«Дар освобождения», курс 25 «Совершенное прибежище», занятие 23

[Speaker 1]
Twenty-three... is people offering food, okay? And it's a big custom in...

my... the people who translated the food prayers, they asked me, what's this word grace, okay? In English we say grace.

And grace has three meanings, okay? One is... the person moves with grace, like when they walk they...

they almost look like they are dancing, okay? That's called grace in English. This person is very graceful, okay?

The second meaning of grace is... blessing of Lama or blessing of God, God's grace. And then...

the third meaning of grace... means... before you eat, before you drink, you...you offer to Buddha first, okay? Or...okay? To the three jewels you offer. So, this is a refuge vow. What number...it's number eight, okay? You should offer the first part of anything you eat or drink, okay? And...what's the emergency prayer? Yeah, like...no, like this...

OM AH HUNG, OM AH HUNG, OM AH HUNG. Okay? Like the last HUNG is also sip, you know?

OM AH HUNG, OM AH HUNG. Okay? But...you know, you should get in the habit of offering always, okay? And like all religious things, it becomes a bad habit, you know? You're like... OM AH HUNG, OM AH HUNG, OM AH HUNG, you know?

Like, you don't think about it anymore. That's a danger for all of us. You don't think about it.

SA SHES BU GYI RGYUN ZHIG MI DANG SANGS RGYAS ZHIG SDUG BSNGAL TE'A BAR GYI DRO DGOS RNAMS BDAG PAR BZHIN LA DROD PA'I SO'O You know? So, try to not get in a bad habit, you know? Like take some...take a moment. We're very, very busy. All of us are busy. I'm Dharma busy.

Me and the Scott and Henri, we're Dharma busy. We're doing Dharma all over the world, all the time, and sometimes we don't have time to think about it. You know?

So...you know. Try to pause. And because we like to eat three or four or five, ten times a day, we can get three or four, five or ten chances to pause and connect with our refuge, okay?

With the Three Jewels, okay? So, learn to do those. You can practice in retreat, because you're not busy, okay?

Three days, you can spend three minutes, go to the end of the book, pick the prayer you like, the grace, okay? It doesn't have to be a Christian word, okay? It can be a Buddhist word, Buddhist grace.

And pick the one, okay? First one, Three Jewels. By the way, the...

Yeah, okay. The Tibetan is also here if you want to learn it. The pronunciation is here, but I would say do it in your own language, okay?

Second one is a grace for your teachers, if you're feeling like you want to make an offering to your teacher of a... ding dong? Or a cupcake?

Hostess cupcake? Something... whatever bad food you're having.

Okay, third one... is a grace if you want to improve your meditation, okay? So, that would be a good one to do during retreat, because you're offering good meditation to other people.

Okay, fourth one is a grace if you have food problems, like me, like you can't stop eating cakes or... Okay? If you have food problems, do number four.

Nagarjuna's grace, okay? Like... if you can't stop yourself from eating, or you eat too much, or you eat bad things, you know, ask for help.

So, this grace number four says I don't want to eat to be beautiful, or I don't want to eat to be strong, and someone asked me a good question, which I will repeat. They said, Geshe-la, you said you taught many times the best teacher is someone who's a good example. You see?

Like, the best way to teach is to follow what you say. Right? If you're obviously following what you say, people will respect you and listen to what you teach, okay?

So, they said, I like to eat carefully, so my body looks beautiful, so people who are just starting Buddhism will be attracted to me. And that's a good motivation, okay? That's okay.

I bought a suit. I bought a Bulgarian mafia suit. Because it looks cool.

You know? Somebody told me, you look ten years younger, Geshe-la. I said, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do.

You know? And the pointy shoes, you know, I always wanted, you know, actually a Bulgarian mafia guy bought it for me. So, you know, that's okay, that's not pride.

That's, I want to look nice because I want more people to come to class. And, so, that's okay. That kind of motivation is not what we're talking about here, you know?

This is a bad motivation, you know, I want to look beautiful so I get more attention, or so my boyfriend likes me more, it's something like that, okay? More boys like me. Okay, number...

five, and the fifth grace is, if you want to connect with Tsongkhapa, which means, if you want to understand what the Buddha said, okay? If you want to understand what the Buddha said, there's nothing better than Tsongkhapa. Nothing.

Ever. Never. Okay?

Alright. And the last grace is... very, very beautiful, very, very powerful grace to...

Tantric angel, okay? Vajrayogini. So, Chinkang Yudjommo.

So, that's... that's a beautiful one, and... in that one...

it's nice to do in retreat, you pretend you are her. You eat the food, you offer the food to her directly. Okay?

Like this. Okay, ready? I'm going to do number six.

I'm Vajrayogini, I'm going to offer this to you. Thanks. Okay, got it?

It's very cool, it's a little schizophrenia. Okay? I'm Buddha, and I'm offering to Buddha, okay?

And it's very powerful. It's a very good custom, okay? Alright?

What happens? Does Buddha have to drink cappuccinos? No, they don't need food, they don't need water.

They're not living on food or water, okay? They don't need to drink it. What happens to a Buddha when they drink cappuccino?

They don't get nervous, they don't get alert, they see emptiness again. But didn't they see emptiness before they had the cappuccino? Yes.

They saw emptiness here, here, here, uh-huh. But... when we offer food to Buddha, we're supposed to imagine when it touch their lips, they get more emptiness, like, wow!

And they feel super cool, you know? Like, super cappuccino.

[Speaker 2]
You know?

[Speaker 1]
Emptiness cappuccino. Wow, that was good. You know?

And they see emptiness even deeper. Okay, got it? And it makes them super happy, so we call emptiness and bliss.

Okay? They have emptiness and bliss. Okay?

Got it? So that's number six, that's grace number six. You have time during your retreat to take your time to do your graces.

So do it, and learn them, okay? Pick one that you want meditation, you want Vajrayogini, what do you want, you choose it, okay? And memorize it, get to know it, okay?

If you say it for ten days, it'll come automatically, you will start to learn it, okay? And that's wonderful, to have that in your Dharma toolkit. Okay?

Alright.