«Дар освобождения», курс 38 «Становясь бодхисаттвой: шаги к порождению желания достичь просветления», занятие 5

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back to the Lam Rim. We're going to explain this mysterious photo as we go through the class. And let's go to the Tibetan.

The name of this class, by the way, of this session is called, We Never Know Who People Are. And here's the Tibetan of the Lam Rim. DI BSGOM PA NA If you keep up this meditation that I asked you to treasure and not lose the tradition that I worked so hard to get, DANG PO TSEN GYIS AA MA'I SKYE BA SNGA MA'I MA'AM DU BYAS PA BSGOM Start with your mom in this life and think about how many past lives she was your mom over and over.

Then, now we expand. And we have a picture of an expanding circle of water. And think about, now expand the vision like the ripples in a pond when you drop a stone in the middle.

Expand it to your dad. Expand it to your father in this life. My dad in this life has been my mom in countless lives.

So expand it to your father. Start with your mom in this life. Imagine that she's been your mom countless times.

Then when you're ready, expand it to your father. BA LA BSGOM Expand the meditation to your father. DE NAS NYAN GZHAN DANG Then expand it to other relatives.

Uncles, aunts, grandparents, whatever. Then DE NAS BAR MA Then go to people that you don't know. People you've never met.

I don't know. I have some neighbors in my neighborhood that I had never talked to them. I like them.

I mean, we smile at each other. But I don't, they're not relatives. They're just kind of neutral people in my life.

DE DAG LA NYON BA LAS PAR MTHUN NYON BA MTHUN means you got good at it. It means experience has flowed out. It's an idiom in Tibetan that means once you get good at working on your mom and your dad and then other relatives and people you don't know much about, then you're ready for DRA MTHUN.

DRA MTHUN PA DRA What? What? Enemy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you're ready for your enemies. It's called ARI in Sanskrit.

ARI HAT means enemy destroyer. So DRA LA MIG NAS Focus on your enemies. People you don't like.

MA BYAS PA BSAM Think about, this MA is not negative. It means they served as your mom. MA BYAS PA They did your mom.

Think about it. BSAM BYAS Until, BSAM BYAS means after that. SEMS CAN THAMS CAD LA MIG DE SBYONG Until you get to the point where you can do it towards all living beings.

He doesn't mention animals and bugs, but that's what SEMS CAN can mean in colloquial Tibetan. That's expanded to non-humans. All right, so this idea of expanding the meditation.

UNA Now a very interesting and famous objection. He's trying to sell us a car. Pabongka Rinpoche is trying to sell us a car called MAR SHES.

Realize that everyone's your mom. Then in every sales pitch, there's objections. The customer makes objections.

This car, there's not a lot of electricity charging stations in the middle of Arizona. Then the salesman has to come back and say, no, but there's so many being put in. So here's the objection from the customer, which is us.

MA YIN NA NGO SHES DGOS If someone were my mom, I would know. I would know, come on. If someone had spent 20, 30, 40 years feeding me, raising me, teaching me everything, look, I'm not stupid.

I would recognize her. I would know. DGOS DE MI SHES PAS MA MED NO YAM NA And since I don't recognize these strangers have been my mom, they have not been my mom.

If they had been my mom, I would have this feeling towards them. I would feel the connection. But I don't feel the connection, so I don't think they've been my mom.

YAM NA Then here comes Pabongka Rinpoche's salesman answer. SANGS RGYAS KYIS KYANG MA MA BYAS PA'I SEMS CAN GCIG KYANG MA ZIG Even a Buddha is incapable of perceiving with their own eyes that anyone has not been their mother. MA MA BYAS Mother not done mother.

Even a Buddha does not have the capacity to recognize that anyone has not been their mother. RANG RES NGO MA SHES PA MA STOGS MA NGON NAS YIN TE Okay, I agree. You don't feel like they were your mom.

You don't feel a connection to them. I understand. But the Buddha does.

The person who sees all things sees that connection. So I understand you don't feel a connection like that. I understand.

But you're just stupid and wrong. And they are, because Buddha who sees all things says, they have been. So don't think that you're going to, if you don't have an emotional connection to somebody, they have never been your mother in a past life.

Don't think like that. Looks can be deceiving. There are people who are, people are not what they seem.

And people are not what they feel. And I like to give this example, this next photo. So here you see me with Venerable Jigme and my wife Veronica, and we are giving a down payment for this little tiny cafe we are buying.

And from this couple, this couple is in their 70s. And the lady whose nickname is Cricket, because she's about this tall. When they were on their honeymoon a hundred years ago, the guy who ran the bed and breakfast told the husband, the new husband, hey, don't lose that cricket.

Don't let that cricket fall out of your bed. You're going to lose her. And after that, they called the cafe Cricket, after the wife.

So she ran the, can you keep it up? And she ran the kitchen and then he would, on the weekends, he would show up and pour coffee for people. He would just say, he'd come up, he's very shy, and he'd say, would you like some more coffee?

And I was talking to people, I used to hang out there. Maybe he's retarded a little bit, or he's just kind of, they just gave him the coffee and said, ask people, do they need more coffee? And then later I found out he's one of the leading astronomers in the world.

And he's been running the observatory, Lowell Observatory, where they discovered Pluto. And he discovered the atmosphere of Pluto himself. And he's tracking thousands of asteroids to make sure they don't crash into this planet.

And he invented the systems for tracking them. And then I'm like, suddenly I'm like, he's not this dull guy who's pouring coffee. He's a world famous astronomer.

He's one of the greatest astronomers alive today. And what's the lesson here? Just because you don't feel like he's a genius, doesn't mean he's not a genius.

Just because you don't feel like someone's your mom, maybe your feelings are wrong. Maybe your impression of this guy is wrong. And maybe he's not what you think he is.

And the older you get in this life, I mean, Gyaltsed can tell you, right? The more you've realized that you meet people and you're completely wrong about them. SEMS DI MA YANG CI'I KHYI LTA BUR SKYES NAS YOD KYANG RANG GIS MI SHES Look, even the mother you had in this life, we don't know what she will be in her next life.

She could be a dog. We don't know. She could be your pet dog.

Your pet dog could be your mother who died earlier in your life. We don't know. LTA BUR SKYES NAS YOD KYANG RANG GIS MI SHES Maybe you don't understand.

Maybe you just don't know. SEMS DI MA DNGOS GNAS PA YANG SNGOS MI SHES PA YOD PA SEMS DI MA And you have to read, Tim, you have to read DNGOS GNAS PA. DNGOS GNAS PA goes together, DNGOS GNAS PA.

And DNGOS GNAS PA means the real one, the genuine one. It's an idiom. DNGOS GNAS PA means the real one.

So even there's cases where people get separated from their mother and they don't even recognize them when they meet them. Like this person. I was recently heard about a lady who gave up her daughter for adoption or her son for adoption when her son was born.

And later they met each other and they used to hang out together and they didn't know they were mother and son. They just didn't know. And then someday they figured it out and they're, oh my God.

So it happens. If your mom died in this life, she could be born as a dog, as your dog. And you wouldn't know.

And you wouldn't have that feeling. And there's even people who get separated from their mom in this life who later meet their mom and don't recognize her. So don't think you have to recognize her.

DGE SLONG MA UD PA LA'I SDOGS KYI BLO RGYUD DANG Think about the story of the nun called Udpala Varna, which means the color of the blue lotus. The lovely blue lotus. And there's a nun by this name.

And think about the story of PAS ZHA ZA ZHING MA LA RDZOGS. That's a piece of a poem. PAS ZHA ZA ZHING MA LA RDZOGS PAS ZHA ZA ZHING MA LA RDZOGS And it's part of a longer poem that is a sutra.

And the part here says, this guy's eating his father's flesh and beating his mom on the head, smacking his mom on the head. RDZOGS here means, different spelling. It means smacking.

And you guys know the story. So a family lived next to a pond. The father used to catch fishes there all the time.

He used to eat the fish later. And the mom was very attached to the house. And then they both died.

They had kids and they died. And they had a son and they died. And then the father was reborn as a fish in the pond behind the house.

We had the story in the Lam Rim. And we gave you the whole story. And the mom died and was born as a dog who was owned by the son.

And the dog was attached to the house and used to growl at anybody who would come in the house. Because in the past life, the dog had been the mom who was attached to the house. And then, yeah.

And then the guy gets married. He has the dog. He's still fishing out back, the lake behind the house, the pond behind the house.

And he's catching his father sometimes and eating him at dinner. Then the father dies again. And then the father is born in the pond again.

And then the son catches another fish and that's his father again. And then he eats that fish. Now, on top of all that, there's a guy who's attracted to his wife and has an affair with his wife.

And he goes and kills the guy. And because the guy was attracted to his wife's sexual organs, he's born in the wife's womb. And he's their son.

So basically, this guy's eating his... When he's at dinner, the dog's trying to get the fish off the plate. And he's beating the dog, smacking the dog on the head, which is his mom.

And he's eating his father. And he's hugging the guy who had adultery with his wife on his lap, who's his son. Then who is it?

It's Maitreya Yana goes and asks for some leftovers for his begging bowl. And the guy says, get the hell out of here. And then another monk comes over and says, you have no idea who is Maitreya Yana.

He can travel to a thousand planets for dinner. He doesn't need your food. He's trying to help you.

And by the way, and then he tells him the story of what's going on in his house. So we don't always recognize who the people around us have been in the past. And there's all kinds of people in our lives who might be people we knew before.

I've met people I thought were my mom and stuff like that. We don't know. We don't really know.

All right, now the story about the nun named Utpala is fascinating for me because we have a nun named Utpala who we love very much. And I said, I don't know this story. So I went and found the story for you guys, which is my job.

And I enjoy that job. And I went and found the story of the blue lotus, Utpala. And here's a blue lotus picture for you, just to get in the mood.

She's called Utpala Varna. And I found the story in a sutra called Do Dzang Mun. Do Dzang Mun.

Say Do Dzang Mun. I love the name of the sutra because it means the sutra of the wise and foolish. The sutra called Wise People and Fools, which is such a beautiful name.

I mean, it would make a good name for any book. And so I read the story. It's extremely old.

Apparently this sutra is very, very old. And it was difficult to read. A couple of times I stopped and I said, it's too much.

I don't have time to try to figure out this story. But I worked it through and I'd like to teach it to you guys. And it's worth it.

It's worth it. So here we go. And by the way, her story was summarized briefly in this lam rim before, but I'm giving you the whole story.

Okay, so here we go. CI PHYIR, you got the CI PHYIR? CI PHYIR DE DAG, I'm sorry.

Let's start below that. DE NAS and then four paragraphs below. DE NAS DGE SLONG, 347.

Mr. Tim, skip four lines down. Skip four paragraphs down. Yeah, DE NAS 347.

Yeah, good. Okay, DE NAS DGE SLONG MA DE DAG So this story begins with a bunch of Buddhist nuns who approached a senior nun. DGE SLONG MA DE DAG, DGE SLONG MA UD PA LAS BDOG GANG NA SDUG PAR BSRONG NAS These other nuns went to where the blue lotus, the nun named Blue Lotus was sitting.

BSRONG NAS, DER PHYIN PA DANG, UD PA LAS BDOG LA CHAGS TSAL They made prostration to Blue Lotus. PHYIR BZHIN DU NYON GSOS NAS, SDIG BSHAD BYAS MA'I SROG Then they paid respect to her properly, PHYIR BZHIN DU and they said, we have something to ask you. Next paragraph.

BDAG CHAGS KHYIM NA CI PA NA KHYIM GYIS LAS KYIS LUS We tried the home life and it cheated us. LUS means deceived us. We tried the wife thing and it just didn't work out.

LUS NAS, DAG RAB TU CHUNG So we became ordained. YANG, BSTOD PA'I DBANG DU RGYUR NAS But still we have attractions to the home life, to sex, things like that. Good clothes.

We still are NYON MONGS BAD by those ideas, by those thoughts. Yeah, so here's an ancient verb, which is kleshad. We are still disturbed.

Remember the definition of a mental affliction, right? We are still disturbed by thoughts of desire for house, husband, clothes. THAR BAR MI NUS We couldn't get over that.

We couldn't Moksha from that. BDAG CAG LA THUG BRTZE BA LAS DU If you love us, THUG BRTZE BA, honorific, if you love us, BDAG PA'I PHYIR BSTAN DU GSOL Please teach us the holy Dharma to help us fix this condition of attachment to our old home life. UD PA LAS MED PA And then, what do you want to call it?

Indigo lotus? That's nice. Indigo, answer them.

SKYE MCHED DANG PHYI'I BSDOD PA BSDOD PA BDE PA'ANG MA'ONGS PA'ANG THA LTAR GYI DNGOS PO GANG YANG RUNG BA'I PHYIR ZHIG NGES BSTAN PA BYA'O Do you want me to talk to you about situations that are in the past? Or situations that will happen in the future? Or something that's going on nowadays?

What's the context? Do you want a story from old days? Do you want a story from the future?

And by the way, at this point, she was an arhat. And there's a beautiful story of her becoming an arhat. So she's an arhat.

She's like, you want me to tell the future? You want me to go to the past? Which one do you want?

NGES BSTAN PA BYA'O I agree to teach you, but tell me what time frame you guys are talking about. DGE SLONG MA RNAMS KYIS BDE PA DANG MA'ONGS PA RE ZHIG ZHOG RE ZHIG ZHOG means, let's forget the past and future for today. Just give us something going on now.

Give us something that's going on now that can help us get over our attachment to the husbands and homes we used to have. BSTAN PA'I BDAG CHAGS KYI THETSAMS SGRUB DU GSUNGS And we ask you to liberate our doubts. Like free us from our doubts.

UD PA LAS MED PA She answered, SGRUB CHAGS NI MED DANG BRTAG TE Attachment to the worldly, attachment to the home life is like a huge fire, huge wildfire. RI LUNG ZIG PAR BYED DO It can burn the mountains and the valleys both. TSAR CI DANG BRTAG TE It's also like a family line in the sense that it's exponential.

One person gives birth to a baby. That person has two babies. Those babies have four babies.

And desire tends to multiply upon itself. And here's the word for SKYE BYAS, Tim, in Ayatana, in the Abhidharma. We call it door of sense, but it really means exponential door of sense.

One perception of an object can lead to a thousand thoughts. BDE CHAGS KYI DBANG GIS GCIG LA GCIG RTZAD Due to their attachment to things, people hurt each other. MED PAR BYED They do damage to each other.

DE LA YIN RIM LA NGAN SONG GSUMGYI BRTUNG STE And if that goes on for any length of time, then we fall into the three lower realms. THAR PA'I DUS MED DO And it's almost impossible to free ourselves once we are in the lower realms. KHYIM NA GNAS PA NI SDUG LA CHAGS DE SDOD PA DANG BYAS BDEL BA DANG The definition of having a home and a husband and all these things is almost like you are trying to practice attachment and the fear of disattachment, the fear of losing things.

By living the home life, you are a study in attachment and the fears of losing what you have. KHYER BA DANG, RGA BA DANG, RNAM BA DANG, PHYIR BA DANG, RGYAL PO CHEN GYI TSE BA'I SDUG BSNGAL RGYUN MI CHOS PAR MYONGS PA'I It's a constant flow of rebirth, aging, illness, death, and the injustices of the government. I don't know why she threw that in there.

That's probably close to tax day or something. And the injustices of the government. I don't know what she's...

I don't know. There's probably another sutra about that. SEMS POS NAS PHYIR YANG SOS PA TZAM DU And after you die, that attachment to your house, to your home, has other effects on you.

The effects continue after you die. YANG SOS PA TZAM DU LUS He says, even if you just fall to the hell called revive, so it's either a reference to the hell called revive, or that those attachments will revive themselves. They will come back to you.

Either way, they will continue. The repercussions of desire in this life continue into future lives. SDUG BSNGAL SEMS SDUG, they torture your mind.

KHYIM GYIS LAG BZHIN CING PA NI TSUL RAB KYANG DTAM MO To put it briefly, living in the home life for a woman is like a prison. That's her final word on it. I'm going to stop there today.

Tim and me agreed that it would be nice to give you guys a break sometimes, a shorter class. And so we're going to stop that class there. And we'll be going on and continuing with the story of Blue Lotus, this nun whose name is Blue Lotus.

And it's a story that you will never forget. And that's the idea of putting a story in the Lam Rim. See you in the next class.