«Дар освобождения», курс 40 «Магия пустотных медитаций и тонглен», занятие 10

[Говорящий 1]
We're on DIN NI NGAG, okay Sugeng? Yeah, good, okay. And by the way, I'll stop 15 minutes before nine o'clock World Central, Buoy time, and take questions and answers, okay?

About any topic, I don't care. So here we go. DIN NI NGAG GI SKABS NAS SHES PA'I DOR BYED DE BA DANG CAN DRA He says this practice of STONG LEN, riding on the breath, okay, cowboy STONG LEN, on your prana, CI, okay, CI, is actually related, linked to a secret practice.

Okay, NGAG means mantra in Tibetan, and mantra in Tibetan means tantra. Okay, mantra-yana and tantra-yana, same thing. So he says there is a high diamond way practice that you can do related to your pranayamas, and that connects to YSI.

So it's kind of like YSI connects to ACI, connects to diamond way. And he says it's related to a practice called DOR BYED DE BA. Okay, DOR BYED DE BA.

DOR BYED DE BA means diamond mantra reciting, okay. And it's a very high diamond way practice. There are 18 courses in diamond way tantra that were developed at Diamond Mountain.

It took 14 years of very hard work by a certain grandpa. And seven years in New York to prepare the people 18 courses, about 30,000 pages of translation. And then seven years to teach diamond way here at Diamond Mountain.

And that's about 30, the whole thing, Ellie, I don't know, 30,000 pages, I don't know. Something like that. Yeah, yeah, I'm still working on it.

But it was a lot of, it's a lot of work. I believe, and I was at, there's only two tantric colleges in Tibet. It's RGYUD MED and RGYUD LTOS.

My teacher was the vice abbot of RGYUD MED. So we're familiar with what they teach. And I was there when they opened their debate ground.

I debated at RGYUD MED Tantric College in the first weeks that they opened in there. And it was cool. So the Diamond Mountain course in the diamond way is better than the course at either tantric college.

And I can say it without hesitation. Because I've been there and I've spent time there. And the Diamond Mountain course, 18 courses is better organized than any diamond way course in history.

And it's more thorough. So anyway, this practice of diamond recitation is part of those 18 courses. Anybody remember which course?

I don't know. Nah, okay. Anyway, it's in there.

And if you get a chance to take the 18 advanced courses, the diamond way courses, you should do it. Right now, Peter, John, Connie, Ellie are focusing on teaching those diamond way courses. And Tim, I think.

And you're very welcome to talk to them and start to learn it. If you want to learn the secret breathing tonglen practice of diamond recitation, you need to learn it properly. I will not teach it in public.

You need to learn it from, in the old way. Gyaltsen, sorry. My teacher loved this investment company advertising on TV in 1975.

And there's an old banker who says, we make money the old way. We earn it. And he said, I love that guy.

So you got to earn it. So talk to one of those guys. Depey Jan Chandrasinghe.

And then he quotes, he says, I can't tell you about that in a public teaching, but I can refer you Kedrup Jey, Kedrup Jey, Jey Lama. Say Kedrup Jey. Kedrup Jey.

Jey Lama. Jey Lama. So Kedrup means, it's an abbreviation of Keshindrupa.

Keshindrupa means, what do you call it? Wise and practiced or something like that. Knowledgeable and practiced.

And it's a beautiful word. It means a person who learns the scriptures correctly and then does retreat and goes and does it. So K means lots of classroom hours.

Drup means lots of retreat hours. And if you call somebody Kedrup, it's a big compliment. We just finished yesterday, mostly, Sugeng's new book, which is by Kedrup Dambadage.

It's a different Kedrup. And so that's the meaning of Kedrup. There's a famous Kedrup, which is the student of Je Tsongkapa, one of the two principal students of Je Tsongkapa.

There's three big names there. There's Gyel Tsub Jey, Kedrup Jey, and the first Dalai Lama. But the first Dalai Lama was just a kid at the time.

So we don't count him much in the pictures. But he's there. He taught, or he ordained a great teacher from Sera Jey named Sera Jetson, and he taught Kedrup Dambadage.

So that's the lineage. There's a tight lineage. So Tsongkapa's student, Kedrup Jey, said about his teacher, okay, and here's a picture, Daniel.

Nope. Yeah, when you see this picture, and Grandpa Geshe Michael asks you, what's this picture? You're going to say, this is my teacher breathing.

Okay, this is my teacher breathing. And the Diamond Mountain lineage, and by the way, how it differs from the lineage that we came from, Lama Zopa's lineage, for example, is that we are returning to the days when Buddhist teachers were either ordained or not ordained. And that's a big change.

Originally, Buddhism was taught by people who were not ordained. In Tibet, it was taught by people who were not ordained. In India also.

Then for a while, the monks and nuns took over. And there's a heavy, beautiful tradition of normal people, normal working people, teaching Buddhism to normal working people, which seems to work pretty well. Because they understand the challenges of normal working people.

So this guy is a high lama. And he probably learned his stuff at Diamond Mountain. But it's a tradition.

There's ancient tradition of lay people teaching lay people, and even teaching monks and nuns. So that's very much our tradition. Doesn't matter what's your background.

Doesn't matter what country you're from. We were the first people in the world, ACI, to teach women the Geshe course. And we were heavily criticized, and really badly criticized.

And then suddenly, they just announced the first woman Geshe in the traditional monastery. We're like, yeah, well, we did that before. So anyway, I think it's a great thing.

You're very welcome to become a teacher. I think you'll make great teachers. If you don't become a teacher, you're lazy.

You should teach. You should teach. We are like a major city of 10 million people with one doctor or two doctors.

It's bad. Situation's bad. Many people are suffering because there's not enough doctors.

So if you listen to these teachings and you don't pass them on, you're a... What's that bad word that Geshe-la would never say in front of his wife? You're a loser.

All right. So here's Khyadrup Jeh's description of his teacher. And then you got to guess why it's here.

DGON PO'I KHYOD KYI ZHAL GYI'UG TZAM YANG THAR BAR GROL LA MAN PAR GYUR GYUR NA Just that. Just two lines. DGON PO'I means my Lama, my protector.

Who's that? Tsongkapa. He's talking to Tsongkapa, Khyadrup Jeh.

GYUR GYI ZHAL GYI'UG TZAM A single breath from your lips. A single breath from your lips. GYI'UG TZAM YANG THAR BAR GROL LA Countless living beings, men.

You know men-la? Medicine Buddha. This man means, is medicine, is sweet medicine.

For what? All living beings. When you, oh, Tsongkapa, when you, you are helping countless living beings.

A single exhalation, a short single exhalation from your lips is the service of all living beings. This is Khyadrup Jeh talking about his teacher. And then Pabongka Rinpoche says, that's the DGON PA.

That's what we're talking about. We're talking about tonglen being connected to pranayama. If you don't know the pranayama part, take YSI course in September.

And they're going through a deep, deep book about breathing practice and retreat. And it'll take us two years to finish. I think we're about a quarter of the way through, something like that.

But it's a secret practice. And that's why Khyadrup Jeh said about his own teacher, you just, and countless people are helped. By that.

And if you want to learn that, come to YSI. ZHES SOGS LTOS PA RTZAD PA'I DI LA DGONGS PA RE DGONGS PA means, that's the idea of those lines. We're talking about this secret practice on the breath connected with tonglen.

Cool. All right. I went and got you the quotation, but that's okay.

By the way, I use the database of John Brady's team, the Asian Legacy Library. I use it probably a hundred times a day. And my teaching strongly depends on it.

When I was in the monastery, finishing the Geshe exam, we have intercollegiate Geshe exams. We have to debate against other monasteries. And I showed my team how to use the database.

And they're like, ha ha ha, now we got him. And it was so cool. We wiped out everybody.

Because every night we were like, oh. And finding amazing stuff on John Brady's database. So I'd like to thank John and his team.

And I'd like to thank all the people supporting John Brady's team. And I know the Gold Club, for example, is really important. And I'm really grateful for that.

So Peter, thank you, and Maria. That was an interesting fundraising thing. Because they basically asked people to give $5 a month or $2 a month.

And they've raised a million and a half dollars for John Brady's project. So I'd like to thank them again. I think that's kind of a cool fundraising thing.

If everyone gives a little bit, it's very helpful. Okay, ,DI DAG MED NAG GZHAN YANG MYOS MOD, Next line, you guys. And don't forget, we'll have question and answer in 15 minutes.

,DI DAG MED NAG GZHAN YANG MYOS MOD, There's lots of deep teachings here. MED NAG means deep teachings. MOD means, but, ,RGYUN DU CHAG MED MI BYAS PA'I RIGS LA BYAS DU MI RUNG, I cannot teach tantra in a Lam Rim class.

Or not. He says, go talk to these Diamond Way teachers. Even in the Lam Rim, he says, look, I'm just giving you a little taste and then you have to learn it properly from a proper teacher.

And the teachers at Diamond Mountain are the most highly trained tantric teachers in the world. Period. There's a three-year retreat at Gyumay Tantric College.

You go stay in a house in the middle of the monastery. Which is like, I'm like, what? And they're like, well, that's how we do it.

I'm like, yeah, but anyway. And by the way, it's a great institution. It's the greatest.

It's been there for 600 years. But I think the way it's being done at Diamond Mountain is very, very special. And I think very powerful.

All right. Here comes a whole new section. We've actually officially finished SDONG LEN.

What was the last thing he said? I'm not teaching you the real one. Go learn it properly.

Then he says, let's move on. Kind of cruel. GSUM PA SKYEN NGAN BYANG CHUB KYI LAM DU GYUR BA NI And I put the header there.

It's called Turning Problems Into the Path. It's a special Buddhist practice called SKYEN NGAN BYANG CHUB KYI LAM DU GYUR. This GYUR means transformation.

And it's the verb for turning yourself into a cloud, turning yourself into the sun. It means to transform something, completely. And we're about to start a whole section about the unique Buddhist skill of consciously looking for difficult situations and turning them into wild successes.

And it's a wonderful, wonderful practice. You purposely seek out difficult situations and then you flip them into this incredible success. And I think even if you just want to be a business person or something, I think this next section is really, really wonderful.

And it transformed my life. Get this, just listen. If you learn to identify problems and then go eat them, live off them, like candy, then what is your life?

You got the good parts and the bad parts. If you learn to eat the bad parts and turn them into the good parts, well, what's your life? It's good parts all day.

So normally, human life has good parts and bad parts. And most human beings try to hang out in the good parts and avoid the bad parts, including irritating people and nice people. So it's human nature to try to hang out with the nice people and to try to avoid the irritating people.

If you learn this part of the Lam Rim, you will reverse your behavior. You will look for assholes. And guess what?

You'll find them. You are looking for irritating people and you are looking for difficult situations, tense situations, arguments, dangerous situations. And you're sucking them up.

Wow, that's so nice. And you flip them. You learn to flip them.

If you have good stuff going on 50% of the time and if you have bad stuff going on 50% of the time, if half the people you meet are really nice and half the people you meet are really dumb, and then you focus on the dumb ones and you focus on the difficult situations and you have this magical Lam Rim technique to flip them, then what's your life? Your whole day is fun. And I do it.

And I have to say it, it works. And it's fun. 24 hours a day, fun.

Every single stupid person you ever meet is like another opportunity to have a good day. And if you learn this section, it's worth all the trouble you took to come to this retreat. Then you're looking for difficult situations and you're looking for difficult people.

If two directors of two organizations tell you, by tomorrow morning, Geshe-la, can you come up with a fundraising thing to cover this? Then you're like, yeah, we'll do that. And you turn it into something really fun and it helps thousands of people.

Okay, all right. So this part is really beautiful. And if you can learn it, there's no such thing as a bad day.

And just imagine having a good day every day. And every time a problem comes up, you eat it like you're really hungry. Like, how does our granddaughter express happiness at this point?

She's six months exactly, right? And we went to visit her yesterday and she goes, rrrrrrrr. I said, what's going on?

They said, that's how she expresses happiness. I'm like, okay, she's really happy. Rrrrrrr.

Hopefully later she'll learn to smile. But imagine all the rrrr in your life turned into something happy. Imagine.

Okay, so really we got to learn this section. Really, work hard on this section. Because the result of working hard on this section is you're having fun all day, every day, no matter what happens.

I was at the doctor. My kidney is not doing great. She told me, you're like, and I was like, yeah, okay.

She says, she looks at me, and she says, she doesn't know what I do. She says, do you meditate? I'm like, maybe a little bit.

You know, it's just, yeah, something's weird. You know? So anyway, isn't that, that's the thing.

Okay, what is the next picture, you guys? Did I not give you a 43.20 point? I think I forgot.

Okay, let's cancel it. We talked about pungsumba for two dollars because we just gave away all our money. What's a pungsumba in regard to reactions with other people?

Interactions, sorry. Finding a third way. Yeah, between what?

Between blowing somebody off? No, not really, kind of. Yeah, good, that's all, that's all.

So in any situation with other people, you have a choice of taking care of yourself first or taking care of others first. And in a traditional Buddhist teaching, and I'm actually thinking of Lama Tsongkapa, they would talk for hours that you should sacrifice here what you want and take care of what other people want. And that's, I think there's a deeper teaching here that a real Buddhist yogi, and what makes you a yogi is you're faced with a situation of taking care of what somebody else wants or taking care of what you want and you pungsumba.

You cover both to higher than the expectations of either party. The combination of both gets both parties more than they expected. Okay, got it?

The donor gives a lot of money and then suddenly there's these two-year grants and both parties get success. Both parties get more than they expected. Got it?

It's an attitude towards solving problems. Don't settle for taking care of yourself or taking care of somebody else. Don't settle for that.

Settle for both at a higher degree than either one individually. Got it? Okay, find clever solutions that give each party more than they expected.

And by the way, that's the key to a business negotiation. We're teaching business negotiation at the MBA program. I negotiated for 19 years, many times every day.

That was my job. And the ultimate negotiation is both parties get more than they wanted when they came to the negotiation. And that's the way it should be.

And that's DONG REN. That's a kind of DONG REN. Okay, SNYING MED DUN DIR, DE BZHIN DU PHAN YIN BYAS TE By the way, now here's the deep question for today.

Why did a teacher who was teaching DONG REN suddenly flip to turning problems into opportunities? He doesn't give any introduction. He says, don't forget this tantric practice on your breath.

And by the way, stuff's going to mess up and try to change it into something good. And then he talks about that for like 10 days. You should be like, wait Geshe-la, we were talking about DONG REN, now suddenly he switched it.

He didn't switch it. Peter. It is DONG REN, right?

Okay, DONG REN is to take the problems and turn them into a, I don't like to say opportunity. I object to that language. There's lots of Lam Rim traditional language, interpretation of Lam Rim that I object to.

I don't like it when you say turn a problem into an opportunity because opportunity means unrealized potential. Get it? Opportunity does not mean success.

If you don't take an opportunity, you fail. I don't like the language. I don't like it when people teach this section and they say, oh, turn a problem into an opportunity.

But I'm like, what happens if the opportunity don't work out? You know? I want to say, turn a problem into a wild success.

Forget success too. That's so boring. Wild, exciting, fun success.

All right, got it? This next section. Because that's the choice you're faced with when you choose between yourself and other people.

This should be the next part of DONG REN. This should be the next part of DONG REN. How to turn a bad situation into wild success.

And if you get good at this, you don't have a bad day. There's no such thing as a bad day. Even terrible things.

Yo, your body's failing. Yeah, cool. I'll use it for some.

It's beautiful. It's very beautiful. All right.

Here, he says NYIG MA'I DUN DIR. Now in the days of screw-ups. NYIG MA means in modern times, when stuff messes up so frequently.

There's a special Tibetan word for that. It's called NYIG MA. NYIG MA means when you make a tea and you get to the bottom and there's junk down at the bottom like little leaves and stuff.

That's called NYIG MA. It means the junk, the last 10%, the last junk 10% is called NYIG MA. Our whole world is last junk 10%.

Modern times, looking back at the glory days of Buddhism, Buddhism is 99% dead in this world. Real Buddhism is 99% dead in this world. Oh, Geshe-la, there's some people in Burma.

All of China is Buddhist. Sri Lanka, they're not. And forget it.

It's a dead religion. 99%, it's a corpse. It's gone.

99% gone in this world. It's almost gone. How many Buddhists in India?

Zero. Zero. There's a small movement among the untouchables, but it's gone.

It's too precious to keep in this world. It's too precious to keep in this world. So he says, look, these are the NYIG MA days, which means it's a great times for turning problems into wild successes.

He says, we're so lucky to live in the garbage days. Because there's more raw material to turn into success. He's so funny.

He's like, you're so lucky to live at the end of Buddhism. Because there's so much problems now. If you learn how to turn problems into opportunities, you're going to be success.

You're going to be wild success. YIN RTEN BYAS means very lucky. CHOS BYAS LA BAR BYED MANG ZHIG RGYEN SPANG MI THUB PA'I SKABS When you get problems in your Dharma practice, MTHUN GYEN DU RGYUR THUB DGOS you better learn how to flip them into opportunities for wild success.

DE MED NA RGYEN SANG YIN GANGS BYUNG YANG CHOS SHOR DRO If you don't learn to turn problems into opportunities for wild success, you will lose your Dharma practice. CHOS SHOR means you will lose your Dharma practice. You won't be a Buddhist.

If you don't know how to, because of the condition of the world right now, if you don't learn to turn problems into wild success opportunities, you will fail in your Dharma practice because of the situation in the world right now. There's zero Buddhism. Because of the situation in the world at large, you better be able to turn problems into something better or your, CHOS SHOR is a terrible, terrible expression.

SHOR means to slip on the ice. SHOR means to fall down, walking down the stairs. CHOS SHOR means the Dharma slipped on the ice and the Dharma fell down the stairs.

And that's the time, these are those days. So on the days that the Dharma fell down the stairs, you better learn to turn problems into something, some great advantage. Okay, cool.

All right, and that's a teaser for tomorrow's class. Yeah, okay. We got 15 minutes, Uncle Tim, for Q&A of any type.

[Говорящий 2]
So the first question, Geshe-la, okay, comes from Gabriela Fuchs, and she said, what are some obstacles and antidotes for being able to see yourself as an enlightened being? And she says, it's easier for me to see others already as enlightened helping me, but to be able to see myself that way seems more challenging.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good question. There's a weird thing. There's a thing in Christianity, and me and Veronica, as I mentioned, we're enjoying watching a TV series called The Chosen, which is a beautiful, beautiful presentation of Jesus's life.

And there's this very serious injunction, this suggestion from Jesus that says, when you are generous, like you give $5,000 to, right, Sunim? Jesus says, keep it secret. Don't tell anybody.

And like, do your giving in secret. That's not my style, but there's this idea of doing it in secret. And we grew up on that.

I grew up on that. That's the teaching I was brought up on. So I think most of us, whichever part of the world we come from, we were pretty much told by our parents that when you do good things, don't advertise it.

Don't tell people. Don't brag about it. It kind of cheapens the good thing.

It makes it cheap or something. So keep it quiet. Do good things.

Don't tell everybody. That's very great. It is a great tradition.

And then the Abhidharma says, no, no, ZHI LAM, what's it called? The four steps, right? What is it?

TAR THUGS Do the four steps. And the fourth step, of the fourth step, the long name, the short name is TAR THUGS. TAR THUGS means celebrate the good things you do.

Celebrate them. The long version of TAR THUGS is BDAG GIS BYAS PA. BDAG GIS BYAS PA means own it.

Make it your own. BDAG GIS BYAS PA Make it your own. And then we run around the world teaching people in DCI.

There's almost 200,000 DCI students now. We teach them the four steps. They live on the four steps.

The fourth step is rejoicing. TAR THUGS or BDAG GIS BYAS PA Own your good deeds. Make them yours.

And then we go back a year later and we talk to the same people. And some people are like, yeah, I had this wild success. And some people say nothing happened.

And then we do the cross check. It's called cross check. We check the four steps.

Did you do number one? Yeah, I did. I have a goal in mind.

Did you do number two? Yeah, I identified someone to help. Did you do number three?

Yeah, I helped them. Did you do number four? Well, it's really frustrating for me because it takes me like 10 minutes to get to the well.

And I'm like, well, you didn't do number four, did you? Which is what? You can call it coffee meditation, but it just means when you go to sleep, before you go to sleep, never sleep with problems in your mind.

Never. It's really dumb. The time for problems is the breakfast table when everything is glorious.

Toast with lots of peanut butter. That's breakfast. It's hard to have a...

Problems are smaller in the light of day. When the sun comes up, problems get smaller. It's really dumb to think about your problems when you're going to bed.

Well, Geshe-la, what am I supposed to think about when I go to bed? Think about the good stuff you did today. I didn't do any good stuff today.

You did, but you're just not thinking about it. Why? Partly, what we've noticed in DCI is the best people tend to have the most trouble with coffee meditation because they have this feeling that they shouldn't brag about their good deeds.

And that's a good thing. That's a good habit. You shouldn't advertise your good deeds to everybody, except yourself.

Except yourself. Sorry, I'm eating in the middle of it. Save the problems meditation for the light of day.

If you get up before dawn, like I'm forced to do at Diamond Mountain, necessarily, to get all the time zones, wait till the sun comes up. Before you think about your problems. Never go to bed thinking about your problems.

Always fall asleep thinking about the good things you did today. I didn't do any good things today. That's not true.

That proves you haven't been sleeping well. I practiced during the day, Shintan. I'll just practice falling off to sleep with good thoughts like a couple times a day.

Especially if someone's trying to tell me something boring. But why am I talking about this? Because I know the question didn't address that, but the question did address that.

Good people tend to not acknowledge when they're being good. Good people seem to have more trouble admitting they did something good than bad people who didn't do anything good, who think they're doing good. You understand?

So the people who have the most trouble seeing themselves as a Buddha, which is the real question, it's human nature of good people that somehow they don't want to brag even to themselves. So you got to get over that. You got to do coffee meditation.

You got to get in the habit. Did we do good stuff today? Yes.

What percent was it? One, okay? For everybody in this room, I don't care.

Except maybe, I don't know. Okay, we are not amazing people. We are not special people.

But think about the good stuff you did at least once a day when you fall asleep. And we're not great practitioners and we're not great Buddhists, but we do do some good stuff. And if you focus on that, it'll be easier for you to see yourself as a Buddha.

There's a famous conversation between a teacher and his student. The teacher said, we got to go to the temple. Why?

It's sojong time. Well, what do you mean? We have to confess our mistakes for the last two weeks.

And the student said, I don't need to. And the teacher said, why? And the student said, I'm Vajrayogini.

I'm a perfect being. I don't have to purify myself. You just gave me initiation.

You just spent weeks telling me how I'm a perfect being. I don't need to go confess. He said, it kicked him in the butt.

He said, get to the temple. He said, Vajrayogini is going to confess today. Okay?

Okay, understand? So that's, but the opposite's also true. We're not perfect, but we have the seed of perfectionist in us.

We have Buddha nature. All beings have Buddha nature. So if you can't recognize that Buddha nature, you are cheating yourself and you are cheating other people.

It's not a noble thing to deny your Buddha nature. It's just a mistake. It's a big mistake.

You are a beautiful pure being. You just got a polish in a little bit. But it's there.

It's all there. And if you don't, then you failed as a Buddha. Which proves you're not a Buddha, I guess.

No, I'm just kidding. Acknowledge your goodness, especially before you go to sleep. That's the best time of day to do it.

Acknowledge your goodness. Don't be shy to brag to yourself. That's a good habit.

And it makes you a better, better person. All right. Mr. Tim.

[Говорящий 2]
This is another question from online. Sorry guys. We got to give them some opportunity too.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, just online, but we'll catch up.

[Говорящий 2]
This is from Ola. I think this is interesting. She says, if everything is coming from me, coming from my own seeds, when I die and pass on, will the people that I see now continue to exist or not?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, that's a good question. If everything's coming from my seeds, and then I die, then I don't know, does the universe stop and does all the people I was projecting, do they all stop? So the projecting is going on from two sides.

I mean, they are projecting themselves to themselves and you are projecting them to yourself. So the only thing that ends is your projection to yourself of them. But they still have their projection to themselves of them.

So no problem. They get to go on. The interface is interesting.

The interface between my projection of you and your projection of you is an interesting border to talk about. We assume that my projection of another person, if it doesn't exactly match, it's probably close to what they're projecting. You see what I mean?

We believe that. I'm seeing Shantan in a certain way. Shantan's seeing Shantan in a certain way.

I can't read Shantan's mind right now, but I can see a lot. I know you for a long time. We make an assumption that that's what Shantan is seeing also, but that's not logical.

Who knows what kind of seeds she has? So the interaction interface, how I see her and how she sees her, God knows how she sees herself. I don't know.

I don't know what she's seeing. And I will never know until I become a Buddha or something. I don't know how you see yourself.

I just see how I see you. But in either case, you are coming from seeds. In both cases, you are coming from seeds.

If you're seeds for something to end, if you're seeds run out and something ends like your life, it doesn't prove anything about what they're seeing. They could be seeing anything. We don't know.

By the way, since we don't know, it's probably better to... My old boss at the diamond business, he was Israeli. You know the Azerbaijani family.

And so I would donate most of my income to the monastery or to ALL for 19 years. And every six months I would collect my salary from the company and then donate it. They would donate it directly.

I didn't even get it. It just was donated directly. I got a little bit to buy bus tickets and stuff.

And so there would be this negotiation every six months. And these two tough Israeli investors, they would, we'd have a meeting. And I'd say, well, it's time for me to get my money.

And they'd say, I'd say, the CFO would come in. He'd say, okay, it's up to 80,000, 90,000, 100. And then the CFO would say, it's 89,300.

And I would look at these Israelis and I'd say, let's make it an even hundred. And they're like, no, let's make it 120. I'm like, what?

They said, nah, not an even hundred. Let's make it, let's make it 150. What the hell?

And I'd be like, wow. I said, can I ask you a personal question? And they said, yeah.

And I said, you guys are Israeli. You're like all Jewish people. Then my boss said, the most Jewish I ever got was throwing rocks at cars on Saturdays.

People driving their car on Saturday. I would throw rocks at them. I said, yeah, but you're not like Tibetan Buddhists.

Why are you making these huge donations on top of my salary? Why are you doing that? And he looks me in the eye and he says, you never know who's right.

And I'm like, wow, that's so smart. And he said, yeah, I cover all, I donate to everything. When I get to heaven, I can say, yeah, I donated to that.

So you got to have that attitude with other people. You don't know who's Buddha. Like don't mess up.

It's safer to assume everybody's a Buddha and act that way. Because some of them are, probably. And then you're covered.

Okay, got it? Treat everybody like a Buddha. Then you're not going to offend any Buddha, right?

It's a lot more logical, like my Jewish boss, okay? Okay.