«Дар освобождения», курс 32 «Пустое приходящее, ментальные бомбы», занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
Oh, that was really really nice, I'd like to give Stanley a hand in the audience, 非常棒! Towards the end of the morning we all get tired, your butt gets tired, so I thought we'd have some fun, and instead of keep talking about negative emotions, just depressing, why don't we go to the review of the Lamrim, which is a little more cheerful, and then we'll come back to depression at the end of the class, okay? So, I'm going to do some more of the review of the last eight years of Lamrim, because those of you who decide to get your master's degree in Lamrim, you're gonna need this, okay?

Those of you who don't decide to become a Lamrim teacher, it's still useful, right? For your teaching, okay? As an ACI teacher.

So, we're on ... Tim, we're on item 81, number 81, and you probably have it, it's a ... it's a glass flower, yeah, 81?

What page? What page number? Page 8, okay.

Okay, I'm gonna start explaining it, and then the kids in the tech table will figure it out, okay? So, it's a glass flower, maybe someone gave you one in your life, they're very beautiful, they're hard to keep clean, right? They always get dusty, and they break easily, okay?

They break very easily. So, what it means is, we've been talking about the Lamrim as a teaching, we didn't reach the Lamrim really yet, we're just talking about the introduction to Lamrim. And what it means is, I like to call it your spiritual real estate, okay?

Your mind, okay? Your mind is very very precious, okay? Your body is precious, but not as precious as your mind, okay?

You will switch bodies, you will change bodies, but the mind you carry all the time, you will carry it to the next life, you carried it from the past life. And those of you who did three-year retreat, it's something interesting, I used to dream about Starbucks all the time, I don't know, like, I would dream I'm in Starbucks having a good coffee, and some kind of nice ... what do you call it?

Biscotti, and that was a pretty common dream during three-year retreat, and the first six months are quite difficult, you know, it's very difficult to adjust to staying in one room, and it's not easy. And we were in a different part of this desert, we were over those mountains, we were in a different, more empty place, this place no one ever has been, no one's ever lived there, and it was wild, the place was ... there were very strange animals, you know, like, there's one that looks like a lobster, and when you meditate they used to crawl up on you, you know, and it was ...

they look just like a lobster, you know, and not scorpion, not this big, but this big, and then there's a called a sun spider, they're like this big, and they like ... they also like meditators, and stuff like that. One day we had ...

we had a lot of rattlesnakes, we had five rattlesnakes inside the fence at the same time, and I got on the fence to ... to push one out, and then I realized there's one below me, and I had to stay on the fence for like half an hour, and it was crazy, but after six months of quiet, you can talk to animals, and it's very cool, so people never stop talking for six months, unless they're at Diamond Mountain for a three-year retreat, and if you stop talking for six months, animals start to trust you, because they don't talk, they don't talk with their mouth, but they talk with their small, very tiny movements of their head, or you know, but if you're quiet for six months, you can start to understand them.

So, we had lots of cool animals, we had a wolf that came every night, a coyote, every night he came inside the fence, and ... and then we had pet rabbits, we had a rabbit, that became very close friends, they come every morning for cookie, and they bang on the door with their shoulder, little rabbit, I want a cookie, you know, then you give a cookie. One day I was ...

so, I didn't have a toilet, I didn't have electricity, I didn't have water, and so I have to poop outside, I have to try ... you know those bombing planes, they have to try to drop the bomb in the correct place, so I had a plastic bag, and I have to try to drop the bomb in the correct place, and then I will trade the bag for my food, it's an ingo, ingo, cause and effect, and I remember one day I'm ... I'm pooping on my bag outside, because it's better to keep your poop outside, and that's great, I'm gonna use that, and the rabbit came and hit my leg, you know, I said I'm busy, you know, don't ask for a cookie now, you know, I'm busy, and she's ...

he, he keeps hitting my leg, and I'm like, what? Because I don't talk, I just go ... and then he dug a hole, right next to the ...

he wanted me to watch digging a hole, I'm like ... he's like ... then, then he spread his legs over the hole, and gave two babies, and put them in the hole, you know, and I'm like, oh you're a girl!

And then she take grass, and put it over the babies, hide them, and then she will run away for about five days, because she's bleeding, and the coyote can smell, so to protect the children, the mother rabbit will always run away for one week, something, and they will just kind of sit there and grow a little bit, then one day I'm pooping, and from the hole comes the poop! Two ears, and what's interesting about rabbit is, the ears don't grow, they are full-size when they are born, so the ear is as big as the rabbit, you know, so two big ears come out, then a small rabbit comes, you know, and they start running around, and I wrote a book about it, I didn't publish it, because after a while you start to suspect they are little Buddhas, you know, they are teaching you things, you know, and I'll try to publish it sometime. Anyway, why did I talk about that?

I forgot completely, oh yeah, in the ... after six months you get really bored, and you can't meditate all day, forget it, it sounds nice, three-year retreat sounds very romantic, it's not, and it's hot, and you know, it was very hot, and when we did yoga you could hear ... the water dripping, and ...

but we found out something cool, during meditation you can watch movies that you saw before, we figure out, when you go deeper in your mind, that everything you ever saw in your life is recorded, every conversation you ever had, and every movie you ever saw, and every song you ever heard, those impressions are there, I think that's why older people start to get forgetful, because the hard drive is full, okay?

I told John Brady there's a test for Alzheimer's, he said what? I said, if you can't remember what Alzheimer's means, you have it. So, he's like, you can sit and watch a movie, okay?

Which, why am I talking about that, and what's it have to do with a glass of flour? Everything you hear in your life is recorded in your mind, okay? Everything, everything you hear, and it takes up part of your mind, you have a limited hard drive, you, you can't ...

towards the end of your life it gets full, okay? I guess it's wiped, erased when you die, okay? A lot of it is erased when you die, then you start over again, but what you learn in a three-year retreat is, be careful what you listen to, be careful what you listen to, okay?

Like, when you have a choice about which teaching to go to, be picky, okay? Because, you know, yesterday I said you don't have time, you know, right Gyelse? I mean, when I met you, you were 25, I was 25, something like that.

Then it's like, boom, you're 65, and you're like, whoa, what happened? That's one problem, time goes ... like, and time goes faster as you get older, and then ...

but the other thing is, everything is recorded, everything you listen to is recorded. So, in the Lam Rim, at the beginning, when they're making the sales pitch for the Lam Rim, they say, choose your teachings wisely, you know? Choose your teachings wisely, okay?

Don't go to every teaching available, okay? Because it will be in your hard drive, it will fill up space in your hard drive, okay? And it will stay with you, not for one life, for many lives, okay?

For many many lives, okay? So, when you go to hear some ... I don't know ...

dumb New Age psychology last year's popular thing, okay? Ayahuasca. There was a big snowstorm in Flagstaff, I was working at the Barnes and Nobles, these two people came in, and they got stuck in the snowstorm, I found them a place to stay, and they were so grateful, and they said, we got a car full of ayahuasca, you want some?

And I said ... I made a mistake, what's that? Hakima?

Hakima? Hikama? I thought they were talking about hikama.

I said, yeah, I make salads all the time, and they're like ... so, ayahuasca is a drug, it's a plant which is a drug that hippies are using for, you know, instead of studying Lam Rim, you just take a drug, it's easier, and it's called ayahuasca, and then it's popular right now, and then hikama is like a carrot or something, it's good in a salad. I thought they were talking ...

I said, yeah, I'll take some! Then I said, this is not ayahuasca, they said ... I said, wait, you said hikama?

Oh, it's ... no, it's not hikama. Why am I talking about that?

Don't go to everything you hear about, okay? Somebody says, let's go to ayahuasca thing, and then say, look, my hard drive is getting pretty full, and I'm not sure I want hikama in my mind for the next thousand years, okay? Because it's going to be in your mind ...

those seeds, those impressions will be in your mind for a thousand years. So, when you hear about a teaching, or you hear about some Lama, or you have a chance to go to some ayahuasca thing, okay? Ask yourself, do I want this in my mind for a thousand years, okay?

Your mind is very ... it records everything, that's why you can watch movies in three-year retreat, okay? So, be careful what you listen to.

You cannot listen to anything lightly. Everything you hear will stay in your mind, okay? And it will affect your mind for many years.

We say a thousand years, okay? It will stay there for a thousand years. So, do you really want to watch a YouTube video about the cats jumping?

You know, do you want cats jumping in your mind? Do you want Jianlong San Si Wu Shi Liu Shi? Do you want these guys shooting people in your mind for the next thousand years?

You know, do you really want that in your mind, okay? So, your real estate, I call it your real estate, this space here is very expensive, and it's very sensitive, and it will record everything. So, be careful what you expose your mind to, okay?

Be picky, you know, check out teaching before you go, and talk to people who've been there, and don't just go because your friend is going, right? YAM GYUG, right? Word?

YAM GYUG? What is that? Yeah, it means ...

GYUG means to run, right? It means YAM GYUG, means run after teachers because somebody said it was cool, okay? They look handsome, or they look beautiful, or they look mysterious, and be careful what you open your mind to, okay?

Alright, that's the idam number 81, your mind is like a glass flower, your mind is very beautiful, and your mind is very fragile, and be careful what you, be careful like, who you let in your mind, who you let come into your mind, be careful, okay? You don't have space for many people, and whatever they're going to teach you is going to be there for a thousand years, so be careful, okay? That applies to what you watch on the internet, things like that, okay?

Do you really want that in your mind for a thousand years, okay? Alright, idam 82, I'm going to stop in 15 minutes, okay? 10-15, we'll take a long pee-pee break, maybe even a ...

sun ... never mind, okay, idam 82 is a pet peeve of mine, Masha, my favorite, one of my favorite irritations, okay? And so, in Arizona, I grew up in Arizona, I was born in Los Angeles, I came here when I was six years old, and if you live in Arizona, you need a car, okay?

Right Palma? By the way, Lama Palma's here, she started the Three Jewels in New York 30 years ago, and that's where we taught the first ACI courses, and I'd like to thank her for coming, yeah. And she has many good qualities, but one she doesn't have, which is how to drive a so many cactuses, and all the rabbits wrote me a letter and said, this one shouldn't drive.

So, okay, then you know, my friends who do drive, because you have to drive in Arizona, you can't go anywhere, the places are too long, so we'd learn to drive when we're 15 in the school, the school teaches us driving, and then some of my friends will say, Geshe-la, I found a good deal, I'm like, what? You know, they say, I got a cheap tires, I found some cheap tires, they're really good, you know, they're all old and worn out, but they're like $15, you know, I'm gonna save ... I'm gonna save like $50, you know, I'm so happy, you know, and I'm like, you live in Arizona right?

Yeah. So, that's why you drive right? Yeah.

Because things are so far apart, it's two hours to get to Tucson to a real grocery store, you know, and they're like, yeah. So, I said, what's the speed limit on highway 10 here? 75 miles an hour, how many kilometers per hour, 100?

36 and 100, okay, I understand, it's a lot of kilometers per hour, it's 100, come on, yeah, 110, okay? It's fast, it's really fast, okay? And if the tire blows out, you're dead, okay?

In Arizona, if you drive a car, you have to drive on the highway, you have to drive a hundred kilometers per hour, if the tire breaks, you die, understand? So, question for you, who saved the $50? Nobody, they're gone, they're dead, I'm like, are you crazy?

Buy some new tires, yeah, but I want to save $50, I'm like, who's gonna have the $50? Me, but you're gonna die because the tire blew out, yeah! You know, I'm like, it's crazy, don't do that, okay?

Why are we talking about that? One, you look at your phone for five minutes driving, I had a friend of mine did it, a friend from my high school, he was looking at his phone and he was driving, and he hit a car, and the other person had their child standing in the front seat, and the child went through the window and landed on my friend's ... right in front of my friend's car, dead, bleeding and dead, and he ...

his mind broke for his whole life, he was a good student, he was a good person, he was one of the highest students in the school, and he just became crazy, for what? For a text, for five-minute text, you see? You do a small thing and it changes your whole life, understand?

What am I talking about? Going to some stupid ayahuasca teaching, okay? Some hippie teaching, you know, last year someone discovered a new meditation that Buddha didn't think of?

Someone's gonna teach Einstein about relativity, you understand? So, in five minutes you can plant a seed in your mind that stays for a thousand years, okay? In five ...

it's a car accident, going to a ayahuasca ceremony, something like that, I don't want to pick on ayahuasca, any stupid new meditation thing somebody thought up, it's a car accident and it will change your life for the rest of your life, you see? It's looking at your cell phone at 75 miles an hour, it's a bad tire, it's gonna kill you, okay? Don't think you can sit in a foolish teaching and it won't affect you, it will stay in your mind for a thousand years, okay?

Like a car accident. My mother, my stepmother, she ... when my father died when I was about twenty-something, three, and she never married, and she never dated much, and then ...

then she was on a cruise, you know, like Wangsha's trying to get me to do ... Wangsha's trying to get us to take a boat together to Antarctica with 500 people in it, and spend two weeks with the penguins and do Lam Rim. I'm not sure about it, I agreed but I didn't give a date.

So anyway, she met a man, a Japanese man on a boat, and she thought well, that would be nice to have a husband, and someone I can be with as I get older, you know, that would be nice, and she ... they got married, and it ... and then it turned out he was not what she thought, you see?

He wasn't very ... he watched TV all day, all day, and very unhappy person, you know, and ... and it was difficult for her, and then finally after five years or something she found out when he was young, he worked for Price Waterhouse, very famous accounting firm, yeah, what's her name?

Laura Valiente's son just got a ... they're very big company, and then he had a car accident, and he killed somebody, and it broke his mind, you see? For his whole life, it broke his mind.

So, you go to a teaching, be careful what you open your mind to, okay? Be careful, it will stay, whatever you hear will stay, okay? Movies are the same, okay?

Be careful what movies you go to. My partner Veronica, she will often walk out of a movie, you know, and it's kind of difficult for me, because I'm like, should I walk out or not, you know? Sometimes I stay.

Okay, that's the eighty-two, okay? Big mistake, biggest mistake you can make, don't think that going to a teaching which is not ... which you haven't checked it out carefully, is just for fun, because whatever you open your mind to, it will stay there for many lifetimes, okay?

Many lifetimes. Five minutes of doing something without thinking much, like looking at your phone, can ruin your whole life, you see what I mean? Okay?

Alright, everything you hear is recorded, okay? Alright, number eighty-three ... there were some people, you know, like in the monastery, you hear monks, Geshes, candidates, young Geshe, gonna be Geshes, they will say, I don't ...

I don't want to go to Lamrim, there's special Lamas come and they teach Lamrim, it's not part of the Geshe course, okay? In the Geshe course you only get Lamrim when you have a visiting teacher, okay? It's not part of the schedule, okay?

And so, the Geshe candidates will say, oh you know, I'm not going to go to Lamrim, that's for ... that's for the guys who can't do the Geshe course, okay? And this is some kind of ...

they put down the Lamrim, okay? And then Pabongka Rinpoche got really irritated about it, and he said, look, if you don't have the three principal paths, okay? If you don't have baby Lamrim in your mind, you cannot succeed in Buddhism, it doesn't matter you're a Geshe, if you don't have Lamrim in your mind, you won't succeed, okay?

You won't be able to practice advanced Diamond Way, okay? You won't be able to, you need Lamrim for Diamond Way, okay? Kuma, it's the engine that drives the car, okay?

Lamrim is the engine which drives the car, you need it, okay? We all need it, and it's ... and when you get to Tantra, the second eighteen courses, which normally takes about seven years to teach somebody, okay?

And you teach other people, don't ... you're not allowed, as an ACI teacher, or as any kind of Buddhist teacher, you're not allowed to teach the second eighteen courses unless they have the first eighteen courses, okay? Got it?

Oh, they have fifteen, I'll just teach them number three, okay? They need eighteen and then they do number one, got it? And the first three Tantric courses are?

Lamrim, okay? So, we're ... in this system, in your lineage, Tsongkhapa and ...

right? We are following the rules, the ancient rules, okay? You cannot study Diamond Way until you do a big Lamrim, so that's going to be, for most people, be a year, an extra year.

Oh Geshe-la, I came to all the Lamrim retreats, I don't need the first three Tantric courses, I don't care, you have to do it again, okay? My teacher had a car accident, it hurt his voice box a little bit, and he talks just like Star Wars, all the time. He'll say, he'll say Geshe-la, I did like eight years of Lamrim with Geshe Michael, I don't need the first three Tantric courses.

Eh, shut up, I don't care, you're gonna do them anyway, okay? Understand? I don't care, alright?

So, why are we doing this Lamrim, if we have to do another Lamrim later? Because maybe you want to be specialized in Lamrim, or maybe you just want to get enlightened. Okay, some lower motivation.

Alright, okay, item 84. This is tricky, this item is tricky, it's going to be a little difficult for you to give me a good answer when you see it, okay? So, listen up, this is the last thing I'll teach, then we'll take a break.

Who invented the Lamrim? So, if you talk to people and you say, when did Lamrim start? They'll say, oh, it started a thousand years ago, in Tibet, you know, Atisha got a job from his teacher, right Seiji?

Whose name is Dharmaraksita, and Dharmaraksita, it's like when Rinpoche sent me to New York, he said, start a business, start a diamond business, make a million dollars, and here's the Diamond Cutter Sutra, good luck. But Atisha got what? Yeah, so Seiji's text, which is an awesome text, when people hear Seiji's text, when the translators heard Seiji's text, they all want to quit their text and do Seiji's text.

So, it's called Crown of Knives, it's called Lojong, right? It's a ... how to open your heart, and after we started his text we realized that, because it's a lecture by a high Lama, we realized it had a lot of Tantra in it, and then I was like, I don't know if I should translate this publicly, but we decided to go ahead with it, because that Lama decided it was okay to mention Tantra inside of a Lamrim, okay, inside of another talk, so.

Anyway, so if you ask people who started the Lamrim, they'll say, when Dharma Rakshita sent his student Atisha to Tibet to teach, that's when the Lamrim started, and what was the name of Atisha's little Lamrim? Yeah, ah, what? Yeah, Bodhipatapardipika, yeah, Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment, okay?

And it's a baby Lamrim, it's a tiny Lamrim, and it's a beautiful Lamrim, someday we should, we should learn it, okay? So, people will say Lamrim started there, and Pabongkha Rinpoche gets upset, he says no, don't say that, who, who started the Lamrim? And then they'll say Lord Buddha, okay?

Lord Buddha started the Lamrim, and for $100 okay? I got to make it a little difficult, why does the name of the Lamrim prove it must have been taught by the Buddha? Wait, wait, wait, raise your hand, I'm not giving away money to anyone who shouts.

Raise your ... you sure? Okay, I should get a kickback but, if you don't get it right, but ...

okay, what? What's, first of all, what's the name of this, of what we're studying? Yeah, good, Steps on the Path, okay, then?

Nice, it means somebody knows the steps, perfect, okay? If a monkey hits a typewriter all day, one word will come out, just kidding, yeah, perfect answer, yeah, the name is of Lamrim, is Steps to Buddhahood, one, two, three, four, five, okay? Who's gonna write that?

Buddha! Okay, got it? Duh!

Like, Pabongka gets really upset, you know, people said, who started the Lamrim? He says, such a stupid question, you know, who started the path to Buddhahood? Buddhahood, get it?

You know, understand? Okay, so if somebody asks you, whose teaching is the Lamrim? Here's the answer in the idim, it says what?

The Buddha's own, it's his, he taught it, because it's the Steps of the Path to Enlightenment, like how to get to Tucson, you got to talk to somebody who's been to Tucson, got it? Who wrote the map to Tucson? Someone who went to Tucson, duh!

Okay, got it? So, no debates about who started the Lamrim, okay? Now, why does it say deep and wide?

Wait, he got a hundred dollars, I'll risk another hundred, why does it say deep and wide? Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, good, which is which? Yeah, deep is teachings on emptiness, and wide is teachings on love, compassion, okay, got it?

A hundred dollars, he's got two now, wait, no, he's got a hundred, he's got a hundred, yeah, yeah I guess, okay, I was going to give him fifty because only more, okay. Alright, so there's two great lineages inside the Lamrim, if you say it simply, okay, to put it simply, they are called deep and wide. Deep and wide, which is in Buddhism describes the ocean, the ocean is called deep and wide, so Buddhism is compared to the ocean, okay?

We often compare Buddhism to the ocean. So, there's two great lineages, deep goes down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, I don't know, eight miles or something, and then wide, you know, it takes time to fly from China to California, right? The ocean is wide, okay?

Wide means teachings on love, teachings on compassion, deep means teachings on emptiness, and those are specific lineages, they started with specific people, they were passed on by specific people, and we'll talk about that tomorrow, okay? We'll talk about, there's two great flows of teaching into the Lamrim, and there's two great other flows that are kind of hidden for a hundred dollars, close. We, okay, I'll teach you American idiom, Marsha are you ready?

Close but no cigar. I think it refers to some ancient game where if you win you get a cigar to smoke, I don't know, but close means your answer is partly correct, but you didn't win the prize, close but no cigar. You didn't want a cigar anyway, I know.

Two other lineages, you got bodhichitta, you got emptiness, what's the other two? Two are understood. You should pay me.

Huh? He already said that. What?

Nah. Okay, in the Lamrim tradition there's two other practices, NYAM NEN GYI RGYU, which means the lineage of personal practice, the lineage of personal practice. In ACI it's kind of the meditation modules, the practice modules, tonglen, you know, how to meditate, you know, things like that, personal, six times book, okay, these are personal practice.

So, that's considered in the Lamrim a third lineage, a third lineage okay, personal practice lineage. And then the fourth one is easy, secret, secret lineage okay, so really there's four. Four streams are combined in the Lamrim okay, let's say it again, compassion stream, emptiness stream, then normally the practice stream in those paintings is put in the middle, there's a third stack of lamas in the middle of the Lamrim paintings.

So, to Tsongkapa's left you have wisdom, because wisdom is always left hand, and then to Tsongkapa's right you have compassion, bodhichitta, and then in the middle you have another stack of lamas, that's the personal practice lineage. And then you have ... okay questions, we have about 15 minutes, any questions?

No questions? I have a question for you, what's the three ways to become the most popular ACI teacher? Number one, know your material well.

Number two, learn your students names, Geshe-la failed already. Number three, yeah, let them go early sometimes. Wait, Rachana has a question, she has a microphone actually, so ...

that's tough, I'm still gonna write a book for him, about that. Okay, okay, cool. Mm-hmm, that's true, good.

This comes from an explanation of Nagarjuna by Choney Lama that we had in Venerable Utpala's text, and it questions all of our ideas in life. It shows that everything we think works doesn't work, okay? Everything, not just atoms, but light switches, and car keys, and things like that.

So, because we grew up with car keys and light switches, it's extremely difficult to break that way of thinking, you know? The light, why did the light go on? Oh, Lama Phelma turned the switch.

Why did the car start? Oh, I turned the key, you see I mean? And it's built into us, and it's completely mistaken, okay?

So, and until we understand it, we won't really change. The light goes on when you turn the switch, because you gave light to other people in the past, it has nothing to do with the switch, okay? Geshe-la, are you saying the light would go on without the switch?

Yes. Are you saying the light won't work sometimes if I do turn the switch? Yes.

Okay, and the car key doesn't start the car, okay? Geshe-la, are you saying sometimes you can start a car without a key? Yes, I'm saying that, okay?

Geshe-la, are you saying sometimes you have a key and the car doesn't start? Yeah. Okay, so, in higher middle way, when you turn the key, nothing touches anything else, okay?

It's not possible, okay? The electricity circuit closes. The way I was taught in high school, I don't know how they teach it now, I suspect it's the same, a little balls, tennis balls in the wire, copper wire, they ...

this atom hits this atom, hits this atom, hits this atom, hits this, and then charge comes out the other end of the wire, you see? So, the atoms ... like a billiard ball, pool ball, so this atom hits this atom, and then that atom hits that atom, it has to be like that right?

Somehow, it has to be like that. This ... you turn the car key, and that moves ...

closes a circuit, the copper has to touch the copper, okay? Or steel, or whatever it is, and then it closes the circuit, and then the balls start hitting each other, and then it pushes power out the end, because the last ball gets pushed out equal to the force of the first ball according to Newton's third law, something like that, okay? So, this is how we live, and this is how we understand things.

And really, if you want to get radical, it's a deeper religion, it's the mother religion of this planet, you see? You can say I'm Buddhist, you can say I'm Muslim, you can say I'm Christian, you can say I'm Jewish, but really, we're all atomists, we're all cellphonists, you see? And the deeply held belief of this world is that stuff is made of stuff, you see?

It's a deeply held belief, and as long as we believe that, we will suffer, okay? So Geshe-la, you know, go back to the atom, and I had trouble teaching it, and I felt it when I was in New York, you know, I just got it from a translation that we did the week before, and I said, oh this is gonna impress all the New Yorkers, because they're a little more sophisticated than everybody, and so I, you know, tried to teach it, and it didn't go very well, and I ... you know how you teach something and you feel like the audience is still like ...

you know, and you keep talking and it gets worse, and then they're like ... you know, and so, I've actually improved the presentation, I mean I've tried to improve the presentation, so I wasn't satisfied with it either, so we in ... where were we?

We started using tennis balls, in Taiwan? Shenzhen. In Shanghai, we started like a month ago, I started to use tennis balls, so I get some tennis balls and I bring them up on the stage, and it helps to understand, you know, it doesn't solve the problem, but it helps, you know, so I said this ball hits this ball, and it's electricity going through the wire, right?

Which is why you can do a WeChat, electricity goes, balls hit balls, and then your WeChat goes to the other person, okay? So, you can't use balls of ceramic, porcelain, clay, it won't carry electricity, you see? Dirt doesn't carry electricity, by the way the best carrier of electricity is diamond, but it's too expensive to make wires, so only if it's copper, which is inexpensive and carries electricity, it carries current well, the balls hit the balls easily, and the balls get pushed easily, and that's more efficient.

Silver is much better than copper, but it's too expensive, gold is also good, but you can't string gold wires all over the country, people will tear them down, which happens in India with the copper wires, but anyway, so this ball hits that ball, it has to be a ... in the metal group of the periodic chart of the elements, it has to be a metal basically, or diamond to carry electricity well, it has to be ... it has to be a metal, it has to have a certain number of electrons, protons, and neutrons, okay?

And those, you know, in the model, which is just a model, it's not necessarily the way it is, those are arranged in shells around the core of the atom, okay? So, it's the core of the atom, and then there's shells of electrons and protons, and then it has a charge, the point is, the structure of the tennis ball has to be exactly that, or it's not copper anymore, you see what I mean? If you pull out a hydrogen atom ...

sorry, yeah, if you pull a hydrogen atom out of water, it becomes something else, you see? It changes to helium and oxygen, it doesn't work anymore, okay? So, if you take anything out of the shell, it's not going to be copper anymore, and it won't carry electricity.

So, it has to be that many electrons and that many protons in the model, in the model of science, right now. So, those electrons individually, and the protons individually, are generic. An electron in one atom is the same as an electron in another atom.

An electron in a shell of oxygen is the same as the electron in a cell, in a shell of copper, okay? Those are not different, those are just positive negative charges, whatever. You see what I mean?

If you could take an electron out of a copper atom, and you could take an electron out of a oxygen atom, they're the same, they're not different. Copper electrons are totally the same as oxygen electrons, they're not different, okay? It's how you mix them together that makes it copper or oxygen, okay?

Got it? Which means, if you only make contact with one electron, okay? In a copper atom, it's not going to work, because it's the same as touching one electron in an oxygen atom, you see what I mean?

If you could only make contact with the outer shell that has a single electron in it, that electron is not different from an oxygen electron, they they are generic, all atoms pieces are the same, it's the arrangement of the pieces that makes them work, okay? Now, does that electron, is it substantial? Does it have a left side and a right side?

Can you split an electron? Yeah, you can, that's what, that's what colliders are for, you know, that's what, that why they make 10 billion dollars CERN in Switzerland, Switzerland? That's why they make these things, okay?

They break electrons up, okay? Which means, electrons have width, and that electron has a right side and a left side, okay? Got it?

Am I, you okay so far? Now, when two copper atoms meet, okay? You turn the switch, right?

Palma turns the switch, and then the light goes on, it's supposed to be that tennis balls, copper atoms hit the next one, hit the next one, and then the charge came out of the, into the tungsten of the light, okay? It's supposed to be like that. That assumes that there's a left side and a right side to the copper atom, you with me?

You still with me? Okay, if, if the tennis ball pushes the tennis, other tennis ball, if the whole first tennis ball touches the whole second tennis ball, then there's no movement because they're in the same space, got it? If Stanley hugs Allison, let me make sure this is going to work, and he tried, if he tried to make every inch of his skin touch every inch of her skin, the only way is if they were standing in the same space, you see what I mean?

That's the only way, you can check it out. Now you can hug, is there a way to hug each other that you touch everywhere at the same time, only if you're in the same spot, you see what I mean? What that means is, stay with me okay, this is a terrible thing to do at the end of the clip, I got it.

What that means is, if all the copper atom made contact with all the next copper atom, there would be no movement of electricity, because they would all be in the same space, as if Allison was touching every inch of Stanley, that means they'd have to be in the same body, that's the only way for all their skin to make contact with all their skin, got it? Okay, so it must be therefore, that only a part of this tennis ball, the front part, touches the pigu of the next tennis ball. What's pigu?

Bottom, the ass, I mean a polite word is bottom, okay Geshe-la is not very polite. Okay, so the front side of this tennis ball has to hit the ass of the next tennis ball okay, the front end of this ball can't hit the front end of that ball, because then there won't be any movement, you see I mean? Therefore, not all of this ball can touch all of this ball, because Stanley can't hug all of Allison at the same moment, you got it?

Therefore, only some of the parts of the atom, only some of the electrons in some of the shells, can make contact with some of the shells, some of the electrons in the next atom shell, got it? The front side only has certain electrons in that shell, this, the next atom of copper only has electrons, some electrons on the back, and some electrons in the front, right? Has to be like that, because they have width, because you can split them in a collider.

Therefore, not all of the first atom of copper is working to touch the second atom of copper. If all the elements, if all the electrons in the first atom of copper are not involved, it cannot be copper, and it cannot carry electricity. It's impossible what's happening when you turn the light switch, it's not possible.

Don't say it's weird, or don't say it's ... what I'm saying is, to think that the light goes on because she turns the switch, is profound misunderstanding of the world, profound. To think that your husband will stop yelling if you talk to him, it's profound misunderstanding of the world, got it?

Okay, and it's too big to talk about it at 11.01, okay? But everything you think about what makes anything happen is completely false, okay? Completely false, okay?

It's not that part of Stephen Hawking is wrong, all of Stephen Hawking is wrong. So, her husband, I told you this story, her husband's a publisher, he asked me what's my next book. I said, I'm gonna prove Stephen Hawking's wrong.

Then he got, he was feeling conflicted because he publishes Stephen Hawking's. Okay, let's continue later, okay? Okay, I promise a question from Norbert, first thing in the evening, okay?

Yeah, fraga un abend. Okay, good? Would you read the Mandala, are you okay?

You want to try? You just say sushi. You say, what you do, okay I'll teach you the trick.

This is how an American gets through a Geshe course, you go, SASHI! And then the second part, you go ... okay, got it?

Here we go, just say SASHI. SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, SASHI, S Cool. Thank you for working so hard.