«Дар освобождения», курс 41 «Сила доброго сердца», занятие 7

[Говорящий 1]
The Diamond Way course, we took the best of all the Diamond Way books. There are 990 teachings from Lord Buddha that still exist. We finished inputting them about 15 years ago.

So we saved all of the teachings in the world that Lord Buddha gave. We finished them 15 years ago. They are online and they are free, but they're in Tibetan.

So out of 990, guess how many of those books are Diamond Way? About 500. Okay, it's almost exactly half are Diamond Way.

And that course, that seven-year course in Diamond Way, 30,000 pages, I think it's the best Diamond Way course in history. Those books were, because it was secret, different parts of Asia have different parts of the Diamond Way, but nobody has all of it. And it took like 35 years of work.

And I think it's the best Diamond Way course in history. So, it's crazy if you don't do it. And I think the Guadalajara teachers are some of the best teachers if you want to learn Diamond Way.

I had a meeting with them yesterday. They have worked harder than any other country to learn the Diamond Way. I'd like to thank them.

Why am I talking about that? Well, try to study with them. And they're doing a good job on it.

But here we have a torma offering. And torma means, it's like a special cake. And it has special ingredients inside.

And like if your family is having some kind of problem, like if you don't have harmony in the family, or one of your family members got cancer, something like that. It's a tradition to make this cake. It looks like this shape, right?

Oh, there's a picture. I think I have a picture of it. Yeah, there's a torma cake.

We teach you how to make them. And when you're having a serious problem, you make one and you put it outside your front door. And it helps to protect the family.

Now, let's read lojong. lojong la lepa gongpa de, chosun sok la nang, na tsa sok jungway tse, SEMS CAN THAMS CAD KYI SDUG BSNGAL BDAG LA SMIN PA, NGES STONG RNAMS CHE KYI DGOS PA RGYUD PA YIN PAS For a lojong person, if they get sick, they should thank the spirits. Because we were supposed to do tonglen.

We are supposed to take other people's problems. If you get some kind of illness, you should think, ah ha ha, I did it. I took the other people's bad seeds and I got sick.

So, you should be happy and then you should make a torma and go put it outside your house. You can thank them, but you can also say, I hope new spirits will come to make me more sick. So, normal people, when they get a family problem, they make a torma and they put it outside their door.

Lojong people, when they get a problem, they make a torma, they put it outside their door, and they say, this is an invitation to more sickness demons, please come. This is the place you want to come to. And I will take it from other people.

If someone has to suffer, it should be me. Okay, and it's very funny because torma, meaning outside the house, is like when we do the tsamto, when we do the diamond way retreat and we put the mantra on the door. It's supposed to protect the house.

I did a retreat in the forest north, in north Arizona. I put the mantras on the four walls and I did a one-month retreat and there was a forest fire and I saw it coming. It was jumping from the top of the tree to the top of the tree.

It didn't touch the ground. And it was coming down at my cabin, you know, and the fire, the firefighters came? Five of them died.

They have to hide under the special blanket when the fire goes over them. And between me and the fire, five guys died. So I did mo, we call mo, means prediction, with the dice.

Should I run or not? Then they said, no, you don't have to run. You have those mantras on the wall, you don't have to worry.

Then I'm like, I don't know, I think I'll run. And I packed a bag and I ran, you know. There was a highway, and I ran to the highway and I hitchhiked and I went to town and I stayed in a hotel, you know.

Then I realized I forgot my address book, and the next day I went back to see if it survived the fire. And I went to the, all the forest is burned, you know, and I walked through the forest, and then I came to my cabin. It's fine, it's no problem.

The fire split and go around the cabin and continued like this. Then the guy I rented their cabin from, he's standing in front door and he says, ha ha, I love you guys! Those Buddhist mantras, they are so cool!

And he saved like $50,000 house, you know. But this one is different. If you're a lojong person, you put the mantra on the house to attract the fire.

If someone loses their house, it should be me. It's advanced Buddhism. If someone's going to lose their house, it should be me.

This mantra is not to stop the fire, this mantra is to invite the fire. It takes a lot of courage. But that's lojong.

In English we say, are you man enough to do lojong? Are you woman enough to do lojong? Are you strong enough to invite problems?

And eat the other people? Okay, that's lojong. And it takes a lot of courage.

But the more you eat other people's problems, the more good seeds you plant. There was a lama, he was dying. He's a very famous lama, very peaceful lama, and he was on his deathbed and he's going, no, no, no, no!

Then his students are like, what happened? What's happening? He's like, no, no, no.

He said, what's wrong? He said, I'm a lojong person. I was praying to go to the hell after I die so I can help people.

And the angels are trying to take me to heaven. He's very upset. No, I'm supposed to go to the hell.

They are saying, no, you have to go to the hell. He's like, no! He's like that, frustrated.

Okay, that's a real lojong. By the way, he ended up in the heaven, I'm sorry. He failed to go to the hell because he wanted to go to the hell to help other people.

So, we are not like that, we are not so strong. Take little problems from other people. They say start with they say start with giving away vegetables and then you can give away, later you can give away your life.

For me, giving away vegetables is very easy. Giving away churros is a problem. Giving away churros would be more difficult.

BYUNG PO LA THOR MA LTAR BA LA If you're going to give, if you're going to make THOR MA's SKAD KYI BDAG LA GNOD PAR BYED PA DE'I BDAG GIS BDE'I BDAG You should offer the THOR MA to the bad spirits and say, thank you for hurting me. You are the instrument of me using up my bad karma. Anytime someone gives you trouble, I don't get much trouble from people, except when I drive.

I don't know, in Arizona, special drivers, they are always in a big truck. They always follow me like this. Then I give a special sign.

I have to do it secretly because my wife doesn't like it. She's like, everything okay honey? I'm like, yeah.

But if you're a lojong, you have to thank those guys. Thank you for following me too close. You are using up my bad karma.

In fact, inside the Dharma organizations, be careful when someone thanks you. Maybe it means you're really problem person. Thank you, I love you.

Why, why you love me? Because since I know you, I use up so many bad seeds. Okay?

That's a real lojong person. SDUG BSNGAL BYUNG TSE RANG BDE SAR BCU ZHONG BA NA This is a very important verse. You guys got that paragraph?

It starts with SDUG BSNGAL BYUNG. It starts with SDUG BSNGAL BYUNG. Yeah, the green one.

[Говорящий 2]
The green one.

[Говорящий 1]
This one is very, very important. It's good that we reached it today. SDUG BSNGAL BYUNG TSE RANG BDE SAR BCU ZHONG BA NA Let's say that you walk into your kitchen and there's water on the floor.

Probably it happened to you. And then you have two choices. You can get some towel and you can clean the floor.

And you feel okay, you feel happy. You know, I clean the floor, the water's gone. But in Buddhism, if you don't look under the sink you're a stupid person.

Find where the water came from. Don't just clean up the mess. Maybe you have a water leak in your house.

Then, I don't know, usually I feel lazy. Daniel knows. Sometimes I get a leak under the sink in my kitchen and I will clean up the floor and I will call Daniel.

Hey, can you figure out where the water's coming from? I'll tell you a secret. If you want to find out what kind of underwear the plumber is wearing, tell them there's a leak under the sink.

Then you can see the big butt and all the ... So, sometimes I'm watching Daniel, but I will send him under the sink. You go check the water.

I feel lazy. I don't want to crawl under there. It's dirty and it's hard.

I just feel really lazy to clean it. But if you're a Buddhist, our job is to find the source of the leak. First teaching of Lord Buddha.

Pain and the source of pain. You have to find the source of pain. Don't be lazy.

Crawl under the sink. Make sure your underwear is clean and then crawl under the sink and try to find where is the real leak. SDUG BSNGAL GYI RGYUD GRIG PA PONG ZHING DE BA'I RGYUD TSOR SOGS RGYAL BA GRUB When you have a problem, find the real source and don't be lazy.

Because if you're lazy, you will have to clean up the water again and again and again. And I'm a lazy person. I will clean the kitchen floor ten times instead of crawling under the sink.

But lojong person, you have to not be lazy. If a person's giving you trouble, you're doing something. You can keep fighting with them.

You can keep talking to them. But it's like cleaning up the kitchen floor. It's going over and over again.

Crawl under the sink. Find the real cause. And that's you.

All problems, all problem people are coming from you. So you have a choice. You can fight with them for many years, or you can crawl under the sink and find the real problem.

And the real problem is me. All people who give me problems are coming from me. Geshe-la should drive home, go in the bathroom, close the door, look in the mirror.

Okay? Right? That's the real person.

If you're going to make the special welcome sign, you should do it in the mirror. That's the real source of the problem. That's good, because then you don't get in more fights with other people.

Okay, DOR MA RGYA MTSA'I BCUG TU DUNG BZHAG GI DGONG NAS BZHAG PA ZHIG CHEN LA RGYUD NA SBYONG BA ZHIG RGA'I BRGYAD PAR TZAM ZHING If you want to do a confession, this is an interesting suggestion for advanced confessions. Like you did something very bad. Like when I was in college, I had an abortion.

And I, my teachers taught me it wasn't a problem.

[Говорящий 2]
My college professor.

[Говорящий 1]
Then later my lama said, big mistake, you know. And I want to clean the karma. You know, so then you should, you could make a DOR MA, for example, and you could offer it as a purification.

But he says here, if you really want to do a purification, offer a DOR MA and ask for more problems. Do a prayer for more problems. And dedicate it to your mistakes.

So, I made a mistake when I was 18 or 19, and I'm offering DOR MA. I'm not offering it to the Buddhas. I'm offering it to the negative spirits.

Please come to my house. Give me as much trouble as you can. And I'm going to use it to clean my bad seeds.

Okay? It takes a lot of courage. By the way, then when you meet irritating people, you can celebrate.

Well, my DOR MA offering was to celebrate. You say, my DOR MA offering was successful. CHAL LA GANG THUG BSGOM LA SBYOR This is a famous quotation.

Say CHAL LA GANG THUG BSGOM LA SBYOR Every single thing that happens to you during the day, use it for your meditation. Everything. Especially your problems.

So, if you're a lojong person, and you're driving to the airport and you have to get there on time, and there's a bad traffic jam, people ask me, Geshe-la, did you go to Mexico? It means, did you go to Mexico City? I don't know.

The people from New York, they say, I live in the city. And you're like, look, there's other cities also. Then the people from Mexico City are, I live in Mexico.

There's other Mexico besides Mexico City. Anyway, my memory of Mexico City is five hours sitting in a traffic jam without moving. When something like that happens to you, in lojong, you have to use it for your meditation.

Here, GANG THUG BSGOM LA SBYOR means any problem comes to you, take it as a meditation object. So, you don't have to go to a temple to find a meditation object. Just go to the highway in downtown Mexico and you get an automatic meditation object.

So, if you're a real lojong person, everything that happens all day long, you can use it. Don't tell me, don't come to Geshe-la and say, I need a meditation object for the next six weeks. Geshe-la, I need a meditation object for the next six weeks.

Okay, I have a suggestion. Use your life. That's the idea.

Everything that happens to you can be a meditation. Here it says, CHAL LAM DU GYUR TE LO SBYONG LA BYANG A person who's studying lojong, they can use everything in their meditation immediately. Okay, we reached the fourth of the seven points.

Since we don't have the young man to ask what is number four, I'm sure he took his mom to a nice lunch in Guadalajara with the money. We reached point four, which is a summary of the whole lifetime practice. I'm going to start it, but also the Guadalajara teachers, they're going to teach it to you the last two days.

There are 18 sections, actually 22 total. Yeah, very sexy. We're going to do it the last two days.

So, I'm going to start like an introduction to that. Okay, ZHES PA'I TSE GCIG GI SNYAM NGAN RDZIL NAS STONG PA The essence of a lifetime practice is called TOP LA and it means the five powers. And they are called the GAR PO SA BA NYID THOB It means the power of the white seed.

Number two is KHON PA'I THOB By the way, I'm not going to pay $100 for this. You can just skip it. No, KHON PA'I THOB means get used to it.

PHAN PA'I THOB is number three. Make a resolution or motivation for the future. Number SEMS CAN PA'I THOB Destruction power.

Number five MNGON LANG GI THOB Prayer. Okay, what does it mean? The first one is called ...

I like to call it ... Do you have a next idim you guys? Yeah, I like to call it Toothbrush Meditation.

And I found out recently that Steve Jobs used to do it. So he dropped out of college. He built the first Mac computer.

His mother yelled at him because he didn't finish his degree. And he used to go back to college and sneak into classes to make his mother happy. And one day he snuck into a class about Buddhism.

And they taught ... the teacher was teaching impermanence meditation. And he never finished the course, but he learned impermanence meditation.

And he did it every morning for the rest of his life. When he's brushing his teeth and he said to himself, if I die today, if I have to die tonight, how should I spend this day? And so for his whole life he did this death meditation when he's brushing his teeth.

And then he gave a beautiful talk at Stanford University. He got pancreatic cancer. It's a very quick cancer and there's no cure.

And they asked him, please give a talk to the graduating class. And it's a beautiful talk, it's on YouTube, you should see it. He's one of the most creative people in the modern world, in the modern life.

And he talks about death meditation. He talks about every morning when he brushes his teeth he will think, this is my last day. And it comes here in the mojo.

And by the way, it's not depressing or sad. It's true. If you brush your teeth and you say, today I will die, one day it will be true.

It's not stupid. It's true. And then you, it's a strange thing.

When you face your death every morning and you say, I will die before tonight, you feel much more relaxed. The whole world is trying to pretend I cannot die today. But it's a lie.

So, there's a conflict in your heart. On one side, you know very well you can die today and you will die today someday. And in the other side of your own heart you're thinking, no, no, I will live forever.

Somebody has to be the first person to live forever. There's a famous movie song, it's called Semua. It's me.

Maybe I'll be the first person who doesn't die. Just in case, maybe you should do the meditation. Maybe I will die tonight.

And it's not sad and it's not depressing. What's depressing is to lie to yourself day after day after day. That creates conflict in the human mind.

Your parents, your school, your community, everyone's training you to pretend you're not going to die. But if you can do the toothbrush meditation, look in the mirror and say honestly, yeah, maybe today. It's so relaxing to admit the truth.

And you're much more functional. Then you can really have a good day. And it's not sad.

What's sad is to pretend you're not going to die. That's like you have a big debt and you pretend you have money. It doesn't feel happy.

Just admit what's going on. Then you can relax. Okay, so here's the Lojong Death Meditation.

NAM PAR BLANG MA THAG MED As soon as you wake up in the morning, CHIR TZEM DI DANG YANG, DGOS LO DI DANG THYIR PAR THEG NAS, YIN YIN LA DI DUN MED DU MI DANG BA I will not waste this year. I'm sorry, I will not waste this life. I will not waste this year.

And in particular, I will not waste this day. And I will do something useful. What's the most useful thing?

I will fight the greatest enemy in my life. Who's the greatest enemy in your life? For $1,000, but ...

but ... Listen, there's a contract here. $1,000.

Okay, he said, today I will fight the greatest enemy in my life. Every day when you wake up, today I will fight the greatest enemy in my life. I will take three guesses and no more.

And I will offer $1,000. But, the answer has to be exact. And I'm not paying $1 for half answer.

That's like half buck or something. Okay, so I want both. I want the whole thing.

Now, it's not me, it's Rob. He's going to have so many friends by the time we finish this. Hey Rob, I'm just going to predict your next few days.

God, you look so good this morning. Don't believe it. I hope we have enough.

We have enough? Okay. Okay, it's up to Rob.

By the way, I want an exact answer and I'm not going to be afraid to say no if you don't do it. I'll repeat the question. When you wake up, look in the mirror and say, today I will fight my biggest enemy.

And for a lojong person, what is the answer? It has to be exact or I'm not paying and there's only three chances. Okay, Rob, make yourself unpopular.

[Говорящий 2]
Wait, wait, wait. I am ... Hello, hello?

No. Hello, hello?

[Говорящий 1]
The suspense is killing me. I think if it takes more than one minute, let's cancel it. No.

I am my worst enemy. That's not exact. I'll give you one more chance.

It has to be more exact. Same person, more exact. I don't care if you ask for help, that's very lojong.

You can ask for help, that's very lojong.

[Говорящий 2]
Think ... I mean, think only about me. Selfishness.

[Говорящий 1]
Think about myself. I want one more word.

[Говорящий 2]
First. Thousand dollars. Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
You're taking your husband to dinner, I hope. You can buy an extra dessert for yourself, okay? Alright, yeah.

Today I will fight my biggest enemy. Every time I want to take care of myself first, I will fight it. Every time I want to take the first one myself, I will fight it.

As soon as they bring in the churros, I'm waiting. Do you know how embarrassing it's going to be if I go back to Sedona and my wife says, how is the churro this time? And I say, Veronica, honey, they didn't give me any churros.

I mean, she'll say, why are you going to Guadalajara? There's hinting and there's direct statement. I tried the hinting, it didn't work.

But, I will try to share before I eat. Okay? I won't take the first one.

Definitely I'll take the second one. But I will fight my enemy. You want to hear a funny story?

I went to teach in Mexico City and it was a big crowd, it was a thousand people. And my friend, I forget who was it, my friend came just before the program. I forget who it was, but they said, Geshe-la, my mother made churros for you.

Because you always talk about churros. And then I said, okay, cool, but we were supposed to play some music. And I asked Nick, I think, Nick Lashaw, I'm not saying his name, I mean, I told Nick, please hold these churros for me and we're going to sing a song and then we sang, who was the girl singer, I forgot, Aisha?

The microphone didn't work for ten minutes and we did a song and we finished the song then I went backstage to get my churros and Nick is like this. I'm like, hey Nick, where's those churros? I said, I can't believe you guys, yeah, I was going to use the churro in the talk.

And I look behind the curtain, I'm like, Nick, bring me a churro. He's like, When you see Nick next time, say, Anyway, so when you wake up, look in the mirror, today I will fight my greatest enemy. My habit to take care of myself first.

Like Nick did. I mean, I'm just giving an example. Actually he's a very, very, he's one of the kindest people I know.

THA NA ZHIG GCIG BSAD PA'AM GUNG TZIG SO BA BRTZON PHRAD PA DANG NAS He says, don't cook lunch without thinking about the promise you made in the morning. That's all. Then he says, people like you and me, don't forget he's talking to like 5,000 monks.

When we get up, we put on our robes and we tie the belt. There's a special knot that you use in the monks. The monk's belt is just a rope.

And it's a lot of fun with the new monks because they don't know how to tie it. And it's always falling down. So, Geshe Lothar taught me how to tie my knot.

He says, the moment we tie the knot in the morning, the moment you tie your belt, you should make a plan for the day. When you button your shirt, a button should be connected to a plan for the day. When you close the first button, you should already have a plan for the day.

How to fight your selfishness. And what he suggests is connect it to part of your clothing. Maybe when you button your pants, when you button your shirt, use that time to make a plan for fighting your selfishness today.

And it's very powerful. If you make it a habit, it's very, very powerful. Okay, so connect it to part of your clothes.

When I button my shirt in the morning, I will try to make an advanced attack plan on my selfishness. Okay, that's called in Tibetan, it's called Pembetan. Pembetan.

To make an advanced plan. Next picture. Actually, I have a suggestion.

Can we do some questions and answers? Okay, we have 20 minutes. I feel like we over, we ate too many Dharma churros.

I think we need to relax a little bit. Don't forget the thing about your shirt. And let's just do questions for 20 minutes.

Relax. Have something to drink. You have to tell Veronica I drank the green juice.

She says we have churros for today. In English we say, I believe it when I see it. Any question, any, by the way, any subject, I don't care.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you for the beautiful teaching Geshe Michael. My question is, for beginners in this audience, and they're learning the Lojong way, and they're supposed to take on all these problems, they don't have the capacity yet, so what should they do? What should I do as a beginner to take on more problems for myself?

[Говорящий 1]
Thank you. Actually, I think the best thing is emptiness meditation. So, I have a limit of a number of how many problems I can take.

So, in my heart I have an idea how much I can do. I have a limit in my heart. Like we brought the, we had the idea to bring the Ukrainians, refugees.

And I talked to John and Connie. I put pressure on them. I said, me and Veronica will pay for two and you pay for two.

And they're like, okay Geshe-la. And then, like a few days later, I thought this is going to be hard to pay for four or five people. Their rent is $2,300 a month.

And, you know, I started to doubt whether I can do it. And then I said, yeah, it's empty. The apartment rent number is empty.

Everything is empty. Okay, what does it mean? A problem is not difficult from its own side.

It's empty. Empty means a problem can be a good thing. A problem is not a bad thing from its own side and a problem is not a good thing from its own side.

That's the emptiness of problems. So, by the way, emptiness doesn't mean you go stare at the wall and close your eyes or something. That has nothing to do with emptiness.

Emptiness means you can see everything two opposite ways. Problems can be opportunities. Success can be a problem.

Okay, so everything's empty. So, when I had this Ukrainian rent doubt, I agreed to pay, well, we agreed to pay their expenses for two years. Then I got nervous, I started to add up, that's, the rent is $25,000 a year.

Then I thought, how many people came to Japan for Grandpa's Abuelo's birthday party? Yeah, we had some good music from Cuba. So, we were teaching a teaching there.

King Shri Sena, he gave exactly 50% of his body away. He gave somebody his legs. And it's mentioned in the lam rim but they don't tell you the story.

So, I found the story because of John Brady's data base. And then we translated it and we made a book and we gave it away for free. You can get it online by the way, for free.

Diamondcutterpress.com They are also giving away e-books of all the ACI courses. I mean they, one by one. And I think they just finished one in Spanish.

I'll let you know tomorrow. I think it's, I think they're giving it away, I'm not sure. And it took the whole week in Japan to teach that story.

But there's two stories. Understand? I didn't teach the second story.

You want to hear the second story? By the way, it answers your question. Okay, so here's the story I did not tell in Kyoto.

And it's the answer to your question. And it's my own answer to my own question about how am I going to pay the rent. And they are available.

First two ACI courses. And we should thank the Spanish translation team, especially the director, Rosa van Grieken. Yay!

So, I used to go around the world and buy gemstones. What is that one? The Light of ...

Oh, yeah, that's a new book. I used to go around the world buying gemstones. Sri Lanka has a lot of gemstones because of the geology, I don't know.

In ancient times it was called Ratna Divipa. Ratna Divipa. Ratna means jewel, like three jewels, Ratna.

Divipa means island. Sri Lanka is the island of jewels. I had a direct experience of that.

I went to Colombo, which is the capital, to buy gemstones. We also used to cut there. We used to cut a lot of stone.

My friends asked me, do you want to go to Kandy? Do you want candy? I said, yeah, I'm happy to have candy.

My friend, his name is Mr. Guru Ratna, he said, no, no, I'm not talking giving you candy, I'm taking you to candy. There's a famous temple called Kandy in the middle of Sri Lanka on the mountain. Then we drove there, it was a long drive and the road was a little bit rough and I said, I have to pee pee.

So he pulled over just on the side of the road. He said, go behind that tree, be careful you don't meet an alligator. I went behind the tree and I pee pee and I look down.

There's like rubies and sapphires and I'm like, shit, wow. I'm like, I took a whole pocket full home. It's really the island of jewels.

You just go to pee pee and you get a bunch of emeralds. So in the old days, people used to take a ship from India to Sri Lanka and there's many stories of the ship breaking. There was a famous story which I will not tell you today about a boy who didn't drown.

His name was Maitri. Seiji translated that book and he named his son Maitri. So anyway, there was another ship that broke and there was all the guards fell in the water between Sri Lanka and India.

In that lifetime, Lord Buddha was a sea turtle, a big turtle. One by one, he go to the sailor and he say, he point to his bag and they hold his bag and he takes them to the land to save them. But when he comes close to the beach, there's a special fish called piranha.

You know piranha?

[Говорящий 2]
Who likes to?

[Говорящий 1]
They like turtles. So he's like, if I go close to the beach, this piranha, they bite you and they suck. They suck your blood.

But if I don't go close to the beach, the guy will drown. Those humans will drown. So he decided he will swim into the beach.

One by one, the piranhas, they catch him and they start to suck his blood. That's the story I didn't tell in Kyoto. Why am I mentioning that?

One more piranha is not such a big deal. I can do the Ukrainian rent. Already I'm, the money's going here, here, here, here, here.

It's just one more and you can see the emptiness of it. You already know every day you're already solving many problems for yourself and your family. So just add one more, it doesn't matter.

My life is already hard. I already have to pay a lot of things every day. So what the hell, I'll add one more.

And that's the emptiness of the problem. So, I personally don't accept that you have a limit. I don't accept the idea that you have a limit.

You can always do more. And I understand that my teacher told me, well sometimes you have to rest. And I believe that.

But I say your capacity is about a hundred times more than you think. Like when there's a war or something, suddenly you see people who become heroes. They're like already tired and they pick up five people and carry them through the fighting.

I think you have more power than you believe, than you know. It's just determination. If you decide to do it, you can do it.

And then it becomes the new normal to have more bills. That's okay. So my personal opinion, people told me, Geshe-la your health is not so good, you shouldn't start three new projects this week.

And I'm like, what the hell, you know, let's just do it. So, I think you can always do more. If you want to.

You have to work on the courage. It's not a physical problem, it's a courage problem. You can do much more than you think.

That's my opinion, that's my experience. Okay, one more question. Who's choosing?

[Говорящий 2]
Nami? Okay. It's a question from online participants.

[Говорящий 1]
Thank you Geshe Michael for teaching us today. This is a question from Nancy Giovinazzo?

[Говорящий 2]
Giovinazzo.

[Говорящий 1]
Giovinazzo. She's from, what's that old town outside of Montreal? Outside of, yeah, Guelph.

When you ask her what's the name of your town, and she, and when she sneezes, that's actually the name of her town. Okay, go.

[Говорящий 2]
She's asking, I work with small children, and in our school we are seeing a drastic increase of autism with young children.

[Говорящий 1]
What seeds do I need to work to clean this up? So, I have a nice answer. My whole life I didn't have a television.

I didn't watch television for, I don't know, 60 years I think. Then during COVID I got a bad habit. It's called Netflix.

And to be honest, I started to watch it sometimes. And then when you start to enter the Netflix culture, when you meet your friends you're like, what? Did you see anything good on Netflix?

Got any suggestions? I ask Ellie, you got any suggestions for me? And somebody said, try the Extraordinary Attorney Woo, W-O-O.

It's a Korean soap opera. And it's about a young woman from Korea and she has autism. And it's 16 episodes.

About one to one and a half hours. And it's extremely beautiful Dharma teaching. I really encourage you to see it.

And it's talking all about the difficulty of autistic people. And I had a so I went to California one time and this woman asked me to come to her house. And she introduced me to her son.

He was about five years old and he has autism. And she asked me, is there anything we can do to help him? He can't use the seed system because he can't understand it.

So we made a cool plan. We will buy gifts, children's gifts, and we will take him, she will take him to the children's hospital and they will sit next to the children like cancer children or something. And then she puts the toy in his hands and then she takes his hands and she moves it over here and she lets it go and he lets the toy into the other kid.

You see what I mean? She takes the kid's hands with the toy, moves them towards the sick kid and makes him give him the toy. 90% of an action is intention.

But 10% is the actual action. So he doesn't get the 90% but he gets the 10%. And she went over and over to the hospital with him and he got his 10%.

Which is called Completion Karma. He didn't get the intention karma which is 90% but he got the 10% of doing it. Two years later I was back in California near San Jose and she said, come to the house.

So I was, she said sit down and she called a boy and he came in and she said, play Uncle Michael's song. He sat down at the piano and he's like and he played like a whole classical song from memory. And now he's a musician.

Something happened in his brain from the seeds. Okay. So I think we can help autistic kids to do the 10%.

And that will start to change their karma. And actually autistic kids, their problem is that their attention is too good. Their attention span is too strong.

So there's things you can help them with and I think you can help them to plant seeds. Because intention is 90% but 10% is what we call Completion. And for me that's a useful trick.

I think it will even work in Guelph. The name of her town is Guelph. You want to hear a nice story?

She's the sister of Jerome and Angelo Giovannazzi. And their mother came to Diamond Mountain. She was about 85 at the time and she came for a whole retreat to Diamond Mountain and she did the retreat and then she went home to Guelph.

And next week they called me and they sent me a photograph and she has a ... she's standing with a beautiful rosary and I said, what's the photograph? And she came from Sicily, Italy, like when she was five years old or something.

Or something like that, a teenager, I don't know. And she had a rosary that her mom gave her and she lost it 70 years ago and she prayed about it at Diamond Mountain. When she came home to Guelph, she opened the drawer and it's right there.

So, that's a nice story. Okay, see you guys tomorrow. Thank you.

And thank you for translation from Flavia.