«Дар освобождения», курс 29 «Большой побег», занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
Okay, good morning. I'd like to go straight into a meditation while you guys are, while your mind is fresh. Okay, so please get ready to meditate.

What's the first step the Buddha said? Turn off your cell phone. Please turn off your cell phone because it's very distracting.

Okay, so we're going to go through the lion's dance meditation and it has five great parts. It was taught by Buddha in about three different sutras and Maitreya taught it to a sangha. So many of you have been practicing it for the last year.

I think we've been teaching it at the Lam Rim retreats for about a year. And it has five great parts and we've only reached through two parts. And in this week we'll do the third and the fourth part.

And I wrote it out for you and it's in your, it's in your, it's in a book there somewhere. Yeah, so this part's called Over the Top. Tilgelke Tingentsen.

Diyatikrantan Tammasamapatti. So, we'll just start. If you do the whole thing it takes about an hour.

So, we're going to do it in pieces. So, we'll do a big piece this morning because morning time you're fresh. And then you'll be working on it during your personal retreat.

Okay? All right, so here we go. Some of you have been practicing it and I prefer that you learn one of the five parts and then you do it for a couple months and then you learn the next part and you do that for a couple months.

But I'm not going to hold up the people who have been doing it. So we will do the third and fourth parts, which is called tu gel. Tu means top and gel means to go over the top, which is why the lady's jumping over a stick, okay?

So here we go. Then when you meditate in a group it's much more powerful and it's also much more distracting when you make noise. Blow your nose now, okay?

Surrender. So in this meditation, which is called lion's dance, singha vijambita, or sangye gingpa, number gingpa, it's the first step is to immediately follow a noise in the room. So it could be the air conditioner, it could be small noises from other meditators, it could be your children in the next room, it could be garbage trucks outside in New York City.

So we'll start with a noise in the room. Rather than counting your breath or practices like that, we go straight to listening to some sound in this room and we'll go slow. So when you have time it's good to do about 20 breaths on each step.

Now please go to the beating of your heart, which is represents the first form realm level. We can also call it the world of beauty, which is the meaning of form realm, rupa datu. Observe your heart beating.

If you're by yourself in your home you can try to hear the heartbeat, especially inside your ear, but in a group usually there's too much noise to do that and you can just feel the sensation of the heart beating in your chest. The idea is that we are drilling down to a deeper point of focus and each step involves a gaccha, which means rejecting something else. So we are, the gaccha for the first level is the sound of the air conditioner or the garbage trucks outside and we reject it and we go drill, drill down deeper to the sound of our heart or the feeling of a heartbeat and we leave behind the noise in the room.

We can't hear that noise anymore. It's too loud and we go to the heartbeat which is more quiet. Now we'll go deeper, more quiet.

Then now the gaccha or what we want to reject or leave behind is the beating of the heart from the outside. So we drop the outside beating of the heart and we enter the second form realm level, world of beating, and we go inside the heart and we leave behind the outer world which is more noisy. So now imagine you are sitting inside the chamber of your heart and you can feel the heart beating around you.

The walls of the chamber are beating but now you are inside the heart and you have left behind the outer world, form realm level too. Now sitting inside of the chamber of the heart, feeling it beat around us, it's normal now. It's quieter and it's normal and now we're going to go deeper.

So that feeling of sitting inside the heart becomes a gaccha, something we want to drop, something we want to leave behind. We want to go deeper. Then you imagine that still inside the dark chamber of the heart, now the heart is inside the heart and it's beating far away, maybe maybe five or six meters away and it's small and you have lost your connection with it.

You are still in the middle of the heart. It's dark, it's quiet, but now the beating of the heart is a little bit far away, distant, still inside the heart and there's a feeling of neutral feeling. You are no longer so connected to the heart.

It's pretty far away and you're just observing it from inside the heart in the darkness and it's quiet and it's a little bit away from you. This is the form realm, world of beauty, level three. Now inside that quietly beating heart, which is separated from you, you see a single crystal of sugar, a single grain of sugar.

You can also use a diamond and you go down towards the crystal, deeper, drilling deeper into the heart and you imagine that you become smaller and smaller and then you can even see a little door on the side of the crystal and you open it and you, all of you, goes inside the crystal like a pretty comfortable room and you close the door and you imagine that you're in a silent chamber inside a single grain of sugar or diamond, tiny, and it's very quiet and you're meditating comfortably inside this single tiny point deep within your heart. Fourth form realm level, samta and shipa.

Now we move up to the formless realm, the world beyond the physical and the first one is called nam kathaye and now we expand the mind. We are still inside the sugar crystal but the mind expands like an ocean, as wide as the ocean. So I like to imagine the ocean between China and America and a vast wide ocean and the surface of the ocean is very very quiet, like a lake or a pond and my mind is spreading as wide as the ocean, still inside the crystal.

It helps to think it's spreading to the left and to the right, the mind itself, and it might help you to picture ripples starting at the center of the ocean, maybe at Hawaii and spreading to the horizon and beyond the horizon. So sometimes I like to drop a pebble in the center of the ocean, still inside the crystal, and the ripples are passing towards the horizon further and further and my mind is wide open to the sky like an ocean. Okay go ahead, you can drop the pebble if you like.

Now second formless level, we, the ocean becomes sagaccha, it's too noisy and we want to go deeper, more quiet, and we want the mind to be more open and we want the mind to expand further and further. So we imagine that the mind is like a light, my awareness is like a light, and from where I'm sitting, which is still inside the crystal, in the middle of the ocean, vast ocean open to the sky, now the light of my awareness will expand like a ball and it will go, as if I turned on a light, the light will go, not just left and right, but it will go up to the sky and beyond the sky, all the way to the Sun, then beyond the Sun, to each of the planets and beyond the planets, and then to other stars and beyond the other stars, and continue a giant ball of awareness, clear like water, expanding throughout all of space. Personally I like to imagine that if there are countless beings in the universe, then there must be other people doing this meditation right now, on some other world, and my expanding ball of awareness, clear water-like awareness, catches up with theirs, and the two balls spread through each other, and then we both continue on, so in a way your mind is expanding to every mind in the universe. So I like to imagine that I'm turning on a light in the middle of my head, and then that clear water-like light starts to expand in all directions, quickly beyond this planet, to touch all the other minds of the universe.

Second formless realm level, called Namshetayi, infinite awareness, very open, very free, very happy, very expanded. The mind feels very happy, clear. Now that infinite mind becomes Sagakja, something too loud, too noisy, we want to go even more quiet, and now it's time to turn the mind off.

It's called Chiang Mai, third formless realm level, and imagine that you are just shutting off your mind, the mind turned off, no more noise of feelings going through the mind, or no more thoughts, so just pretend you're turning the mind off, like a light, and then everything's totally quiet, silent. If thoughts come up, if feelings come up, confront them, fight them, turn them off. So part of your mind is watching to see if any thoughts come up in the mind which is turned off.

Fourth formless realm level, and then we'll take a break, it's called Dushyamay, Dushyamay Min. At the third formless realm level, we turned off our mind, and we tried to block the small thoughts and feelings. Now at the fourth formless realm level, traditionally we allow the thoughts to come and go, we allow the feelings to come and go, because it's more quiet, it's more silent.

If we don't attach to them, we don't pay attention to them, we just let them go. So again we'll turn off the mind, but this time if thoughts come through the mind, we let them gather like clouds in the sky, and then we let them dissolve like clouds in the sky, and we don't attach to them. Fourth formless realm level, Dushyamay, Dushyamay Min.

Very, very quiet. Now please follow three long, slow exhales in your mind. Don't move, don't open your eyes.

Follow three long exhales, and then slowly open your eyes, and I like to take a stretch. You can drink something. When you're here in the desert, you have to drink a lot, okay?

And it makes the class more interesting, because you have to go to the bathroom. So my mom, my stepmother, had her 90th birthday recently. She's been here, she's a big supporter of Diamond Mountain for 20 years.

She does yoga still, she does yoga with us, and she walks three times a day for an hour. Three times a week, sorry. Three miles, and she's amazing.

She's still doing business, and she's my investment person. So anyway, we had her 90th birthday, and she invited us to the hotel on the beach. Small, cheap hotel, but right on the beach, so you can walk to the beach.

And my brother said, oh, we're going to go surfing, right? I'm like, okay, because we used to surf a lot. So I was in China and Taiwan, and I thought I better start exercising in the water, because I will die surfing.

So I went with me, and Stanley, and John, and Scott. Almost every day we went swimming in the hotel pool. And it's very boring.

Not like surfing, you know. You just swim to the other side, and then you talk about fundraising. Then you swim to the other side, you talk about your schedule.

And then if you want to go surfing, you've got to do many kinds of backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle, puppy dog. You have to do many kinds of, because the wave will push you under, and you have to know many ways to swim. So we tried every kind of swimming.

But it's boring, and it's not surfing, okay? It's just to get ready for surfing, because if you don't do it, you will have a bad time when you go surfing, right? So there's four levels of the form realm, and the four levels of the formless realm, and the air conditioner, which is the desire realm.

So nine levels, right? These are called warm-up. These are not meditation.

They are just swimming laps in the hotel pool, because you want to go surfing. You see what I mean? So, it's very, very famous that some people got stuck in the hotel pool, and they never went surfing, you see?

Especially the third formless realm level, it's very famous when you turn your mind off. Some people thought, oh this must be emptiness. So they stop there in the hotel pool, and they never go to the surfing, see?

So the idea is, these are all different ways to sharpen your meditation skills, and they're just exercises. They're not surfing. They're not the real thing.

So after you do the desire realm, then four form realm levels, four formless realm levels, nine levels, then you start the real meditation. Then you go surfing, okay? So don't stop in the pool, okay?

There's no content yet. There's just technique, you see? We're just exercising the meditation muscle in different ways, you know?

And it's not, it won't help you in your life. The karmic seed you make is, it's just kind of a pleasant seed. It won't change your life, you see?

So we are just exercising, and never stop there. Don't sit in the pool, you never go in the ocean, you see what I mean? So, these are just exercises, but they're very important exercises, and Buddha taught them, right?

Anybody going to tell me why it's called, why is it called form realm? Or nowadays I think the translation might be better if we call it world of beauty. Why is it called that?

Anybody want to see? Why are those first four called form realm? Yes?

Yeah, good. If that's all you do, if you just stay in the pool your whole life, a lot, first of all you get wrinkled everywhere. No, just kidding.

Yeah, because you're not having your normal negative thoughts, you will be born in a world of beauty. So form, rupa, in this meditation form realm means world of beauty. So you will be born into a place called the world of beauty.

And everybody there looks like Iron Man, and Spiderman, and Superman, and Wonder Woman, really. In fact, I believe that the movie makers came from form realm rebirth last time, and they're still remembering what people look like there, and how strong they are, and how they can fly, and they're super beautiful. But then you die there, and your bones, and your dust, and then you go to hell.

So not a good place to stop. You go to a better, you go to a beautiful realm because you're meditating so much in the pool that you don't have time to be jealous of other people, or angry, or upset, or as we normally do. Okay?

So it's just good luck. Then you temporarily, you go to a nice place, you get to be Iron Man for a couple years, and then you use up all your good karma, and then you always go to the hell realms. Okay?

Not a good, don't stop in the pool. Okay? Why formless realm?

Why the last four are called formless realm meditations? No, you already gave me answer. Let the older people say something.

Huh? Why, why do you go formless realm? Yeah, no more gross form.

You still have subtle prana. You still have chi. In that sense you still have a physical basis, but you're basically a mental person.

You just live in the head, and it's very, very, very pleasant. It's like being on, it's like smoking marijuana all day, I guess. Judging from my friends who do that, they seem like that.

They don't have any activity. They don't do anything. They can't have any ideas.

They're just kind of, hey man. So that's like formless realm, beyond the physical. It means beyond physical.

Okay? So if you stop in the pool, that's the two choices. And that's why they're given those names.

That's why they have those names. Because if that's all you do, then when you die, you will go to one of those places temporarily, and then you'll go to the hell realms. Okay?

So not a place to stop. And we want to, we want to go to the, to surfing. Okay?

So surfing is called the gope nyom juk. Okay? Say gope.

Nyom juk. Gopa means stopping. Stopping.

Cessation. Stopping. Okay?

And Maria was asking me what, what kind of stopping, because I guess there's two words in Russian for stopping. So traditionally, it's called stopping meditation, gope nyom juk, because you stop your wrong idea about things. So you don't think the pen is coming from the pen.

If you stop thinking that the pen comes from the pen, and you realize that it comes from you, then you are, you are doing stopping meditation. Then that's a cessation. The stopping means, you stop your belief that the thing is coming from itself.

That's why it's called stopping meditation. Okay? Gope nyom juk.

So we're going to do a gope nyom juk. Okay? That's the surfing.

Alright? And after that, you can do a Wheel of Life meditation. And that's like lying on the beach after surfing, and enjoying the sun.

Okay? Alright? Like those are the two goals.

It's surfing and lying on the beach. Okay? And Maitreya said, DE NAS ZEN GYI RNAMS KYING PAS, STING NGE BRDZIN LA NYOM ZHUGS NAS, RTEN CING BRAL BYUNG LUG DUNG DANG, LUG MI THUN LA RTOG PAR BYED Very famous.

We have to memorize it in the monastery. He says, do your, do your desire realm, which is like the ground floor of a European hotel. Because in Europe, they call the second floor the first floor.

You don't know how many times I wander around the lobby looking for my hotel room, because they say you're on the first floor. But the first floor is the second floor. Okay?

Alright? So lobby is desire realm, air conditioner. Then the first floor is the first form realm, four floors.

And then there's four formless realm floors. And I like to compare it to the, what's this hotel called? Premier Palace Hotel in Kiev, Ukraine, where we often have our programs there.

And it's a great example, because on the ninth floor, counting European way, there's a great American breakfast. With a stunning view of Kiev. Right?

You teach there, Peter, you and Maria? They teach ACI there, a lot. And congratulations for that.

And then you can go down the ninth floor. And it's very secret. You have to go down some weird corridors.

And then there's a huge American breakfast. So for me and Scott, this is the ultimate goal. It's the ninth floor.

Okay, so ninth floor is like surfing. Ninth floor is cessation meditation, stopping meditation, emptiness meditation. And then if you want for dessert, you can do a dependent origination meditation.

And then this is a full course meal. Okay? That's called trug chig.

Trug chig in meditation, in the study of meditation, is called trug chig. Trug chig means, trug means offspring. Like a baby cow is called a batuk.

A baby rabbit is called a ribontuk. Okay? You just add trug.

And the colloquial, do you know the colloquial? It changes, it's pugu, pugu. Pugu is trug.

It means kid. So this meditation has five babies. Trug.

Okay? We just did half of the first baby. We did half of part one.

We just finished half of part one. There's four more parts, four and a half more parts. We didn't do yet.

Okay? So, it's sort of a grand meditation that really you can do it for three, four years and get good at it, you know. And it's good to learn it in pieces, and to get good at the first eight floors in the lobby, and then go on.

Okay? So I'm going to describe the stopping meditation. Okay?

And I think recently in Taiwan we found a good way to describe it. So, if you have a partner, wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, I don't know about you, I'm a little jealous. I don't have to be too jealous because my partner is really beautiful and devoted.

But in my life, since I was 16, I've been in jealous relationships. I know what they're like, and it's very unpleasant because you're always paranoid. So, imagine that you come home early from work, and you walk in the apartment and your partner is sitting there like this, you know, and they see you, and then they're like, oh hi, you're early, you know, and they take the phone and they kind of hide it behind them, you know, and you're like, who are you texting, you know?

In the old days, in my house, when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, we just had one phone. And then, you know, four brothers with four girlfriends trying to use one phone, you know, and it was always unpleasant. And then my mom, we asked my mom, we didn't have money, we asked my mom, can we have an extension phone?

So that means I can sit in my bedroom and talk to my girlfriend without talking in the kitchen and everybody hears what I'm saying. So, but they're connected. So, my brother is always in the kitchen, you know.

And then you can hear, if you're a teenager, your ears are good, you know, you can hear this, that's when they pick up the extension, you know. They say, are you LLM? Yeah.

You shouldn't talk like that to your girlfriend. Yeah, shut up. Then later it became cell phones, right?

And now people can do adultery very easily. You know, they can text to some boyfriend or girlfriend that their husband doesn't know about or their wife doesn't know about. So you come home and your partner is like, and then they're like this, you know.

And you say, well, who are you texting? And they're like, oh, it's nobody. Then you get really uncomfortable, you know.

And you're like, hmm, what's going on? Then you get paranoid. Many people get jealous.

Jealousy creates misperception, right? So you think, oh, they must have a girlfriend or they must have a boyfriend. Then they take a shower, right?

And the phone is on the table. So naturally, you don't like it and you don't feel comfortable, but you can't stop yourself. You're like, who are they texting?

Because you have this whole picture in your mind of somebody they met on the train last week and they had a conversation and they were talking like hitting on each other, you know. Me and Veronica went to a... my stepmom took us to a play.

She went to the bathroom. Some guy tried to take her out. She came back, she said, ah, some guy just tried to pick me up.

I'm like, what? Where is he? She's like, he said he wants to get to know me.

I said, no, he doesn't. Okay, it's a bad feeling, right? So, you want to check your partner's phone, you know, and you're checking it.

And you check the time when you came home. What's the messages from this time? And then it says, there's a message from Amazon or Alibaba and it says, your secret birthday gift for your wife is delivered.

It's sent from Alibaba. It will come, this beautiful coat that you bought for your wife is for her birthday. Secret birthday present?

So, he was happy about the present that he bought you and he wasn't texting any girlfriend. He was happy because he got, he found the coat that he wanted for you and that's why he had that big stupid smile on his face. And then all, at that moment, the feeling you have and the picture you have in your mind of the other husband, the other boyfriend or the other girlfriend, the whole story that you wrote in your mind for one hour, two hours, the whole thing goes, you know, and that's Gakcha.

That's perfect Gakcha. Because the nature of Gakcha, the nature of a self-existent thing is it gives you emotions. It gives you anger.

It gives you jealousy. You see? And it's all fake.

It's not true. It doesn't exist at all. It's some story you wrote in your mind.

And when you check your husband's phone, he's ordering you a birthday present. Then suddenly the Gakcha, okay, that's Gakcha, something that wasn't there just goes poof and it just disappears. Okay?

So that's the goal when we get to surfing. Okay? We're going to explore things that don't exist that give us all of our negative emotions, all our strong emotions, anger, jealousy, desire.

We're going to realize, poof, it was never there. Okay? So when we go to the ninth floor, the American breakfast, the surfing, is to explore how things that we got so excited about weren't even there.

Got it? Okay? So we're going to, when we reach the ninth floor, that's what we're going to do.

And that's called Gokpa-nyomchug, stopping. What are we stopping? The idea that your husband had a boyfriend.

Okay? How real was it? Not at all.

Okay? You're stopping something that was never real anyway. Got it?

Okay? That's Gokpa-nyomchug. You got to understand, you're not stopping your anger.

That exists. You're not stopping your jealousy. That exists.

You're stopping what caused the anger and what caused the jealousy, which is a guy who never existed or a woman who never existed. Okay? Got it?

It was just Alibaba or Amazon. Got it? Okay?

So you got to get that feeling of I was wrong. There was nothing there. I was all upset for nothing.

And every upset feeling you ever had in your life was the same. All of them. They were thinking about something that wasn't there.

Every time you get upset. Not just this time. Okay?

And that exercise of blowing up people you're upset at is called surfing. Okay? That's the real goal.

So don't waste your time in the elevator. Go have the American breakfast. Go surfing.

Don't do laps in the stinky hotel pool in the chemical water, you know. Go out in the nice fresh salt water and beautiful sunlight and surf. Okay, that's when I was 25.

Now it's kind of like... Okay? All right.

So let's take a break. A pee-pee break. And when we come back we'll do a little bit of the American breakfast.

Okay. And by the way, that's only part of the first round. Tuk.

First round. We have to do five rounds. We have to learn five rounds.

Okay? All right. Thank you.

Okay, let's start. Some people had some questions about the meditation. I think Vimala would like to start with a question.

Let's do a microphone so everybody can hear. And please try to talk into the mic. Like, some people hold the mic like this and talk.

Try to talk into the mic so everybody can hear. We'll do some questions about the meditation.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. Thank you, Lama.

[Speaker 1]
So when you're going into the heart chakra and you're going deeper and deeper into the heart chakra, into the form realm, and this feeling of like becoming kind of a solid form, and then you come out inside the heart chakra and you go out infinitely and you're touching infinite beings. It's the formless realm.

[Speaker 2]
So I was wondering, is there a connection between the form and the formless and the rupakaya, the enjoyment bodies, and bhoga and the emanation bodies?

[Speaker 1]
Is there some connection between the samsaric form and formless and then going into the buddhahood? Yeah, good question. I think there's a big connection.

For me especially, when I do the ocean and the space, then I feel like it's sort of preparing me for the day when I reach Buddha headquarters as the newest Buddha and they assign a planet to me. I always see me and V, we get assigned a planet to take care of. So I feel like I already have experience with outer space.

Actually, I do feel that it sets up the seeds for the different Buddha bodies. It's important I think, there are very few teachings that were specifically the same between our Buddha Gautama and the next Buddha Maitreya. But this teaching was repeated by both of them independently.

You know. So I think there must be some big significance to planting seeds for your body, for your Buddha bodies, even from the laps in the pool. Okay, I agree.

Any other question?

[Speaker 2]
I have a question from the live stream.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, cool.

[Speaker 2]
This is from Lucy in Canada.

[Speaker 1]
Cool.

[Speaker 2]
She asks, when you do the step inside the heart with the grain of sugar crystal, I'm a bit afraid to create something wrong in my heart. What would I do at that point?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's a good question. So traditionally, you know, especially the long-term meditators, and we have a few in here. If you did a three-year retreat, can you stand up?

Connie, John, Earl. Yeah. Yeah.

So you have seven three-year retreatants, which is unusual in one room. And when you do a long-term retreat, you kind of want to avoid too much going on in your heart chakra, because it's a very vulnerable place in your spiritual body. And you can easily get unbalanced.

You can get nervous. And you might feel it this week, okay, in your own cabin. If you're used to living in Beijing or Shanghai or Guangzhou, and suddenly you're out in the desert by yourself, and there's all kinds of interesting creatures walking around, and too many stars, so you can feel a little bit nervous in your heart.

So you... Yeah, when you're meditating, personal retreats, it's good not to do too much inside the heart. And the antidote is to drop the meditation to your navel chakra.

So you drop it to the level of your belly button, more towards the back. Okay, so when they say navel chakra, they don't mean navel. So you don't meditate on this little hole.

You go around at the same height to the back, just in front of the spine. And you bring the meditation there. So you can do it there if you start to feel nervous at the heart.

And I'll tell you a funny thing, which is not funny when you're in a long retreat. If you go too low, you won't be able to poo-poo. So, if that happens, raise it up a little bit.

Okay, but if you feel nervous, like your breath is too fast, and your heart's beating too fast, and your hands are shaking a little bit, in your personal retreat, then drop it to the navel chakra. Okay, any other question?

[Speaker 2]
There's another question from the live stream.

[Speaker 1]
Okay.

[Speaker 2]
This is from the great Erin Chad up in Sedona, Arizona. And she says, thank you for teaching, Geshe-la. My question is about the fourth formless realm in the lion's dance.

I'm wondering if this is what other traditions might call shamatha meditation.

[Speaker 1]
There's a lot of confusion about meditation practices. There's many, many, you know, what they call vipassana. For example, I did it in 1975 with Goenka, who founded it.

And I spent 10 days with him in deep retreat. And there were 50 Tibetan monks with us. And we did it for 10 days.

You know, I was very young. I didn't know about meditation. And I learned a lot.

And at that time, the most important part of it was to watch your breath. And so, that would be the elevator. That would be swimming laps, you see?

So, there's no content to it which would cause you to become enlightened. It would just make you more peaceful or calm for a while. And so, later I learned it's not vipassana.

Vipassana is a Pali word which is spoken Sanskrit. It's like, it's taught like in the South in America. And people talk like that.

And the words are a little bit changed. So, Sanskrit became spoken for a while. And then people, it's called Pali.

And it's kind of like slang. And so, the real word is vipassana and not vipassana. And then, it doesn't mean watching your breath.

So, it just got some confusion. It got some confusion. After the Buddha died, until Nagarjuna, 700 years, there was a period of confusion.

And that's when the Abhidharma was the main Buddhist school. And I spent 12 years studying Abhidharma. So, we take it very seriously.

I memorized the first half of the book, ngapo nam li dun shi la wang chok shi la nyi lang lo nga rang ne pa te rang ni kuni no yong dong jang la like that. But it's mistaken. It's not a high school.

So, those traditions came out of that. So, it's good to know them and it's good to understand them. And it's good not to swim laps for your whole life.

It's better to learn to surf. Okay? But it doesn't hurt.

It's just that you shouldn't stop in the elevator. You will never get a good breakfast. Okay?

It doesn't help you that much. It's just exercise. One more question?

Vivian has one.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la. My question is for this meditation. Geshe-la, before you talk about how to do this meditation, it's very important to know that we should have a very high motivation.

You talk about when you don't have that kind of high motivation, that one part of your mind will stop. So, because I check my life and I find that sometimes I find myself forgetting to forget things. So, maybe that's because I do something wrong in this meditation.

So, it stops that part of my mind.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good question. So, the karma of staying in the elevator is the seed you plant by kind of smoking marijuana meditation, in meditation, you know, just like... Some people like to go home and drink a beer every night.

And they don't get drunk and they don't fight, but they're like, and if I just meditate to feel good or to feel peaceful, the karma of that, the seed it plants in my mind is to be forgetful or to not be able to think clearly. So, Vivian's asking, if I did an elevator with a low motivation and, you know, I kind of get stuck in the elevator, then karmically, am I planting seeds to be forgetful? Like you lose your keys and you lose your cell phone and you don't remember what you're supposed to do today.

Allison has to send you email, Keshla, you forgot to do this thing. And, yeah, I think it's possible. But I think the general Lamrim, those people who come to the Lamrim regularly, you don't have to come to all of them, it's too many.

You will get fired from your job and your family will divorce you. But those who come to Lamrim, I think you understand the goal and you understand the purpose of what we're doing. So, I think, you know, like what you're doing in Guangzhou, you're organizing thousands of people.

That motivation is to help the whole city of Guangzhou. And I don't think you ever lose it. I think you can have a bad day when you're just thinking about yourself.

But I don't think it's possible for you to keep coming to Lamrim and you don't think about the reason why we're coming here, is to help the world. So, I don't think you have to worry about it. It's probably just getting old.

Like me. Right, Phil? Me and Phil can tell you about it.

But don't worry too much about it. It won't stay. You don't have...

Those are old seeds and you are burning them. So, I don't... Personally, I find my mind becoming sharper as I, you know, every year.

Weird things. Strange things. Like I remember Buddhism classes I had when I was 20 or something.

Very clearly. So, I think your mind will get sharper as you get older. Okay.

So, I kind of wanted to... We have about an hour left of this class. And I wanted to kind of give you the plan for the week.

Okay. So, there's a couple of goals I have. One is, while we're fresh, especially in the morning, we'll spend a lot of time on meditation.

And I'd like you... I've never taught the third and fourth parts of the Lion's Dance. So, you guys are the first people in the world to do it this week.

And we'll do part three and part four. Okay. So far we've done half of part one.

But the other parts are faster. So, I'd like to do parts three and four with you. And then I would like you to do it in your personal retreat, the three-day personal retreat.

And I would like you to do it for the next few months. Okay. Because then when I do part five, you are ready.

Okay. And those of you who haven't been working on it, like I know I taught it in Germany, for example, or Vienna. And you guys should be practicing it.

Because then when I teach the next part, you're ready for the next part. You see what I mean? So, you got to have the foundation.

So, if you haven't had the first few parts, just... and we did it in New York. Just, it's okay.

You'll have to catch up. Okay. But you have to work hard between retreats.

Okay. On the meditation. Then it's much more exciting to do the next part, because your foundation is there.

Okay. So, we'll spend a lot of time on the lion's dance. I gave you a reading.

Tim told me I wrote the numbers wrong. I misnumbered something, but don't worry about it. I think around number 20 it does it twice.

So, but that's a nice thing and we'll do that all week. And then we'll continue with the lamrim. Lamrim is a...

there's two tracks in Buddhism. There's a Geshe track and there's a lamrim track. So, you can either become a monk and take the Geshe track and then you study the five great books for 20, 25 years.

All day. And if you don't have time for that, traditionally in Tibet, you would do lamrim track. And then...

and the monks also do lamrim track, but they do it during vacation time. Then big lamas come and teach lamrim. You know.

It's kind of like a dessert. So, lamrim track, it's really the same information as the Geshe track, but it's not as detailed. And it's more...

it's more focused on meditation. So, lamrim is this similar information, but it's more emphasis on meditation, using it in meditation. Geshes don't use it, the Geshe track in meditation that much.

They'll do... their meditations are largely from lamrim. So, if you want to be a meditation teacher or something like that, you should know the lamrim.

So, we'll do lamrim... we'll do the next part of lamrim. We have reached a section about suffering.

Especially different kinds of suffering of human beings. Okay? So, we'll be...it's kind of a depressing week. And...it's supposed to make you sad, so you want to keep going to get out of the suffering. But first you have to learn the suffering. And according to the lamrim, we are all suffering.

Three kinds of suffering, right? Number one is called dunyog gi dunyog, which is? Suffering and pain.

You know, like the classic example, tsen shi? Headache, backache, okay? Obvious pain.

Okay, then the second kind of pain? Gyurwa dunya, which is what? What's the tsen shi?

Classical example. A dinner at Cucina Rustica, right? Like a really nice dinner, because it will change, you know?

You will get hungry after a while. So, it's really not pleasure, it's like another kind of... it's disguised pain.

While you're eating the dinner, and having... before you get hungry, you are getting older. Okay?

And if you go to enough dinners, you'll be in the nursing home. You see? So, during the pleasure, you're also getting older, and your body is starting to fall apart.

Okay? Those of us... What do we talk about when we hit 65?

I'll tell you. We talk about our doctors. You got a new doctor?

Wow, really? What? Yeah, they give me, you know...

Okay, so your body... even while you do yoga, even while you meditate, your body is getting older. So, we're going to study all that this week.

We're going to continue to the Lamrim. So, my goal was to teach the whole Lamrim Nanda Lakchang, which is called A Gift of Liberation Stuffed Into Your Hands. Like the Lama goes, Take it!

You know? Here's Buddhahood. You know?

So, that's the name of the book. I think it's the greatest book ever written. It's about 500 pages?

400? 500? In the Tibetan.

And the goal, we had a goal of finishing it in 10 years. And we're on schedule. We're about 8 years through...

8 and a half, something like that. We're not far from the end now. We're about 2 years from the end.

It's been 29... This is the 29th retreat. It's cool that we all survived and we're still going.

So, we have about 8 more classes. Then my strategy in the beginning was I taught the meditation section first. I went to the end of the book and I taught the meditation section because we were going to meditate during all the Lamrims.

So, those of you who were there in Prescott and Phoenix, we started at the end of the book and we did the meditation section. Then we went back to the beginning so you could use the meditation to meditate on the Lamrim. But then I thought when we get to the end and we reach the meditation section which we already did, we'll skip the Tsongkhapa's Lamrim because this Lamrim doesn't spend much time on meditation and emptiness because Tsongkhapa spent half his book.

Tsongkhapa has 500 pages on meditation and emptiness. So, my grand plan was to teach the meditation section from the Gift of Liberation, then do the whole Gift of the Rest, and then at the end for dessert we do Tsongkhapa on Samatha and Vipasyana, direct perception of emptiness. And so, this book will take 8 more retreats.

And then if we do dessert, that will take 20 more retreats. We had 28, we're half way through. We finished 29, we had 28 to go.

And now, my idea is the reason, one of the reasons I taught the Lamrim was my teacher taught it to me three times. His teacher wrote it down. His teacher's teacher gave the teaching.

So, you are a direct lineage holder. You are a fourth generation. So, it was taught by Pabongka Rinpoche.

It was written down by Trijang Rinpoche who edited it for 20 years. And it's the greatest book in the Tibetan language. And then my teacher taught it three times for 30 years.

And now I'm teaching it. Next one is you. You have to teach it.

So, I have a plan, I have a new plan. Since we have 8 retreats left, I'm going to start reviewing the whole thing also. So, part of this week, every class, we'll start to review the whole thing.

So, by the time you reach the end of The Gift of Liberation, you will have reviewed the whole thing. My motivation for reviewing it is I want you to teach it. So far, I didn't do homeworks and I didn't do examinations because, to be honest, I didn't have time because I'm so busy in Guangzhou and other places.

So, my dream is to review it with you through a thing that I call idim. You want to put up the first idim? Idim, I made a new word in English.

Stanley and Allison came to me. They said, we have to translate this reading, Geshe-la. What's idim?

I said, idim is a new word. I invented it. What's it mean?

It's called idea image, idea image. So, it's a picture. Mnemonic?

Something that will trigger your memory of a subject, okay? So, I'm choosing pictures that will remind you of one of the great topics of the Lamrim. Here's the first one, okay?

So, that's the picture of the author who gave the teaching, Pabongka Rinpoche. And I want you to use the pictures as a study tool to become a teacher, okay? Lamrim teacher.

So, that's separate from a DCI teacher, for example, okay? A Lamrim teacher is a different thing. And I want you to look at the picture and I'll review with you starting this week.

And we'll review for two years. We'll just review for two years. How many idims will there be?

500, okay? There'll be 500. We have to finish 60 this week.

You have eight more Lamrim retreats. We have to review 60 ideas this week if you're going to pass it on to the next generation, okay? So, this is my way to test you.

Then I have another idea. You want to put up that image of the ACI teacher training thing which I sent you this morning? It's a PDF of two pages.

No? Yeah. It's just a black and white two-page thing I sent you this morning.

You'll find it. Anyway, I have an idea. We would like to start an ACI teacher training like the DCI teacher training.

The DCI teacher training which the bosses or reed of the college in Sedona, and they've been going for just over a year now. For me, the magical moment was in Taipei and we had 3,000 participants. We had 3,000 people in the room and we had 31 teachers.

Most of them were trained at the college and I got all these people telling me these teachers are really good. I had a lot of people tell me these teachers are really, really good. I've been trying to teach teachers for 30 years and I failed spectacularly.

But Orit got it together. Orit and Scott, mostly Orit, they have a good training. It's a tough training and they are producing really good teachers.

So I'd like to thank her. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It is a PDF. But I'll give you...

It wasn't the right one. I'm sorry. So anyway, I would like to do...

We would like to do an ACI teacher training. What's the difference between ACI and DCI? ACI, well DCI is meant to be not religious, okay?

And for example, earlier this year we went to Kazakhstan and we taught a thousand Muslim people in one night. DCI, so DCI is the great ideas of, now what's the name of this thing? Hang on.

Sorry, hang on just a second. You got too many things. Yeah, where is that thing?

Hang on. Oh, you're right, I did give you the wrong one. Yeah, where is that?

Oh, I got it. Okay, it's called ACI Teacher Training. Okay, what was I talking about?

Yeah. So anyway, I was so happy with what's happening with the DCI teachers that we would like to train ACI teachers. What's the difference between ACI and DCI?

DCI is meant for everybody in the world and it's especially meant for business people, professional people, and it doesn't matter if they want to be Buddhist or not. Many of them, for example, all the Muslim, one thousand Muslim people that we taught in Kazakhstan, none of them want to be Buddhist. They're not interested.

They have their own religion, they're happy with it. And I'm happy that they're happy. And everyone should do what their parents did and that's okay.

You don't want to get married in a Christian church if you're Buddhist and you don't want to get married in a Buddhist church if you're Muslim. So, that's okay, right? So, DCI is trying to teach the great ideas of Asia to normal people so they can be successful in their life, in their business, in their family, in their health, in their mental state, and that we can create some kind of peace in the world.

So, that's DCI. It's extremely successful. It's kind of too successful.

And we have invitations to many, many countries we can't go to. We are canceling many countries. So, we really need more teachers.

And I think the college is very, very exciting and it's producing new teachers so fast that I think we can meet the new countries that need us, you know? So, I'm excited about it and I think it will go on for many years. And we have a dream to build a branch in Europe and a branch in Asia so we can train teachers in other languages.

So, that's DCI. ACI is more Buddhist, okay? It's spiritual.

It's for people who are attracted to spiritual things. In DCI, for example, we don't talk about what's going to happen to you after you die or how can you become Buddha. It's not appropriate in DCI.

But in ACI, this is the beginning of ACI. It's what's going to happen to you after you die. And it's a big filter.

DCI is a big filter. So, a thousand people will come to a talk at the Union Trade Center in Singapore. From the thousand people, one hundred people will come to DCI retreat to go deeper.

From those hundred people, ten people will come to Diamond Mountain. Okay? So, it's like a big filter.

So, the people who are deeply interested in spiritual things, they will end up here. Few people. You are out of 25,000 people.

You are the ones who came here. So, we need good ACI teachers. And we've been talking in many years, how can we teach ACI?

How can we create ACI teachers? And we have an idea, which we're working on with Jasmine, because she did such an amazing job in Thailand. Yeah, she sings and she also does great organizing.

Four hundred and thirty people came to the Lam Rim in Thailand last time. And she's building every year. She's good at organizing Lam Rim.

So, we had an idea. We've been teaching ACI for 25 years, 30 years. Hector's teaching it in New York for many years.

I'd like to thank him. But we're trying to think how to share ACI with more people. So, we wanted to try something.

It's called a meditation club. Sorry, meditation studio. So, when I wrote the Diamond Cutter book, in the book I said maybe business people should meditate.

At the time it was a very strange idea. And people loved it. And the book sold many, many copies.

I don't know, million copies. And many, many people are... But in the book I said maybe people want to try yoga also.

And my editor at Doubleday, which was the biggest book company in the world at the time, they said, take it out. Take out the word yoga. I said, why?

They said, nobody does yoga. Put golf. You know, I think the first edition said golf.

And at that time there was one yoga studio in New York. Now, yoga studio is normal, everywhere in the world. Everywhere you go there's yoga studios.

And they're actually based on the model of the first New York yoga studio, which was, I think, the first major one was Jiva Mukti. So, why you do an hour, why you do an hour and a half, the exercises you do, everything, the whole system, how the class is held, we don't know, but there's a history to it. And it started with a few people.

It started with three or four people. And they just said, well, how are we going to teach yoga? I don't know.

Let's get a big room. What do you want to do? Let's have mats.

Mat? What's a mat? You know, and you think it's normal now, but at the time it was...

they just had to create it because nobody was doing it. And even my editor didn't want me to put yoga in the book. You know, now it's...

millions of people are doing yoga, right? So, we think people want meditation like that. And when I went to the Three Jewels in New York, when I walk in the door of their new studio, which is amazing because it has a coffee shop, when you walk in the door says Enlightenment Studio.

And I was like, wow! That's got to be Hector. You know, Enlightenment.

I want to steal that. Enlightenment Studio. So anyway, we would like to build a chain of like meditation studios.

And then you call it meditation. People come from meditation. You teach them meditation.

You have many levels of meditation. And it becomes normal. Like in China, there's an old tradition of clan club.

Like all the wangs in Singapore will start a club called the Wang Club. I've been there. We gave talks there.

And it's a nice building like Century 21 in Shanghai or the club in Shenzhen. It's a nice... It's like the Princeton Club in New York.

And it's like five stories. There's a sauna. There's a yoga room.

There's a meeting room. There's a nice cafe. You know, tea.

You can go for tea. Like real Chinese tea service. They have nice food, really nice food.

So we would like to start building things like that where business people can go for meditation. And they get a massage. And they do a sauna.

And they meditate. And in the back room, there's a DCI. Sorry, ACI.

36 courses going on in the back room. So if you like, you can go to the back room. Only the special people.

And everybody learns to meditate and be calm and relax and have a nice talk with your friends and have a nice tea and have a nice meal and do some meditation together. And then go back to your job, relaxed and fresh and enlightened. So anyway, I thought Jasmine should be in charge of that around the world.

And so we've been working on that. Because she's a business person also. And she knows how to borrow money from investors and build buildings.

But we need teachers. We need teaching staff for those centers, those studios. So here's my idea.

You guys ready yet? Yeah, here's my idea. We had many meetings with Jigme and Tim who are in charge of ACI in America at the college building.

We have an office there. And this is what we thought. And we maybe changed some things, but...

First is... First level is Lamrim Meditation Guides. That means you've finished idim.

Idim means idea image. 500 pictures. If I put a picture in front of you, you can say, yes, this is the third obstacle of meditation.

What is the third obstacle of meditation? Huh? What?

Yeah, good. Okay. Either you've got sleepy mind or busy mind, okay, in your meditation.

Then the picture happens to be a wife who's excited, too excited, and her husband next to her who's falling asleep. That's the image. In fact, I chose it this morning.

So, that would be one of 500 images. So, you will take like a Geshe examination. If you want to be a Lamrim meditation teacher, you will take an exam with 500 pictures.

And I'll show you a wife who's too excited and her husband sitting next to her who's too sleepy. And you're going to tell me, this is meditation obstacle number three. And then you pass the test and you become a meditation teacher.

Lamrim meditation teacher? Okay. So, we're going to do those 500 pictures 60 at a time.

So, this week we'll do 60. Okay. I will review with you the first 60, which is about, what, 10%.

And then we do it seven more times, seven more retreats, okay? If you cannot come to the next retreat, you're not going to get the items for that retreat. Then you can talk to Jasmine and you can, or Tim or Jigme, we'll work it out to train you for those.

You see what I mean? But, then each item will have the page number of the Lamrim. So, in Chinese and in English, the three volume book.

So, if you don't remember why the wife is excited and why the husband is sleepy, you just go read those two pages and you review from the book. Okay? So, if you want to be a Lamrim meditation guide, 500 items, 60 at a time, eight retreats, the next eight retreats, because after the eighth one we're done with this book.

Okay? Then you can be a meditation teacher, Lamrim meditation teacher. Okay?

And, next point, you can do it personally or you can do it professionally. Personally means, you teach your family or you teach your friends. And we have many teachers like that around the world.

They are teaching ACI to their friends and their... I think Orit is teaching her mother and it's very successful. I don't know how many levels she did, but...

15. Her mom, who's a boss of a hospital, who runs a hospital. Okay?

But secretly she's doing the ACI courses. Okay? So, you can do it personally.

You can be certified to teach small groups in your living room. Or, if you want to teach professionally, it's tougher. The certification is tougher.

Like Peter and Maria teaching in Europe. You know, it's tougher to pass. Okay?

We'll have more requirements. Okay? And, if you want to teach online, you need a professional certification plus.

Okay? Plus more. Because online teachers are more...

They affect thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. So, they have to be better. Okay?

So, there are special professional teachers. Okay? Second kind of teacher, and you have a choice.

You can do one or you can do two or you can do both. You can be super teacher. Okay?

So, you have choice. You can do Lamrim, which is more spiritual and more meditation. Okay?

Or you can do ACI courses, which is Geshe. Okay? 36 courses.

There are 18 foundation courses, and there are 18 advanced courses. Okay? You can go either one.

And again, you can do personal, which is small groups. Teach small groups. You are certified to teach to your friends.

And they're friends' friends, but not the friends' friends' friends. Okay? And...

Or you can do professional, which means you could teach at Jasmine's Meditation Studio. You see what I mean? You have license to teach professionally.

And then you can do online option. Okay? Next part.

Meditation Studio Master, that's teaching professionally in a meditation studio in Beijing or Shanghai or Los Angeles or New York or whatever. And Hector, we're thinking he should build a second center in New York. The first center is religious.

The meditation centers are not religious. They are for professional people. Okay?

It's like a club, private club. Okay? It's not religious.

And we will ask the approval of the Chinese government. Okay? Before we build them in China.

Okay? We will talk to the necessary people to make sure it's not religious. Okay?

It's for professional people to sharpen their mind and have good food once a week. So meditation studio training. My idea is twelve concentrations.

Concentration means health, peace of mind, creativity, innovation, leadership. You choose one. You see what I mean?

And you can teach those meditations. I like this thing of wushu? Wushu.

Taekwondo. Anyway, you get these belts, right? You get...

I did it for one year until I broke my foot. You get white belt. Then you get yellow belt.

Then you get green belt. Then you get brown belt. Then you get black belt.

Then you get black belt number two. Black belt number three. So I thought we could have levels of meditation training for professionals.

Professional business people. I like that. And then maybe companies will ask we want to have that training in our...

So the meditation studio would supply meditation training to... to companies. And I would like to call it meditation teachers and not ACI teachers.

You see? They are meditation teachers. They go to teach meditation.

Accidentally they teach ACI. Okay? Understand.

Next. Because everybody likes a meditation teacher. Okay.

So what I just talked about is content. It's the Lam Rim or it's the ACI Geshe courses. But what we learned at Diamond Mountain by hard experience was it's not enough to teach a teacher the content.

You have to teach them other things also. Or they are not a good teacher. We made a mistake here.

So these are more requirements. Okay. First one is four legs of the table.

For every... All the meditation teachers will have to do the four legs of the table. Number one is content.

That's the 36 ACI courses. Or the Lam Rim courses. 500 image ideas.

Or the executive meditations for the studios. Okay? That's content.

We are very very good at content. We are the best in the world. Nobody comes close.

I don't think so. Second is presentation. Some people know the material but they don't know how to teach.

They get up and they go, Okay? So we'll teach you not to be nervous basically. And Orit has a fantastic system for that.

So we are going to ask her to advise this process. Third is production, which is Scott's great skill. Which is, how do you do a program for 500 people?

You know, Yao Li, right? In Taiwan. How do you...

How do you handle 3000 people in a single room? How do you market? How do you...

How do you finance it? How do you keep the finances? Like that.

It's not enough to be a teacher. And it's not enough to know your content if you don't know how to rent a room and get the people there. You see what I mean?

So that's presentation. Then the fourth part of it is professionalism, which is mainly two things. Number one, you don't hurt other people sexually or their marriage or things like that.

You are good behavior. Second is financial. You keep good records.

You pay your taxes. You're clean. Your finances are clean.

Your finances are correct. And you're not in debt. Okay?

So those are the four principles that we teach DCI teachers. And we would like to use it for the ACI teachers also. Number five, I put here DCI language study.

DCI has a whole language which is like French or something. You have to learn it. You know, like somebody says you have a two husbands in the kitchen problem and then everybody else is like, what?

Or you need the pen. Or you know, you need to think about... What's that called?

You cannot guess. These are all DCI language. You should learn it because when you teach in the meditation studio, you probably have to use a lot of DCI dialect, language.

Okay? So I think everyone in the ACI training should learn a little bit of DCI. Right now in the DCI training, everybody learns the ACI courses also and it's very good for them.

We have DCI teachers from Europe for example who come to me, they say, I don't want to be Buddhist. I say, yeah, but you're going to study the ACI course. I don't ask you to become Buddhist.

You don't have to be Buddhist. But you have to know the ancient books. You have to understand the ancient books.

You must study the ACI courses. If you're an ACI teacher, you should be able to speak the modern language which is so successful for DCI. The reason 3,000 people come is that we're not talking about bodhichitta.

We're not talking about rupakaya, dharmakaya, sambhogakaya. There's no Sanskrit. There's no Buddhist words.

It's all seeds and pen and four steps and Starbucks and shimbhaka. Okay? So you need this language, I think.

Number six, continuing education units. My partner Veronica, she's a massage therapist. Legally, she has to take a course every year which is approved by the state of Arizona.

Legally, to be licensed, she has to come back once a year and take... it's like three days of courses or she cannot practice. It's the same for lawyers.

It's the same for doctors. It's the same for school teachers because you are responsible for people's health and happiness. So they have to make sure you are still training, you still understand.

You didn't get trained 20 years ago and you forgot everything and you are still teaching. So every year you come back and you do a review course like that. ACI and DCI regular programs.

Maybe you come to a retreat in Mexico or Thailand once a year just so we can see you and make sure you didn't grow two heads. Like that. You review and deepen courses.

You take deeper courses like we are going to start Nagarjuna in Mexico. Much, much deeper. So you take these special courses.

And then finally, the translators and we are fortunate today we are going to have a talk by one of the translators. We have about 12 people, 10 in Sedona studying how to translate the ancient books and we have about 81 in China studying how to translate the ancient Chinese classics. So we have about 100 translators worldwide.

The ones in Arizona are producing 2,000 pages of translation per year. And we have a plan to produce 108 books. The first one was finished two days ago and it's ready to go to the publisher.

It's the only great, the only long commentary to the Diamond Cutter Sutra from Choney Lama. So my idea is if you are going to be an ACI teacher you are studying these books. You are learning these books, okay?

And it went to, that book went for translation yesterday into Chinese. It's halfway finished in Spanish already. And we have Germans like Brigitta is going to work on it, right?

Russkies, like Kondratieva. So these books will go to them and they'll start translating them into modern languages, okay? So you would be involved with that.

Cool? So those are your options. To go back to the beginning of it, the first page, the Lam Rim Review will start tonight.

Okay? We'll start the first, we'll start the first images of the 500 image ideas, okay? IDIM.

And we'll just go like that. How we do, where we do the other training that you need, like how to present. We'll probably do it at the college in Sedona.

And we're talking about, although we're not clear yet, maybe we'll do the DCI teacher training and then immediately do the ACI teacher training after that. And then the ACI course that you study would be together. The DCI teachers and the ACI teachers would study the ACI course together.

You see what I mean? We just have to build a new building. Stuff like that.

But we're not totally clear on that. Jasmine, we're working on that. Tim and Jing-Mei and Hector.

Who's going to run those divisions? We have to decide. If you're interested in helping with this project, which is more religious, more meditation, it's meditation-oriented.

And I think most of the people in this room, you are kind of like more Lamrim than DCI. Or you like DCI, but you also like Lamrim. So if you're interested, if your heart is that kind of heart, if you're interested in the ACI training, talk to Jing-Mei or Tim or Jasmine.

Jasmine will run it globally, especially the clubs, and talk to them. We kind of need a few business people to help people who have business experience. We kind of need people in different countries who have built businesses, who understand that.

So that's the plan for this week. It's not much. And we have half an hour.

And we're going to start the Lamrim. We're going to go back to the Lamrim. Okay?

And I don't know if you have the... I guess I should send you the latest... Yeah, it's good.

Actually, I'm going to start... I'm going to start with something which is not in the text, okay? The text mentioned the four ayatruths.

Okay? So, this is the first teaching that the Buddha ever gave. Where?

Deer Park, Sarnath. Yeah. Which Alison and Stanley, they visited our Sanskrit entry center in Varanasi and they went to visit the Deer Park.

It's 45 minutes from our entry center. So, if you ever want to go there on a pilgrimage, you can stay at the entry center. We have a nice beautiful building there.

We're building a second building as a school. And they are typing in the great books of Sanskrit, Buddhist books, which are very difficult to find. And Vimala is doing a lot of great work to find those.

And I think we should give her a hand. Yeah. So, nobody found the great books in Sanskrit before, of Buddhism.

And her team, they're working very hard on it. Kristina Kasica is not here, right? Oh, sorry.

She's on the team too. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, that was the first teaching of the Buddha, was he taught the four Arya Truths. Okay?

And I... That's the last thing we talked about in the last Lamrim. And I would like to review it.

Okay? So, these are four... What's this thing?

Yeah, I got it. Oh. I thought I had 1115.

Sorry. Okay. I have 11 more minutes.

These are the first teachings that Lord Buddha gave. To whom? The five tigers.

Okay? The mommy tiger and her four babies. Okay?

Caldenya was the most important one. Do you remember what happened with Caldenya before? We had it recently.

He was the king of Kalinka. Yeah. Yeah.

We had it in Taiwan. Yeah. The main tiger, mommy, was the king of Kalinka who cut off the fingers of the guy in the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

Yeah. Okay? Anyway, so the four Arya Truths are really the foundation of all Buddhism and they came up here in the Lam Rim.

And I wanted to go on a little side trip and explain them because they don't get explained very clearly very often. The word... They are called Arya Sattva, right?

They are called the Arya Truths. And... So, early in the history of Western Buddhism they mistranslate the word Arya and they said Noble.

Noble means very respectable, follows the rules, pays their taxes, nice person. And that's a wrong translation. It's not the meaning of Arya.

Okay? So, don't... So, forget the word in English Noble Truths.

Four Noble Truths is not correct. It's one of the big traditional mistakes in Buddhism. I call them Dharma Rumors.

They are just mistakes. Okay? So, it's not Noble Truths.

It's Arya Truths. Why is it called Arya Truths? It's because only a person who has seen emptiness directly understands the Four Truths directly.

Okay? You can study them before that. You can learn about them before that.

But only an Arya sees them directly. Okay? Only an Arya understands them directly.

And... They relate to the path of seeing. So, the first time you see emptiness directly in that day, in those two or three hours, you have these four understandings.

And each of the four has four parts. So, there are sixteen. Okay?

They are called the sixteen aspects of the Four Truths. Okay? And there are two ways to teach the Four Truths.

You can teach them in the way they happen, or you can teach them in the order that they happen, or you can teach them in the order that they occur in your mind. Okay? And I'll explain the difference.

Okay? Anyone, give me one of them. No, Four Truths.

Yeah, pain. Suffering. Okay?

That's the first one. Okay? Pain.

Suffering. Especially getting old, forgetting everything, not being able to surf anymore, other tragedies. Like that.

Okay? That's the first one. What's the second one?

Huh? Yeah, where does it come from? What's the source?

Source of suffering. Okay? Where does it come from?

Okay, that's the second truth. Third truth? You can stop it.

You can stop it. Okay? Fourth truth.

Yeah, it's a path. There's a path. Okay?

There's a way. Okay? There's a way to stop it.

Okay? Now, that's the order in which it occurs when you're thinking about it. But the actual order is what?

Which one of the four comes first? The source. Yeah, first you have source of pain.

Then you have pain. Then you follow the path. And then you get to the end of the path.

You see? So, there's two ways to teach the four truths. Okay?

There's two ways. One is, how do they actually happen in time? And then secondly, how do they happen in your thinking?

Okay? So, traditionally, we teach them suffering first. Okay?

Because most people aren't even aware that they are suffering. Okay? They are suffering and they don't know.

They are in the yoga class. They are exercising. They feel pretty good.

And they are dying. And then suddenly they hit old age and they're, ah, freak out. Or they get their cancer or they get their heart attack.

And then suddenly they discover the truth of suffering. We had a student who lost her husband recently in a restaurant. He died in a restaurant sitting next to her, unexpected.

She came to me. She said, I just understood the four truths. Wow!

I just got the first one. You know? All this time you've been teaching Geshe-la.

She's been studying for 15 years. She said, I just understood the first truth. You know?

First time. So, pain. Okay?

Suffering. Even if you're having a good life, which is unusual, you're getting older. Okay?

You will lose everything. DCI is kind of funny because we're teaching people to get things that they're going to lose anyway. Then they have to come to the meditation studio.

Then they have to go to the back room. You see what I mean? So, that's the idea.

DCI is like the tunnel to the train or something. Anyway. And then the second one is the source.

Two classical divisions of the source of pain. Two classical... Yeah.

Karma and negative emotions is the current lingo. Yeah. Karma.

And then the negative thoughts that make you do karma. Anger, jealousy, desire. Okay?

So, kunjung denpa, the source of pain has two divisions. Karma and then the negative thinking that makes you do karma. Okay?

That's the source. Third one, the end of pain. Okay?

Basically two levels. I think you can think of it that way. What two?

Nirvana and Buddhahood. Okay? Nirvana and Buddhahood.

No. The definition of Nirvana. NYON DRIB MA LUG PAR BAM PA'I SO SOR TANG NGO NYON DRIB MA LUG PAR BAM PA'I SO SOR TANG NGO That's Maitreya's definition of Nirvana.

What is it? NYON DRIB Negative emotions. MA LUG PAR means all of them.

BAM PA means stop them forever. SO SOR TANG NGO Because you saw the four truths one by one after you saw emptiness directly. Okay?

That's the definition of Nirvana. You have to see emptiness directly. You have to see the four truths directly to reach Nirvana.

Otherwise it's impossible. And according to Buddhism, until you... I'm going to go to DCI language, okay?

Until you understand the two husbands in the kitchen, it's impossible to stop anger. Impossible. Not possible.

You can lower it. You can... What do you call it?

Suppress it. But you can't get rid of it until you understand the two husbands in the kitchen. Not possible.

Impossible. Okay? And then enlightenment is basically knowing all things.

Mr. Know-it-all. Which I achieved long ago. But not enlightenment.

Just kidding. Then you have ultimate capacity to help other people because you can make as many bodies as you want at the same time. Okay?

You can be in LA and Beijing at the same time and help people on the bus at the same time. Okay? Then the path, which is mainly the Lamrim.

Okay? What we're studying. Alright?

Now, what I would like to go into is the sixteen parts of the Four Truths. Four each. And the way I would like to do it is I'm going to teach it to you from two different scriptures.

Just as a sampler, I'll teach it to you from two different scriptures by two very good lamas. Okay? And I'll teach you what they say.

But one is Pabongka. One is, I think, Khedrup Je. And I'll teach you how they explain it, the sixteen, in the scriptures.

Okay? And then I'm going to teach it to you based on my own experience and what happened to me. And I believe it's the correct explanation of what the sixteen are.

Okay? So, normally I don't put in my own ideas, but it's difficult to find in the scripture. That the sixteen are there, the names are there, there's a little explanation about them, but not much.

Not enough. So, then I'll give you... I'll connect it to the actual experience.

Okay? So, we'll do that in this evening's class in addition to starting our Lamrim review, which will go on for two years. And then we'll be done with the Lamrim, and we're done with the review.

And then for dessert, we'll do about, I don't know, five or ten years of Tsongkhapa on emptiness. Okay? All right.