«Дар освобождения», курс 21 «Ретрит радости непостоянства», занятие 11

[Speaker 1]
Hi, good morning. Happy Easter. The story of Easter, many of you don't know from China, but it's supposed to be on Friday, two days ago, Jesus got killed by some bad guys.

In those days, when you kill somebody legally, you don't give them poison, you nail them on this, you put nails on the cross. Then his students put his body in a cave. Then like ten people rolled a rock in front of the cave, big rock.

Then, supposed to be this morning, some of his students went to see the body, but the rock was, somebody rolled the rock away and the body was gone. Then one of his students, Mary Magdalene I think, met him. At the beginning she thought he was the gardener.

He said, what did they do with the body? He said, you don't know who I am? So that's the story this morning.

I think it's good luck for today, because we're doing death meditation. The purpose of death meditation is to understand how to stop death. All week we've been saying you have to die, but today we can say you don't have to die.

That's why we are here, and that's why we are studying. Because if you learn about how to change the seeds in your mind, then you don't have to die. Okay?

Then people say, Geshe-la, I never saw anyone who didn't die. And also the Singapore Straits Times, the big newspaper in Singapore. Yeah, I told you, Straits Times.

They never reported that somebody didn't die. Okay. The dogs had a meeting.

One dog said, you can write with a pen. And all the other dogs said, we never saw that. Understand?

Okay. So when you get close to it, you'll see it. Then after that you'll reach it.

Okay? So the purpose of these classes and the purpose of Diamond Mountain is to really understand that you have to die, and then to stop it. Not just for yourself, but for everybody.

Okay? Alright. And there are worlds where everybody did that already.

In the school, the intelligent students sit in the front, and the lazy students sit in the back. In this world, whole world is the lazy students who sit in the back. So other worlds, they already became Buddhists, all of them.

But we are the stupid students, so we are the last ones. Okay? Alright?

Okay? So we're still learning how to do it. But there are other places that finished already.

Amitabha's Paradise and things like that. Okay. Alright, let's meditate.

What should you do with your cell phone? Turn it on. Everything's backwards.

Okay, get your app up. Okay? I want you to get in the habit, okay?

Every morning. We have busy people, we have jobs, we're going to college in Los Angeles, so we're all busy. This can help you do your meditation.

Okay? Then, you know, you don't have to do it just in the morning. In the afternoon, if you...

between classes or something, you have twenty minutes, then do a little meditation. Go sit under a tree and do five minutes. Okay?

Okay? Too early. I think it was Phil.

Let's let it go. It would take an hour to get it straightened out. Okay.

Here we go, you ready? Let's do like... Let's do about six of them.

No, five minute meditation? Six meditations. Okay.

LUS Okay, ready? Everybody ready to ding? Yeah.

Got your finger ready. One. E.

R. ZAN Okay, get ready. Relax your forehead.

[Speaker 2]
Relax your mouth. Relax your fingers. Pull in your stomach a little bit.

And come to your breath. And today I'm very busy.

[Speaker 1]
I'm getting ready. Some of us are getting ready to go home. And it's a little bit distracting.

Everything's very busy. We're trying to make sure we have our luggage ready. So actually I don't have time to die today.

I'm too busy. And on a day like that, then it's good to decide that it's... I'm going to die before dark, okay?

Maybe at the airport, maybe on the plane. Before dark comes I will die. And just decide that.

And then we will spend the day well. So that's like the mother meditation of all these meditations. Let's do that one first.

[Speaker 2]
I will die before dark. How do I want to spend my day?

[Speaker 1]
I like it. Sounds like tempo, right? Okay, let's do the first reason, okay?

Ready with your finger? Everybody okay?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Ready? One, two, three.

[Speaker 1]
And death will come for me. It doesn't matter where I go. It doesn't matter what kind of medicines I take.

It doesn't matter how much money I have for medical treatment. Nothing can stop it. It doesn't matter how strong I am, how strong my yoga is, what kind of vitamins I'm taking.

[Speaker 2]
When death comes it will take me. Nobody can stop it.

[Speaker 1]
Ready? Next one. Yeah?

Okay, here we go. One, two, three, go. Then according to the karma seeds in my own mind, I was born in this world with a certain amount of life in my body and I cannot buy more life.

I cannot get more anywhere, even Walmart. And every minute, I am losing one minute more of my life. There's no way to get more, no matter how much money I have.

And I am losing more every hour that goes by. We'll stay here for five minutes. Focus.

People complain to me, they say, Geshe-la, meditation is too short. When you can do five minutes, we'll go to six minutes. One hour is made of five minute pieces.

If you can't focus for five minutes, you can't focus for one hour. Okay? All right, let's meditate again.

Is your finger ready? E R ZAN Go. So, how much life do I have left?

How many years left? How many months? If I ask you that question, then in your mind comes a number.

Maybe it's wrong. Maybe it would be longer than that or shorter than that. But I think all of us have a number in our mind.

If I push you and say, give me a number. How many years you have left? We all have a number in our mind.

We imagine old people we know and we say, maybe, I think I can reach that. I can reach 80. So, how many years you have left?

Think about that. And then you do your own calculation. How much of that time can you really practice?

How much do you have to spend eating, pooping, sleeping, working, meeting family? If you subtract all the jobs you have to do, how much time you really have left is very, very small. So, we'll meditate on that for five minutes.

Focus. Five minutes is nothing. You should yell at your mind if it thinks about something else.

What's wrong with you? It's just five minutes. Ready?

Again. Here we go. One, two, three, push.

The fourth death meditation is, after nine, is that I live in a world where life is uncertain. How long I will stay, nobody knows. Some people die just after they're born.

Some people die inside the womb. Some people die... There's people who die in playing sports, young strong people, they die running a race or playing football.

[Speaker 2]
There's people who die in giving birth.

[Speaker 1]
There's people who die during their career, successful career. There's people who die old. Nobody knows.

In this world, you can die at any age.

[Speaker 2]
We'll stay here for five minutes.

[Speaker 1]
Today we're only going to do six of the reasons. There are nine, right? We'll finish the nine in Mexico, right?

Mexico retreat in Guadalajara. Okay, you ready to do the next one?

[Speaker 2]
One, two, three.

[Speaker 1]
Everything around me, the floor, the roof, the car I'm going to take to Tucson, the airplane I'm taking back to Guangzhou or Los Angeles, the food I eat on the airplane, it can all kill me. There are many, many things can kill me, all around me. It's very hard to stay alive.

If I don't breathe for five minutes, if something stops those two small holes in my nose, for five minutes I die. So don't be afraid, don't get sad, but realize that your life is very precious. We have to use the time carefully because there are so many things that can kill us and one day one of them will.

I think it's good to imagine which thing will kill you. I think it's healthy to think about it. Try to imagine a few things that might kill you.

I'm thinking my car.

[Speaker 2]
We'll stay here for a few minutes.

[Speaker 1]
One more meditation. Ready? Here we go.

One, two, three, go. You can also do this with earphones. I do it on the plane with earphones.

Otherwise you drive the person next to you crazy. They think you're listening to music.

[Speaker 2]
Then generally speaking, the human body is very soft.

[Speaker 1]
There are, I don't know, 10,000 parts inside have to work together. The liver has to work with the lungs. The cells in the blood have to work right.

Every little piece has to work together with the other pieces and it's difficult. It's like four snakes in a bag. The nature of the body is very fragile.

It's not like a car or house. It's made of soft skin.

[Speaker 2]
It needs to have breath. It needs to have water. It's very fragile.

[Speaker 1]
There are thousands of things that can break and one day one of them will. So we'll sit here for a few minutes. My body itself is very easy to break and inside all the forces in my body are fighting against each other.

One day I will break.

[Speaker 2]
Something will break inside.

[Speaker 1]
Take a stretch. Okay, we have about 45 minutes. Let's do some more lam rim.

By the way, at the end of the Tsongkhapa translation yesterday, there's a long, well I don't know how long it is, but there's a section about how much good karma do you lose if you're not a bodhisattva and the person you're getting angry at is not a bodhisattva. But I didn't translate it yet. So you have to come next time.

If you need to do a pee pee break, please go ahead. Certain forces are unstoppable. Yeah, let's do a question.

Quick. Quick question.

[Speaker 2]
If we can do the giving with the understanding of the three elements, then that will create great seeds. Can we be angry with the understanding of the three elements? So I wouldn't plant such best seeds.

[Speaker 1]
If you understand the three elements, you cannot get angry. It's impossible. I'll tell you why.

So if your husband says something bad to you, and if you understand that the husband is coming from you, you can only get angry at one person. Who is that? Yourself.

Nobody likes to get angry at themselves. One person we always forgive very easily, which is ourself. So if you understand the three elements, it's not possible to get angry at somebody.

Then there's another question people ask. Oh, I heard some lamas say you can have enlightened anger. Anger is healthy, or something like that, or anger is good for you.

If bad karma is good for you, then anger is good for you. You can get kind of frustrated with yourself. If you're lazy, you're not meditating.

Geshe-la gave you a five minute app. You're too lazy to put your finger on the iPhone. Then you can yell at yourself.

That's okay, a little bit. But generally you should be nice to yourself also. Like for example, most people in the world have trouble doing coffee meditation.

To think about the good things they did today before you go to sleep is one of the highest Buddhist practices. Many people have trouble doing it. Also, it's probably better not to be even angry with yourself.

You did a lot of good things and it's good to focus on those. Alright, we're going to go back to the book. You ready Adam?

We're at RGYAL PO. RGYAL PO Let's see. You can look up BRKA.

B-E-R-K-A B-E-R-K-A Yeah, there we go. We're at this RGYAL PO here. Okay, so he's quoting a sutra.

The sutra is called the DO BRJUN SHING which means the Tree Sutra. He says, RGYAL PO RGYAL ZHIG ZHAG NAS SGROL DRANG PO BRER KA ZHAG NAS SGROL When a king dies, they leave behind the whole country. When a homeless person dies, they leave behind their sleeping bag.

But it's the same. They both leave with nothing. We're somewhere between those two I think.

So, you have maybe a car, and you have an apartment, and you have some clothes, and when you die you leave them. Some people leave more, some people leave less, but we all leave everything. Then he quotes the same sutra again.

LO RGYAL DANG BA'I ZAD YOD KYANG PHYIR BA'I RNAM PAR RTOG PAR GROL LO RGYAL DANG BA'I DGOS YOD KYANG PHYIR BA'I RNAM PAR SPYIR BU GROL LO RGYAL DANG BA'I ZAD YOD KYANG Even if you have enough food to last you for a hundred years, you stock up your refrigerator. PHYIR BA'I RNAM PAR RTOG PAR GROL The day after you die, you're hungry. The day after you die, you're hungry.

You cannot eat the food. Some people like to store a lot of food. But when you die, you can't take it with you.

And the spirit that you become will be hungry the next day. LO RGYAL DANG BA'I By the way, this is DANG BA. Let's talk about DANG BA.

AUNG DANG DANG BA The word DANG is very... DANG, voiced consonant. DANG is very common in Tibetan.

It means and. This one is a prenasal. MDUNG It means to suffice or to be enough.

So if you have enough food for a hundred years, DANG BA. And it's very common in colloquial Tibetan. DANG GI SDU BA'I Is that enough?

And say, yeah, DANG GI SDU BA'I. That's enough. Thank you.

That's DANG. It's nice to see it in writing. It's not very common.

But in spoken Tibetan, you say it constantly. LO RGYAL DANG BA'I GROL YOD KYANG Even if you have... Some people...

I've stayed in people's houses. Their closet is bigger than my room. You know those walk-in closets?

One day I got lost in this person's lock walk-in closet. And I was just trying to find the toilet, but it was at night. And I forgot where I was.

And they're so wealthy, they have a separate room for the toilet. And I opened all these doors and I couldn't find the toilet. So even if you have a thousand dresses and...

What's that lady in the Philippines? Mrs. Aquino? Yeah, how many?

She had like 5,000 shoes. 10,000? I don't remember.

BYIS BA'I RNAM PAR SPYOD PAR DO The day after you die, you're naked. You go naked. All right?

It doesn't matter how many clothes you have. By the way, your family will throw them out. You have your favorite dress.

You have your favorite jeans. You worked very hard to find a good pair of jeans. And you like them.

They're very precious to you. You have your favorite shoes. And then the day after you die, they just throw them away.

They don't care. Nobody cares. They're worthless.

Okay? CHOS RDZUGS LAS THAMS CAD PHOR TE PHYAGOS PAR BDAG GIS DE LTAR MA SHES NAS RZA DANG MI RDZAS SDUG GI PHYIR SDIG PA RNAM PAR NA TSOGS CHE Master Shantideva said in the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, THAMS CAD PHOR TE PHYAGOS PAR When it's time to move on, you have to throw away everything. You have to give up everything.

Okay? BDAG GIS DE LTAR MA SHES NAS But we don't think about it. Therefore, RZA DANG MI RDZAS SDUG GI PHYIR For the sake of our friends and for the sake of our enemies, SDIG PA RNAM PAR NA TSOGS CHE We do lots of bad stuff.

People say, Yes, Geshe-la, I would never lie to get something for myself, but I have to take care of my children. My children are important to me, or my parents. If I have to lie about the contract for their apartment or something, I will lie.

For me, I won't lie. But for my family, for people I love, I will lie. If you hate somebody, you will do bad things.

Ex-wife, ex-husband, ex-girlfriend, ex-boyfriend. Six months ago, they were the nicest person in the world. You love them more than anybody.

Then, I don't know why, but it's always you hate them worse than anybody after six months. Then, you want to hurt them, or you do things to hurt them. You see what I mean?

It's very common to have nasty fight about the divorce and things like that. It's very common. So, because you love somebody, you're willing to lie or break your morality.

Or because you hate somebody, you're willing to break your morality. Then, Nagarjuna says in another book, he says, look, the apartment you got for your parents because you lied for them, or the car you got away from your ex-wife because you lied about the divorce thing, when you die, you lose them. They lose the apartment, you lose the car.

But the bad deed stays with you. You take it in your head to your next life. That you keep.

The bad karma of lying for your parents. The bad karma of lying about your ex-wife. The bad karma you take with you.

The apartment is gone. The car is gone. But the bad seed you carry, that you carry with you after you die.

Nagarjuna says don't tell yourself, don't fool yourself that it's okay to do a bad deed for someone you love. It's still a bad idea. Do they get a bad seed?

Not necessarily. Not usually. You're taking a hit for them.

Same source. SKYE NA GCIG POR SKYE RGYUR ZHING PHYI NA'ANG DE NYID GCIG BYED TE SDUG BSNGAL RGYAL GZHAN MI LAS NA RGYAG BYED RTZA BA'I CI ZHIG BYA SKYE NA GCIG POR SKYE RGYUR ZHING When you are born into this life, you are born alone. PHYI NA'ANG DE NYID GCIG BYED TE And when you die, you die alone.

You can't take your friends. The people you broke your morality to help cannot go with you. SDUG BSNGAL RGYAL GZHAN MI LAS NA RGYAG BYED RTZA BA'I CI ZHIG BYA SDUG BSNGAL RGYAL GZHAN MI LAS NA RGYAG BYED RTZA BA'I CI ZHIG BYA SDUG BSNGAL RGYAL GZHAN MI LAS NA If they're not going to take some share of the bad deeds you did for them, RGYAG BYED RTZA BA'I CI ZHIG BYA then in a way, doing bad things for your family or your friends is just another obstacle.

SNGAR MI GCIG GIS RDO CHEN PO GCIG GROL BZHIN DAR BA LA I like this story. I don't know why. I heard these stories from my lama for many years and some of them stayed in my head and some of them didn't.

I really like this one. SNGAR MI GCIG There was a guy sitting in front of his house. RDO CHEN PO He had a big diamond mountain boulder.

One thing diamond mountain has because it's rocks. We got rocks. RDO CHEN PO GCIG Then he had a file, like you use for wood, to change the shape of the wood.

Then he's filing the boulder, big boulder. He's filing it all day, he's filing it. Then his friend, his neighbor is looking out the window, he's like, what's that guy doing?

Finally the neighbor couldn't stand it. He went out and he said, what the hell are you doing? What are you doing?

He says, I'm going to make this into a big square piece. Nice box shape. This big boulder, I'm going to file away at it until I can make it into a nice square shape.

Then the neighbor says, what are you going to do with it after that? He says, I was thinking of throwing it away. Somehow it applies to our life.

GYUR BYOGS PA GYUR means throw it away. We had GYUR the other day as be thrown by a horse, same thing. GZHAN GANG YANG MI BYAS PA ZER BA GZHAN Yeah, I don't have any other plans with it.

It means all the stuff you collect in this life, all the clothes, all the shoes, all the money, all the houses. It's kind of useless, to work so hard for them, because you're going to throw them away anyway. You can't take them with you, but the bad deeds you did to get them, you take with you.

JIG RTEN BDE'ER GSOS BSRAS PA'I SNGON LUNG CHUB THAMS CAD BZHAG NAS GRONG So you spend your whole life collecting money, getting a house, and you do bad things to get them. Little lies, little cheating, tax evasion, things like that. Then when you die, the only thing you can take with you is the bad karma.

Okay. We're on the second reason for the third basic principle. What was the third basic principle?

Yeah, only Dharma can help you when you die. The other things can't help you. We're on the second one.

If you count nine death meditations, we're on number eight. Okay. I wasn't supposed to get to past number one, but you guys are fast.

NYID PA NYAN SHES KYI MI PHAN PA NI On the day you die, your friends and family, there's no way they can help you. They want to. They really want to.

But there's nothing they can do. KHO YOD People working for you. LO MA Students you have.

NYAN BRAL Friends you have. Relations you have. Mother, father, brothers, sisters, kids.

SNYING DANG BRAL BA Who are as close to you as your own heart. MANG PA DAG BAR TE They can stand around the bed where you're dying. BSKANGS RJUS RJUS means to grasp or to hold.

Okay. What's BSKANGS RJUS? BSKANGS PA RJUS Yeah, they're holding your feet like oh, I love you.

BSLAG PA RJUS They're holding your hands. Oh, I love you. Please stay.

PHYIS You die and you're gone. It doesn't do any good that your family was standing around the bed. Even holding you.

They're like, mom, don't leave. And then mom leaves. It happened to me with my mother.

You're like, please don't leave. And they're like, and they leave. You can't help them.

DE DAG GCIG KYANG PHYIS SA MED PAR You cannot take one of them with you. RANG GCIG BU By yourself you go to the bardo trang. Say bardo trang.

Bardo trang There's a very, very, very famous Tibetan book called say bardo? Trang dul Bardo Trang dul Tibetan Book of the Dead. That's the name of the book.

So bardo means in between the moment you die and the time you're reborn, you can spend up to 49 days in a separate place as a spirit. That spirit can only live for seven days. But it can die seven times and come back as the same spirit or similar spirit.

So we say the bardo, the time between a person dies and the time they're reborn can take up to 49 days. The first death has to take place in seven days of that spirit. So normally a Lama will do prayers for that person on the seventh day and then again on the 49th day.

And you count the day of death as number one. If you really want to know. If they die on the 15th of January, you start counting one on the 15th of January.

And then you should do prayers on the 7th day and the 49th day. I'm getting there. If someone dies that you know, let me know.

We have a Lama prayer team at my monastery. Geshe Lothar is in charge of it. We send him like $50 and they do prayers for 49 days.

We have a team that does it. If you want, let me know. If someone passes away.

We need their name. A photo is useful. We need to know the place and the date that they were born.

And we need to know the place and the date that they died. Four things, I guess. Their name.

Photo is helpful. The day and the place where they were born. And the day and the place that they died.

If you send me those things, you don't have to send money. I will take care of it. If you want to, you can send some money to the monks directly.

I'll tell you how to do that. When my mom died, my friend asked me, are you going to write to my Lama at that time whose name was Geshe Dargye? Are you going to write to Geshe Dargye?

I said, no, I don't believe in all that stuff. Then my other Lama, whose name was Tenzin Chinle, who's he's a high Lama. He said, you're so stupid.

He said, right away, write to your Lama, ask him to do prayers. He called me, he said, you're really stupid. You're lucky 49 days is not gone yet.

He made me do it. I think it's a good thing. BAR DO means that.

BYANG means a narrow, dangerous path, especially across a cliff. I have one in front of my house. I live on a mesa, a big mountain like this.

If you're careful, you can walk down the front. The deer do it. I follow the deer.

It takes about half an hour. You can go down to the bottom. But it's dangerous.

If you fall, you're going to fall a long way. That's a BYANG. There's a famous BYANG on Mount Everest.

The last How long is it? I think it's 30 feet. It's 30 feet long.

If you want to go to the real top of Mount Everest, you have to cross this 30 feet. It's only a few inches wide. You have to walk on it.

On both sides, it's a thousand feet fall. That's a BYANG. That's a real BYANG.

BAR DO BYANG means the dangerous, narrow path of the BAR DO. DROL means what? Like DRO MA.

DRO MA Liberation. The name of that Tibetan book, The Dead, the real name of the book is Freedom from the Dangerous, Narrow Cliffside Path of the BAR DO. That's the real name of the book.

There's a couple of versions of that book. There's one that's kind of more related to Padmasambhava's tradition. My Lama said it's not authentic.

Some books were written by people who didn't really know. They just wrote it. Even in Tibetan language there are some books like that.

In the database, we're very careful not to add books that are known not to be authentic. My Lama said that famous book is not authentic. The information is not correct.

But there are other versions of it. One is by the first Panchen Lama. That's a correct one.

It sounds nice and it's kind of sexy and lots of people translate it, but I would go with the first Panchen Lama one. We're going to get quotations from it in here. If you want to study those things, there are many tantric scriptures which are more accurate.

We have some in the tantric course. In the 18th, 10th, we translated some of it. The death process is something we meditate on during tantric study.

And you can get more accurate presentation that way. BAR DU GRONG DROG DRIM means to wander. And then DRO TE When you walk down that cliff just after you die, you have to go by yourself.

There's nobody can help you. GRUB CHEN MI DROD RDZOGS KYI It took me many years to figure out that RDZOGS KYI is yogi. So the Tibetans, I don't know, I think maybe in ancient India it was pronounced RDZOGS KYI.

It took me years to figure that out. So his real name is Mitra Yogi. His full name is Sri Jagata Mitra Nanda.

And he wrote a book called Letter to King Chandra. So he's a very famous yogi in India. LHA GCIG JI LTAR GYUR SBYOR BSKYANG ZHIG NAS JI BSTAN GZHAN ZHUS TSE LHA GCIG is a common expression to a king in ancient times.

And it means my one and only god. LHA GCIG It's a typical... It was often used a word when you're referring to a king.

It means like your highness or something. JI LTAR GYUR SBYOR BSKYANG No matter how rich you are, ZHIG NAS JI BSTAN GZHAN ZHUS TSE when you depart this life to the other world. NYANG RANG THAMS LA BRAS BYOM LTAR It's as if you are on a...

There's a... What's his name? Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Great poet. English poet. And he wrote a very famous poem called about death where ignorant armies clash by night.

Very beautiful. Very famous. The image that he brings up in the poem is of a huge wasteland.

Like just everything's been destroyed. The trees are all destroyed. The water is all full of blood.

The sun is dark. Dust lies everywhere. In Hopkins poems it's an image of how people relate to each other in life.

And still we're fighting each other on this wasteland. Like two ignorant armies clash by night. That's the image here of a wasteland.

Like a huge plane on which a major battle has just been fought and there's just bodies strewn everywhere and you're one of them. You're a body lying on a huge battlefield that stretches to the horizon. GCIG BU SRED MA'I GCIG BU SRED MA'I BTZUN MO MIN You will lie there dead body without your queen and without your princes and without your princesses.

He's addressing the king. You see the word there for grief in the word for wasteland NYA NGA'AM THANG You want to do that dictionary entry? NYA NGA'AM THANG THANG means a plane or a plateau.

And NYA is found in the word NYANG NGAN which means grief. And GZHOGS PA A GZHOGS PA means NYANG NGAN MED And NYA NGA'AM means like desolate wasteland. THANG I went and found that book.

It's in the Tenggir. We can read it someday. The Tenggir has a section called epistles.

Meaning letters that people wrote like in the Christian tradition. Paul's epistles and things like that. So there are a whole section in the Tenggir called epistles.

Some of the famous ones are like the Ratnamala Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna wrote a lot of famous epistles. Letter to the King.

Letter to the Friend is a famous one. They're often very easy to teach, easy to read, easy to translate, very poetic. They're a nice source of...

If you're teaching a lot, you can go to the epistles and take one out. Three Principal Paths is an epistle for example from Tibet. CHUN GCIG LAS GZHIN RJE'I PHO NGES ZIN PA LA NYIN GYIS GCIG PAS ZHES GCIG PAS Once the messenger of the Lord of Death has you in his hands, there's nothing your friends and family can do.

Useless. SPAN CHEN CHOS RGYEN SPAN CHEN CHOS RGYEN Let's talk about the word CHOS RGYEN here. CHOS RGYEN is an abbreviation of the word CHOS KYI RGYAL TSEN and if you don't know that, it'll drive you crazy.

It's like calling Obama Oba. Barack Obama. It's like calling him Barbo.

So the first SPAN CHEN Lama, very very famous poet, great Lama, his name was SPAN CHEN BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL TSEN but it's too long. So people just say CHOS RGYEN. They just slush the words together.

TSE BZHIN SDUG BSNGAL NYAN DANG BRTAN BRAL NAS You love your family. You have a deep bonds between each other. BRTAN BRAL You will be ripped away from them.

BRTAN BRAL For a long time. You'll be ripped away from them. SOGS GSUNGS PA LTAR ROL And I went and got it for you.

You want the whole poem? He just gave one line of the four lines. So I went and got the rest of them for you.

TSE BZHIN SDUG BSNGAL NYAN DANG BRTAN BRAL NAS SNYAM NGA'I GNAS SU GCIG PA'I GRO BA'I TSE RGA DUR BSTAN DANG MI BSTAN PAR SA CHU ME RLONGS BYUNG BA RIM GYIS BSTAN TSE BZHIN SDUG BSNGAL NYAN DANG BRTAN BRAL NAS You are ripped away from your friends and your family. SNYAM NGA'I GNAS SU GCIG PA'I GRO BA'I TSE You are sent into the wasteland alone. The dark of the wasteland alone.

RGA DUR BSTAN DANG Then there's some piece missing here, but you no longer have any source of happiness. SA CHU ME RLONGS BYUNG BA RIM GYIS BZHIN The four elements. SA CHU ME RLONGS Earth, water, fire, and wind.

When they dissolve in your body, when you die, those four elements inside your body, those four forces, they start to... you start to have hallucinations. You start to see crazy things.

It gets crazy because your brain is falling apart. The brain, the neurons, the synapses are failing. And then because of that, you have these weird hallucinations.

Everybody has them. So in our tradition, in the Gelugpa tradition, Tsongkapa's tradition, we don't focus on the practice of po'a very much. Which means at the moment of death, you direct your mind to Amitabha's paradise or something.

That's popular teaching, it's very well known that when the brain collapses, as the brain collapses, you can't think straight because the tool is breaking. The screwdriver called your brain is falling apart. The electricity is going crazy.

And you can't plan, oh, I decided when I die I will go to Amitabha's paradise. Turn left, go 50 feet, turn right. Because your brain is dissolving.

So everything goes crazy. You just see big fires or you see crazy hurricanes or crazy hallucinations. Like you took a very strong drug.

So it's too late to take your spirit and direct it to heaven. Because the mind that you use to do that is breaking down. It's breaking down like a car.

THA LTA RGA SHI DAG LUS DGON THOGS SU CI NGES PAR YON NA DE'I SANGS PO'I KYI LAS DON SONG NAS CI BYAS This is Pabongka Rinpoche, there's people sitting in this audience who have been told by their doctor that they can expect to die of the cancer they got by this winter. DGON THOGS And they're still starting new projects. CI BYAS What the hell are you doing?

CI BYAS THA LTA RANG NAS RGYAL GAR RGYAL NAG SOGS SU GRO BA LA HA LAS LAS RDOG GAL CHEN PO BYAS So Tibetans used to take trips in the old days to RGYAL GAR or RGYAL NAG. Say RGYAL GAR. RGYAL NAG These are the two words for India and China.

The two words in Tibetan, the words for India is RGYAL GAR and the word for China is RGYAL NAG. So RGYAL means big country. So both India and China are big countries.

So the RGYAL means big country. GAR means, GAR is a corruption of GAR which means white color. Because people in India used to wear white.

They still wear, a lot of people wear white clothes. And then people in China prefer not. Black, nice black clothes.

It's warmer. In China it's cold. So in the old times people used to wear a lot of black clothes.

And in India they used to wear a lot of white clothes. So the name for India in Tibetan is big country where people wear white stuff. RGYAL GAR And the word in Tibetan for China is RGYAL NAG which means big country where people wear black things.

Then he says, we're always thinking how fun it would be so amazing to take a trip to China. Or it would be so amazing to take a trip to India. Everybody in Tibet might want to go see these big countries.

They can see Beijing. They can see Delhi. They can see amazing places.

Because in Tibet there's just mostly yaks and sheep. So HA LAS, that's a nice word to learn. HA LAS It's just HA LA SA LAS.

HA LAS means wow, so cool. HA LAS It would be so cool. I'm going to go see China.

Or I'm going to go see India. RGYAL CHEN PO'I PHYIR Then after a while we're like, I got to go. This is like the most important thing.

It's like Paris. I got to go see Paris. One of my students went to Paris this week because it's so HA LAS.

HA LAS Then it got very important for them. I got to go. RGYAL CHEN PO'I PHYIR DROG BYED LA BRTZON MA We put all our efforts into raising money to go to Paris.

DER LTA BRAL KHOR YOD DANG BYAS DE DROG RGYUD YOD LA JI RTEN PAR DU SKYE CHEN PO'I BDE'I PA NA DROG MED CING If you plan a trip to China or India or Paris, you got to take a lot of stuff with you. Lots of suitcases. You might need a DA.

A horse. You might need a TAO, which means a mule. You can take some friends to help carry your suitcases.

KHOR YOD DANG BYAS DE DROG RGYUD LA In the world, you can hire people to help you. At the airport, you can say, can you carry the bags? I'll give you five dollars.

But JI RTEN PAR DU SKYE CHEN PO'I BDE'I PA NA All the stuff you have to carry in your next life, DROG MED DROG PO MED There's nobody who's going to help you carry your baggage to your next life. You're alone. You're always alone.

You're in the Pudong airport? In Shanghai? You can hire somebody to carry your bag.

But in the Bardo, there's nobody to hire. You got to go by yourself. DROG MED CING RANG GCIG POR By yourself.

Nobody to help you. LONG BZHUGS BU MTSUM YANG KHYER DU MED You can't take... BU MTSUM means...

This is a BU. One hair. You can't take that much stuff with you.

I was going to give you a pep talk, but I'd rather finish another part. We got five minutes. I'm supposed to say something and make you cry or something about how great you are and how much you're helping Diamond Mountain.

Thank you very much. It was a wonderful retreat. I never had such a good three days in my whole life.

You're amazing. You were so quiet and you were such good students and you focused so well. If you're from China, you're so brave to come to this crazy empty place.

It's scary, right? In the dark and at night and there's all kinds of things moving around. You fly a long way to come here and you're very brave.

I really admire it. In Israel or Mexico or Germany. It's amazing.

It's amazing you came here to just get sunburned. But I really appreciate it. It's a good group.

It's a good solid group and I hope we can do it again. The music for me is like it's like the most fun I do all year. I never have any fun.

I always have to work. It's so fun to play rock and roll with you guys. I look forward to it all year.

I'm like, is band coming? They're like... I don't say, you know, is Lama coming?

Anyway, we did a good job. We had a good retreat. You all worked very hard and the Diamond Mountain people worked so hard.

You're all like really cool. That's all I want to say. But that's what I wasn't going to say.

Let's do some more. GSOS PA LUS KYIS KYANG MI PHAN PA NI This is the third, third of the third. We're on the ninth one.

Wow! Let's go halfway to the ninth one. Why halfway?

Yeah, it means we have to meet again. Maybe in Guangzhou or Thailand. GSOS PA LUS KYIS KYANG MI PHAN PA NI Your own body doesn't give you any help at the end.

Your whole life, your whole body was helping you out. Will you walk me over to my cabin? Okay.

And your body walks you to your cabin. And the day you die, the body's like, no, I got other things to do. I got flies who want to eat me.

ZHI BA'I TSE RIGS THAMS CAD ZER DU BYIN On the day you die, if all the mountains at Diamond Mountain turned into solid gold, MI THAMS CAD NYAN DU RGYUR if every person in Arizona became your closest friend, KYANG PHAN PA NI PHAN PA NI It doesn't help anything. Nothing helps. BLOR LONGS SPYOD Money, possessions, NGES BRAL, close ones, friends and family.

LTA SHOG Money, friends, family, they don't help you. LTA SHOG LTA SHOG means not only that. Forget that.

You want to know something really bad? NYAL NAS RANG DANG NYAN DU SKYE ZHING The body that's been so dear to you since you came out of the womb. The body you've been carrying around since you were born.

NYAN DU SKYE NGES LUS SHES GYAG STOG STOG STOG The body that you've been pampering your whole life. Oh, are you a little cold? Put on a sweater.

Oh, are you hungry? Have some cookies. You've been pampering this body.

Anything it wants, you're like, Oh, what do you need? I'm a little cold. Oh, have a sweater.

Could I have a cookie? Oh, have a cookie. Your whole life you've been treating the body like a spoiled kid.

DANG SEMS MA SOS PA Even somebody, you got a little prick. When you walk by one of these diamond mountain bushes and it goes ding, and you're like, Oh, did that hurt? I'm so sorry.

You took care of it so well. TZAM YANG MED POS You couldn't stand even to get a little sticker. YI ZHING RNOD PA LTAR BYED You valued it more than a wish-giving gem.

Oh, you are so precious to me. I love you little body. KYANG KYANG KYANG KYANG means you took care of it, you took care of it.

You combed his hair every day. KYANG RLOD DU YANG ZHUS DU ZHAG Then you got to dump it. Okay?

You worked so hard to take care of it. So much... What's that called?

When you go to Sephora, you buy it. What's the best makeup? LEN GOM Yeah.

So much LEN GOM you put on his face. Then you're like, Go away, you're dead. Then it's like just a piece of meat.

Ew, it stinks. Your family, all the LEN GOM they'll just throw out. Ew, it stinks.

Call the ambulance. Get it out of the house. The whole house stinks.

You took care, you LEN GOM-ed it so well. And then you have to throw it away. Like a piece of dead meat.

Nobody will want it. I'm going to stop there.