«Дар освобождения», курс 13 «Джорчо: песнь медитации», занятие 7

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 1:32:48)
So, for those of you who are new tonight, we have like a 14-year plan to cover a very famous text by the teacher of the teacher of the current Dalai Lama, who was also one of my teacher's teachers. And his name was Pabongka Rinpoche. And I tell this story a lot, but I was sitting around with Mrs. Hancock and her ex-boyfriend. He was ex-later. And we were talking about what's our favorite book. And I said, you know, NAMDRO LAGCANG, a gift of liberation thrust into the palm of your hands.

And I think in my life, it's been the greatest book on this planet. And I love books. And I spend a lot of time with books.

We've cataloged 141,000 Tibetan books. But to me, that's the cream of all those books. So anyway, we have a plan.

My teacher taught it to me for about 30 years. And we have a plan to finish it in these 10-day teachings four times a year in about 12 or 14 years, I think it will take. And I want to, you know, as many of you know, I travel a lot, especially with DCI company.

And we present, what do you call it? Non-religious programs to business people or just normal people about how to use these principles to have a better life, happier life, more successful life. And we go to many, many countries.

So a lot of my time is taken up with Palm Shek. Palm Shek is a Tibetan word. It means watered down Buddhism.

And not in a bad way. I mean, we teach, I think last year we taught 10,000 people. And they end up doing some meditation and some yoga.

And they learn these principles that basically you must offer to others what you would like for yourself. And that's how things work. Things work by the golden rule.

And we teach that in a business context and it's very popular. I think we're booked through the next, I think we're booked through most of 2015. And we have many, many more requests that we can't fill.

So I go do those programs, but they're a little bit boring for me. I know they're very boring for the people who travel with me. At least I get to talk.

They have to hear it over and over again. And we have to do it over again in each city. So I don't get to do what I, my heart is really, well, my heart is into that, but I also enjoy going deep into Tibetan scriptures.

That's what I was trained to do. I enjoy it. I also enjoy that a lot.

So these 10-day teachings are a chance for me to go deeper. So I'm going slowly and carefully through this text that was written by the teacher of the teacher of the current dharma. We've just covered over the last, I think, two years, we've covered a major section which is devoted to how to prepare yourself for meditation, for deep meditation.

So there are practices you can do that prepare your body and mind for deep meditation. And we believe in the Dalai Lama's lineage that if you learn those pre-warm-up practices, you can have a much more powerful meditation experience and much deeper meditation experience. We believe that.

So there are practices that just before you go into a deep meditation, if you do these warm-up practices, it's much more powerful. A lot of those practices are centered around getting a heavy shot of good karma quickly just before you meditate, and then meditating before you can burn it, and then trying to clear away some obstacles that might have been created by your negative karmas. So a lot of them are focused on that.

In his book, the teacher of the teacher of the current Dalai Lama quotes a thing called the meditation song, Khelsan Dungyin. So he quotes his own lama a lot. And I taught you those.

We went through that. But the actual meditation song is a separate book. Then I thought it would be nice as a review, and also just to pause in our 14-year journey for 10 days, talk about what we've been talking about for the last three years, summarize it, kind of savor it.

And then it got out of hand and I translated the other book. So I couldn't stop. I was supposed to make a movie last month, but this happened instead.

So this is called The Jorja. A lot of people find it easier to remember the word jorja. It means warm up for meditation.

We call it the meditation song. Then I had an idea it would be nice to review it and talk about the highlights of what we've covered for the last two or three years. Pause, relax a bit.

And then I thought, this book really lends itself to performance, to being sung, to be danced in the monastery. We might make a dance to it. We might make a song to it.

We might make a drama called namtar to it. Or we might make special meditations to it and do those together. So we're continuing with this book.

So here we go. We've reached a part in the jorja. Where are you?

This is a really sweet part. Go to verse 53. It's on page 39.

Verse 53 on page 39. Please spread the books out. Does anybody can't see a copy in someone else's lap?

Anyone? There's one person back there. Okay.

Or there's one, I'm sorry, they're up here on the screen. I guess that's good enough. But again, I think there are more copies coming tonight and you can have a copy.

It's a very wonderful thing to teach new people. If you have your own students, you should get it. They'll be publishing it, mass producing it, and it'll be reasonable, I think, after this week.

But we didn't have enough time to do that. So we've reached a section where you honor your teacher. And again, it's not just me.

I'm your scripture teacher, but your parents are your teachers. Your children are your teachers. Even those little mat-rat kids are your teachers.

The people who taught you in high school or people who taught you to do your job, whatever your job is, or people who taught you to play music, all of those people are your teachers. In Tibet, in Buddhism, in ancient India, there's a spiritual practice which I think is very beautiful. It's also in the Hindu tradition.

This is very strong among followers of Krishna. But they will bathe their teacher in their mind. And if you're more comfortable, they can have a bikini on or shorts or whatever.

And it's not about that. It's a very innocent practice. And it's just that it's a very personal way to show honor.

Like in Jesus' time, we read in the Bible that a prostitute came and offered expensive oil in his hair and his disciples criticized him and said, we could have sold the oil and given the money to the poor. And he said, I will not be among you forever. That was his answer.

So we have that sort of practice in the West. We have that in the Bible of honoring a teacher. I think Messiah means the one who is anointed with oil.

So this is a traditional Indian offering where you honor your teacher in your heart, in your mind, by bathing them and offering them bath. So we're going to start on that tonight. It's a very pleasant task for me to describe to you how to do it.

I like it. I love this practice. I've done it for many, many, many years.

All right. We start out with a quotation from the scriptures. ,'CHOS KYI DGOS LA PHYI MA MI NGA YANG, ,'ZHI ZHUGS DGOS KYI RIM ROL TSUL BSAM DU, ,'CHU TZAM MAN PO'O MA DAG PHYAL SPYOD, ,'DRO BA'I LUS SEMS, ,SDUG BSNGAL GNAS ZAL TE, ,GNAS PA'I RGYUN DREL DRO BA'I YI DBANG BA'I, ,DAM PA'I GOS CHOG BDAG GIS THOB PAR ZHOG, This quotation, which comes in Pabongka Rinpoche's text, is taken from a book by Je Tsongkapa.

It's a text called Rabne. Anybody know Rabne? What's Rabne?

Huh? Yeah, consecration of the land for a temple, or the land for a nu stupa, or for a student center. Normally you would consecrate the ground, and then you would build the student center or something like that, which we're doing at Diamond Mountain for the next six months.

If you don't know how you do, talk to Joe. It's going to be a glorious thing because we actually have some money for it. ,CHOS KYI KHO LA PHYIR MA MIN NGAL YANG, The Buddhas don't need a bath.

That's how the ceremony starts out. Lord Buddha doesn't need a bath. ,SI ZHUGS KUR TE RIM ROL TSOS TZAM DU, But only to honor the enlightened beings.

,CHU TZAM MEN POS DBO MA BDAG CHU BYA, I offer this very beautiful water and I wash your body. My teacher. ,RDOR BA'I LUS SEMS SDUG BSNGAL GNAS ZAL TE, And by this act, may I wash away the pain of every living creature.

,GNAS PA'I KHYIM BRAL DOR BA'I YOD NGON BA'I, May they reach a place where their body has no impurity and their body is made of light and they don't need a bath anymore. By my offering, bathing my teacher or the Buddhas, then may all beings reach the state where they no longer need a bath either. Okay, like that.

Then we're supposed to imagine, we put a picture on page, where is that? On page 38. We went through thousands of boring pictures of bathtubs on this stock photo site.

This one felt right. Nice candles and soft towels and a nice bathtub. You can imagine it filled with warm water.

Traditionally, in this particular text, when you offer the bath, you should imagine a large spa like marble or granite with four sides. It should be a massive building, open, no pillars, a wide, massive building with a beautiful, what do you call that? Like a pool in the middle, like a shallow pool in the middle.

In this pool, you're going to bathe your Lama. And the roof should be a dome or some kind of a, like the Teatro del Ciudad Mexico. It should be a nice, beautiful place.

That's traditional. And that relates to the highest class of the secret teachings. There's a reason to have four walls.

There's a reason to make it massive. There's a reason to have the dome on the top. And you will learn it some other time.

But it has a purpose. When we do this offering in a group, obviously the main offering is done in your imagination. But there's also a custom for the Lama to have a silver bowl.

Traditionally, there would be a silver bowl about this large. And then there would be a mirror, a flat round mirror that you use. And then you, the mirror has a hole drilled in it.

And that has a silken cloth coming off of it. And you hold it by the silk. And you hold the mirror like this.

And then you take a peacock feather and you dip it in holy water. And you start a ritual. You sing the ritual while you make lines on the mirror with the peacock feather.

So there's a tradition to that that I'll tell you. You do a tic-tac-toe shape. So luckily we have a name for it.

Two vertical lines and two horizontal lines so that you have nine squares. You go with the peacock feather, you go like this. And then you go like this.

And that represents the bathing house, the large bathing house. And then you dip the water again with the peacock feather. We had them in Guadalajara.

When we taught it, we bought everybody mirrors and bowls. I forgot to bring them. Then you take a spot of water, you put it in the middle of the tic-tac-toe.

Then front side, left side, near side, and right side. And that represents the five Buddha families. You are washing the leaders and their partners, their consorts of the five Buddha families.

So that's a tradition. You draw it this way and then you do these five spots. And that's a tradition when you're offering this bath.

Then we get to the actual verses. Where is that? Here is a crystal...

Verse 53. Here is a crystal bathing house set in a fragrant breeze. Its floor is glass, sparkling clear.

Its lovely columns blaze in jewels with a pearl canopy glowing warm. And that's called drukang kye. Dru means to wash.

Kang means building. Like ngul means silver. So what's a ngul kang?

Which is a bank. So kang you can add to anything. You can make any kind of building.

It's called something kang. So here we're making a drukang. Dru means to wash, to bathe someone.

I like this word kye. The last word in verse 53 in the Tibetan is kye. This is the kye in kyerim.

What's that mean, kyerim? What's the kye in kyerim mean? To create or to...

But it's kind of more powerful than that. I don't know how to say it, but it's like to... It's to make a very holy thing pop out of mid-air.

It's kye. So now we're drukang kye. So what's that mean?

It just pop and there's a real one there. It's in your imagination, but your Lama experiences it as a real thing. So you got to make it clear.

If your mind is half pizza after the meditation session, then it's going to be hard for your teacher because it'll be half of this beautiful bathing facility and half pizza. So it's important to focus because they see what you imagine. They experience what you imagine.

So it's important for you to make a beautiful bathing house that isn't mixed up with the pizza you're going to have this evening. Like that. It must be imagined clearly because your teacher can see what you imagine and they will experience it that way.

Next page. And then bathe the holy beings. This is page 40.

I bathe you in these crystal waters divine just as all the angels made offering by bathing him upon the occasion of his birth. Who's the him? Huh?

Lord Buddha. So there's a very famous story that when Lord Buddha was born, when he came out, then the gods came and bathed him. It's like the three wise men in the Christian tradition.

So these gods showed up and bathed Lord Buddha just after he was birthed. They offered him a bath. You've probably gotten two, right?

Then we say, say OM. Sarva. Tathagata.

Abhishekata. Samaya. Shirye.

Ahun. This is the bathing mantra. It's also the initiation mantra.

When you give the vase initiation in the secret teachings, you use the mantra that the gods used when Lord Buddha was born. So when you give someone empowerment into the higher teachings, you use the same mantra. It's very beautiful.

The word Abhisheka came to mean an empowerment. So in Sanskrit, Abhisheka, which literally means to wash somebody, it became a word for Sanskrit. We have a student in Phoenix who comes to these teachings.

His name is Abhishek. He's from India. I told him what his name meant.

He was really happy. Verse 55. Let me get down there.

Oh, just one more thing. There's a detail. Sorry, from verse 53.

When you get to a pearl canopy glowing warm, you're supposed to remember that you've been picturing a magical tree and in the tree, a giant platform. And on that platform, all your teachers and all the teachers who have ever taught are on this platform. When you get to the words with a pearl canopy glowing warm, you're supposed to imagine that they descend like a flock of pigeons with all this, okay?

There's a special word in Tibetan. It's called uddir. And it means like when a hundred pigeons land in the park at the same time, there's this noise, right?

You're supposed to imagine this noise. When you get to the word pearl canopy, you're supposed to hear and they all come down like, they all flutter down around the pool. You see?

Like in a mass, they come down in a sudden. They suddenly fly down altogether. It's a very beautiful touch, okay?

Those of you who know Tibetan or try to read the Tibetan, the word labdre, say labdre. It's what I call illogical exception, okay? Irrational exception to the rules of pronunciation.

It should be what? Look at the Tibetan and tell me what it should be. No?

Look at the Tibetan, not the pronunciation. La, re. It should be la re.

But this is one of those words like dorje, which is mispronounced by every Tibetan and that became the normal pronunciation. We say labdre. So these are just details that you should learn later when you learn Tibetan.

I just wanted you to know because I got 12 letters from email saying it was misspelled. That's how a Tibetan pronounces it, okay? All right.

Here we go. By the way, when you hit the pearl canopy, you're supposed to get ready. Three angels.

They usually come from your heart. But you're supposed to kye. What does kye mean?

Pop out of nowhere, something holy. You're supposed to see and there's three beautiful angels there. I guess if you're a lady, they look like Chippendales or something.

And if you're a guy, they look like, I don't know, Charlie's Angels. But they're supposed to be really beautiful angels and they come out of your heart. Three angels come out of your heart.

One of them is going to do the bathing for you. One of them is going to dry off the teacher for you. And one of them is going to anoint the teacher with oil.

It's a tradition that when they flutter down, you respond within a few words by creating these three beautiful angels who are going to be doing the offering for you. This is also traditional. Okay.

Also, you're supposed to imagine that the act of washing them triggers high spiritual states in them. When you put water on a holy being, they feel bliss and they feel high realizations of reality. It triggers the perception of emptiness in their heart.

Every time you put a little oil or you dry off their body or something, it triggers in them a high spiritual state. Not just kind of a warm feeling of a good bath. They probably get that also.

But you're supposed to think that this offering triggers in them a high spiritual state. Not that they're already not in it all the time. Okay.

Let's go to verse 55. Your holy body was born from a billion perfect deeds. Your words fulfill the hopes of infinite living creatures.

Your mind perceives all things exactly as they are. I bathe this divine form, Lord of the Able Ones, Keeper of the Diamond. This is Lord Buddha.

And then again you say that mantra, Aum Sarva Tathagata Abhishekate Samaya Sriyayo. Okay. That's tradition.

You're going to see this verse, I think it appears three times in this book, so don't think it's a mistake or something. It's a very, very famous verse. It's a praise of how the Buddha acts and how the Buddha speaks and how the Buddha thinks.

And so they repeat it two or three times in this text. Also, this book is famous, is a famous source of other prayers. So if you want to learn to make a grace, a Buddhist grace, like me and my brothers used to do, rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub.

Yay, God. But if you want a similar grace for Buddhism, a lot of the traditional graces are taken out of this section. PUN TZO RGYAS LAS CHE BA'I DU MED GUR THAG YID ROL BA'I LENG BA GONG BA'I GSUNGS MA DANG ZHIG RGYAS JI ZHIN ZHIG PA'I DU ZHAG BSKYED TSOR DE MA CHOD PA BU And then you dig in.

So this is a... I'll just alert you when we reach them. Maybe if you're interested in learning some Tibetan, these graces are a nice place to start.

They're very famous. They're like the Lord's Prayer or something. And it's nice if you know them.

This is one, okay? Verse 55 is nice to memorize if you're interested. You can do it in English also.

Okay, we're on to verse 56. I bade the holy bodies of the lamas of the lineage of far-reaching deeds. I bade the holy bodies of the lamas of the lineage of the profound view.

I bade the holy bodies of the lamas of the lineage of inspired practice. I bade the holy bodies of every lama who has passed the teachings down. AMSARVA TATHAGATA ABHISHEKHATA SAMAYA SHRIYAHUNG This is honoring the three great lineages.

Far-reaching deeds means the lineage of bodhisattva activities, six perfections. Profound view means the lineage which has taught emptiness. And then inspired practice means the secret teachings in Tibet.

So in that painting, which is on page, what page is that on, of the lineage tree? Anybody can find it? Page 12.

The central figure is Je Tsongkapa. On his left, right neck, is the lineage of emptiness. And on his right, his right, is the lineage of compassion.

And in the lines of lamas going above him, those rows of lamas above him, those are the, it took us a long time to figure them out, but they are lineages of the secret teachings. Then in front of him are all other enlightened beings and protectors and things like that. Okay.

So we bathe them, and then we bathe every teacher that we've ever had. And we do the mantra again. All right.

Down to verse 57, page 45. And I found this young man, oh sorry, the guy in the bathtub on page 42. I really tried to find a rubber ducky, but I think they tipped over or something, but you understand.

Then on the next page, the plate on 44 is drying their bodies. So one more verse about washing. I, 57, I bathe the holy bodies of the teachers, the enlightened Buddhas.

I bathe the holy bodies of our protection, the perfect teachings. I bathe the holy bodies of our guides, the community. I bathe the holy bodies of all three supreme gems to whom we go for shelter, Aum Sarva Tathagata Abhisheka Dasamaya Sriyahu.

So that completes the bathing. The last thing is we bathe the three jewels, the three Ratna. Verse 58, we start drying them off.

I dry now their holy bodies, and I put the lady drying her child. Okay. I'm not just trying to make cute pictures.

I want you, when you're going to prepare for meditation, you can just go through and look at the photos. You don't have to read it, seriously. I think sometimes it's more powerful.

Just look at the photo and think, okay, now I'm at the part where I'm supposed to dry them off. And in your heart, dry them off. You don't have to recite it necessarily.

It's in your mind, right? Maybe at some point in your practice, it would be enough to look at the photos to remind you of what comes next. You don't have to recite the whole thing, okay?

I'm just suggesting it might be fun. Okay. I dry now their holy bodies with the most exquisite towels, sparkling clean and divine in fragrance.

Aum Hung Tam Sri Arkaya Vishuddhanaye Swaha Say Aum, Hung, Tam, Arkaya, Vishuddhanaye, Swaha. Okay. I was confused.

I love to figure out mantras. Now we have the whole canon from India has been input. It's a half a million pages.

It took us 25 years, 4,600 texts. So I can, in a few minutes, sitting on Mrs. Hancock's counter waiting for my waffles this morning, I can look up that mantra and how it's been used for the last 2,500 years in a few seconds and see who used it and what was it used for. So if you learn to use this tool, it would be very wonderful.

And we're working on, we're making YouTube videos on how to use it. So we have a grant for 100 videos on how to use that database and 100 videos for Learning Tibetan. So the first 10, I think, are filmed by Venerable Nyingpo and Nick's editing them quickly in his spare time.

Okay. So I was interested in this mantra. I'm not familiar with this mantra, Ong Hun Tam Shi.

So I went and searched for it in many, many places. It is in the Kangyur. It is in the Tengur, but no one explains it.

Someone in Tibet explains it. Here's the explanation. It used to have another syllable.

It used to have five syllables. Ong, ah, hun, tam, shi. So this one's missing what?

Yeah, I would like to show you. Do you have that page eight of the Georgia? I want to show you how we deal with this kind of stuff.

So this is the copy that my teacher gave me 40 years ago. This is the one I studied from and we had to memorize it. Those of you who can read Tibetan, the upper page, four lines down, is the mantra, carved.

Ong, what does it say? Ong, hun, yikes. No, it doesn't say yikes.

It's up at the very top now, in the middle. Ong, hun, tam, shi. It doesn't say ah.

There's only four syllables. In ancient times, it was five syllables. Just so you know, if you care about these things.

If a mantra has magical power and you skip some of it, it probably creates something weird. I don't know. So it used to have five syllables.

It's ong, ah, hun, tam, shi. But this carving that we have only has four syllables. And then this is the kind of thing that, this book was typed out by Nick and by Venerable Ningbo and Venerable Jigme helped a lot.

In the last three, four months, they've been typing. So I think, oh, they made a mistake and then I go look at the carving and I realize the carving is mistaken. Then it gets nasty.

Then you have to go look through thousands of books with the computer. So it used to be ong, ah, hun, tam, shi. These were mantras, syllables that related to five points in the body.

So these are called the five points of the body syllables. In the old days, ong related to the top of your head, which we call chiwo. Ah related to your throat, which we call drimpa.

Hun related to your heart, which we call nyingka. Tam related to your navel, which we call tewa. And shri related to your secret place or your muladhara chakra.

So these five syllables relate to five chakras in those five parts of the body. So these are meant to be sacred sounds for five parts of the body. And then there's a long explanation of this drying, how you dry a holy being.

If you ever get a chance to dry one, do it this way or you'll get in trouble. We're not supposed to dry them the way the guys, I'm assuming most of the guys dry themselves like me, like they throw the towel somewhere in the corner. You're never supposed to be brusque in drying a holy being, an enlightened being.

You're supposed to be very respectful. And you're only supposed to touch five parts of their body. So that's why the om ah hum tam shri.

It's very beautiful. And it took a lot of time for me to work it out. But Pabongka Rinpoche says the mantra relates to touching.

You just touch five points on their body with a towel and that's it, and they're dry. You don't wipe them. And if you try to wipe them, you'll get in trouble.

I'm warning you. The day it happens, you remember. Traditionally, you get a very, very soft towel and you touch it once to their forehead.

This is called, this is the first one. Drelwa. Then you touch it to their throat, and then you touch it to their heart, and then you touch it to their two shoulders.

So it's like, okay? This is tradition. You don't wipe them.

And then they're dry. It's very beautiful. I'm thinking maybe that's why the ah was missing because you can just go straight here and you've done the same thing.

Okay? So think about it. All right.

He even says, ,RANG GIS CHOS BYAS PA LTAR, ,SGO SBYUG THAMS CAD DU CHE BAR, ,RDZIN DRA MI DGOS, Never wipe them the way you wipe yourself. The scripture says that. But you can find out someday on your own.

So now we're on to verse 59, and we're going to apply oil to their body. And we put a photo of a mom oiling her baby, okay? Because they get dry after a bath, right?

I spread now scented oil upon the holy bodies of these lords of the able ones. They shine like purest gold, polished to a perfect sheen, wrapped in exquisite perfumes whose delicate fragrance drifts to the edges of the universe. So you're supposed to imagine that you have like frankincense or some very subtle, subtle word or scented oil, and you apply it to their bodies, okay?

And you anoint them in precious oil, okay? They don't say the same places. I get the feeling you're supposed to do it everywhere, okay?

They don't say to restrict it to the five places, okay? All right. Next, we dress them, okay?

We have to put some nice clothes on them. With faith, that is adamantine, I offer these clothes of the gods, gossamer soft, light as a feather, to those who have attained the body adamantine, the holy body of diamond. And so may I as well achieve this diamond body.

So adamantine, the word diamond comes from Greek. It used to be adamas, and the A dropped off. Dam comes from, D-A-M comes from Sanskrit.

And Damayanti, for example, is a famous character in a Hindu story. So Dam means to be tamed or conquered. Adamas means that thing which cannot be conquered or cut by any other object, and that's diamond.

And then as it came into English, the word A fell off, and it became diamond. But we still see in the adjective, what? Adamantine, not breakable, okay?

We still see the original form, the old Greek form. Negative, privative, A. A-Dama, cannot be tamed, cannot be broken.

And so adamantine means diamond body, okay? So we are, they're playing on the word diamond as you can notice. I wonder how many diamonds there are in the Tibetan.

Miche is adamantine. Dorje means diamond. Miche is repeated, and then dorje is repeated.

There's two dorjes, and there's two miche, meaning unbreakable, adamas, okay? Your face should be unbreakable, and you should offer clothing to these bodies which are immortal, okay? Like that.

This plays on the word vajra, diamond, okay? And as you know, diamond has a lot of other important meanings, and I won't go into it, but of all the objects in the world, the diamond is the closest metaphor for emptiness, okay? If you had to be surrounded by one object that would remind you of emptiness, it should be a diamond.

And if you had a chance to be surrounded by diamonds for many years, you should do that, okay? Even if you had no interest in it. Okay, all right.

Next, we're going to put on jewelry, and that's on the next page, 48. And you can see that we're putting pearls on them, but you choose what you like, okay? It's a lot of fun to do this.

You should surrender to this practice. It's all, what do you call, imaginary. It's all in your mind, but it's a very, very sweet practice.

And you get closer to your teacher. Even if your teacher is far away, you could give them a bath every morning and dress them up and put jewels on them, and out of respect, out of devotion. What occurred to me after many years, I lived with my teacher, my Tibetan teacher, for 25 years.

I washed his clothes for 25 years. I cleaned his toilet for 25 years. I watered his flowers.

I drove him around. And at some point in the 25 years, I realized that the word respect or honor your teacher is really expressed better by affection. It becomes affection.

I think respect that is cold or honorable, or I don't know how you say, kind of, there's some people who serve a Lama who are unfriendly to everybody else, and that's a little suspicious to me. Or they, what do you call it? They, how do you say that?

They push other people away from the Lama, and they want to be near the Lama, and then they... Yeah, and it's not affectionate. You see what I mean?

It's some kind of ownership thing. And I think if you spend many years around a nice Lama, a good Lama, then it becomes affection. At some point, the service of the teacher becomes a form of affection for each other and for others around the Lama.

If it's affection for the Lama and not for others, then it's suspicious. At some point, it becomes unpleasant. It should be an infectious affection.

That's a good name for a song, right? Somebody should write that down. We're always looking for names for a band.

Infectious affection. So, at some point, honoring your teacher should become honoring everyone else around. And if it doesn't, there's a problem.

There's some kind of problem going on. There's a possession thing going on or something. The victorious ones already possess the natural ornament of the signs and marks of enlightenment.

As such, they have no need for other jewelry. So, enlightened beings have, what do you call it, marks on their body, natural indentations, and what do you call the opposite? Like ridges on their body.

Like the hand of a Buddha always has a wheel imprinted on the hand. It's one of the signs that the person is enlightened. I think there may be some kind of, I know there's sort of a popularity nowadays of putting things under your skin so that patterns will show up on your skin.

And that's not a, there's probably a deep-rooted good thing going on there. That's what happens when you get enlightened. You do have patterns under the skin of sacred objects.

And that's just one of the signs of a Buddhist. So, Buddhas have different signs on their bodies that mark them as a Buddha. So, they don't need rings or bracelets or necklaces or earrings or nose rings or belly button rings.

They don't need them. They have natural jewelry in their bodies. They have natural, beautiful ornaments that are part of their bodies.

So, they don't need you, they don't need your earrings or your pearls or your gold. But we offer them. Why?

It's good for us. He's going to say later, later he will say, generally speaking, something cannot be a good karma unless the intention is good. You see what I mean?

Like, I want to give you something so that you'll be healthy and you will teach many people dharma. There has to be a high, the higher the intention, the more sacred the act. But, he says there's one exception.

When you are doing something for an enlightened being, when you are offering earrings to a being who doesn't need them, you get ultimate good karma. Even if your intention is lousy. So, it's one exception to the rules of karma.

You can offer something to the person who is your heart teacher. I'm not saying me. Then I could have a bag after class and you could put your earrings and stuff in there, like robbing an old train.

Not like that. But whoever is your heart teacher. One of the most important, probably the most important task you have in your life is to find your heart teacher.

It could be anybody. It doesn't have to even be a Buddhist. My heart teacher is not a Buddhist.

When you find them and you have that relationship with them, then when you offer something to them, even if it's for bad motivation, I hope they like me, or I hope they're impressed that I'm giving them better emeralds than the other student did. Even if the intention is wrong, defective, the deed is extremely powerful karma because of who they are to you. You see?

So, that's an exception to the rules of karma. So, pretty much anything you offer to your personal heart teacher is guaranteed awesome karma. All right?

That's an exception. But they don't need it. A good teacher, a real authentic teacher, they don't need anything you can give them.

They don't need stuff. They just don't need it. They have what they needed they have already, which is inner peace.

They have higher things. You can't give them anything. They don't need anything from us.

But we give them so that we can get some good karma. Okay? It's for us that we give them things.

A real teacher, what do they want out of you? Authentic teacher, what gift do they want from you? They want you to be a successful person, meaning a good person, a kind person, compassionate person.

When they see you being kind to others, it feeds their health, it feeds their heart, it makes them happy. They feel fulfilled. They feel like they're successful because you're a nice person.

They feel like a proud parent. Like, oh, all those years of teaching, they were successful. This person is really sweet to everyone and kind to everyone and considerate to everyone.

Polite and well-mannered. Whoa, I'm so happy. I succeeded as a teacher.

That's the gift you can give them, is to be a good person, a kind person, a compassionate person. Every time you act up to someone else, every time you hurt someone else, every time you're inconsiderate to someone else or ill-mannered to someone else, it hurts them. It hurts even their body.

It hurts them. So, if you want to make a gift to your teacher, practice. What is practice?

Ultimately, it's just being kind to other people. So, if you want to give an authentic teacher a gift, be kind to other people. They don't need money.

They don't need your stuff. Probably they don't want stuff. There's a joke.

I saw a nice cartoon. I think it was in The New Yorker and the Dalai Lama was opening a birthday present and all these monks were around him and he goes, just what I always wanted, nothing. And the box was empty.

So, think of that. When you want to make a good offering, when a teacher sees you being kind to someone else, I don't want to embarrass Venerable Phil, but the way he conducted his choral session today was so sensitive and kind and good-hearted and beautiful. Then it just made everyone happy.

And this is a real offering. Teachers don't need money or stuff. If they spy on you and you're being nice to other people, they're like, oh, I feel happy.

I feel really... It makes your heart strong. All right.

Last thing, you ask them to stay in your life. The last part of this bathing ceremony is to ask your teacher to stay in your life. I ask you, O conquering ones, verse 62, to stay here in my life as long as I still make these precious gifts to you.

Use the might of miracles which only you possess. Do it out of your love for me and for every other person. What miracle are you asking for?

That they stay. Like you tell your teacher, I know if you really want to, you can stay in this world. So please stay.

Show me this miracle that you stay in this world. For your teacher, me. All right.

So once we're done, this has all been step number four of the six preparations for meditation. It's called sok ching sel dep, which means to just get a clear picture in your mind of your Lama in front of you. And then the bathing, the drying, the anointing, the dressing, and the jewelry-ing, we're all just part of that.

So now we're ready to do the real practice with our teacher. The real preparation. Now we're ready to do step five.

Step five, the fifth of the six preparations, is to do some heavy good karma and to clean out some of our main mistakes in our life just before we meditate. It's to clear the slate and put fertilizer on the ground just before we meditate. Hopefully, between that practice and the meditation, you don't get upset at anyone, you don't get jealous of anyone.

The trick is to do these good deeds mentally, quickly start to meditate, okay? Before you can think of the person that bugs you. Okay?

That's the idea. Frankly, you make some really good karma, you clean your conscience, and then quickly you start meditating before you can mess it up again, okay? That's just a word to the wise, all right?

So we've reached step five. Now, major confusion. Major confusing point, okay?

Ready? Don't forget. Step five has seven parts.

Step five has seven parts. Then it's so easy to get confused. How many preparations for meditation?

Six. But are there seven-part prayer? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is.

But that's more than six. Yeah, well, the seven are part of number five. So what's the total?

It's like six plus seven. No, because five is the seven. So five plus seven is 12.

Got it? It feels like there's 13. You used to think there was six.

People talk about seven, but it's only 12, okay? Got it? Six main preparations for meditation.

The fifth one has seven parts. That makes a total of 12, because there's no separate number five. Comfortable?

Don't forget, the longest time I was confused, and they kind of overlap, they kind of repeat a little bit, so it's a little tricky, okay? When you get to step five, you're going to do seven separate practices. For what?

Make an instant good karma, a good espresso hit of good karma, and then clean your conscience, quickly. Quickly brush off your conscience, then start meditating fast, before you can have new bad karma. All right?

That's step five, and it has seven parts. Here we go. So that brings us to verse 63.

I would like to talk, and then we'll take a break in about five minutes, okay? I need a break too. It's bad to start these 10-day things with three highly emotional happy days at Diamond Mountain, because it was exhausting.

I think we all got wiped out by the beauty of the weekend, and then it was ugh. Okay, so, here are some general comments about the seventh step for purifying your karma, and for jacking up your karma just before you meditate. Okay, here we go.

There was a, Pabongka Rinpoche, in his text, warns us not to think that because this is such a common practice in Tibet, everyone does it. Don't think, therefore, that it's an unimportant practice, or that it's for untrained people, and high yogis, and high geshes, and high tantricas, they shouldn't use this easy seven. It's too easy to be a serious practice.

He says, be careful, okay? There are seven steps that anyone can do, and they are high. They are very high practice.

So don't think that just because everyone does them, okay, it's like down dog, and up dog. It's still a high practice. Everyone does it, and it's still high.

He points out that even in the highest tantric practices, highest secret practices, such as Vajrayogini, which is, in my opinion, the highest for us, because it's our lineage, even in there, they repeatedly do the seven step practice. So it can't be a dummy practice. It must be something high, okay?

Where do you do it in the Vajrayogini practice, if you care? ,KHWANG CHO GSUM LA DAG, ,GAL GCIG GRIG PA LTAM DU'I SO SROG SHA, ,DUR BA'I RGYAS LA RGYUN YOD RANG, ,SANGS RGYAS CHEN PO'I YOD KYI GSUNGS, ,SANGS RGYAS CHOS DANG SOGS PAR BLAG, ,BYANG CHUB PA DUR DANG NYID, ,PHYIS RANG CHEN DU NI RAG GYUR CHER, ,BYANG CHUB PHYOG KYIS GSAN NI, ,BYANG CHUB PHYOG KYIS GSAN MI SKES GYI NYE, ,SANGS CAN THAMS CAD DRAG GI DU NUS NYOD, BYANG CHUB CHU BYUNG YIN YONGS CHE BA RGYUS GDUG LA BSTAN GYUR BZHANG YIN THUB PAR ZHOG That's it. If you learn that sadhana, that's the seven limbs in the Vajrayogini sadhana.

And we do it over and over. We do these seven practices in the highest Buddhist practice there is. So the first, and then he says, even bodhisattvas do this practice.

High bodhisattvas, they like to emanate bodies. They like to, what do you call, clone themselves with their miracle powers so that they can bow down more times to lamas and they can make more gifts to lamas. So he says, even on the first bodhisattva level, which happens when?

When you see emptiness for the first time, okay? Under the influence of bodhichitta, you gain the power to divide your body into a hundred and make offerings to your lama with a hundred bodies instead of one, okay? I'm just giving you the highlights of what we covered for the last two or three years, okay?

He compares this practice to a blister. Do you remember? It ripens the blister, okay?

With regard to your negative deeds, these few minutes in this book that you're going to spend on the seven stages, they ripen your bad deeds. You know how you let a blister get old and then it will just sort of pop by itself? So these are seven practices.

Ripen the bad karma in you and it pops and you're rid of it, okay? So it's important to clean your worst bad deeds just before you meditate. And then he compares it to a fruit on a tree, meaning what?

The opposite, okay? With your good deeds, it helps you to rejoice in yourself and to appreciate yourself. And then those good deeds will get fat and, what do you call it?

Ripe and mushy and they'll fall. And they'll ripen, okay? So these seven practices make your good deeds ripen fast.

They make the fruits fall and they make the blisters pop, okay? So remember pasta and pears or something like that, okay? All right.

TSOGS SOGS MED NA LEN MED SA BON DRA Very famous quotation. TSOGS SOGS MED NA means, if you don't do these seven practices, it's like having a seed that you never put water on them. And I have many, many, many friends now in many countries.

It's funny, I have my best friends in countries that I was nervous about. So like, some of my best friends are in Beijing or in Indonesia, which is a Muslim country, right? And we've become very close.

And I teach them and I encourage them and I ask them to practice and they do good deeds. But universally, in all countries of the world, including America, people have trouble to put water on their seed, you see? People don't have problems making good karma.

They understand it. They give money to people. They serve the sick.

They serve drug addicts. They serve prisoners. They serve everywhere around the world.

Your brothers and sisters in this larger organization are doing very beautiful service of people. But every one of them has trouble at night with the act of rejoicing, of appreciating themselves and saying, I did a good thing today. Going to a prison and helping these guys is a really nice thing to do.

I'm not Mother Teresa, but I'm getting there. I'm not a holy being, but I'm doing some nice stuff. I made a nice film and a thousand people in Mexico City saw it and it probably changed their hearts.

And I'm not Steven Spielberg yet, but I did change a thousand people's hearts last night. You should give yourself some credit, okay? And in our religion, in our faith, that's probably the most important practice you can do.

Otherwise the karma will not grow. If you're serving at Diamond Mountain, you have to think, sometimes pause. We do it before bed.

Sit on your bed. Have a cup of tea, hot tea, chocolate. Mint tea is good, why?

You don't have to pee for eight hours. I'm just giving you a three-year retreat and thing. Drink something warm and think, I did some good things today.

I'm volunteering at probably the most important retreat being done in North America at this time. And I'm a person who is helping that happen. And then by thinking that, it waters the karmic seed.

And if you don't think that, the karmic seed will not grow. You have great karma and nothing will happen. You must appreciate yourself or karma will not grow.

Karma will not open. It just sits there because it doesn't have any water. Somebody gave me some seeds recently.

They're a thousand years old. They were found in a, what do you call? Funeral tomb of some Egyptian pharaoh and they're viable.

They work. After a thousand years, they grow corn and they just wanted water. They were waiting a thousand years to get some water on them.

Karmic seeds in your mind are exactly the same. If you do not review the kindnesses you have paid to other people, without pride, obviously, okay? No pride, no competitiveness.

My service at Diamond Mountain is much better than Chok's service at Diamond Mountain. Then you destroy the seed or you short circuit it. But to take an honest appreciation of yourself, I went to the prison for two, three years now.

They just started giving refuge vows to each other in the prison. The older inmates are teaching the newer inmates quite good, quite good teaching. We went and watched.

And those people who were involved with creating that work in the prison, you should be proud of yourselves. You should think about it. The directors at Diamond Mountain, man, you've been through hell and you should appreciate yourself.

So we stuck it out and now the place is awesome right now. The place is like about three feet off the ground and it's awesome. And you should say, you know, we paid for that in gray hairs or no hairs.

And I'm glad and I'm proud of it. And we did a good thing. And it's a wonderful thing.

And then when you think that about your own good deeds, the deeds open, okay? But men na lenme sabundra. Don't be like a seed which got no water for a thousand years in the Egyptian pharaoh's tomb, okay?

You must, in this religion, we're not like other religions, okay? Exactly. We have common themes, but our methods are different, our beliefs are different.

And one of our beliefs is that a good Buddhist practitioner must appreciate themselves and the people around them. They must take joy in the goodness that other people are doing and in the goodness that they have done. This is a fundamental practice of Buddhism.

You are required to be happy, okay? About yourself and about other people. You're required to focus on the good things that other people are doing and that you're doing.

And it's hard for us. We didn't grow up with that. We grew up with sort of, you know, what is that?

I don't know. You feel guilty if you feel happy about yourself, okay? So we have to overcome that cultural habit.

If you do kind things, which everyone here does, in Buddhism you are required to think about them because that makes the karma multiply and you become a better person, got it? And still tomorrow you won't be able to do it, or tonight, okay? You'll sit in bed and worry about your credit card or what someone said to you today, or 12 years ago, or your sixth grade girlfriend said to you.

You know, we have a fundamental inability to be happy about ourselves. So try, okay? Tonight as you fall off to sleep, try.

It's a basic required practice of Buddhist religion, okay? That's who we are. That's what we do.

Rinpoche used to say, if you've heard it a thousand times before, watch how I teach it. Learn how I teach it, okay? And learn that.

Watch that instead of learning something new because you're not going to learn something new. So learn something new about how it's taught and then learn to teach it. And there's a trick to it, okay?

So you can understand, according to Buddhism, you cannot, for example, destroy anger in the human soul without understanding emptiness. So it would be nice to be a person who could not be upset by anyone. You know, I have ears, I have eyes, I can see you, I can listen to you, but it's impossible for you to upset me.

I mean, I'm not at that stage, but it would be nice, right? So we say you cannot extinguish, which is called nirvana, you cannot extinguish anger in the human soul without understanding emptiness. So, okay, I would like to be a person who cannot be irritated by anybody.

Teach me emptiness, okay? You ready? What is this thing?

Just give honest, straight answers. Don't think too much. It's a pen.

Okay, if a small dog comes in here, a puppy dog, and they walk up on the stage and somebody brings them up and I wave this thing in front of them, what will they do with it, probably? They'll bite it, okay? Does the puppy dog see this as a writing instrument?

No, they see it as something to chew on. Then the next question to ask an audience in Singapore or Moscow or Buenos Aires is who's right, the dog or the human? They're both right because a human can write a letter with the pen, with the one object, and the dog can enjoy chewing on it, okay?

So it's valid. Both are correct. Both are valid.

Both can chew on it. Sorry, the one can chew on it and the other one can write with it. Next question, next question.

If I put this object here on this table and all the dogs leave the room and then all the humans leave the room, and then when you teach it, it's important to say at that time, okay? Remember, at that time, is it a pen or is it a chew toy? Which one is it at that time?

Nobody in the room. Is it a pen or is it a chew toy? By the way, it's important to say or because that kind of forces them into deciding.

Is it a pen or is it a chew toy? You can say neither. I mean, it's an honest reaction.

People around the world in many different cultures and countries, by the way, one of the most pleasant things about what you are learning is that it appeals to every culture in the world. I have not found a country which doesn't find this stuff enlightening, okay? You learn this, you're popular everywhere.

Your books through 2015, people love it. They want it, they hunger for that. Everywhere, everywhere in the world.

Everyone has the same reaction to this stuff, okay? And everywhere in the world, if you say, which one is it, they will go. And 10 people will yell out, nothing or neither.

That's emptiness. That nothing that people yell out in every culture that I've ever been to. Universally, everyone will yell out, nothing, okay?

Niggi, jigar shu shu ma? Jigar ni ma ha? You know, it's nothing, okay?

Everywhere, people will say the same thing, okay? They'll go like that. That's also a very good answer.

It's nothing, it's nothing. That's emptiness, okay? Nothing more exotic than that.

Nothing more difficult than that. If someone tries to sell you a more difficult emptiness, tell them to shove it, okay? They're just confused.

Really, honestly, I don't care who they are. They're confused, okay? They don't understand, okay?

If it's more complicated than that, then the dog and the human, it's wrong, okay? And it won't help you, okay? So at that time, it's nothing.

It's like a blank white screen, okay? It occurred to me recently that blank comes from what? French.

Blanc, which means white. Blanc, white screen means white, white screen. Got it?

Blanc. It's just an empty screen. That's all.

That's emptiness. The world is an empty screen. The dog walks back in to the room.

The dog's mind is a projector, okay? And the dog's mind projects a chew toy onto this blank, okay? Onto this blank white screen, like one of Osiris' films, right?

Everybody has a film in their mind. And the mind puts the film on the thing, on the white screen, and then it becomes a chew toy. That's cool.

It's better than a real movie. It's more real than a movie. If you project a guy on the screen choking somebody to death, you don't feel so bad because it's just acting, right?

But your mind is a better projector than that. You can write with a thing that your mind calls a pen, okay? The reality is coming from your mind.

The substance is coming from your mind. And it's so good that you can write with it, okay? Is it coming from your mind?

Yes. Is it a mental image? Yes.

Does it work? Yes. And it never worked any other way, okay?

It was never anything else. There's no pen outside of your mind. Got it?

It's very sexy. Your mind is the ultimate projector. It projects reality.

It projects real pens that you can write with, okay? If it didn't exist that way, it wouldn't be real. I'm not going to there.

I'm not going there yet. That's too much confusion, okay? Your mind makes it a pen.

Every person is walking around with a different projector up here and it's projecting stuff onto this thing, okay? It makes it a pen. It's not a pen until the human walks back in.

It's not a chew toy until the dog walks back in. Now we have a problem. What if they both walk in at the same time?

It's both. It goes back to being both. No problem.

You can write with it. Yes. You can chew on it.

Yes. Lots of people chew on their writer than I do. You can tell if someone stole the pen from me because it's all chewed up here, okay?

Just take it from them and give it back to me. Okay? Now, why does a dog project a chew toy and why does a human?

Who loads the PowerPoint into the projector, you see? Who loaded the film into the projector? You did, okay?

Can someone else loan you their film? No. Can someone else load your PowerPoint for you?

No. You put your own seeds in your own mind. That's the way it goes, okay?

How? You witness yourself doing something or saying something or thinking something about somebody else, period. That's all.

That records it in your mind, okay? The fact that you witness yourself saying something nice to somebody or saying something mean to somebody, that's what plants it in your mind. It's very logical.

I've had Communist Party members in China. I've had Muslims in Indonesia or Malaysia. I've had people from everywhere, strange places.

And they all get it. Nobody doesn't get it. How is a seed put in your mind?

You witness yourself talking. You witness yourself doing something and that puts a seed in your mind. Nobody ever argued about it.

It's just, okay, it makes sense. You don't need to believe that there's some guy somewhere else recording what you do. You record it yourself.

There's an absolute justice in the universe. Everything you do is recorded. Your sins are written.

By who? By you. You don't need someone else, okay?

And they're put into your mind. The seed is put into your mind. And then it comes out of your mind.

But in the meantime, it grows. The seed grows in your mind. Physical seeds grow.

I planted, what do you call it? Clover for my bees for next April. I planted it yesterday.

What was yesterday? Thursday, right? Yeah, I planted it yesterday.

I went out and planted it yesterday. The seeds, you could fit a hundred seeds on your fingernail. They're tiny, tiny.

They're like sand, you know? And each one will grow into a plant like this. Tens of, hundreds of thousands of times bigger than the seed, you know?

It's incredible. It's cool. It's $8 for like a hundred thousand seeds.

And you just take them and you go, you know, it's fun. You know, you say, I'm a farmer. And it's kind of fun.

You walk through your garden, just throw them, you know, and then you're like, I'm a farmer. And they will cover the whole acre next spring and the bees will have something to eat. And seeds in your mind are infinitely more powerful, infinitely more powerful, okay?

A small kind thought will grow into years of happiness. Okay? It's incredible.

And a small, uncharitable thought will grow into years of problems. It's dangerous. It's beautiful and it's dangerous, right?

It could be very beautiful. I heard this thing, I mentioned it the other day. Quantum physicists believe that at one time the whole universe was contained in a space the size of your thumbnail.

All the galaxies of this observable universe once existed in a space as small as your thumbnail. And the mass of that space was infinitely great because all the stuff that became the universe used to be in a square inch, okay? Before the Big Bang, okay?

And then it blew up. Still, it's still going. The stuff is still moving away from a central point.

We're still moving. We were also blown up, okay? And it's cool.

And then they say, get this, try to imagine, quantum physicists believe that the existence of planets and stars and galaxies is proof that the stuff in the thumbnail was unevenly distributed because it glumped together. Otherwise there should just be powder, equal quantities of powder with a magnetic, with gravitational forces between them completely equal and they would never change. They would always be so many inches away from each other in infinite space and there would be no glumps, okay?

No, they say that and it's true. If you had a super, super, super, super computer, you could study the sky at night and you could predict the shape of the thumbnail from the result eight billion years later, okay? You could draw what the stuff in the thumbnail looked like from what happened when it glumped together over the next eight billion years or so, okay?

Got it? Karma is more powerful than that. Karma is more powerful than that.

If you had a deep, deep knowledge, deep, deep training, very good meditation, good meditation song, you could look around this room and see directly what you did a thousand years ago, just from the pattern of the carpet, okay? And the arrangement of the chairs and the smiles or the looks of confusion in the people's faces, okay? You could deduce what you did a thousand, exactly, in the same way that the thumbnail, you could figure out what was in the thumbnail.

Got it? It's very cool. So, the reason the dog sees a chew toy and the reason the human sees a pen, according to Buddhist belief, is that the dog, is that the human did a kind act towards another person that helped them to communicate.

And the dog didn't do that. So the dog doesn't see a pen and the human does, okay? And that's all.

Cool? That's the pen story. The pen proves that things are empty because every person in this room, you see something slightly different, okay?

If I play a Neil Young song, which if you dare me, I will, some people will cover their ears and some people will dance. And that's the emptiness of Neil Young, okay? If you have the karma, you will hear the best rock and roll ever recorded.

And if you don't have the karma, my college roommate called him that screaming eunuch. Turn off that screaming eunuch. I said, he's not a eunuch.

He screams, but you know. So anyway, that accounts for why different people have different favorite songs. And it also explains why no one agrees with your personal favorite song because everyone has different seeds, okay?

That's proof. That's emptiness. That's the meaning of emptiness.

We look at the same object. We see different things. Therefore, the pen is not in the pen.

And the last person who irritated you wasn't coming from them. Are you proposing every person I ever met who was irritating was a reflection of myself? Mm-hmm.

That kind of means I am every irritating person I ever met. Yeah. Okay, but you're also responsible for all the beauty in the world, okay?

All the beauty you ever see, all the kindness you ever see is in a way coming from you, okay? You can only see it if it's in you, okay? I prefer to remember the kind part.

Okay, maybe one more question. I think Mark, because he did such a good job of explaining to us the solar thing. Now you're going to be our policy man, you know, forever.

I'd be honored. I was wondering if the gross consciousness or ego, if it dies with the body? I didn't hear the adjective before consciousness.

If the gross consciousness or ego dies with the body. Yeah, does gross consciousness die with the body when the body dies? Buddhism has a very delicate description of life.

Like what is life? Life is to see life in your body. You see life in your body because you protected life.

You protected the lives of other beings, okay? That involves not killing animals to make your shoes or not killing creatures to eat and not harming other people, not using your cell phone when you drive. I'm very sensitive to other people driving.

I don't know why. People make fun of me or they criticize me, but like people will come over in my lane and almost kill me and I look and they're not even looking, they're on the phone, you know? And I get very righteous.

I get very angry. I'm like, you almost killed me and you're just talking on your phone, you know? Or you're texting people.

A guy almost killed me yesterday and he was looking like this and he cut in front of me and he didn't know. He never knew. They call it clipping, right?

They clip you, you crash and die and they just keep going and they're still texting and they're not even aware that they hit you, you know? And I get very upset at them, right? So we have to honor life.

We have to be very, very careful. The solar thing is honoring the lives of our great-grandchildren, right? They should have a right to live the way we do.

Diamond Mountain used to be an oak forest with grass up to the top of your chest. It was covered with beautiful oak trees and long grasses and it had a great variety of antelope, buffalo and beautiful creatures and they made a railroad which became I-10. I-10 was the railroad.

The tracks of the railroad, the highway was built over the tracks of the railroad. They cut down the trees to build the tracks and to burn as fuel for the railroad. The railroad was built in those two valleys, Wilcox Valley and the valley that Diamond Mountain is in, to carry cattle who ate the grass, who destroyed the grass and then in those days there were no refrigerators.

So cows were living meat, fresh meat and you kept them alive. You didn't slaughter them in Bowie. You put them on the train in Bowie and they took them to Chicago and then Chicago was the great slaughterhouse for the United States and it was close enough to New York and to the East Coast that you could ship the meat before it rotted to be eaten and that's why people spiced meat so much because in the old days there were no refrigerators and you kept it in the basement and you ate it half rotten and that's how America grew. And then they ran out of grass and it created a drought and then they abandoned those two valleys with no more trees and no more grass and the soil washed away and you only know because I'm telling you. You only know because I told you.

Nobody who's ever been to Diamond Mountain could picture it as a vast oak forest, but it used to be. And people will say that about us. They will say the planet used to have this oil underneath and it was relatively easy to take out and you could have lights at night and you could travel hundreds of miles in a private vehicle in the old days and people will say, Mom, I don't believe you.

Everything's just steam generated. You don't believe Diamond Mountain and they won't believe about the oil. We're hurting them.

We are actively hurting people who will live later. Now, by wasting the oil. Not using solar, it's crazy.

So anyway, if you respect life, other life, life to come also, then you will see life in your arm. Your arm will be alive. Every time you go to the Arizona State Capitol to, what do you call it, protest about no solar, you create more life for your arm.

And then if you don't take care of those seeds, they get old and then life withdraws from your arm and you die and you see it dead because you didn't do enough kindnesses to other people. You didn't respect life enough and then you see life wear out in your body and you die and that's death. That's all.

That's death. You have certain other seeds in your mind that allow you to be conscious. Life of the mind and not of the body.

As those seeds get older, they lose their power. You forget things. You might get, what do you call it, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's.

You forget things, dementia. These aren't stupid people. They were smart people, a lot of them.

They just got old. What is old? Old means they're karmic seeds for intellect, for intellect got old and wore out and they wear out for everybody.

And they will wear out if you don't replace them. So, does your consciousness continue after you die? If there are seeds, there will be consciousness.

Seeds for being aware at all cannot be destroyed completely. You will always have those seeds. They perpetuate each other.

Thinking perpetuates the mind. So, according to Buddhist belief, you have always had a mind. Your mind has been alive forever.

If you ask a Buddhist, which came first, the chicken or the egg, they say, yes. You can't have a chicken without an egg and you can't have an egg without a chicken. Therefore, there's no beginning.

And we think it's self-evident that there was no beginning. We think it's foolish to say there was a beginning. It's like saying you could fart without beans or something.

You know, I just thought of that. You can't have a reaction without a cause. It's not possible.

There has to be something to cause the Big Bang. Now I heard they decided there was a pre-Big Bang. I'm like, duh, of course there was.

You know, and there was a pre-Big Bang before that. There's no beginning. You can't have something happen from nothing.

There's no such thing. No scientist would believe that. But then they say it all started with the Big Bang.

It's like so funny. The most important event in the universe didn't have a cause, but everything else does. You know, you're like, and you think we're superstitious.

I don't understand your superstition. But anyway, so yeah, you cannot destroy the mind because the act of thinking creates the karma which perpetuates the mind. So you cannot destroy a mind.

It will live forever. You know, somebody was telling me I was thinking to commit suicide. I said, don't bother.

You know, it doesn't work. It will continue. The mind will continue, probably in a much worse place with no hope.

So little hope is better than none, right? So yeah, the consciousness continues. You can say at a subtle level, I think you can say that, it does continue.

It never stops. Even after you get enlightened, it will continue. Okay?

That's the Buddhist answer. Thank you. Okay.

One more question. Then let's go home. Yes, sir, Todd.

[Говорящий 2] (1:32:50 - 1:33:07)
What's the cause of some of our perceptions have something in common? You know, we may not all see the song as being our favorite, but we all see it as a song, you know. I mean, so what's the cause that some of our perceptions have something in common?

[Говорящий 1] (1:33:07 - 1:43:36)
Good, good question. Really good question. So I think an important thing to say is that I cannot plant a karmic seed for you and you cannot plant a karmic seed for me.

Okay? So that's another tenet of Buddhism. You are completely responsible for your life.

No one else can change it. You plant your own seeds. I cannot, as much as I may love a person, I cannot loan them a seed that I planted in my mind.

I also cannot plant a seed in your mind. You can teach someone how to plant their own seeds, but you cannot plant their seeds for them. Okay?

So that's a fundamental belief of Buddhism. And they say it is proven by the fact that I had these three teeth worked on last week. And it hurt.

I was in the dental office for three or four hours. Okay? Why would that prove that you cannot share seeds?

Yeah, well that, but also Buddhists have billions of extra seeds. They would just send me a few just before I went to the dentist. And then I would go and they would say, your teeth are fine and go have an ice cream.

You know? So, but it didn't happen. So seriously, Buddhists believe, traditional Buddhists believe that that proves that it's not possible to share seeds.

If it were possible, none of us would ever have pain because there are, according to us, there are countless beings who are already perfected. They could loan you some seeds, you know? So if you suffered, if you went to the dentist last week and had three hours of work done on your teeth, it proves that no matter how much you love someone, you cannot give them your seeds.

We all, I like to say, we're like, you know spaghetti, what do you call it? A box of spaghetti, right? These long individual, until you overcook it and they all, until you overcook it, they're just long individual things.

Your mind is a beginningless spaghetti noodle and it will go into infinite time into the future and it will not mix with other minds. We are, we will forever be separate because I cannot plant the seeds to become your mind, okay? It's not possible.

We will always be, will we all be enlightened? Yes. Will all living creatures on this world become Buddhas?

Even the bugs, yes. Will they become one Buddha? No.

We will always be separate Buddhas. We can hang out, but we can't be the same Buddha, okay? So, but how do you explain that, you know, 50 or 100 people in a room see a pen?

Okay, I admit that the dog has separate seeds from the human, so the dog sees a chew toy and the human sees a pen, but isn't it also true that 50 people in the room share the perception of a pen? And then you get into the idea of communal karma, karma that is collected as a group. So the people who went to the state capitol together, you know, and did this little, helped in a tiny protest, together we will share in the future sources of energy that other people won't enjoy, okay?

And that's because we did the deed together, okay? So there is a communal collection of karmic seeds which are separate. So we all see a pen.

We all see, the dog and the human both see a purple cylinder, and that's because they both collected seeds to see a purple cylinder. Does that mean that any creature would see this as a purple cylinder? No, I mean, people are color, we have a friend, Kevin, who's colorblind.

He can't see the difference. You say, oh, look at that green, and he's like, he looks at the wrong wall. And you're like, no, no, that one.

And he's like, oh yeah, beautiful green, you know? And so some people don't have karma to see the purple, but communally, some of us have the karma to see purple. Cool?

So we do make karmas together, but they're stored individually. Each person at the solar rally had a slightly different motivation, and they will all perceive probably some readily available energy in the future, but it may come in different forms to them, okay? Cool, it's a good question.

It's a nice question. By the way, just to end, okay, then I promise I'll end. Buddhists believe that it's those communal karmas which create international borders.

So I always, I went down to Awapriyeta. I was curious what it would feel like to straddle the international boundary. So they checked my passport, and they said, go ahead, and I paused, and I turned sideways, and I put one foot in America, and I put one foot in Mexico, and I just wanted to see how it felt.

I felt a little vulnerable, and I thought, you know, I was like, maybe this could be uncomfortable, you know, so I kind of put a foot on each side, and I looked down the wall, and I was like, feels the same, you know, the dirt is the same. I looked, checked the dirt under each foot, the dirt was the same, you know, and I'm like, so who makes these lines, you see? Why is there extreme poverty on my left side, and why is there overeating to death on my right side?

You know, why is that? And that's communal seeds. People on one side altogether maybe didn't do solar when they could have in a past life, and people on the other side were generous, but probably made people sick or something, okay?

Physically, so, and then it becomes an interesting question of if there's a force like the internet, which in my opinion could destroy those lines within a generation. I believe it's already started in a big way, but we don't see it. Like, I believe those lines will disappear.

It's already weird, like, if you sell a book in Guadalajara to somebody in Georgia, who pays the tax? I mean, where's the tax go? You know, people are asking me to sign contracts for books all the time, can we sell your book in Russia?

I'm like, yeah, and can we have an exclusive? No. Well, why not?

I said, what's it mean anymore? You're not going to send a book to Ukraine or, you know, what does it mean, exclusive? To where?

You can sell a book anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world. Where's the country start and where's the country stop? I mean, in a while it's going to get really weird.

You know, there just won't be any, there'll be borders technically, but there won't be borders economically, or in reality, there won't be any borders. You know, the internet's destroying them. It's very interesting.

They've already done a lot of destruction and people didn't notice, they got used to it. So what's the karma for that? You see, has this whole planet done some kind of karma together?

That in the end we will all be one country? You know, that's kind of sexy, I like that. You know, okay, think about that.

Think about the opposite of where our countries come from. Maybe in your lifetime you will see something special happen, I believe that. Okay, Uncle Phil, let's go home.

Home. ♪ Chanting in Chinese ♪ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

[Говорящий 2] (1:43:36 - 1:43:36)
Amen.