«Дар освобождения», курс 37 «Лучшее, что ты можешь сделать со своей жизнью», занятие 7

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back to Lam Rim and that picture was Arya Sangha, don't forget. The guy with the dog and I love the picture. We tend to think that people like Arya Sangha must have been very handsome.

But look, you don't spend 12 years in a cave and look like some handsome llama. It's hard work and probably he had a coat like that. Don't forget the story that we talked about during the lion's dance that he spent 12 years in the cave frustrated that he couldn't meet Maitreya.

Then when he left the cave and he found a dying dog on the road that had been hit by a wagon like a dog that was hit by a car. Nobody stopped to help the dog except him. Then suddenly, because of that moment of bodhichitta, he saw Maitreya and then Maitreya taught him the lion's dance.

DE NAS ZEN GYI RNAMS BSGYIN PA'I STING NGE BRDZIN LA MYONG BZHIN NAS BSTAN CHEN BRAL BYUNG LU BYUNG DANG LUS MIN THUN LA RTOGS PA BYAS That's the famous lions that Maitreya taught him. Okay, here we go. We're on to the 10 cool things that will happen to you if you get bodhichitta.

Here's number eight. We're starting number eight. Which means that no obstacles can touch you.

All of us, all of you in this class, if you got to the Lam Rim class, you're serious. You're a serious person. This is not a half...

somebody told me we should stick to... I don't even forget the name of the thing. TikTok.

What's the other one? Instagram. Yeah, TikTok, Instagram.

Geshe-la, don't go on for more than three minutes, two minutes or one minute. This is the most people can handle right now. Now we're asking you to come to 12 years or 15 years of Lam Rim.

If you're in this class, you're probably a serious person and you're probably a very committed person. Otherwise, you're not going to make it through 15 years or 20 years of Lam Rim. If you're a serious person, if you're trying to help people seriously over a long period of time, like Diamond Mountain has how many years now?

20, basically 20 something years. The people in this room, a lot of them have been here for 20 years, some of them. It's a long job and there's lots of problems.

There's just lots of problems. You can't do big things without problems. It's funny, all of us want to do big things and then we get problems and we start to, well, my practice is no good.

I had a problem today. Come on, you're going to have problems up till Buddhahood. You're going to have problems.

There's going to be screw-ups. Endless screw-ups. The bigger the project, the more screw-ups.

So don't get all excited about it. I'll tell you something. I can't remember the name.

This morning I couldn't remember the name of a person who gave us a lot of trouble like five years ago. I couldn't remember the name. It's not just senility.

It's that they just go away. Things happen, problems come and you have a choice. You can quit or you can keep going.

If you're going to keep going, you have another choice. You can be grumpy about the problems or you can laugh at them. Oh look, Pachi, oh man, we tried to make biochar at Nick's house.

The whole thing, wow. So, you might as well have fun. If you have bodhichitta, then the problems get very small.

The problems shrink fast. You can have fun even when you're having pretty serious obstacles and problems. Then you know what happens.

If you're having fun while you have a problem, the problem is not much of a problem. So, here we go. I like this picture.

I don't know, this picture is actually a disturbing picture of a tank. They're terrible things. They're really terrible things.

People still use them. They were invented for World War I. They were invented in 1916 or 1917.

They found out if you make a metal box on wheels, you can kill people and you can be comfortable. You can sit inside the box and just shoot other people and they can't shoot you. You can just roll over in the middle of the other people's army and shoot people.

They're still popular. They still measure the strength of an army. For example, in Europe, they will measure a country's military strength by how many tanks do they have.

So, they're still used a lot. The point is, you can just sit in the middle of it and the whole world can be blowing up around you. It's not comfortable, but it's not bad.

You're in a metal box and you're protected and that's what bodhichitta does for you. Bodhichitta is like sitting in a tank in a war and everybody else is getting blown up and dying and you're just kind of having a coffee probably. Bodhichitta is like that tank.

I don't like tanks. I think they are a symbol of our failure as people. But the idea that they could protect you is a nice image.

DGES PA NI, KHOR LUS RGYUD BA'I RGYAL PO LA, BLAG NA MDOR BYED DANG SANGS PA, RGYAL CING RGYAL CHEN ZHIG SOGS KYI, NYID NYENG BA'I GNAS SKABS TSUN CHE DU GSUNG BA YIN LA There's a kind of special karma called Chakravartin, which is what? World Emperor. Yeah.

Wheel Emperor. Wheel World Emperor. You're called a Wheel Emperor, King of the World, President of the World, because you have the wheel and the wheel is a spaceship with lots of army guys in it.

To become a King of the World, and there's different levels of King of the World. A Gold Emperor. They have no competition.

Everyone begs them to be King of the World. They don't have to campaign and they don't have to threaten anybody and there's no competition. Everybody wants them to be King of the World.

That's some kind of extraordinary good karma in their past lives. In this life, unanimously, I remember Ken Rinpoche, my Lama, when he went, he didn't want to be abbot of our monastery. It's one of the Great Three Monasteries of Tibet.

He did not want to be abbot and he was too busy. He didn't want to get stuck with this job. He kept writing every four years when they voted for, or six years when they voted for the abbot, he sent a paper and said, I will not accept the abbot's position.

Then he got to be 75 or something, 70 years old. He said, well okay, I don't have to write this letter anymore. They're not going to do it now.

Then they voted him in because he didn't send the letter. Then he had to do it. I was there when he accepted the position and he had to accept it.

He was like, I'll accept the position if the vote is unanimous. If 3,000 monks, if there's not one monk who votes against me, I will accept the position. I was like, Rinpoche, come on, this is a monastery.

It's never going to happen. One guy said he didn't want Rinpoche, one guy. Of course, the peer pressure was pretty intense.

Finally, he changed his mind. Why am I saying that? That's the karma of a real emperor.

The vote, if you run for president of America, the vote will be 350 million to zero because of your karma. You have intense karma. It'll be similar to Rinpoche becoming abbot of Sera Mey.

Sambhagyacin. They have this karma that powerful beings in the universe want to protect them. We have a picture here of some...

I like this picture. This is a real bodyguard picture. You're right.

These guys, they're supposed to be secret service but you can tell them immediately because of the sunglasses and the thing in their ear. If you want to really get some attention, Tim from Girls, just get these glasses and put the thing in your ear and walk around and people will think you're some high James Bond guy or something. Anyway, the karma of a person who has heavy, heavy good karma from their past life and for example, is born into a country where no one starves for the first time in history.

It's the nature of the universe that powerful beings want to be their bodyguards. They are around you all the time. They are protecting you all the time.

If you have the karma, for example, to be born to come to Diamond Mountain. If you have the karma to reach Diamond Mountain in this life then you already have these people around you. You don't see them but there are beings hanging around deflecting problems from you already and you don't know.

You never know but there's already powerful beings protecting you. They are not necessarily Buddhists. They can be Buddhists but sometimes they're just interested, super powerful bodyguard beings.

He lists them here. World emperors have these guys and you don't see them. Invisible bodyguards who keep deflecting problems.

The problems you never know you were supposed to have. There's a lot. These guys have been deflecting them for you.

For example, if you ever did a three-year retreat at Diamond Mountain, you have got a lot of these guys. Then he says here, if you get bodhichitta you get double duty. The home office assigns double bodyguards for you compared to a world emperor.

Compared to a king of the world who has already probably thousands of invisible bodyguards. Bodhisattvas get double. You have two thousand invisible bodyguards taking care of you if you have bodhichitta, if you've tried to have this motivation.

There are invisible powerful beings deflecting problems from you and you don't even know because the problems never reach you. Problems that never happened, that were supposed to happen. GOR GYUR GYIS GSUNGS MA GNYIS GYUR GNYIS GYUR means 100% more.

GNYIS GYUR means double. GYIS NYIN TZAN KUN DU Day and night they are on duty. They are never off duty.

GSUNGS MA GYUR BA'I GNOD PA DANG They prevent problems in your life. DON DANG They prevent evil spirits from reaching you. RGYAGS SO They stop obstacles in your life, problems.

They block them and you don't even know that you were supposed to have them if you have bodhichitta. SEMS DI MED NA THA LTA GANG SO NGA ROL SOGS KYIS DE RNAMS LDAN DANG KYANG BRJUN MI BRJUN NGES PA MED If you don't have bodhichitta and you do GANG SO, so GANG SO is like SO SBYONG but it's two parts, GANG and SO. GANG means to collect new good karma.

SO means to fix all bad karmas. It's similar to SO SBYONG but it's more powerful. It's a tantric SO SBYONG.

It's called GANG SO. Many of the colleges of a great monastery like Sarah will do GANG SO once a month. They have their own GANG SO ceremonies that are written for their college.

Their particular protector deity, which is not the bad protector, which is argument about it nowadays, but every major college has their own protector which everyone agrees is a nice protector. GANG SO NGA ROL SOGS He says you can go take all the guys in your college. You can go to your college temple.

You can get all the big drums. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You can call the protectors at your monthly tantric SO SBYONG.

They won't come if you don't have bodhichitta. They won't come. BRDZUN MI BRDZUN NGES PA MED means we don't know they're going to come or not.

If the guys who are doing the SO SBYONG ceremony, the purification ceremony, don't have bodhichitta, you can bang on the drums, you can ring the bells, you can do the mantras, but there's no guarantee that anyone's going to come to help you. The protectors might listen and they might not listen. The good protectors.

SEMS DES SKYE NA RGYAL PO RNAMS TU RGYAL CHEN DE'I ZHIG CHEN MA GRANGS KYANG But if you have bodhichitta, then even the highest of the protectors, the example here is the four great kings, such as Vaisravana, who are very powerful Buddhist protectors. KYANG DRAN BZHIN DU GSUNGS KHYOB BYED They will come to protect you as if they were your employees. You say, hey, hello, where's my coffee?

And they're like, yes sir. These huge dangerous protectors, they become your employees. You can say, hey, where is it?

I don't know. How come there's traffic this morning? What are you guys doing?

Then, oh, I'm so sorry. They clear all the traffic on the way to Tucson or something. That's their job, right?

They're kind of at your beck and call. I like to say, I was thinking that nowadays we're trying to practice Medicine Buddha. Many people are trying to practice Medicine Buddha, kind of as a team we're trying to do Medicine Buddha.

Now there's supposed to be 12 yaksha generals, like very powerful protector military, Dharma military generals, who are supposed to help us. You can apply this to those 12 also. If your motivation for Medicine Buddha practice is to help other people, then those 12 spirit generals will come and help you.

They will help you achieve your projects like building stupas. But if you don't have bodhichitta and you call them with a mantra, maybe they won't come. There's no guarantee that they will come.

Because there's a weird thing they say, people with bodhichitta smell good, which I guess means if you don't have bodhichitta, you smell like you didn't take a bath for two weeks or something. Something like that. They're attracted, the 12 yakshas are attracted to people who are wearing that cologne of bodhichitta and then they come.

Even you don't ask them to come, they will come. Then if you ask them to come but you don't care about other people, they're like, I don't know, I'll come tomorrow maybe. I have this idea, I like this picture, it's a fire alarm.

Many years ago, I think if people were in the first ACI classes in New York, I had this idea of a very dishonest person. What do you call it? Cynical person.

Unhappy person who want to make money. They start a company and they start selling fire extinguishers that they know don't work. That don't work.

Try to imagine something more mean or cynical than trying to make money by selling fire extinguishers that you know they don't work. Somebody will die from the thing you're making that doesn't work and you know it doesn't work or you don't know it works and it doesn't work. I think the point is to do practices, Buddhist practices, without bodhichitta and to teach them to other people is like selling fire extinguishers that might not work or fire alarms that might not work.

Then someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get hurt. To teach somebody a ritual or a mantra and then don't teach them lam rim and don't teach them about bodhichitta, then it's kind of like giving somebody a fire alarm that doesn't work or might not work.

If it doesn't work then someone's going to get hurt. That's what they're talking about here. What's a safe thing to do to make sure it works?

Just be nice to people. Do your practice for other people. If you do your practice for other people does that mean you're not doing it for yourself?

When you say all living beings, guess who's one of them? People forget that. It's so funny.

I'm doing this for all living beings except me. Why not do it for you too? You're also a living being.

So don't forget when you're practicing bodhichitta for all living beings. My Lama used to say, duh, you're also one of them. You can do prayers for yourself.

That's okay. You're also a suffering being. We're not leaving you out.

That'd be so funny. You have to love yourself also. You owe yourself love because you are a suffering living being.

Simple. You don't have to be lovable. You have to be unlovable.

Then you deserve love. DONG PO GUS PA'I SDOGS NAS I love this sutra. Every time we have a quotation from it, it's beautiful.

This is the one called The House in the Jewel Forest. The House Inside the Circle of Trees Made of Ruby and Emerald and Sapphire. Trees made of emerald.

That's the name of this sutra. NAM PA MI SDUG MED TSIS It's kind of a long sentence, but what it means is in ancient India there were, what do you call that? You put stuff in a little bag and you carry it around your neck like the Native Americans.

Amulet. But what if you put some kind of herbs? A medicine bag or something and you tie it around your neck.

Then there's certain diseases you cannot get. It's like a vaccination. Nowadays they call it a vaccination.

In the old days you put some herbs in a bag and you tie it around your neck and that will protect you from certain diseases. There's a list of them in the sutras. One of them is called NAM PA MI SDUG MED TSIS which means no suffering herb bag.

If you wear that one, there's certain problems and sicknesses that you cannot get if you wear that medicine bag on your neck or on your arm or something. TSIG RGYAL PO CHUD There's another one called the king of all elixirs. If you put that in a medicine bag and tie it around your neck, GRUL BYED RGYER BA you will never step on a rattlesnake at Diamond Mountain.

They don't like it. When you get close, they go away. There's some kind of smell from the bag.

We should find this one. TSIG RGYAL PO GZHAN GYIS MI THUB PA Then there's called the king of medicine bags. GZHAN GYIS MI THUB PA Unbeatable.

LUS LA BYANG NA If you tie that one on your neck, BRAS MI THUB PA people can never take advantage of you. These are different medicine bags that people used to tie on their necks. Why is he talking about this?

You want the ultimate medicine bag? Then get some bodhichitta. It repels all problems automatically.

That's the idea. The ancient sutras talk about special plants that you can put in a bag and tie around your neck. Certain bad things will never happen to you like snakes biting you.

But why not just get bodhichitta and tie that around your neck and then nothing can hurt you. That's another benefit of bodhichitta. You become impregnable.

It's like armor. I have a picture here of a bag. Isn't that a cool idea that if you had a certain kind of motivation to jump planet, it would be like the COVID vaccination.

You would never get certain problems. They just couldn't happen. Nowadays, some of us got our vaccinations.

I stayed in my house for a year. I didn't go anywhere. I didn't go.

I needed something from the hardware store. I needed a little thing for my garden. I called them.

I said, do you deliver? They said, yeah. What do you need?

I said, I need a water sprinkler. It's $10. They said, okay.

I said, can you deliver it? Yeah, it's $100 to deliver it. I said, what?

$100 to deliver a $10 sprinkler? Yeah. I said, I'll take it.

I was like, damn, I can get my car and go buy it in 10 minutes or 15 minutes, but I don't want to die. It's not worth it. I'll pay the $100.

Then they give you a vaccination and it's so cool. Now we go to coffee shops. I went to San Diego.

I went to a nice beach. I went surfing for a week. Every morning I went to get these waffles and I was like, no man.

That's a vaccination. Bodhichitta is the ultimate vaccination. You don't have to wear a mask if you have bodhichitta.

I mean, you should. Still wear a mask. You should wear a mask.

I have my mask right here. You should wear it. I really do.

I have to prove it now. There's my mask. I still wear it, but what I'm saying is if you get a real vaccination called bodhichitta, you don't have to worry about other things.

It protects you. I'm not saying you shouldn't wear a mask. I'm not saying you shouldn't get a vaccination.

What I'm saying is if you have bodhichitta, your mask will work and your vaccination will work, which you should still get or you should still wear. Okay, good. All right.

I went and found the quotation from the sutra. If you're interested, I'll give it to you someday. It's long and boring and we don't know what those bags were anyway.

We don't know what was in them anymore. Okay. Now they're going to talk about Geshe Kam Lungpa.

I had a teacher named Kam Lung, a great Rinpoche Kam Lung. This is Kadampa Geshe from a thousand years ago. Geshe Kam Lungpa, he was meditating on bodhichitta in the mountains of a place called Yungwa in a state called Pimble, which produces some cool lamas.

I've had some lamas from Pimble. BYANG SEMS BSGOM BZHIN ZHUGS SKABS YOD DE MI MA YIN RNAMS KYI Then there were some evil spirits living in Pimble at that time. Like we used to have them around here at that mountain.

Negative spirits. Probably people who were upset because they were killed here. RNAMS KYIS GNOD KYANG BAR TZAM PA NA He was meditating on bodhichitta in his retreat cabin.

The retreat cabin was surrounded by negative spirits. They said, well, let's go get him. Let's go get this guy.

Let's ruin his retreat. Let's make sure the plumbing breaks just when he starts his retreat. If you've ever tried to do retreats, there's about a million different things.

One day I did a retreat and a cicada plague happened. Thousands of grasshoppers going around the cabin. Then they kind of flew away.

Then I found out the cabin was next to a peacock farm. Peacocks go all day long. Anyway, if you want to have obstacles, try to do a retreat.

Why are we talking about that? This Geshe Kamalumba was trying to do a retreat and these demons said, let's go get him. Let's go ruin his retreat.

Then one of them said, ah, it's not working out. It's not working out. We're trying to ruin his retreat.

We're trying to disturb his retreat. But it's not working out. What's the problem?

What's stopping us? One of them said, he loves us more than himself. He cares for us more than he cares for himself.

We can't touch him. We can't touch him. That's so cool.

Let's ruin his retreat. Yeah, it's not working out. Why?

He loves us more than he loves himself. How can we hurt him? We can't hurt him.

We keep trying and nothing happens. He loves us. People always ask me, by the way, lots of people in our group try to do retreats.

Medicine Buddha retreats. Very cool. You always have problems.

You always get some problems happen in retreats. I think not a few of us believe that we have seen this experience during a deep retreat. It's happened to me twice in 40 years.

But I think I have seen those spirits. Then people ask me, what should I do? I have a spirit in my retreat cabin.

One of the ones I saw looked like a good friend of mine. One of the ones I saw looked like black ink flowing between the wall and the ceiling and disturbing the retreat. People ask me, do you believe in those spirits?

I say, well, I didn't grow up in a country where my parents talked about these spirits. We thought it was superstition. No, I didn't grow up believing in spirits, in those spirits.

But I experienced them a few times. Then I asked my teacher, what should I do? What can I do?

How do I get them out of my retreat cabin? He said, love them. They can't stand it.

He said, just love them. Make friends with them. Take care of them.

Support them. I said, welcome evil spirit to my retreat cabin. Would you like some tormas?

Are you guys hungry? Are people ignoring you? The most frustrating thing for an evil spirit is when people don't believe they exist.

They're like, yeah, we're here. You want us to prove it? How to deal with almost supernatural obstacles.

They're also living beings. They're also people. They also need love.

They also respond to love. Everyone responds to love. Love them.

Tell them you love them. Show them you love them. Go pick some flowers for them.

Put them on the altar and say, these are for you guys, not for the Buddhas. These are for you guys. That's how to deal with them.

All right. BSTAN GZHAN ZHIG GRANGS By the way, in the scripture here, in the Lam Rim, that Geshe Kham Lungpa, the demons call him a name. They're trying to think of an insulting name to give him.

They say, he's just like Saraprarudita. Saraprarudita. The bodhisattva who can't stop crying.

He came again. This bodhisattva came again. That's why you have to be a volunteer for ACI.

Because you get to hear the story of the bodhisattva. These demons were calling him names. They're calling him, just like that guy who can't stop crying.

You stupid. It's the biggest insult they could think of. You're just like that bodhisattva from the 8,000 verses.

All right. GZHAN DUG PA'I GNOD PA KYA'O MI PO We can't hurt him. All the stuff we're trying to do to hurt this guy doesn't work.

BYAS MED TSUL MED TSUL means our Lama taught us how he said that. A lot of times you'll see the incomparable Thich Nhat Hanh Rinpoche who's writing the transcript will report what his Lama said. GZHAN YANG STON PA THUG BYED BYIN GYIS SDU MAR BYAMS PA'I THUG PHAM PAR BRDZAD PA There's also the there's also the precedent of how our Lord Buddha dealt with the obstacles that were presented to him.

Especially the famous ones are in the moment of his enlightenment. What's the story? Yeah, they threw spears and they shot bows and arrows.

His love for them turned them into flowers in mid-air. That's such a cool idea. It doesn't take very long for an arrow to go from me to a cat.

But then imagine it turning to a flower halfway. So I shoot an arrow at her because I'm angry and then a flower incoming flower and there's a big rose, big rose. There's the precedent.

Lord Buddha, how did he react to evil spirits? Somehow he loved them so deeply that their weapons became flowers. I think if you try it with people in your life who cause you problems, you will have the same experience.

If you try to love them, what's the best way to deal with an irritating person in your life? It's to love them. Then the spirits will change to flowers.

What's the best way to deal with a problem person? It's love them. By the way, that doesn't mean you cannot discipline them or spank them if they're bad.

But with love. Because you love them. RGYAL PO BYAMS PA'I STOB ZHUGS YUL GYI CHUNG JI RNAMS NUS CAN NGA'I DANG THOB PA MI NUS PA Then there's a story about a Tibetan king who because he had so much love for everyone, all the negative spirits in his country couldn't hurt people.

The king set such a good example of loving people who caused him trouble, that when the demons tried to hurt the country, the economy of the country, which is a yak hurting, it didn't work. There's this guy, what's his name, Richard Kramer? I forget.

Bishop in London who helped write the Church of England's prayer book. It's an extraordinary prayer book. Extraordinary.

Many people thought it was written by Shakespeare. There was a joke that, if you want to get fed for the rest of your life, become his enemy because he will take care of you for the rest of your life. It was a very beautiful story.

This bishop was so loving to his enemies that the way to get a lifetime pension was to try to hurt him. Then he would take care of you for the rest of your life. It's really cool.

That's the best way to deal with problem people. Tim, when should I start? Five minutes from now.

We're going to have a special question from a person who won the lottery yesterday. Then we're going to have another lottery for tomorrow. Okay, good.

We have time to do this last spirit story. This spirit is called Pekhar. Tibet has lots of local spirits in those mysterious mountains before Buddhism came.

After Buddhism came, a lot of them became Buddhist protectors, good guys. There was one named Pekhar and he came to Bhutan Rinpoche. Bhutan Rinpoche lived just before Tsongkhapa.

He's famous for? He wrote a history of Buddhism, very famous. He organized the Kangyur and the Tengyur.

He organized 4,600 books from ancient India. Got the translations all done. Got them into their current form, mostly.

Then there was another Lama named Sinnamgyeltsen in the same period, just before Tsongkhapa. This demon offered them an iron nyukul. Nyukul means bamboo shoot, which came to mean pen.

He offered them an iron pen. Why would a demon offer two eminent Lamas a pen? Yeah, exactly.

It's like giving them a computer. He was trying to disturb their meditation practice. He was trying to get them to write books all day and not do their meditation.

He succeeded. That demon was able to offer an iron pen, meaning a computer, to these two Lamas. But, but, ngu chu.

Ngu chu means quicksilver. We have a famous, two famous quicksilver Lamas in our Vajrayogini lineage. But it's a place name.

Quicksilver is a place name. There was another famous bodhisattva from that same quicksilver county called Togmesambul, who wrote a famous commentary to Master Shantideva. When the demon came to him to offer him a computer, it kept falling or he kept losing it.

Got it? Why? Yeah, his bodhichitta protected him from these distractions.

Probably he would have tried to buy an iPhone and it would probably keep breaking. Then he'd have to meditate because he didn't have anything else to do. He had the power of bodhichitta that prevented people from destructing him, demons from destructing him.

So the whole point is... By the way, we have a picture, right Paul? Where's that guy?

Is it? No, I got one before that I think. Yeah, how to ruin a kid's life.

Give him an iPad. How to ruin a kid, how to get a kid to ignore the entire world of nature is to give them a four-inch piece of glass that they can spend their whole life in and not enjoy the world. So you can do the same thing with children, right?

Give them a little piece of glass where they can see pictures of deer and trees and sky and never experience deer and tree and sky. Alright Tim, so anyway you can protect yourself from these negative influences, including too much computer. Some computer is very useful.

John Brady's computer project is very important, but too much computer can be an obstacle. If you have love, those obstacles will not appear in your life. Okay, Mr.