«Дар освобождения», курс 39 «Ускорь своё сострадание», занятие 11

[Говорящий 1]
All right, we're ready to start DGRA BCAD NYAMS PA, which is the first of the two steps, where we talk about equal rights. So this next section is about equal rights. Why did we jump from the story of Lord Buddha first getting bodhichitta, cream dream, bodhichitta, and then we're jumping to equal rights.

Well, this is how you get cream dream bodhichitta. You start with equal rights. Got it?

And if you want to lojong it, you got to mix it with the seven steps. So here's how you do that. And that's very appropriate for your retreat.

If you're going to do some retreat, in the next couple of days, here's a nice strategy for retreat. And bhavana, meditation, right? Bhavana, the Sanskrit word for meditation.

BA came into English as BYU, which came into English as BE, to be. To be comes from BA. So bhavana.

Then ANA means makes you do it. Like it's the AN in politician or artisan. So bhavana means, the word for meditation in Sanskrit is a practice that burns something into your brain until you become that.

So the word for meditation in Sanskrit is becomer. What are you doing for the next two days? I'm practicing becomer.

And it means by thinking about something over and over, you burn it into your brain, and then ideally you become that, which is why what is not meditation? Yeah, thinking about your breath, because you don't want to become your breath. It's a nice thing, but it doesn't help that much.

So the idea is to meditate on something of high significance so that you turn into that. And that's what bhavana means. That's what meditation means.

So anyway, here's a nice thing you can burn into your brain and become a person with bodhichitta, which is more fruitful than becoming your left nostril. Okay, all right. It doesn't mean that we don't practice breathing meditation, but it's just a warm-up, right?

It's just a preparation. Okay, in his book, right? UG CUNG UG.

Say UG. I like it. It sounds like boop boop.

UG CUNG UG. Breathing meditation. UG CUNG UG.

From his book of Abhidharmakosha, 350 AD, 1,700 years ago. It's just a warm-up. It was never meant to be a meditation.

Okay, it's very, very, very obvious. It's a whole explanation of it there. DE LA SNGA LAS BSTAN PO So we're going to start talking about how to do BDAG CHEN YAMS CES, how to equal rights and exchanging, equal and exchanging.

And he says, I'm going to teach it to you in five parts. DANG PO BDAG CHEN YAMS PAR BSGOMS PA NI The first step is going to be equal rights. Let's talk about what this equal rights means.

Tim, I'm going till 830 Arizona time. Am I right? Okay.

Then we'll put you into retreat and grandpa will sleep for two days. No, just kidding, kind of. MTHOG MA SNGAR KHON DU BSHAD PA'I STANG YONGS NAS So to start the equality part, you can actually go back to the seven steps and start from the beginning there, which starts with equanimity.

So try to get to a point where you see that everybody is the same. Everybody's got the same problems. Nobody's less mortal than anybody else.

I don't care how much money you have. Elon Musk is this, the niche owner, 7% owner of Twitter, is also mortal. He's same as you and me.

He's not less mortal than you and me. Okay. LAS DANG PO BDAG CHEN BSGOMS PA NI So we are, so start to feel equanimity.

That's not equal rights, not the same thing. Okay, so equanimity is part of the seven steps, right? 7.5, 0.5? Okay, it's the start. Okay, we're all in the same boat. And then work up through, everyone has been my mom.

They did so many good things for me. I would be heartless if I didn't pay her back in some way. Then love, okay.

Now he says, when you do your retreat and you want to do a nice, let's say you want to do a half hour, 45 minute meditation, start with those. Me and Elon Musk are both mortal. Okay, we're the same level of killability.

Then everyone's been my mom. They did so many good things for me. I should pay them back.

I want them to be happy. He says, work on those. Okay?

Start with those. THOB MAR, GONG DU ZHES BU. MUN DU BSTANGS means do those first.

Okay, do those first. Here's a picture for you. Okay, and I don't know, this is just the equal rights thing, okay.

It doesn't mean what it means in modern social theory, right? It doesn't mean that black people and white people are equal. It doesn't mean that men and women are equal.

It means that we're all diable. Okay, that's all. We already got equality.

Nobody had to pass a law. We're all equally mortal. Okay, some will die a few years before the others.

That's all. The ones who don't die in a tragic way will be proud that they didn't die. Ha ha, you died.

I didn't. I'm so healthy. And then some will watch you die and then go like that.

There's this funny thing where healthy people think sick people are stupid or something. You know, what's wrong with you that you got cancer? I didn't get cancer.

Yeah, okay, just wait a while. You'll catch up. MUN DU BSTANGS.

DE NAS LA SPYOD LAS Here's the big moment. LA SPYOD means Lama Chodpa. And that's that very famous prayer that we do at the beginning of the Lam Rim courses, the offering to Lamas, Lama Chodpa.

And it says, SDUG BSNGAL GRANG MO TZAM YANG MIN GDOD CING Very, very, very, very famous line. SDUG BSNGAL GRANG MO TZAM YANG MIN GDOD CING Nobody wants the smallest kind of trouble. Nobody.

Like, they don't want a trip on the way out of here. They don't want the men's toilet to leak today, which was fixed. I mean, little tiny things.

Even that people don't want. Nobody wants even to feel too warm this afternoon when it spikes up to 74. I'm like, wait for a couple of weeks, you'll see something.

I was like, yesterday I was like, oh, it's so hot. I check, it's 74. When it gets to 110, then you can complain.

44, 45 in your language. Centigrade, right? 45?

Yeah. Oh, sorry, Celsius. Okay, anyway, nobody wants, nobody in the world wants the least amount of hassle.

And this is where I sell books. Which is one of my little pains that I have to go through. So we have a very active translation team, the best in the world, without question actually.

And then they keep putting out new books. They're working on 27 major translations. And they just finished a new e-book, which is called The Three Treasures.

And we finished a hard copy of this book a couple years ago. It has the three most important meditation rituals that you can do. They're all in one book.

So this is a meditation guidebook. It's a retreat book. If you're going to do a retreat, you should get this book.

And it just came out in e-book. So you can get it right now on e-book. It takes 10 seconds, and it's really fun.

By the way, I'll tell you what I like to do. My neighbor came to me, and she and her husband are bakers, and they finally came to my house. They said, what do you do?

You know, and I'm like, oh, you know, not much. And they kept bugging me, because they kept seeing me doing yoga on the porch and stuff. And they're yoga people.

And then they said, well, what do you, really, what do you do? I said, well, look, I'll send you a book. And it was cool, because with the new press, Diamond Cutter Press website, diamondcutterpress.com, am I right?

Jigme? Diamondcutterpress.com. You can gift a book to another person in 10 seconds.

So I like sent them a book. It was really fun. I never did it before.

And you can do it on the website now. So you just type in somebody else's email, and you pay with your credit card, and they get the book in like 10 seconds. And that's a good way to introduce yourself to your neighbors after 12 years.

Okay, so anyway, this book has the Three Great Meditation Practices. And I don't know how long, it's 400 pages or something? I don't know.

It's long. Yeah, something like that. And it's a beautiful translation of the Three Most Important Meditation Practices.

So if you need one, you can, and it has the, here's the hard copy. 300 pages. And it has nice, it has illustrations.

It's really, really, you got to have this. By the way, the first text in here is by Pabongka Rinpoche's teacher, which is how to start your meditation practice. So anyway, that's a guidebook for your retreat.

If you don't have it, you can get it online. Diamond Cutter Press. And by the way, you got the next, the translation team has been going for about six years now, and their books are starting to finish.

The quickest book is five years. The longest book is...

[Говорящий 2]
What was your book?

[Говорящий 1]
He's going to finish in 2046 if he's on schedule, if he goes on schedule, he'll be done in 2046. But some of the books have already come out. So, five books have come out.

You can get them e-books. They're now e-books. Rosa van Grieken, Venerable Jigme worked really hard, and they are e-books.

I go crazy. I love these e-books. And if you're a teacher, if you're teaching Dharma, you should get them.

I mean, they're just, it takes like less than five minutes to get the books. Somebody says, Geshe-la, teach how many Chinese business executives? 75?

Big Chinese business executives. They say, Geshe-la, you got to do it next weekend. I'm like, okay, I just get one of these books, and I open it up, and I convert it to a business program.

So, whatever you're doing in your life, you can open any of these books anywhere, and have a really super successful time. They're buying what today? You're buying land for their university.

Today. Today. How much?

Millions? Three? Four?

Four million? We don't advertise it. Two to start.

Yeah, they're like 20 years old, or 18? No, I mean, if you know how to apply these old books, even music, you want to play music, then read some of these books, and you'll be a... Buddha had a music contest with a famous sitar player.

They both started off on their sitars, and they're like, and the other guy's, Buddha's like, and then Buddha broke a string, and the other guy's, and Buddha's still playing, but he has to go faster, because he has to get the string. And then Buddha's still going, and the other guy's like, ha ha, I got him. I got him now.

And then Buddha broke another string, and then the guy's like, ah, I got this contest nailed, and Buddha, he has to go twice as fast, because he's got to make up for the two strings he lost on the higher frets of the other strings. So he's like, and you know the end of the story, right? Buddha breaks his last string, and still wins the contest.

So I mean, get these five books, and just look at them. My God, you know, open any one of these stupid books, any place, and you have an amazing life. And I'm not trying to sell books.

Guess what? You make more money selling diamonds than books. These books lose money, but happily, okay?

So I'm not trying to make money, okay? I don't need the book money. It's a lot of work for no money.

It's a bad business. All right. Third book that you should get.

King of the Dharma just came out in a paperback. It took 15 years to finish the paperback. And it's a beautiful book.

I don't know, Venerable Jigme and Rosa, they found a publisher who has a special kind of paper, which is something strange. It's almost like cotton pants with, what do you call that stuff? Spandex.

There's two ways to make money in 2010. Invest in Amazon or in spandex. Anyway, the pages are kind of stretchy, and they're very beautiful.

It's very, very nice to use the book. It's a huge, heavy book. Maybe we do have one.

It's a huge, heavy book that we originally published in a paperback. I say in a hardback. And as a...

Can you bring the case? Yeah, and it's a good book for... Yeah, we originally published it in a slipcase.

All the prophets have been going to support the Mongolian temple in the armpit. And it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful book. These paintings, this is a set of 15 paintings that were brought out of Tibet over the Himalayas on horseback in 1959.

We found them and they tell Tsongkapa's life story, every detail, and we translated it. The translation took 15 years. So anyway, it just came out in a paperback and in a e-book.

So anyway, if you want, try to get these books. What do you call it? Anyway, if you don't, you're a loser.

All right, okay. I'm going to start on Tatha Rangre. Tatha Rangre dak serwa na.

Nowadays, where we are in our meditation practice is if somebody says, me, Michael. If somebody says Michael, then we're like, hmm. Like if somebody says, Michael's smart, we're like, no, Michael's so hard working.

We feel, shintu che means, it feels yummy if someone talks about us and says you're so cool or something. It feels yummy. Shin pang la, and we have a crush on ourselves, permanent crush on ourselves.

Crush, you know this word? Yeah, like high school girlfriend, boyfriend. All right, shen de, de tsa nami tawa ni.

But we don't have a crush on other people like that. It's a weird self-crush, and we've had it since we were kids. We love ourselves above all else.

We'd like to hear Michael spoken on more often than anybody else. dak shen ma nyampa yin du kyang. That's a sign that you aren't respecting equal rights.

If you want to know how you're doing on equal rights, compare your crush on yourself with your crush on others. dak shen yin la khyepar chenpo de tsang mi rik te. So all of us tend to be more attracted to me than to you, deep down.

We don't talk about it because it's impolite. But we'd much rather Michael get a croissant than you get a croissant. You see what I mean?

It's just that natural bias. We like ourselves more than other people. You don't comb other people's hair in the morning, do we?

We just comb our own hair, if we have any. dak shen yin la khyepar chenpo de tsang mi rik te. And then here comes the punchline.

You can take this into retreat today. We have five minutes more of class. Here's the punchline.

khyepar chenpo tsang mi rik te. The difference between you and other people is not enough to justify the way you've been acting all these years. Okay?

The difference between you and other people is not so big that you can say it's right to be biased towards yourself, because there's not that much difference between you and other people. No, but Michael's Michael and you're not. No, that's not what I'm talking about.

In the end, it's hard to tell you from them. If you're honest about me, and you go deeper into it, it's hard to see any difference between you and other people. Yeah, you have a different name.

Yeah, you have a different face. Yeah, you have more hair or less hair, or gray hair or whatever. I mean, those differences are there, but basically, you're not different enough from other people that we should raise you up and say, oh, cat, you're more important.

Oh, me. Oh, me. You're so special compared to the other people.

You're not special compared to other people. You're exactly goddamn same. Okay?

There's nothing that distinguishes you from other people. Then, you know, somebody says, yeah, but I'm Geshe Michael. You don't understand.

I am different. He says, no, you're not. Mi rik.

DE BA BSTAN CING SDUG BSNGAL MED DGOS PA Everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants to be unhappy. You are exactly the same as everybody else.

There's no logical reason why you are biased towards taking care of yourself better than other people, because you're exactly the same. Got it? It's a very...

that's equal rights, okay? That's very interesting. I'll say it again.

You tend to take care of me better than you take care of you. But that's illogical. Why?

Because me ain't different from you. Yeah, me is different from you. Me has a different name.

Me feels how me feels, and me doesn't feel how you feel directly. Like I'm not in your skin, right? Then we're different.

He says, no, we're not different. In the long run, we're all the same. There's no difference between people.

That separates them. Why? Nobody wants the smallest problem.

Everybody wants any kind of tiny happiness they can get, they want. Even a cookie. So, logically, which human beings are not, we're not different.

We're the same. We're totally the same. Not just a little bit.

We're exactly the same. Why? Everybody wants one more good thing.

Oysters, coffee, coffee. Nobody wants green drink. Look how full that is.

All right. Everybody's, I mean from that, you got to admit, okay, and it's a big mental breakthrough. If you need something to meditate on today, in your retreat, just meditate on that.

I'm not saying I look like you. I don't. I'm not saying my life is the same as your life.

It's not. But we are totally equal. There's an equality that we share that we cannot deny, and that's that we want to be happy, and we don't want to be unhappy.

From that point of view, we're all totally equal. Okay? Equal rights.

We have equal rights, therefore. Okay? We have equal rights because we are the same.

Forget sex, forget race, forget country, forget religion, forget age. We're all the same. At the most important level, we're all the same.

And you can't deny it. There's no logical argument against it. It's illogical to treat people differently.

Okay? All right. All right, that's a great place to start our retreat.