«Дар освобождения», курс 15 «Найти учителя, которому можно доверять», занятие 5

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 58:15)
Okay, we'll start. So we're going through a famous text. It's probably the most famous modern book in Tibet.

Modern meaning in the last 300 years or so. And it's called A Gift of Liberation Thrust into Your Hands. And it was a record of an oral teaching by the teacher of the teacher of the current Dalai Lama about 90 years ago, almost 100 years ago.

And his disciple, Trijang Rinpoche, who's one of the two tutors of the current Dalai Lama and the teacher of my teacher, edited the book and it became a classic in his lifetime. And it was carved in his lifetime, which is very unusual. And I think it's the best book on the planet right now, personally.

And I really love it. And so we're in the middle of a rather long course of perhaps 12 to 14 years of going through it slowly. What do you call it?

Savoring each word. And we're making a video record because the level of Tibetan in the world is dropping quickly because of political events. And not many Tibetans speak Tibetan very well anymore.

I called a monastery in Tibet, which I rarely do, to look for a book. And there was no one who could speak Tibetan to me except one old man. And so I would like to make a record of the meaning of the wording.

For future, for the future. Maybe we're the last generation who will do that, I think. All right.

Adam, I'm going to start just below where you have your dollar signs. NYIN RGYAS PAR Next line. Yeah.

So that NYIN RGYAS PAR means on the eighth day. So this teaching, I believe it's 24 days of teaching in Tibet. These guys sat there for 12 hours a day, 16 hours a day.

They rarely got a bathroom break. So we can do an hour or two. And we've reached the eighth day.

We're in the fourth year of our own study. We've reached day eight. So we're about a third of the way through.

It's a big deal to reach a new day. So congratulations. NYIN RGYAS PAR means on the eighth day.

Then beginning a new section or a new day, Pabongka Rinpoche, who is the lama who taught this book, he would try to remind people to refresh their motivation for coming to the event. Why did you come to hear this book? He will try to refresh everyone's motivation.

NYIN RGYAS PAR means on the eighth day. RJES BDAG NI CHEN PO RJES BDAG NI CHEN PO means... What's BDAG NI CHEN PO?

Maha... Mahatma. Mahatma.

So he's calling somebody Mahatma. It's a Tibetan translation of the word Mahatma. And RJES means...

But who do you guess he's quoting? Yeah, RJES MTSONGS SKABS PA. So RJES means like Lord.

And there are a couple of famous RJES in Tibet, but the big one for us is MTSONGS SKABS PA who was the teacher of the first Dalai Lama and the founder of our lineage. So RJES BDAG NI CHEN PO means by him. It's the instrumental case or agentive case has been added to his name.

So we're going to have a quotation by him. That's what it means. This particular quotation comes from a book called LAM TSUL NAMS SUNG which means the three principal paths.

It has been mistranslated as the three principles of the path, which is a very gross mistranslation. And you often hear that. So just be aware.

The word TSUL, the syntax of the word TSUL is unusual and it requires that you attach it to the word in front of it rather than the word after it. So LAM TSUL means principal path. Then he has a famous verse by RJES MTSONGS SKABS PA.

,GANG DAG SRID PA'I DE LA MA, ,CHAGS SHING, ,THYANG SBYOR DON YON, ,CHA BYAS TSUN PA YI, ,RGYAL BA RGYAS PA'I LAM LA, ,YID DON PAS, ,KYANG LDAN DE DAG DANG, ,BA'I YID KYI NYON, It's a very famous line. So the LAM TSUL NAMS SUNG or the three principal paths is a work of 14 verses only. It fits on one page.

It is a letter, an epistle that was sent to a disciple of RJES MTSONGS SKABS PA whom he had sent, shipped off to eastern Tibet like Siberia with the task of founding 108 monasteries. That was TSAL KHO BUM PO, ,SNGO BAR BDAG PA, TSAL KHO BUM PO means the friar from TSAL KHO, like local priest. He's the one who pulled off Gelsobje's hat, remember?

So, ,GANG DAG SRID PA'I DE LA MA BYA ZHING, Please listen to these lines, anyone of you who is no longer attached to the pleasantries of this life. Who is no longer attached to the pleasantries of this life. So I don't know, today I had a really good enchilada.

El Molino in Scottsdale, if you're interested. It's like a takeout place and it's the best Mexican in Phoenix, which is a big deal. So I enjoyed it.

Me and Scott and Nick, we were working at my girlfriend's house. She's 87. She broke her hip, so we were installing, what do you call it?

Railings for her. We enjoyed it. So was I attached to the pleasantries of suffering life?

No, because I shared it with them. I could have eaten it in the car on the way to her house. So why am I attached to it if I don't share it?

And why am I not attached to it if I do share it? Sharing it is a statement in our tradition that I know where the food came from and where the flavor is coming from. It comes from sharing things with others.

So that's not attachment. It's not wrong to enjoy things. All Buddhas do all day is enjoy things.

And they're not attached because they know where they come from. So it's like a win-win thing. You get your cake and you eat it too, by giving it away.

All right, okay. SRID PA'I DE LA MA CHAGS SHING So those of you who are not attached to the pain, why would it be pain not to share it? Yeah, I would kill the causes that created it.

I wouldn't perpetuate the causes that created the enchilada. By sharing the enchilada, I'm assuring myself at least ten more enchiladas. That's the math that you have to do in your head.

All right. Next line. DE'ANG PHYIR BSDUN GYIR BYA CHUD TZIM PA'I Please work hard to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunity you have right now.

You have a body. It's working. Where was that?

Somebody was talking about... Oh, we took our yoga class yesterday. The teacher was a ballet dancer.

Ballet teacher. So she mixed in some ballet. Then she said, don't worry if your muscles hurt.

Just think how lucky you are to have a muscle. Or who was that? Oh, it was Aaron.

Sorry. Sorry. Anyway.

Yeah, you're lucky to have a muscle. You're lucky to have a body. They're very fragile.

They get sick very easily. They catch cancer like nothing. The time that you have this body is not very long.

You have the use of this body for a while and then it will fall apart. So work hard. Realize that every hour is precious.

Every five minutes is precious. People make fun of me because I work in the car all the time. They say, don't you get a headache?

I say, yeah, but it's better than being dead. If you have five minutes in the car, do something with it. That doesn't mean you have to be, what do you call it?

ADD. Calmly work on something in the car in the five minutes that you have. ,RGYAL BA RGYAS PA'I LAM LA YID DON PAS, means turn your mind to that path which pleases the Buddhas.

The victorious ones. RGYAL BA means Jinnah, means victors. ,RGYAL DANG DE DAG DANG BA'I YID KYIS GNYEN, DE DAG, all of you, DANG BA is a beautiful word and here it's spelled correctly, which is unusual.

It has a WA SRER, DVANG, and it means crystal clear, like clear water, like the water in the Bahamas or something, or a nice creek, which you can see the bottom. DANG BA'I YID means mind. GNYEN means please listen to this teaching.

Please turn your attention to these teachings with a clear mind. In Tibetan, the word clear implies faith, or faith born of admiration. Admiring these enlightened beings, then please listen with clarity.

So it means clarity. It means faith. And then he uses the word GYEL MDAN, which is a common Tibetan first name, GYEL MDAN.

Lots of people are named GYEL MDAN by their parents. GYEL MDAN means those of you who have GYEL BA. What's GYEL BA?

GYEL BA means enough good karma to be here tonight. There's five million people in Phoenix and I don't know, there's 50 here. You are one in what?

100,000? You are one in 100,000. You are GYEL MDAN.

You are special. You have the karma to think it's worthwhile to spend a couple hours listening to this. And that's very rare, extremely rare.

One out of 100,000 is not bad in a normal city. We teach all over the world and that's pretty good numbers. One out of 100,000 people is willing to spend two hours to think about these things.

GYEL MDAN. You are lucky. You are special.

You are special people. You have some kind of strange karma that you want to listen to Tibetan grammar and meditation. Meditate on little lights in your body like you're a Christmas tree or something.

You're a really unusual person, as you may have noticed. I think good unusual, personally, but unusual for sure. LUNG BRDAN DANG BYAS ZHES PA'I LUNG BRDAN DANG BYAS This BRDAN is a different form of the word DRANG, like DRANG NAS.

You know the word DRANG NAS, which means to draw out the meaning of something. DRANG means to draw out. This BRDAN means DRANG PA LAMS GYI NUS PAR BYED means guides, those who draw us behind them.

BRDAN means to draw. But draw can also mean, BRDAN can also mean to pull out a quotation or a citation. So LUNG BRDAN is an idiom that means to quote a book, to pull a citation out of a book.

As he opened the eighth day of teachings, Pabongka Rinpoche chose to quote these famous lines from Je Tsongkapa. To summarize them, listen with a pure heart, those of you who have enough karma to be here today, who have no craving for the pleasures of this life of pain, who are working hard to make your opportunity meaningful. And who want to focus on the path which pleases the Buddhas.

He starts out by saying that. Now he's going to explain what that means. BSKANGS PA DANG PO, SKYE BU DRING NI YANG DAG PA'I LTA BA BSKANGS PA means what?

Leg. What's a BSKANGS THUNG? THUNG means to drink.

What's a BSKANGS THUNG? It's a poeticism for a plant, a tree, because they drink through their leg. You see?

BSKANGS So you can remember BSKANGS. But in poetry, BSKANGS PA means a line of verse. Normally it's a four or six line verses of poetry.

So BSKANGS PA means first. It comes from Sanskrit, which is Pada. And Pada came into pedestrian and pedal and it means foot or leg.

So it comes from the Sanskrit. The first line here is talking about the correct view of SKYE BU DRING, a person of medium capacity. So this teaching on the steps that you have to take one by one, call it 30 steps that you should take, 30 realizations you should seek to become a Buddha in order.

There are three levels of people who practice this and they are called lower capacity, medium capacity, and higher capacity. So medium capacity people have a certain viewpoint. What is it?

SRID PA'I DE LA MA CHAGS They aren't attached to anything in this life. Like you could... It's not that they don't even want the best things in this world.

They want something more than that. They don't want the best car you can buy or the nicest house you can have or things like that. They're not interested.

Medium motivation in Buddhism is you want something higher than that. You want to go higher than that. You want something beyond that.

That's called medium motivation. Medium capacity. GNYIS PA SKYE BU CHUNG DU DANG THUB MONG BA'I RNAMS The second line expresses the path which is THUB MONG BA with lesser motivation people, lesser capacity people.

THUB MONG BA means shared. Shared is a very important word in this tradition. It means we are building on the three motivations and it's not that we reject the lower ones when we get to the medium one.

So motivation, the smaller, lesser motivation is a building block in which you put the rest of the wall. But it's not like you reject the lower motivations. What's the lower motivation?

DANG GYUR DUG NYID BYANG CHUB They want to get the most out of this life, out of this present life. They want to use this life for something beautiful. They want to make something out of the years that they have, the few years that they have here.

They want to do something with it. So that motivation doesn't extend to after they die. They are focusing on this life, but they want to make the most out of the years that they have, which makes them lesser motivation.

Their motivation stops at the day that they die. They are not thinking beyond that. GANG PA GSUM PA BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS NA BYAR BA And then the third line reflects the attitude of a bodhisattva, highest capacity, higher capacity.

RGYAL BA RGYAS PA'I LAM LA YID DON PA Turn your minds to the path which pleases the Buddha. The path which pleases the Buddha is the path in which you have a vision of saving the whole world, where you have a vision of saving every being on this planet. Bodhichitta, right?

You have a higher motivation. You want to make every being on this planet happy. And that's your motivation.

That's the highest motivation. And frankly, not just this planet. I say this planet because you don't believe in other planets.

But one day in your meditation, you can see the other planets. They are infinite. They are not countable.

And in a deep meditation, you can learn to see them all at the same time. That's a beautiful thing. Like you see the fingers on your hand.

Is it possible to see more than one finger? Yes. Is it possible to see all planets?

Yes. Is there a number you can put on them? No.

Okay. That's like something cool. All right.

GANG PO GSUM PA BYAS NA LA BYAS NA SOGS GSUNGS DGOS NAS MUN GROL KUN LONG SPYOD PA So he was encouraging us. He SPYOD PA our motivation. He restored.

He asked us to again remember, why did you come to this talk? Why are you reading this book? What do you want out of this?

And everybody wants something different. Some people's motivation extends to having a life which has some meaning and not spending it eating and pooping and having sex and watching TV. Like they want to do something that has meaning.

That's least motivation. And then some people would like to expand their vision beyond this planet, beyond this current life. They are thinking bigger.

Most of us don't think more than a few days ahead. Most of us. We're not really very actively thinking more than a year ahead.

It's hard to get Americans to talk about a five-year plan or a ten-year plan. Even the government doesn't do a five-year plan or a ten-year plan. Some countries do.

We just don't have that habit. But a medium-level person is already thinking a lot about what they're going to do in the next life. This life is just a little part of their focus.

It's not that they're ignoring the events of this life or they're ignoring the people around them. It's that their vision is bigger, is expanded. And then the biggest motivation, they're expanding it to all lives and all people.

It's cool. It's a very wonderful thing to get out of the closet, which is called today, and look at the whole house. Most people live in today, and it's very narrow.

Most people live in the present moment, actually. Most people live in a five-minute wide box. In our tradition, we're supposed to expand our mind to higher things, to deeper things.

I'm not so worried about what happens this week. I'm worried about what happens in the next 10 or 20 years or 500 years. Like that.

A Buddhist has a big vision. All right. Tsongche, so after he had reminded us to expand our motivation to something a little bit beyond what's going to happen this week, which is not easy.

You have to practice. NGON DU JI LTAR SONG BA'I SA BCAD NAM BRAN He went over the SA BCAD. Say SA BCAD.

S-A-B-C-A-D You got it there? Start dictionary entry. You ready?

Start a dictionary entry. We're doing a video dictionary for the next 20 years or so. So SA means earth or level, and BCAD is a form of the verb SPROS PA, which you know from Dorje Chupa, which is diamond cutter.

So BCAD means to cut. SA means like a level. SA BCAD, it should be pronounced SA BCAD because you don't normally pronounce prefix letters in Tibetan.

They are like the K in I know what you're thinking. But this particular word, if you're going to pronounce it properly, it's what I call an irrational exception. You pronounce the B.

If you're cool, you say SA BCAD. SA BCAD. Say SA BCAD.

Then people say, oh man, your Tibetan is good. It's like, what's up? We have a translator from China.

His name is Stanley. He learned his English from... We have two translators.

One is Xiaoping, right? Allison. And one is Stanley.

Stanley learned his English from American movies. Xiaoping learned her English in the university. So it's cool to talk to Stanley because he's like, what's up man?

And she's like, what is occurring today? You know? So anyway.

So if you say SA BCAD, say SA BCAD. SA BCAD means the general structure of a work of literature, an outline of a text, the categories of a text, and it's called SA BCAD. So for example, one of the greatest books ever written in Tibetan is the Lam Rim Chimu, which is the great book on the steps of the path written by Jetsun Kappa.

The SA BCAD for that work, which is the outline of it, extends I think for 15, 20 pages. People memorize it. It's very common for people to memorize it in Tibet.

I memorized the SA BCAD of the Lam Rim Chimu. I know the whole structure of the whole Buddhist path is in my head. And then when you're bored, you're sitting on a bus or you're waiting for your enchilada at Molinos, you can pull out the SA BCAD and start going through it, which is what kind of meditation?

SHAR GOM It's called SHAR GOM. There are three kinds of meditation. SBYOR GOM Fixed meditation on a single object.

PHYIR GOM Problem solving meditation. Why does my husband yell at me? And then SHAR GOM which is let me, while I'm waiting for my enchilada and Nick just ordered another burrito, I'll go through the first 20 SA BCAD, the first 20 pieces of the SA BCAD.

And that's cool. If you're well trained, you can sit there in El Molino and do the Lam Rim Chimu SA BCAD for fun while you're waiting instead of reading the newspaper or something. All right.

So, Pabongka Rinpoche went over the topics we had already covered. He's starting his eighth day. Then he said, DNGUL ZHIG GZHAN YIN RTEN TSOG KYI SA BCAD DANG PO DANG NYID PA NYID LA SKYAR ZHES RNAMS SKYAR is an ancient word for again or repeat.

SKYAR ZHES means he did a brief review of what? Of the first and the second sections in the outline of ZHES RNAMS RTEN TSOG which is the DNGUL ZHIG. DNGUL ZHIG means the real, what do you call it?

The main act, the main course. Yeah, like there's the preliminaries and then there's the, what do you call it? The main event.

Yeah, main event is good. So, we're in the main event. We finished the preliminaries.

We're finished with Georgia for example. We're in the main event which is the real lam rim. We started the first of the real lam rims which is what?

Yeah, how to find a qualified teacher and how to serve them properly. DNGUL ZHIG GZHAN YIN RTEN TSOG There's some subject, DANG PO DANG NYID PA NYID He repeated, he did a small review of the first two categories which are RTEN PA'I PHAN YIN MA RTEN PA DANG RTEN TSUL LOGS PA'I GNYIS MIG Say RTEN PA'I PHAN YIN. RTEN PA'I PHAN YIN Anybody remember what that is?

PHAN YIN The benefits that come if you find a qualified teacher and create a loving and respectful relationship with them. There's a list of, I think it's six benefits that will come to you. Then he covered what?

Yeah, he covered the opposite. What happens if you screw up that relationship? He expresses it in this way.

MA RTEN PA Either not trying to find a teacher or RTEN TSUL LOGS PA Find them and then mess up with them. In Buddhism the most important task any Buddhist practitioner has to undertake in their life is to find their heart teacher. It could be your mom or dad.

It could be your high school girlfriend. It could be your dog, I believe. It could be a guy in a red suit.

It could be anybody. It could be a rock singer that you enjoy. But you have to find your root lama, your heart teacher.

In this life, that's the most important thing a Buddhist has to do. It's the root of everything. What do they call it?

Yeah, yeah. YON DEN SHIR GYUR MA It's the root of everything. It's the basis of everything.

You have to find your teacher in this life. Personally, I found mine. I was fortunate at a very early age.

I can say from my personal experience that it's the sweetest thing in your life. It is the sweetest thing in your life. Remember, if you find your heart teacher in this lifetime, there's nothing better.

And I've done everything, trust me. There's nothing better than that. There is nothing that compares.

Nothing compares. GYUR BZHIN RNAMS TE DE LA SA BYAS BSTAN MIG PA GYUR GYUR KHO NAS DBANG DU BYAS PAS ZHES NYID DAG PA'I TSUL GYI GOR TE In this particular Lam Rim presentation, by the way, Lam Rim means The Steps to Buddhahood, right? Idiot's Guide to Buddhahood.

MIG PA GYUR That's an important idiom for you to learn. MIG PA can mean a lot of things, but here it means topic of meditation. It can mean a lot of different things, but here it means topic of meditation.

MIG PA GYUR means to practice bringing to mind different topics of meditation in a certain order, okay? For years in your meditation. MIG PA GYUR GYUR GYUR means present, future participle, which are to be the topics of meditation which are to be reviewed in the next few years of your life.

GONG NAS DBANG DU BYAS means this particular book that we're studying, even though it's huge, it's designed only to present to you what you should meditate on. It's not designed to be a book of philosophy. It's not designed to be a philosophical discussion of theory.

This book is special. This book is a string of meditation topics. It's not discussions of things.

It's basically a raw string of things you can meditate on. Therefore, SPAS BYAS PA'I SHING YIN LTA BU'I TSUL GYIS BSKOR How to... Now, say beautiful expression here.

Say SHING YIN LTA SPA SHING YIN LTA SPA This is not the LTA SPA that means unchanging. That's RTAG. This is BRTAG.

The meaning changes totally. This LTA SPA means... LTA SPA means vittarka, means examine.

Check them out. A potential teacher, LTA SPA means check them out. Investigate them.

Dig into their life. Before you commit, before you take them as a teacher, LTA SPA That's a very important word here, right? In this text.

Very important. SHING YIN LTA SPA means investigate a teacher's life and teaching and friends and students and lineage before you make the commitment to them. So, can you go to their teachings to LTA SPA?

Yeah, you have to. You have to. So, you know, sit in the back.

And, you know, like, LTA SPA. How's everybody behaving in this group? What's this person teaching?

Are they practicing what they preach? How's the harmony in this group? Like that.

Investigate. Dig into. Look on the internet and read all the blogs.

And then compare them to what you see and decide whether they're valid. What's valid? What's not valid?

And then make a decision about this teacher. But don't take a teacher lightly. Don't accept them lightly.

In our tradition, you must find your teacher. But you are not allowed to take one lightly. You are supposed to investigate them.

And again, to repeat, the period of 12 years is often quoted as the time to investigate a teacher. I think 12 years in modern life is a little... I don't think it's practical for many of us.

But it's not unusual in Buddhism to spend a few years going to a person's classes to see if they're the right person for you. And each person has a different personality. And we're all different.

And we all respond to different teachers. I respond to teachers who are tough with me. And some people break down and leave.

My Lama, every person he ever lived with left, except me. And it works for me. If you praise me too much, I get a big head, and I don't listen.

If you criticize me constantly, I try harder. He criticized me for 25 years. I try harder for 25 years.

But some people would leave after a week. They did. So everyone has different needs and different personality and different...

what do you call it? Propensities and makeup of your inner self. And you have to find someone who fits you.

You have to find a good fit. And don't be... It means we also can't judge other people's choice of a teacher.

You see what I mean? Because maybe they need that teacher. Maybe they need someone...

There was a teacher, I remember, in my day, who really took advantage of his students terribly and charged them high amounts of money and made them slave labor. I'm talking digging ditches, building house after house after house. And sometimes he'd keep them and sometimes he'd just get rid of them and then he'd say, I need another one.

And we were sitting there going, this Lama's a little... We're glad we have our Lama. That Lama's kind of crazy.

But frankly, that Lama's students came out very well. Those who survived the process became great practitioners of Buddhism in this country. They are some of the foremost scholars in this country of Buddhism.

Like Professor Thurman and Jeffrey Hopkins. They all studied with this kind of crazy, to me, person who was kind of taking advantage of them. But they came out quite...

He worked them very hard and they came out well. It just depends. So you have to check them out and see if it's a good fit or not.

ZHIN YIN BTAG PA'I TSUL KHI Now the subject of how you should check out your teacher is not a meditation subject. It's something you do before you commit to your teacher. Therefore, DE NYUR means...

DE means DALAM. NYUR means NYUR LAM. What's that mean?

These are two famous Lam Rim texts. DALAM is the path to bliss. NYUR LAM is the quick path, shortcut.

They were written by the first and second Panchen Lamas, respectively, in the 16th and 17th centuries. So in those two Lam Rims, they do not cover how to check out a teacher. Because they're just focusing on meditation.

But BYAMS PA'I LA MI ZAL MI ZAL means it doesn't clearly or explicitly cover the subject which relates to how to check out a teacher. What's subje? List of topics or outline.

YANG, but BYAMS PA'I ZHAL LUNG The Word of Manjushri. It's called The Word of Manjushri. ZHAL means His Holy Lips.

The words which came from the Holy Lips of Manjushri, which is another Lam Rim which was written by His Holiness the Fifth Dalai Lama, who's one of the most famous of the Dalai Lamas, sort of unified Tibet into a country, built the Potala Palace, for example, and was a great scholar of both Tsongkhapa and Nyingma traditions. He wrote a Lam Rim which is very beautiful. And maybe in the next 20 years we can read that one.

ZHAL LUNG LAS SBYUNG BA BZHIN DI'I BAR NA BYAS DGOS So, DI'I BAR NA means at this point in your teaching your own students, because that's the system. It's a pyramid scheme. I had learned a new business term, multi-level marketing organization.

It means I teach you, then you teach other people, then they teach other people. It's a pyramid scheme. DI'I BAR NA means when you get to this part of the book, with your own students, that means you, with your own students, which you should have, you should teach people.

I want you to teach people. I'm not getting up here to teach and then go away and this thousand year tradition dies out because you didn't take notes. No pressure.

Take notes. You never know when you might want to teach somebody, even if you don't right now. So take good notes.

DI'I BAR NA means at this juncture, BYAS DGOS you should go into how to find a teacher or how to check out a teacher. So there's a system for how to check out a teacher. There are things you're supposed to be looking for.

This week we have to buy a car. I never bought a car in my whole life. Never, ever.

This year I have to buy a car for my teacher. This week, sorry. So we saved up the money for many months.

We have the money. We're going out starting tomorrow. Try some cars.

Then I realized we have to have a list of what we want. It's got to be all-wheel drive. It's got to be big enough to fit their stuff.

It can't use too much gas. For a lady, the main thing is it shouldn't have an ugly color. They should like the color.

I'm thinking the tires should not be worn down. I have to buy new tires. There's a list in your head of what you want.

It should be fairly comfortable inside, but it should be modest because my teacher is modest. My teacher wouldn't want something, what do you call it? Extravagant or inappropriate.

But she does like a little power sometimes. This is my list in my head. You should have a list in your head of the teacher that you want.

You should have a list in your head. What he's going to do is give you some traditional lists that have been presented in the past two and a half thousand years. Then maybe some of the items will be useful for you.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, number four should be on my list. That's something I want in my teacher. We're going to get a couple of very famous lists.

One of them, the most famous one was granted by Maitreya himself, the next Buddha. He said, here's a list of stuff, features that you want in your new car. I'm Lama.

Here we go. Here comes the lists. I think this is the guts of this ten-day course.

I think tonight and tomorrow are the guts of this course. This is what you really want to remember from this course. This is what you want to teach other people.

Because if people don't find a teacher, they will die. If they find a teacher but they don't check the teacher out, they will do worse than die. They have to know what to look for.

If you're trying to help somebody, you should be able to give them some suggestions about what a good teacher looks like. Here we go. DE YANG, DBOS NA SNGAR BSHAD PA LTAR ZHING YIN GTAM PA LA PHAN YIN DANG This is a segue, by the way.

This is a bridge to the new topic. He says, DBOS NA, DBOS NA means, well then, you have explained all the cool stuff that happens if you have a sweet relationship with your teacher. And, MA BSTAN PA LA NYES MI DE LTAR YIN NA And you've gone over all the problems that happen if the relationship goes sour.

But you didn't tell us what kind of teacher to look for. You say if we have a good relationship, it's good. If we have a bad relationship, it's bad.

But you didn't say what we're supposed to look for before we start the relationship. Could you tell us what to look for? JI LTA BU ZHIG means, what the heck?

LA BSTAN PAR BYA Who am I supposed to have a relationship with? What kind of dude or dudess am I supposed to have a relationship with? SHES NA What's SHES NA?

We had it the other day. You may ask. Rhetorical question.

Someone may ask, you talk about a relationship, but who am I supposed to have it with? First, Pabongka Rinpoche covers what's not enough. And then he covers what is enough.

So first he's going to say a little bit about what's not enough, and then he's going to give us a list. So the list doesn't come right away. I'm sorry.

ZHES NYAN DE YANG GANGS BYUNG GI MI CHOG PAR Don't just take whoever shows up. Don't just take whoever you bump into. That's extremely important advice for Americans.

Americans have this habit. They run into some teacher and they get all, what do you call it? What do you call it?

Starry-eyed and they say, oh, I found my teacher. He rings a bell. He rings a bell.

You see it all the time. And they get all excited. It's called ang sar tsapo in Tibetan.

Say ang sar. Tsapo. It means initial excitement or something.

We have a word for that? It wears off quickly. Infatuation, honeymoon.

It's like you all get all excited. Oh, he rings a bell. He also has a neat drum.

Then the next time you see him, he's like, you got to give me $4,000 if you want this initiation. Like that. Initial excitement or something like that.

There is an expression in English. I don't remember. ZHES NYAN DE GANGS BYUNG means whoever shows up.

Just whoever. Start dictionary entry. GANGS BYUNG GANGS means what, who, or where.

BYUNG means happened. But as an idiom, GANGS BYUNG means whoever just pops up or whoever shows up in your life. End dictionary entry.

MI CHOG This CHOG doesn't mean ritual. We talked about it. This CHOG means it's not enough.

It ain't going to cut it. CHOG. C-H-O-G.

CHOG PA LAM YONGS SROG LA CI NUS PA ZHIG BSTAN DGOS You must find a teacher who can take you through the whole path. The whole path from beginning to end. They must know the whole path and they must be able to teach it to you.

And that's a lot. The path is very long, very detailed. There are many things to know and you must find one who knows the whole thing from the first day to the last day.

And that's a lot. It's massive. NUS PA Someone who can teach.

TEA means guide you. Take your hand and guide you from the first day to the last day. You have to find somebody like that.

NUS PA means they have that capacity. They have that ability. BSTAN DGOS KYI DPER NA For example, THUGS SHIN TU SANG BA TZAM LTA BU YON DANG CHOG RE BA ZHIG YID LAM YONGS SROG LA CI NUS And then he gives a very delicate example, I think.

He says, if you find a very sincere teacher but who's unqualified or incapable to teach the whole path, it's not enough. They can be very loving and very sincere and basically a very... a person of very high integrity.

But they don't know the whole path. MI NUS, CI MI DUS They can't help you. It's not enough.

It's not enough to find a really nice person. You need someone who can teach you the whole path and is also a nice person. Both.

Don't be satisfied with a yellow diamond or a black diamond. BLO MA DE PA DANG ZHES MTSON DANG YANG BLO MA DE SDONG RANG YONGS SROG LA NYAN CAN CHU MA BLO MA DE PA DANG ZHES MTSON DANG YANG This is very interesting. The disciple may be a person of great devotion to the spiritual path.

They may be very interested in spirituality. DE PA CHEN PO They are very... They were born to practice the Dharma.

They were born to be a spiritual seeker. And GZHAN PA means extremely intelligent. And MTSON means willing to work their butt off, willing to work hard.

You can have a disciple who is deeply attracted to spiritual things and very naturally wise and also willing to really work hard but young. BLO MA DE SDONG RANG YONGS SROG LA NYAN CAN CHU MA If that Lama hasn't mastered the open and the secret paths of this tradition, if they haven't mastered SDONG RANG, sutra and tantra, meaning the open and secret teachings, all of them, YONGS SROG LA, master. If they're not, MA CHUNG TSE If you don't find someone like that, DE'I DE'I SKYAM DU CI DANG They can teach you all about faith.

SKYAM DU, right? Shelter. Give me shelter.

You will hear more about that later. And LHA'I GRUB THAB They can know some tantric practices. How to call forth a tantric deity.

SADHANA They can know individual topics well, but not the whole thing. See what I mean? Oh, they're a master at teaching refuge.

Or they're very good at Vajrayogini Sadhana. Or TSAR LUNG BSGOM PA They are very good on the inner body, chakras, prana. TSAR means nadi.

They know the inner body. Backwards and forth. They are very good at the inner body.

TSAR LUNG SROG NYAM LEN CHOG RE BA is the crucial term here. CHOG RE BA means individual topics they may have mastered. Either a master of the chakras, or a master of a certain deity, or a master of some very foundational basic thing, but they haven't integrated the whole thing.

They're just good at individual things. BSGOM PA NYAM LEN CHOG RE BA NA CIG TZAM LA MI TSE SHRIL POR BYOR BA SHRIL PO is a nice word, I like it. Say SHRIL PO.

H-R-I-L SHRIL PO SHRIL POR BYOR BA means they could be a person who has devoted their entire lifetime to the chakras. Or they have devoted their entire lifetime to a certain ritual for calling forth the tantric deity. Or they could have devoted their whole lifetime to one of the topics of the Lam Rim.

But BDA' BA THOB PA LA DON CHEN PO GDUG PAR MING GYUR You're not going to get the most out of your whole life if you just study with someone who's very good at one single little slice of the whole pie. You need someone, rather, who can take you through the whole pie. GYUR BA'I SHES NYAN SRED NYID TZAM BA ZHIG BSTAN DGOS So you have to find say SHES NYAN SRED NYID TZAM BA Say SRED NYID TZAM BA SRED NYID means what?

Definition. Here it means requisites. The requisite qualifications.

The prerequisites of a good Lama, great Lama, SHES NYID. TZAM BA means they're all there, complete. They have all of them.

It's not that they just know about the chakras or they just know about one tantric deity or they just know some part of the Lam Rim. They know all of it and they mastered all of it from the beginning to the end. And they can take you the whole way through each topic to Buddhahood.

They know them all. They mastered all of them. You have to find somebody like that.

Which is... Anyway. DE'I DE'I KHYAM DOR CI DANG SRED NYID KYANG Then he's...

Again, he's segueing. He says SRED NYID KYANG. What does SRED NYID mean again?

Here are the qualifications. The requisite, the prerequisites to be a great Lama. SRED NYID KYANG Then he bridges.

He says, hey, let's talk about those qualifications. So that's what we've been waiting for, for like five days. He's like, okay, so you got to find one with all the qualifications.

Well, what are the qualifications? SRED NYID KYANG here means let's talk about those qualifications. SO THAG GI SDOM PA BO PA PO DANG BYANG SEMS DANG SANG SNGAGS KYI SDOM PA BO PA PO'I BRTZE NYID SO SO SEMS MANG YANG In the scriptures, many definitions or many descriptions are given.

Many lists of qualifications are given in the scriptures at different levels of Buddhist practice. He gives some examples. SO THAG GI SDOM PA What's just SO THAG GI SDOM PA?

SO SOR THAR PA'I SDOM PA BRATTI MOKSHA VOWS BRATTI MOKSHA VOWS Monk's vows, nun's vows, novice's vows, people who've left the home, ordination vows, lifetime layman's vows, vows to follow the ten virtues, vows to follow your refuge commitments, those kinds of vows. The people who grant you that level of practice, the commitments for that level of practice, they have their separate qualifications. There's a list.

You shouldn't take refuge vows from someone who doesn't have those qualifications. You shouldn't take monk's vows, nun's vows, lifetime layman's vows from someone who doesn't have all the qualifications of the traditional list for that. But that's just one list.

He gives another example. BYANG SEMS KYI SDOM PA BOG PA PO BOG PA, by the way, those of you who care, it's an unusual word, apostrophe B-O-G-S. BOG PA means to confer vows.

It's a strange word, unusual word, to confer vows, to grant vows. And there's a separate list of qualifications for someone who gives you the next level of vows, which is what? Bodhisattva vows.

There's a whole separate list of qualifications for that kind of Lama. And there's a completely separate list for a person who's a SANG SNGAG SDOM PA BOG PA PO who grants you tantric vows. That's a whole separate list of qualifications.

So far we have three different kinds of Lamas. One who can make you a monk. One who can make you a bodhisattva, a vow holder.

And one who can teach you tantra, give you tantric vows. Their qualifications are different. Those lists are different.

SEMS KYI SDOM SO SOR MANG YANG means there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. YANG But...

I have something hopeful coming here. But DIR LAM GYI RIM PA YONGS SROG LTOS NUS PA'I ZHES NI KHYAD SEMS NI BSTAN PA BYA LA What we're looking for in the context of the current teaching is a person who can take you through the whole Lam Rim. Someone who knows the Lam Rim well and can guide you through, I don't know, 30, 40 major spiritual realizations that you have to have to reach the goal.

They've got to be able to trigger in you 30 or 40 major changes in your personality and in your life to get you to the goal. This person has to be skilled enough to trigger certain personality changes in you. 30 of them or 40 of them.

ZHES NI BSTAN PA BYA LA And they can trigger all of them. They've done it many times. They know the order.

They know how to work on you. They know how to get you to the next level of changes, transformation in your personality. NUS PA'I ZHES NI KHYAD SEMS NI BSTAN PA BYA LA So that's the list that we're going to be most concerned with here.

That's the Lama. That's the qualifications that we have to cover here in our current context. LA MTSAN NYID DANG BRTAN MI BRTAN YANG MA BRTAN KHO NA'I BTAG Very, very, very, very important sentence.

Here we go. MTSAN NYID DANG BRTAN MI BRTAN Whether or not they have those qualifications, YANG MA BRTAN KHO NA'I BTAG Before you commit to them, BTAG. Check it.

Analyze. Rip them apart. Investigate their life.

Check them out. Ruthlessly. It's funny, I had the honor of teaching a very extraordinary Chinese teacher last week.

We were sitting having dinner and he named all the places I've ever taught. I'm like, whoa. I don't even remember.

And he's like, I'm like, he checked me out. You see what I mean? Before he ever talked to me, he said he checked me out for two years.

He spent two years investigating me. Every time I want to tell him about something that happened, he's like, I know. He says, I know and I love you.

And I'm like, okay. There's no confessing anything to him. BTAN KHO NA'I BTAG Check them out.

He did it. He's very unusual. Very, very unusual.

He remembers more about my life than I do. LAM MED TSE NI BDAG PA'I DE'I GZHAN YIN BRTAN PAR BGYUR PA'I BYA BAR MA ZAD This is not just... The exercise of checking whether this person is qualified or not is not just something that those who wish to check out teachers must do.

What's he going to say? I'll say it again. This exercise of examining whether a person has the required qualifications or not is not just something that those who are seeking a teacher should do.

[Говорящий 2] (58:21 - 58:22)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (58:22 - 1:06:07)
Those who wish to become a teacher. So the exercise of learning to examine another person to see if they are qualified should be applied to yourself later on in your life. Do I have...

Am I like that? Do I have... How close am I to that?

Because we all seek to teach. We all should teach. We should help others.

That's the main way Buddhists help others. The greatest deed Buddha ever did on this planet was to speak the teachings. When you go through this exercise of learning the qualifications of a Lama, it's not just because you're looking for one, it's because you want to become one.

And you have to start applying it to yourself. Do I have these qualifications? So he's encouraging you as you learn these qualifications, learn to look at...

learn to look for them in others, but also begin to look inside yourself whether you are working on developing them or not. In theory you don't have them yet because you are looking for a teacher. But you should be in the mode of what I look for, I also seek to be.

And that's beautiful. All of you should teach. Each person here should become a teacher.

It's cool. It's what we do. It's our practice.

We want to become a Buddha, which is a teacher. The word for Buddha in Tibetan is THON PA, the teacher. So you should teach.

You should be setting yourself up to teach. If you're shy, then just play rock and roll with us for a while. You'll get over it.

All right. BSTAN PAR BSDOD PA'I BYA'O MA ZAD SDUG SDOG SNGAGS GSUNG GI GZHAN YIN BYAS PAR BSDOD PA'I If you have any dream of becoming a spiritual teacher yourself of either SDUG, SDOG, or SNGAGS, what's SDUG? Vowed morality.

Vinaya. Like a basic foundation level teacher who can teach basic foundation level Buddhism. ACI courses.

18 courses, let's say roughly. SDOG means sutra. Open teachings.

That's the whole 18 courses. And then SNGAGS. Tantra, the secret teaching.

SNGAGS is the Tibetan word for mantra. It means mantra, tantra are basically synonyms. So if you seek to be, don't just look for these qualities in other people.

Seek them in yourself. If you seek to be a teacher, check them out in yourself. If you seek to be a teacher either of foundational level or 18 ACI course level or all 36 course level.

Open and secret teachings. SDUG SDOG SNGAGS GSUNGS KYI LAM MA'I YON TAN NAM RANG LA TZAM PA TZAM RTAG You should RTAG RANG. RANG LA RTAG.

Check out yourself. Investigate you. You investigate you.

It's cool. Whether you have those qualities. Whether you have the YON TAN meaning the qualities of a Lama who can teach those subjects.

See if you have the qualities while you're investigating a potential teacher to decide whether you're going to commit to them. You might as well look into yourself and see how far you have to go on each subject. TZAM MA SANGS PHAG STE MA TZAM NA MA TZAM NA TZAM means you have all of them.

MA TZAM NA RU GO I don't know why I remember that word. I can't remember anything else. If you don't have those qualities, what's he going to say?

Get them. MA TZAM NA TZAM PA BYA Then get them. Finish your ACI courses.

Finish your tantric courses. Go through all the Lam Rim teachings. Do all the meditation.

You have them all. You're like weird people. You're like one of the only people in history who have all of them at your fingertips and you don't finish them.

It's extraordinary. It's weird. I would say try to make it a goal to finish four courses a year.

Every six months try to finish two courses. Anybody with half a brain can finish four courses a year. They're not hard.

You can sit and listen to the audio in your car and the homeworks are easier than the Arizona State driving exams for people who ran a red light. How many wheels does a car have? I'm swearing.

Did you ever do that test? Did you ever get a big traffic ticket? I did once.

The cop was wrong of course. I was astounded that they could make a quiz like that. How many headlights does a car have?

Stuff like that. Anyway, the ACI courses are not much more difficult than that. So you should finish them.

Really you have to finish them. He's telling you finish them. He's telling you finish them.

If you work for DCI from this year on you have to finish four a year or you're out. And some people are out already. Some good people are out already.

You have to finish four a year. If you have any that you didn't finish. Who decides whether you finish?

One lady from Colorado. And whatever she says is true. She says you never finish the course.

As far as I'm concerned, you never finish the course. People are always saying, I did all the homeworks, I sent them in, they got lost. And I say, you didn't pass.

Do them again. Is it going to hurt you? Is that such a bad thing?

Maybe it's a good karma that they lost all your homeworks. They lose a lot of homeworks. Maybe I even asked them to lose them.

Now you're in a position to learn the deepest, most beautiful things on this planet. You're just insane if you don't do it. It's really frustrating for me personally.

It took 14 years. It's 20,000 pages of translation. It was a bit of work.

And it's there. It's all in English and it's sweet. It blows your mind.

It makes you a wonderful person. It makes your whole life happy. Just do it.

Four courses a year. Okay. One every three months.

All right. We're going to take a break there. Okay, we have about an hour to go.

Okay, we'll start again. We have about half an hour and I thought we could spend some of the time on questions, if you have any questions. That was my Geshe exam.

That was the last day. That's when all the high lamas come and debate with you, one by one. I was really nervous.

But anyway, it went pretty good. Any questions?

[Говорящий 2] (1:06:10 - 1:06:19)
Does this lamrim go over a list? Does this lamrim go over a list of the realizations that a teacher should have?

[Говорящий 1] (1:06:20 - 1:06:33)
Todd asked, does this lamrim go over the realizations that a teacher should have had? Yes. Yes.

And we're going to get there shortly, probably tomorrow. Erin.

[Говорящий 2] (1:06:38 - 1:07:04)
I'm wondering because when, I don't know, I've heard it said a lot when you're thinking about who could be your heart lama, like sometimes it's okay if it's a dog, or if it's your mother. And then going down this list, and I know your view that someone could change, like one minute it might be your dog and then the next it could change all the way to teaching you how to see emptiness directly. But how do you justify that?

[Говорящий 1] (1:07:05 - 1:10:35)
Yeah, I had a Chinese person ask me recently. They're very devoted to me. And they said, some people you meet they have all these qualifications, but sometimes you meet a person and you think this is my heart lama and they're not so qualified.

They don't know Sanskrit and they can't tell you the ten this and the twelve that. And how do we deal with that? So, at the level of your heart teacher, as we will discuss in detail either, probably at the next session, the next ten days, but at a certain level, when you meet your heart teacher, then you are consciously developing an attitude or you already feel an attitude where you believe they have been sent by the Buddhas to teach you.

Like that movie we saw the other night. And they have been selected by the enlightened beings and they are an enlightened being and they have come to teach you. So there happens this thing with your heart lama that the external qualifications aren't so important anymore.

And they have, it's not that they mastered the Buddha's teachings, they taught them on another planet or something. They wrote them. And then you, eventually you reach this place with your teacher and you realize that so they can't tell the ten things or the twelve things, apparently, but you gain this conviction that they are the person who wrote them.

And that's the result of a lot of hard work that you meet them. Okay, that's all. So to other people, they may not appear to have those qualifications, but to you, they, without question, have those qualifications.

And then there's something where it's kind of uncomfortable to try to tell other people why they have the qualifications. Because they don't see them the way you see them. They might see them as a normal person.

That's pretty common. You see them as a Buddha and they see them as something else. And then it doesn't help to try to convince them that this is a Buddha because probably to them, they're not a Buddha.

But to you, they're a Buddha. You see what I mean? Something like that?

Does that make sense? And by the way, that's very close to tantra. That's really the tantric worldview.

You're supposed to develop a tantric worldview with one person, your teacher, first. And come to recognize them as an angel and then it starts to spread to other people. And that's the practice of tantra.

Tantra isn't like sex orgies or killing chickens or all those things. Nothing to do with that. The practice of tantra is to see one person as enlightened and then spread that to other people through conscious practice.

Like that. Cool. It's okay.

[Говорящий 2] (1:10:35 - 1:10:46)
Do you just, then when choosing, do you go with what you see at the moment? I guess what you can work with is how you see things at that moment.

[Говорящий 1] (1:10:47 - 1:12:51)
Yeah, I think, yeah. Well, I think it can happen both ways, frankly. You can commit to a teacher and then suddenly they seem different.

Like they're pushy and demanding and never satisfied with you. And my own personal experience, my Tibetan Lama was like that and I just stuck it out. And then my vision of them changed.

But I stuck out a lot of years where I, they seemed mean to me or something. And then I changed my karma like that. So that's also possible.

Like they look pretty good, you commit and then they change. And then you can either bail out or you can stick with it. Because in theory you can change anything and you can change anybody.

That's what we do. All right. We did a very nice interview today with Ukraine.

We have a group in the Ukraine and they asked, they had some radio, was it TV station? Online TV station asked for an interview about what to do from a Buddhist point of view. And we had a very wonderful time and they were really happy.

They're very frightened right now. Concerned is not enough. They're frightened and they don't know what's going to happen.

And so we had a wonderful talk about how to change those seeds. And they were really happy at the end. And they think 10 or 20,000 people might see it in them.

So Lama is saying don't forget to do coffee meditation tonight. That's cool. Anybody else?

Ram? Is that distracting for you? Yeah, I think we...

[Говорящий 2] (1:12:55 - 1:13:17)
So in your own experience, did you ever find or did you ever struggle with... You ran into your heart Lama pretty young and then you ran into your Tibetan Lama. Did you ever feel a discrepancy?

How did you sort of, if not, how do you deal with that?

[Говорящий 1] (1:13:18 - 1:17:51)
Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, so in my life I had a... I met my heart Lama when I was I think 17.

And they are not Tibetan Buddhists. And then later I trained for 25 years. I lived with a Tibetan Lama.

And then Rob's asking, did you have a discrepancy between how you viewed them? And if so, how does it reconcile itself? And I think I always had this...

I think I have really lucky karma about teachers. So I had this deep, deep feeling that they were the same person. And one day they met each other.

And I was in the room and I was like... It was like seeing someone talk to themselves. And it was very surreal.

I was struggling to not go cuckoo or something. And so in my own personal case, I always had some kind of deep thing from my past lives that I felt they were the same. But I...

That's about all. It was a very similar experience. They were totally different people, completely different people.

But I felt like they were the same person. And I used to also get confused about my boss at work and my lama, my Tibetan lama. Because during the day I had my boss in the corporation, and at night I had my lama.

And I used to get confused between them. Like I would agree to do weird things at work because I confused it with lama's instruction. And then later I came to feel that my boss was my lama also.

And that was kind of cool. And I still do. I still see...

I saw my boss a few weeks ago and I still have that feeling. I guess there's a point at which you feel like your lama's showing up as a lot of the people in your life. And in Buddhism it's interesting.

If you don't feel like that, and if that's not happening to you, you're supposed to make it happen. Consciously. And it's called DHAG PA NYON GYUR which means...

That DHAG PA is a different spelling. B-R-T-H-E-S which means the yoga of make-believe. So you're supposed to get to the place where you see all the important people in your life as angels sent to you consciously and artificially.

They call it artificially. You are supposed to press the issue with yourself. You're supposed to change your seeds until you do see them as the same.

So I think in America you might think it was strange to pretend that your husband was your lama or that your boss at work was your lama. Like it would seem artificial to struggle to make them the same. But in higher Buddhist practice that's very much a desirable practice to try to imagine that they are the same person.

And to practice thinking that way is tantra. To practice the thought process that my husband or my dog or my mom might be Lord Buddha. And to keep trying even when they don't seem very Lord Buddha at all is tantric practice.

That's what tantric practice is. And there comes a day when they all say, ha ha, we fooled you. And that's it.

Then they say, okay, come with us. We have to go to paradise. And you're like, cafe?

And they're like, no. Somebody had a question. Yeah, Anatole.

Pretty loud, okay, so people can hear.

[Говорящий 2] (1:17:55 - 1:18:29)
The idea of happiness and as distinguished from thinking like this person's still alive, there's a lot of different experiences. It could be moments of deep meditation or it could be a lot of blissful feelings, energy, excitement. And then it seems more rare that there's moments of deep happiness.

And I just wanted to know if anybody else already talked about that.

[Говорящий 1] (1:18:33 - 1:24:58)
I think, so I'm old, I'm 61. I've been practicing since I was, I don't know, 21? With Tibetans.

And so 40 years. And I've gone through a lot of phases in my practice. Of course, in 40 years of hard practice.

And I think, my current thinking is that if you practice well, including yoga and meditation and self-analysis with the six times book of your behavior, self-analysis of your own behavior, and serving other people, and study, is that if you are modestly regular in those things, so modestly means you don't go overboard. You don't do yoga for four hours a day. You don't not sleep.

You know what I mean? Like you follow a modest daily diet of a certain number of minutes of meditation. yoga or a similar practice, channel practice, and serving other people.

Like nothing big deal. Today we went to an old woman's house and fixed up her house for a couple hours. And we don't do that every day.

We do it on occasion. But we do it joyfully and happily and we're regular. We're regulars at her house.

And then study, regular study, just like I don't know how to say, not as an obligation, but as a pleasure during the day. Like a half hour of study, something. And my current thinking is if you can get in those habits, which a big part of that is to be around other people who have those habits.

So like I'm around Arendt and Scott or Anatole. I don't like yoga. I never liked yoga.

I started yoga 16 years ago and I've done it almost daily because the people around me do. And I do a book when someone around me pulls out their book, I'm like, oh, I'm the Lama, I better do my book. And you know, if you just do a modest daily practice, and I think a lot of that is being around other people who have a modest daily practice.

Just hang out with people who have a daily practice. And then you start to have anyone who has a modest, meaning not fanatical, but steady, happy, regular, 15 minutes a day? At anything.

I think you'll be, I think you'll reach a place where you feel happy about yourself. And some kind of feeling of contentment. And that's the direct result of a regular practice every day.

Without, what do you call it? Anxiety. Or, I didn't do my book today.

Instead of having anxiety about not doing your book today, just do your book today. Like that. That's how to get rid of that anxiety.

Or the guilt that you feel when you didn't meditate. Just meditate, and then you don't have it. Then this sort of feeling of well-being creeps up on you.

And you just feel contentment. Pretty constant contentment. And we all have big problems happen in our life.

We had a big problem Sunday, right? And people were like writing me emails, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine.

I had a good day. And it's okay. If you have a good practice, then you're just steadily happy and nothing much can change it.

And you just feel very taken care of and loved. And you love yourself and you love others. Just that weird thing of a 15 minutes a day of meditation, half an hour a day of yoga, a little bit of study every day.

Taking care of some older person or sick person. And I didn't want to go yesterday. I was like, I don't want to spend my whole day screwing things in Mrs. Hancock's wall. And then I got over my laziness and we went. And we had a very mellow day and a very beautiful day. So I'd say that it's a, after 40 years of practice, how it feels if you're successful is that you're just quietly happy.

And it's very stable and it's very steady. And almost nothing can shake it. So I think that's a good sign.

People say, how do you know that your chakras are open or that your prana is moving or you're about to see emptiness or you're about to see the whole universe. I have a feeling it's just some kind of quiet happiness. When your chakras aren't really open, it's just some kind of gentle happiness.

And not much can change it. And it's a very nice goal to have. I don't think there's so many fireworks things.

You do have days like that. There are breakthrough days, but I think in the end it's just this kind of quiet slide into paradise. Maybe one more question.

Yes, Bonnie.

[Говорящий 2] (1:25:00 - 1:25:39)
So when you're talking about the list of phenomena to have, you've already said that feeling like you're long is expensive prana. And it sounds like you're checking out an external, self-existent, whatever long it is. Yeah.

So Rob's question touched on it. And you gave a really lovely teaching in the university on the emptiness of the teacher. I just wonder, two things.

Why they don't present it that way in the long run? Because it seems that people really do make mistakes. When there are karma changes, they think they've discovered the truth.

[Говорящий 1] (1:25:39 - 1:25:39)
Yeah, yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (1:25:41 - 1:25:47)
So I wondered if maybe you could talk a little bit about why it isn't like that?

[Говорящий 1] (1:25:52 - 1:31:20)
Step back three feet and see that the lack of that in the scriptures you have heard was created by you. Seriously. But let's answer it on a conventional level.

I think... Just a personal practice thing. We were invited to China by two or three very influential groups of business people who want to create a...

what do you call it? Like an Uber company. Like a huge company.

They want to marry us. Our company. They want to help hundreds of millions of people.

We were going into those negotiations very kind of, not suspiciously, but how's that going to work out? What would that look like? And I was very conscious.

We had five days of talks all day with one of the parties. We were talking all day for five days. And I was very...

Something happened in my practice that week and I said, every time I see something in this potential partner, business partner, lifetime business partner, every time I see the slightest thing that I don't like, I'm going to root it out of myself for ten minutes. Anytime I see something in them that concerns me, makes me concerned about having a ten-year or fifty-year relationship with them, business relationship, then I'm going to, rather than writing a new sentence into the contract that protects me, I'm going to think about, do I have this quality that I don't like in this? Do I have that?

And maybe I could just, rather than trying to write a clever contract that covers all the possible problems that come up with them in the next ten years, could I just fix them before we sign the contract? And I tried really hard for a week. It was a very interesting meditation.

Five days, all day. And every time they looked a little greedy or a little, what do you call it, possessive or a little egotistical or egomaniacal, I would check myself for that. And then like in half an hour they'd start to shift.

And it was really a weird, cool exercise. It was very, very cool. And by the end of the, at the airport they did a full prostration before they got back in their limousine.

And I'm like, on the floor of the airport, Beijing, Shanghai airport, and I'm like, wow, something weird happened. And then they were crying and they were helping poor people. The whole thing shifted.

So I think that's the case with your teacher. When you first meet them, you have a list of ten qualities by Maitreya, which we'll get to tomorrow. So you have ten qualifications to look for in a teacher.

And then if they seem weak in two of them or four of them or eight of them or nine and a half of them, then in our system, as Bonnie was pointing out so deftly, we're supposed to change them. And then we can commit to them. It's kind of cool.

Like, okay, if they have nine of the qualifications but they don't know the scriptures well or something like that, then you can either think that I'm compromising and I'm taking a nine teacher instead of a ten teacher. Or in our immediate tradition of emptiness, if I were to make a commitment to finish my ACI courses in the next six months, would they shift? Would their knowledge of scripture suddenly shift?

You see? And the answer is yes. It would shift.

You can make your teacher anything you want. But it takes intense awareness every minute you're with them that they are coming from you. And then it takes intense self-examination to shift whatever they don't have.

And that's what I did last week. And it was a very beautiful exercise.

[Говорящий 2] (1:31:21 - 1:31:27)
Holy Lama, you're going over the list tomorrow. Can you please add to the scripture?

[Говорящий 1] (1:31:28 - 1:32:21)
Yeah, the correlations. Like what do I have to do to make my teacher appear this way? That would be nice.

That would be a nice exercise. We should make a practice out of that. We should have some kind of meditation.

It's true that doesn't exist in the scriptures. That, okay, I'm going to sit with my boss. I'm going to work on my boss for the next five days and see if I can change their cheapness or the qualities you see in someone in your family that disturb you or that you don't like about someone in your family.

And then say, okay, this is make my sister a polite week. And then work on them for a week. And that means working on yourself.

That means changing something in yourself. And that would be cool. That would be fun.

Okay, one last question.

[Говорящий 2] (1:32:22 - 1:32:37)
How do you deal with like seeing a shortfall in their Lama that you recognize is just about disparaging them? Like maybe it's some sort of critical thing that needs to come back to you?

[Говорящий 1] (1:32:39 - 1:36:47)
Rebecca said, how do you deal with seeing a shortcoming in your teacher and understanding that it's coming from a shortcoming in yourself? But doesn't that recognition imply a loss of guru devotion or a proper relationship with your teacher? I think the understanding is defective if it feels that way.

I think if the understanding is clear enough that it's coming from you, you don't feel that way about them. You see, you don't blame it on them in any way. What I'm trying to get people to really appreciate is that the Buddhist approach to dealing with a problem in another person.

Try to deeply appreciate what's the Buddhist approach to dealing with a problem in a person that you know or that you have to be with is to very strictly examine yourself for that problem and let it be instinctual that as soon as you see a problem in someone, your first reaction is to examine, how have I done that this week? Or how am I doing that to other people? And the closer you get to that being instinctual or automatic, then the less possible it is that you are committing an infraction of your commitment to your teacher.

You see what I mean? You can see a bad quality in your teacher, but if your reaction is 100%, I must be doing that myself, then I don't think there's any bad karma about seeing it or admitting that you see it. But it's very, very easy when you're tired or upset or you didn't get your enchiladas yet.

Today, when we are weak for some reason, we are tired or we didn't sleep well or we didn't do our yoga or something like that, it's very easy to slip mentally and start blaming them. But it's the same with your parents or your dog or yourself, right? Not just the teacher.

But I just encourage you all to, and me too, I'm kind of into this mode lately where rather than trying to safeguard myself from problems I see in others, such as a potential long-term business partner, I'm into this thing of fix them on the fly. You know? It's cool.

We got to name that practice, maybe fixing them on the fly. you just dig right away into yourself and see how are you doing that. And then they, the better you get at it, the faster they change.

And then you can sign a contract without a clause. I got today a royalty statement from one of my publishers saying we really should finish up the contract for this book that we started 11 years ago. So we've been going like this for 11 years.

He's been sending me the contract every year and I'm like, yeah, okay, I'll send it sometime. And we don't have a contract and the book's not copyrighted properly. I'm not going to tell you which one it is.

And we just didn't bother. Every time we decide to do it, we just don't do it. Because we don't really care to have a contract because we love each other and we never had a contract.

But it's weird because it's a lot of money. Anyway. We got to go home.

I got to send them home. But we'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow evening.

Schedule tomorrow. Tomorrow.

[Говорящий 2] (1:37:18 - 1:37:50)
. . .

. . .

Oh, one last thing.

[Говорящий 1] (1:37:52 - 1:42:25)
Last time we met in Phoenix for 10 days, we did the Gyorgia, which is called the meditation song. And this is an ancient tradition of preparing for a meditation session by going to a certain number of like a confession and a rejoicing and an offering. And so we were playing around last session with each person making an offering of song or poetry or a dramatic performance or whistling or whatever they know how to do.

And especially things you're not so good at or maybe you never tried before. So some people who had never acted did a beautiful performance and some people who had never danced publicly did a poetry reading. Somehow we all broke out of our self, what do you call that?

Self inhibitions or something. Somehow because we all did it at once, it's like everyone took off their shirt at the same time or something. And everybody was like, okay, I'll sing something or I'll do a poetry.

I'll stand up and look weird. Not weird, but I'll risk embarrassing myself because we'll make it an offering rather than a performance we'll make it an offering. So I'm going to get up and do something and offer it to the Buddhas of the universe.

And they don't care if I'm a little flat or sharp. You see what I mean? They're just grateful that I stood up and made an offering.

And somehow last ten day session everyone was able to get to that mind state of okay, I'm not a great singer. My fifth grade teacher told me I can't sing. But I'm going to sing a song.

And I don't care if it wouldn't sound good on what's that show? Singer of the... Singer American...

Yeah, I don't care if it wouldn't win American Idol. I'm just going to do my favorite song off key as an offering karaoke to Lord Buddha. And I'm not doing it for me and I'm not even doing it for my fellow participants.

I'm just doing it for the Buddhas. So they're happy with anything. They're very accommodating.

As long as you get up and try something. So anyway, I really encourage you. Sunday we will do like a two hour thing.

Just think of something that you'd like to do and do it and you'll feel so happy. And it's such a beautiful thing to offer something to invisible enlightened beings. It's very healthy.

It's extremely healthy. And then between now and then we'll be having special periods of the day when you can practice. And you can go in a room by yourself or with a bunch of other people.

We were practicing a rolling stone song for two hours. And the choir here was practicing in the next room. And we were a little louder.

And we had a full drum set and everything. And then it was funny. The choir director came over and she kept looking in the window and I thought, I hope they don't throw us out.

And then finally she plucked up the courage to walk in and she said, I'd give anything to be in this room. You hear that? And she was over there trying to do this.

And... And... So just...

You have still a four... How many? You have like four days.

And join some little group and do something. I think a lot of shyness is pride. And just think, I'm going to make an offering to the Buddhas.

Anyone who wants to sing in our band is welcome. We have many people who never sang before. And it's very, very...

Right, Hason Nossi? It makes you so happy to do it. Just do it.

So you're very welcome to do anything. Yeah?

[Говорящий 2] (1:42:25 - 1:42:33)
I wanted to say, if people want to make music offerings and they can't be here to rehearse, and they just want to do it by themselves to see me do it.

[Говорящий 1] (1:42:34 - 1:44:40)
Yeah, if you want to do an offering, I would say poetry or music or anything, dance, then talk to Aaron, even if you don't have time to come and rehearse. But just do something. It makes you so happy.

I hope you do it. Okay? So that means, that's based on a text that we never finished last time.

We didn't finish going through the jorja and explaining it to you. So I'm going to... I had an idea to stretch it out and just teach you jorja for like half an hour or an hour each session, each term.

And that means we'll have to be doing these silly offerings interminably, which I kind of really enjoy. So I'll teach you some jorja, meditation song, which is the traditional preliminary instrumentation. But we'll just do a little bit of it so that we can stretch out the experience like for four or five years.

And then we'll probably have to start over. So the reason I'm mentioning is last two sessions, here and in Guadalajara, we gave away those books. We gave away the jorja books.

They cost $30 each. We gave away a couple hundred. We gave away three or four hundred, I think.

And the party's over. So first of all, I'd like to encourage you to bring your copy. And if you don't have a copy, we'll have them for sale.

We just can't afford, it's like $10,000 and we can't afford it. So dig up your copy from Guadalajara or from... And it's in English, Spanish, and Chinese.

Whatever is your language, you can do it. And then I'm going to ask you to pay this time for the books. I think we're going to make them cheaper.

How much are they going to be? I don't know. That's cheap?

[Говорящий 2] (1:44:43 - 1:44:43)
$18.

[Говорящий 1] (1:44:44 - 1:46:20)
$18? Yeah, you're welcome to have a free digital copy. You're very welcome to have a free digital copy.

Maybe we can put it up online somewhere. We'll give you the link. And you can put it on your laptop or your iPad for free.

It's just that the color copies are expensive. But I'm going to ask you to buy one if you want a hard copy. And if you're really broke and you're dying to have one, then talk to me and I'll squeeze one of the sponsors.

But in general, if you've lost yours or you never got one, it'd be nice if you paid for it. If you want it on your laptop, it's free. And we'll give you the final printing copy for free.

See again? Oh yeah. What day will they be ready?

I would say this. I'm suspecting Friday night will do, Georgia. Bring it on Friday.

Have it with you on Friday and Saturday. Okay. And if you don't have a copy and you want just a digital copy for free, you're welcome to take that.

It's the color laid out copy for free. And you can have it in three languages if you want. Cool.

Did we do the gewa? Yeah. Okay.

Good night. See you tomorrow at 9.30? Okay.