«Дар освобождения», курс 21 «Ретрит радости непостоянства», занятие 5

[Speaker 1]
OK, let's meditate. OK? OK, here we go.

Then relax your forehead. Relax the corners of your mouth. Relax your hands.

Relax your shoulders. Close your stomach and come to your breath.

[Speaker 2]
Watch your breath. Then think back on things that you did today, since you woke up, up to now.

[Speaker 1]
Just go back to the day. It's not big things. It's not like you had a big event in your life or something.

Many small things, many small memories. Each time you remember doing something or saying something, each small thing that you did today, is it going to help you when you die or not?

[Speaker 2]
Was it a good thing to do? Will it help you die or will it not help me die? Then divide.

Somebody owes me $50 on there.

[Speaker 1]
I'll collect it afterwards. Divide all the stuff that happened today into two parts. These things help me when I die and these things don't help me.

Life is not all big things. Life is all small things. Small things you said, small things you did.

Now think about all the things you did which will help you next time.

[Speaker 2]
Help you after you die.

[Speaker 1]
Think about how your old friends would think about these things. Oh, I did a death meditation this morning. Then your old friends in your old life, they would think that's pretty stupid or that's depressing.

[Speaker 2]
That's pretty morbid.

[Speaker 1]
That's a sad thing to think about. Why are you meditating on death? Or today I made two of us little red cakes to give to the spirits so I would have a good retreat.

Think about how your old friends or maybe some of your family, that little red cake looks so stupid to them and it looks like a foolish thing to sit in the desert. And make little red cakes, put them outside on rocks. It seems very naive or foolish, superstitious.

And sitting and meditating quietly doesn't achieve anything, doesn't do anything, it doesn't make anything. Then try to feel the conflict between the way most people think and these activities, meditating, thinking about death, trying to have a quiet retreat, making two of us. Feel the tension between these activities and what most of the world thinks is valuable.

[Speaker 2]
And try to get it clear in your mind that these are more important.

[Speaker 1]
These will help you after you die. And most of the things that other people are doing, they seem to be pretty useless. Collect money, build house, and then you die and the money goes away.

The house gets sold to somebody else, somebody else moves into the house. It seems from the dharma side, it's foolish to collect money, house, things, if you have to lose them. Everybody has to lose them.

So maybe those people are crazy and maybe you're not crazy. And just think about it. Most of the things you do for your next life, they look crazy to other people.

And most of the things that other people do seem to be hopeless, waste of time. And make it clear in your mind what's more important for you. This is the next meditation.

We'll spend ten minutes here. Be uncatchable. Don't let people talk you out of it.

Don't regret the decisions you made to practice dharma. And keep that determination by your side. Then please come back to your breath, three slow breaths.

And slowly open your eyes. Take a stretch. You're doing very good.

Very nice meditation. I think you're getting better. I don't know.

Maybe you're just sleepy. But I think you're doing better. All right.

I don't know. I fly on airplanes a lot. I'm often looking at what the people next to me are doing.

And on a normal airplane, if there are six people around me, maybe four of them are watching movies. They have movies on the plane, but they also carry their own movie on their computer. And then it's surprising.

I fly in business class a lot, and the businessmen are playing games on their computer. And I'm sort of surprised. I'm like, when do they have time to do business?

And they're paying like $10,000 for the air ticket and they're playing games for hours and hours. Like stupid games that kids play. And a few people are reading books, like monster books and weird books.

People kill each other in the books and stuff like that. And then a few people get drunk. Because in the business class, they give you all the alcohol you want for free.

And sometimes I feel like I'm in the wrong plane. I just feel weird. I feel like either I'm weird or they're weird.

One of us is weird. And I feel like I'm a stranger in my own country. I feel like I can't understand or I don't relate to all the people around me.

And I think that's a bad habit. We don't know what they're doing. Maybe they just meditated for six weeks and their Lama said, take a break, watch a movie.

I think you have to be really careful about the tension between yourself and other people. It's easy to say, I'm a Dharma practitioner and all these people are crazy. But we don't really know.

Every once in a while, one of those people will turn to me and say, I saw an angel yesterday. And I'm like, what? You've been playing crossword puzzles for three hours.

And you just don't know. Everybody has had mystical experiences. Some people talk about it.

Some people give DCI talks about it. And some people just don't talk about it. But they had lots of them.

They met lots of angels. So we don't know. So I think it's important.

It seems like most people are crazy. And they're just... Shantideva calls it, MA HA'I DANG NAS DOG PO BZHIN They're like sheep waiting outside of the butcher house.

They're just getting killed one by one. And nobody gets scared and nobody is alarmed. One sheep goes in and gets killed.

The next one is like, bah. And then the next one goes in and gets killed. And they seem crazy.

But we don't know. So just in my own life, when I was younger, I decided everybody else was crazy. But when I got older, when you get 60, you get smart.

And I decided, maybe other people are... something special is happening to them. I don't know.

So I think it's better to... In English we say reserve judgment. Don't try to guess if this person is playing crossword puzzle or Dharmanjushri or Amitabha.

I don't know. But I know I can't waste my time. I shouldn't waste my time.

So be careful with that meditation. That's the three diamonds, right? So people criticize you or it seems like they are doing other things.

Useless things. Things that hurt them. But we don't know.

There could be some Lama or something. We don't know. So there's a tension, but let it be on your side.

Watch your own life. Don't waste your time. Every time I want to take a rest, I think...

or I feel a little tired, like I don't want to read Dharma right now or I don't want to meditate right now. And I think, are you sure you're going to feel better tomorrow? Maybe you're going to get sick.

You know? Your body will get older. You won't be able to meditate.

You won't be able to sit. You have to lie down. Or your back hurts all the time.

So if your back hurts a little, you should meditate. Because later it's going to hurt all the time. So, just do it.

All right. We're going back to the text. We're doing really well on the text.

Mr. Adam, you ready? Yeah, nice. DE NA PA'I PHYIR LAS PA'I PHYIR means PA'I PHYIR RIN CHEN PUNG PA and it's an ancient book from about a thousand years ago.

PA'I PHYIR means the author, whose name was Potowa Rinchen Tso, he uses normal things in the world to explain Dharma. So, Pabongka Rinpoche quotes it. DGOR MO THAMS SAB BA DANG BYAS So the spelling is all wrong in our text.

It's all wrong. It should be, the LBA should be a WA and the SPRE should be SBRE. So it's hard to translate something when it's all spelled wrong.

And it means the swan and the fox and the weasel. Fox and weasel are two small creatures like this, long tail, red color. They like to eat birds' eggs and things like that.

This book is a thousand years old and I never saw anybody try to explain it. And I found it while you were doing Tormas. But I didn't have time to figure it out yet because it's spelled wrong also.

The explanation is also spelled wrong. Pabongka Rinpoche doesn't explain it, but he says it's an example for people who are really, people in Los Angeles, they like to talk about roads. If you go to Los Angeles and you sit down with somebody for dinner, they'll say, I was going to take the 417, but I took the 38.

I saved 16 minutes. I couldn't believe it. And the other person said, yeah, I was going over to the valley and I got the third lane to the left.

Can you believe it? And they just talk about roads. They think it's really interesting.

Then MED DONG THAMS PA means THAMS PA means the door, what do you call the piece of wood? The threshold of the door. It's called a THAMS PA.

And John Brady went to Mongolia and saved a special copy of all the... Where is John Brady? He's still cleaning up.

He went to Mongolia and he found a copy of the Kangyur, 990 books of Buddha that never left the room. And he scanned it. His team scanned it and they saved it.

And that book's name is THAMS PA. What's THAMS PA? Yeah, you're not allowed to take it outside the threshold of the door.

And he found it and he saved it. THAMS PA. So this is THAMS PA.

THAMS PA'I DRAM NA means right in front of your front steps is a MED DONG. MED DONG means a big fire pit. You know like quicksand pit you walk through the swamp?

You see in the movies and the guy suddenly sinks in the sand and he's like, ah! It's called quicksand. But there's another kind of quicksand that's made of fire.

On top it looks like normal ground. But when you step on it you fall into a big barbecue pit like for a cow or something. Somebody tried to kill the Buddha that way.

Somebody tried to kill... Several people tried to kill the Buddha. Several people tried to assassinate the Buddha because they didn't like him.

And one day they invited him to go for a walk but they prepared a big fire pit and they were hoping he will fall in. But I don't know, he walked over and he said, my feet feel really comfortable right now. Something like that.

So if you have a MED DONG just outside your door, right? But you're thinking about highway 417, you can save six minutes or highway 37 you could have saved in the third right lane, you could have really got... So your mind is on the highways in Los Angeles.

But there's a thing outside your door that could kill you. One inch from your door there's a thing that could kill you. But you're thinking about the highways and how to get to Ventura a little bit faster.

Okay? What's that an example for? THAR DUNG PO SA LAM SANGS RGYAS KYI ZA'I DANG SNGAGS SOGS BLANGS SPRUNG PA'I TSAD SPYOD CHOS CHE CHEN PAS So people are talking about tantra all the time, secret mantras.

Geshe-la, teach me the secret mantras. Don't waste my time with Lam Rim. I want to know the secrets of Amitabha, how to go to the paradise of the angels.

Like highway 317 to the angels. And they don't realize that DI RNAMS KYI GZHAN PA Thinking about this life, Amazon, Facebook, it's like a fire pit outside your door. It's right there all the time.

It's going to kill you. And you're worried about Amitabha mantra or some secret teaching. But you got something inside your head that's going to kill you.

Which is thinking about this life. Thinking about things you want in this life. Oh, I just need a little bit better car.

Everybody needs a little bit better car, okay? Jigme told me to tell you that the... You did tell me the Prius story that she smashed her Prius, right?

Somebody gave her a new car and then she smashed it. The next part of the story is she got a new big SUV and she can drive all the way up the Diamond Mountain Road with no problem. So, actually it was a cool karma.

SANGS RGYAS KYI SA DANG SNGAGS SO LAM BSTOD PA'I TSAD CHOS So people are always looking for some super secret thing and they have a bomb in their own head. Called worrying about do people know I'm a good meditator? Did they notice in the yoga class that I did a handstand today?

And then that ruins their life. But they're thinking about some panther thing or something like that. The thing that's right here you didn't take care of and your mind is on something that's a hundred miles away.

DE PHYING BA MA GRUB PA NI DE DANG BRAL So that feeling that you would like people to notice what a good Dharma person you are, it destroys your practice and it's like chains. It chains you. It prevents you from progress.

DE LTA BU'I GNYIS MED DE YANG PHYIR BA MA BRAL PA'I GNYIS MED SO And all of those problems come from not doing death meditation. If you do death meditation every day you won't have those problems. You won't have that bomb in your head.

I'll tell you the meaning of the goose and the fox and the weasel later when I figure it out. Anyway, it's related to the fire pit and the highways. It's supposed to be, that's supposed to be the meaning of it.

I don't know why. Here we go. ZHES PA This is the fourth of the six problems.

I don't know who's keeping track. I also don't know what came before. But maybe Jenny will tell us later or something.

We're on the fourth problem. We had three problems already. I think the first one was if you don't think about death meditation you won't think about dharma.

I think that was the first one. Second one, if you don't think about death meditation you won't You won't practice today? What's the third one?

Oh, yeah, you'll practice but it's polluted by, oh, does anybody know I did a handstand today? Were they watching me? Okay, all right.

Now here's number four. DGOS PA LA NAN DANG DANG DRO BA'I GNYIS MI GNYIS DGOS PA LA NAN DANG DANG DRO BA'I GNYIS MI GNYIS DGOS PA LA NAN DANG DANG You may practice but you won't practice with a lot of enthusiasm. You won't be really excited about it.

Like this. Did you do your meditation? Yeah, I did my meditation.

Did you do your book? Yeah, I did my book. Did you do yoga?

Yeah, I didn't run away when John Brady started to do the hard poses. I stayed there. But there's no excitement about it.

Then you go to a movie and you're like, then you have to meditate and you're like, oh man, okay, I'll meditate. If you think about dying a lot, you start to think meditation is sexy. And it gets very interesting to you.

Right now, we practice but it's like pulling teeth, they say. I don't know. It's like, yeah, okay, I'll meditate.

Some people are just so, what do you call it, responsible. They meditate every day but they're not hungry for it. It's not like the most exciting thing in their day.

They're like, I asked somebody, what's the definition of yoga? They said, the thing that stands between me and lunch. The thing that stops me from reaching my lunch is called yoga.

So, if you don't meditate on death, then maybe if you're a good person, you can force yourself to meditate, you can force yourself to do yoga, you can force yourself to do your book, but it's kind of like, it feels like an obligation. You just, I have to do this. And if you're a good person, you will keep doing it.

Just because the Lama told you, you have to do it, then you're like, okay, I'll do it. But really, you're more interested in what you're going to do after that. Okay?

So if you think about death a lot, then meditation gets exciting and yoga gets to be exciting. Going to the old folks' home becomes exciting. Like, it feels cool.

It's like listening to good music or something. Okay? PHYI BA MA BRTEN NA CHOS NA NAN NAS BYAS PA MI'ONG BA'I If you don't think about death, you won't be excited about your practice.

NYAM NAN RGYUD MA BYAS PA BYAMS MI NUS And sooner or later, you will break down. Your practice will break down. Because if it's boring for long enough, you'll just stop one day.

You'll get too bored. DA LTA RANG RE RGYAS BYO CHE PA SOGS KYI TSE DANG CHE CHOG CHE CHOG People like you and me, we get into John Brady's yoga class and we start looking at the clock after 10 minutes. The clock in John Brady's yoga class stops every half hour for 20 minutes.

I'm looking at the clock. It's not even moving. He's doing pose after pose.

It's some kind of special clock in the cafeteria. And it's not moving. Then you just get DANG CHE DANG CHE means you feel tired.

In the middle of the yoga class, you're like, when's this going to be over? Or in the middle of meditation, you keep looking like, you're meditating like this, right? And you're going like, maybe the clock is broken.

That's like, you get tired really easily. But then somebody says, you want to go to a movie and you're like, yeah. Like in the morning, you felt tired and bored and then they say, you want to go see Star Wars and you're like, yeah.

TSUL KHRUB CHEN PO MI SBYUNG And the problem is, KHYON means you weren't thinking about your death. If you think about your death, then it's really sexy to do some meditation. Because you can take that with you and you can't take anything else with you.

The dress you bought on Alibaba last week, somebody's going to throw it out. If you die today, someone's going to throw it out. But if you meditated today, you get to take that with you.

So it's better. It's cooler. If you think about your death all the time, then those things are nice.

So the next three meditations, let's talk about them. Number seven. Number seven.

Number seven, I chose a lady, she's on a train I think, but she's doing her book. She's doing her vow book, six times book. And she's happy to do it.

She's really thinking about her vows because she's doing death meditation. So the death meditation makes practice daily easy. It makes it easy to practice every day.

I don't know, it's like playing guitar or... I don't know. You just have to do it every day.

That's all. Otherwise nothing's going to happen. So I don't really care if you're interested or excited, it doesn't matter.

You have to do it every day. You won't get any big result. Just a little bit.

Just a little bit every day. Put that app on your phone. Do like three five-minute sessions.

But do it every day. Same with yoga. If you don't do yoga every day, it's just going to always feel uncomfortable.

Forever. If you do a little bit every day, it starts to feel good. So, practice is just like that.

You can't brush your teeth once a week. It doesn't work like that. Your mouth is going to smell funny.

You just got to do it every day for the rest of your life. That's all. You're not going to have a vacation.

It's just part... You have to breathe every two minutes. You have to do Dharma every day.

Or nothing happens. You'll always feel guilty and it'll always be half-assed. So you have to do your death meditation every day.

And then your practice gets very regular. And then you get results. Then you get nice things happening.

And you get hard. Your mind gets hard. Your body gets hard.

And then you become a Dharma tough guy. Your mind gets very strong. Okay.

,RGYAS SHES KHAR BAG PA'I, ,MI LTAR PAR DRAN DE, ,DUG KHANG DGOS DRAM GYI TSE MA'ANG, ,CHOS BLO MA CHUNG BA, Then there's a RGYAS SHES called Kharagpa. He was practicing in a small retreat cottage. If you want to know the name for a retreat cottage, it's here.

It's called Dukkhang. Dukkhang. Siddha building.

Siddha house. Like where you're going to achieve high realizations. In Tibetan they don't call retreat cabin.

They call it realization house. What number is your realization house? In Tibetan the word for retreat cottage is realization house.

Okay. Dukkhang. Then this RGYAS SHES, I don't know if you have this kind of plant in China.

I don't know. In Mexico I saw one, it's called Moneta I think. It's a little vine and it tends to grow everywhere.

Sometimes they have thorns on them. I have it in my house. I have climbing roses and they like to climb.

They have thorns on them. Sometimes they grow across the door. It's a big hassle.

Every time you go in the door it will scratch you. So you cut it. Then this RGYAS SHES, he was so busy practicing that he didn't have time to cut the thorn bush that grows across his door.

Every time he went outside it got scratched. But he didn't have time to cut it because he was too interested in meditating. He said, I'll cut it tomorrow.

Then he didn't cut it. Every day he didn't cut it. If you delay your practice on a single day, you will delay your practice every day and you will die before you start to practice.

If you delay your worldly stuff every day, like, okay, I will order the pink shoes with the green inside, but I'll do it tomorrow. Because today I got to do my meditation. But definitely tomorrow I'll go on Alibaba, I'll get those shoes.

Then tomorrow you're like, oh, I got to meditate. I'll buy the shoes tomorrow. So you have a choice.

You can delay your meditation forever and die like that. Or you can delay your Alibaba purchases, your Amazon purchases. Just do it.

Do delay it one day. Then the next day you're like, I'll order it on Friday because I'm meditating. I'm busy today.

I got to do my yoga. Then finally, when you come to the end of your life, you won't have the green shoes, pink shoes, whatever. But you'll have, your suitcase will be ready to die.

You see what I mean? So if you're going to delay something, delay all those stupid things you have to do. Okay?

All the men in the room, you can tell your wife, Geshe Michael told me not to do little stupid things around the house, like fix the faucet, or fix the toilet. He said, that can wait until tomorrow. Do your meditation.

Then the next day you delay it again. It's okay, you will die and the faucet will still be leaking, but you'll be ready to die. Okay?

Got it? So I gave all the men permission not to do any housework. Okay, that's what I do.

No, you got to do a little help. You're supposed to clean before you meditate, right? So you can do like ten minutes of fix the faucet.

Okay? Your house will be okay. ,MI LA RE DGOS DANG SANGS RGYAS SOGS ,SNAB NAS BYAS SU BRTZEL BAR BYUNG KHYANG So MI LA RE PA had a...

What's MI LA RE mean? Yeah, it's a special kind of white cloth. It looks like a towel.

Indian people wear it. It looks like... They call it dhoti, right?

It's a piece of white cloth like this long. And this wide. And you just tie it around your waist.

I tried to wear it in India but I didn't know how to keep it from showing other things. And finally I gave up. But MI LA RE PA just wore that.

And like every Tibetan meditator, he had a ,TSAM PA RGYAS MA What's TSAM PA? Andriana. Yeah, Tibetan cereal.

She makes it for me almost every day. Monks like to have it because it's pre-cooked. You just add hot water and you can eat it and you can go to the debate ground.

It's super food. It's super healthy and it takes one minute to make it. You just go like this.

If you have too much work to do, you just... Every monk has a little bag they carry on their belt. It's a little bag of TSAM PA.

It's like fast food. Some monks eat that the whole Geshe for 15 years. They'll eat just TSAM PA because they're too busy.

MI LA RE PA had a TSAM PA bag and he had his little white cloth. And then they started to get torn because of why? He used to hang out in the nettles.

The thorn, green thorns. It's actually very healthy for you. It's good for allergies.

I got a big bag but I didn't open it yet. I was too busy. But he used to eat just nettles, cactus, soup.

He made a soup out of green cactus and his skin got green. He didn't have time to cook. And then his TSAM PA bag got torn.

He didn't have time to sew it. And his little towel got torn and he didn't have time to sew it. He was too busy.

DE'I TSUL TSAL BAR RGYUD GANG TSAM LONG This LONG, those of you studying Tibetan, LA NA DO LONG LA LONG So generally LONG means to raise up or to ask for something. But this LONG means to have time. LONG MA CHUNG means I didn't have time.

I didn't have time to TSAM. TSAM means to to sew something. There's a tantra called TSAM BU.

There's a special tantra called The Tailor. Someday you can learn it. LONG MA CHUNG BA DGE SBYOR ZAS PA BZHIN DU RANG REG KYANG MI LTAS PAR DRAN NA If people like us really think about our death, LAS DGOS GZHAN LA MI TSUN PAR DGE SBYOR LA BDAG TU TSUN We will slowly give up our other tasks in life.

We just kind of drop them because you don't have time to do both. I don't know. You can't do Facebook and have a good Dharma practice.

I'm sorry. I don't think so. You can't do Facebook regularly and have time to meditate and, you know.

You can do Facebook once in a while, but to be, if you really check Facebook all, you know, for like 25 minutes or 45 minutes a day, you can't, you don't have time to meditate. So you decide. Do you want to see people's stupid little videos?

Or do you want to have a good bath? You know, you decide. Okay, you can't do both.

You don't have time to do both. Facebook is unbelievably stupid. Okay, I'm sorry.

You don't, you won't, if you die suddenly, you won't regret that you didn't read your Facebook today. Okay. But you will regret that you didn't meditate today.

Okay. It's easy. The choice is easy.

It's just so meaningless. Most of the stuff online is just totally silly and waste of time. Really bad waste of time.

Okay. You might as well read, you know what we do in three-year retreat? You know what's one of the favorite thing for three-year retreating?

Is to read the cereal boxes. And any kind of box, like any kind of, because you're starving for anything. So you spend, like, if you're doing retreat with somebody else, you're fighting over the cereal box.

I want to read how many calories they're eating. Because you're so, like, hungry for doing, wasting time. Okay.

So finally we told people just cross out all the, anything written on the box of food, cross it out, you know. Because we were spending, like, an hour a day reading them. TSA BA RGYUR KYANG SEMS SLO MA BYUNG BA RGYAS BYOR ZAD PA BZHIN DU LAS DGOS GZHAN LA MI TSON PA So slowly you will get behind on your Facebook.

Facebook posts. And you'll get ahead on your meditation. Okay.

You can choose which one you want. Jigre shen, nobody looks at my Facebook anymore. Because I posted, like, once six months ago.

And then I posted again, like, three months after that. Then I just haven't had time. Dr. Tsoen Hsing, Jigre shen shunpa mey pa drol sim sim Say, drol sim sim. Drol sim sim. Drol sim sim. It means, ooh, I get to meditate.

Ooh, I get to go to John Brady's yoga class. I'm so lucky. Okay, it's like that.

You'll be excited if you do death meditation. It'll be, like, so cool to have some time to do some practice. If your death meditation is good, you should be hungry for meditation and yoga and stuff.

Scott, how late do I go? Six? Okay, no break.

You came late. We had the break already. Okay, problem number five.

What was problem number four? You won't have any enthusiasm. You won't think it's fun if you don't meditate on death, your practice.

Number five. SNGAGS PA RANG NI MA RUNG PO BYED PA'I GNYIS MIN GNYIS This is a really important one. What's the picture in your meditation book?

What's the picture for number eight? What's going on in that picture, number eight? What's happening?

The guy's complaining to the lady at the coffee shop that his cappuccino doesn't taste right. He went to the coffee shop, he ordered a cappuccino, and I don't know, it's too hot or it's too cold or there's too much sugar or there's not enough sugar. And he's a whiny, whiny person.

I don't like the cappuccino. It's too cold. Or it has too much sugar.

Or I took too long for you to make the cappuccino. If you don't meditate on your death, you will become a whiny person. Everything will start to bother you.

There's people who eat organic, vegan, and they just bother other people all the time. Someone gives you a cookie and you're like, is it not gluten-free, sugar-free? Is it turbinado brown sugar?

Was it baked under 300 degrees in a flax oven? And then you just become a whiny, pain in the butt. If you've just meditated on death and someone gives you a cold cappuccino, you're like, okay, it's okay.

Everything's okay if you're going to die this afternoon. Your mother calls you up. You're like, I love you mom.

I'm dying this afternoon, okay? Your boss says, you're stupid. You're like, I'm dying this afternoon.

I don't care. You didn't do that job fast enough. I said, well, maybe tomorrow.

If you know you're going to die today, you're so patient with other people. You have so much, I don't know, what do you call it? You let things go.

If you're going to die today, you let things go. If you're going to die, why should you complain about the cappuccino? Or somebody pushed you in the food line.

Or someone fell asleep in the bathroom in the Jetson Coppice. One day I stood there for like 45 minutes and I found out somebody locked the door and left and closed it. And I was waiting for like 45 minutes.

Finally I knocked. I realized there's nobody in there. But you don't get upset about stupid small things if you just did your death meditation.

And if you don't think about your death, then every little thing can bother you. Every little thing will bother you. If you're going to die today, who cares?

Who cares? I don't know. You lost one of your socks and you're going to die today.

Okay, I can do without the sock. Okay. All right.

RANG NYID MA RUNG PA BYAS PA'I GNYIS MED If you don't think about death meditation, you can become a pain in the ass, whiny person. That's called MA RUNG PA BYAS PA in Tibetan. You become like a pain in the butt person.

PHYI BA MA BRTEN LA TSE DI LA ZHES BYAS GZHAN NAS You're so attached to every little thing in this life. SEMS DE'I BDUN GRUB PA'I PHYIR PHAN NUS SOGS BYAS PA LA CHAGS DANG MONGS SU The minute somebody looks attractive to you, you want to own them and you want to control their life. And the minute somebody says something negative to you, you hate them, forever.

But if you're going to die this afternoon, you see some pretty boy and you're like, yeah, okay, good luck man. Or your boss calls you stupid, you're like, yeah, okay, whatever. People who just did death meditation are really good at whatever.

Okay, whatever. CHAGS DANG MONGS What's CHAGS DANG MONGS? What three animals are CHAGS, DANG, and MONGS?

CHAGS means, I want that boy today. That's called attachment, right? It's the rooster in the Wheel of Life.

DANG is anger. He said, he called me stupid. Then the snake, you know.

He called me stupid. If you just did death meditation, somebody calls you stupid, you're like, okay, what the fuck, you know. And MONGS, what's MONGS?

The pig, yeah, stupid, stupid. I didn't get a good cappuccino. I'm going to die this afternoon.

So let me give the waitress a hard time. Let me tell her how stupid she is. Let me plant a lot of seeds to go to the hell realms just before I die.

Okay? Like if you're going to die today, you're going to be very careful what you say and what you do because the seeds that you do on the day that you die could come up faster because they're right in front of your mind. So if you might die this afternoon, it's important not to make any small, stupid seeds like complaining about a cappuccino.

Because you don't want to die with that one in front. Probably you'll be born in a Dunkin' Donuts serving bad coffee to people. Okay?

So don't make stupid little seeds if you're going to die today. Which means you can never make stupid little seeds because you don't know if you're going to die today. Got it?

Okay, BTAG PA DANG TSOS PA DANG, DE'I KHYEN GYI GZHAN LA BTAG PA So hassling other people, TSOS PA, arguing with other people, GZHAN GYI MA RUNG PA MA BA'I GZHIR GYUR PA Being unpleasant to other people. THA NA MGO'I MA TSUN GYIS If you don't do your death meditation every day, you might get a... MGO'I MA TSUN means black eye.

Somebody will get irritated with you and punch you in the head. You get a black eye. MGO'I MA TSUN means everything from a damage on your head to on up.

BDAG NYID MA RUNG PAR BYED PA'I SOGS DE'I PHYI KUN DU PHUNG PAR BYED So not doing death meditation is bad for next life and it's bad for this life because it makes you petty. So in English, there's a word petty. Petty means you get offended about small things.

You get angry about small things. Oh, there's too much salt in my noodles. That's called petty.

You just worry about small stupid things. If you're doing death meditation, you won't be like that. Dharma people should have a wide tolerance for all kinds of stupid behavior by other people.

This person just dumped, I don't know, soy milk in my coffee. You should, okay, all right, I'll just drink it. Don't worry about it.

Dharma people should have a big, somebody puts ketchup all over your, I don't know, Cheerios and you're like, okay. Whatever. You don't complain about stuff because you're going to die today.

I don't care. When they cut my stomach open, they'll find ketchup and Cheerios together. That's okay.

All right? Number six. Let's do a meditation, okay?

Let's do a meditation. Have you been petty recently? Did you complain about the noodles in the...

Yesterday I was sitting with somebody at dinner and they found a piece of garlic in their noodles and they mentioned it like six times. And I was like, it's okay, man. You die with garlic in your stomach or not.

It's all right. Okay? So, was I petty in the last few days?

Did I complain about stupid, small things that don't matter if you're going to die today? All right? See if you were whiny or complaining in the last few days.

And then think about death. And then think how important was that. I didn't get enough sleep two days ago.

But you might have died on the way home. It's okay. You die with sleep or you die without sleep.

It's about the same. Okay? Ready?

Oh, I feel jet lag. I'm going to die today. Okay.

That's okay. Ready? Five minutes.

Just do it yourself. Are you complaining about stupid little things? Put your death on it.

Compare it to your death. Here we go. Five minutes about whiny Geshe Michael.

50 plus 50. If this conducts your breath, three slow breaths. Okay, good.

Let's do some question and answer. Do you have a microphone? We'll do, I don't know, 20 minutes of question and answer.

If you have any questions about anything, anything is okay. It's up to Nick.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la.

[Speaker 1]
You're welcome. Devaka, ciao.

[Speaker 2]
I have this question for a while. You mentioned to pick an object for meditation. Stay with it for two or three weeks.

And usually my meditation looks like, you know, preliminaries and Tonglen and the Lama's eyes. And mindfulness, you know, shamatha. Is it wrong or should I change it?

[Speaker 1]
No, that's okay. If it's going well, and if it keeps developing and getting deeper, then stick with it. If it starts to get dry, stick with it a little bit longer.

And if it's still dry, then switch to another object. So it could be longer than a few weeks. It could be a few years.

It's a good question. By the way, somebody asked me, I guess I'm not the person to ask, but what's the karma to lose weight? So just go to India, get an airplane ticket to Mumbai, and drink water everywhere.

No, that's one method. The other method is to just do the four steps. Some people have trouble with their eating.

Like, I can't control my eating. I made my Lama's, they were sick. They said, I want some, I feel like a cinnamon roll.

So I looked up a cinnamon roll, what do you call, recipe? I never made them in my life, and I found a good recipe. It looked really good, so I made them.

There were 18 of them, I think. Mama got one. Anyway, you can use the four steps.

Number one, I want to control my eating more carefully. I want to try to control myself. I don't want to go on food binges and just eat 17 sweet rolls.

It's pretty amazing. Number two, find somebody else who has this problem. Find somebody else.

I can mention, I think she won't mind, Mandy Chen in Taiwan. She had a big overeating problem, and it really bothered her. She couldn't stop eating.

Then she found a thing called Food Advocates Anonymous. It's called FA. It's a 12-step program.

She has to help somebody else with their overeating problem. She looks great. She doesn't overeat anymore.

She can control her eating very nicely. She looks really beautiful. She decided to do it for other people for the rest of her life.

She's introducing FA to Taiwan. She's the first organizer in Taiwan of FA organization. That's such a smart idea if you don't want to overeat.

Number one, decide I don't want to eat uncontrollably anymore. Number two, find other people who have the same problem. Number three, help them one hour a week.

Then number four, be happy about it before you go to bed. This is the real way to stop eating problem. There's no other way.

If you do a diet and it works, it's because you did the four steps and you didn't know you did them. Whatever seems to work, it's not working. What works is karma.

If you want to control your eating and help other people. Then in American culture, I don't know China or Mexico, Germany, but in American culture, if you want to make someone happy, you buy them chocolates or you give them cupcakes for their birthday. We honor people with bad food.

This is American. No, it's just our parents taught us that. If you're a good kid, I'll give you a cookie.

We think if we have a friend and we want to honor them, then I will bake you some cookies or I will buy you some special chocolates from, what's it called, Linden something. I don't know. Germans have 14 kinds of unbelievable chocolates that nobody else has.

Lint, lint. I went to Tokyo, there's a lint shop. It ruined my afternoon.

If you want to make the karma not to eat poorly, don't give your friends bad food. If you want to honor your friend, make them a nice vegan, someone gave me a vegan tart last night. Gyel Se.

That was delicious, even though it was healthy. If you want to treat your friends, give them something healthy. And make something beautiful.

It doesn't mean you can't. You can go in your kitchen and you can work for an hour and make some kind of really tasty, healthy thing. And then the karma of that is that you won't be so attracted to bad food.

So don't do this thing where you buy people cookies or stuff like that. You're not helping them. Somebody started a rumor in Europe that I like chocolate.

Actually, nowadays I throw it out. I accept it, I give a big smile, and then at the airport I just throw it out. Because to give it to my friends is also not good.

You see what I mean? Like if I bring it home and give it to my old lady, which is what I used to do, it's just going to hurt her. So the best thing I can do is just throw it out.

Next question.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you very much for teaching us. You're welcome.

[Speaker 1]
You're welcome.

[Speaker 2]
You taught us that we won't fall down in the future. My parents are also Buddhists. Is there a way for me to send them to heaven?

[Speaker 1]
Thank you. Thank you, teachers. Thank you for teaching us so that we will not fall down to the hell.

But is there a way to bring up our parents after they die, like get them to heaven? Yeah, good. Good question.

So we are learning ways not to go to hell realm in this life. By the way, when we teach Kamalashila next week, one of the nicest things, or about level seven, DCI level seven, I think one of the nicest things is called ,'GYOR LAM GZOD It means when someone teaches you emptiness with a pen, let's do it. Just answer, okay?

Don't think too much. What's this thing? If a small dog comes in here, what will they do?

Does the dog see this as a pen? Does the human see it as a pen? Who's correct, a dog or a human?

Then if I leave this thing here and all the people go to have dinner and all the dogs leave also and Tim is the last person out and he closes the door and there's nobody left in here, at that time, is this a pen or a chew toy? Yeah, nothing. And that's GONG ZHING, that's emptiness.

Emptiness isn't anything else. It doesn't mean close your eyes, everything's black. It doesn't mean everything is illusion.

If you think that, I'm going to hit you in the face with my illusion. It doesn't mean nothing's good and nothing's bad. Those are all super stupid ideas.

SHIN TU KHUL PA That's GONG ZHING. Nothing more than that. When the dog's not here, when the human's not here, it's just something.

It's not anything yet. Then that person comes back in the room and they reach here and they look at this thing. In that moment, what does it become?

Yeah, it becomes a pen again. Why? Because a seed opened in their mind.

When they walked in the door, the seed didn't open yet. And they came closer and closer and closer and when they first saw this thing, in that moment, a seed opened in their mind. Karmic seed.

And a small picture comes out. And it's made of light. And if you meditate every day, one day you will see it.

Okay? One day you will see it. Your mind is...

Karma, the way karma opens is its seeds are opening in your mind and little pictures are coming out. The pen doesn't come this way. The pen comes this way.

Little pictures are going beep, beep, beep. Beep, beep, beep, beep. It's like a video.

Little pictures are coming out of your mind. The word in Buddhism for a person who doesn't understand reality is this way seer. Svartong.

Svartong means this way seer. They think the pen is coming this way. Oh, that's a pen and I'm...

That's called... That's the synonym in Buddhism for a stupid person. This way seer.

They think everything is coming this way. When their husband yells at them, they think, it's his fault. He wants to yell at me.

They don't think he's coming from them. Okay? Every stupid person you've ever met was a direct reflection of you.

I'm sorry. Some people say, I don't know why. I'm surrounded by stupid people.

They were all like... Okay? Anyway, who put the seed for the pen in my mind?

Only you can put a karma seed in your mind. Only you can do it. How did I put a pen seed in my mind?

I gave a pen to somebody else. When my hand opened and the pen came into their hand, that image of my hand opening, it made an impression on my mind. Like that.

It came into my eye and it made an impression on my mind. Okay? Look.

See? There's a mark. In a few hours, that's called a sanskara.

And in a few hours, it becomes a vasana. That's a duche. That's an impression.

And a few hours later, it becomes a mental seed. And then you have a seed for a pen in your mind. And immediately it starts to double every 24 hours.

Why are we talking about that? If someone gives you that explanation, you cannot go to the hells after you die. If you understand that explanation, one time, strongly, you cannot be an animal after you die.

You reach jor lam su. It's a special level. Path number two.

Level two, level two. Second part of level two. You understand the pen.

If you really understand the pen, you cannot go to... you cannot go down after you die. That's like good advertisement for level seven.

Just come, hear the pen one time. If you really understand it and keep that understanding, you cannot... It's impossible, even if you want to, to go down after you die.

Now, what about people that we love who don't want to listen to the pen? My father was like that. He was a nice man, but he wasn't interested in Dharma.

He was a good man. He didn't like to go to church. He wasn't against the church.

He just didn't want to go. He wasn't interested in Dharma. Then he got cancer, and then I want to help him.

So in Buddhism, and same in Catholic, same Christian, if you clean your bad karma just before you die, then probably you won't go down. So if you can do a good confession just before you die, it will help you not to go down. In the Christians, Catholic, they have very good custom.

When the person gets in a car accident, the ambulance will come and they will say it's too late. Then the policeman will call the priest and say, come fast to the car accident. He's dying.

Take his confession. Then I don't know, they do something on your head and the priest says, okay, thank you for confession. Then you die.

Then probably you won't go to a bad place. So my dad, he's dying of cancer. I know he fought in the Second World War.

He was very young and he killed many people. Then I thought, oh, he's dying. He has to do confession, but he won't do it.

He doesn't believe in the priest. But real confession means you regret something and you agree not to do it again. It's called shak dom.

Shak dom. Shak means confess. Dom means agree not to do it again.

That's a real confession. So I tricked him. He was dying.

I said, dad, do you remember you told me what you did in the war? He said, yeah, yeah. I said, wasn't that terrible?

He says, yeah. I killed many people. I said, would you do that again?

He said, no way, no way. Then he died the next day. Ha ha.

Okay? So try to get them to talk about the big mistakes they made. If you get a chance at the breakfast table, tell them about the pain.

In a way, not in a missionary way, in America we have some Christians they knock on your door and they grab you and you have to believe. Not like that. We shouldn't be like that.

Buddhist people should be cool. We should trick people. You wouldn't do that again, dad.

No. Like that. But we're not allowed to bother people with our religion.

That's why you do this mandala before the class. I'm not allowed to teach you unless you ask me. I'm not allowed to bother you.

Alright, good question though. So try to get them to clean. The best way to teach people in your family is to be so happy and so successful and so nice that they say, what are you doing?

If you're unhappy and unpleasant, then it doesn't matter. You say, oh, I went to Arizona. Why?

You study to be more unpleasant? If suddenly you're very happy and your life is really beautiful, then of course your sisters or your parents are going to say, what are you doing? I was in a car with a guy in Ireland.

He's in our group in Ireland. His name is Maroon. Not Maroot, Maroon.

He's Lebanese. He grew up in a Muslim country. I was in the car with him one day.

He was driving me and his little daughter was in the back seat. I think she's like five years old. He says, this is my teacher, Geshe Michael.

The daughter said, why do you make daddy meditate all the time? Then daddy was embarrassed. Daddy says, well, daddy has to meditate every day.

Why daddy has to meditate every day? Because daddy gets angry. Why?

Because daddy didn't meditate. If daddy doesn't meditate, he gets angry. Remember?

Did daddy get angry after he started meditating? Then she goes, no, daddy didn't get angry after he started meditating. Then she said, but could you just meditate for half an hour instead of an hour?

But it means even the five-year-old noticed some change in her father. The best way to influence your family is to be super happy and super friendly and super cool. Then they'll ask you, are you taking some drug?

Then you can say, yeah, it's called meditation. Okay? All right, one more question?

But if you push your family and bother them, they will do the opposite. They will say, okay, Buddha, they will do something bad. Don't push.

Don't push too hard. Just be a good example.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. I have a question about this morning's teaching. You were talking about the Lotus Sutra and the men, the dogs, and the gods.

And the Buddha having this ability to thank his karma. So I get a little confused after studying that.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's okay.

[Speaker 2]
Does it mean that the person who's meditating will never go hungry? Does that person, does it mean that they are at a certain level of realization of emptiness?

[Speaker 1]
It's a good question.

[Speaker 2]
Do they have to be an Arya?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, okay. It sounds like in that story, and he's quoting three or four sutras. Where Buddha said the same thing.

I take my extra good karma and I dedicate it, NGOS BA, I dedicate it, DGE BA DI'I KHYAM BO KUN to other people who are going to be meditating in this planet for the next million years. I dedicate my karma to those people that they will never go hungry if they practice Dharma. Nobody who ever practices Dharma will die from hunger.

If they do, then I'm not a Buddha. Buddha said that. Then that's difficult to understand because generally, what we just said about your father or your mother, you cannot give them karma.

You can't say, oh, Buddha gave karma to us so I'm going to give karma to you. I'm going to give you my karma. It's not possible.

We always say it's not possible. Why? Because I have a dentist.

Understand? If Buddha could give me his good karma, I wouldn't have a dentist. It's true.

It's proof. It's ultimate proof. You don't need more proof than that.

If Buddha can give away karma, I won't have a dentist. But I do. So it must be impossible.

How can Buddha bank good karma for everyone who's going to meditate after that? We have to say in Buddhism, in the law of karma, it's like the blind man who got cured by Jesus. He thanked Jesus.

Thanks for making me see. And Jesus said, your faith may have made you whole. It's your faith created the cure, not me.

Your faith gave me the power to give you sight. So if you honor Lord Buddha, if you believe in Lord Buddha, then you can get the extra karma. And you will never be hungry.

So I think you have to interpret it as saying, a person who meditates with faith in Lord Buddha will never go hungry. Something like that. Because your faith creates the karma to get food.

It's not Buddha cannot hand you a hamburger. Big Mac. But if you have faith in Buddha and you go to do a retreat, you won't die from hunger.

The Big Mac will roll down the highway to your retreat cabin. But it's being drawn by your faith and not by the Buddha's power. Really.

It's your faith in the Buddha which creates the seeds for food. It has to be like that. Otherwise I wouldn't have a dentist.

And I do. And he loves to cut. Okay.

Next question. It's a good question. It's a good question.

Maybe one more question. By the way, some Christian people told me, so you don't believe in God, right? You don't believe there's a person who can help you.

Don't you feel lonely? We have God. When we have trouble, we can pray to God.

But you don't believe in God. So when you have trouble, what do you do? Don't you feel kind of lonely?

And then I say, no, we have Buddha. And they say, but Buddha can't help you. And we say, yeah, but if we have trust in Buddha, that karma helps us.

And when you pray to your God, we believe, Buddhists believe, that's okay, that's possible. Because you believe in their God, and because you follow what the God said, and you don't hurt other people, then God can help you. And we believe that.

Buddhist people accept your God. We believe there's such a thing. You can call it karma, but we don't say that to Christian people.

What you call God, we call karma. But it's the same thing. If you are a nice person, God will help you.

And you can call it karma, or you can call it God. I don't care. I don't care.

So if you believe in that person in the sky called God, and if you believe God wants you to follow the Ten Commandments, and don't hurt anybody, be nice to everybody, and you follow that, then of course good things will happen to you. And then that God will exist. Because you made them.

Okay? No problem.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe, for your teaching. I have been working in Herbal Life for 18 years, and I nearly made a big success.

[Speaker 1]
But two years ago, I got stuck, and I started to use the method you taught us, and it's getting better. I use it for myself and in the team. And my way to attract clients, make sales, is to post things on Facebook.

And I have to use it every day to post something to attract people. And what you just said really confused me, because, yeah, so what can I do? Yeah, okay, it's a good question.

She also teaches people how to lose weight. She's also a coach for them. She's also a coach for them.

When I say Facebook, what I mean is, I looked at mine today. I looked at mine this morning. I never post anything, never.

There are 5,000 people on my Facebook thing, and sometimes it just disturbs me, because they are showing people got in a car accident, or somebody got eaten by a shark, or just this person can beat up this person with kicking and punching. Many people, my friends, people I know, they're putting stuff like that on Facebook, just because it's strange, or, I don't know, amazing. Look, this guy kicked this guy 34 times, and finally the guy fell down.

It's so amazing. A lot of people, I don't know, it really disturbs me. So I'm talking about that.

If you can use, of course Buddha will use Facebook. Hello, hello. She needs to attract people.

She needs the attention from people. So is it a bad thing? Yeah, not bad, not bad.

I mean, if you use it to make people healthy, if your motivation is, I will show this Facebook video about the cute little kid, because then people will buy something, make them healthy. That's fine, that's great. Buddha uses tricky things all the time.

I'm sure Buddha will use Facebook. But you have to be careful why you're using it. If you're just gossiping about, I don't know, this chicken had two heads, and he lived in...

No, many, many, many things like that in Facebook. Then it's just a waste of everybody's time. But if you are trying to attract people to make them healthy, then you should do more Facebook.

And you should do LinkedIn, and all those other things, Twitter, and WeChat, and WeTalk. You should use everything. Yeah, it's your motivation.

Just be careful with wasting your time. I mean, looking at other people's junk. It's just junk.

I have some friend, he's a good friend of mine. He always put up the video of the people doing, what do you call it, MAM? MMA, just hitting each other, and trying to kill each other.

And I'm really surprised, because he's a nice person. And then I start to watch it, because he put it on my Facebook. Okay, one more.

There's a guy. No, it's okay, it's okay.

[Speaker 2]
Last question. Thank you, Geshe. You said how karma works.

[Speaker 1]
In the DCI, you taught us, all the karma we have planted, it's like the plant waiting in the airplane, airplane waiting in the line, right? And it will ripen according to the time when we plant it. Yeah, in accounting, they call it FIFO, first in, first out.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, but just now you said before we die, the bad karma just ripens right away, right?

[Speaker 1]
So it's just a... It's a balance, it's a balance. It's a good question.

Any karma that you plant with strong emotion can go ahead of the other airplanes. And also any karma which is very fresh in your mind, temporarily it can go ahead for like half a day or something. So if you just had a big fight with your friend, but you were nice to your mother for six days, and you die suddenly, the big fight is it fun.

Just for a short time, then it goes back to the bad. It's very important, for example, in the Buddhist scripture, it says never freeze the body of a dead person. Try to wait for three, four hours at least.

So in America there's a law, when the person dies in the hospital, they have to go in the refrigerator within half an hour or something. But for Buddhists, we're supposed to try to keep them out of the refrigerator because they're not quite dead yet, then they feel cold, and they say, I need fire, I need fire, and they go to the hell. They go to the fire hell.

You see what I mean? There's a famous story. Somebody was dying, and the last thing they saw was a beautiful elephant.

And they're like, I want to be an elephant. Then they're born as an elephant. So anything that's very fresh.

We have to be very careful about people while they're dying. We shouldn't be noisy. There shouldn't be...

Everybody should be quiet. There should be some quiet mantras. Everything should be peaceful.

All the family should support them. And everyone should be quiet and peaceful and try to help them to go quietly. Because if you make some big noise, or if you startle them, or if they suddenly see someone they didn't like for 20 years, then there's a danger that seed will come up by accident.

And the last seed in this life is very influential in the next life. You can spend your whole life nice person. Then if the last thought is angry, it's a big danger.

Like that. So we have to be very careful in the last few hours just to make it peaceful and quiet. Because that seed, temporarily it goes ahead.

It's a good question.