«Дар освобождения», курс 15 «Найти учителя, которому можно доверять», занятие 9

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 40:23)
Today is sort of a, what do you call it, vacation, philosophical vacation, and we are going through a special text which is called the Meditation Song, or Dzogchen in Tibetan, and we've been learning about ways to prepare for meditation. These are steps for preparing for meditation. So there's a book, can somebody hear me?

Yeah. There's a book that we printed, and it, we didn't print it at a printer, we just printed it at Costco, and it's a translation of a text from the 19th century about how to prepare for meditation. We're going to be going through this book tonight.

If you want a copy, is there still there? Vicky's got them back there. They're expensive, they're $25, because they cost a lot to print.

But if you would like a copy just to take for free, we have it, she has it on a flash disk, and you can just copy it onto your computer or your iPad, you're welcome to have it for free. And you can also just watch it on the screen. But I encourage you to get one, even if it's just on your computer, because you can use it every morning to prepare for your meditation.

You can use it, it's nice to have. Okay, we're on verse 64, which is page 51, and we're going to go through the seven different preparations that we traditionally do to prepare for meditation. And I'll read the Tibetan for good luck, and then I'll explain it, and then kind of savor it, and think about it, and go deeper into it, okay?

KUN TZO RGYAS LA'I CHE BA'I THUN PA'I KHU, THA'I DOR BA'I RE BAR GOMS SU, MA LUS SHES BYA JI BZHIN GZIGS PA'I THUB, ZHAG GIS MTSOR DE LA CHAGS TZAM LO Look familiar? We had it. We had it like, I don't know.

Remember I told you there was a grace that you could do? This is the same verse, okay? So this verse is repeated in this text, because it's so important.

And this part is called CHAGS TZAM LO BA. CHAGS TZAM LO BA in Tibetan means to prostrate. So you see this thing where Buddhists get down on the ground and put their head on the ground, or you see full prostration where they stretch their body out on the ground, and they prostrate before a teacher, before the class, or after the class.

And I remember when I first went to India, it was like, I forget, 1973? 1973. And I grew up a Christian near here, and I was even supposed to go to seminary.

I was signed up for seminary. Then I got hijacked. And I think, I don't know, I don't remember, but in the Ten Commandments there's something like you can't bow down to false gods or whatever, but the bow down part was, when I saw all these Buddhist people bowing down to the teacher, I felt very uncomfortable.

And I thought, oh, that's why they made the commandment. Now these people are breaking it. And I thought, oh, I'll never do that.

And I purposely stood up straight while they were doing it. And it felt very uncomfortable with it. And then slowly they explained it to me, and now I enjoy doing it.

I enjoy making a prostration. There's a part in the Bible, I don't know exactly where it is. It's when Moses sees God, and he sees God as a burning bush.

I don't know, maybe you're the same, but my impression of the whole event comes from the Charlton Heston's movie. I hardly remember the movie. It was a long time ago.

But I do remember him throwing himself down in front of what looked like a tumbleweed that caught on fire or something. And he throws himself down. And if you meditate regularly, if you practice sweetly every day, if you use this book in your meditation, then one day in the meditation you can see Buddhas.

So we don't... People say, are you a Buddhist? You say, yeah.

And then you say, do Buddhas exist? And you say, I'm not sure. Have you ever seen a Buddha?

I say, no. We got all these books that somebody named Buddha wrote, but I can't... Aside from the books and the Buddhism that's hanging around, and the Buddhist monks and the Buddhist temples, I can't say for sure there was a Buddha.

You see what I mean? I haven't met them. I haven't seen them.

I just kind of believe that with all this stuff lying around, books, temples, monks, there must have been a Buddha. But we don't really... And we're supposed to believe that they still live, they still exist, but we have never met them.

I guess with a Christian it's the same. With Jesus or with God, you haven't met them directly. But if you practice in a steady, modest way, happily every day, do a little bit of meditation, do a little bit of yoga to move the inner winds.

If you serve people in a prison or a psychology program, and that's, by the way, why we're having these presentations before each class on the weekend, because that's part of the program. Meditation by itself is not enough. Yoga by itself is not enough.

Studying scriptures is not enough. You need something to grease the wheels, and that's serving other people. What do you call it?

Getting your hands dirty. Not just theoretical service, or not just meditational service, but actually hands-on service of other people. This is a crucial part of a Buddhist practice.

If you do those things, you go to the prison. It's twice a month, okay? Sorry, this is the llama phone.

Hang on. Sorry. Maybe I ...

She didn't really say it that clearly, Christine, but I'll tell you the real story. People have ... Children have died in cars because the parents forgot them in the car and locked it up on the hot days.

Because they were on the phone, or they were texting. So we're thinking to call her book Put Your Phone Under the Baby. Keep the phone under the baby in the car.

Then nobody forgets their phone, but they forget the baby. But if you have to move the baby to get to the phone, you'll remember the baby. Anyway, so if you do a modest practice with serving others as a big part of the recipe, then one day in meditation, you will see a Buddha.

You will meet a Buddha, and not just the outer form of a Buddha. You will meet the essence of a Buddha, and you will know it's the essence of a Buddha, of a living Buddha. Then this cool thing happens, that you have to throw yourself down on the ground.

You have to get up and throw yourself down on the ground. It's like anyone who ever sees a Buddha in meditation has the same reaction. Everybody.

It's the Charlton Heston reaction, and you have to throw yourself on the ground, and you have to put your face in the dirt, or on the floor. You have to. Not one of these pretty little frustrations.

You have to throw yourself down, and it's just a human, every human who sees an enlightened being reacts in the same way. So, that was the first frustration. Then after that, people, I don't know what happened, but as usual in a religion, the teacher told the student, you should try doing that once in a while.

Then they felt obligated, and then they started counting them, and let's do a hundred. It got, I don't know, what do you call that? Institutionalized.

But if you ever do meet an enlightened being, you will experience a real frustration. So it's not some kind of silly Buddhist custom, or some weirdo cult thing. Not at all.

It's a very important seed to put in your mind for the day when it comes. And no one can meet a divine being and not put their face in the ground. So get ready.

Alright. So here we're starting a series of frustrations. We're starting a series of face throwing into the dirt.

Then the first one, we already covered the meaning of it. It's a prostration to Lord Buddha. And we are...

It's a DANG BA'I BDE PA What's DANG BA'I BDE PA? Crystal clear faith. So we are bowing to Lord Buddha by thinking of their nice qualities.

Your body, your physical body was produced by BYAS BA BYAS BA in Tibetan, there's a different word for every multiple of ten in Tibetan. GCIG CHU RGYA STONG PHYI Ten thousand. BUM BYAS BA So BYAS BA means whatever that is, ten million.

It's after Sāyā, sorry. So Sāyā and then BYAS BA. BYAS BA means ten million.

And they all have different words up to ten to the sixtieth power in the Abhidharmakosha, which you can study. We're going to study. We're going to start in April.

So BYAS BA happens to be ten million. It means a zillion. It means a lot.

So your body was produced by countless nice things done for other people, for example, at prisons. Not going once, but going millions of times. When you talk, it fulfills the hopes of countless people.

When you say anything, it fulfills the hopes of countless beings. Another thing that happens to you on the day that you see a Buddha directly is that you can perceive all the living creatures who inhabit every planet in the universe at the same time. Some kind of breakthrough happens in your mind.

And each one of you in this room has that capacity. So just try to remember that once in a while. Right now you're stuck at 8.13 p.m., but in a building on Maryland and 7th Street. But when that day comes, something happens to your mind like a water balloon bursting or something, and your mind, the water goes everywhere, and in a few minutes you can perceive every living creature, the face of every living creature on countless worlds, and you know you will take care of them. So those two, what do you call them? Two experiences, one right after the other.

You see all these beings, their faces, like a, I don't know, a deck of cards. You see billions, countless faces, and then in the next moment you know you will take care of all of them. In your life, you will take care of all of them.

Then after that, it kind of changes your life. If that happens to you, or if you see a Buddha directly, your whole, what do you call it, your priorities change, and your vision changes, and your reaction to single events on single days changes. You don't have much worry about anything.

You know, by the way, you also see your own future enlightenment. So you don't have any real concerns that normal people have. You're working on a much grander scale.

You're working on the scale of centuries and not days. So the first prostration is to a being who is like that, all the time. Next, we'll go to the next verse.

I'm going to blow my nose, please excuse. Then he'll start bowing down to all the teachers in our lineage. And that's a long list.

Just in Tibet, I think we're on the 43rd generation. Since Naropa, for example. A thousand years.

It averages about 25, 30 years between a teacher and their student normally. So we're about, you're like 43rd or 44th generation in the lineage of Naropa. And they make lineage lists in Tibet and in Buddhism.

We keep them very carefully. Your genealogy is important. When you ask for teachings from somebody in Tibet, you ask them for their genealogy.

It's like a good dog. I don't know my genealogy. I don't know if that's two people back or three people back, but I once bought a dog for Anipyama and it had like 30 generations of dog names in a nice piece of paper.

And we paid, I think, a thousand dollars. Then he grew up to be a big mutt. And they cheated us.

They made up this paper. Anyway, we have to... You should know your family.

You should know your genealogy. Your spiritual genealogy you should know. You should know your genealogy.

It's a tradition in Buddhism. So Nick has done a lot of research into the genealogy. He's made a document of some of the stories of those lamas and he will continue to expand that.

All of them are illustrated in a woodblock carving, which we'll come out with a real fancy one soon when we finish translating the whole thing, which might take another year or two. So we start the lineage. We're starting your family genealogy.

I'm sorry it takes a while, but I'm not sorry. You should know your lineage. What we teach at ACI and DCI, I didn't make up Diamond Mountain.

I didn't make it up. I'm very strictly following the tradition. There are 20,000 pages of courses for ACI, open and secret courses.

There's not a word in there that I wrote. It's all translation of the classics. So you should know, you have a very, what do you call it, good pedigree.

You have a very pure pedigree. It hasn't been musked with at all. No one has changed a single word of that pedigree.

And we put the Tibetan and the English. So nobody can question it. I don't think anybody has questioned it.

Nobody's looked at it. But it's immaculate. It's extraordinary.

You are special people. You have a very high lineage. And you have a very pure lineage.

Perfectly pure lineage. So here we start through the major teachers of that lineage. There are some skips, gaps.

We'll skip a couple centuries and jump to the next coolest teacher. So it's not, we don't go back. It would be about 120 teachers for each concept in the lineage.

So we don't have time to do that. We just mentioned the major teachers. We're just going to go through the major teachers.

Here we go. And they are grouped into themes. Like you'll have three or four teachers to a verse.

For example, the first one here is the lineage I'm inspired. Are we on what verse? Sixty-five, good.

THUG BYED CHEN PO'I BDE BZHED RDO RJES BYANG By the way, it's customary to, when you get to this part, it's customary to do this thing. When you recite it at home. Because you are, what are you doing?

You're bowing down. You're supposed to be bowing down. So you can just hold your, when you go through these verses and it says, I bow down to, it's traditional to keep your hands like this.

THUG BYED CHEN PO'I BDE BZHED RDO RJES BYANG PHYOGS GZIGS SDI RLOG PA DANG, SNGA ROL PA, BAL PHYOGS SDOM GYIS PA DANG, ADI SHAR, NYAMS NA'I BYIN RNAB RGYU LA, CHAGS RTZA' LO So these are mamas of the, these are your lineage. These are your pedigree, the mamas of inspired practice. NYAM LEN Now, third chance to tell me what NYAM LEN is.

Practical side of practice, as opposed to emotional or something like that. These are down and dirty, hardcore meditation and other practices. In this case, practical application means tantra.

Practical application means working on your inner body. Yoga is a big part of tantra. Working on the outside to change the channels.

CI NANG THABS LA TSOR Say CI NANG THABS LA TSOR BAS This is one of the principles of tantra. CI means the outside of the body. NANG means the inside of the body.

TSOR means mainly. BAS means you should make great efforts on the outside and on the inside. The idea is that mind and CI or prana or inner wind are linked.

The mind and your inner body are linked together. Where your thoughts go, the inner winds will follow. And where you direct your inner winds, the mind will also flow there.

For example, an outer method would be yoga. For example, there are four movements in Niguma's yoga from a thousand years ago. The first would be to twist the body.

The second would be to stretch the body. The third one would be to core work. And then the fourth one would be to distribute the prana.

Those are done by four kinds of exercises at each chakra. CI'U'O NAS SDUG PA LAS PAR NA RGA' BA SDUG PA NAS NYID RGA LAS PAR NA CHOG PA NYID RGA NAS DE BA LAS PAR NA RGYAS KA DE BA NAS NOGS PA'I TSUL LAS PAR NA LHANGS RGYAS KYI G-YES ZHIG RGYAS PA'I DE BA DANG STONG PA NI YIN MED PA'I STIG GYI TZUN NA NYON PAR ZHUNG SO This is the mantra. This is the instructions for bringing the prana down the chakra.

These are using outer movements to move energy within your body. Yoga is one of them. And then you could do the reverse, which is what?

Yeah, you could meditate on certain parts of your body and that would draw prana there. And then that could change your body. I have a funny thing.

In my three-year retreat, we were working on Dorje Depa and other practices. There was four or five retreatants. So I taught them how to draw prana to the navel, but some people did it an inch too low.

And they got really bad constipation. So you have to be careful and you have to have a good teacher nearby or you might have a problem. So these are using the mind, the focus of the mind to draw the prana to a certain place.

And if you blow it by an inch or two inches, then you get problems, especially at the chest, in the chest area. So, THU BYED CHEN PO'I DE BZHED DOG GI CHENG He's bowing down to the lamas who taught these inner and outer practices for the last two and a half thousand years. And Keeper of the Diamond is a code word for Vajradhara, which is Lord Buddha in the form that he uses when he teaches tantra, which is sort of like Mick Jagger or something, I mean in his earlier days.

Very flamboyant, very beautiful silk clothing, jewels, long hair, and very, very divine form, very, very angelic form. So that was the form that Lord Buddha took when he taught the secret teaching in this world. The very first person we're bowing down to here is the person who started tantra in this world, which was Lord Buddha.

Then we go to Tilopa, who was the teacher of Naropa. And I don't have time to tell you all the stories. Nick is going to slowly tell you all the stories.

But basically, Tilopa was a really hardcore yoga teacher and meditator who lived in the jungle in India. And there's many long stories, which I translated for the tantric course, of all the tests he put his disciples through. His disciple was Naropa.

By the way, Tilopa, Niguma, whose yoga you study, which is being taught in a prison, right? was the partner of Naropa. Naropa was the greatest monk of his time.

He was the abbot of Nalanda Monastery. We talked about the debate he got into that he wasn't supposed to debate, because he was the abbot and he was guarding the gate. And then Niguma was his spiritual partner.

So we bow down to Naropa and, by extension, Niguma. So you can think of Niguma. When you do this prostration to Naropa, you can do a prostration to his partner, Niguma, spiritual partner.

Then Dombipa, which is a tantric yogi who came after Naropa, and Atisha, who came a thousand years ago. Then there are stories about Dombipa. I won't go into it, but you can learn it later.

They're cool. Cool stories. Sort of straight, what do you call them?

Believe it or not, very, very, very, very unusual stories about his powers and his life. It's a long, it's too long. It's coming in the Lam Rim.

It will come in the Lam Rim. It's coming. I'll save it for the Lam Rim.

It's very beautiful. It's about him and his partner. So we finish that prostration and in the next verse, which is 66, we'll do one more verse and we'll take a break.

We'll take a break at 8.30 and then come back at 8.40 and go till 9.30? Okay. So don't worry.

I have to go to the bathroom actually. BYAMS PA THO MED YIN NGAN RNAM DU DE CHOG DE DUR MED DE DANG PHRAG PA'I BRTAL SEMS SANGS KUSA LAS NI ZER LING PA RGYAL CHEN CHOS PA'I RGYUD LA CHAGS TZAM LA So now he's prostrating to the lineage of far-reaching deeds, which is YABOD'I PHYED DANG or the desire to help the whole world. So all of these projects like teaching in federal prison or going to Beijing to teach people and these many projects which are taking place in I think 31 cities around the world, the goal of them is to change the world.

The goal of them is to make a global effect on the world and it's working. It's kind of exciting. It's really exciting.

And we need to triple the staff in the next 12 months or so. We need to triple the amount of people working on it. There are 33 people went on tours in the last six months but we need to make it 100 or something.

We need to have a larger staff. And the motivation is to change the world. It's to make an effect in the world.

And the cool thing, and I don't think you appreciate it or you don't appreciate it enough, is that it's happening. It's already happening. And I think last year those 33 people taught 10,000 people.

In the last 12 months, 10,000 people worldwide have gotten involved in these teachings. So you're probably having the greatest effect of any Buddhist group in the world. But you don't feel like that.

But I'm just telling you. You are. Any Buddhist group in the world.

I think so. BYAMS PA Here is a list of some of the Lamas. BYAMS PA means Maitreya.

Who came to this world as a disciple of Lord Buddha, as a bodhisattva, one of the eight bodhisattvas who followed Lord Buddha, but who was later recognized as the next Buddha to come in this world. Very close. THOG MED means Asanga.

350 AD, 850 years after Lord Buddha, roughly. Who wrote a book called Bodhisattva Bhumi. NIL GYUR CHOS PA'I SA We can study it sometime.

About compassion. YIG NYEN Vasubandhu. His half-brother.

Between them, YIG NYEN and Vasubandhu, if you add up the years in the monastery, they're responsible for 16 years of the 25 years of the Geshe course. They're a big contribution. YIG NYEN, who wrote the Abhidharmakosha.

Vasubandhu. And then NAM DU DE, VIMUGDIS ZAS NA CHOG GI DE, BAR MA ZAS NA Then VINITA ZAS NA DUL BA'I DE DRAG PA'I SPAL is called Yasha Sri. SEMS SANG HARI BADDRA Then two different Lamas with the name Kusali.

And then Suvarnadvipa. Have passed on the lineage of working to change the world. And see, you're doing it.

You're really doing it. People here are doing it, and it's kind of cool. They're actually doing it.

Suvarnadvipa. Who's Suvarnadvipa? Yeah, Sem Lingpa.

Came from Sumatra. From him, Lord Atisha learned the teachings of Bodhichitta and brought them to Tibet, and then they got to us. So you should know your lineage.

They were lost, the instructions were lost in India for a while, went to Indonesia, and then came back. All right, let's do one more verse, what the heck. BYAM YANG YOD MED CHOG GCIG LUS GRUB DANG LTA BA DRAG PA RIG PA'I KHU CHUG BYAS SANGS RGYAS BSGOMS KYONG BAR PA YAB ZAS SOGS SA MO LTAR BA'I RGYUD LA CHAGS RTZA LO I bow down to the lineage of the profound view.

BYAM YANG is Manjushri, who's believed to be the divine embodiment of all the wisdom of the Buddhas. If you took a Buddha's understanding of emptiness and it turned into a person, it would be Manjushri. Then YOD MED CHOG GCIG LUS GRUB Arya Nagarjuna, 200 AD.

Nagarjuna. And the Tibetan here says he destroyed both sides, existence and non-existence. The idea that things can exist and the idea that they can't.

He destroyed both sides. What's that mean? By the way, and then he went to the middle way, because he destroyed both of the extremes.

What's it mean to say things can exist? He destroyed the idea that things can exist. Yeah, from their own side, without you creating them.

The classic example is, you're a partner when you come home and they start to fight with you. Then you think they decided to criticize you, but that's not true. You think they decided to criticize you when you came home, but that's not true.

You created them. They didn't decide to criticize you. You were critical of somebody last week or last month and then you put a seed in your mind.

You put a bug in your head and then you're seeing that opened and then you're seeing someone criticize you. If you had planted the opposite seed, then on the same night, at the same moment that you walked in the house, they would have given you a big kiss or something. It's just you.

It's nothing coming from them. Everything's coming from you. So to think that things can exist, meaning to think that they exist in themselves, he destroyed it.

Then people, normally people, when you tell them nothing's coming from its own side, then they say, well then nothing's real. Then they say nothing's real. My wife is in my head.

My husband is in my head. And I'm living in my head. I'm very lonely now.

Thanks Geshe Michael. Okay, okay, no, really, really. And then they go too far.

They go to the other extreme. And then the Nagarjuna has to come along and say, no, it's not that nothing is real either. That's also a mistake.

Nothing's what you thought it was and it's not true that nothing's real or that nothing works or that nothing exists. Your husband is outside of you. He really does work.

How he behaves towards you is coming from you. But he exists as an independent outside entity. He acts, he kisses, he hugs, he cooks dinner, he washes dishes, he earns all the money and other good stuff.

And it's real. He's real. He works.

So Nagarjuna says, no, no, don't go too far. Is he coming from you? Yes.

Does he exist as an outside independent person? Yes also. Okay, not contradictory.

Don't go too far either way. Take the middle way. Okay, all right.

So that's a big praise of Nagarjuna. That's a cool thing to say about somebody. Dawa Dhagpa is Chandrakirti, Master Chandrakirti, who wrote the NMLA way, upon which a commentary was written by Je Tsongkapa, called Gomba Ravsa, upon which a commentary was written by Kirtipati Madhage from Serame Monastery, the best monastery in Tibet, called Umachidan.

And you're studying Umachidan for the last 11 years. 11 years, okay? So you're pretty deep into Chandrakirti, I would say.

RIGS PA'I KHOS CHUG is Vidya Kokila. There are two of them, the elder and the younger. I can't tell you anything about them, okay?

We have their names. I'm not aware that there's any text that's survived by them, but they are considered an important link in the lineage. Maybe Nick and I can dig out some stories for you about them.

We don't study any texts actively that are taught by them, that were written by them. But they're important in the lineage. Some of the guys in the lineage we don't know almost anything about, sorry, except their names.

SANGS RGYAS BSGOMS KYONG SANGS RGYAS BSGOMS KYONG and PHAG PA YAB ZAD What is that? SANGS RGYAS BSGOMS KYONG means protected the true idea of the Buddhas. PHAG PA YAB ZAD Normally, PHAG PA YAB ZAD is Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, the father and son Aryas.

But he already mentioned Nagarjuna. I'll just have to check that out. There's often times a Lama and their close disciple are called father and son.

YAB ZAD Maybe you can look it up. It might be Je Tsongkapa or Gyaltsab Je, I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. Either one. There's a bunch of father-son combinations.

They're called YAB ZAD. For example, the collected words of Tsongkapa are called YAB ZAD GSUNG PO. The books of the father and the son.

His two sons actually. So in that case, it should have been translated sons. Anyway, we'll see.

All right. We finished the lineages of the three great ideas. Secret teachings, compassion lineage, and the emptiness lineage.

Now we're going to go through historical lineages, starting with the first Tibetan teachers, which are Kadampa's. The Kadampa's. I think we'll take a break.

Questions? We have about 20 minutes. Ven Chag.

Cause of jealousy? Why I have jealousy? Why anybody has jealousy?

If I knew, I wouldn't have it. No. That's a more careful question.

Okay, so most mental, you know, most, like, getting a boyfriend is easy. You just go to the nursing home and help people. Getting rid of jealousy is more complicated because you have to take out the seeds for jealousy.

And the seeds for any negative emotion are always the negative emotion the last time you had it. Okay? So jealousy begets jealousy.

Anger begets anger. Desire begets desire. So the mental ones go back to the last time you had jealousy.

And then that causes you to have jealousy again. Then of course somebody's going to ask, yeah, how did the first one happen? And therefore a Buddhist has to answer, there is no first one.

And that's one of the proofs that there is no first one. Because causes and results must be of the same content, you don't get lemons from watermelons, you don't get sissles, you know, and all that stuff. Then you get jealousy from jealousy.

But there are other approaches what to do about it. And one popular one is you find a person who has jealousy, whose life is made sadder because they have jealousy, right? And then you...

I don't suggest you go to them and say, you're the most jealous person I know, so I thought I would help you because I have a problem with jealousy. Okay? That usually doesn't work out so well.

You might say, I have a problem with jealousy, could you help me? But actually you're trying to help them. So sometimes you can do that.

That's called THUB KHAS. What's that mean? Yeah, it means like sneaky, sneaky means.

Sneaky spiritual means. Okay? So you go to them and say, I have a problem with jealousy, so I thought, you know, maybe we could go out and talk about it once a week or once every two weeks, or if you have any advice for me.

And then by getting them to talk about their jealousy, you help them. And then that stops your jealousy. And that's the best system.

So that's how to plant the seed. But then Mama Chicken has to sit on the egg. And you have to do coffee meditation.

You have to think, oh, today I... I've been trying to stop my jealousy for 61 years, or I don't know, a long time. Then today I used the four steps.

I took someone to Starbucks and we talked about jealousy and you know, I tried to help somebody else with their jealousy. So finally I'm doing the right thing about my jealousy. Finally I'm doing something that might get rid of my jealousy.

Like that. And then be happy about yourself. And that causes the seed to grow.

So it's always a two-step process, right? Number one, plant the seed. Number two, fertilize it by being happy that you planted it.

And if you don't do the second part, it might take 10,000 lifetimes for the seed to grow. So you have to... you are required to be happy about yourself.

That's a Buddhist requirement. You're required to think about all the nice things you're doing, every night. Good?

Okay. Yes, Miss Bonnie?

[Говорящий 2] (40:25 - 40:26)
Oh, okay.

[Говорящий 1] (40:28 - 41:03)
Yeah. Oh, good. So Bonnie says jealousy is more like bad deed number nine of the ten, which is to be unhappy when something nice happens to someone.

And then she tried fighting it by trying to catch herself being unhappy when someone else succeeded and was able to stop her... Say again? Yeah.

Yeah. Learning to be happy that someone else succeeded or was happy.

[Говорящий 2] (41:04 - 41:05)
That's the opposite of jealousy.

[Говорящий 1] (41:09 - 42:02)
Okay, good question. If you find your heart teacher and then you serve them for many years and then they pass away, then should you go try to find a new heart teacher? The reason that you lose a teacher in your life is that the seeds for them were out.

So you had seeds for a heart teacher. You worked hard to plant the seeds. Then the seeds wore out and they left.

And it's the same with a husband, or it's the same with a child, or it's the same with a job or a company. Every good thing that happens to us wears out. So there's this principle of reinvestment.

What do you call it? Reinvestment. So if it were me, I don't know.

[Говорящий 2] (42:04 - 42:05)
I don't know.

[Говорящий 1] (42:05 - 42:11)
I think I would just try to keep the seeds going to have them not pass away. But if they did, right? You're saying if they did.

[Говорящий 2] (42:15 - 42:17)
That's a long story.

[Говорящий 1] (42:21 - 43:00)
I would help people connect with teachers. I would work to help people connect with a teacher. And then I would do chicken and egg on that, coffee meditation at night.

And something would happen. They might come to you in a different form. Yeah, I would look.

But I would look that way. I would look by helping other people find their teacher. And not by going to the newspaper or internet or like that.

[Говорящий 2] (43:01 - 43:14)
I think that's what I would do. But I'd work really hard that I could keep the seeds going. I would just...

[Говорящий 1] (43:15 - 43:22)
In my own life, I would work very hard that they didn't pass away. Okay. Other questions?

[Говорящий 2] (43:25 - 43:29)
Rebecca. Wow.

[Говорящий 1] (43:36 - 55:08)
There's four great schools of ancient India. The third one is called the Mind-Only School. And they have a...

So normally we say there are six consciousnesses, right? In the Heart Sutra it says, MIG MED NA BA MED NA MED PHYIN MED LUS MED YID MED So, visual consciousness, auditory consciousness, smell consciousness, gustatory, taste, olfactory consciousness, gustatory, and tactile consciousness. And then awareness of your thoughts.

So those are the six consciousnesses. Then there's a school in ancient India called Mind-Only. They have two names in Sanskrit.

Yogacara or Chittamatra. And they believe there are eight consciousnesses. Then the extra two are called NYON NYID and KUN SHING RNAM PAR BSHAD PA So NYON NYID means something like afflicted mind, klesha mind.

And then KUN SHING RNAM PAR BSHAD PA So KUN SHING in Sanskrit is alaya vijnana, alaya vijnana. And it means like the field out of which your karmas ripen. Something like that.

KUN SHING RNAM PAR BSHAD PA And they posit it as a separate part of the mind, as a separate consciousness. And then in the highest of the four schools, Madhyamika, middle way, their philosophy is the basis of all tantric practice. How many scriptures spoken by Buddha relate to tantra?

Do you know? About half. About two and a half thousand scriptures of the Kangyur and Tengyur relate to tantra.

And they might treat, for example, the inner body, what's going on with the inner body. But their viewpoint, their philosophical, what do you call it, reference, is Madhyamika, is the pen. All tantric schools believe in the pen and that things are coming from me.

But they teach the place that holds the karmas. The place that holds your karmas is called MI SHIG PA'I THIG LAS, which means a drop of consciousness, BIN DU, of consciousness which is located in the heart chakra. MI SHIG PA means indestructible drop.

It's not really indestructible and that's a long story. And that's tantra. So her question is, what's the difference between the third school's idea of a place in the mind where all karmic seeds dwell and this tantric presentation of where all seeds dwell?

In that tantric presentation, it is stated that all the karmic seeds reside in an area smaller than the tip of a needle. So billions upon billions of past experiences are stored there in the heart chakra. And then they ripened from there.

So when you talk about the indestructible drop in the heart and you say that karmas are ripening out of that place, then the assumption is your higher middle way school. And you're describing how the world is a creation of your own actions. But when you are mind only and you say that things are produced out of your alaya vijnana, the foundation consciousness, ground consciousness, then the assumption is that you think that those objects have some existence of their own.

That they exist else. Third school is still NGOS PO MA'O. NGOS PO MA'O, do you remember?

Functional list. Meaning, they think that things function lies within them, by definition. So a pen has to be a writing instrument or a fire has to be hot.

Then by definition, if a fire didn't have hotness in it, it wouldn't be a fire. So they believe that the way things work exists in them. I like to take the example of gasoline.

So gasoline has the ability to run a car, but water doesn't. Right now, at present. Then we automatically assume there's something in the gasoline that causes the engine to run.

So a mind only school person would say that when seeds open up out of that part of their mind, they are creating objects which have their own functions in them. A tantric person, because all tantra is based on middle way school, they would say, no, gasoline works because you gave people rides last week. Then somebody will say back to them, well, that's silly.

Then you should be pumping water into your car. Let's see what happens. Then the higher middle way person will say, they have an interesting idea.

They'd say, if you get in a car accident on your way to work, did the gasoline make your car run? Then you'd say, no, but that's not the fault of the gasoline. That's the fault of the car accident.

Then they'd say, well, what caused the car accident? The higher middle way person will say, you prevented someone from getting to where they want to go. So you got in a car accident.

Then your gasoline stopped running your engine. Then the scientist, middle way, kunshi people, alaya vijna people, they'd say, no, no, no, the accident is unrelated to the gasoline. The gasoline in a car that didn't get in an accident would run the engine.

So it's not the gasoline's fault that you didn't get to work. There was a whole separate chain of events that somebody ran into your car and then your engine broke and the gasoline couldn't make the engine go. That's a very, very mistaken view.

Then you have to chew on that. You have to think about that. You have to think about it a lot.

The highest middle way school's definition of gasoline, or the function of gasoline, covers accidents that happen to you on the way to work. It embraces malfunctions due to apparent acts of God or quote accidents. It says that the fact that you had gas in your car and you didn't get to work that day proves that gasoline doesn't have the power to make your engine go.

That's just a different way of thinking. It's a totally different way of thinking. I had a scary, a weird thing happen to me.

There was a reporter in Galway, Ireland. You were there, I think, at that little nunnery. You and me did sojong in the principal's office at midnight on the floor.

There was a reporter from a very famous newspaper and he came to attack me. Then he was sitting in the back and he got very angry. He said, well then, we were talking about function and he came to the example of gasoline.

He got up and he ranted about, are you saying that if you didn't put gasoline in your car, but if you had the karma, you'd still get to Dublin without enough gasoline to get your car there? I said, yeah, that's true. Somebody would pick you up or something like that.

You would get there. The karma would get you there. He was extremely intelligent because he asked that question.

The other Buddhists there didn't think of the question, but he did. I remember the next day we were supposed to have an interview, but he had to go interview Sunny Bono? Bono?

Bono, sorry. Then I heard later a very terrible thing. He walked into a sliding glass door and died.

He broke a sliding glass door and it broke on him and he died. He bled to death. It was really terrible.

Anyway, I know it sounds weird, but you have to think about it. If you're going to be higher school, which again also includes all tantra, you have to have this viewpoint even to start Tara practice or something like that. You're supposed to have this viewpoint even to do OM MANI PADME HUNG.

You're supposed to understand this thing about gasoline, that what makes it run a car is not in it. What makes gasoline run a car engine isn't in the gasoline. That's our viewpoint.

We're supposed to get to a point where we can understand that. The proof of that is you can have gasoline in your engine and not make it to work, and even get killed before you make it to work. That's related to the gasoline.

The fact that you didn't make it to work is related to the gasoline. That's hard. Why am I talking about that?

Mind-only school says, if gasoline popped out of your kun chi nampa shepa, your foundation consciousness, it should always work. It will always work. Anytime you put gasoline in a working engine, it will run.

They would say that. Then a higher middle way would say, well, what about a car that gets in an accident? Does the gasoline make that engine drive that car to Dublin?

And we say, no. Got it? So gasoline never had the power to run the engine, because it doesn't run the engine every time.

Because you can have accidents where the engine breaks. And then you say, well, that's not related to the gasoline. It's not the gasoline's fault.

Then you have to meditate on that point, because it means you didn't get it. You didn't understand it. Helping people get rides to places is what makes gasoline work.

And if you don't help other people get rides to places, and you pour gasoline in your car, you won't make it to wherever you're going. Because the power is not in the gasoline. Okay?

Is that okay? Okay, one more question, but I'm off. It's 9.30. Okay.

[Говорящий 2] (55:09 - 55:14)
Go ahead. Yeah, good. Okay.

Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (55:15 - 56:35)
That's a long question. Well, let's just do the last part. We were talking about how things that are illusory can still affect you.

So, you know, if you spend your life on airplanes, nowadays, to save money, they show a film of the flight attendant putting on a seatbelt for you, and they're too cheap to hire an actor, so they have a cheap animation, and the lady puts the seatbelt on and you're supposed to watch it. But even though it's artificial and fake and illusory, if you watch it and the plane gets in trouble, you could save your life because you will know how to put your seatbelt on. You see what I mean?

So the idea is that something which is, in essence, unreal, can still be functional. And then, what's the second part? I forgot.

Yeah. Yeah, the creation of your own seeds. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (56:35 - 56:35)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (56:36 - 1:10:49)
So then, in lower school, to remove desire, you're supposed to think about the object desire, whether a man or a woman, that they're just a bag of poop anyway, and guts, and if you peeled off a little bit of their skin, you'd see the real thing under there, and you wouldn't want to make out with them or anything. So that's supposed to lower your harmful desire, where you might want to, what do you call it, hit on somebody else's partner or something like that. You use that as a reason not to hurt other people in a relationship.

But Anatole is saying, the person that you're trying to imagine is, what do you call it, is a bag of poop, it's already illusory. It's already like the flight attendant. So it's kind of, let me guess, I think where you're going is this.

In one case, it says, you're supposed to, let's see, the person's body is unpleasant, but behind that they're illusory, and if you understand that they're illusory, you have even less desire. You wouldn't hit on someone's partner if you understood that having a partner who's loyal to you comes from not hitting on another's partner. So if you want a partner, the best thing to do is respect other people's partners, and then you'll have a partner who really stays with you and is good to you, is loyal to you.

But in the case of the movie, it's kind of the reverse. An illusory person can teach you something that will save your life. So in the case of the movie, it's a good thing that illusion can function.

And in the case of the desire, somehow it's the opposite. Then we go to the example of your teacher. This is a very difficult subject, and we had a person in the first three-year retreat.

We had a person, and we had this debate frequently, after retreat and before retreat. We actually didn't speak during the retreat for three years. We had bitter debates.

They said, no, my Lama is good from their own side. My Lama is qualified from their own side. They were insistent that, okay, they understood emptiness, and they understood that things are coming from them, but their Lama didn't come from them.

They were insistent. They couldn't break through that. There's some kind of mental block.

Is a pen coming from its own side? No. Is a gasoline coming from its own side?

No. Is your Lama good from their own side? Yes.

Is your Lama coming from you? No. It's not just a question of knowledge.

By the way, it's not just a question of if they're coming from you, how could they know more than you, and how could they teach you? Forget that question. That's just a low-level question.

Is it possible for your mind to create a person who knows more than you and teach you? Yes. That's not so difficult.

But this emotion or this feeling that what you see in your Lama must be coming from them and not from you, that's a very difficult thing to digest. That everything good you see in your teacher or your partner is coming from you also. That's kind of difficult.

Then how could you learn from them? And then Anatole's question is the opposite. If you don't understand that they're coming from you, can you learn from them?

And if you try to learn from a person that you think is coming from themselves, will it work? Because it's based on ignorance, on the parallelism that the morality of a person who doesn't understand that it's all coming from them is immorality. Therefore, studying with a teacher that you don't realize is coming from you must make you stupider.

Or something like that. I mean, by parallel logic. We call it rikpa gotsong.

In logic it's called parallel reasoning. If it's true that morality done by a person who doesn't understand that the person they're being moral to comes from them is immorality, then ergo, trying to learn the spiritual path from a teacher and not realizing that they are coming from you must ruin your travel on the path. Oh, that part we have to...

we can cut that part off right away. Lower school people who become arhats because they saw emptiness saw the highest school's emptiness in the way that the high school sees it. That you got to get.

Their perception of emptiness is exactly the same as the perception of emptiness by a person who's Mahayana. So that question we can cut off. If you didn't see the highest form of emptiness you couldn't become an arhat.

No matter what school you're in. So we can cut that one off. But let's go back to the teacher.

Is it... I'm sorry it's late, but we're just going to do a few more minutes. Is it...and everybody's exhausted, me too, but it's okay. Because this is what we came for. Is it shen yin ten su lokpa? Is it a mistaken service of a lama to learn from a teacher and at the same time believe that whatever you're seeing is not coming from you?

Or not understand that that teacher is coming from you? Does it somehow poison the relationship? On a higher level it will.

On the highest level. You cannot reach nirvana without coming to a point where you realize that what the teacher's teaching you is coming from you. That's true.

I would say that's true. So in that case it's like immorality. But I will tell you about Geshe Gelden.

Geshe Gelden. This is the way that Mongols pronounce Geshe Gelden. Geshe Gelden.

He was from Inner Mongolia. He was one of my teachers. I think he was the last Geshe from Inner Mongolia.

Inner Mongolia has now been part of China for a long time. We met some Inner Mongols and they don't speak Mongolian anymore. But anyway, there was another student of my teacher named Art who I often mention.

You've never met him probably. You don't know him. But you kind of know about him because I'm always trying to confess, although it's not quite, it never seems to work.

Anyway, so I was jealous of this other student of my Lama named Art. He translated this Lam Rim, by the way, in three volumes. It took about 20 years.

It's a good translation, very thorough translation. But anyway, I was studying Abhidharma with Geshe Gelden and I was actively being jealous of my fellow student for like 25 years. The only reason I'm not jealous of him now is that I'm in a different state.

Anyway, we're sitting there and Geshe Gelden finishes the Abhidharma text. He wraps the cloth, which means you like it when they put the cloth over the book. It's like they close the laptop and you're like, all right, I'm out of here pretty soon.

It didn't work, did it? Anyway, he puts the cloth over the book and I'm like, oh, I get to go. And then he says, let me talk to you about something.

And I said, you know, yeah, okay, Lama. This thing with your jealousy attacks with Art, this thing about your jealousy attacks with Art, that's a goddamn good thing. I'm like, what?

He says, it's so great that you have Art to be jealous towards. I'm like, I thought no one knew I was jealous. And he's like, it's so good that you're jealous of him.

And I'm like, well, why? And he says, that's the reason you work so hard. That's the reason you're driven to excel in the scriptures, is you want to be better than him.

You stay up all night memorizing stuff just because you're jealous. It wasn't exactly that bad. But I'm like, okay.

And he says, so use it. Use it for a while. But later on you have to give it up.

Use it for 10, 20 years, but later you should give it up. He's like, because it drives you, it's a good thing, but later you got to give it up. So anyway, what I'm saying is that you can spend a lot of years with a teacher and misunderstand where they're coming from, and eventually they will teach you that they're not coming from them.

And what gets you there is thinking that they do come from them and listening to what they teach for long enough until what they teach teaches you that they are coming from you. Got it? So you can live in a state of ignorance for a while and it's useful about your teacher.

See, it's not harmful because it's going to cause you to get taught that they are coming from you. All right. Good question though.

I guess we should add that as speedily as possible you should understand that they're coming from you. Because otherwise you will lose them. Then that goes back to the other question.

You see, otherwise you will lose them. If you don't understand that they are coming from you, you won't be able to keep them. So you're kind of a high-risk thing to not understand where they're coming from.

Of course. No, I mean, if you don't understand that the teacher is coming from you, you won't work hard at the causes that make them stay in your life. And that's a high-risk situation.

Then you'll use up your debit card and they will leave you. Not because they want to, but because you used up your debit card with them. Then the karma to be with a teacher is the most expensive karma there is by far, by zillions of.

Five minutes hearing lam rim is priceless. Karmic, hundreds of years of work to hear five minutes of lam rim. Hundreds of years of past life work to hear five minutes of lam rim.

Very expensive karma. It's burned up easily. It's like going to Sephora to buy your lipstick.

You can't get out of that store without losing a couple hundred bucks, right? Because I'm always in the airport and I have to buy stuff for my old lady. Because I don't remember till I get to the airport.

And they know that. And then everything's like 200 bucks, 300 bucks. Beijing airport, oh my God.

One bottle of perfume for her. 200 and something. We blew 300 bucks in the five minutes we were running to the airplane.

Expensive karma. So you have to keep renewing it. Last question.

How do you renew it? How do you reinvest it? How do you keep it rolling?

Huh? Yeah, I think share... I like the word...

You know the Chinese people, when we go to China, I don't know what's the Chinese word, but oftentimes they won't say, I taught a class, Geshe Michael. They'll say, I shared. They'll say, I shared.

I don't know what's the Chinese word, but... fen chuang, shiang, fen shiang. They won't say, I taught a class.

They'll say, I shared with another group of people. So in the scriptures, one of the best seeds for keeping your teacher around is to share, and then the book always says, whatever you've understood, as much as you've understood, with other people. So make a big effort to share things with other people.

We're not allowed to proselytize. We're not allowed to stop people on the street and grab them by the shirt and say, did you hear about Nagarjuna? We're not allowed to do that.

But it's okay to say, if your sister is angry at your aunt, to say, because she gossips all the time. You could say, maybe there's some kind of connection between something we're doing and her gossiping. Like that.

You can propose it as a theory and not mention Buddhism, or me, okay? Like that. Then you've shared in a polite way and in a helpful way.

Then you can do chicken on the egg with that sharing and say, I shared today. I don't understand 2% of all that stuff, but what I understand, I tried to share today in a polite, non-aggressive way to help somebody. I send that seed to my teacher's health to keep them alive.

Cool. I send it to my teacher's health to keep them alive. All right then, Anatole.

[Говорящий 2] (1:12:46 - 1:12:48)
OK. Thank you. Thank you for coming.