«Дар освобождения», курс 39 «Ускорь своё сострадание», занятие 7

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back to this totally quiet temple. And we're going to continue. I was thinking we shouldn't call the, we should say they started with gas, then they went hybrid, and then they became all-electric.

How's that? Okay, so Dromtönje, the non-monk great lama. So lama, you can be a great lama and be female and be not ordained.

It doesn't matter. Lama just means a great teacher, guru, right? So anyway, and it's a tragedy that the word guru has got bad connotations now.

It's kind of a demon's work. It should be a very revered word, and it deserves to be, but that's life. Okay, so anyway, Dromtönje got it.

DE LOMA RNAMS LA RAM So he taught it to his students. He taught the LAM RIM parts in public, and DI SANG BA'I SGO NAS, the LO SBYONG parts for developing the good heart, mainly through exchanging me and you so I can look at me with an honest eye that hurts. Okay, SGO NAS, he taught it to Potawa.

So there's a difficulty with the lineage trees. We were counting Vajrayogini lineage yesterday. Diamond Mountain is 40?

Diamond Mountain started as the 40th generation. We are 40th generation Vajrayogini practitioners. We know the major teacher of each generation before us.

And the people who study Vajrayogini here are 41. You are lineage 41. Your students will be 42.

But when you get to the early Tibetan lineages, it gets really complicated. I call it a tumbleweed. I saw such a cute thing.

Koko, you would love it. So we live near Sedona. Near Sedona means we don't want to live in Sedona because it's full of tourists and crystal gazers and stuff.

And we don't want to live, and it's extremely expensive to live in the actual town. And you get, there's 10,000 people in the town. There's 6.5 million tourists come to the town every year. And the other day, we were driving past the Hilton, and these people had filled up their cars with tumbleweeds to take home. Hey, fundraiser for Diamond Mountain. Export tumbleweeds to Sedona for the tourists.

So they have a hatchback with the hatch up, and all these tumbleweeds stuck in the back, and they're taking them back to New Jersey, which is appropriate. And anyway, why am I talking about that? Oh, the lineage in those days, in the Kadampa days, is like a tumbleweed.

See, Vajrayogini goes very nice. ,RGYAL BA RGYAL TE RIGS DRAG DOR BYED SPYOD, ,RGYAL BA YUL BYED DOR BYED SMRAS BYED MA, ,RGYAL TSE DUS BA LA, It goes, the lineage is very clear. When you hit the Kadampa times, 1,000 years ago, the first hippies into that, they were not monks.

They were family people. And all the dharma was not taught in monasteries. It was taught in people's homes, in living rooms.

It was a living room era. And the lineage tree is all messed up, because they say, what, you got anything new from India? God, I learned Madhyamika.

Hey, I learned Pramana. Hey, you want to compare notes? And they would teach each other.

So it's a very beautiful, the lineage is delightfully confused. And you can't say he passed it on like this. It was all people teaching each other.

Oh, what did you learn? Oh, I went to Nepal, I learned this. Oh, I was down in Bengal.

What did you learn? And they would teach each other. And it was a very beautiful time.

And they would have their own little, their house was their dharma center, and there were no monasteries. Kind of refreshing times. Okay, and De Sangway Go Ney.

So he taught Dromchen Jey, the famous lay person, lama, taught Potowa. So I'm going to give you the names. I don't remember the lineages very well.

I researched it, I can tell it to you. You won't remember later. It's all tumbleweed.

He taught Potowa. Potowa is the 1031 to 1105. He was the heart disciple of Dromchen Jey.

Potowa taught it to, here it says, Langshar. And by the way, in this lineage, it's important to at least know the lineage. Because we pride ourselves on being authentic.

We say, look, this is an authentic dharma. Here's who taught it, here's who learned it, here's who taught it for a thousand years. We know all the teachers who taught it.

And one of the things we've input in the input project is all the lineages. So we have thousands of pages of, we know who taught who, who taught who, who taught who. And it has never been corrupted.

Nobody ever said, hey, this is what I think. Let me make up something. And there's no such thing in this lineage.

It's all documented. And you know who taught who. So anyway, he taught Langshar.

Langshar is an abbreviation for... Lang is Langthangpa Dorje Senge. Langthangpa Dorje Senge.

Dorje Senge means diamond lion. And he wrote the famous, or he wrote it down. He had eight verse training for good heart, developing a good heart.

That's probably the most famous one. It's just eight verses. BDAG NI SEMS CAN THAMS CAN LA YOD ZHIG RNAM PAR LAS LHAG PA'I DUN CHOG DUG PAS Other people are your ticket to heaven.

Nice opening line. So he lived 1054 to 1123, if you care. So he lived 1054 to 1123, if you care.

And Shar here is a Sharawa Yonten Drak who lived 1070 to 1141. So anyway, it was passed on responsibly. SHARA BA'I KHO NGIS BLO MA BYANG CHUB SEMS PAS SEMS KYI RGAGS PA PA Then Sharawa taught it to his disciple, Chekawa.

And Chekawa was the first person to write down the Lojong in seven parts. So he's considered the author, but he just was the first person to write it down after, by his time, 15 centuries. It was passed on orally for 15 centuries.

And then he was the first one to write it down. He made it sok chö. He made it public.

He started to teach it in public. KHA BA LA SNANG ZHING CHE KHA BA'I KHOS BDOD NAS SOGS CHOS So in the time of Chekawa, it became a public teaching. What we're going to study now.

It's funny, they don't say it started in the time of Chekawa. KHOS BDOD means it started in the time that Chekawa's holy body was present in this planet. They don't say in the time of Chekawa.

It's very beautiful. Even how they speak about lamas is very beautiful. All right, so now we are next.

IDIM, ta-da! Open book. The idiom, English, it's an open book.

We can teach it openly. We can show it. So this lady is reading an open book.

This represents the third era of this teaching. It became, I say we call it electric. Before that, it was hybrid.

Before that, it was gas. So then it became open, open teaching. Luckily, we're in the time of open teaching.

Geshe Chekawa's dates, if you care, are 1101 to 1175. So by about 1150, it became a public teaching. Lucky for us.

And by the way, if you know Lam Rim well, we've reached a section which is a stylistic standard called DZAD PA'I BO'I CHE BA. It means, let me give you some background on the people who were involved with the lineage. It's called The Greatness of the Creators.

The Greatness of the Creators. So we're going to study The Greatness of the Creators. We're in the middle of a Lam Rim exercise, standard exercise called The Greatness of the People Involved.

Like 60s rock and roll people. Right, Joe? The greats.

And that's called DZAD PA'I BO'I CHE BA. So stylistically, we're in a Lam Rim standard section called, let's talk about how cool those guys were. So they're going to talk a little bit about it in terms of the early people who were teaching this practice and who wrote it down for the first time.

And that's why, by the way, you see different versions of these lojongs. We're very fortunate that one of the first books ever published in Western style in Tibetan was printed, chakpar means cold type. Cold type in typography means metal, metal letters, screwed into a frame, letter by letter.

And in Tibetan, each letter can have three or four pieces, different pieces. So you're talking one letter of a word has three metal squares screwed into a frame. Okay, so one letter, like lojong is a LAR DO, S, B, YOD PA, one, two, three, four pieces.

You have to, by hand, put in the frame. And then you got to put a whole page up and then you screw it tight and then you print from that page and then you break it down and you do the next page. Before computers, cold type.

So the first book ever published, to my knowledge, in Tibetan, cold type, was designed by the Dalai Lama's teacher, Trijang Rinpoche. And he said, we need a book of all the lojongs. So he was a great book collector, like John Brady.

$100, who's the oldest book collector? Damn, you're so high. Yeah, Shem Tsang, the Chinese master who wandered around India for 17 years after he snuck out of the Tang Dynasty capital, he found the Gajanese ACIP library, ALL library in South India 500 years later, right?

He visited there. Anyway, why are we talking about that? Yeah, so Trijang Rinpoche was a great book collector.

He was a, what do you call it, addicted to books? And so after he passed away and his reincarnation came and he was a young man, about 12, they allowed me to stay there during the debate competitions. And I lived with them for a couple weeks and he let me see his library.

And we found a lot of rare books there. But this was, he was the first person to recover all the lojongs. And he put them all together in one place.

And it's a very great accomplishment. All the great, important lojongs from 1,000 years ago, he collected them and he put them together in one book. And that's one of the first books we input, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Cool?

[Говорящий 1]
And we made it obsolete.

[Говорящий 2]
Because now everyone has it.

[Говорящий 1]
It's online, it's free. We have 16 million pages online for free. All the lojongs are there.

You can just take them. And you print them automatically. Yay!

Yes, earth shaking. Okay. RGYUD CHUNG RIGS NAS SNGAGS SOGS LA BZHIN DU BSKYED Okay, so he's going to tell a little bit about the life of Chikawa, Geshe Chikawa.

He was a Geshe, but he wasn't a Geshe. What's that mean? Yeah, he was a spiritual friend, but it wasn't yet a title.

It wasn't yet a degree. Later they called the degree Geshe. But in the early days, Geshe meant just a spiritual teacher.

All right. RIGS NAS CHEN PO ZHIG GI SDUG RGYUD DU CHUNG He was born into a Nyingma family. This is the oldest of the four Tibetan traditions.

So Chikawa was born as a Nyingma. In fact, Tsongkapa lived 400 years later. So there weren't any Galupas then.

So he was born into, Nyingma means the original Buddhist of Tibet. The earliest Buddhists of Tibet are called Nyingma, which means the older ones, the elder ones. He was born into a family of Ngakwa, Ngakwa, Tantrikas.

He was born into a family. His parents were Tantrikas. His parents were studying like Bajigme.

They were practicing in their family, quietly. NGAK CANG CHEN PO, great Tantrikas. ZHIG GI SDUG RGYUD DU CHUNG means he was born into that family.

He was born into a family of lay people who were secretly practicing the highest teachings. Cool. RIGS NAS SNGAG SOGS LA GZHAN DU SKAD Then he studied the five great sciences, which are the five great topics of ancient India, like classical poetry, astrology, Buddhism, logic, grammar, medicine, and then there's lower five arts, like architecture, sculpture, music.

He mastered them. GZHAN DU SKAD KYANG MA TSIM But it wasn't enough, and he was still hungry for more. MA TSIM means he was still hungry for more.

Then he saw a text by Diamond Lion. SKAD DANG RGYAL KHA GZHAN LA STANGS KYONG DAM BU DKA' RANG GI LEN Anytime there's a potential prophet in a situation, I will offer it to the other party. Anytime there's a potential prophet in a situation, I will give it away to the other person.

KYONG DAM BU DKA' RANG GI LEN Anytime there's a potential loss in a situation, I will secretly take it on myself. And it's a beautiful practice. And you can use it all day long.

And you can also use it in business. Anytime there's risk, you take it. And anytime there's profit piling up, they say you steal it from yourself and give it to others.

No, you can't keep that. No, I want to. No, shut up.

Give it away. And it's this beautiful attitude towards loss and gain. And it also, personally, I don't know, my wife is not here because she's taking care of some cancer patients.

And she just lost a big part of her business because she's giving four days a week to cancer patients. So that's called giving up your profit and taking the loss. Just quietly, you take losses for other people.

Anyway, he had become a great Buddhist scholar. And then he ran into this idea. And he fell in love with it.

And he's like, God, that's so beautiful. So he was already a Geshe. But he saw this Lojong thing and he's like, whoa, now that's beautiful.

ZHES SOGS LAM THAMS PA'I LOJONG He saw the Lojong, it's the eight verse Lojong of Diamond Lion, Dorje Segyu. DGE MA GZIGS PA'I DON TSE PHYAD PAR CHUN PA NA And he started to explore practicing those ideas. PHYAD PA NA, LAM THAM PA And here's an interesting, there's an interesting history here.

I read the history long ago. It's in that book by Thich Nhat Hanh. There's the history of the eight verses.

He was staying in someone's house overnight on the road. So in Tibet, in those times, there were no hotels. And you would just stop at someone's house on the road and knock on the door and say, I'm a traveler.

And they would say, come in, have dinner, here's a bed. And they wouldn't charge them anything. And this was just a custom in Tibet.

There were no inns or hotels. And it was the right of a traveler to knock on the door. And it was the duty of the family to give them a place to stay and feed them while they're on their travels.

It was very beautiful. So one night he was staying in somebody's house and there was another traveler in the next bedroom. And the other traveler was reciting Diamond Lion's Lojong.

,BDAG NI SEMS CAN THOB PA'I LA, ,YI ZHIG SNANG PO DE LHAG PA'I, And he's like, hmm. And he started listening to the wah. And he's like, wow, that's really cool.

So in the morning he introduced himself to the other guy. Where did you learn that? And he said, well, I learned it from Dorje Sengdi.

Diamond Lion taught me himself this Lojong. And he says, God, I want to learn that. Chakravarti is like, I want to learn that.

How can I meet this guy? This the tumbleweed thing? Like, where's that guy live?

I'll go to his house and hang out with him for a while. I got stuff I can teach him. He can teach me some stuff.

So he told him how to go meet Diamond Lion and his lineage. And he left and he went to this place. And Diamond Lion was already passed away.

There's a famous moment when he gets to Diamond, the translator that's writing, tell him to use the air conditioner. He's going to teach this to me. He went to Diamond Lion's house.

Diamond Lion was already passed. And he said, and he was really bummed out, and he said, is there anybody who can teach this to me? And then Langtangpa, Diamond Lion.

He's also called Langtangpa, which means the guy from the Plane of Lung. His students were there and they taught it to Chikunga. They taught the lojong to Chikunga.

The students taught the lojong to Chikunga. Next picture. No, that's the, take the problem, sorry, give away the problem.

Yeah, here it is. What's cool about this situation is that the students of Diamond Lion were so dedicated and so attentive and made such good notes and learned the Dharma so well that they passed it on perfectly to Chikunga. So it's a famous example of good second generation.

Understand what I'm talking about? It's one of the most classic events in Buddhism. Where the second generation succeeded to pass it on.

You understand what I'm talking about? They took good notes. They worked hard.

They got the lineage. And it's a famous example of, they almost improved on the first generation. Understand what I'm talking about?

So they learned it so well and they practiced it so well that it was passed on to the third, sorry, yeah, the third generation, which is the little girl in the middle, perfectly. You guys are on the right. Grandpa's on the left.

Okay, got it? And I like that. I feel really happy about that.

When I read that story, he was bummed out because he got to Diamond Lion's house and he had just passed away and he's like, oh, I'll never learn this. And then he was swamped in the, what do you call that? The atmosphere place of a cafe, for example.

The ambiance of the master's home where all second generation people, and it was almost better than the master because they were a group of second generation people who were so devoted and they were supporting each other so much that instead of one teacher, he was thrown into this nice, warm swimming pool of second generation teachers. And it thrived, thrived? It prospered.

The whole thing took off because of the efforts of the second generation to really learn it and then support each other. First generation is one teacher normally. And then second generation is maybe five, 10 people who are really devoted and dedicated.

And then the thing blows up. And that's what happened in Tibet. It became an open teaching and it just blew up.

And it spread all the way to Arizona. All right, Shinsu, Shinsu. ,GZHA RO DANG BYANG NAS LO SBYONG GI BDAM LA GZHUS TE, ,GONGS PA'I And then he went home and practiced the Lojong and he took Gyula Trung.

He got bodhichitta. It worked. He studied it with the second generation and he went home and worked on it in his own practice, probably in a retreat at a diamond mountain, similar place.

And he got bodhichitta.

[Говорящий 2]
Next picture. No, next one.

[Говорящий 1]
This is a real case of leprosy. Before they had sulfide drugs, I guess. But this is what leprosy looks like.

And slowly the parts of your body fall off. And it's highly contagious. So there are only famous saints in Christianity and other traditions, Hindu traditions, Buddhist traditions where people will go work with lepers and try to help them.

Usually they're kept away from the city and nobody wants to touch them or take care of them. But he was famous for seeking out lepers and helping them and taking care of them. So he wouldn't avoid them.

He would go try to find them and he would take care of their wounds and touch them and take care of them. And then he would teach them this Lojong. And it cured many lepers.

So this practice, the seven step Lojong, it became known as ZE CHOS. Say ZE CHOS. CHOS means what?

Dharma. ZE means leprosy. It became known as the lepers' dharma.

This teaching that you're going to learn was known as the lepers' dharma. Both because it cured lepers and it cured people of being afraid of lepers. They had enough love to go take care of lepers.

I think Jesus took care of some lepers. Okay. BSGOM PA'I GNAS LAS GRU BA'I So people stopped talking about it as the seven part Lojong and started to call it the lepers' dharma.

CI'I SANGS SPYOD SU BYAS NA GZHIN DU PHAM PA BSGOM NAS Then Chekhawa thought it's a pity that people are still keeping this secret. So that's when he, after he cured some lepers with the Lojong, teaching them this Lojong, he said it's kind... GZHIN DU PHAM PA means it's a crying shame.

New idiom. I charge him 20 bucks per idiom. Crying shame.

Crying means cry, right? Shame means sad thing. It's a crying shame that this is secret.

It should be public. He said it's a shame. GZHIN DU PHAM PA means it's a crying shame.

It's a sad thing. It's a very sad thing that it's not public. So GZHIN DU PHAM PA BSGOM NAS SOGS BSHAD DU RNAMS He taught it.

He was the first person to teach it in public. So he broke the tradition and he taught it publicly, which is why we have it. DE NYID YI RGYAS KOS PA Then he wrote it down for the first time and he structured it in seven parts.

GNAS CAN DON GZHAN DON DU BYED PA'I LO JONG DON DON MA And then it became known as the seven part Lojong. DON DON MA Say DON DON MA Seven part Lojong. I thought you might want to know what the seven parts are in case your students ask you.

There's no other reason to know. Just kidding. So we're going to be going through it, but I'll give you the seven parts just so you can keep it in mind.

Okay, I think I made a graphic of it.

[Говорящий 2]
You give up at the end?

[Говорящий 1]
Well, I guess. I'll have to, I could. I'll try.

LUNG means an oral transmission. You just sit and you hear it once and that's passed on from generation to generation. Like rock and roll songs, right Joe?

You got to hear it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it. Okay, all right, let's see. Okay, you got those seven?

Let's look at them. Yeah, first preliminary practice, what kind of foundation teachings, like going for refuge, things like that. Second part is the actual Lojong, how to develop the wish.

Third part is interesting, a separate section on how to turn problems into opportunities. We took that section and teach it to business people. We just finished a program for, it was attended by 110,000 people, on how to turn problems into opportunities using that section.

Which is cool. Summary, number four is, so if you practice this Lojong your whole life, what kind of person should you end up as? In the end, what should you be like?

Number five, what's the sign that you made it? At what point can you say you made it? Okay, so it's very helpful to have some kind of a formal definition.

If you can do this, you got bodhichitta. Number six, how to make a commitment to this training. How to say, okay, I'm in, I'm in.

Count me in, I want to learn. And then seven is, these are called MED NA. MED NA means stuff your teacher tells you in private.

So if you live with a teacher, or you serve a teacher closely, so I had the honor for 25 years to live with my teacher. My friends told me I was being abused and taken advantage of. I told them I'm taking advantage of him because he lets me drive his car and he lets me wash his dishes in his car.

They thought I was crazy, but I got the profit, don't worry. I mean, it's funny, right, how my friends all said, oh, you're crazy, he's taking advantage of you. And I'm like, no, I'm taking advantage of him because he's letting me serve him.

And I'm a totally, blissfully happy person, and I recommend it. And that whole stuff about all the teachers taking advantage of you, it's all BS. I'm taking advantage of him.

He lets me drive his car. He lets me wash his dishes. He let me build his house.

And it made me extremely happy, extremely successful, even financially. Well, how can I give away 100 bucks every few seconds? Okay.

Anyway, these are private advices. The seventh part is the kind of thing your teacher would tell you in private. You're a nice person, but you know you're still jealous of this other person.

I had this, I got an advice, I'll tell you. He's one of my teachers. He's like, you're really doing good.

You're Tibetans coming along, but you're still really jealous of art. This is menot. This is private, private talk when you're alone with your Lama.

He says, you still got this jealousy problem. And I'm like, okay, I'll work on it. He says, no, don't work on it.

I'm like, what? He said, keep it for a while. I said, why?

He said, you work so hard because you're so jealous. He said, first master the scriptures and then work on the jealousy because the jealousy drives you. I'm like, that's menot, okay?

That's part seven, okay? It's like private talk between you and your Lama. It's a beautiful thing.

You can't do it if you don't have a Lama, by the way. Okay, all right. menot dunci nyi mo Sometimes this menot, there's the word, private advices.

Sometimes this book has been called The Essence of Nectar, Private Advices of The Essence of Nectar. There's another lamrim called Essence of Nectar by a Mongol scholar. That's not what he's talking about here.

This lojong has been called The Essence of Nectar. He says, why do they call it The Essence of Nectar?

[Говорящий 2]
A hundred bucks. What's the word nectar mean? Huh?

Huh?

[Говорящий 1]
Huh? Too easy. I want a better translation of tar, nectar.

Yeah. Yeah, you can, a hundred bucks. You can buy some more trees.

Yeah, nek is the Greek word for death, right? Necrophilia. Okay, nec means death in Greek.

Tar comes from Sanskrit. The Greek comes from Sanskrit. It means to travel past.

Tara, tara means the lady who travels past. Transportation comes from tar. So nectar means to travel beyond death.

Nectar means travel beyond death. So what's the Sanskrit? Amartya, amartya.

Not amrita, okay? That ri is a huge mistake in Sanskrit. There is no ri in that sense.

It's ir, amartya, not amrita. That's like calling Stanley, Lastly, or... It's weird.

It's messy. Hi, Lastly and Salison. It's just like messing up the thing.

It sounds terrible. Anyway, amrita, okay, say amrita. It's exact translation.

Nectar is an exact translation of amrita. So it means deathless, the nectar of immortality.

[Говорящий 2]
So he says here, and here's a picture, peach tree cafe.

[Говорящий 1]
That's, I don't know why, Stanley, okay? Here's another American Indian. They don't call peach juice peach juice.

They call it peach nectar. Normally, if you go to the store and you look at the bottle, oftentimes it will say peach nectar. It won't say peach juice.

I don't know why. But this is supposed to remind you of the alternate name of this lojong, is the nectar of immortality, okay? The essence of the nectar of immortality.

DUS KYI GNYIS MO In Tibetan, DUS KYI GNYIS MO In Sanskrit, it'd be something like, it'd be amrita hrdaya, the heart, hrda, hrda of nectar. That's the alternate name. Why?

Because if you study this lojong, you get to buddhahood, which is immortality also. Okay, sweet, sweet immortality. Nectar, okay, nectar.

Very beautiful. So sometimes, I personally think calling this sweet book, this seven-part lojong, is kind of a stupid name. I think we should call it by its old name, which is the essence of nectar, the nectar, right?

The deathlessness, okay? I like that. It's more...

Joe, did you ever, when you were a teenager and you're trying to find names for your rock band, and you and your friends are sitting around the root beer shop, and you're like, essence of nectar. Let's call it seven-part band. Essence of nectar.

Yeah, that's got a ring to it. Yeah, so anyway, we had hundreds of names. $10,000 for the first name of my band.

Safe. Nobody knows. I'll give you a clue.

We had white shorts, green t-shirts, Irish green t-shirts, and green beanies. This is how long ago. The Gremlins.

Okay, next time you'll get it. All right. All right.

Our first gig was at a swimming pool party, and I was so nervous I went and threw up before we played. I don't know, Joe probably has a similar story. All right.

So we finished the DZES PA PO'I CHE BA, the greatness of the people involved with the lineage. Okay, the greatness of the people. So what we go on to next is a sales job on the teaching itself.

So we did a sales job on the teachers, and now that's called DZES PA PO'I CHE BA. Say DZES PA PO'I. DZES PA PO'I CHE BA The greatness of the teachers who passed it on.

Now we do the BCUG GI CHE BA, which is the greatness of the teaching itself. Okay, so we're on to a different topic. If you know Lam Rim well, you can see these patterns.

Okay. Sorry. Okay, BCUG GI CHE BA DOR BYED PA LAM DANG DGRA TSUL What's DOR BYED?

Diamond. I think it's the same in Chinese. There's the technical name for diamond, and then there's kind of the folk name or the colloquial name.

It's different. Is it that in Chinese? I don't know.

Jingkang? You don't say Jingkang nowadays. You say...

DZON ZHU DZON ZHU DZON ZHU DZON ZHU DZON ZHU DZON ZHU Yeah, same in Tibetan. Okay, so Jingkang is the old word. DOR BYED is the old word.

The modern Tibetan is PA LAM. Okay, PA LAM. So here he uses the modern word PA LAM.

DOR BYED PA LAM means diamond. It's the modern word for diamond. DZON ZHU DZON ZHU DZON ZHU And the old one is Jingkang.

Yeah, okay, like that. So DOR BYED is Jingkang. PA LAM is DZON ZHU.

Okay. SGRAB TSUL NGAR PHAN YON GYI SKABS SHES PA LTAR This dharma is cool, right? CHOS KYI CHE BA The greatness of this teaching is that it's like a diamond.

And so we are, being old diamond cutter students, we are expecting some kind of diamond cutter comparison, like it can be broken into pure pieces, or it's the hardest thing in the universe, or it's totally transparent, but he doesn't go there. He says a good piece of diamond is like sunlight. He goes this way.

He goes on a different track. He says a good piece of diamond, sorry, I think I'm allergic to... No joke.

Okay, a good piece of diamond sparkles like a spark. Here's a picture. I tried to find a picture of a spark.

It's like impossible. But there's a picture of it. He said a good piece of diamond is like a spark, and even a tiny spark is more powerful than darkness.

If you think about it. It's not big, but where the spark is, the darkness has to retreat. That's the idea.

Where the spark sparks, even for a second, the darkness has to go, whoa. The darkness retreats, and the spark asserts itself. So therefore, this lojong is like a diamond in that a piece of diamond is like a spark of sunlight.

He calls it a spark of sunlight. Okay, here it says NYID MED DGOS KYI CHA. A spark of sunlight.

One spark of sunlight can defeat all darkness. Doesn't matter how thick the darkness is. Doesn't matter if you're out in the middle of a diamond mountain or you're in the darkness of Phoenix, which doesn't even let you see the stars.

A spark of light, even a tiny spark of light can hold off the darkness. The darkness has to retreat. ZAL NUS PA BZHIN, CHEN ZIN GYIS NUS PA ZAL The darkness here is taking care of number one.

American idiom, taking care of number one. The darkness here is our tendency to take care of number one. That's an English idiom for, help out the Chinese guys.

Yeah, selfishness, taking care of yourself first. Serving yourself first. Here it's considered GNAS.

GNAS means a disease. It's a disease to take the first share, or unless it's eggs, okay? You guys take the first share.

But croissants, stuff like that, you should leave it for Geshe-la.

[Говорящий 2]
No.

[Говорящий 1]
So, BDAG CHEN ZIN, which is the whole subject of Seiji's book, is the tendency to watch out for yourself first. There was a sick book in my day called Watching Out for Number One, and it was a bestseller about how it's okay to take care of yourself first, and it's a sick idea. That book disappeared.

Guess why? It didn't help anybody. this teaching that you're about to study is a spark that can make the habit of taking care of yourself first retreat.

When your selfishness meets this lojong, your selfishness is like, oh, oh, oh. What's that? Because Dracula meets a book, or a Bible, or a cross, and he's like, oh, oh, oh.

So you're habit of taking care of yourself first doesn't like this teaching. CHAGS TZAM GYIS BSKYEN MNGON PA GSAL NAS NUS PA BZHIN CHEN ZIN GYI MNGON PA GSAL BA DANG MEN GYI SBYONG ZHING CHUNG SRED TZAM GYIS BSKYEN MNGON PA GSAL BA NUS PA DANG CHEN ZIN GYI MNGON PA GSAL BA And he goes to Oshota. He goes to the idea of Oshota.

And he says, it's also similar to Oshota. There are plants in the pharma, what do you call the? Pharmacopoeia.

There are plants in the pharmacopoeia which can cure almost anything. Like digitalis, like it's a natural plant. It stops heart disease.

It's still used straight as a pill. You don't, it's nitroglycerin. It's a form of nitroglycerin and it keeps people alive.

It can cure heart disease immediately. It's just a plant and they never improved on it. It's in the U.S. pharmacopoeia. It's a legal medicine, digitalis.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
It's nitroglycerin and it cures heart disease. And so he says, this teaching is like a spark against darkness and it's like digitalis against heart disease. It just, boom, knocks it out, like that.

And there's people who have to take that every day to stay alive, right? Oshadha, sacred medicinal plant. Cool.

All right. Tim, you have an announcement or anything? He's trying to get me to stop.

We were in San Diego. My dad and mom lived there. My dad in his second life after my mom passed away.

And she was a, she had a captain's license, sailing captain's license, ED. But he was a naval officer on a submarine. Not an officer, he was the lowest rank.

Anyway, in World War II, he was on a submarine. So he liked to say he could sail the boat better than my mom. She was the captain.

He didn't know how. Then the Enterprise came into port. This is the largest aircraft carrier in the world at the time.

I don't know if it's still, it's probably some Chinese ones. It takes five miles to stop the boat. You have to have five or six tugboats, small powerful boats, have to get in front of it and push the other way.

It takes five miles to slow it down. And it's about 10 stories high. So my dad decides to sail our boat in front of the bow of the Enterprise.

And we get really close to the bow. And it's like wah, wah. And then the wind dies because the aircraft carrier cut off the wind.

Why am I telling you that? Oh, to stop Geshe-la's mouth. It's like the Enterprise.

Okay, we'll see you in 10 minutes. I'm still here. We survived.

The screw, the propeller is, I mean it would kill you in a second. It's huge. It's like half the size of this room.

A couple of these at the back. Anyway.

[Говорящий 2]
Take a break.