«Дар освобождения», курс 15 «Найти учителя, которому можно доверять», занятие 1

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 59:05)
Hi, a couple of years ago, three years ago we started this class. We are trying to cover a famous book that was taught by the teacher of the teacher of the current Dalai Lama. That teacher's name was Pabongka Rinpoche.

He also taught my teacher when my teacher was very young. So my teacher taught us this book. This book is a record of 24 days of teaching in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in 1921, I think.

I think it was 1921. No, must be later, I think. I'll find out.

Yeah, maybe it was 21. Anyway, the teaching, the 21 days of teaching were recorded by hand by the current Dalai Lama's teacher, whose name is Trijang Rinpoche. And then he wrote out his teacher's teaching into an extraordinary book called A Gift of Liberation Thrust into the Palms of Your Hand.

So it's almost like somebody comes up to you and shoves Buddhahood into your hand and said, here, take it. Here's enlightenment. Good luck.

The book is called Shoving Enlightenment into Somebody's Hand. And it's a beautiful name. It's a very unusual name, even in Tibetan.

And my teacher taught us this book. He taught it three times because he had different groups. And I was his attendant for 20 years or 25 years.

So I was able to hear it each time he taught it in different cities. And he finished it in three cities. It took about 20 years.

And I was thinking it would be a shame not to pass on that lineage in my lifetime. So about three years ago, we started a course. I believe it will take about 14 years or 12 or 14 years.

And we're going to go through this book. It's about 800 pages, I think. And it's very, very beautiful.

It's very, very exquisite. I think it's the best writing in the Tibetan language that I've ever read. And the meaning is, so the writing is exquisite.

The composition is exquisite. And the meaning is ultimately exquisite. And it really is like a dummy's guide to enlightenment.

And if you just come and listen, then you kind of are going to get enlightened by accident. And you almost can't avoid it. So I encourage you to come as much as you can.

I never miss the teaching by my mom. I think once I... Sometimes I resent overseas on business, but you should hear the whole thing.

If you can, try to hear the whole thing. There's a blessing to hearing the whole thing. And then you can pass it on to other people.

My dream is that each of you will pass on parts of it that you remember, or the parts that strike you, to other people. So that's my hope, is that each of you will pass it on to other people as much as you can. In the beginning of the book, they say, our Lama taught this for twenty-one days, twenty-four days.

And he made us cry sometimes, and he made us laugh sometimes, and he made us amazed sometimes, and he made us scared sometimes. And it was a very emotional teaching. It was a very beautiful teaching.

So we've reached a part of the teaching. This style of teaching is called Lam Rim. Say Lam.

Rim. Lam Rim. Lam means path, and Rim means the steps to the path.

So this is a very famous genre of Buddhist literature where they teach you from A to Z. It's like, I don't know why, I used to mow the lawn for my teacher. For twenty-five years I mowed the lawn.

So we had to buy a new lawnmower every five years or something. And then I would get the manual, and it would say, do this, and then do this, and then do this. And if you skipped any of the parts, the thing would fall apart.

And the Lam Rim is designed like that. It's like a lawnmower manual. And you just do step one, and then you do step two, and then you do step three, and then you wake up one morning, and you're a Buddha.

And you just have to follow it. You don't have to be smart. You just have to do step one.

When they get to step one, you do step one. And then when they get to step two, you do step two. You don't skip any steps.

And you should learn to do the steps in the proper order. So that's called Lam Rim. This style of book is called Lam Rim.

There are eight famous Lam Rims in Tibet. This was a ninth one. And so he draws from the other eight famous Lam Rims.

So this is, it's not just a Lam Rim, it's a compilation of all the previous Lam Rims, which were created by some of the Dalai Lamas and some of the Panchen Lamas and like that. So we've reached the first major section. We spent a long time on the preparation for Lam Rim and Lam Rim meditation, which is called Djordje, which means, we translate it as meditation song.

So there's a practice, a seven part practice, six plus seven, called Djordje, which is how to prepare for a meditation session. So in Tibet, it's believed, I saw the Olympics. You probably saw them also.

I wasn't in a bar, I was in a restaurant. And I saw some of the Olympics. And where were we?

We were in China. We were in New York, walking down the street. And we walked by all these restaurants and you could see the same skaters dancing down the block.

As you went down the block, you saw this. I don't know what country they were, but they were amazing. And at first they go out and warm up.

And they even video them warming up, which must be kind of nerve wracking because probably you get judged partly on your warm up. The warm up is the time that you're supposed to make the mistakes. But in meditation, there's a warm up.

And there's a way to warm up your mind and your heart for meditation. So we covered that in the last series of teachings in Phoenix. We didn't quite finish it.

But that warm up involves many parts. There are many, many parts. But I think one of the most beautiful parts is the offering, the section on offerings.

And during that warm up, we are encouraged to make some special offerings to our teachers. So the best offering is what? Is your practice.

So every time you're nice to somebody, or every time you do your meditation, or every time you do your yoga, then you are making the best offering you can do. In Buddhism, the highest offering is not considered money, or honor, or food, or cars, or things like that. The highest offering is considered doing what your teacher asked you to do with regards to being kind to other people and improving yourself, becoming a happier person.

It's the best offering to your teacher. So in the meditation song, in the preparation for meditation, we do a special series of offerings. So last time in Phoenix, we had this program.

We thought we would each try to do some kind of a song, or a dance, or a poem, or a drama thing, or some people made a video, some people made a cartoon. And some people played instruments, and everybody did something. So we're going to continue that this week.

You'll see on the schedule, which is in your playbill. Playbill is, I hope everybody got one. Then in the schedule, you'll see, it's called, I think it's called creative work time or something like that.

But creative offering groups. So you'll have a chance to join a group or do your own thing. Venerable Phil, I hope you do some choral stuff.

You have it ready? Okay, all right. But we tried to set aside some time, especially during the week, that we could do some...

If you like to sing, you join the choral thing. If you like to play an instrument, you join that. If you like punk music, talk to me.

Whatever you'd like to do. A lot of people did drama last time. And then on next Sunday, which is a very...

It's one of the six great Buddhist holidays in the year. Next Sunday is called Chodro Duchen, which means the day of miracles. And it's a day, historically, in which Lord Buddha, two and a half thousand years ago, engaged in a competition with some other wise people of miracles, to show miracles.

And guess who won? And so I thought it's especially a good day to do some kind of offering, to offer to our teachers and to the Buddhists. And so next Sunday, a week from this Sunday, is the day of miracles.

And we'll be making these offerings. So I really encourage you. A lot of people came up to me during the last program and said, I never sang in front of a group or I never played rock and roll.

I don't know if you ever played in a band, but we had a good time. And we all did really well. And it was really beautiful.

And we just kind of don't worry that other people are watching, because we just offered to our teachers. And we just offered from our hearts. And I really encourage you to, this week, to as much as you can, come during the creative offering group times.

And then you just see what's going on and you see what looks fun to you. And you can try it. Todd did a beautiful poetry reading, I think.

Just stuff you never thought you would do. And the idea is you don't think about doing it in front of other people. You think that you're offering it to the Buddhists.

The whole energy changes. You're not performing. It's not that people are looking at you.

It's that you are personally making an offering and you don't care what you look like or what you sound like. And it's so liberating and it's so fun and it's so beautiful for a group of people to just do something that people don't do every day. And offer it to invisible angels and saints.

And then you start to get this feeling that they're really there. It's really nice. So this week, when you look on the schedule and you see a creative offering group, I know some of you probably live in Phoenix and you're busy and you have jobs and you're not used to doing this kind of thing.

And I just really encourage you to try. I just encourage you to come once. Like I was in Phil's choral group and the first day it was pretty rough.

But it was really fun. It really opened our hearts. So I hope you'll come.

I hope you get over your... Sometimes it's shyness, sometimes it's pride. So just come and do something with us and we'll have fun.

In Mexico, oh my God. We had a lot of fun. Let's do it.

All right. So we're in the first step of the lam rim, which is how to find a teacher. So the subject of this particular course this week is called How to Find a Teacher You Can Trust.

And in Buddhism, we believe that finding a personal teacher is one of the most important things you can do in your life. In the Bible, in the New Testament, how do I keep this up, Joni? I got it.

In the Bible, there are these... The relationship between Jesus and the disciples is very, very beautiful. It's one of the most important parts of the New Testament.

I had a choice a couple nights ago. I went to see my mom, stepmom in San Diego. She's having some health problems.

And on the way back from China, I stopped in San Diego for a couple of days. And then we had a choice. Should we go see Son of God movie?

Or should we see... There was a movie called The Winter's Tale. And yeah.

Anyway, we ended up seeing Winter's Tale, but it was more about Jesus than the other movie. But if you see movies about Jesus, the whole story of the New Testament is, to me, a lot of it is the interaction between Jesus and his disciples. So the disciples are working out their stuff with Jesus.

Even on the last night, there's this nice Da Vinci painting, or somebody painted it? The Last Supper. Yeah.

And they all look very inspired. And they look like everything's going to go well. But if you read the New Testament, the disciples were having an argument on the night of Jesus's death about who would get to be the boss of the group the week after.

And we respect them as the disciples, as the apostles, as the people who spread the word in the world. But they were arguing about who would be the boss after Jesus got killed. And the relationship between the disciples is very interesting.

The one thing you can tell in the New Testament is they call Jesus Rebi, right? Rebi means rabbi. And they call him teacher.

They don't call him Jesus or Christ. They call him master, teacher. And the whole relationship is about disciples and teacher.

So in Buddhism, we don't go to a church and sit down and listen to a sermon from a priest or like that. We are supposed to find in our lifetime our personal master, our personal spiritual master. We're supposed to devote a big part of our energy to finding the one person in the world who can bring us to enlightenment, who can drag us kicking and screaming to enlightenment.

We're supposed to hook up with this person and it can take many years to find them. So I'm teaching it. I could be that person for some of you, but I think most of you will find your own personal teacher.

You will find them. And the purpose of this part of the teaching is to help you find them. Because that's a big deal in your life.

We don't go to a service and listen to a person who's not our personal teacher. Normally, in Buddhism we seek the person who was sent to this planet to guide us. If you're not sure what that's like, there's a French movie called Angel A.

Did you see that movie? Oh my God, we should see it on Tuesday or something like that. We should watch it.

It's like the best movie ever produced in France. It's like, how do you find your personal spiritual guide? The person that you can connect with and who can guide you for your whole lifetime.

And this is a big part of Buddhism. This is a major part of Buddhism. It's different from other religions.

I think Christianity had it in the beginning and it hasn't been emphasized since then. But in Buddhism, it's still the cornerstone of Buddhist practice. You have to try to find the heart Lama or the root Lama in your life.

And then other Lamas also, spiritual teachers who call to you, who you feel a connection with, that you feel some sweet relationship with them. It's like if any of you ever learned an instrument well, most people who know an instrument well learned it from a master and they spent 10 years with a master. And there's something about learning like guitar or violin or piano.

There's something about having your private teacher for 10 years who guides you or guides you for 20 years. And in Buddhism, that's like an art form. Buddhists are really good at that.

So this part of the book is telling you, is giving you advice on how to find a teacher, that how to find your angel in your life who can guide you. And I can tell you from experience, I mean, I found mine when I was 17 and I saw them yesterday. And 40, I don't know, 44 years later.

And to have that kind of relationship with a teacher is extremely, it's the sweetest thing in your life. It's the most beautiful thing in your life. And it makes your life perfect and whole.

So we're going to go through how to find them, how to behave with them, which is a very important subject in Buddhism. And it's different. It's not like what we grew up with in America.

It's a deeper thing and it's a deeper relationship. And there are ground rules and there are guidelines. There are very strict guidelines about what their qualifications should be.

So we don't just jump into bed with the first teacher, spiritual bed. We don't just grab them and say, okay, I really liked your talk yesterday. We check them out for months or years and we investigate their life and we investigate their teaching.

And then slowly, my Tibetan Lama, I didn't ask him to be my teacher for I think five years. I lived with him for 25 years, but it wasn't until about five years into living with each other that I asked him to be my teacher. So that's a very serious thing and it's a beautiful thing to know.

And I say it's the happiest thing that you can do in your life. I say it's the best thing you can do in your life. So we finished a list.

By the way, this week is cool because we're going to reach the qualifications of a Lama. We'll reach, I think by Monday or Tuesday, Monday or Wednesday, we will reach the section on what kind of good qualities should a Lama have? What should you be looking for in buying this car?

We're trying to buy a car this week for one of my teachers and this has been going on for like two months. And we have a list of what we want. And you should have a list like that for your Lama, for your heart teacher.

You should have a shopping list of features that you want. And I'm not kidding. But in Tibet and in India for two and a half thousand years, there was traditional lists of stuff to look for in a good teacher.

And we're going to go through those lists, okay? Before we get to those lists, he talks about the beauty that comes from having a teacher and having a good relationship with a teacher. And then he talks about the very terrible consequences of taking a teacher too soon and not checking them out and then having trouble with the teacher.

So if you have problems with your teacher, there are some very serious consequences. So they are very adamant that you should check a teacher out before you. So you can go listen to them for many times and listen to what they say, check their behavior, check their students, check what effect they've had on other people.

And then slowly investigate them and then come to commit to them. But after you commit to a Lama, there's no divorce, right? It's a very serious relationship that we believe, Buddhists believe can continue for many lifetimes until you become a Buddha and even after that.

So we believe that there are certain things going on between you and your teacher that are very powerful karma. And we finished the list of beautiful things that can happen if you have an affectionate, respectful relationship with your teacher. We finished that list.

And then we got to the bad news, okay? We're in the middle of the bad news. And I'm sorry for that.

We started it in Guelph. This is a very depressing section called what happens if you mess up with your teacher. What happens if you make that commitment and then you have a problem with your teacher.

So we're in the middle of eight problems that come if you make that commitment and then break it in some way. All right? So it's sort of a depressing topic for a couple of days.

I'm sorry about that. I didn't, just remember I didn't write the book. I'm just teaching it to you.

And I'm going to go word for word to the Tibetan. I would like this to be a record of what I learned for 25 years. And I want to make a record of the meaning of the Tibetan.

Some of it is quite difficult. And I'm afraid that people wouldn't be able to figure it out later after I go to Nirvana or whatever. So I'm going to go word by word.

And I'm sorry if that's a little bit too much for people. But I want to make a record of it, a video record. So we're working on videos and we're really working hard to make an accurate and complete record of this teaching.

So it will take 12 or 14 years. And I'm dwaddling on. My teacher said I'm chewing on the words and that it takes time.

And I'm not going to finish too fast. So we're chewing on the words, all right? We have finished four of the problems that can happen if you commit to a teacher too soon or without checking them out or if you break your relationship, if somehow you disrespect them or you lose affection for them or some kind of...

We call in Tibetan, LHES ZHUGS. LHES ZHUGS means if the relationship gets poisoned in some way. Then there are certain problems, karma.

There are some very serious karmas that are created. So I'm going to be spending like two days going through some very serious karmas that are created if the relationship between you and your teacher gets poisoned in some way. And the purpose of going through that is it's not that you buy me more hot chocolate tomorrow.

It's that you be more careful before you commit to a teacher, okay? That you should really investigate a teacher before you take them, okay? The best thing you can do with your life is to have a teacher, is to have a personal teacher.

And I lived with my Lama for 25 years and it's like nothing in the world. There's nothing like that. There's no meditation.

There's no prayers. There's no mystical experiences like just living with a teacher and serving them. It's the happiest thing in my life for 25 years.

So I want to share it. But if problems come up in that relationship, it's a very serious bad karma. So I'm going to describe eight problems that can come up between a disciple and a teacher.

And then again, the reason for that is that you are more careful in selecting your teacher and deciding whether you are going to take a person as a teacher, okay? We finished four problems. I'm going to just repeat them.

The first problem which we covered already is that if you criticize your teacher, you are criticizing every enlightened being there is in the universe. So we believe that the current Buddha who lived two and a half thousand years ago is just one of millions of Buddhas. Millions of people who already became Buddhas.

They were people like you and me at the beginning and they practiced all this stuff. They did their meditations. They did their yoga.

They did their service of the poor and the sick and studied and they became Buddhas. So there are millions of Buddhas already in the universe. The one we know is just one of them.

And if we criticize our teacher, then we are criticizing them, each one. And criticism of a teacher is defined as mental or verbal. So it's a little tricky.

It's not just to say, I used to go to that guy's classes but now I decided he's creepy or something like that. That's one kind of disrespect. But a deeper one is to begin to think things before you say them.

Maybe you can control your mouth but not your mind. And so really the criticism of a Lama occurs first in the mind. So you have to be very sensitive in what's your mind.

And what should you do if you start to doubt a teacher or you start to see things that you don't like? We're going to talk about it. It's part of the process and we'll talk about it.

It doesn't mean that you blindly do whatever a teacher says. In fact, it's the opposite. If they're doing something improper, you should avoid them.

But how that happens and how we do that, that's a whole subject in itself which we'll get to. Okay, second one. For every moment of anger you feel towards your teacher, you spend an eon in the realms of hell.

And that sounds like some kind of, what do you call? Medieval Christian thing. But Buddhism does believe in hells.

We do believe that after you die, terrible things can happen. We don't believe that after you die you have any right to live like you're living now. Comfortable and alive and well fed.

We believe it's very possible after you die to stay in a place of great torment for thousands or millions of years. We believe that. The mind is not destroyed when you die and then it must go somewhere.

And the seeds, the karmic seeds in your mind that you collect or plant through your relationship with your teacher are the most powerful seeds. So if there are negative ones, they can keep you in a very terrible place for a long time. Number three.

In Buddhism we have open teachings and we have secret teachings. And according to Buddhism, the open teachings, in the open teachings you can become enlightened in, I don't know, 64,000 eons, large eons. Eons are, I don't know, eons are billions of years.

It takes billions of years through normal Buddhist practices of meditation and yoga and service of the sick or the poor, it takes millions of years to become a Buddha. In the secret teachings, if you follow, if you are granted empowerment into the secret teachings, you can become a Buddha in one lifetime. You can shorten the process by billions of times if you follow the secret teachings.

But they are very dependent upon a close relationship with a teacher. So the secret teachings are considered very fast. They call it riding a tiger.

It's like you can go really fast, but if you slip the tiger will eat you. So it can be very dangerous. You have to have a good teacher a highly qualified and confident teacher who can guide you on those things.

It says the third disadvantage of having a problem with your teacher is that even if you practice the secret teachings, rather than reaching some high goal, it will stop you from reaching that goal. You cannot. The fourth problem that we covered is the more effort you put into the high teachings, the secret teachings, the more sweet the relationship has to be with the teacher, the Lama.

And if it gets poisoned or something goes wrong, then the more you practice the secret teachings, the worse the result. They actually backfire and they cause the opposite. You have the opposite effect.

So those are the jolly first four. Disadvantages of disrespecting your teacher or having a problem with that relationship. Now I'm going to start on the new subject, which is the fifth of the eight traditional problems of having a spiritual breakup with your teacher or a loss of faith with your teacher.

And I'm not talking about me. We distinguish in the monastery, we distinguish between your scriptural teacher and your heart teacher. So I'm serving this week as a scripture teacher.

I'm repeating to you what the scriptures say and I'm adding my own experience with my own relationship with my teachers. But I'm not claiming and I don't seek to be your personal teacher. If you want me to, I'm happy to negotiate.

But each person here has to find their heart teacher. And it has to be someone who fits your personality, who fits your dreams, who fits your life. It could be myself, but it probably could very well be some other people that you come to meet.

So I'm not trying to sell Geshe Michael. I would rather you keep a photo of Jimi Hendrix than a photo of Geshe Michael in your house. And I'm not trying to sell myself.

I'm trying to repeat to you the traditional teaching on how to find a good teacher. And then it's your job to take those steps and you go find your teacher. I'm just your, what do you call it?

Informant. I'm just sharing with you the scripture as friends because I also benefit from this process. I become more careful with my own teacher.

I learn as I teach. That's the best way to learn. So I'm happy to share, but I'm not trying to, what do you call it?

A proselytizer. I'm not trying to brainwash you into being a Geshe Michaelist. That's your business.

What you do with it is your business. I'm trying to help you learn the tradition. All right, so here we go.

And I'm going to start with following the Tibetan and you don't know Tibetan maybe and maybe you don't care about the Tibetan and I don't care. I'm making a video record for maybe somebody who will come 100 years from now and I want to make it complete. It's also being translated into other languages.

I was in China this week and they are working hard on translating these things, translating the whole series. It's a nine-year project. So it has to be complete.

I want to make it complete. And then we'll take a break in about, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes. And then we'll have some refreshments and then we'll continue after that.

And my hope for the week is we'll do a lot of meditation together and we'll have a lot of question and answers. So I think it's important, especially with this subject, that you have a chance to grill me or ask me questions about, that seems a little weird to me. Because this is culturally much different from what we grew up with.

We didn't grow up with this. And we should talk it over. We should have some...

You should be able to ask some tough questions about it. And then I'll do the best from my training to let you know what the tradition says. So starting maybe tomorrow, please have some questions in your mind and we'll have time open for questions and answers.

They don't have to be about the subject. I'm very loose about... You're supposed to be listening to the How to Find a Lama You Can Trust, but if you want to ask me a question about your relationship with your wife or something, that's fine with me.

It's kind of a free-for-all. Okay. ,SNA PA YIN DE SNGA MA SKYED PA RNAM SAR DU MI SKYE ZHING, The fifth problem of losing your respect and affection for your teacher is that, ,SNA PA YIN DE SNGA MA SKYED PA RNAM SAR DU MI SKYE ZHING, the good qualities that you haven't developed yet, you will not.

It will block you from gaining spiritual qualities that you haven't developed yet. What are spiritual qualities? I mean the ability to meditate deeply, great compassion for people that you meet, the capacity and joy in serving other people, taking care of them, mystical experiences of all ilk that you can imagine, beautiful experiences, wonderful things.

You will never have them. They will never happen to you. If you take a teacher, if you make the commitment and then you break it in some way, it blocks your progress.

And again, the moral of the story is be careful before you take a teacher. In the tradition, sometimes it takes 12 years to decide to commit to a teacher. You go for 12 years in some traditions of Buddhism.

,SNA PA YIN DE SNGA MA SKYE ZHING, And the qualities which you did have when you started into the relationship will deteriorate. So if you enter a relationship with a teacher too early or if you break it, then even if you had some capacity to meditate before or you had some kindness in your heart, they will be destroyed. They will degenerate because of the damage in the relationship with the new teacher.

So you have to be careful. You not only don't make progress, you lose whatever progress you came into this world with. ,LAM MA LA NYES MED GZHOR NA, NYES MED means to criticize your Lama, either mentally or verbally.

GZHOR NA, he's being polite. He's being charitable. GZHOR means if it slips.

If you slip and criticize your Lama. So he's just saying, of course, no one would ever do that. But if you're having a bad day and you didn't sleep enough and you had a lot of chocolate and coffee, then maybe you're going to slip and say something or think something.

GZHOR NA, he's being charitable. ,TSE DER RTOG PA SA DU SKYE BA'I RGYAS BYED, It blocks you from having new spiritual realizations in this life. It blocks you.

That mistake, karmically, it blocks you. ,SNGAR BSKYED PA RNAMS NYAMS PAR GYUR BA, And everyone has come into this life with some kinds of spiritual inclinations. We believe they came from many lifetimes of practice.

But coming into this life, you were either very kind to other children or you were always thinking about... I mean, for me, when I went to church, my church that I grew up with is a couple of blocks from here. And I still go, every couple of weeks I go.

For me, it's like a mystical experience to walk into this. I used to have all this cool stuff happen to me in this church. I still have it happen.

50 years later, it still happens to me in this church. So we come into this life with certain virtues. We all have some virtues that we come into this life with.

Intelligence, kindness, gentleness, beauty, quick mind. We have those things. But if you make a relationship with a teacher and then you break it or it's poisoned in some way, then the qualities you came into this life with, which you take for granted, you will lose.

You can lose them. You can lose the progress you made before you were born. If you're not careful.

The karma between a student and a disciple and a teacher is the heaviest karma there is. Without it, you cannot really help other people. But with it, you can make terrible mistakes.

No one's going to be perfect, okay? Why? You're the student.

You're supposed to be messing up. That's why you're not a teacher. I messed up with my teacher every day yesterday.

But Nat, it's like two steps forward and one step back. I mean, you got to have a teacher. You're going to mess up with them because you're not perfect, which is why you have a teacher.

But try to make more progress than steps back, okay? You will make mistakes, but try to do more good stuff than bad stuff. Try to net out some profit here, okay?

All right. LOP PA GNOD PO CHOD PAS Then he goes into some funny stories, terrible, funny tragedy stories of Buddhist saints, great Buddhist saints who made bubus with their teachers, okay? And what happened to them.

So this is kind of depressing, but it's also kind of funny. And it's also encouraging to me because if they could make bubus, then my bubus are not so strange, okay? So LOP PA GNOD PO CHOD PAS means, his name is Krishnacharya.

And he was from India. He was a great Buddhist saint. Tantrika, a very high tantrika.

And he has two names, Krishnacharya. Krishna means dark one or black one. It's mispronounced in India nowadays as Krishna.

But it's Krishna. And it means dark-skinned. And then Acharya means master.

And then he also, sometimes you see his name as Krishna Pada. And Pada means foot. Pedestrian comes from that.

Gas pedal comes from that. And we use the word foot after a high teacher's name because we're supposed to bow and touch our head to their feet. So sometimes somebody whose name is Krishna is called feet of Krishna because that's the relationship we have with them.

We touch our head to their feet. So you'll see either name. Lama Jalandharabha, his lama's name was Jalandharabha.

And I think it's a Jalandharabhanda. The throat lock in yoga, in modern yoga, comes from this lama, his name, Jalandhara. So he was a student of Jalandhara.

RGA CHUNG ZAD CHAGS He slightly disobeyed his teacher. Slightly. CHUNG ZAD means slightly.

One day he slightly disobeyed his teacher. And then KUS TE DE LA CHOG MA GRUB And that karma stopped him from reaching enlightenment in this lifetime. He couldn't reach enlightenment in this lifetime because one day he slightly disobeyed his teacher.

I forgot to go find that story for you so I'll try tonight. I don't guarantee I can find it, but usually I can. And I'll go look for it.

We've had a computer project for 26 years. We teach Tibetan refugees to type their classics into computer. We finished about half a million pages.

And we have a search program. So usually I can find it in a couple of minutes, but I'll try tonight. I forgot.

Then he gets into the story of RE CHUNG PA. RE CHUNG PA is a Lama. RE means a cloth.

And it refers to an inexpensive white loincloth that was worn by yogis and meditators. What's the most famous RE PA? Milarepa.

Meaning Mila who wore the white cloth. Milarepa had a student named RE CHUNG PA which means little cloth. And his monk's name, if you want to know, was Dorje Dokpa.

He lived 1085 to 1161. Then he was a student of Milarepa. Milarepa is probably the most famous meditator ever in Tibet.

And his story is very famous. And he wrote a very extensive collection of spiritual poetry. After his retreat years, he started his retreat years when he was 50, which is interesting.

He started his deep retreats when he was 50. This Lama, RE CHUNG PA, didn't start his deep retreats until he was 50. I'm sorry, Milarepa.

And then there's a book called Mille Gurbum which is the 100,000 Songs of Milarepa. And those are his poetry. Some of the most famous poetry in Tibet.

His disciple was named RE CHUNG PA. RGA LEN GSUM CHAGS He disobeyed his Lama three times during his life. PAS And because of that, GUS TE DE LA In that lifetime, CHOG MA GRUB He was unable to reach the highest goal.

He was unable to become enlightened. MA GRUB PAR SKYE BA GSUM LEN DGOS PAR GSUNG He had to take three more lifetimes. It took him three additional lifetimes because of three times that he broke his Lama's request or his Lama's instructions.

And they don't tell you what the three were in the book. So I went and found them for you. And they're kind of, they're tragic, but they're funny.

I was in China with a group of business people from Shanghai and we had dinner together. And I told them these stories and it was fun. We spent like a couple of hours then.

So I went and got these stories for you. And I'm going to tell you the three stories. And the first one, and by the way, I have to combine three or four scriptures.

So parts of the stories are in different scriptures. So I guess the most famous one is that Lekshambha was living out in the, kind of in the countryside with Milarepa and studying. Doing some heavy study with Milarepa.

Meditation and study together. And he was getting bored being out in Camp Verde or wherever it was. And he wanted some, he wanted a little excitement.

He's like getting really bored being out in the boondocks. So he went to Milarepa and said, would it be okay if I went to Phoenix for a couple of days and took a few yoga classes and went to Paradise Cafe? He asked Milarepa, would it be okay if I took a break and just went and saw a movie?

He just wanted to get relaxed a little bit. And he's like, could I excuse myself from class for a few days and go to plaza? And then Milarepa said, no.

Sounds just like my Lama. My Lama, his vocabulary was only one word. No.

And he wouldn't even say no, I don't think so. He'd just say no. And thank God.

Anyway, but Milarepa said no. So of course, Lekshambha went to town. And he got attracted to a girl.

He met a girl and he was kind of attracted to her. And he's a monk, right? And then he'd like to give her a little present to get her attention.

And there was this beggar on the street and Lekshambha was sitting there and thinking, he's a monk, he doesn't have anything to offer to this girl. And then the beggar is like, oh, I understand what you're thinking. I can help you out.

Lekshambha's like, well, how? And the beggar says, I happen to have a small turquoise. So Tibet has turquoise.

And he said, I'll give you this small piece of turquoise and you can give it to the girl and she'll like you. And he's like, yeah, well, thanks. Thank you so much.

And he took the turquoise to the girl and he offered it to the girl. And somehow the girl's mother had died and she, with the turquoise or something, like she hated turquoise. And she was having some noodle soup and Lekshambha said, I have a gift for you and offered her the turquoise.

And the girl got angry and took the soup and dumped it on top of his head. And then he had noodles like this, all over his face and his shoulders. And then he's like, gee, I've tried on jewelry before but I've never worn noodles.

And then all the other monks saw it and he was disgraced. And then his face was burned and he crawled back to Milarepa's monastery and in, what do you call it? Disgrace.

And came back to the monastery and Milarepa was about to give a tantric empowerment. He was about to give an initiation. And they were all gathering and they're all excited and Milarepa's about to give this empowerment.

And Lekshambha didn't say anything about the girl. He's trying to hide the whole thing. And Milarepa's like, okay, what will each person offer for the empowerment?

You have to offer something for the empowerment. And Lekshambha's like, I don't have anything. I don't have anything I can offer.

You know, I don't own anything. I'm sorry, I would like you to make an offering. And Milarepa says, well, don't worry.

I have something you could offer. And he pulls out a turquoise. He pulls out that same turquoise and he hands it to him and he says, you know, you could offer that, can't you?

And then Lekshambha suddenly realizes that Milarepa was the beggar. And he was disguised as the beggar. And he was following him and he knew everything he was doing.

So that was the first occasion on which Lekshambha broke Milarepa's word. And by the way, that story is often told in Buddhist scriptures to students who want to go on trips. You know, they say, I'm going to miss a class because I want to go somewhere.

And then they'll tell them the story of Lekshambha. That's one of the stories. You want the other two?

Yeah, you want the other two. Okay, that's the nice thing about Lamrim is that you'll never forget this story. Every time you want to miss a class, you'll think about noodle soup or something.

The second story, Rejumah was not a slouch. He went to India twice, which was a very dangerous, long trip. And it took a lot of courage.

For anyone to go to India from Tibet, you had to stop in Nepal and adjust your lungs because people would get tuberculosis. They still do. And a lot of the monks in my monastery have tuberculosis because of the lung size, the difference in the lungs.

And so he made two journeys to India to study. And on the way back one time, Milarepa agreed to meet him at a certain mountain pass and guide him home. So they met each other on the mountain pass.

He came back from India and Milarepa was waiting for him. And he said, okay, good job and I'm proud of you. And you went to India and you gained knowledge and you came back.

And he said, let's go home, my son. And they walk home. And then on the way in the mountains they see two yak horns.

They're big. Really big horns. And these are all just like old, disgusting, rotten yak horns.

And Milarepa says to Re Chumba, pick those, bring those with you. We're going to need them. Pick them up.

And then Re Chumba is like grossed out. And he's like, he wants me to carry these things with rotten meat. He picked up one.

And he didn't tell Milarepa. He never took the second one. He picked up one.

And they kept walking. And then in Tibet there's very drastic weather, very sudden storms, sudden dangerous storms. And there was a hailstorm broke out that came down from the mountains.

Very hard hailstorm. Hail is called what in Tibetan? Sera.

So the name of my monastery is Sera. Me, which means the lower part, which is the higher part, but that's a long story. So Sera means hail.

In fact, there's another monastery called Drepung. Two of the three great monasteries in Tibet are called Sera and Drepung. The third is Ganden.

The Ganden was founded by Tsongkhapa. The other two were founded by his disciples. So when we debate the guys from Drepung, of course we say what?

Drepung means pile of rice. So we say Sera is going to encounter Drepung. Hail is going to fall on the pile of rice.

And then they say, yes, but later it always melts and the rice remains. This is like how you're supposed to go into a debate with somebody from Drepung. Anyway, so a big hailstorm came and they're running around.

They don't know what to do. And then Milarepa says, give me that yak horn. He pulls out the yak horn and sets it down on the ground.

And then suddenly Milarepa's inside with a nice little fire. He's like inside the horn. Just suddenly he's inside and he's enjoying a nice little fire and the hail's coming down and just falling off the roof.

And he says, what do you say to Lertungpa? Yeah, you know, you can call him the other one. You shrink your body and get in the other one.

Lertungpa didn't have one. He didn't pick it up. That was the second time he broke his teacher's word.

These are not very serious, right? But it took him a whole lifetime more to reach enlightenment. That's truth.

That's the truth. The third story is not clear. They don't give the details.

But I can tell you the general gist of it is that generally a teacher who has some special spiritual powers or experiences is encouraged not to display them or to talk about them much unless the disciple is very close. So we're not allowed, if something happens to you, in Buddhism, if you have some kind of spiritual experience, we are encouraged not to brag or not to tell people about it openly or very easily. And the tradition says that the reason is that the student, the student, apparently Lertungpa did the same thing.

Milarepa confided in Lertungpa that he had had some peak experience, some kind of peak spiritual experience. And then Lertungpa didn't take it seriously. He didn't, he wasn't amazed enough.

He kind of took it for granted. And that was the most serious mistake he made. His teacher shared something very rare and precious with him and then he didn't respect it enough.

The word pearl before swine always comes in my mind. He was trying to give him something and the student disrespected it and didn't appreciate it. That was his third.

So I don't know if those are the three. There might be more. Those are the only three that I could find.

I believe they must be the three. But maybe in, Lertungpa probably has some biography somewhere. But those are the examples of slightly disrespecting your lama's instructions.

And then the karma of that for Lertungpa was that it took him three more lifetimes to become enlightened because he made he made three mistakes with his teacher. Then I think we'll take a break there. Hello.

Okay, we'll start. Someone asked me, is it okay to come some nights and not other nights? Of course, you're welcome.

Very welcome. Everybody's busy. We all have things to do.

I have to show up every night but you don't have to. So you're quite welcome to come to as many times as you'd like. I'd like to open the floor for any questions you might have about what we did so far.

I think you'll have more questions in the days to come. But if there's anything, I can continue if you like, but if anyone has a... The question doesn't have to be relevant to the topic.

Okay. But you can't ask me about my credit card balance. That's good.

Okay, yeah. Well, do you have a mic? I do.

Hang on one sec, Cecile.

[Говорящий 2] (59:06 - 59:07)
Check, one, two, check.

[Говорящий 1] (59:07 - 59:21)
By the way, Cecile is a fantastic yoga teacher from France. She's going to be giving us a class this week. Okay.

No, that's mean.

[Говорящий 2] (59:22 - 59:38)
So my question is about the four powers. Can, if somebody criticizes this teacher, apply the four powers to cancel the bad deed?

[Говорящий 1] (59:38 - 1:08:04)
Okay. Good. So in Buddhism, we believe that there's a way to disable a negative karmic seed.

So there are practices that you can do which drain the power from a negative karmic seed. And that process is called the four powers. And it was taught by Lord Buddha in a sutra called the Sutra on the Four Powers.

And we still have that sutra. And it's very beautiful. But there's a four-step process for removing the power of a negative karma.

So Cecile's question is, these are very serious karmas. These are some of the... In the secret teachings, these are the most serious karmas, negative karmas.

So is it possible to repair that kind of a mistake or is it possible to fix that kind of a karma? And yes, a hundred percent. You can remove it completely.

And just briefly, the four powers are number one. The first of the four is to understand that things are coming from you. So I had a friend who got in a car accident yesterday or the day before or something and totaled his car and got banged up.

Or let's say you have a problem with another person. Then it's important in Buddhism to understand that the problems you're having are flowing from you. You did something to hurt someone else.

That seed was planted into your mind. It increased every day and then it became a car accident or it became someone at work that you're having trouble with. And so it's important to...

The first step to removing a negative karma is to realize that these things are coming from... Your life is coming from how you treat other people. Just to recognize that is step number one.

Step number two is to have some kind of serious regrets that you made a mistake. And it's not guilt. There's no word in Sanskrit that I'm aware of or Tibetan for guilt.

Guilt paralyzes you. This is called intelligent regret and it means, okay, I screwed up. How can I fix it?

So number two is to acknowledge what you did and not avoid thinking about it. Like, what do you call it? Confront it mentally and then face it and then change the seed.

Get rid of the seed. Okay, I made a mistake. I was young.

I didn't know anything. I did that. And then I can fix it.

But you can't fix it if you don't admit it. We were having a series of talks about addictions in New York and we're going to do it again in LA I think next month. But what struck me was that to admit that you have an addiction is the biggest step.

To face it and to say I am addicted, I cannot control myself around cookies. Or of course you don't have to in this course because it's a religious action to eat a cookie. But in general, just to recognize what you did is very healthy and makes you happy.

And so that's the second step. You know, I did criticize my teacher mentally. Okay, I thought something or I said something and I'll clean it up.

That's the second one. The third one, the third step and most important one is to make a commitment not to do it. So I've been reading about addiction and I've been reading a lot about the AAA, not AA, the AA program, not the car program.

But what struck me was very interesting. Somewhere in the literature it says that alcoholism, for example, is incurable, cannot be cured. You cannot fool around with it.

A person who has understood that they are addicted just simply cannot take it again in their life and they have to make that commitment and they have to decide. And there's no halfway. You can't say, I'll stop at two drinks or something like that.

In Buddhism, step number three is to make a commitment that I will avoid that action for the rest of my life. I will not do that kind of thing again. In the case of your teacher or having doubts about your teacher or criticizing your teacher, you can't make a promise like that for your life because 10 minutes later you're going to break it and then you made a new karma.

So it's a tradition in Tibet to make a commitment for a certain period of time. I'll be very super careful for three days not to have that particular doubt or that kind of criticism set a time limit. And then the fourth step is to do some kind of makeup activity.

For me, I will pull out Julia Child. Okay, why? My Lama likes French dinners and I will find a recipe that I haven't tried yet and I'll invite Lama to come and I will make some difficult four-hour, five-hour dinner.

I mean, just to make the croissant. One of your friends told me to go to the croissant store. They had a new cookbook.

I translated it with Google Translate and I made croissant for my teacher. Oh my God, that's like six hours. And we call it a makeup activity.

So do something to kind of balance the karma. And you can change any karma there is. Any mistake you ever made in your life.

We've all done terrible things. We've all made huge mistakes in our lives and any mistake you've made, you can fix it by using those four steps. So yes, it's very famous in the scriptures when they tell the stories about people who made mistakes with their Lamas.

Oftentimes it will end up that they fixed their karma and then they got enlightened in ten minutes. And it's called, they say the light of the moon is more beautiful when the moon comes out from behind a cloud. If the moon's been up in a clear sky all night, you don't notice it.

But if it's a cloudy night and then suddenly the moon slides out from behind a cloud and there's this glorious point, then they say people who screwed up, if they straighten things out, they're more beautiful than people who never screwed up. They're more amazing and they're more attractive than people who never made a mistake. So criticize your Lama and then fix it.

And you'll be more beautiful. And nobody's perfect. We're not perfect.

Nobody's perfect or we wouldn't be here. We would be some other realm. And so we will make mistakes with our teachers and then we have to fix them.

Happily, just fix them. You're in a bad mood and you make a mistake and then the next day you'll be in a good mood and fix it. And that's the process.

To make mistakes and fix them is the process. And that's how you get enlightened. So we will make mistakes but we just fix it.

You just keep coming back and trying again. And it takes years. And then finally, it goes well.

Yes?

[Говорящий 2] (1:08:11 - 1:08:24)
If the seed is already ripening, like in the case of a car accident, and then there's a lot of other things that are going to come out of that seed, is it still possible to work on that seed or is it already in the process?

[Говорящий 1] (1:08:26 - 1:10:50)
Can you clean a karmic seed which is already starting to open? In the scriptures, it says it's a lot wiser to deal with them before they start to open. Okay, so if you made a mistake, I was involved, my most famous bad deed in my life, I was involved in an abortion before I knew it was wrong.

And then, you know, I knew about it. I mean, my teacher, I told my teacher one day and he freaked out. He said, that's a very serious karma.

And I said, no, no, my high school teacher said it was fine. And they're like, no, no. And then we talked about it and I decided he was right.

So I cleaned it before the seed opened. I worked on it for a long time and I cleaned it. So if you know you've made a mistake, you should work on it right away before you get signs that it's opening.

But oftentimes you don't know that you made a mistake and the karma starts to open. So karma is like cement and the closer you get to the day of the opening, the harder it gets and the harder it is to change. So it's possible to change a karma early.

It's possible to change a karma late. As it's starting to open, it's possible to change it. But you have to act quickly and you have to act decisively and you have to make big promises and keep them.

And then it's possible. Like after you get the mammogram results and they look a little like something might happen, it's not too late to do something. But you have to act quickly and you have to act very powerfully.

So it's almost never too late. I mean any karma can be adjusted. If you're skillful, if you've had a lot of practice, you can adjust to karma within a day.

But you have to act decisively and you have to act strongly. When you see it's dark, when the doctor says, or you call me tomorrow, then you got to work really hard. It's possible, but it's much harder.

It's a lot easier to remove the karma long before you get any sign that it's opening. One more question maybe. Mark?

[Говорящий 2] (1:10:50 - 1:10:54)
What's the difference between deceptive reality and meditation?

[Говорящий 1] (1:10:55 - 1:39:42)
Okay, good. He said, what's the difference between deceptive reality and meditation? So in Buddhism we recognize two levels of reality.

One is called deceptive and one is called ultimate. What deceptive means is that it's a form of reality which tends to trick you. Deceptive means you can take it the wrong way.

And I'll give an example. I don't know why. The same example pops into my head.

It's just coming home from work and you're tired and you've had not a great day and you're opening the door and all you want is to have a good dinner and a quiet evening and to go to bed. I worked in a corporation for 19 years. I know about these days.

All you want to do is just have a quiet dinner and maybe watch a little TV in a very mindless way and then get to bed. And you've decided you'll meditate next week. And you walk in and you open the door and your partner attacks you.

They just attack you. You didn't do anything. You just got home.

You just walked home. You didn't do anything. And then there's this, what do you call it?

Indignation rises in your heart. I don't know about you, but for me it's a physical sensation in my chest. I feel the rising of some kind of blockage in my heart or some kind of anger, physical feeling rises in my heart.

And I'm like, why are they doing this? I'm tired. Can't they see I'm tired?

Don't they know I worked all day? Don't they see I'm hungry? Don't they see I want to just veg out tonight?

What's wrong with them? Anyone could figure it out. I've been there for 12 hours.

I just got home. Why are they saying these things to me? You see what I mean?

This thing rises in you. Why? Because you believe that they are coming from themselves.

You believe that they have decided to say something to you. And then you feel anger or indignant that they would say that. In Buddhism, we're supposed to walk in the door and if the person starts yelling at us or saying inappropriate things, then we're supposed to think, oh, last week I criticized my friend and I planted a seed and that's where this is coming from.

And then you just kind of chill out. Your heart calms down and it's not going to go well. It's not going to change it.

They're still going to yell at you, but at least you're not going to make some new karma. Then you're going to say, okay, all right, we'll talk about it. Let's talk over dinner.

Just kind of try to chill them out. But an untrained person, when they walk in the kitchen, they feel viscerally that this person has decided to attack them. And they feel hurt and they feel angry.

A trained Buddhist realizes that the person is coming from them. Deception means there's a discrepancy between the appearance and the reality of a thing. That's the meaning of deceptive.

It looks like they decided to yell at you, but that's not true. And that's the sense of illusory, of illusion. That's the meaning of illusion in Buddhism.

It's not some pie in the sky, mystical blah, blah. It's that illusion means it looks like the partner decided to criticize you, but what's really happening is that a seed that you planted last week is opening. There's a discrepancy between how it looks and how it is.

And all reality is that way. All the reality we live in, all the reality around us is deceptive in that same way. It's constantly giving us wrong messages and we're constantly taking it the wrong way.

On very rare occasions, after much practice and study, a person can reach a place where they can understand that that's not the way it is. The husband can be in their face criticizing them and during the whole 10 minutes that they are ranting, this well-trained Buddhist can focus on the fact that this is a seed opening in their own mind that they planted there last week. So that's no longer deceptive.

Why? That what you see matches what you know. And there's no discrepancy between what appears to be and what is, you see?

And that's getting close to ultimate reality. Mark's question is, what's the relationship between deceptive reality and meditation? Going into meditation, learning meditation, developing a daily habit of meditation, gaining a life skill, a lifelong skill in the ability to meditate is mostly occurring in deceptive reality.

The way we perceive ourselves, the way we perceive our own thoughts, we are constantly misinterpreting who we are and where our thoughts are coming from. At some point in your training, you understand that all things are coming from seeds in your mind, including meditation. So the degree of peace in your mind, the degree of insight, the degree of wisdom in your heart while you're in deep meditation, you see that it's flowing from your morality, from how you treat other people.

The more ethical you are, the deeper your meditations will be. The karmic cause of deep meditation is to be moral, is to not hurt other people. And then at some point you recognize that and you start to get excited because you're like, oh, if I stop yelling at my aunt or getting irritated with my aunt, then my meditation will go better next week and I'll go deeper.

And then you're getting into ultimate reality because you're recognizing the real causes and you're not being fooled anymore. And then at some point you see ultimate, ultimate reality and that's a different thing. That's the pure absence of anything that is not coming from your seeds.

Then that meditation is extremely powerful and that one can get you enlightened very fast. So short answer, most people are living inside an illusion because they believe that people and events are happening to them from the outside and they're not flowing from what they did to others last week. And as you are trained more and more, as you meditate more and more, you begin to stop that illusion and you start to realize that everything's flowing from how you treated people last week.

And in that meditation becomes less deceptive and more correct. But they always say in the beginning you can't help yourself. If you're having a problem with another person, you can avoid them.

That's a deceptive reality solution because you're not changing the seeds that created them. You're just avoiding them. And then later you should learn to change the seeds and then that will change the person who's giving you trouble.

But to change those seeds you got to get some peace and you got to get some space away from them. So deceptive solutions to life are desirable in the beginning. It's okay to try to avoid a person who's giving you trouble until you're strong enough to change them by changing your own seeds.

So it's okay to do lower solutions for a while in meditation also. Like change your seat or change your posture or change your breathing. These are lower solutions.

Higher solution is to be nice to people and your meditation will go deeper. But to get there you have to do the lower ones first. You got to find a good seat and you got to breathe properly and not...

Good? It's a cool question. It's a very sexy question.

All right, let's do a few more stories and then we have about 20 minutes I think. We'll do questions every night so if you have some questions for tomorrow bring them, okay? And they don't have to be about what we're talking about, okay?

I like questions. It's a tradition in Buddhism to question and to challenge a teacher and a teaching. This is very much a Buddhist tradition so we'll do it.

We're on LUN. You got it? LUN LOB PA'I RIG NGAN ZHIG LA One time there was a teacher, a spiritual teacher.

RIG NGAN means they were of a lower social class or lower social standing. They were poor and ill-mannered. I don't know.

ZHIG LA BLO MA RIG SANG ZHIG YOD CING But the disciple was of a very high social standing. They were wealthy or something like that. BLO MA DE NAM GAR BUR NUS PAS The student had already gained the ability to fly in the sky.

NYIN GCIG LA MED THEG KYI NAM GAR BUR TE Then one day he he was flying around his lama. NAM GAR BUR TE In front of his lama he was flying. KHO RANG GI LAMA LA'ANG DON DANG MED And he got pretty high up in the air.

And he was looking down at his lama and it suddenly occurred to him, I'm superior to my teacher. I can fly, he can't. Then what happened?

Yeah, he fell down. Okay. SANGS PA'I The minute he thought, DE MA THAG means in the next moment.

NUS PA NYAM He lost the ability to fly and he fell down and broke his leg. You know, like this. Just the one, they're talking about minor, you know, what do you call that when a thought just kind of flits through your mind?

It's a passing thought. He wasn't focusing on I'm superior to my teacher. It just kind of crossed his mind.

It crossed his mind, right? That he could fly and his teacher couldn't and then he fell. I guess there's some big moral analogy there.

Okay. All right. Then the next example is an ancient Indian master named Naropa.

Okay. Which is dear to our hearts. Why?

For example, we do Niguma Yoga often. We teach it in DCI Tours. We teach, last year 10,000 people came to DCI events.

Everyone who came to the retreats was required to do Yoga, Niguma Yoga. So, there are thousands of people doing. Niguma is a woman who lived in India a thousand years ago and she was a great yoga teacher.

Her spiritual partner was named Naropa. Okay. And he was a great yoga teacher and he was a great monk, a very famous monk.

The most famous monk maybe? Abbot of Nalanda Monastery. Highest position in India.

he, this is a story about Naropa. We study Naropa, we study his teachings extensively in our curriculum. PEN CHEN NAROPA NARO PA'I LAM MED DKA' BYAS NAS He didn't contradict his Lama's wishes.

He didn't disobey his Lama. He forgot his Lama's instruction. It's he slipped his mind.

Like he wasn't disobeying his Lama. He just got excited one day and he forgot what the Lama had told him not to do. So, this is even getting more subtle and scary.

JNE So, the story is that his, who was his teacher? Tilopa, okay. This is a great yoga, great yogi and a great master.

Tilopa told Naropa one day, for the next year, the time period is not precise, but for the next few months or something, do not get into a debate with a non-Buddhist. Don't do it. I'm just telling you.

Don't do it. Then Naropa was a very, very great debater. In fact, he was one of, he became the abbot of Nalenda Monastery.

Nalenda is in northeastern India. And it was one of the greatest seats of, it is the greatest seat of Buddhist learning ever in history. It was the greatest monastery in history.

You can still see it, the ruins of it. You can still go there and see it. And thousands of monks have studied there.

We were just studying in China. A master from China went and studied there and came back and translated the scriptures into Chinese. The whole scriptures in a tower in a city called Shan, the tower is still there.

But Nalenda was known throughout the world. I mean, people came from China to study their Buddhism. And there was a tradition there.

There were four gates to the monastery. And there was a tradition that the four greatest thinkers of the monastery should guard the gates. Each thinker should sit on a chair at the gate all day.

From morning to night, the gate should never be open unless one of the four greatest thinkers in the monastery was sitting there because there was a tradition that if a non-Buddhist thinker came to the gate and challenged the gatekeeper, if he beat the gatekeeper, every monk in Nalenda had to become a, had to follow the other religion, had to convert to the other religion. So these are big stakes. These are heavy stakes.

These are very serious. And it was a tradition. If you lost the debate with any other philosophy, the whole monastery had to switch to that philosophy.

It was a tradition. And so obviously you put your best guys at the gate. So guess who was at the gate?

Yeah, Naropa was assigned to the gate. And then some non-Buddhist master showed up and started to challenge him. Then what happened?

He forgot what Tilopa told him because he's always excited. I'm going to protect the monastery. And this guy attacked him philosophically.

And he got into the debate. And Naropa was a fierce debater, unbeatable debater. And he attacked him.

And Naropa started to give answers and then he started to falter and he started to fail. And he realized he was going to lose the debate. And he would ruin everyone's life.

And then he... Then he... What happened?

Then he remembered. Oh, Tilopa told me, don't debate anybody for a couple months. Then he went into this thing.

I was doing it the other day. What was that? We were in Shanghai.

And they put me up in the... They put us up in the Hilton in the penthouse, all glass. And then it started moving.

The hotel was moving. I was meditating and something was going on and I could feel the building going like this. And then I was like, if you're a Buddhist, this is a cool thing.

If you have a teacher, then you're like, come now. Come now. Be with me now.

If I die, I want you in my mind. And I'm like... So he's like, Tilopa, come now.

I need you now. Then Tilopa came into his heart. And he was channeling Tilopa.

He didn't even know what he was saying. He was just like, his mouth was moving and answering the questions. But perfect.

All the answers were coming. Perfect. And Tilopa saved him.

But he forgot to do what his teacher asked him to do. He didn't disagree and he didn't criticize his Lama. He forgot.

And because of that, KU TSE DER MU THEG PA DANG TSOS PA means with a non-Buddhist master he debated, engaged in a debate. LAM MED KA BYAS NAS means he forgot the instructions his Lama had given him. KU TSE DER CHOG MA GRUB Because of that, he was unable to achieve enlightenment in that life.

BAR DOR TZANG RGYAS DGOS BYUNG BA It became necessary for him to become enlightened in the BAR DO Okay, BAR DO in the spirit world after death and before rebirth. He got enlightened in the BAR DO. Which is possible.

Difficult but possible. And he had to do that. The wording here is DGOS BYUNG BA means he had to do that.

He didn't have a choice because he forgot. Just for a few minutes he forgot what his teacher had asked him to do. All right.

We got about 10 more minutes, okay? I'll tell you one more depressing story. BYAMS PA'I RANG GI TSE DER LA CHOG GRUB PAR LUNG BSTAN PA LIS YUL GYI DGE TSUL There were two DGE TSULs, what's a DGE TSUL?

Novice monk. There were two novice monks from a place called LIS YUL. Okay, LIS YUL is Koh Tan.

And Koh Tan is an ancient kingdom. It's a little bit, it's between Kashmir and Tibet. Okay, it was an ancient kingdom.

We believe it was between Kashmir and Tibet. And LUNG BSTAN PA is a beautiful word. LUNG BSTAN PA Up there, can you find it there?

LUNG BSTAN PA means foretold. It was foretold by whom? BYAMS PA'I RANG Who's that?

Manjushri. Manjushri foretold that these two novices TSE DER LA CHOG GRUB they would get enlightened in that lifetime. Manjushri told them, you guys are on a track.

You're going to get enlightened in this lifetime. CHU RGYAL SONG BRTZEN LA LOG LTAR BSKYED Then there were famous kings in early Tibet called CHU RGYAL. What's CHU RGYAL?

Dharma kings, okay? Dharma Raja. They were Dharma kings.

We believe they were angels. It's like if Obama was an angel or something like that. We believe that those kings were divine beings and that they came to this world to help start the tradition which you are part of as of tonight.

Now you are part of that lineage. Maybe you just came here for some cookies but you ended up becoming a part of this. Now you are officially part of this lineage by having been here tonight.

So in this lineage, we believe that those early kings were Buddhas. But they LOG LTAR BSKYED. What's LOG LTAR?

Yeah, they got some kind of doubts about this king or they disrespected the king. They said, he's not a Buddha. Look, he's just a normal guy.

Okay, LOG LTAR BSKYED. THET TZAM SOS And they got doubts in their minds about him. CHOG KYI NGU DRUG DRUG RGYUD TSAP DU Rather than achieving enlightenment in their life, RANG YUL LA LAS PA They went back to their country, Khotan, to their little, what do you call it, kingdom.

SER BSKYAL PA GCIG GI NGU DRUG LAS The only NGU DRUG, What's a NGU DRUG? Siddha. Siddha.

The only spiritual breakthrough they had was SER BSKYAL PA GCIG. What's SER? Do you know?

Gold. BSKYAL PA means a bag of gold. They got a bag of gold.

The doubt transformed enlightenment itself into a couple bucks. And that's all they got. They went home without enlightenment.

They went home with a bag of money. It changed. The karma got downgraded to economy.

The karma that was supposed to make them into a Buddha shifted into the karma to have some temporary wealth. GANG GI NGU DRUG LAS MA GRUB PA Nothing more than that. YIN PAS LAM MA LA LOG LTA GZHOR NA Therefore, if we GZHOR, we had GZHOR once before tonight.

Yeah, if you slip and get LOG LTA towards your teacher, doubt about your teacher, this is after you've investigated them for a long time and after you've made a commitment. Then after that, you shouldn't doubt them. The time to doubt is before you make the commitment.

The time to doubt is investigate their life, investigate them carefully. If it takes years, that's okay. But after you get married, that's it.

In Buddhist terms, karmically, you can't... Then you're committed. After that, you're committed.

LOG LTA GZHOR NAS NYAMS RTOGS SKYE BA RGYANG RGYANG means your Buddhahood will be delayed, your enlightenment, your realizations. RGYANG means pushed farther away. NGOS DUG CHEN PO'ONG GI RTE'I CHUNG ROL RGYUR DRO BA YIN And karmas which were about to produce high spiritual states in you will be reduced to smaller cool things like you'll get a car or something.

Seriously. Then he goes into a very beautiful subject and we won't be able to finish it tonight, but let's start it. We have about five minutes and then we'll stop.

He's going to get into the subject of DIG SROG. Say DIG SROG. DIG SROG.

DIG in Tibetan means bad deed, bad karma. Okay. A bad deed.

DIG. You want to know the deeper meaning? DIG means to threaten somebody.

Like DIG means always like this with your finger, DIG PA. Don't do that. And bad karma in Tibetan is called fingered because lamas will say, that you shouldn't be doing.

That you shouldn't do. And scorpions are called DIG PA RANG NYA. They are pointing and they hurt you.

You see, danger. Danger pointing. DIG means bad deed.

SROG means a friend. Right? So DIG SROG is a big subject in spiritual path.

It's a big deal in the spiritual path. There's a book that very much affected my life. It's called The Screwtape Letters.

And it's written by C.S. Lewis who wrote the Narnia Tales. And he was a close friend of Tolkien. And in fact, when they wrote those books, they were working together.

They were meeting every night and reading to each other. The Hobbit and the Narnia Tales in Britain during the war. And so C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Screwtape Letters. I like it. You should read it. It's like tiny and it's very powerful.

And these are letters written by the devil to his assistant on earth who has been assigned to corrupt a young man during the war in Britain. So they're very heavy letters of advice on how to corrupt a good person. And C.S. Lewis said he almost went crazy while he was writing it. Like he had to put himself in the devil's mind. And it made him very sad. He was depressed writing the book.

But we learn a lot by reading the advice of how to corrupt a young man. You got to read it. There's a very beautiful ending by the way.

But in that book, the nephew, he's the nephew of the devil. He says, okay, so should I show him my true form? Should I bite his neck with my fangs?

How should I corrupt him? And the devil's like, no, no, you don't understand. This is not how corruption is done.

I want you to get a good suit and I want you to have your hair combed just right. And I want you to become an expert in good wines. And I want you to know all the latest in the politolitical situation and the gossip columns.

And I want you to be very sophisticated, cool person, a little bit, what do you call it? Skeptical and sarcastic. What do you call it?

Fashionably sarcastic, intelligent, wine sipping, well eating, good card person. And then this is the best way to corrupt him. And just make little sarcastic comments about his religious practice.

Say, oh, are you going to... Do you have time to go out tonight to the movie? Are you going to pray?

You're going to go to church with the old ladies. He teaches him to speak poorly of religion in a sophisticated way, in a cool and cosmopolitan way. And this is a perfect dick joke.

That's a dick joke. That means that's the person who's going to drag you to hell with them. What do you call it?

What do you want to call it? Dick means bad deeds. Joke means friend.

What do you call it?

[Говорящий 2] (1:39:42 - 1:39:42)
I don't know.

[Говорящий 1] (1:39:46 - 1:54:31)
It's a blank friend. What are you going to call it? Bad influence is good.

I like it. It's a good English word. And bad influence people, the way they influence you is that they ingratiate themselves to you.

They look cool. They look reasonable. They're not evil.

They're not like drug dealers. They don't have guns. They have a glass of wine.

And they're like, this is a Pinot Noir. You know, this is from Boubidou. And they're like, this is something.

You got to taste this wine. And they're friendly. And they're fun to be around.

DE YANG GDUG RTOG LA BRTEN NA YANG If you hang around this kind of people, NYAM RTOG SGRUB PAR BYED PAS they will block your spiritual breakthroughs. When you're about to have a spiritual breakthrough, these sophisticated, sweet-talking, fun people to be around will block you. DZAM DGOS DZAM DGOS means you got to avoid them.

DZAM means avoid them. At all costs, you got to avoid them. THENG SANG GI MI PHEL CHER Most people nowadays in the modern world of what, 1921 in Hwasa, where they were up to cat horses, THENG SANG GI MI PHEL CHER TSE DI LA GZHAN PA ZHAG LTA YIN Nowadays most people, all they really care about is this life.

They want to have some nice wine. They want to go out to a nice dinner. They want to have a nice car.

My job, I stopped, I paused between Beijing and Phoenix in San Diego. And why? My stepmother needed help taking her late husband's clothing out of the closet and taking it to the goodwill.

You see, I mean, that was my duty yesterday. And the day before was washing the clothes of the dead men and putting the suits on the hangers and going through his shoes to make sure they had matches because the place wouldn't take shoes that didn't have a match. Counting his shoes.

And that's life. That's where we really are. That's what life really is.

And then this thing slipped out of, how do you say that in Tibetan? Sure. This thing slipped out of her mouth and she's like, I'm going to make sure my shoes match for you.

I'm like, no, don't talk like that. You know, it broke my heart. She's like, I'll make sure my shoes match.

And I'm like, no, no, don't say that. But that's who we are. That's what's going to happen.

That's where we're headed. We're all of us. Somebody, you know.

Then I'm like, oh my God, if Nick has to clean out my house, oh man, there's such crap in there. All this junk. They're all going to be cursing me.

And I'm like, God, I can't believe I had three truckloads of momentos from China. And, you know. So that's who we really are.

But most people nowadays, shatak means exclusively, 100%. Shatak is a nice colloquial word. They're all hung up on this.

They want to have stuff. They want a new pair of shoes. That's where most people are.

Get me a new car. Get me some stuff. shatak yinpe, THAMS CAD KYI TSE'I MDID DROD NAD PAR BYED And their conversation is all restricted to stuff and politics and scandals and stuff.

Their whole life, their whole day is spent in useless junk, garbage. Garbage talk, garbage life, nothing. Just nothing.

Can I get a new car? I didn't get $10,000 more last year. It's all crazy when you think about taking their clothes to the Goodwill after they die.

It doesn't mean anything. These all nice suits. We were sitting there like, this suit's pretty nice.

She's like, look, here's a new sweater. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, would somebody at Diamond Mountain, they're coming out of retreat, right?

I'm like, look, Mom, nobody wants it. It's a dead man's sweater. It's gross.

Let's take it to the Goodwill. But it's new. He never wore it.

I'm like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to anybody now. Okay, TSE'I MDID DROD PAR BYED PA RANG GIS KYANG DE ZHAG RTZA BYAS PA DANG PHAN DO BYAS PA LTA BUR MTHONG YONG Then we meet these kind of people and we, sometimes we want to be their friends.

They look confident. They look like they know what the hell's going on. They'll say, forget, I'll tell you what's really happening in Ukraine.

Russia had had that as a port for 40 years. Their fleet is parked there. They need Crimea.

That's where their goddamn army is stationed. They can't get a boat out of there unless they own the land. It was crazy to take it from them.

Get real, they're like, don't believe what the newspaper, they don't know what they're talking about. This problem is almost 50 years old and maybe they're right or something like that. They look very sophisticated and you feel comfortable around them because they know what the hell's going on in the world.

They're like, oh, I'm so glad to have a friend like you. You really know what's the best Pinot Noir. I didn't know what's a Pinot Noir.

You ordered the right wine. It's just good to have someone in my life who knows what the hell's going on in life. Who's sophisticated and intelligent and well-informed.

It's just a comfort to be around a person who knows what they're doing. That's a shatsa. And the pendog chepa tabur.

Then we think they're going to do something for us. Tong yang. DENG DANG NI DEG PA'I SGROB PA YIN But that's a SGROB.

That's a SGROB. They're just going to screw you up, in an ultimate sense. You'll end up with your shoes being taken to the goodwill and you didn't do anything except find the next kind of wine that's more popular or know which baseball player is going to get traded next week.

That's all they're going to leave you with. SDIG SROG ZHES BYA BA DE DGOS SU RE BA What we call a SDIG SROG is not a person who wears... RE BA means a yak hair shirt.

GYON And GO LA RA ZING NGE BA And they're not going to have horns coming up out of their head. And a pitchfork. And a tail.

That's not a devil. These people don't have horns and they don't red. They have a nice suit on.

GO LA RA ZING NGE BA ZHING MI'ONG ZHAG RTZAD DOG GI DGE BA LA SBYOR ZHING DGE BA LAS NYAMS SU SBYUG KHYEN DE LA ZER They are people who pose as your buddy, but who get you to do, who waste your life. They get you to waste your life. That's a SDIG SROG.

They're not going to show up with fangs and drag you to hell. They're going to take you out to Vincent's and have a nice wine and eat. And you don't do your meditation that night.

And they will slowly get you dead. That's a SDIG SROG. I got to go one more sentence.

I'm sorry. Because it's so cool. RDZIN DAG GANG GI'ANG GALA MI NYON PAR Don't listen to them.

Don't listen to them. They're trying to talk to you about who's going to win the World Cup or some kind of useless crap like that. 99% of what's in the newspapers on television, they're going to say, did you hear?

And then you're going to say, no, I didn't and I don't need to. Thanks. I didn't.

I don't own a TV. I haven't had a TV my whole life. I didn't miss it.

I went to... Do you know Yuri, the doctor in Tucson? I went to his house one night.

I had to sleep there. He had the TV on. I'm like, let me see if TV changed since I was a kid.

I used to watch Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and stuff like that. Or what's that? The computer on the other planet.

Lost in Space. I mean, that's the last time I watched TV. And then I'm like, I want to see if this had got any better.

And it was a game show and you had to get blindfolded and they would put stuff in your hands and you had to tell them what it was. And they cut the penises off of bulls and had them in a bag and you were supposed to guess what it was. And I'm like, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was better.

I didn't miss anything in the last 55 years. I can't believe it. I can't believe people would look at it.

He's a physician. Anyway. But not mine.

GAL LA MI NYAN PAR It said, don't listen to them. DIG SROG DE LANG CHEN NYAN PAR Staying near a person like that is like staying at the feet of an insane huge elephant. You're going to get smashed.

Or THAG ZIG LTA BUR It's like laying down next to a wild tiger, a real tiger, not the ones in the movies. These are the ones that can knock your head off with just a little slap. Being next to that person is like laying down with a tiger or hanging out with a big elephant who can squash you when they go like this.

THAG ZIG LTA BUR JIG RTAR YUL LTA BUR TE NAS View them like tigers and elephants. Don't get close to them. You stay over there.

I'm over here. You with your TV. You just...

You just stay over there. I like you a lot. I'm going to the talk tonight.

You watch the bowl show. Like that. The idea is treat them like a rattlesnake.

When you have the pleasure of going to Diamond Mountain for a retreat, you'll discover rattlesnakes. You see one. My father taught me.

We grew up in Arizona. Every month he took us out in the wilderness and he said, what do you do when you see a snake? And he said, turn around and walk the other way.

Just turn around and walk the other way. I was in New York. The first Dharma classes we had were in Hell's Kitchen.

Eight people. And we went outside and there's this guy walking down the street with a pistol like this. Drunk guy.

And he's waving a pistol around and everyone's like, what do we do? I said, you turn around and you go back and you close the door. And they're like, okay.

You want to watch them. You're like, what's he going to do? And it's like, no, you don't have to watch.

Just turn around and get in the house and close the door and wait for a couple hours and he'll be gone. When you meet those sophisticated people, just turn around and close the door. Don't even get close to them.

Just avoid them. Don't even talk to them. Don't try to engage them.

Don't be nice. Don't be anything. Just say, I got to go somewhere else.

Catch you later. Why is he talking about this? What was he just talking about?

But how did he get on to... What was he talking just before dick jokes? Something about teachers, right?

He was just on the two guys who were supposed to become enlightened and all he ended up with was a bag of gold. They got shortchanged. Instead of enlightenment, they got a jaguar or something.

This guy in China, he took us out in a jaguar, right? Two days ago? He was trying to impress us.

And I'm like, there's not even room to move your legs in this thing. It means don't settle for less. Go for the big time.

Don't settle for a new car or a great job. Don't settle for less. Go for the real stuff.

And don't listen to people who sidetrack you. Tomorrow he'll get into being reasonable in your spiritual practice and your attitude towards your teacher. Be reasonable.

Don't go overboard. Who says that? Dick joke.

Dick jokes say, come on man, I mean, this is like culty. This is weird. What?

You're not supposed to sneeze in the class. You're supposed to respect them all. Come on.

Get real. Don't go crazy. Be reasonable.

The dick jokes say be reasonable. It's not like you're going to die tonight or something like that. Okay?

Of course you die tonight. Everybody dies tonight. Sooner or later they die tonight.

Okay? Everybody dies tonight when they didn't expect it. Then the reasonable doesn't, then the reasonable becomes unreasonable.

All right, I'm sorry to be unreasonable. Yeah, where do you want to go? You ready?