«Дар освобождения», курс 13 «Джорчо: песнь медитации», занятие 6

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 1:08:42)
So, those of you who are just getting here, we're studying a book called The Meditation Song. In Tibetan it's called Kelsang Dringgen. And it was written by the teacher of the teacher of the teacher of the Dalai Lama, the current Dalai Lama, so the grandfather.

The teacher of the Dalai Lama was my teacher's teacher. And so it's in our immediate lineage. His teacher's teacher wrote it.

And this is an ancient practice, very, very traditional. It's two and a half thousand years old. It's a beautiful ancient tradition that before you meditate, you should kind of stretch your meditation muscles in the way that you would warm up before an Olympic race or something.

It's claimed in our immediate lineage, the Dalai Lama's lineage, that if you do this practice before you meditate, then the meditation will be much deeper, much smoother, much more peaceful, much more powerful. You can go into a very deep meditation. So I think this is a very important practice.

I think it's a wonderful practice to teach new people. And I know a lot of you are teaching, even here in the valley, we have nice groups going on in different parts of the city, and I'm proud of that. And I think at some point, what I'd like you to do this week is learn this thing well.

And then you're welcome to teach it to other people. If you want to copy it, you can copy it and steal it. If you want a real copy, you can talk to Jigme.

We lost $40 a book printing it fast and giving it away. So we're kind of going to stop that business next week. But if you want one, talk to Jigme for the future.

I think we'll have 75 more copies tomorrow for the printer, and we'll give them away for free for the weekend. So I'm sorry if some of you didn't get a copy. A big group of people stayed up till two in the morning for like three days in a row.

And printed the ones that we had, and we thought that was enough because of the number of people who registered properly. And so we had to print some extra ones, and we'll have them tomorrow, okay? So don't lose heart.

If you don't have a copy, I encourage you guys to spread out copies and make sure everybody has one, can see one. That would be nice. Those of you who are teachers especially, and I encourage you, we left 20 pages blank in the back.

And I really beg you to take notes because some parts are not obvious. Some parts you need explanation to do it properly. So I'm asking you to take notes in the back, those of you who intend to teach it, okay?

All right, we're on the sixth part of 10 parts, 10 classes that we'll be having this week. The sixth class begins the sixth, sorry, the fourth of the six traditional preparations for meditation. That's on page, sorry, verse 45, which is page 29, okay?

So encourage, if you don't have one, maybe try to sit next to someone who has one, okay? If you have two, you might want to spread them out a little bit, okay? Is there anybody who can't see a copy?

Maybe there's a little pocket over there. Anybody else? Okay.

Can you guys have enough light in the back rows to read? Is it okay? Okay.

Oh, we're projecting it off. That's nice. That's splendid.

I love your voice. I wish I could talk like that. All right.

Section four. What's the first preliminary to meditation? Clean your room.

Straighten up your room. Straighten, a neat space means a peaceful, well-ordered mind. And what?

Set up a simple altar, a modest altar. Then the second step is? Yeah, put some offerings on the altar, like a banana or an orange or avocado, if you think that's a good food.

Then, sorry, third preliminary? Take, yeah, sit properly in the seven, traditional seven-point posture and then prepare your heart in two ways. The two ways are on page, what page are those on?

18, okay? I like the photos. For me, it's a thousand words, right?

On the right is the idea of protection. The two girls under the umbrella. And on the left is the idea of love for all living beings, that every person has been your mother in a past life.

You have drunk milk from the breast of every person you've ever met in this life. You have drunk their milk and they have drunk yours. So if you reflect on that, then it's hard to dislike people as strongly.

You could probably say the milk wasn't so good. You know? For me, I mean, personally, I do have troubles with some people and I'm not proud of it, but I admit it.

And when I'm having trouble with them, when I'm feeling grumpy about them, I try to imagine drinking milk from them. And then it's impossible to keep that photo in your mind and dislike them as actively. As normal, okay?

So I suggest that. I recommend that. If you're having trouble with somebody, just put that picture in your mind.

Page 18, okay? Then shelter in this tradition, in this immediate lineage. We don't, we're similar to the Jewish tradition.

I spoke at a synagogue in Tel Aviv and then we went to Jerusalem together and I liked it because the synagogue was round and there were no images. They keep to that idea of no images. And we are similar, Buddhists are similar in this tradition in that we don't believe that a statue or like bowing to a statue or praying to a statue or a painting is real protection.

We believe that in Tibet, a million monks and nuns were killed and they all had lots of statues and paintings. We don't believe that ultimately the picture of a holy being can protect you. We don't even believe that asking a holy being can help you if a soldier is shooting a gun at you.

We don't think it's going to help you at that moment. We don't believe that. What we do believe is that an understanding of where reality comes from can protect you.

And I'll give you an example. And that's the idea of the umbrella, what we call refuge, right? So just the idea of, it's very common if you have a, what do you call it?

Partner, a wife or husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, that they might on occasion possibly criticize you or yell at you and it's unpleasant. I think the closer you are to someone, the more likely it is to happen sometimes and it hurts them, it hurts more. Somehow we are allowed to be meaner to people that we live with all the time in private.

Of course, you can't do that when you go out together in public, but you can yell at home. And so it's very heartbreaking when your partner criticizes you or says something bad to you. And in this system, you can take protection.

You can take refuge. You can seek shelter. Shelter means understand that this person is criticizing me because of a seed that was put in my mind when I criticized other people.

So we believe that. We believe it strongly. It's a fundamental tenet of our beliefs, which is that everything that happens to us happens for a cause, for a reason.

And that's because we did a similar thing to someone else. So if we don't like the way people are behaving towards us, in this system, you don't so much pray to a holy being and you don't so much take refuge in a statue or a painting, but you take refuge in the idea that if you stop doing that to other people, then your partner will stop doing it to you. And it can be third party, right?

You can stop yelling at your kids and your partner will stop yelling at you. Or you can stop yelling at employees at work. Or I like to yell at people on the highway, although they can't hear me.

I'm like, oh, stupid. And if you stop that kind of thing, then you're not putting seeds in your mind. And then those won't grow into a partner who's critical of you.

So in this system, you can protect yourself from everything. You can always protect yourself by not doing what you don't like to others. That's real protection in the system.

And that is, in this system, is said to be what makes you a Buddhist. So I grew up as a Christian nearby here. And we had a very wonderful ceremonies.

We had baptism and then we had confirmation. Confirmation was like, I don't know, we were in high school and we had to study for six weeks and then the bishop came to our church and then he said, you're confirmed and you can take Holy Communion or you can take Mass. And that was what made you a Christian or a certain level of Christian.

You were a Christian if you were baptized. And then when you studied enough, you could take the wine and the bread. That was what it meant.

You were confirmed as a Christian. In Buddhism, you are confirmed as a Buddhist when you take refuge, when you respond to violence with kindness, then you're a Buddhist. You see?

So you could be a Buddhist and not know you're a Buddhist. And you could say you're a Buddhist and not be a Buddhist. If you yell back, for example.

At the moment that you yell back at somebody, you're not a Buddhist. Okay, for a while. Then when you remember three days later not to yell back, then you go back to being a Buddhist.

Okay? It's kind of a sliding scale thing. Okay, so we believe that before you do meditation, you should clean up your room.

You should set out an altar, small altar, modest. Put some fresh flour on it or some water bowls and then prepare your body physically. Park your body in a position that it won't hurt if you sit for an hour or half an hour.

That may be on a chair for some people. It may be in full lotus for other people. It depends on your knees or your bottom.

And then you take the proper meditation posture, but then you prepare your mind also. And you go through that idea of the umbrella and then you go through the idea of the breastfeeding and that prepares your heart. Then now we're on to the fourth.

Tonight we begin the fourth preparation of the six traditional preparations for meditation. This book not only outlines the proper preparations for meditation in our lineage, but at the end there are a list of subjects for meditation. So part of the book is composed of the traditional topics of meditation.

So ideally you would go through the preparations, six preparations, and then you would flip to the back. I think it's verse 163. And that's where the traditional topics of meditation begin.

What are called? We call them lam rim, steps of the path, okay? Verse 163.

So I love this book. We made it flat for a reason. We had a special binding put on it so you could lay it down in front of you when you meditate.

And you can go through the six preparations. I don't anticipate that many of us could do all of them. I'll tell you what to cut later, okay?

Maybe on Saturday. I'll tell you what you can skip. If you do the whole preparation, it's 45 minutes.

Most people don't have half an hour to meditate. So obviously we have to make some adjustments, all right? But what you should do is quickly go through the six preparations and then start on verse 163 and choose a topic for meditation.

And these are the traditional high spiritual topics. We'll talk about them later, okay? So I'd like you to go to verse 45.

The fourth step before meditating is to picture what's called sok ching, okay? The expanded version of the sok ching is found on page 12, okay? The picture of the expanded sok ching is on page 12.

So if your meditation was really good, you would picture the 200 lamas or whatever it is on page 12, okay? If you're like me, you'll reduce it to kundu nobu luk. Say kundu nobu luk.

Kundu nobu luk. It means you just smush them all into your heart lama. That's what I do.

After 40 years of meditating, I just smush them all together into my heart lama. It gets too complicated for me, okay? And that's fine.

That's approved by all parties, okay? So on verse 45, on page 29, we begin picturing who it is that we would like to invite to the room to help us with our meditation. At step four, we invite them to the room and we try to get them clear in our mind.

For most of us, that will mean picturing whoever's your heart teacher sitting in front of you, okay? And that's a very sweet practice. You're supposed to use all of your senses and you're not supposed to visualize a photo.

You're supposed to visualize a person, a living person. That's important. When you visualize in meditation, you shouldn't visualize photos or statues.

Then you're just sitting with a statue, you see? You should visualize a living person. They're blinking.

They're smiling. Their chest is rising and falling. I like the fragrance coming off of them.

They say that spiritual people have a kind of a fragrance. You can smell it. If you're close to them, it smells like honey or almonds or something like that, okay?

So step four is to bring them to the room, okay? We've already done similar things with a preliminary group, but here's the main one, okay? So if you want, you can reduce it to your heart teacher.

And in acknowledgement of the very foundation of our path, he took this part from an older book. He took this part from an older book. The older book is called Lama Chodpa, okay?

Which may be the most famous prayer in Tibet. Lama means lama. Chodpa means to make offerings to your teacher.

So there's a very famous ritual called Lama Chodpa, which we do often together. And basically it's to picture your private teacher, your own teacher, and to make offerings to them, honor them. In this system, like I'm thinking to start a beehive.

I bought all the stuff online and it was all delivered, these boxes. I'm into this patriotic thing, like I should use solar power. I have now, I'm capturing all the water off my roof.

I have 5,000 gallons now and I use it for my garden. And then solar is coming in a couple of weeks. It's already paid, mostly paid for.

And I just think it's patriotic to grow some bees because there's not enough bees. There's some problem with the bees. So if everyone had a hive, it would be cool.

They're very simple. It's very simple. They don't hurt you.

They don't sting actually, unless you like squash them or something. Those are other bad critters, like what do you call, yellow jackets and wasps. But the bees, I have thousands of bees in my garden all day.

Today they were so loud. I was just sitting there and listening to them. It's like a kind of a loud song.

And they're very pleasant and they're very grateful and they're very nice. You can feed them with your fingers. You can feed them stuff.

And so, I had all these beehives ready. And then I called the local bee guy. I said, okay, I'm ready.

I need the bees now. This was last June. And he said, you don't get bees in June.

And I said, well, but I'm ready. I got all the stuff. I want the bees now.

And he said, no, no, nobody sells bees in June because it doesn't give them enough time to prepare for winter. They don't have time to make enough honey for winter and they'll die. So nobody will give you bees in June.

I said, I'm going to get bees. Then I called everywhere in the United States and they all said no. Everybody said no.

And then I'm like, they're like, you have to wait until next April to get your bees. What it means is, you can look online, you can look at all the YouTube videos about how to keep bees and you can read Bees for Dummies. And I almost memorized it.

And this is very monthly. And I also read the organic beekeeper manual, which is like this thick. But I didn't ask anybody about the bees.

And any idiot could tell you that you can't buy bees in June. And I just wanted to do it on my own. I didn't want to ask anybody because I'm shy.

I don't want to... Then you have to meet them and become friends with them and all that stuff. But I realized in our lineage, in our tradition, you need a teacher.

You need a human teacher. Like video, right? Every good director I know studied with somebody else.

Oftentimes they made coffee for another director for like four years or something and didn't get paid. And then they became a great director. You see?

So in our tradition, a teacher is everything. A teacher is everything. You must have a living teacher.

You can't have a beehive without a teacher. And getting enlightened is a little more difficult. Little more to know.

So in step four, we invite our teacher to come. In step five, we honor them and make some fresh, good karma. We make a hit of fresh, good karma.

Like, what is that Rob Haggerty that wakes you up in the morning really hard? He just was working. He's like a manager at Starbucks.

He said, it's so fulfilling, Geshe-la. And I'm like, why? And he says, people come in and they're like this in the morning, you know?

And then I give them their, what's the heavy one that gives you a kick? Like espresso. I give them an espresso and they're like this.

And they just hold it for a while. Then they take a sip and they go. It's like that.

Just before you meditate, you should make some espresso good karma. So just before you meditate, in our lineage, you're supposed to get a kick, some hot caffeine by collecting some heavy, good karma just before you close your eyes. Just in a few minutes before you close your eyes, you should have a karma espresso.

And so we visualize my teacher, your teacher, and then you honor them mentally in your mind. And then you close your eyes and meditate because you just collected a lot of good karma. That's step five.

We're on step four. Step four is inviting them, getting them in the room. Step five is honoring them.

Step five also involves an espresso kick of what? Cleaning out some of your heavy bad karma. You do a real quick and very powerful karma cleaning session just for a few minutes.

And then you close your eyes. That's step five. That's step number five.

So step number four tonight, what we're covering tonight, we have to invite them, get them in the room, and then we start. After that we'll be ready to make some good karma with them. And again, this section is lifted from an older work by whom?

Yeah, Los Angeles Chikki Gyatso, which is the first Panchen Lama. So in Tibet there are two, there are many lineages of lamas, but the two most famous are Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. And it has worked out historically in many centuries that when the Dalai Lama passes from this planet, the Panchen Lama will be growing up and he'll sort of run things for a while.

And then he gets old and then the Dalai Lama is young again. And it goes like that. So the first Panchen Lama was very special and his teacher was Sangye Yoshe.

Whoa, where'd that come from? His teacher was Gyawa Wensapa. Okay, so the grandfather of the first Panchen Lama is said to be, he's always pointed to as a Tibetan who used all this stuff and got enlightened in his lifetime.

So he's always pointed to, if you ask a Tibetan of our lineage who's educated, so did you ever see anybody who did this? Did this ever work for anybody? Then everyone says Gyawa Wensapa.

And what he practiced was this section. It's a famous thing. He practiced section four.

That was his thing. Guru Yoga. He practiced visualizing his teacher and honoring his teacher.

So in the commentaries it says this section is the one that made somebody a Buddha. So it's kind of sweet. So here we go.

Let's go to verse 46. The broad highway of the gods is indivisible bliss and void, covered now with the offering cloud of perfect goodness. And there's a photo there taken out of the windshield of my car, a week ago in Flagstaff.

But I thought it was perfect. So in this section, we will have a tree, very similar to the tree in what famous movie? Avatar.

I saw that tree and I was like, oh, that's it. That's the tree. In this section, traditionally if you want to do the fuller visualization, you can imagine a tree.

And you can put your Lama up in the tree, others from in the tree. I always wanted to make a tree house and meditate in it. But where I live, the tallest tree is about six feet high.

Then I'd like to explain a couple words here. They're talking about the highway of the gods is a poeticism for the sky. And indivisible bliss and void.

You should understand that in our tradition, as you start to get close to enlightenment, your body changes. You see, we don't believe you can have a body of flesh and blood and become a Buddha. As you turn into a Buddha, as you get closer to the goal, then your physical body begins to transform.

And so this body, the blood and the flesh will fall apart. It always does. They call it dosha in Sanskrit, in Ayurveda.

Dosha means the three big constituents of the body. But the word dosha means problem. It came into English, D-U-S, came into Greek as D-Y-S.

And it means dysfunctional or dysentery. You see, the parts of your body, this human body, blood and bone and flesh are fallible and they will fail you. Something will fail.

It's an extraordinary system of balances and checks and chemicals. But at some point it will fail. Something will fail.

One of the doshas, one of the constituents of the body will get too strong. Another will get too weak. And you will get cancer or pneumonia or something.

And you will die. So in our tradition, our practice involves changing the body into light before death comes. And it's a pleasant process.

Meditation is part of it. Going down to the Arizona Corporation Commission is part of it. Taking care of elderly people is part of it.

And doing yoga is a big part of it. Or some similar practice, physical practice, which addresses your chakras. And chakras are knots in your body, or they're the result of knots in your body.

And they help you be mortal. They also choke off psychic channels, nadis, which when they are open, make you very happy. So when you do a good yoga session and you do your twists and everything, you loosen up knots in your body and then you feel better for a couple hours like that.

Those knots open at two junctures in human life. One is the orgasm. When you're having an orgasm, those knots open completely for a tiny period.

And you feel this jolt or you feel this rush. And those knots that keep your body mortal are open briefly. And then they tighten up worse than before.

So that's not a preferred spiritual method. But it gives you an idea of what it would be like, what it would feel like if you opened them completely, how you would feel. The other time is at death.

As you die, those chakras open briefly and your pee-pee comes out, poo-poo comes out, blood comes out, and those knots are released for a few minutes. And then in the next life they retie themselves. But we believe that at high stages of meditation, you can open those knots and you would be in a state of bliss.

In that particular state of bliss, which is brought on by kindness and the service of others, and meditation, and going to the Arizona Corporation Commission meeting. Seriously. That's what opens your chakras.

Doing kind things, serving others, taking responsibility that good things happen in the world. And then that opens your chakras and you have this feeling of bliss. At the same time, the flow of prana or inner energy gives you deep insight into reality.

So bliss and deep insight into reality are brought on by the opening of those channels. So what he's saying in this first few lines, he's referring to high, high spiritual practices where because of all the times you went to the Arizona Corporation Commission building, your chakras open. I'm not kidding, okay?

Your chakras open and you are in a state of orgasm all day. And then that triggers deep knowledge, deep understanding of the reality. So it's not a light way to start a sentence.

This guy, I'm thinking about a sky, but it's made of that bliss and it's made of that insight. He's already gone pretty deep. Okay, that's the insight that makes you a Buddha.

What happens when you get that body? The cool thing about that body is you can go to the Arizona Corporation Commission building on every planet at the same time. Your body splits into countless bodies and you can serve countless beings at the same time.

So it's a very profound way to start a sentence. He says, I'm thinking of a sky, but it's no normal sky. It's not a blue sky.

It's a sky, it's the sky of that understanding. It's the sky of that deep feelings of bliss and insight, and that's the sky. And in that sky, I imagine the gifts, the cloud of the gifts of perfect goodness.

In Sanskrit, what? Perfect goodness. Samantabhadra, okay.

I heard a lot of yoga teachers call it Virabhadrasana. It's funny, Virabhadrasana, okay. Bhadra, Bhadra means excellent.

It's the song in Lobsang, right? And then Samantabhadra is totally, okay, Samantabhadra. So this is, we already spoke about this, but it's an ancient tradition of imagining the sky filled with clouds of flower petals.

Rose petals. And then dropping them slowly on your teachers. Teachers could be your mom, your dad.

They are big teachers. Your last boyfriend or girlfriend who broke up with you and taught you a lot, okay. And in this visualization, you are dropping flower petals on them, okay.

So already it's a pretty heavy, if you understand what this verse means, and I'm sure you have it in your notes now on the last page. You're going to tell your own students, this ain't no normal sky. This is the bliss and voidness.

And it's no normal cloud. This is a cloud of offerings which you make real by two methods. What are they?

We covered them last class. Hopefully they survived Wednesday. Huh?

Yeah, act of truth. You can do an act of truth. Act of truth means you swear by the truth of something good you did, okay.

It could be anything. If it's true that I kept my patience for six minutes with that guy before I yelled at him, then may the sky be filled with roses. May my teacher see the sky filled with roses.

Got it? What was the other one? There was a mantra, right?

There was a special mantra. Where is that mantra? Verse 39.

Okay, we did that mantra. That mantra turns the clouds into flower petals or whatever you want to offer. iPhones that really work.

And iOS 7. That's better than 6. And stuff like that.

Okay. Within this space and cloud stands a tree which grants a thousand wishes, lovely with its leaves and flowers and fruit. This is called baksang gyi shing, okay.

Baksang gyi shing. It's a special tree. And it's like an Aladdin's lamp, okay.

I thought you'd like to hear what the tree is made out of. This is traditional description of this tree. I think it's really fun to go look at Avatar again and look at the tree because it's a tree like that.

It's a holy tree. Some trees feel holy, right? I think I've met three or four in my life that seemed especially holy.

Once in Phoenix. Tsawa ser. The roots are gold, made of gold.

Dongpo ngu. The trunk is made of silver. Yelka vaidirya.

The branches are made of lapis lazuli. Loma shell. The leaves are made of crystal.

It's already a pretty tree, right? Somebody should paint it for Sunday. Those of you who don't know, we are preparing a performance for Sunday.

We're going to do this whole book. We're all going to do something. If you feel like it, you don't have to.

But read a poem. Sing a song. Do a dance.

Paint the tree. Get the tree out of, what do you call it? Avatar and show it on a video clip for a few minutes, okay?

By the way, remind me. I have a nice... Jigme was finally successful.

We asked the monastery if they could send us a good recording of a monk singing this ritual in Tibetan, which I'm not going to teach you because it's... And I think it'd be weird for you guys. I think this is one of those cultural things we'll pass on.

But what I thought was, I'll give you a taste of it on Sunday. We got a recording. And it turns out that my highest teacher, Geshe Thuttham Rinchen, agreed to sing it.

So it's very important. And you're welcome to have the recording. Let me make sure it's complete because it came in five pieces.

I'm not sure we put it back together in the right order. But you could learn to sing it in Tibetan. We spent great effort to put the Tibetan pronunciation in the bottom left-hand corner of each page.

So theoretically, you could learn to groan it. I mean, sing it like that, okay? I'm going to see if I can find a part that you would find attractive in the West.

The first year in the monastery for me was torture because I used to sing in the choir at Princeton. And there were nice, what do you call it, organ music. And then they threw me into this room and everyone's screaming and they're doing cymbals.

And it was really hard to get that Christmas feeling. Okay. Dhamma, oh, the petals of the flowers on the tree are called buk.

Buk is a jewel called karketana. And it's a precious stone. I think it's white crystal or something.

The flowers are made of red pearl. And like that, the fruits are made of another jewel. He says ashvagarbha.

Margarth means emerald. So I think it may be emerald. And so you have to think of a tree like that.

YI SHING GI NOBU LTAR DGOS DU THAMS CAD PHAG LTAR BSAM PA TZAM GYIS BYUNG BA Just thinking of what you want, the tree will grant it to you. It will grow on the tree and you can pick it off. I would like a latte.

And then it goes whoop and you pick it off. Like that. I'm still describing the tree.

I think you should know about the tree. It ain't no normal tree. It's a nice tree.

When the wind moves the branches, they sing songs of impermanence. They sing songs of impermanence. Dust in the wind.

Something like that. No, you choose something. Do it on Sunday.

If somebody wants to. You don't have to sing it. You can do a recording.

You could sing it. Lip sync it. Like when I play guitar on songs, I have Nick in the back and I go like that and he's playing it.

Yeah, okay. BDAG MED SOGS GCOD KYI STONG ZHIG And they also sing out the, what do you call it? The four songs of the Dharma.

The four songs of the Dharma. So I'm going to tell you what those are. Okay, the four songs of the Dharma.

BDAG BA RGA RTAG GI CHAGS RGYAL ZHIG They're called the four mudras also. Okay, BDAG BA RGA RTAG means if a book talks about these four things, it's Buddhist book. If it doesn't, it's not a Buddhist book.

Okay, if it's not a Buddhist book, in my opinion, it's not worth your time. People ask me, what's your favorite book? I say, well, you wouldn't know.

If I tell you, you've never heard of it. I didn't read a novel for like 30 years or something. You have a choice in your life.

You can read a fiction novel. You can read a fictional story. There's a way to read fictional stories or go to movies and turn them into practice.

Those aren't sweet. Those aren't real. Those are okay.

But for informational purposes, if you want something that will really help you before you die, then find a book that has these four things. If it has these four, we consider it a Buddhist book. If it doesn't have these four, we don't consider it a Buddhist book.

It could be useful. It could have some meaningful parts. But in the end, it's not going to help you transform before you die.

That's our goal. We have a special goal. Here they are.

Number one. DUD CES THAMS CAD MI THAG PA Anything which is caused by something else will end. Your life, which is caused by your mother and father, all the things you've ever earned in your life will disappear.

All the relationships you ever entered into will disappear, will die. All things which are caused by other things will die. Okay, that's the first one.

If the book or the philosophy you are looking at or thinking about isn't honest about that point, we don't consider it worth reading. Okay? If it doesn't specifically treat that problem of life, that things die.

People die. Things die. Relationships die.

Bodies die. Governments die. Cities die.

Countries die. Okay? Everything.

Okay, number two. SAK CES THAMS CAD DUG NGEL BA Anything whose creation involved a negative emotion is suffering and it will cause you suffering. Okay?

Number three. PHYIR THAMS CAD SDONG BZHIN BDAG MED PA Nothing comes from itself. Especially partners who criticize you.

You see? Nothing comes from itself. On a deeper level, nothing has itself inside of it.

A pen isn't a pen. A fire isn't hot. The girders holding up this building are not made of a material which can hold up a building.

They don't have the strength to hold up a building. These walls don't have the strength to hold up a building without what? Karma.

Without you. In this case, without you providing other people with homes or safety, these beings will fall. If you didn't do that or you're not actively interested in that, then eventually those beings will fall.

I gave this lecture at the World Trade Center in 1999. It's pretty heavy. SNYANG NGAN LAS BDEB PA ZHU BA It's possible for a human being to reach enlightenment.

It's possible for a human being to reach perfection. Immortal capacity to serve countless beings. And that's the goal of this tradition.

That's what we do. And if a philosophy or a way of life doesn't embrace those four, then it could be nice, it could be attractive, it could be interesting, but it's not going to help in a big way. All right.

Why am I mentioning these four? The trees. When the wind blows the tree, you hear this talk coming from the tree.

It's whispering these truths. You will die. Do something now.

There's a way. It's possible to finish. You can change things.

The tree is whispering that all the time. Okay, it's whispering sweet little ditties of Dharma. Okay, cool.

BDAG ZHIG RGYU GSU ZHING ZHING DE MED DOG ZHIG TU PHYIR BA'I ZHIG GI BRTEN DU Then you're supposed to imagine in the middle of the tree a huge fruit. And on that fruit is a vast platform which is held up by eight lions. And on that platform we're going to invite our teacher.

Okay. We're going to invite our teachers to sit on that platform. Okay.

So it's already a beautiful visualization. It's very appropriate in doing this song that you say, today I'm just going to think about the tree. I'm going to go to verse 46 and I'm going to stop at verse 47.

And that's my practice for today. I'm just going to think of the tree and what the tree is singing. I'm going to let the tree sing to me.

And if your meditation gets good, the tree will sing to you. Okay. The wind and the tree will sing to you.

And then when you go to the forest or the ocean or around here a mountain, you walk up on a mountain but the wind will sing to you. You will hear things on the wind. Okay.

Because you practiced to hear. You practiced listening to the wind. Got it?

It's very beautiful. It's very, very profound. You know, the ocean will sing to you.

Birds will sing to you. There are special birds going down in the retreat valley. Oh boy.

I'm going to try to get a recording. Something strange happening there. The birds have...

Something's happening with the birds there. You know. I think they feel the vibes of the retreat or something.

But the birds are making these extraordinary songs. Anyway. Those lions represent bodhisattvas who want to honor your teacher.

And so they take the forms of lions to hold up the teachers, the platform that the teacher's going to sit on. So, it's like the Dalai Lama offering to crouch down and hold up your chair. These are already high beings.

And to show whose boss, they agree to take the form of a lion. And the platform is supported by their shoulders, on their shoulders. It means your teacher is more important than these high bodhisattvas.

For you. All these high bodhisattvas are there, but it's the teacher who takes a human form and tries to relate to you. And I'm not selling myself.

You should find your own teacher. You should find one that fits you. You should take your time doing it.

And then, I'm going to try to... I found the best beekeeper teacher in Northern Arizona. He just won't talk to me.

CES SRENG GI TSUL DU CHEN PAS SRENG GI RIGS BDAG GIS SOGS THAMS CAD GZIL GYI NUN PA LTAR And then in the same way that a lion... What's GZIL GYI NUN PA? You guys know.

Yeah, in the way that a lion outshines all other creatures. I guess at Diamond Mountain it's the javelinas. We do have one mountain lion there and we have a couple bears.

But I think the mountain lion, kind of, if you see them, they look a lot cooler than a javelina or... You know Kodamundi? We have Kodamundis.

They look like a cross between a dog and a monkey. They climb in the trees. But they're not elegant or they don't look like Queen Elizabeth or something.

It means the lion is, among all creatures in the natural world, they are this amazing. If you see a mountain lion, they just strike you with their dignity and their power. You know, raw power.

Up close, quite... What do you call? Shakes you up.

Okay. All right. Atop the tree is a throne of sparkling jewels held aloft by lions set with full cushions of lotus, sun, and moon.

The lotus and sun and moon we spoke about before. In ancient times, the sun and moon were perceived as discs, as was the earth. And it was thought that you could fall off the edge and things like that.

So the word for disc in Sanskrit is mandala. The Spanish word for world is mundo, comes from mandala. Mundane comes from the same word.

And so we picture our teacher sitting on a cushion, three cushions. One is a lotus, one is a moon, and one is a sun. And then those have a special meaning and I wanted to cover that.

Of course, you're writing furiously in the back of your book so that you can explain these details to your own students. The lotus, what is it? How does it go?

DAM LAS SKYES KYANG DAM GYI RKYEN MA DGOS DAM LAS SKYES KYANG DAM GYI RKYEN MA DGOS Where's that from? It rises from the mud. It rises from the dirt, the muck, but it is undefiled by the muck.

From Vajrayogini Sanna, right? DAM LAS SKYES KYANG DAM GYI RKYEN MA DGOS means a lotus flower. If you've ever been to India, you can see lotuses.

Real lotuses. And they're extraordinary. They're like this big.

They're either pink or blue. And they grow. And their smell is, there's no smell.

It's unique. It's like creosote or something. If you smell it once, you never forget it.

It's an extraordinary smell. Unfortunately, the only place they grow is in cesspools. And in India, they just pour raw sewage out of cities like Bangalore.

To get from Bangalore to the monastery, you have to pass through the sewage fields. They just pump raw sewage out into the fields. And it's terrible.

For like 10 miles you can't breathe. It's just raw poop sitting on the ground, pumped out of the city. But these lotuses grow in it.

Then you're standing on the berm of one of these fields and you're like, dang, I wish I could get one of those lotuses. And there's always like three little Indian kids and you give them a rupee and they jump in. So maybe that's not so good.

Anyway, so they say, it's funny because if you ever grew something in your house, like I grow herbs and corn and things like that, watermelons. But it's so cool to eat something that you grew in your own dirt because the whole thing is made of your own dirt. Somehow the dirt that gets on your shoes and tracks through your house, that creates a watermelon or that creates a flower.

And it's weird. Like what does the flower do to take the chemicals out of the dirt to make it bright red? This month it's, what do they call those things?

I'll think of it. It's a weird exotic flower. This is the month for those flowers.

There's one called borage, if you know borage. It's an herb, it's a tea and it has a wonderful flower. The bees like it.

Coriopsis is the other one. This is the month for golden and purple coriopsis and borage. And the bees are there and they're going crazy.

But what is it in the dirt that makes this bright orange flower? What is it in the dirt outside my house? How can it be refined into a bright orange color?

I don't know. But it's kind of a miracle. So in Buddhism, the lotus is a metaphor for what?

Renunciation. It means a Buddhist will grow something beautiful out of the most dirty circumstances. The toughest, hardest, most traumatic circumstances.

A true practitioner can make flowers grow out of that. Because they're beyond those things. They grow beyond those things.

The harder things get. What is it the tough get going? How does that go?

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. That's what Buddhists do. Okay?

The worst things are, the worst people criticize you, the worst terrible things happen. You make something beautiful grow. That's what we do.

That's our business. And the lotus is an example. So your Lama is sitting on that.

It means that's the fundamental principle of a Buddhist. We go to the hard places. We don't go to the easy places.

We go walk around in the sun downtown. You know? You know what I mean?

Or the prisons. These guys go to the prisons. They're hard places.

We figured out when you come out of prison you want to go to McDonald's. I don't know what it is. We never go to McDonald's, ever.

But you're hungry. There's some kind of tension in the prison. And then when you come out, you're like, give me something to eat.

And you just want to reassert that you're human. And Buddhists specialize in going to the roughest places and treating the most difficult cases. We thrive.

And the lotus is meant, your Lama is sitting on that principle. Got it? Okay, next is the sun.

And the sun represents ultimate bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is ultimate kindness. Ultimate, ultimate kindness is what?

Yeah, the perception of where reality is really coming from, okay? Can you practice it with your boyfriend in the kitchen? If you're a girl, I mean.

Huh? Yeah, you can. What would it look like?

Yeah, he's yelling at you and you think, oh, that came from something I did. Then you start examining. The ultimate Buddhist insult is, you're talking to somebody and they go, it means, what did I do to create you?

It's like, what mess up did I do three weeks ago that I have to be with you now? And you're like, you're yelling at them and the person's not, they don't yell back. A really well-trained Buddhist, they're just like, what did I do to deserve you?

And if you want to insult somebody in our group, you can just go like that. So the sun is a knowledge which burns things and which ripens sweet things, okay? Then the moon is what we call the relative bodhichitta or the, what's that?

Kindness. Just a concern for people. I wish that we could make a perfect world.

Making a perfect world takes work. Like going down to this boring hearing and listening to, you know. Actually, it wasn't boring, it was kind of cool.

I was very impressed by the speakers. The speakers were citizens who thought it was important to go down there and say something. And they were very eloquent.

They spoke really, really, I thought they were going to be kids yelling at the commissioners, but they were all very thoughtful and very kind and respectful and they said very beautiful things. So kindness means leave a world which isn't polluted for your grandchildren. Like don't use up all the oil.

Try to use some sunlight and leave them some. They're going to need oil for packaging to keep food fresh. They're going to need oil to build roads.

They're going to need oil for fertilizer to grow food. So leave them a little bit. We can do with sunlight.

We can use 50% sunlight and then leave a little oil in the ground and let them pump it out later. It's like, what do you call it? Leave it in the refrigerator for your grandchildren and let them pump it out.

Don't pump out the last drop and say good luck guys without packaging roads or fertilizer. You see? Give them a chance.

And that's a kind of bodhichitta. So your Lama's sitting on those attitudes. It means he is a master or she is a master of those three attitudes.

See the pain in the world. Recognize where it comes from. And then wish that all people in the world could overcome this pain.

He or she is sitting on those principles. Cool? So this is not an easy practice.

This is a very deep practice. To do it right is cool. I'm hoping that as we go through it, you guys are imagining ways that you can, creative ways to express this on Sundays.

Sundays are free for all. Anybody can get up. Even if you can't sing, you sing.

Even if you can't play guitar, you play. Even if you can't dance, you dance. I promise to dance if I'm in the mood.

And you do something to express one of these pictures in the mind. Can you think of a way to express these three ideas? A sun and a moon and a lotus.

And express what it means in a performance of some kind. Maybe you paint something. Maybe you make a video clip.

Maybe you Photoshop something. Okay, like that. Maybe you put a lotus on Venerable Phil's head.

Moon and, okay, anyway. All right, we're going to go about five more minutes and I'll give you guys a break. Upon them sits my heart Lama who has paid me all three kinds of kindness, the essence of all the Buddhas.

Heart Lama here has a special name. I'm going to tell you the special name. Whoever your Lama is, even if somebody asked me, can your dog be your Lama?

I said, no problem. Buddha emanated as dogs many times. Buddha emanated as the sound of the ocean.

Buddha emanated as cars. You know, it's okay, whatever. Whoever is your teacher, in this tradition, they have a name.

You ready? Lama, Lobsang, Tubwang, Dorje Chang. One more time.

Lama, Lobsang, Tubwang, Dorje Chang. Okay, I'll go through them one by one. Lama means a Lama.

Lama just means teacher. In Tibetan, if you're interested, Lama means higher one. And it's the translation of the Sanskrit word guru.

Unfortunately, sadly, terribly, the word guru has come to mean strange things or dirty things in the West. But in India, it's like rabbi or master or lord. It's a beautiful word.

It's a very beautiful word. So Lama means teacher. Your personal teacher.

Lobsang means pure mind. And it's the first name of Tsongkhapa who founded our lineage, born in 1357. If you want to get into anybody's email account in this group, type 1357 because we all use it.

So that's the year that the teacher, the first Dalai Lama was born. We call your own teacher, whether it's your mother or your sister or your child or your dog or your high school teacher or your high school girlfriend or your Buddhist teacher or your yoga teacher, it doesn't matter. Your priest from when you were young, your rabbi from when you were young, it doesn't matter.

Whoever it is that you honor, we call them Lobsang because that's the person who founded our lineage. It's like calling them George Washington or something. All right.

Tubuang means the historical Buddha. The Buddha, Shakyamuni, Gautama. So Lama means Lama.

Lobsang means your teacher is Jetsongkhapa. Like one day, my principal teacher is a woman that I met when I was 16 or 17. And one day I translated the biography of Tsongkhapa, right?

One day I was at Bumble and Bumble, remember? We gave a talk in New York City to introduce this book. And it suddenly, in the middle of the talk, I thought, oh, my Lama is Tsongkhapa.

And how can a Spanish woman be Tsongkhapa? But it just hit me and I said, she is. And then I was like, that's really cool.

And so you can, if you're in this tradition, if you're meditating with this book, whoever your teacher is, one day I believe you will understand that they are Tsongkhapa, okay? They are the teacher of the first Dalai Lama, okay? And they are also Lord Buddha, okay?

Whoever they are. My mom can be Lord Buddha, yes. Especially Osiris, just kidding.

And then Dorje Chang means Vajradhara. Vajradhara is the form that Lord Buddha takes when he teaches the Diamond Way or the secret higher Buddhism, okay? So whoever your teacher is, it doesn't matter.

You can think of them as Lama, Lhosa, Thubwa, Dorje Chang. They are these four beings. Then somebody made a mistake in the original teaching and they said, oh, Pabongka Rinpoche, you mean my teacher is like all four beings mixed into one?

And he got very angry in the original teaching. And he said, never ever say that. Your teacher is not four different people combined.

Big mistake. He got angry. He said, they are each one of them, okay?

And they are each other. They are each other. And your teacher is each one of them.

Your teacher is not the combination of four different people because they're not different. Lord Buddha is Jetsamkapa, is Vajradhara, is your personal teacher, even if it's your mom, okay? And somebody said, oh, they're like those Russian dolls.

It's like, and he's, no, no, no, no. They're not separate. They're not like inside of each other or something like that.

Bad thinking. We call wrong think, right? In Buddhism, we call wrong think.

Don't do wrong think. They are. Your personal teacher is Jetsamkapa.

In Judaism, it would be like saying your personal teacher is Moses, not that he resembles Moses or she teaches what Moses taught or something like that. In our tradition, you have to treat them as if they were Moses because they are, okay? All right.

One more little piece. Do I want to do one more piece? Yeah, okay.

I lied, like as usual. Five more minutes, okay? Then we'll have...

I brought a really good chocolate cake that I made today, so try to get some of that. It was made with beets, so there's an excuse to eat it. It's healthy.

With the two pounds of sugar. ,RDZO BA DI KUN SANGS RGYAS SNGAGS DANG NYID, This is a quotation that is brought up in the original teaching, right? ,RDZO BA DI KUN SANGS RGYAS SNGAGS DANG NYID, ,GAL KHAN DAG DANG RIG MO SANGS DANG SNANG, ,THANG DU DE CHEN ZHES BYA GCIG PA NYID, ,GCIG PA NYAMS NI THOS MED RGAR BRJED DO, All of these beings on the tree are the Buddha.

One actor can play many characters in a movie. Just put on different wigs and mustaches and clothes. ,GANG GIB DE CHEN, Of course it says in a play.

This is an ancient sutra. And they are all bliss, dancing on the stage. All of these people in your life who teach you.

And of course the negative teachings are probably worse more than the sweet ones, right? The ones who hurt you in your life and strengthen you and teach you are probably more important in your life. I've found that in my life.

They are all the dance of one person and that's great bliss. All the people in your life who helped you, good or bad people, they are one actor playing many different characters in the movie. And that actor is great bliss.

Very cool. All right. And he connects it to Luen.

Luen means isolation of body or something like that. It's one of the five great stages of the secret teachings. And I'm sure all the people who finished a seven-year course in that are very familiar with that.

I had to look it up again. But Luen is basically, in the secret teachings, a point that you get to where you can see that the people in your life are one person playing different roles. All right, last thing and then I really will give you a refreshment break and me too.

It says here, my heart Lama who has paid me all three kinds of kindness and I thought I would just review them for you. In Buddhism we believe that your teacher shows you three kinds of kindness and here they are. Number one, they give you formal teachings.

Okay. They give you formal teachings.

[Говорящий 2] (1:08:42 - 1:08:42)
Chi.

[Говорящий 1] (1:08:43 - 1:10:19)
It's called chi. Number two, they pass on the blessing in those teachings which is called what? Lung.

Lung. Low tone Lung. Lung.

I did a Zen in for the retreatants. When was it? Sunday night.

Four and a half hours. They got the Lung for Tara practice. They got the transmission for Tara practice and it took four and a half hours.

It was very beautiful. We had a beautiful time. So that's called Lung.

That kind of transmission of the living blessing of a practice is called Lung. And then Lapa. Lapa means when you're having a rough time and your Lama takes you out to Starbucks and you complain about them and they calm you down and that's called Lapa.

Personal, what do you call it? Advices or... Okay.

Personal advices. When you're having a hard time. They can often take the form of what do you call it?

Criticism. No student likes it. Only the students who are strong enough get criticized.

The Lama will be sweet to the rest because they will quit otherwise. So if you get criticized by a Lama, you should feel honored. And the more you get criticized, the stronger they believe you are.

It's like an athlete. Only a really high class athlete will get pushed by their coach. The other ones will hurt themselves so the coach doesn't push them.

[Говорящий 2] (1:10:19 - 1:10:19)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (1:10:20 - 1:12:49)
If you haven't got criticized, it's possible you just didn't do anything wrong. So don't feel bad if you didn't get criticized. Okay, all right.

In the higher teachings, there's another version of the Three Kindnesses. I thought you'd like to hear those. He mentions them, Pabongka Rinpoche.

WANG KOR RGYU ZHES MED NAG SNA BA WANG KOR RGYU ZHES MED NAG SNA BA WANG KOR means they give you the empowerment into a secret practice. So they will train you for many years, traditionally train you for many years. And then when they think you're ready, they will grant you permission to study the secret teachings.

It's very much like Kabbalah in the Jewish tradition. RGYU ZHES means explain those teachings to you verbally. Okay, the classical texts of the secret teachings.

Okay, we have how many scriptures in our canon, traditional canon, Kangyur and Tengyur? How many books? 4,600 books.

Okay, how many of those are Tantra? How many of those are high secret classical texts? Over half, okay, over half.

Okay, so Tantra isn't some weird, what do you call it? Sex, chicken killing thing. Okay, it's a very sophisticated, deep, beautiful, innocent, pure way of deepening your morality and deepening your practice.

Okay, so they explain those texts to you. And then MED NAG means they also give you personal help, personal one-on-one advice about your life. Those are the three secret forms of what?

The three kindnesses. Okay, so oftentimes we will refer to a Lama, not his Lama. We will say Gatun, Gatun Sum.

Those are the three kindnesses. Gatun means kindness. Okay, we're making a movie, right?

We're trying to write a screenplay and somebody from Hollywood was interested in it. And the real name of the movie is Gatun. Okay, whether they'll keep that, I don't know.

Okay.