«Дар освобождения», курс 27 «Четыре цветка», занятие 8

[Speaker 1]
Dasha hao, good morning. Let's meditate. Okay?

Don't forget DCI teacher skill to meditate while you sleep. Don't snore. By the way, DCI has a teacher training three times a year and you are welcome to come.

Talk to the boss of the college, which is Orit, is the president of the college, or Seiji, who runs the college, even though they don't call him the boss. Seiji, can you raise your hand? Yeah, so if you'd like to come, I think the next term open is, this term is full.

January is available. Okay? You are welcome to apply.

What's the next one after January? May? May, okay.

Alright, what did Buddha say?

[Speaker 2]
Turn off your cell phone.

[Speaker 1]
We start the 30-day lion's dance challenge on Sunday. Okay? 30 days.

If you'd like, there's already a Spanish-speaking group called Chalapa. You can join that one. And there's a Romanian one, and there's a German one.

It's up to you. Okay? We start on Sunday, Russian group also.

That's a lot of pressure for me. Okay, you have to do it in Russian. Okay?

And if you do the English one, you have to do it in English. If you do the Spanish one, you have to do it in Spanish. It's very cute to read Vivian's Spanish post.

She says, I got drunk with my friends. She means I did the lion's dance, I was in China. Margarita pizza, right?

Okay, we'll do the whole lion's dance, okay? Because tomorrow you won't, you just think about airplane tomorrow. Okay.

Oh, clear your throat. If you didn't record it yet, you can record it on your phone, if you want to record it. So in this meditation we go directly to the sound in the house, like air conditioner, refrigerator, traffic, your kids.

If you're doing it at night, I like to use the crickets. Glue your mind to the sound. If I don't have much time, I spend about 10 breaths on each step.

If I have time, if I have 45 minutes, I'll do about 20 breaths. Then compared to the air conditioner, the sound of your heart beating is more peaceful. So let's go there.

Feel your heart beat. You're watching it. For me, I feel like I'm above the heart in my head and I'm looking down, feeling it.

First form realm level. Now go inside the heart. It would be a more quiet place and the heart is beating around you, like you're in a small room.

Sometimes I imagine that I'm myself and beating a little bit like I'm the heart. Second form realm level. If I only did this meditation and I didn't go to level nine, then the only thing that would happen is I would be born in a beautiful place called form realm.

When I died there, I would go to a very negative birth. So we don't stop here, but we climb on it like a ladder to the important meditation, number nine. Form realm three, we disassociate ourselves from the heart.

We drop all emotional connection to the heart. For me, it helps if I send the heart away. Maybe it feels like 50 feet, like 20 meters, and it's just beating by itself in space.

I don't feel connected to it. It's just beating alone in the dark. I'm not really so much there anymore.

Classically, we drop especially a mental feeling of enjoyment here. The meditation becomes a little bit cold or disassociated. Form realm four, the body becomes numb.

We lose sensation in the body, especially the sensation of good posture, which is typical if you're doing a lot of yoga. Yoga, the purpose of yoga was to, originally asana, to sit very comfortably. So we drop that sensation of the body completely, and we think, bring to mind a small piece of sugar or salt.

I like sugar because it's sweet. A small crystal, single crystal, the white sugar, and we go inside as if our whole self went inside. I like to leave it inside my heart, in the center of the heart, in the center of darkness, and there's just a single white crystal of sugar.

If you want to, you can also try to push it away, like past the heart, the disassociated heart, to a distance, and sometimes that will help you push deeper. The main quality of form realm four is single-pointedness, like a laser, and you're inside this crystal. To focus on something tiny helps to make the mind single-pointed, each time more quiet.

So after focusing the mind on a single point, we go to the formless realm, first formless realm. If we only did the formless realm meditations and we didn't go to level nine, if we didn't try to understand reality around us, then we would be born basically without a body. If the goal at the fourth form realm is to be single-pointed, then the goal at the first formless realm is to completely drop the body and spread the mind as wide as the sky, as wide as space, outer space.

So the name of the first formless realm is nam kathaye, infinite space. And we picture the mind like a lake, like the surface of a lake, completely still and calm. And we will drop a small pebble in the middle of the lake and we will imagine a silent ripple going out to the left and going out to the right, and there's no shore on the lake.

The lake, in my meditation, it's at the level of my forehead, or my eyes, and it's on a horizontal plane. And we follow the ripple to the left and to the right, and infinitely, no end. So after a few seconds your mind gets a little tired or the attention starts to degrade, and don't let it, like, stay with the ripple both ways, left and right, and keep it going.

I find it helps if I lose the ripple, I kind of push it out with my breath a little bit in my imagination, and keep going infinitely, silently. Drop the pebble. Formless realm, second level.

I like to bring the mind back to the center of my mind, and I imagine a point in the center of the mind. I think it's a nice feeling of the center of the mind, a point in the center of the mind. For me it's like a single point in a dark room, somewhere in the middle of the floor, and we'll turn on a light.

We'll imagine a small, powerful light is turning on. You can imagine a white light spreading in a sphere from that single point in the dark room, center of your mind, or you can imagine it's like crystal, colorless light, clear light. It's not the meaning of real clear light in Buddhism, but you can imagine crystal light expanding quickly out when we turn on this light, and it just spreads and spreads and spreads, and I like to imagine that it quickly becomes larger than this planet and continues out.

The crystal light represents your awareness, the fact that you are aware at all, that you have any consciousness, that you are alive, and that crystal light expands quickly. For me it overtakes the sun, and then it overtakes the planets. The first formless realm level was, for me, horizontal, plain, and the second formless realm level, which is called NAM SHES TA'I, infinite awareness, expands in all directions like a ball, and just to make it more interesting, I like to imagine that my expanding sphere of awareness is overlapping other people's on other worlds.

There are countless worlds in this universe, and we don't think of them very often, but in this meditation you can imagine that you are touching, your awareness is overlapping the awareness of other beings who are doing this meditation at this moment on many planets, countless planets, and maybe someday we can feel each other's awareness overlapping. Okay, turn on the light, let the clear light expand. Compared to that it would be more quiet if we went to the third formless realm level, which is called CHI YANG MED, and it means turn off the mind completely, as if you were turning a light switch off.

And deep in the mind, especially if you're doing it alone without me talking, imagine you just turn the mind off and it takes a little bit of effort to block every thought, every feeling, every awareness, every emotion. You should even feel a little bit nervous that maybe you couldn't come out of this meditation. So go to the super quiet place called turning your mind off, and anytime a thought comes, a feeling, emotion, memory, then just turn it off.

We'll stay here for ten breaths. I'll bring you back out. It takes some effort to stay there.

It would be more quiet if we went to the fourth formless realm, which is called DU SHES MED DU SHES MED MIN, and it means don't even expend the effort, don't even make the effort to stop the mind. If you can stay in no thinking, that's fine, but if thoughts come up, if impressions come up through the mind, then just surrender and relax. Let them come and go.

Don't attach to them, and if you can, shut them off, but if you can't shut them off, let them flow through the mind. This and the last one were mistaken traditionally for emptiness meditation, and they are not. They cannot help you stop your suffering, or the suffering of this world, the rest of the people in the world.

They cannot help by themselves, so don't mistake them for emptiness. They are not, but they are useful steps for climbing higher, deeper, to a really useful meditation, which is number nine. Okay, stay with the mind turned off, or if things come up, just let them.

Don't fight. Very, very quiet. Now sort of a joyful moment.

We reached the ninth meditation. This is the only one that can help people, and bring to mind a teacher in your life. Someone dear to you, someone who's helped you in your life, taught you.

Could be a schoolteacher, could be your parents, one of your parents, could be a spiritual teacher, could even be the person who taught you your occupation, and imagine they are sitting in front of you. I like to say knee to knee, and they are alive, and they are actually here. They are breathing.

You can feel some subtle warmth from their body, some fragrance like a flower, and their eyes are focused on you. Your eyes are closed, but with your eyes closed, you can see their eyes open, and the eyes are bright, and interested in you, in your welfare, and they care about you. They like you, and they are proud that you are meditating.

And think of one beautiful quality about them that you have always admired, and you can change that quality from day to day as you meditate, for the next 30 days especially, and you can go to different teachers you've had in your life. A teacher doesn't have to be a formal teacher. It could be a favorite aunt or uncle, or even one of your children.

Someone who has helped you learn something, or someone who's a good example for you, could be historical from the past. So focus on this teacher and choose one of the beautiful things about them. Get it clear in your mind, because we cannot do the ninth level without making this quality clear in our mind.

Now please go to the middle of your mind. For me it's the same place that I turned on the light bulb in the second formless realm level. It's like the middle of a dark room.

Very center point. I like to see like a small nest, and inside the nest are six or seven silver egg-shaped seeds. It's almost like there's a light in the ceiling, and it's spotlighting these seeds suspended in the darkness, and then watch one of the seeds crack open, and an image made of light comes out, and it's that quality that you see in your teacher, and this quality slips out of the egg, out of the crack.

I like to picture it like a hologram or image made of light, and for me it moves forward to my forehead or to my eyes, and it continues out to that teacher sitting in front of me, and it covers them like a sheet or a coat, and then it sticks to them, and I see this quality in them. So, before my seeds open, they didn't really have that quality, and then seeds open, one seed opened in my mind, and this quality came out and came to them and settled on top of them, and because of that I see this beautiful quality in them. So, during this step it's very important to have the emotion that what you see in your teacher is actually coming from you.

It doesn't mean you have that quality in a manifest way now. They may be generous, you may be not, but their generosity is still coming from you, from seeds inside of you. We can aspire to their generosity, we can wish that we had it, but still it's coming from deep within us, and we hope that we can also gain that same generosity which they have, which is actually coming from us.

So, at some level all the good qualities we see in others are available to us, but we may not have them yet. When I finish one seed opening and picture going to them, I come back to the eggs and I see another one open, and you can continue this for three or four passes of images coming out. The main emotion should be, oh, what I see in them is coming from deep inside of me, even though I may not have that quality myself.

Now, fun part, little bit longer part. We will fantasize about past life in which we planted those seeds to see that quality. So, here you have to learn to, you're driving in a car pretty fast from Diamond Mountain to Tucson, and it's like birds are flying by, and you stick your arm out the window and try to catch one.

So, images, unformed images, impressions, distant memories are flying through your mind. Just grab them and bake a cake, make a movie. Use pieces of things you've heard on the internet in the last few days, or stories you remember from your childhood, or strange impressions that come through your mind, seems randomly, but all of those things, your outside life, the history of your life in this world since you were born up to now, every book you read, every movie you've seen, every song you've heard, they are all coming from you.

So, you can take a little bit from here and a little bit from there, whatever passes through your mind, grab it, and use it to build the story. Don't be shy, don't be reasonable. It can be a thousand lives ago, it can be on another planet.

Maybe you were a man, maybe you're a woman, maybe you're a fox, maybe you're a bird, and make a story of how you planted these beautiful seeds to see your teacher in this life have this beautiful quality. It should be similar because of the first law of karma. Watermelons make watermelons.

You must have done something similar. So, go make a story. You are not seeing your past life directly, but you are acknowledging that everything you have felt and thought in this life has come from something you did in the past.

Now the most important part, come back to your teacher. Respectfully ask this teacher to move to the side, and imagine a second teacher that looks like the first one, but this one's just an accident. Everything about them is accidental.

It's not coming from you. It's a result of their upbringing with their parents and their society and their own experiences, and none of it is coming from you. This second lama, we like to call bubu lama, accidental lama.

Everything about them is coming from their side, and the way they are, the way they think, the way they act is not coming from me. It's coming from their own experiences, their own life, which ultimately means their birth was accidental, their existence is accidental, random. And if you follow that way of thinking on a more grand scale, the whole world you see in front of you is just accidental.

What the scientists say, there was a big explosion billions of years ago, and pieces of matter collided randomly in infinite combinations. Your teacher's face and their good quality, ultimately it's just amazing coincidence of collisions of pieces and evolution of life from single cells in the ocean to things crawling on the land, and then monkeys or some other animal, and then by genetic accidents and survival of the fittest, then randomly, random collisions have become this beautiful person in front of you, and this fine quality that you see. There's no sense to it, there's no logic, and especially it doesn't matter whether you are a good person or you're a bad person. Your teacher would have been there anyway, and there's no connection between you and them, it's just accidental.

You weren't supposed to meet them, and there's no ultimate purpose of this relationship. You are not supposed to improve yourself and perfect yourself by meeting them. It's all accident.

There's no deeper meaning, there's no tantric meaning, there's no angel there. It's just a random, another random incident in a big and very long-lasting universe. Then your heart should rebel at this idea.

It should feel wrong or uncomfortable, and you can sit for a while in the emptiness of that accidental meeting. Cancel that false teacher. Gag ja.

Accidental teacher. Cancel them. Sit in the feeling that there's no such thing.

This is real emptiness. This is an experience which can make you into a Buddha. Then during the day you will sometimes remember that what you see comes from your seeds, and during other periods of the day you will forget, and try to make those periods shorter and shorter.

Try to be aware of a higher purpose, a goal of this life. Bring your Lama back, the real one, dependent origination Lama, coming from you. I like to put a little piece of that emptiness in their chest, in their heart, to remember where the false Lama is not, which is emptiness.

That's the emptiness of your teacher. Then we'll come back down the ladder. We'll take the elevator back down to close to where we came from.

Eighth level, fourth formless realm. Turn off the mind, or don't turn off the mind. You can come down faster than you came up.

It's easier to come down a ladder than to climb it. Third formless realm. Turn off the mind.

A little more effort, a little less quiet. Focus on the sphere of awareness. Someone in this group suggested bringing it back in from infinite space, and I like it.

I like to try that. Bring it back towards the center, clear light, which is not the real clear light in a Buddhist sense. Watch the lake, watch the ripples coming back to the center, and they enter the piece of sugar, and that becomes a heart beating out of context by itself, and then suddenly you're inside the heart beating, and then you're in your own body watching your heart beat in your chest.

Watch your breath connected to your heart. We'll take three long exhales. Don't open your eyes yet.

This is the dedication part, and you imagine a golden light coming out of your nose, and on that light is carried all the very good karma you just made, and you are sharing it. For me it's like a fire offering, that beautiful smell of the grains rising with the smoke to the sky, and eventually touching everyone in this room. Three long exhales offering these good seeds of this meditation to the whole world.

Then gently open your eyes. Take a good stretch. Wow, we made it through the whole thing without stopping.

Drink something. I can share my green drink, but not my coffee. You can come get your phone.

You can take a pee pee if you need, and slowly let's do some questions when you guys have a microphone. I can feel you were meditating the last few days, and I really appreciate it. I think that's the first time I ever did the whole thing with a group.

Very nice. Very nice. That's two parts.

By the way, there's five. Next time. It's always good to hold something back from the students.

You can blackmail them. Thank you, Geshe-la, for this amazing teaching. I have a question.

[Speaker 2]
In my meditation I reached this part, level nine, emptiness, and I stepped on it. It was amazing, and I saw that everything in my world, if I'm in this place of emptiness, nothing exists, and all stuff which is coming from me left, and nothing at all was around me. Good.

[Speaker 1]
So, what should I do next? Please, Geshe-la, please. I stayed here and I didn't know what to do, and I want to do the next step, and I feel that it should be the next step.

It's hard to stay there. You get impatient. You're like, well, what's next?

Nothing's happening. It's a little frustrating. This is supposed to make me a Buddha?

Nothing's happening. If you'd like, at that point, when you see emptiness directly, okay, there's a distinct feeling of going up a ladder. You actually naturally feel what we are imagining.

So, there's a distinct feeling that you are rising, which you're not, but it feels like that, and then when you hit ultimate reality directly, it feels like you're higher, okay, just before you go in. Then when you go in, you can't have other thoughts. Impossible, because they are normal realities.

So, when you study DCI level seven, we talk about the bedrock under Manhattan. It's like a reality that nobody can, nobody normally sees that rock below Manhattan. There is a rock.

It's almost a single rock below Manhattan, but millions of people walk around Manhattan, they're not aware of the rock. Did you worry about it when you lived in Manhattan? How long you're there?

20 years or something. So, all I can say is play with that space and try to, you can imagine it like a cavity, like a cave, and you can try to be in it. Then after a few breaths, other thoughts will, you'll get impatient.

You'll say, I don't understand. Nothing's happening here. It's not very interesting, you know, and all I can say is try to be in that space, or try to occupy that space, and practice.

It's practice, okay? Try to become that space. Just to stay there?

Yeah, stay there for... And what think about it? Excuse me?

What think about it?

[Speaker 2]
What should I think about it?

[Speaker 1]
Well, your mind will start to wander. You say, why am I here? And then go back to how wrong it feels that your teacher should be an accident, and there's no fate, there's no destiny, there's no reason why you met them.

Like that, and so every time your mind slips out of that space, it will hit a feeling that things are coming this way, and then say no, and go back to the space, and try to occupy the space. That's all I can say. At that point, you're on your own.

Okay, all I can tell you is this. The experience of that space plants seeds directly to become a Buddha who can go to millions of worlds and help millions of people at the same time. So, stay there as long as you can, remembering that it's planting those seeds, and nothing else can plant those seeds.

You can be nice to people, you can do the first eight meditations, they will not plant those seeds. So, struggle. Be frustrated, and every time you start to slip out, say, that's also not coming, that's also not coming from me.

[Speaker 2]
How long, wow.

[Speaker 1]
I would say start with 20 breaths, it's about three minutes, something like that. So, the rest of the steps are about a minute each. If you can stay there as long as you can, it's good.

Each time you start to come out, the sign is you start thinking something's coming this way, and then you say, no, no, and you go back. You go back to that space. But the longer you can stay in that space, that's real progress.

That plants directly the seeds to become a Buddha, and nothing else does, not directly. All right, continuing a question. After hearse, during my meditation, in that step, actually I feel that I was melt in the emptiness.

I cannot feel myself, it's like all of my parts are into pieces, and then nothing. I don't know if it's a feeling right or wrong. It's a very good feeling if you imagine you are melting into that space.

That's excellent. If you think of me during that time, you pop out of that space. So, if you can lose yourself in that space, it's very good.

But now you know the difference between the third formless realm level, which is nothing, and this nothing is the absence of the second husband in your kitchen. Those of you who studied DCI, we have a game, we have a skit we play on the stage. We say there's always two husbands in your kitchen.

One is the one who yells at you because you yelled at your kids last week, and the other one is the one who yells at you just because he wants to, and that second one doesn't exist. It cannot exist. So, it's different to close your eyes and imagine your husband doesn't exist.

It's different to understand the second husband in the kitchen doesn't exist. Why? When we do formless realm number three, we are imagining that things which really do exist, like thoughts, don't exist.

But in the emptiness meditation, we are focusing on the fact that something which could never exist is not there. The absence in the third formless realm level is of thoughts and feelings which are real, and they exist, and they are coming out of seeds. But the absence of the bubu lama is of a thing which could not exist, and that's a big, big difference.

We are not imagining there's no diamond mountain, there's no temple, there's no people around me. Those are things which do exist. When you cancel those, pretend you are doing formless realm number three, and it cannot help you.

It's just a ladder. In the number nine, level nine, you are refusing an accidental lama. You should feel like, go away, you know.

You bug me my whole life. Husband who didn't come from my seeds. Income which didn't come from my seeds.

Go away, you cause all my trouble. Just get out of here, you know. That one is the absence of something which could not exist.

It's a phantom, and your whole life it made you hope, it made you hurt, it made you upset, it hurt you, your whole life. This one caused you all your trouble, okay? This one, tell him.

That's SING HA, VI BYAMS PA'I DA. Say, SING HA, VI BYAMS PA'I DA. That's the meaning of the name.

That's the meaning of the name. It's like, get out of here. You can check, Khenpoche.

I'll give you the reading if I have time, but he says, you know, to the fake lama. That's the meaning of the name of the meditation. Get out of here.

You can say all the bad words in your own language. Or Stanley can teach you bad English words also. I've been training him.

Okay, other question. You need a microphone? Buddhist fight.

You take the microphone. No, you take the microphone. So Geshe-la, thank you for improving my meditation.

First time when I came, I can only sit for five minutes, but we just sit for one hour, and I really enjoy it. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Okay. After this question, by the way, we're going to take a pee-pee break, and then we'll come back and do more questions. Okay.

So my question is, during this meditation on emptiness of my teacher, when I try to focus on the face of my teacher, then at the beginning I cannot really focus on that, and then I start to see many other people's faces, like the names she just mentioned, Vivian, Jasmine, Stanley, and I feel like, oh, they are so nice, they are like Buddhas, and then I gradually I can start to focus on my teacher's face, and then I feel good about it. Is that okay to do that?

And then the second part of the question is, how can I bring this good feeling in meditation back to my real life when I go back to teaching? Okay, good. I think it's fine if you have more than one teacher, to start, like, go to the teacher's store and say, oh, there's Jasmine, there's Vivian, there's Stanley, which one do I want to meditate with today?

Then you can pick one, and then if the other ones come back again, we want to be in your meditation today. Then you can say, tomorrow, tomorrow, you can be in my meditation tomorrow, okay? So, talk to your, learn to talk to your mind.

Your mind will say, oh, we have many teachers, let's meditate on all of them. Then you have to say, we'll do tomorrow, definitely we'll do Stanley tomorrow. Let's concentrate on Jasmine today, because it's meditation.

We have to focus on one thing. So, yeah. Secondly, again, I mentioned it before, but the reason, the bad qualities you see in your teacher, like Geshe Michael Peekers nose, they're also coming from you.

But it doesn't make you a better person to meditate on that, you see? It doesn't mean Geshe Michael's perfect. Geshe Michael's not perfect.

Geshe Michael has many mistakes and faults. But if you meditate on those, you just, like it's, in Tibetan, they say, du ri yang gyel ma num. Say du ri?

Yang gyel ma num. So it means, if you're sitting next to Stanley and Stanley makes a fart, you have choice. You can kind of move away, or you can go, what's that?

Then it's uncomfortable to get closer. Oh, Stanley, what's that? So, you know, in this meditation, to focus on a good quality, and then the Sanskrit word for meditation is, I mean he didn't really do.

The Sanskrit word for meditation is bhavana. Bhavana means to become, and the word be in English comes from baba, okay? So, to be.

Ana is the ending in Sanskrit that means to make you do something. So bhavana means, it turns you into that thing, you see? What you hold in your mind, in the mirror of your mind, the teacher you keep here for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, you become what you meditate on.

That's the word meditation means, you will become what you meditate on. That's why we don't meditate on? Fart.

Because no one wants to become a fart. Okay, go take a fart break, and come back. We'll do more questions, okay?

15 minutes, okay? You shouldn't spend your time on it. You don't know when you're going to die.

Don't waste time. Other meditations make you calm, make you peaceful, make you happy for a while, but they are not a direct attack on samsara. And we don't know when we're going to die, so better to take care of this one now.

Then later you can do those other things. You can get out of samsara, then you can watch TV and play soccer and things like that. Okay, all right.

Other question? Are you sure it's on the internet?

[Speaker 2]
This question comes from Guadalajara. We had a question regarding how quickly an event in the past, present, and future could be changed using seeds. Once a ripe seed has opened, it is said to be like a still frame in a movie in the last 165 years.

The emptiness of that frame would mean that it does not depend on a seed. A previous act of kindness, but as we know, when a sprout arises, the seed is finished. Upon what then does the frame depend upon its length and duration?

Meaning, like, how did Neo stop the bullet, or how did Lord Buddha turn the arrows into flowers?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, good. We're going to talk about it during Kamalashila, but time is also coming from you. And there's a simple proof of that.

I like to say in DCI, when you are kissing your girlfriend when you're a teenager, time goes faster. And then when you go to the dentist, time goes slower. So, anybody can see this.

So, time is also coming from you. We're going to study during Kamalashila how you can compress time. So, it's possible, each person in this room, because time is coming from you, you have the ability, although you haven't used it yet, to see the future.

And not just tomorrow or the next day. You have the capacity to see 500 years into the future. So, if a person reaches direct recession emptiness, when they come out, they typically can see 500 years ahead.

Imagine what it means for how you behave, that you are behaving on a 500 year plan. You see, you're not even thinking about next week, or next month. Everything you do is aimed at the next 500 years.

And then, how will you look to other people? You know, you would look weird. Other people wouldn't quite understand what you're doing.

So, anyway, then an interesting question comes up, can you change the past? You see, is it too late to change the past? And different Buddhist schools have different ideas about the past.

So, middle way school has two parts, lower middle way, higher middle way. And lower middle way says the past is gone and you cannot change it. Higher middle way says the past is a functioning thing in the present.

So, like the election of a leader 100 years ago is still affecting us now, you see. So, they would say the election of that leader is a functioning thing now, and then you can change it. I think the third flavor I feel in the question is, what's the maximum speed you can change something?

You know, if someone shoots a gun at you, can you change your seats before the bullet hits you like Neo does in the Matrix? We would have to say yes, you can do it. Because we have the example of Lord Buddha and someone shot an arrow at him just before he got enlightened and the arrow became flowers.

In the space, on the way to his face, it became flowers. You could give a one hour teaching about that. But yeah, it's possible for things to ripen very fast.

They cannot ripen without any passage of time. That's a Buddhist principle. There has to be some passage of time, like even if it's a millisecond.

Cause and effect have to occur at different times. Okay, one more question. Then we should do this thing called lam rim.

We can do some more questions this afternoon. I'm afraid we won't cover much lam rim, and it will take a hundred years to finish.

[Speaker 2]
So, thank you for teaching, Geshe-la.

[Speaker 1]
You're welcome.

[Speaker 2]
So far, you talked to us about the emptiness of the lama in step nine, and also the dependent origination of the lama. But we haven't tackled the emptiness of the thing we grasp to the most, which is ourself. According to what you've taught us, the first emptiness that we see is the emptiness of ourself.

So, it seems logical to me that at some point we would have to think about the emptiness of how we're seeing ourselves see the lama. Can you talk about that? Maybe, is that part of the next steps of the Lion Dance?

Am I getting ahead?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good question. That was actually one of the last questions in my Geshe exam. If you saw the video, that guy is asking me this question.

Traditionally, we say when you see emptiness directly the first time, you always see the emptiness of yourself. So, Adam sees directly the emptiness of Adam. Katie sees directly the emptiness of Katie.

And Adriana sees the emptiness of Adriana first. First one you see directly. The first one you understand intellectually is the emptiness of some outside object, like a pen.

So, traditionally, the first emptiness you understand pretty clearly is some kind of object, like a pen or something like that. And then when you see it directly, it's you. The one that helps you the most is to see the emptiness of you.

And it's true, we're going to study it in Kamalashila next week, but just generally, yeah, eventually it would be useful to turn that microscope called meditation on yourself during the level nine. But right now I'd like you to work on your Lama. Because in Buddhism, your own personal teacher, whoever it is, is considered extremely powerful karmically.

We saw in the Lam Rim, they put it above Buddha. So, just spending time with your Lama in your meditation is a very powerful good karma and it would help you push you into the direct perception of emptiness. All right, let's do some Lam Rim.

You can easily find ZANG ZHING, Z-A-N-G, Z-I-N-G, Z-A-N-G, Z-I-N-G. Yeah, good, okay. We were talking about karma which is heavy not by motivation and not by the person you do it to, and not by the person who's doing it, but by the substance involved.

What is the stuff you're using? And we gave the example of giving physical things like money or sharing with someone a Dharma teaching. Which you don't...

I often tell people my first Dharma teaching was in a Volkswagen bug. I taught the postman. My teacher wouldn't let him come in the temple, so I had to teach him in the car because it was cold in New Jersey.

I taught him in the... By the way, he became a very good Dharma student. He helped me to translate the story of Rudrayana.

I taught him to translate. But first Dharma teaching was in the car. So for us, especially when one of your friends is having a hard time with their husband, you can talk about the second husband.

You can really help people. So it's one thing to give money to somebody. It's much more powerful to give them teaching, and it doesn't have to sound like teaching.

Sometimes if you push somebody with Buddhism, what do you call it? Buddhist nudity. You must believe.

I went to Diamond Mountain. I know the truth. You must listen to me.

That's the way not to teach Dharma. People will get turned off. So when people are hungry, when people need help, you can share the Dharma.

In DCI we don't use the word Buddhism, and I don't care. I don't care what you call it. You can call it cookies or something.

Yo chow. It doesn't matter what name you give to wisdom. Actually, I feel a little uncomfortable around organized religious groups.

They can be very uncomfortable. They are like, and just share four steps. When you're teaching DCI, sometimes it's very helpful to say, you don't have to join anything.

There's no leader. There's no picture you have to keep in your house. You don't have to join anything.

You go home and you try it. I'll see you in five years. You should be more successful.

You don't have to push some religion or some teacher. It's the idea which will help people. I like to think if we are successful in spreading the Dharma, then people should forget who started it.

A good virus should be anonymous. People are all using the four steps. I went to a yoga class the other day in Phoenix and the teachers started with a meditation I was teaching 18 years ago.

I didn't say anything. They didn't know who I was. I felt so happy.

Anonymous virus is cool. Now, as far as offerings, as opposed to giving, give physical things good, but give Dharma better. Give Dharma anonymously and without pushing somebody, they have to join something.

That's even better. Now, offering. Offering money is nice, but what's the best offering to your teacher?

If I see that you are doing 30 days of lion's dance on the WhatsApp or WeChat or whatever, then I'm really happy. Then it makes the teacher really happy. By the way, if you live in a country where you're not allowed to do religious things very openly, then please don't put religious pictures on the WeChat or WhatsApp and please don't put religious subjects there.

It's just meditation that we do together. Don't get your other friends in trouble. Okay.

All right. Karma, which is heavy due to motivation, is the next subject. Kamalashila, I think he calls it...

No, sorry. You understand. Master, you understand.

He says, in India they say everything tastes better with butter, but in China we say everything tastes better with ginger. But it's the same thing. He says same thing.

It means... Let's see. I always like to talk about if I want to plant a beautiful partner, if I don't have a partner now and I would like to plant a beautiful personal partner, then of course you guys all know you can go to the nursing home and you can take care of a lonely person once a week.

And we said already that even if your motivation is selfish, you will get a partner. You cannot prevent it. You will get a partner.

Now, when you open the door to the nursing home, you have choice how you think about it. Thinking doesn't cost anything. Thinking is free.

You can have a motivation. I'm here to plant my partner. Or you can think, if I get a partner by planting one, then other people will copy what I'm doing.

Then people will copy those people and people will copy those people and people will copy those people. I have a video I'd like to show. You saw it, right?

Norway. This idea of visiting the nursing home spread from one guy through the whole country. Now the government will pay the young people to take an older person to the movies.

They will pay for both tickets. That started from one young man in a DCI class in Oslo. Now the whole country is doing it.

The whole country is doing it. So you have a choice. And you know, I know, I grew up Christian.

Many of you grew up Buddhist. Your mom took you to the temple or the church and she said, pray for everybody. Then you're like five years old and you're like, everybody?

Okay. You pray for your aunt and your father and your mother. Then you're like, is that everybody mom?

She's like, no, no, more people, more people. Okay, I pray, pray, pray, pray. Then of course in Buddhism we say, SEMS CAN THAMS CAD KYI PHYIR DU For all living beings, I'm doing this thing.

Then that's a prayer. It's difficult to think of everybody. Even now, I'm, what, 38 or something.

It's difficult to think of everybody, even now. I reach like five people, I'm like, you know. If you follow karma, if you understand a karmic path, if you use the four steps that you learned in this class, if you become successful, you get a partner, you get financial freedom, you are healthy even though you're old and bald.

People will say, what do you, somebody asked me yesterday, this morning somebody asked me, what do you do? How come you're not tired? You know, okay.

I say, I do karma. They say, well, you use some kind of vitamins Geshe-la? I say, yeah, I do karma vitamins.

So people will copy you. Then it will spread like a virus. Then you are helping all people.

How? By your own example. You see, by your own example.

Automatic bodhisattva. Automatic bodhichitta. Just use it yourself and you create virus.

Then that's what a bodhisattva is supposed to do. It's okay to go to temple and I pray for everybody, especially four people I can think of right now. But if you succeed in using dharma on yourself, that's automatic spread dharma.

It doesn't cost you more and it's not more effort. You just do it. Become happy person.

Become successful person. Be really happy person. Then other people will follow you.

So you have a choice. Motivation. You have a choice.

In your meditation here, it's called put butter on everything. What's butter? Bodhichitta.

What's bodhichitta? I want to be a virus. I will be a virus.

Don't think bodhichitta is something that Maitreya has, Manjushri has, Guanyin has. I will never have. I'm a normal person.

Forget that idea. Bodhichitta means be successful as a person and your activities be successful. Then people will say, what the heck are you doing?

Then the virus will spread. That's a real bodhisattva. That's real bodhisattva.

That's the meaning of bodhisattva. DCI organizers must all be bodhisattvas. You see?

By definition. By what they are doing. Not by some religious thing.

Forget the religious thing. All right. SANGS PA'I SGO NAS STOBS CHE BA NI What's it mean to make a heavy karma by your motivation?

BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS KYI SEMS PA'I SGO NAS BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS KYI SEMS PA Say BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS KYI SEMS PA SEMS PA means, you know, people ask me, oh Geshe-la, what was your training in the monastery? I say I washed dishes for eight years. I was a dishwasher for eight years.

That's why my hands are so bad. Okay. A lot of dishes.

Monks eat a lot. Okay, then sponge. The key to dishwashing is a good sponge that has Teflon on one side.

Right? I'll teach you if you want to know. Sometimes I think we should have a dishwashing class.

A lot of my students don't. One of my students, I gave her a broom. I said, sweep the floor.

She's like this. I said, no, it's like this. I said, you never use a broom?

No. BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS means bodhichitta. I want to help the whole world.

SEMS PA means like a sponge, your mind should be soaked in this idea. I want to help the whole world. Every time you use four steps, you say, just a simple idea.

I want to be a virus. May I be a virus. That's bodhichitta.

It starts with you. It has to start with you. I want to be successful.

Then that will spread. Automatically. That's bodhichitta.

Don't think it's some religious thing. Only people in India had it. 2,000 years ago.

You have to have a Sanskrit name. Forget that. There's lots of bodhisattvas in this room.

Because they are human virus. They are living virus. That's all.

You don't have to be Buddhist. I don't care. It doesn't matter.

It really doesn't matter. I tell people, do what your mother did. Do what your father did.

It's okay. Be whatever your parents were. But inside, I want to be a virus.

Okay. BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS PA'I SGO NAS means if you keep that idea, virus idea in your mind. So we're not going to call it bodhichitta anymore.

We're going to call it virus idea. Virus, what do you call it? Aspiration.

It's too long. Virus mind. Virus chitta.

DROD MA TSAR CIG STON PA'AM If you do one round of Tathagata's mantra, OM THARATI THARITUR YAS SO HA with that virus chitta, or you offer a single butter lamp on the altar, it's extremely powerful karma. Okay. SEMS DE MA SEMS PAR MA MED BUM PHRAG BU BA LAS LHAG PA YIN If you offer a hundred thousand butter lamps but you don't have virus chitta, it's not as much karma as offering one with the virus mind.

SA BCAD DI RNAMS NI DGE MI RGYAS RNAMS LAS TSOR BRDZEMS DGOS PA DANG SDUG DGOS PA RNAMS BSDOD TE STON PA YIN All these sections that we just went through is talking about what should you avoid in your life and what should you try to do in your life. I have a new word for morality. I don't like the word morality.

In English it's too religious. Then I was calling it ethical life. That's a little bit better.

It doesn't sound so religious. Nowadays I like to call it immorality. I like to call, that's not cool.

I think that's a good word. Hurting people is not cool. Eating meat is not cool.

Like stealing money from people, even if you're a bank. As through this life you wander, as through this life you roam, you never see a bandit take a family from their home. Some men will rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen.

It's talking about immoral bankers. Why did I get into that? Oh yeah.

It's not cool. It hurts people. Anything that hurts people is immoral.

We can say not cool. All right. DZAM DGOS PA DANG So we should avoid things that aren't cool.

SGRUB DGOS PA RNAMS BDOD PA'I STON PA'I YIN We should do things which are cool and the whole section on karma is meant to get you thinking about that. What's cool to do? What's not cool to do?

DE NA GRUB KHYAD PO CHUNG NA TSE CHUNG NGOS DGE BA RGYAL CHEN PO BSTOD PA DANG MI DGE BA YANG CHUNG DU STONG BA'I TSUL YOD PA'I DE ZHES DGOS So if you understand karma, KHYAD PO, KHYAD PO means you become a karma master. You can make a lot of big seeds with a little bit of effort. One butter lamb with a virus chitta.

And you can make a lot of and you can learn to avoid bad karmas very easily. If you understand karma. If you understand the four by four, right?

What makes karma powerful? Just think when you open the door to the nursing home, I want to start a virus. I want to start a cool virus.

Just think like that. That's enough. Then everything, every little thing you do, everything, anyway, becomes much more powerful.

Extremely powerful. You can create your 2018 this month by doing little things and you can have a great 2018. Okay?

Like that. If you understand karma. DGE SLONG ZHIG GIS BSAM PA BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS KYI SEMS PAS BSGOM NAS SBYOR BYED LTA BU ZHIG GTAN NA If a single person in this room does SBYOR BYED, what's that?

That was the first thing in your Three Treasures Prayer Book. Okay? You studied it.

You learned it many years ago. How to prepare for meditation. Bring the Lama.

Make them offering. Confess. Be happy.

Ask for teaching. Ask them to stay with you. This is SBYOR BYED.

One person in this room right now, if you do the SBYOR BYED prayer with virus citta, the idea, I want to be a virus. If you just recite that prayer, he says, you got, that karma is powerful. Siri is asking me, what can I help you with?

She likes virus citta. Ten. Meaning the person doing the prayer became powerful.

Why? They want to be a virus. They have the intention to be a virus.

So, the person doing the karma is powerful. Number one. I numbered them here.

Number two. Their intention is extremely powerful. Okay?

We talked about powerful intention. Number three. The person they're doing it, the karma towards, is powerful.

You. What's the person they're doing the karma to? All the people they want the virus to touch.

You see? If they have the intention while they're doing this prayer in their retreat cottage and their intention is, I want to be a virus. How many people are they doing the karma towards?

Everybody on the planet. Seven billion people. That's a little powerful.

Okay? So, the person doing the karma is powerful. Ten.

The intention is powerful. Sampa. The yul.

The person they're doing it to is powerful. And the stuff they're selling is powerful. The stuff.

What's the stuff they're selling? What are they hoping for all these people? Enlightenment.

They should never have suffering again. Okay? All right?

So, from all the different ways that we have discussed already, what they're doing is a powerful karma. Okay? They are a karma master.

Sitting in their retreat cottage alone, reading this prayer, they are creating more karma than a person who's feeding everybody in Arizona. That's a powerful karma. GZHAN YANG Now we get into another division of karma.

We talk about it in DCI. Say, PHAN BYAS KYI LAS PHAN BYAS KYI LAS RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS PHAN BYAS KYI LAS RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS Okay. PHAN means what you do with an arrow.

It's called PHAN. Shoot it. Shoot, right?

You can call it shooting karma. Some people call it projecting karma. It's the karma which projects major events in your life.

The day you met your future husband. The day you got your first job in the career that you followed for the rest of your life. The day you were born.

The day you die. Big things in your life. You met your heart teacher.

Those are PHAN BYAS KYI LAS especially next life. But also this life. Major karmas.

Major event karma. Second one is called RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS means fills in the details. Like, yeah, you met your wife on that day and her name was O'Brien and she had this color hair and she had this kind of smile and she talked like a Canadian and she said, what's a solar boot?

And all those little details meeting her was a PHAN BYAS KYI LAS. Major karma projection. And then the details of Connie, of your future wife, those are called RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS.

So this is another division of karma. Now you've had like ten different ways to understand karma. Major event karma.

I also like to call them transition karmas. Something big is going to change in your life. You met Nick at a yoga class, right?

Just like that's a PHAN BYAS KYI LAS. Then all the details since then, that's a RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS. In the scriptures they compare it.

I put the picture in your reading. It's the Sistine Chapel. It's a famous painting in the West.

It's maybe one of the most famous paintings in the West. It's on the ceiling of a famous church. God is touching Adam.

Why I put the picture there, anyone can guess? In those days of Michelangelo, he was very busy. Then he would come with charcoal and he would sketch the God and Adam.

Then he might put numbers on them. BUD DU BUD DUR SEMS They put numbers, they say carve this this way, carve this this way. The master comes.

He's the PHAN BYAS KYI LAS. He makes the main drawing. Then the assistant artist comes and puts the red color and the blue color and the green color.

Connie's face, Connie's smile, Connie's hair, Connie's accent. All those details are done by the RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS, the assistant painter. Then the PHAN BYAS KYI LAS is create the main person.

Got it? This is another famous example of karma. We talked about it.

If you go to the nursing home to get your partner, but you don't care about the old lady, you are selfish. You're just using her. What's the PHAN BYAS KYI LAS?

You'll get a partner. What's the RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS? Okay.

He will be selfish. Got it? It's useful.

You can use it. Don't forget you have to cover both. It's not enough to create a boyfriend.

You have to have a nice one. All right. LAS LA PHAN RDZOGS KYI BYAS PA NI PHAN BYAS LA RGYAS BA'I BRTAN DRO Generally speaking, if the shooting karma is good karma, you will go to one of the higher births in the future.

MI RGYAS BA'I RGAN GROR PHAN If it's a bad karma, shooting karma, it will send you to a lower birth after you die. Animal, hell. RDZOGS BYAS LA RGYAS PA MED DE PHAN BYAS RGYAS BA'I PHANG NAS RDZOGS BYAS RGYAS BA'I RDZOGS PA DANG MI RGYAS BA'I RDZOGS PA NYID The finishing karma, the detailed karma, is it's not sure it will follow the PHAN BYAS KYI LAS.

Give me an example. Well, when you meet the boy, right? That's the shooting karma which is a good karma.

You got a boyfriend. But that doesn't mean the RDZOGS BYAS KYI LAS is going to be a good karma. He might be selfish.

Maybe he doesn't have a job or never gets a job for 20, 30 years. I know. Well, anyway.

That's a good shooting karma and a negative finishing karma. Got it? It's not necessarily the same.

What's the opposite? Bad shooting karma, good finishing karma. You're a nun, don't answer all the questions.

Yeah, and a famous example is the hell guards, the people who hurt you in the hell. They are the boss of a terrible place. It's like the first company I used to work for.

RDZOGS BYAS LA PHAN BYAS MI DGOS NA He gives that example. MU SHI YOD Adam, where's MU SHI? MU SHI All four permutations.

All four permutations. That's a logic term. Between any two things you can have three or four or is two possible?

Combinations. How many combinations between throwing karma and finishing karma? There's four.

Good throwing karma, good finishing karma, good throwing karma, bad finishing karma, bad throwing karma, good finishing karma. Four possibilities. It's a logic term.

MU SHI DANG PO NI KHO RLU RGYUR BA'I LTA BU MI TSE SKYI RGYI RGYAL BA RNAMS YIN Then I gave you all, I filled in the English for you. Good projecting karma and good finishing karma. KHO RLU RGYUR BA'I RGYAL PO PHYAG BAR BAR BSTAN Come on, where's word when you need him?

RGYAL BAR BSTAN RGYAL BAR BSTAN King of the world. There's such a thing in Buddhism many eons ago. King of the world.

Good throwing karma, good finishing karma. GNYIS PA Second example. Good projecting, bad completing.

He says you're born as a human but you're broke all the time. I'm close to that. Bad projecting, bad completing.

He says hell realm. Normal person in hell. Bad projecting, good completing.

He says you're a high lama. You are born as a high lama. Sorry.

You're born as the horse of a high lama. Or Andriana. You have to cook all day but you get to be in the Dharma.

Just kidding. Thank you for cooking. All right.

Now there's a question come up in the Abhidharma. Can you do one action which throws many lives lifetimes, different lifetimes? Can you do many actions which throw a single lifetime?

Is that possible? What do you think? Yeah, both are possible.

YANG GZHAN LA BRAL BA GRA ZHES NGES TSIG TZAM MED PA If you call somebody a frog that's just one karma. BRAL BA BRAL BA SKYE BA'I SNGABS RGYAL LEN DGOS CHUNG BA You call somebody a frog one time you have to take 500 births as a frog. One frog make 500 frogs.

DGOS CHUNG BA LTA BU LAS GCIG GIS LUS BDU MA PHAN PA DANG So one karma can project many bodies, many lifetimes of bodies. DE BZHIN DU LUS MANG PO LUS GCIG PHAN TSUL YOD DONG You can do many karmas during this life which project one body later. So both are possible.

LAS DE LA'ANG MYONG BA NGES PA MA NGES PA BYAS LA BSAGS PA DANG BYAS LA MA BSAGS PA DANG BSAGS LA MA BYAS PA There's other details of karma that he doesn't explain in detail. First one, MYONG BA NGES PA means you must experience it. You must experience a result.

The karma is so powerful you must experience a result. It isn't what it sounds like. Technically, it's not what it sounds like because any karma can be changed by the four powers.

Any karma. It doesn't matter how bad it is. What this refers to, it's an Abhidharma term.

If you do the eight levels meditation a lot in this life, you must experience it in the form or formless realm. That karma cannot redirect to desire realm. That's all.

It's a technical term. It doesn't mean some karmas are irreversible. It doesn't mean that.

Every karma can be changed. Every bad karma can be changed. Then, BYAS LA BSAGS PA means you did it, but you didn't collect the karma.

You did it, but you didn't collect the karma. That's like, I don't know. You can say you did the four powers or something like that.

I was going to go find examples of those for you, but I didn't have time. Some other time. Okay.

Next life. Okay. Speaking of next life, then I'm going to pause for a while.

Okay, Michael? You guys are almost ready. This is something you find in the Yoga Sutra.

DIR BZTAG DIR BZTAR BYANG MA BAD DANG NYED I made a note here. In the Abhidharma, there's a discussion of karma should ripen at three different times. Karma can ripen at three different times.

DUS GSUM STE means three different times. Number one, MTHONG CHOS MYONG RGYUR MTHONG CHOS means DIR BZTA in Sanskrit. MTHONG CHOS means you see the result in this life.

You see the result in this life. It's called DIR BZTA. ZIN Don't say DRISHTA.

That's from Yoga Studio Sanskrit. DIR BZTA means you see it in this life. DIR BZTA'I BAD DANG NYED means to be experienced, future participle.

Okay, MTHONG CHOS MYONG RGYUR SHING DANG BSAM PA KHYAD PAR GYI'I TSE DE LA BSAM PA'I BDE BU DE ZIN DANG LA If the SHING means the person you do the karma towards, or if the motivation is very powerful, you can get the result in the same lifetime. The goal of DCI is to shorten that time to like a day or a month. How?

With coffee meditation. With rejoicing. All right.

SKYE NAS MYONG RGYUR means second division of this division is a karma which you experience in the very next life. In the very next life. So pretty powerful.

Definitely five minutes after you die in this life, you'll be going there. SKYE NAS MYONG RGYUR TSE NYID PA LA MYONG BA It's experienced in the next lifetime. GZHAN LA MYONG RGYUR GYI LAS GSUM PA PHAN CHE means what we call experienced in the life beyond, lives beyond, means second or other rebirth.

So we divide, Buddhism divides the experiences into three. The Yoga Sutra into just two. DER ZDUG and AB DER ZDUG.

All right. If you know Buddhism well, if you know all the schools well, you can, it's my opinion that the Yoga Sutra is a collection of Buddhist ideas. Okay.

From about the third century, I would say. Judging from the schools that it talks about. Okay.

SKYE NAS MYONG RGYUR GYI LAS LAS DAG GZHAN LA MYONG RGYUR DI DAG KYANG ZHIG PA LA MING CHE CHUNG LAS ZHIG DGOS You want details more on that? Read Tsongkapa. He says, read Tsongkapa.

So don't worry, we'll get there. You will have more than you ever wanted to have. NYID PA LEN DE PHYIR DAG TU BSAM PA NI So here's a second section here which is some more detail on karma and results.

DE LTAR MI DGE BA'I BRAL BU NYONG BA LA JIG BZHIN BRTAG NAS MI DGE BCUG PONG GI TSUL KHRIMS GSUNGS When you hear about the results of bad seeds, you should get scared. And that should lead you to want to do cool things. DGE BA'I BCUG TSUL BZHIN DRUB NA PHYI MA NGAN SONG DU MI STONG BAR LA MI LUS RTEN TZAM PO BA TZAM THOB NUS KYANG If you do good karma, in the next life you can have a basic equipment which is good.

RANG RES LTAR PA DANG THAMS CAD KHYAD PA GRUB PA LA TZAM GYIS MI CHOG PAR DGON THOD RTEN KHYAD PAR RNAMS NYON DANG BSGYAS But if you want to have really good equipment in your next life to become a Buddha. So this is an interesting section. He's going to talk about how to design the ideal body and mind for achieving enlightenment in your next life.

What's the karma to have the perfect vehicle in your next life? Then there are eight different karmas we should be focusing on. Obviously, if you do them with virus chitta, they could start to happen in this life.

So here we go. ZHIG RTOG PA LAM DGONGS PA'I SA CHOD SA CHOD means you can make a lot faster progress if you have a body and mind which are suitable for Buddhist practice. So there are eight qualities that the Buddha described for a perfect body and mind for Buddhist practice.

GZHAN DU MI BRAL BAR NGES PAS NGES PAS YIN PAS RGYAS BSTAN GZHIG BSTAN GYIS BSTAN GZHIG THOB DGOS TE So we should try to design this perfect body and mind now. Maybe it will kick in before you die, maybe it will kick in later. BRAL TSONGS SKABS PA CHEN POS Then he quotes TSONGS SKABS PA LAM CHOG DRUG LA MTSAN NYID TZAM BA'I BRTAN MA RIGS PA DU SA CHOS MI YONG BA'I DE'I MA TZAM MED PA'I RGYUD LA BSLAB You should study the causes that will make you have a perfect vehicle in your next life for practicing Buddhism.

Where nothing is missing. DE NA DE LA GSOS NAM GYI YIN DANG DE'I PHYED LAS BDE RGYUD DU PA'O He's going to talk about the eight things it would be nice to have. Then he's going to talk about why they would be nice to have.

Why they help you reach enlightenment. Then he's going to talk about the karmas you need to do now to get them. Some of these eight you may already have.

Some of these eight you have to work on. Okay? Here's the list.

DANG PO LA RGYAS Number one, SRE RING BA What's that mean, Anupama? Long life. It's useful.

I can tell you it's useful to have a long life. Long and healthy life. It takes a long time to learn everything you need to learn.

You have to do a lot of retreats and you have to have a lot of experiences in your life to really get experience wisdom. You didn't hit 60 yet, but when you hit 60 instantly you become wise. Okay?

After that it's just better and better. Okay, so long life. We want to have a long life.

Number two, GZUGS SANG BA GZUGS SANG BA means how do you say, attractive body. Nice looking body. Nice looking body.

Number three, RIGS MTHO BA means in your society be like, what do you call, like a higher class in your society. Okay? Depending on which country you live in.

Okay? You are all from different countries, I think 15 different countries, but you all have one thing in common is that you had enough money to come here. You are not starving.

You are not living in a war zone. You had, maybe it was your parents money or your husband's money, but you had enough money to come here. So you already have this.

You are a certain economic level in your country. And that's useful if you want to practice. If you're hungry, it's very difficult to meditate.

It's really difficult to meditate. If you don't have a quiet house, if the house doesn't keep out the rain, it's difficult to practice. RGYUD CHE BA means some kind of authority.

You should have some kind of power. Not in a bad way, but in a good way. Like in your family, people respect you.

When you talk about the four steps, they listen. That's called power. Number five is similar.

TSIG BRTZON PA means people respect what you say. You have a karma that people respect what you say. If you say, I want to tell you about Kamalashila, they all go, instead of Some of the WU people go, later, but...

Okay. DBANG PHYIR BAR BGRAG PA Let me look it up. Oh, yeah.

People believe you know what you're talking about. Like you have a lineage or something like that. I'm not make up this lam rim.

I'm following... That fire offering last night is how many generations? 43 generations.

People been doing this fire offering. You are 44. You have to do it in your life.

You have to learn it. Translate it into Chinese or Spanish or German or Russian. You should do it.

Learn to do it. Number seven. Sorry.

Six was you have like an authority. Like a good lineage. Like that.

We'll talk more about it. Number seven means male or female depending on what's good at that time in your country. Right now it doesn't much matter you are male or female.

In this room it's about 50-50. Half of the Buddhists here are male, half are female. In India 2,000 years ago if you're a woman you cannot do retreat at all.

It's not possible. If you were a woman in Tibet 100 years ago you cannot become Geshe. It's not possible.

They don't allow. Things like that. It means to fit the country you live in.

In this country and in most modern countries it's man or woman same. In China women's right respected long time ago. Women can work in China long time ago.

After the revolution in China 1949-1951 it became almost equal. Not equal pay I guess but women can work. In your country you are born as man or woman who can do that thing.

Can do retreat. Can do meditation. Can study Geshe course like that.

Number eight. Body and mind are strong. Strong body, strong mind.

Can think about difficult things. Can meditate without getting tired. Like that.

Good conditioned body, good conditioned mind. That's a good place to stop for this morning. Now we will talk about each of those eight.

Why it's useful to have a... If your back is hurting all the time you can't meditate. If you get tired easily or you don't have energy and someone starts to explain Kamalashila to you, you will fall asleep.

It's really nice to have a powerful mind and a powerful body. We'll talk about how to make it. All right.