«Дар освобождения», курс 40 «Магия пустотных медитаций и тонглен», занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
Welcome to Long Run. And I thought I would review where we are. And first of all, I wanted to thank everyone coming to Diamond Mountain.

It's good to see you. I see from many countries and different, a lot of old friends. It's good to see you.

And there's a guitar player here. Hiya. All right, okay.

And I was going to review where we are. We started, as far as I can tell, I think Anjali should know. I have a record that we were doing homeworks together.

So I think we started in December of 2010. We started this Lam Rim and we knew it would take about 10 years. And it's going a little slower than we predicted, but we're doing good.

We have finished, let's see. It's 378 folios, which is 750, 760 pages. And we finished 90%, okay.

When we started, am I pausing for translation, Timothy? Okay. When we started, we went straight to the part on shamatha and vipasyana.

So we went, we started with the section on meditation and how to see emptiness. And I did that because the structure of Lam Rim is rinpas. And rinpa means meditations that you do in a certain step-by-step.

So rinpa means that. So since we're supposed to be doing meditation step-by-step through the 10 years, I thought first we should learn how to meditate. So the first courses that we did, we covered the section on shamatha, which is how to prepare your meditation for seeing emptiness.

And then vipasyana, which is how to see the emptiness. And we did those two sections, which are basically the last two of the six perfections. So we did that first.

And then we started back at the beginning of the Lam Rim with subjects like how to find a teacher, for example. And we've been working through that way. So pretty soon, we're going to hit shamatha again, after 10 years or 12 years.

And then my plan is to jump to Lam Rim Chenmo, which is Tsongkhapa's Lam Rim. And his is a thousand pages long. It's a little bit, it's about a quarter longer than this one.

And half of his presentation is about meditation and emptiness. So we'll come back to meditation and emptiness. And that's one of the greatest presentations in history.

So that'll take us another three years or so. Sorry, six years. So we'll finish around 2030, hopefully.

And my teacher taught this Lam Rim for, I don't know, 25 years. He took, I heard it three times from him. I think it's probably the greatest book I've ever read.

And so it's a pleasure to go through it. And I think it's not like you finish it and then you just finish it and then you're done. It's not like that.

Every time he finished it, he started it over again. And I think it's not like reading a book. It's more like an experience.

I think the havalina are here. Good to see you guys. Right?

Oh no, it's a coyote. Right out this window. Can you see him?

Behind, he's hiding behind that white rock. It's pretty. He's very pretty.

Yeah, so I mean, a book like this is more of an experience and you don't really finish, you just start over again. And to me, for my teachers, the last 25 years that he taught, it was very comforting to always have Lam Rim going on. So he taught many, many deep subjects but he would always come back to Lam Rim a couple of times a week.

And I think it's a very comforting thing to be going through Lam Rim for your whole life. I don't think you ever graduate. I think it's nice to have someone who can keep giving you, you can see him now, look, quick.

See him? Oh, it's a fox, actually. Oh, yeah.

He's showing his butt here when he's eating soap or something. Diamond Mountain Fox. It's not a cat.

It's a fox, I think. It's a fox, I think. It's a fox.

No, it's a small fox. It's a fox. Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah. Foxy, maybe. All right.

By the way, they're very shy. It's very rare to see one like that. Must be a good sign.

So where we are in the, we're at the point, and this is maybe the most important part of the class where he announces where we are. And he says, NYID PA KUN SROB BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS LO BLO BYANG BA LA And by the way, I always, in Lam Rim, I like to explain the text literally, and I will read it in Tibetan, and I will explain it. And I was talking to my wife.

We drove over from San Diego yesterday or the day before, and she was asking me about Tibetan, like what language family is Tibetan? And it just dropped out of the sky. There's no relation to any language.

It really does seem to be a divine language. And then, of course, Sanskrit. So we'll be studying both, okay?

But I like to read the Tibetan. This book is the best Tibetan ever written in history. And it was the end of the Tibetan language as we know it.

Tibet was lost shortly after this was written. Tibet was lost. And the language has been corrupted.

I met a person recently, I met two people who speak real Tibetan, older Tibetans, and it was incredible. I was with Sugeng, and it was so sweet to hear. Those are the last people who can speak it properly.

And this book is the last and greatest book ever written in Tibetan. And so that era has passed. So he says here, kun tsob chan chuky sem.

We're going to study bodhichitta, chan chuky sem. But then he says kun tsob, which means for $100. What did you say, Rob?

Yeah, 50 bucks each, okay? Kat and Rob, 50 bucks each. Now, the rules of this money giving are that you have to collect it.

I was teaching in Japan last week, and some older gentleman came up after the talk and he said, you owe me $100. And I said, no, I don't. And he said, yeah, you came to Japan five years ago and you never paid me.

And I'm like, the new rule is you have to collect. It's not my fault if you don't collect. Who do you collect from?

Ellie's right here, Jigme. And you can collect from her. Please collect it in a reasonable time.

I can't guarantee I'll have any money in five years. So she's there, just ask her, she'll pay you. Okay, 50 bucks.

Yeah, whatever. Then we have to find something to put in the bank. Okay, so why would he say we're going to study fake bodhicitta?

Yeah, good, it's the perception of emptiness. Yeah, good. So too bad I didn't offer any money for that, Rebecca.

Yeah, it's kind of weird for an author to say, let's study fake bodhicitta. And then this whole section is fake bodhicitta. Fake bodhicitta means it's an ultimate love for all beings, but not necessarily understanding emptiness.

And what we call real bodhicitta or ultimate bodhicitta would be the direct perception of emptiness. And there's a debate whether that would involve loving all beings, for example. And Tsongkhapa's position is that you can see emptiness directly without a love for all beings.

All right, so it says here, Lojongwala. So $50 for Lojongwala. Training the heart.

Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
A good heart?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, okay, good, $50. Which you collect from the bus. Yeah, Lojongwala is the root of the word for lojong.

I just say it with a different accent, right? Lojongwala means if you want to train your mind, this is what lojong means. LOD SBYONG BA means CANG CHUG GI SEMS LOD SBYONG BA.

It means training your mind in this ultimate love. Training your mind in ultimate love. So when you see an ACI course called LOD SBYONG, it means CANG CHUG GI SEMS LA LOD SBYONG BA.

Studying, training your mind in bodhichitta. So to call it mental training or something like that, I think it's misleading. It's training your mind in love or compassion.

LOD SBYONG BA LA. So here he uses it. SDIM MI SNGAGS KYI KUNG NYID SRAL BA'I PHUNG MED DAM GYI LTAR And then he's going to...

Tim? We can't hear you over here. Look for start GIF 43.

Look for GIF 43. This is the 43rd retreat. And you can look for the...

Well, I might have changed it since I sent it to you last night. No. We're not there yet.

Well, I think so. No, we're not. You don't have it.

I'm sorry. I added it this morning. But I will catch up to you.

And that'll be Phelgig Day. D-P-A-L-G-Y-I-S-D-E Phelgig Day. Sri Sena.

Okay. So the outline here and the flow of what we're doing, you should know it and you should be meditating on it this week. So you should...

Here's where we introduce what you're going to be meditating on. And I'll go through meditations with you briefly. And then we'll have longer sessions with Tim and his staff about how to do the meditations.

So I'll give you the bare bones. And there's basically five different topics we're going to be meditating on. And that's what lam rim means, like the topics of the path.

So this week, especially at Diamond Mountain... Oh, and by the way, the stupa looks great. I just noticed.

The fox and the stupa. There'll be five basic topics. And it's a beautiful flow.

It's a really interesting flow. So first he says, so you should write these down or try to remember these five. Five topics that we're going to meditate on.

DANG PO'I BDAG GZHAN NYAMS PAR BSGOM PA NI And that's called a meditation where I and the other people around me have an equal right to get what they want. Me and the people around me have an absolutely equal right to find happiness. Your right to happiness and my right to happiness is totally equal.

And that's BDAG GZHAN NYAMS PAR. You've heard BDAG GZHAN NYAMS BYAS. BDAG means me.

GZHAN means other people. Then NYAMS BYAS, you heard the word NYAMS BYAS, but it's actually two pieces. So there's two practices.

NYAMS PAR means recognize that we all have an equal right to happiness. That's called BDAG GZHAN NYAMS. And then JAY means where you exchange yourself with others. And it's not what it sounds like.

It's deeper than it sounds. It's not just putting yourself in someone else's place. I mean, that's also a good practice.

And that's a good place to go to. But it's a little more sophisticated than that. And so when you say, what do they call it?

Equalizer, I don't know. People have strange translations. But it's not just exchanging self and others.

It's deeper than that. And we'll get to it. We'll go through it.

Those of you who are going through DCI, you've had it already. So BDAG GZHAN NYAMS PAR GOMS NI. And, yeah, then he says this, THOB MAR NGAR GONG DU ZHES PA'I DANG NYAMS NAS YID DBANG GI CHEN PO'ANG MA THUGS KYI PAR GONG DU ZHES PA'I DANG NGON DU DANG BDAG GZHAN BYAS PA DE NGON DU Before you could ever get to the second part, so BDAG GZHAN NYAMS PAR means to come to a deep meditative understanding that the right of other people's happiness is equal to your own.

All the time, every day, in everything you do. And then BDAG GZHAN BYAS PA, to actually exchange yourself and others, that needs some preliminary work. So there's preliminary work.

The first great topic here is to realize that the right of others to happiness is equal to your right. Then the second great topic is BDAG CHEN ZIN GYIS BSKYEN DGOS SDU MA NAS BSAM PA, which means recognize the great problems that are created in your own life by taking care of yourself first. The great tragedies that result in your life whenever you take care of yourself first, or you prioritize yourself first.

And so there's a whole section on how that messes up your life. What a problem that is. Every day, all day, every time you try to take care of yourself first, it's a disaster.

So that's the second, you can say the second step here is the disaster of trying to take care of yourself before other people, or prioritizing yourself. And I think there's a place here where you could say, we're not trying to be a martyr. It's just a recognition that we all have an equal right to happiness.

So you don't have to say, I'll take care of you instead of me. It's that, let's take care of all of ourselves together as one being. So it's not like, it's not a Buddhist practice to deny yourself happiness or I'll be unhappy until you get the nirvana and then I'll come later.

That's just KUPA UTSUG. Dumb ass. So it's not like that.

We're all supposed to cross the finish line at the same time. And that's nice. So the second great meditation here is that trying to prioritize my happiness above everybody else's happiness is just to recognize that it hasn't worked out in your life so far.

I'm 70 years old. Maybe it would be a nice line to start thinking differently. And I don't know how old, some people here are kids.

But I mean, at some point in your life, you have to draw a line and say, this doesn't work out. Trying to take care of myself first. Trying to prioritize myself first.

And ignoring other people's pressing needs, desperate needs, it will never work out. It's faulty. It's broken.

It's a broken way of thinking. And it will never... You devote yourself to your own happiness but you therefore fail to reach your own happiness.

It's a disaster. It's a built-in disaster. It will never work.

It just can't work. So trying to, saying, look Geshe-la, I can't handle taking care of everybody. I just got to take care of myself first.

It doesn't work that way. I'm sorry. And you can take care of everyone.

Don't think you cannot. You can. You have that.

That's your blessed capacity. That's your enlightened capacity. Every person who's listening to this has the power to take care of everybody else and themselves at the same time.

And that's faulty thinking. Number three. GZHAN GZHIN GYIS YIN DANG GO SDUG MA NAS BSAM PA The third of the five great meditation topics that we will be covering.

Ding, ding. It's... Yay, Gina.

It's the opposite. If you learn to take care of others with the same kind of passion that you take care of yourself, how many beautiful things will happen? That's the third part.

That's the third great topic in learning to develop bodhichitta? Fake bodhichitta, nice. Fake bodhichitta.

Why is it fake? What's real bodhichitta? The direct perception of emptiness.

Because you cannot take care of others until you see emptiness directly. You can't really. You can practice and you can get used to the idea, but you can't really do anything.

You can't really help them until you see emptiness directly. You don't have anything to offer. You don't have anything much different.

You can feed people, then they'll get hungry again. You can pull them out of a war zone and then there'll be a war wherever they go. Things like that.

So until you see emptiness directly, you don't really have anything to offer other people equally. So the third great topic is thinking about examples of people who have truly taken care of others. And that's where we are.

That's the section where we are. And we had Lam Rim, Steps of the Path teaching in Kyoto. And we will continue to do a lot of ACI programs at Diamond Mountain and in Kyoto because it helps people in Asia.

There are so many people in Asia who want to come to Lam Rim. It's difficult to travel to the United States. There's a lot of dumb rules about visas and stuff.

And Kyoto is extremely convenient for almost anybody can travel there easily. And so we'll be doing, we'll kind of split the time between Diamond Mountain. We'll be here for the usual two retreats during the one week spring.

And during the one week autumn. And we hit it just right. By the way, I scheduled my whole year around these two retreats because we have to come here when the weather is really good.

So we'll keep doing that here. We were doing retreats in Mexico every summer because Guadalajara is, I think, the only major city in the world which has the same temperature every month of the year. It's pleasant every month of the year.

So we will continue. COVID's over. And even if it's not over, we don't care.

And we're going to resume in Guadalajara this summer. Right, Tim, what month? In July.

Which dates? It's the 5th or 6th through 11th, something like that. So we'll be going back to Guadalajara, which we used to do every summer.

And we'll start again. And then we'll be doing Asia retreats, probably Kyoto, in December? Yeah.

So we'll be doing Lam Rim four times a year. We'll go back to four times a year. Hopefully Geshe-la won't get distracted.

Hopefully we'll finish the Lam Rim. Hopefully I won't find anything else to teach during those retreats. We'll still try to cover Nagarjuna.

I still owe you half of the fifth great teacher's Medicine Buddha teaching. We didn't finish that. So that's probably in the fall, right?

Still to do, still ahead of us, are steps four and five. Still ahead of us are four and five. What is four?

BDAG GZHAN BYAS BA'I BSAM PA'I DNGOS Which means the actual practice of exchanging myself and others. So we'll get to that. We're going to get to that in about two days or something like that.

And we'll actually learn how to exchange myself and others. Again, it's more complicated than it sounds like. It's not just trying to imagine how the other person feels.

That's not the whole thing. It's actually a very challenging meditation and it's deeper than that. Okay, number five.

DE LA BSTAN NAS STONG LEN BSGOM TSUL Then you're ready to do STONG LEN. Then you're ready to start STONG LEN, the famous STONG LEN meditation. Giving and taking meditation.

Giving happiness to other people, taking away their problems. Taking away their suffering. So you need a lot of work to get to the first meditation that they teach everybody in the monastery.

I mean, kids around age seven or eight, they start with STONG LEN meditation. We're going to work for 12 years to get to it. We're just about to get to it.

So I'm going to repeat the five and that'll be the basis of our meditations this week. First one was equal rights. You can just say equal rights.

People have equal right to happiness. You don't have a right to work for your happiness first. You don't have that right.

Number two, think about the problems of trying to take care of yourself first. It just doesn't work and it never will. So give it up.

Give it up. And you can hang on to it for another year or 10 years or 50 years. And sooner or later you're going to have to face it, that trying to take care of yourself, prioritizing what you want over what other people want, is doomed to fail.

It will never work. I don't know how many years you have to live on this planet before you get that. The whole purpose of Lam Rim is for the older, wiser people to tell the younger, foolish people what to do.

And it's tradition for about 50,000 years that the younger people don't listen. And I also didn't listen when I was young. But you can try, try, take care of yourself first and it's just hopeless.

It does not work. And you just, you can wait 50 years and then figure it out. Or you can listen to the gray hairs or the no hairs.

Okay, so BDAG CHEN ZHIG GIS KHYUN DGOS DU MA NAS BSAM PA Number two, it doesn't work to try to take care of yourself first. Number three, what? Yeah, it's a lot cooler.

It works a lot better. You have to kind of overcompensate slightly and try to take care of others because it has been zero so far. So yeah, try to enjoy how much fun it is to take care of other people and to focus on what other people want.

And try to, just try it out like a new pair of jeans. And keep, just see how fun it is and how satisfying it is to take care of other people. Okay, number three.

Number four, the actual exchange of yourself and others, which is not what it sounds like. It's deeper than that. And then number five.

Yeah, then you're qualified to do this first meditation that all the seven-year-olds learn, which is SDONG LEN. So the implication is, you need a lot of preliminary work to do SDONG LEN. SDONG LEN is not easy.

SDONG LEN is a very advanced practice and you need a lot of contemplations and meditations before that. And we'll do some. Let's do one right now.

So get ready to meditate. Grandpa will lead you in a short meditation. Those Vietnamese people call me OM NGOR, which means wise one, I think, or grandpa.

We'll do about 10 minutes. When you meditate in a group, you have a bigger obligation to... Turn off your cell phone.

Turn off your cell phone. Be quiet. Yeah, if your cell phone's not off, you might not.

Blow your nose now. Okay, here we go. OM NGOR This week, I want you to try on a new way to start a meditation, which is 100 breaths instead of 10.

I don't know if I'm getting more distracted as I get older, but 10 breaths doesn't work for me. And doing 10 breaths four or five times doesn't work for me. 100 does work.

That's about six minutes or something. So we're going to do, try to count 100 breaths. You're allowed to continue if you go off.

Just try to remember where you were. So here we go. 100 breaths.

Exhales the first half, inhales the second half. Now I'd like you to think about some interaction you had with someone, probably yesterday, but somebody you spent maybe half an hour with in the last few days. And just try to choose one of those interactions with another person, at least half an hour that you spent together.

And try to remember what it was that you were hoping to get out of that interaction. I spent the last five days with my wife. We went to take care of my mom who had a stroke.

And I was spending a lot of time with Veronica. And I think I was hoping to work on Sugeng's text. So that was kind of in the back of my mind.

What were you thinking about when you were with this person? What were you, what did you want to do during that time? And then what do you think the other person wanted to do during that time?

Based on what they spoke and based on how they were acting, what do you guess they most wanted to do while you were together? What was in their mind? And what would they enjoy?

What would they have enjoyed doing during that time you were together? I think my wife at that time, she was really focused on helping my mom. She has a list of other people that she's helping.

I think she would have liked to have really focused our time on that. And you could sacrifice what you wanted to do. And you could just do what the other person wanted to do.

And that probably won't be sustainable. You probably cannot continue doing that. You also have important things to do.

You have things that you would like to do. And then they have things that they would like to do. So, PHUNG GSUM PA Could there be a third alternative?

And bodhisattvas are constantly thinking of PHUNG GSUM PA. PHUNG GSUM PA means, is there a third choice? I know what my wife would like to do today.

I know what I would like to do today. And is there some kind of clever, innovative, creative way that we could both do what we want? And be together, and still be interacting, and still spend the day together.

Is there some way that we could both do, deeply get into what we want, individually, and create some third possibility of our relationship or our interaction? Where somehow, we do both at the same time better than if we were not together. Is there some way that I could work on Sugeng's translation?

And is there a way that we could be serving my mom and my wife's other clients? And is there some way that we could do both at the same time? We have equal right to do what we would like to do?

And is there some really super creative way that we could help each other do what each of us wants to do, and do it better than if we tried to do what we want alone, or at the expense of the other person? And this is the bodhisattva's way of life. They are not sacrificing what they would like to do.

They are not selfishly just doing what they would like to do. They are finding creative ways that everyone can get what they want at the same time. So think about that interaction, and try to think of a third choice between the two choices.

Something, some way that you could have achieved what both people wanted during the same day. So what my wife and I did, we blocked out at time in the morning. She enjoys walking, and we were in California.

She enjoys walking at the ocean. So she would go for a walk. We just make a deal.

And she might be collecting her thoughts for the day, or she might be preparing her list of things to do today to help other people. And then during that time, I will work on Tsugeng's great translation. And then we get together at the end of the morning, and we combine our lists.

She has a list of people she would like for us to help together, and I have my own list. So we spend a few minutes combining our lists and working out a way that we can do both during the day together. Try to think if there's some kind of way you could have done that with this other person in your interaction this week.

It's called PHUNG GSUM PA. It's called creative, super creative middle way between doing what they want, only what they want, and doing only what you want. Is there some super creative way to do both?

And no person sacrifices. Each person's goals for the day are equally important. And then slowly open your eyes, come back.

Take a stretch. And then I think if you're like me, so I used to have, I remember when I came to Diamond Mountain first, I had 80 students in New York. And we came here to learn Diamond Way together.

They did seven years of preparation in New York, and then we came here and we did seven years of Diamond Way. And then we all graduated. A lot of people did three-year retreat.

Now it's 200,000 students in the world. So there are 200,000 students in, there's about 15 organizations now. And there's about 200,000 students.

So I have these demands on my time. It went from 80 to 200,000. And I have the demands on my time are about that much more.

And I can't do what I do with my wife. I can't try to do what 200,000 people would like the way I used to do with 80 people. So unfortunately, I have friends, many friends in this room from the 80 people days.

And they're like, could I just have an hour of your time, Geshe-la? And I'm like, no, things have changed. By the way, I will spend time, and I do spend time.

And I always have time somehow. But you can't accommodate 200,000 people the way you can 80 people. It's not possible.

And I'm not saying you should go crazy and try to give an hour to 200,000 people. We calculated it the other day. It would take 16 years or something, 16.6 years. So it's not about that. It's not more clever time management. Time is also empty.

Time can also be bent and shortened or lengthened. Einstein proved it with mercury traveling around the sun. And the light that comes from mercury to the earth is bent by the gravity of the sun.

So it can be proven, as Einstein predicted, that the light, mercury seems to slow down as it exits the arc of the sun. And time slows down. Time is a circle.

Space is curved. And it takes longer for light to get to us if it has to pass by the sun, which means you are looking at the past. You are traveling in the past.

When you look at mercury in a telescope, literally you are traveling in the past. Time travel. And the new web telescope is just even more, it's even more the case.

You can be in the past. You can observe the past directly as it happens. And so the bodhisattvas method to accommodate all people equally has to do with emptiness of time and space.

Okay? We find time. We create time.

And we mess with, I almost said a bad word. We mess with space. And then we can serve more people.

So the two kinds of bodhichitta dovetail. The two kinds of bodhichitta help each other. It's impossible for me in a normal time space to do what I used to do.

And it's impossible to accommodate 200,000 people the way I accommodate my wife this week, unless I can work with emptiness. Okay? So you need that tool.

If you want to, in my opinion, the reason he started the discussion by saying the fake bodhichitta, was he was implying you got to use the ultimate bodhichitta also. Or you cannot ever serve people equally. Okay?

You cannot accommodate countless beings' wishes for equal time, unless you can mess with time. And you'll get better at it. Okay?

You'll get better at it. First, the desire has to be there to help hundreds of thousands of people. First, the desire has to be there.

And then that drives you. What's a necessity is the mother of invention. If you're hungry enough to serve hundreds of thousands of people, you will find a way.

Because the human mind is, the capacity, your capacity to serve others is infinite. You literally have an infinite capacity. You just have to be pushed to it.

Okay? Good? All right.

We'll talk more about it. We have about 10 minutes for questions. And Tim, I'll defer to you how you want to do it in this room, or you want to do it online?

I'll just do it. You choose questions. Okay, we'll start in here with the blue box, or the gray box.

And by the way, the questions don't have to be relevant. You can do any question you've been saving up for a year or something. I don't care.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you. We have to ask questions in the chat.

[Говорящий 1]
And if you have questions to ask in the chat, send them in. And don't be shy, and we'll try to cover them in the next session if we can. Okay, go ahead.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you for the opportunity. I have a question related to this training and also to Level 2 Advanced. So could you comment on the link between Tonglen Meditation and what I consider the most important idea in Level 2 Advanced, that I am the opposite of everybody that I am not.

[Говорящий 1]
I didn't catch the first thing. Between coffee meditation, did you say?

[Говорящий 2]
Between Tonglen Meditation, so what we are doing this week.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, okay.

[Говорящий 2]
And the main idea from Level 2 Advanced.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, okay, good, good. That's a deep question. So just as a background, DCI, Diamond Cutter Institute, which mainly, we have about 15 organizations.

Each one has its own niche. Each one is trying to serve people in a different way. We just opened a university, an MBA and EMBA university, because we didn't have a degree program accredited.

You couldn't get a degree that anybody else would accept in any of our 14 organizations. So we built a university. We're building a university in Sedona and Kyoto.

And we had our first classes two weeks ago. And it's going very well. And we are going to get accredited.

And it's extraordinary expenditures and extraordinary donations. And so we have literally millions of dollars of support and it's going very well. And we actually have students.

The first class is pretty big. So each different organization is meant to address a different need of people. And so DCI, their purpose is to address the needs of normal people who are not necessarily Buddhist.

And so we tried to make DCI secular. DCI doesn't teach religion. It teaches how to be successful at home, in your family, and how to be successful in a business.

And that's, last year 138,000 students took courses. Some are repeats. Some took two courses.

But 138,000 courses were taken last year. We made a goal of having 12 courses. So every year we set a goal to create a new course.

And there's courses. We just finished a course in addiction, for example, how to overcome addictions in Taiwan in June. Right, Sugeng?

We'll be teaching level seven, which is about how to see emptiness directly. And by the way, if you missed that, you're really stupid. You don't deserve to see emptiness directly.

Just kidding, not. Now there's a jackrabbit straight back, straight behind with the long ears. I think, unfortunately, desert animals tend to move.

But they have these huge ears. We call it jackrabbit, special kind of rabbit. Where was I?

Yeah, so that's DCI's goal. We finished the 12 years. And then people said, what are you going to do?

And I said, well, what I usually do, which is 12 advanced levels. So we finished the second advanced level last year, I think. Well, I wrote it last year, and we released it in December, I think.

And that level, the second advanced level, was really focusing on how your mind creates objects. And as Anahili mentioned, one of the most important aspects of how the mind creates objects is that we cancel everything an object is not. And the classic example is being in the train station, maybe I was with Walter and Judah, I don't remember, in Germany.

And we were with Sylvia Engelhardt. And we had like five minutes to catch a train. I think it was Minkin or something.

And we got there with all these bags and all these people. And I said, well, let's get on the train. And she said, no, we don't have any tickets.

And I'm like, who's got the tickets? And she said, there's a lady meeting us here. And there's like 5,000 people there milling around.

And the train is getting ready to leave. And I'm like, which lady? And she says, and then it was a natural process of elimination.

She said, well, first of all, she's a lady. So I just cancel all the men in the train station. Like I don't even look at them.

I just see 2,500 ladies. And then I say, well, is she tall or short? She's tall.

Okay, cancel all the short ladies. Now I'm down to 1,200 ladies. And then I said, does she have a coat on?

Yes, oh, 600 ladies. Okay, then what color is the coat? Red.

Cancel all the yellow coats, the blue coats, the green coats. And we're down to like 20 ladies, 20 tall ladies with red coats. And then I say, what's her hair look like?

One day I was looking for a lady at the, what is it called, the Lincoln Center. And the only clue I had to go on was she was a modern dancer. So I was looking at people's calves.

And I found her. So that's called a process of elimination. You cancel things until you arrive at the one you're trying to reach.

And your mind is doing that anytime you perceive anybody. So my mind is doing that with my wife. I'm canceling.

The only way I can see my wife to discuss who gets to do what they want is to cancel everything that's not my wife. And that's just a fact of human perception. You see things by canceling who's not the thing you want to see.

It's the same as the lady in the train station. So the human mind creates archetypes by canceling everything that's not the thing you're looking for. You never actually meet someone to discuss who's going to get to do what they want.

You meet people and you recognize those people by canceling everyone who they are not. Now there's a huge philosophical discussion. Do you actually have to perceive everything they are not to cancel it?

And the obvious answer is, you don't have time. I don't have time to cancel every single woman in San Diego to get to my wife to decide who's going to do what they want. You do it through representative examples.

So I cancel general other women in my part of San Diego when I reach my wife. And that's a process of elimination. If you understand that, you're close to emptiness.

You're much, much closer to emptiness. And then if you work on that idea, which is advanced level two in DCI. If you work on that idea, you can see the emptiness of your wife.

And then you can mess with reality. And you're more able to come up with these very innovative solutions to pleasing everybody. Which is, once you agree that everyone has an equal right to happiness, you do have to please everybody.

And get used to it. That saying you can't make everybody happy is not true. You can't please everybody, that's not correct.

It's not true. If you understand how your mind is creating people, then that means it is possible to make everybody happy at the same time. And that's our goal.

That's a bodhisattva's goal. And you do it by messing with reality. And you mess with reality by understanding how you are working with archetypes when you perceive anything, people or things.

And it's a deep question. And that's DCI advanced level two. By the way, we're writing advanced level three right now.

It's based on a really, we're coming out with new books now. The Mixed Nuts have been going for six years, Diamond Cutter Classics. We are doing one major book from every major tradition in 2,500 years.

So 100 generations of great books. We chose the greatest of the greatest. It's been six years and we're finishing books.

Books are starting to come out of the pipeline. And so we're going to be working, DCI advanced level three, we'll be using Ben Kramer's book, which is a study of, how do I say it? Belief systems, systems of belief.

Okay, and it's actually his book, Ben's book, which is I think almost 600 pages, is an examination of 101 ancient belief systems, all of which are candidates for us. So it's like a candy store of 101 different belief systems. You grew up with a belief system that your parents dumped on you.

And by the way, you have the right. Once you're 16 or so, you have the right to choose your own belief system. You don't have to follow necessarily the one that your parents did.

In my father's generation and in my high school, we got 10 days off every autumn to go out and kill deer. And I was trained to shoot a high-powered rifle. And I was expected to go kill a deer.

I was expected to leave school for over a week and go shoot a deer and tie it on top of the car and bring it home. And I did. And now I reject this belief system.

So anyway, Ben Kramer's book is an examination of 101 options that you have for new belief systems. And it's extremely deep and extremely beautiful. And it includes sections on enlightened physical activity, enlightened verbal activity, and enlightened mental activity.

And it's the first time that I've translated 110 mental qualities that you can develop. There's a viewpoint, the highest one, number 101, which has 110 different mental trainings you can do. And we put them all in the book.

And so that's advanced level three, which will be coming out December, Sugeng? I think. November.

Okay. And then advanced level four is already being written for 2024. And that's Sugeng's book.

And I'll tell you about that when we have more time. We're going to take a break, right Timothy? How long?

25 minutes. 25 minutes. We'll come back at a quarter to the hour in most time zones.

And we have arranged for the people here at Diamond Mountain, Grandpa has sponsored a green drink or a fresh orange juice. So try to find it and bring me one too. Okay.

Thank you.