, it's hard not to focus on anything. I personally found that if I had a paisley altar cloth, it was very distracting to keep my eyes cracked open down. But I found this trick that if you choose a color altar cloth, which is, if you're meditating in front of your altar, if the altar cloth is a solid color, an ordinary solid color, that you can open your eyes slightly and keep your eyes down.

And of course, that means you have nothing moving in the room. And for me, you have no letters in sight, magazines, newspapers, book spines in sight, in your peripheral vision, because immediately I'm attracted to letters. So, okay, that's how you keep your eyes.

So you have a choice. As with everything, as with the meditation cushion, you should experiment. Everybody's body is different.

There is no, what do you call it? Doctrine or, what do you call it? What's worse than a doctrine?

Oh, you're not supposed to say anything. There's no dogma that tells you how you have, which, they were like, woof, woof, that tells you how your meditation seat should be, okay? I have a friend, Dieter Gavisler in New Jersey.

He swears by two thick pieces of wood. And it just looks so painful to me. I tried it once, and I couldn't stay on that for two minutes.

And he stays on it for hours, and he says that's the best thing. And other people like these big puffy cushions with things under their knees. I personally, if you want to know what you have to do, no, just kidding.

I like the barley-filled ones, because I can take out barley or add barley, depending on how my butt's doing. And personally, I find those very helpful. But you decide, okay?

I think if you're traveling a lot, like if you work for DCI or something, it's nice to have a small barley-filled meditation cushion. It's good to travel with your cushion. So I think it's nice to get a lighter one and a smaller one.

And it'll have the vibes of your bottom on it. And some people just pull up any, pillows are bad, they get you sleepy. If I meditate on a pillow, it's not a good idea.

If you meditate on your bed, it's not a good idea, okay? Like get down on the floor, and that's nice. Make sure the floor is warm enough.

I personally like, I very much like those big square, I think I got one here, yeah, cushions that are under your knees also, because I have bony feet and bony knees. And that's why I never wear shorts, because I'm so embarrassed for you to see. And I find that my ankle will hurt really bad if I don't have a cushion that covers my knees, my knees and my legs and my shins.

So to me, ideally you should have two cushions, one for the whole legs and bottom, and then another one to hold the bottom up, okay? And then you must experiment. You have lots of friends here, you have lots of Dharma brothers and sisters.

Ask them, can I use your cushion during Geshe-la's next talk? Let me check out your cushion and see if it works for me. And even if you found one which is fairly comfortable, keep experimenting, keep going, keep trying to find the holy grail of meditation cushions, okay?

And one day you'll find it, and then that'll be it, you'll use it forever. And you should travel with it, you should keep it with you. It's also a commitment.

It's another three pounds on the 50 pound limit, and it means I consider my meditation series important, okay? More important than the third pair of shoes. Okay, we got up to number seven, I think, yeah.

Shoulders should be equal, even, not one higher than... I have a friend who meditates like that, and you're supposed to get your shoulders down and back, okay? You can go like this a couple of times before you meditate and then stick them back.

Try to join your shoulder blades in the back, and that will puff your chest out a little bit, and then your hands will automatically come back a little bit on your thighs, okay? And that's very comfortable, and that puts your spine in a good position, okay? Then sometimes the seven-point posture is called the eight-point posture, and your breath, the condition of your breath is considered the eighth part of the meditation posture.

You know, what you're doing with your breath. It's traditional in Buddhist practice to do ukjumuk, okay? Say ukjumuk.

I like it. It's just a sexy word. Ukjumuk.

Uk means breath, okay? Your breath. Jum means exhale.

Muk means inhale. So ukjumuk means... This is what you call breathing meditation, right?

It was popularized in the fourth century by Master Vasubandhu who included it in his Abhidharmakosha, which I hope to start teaching in April. I've never taught it. I studied it for 12 years with Rinpoche, and we translated it together, and we gave the commentary by the first dharma, which is 400 pages, and then we offered it to His Holiness when he came to our house, and it was really sexy.

So anyway, in there, they teach how to do breathing practice, okay? Basically... And then when Buddhism went to Southeast Asia, Burma, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, only that book made it.

And Buddhism came late to those countries, like 1700s, like I'm very late, and only a few books made it, Vinaya and Abhidharma. Of the five great subjects, only two subjects made it to those southern countries. So there came to be a fixation on the breathing meditation, and that that was a goal in itself.

But if you study Vasubandhu carefully, and in Tibet they do, they spend many, many years on the lower schools, on the Hinayana or Theravadin schools, and the study of the Theravadin schools is very, very healthy in Tibet. It's a very, very high degree of mastery in those subjects. So the purpose of breathing meditation, watching your breath come and go, is to put the mind in a neutral state before you go to your meditation object.

So when you're driving a car, I can tell you, I had three brothers, four boys, four crazy boys, and my mom was a single parent. So we had some wild days. Every door in our house had a hole in it.

Sometimes the windows were busted out. One day me and my brother broke so much furniture over each other's heads that we decided to quit fighting. And we never did after that.

But anyway, one day one of my brothers, when my mom was on the highway, he jammed the stick shift into reverse. We were tussling and he jammed it into reverse. It's very interesting.

There's this, and then the car stops working forever. And there's this bad smell. Just in case you want to know.

So in Buddhism, in our lineage, to get your mind into neutral before you change gears. You've been going backwards or forward and you can't just shove it into meditation mode from email mode. Scott has a very, when he teaches meditation, he says a very beautiful thing.

He says, don't read an email before you meditate. Don't use your electronics before you meditate. I was thinking the new Diamond Mountain logo could be disconnect to reconnect.

Something like that. But it's a very kind thing to take away people's, people love it. We take away their self.

There's a place here called Canyon Ranch. They charge you $1,200 a day. What do they do?

They just take away your laptop and your cell phone. And people pay them happily. So you can't just disconnect from the world immediately to your meditation object.

There has to be an interim neutral state of mind, like a neutral spine in yoga. That's breath meditation. The function of breath meditation is to put your mind into a neutral state.

It is not a worthwhile meditation object. Your breath, consider it in the normal way, unless you consider it in some high pranic way or deity's breath or something. But your normal breath coming and going, it's not an important meditation object to stay on for a long period of time.

You should go to it to bring the mind to neutral state, and then you should shift your mind to something highly virtuous. This is tradition. Take a meditation object which is highly charged, karmically, a very holy or sacred object.

But by itself, the purpose, it was always the purpose that you only focus on the breath to bring the mind into neutral. And then it got out of hand in Southeast, and that became the only thing they did. They didn't go beyond that.

So it's good to know that. It's very powerful and beautiful practice. In tantra or in yoga, it will have a higher meaning, and then it becomes a goal.

But just normally watching your breath without any other training is not itself a high meditation object. The purpose of it is to bring the mind into neutral. So we will, even in this text, even in this practice, this meditation song, we should be doing breath meditation before we start the real meditation.

That's the eighth of the eight-point posture. And when you're watching the breath, you can enhance the exhales, and then the inhales will take care of themselves. So concentrate on the exhales, make them longer than usual, and then you will have some good pranic results.

It will help your concentration. So follow your heartbeat is a very common method. When you get better, you can follow the sound of air molecules hitting your eardrum, okay?

You can try either one, okay? Or later you can follow the sound of the blood moving through your body, okay? Follow those sounds, and bring the body to a state of neutral, okay?

As you get more quiet, you will go through those stages. At some point, you'll be able to hear your blood moving through your eardrums, or you'll be able to connect very strongly with your heartbeat, and then follow it and get the body quiet and get the mind quiet, okay? With those sounds, with those inner sounds, nada, okay?

But those come with practice, and they come with... Practice means regular, okay, every day. Anything you do every day, you get good at.

Anything you do for four hours every fifth day, you get bad at. Just every day, just get on your cushion, okay? Just have a goal.

In the diamond business, it was very interesting. I would, every six months, I had to, what do you call it? Evaluate my employees.

I had a couple hundred in New York, and I had 800 total, and I'd have to go in and fight for their raises, and the boss would say, okay, are they smart? I'd say, yeah. Are they work hard?

Yes. Are they creative? Yes.

Is their hand on the pad? Hand means when you're sorting diamonds, you sort thousands of diamonds every day, and your hand is on the pad, and you have this little eyeglass, and you've got tweezers, but if your hand's not on the pad, which means if you're in the bathroom, or you're having coffee, or you're talking to somebody, you're like this, and your hand's not on the pad. So, you know, and if I said, no, they don't have their hand on the pad that much, he wouldn't give them a raise.

Didn't matter what else. He said, I don't care what else they do. If the butt's not on the meditation cushion, nothing else matters, okay?

The butt has to make contact with the cushion once a day, okay? That's all. It's just that simple, okay?

And you can make excuses, or you can blah, blah, blah. If the butt doesn't meet the cushion once a day, you cannot get enlightened, and you cannot make progress in this path. Not possible, okay?

The butt must touch the cushion, okay? Then if it touches, you'll probably meditate, okay? I have gotten up after the butt touched the cushion without meditating, but it's not very common.

Okay. How are we doing? You promise, does this stop?

Yikes, okay. That's how you can tell someone's from Arizona. They say, yikes.

I mean, original Arizona. Sabra, Arizona Sabra, right? Nakhon?

Okay. I'd like you to skip to, where are they? Well, we can start with page 14, okay?

And to me, it's a very important image in my life, okay? Page 14, in my life, it has been an important image. This is a photo of a woman in the 50s, 1950s, I believe.

I don't know the whole story, but she dressed up very well one day, put on a nice business suit, put on her gloves, made up her face, put on her best shoes and her stockings, and she climbed up on the Empire State Building and jumped off. And when she landed on a car, she crushed the car. And she looks like she's asleep, right?

Like she landed like that, like she's asleep. And I always, when I saw this picture, I used to cry. I used to think about it.

She's young. She's beautiful. She's well-dressed.

She obviously had some money. You know, she had everything. You know, she was happy, probably.

She had all the things that are supposed to make you happy. And then she jumped. So that's the condition that most people are in, okay?

They don't have any refuge. They don't have anything to help them. You know, you can say we don't do so well.

You guys, you're so good at, you know how there's like Jewish, there's the guilty all the time about their practice. And, you know, you can say I had a hard time meditating or my practice is not so great or, you know, we had an upset in our group. Or you can say all those things and they are true.

We had all these things have happened, you know? But dharma, to have the dharma to fall back on as a support for your life, to have some kind of hope in life, there's nothing like that. There's nothing else, okay?

You have something that other people don't have. And it's refuge. So, you know, you can give up this training.

You can go away. You can do something else. But you have this training.

And when you need it, it will serve you. And other people don't have it. When the cancer comes, they can't do anything.

All they can do is just suffer. Like when an animal gets very sick, they can't even talk to you. You know, you know the animal is sick, but you don't know what hurts or they can't say.

They just suffer helplessly. And all people are like that also, okay? They have nothing.

When it comes down to it, at the end, which it always comes to, they have nothing, you know? They have no hope and they have nothing to help them, okay? Unless you have some kind of spiritual practice.

There's nothing, okay? And then you should might as well jump. That's what I think of when I think of her, when I look at her.

I made this book. We made it to lay down flat when you're meditating. Sometimes you can just stop there and stay there with that photo and think about other people.

They don't have anything, you know? Maybe we are imperfect or the path is not perfect or we mistranslated the fourth verb. And I'm not perfect, but we have something, you know?

We have something valuable and we have a protection, okay? It's a kind of protection. And it explains the world, okay?

So now, after you've seated yourself correctly, you are supposed to put your mind into a certain state of mind. It's called kunlong chöpa. Say kunlong chöpa.

In the Buddhist tradition, before you start a meditation, and I was first trained in the Jiva Mukti Yoga, and that was very wonderful because they're very big on this. When you start a yoga session, you must kunlong chöpa. Kunlong means your motivation or your intention.

Chöpa means you must set it. You have to set your motivation for the yoga session or for the meditation session. I was trained in some ballet briefly, and it was very interesting.

They say the first move you make decides all the rest. Be very conscious of the first move you make in a ballet, dance, or in a practice, in a bar, because then everything else will be the same. So if the first move is sloppy, the rest will all be sloppy.

It's true. Check it out sometime. If the first several minutes of your meditation session are done with a strong motivation and a strong intention, then the whole session will be good.

And if you're sloppy on the motivation at the beginning of the session, the session will be sloppy. That's just the way it is. The first few minutes of the meditation session are the most important.

You have to have set your motivation. Motivation picture. It's on the next page, is it?

Two pages later, maybe. Yeah, okay. And then that's enough.

That's all we'll do tonight. What page is that? With the umbrella.

Page 18, okay? Page 18. I just kind of wanted to make a visual thing that would remind you of where you're supposed to be.

There are two parts to the motivation that you're supposed to have. As you enter a meditation, there are two parts of the motivation. Number one.

We can go backwards, okay? Because we're going to talk about it tomorrow night. But you should understand that every person in the world has been your mother in a past life, countless times.

You have drunk your baby's milk from the breast of every person you've ever met in this life. Especially the people you don't like, okay? I try this practice.

It's very powerful for me. If I'm having trouble with somebody, I try to go back to the moment that I was drinking milk from their breast, or they were drinking milk from my breast, okay? And it's very powerful.

It kind of breaks. There's this illusion that they're a bad person, or there's this illusion that you hate them, or you don't like them, or they hassle you. And then the minute you give them a couple drops of milk, it's all over.

Or you drink some from their breast, and then all the reasons to dislike them melt immediately. It's some very, what do you call it, primal thing. Once you've drunk milk from somebody's breast, you can't dislike them after that.

So use it, okay? That's the basis of bodhicitta, right? That's the basis of love for the world.

Everyone has fed you. There's nobody you can ignore, okay? And when you think there's someone you want to ignore, imagine you have, picture yourself drinking from their breast.

That's why I put this picture here, okay? That's why I want you to remember. Every time, that's you, okay?

Or that's the person you don't like. And you are feeding them, or they have fed you. Just go there.

The minute you have a problem with somebody, go to that picture. Page what? 18?

And it will dissolve. The whole problem will dissolve. Oh my God, they fed me.

I have sucked milk from their teeth, nipples, many times. They kept me alive. And then whatever problem you're having right now will pale in significance to that, okay?

It just won't matter anymore. By the way, at the age of 60, I can confirm that all problems fade away eventually. We were trying to remember the other day the name of this person in New York who gave us a lot of trouble before we came to Diamond Mountain.

And for God's sake, for the sake of us, we couldn't remember their name. But at the time it was the most important thing in our life. And now we just...

We were all concentrating in the car and trying to remember their name. We couldn't remember their name. And it's always like that.

Every problem you have, you'll forget it after a while. So why not forget it now? With somebody, just forget it.

Okay, you hurt me yesterday. I'll pretend I'm living 20 years from now and I can't remember your name. And then you can think about nicer things.

You only have so many thoughts. We were in the prison. We were talking about it with the prisoners.

You only get so many thoughts in this life. They are numbered. There's a number on how many thoughts you will have.

Why waste them on people you don't like? I refuse to. People like, Jesse Michael, I heard this thing about you.

They're just like the skunks under your house. And now I just refuse to think about it. I'm like, no, I will not spend five of my life's thoughts on those people.

I refuse. I'm going to think about my teacher or my lama or what's my next flower project. I refuse to give them my time, my precious holy time.

They don't deserve it.

[Говорящий 2] (49:28 - 49:29)
Anyway, okay.

[Говорящий 1] (49:32 - 1:02:22)
Then the other picture there is refuge, okay. I think Rebecca helped me choose this one, right? I like it.

The girls with the umbrella. So that's refuge. The rain is the troubles of life, okay.

I had a person come to me. Don't think I'm talking about you because it could be 500 others in the last three months who are having trouble with their partner, okay. And they're like, should I get some space from them or not?

You decide. I always get this. That's why I lost my hair.

You decide, Geshe-la. Should I get some space from my partner or not? And what's the right thing?

What should I do? I respect that they ask me. I respect that they see me as a teacher and they think I would know what to say.

But in our tradition, when you have rain dropping, you get an umbrella, okay. And look how happy they look. They're like giggly under their umbrella.

It took so long to find giggly people under an umbrella. They're protected from the rain. They don't have to worry about the rain.

They have an umbrella, okay. What is your umbrella? It's worldview, okay.

People now, all these people are like, karma and emptiness. Geshe-la, I don't like karma and emptiness anymore. I'm like, why?

I don't know. They give me these weird answers. But karma and emptiness means, worldview means, the world is coming from you.

Where? From where? Things you did to people in the past.

These people, I say, do you believe in karma? They say, yes. What percent do you believe in karma?

How much of the stuff around you is coming from you? I don't know, half. And then that's just illogical.

That's silly to say half. You see what I mean? The people I don't like aren't my fault.

But the people I do like are my fault. It's just silly. All the good things that happen to me, I deserve.

And all the bad things that happen to me, I don't deserve. It's so weird. It's so bizarre.

That's karma and emptiness. Either everything is coming from you, or nothing is coming from you. Okay, honey?

It's like... And guess which one it is. Everything is coming from you.

Every little thing that happens to you is coming from how you treat other people. That's all. Then if you're having trouble with your partner, should you get some space, or shouldn't you get some space?

Okay? Which one? Which one's right?

Which one's right? If you want it to rain tomorrow, should you eat an M&M without a nut inside, or with a nut inside? Tell me.

Geshe-la, tell me. You're my lama. Should I eat an M&M with a peanut inside, or without a peanut inside?

And which one's going to make it rain tomorrow? No. Think what it feels like to have thousands of people asking you these things.

You know? And I'm just like, look at them. And I'm like, gee.

It has nothing to do with that, okay? Getting space is like the M&M without the peanut. Not getting space is like the M&M with the peanut.

And it don't matter which one you do, because it's not going to make it rain tomorrow. Because guess what? They're not connected.

There's no relationship between the two, okay? Struggle to comprehend that. Struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle.

Fight. Don't give up. Don't quit and go get a job in a Circle K somewhere.

I mean, really. Keep struggling to understand that. It doesn't matter what you do.

It doesn't matter if you do get some space from your boyfriend or you don't get some. It doesn't matter. That's not going to do anything.

It doesn't have any connection with it. If you want your boyfriend to be nicer to you, you have to be nicer to other people. That's all.

Okay? That's all. And I'm never going to give any other answers, so stop asking me.

Okay? No, it just drives me crazy. I was going to hire a Dharma bouncer.

I met a guy in New York. He was pretty good, that guy. The guy at that talk in January.

Mark helped me, right? He's this guy, you know? And I was going to keep him next to me, and somebody asked me again, should we get some space or should we not get some space?

I'd say, you know, I'd go to the guy, and then he'd just pick him up and throw him out of the door. Don't worry. Come back later when you understand worldview.

Everything is coming from you. You can make anything you want to happen in the whole world by changing yourself. And that's the only way you can change anything.

If your boyfriend doesn't listen to you, then guess what? How to fix it? Listen to other people more.

If your boyfriend doesn't show you affection, be more affectionate to strangers. You know, be nice to strangers. If your girlfriend is not interested in giving you what you want at night anymore, then, I'm not kidding.

I mean, this is a big concern for half the population. Then be more concerned that other people will get what they want around you. I find it useful in a pizza shop.

You be the one who organizes the pizza. You know, what do you want on yours? Olives, bell peppers, and onions.

And then other person's like, Ew, I wouldn't eat that. And they want something else. So you make sure everybody gets what they want.

We had a nice, wonderful breakfast this morning with our intelligent, beautiful sponsors. And, you know, each person wanted something different. And we were running around like crazy.

Somebody wants granola. Somebody wants waffles. Somebody wants eggs.

And somebody wants gluten-free Udi's toast. There's a guy named Udi, okay? You'll meet him.

So you just take care that the people around you all get the different things that they would like to have. And your girlfriend will change. She will be concerned about what you would like.

You see what I mean? So that's just the answer to the world's problems. That's all we teach here.

That's all we do here. We don't do anything else. And we don't teach anything else.

That's refuge. That's protection. If you get it, you got an umbrella for the rest of your life.

If you don't get it, the world will rain on you. And it will continue until the day you die. And there won't be any rest from it.

Until you figure out the umbrella thing. You'll be unhappy for the rest of your life. And are we some cult teaching weird things?

No. That's all we're teaching. That's all.

That's it. If you want something, then offer it to others. Take care of others and you will be taken care of.

Bjork said that, I think. Do-do-do-do-do. Love is all around.

You will be taken care of. So that's all. So we are required, in our tradition, before we meditate, to put up the umbrella briefly.

We're required to think briefly about the only solution to problems, which is to change yourself. And the only way to achieve your own goals is to help someone else achieve them. If you're having trouble with your partner, then find, for God's sake, find another person and help them who's having trouble with their partner.

That's the only way. There is no other way. And that's Buddhism.

Last thing. If you understand that, and if you have that umbrella, then by definition, you are a Buddhist. That's what makes you a Buddhist.

We don't baptize. We don't have catechism. We don't do a vritt, or a bat mitzvah, or a bar mitzvah.

We do umbrella. Okay, with the... Oh, there's two animals today.

Porcupine and the... Who was the other one? Who was Vilma's animal?

I was just thinking I had to remember two animals. No. No, no, the good one.

Huh? No, there was a good one. Maybe it was the ant.

I think it was somebody else. Anyway, you need the porcupine, and you need the other one when I remember. If you have that understanding in your mind, whatever you profess other than that, you are a Buddhist.

And if you don't have that understanding in your mind, it doesn't matter if you wear red robes, and you do a three-year retreat. If you don't have that understanding in your mind, you are not a Buddhist. That's all.

That's what makes a person a Buddhist. There's a joke in Tibet, a true story, that this yogi who could read people's minds was sitting in a group of a couple thousand monks at Sera, and the abbot of Sera was sitting on the throne. And he turned to the other monk and said, our abbot is not a Buddhist.

I can read his mind. When he gets trouble from somebody, he will spend sleepless nights wondering whether he should argue with them or ignore them. And both answers are wrong.

Should he get space or not? Both answers are wrong. He should stop doing what he's doing that the other person's doing.

That's all, if you understand that you're a Buddhist. So what happens now, a question for you, then I'll stop, I promise, almost. What happens if you go to a foreign country where Buddhism is not allowed, or in practice it's not allowed, or it's discouraged, or whatever, and you give a talk to 500 business people, and you get them to believe that the only way to have a good relationship or to have financial prosperity is to give it to someone else.

If they all start to believe that, what happens? They're all Buddhists. I love that.

And then you give a talk to a Buddhist group and nobody gets it. And they're not Buddhists. I'm not making up, this is the definition.

This is what makes a Buddhist a Buddhist. So we are required, before we meditate, to spend a few moments reviewing this idea in our mind. The world is coming from me.

What I need, I should provide to others. What I hope for, I should provide for others. What I don't like in my life or my boyfriend, I should stop doing to others.

That's all. That's umbrella. Got it?

You're just required to review that concept for a few seconds before you meditate. And somehow that's going to make your meditation perfect. Got it?

And then the breast thing. The mom thing. Got it?

Those two thoughts are required for us in our tradition before we meditate. Getting on the seat and having those two thoughts are joined together as the third meditation preliminary. All three are required before you go on.

You cannot go on. You must sit down in a certain way. And you must sit down your mind in a certain way.

And then you are allowed to meditate. Got it? So that's what this book is all about.

Veseda. No more? Miyakos?

All right. You ready Venerable Phil?

[Говорящий 2] (1:02:25 - 1:04:07)
Yes. Meditate. Meditate.