«Дар освобождения», курс 25 «Совершенное прибежище», занятие 21

[Speaker 1]
Let's do 21, meditation 21. We're gonna finish, I'm sure. Oh, 9.30 I'll give you a break, six more minutes, okay?

Alright. I keep remembering this advice from the most popular teacher at Princeton, they interviewed him and... he said the main thing is let students out early.

They will love you, even if it's two minutes, three minutes. I'm just telling you guys teacher trick, good teacher trick. Let your students out early.

Are you hot? Are you warm? How many people warm, raise your hand.

How many people not, don't want the air conditioning, raise your hand. Okay, you win. 21, recently I was...

Oh, it was the day I went to church, and I promised myself a good breakfast out, you know, at a restaurant if I went to church, because you have to get up, you have to get up early. This is how my mom used to bribe me to go to church. And so, I went to church and then it ended early.

And...

[Speaker 2]
there is no good restaurant where I live on Sunday, nothing, you know. I even went to the casino, and I said, do you guys have Sunday brunch? They're like, no.

I'm like, all right. Then, that Phil knows a place, El Patio, that we got...

[Speaker 1]
we have a little Mexican restaurant close to us. It's good food, but it doesn't open till noon. So, I had like half an hour in my car, I have to waste half an hour in my car.

So, there's this Native American monument near my house, it's called Montezuma's Castle. It's on the side of a cliff. It's huge, it's very big.

And it was made a thousand years ago, 1,400 years ago. And they made it, and they used to live there, and then suddenly they disappeared, nobody knows why. They made many houses like this around my house.

There are about a thousand places smaller than this. Nobody knows what happened to them. I think their air conditioners broke.

They went someplace else. Anyway, when I was a kid, you used to climb up there, and now they don't let, they don't allow it now. Okay, but I had half an hour, I never been there, I've lived there for seven years.

It's five minutes from my house. I never went there. So, I said, I'm going to go look at it, you know.

And, it's interesting, because the... the people are gone, right? Who lived there.

But the place is there, and... and the place proves that there used to be people there. That's all.

So, I took a picture of this place, I put it, okay? The place proves that the people were there. Okay?

And in the refuge tradition, we're encouraged to be honest that we never met Buddha. Okay? Are you Buddhist?

Yes. Who's Buddha? He lived 2,000 years ago.

Are you sure? I think so. What?

You're a Buddhist and you don't know if Buddha lived or not? I said, well, I don't know, my mom said so. Like that, you see?

Like, there comes a question in Buddhism, in Christian to Muslim, you know, are you sure this person lived? You never... Did you meet them?

No. Do you follow them? Yes.

Okay? Then in Buddhism, we say, I have jing kang jing, I have shin jin, I have these beautiful teachings about seeds, four steps, four powers, four by four? Five by four?

You know, there is a five by four. It's a secret. You know, and I have those teachings, and...

and to me, they prove a person who was not like anybody else in the world, you know? Who wasn't a copper atomist, okay? There was a person who came to this world and said, no, it doesn't work that way, it works differently, you know?

The whole world didn't believe it. They're copper atomists, okay? And then one person came and said, no, that's wrong, that's not how anything works.

It's not just wrong, it's completely wrong, okay? Somebody told me the first link in the wheel of life is a lack of an understanding. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's a misunderstanding, okay? It's not a lack of understanding. So, Vasubandhu will hit you on the head three times if you say that, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. No.

[Speaker 2]
Thank God there's only three jewels.

[Speaker 1]
No, he will hit you on the head and say, no, no, no, the first link is not a lack of understanding, it's misunderstanding, okay? Copper atomists misunderstand where the world comes from. It's not that they don't understand, it's opposite.

They believe the opposite, okay? They believe you can ignore a friend who's having trouble with their husband or their wife and your cell phone will still work. They believe that, right?

Got it? That's misunderstanding, it's not lack of understanding, got it? So, one person came into this world, your world, that you were born into, okay?

And one person came and said, no, that's not the way it works. One person against a billion, you know, and we're lucky because people started to believe it and they wrote down what he said and... we have those books and we have a tradition, we have a lineage, okay?

And this lineage, I... you're a lineage, right? You're the next lineage Lama, okay?

You are, I don't know, 43 or something like that. You are the next one. Something like...

don't confuse me. I mean, I can count them for you if you want, but you are the next one, okay? And...

you have to keep it pure. You have to keep it pure, okay? Two and a half thousand years, people didn't mess up this explanation.

And if you mess it up, you first person in two and a half thousand years, okay? Yeah, things coming from you, but you know, not everything. You know?

Then you just destroyed two and a half thousand years. You see? So, you have a big responsibility.

In the monastery they say, you're not allowed to go to a teaching unless you can take responsibility to teach it again yourself. So, Chinese people take notes, Americans don't. I don't know, I guess Americans have better memory.

Or maybe they have the knowledge base, I don't know. But... you know, it's your responsibility to pass it on.

So, how do we know there existed Buddha Jewel from the evidence we have okay? From the buildings they left. Okay?

We can believe it. So, when you do that meditation, you can ask yourself, you know, why do I believe in this person who I can't see, I can't talk to them, there's no video. There's a joke in Europe.

They say, Americans only believe something if it's in a movie. I think some Deutschland told me that. So, you know, we don't have video, we don't have photos, but we have the teachings, okay?

So, we can believe that there existed this person, okay? Now, on the day you see emptiness directly, you will see the Buddha directly. You will meet them directly.

Okay? On that day, you confirm with direct perception what you deduced from the evidence before. Okay?

Different experience. Then you can confirm there's Buddha. Okay?

Until then, you are using deduction. But on the day you see emptiness directly, you will meet the Buddha. The Buddha didn't die, Buddha is still there, you can meet them directly.

And you will never be the same after that. Okay? You will never be the same after that.

By the way, a good news which relates to your debate today is that you also see your future Buddha self, yourself. On the same day, you see ahead and you can see yourself become a Buddha already. Okay?

And teaching and doing all these nice things. Okay? So, on that day, you can see yourself as a...

You can see what you're gonna look like, what you're gonna talk about. Okay, you can see that. Okay?

It's cool. 500 years ahead. Okay?

You wanna go deeper? Or you wanna go to the bathroom? Let's go deeper for one minute.

And as you're going to learn in debate class today, and the debate class will be taught by Nick and Adam, and my idea is Katie and Aaron also. Okay? Because women are better arguers than men are.

We know that. I mean all the men know that, I don't know. But there's an important form of taking refuge which is called result refuge.

Okay? It's called result refuge. You're gonna learn five kinds of refuge in debate class today.

Okay? You're gonna learn five different kinds. One—the coolest one, the fifth one, is called result refuge, and it means you can do prayers to a future Buddha named Mike, or Monica, or Daniel, or Anton.

Okay? Anton can take refuge in a future Buddha called Anton. They won't call you Anton by the way, but you'll have a nice name.

Okay? Okay, got it? The fifth kind of refuge, the coolest one, is to take refuge in the future Buddha called you.

Okay? And I did that, I told you, sometimes I was having a hard day in my diamond business, like very busy, and the boss is yelling at me, you know, calling me stupid, probably I did do something stupid, you know, and I feel tired, and I feel sad, and nervous, and too much pressure. Then I would meditate, but I can't meditate in my office, because I built my office out of glass, on purpose.

I built it in the middle of the floor, I built it, everybody can see what I'm doing, I'm the boss, everybody can see everything I'm doing, and it helped the whole company, because they know I'm not just relaxing, they can see I'm doing something. So, I built the office out of glass, and... so, I don't have any privacy.

So, I used to go to the toilet, and close the... I do it number two, okay? In a boy's bathroom, it's more private.

And I go in there, I sit down, I don't open the toilet, I just sit on the top. Then I'll say, you know, to my future Buddha, because future Buddha can see all the past time, you see? So, I'll say, hey Mike, future Buddha Mike, I'm having a hard day, you know, and I got mad at my boss, and...

I'm sorry I delayed you, because I got upset, and I apologize, it's probably going to take another thousand years for you to become Buddha, and I just want you to know I'm sorry, and I'm trying really hard, just having a hard day, you know? So, you can talk to your future Buddha, because they can hear you, and that's a special kind of refuge, okay? When you're having a really hard day, and you don't have any friend to talk to, you can talk to your future Buddha, because they are watching you right now, you know, they're like, come on, hurry up!

Okay?