«Дар освобождения», курс 39 «Ускорь своё сострадание», занятие 1

[Говорящий 2]
Okay, Geshe-la, first question. In the first step of cause and effect, you talk about understanding everyone is your mother. What will you suggest to people if their mom didn't treat them as nicely as they would have liked to?

Or if they didn't even have a mother in this life? Or if they have difficult relationships? Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
All right, this is, by the way, this is a very, very famous question and I've been hearing this question for 30, 40 years. And people will say, try to treat people like you would your own mother. And then, I don't know, in America especially, and I teach all over the world, so I'm not being critical of America, but just because of the way, because of the lack of family structure in this country, as opposed to, say, China, it's a common question for someone to say, but I had a bad experience with my mother.

My mother hurt me. My mother left me. My mother used to be mean to me.

So, it doesn't work for me, Geshe-la, if you say, think of everybody as your mother, then I would hate everybody. And then, I heard this question to my teacher. So I was lucky because I'd lived with my teacher for 25 years, so I heard every question that anyone asked him for 25 years.

And because I was his slave, I drove his car, so he never went. I always went wherever he went, because I was driving. And I remember that the first time this question was asked to him, actually, we were in Brazil, and someone asked him this question.

And he looked at the person like they were insane. And he said, what? And they said, well, my mom wasn't very nice to me.

And he's like, so your mom didn't care of you for nine months of sickness and trouble and financial hardship, and your mother didn't decide not to have an abortion, right? Your mom didn't have an abortion, did she? No, oh, she didn't.

Oh, you're here, oh. So your mom didn't have an abortion when she could have had an abortion. And was that the person who risked her life to give you your life?

Are we talking about that lady? And the person's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, you know, are we talking about the person who went into permanent debt for her whole goddamn life to pay for your food?

Are we talking about the person who taught you to talk and ask this question? And he got a little hot, which was very unusual. So I think there's certain inalienable, new word, undeniable things your mom has done for you.

And I'd love to tell this story. I was in Mongolia. We were negotiating to catalog the books at the National Library there, which has 100,000 precious books.

And we got permission. We're still doing it. We're still there.

This was many years ago. And they had just gotten freedom in the country of religion for after not having it for almost 50 years. And it was an exciting time to be in Mongolia.

And so, but it was a very poor time. There was no, there's one electric plant in the whole country, and it doesn't work half the time. So it was all dark, and we were walking home from the library, and the librarian was walking with me to make sure I was safe.

And it was dark. And we're walking down this dark street, and I see a manhole cover, sewer cover, this metal cover comes up. And there's like a dog.

There's like a big dog holding it up and throws it off and jumps out and comes running past us. And the guy says, move. He like pushed me aside.

And I'm like, wow. And it's like, whoosh. And he said, God, he said, be careful.

Always be careful Geshe Michael. You got to be aware of what's happening. And I said, well, what was that?

What kind of animal was that? He said, that's not an animal Geshe-la, that's a kid. That's a human.

And I'm like, what? And he said, yeah, that's a human kid. I said, well, what's a kid doing in the sewer?

What are they doing in the sewer? He says, oh, those are the kids with no parents. Those are the kids who lost their parents, whose parents died.

I said, well, why do they stay in the sewer? He says, Geshe-la, it's the only warm place in Mongolia. It's the sewer in Ulaanbaatar.

It's warm. Shit is warm. While it's rotting, it's warm.

They stay in the shit. The kids stay near the shit because it's warm. And they don't have any place to live.

And he says, you see those kids, Geshe-la, you run. You move. You don't stand there like, oh, what's that?

I said, why? He says, you're going to get bit. They'll bite you.

And they'll steal things from you. And I said, well, can't you talk to them? He said, talk.

They don't learn to talk. They're wild animals. They don't learn to talk.

They don't know how to talk. They're wild animals and they don't wear clothes. And they run to the streets and they take things from people.

And actually, we lost a computer. Do you remember, Ellie? Somebody lost their computer.

A kid grabbed it. One of these naked kids. And then we met a British woman who actually got a Nobel Prize.

She was nominated. She took care of them. She dressed them.

She taught them to talk. She had a couple hundred of these kids. Why am I saying that?

There's things that your mom did for you that you don't think about. In the modern world, your mom has the option to have an abortion, mostly, in many countries. So, your mom made a conscious decision to not abort you.

Your mom made a decision to risk her life to give you life. And that, I mean, just that. And then most of us, we learn to speak from our mama or dad.

The reason we can not live naked in the sewer is that they taught us how to talk. And they taught us how to dress. And there's so many things that you don't even think about that came from your parents.

You would be, without your mom and father or whoever taught you these things, risked their life to give you life, you would be a naked animal and biting tourists in Ulaanbaatar. So, think about that sometimes. Moms aren't perfect.

Many people had bad moms. Moms, we had fights with moms. But that's not the point.

That's a tiny thing that you don't get along or she asks you to come home too often or she whines when she doesn't get Mother's Day flowers. That's not a reason not to respect your mom. Your mom, I don't care who she is.

I don't care how bad she is. She risked her life to give you life. That's enough.

You wouldn't be alive without this person. You wouldn't know how to eat. You would have starved.

You would have died right away. There's a beautiful story of the first Dalai Lama. He was born into a nomad's camp in Gyalwa Gendungru.

When he was an infant, the camp was attacked by other nomads. And his mom ran out and put him behind a boulder and went back to fight, protect the camp. And they say during that time he should have died because some animal should have, she couldn't come back for a whole night.

And normally some animal would find the baby and eat it. The baby can't defend itself. A human baby is defenseless for, how long?

You know, I don't know, a year, two years? Three years, 20 years, 40 years. Long time, right, Vivian?

Vivian knows. They can't really defend themselves. And there's a beautiful story that a black crow, a huge, one of those Mexican ravens, right?

Stood watch over him, protected him until the next morning. So every time I see these, we have them at Diamond Mountain, right? We have these big Mexican, they don't call them crows, raven, right?

They're so beautiful. I mean, they can, in many cultures, they are considered bad luck. Like in British culture, I think, old British culture.

So I think when I see them, I always think of, oh, they're protecting the baby. So anyway, try to think like that. Think about, it's very simple.

She was willing to trade her life for your life. So that's, maybe she deserves a little gratitude, okay? All right, cool.

And no mom is perfect. And I don't know how long you've been on this earth, but you'll notice at some point that most of us are not perfect, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
All right, thank you, Keshlin. The next question is about, you spent, in the last class, you discussed more in detail about the king option, and then about why the boat option can also be very valuable. But we didn't spend much time talking about the shepherd option.

So I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit more details about being a Buddhist option, Bodhisattva as a shepherd, and how that helps as well.

[Говорящий 1]
Good, that's a great question about the third possible image of bodhichitta. And the debate is most fierce, sorry, about that one, because it is mentioned in sutra. It often comes in sutra, where they say the Bodhisattva swears not to reach final enlightenment until they've taken care of everybody else first.

So there's a major philosophical arguments about these sutra ancient quotations that say you should wait in samsara until everyone else gets out, and then you should leave. Or you should, if needed, you should go to the hell realms to help other people. If you are called upon to go back to the hell realms to help people, you should be willing to go back.

Which, I'll tell you this story. And I forget which Lam Rim Lama it was. Maybe it was Cekhava that we're going to study now.

Or somebody like that, a Kadampa Lama. I don't remember which one. He said, they asked him, what are your hopes after you die?

What would you like to happen? What's your dream? He said, oh, I do have a dream.

And they're like, what's your dream? And he's like, I got this plan. I'm going to go straight to the hell realms, and I'm going to take care of people there.

I got it all ready. I got the whole trip prepared. And the moment my consciousness passes, I'm headed straight for hell to take care of people.

And so he got old. He got sick. He was on his death bed.

And he's going like, and his students are like, are you seeing the hell realms? Are you seeing the hell realms? He says, no, it's only paradise, god damn it.

It's only paradise. He said, I failed, I failed. And it was his wish to go to the hell realms, push him to Buddha Amitabha.

So he's frustrated, he's angry. He's like, god damn, I keep seeing paradise. It was, I think it would be the same with the shepherd approach, if it was really your intention.

And by the way, the whole idea that you could stay in samsara to help others is a false idea. It's just a totally wrong idea. It's, you don't understand what's enlightenment then.

That's like saying, I don't know. That's like saying, I'll stay in Buhi to help Diamond Mountain. I don't know.

It's something strange. It's something like there's no connection at all. Samsara means because of your bad deeds, you are forced to suffer over and over again.

And there wouldn't be any possibility that you would decide to do more bad deeds so I can stay here and help people. It's not like that. You could help people perfectly well on a temporary visa.

Okay, you don't need a green card to samsara. TN1, you can observe people in samsara. You can observe themselves in samsara.

And you can serve them quite well, better if you're enlightened because you can read their mind, for example. So what's the point of, I'm going to, I could be a doctor who has the power to look into the future and see if the medicine I'm thinking of giving you would help you. I could be a doctor who had the power to see into the future if the medicine I'm about to give you worked or not.

And give that up and go back to being a normal doctor? I mean, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense.

Stanley has a debate. Oh, it is Jigong. Okay, good.

We're about to study his loja dharma, his seven-part mind training. Sorry, mind training. Other questions, Timothy?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, so as you're talking about the Buddhas who can help us and in our teachers as well, it seems like there's something about the way we see it incorrectly that they're doing it from their own side. So somehow I have the power to create a Buddha, right? But it seems like they're helping me from their side or my teacher's helping me from their side.

How can a perfect being help me if I'm not perfect yet?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, okay, good. How can a perfect being help me if I'm not perfect? Okay, good.

And I think we have this thing called the two husbands in the kitchen. To put it simply, a woman has a job with a big company. She comes home one night.

Her kids are acting up. She screams at them. And I always have to teach it this way, right?

She screams at the kids, but she also hears herself screaming, which plants seeds in her mind. And then a week later she comes home. She goes in the kitchen to get a hug from her husband and he screams at her with no, what do you call it?

Provocation, no word, no reason. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't do anything.

She just opens the door and he starts screaming at her. So ignorance means, misunderstanding means, at the moment that he starts screaming at her for no reason at all because she didn't do anything, misunderstanding classically means she believes that the, I should slow down. She believes, she really believes that the reason he's yelling at her is that he had a bad day.

He didn't get lunch. He had a lot of traffic. His boss yelled at him.

She assumes it's coming from him. And if she understands Buddhism, she knows that he's, she sees him yelling because she yelled at her kids last week. She planted the seeds, seeds open.

They create this yelling husband. So we say there's two husbands in the kitchen. There's one who's coming from the seeds she planted by yelling at her kids.

And then there's a false husband or an unreal husband or a husband who doesn't really exist, which is the one who isn't her fault. So you can't point to a person that you ever met in your life who was not your fault. There's no such thing.

And emptiness, this high, high idea of emptiness, it just means there's no other people in the world. There's nobody who doesn't come from you. That's emptiness.

You don't have to think black space. You don't have to think deep reality. It's not like that.

You never meet a person in your whole life who didn't come from you. That's all. And there's emptiness of all the other people.

All the ones who don't come from you aren't there. And never were there and never will be there. And that's the whole meaning of emptiness.

There's nothing more mystical than that. I'm sorry. And wouldn't that make her a nice person?

Geshe-la, why are you talking about the two husbands? I asked a question about teacher. Your teacher's coming from you.

And in this path, it's extremely important for a mature student to let them know that the teacher is coming from them. Why I say mature student? We're going to study the story of Mr. Elephant Skin Coat. We're going to study the story of Mr. Elephant Skin Coat who taught emptiness too soon to his student. So don't forget when we get there. Mr. Elephant Skin Coat, LANG CHEN KHO BA PA He taught emptiness too soon to his student and he messed up his student. He messed up the whole thing. So I do believe that, and I remember when I did three-year retreat, we had five people doing retreat. One person had this constant debate which was difficult because we really didn't talk for three years about, I understand everything comes from me, but I don't see how my teacher comes from me.

I don't see how that's possible. They had a problem with that. My teacher's perfect.

They cannot be coming from me. And they held it for years. And so in the end, your teacher is coming from you.

Why I mention it and why it's relevant to this question? If you can find a perfect teacher, you're set. Your life is set.

You don't have to worry about anything. If you can find a perfect teacher, then you can relax. They'll pretty much take care of anything.

You just have to do what they say, which is simple, right? But if you can find a good teacher, your life is set. You can relax.

Just follow them. And the way, then people, especially in my hippie generation, we had to go to the Himalayas to look for one of these guys. This is the only place you can find them.

And countless cases of diarrhea in the foothills of the Himalayas, driving on dangerous buses around these cliffs. There were 10 buses at the bottom with corpses. And you're like, and the bus actually goes out into space and turns.

The front of the bus goes over the cliff. And you're like, whoa. And countless sufferings to go find a teacher.

Guess where I found mine? In New Jersey, 35 minutes from Princeton. Go figure.

If you plant the right seeds, they'll come to you. And I like to say, it's like, I was looking at the last fruit trees in the orchard yesterday, and they have flowered. They're flowering now.

And the bees are coming. It's really beautiful. They're really beautiful.

And if you have the right prayers, which is, here you go, just before you fall asleep, my teacher loves me, please come. Nothing more complicated. As you fall asleep, probably after coffee meditation, my teacher loves me, please come.

That's all. Just make that prayer before you fall asleep. Do it, you could do a couple.

And then the wish to have a teacher attracts them like a bee to the flowers. It's so nice to see them. The bees can't help themselves.

They roll around in the flower, inside the flower. If you've seen bees in a dhatura, they get drunk, they go crazy, and they're just rolling around. They can't figure out how to get out anymore.

And only at early morning or dusk, anyway. So anyway, yeah, your teacher is coming from you, and they've always been coming from you. And if you know that, and if you're mature in your thinking, you can use that to get a good teacher, and you don't have to get diarrhea.

All right, next.

[Говорящий 2]
Question to that would be, once we've planted the seeds for your teacher, or we've heard you talk about getting into a partnership, a spiritual partnership, who could be a very powerful teacher. What are some of the signs that you've found that special teacher, or even that special partner?

[Говорящий 1]
Good, yeah, okay. So there's an advanced kind of teacher, which is a spiritual partner. And in the Diamond Way, it's very much a practice to find a spiritual partner, and then practice together with them.

And in that case, this personal partner, male or female, becomes your teacher. So they call it riding a tiger. They call it riding on a tiger.

It's very fast and very easy to fall off and get eaten. So it's a difficult path. It's a very difficult path.

Staying with another person is difficult. It's probably one of the most beautiful things in the world to have a partner of any kind, a wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend. Regardless of what you've ever heard about Buddhism, Buddhism does not say you should never have a wife or husband.

And Buddhism does not say it's desired to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. It doesn't say that. Buddhism says you should be happy, which means you shouldn't have a boyfriend.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. And I think you'd be just foolish and stupid to claim that the fact that many people, tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people are attracted to relationship.

You'd say that it's all stupid or it's all crazy or it's all deluded. It's not. It's because sometimes it works.

And then it's the most beautiful thing in the world. And I don't think you can deny that. It's a human urge.

It's a human hunger to be in a relationship and to develop that. It's a kind of surrender also. You learn to, not as much as having a child, but you learn to serve someone else's needs or someone else's desires or someone else's wishes.

And you learn to serve them. So I think, so what Buddhists do, they keep an eye out for trends in the world. If hip hop is popular, they will come as a hip hop singer.

That's just the way it is. Buddhists keep an eye out for what's popular and then they show up at what's popular. Now what's always been popular is having a boy or a girl.

So they're not stupid. They're like, what's the best way to get into Stanley's head? Let's emanate as a girl.

Okay. And that's what they do. And so I think it's only logical that the people closest to you in your life might be Buddhists.

It's just logical. I'm not saying they are and they're not, but you can't deny that it's logical. If someone wanted to change you and if they had the power to come as anything, they would come as your wife, your husband, your kids, or your dog.

These are the possibilities. Okay. And then to say that these people can't be Buddhists is foolish.

That they're trying to get into your head. Their mission is to get into your life. Their mission is to affect you.

Then logically, a Buddha would emanate as the closest person to you. So it's very common that they will emanate as a partner, as a man or a woman who has a partnership with you. And then they will start to change you.

And it might take decades. It might take a whole lifetime. And same with your kids.

It's very possible that your children are Buddhists. It's very, very possible. Because they want to get, what do you call it?

They want to get their foot in the door of your life. And kids have a foot in the door of your life. And they tend to hang around and ask for money indefinitely.

So they're going to be around your whole life, normally. So it's a perfect opportunity for a Buddha to affect you. And then the other fallacy is that Buddhists will always act like Buddhists.

Because they don't. I mean, if a Buddha really loved you, then they might make your life hard for 10 years or 20 years. Because it builds character.

I never got so much character built as the bad relationships I've had. That was serious character building. So don't be foolish enough to think that a Buddha is going to appear as your partner or your kid and be lovey-dovey all the time.

Because you don't learn anything from lovey-dovey. You learn the most from people who cause you trouble. So logically, a Buddha who really loved you would come as a partner who push your buttons all day.

And then you would grow and you would develop and you would learn to be compassionate and stuff like that. So anyway, logically, if there's such a thing as a being who can do whatever they want and appear whatever they want, then you should watch out for them among the people who are close to you. Because most likely they will attack there.

And it may not always be sweet. It may be challenging. And then you have to learn to rejoice in the good fight.

You have to say, this person, this person was sent by Amitabha to push my buttons. And thank you Amitabha for this person. And there are channel stuff going on, sexual, you could call it sexual, but there's channel, there's prana stuff going on between men and women.

They compliment each other. They fill in what the other person is lacking. And that's just a prana thing.

And I'll tell you one more story. Grandpa likes stories. I told this story, but I love this story.

I probably told all the stories, but you've been very kind to listen to them again. Joe's like, yeah, oh, you never heard that one. So we had this input project to save the ancient books.

And I've been looking for ancient books since, I don't know, 1976 or something like that. And I heard about a rare set of books at Gyumei Tantric College. This is one of the two high tantric colleges of Tibet.

And it's the one that my teacher went to. He was the Vice Abbot. So I heard they had a set of 12 highly secret books.

Which is the kind of thing we look for. And I kept asking, and they kept saying, oh, no, there's no such books like that. And then my teacher, my logic teacher, became the Abbot.

And I don't know, you were with me, Ali, I think. We invited ourselves to the Gyumei Tantric College. We sponsored a big tea party, which is how you get books out of people.

And we sat down and we had a big tea party. And I asked him, point blank, I said, I heard there's 12 highly secret books. Can we get them?

Can we preserve them? And he said, there are 12 highly secret books. And no, you cannot look at them.

And I'm like, he's my teacher. And if he's not going to let me see them, then it's not going to happen. So we went home, and I don't know, six months later, we used to get data shipments from our input centers.

And one of the input centers was founded by refugee women. And it was the first input center that wasn't monks. And we had 12 input centers with monks, and we had one with refugee women.

And they turned out they were much better than the monks. And in fact, nowadays we have most, 90% women refugees and very few monks, because they're not as careful. And anyway, I got the shipment of this from, there's a data input center right next to the Tantric Monastery.

It's about 30 feet away or something from the wall of the monastery. I got the data shipment, I open it up, there's the 12 books. Input.

All 12 books, input. All the words, every word. I'm like, ah, ah, ah.

Then I call them, I'm like, this is SON NAM BHAMA, right? How'd you guys get those books? Ladies have ways.

I'm like, okay. Why am I telling you that? So anyway, in one of those books, there's the story of Lord Buddha's tantric partner called Tilottama.

And it's a stunning, beautiful book, extremely beautiful book about their life together. And there's this unstunning account of them getting enlightened together in the morning when the sun breaks the horizon and they're meditating together. And they both become Buddhists at the same moment.

And it's very, very beautiful. And so they say that's how he really, and there are many books that say you don't get enlightened except through Vajrayana. No one has ever been enlightened who didn't do it through Vajrayana.

So does that cover that question? What was the question? Anyway, yeah, it's important.

[Говорящий 2]
The question was what are some of the signs?

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, what are signs that you've met the person? Well, we've already established that they might be the most challenging person you've ever met. But I would say there's a deep attraction.

I asked my teacher one time, what's the definition of a root Lama? Because they always say root, saway lama, root lama. And what's the definition of a spiritual partner?

Like how do you know that someone's your root lama? Or how do you know that someone's your spiritual partner? And he defined root lama, he said the person who helped you the most in your life is your root lama.

Then we go back to your mom, right? So I would say if you meet the, I would say personally, if you meet the person who is meant to be your spiritual partner, you will know without a doubt. So you will just know.

And in fact, if you wanted to avoid them, you couldn't. Like if you tried to not be with them, it wouldn't work out. So when you meet that person, I'd say that's your spiritual partner.

Now, I don't know, sometimes it doesn't happen like that. And then you have to build your spiritual partner from scratch. And because things are empty and because things are coming from you, you have the power to build a spiritual partner out of anybody.

So I would also say that if you understand the pen is coming from you, then you have the power and the right and the responsibility to build your spiritual partner. And you can start with any raw material. Depends on how much of a challenge you want.

All right, next. One more thing. It's been my personal experience that you could have someone that you thought was your spiritual partner, you stayed with them for some time, you practiced with them, and then something happens.

It fails, or they leave, or they die. And if it's a real spiritual partnership, they will return in another form. I'm not saying you should go around having spiritual divorces every two weeks.

I'm not saying that. Because that's a trap. You're just going to suffer.

You say, oh, Geshe-la said I could switch spiritual partners. I didn't say that. I said if something serious happens and you have to be separated, I think the best thing you can do is to believe that that Buddha has chosen to direct you to another Buddha.

That's all. So I'm not saying you should switch spiritual partners every week or something like that. I'm not saying that.

But if something happens, they die, or they have to go away, or something happens, then build another one with your karma. And they will come in a different body. It will be the same person in a different body.

But I'm not saying you should switch partners every week. That's not going to work either. Stick with it, stick with it, stick with it.

And something might change that should change that they had planned all along. And then you can't doubt it. If you doubt it, you ruin it.

Cool? It's not easy. All right.

[Говорящий 2]
And you began in this class talking about the three years and three months path. Right. And the question is, you know, I haven't seen emptiness directly yet.

And it seems like this might be a little bit challenging for me to go from zero to three years and three months. But what's a recommendation you can give us to accelerate our understanding of emptiness so that we can have that direct experience ourselves?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, cool. First of all, the three years, three months, small print in the contract, is if you keep your vows. LAM MA NI MED LA BCAD KHYAD SRID BYAS BU NA KHYEN GYUR DRO LA BYAMS PA MO MUN GYUR SEMS DO DANG LA CHOS NA MA MA MI SANG DU RANG GI PHUNG BAR LAS STONG MA YIN PO'I DU BYIN TZA BAR THAMS PA'O MA NA DE RGYUR ZIN GYIS DANG TZAM GYIS MI DANG PHUN MI RIG PA DE TZAM GYIS MI DANG PHUN MI RIG PA DE TZAM GYIS MI DANG PHUN MI RIG PA DE Just those.

Fourteen root vows. Keep those well. And three years and three months is possible.

So you can't keep those vows if you don't know them. That's a famous principle in Buddhism. You can't keep vows, commitments, if you don't know what they are.

And you're not allowed to hear them until you get a proper initiation empowerment. So a big part of the process of empowerment is that you are given, empowerment means you are given permission to study and carry out the vows that can get you enlightened in three years and three months. So it's all, empowerment doesn't mean someone hits you on the head with a brick, although it would be a good idea in some cases.

And it doesn't mean that you have sex with somebody and it doesn't mean that they pour water on your head. It doesn't mean any of those. Real empowerment means you have the extraordinary honor of learning your vows.

And then you start keeping them. And then if you keep them pretty well, it's impossible to keep vows perfectly. Why?

Only imperfect people take vows. Buddhas don't take vows. Buddhas don't need to take vows because the vows make you a Buddha.

The only people allowed to take vows is people who will break them. Logical, right? I hate to say it.

Yeah, if you are so perfect that you wouldn't break your vows, you don't need them. So the whole thing about vows is learning them well and then struggle. It's a struggle.

And you keep breaking them. You keep messing up. Your teacher keeps yelling at you, calling you stupid.

And you just have to be stubborn and go back. Get back up. After you fall down and you break your vows, you get back up and you keep going.

Because actually, what else choice do you have? Just die? Just go to hell?

Okay, fun story. Gaithersburg, Maryland. We're getting our first tantric vows from my Lama.

And first he gives us a pep talk. He says, if you break these vows, you will definitely go to hell. Then he says, and you're all going to break them.

And we're like, I was close enough to say, what? And he said, if you break these vows, you go to hell definitely. And you're all going to break them.

And I said, well, then why are you giving us these vows? And he looked at me very calm. He's like, well, you're all going to hell anyway.

Even if you don't give vows. Well, the way you've been acting, you're all going to hell anyway. So now when you get there, you can say, I'm not like you guys.

You're just here because you were bad people. I'm here because I broke my tantric vows. I'm special.

We're like. So I don't know if it was joking or not. But yeah, if you get an initiation, it means you're permissioned to learn the vow.

And then if you keep the vows. And by the way, you can't keep them perfectly. But if you keep them lousily, lousily.

If you keep them in a, if you do a bad job at keeping them, you will still make more progress than you ever could have made anyway. You will still end up having an extraordinary life. If you get your vows properly and you do a half-assed job to keep them, you will still end your life as a miracle.

So what the heck? Good? Oh man, this is one of those two hour questions.

Wow.

[Говорящий 2]
The real question was, if I can, I have not seen emptiness directly. And so are there any, how can we accelerate our own practice? Or can you give us a recommendation to help us understand emptiness more quickly so that we can have that experience?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, I'll say something. So lately we were doing what's called China Self-Help Program. And we do a program for Chinese business executives.

And we do not teach religion. It's not allowed. But we teach deep principles from the classics of ancient China.

And so we were covering some mind-only texts. And if you want to study about seeds, mental seeds, you see? I'm not talking emptiness.

I'm talking about studying mental seeds. Making it an idea to just study mental seeds for a couple of months. Don't study emptiness.

Just study mental seeds for a couple of months. And so we kind of did that. And we went to some important mind-only texts.

I'll show you the texts later. We published them. They're available.

You can e-book them. But we went to some of those ancient books about seeds. And we decided to lay off the emptiness for a while.

Because we were doing that heavily for five years. And then we said, let's go to seeds for a while. And we worked just on the seeds for a couple of months or something.

And it was extremely powerful. It was extremely fruitful. And I'll tell you a nice sansara, a positive sansara.

The more you study seeds, the faster your good seeds grow, that you already have. The more time you spend studying how mental seeds work, the faster the good seeds you already have ripen in your mind. It's very sexy.

It's a very easy proposition, right? Do you have any positive seeds? Yes, or you wouldn't be breathing right now.

Okay? Do I have a lot of positive seeds? If you're sitting in this room, you are one in a hundred million people.

Literally. If you're listening to this right now, you are one in a hundred million people. Maybe you're special.

And then you must have billions of good seeds in your mind to be hearing this now. If you can hear this now, you are an extremely unusual person. And you have extremely powerful good seeds.

You have hundreds of thousands of powerful good seeds in your mind. If you purposely spend some time to learn more about how seeds work, all the good seeds you already have will open twice as fast. How's that?

Okay? That's cool. That's really cool.

So personally, I'd say, if you really want to see emptiness directly, then kind of a secret backdoor. I'm a backdoor man. Secret backdoor is to devote some time to studying how the seeds work.

And then I believe you would see emptiness much faster. How's that? Question?

[Говорящий 2]
Yes. If we devote our time to studying these good seeds and thinking about them, do we also reap those good seeds just because we're thinking about them and kind of watering them and making them grow so they multiply?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. They have babies.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, that's true. They not only ripen faster, but they have babies. That's true.

By the way, you said study good seeds. I said study all seeds, not just good seeds. You got to study how your bad seeds work too.

Then you can short-circuit them.

[Говорящий 2]
Is it bad seeds ripen faster?

[Говорящий 1]
No, and that's a detail I should have mentioned. Studying seeds doesn't cause bad seeds to open faster. What causes bad seeds to open faster is not to be determined to try to stop them.

Okay. It means Geshe-la, don't talk to him. I understand.

[Говорящий 2]
Not me, this is not Tim's question. Problems myself, but I see a lot of people are having a lot of marital problems and relationship problems. So how do I help, if I don't have the problem myself, but other people do, how should I relate to that in my seed planting practice?

[Говорящий 1]
I'm sorry, I didn't catch which kind of problem? So they're having marital.

[Говорящий 2]
In general, marital problems. In general, they're having general marital problems. I don't have them.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Of course, I don't have them, I'm not married.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
But the person who has the question doesn't have the problems, but they're seeing the problems in other people. How can they relate to this? Because they don't have it, but they see others.

So how can they relate that in their seed planting practice?

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, good. I see my married friends having problems. I don't happen to have those exact same problems in my own marriage.

How can I relate to the problems that they're experiencing? How can I relate to the problems that they're experiencing? Having the karma to see problems is one step away from having them yourself.

So if you didn't have any seeds for those problems at all, you wouldn't see them in other people. If you do see other couples having certain challenges, as a Buddhist practitioner, you should pay attention to them carefully because that means you're about to have those problems. So we should take an interest and we should be curious about the problems that our friends are having, relationship problems that our friends are having.

Because that always means that you're close to having them yourself. So you might as well get warmed up while you can before they hit your relationship. So I would say that, just stay aware that when you see another couple having a problem, it's on the verge of coming to you.

It's close to you. So I would say, and this is a tough thing, okay? I have a very busy life, extremely busy life.

And I like to remind people about that about every five minutes. And, right Shelby? And it suddenly occurred to me that everybody else is busy too.

I mean, after I got married and I saw how busy my wife was, it suddenly occurred to me that everyone's busy. And probably she's more busy than me, first thing. Second thing, therefore it's really hard for me to take time to help other people who are having relationship problems.

It just sounds like listening to a broken record. A-do-a, a-ra, a-ra, same problem, same problem. And I kind of thought, well, I mean, we're talking options, right?

Ignore them, let them have their fights. Just stay in your house, fight it out. Good luck.

I mean, I'd like to say that, because I'm busy. I don't have time to talk to somebody. People having marital problems like to talk.

And I'm not talking 10 minutes. I'm talking, one lady talked till 5 a.m. recently. We started in the evening.

She talked till 5 in the morning. She didn't stop about her marital problems. And I'm like, I've got to sleep.

I'm sorry, I've got to sleep. I've got other people in line. I can't talk to you, I can't do it.

But what I want to say is, it's worth the time. It's worth the time. If someone's having a relationship problem and they need to talk, then I have learned to cancel some of my other stuff.

Because it's the most important thing you can be doing right now, is to listen to someone else's problems. Because if you hear a problem in a relationship close to you, it's coming to you too. So you better spend some time on it.

You better proactively make some good seeds that are going to stop that problem from hitting you, because it will hit you. So what I'm trying to say is that I do book time with people to talk about their relationship problems. I do book time for that.

And if you want to know how, I've learned to use the FaceTime thing. And I do it during my exercise. So every day I try to do exercise.

And then I'll say, okay, I can talk to you now. And then I'm like, yeah, what happened then? Oh, really?

Oh, that's terrible. I'm not kidding. So it's one way to, one way to, that's a good way, right?

I mean, you're not going to talk during your exercise usually. So you might as well give the time to somebody else. So I'm just suggesting that's a, I think it's a good investment to take an interest in other people's relationship problems.

And you better, because if you can hear it, it's coming to you. And then you can stop it before it happens by listening to the other person and helping the other person. Cool?

All right, grandpa's going for breakfast.