«Дар освобождения», курс 37 «Лучшее, что ты можешь сделать со своей жизнью», занятие 5

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back to Lam Rim. Let's put that picture up you guys. This is a peach tree.

We have this new little cafe in Arizona, which I bought because it was going to close. All the old people in my town go there for coffee in the morning and talk to each other. It's the only bright spot in their day.

I told the guy I would buy it. Oh God, it's a lot of work. Anyway, we called it Peach Tree Cafe and we planted these peach trees.

They're growing like crazy. They flowered. Actually, two Chinese friends, Allison Zhou Xiaoping and Stanley Chen, they planted the trees because they got stuck here during the virus.

They had a lot of fun. I guess they never planted anything before and it was a lot of fun to plant the trees together. You guys should know that your peach trees are growing very crazy.

It looks like it's going to be about 20 peaches in the first year, which is very strange. Anyway, why are we talking about that? Let's go back to the text.

DGE BA GZHAN KUN CHU ZHING ZHIN DU NI, BDE BU SKYES NAS SRED PAR RGYUR BA NYID, BYANG CHUB SEMS KYI DRUN ZHING LTAS PAR YANG, BDE BU RJIN PA'I MI ZAD PHAL BAR YOD, This is talking about different kinds of karmas. Most of the karmas that you and I make, we do something nice for somebody. We collect a seed in our mind and then later on that seed opens.

We get the result. It should be much bigger than the cause. Then it's done.

Then it's over with. Then you're going to have to go find someone else to do something nice to them because that other seed is finished now. That's the way seeds work.

They grow a tree and when the tree grows, it kills the seed. That's the same with seeds in our mind. We get the result of the good karma and then that's finished and now we have to go make another good karma.

But bodhichitta is different. Bodhichitta is a self-replicating karma. Bodhichitta is a karma that when it opens, it causes more bodhichitta.

So it tends to perpetuate itself. It's like a positive wheel of life. But other plants bloom and die and he calls CHOS SHING.

CHOS SHING means like a bamboo or sugar cane. Then a peach tree, for example, it will give a fruit. I remember my teacher, he was teaching this subject.

It was very beautiful. He had a peach tree outside and he took a peach and he ate it and he took the pit and he went over and he planted it and that grew into a big beautiful tree. So he said, look, you see, the fruit becomes the seed.

So that's the way bodhichitta is. The fruit becomes the seed and then it's an upward cycle. It keeps growing more trees and keeps growing more fruit.

BYANG CHUB SEMS KYI BYUNG ZHING He compares bodhichitta to a fruit tree. LTAG PAR YANG RGYAS BU BYIN PAS It keeps giving results. Those results become next year's seeds.

MI ZAD PHAL BAR GYUR It never stops. It keeps an upward spiral. All right.

And that's from Master Shantideva again. ZHES GSUNGS PA BZHIN, SON NAMS KYI RTZOL RDZOGS PA LA DE LAS LHAG PA MED TE If you want to... At the end of the class, we always say, DGE BA'I DI RGYAS BO KUN, SON NAMS KYI RTZOL RDZOGS BZHIN May I collect the two collections of merit and wisdom?

Somebody asked me a question. When you get to the level of an enlightened being, are you still making karma? Do you still call it karma?

And we don't call it karma. Because karma always has some negative connotations. Even good karma.

Sometimes we call it dirty good karma because it wears out. So, when you get up to the karmas or the seeds that turn you into a Buddha, we don't call them karma anymore. We call them the two collections.

So here he is mentioning... By the way, where is that famous verse, Tim, for $100 about the two collections? Come on, you guys.

At the what? Nope. But you're close.

It is Nagarjuna. It is Arya Nagarjuna. Yeah, at the end of the 60 verses, which Nick Lasha is translating nowadays.

He's translating an impossible commentary by Gyaltsabje. He told me yesterday he was resting with Gyaltsabje. I said, don't try, he's stronger.

Anyway, SON NAMS KYI RTZOL RDZOGS PA LA If you want to complete the collection of merit which creates the body or the mind of a Buddha? The body of a Buddha. RTZOL RDZOGS PA LA, DE LAS LHAG PA MED TE There's nothing better in the world than bodhichitta.

SEMS DI MA SEMS PAR SEMS CAN BUM PHRAG GCIG LA If you don't have bodhichitta and somehow you could make an offering to 100,000 people. GAL PO BUM PHRAG MANG POR Even if you could do that for many millions of years, and even if STONG GSUM NOR GYI GANG STE Even if you took a bag and filled it up with all the jewels that exist on a thousand planets, sorry, a thousand groups of a thousand planets. It's called the STONG GSUM.

A billion planets. If you could take a billion planets worth of gemstones and offer it to 100,000 people for billions of years. RGYUN PA RGYUN PA YANG, BRAL BU ZAD At some point that karma would run out.

The karma would run out. Then you'd have to do it over again. But you know what he's going to say.

RGYAL ZAD If you are RGYAL ZAD If you do RGYAL ZAD job, RGYAL ZAD KYI CHOS PA MIN ZHING SANGS RGYAS KYI RGYUR MIN RGYUR YANG SEMS DI ZIN NAS Even if you are not able to do the six perfections, for example, and even if it's not the kind of karma that would create a Buddha right away, SEMS DI ZIN NAS Even if you have one of those, let's call it a blessed moment, where you feel close to being a bodhisattva. Like you're in a sacred mood.

You're having a sacred moment in your life. I don't know about you, but it doesn't happen very often. For me it happens maybe once in a few months or something.

So you're having one of these sacred moments, a moment of real peace and silence or something. Then he says you're having one of those moments, you're in this super good spiritual mood, and you're eating french fries at McDonald's, which is the only thing you can eat at McDonald's, and you DUN GROL LA GZAN GCIG You got the picture for me, you guys? This is one of my favorite things to do.

This is giving a McDonald's french fry to a bird. This is the kind of thing that Lord Buddha used to do. He would go to McDonald's, buy french fries, eat most of them, and then throw a couple to the birds who are always hanging out at McDonald's.

Then you make a little prayer. I'm teaching you a really fun spiritual practice. So go to McDonald's, eat a few and throw out the rest.

But take a few french fries, and just before you throw it to the bird you make a prayer. You say, if you eat this french fry, you have to be one of my first disciples after I become a Buddha. Then throw the french fry to them.

Then it's so fun to see them eat the french fry. Sometimes you have a really bad day and they refuse to eat the french fry. But mostly they will eat it.

So hold up the french fry, make a little prayer. I say a little prayer for you. Then throw the french fry.

He says here, if you throw the french fry to the little bird outside of McDonald's with a prayer, a bodhisattva's prayer, it's more powerful than giving all the gemstones on a billion planets for a billion years to a billion people. Got it? It's more powerful.

GZAN means a tiny piece of food. GZAN BYANG CHIG RGYIN PA TZAM YANG BRJED PA ZAD PA MED Why? Because that karma is self-replicating.

That karma tends to create more karma of the same. It doesn't wear out. It's not like, they call sugar cane, which is harvested once and then the plant dies.

Bagasse, if you know about that. Old sugar cane. Anyway, it's popular in Hawaii.

Big waves in Hawaii. That's where I met it. Anyway, BRJED PA ZAD PA MED This seed has no end.

This is like a peach tree and the fruit becomes the seed from the next tree. RGYAL ZAD KYI CHOS PA DANG SANGS RGYAS KYI RGYUR GYUR RO Then you'll be able to practice the six perfections and it will turn you into a Buddha. SEMS DI SEMS PA'I SGO NAS PO'I GANG PHYIS BU BA NA SEMS CAN GYIS BYANG DAG NYAMS PA'I BU BA'I PHAN YIN YOD PAR GSUNGS It's very difficult to express this next point.

It's difficult to... It's difficult to say it to somebody who hasn't experienced it. But try to imagine that if you did something that affected a billion...

If you did something that affected billions of people, what would that karma be like? Then he says, look, if you take one stick of incense and you offer it to one person, is it good or not? It's a good deal.

Will the second love karma kick in? What's the second love karma? Will it increase exponentially?

Yeah, it will. Okay, that's with one stick of incense. Now try to imagine that somehow when you offered one stick of incense to somebody, at the same moment, you could offer it to everyone in the universe.

Would that be a good deal? That's what he's saying. Look, offer one stick of incense to one normal person, then the second love karma kicks in.

It will multiply exponentially and you'll get 16 and then you'll get 153. Like that. Now imagine that when you offer the one stick to one person, somehow your body multiplies and you're offering it to everyone in the universe.

Countless people. No limit. Imagine that.

Then he said, you get the good karma that you... You have to multiply the karma of giving the one stick to the one person which multiplies by itself already and then multiply that times how many? Infinite.

Multiply one by infinite and that's how much karma you get by offering one stick of incense if you have bodhichitta. It's hard for me. It's kind of frustrating for me because I have to keep repeating something and I'm not sure it really sinks in, but if you think of the nicest people you ever met or the kindest things you've ever heard about on this planet, like people like Buddha or Jesus or Muhammad helping millions of people for hundreds of generations.

Imagine that kind of goodness and then imagine someone who's doing that for countless people on countless planets and then try to imagine the difference in the number. What is one compared to... What is a million compared to infinity?

I'm trying to get you to think about infinity and I don't know how to get a normal person to think about infinity. Sometimes I think you can say, take off in a spaceship away from Earth and let me know when you see the last star. Sometimes that's the only way I personally can think about infinity.

I think about getting in a spaceship and just going that way and then there's no last star, they just keep going. So try to imagine a karma like that. Try to imagine a mental seed which is infinite, as many as the stars and there is no limit to the stars.

There's no end to the stars. There's the end to the stars that blew up in our particular universe but there are many universes and there are endless stars. Try to imagine a person, try to imagine yourself taking one action which affects infinite beings.

That's how much good karma you make. You can't compare it to anyone doing anything on this planet. There's no comparison.

All right. If normal people can study lam rim and get bodhichitta, then what you're doing to help people cannot be measured, cannot be compared to anybody else in this world. There's no comparison.

You can't compare. Just to have that experience for 20 minutes of making a connection with every living being, if those beings are infinite, then how could you do anything better than that? That's the point.

All right. DE NA SEMS DE SEMS PAS MA NI TSAR GCIG RTEN KYANG MA NI here means OM MANI PADME HUNG. The mantra OM MANI PADME HUNG.

He says if you do... TSAR GCIG means one string, one rosary of money. TSAR GCIG RTEN KYANG Or it could mean a single money.

SEMS CAN GYI SBRANG DANG NYAMS PAS PHAN YIN THOB The karma a bodhisattva collects by saying mantras, for each mantra they say is multiplied by the number of beings in the universe, which is infinite. Got it? Boy, you can finish your 300,000 mantras in much less than three years, right Kat?

Okay. All right. Then I was trying to find a picture for infinity.

I kind of gave up, but here's a picture I don't know. All right, that's infinity. I tried the infinity sign, but it looks like a car thing or something like that.

What is one times infinity? Yeah, I mean, there's no number. Everyone in this course listening right now, we would all like to be a good person, and we would all like to do something good for other people.

We have selfish moments, many times during the day, where we're just thinking about ourselves, but most of the people listening right now, I think all of us would like to be a nice person, and we would like to do something to help the world. So we do all these projects, we fundraise, we help poor people, we help sick people, we save ancient books, but a minute of bodhichitta is one times ten to the infinity power, more good karma than that. So just the attitude of wanting to help all the beings in the universe is more powerful than everything else we did in our life.

And that's why this lam rim is important. Is it possible for a normal human being to encounter an infinite number of other people? And the answer is yes.

Why? Because of emptiness. It's possible.

You can do it. And it's not a big deal. It's just discipline and hard work.

But you can do it. You can spend your life struggling to fundraise a certain amount or to do a certain number of mantras. That's a good thing.

It's a powerful thing. And I do do it. But if you could reach this state of mind, the comparison is...

There is no comparison because it's infinite. So which one should I do? Both.

Okay, shut up and do both. Fundraise and infinite at the same time. All right.

NGON SANGS RGYAS GSHEL ZHUGS DKA'P UL PO GCIG GI SEMS DE SEMS PAS SGO NAS MA MED KONG PO CHUNG NGU GANG PO BA Then he tells a story. NGON SANGS RGYAS GSHEL ZHUGS DKA'P means in the days when Lord Buddha, his holy presence was still here, UL PO GCIG GI, a poor person, and I found the story, and it was hard to find it, and I found it. In fact, it was a beautiful...

It was a poor woman. They don't say it, but it was a lady. GCIG GI SEMS DE SEMS PAS SGO NAS With the intention of a bodhisattva, MA MED KONG PO GCIG She offered one tiny little buttercup, butter lamp cup, butter lamp in a small cup to the Buddha, CHUNG NGU GANG PO BA.

She made it... I'll read it to you. Well, I'll just tell you.

She made a prayer. May this lamp not go out until I come back as a Buddha. May this butter lamp not run out until I return as a Buddha.

She made this prayer. She lit the lamp and she went off to go study. She probably went to Diamond Mountain to do a retreat.

By the way, I'm looking forward to... Maybe in the fall we can have an in-person retreat, especially if people have been vaccinated, etc. I think Diamond Mountain is hungry for you guys.

Diamond Mountain is so beautiful right now and so comfortable. I don't know, when I got here I felt... I just spent a week at a very expensive hotel in San Diego because I was helping my mom.

Diamond Mountain is on the same level. It's kind of amazing. It's really beautiful now.

Anyway, imagine she goes off to Diamond Mountain. She leaves the buttercup at home and she says, may it burn until I return as a Buddha or something. May I become a Buddha.

And then, KUN DGA'O, AA NAN DA Comes back in the room and Buddha says, hey, that butter lamp is still going. Could you blow it out? It could start a fire.

Here's the real story. I'll read it to you. This comes from...

It's called a sutra called Supported by the Tongue. That's a long story. How long is this?

Is this going to mess up our schedule? Yes. I don't care.

Let's do it anyway. DI LTAR YANG SEMS SKYES TE Here's how she got her bodhicitta. GAL TE BDAG MA'ONG BA'I DUS NA SANGS RGYAS SU RGYUR BA ZHIG NA Until the future moment when I return as a Buddha, BDAG PHYIR MA'ONG BA'I BAR DU Until I come back, BAR DU BAR BAR RGYUR May this butter lamp continue to burn.

It's a tiny little cup. ZHIG BYAS NAS MAR MED DE SPAR TE She lit the lamp. CHUNG RGYUR TU SONG She went off on her retreat.

Sorry, I'm talking too fast. MAR MED ES ZER GYIS By the way, I've left the... Don't look for it in the alarm room.

I went to the sutra. The light from the butter lamp, DZAM PO'I LING NANG BA covered the whole planet. DZAM PO'I LING DZAM PO'I DVIGS PA DZAM PO'I DVIGS PA NANG BA RGYUR TE NANG GIS BAR DO'ANG MAR MED DE MA ZHIG RO The next morning it was still going.

It's probably keeping everybody up. Okay. DE NAS TSE DANG LDAN PA MAU RGAL GYI BU CHEN POS Buddha said to Maudgalyayana, can you blow it out?

It's dangerous. And also nobody can get any sleep. BU CHEN POS GUR GYI THAG He took the edge of his monk shawl and he tried to blow out the butter lamp.

MAR MED DE ZER PAR BYED NAS ZER PAR MA NUS MA NUS Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. MA NUS SO DE NAS TSE DANG LDAN PA MAU RGAL GYI BU CHEN POS NANG BAR THOR LING GI ZER PAR BYED Then Maudgalyayana, who was a master of miracles, called up a cyclone, a tornado, and he said, blow out the lamp.

Guess what happened? ZER PAR ZER PAR He couldn't do it. MA NUS SO He couldn't do it.

Then you can see Maudgalyayana is getting frustrated. Then Maudgalyayana GYI BU CHEN POS TZAM PA'I JI RTEN DU SDUG NAS He went up to the form realm, to Brahma level, way above this planet, SDUG NAS STONG ZIN GYI MDIR He got in a place where he could see all the billion planets, including our planet, on which the barnab was still burning. But he called down a cosmic rain on the galaxy of a billion stars.

He called down a rain. Each drop, SHING STE SOGS SHING TZAM Each drop was as big as a wagon, what do you call the piece of wood that goes out? The tongue that holds the six horses or something.

The stick that goes between the horses. Anyway, a big piece of a cart. Call it a BMW.

Each drop was as big as a BMW. SHING THAMS CAG GI RGYUR AB PAR BYING GI LAM MA MIN DE'I RTEN DU STANG It all fell on that one butter lamp. SE MA NUS Couldn't put it out.

DE NAS BYAMS NAS DE'I GYI RGA TZA BA Then did the Buddha proclaim, MAUDGAL KYI BU, HEY MAUDGALYAYANA MTHONG ZHIG Give it up. That's the same verb that Atisha used before. MA MED DIN NI BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS KYI BAR BA YIN LA This particular butter lamp was lit by a person with bodhichitta.

BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS KYI NYAN THOS KYI GZOGS KYI RNAMS You won't be able to put it out. Just give it up. CI PHYIR ZHES NA Why?

THAMS CAD KHYEN PO'I NI GYI SEMS KYI NYAN THOS DANG RANG SANGS RGYAS THAMS CAD KYI GZOGS KYI RNAMS DU MED PA'I PHYIR RO Because nothing else in the world can compare to the power of bodhichitta. Cool story. All right, I'm not going to tell you the rest because it's too...

Well, let's do it. It's so cool. DE NA RA ZHIG NA BU MED DE NYID MA ZHAG STE DRANG PHYIR NAS PHYIR RO MI Then the lady came back to see what was happening with her brother-in-law.

DBANG NAS DE MAR MED DE BZHIN DU'I BAR BA MTHONG BA DANG She saw the lamp was still going strong. DE'I CHOG TU RGA BA CHEN PO'I RGYAS PAR GYUR TO She was extremely overwhelmed by joy. DE NAS CHOG TU DE'I KHYI DE PHYIR BRDZUN PA RDZAD DO And then did the Buddha smile.

Okay, I love it. They don't say he said anything. He said...

They're like, what did Buddha do? What did Buddha do? He smiled.

What? He just smiled. BRDZUN PA RDZAD DO ZAGS KYANG CHEN PO'I DE'I NANG GI PHYIR NI DI YIN TE And what's a Buddha smile look like?

It's part of the sutra. I love it. What was the Buddha's response?

He just smiled. What was the smile like? What's it look like when a Buddha smiles?

GANG GI TSE SANGS RGYAS CHEN PO'I DE'I NANG GI PHYIR NI You want to know what a Buddha smile looks like? CHEN PO'I DE'I NANG GI PHYIR NI GANG GI TSE SANGS RGYAS CHEN PO'I DE'I NANG GI PHYIR NI Light flies out from their well-brushed teeth. Okay.

What's it look like? DI LTA STE You get blue lights. CHEN PO'I You get yellow lights.

MA PO You get red lights. DKAR PO You get white lights. TSUL KHAR means the green of a spring tree, like around here, the mesquite.

SHEL Crystal. MU The sheen on silver. That's what happens when a Buddha smiles.

And that's the end of the story. Then he says, CHIN RJIN LAS KYANG By the way, the same point is made in Shantideva, Master Shantideva. GANG NAS GSUNGS TE SEMS CAN GAM THA'I RAB TU GDUG BA'I PHYIR MIN DOG PA'I SEMS KYIS SU SEMS DE YANG DANG LA NGES PA Suppose you are able to give birth to this state of mind in which you want to help infinite beings.

DE NAS GSUNGS TE NYID LOR GANG Next picture. This guy, oh no. Yeah, I don't know, he's almost as handsome as Pachi.

Or Jordan, I guess. What's he doing? $100.

What's he doing?

[Говорящий 2]
Meditation.

[Говорящий 1]
Better.

[Говорящий 2]
He's drooling in front of everybody.

[Говорящий 1]
No. He's dead... $100.

He's dead out asleep. He's not meditating. He finished his coffee meditation.

He's not thinking about the irritating people in the project against Michael Gideon. He's dead out asleep. And he's piling up huge amounts of good karma because he has bodhichitta.

So the next part of the lamrim is talking about if you have bodhichitta, then it really doesn't matter what you're doing all day long. I mean, as long as you're not burning down somebody's house. But even if you're sleeping, you are collecting huge amounts of good karma.

Here's how Shantideva said it. DE NAS GSUNGS TE NYID LOR GANG Once you get to bodhichitta, you can be sitting, sleeping. I like this promise because I enjoy sleeping.

So if I can collect good karma while I sleep, I'm interested. NYID LOR GANG PHAG MA'I GYUR KYANG PHAG MA'I GYUR KYANG Even if you're totally distracted by a Netflix movie or something, this is the perfect Dharma solution. You can sleep all day.

When you're awake, you can watch Netflix. KYANG GSOS NAM ZHUGS You still get the power of collecting good karma. RGYUN MI CHE Without a moment's interruption.

DU MA ZHIG RNAMS KHANG NYAMS PAR RAG TU CHUNG You get a quantity of good karma equal to the extent of the universe. Even while you're sleeping, and even while you're wasting time on some silly Netflix movie, then you're still making huge amounts of good karma. I like it.

I'm interested. Teach me how. Okay, here you go.

That's another quotation from Master Shantideva. ZHES PA LTAR BYUNG SDOM SNANG NAS GSUNGS He says, here's an important part for you Medicine Buddha people. Shantideva promises that you are collecting that kind of karma even if all you did was make a commitment to the idea of bodhichitta.

The first of the two sets of vows. The first vow, I commit in principle to the bodhisattva's way of life. In principle.

I'm not willing to do anything yet. But in principle I commit. That's called the SDUG SDOM.

Committing to the aspiration. We took it in last December. We all took it.

He says, even a person who just took that much bodhichitta, they just took the vow to think about being a bodhisattva, they're already into the sleep and Netflix category. I said, good deal. Here it says, GNYIS LOGS PA'AM BAG MED DU GYUR KHYANG Even if you're just asleep or if you're wasting your time watching a movie or something.

By the way, there is a time when you should watch a movie so you can rest and that's okay. Watch a nice movie. Don't watch a movie that's going to put bad seeds in your mind.

GYUR KHYANG DGE BA RGYUD MI CHEN PO'I CHUNG The karma will never be interrupted. Now he comes to a famous idea from Master Shantideva. SEMS CAN GCIG GI LAS GNAS TZAM SEMS DUS KYANG I think we have a picture.

Are you ready? This is a mom. Her daughter had a headache.

I think mom gave the daughter one aspirin. Children's aspirin. She's going to give her some water to take it.

Looks like Eva, right? Not quite yet. She's not that big yet.

But Eva's eyes are more powerful. Anyway, SEMS CAN GCIG GI LAS GNAS TZAM SEMS DUS KYANG Even if your intention is no more than giving a single aspirin to a single person to remove their headache, PHAN YIN CHEN PO you get extremely powerful karma from that one act. SEMS CAN THAMS CAD SDUG BSNGAL GYI GNAS PAR RTOD MED PA LAS BRJUN DUG GIS BLO BSKYED PA NI But if you rather have this intention to take away the headaches of infinite beings, SON NAMS KYIS PHYIR MI CHE Wouldn't you say that's a lot?

A lot of good karma. And then he quotes Shantideva again, Master Shantideva. SEMS CAN RNAMS KYI LAS GNAS TZAM ZAL LO NYAMS DU BSAM NA YANG Even if you just think, I would like to take away the headaches of a person, PHAN DUG BSAM PA DANG LDAN TE SON NAMS PAR MED DE'I RGYUR NA If you get a lot of good karma just from the intention to take away a headache from a single person, SEMS CAN RE RE'I MI BDE BA BAG TU MED PA BZAM SDOD CING If you wish to remove the unhappiness of infinite living beings, RE RE'ANG YIN TEN PAG MED DU SGRUB PAR SGRUB PA MOD CI DGOS Well, how much karma is that?

MOD CI DGOS means, what, you want me to tell you? Or how can I tell you? I can't tell you.

Got it? All right. We still have five minutes.

I can use it, right Tim? All right. You guys should thank Tim someday.

We're going to start, hey, the next class. We'll just start the next class, class five. I call class five, which makes us officially one class behind, okay Tim?

A ketchup stain in the middle of the sun. You spill ketchup on your shirt. You have a stain.

If you want to remove it, put your shirt in the middle of the sun and maybe you'll get rid of the ketchup stain. And I looked it up, how many degrees? It's like 50 billions, billions, I don't know.

The shirt would vaporize long before. The stain would obviously vaporize. So we're going to continue on this theme of how powerful is bodhichitta in removing negative karma.

,GRO BA NYIN GZE'I MA'I SREG SBYOR BA, Then they quote, what's the quotation from? I think it's Shantideva. Yeah, it's Master Shantideva.

And he says, look, if you prepared, I don't know about you, I'm a slow cook. It takes me a long time to cook. When I offer to cook, which is not a very smart thing for me to do, it takes me three, four hours to make a good meal and clean up.

The frustrating thing is that the eating takes 15 minutes, right? But if I make a nice French meal for Veronica or something, it takes three, four hours. Anyway, if you made a meal for some people and you made it grumpily.

Grumpy? Grumpily. If you were grumpy making the meal and it was enough to fill up their bellies for half a day, a couple hours.

If you were grumpy and took a couple hours to cook something nice and filled up somebody else's tummy for an hour or two, people would say, oh, what a nice person. Wouldn't they? We do it all the time.

I've never had anybody cook for me. It's kind of a miracle. And I'm like, well, thank you.

I really appreciate it. Now, suppose you made a meal for an infinite number of beings that never stopped. DE BA ZHES PA'I DE BA LA NGOS MED YID NA SANGS PA MTHONG BA'I RDZO CIG PA That meal didn't fill up their belly for a few hours.

It brought them all their hopes and dreams forever. Then compared to cooking the meal for somebody, how does it rate? How does it rate?

The point is Shantideva is saying when somebody cooks somebody else a meal, a dinner, to honor them, which is a nice... I enjoy cooking for people. To honor them, you cook for them.

Then it puts everybody in a good mood. They're like, oh, thank you so much. I made a nice meal for my mom.

She came to my house. And my brother. I made them a nice meal.

It made everybody feel happy. Well, then multiply that times infinity. That's all.

That's what bodhichitta is all about. I like to show this picture, and we'll stop there, of a farm. This guy is not the guy.

There you go. The point is, again, that when you plant this meal from the soil, the soil never stops. It's the biochar thing again, Pachi.

It's that the soil never stops working. The soil works for everybody. The soil doesn't say, you planted me last year.

I don't feel like doing it again. The minerals and the chemicals of the soil will keep working for you forever, as long as you don't abuse it. In India, I've seen ancient fields that are dead.

They can't grow things anymore. They used them up. But normally, a normal field, if you take good care of it, it will just keep feeding you year after year.

That's the idea with bodhichitta. It's like a field that never stops giving crops. It's got good biochar on it.

If you don't know what biochar is, you should find out. It's a wonderful way to make your flowers. I swear, in the few weeks, they're twice as big and twice as beautiful.

Thank you, Pachi and you guys, for inventing that stuff. All right.