«Дар освобождения», курс 40 «Магия пустотных медитаций и тонглен», занятие 6

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, welcome back. And we're going to do some Q&A at the beginning of the class because Geshe-la can't stop his mouth. So we're going to start with a question here at Diamond Mountain.

And then we'll go to questions online. So please feel free to send any questions. By the way, when we do Q&A, it doesn't have to be relevant or intelligent.

You can ask anything you want, okay? That's the fun part. And I think we already had somebody with the microphone.

[Говорящий 2]
Talk loud. One, two, three. Thank you, Geshe-la, for the possibility.

I had conversation with my Lama, and my Lama says that never ever do tonglen for your heart teacher.

[Говорящий 1]
But my karma forced me to see people in suffering and unfortunately see my Lama-like person who can heal, who can die. What can I do to change this? Okay, good question.

So the question was about doing tonglen with your teacher. And he's going to talk about it on this page. He's getting to it already.

But generally, I'll just go there. He says, in about maybe today or tomorrow, he says, this is the sentence. He says, LEN PAS SKABS LAM MA DANG SANGS RGYAS GNYIS LA LEN DU MED It means, when you do the taking part, it's inappropriate to do it with your teacher.

Or with a Buddha. He says those two. And he says, LEN DU MED means there's nothing to take.

I had the same problem with my teacher. I lived with my teacher for 25 years. He had, like his teeth.

When I met him, he was 55. He had never been to a dentist in 55 years. And it was bad.

And they didn't have dentists in Tibet at that time. And so, I had to take him to the dentist. And the dentist said he needs 20 teeth taken out.

And he was afraid because he'd never been to a dentist. So I had wisdom teeth. And I told the dentist, take mine out first.

He can watch. And then he won't be nervous. And then it was very bloody and messy.

And they had to drill the teeth into pieces and it got infected. And so I had all this, I had this question too, because it seemed like he was really suffering. And so I think my own personal opinion is with your teacher and with the Diamond Way teachings, you're going to have to be able to perceive your teacher as ill or suffering and still believe they are not.

And still take them to the dentist. And still make sure their teeth are in good shape. So a real Diamond Way practitioner has to overcome this division between appearances and reality.

I feel a very serious responsibility to make sure my Lama's health is taken care of. And I spend a lot of time on it. I spend a lot of time on arranging doctors and stuff.

And at the same time, I don't perceive my Lama as needing a doctor. So I think when you practice Diamond Way, that's something you're going to have to live with. You have to get, you have to balance taking care of your teacher's health with all of your resources.

And then on the other hand, believing that they are not sick. And seeing that they are not really sick. So that's one of the Diamond Way practices you have to get good at.

And so you have to, I'll tell you this, how about this way? If you work the way you should work to take care of your Lama's health, one day you will see that they don't need it. How's that?

But if you don't work to take care of their health, you will never see that they don't need it. Got it? How's that?

Other question. Timothy, you got some online? Tim?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, so online, there's been several questions. I'm gonna combine it into one question here. There's several questions about balancing priorities in life.

So how do we balance, one of the questions is about how do we balance the, you know, perhaps our Dharma life with our work life? Or balancing taking care of ourselves and taking care of others? And then asking the question of finding the punsubha, the third way.

So the questions keep coming back to what is the seed to be able to not see this compartmentalization so that we can actually see these creative ways? Yeah, because in class, one of the questions says in the class you're asking us to do it. But what's the seed that will allow us to be able to do it?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good question. Yeah, so look, I understand that I have to learn to, like taking care of others or taking care of myself. I understand that I need to do both.

And it doesn't feel like I have time. It feels like I have to sacrifice one or the other. And you know, I understand that there are Buddhas who can do both at the same time.

I'm not at that level. I only have so many hours in the day. I only have two hands.

I'm not like Avalokiteshvara with a thousand arms or something. I don't have that capacity. So I have to deal with my limited resources.

For example, it's very common for new Buddhists to over-Buddhicize and burn out and then quit. And then they never come back. And if you're in the Dharma business, you've seen it a million times.

And people get all excited about doing tonglen or taking care of other people. And then they neglect their own health. They neglect their own family.

They neglect their prior commitments that they made before they met Buddhism, like a marriage. And they get in trouble. So the question is basically this.

If I'm a normal person and I'm limited with my time, then how do I manage my time? And what are some creative things I can do to plant the seeds for Pungsumbha, to see these third options? And I'll start with, I went to a Tibetan doctor recently.

I haven't been to a Tibetan doctor for 40 years or something. And I translated for one, two famous doctors, the two most famous modern, well, 20th century doctors. I was their translator.

And I remember the first doctor I translated for, he gave a talk at Nancy Karen's apart loft in New York. These big, cheap spaces in dangerous neighborhoods. And she had a baby in her arms named Alice.

How old is she now, 40? 40 something. She's a doctor herself.

Anyway, she was in the class in Nancy's arms. That's how old it was. And the doctor was, somebody said, what gives people cancer?

And he said, oh, many things that you guys don't understand. He said, I'll give you some things that you don't even know, you don't even think about. Did you ever buy new tires for your car?

And everybody said, yeah, I bought tires for my car. He says, why did you buy new tires for your car? And we're like, because the tires wore out.

He says, when a tire wears out, where does the rubber go? And we're like, I don't know. It wears off the tire.

In New York City, there's a million and a half people commuting in every day. They drive in, many of them. Then the tires, he says, the rubber goes off the tires, it particleizes, it gets into the air.

In Manhattan, you're breathing rubber all day. Of course you're going to get cancer. And we're all like, wow, we never thought of that.

And he says, I'll tell you another thing. Your processed food in plastic and cans, it causes cancer. The food, processed food causes cancer.

He says, you can't eat that stuff. You got to eat fresh food. And then he went on like that, and finally somebody raised their hand and they said, look, I'm just a normal person.

I live in a normal apartment. I go to a normal store. I got to eat something.

I got to buy something. I got to breathe something. What am I supposed to do?

And he gave some advice and he said, try to eat more fresh food and avoid putting your nose near the exhaust of the cars. And then he said, then he looked at me and he said, and tell that guy to stop using the word normal. And I'm like, what?

And he said, it's bad luck to talk about yourself as normal. And I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, nobody's normal.

You are all amazing. And I'm like, wait, I thought you were just teaching medicine. And he goes off on this thing and he says, the reason you get sick is because you think you're normal.

That's the worst thing you can do. You are all special. You're super special people.

You heard Buddhism. You're the one person out of a million who came to Diamond Mountain or more. You're like effing amazing.

You are special, special people. And he went ranting. He was ranting for like half an hour on this thing.

Don't call yourselves normal. So that's my advice for this question is, you say, how is a normal person supposed to deal? What's the seeds you can plant to get the ability to be more creative with your time and to see, what's the seeds you can plant to see the pungsumbas?

And one important seed is to stop thinking of yourself as normal. You are not normal. If you're here, I'm lying.

If you're here at Diamond Mountain, you are weird. No, I mean, no. You're special.

Now you are, and you guys, you listen to these sutras all day, Sugeng's books, stuff like that. To meet those books is one person out of a hundred million. To hear these teachings, the fact that you're here is proof that you are special.

When you think about it more often, that plants the seeds to see higher options. That plants the seed. So it's this THAMS NA'ANG GZHAN.

In the Diamond Way, it's a greater sin to think of yourself as normal than to kill another person. So if you kind of fix that one, you'll see that. You'll plant the seeds to see those options, third options.

Okay, cool? And that's, I'll tell you another thing about Buddhism. The real antidotes for things are totally fun.

Like when the real solutions to problems are totally fun. If you think a solution sounds difficult or unpleasant or drudgery, you're in the wrong place. Because all the highest solutions to problems are totally fun.

And it's totally fun to realize how lucky you are. So the best practices, the highest practices are the most fun. And if you're not having fun, there's something wrong.

What did, $100, Dharmamitra's famous quotation. I want the whole thing. If you want the whole money, I need the whole quotation.

No yoga, no pain. Who said that? All right, stop, stop.

Cancel the bet. Cancel the bet. Dharmamitra said, no pain, no gain.

No fun, no yoga. It should be, somebody should attach it to the fourth chapter of the Yoga Sutra, which they also attach to the Yoga Sutra.

[Говорящий 2]
Actually, Geshe-la, Aisha gets it because she had it in the chat before you canceled the bet.

[Говорящий 1]
Aisha, that's cheating. Her husband is like Dharmamitra's main student. Okay, $100 for Aisha.

Add it to my tab with Anatole. I owe Anatole some money. Okay, all right, let's go back to the book.

Yeah, so do think about that antidote. The seeds, kind of all-purpose seeds is to realize how special you are and how lucky you are. And that's kind of all-purpose seeds, to see new solutions to your challenges.

And those solutions, what's the Tibetan word for unusual strategy? Tab khe, yeah. You should wait till I offer money.

Okay, hey, I got a free answer out of somebody, thank you. Okay, yeah, it means, skillful means, a cool strategy, fun strategy, to solve problems. Being a Buddhist should be fun.

If it's not fun, you're doing something wrong. Okay, all right, here we go. RGYAS PA NA SA NYANG BA'I RTZA BA'I SDUG BSNGAL Is that where we are, right?

ME DANG BYAS PA RANG GI SNYING RGYUR RTZA BUGS KYI CHEN ZIN GYI BSGOMS PAR THIM PAR BSAM So he says BSGOMS PA here. It's a very unusual Tibetan word that means a spirit, a demon spirit that took over your heart. Okay, like, what do you call that?

Like voodoo, like somebody put a voodoo spell on you and some demon took over your heart. That's called BSGOMS PA. So he says, first of all, I want you to think about all the people in the hell realms.

Okay, and I think of Ukraine with missiles coming down. You know, like that must be a similar feeling, I think. Kind of helpless terror, helpless terror.

Think of there are beings who live like that in the hot hells, in hells. There's a funny, there's a Christian writer who's very great, very good to read. Oh, what's his name?

C.S. Lewis. No, is it? Yeah.

What's the book? Screw Tape Letters. Yeah, screw tape is an old word for the devil.

And it's called Screw Tape Letters. And it's a beautiful book of letters from the devil to his nephew. His nephew has come to earth and he's assigned to corrupt a young man.

And he keeps failing. The young man keeps being pure. And the uncle's getting really upset because his nephew is not corrupting the guy very well.

And C.S. Lewis said it was very painful to write the book because he had to put his mind in the devil's mind. Anyway, the devil is bragging in that book. He says, one of the greatest achievements of devils in modern times is to make people feel not modern if they believe in hell.

One of the greatest achievements of the devils in the world is to get modern people to say there is no hell. Or that hell is an old stupid idea of Dante or the Catholic Church or something. He's like, one of the greatest achievements of the forces of evil in this world is to convince people that you are stupid or corny if you believe in hell.

And it's really true. There is a place like that. And it's easy to go there.

And it's hard not to go there. And they are suffering. So you take all that fire, all that fire, all that confusion.

I mean, think of an apartment building burning from a missile hit or something. And then just TSA'UG means you just sweep up all the fire in your arms like this. You just embrace the fire and you jam it into your heart.

And you feed it to that demon of your selfishness. It's really a beautiful image. Whole apartment is on fire.

Whole apartment building is on fire. A missile just hit. And you take your arms like this and you go, and that's called TSA'UG.

And you jam it into your heart and you feed it to your selfishness. And he's like, and then it disappears. They say it's really important that it disappears within a second.

You don't keep it there and say, oh, look, my heart's burning. Okay. All right, you have to put it out.

Before you take the next breath, that fire should be gone and it should have killed the demon. Both are gone. There's a practice.

My teacher called it the cigarette smoke practice. And the next moment after you feed the fire to the demon, the demon should disappear. And my teacher said, Marlboro, doom-doom.

It should be like cigarette smoke goes, like on a windy day, like cigarette smoke. The last part is cigarette smoke. Just goes, and then the demon's gone and the hell realms are all comfortable, like that.

So cigarette smoke at the end. Last bit, then all the selfishness is gone. So I'd like you to practice that today.

Okay, you have a question? Loud. Box, blue box.

What is the breath like when you're climbing up?

[Говорящий 2]
Do we do that with every breath we take and give or we just take, take, take, and then in the end we give?

[Говорящий 1]
What was, she asked, with each breath should I take it? I don't think you can do it with each breath. I personally, I cook it for a while.

I think about it. I visualize the hell. I get everything ready.

I make sure I got a good demon here. And then I say, okay, go. And I go, and use your left nostril for the inhale.

And that's a pranayama. That's a tantric practice. So that's why we practiced it this morning.

So when you're taking, use your left nostril. Geshe-la, what if I have a cold or a Sedona allergy? Then just imagine that it's coming through your left nostril.

It's okay. And then take it in and then do it. Cigarette smoke, everything's done.

Relax for a while. Enjoy, have fun. Think about the hell realm just became a really nice place, like a very beautiful, like a diamond mountain, beautiful green day here.

And then if you feel like it, do a second one. I personally don't think you can do more than two or three in a session. It's also very emotional.

It's kind of draining. You don't try to do it with every single breath. But you can keep using your left nostril.

To take. TSA BU CHEN ZHIG GI BSGOM PAR MTHIM PAR BSAM We're going to do more detail on it and it's coming. DE BZHIN DU DRANG SNYAL BA DANG Then he says, I want you to work through the...

So there's two parts to hell, basically. The worst part of hell has two parts. It's the hot hell and the cold hell.

One is like the North Pole. One is just fire. They don't talk much about the cold hells.

But he says, do the cold hells. And we're going to do more detail in a minute. YID BDAG, take care of the pretas, hungry ghosts.

Then take care of the dendros, the animals. And take care of the ZHA MIN and the ZHAs. These are like worldly gods, worldly gods.

And they look like Marvel comic characters. And then the humans. And he says, you can work up to the suffering of bodhisattvas on the 10th bodhisattva level.

Sometimes they say 10th level is buddhahood. Sometimes they say level 11 is buddhahood. So you can work your way up to high bodhisattvas.

High bodhisattvas, their biggest problem is called traces. GNAS MIN Traces, subtle traces of problems that they had millions of years ago. Like in the way they walk and stuff.

Weird, weird, weird little things. Okay. SDIG SDIB SO RANG BSTAN DU LHAN PAR BSAM NAS SDUG BSNGAL DANG PHRAL BZHIN SDIG SDIB BYANG BA'I SMOD PA DANG As soon as you do the taking, it's really important to do that kind of a BDAG BZHIN YAM CES What's that?

BDAG BZHIN BYAS BA Yeah, exchange yourself with others and feel how it feels to those guys. They're like, wow, that's nice. Thank you.

So put yourself in their shoes after the LEN PA. Put yourself in the shoes of the person whose suffering you took away and see how much it feels to them. And it doesn't hurt to feel how grateful they feel towards you.

That's fine. That's fine. So feel, after you do the LEN PA, after you take the problems from other people, briefly put yourself in their shoes and feel how good it feels.

And then see how good it feels to be the hero. Okay? Because they're looking at you and saying, oh my God, you just put an air conditioner in the hell realms.

You're so great. And that's not a bad thing. It's not pride.

It's not pride. It's a healthy, enjoying the good stuff you've done is different from pride. Pride, the sign that you're having pride about your STONG LEN is when you get competitive.

My STONG LEN is better than Rob's. And if you can do STONG LEN without pride, probably you're rejoicing and that's fun and that's great. Oh man, I just cleaned out the hot house.

I'm pretty cool. Literally. Okay.

All right. That's fine. That's fine.

So MOP PA means it's important to do that little exchange at the end and see how nice it feels that hell was emptied out. Or that hell has become like Diamond Mountain on a good day. Okay.

All right. And then he says, DE LTAR BDAG LA MIM PA RGYUR CIG BYAS KYANG MNON And there's also a side meditation you can do after you do, and by the way, I do want you to do it today. So you're cleaning out the hell realms.

Then you're doing the exchange and you're looking at yourself as the hero and thank you very much. And then you're going to tell the hell realm guy, and by the way, I'm here to take the rest of your crap also. I'm here to take the rest of your bad seeds.

I will take them. Okay. If you have any more bad seeds lined up for the future, give me those now at the same time.

Let's clean out the whole show. I'm not just going to clean out your current hell realm. You got any bad seeds left in there you want to give me?

I'll vacuum cleaner those also. And then you do this clever thing where every time something goes wrong for the whole week, you're like, yay, I used up those extra bad seeds. Because look, you're going to have bad stuff happen this week anyway, right?

Until you're a Buddha. Bad stuff's going to happen. You're going to have disappointments.

The car's not going to start. The flight from Lucerne is going to be late. Stuff happens.

And then you can say, secretly in your heart, you can say, ah, I just used up a few of that hell realm guy's bad seeds that I took, that I vacuum cleaned. Okay, all right. So then every other mess up in your whole year, you can blame the other guy's seeds.

Okay? And you can congratulate yourself. Hey, my car didn't start.

Good job. Hey, my boss yelled at me. Yay, good job.

[Говорящий 2]
How are you supposed to know? It's my birthday.

[Говорящий 1]
Aren't you supposed to burn them too? Yeah, you're supposed to burn them. And he says that.

Very important to believe that both you and the other person don't have them anymore. But if stuff goes wrong in your life for the next 10 years, you can imagine that this is how the seeds are burned. Okay, like that.

And it's a good way to use, it's a good way to get something out of the problems you have anyway. Okay? It's a good way to make something useful out of them.

Okay, so you're going to clean out three steps for this afternoon, right? Clean out the hell realms. What's the second one?

Look, see how good it feels for them when they look at you. And then for dessert, tell them, by the way, if you got any more bad seeds left over, hand me those, let me take those too. And I'll use them up in the next few weeks at my black hole cafe or something.

Hedong Cafe. Why are they called black hole? Ellie can tell you.

Next. Next. How much time I got, Tim?

Nine? Oh, we're good. LAS PA'I SKABS LAM PA DANG SANGS RGYAS NI LA LEN DU MED There's where he says, look, when you take the suffering from other people, don't do it with your teacher and don't do it with the Buddha.

There's a famous Shantideva thing about teachers. And there was a specific question in the Long Rim, which was, what do I do if my teacher is attacked? If my teacher is attacked, do I have the right to do violence to protect them?

And I think it was Pabongka Rinpoche, and he gets irritated. And he says, look, if your teacher is a teacher, they don't need you to protect them. So just forget it.

If someone's trolling your teacher or someone physically attacks your teacher, then, or verbally attacks your teacher, that's not your business. If your teacher can take care of their teacher, don't worry about it. It's very beautiful.

So you don't have to do tonglen on your teacher. They don't need it. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
I have a question to clarify, but can you do the tonglen with your teacher?

[Говорящий 1]
Oh sure, you can sit together and take the hell realm's fire away. That's fine. Thank you so much.

Yeah, yeah. That's what we're doing. So there's no need to, in Buddhism, we don't have this thing of, you can do violence if you're protecting your teacher or something like that.

There's no such thing. You can't do violence to anybody. LEN DU MED, GANG SA'I RIGS LA BLO YIN NUS PA MTHONG MEN CAN MANG LAS NA Now he goes a very beautiful direction.

And he says, GANG SA'I RIGS LA, he says, look, there's many kinds of people in the world and there's many different personality types. RIGS means personality type. BLO YIN NUS PA, also people's mental capacity, their spiritual capacity is big difference.

Different people, like, I don't know, I'm okay with irritating people. They don't, rarely do I get angry. Rarely.

My specialty is jealousy or desire. You see, so we all specialize. Some of us specialize in everything.

But he says, look, everybody's got different personalities. Okay. So he says, there's going to be LAS DANG PO BA.

Say LAS. LAS DANG PO BA So LAS means karma in Tibetan, but it also means work. So LAS DANG PO BA means beginner.

A beginner. He says, if you're a LAS DANG PO BA KA'I PHYIGS MTHONG LEN BSGOM PA MI NUS PA MI NUS PA'ANG BYUNG He says, look, there's people who are just starting out in Buddhism and they're not ready even for MTHONG LEN. They can't do it.

It's going to hurt them to try to take the pain from other people. They're already having a bad day. Then tell them to take away other people's problems.

They're like, look, I'm already having a breakdown. I can't handle any more problems. Pabongka Rinpoche says, okay, there's those kind of days.

There's days when you're not going to do it. My yoga teacher, David Swenson, he's like, there's days when you get on the mat and you should just get off the mat. I like those days.

And it's just not going to work today. He says, so what if you're that kind of person? Or what if you're having a bad day and you don't feel like going to the hell realms today because you're already having a hard day?

Then he says, I got a meditation for you. So the lam rim goes off on another thing. Here's the meditation picture.

Do MTHONG LEN on yourself. Do MTHONG LEN on yourself. If you're having a bad day and you can't handle doing MTHONG LEN on somebody else, then, okay, just do MTHONG LEN on yourself.

And by the way, if Pabongka Rinpoche was here, he'd say, that's fine. We all got days when MTHONG LEN's too much. You don't have to go visit the hell realm every day.

There's days, like tax days coming up, right? April 5th, we got a financial... 18th.

What? 18th. Oh, it's not the 15th anymore?

Oh, there's this. Anyway, it's enough stress this week that we don't need more stress. I got the IRS.

I don't need the hell realm. So you can go there. You can do MTHONG LEN on yourself.

And I'd like you to practice that also today. So you're going to do hell realms, three parts, right? And we're going to describe how to do MTHONG LEN on yourself.

And here's the instructions for it. And it's very beautiful. DE LTA BU'I RIGS LA If you're having a day like that, LEN PA'I GURIM RANG NAS TZAM He says, go back to the seven-part mojo.

And he quotes a line from the seven-part mojo. And it says, LEN PA'I GURIM RANG NAS TZAM means, when you're doing the LEN, the taking, in MTHONG LEN, giving and taking, you're allowed to start from yourself. RANG NAS TZAM means start with yourself.

If you're having a hard day. Or personally, like in my three-year retreat, which I did close to here, my personal observation, maybe Kat can tell you, my meditation ability decreases as the day goes on. My best meditations are right after dawn.

And then the mid-morning is really good. After lunch is hopeless. Evening is more hopeless.

My meditation ability goes like this. So he says, maybe if you're... And some people are worse in the morning and better in the evening.

But judge the time of day. Judge your mental freshness and react to that. Do it on yourself.

If you're not feeling very fresh, but you want to get some meditation in, then do it on yourself. Do MTHONG LEN on yourself. And then maybe a couple hours later, you're going to feel better.

After your green drink. Okay, here's how to do it. RANG LA PHYI ROL DBANG RGYU'I SDUG BSNGAL DE SNGA PHRO LA LEN CING GOM In the morning, meditate on yourself this evening.

In the future. Me in the future. I know I might have a potential suffering coming up this evening.

My friends, Ellie and Adriana and Rebecca offered to bring me a sample from the new Indian restaurant in Bui, which is risky. So I can do MTHONG LEN on myself later with the stomach ache from the food. See what I mean?

So you can, in the morning, you can do MTHONG LEN on potential problems that I hope I won't have in the evening. And you can take away the pain in the evening. Like I get tired.

I would like to, I don't know, around nine o'clock or something. I can't work that well. And I could take the, I could take my own suffering.

SDUG BSNGAL DE SNGA PHRO LA LEN CING GOM And that's what the lojong says. That's the big letters down below, you guys. Keep going.

Yeah, there. Okay. LEN PA'I DGOS RIM Here's the original lojong.

I always like to go get it. This is from the 12th century probably. LEN PA'I DGOS RIM RANG NAS TSIS ZHES PA When the text says start your taking practice from yourself, BDAG LA SKYE BA PHYI MA'I PHYI MA PHAN DANG You can start with the suffering you're going to have in your next lifetime.

But if you're not up for that, THA NA SANGS PEN MIN GYUR SDUG BSNGAL KUN BYUNG THAMS CAD You could just start with the problems you might have tomorrow and you can take them today. That's the ancient text. MIN PAR GYUR GCIG NYAMS DU BSAM DE SAGS PA'I KHYEN NGAN GROG SU GYUR BA DGOS PA YOD KHYEN NGAN GROG SU GYUR PA What's GROG PO in Tibetan?

GROG PO GROG PO means friend. So he says, in this way, your future problems can become your buddies. It's a cute, it's very kadampa.

Your future problems will become your friends. Like that, okay? GROG SU GYUR All right.

Next picture. I love this picture. I use this picture when I think about bodhichitta.

The first bodhichitta experience. It's the closest picture I've ever seen to that experience. And so we're going to talk about expanding that taking to other planets, okay?

Expanding this giving and taking to other planets. Here we go. DE NAS SANGS RGYI DE DE RING LA LEN PA You could take this evening's problems this morning.

I like this, especially if I have a meeting with someone that I know is going to be tense. And I did this in my corporate career. Like if I knew I was meeting with a difficult supplier in the afternoon, I would do SDONG LEN in the morning.

And then when the meeting with the difficult supplier comes in the afternoon, subconsciously you remember taking away the tension and there's less tension or there's no tension. It's kind of cool. So if you have a difficult meeting coming up or I don't know, some emotionally difficult thing coming up, do SDONG LEN on yourself and get ready.

And what happens is in the morning you do the SDONG LEN and you visualize the meeting in the afternoon and the supplier is yelling at you and you're like, okay, I know, I'm sorry. And then you suck the tension out of you and give it to you this morning and you destroy it. And then frankly, you won't remember in the hours in between.

Okay, I used to do this every day for corporate life. I would do SDONG LEN in the morning on myself and then I would forget about it. And then at four o'clock the supplier comes and suddenly I would feel somebody taking away the tension.

Okay, so it's really cool practice. So in the morning, take away some tension you expect in the afternoon. Then you won't remember because you're busy.

And then when you hit the afternoon and the guy walks in, suddenly the tension's gone. It's like someone sucked it with a vacuum cleaner. So it's really cool.

I don't know if it's a subconscious suggestive thing, I don't know, but it works. And the proof is in the pudding. Do you know this American expression?

It means, don't believe me, just try it and you will see. And it works and it helped grow my company. It helped grow the company to 10,000 people from three.

It's this practice of dealing with a problem in your imagination in the morning. And then when you get to the problem in the afternoon, there's some strange stuff goes on. Like the supplier comes in and tells you how sweet you are.

And you're like, what? I mean, weird stuff happens. Because it's all coming from you anyway, right?

So you're messing with the seeds in your mind for the afternoon. In the morning, you're messing with the seeds in your mind that are going to create the afternoon. And it's a fun practice.

As I said, no pain, no gain. No fun, no Buddhism. Okay, right?

If you're not having fun, you got to do more Lam Rim or something. All right, DE NAS BDAG BA BYAS MA'I DANG You can also take away problems next month. BLO BYAS MA, next year.

MI TSE DI, rest of your human existence, this one. SKYE BA'I PHYI MA, next life's problems. Take away next, I don't know why we got this picture.

Okay, CHER RAB BSTAN, spend all of your future lives. Why not go for the big time? All your future lives up to Buddhahood.

CHER RAB BSTAN, then start on your pa and your ma, your apa and your ama. Then start on your dad and your mom. You covered all your problems up to the end of your human existence or your non-Buddha existence.

So why not start with your mom and your dad? Then NYE BRAL, NYE BRAL means friends and family. Friends and family.

Work on them. Then PHAR MA, PHAR DO means in between life, between death and rebirth. But PHAR MA means neutral people in your life.

People you see at the grocery store. People you see at the gas station on the way to Diamond Mountain. Just people you're never going to meet again soon.

Do it on them. Then what's the ultimate? DGRA, so DGRA CHEN PO means enemy destroyer.

DGRA means enemy. Okay, where is that? ARI, ARI in Sanskrit, ARI.

ARI in Sanskrit, not like Hebrew. ARI means enemy. ARIHAT means enemy destroyer.

All right, DGRA, work on your enemies. Then SEMS CAN THAMS CAD KYI BAR BYANG Keep going till you cover every living creature. But I want you today to practice it with yourself tomorrow, let's say.

Or this evening. If you're doing it this morning, just work on yourself. I'd like you to have this fallback meditation.

When you're having a lousy day and the meditation just isn't working, then go to this one. Just take your own evening's problems away. And that's enough.

Don't stay in a bad meditation for an hour. Lighten it up, brighten it up, or quit. But don't get to hate...

They say in Tibetan, don't get to hate your meditation seat. If it's really not going well, dumb it down, dumb it down, dumb it down, quit. Don't quit every day.

That's not meditating. SNGA MA SNGA MA LA SBYONG BA NA PHYI MA PHYI MA LA MIG PA BOD KHYIN SDUG BSNGAL SDIG GYIBS SOGS RANG BSTAN DU LONG That's a misspell, that's a miscarming in the book. It should be K-Y-I-N.

I'll make a mark, which is a very rare word. SDUG BSNGAL SDUG BSNGAL Okay. So KHYIN is a very unusual word that means keep raising the bar.

Keep doing it. KHYIN means present participle. Keep raising the bar.

As soon as you can do one person, like your mom, then increase it to your dad. And once you can do it with your mom and dad, increase it to your family. Once you can do it with your family, do it with people you don't know.

Like that. Keep raising the bar. Keep taking things.

Now we're ready for that image, you guys. That's the ultimate one, right? And DE LTAR, he says, DE LTAR KHO RIM DU BZHIN DU BYED NAS SBYONG DGOS KYIS He says, you can work out through yourself this evening, yourself tomorrow, yourself this month, yourself this year, yourself the rest of this life, yourself the rest of all your lives.

Start with your mom, go to your dad, go to your relatives, go to your friends, go to people you never met or cared about, and then go to your enemies. KHO RIM BZHIN, he says, work up gradually. Build up your strength.

BYONG KYIS DANG PO NAS BGRA SOGS Don't do it with your da. Don't start with your enemy because you won't be able to do it wholeheartedly. Don't start with your enemy, but make it a goal.

Have it as a goal. And by the way, when you start doing your enemies, your whole life gets turned upside down. Then it's weird.

Life becomes weird because you're taking care of your enemies instead of competing with them or hoping that they fail, and life gets strange. Then you don't have any enemies after a while. Or it's difficult to call someone your enemy.

You spent the whole morning trying to take away their pain and then you're supposed to fade them in the afternoon. It gets difficult. Okay, next picture.

In English it's called what? Hopscotch. And it's, I don't know, they don't teach it to boys in the 1960s, but I guess it's some kind of thing where you jump from one box to another.

And it's a game. It's a children's game in America. And we call it skipping.

It's a Buddhist practice. We refer to it with the lion's dance where you jump, you skip around to different levels of meditation. So you can do a meditation where you focus on one thing for an hour or something like that.

But there's also meditation practices where you can purposely jump around with control. With control. It's like a runner who runs hard, then stops, slow, faster, medium, like that.

I didn't do these running machines. They have a workout. We had one in Kyoto.

I forget who it was. It was Seiji or somebody on a bicycle. And they had like a 20 foot TV screen.

And the guy was, was it you Tim? Oh, it was him. And the guy's like, ah, let's go faster.

And Tim's like, ah. And then they're like, let's slow down. And Tim's like, ah.

And then it's like you jump into different gears. And that's called skipping meditation. By the way, we're going to have an idim examination.

Idim means these idea images. It's a new word I invented. So the examination for this class, I'm going to show you pictures and say, what are they?

Okay? So you should be making notes. We're on 15 now, by the way.

You've had 15 pictures. And personally, I can remember the content of a teaching for a week if I have the pictures. And I test myself at home.

I say, okay, hopscotch. What's hopscotch? I say, oh, that's where you skip around to different levels of tonglen.

In one session, you jump around to different kinds of tonglen. Let's do the last picture. What was the last picture?

We're going to go backwards, you guys. We're skipping. Yeah, this is tonglen on your enemy.

Okay, back one more, you guys. This is spread it from what to what? Do the tonglen on.

Start with this evening's yourself, or this afternoon's yourself, and then work up to all the planets in the universe. Okay? Last picture.

Yeah, especially if you're having a bad day, okay? If it's just not going to work, you have a choice. Get off the meditation cushion, or do tonglen on someone who really needs it, which is me.

Okay, what's the one before that? Not getting cut by Mr. Ravi. Yeah, that's our target, the five realms.

Microphone.

[Говорящий 2]
I understand how we can do tonglen on ourselves, because we are the source of our own seeds, but how does tonglen work with taking other people's seeds when we know that they have the power to change their own seeds and not us?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good. That gets into a deep question. Can you really take pain from other people?

Can you really remove their pain? And in my opinion, the answer is no, you cannot. It's not going to do anything to lessen their pain if you imagine you're taking away their seeds.

Seeds are, by definition, personal. You cannot take other people's seeds. If it was possible, we wouldn't be here.

We'd be in a Buddha paradise already. If it was possible to take away another person's bad seeds, we wouldn't be here. I mean, that's just, Buddhism loves logic, and I'm afraid that's totally logical.

So, if it was possible to take away somebody's seeds, somebody would have done it already. But the desire to take away other people's seeds can result in an environmental ripening where you see less seeds. And that's actually a ripening of yourself.

That gets into a deeper question of the five skandhas. So the five skandhas are the five parts to a person. In English, we call it body and mind.

In Buddhism, we call it the five parts. And they are like this, body and mind. So body is the first part.

Then your feelings, capacity for discrimination, all the other parts of your mind and personality. And then your awareness, these five. These are, in Buddhism, this is body and mind.

Body and mind. They're called the body-mind complex. There's a beautiful debate in the Abhidharma, how big is this one?

Some people say it stops at the edge of your skin. Then Vasubandhu is like, what about fingernails? Then they say, well, if you clip it and you don't ouch, that's not you.

When you clip it and you ouch, that's too close. That's you. That's the edge of you.

And then other people say, come on, that's ridiculous. The things that are happening in this room are affecting me also. So actually in the Abhidharma, in the deep Abhidharma, the first of the body and mind, this body includes the whole physical world, the universe.

This body and mind is, the body is everything. Every physical thing. So when you take care of yourself, or when you try to take someone's seeds, the environmental karmic result is that you change the physical universe because that is part of you.

Got it? Cool? So are you changing other people?

No. Are you changing them? Yes.

Okay. Yeah. But because you created them.

You created them with their seeds. Go. But if I don't finish my quota from Tim, it's your fault.

Go ahead, go ahead.

[Говорящий 2]
In 20 years, blame me. So my question is, I understand that by changing myself, I stop seeing sufferment of other people. But is it because they stop suffering or just something changes and I stop seeing it?

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, that's a good question. If you, and that's the same question. If you work on your own seeds, you are also changing because of this.

Because the whole world is part of you. You're also changing the whole world. So when you work on your own seeds, you are working on other people's seeds.

Cool? Yeah. Okay.

I was having fun going back to the pictures. What was the Mr. Ravi haircut? Yeah, how to cut the black.

Let's keep going back. Are you up for it? Who's running that?

Okay, what's the next one? I'm going back. Let me do it this way.

Oops, sorry, hang on. Okay, good. The one before that is the guy with the present, I think.

No, go the other. Yeah, what's that? What was the lesson here?

Should you give first or take first? Yeah, but did anyone say give first? Yeah, some people say give first.

Yeah. Okay. All right.

I forget the argument for giving first. The argument for taking first is obvious. It's the bicycle band-aid thing, but yeah.

Okay. Okay, next one. Yeah, especially with the viewpoint looking backwards after you switched, right?

Okay. How does it feel? Yeah, you guys are going good.

Let's do the last, first seven. Next one. Wayne.

Yeah, four river currents. SKYE RGANG NA CI Yeah. But think of it as, what was the image?

Come on. The person already got thrown in the river. Yeah, there's four steps to the process.

They got thrown in the river. First, they got handcuffed. They got put in a cage and it was dark.

Okay, okay, okay. Nice. You guys were listening oddly.

All right, next one. No, it should be, yeah, there, mm. Yeah, this one.

Yeah. What's it mean? Yeah.

Yeah, okay. In American English, we have this thing called ticket. You know, he's my ticket to heaven or she's my ticket to heaven.

Okay. Like other people are your ticket. If you take care of other people, you get what you want, okay.

All right, what's the one before that? We didn't do this one, I picture, I think, but can you guess? It's when you eat a croissant.

Yeah, go backwards. Take the process backwards through the whole chain and you will reach the people who invented farming. 50,000 years ago, okay.

You should be able to go back. What's a parallel meditation? Deeper.

Yeah. The history of your thoughts. The history of your thoughts.

And again, I tell you, if you do that one every day, you will have really weird stuff. No, I mean, you'll be able to go back to your, when you were a baby and then you'll be able to go back further. And it's very exciting and very sexy.

It makes you want to meditate. You just follow it straight back. Yes, Mr. Chen. I can repeat. Yes, yeah, you mentioned that this one is good for your emptiness, understandings. Going to help you to see emptiness directly.

Why is it working like that? It gets you back, well, okay, the main content of a CHOS RGYUN GYI MTHIL GYIN ZIN is you will find it easier to go back even to previous lives. The events that pop out first are every Dharma teaching you ever got.

And that helps you see emptiness. When you trace your mind back to your childhood and your previous lives, the events that will come up first, the strongest events, the strongest seeds in your mind are every teaching you ever heard. And you'll have this weird experience of remembering teachings that you went to in your past life.

And that helps you see emptiness. And those are the most indelible seeds. Those seeds are there in everybody.

Your past Dharma classes are there. And if you do this practice, you'll hit those. One before that.

Yeah, it's just kind of aspiration. Are there people who have given their bodies to tigers? Yes.

Should you try it today? No. Very bad idea.

Okay. Just try to give away your green drink. And what the book says is, have aspiration.

May I one day be like Mahasattva, this previous life of Lord Buddha. Me and Christy, who helped found this place, Christy McNally, my old partner, who worked really hard to build this place. And probably most of the cabins are her fault.

We used to go to the McDonald's and the only thing we could eat was French fries. And we used to buy French fries and we would go outside and we would break pieces of French fries and throw them to the sparrows. And we'd say, we did this, we had this special McDonald's prayer.

And it was, if you eat that French fry, you're going to be one of my first students after I become a Buddha. So that's a great practice you can do. You can do that.

That's the tiger thing. Like someday I'll give you my body, but let's start with a little bit of French fries. Okay.

After I had a couple myself. All right. And what's the first picture we had?

Oh, what is that one? No, I think we didn't. I must be confused.

No, there should be one of somebody cutting, yeah, my brother cutting, what's that? Sri Sena, that's Sri Sena. That's the art of sharing.

Right, the art of sharing. Okay, let's go back to, which one were we on? I think it was, yeah, 15.

Yeah, the hopscotch. Okay, we got five minutes. Let's use it.

DE NA SKABS RE RANG NAS BAR TZAM NAS DE LTAR BSGOM So if you're in that kind of a mood that you're not really into meditating today, start with doing tonglen on yourself in the afternoon or the evening. And because you're so interested in yourself, it'll be more fun. SKABS RE RANG NYAL BA NAS BYANG SEMS SA BCUG PA'I BAR DANG Then sometimes hopscotch to every living being up to 10th level bodhisattvas.

SKABS RE RUNG PA'I BU NAS MAR Sometimes you could do a geographical version. I'll start in Arizona, I'll go to California, work my way up to Vancouver, stuff like that. You can do a geographical one.

BU NAS DANG, SKABS RIM DANG NAS YAR RIM BDE GYIS DE LTAR BSGOM Or sometimes you can do the opposite and start in Vancouver and come back Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Palm Springs, Gila Bend, and get to Rimrock. THA NA, KYIS LA SDOGS RGYAL PA'I SDUG BSNGAL TSUN LAM And then he says, I want you to get to the point where you could take the suffering away from an animal that was scared by a human. And if you're sensitive, by the way, his example is throwing a rock at a dog, but if you're sensitive, watch the birds around here.

And you go out and they sound so beautiful. I record them for Veronica, send them to him. Send them to her on the phone because they're so beautiful.

But try to get close to one and they wisely fly away. And there's a reason why they do that because they die if they don't. So they are suspicious, animals are.

By the way, if you do a three-year retreat, after six months of silence, they start trusting you. And we had coyotes, we'd had pet rabbits, we had rattlesnakes, skunks, all kinds of fun things. They trust you after about six months if you don't talk.

I don't know what's the thing. So anyway, he says, next time you look at a bird and they glance at you like that because they don't trust you, do a quick tonglen on their nervousness to be near you. Like get your tonglen so refined that you can take away a nervous glance from a sparrow.

Like a momentary nervous glance from a sparrow and get to the point where you see a sparrow a little bit uncomfortable, take it. Take it and then move on with your day. It's very beautiful.

All right, one more thing. We have two minutes. Next picture.

He says, ,BLANG PA DE NYID KYANG YAL BA'AM, ,DRAM DU SHAR PA LTA BU MIN PAR, He says, when you take the sparrow's momentary nervous response to you, when you take even that much from another being, you are not allowed to set it on the table. What's he going to say next? I want to see it strike your heart.

Okay, every pain you take from another person, strike. This is the only place you can put them. Don't say, I'll pick you up tomorrow.

I'll put you in my heart tomorrow. Right away, let it strike your heart. Burn it here.

You're not allowed to take a pain from another person and say, I'm just going to put that in the fridge until tomorrow and then I'll destroy it in my heart. He says, the only place you're allowed to drop a pain in an act of taking from another person is in your own heart. You're not allowed to put it anywhere else.

,DRAM DU SHAR PA LTA BU MIN PAR, ,SNYING RGYUD DUS SU LEN, Strike to the middle of your heart. Always to the middle of your heart. ,DE DAG GIS TSE, ,JIGS DANG, Oh, this is misspelled.

It's totally misspelled. You should hire me to fix all these. Oh, you did.

It's not D-A-N-G. It's D-N-G-A-N-G. No.

It's a very rare word and it means to be, it means to feel apprehensive. It's apprehensive. Then go back to the picture.

He says, and the last thing he says is, if you're doing your SDONG LAM right, and if all those, even the little pains of the sparrows, and you're shoving it in the right place in your heart, it should feel a little scary. You should feel a little scared. And then he's going to say tomorrow when we meet again, that's a good thing.

That means you're doing it right. If it feels a little bit uncomfortable to take that fear of a bird into your heart, you put it in the right place. GNAS DU SNGON PA What's that?

Marma Hatta. Yeah, you have struck the right spot. You hit the chakra on the, you hit the chakra nail on the head.

Okay, got it? Okay, cool. We'll continue with that tomorrow.