«Дар освобождения», курс 15 «Найти учителя, которому можно доверять», занятие 3

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 47:59)
So we're continuing a book called the Nanda Lakchang, which means a gift of liberation thrust into the palms of your hand. And we are halfway through a list of problems that come if you don't have a sweet relationship with the person who is teaching you spiritual life. And we're in the middle of one of those pieces.

DE NA LAM MA LA NYE MOD NAM YANG MI RUNG BAR GSUNG LA Therefore, the moral of these stories that we've been talking about is that it's never appropriate to criticize your teacher, mentally or verbally. LAM MA NYE MOD BYAS PA LTAR ZHOGS Not only is it inappropriate to criticize your teacher, and I repeat, this is a teacher that you are supposed to have checked out for years, if necessary, to see if they have integrity and they have knowledge and compassion. And then after you decide that this is a good teacher for you, then you make a commitment.

And we're talking now about what happens if you break that commitment or you fail in your half of the commitment. LAM MA NYE MOD BYAS PA LTAR ZHOGS Of course, it's very serious to break your commitment with your teacher after you have chosen one, after you have selected one, very carefully, very slowly. NYES MA BYAS PA'I MI YANG STONG DU MI RUNG It even is an obstacle to your spiritual practice, he says here, to lay eyes on a person who has broken their relationship with their teacher.

And this is similar to monks or nuns who have broken their vows. In the monastery, it happens that you meet monks or nuns who have broken their vows, who have given up their vows. And I think I can say I've never met one who was happy.

They always seemed very profoundly unhappy. They made a commitment for life. They were supposed to have thought it over carefully.

Then they took those vows. And then they gave them up or they broke them. And they tried to do something else.

And then I've seen many, because I lived in one of the largest monasteries in the world. And then just their whole life, they seem something is broken. It's like a cup which is broken, or a fine china cup which has a crack in it, and you can't ever fix it.

And there's always some kind of... I don't know. To be around them for me is a little disturbing, is what I'm saying.

To be near them is sad because you sense this loss. It's a sense of loss or a sense of pain. They're in pain, something.

They've lost something very dear. It's like a kind of grieving or something. And then to be around them for me is...

Of course I love them and I care for them, but it's an uncomfortable feeling sometimes. And in this case, he's talking about not only is it a bad thing for you to hurt your relationship with your teacher, but you also are hurting other people around you. So it infects their mood if you are critical of your teacher.

It's a very serious thing to damage the beauty and love of a relationship between a disciple and a teacher. And then you affect the people around you. That atmosphere infects you for the rest of your life.

And other people can sense it, and other people can feel it, and somehow it brings them down. So he says, he's even advising us, it affects your spiritual life even to lay eyes on a person who has broken this commitment. And then he says, then he gives an example.

Drupchen Lingrepe, then there was a high lama long before Je Tsongkapa, in the 1100s. He was born in 1128. He passed away in 1188.

A lot of you at Diamond Mountain, you studied, Lama Kristi briefly taught, I taught her some pieces of a lama called Tsongpa Gyare, very famous teacher from India who taught in Tibet for 12 years. And his name was Tsongpa Gyare. And he was always saying cool things.

He had a student named Padma Dorje, or his short name is Lingrepe. And he was giving a teaching to a group of people in Tibet. And then Chaklo Lobma, then a student of a lama, a different lama named Chaklo.

Chaklo is a short for Chaklotsava. And this, Lotsava means a master translator of what to what? Sanskrit to Tibetan.

So the whole process of translating the scriptures into Tibetan took 700 years. And in that course of seven centuries, there were, I don't know, a handful, maybe 20 or 30 true masters of translation. Marpa was one, for example, Milarepa's teacher.

And Chaklotsava was one. His, they just called him Chaklotsava. It's not clear what his dates were.

I think they were in the 1200s, very late 1100s. Then he had a student, Lobma, dam nyam shik. Dam, nyam means dam tsik nyampa.

It's an abbreviation. What's dam tsik? Dam tsik means like a commitment, a moral commitment to your teacher often, a commitment to his teacher.

He had a dam tsik. And nyam, nyam means he broke it. He broke that commitment with his teacher.

Shik. DER LAS PA'I He came to the teaching. He came late and he walked into the teaching and sat in the back.

And then DER MA THAG within the next minute, GZHEL, I think there's a mistake in the carving here. It should be GZHEL DRIB NAS. GZHEL DRIB NAS The teacher who was delivering the teaching, GRUB CHEN PA, LING RAS PA, CHOS GSUNG MA THUG PA He couldn't teach the Dharma with this person sitting in the audience.

He couldn't continue the Dharma teaching because there was a person in the audience who had broken his relationship with his teacher. CHOS GSUNG MA THUG PA GZHEL PA means he had to leave. He had to excuse himself.

The teacher couldn't continue the class and he had to excuse himself. LO RGYUL THAR YIN It's the same anywhere. So it's a very serious karma to break this relationship.

And it affects the people around you. It brings them down. If you spend time around people like that, you'll see it brings the room down.

It brings the energy of the room down. And if you're in a group of people who are enjoying and affectionate and respectful relationship with their teacher, there's the opposite happens. You feel a very sweet, high energy in the room and it's very attractive to other people.

We're often... I think Bonnie was at that... We had a meeting at the Good Egg and Happy Valley Road.

We often have DCI meetings in restaurants because this is our office, or Starbucks, or we're on a plane, or we're in an airport. And people will come up to us and say, what do you guys do? We'll be on a plane to China and it'll be six hours into the flight.

The whole flight is asleep. Even the attendants are asleep. And some flight attendant will come up and kneel down next to the chair and say, what do you guys do and how does someone join you guys?

And they don't know what we do. The waitress in the Good Egg begged us to hire her son and gave us her phone number. She didn't know what we do, but she just felt the energy, the sweet energy of a group of people who have a sweet relationship, teacher-disciple relationship.

So I think it's a very beautiful thing. If you break that relationship, you're also affecting the other people around you. All right.

We're on to problem number eight. I'm happy because it's the last one. And then this is the most depressing part of the Lamrim.

If you're new or you haven't come to many of these classes, please hang in there. We're going to get to meditation and flying in the sky and stuff like that. And apparently it's important to go through this process of hearing about.

So that finishes, by the way, homework number two people can do. Homework is just meant to help you become a better teacher. We've learned on the DCI tours that those people who finish their ACI courses, the 18 courses, they make much, much better teachers.

They are able to answer people's questions. Those who have finished the Vajrayana Diamond Way courses, the second 18 courses are even greater teachers. And the people who have finished their 36 courses and who are nice to other people are even the better teachers.

And there seems to be some kind of correlation between someone who has all three of those qualifications. You did your 18 ACI courses, you did your 18 Tantric courses, and you are polite to people and sweet. Then you really are a great teacher.

So here we go. Problem number eight. ,GES PA TSER RAB THAMS CAD DU, ,DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN GYIS PHUNG PA NI, PHUNG is an ancient word that means bereft of something or without.

There's a beautiful part in the Vajrayogini Sangha. What is that? Anyway, ,PHAM PA MED PAR BUG GI LEGS SHES NAS, ,PHAM PA MED PAR BUG GI LEGS SHES NAS I give you everything I have without hesitation.

And PHUNG here is similar. PHUNG means to not possess something, to go without something. What?

,DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN What's the short version of that? GES SHES So the word GES SHES, which is currently a title, a degree, it used to mean a spiritual teacher. ,DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN It means like a Dharma brother or Dharma father or something like that.

Or mother. ,DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN ,TSER RAB THAMS CAD DU In all of your future lives, you will be PHUNG PA of GES BA'I GZHAN YIN. You won't have them.

You won't find them. So I'll tell you something very true and very beautiful and very sweet. And I offer it to you as a rare thing to hear.

But when you see emptiness directly, in the hours following that, you have many extraordinary experiences. And one of them is to see directly the teachers that you will have in your future lives. And there's a feeling that comes from that to know that you will be taken care of even after you die.

And even if you die a hundred times, to know that you will always be taken care of by a beautiful teacher, sweet, holy teacher. And you will never again be without one. It's extraordinary.

What do you call it? Insurance policy. It's something extraordinary to know that you will be taken care of forever into the future.

It's an extraordinary emotion to know. And if you disrespect your Lama, the opposite happens, you see? And you can look, you can travel, you can seek out teachers, you can read magazines and find out who the hot teachers are, or go on the internet, and you will never find a good one.

You won't because you broke your commitment and you don't have the karma anymore. And there's nothing you can do to find one. It doesn't matter where you go.

You can go to Dharamsala and you won't meet anybody. You see what I mean? Nothing will happen.

The opposite, if you honor your teacher and love your teacher, then you create a karma that you will be taken care of forever, even after death. And after many deaths, you will always be taken care of from your childhood. And it's a very beautiful knowledge to have.

It's called deng in Tibetan. Deng means, it doesn't mean dang, okay? Dang.

Deng means some kind of cosmic assurance that cannot be changed. You will have teachers. You will be in the care of teachers forever into the future.

You will never be without a teacher, without a close teacher. So here we're talking about the opposite, which is a very terrible, sad thing. You guarantee that you will not have teachers and you will be alone for many lives.

PONG PA NI, NGAR GYI GZHAN YIN BSTAN PA'I PHAN YIN ZHES PA DE LA'I GDOG STE This is the opposite of a benefit that we mentioned in the list of benefits, which was that if you maintain an affectionate relationship with your teacher, then you will have more teachers in the future. And in this life, you will continue to meet cool teachers. You want to study bowling or French language.

I wish I could put it in my head. Or anything you want, you will find the most beautiful, amazing teachers. I wanted to start a rose garden.

I went to a rose gardening class and it was a pretty big class. And the lady got up and she was like, okay, here's how you plant a rose. And we studied for like three, four days how to plant them and how to take care of them.

And then at the end she was like, okay, we're going to have a lottery. And whoever wins the lottery, I have to come to their house and actually stay there for days and help them start their rose garden. So I'm like, oh, I got the thing.

And she came and she planted all my roses. And she's like the rose master of the Verde Valley, which is a pretty big place. And just, it'll always be like that.

Your whole life will be like that. Anything you want to learn, the person will be there. They'll just suddenly, the best one in the world will show up and you do it.

,NGAG GI RGYAS BZHIN NYID DANG MI PHAN YIN ZHES PA DE, ,DE MA BYAL BA'I NI, And because you don't meet teachers, or you meet like these fake, flimsy, stupid, I don't want to say stupid, not real teachers. You meet like kind of new agey in a bad way teachers. ,CHOS KYI DRA TZAM YANG MI KHO BA, There are even extreme cases where you will never even hear the word Dharma or the word meditation.

You will live your whole life and never hear a single person mention spiritual things. So you grew up in America or, I don't know, when I grew up, we had great churches. My church is a couple blocks from here and it was extraordinary and it was incredible.

And it was drilled into us in our culture, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not mess around with other people's partners. We grew up on that stuff. The rock and roll songs had Bible references in them.

For every day, turn, turn. And so we grew up in that culture. But it's not a natural state of things.

The opposite can also happen. You can grow up in a country where, I was studying Genghis Khan's life. He grew up in a culture where it was considered quite desirable to invite people to dinner and murder them and steal all their stuff.

His father was poisoned at a feast given by another chieftain. And he and his mother were driven out into the forest in Mongolia to die. And that's how he got so tough.

And this was normal behavior, social behavior in his country was to try to kill your neighbors and take their horses. So it's possible to be born in a place where you don't even hear the word. In your whole lifetime, you never hear someone say meditation or be kind to other people.

There are places like that. I've been to places that are close to that. And we're lucky.

So anyway, if you break your relationship with your teacher, you will, even in this lifetime, you will never hear people talk about spiritual things. It'll always be people talking about cars or what was on TV last night or stupid things. You will be thrown into a life in a social group where people just are talking about worthless things and get old and die.

And it will seem normal to you because that's all you'll ever hear. No one will ever talk about higher things around you. MI KHON PA'I GNAS In Buddhism, this is called MI KHON PA.

What's MI KHON PA? Do you guys know KHON PA? KHON PA means lack of opportunity, lack of DAL MBYOR, right?

A lack of spiritual opportunity. You will be born... MI KHON PA'I GNAS means a world where no one mentions sweet things.

They don't even talk about them. No one's talking about Dharma or religion or anything. MI KHON PA'I GNAS, KHON BAR SKYE ZHING You will only be born in places like that where you just have no...

no opportunity ever presents itself to live a spiritual life. It's not part of the culture that you're born into. We've been to countries where they didn't allow any spiritual life and it was very sad.

I was in Russia when communism fell. I went there to negotiate the cataloging of the Tibetan collections in St. Petersburg, which we negotiated. It took 14 years to finish the cataloging.

But when I went there, I was on the subway and every single person had a New Age book in their hand because they weren't allowed to read them the year before for 50, 60 years. And they were so hungry. And anybody who showed up in Russia during that 10 years, you could teach anything and a thousand people would come because they were so hungry for anything.

They were so starved of anything beautiful or deep. And it was really a cool time. In Mongolia, it was the same.

When we went to Mongolia the first time, we spoke in a stadium and people were handing sick children up onto the stage in stretchers, like handicapped children and stuff, and it was intense. And they hadn't been allowed to practice for 50, 60 years. It's a human need to have some spiritual life and to be denied it is the result of breaking your commitment to your teacher.

All right. Dornad Jetsongkapa, he's going to summarize with a verse from Jetsongkapa. Jetsongkapa, if you're new, was the teacher of His Holiness the First Dalai Lama, Gendrung.

And he started our immediate tradition, our immediate lineage in, what was his birthday? 1357 to 1490. If you want to break into any of my email accounts, okay.

Bank account. Nothing in the bank account. Anyway, okay.

Dornad Jetsongkapa, he said, DE NAS DE GIS LEGSOR JI NYEN PAS So he quotes the first line of a verse by Jetsongkapa. So I went and got you the verse because I knew you'd want it. So here's the whole verse.

This is from his NYAM GUR. NYAM GUR means an extended poem in which Jetsongkapa reveals some details of his personal inner life, his own inner spiritual life. He reveals some of the details of his own life, which is a very moving piece of literature to read.

DE NAS DE GIS LEGSOR JI NYEN PAS RTEN DANG LAS PAR GRIB PA'I RTZA BA NI LAM DUN ZHING YIN DANG PA'I PAS PA'I SEMS DANG SBYOR BA'I TSUL SHING BSTAN PA ROL GTONG NAS SOGS KYI PHYIR YANG MI STONG BA DKA' ZHIG SBYUG PA'I PHYIR PA'I NGES PAR BYED JA TSE RNAMS MED NYAM NGAN DE DANG TSE THAR NUS BDAG KYANG DE BZHIN GYANG RTZA LO Each verse of that work ends with the same lines. JA TSE RNAMS MED NYAM NGAN DE DANG TSE The lamas of our lineage, this is how they have practiced. THAR NUS BDAG KYANG DE BZHIN GYANG RTZA LO And I also sought liberation, so I followed their footsteps.

Each verse ends with the same two lines. What did he do? What was the secret of his own spiritual life?

This is like Jesus writing how he made it. DE NAS DI BYAS LAS SOGS KYI GNYIS PAS If you want anything good to happen in this life or your future life, TEN DAL LAS PA'I DUS PA'I RTZA BAR NI What is the root for... What's ten dal mean?

It means the Buddhist idea that everything comes from causes. You can plant your future, ten dal. But I think you've heard me say in one-tenth of one percent of the cases it has a different meaning, completely different meaning.

Do you know? Yeah, it means to get off to a good start. Ten dal jikpa as a verb means in the first five minutes of a ten-year project you do the right thing.

Tibetans consider the first five minutes of something to be very important. We were having meetings in China with companies that want to buy DCI or they want to eat DCI or at least they want to work with us because we're so hot in China. And it was funny because the day we started the negotiations was Tibetan New Year's Day, last Sunday I think.

And it was so exciting because in Tibet the first day of the year is considered the day to do that kind of stuff. It's the best day to do that kind of stuff. And the first five minutes in the presence of the person who will become your Lama are crucial.

And it's kind of unfair because you don't know they're going to be your Lama. I guess you're going to have to be nice to everybody. But the first few minutes interaction with a person sets the tone for the rest of your life.

I had a ballet teacher. I used to have ballet classes. They would tell me how you move in the first five minutes.

It sets the whole thing. Just concentrate for the first minute or two minutes how you move your body and then the rest will follow. And that's the idea in Buddhism also.

DENG DAG LAS BAR GYUR PA'I TZA BA NAS If you want to set the correct tone for the rest of your life, LAM BDUN ZHING YIN find a teacher who can teach you the path. Find a spiritual friend who can show you the path. And then DANG PA, a holy one, BAS PA YID And then work your butt off.

BAS PA Sounds like butt, right? BAS PA BAS PA YID Surrender to them. Surrender to them.

How? SANGS PA DANG BRAL BA So he's telling the secret of his own spiritual success. We believe he became a Buddha in his lifetime.

How? SANGS means how you think about your teacher. BRAL BA means how you behave towards them.

So the one comes from the other, right? How you behave towards your teacher comes from how you perceive them. And we're going to study that.

I think by the end of this week we will get to the SANGS PA part. How do you train yourself to view your teacher in a special way? And it takes training.

It's not natural to see a person as a Buddha or something. But it's desirable. If you're going to trust your life to somebody, try to train your mind to see them in a certain way.

SANGS DANG BRAL BA'I SU BZHIN BSTAN PA Follow them, surrender to them sweetly. MTHONG NAS SOGS KYI CHE YANG MI STONG BA And once you grasp how crucial that relationship is to your life, then SOGS KYI CHE YANG MI STONG BA Don't give up that teacher even if someone threatens to kill you. And it happened in Tibet in the 50s, in the late 50s, starting in the early 50s.

I was born in 52. Sometimes I think I was killed there. But many people were killed.

They were asked, are you going to follow this thing? And they say yes. If you say yes, I'm going to shoot you.

And they said yes, and they got killed. So even at the cost of your life, don't give up that relationship. Once you commit, and don't commit easily.

If it takes five, ten years to commit, take it. Check the person out, get to know them. But after you get spiritually married to someone, you cannot break it.

MI STONG BA MTHONG NAS SOGS KYI CHE YANG MI STONG BA RGA BZHIN GRUB PA'I SPYOD PA'I NYE BAR BYED Please your Lama. NYE BAR BYED means... What's he saying?

He says, that's what I did. That's what happened to me. That's why I got to be Je Tsongkhapa.

I pleased my Lamas. How? RGA BZHIN GRUB PA'I RGA means their instructions, like KANG YOD, the word of the Buddha.

RGA BZHIN means in accordance with their RGA, with their instructions. GRUB PA', I practiced. I practiced what they taught.

So I made the ultimate offering to them. I did what they asked. When they said meditate every day, I meditated every day.

When they said do yoga every day, I did yoga every day. When they said help the people in Rwanda who got their legs chopped off with AIDS blood covered swords, then I went out and raised some money for that. Or something like that.

Whatever my Lama asked me, I did. Who's saying that? Je Tsongkhapa.

I made the ultimate offering. My practice. What's the final step?

What's the final iteration of that? What does it look like in the end? You are pleasing your Lama by being a happy person, a good and happy person.

That's the ultimate offering to a Lama. All they want to see is a good and happy person. They don't need money.

They don't need bananas. The flowers are just a lot of work to cut, put them in the water, take them out of the water, throw them out, clean the vase. By the way, flowers are good.

I'm happy to clean the vases. But what they really want is called dubde. Dubde means they want their...

What do you call it? They want to see their investment pay off. They want to see the payoff.

They're in this game because they want to see the payoff. What's the payoff? You become a sweet person and a happy person.

You're good to others and internally you're happy. You're totally kind to others. You're happy.

You serve others joyfully. And then they're like... James Brown has a song, The Big Payoff.

You know that song? I will play it for you. I have it on here.

He's like, The Big Payoff. And that's their dubde. Dubde means that's their...

He says, that's the offering you can give them. Become a happy, well-adjusted, sweet, kind, knowledgeable person. Wise person.

Then they can relax. Then they're like, Oh yeah, my life... Then their life had some meaning.

Then their work had some meaning. And if you're just continually selfish and mean to people and self-centered and fighting with other students, it hurts them. They're like, I'm a failure.

My whole life I've been teaching and they're still fighting with each other. Then it's like, I can't do anything. Then think how it feels to them.

All right. NYES PA BYED, JE TZAM LAM YIN YAM LA DE LTAR ZAD That's what the great lamas of the past did. THAR DE DAG KYANG DE BZHIN GYANG TSAL LA And that's what I did.

And that's how I got here. That's his verse. Very sweet.

Very cool. I'll do one more paragraph then we'll take a break. ZHES SOGS LTAR GCIG RTEN NA LEGS SOGS JI NAS GCIG YOD PA THAMS CAD All the good things in the whole world.

ZHES NYEN TSUL BZHIN DU BRTEN PA'I BRAS BU They come from having a teacher and treating that teacher with affection and respect. MI THUN PA'I DGOS PA JI NAS GCIG And all the hassles. If you want to learn the Tibetan word for hassle, there it is.

RGUD, DGOS PA DGOS PA means hassle. DGOS PA, it's the scriptural word. The colloquial word is GNOG DRA.

GNOG DRA TSAL PO means these students are, oh man, these are a hassle. DGOS PA means trouble. There's a song like, anyway, Trouble.

It's like, they're just trouble. DGOS PA means trouble. DGOS PA JI NAS GCIG GCIG PA THAMS CAD All the hassles that the world ever serves you.

GZHAN YIN MA BSTAN PA comes from failing to serve a teacher. Failing to surrender to a teacher. And BSTAN TSUL LOG PA LOG PA We just had LOG.

Wrong. Either you don't find a teacher and serve them or you serve them wrong. You break it.

Somehow you break the relationship. So either not finding a teacher or finding one and breaking the relationship is, according to this paragraph, it's not just going to cause certain serious karmas to you. In the end, it is the source of every single thing in your life that happens to you that you didn't want.

That's a pretty radical statement. MA BSTAN PA TSUL LOG PA GANG RUNG GI DE BU YIN It's the result of one or the other. What?

Either not meeting it, not finding your heart teacher or finding them and blowing it. All the troubles in your life come from that. All the troubles a human being can experience come from one of those two things.

DBANG DBANG DBANG DBANG When we did our three-year retreat, we did a good one. We didn't talk at all, but we had all these expressions that we all knew what they meant. And WAMP WAMP meant that didn't work out, did it?

Okay. I think we'll stop there and take a break. Okay.

I'm going to just read one more verse and then we're sort of at a place where the text breaks nicely. And then we'll have about 20 minutes left and I thought we could do questions and answers. So if you can come up with any really hot questions about anything, any part of your life or any question, anything.

Things you always wanted to know but you were afraid to ask. LAM MA LA BSTAN TSUL LOG NA If the relationship with your teacher is disturbed, TSE'ING DIR MA ZAD SKYE BA GZHAN DU'ANG DGE BA'I ZHIG NYEN DANG MIN BYAL You probably won't meet another one in this life or the future life. So even in this life, you'll have trouble finding another one.

It's like when you get divorced once. I don't know anyone who got divorced once who didn't get divorced three times. Just something breaks and then you can't get it together again.

Same with the teacher. DU TSIS SNYING PO LAS So he quotes a book called DU TSIS SNYING PO DU TSIS means amrta, deathless nectar, the nectar of deathlessness. And then SNYING PO means essence.

And Ken Rinpoche translated this text and published it. And I remember he gave the copyrights away to the Tibetan library in Dharamsala and they've been publishing it all this time. So here's a quotation from that.

It's another lamrim. GAL TE RGYAL LA BRTEN DUR BRTEN THOB KHYAM MA GUG PA'I GYU DRIN DE BU DE MI KHOM NAS SU SKYE NAS The nice thing about China is nothing grows and I don't have allergies there. Okay.

MA GUG PA'I GYU DRIN DE BU DE MI KHOM NAS SU SKYE NAS DAM CHOD DANG RGYAS BA'I ZHES KYI BRTA YANG THOS MIN GYUR GAL TE RGYAL LA Those of you studying Tibetan, this is an interesting expression. By the way, I think let's start it tomorrow. But I was thinking every time we come to a sort of unique word that I have to explain, I should give a sign like I'm going to explain this word.

I have this dream that we cut out those sections of the video and make a video dictionary. Then if you become a translator and you don't know the word here, GAL LA, the third and fourth word of the verse, which is GAL LA, I'll say, okay, mark the video here at this moment and I'll explain this unusual expression. Then we'll collect those for ten years and then we'll have a dictionary, a video dictionary.

Because there's a lot to say about GAL LA. So GAL, you know the word GAL from DANG LDAN LA RGYAL MA, which is what? Well, there it means a thousand angels, but that's a translation of a word that means one hundred.

GAL means one hundred. It's probably related to the word GYAT SO, which means wide lake or ocean. The word GAL LA is the Mongol translation of GYAT SO, which means ocean.

All the Dalai Lamas are called GYAT SO something. Most of them, like Tenzin GYAT SO, they're all called ocean, which is the word GAL LA. This GAL is spelled differently.

It has a B on the front, so it means one hundred. But it came to mean any big number, like a thousand or a million. It's not impressive to say the hundred angels.

To say the thousand angels is impressive. So that's why I translate it. And then I get all these letters, I get all these emails from Tibetan scholars, don't you know that GAL means a hundred?

Anyway, GAL LA is an idiom that means once in a hundred. And it means, how do you say it in English? One in a million.

So then I'll probably get letters that tell me it's not a million, it's a hundred. So once in a million. Once in a million, right?

GAL TE means if. RU GO RU GO In the unlikely event, it means if in a hundred. It means in the unlikely event that you BSTAN DROG BSTAN THOB that you are reborn among a human or better rebirth.

In the unlikely event. Why unlikely? Who's he talking about?

Yeah, someone who screwed up with the Lama as he said. BSTAN THOB KYANG In the unlikely event that you are born among humans and other higher realms. BSTAN THOB KYANG MA GOS PA'I RGYUD DON DREG PO DE You will experience the karmic result of what we call RGYUD DON RGYUD DON means in the Abhidharma, which you will be studying starting in April and going for the next 20 years or so.

There are a certain number of causes in the world. There are a certain number of results in the world. And they are very beautiful and difficult.

The reason they study them is to answer some very fundamental questions of Buddhism. For example, it is said in Buddhism that you have had countless lifetimes. That there was no beginning to your lifetimes.

And it's also said that all things are coming from your karmic seeds. So how can you ever break out of the cycle? How is it possible that you could see emptiness directly if you have no seed for it?

You cannot have a seed for it because you have never seen it before. In countless lives, you have never seen it. So how are you going to see it if you can't have a seed for it?

If all things come from seeds, how are you going to have a spiritual experience that you never had before? How can you ever progress in the spiritual path? Because all things come from what you did in the past.

And you have never had that happen before in the past. Then the Abhidharma gets into cause and effect. Is it possible for an inconsistent cause to create an inconsistent result?

Because that's what we're shooting for. We are samsaric beings. We are screwed up.

And we want to have something happen which is ultimately pure. So how can an impure being create a pure thing like seeing emptiness directly? How is it even possible?

So they get into the idea of gyu tun gyi du bu. Gyu tun means a result which resembles its cause in content. In content, the cause resembles the result.

Like a watermelon coming from a watermelon. But when you talk about seeing emptiness directly, you're talking about a lemon creating a grape or something. How is that possible?

Anyway, that's not my job tonight to tell you. You'll have to wait. here he's talking about gyu tun.

He's talking about a consistent result from a similar cause, of similar content. What's the cause? Ma kuppa.

Ma kuppa. Disrespecting your teacher. So the only reasonable result of an evil cause is what?

Something evil. So ma kuppa. What is it?

What will come? Mi kom ne su kye ne. You will be born into a country.

He said one in a billion chance you're going to be a human. But even if you're born as a human, you'll be born in a country where there's no chance to hear these things. Mi kom.

There's the word again. There's no chance to hear those things. Kom in modern Tibetan means, and see, we could stop here and say here's another word, K-H-O-M.

We'll have to do that. We'll start tomorrow. Kom gyu du e means do you have time?

Nge shak la kom gyu du e. Do you have time to come to my monk's cell today? Kom gyu du e.

And then you say, kom gum du means I don't have time. In scripture it means spiritual opportunity. You will be born in a place where there are no spiritual opportunities.

Mi kom pa ne su kye ne. Having been born there, kye ne, dam chok gi dra yang tu min gyur. I'm breaking across the lines.

Dam chok means holy dharma. Dra yang tu min gyur means you won't... It's not just that you will never have spiritual teachings.

You will never hear the word spiritual in your whole life. You'll be born into a place where no one talks about anything spiritual, whether Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist. We're kind of cool.

A lot of people here have heard Christian or Jewish teachings. And then on top of that they got dessert, which was Buddhist teachings. But there are people in the world who are born and never hear anything about anything.

I was... Recently I was in like Spain and France and I will quote the New Testament. I'll quote some famous thing that Jesus said, like, you don't get grapes from thorns or figs from thistles.

And they'll go, what? And I'll say, you know, you know what I'm talking about. You don't get...

You reap what you sow. This is old English. We don't use those words anymore.

But everybody knows it because it's from the Bible. It means you get what you give. If you're mean to people, people be mean to you.

You reap what you sow. I've said that in America recently and the people under 30 look at me like, it doesn't mean anything to them. They never heard it before.

I say, you know, or I quote a Beatles song and they ask me, what's the Beatles? And that hurts me. That really hurts.

The Beatles were everything for a whole generation of people. They were like God, you know. It's like saying, who's God?

You're like, what? You don't know the Beatles? There is such a thing nowadays.

They don't know Gimme Shelter? They never heard Gimme Shelter? Anyway, you're going to get to hear it, hopefully.

Caldey Geller, you won't even hear the word Dharma in your whole life. No one will ever mention spiritual stuff at all. You live in a country where there is no spiritual stuff and there's no words for it at all.

No one cares. And no one ever heard of it. Dham ched dang, gye way she kyi jayang tu min jang And you will never hear the word Dharma teacher.

You'll never hear the word spiritual teacher. There'll be no such thing in the country where you live. There'll be no such thing.

It was kind of like that in America. When I grew up, we went to church near here and there were wonderful priests there. I was very close to them.

They were beautiful people. But there was no custom to study with them privately. There's no such thing.

You don't go into a Christian church in my time, when I was growing up in Phoenix and say, I'd like to come to your house and you teach me what Jesus taught. There's just no such thing. And you will come to live in a place where there's no such thing.

There's no such thing as a personal spiritual guide. No such thing. There's no word for it.

It's just not the custom. Why? Because you broke your relationship in the past life.

Okay? I'll stop the depressing talk. If you have questions, we'll do questions for...

We have about 15 minutes, but if you don't have any questions, I'll go back to the text. Bonnie has a question. Okay.

I'll repeat the question until we get a mic, okay? You weren't here? Oh, you were afraid when you left.

Okay, good. Yeah, okay.

[Говорящий 2] (48:01 - 48:01)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (48:05 - 48:05)
Yeah, good.

[Говорящий 2] (48:13 - 48:14)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (48:24 - 54:52)
Okay. I'll repeat the question. So Bonnie said she had a good class yesterday because she went home scared.

So the class had some effect. And then she was reflecting on she has her own dik dro, negative influence, spiritual influence within herself. And then she was thinking about people that she would meet who are kind of tending that way.

And that's not uncommon. Why? It is the most expensive karma in the world to meet a teacher.

And it's burned up very fast. Five minutes with a teacher will burn up, we believe, thousands of years of good karma. I have a friend, he doesn't want to be around any teachers because he said, I don't want to burn up my karma.

I'm like, wait, wait, we have a mental problem here. Conceptual problem. So you're born with a kind of a debit card and then all the good experiences in your life use it up.

And that's why people age. That's why people get old. Because you use it up faster than you replace it.

Even if you try pretty hard, you're not making good karma fast enough not to get old. And it's the same with a teacher. So it's very common to meet people who are with a teacher for a while.

And nothing bad happens. There's no big blow-up or explosion. They just lose interest.

They just slowly wander off to do something else. Then if we see that happening to our friend, is there something I can do to help them? Can I somehow help them charge up their debit card for another ten years with their lama?

Is there anything I can do to help a person who's losing interest or losing affection for their lama? There's a very beautiful thing you can do. So, in the end, everything you see is coming from you.

In the end, if you see people around you losing interest or having friction with their teacher, in the end, it's always coming from you. Hinsa bhakti-sthayam tat-sannidha-varajyagah in the Yoga Sutra. If you see conflict in your life, it's because you yourself have been violent.

To fix it, ahinsa bhakti-sthayam, if you stay aware of that fact and you try to be less violent in your own moment-to-moment behavior, tat-sannidha-varajyagah, you will no longer see conflict around you. So, if we see people around us losing interest or having trouble with their teacher, in the end, it's coming from small seeds in me, inside of me, and I can fix it. To help them, I have to crank up my own faith.

So, the real solutions in Buddhism are sweet and they're not difficult. They're a pleasure. How do you fix other people's problems?

You fix yourself, and that's pleasant. That's a fun thing because then you're a nicer person and then you're happier. So, the way to influence a friend in a positive way who's maybe wandering away from their teacher or having trouble with their teacher is to be super vigilant about your own relationship with your teacher and dedicate those corrections, those minor corrections, those corrections which are at this point minor for you but which will be major later if you don't correct them and which are causing you to see these people. Correct those, correct minor, be very super vigilant. Say, okay, to help so-and-so I'm going to be really vigilant about my own feelings about my teacher and my own service of my teacher and then that will correct what I see.

And that's just a beautiful strategy for your whole life. Anything in your life. My friend's having financial problems.

Oh, you should be more generous. Or my family, people in my family in another state are fighting with each other. Okay, then you be more friendly with your friends and you be more kind to your friends and that's how you fix them.

In Buddhism, you fix everything around you by fixing yourself and that process is desirable and fun and you become a better person. It's so fun to go to bed sending someone your corrected Lama behavior. Okay, I've never disparaged my Lama.

Let's just say. But I was a little irritated with them a couple days ago. It crossed my mind.

What do you call it? It flitted across a shadow of a thought like, oh, this is such a hassle. And then, oh, I caught it.

And I caught it and I confessed it and I dumped it. And now I dedicate that dumping to my friend who's wandering away from their teacher or something like that. So that's how you fix it.

It's a wonderful process. Buddhism has a wonderful solution to everything which is fix those tendencies in yourself, small as they be, and then major things that you see in your life will shift. And the process of doing that is fun and it makes you nicer and happier and you feel better.

It's just a win-win thing. It's a beautiful system. You see what I mean?

You don't have to correct them or talk to them or write them a letter. You just fix yourself and then they change. It's cool.

Next question. There are some hands over here. Mr. Todd, I don't have a mic but you can mic them.

[Говорящий 2] (54:54 - 54:58)
So what are the seeds that we plan to have a sweet relationship with?

[Говорящий 1] (54:59 - 1:01:10)
What are the seeds that we plan to have a sweet relationship with our teacher? There are many. There are many.

But let me think. I'm trying to think of my own case. I think the standard answer would be to say help others have a sweet relationship with their teacher and that's important.

But also in my own case, I think it's gratitude. I think it's a feeling of gratitude. Gratitude is some kind of super medicine for everything.

Gratitude is like the ultimate cure for everything. So in my own case, when I'm feeling... I don't feel down or something like that but when I'm not feeling super sweet about my teacher, I crank up my gratitude.

I work on my gratitude. I think of what they have given me. I think about what I would be if I had never met them.

How different I would be. I think about all the times they took care of me and how much they love me. I think they love me is the best one.

I think about how much they love me and then I feel this intense gratitude for them. So I think work on... There's a thing in Buddhism called making mental lists.

Making mental lists. And most often we get into making negative mental lists. This is...

You get in some kind of problem with somebody and then you start making lists about them. That's a kind of meditation. It's called...

What is it? Che gom. Or shar gom.

You review all the times they hurt you and then the list gets longer and longer and you review it more and more often and then you get into a negative rut with them. But in a positive way, about anybody that you're having problems with you can start making positive lists. And you can challenge yourself.

You can't go to bed, Todd, unless you write down three nice things about this person that you don't like so much. And then you might not sleep all night. But anyway.

No, just kidding. But with your teacher, once you start a list about your teacher, then it will just get really long. If you do it every night, you say, okay, I'm going to write down three good things about my teacher so I can have more gratitude, so I can have a sweet relationship with my teacher.

I would say that. I would say every day write down three things that you love about them or that they've done for you. In my case, with my Tibetan teacher, Ken Rinpoche, who was I talking to?

I forget. In China I was talking to somebody about him. And it just hit me that thousands of times he helped me.

He tried to help me thousands of times. And it overwhelmed me. I was just sitting there and I said, wow, wow.

He put up with me for 25 years. He had another student who confided in me one day that I was just a big hassle. And then it was extremely charitable of Rinpoche to have me around.

And now I'm like, yeah, probably it was. And I just think, I can think of thousands of times. When I was talking to the Chinese person, I was remembering when I was sick one time.

And Rinpoche came and served me like hand and foot. Here's this great Lama and he's coming down and making me tea and asking me how I am. Every few minutes, he's down there helping me.

He did that kind of stuff constantly. So I think start making a list. Start a list and then it'll get out of hand.

And then you'll get into a sweet relationship. So make a positive list. And that goes for people that you're having problems with.

There's nobody that you're having a problem with who hasn't done something good or something nice. You're just looking at the negative list and you're not looking at the positive list. So if you're having trouble with somebody, start a list.

You can even start a page in a journal and start writing nice things that you've seen them do. And the first night there's only two. And the second night there's five.

And then the third night there's 20. It gets really cool. And then you start watching them for nice things that they do and then your relationship changes.

So it's called good list instead of bad list. You can make a bad list about anybody. You can make a bad list about Lord Buddha.

And it'll get longer also if you practice. You know? So the idea is to...

I'm just teaching you a very powerful thing. It's called the good list. Make a list of nice things about somebody.

And then in life, 50% of life is good. 50% of life sucks. And in the end you have a choice which list you make.

All day. Are you going to pay attention to all the stuff that sucks or are you going to pay attention to the things that are magical? You have a choice.

There's both there and nobody can say there's nothing bad in the world. And nobody can say there's nothing good in the world. It's mixed up because your karma is mixed up.

So you have a choice. In any given hour of your life you have a choice. You can pay attention to the stuff that sucks or you can pay attention to the things that are a miracle.

And if you get in the miracle habit it'll just sustain. It'll start to... snowball on itself.

Cool? It's 9.30. I get to go home. See you tomorrow.

[Говорящий 2] (1:01:57 - 1:02:05)
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