«Дар освобождения», курс 39 «Ускорь своё сострадание», занятие 13

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back to Lam Rim. More of this litany, more of this list of problems in the world that are caused by our habit of caring about our own situation first. And here's an interesting one, okay?

Say, SREG GIS MDZOD MA SEMS PA The habit of people of not being able to regulate how much they eat. Whoa. The habit of human beings of not being able to measure properly how much food they eat.

He's talking a long time ago. So, maybe people even then had this problem. Now it's a plague, it's a modern plague.

And we all have this problem. But the habit that people have, that they don't know when to stop eating, is also traces back to our general habit of taking care of ourselves first, okay? The worldwide habit of not being able to stop eating when you're full, or when you had enough, traces back to, and it could be traces back decades to somebody not being able to control their habit of taking care of their self first, okay?

Wow, that's depressing. Then he goes off on, say, RTOG DGOS THAMSUM. RTOG DGOS THAMSUM These are called the three concerns.

The three main things that people think about. RTOG means grub. It's the Tibetan colloquial for food, grub.

RTOG means your belly. So, one third of human mind space is consumed with food. DGOS, the second third of human mind space is concerned with, what am I going to wear today?

Okay? And then the third, THAMS means concerned with being famous, or concerned with how other people see you. So the human condition is Mr. Three Thoughts, right?

Food, clothes, and reputation. Food, clothes, and reputation. The human tendency to be obsessed with food, clothes, and reputation all goes back to our habit of taking care of ourselves first.

That personality trait of all humans goes back to the one thought, I should get what I want first. All right. GNAS MA THEG PA means the general human inability to be sick and still be happy.

Okay? So, how much we are affected by when we don't feel well, and how selfish we get when we don't feel well, how self-centered we get when we don't feel well, also goes back to that thought. The minute you get a little bit nauseated or something, you're the most important person in the room, right?

And it's hard not to do that. All right, I hope he... Oh, yeah.

There's a general theme here in the Tibetan that may not be obvious in the English, and it's called THUG PA, say THUG PA. THUG PA means disorder, or imbalance, or it also means confusion. And the theme is throughout this, all of these things getting out, in New English idiom, out of whack.

Like things are going okay, and then something gets a little bit like this. And this idea of things not going well, or things being a little bit messed up. Messed up?

All mess ups come from our habit of taking care of ourselves first. And he's going to continue now. His list is going to continue with this theme of THUG PA, meaning things going out of whack, or things going out of balance.

MTHO SA NAS JIG RTEN GYI RGYAL LUNG DANG RGYAL KHAG PHAN TSAN THUB NAS ZING PAS The out of whackness of the rich and powerful in this world. The misbehavior, the mental sickness, of the rich people in this world, the powerful people in this world. The fact that you could kill people, see the photographs, and still want more, is sick.

So that sickness of wealthy people, rich powerful people, politically powerful people, he lists it here. He said, if you follow that illness, mental illness, back, it all comes down to, I want to that little tiny bias in favor of me rather than you. They all trace this back to, I want what I want.

And I'm not, I know you want stuff, but mine's a little more important. All right? And I don't know, when I was reading that sentence, it felt very sad, because it seems like that's happening nowadays.

MA SA NAS BANG MI KHYIM SOGS MI THON PA Then he says, it's no different in the slums. Whatever these mentally ill politicians have problems, it's the same at the lowest levels of society. They're all the same.

They also want what they want. They're also willing to hurt others to get what they want. So he says, conflict at the top and conflict at the bottom, it's all the same.

MA SA NAS BANG MI KHYIM SOGS MI THON PA Down to small disagreements in your family and international conflict from hyperactive kleptomaniacs, it's all the same. It's all driven by the same force, which is the preference of me over you, which we all have. PHAN DZIN THABS PA DRAG KYANG Then he goes, oh my God, he's not done yet.

He's like, in your spiritual communities, your monasteries, your nunneries, your talks by lamas, people having disagreements, getting mad at each other. Tensions in the dharma group. He says they also trace back to the same thing.

Not just the crazy politicians with their armies and their weapons. It's here in the room, he says. And that's weird, right?

That's really sad. It's here in our room too. He says, DRAG KYANG PHAN DZIN THABS PA DRAG PAR DRAG KYANG, say DRAG PAR DRAG KYANG.

It's an idiom in Buddhism. It means solitary yogis. Like a yogi sitting in their meditation room by themselves.

It's called DRAG PAR DRAG KYANG. When the Dalai Lama calls himself a sinful monk, this is what he's thinking. He's thinking of this word.

And it means, I don't need anything. I'm satisfied. I'm living quietly in my monk house.

I don't need a lot of stuff. And then they start fighting with each other. You know?

So he says, we all have it. Even we have it. DRAG KYANG PHAN DZIN.

That's healthy that he would say that, right? That to not include himself in the discussion would indicate that he has that tendency to prefer himself over, you got it? The fact that he added himself in the list means maybe he's getting over that tendency.

It's kind of cool. Okay, THABS PA TSUL RANG BYAS PA GSUNGS NI THABS PA KHYEN PA'I CHEN ZIN MA BYAS PA SNGA LA BSKYED PA MED GYUR GANG SGAG GYIS ZER BA ZHIG CHUNG NA KHYEN PA'I DAG THAMS CAD MIN BYUNG Then he says a very profound, simple thing. He says, if we could start fighting that tendency, you would hear more of a single sentence in this world.

And it would be, I'm okay, whatever you like. I'm okay, whatever you like. He says it very simply.

Yeah, I'm good, what would you like? He says, if we were working against this tendency, the total number of, I'm good, what would you like, would increase in the world statistically. Yeah, I'm good, what would you like to have for dinner?

I'm good, which Netflix movie would you like to see? I'm good. And he says it here.

It's SNGA LA KHYEN PA'I MED means I'm good, what would you like to do? Then he says, if you heard more of that, then all of the list I just gave you would not have happened. International problems, cancer, road rage, a whole list of stuff.

Monks not getting along with each other. If there had been more of, yeah, I'm good, what would you like to do? Here's a picture.

Yeah, I looked up harmony on the stock photo agency and this is what they came up with. I guess you could say a SANGA, which is treating each other nice. When the SANGA is treating each other nice, there's nothing like it, right?

We had a nice fire last night, and the SANGA here is quite cool, as far as I can tell. Probably if you live here longer, you see other stuff. But the SANGA here feels good to me.

You can't hide it, really, if it's not. So the SANGA feels good to me. I was at the Lama house yesterday.

I used to live there, and I was always curious what it looks like. I stay across the street at Gyelse's house, old house, but I was always too shy. I didn't want to bother anybody, or maybe they were not dressed or something, so I just haven't gone over there.

But yesterday we had a meeting there, and I asked the people who were there, I said, can I just walk around and look at my old bedroom and stuff? And they're like, yeah, go ahead. And it's stunning.

The place is stunning. I mean, God, we could use that as a luxury destination for rich people. I mean, it's so beautiful.

The bathroom downstairs. Who did that? Who?

Om, are it omni? No, it's, the toilet never worked for 10 years, and it was filthy, and no one ever fixed it, because you couldn't get through the roaches to the toilet. You had to like, really?

I'm sorry, I'm not kidding, right? You know, and it's so beautiful now, and I don't know, it seems like the staff here is really exceptional, is what I'm trying to say. And that is so beautiful.

I mean, we should get it in a magazine somewhere or something. It's really, really nice, and I really appreciate it. The whole house is working.

The shower works, the toilet works, other miracles. It's really nice. So I don't know.

Thank you. I would also like to thank the stone room. Yeah.

People, the outside of that building, so that building is an historical building. It was built by the cowboys. And if you've ever been in the stone room, turn left at the front door.

Go left. It says stone room, do not enter. Of course, I had to look inside.

And check out the windows. They are gun slits. The windows are gun slits.

They were built for shooting local people, local indigenous people, to keep them out of the water. So, you know, so that house has been here since the first white people showed up here. And anyway, it's old.

And you're not allowed to, it's on the historical list by the government. So we're not allowed to change it. We have to ask permission if we fix anything.

And the donors around the world, you guys donated to fix it up. The roof was leaking. The walls were falling down.

Actually, for me, it was really cool because I'm a beekeeper. And the whole house was full of bees. Now there was a major bee, right?

A major bee colony in the rafters. Not wasps, a real honeybees. And so anyway, it's stunning though.

And I got to compliment you guys who work here and volunteers here. It's beautiful. I was kind of stunned.

I was like, why am I staying in Gyelse's house? Just kidding. Her house is also beautiful.

But I'm very impressed. Then I was like, how come we didn't do it? We were here for 10 years.

We didn't do it. I don't know. Yeah, it's incredible.

And I was like, wow. The windows are new. Everything is beautiful.

I mean, we should charge a lot. All right, kumajagpa. The existing...

I'll tell you the difference between kumajagpa, okay? And you can translate it for yourself. So a guy came to another guy's house at night and snuck in and went through all his stuff and found his wallet and stole the money.

Took the money. Left the wallet, took the money. Escaped in the cover of darkness.

Ran down the path. Got to Third Street, whatever, and ran into a mugger and got mugged and lost the money. So there's a saying in Tibetan, kumajagpa la thug.

Say kumajagpa la thug. The thief met the mugger. Okay?

The thief ran into the mugger. How's that? And the mugger took what the thief had stolen.

Got it? So, the existence of thievery in the world traces back to our habit of taking care of ourselves first. The existence of crime in the world traces back to my habit of taking care of myself first.

That's depressing, right? You want me to brighten up your day? What's a bodhisattva thief do?

They unlock the front door. They sneak in to the bedroom. They find your wallet and they slip in 300 bucks and they sneak out.

Okay? All right. Then he says, okay, this is really funny.

I mean, the monks in the talk must have been roaring with laughter because then he says, you're tsam kuk, say tsam kuk. So, in the monastery, we're too busy to eat. And I met a foreigner who came to, he signed up for the Geshe program at my monastery and he had a breakdown.

He left. He didn't survive. And before he left, I said, are you okay?

And he's like, yeah, I'm okay, but I got to get out of here because it's too busy. He said, I thought you guys meditated. You were living quiet lives.

But the stress of the Geshe course, it's extremely stressful for 25 years. Every day is another examination, oral debates from memory. He said, I can't take it anymore.

And he left. So we don't have time to eat. We normally don't have time to eat.

The schedule's too hard. We start at four in the morning or something. We end at midnight.

It's too hard. And so we don't eat. We don't have regular meals.

So you have a tsam kuk. Tsam kuk means a little bag, cloth bag that you carry. You tie it on your monk's belt.

You loop it around your monk's belt and you put tsam pa in it. So tsam pa is barley flour pre-roasted and you can eat it without cooking it. And the roasting parties are fun.

It's like those beach beer parties. And there's barley roasting songs that you sing, like, we're roasting the barley. And then they make it fun.

So anyway, every monk has a barley bag. It's called a barley bag. What do you call a small bag that you tie up?

Yeah, you have a barley pouch. And he says, the whole existence of crime in the world on down to mice is putting holes in your barley bag. Like a mouse sneaks into your room when you're taking a nap and they're putting holes in your barley bag.

He says, even that comes from taking care of yourself. Okay, those little mice putting holes in our barley bags, even that comes from taking care of yourself. I was trying to find a modern equivalent of a mouse putting a hole in your barley bag.

And I got it. Cracks in your cell phone. All the cracks in your cell phone go back to your habit of taking care of yourself first.

Okay, little irritations, right? That's barley bag mouse holes. Okay, because you don't have barley bags even at Diamond Mountain, right?

But this thing that you drop your cell phone and it gets a crack, these little annoyances in your life, they also... So he says, from the kleptomaniacs who take a dollar from every barrel of oil that exports from their country and have collected $100 billion in this way, even from those guys down to the mice that put little holes in your barley bag or the tabletops that crack your cell phone cover, that all comes from taking care of yourself first. Cool?

All right. SDUG GI ZHI BA DANG ZIN MA DRIN NAS ZHI BA'ANG RANG BYAS PA ZIN Feeling ill the next morning from something you ate. It's on the list here.

Comes from the habit of taking it. I feel better. Something about talking about it.

So this habit of getting sick from something you ate, it also traces back to your own habit of taking care of yourself first. What's the implication here about the opposite? Yeah, if you could deal with your habit of taking care of yourself first, the implication is this stuff would start to disappear in your life.

That almost makes it worth it. RANG BYAS PA GSUNGS NI ZHES MI SA GUS SA MANG PO ZHIG SRED PA LAS DRIN GZHAN SDUG GI ZHES PA MIN GYI RANG BYAS PA ZIN GYIS ZHES PA When you wake up the next morning with diarrhea or not feeling so well in your tummy, which is what happened to me today, he says, even if it killed you, even if eating something bad killed you, now listen, you would not have been killed by food poisoning. You would have been killed by taking care of yourself first.

Whoa. Okay, you get in a car accident, you're not killed by a car. You're killed by taking care of yourself first.

That's what made the car kill you. Got it? Okay.

Then he has this sentence here. SDUG GI ZHES PA MIN GYI A person who dies from... What's that thing?

Jigme and I, we took... I got to tell you this story. That's the right of a grandpa.

So Jigme and I, I bought a cafe. We decided, and there's a new law. There has to be someone in the cafe at all times who has passed the county health exam, which means you have to take the county health test, which means you have to take the county health course.

So we both took the course, and she got a 92? 94. I got a 86, that's...

84. I was going to change her name to 92. 94, sorry.

Anyway, what's the... So I'm going to test you, Jigme, in front of everybody. Is it salmonella, or which is the one that can kill you?

There's one that can kill you. Anyway, what he says here is, if salmonella kills you, it wasn't salmonella that killed you. It was your habit of taking care of yourself first.

Okay, got it? Okay. And here's a picture.

I was trying to look up a diabetic. And it's a thing that's on my mind a lot lately because China used to be famous for having less cancer patients than any other country. And they thought it was the selenium in the soil.

And I translated for two Chinese doctors from China at Sloan-Kettering in New York. And there was a big conference about cancer treatment. And they were trying to figure out from these Chinese traditional doctors why Chinese people didn't get cancer so much and diabetes.

And then KFC and McDonald's moved into China, 10,000 outlets each. And now the numbers are the same as America. Cancer frequency, diabetes, juvenile diabetes, kids' diabetes is higher than the U.S. because we taught them to eat our food. Yay! This habit of diabetes, which is, it's going to be weird, okay? When you guys grow up to the age of me and Joe and Gyelse, 60% of you will have diabetes.

60% of you will have legs cut off. And then the other 40% is going to have to take care of the 60% and pay for those people, okay? So the health system is going to have to pay for the 60% of children who already have early onset diabetes.

60% of the people you went to high school with will die from diabetes. But before they die, they'll go through 10 years of suffering in their bed and you'll have to pay for it. Just to give you a picture of what's coming, okay?

And it's going to be exactly the same in China and Mexico. The numbers are the same. So America is leading the way.

And why am I talking about that? That trend, which may be unstoppable now, comes from taking care of ourselves first, okay? And if you have any brains at all, in this generation, we should try to get people to eat healthier, right?

It's more important than climate change, for example. It's more important than nuclear proliferation. It will kill us.

It will kill the world more quickly than those things. And it's obvious. Anybody with a brain can see it, okay?

So there should be a Peachtree Cafe healthy eating show, which we filmed last week, last couple of weeks. And it'll be coming out soon at your neighborhood theater. That's the idiom you learned yesterday.

Okay. BDAG RE BAR GANG YANG MA BYAS PA By the way, there really will be a show coming out and it really is helpful, I believe. So, it's part of YSI, Yoga Studies Institute.

BDAG RE BAR GANG YANG MA BYAS PA GUNG KHAG CHUNG BA LTA BU YANG RANG CHEN GYI Then he says, picture, did this happen to you in your relationship lately? Anybody who has or had a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, what you can't tell from her smiling face is that she's yelling at him for something he didn't do, Stanley. He's getting yelled at for something he didn't actually do.

Now, most of the time you get yelled at by your wife or partner. It's for something you did do. But what he's talking about at this part in the text is something you didn't do.

So, I don't know. You didn't spend the family money on a new car, but your wife thinks you did. So, she's screaming at you on the phone for something you probably would have done, but you didn't have a chance.

And so, you're getting blamed for something you didn't do. So, the theme now, the text is moving to a new theme of getting blamed for stuff you didn't do, which is typical for guys in a relationship. GUNG KHAG CHUNG BA LTA BU YANG RANG That also comes from your own habit of taking care of yourself first.

So, next time you get blamed for something you didn't do, just try to remember where it's coming from. He's trying to make a list of stuff that happens. And getting blamed for something you didn't do is a favorite, apparently.

DER MA ZAD Say, DER MA ZAD. DER MA ZAD I'm sorry to tell you it means, and that's not all. DER MA ZAD It doesn't end there.

MTHO RIGS DANG THAR BA'I SOGS SPYOD PA'I GZHAN PA LTA BU And then he goes off on a karmic, now he's into karma. He says, you could have stayed human in your next life. You could have even reached nirvana, but your hopes were murdered.

It's SOGS SPYOD means murdered. By your tendency to take care of yourself first. You could have had a good rebirth.

You could have even not had a rebirth, but those hopes were murdered already. He uses the word murder. SDUG BSUM GYI GAL PA KHOR NAS DGE BA'I BLO RTOG BU'I CHOM KUN LTA BU Now he gets poetic.

Your habit of taking care of, of watching out for number one, your habit of watching out for number one is like a house robber who steals the fruits of your labor. You went to work, you made money, you bought groceries at Clark's. That's how you know you're rich, if you can buy groceries in Sedona.

You got bucks. I even don't buy groceries in Sedona. I go to the poor town next to me.

Same groceries, half price. I'm just saying. Your habit of taking care of yourself first is the thief who came to your house and cleaned out your kitchen cabinets, carrying the sack to throw the stuff in called SDUG BSUM for 300 bucks.

[Говорящий 2]
But which ones?

[Говорящий 1]
You're close, just keep going. He's trying to make it more picturesque.

[Говорящий 2]
Man.

[Говорящий 1]
Say again? He's saying your tendency to take yourself first is a thief who comes in your house and steals away the fruits of your virtuous deeds, carrying the bag of the SDUG BSUM. Okay, cancel that bet.

The three animals at the middle of the Wheel of Life. He's got those three critters in the bag already. The pig representing ignorance.

The rooster representing desire or pigeon. And the snake representing anger. Okay, good.

He's getting poetic. MA RIGS PA'I ZHING SA LA LAS NGANG PA'I TSA BA'I You have, every time you take care of yourself first, you are planting your shitty seeds in the field of ignorance. And he says it like that.

It's not me. He's pretty cool. He got in trouble, by the way.

Pabongka Rinpoche got in trouble. He was so popular and he so spoke to the common man that the other monastics got jealous. And he had major problems in his life from jealous Geshe's and stuff, who didn't like that he was teaching normal people.

He taught normal people. Nobody else did. He went outside of the monastery and taught thousands of people.

And he got hassled for it. He got seriously hassled for it. But he didn't give up.

All right. Khorway Lotok Drupal. So you are planting your crappy seeds in your vast fields of ignorance and you are getting your samsara crops are flourishing.

He's like that. Your samsara crop is doing really well. Drupal Jeype, Sonam, you are the ultimate farmer.

I got a picture here. You're not just using an ox and a plow. You mechanize the whole thing.

You're planting crappy seeds by the thousands. God, did he give it up? No, he's still going.

It's really depressing. And then suddenly it breaks and he goes to... Yeah, nice.

$500. Okay, say it again. Take, yeah, okay, I'm serious.

Okay, collect, don't give her any. Oh yeah, give her all of it. Okay.

DAG DUNG GCIG KA THAB GYI MI GYIS TSUL NAS SKYE ZHIG THOB TU RE BA'I SNAB SEMS KHYEN You are that ignorant soldier who joins the army in hopes of going to foreign lands and pillaging them and coming home with lots of money, which was what military service has been about in past centuries. Nowadays, you don't get paid. The politicians keep the money and you get the leg shot off.

In the old days, you got some of the money that you guys got when you took over a city or something. In the old days, you split the money, but that's not the way nowadays. They just send you and you die.

They take the city, they get the money. DAG DUNG GCIG KA THAB GYI MI GYIS TSUL NAS SKYE ZHIG THOB TU RE BA'I SNAB SEMS So you are this guy who's fighting in the middle of a war, trying to get, hoping for some extra money. GYONG DU NA LAMA KHYEN PO'I PHA MA TSUN GYI THOB DU'ANG YUL PHAL PA'I PHYIR MA'I ZHING YIN PO You are the, I'm sorry for the language, but you are the asshole who's so interested in yourself that you would even blame stuff on your parents and your lama.

Your own problems on your teachers, on your parents, on your school teachers, everybody. THOB MED NAS LAS PA'I YIN PAS GANG GI RGAG RGYU MA GRUB PA'I BRAL MO LAG STONG CAN You are the naked soul struggling down the street, empty-handed, with no spiritual qualities at all. It's very harsh in the Tibetan.

You are the naked man stumbling down the alley with empty hands and having spent your life at the monastery and you're still thinking about yourself first. So, you're naked and you're empty-handed because you couldn't get over this tendency. You die empty-handed, naked, because you didn't fight the good fight when you were here.

Yeah, it's hard, right? We should write a book called The Depressing Book. I call it The Ultimate Loser.

Here's a picture. I don't know. It's like, this is his career at the Lam Rim courses.

You know, like just, wah. And he went through the whole Lam Rim. They heard it day after day, year after year.

He didn't do anything to stop his selfishness and he lost everything. He's bankrupt, spiritually bankrupt. How's that?

All right. I still have some time. By the way, we're going to do question and answer after this.

And then, at Diamond Mountain here, we're going to have a live TV show in Ukraine. With a famous Ukrainian musician. He's like the sting of Ukraine.

So, that's before your time, but. But we're going to have a TV show live in Ukraine after this, after the Q&A, okay? All right.

And they wanted to talk about, I don't know what they're going to talk about, but we're supposed to talk about meditation and how it might help everybody involved in the situation. All right, RE DOR MED PA LA RE DOR BYED KHYEN You are the guy who's hoping for the hopeless. It's all poetic and it's all depressing, okay?

MTHO NYAM MEN GSUM LA PHRAG DO You are the guy who manages to be jealous of people who are better than you and people who are equal to you and people who are lesser than you at the same time. You're a miracle. You can be jealous of your betters, your equals, and the people worse than you at the same time.

You're like amazing. KHYAS SRED CHEN GYI You're the one who can just blow off every immoral thing in the world. You're the one who DUR NA BRAL GZHAN MED NA MTHO If we praise you, you just get more conceited and if we criticize you, you get more pissed off.

We can't even talk to you. If we say something good, you get more proud. If we say something bad, you get more angry.

We can't even say anything to you because whatever we do, you get worse. Yeah. What is that?

Oh yeah, here's a picture. No, the one before that. The one before that.

I don't know, maybe we missed one. Anyway, yeah, we missed one. Okay, it's okay.

It's a lady going like this. What's it mean?

[Говорящий 2]
You can't say anything.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, don't tell him he did a good job because he'll get more proud. Don't tell him he messed up because he'll get angry. Just keep quiet around him, okay?

Right? Okay, yeah, okay. All right.

Yeah, I'm going to stop there because the next one's a little complicated. But just to let you know, he's going to continue on this rant for a while. We're not quite finished.

Rant? You know rant? Rant means like, I can't remember.

All right, take a break and we'll be comfortable. If you have any questions and answers, send them in. In the Geshe course, the examinations in the Geshe course are public in front of thousands of monks.

You stand up on one side of the temple and you have to yell over the heads of all the monks to the other guy. He stands at the other side of the temple. So everyone hears everything.

Everything you say is heard by everyone. It kind of keeps everybody awake actually. And you have no warning.

They just pop it on you. And so we're trained to enjoy pop questions, sudden difficult questions. It's what we do.

Okay? So hit me with some good ones. Okay?

All right.