AGOL 39, Совет Геше Майкла об обмене себя на других (спецучение) — стенограмма

[Говорящий 1]
So I'd like to describe the exchanging self and others meditation. And it's been part of your course. You got some materials for it if you signed up for this course.

We didn't reach that part in the text yet. So let me give you a preview and you can start practicing it on your own. So first you would do equal rights meditation.

And in your meditation, you would ask yourself the question, do other people really have equal rights to me? And normally equal rights means people of different color, people of different sex, people of different backgrounds, people of different religions have equal rights. That's normally what we think of as equal rights.

When you do this meditation, you choose a person, anybody, it doesn't matter. Somebody you saw at the gas station or your brother or sister, it doesn't matter. Choose a person.

And then you ask yourself, do they have equal rights? Do they have equal rights? Meaning what?

Yeah, do they have an equal right to get what they want in life? And do they have an equal right to not suffer disappointments and other problems in their life? Do they have an equal right?

Are we equal? And I don't know, have you ever had this delusion? We could have a delusion contest.

Did you ever have the delusion that other people didn't want to be happy as much as you want to be happy? Like, I don't know, some kind of delusion, right? Like, I'm not talking about the right to be happy.

I'm talking about deep down, did you ever have this feeling like other people just don't enjoy donuts the way I do? So, of course, we all have equal right to donut, but I would enjoy it more than them. And also, I understand everybody has problems, but mine are a little more serious.

People just don't, my wife doesn't understand how serious my problems are. I don't know why she wants to talk about her problems. And some kind of inner thing we have.

We really honestly believe that my problems are a little more serious than Coco's or Spaghetti's or Alex's. We believe that, deep down you believe it. So in this meditation, you try to detect that weird illogical tendency to believe that other people's problems are not as serious as mine, and that other people just simply can't appreciate a donut the way I can.

Therefore, I should get a donut. You see what I mean? So work on that.

Now I'm going to describe the exchange. When you say exchange self and others, it feels like the English idiom, put yourself in the other person's shoes. Put yourself in the other person's shoes.

And so here's what exchanging self and other meditation is not. Here's what exchanging self and other meditation is not. It's not, I try to think how Coco feels right now, and what would she like for breakfast, and what time would she like the class to end, and what would she like Geshe-la to talk about, like adopting her two nude puppies.

Help. It's not the goal of this meditation that I put myself in her shoes and think what she would like right now. I mean, that's obviously a healthy, wonderful meditation to do.

It's not BDAG GZHAN MNYAM BYAS. It's not what Shantideva taught. What did Master Shantideva teach?

Here you go, you ready? It has three parts. It has three parts.

So you do switch yourself and Coco. Coco's a famous three-year retreatant here. So you do exchange yourself and Coco.

So Michael puts his mind in Coco's body. Michael puts his mind in Coco's body, and then Michael opens her eyes and looks at Michael. Okay, you okay so far?

So I put myself in Coco's, Coco's sitting here today. I put myself in her body. I turn my head at Michael and I open my eyes.

And now Michael's looking at Michael. And by the way, when you translate this, it's messy. It's really confusing, super confusing.

It takes a lot of discipline to translate this. So now Michael is looking at Michael. And there's three variations on the meditation.

There's three ways you can do it. Number one, pretend you are someone who works for Michael, for example. So pretend you're someone who works for Michael.

And then pretend you're Coco and pretend you work for Michael. So now Coco, the employee, or I don't know, the volunteer at Diamond Mountain, is looking at Michael, who's supposed to be the boss or something. Okay, like that.

Just pretend. And how does it feel to work for Michael? Who's asking the question?

Michael. Michael's asking the question, how does it feel to work for Michael? And then suddenly you get a real vision of how people see you.

Suddenly you see how the people who serve you, even at the grocery store or at a restaurant, how they serve people who have to serve you, how do they feel about you? People who pick up your garbage in the morning, in the truck, how do they feel about you when they look at you? And oftentimes they are frustrated by how little you pay attention to them.

And how little gratitude you show them. Somebody was trying to convince me that the main quality of our sangha here is lack of gratitude. I'm like, don't tell me that.

That's terrible. But then I was thinking about it. So what's often the case when you're in charge of somebody else is you don't show them enough gratitude.

You don't thank them for the irreplaceable hours of their life that they are giving you. You can, if you steal a car from somebody, you can pay them back. If you take someone's shoes, you can pay them for their shoes.

But if you take the hours of their life, you cannot give it back. It's priceless. There's no price.

You can pay a million dollars and you can't buy 10 minutes. You can't do that. It's not possible.

So Michael gets into Koko's body. Michael pretends that Koko is working for Michael. Michael opens her eyes and looks at Michael and Michael is disappointed in Michael because Michael doesn't thank people very much.

Okay, got it? So that's why this was a sealed practice for so long. It's depressive.

If you don't get depressed by this, you're not doing it right. Okay, now step two. Are we okay, Tim?

Michael puts his mind in Koko's body and then Koko opens his eyes and looks at Michael as an equal. Okay, we're both teachers. We happen to both be teachers.

Koko and I are both teachers. We both did three-year retreat. So Michael opens her eyes and looks at Michael as an equal.

How does it feel to be a fellow teacher with Michael? And then suddenly you're like, wow, Michael's always competing to look like the better teacher. Okay, when you're on the same level, the main quality of Michael is that he's working so hard to learn more Tibetan and Sanskrit so he can look like a more smarter teacher than the other teacher.

Michael's main goal in life is to compete with the other teachers. He's driven by jealousy and competitiveness. He's trying to seem like the smartest teacher.

And it's quite repugnant, can we say? A new word. Disappointing to look at yourself as if you are Koko.

Through Koko's eyes, you look at yourself and you see, oh my gosh, Michael's not really teaching only for compassion. Michael also enjoys the attention. And Michael would even get competitive.

If you got close to Michael in Tibetan, it'd be dangerous because he would be trying to compete with you. And there'd be an unspoken tension of his jealousy with each other. You see what I mean?

A competitiveness. And then, so actually, exchanging self and others is a study in looking at the dirty parts of Michael. And it's not a pleasant meditation.

It's not this cheerful thing where you say, oh, Vivian likes Mabudofu. Let's cook her Mabudofu. Let's be more sensitive about her Mabudofu.

It's not that. It's looking at the dirty parts of yourself. And if you're not depressed, you're not doing it right.

So now nobody's going to do this meditation. Okay, you want to be more depressed? Let's go to the third level.

Oh, okay. So Michael gets into Coco's body again. And now we're imagining that Coco is higher than Michael.

So Coco has some kind of position in ACI where she gets elected super director. And then, how does she feel? Michael gets into super ACI director Coco's mind.

And Michael, through Coco's eyes, looks at Michael who now is below Coco, who now works for Coco. How does it feel to be Michael's boss? And you get an intense wave of jealousy from Michael.

Michael wants your job. Michael's favorite thing would be if you screwed up and got fired by ACI super director and he had to replace you, unfortunately, in this higher position. You see what I mean?

So Michael looks at Michael who's jealous of Michael. And Michael's favorite thing would be if Michael failed so that Michael could replace Michael. And Michael's constantly critiquing Michael to see if there's any small mistakes as super ACI director so that Michael could replace you.

So how does it feel to be Michael's boss? How does it feel to have these waves of jealousy directed at you all day? And it hurts.

It hurts. It hurts to be Michael's boss. It's very unpleasant.

He's constantly checking for faults. Can I undermine you? Can I make sure you don't succeed?

Then I'll rise to the position. You see what I mean? So three nasty meditations.

They are so hard to do that we might want to keep them sealed from people who can't take it. So those are the three meditations. We'll talk more about it in the next Lam Rim class.

But you can start warming up. Imagine how it is to work for Michael. Imagine how it is to work with Michael.

And imagine how it is to work above Michael. And in all three cases, it's pretty unpleasant. And the goal is that we make it more pleasant.

As an equal, we're more pleasant. As a boss, we're more pleasant. As a subordinate, as someone who works for Michael, we want to make life more beautiful, more pleasant.

All right, we're going to get into that next Lam Rim. But that's a preview. And you can start working on it, especially if you're going into a lay room this month.

Tim, do you have anything else?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, there's just one question that's been nagging a lot of people here about this. If Dr. Nam Gyai was a seeker practice, what changed so that now we're ready to be able to hear this?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, nice. So I'll repeat the question. And by the way, when you're a teacher, it's good to repeat the question, because then you know you're actually answering what they want.

And you have time to think about it while you repeat the question. It's an old Geshe train. Oh, you want to know what changed historically that people were suddenly ready to do this practice.

And I'll tell you something. So my first book I ever studied was the last book you're supposed to study. So in the Geshe course, the last of the five classics that you study is Abhidharma.

It's the last thing you study. You study it in the last two years, up to 25 years. So you don't do it for 23 years.

But when I went to study with my teacher, he had agreed to translate the Abhidharma Kosha with a professor from Washington, D.C. And he was a famous professor, and he asked my teacher if he would teach him Abhidharma, because he wanted to translate an Abhidharma commentary by Gyalwa Gendun Druk, famous writer from 1400s, who was a student of Tsongkapa. So I had just met my teacher. I had just gone to wash dishes for him.

And I said, could I just sit in the back? Could I sit in the room while you go through the book with this teacher, with this professor, famous professor? And he said, okay, but you can't say anything.

Just sit in the back and listen. So I sat in the back, and I was taking notes. And then the famous professor got tired and quit.

Because you're talking 12 years. And he got tired after three months or something. And he quit.

And so I went to my teacher. I said, I can finish it. I'll finish it.

I can do it. Give me a chance. And he said, okay.

And then he taught it to me privately for 12 years. And I memorized the first four chapters. ,GCOD RNAMS SA BYAS SA BA MED LA MA RDOGS PA'I ,DU BYED RNAMS SA BYAS GANG GYUR DE DAG LA, ,SA RNAMS KUN NI RGYUR PA RGYUR, ,SA MED LENG GI BRTAN PA DANG, ,SDOD MA BYAS NA ZIN YANG DE, ,SNANGS RGAGS DANG NI SGOS PA'I, I didn't know what it meant.

I memorized the sounds. And I learned Tibetan this way. Why am I talking about that?

In the last verse of the Abhidharmakosha written 17 centuries ago, it says, the last verse, this book will disappear in this world. The super depressing last verse says, this book will disappear in this world. Not long after the last person who understands it dies.

What a thing to say at the end of a book. This book will disappear from this planet not long after the last person who understands it dies. I'm like, what kind of ending to a book is that?

And actually it struck me as very, I've never heard of a religion where the founder of the religion said, look, all things are impermanent, including me and including my religion. My religion will disappear from this world. And just before that, the people who understand my religion will disappear from this world because it's all seeds and seeds wear out.

And my teaching will also disappear from this world. So there's a deep tradition in the Buddhists for two and a half thousand years that this teaching will disappear in this world. But, there's also a strong tradition that the last generations will be the best.

There's a strong tradition that the last keepers of this dharma in this world will be the best ones of all. So check this out. Here's the general trend of Buddhism historically.

And here's the quality of the students. Cool? Like this, look.

Buddhism is declining and the quality of the students is increasing. Very beautiful, here we go. Buddhism is declining and less and less people understand it.

But the ones who do understand it get sweeter and sweeter and sweeter. Is that an answer to the person's question about the seal? Yeah, long Geshe Michael answer.

That the people who understand the teaching getting less and less in the world. But the people who can practice this difficult cocoa exchange, which is hard on the soul, they're getting braver and braver and braver. I can do it Geshe-la.

What? I can look at myself honestly. That's hard.

That's really hard to see how other people see you. You would shoot yourself. So that's why it got to be public because the capacity of students, the few students left in the world, is much, much sweeter and deeper than ever was before.

Yay! Okay. Okay.