«Дар освобождения», курс 40 «Магия пустотных медитаций и тонглен», занятие 11

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, I'm just going to repeat that sentence, okay? Good, Rebecca. SNYING MED DON DER DU BZHIN DU PHAN YIN CHE STENG CHOD CHE LA BAR CHE MANG ZHING Basically he says the skill of turning a problem into what?

Wild success. Yeah, I hate this word opportunity. It's so dull.

Turning it into something really cool, all right? RGYAL KHYEN THUN KHYEN DU RGYUR means things that are blocking you turn out to be things that supercharge you, okay? GRUB THUB PA DGOS DE MED NA KHYEN SANG NGES GANG CHUNG YANG PHYIR GZHOR DGRO If you can't turn problems into successes, then there's a danger you will give up your practice completely, okay?

So it's not just that you need this skill to turn a problem into an opportunity or success. If you don't develop that skill, there's a chance you will give up, okay? That problems will overwhelm you and you'll just say, this is too much.

Diamond Mountain had huge problems. We, every year here for 20 years, we had huge challenges and we just busted through. And now it is the largest, I think, retreat center in the Western Hemisphere, maybe in the world.

And it's cool. And you just have to keep going and you have to be stubborn, Dharma stubborn, okay? My wife has a stubborn husband.

Okay. All right, next picture. Who's on that?

It's a business woman. So keep that, well, let's keep that image in mind, okay? She's a successful young lady, all right?

DE YANG PHYIR PA RGA' ZHIG NI GO SA SOGS BYUNG BA'I Then he starts listing a special disaster for a Dharma person. And he says, GO SA, say GO SA. GO SA means you get a good position.

You get a promotion at work and you become like a vice president or something. All right, and he says, disaster. The position is a disaster, okay?

GO SA SOGS BYUNG BA'I Dharma people get a position, then DRAG. DRAG means they start to get proud of their position. Oh, now I'm the assistant assistant director of ACI.

And then the success becomes an obstacle. So turn the obstacles into success, but be careful that your successes don't become obstacles. It's an interesting twist.

He says many, PHYIR PA here, the third, fourth word. PHYIR PA means Dharma practitioner. PHYIR means Dharma.

PHYIR PA means a Dharma-er, a Dharma-ist. And he says many a Dharma-ist has been ruined by success. DRAG NAS PHYIR ZHOR PHYIR ZHOR means they lost their practice.

They got all wrapped up in their position and they lost their practice. So problems is a danger. If you don't know how to turn them into opportunities, and then opportunities are a danger.

After you turn the problem into an opportunity, the opportunity becomes a danger. So he says keep a middle way. Keep a middle way, okay?

It doesn't mean, by the way, that you shouldn't be a director or an assistant director. You just can't have DRAG. DRAG means pride or something.

In Yiddish, DRAG means something else. So I was in the diamond business. We all speak Yiddish.

Okay, ZHOR RGA ZHIG NOR CHUNG BA'I NOR CHUNG BA'I means some people get some money at their job. TSO TSIS KYIS PHYIR ZHOR PHYIR ZHOR means what? ZHOR means their Dharma falls down, slips on the ice.

And TSO TSIS means they get all wrapped up in the things they can buy with the money that they got. And you could say Tesla disease. And it gets worse.

You get a small Tesla. And then you're like, then Elon Musk makes Tesla ZZ3. And now all your friends say, you don't have a ZZ3 yet?

What's wrong with you? And you're like, oh God, now I got to upgrade my Tesla. And then he keeps coming out with new ones just for those people.

So learn to... He says TSO TSIS means once you get some money, you get tempted to keep buying better and better things, which is why you're so lucky to have fundraising from ACI and Diamond Mountain can relieve you of this problem. I'm just kidding.

And by the way, we're not making money. We're all, my account went under zero last week. It was exciting for all my creditors.

RGA ZHIG NI, RGAN NGAN PA CHUNG BA NA, YI BYAS NAS, some people get discouraged when things mess up. PHYIR ZHOR BA'I, so he says you have to keep a middle way. DE LTAR BYUNG NA PHYIR BYAS PA KA, If you can't learn to thread a middle way between success and problems, you'll never be a good Dharma practitioner.

You got to keep your head. Things are going bad, keep your head. But also, if things are going well, keep your head.

Because all the money is going to go away in one day. You got to lose it all in one day. The more you get...

Everybody loses all their money. Everybody. So you got to get mentally ready for it.

And then you don't freak out when the day comes. PHYIR BYUNG TSE BYAS KUL BYAS PA YANG, Sharna, he says it's almost better that you never heard the Dharma than if you heard the Dharma and you blew it. So you've been cursed at Diamond Mountain.

You heard the Dharma. So it's almost worse. It's almost better if you never heard it.

If you just passed by on Highway 10 and went to the Indian restaurant and then kept going to New Mexico, and you never stopped here. It's less bad karma than trying to do Dharma and then giving it up. PHYIR BYUNG TSE KUL KUL, by the way, in Tibetan, for Sugeng, KUL means...

It doesn't mean cool. It means KUL. KUL means you try.

KUL BYAS PA means you pretend to do some Dharma and then you blow it. So KUL is a kind of a very depressing word. So here it means BYUNG TSE BYAS KUL.

You try to do a bit of Dharma and then you mess up. SHARNA BZHIN DU NAS LTA BYAS PA That's really lousy. My teacher, Ken Rinpoche, some of you knew him.

I don't know, he specialized in these English words like, that's lousy. He'd say, that's really lousy. He was on a kick for a while.

Hagrid, he probably remembers. He watched baseball for a while. Then all his English was baseball.

We're going to do a doubleheader today and you're out. Everybody's like, what? Okay.

LAM DUG GYUR THUB PA DGOS So therefore it's very important to learn, to make sure that when problems come up, you don't let them hurt your practice and you turn them into some kind of opportunities to be successful. Then he outlined some different ways to turn problems into opportunities for wild success. And he says there's two ways.

DE LA BSAM PA'I GYUR BA GYUR BA you had, I'll give $50 for GYUR BA. Hiya. Huh?

Yeah, who said, yeah, transform it, 50 bucks. Collect from Gigi. Tim, you don't get to bet.

Yeah, GYUR BA means transformation. That's what you did during your two-day retreat, right? Here it says you can transform problems with BSAM PA or with GYUR BA.

BSAM PA means with your intentions and GYUR BA means with your actual actions. So BSAM PA comes before GYUR BA. So he says, look, you can transform problems with your intention, mentally, or with your actions.

And probably you should do both. Okay. Then he says, the first one has two subcategories, which is very, by the way, he was a low-level Geshe from Gyerong House, Gyerong College, one of the 12 colleges of Surme.

Pabongka Rinpoche, the greatest teacher of the 20th century, was the lowest level of the Geshes from Gyerong House. And so am I. So we're like, okay, all right.

I just got into the Geshe. Okay, anyway, the high-level Geshe takes an extra 12 years and I wasn't ready to do that because I had other stuff to do. Okay, DANG PO LA BYAS PA'I GYUR BA DANG LTA BU'I GYUR BA Low-level means 20 years.

Higher-level means 30 years. I'm like, I started 15 years late, so I'm going to have all my hair gone by the time I... Okay, DANG PO LA BYAS PA'I GYUR BA DANG LTA BU'I GYUR BA Then he says a weird thing.

You can transform with your intentions in two different ways. The first one is with actions, so it gets a little confusing. And the second one is with your viewpoint.

And what's that mean we're going to talk about? Don't worry about it. DANG PO NI, here's the first one.

LAMA BYAS PA Then he quotes the offering to Lamas. Which he's been on a LAMA BYAS PA role here, right? He's been quoting LAMA BYAS PA a lot and he's been quoting the seven...

LHO SBYOR LHO SBYOR, yeah. He's been working on those two texts basically. And he says, GNOD BYED GDIGS PA'I BRAS BU YONG GANG STE GNOD means the outside world.

In Tibetan, it means the pot that holds all the people. It's the outside physical world. And then GCOD means the stuff in the pot, which means all the people and all the animals in the world.

So he says, you got the outside world, which is the pot that holds everything. And then you got all the people and animals that are in the pot. And he says, pot and people, including animals, because in Tibetan and Sanskrit, animals are called people.

GANG SOGS or PURUSHA. When we say people in Tibetan or Sanskrit, it refers to all living beings, automatically. It's very cool.

We don't distinguish between human people and animal people. So he says, GDIGS PA'I BRAS BU YONG GANG STE The offering to lamas, the verse starts with the world and the contents of the world are filled with bad deeds. The world, the pot, and the contents in the pot are full of bad karma.

And where does he go with that? I'm going to read you the, I think I put the English there, Rebecca. Yeah, there's the English.

You can kind of scroll down slow. The world and every being who lives upon this world are filled with the results of every wrong ever done. Let a shower of suffering fall of things I never wanted.

Fall on who? On me. Then here's the beginning of the transformation.

Here's the beginning of the transformation process. I pray that all the bad karma in the world should be dumped on me. That's my prayer.

By the way, be careful what you pray for. Like you got to be mentally ready before you do this practice. So don't be, if you ask for it, make sure you're ready because that stuff will come.

Let all the bad karma come down on me. Bless me to see it all as a way that all the fruits of my own bad deeds are finally exhausted. So if I agree to take on the problems of all people, it will kill my bad deeds.

Agreeing to take on all bad karma cancels your bad karma. Got it? It's kind of interesting.

I don't know if it's a good deal. Take on eight billion people's bad karma and one of the eight billion is cleaned up. I'm not sure.

It sounds like an ACI fundraising deal or something. Okay, here we go. Bless me to learn to turn every problem that ever comes to me into a path that takes me further.

Wild success. So bless me to do that. And by the way, he keeps, the Lamrim teaching style is to quote a book that the students are supposed to know.

But we're kind of advanced people. Who spend our day in the cell phone and we can't memorize two lines of scripture because we don't have time because of our time-saving device. Okay?

Did you notice that your time-saving device has taken all your time? All right. LO SBYONG TSA BA means, let's go to the LO SBYONG DON DONG MA, which is what?

The seven point. So again, he's flipping to his other source. And that one says, GNOD CHOS SDIG PA'I GANG BA'I TSE, BSKYEN GNYEN BYANG CHUB LAM DU RGYUR There's the word RGYUR.

Yeah, transformation. And BSKYEN GNYEN means problems in your life. BSKYEN GNYEN means problems in your life.

It means bad factors. And then he says, change it to the LAM. Yeah, change it to the path, to BYANG CHUB, to Buddhahood.

Change your everyday challenges into a path to Buddhahood, which is wild success. All right. Then there's a picture I want to show you.

Ta-da! I have a lot of fun finding these pictures, as you may have guessed. And this one's perfect.

And you'll see why. So he's like a young scientist and he has a great idea. I am going to test you on the IDIMS. IDIM means idea image. It doesn't mean idiot image, okay? So don't worry. All right.

BYAS PA LTAR NA By the way, you have to read this as NATSA. I just made a note to myself because BYAS PA LTAR NA is a very common word. And you could misread this sentence.

But Tibetan doesn't... Tibetan has spaces between every syllable. So how is Joel doing today?

It would be HA WO YIS SA JOEL DO And maybe ULDU is a word. You see what I mean? So he says, NATSA, sickness.

JA means enemies. You can say competitors in your life for your position at work or for your wife or whatever. JA means demons, okay?

Spirits, spirit beings. SOG YID BLO MI MTHUN PA BYUNG BA NA YID BLO MI MTHUN PA means things you don't want, okay? Things that are not happy.

BYUNG NA RANG RE LAS LEN GZHAN LA RGYAL ZHING And here's a very, very deep idea coming up this morning. And if you don't go home with anything else tomorrow, go home with this idea, okay? Here's one idea you can take home and it will help you for the rest of your life.

And it's subtle. It takes a few minutes to get it. RANG RE LAS LEN GZHAN LA RGYAL Human nature, human nature is to blame something else for your problems.

LAS LEN means blame. GZHAN LA RGYAL means load it on somebody else. Blame it on anything else except me, okay?

The human nature is to mentally, at all costs, avoid the idea that all this crap is your fault, okay? Human nature. And it's very difficult to overcome that nature.

It's very difficult to fight that nature. Human being nature is to want to blame somebody else for your problems. And it's deeper than you think, okay?

He's not saying the person sitting next to you in the temple at Diamond Mountain. It's deeper than that. Okay, you ready?

NAS BYUNG BA THAMS CAD LAS KYIS BSKYED PAR MI SHES PAR People have real trouble to acknowledge that all the problems that come to them are karma. They desperately want to blame something else. And it's not necessarily other people.

And he says, MI SHES PAR SRED DANG BRTAN SOGS KYIS BSKYED PAR MA People will say, I got sick because I ate the wrong thing. My illness is because of my diet. Or, BRTAN in Tibetan, I bumped into a spirit being at the bathroom, which seems to be where they come from.

Okay, right? Sometimes they break the bathroom. So it was human nature in Tibet that when you had a medical problem, people would say, I must be eating the wrong stuff.

Maybe I'm missing some kind of vitamin or nutrient. Maybe I should change my diet. Or in Tibet, they would say, I must have bumped into a spirit being when I was going past the bathroom.

They'll say, I don't know what happened, but I was fine when I left the temple. And then I went over there and then when I got back, I didn't feel so well. And I must have picked up a spirit being.

It's called DON. I must have picked up a spirit being on the way. What do we call it now?

Viruses and germs. And it's not different. It's the same.

I must have got a virus. I must have got a germ. He says, that's as primitive as saying I picked up a demon in the bathroom.

You are not different from people in Tibet who never heard of a germ or a virus. You're doing the same thing they did. Oh, I must have picked up a germ from somebody.

I must have been at the Jetson Campus Center and I shouldn't have sat at that table with that person coughing. And he says, wake up man. It's not the virus that made you sick.

And he's pissed off. He feels pissed off. He's like, listen, don't be superstitious.

Don't say I picked up a demon at the Jetson Campus Center somewhere near where Rob was sitting. You're just doing the same mindset that these superstitious Tibetans who never heard of science. Science is an advanced superstition.

Picture the old one. Got it? Okay, duh.

Duh. It's not the viruses. It's not the COVID virus.

Wake up. It's not demon number 36 behind the rock at Diamond Mountain. Give it up.

What? Stop blaming it on other things. It could be a virus.

It could be a demon. Who made the virus? Where'd it come from?

That's like blaming the air. Why'd you get COVID? Oxygen.

Huh? Why'd you get COVID? Oxygen.

So what are you going to do? Stop breathing? Maybe.

Why oxygen? Oxygen carries the virus. If I didn't have oxygen, I could be better.

Like you're blaming the... You're blaming the... What do you call it?

You're blaming the instrument and not the real source. You're blaming what brought it to you, the wind. Oh, the wind gave me COVID.

No, the wind didn't give you COVID. The viruses that floated on the wind from the other person's mouth gave you COVID. No, the karma that floated the viruses to the wind of the other person's mouth is what gave you COVID.

Stop blaming it on stupid things. Who created the wind coming from the other person's mouth? When you have a medical problem, focus on the real cause.

And take care of it. And take care of it. And then you don't have to...

It's probably cheaper, right? Okay. Take care of the karma.

Does that mean you shouldn't go to a doctor? My Lama used to say, take care of the karma and then go to the doctor. Okay.

And that's a good strategy. Did Geshe-la say, don't go to a doctor? I didn't say that.

I go to a doctor. But take care of the karma before you go to the doctor. Okay.

And then the doctor will work. And it saves money also. I'm sorry.

My computer died. Here we go. Okay.

Come on back, honey. By the time you get up here, it always starts working. And if you don't come up here, it doesn't start working.

No, I can't. Wait, wait. I got it.

So it's kind of, you got to think like that. Is it your diet? It could be your diet.

But I got these irritating guys. If you ever lived in New York City, right, Rob? You're on the subway and there's these buff, thin, handsome guys eating chocolate bars on the subway.

And you're like, dang, you know, how do they do that? It must be karma. Come on, guys.

I got this. Oh, here we go. Okay.

They call it the wheel of death. It's almost like I'm supposed to contemplate before I go on. Okay, here we go.

BYAS PA LTAR NA TSA Yeah, people blame things on germs, which in the old days was called sickness demons, right? THAMS CAD LAS KYIS BSKYED PAR MI SHES PA'I SRED DANG BDUN SOGS BSKYED PAR I put viruses and carcinogens. That's my translation of BDUN.

BDUN means sickness demon. Okay? And what the doctors in Tibet did was come over and hit you on the head with a brick or something.

And that was supposed to stop the sickness demons. Okay? Nowadays, they just radiate you or something or give you chemotherapy.

It's the same primitive thing. Okay? It's not different from bloodletting or hitting somebody with a stick because they have a demon in them.

It's the same thing. Chemo and hitting people with a stick to get the demons out of them. It's the same thing.

It's exactly the same thing. If you don't take care of the karma, it's not going to do anything. So what should you do?

Not do chemo? I didn't say that. Take care of the karma, then do chemo.

Or do chemo and do the karma really fast. Take care of the karma really fast. RTZA BA'AM LEN TSAR GANG LA THUGS Next paragraph.

GANG LA THUGS is very important here. GANG LA THUGS means, TSAR means root, right? TSAR means root.

GANG LA THUGS, this is a very important practice. Next image, Daniel. Who is that?

That's Columbo. Okay, you guys don't know Columbo if you're not from America. So in 1973, when my Lama discovered the demon called television, some guy, really, some guy, I think the guy was a demon, I really believe it, bought him a television.

And that was the end. He's like bang on the floor at 8 o'clock at night. He lived upstairs.

I built his house. I built his house. He had a two story house.

He would bang on the floor. I was supposed to run up the stairs and watch Columbo with him. Columbo is like Sherlock Holmes detective.

He always has a cigar. Peter Falk. He goes, I saw you didn't kill your husband, right?

The lady said, no, why would I do that? He said, well, why is that hairbrush under the chair? You know?

And she'd be like, oh, it just fell down. He'd say, it didn't fall down while you were stabbing him? And she'd go, ah, you got me.

You know? You know? He was so funny.

He was always like, hmm. You know? Why is this up here?

Be a detective for God's sake. Be a karma detective. Hey, I got a medical problem.

What's the problem? What's the karma? What karma did I do?

Be a detector. Be a karma detector. Cure yourself.

Heal yourself. Go to a doctor, yes. Do your treatment, yes.

But look at what's the real problem. Trace it back. He's always doing that.

He's like, why is the hairbrush on the chair? He never says it directly. He always gets the person to confess.

He just irritates them until they say, okay, okay. I killed my husband. Now leave me alone.

So your karma's going to say, yeah, yeah, okay, it was me. It wasn't the virus. It wasn't the COVID.

It wasn't the plastic in your water bottle that gave you cancer. It was your karma, what you did. Does that mean you should use plastic water bottles?

No, it's bad for the environment and it puts plastic molecules all over your guts and you get cancer. So yeah, but stop the karma also or else your aluminum bottle will do something to you. All right.

SNGAGS SKYE BU CHUNG LU LEN BRAS KYI SKABS SU BSTAN PA LTAR MIN GDOD PA CHUNG TSE LAS MIN GDOD PA means stuff you never wanted. DGOS GANG is what, Sugeng? DGOS GANG Desire realm.

MIN GDOD PA here means all the stuff you never desired. It's the same verb. Stuff you never wanted happens.

TSE means TSE means the total amount. The word TSE here which means measure, like TSE MA, right? Sugeng?

Pramana. TSE means the total amount. Everything you never wanted to happen, LEN GYIS BYAS PA LEN GYIS BYAS PA It was created by karma.

Don't blame carcinogens. Don't blame viruses. Well, Geshe-la, so should we just cough in someone's face if we have COVID?

I didn't say that. I mean, I suggest you ask them to wear a mask and take care of your karma, but maybe not in that order. Okay?

All right. DE YANG RANG Now he says something very deep. How much can I give my wife 300 bucks for an extraordinary answer?

Okay. Tracing back like Columbo. Ah, so who put the hairbrush under the chair there?

And then go back one step before the hairbrush. Okay? We traced it back to karma.

We got it all back to karma. Where'd the karma come from? What's he say here?

What's he say here? Yeah, self-cherishing. Taking care of yourself first.

You want to cure a medical problem? Go after the karma. You want to cure the karma?

Go after the? Self-taking care of yourself first. Go after taking care of yourself first.

It's an easy way to take care of the karma. Okay? Just take care of the karma.

What do you mean? What am I supposed to do? Try to remove all the bad stuff I ever did?

You don't have to do it. Go to the root of the karma. What's the root of the karma?

Taking care of yourself first. Did I say you shouldn't take care of yourself? I never said that and I don't want any martyrs.

The Dharma martyrs are the most irritating people. Oh, you take all the pastries. I can do without.

You know what I'm saying? But there's enough for both of us. Yeah, but you take them.

You know? I mean, it's really irritating because we know you stuff your face with pastries right after we leave. So, be a Colombo.

You might want to buy a cigar for this. Me and Veronica took her sister Mona to Paris. We got off the plane.

We checked in the hotel. We went out for our first walk next to the Louvre. We found a square.

There was a beautiful cafe. We sat down and had a nice French coffee, which is like the whole goal of spending all that money. By the way, we were there on business.

Right? Remember? We married somebody there.

And there was a cigar shop next to the cafe. We all looked at each other at the same moment. We said, let's smoke a cigar.

We never smoked a cigar before. We went and bought one cigar. We walked around Paris and smoked a cigar together.

So, you might want to do that. So, you look like Colombo. And you say, okay, this problem in my life, it must be karma.

And then, be a detective. Be a detective. What's the next step?

What triggered the karma? Taking care of myself first. It's so simple.

I can't understand the karma. Yeah, you cannot. It takes a Buddha.

But I'll give you a guideline. What's the guideline? You took care of yourself first at some point.

Somewhere, somehow, you took care of yourself first. You want to fix it? Yeah.

Okay, genius. We'll give you a genius grant. Stop.

Taking care of yourself first. I didn't say, don't take care of yourself. I said, equal rights.

Equal rights. BDAG GZHAN NYON PAR BDAG GZHAN NYON PAR Other people have equal rights to your time. Do they have exclusive rights to your time?

No. Should you hurt yourself to serve others? No.

Should you not sleep? Should you drive all night and dangerously endanger yourself? No.

Right? I'm talking to the lady behind you. You should take care of yourself or you can't take care of others because you'll get in a car accident or something.

Okay? Good? All right.

SA BA NI RANG CHEN ZIN LA THUG THUG means, THUG is very important here. THUG means to meet somebody or to make contact. What's it mean here?

RANG CHEN ZIN LA THUG That's the end of the detective work. It goes back that far and it stops. The buck stops there.

Trace back your problem. I got carcinogens. I have a bad diet.

I got viruses. I got spirit beings that were hanging out in the bathroom. And then I traced it back to my karma.

And then I traced that back to taking care of myself. First, THUG means that's the end of the road. There's no place behind that.

Because you've been doing that for billions of years. There's nothing before that except more of that. What's the cause of taking care of yourself first?

Taking care of yourself first for billions of years, for countless years. If you get your mental process, your detective work, if you go back as far as taking care of yourself first, you can relax. You hit the root cause.

You found the cause of cancer. You don't have to be a scientist to find the cause of cancer. Just go back that far.

THUG means that's it. You hit the real cause and you don't have to go back further than that. All right, Columbo.

DE NA, KU MA NOG KU PA TSUN CHAD KYANG LAS LEN, KU MA LA DA SA MED I put the English there for you. It's a very unusual word. If you're looking to figure out why somebody broke into your car and took your purse or something, he says try to work back past the thief.

Don't go running around the neighborhood looking for somebody with your purse. Try to trace it. If your purse is missing, don't go looking for people with your purse.

Go looking for the karma and then go look for the taking care of yourself that caused the karma and you can relax. Your purse will come back. DA SA MED KYI What he says here is it's not enough to walk around the neighborhood and try to find someone who's carrying your purse.

KU MA means the thief. MED KYI RANG GI LAS NGAN It was your LAS. NGAN means bad.

Bad karma. It was your bad karma. What's he going to say in the next sentence?

Anticipatory translation. We try to teach it to the mixed nuts. Close your eyes and guess what the next sentence says.

Yeah, and that goes back to taking care of yourself. Let's confirm. DE SKYE BYED CHEN ZIN LA BDA Trace it back to your taking care of yourself first.

A great translation skill is to anticipate what the guy has to be saying next. You can close your eyes at the last sentence and translate the next sentence without seeing it. Then you can check.

It's a great translation help. It's a great skill for a translator. Guess what he has to say next.

Write the sentence down and then fix it. It's very fun. When you think like a llama, you will be able to write the next sentence on your own and you'll be right.

Cool. All right. Danny says, I got a new picture for you.

It's 28A. I sent you a new picture this morning just after my coffee. Anyway, it's a traditional Tibetan people there.

Well, we'll figure it out. You can put it up when you find it. It's a piece of wood.

,DE PHYIR NA TZAD DANG, ,SDUG BSNGAL SKYE NGAN SOGS CHUNG BA NA, So when you get, when you fall, when you get sick, when something happens to your body, SKYE NGAN means you get a problem of some kind. ,BYANG CHUB THOB PA'I GROG TU, Now he switches gears. He says, therefore, to be sick is a lucky thing because it will force you to think about karma, which will force you to think about you must have taken care of yourself first.

He says it's what's GROG PO you guys? Friend. Yeah, friend.

GROG PO is a nice Tibetan word. What's the Sanskrit? Mitra.

Like Dharma Mitra means Dharma friend. So, in Maitri, it comes from that. Maitreya comes from that.

Ultimate friend. ,GROG TSUL GSANGS RGYUD DE, ,NA TZAD DIG BSNGAL KYI CHAGS BZHIN YIN, Getting sick is the prostration board for your bad karma. So, did you find the prostration board yet?

It didn't come in? Oh, it just was coming from the retreat valley. It wasn't that far.

Anyway, there's a special wooden board that's about this wide and you put special gloves on your hands and you do full body prostrations on it. And it's angled slightly up at the end. So you go down and you slide and then you come back and you stand up.

I went to a Tibetan doctor recently and she's like, you got to get a CHAGS BZHIN. I'm like, come on. Because my Lama did, they did like 500 prostrations.

I don't have time for this. I'd rather go to the gym. But it's the same thing.

It's, Tibetans like, Lamas like CHAGS BZHIN, prostration board, because they can collect some good karma while they're doing the gym. It's an interesting idea, but it's really bad for your knees. So anyway, he says, thinking about where your sickness is really coming from is your prostration board.

Work out your sicknesses on your prostration board of intelligence, Dharma intelligence. The board, the prostration board is your Dharma intelligence. He says, when you feel physically not well, do a daily workout on your prostration board, which is meditations on karma and meditations on taking care of yourself first.

That's your prostration board. Then go to the gym. Then do your workout.

But don't expect a workout to help you if you don't have the right intention. You have to make new resolutions about taking care of others first. Then go to the gym and work out your high blood pressure or something.

Is it wrong to go to the gym to work out your high blood pressure? No, it's smart. But do it with style.

Think about while you're working out, think of the times that you were taking care of yourself first. Then the workout will work. Got it?

ZHES PA BZHIN You didn't find... It didn't show up. Nah, that's a different guy.

Well, this is a good... Let's do him. He has succeeded at something.

So get that feeling in your heart. I don't know, he got a promotion or he won an election or he lost an election and thinks he won the election. I don't know.

No politics in the Dharma. ZHES PA BZHIN Then he says ZHES PA BZHIN NA TZA SOGS CI CHUNG Now he's going to a new topic. Now he's going to a new topic.

When you do get sick, NA TZA, whatever you get, if you think about it, when you get sick, you should celebrate like that guy. Why? You just used up some bad karma.

Yay! Did you get COVID yet? No.

You know. Don't worry. You're a good person.

You'll get it.

[Говорящий 2]
You know.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. You can wear off your bad karma. You know.

NA TZA CI CHUNG YANG SNGON GYI LAS NGAN GYI RGYUD GYI NGAN SONG YONG CHE Then he says, if you think about it, if... By the way, we're going to do Q&A in 10 minutes. So get ready.

If you're online, send your questions to Timothy. All right. NA TZA CI CHUNG YANG SNGON GYI LAS NGAN GYI RGYUD GYI NGAN SONG YONG CHE BSTAN DI LA MIN PA'I GO CHE This GO CHE at the end, GO CHE, it's a very difficult word.

All my vocabulary came from direct contact with my Lama. We lived together for 25 years. He would say things at me, about me, and I had to figure him out.

He said, GO CHE. I didn't have a dictionary. I had him.

I can remember where he taught me all my words. Most of my words, I can remember where I learned it. I don't know, we were building a sidewalk together around the temple.

We built the addition and then we had to increase the sidewalk so people could walk around the temple and the house. We did the sidewalk together. I'm like, we get the truck comes, we pour the concrete and he looks at me and he says, you got the trowel?

I'm like, you got the trowel? The trowel is the thing you make the cement level with. I'm like, you got the trowel?

I said, no, you got the trowel. He says, I don't got the trowel. I'm like, what are we going to do?

He grabs a piece of wood and he says, GO CHE. I'm like, what's GO CHE? He says, we can use this as a trowel.

What's GO CHE? Substitute. Who said that?

That's pretty good. Acceptable substitute. Not the real thing, but it's an acceptable substitute.

So he says here, if you do get COVID, that's a GO CHE for cleaning up your karma. Are you intelligent enough to clean up your karma in advance? No.

So what's the next best thing? Get COVID. Then you should be happy.

Wow, I didn't have a trowel. Trowel means you confessed your karma with the four powers and you cleaned it up. But you weren't smart enough to do that.

So what happened? You got COVID. Yay, I got COVID.

It's a substitute for doing confession. It's a little bit late. You get sick.

If you had done your four powers, you wouldn't have got sick. But since you didn't do your four powers, you got sick. You should celebrate.

You should be happy. Wow, that's as good as doing the four powers. What?

The bad karma comes back to me at a lower level. You trigger a premature baby. That's a Dharma skill that you have to learn.

It's triggering a premature baby. Try to get the karma to ripen before it's cancer. Before you get cancer, try to get the karma to ripen prematurely.

Before you get cancer. The karma that was going to give you cancer, try to trigger it early. How do you trigger it early?

You make a decision to take on other people's problems. That triggers the karma early. That triggers a premature baby.

It's a very cool practice. You decide voluntarily, I will take on Shantien's karma. Tell me anything you did in the last few weeks.

I'll take it. I voluntarily accept your karma. Can you take another person's karma?

You cannot. Can you get a lot of good karma by deciding to try to take someone else's karma? Yes.

That good karma is so strong that it will trigger a premature baby. That will go chupa. It's as good as the four powers.

It's a little late, and it's a little messy. But it's better late than never. So, if you're not smart enough to do the four powers in advance, at least try to take on other people's karma.

That will trigger an early ripening of your own karma. Got it? The intention to do something you cannot do is enough to trigger your karma early.

Cause your karma. That's all wrapped up in the Wheel of Life teaching. LIMS number 8 and 9.

LINGS number 8 and 9. And I think Sugeng's book finished yesterday or something. He's cleaning now.

He's doing the final cleaning, which takes a long time. You'll get it before you're 90, I promise. Maybe not before I'm 90.

Okay. DGOS CAN YANG DU, YID DE LHANG LHANG Say LHANG LHANG. LHANG LHANG means giddy happiness.

LHANG LHANG means do you feel LHANG LHANG? No. Okay, just try to do something for somebody else to take their bad karma.

And then you're, okay, got it? If you're not walking around like this by the second class. LHANG LHANG means I did it!

I did it! What? I got COVID!

Yay! Okay. No, really.

If you're really doing a retreat and you're trying to take other people's DONG LEN, the sign that your DONG LEN is successful is that you will have a small karmic disaster. Like you'll get COVID when you're taking out that boy finally that you've been chasing for weeks. And then you get COVID the night before.

And then you should be hee hee hee, I did it! Okay? All right?

And that's that guy's picture. We got five minutes to Q&A. DER MA ZAD NGES DONG LEN BYAS TE SEMS CAN GYI SDIG SDUG BDAG LA LANG MA YIN PAS DA DA means well, DUN DRUG.

DUN DRUG. Oh, I got sick. Yeah.

What happened? Hee hee, I got, I did it. I was trying to take someone else's karma and then I got sick.

It worked. DUN DRUG. DUN DRUG, what?

AMOGHA SIDDHI. There's two translations in Sanskrit of DUN DRUG. One is AMOGHA SIDDHI.

Tantric daily. Gets everything done. What's the non-tantric word?

Siddhartha. Okay? Siddhartha.

Siddhartha is the name of the prince who became Buddha. His name means did it. Siddha means did it.

Artha means go. Siddhartha means I did it. Hee hee, flang flang, DUN DRUG.

That should be a good name for someone taking Buddhis off of us. Flang flang, DUN DRUG. I did it, Siddhartha.

I did it, Siddhartha. Hee hee, Siddhartha. Okay?

Hee hee, Siddhartha. Flang flang. It's got a ring to it, Tim.

We got to name somebody flang flang, Siddhartha. You got names for everybody, right? You got names for everybody, right?

I don't have to worry about it, right? Yeah, okay. So if there's someone who signs up late, like in ten minutes for the Bodhisattva vows ceremony, I give you permission to call them flang flang, DUN DRUG.

Okay? Which means, Hee hee, Siddhartha. Okay?

DUN DRUG SONG NYAM DU RGA BA SKYE means you should be super happy. RGA BA SKYE means you should be super happy. So if you try to take other people's karma and then you have just a normal life disaster, you can blame it on your practice and go, Hee hee, I did it.

Okay, all right. SKYE NAS, LA SDUG BSNGAL GYI LHAG PA RNAMS KYANG, MIN PA MAN NAS And then you can say, I pray the rest of the crap comes to me also. Like I got 2% of my karma just ripened.

I got COVID. Now I pray the 98% comes. I hope I get cancer on top of that.

You know? By the way, that's a weird prayer to make. But if you could make it, you'd be a happy person with cancer.

Okay? Because you used up hell karma or something. A real Buddhist would be happy to have a serious medical problem just after they tried to do all these practices.

They would be hung hung. Hee hee. And that's a hard to believe, but it's true.

If you get good at DONG REN, and you have a major problem, you should be really happy. Because the karma you just used up was hell realm karma. And it's a lot better to get a serious illness than go to the hells.

You should be ecstatic that something bad happened to you, and it's going to march you to your legs. All right. Good job.

NYAM DU SKA BA SKYES NI, SDUG BSNGAL GYI LHAG MA RNAMS KYANG MIM PAR MIM PAR means pray that you get the rest to ripen also. MIM PAR SEMS CAN RNAMS KYI SDUG BSNGAL MYONG GYUR SANG MA DE'I GO CHOD PA I pray that my illness should go CHOD PA for the karma of all living beings. Substitute.

Substitute for. I pray that my current medical problems, get some mileage out of your medical problems. I went in for gallbladder surgery.

It was the funniest, one of the funniest moments of my life. I was in intense pain for 24 hours in my retreat cabin. I came down here to teach.

I was laying on the floor, and I had to go to the hospital. Jigme is waiting to drag me to her car. Geshe Lothar is like, Oh, I wrote a long life prayer.

Can you just hang on a while? I'm like, Geshe-la, I can't get off the floor. He says, That's okay.

You stay there. Let me read the long life prayer. I said, I'm going to be the only lama who ever died during his long life prayer.

He's like, but he wrote it. He wrote it for like six months. I could see he really wanted to do it, so he did it.

Anyway. Gochupa. When you get a problem, think that, oh, this should substitute for everyone else's karma.

Got it? Gochupa. Nice word.

Right? Gochupa. I'm going to stop there.

We'll go to Q&A for about 15 minutes and then we'll take a break. I'm a substitute for another guy. I look pretty tall, but my heels are high.

That's an old hippie song.

[Говорящий 2]
Sorry, that was loud. The question, let's see, where did it go? Because of these beautiful Tonglen service grants, someone's asking a question about, could you give us some advice on how to manage our resources in a beautiful and meaningful way, especially if we're receiving money from a Dharma job?

How to balance things in our lives with receiving such precious money and not wasting it?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good question. That's a great question. I don't know, for the first 15 years of ACI and Diamond Mountain, nobody got paid.

Nobody got anything. I did the whole 15 years of ACI courses. I paid for everything.

I was seriously in debt by the time that process was finished. I was in huge debt. I didn't get paid.

Nobody got paid. I had to pay for all the notebooks and everything, and the travel. Then people started to help.

Then people started to overhelp. We started to give some hourly payment to some of the people. By the way, we're not past that.

We don't have enough money to pay everybody what you can make outside, and that's just the way it is. But we can. The Dong Len service grants are meant to help you with your expenses.

I'm thinking of people like the translators. There's online translators now. Because we went online, there's people who are spending six or eight hours a day translating, and they don't get anything.

They don't make anything. We're trying to create these grants to try to help people with their expenses. By the way, to make a commitment to your marriage or your partner, and then make the commitment of having children, for example, and making a commitment to a mortgage and a car monthly payment, and then go Dharma, and give up all your commitments that you already made is not Dharma.

That's just bad karma. I'll repeat. You make commitments in your life to your family, to your car payments, to your mortgage, to your sick parents, taking care of your parents.

You make commitments. Then you become a Dharma person. You sign up for Dharma translator.

It's tempting to say, well, I'll just give up my old commitments because now I'm on an enlightened track. That's an enlightened track to the hell realms. Something like that.

You made promises. You got to keep them. The Dharma grants, the tonglen service grants, they are meant to help people keep their commitments to taking care of other people, your family, your wife or husband, your parents.

You need to do that. We're trying to make sure people get some payment. We don't have enough money to pay you.

You're probably worth 100,000. We can only probably pay you 20,000 or something because we don't have that. It's not enough money.

But I think it's a great opportunity, as I said, to take a year off or take two years off and support yourself and do some cool Dharma work and then go back to your corporate job or something like that. I'm thinking that would be a cool... I wish I had had this opportunity.

My grandmother died and my mother died in the same few months. My grandma was wealthy and my mother had nothing. But the money went boom, boom.

So I could do my Geshe degree without working. I didn't have to work. I had this money.

We're trying to give you support to be able to do Dharma work. Now that money is a severe responsibility. Yeah, that's true.

So it took me 25 years, 30 years to raise money to pay people. Then I started paying people. I saw two things happen.

Number one, some people worked really hard and very successful, extremely successful, like Tim. They just did really, really good work. Then some people took the money and stopped working.

I don't know what to do about these people. I'm in a bad situation. I'm in a, what do you call it?

Yeah, I don't know what to do to be honest. I got money for somebody. They're taking a salary and they stop working.

I'm like, you know, yeah, that's a very serious karma. To waste Dharma resources is a very serious karma. So think about it.

If you take Dharma money, you got to put in the work. You got to give the work. You got to do the work.

So don't take a grant from the tonglen service grants and stop working. That's extremely serious karma. So that's all I can say.

You don't have to be a genius to know that. You know if you're working hard and you know if you're not working hard. That's up to you.

But to take the money and not to work hard is a karmic disaster. So I don't have to tell you that. You can figure that out.

But it's much more heavy karma money. So if you take this organization's money, if you take a grant to do some work, for goodness sake, do it. Or it's very bad karma.

I have these people, they get a grant, they don't work, they keep losing money. They come to me and they say, I don't know what's happening Geshe-la. Things are happening.

I'm getting all these big expenses and I don't know why. And I'm like, maybe you're not working. Maybe you're not using the money we're giving you.

Maybe you're not doing the work you're getting paid for. And they're like, oh. You don't have to be Columbo to figure that out.

Alright. But it's a ticket to long term financial stress. You see what I mean?

If you take dharma money and you don't produce, you will be stressed out financially for many years. And that's painful. That's really painful.

So you're just protecting yourself. Either quit and say, look, I'll do as much as I can without money. Or give it your best.

It doesn't mean you have to overwork. When you overwork, you do lousy work. And nobody wants your lousy work.

When you take care of yourself and you do your practice, you do your meditations, you study, you do your retreats, and you do your dharma work, that's sweet. But to overwork, don't sleep, make yourself sick, that's not what we're asking. We're asking you to do a fair amount of work for a fair amount of, less than a fair amount of pay.

So yeah, be careful with dharma money. It's very dangerous. But if you get a grant and you do what you're supposed to do, it's extremely good karma.

And you will be financially successful. Strangely financially successful. I gave away 3,000 bucks this morning before I got here.

Just like that. If you followed the karma rules, the money just come like crazy. $40,000 since yesterday morning.

Okay. That's not bad. Okay.

All right, Timothy, back to you.

[Говорящий 2]
So we have one question here. I'm going to summarize it. During their meditation, as soon as they focus on the object, their body begins to shake, or they begin to laugh, or they're beginning to get very tense in their body.

Tense? Tense, yes. So the question is, what can they do to navigate this?

Or what should they be doing differently so that they're not, because it's uncomfortable and it doesn't seem like it's meditation.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, okay, understand. So when you're meditating, because of lung, sem, jukpa, chi. What's that?

Give me the Bowie, Arizona version. Yeah, the cowboy on the horse. The prana, the thoughts are running on the prana, right?

The cowboy's on the horse. So while you're meditating, your thought processes are affecting your subtle body heavily. So as you sit with your eyes closed silently, without moving on your meditation cushion, and you are messing with the cowboy, the horse will, if you do a big change with the cowboy, the horse will move.

And it's very common to see a person who's meditating to go like this, or your body like a jolt, or something like that, or you start shaking like that. So you got to get familiar with your subtle body, and you got to know what's a good jolt and what's a bad jolt. So I'm going to give you some jolt guidelines.

A sudden jolt like that is probably good. That's a sudden release of prana. If you're doing yoga and you start burping, oddly, like every pose, that's a good sign.

That's prana's being released. Stagnant prana is being released. And you will burp, or you'll fart, or you'll sweat.

And in the yoga tradition that's considered highly successful. Sweaty, burping, farting yogis are successful yogis. It's not fun to be around them.

prana is being released. By the way, it will stop after a while. And by the way, you will get small injuries as prana moves when you start yoga.

So the first year that you do yoga, you will get small injuries. You will hurt your neck, or you'll get a bad shoulder. And just work through it.

Because prana is being released. That was jammed up. It was stagnant.

It was stuck. So don't be concerned if your first year or two years that you do yoga, or the first year or two years that you meditate regularly, did I say regularly? You will have these sudden releases of prana.

And that's a good thing. If you do hurt something in yoga, like your knee or your shoulder. I had a shoulder thing.

In three-year retreat I had a shoulder thing for the first six months or something. Then take care of it. Don't try to do more prana moving.

Take care of it. Don't hurt it more. But understand that it might be a good thing.

You're releasing prana. So if you have jolts going on in your meditation, generally, that's a good sign. But if you have shaking, if you start shaking, that's not a good sign.

That means you have an overload of prana and not a release of prana. So how do you get an overload of prana? You meditate too much?

You meditate more than your capacity? Or you're focusing at your heart chakra. So somehow your focus is in here.

Then that tends to cause shaking and quaking of your hands and stuff like that. That's because you are you may not be doing it consciously. You may not be trying to visualize your teacher at your heart.

But if you're generally focused at your heart and you're meditating and you start getting shakes, that's an overload of prana and it's a bad thing and it will get worse. There's a simple traditional correction, which is to drop the visualization to your navel. Anytime you get shaky, which is a bad sign, purposely drop the visualization to your navel.

It's not at your navel, it's behind your navel. So that's really important. You're not meditating on your belly button.

Go to your belly button and go back towards your spine. So like an inch or two in front of your spine. So go to the belly button, turn left, go in.

And take the visualization back towards the spine, but not in the spine. Not in the spinal column. They say half an inch in front of the spinal column.

Park there, do the visualization there, the shaking will stop. And if you're shaking, you have to take care of it or it will get worse. And then it will cause irritation with your loved ones.

Then your meditation is like a klesha meditation. You'll become more irritated and irritating at the same time. That's a general guideline.

By the way, that's why it's important to have a teacher. It's really important to have a relationship with a person who's done long retreats and can tell you the difference between a jolt and a shake. You need someone who can teach you these things.

The nice thing about Diamond Mountain Retreat Center is of all the retreat centers in the whole world, we probably have more three-year retreatants related to this retreat center than any other retreat center, including Tibet. I think we're lucky to have the staff here at Diamond Mountain. We have experienced meditators here who survived the three-year retreat.

They know their stuff because they've been there and they made mistakes and they learned. Probably the best thing about jolts or shakes is to find a good meditation teacher who can help you. It doesn't have to be, if it's in person it's better, but if it's online, that's better than nothing.

We have people like that at Diamond Mountain. Get in touch with Diamond Mountain. We can assign someone to you, right?

Okay.