«Дар освобождения», курс 13 «Джорчо: песнь медитации», занятие 9

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 46:52)
We're on verse 87, page 71. And I'm sorry I didn't have time to change. I thought you'd rather have me here than...

The robes take a long time to tie on. They fall down and you have to tie them again. Okay.

I love this verse. This is, I don't know, Phil, this is one of my favorite. I think somehow there should be a choral piece in here somewhere.

I sing the endless praises of each and every being who has ever gone to bliss. I sing on the sound of every wave breaking now on every shore of the oceans of the earth. Sing of the high good qualities of every conquering Buddha.

So, I don't know. I often think about the night my mom died. So she was sick from cancer and we expected her to pass.

I was in a meeting for global hunger at the church at my university and the priest came downstairs and said, come up and talk to me. I'm like, I didn't know what he wanted. And then he told me, I just got a phone call, your mother passed away.

It was very heavy. Then I went home and I was living in a single room. I was the nanny for the minister at the church and I got a room in exchange for watching the kids because I didn't have any money.

The wind was blowing this tree against the window sill and I had the weirdest feeling that I heard my mom talking or something like that, that that was the wind. I think if you've ever been in a very heavy emotional situation, you feel the wind talking or the trees, the sound of the trees is talking about something. And in this verse, you're supposed to reflect on the sound of the ocean.

So I love the sea, I love the ocean. We practiced this morning, right? Many of you were here.

We did a meditation where you think of the song of the sea, the ocean. So my dad loved to go out in boats, deep sea. We'd go out for three days or something.

And there's many sounds, the ocean makes many sounds. It makes little flop noises with little one inch waves. I used to surf in Hawaii, these very dangerous waves on reefs and they make a sound and they shake your house.

We had a house near there, like a half a mile from the beach. And on a big day, the bed would be going like this and you'd wake up and you're like, uh-oh, we got to go out in that. And so the wave, the ocean has many sounds, like crashing sounds and little drip sounds and little lapping sounds.

And in this verse, you're supposed to think about those sounds in your mind, bring a few sounds. There are very gentle wave sounds, repetitive, beautiful sound of the waves breaking. And then you feel the salt air and you feel the droplets of water on you, especially at night.

And if you're sitting on the beach at night, in the dark, in this verse, you're supposed to get those sounds going in your head and then offer them to the Buddhas. It's a very sweet practice. These practices are very healthy for us.

They make us different people. So you can go out into the forest and you can hear the wind moving the leaves of the trees and you're supposed to imagine it's a song and that the Buddhas hear it and it's a song in honor of the Buddhas. So it's a very pleasant practice.

I haven't tried it with traffic sounds yet because I live in a very quiet place, but maybe if you live in Phoenix, you can try to offer the traffic sounds. But the idea is that you offer, you interpret natural sounds around you, like the birds singing, and you say, may the Buddhas hear that as a song of honoring them. And that's the practice at this point.

And remember, it's a part of the prayer of whom? Samantabhadra. The Bodhisattva whose name is Perfect Goodness, who lived in the time of the Buddha.

This whole thing is from that sutra. This section is from that ancient sutra. Verse 88.

I present gifts to every victorious one, perfect flowers, perfect strings of flowers, perfect songs of bells, perfect oils spread upon their bodies, perfect parasols, perfect lamps, perfect incense. These are seven offerings, and these are the traditional offerings of Samantabhadra, of the Bodhisattva named Perfect Goodness. These seven are famous offerings.

The difference between the two kinds of flowers is one is offering single flowers, and one is offering the traditional, what do you call it? Garland of flowers that you see in India to your teacher or to the Buddhas. And at this point, Pabongka Rinpoche reminds us that the highest offering you can make is none of these seven.

It's your kind behavior towards other people, which is proof of your practice. If you are kind to others, considerate of others, polite to others. Somebody gave me a book.

It's called How to Be a Guest and How to Be a Host. It's a very useful book. It's like, it might seem obvious, but in Dharma circles, often we are staying in other people's homes when we're traveling and things like that.

It's a whole little book about... For example, it says, don't give your host a potted plant because they don't want it. If they wanted one, they would buy one.

Then it was like, you can give them cut flowers, but don't come late to dinner and give them cut flowers because the man they're cooking, they don't want to arrange cut flowers into a vase. Bring it half an hour before and put it in a vase yourself. Something like that, things like that.

Just normal, what do you call it? Oftentimes, I'm sad to say, Buddhist people are not as polite or as considerate as uneducated public. It's kind of distressing.

We're supposed to be graceful, grateful, graceful and kind and considerate in just normal, what do you call it? The things your mom taught you. Yeah, etiquette.

Considerate towards other people. You come to their home, you ask, how are you? What's up?

What are you doing? You be polite to them and you engage them in a pleasant way. Sometimes we don't do those things.

We don't show common courtesy to people around us. The highest offering in Buddhism is not money or honor or incense or flowers. It's just to be nice to other people in very normal, kind ways that are polite.

Even if you don't feel like it, because that's pretty much what politeness is about. It's not that you have to feel like it. It's the right thing to do.

If something is the right thing to do, you should do it whether you feel like it or not. You see what I mean? That's a basic principle of good manners.

I would rather grab the whole chocolate cake for myself right now. But good manners require that I cut pieces and offer it to other people and then take my cake. That's just courtesy.

Of course, your instinct is to grab as much as you can, especially if you grew up with four brothers. But we have to restrain ourselves. That restrain is called dulwa vinaya.

It means you restrain your animal impulses or your personal desires and you pay attention to the small needs and desires of people around you. Then slowly it becomes a habit and it becomes your nature. Most children used to be brought up that way, but it's kind of lacking, I think, nowadays.

We have to impose it on ourselves. That's the sweetest offering to your teacher. Some kind of polite behavior, kind behavior, considerate behavior towards others is considered the highest offering you can make.

It pleases the Buddhas that you pay attention to the small needs and hopes of others on a constant basis. All right, that's my Miss Manners lecture. 89.

Gifts I present to every victorious one, perfect silken softness to wear, perfect fragrances, piles of incense powder higher than the Himalayas, perfecting in their arrangement, simple and total perfection. Verse 90. Here comes the Samantabhadra part.

Here comes the practice of this particular bodhisattva. In my mind, I send each of these offerings unsurpassable spread as far as the sky to every enlightened being there is. By the mystical power of my devotion to this practice, I bow and make my gifts to every enlightened being there is.

And then that's the end of which section? Second of the seven, right? Which is what?

Offering, making offerings. That little tiny section starts with prostrations, but the point of it is offerings. All right.

Then we offer the mandala one more time. I'm not going to go through it again. You may notice that it's the second time the mandala is offered.

I'll give you a few highlights from Pabongka Rinpoche's presentation. The Sanskrit word is mandala. It means a disc, a flat disc, and it can mean the world.

As we mentioned, the Spanish word mundo comes from it. The English word mundane comes from it, meaning worldly, the world. So mandala is an old word for the world.

Why I bring it up is because... Do you know what the Tibetans call it? Does anybody know?

Kinkor. Say kinkor. It's really kilkor, which is what I call an irrational mispronunciation.

It came to be pronounced kinkor. Like, how do you pronounce T-R-U-C-K? Truck.

But there's no cha there. Get it? We don't say truck.

We say truck. It should be spelled C-H-R-U-K. Truck.

It's like irrational mispronunciation, but it's what we do. Kinkor is like that. Kil means a circle, like a coil, the way a snake coils is called a kil.

What do you call those water things that go like this and go down into the water? Whirlpool or vortex, that's a kil. But the classical meaning of kil is ningbo.

Ningbo is back there. Ningbo means heart or essence. Heart or essence.

And kor can mean... Sorry, kinkor can mean lempa. Kor can mean lempa, which means to take.

So together they mean kinkor, to take the essence, extract the heart from something. And then as lamas sometimes do, my lama was really good at that. Pabongka Rinpoche says, you figure it out.

He says, this has deep meaning, but I'm not going to tell you. So you can struggle with that. Why is mandala, kinkor, called taking the heart?

And the meaning in Buddhist practice, of course, is of a perfect world where everyone is being polite to each other and considerate. And where, for example, all businesses are run by the principle of the more you give to people, the greater your profits will be. And where all countries, when discussing oil supplies, understand that your country will have more energy if you offer more to others.

If you reserve more for others and give it to them, your country will have more oil. A world that is run by those principles, we call mandala. That's the meaning of a mandala.

And of course they come in beautiful little photos, drawings, and there are all kinds of traditional mandalas. Don't get hung up on that. Think, we gave a talk, it was very weird.

It was to hospital architects of Florida. And I think it was, I don't know, 1,200 or 1,600 hospital architects in the Southeast. So they were all very conservative.

Can I say redneck? Because they're probably not listening. And each one had a desk in front of them.

So imagine 1,600 desks. So the place was like a football field. And I could barely see the person in the back.

They were like this tall. And I gave them the pen talk and all that. Then I asked them a question.

I said, so if America wants to assure their future energy needs, what should Congress do with the pending request of the Chinese government to purchase an American oil company? They said, God bless you, here's the oil company. You see?

That's the proper way to assure that you have enough oil. In this system. In this Buddhist system.

The way to assure your oil supplies is to make sure your neighbors have enough. And then I kind of watched them and I was wondering if they were going to lynch me or shoot me. They were all so happy.

And they were like cheering. It was really supernatural. All these guys were so happy.

And I think they always wanted someone to say that to them. That the way you get more oil is to give more oil to others. And no one ever told them that.

No one ever said it out loud. And it was so beautiful. That's mandala.

A world where people think that's a great idea. Oh, now that's how we can solve our energy supply. Oh yeah, I forgot.

We were competing for oil. How silly. Of course we should share more.

Then we'll have more oil. It's so obvious. Because it's coming from my mind.

They seemed relieved that someone would say it out loud. And it was very beautiful. It was a very moving time down here in Florida.

Okay. So we offer mandala. I'm going to...

some more quotations from the Pabongka Rinpoche. ,GNAL SBYOR DBANG PHYIR BSTAN DU BSGOMS PA BA, ,SNYIN GCIG MTHING NGE BRDZIN LA BYAMS NAS, ,BLAN DAG BU RGYUD NUS TE, So he tells the story of a lama who was named BGOMS PA BA. He's in here somewhere.

Do you know what page? There's three lamas in a drawing. Page 110.

He's the... No, I take it back. Those are three different lamas.

Those were his colleagues. Anyway, BGOMS PA BA. He was deep in meditation.

He was deep into a meditation. He went right into meditation. And so he didn't offer the mandala.

So there's a traditional plate you can buy. And there are three rings that you put on it. And you use rice or barley.

And every Tibetan monk in the monastery has a little bag with their mandala plate and the three rings. And anytime someone gives you something cool, like a coin or a jewel, you throw it in your mandala bag. So if you know old monks, their mandala bag is really cool.

They've got all these cool old rupees in there and old Tibetan coins and somebody's priceless emerald. Probably their old Popeye head that broke off. Stuff like that.

So they're very sweet. They're very personal. And then you wipe it in a certain way to clear the obstacles.

And then you start piling rice on it. And this is an old custom in India. They used to be done on huge plates like this.

And instead of using rice, you used rose petals. And you get big bags of rose petals and then you offer the world, like on a pizza plate, and you throw a pile of rose petals in the middle and you say, that's Mount Meru. And then you pile rose petals around.

You say, that's the Pacific Ocean. There's Guadalajara. There's Mexico City.

There's Bulgaria. And then you get the whole piles of rose petals and you offer it to your teacher. Perfect world.

But in that world, it's understood that in each country, the reason they smell so sweet is they figured out the oil thing already. And you offer that world to your teacher. That's also the traditional payment for a class.

So when Venerable Phil goes, Zazhi, then in Buddhism, in this lineage, the price, the charge for a class is that the student offers the world already made pure. Already people know about the oil thing. So you offer the world filled with people who are quite happy to supply oil to China.

And that's what you pay for the class. That's the payment, traditional payment for the class. Then there's a Tunglak Mandala at the end of class.

That's like, what do you call it? A tip for the waiter? You offer the world one more time at the end of the class.

Tunglak means Thanksgiving, out of Thanksgiving. So this is the traditional charge for a Buddhist class. You may be interested to know that in the monastery, once you are accepted in the monastery, no one ever charges you for anything.

There's no charge for a class. My Lama taught, I think it's 8 or 10,000 hours of classes. Once he got to America, he was already almost 60, and he taught hard for 20, 24 years.

And I never saw him take money. He never took any money. He never charged anyone.

I lived with him for 25 years. I watched. And he refused.

He wouldn't ask for money. That was his custom. And in a Buddhist monastery, in a Tibetan monastery, once you are accepted, I never heard of a teacher charging anybody.

That's just the way it is. My students ask me, can we charge for what? And I said, for business, you can charge.

If you're doing a program for British Airways, or recently we did a program for Verizon or something, okay, you can charge them, because they want to make money from it. And I think in yoga studios, the custom is to charge people. So if they're asking you to do a program there, you should charge.

It's okay to charge them. But for this kind of teaching, it should be free. And then really, in the end, it's the teacher's responsibility to get the money, to rent the beautiful place, and pay for these incredibly expensive books.

And that's an honor for the teacher, and it's something you should do. You should learn to be happily broke for your students. And it's something we should, it's a tradition we should keep up, okay?

And you don't complain about it. You don't whine about it. You don't advertise it.

You just do it transparently. They think the book just, Costco just made it for free, and that's okay. That's the way it should be, okay?

For Dharma, for these teachings. But you're supposed to offer the world. Before you take a teaching, you're supposed to offer the world.

By the way, the offering of a mandala class is also meant to satisfy a requirement in Buddhism that we don't teach without being asked. So we're not allowed to proselytize. We're not allowed to knock on people's door and irritate people, or what do you call it, harass people.

We are required. We're supposed to not teach until someone sincerely asks us. And there are exceptions if you're, if you know a person who might be interested, you're allowed to tell them about a class.

And we should advertise our classes, free classes, we should advertise them so that someone who wants to come will hear about it. That's okay. That's proper.

But to bother people or harass people, we're not allowed. So one of the purposes that we make this offering before class is to confirm that everybody really wants a class. You're supposed to ask me before I teach.

I'm not allowed to teach if you don't ask. That's it. You should know.

,RDOM GI ZHAL NAS GYUR CIG SER, Oh, so Gombawa didn't have time to offer his mandala and his mandala play got dusty. You could see he hadn't used it for a while. And then Dromtonche, he's in here somewhere.

I got to show you Dromtonche because we might not get there. Where is he? Look for a guy with long hair.

What is it? 104. Yeah, that's Dromtonche on page 104.

Principal disciple of Lord Atisha. I put him in here. Why did I put him in here?

Because there's lots of lamas. I thought I would put him... This is a traditional carving.

Nick, why did I put him in here? What's special about Dromtonche? He was a lay person.

In a world of monastics, he was not a monastic. He was a family person. And he was one of the greatest lamas of all time.

So no Tibetan, every Tibetan would agree that Dromtonche was one of the greatest lamas of all time. But he was not a monk. He never became a monk.

He wasn't interested in being a monk. In fact, some strange things happened to him later in his life, which hopefully we'll get to. But I like to put him in because he...

And they made his hair long on purpose in the carving. It's to emphasize that he wasn't a traditional monastic. Okay.

Anyway, Dromtonche walked in on Gombawa and noticed his mandala was dusty. And he said, ,GCOD MANDALA MIN BU BA CI YIN, CI YIN What's with your mandala plate? It's all dusty.

And then the other... Gombawa said, It's a distraction. I'm trying to meditate.

And to do this plate thing and sing the song and all that stuff, it's distracting. I just want to go deep into meditation. Then Dromtonche replied, ,GCOD CI ZER, Who the hell are you?

,GCOD LAS ARTI SHA'I GOM SANG, Who's better at meditating, you or Arti Sha? Okay. Of course Arti Sha was high master because Arti Sha offers a mandala three times a day.

He has time. The greatest meditator in Tibet at this moment has time to offer a mandala three times a day. ,MEL SBYOR PA'I DE NAS GSUNGS, And the yogi, meaning Gombawa, from that day on really made a lot of efforts in offering mandalas.

And, ,RTOG PA DRUNG, DRUNG is the high word for birth. ,RTOG PA means realization. He got high realizations.

High spiritual realizations came from offering the mandala. I think when you guys offer the mandala or me guys offer the mandala, we should use the photo on page, where is that? The moon and the earth rising.

Is it page 76? Yeah? Oh, it's coming up?

Yeah, I like to follow on page 76, okay? So to me, to a Tibetan, you see, the world was flat and disc-shaped and there's four mountains and all this stuff. It's not how we see the world.

We see it like on page 76, I think. When I think of the world, I think of the picture on page 76 as seen by Sandra Bullock from her tether. So I encourage you, when you get to the mandala, personally, I find that picture more moving than a flat thing with four, Mount Meru, it has four sides, sapphire, ruby, emerald, gold, I think.

And when the sun gets close to the sapphire side, it makes the sky blue and things like that. It's nice, but it's not my culture. So you can offer the world as you see it in that photo.

But I think it's important to say that in that world, everyone is offering oil to everybody else. That's the main thing. People understand what makes stuff happen and that leads for a peaceful world.

Okay, in the offering of the mandala, there's a traditional eight precious things, not including Jimi Hendrix on page 78. But if I had to have an angel to sing to, God, do you know this new hippie thing that's going around? It's a poster of Jimi Hendrix and it says, Jimi didn't die, God needed guitar lessons.

But there's precious things here. So there are eight precious things and they have deeper meaning which I won't go into tonight. But the mandala offering, the parts of the mandala offering have deeper meaning.

It's not just you're offering a queen and a general and a goldmine or things like that. They each has a higher meaning in Buddhist practice, but we don't have time to do it tonight. Just for your information, do you know when the first mandala was offered in this world?

Anybody remember? When? Yeah, good, good, good.

That's why there's 50 ACI groups in Israel. Yeah, so Lord Buddha, after he got enlightened, I think it's seven weeks, he sat under the tree at what is now Bodhgaya and he said, I'm not going to teach because I don't think anyone will get it. I'm not going to teach because no one will understand.

And you should understand that that's the difference between us and them. It'd be like trying to teach a dog about a pen. It's very similar.

To try to teach these things to many people. It's like we often talk about the pen and the dog sees it as something to chew on. And for a human to try to explain to a dog how they could write a book with this thing is very similar to how it feels for Buddha to try to explain to us these ideas.

It's almost, the gap is almost too far in an evolutionary way. So Lord Buddha didn't teach for seven weeks, sat under the tree and said, this is just not feasible. They won't understand.

And oftentimes it's human nature that when you really don't understand you get violent or you kick back or you push back to that, you crucify that person, et cetera. So he was like, I'll just leave him alone. And then there was a worldly god named Brahma.

People say Brahma, it's Brahma. His real name is Brahma. And he thought it would be beneficial to the world if the Buddha tried to teach.

He begged Lord Buddha to try to teach. And he offered a wheel. He offered an eight spoke wheel.

That wheel represents the wheel of a chakravartin. What's a chakravartin? A wheel king or a wheel emperor.

So there were the ancient emperors on this planet. According to Buddhism, according to the third chapter of the Abhidharmakosha, there were ancient kings on this planet whose people came from other planets in a wheel-shaped vehicle that had eight spokes. And they were capable of carrying large groups of people.

And they became a military weapon because you could fly in those wheels to other countries and carry large amounts of troops with you. So when Brahma asked Lord Buddha to teach, he offered one of these wheels. So if you're going to do a traditional offering for a teaching, it's a custom.

If you're interested, to do eight piles mandala and drop one in the middle. And that represents the wheel that Lord Buddha was offered to give the first teaching on this planet. Cool.

Then there came a custom in Tibet too. Some schools said you should imagine that Brahma comes and helps you make the offering of the mandala to ask for teachings. And Pabongka attacks those people.

Pabongka Rinpoche attacks those people. He wasn't a wimpy guy. He was quite outspoken.

He got in a lot of trouble in his lifetime. He was heavily criticized for teaching lay people. And he was attacked viciously in his lifetime.

So he made a typical Pabongka Rinpoche statement, which was, we don't need Brahma anymore to help us ask for a teaching because I'm offering the world and the world comes from me. I own the world. I can offer the world.

I don't need someone else to tell me I can offer the world because the world comes from me. DAK DE, say DAK DE. DAK DE means environmental result of my karmic deeds.

I have made the world. I have made Phoenix. I made Phoenix.

People complain to me about the weather in Phoenix. Why did you drag us to Phoenix Geshe Michael? I'm like, chill out.

That's your fault. It's very easy as a Lama. You can always tell people it's their fault.

Just kidding. But the environment around you is being created by how you treat other people. So in a way you own Phoenix or you own Mexico City and you can offer it.

You don't have to ask anybody. Just offer it. Because you created it.

You own it. That's all I'm going to say about the offering and the mandala. Let's go on a little bit.

So we can skip down through the whole offering. Very traditional. Just for the record, verse 102, in that area, there are, what do you call, variant versions in the scriptures.

In the Georgia text, there are different carvings with slightly different versions. So if you see another one, don't freak out at verse 92. 102, sorry.

With that, we have reached tonight's class. Sorry. Now if we stick on schedule, we have one more class tonight, one more class tomorrow morning.

So if you don't mind, I'll push ahead a little bit. We're a little bit behind. I'm going to take you down to verse 106.

Those are the three Buddhas that look like the three monkeys. Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. Again, I saw these guys in the window in Jerusalem.

I tried to buy them, but the guy wanted $500 each. I guess they're ivory, I'm not sure. But anyway, I got it.

Orit went in and distracted him when I took a photo. Thanks for that. Overcome by ignorant liking, overcome by ignorant disliking, and overcome by ignorance itself, I have hurt others in my actions and words and thoughts.

I here confess and admit openly each of these deeds one by one. Then he says an interesting thing in the commentary, and this comes from sutra. This comes from ancient texts.

LAM PO CHE ZHIG YANG SA GCIG SU RUNG BA GAR TSAR BSKYED PA LA CHAGS NAS DER SONG BA NA YANG DU LHUNG BA It's an ancient story about an elephant, very powerful being. You got to appreciate what an elephant was in ancient times. It's like a nuclear bomb.

If you had an elephant in your war, what do you call it, army? Like when Alexander attacked India, he had to stop. He conquered the world with 50,000 men.

But when he got to India, he was beaten back, and it was the elephants. If you have a very powerful elephant, just picture a very powerful elephant. He comes close to a well, traditional Indian well.

These are a small wall, short wall, with a wood thing, and you, what do you call it, crank the bucket up. This is an Indian traditional well, even nowadays. I dug one.

It took several months. It was terrible, all day. It was a terrible, terrible thing.

One guy got killed. It collapsed on one of the people. Anyway, the elephant is eating the grass at the edge of the well.

It's the sweetest, right? Because the water spills there. The elephant is, what do you call it, distracted by the tasty grass.

The closer you get to the wall, the more and more delicious it is, and then you fall in. Even this great powerful creature falls into the well and dies. So this is a very typical Indian story.

There's a book called Hidopadesha. If you ever have time, you should read it. It was the source of Aesop's tales.

It came from India, before it got to Greece. So anyway, he's describing us. We are attracted to something in our life.

It could be food. It could be money. It could be someone else's partner.

But we get, what do you call it, entranced by this thing. And we come closer and closer to doing something wrong to get it. You see?

We come closer and closer. The grass is so tasty. Closer and closer to the edge of what is moral.

And then our appetite gets too strong and we fall in. You see what I mean? So it's a metaphor.

You should always remember it's a sweet metaphor. No, it's a nasty metaphor for our life. You see?

All the negative karmas we make, well, many of them are motivated by thinking we will get something. A partner is a good example. So we fall in love with someone else's partner.

And in our culture that's often, what do you call it, the TVs are often having romantic movies about people who fall in love with other people's partners and finally they run away and live happily ever after. They don't. Okay, obviously.

If you cheat on your partner to get someone else's, if you cheat on your partner and then obviously to get another partner, that partner will cheat on you. Duh! So you have to control your appetite.

That's morality. Of course it would be nice to take any nice looking guy that you see, but that's not, it's going to hurt you. It's interesting if you want to know the definition of bad karma in Buddhism.

Immorality in Buddhism is defined as any action you take which hurts you later. It's not right or wrong. There's no discussion of right or wrong in Buddhism.

There's no moral or immoral in Buddhism. There's actions you take which will cause you pain later. That's a bad deed.

And actions you take which will bring you happiness later, that's a good deed. And that's all the morality there is. No god decided this is good and this is bad.

And no church decided, and no government decided what you can do and what you can't do. There's no such thing in Buddhism. A deed which you take, an action which you take, which will bring you pain later, is immoral.

And an action you take which will bring you happiness later is moral. And that's all. That's good and bad in Buddhism.

So it's very clear. But we get desires. We want things.

And then we go over the line and we fall into the well. So be careful. It's not the way to get things, to take them from others.

This is not the way. It's like oil supplies again, right? Of course it would be nice to go conquer countries like Iraq and take their oil.

Of course that would be convenient, but it doesn't work. If it worked, we could have a discussion about the morality of it, but it doesn't work. You don't get more oil by attacking a country with oil.

You get less oil. Got it? Morality is very simple in Buddhism.

But all of us, me included, I talk a good talk and I also have desires. I eat too much chocolate cake. There's a reason why I brought only half a chocolate cake for the bakes.

Daniel knows, right? There is some missing, right? Most of it.

Half. Not quite half. I like those things too.

So we make mistakes. But in our belief, in Buddhism, we can clear our conscience and we can clean our karmic seed. It's possible.

We have a teaching. Morning after pill. We have such a thing in Buddhism.

It has to be used wisely. But here it is. What's it called?

Yeah, the four powers. So just to be, what do you call it, thorough, I will describe to you the four powers. It's the time.

This is the place. This is the time. And at this point in the scripture, Pabongka Rinpoche teaches the four powers in detail.

And I forgot to give you a break. So let's take a break. I think it's healthy.

When you come back, we'll do the four powers. We'll confess taking a break.

[Говорящий 2] (46:53 - 46:54)
Thank you.

[Говорящий 1] (46:56 - 1:16:57)
All right. We're going to start going through the purification of negative karma. So luckily, you can purify any negative karma.

It doesn't matter what you did. I was involved in an abortion. I heard it was okay when I was a kid.

And then later my Lama hit me on the head and said, you have to purify that. So you can purify anything. Any terrible thing can be purified.

And they block you. Things you did in the past to hurt others, they block you. You can meditate a lot.

You can do yoga. You can serve on the solar commission team. It won't have a good effect unless you erase your...

Rinpoche called them blockers. He used to like to watch football. He said, those are blockers.

And they block you. So if you're having trouble with your practice or you find that you get stuck, you meditate for a couple weeks and then it feels like you can't go higher, then try to think of what you might have done in the past and admit it openly to yourself at least and purify it. There's a system to purify it.

It's very straightforward. And you can just eliminate it. And then suddenly your meditation goes incredible.

It gets very high. Then he gives an example of people in the past. ,GANG ZHIG SNGON PHRAD BAG MED GYUR PA LA, Those who in the past made mistakes.

,GCIG NAS BAG DANG LDAN PAR GYUR DE YANG, But if later they admit those mistakes and correct those mistakes, ,BDAG BAR DRIN DREL LTA BUR NAM ZAD DE, They are more beautiful than the people who never made mistakes. They are more beautiful. The people who made mistakes and admit them and clean them are more beautiful than those who never made mistakes.

It's like that. Then he compares it to a moon which comes out from behind the clouds. Tonight we had that kind of moon over there.

We took a photo, right? And the moon is behind the clouds. And then suddenly it comes out from behind the clouds.

So a person who made a lot of mistakes in the past, if they clean them and admit them to themselves mostly and then purify them, they're more beautiful than people who never made a mistake. Like a moon that comes out from behind clouds. Then he gives some examples from Buddhist scripture.

There was a person who killed 1,999 people because he met a bad guru who told him that was religious. The last person, the guru said if you kill 2,000 people you will become enlightened. Then he finished 1,999.

His teacher taught him to cut the fingers off, first finger off, and put it on a string around his neck. He's running around with 1,999 people's fingers on his neck. But unfortunately, the last victim he chose was Lord Buddha.

So he's like sneaking up on Lord Buddha to kill the last one and then he'll get to enlightenment. Then Lord Buddha's just walking very slowly. This guy's got the knife and he's sneaking up on Lord Buddha.

Every time he gets close, Lord Buddha's just a little bit ahead. Then he starts speeding up. Lord Buddha's not changing.

He's just walking slowly. Then the guy is running full speed after the Buddha who's just walking slowly and he can't catch him. Then finally he just falls down exhausted like me after those yoga classes.

He's like, who are you anyway? What's up? Then the Buddha says, what you're doing is wrong.

You should do the four powers. You can clean the bad karma. And he did.

Very beautiful story. I don't think anyone here killed more than even a few people. We can clean.

Anything you've done, you can clean. Anything ever you've done, you can clean. If you use the four powers.

Then he says, SKAD PA'I DIG PA CI YANG YANG LUS PA'I DIG PA YANG YANG CI Say CI YANG YANG. YANG YANG CI CI YANG YANG YANG YANG CI The first CI YANG YANG means even if it's serious, even if it's heavy, it's light. And the second YANG YANG CI means even if it's light, it's heavy.

Even if it's heavy, it's light. And even if it's light, it's heavy. What's he talking about?

SKAD PA'I DIG PA means bad deeds that people do who understand Buddhism. They can be serious, but they are nothing. And then fools who commit minor bad deeds, those deeds are serious.

Get it? If you know about the four powers, a serious mistake you made can be light. If you don't know about the four powers, then you can do a small thing and it's going to increase.

Karma increases. CI YANG YANG YANG YANG CI Then he makes a big point about karma is a lot like cement. Karma is a lot like cement.

I learned about cement when my teacher decided he needed a sidewalk. He's like, go to the library, Mike. Figure out how to make a sidewalk.

And I did. It's very interesting. I guess some of you know about it, but you pour the cement and then you have to pour water on it.

Every day you pour water on it and keep it wet, the reaction will go on more and the cement gets much harder. So if you keep pouring water on it, it keeps it from drying out and then the inside, the reaction, the chemical reaction is stronger. So you have to pour water on it for like a week, it'll get really strong.

If you pour water on it for two weeks, it gets much stronger and the reaction keeps up. So your karmas are like cement. When you first do something, mistake, it's like wet cement and you can still change it.

You can still make changes. And then if you wait a few weeks, it gets hard. And if you wait, cement continues to harden, I think a year.

It gets harder every day for a year. Then karma is the same. If you wait a year, it will get really hard.

Hard to break, hard to change. So while it's still wet, you have to do something. If you make a mistake, fix it quickly.

Every minute counts. Every hour counts. If you make a mistake.

That's why Atisha rode around with a confession stupa. Because he used to get irritated at his students and then he'd jump off the horse and confess it. You know the story about him, right?

He was from India. He was trying to learn Tibetan to teach the Tibetans. One day he was trying to get a pebble out of his shoe.

Oh, sorry. And he brought this assistant with him from India who was his stupidest, most irritating disciple. And the Tibetans, at first they met this assistant and they said, oh, this is our Atisha's assistant.

They must be an amazing person. And then slowly it became clear that this person is really irritating. And then finally the Tibetans asked Lord Atisha, well, why did you bring this person with you?

And he said, well, that's my patience practice. It's important to find the most irritating person you can and keep them close to you. And it's like weight lifting.

You get stronger. So then later he was walking around Tibet and he stopped. He sat down on the trail and they said, do you have to make a confession?

He said, no, no, no. I have a rock in my shoe. I have a pebble in my shoe.

But he used the word, he was just learning Tibetan, so rather than saying du which means pebble, he said pabong. So pabongka actually means the person from the cave of the boulder. But he said, I have a pabong in my shoe.

Which, he didn't understand that it meant I have a boulder in my shoe. And then all the Tibetans were like, he, he, he, he, he, pabong, pabong. Then he said, maybe it's time to send that student back to India.

Okay. Why did I bring that up? Oh, yeah.

So, don't wait till it's too, don't wait till the karma ripens, okay? When you do a bad deed, I was involved in an abortion when I was in college. Then I, shortly after that I went to the monastery and I spent 25 years there.

And I showed up on the first day and I'm like, and I told my teacher, I did this thing, and he said, you have to clean it. And I said, what's the rush? And he said, this karma is going to get you killed in a car accident or something.

You have to clean it fast. You have to get it out of you. It's like a cancer or something.

You have to cut it out fast before it opens. Before the seed opens, you have to take the seed out of you. So, it's important when you've made a mistake, get the seed out.

There's no reason to hold on to it. Just let it go. Just say, I made a mistake, and take it out.

There's no reason to be proud and say, maybe I didn't make a mistake, or maybe it was okay, or maybe I had a higher motivation. Play it safe. Take it out.

Then you don't have to worry about it. So, here are the four ways to take it out. And then we'll stop for the night.

These are called the four powers. DOP BZHI in Tibetan. CHETRA BALA in Sanskrit, the four powers.

They were not made up by Tibetans. There's a sutra by Lord Buddha called the Four Power Sutra. It would be nice to translate someday.

It's not very long. But in the sutra, Lord Buddha himself teaches the four powers. This is tradition.

This came from Lord Buddha. First power, go back to your roots. What are your roots?

The world is coming from me. Just remember. First power, just sit there on a chair and say, the whole world is coming from me, from seeds in my mind.

Which were planted by how I treated other people in the past. Just remember, that's all. Who you are.

You're a Buddhist. What do you believe? The world is coming from seeds in my mind.

Who put them there? I did. Only I can.

This is our belief. Go back to your foundation. And in fact, the first power is called the foundation.

Second power, even in Pabongka Rinpoche's text, they give the story of the three guys at the bar. So it's very appropriate that we talk about it. This is power number two.

Three guys are at a bar. They all order patron tequila. The bartender places three shot glasses on the top of the bar, takes the patron out the...

It's probably La Sia? La Sia. La Sia.

So he takes the bottle... La Sia? I'll teach you later.

Takes the tequila out and pours three glasses from the same bottle. Then they all, what do you call it? Toast each other.

And they knock back this tequila. And they're sitting there and talking. And then one guy goes, And then he chokes and he falls off the bar stool and he's dead.

And then the other two guys are watching him and then the second guy goes, I don't feel so good. He falls down dead. How does the third guy feel?

That's power number two. That's power number two. I swallowed something bad.

It can kill me. That's power number two. I made a bubu.

I made a bubu. And I got to get this out of me. Quick.

Probably he's asking to throw up. I imagine he calls the hospital really fast and they pump his stomach. You got to get it.

Number two is like, I got to get this. I got to take care of this. I got to get this out of me.

One thing, it is not guilt. There's no word for guilt in Tibetan that I'm aware of, which means it's not. There's no Sanskrit word for guilt.

There's no such thing. They don't have a word for it. There's no feeling about paralysis of having made a mistake.

There's no such word in Buddhism. It's a healthy concern. Intelligent regret.

I have to take care of this problem. It's a kind of responsibility. I take responsibility.

I made a mistake. I was involved in an abortion. I have to clean it.

I have to take it out. It's just very logical and cool and, what do you call it? You take responsibility.

I made a mistake. I have to take this seed out before it opens. It's only logical.

If the pen story is true, I have to take the seed out. If the pen thing is true, I need to take care of this. I can't wait.

I have to take care of it now. That's step number two. Because it doubles every 24 hours.

The power doubles every 24 hours. Take care of it now. Take care of it today.

Go home tonight. Do your four powers. Do it in the car.

Go to the bathroom. Do it before. You can sit.

It's okay. Just close the stall. Go on.

Okay. Step number two. Step number three is the most important of the four powers for removing any karmic seed.

You can remove any mistake in your life, but you must do number three, and that's make a commitment not to do it again. Make a commitment not to do the same thing again. I will not do that thing.

In my case, it was part of the reason I became a monk. I thought, if I become a monk, then it's not possible I'll have this problem again. You see what I mean?

So make some kind of commitment that you won't do that thing again. What do the lamas always say at this point? Yeah, put a time limit on it if the deed is kind of slippery.

Like, can you commit for your whole life not to have another abortion? Yes. That's not so hard.

Can you commit for the rest of your life never to be upset with your partner? No. Can Geshe Michael commit never to be jealous of another Buddhist teacher?

No. It'll probably happen in the next few minutes. I can make a commitment for 60 seconds.

So make a reasonable commitment. Make a reasonable time limit for the kind of action. You can promise you won't yell at your partner for three days if you go away for the weekend and leave your cell phone at home.

You know, like that. Take Skype off your computer. Make a reasonable time limit.

And there's no, what do you call it? There's no embarrassment about it. It would be much worse to over-commit and then commit a new bad karma by lying.

I will never yell at my partner again. That's just asking for trouble. Karmic trouble.

Of course you're going to do it again. But it should be long enough that you have to struggle to control yourself. There has to be a conscious fight.

You make big points when you fight against your desire to do a bad thing again. Even if you break down. Even if you break down.

I won't drink again for three days. I won't drink alcohol for three days. And then you fight for two days.

If you have trouble with alcohol, then you're fighting, fighting, fighting for two days. Fight, fight, fight. Look at the bottle, look at the bottle.

Keep opening the cabinet. Keep pulling out the glass. Close the cabinet.

Put the top back on. Don't pour it. Fight, fight, fight for two days.

And then finally on the third day, you're just, I can't do it anymore. Drink something. The fighting for the two days is extremely powerful good karma.

To struggle against your desires is extremely powerful good karma. So it's worth it. It's okay.

Make yourself a challenging time limit. And then enjoy the good fight. And maybe you will lose.

Maybe it will beat you. But the good fight, the karmas you make in the good fight are worth everything. So put yourself in a situation where it's going to be a challenge.

Not to yell or not to drink. And then fight. And it's a fight.

If you have an addiction, we all have some kind of addictions. We all have different addictions. Some are more acceptable, some are not.

They're all the same. Fight them. And the time you spend in the fight is very powerful good karma.

Even if you fail at the end. And then next time you can fight a little longer until finally you can win. But it takes time.

Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself. You will lose.

Some of these battles you will lose. But you should at least get some good punches in. Don't just go down like a wimp.

Get back up. I'm going to... Okay.

Don't roll over the first time. Second time, okay. All right.

Number three is the most powerful of the four. The commitment not to do that mistake again is the one that clears the karma. That's the main one that clears the karma.

If you don't have time for all four, you don't have the willpower for all four, work on number three. Make a commitment to yourself. I won't do it.

And you will break it a hundred times and you will make that commitment a hundred times. And then one day you will win. But if you don't fight, you'll never win.

All right. Last one, then we'll stop because we have to bless a baby briefly. So don't worry, it's not like a four-hour ceremony.

Okay. We just pour water on her head until she starts crying. Okay, never mind.

Fourth of the four powers, do something to balance the karma. Do something to balance the karma. I asked my Lama, in Buddhism we believe that you kill the child.

I killed a child, a living child. Then I asked my Lama, what should I do? What's the balance?

What action should I do to balance it? He said start a children's group for the community. So we had a community of Buddhists, Mongolian Buddhists.

And he said start a children's group. I had that group for I think over 10 years. And we met and we taught them stuff.

They did plays about the Wheel of Life and stuff like that. They learned the Wheel of Life. They learned Buddhist logic.

The local school joined in with us. We got a grant from NEH. Like that.

So make a commitment to do some action which would balance it. If you've been angry at someone, your partner, over and over, then make a commitment that for one week you'll make a list of the good things about your partner. Something like that.

Balance the karma. As you'll notice, number three is something negative. I won't do it for three days.

Number four is positive. To balance the karma I will do this good thing for a week or for 10 years. Depends on how serious it is.

And you can balance. These are the four powers. If you have all four powers present, there is no negative deed which cannot be destroyed.

It will be destroyed. The karma will be destroyed. So do it before it opens.

Before the concrete gets hard, do something. Do the four powers. Last thing.

This is in the text, so I just want to say it. There's a mantra you can do which will increase the power of the purification. And that's taught in Pabongka Rinpoche's book.

So I'll say it. I'll say it, you repeat after me, and then if you want, we can, maybe Venerable Jigme could hand it out later. Did you ever hand out that other mantra?

The one Samantabhadra? No, let's do both mantras on a page and we'll give it to you tomorrow, okay? In your free time.

Huh? Oh, we blew up our printers on your books. You can write it out and take it to Kinko's.

Okay, you worry about it. Okay, here we go. Say OM Sambara Sambara Vimana Sara Mahajah Vah Hum OM Sambara Sambara Vimana Sara Mahajah Sambara Hum So it's supposed to be that this mantra increases the power of the purification seven times.

700% stronger cleaning power. Okay? So we'll write the mantra out for you.

So that concludes the confession. I asked Osiris this morning at breakfast, I said, what's your next movie? Because how's he going to follow up on such a great movie?

He told me about this movie he has with a lawyer and all this stuff. But then he said, but I'm also working on a short film. And I said, what's it called?

And he said, Rejoice and all. So this is a reference to, just very quickly, my Lama was, the Pope made a decision that all Catholic churches should invite other religions to come and talk at the church. So we got a phone call from the local Catholic church and they said, can your Lama come and give a talk about Buddhism?

So my Lama was very ecumenical and he said, of course, I'd be happy to come. He really liked other religions. He used to watch the Pope on TV and he'd call me and say, look at what he's saying.

One night the Pope was saying, he was in Giants Stadium and he's saying, when you give to the poor, don't give your extra stuff. Give them the good stuff. And Rinpoche's like, listen to this guy.

And he was so excited. He's like, he's so cool. So we went to the church.

It's a big cathedral, huge cathedral. And we're walking down the middle of the aisle with the priest. And Rinpoche's looking at everything and I'm taking notes.

And he's like, Mike, Mike, look at those windows. I said, what's the colors and all? I said, those are saints.

Oh, we can have a Nagarjuna window. We can have a Buddha window. Make a note.

We have to steal this. We got to have these colored windows in our temples. I'm like, okay, I got it, Rinpoche.

Then he's like, then he saw this little room off to the right side and there was a priest going into the door in the back. And then there's this kind of good-looking woman going to the door in the front. And he's like, to the priest, he's like grabbing the priest.

He's like, what's that? What are they doing over there? And the priest said, don't worry, don't worry.

It's no problem. And Rinpoche's like, what do you mean no problem? The priest came in the back, good-looking woman came in the front.

What's going on? He said, no, no, don't worry. There's a wall between them and a screen.

And the woman has to tell the priest what bad thing she did last week. And then what happens? Well, the priest gives her so many Hail Marys.

What's a Hail Mary? Rinpoche, it's a mantra. Oh, mantras?

You make a mistake? Good deal. This is a good church.

I like this church. That's really smart. You guys, you're on the ball.

And then he looks over to the left side. He's like, where's the other one? And the priest is like, what do you mean the other one?

He says, well, you know, where's the other little room? The priest is like, what do you mean no room? You know, where the lady comes in the front and the priest comes in the back.

And she tells him the other stuff. The priest is like, what do you mean the other stuff? He says, well, she has to tell him all the good things she did last week.

It's not like a confessional. It's a rejoicinal. And then the priest is like, that's a good idea.

And I was going to, I felt like I should take notes for the priest. So anyway, Osiris' next movie is called Rejoicinal. It's a beautiful film.

It sounds like a, it's a short film. I like it. So tomorrow we have to cover a rejoicinal.

In Buddhism, you are required to confess your mistakes and purify them. And you are required to give equal time to thinking about all the good stuff you're doing and be happy. You're required to give equal time.

In my experience, all over the world, not just the Judeo-Christian tradition, all over the world, Chinese, communist Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Muslims, everyone has trouble with appreciating the good things they're doing. Everyone in the world has trouble to appreciate the kindness they're showing or the kindnesses they see. We all, what do you call it?

Gravitated. We all, what do you call it? We're all obsessed with the negative things and we don't see the good things that are happening.

So in Buddhism, you're required to give equal time. And it's a skill that we must develop because it's not natural for us. We can take pride, but that's a sick thing.

We can say, I'm the best, I sing the best in Phil's choir. That's pride. That's not appreciation.

You see, that's a sick thing. But to say, I worked hard, I took care of this old lady, or I went to the prison, I didn't get anything out of it and I did a good thing and I'm happy. I'm proud of myself in a good way, a healthy way.

That kind of appreciation of ourselves, we are not able to do it. We have to practice. We have to practice more.

Honest, unprideful appreciation of our goodness. So we'll talk about that tomorrow morning.