«Дар освобождения», курс 36 «Любовь во времена вируса», занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome to the first meditation for loving the time of the virus. So it is the time of the virus where I'm speaking from, Sedona right now. We are still pretty much in quarantine and we're talking about this whole long rim is about the time of the virus.

I like to think that if you and I do a really good practice during this retreat, if we practice this particular long rim section very well, that we could kill the virus. If we did some love to each other during the time of the virus then we could kill the virus. So we're actually going to try to do that together.

Of course that involves learning the ideas that we've been learning. This first week during the long rim we'll be studying the importance of treating other people kindly, especially in difficult times. Then the Pabongka Rinpoche talks a lot about how powerful the seeds are.

When we just reach out to other people during difficult times, like the virus times, and we do something for other people. So in addition to that study from that beautiful Tibetan book, which I think is one of the greatest books ever written in Tibetan, we're also going to be doing meditations together. These are brief meditations.

In general it's better to make meditations brief and strong. If you would like to repeat the meditations you're welcome to. You could do once in the morning or once in the evening, like that.

But it's better, I think, in my experience to do brief meditations. I was fortunate to do a three year, three month, three day retreat in silence. Good silence.

We kept good silence for that period from 2000 to 2003. During that time, every six months, before I went into retreat, my students asked me, could you please just come out and teach a few days every six months during your three year retreat? So I said, I can do that but I will be blindfolded.

I won't know if there's one person there or there's a thousand people there. I think it's important from my retreat that I don't see anybody. So for three years this is what we did.

After about two years, I was thinking what would be very valuable for all of us to learn during one of those teachings, those few days of teaching every year. I decided to to teach the last chapter of the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life by Master Shantideva. He lived about 1,300 years ago.

You know the story. He was accused of being a lazy monk and everyone thought he wasn't a very productive person in the monastery. So in order to have an excuse to kick him out of the monastery, they asked him to give a teaching and they thought, well he will give such a terrible teaching that we can tell him we don't want a monk like that in our monastery.

He got up on the teaching throne and he started to teach something he had written which is called the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. It was extraordinarily beautiful and everyone there was incredibly amazed. As he reached the ninth chapter, which is about emptiness, he started to rise up off the teaching throne and he kept teaching.

He didn't stop. A few of the monks had the ability to fly and they just flew up after him. He was teaching them in the sky but then he kept going higher and higher and even those monks couldn't follow him.

So not many people heard the end of the famous ninth chapter about emptiness, which is one of the greatest technical presentations of emptiness in history and it's poetry. It's all incredible poetry. Then there's a tradition that he taught another chapter alone in the sky called the chapter on dedication.

This was kind of a private prayer that he made to himself. The prayer went like this, you know, if I have done a good deed by writing this poetry really about how to be a bodhisattva, if that was a good karma, then I dedicate that karma to other people. I dedicate that karma to all the beings in the universe.

Then he goes through all the different kinds of beings in the universe who are having any kind of trouble, which means he goes through every kind of living creature in the whole universe, which is amazing. For example, he starts with the hell realms and he pictures the situation in hell. He describes it and then he does a prayer that the good karma of writing his famous book, that that good seed will empty the hell realms and transform them into a paradise.

Then he goes on to all the other realms of the universe. Today we're going to do a meditation based on this text. We're going to follow the same idea.

What is that meditation? In the time of the virus, here in the time of the virus, as we said before in this text, if we can do anything for other people during an especially dangerous time, a special time of worry and fear and danger for everyone in the world right now, a very special time. If we can do any small act of kindness to other people, and you have seen and I have seen many of these acts of kindness.

Needless to say, the doctors and nurses in the world, they're frightened. I read an article today of someone from Princeton who is a doctor in New Orleans in the US and half the staff in her hospital came down with the virus. Nobody left.

None of the doctors or nurses left. They stayed and they served people and they said better others should live. That was their motto.

Better others should live. In our own small way, I think every one of us during this virus time, we were scared. We were worried about our jobs.

We were worried about our work, our money. We were worried that our parents would die or we would die or our kids would die. I think I can say probably not many of us were bodhisattvas.

We didn't run to the hospitals to serve people. I have a friend today who volunteered to go to a hospital and work, but you and I didn't really do that. But we did do some kind things.

I think every one of us has done from deep feeling, in the middle of our fear, I think we all recognize that this was a special time for bodhisattvas. This is a great time for bodhisattvas to do any small nice thing for other people. We are similar to Shantideva, Master Shantideva, because a small kindness during the virus times, during the times of the virus, is equal or almost equal in power to writing the whole Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life.

That's what we learned. To do a small kindness to another living being at a very dangerous time is an extremely powerful seed. So let's dedicate this seed.

Let's do a meditation together. I see, this is by the way, this is called an act of truth. These five meditations during this lam rim course, they are all acts of truth.

So what is an act of truth? It's like shooting a gun. Here you see a lady shooting a gun.

She's shooting at the sky and there's a reason for that. The bullet in the gun is those little nice things you did for other people during the virus and they're still going on, right? So the bullet in the gun, the bullet for the act of truth has to be some good thing you did for other people.

And shooting the gun is called dedication. You give away the karma of some kindness, some love that you did during the time of the virus. So this Shantideva's practice is based upon an act of truth.

If it's true that I did one kind thing, maybe to your neighbor, personally I met my neighbors for the first time during the virus, and we did kind things for each other. So if it's true that I did one kind thing to my neighbors during this virus, then may the virus be killed. May the virus be shot to the middle of the sun.

So I just imagine this lady is shooting the virus into the middle of the sun. I checked on Google, it's 25 million degrees in the middle of the sun. I just imagine the virus being totally vaporized by the power of the sun.

By the power of the sun, this virus is going to be evaporated, completely gone. So all of us, during these five meditations, we're going to follow Master Shantideva's suggestions in his famous tenth chapter, and we're going to take some small good deed we did during the virus, and we're going to use it as an act of truth. If it's true Geshe Michael spoke to his neighbors for the first time and showed some love for each other during the virus.

If it's true, then by this truth, may the virus be ended, and may people no longer suffer. So we're going to do five parts to this meditation. Let's get ready to start, so please get comfortable.

We're going to start working on sending help to people of the universe. The very first part of this meditation will be to identify one good thing you did during the virus. For me, to be honest, I have a neighbor who's a little bit cranky.

I've never really gotten along with him, but during the virus we've been extremely kind to each other and we have served each other during the virus. I'm going to take that good deed. So first you have to identify some love you gave to someone else during the virus times.

It's going to be a short meditation, 15 minutes. Just think of one good thing you did to overcome during the virus time. Then there's an expression in English, it's a bad expression.

When I was a kid in school, the teachers taught us to kill flies. Flies have germs. Flies are supposed to be bad.

We're supposed to try to kill flies. My parents would hand me a piece of newspaper and you roll it up and you try to kill the flies and if you kill some, your parents say, oh you're a good boy. Of course that's a terrible thing.

Now I understand it was wrong. But there's a joke in English called to kill a fly with a sledgehammer, with a very heavy hammer. Maybe I'll get you a picture of a sledgehammer.

Try to kill one fly with it. It means overkill. We have this expression in English called overkill.

Look, that's like trying to kill a fly with a nuclear weapon or something. It's too much. Why are we talking about that?

To send the virus to the middle of the sun, to remove it from this world, is overkill. You could just snap your fingers and kill the virus and you don't have to send it to the middle of the sun. But if you do an action which is extremely powerful, which covers the whole existing universe, then you're going to, it will hit the virus also.

I'll say it again. If you perform an action which impacts on the entire universe, then because the virus is a tiny part of that universe, it's going to kill the virus also. So what I'm talking about in this meditation, we're going to imagine sending our karma, act of truth, to whole sectors of the universe.

We'll cover the whole universe. By the end of the fifth meditation we'll cover the whole universe. Then obviously the virus is a tiny part of the universe.

It will easily be destroyed. But we're going to do overkill. We're going to do something for the whole universe.

We're going to start in the hell realms. Now, we don't believe in hell. Hell doesn't care whether you believe it or not.

You can go there. Many people do. There are realms of hell.

Then there are simple explanations. I think they were invented by people who saw hell. They said, oh look, hell is 3,000 feet under this floor and if you're bad you can go there.

You will burn in the fire there. Christian religion has this tradition. Buddhist tradition has the same tradition.

Hindu also. Muslim also. So yes, we do believe in a hell.

But it's not a place so many feet under the floor. It's a sector of the universe. It's like, think of the universe as a bunch of concentric spheres.

In every part of the universe there's a hell realm. There's a hell realm in every part of the universe. It's not below our feet or something like that.

That's not the point. There are billions of beings in every part of the universe living in hell. During this meditation we're going to take our little virus love action.

We're going to do an act of truth. If it's true that I was nice to my neighbor, if we had love for each other for the first time, then may all the sectors of hell in this universe be destroyed and transformed into parks, dharma parks. Beautiful dharma parks.

So let's start. Let's just do it. Get yourself ready, comfortable.

Sit up straight, having my smile, drink a last bit of coffee. Someday I'm going to tell you not to drink coffee. Get a nice smile on your face.

It's going to be a 15-minute meditation and it won't be very long. A short, focused, sweet meditation is more powerful than a long distracted one. Okay, here we go.

[Speaker 2]
Close your eyes. Small smile. Hands are relaxed on your lap.

To get the energy we need to do this act of truth, we are going to bring in front of us, we're going to invite our teacher.

[Speaker 1]
Think of your heart teacher and bring them here in front of you.

[Speaker 2]
They're going to be meditating with us.

[Speaker 1]
Then we'll come to our breath and we'll do ten slow breaths, relaxed, happy, smile on your face, tummy is slightly pulled in, long exhales. Let's count ten breaths. The out breath is the first half.

The in breath is the second half. Here we go.

[Speaker 2]
Ten slow breaths to settle down the mind. Now we're going to do an act of truth.

[Speaker 1]
Doing an act of truth requires ammunition. You have to have a good deed, an especially good deed that you've done. So for the next few minutes, let's be quiet.

Think about the days when you first heard about this virus and it started to spread around the world. In America I think we thought it wouldn't reach here or something. Then it reached our country and it started to spread.

A sense of fear and confusion also spread. During those difficult days, which are still going on here, I did do some beautiful things for other people. I was afraid.

I wasn't a great saint during this time. I didn't volunteer to go help the sick, but I did show kindness to people around me. So think about those kindnesses you've shown to other people.

[Speaker 2]
I'd like you to choose one. Choose one of the acts of love that you have shown to another person during the days of the virus. Now imagine the realms of hell.

[Speaker 1]
As you heard in the tenth chapter, dedication chapter, from Master Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, you should listen to the recording sometimes. There are places in this universe where people live in terrible pain all day, all night, for many many years. If the dog sees a chew toy and the human sees a pen, there are also beings who have hurt other beings in the past, who have terrible bad seeds, who see the pen as fire and they see it pressed into their eye.

Fire pressed into their eye. The dog sees a chew toy. The human sees a pen.

There are beings who have very bad seeds and they see a stick of fire pushed into their eye. There are such things. Think about those people.

We're going to try to help them. They exist. We can't really get into the mind of a dog.

We can see dogs, but there are many beings we cannot see. They are around us.

[Speaker 2]
There are beings who see the pen as fire, pressed slowly into their eyes.

[Speaker 1]
If it's true that I showed some love or kindness during this time of the virus, if it's true, then may I, may those beings see me as a real bodhisattva. May those beings who see the fire being pressed in their eye, may they see a person approaching me as a bodhisattva. I see myself as a normal person in this world, but by that good karma, the love that I showed in the time of the virus, by that good karma may I appear as a high bodhisattva to those beings.

[Speaker 2]
If it's true I was kind once during the virus, may I appear as a high bodhisattva to those hell beings. Act of truth. And I wave my hand and a cool rain starts to fall.

[Speaker 1]
It hits the fire in their eyes.

[Speaker 2]
The pen, the thing that is a pen in this world, which is a stick of fire in their world, and the fire goes out, and this beautiful soft rain keeps falling. And their eyes are healed. All the pain disappears.

They open their eyes, new eyes, and they look around. Beautiful flowers everywhere. Beautiful garden.

Beautiful trees. Beautiful birds singing in the trees. Complete opposite of hell.

If it's true I was kind once during the virus, may hell be turned into a garden of deathlessness. A garden of buddhas. Each hell being, may they become a buddha in their own garden.

Let's spend some minutes there. If it's true I was kind during the virus, to anyone, for even a few minutes. May they see this pen called Michael as a bodhisattva who changes their world into a paradise.

Changes them into a buddha. Now let's please come back to your breath. Let's take ten slow breaths.

Long exhales. Slowly you can open your eyes.

[Speaker 1]
I like to take a stretch after meditation. Take a good stretch. During this Lam Rim, we've sort of designed, me and Tim, designed the Lam Rim to go on for five weeks.

You'll be having three Lam Rim classes every week. This meditation, we'd like to encourage you to do it every day for the first week. There will be three classes.

If you can, do this meditation maybe once a day or twice a day. That'll be for the first week. During the second week, we'll change to a different daily meditation, but the same chapter, the same dedication, and the same sending the virus to the middle of the sun.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. See you in the next meditation.