«Дар освобождения», курс 36 «Любовь во времена вируса», занятие 13

[Speaker 2]
Hi, welcome back to the Lam Rim.

[Speaker 1]
We're on episode 13. I call it, It Might Set the Sky Afire. It Might Set the Sky Afire.

Just to get us into the mood of this episode, I'd like to show a picture. This is actually the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in this world. This was near the end of World War II.

Actually, this bomb was exploded not far from here. I have driven there before. It's a few hours drive from where I'm speaking, in New Mexico, in the United States.

These scientists, including Fermi and earlier Einstein and Oppenheimer, who worked at Princeton, they believed it was theoretically possible to create a nuclear reaction and it would create a large bomb. They talked the President of the United States into this project to make this bomb. When they had it ready, in theory, they took it to New Mexico, near here.

They set it off in the morning when they were out in the desert. The project was called Trinity, which is sort of meaning like a powerful deity. I read some amazing conversations with the scientists and the military people.

The military people said, is this safe? If we explode this bomb, could something happen that we don't know about? The scientists were like, no, no, we'll make enough explosion to destroy a city, for example.

So, don't worry about it. We got it under control. Then this one scientist raised his hand, and somebody should make a movie about it.

He raised his hand and he said, there's a small chance of a problem. The military guys are like, what? He said, well, we don't quite know, but there is some chance that it will ignite the whole atmosphere of Earth and it will destroy everything on Earth and all the people on Earth.

There's a chance that the reaction will go through the oxygen of the entire Earth. They're like, okay, just a chance, right? Yeah, just a chance.

Let's go ahead with it. Whenever I read that, I was like, wow, here's this, they're trying to do a little bomb and it could go wrong, you see? It could destroy everything.

That's the theme of this episode 13. Let's read the Tibetan together. ,GZHAN YANG NGAR ZHES PA'I DRAM ZEG GYIS BRTZAN RGYAS CHUNG BA DANG, Now they're talking about disastrous results of diamond way practice if we don't have this attitude of trying to help, having made a commitment to help everyone.

Then this says, it's like the story of the Brahmin youth called drzhan rgya which we talked about earlier. So I went back and got it for you. The text earlier in the lam rim, day 13, it says, ,DRAM ZEG GYIS BRTZAN RGYA ZHES PA, ,GZHIN BYAS ZHES GRUB PAS, ,MI MA BU NGON CIG MTHUS BSAD PAS, ,GNYEL BA RNAMS MED DU SKYES PAR GSUNGS, He got magical powers by practicing tantra and then he misused them.

He actually killed a number of people with the powers that he gained through the practice of the secret teachings. So here it says, then he went to the lowest of the hell realms. So we're talking about, before we had the example of someone who didn't use the power of tantra correctly and all that happened was they saw emptiness directly.

Now we're talking about other people who didn't have this bodhichitta motivation. When they practiced tantra it got worse. It was like the whole sky blew up.

It's like they ended up in the hell realms because they were doing these powerful practices without this motivation to help all living beings. Alright, there are three stories. ,RGYAL DGOS NA, ,GZHIN BYAS ZHES GRUB PAS, ,GNYEL SBYOD PA ZHIG, ,DUG BRAL SKYES TE BUD DO'ANG BAR, ,'JO BUD DOR MA BYIN NAS, ,PHAR BRTAD PA DANG, Then there's a story of a yogi, a tantrica in India who was practicing Yamari.

In Tibetan it's called GZHIN BYAS ZHES. It's similar to Yamantaka. He was reborn as a spirit, as a negative spirit, a bad spirit.

These spirits tend to wander into other places. So he actually wandered up towards Tibet and he reached Tibet. Atisha became aware of this spirit and kind of like made a deal with him where he offered him a DOR MA and then chased him off.

So PHAR BRTAD PA, DOR MA BYIN NAS, PHAR BRTAD PA means Lord Atisha gave him a DOR MA offering and then he chased him off. He said, now you should go. So this is again a disaster result from practicing the higher teachings without this commitment to these beings.

Third story here. PHAN PO'I JIG RJE GYI GNAL SBYOR PA ZHIG, YIDA'I YIDAM GYI GZUGS CAN ZHIG TU SKYES NAS, SNGAGS KYI NYE NAS LA TSUL KHUGS PA'I LO RGYU LTAR YIN, This again is a story that was told before. PHAN PO'I is an area of Tibet.

I think it's north of Plasa. I'm not sure. I've known some monks from there.

JIG RJE GYI GNAL SBYOR PA ZHIG, There was a Tantrica practicing Yamantaka and he was born YIDAM GYI GZUGS CAN ZHIG. This is a weird word. I should offer Seiji a hundred dollars.

You ready? Or Tim? YIDA'I YIDAM GYI GZUGS CAN YIDA'I YIDAM GYI GZUGS CAN YIDA'I you know.

A preta, right? What's a YIDAM? Yeah, yeah.

Tantric daily. GZUGS CAN. GZUGS.

GZUGS. SKYES. He was born.

Okay, cancel the bet. He was born into the form of what? No.

YIDAM. YIDAM. He was born as a preta but he looked like YAMARI.

A very weird karma. He practiced Tantra without a high motivation. He was constantly thinking about this fierce deity and he died and he was reborn as a preta but the preta looked like the fierce deity.

That's all he got. That was his result of his tantric practice. GZUGS CAN DU ZHIG Then some of his friends who had done the YAMARI retreat with him were offering a dharma to the local spirits and he showed up.

Yeah, and they were like, Hey, are you YAMARI? He says, Uh-uh. I'm your old friend.

I tried to practice Tantra without this motivation. All I got was, I look like him but I live like a preta. I'm suffering terribly.

It'd be weird to meet your retreat friends later and they look at you and they say, Oh, YAMARI is here. You say, No, I'm not YAMARI. I'm just a plain old preta.

Please give me some dharma. Please lead me dharmas more frequently. You don't want to go to Diamond Mountain on a retreat.

Practice medicine. Get the Medicine Buddha Initiation online and do the retreat online at home. Then you die and you become a ghost that looks like Medicine Buddha.

It'd be weird, right? Then your friends are offering dharmas and you show up. It's a weird story.

We don't want to do that. THA DANG PHAL CHER GYIS YI DAM GYI GSHEL GZIGS DANG MNGON SHES RDZUS TU SOGS PA GCIG BYAS BAR BYED Then nowadays, PHAL CHER means most people, if they see a tantric deity in person, YI DAM GYI GSHEL GZIGS, GSHEL GZIGS means if they see the face of the tantric deity that they're praying to, or they gain some kind of ability to read other people's minds, or they can fly in the sky, or they know people who say, I met Tara in person, or I can read what you're thinking, or I can fly in the sky. Then people are like, wow, your practice is awesome. You must have a really good Buddhist practice if you can see deities, and you can read people's minds, and you can fly in the sky.

Then Pabongka Rinpoche says, yeah, that's cool, but if you don't have bodhichitta, you could go to hell because of those three. They could take you to hell, seeing deities, flying in the sky, reading other people's minds. If you do it for the wrong reason, it could take you to the hell realm if you don't have bodhichitta.

DE NA NGON SHAS RDZUS CHU GANG DANG LDAN YANG PHAN MI THOB So it doesn't really help you and me if we can read other people's minds, or we can do little magic tricks. PHAN MI THOB means it doesn't help us that much. SEMS DE YOD NA NI GZHAN CI LA'ANG MA BRTZON KYANG But if you get this experience where you meet other beings directly and make a commitment to them for their happiness, THEG PA CHEN PO'I CHU GYI RTZA BA BYUNG BA YIN TE then you really reached the essence of dharma.

You have the essence of dharma inside of you. Forget meeting tantric deities. Forget having the ability to read other people's minds.

If you just have this kind of love from a personal bond with each being and a commitment to them to help them, to take care of them as if you were their parent, then that's really the core of the dharma. SDO NGA'I GANG GI SKABS KYANG THEG CHEN DU RGYUD MIN GYUR SEMS DE YUL MED KYI RJES SU'I GRO Whether or not we can call you someone who's practicing the bodhisattva way only depends on this experience. It's the crux of the whole question.

It's have you met beings? Have you made this commitment to them? Or at least are you aspiring to that?

Then we can say you're on the bodhisattva track or not. These, by the way, you can have the... It can be that you haven't had that experience directly but you're strongly attracted to it.

That's fine. DI'I SEMS NA DON DRO LA SEMS CANG GCIG BYIN PA TZON DANG The next picture here is a cute picture of a bird. It's a lady and she's feeding a bird.

This is a practice that I used to do with my former partner, Christy, and it was a very sweet practice. We used to go to McDonald's. The only thing we could eat at McDonald's was french fries.

We had read this part of the Lam Rim and we would take little pieces of french fries. So you know the story of the tigress when Lord Buddha in his former life was a prince called, I think his name was Nyingtob Chenpo. Big courage, Mr. Courage. He went into the jungle and he found a tigress who was dying of hunger and had four babies who were trying to nurse from her but couldn't. She couldn't produce milk. To make a long story short, he offers her his body.

He offers the five his body. With a commitment that they should be his first five students. And they were, Cao Dinh and four others.

So there's this act of truth you can do by feeding another being. We used to go to McDonald's, order the french fries, break them up into little pieces and then we would feed the bird, the sparrows who come to the McDonald's. We would make a prayer, if you eat my french fry then you're going to be reborn as my student when I become a Buddha.

So then it becomes very cool to go to McDonald's. Otherwise it's kind of weird to go to McDonald's, right? So actually he mentions it here, DUNDRO LA ZAN CHAGS GCIG BYIN PA TSUN DANG If you have this kind of motivation and you go to a McDonald's and you feed pieces of french fries to the little birds there, KUN CHOS LUS MA BSTAN RNAMS KYANG RDZOGS BYANG THOB PA'I RGYUR RGYUR Even activities which are karmically flat, they have no great karmic power.

Giving french fry to a bird or going to the toilet in the McDonald's. Karmically neutral activities. It's called here LUS MA BSTAN.

Karmically neutral activities. Giving the french fries to the birds is a little bit good karma. Let's say you go in and you want to use the toilet so you buy some french fries.

Sometimes I do that. Even the going to the toilet, which by definition is almost karmically neutral, not good, not bad. I guess it depends on how bad a bomb you make.

But it's karmically neutral. It becomes a great virtue. He says TSUN here means, BYIN PA TSUN means on down to giving french fries to a bird.

On down to giving french fries to a bird. Or even going to the toilet at McDonald's. It's something neutral.

It becomes a high bodhisattva act. That's awesome. That's awesome.

If we can have this background motivation all the time, that I would like to... I would like to, as a parent, save every living being. If you think like that, then all the little stuff you do, brushing your teeth, cleaning your house, it all becomes high karma.

Everything you do becomes some kind of supercharged karma. You don't have any neutral actions anymore. Everything you do is supercharged.

That's very cool. All right, RDZOGS BYANG THOB PA'I RGYUR RGYUR All of those actions, cleaning your house, brushing your teeth, going to the bathroom at McDonald's, feeding the birds, they all become direct causes for buddhahood. Very cool.

BYANG SEMS BDAG NI CHEN PO'I NI MI DGE BA'ANG DI'I GSOS NAS DGE BAR GYUR NUS PA YIN This is a very controversial statement. I don't want you to hear it. Then everybody's like, oh, tell me.

BYANG SEMS BDAG NI CHEN PO'I BDAG NI CHEN PO'I $50. Sanskrit. BDAG NI CHEN PO'I Cancel.

Mahatma. Mahatma. This is the Tibetan for Mahatma.

And it means a great being. It means a great being. Like Mahatma Gandhi.

BYANG SEMS means those bodhisattva mahatmas. I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
Let's think of something.

[Speaker 1]
You go to McDonald's. You want to give french fries to the birds as a bodhisattva activity. Then you find out you don't have any money or credit card.

You go outside and there's a guy sitting next to you eating french fries. He looks away and you swipe a french fry and you give it to the birds. Under special circumstances, if your motivation is high enough, that stealing a french fry becomes a good karma.

Because of the motivation. That's an extremely dangerous idea. I was trying to think of some picture that I could show you that would demonstrate how dangerous this idea is.

I got this picture of a fugu fish in Japan. A fugu fish is also called a blowfish. There are parts of inside this fish that are highly, highly poisonous.

They are more poisonous than cyanide. I don't know. There's this...

I don't know Japanese cool people. I spend time working in Japan. There's this thing of...

courage thing, bravery thing. They go to the restaurant and say, give me a fugu fish. The guy's like, but if you eat the wrong piece, you will die here now with the fish in your mouth.

You will die that fast. I looked it up. 50 people die in Japan every year from fugu fish.

They're like, I'm going to try. Supposed to be, it's super delicious because it's so dangerous. To cook it legally, you have to have three years of training.

You have to have a license and you have to have three years of training to legally serve it in a restaurant, to cook it. Most of the people who die buy one and take it home and try to do it themselves. You know what I'm talking about, right?

You got what I'm talking about, right? To steal the french fry and give it to the birds takes a very skilled, highly trained bodhisattva to cook. If you and me try it, we will just end up on the floor dead with fugu fish in our mouth.

There's a joke that no matter how many times you tell a student something's dangerous, someone's going to try it anyway. So please don't. He's just trying to make a point that things that are normally not nice, these high, high bodhisattvas.

BDAG NYID CHEN PO means not just a normal bodhisattva but a very high bodhisattva. It's possible they could steal a french fry and, what do you call it, turn it over into an incredible good deed. But it's extremely rare.

Like eating fugu fish. So don't be a fugu fool. All right.

DE MED NA NI STONG NYID RTOGS PA'I ZHIG RAB DGE'EN DANG PHRAD NA THEG PA GSUM RGYAS BYANG CHUB KYI RGYUR DRO BA'I MA LTA BU YIN NA BYANG SEMS NI LAM MED BYANG CHUB KHO NI RGYUR RGYUR BA'I PHA DANG BRAL BA'I YIN NO DE NA SNGA MA LA YUM YANG ZER DE ZIN NAS RGYUR BA'I RGYUR NUS PA YIN DE MED NA NI STONG NYID RTOGS PA'I ZHIG RAB DGE'EN DANG PHRAD NA Okay, in general, seeing emptiness directly, okay? STONG NYID RTOGS PA'I ZHIG RAB here. If you can see emptiness directly, THEG PA GSUM RGYAS BYANG CHUB KYI RGYUR DRO Okay, so this BYANG CHUB here does not mean BYANG CHUB SEMS PA.

It does not mean bodhisattva. It means buddhahood, but it doesn't mean buddhahood. It means enlightenment of the three kinds, okay, of the three vehicles, of the three tracks.

And there are two lower tracks. If you get to the end of them because you saw emptiness directly without bodhichitta, then those do create nirvana, but it's called lower nirvana and we already talked about how we don't want to go there, okay? But seeing emptiness directly has that power even for a person who doesn't have a high motivation.

So even for a person who does not have a high motivation, seeing emptiness directly can give birth inside of them to nirvana and therefore it's called MA. It's called the mother. YUM, like YAB YUM, okay?

It's called the mother. So here it's MA, MA LTA BU YIN. And I'd like to go to the next picture which I negotiated with great difficulty from a family in Sedona, okay?

And here you see Aaron Shad, Mrs. Nick LaShaw. You see Nick LaShaw and you see their baby Amalie, okay? So just imagine Amalie being a Buddha, which is not difficult looking at her face, and the mother of the Buddhas, the Aaron of all Buddhas, is the direct perception of emptiness, okay?

So we can say that seeing emptiness directly is the mother of the Buddha, like Aaron for Amalie. Okay? BYANG SEMS NI LAM MED BYANG CHUB KHO NA'I RGYUR RGYUR BA'I PHA DANG RGA BAR But bodhichitta only has one result.

You can't go on the three tracks after having that experience. Once you've had that experience, the two lower tracks are cancelled. You are restricted to the highest track and the highest track, the bodhisattva track, always ends in total Buddhahood, complete Buddhahood, okay?

LAM MED means the highest, totally highest, okay? Incomparable. Nothing higher.

Okay, so KHO NA'I RGYUR RGYUR BA'I. So really it's like a father, okay? So if we go back to the photo, so Nick, Nick represents the bodhichitta, okay?

Nick represents bodhichitta. And the mom, there's something here, I mean you guys got to think about it in your study groups maybe. There's some kind of statement here, I don't know exactly what it is.

That emptiness realization could go three ways. You could become a complete Buddha or you could just reach nirvana. So therefore it's like a mother.

But the bodhichitta can only go to full enlightenment. Therefore it's like a father. So maybe it's some statement about what a mother is and what a father is.

I don't know. You have to, you guys can debate it in your discussion groups, okay? He's making some kind of statement like that.

RGYUR BA'I PHA DANG DRAG YIN NO, DE NA SNGA MA LA YUM YANG ZER And by the way, he makes an aside. This is an aside. He's making a side statement.

He says, by the way, that's why we call the perfection of wisdom YUM, as in YAB YUM. YUM means holy mother or something like that. That's why we call the perfection of wisdom holy mother.

I looked up what YUM is in Sanskrit and it took me a while. Oftentimes it's simply Prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom. But sometimes it's called Mata, which means mother.

Then Indian people call their moms Mataji. So YUM in Tibetan, referring to the direct perception of emptiness and the literature that helps you get there. The mother sutra or the mother, the great mother.

All right, and together they're called Mata Pitta or Pitta, no sorry, Mata Pitta or Amba. Sometimes Amba for the mom. Or sometimes Pitta and Mata, which means father and mother.

All right, last part here. DOR NA SANGS RGYAS KYI GO PHAG ZHIG BSTOD NA MI NYAN NA MA RTOGS This is an interesting statement. THAMS CAD KYI BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS MA THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL DU BYA There's a word here in the second line called THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL.

THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL at the end of the second line here. Yeah, and MTHIL means the palm of your hand. This is LHAG MTHIL.

This is GANG MTHIL, the palm of your foot, the sole of your foot. And LHAG MTHIL means, so I got a piece of gum here. If you hold out your hand and you put it in the middle of your hand, that's called LHAG MTHIL.

It means what's your one most important Buddhist practice? It's called what's in the palm of your hand. It's kind of funny.

By the way, the name of the book is not liberation in the palm of your hand. The name of the book is a gift of liberation shoved into your open hands. Thank you.

I wasn't expecting that. But this palm, it means, look, what's the one practice you should always have at hand, in your hands? What's your one...

THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL means what is your private number one practice? What is your number one Dharma theme for your whole life? Which have you selected?

Is it Vajrayogini practice or is it death meditation or is it seeing emptiness directly? What's the one thing you want to be buried with? What's the one thing you want in your hand?

SA GYI'I SGO PA ZHIGS DON DU MI GNYER NA First he excludes a certain group of people. First he excludes a certain group of people. He says, look, I'm not talking about people who don't want to become a Buddha.

Forget those people. It's really funny. I don't know why he said that.

He says, look, what I'm about to say, it's just meant for you guys who want to become a Buddha. If you don't want to become a Buddha, then don't listen to this next part. He says that.

If you're not interested in becoming a Buddha, then you don't have to listen to this part. But if you are interested in being a Buddha, then there's only one practice you should devote your whole life to. The one practice you keep in the palm of your hand, and that's you got to have this experience where you meet every single being one by one and commit to help them overcome all pain.

You make that personal connection and commitment to every single living being. Bugs, fish, birds, martians, people living on the other side of the universe, all of them, in a single meditation. Let's make that the one thing you're going to work on for the rest of your life.

Let this be your heart practice. All right, TIL DU BYA, THEG GSUM GYI YIN DANG SOGS LENG PA CI YOD THAMS CAD PHAR BDE NA This PHAR BDE NA, very very unusual word, you won't see it very often. BDE means to chase an animal while you're hunting it.

It's got a weird, it's a weird word, like you're hunting a rabbit and you keep running after the rabbit. That's called BDE, and PHAR BDE is an idiom in Tibetan and it means boils down to. If you chase, chase, chase, chase, chase, chase, it all comes down to this.

What? He says, look, all of Buddhism, the whole Buddhist practice, 300,000 John Brady books, all Buddhist practice, ultimately, PHAR BDE NA boils down to trying to get this experience, trying to have this experience with every living being. All Buddhist practice, thousands and thousands of books, thousands of hours of meditation, it all boils down to, can you trigger this experience?

Can you have this experience yourself? Okay, very cool. All right, see you in the next episode.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.