«Дар освобождения», курс 39 «Ускорь своё сострадание», занятие 2

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la. So the first question here is, if I, it's going to the idea of taking care of others first. So the question is, well, how can I take care of others first if I really don't take care of myself and my own needs like eating and sleeping and my own emotional mental health?

How can we think about that? Because the question says, I oftentimes get too tired or I get overworked by serving others and then I'm not able to serve others as well.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, cool. That's a great question. And I think the group here, the people I know here, we all tend to overwork and we all tend to, we see so many people who need things and there's so many things that we would like to do to help other people.

And there's a long list of things like buying buildings in half a day whilst the seller raises the price every half hour. And I think all of us in this room, I mean, most of us in this organization, we see a huge list of things that people need. And I think we all have this, it must have been training in our past life, but we feel guilty if we don't do it.

So if we don't kill ourselves, we go home and we can't sleep because somebody didn't get something. And we think, oh, if I just could have worked another half hour, I could have done that. And I think that kind of good attitude is contagious in this group.

And we tend to overwork. So again, I had the honor to serve my teacher for 25 years. And there's a trade-off.

When you serve a teacher, you also get to bug them with things that you want to ask. And so in a way, it's a trade-off. I remember digging his septic by hand, huge septic for this public building by hand, and doing the gravel by hand.

And then you go in and you ask a philosophy question. He's got to answer. He can't watch you out there in the muck.

This is a, the septic was already half full, by the way. And you're standing in the poop and shoveling gravel. And you can't come inside and he won't ask a question, right?

So anyway, there's this trade-off. If you keep getting teachings, then you feel really guilty if you don't work really hard. And then I remember, the good thing about working hard for a teacher is that you get to ask them personal questions.

It's called Dhamnak. So Dhamnak means, that's Dhamnak. You can go in to their room and you can ask a personal question.

And normally those high lamas, they're too busy to deal with individual people. They can't do individual questions. So they just don't have time.

It's not possible. But if you're serving the lama, you kind of have the right, and I did have the right, to ask an occasional personal question. So anyway, I would go up and I'd say, I got to ask you something.

And I wouldn't bother him unless it was really important. And I'd say, look, I'm going to have a breakdown. I can't do all this stuff.

It's too much. I don't know what's the right thing to do. Should I?

I don't feel good if I don't do more, but I'm also afraid I might have a breakdown. I'm close. And then he'd say, what he told me was that it's very common among do-gooders, do-gooder, that they burn out.

They burn themselves out. And he said, he was in a refugee camp for, he taught refugees for a long time, 12 years. And he said, he saw it in the refugee camps that the people running the camps would burn out.

And he'd say, here's what your career path is. If you don't get enough rest, if you don't eat well, if you don't watch Netflix a couple times a week, this is your career path. You will burn out.

You will lose interest. You will leave the refugee camp. And you'll be angry.

You'll be an angry person. I had a lady, so I was in the diamond business. Diamond jewelry business.

We did not, we did not, we did not, we did not buy diamonds. Rough diamonds, we did not. We did not buy a single diamond from Africa.

And we did 300,000 diamonds a day. But we didn't do diamonds from Africa. So the people, the irritating wiki people who don't have anything else to do, it's not true what they're writing there.

It's weird. It's kind of weird to buy millions of diamonds, never bought a single diamond. Blood diamond?

Never bought one out of many million diamonds. Why am I talking about that? You get to a, so in the diamond business, we had pressure.

And we had to produce 300,000 diamonds a day. We had to process. We had to look at a million diamonds a day and take the 300,000 best ones.

So we had to check a million diamonds a day. And that's a lot of pressure. So I had to hire people to do that.

And we hired mostly refugees. And we hired people who were in trouble and needed help. So I hired a lady from Thailand.

And her name was Tasanikata Pitook. And she was poor Thai person. And I trained her to do, and she was this beautiful, beautiful, gentle woman with four kids or something.

And really gentle Thai, we call Wei, in Thailand it's called Wei. She would do Wei like all day long. You say, good morning, Wei.

How's your kids, Wei? What are you having for lunch, Wei? And then, she's so gentle and beautiful.

And so she made her way up to the head of the, we call colored stones. So all gemstones are divided into two, diamonds and colored stones. Colored stones means all non-diamonds.

So rubies, sapphires, emerald, pearls. So she made her, she rose up through the ranks of 10,000 people. And she reached the top.

And I kept trying to work at her. I kept trying to work at her. And then slowly, she became an asshole.

I made her a nervous person. I gave her too much work. And she took it happily because she's such a good person.

And she, no matter how much work I gave her, she would smile and say, give me more. And then finally, it killed her. She got to be an angry person.

I took a person who was extremely pleasant and kind and helpful and wanted to do more. And I was a new manager. I was young, long ago.

And I didn't realize how you change people if you press them like that. And I ruined her. And I did, and I'm sorry.

She became an angry, nervous person. Because I kept giving her too much work. And it was good for me because she produced so much.

So I was happy. And I didn't think I was killing her. So I worked.

And then finally one day she comes in, she says, I'm quitting. I'm like, no, no. I'll give you anything.

I'm so sorry. Name your price. And she says, there's nothing you can pay me that will make me work here for another day.

And I'm like, what did I do wrong? I know I overworked you. And she said, no, it's the last straw.

And I'm leaving. And she left. And I never saw her again.

And she said, people are pointing their feet at me. People sit down in their chair and they cross their legs and point their feet at me. I can't believe it.

And I'm like, what? People are crossing their legs? She actually says, everyone hates me.

They come in the room and they cross their leg and they point their foot at me. And I'm like, well, that's what we do in America. She says, no, no.

To show the bottom of your feet to other people in Thailand is a big insult. There's signs, if you ever go to Thailand, there's signs in the temples. If you're a foreigner, don't point your feet at the Buddha.

Don't sit with your feet like that. And she swore that everyone hated her because all these American people had their legs crossed. And so she was so nervous and distraught.

And then finally, it just ruined her life. So I can tell you from experience. And my Lama told me very adamantly, it's your responsibility as a Dharma person to know your limits and not to overwork.

Okay, right? Because you'll become a nervous, angry, pushy person and you'll ruin your Dharma practice. And no one really knows what your limit is.

You know what your limit is. And your limit is probably a little bit less than you think. So it means you got to take care of yourself.

And in an organization like this, the 12 organizations we have, to be honest, no one's going to stop you if you overwork. I don't think so. No one's going to say, come on, you're going to ruin your life.

You're going to end up getting angry at everyone who crosses their legs. So it's kind of a response. It's a long-run responsibility to take good care of yourself.

And that includes exercise daily. Did I say daily? Daily.

Daily, daily, except for weekends, okay? Exercise and eating well. Those are very simple two things.

Eat well, exercise, and play guitar. Right, Joe? And I honestly think that.

Or do something that's fun. And you got to have some fun. If you don't have some fun every day and you just work, work, work, you will end up an angry person and a bad example.

And then you just ruined your whole reason to work for the Dharma. You become the anti-Dharma. So it's your responsibility to keep yourself fresh, healthy, rested, and more fun and more happy.

And if you're not fun, I think you should go home and stop serving the Dharma. If you're not fun, I think, what did Dharmamitra say? No fun, no yoga.

No sweat, no yoga, no fun. What was that? Anyway.

No pain, no gain, no fun, no yoga. That's his thing. Yeah, no pain, no gain.

He works his yoga students hard. You have to work hard in his class, really hard. And then he says, no pain, no gain.

And then he goes, but no fun, no yoga. So I sincerely believe that you have to have fun in our organizations. We work hard and you got to have fun.

And I think fun is the sign of a successful Dharma student. I personally, I think that. Okay.

All right. Next question.

[Говорящий 2]
All right. Thank you, Geshe-la. This question is about someone who is really trying to help other people, helping out their friends, providing them good advices in business management and helping them become better people.

However, they don't seem to listen to me. I think I have really good ideas to help them, but they don't accept my advices. What's your advice on how to handle this?

[Говорящий 1]
We very commonly, for example, in DCI, we'll commonly get a question of, somebody will come and say, I've been coming to DCI for three years. I've done six levels. It's really helped me a lot.

And I'm trying to get my husband to come, but he just doesn't want to come. And I keep telling him about seeds, and pans, and husbands in the kitchen, and he's just not interested. And what can I do to force him to be interested?

We do this custom before class called mandala. So traditionally, you have to offer a mandala before class. SA RGYUD YIR BU RGYUD And it's a very, very beautiful tradition because mandala means a perfect world.

No more war, no more hunger, no more disease, no more aging, no more death. And then you offer it before class. And you offer another mandala, tang rak, it's called tang rak mandala, Thanksgiving mandala, at the end of class.

So this is a traditional payment for a Dharma class in the monastery. It's an interesting system. When you get there the first day, first of all, someone has to vouch for you.

Some member of the monastery has to take responsibility for you, or you cannot enter. You cannot enter these great monasteries unless somebody agrees to sign for you. And they actually have to come to the monastery office and you come with the sponsor, and they have to sign for you on the ledger.

There's your name, candidate for admission. And the only requirement for admission to Sara is a sponsor. Somebody has to sign for you.

And they don't have to pay for you. It's free. The monastery is free.

There's no charge for anything. No charge for food, no charge for lodging, no charge for teaching, nothing. And it's a beautiful custom.

And it's called kīduk cikpa. Say kīduk? kīduk cikpa So when they accept you and you're allowed to sign your name as a monk at Sara, you enter kīduk cikpa.

kīduk cikpa means, kī means happy, like Vimala's friend, Dekī. Her real name is Dekī, which means happy, happy. And kī means happy.

duk means suffering, dungyel, right? Unhappy. And kīduk cikpa means one for all and all for one.

It's the three musketeers thing. So you sign kīduk cikpa. If we all go hungry, we go hungry together.

If we all get extra pastries on New Year's, we all get extra pastries. And you sign kīduk cikpa. And then you join the kīduk cikpa and then all for one and one for all.

And the only charge for a class at these monasteries for 25 years is a mandala. You have to offer a mandala. And if you don't, you cannot have the class.

And mandala means you have to, you have to picture the world after everyone learns Lam Rim. You have to picture a perfect world where no one has self-cherishing, so no one's hurting anybody. And you have to offer that world to your teacher or you can't take the class.

There's no money. You're not allowed to offer money, but you have to offer a mandala. So you have to, you're not allowed to teach a person in Buddhism, you're not allowed to teach a person unless they offer a mandala.

So we're not allowed to proselytize. When I was in the Mongolian temple in New Jersey, we would have groups would come and bang on the door with Bibles and say, we got a Bible. You got to learn this thing.

And my teacher would be, who are these people? What do they want? And I'd say, don't worry.

It's just a tradition. They come to your house, they bang on the door and they try to sell you the Bible. And he'd say, wow, that's really, do you do mandala?

I said, no, they don't have that. And he'd say, they teach you without a mandala? And I'm like, yeah.

And he said, wow, that's strange. You didn't, you didn't pay them the proper payment, which was, I want to make a perfect world. And unless you make that payment, which is the wish to make a perfect world, the teacher's not allowed to teach you.

There's a very strict custom in Buddhism. We're not allowed to teach a person who doesn't offer a mandala, which means we're not allowed to teach a person who doesn't have a vision of a perfect world and they want to learn for that. That's why they want to learn.

So we're not allowed to teach them. There's a small print exception. There's a small print exception.

If you know or suspect strongly that they would really like to be taught, you're allowed to talk about it. So when I was in the diamond business, there was this one black woman from Barbados, little fiery troublemaker, and she just seemed like hungry for Dharma, but she didn't know. So one day I invited her to class.

I had two black monks in my sangha in New York, and I had a tiny group. We had like six students, two black monks, and nobody showed up that day except the two black monks, and she's this cute black lady, and they're very handsome. You know Jackie.

And there was this boom, chemistry, and I was like, ooh. So anyway, I thought she has the seat. I felt like she had the seat, and she did, and she became a very famous nun.

She started ACI. So anyway, if you really know they have a seat, you're allowed to teach. If you're not sure, you're not allowed to teach.

Traditionally, they must request for the right reason. I want to make a perfect world, please teach me. And at the end of class, they have to say, hey, that's the world I'm going to make with what you taught me, thank you.

So what I tell the DCI people, don't bother people with your religion. Don't bother people with your Buddhism. It's a very big mistake.

It's a bad seat. So to grab people by the shirt and say, did you know about self-cherishing? And they're like, no, I don't know.

So in this lineage, we're not allowed to bother people with our religion. If they seem interested, we can share gently and see how they take it. But we're definitely not allowed to irritate people or force people.

So generally, if you're friends and your spouse, your husband, your wife, if they're honestly not interested, then we're not allowed to talk about it. Why? If they get angry at what you say, it's extremely bad karma for them.

So if they say, oh, that's bullshit. God, take care of everybody else before you get the donut yourself. Then they can make huge bad karma.

So if they react badly to your dogma, it's your fault. You hurt them. You helped them make a bad seat.

So in this tradition, in this lineage, we're supposed to be super careful not to bother other people and not to try to give advice to people who don't want it. Because if they react badly, they plant bad seeds. Anytime you encourage someone else to plant a bad seed, you get double bad seeds, which is why we don't buy meat.

Because when you buy meat, you're paying someone else to kill an animal. Then this argument, oh, I didn't kill the animal. I just bought the meat.

No, you don't understand. When you buy meat, you kill the animal and you hurt the person who killed the animal because you paid them to kill the animal. So you double, it's double karma for the purchaser.

If you're going to eat meat, go get a knife, bring cows into your kitchen and slaughter them yourself. It's less bad karma. So to encourage someone or to cause someone to make a big mistake is double bad karma.

So don't force your ideas on other people. Bring them up gently. Last thing in this long answer, which is the only kind that the enterprise makes.

What's the DCI system for, it's called proselytizing, new word for you, trying to spread your religion. What's the DCI system for proselytizing? Yeah, so one of the goals of DCI, for example, is to be successful as a person.

Like have successful relationships, be healthy, make your own way financially in life, don't bother other people. So the idea, the real bodhisattva ideal is that you look so happy that people ask you, what the heck are you doing? What's it called in the movies for $100?

I won't have a chance. All right, cancel that man. Can I tell that story?

Okay, grandpa likes it. I'm sorry, we don't get a lot of questions then. It's okay.

There's a movie called Harry Met Sally. Sally Met Harry? I never saw the whole movie.

When Harry Met Sally. Some guy's having trouble with his girlfriend. In fact, the diner is famous in New York.

They have a big sign out front. It wasn't far from Hell's Kitchen. I got to remember it.

Okay, yeah. So they're having trouble. Their relationship's not going too well.

They're having lunch at a diner or something. He says to her, but at least I make you happy in bed, right? She says, not really.

He says, no, you always get so turned on. I must be doing that right. She says, not really.

He says, well, how do you explain how you act when we have sex? She says, I'm faking it. He says, faking it?

That's impossible. You got to be, it's got to be for real. Then she says, no, it's not.

He says, you're telling me when you get all, you're faking it? She says, yes, and I could do it right here, right now, if you want me to. Here having a hamburger together.

And he says, okay, do it. And then she goes, ah, ah, ah. And then she goes, ah, ah, ah.

And the whole, all the people in the diner are like, and she starts screaming. Her hair is going, Meg Ryan? Her hair is flopping, and he's like, okay, okay, it's okay, stop.

And then this wealthy lady comes in, pearls, silk suit from, what's that place? Bergdorf Goodman. And she comes in, and the waiters, and she's like also looking, and the waiter sits her down, and he says, what would you like to order?

And she says, I'll have whatever she's having. I'll have that. Why am I saying that?

Yeah, that's the real way to spread the Dharma. If you want to, I mean, now, don't go grab people and say you got to study lamrim. If you're so happy and so much fun, suddenly, after many years of being grumpy, your friends are going to say, what's going on?

What are you doing? I want what you have. Because...

You can support your parents and family in their ideas, in their beliefs. That's true too. That's true too.

Yeah. How to get there is to... I mean, the alternate method is called seeds.

By the way, the first method, so what I'm saying is, if you really want to spread the Dharma, then show what it's doing for you. If you're grumpy, jealous, always arguing, then... Another story.

I was sitting at the back of a meditation class given by one of my students. I snuck in the back and they didn't see me. There were two ladies sitting in front of me and I could hear them talking.

My student, who was nervous, they were like this. They were teaching meditation and they were like... Then they were teaching and then the one lady turned to the other lady and said, I don't know what kind of meditation she's teaching but I don't want to learn it.

Then I'm like... Anyway, if you show what the Dharma's doing for you, that's much better than fighting or arguing or telling other people how to live their life. Let them come to you.

Let them come to you. Be so successful and happy and joyful and giving and generous that people come and say, what the heck are you doing? Because I want the same thing.

Alternately, if it's a listening problem, that's a simple seed to plant. If people don't listen to you, just try listening better to other people and you'll plant seeds. Next question, Tim.

I'm sorry for such a long answer, but those stories are so fun.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la. We were talking earlier about LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, the personal responsibility. It sounds like a really great attitude to have, but how do we protect ourselves against a bit of pride or arrogance that could come from that point of view?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good. LHAG BSAM NAM DAG means I'll take personal responsibility. I'll make it happen.

It means I'll make it happen. Typically, in the scripture, it will say two things. I'll make it happen even if no one helps me and even if they criticize me or they fight against me or something like that.

Say again? Yeah, those guys who take LHAG BSAM NAM DAG tend to get nailed up. Really.

Buddha was the object of three or four murder attempts and we studied them once. They came up in the Lam Rim in Thailand or Bali or something. Yeah.

So anyway, I would say this. By the time you get to LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, the stuff that people don't want to do that you have to cover is not fun. Like last night, grandpa came and got all the credit for the fire offering which other people had worked for days and weeks to set up.

Just trying to buy kusha grass somewhere. Don't worry, I've been there. Then somebody had to clean up.

Then grandpa got all the credit online and went home and had a nice sleep and dessert. Then other people had to finish and then other people had to clean up. Some poor guy had to take all the equipment for streaming and drag it back in here and put it all back together for this class.

We should thank Tim. He was tired at six o'clock. I know, I was with him.

He was ready to go to bed at six. I don't know what time. He went to bed at probably midnight or something.

My prediction is, by the time you get LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, the work that you take that other people don't want to do, like dragging all the equipment back in the temple and setting it up for the morning, you don't have to worry about pride. It's not like anyone else is going to notice or thank you. Normally, by the time you get to LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, the work is so hard.

It's also thankless. I don't think, I guess Tim could have been proud before he fell into bed last night, but I doubt it. When you get to real LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, like cleaning the toilets in 30 cabins, I don't think people are going to be jealous of you.

I don't think at the end of the 30 toilets you're going to feel superior to everyone who didn't clean toilets. Am I right, you guys? I don't know.

I guess it could be a danger, but I do believe by the time you get to LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, the demands on you are so difficult that you probably, I don't think anyone's going to be jealous of you. No one's going to say, I wish I could do 30 toilets. I don't think you have to worry that much about it.

It's planning to have LHAG BSAM NAM DAG is where you could get pride, right? I'm going to have that someday. I'll be so cool.

Yeah. I guess the best way to prevent pride about LHAG BSAM NAM DAG is to get to LHAG BSAM NAM DAG. Okay, next.

[Говорящий 2]
First of all, I'd like to say that it wasn't just me who stayed up late to clean up everything. There was a big team of people. There was probably about 15 people cleaning up the entire fire ceremony and setting this all back up.

[Говорящий 1]
Who's the main fire offering? Gelsi, okay. Yay.

Alex. Alex, Jenison, Gelsi, quietly behind the scenes. Yay, Connie.

[Говорящий 2]
Lots of people.

[Говорящий 1]
See, by the time you get to LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, everybody's trying to blame somebody else.

[Говорящий 2]
For those of you online, I think everyone in the room got thanked when you couldn't get LHAG BSAM NAM DAG, right? I forget the question now. Oh yeah, so the question here, Geshe-la, is, you said in an earlier class that the clock starts ticking when we have the thought of making people we don't know into Buddhas.

Like if we go to a gas station and we imagine that the person attending us is a Buddha. How can, I'm not quite sure I understand what this means, and how does this help us get out of samsara? Okay, good question.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, there are some weird contradictions in the scripture. There seem to be contradictions. I was trying to think of one of them.

There's a teaching that everyone has been your mother, right? Everyone has been your mother and it's infinite. Oh, that's it.

Everyone has been your mother and your past lives are infinite. So by that logic, it shouldn't be possible for everyone to get enlightened because you could never reach the last unenlightened person. You see what I mean?

It doesn't quite make sense. There's some kind of problem there. Your past lives are infinite.

Every living being has been your mother. The argument in the scriptures why everyone's not enlightened already is that, especially in the Abhidharma, they haven't seen emptiness directly, but your past lives are infinite. So given infinite chances to do something, you should have done it.

It doesn't make sense. If you had infinite past lives, what's one divided by infinite? I mean, it should have happened already.

It doesn't quite make sense. What was the question again? Yeah, then, and according to you, according to your scriptures, Buddhists see everything.

The meaning of the word buddh is to see everything in the universe. It came into English as vid, video, to know, to see. So if everybody's a vidir, vidir, Buddha, a Buddha should be able to see everything, right?

Therefore, a Buddha should be able to predict the date that I'm going to become a Buddha. So if I meet a Buddha, I should, in theory, I should be able to ask them, what's my date? Because I'd like to celebrate before.

I think I'll have, I think I'll have a party on that day every year. It's like a pre-birthday. Then the tradition is that until the day you offer to die for the other chariot puller, yeah, until the day in the hell realms that you offer to be whipped in the place of the other weaker whippy, the clock doesn't start.

But tradition says that even an enlightened being cannot look at you and tell you what your date is until you get bodhichitta. Then once you get bodhichitta, one of the benefits, one of the famous benefits is that you could get your LUNG BSTAN PA, which means your prediction. And that's a weird thing, right Stanley?

You kneel down, the Buddha puts his foot on your head and says November 25th. He'd give you a date because you got bodhichitta. So then it becomes finite.

The number of future lives becomes finite rather than infinite. So then there seems to be a contradiction there. In my opinion, a Buddha can see your date since forever.

It's a tradition to say the clock starts here. The way I would resolve that question is that it's a tradition to say the clock starts here and it's a tradition to say now Buddha could give you a date. But I do feel it's illogical to say that an omniscient being can't give you a date before they could give you a date.

So that's just my opinion. I don't think it's illogical to say just because you've had infinite chances you should have seen emptiness by now. I think it is logical to say you could have infinite chances and you could roll the dice infinite times and snake eyes don't come up.

That's possible. I think it's possible. It's unlikely, but it's possible.

Okay, cool. Oh, but then there's the argument that everyone has definitely been your mother because you had infinite past lives. Now to say that and then to say you didn't see emptiness even though you had infinite past lives, that seems like a contradiction to me.

Maybe it's that there's no benefit to thinking. Maybe there's somebody who wasn't your mother after infinite chances. Okay.

Question. Alex has a question, Tim. Or Tim can repeat it.

[Говорящий 2]
What's the connection between the chariot story and seeing people in the gas station who you'd like to make into a cool Buddha? And also, what about seeing people in the gas station who are Buddhas?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good. You want to talk about it?

[Говорящий 2]
So what is the connection with the chariot story? And the people in the gas station who you see who you think would make a cool Buddha. And the people in the gas station that you see that you believe are Buddhas.

Yeah, but there was a story about you think they would make a cool Buddha.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
What's the difference in that and seeing, oh, you already are a Buddha? Yeah, good. So what's the difference between looking at someone and saying, oh, Alex, you'd be a cool Buddha versus having the seeds to see them as a Buddha?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, like we said the day that you can go to the gas station and see the potential in everybody is a line. You could imagine them being a Buddha which means you'd like to make it happen. And then you get to another stage where spontaneously someone strikes you as a Buddha.

A normal person at a gas station. And what's the difference? I mean the first perception where you seriously, where you see a person just stop at the gas station and get out and start filling their gas.

And then your first impression of them is that I would like to take you to Buddhahood even though I don't know you and I never saw you before and I'll probably never see you again. I would like to be the one to take you to enlightenment because you look like my mom. So that spontaneous feeling when you're filling up your gas and the first thing you see another person stop and you glance at them and your first reaction is I'd like to take you somewhere on a date to Buddhahood or something.

And then what's the difference between that and then you get out of your car and you look at another person at the gas pump and suddenly you're certain they're a Buddha in that they've been sent for you. So what's the difference between the two? Both very, very high seeds and I would say one causes the other.

So the trying to cultivate the perception, the automatic reaction to people no matter how they treat you, trying to cultivate the automatic hunger to make them into a Buddha is the cause of later stopping at the gas station and the person strikes you as enlightened even though you never met them. And the second, the second perception is tantra. The second perception is tantra.

And if you practice, okay, here's the thing. Vajrayana system is very subtle and complex. What the prayers we did last night, which took many years to learn, and many, many, many years to learn them, word by word, the Vajrayana system as it's been passed down is very rich, deep, complex.

I think it's, I forget, how many pages, Jigme? The 18 Vajrayana courses in ACI, I think it's 20,000 pages of translation. It was a lot of work.

It was many years of work, hard work. And it's very, very beautiful and deep and complex. And it takes seven years to learn it well.

If you work hard at it. Then there's another approach. And this is from my heart.

If you get a good teacher and you just study lam rim, you will have spontaneous tantric experiences. Stuff will happen to you. Tantra will happen to you.

You see what I mean? You don't study tantra and memorize all the hundreds of pages and go through all the training. That's the Vajrayana.

And by the way, the Vajrayana course at Diamond Mountain is the best in the world. I was at Gyumri Tantric College. I debated there.

I studied there. I fought there on the debate ground. The Diamond Mountain course is much more advanced and much better.

No one has ever organized tantra like that. Nobody. There's no one graduating from Gyumri Tantric College who has this training.

But, if you sincerely practice lam rim, tantra will happen to you without the seven years of study. Okay? Now I just ruined the seven year course.

But, you know, you'll go to the gas station. I'll tell you one more story. There's a place, there's a little restaurant in New York called Caravan of Dreams.

It's a vegan restaurant. You know this place? It's on Sixth Street?

Sixth Street and Avenue A? Avenue B. Avenue A and Sixth Street.

It's a tiny little dive, a dive vegan restaurant. It's actually underground. You have to go down the steps.

It's normally where the drain gutters are, the rain gutters. I don't know if they cleared out the rain gutters and made a restaurant. We went there one day on a, so twice a month we are required to have fun and meet together and think about, if you're initiated, you're supposed to go out twice a month together and relax and have fun for the holy angel, for Vajrayogini.

You're required to go out and have fun to celebrate her, which is a fun requirement, right? Okay, yeah. He's telling me I got 10 minutes before the Ukraine talk starts, which means I'm giving up my pee-pee to tell you this story.

Okay, and so we went there on a Vajrayogini day and this old Jewish lady was the waitress. Big, big chubby buxom, New York Jewish lady, and she served us the food and she did, we had a wonderful celebration, tantric celebration. And then we finished and we're all like, New York people don't like to sit around.

We're like Shenzhen people. And we're like, we got to, let's get going. And they said, well, she didn't bring the bill yet.

And you're like, God, we got to get going. And finally, finally she came out and we said, we need the bill. We got to get going.

And she said, you think I'm going to charge a group of people who are doing their Vajrayogini celebration? You think I'm going to give you a bill? Forget it.

And she disappeared into the kitchen. We're all like, and we ran into the kitchen to find her. Where's that big Jewish lady?

Huh? What Jewish lady? What Jewish lady?

There's no Jewish big lady. We don't have a waitress like that. And we're all like, you know, so, so if you practice lamrim sincerely, stuff will happen to you.

And that's real tantra. That's the real tantra. You make such good seeds that you get free meals in New York, which is totally impossible otherwise.

All right, we'll take a break and we'll see you. So that's natural tantra. But the best way to make natural tantra happen is to do the whole course.

Okay? Got it?