«Дар освобождения», курс 13 «Джорчо: песнь медитации», занятие 10

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 1:04:36)
Okay, so we're in the middle of the seven-part practice to prepare for meditation, which is step number five in the six steps of preparing for meditation. And we just finished purification, cleaning out old negative seeds, and we're about to start rejoicing, which is enhancing positive seeds. I had a Christian friend, he came to visit me in retreat one time, and he was asking me about purification.

If you don't have a god like we have, then how do you get rid of your bad deeds? And we're like, well, you just do these four steps. And he says, oh, that's really convenient.

You can just do whatever you want, and the next morning you can do the four steps. He was making fun of me. But this text says, dom-sem-sik-me-na, dok-si-mi-tsang.

It means without dom-sem, you haven't done the four powers. So dom means to, what do you call it? Restrain yourself.

And sem means attitude of restraining yourself. So the four powers don't work unless you have a commitment to try to stop doing that thing. So then it doesn't really become a morning after pill.

It's like you can use it once or twice after you do something wrong, but you can't make a habit of doing that, because then it won't be purified. So there has to be some attempt to control yourself for the future. And as I said yesterday, usually if it's a chronic habit, like I'm thinking of a friend who has an alcohol problem or a drug problem, it's very, very difficult to say you're never going to do it again.

They try, they really try hard, but it's really, really difficult for them. So you can set a time limit, and then those will accumulate. Those three day stopping drinking will accumulate, and then maybe after a year or two you can stop like that.

But the karma of struggling, in our system, the karma of struggling against your bad habits is a very noble and powerful karma. So if you just roll over, if you say, I can't get rid of this bad habit, it's not possible, then the bad karma is really serious. But if you fight it as best as you can, and you spend sleepless nights fighting it, and you feel like a wreck, that's a really good karma.

So you should know that fighting your impulses is a noble and very powerful karma. So don't think you're losing on you. Don't think, oh, I just get beat up every time, I'm not going to try to fight it anymore.

Keep fighting. Even for a second, you're sitting there in front of a big pile of waffles and you're like, I shouldn't really eat this, it's not good for my health. And you're like, okay, I'm going to eat it.

That one moment that you pause is a really heavy good karma. So don't, like pause for two moments, pause for three moments, then suddenly it's five minutes, and then suddenly it's a couple of days. You can do it, like that.

So, what verse are we on? We're on verse 107, and it says, I take joy in all the good done by every living being in all the universe, in the good of all the Buddhas, in the good of the Bodhisattvas, the good of the self-made ones, the good of those still learning, and the good of those whose learning is ended. I'll just review some parts from the original text by Pabongka Rinpoche about rejoicing.

He says, YID RANG GI BYANG CHUB SEMS PAS NYAMS NA YIN PAS RANG RES BLO LA BYUNG ZAD PHAB SKA YANG, DI LEGS PO CHUNG NA TSOGS SOGS PAR ZHIG LA DI LAS LHAG PA MED YID RANG means the practice of being happy about the good things in your life, and the good things you've been doing, and the good things you've seen other people do, and the good things you must have done in the past or you wouldn't be here.

That practice is BYANG CHUB SEMS PAS NYAMS NA. That's a bodhisattva's practice. It's not a normal person's practice.

It's something that bodhisattvas do. YIN PAS, therefore, RANG RES BLO LA BYUNG ZAD PHAB SKA PHAB SKA means difficult to fall, but in colloquial it means, how do you say that? We don't get it.

Normal people don't get it. It's a difficult practice for them. SKA means difficult.

It's not the SKA in Kangyur. That SKA means command. B prefix?

But with a D prefix letter, TAU, it means difficult. So it's the practice of focusing on what's going right in your life, and what you're doing right is very difficult for normal people. Bodhisattvas are better at it.

And it's nice to see it. I like to see my problems, what do you call it? Confirmed in scripture.

Like, okay, so it's not me. It's the Buddhists, and people have trouble appreciating themselves, and I think we all do. So they say it's one of the most difficult practices.

Coffee meditation, right? I call it coffee meditation. Those of you who come to classes a lot, you know what it is, but I'll just repeat, because that's what this course is.

This is the last class of a review course, so I get to repeat anything I want. And so I would work in New York. I would go to work in New York.

It was two hours into New York, and it was two hours back. On a bad day, it might be six hours travel, and we had to work late. Oftentimes I didn't get home until two o'clock, and then I had to get up at six and go back.

But I couldn't stay in the city. I had to stay at the monastery. That's just the rule.

So it was really, really difficult. So I would come home. I had to walk to the bus station.

I didn't have a car for 19 years. I was just wiped out. I'd come home, I'd just be wiped out.

We're not allowed to watch television, and I don't like television, but somehow when you're wiped out, television is very enjoyable. I would hear Rinpoche upstairs watching the news or something, or a baseball game. He watched TV.

I don't know how much he watched it. He had it on. He said it was to learn English.

So his English was very strange. He'd say, we're going to have a double header class today, and we'll hit a home run. His language was all like, who's that catcher?

I forget his name. New York Mets? No, older than that.

Isn't it Carter? Yeah, I guess it was him. Sure, announcer for a long, long time.

I'll think of it. Anyway, he spoke just like him. His English was perfect clone of this guy because he announced the baseball games.

It'll come to me. Anyway, I'd be sitting downstairs, and I'd hear him up there watching the baseball game, and I'd think, oh man, I'd really like to be up there. So then I would make him a tea, Tibetan tea, which is a very difficult thing.

It takes a lot of practice. You use boiled water. Then you take a brick of tea from China, and you break it up, and you throw it in the water.

You add milk and cream and nutmeg and salt and butter. Then if you're going to make a nice cup, you use a plunger. You use a Tibetan tea churn, and you have to sit there and go like this because the butter has to mix in with the water.

Then you churn it like this. Then you pour it back in the pot, and you take a ladle, and you have to aerate it, and you go like this. I got really good at it.

So take that up, knock on his door, as an excuse to see TV. He would say, sho. Sho means come, but it's the word you use for a dog.

It's like, you know, and he says, sho, because that's how he talked to me. Then I came in, and you have to get down on your knees, and you have to offer the tea. You have to look at the ground.

You're not supposed to look at him. Then you have to go like this. Then in Tibet, that means I respect you.

So you have to hold the tea up and go, sho, sho, sho. When you meet a big lama, you're always supposed to be, during the whole conversation, you're supposed to be going, yes, lama, yes, lama, yes, I'll do what you say. If you ever see an old-fashioned lama, this is how you're supposed to approach them.

Then I would give him the tea, and then I would sort of not stand up and sort of get behind his chair and watch TV very quietly. Then he would, he was strange, because he would be watching the TV intently, but he'd be doing his mantras. Then he would, like after two minutes, he'd say, why are you still here?

It's like he could see out of the back of his head. I really think he could. I'd say, oh, lama, I had a rough day at work.

That was rough. It's easy to say 19 years in a corporation, but it was rough. Every day was rough, terrible, horrible, difficult, and thousands of people, and difficult all over the world, not in New York alone.

It was very difficult. Then he'd say, did you, did you, he had a voice thing. He got in a car accident just before I met him, and it crashed part of his voice box.

He talked like Darth Vader. He's like, did you meditate today? Lama, I got up at like 5.30, and I've been gone all day. No, I didn't meditate. He's like, you have to meditate. I'd be, no, no, I'm too tired.

Please, he'd say, go sit on the couch and meditate. Also, he liked Dirty Harry's. I think he liked to talk like that.

He's like, make my day. Then he'd say, get on the couch. The couch was very weird.

Some sponsor gave him a couch. It had gold cloth. The cloth was spun from gold.

The hands were, what do you call, teak? Like these heavy, rare wood. He wouldn't let anybody sit on it at all.

Never. Nobody could sit on his couch. Only one person sat on the couch, Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama came to our house for a day, and he taught, and he sat on the couch. That's the only person that ever sat on the couch. Even Rinpoche didn't sit on the couch.

Then he said, you sit on the couch. Then sometimes they ask you to do something wrong so they can hit you. He has this rosary, and he would whip you with it.

So he's like, sit on the couch. I'm like, no Rinpoche, I'm really comfortable on the floor. He'd say, sit on the couch.

Then if they ask you three times, they hit you anyway. That's a custom. If they have to ask you three times to do something, they hit you.

So I'm like, alright, sit on the couch. Then he's like, so I get ready to, he says, now meditate. So I start to do a lotus or half lotus or something.

He's like, no, don't do it like that. Lay down on the couch. You never ever lay down on lamas, anything.

Because in Tibet, your feet are considered very dirty. And in Thailand and places like that, your feet are considered profane. He's like, put your feet up on the couch.

Then I'm like, oh, he's in a mood tonight. He wants to hit me. Sometimes you get in a mood.

We were like an old married couple. We were together for 19 years in the same house. I knew what he's thinking.

He knows what I'm thinking. Alright Rinpoche, and I lay down on the couch. He's like, start meditating.

I'm like, how can I meditate laying down? He's like, oh yeah, you need coffee. Then we had another monk named Jampa.

You know Jampa. This little, perfect, obedient monk. Tibetan, some Tibetan.

He's still there. He's incredible. He just does anything he's told to do perfectly and kindly.

So he, Jampa, go get him some coffee. So he runs down and makes coffee and runs back up. Rinpoche thought it would taste really good with butter in it.

So he says, drink the coffee. And I'm like, yes, it's wonderful. Then he's like, okay, stop meditating.

Then I'm like, what meditation? He's like, coffee meditation. Then I'm like, what's coffee meditation?

He's like, you know, think of all the good stuff you did today. Just think of all the good stuff you did today. Oh, if you want to think about, if you saw anybody else do good stuff, you can think about that too.

Then you're supposed to lay down and think about all the good stuff you did today. And the coffee keeps you from sleeping for like four hours. I'd suggest mint tea or something.

But I call it coffee meditation. So he taught me this meditation. Supposedly, just before you fall asleep, as you're falling asleep, if you think about all the good karma you did today, it fixes the seed in your mind.

It does something to the seed. The seed becomes more powerful. And somehow it defines the edges of the seeds more clearly, mentally.

A seed is not a physical thing. It's considered demonduchi. Demonduchi means neither physical nor mental.

It's an energy. It's a potential. It's a different class of stuff.

Tibetan scriptures recognize three classes of changing things in the world. One is physical matter. One is mental.

And one is called demonduchi. Demonduchi means, very difficult to define, but it's a potential or an energy that could become something. So, seeds are like that.

They are potentials. And potentials are very slippery things in the mind. And they can slide into the subconscious and stay there for hundreds of lifetimes and not open.

So, you have to coax them up to the top of the, to the edge of your subconscious. And you have to, you do that by reviewing what you did, by thinking about what you did. So, it's a very important process.

If you let it slide, if you let the demonduchi slide in the mind, it will sink down to the bottom of the subconscious and it might stay there for lifetimes. So, you have to coax it up to the surface of the conscious mind. And that clarifies the seed and it makes it ripen.

It makes it ripen within a few weeks or a few months. So, if you don't review the good karmas you've done, they will slide down into the subconscious and they won't ripen for a long time. Eventually, every seed has to ripen.

But it could be lifetimes. That's why people who are very kind, but who lack the ability to take a proper appreciation in their kindness, they don't see results in this life. You don't see them getting wealthy or you don't see them becoming famous or something like that because the seed is, the seed's there but they haven't coaxed it up to the surface of the conscious mind, edge of the conscious mind.

So, you have to do that. Otherwise, the seed will just sit there for a long time like the pharaoh's corn seed. These corn seeds I have that are a thousand years old.

They never got any water. So, they're viable. They can grow.

So, you have to review the good things you've done. You don't have a choice. It's not like a, what do you call it?

It's not like some new age, pep me up thing. It's survival. It's necessary.

You have to do it. It's not like a psychology thing. It's a very practical exercise that you have to do every day, like brushing your teeth or doing your yoga.

You have to do it. You have to. And then if you do it as you fall asleep, it stays up in the subconscious, in the top of the subconscious because then it will stay in your mind as you sleep.

Your mind will mull it over as you sleep. So, we actually, we do the opposite all the time. All the time we review what people have done to hurt us or what people said that upset us.

And then we are massaging those demenduchies. We are pushing all the negative seeds up to the top by thinking about them over and over. And as you fall asleep, it's a very, what do you call it?

Fertile time in the mind. And very vulnerable. They say the mind is very vulnerable to spirits as you fall asleep.

So, that time of day. And you're also just tired. And when you're tired, all your problems are exaggerated.

When you're in retreat, they're exaggerated. When you're alone, they're exaggerated. When it's late at night, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, it's exaggerated.

When you're tired, they get exaggerated. So, just before you sleep is a very difficult time to think about the good things you're doing. It's not a natural time for us.

We tend to reserve that time for our problems and thinking about things we don't like. So, it's a struggle for all of us. And that's why they say it's a bodhisattva practice and bhavka.

Bhavka means it's difficult for normal people to take an honest pride in their goodness, in your own goodness. And we avoid it. Some people avoid it because they think it's prideful to think about the good things they did.

So, the text says, yes, it's true if you take pride. What's pride in Tibetan? SNGA RGYAL SNGA means I.

RGYAL means I'm the king. It's like Muhammad Ali, I'm the best. SNGA RGYAL is...

Unhealthy SNGA RGYAL hurts the karmic seed. Unhealthy pride hurts the karmic seed. How do you know you have healthy pride or unhealthy pride?

There's a healthy SNGA RGYAL in Buddhism. So, how do you know the difference? One will make your mind happy and contented and cheerful and one will make your mind competitive and unhappy and dissatisfied.

The bad pride, it doesn't let you go. It always wants more. It always is restless and it's competitive with others.

It's always thinking I'm better. It's comparing yourself to others all the time. I think today, I mean, it's going to be a very interesting day.

We all have to perform for the Buddhas, for enlightened beings, for our teachers. We have to overcome, first of all, the fear of standing up in front of people and doing something, which is a kind of pride sometimes. I don't want to look stupid because it's vulnerable.

I feel vulnerable to look stupid in front of a group of people. Why? Because you're proud.

You have pride. You'd rather not expose yourself to that risk of forgetting your lines or falling down or farting during the performance. That's who we are.

That's a sign that you have a bad pride. Today, I really encourage you, all of us, and I'm encouraging me too, once in a while I can get into that mood where I'm just offering it to the higher beings. I'm not thinking about myself.

Then I was reflecting last night, maybe in ancient times, cavemen or something, cave ladies, maybe there was a time when people just, before television and before the internet, where they just sang for the joy of singing and nobody cared if anybody was on tune or something. Maybe they just danced for the joy of dancing or it was an offering and they don't think about how they look to other people. They don't think about, the mind is not thinking, how do I look to others?

It's just the mind is into the offering and there's no time to think about how I look to other people. So think about, try to do that today. Forget the front of you.

Tibetans call it mu. Forget your front and how you look to others and cancel that and channel to something higher and say, I'm offering this to you. This is a pure gift and I'm not thinking about how I look to other people.

In the University of Arizona, they did this big study. I looked online because I was curious why the coyotes howl. The retreatants are really good at it, by the way.

They sing to each other. The coyotes go howl and the retreatants go howl and then they start going back and forth. It's really cute to watch.

They're really good at it and I think the coyotes get confused. But they commissioned this study, God knows why, but you paid for it. State University, it's like a million dollars, 10-year study.

What are the coyotes doing when they yell and what is the goal and what kind of communication is going on between them and are there secret signals of danger or are the seasons changing or is Jupiter coming out? They studied and studied and studied and then the final paper is like one page and it says, Why do coyotes howl? And then it says, It's fun.

And there's no other reason. They're not communicating anything to each other. They're just having fun.

Anyway, that's a really expensive page. So be like that. Today be like a coyote.

Don't be so self-conscious. That's also kind of tends to pride. To be worried about how people see you in an offering is kind of not pure.

So just give it up and make a fool out of yourself and we'll all remember for a long time. In the monastery, if you make a fool out of yourself, they change your name. So one night we had a momo party.

It wasn't momo. It's called chapale. Chapale is a flat momo and it's fried.

So it's a dumpling with meat inside and then you flour skin around it and then you flatten it and then you fry it. So in the old days, when Sarah was extremely poor, everyone was really desperately refugees. And me and Rinpoche would come and we would offer chapale to everybody just to make them happy because they were so hungry all the time.

And then in return, if you have a sponsor do a really big thing, then you're supposed to do a little show for them and you get your best debaters. And if it's a lama who's sponsoring the dinner, then you have a, what do you call it, a debate demonstration to demonstrate to the lama that it's a decent monastery to sponsor because look at what good debaters we produce. So they were debating, but they were all thinking about the chapale and you're supposed to go, you know, yinpata, but this guy went, chapale.

And then everybody's roaring. And then in the monastery, when you screw up in front of a lot of people, they'll call you chapale for 20 years. They'll call you chapale for 20 years.

He got called chapale. They won't call you, people come later, they say, what's his real name? Because everybody calls him chapale.

My name is, you want to know my secret names? Rinpoche gave me one, which is shingyipakpa. Shing means tree, pakpa means tree bark, a reference to the complexion of my hands.

So I was shingyipakpa for a long time. And then when I did my pre-geshe debate, I was terrified. And I was debating, but my legs were shaking like jello.

And the word for jello in Tibetan is pikpik. And so I was pikpik. I got changed from shingyipakpa to pikpik.

So if you want to make me feel good. Anyway, don't worry. So we don't have that custom in this group.

So probably people won't remember after a few weeks. Just do it, okay? Just enjoy.

If you make it an offering and you take your mind off yourself, it'll be beautiful, okay? It'll be nice. I'll try also.

Okay, a little bit more about rejoicing. He makes a statement, a beggar rejoicing over a penny that he or she gave is making better karma than a rich person who fails to rejoice over a huge gift that they made, okay? That sounds very proper and almost biblical.

But if you think about it, it has very big implications, right? So if we can master the process of rejoicing in the goodness we've done, then we don't have to be like a saint. You see what I mean?

We could theoretically make the same karma as somebody who's much better than us if we just rejoice or appreciate ourselves, okay? NGON RGYAL PO SEL RGYAL GYIS SANGS RGYAS LA ZHUGS TE RGYAL SRID KYONG BZHIN CHOS BYED CHOG PA'I CHOS NA RJES SU YI RANG DANG, BYANG CHOG DU SEMS KHYAD PAR NGON BA'I TE SUM NANG BA THAR THAR STO DANG DRAN SEMS MED PA'I YI RANG CHE DGOS There was a famous king in ancient India called Prasenajit in Tibetan. It's SEL RGYAL.

He asked Lord Buddha, he said, look, I'm a king. Kings in those days were politicians. He's like the mayor of Mexico City or something.

He asked Lord Buddha, he said, look, I'm a politician and I'm busy. What's a good spiritual practice for me? Because I don't have time to meditate all day.

I'm in a very rough world called politics. Then what's a good practice for me? Buddha said coffee meditation.

You can do that. Kings, politicians, mayors, they can rejoice in goodness of themselves and other people. Of themselves and other people.

He says, THAR THAR STO DANG DRAN SEMS MED PA Without jealousy and without a competitive feeling. Rejoice in your good deeds and rejoice in the good deeds of others. Then he says, he goes into this thing, RANG LA MI DGA' BA ZHIG GI DGE BA BYAS NA Normally, if we see someone we don't like doing something admirable, we don't feel happy, we feel jealous.

Or we, what do you call it? We dis, what's that? We discount it.

Who said that? Good, yeah. We're like, oh, yeah, yeah, he memorized the Heart Sutra and he recited it, but anybody could do that.

It's not a big thing. If we do it, we're like, we tell everybody. He launches into this long discussion of why is it that we refuse to be happy when someone we don't like does something kind or something admirable.

Why is it we have such a problem and we refuse to acknowledge good things done by people we don't like? Then he says, it doesn't cost you anything. You don't even have to tell them they did something good.

You can just admire them mentally. You can say, this person is 99% asshole, but today they did one nice thing. What's that thing?

You're going to do it today, right? A lot, right? It's like, don't make it too obvious.

You're just like, it's like when you want your partner to shut up and you're like, but we're going to do a different one. It's like, okay, like that. There should be a lot of that going on today.

When you're in the audience, I like what Esther said about respecting the performances, like not talking, not jabbering during someone else's thing and watch it and appreciate it and give them a bunch of, what do you want to call it, a high four? Like that. Admire them.

And then it says here, especially if there's someone you don't like, you feel competitive with them or they said something mean to you or in general they're like a nervous, irritating person. If they do something of beauty, it doesn't hurt you and it doesn't cost you anything to say that. Generally they're a really lousy person, but that was beautiful.

Like that. Then maybe slowly you might change your feeling about them. He goes into a thing about, this is where, by the way, where it actually says in the scripture that if you're happy about something good that someone else does, you get 10% of the karma.

You get 10% of the karma. And he's careful to say, they don't lose it. It's not like their karma drops to 90.

It's extra. It's 10% extra karma gets created. And then he says, think about people like the Dalai Lama or something who are doing deeds that we could never do, like extraordinarily kind deeds or high things, keeping a whole viewpoint alive on a planet.

So if we want to collect good karma cheaply, you can just be happy about what they're doing. You can say, he's doing something cool. And it's mental, right?

It's kind of some kind of mental celebration of another person. So I can't dance like Johnny O or I can't dance like, Daniel's pretty good. Aisha's awesome.

Bertha's got something going there. And I will never, if I just enjoy them mentally and I celebrate them and say, they're beautiful, that's really beautiful, then I get 10% free. So that's going to be more than I can make in a day.

So celebrate people who are extraordinary and you make much more karma. He says that. It's nice.

Get in the habit of celebrating what other people do. He calls it a huge good karma producing machine. Two core, those of you who know.

Then he goes into, I'm going to take a break in like five minutes or something. He goes into two kinds of rejoicing. One is rejoicing about things that you've done and the other is rejoicing about the things that you've seen other people do.

So you can, obviously you can divide it into two. Then with regard to the good karma that we've done and being happy about the good karma we've done, he says a very interesting thing. TSE SNGA MA'I DGE BA LA, BYAS PAG TSE MA'I GSHEL BA'I DGOS NAS GYI RANG BA It means, TSE SNGA MA, what's TSE mean?

Like sharing life. Sharing means long life. TSE means life.

SNGA MA means past life. Your past life. BYAS PAG TSE MA, Deduction.

So I think about myself. I did really well in school. Like it was easy for me.

Thinking about grade school. I was the spelling bee champion. They gave us reading assignments and I would finish that in a half hour and then do 10 extra books.

Then I'm healthy. I had a healthy body. When you're young, you take pride in those things.

You say, I'm healthy. I'm smarter than the other kids in the class. You feel some kind of, what do you call it?

Pride. Everybody. About the abilities of their body or their mind or your talents.

But they were from the guy before. All those things were created by someone before you were born. It's not your credit.

You can't take credit for it. It was somebody else. My physical body, the country I was born in, my intellectual abilities, the beautiful family I grew up in, the teachers I had.

I didn't have anything to do with that. I didn't do anything. That was the last life.

He worked like a dog. I'm enjoying the interest payments. It's important to understand that.

Your physical appearance, anything good about who you are, most of that was done by somebody else. There's no reason to take pride in it. It wasn't something you did.

It's something somebody else did. If you had to look like the karma that you've done in this life, oh boy. You see what I mean?

I worry about it a lot. I got to work a little harder. I have to love people more because I don't think I'm catching up with what he or she was doing.

But in this practice, you can take the good things about your life that were created by your last life and you can celebrate what he or she did. You get 10%. That's like a pyramid scheme.

You can say, okay, I'm going to rejoice on stuff that somebody who's almost me did. Then you're stronger and you're healthier and you're smarter and you look better. You see, you can play the game.

I have this friend who doesn't work and they're just on the internet all day playing credit card games. The credit card company will say 50,000 miles if you sign up for a year. They take the card.

They don't use it. Or they buy something on another card and transfer the thing and they don't pay anything. They get miles and they get credits and they get cash.

They're just playing this credit card thing all day. It's kind of dishonest. I mean, it's legal, but it's dishonest.

You can do that with your past life karma. If I have two arms, I must have been really good. I'm happy about that.

Then you can live off his work or her work for a long time. But you have to use jeypaksama. You have to deduce what your past life must have done.

What did my past life do that I was born into the top 0.01% of wealth in the world? What did they do? What did my past life do that I've never seen war in my country?

I've never seen someone attack my country. You see what I mean? Like that.

What did my past life do that I have all these things? Then you can be happy and you can make more good karma. Past life, be happy about what you must have done and then be happy about what you're doing now.

Those are two categories and they're free. He also makes a big deal about the fact that for him, for Pabongka Rinpoche, the miracle of your life is not that you are healthy or you have blue eyes or you were born in a wealthy country or you were strong. That's not the miracle.

For him, it's the miracle that you met the Dharma in this life. You met the teachings in this life. You made it here.

You are one out of about 10 million people. You are one out of 10 million people. So your last life must have been very, very extraordinary person because you have the karma to be interested in these things.

You can go tie up people on the street and bring them here and tie them to the chair, but they'll just fall asleep faster than you guys. No, they just won't be interested. It's just not interesting to them.

They don't understand why you'd want to listen to this stuff instead of watching videos or going out to eat. They don't understand why you'd even want to hear this stuff. You have some kind of seed and it's fragile, by the way.

I have seen, I lived with Rinpoche for 25 years and I watched people come and go. The seed is very, what do you call it, fragile. Sometimes the seed is not very deep and people just honestly lose interest or they get interested in psychology or they get interested in selling cars.

They just lose interest and they lose the, they don't have a deep seed and it wears off. They come for a week or they come for a year or they come for five years. It's not like they reject it.

They just kind of like, I'd rather go out this morning or I'd rather do something else, fool around on my computer or something. They just slowly drift away. They're not evil people and they're not bad people, but the seed wears out.

That was planted by the last person. So we have to be, he says, the thing you should most thank your past life for is the Dharma, that you met the Dharma in this life. They put all those seeds in your mind and then you have to take care of them.

Now it's your job. How do you take care of them? Coffee meditations.

Be aware that you have those seeds and be grateful for them and then they won't wear out. This is a way to perpetuate a good seed and do be aware of it. Don't take it for granted.

I've lived in the Dharma business for 40 years. I've watched hundreds of people come and go and not just in my classes, but in my teacher's classes. The seed is very fragile and you have to reinforce it or you will lose it.

There's a story, right? The minister comes to the king in ancient India and says, there's a problem with the water. The water is poisoned in the whole kingdom.

All the water supplies are poisoned and the king's like, well, what do you mean poisoned? He says, anyone who drinks that water will go crazy. The king's like, well, get some other water.

They're like, no, you don't understand. All the water is infected. The king's like, oh my God.

Then he says, don't worry, I have an idea. He takes a piece of coal and he puts a big X on his forehead, the king. He says, okay, give me the water.

The minister says, what are you doing? He says, I put an X on my forehead. After I drink the water, I'll be crazy, but when I look in the mirror, I'll see the X and I'll remember that I went crazy.

Then he puts a big X on his head and then he drinks the water. You know what happens. He's looking in the mirror, he's like, why?

Why is that big X on my forehead? I don't remember. We're like that.

You will forget the Dharma. It's possible. I've seen many people do that.

They just drift away. It's just not interesting to them anymore. Why did I get up at nine o'clock and go to that class?

I don't imagine why I did that. They're like people with a big X. So you have to reinforce those seeds.

Don't take them for granted. They are impermanent. They are temporary.

If you don't take good care of them, you will forget what the X was for. So be careful with those seeds. How do you take care of them?

Just be happy about them. I don't know what my past life did, but they worked really hard. I was born in 1952.

This was the height of the fighting in Tibet. 1951 to 59. So I always think maybe I was there.

I don't know. I don't have a direct vision of who I was, but I imagine somebody who was really interested in the scriptures. I don't know who.

But you have to take care of those seeds or they will get old and they will disappear and you won't remember why you ever came here. All right. He gets into accounting, meaning there was a Geshe who lived a thousand years ago.

In those days Geshe wasn't a scholastic title. It just meant like teacher, like rabbi or something. There was a Geshe named Ben, Geshe Ben.

You know this story, but I'm repeating because this is the repeat class. He used to keep pebbles in his house. It's like Diamond Mountain.

The only thing at Diamond Mountain that there's lots of is rocks and flies. But there's, right? We should sell the flies or something.

I don't know. We'll figure it out. He had little white pebbles from the stream and he had little black pebbles.

Then he would keep track. He didn't have a six times book. He had pebbles.

Then if he did something nice, he would put a white pebble in his pocket. If he did something bad, he would put a black pebble in his pocket. Then at the end of the day, he'd empty out his pockets and see how many black and how many white.

For us, we have a spiritual journal. You can keep a little journal like that. I've been lazy.

I haven't been keeping my journal very well. When I go overseas, I get lots of change. Like coins.

I keep them. You can't exchange them in the airports. They won't take them.

So I just put them in my backpack. Then I have a little bag. When I see children anywhere, I pull them out and I ask their parents, can I give them some coins?

They say, yeah, okay. Mostly they say yes. Sometimes they run away.

Last night I was at the restaurant with Mercedes and the Morris. There were two nice little black kids with a couple parents. I have two really cool coins from China.

I was like, oh, can I give your kids these coins? They're like, yeah, you can. I gave the kids these coins.

I sat on the other side of the restaurant. Then these two kids came over at the end of the dinner. They've got this little book.

It's got Grandma's face on it. Grandma is a writer. Grandma publishes spiritual journals.

They're like, Grandma said you should have this. I'm like, all right, I understand. It's a blank journal.

They said, Grandma says you should write something in it. I'm like, all right, I understand. It's got a picture of Grandma in it.

I got it here somewhere. You get subtle messages and you get not so subtle messages in your life. Anyway, I guess I better start writing in it.

Anyway, you don't have to carry rocks around. For me, my pants would fall down anyway. You can keep a book.

You can keep a book. Then he says a heavy thing. He says you should do your accounting of your good deeds and bad deeds now because if you don't, then the Lord of Death will do it later for you.

You do it yourself while you're still alive because after you die, it will be done for you. If you don't do it yourself. We have a few more minutes.

He says you can read the stories of great saints, like Gandhi or Hafiz or doesn't matter who, Moses, Bible. It's very fruitful to just celebrate the good things they were able to do. You hear stories about Jesus or you hear stories about holy people.

Then read them. In the monastery, that's about the only entertainment we have. We keep namtar.

We keep spiritual biographies around and if you want to take a break from your philosophy studies, you're allowed to read biographies of saints. We did that in my three-year retreat. We got together.

We tried Monopoly and it was a disaster in the breaks. Then we tried volleyball in the desert with cactus all around. That didn't work out.

Then we ended up just reading each other spiritual biographies of different religions and it was very sweet. It's a very sweet practice. So you can do that.

He suggests that. If you're happy about them, then you get their karma. You get some of their karma.

Again, he says, we call it dro shor duk shor. Say dro shor duk shor. Shor, low tone.

Shor, high tone means to lose a game or to lose a fight. Or shor, or to lose your keys. It's called shor.

But shor, low tone means, shor la means by the way. So you're doing something, but incidentally or by the way, you can do something else. So he says shor.

Dro shor duk shor means whether you're walking around or whether you're sitting in the dentist's office waiting for them to call your name. You have pauses in your life. They're called dro shor duk shor.

So you're sitting in an office waiting for the dentist or you're sitting in the airport waiting for the flight or you're just walking from here to the toilet. Then be observant around you for things to what? Hype for.

Be observant for sweet things going on around you and salute them. And you can make it subtle. You can do this.

It's a tradition to make some kind of physical sign. You can do it mentally, but also make some kind of gesture. It's a tradition.

And that can be a secret gesture. In baseball they have all this. Rinpoche loved it.

He said, look, that guy's doing duk shor and dro shor. And I said, what? He said, look at the coach.

And the coach is like, and the catcher's doing this thing. And he was so happy. He's like, what are they celebrating?

I said, no, it's not like that. It's just should they steal second base or not. But you can do it as you walk around or as you sit.

We believe there's a thing called, you should study. We'll study it in April. Maybe we start in April, Inshallah.

Abhidharmakosha. Deep subject. But there's a thing called nambarik ched mayim besuk.

Very, very difficult concept. Nambarik ched mayim besuk. It's unique to the Abhidharma system.

And you could translate it as a cosmic photograph. They say all your actions of your body are being photographed, are being recorded. Not on, what do you call, video cameras.

But cosmically. And it makes sense, what do you call, scientifically? When you go like this, photons are coming off your hand and they are hitting the atmosphere.

And then they affect the ozone and then they affect the dust in outer space. Things that you, actions that you take, ripples go out physically forever through the universe. And the Abhidharma system recognizes that.

And it's called cosmic photograph. So if you see yourself honoring somebody, like today somebody does a beautiful thing, you can just go, that's cool. And then that acknowledgement, the good karma of that goes on forever.

It's a photograph that's taken in the universe. And it stays forever. It's very beautiful.

When you take vows, you get a special NAM BAR BYED MA YIN PAS SUG Some kind of special photograph. The moment the lama snaps their fingers and you have the vows, there's a very heavy karmic photograph that's taken at that moment. And it stays in the universe forever.

So it's important to do some kind of subtle gesture or something. Just when you see something beautiful or you want to acknowledge someone that they have done kindness, then just kind of, even if it's like somebody in a car or something, you just like that. All right.

I think we'll leave it at that. We'll start, we didn't quite finish the Georgia. We'll have to save some of it for Guadalajara.

And we're on the 5th, so somebody has to remind me in Guadalajara. We got up to the 5th one, which is asking your teacher to teach. And then we'll just wrap up the Georgia in the first day or two in Guadalajara and then we'll go back to the Lam Rim.

We are ready to start. After three years, we are starting the Lam Rim in Guadalajara. You can miss, this is an old lama trick.

You can miss later classes, but you should go to that one. Because that's the beginning of the Lam Rim. We're going to do the most important subject of the Lam Rim, which is how to find a teacher.

It's the protocol for identifying a qualified teacher. And you should know. In our tradition, you need a teacher, you have to have a teacher, and you must know what to look for in a qualified person.

What makes a person qualified? Because it's more serious than getting married. And last thing about that subject.

In this system, how do you find a teacher? You share what you know. And always in the text they say, share what little I know.

Okay, I'm not Dalai Lama, I'm not Nagarjuna, but I've sat in some classes, I can share. But not in a missionary way, not in a proselytizing way, but you can say, somebody's coming to you with financial problems, you say, well maybe you should try helping someone who has a financial problem. Or someone comes to you with a partner problem, and you say, there's lots of people who have partner problems, maybe you make some karma.

It's okay in our culture now to say, well you make some karma. And you don't have to convince them to be a Buddhist, but you can say, you can share what you know in a gentle, happy way, and just share. That karma creates a teacher.

So you don't have to go to India and get diarrhea, or you don't have to go looking for some exotic teacher. You can bring them to you. That's our system.

Just for your knowledge. That's what we're going to talk about in Balahar. You create the karma for a teacher to come to you, and then they have to come.

It's like growing a flower, and then the bees will come. You can't go out and grab bees and force them to come to your house. But you can put flowers out.

You can grow flowers, and then they will come. They can't help themselves. Uncontrollably, they will come to roll around in the flower.

I have, what do you call those? Poppies. Not a lot, okay?

I'm not making a business out of it, but I have a few red poppies, and the bees go crazy. If you grow a poppy, bees will come. Actually, they don't sit there and pick the pollen.

They roll around in it like they're drunk or something. They won't leave for like an hour. I don't know what they're doing in there exactly.

I was looking for a bee-keeping teacher because all the books, the first page of the book says, you can read this book, but find a human being who can help you, locally, because you can't learn it all from a book or from a YouTube video. You need a human being. I didn't know what to do.

Then I was like, Geshe Michael, just do what you say. Just do what you're always talking about. Make one.

Create one. I was like, all right, so I'll dedicate the karma. You can direct karma, okay?

We didn't have time to talk about it, but you can take raw material. They call it in Tibetan, what do you call it? Hammering the silver.

It's called hammering the silver. In Buddhism it's called hammering the silver. Your good deeds all day are raw silver, ingots.

Then at night when you do your coffee meditation, hammer the silver into what you want. They call it making a Buddha image out of an ingot of silver. Like you take a hammer and you hammer it into a Buddha image.

You see? So at night you can take random good deeds you did and hammer the silver into goals that you want. I was hammering silver.

I was like, I need a beekeeping teacher. I don't know how to find one. I'm too shy.

I don't want to go ask somebody. Then yesterday I was waiting for Venerable Phil and I'm out there killing time and I'm looking at the pictures on the wall and this lady comes up and she's like, can I ask you a question? I'm like, you know.

I'm like, I just talked for like five hours. I'm tired. But I didn't say that.

I'm like, you know, sure. Then she says, do you need a beekeeping teacher? I'm like, excuse me?

She's like, I'm a beekeeper. I heard you're interested in bees and I thought maybe you'd need a teacher. I'm like, yeah, okay.

It was funny. She brought this honey. I never met her.

I don't know who she is. I still don't know who she is. I looked her up on the internet.

She's got one picture there. I don't know who she is. She's like, well, you can call me anytime and here's the number.

Also, if you need bees, I'll give you bees. Because I couldn't get bees. Bees are hard to get right now because there's bees problems.

They're hard to buy right now. I couldn't buy any. She's like, if you need bees, I'll give you some bees.

I said, I need 80,000 bees. She says, okay. I can take care of that.

This is weird because that was this week. I need it this week. What I'm trying to say is, I'm not doing karma bragging, although I look like that.

I have a word called karma bragging. What I mean is, the ultimate teaching to find a good teacher is to share what you know with other people. Then you make the karma for a teacher to come into your life without any phone calls and without any trips to India.

You save a lot of trouble. You're just standing there and they come up and say, do you need a beekeeper? That's the way it works.

It works that way anyway, so you might as well, even if you fly to India and you find a teacher, it's only because you shared it with somebody that you find them in India. Just share what you learned. It's your job.

You're supposed to, I'm passing on what I was taught for 25, 30 years. Guess whose job it is now. I get to relax and now you have to pass it on.

Especially this little book. You are welcome to steal it. Copy it for $40.

Give it away to your friends. You're welcome to take it. Use any part of it.

Put it up online. I don't care. I'm even happy.

Jigme, can we put the PDF up online? It's going to kill sales. I said, do it.

Just give it away. Translate it. But it's a wonderful first thing to teach someone.

Somebody shows up at Diamond Mountain to deliver propane and you can say, they say, well, how do I start on this stuff? You can say, I got the book for you. You're welcome to use it and share it with other people.

It's free. Just spread it. But now it's your problem.

Jigme is going to publish it. They will print it, reprint it. If you need copies, talk to her.

All right. Now we have to do a big dedication. Bigger than usual.

[Говорящий 2] (1:04:38 - 1:07:05)
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