«Дар освобождения», курс 40 «Магия пустотных медитаций и тонглен», занятие 13

[Говорящий 1]
Hi, welcome back. We're going to go back to the Lam Rim. We're at Natsar Khyen.

Natsar Khyen. I'll just keep going. Natsar Khyen Ngen Sob Chud Papa Sapte What he says here is, listen, don't remember the next day to turn a problem into an opportunity.

What's that mean? Do it in the instant of the problem. And that's a special skill.

It's very common to have a disaster, get upset, spend a whole night worrying about it, not sleeping, and then the next day you remember Lam Rim. Don't do it that way. Try to turn on the Lam Rim understanding immediately because that's when it's really helpful.

That's like pulling out a fire extinguisher the next day and it's too late. Usually it's too late. So you have to get these instincts.

You have to have these automatic reactions that when a problem comes, you're like, oh, look, a new puppy to snuggle up to. We were saying that problems are like new puppies and instead of kicking them or trying to push them out of the house, like get out on the floor and let them lick you and get to know these puppies. Puppy means the latest problem with your friends or something.

So learn to react immediately and don't react two days later, remember your Dharma. Dharma has to be applied immediately. If you can apply Dharma in the middle of a problem, that's extremely powerful.

So I encourage you to, you got to think fast. You got to keep your head and you got to not get off balance. In the middle of a disaster, you have to remember Lam Rim.

And that's when it's really helpful. Only in the middle of a disaster can you truly turn the problem into an opportunity. If you wait two days, it's usually too late and you lose the energy of the problem.

So just as a person, I think I'm good at it. When I have a problem, I try to turn it into an opportunity. Personal advice, do it fast.

Don't wait. Don't wait two days and then try to recover what you can. Like immediately, especially personal problems with other people.

The minute a person causes you trouble, then jump on it and use it as an opportunity. Find some way to turn a problem into a success. And don't wait two days because you also won't get any sleep for two nights because you'll be worrying about it.

If you have a problem with somebody, jump on it today and do something. Use it. Use the energy for something positive.

And your life will be a miracle. Your life will be... My life is just fun.

My whole day is fun. I have fun whole day. And at night I have fun.

And I sleep really well. I sleep too well. I'm so glad I don't have to sit in a class.

I get to talk during the whole class. So, all right. STONG LEN SONG NENG DE'I PHYIR PA GAL CHE GSUNG Next picture.

I was on the airplane from Japan. When I eat, I let myself watch movies or TV because I can't translate while I'm eating. And I take like 10 minutes.

And I was trying to find a movie that was appropriate. It wouldn't mess up my mind. And there was a documentary about...

He's called Motocross Guy. He was like the world champion of racing across the desert on a motorcycle. And they have the footage of him falling.

And he fell and he broke his spine. He broke his spinal cord. And there's no cure for it.

You can't do anything. If you break your spinal cord, your legs will never work. And he broke his spinal cord.

Then there was this... They took a camera in the helicopter when they flew him out. And they took a camera in the hospital.

And they filmed him for like a year with his girlfriend. So here's this beautiful girlfriend who's girlfriend of the world's best motocross rider. And then suddenly she has to help him pee-pee and poo-poo and walk.

She has to put him in bed. She has to get him into his wheelchair. And what struck me was how quickly he adjusted his mind.

And I think that showed he was a real champion. Because he didn't freak out. And he didn't get depressed.

And he didn't get angry. And he was like, okay. What do we do now?

How do we... He developed his arms. And he learned how to use two canes.

But the thing that struck me was he so easily gave up his pride. He so easily surrendered his pride. And he was a very famous person.

The girls were all chasing him. Now all the girls are running away because they don't want to clean up his poo-poo. And his pride dissolved.

And he did it so gracefully. If you have a chance, you should see it. They interview all these people who broke their spine and how they dealt with it.

So here's CHEN GYUG. What's CHEN GYUG? Bodhisattva Jaya Avatar.

Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. And here's advice from Shantideva. CHEN YANG SDUG BSNGAL YIN RTEN NI Problems do have one good thing about them.

YIN RTEN means in Sanskrit, guna. Good quality. He says, when your life messes up, there is a guna, something good about it.

What? RGYAL BA'I THEG PA SO BAR BYED It smashes your pride. It smashes your pride.

He became a very gentle, modest person. And this whole thing of being the world's best motorcycle rider, he gave it up. But it took a spine break.

It took his spinal cord to be broken. And it just removed his pride. And I think I had this experience in the diamond business.

And I tell this story a lot. There is a family called the Mehta family from Gujarat. They moved to Belgium.

They were knighted by the king of Belgium because they doubled the economy in Belgium with their diamond company. And they built a huge children's hospital in Mumbai. And I used to work in their office.

I used to buy diamonds in their office. And I went to the toilet one day. They have a gold toilet.

It is made of gold. The whole toilet is made of gold. And there are wings on it.

Why? People like to squat in India. They like to squat when they poo-poo and pee-pee.

So it is a dual-purpose gold toilet. You can sit on it or you can climb up on it and do your thing. The whole thing is gold.

The sink is gold. The thing is gold. And then downstairs he has an antique car collection.

So he has got two parking levels. He built a parking garage in the basement of his office to hold his antique car collection. Then he invited me to go.

He said, you want to go to my son's wedding? I am like, okay. They rented Mumbai Soccer Stadium.

60,000 seats. They turned it into a Gujarati tent with 60,000 participants. They held the wedding in the stadium with 60,000 guests.

On the way to the stadium, I was in the car. They took a basket of diamonds and they threw diamonds out the window. The whole way from the office to the stadium, they were pretty popular.

We go to the slums of Mumbai and they are throwing diamonds out the window. I was like, wow, this is unbelievable. Then about a year later, he had a stroke.

The father of the family had a stroke. He was young. He was like 50.

He had a bad stroke. The next day, he has to be carried to the office. His limo driver gets out and carries him into the office.

They made a special chair for him. He couldn't speak and he couldn't write. In India, you respect your parents.

You take care of your parents. His children made him this big desk and this big chair. They just put him there in the morning and he sat there until the afternoon and then they took him home.

Just to honor him, to let him feel like he is still part of the business or he is still part of the family. Then I was like, yesterday he was arranging millions of dollars of stones for me to look at. The next day, he can't talk and he can't walk.

It was a big lesson for me. It woke me up. Then I said, we are all going to be like that.

Every one of us will go there. Sooner or later, if your kids are nice, they will put you in the chair when you can't move anymore. It will happen to everybody in this room.

Sooner or later, we will be in the chair and the kids will be feeding us. I fed my mom last week. A couple of weeks ago, she was my stockbroker.

She took $10,000 and made $100,000. Now she had a stroke and I am feeding her. She can't pick up the food.

I have to feed her. She can't remember anything. We will be there.

You will go there. The good thing about this kind of a life is you might as well give up your pride now. Because if you hold on to it, you are just more ridiculous later.

You might as well give up this thing about looking good or trying to impress people or trying to be the smartest person in the room or the most beautiful person in the room. You might as well drop it now because you are headed there. It is going to be a lot easier when you get there and Tim has to feed all of us.

I was feeding her pizza. I wrote an essay for my family. I said, take her out in the wheelchair for pizza.

Everyone is like, well, thanks for thinking about it. I am like, don't heat the pizza up too much. They are like, why?

I said, the cheese comes out in strings and it flops down her blouse. Let it cool down until the cheese won't stretch. That is her life.

We are all writing these emails to each other. Make sure the cheese is cool before you put the pizza in her mouth because otherwise it flops down on her and she is not even aware of it. You will be there.

We will be there. So be goofy now. Have fun now.

What is the point of trying to be fancy or trying to be wealthy or trying to be the most intelligent or beautiful person in the room? It is hopeless. You are headed for pizza.

Somebody feeding you pizza. You are headed there anyway, so why not let it go now? Just let it go now.

Have fun. Be yourself. Be goofy.

Right? SKYE BA'I DREG PA SEL BAR BYED Give up your... DREG PA means...

What do you call that? More than pride. Arrogance.

Drop the arrogance now because you are going to be a fool later anyway. KHOR BA LA NYIN RJE SKYE KHOR BA PA KHOR BA means what? KHOR BA Sansara.

What is a KHOR BA PA? It is a sansaraist. Okay?

We are all sansaraists. We are all sansara specialists. He says KHOR BA PA.

NYIN RJE means learn to... learn to sympathize with... What is his name?

The great French writer. Not Rousseau. The other guy.

That is his name. Anyway, he said fellow sufferers for a day. Fellow sufferers for a day.

We are fellow sufferers for a day. Your whole life, we are fellow sufferers for a day. KHOR BA PA LA NYIN RJE SKYE means give other people some sympathy.

No matter how arrogant and insulting they are, they are all headed for the pizza thing. We are all headed for the pizza thing. So just let it go.

Someone is irritating to you. Someone is arrogant to you. Someone hurts you.

Let it go before you are fully offended. That is the idea. As you start to get offended, let it go before you get full...

Before the anger comes up complete, break it before it is complete. That is a lamrim practitioner. That is how fast your reactions have to be in the lamrim.

Before you get completely pissed off, you are already thinking about their suffering. So within two minutes, you can switch the situation. That is a lamrim practitioner.

That is why it takes 20 years to teach the lamrim. Okay. DIG LAM ZAM SHING, DGE LA DGA Try to avoid mistakes in how you react.

DGE LA DGA means enjoy catching yourself halfway through pissed off. Enjoy making an art form to catch yourself before you have time to get fully angry. Remember the guy with the gold toilet.

Before you even have time to get properly angry. And by the way, there is this weird feeling of being interrupted in the middle of a movie. You are like, do I have to be nice?

Can't I just be irritated another 10 minutes? And then your lamrim mind is like, no, give it up now. Yeah, but I didn't really fully hate the person yet.

You are going to have to give it up sooner or later anyway. You might as well do it before you get there. Next picture, Daniel.

Credit card problems. And if we had... I am sure Tim is going to arrange an item review time with all the participants.

Who is she? Yeah, A-lei. A-lei.

Okay. All right. Credit card troubles.

Here is the next verse. And it is from the Lojong Dundunma. It is from the seven point bodhichitta training text, Lojong.

RANG RE DUNG YAL CHUNG BA LAS DE BZHIN GYIS PA CHUNG NA LEG PA RDZIN KYANG You and me, if we have a good day, we think things are going well. But if you are a lamrim person, if you have a bad day, things are going well. Okay.

He says, GYIS NA MI DGAR DUG NA DGAR A real lamrim person, if they have a good day, they should get upset. DUG NA DGAR If they have a really crappy day, they should celebrate. Now, $300 bet.

There is two ways in which this relates to a credit card and I am waiting. And I will repeat it. When things mess up, I am sorry, when things go well, you should regret.

And when things mess up, you should celebrate. And it relates to a credit card. Daniel, I want two.

It is $150 each. It is two aspects. You tell me what Lojong is going to say in the next two lines.

[Говорящий 2]
I think when things go well, it is you are using up your credit card. And then when you have a problem, you are actually getting rid of some debt from your credit card.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, so, don't forget to collect your $200 from... I am just seeing how fast you can turn that in here. Okay.

$300. He is like... Okay, next two lines.

GYI NA NGON SOGS SUN NAM SRED GYI NA NGON SOGS SUN NAM SRED GYI NA means when things are going... when you are having a good day. NGON SOGS means previously collected karma.

SUN NAM means good karma. SRED means you use it up. Your credit card is used up.

RGYUG NA, when you mess up, when you have a bad day, that DIG RGYIBS means the bad deeds and obstacles which would take you to the NGAN SONG, the lower realms. BYANG You purify them. You should be happy when you have a bad day.

You are cleaning your credit card, right? And when you have a good day, you are just using up your credit card. I don't know.

This Lamrim blogging is difficult. Okay. I went and found you the quotation.

He didn't tell you where it was from. And I bowed down to John Brady and your project. And I couldn't do anything without your project.

So I am extremely grateful. And I spend all day swimming in your database. And I am really grateful for it.

And it will change the world eventually. By the way, that LO SBYANG is quoted by Thich Nhat Hanh Rinpoche and by Pabongka Rinpoche and nobody else ever quotes it. And he didn't say who gave those lines.

They don't say who gave those lines. Who spoke those lines, they don't say. The credit card lines, okay?

And I went on a long trip to John Brady's database. And there was a guy named Jason who worked for you, I don't know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. A nice young man.

And he was a nerd. And there is a weird thing. All these monasteries around the world are inputting data and printing books and they throw the data away.

They input the book so they can print it and then they throw away the data. So he was going around begging people for their data before they threw it away. And he went to a Nyingma group, which is the ancient...

Nyingma means the ancient Buddhists of Tibet, which is a different group than your lineage. It's a different tradition. And he begged them for their data and they gave it to him.

And it's in there. And the reason these Gelugpa guys don't credit it is it's a Nyingma. Okay?

So anyway, I'm going to give credit properly to Ogyen Jigme Chukyi Wangpo, 1808, 1887. He was a Dzogchen master and a Nyingma and partly Rinpoche. So they never mentioned who the credit card lines are from.

And I don't think anyone ever found it before. So thank you, John Brady. All right.

ZHEG ZUNG PAS GOS SA LTA BUR MTHONG NA We got to go down a little bit, Rebecca, out of the bold. There's the quotation, by the way. Yeah.

By the way, the name of the book, his book is LHAG CHE DANG THUN PA'I DAM PAS MED TZEL GYIS BDOD KHAR The Dance in the Lotus Garden, which sings in harmony with the teachings of the gods. Pretty good title. All right.

ZHEG ZUNG PAS GOS SA LTA BUR MTHONG NA RANG GCIG PO SANGS CAN DU CHUG PA DANG BRAL BAR GANG DROD ZAR DROD ZAR MED LA CHEN PO'I LOB SO LTA BUR TE GOS SA LTA BUR MTHONG NA RANG GCIG PO SANGS CAN He has a long section here about the dangers of life going well for too long. And he says, GOS SA means, we mentioned it before, when you get a position, or you're doing pretty well in life, and you're moving up in the company structure or something, there's a tendency to slack off on your dharma. There's this inherent belief that it's going to last forever.

When things are super, when you're being really successful in a company, for example, and you have a position, there's a natural tendency to think it's going to last. And then that hurts your lam rim practice. Because it doesn't last.

I'm going to keep going. That's as far as I checked, so I'm swimming from here. You ready?

RGYUB CHOG LO SANGS NAM GAL GYIS KYANG PO NA SANGS CAN TU RGYUR BAR GSUNGS PA DANG He said, SANGS means a prison. And he says, when things are going well, it's a, what do you call? Gilded cage.

It's a nice prison. SANGS, like LOP SANGS. It means a good prison, sweet prison, when things are going well.

GSUNGS PA DANG MAN SOG RGYAL BA'I RTEN SANG YIN Somebody else said, the lowest seat in the room is the Buddha's seat. The lowest position in the room is the Buddha's position. John, who takes care of the toilets and anonymously builds benches around Diamond Mountain.

I heard this morning that nobody knows where they all are except John. But you'd be wandering through the desert and suddenly there's this bench made from discarded wood. He won't throw it out.

He makes a bench out of it, under a tree. And he truly prefers to be anonymous. I've never had a conversation with him.

He's been here 12 years or something. He prefers not to talk about what he's doing. He says here, the person who takes that most modest position of cleaning the toilets is the one who's sitting in the Buddha's position.

ZHES PA LTAR LUNG GI KHYAD GRUB THAMS CAD MEN GSUNG NAS RGYAL BA'I GO PHANG DU ZHES SHING Those who seek the lowest positions go to the highest positions of the Buddha. ZHES SHING, DROM RINPOCHE KYANG Drom is the student of Atisha. Atisha brought Buddhism to Tibet.

Atisha went to Indonesia to learn his stuff, tonglen. And then he had a student in Tibet. That student is special.

He's a very high lama and a businessman. He never became a monk. He was a very high lama.

He helped start Buddhism in Tibet. I always think of John Stilwell like that. The person who helped start ACI.

But he never became a monk. And he was just a businessman. And he was a great, great lama in the Kadampa.

ZHANG THAMS CAD PHYIR CHUNG LA CHAGS TSA BAR ZHES PA SHING Going down the road, he would come across a beggar that he knew to be particularly virtuous. And he'd always stop and do prostrations in the dirt in front of this beggar because he knew the beggar had a good heart. So this high, high lama would do prostrations in the dirt to this person.

RANG RES YANG MAN TSAR GSUNGS PA'I SROG TU DROG BA CHU LAS MED PA BYAS NA SGROG DANG YANG THUN PAR BYUNG CHEG LTOS NA MI DGA'I ME NA DGA'I ME NA RANG GYUR TE LA BU LTOS NA MI DGA'I ME NA DGA'I We should rather, if someone praises us, MI DGA'I We should be unhappy. And ME NA DGA'I If someone criticizes us, we should be happy. ME NA RANG GYUR TE LA BU Because when someone criticizes you, there's always some truth to it.

Somewhere in there, there's some truth to it. Even when people attack you and criticize you and you're innocent, but normally there's some grain of truth there. When someone says bad things about you, oftentimes, I'd say almost always, there's some kind of truth there somewhere.

It's not as bad as they said, but it's there. Something's there. Or you wouldn't be criticized.

ZHANG THAMS CAD SROG TU DROG BA CHU LAS MED PA BYAS NA MAN ZHAG GSUNG NAS SROG TU DROG BA CHU LAS MED PA When the water reaches the lowest basin of the valley, there's one good thing. You can't go lower. So if you just take the lowest position in any place, you're never going to be disappointed.

You're already low. SROG DANG YANG THUN PA BYUNG CHE THUN NA RGAG BYED PA LTAR ZHING GI BSTOD PA DU RAG DANG NA NGA RGYAL JI CHER GYUR The problem with being praised by other people is it tends to kindle pride in you. When people praise you, you tend to get pride.

It's probably better if they don't notice you. THUN NA DANG NA NGA RGYAL JI CHER GYUR ZHING DE'I RGYI PHYI NI RGAG PUNG RANG GI RKYEN MI MTHONG LA MED NA GNAS SKABS MI NYAN NYANG When people criticize you, GNAS SKABS MI NYAN means it doesn't feel good at the moment, but CI NAS RANG GI LAS DE LA BTAGS NAS Later on, after people have criticized you, then the next day, or the next week, or the next ten years when you can't forget what they said, GNAS SKABS MI NYAN NYANG CI NAS RANG GI LAS DE LA BTAGS This THOG, B-R-T-A-G-S, two lines below the 324. THOG NAS THOG NAS means you will tend to examine your behavior.

If someone criticizes you, even if it's not true, you will check your behavior to see if it is true and that will help you. So the natural tendency when someone criticizes you is to say, I didn't do that. But you can only say I didn't do that if you check what you're doing.

So in any case, they've helped you look at yourself. BTAGS GNAS SKABS MI NYAN BTAGS NAS DOR LEN SKABS PAR BYED PA'ANG You will be more careful after that. If someone accuses you of financial misdealings and you're not guilty, but still you'll be more careful in the future of the same thing.

PHYIR PA DANG DE'IN BYUNG LA MI KHAR LHA'I PHAM PHAB YIN SHES LHA'I NGOS GRUB LTA BU YIN PAR GSUNGS The practice of dealing with criticism successfully is the practice of the gods. LHA'I NGOS GRUB PA The practice of using criticism to improve yourself, even when it's false, is extremely helpful. GRUB PA LTA BU YIN DE NA MI KHAR DANG BA SOG KHYEN NGES ROL BYIN PA'I SKABS DE'I RDI LTAR BSAM The point is, in the middle of difficult situations, you have to pull it out.

You have to pull out your lung rim. It's almost useless to think of it two days later. Use it immediately.

RANG DE BZHIN GYIS PA BYUNG NA DGE BA'I DUS BU BYUNG NYAM DU LHAG PAR CAN GCOD KYI SEMS BSGOM PA LA RDOR ZHUGS BSKYED PA SOGS BYA GSUNG Even when things are going well, he says, look, I'm trying to teach you how to respond to criticism. But I also want you to be mindful when things are going well and be thankful that you know about doing good deeds. It's not just that you have to wait to be criticized to make progress.

When people are not criticizing you and people are thanking you or praising you, you can also enjoy, learn to enjoy your good karma. So learn to use your bad karma as an inspiration to be better, but also learn to enjoy your good karma. I think a lot of people, I know, we have this thing in DCI, you're supposed to do coffee meditation at the end of the day and a lot of people have trouble with it.

A lot of people have serious trouble to enjoy their good deeds at the end of the day. It's a Buddhist practice that at the end of the day as you fall asleep, you're supposed to be thinking about the good things you've done today. Then if you want to think about problems, do it in the morning.

I always like to say do it in the sunlight. They get smaller. So when you have problems, when you have troubles, the worst thing is to think about it before you go to bed.

So get in the habit now, before the problems come, get in the habit that as you fall off to sleep, you're thinking about the good things you're doing. So just get in the habit. Did you do bad things?

Yes. Did people yell at you? Yes.

Do you have financial and other family problems? Yes. So think about those in the morning.

Save those for the morning. Save your problems for the morning. Thinking about your problems when you're tired at the end of the day is a disaster.

It's really stupid. It proves you should have problems. So don't let them have the end of the day.

The end of the day, when's the end of the day? It's when you put your head on the pillow. When the head makes contact with the pillow, you have to have this instinctual start thinking about the good things you did today.

And there's a joke in the monastery. If you didn't do anything good today the whole day, well, think about the good things you did yesterday. And if you didn't do anything good yesterday, well, think about the good things you did last week, or last month, or last year, or possibly in your last life.

You did something good or you wouldn't be here, right? So there's always something to rejoice. There's always something to think about as you're going to sleep.

Nobody is so evil that they don't have anything good to think about. Because they also say you can think about other people's good deeds. So that's kind of an insurance policy.

If you never do anything nice, you can rejoice in, I don't know, Ale and Tim and other people doing these lamrim retreats for us. And that's legal. So you're not allowed to have a bad night.

If you have a bad night, you can feel guilty about it and stay up. You're in the lamrim. You're not allowed to think about your problems as you fall off to sleep.

You're not allowed. Do it in the morning. I don't do it when I wake up because I'm still grumpy when I wake up.

So I wait until I have toast and coffee. And the day looks better. And I think about my problems with coffee.

And then everything is kind of easier. So don't... I mean, even the next morning, wait until you eat something.

Okay? Don't do it when you're hungry. Raise yourself.

And then the problems are so small. By the next morning, half of them you can't remember. All right.

GOM PA LA CHOG. NYID PA LTA BA'I RGYUR BA NI Sorry. NYID PA means part two.

And he says, RGYUR BA. What's RGYUR BA? I have a RGYUR BA specialist over there.

Yeah, transform. He's been talking about different methods to transform. And now he reached the second one.

I think the first one was CHOG PA. How to transform a problem. And he says, LTA BA means use your correct view.

What does he mean? Let's see. LTA BA'I RGYUR BA NI CHU NANG KHO SHER LTA BA'I ZHES SOGS KYI ZHUNG DI YIN ZHING Yeah.

CHU NANG means... I'm trying to think of a good example. If you drive here from Tucson, you can see some mirages in the highway.

And it looks like there's water in the highway. From a distance, because of the sunlight, it looks like there's water flooding the highway. That's called CHU NANG.

Okay, here it's called CHU NANG. CHU NANG, what do you want to call it? Like a mirage, okay?

This is a line that says, CHU NANG KHO SHER LTA BA means when you see a mirage, it's the four bodies. When you see a mirage, it's the four bodies of a Buddha. Does a Buddha really have four bodies and eight pairs of shoes?

No, okay. It's four aspects of one body and they call it the four bodies. What are the four?

Four dollars. Anybody? Give me one.

Emanation body. Yeah, the body they take when they come to earth. Paradise body that they're really hanging out in, up in the heaven.

You can say knowledge body or wisdom body. Their state of mind, which is omniscience. And then their emptiness body, which means their pen body.

Okay, their pen body. What does that mean? Just the fact that their body is not coming from itself.

They have a part of their body which is not coming from itself. And that's their emptiness body. And that body you already have.

And when people say you're already a Buddha or you have a Buddha inside of you, it's correct, it's true. Because you are not coming from yourself. Already.

However dumb or bald you are, that's not coming from your seeds. So you already have 25% of the Buddhist body. Not bad.

When did you get it? Never. It's been there forever.

You've always had that. All living beings have the potential to be a Buddha and it cannot be taken from you. Luckily.

No matter how bad you are, how much you ruin your life, you still have a Buddha body. And that's what they call Tathagata Garbha. Say Tathagata?

Garbha. Tathagata means Buddha and Garbha means the womb of a Buddha. So even boys have a womb.

And out of that womb will come your Buddhahood. All boys also have a womb. All right.

Thunangphu Shantawayu. So he says, now we're trying to transform how we see the world, the emptiness of the world. Before it was kind of attitude training, right?

Oh, be happy when things go wrong. Be sad when things go right. Now he says, let's talk about emptiness.

How can you transform things with emptiness? DE NYID NGA RAB PA'I LUG YIN PAS NGA RAB PA'I LUG means this was a system from days gone by. The second way of transforming your life with emptiness, rather than attitude adjustment.

So now he's not talking about trying to talk yourself into being happy that you're having problems. Now he's talking about the emptiness side of it. He says, NGA RAB PA'I LUG.

He says, this was the custom in ancient times and we don't have this custom nowadays. LUG YIN PA'I RANG RE THAG NAG CHUNG MI DE It's a little bit uncomfortable for modern people. MI DE DE SDUG BSNGAL GANG CHUNG YANG DE NGO BO LA BSTEN NA And he says, now you're getting into kind of philosophy.

Before it was just attitude adjustment. Now you're looking at the emptiness of your problem. Instead of thinking that maybe a problem is an opportunity, now you're supposed to look at the emptiness in your problems.

And he says, that's harder. That's more difficult. Here we go.

You ready? We still got some time. Six minutes.

I always love to use six minutes. DE NGO BO LA BSTEN NA DANG PO GANG NI MA SKYED PA CHUG GI SOGS SUNG Where did your problems come from in the first place? Let's look at the emptiness of your problems.

Rather than trying to turn a problem into an opportunity, let's look at the emptiness of your problems. GANG NI SKYED PA Where did it start from? And the answer is, it never started.

I'll say it again. Before we were talking about trying to use problems as an opportunity. And then now he says, where did it start from?

And then you have to answer yourself and say, it never started. The perception that a problem has begun is already a mistake. The feeling that a problem has started is already a delusion.

So forget trying to turn a problem into an opportunity. No problem ever started in the first place. The practice of turning a problem into an opportunity is itself based on a delusion that the problem started.

If you want to go deeper, I'll say it again. Turning a problem into an opportunity is already a delusion. Turning a problem that happened to you into an opportunity is already a delusion.

There's a deeper level of solving the problem here because it never happened. There's a deeper level of dealing with your problems, which is to recognize that they never started in the first place. So if you're a kind of lower level Lamrim person, okay, talk yourself into the Daniel's credit card thing.

You know, hey, every time you're happy, you're just burning up good karma. It's more efficient to be unhappy. Your patience is building up new good karma.

That's wise karmic credit card management. Now he says, by the way, there's no credit card either. The whole thing is a delusion.

And we got to talk about it. And it's a great segue to Guadalajara. Okay, I cannot teach this to you in four minutes.

But I can put the question in your mind and you can carry it to Guadalajara. If you can't come to Guadalajara and you're a total loser, I mean, if you have some problem that you can't come, then take it online because we're about to dip into the emptiness of your problems and it's much deeper and it's a much more powerful solution to your problems. It's the ultimate solution to your problem.

This whole thing of trying to trick yourself and say, oh, I'm so lucky I'm having a bad day. I'm burning off a lot of karma. It's kind of frustrating, right?

Wouldn't it be better not to have the bad karma in the first place? Please don't teach me to manage my bad karma successfully. Please teach me how to not have bad karma.

Well, okay, for that you got to talk about emptiness. For that you have to understand emptiness. And here's a, what do you call it?

A taste. Here's a preview of Guadalajara and we're going to jump into it immediately, the first day of Guadalajara and confuse everybody. Saying a problem started in your life is to say there was a time when you didn't have the problem and then it turned into a time when you did have the problem.

And that's called the problem started. I'll say it again. Being clever when using problems in your life as opportunities depends on problems.

A problem happened means there was a time when there was no problem and then after a while, there was a problem. And that's called, in English, that's called a problem started. In my life, a problem, someone criticized you, someone hurt your feelings, you had a financial problem, it started.

And that assumes a line. Starting assumes a line. What's the line between?

No problem, yes problem. No problem, then there was a problem. There was no problem and then I had a problem.

That assumes there was a line in time. Like at, right, Tim? 8.54, 8.49, he lets me go to 8.50. At 8.49, I didn't have a problem. At 8.50, I had a problem that I'm supposed to turn into an opportunity. But Nagarjuna says, I don't want to talk about turning problems into opportunities. I want to talk about when did the problem start?

And you're like, duh, at 8.49, I didn't have a problem. At 8.49 and a half, I got a phone call. At 8.50, I had a problem. Nagarjuna, if you want the line, it was 8.49.30. At 8.49 and 30 seconds, I understood the tenth syllable of my wife's conversation to me and I realized our house was burning down. And if you want to say when did the problem start, that's when the problem started. And he said, well, what part of the tenth syllable did the problem start in?

I said, well, it wasn't the first half of the syllable because she said bur- and then she said um-down, you know. So it wasn't during the bur- it was during the um-down that, by the way, it's a true story, that somebody left their stove on and went to Diamond Mountain. It didn't burn down, but it was close.

It was a close thing. So when was the problem? It was not in the bur- it was at the um-down.

And then Nagarjuna said, which part of the um-down? And you're like, well, it wasn't during the um- because that was just bur-um. It must have been during the um- that we had- that's when the problem started.

When she finished the um- burn-down-um- that was when the problem started. Oh, and Nagarjuna's like, was it the beginning of the end or the end of the end? And you're like, just shut up.

Quit asking me dumb things. And he says, it's not a dumb thing to ask you, did you have a problem at the beginning of the end, at the burn-down-um- or was it after the end at the burn-down-um-? And you're like, why does it matter?

Who cares? And he says, don't you get it? You're making the end.

There is no end in burn-down-um. You're making the end because there's no start of the end and there's no end of the end. You can't point to the start of the end and you can't point to the end of the end.

You can get as close to the breath at the end of burn-down-the-house. Then you took a breath between down and house. When did the breath start?

After the end. What part of after the end? At the final end of the end.

There is no final end to the end. You didn't hear burn-down. It's not possible.

It's a delusion. She never said house burn-down. The whole thing's a delusion.

She never said burn-down. All your problems are delusions from the beginning Forget Lam Rim management of your problems. Try to understand they were never there in the first place to practice Lam Rim with.

Got it? If you don't, come to Guadalajara. Okay, see you later.