«Дар освобождения», курс 38 «Становясь бодхисаттвой: шаги к порождению желания достичь просветления», занятие 15

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back to the Lam Rim. We're going to do a review of all the points that we've covered in this Lam Rim course together. I think it's 37 Tim, or 38, 37 I guess.

Anyway, it's something like that, 38. And we're going to go through, I picked out, there's about 80 cool ideas that we have pictures for. And I picked out about 16.

And this is the purpose of choosing these photographs is to make it easy for all of us to review the big ideas that we went through. It's kind of like a meditation. So if you're going to do a meditation on this whole course, you can go through the pictures one by one and you can test yourself.

And it's kind of fun. I finish writing the course, then I go through the photographs. And honestly, I cannot remember what each one is.

Maybe 90%. And then a couple of them, I don't remember why I chose a picture. And then I remind myself and then I won't forget it.

So I think it's a wonderful way to meditate on the main points of this whole course. Let's do a self-examination. Let's look at the 16 most important pictures.

And my friends in this very room are going to tell me what's the picture about. So it's a great teaching technique is to embarrass your friends. And then they never forget that they embarrassed themself in front of so many people.

So this is why we debate in the monastery. The debates I lost, I remember deeply. The debates I won, I can't remember.

So, all right, here we go. First picture. Do you guys remember, I'll give you a clue.

This had to do with the virus. Does anybody?

[Говорящий 2]
Sending the virus to the middle of the sun.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good. Sending the virus to the middle of the sun. And I don't remember the temperature difference, but it's amazing.

It's incredible. The temperature is incredible in the middle of the sun. And the idea is that bodhichitta, or the vision of the bodhisattva jumping from planet to planet, billions of planets in a few seconds, and meeting each person there and taking care of each person there.

The decision to take care of each person there, that's so powerful that something like COVID is not going to stand up to it. If you do any, if any group in the world does some serious study about bodhichitta, we can easily kill the virus. It's like sending it to the middle of the sun.

So, that's the first picture I want you guys to remember, is the power of this decision to take care of all the people in the universe. All right, second picture, Mr. Pachi. You guys remember this LAG MTHIL DU BDAMS?

LAG MTHIL? What's it mean? Yeah, so the name of this book is a gift of liberation thrust into the palm of your hand.

But there's a different palm of your hand in scripture, which means to keep something as your primary practice. This is my main practice. Somebody says, what are you working on nowadays?

Oh, I'm working on my number one practice. What's that? I'm trying to get this vision of a bodhisattva.

So bodhichitta, which I like to call vision of a bodhisattva, I'm trying to, that's the main thing I'm focusing on. That's my main practice I'm focusing on. So he says, put that in the palm of your hand, means keep it, the world, right?

All the people in the world and the universe, that should be your main practice. And then you're on the right track. All right, third picture, Mr. Pachi. Yeah, I love this picture. You should get your own, okay? Find a picture of you with your mom and keep it for this course.

Find a nice picture of you with your mom. And it's very important during this entire course that you keep coming back to this one person in your life who took care of you. It's very important to keep coming back to her.

And I'll tell you the first time I saw the picture recently, I don't look at it all the time. I was thinking, oh yeah, that's my mom. But then if you keep looking at the picture every day, then I think you cannot help but go back and realize how much hardship and love she put into taking care of you.

And my mom had a lot of hardships, four sons, no husband, and very, very difficult. And so I think that's probably the most important picture for this seven-step practice for reaching a bodhisattva state of mind is to keep a picture of your mom close by and think about it during this course a lot. And you'll never forget that the goal of this course is to realize that every single person around you has done the same thing for you.

All right, next one. Wait a minute, that's the wrong picture. You guys sure that's the next one?

I'm thinking Dharmakirti. Oh no, no, you're right, you're right. That's the right one.

Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, this was the proof of Dharmakirti. I was expecting that picture of Dharmakirti, but this'll do.

And we took a detour because Pabongka Rinpoche quoted Dharmakirti. And I think he wanted us to take a detour because he cut the quotation in the middle. And when it's cut in half, the quotation means the opposite of what it's supposed to mean.

So there's a knot at the end that he left out. And so it's not the case that the wangpo, the clarity of the senses of the child, the life of the child, and the YER BAG CHEN, the personality, right? Pau gave me this word.

The unique personality of Maitri, of this baby. He has his own personality, and there can be twins born at the same time. Psychologists have trouble with that because they want to say their mom ate a milkshake.

Their mom ate a really hot chili relleno in the third month, and that's why the kid is so angry. But they have trouble with twins. Then they have to say the chili relleno went to one twin, but the chili relleno didn't go to the other twin.

And it gets crazy. And yeah, kids enter this life with a certain personality, and their sense powers display life. They have life.

And the personality is not coming from their skin. Their personality is not coming from chemicals. Because if it was coming from chemicals, then every time you put those chemicals in a bottle, you should have Maitri, but you don't.

So it's that what children are is not just the result of chemicals. Of course, it affects children, but who they are is flowing from a similar cause in the past. Mind can only be the result of mind.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Yes. Yeah, so every egg needs a chicken and every chicken needs an egg.

Yeah, therefore, if you could just struggle to prove that you were alive 10 minutes before your mom and dad had sex and the egg was fertilized by the sperm. If you can just force your mind 10 minutes back from that moment, you have to say you were alive. Something was alive.

Something was aware. You have to say. If you can push back that 10 minutes, then everyone's been your mother.

Then it's totally logical. Then you're already trapped. Checkmate.

Did you live 10 minutes before? Yeah. Okay, then everyone's been your mom.

Proof. It doesn't take a genius. All right, next one you guys.

Do you remember this one? It was an emphasis on location. Do you remember?

Yeah, if you've had countless births, then you have stepped on, or you have been born in every square meter of the universe. Countless times. Billions of times.

So it's kind of fun. I like to walk out in the desert, find a rock. It's so difficult at Dime Mountain to find a rock.

And you just walk out and you find one rock and you say, there's no... I have been born next to this rock billions and billions of times. But it's not a single rock out in the desert somewhere.

I have been born at this rock, near this rock, billions of times. And then you get a feeling for how many times it's been. It's very difficult.

It's easy to throw around the word countless. We get lazy in Buddhism. How many lives you live?

Countless lives. Yeah, but what does that really mean? That means you've been born everywhere billions of times.

Every country, every language, every world, every planet, every star, billions of times. Try to think like that. I like to go to Dime Mountain, go out in a black moon, Yamantaka day, and look at the sky.

You see the Milky Way. This morning I was listening to Stevie Wonder, Ribbon in the Sky, and I was like, Veronica, what's the ribbon in the sky? Maybe it's the Milky Way.

And billions and billions of stars. I remember a Chinese lady from Shanghai. I went to Shanghai, I taught in Shanghai.

They told me to stay inside. Stay in the hotel, don't go outside. I'm like, why?

They said, look out the hotel right now. And I looked to the hotel. There's another part of the hotel about 50 feet away.

You couldn't see it. The pollution was so bad. And they said, don't go outside.

I'm like, wow, that's weird. So, you can go outside. And then a lady from China told me, hey, guess what?

I came to Dime Mountain. I saw the Milky Way. I saw all the stars.

Can I ask you a question? Yeah, what? Will these stars be out tomorrow?

Or is it just tonight? Do they also have these stars tomorrow? I'm like, we have them every night.

She's like, wow. I thought it was just once a year or something. So, yeah.

Then look at those billions of stars and think about you've been on each one billions of times. I also like to play a game with myself. I go out, there's an app.

What is that app? Sky app or something? What is it called?

Sky Guide. Get it on your phone. It's so amazing.

It tells you what's the name of the star. I like to play with my Sky Guide and check out the next star I'd like to be on. Next mile.

I say, where am I going next? It's very cool. All right.

No place we haven't been born. Next picture, you guys. Yeah.

Do you remember what this story is? Come on. I'll give you a clue.

A wolf was involved.

[Говорящий 2]
The story of the lady in blue outfit.

[Говорящий 1]
Blue loin, Utpala. Utpala Varman. Blue colored lotus.

This terrible, terrible story about this incredible nun who became an arhat after she was personally greeted by the Buddha who stood up when she entered the garden and invited her to become a nun after she had had all her children die, her parents die, her husbands die, and after she was buried alive twice, or three, I don't know. What's the point of this story? Why did they have this story in the book?

Yeah. There will come a day when you will see your past life. There will come a day when you can see that everyone's been your mom.

Directly. So right now you have to do it with logic, but there will come a day when you just look around and you think, oh my God, they all have been my mom. I can remember what they did.

I remember my 10th birthday with her and I remember my 6th birthday with her and I remember he kicked me when I was a kid. You can see all your past moms. So the story was very important.

I think the story. There was an argument that, don't think that just because you cannot recognize right now that someone has been your mother before, that they have never been your mother because the passage of life and death covers, it obscures the reality that everyone has been our mom countless times. You died so many times you forgot.

Next picture. This one's tough. If you want to win the $50, you have to relate it to another piece of clothing.

Yeah, great. It was related to the monk shawl and Pabongka was making an argument. Just because my shawl has holes in it, doesn't prove that it's not the same shawl I bought in the market last year.

Yeah, it looks different. It's a little worse for wear. In English we have this idiom, worse for wear.

It means, look, yeah, my shawl looks like it's been beaten up a hundred times. That's kind of a funny analogy. Yeah, you're going to run into people that look like they've been beaten up by life a hundred times but still they were your fresh, beautiful mom.

They are not different from the fresh, beautiful mom in Geshe-la's picture when he was a little kid. Just because my monk shawl has holes in it, doesn't prove it's not the same shawl I bought at the market last year. Just because the mother sentient beings around you look a little worn out, doesn't mean they weren't that fresh mom who gave you birth last life.

It's the same mom, it's just got holes in it. But just because it has holes doesn't mean it's not the same mom. Next picture.

What is this picture? What's the event?

[Говорящий 2]
Oh, dance. The Vietnamese is dancing in Lam Rim.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, it's the Lam Rim event in Bali, 2019. And why are we showing it here? I'll give you the first part of the logic.

It's a logical statement. If your mom had not been so skillful at saving your ass a thousand times every day. Yeah, you wouldn't be sitting here and listening to Lam Rim.

What's the best thing your mom ever did for you? Feed you, baby food, give you milk, save you from falling off the table? No, she got you here.

So maybe she's nice. Maybe she's a nice person. She got you into the Lam Rim and that's the best thing she ever did for you.

So I like this picture of the Lam Rim because it's so joyful. And she got you there. Those of you who were there, it was a very beautiful moment to see all of our friends doing their traditional dances from many countries and your mom got you here.

That's the best thing she ever did. Okay, all right, next one. Now, next one, somebody has to tell me the whole story.

I don't want to tell the story. Who's going to do it? Pachi, loud so they can hear.

[Говорящий 2]
This is a story of Mongolian children with no parents, wide children, who don't give for granted.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, and they live in the sewer. So if your mom had not worked so hard, you would be a wild animal. You wouldn't be...

You would just be a wild animal. It's not that you are naturally civilized. You're not.

Your mom civilizes you. So take away the mom, like the kids we saw in Mongolia, who are living in the sewer. They cannot speak human language.

They don't understand human language. They run around naked and they bite tourists who don't give them their purse. And you would be the same.

You would be the same. Without your mom, you would be a wild animal. And you would be the same.

So think about it. The difference between you and a wild animal is your mom. And I think especially giving us the gift of speech, teaching us to speak.

We don't always use it for the best purpose, but that's an extraordinary gift. All right, next one. Okay, somebody tell me the whole story.

For zero dollars.

[Говорящий 2]
If your mom, if it's like on drugs.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, your mom accidentally took some extra drugs.

[Говорящий 2]
And she just got a little bit wild and she doesn't recognize you when you're coming into the room. You won't shoot her. You won't try to just make her...

[Говорящий 1]
Peaceful. Yeah, so this is the answer to the question that people give to Buddhists. Are you a hindsa?

Do you have a hindsa? Are you nonviolent? Yes.

So if somebody comes at you with a knife and you have a gun, you won't shoot them? And you're like, no. And they say, why?

Well, would you shoot your own mother if she came at you with a knife? My mother's not going to come at me with a knife. Come on.

Yeah, but if your mother went temporarily crazy because she took some drugs by accident and she was crazy and she thought you're a thief and she came at you with her kitchen knife and she's about to kill you, would you shoot her then? And you're like, hmm. You know, I wouldn't shoot her.

I would just grab her and try to knock her down and take the knife out of her hand. Well, would you do that if you knew she was going to cut you badly? And then if you're a good kid, you say, yeah, I would allow her to cut me badly.

Rather than shoot her. So that's the idea is that people around us have temporary insanity. They do stupid, mean things to us.

But it doesn't mean that that gives you the right to hurt them because they are your mom. And you wouldn't do it to your mom. If you're a good kid, you would not shoot a gun at your mom, even if she's trying to kill you.

You would find a way to try to stop her. And this applies to countries that attack your country and things like that. Other countries which are threatening your country, is there a way that you could slow them down or stop them without hurting them?

And then when we negotiate with other countries and we have international problems, we have to remember they have been our mom. Okay. All right, next one.

Who wants to tell me what this is?

[Говорящий 2]
The Six Perfections.

[Говорящий 1]
Nice, it's the Six... Wait, who wrote this? I'll give you a clue.

His picture is there. Yeah, yeah. Nagarjuna wrote this and he went through the Six Perfections and he said, here's the...

The correlations. Here's the Six Correlations. You want to make money?

Can we keep it up? Sorry, Pachi. Yeah, if you are generous to people, you will become rich.

If you don't hurt other people, you'll always be happy. If you want to be beautiful, don't get upset at people. If you are careful to be joyful when you do your Dharma, then actually people will recognize you as a leader.

People will accept you as a leader. And if you meditate regularly, even lousy meditation, you will be peaceful. Because it's karma.

It's not the success of the meditation. It's the fact that you tried to meditate. And if you try to remember that things are coming from your seeds, then eventually you'll be freed from suffering.

Now, I think, Christina, why did I stick this in this part of the Lam Rim? What's it got to do... Pabongka did not put this in this part of the Lam Rim.

But he should have.

[Говорящий 2]
Well, it's because Chandrakirti asked a question later as to how you get to bodhichitta.

[Говорящий 1]
Maybe.

[Говорящий 2]
You can do that, or you can just have love and then promise.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, there's the last line there. GOS PAR SA BAR TA SA DA NI You can do those six perfections or just love people. And he kept saying that random feelings of love for people for a few minutes during the day was worth all the six perfections.

SA BAR TA SA DA NI You can reach all your goals. What's the correlation for love? Everything.

Be generous and get money. Yeah, I got that. Don't hurt people, you'll be happy.

Yeah, I got that. Be patient, you'll be handsome. Yeah, I got that.

I mean, I wish I could do it. But love people even for a few minutes, then you get everything. Then the correlation is everything.

All right. Which is the argument for bodhichitta and especially for compassion. All right, next picture.

I feel uncomfortable personally with the word bodhichitta being used a lot, especially when people misspell it with a C, which is not the pronunciation. It's the technical transliteration. You don't spell bodhichitta with a C.

It's CHA, it's C-H, duh. Please, don't say bodhichitta. Anyway, the word makes me uncomfortable because it feels so foreign.

You got bodhichitta? I hope not. I took the vaccinations.

No, no, it's a good thing. Yeah, well, what is it? So what is it?

It's, you got to imagine sitting in a meditation in your living room and walking between a billion planets within 20 minutes. You got to imagine sitting on your meditation cushion in your living room and walking on a billion planets in reality. Really, really stepping from planet to planet, billions of planets, and personally meeting each being on each planet, each bug, each bird, each fish, and promising them that you will take care of them.

You got to imagine having that experience. And if you have that experience, then the rest of your life is easy. Then the rest of your life is ridiculously easy.

If you just have that 10, 20 minute experience, then it doesn't matter what happens for the rest of your life. You are extraordinarily happy. And that's bodhichitta.

So please don't think it's some Buddhist weird thing. It's not that. Is it weird?

Yes. Is it unusual? Yes.

Is it an experience you didn't hear about in university? Yes. And it's the most beautiful experience that a human being can undertake.

And you will never forget it. And then your whole life will have a clear purpose. You know what you have to do in this world.

And it's very, very relaxing and comforting. You know what your job is. People, nowadays we're restructuring one of our companies.

And people are like, what's my job? What's my job? And I say, don't worry, I'm going to write your job down.

And once you write the job down on a piece of paper and you hand it to them and say, this is your job and they say, da, da, da, da, da, and they're like, ah. And even at the end of the interview I say, here's your business card. And they're like, oh man, I have a title.

This is who I am. Vice President Operations. Now I have a title.

And the point is, you get this Bodhisattva business card. It says, Tim Lonehow, Bodhisattva. And then you're like, ah, yeah, now I know who I am.

Now I know which company I work for. And I know what's my position. I have a position.

And it feels great. That's your lifetime position. All right, next one.

So please don't think of bodhichitta as some minor Buddhist thing with a Sanskrit name. That's so, it's a lifetime experience. Once in a lifetime experience.

All right, here we go. Ooh, who's going to explain this one to me? It was a long time ago.

Yeah, good, good. Yeah, cool. Each of these people, each person here is laying in a hospital bed taking their last few breaths after a failed fight of cancer.

I always think it's so funny to say, after a brave battle with cancer, come on. Battles with cancer are always one-sided. You know, you die, okay.

So each person here who's eating the famous cinnamon roll at the Peachtree Cafe, they're as good as a person dying in a hospital. They just look different. And then don't forget, they have been our mom.

So we have to take care of them. We should try to help them. All right, next picture.

Somebody tell me why this picture is the same as the last picture.

[Говорящий 2]
Because they're young people, they look vibrant and alive and everything is going for them, but they're also going to die.

[Говорящий 1]
They're also laying in the bed in the hospital room breathing their last breath, except they have a worse disadvantage. The excitement of life. They're doing small bad things to get this new house and to get this nice job and to buy that nice shirt and that nice dress.

They're not cruel people. They didn't put people in the gas chamber or something. They're not like that.

They are normal people. They are doing small things to ignore other people and to hurt other people. They're not bad people, but they are constantly collecting small seeds that will multiply and bring them huge suffering later.

These people are suffering as much as a 90-year-old woman on the resuscitator on oxygen in the hospital dying. These people are the same. In fact, these people are worse because they're collecting karma to be in that hospital bed a thousand times.

In this real estate interview. During this real estate interview. All right, okay.

All right, next. We've got two more to go. And this is called se, and Tim's going to explain it.

Se.

[Говорящий 2]
Talk loud.

[Говорящий 1]
Talk loud.

[Говорящий 2]
She's at home having breakfast, but her daughter, her baby's in the hospital, sick. She can't think about anything else but her sick daughter. Yeah.

And so she's, well, se means to measure. She knows that she has something, but I don't know what it is right now.

[Говорящий 1]
How do we know when we got to...

[Говорящий 2]
How do we know when we have love?

[Говорящий 1]
Compassion. Yeah. How do we know?

Okay. If I ask you, what did Pabongka Rinpoche say was the sign that you have reached the goal of developing compassion?

[Говорящий 2]
Even personal responsibility.

[Говорящий 1]
Or even while you're...

[Говорящий 2]
You can't stop thinking about it.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, you can't stop thinking about it. Mainly it's not. You can't stop thinking about it.

Any more than a mom could stop thinking about her daughter who's in the hospital after a bad car accident the night before. I have a friend who had a lung operation in the last week or two. They cut out half of one of his lungs.

He's young. He's very successful. He's handsome.

He's kind. He has two beautiful kids. And to talk to his wife during that day that he was getting his lung cut out, she wasn't thinking about anything else.

She wasn't like, Geshe-la, how's the weather in Sedona? She's only focused on one thing. That's the measure that you have compassion.

When you're thinking like that all the time. I don't know if you can enjoy coffee probably. If you're a super meditator, you can have coffee and worry about people at the same time.

Okay, we got one more to go. And Pachi offered to explain it. Loud, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
He's taking personal responsibility.

[Говорящий 1]
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. By the way, usually when they explain it, they do it this way.

Look, I'm going to take responsibility that plastic doesn't spread in the world. Me and V were eating sambal this morning and we got it from Tibet. And it comes in a cloth bag.

And V was like, wow, we could wash this and use it again. And I'm like, duh. And then she said, probably people used to do that.

I'm like, yeah, I guess so. You just wash the bag again and then you put more sambal in it. So if you decide, I won't use plastic.

We were talking about our friend Anjali. She decided to be careful with packaging. And she puts all her garbage in a box like this every week.

We have 24 bags of stuff. And if we just decide, each person. I don't know what the rest of the world's going to do.

I know they're driving these big trucks and using gas they don't have to use. I know they're throwing away all kinds of plastic every moment. But I personally have made a decision that I will pick up garbage that I see on the road.

I will be the one who picks up the garbage quietly and throws it in the garbage can for everybody else. And that's a quiet, modest, personal decision that you make to serve other people even if they don't know and serve future generations. I will take care.

I'll be the one. I'll start. I'll take care of future generations.

And I will take care of this world. I will do my little part to pass this world on to the next generation a little cleaner or some kind of personal responsibility like that. So that's the sixth step of developing bodhichitta.

And then next course, we're going to go into what does it feel like when you hit number seven, which is a famous result of the first six. So next course, we'll be going into what does it feel like when you get there. Okay, I'd like to thank Tim Lowenhaupt for working so hard.

And he works all day, all night. He actually, his work to support, his work to run these hotels in this town pays my salary, thank you for that, and a lot of other people's livelihood. And because of him, I have a refrigerator, et cetera.

And then he also took responsibility to produce these lam rims. And I think the greatest achievement he did was that he attracted, he is a nice person and he has attracted many, many volunteers around the world to help because he's such a nice person. So thank you for that.

And thank you Pachi and Pao for flying out from Mexico to run all this equipment because grandpa in 1,000 years could never run this equipment. And Venerable Gyeltsen, thank you for Diamond Mountain. Venerable Connie, thank you for YSI and keeping us healthy and keeping us going.

And Christina Kasica, thank you for quietly, anonymously taking care of all our needs. And it's very graceful and very elegant. And thank you for that.

Okay, and thank you Venerable Jigme for driving me around so I can get the lam rim done in the car. Okay, see you guys at the next lam rim.