AGOL 37, Q&A 2 — стенограмма

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Lam Rim. And this is a special session of question and answer just for the people who gave us the most support. And at first I'd like to thank you all for signing up for that special level where you're actually paying more so that other people can come.

And I always appreciate that. And we're going to do just a private question and answer for you guys. So Tim, are you guys ready?

[Speaker 2]
Yes. So first question Geshe-la is, now that we've learned so much about bodhichitta and becoming a bodhisattva, we've learned various techniques on how to do it. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed about how I'm going to enter back into my real life.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to work. My boss is going to yell at me. Everything is going to go back to, quote, normal.

What are some advices you can give for us as we're moving out of an intensive retreat to then integrate into our real life?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a good question. For example, my teacher encouraged me to do LER RUNG. LER RUNG means normally three weeks, four weeks of retreat.

And it would be very difficult for me because I was the vice president in the company. And for me to leave for one day was very difficult. But to leave for three weeks and no contact with the office, first of all, it was very strange.

Everyone in the company thought I was crazy. And it was difficult for everybody. And I remember how difficult it was.

So, then I would go away for three weeks, do my mantras, 100,000 mantras or so. And then I would come back. And it's a good question.

Also after my three-year retreat, I remember the first day I came out. And I have a close friend named John Stilwell. And he said, get in the car, Geshe-la.

I'm out in the desert for three years. And he said, get in the car. And I got in the car.

And he drove me to McDonald's. And he brought me into McDonald's. And he made me eat french fries.

And it was like someone hit me on the head with a hammer. It was very, very difficult. So, I understand the question.

When you've been through a deep retreat and you're going back to your office, then what are you going to do? My first advice is don't expect too much of yourself. Don't think that 10 days is going to make you a bodhisattva.

And if you go back to work and you yell at somebody within 20 minutes, you're a very bad person because you sat through the whole bodhichitta retreat. And you could only keep your bodhichitta for nine minutes before you yell at somebody at work. So, my first advice.

Dharma people, we tend to take ourselves very seriously. I'm a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva has to be perfect.

Probably I should cut a few fingers off before the end of the first day and give them to people. You think like that and it doesn't work like that. In real life, you're not going to be much different after 10 days.

You have been the way you are for about a thousand billion lifetimes. Then to think you're going to change in 10 days, don't be hard on yourself. Don't make yourself crazy.

Smile. Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with yourself.

We have been who we are for countless lifetimes. Then we're not going to change in 10 days. But, having said that, don't be so serious.

The worst thing in the world is a very serious, nervous dharma person. Just relax. You're going to mess up.

You're going to stop meditating. You're going to miss your yoga. You're going to say three bad things immediately.

So don't make yourself crazy. Dharma people who are trying too hard are unpleasant for everybody, including themselves. So just relax and take it easy.

Then you'll be a better bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas know how to laugh at themselves and they know how to not take themselves too seriously. So just relax.

But try to find a way to make one of these teachings, you had a hundred teachings. You had a hundred different ideas. You had 120 pictures, I think.

Something like that. I know because I had to pick them. Take one.

Just take one. So you are rich. You may not be some wealthy business person or something like that, but you are dharma rich.

You have hundreds of choices of practices. Don't try to practice all of them. You'll get a headache.

You'll get grumpy. You'll be worse than when you took the Lam Rim. Just relax.

I would say take two or three pictures from all the pictures and try to practice them at work. Take two or three pictures each day and make that your theme at work. And then you'll be fine.

You'll be fine. You're not... Just relax and have fun.

If you're a bodhisattva, you are laughing a lot. Bodhisattvas have fun. Bodhisattvas don't get very serious.

Bodhisattvas don't get nervous about trying to do everything. Just relax. Have fun.

Do the best you can. Take two or three pictures to work each day in your head. That's all.

Okay, next one, Tim.

[Speaker 2]
Cool. So this is a question about when you were describing how to do an act of truth and then how to load it with bodhicitta. The question is, should we do this all the time or won't this consume a lot of our good seeds because we're doing something very, very powerful all the time?

And how should we think about this?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, that's a good question. By the way, I was preparing for a program for next week and I was using the Diamond Cutter business book, the old one. And that has a nice chapter about act of truth.

So I encourage you to, if you're interested in the act of truth, I suggest you get that book and you can study that chapter and that will talk to you about how to do an act of truth. But try to appreciate this. An act of truth for a bodhisattva means if I try to be a good person at work today, then when I get home, my husband should have cooked dinner.

Right, pal? Choose something impossible. Just kidding.

I'm just kidding. You can do little acts of truth all the time. If it's true, you know, I worked pretty hard during the Lam Rim retreat.

Then I hope my cousin doesn't argue so much with my uncle. You can make a little act of truth like that. And you are not using up your karmic seeds.

Doing the act of truth with your old karmic seeds makes more karmic seeds than you use up. It's like an interest on a loan. It's like a 110% interest on a loan.

Every day that goes by, you make more money than what you had in the first place. So if you keep doing little acts of truth, you're just making more interest on your karma. You don't lose karma.

You make more karma. Acts of truth, I think they are fun. I don't do them too often.

I kind of save them for special occasions when I need something to happen, which might not happen. I don't know. I hope so-and-so, I dedicate my karma for the last 10 days that this person I know who's unhappy should be happy.

If it's true that I translated for Geshe-la after he drank coffee and talked too fast for one hour and I kept a smile on my face, if it's true, then my friend who's having fight with her husband or something, they should have some peace. You can do an act of truth like that. It doesn't always work.

Sometimes the old seeds are too strong. And don't quit. Don't say, I did an act of truth that, I don't know, the pizza in my town should get better and it didn't happen, so I'm going to quit.

Don't be like that. Don't make impossible acts of truth and they get depressed when they don't. Do your best.

Do some modest acts of truth and then get used to it. But you're not using up karma. You're making more karma.

Acts of truth make more karma. And I encourage you to read the chapter in the Diamond Cutter book about that subject. All right, Mr. Tim.

[Speaker 2]
So here's a question about when do karmic seeds get planted? So for example, you wrote the Diamond Cutter book many, many years ago. You know, bestseller, translated 30 language, et cetera.

And let's say someone reads it, picks it up today. They go into the bookstore, they pick it up, they read it. And then the way this question is tied together is about someone's serving a bodhisattva, right?

So you wrote the book, right? And if someone were to serve you, then they get sort of magic. They get seeds from that, from serving it without knowing it.

Now, if they read the book, do you get seeds, good seeds from them reading because they're bodhisattvas and you helped them 20 years ago when you wrote the book?

[Speaker 1]
Good question. Okay, good question. There's two interesting concepts in the Abhidharma.

One is called ZAD LAS CHUNG BA'I DGE BA. ZAD LAS CHUNG BA'I DGE BA. Say ZAD LAS.

[Speaker 2]
ZAD LAS.

[Speaker 1]
CHUNG BA'I. CHUNG BA'I. DGE BA.

And it fascinates me. This concept fascinates me because I spent almost 30 years serving my teacher, taking care of my teacher. And he was tough and he kept me busy all day.

I mean, he had, the minute you finish one project, he had another project ready. And it was hard. I'm talking hard projects.

Like, build me a house by yourself. And I'm like, okay. And I did.

And it was so hard. A whole winter building a house in New Jersey, in a two-story house. And then, I was studying Abhidharma at the same time.

He was teaching me Abhidharma for 12 years in the evening. And I was building house in the day. This was for eight years before I went to the diamond business.

So I was working full-time for him. And it was, I was building all these buildings and temples and things like that. And then, I started to feel, a strange thing happened to me.

I started to get happier and happier. It was really strange. Like, I would get happier and happier and happier.

And my brain would expand. My study got better and better. And my meditation got better and better.

And then, I always had him to ask questions. He hated to answer questions. He didn't like questions.

And his opinion was, if I taught you for 12 years so far, maybe I covered whatever you're going to ask me. So, he didn't like questions. But, I was his driver.

And we would go for five, six hour trips to teach. He would go teach somewhere. So, he was captive in the car.

He couldn't go anywhere. Or on an airplane. Then I would ask him questions on an airplane.

Then sometimes he'd pretend to be asleep. But finally, I would ask him questions. And I said, Rinpoche, something strange happened.

What? I started to feel better and better. My mind is increasing.

My mental capacity is increasing. And my happiness level is increasing. What is that?

What's going on? And he said, MDZAD LAS CHUNG BA'I DGE BA Say MDZAD LAS. CHUNG BA'I DGE BA You built part of the temple in New Jersey.

The Mongolian temple. You built a lot of it. You built my house.

I said, yeah, but that was like five years ago. He said, no, no. MDZAD LAS CHUNG BA'I DGE BA means every time someone walks in the house, you get more karma.

Every time that we... People used to walk around the house because there was a llama in it. So they used to do circumambulation for many hours.

He said, every time someone goes around the house that you built to honor the llama who's inside the house, then they get like 99% karma and you get 1% because you built the house. I'm like, wow, that's awesome. And then he said, yeah, you can study it in Abhidhamma.

And I said, well, what happens if I die? Do I still get the... If I die and people are still walking around the house later, do I still get 1%?

He said, yeah, you still get 1%. I'm like, wow, that's awesome. So that's called like capital investment.

Capital karma investment. So if you write a book and you get karma from writing the book, but then other people read it. If a new person reads it after 20 years, then you get interest.

You get interest from that book. Now, if you benefit from the book, or if you helped me print the book or something like that, yeah, you get the 1%. Yeah, you also get 1%.

And the nice thing about Dharma economics is that everybody gets 1%, even if it's more than 100. It's like those dishonest filmmakers who sell points. Do you know that?

People who don't have money to make a film, they give you points. Say, okay, you have 3% of the project. You're going to get 3% of the box office afterwards.

That's called points. So there's no limit to the points with a Dharma activity. And yeah, if you benefit from the book, I get 1%.

And then if I benefit from your benefit, you get 1%. That's true. That's true.

It's a nice pyramid scheme. Dharma pyramid scheme. What do you call that?

There's a multi-level mark, MLM. It's illegal in China, for example, but Dharma MLM is okay. Okay, Tim.

Multi-level marketing.

[Speaker 2]
So a follow-up question to this would be the idea that if I were to unknowingly serve coffee to a bodhisattva and then I get tremendous seeds from doing so, what about the corollary of I yell at a bodhisattva or I throw coffee on the bodhisattva or get angry at the bodhisattva? Is there an equal corollary? And then what could we do to be aware of that potential error we are making?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good question. Good question. This is called the walking across the lawn question.

This is called the walking across the lawn question. And there's a thing called YAR NAS. Okay, YAR NAS means for I think three months in the summer, Buddhist monks and nuns are supposed to stay indoors mostly.

That's the rainy season, the monsoon in India. And because of the rain, there's lots of bugs, which if you've ever been in India during monsoon, you can experience directly. Direct experience of bugs, especially bed bugs.

And so anyway, we're not allowed to walk across, we're supposed to stay inside during the rainy season because we will kill less bugs if we don't walk across the grass. Then what's the status of killing bugs when you walk across the grass? How much karma is that?

You don't open the door and say, ah, I feel like killing some bugs this morning. Nobody opens the door and says, I think I'll go kill some bugs. I think I'll go walk across the lawn.

It's not intentional. So how much karma is it if you do something bad, but you're not aware of it? Isn't the intention 99% of the karma?

How can you have... Why should you do summer retreat so you don't step on the bugs if you never know you stepped on a bug and if you didn't want to step on a bug? There's no intention and there's no awareness of what you did.

What if you throw coffee on a bodhisattva? How much bad karma do you get if you didn't have any intention and you didn't know they were a bodhisattva? So that's called...

The answer is called background radiation. Background radiation. I'll give an example.

Cat, if it rains here at Diamond Mountain, LTAG PA LTA GSUM GYI RIGS PA In the theoretical case that it rained in Diamond Mountain and you went out for a walk, would you probably kill more bugs with your feet by accident? Yeah, and she said, yeah. Do you understand that statistically it's more likely that you would kill more bugs after a big rain?

And you say, yeah, I understand. That's enough intention to make karma. Knowing that it's probable that something happened or would happen is enough intention to collect karma.

So that's how we answer the bodhisattva question. What are the chances that anyone you serve coffee... Is there a chance...

Okay, you made coffee. Somebody made coffee. There's a girl standing there, there's some cat, I don't know.

Somebody made coffee this morning and what I call is a background awareness. You have background awareness. It's possible Geshe-la is a bodhisattva.

We don't know for sure, but it's possible. Is it possible that anyone you make coffee for might be a bodhisattva? Is it possible?

Yeah, and you have that awareness all the time. You never lose that awareness. Anytime you make coffee for anybody, part of your mind, deep down, is aware they could be a bodhisattva.

You're aware. And anytime you throw coffee on somebody, part of your mind is also aware that they could be a bodhisattva and that much karma you collect. That much karma you collect.

So that can be called background intention and it matters. It matters. Therefore, even accidents, killing bugs with your car, when you drive your car, you do collect karma.

Why? There's some intention. No, I didn't want to kill bugs.

Yeah, but you knew you might, right? And that's enough. That's enough intention.

So, bottom line, make coffee for as many people as you can, if they like coffee. And serve people whenever you can. And there's a background possibility that they might be a bodhisattva.

Now there's a... Okay, another famous question. If you get angry, you destroy thousands of good seeds.

The small print in the contract says, if you get angry at a bodhisattva, you destroy lots of seeds. That's the small print in the contract. Well, how do I know who's a bodhisattva?

Well, how do you know they're not a bodhisattva? Well, they could be a bodhisattva. Okay, that's enough karma.

That's enough intention to destroy your good seeds if you get angry at anybody. Okay, got it? So, what's a safe thing to do?

Make coffee for everybody, if they like coffee. And don't get angry at anybody. Okay, you never know who's who.

So, it's better to be safe. I'll tell you a beautiful story, okay? Grandpa likes stories.

So, when we started the diamond company, we borrowed $50,000 from a guy in London, a Turkish guy in London. And we built the company, built the company, built the company. And then, I was not, I didn't have shares in the company.

I didn't have stock in the company. The stock was held by two people. And so, but every year, we used to have a meeting and they would split profits.

They would help share some profits. And I remember, we used to go out for lunch and this was the big meeting for the year. In fact, my Lama would say, when's the lunch meeting?

I'd say, next week. He'd say, good luck, good luck. Because all the money went to the monastery.

He's like, good luck, good luck. And then I'd get home and he'd say, did you have the meeting? I'd say, no, it's tomorrow.

He'd say, okay. And then they would give me extra money from the profit for my monastery. Because I was giving all the money to the monastery.

So, they would throw in extra money. And it got serious. It started to get serious.

Like 100,000, 200,000. They would throw in extra money for the monastery. And they're Israeli.

They're Jewish. And then finally, one day, they gave me a huge amount. We built a new debate ground for the monastery.

A new one, for 3,000 monks. And I'm like, I took the check and I said, can I just, I remember we were out to dinner at a very exclusive New York restaurant, lunch. And I said, can I ask you a question?

And he said, oh, for the Israeli guy. He said, yeah, what's the main owner? He said, yeah, what's the question?

I said, you're Israeli. He said, yeah, I'm Israeli. I said, Israel's 100% Jewish.

I mean, not even 99.9, it's 100%. He said, yeah, we're 100% Jewish. Then I said, well, why do you keep giving me money for my monastery?

Why do you keep throwing in 100,000, 200,000, 300,000? Why do you keep doing that? He said, you never know who's right.

He says, could be the Jews. Could be the Buddhists. Could be the Hindus.

I'm covering my bases. When I die, I'm covering. I give money to everybody.

Why did I say that? Cover your bases. Assume everyone's a bodhisattva.

Then you won't get in trouble. Cover your bases. Give coffee to everybody.

And then you cover the few bodhisattvas in the room or maybe all of them. Okay, next question, Tim.

[Speaker 2]
So in this question, it's a segue from assuming everyone's a bodhisattva. And by having bodhicitta, we'd love all beings equally. So one could potentially conclude that we shouldn't get married and love a single person because then we may not be loving all beings equally.

How can we think about this seeming contradiction of loving one person fully, but also supposed to be loving all beings equally?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a great question. So when I got to university, when I went to Princeton, I was a devout Christian and I was a Episcopal Christian. And I wanted to be an Episcopal priest.

I was accepted into the priesthood. And the last year, I lived in the Episcopal church's quarters. I lived in the priest's house the whole last year in the university.

And in the Episcopal church, the priest can marry, the priest can get married. So I was living with the priest I knew who lived in the priest's quarters with me. They were all married.

So there'd be a special house over there for this priest and his wife. And there'd be special... They always were married.

And then I used to watch them and I was curious. I was like, it seems like if you're not married as a priest or as a spiritual counselor, you're more available. Like you don't have to get up and say, I have to go home.

If someone's having a crisis, you can focus on them 100%. You don't have to call your wife. You can stay at the hospital all night and you can serve them.

So I was watching them and I was thinking, which is better? Is it better to get married or it's better not to get married? And then I've had the experience that people I knew who were very selfish, who seemed very selfish, and then they got married.

And then they had children. I had the personal perception that many of them suddenly became very sweet people. I was like, wow.

Having to get up and change diapers and feed the child, you cannot be selfish and keep that up for very long. It's going to break down your selfishness, I guess. I think so.

I mean, I've never had that experience, but from observation of my friends, those who had children who had to get up at night, who had to break their sleep, who had to warm the bottle, who had to change the diapers, who had to get their hands all poopy for another person, they seem a lot nicer. Or they seem to have a bigger capacity for love. So I also used to struggle with this question.

Is it, should I not have a personal relationship because I wouldn't be able to focus on everyone equally? Or should I have a personal relationship which teaches me to give up what I want, and then I can serve other people better? And my conclusion is, both are good.

My conclusion is, do either one that calls to you. And then make it a path. Turn it into an opportunity.

Turn it into a path. So if you're attracted to, if you are called to having a family or getting married without a family, either one, if that's your, if it calls to you, then do it. And make a path.

Make it a path. Make it an opportunity to learn to serve another person. Unselfishly.

And, or, if you feel called to staying single and staying by yourself, because it makes you more available to other people all the time, then follow that one. But in my opinion, after many, many years of watching married and unmarried priests and other people, I think both can be useful. I think both can be very useful.

So I would say, follow your heart and see which one calls to you. And I think if you are THAB KHYAD PA, skillful means, you can turn either one into an advantage. You can be alone and be more available to people, or you can learn to give up yourself for your family or for your spouse.

I think you can practice. I think in the end, every situation can be used for Buddhist practice. It's up to you.

It's not the situation. It's up to you. Cool.

[Speaker 2]
One of the, thank you Geshe-la. One of the concerns that's come up is, when I've been thinking about the 10 benefits of having bodhichitta and becoming a bodhisattva, there seems to be a potential danger of causing negative pride. Where it's like, I'm a bodhisattva.

I'm awesome, et cetera, et cetera. So how can we think about this and how can we generate this with a positive sense of pride and avoid the negative side of it?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. Okay. I asked my teacher this.

See, that's the, all these answers are really one answer, which is, if you find your personal teacher, everything's taken care of. If you find your personal heart teacher, then all the questions are answered. And if you don't, then you're going to have, you'll have to keep asking questions.

So my, the mother advice, the big advice, find your personal teacher. Find your root guru. Find your heart teacher.

And then you can always ask them questions. That's the deal. So if you don't feel like you met them yet, then study the Lam Rim, find out the causes of meeting your root teacher.

But you can guess, it's helping other people connect with their root teacher. So help other people find their heart teacher. And that will cause you to find your heart teacher.

And then all questions are answered automatically. And there's no substitute for that. So that's my main advice.

Now, so I'm going to quote my heart teacher, one of my heart teachers. I asked him, so if I study all this bodhichitta stuff, and if I memorize all these Buddhist books, and I become a great teacher, then isn't there a danger that I will start to get pride? And actually it will hurt me later.

And he said, don't worry me. I'm like, what do you mean, don't worry me? He says, samsara will take care of everything.

I'm like, what do you mean? He says, samsara will smash your pride in about 10 minutes. So he said, that's not, don't ask me about that.

That's not a problem. Samsara will take care of everything. The minute you feel like you're doing well, samsara will come and smash everything.

So don't worry. Have your pride, because it's only going to be a couple of days until you really mess up and you will destroy your own pride. And I was like, wow, Rinpoche, that's a hard answer.

He said, don't worry about your pride. You will screw up so bad because you have pride that you won't be able to be proud about anything. So don't worry.

We designed samsara just for you. Samsara is going to knock you down and fix your pride. So go ahead and have your pride.

It's great. By the way, I had another advice from another teacher of mine, Geshe Ngawang Gelden, who's a great Mongolian Geshe. I remember going to him in his room.

I built his room. I built his house. And I went to him and I said, Geshe-la, I have a confession.

By the way, confessions are really good to do and they're very uncomfortable. So I said, Geshe-la, I have a confession. He says, what's the confession?

I said, I'm terribly jealous of another student. Who's the student? Art, you know, Art.

Why are you jealous of him? His Tibetan is much better than mine and his Sanskrit is a thousand times better. I hate him.

I'm very jealous of him. He said, hold on to that jealousy. It's great.

I'm like, what? I'm waiting for him to tell me you're a bad person. Get rid of your jealousy.

What's wrong with you? You're living in a monastery and you're jealous of other people. What's wrong with you?

And he said, great. Keep going with that jealousy. I'm like, what?

He said, it's wonderful. I said, why? He said, do you know how hard you work to try to catch up to him?

We watch you. Everybody knows you're jealous of him, by the way. It's not a secret.

Everybody in the monastery knows how jealous you are and you drive yourself so hard to keep up with him. It's wonderful. Keep up that jealousy.

And he says, but when you catch up, let it go. Okay? Then let the jealousy go.

Okay? So anyway, that seems to be relevant here. By the way, I did catch up maybe, but I didn't get rid of the jealousy.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. All right, Geshe-la. And our final question for today.

So it seems that the goal that we've been taught during this course is that we want to save all beings from this samsara that keeps smashing our pride and our jealousy, right? Or gives us more of it. But it seems as though the world would also, based on the teachings, would also be full of many high bodhisattvas and buddhas already that have already become enlightened, right?

And yes, I can see that obviously there's still work to go because I have suffering in my life and I see it. But how can we think about this if I see so much of the suffering around us, but maybe there's more buddhas and bodhisattvas than we thought? How do I kind of put this together?

[Speaker 1]
I'm going to quote, it's a beautiful question. And I'm going to quote a famous book. Where is that?

Let me see. Good, yeah, here it is. YI LTAR DA'O MAHA SIDDHA HATHA YOGA PABAVATHA THANG DA YID PA GALA DANG DANG BRAHMAN DE PA'I PHYIR RANG GIS TE Okay, I'll say it again.

YI LTAR DA'O MAHA SIDDHA HATHA YOGA PABAVATHA THANG DA YID PA GALA DANG DANG BRAHMAN DE PA'I PHYIR RANG GIS TE Very, very famous, okay? This is the opening lines to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, okay? And first they give the lineage, okay?

What's it called? Do you know? The lineage at the beginning of a Hindu book.

Parampara. It's called the parampara. They give the lineage.

They give who taught it, who practiced it. And this is Hatha Yoga. This is called the yoga of the sun and the moon.

Hatha, ha-sun-ta-moon, which is the left and right channels in the body. Hatha. Hatha Yoga.

Okay, so Hatha Yoga. And here's the famous verse, okay? These and other mighty accomplished beings, he lists them first, like Goraksha and people like that.

Born into power by the yoga of the sun and moon, they roam the universe, the egg of the pure one. What's that? THANG DA YID PA BRAHMAN DE This is the Hindus believe that the universe is shaped like an egg and it belongs to Brahma.

They are wandering the egg. It means they are walking around the world, our world. Mingling among the crowds of humans, for they have murdered death itself, kaladanda.

They are secretly... These guys who practiced for many years and conquered death, kaladanda, right? They are mingling with human beings secretly.

They are wandering around Bowie, Arizona pretending to be normal people, okay? This is the opening lines of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. By the way, we'll teach this in the Yoga Studies Institute soon.

Okay, we'll go through this book. But yeah, there's a belief expressed in this verse that there must... If the Diamond Cutter Sutra survived for a hundred generations, if the Diamond Cutter Sutra survived for a hundred generations, if people...

Pachi, did you know your grandfather? Was he alive? He dressed weird, right?

Like he dressed 1920s or 1930s and he thought it was cool. Like Geshe Michael still wears long hair from 1960s. 1965.

There's a generation thing that your grandfather and grandmother, they think they look good. To us, it looks really weird, this clothes from two generations ago. And they got to have those clothes.

So, things change from generation to generation radically. Okay, clothing, hairstyles, morals, values. When I was young, it was good to meet people from other countries and try to get to know them.

When I was young, this was considered a beautiful thing to do. Not to say, oh, he's from this country, I hate him without meeting anyone from that country. So, anyway.

But certain books survive for a hundred generations. Shoe styles, hairstyles, haircut styles, makeup, whether you use black lipstick or purple or you don't use any. It changes radically from generation to generation.

But the diamond cutter survives. That big box book, people still working on it, still printing it, still translating it. Why?

It must have worked for somebody or it wouldn't be here. Those sutras that John Brady is saving, they must have worked for somebody or they wouldn't be here. Somebody must still like long hair or it wouldn't be here, right Joe?

Somebody must have got something out of it. Why am I talking about that? If the diamond cutter survived for a hundred generations when haircuts and shoe styles don't, it proves that some people must have gotten enlightened.

Some people must have made it. They must have become bodhisattvas and they must have become Buddhas and we just don't meet them or they're hiding, mingling among the crowds of humans for they have murdered death itself. Kala danda, okay?

So yeah, definitely, it's a good attitude. It's a healthy attitude to think about why did the diamond cutter survive for a hundred generations? It's because it worked and some people got to Buddhahood and maybe they are hiding out at Diamond Mountain, driving tractors, stuff like that.

You don't know. You really don't know. So that not knowing is a beautiful thing.

That not knowing is a very beautiful place to be. Okay? All right, thank you.