«Дар освобождения», курс 38 «Становясь бодхисаттвой: шаги к порождению желания достичь просветления», занятие 10

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back to Lam Rim. Remember we're going through these seven steps to reach that place where we have this feeling of jumping between planets and helping people on all of those planets. This kind of vision of a bodhisattva.

And we're on the third of them, right? So MAR SHES means you recognize that all the people around you have been your mom. And then DRIN DRAN, we finished, which was remember all the cool things they did to take care of you.

Basically that you didn't die and you got to be an adult because of their hard work every single minute of the day. And also really suffering from the financial burden of bringing you up. And now we reached the third great category which is called DRIN GZO.

DRIN is short for DKA' DRIN, which means kindness. And GZO BA means to fix it, which means to pay it back. So DRIN GZO means if my moms have been that nice to me, then what can I do to pay them back?

How can I pay them back? And I like this. I think it's very appropriate here if we add a special verse from the Three Principal Paths.

And I've inserted this verse because I think it's especially relevant here. And it goes like this. And I just remember this verse a lot.

I think about it a lot. ZHUGS BRTAG CHU'O ZHI'I RGYUN GYIS KHYER RDOGS DKA' LAS KYI PHYING BA DANG DANG RDZIN BYAGS KYI MTHRA BA'I BUGS SU TSUD MA RIGS MNGON PA'I MAG CHEN KUN NAS THIB MU MED SRID PAR SKYE ZHING SKYE BA RU SDUG BSNGAL GSUM GYI RGYUN BYAS MED PA NA GNAS SKABS BSTAN DU RGYUR PA'I MA RNAMS KYIS RLANGS SOGS BSAM NAS SEMS SBYOGS BSKYED PA'I MDZOD This is in the Three Principal Paths, Je Tsongkapa's way of introducing this idea of paying back your mom's kindness.

And I was in Mongolia many years ago. I guess it was the 90s. And they had just got their independence.

And so religion was allowed again for the first time in about 75 years. And it was an exciting time to be in Mongolia. And so I said, I would give a talk along with a great teacher, a great Lama named Bakla Rinpoche.

And it was at a stadium. It was at the largest place they could do it in Mongolia, which is actually where they hold the National Circus, which is the biggest stadium in Mongolia. And we had a lot of people.

And I remember I used this verse. I started out with this verse and I was looking at a family and I was talking about how they would feel if their daughter turned out to be their mom. What if your daughter turned out to have been your mom before?

And I read this verse and I explained this verse. I remember. And afterwards, the family came up to me and they said, please take it back.

I said, what? And they said, take it back. Don't talk about our daughter with this verse.

It's too dark. We don't want to use this verse about our daughter. So it was a very, I think they were very sensitive to the real meaning of the verse.

The verse is very dark and very sad. And it's necessary when we think about paying our mom back for the kindness she gave to us. We have to think of our mom in this way.

So let's go through the Tibetan Tsongkapa's Three Principal Paths. ZHUGS BRAG CHU BO ZHI'I RGYUN GYIS KHYER They are swept away by four fierce river currents. RTOG KA LAS KYI CHING BA DANG PA'I DANG Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo.

They are swept away by, for example, the suffering of being born. SKYE DGAG NAG CHI Of getting old, of getting sick and of dying. They are our mom.

Our mom has fallen into this great river, this very fast river. And she's being swept downstream. And the river is SKYE DGAG NAG CHI.

She has the suffering of going through birth. And then she has the suffering of aging every moment since the moment she's born. And unstoppable aging, like a candle burning down.

And then she's oftentimes sick in this life. I translated for the Dalai Lama's doctor for some years. Two of the greatest Tibetan doctors in the world.

And I was kind of shocked one day. He said, he was giving a talk and he said, by the way, health is not normal. Health is abnormal.

Disease is normal. And I said, what? And he said, it's normal for your elements of your body to be out of balance.

That's normal state of human being. And then to be healthy is like this very rare balance of all the elements in your body. The human condition, the normal condition of a human being is to be sick.

And if you're healthy for a while, it's just really dumb good luck that you're healthy for a while. So SKYES RGA NA'I PHYIS And then your mom must die. So our moms, those beautiful people who have been our mom, they are being swept downstream by these four kinds of suffering.

ZHUGS DRAG CHU BA ZHI'I RGYUN GYIS KHYER RDOG DKA' LAS KYI PHYING BA DANG PA'I DANG And that's okay. If you're being swept downstream on a river, well, you could try to swim and you could try to swim to the shore, but their hands are chained and their legs are chained. Their hands and legs are chained together.

RDOG DKA' LAS KYI PHYING BA The karma chains. Maybe if they weren't chained, they could swim and maybe they could try to get to the shore, but they are chained. Their hands are chained.

Their feet are chained by their past karma. They don't really have a choice. They don't have options.

They don't have options to change the direction of their life. The direction of their life is largely determined by what they did in their past life. So they don't have options to try to do something like save themselves.

They are chained up. Take your mom, throw her off a cliff into a raging river, but before you throw her off the cliff, chain her arms and legs together. Think of it that way.

DANG CIN CHAGS KYI MTHAR BU ZHUGS Then just before you throw her off the cliff, lock her in an iron box, like an iron cage. So first of all, chain her hands and legs and just for good measure, put her into a zoo cage, a cage for the animals at the zoo. Put her into a cage like that and then throw that into the river.

Because that's the chance that she's going to have to escape, which is zero. And then what's the cage? It's DANG CIN.

It's a misunderstanding her world. For example, misunderstanding why your husband's in that moment. That's when you don't understand.

When you come into the kitchen and your husband starts yelling at you and you don't understand what's going on and you yell back, in a way, you are in an iron cage. You have just put yourself in an iron cage. So now think about this mom who brought you up, who kept you from being like an animal.

And now she's thrown into this terrible river, powerful river, and her hands are chained and her legs are chained by the karma she did in the past. And on top of that, the chained mom is shoved into a cage, a small cage. And then that is thrown into the river.

SMOS MED SRID PAR SKYE BZHIN GYI BA RU They are born, you guys know Musu, Mushi, SRID, what do you call it? Perimeter? No.

Permutation. Three or four permutations. This SMOS MED means countless permutations.

It's an interesting word. SMOS MED means countless permutations. SKYE BZHIN GYI BA RU She's born in countless forms.

Animals, different kinds of birds, different kinds of fish, different kinds of humans. SDUG BSNGAL GSUM GYI RGYUN CHEN MED PAR NAR And she is suffering from the three kinds of suffering. RGYUN CHEN MED PAR He is returning to the image of a stream, of a river, and without a break in that flow, she is suffering from those three kinds of suffering.

SDUG BSNGAL GYI SDUG BSNGAL, RGYUR BA'I SDUG BSNGAL, and KHYAB PA DU BYED KYI SDUG BSNGAL What's SDUG BSNGAL GYI SDUG BSNGAL? Suffering is suffering. What's the classical example?

A back egg, yay, or a foot egg. SDUG BSNGAL KYI SDUG BSNGAL Then SREG BA'I RGYUR BA'I SDUG BSNGAL Every time you get a nice dinner, it changes. You get hungry again.

Suffering changes. And then KHYAB PA DU BYED KYI SDUG BSNGAL KHYAB PA means covers everywhere. That's basically aging.

That we live in a body which is mortal. KHYAB PA DU BYED KYI SDUG BSNGAL also covers the first two. It's just our nature to fall apart.

As you get older, you'll have the joy of having your body fall apart. Then you exercise, exercise, and then it keeps falling apart. It's like holding up a sand castle or something.

All right, NAS SKABS BSTAN DAG RGYUR PA'I MA RNAMS KYIS SNGAGS TSUL BSAM LAS SEMS SBYOGS BSKYED PAR MDZOD Try to imagine that all the people around you have been your mom. Try to imagine that they have been thrown into a terrible river with their hands chained inside, stuffed into an iron cage. And in that cage, underwater, struggling, they are going through direct pain.

They are going through seeing every nice thing collapse in their life. And while they're going through that, their body's also falling apart. So imagine your mom, even your mom just in this life, is like that.

Her situation is super desperate. To jump off the banks of the river, to swim down underwater, to open up the iron cage, to get the chains off of her, to pull her out of the water, to get her to safety, it's almost impossible. Difficult.

But at least we should try to imagine that it's something we would like to do. So that gets you in the mind frame of the third step for developing bodhichitta, bodhisattva vision, which is that if you want to pay your mom back, just get her out of the river. Get her out of the cage.

Get her out of the handcuffs. Paying your mom back for everything she did for you doesn't mean buying her a new TV when she's too old to work. It's a little more complicated than that.

Okay, let's go on to the next verse. First verse of this section, actually. LHAB DU LAS LHAB DU is called ZHIG GZHER BSAM BU BYAS Shantideva, Master Shantideva wrote two great books that we have.

Of course, the first one is The Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. And the other is a long description of sutra quotations that apply to training ourselves. And that's called Companion of the Trainings.

NYON MONGS KYIS NYON Your mom, imagine your mom. NYON means gone crazy. Like she went crazy.

Like I have a friend, her mom. In fact, this is a big danger for older people that they take their drugs wrong. They forget they took their drugs already and they take them three or four times in a day.

Or they take the whole bottle by accident and then they get crazy. So imagine, NYON MONGS KYIS NYON Your mom has gone crazy because of her mental afflictions, her negative emotions. STI MUG DONG means her misunderstanding of where life is coming from has made her blind.

Her misunderstanding gouged out her eyes. YANG SA MANG PO'I LAM DU NI And she's wandering in the high mountains near all of these cliffs. So she's blind and she's gone crazy and she's balancing high in the Himalayas on these very dangerous cliffs.

KHON PA RE RE'I BDEG CHA BA Then you're watching her take her unsteady steps near the edge of these deep abysses, deep chasms. BDAG DAG GZHAN BDAG NYON NGES ZHI SBYOR BA RNAMS KYI SDUG BSNGAL TSUM So BDAG DAG GZHAN BDAG NYON NGES ZHI Our whole life is of misery. SBYOR BA RNAMS KYI SDUG BSNGAL TSUM And the suffering of living beings is similar to a person who has gone mad and who is blinded, had their eyes gouged out and is walking along these high mountain canyons where they could fall off easily.

ZHES GSUNGS PA LTAR BSTAN NA TSE'I SDI'I AA MA MIG LONG ZHIG LONG KHRID DANG BRAL Imagine your mom in this life. MIG LONG, her eyes have been cut out. LONG KHRID DANG BRAL means, and imagine she has no one to guide her.

And she's just, I like thinking of your mom is blind and she's walking through New York City through the traffic and no one to help her to get to the other side. SEMS NYOD DE On top of that, she's gone temporarily insane. And on top of being blind, she's insane.

NYOD DE YANG SA ZHIG GAR CHUNG BA NYON NA And she's close to falling off a very high cliff. CHUNG means to jump. But here it means to fall off a very high cliff.

BU DER YOD NA If her daughter or her son is nearby, at her side, AA MA DE'I KYANG BU LA MI RE NA If she can't hope, if she can't put her hopes in her child at her side, then who else is she going to put her hopes in? If her child, her daughter or her son is walking next to her through New York City traffic while the mom is temporarily insane and also blind, and if that son or daughter will not reach their handout and help them across the street, then who can she hope? Who else is she going to hope for?

BU DE'I KYANG AA MA DE'I MI BSKYAB NA GSOS LA BSKYAB And if the child is going to protect someone in their whole life, if they're going to help someone, but they don't help their mom when they are temporarily insane and blind and about to die, because they're going to fall off a cliff, if the time has come to help her and you don't help your own mom, well then who else are you going to help? How can you say you're a nice person? How can you say you're doing all this charity work if you won't help your own mom who's right next to you and who's going to die in the next few minutes if you don't grab her and help her?

Picture here, we can see... I was trying to find a picture of somebody running away from a fire. It's not very good, right?

It looks like a thief or something. But I guess the website that I use for pictures, they're all cheerful, which is why I use it. But anyway, imagine that this is your mom.

She's running from a fire in her home. You are standing at the door. You can just step in and take her hand and bring her out and you don't.

Just imagine that you don't. That's the feeling we're supposed to get here. DE BZHIN DU SEMS CAN THAMS CAD KYANG CHOS DANG CHOS MA YIN PA'I LAM DU LTA BA'I DMIGS DANG DO Every living being around us is blind.

People in the whole world around us are blind, especially if they don't have any Dharma training. They don't know what's the right thing to do and what's the wrong thing to do. Their judgment of what's a good thing to do, of what's a healthy thing to do, and what's an unhealthy thing to do, their judgment about that line is completely mistaken.

So even if they think about it, they're going to make the wrong decisions about everything. In that sense, they are blind. I mean, if you had a few minutes or a few dollars extra, if you studied Lam Rim, then you would use it to serve somebody else who needed help.

Or you would use the money to help someone else who needed help. But if you're blind, then you would just buy a nice dinner or something. You would ignore those people.

That's blindness. To not serve the poor, to not serve people who are sick, to not serve the environment, it's a blindness. And people are just blind.

And they are doing the completely wrong thing. So imagine your mom like that. ,SKYE GCIG RAS RE ZHING BSDOD PA DANG, ,BLAG LEN CING GI SLOG TU BYAS PA, All of their hopes in life, all of the goals they're trying to reach are completely mistaken.

,SLOG TU BYAS PA'I NYES SPYOD KYI GOMS PA BDEG CA, So every step they take in their life is like a person dancing on a high cliff and about to fall off. Every step they take through life with their eyes blinded is a dangerous, it's a dangerous step. ,DI BYED DANG, ,DI MA BYED ZER BA'I, ,BLO MKHAN ZHING YIN GYI, ,BLO MCHED DANG NI BRDOD, They don't have anyone who can take their arm and guide them across the busy traffic or something like that.

Here it's called ZHING YIN, ,SKYE BA'I ZHING YIN, spiritual friend. They don't have... Most people in this world don't have anybody who can grab their arm and say, come on, help other people.

You want to be happy? Help other people. That's the only way to be happy.

Take care of other people. They don't have someone. ,DI BYED DANG, ,DI MA BYED ZER, They don't have anybody who can tell them, do this and don't do this.

This is a good thing to do. That's a bad thing to do. ,NYON MONGS DU GSUM GYI, ,DON GYIS SEMS SGRUB, ,NYON MONGS DU GSUM means the three animals at the middle of the Wheel of Life.

Misunderstanding your world. And then ignorant liking and ignorant disliking. Is it okay to like things?

Yes. Is it okay to like things and try to take them away from other people? No.

That's ignorant liking. Is it okay to dislike things? Yeah.

We should dislike cancer. Is it okay to dislike cancer in a way that you take resources from other people? I heard today, yeah, some country was blocking vaccinations to another country because they wanted all of them themselves.

And that's ignorant. All right. ,DUG GSUM GYI, ,DON means the demon.

,DON GYIS SEMS SGRUB, SGRUB means to... Here's SGRUB, okay? I've got this carrot juice and if I wanted to...

This is called SGRUB. SGRUB means to shake it up. Like that's how you make a nice carrot juice or something like that.

Let's see if it tastes good. So that's called SGRUB. The people around us are SGRUB by the demon of these three kinds of negative emotions.

,ZHES PA LA RANG BA MA THOB PA'I MYOS, They cannot... This is an interesting expression. ,ZHES PA LA RANG BA, RANG BA means freedom or liberation.

Freedom in a political sense, for example. And they don't have RANG BA about their own mind. They don't have freedom to think pure thoughts because they are out of control.

MYOS means crazy. What's the word for alcohol in ancient scripture? We call it MYOS CHE.

MYOS CHE means crazy maker. Makes you crazy. ,MYOS NAS SKAL PA MANG POR MED DANG, ,LU YIN MI DU RGYUR BA'I NGAN SONG, They are about to fall off the cliff into the deep canyon called the Three Lower Realms, where for many SKAL PAS, for many millions of years, MED DANG LU YIN MI, your body and the fire there are indistinguishable one from the other.

You can't tell where your body starts and where the fire starts. NGAN SONG GI YANG SA CHEN POR, They're about to fall off that cliff. ,RDOR BA'I NDI LA, ,THA LA'I RANG CHAGS SKYE BA'I GZHAN YIN DANG, But us guys, RANG CHAGS SKYE BA'I GZHAN YIN DANG, We have met with a spiritual teacher.

We had the great good fortune to meet awesome spiritual teachers. ,THEG PA CHEN PO'I CHOS DANG PHRAD, We have made contact with the Mahayana Dharma, with the Dharma that says take care of other people. Just to meet somebody who tells you to take care of other people is extremely rare.

To me, when you talk about religions of the world, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, they're all very rare good luck. Don't focus on the difference between them. To meet any of them as a child or to grow up in a country where any of them exist is extremely good karma.

Extremely good karma, great karma. ,THEG PA CHEN PO'I CHOS DANG PHRAD, ,BLANG DOR YANG CHUNG ZAD ZHES, We understand what we should do and what we shouldn't do, CHUNG ZAD. A tiny bit.

A tiny bit, CHUNG ZAD. We understand a tiny bit about what we should do and what we shouldn't do. ,DE DAG LAS RANGS CHE CHER SANG BA'I, In that sense, we are more blessed than our mom.

That blind, crazy mom. We have some eyes. We have some sanity.

We're following Lam Rim. That's a sign of sanity. So I'm not the best person in the world, but compared to someone who never heard Lam Rim or never heard that you should take care of other people, I'm like perfect.

Here it's funny. It's a funny word, CHE CHER SANG. I'm like super, I'm really perfect compared to these other people who are blind and crazy.

At least I have eyes. I don't use them very well. And at least I'm not crazy.

But although it's crazy to act crazy when you don't have to. ,DE DAG LAS RGYAL THAB GYI GUR BYED, The cure to take care of my mom has fallen to me because I'm the only one who has any eyes around here. I'm the only one who has Lam Rim around here.

,CHE RKYEN RANG LA BAB TSUL, BAB TSUL means it has come down to me. There's nobody else who can take this responsibility. It's all fallen, BAB, to me, SANG BA.

So think about that. I like this picture. I'm giving CPR to somebody, trying to save somebody's life.

I don't know if you've had this happen in your life. If you live as long as me and Jigme, it happens every 20 years or something that you get to save somebody's life. I remember somebody was on fire and I was able to knock them down and save them.

So in a car accident, I pulled somebody out of a car. It doesn't happen very often, but it seems like a high honor to have the chance to save a life. Like someone's going to die if you don't do something in the next two minutes.

And for some reason you don't freak out and you think clearly for two minutes and you pull them out of the car and then the car blows up and you're like, damn, I did it. It happens a few times in your life. It's one of the sweetest things in life.

To be able to say I saved somebody's life is a great feeling. It's one of the greatest feelings in life. So anyway, you have a chance right now to save your mom.

Your mom's had a car accident. The car is about to blow up. And all of us have this chance to pull our mom out of the car.

YANG SLOB SPRING LAS This is called A Letter to a Student. And it was written by Master Chandragomi about 1,300 or 1,400 years ago. NYES DU'I KHOR BA'I RGYAL TSUL GONG ZHUGS RGYUR PA RNGON GYI RNAM DU LHUNG BA LTA BU'I SNONG BZHIN DU SKYE ZHIG PHOS PA'I SNGO MA SHES PA DE POR NAS SKYE ZHIG PHOS PA'I SNGO MA SHES PA DE POR NAS NYES DU means your loved ones, the people you love.

KHOR BA'I RGYAL TSUL GONG ZHUGS RGYUR PA They have fallen into the ocean of sansara, suffering life. RNGON GYI RNAM DU LHUNG And there's a, what do you call that? Whirlpool.

What do you call, there's another word for that. If there's a technical word for a whirlpool in the middle of the ocean. It's like a vortex.

It's like a vortex, huh? I don't know. You can check.

But anyway, your mom has fallen into this whirlpool in the middle of the ocean. SNONG BZHIN DU SKYE ZHIG PHOS NAS And she's moving from birth to death, birth to death, birth to death. SNGO MA SHES PA And because she's been shifting from birth to death and birth to death, and because you've been switching from birth to death to birth to death, you don't recognize her.

SNGO MA SHES means you don't recognize that she was your mom because there's been too many deaths in between. PHOS NAS And so you ignore her. SKAL TE GCIG THAR BYED NA And you kind of say, I'm going to focus on myself.

I think I'll just focus on myself. I know these other people are suffering, but there's no big reason why I should take care of them also. You don't recognize that they have been your mom.

DE LAS CHAL BAR MED CHAL BAR means, CHAL MED means you don't care what others think, remember? When you do a bad deed and you don't care about what others think. That's called CHAL MED.

So here it means, how could you do anything more shameless than to ignore your mom if she's in the middle of drowning and you're just swimming off by yourself? Did you find that thing?

[Говорящий 2]
A couple of words like maelstrom. Yeah, I think maelstrom.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, that sounds good. BYAS PA LTAR MA SEMS CAN KHOR BA'I RGYAL TSUL LUNGS KYI CHOS RNAMS DA RES RANG LA BDUN PA'I THABS YOD BZHIN DU Your mom fell into the ocean. She's being sucked down by a maelstrom whirlpool.

And you have, what do you call those things you throw to the drowning people? The ring. You have a life ring?

Life saver. Yeah, and then you're just standing there, the life saver, and you don't throw it to her? What's wrong with you?

What kind of person are you? You have a way called LAM RIM and you could just throw it to her and you're like, huh, what? Oh, look, she's drowning.

THABS YOD BZHIN DU MA BSTAN NA If you don't pull her out, MA RAB You should learn this word, MA RAB. MA RAB has nothing to do with mother and it has nothing to do with not really. MA RAB means worst of the worst.

It's a useful word. MA RAB MA RAB THA BYAS means you are the worst of the worst of all the people in the world. You really suck.

You stand there with a life preserver and you watch your mom go under. What's wrong with you? That's MA RAB THA BYAS.

You are like the worst of the worst. DE DAG BSTOD PA'I KHUR DA RES The KHUR, the responsibility or the burden of pulling her out, which is BDUN. DA RES RANG NYID LA BAB means the responsibility has fallen on your shoulders.

So do it. SDUG BSNYAMS DU DRIN SOGS BSGOM And that's what it means to meditate on repaying your mother's kindness. So it's interesting.

She gave you food. She gave you language. She gave you walking.

She gave you manners. She gave you wearing clothes. And when you say you should pay her back, it feels like, oh, you should feed her or you should make sure she has clothes or you should teach her Spanish if she's speaking English or something.

And he said, no, no, no, no. Just save her life, okay? And he said, no.

We're not talking about paying her back with what she gave you. We're talking about saving her life. That's a different...

You can pay her back, not by buying her a new dress or by buying her a nice French dinner. How about you just save her life? That would be nice.

DRIN SOGS DRIN SOGS DE YANG DGOS MA YIN PO LAS Then he quotes a book called The Essence of the Middle Way, which is a famous book by Master Bhavaviveka. Lower Middle Way. GZHAN YANG SNGON PHYED NYON MONGS PA'I SDUG BSGYI LAM PA BDAG GIS NI SNGON PHYED means in the past.

NYON MONGS PA'I SDUG BSGYI LAM PA What do you call that when a spirit takes over a person? Possession. Possession, yeah.

I was possessed by the demon. I have been possessed by the demon of my own negative emotions. And because of that, instead of trying to help my mom, MA LA RGYUR BYED RGYUR BYED is an interesting word.

It means the changer, right Tim? RGYUR BYED, the changer. And it's a word for salt because it changes the taste of a dish.

The changer. MA misspelled here means open wound. So I'm supposed to be the hero who goes and saves my mom.

But what I've been doing so far in my life, because I was possessed by the demon of my own selfishness, I was rubbing salt in her wounds instead of trying to put a Band-Aid on them. BYAS SDUG BSNGAL NAS PAR GANG DU BYAS I was doing my best to make her condition worse. I was pushing her off the cliff after she went blind and crazy.

And I was like leading her to the edge of the cliff. SKYE BA GZHAN DU GANG DAG GIS BYAMS DANG NYAN DGOS PHAN PA BYAS Look, in other lives, the people around you have cared for you as literally as your mother. They have BYAMS PA.

They have shown you BYAMS PA. What's that you guys? Love.

And NYAN GOR means they have respected you and cared for you. PHAN PA They have given you help your whole life long. And in return, LEN DU PHAN DAG PA Wouldn't you want to repay them in kind?

Wouldn't you want to give them back the same kind of help? Well, what's the best one you can do? NYANG NGAN BDAG as a verb.

We had it in the Diamond Cutter Sutra. NYANG NGAN BDAG Nirvana. Scythe.

So here's the very strange verb. It's almost an invented verb. NYANG NGAN BDAG LAS GZHAN CI YOD There's no option.

Don't give them clothes back. Don't give them food back. Give them back nirvana and Buddhahood.

That's repayment. That's CHEN SO. That's paying your mom back.

It's kind of common, right? If someone gives you a gift, you try to give them back something better, right? So, okay, you gave me food.

You gave me language. You gave me walking. You gave me dressing clothes.

You gave me human behavior. I think I'll give you nirvana back, okay? Or Buddhahood if you want.

That's a good deal. All right. And that's the picture we have here that we started out the class with.

It's this, the idea of a young girl, she's paying her mom back, and she's giving her something beautiful. The most beautiful thing you can give to your mom to pay her back is nirvana and Buddhahood. BYAS PA LTAR ZAD DANG, GOS SOGS BRTAG BA TZAM GYIS NI Yeah, you can give her food.

You can give her clothes. GNAS SKABS KYI MTHIL GOMS NA BRAL TZAM She will reach a liberation, but only from hunger and thirst. Physical hunger, physical thirst.

LAS PHUGS SU'I PHAN PA ZHIG MIN BYUNG PHUGS SU'I means in the long term. She doesn't get... It's very common to buy your mom a TV or an apartment even, or something like that.

And he says, okay, that's help. That's PHAN PA, but not PHUGS SU. That's not ultimately going to help her that much.

DE BA THAMS CAD DANG LDAN PA DANG, SDUG BSNGAL THAMS CAD DANG LDO BA ZHIG BYUNG NA If she could get every form of happiness and if she could escape every form of pain, SEMS CAN DE DAG LA'ANG PHAN PA BSTAN CING BYAS LA That's real payback. That's a good payback. Give her every form of happiness and remove every form of pain.

That's a good payback. SDUG BSNGAL SEMS RGYAS KYI DGOS PA LA DGOS NA Now, if you could push her to Buddhahood, if you could get her to go to Buddhahood, yeah, then DE BA THAMS CAD, she gets everything she ever wanted. SDUG BSNGAL THAMS CAD DANG LDO She gets free of every pain she ever wanted.

YIN PAS SEMS CAN THAMS CAD SEMS RGYAS KYI DGOS PA LA DGOS PAR BYA'O NYANG MA DGOS Therefore, because everyone has been your mom, your motivation should be to pay them back. I will push all of them into Buddhahood. I'll be the pusher.

I will get them into Buddhahood. All right. DPER NA RANG GI'A MA NYON NAS CI KHYER TE I love this image.

I went through this Lam Rim three times with my teacher over 30 years. And I love this image. RANG GI'A MA, we use it a lot in DCI.

Suppose, I like to tell this story because it happened kind of to me. A friend of mine's mom who was living alone and I was helping to take care of her from time to time. And she had to take her meds every morning.

And later we had to hire someone to give her her meds every morning because she would take the wrong ones or she would take the whole bottle. She took a whole bottle of something. And she went, what do you call it?

Temporary insanity. And she was cooking and she was cutting vegetables with a big knife. And you can see the picture here.

It took me so long to find this picture. I don't know why. Yeah, she was cutting vegetables with this big meat cleaver.

And we told her, we went to the store and we said, we're coming back. And we were coming back and we were trying to get the lock open because she had a sliding glass door and it didn't work very well. And she forgot that we were coming.

And she thought it was a robber or someone come to hurt her. And she pick up the knife and she head towards the door. We're like, oh, no, no, no.

It's us. But when a 90-year-old woman is scared and she's got this cleaver in her hand sometimes. And this is the answer to a question that you will get as a Buddhist many, many times from other people.

Okay, you're a Buddhist, yeah. So what do you do if somebody attacks you? If someone, if another country attacks you or if a person attacks you with a knife, then what are you going to do?

What's the right thing to do? And the classic answer that you should learn if you're going to teach Lam Rim is treat them like your own mom. If your own mom took some extra drugs by accident and went crazy, and then you were coming in the door and she thought you were someone come to hurt her and she came to you with a big knife, then would you shoot her?

Would you stab her? And then, no, of course I wouldn't. Well, what would you do?

Well, I would try to wrestle her to the ground and try to get the knife out of her hands. Well, what if she cut you? Well, it's okay.

It's worth it. She give me a few cuts. It's better than killing her.

I wouldn't take a gun and shoot my own mom. I would take a few cuts. And so that's the answer to the question of what to do if someone attacks you.

Try to, what do you call that? Disable them or disarm them. And even if it causes you some pain or some trouble, even serious trouble, it's better than killing them because they are your mom.

They have been your mom. You wouldn't shoot your mom if she came at you with a knife. Even in America.

I don't think so. All right. So anyway, here's the Tibetan.

RANG GI'AM MA NYON NAS Suppose your mom went crazy. CI KHYER TE And suppose she approached you with a knife. BU RANG GI SOS PAR MTSOMS MTSOMS here means to undertake or to start.

It can also mean to write a book. So you have to be careful. MTSOMS LA'ANG AA MA LA MI MCHOG BAR You would not get angry at your mom.

You wouldn't get furious and say, Mom, I'm going to kill you. MI MCHOG BAR NYON NAS DE SEL THAB You would try to knock her down and you would try to keep her safe until the craziness passed from her mind. SON DGOS PA You have to work hard to do it that way.

GZHIN DU DRA LA'ANG CHIN SOS BYA DGOS Then Pabongka Rinpoche ends this section by saying, I'm talking about people who've been your mother who are your enemy in this life. I'm talking about people who hurt you in this life. People in your business, other business executives who are trying to screw you or other countries, people who attack your country and try to kill you or hurt you.

People in your family who are jealous or do things to hurt you. I'm saying they've been your mom. And CHIN SO, it's time to pay back.

There's a James Brown song, The Big Payback. It's time for payback. But payback in Buddhism means it's time to push them into nirvana and Buddhahood.

Not to pay them back by hurting them more than they hurt you. All right, great words, difficult to practice. And we'll see you in the next Lam Rim episode.

Thank you.