«Дар освобождения», курс 25 «Совершенное прибежище», занятие 13

[Speaker 1]
I was in Taiwan, there was a guy on a motorcycle, and he had a t-shirt on and it said, kick me in the butt. And I said, do you know what that says? He says, yeah, it says, I like trees or something like that.

So I asked Penny, what does it mean? He gave me the shirt. It means, how do you say it in Chinese?

YIN GOS YIN GOS GOS Cause and effect. YIN GOS Share the cleanse with other people, it will work for you. Alright, I want to do the text, because we're getting behind.

So, Nick, it's BOD DOR BA'I DRUNG NA The next paragraph here. BOD DOR BA'I DRUNG NA, SANGS RGYAS BYIN PA MI BSTAN PA MA' BA'I BYUNG BA NA There was a Kadampa named BOD DOR BA, early Tibetan Buddhist, and somebody came to him and said, I don't believe there was a Buddha. It's like people who say there's no landing on the moon.

It was all from a TV studio or something like that. Then he said, DE LA RGYAS SHES KYI THABS CAD DE Then the RGYAS SHES THABS CAD, THABS CAD means skillful means. THABS CAD PA, THABS CAD PA It means tricky.

He gave him a tricky Dharma teaching. He said, O NA SKYE RANG GI PA MED RGYUD NA GONG YANG MA BYUNG I know about your grandfather. His grandfather was famous.

His name was RGYUD NA GONG And he said, So I'm sorry to hear your grandfather didn't exist. YANG MA BYUNG DE'I BYUNG DE SHAGS PA'I LANG RJES DI YID RIGS DU SHES Then the guy got offended. And he said, don't say my grandfather didn't exist.

He was famous. And we have these letters that he wrote. Famous letters that he wrote.

Then BOD DOR BA said, Okay, RIGS PA DGOS TSUNG Say RIGS PA RIGS PA DGOS TSUNG We should record that as a word. RIGS PA DGOS TSUNG is a logic term. It means parallel reasoning.

Parallel reasoning. Oh, your grandfather must have existed because the great letters he wrote are still in your family, right? Yes.

Well, then the Buddha existed too. Because we have great things that he wrote. Okay, got it?

It's called parallel logic. SHIN DU RIGS PA DGOS TSUNG SANGS RGYAS BRJEN PA'I CHAGS RJES DI CHAGS RJES means footprint, handprint. What do you call it?

The footprint left behind by the Buddha. It's GSUNGS RAB These beautiful books. 990 teachings by the Buddha still exist in Tibetan.

Direct teachings, like Diamond Cutter Sutra. 990. And 3,700 others from India.

And some great ones from China also. BZHIN NAS KHOS SANGS RGYAS BRJEN PA'I YID CHAGS PAR BYUNG TSO Then the guy changed his mind. Okay, I accept Buddha came to this world.

But I think it's good to be honest and say I didn't see a Buddha yet. Monk or nun. One of the worst things a monk or nun could do.

The four big bad deeds. One of them is to lie about your spiritual life. Or to imply to people.

They say, are you an Aryan? You're like, well, you know. I'm not supposed to say.

Then you imply that you are. The biggest lie you can make in Buddhism is about your spiritual level. So we have to be careful not to imply that we reached a level that we haven't reached.

That's a big bad karma. What's it called? Anyway.

NYID PA'I GRUB PA'I BSLAB BYA NI So we had negative... We had negative... What do you call it?

Refuge vows. Negative refuge vows. I think we had three so far, yeah.

One for Buddha, one for Dharma, one for Sangha. Once you've taken refuge in the Buddha, yeah, don't take lower refuges. Once you've taken refuge in the Dharma, don't hurt anybody.

Once you've taken refuge in the Sangha, yeah, don't get real close to people who think this is not practical. Okay. Now positive guidelines.

NYID PA'I GRUB PA'I BSLAB BYA NI Positive. Now refuge vow number one. DANG PO SANGS RGYAS KYANG KHYAB TSUL SONG BA'I NI ZHES SPRING LAS ZHES SPRING is called ZUL KHUR LAS KA in Sanskrit and it means the letter to a friend, written by Nagarjuna.

And by the way, there's a couple of letters to friends in the ten year, but this is the most famous. By the way, if you want to teach a short Lam Rim, that's a great book to teach. And Rinpoche, my Lama translated it with my enemy Art Engel.

Just kidding, not. He's smarter than me and his Tibetan is much better than mine and his Sanskrit is ten times better than mine, so I don't like him, okay? I'm just being honest.

But I got over it because I moved away for 20 years. Okay. If you can't overcome a bad habit, just leave the place.

When you go back, it will come back. JI LTAR DE BZHED KUS GSUNG ZHING LAS KYANG RGYIS PA CING DA'I YANG RUNG SKAD PA'I PHYIR Even a Buddha image made of wood, a cheap one, wise people will still respect it. And we talked about it, that any Buddha image you see, ultimately it came from someone who saw the Buddha in the past.

So respect any Buddha image. I'm not so crazy about Buddha images from Thailand. They all have this kind of...

but I respect them. So try to respect them. BYAS GSUM PA LTAR BSANG GIS KUS GSUNG RGYUD DANG SO YOD This RGYUD, which normally means cause, means material from which something is made.

So about 3% of the time, RGYUD means the substance used for the sculpture. Something like that. SO YOD NGAN PA means lousy...

What do you call it? The sculptor made a super ugly Buddha. Sculptor was not so skilled.

NGAN PA LTA BU DANG, SA TSAD GANG DANG DU CHAGS DUS MI YAN CHEN LA SANGS RGYAS NGOS KYI DU BZHIN SBYONG DGOS SA TSAD GANG means Dharma garbage bin. In Tibet, they would build a small... like our pump house in the valley, or those outhouses, they would build a small adobe building.

If you have an old painting, or you have a Buddha with a broken arm, we are not allowed to throw them in the garbage. So these are spiritual garbage shed. You can throw old Dharma things in there.

Like old Geshe Michael ACI course stuff that you don't want anymore. Somebody I knew was living in a tent. They said, Geshe-la, stop making courses.

I don't have any place to sleep in my tent. SA TSAD GANG DANG DU CHAGS DUS CHAGS DUS means broken pieces of Buddhas or Thangkas. YAN CHEN LA SANGS RGYAS NGOS KYI DU BZHIN SBYONG When you see a statue, or when you see a painting, you should treat it as if it was the Buddha.

You should treat it as if it was a High Lama. Even the painting. So there's all this etiquette about paintings.

You're not supposed to pick them up by the head. You're supposed to roll them up carefully. By the way, when you roll it up, you're not allowed to touch the pink part.

You roll it up this way from the edges. You're not allowed to roll it from the middle. You see, there's all this etiquette about not hurting the painting.

It's interesting, in Tibetan, when we go to a temple, we say, CHUN BYUNG which means, you don't say, I'm going to look at the paintings. You say, I'm going to meet the Buddha. So you think of the images as the Buddha.

They're not normal. Somebody saw Buddha in the lineage. Somebody who painted this.

The painter of the painter of the painter of the painter of the painter. Somebody saw Buddha. So these are very karmically powerful.

And you have to treat them carefully. So don't get sloppy with your statues and stuff. Don't put peanut butter sandwich on top of your Buddha head.

No, I've seen some weird stuff. People use it to hang their coat. Don't do stuff like that.

Treat them as if they are atomic bombs. Like, whoa, I got a statue in my house. Whoa.

Keep it clean. Remember Jay had a feather duster and he would spend a couple hours in the temple. I said, what are you doing in there?

He said, Chunjang, I'm meeting the Buddhas. He liked to hang out with the images more than me. I don't know why.

SANGS RGYAS DNGUL GYI BDUS SHES means think of them as the Buddha themselves. Think of the statue or painting as the Buddha. And treat them that way.

Okay. RANG RES RGYA RGYUR LI MA DANG SANGS RGYAS SOGS KYI KUL LA BDE PA PHYIR BYAS CING LHA GANG GI PHUGS DU BZHAG PHUGS means the inner sanctum. Sometimes you can call it Gungkong.

Every Gelugpa monastery, major monastery, has a temple. And inside the temple there's a secret room called Gungkong. And that's where they keep the tantric deities.

And in Seramay, there's a prayer that goes on there 24 hours. It never stops. Ever.

For, I don't know, 400 years or something. Nobody... there's always four or five monks in there praying.

For the monastery. Day and night. There's a...

what do you call it? Shifts. We take shifts.

Then in the Gungkong, people tend to put the most valuable statue by material. If it's gold, they keep it in there. If it's bell metal, they keep it in there.

There's a beautiful statue of Rinpoche, full size, in the Gungkong at Seramay. In the secret room at my monastery, if you ever go there, behind the altar there's a secret room. There's a full size clay statue of Rinpoche in there.

I was there when they made it. It was kind of cool. SANG SRER SOGS KYI DGU LA BDE BA BYAS PA So we tend to have more faith for the expensive statues than the cheap statues.

That's a sign that you don't understand the statue. Every statue of the Buddha, even the ones they sell in the garden stores to keep... they buy them from Thailand and people just use them to plant the bulbs on them and stuff.

We should still treat them with respect. BYIN PA LA'I BYAS PA SOGS LA BDE BA BYUNG Then if they find a statue made of clay, they think that's not so spiritual. Because it's not as expensive.

That's a wrong idea. BYANG CHUB SONG BA LTA BU NI, SPYI RA SOGS SHES ZHAG NAS, RNAM SHES TSAD SOGS DANG DU SKYE BA DON DANG YOD Then if you have an image that you have to throw out, be careful not to throw it in the garbage. Don't mix Dharma garbage with other garbage.

I don't know, the schedule. I had the schedule for... I had Melissa's list of donations to make.

So that's Dharma garbage. After you make your $20,000 donation, don't throw that paper away on the ground or something like that. Treat it...

Dharma people have two sets of garbage. Recycling bin and Dharma bin. Then Rinpoche would always burn his Dharma garbage.

He wouldn't... He would burn it once a month or something like that. So we're not supposed to mix old retreat schedules with garbage or something like that.

All right. ZLA TSUL KHANG KUN DRAG CI ROL DU SKYE BA LA, DE'I RANG GI ZAN NAMS SPYIR BSKYAL BA YIN, He makes a joke. Somebody asked me, did this Lama make jokes?

He did. They're kind of Tibetan jokes. You tell a Tibetan joke to an American, they're like...

If you throw Dharma into the garbage, you are throwing your good karma away also. He said that. ZHES LAM PAR BSKOM PA RNAMS SU Lamas of the past said that.

One more sentence. DE BZHIN DU GU THANG SOGS KYANG SNYING PA NA, GONG SHAMS CHAL TE, ME RLONG BRJOD PA SOGS RANG GI KHO NYAMS NA, DE DGOS MED PA People with old thangkas, old paintings, they tend to take off the silk, which is valuable, and they treat the painting as not valuable. They keep the silk and make something out of it, and they throw away the painting.

Try to treat them both with respect. BRJOD PA SOGS RANG GI KHO NYAMS NA, DE DGOS MED PA, RTZA BA'I ROL PA LTAR YIN, This is a sign that the roots of your karma inside of you are rotting. Rotten.

You should treat the whole thing with respect.

[Speaker 2]
All right. Sorry? Say again?

WEN TE Tonight.

[Speaker 1]
By the way, we're going to stop there for the lam rim. I'm sorry we took so long in the food, but I think it's important. So you can be healthy.

Your mind gets more clear. If you do that fast, you will find your mind is much clearer. It took me many attempts to be successful.

I gave up many times in the past. So keep trying. It won't always be successful right away.