«Дар освобождения», курс 36 «Любовь во времена вируса», занятие 14

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to the Lam Rim. Love in the time of the virus. Or we could call it sending the virus to the middle of the sun.

I'm not sure which one I like better. You saw one of my favorite images in the world, which is a croissant in Paris, wandering around Paris. I like to stop by every boulangerie I see.

There's one every three or four doors, so it's kind of difficult for me to walk through Paris. I don't know. I got the recipe for that croissant and I tried to make it at home and it's almost a whole pound, half a kilo of butter.

So anyway, I decided I shouldn't eat so many. Anyway, they're delicious. Why we're talking about that, I also don't remember.

Let's see. We're going to talk about it. Okay, he starts with a question.

Pabongka Rinpoche starts with a question. RANG RE LA THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL GANG YIN PHYIN NA If someone comes up and says to us, do you remember that word from last episode? We said something in the palm of your hand and this is your main practice.

This is like the number one practice you're working on. It's the one that's at hand all the time. If somebody comes up to you and says, hey man, what are you focusing on nowadays?

What's your number one Buddhist practice? I don't know about you, but if you're like me, I got practices and practices and practices and practices. I'll never forget, I had a student from Burma many years ago, maybe 25, 30 years ago.

He learned one more meditation from me. I was having a class and he said, well, I don't know if I'm going to show up. I said, well, why?

He says, I don't need one more thing to feel guilty about that I'm not doing that you taught me. He says, I'm going a little bit crazy feeling guilty about trying to do all the things you taught me. THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL means, what are you going to focus on?

I think it's important for all of us to find one thing that you're going to be focusing on. Obviously in this lam rim retreat that we're doing right now, we're trying to focus on the idea of this experience. I don't think we've really gotten yet the instructions for triggering that experience.

But still, I think hearing about it over and over again is planting seeds in our mind to have that experience. If we have that experience, then I believe, if enough of us have this experience together, then I think the virus couldn't survive around us. I think that's my idea how to work on the virus.

Then I was having breakfast and I was thinking, come on, get real. You have to study the news this morning. You have to see what the economist says about the progress with the virus vaccination.

You have to think about is American Airlines idea about flying planes safe? I caught myself thinking like that. Then they had an article about, in some country, people heard that drinking methyl alcohol, which is poison, was good to prevent the virus.

400 people died drinking hard alcohol that we use for cleaning. Then I remember I was thinking, oh, those people are crazy. They're living in such a strange society where they would drink methyl alcohol and die because they drink a poison because they thought it would help with the virus somehow.

Then I caught myself and I thought, well, the vaccination is the same. It's actually based on a wrong idea. You see what I mean?

It's the same thing. If it works, if they make one that works, it's not because of something in the chemicals. It's because of some kind of attitude that you and I have.

If we can have this bodhichitta experience, if we can make contact with, I don't know, a few billion beings directly, and if we can comfort them and say, don't worry, I'll take care of you one by one, then that's the real antidote for the virus. The vaccination and the methyl alcohol, I think they're just about the same. If it works, it's because of your love.

It's not because of what's in the vaccination. I look forward to the vaccination and I think it'll work, but I think we have to have a lot of love for it to work. We have to think about other people at this time.

Anyway, if someone asks you, what's your main practice, Geshe-la? By the way, I have people come up to me and say, you've taught us like a hundred different meditations and which one do you want us to focus on? Which should we hold as our main practice?

Then he says, somebody asked you this question, DANG LDAN YIN BYANG RDO YIN BYING RJE'I LDAN LDAN YIN means, oh, my main practice is tantra Hayagriva, which means horse throat tantra. It's a special tantra. BYANG RDO, which means Vajrapani, the Buddha with the Vajra in his hand, and then RJE'I, which is Bhairava, which means the frightener or the lord of terror.

And DRA' DUN, these are difficult. DRA' DUN GYIN is a difficult word. DRA means, oh, something like those three.

Or you could say Vajrayogini, or you could say Tara, or you could say Medicine Buddha. I'm focusing on that. DUN means I'm reciting that sadhana.

That's my regular sadhana. DUN means to recite every morning. What's the Sanskrit?

Svadhyaya. And it's a famous mistranslation that people do of the Yoga Sutra. It means to do your daily memorization and recitation.

And all the translations say self-study or something like that, which has nothing to do with that. Anyway, DUN means Svadhyaya. It means to recite your sadhana every morning from memory.

GYIN is the present participle. I'm doing that every day. That's what I'm doing every day.

YOD ZER MOD. ZER MOD means, we say stuff like that, but PHAL CHE BA NI most of us, if you figure out what's our THUGS DAM GYI THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL NYON MONGS DUG GSUM for $50. DUG GSUM Yeah, $50.

You got to remind me. I'll forget. Yeah, most of us are, most of us, what's our main practice?

It's thinking that things come this way and then getting irritated with things or else wanting things the wrong way. And that's our main, that's our core practice. You want a core practice?

That's our core practice. Those three animals in the middle of the real life, right there in the core of the wheel of life. DUG GSUM THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL DU BYED PA MANG NGO means you see a lot of people like that.

That's what there's. I got a picture here of just a palm of the hand so you could remember this expression. What's our main practice?

What's the thing we're focusing on? It's this thing in the palm of the hand where this is your main practice. This is the one you carry around with you all the time.

I like this picture. I don't know why. I think it's kind of artistic, I guess.

All right. SBYOR BA CHEN PAS KYANG SNGA PHYIR THAMS CAD LA SKYES PA RGYUR KYANG Then Lord Atisha, he's talking about Lord Atisha, Dipamkara Sri Jnana. And he says, wow, he was a master of everything.

He had mastered countless scriptures. His commentaries are unbelievable. In fact, I was trying to read one yesterday and I was like, I actually decided not to teach it to you guys in October because it was just too difficult.

CHOS THAMS CAD LA SKYES PA RGYUR, he was a master of everything, of all this. By the way, we are going to do his sadhana, but we're not going to do a commentary on emptiness, which is often printed with the sadhana. I thought it would be nice to do them together, but it's too far out.

It would take a year to teach it. SKYES PA RGYUR KYANG, DE'I THUB MA BRTZON PA, THUB MA BRTZON PA means, but he wasn't satisfied with learning all these topics, and BRTZON PA, SEMS RIN PO CHE, DI PHYIR SEMS RIN PO CHE is a beautiful expression, which means this dual mind, this dual state of mind, meaning, this experience, having this experience with other people. SEMS RIN PO CHE, this dual state of mind, PHYIR, for the sake of getting it, DI PHYIR, RGYA MTSOR THRU ZING BYAS TE, he took off across the ocean to get the instructions on bodhichitta.

There was a famous lama living in Suvarnabhivipa, the golden isle, which is Indonesia, part of Indonesia. What's that called? Sumatra.

Anyway, he went off. He said, I heard there's a great teacher of bodhichitta living in the isles around Java and Sumatra. So he took off on a boat, one thousand years ago.

This guy, this guy, this lama, he took off from North India and went all the way to the ocean and then went 13 months. BDAG BA CHUGS SUM GYI RING DKA' BA BYAS Extremely difficult journey. Extremely dangerous journey.

We have in this next, this next image. I kind of feel like this image says it all. He's in this tiny boat on a very dangerous sea and it was extremely dangerous to sail in those days.

I don't think this painting is an exaggeration. Why is red important? He always wore a red hat.

Tsongkapa wore a gold one. If you see a thangka and they have a red pundit's hat, that's Atisha. And if it's gold, well, that's Tsongkapa.

So I picked a red ship. This is not an exaggeration. I mean, this is probably what it felt like to travel those 13 months to travel across the ocean to meet this lama.

And he was so strict with his vows that he refused to take his monk's robes off. He did the whole trip in his monk's robes. And when he got there, what happened that was famous when he got there?

I don't think it was that much. But yeah, he refused to go to... By the way, that teacher's name was also Dharmakirti, but it's a different Dharmakirti.

Sometimes he's called Suvarnadvipa Guru, the lama from the Golden Isle, Sumatra. But he refused to go directly to his classes. He checked him out first.

He probably got to Indonesia and got an internet connection and checked out this person to see if there were any scandals or any problems with this person. And he did not go directly to the teacher. He studied the teacher first.

After the 13 months on the ocean. Lama Serlingpa Ladin Dhammang Yondzok Sente. And then Lord Atisha studied the complete instructions for having this experience of bodhichitta directly from Lama Serlingpa Suvarnadvipa Guru.

Sente, BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS LA THUGS DAM GYI MTHIL And he made bodhichitta his palm practice, at the center of his palm practice. DE'I BSTOD PA'I LAMA ZHENG LAS KHU SHAB CHE BAR MDZAD He had many, many teachers in his life, Atisha, but he respected this teacher above all. He was more devoted to this teacher than any other of his many teachers.

The one who gave him the instructions on bodhichitta. GZHAN LTA BA NI SER LING PA SEMS TZAM YIN PAS MA BA YIN NO This is a very interesting sentence. GZHAN means if you looked at this teacher Suvarnadvipa Guru from another point of view, GZHAN LTA BA His LTA BA His philosophical school was SEMS TZAM He was a mind-only practitioner.

Therefore, he was MA BA. He was lower, lower school. And it's very interesting that Pabongka Rinpoche would throw that in.

From the point of view of his emptiness understanding, he was actually lower than Atisha and Tsongkhapa and people like that. His viewpoint was mind-only. So why should Atisha, whose viewpoint is much higher, respect this teacher above all his teachers?

It's because he taught him this form of love, universal love. That's very beautiful. DE PHYIR RANG RES BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS SDUG BSNGAL GYUR LA SKYE AY THUB DAG DGOS TE Say AY THUB.

AY THUB. AY THUB means yeah, I got to do it. AY THUB.

AY THUB means RANG RES means us guys, we should work on this. This is the practice we should work on. AY THUB means I think I can do it.

I think I can do it. AY THUB means to be able to, right? AY THUB means yeah, I think I could do it.

After hearing this lam rim due to the hard work of Tim and Jing Mei and Seiji and a hundred other people, you should be saying by now in this course, you should say AY THUB. Hey, I think I could pull that off. I think I could do that.

I'm going to go for it. AY THUB. DAG DGOS TE That's how you have to think.

You have to think like that. DAG DGOS TE SEMS SKYE BA'I LUS BSTAN DA RES LAS LHAG PA BYUNG DU MED LUS BSTAN means body and mind headquarters. Body and mind headquarters.

For SEMS SKYE BA What's that mean? For SEMS SKYE BA For SKYE BA in this SEMS, this chitta, this bodhichitta. You ain't never going to find a body and a mind, meaning you ain't never going to find a situation better than today.

Actually, the virus is even better than normal. You're not going to find a better world. You're not going to find a better human body.

You're not going to find a better IQ. You're not going to find a better Dharma IQ than the one you got right now. He says that.

DA RES LAS LHAG PA BYUNG DU MED You will never be able to find a better chance than the one you have right now. You have an extraordinary chance to get to this state of mind, to have this experience. You are perfectly situated in the balance of suffering and happiness in this COVID world to have the experience of bodhichitta.

If you just try, if you just put it here and focus on it for a while, then you couldn't have a better chance. This is perfect. Everything's perfect right now.

They say in the god realms people can't develop bodhichitta very easily because there's not enough problems. But we got this virus problem. I mean, everything's perfect.

We have enough food. There'll be some economic problems, but we have enough food. Everyone's got a place to stay.

You can see the real situation of the world is the world is showing its true nature nowadays. It's always been like this. There's been a pandemic going on since human beings started.

It's called death. But it's just more obvious nowadays. it's a good time to practice love.

It's a good time to try to to try to reach this kind of love. CHOS KYANG BYANG CHUB SEMS SBYONG GI DANG PA'I GCIG LA This sentence is extremely important for Seiji. Okay, so we have the body and mind.

We have the perfect circumstances. And we should be doing SEMS SBYONG. Yeah, what's the other name for that?

LO SBYONG. Okay, so you know, don't let people don't let people tell you mental development or something like that. Some incredibly bad translation.

Extraordinarily poor translation. Okay. Here it is.

Here's the real meaning of LO SBYONG and he's playing with us. He doesn't call it LO SBYONG. He calls it by its full name.

BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS SBYONG Practicing bodhichitta. Trying to get to bodhichitta. That's what LO SBYONG means.

And I told you guys a million times in ACI 14. Well, here it is. SEMS SBYONG GI DANG PA.

DANG PA means GCIG LA. If you get one good teaching on trying to develop this bodhichitta experience. CHOS BYANG CHUB NANG GI RIM PA'I SDI LAS CHOG TU RGYUR PA MED If you were looking for a body and mind that was ideal situation and an ideal world to get bodhichitta, you're there already and you're in the middle of the best teaching for developing bodhichitta.

You're in the middle of an extensive lam rim. This lam rim is going to go on for 14 years or something. Inshallah.

How can you do better than that? You're sitting in the middle of the greatest lam rim ever written and you're sitting in a world which is comfortable, but dangerous. And that's perfect.

SEMS SBYONG GI DANG PA GCIG LA. CHOS BYANG CHUB NANG GI RIM PA'I SDI LAS CHOG TU RGYUR PA MED There is no better dharma you could be working on to get bodhichitta. DE LTA BO DANG BYANG NAS BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS RGYUR PA MED DE LTA BO DANG BYANG NAS BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS RGYUR PA MED If you get to this lam rim being taught on the internet in this world which has enough food for us and enough housing and a virus that could kill you.

This is perfect. This is like, and if you can't get bodhichitta now with this teaching and with this world that we're experiencing right now, then you're like a person who goes to Paris and doesn't go to the Bollagerie and doesn't get a Parisian croissant. Okay, I'll give you guys a quiz.

How come I, there were days in Paris when I couldn't get my croissant? There's a quiz. Well, no, when you go, you always got jet lag.

To come from the United States, you always, that's a terrible jet lag. That's one of the worst. Is to go to Europe from the US.

And then what happens? No, you wake up late. And the best Bollageries, they don't serve croissants after like 11 or 12.

You go there and they're like stupid American. We don't have croissants after 11 o'clock. Why not?

Because we don't make them out of a horse oil like you do. And they get bad after 11 o'clock. You know, we want them fresh.

Anyway, it's a thing. So, SHIN DU PHANG. Say SHIN DU PHANG.

SHIN DU PHANG Okay, PHANG PHANG means fat in Chinese language. SHIN DU PHANG probably means very fat. This is a COVID tummy.

No, but in Tibetan, SHIN DU PHANG means How do you say it? How would you say it? You go to Paris and you don't get a croissant.

It's a great loss. SHIN DU PHANG means incredible loss. Okay.

SHIN DU PHANG means you got the best teaching. You got the best lamrim. You're in the middle of those instructions.

You know, you got enough to eat. You have a place to stay. You're stuck at home a lot.

And you see the real nature of this life, which is dangerous. And then if you don't pick up your croissant, then you're crazy. You're not going to get a better chance than that.

Okay, SHIN DU PHANG. You blew it. SHIN DU PHANG All right.

CHOG PHAN ZIN DU MI TSE GCIG LA MTSO BA RGYUD CHU LEN GYI DKA' THUB TZAM LA BSTAN NAS CHOS PA'I YANG RTZA' LROMS KYANG So, CHOG PHAN ZIN DU You see people comparing Dharma practices and they think MI TSE GCIG LA MTSO BA RGYUD CHU LEN So CHU LEN is a special yoga practice where you go out and you collect the pollen from certain flowers. And then you make a pill out of it. Tiny pills.

And if you've reached a certain kind of meditation level, that's enough to live on. I know some foreigners, some Americans, some Europeans, and they tried to do CHU LEN and they went and, you know, it's kind of nice that Westerners try this stuff because Tibetans know better. But there are some Westerners reading something like this and they run out and they get some flower pollen and they make little pills.

And then I saw these guys, they did CHU LEN for a month. They lived off these pills for a month and they looked like from a concentration camp, you know, they looked terrible. And it looked like they're about to die and that's not CHU LEN.

CHU LEN means that if you have this stage of meditation and you take this tiny pill, you look like Seiji. You look all, you know, muscular and strong and happy and healthy. So that's not CHU LEN.

If you get skinny, you're not doing CHU LEN. If you look great, you're doing CHU LEN. RGYUD CHU LEN GYI DKA' THUB TZAM LA BSTAN NAS CHOS PA'I YANG BRTZER, YANG BRTZER means the pinnacle.

YANG BRTZER means the top of the top. YANG means also, right? So BRTZE means tip.

So they think, oh, this is the pinnacle of religious practice. If I could live off those little pills, then I'd be a real saint. This is what it would be to be a real saint.

BRTZER LOM. LOM is a special verb that means to have delusions. Big delusions, you know.

Like those guys who say I'm Napoleon or something in the crazy house. That's called LOM. So here he says those people who think they're going to eat these little pills and then they don't get skinny, then they must be real meditators.

He says LOM. That's all LOM. Delusion.

KYANG BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS DE'I GAL CHUNG DU SONG STE And then you ask them, well, what's your opinion about bodhichitta? And they say, well, you know, that's a nice thing. That's okay.

But I'm working on Chudan, you know. Bodhichitta is, you know, it's one of those things people talk about. It's not a big deal.

Here it says GAL CHUNG. It means not a big deal. SONG STE RDZOGS CHUNG DU SGROS PA'I LAM LAS DGOS PA'I MANG PO So we see people wandering in the opposite direction from enlightenment.

Like there's enlightenment ten miles that way. And they're like wandering out in the desert somewhere. Completely confused, you know.

I'm doing Chudan. Wait, wait, you got to get there. No, no, no.

I'm going to go over there, you know. So that's called DGOS PA, to make a mistake on your path, okay? MTHONG CHOS SU YOD means, it's an expression in Buddhism.

It means, this is something we see every day, you know. Don't think I'm describing some crazy situation. MTHONG CHOS means seen entity.

But what it means in colloquial Tibetan is, come on, you can see these people everywhere. Every Dharma group in this world, you can see people who consider some little yoga practice to be more important than loving other people, okay? All right.

RANG RES YANG RAB NA SEMS DI RGYUD LA CHOS MIN ZHIG BSKYED THUB NA Now, let's get back to us guys who are, you know, we're not crazy. We're trying to get bodhichitta and he says, look, if you could have the real experience, just once, okay? DE MA BYUNG NA TSUL BYED KYI MYONG BA THON PA If you can't get to that real experience, at least try.

Keep trying. Keep knocking away on it, you know? Like try one day and then try the next day and then try the next day.

So what he says here is, look, if you don't have this direct experience with all the people of the universe in 20 minutes, then keep knocking away on it. TSUL BYED means keep getting used to it. MYONG BA THON PA means keep getting used to the idea.

Listen about it. Learn about it. Talk about it with your friends.

Keep getting used to the idea that it is possible to meet every living being in the universe within 20 minutes and make a commitment to them to take care of them as if you were their mother or their father, okay? So just get used to the idea. So what he's saying here is, look, if you don't have this experience tomorrow, don't freak out, okay?

Just keep working on it. Keep trying and get used to the idea. Keep thinking about it, and then it's going to help it grow in your mind.

DE YANG MA CHUNG NA NYAM MOG TU TSOS PA TZAMS PA'I SPYOD DAG PA'I SPYOD Here's another SPYOD. Then if you don't have time or you're too busy to think about it constantly, then please think about it once in a while, okay? At least get in the general mood.

NYAM MOG TU TSOS NYAM MOG TU TSOS means try to get in the general mood of it, like on your way to work, in your car, or while you're having dinner, or while you're watching Netflix. Just think about it once in a while and say, that'd be cool if I could do that. That'd be kind of cool.

So even if you don't practice it every day consciously or purposely, but at least try to entertain the idea once in a while. That's called NYAM MOG TU TSOS. Get used to the idea.

Get accustomed to the idea. BDAG DGOS KYIS. That's what you should do, but the KYIS is negative at the end of a sentence.

KYIS DE LA THUN GCIG GI RING MI KHOR MI BSKYENG BAR LHA BSGOM SNGAGS BDE'I KHO NOR LA BRTZON PA NI But if you don't think it's worth your meditation time, if your meditation time is too booked up with meditating on Vajrayogini or Tara or Medicine Buddha, and you don't have time because your meditation time is all booked up with these high tantric deities, then BRTZON PA NI If that's your practice, if you think that focusing on Vajrayogini or Tara or Medicine Buddha is the main thing and you put all your effort into that and you don't have time during your daily practice to think about this experience, SNGAGS BA BRTZON MED It is useless effort. Meaningless exertion.

It's a meaningless work that you're doing with tantra if you're not working on this state of mind. Everything else becomes meaningless exhausting yourself. SNGAGS BA means to exhaust yourself without any point.

DE'I HA BYAMS PA'AM PA YIN GSUM And there would be no greater loss in your life to spend your life that way. That'd be like going to Paris a thousand times and not getting a croissant. So that completes this section of the text.

We're going to be going on during the next retreat. Next retreat again, we're going to focus on Medicine Buddha practice because of the virus. It's a very powerful practice and obviously we'll try to do it as much as we can with this attitude of love for every person in the universe, not just for this planet.

This is a small world. There are billions of worlds like this. And if we can have this greater focus, I don't know.

It's like if you catch all the fish in the ocean, you can catch one fish that you want. You see what I mean? Something like that.

I mean, we don't want to catch fish, but if you could catch all the fish in the whole ocean, then probably the one you would really like, but maybe it's a Jew, what's it called? Juju fish? You can probably catch the one you want.

We'll see you in episode 15. We're going to be doing a review of all of the big ideas of this course. It's good for you and it's good for me.

We've been going through very carefully, bit by bit by bit. If we can go back and review everything in one session, then we can get an appreciation for the flow and it'll be easier to remember what happened during this retreat. Okay, see you then.