«Дар освобождения», курс 40 «Магия пустотных медитаций и тонглен», занятие 9

[Говорящий 1]
We're at this point where Pabongka Rinpoche encourages us to make a little personal mantra for ourselves, to remember taking away other people's problems and giving them help. And then there's an ancient tradition of saying a mantra to yourself. And just as you go through the day.

So keep your mantra, okay? Don't lose it when you get on the airplane. Don't leave it at the airport.

And use it, okay? Just use it while you're walking around. I'll give $100.

Everybody wakes up. Okay. If you can tell me the two requirements for a powerful mantra, the traditional requirements for a mantra.

Is that? Oh, you're going to be greedy again? All right, no, no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

No, you got it, you got it. I'm just joking.

[Говорящий 2]
Keeping your morality yourself and getting the mantra from an authentic person.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, nice, $100. Now, how do you get your $100 when you win a bet in here? You go to Venerable Jigme.

You don't complain to me two years later that you didn't get your money, okay? All right. Yeah, you have to, the mantra has to be, you have to be encouraged by an authentic lineage to create your mantra, and you did that already.

And then secondly, you have to keep your morality. Mainly your 10 good deeds, okay? But also your other two kinds of morality, which for $100 are what?

Yeah, bodhisattva morality and your tantric morality, diamond way, okay? Don't forget to collect. All right.

STONG LEN DRIN PA SO BA'I PHYIR GNAS SKABS THAMS CAD DU STONG LEN GYI TZIG BRDOD And it means keep reciting your little mantra to yourself so you can remember to give people happiness and take their problems. And you can do it in little tiny ways, like at the airport, you can let people get in line ahead of you at customs and stuff like that, okay? All right.

He gives a couple of examples of mantras. We talked about them already. And I'm going to start at ,DI LA ZER DGOS Okay, so a couple of paragraphs down.

Keep going, there you go. Yeah, ,DI LA ZER DGOS NAS GSUNGS PA'I TZIG RGA' ZHIG YOD KYANG He says, look, I could give you some words from Golden Light Sutra, that Suvarna Prabha Sutra that you could use for your little mantra, okay? And again, that sutra is, it has a lot of amazing stories about Lord Buddha and how he became a Buddha.

The story of him giving his body to the tiger is in there in Mongolia. So we've done a lot of work in Mongolia. John Brady has three projects in Mongolia trying to catalog and save 300,000 books.

And I think if you ask a Mongolian what's their greatest book ever, they would say the Golden Light Sutra. So that's, for them, very important. GSUNGS PA'I TZIG RGA' ZHIG YOD KYANG He says, look, I could give you some mantra from the Golden Light Sutra, ,BAR KYANG, ,THE RANG RE MA BZHIN NA DE NA He says, but you guys don't really know that sutra very well.

So, ,DE NA JA TZIN LAM MA THUG BYED CHEN So you could just recite the verse that we got you from the Lama Chodpa, which we do every time we do retreat here. The first night we get here, we do Lama Chodpa. So he says, you could just use the verse from Lama Chodpa.

,ZHES SOGS DON PAS RUNG, ,SNGON GYI LAM MA RGA RE, ,DI NYID GRANGS SOGS TU RDZAS PA'I LO RGYUD KYANG YOD He says, some teachers of the past have used this verse from the Lama Chodpa to do their, as a mantra. And instead of doing Vajrayogini mantras in retreat or something, instead of doing a hundred thousand Vajrayogini mantras or a million Vajrayogini mantras, they will do this verse about love as a mantra. Like a million times or something.

So they'll do it as what they're counting. They'll repeat it over and over. I have a picture for you.

You ready? No, go back to 43.22. There's two of them. Yeah, here's one, Lama Tsongkapa Rinpoche.

He passed away yesterday. And I just wanted to talk about him a little bit. He was the first person to invite me to teach in my life.

And he was a very great teacher who helped bring Buddhism to the West. And the fact that we have Buddhism in the West. I mean, I grew up in a country where we didn't know what's Buddhism.

We never heard of meditation. And there were a few great teachers who came down, had great suffering, came out of Tibet, lived in refugee camps, and then slowly came to the West. And there were just a handful of very brave teachers and they learned English and they helped Westerners.

And whenever I think about those years, I feel like it was the Titanic hitting the iceberg. And the Westerners were kind of like the iceberg. And then these few brave teachers from Tibet came out of Tibet and started coming to the West to teach Westerners.

They were kind of like the Titanic and they kind of wore themselves out on the Westerners. It was not easy. It was a huge cultural gap between old Tibet and the West.

And these people, these few special lamas, they came and they tried to teach crazy hippies. I'll show you his teacher, Lama Yeshe. Next picture.

That's Lama Zipa's teacher. And they came out together. And Lama Yeshe was a Geshe who came to the refugee camps.

And he was very goofy. You can see, right? And he was a great joker.

I remember this story that he went to a sub-department store in San Francisco and he said, take me to the ladies' section. And the students are all like, what? And he said, take me to the ladies' section.

And he went to the ladies' section and he found some really loud orange pants. And he said, that's the right color. And then he bought them and he would wear them.

And he's like that. He was so goofy. And he taught at San Francisco State, I think, University.

He taught Westerners. So some of the first Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists to bang into the iceberg of America was Lama Yeshe. And it was hard for them.

It was really hard for them. And they didn't have any money. And they were trying to teach.

He was teaching at San Francisco State University, I believe it was San Francisco State, during the hippie times, during the worst part of Berkeley. And it was so, it took so much courage to teach these wild hippies about Buddhism. And he did.

And they did. And they tried really hard. And I remember one day they came together to see my teacher.

So it was a big deal. So I was all excited. And they came to the Mongolian monastery and they showed up and Lama Yeshe was goofy and fun.

And Lama Tsongkapa was 100% the opposite. He was very, very serious. And he was a very high reincarnated lama.

So he wasn't a geshe, he was a truku. He was a reincarnated lama. And he was born on the slopes of Mount Everest.

He's from a village on Mount Everest, in a tiny village. So he ended up in a refugee camp, super conservative. And his only thing was to see how many tantric initiations he could collect.

And I think he got up over 100. Like I have three or something. And he was very devoted to that.

So he was a high, high reincarnation from the age of three or something. And he met Lama Yeshe. And there was this magnetism between them.

And they built the largest organization of Western Buddhists in the world together. And they worked really, really hard. And Lama Yeshe had a heart problem for many, many years.

And he just kept going. And he refused to rest. And finally his heart gave out.

And then his student Lama Sopha kept going for many years. And he had a stroke about seven, eight years ago. Jingyi, I don't know.

And he wouldn't stop. And when I did my three-year retreat, I was teaching at his center in Bulgaria. I was teaching Diamond Cutter Sutra for the first time in public.

And he asked me to teach it. And so he was there and he didn't sleep. He met students all night.

And I said, do you have any advice for my three-year retreat? And I didn't hear back. And then suddenly somebody's banging on my door at like three o'clock in the morning.

He's ready to see you. And I'm like, okay. And I went there with Christy, my partner.

And he said, okay, you guys are doing three-year retreat, huh? And we said, yeah. And he said, your eyes, ears, nose, your senses are the man, the retreating man.

And the objects in the universe, the things to see, things to hear, things to smell, these are the lady. And they will be connecting the whole retreat. And then he says, good luck.

I'm like. And so it was like that. He's amazing.

He was very, very conservative. But he had a very, for me, he had an instinctual democratic spirit. And he would say, look, that's not the way I would do it, but I respect that you can do it that way.

And I support you. And that's the way he was. So we lost a great teacher yesterday.

And that generation has passed. I think that generation has passed. So we're really lucky to have them.

Now it's kind of our problem, okay? Now it's our job to pass it on, okay? So let's be as brave as him and hardworking as them, okay?

Let's keep it alive, okay? And so bless me, my holy Lama, bless me. Lama of compassion, that every living being there is, may find every kind of happiness.

Let all the evil deeds and obstacles, let all the pain that ever comes to every living being, every one of them, my mother, my father, come and ripen upon myself, ripen upon me now, and let any goodness I ever do and all my happiness be sent away to other people. Okay. DER MA ZAD D-E-R-M-A Down a little bit.

PHYIR LAM THAMS CAD KYANG BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS LHAG LTABS SU GRO BAR BYA'I DGOS ZHIG Use every activity of the day. I always think of driving back to Tucson. Use it as a practice, okay?

Your interaction with the other drivers, which can be interesting in Arizona. You know, use it as an excuse to practice DONG REN, even the traffic. DER GA' ZHIG DE NI RDOG PA'O CHEN LA'I SEMS PA DANG CHU YUL YONGS SU BDAG PA'I RDOG LA'I SEMS PA SOGS LTABS DGOS DE NI refers to a couple sutras that you could check.

GZHAN YANG BYANG CHUN GYI SEMS LA THUGS DAM GYI TSO BAR DE NI LHAG LTABS SU GRO BAR BYA'I DGOS ZHIG RDOG PA'I RDOG LA'I SEMS PA LHAG LTABS SU GRO BAR BYA'I DGOS ZHIG RDOG PA'I RDOG LA'I SEMS PA LHAG LTABS SU GRO BAR BYA'I DGOS ZHIG We can use the Life Story of Tsongkhapa, the king of the Dharma group. He says you can use it to see examples of that. Then he says, DE NYID LUNG LA KHYEN PAR BYA This LUNG is an important word in Buddhism.

LUNG means in Tibetan, wind. So it's one of the elements, SA CHU ME RLUNG, earth, water, fire, and wind. Sometimes they'll add wood or consciousness.

So LUNG means wind. But it's also, the word for wind in Tibetan is also the Tibetan word for CI or prana. So we're getting into a very deep diamond way principle here in the Lam Rim.

And Lam Rim is a sleeper. Sleeper in English means, it looks like it's just a dull, long book, but there's tantra running underneath, like water under the ice. And if you really understand Lam Rim, it's a whole diamond way teaching.

For how many years now? 13 years. It's been a diamond way teaching.

Under the ice. And here the water comes up above the ice. He says, NYID LUNG LA KHYEN PAR BYA means, KHYEN means let it ride on your prana.

Let the tonglen ride on your prana. And it goes very deep. It goes very deep here.

The connection between giving and taking, the practice of giving and taking, taking other people's problems, giving other people the good things that come to you, that becomes a diamond way, a tantric practice. With your prana, using your prana. Your breath is not your prana, but your prana is connected to your breath, very intimately.

So where goes your breath, so goes your prana. So tonglen becomes a pranayama. A-yama means a practice of, what do you call it?

Like making effort to make something happen inside of you is a-yama, pranayama. It can also be read as control of your breath, a-yama. Yama means control and it also means the lord of death.

I'll tell you why, it's too complicated. In the old days, yama meant the two reins of a horse, the two reins that you pull the horse with. And so yama came to mean a pair of two things.

And in the ancient times, there was a pair of night and day and there was two deities connected to them. And night was supposed to represent, I think it's the loss of a loved one. And so it was a pair, night and day were a pair, like the reins of a horse, which are yama.

So the lord of death came to be called yama. And if you kill the lord of death, it's you put an end to him, antika. Yama?

Yamantaka, yama-antika, to kill the lord of death, yamantaka, which we practice here and you can learn it. What's the other Sanskrit word for yamantaka? Nay.

Nay. Kaladanda. Yeah, beat death to, beat death to death, death?

Beat death to death, kaladanda. Okay, all right. And that's part of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which is a very deep retreat practice text.

It takes two years to teach it and we're in the middle of it. So come to the next YSI program in, when is it? September?

Okay. And we're studying kaladanda. That's the whole topic, how to kill death.

So anyway, here, use the prana. Use your breath practices. And there's obviously a deep connection between your breath and your state of mind.

When you get scared, you're like, when you're too busy all day and you're not focusing on people, you're also breathing irregularly. So if you want to know how your tonglen's going, day to day, hour to hour, you can check your breathing. How's your breathing?

And if you're really practicing giving and taking on a hour to hour basis, it'll be reflected in your breathing. So keep an eye on your breath. And when your breath gets jerky or out of flow, out of sync, it means there's something wrong mentally.

When you're doing tonglen hour to hour with your little mantra, you should be doing pranayama at the same time. And your breathing should be sweet and calm and regular. Going in through the left nostril, exiting through the right nostril.

You don't have to remember it all the time. You're not a bad person if you breathe through both holes. I had a student many, many years ago, Nigel, did you know him?

From Burma. And every time I taught him some little thing like this, he'd say, no, no, Geshe-la, don't teach me anymore. And I'd say, why?

And he'd say, it's just something else to feel guilty about. Every time you give me a new practice and I don't do it, I feel guilty. And I'm just like, it's driving me nuts.

I feel guilty all day. And you got to be careful with that. Take the instructions from retreat that struck you, that seemed cool to you, and use them for a couple weeks.

And frankly, let the other ones go. You can't remember everything. You can't practice everything.

If you try to practice everything, you'll definitely, your breathing will get messed up. Okay, so why does Geshe-la teach hundreds and hundreds of practices? I want you to connect with one of them and use it for a while.

So don't feel guilty. Don't get overworked. Dharma overworked.

Choose the one that fits you. The reason they give hundreds of practices is that there's hundreds of personalities and different strokes for different folks. When you hear something that's attractive to you, then practice it.

And don't go crazy trying to do everything you hear in these classes. I think this pranayama connected to a tonglen mantra, connected to a whole day long habit of watching out for other people. What do they want?

What do they need? Little stuff. Opening the door, serving them tea.

I think watching other people, little stuff. And then pranayama, watching your breath as you do it, and having this intention that that should make you a high bodhisattva. This little practice of serving people tea, opening doors for people, helping out people at the airport, stuff like that, strangers.

I've been, Veronica and I, and I'd like to thank Veronica for coming today. My STEM mom had a stroke, it seems, and we went to the nursing home facility, rehab. And there's hundreds of people there, in the same, also in a bed there.

We started to talk to the other families, and it was so sweet, it was so cool, and it felt like Buddhism. And normally I'm really shy, I'm not shy to teach, but I'm shy in public with strangers, and Veronica's like, oh, where are you guys from? And I'm like, you know?

And so all these families were there taking care of their mother, and then there was this beautiful tonglen going on. So the place to practice is wherever you are, and you can do tonglen everywhere. Then connect it to your breath when you remember.

And that means when your breath gets out of whack, something's happening to your tonglen. When you're breathing irregularly, either you're worried or, I don't know, you're upset, or you're just not mindful, your breath will not be smooth. So he says, watch your breath, and that's a sign of how your care of others is going, day to day, hour to hour.

,GZHAN PA LTAR RTOG LEN GYI DMIGS PA CING ZAD SBYONG BA'I ZAD, When you get pretty good at tonglen, ,'UG PHYIR DROG SKABS STONG BA, when you breathe out, remember you are giving kindness and help to other people. ,SNANG DU SBYUG PA NA LEN PA, You are, when you inhale, you're taking people's problems away. So don't miss the opportunity to focus on taking away other people's problems and giving them help.

As long as you're breathing, you can do it. If you connect it, jar here, the last word, jar, S-B-Y-A-R. Jar means connected to your breath, connect your practice to your breath.

So then your breath will remind you to do your tonglen all day long. All right, now I'm ready for that cowboy. I shouldn't spend too much money.

Forget it, $100. Tell me why the cowboy is relevant here. I think, Aniili, did you?

Whoa. Why is the cowboy on the horse relevant for our discussion today?

[Говорящий 2]
It's relevant because it's about LUNG SEMS SBYUG PA GCIG PA.

[Говорящий 1]
Nice, nice.

[Говорящий 2]
How the prana and the thoughts ride together, just like the cowboy and the horse.

[Говорящий 1]
Nice, nice, perfect. Don't forget to collect your cowboy money. I was in China, I was in Shenzhen.

Somebody was opening a new office. They asked me to do some calligraphy. And I was thinking, I needed something like three, four words that would be inspiring.

And so I chose SGUNG, it's in the next paragraph, in the bold, in the bold letters right there. LUNG SEMS SBYUG PA GCIG, okay? Please repeat, LUNG SEMS SBYUG PA GCIG.

One more time, LUNG SEMS SBYUG PA GCIG. SBYUG PA GCIG, high tantric practice. Here in the Lam Rim for beginners.

Beginners, okay? So you've heard me say it many times. In yoga classes, YSI loves LUNG SEMS SBYUG PA GCIG.

And here it is. People ask me how to spell it and stuff like that. Well, here it is, okay?

So LUNG means that word for wind, okay? Prana or chi, all right? SEMS means the mind.

SBYUG PA GCIG means they flow together, okay? They flow together. And the classic example is a cowboy on a horse, okay?

We were, I heard some amazing news here in Bui. The only functional business is a gas station. And they used to have a 31 Flavors there, which was the only happiness we had here.

And it's an ice cream store. And we used to go there. It was a pilgrimage.

We didn't go to the stupa, we went to the ice cream store. And then they closed it. It was really depressing.

And then recently they opened it up again as an Indian restaurant, which is like a miracle. Because I grew up on this. And by the way, they're from HP, UP area, which is exactly the Indian food I grew up on.

And they make it exactly like I had it 50 years ago in India. And so it's kind of a beautiful thing. And we used to go hang out there at the ice cream store.

And these guys ride up on a horse and get off the horse and tie it to the pole there. I was with Yoram Cohen and Uri Cohen from Israel. And we're having the ice cream and the cowboys ride up and tie the horse.

And they got these big guns, you know. And here's Yoram's like, Geshe-la, they are making a movie, right? They are making a movie.

I said, Yoram, this is not a movie. This is a real thing. And he's like, whoa.

Do you have some real bullet in the gun? I said, yes. You have to be nice to them.

So, we got cowboys here. Our neighbors are the last cowboys in Arizona or something. Be nice to them.

Don't piss them off, okay? Because they do carry around. I asked the guy, why are you carrying these two big guns around?

He says he shoots rattlesnakes for fun. And he got 25 this year. And I'm like, okay, that's nice.

And so think about a cowboy, okay? And the point is that the prana and the intention to be helpful to other people are riding like a cowboy on a horse, okay? Who's the horse and who's the cowboy?

For $25, because there's only two choices. And I get confused sometimes, frankly. Who's the horse and who's the cowboy?

The horse is the breath. Good, the horse is your prana. And who's the cowboy?

The cowboy is your mind. Yeah, your feelings or your intentions, okay? So the horse is the prana or the inner wind, which is reflected in your breathing, okay?

If the inner wind is not smooth, your breathing will be jerky, okay? And they make jerky. Never mind, never mind.

Jerky is some, it's like chewing gum made from cow meat. Bowie is the capital of jerky in the whole world. So anyway, the horse is your breath, okay?

And the rider is your thoughts, and specifically your awareness of tonglen all day, okay? Like every chance you get, take care of somebody else. Every chance you get, do something nice for somebody else.

And there's this deep inner hesitation to take care of other people first. You can force yourself. If you've been in Buddhism class for 25, 30 years, you can force yourself to take care of other people first.

And it's difficult. It feels like an obligation. And sometimes you let it go, and you take the thing first, and it feels really good to take care of yourself first.

And you're like, a few exceptions during the day is probably okay. I'll just take care of myself first. After all, not everyone likes these pastries the way I do.

But what happens is, over many years' time, and my wife is a great master of this. If you take care of other people first, it's just really amazing. And it makes your life, it makes your whole life meaningful.

Like whatever occupation you do with your life, doesn't matter. Whatever things you study, doesn't matter. Whatever meditations you do, doesn't matter.

Just focus on other people. Take care of them first. If that's the only thing you learn at Diamond Mountain Retreat Center, then your life is set.

Just take care of other people first, and you'll have a super happy life. This struggle to be happy and take care of yourself first is a losing battle. You cannot.

It'll never work. It's a stupid idea. It's a bad strategy.

And it's human nature. So you have to fight it. Not because of morality, blah, blah.

Because it's the only way to be happy, is to take care of other people first. So the more you do it, the happier you will be. And you're not losing anything.

You're losing something if you take it first. Then you lose it. So this attitude, there's something about the horse and the cowboy.

The horse is your prana, your breathing, and the cowboy is your thoughts. Who's in control? Yeah, it's a chicken and egg.

I went to Princeton in, I guess it was the second or third year, and somebody said, you know there's a place near here, there's a lake at Princeton. They built a lake. It's like five mile lake that they built.

Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie built it. And we used to race, I was in the rowing team. We used to race up and down the river.

And you could rent a horse and ride around the river. And so my friend said, you want to rent horses? You're from Arizona, right?

I'm like, oh yeah. And I rode a horse once. It was the oldest horse they could find.

And I went out with my dad. I said, oh yeah, yeah, I can do that. So we went out and it was really funny because I saw all these cowboy movies where you kick the horse and you, so I kicked the horse, and it goes, boom.

And then I'm like, I'm trying to stop the horse. And then there's this thing in their mouth and you pull it and it hurt. And the horse stopped suddenly.

And I went, whoo. And just fall down. And I never got on a horse again in my whole life.

Why am I talking about that? Sometimes the horse runs the show. If the breathing gets out of whack, if the breathing gets shaky, the thoughts will follow.

You see, if the horse goes out of control, the cowboy's not running the show anymore. The horse is running the show. So sometimes your mind controls your prana.

And sometimes your prana controls your mind. It depends on who's in charge. Sometimes the horse is in charge.

Sometimes the person is in charge. So it can go either way. SBYUG PA GCIG PA means it can go either way.

If you let your breath get out of control, your mind will follow. If you let your mind get out of control, your breath will follow. If your meditation is so bad that you can't watch your mind, at least watch your breath.

That's a physical thing. It's much easier to watch. If you can't control your mind, if your mind has the capacity to get unhappy and take care of yourself first, and you don't have the capacity, ZHES BZHIN, to watch your mind, which we all lose that capacity, at least watch your breath.

Learn to watch your breath. If the breath gets crazy, you can trust that the mind is following it. So watch your breath.

On a bad day when you can't watch your mind, watch your breath. And the condition of the horse will tell you the condition of the rider. Okay, got it?

So it's a symbiotic relationship. It goes both ways. Very important here.

YANG YANG GOM NAS LUNG LA BSGYUR NA If you get very good at this, what's BSGYUR mean? KHYON without the B in Tibetan means mistake or problem. KHYON MIN DU means, hey, no problem.

MA'I YON TI KHYON But with the B prefix letter, it means to ride a horse. Got it? So now you won't forget.

So BSKYON means ride your prana like a wise cowboy. Ride your prana like a wise cowboy. BDAG GZHAN GNYAMS BYAS BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS KYI LA BA'I PHYIR If you're good at watching your breath, it'll be easier for you to BDAG GZHAN GNYAMS BYAS.

Remember that other people have equal rights to happiness and then switch your, switch taking care of yourself first with taking care of other people first. And you won't lose anything. Don't think you're going to lose anything.

And it's a lifetime struggle to take care of other people first because there's this deep instinct that if I don't take it first, I won't get it, especially with pastries. So there's this deep, deep feeling that if I don't get mine first and I let everybody else have theirs first, I won't get it. And that's the biggest mistake you can make in your life.

Take care of other people first. Trust it. And you're not losing anything.

Don't be stupid. How did you get pastries in the first place? Be a smart pastry addict.

Keep giving them to other people and you assure your supply forever. It's just intelligent self-interest. BYA CHUG GI SEMS KYE LA BA'I PHYIR DRUL BDAG CHEN PO YIN This is a very unusual word.

DRUL BDAG CHEN PO means huge machine. The word for machine in Tibetan is related to the word for miracle, like chukhu. And it means this practice of taking other people first is like a huge machine in the background of your life.

Doing tonglen is in the Lama Chodpa, which is where it came from. It's called the huge machine. And it just means, it's just a happiness production facility.

It's a huge, we passed that pecan factory on the way out here in Bui. And yesterday, Veronica asked me, oh, gosh, that looks impressive. What do they make there?

It's this huge machine that takes the skin off the nuts separates the nuts from the shell. Huge, huge, huge machine. That's DRUL BDAG.

That's what they're calling here. They're comparing tonglen to that machine. And that's a happiness machine in your life.

To take care of others first, to tong and len is a huge machine that can bring you happiness. Happiness production facility. Factory.

Happiness factory? I'm always looking for good names for rock and roll bands. Right, Jack?

Happiness factory? That's too corny. Okay.

Then we're going to stop this class here and we'll continue. He goes from there into tantra. Okay?

In this innocent little lamrim. He's about to go into deep tantra. So I know you're going to come back for the next class.

All right.