«Дар освобождения», курс 29 «Большой побег», занятие 5

[Speaker 1]
Let's get ready to meditate, okay? Turn off your phone, please. Blow your nose.

Beautiful. We're going to go for three rounds of the lion's dance, which we haven't really done it before, okay? Tomorrow we'll do four, and then you'll be ready for retreat.

All okay? Vidyambhita. Lion's singha vidyambhita.

And the root is jamb, and there's a word in Russian, grom, gromki, gromka, gromak, gromka. Thunder? Grom.

Thunder. Okay, comes from Vidyambhita. Here we go.

It has that feeling, the ancient root has this feeling. It wasn't really dance, it's lion's roar, okay? Why?

Why is it called lion? Remember? I was waiting for the punchline.

Yeah, that's not bad. She said, you are scaring away your mental afflictions, permanently, okay? I understand.

Really, okay? So, but that's why it's called. Your desire, your anger, your jealousy is supposed to run away because of your powerful meditation.

Especially obstacles to knowledge, says the text. Obstacles to omniscience, okay? You ready?

Let's go. When you do a lion's dance, you have a choice of timing, and when I'm pretty busy, I'll do maybe, I don't know, 10 breaths on each level. When I have time, I'll do 20 breaths on each level, or 30.

So tonight we'll do, I don't know, 10 or something. We'll go pretty fast, because we need to do three rounds tonight, okay? So please take, follow the desire realm, the sound of something in this room.

It could be the person next to you who's still moving, or it could be the air conditioner, or something like that. And now please come to your heartbeat, and the heartbeat from inside the chamber of your heart, the heart beating around you, outside world forgotten. Heartbeat at a distance, tiny, inside the heart, into the crystal, inside the heart.

Expand the mind as broad as an ocean, ripples going out. Expand the mind as wide as space, the awareness. Turn off the mind, block thoughts.

Turn off the mind and ignore thoughts and feelings. Ask one of your teachers to come. Think of how you first met them, the accidental meeting.

What were the events that brought that meeting from each side? And now think how the teacher that you met by accident doesn't exist. The events that brought them to you, and the events that brought you to them, also don't exist the way you thought.

They're all coming from some older seeds. And then go on a trip to your past lives, imaginary. Imagine how you planted those seeds.

You can focus on one good quality of your teacher, and try to imagine what seeds caused it. What good thing did you do in the past? Have fun, relax.

Imagine how you planted this great thing in your life. Come back to the center of your mind. See the silver seeds.

Watch one of them open, and watch the image of that beautiful quality come out, and settle on top of your teacher. Follow a few more seeds. Sit for just a moment and appreciate how amazing it is that the beauty you see around you is coming from good things you did for others in the past.

Blue sky, good friends, sweet Dharma. You made it. It's a nice custom here to bring the teacher, invite them into your heart, to guide you during the day, even when you don't remember they're there.

Guide your dreams, guide your sleep. Now we'll come back, second round. Imagine turning off your mind, and not paying any attention to random thoughts or feelings.

Then turning off your mind and fighting any random thoughts, feelings blocking them. Then the mind returning from endless space to the middle of the mind. The ocean ripples coming back to the center of the mind.

The crystal sugar, the heart beating at a distance, sitting inside the chamber of the beating heart, watching the beating heart. Now round three, we've never done it before. It's not very long.

We'll go back up, straight back up. So beating heart, inside the chamber of the heart, heart at a distance, crystal, ocean, space. Turn off the mind, block thoughts.

Turn off the mind, let thoughts go. Choose a teacher. Imagine them coming to you, to meet you for the first time, from someplace else.

Now see that the place they came from, and the way they came to you, in the first moment of your meeting, were all coming from your own mind, your own seeds. Three long exhales. Slowly open your eyes.

Take a good stretch. I grew up in Phoenix, and I was born in Los Angeles, but we moved to Phoenix. And then I never went to Tucson.

And then once a year my mom started sending us for two weeks of tennis camp. And we slept at the university, and we played tennis all day. And we were sore, and everything was bleeding, and that's Diamond Mountain.

But when we went home we beat everybody, because we were, you know, we played all day. It hurts a little bit, but when you go home you'll be happy. Any questions?

That's the third round. We've never done it before, okay? Second round you go down, but not to the air conditioner.

It's a tradition to stop the heartbeat. Then you come back up to nine, okay? That's three.

And then tomorrow we're going to do four. And then that's enough for the week. You can practice it during your personal retreat, okay?

Tim. Thank you for teaching, Geshe-la. In the first round you had us focus on the transitions of letting go of the gaksha.

Is there a transition like that in the second and third round? That's a good question. I guess you could say the first and third rounds, the gaksha is the same, right?

You are rejecting a less quiet place, and you are seeking a more quiet place. But in the second round, when you're going down, you're actually embracing a noisier place. So you're coming out of the quietest place.

You see what I mean? So you're voluntarily going to a noisier place. So technically, if you were going to debate it in the debate ground, I guess you could say that the quieter place becomes a gaksha.

And then you go to the noisier place when you're coming down on round number two, okay? Something else about that. Don't forget, the reason we're going up and down now is to increase your meditation muscle, okay?

There's no great purpose to go ocean and then, you know, to go up and down. What's the use of coming out, you see? But it's to show you have control over your mind.

I can go noisier if I want. Slightly less quiet. I have such control over my mind that I can come out a tenth of a level, and I can come out two tenths of a level, and if I want to skip a level, I can.

And you are exercising your focus capacity. You see what I mean? So a lot of the different rounds are just to exercise your mind.

And I can think like those different strokes in the pool, you know? Backstroke, breaststroke, what do you call this thing? Butterfly.

And it all affects different muscles in your body. Then when you raise somebody, you're stronger. You see what I mean?

So you're just showing off. Oh, I can come out if I want. I can go back if I want.

And I didn't once think about Yotel. You see what I mean? I didn't once think about, my boyfriend was angry at me last week, or, okay?

I didn't think about Trump the whole night. Like that, you are kind of displaying the power of your mind. And it should get two things.

I mean, one is more focus, right? But there's also a thing that we're about to reach in the idims, which is shinjang. What's shinjang?

Yeah, it feels so good. Your mind is so strong. It's like, I imagine that's how Kendra feels when she does yoga.

I wouldn't know. But, you know, like just feels, Michael's yoga is pretty awesome. Just, you feel really nice when you do it.

So there's an element, believe it or not, eventually it will be very enjoyable. You know, people will say, you want to go see a movie? And you say, no, I think I'd like to do my lion's dance, you know?

I didn't do round three so much today. Because you're good at it. You'll get good at it.

And then it's kind of like eating your favorite dessert, or something like that. Okay, other questions? 谢谢格西拉的教授。我有一个问题就是说,如果佛陀,他既然已经是佛陀了,那么在他的世界当中便只有佛陀,没有其他的存在,那为什么佛陀还要再去帮助别人呢?因为他的世界当中只有佛陀。

谢谢格西拉的教授。我的问题就是说,在佛陀的世界当中,如果佛陀,他既然已经是佛陀了,那么在他的世界当中便只有佛陀,没有其他的存在,那为什么佛陀还要再去帮助别人呢? 他既然已经是佛陀了,那么在他的世界当中只有佛陀,那为什么佛陀还要再去帮助别人呢? Good, yeah.

This is an old debate. I like to brag that, so Pabongka Rinpoche, the third one, Pabongka is from my house in the monastery, so when he did his geshe, the oldest non-geshe in the house has to debate him for his geshe, and that was me. So I asked him this question.

I asked Pabongka this question, and it went on for about two hours, and it was kind of cool. What we decided, and it's a difficult question, is I can improve my karma, I can improve my seeds until I see you as a Buddha. So in the definition of Sambhogakaya, the Buddha's body in his own apartment, in his own paradise, the definition is, do you know?

The basic definition. Ngepa nganden. Ngepa.

Yeah, the five things are always the same. No matter who Buddha, five things are always the same. And one of the five is, he sees all the people around him as minimum tenth level bodhisattva.

So he never meets anybody who's not a tenth level bodhisattva. So does he never come to this world if he's always seeing everybody as tenth level bodhisattva? And this is interesting.

I can see you as a Buddha. If I have good seeds, I can see you as a Buddha, and you don't see yourself as a Buddha. And I see you don't see yourself as a Buddha.

And the person you see who's not a Buddha, I need a pen. The person I see who's not a Buddha, and the person I see who thinks they're not a Buddha, and the Buddha I see, are the same person. Okay?

Got it? So my Lama used to say, are they all going to retire? And then he taught us this, and he said, no, they don't have to retire.

They still have to make those tenth level bodhisattvas into Buddhas. So it's possible for me to see you as a Buddha, and you are. And it's possible that you don't see yourself as a Buddha, and you are not at the same time.

Okay? So then I still have work to do. Other questions?

By the way, I like the question. It doesn't have to be about, tonight let's play a little bit. You don't have to ask a question about lion's dance.

You can ask whatever you feel like. Now I have trouble from Myrtle.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you Geshe Michael for teaching. I do have a question about lion's dance. When you visualize that your mind expands two-dimensionally or three-dimensionally, what I do is I mention, you know, the place where I am, then the continent, then I leave Earth, then I go to the solar system, I see a galaxy, I see a universe.

I feel I go through time to the Big Bang, but eventually it becomes a little fussy, and I lose my focus because I feel there is no border. Do you continue to expand and try to imagine planets or galaxies or physical stuff? Or what do you actually, what do you see when you let your mind expand infinitely?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I mean, I like to go to NASA website, really, and I look up Andromeda galaxy. You know, I look up different galaxies. They're all different colors.

They're all different. So, you know, if you have time, you can pass one galaxy and then go to the next galaxy. Any galaxy you can imagine is a real one, right?

So, I just keep going. The point is that you don't stop. The point is not to stop.

You're trying to go back in time to the beginning of the Big Bang, which is actually distance, right? That's okay. And according to Buddhism, every Big Bang had a Big Bang before it.

So, you can hang out in the emptiness before the Big Bang for a few minutes and go to the next Big Bang. Okay, like that. But it's a good question.

I like, personally, I like to go back to the Big Bang and think about I created it. You see, they say that the whole universe was compressed into a space the size of your thumbnail. Our whole universe in the beginning was compressed into a super heavy, super dense mass the size of your fingernail.

And then it blew up. And it created our universe, okay? But if I created the house where my Lama lived when she was younger, and if I created the roads that her mother drove her to my mother's house on Thanksgiving, then I also created the Big Bang.

I was around when the Big Bang happened. And I created it. I created it.

That bang also. Okay, got it? That's kind of fun to think about.

There's no limit to the history that you created. You created George Washington, and then you created Caesar, then you created Taizong, Tang Chao. Then, you know, you created all of it.

Okay? It's kind of fun to think about. Any other question?

Geshe-la, when we first go into the crystal, and you shrink and then you're in there, then what do we focus on? I like to focus on ... This is a meditation muscle builder.

That you are ... Sometimes I alternate between being outside and seeing that it's tiny. And then I go inside, and it's going to be as big as the Pacific Ocean inside.

You see what I mean? Without the crystal getting bigger, between form realm four and formless realm one, that inside of that crystal is going to be as big as the Pacific Ocean. But sometimes if I come out a little bit and watch the crystal, it's a single drop of sugar that someone sprinkled on my heart.

So, that's a kind of meditation exercise. And, by the way, if you ever feel distracted in meditation, like you can't stop thinking about what someone said to you today, then try to shrink the object of meditation, and the focus will come back. And if you feel too tight, expand it like an ocean.

You have the power. There's a Jimi Hendrix song, Standin' next to a mountain, Chop it down with the edge of my hand. You know, it's like he's imagining himself much bigger than this mountain, and he's like...

Sometimes you can do that. Mental exercise. One more.

Jenny Wong.

[Speaker 2]
Geshe-la, thank you so much for your teaching. I want to ask, when we're inside the crystal, you say we have the leg, and then expand the leg. So, the crystal also expands together?

No?

[Speaker 1]
The leg expands, the crystal is the same size.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, crystal is the same size. Even in the feet, also the leg expands, also the crystal is the same size, and the leg expands to the infinite.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, see if you can do it. Just feel inside the crystal. Fill one piece of sugar with the Pacific Ocean.

Oh, okay. Thank you, Geshe-la. Okay, let's go to Lam Rim for a while.

We've got to tell the fish story. You've heard this story, well, here's where it comes from. Then we have to do some pictures.

You guys okay to go till 9.30, one more hour? Less than an hour, is that okay? If you have a pee-pee emergency and it's as big as the Pacific, you can go over there.

You can go to the desire realm. All right. So, Adam-la, we're at ngar mi tsang shik S-N-G-A-R-M-I Okay, here we go.

Ngar means, you know, once upon a time. Mi tsang means a family, shik. Tsang, by the way, means a nest.

Like drop tsang is an ant, ants? What do you call it? Ant nest, colony, yeah.

So, what's a dratang? A monk's colony. And that's the Tibetan word for monastery.

We don't say gompa. Okay, my monastery is Seme Dratang. Ant's nest of monks.

Drat means monk. So, here's tsang. Mi tsang means family, okay?

Tsang also means complete, so you have to be careful. Mi tsang shiky pag den te The grandfather, or the older, the head of the household, he's maybe 70 years old, right? That's old, okay?

65 is not. You'll know it when you get there. Pag den te, dak du khan gyap Gyap means behind, like your back is called gyap.

So, behind the house, behind their house, there was a zing. Zing means a pond, okay? Kyi nya, there were fish in that pond, and the old man used to go back and catch them with a fishing pole, okay?

Serpa means he used to eat them. He would bring them in the kitchen, and they would cook them, and he would eat them. Serpa le, and then, this le means and then, ko shi ne, ko here means he, shi means died, after he died.

De khan gyap gi zing du, nyar kye What's that mean? Yeah. Yeah, good.

As a nya. Yeah, good, okay? So, he got reborn as a fish in the same pond where he used to catch the fish, behind his house.

The older man in the family. Ma de, the mother, the older mother of the family, Kim la chakpe, what? Adam?

Good. She was attached to the house, okay? Mi tsang de, de kye, that same family's de kye, kyi la kye, kyi ru kye.

Yeah, she took birth as a dog in the same house, okay? After she died, she came back as a dog that was living in the house, okay? Kye shing, chung ma la chi chepa, chi chepa, you don't know, this is the first time I've ever seen it in a book, and it means to have sex with, okay?

Chung ma means, okay, now we're talking the old man's son, who's maybe 35 or something. So, he had a wife, chung ma, and his neighbor had sex with her, okay? What do you call it?

Adultery, right? Then, he got angry and he went next door and he killed the guy who had sex with his wife, okay? His neighbor, he killed him.

Dra tsepa, chung ma la chakpe wang kyi, because that guy was attached to his wife, dey pur kye, he was reborn in her womb because he liked her sexually. You see what I mean? Okay?

Then he was born as the kid of the 35-year-old son of the old man, okay? Got it? GYIS RGYAS NAS YOD PA LAS PHYI'I PHA DE'I PHUS PHA NYALA PHYI'I PHA DE'I PHUS PHA NYALA RGYAS PA DE'I SUNG NAS Later on, the 35-year-old son caught his father on a hook from the pond, okay?

RGYAS DE'I SUNG NAS And then he killed him. RGYAS DE'I SUNG NAS And he was eating his father's flesh, okay? He's eating his father's meat at the kitchen table.

MA YI RGYAS BA GYIS DE And then the mom, the old mom, the grandmother, who was born as a dog, she was trying to grab the bones of the fish off the table, so the son smashed the dog on the head with his fist, okay? Who's he hitting? His mom, okay?

He's beating his mom on the head because she's trying to eat his father, okay? That he's eating, okay? DE'I RDUNG BA DANG RGYAS RGYAS BA CHUNG PA DE SPANG This SPANG without the S means your lap, L-A-P, okay?

Your lap. And while he was hitting his mother and eating his father, he was hugging on his lap the guy who raped his wife, okay? SIGS NAS They don't tell the whole story here.

I thought they did, but they don't tell the story. So anyway, the whole story is the Buddha had two great disciples, Shariputra, Shalidzu, Shalidzu, and Maudgalyayana, Maudgalyayana, and Maudgalyayana's specialty was miracles. He could fly, he could, you know, do strange things.

Then one day, he went to this house to ask, you know, with his bowl, to ask for leftovers. Shariputra was across the street watching and Maudgalyayana went, knocked on the door, and the 35-year-old son put down his, the guy who raped his wife, and set the dish down with his father's bones on it and pushed the mother out of the way who became the dog and came to the door. Maudgalyayana offered his bowl and the guy got angry and he said, get out of here, go away.

I'm not giving you anything. Go get a job, something like that. Then Shariputra, Shariputra, he couldn't take, he was so upset and he came and he knocked on the door and the 35-year-old guy came to the door and he said, no, not another monk, I'm not giving you any food.

Shariputra says, look, I don't want any food. Understand something, I don't want any food. But I think you should know that the guy you just kicked out, Maudgalyayana, has the power to fly to 50 or 60 galaxies for food if he wants to in the next five minutes.

And he's trying to help you. He's trying to be nice to you. He doesn't need your food.

You know, he can go to 10,000 planets and get a nice American breakfast. And then he walked in the house and he says, I'll tell you something else. And then he said this poem.

The poem that comes here. He said a poem. Shariputra said a poem.

PHAR SHA SA ZHIG MA LA THOB SRED PA'I DRO BANG DU KHUR CHUNG MED GYUR YID RUG PA CHA KHUR BA'I PHYIR LA KHYEM PO DRO And it says, PHAR SHA SA Let me tell you something, who doesn't want to feed Maudgalyayana, you are eating your own father right now. PHAR SHA SA ZHIG MA LA THOB And you just punched your mother in the head. SRED PA'I DRO BANG DU KHUR And the baby you are hugging on your lap is the guy who raped your wife last year.

And you killed him. CHUNG MED GYUR YID RUG PA CHA And your father's wife is trying to grab your father's meat. As a dog.

KHUR BA'I PHYIR LA KHYEM PO DRO When I look at sansara, I gotta laugh. That's Shariputra. KHYEM PO DRO means ha ha ha.

This is a crazy place. This place is nuts. This place is nuts.

He goes ha ha ha. That's Shariputra. KHYEM PO means he laughed out loud.

DER MA SHES SHES SPRING LAS Nagarjuna repeated this story. I think that's where I first heard it in his Letter to a Friend, which would be a great book to translate. And I think we'll study it in the next few Diamond Mountain sessions.

We're going to do Nagarjuna. Why don't we do a sampler? Sampler means the chocolate company sells you a box with all different chocolates and you can sample, check each one.

We can do Nagarjuna sampler. So, we can read some of shitting. SU HUR LEKHA SU HUR LEKHA Which was SU HUR DU LEKHA LEKHA means letter.

HURD means what? Heart. And SU means close.

SU It's a letter to a close friend. SU HURD And then the D has to change to L. Before L.

SU HUR LEKHA Okay? So, in fact, that book's a very good lamrim. It's a lamrim a thousand years before the lamrim.

Okay? Kind of cool. When I wrote China Love You book, I took the structure from Nagarjuna's SU HUR LEKHA.

I stole it. Don't tell anybody. Okay.

DER MA ZAD ZHIG ZHING LAS So, that book says PHA NI BU NYID MA NI CHUNG MA NYID Fathers become children. Mothers become wives. SKYE BA'O DRA RGYUR PA YANG ZHES NYID Enemies become close friends.

And the opposite also happens. KHRO BA DAG NA NGES PA DGA' MA CI There's nothing, there's no guarantees in samsara. Okay?

There's no guarantees in samsara. So, in a small level, there's no guarantees about your life. Your boyfriend can die, you know, the next time you eat together, which happened to one of our students recently.

And her boyfriend had no sign of, you know, any serious disease. Or you can get fired. I ate at my mom's 90th birthday party.

I had to listen. The lady they put next to me at this huge table wanted to tell me the 20-year story about how she got fired from the job she really liked. You know?

And she was a big executive and she got fired. And after that she never got a good job for her whole life. You see?

Who knows? You see, we don't know. Okay?

And that's all she wanted to talk about 30 years later. It was sad. It was really sad.

Okay? There's no guarantees. Anything.

No position. No health. No body.

Nothing. No guarantees. Alright.

So the meditation here is meditation number four for the 29th retreat of the gift of liberation. And the picture is... What is the picture?

Because I don't have the pictures. It's number four. No...

Huh? Oh, they're eating fish. Okay?

If you look closely it's a fillet. It's supposed to be the guy and his wife. That's their father that they are smiling over.

Okay? So... And it says on three levels there's no certainty, right?

Three levels meaning day to day, in your job, in your relationship. There's no certainty. Okay?

No guarantees. Second level. Year to year there's no certainty.

In the Lam Rim they say between who you hate and who you love. Okay? It's very common for spouses to become worst enemies.

Ex-wives, ex-husbands. Okay? Three.

Over lifetimes there's no guarantees in your relationship with people. There's a joke in the diamond business. Be nice to people on your way up because you're going to meet them again on your way down.

Like if you become vice president of a company treat the workers of other companies with respect because you might be working for them two years later. It happens a lot. So...

Day to day, year to year, lifetime to lifetime people's positions are reversed. Be nice to the people who work for you. Treat them with respect.

You might be working for them next year. It happens all the time. Okay?

Don't abuse anybody. Don't say something to other people that you wouldn't want them to say to you on your way down. Okay?

It means you have to respect everybody. All right. RANG RE DRAG NYEN SOGS LTAG PAR DE NYID DU NGES PA BZHIN CHE MOD KYANG NGES PA MED We tend to feel like our friends will always be our friends and our enemies will always be our enemies.

But it's constantly switching. There was a guy I hated in the monastery. Okay?

I'm confessing. Kind of. He's from Switzerland.

He was the first Geshe in the world from the West. I was the second. I remember I was debating in my monastery one night.

There's some Tibetan guys there from the other monastery. And they said, you are unbelievable. A white guy who can debate like you.

You're awesome. I'm like, yeah, I know. Then they said, but that other white guy, he's ten times better.

I'm like, what? Then I started to hate this guy. I never met him.

Just because of that one sentence, I decided I don't like him. I try to find bad things about him. Then one day I was studying this section, and I said, it's not really good for me to be so jealous.

So I said, I'm going to go introduce myself to him. I found his monastery. I found his house.

I went and I knocked on the door. He said, oh, come in. I've heard about you.

I said, yeah, I heard about you too. Then I sat down and I just said, you know man, I'm really jealous of you. Everyone says you're better than me.

Can we just be friends? And he's like, yeah, let's be friends. And we became very close friends.

We're still very close friends. So, you don't know. The guy you don't like the most becomes your best friend in the monastery.

Like that, okay? You don't know. It happens all the time.

Usually you don't like people because they are similar to you. So, then it's very possible you become friends, like in a day or two days. Be careful, okay?

How you, who you're jealous of. Okay. DE NYID DU NGES PA DE BZHIN CHES DMOS KYANG NGES PA MED SEMS DI TSE LTAR TSE MA'I LANG NYAN DAG GYUR BA DANG In a single lifetime, your best friend can become your worst enemy.

And vice versa. DANG NYAN DAG GYUR BA SOGS DANG CHUG UL YANG DRE TOGS SOGS KYI KHA SANG GIG CHUG PO DE DE RING BRTANG POR GYUR And it happens all the time that rich and powerful people fail and become the people that they hated. They become the people who have no money or the people who need help.

Okay? There was a guy, a diamond dealer in Bombay. I like to tell his story.

So, I went there to work with him. They had a sister office in Belgium and his brother headed that office and he became a prince of Belgium because he was so wealthy. They decided to make him a prince and he was like the biggest part of the Belgian economy.

And the other brother, very, very, very powerful man. And I went to work in his office to buy stones with him and I said, do you have a bathroom? He said, yeah, go in there.

The whole toilet was gold. The whole toilet. And it had these wings.

Then I did my thing and I tried not to make the gold dirty. Then I came out. I said, wow, your whole toilet is gold.

He's like, yeah, I know. I asked my friend, he was working there. I said, what's the wings on the toilet?

He said, that's for people who want to squat. It's a double toilet, squat toilet, Asia toilet and American toilet, both. He designed it out of gold.

You know, you can do either way. Then when he got, when his son got married, he rented the Bombay soccer stadium. 60,000 people were invited.

They rebuilt the stadium to be like an Indian tent. And on the way to the wedding, on the way to the marriage, we were in a car behind them. They were throwing diamonds out the window in the street.

You want to see people go crazy? You know, poor people sleeping on the street and diamonds are coming down. No, no, no.

It was like crazy. Very powerful man. Then he got a heart attack.

He lost this arm and this leg. To poop in his own gold toilet, he needs two people to help him. You see?

This powerful man. And then later, no one wanted to do business with him. He failed.

His company went bankrupt and he had nothing. So, it's a true story. It happens.

DREG CHOG PA The money gets stolen by enemies. KHA SANG GI CHUG PA Yesterday's rich people are today's beggars. MTHONG CHOS SU YOD PA This is not a story.

You can see it every day in the news, on the internet. You can see these stories every day. MTHONG CHOS SU YOD PA Nice idiom, Adam.

It's something we see every day. MTHONG CHOS SU It's not a story. It's something we can see.

YOD PA SHIN SKYE CI SKYE CI LA RGYUR RO These things are changing instant to instant. Nothing is guaranteed, moment by moment. Then he told the story of Srija, which is a famous guy to tell stories about in the Buddhist time.

And RGYUR RO We see his story told pretty extensively. And it talks about a snake that was wrapping itself around the body of a dead woman. There was a dead woman on the street and a snake was wrapping itself around the body.

He saw it. This monk saw it. SHING CHEN PO ZHIG SOGS CHAGS MANG POS SA BA Then he saw a huge tree and the leaves and the fruit were being eaten by many strange creatures.

Then he saw MI GCIG LA GZHIN BYAS SKYES BU DGON YIN MI LTA BA MANG POS BDEGS PA GZHIN BYAS SKYES BU DGON YIN MI LTA BA MANG POS BDEGS PA One man with the head of many BDEGS PA being struck I got to look it up. by many beings with different heads. Head of a horse, head of a cow, head of a goat.

Like that. CHU ZIN GYI RU DRON RIG RGYUD TZAM GNYIS MANG RGYUD THUB PA ZHIG RNAM THONG BA LAS Then he saw bones of sea monsters, whales, stacked as high as a mountain and it blocked the light of the sun. If you stood next to it, these bones, okay?

NAM THOB PA ME So, this monk saw them and he asked MOUTH GAL YA YAMA, What is this? What are these things? These are weird stuff.

What is all this? THAM PO NI RANG GI LUD LA CHAGS PA PHUNG MA'I GCIG GI SKYE BA DANG The first is a beautiful woman who was attached to her face, her looks, and she died. And she was born as a snake.

So, the snake is wrapping around her old body. Okay, that's her. NYID PA RGYEN RDUN GYI ZHING LA BAG MED DU BYAS PA The second tree, which is being eaten by many creatures, is actually the rebirth of a monk who was misusing the lumber at the monastery.

SEMS PAS LUM PAR ZHIG GI SKYE BA The person being chomped at by many different kinds of animals was a hunter. Okay, and ZHIG PA NI BRAL SKYE RANG GI SKYE BA SNGA MA'I RUG PA YIN And the pile of bones, my dear monk, is your bones from your past life. As big as a mountain and blocking the sun.

These are your bones. Each one is from your past life. Okay, got it?

DE YANG RGA RGYAL PO ZHIG LA RUNG PO RNAMS KYIS MI NAG CHEN ZHIG ZHEL CHE Should we do that? How much time I got? Half an hour, right?

You guys okay for half an hour? Okay, then you can have a long sleep. Okay, well, pretty long.

DE YANG RGA RGYAL PO ZHIG LA RUNG PO RNAMS KYIS MI NAG CHEN ZHIG ZHEL CHE JI LTAR CHOS GYIS PA There was a king who was playing a game of chess. And his ministers, his assistants, they came to him while he's playing chess. And they said, there's a guy in the— we arrested a guy in the prison.

What should we do with him? Then the king was like, what? He's concentrating on the game.

Then he said, JI LTAR CHOS GYIS RGYAL PO MI DMANG TSE BA LA YANG NAS Then the king was concentrating on his next move in the chess game. TSE BA YANG NAS MI DMANG by the way means many eyes. Okay, you listening?

Nick? MI DMANG MI DMANG means many eyes. But it's the Tibetan word for a checkerboard pattern.

Just so, in case you ever meet it, don't translate it as many eyes. It means a checkerboard pattern. So, he was playing chess.

TSE BA LA YANG NAS YOD PAS CHEN ZHIG LTAR CHOS GYIS He said, you know, do whatever the law says. Punish him however the law says. Don't ask me.

I'm busy. ZHIG, short way. DE KHYANG GI MI ZHIG ZAS So they executed the guy because that was part of the code of law.

LA MI DMANG ZIN NAS RGYAL PO JI LTAR JI LTAR GCIG PA NA Then when the game of chess was finished, the king said to his assistants, what did you do with the guy? They said, RGYAL PO RNAMS KYI ZAS ZIN TSUL GYUR PA We killed him. You said, you know, follow the law, so we executed him.

RGYAL PO ZHIN TU RGYUR PA SKYE DKYANG Then the king was sorry that someone was executed because he couldn't stop his game. MI NAG CHEN DE ZAS PA'I DIG PA CHU ZIN GYI SKYE NAS YOD RING SONG Then as a result of causing the execution, he was reborn as a sea monster, which is a Tibetan word for either a whale or a crocodile. I'm going for a whale.

SKYE NAS YOD RING SONG RNAMS KYI ZAS ZIN TSUL GYUR PA SKYE NAS YOD RING SONG RNAMS KYI ZAS ZIN TSUL GYUR PA SKYE NAS YOD RING SONG Then later on, that sea monster grabbed a ship in his mouth and he was going to kill all the people on the ship. TSONG PA RNAMS BRTAG NAS SANGS RGYAS LA KYANG BRDUR BYAS PA'I BRTAG Then the people on the ship who were business guys, merchants, they took refuge out loud. SANGS RGYAS LA RGYAL TSUR GYI YOD BYANG RGYAL TSUR GYI YOD RGYAL TE NA RGYAL TSUR GYI YOD When the sea monster heard the sound of refuge, he couldn't open his mouth anymore and he died from hunger.

DE ROG RGYAL TSUN LUS RNAMS KYI TSUL KHA DE RGYAL BAR GSUNG And then the Nagas, what do you call them in Chinese? I don't know. Lung?

Kind of like they stay in the water. Water lung. They don't like dead bodies.

So they always push them to the beach. You see many dead fish on the beach. In the old days, they thought those water lung, they push the dead things out.

They don't want to make their house dirty. So they push it onto the beach. So they pushed his body to the beach.

DE LTAR DANG BAR RGYAL BAR SKAD So if you think about it, this is a king who became a sea monster. And then YANG MIR GYUR PA STE later he became a human again. And this is typical in rebirth.

Like, you do crazy rebirth. It's all crazy. First he's president of the country.

Then he's a big fish. And then later he's a human again. Everything's mixed up.

Just like real life. Let's stop there. Yeah, good question.

Jasmine asked, if you say someone can be born as a tree, then where are you going to put them in the five realms in the Wheel of Life? So generally, anyway, my Buddhism professor in college was very worried about this question. And he asked many lamas.

So here's the story he got. Generally, in Buddhism, we don't say that trees are alive. Hmm.

So we say plants don't have a mind. They're not sem chen. They're not a living being.

In the West, in America, we say two kinds of life. Plant life and animal life. But if you push a high lama on this question, which I did, they will say the way a tree grows is like the way somebody told me they bought some honey yesterday and they opened it and it was all hard inside.

It made crystals. So it will grow. The crystals will grow.

But it's not alive. It's just more crystals growing. Like if you put sugar in water and the water evaporates, you will see sugar, you know, crystals will grow.

But the crystals grow, but they're not alive. Then if you push a lama on this question, they will say a plant is similar. It looks like it's life, but it's not.

It's just chemicals like crystals growing. I'm just reporting. But they don't have a mind.

It doesn't have a mind. So I think you could say, I would say it's life in the sense that it's growing. But it doesn't have consciousness.

It can't think like that. So how can a person be born as a tree? I think it's considered a kind of preta, rebirth.

So you look like a tree, but you're not a tree. You are like a hungry ghost, but you look like a tree. So that's the traditional answer.

Tree is not one of the five births. It's probably a preta who looks like a tree. How's that?

Alright. Let's go to the pictures and then I'll let you go home. What's the three ways to make— What's the three ways to become the most popular professor at a college?

We saw it on the internet. Know your stuff. Know your subject well.

Learn your students' names and send them home early. But we'll see. I'm not guaranteeing anything.

Because the Lam Rim said there's no guarantees. Okay. Nineteen, I think.

We got to do—let's do like seven or eight more. Then we're on schedule. Don't forget while we're doing this, this is a review for people who want to take the final exam.

Write Jasmine at the end of this week or something. I don't know. They're going to look at sixty pictures.

How many you have to identify. That's up to the boss. Okay.

Correctly. Like maybe you just show ten. You see what I mean?

So, if you're interested to become a meditation— a Lam Rim meditation guide, you've got three days to study these sixty pictures, okay? By the way, well, I can't finish all—we'll see how many I can finish. You're probably going to have about thirty by the time we do retreat.

I'll do thirty after the retreat, okay? Something like that. You figure it out.

Okay. Number nineteen. Classic problem of meditation number four.

In problem number three, what happened? Wait. What was the photo and don't look?

Yeah, the wife was like, distracted. And the husband was busy mind and sleepy mind, okay? In the same photo.

Now, what's the next problem in meditation? Yeah, you detect a problem, but you don't do anything. You say, look, I'm sleepy.

Wow, that's interesting. Okay. Wow, I'm thinking about dinner.

Well, what's for dessert? Okay. Like you just let it go, okay?

It's like the fourth formless realm. Right? You just put up with it.

Then, this is what you should be doing. These guys are working at a hospital. Probably somebody's heart stopped and they are running to do something, okay?

So, when you see this picture and Jasmine asks you, what's this picture represent? You're going to say, classic meditation problem number four. After you detected busy mind or sleepy mind, you don't do anything when you should be running to stop it, okay?

How do you stop? What's the classic method to stop sleepy mind? In Tibetan, it's sang tupa.

Think of something you really enjoy. Think of something that's cool. What's the classic Lam Rim example of something that's cool?

Huh? Nope. Nope.

I mean, for this particular meditation problem, very famous solution. Okay, I'll give you a clue. James Brown.

I'm so cool I could kiss myself. Yeah. How cool am I?

Okay, if you get sleepy or depressed in your meditation and things aren't going well and you feel dull and sleepy, there's like 50 people in this room. You are one out of 50 million people who made it to this room. Okay?

So either you're very crazy or very stupid or you're amazing. Okay? The whole funnel of 1.4 billion Chinese, okay?

How many here? Like six or something. Maybe you're special.

Like one out of 200 million Chinese, you made it here to hear the Lam Rim. Okay? So, when you're meditating, the classic method to deal with sleepiness is to uplift your heart.

It's called Seng Tup, uplift yourself. If you want to, think about your favorite dessert or your favorite song. But the most famous thing to do is to think about how goddamn special you are.

Okay? Understand? You are one in, you are one in about 100 million people who have a chance after you die.

Okay? You are one in 100 million who have a chance to do this meditation. You are special.

You are off the chart. Okay? You're more famous than all those guys.

Brad Pitt, Xi Jinping, you know. You're more famous than all of them. Really.

Okay? So then, you're like, yeah, okay. Then you're not tired anymore.

Okay, got it? What's the classic solution to busy mind? Yeah, think of someone you know who died.

Someone dear to you who died. Okay? And it will bring you down immediately.

Okay? If you're thinking about what's for lunch or you can't stop thinking about your girlfriend or something. Think about someone you know who died.

And then your mind will go, and you can focus. Okay? Alright.

Not doing that is idim number 19. Meditation problem number 4. You know there's a problem.

The smoke alarm is going beep, beep, beep, beep. And you're like, wow, it's going beep, beep, beep, beep. Okay, alright.

Okay, do something. Okay, run. Alright, idim 20.

When the meditation is going well, which don't worry, it won't happen much. Don't mess with it. Let it go.

Don't keep checking and don't keep questioning it. Don't keep examining it. Ride it.

Ride the flow. Learn to ride the flow when it's going good. Okay?

And that's a skill. Okay? Don't over correct yourself.

Okay? When it's good, let it be good. I know some people, they come to me, Geshe-la, you know, I'm not happy.

I said, you have a beautiful partner. You're wealthy. You're studying the highest Dharma in the universe.

You're beautiful. What's the problem? Yeah, I'm not happy.

When it's going good, let it go good. Enjoy. Okay?

There's a place, there's a time in Buddhism when you should enjoy the seeds you have earned. Okay? Who did all this good stuff?

I did. Who created the beautiful people in this room? I did.

Did they fly here from China, from Israel, from Germany? No, they're coming from me. All these cool people.

So, it's like coffee meditation. Enjoy your success. There's a time on your meditation cushion when you should enjoy life.

Okay? I like to end the day with a nice hot chocolate. I just sit on the chair and do a coffee meditation for like a half hour, and just think about all my cool friends that I have, and all the cool things that are happening to me.

Okay? Don't always work so hard. Enjoy your life a little bit.

You earned it. You made the chocolate. You made the chair.

You made the quiet stars. You're pretty cool. Okay.

So, when it's going well, don't mess with it. Don't try to overanalyze it. Okay?

Got it? All right. Now, before he starts the eight solutions to the five problems of meditation, we just finished the five classic problems of meditation, right?

And before he goes on to the eight solutions, he makes a note. He says, even in Tibet, 150 years ago, there were people teaching weird meditations that you can't find in any scripture. So, either the Buddha forgot, or the Buddha didn't know about, Mr. Know-it-all didn't know about it. Okay? Like that. So, even a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, you know, people were making up weird meditations.

Put this wire on your head. If you see purple color, you're doing good. You know, stuff like that.

Just weird stuff. Okay? You have access to 200,000 scriptures.

Okay? If it's not in there, it's probably dumb. Okay?

And that's exactly what Pabongka said here. He said, use the classics, okay? Like today, we used Maitreya, and we used Tsongkhapa, and we used Nagarjuna.

Stick with these people, okay? They know what they're doing. Their meditations have lasted for 2,000 years, and many people have achieved Buddhahood from them.

So, you don't need to do some weird thing, okay? Stick to what's there, okay? That's Pabongka Rinpoche's advice in the Lam Rim, okay?

There's many, many proper teachings on meditation that come from the great teachers of history. You don't have to worry that you... You don't have to go to some yoga studio and hear some weird thing that somebody made up yesterday, okay?

Alright. Beware of lesser or made-up presentation. Lesser means the goal of those meditations is not Buddhahood.

If you ask that teacher, why are you teaching me this? I want you to be more calm, you know, while you die. I'm just kidding, okay?

So, check what's the purpose of the meditation, and check where they got it from. Those two things, okay? Does it have a high goal of bringing happiness to the whole world?

Or, is it to make you feel better, you know, after you have eaten something bad? Okay, something like that. What's the goal?

Ask the meditation teacher, what's the goal of what you're teaching me? If it's not minimum, giving you a better next life, it's not Buddhist. Okay, got it?

Alright. We got eight more minutes. Hang in there.

Hold that Pacific Ocean. We're going to start the eight antidotes to the five problems. The reason why there's eight antidotes to only five problems is, the first problem has four parts to the antidote, okay?

The first problem of the five, right? Has four different antidotes, okay? All four are necessary, okay?

So, what's the first meditation problem? Tell me by the picture. What's the picture?

Yes, the guy just hanging out. He's looking down like he's lazy. Okay?

Now, if that's your problem, then you should use the next four antidotes, okay? There are four parts to the first antidote, okay? Here's the first part of the first antidote.

Think about how cool it's going to be when you become a great meditator, okay? I can see the future. I can meet my Treya.

I can see next week's lottery numbers. Okay? I can see emptiness directly.

Okay? Think about how cool your life is going to be. I can watch seeds popping up out of my mind.

I can change my reality, everything. I can make my husband wash the dishes. Impossible things, okay?

Alright? So, just think how cool it's going to be. Alright?

What's the picture? Yeah, it's a little girl. She has a fantasy to be a jet pilot.

Okay? How cool it's going to be if she could be up in that plane. Okay?

John Foley, my friend, Blue Angel, he flew Top Gun. He's Top Gun. He's the real Top Gun.

He flew some of those stunts. When he was six, he went to a Blue Angels show and he said to his dad, I'm going to do that. Cool.

Alright. You got to be meditating like that. You watch these great meditators, I'm going to be like that.

Okay? How cool will it be? Antidote number one, second part.

Okay? I want it. It's cool, I want it.

I'll try. I'll try to get there. I want to have that bodhisattva experience.

I want to do it. I want to see every living being in five minutes. That's kind of cool.

Alright? I want it. Number 24.

Work hard. Okay? The guy's digging a hole.

He's working hard. You got to do hard work. You got to sit in that meditation cottage.

I had a yoga teacher, David Swenson. Some days you feel like doing yoga. Some days you don't feel at all like doing yoga.

Some days you feel like you can fly. Some days you feel like wet cement. Just do it.

Okay? Forget how you feel. Just do it.

Okay? Work hard. And if you do, idim 25, you get shinjang.

Okay? Shinjang means flexible. Meditation flexibility.

Okay? Your mind becomes super powerful. Okay?

And you can do weird stuff. You can learn complex songs by memory. You can learn foreign languages very easily.

Okay? And when you sit down on your cushion, it feels like you're eating ice cream. If you like ice cream.

Okay? Alright? So if you work hard, meditation becomes extremely pleasant.

And you feel super good when you sit down on your cushion. But it takes hard work. And that takes wanting it.

And that takes thinking about how cool it's going to be. Okay? And all of those will prevent you from putting it off till tomorrow.

Got it? Cool. Let's do one more.

Where was this? It took me a long time to find this picture. Which is weird because all of us have had dogs like that.

What's the second problem in meditation? You lose the object. So when the object goes away, you know, you have to pull back.

It's called drenpa. Drenpa means pull back the object. The same word means remember, but it's not so much that.

It's you got to go looking for the object and you got to pull it back. What was the object in the problems? A high-heeled shoe.

Okay? So you got to go find it and you got to pull it back. And the mind is like a bad dog.

And what's the famous thing they say? This is like lamrim charades. Okay?

What's the famous thing they say when the student complains that their mental state is getting worse and worse? The lamrim answer is your mind was always a mess, but you never listened to it before. You weren't listening to your mind before.

I didn't make your mind worse with the meditation. Your meditation is getting better and as your meditation improves, you're becoming aware of how messed up your mind is. Got it?

It's a common lamrim complaint by a student who's meditated for the first time for a couple weeks. They'll say, this is not working. And you say, what?

My mind's getting worse, more jealous, more angry. They say, no, you are learning to listen to what's there. You are seeing the garbage that's in your mind since you were born.

Okay? The meditation is successful. You're starting to see how bad you are.

Got it? That's a common lamrim thing. Okay.

So anyway, this lady, she lost the object, right? The mind went off the object and she's pulling it back. She's pulling the object back.

And the mind will fight you. The mind will fight you. I really want to think about what's for lunch.

It's important. And I haven't checked my emails either. Then you say, we're not doing that right now.

We're meditating. And your mind says, oh, yeah, you're right. Let's go back to the object.

But you know we haven't checked the emails yet. And it's just this constant stupid mind. It will repeat itself over and over like some dumb people.

And you tell the mind it's time to come back. And the mind says, oh, yes, you're right. I understand.

But we haven't checked our emails. It's like some people, you know. Use the four steps.

What? Use the four steps. Geshe-la, can I have a meeting with you?

Okay. What do you want to talk about? Use the four steps.

Yeah, but use the four steps. Do you think I should use the four steps? Use the four steps.

Somebody told me I should buy a tape recorder and put it in my pocket. And I could just relax. Use the four steps.

Use the four steps. Okay. No, I like meeting with people.

Don't worry. Okay.