«Дар освобождения», курс 21 «Ретрит радости непостоянства», занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
We're going to meditate. We just got back from India and many of us got a special blessing there, both ways. So I had a bad cold, so I'll be coughing a little bit, but don't worry about it, it's okay.

So let's meditate, you ready?

[Speaker 2]
Blow your nose if you have to blow your nose. I have this if anybody needs.

[Speaker 1]
What's the first meditation preliminary?

[Speaker 2]
Turn off your cellphone. Okay, let's start then. And pull your head up towards the roof, like a string is pulling your head up.

Relax your mouth. Relax your eyes. Relax your fingers.

Relax your forehead. Start to come to your breath. Pull in your stomach a little bit.

And see if you can count ten breaths without thinking of anything else. Try to follow ten breaths. Please turn your cellphones off.

And please invite your lama, your teacher, to come and sit down in front of you, knee to knee, and try to think of one of their good qualities, which is a mental prostration. And make them an offering. Flowers are nice.

Food is nice. But something good you did yesterday is best, to help somebody else. And tell them in your mind, something you did yesterday that you're not happy about.

Confess to them. Make a small promise that you won't do it again for a while. And tell them something good you did yesterday.

For a lot of us, it's taking a long trip to come here. Very difficult. Expensive.

And ask them for teaching. Ask them, please teach me. And ask them to stay in your mind.

Now we'll do the first of what's called death meditation. And in this first meditation we go through all the things we did yesterday. From the time we woke up, to the time we went to bed.

Think about all the things you did yesterday, every five minutes, every ten minutes. I was driving. I was doing my practice.

I was talking to friends. I was trying to get ready for the retreat. Start from the moment you woke up yesterday.

And slowly go to the time you went to bed. And each thing you can remember, each small thing you can remember, that you did, then ask yourself a question. Will this help me when I die?

When I die, will it help me that I did that thing yesterday? And then you can divide the important things from the things that are not so important. And then some things, oh yeah, that will help me when I die.

That was an important seed. And then some things, maybe not so important, that's not going to help me when I die. So go through every little thing you can remember yesterday, even thoughts you had, small things you said to people.

Ask yourself, will that help me when I die? And we'll stay here for about ten minutes. Try to stay quiet.

Try not to move, because it will disturb other people. Ten minutes. Please come back to your breath.

Watch your breath. Three deep breaths. Okay, nice.

Open your eyes. Take a stretch.

[Speaker 1]
I don't know if you're peaceful or jet-lagged. But it's pretty good. Pretty good meditation.

So this is the 21st Lam Rim retreat. We started, I don't know, five years ago? Six years ago.

And I promised to finish a book that my Lama taught to me. I have the book, I forgot to bring it, but I'll bring it in the afternoon. And this is a special book called Lam Rim.

Lam Rim means step-by-step to Buddhahood. Start from beginning and go to the end. And I always tell this story, I was eating lunch with some people in Phoenix and we were talking about what's the best book in the world.

And I think this is the best book in the world. I love books. Books mean a lot to me.

And I think this is the best book in the world. I think it's the most important book in the world. So I was my Lama's servant.

I drove him everywhere. I cleaned everything, his laundry, and cooked for him. Because I was his driver, I got to hear everything he taught.

Because he can't go without me. He taught this Lam Rim twice in New Jersey and once in Washington, D.C. So I got to hear it three times. It took about 25 years.

And I would like to pass it on. I would like to share it with new generations. And I would like you to pass it on to other people.

And I know the translation is there now in English and the translation is there in Chinese now. And you can just go home and read the book. But it's not the same thing.

In Buddhism we say there's a blessing that comes from teacher to student. So I want you to have that blessing. And then try to come to as many retreats as you can.

And then learn the Lam Rim and pass it on to your own students. And that way this beautiful thing survives in the world and it's passed on. So it's a living thing.

And it goes from generation to generation. And you should take good notes. Try to focus.

It's going to be long, okay? The classes are long. I made them longer.

I decided the morning, you seem like you can take a little bit more in the morning. So I made the mornings a little bit longer. And it just takes time to pass it on the way I would like to pass it on.

So I'm just going to do it slow and carefully. And I don't care if it takes two more years. I'm just going to do it right.

Yes, JB? Oh, that's nice. When we were in Russia, an artist came to me and he said, can I make a statue of your face?

And I said, only if you make my teacher's first. So he made a nice statue of my teacher's face. Can't imagine.

And we met, do you have those pictures, Scott? You know how they give tests to the reincarnation of a Lama? So they always put on a tray, they put the bell and the Dorje and the mala and they see if the Lama is the real one.

So my Lama, the boy, was recognized a few years ago by the highest Lamas. But I got to meet him about, I don't know, a week ago, two weeks ago? And I gave him my own test.

You ready?

[Speaker 2]
That's one of them. He loved baseball.

[Speaker 1]
So I gave him a baseball hat and glove to check to see if he's the real one. And immediately he started to throw and catch. Then I said, yeah, he's the real one.

So that was my test. So that's the real thing. So we'll continue through the book, very slow.

Take good notes. It's not easy to sit here. You're far away from your home.

The food is not what you're used to. You don't have a refrigerator. It's a disaster.

Oh, you do? Yeah, okay. You will miss your home after a while.

Just relax and be here and enjoy. Many great yogis risk their life to come to an empty place like this. We found the most empty place in the world, I think.

Even there's no cell phone coverage in most of the valley, although it's starting to creep in. But it took us many years of hard work to make this place. And I'd especially like to thank Rob Rossinger, who's here.

Many people built this place. And it's like, I read a book by Stephen Hawking. It's called On the Shoulders of Giants.

It means we are building on the shoulders of the past people. So it took a lot of work to make this place. And a lot of people worked really hard.

So enjoy it while you're here. And you can go back home, don't worry. The plane will be there.

Your family's waiting. Your apartment didn't go anyplace. Just relax and be here and relax.

Focus on the lamrim. You can't get this anywhere. Very few places in the world.

You can get a new car anywhere. You can get some nice furniture. There's a Zara everywhere now.

What do you call that place? What's the cosmetics place? Sephora is everywhere.

Zara is everywhere. Alibaba. But you can't get this.

You can't get this, I think almost anywhere. Very few places you can get real lamrim. And when you die, only this time matters.

The Alibaba doesn't help you when you die. Sephora can help a little bit. But not much.

Just relax. When the time comes that you might die or something, this thing will protect you. And this thing will help you and your family.

So you are spending your time well. And just give up and surrender and be here. And don't worry about other things.

It's very rare that we have a chance to be together. It's very difficult. So I will do four of these retreats every year.

One here in March and one here in October. Because only two months of the year it's a pleasant weather here. And in Guadalajara, Mexico in July.

Because it's always good weather there. It's always within ten degrees weather there. And we'll be on Lake Chalapa.

Chalapa. Okay, Chapala. It's the largest lake in Mexico.

It's very beautiful. And very beautiful mountains. And if you have time, come in July.

We did in Mexico once a year because people couldn't get a visa because of the crazy American visa problems. I apologize for my country. And I'm sorry about it.

Maybe they will relax after a while. I don't know. But it's bad right now.

Even very nice people can't come. So we'll do once a year in Mexico. And then this year we're going to start in Thailand once a year in December.

Which is very bad weather there. It's perfect. We're on the beach.

And Jasmine's in charge of that and I'd like to thank her. And that's in December. And Jamie Plant, if you know him, he's also helping.

He's there in Thailand and he's helping. It's two hours and 55 minutes from Shanghai, I checked. So it's under three hours flight from Shanghai.

So you will miss the jet lag. But you get the beach. And Jasmine's found a very nice place.

I think you signed a contract? We signed a contract. The dates are set.

So try to come. It won't last forever. We had a seven-year tantric course here.

I used to tell the students, 134 students I think, it's not going to last forever. Someday it will finish. And they're like, no, no, it's going to go forever.

Then one day it finished. So don't miss the opportunity. This will help you when you die.

And we don't know if we'll be here next year. So do it while you can do it. I will finish.

But if five people come, I will finish. If three people come, I will finish. All right?

Okay. So we're at the end of a... And I like to go through the Tibetan.

I like to go slow. I like to explain all the words. I don't care if you don't care about Tibetan.

Somebody told me, Geshe-la, if you stop the Tibetan, 200 people will come. I said, I don't care. You should understand it.

And it should be real, authentic. So we're at a part about NYAM LEN KYANG And partly you can follow the Tibetan. Why Tibetan?

There are 200,000 Buddhist books in Tibetan language. 200,000. All of the books from India survive in Tibetan language.

3,700 commentaries. 990 books by the Buddha. 4,600 books total.

Nicole is working on the commentaries. Jigme is working on the Khangyur, the Buddha's speech. Venerable Phil is working on the 200,000 books with Nick and Adam and other people.

Word is working hard. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like that.

Xuanzang brought back a few hundred books to China and those are beautiful and those are important. But there are, I don't know, there's 100,000 more in Tibetan language. So it's useful to have.

It's all that's left from India. We have a project in India. We were just there.

We worked with the project. They are looking for the 990 books in Sanskrit. I think we found...

Nicole, how many? I don't know. Where is Nicole?

I don't know. We found so far 20 in Sanskrit. Something like that.

It's gone. And many books didn't reach China. So we're doing in this language.

Okay, here we go. NYAM NGAN GYANG MTHANG LOS RANG BAR BYA BA'I YID LA MED GZHAN NAS PHYIR THOS PA LTAR BA'I TSE NGAN CING SNGA THUNG BU GZUGS KYIS SNYING RGA SHOS ZHIG LA MI BYAS BU BYAS PA NYAM NGAN means your daily practice. MTHANG LOS RANG means the tension, the amount of tension should be correct.

Like when you play a musical instrument and you tune the string, like in a sitar, if you make a mistake and you tune it too strong, the string will break and will actually hit you in the face. I have a couple of cuts. Sometimes it hits your eye.

So you have to be careful because the strings are made by hand in India. So you can't tighten it too much. And if it's too loose, then it sounds boing, boing, boing.

And your practice should be like that. So there's a thing called tuning your practice. Shouldn't be too tight.

CHOS RDZOMS Like CHOS RDZOMS is a lot nicer when she's relaxed. No, when she had enough sleep and she didn't drink too much coffee and she's like so cool and chill. And then if you wind it up a little bit, like you try to practice too hard or you try to do too much, then you get tight.

And then you hurt yourself. Your practice isn't good. More is not good with practice.

The right amount is good. If you tune the sitar tighter, it's not going to sound better. It sounds worse.

So you have to, your practice, your practice should be the same. Like tune it. Nice.

And not too loose. I'm not going to give you any examples for that. So don't be too loose either, which means you're just hanging around.

Maybe you do some meditation every couple of days, something like that. RAM BZHIN NI CI THOS PA LTA BU'I TSE When you listen to your teacher's teaching, RNGEN BZHIN NA LTUNG BU ZOD Say RNGEN BZHIN BU ZOD I'm going to ask you to say repeat words after me. Why?

It keeps you awake. It doesn't have anything to do with karmic seeds. It's just how I check who's still awake.

Say RNGEN BZHIN BU ZOD BU ZOD So BU ZOD is a ... We should put it in the dictionary, okay? We're making a video dictionary, okay?

SA PA LTAR PAR ZHOG RGYUD GSOD BU SA ZHOG RGYUD GSOD DANG ZOD BU ZOD means when you get cold, the little bumps come up on your skin. What do you call? Goose bumps.

In English we call it goose bumps because it looks like the skin of the goose. I don't know what you call it in Chinese. Then, it doesn't last very long.

See what I mean? You get goose bumps and then they say turn up the heat and you put on a sweater and they go away, right? So your practice shouldn't be like that.

Like you go to the Lam Rim teaching first day and they say, oh, you're going to die. And you say, oh, I'm going to die. And then you practice for like six hours.

The first day. And then second day is like three hours. The third day you're like, oh, I can do it later.

So don't practice six hours one day and then nothing next day. Like a few five-minute meditations every day. Half hour every day.

It's much stronger. So don't go crazy because you won't be able to keep up. It's called NGES BYIN PUS SU SNYING RKA SHES ZHIG LA MI BYAS DGOS BYAS MI BYAS DGOS BYAS Let's put that in the dictionary, okay?

MA RGYUD KYI MI BAYA LTAR BYA BSTAN PO BYAS DAG BYAS MTHA'O RGA' ZHIG TU DGUS BA'O'I BHA'A YATTA BYA BSTAN PO BYAS DAG BYAS MI BYAS DGOS BYAS means don't do. DGOS BYAS means do nine. Do number nine, okay?

And in Buddhism, number nine means a zillion. Like NGES PAR BSGOS MTSOMS I taught you NGES PAR BSGOS MTSOMS. Do you remember? I like to embarrass the naked Adam in the public.

NGES PAR BSGOS MTSOMS What's NGES PAR? NGES PAR means... Yeah, bad.

DGOS means nine. MTSOMS means comes together. So NGES PAR BSGOS MTSOMS means a special holiday.

Bad luck holiday. 13th of... Friday the 13th?

Okay. But in Tibet they call the nine bad things. So nine means a lot.

So MI BYAS DGOS BYAS means sometimes you don't do anything and then you do six hours. And then four days you don't do anything and then you do six hours. It's called MI BYAS DGOS BYAS.

Say MI BYAS DGOS BYAS. Don't do MI BYAS DGOS BYAS. Like work very hard on Monday then don't do anything on Tuesday.

Do a little bit on Wednesday. Every day like, I don't know, an hour. It's enough.

Just every day. Same. Even if you don't feel like it.

GUS BYAS PA There's a yoga lama, David Swenson. I like him. He says someday when I do my yoga I feel like a bag of wet cement.

It means I don't feel like... I feel heavy and I don't like to do yoga. And that's when you have to do it.

You just do it. I saw... There's a famous tough guy in America called Charles Bronson.

He always does karate and beats up. He's like Bruce Lee. American Bruce Lee.

He's really super strong and he's old but he's still really strong. I saw him. He did an interview with a famous, like Oprah Winfrey or something on the TV and they said, What's your secret?

What's your workout secret? What's your diet secret? You're like 60 years old.

You beat up everybody. What's your secret? How should we do our exercise program?

And he said, he goes like this. He says, just do it. And she says, Well, give us more detail.

Just do it. He wouldn't say anything else. Just do it.

Every day, just do it. That's all he would say. THAR MI CHIN PA'I LTA YIN THAR MI CHIN PA means your Dharma efforts.

THAR CHEN is my Lama's name. THAR CHEN means gone to the end. THAR MI CHIN PA means didn't go to the end.

If you're like working for six hours one day and then you're not doing any practice for three days, then THAR MI CHIN. You didn't get it. Your practice is not good.

THEG MA NGES PA SNYING PO JI LTAR LAM PA'I TSUL LA GSUM Now we've reached a huge section in the Lam Rim. This is after, how many years? Six years?

After six years, we're going to start the Lam Rim. We're at the real start of the Lam Rim. You made it.

It took six years. THEG MA NGES PA SNYING PO JI LTAR LAM PA'I TSUL LA GSUM So, how to get the most out of this life? You're not going to live forever.

You can get sick anytime. You can... We got sick in the best hotel in India, in Delhi.

We didn't get sick in the bad hotel. I had diarrhea all over the biggest bed in the hotel. It was great.

You don't know when you're going to die and you don't know when it's going to be time. So do something with your life. Don't waste your life.

It's very difficult to get a human body and to be alive, and to be healthy and to not be too old that you don't forget everything. So, we were trying to remember what we forgot but we couldn't. I said, there's a really great book about this lady who's going to forget everything, but I couldn't remember the name of the book.

RIGS PA YIN PO'I RGYUD DANG LEN PA'I TSUL LA GSUM So, how to practice Lam Rim? There are three parts. SKYE BU CHUNG DU DANG THUM MONG BA'I LAM RIM PA LA BLO BYANG BA SKYE BU DRING DANG THUM MONG BA'I LAM RIM PA LA BLO BYANG BA SKYE BU CHEN PO'I LAM RIM PA LA BLO BYANG BA So these are three great parts of the Lam Rim.

You should know. There's paths for people of lower motivation. Paths which are used by people of lower motivation.

First. Second, there are paths which are used by people of medium motivation. And then third, there are paths which are used by people of highest motivation.

So, there are three sets of paths in the Great Path. There are three stages in the path. We talked about it last time.

It's like a road that goes from Los Angeles to New York. You should do it. If you're not from America, it's a lot of fun.

You get an old car and you start in Los Angeles and you drive to New York and you just see America on the way. It's a lot of fun. So, if you start in Los Angeles, in the west side of America, then you drive to, I don't know, Denver.

How long does it take, Janice? I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
About 22 hours.

[Speaker 1]
No, to Denver from LA? Oh. Okay.

Her daughter does it faster. But it's like 20 hours, okay? And then you stop in Denver and you see a football game or something and then you drive to Chicago.

How long does that take, Scott? Denver to Chicago. He lives in Chicago.

I don't know. Yeah, 18-20 hours, okay? And then you rest in Chicago and there's nothing to see there.

So, you go... Sorry. Then you drive to New York.

Okay? Chicago to New York, how long? 14 hours.

He's done it in 14 hours. But that's with substances. Anyway.

So you can think like the first part of the Lam Rim is the road from Los Angeles to Denver. And then the second part of the Lam Rim is the road from Denver to Chicago. Or you can say, to drive from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, Guangzhou to Shanghai, Shanghai to Beijing.

Same thing, okay? So the goal is to reach Beijing, right? If you start from Hong Kong and you drive to Beijing.

But you have to go through Guangzhou. And maybe you have to go through Shanghai. Okay?

So you have to go through different cities. And you can call the trip from Hong Kong to Guangzhou is lower motivation. Lower motivation.

Why? Some people just want to stop in Guangzhou. What is Guangzhou?

Or what is Denver? It means, I don't want to go to someplace bad after I die. That's all.

That's the lower motivation. When I die, I don't want to go someplace bad. And if you're young, you're not thinking about it.

And no matter how much I talk to you about it, you're not going to change. So I don't care. Anyway, you'll understand later.

As you get older and closer to death and more of your friends die, then you start to think about it more. Lowest motivation in this teaching, lowest motivation is I don't want to go someplace bad after I die. I've seen my friends die, now I believe I can die and I don't want to go someplace bad.

That's the lowest motivation. That's Denver or Guangzhou motivation. I don't mean Guangzhou is low.

But just example. Then some people just want to stop in Guangzhou or Denver. That's okay, that's enough for them.

Some people want to go higher. Some people want to go higher, which means I don't want any kind of pain in my future. I don't want to come back to any kind of samsara rebirth.

Even human. I don't want to be a human who gets very rich and then loses everything. I understand there are better suffering births and worse suffering births, but I don't want any suffering births.

I want nirvana. I don't want to come back at all to a world which is not perfect. That's the first motivation.

And that's the second motivation. Medium motivation. That's...

What city in China? Shanghai. Good.

And in America? Chicago. I'm not satisfied with Denver.

I'm not satisfied with Guangzhou. I want to reach Shanghai. I don't want to come back at all to this kind of world where everyone, even the rich people are suffering.

Maybe they are suffering more. It's harder to have diarrhea in the best hotel in India. Because then you realize nothing can help you.

Nobody can help you. You have the biggest bed in the hotel. It's enough for like six people.

And you're just trying to... Anyway. And it just doesn't matter.

The wealthiest people are not much happier than the poor people. Sometimes the poor people are happier. It doesn't help.

They all have to get old. They all have to die. If you have money, you have to meet all those doctors.

And a lot of those doctors for rich people, they just want money. They say, oh, you need an operation. Let's cut up your face.

So, higher motivation. We call it medium motivation. I don't want any of this.

I don't want to come back to a place like this. Higher motivation than that, which is New York or Beijing, is, I want to become a Buddha so I can help everybody. I want to become a Buddha so I can help everybody.

So those are the three great divisions of the path of the Lam Rim. And we just reached the first one after six years. So you're in a historical place right now.

You are the group who reached the beginning of the Lam Rim. Today. Today, this morning.

You reached the beginning of the Lam Rim. Now there's an important word in the Tibetan called DANG THU MONG BA So let's talk about that. You want to show them, Adam, where it is?

Yeah, that's okay. DANG THU MONG BA Say DANG THU MONG BA DANG THU MONG BA DANG THU MONG BA So there's a thing about Lam Rim that you have to know and you have to teach your students. Should you practice the lower motivation or not?

Yes or no?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
You mean you should just go to Guangzhou?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, to get to Beijing you have to go to Guangzhou. So we say I will practice the paths which are shared with the lower motivation. Shared by the high people.

So high people share the trip up to Guangzhou. They share it. They don't practice the lower path.

You cannot say that. In Lam Rim, if you want to lose in the debate park or you want the abbot to hit you with the mala, then you can say I'm practicing going to Guangzhou. Or I'm practicing lower path.

You cannot say that. You have to say I'm sharing for a while the lower path until I get ready to go to Shanghai. Like I'm sharing it but I'm not doing lower path.

Because I don't want to stop in Guangzhou. It's not enough for me not to be an animal next time. I don't want to be a roach next time.

I don't want to be a cockroach in a Hong Kong apartment. I want to be a human. That's okay.

That's a first goal. You can call it first goal. Second goal, I don't want to do that again and again and again and again.

I want to be a Buddha. I want to change my body into light. I want to...

When I was a kid, we used to have marble games. It was a big thing. They banned it in my school because so many kids were losing money.

So when you become a Buddha, it's like planets are like marbles. You got a planet. Can you loan me a planet, Catherine?

Yeah, yeah. I can take another planet today. Okay, you take care of those six billion people.

Okay, yeah, I'll do that. You got another one? Yeah, here's another one.

You can take care of whole planets full of people because you have that capacity. It's called bigger capacity, high capacity. What's the Sanskrit?

Mahayana. Say Mahayana. Mahayana.

Bigger capacity. I can carry more. The word means I can carry more.

I can handle more. Lojangwa means I will practice higher. So we're ready to start on the roadmap of how to get to Guangzhou or Denver.

Here we go. DANG PO LA GNYIS So if you want to get to the first stop, to Guangzhou, there's two parts. Number one, GCIG RTEN PHYI MA BDOD NYID GYI BLO BSKYED PA GCIG RTEN PHYI MA BDOD NYID GYI BLO BSKYED PA GCIG RTEN means the world in Sanskrit.

BLO BSKYED PHYI MA means next one. The next one. The next life.

The next world. BDOD NYID GYI BLO means focus on that next world. To want something to happen in the next world.

I'm guessing that probably today in Arizona maybe, this is the only group of people who are talking about what's going to happen to them after they die. So in the world, China, America, Mexico, Germany, it doesn't matter. People don't sit around and discuss what's going to happen to me after I die.

People just don't think about it. And so we have to start, if we want to be a Dharma person, we have to start thinking what's going to happen to me after I die. And everyone's going to die.

So, it's just that nobody thinks about it. I guess we just block it out. But everybody's going to die.

So maybe we should get ready. Like you don't know if you're going to get back to China. You don't know if you're ever going to have another good Chinese meal in your home country.

But you know you're going to die, so which one is better to prepare for? You see what I mean? Should you make sure your seat is okay on the plane home, or should you get ready to die?

Which one? Well, you don't know if you're going to get on the plane home, but you know you're going to die, so you might as well work on the second one. And it's very difficult for a human being to make that shift.

It's very, very difficult to think what's going to happen to me after I die. And should I get ready? Should I get something ready?

Is there some kind of preparation I can make? Like go ahead and have a nice family and make money and eat as many yau taus and churros as you can. That's what I support.

But get the other thing ready also. Why not? If that's going to come for sure, then why not make some preparations?

Just get it ready, just in case. Just in case. In case I die.

Get it ready and then focus on your life. Like take care of that, get it ready and then focus on your life. That's more smart, but it's very difficult to do.

It's very, very difficult because we block it. We have died many, many times. We have died many times and we don't want to think about it.

BLO SKYES PA DANG, BYAS STAN GCI MA BDE BA'I THABS BSTAN PA So second part of the first part of the road. First part of the first part of the road is get your mind focused on what's going to happen later. Think about what's going to happen to me after I die.

Second part, is there something I can do to make things go well at that time? Is there something I can do to make it go well after I die? So first thing, just learn to focus on about death and what's going to happen after you die.

Second thing, is there something I can do to make things go well when I die? Can I make sure that... Can I have like an insurance policy?

After death and... They don't sell those, right? After death insurance.

That's what we're selling here. Okay. After death insurance policy.

Is there something I can do to make sure things are going to go well after I die? And why not take care of it? Just take care of it.

It's like in America we have to... We're supposed to put taxes. We're supposed to...

If you're self-employed, you're supposed to take some of your income every month and you're supposed to get ready to pay your tax on April 15th. And nobody does. And then they go crazy at the end of the year.

They're like, oh, I don't have any money. And everybody's borrowing money from everybody. But why not just get it ready?

Put the tax money there. Get ready. It's coming.

April 15th has to come. There's only two things definite in life. What are they?

Death and taxes. So get it ready. Get it ready.

Now the first part about how to learn to focus on the future after you die has also two parts. It's on your homework. So make a note.

How to get your mind to focus on after death. Number one, death meditation. That's what we're here, this week.

That's what we're doing. We are doing death meditation. We gave it a better name because it didn't look good on the advertisement.

Please come for death meditation. Actually, I wrote it. Please come for death meditation.

Tim said, I think we got to change it Geshe-la. Call it the joy of impermanence. It's death meditation.

It's just death meditation. It doesn't look too good on the advertisement. GCIG RTEN BDE'I RING DU MI GNAS PAR PHYI BA'I RJES SU BYAMS PA Focus on the fact that you will not be here very long.

And do your death meditations. I'll say it now and I'll say it all week. If you do good death meditations, your life is so happy.

Your life has so much energy because you know you're not wasting your time. Everything becomes cool. People who do good death meditations are the happiest people.

And people who pretend they're not going to die are unhappy. Deep down they're unhappy because they're scared. And I know people jump out of planes and do bungee, stupid bungee thing.

Who is Brigitte? They say, Geshe-la, I think it would be so interesting to die. Come on.

Take them up on the side of a building and go like this. Take them up on the roof of a tall building and go like this. And they go...

Nobody wants to die. I don't care. Even people who kill themselves don't want to die.

They're so afraid to die, they kill themselves. My brother did, I know. You won't be here very long.

So get ready. Just meditate on your death. And if you do a good job, you get very cool, very happy.

You feel very free. Your tax money is in the bank. And you're like, yeah, my tax money is in the bank.

I don't have to worry about it. I can die. One of the last meditations we will do is called going back to your parents' house meditation.

Going back to your parents' house. It means if you do steady death meditation regularly, then when the time comes and they say, oh my god, you're dying. And you're like, okay, I'm ready.

I've been waiting for that. And it feels like you're just coming home. To die feels like coming home.

And you're not afraid. People who meditate on death every day are not afraid to die. People who pretend they're not going to die are afraid.

When the time comes, they're afraid. But a Buddhist person who does death meditation regularly, when the time comes, they're like, haha, I'm ready, man. Come on, I know what's going to happen.

This is going to be cool. Okay? It's a valuable thing.

What time am I supposed to stop, Scott? Anybody know? 11?

I'm going to kill you guys. Okay. We'll take a break in about five minutes, okay?

I made the morning session very long because we're all fresh. And then in the afternoon, you can have jet lag, okay? Second part of the second part.

,'JIG RTEN PHYI MAR JI LTAR GYUR BA, ,'GRO BA NYID KYI DE DUG BSAM PA'O, is to study the possibilities of what will happen after you die. To study the two possibilities of what will happen after you die. First part, I won't stay here very long.

I will die. Second part, what are the two ways I can go? I can go up or I can go down.

And study them. Study the options. Option one, option two.

What's it like to die with a lot of bad seeds? And what's it like to die with a lot of good seeds? Like study it and know what to expect.

Cool? So we've got two divisions of the road to gonzo. The first one is start thinking about after death.

The second half is is there some way to make it go well? And there's two divisions to the first division. The first division of the first division is I'm not going to stay here very long.

I'm going to die. Death meditation. Second one, what are my options?

What are the two ways it can go? Got it? It's on your homework.

I'm going to be really tough about the homework. Okay, one more thing and we'll take a break. This is very Buddhist.

Buddha liked to divide things into outlines. I'm sorry. But people who sing clearly do it also.

Death meditations have three parts. There are three parts to death meditations. Number one, chiwa mar tenpay nyi me.

What bad things can happen if you don't think about your death? What's wrong with not thinking about your death? That's the first division.

What's wrong with not thinking I'm going to die? What happens to people who don't put their mind on their death? What bad things happen?

There are six of those and we'll talk about it. Second, what good things happen to people who do do death meditation? In Buddhism we always have selling points.

Buy this car. It has a good color. It has a great stereo.

The brakes are really good. So in Buddhism we always sell a new idea. What good stuff is going to happen to you if you do death meditation regularly?

What's the cool stuff? So in Buddhism we don't just focus on negative things. We don't say, you're so stupid if you don't do death meditation.

We say, you're so smart if you do. So much good stuff is going to happen to you if you meditate every day on your death. Third one, chiwa ten su lu so means the actual death meditations.

The actual death meditations. There are nine parts. Nine parts of the actual death meditations.

We will get to the first one next Sunday. So the whole week we're going to be doing pre-death death meditations. Getting ready for death meditation.

There's a bunch of stuff for that. But there are nine famous death meditations. You'll get the first one at the end of this week.

You'll get the rest of them in Guadalajara. Okay? Alright?

So this whole week we're going to work really hard to get to the first death meditation. And there's a bunch of meditations in there. We're going to do, I don't know, 14 different meditations.

So we're going to do the second meditation. Do I really believe I will die today? Okay.

So, we'll be doing it all week. This is the most powerful of the death meditations. And this is something you have to learn to do every morning.

First thing your mom said, brush your teeth. She's correct. Brush your teeth first.

And then while you're brushing your teeth, look at yourself and say, you're going to die before tonight. Like, brush your teeth and do death meditation at the same time. And just say, you're going to die before tonight.

Sometime during today, you will die. Is it true or not? Yeah, one day it will be true.

So get ready. You don't know which day. So one day it will be correct.

And you'll be ready. And it sounds depressing or it sounds upsetting. It sounds like morbid to think about your death.

But it's not. If you try it, it's a kind of honesty because it's true. And you can deny it or you can admit it.

If you admit it, you're free. You get free. You will feel some kind of like a bird.

You will feel free. Everybody around you is lying to themselves. They go to Sephora, maybe I can get another five years.

And it's all a lie. And you're the only honest one. You're brushing your teeth and you say, we're going to die today.

And you're honest with yourself. And because you're honest, deep, deep honest, you'll feel much happier. You'll be free.

Some of these ladies you don't like who waste your time all the time, she calls you and say, you want to go have some coffee today? You say, actually, no. I'm busy today.

I can't... To be honest, I can't spend today with you. It's my last day.

I have to do the important things. I have to take care of some important stuff. Then you get free.

People want to waste your time. They're like, you want to go to see a movie? You say, is it good?

They say, it's not great, but it's pretty good. You say, no, I don't want to go. If it's great, I'll go.

If it's not great, I don't want to go because I'm going to die today. So, I don't have time for the number two movie. If it's the number one movie, I'll go.

But, then you start to clean up your life. Then your life, you start to cut out all the crap in your life, like meeting people for coffee that you don't really want to see or going to movies that... My Lama, I'm always like, you want to go to a movie?

He's like, is it good? I say, well, you know, it's okay. No, I don't want to go to an okay movie.

If it's great, we'll go. If it's not so great, then why waste the time? Then you start to clean out your life.

All the stupid things, you start to clean out your life. Then you feel so happy. Okay, I can die.

I'm ready. We're going to do that meditation now. Try to do it for the rest of your life.

Maybe write on your toothbrush, I'm going to die today. We should... Okay.

I'm going to die today, toothbrush. I'm going to die today, toothpaste. It only has enough toothpaste for one day in it.

But we charge for the real price. Okay. All right.

So do it every day. Just when you brush your teeth, say, okay, I'm going to die today. What do I want to do today?

It's my last day. They have those movies, right? It's your last day, the world's going to blow up.

They're nice movies. They're like people suddenly do something. They tell each other they love each other.

They go see their friends. Like that. I'm in one of those movies.

But that's another story. Okay. Some guy decides I'm going to watch Casey Michaels' video because if I'm going to die this evening, that's probably better.

Okay. I didn't see the movie. I just heard about it.

I hope they pick a good one.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Ready? Let's meditate.

Clear your throat. Relax your face. Sit like a stone.

Don't move. Come to your breath. Watch your breath.

Meditation is very simple. I'm going to die today. I will die before the sun sets today.

6.30. I will die before 6.30. And then your mind will automatically start to think about how do I want to spend my last day? What's the best thing for me to do with my last day? And let your mind go.

Don't try to control it. Your mind will think about the things it wants to do on the last day. And that's a perfect death meditation.

I will die before sunset, 6.30 today. Now, how would I like to spend my last day? And we'll meditate on that for about 10 minutes.

And at least come back to your breath. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath.

Then you can open your eyes and stretch. What's the first thing we're supposed to be talking about? Huh?

No, go deeper. Go deeper.

[Speaker 1]
There's six. Yeah. If you don't think about your death, then six bad things will happen.

Here's number one. ,DANG PO LA GRUG LAS, ,DANG PO CHU MI DRIN PA'I GNYIS GNYIS GNYIS You won't think about your practice very much. If you don't meditate about your death, your practice becomes like second priority or third priority.

Number one priority is your boyfriend. Number two priority is getting some nice dinner. And practice is number three or something like that.

So you won't have the right priorities. Your practice won't be your most important thing in your life. I'm really happy that when we come down to Diamond Mountain from...

We live six hours away from here. When we come, nowadays, we used to try to stop and do our practice in Tucson on the way, like our yoga practice. It was difficult because we had to time it right because there's only certain classes.

Then we just decided, we'll rent the yoga studio and we'll have our own class. We've been doing that for, I don't know, a couple years now. It's really cool.

Practice is number one priority. So we stop in Tucson on the way and we do our practice together. It's nice.

We just rent the place. We pay them more money than in the yoga class. We all donate like a couple hundred bucks, total money.

They're really happy. So practice is number one. We build the day around the practice.

We don't not practice if we don't have time. You see what I mean? So the day is built around the practice.

The trip to Diamond Mountain is built around the practice. You see what I mean? ,RTANG PO CHOS MI BRAL BA NYID MI NI, ,'DI MA BRAL NA SEMS DE'I KHO NA BSAM NAS, We will just think about this last stuff.

,THE RING ZAS DGOS SOGS DGOS DGOS ,DGOS DGOS MANG PO ,ZAS DGOS DGOS MANG PO Oh, I need this and I need that and I need this and I need that. I got to have a Dharmamitra back-stretching wheel. Then I got to get these sunglasses I saw in the Denver airport.

I spent like half an hour online trying to find them. Then the little needs pile up in your life. I got to have some Indian instant tea.

I got to find out where you get it. Amazon and Alibaba, you spend all your time on that. I got to have double Bergamot Earl Grey tea.

I got to find it online. I think online causes a lot of this. Then your needs multiply.

I got to have these shoes. My friend has them. They're a certain color, pink.

They got green on the inside. You spend like an hour online trying to find them. Then your needs just multiply.

If you don't think about dying, you need all this little stuff. DGOS DGOS DGOS DGOS MANG PO ZAS DGOS DGOS MANG PO Lots of little things I need. ZHIG BAR DGOS KHOR NAS DGOS KHOR is a nice word in Tibetan.

Let's do dictionary. MA'ONG DGA' NAR GO AO DKA' NAR KHOR NAR KHOR DGOS KHOR means to spin your head. But it really means to be deceived or to be confused.

Life will cheat you. DGOS KHOR Those little needs, those little Alibaba needs, will DGOS KHOR. They will confuse you and you'll die without the pink shoes with the green on the inside.

You know what I mean? And they will cheat you. I don't know how to say it.

DGOS KHOR means to deceive somebody. Like, I don't know, you buy this car, it's real cheap, and then you cheat them. There's something wrong with the car.

So life will cheat you if you don't do death meditation. Those little needs will pile up and they'll cheat you. They'll cheat you out of your life.

DGOS KHOR NAS SPYOD MIN SBYUNG And you won't practice. ZHING DI LAS PAR BRTAN PAR ZHIG BYUNG NA But if you do death meditation every day, KHAMS PA'I BRUL PA GRO RIM PA DE GRO CHE KHO NA GRIG PA BZHIN Then there was a guy, people used to come to the middle of Tibet, from the east of Tibet, to see the holy statues and things. They would come from Kham, which is east Tibet.

And they would make a long trip, pilgrimage to Lhasa, to see the sites. I used to go to debate, winter debate, one month every year. Very difficult, really, really difficult.

And you get sick. And every day, during the whole 30 days, you're looking at your suitcase, and you pull out your airplane ticket, and you're like, oh, I got 13 days left. And you're always packing your suitcase and make sure your suitcase is ready.

Or people from east Tibet, when they get homesick, then they're just thinking about, let's see, do I have room for incense? They're packing their suitcase all day because they're thinking about going home. They're not where they are.

They're thinking about where they're going. And that's a good thing with death meditation. Just think about your suitcase.

Is my suitcase ready? What's your suitcase? It's your mind.

Do I have good seeds in my suitcase or not? Keep checking your suitcase. If you're not so present, that's okay.

Keep checking your suitcase. Am I ready? Do I have everything ready to go?

And he says, then you're like the guy from calm who came to the middle of Tibet and kept looking at his suitcase every day. When I was in the winter debate, I was always staring at my suitcase and checking my airplane ticket to see if the date didn't change or something. Because it was so hard.

DRO BYED DRO BYED, we can talk about that word. AUNG DGA' NAR DO AUNG DGA' NAR DO It's CHA SA BYED DRO BYED means stuff for the trip. So BYED means stuff.

DRO means to go. DRO BYED means stuff for the trip. Is my stuff for the trip ready?

Is my suitcase ready? DRO BYED GANG NA GRIG PA BZHIN PHYI MA'I GRAB PAR BZHIG BYAS PA This GRAB means to get ready and it's an unusual word in Tibetan. You call Dr. Traba some GRAB. It means to get your stuff ready to go. There's a GRAB that means to dance and that's a different one. GRAB PAR BZHIG BYAS PA BYUNG BA YIN So you spend all your time getting ready to go, just checking your suitcase.

MTSAN GYIS RTOG DGOS STAM GSUM SOGS LA PHYIR PHYIR GZHAN PA YANG MI RTAG PAR MA BRTAN PA'I LEN Say RTOG DGOS STAM Very, very famous. Very, very famous. In Buddhism, very famous.

RTOG DGOS STAM GSUM It means what people spend all their time thinking about. It's RTOG, DGOS, and STAM. These three things, RTOG, DGOS, and STAM.

It's on your homework. Get it straight. RTOG means, what am I going to eat next today?

Will they give me a decent Chinese meal or not? Are they going to have Mexican food also? Or if they're going to have Chinese noodles every day, can we have some German sauerkraut and some schnitzel or some real food?

So that's called RTOG. It's the first thing that we think about all day long. It's, what's my next feeding?

And what am I going to get in my next feeding? What's the next thing I'm going to eat? So RTOG, most people spend their time, RTOG means your belly.

Thinking about your stomach. RTOG is the number one priority of all human beings. DGOS, second word is DGOS.

DGOS means, what am I going to wear today? How am I going to look today? Should I wear the blue shirt or the green shirt?

What will people like? Should I wear the new shirt yet or should I wait for later in the week and impress people? I have two hats, one's a little nicer.

Or I got three pairs of sunglasses because Orit and Scott gave me some more. Which one should I wear? That's called DGOS.

DGOS means, what am I going to wear today? So most people are thinking about RTOG and DGOS. RTOG means your stomach.

DGOS means your clothes. DAM is the most dangerous one. DAM means discussion.

But here it means, are people talking about me or not? What are people saying about me? Do they think I'm a cool guy?

Did they notice how cool I am? Did they notice I have a new dress on? Like that.

What are people saying about me? It's called DAM. Are people talking about me?

Some people misbehave because they can't get people to talk about them any other way. They'll just do bad things because at least people will talk about me. So that's called DAM.

And it infects everybody all day long. It's not like you want to be famous. When you hit J on Google, Justin Berber comes up.

You just hit J and Justin Berber comes up. It's not like I want to be so famous that when they hit G, Geshe Michael comes up. First thing.

It's not like that. It's like we want people to think we're cool. We all want that.

And we spend a lot of our day trying to make it happen. So those are the 90% of our mental space is spent on LTO DGOS DAM GSUM. GSUM means those three.

Yeah, GSUM just means the three. So LTO means what am I going to eat next? Will I get what I like to eat?

DGOS means do people notice the shirt I have on today? And DAM means are people talking about me? Do people notice how cool I am?

Stuff like that. A big part of everything you do is how do other people think? If I do this, will people like me?

Will people think I'm nice? Even Dharma teaching is very dangerous. It's very dangerous.

You want people to be impressed and you learn new Tibetan verbs and stuff just because you want people to be impressed. You see what I mean? So it's very dangerous.

DAM is the worst. The third one is the most dangerous. LTO DGOS DAM GSUM LOG PHYIR PHYIR GZHAN PA means you get more and more attached to these three.

NI LTAG PA MA CAN PAS LEN We should put this into the dictionary. NI LTAG PA MA CAN PAS LEN In Tibetan you have to use the instrumental with the word to be at fault or it's the fault of, or it's the... So LEN here means it's the fault.

Usually LEN means the answer. But here it means the fault. And then when you use instrumental BA'I MA CAN PA, of not remembering.

So if you don't think you're going to die today, then you will be more attracted to those three guys. Stomach, clothes, and what other people think of me. What other people think of me.

Stomach, clothes, and what other people think of me. If you don't do death meditation every day, you'll get more and more into those other three things. And if you find yourself getting stuck in the pink shoes with the green inside, it's because you're not doing death meditation.

So you can work it backwards. You can say, if you catch yourself being too worried about your makeup or too worried about what did people notice I'm working out, then that's a sign that you're not doing enough death. Maybe you need more death meditation.

If you get free of RTOG DGOS DTAM, you're free. Your whole day is free. What are you going to eat tonight?

I don't know. Whatever they serve, I'll eat it. What are you going to wear?

I got this t-shirt since 1985. It's comfortable. RTOG DGOS DTAM What do people think about you?

I don't know and I don't give a... Let them talk what they want. I don't care.

I'm happy. They don't realize how cool I am. That's all right.

Okay, MI RTAG PA MA CAN MI MA BZIN NA Then every day you spend that you don't do death meditation, you wasted that day. Every 24 hours you spend without doing a death meditation, you wasted 24 hours. If you spend 48 hours without a death meditation, you wasted 48 hours.

So the death meditation gives your life meaning. If you skip a day, you wasted 24 hours of your life. 24 hours.

So it's up to you. Every day you skip it, you wasted that day. NYIN GCIG SOGS CI TZAM MA BZIN PA DE TZAM DE TZAM ZAD GYIS PAR GZHON DO GZHOR is a nice word.

Adam, Nick, anybody else who cares. What does GZHOR mean? Do you know?

GZHOR means either to slip on something slippery or it means to lose a game, like to lose a football game. It's called GZHOR. But here it means, TSE BDI'I BAR GZHOR You will shore into TSE BDI'I.

TSE BDI'I This life, you'll slip into this life. You'll slip into TOG DGOS DTAM. Worrying about what's your next feeding.

Am I going to get Mexican food here or is it just Chinese all week? Or should I buy a new T-shirt? Should I buy some new yoga pants?

Is there something wrong with your old yoga pants? No. But I was thinking it might be nice to have another color.

You see what I mean? And then you'll slip into that kind of... GZHOR means you slip into that kind of thinking about this life.

This life's little DGOS DGOS DTAM. Little needs. Little artificial needs that you decide.

Ever since I learned how to shop on Amazon, I have more needs. Like I have this kind of soap, Dr. Brunner. What's it called?

I got to have lavender now. And Amazon said, we can't send it to your house. And I'm like, what?

I got to have lavender soap. Your needs just multiply because you're not thinking about death. Okay, second...

Second what? Second problem that will come if you don't do death meditation every day. We got eight more minutes, hang in there.

Don't worry. Three more minutes? No, the first one was you'll start thinking about all this life stuff.

That's the first one. Or you won't practice. You won't have time for that.

That's the first one. Everything I said up to now is in the first one. Here's the second one.

Here's the second one. GNYIS PA DRAN GYANG MI GRUB PA'I NYES DMIGS NI This is really cool. This is a nice one to finish on.

And I'll just go straight to a quotation by Je Tsongkapa. People ask me, what religion are you? I say, Tsongkapa.

They say, well, what kind of Buddhist are you? I say, I'm Tsongkapa. And they say, well, do you want to do this kind of psychology?

No. Why? I'm Tsongkapa.

I follow Tsongkapa. That's all I'm interested in. It's enough.

You can get enlightened. You can become a Buddha. You can play with planets like marbles.

It's okay. That's good enough. It's called Tsongkapa.

People say, are you Gelugpa or Gopi? I'm not. I don't know.

I'm just Tsongkapa. I don't care what you think. GNYIS PA DRAN GYANG MI GRUB PA'I Tsongkapa said, look, everybody knows they're going to die.

We already do death meditation on one level. On one level, if you ask any human being, you go to the, what's that truck stop in Wilcox we went to? TA or something?

Travel America. It's the biggest truck stop in Southeastern Arizona. Almost.

I mean, it's an important place. You walk up to anybody in that store and you say, are you going to die? What will they say?

Yeah, I mean, sooner or later. They'll say, sooner or later. Yeah, I'm going to die.

I mean, I'm not stupid. Sooner or later, I'm going to die. Then Geshe-la Tsongkapa says, LONG NGAN.

Say LONG NGAN. What's NGAN PA? We just had it.

Bad. Evil. Evil state of mind.

What part of the mind is evil? The one that says sooner or later. Evil.

What's evil? I mean, is ISIS evil? I don't know.

But definitely that state of mind is evil. Sooner or later. Sooner.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to die. No, yeah, I'm going to die.

When? I don't know. Eventually.

I'll get old, but you know. It'll happen. No.

He says, THAR PHYI BA ZHIG DBANG NYAMS PA KUN LA YOD Everybody knows they're going to die sooner or later. KYANG, DE RING MI CHI What's DE RING? Today.

It won't be today. It won't be today. That's the LONG NGAN.

That's the evil. More evil than ISIS. More evil than income tax.

There's an evil state of mind that says, not today. You ask them in the truck stop, are you going to die? Yeah, I'm going to die.

I know I'm going to die. When? Sooner or later.

Will it be today? I'm just here, you know. Not today.

I don't have time today. I got stuff to do. The pink shoes with the green inside didn't come yet.

I can't die today. Okay, got it? So, the second problem of not doing death meditation is that you will understand you're going to die, but you won't practice today.

It won't make you practice today. Maybe you'll do some practice, but not for today. CI NYAMS PA'I LONG NGAN DI, CI KHA MA BRTZON LA BRJUNG Je Tsongkapa said, CI KHA MA BRTZON LA BRJUNG Say CI KHA.

CI KHA What's CI BA mean? Yeah, CI means death. By the way, if you want to know the name for death meditation, this whole week, if someone says, what did you do in Arizona?

You can say CI BA MI BDAG PA. Say CI BA. CI BA MI BDAG PA What did you study?

CI BA MI BDAG PA CI BA means death. MI BDAG PA in this case is not the philosophical MI BDAG PA. It's the impermanence.

So here impermanence is a correct translation. It's not a correct translation in DCI Level 7 that we did in Taiwan. It's not correct there.

It doesn't mean impermanence there. It means constantly changing. Different thing.

CI BA MI BDAG PA Here it means impermanence. Here is the only place that MI BDAG PA is correctly, or Nidya is correctly translated as impermanence. Meaning, I'm not going to last forever.

What did you study in Arizona? I ain't going to last forever. What meditation did you do?

I ain't going to last forever. I won't be here forever. CI BA MI BDAG PA CI KHA MA TSUM LA BYUNG CI KHA, so KHA means what?

The mouth. CI KHA means what? In the jaws of death.

In the jaws of death. The last ten minutes. The last half hour.

My dad had lung cancer. He was dying. They broke all his ribs open.

They cracked all his ribs and they scraped out as much cancer as they could and they sewed him back up. They said, go home and die. And he was dying.

He couldn't do anything but drink orange juice and watch football games. I watched like 50 football games with him and then he died. But every day he'd say, not today.

Not today. It's not going to be today. But then there comes a time when you can't...

You got to admit it's today. Like CI KHA means in the mouth. CI KHA.

Then people will say, okay, it's today. I believe it's today. But up until that time, every human being lies to themselves and they say, not today.

Not today. Until CI KHA. Until the last breath.

You can feel that you're dying. People will insist, I'm not going to die today. It's LONG NGAN.

It's evil. It's worse than some extremist, fundamentalist terrorist. It's mental terrorism, terrorist, in your own mind.

And it says, not today. Not today. ZHES GSUNGS PA LTAR LAS MI CHE BA'I CHOG GSUNGS TE We always have a bias towards thinking it won't be today.

MI CHE BA'I CHOG means we have a bias towards... If you say, are you going to die or you're not going to die? We're like, not.

We always hold that side. GSUNGS TE CHOS DANG PO CHE CHOG LENG PO CHE CHOG You know, I'm really going to get serious with my practice next year. Or 2018 is a...

It's got a number eight in the number. It's lucky. I'll start practicing in 2018.

That's like me with my diets or my yoga. I'm like, I'll get serious about my yoga next year. It's always next year or the year after.

Next week. It's always next week or the week after. GSUNGS PA CHE CHOG SNYAMS PAS CI SHOD CI SHOD means...

What do you call it? Put it off. CI SHOD means you put it off.

You keep saying next. I'll practice next week. When I get some time, which is English for never.

When I get some time. I guess you might go, thanks for that nice little death meditation thing. When I get some time.

A couple weeks from now my son's going to be busy. My grandkids are... Yeah, I'll have some time.

Forget it. CI SHOD ZHAG LTAG ZHAG LTAG means all the time, 100%. ZHAG LTAG means...

It's a colloquial. ZHAG LTAG ZHAG LTAG LTAG ZHAG LTAG ZHAG LTAG means 100%. Like, I don't know.

CI SHOD ZHAG LTAG YIN means every time the question comes up, you postpone. You postpone. ZHAG LTAG YIN DBANG DU SONG NAS DBANG DU SONG means and you lose yourself to the power of...

What do you call that when you put something off? Procrastination. You become a servant of procrastination.

DBANG DU SPYOD PA SPYOD DANG KYANG MI SGRUB BYING So you do think about your practice, but you don't do it. NOR ZHIG DGOS SDUG BSNGAL PA Oh, there's one more little thing I need. You know, like those socks.

I saw those socks. I saw this guy with socks. Nowadays it's cool if you have socks that are only half socks, but you pay double.

They just come up to your ankle. Yeah, they look stupid, but they're fashionable. I got to have some.

I got to get on Amazon and get some of those socks that just come up to the top of your shoe. NOR ZHIG means one more thing. Usually NOR means what?

Jewel. Wealth. It can also mean to make a mistake.

NOR NOR ZHIG DGOS SDUG BSNGAL PA YER BA GONG NAS SPYOD DU RGYUD MA BYUNG So you get distracted by all the little stuff you need. You get distracted and the hours pass one after the other. You look up and it's already 12 o'clock and you didn't meditate and you didn't do your book.

And you're like, okay, then that can happen today, I'll do it tomorrow. That's called YER BA. GONG NAS SPYOD DU RGYUD MA BYUNG LAS SNANG NAS MI TSE SRED PA ZHIG DBANG And you can spend a whole human life that way.

Every day. I don't know, for me it's like getting my car started in the morning. To get my practice started in the morning it's like I got to have a tea first.

Then I got to do this. I got to check my emails. I got to just answer this one.

I got to... It's 12 o'clock already. And it's like, okay, meditation time is finished.

Yoga time is finished. I'll just start my day. And then your whole life, suddenly your whole life is gone.

Because every day is like that. It gets to be 12 o'clock and you say, I'm not going to do my practice. You decide, today I can't do my practice.

I had to take care of the other stuff. I took care of it. Now it's noon.

I got to get to my life. And then your life will end before you get to your practice. Even though you know you're going to die today.

So we got two so far. Number one, you just waste your time on little worldly stuff. Number two, even if you think you're going to die, you don't get to your practice.

You don't get to it. You keep delaying. An important thing about this whole week, an important thing about this whole week, and he'll talk about it, but I want to talk about it.

Does it mean you have to move to Diamond Mountain and move into a cave and just meditate all day? Does it mean that? That's not practice.

Practice happens with your family. Practice happens with your job. Practice happens with the people you're with.

And it's not moving to a different place with less furniture, like a cave. That's not practice. So don't go there.

Don't get fooled. Having no things is not practice. Bodhisattvas have, they like extra things because they can help more people with them.

A bodhisattva's life can be complicated, but pure. And practice. They are practicing.

They have kids. They can have kids. They can have a job.

They can have a house. They can have a family. But it's all for the purpose of Buddhahood.

It's all to get enlightened. And they see it that way. So don't get into this trap like, I'm in samsara, why?

Because I bought something on Amazon last week. You can buy stuff on Amazon with a Dharma mind and you cannot buy stuff on Amazon because you want people to know you didn't buy anything on Amazon. And then you don't have a Dharma mind.

You see what I mean? It's not the outside things. It's how you think.

It's not so easy that if you give up three pairs of shoes you're a good person. It ain't that easy. It's can you have things and can you have a family and can you have a job and be working to become a Buddha at the same time?

That's the question. It doesn't work to give up all your stuff. Then whatever, you would want to show off that you only have one pair of shoes.

That's where your mind will go. Did they notice I only have one pair of shoes? It's independent of how much stuff you have.

It's a mental state. Are you practicing? Wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever your family situation, are you practicing?

Are you trying to become a Buddha all the time? It ain't as easy as giving up all your stuff and quitting all your responsibilities. And many people have made that mistake.

Many people here made that mistake. So don't go there. Okay?

All right, here we go.