«Дар освобождения», курс 42 «Сила мечты», занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
Thank you all for coming. I know it's a long way to come here. We tried to choose a place in the middle of the world, so it means everybody has to travel a little bit.

Thank you for coming, and I know it's a long way, and I know it's a lot of money, and I know it tastes good. And I'm happy to come, happy to finish this book with you. This is called Lam Rim, and it's the Steps to the Path to Enlightenment.

And I always tell this story, I was sitting with my wife and her mother many years ago, and her mother enjoyed reading books. And she asked me, she called me Mike. The funniest thing she used to say, when I'm driving, mom will sit in the back, and she said, Mike, you could drive a little faster.

She's 90 something too, I think. She accused me of driving too slow. But she asked me, what's your favorite book in your life?

And this is my favorite book in my life. And I love books, you guys know. And we have saved 12 million pages of books.

But this is my favorite. My teacher taught me this book three times. It took 30 years.

I'm actually pretty fast. Only 30 years. You can finish pretty soon.

This, as you probably know, was a teaching given by my teacher's teacher's teacher, named Pabongka Rinpoche. And his student was Trijang Rinpoche. Trijang Rinpoche was a young Lama.

In Tibet, Lama means incarnated Lama. It doesn't mean Lama in the monastery. Lama means you are the incarnation of another person.

And usually the Lamas are a little bit irritating young guys. And many of them hit me with their bicycles and things like that. But he was very unusual.

And I guess, I don't know how old he was, maybe 20 or 25, but he sat in the teaching for 24 days. I think 1921 or something like that. And he listened to the teaching by his teacher.

And then he made notes. And he worked on those notes, I think for 15 or 20 years. And he made this book called, some people call it Liberation in the Palm of Your Hands.

The real title is A Gift of Liberation Put into the Palm of Your Hand. So I like to call it A Gift in the Hands or something like that. And it means you don't have to try too hard to get enlightened.

You just come, try not to fall asleep. Even if you fall asleep, there's a blessing. And they put the enlightenment in your hand and you don't have to do so.

You don't have to work so hard. It's kind of like a gift, free gift. That's the name of the book.

And it was the greatest book, I think, ever written in Tibetan language. So this is sort of a monument to the Tibetan language. The Tibetan language died about 50 years ago, 45 years ago, it was killed.

And it's gone. As a language, it's been destroyed. So this is the greatest book in the Tibetan language, I think.

And it's poetry, it's pure poetry. And so I like to, when I teach Lam Rim, I like to read the Tibetan, I like to read it to you. And I know maybe you're not interested in Tibetan, but many people said that before and I hooked them.

So I think it's a blessing to hear this language. Linguistically, Tibetan is not related to any language in the world. It's a very strange language.

There's a tradition that says it dropped out of the sky. And I almost believe it. Like all of the languages in the, we say from Iceland to Iran, they all come from Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, English.

But this language is from somewhere else, from some other realm. And it's a beautiful language. So I hope you will get some seeds to learn it.

But don't feel pressure. Just enjoy, relax. This is the class where I also get to relax.

I wear my usual clothes. I don't have to wear Seiji's suit. And I kind of enjoy myself.

And I hope you enjoy yourself also. So just relax and enjoy. And I sat through 30 years of these classes and it feels like we're not trying to finish a book.

It feels like your whole life, for the rest of your life, I hope we can have lam rim. So I don't have any idea to finish anytime soon. I'm not thinking we should finish and move on to the next thing.

It's kind of, for me, I spent 25 years with my teacher in the same house and he taught this book every week or something. And it was wonderful. And it's sort of a comfort to have someone to teach you the lam rim every week or every month for your whole life.

I think it's like going to the gas station in your car and you run around for a week and you go crazy in your job. And then you come back to the gas station called lam rim and you fill up your spiritual side. And then you run around again for a week and then you go back to the lam rim.

So for me, it doesn't have to start. It doesn't have to finish. It's just kind of a comfort for your whole life.

And I hope we can continue as long as possible. We will, Tim mentioned, we started in 2010. We've been on it for 13 years.

And we are 92% done with the text. And my plan, when I started this book 13 years ago, at the end of the book, they teach you meditation. Shamantha and Vipasyana.

They teach you how to meditate and they teach you about emptiness at the end of the book because it's the final two of the Bodhisattva's Perfections. And I thought, because there's a tradition to meditate on lam rim, every time you learn a few pages of lam rim, it's tradition to meditate on it and try to incorporate it in your life and then move on to the next step. So I thought we should go to the end of the book and learn how to meditate.

And then we go back to the beginning of the book because we're supposed to meditate on each of the steps. And so when I started 13 years ago, I went to the end of the book and I taught the last two Perfections, meditation and wisdom. They are unusually short in this book.

This book is 1,000 pages. And by the way, we're just 8,000 pages in English. But I went to the end.

It's kind of short. The section on meditation and on emptiness, at the end, it's kind of short because he had Tsongkapa's Lam Rim. And that was written about 500 years before this one.

And that one's a similar pages. It's about 1,000 Tibetan pages, which is about 8,000 English pages. And in that one, the presentation of meditation and emptiness is extremely detailed.

And it's one of the greatest explanations of emptiness and meditation in history. So I thought when we reach that part, when we come back to the last two Perfections, I will teach you from that book, from Tsongkapa's Great Lam Rim. And then that's going to increase the years, okay?

Because that's about half of his Lam Rim. That's about 4,000 pages in English. And it's awesome.

And so that's dessert. So we'll finish this book and we won't do the meditation and the wisdom because I finished it already. And then we'll go to the Lam Rim Chenmo.

And that will take, I don't know, that will take five or 10 years, I guess. Okay? And it's amazing.

It's really fantastic, okay? So we're about 92% done. We've been talking about, we've been talking about mojo, which is how to develop bodhichitta, how to develop a love for all people, where you want to make them Buddhists.

You want to make all people Buddhists. So we're in that section where they're talking about different ways to develop bodhichitta, the wish for enlightenment. That's where you want to become a Buddha so you can help everybody, okay?

And he's been using a book from the Kadampa. So Kadampa, there's a modern Buddhist group called Kadampa. They took the name from some Buddhists 1,000 years ago.

These were the early Buddhists in Tibet, first Buddhists in Tibet. Tibet was a non-Buddhist country. It was Bumbo, which is some kind of shaman, shamanism.

Very similar to the Siberia. Some of the Siberian tribes, Tangut and Tenggeri. They're called Tenggeri in Siberia.

And these are special shaman teachings. And that was popular in Tibet. Then the Buddhists started to come over the Himalayas from India.

And at the same time, India was attacked by people from the Middle East and Turkey and Buddhism was wiped out in India, completely. There's no Buddhists left in India. It was the world's, it was the motherland of Buddhism.

It's where Buddhism started. But starting around 1,200 years ago, it was wiped out completely. And so it's like a guy jumping off a ship.

Buddhism jumped off the ship called India and jumped into Tibet. And then it was destroyed in India. So, and the Tibetans didn't even have writing at that time.

They just have yaks. And they are just taking care of yaks. And they invented an alphabet and they invented writing for their country.

And they started to write down Buddhism. And they went crazy. The whole country went crazy.

And they become the greatest Buddhists in history, I think. And they, we're cataloging 400, 500,000 books. They wrote 400, 500,000 books on Buddhism and they are high quality.

Every book is amazing. Every book is like Shakespeare. It's unbelievable.

500,000, half a million books about Buddhism. Each one is different and each one is amazing. And very, very accurate, highly accurate.

So, today we're going to study a teaching that was popular 1,000 years ago in Tibet. And it was brought to Tibet by Lord Atisha, who was born, I think, 982, so 1,000. And we're working on a book.

Seiji, you want to raise your hand? Seiji Araw, he's one of our translators and he's the Vice President of DCI and SIN. He works very hard.

Because of his hard work, I get salary. And God bless you and please live a long life. And so I don't have to worry about money.

I have this good salary because of his work. And he asked, can I be a translator? Can I learn how to translate?

This was seven or eight years ago. And we started. And he finished a very great book of poetry that was written 1,000 years ago.

And right now we are cleaning out the book. And it's an extraordinary book. And it's by someone named Dharmaraksita.

And his student was Atisha. And Atisha was a great Indian master who came to Tibet. He agreed to come for six months or something.

And then there was a war and he stayed for 12 years. And he helped to start Buddhism in Tibet. So this, we're going to read some poetry which is from his times.

And this is called Lojong Dunduma. It's seven topics about how to become a Buddha. And it's very, very sweet.

If you took the ACI courses, I think it's in course number 14. When I first taught ACI courses in 1990s in New York, course number 13 is Buddhist Logic. I think Rob was there, I don't know.

And I lost half of my students. Half of my students quit, really. And I was a little bit worried about it.

So after I finished the Logic course, I decided to do Lojong because it's so friendly. Lojong is so friendly, accessible, powerful, sweet. So I started Lojong.

And I taught this Lojong in that course. But he goes deeper. He goes much deeper.

So we're about halfway through a book called the Seven Point Lojong. It's not really seven points. It's seven sections.

And each section has maybe 20 ideas in it. We're going to continue through that. That's where we are.

And I'll show the Tibetan on the screen. Where is the screen? And don't get nervous.

You don't have to learn Tibetan. Many people said, I'm not going to learn Tibetan. Wordsmith said, I'm not going to learn Tibetan.

Now he's the best teacher of Tibetan. So just relax. Learn a few words.

It's okay. It's like my Japanese, like my Chinese. Like, ni hao, wei shi ma.

And you can learn a few words. It's good luck for your next life. So just relax.

You don't have to memorize anything. This is a comfortable class. I am talking to your subconscious.

And it will change your heart, even you don't want to. This teaching will change your heart. I'm also going to show pictures, which I call idim.

Idim means idea image. And I'll show you a picture to help you remember the main ideas. You don't even have to remember the Tibetan word.

Just remember the picture. And each picture will have a meaning. Geshe-la's habit is to hand out $100 bills to people who can tell me what's the picture.

So just relax and try to remember what the picture means. This is how I used to memorize the books. CHEN RNAMS ZA BYAS ZAG PA MA'I RNAMS DOG PA'I DE BYAS DANG ZA BYAS GANG GYUR DE DAG LA ZANG RNAMS KUN GYIS RGYAS DGOS GYUR BZHAG PA'I SNANG NYID DE LA BSTAN DU MA BYAS LA ZHING DE'I SNANG RGA DANG NI DGOS PA NI DE DAG SNANG RGA RNAMS PA DE'I BO Like that.

And I will connect a picture to each idea. And then I could memorize the whole book. So pictures are very powerful.

I think that's why Chinese language is so powerful, so efficient, because it's based on pictures. So learn the pictures, look at the pictures, try to remember what the picture means. Maybe you can win $100.

And actually $100 is usually 100 lifetimes of happiness, if you can answer the question. So try to learn the pictures. And I will test you tomorrow.

I'll show you the picture and I'll say, who can tell me what's this picture? And then don't be all nervous and don't, just relax and have fun. Lam Rim is fun, it's not like those other courses.

All right, not like ACIM or difficult things, DCI. So here's the first picture. And I have fun, I have fun choosing the pictures.

It's a lady saying goodbye. And the subject that we're on is PO'A. PO'A means how to die well, dying well.

And I'm not allowed to teach this stuff in DCI. I'm not allowed to teach this stuff in ACIM. I'm not allowed to teach this stuff much in ACIM.

I'm allowed to teach it in Lam Rim. And this is the important stuff. So how to die and how to move on.

And even if you're not planning on dying, trust me, everyone else didn't plan on dying either, but they die, people die. We will die. So you have to get ready and you have to know how to die.

And I went to Princeton University, second year now, it's number one in the world, the university, but they don't teach how to die. There's no course how to die. And we are lucky to have Lam Rim.

We are lucky to have some instructions how to die well. And you can learn how to be a doctor and you can learn how to be an engineer, but you're not sure you're going to be a doctor and you're not sure you're going to be an engineer. But when you learn how to die, you're going to use that degree.

Definitely. And learn it while you're young and then you don't have to worry later. Learn it now.

And if you don't die for 20 years, that's nice, but you might die tomorrow. So it's helpful. It's really helpful.

And I taught many students who died. You are younger. They were younger than you.

So, all right, here we go. She's saying goodbye. Let's go back to the Tibetan, you guys.

,'BYUNG NA SKYES BU'I CHUNG NGU, ,LTA BU NUS, Go down, you guys, to it. Go down, down, down, down, down, down. Go past the bowl.

More, more, more, more, more. These are just my notes. There we go.

,'BYUNG NA SKYES BU'I CHUNG NGU, ,LTA BU NUS KYANG SDUG BSNGAL GNAS PO LA, So they're talking about PO'A. PO'A means how to die. How to die well.

And how to go to the next place well. PO'A means to travel to the next world. And here he says, minimum, when you die, try to remember the Three Jewels.

Minimum, while you die, try to remember the Three Jewels. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

The Jewel Buddha, Jewel Dharma, Jewel Sangha is different from Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Not the same thing. Buddha is a person.

Dharma is the books. Sangha is the monks and nuns. But the Jewel, the Sambal, Sambal, Three Jewels, that's a completely different thing.

And each one means emptiness. Each one refers to emptiness. Buddha means the real protector in Buddhism is the emptiness of the Buddha.

Not even the physical body, but the emptiness of the Buddha. We don't go to a Buddhist temple and worship statues. That's not Buddhism.

Go to a Buddhist temple, light incense, give it to the Buddha. It's not Buddhism. Buddhism is to understand what is a Buddha.

And the Buddha is emptiness. Buddha is emptiness of the Buddha. When you take refuge, you take refuge in that, the Buddha's emptiness.

That's what can protect you. Not Buddha. Dharma means the perception of emptiness by an Arya.

Who sees emptiness directly? That seeing is Dharma. It's not the books.

It's not the holy books. It's not the translations. It's the emptiness.

It's to see emptiness. That's Dharma. Sangha?

Anyone who saw emptiness directly. That's real sangha. We don't believe in Buddhism that you worship Buddha or even the books are Buddhism.

We don't believe that. It's the emptiness that the Buddha has. It's the understanding emptiness which is in the books.

And it's the people who saw emptiness directly, touched the diamond world. They are real protection. Those three things are protection.

There's a very famous sad joke that when Buddha was alive, his town was attacked. And many people said, oh, we have Buddha in our town. And they ran to the Buddha's house and they grabbed onto the Buddha's clothes and they hold on.

And then the soldiers came in and killed them holding the Buddha, holding the Buddha's robe and just killed them. They tried to take refuge. They go for protection to the physical Buddha.

Can I help you? They all died. All those people died.

What protects you is the emptiness of the Buddha. The emptiness. How to say it positively?

All things come from seeds. All things come from seeds. That's protection.

That can help you. That's Sambhal. That's the Three Jewels.

If you understand that, you're a Buddhist. If you don't understand that, I don't think you're a Buddhist. Once you understand about the pen, you're a Buddhist.

I'm not allowed to teach Buddhism in many places, but I teach the pen. Understand? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if you don't understand the pen, then you're not a Buddhist. Then we can't help you. It's not going to help you.

So here he says, minimum. PO'A. Minimum PO'A.

SKYE BU CHUNG ROL means minimum. Please remember the Three Jewels as you die. As you die, think about the pen.

Think about emptiness. Think about seeds as you die. Minimum.

Minimum means that will protect you personally. It will not help other people much. If you can die, as you die, remember seeds, where things come from.

It will help you to die. You will die better. You will go to a better place.

Everybody wants to go to heaven after they die. Someone asked me, a Chinese person asked me this week. Now I lay me down to sleep.

Ask the Lord my soul to keep if I die before I wake. Ask the Lord my soul to take. We learn this prayer when we are six years old, five years old.

It means, it's a Christian prayer. Our parents teach us before we sleep. We have to recite it to our parents before we sleep.

It means, if I die tonight, please Jesus take me or God please take me. It's like that. It's a motivation for when you die.

In Buddhism, if you can die and remember the seeds, you will have a good PO. You will have a good rebirth. Everybody is like, I don't know, hold this, I don't know, hold this rock from holy place where Buddha was walking or something like that.

When you die, try to hold this rock or something. That's not protection. That won't help you much.

Remember seeds. Remember about seeds while you die and you will go to a good place. Everybody, they do mantras.

OM MANI PADME HUM Why are you doing mantras? When I die I want to go to Amitabha's heaven. Forget it.

Just remember the pen. OM MANI PADME HUM never sent you to heaven. Remember the pen and then die.

Then you will go to heaven. There's a joke here later about it. By the way, this book is, in the beginning of the book, the writer said, we went to the talk by my teacher.

He talked for 24 days, all day. I think no pee pee breaks. I don't know how he did it.

He talked for 24 days. Sometimes we cry. Sometimes we laugh.

Sometimes we fall asleep. This one is kind of funny. He says, just try to remember about the pen or remember about seeds and then if you die, you're safe.

You will go to a good place. Yourself. If you have higher goals, if you want to help more people, then he says, BYANG SEMS BSGOM SHIN DU PHO BA SOGS DGOS As you die, try to remember Bodhichitta.

As you die, try to think, I would like to help all people in the world. I'm dying now and I wish soon I can become Buddha to help everybody. I wish that.

Then die like that. Then that's a perfect PO'A. That's a good PO'A.

You don't need Vajrayana, Tantra, secret way. This is Vajrayana. I want to help everybody.

Die this way. That's a good death and you will go to a good place. That's protecting yourself.

By the way, you won't remember all this until you get really sick and then you will remember all this. I'm putting information in your mind for that day. You're going to forget it until then.

When they put you in the hospital and the doctor is like, or your family is like, you're going to be fine, and the doctor is like, then you're going to say, Geshe-la said something. In Kyoto, I remember. It's good to have the information in your mind and when you need it, you can use it.

Hopefully you don't get hit by a car quickly. You have some good cancer, slow cancer, and you have time to remember everything. It's better.

It's really better. Alright. Next picture.

This is a nice picture of my wife. She's wonderful. She saved my life.

We like to go riding on the beach and we have a special bicycle to go on the beach. This one's called, well, I'll teach it to you first. BDAG SHING DU DRU LUG MED NYAM NA So, how do I get to a Buddha paradise after I die?

What should I do as I die? NYAM NA DE NGES PAR YOD TE YOD TE There is a way. You can send yourself to a Buddha paradise as you die.

You can do it. You just have to know how. PHYIR KHA BA BDAG KHA BA BDAG KHA NGES NAS LA SPYOD PAR NA UR SHUNG So, PHYIR KHA BA is the author of the seven-point mojo.

One of the Kadampa's. He didn't write it, he wrote it down for the public. Before that, it was kind of secret.

And Atisha learned it in Indonesia. So, there are some cool people from Indonesia. Surabaya, Surabaya mostly.

So, PHYIR KHA BA, he was the first person to publicize it. But Atisha learned it in Indonesia from Suwano Dvipa Guru, whose name was also Dharmakirti, but that's a different Dharmakirti. So anyway, PHYIR KHA BA.

BDAG, BDAG means he was ready to die. He was dying. And NAS LA SPYOD PAR He wanted to go to the hell realms.

It's a very funny story. So, the person who wrote the book that we're studying this week, who wrote that, he said, when I die, my goal is to go to the hell realms. And I'm going to help people there.

He made a plan like that. BDAG DKA' NYES NA When he was getting ready to die, he made some final offerings. SPYOD PAR LA UR SHOM He tried very hard to make offerings.

BDAG. NGES SEMS CAN THAMS CAD KYI BSTUN DU NAR MED DU RDOG BA RMOS PA BYAS KYANG He prayed, I want to go to NAR MED. Not just I want to go to hell to help the people there.

When I die, I want to go to the lowest hell. This hell is unbelievable. NAR MED means, I don't know, it's like someone stabbing you with a knife all the time.

No break. NAR MED means no, not even two minutes break. It's like stabbing you with a knife or burning you.

And he prays to go there. He's praying to go there because he will help the other people. They say Lord Buddha got bodhichitta in the hell realms.

They say Lord Buddha got his bodhichitta in the hell realms. So he's, CHOS KHA was like, I hope I can go to hell. I hope I can go to hell.

The worst hell. RMOS PA BYAS KYANG Then when he was dying, he's like, and the students are like, you okay? Are you okay?

No. No. I'm not okay.

And they're like, is it a lot of pain? Are you in a lot of pain? No, no, I'm not in pain.

What's going on? I want to go to hell. What's going on?

I keep going to Amitabha's heaven. I don't want to go there. He got very angry.

He's very upset. I don't know. Every time I want to help the hell people, then the karma starts to go up to the Amitabha's heaven.

And he's angry. He's very upset. So, try not to have too much love when you die.

Try to be angry or jealous and then you can go to hell people. And he went to the heaven. He went to Amitabha's heaven.

He was very upset.

[Говорящий 2]
He's like, ah.

[Говорящий 1]
Because he wants to help the people in hell. So that motivation, pho-wa. That's real pho-wa.

CHE KYANG MINDOR MINDOR means he wasn't able to go to the hell. BDAG SHING GI SNANG BAR BSHAG CHUNG Instead, he just could see that he's going to go to the heavens. He's going to go to the Buddha paradise.

BDAG SHING BSHAG CHUNG GSUNG BA DANG RGYAS ZHIG PO MTHONG BA'I KYANG DE BZHIN ZAD SO There was another RGYAS ZHIG. RGYAS ZHIG started about a thousand years ago. There was one named MTHONG BA.

And he also did the same. SNGA MA MED NYID CHOS KHYER BA'I TSE There was a case where there was a mother and a daughter who were dragged away in the river. They fell in the river.

They were drowning in the river. NYID KHYAD PHAN TSANGS SANGS RBOR BSKYED PAS They each tried to help the other to survive. Each one tried to save the other one.

So each one's trying to hold up the other one. SANGS RBOR BSKYED NI Then because their last hope was to help their family person in person, they both went to the Buddha paradise. And it's a very sweet story.

Mom's trying to save the daughter, push her towards the land. Daughter's trying to save the mom and push her towards the land. And because each one is trying to save another person, they both have to go to the heaven together.

So that's dying with a higher motivation. To die with a higher motivation. Okay, next picture you guys.

Yeah, and by the way, so when you see that picture of my wife, can you go back? It means sometimes you want to help people. If you want to help people in suffering, that karma will push you to really beautiful places.

Really, really beautiful places. Even you don't want to go, it will push you. So when you see this picture, I want you to say, oh Geshe-la was trying to go exhaust himself at some program and instead he was forced to go to the beach and ride on the bicycle with Vajrayogini.

Okay, all right. So when you see this picture, you're going to say, oh, those people who you try to help other people, accidentally they go to heaven. They don't want to go.

The picture before that was, when you say goodbye, at least try to remember the Three Jewels. And if you can remember trying to help all people, then that's a good way to say goodbye. So tomorrow you can make $100 if you remember.

Grandpa's very easy. I mean, I'd give $100 if you're even close to the right answer. So just remember a little bit.

You can get rich, this Smith. Ask Word Smith. How do you think he support all these girls?

Four girls. Lydia's a girl. Okay, yeah.

All right, NGA MTSO'I GZHIG DANG PHAD ZER BA'I PHO BA LA Let's go to the... Let's go to the... Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh yeah, okay. YANG LHO SKAD CHA ZAD DGO BA THENG CI DRAG DGO BA means, in Tibet, there's many, many rivers everywhere because that's where the Himalayan Mountains are. So the snow melts a lot and you can walk half a mile and you will hit a river.

All the four great rivers of this world come from the Tibetan Mountains. Mekong, the Yellow River, the Ganges River. These rivers all come from the same place.

So you can't... You go a little place in Tibet, you hit a river. And they did not have bridges.

So they had DGO BA. DGO BA means you take tree branches and you make a frame and then you take a yak skin and you make a little boat. And they're very powerful.

They're very strong. You can put a horse or a couple horses on one and get them across a river. That's called DGO BA.

How did I learn that word? I learned all my Tibetan from my teacher, my dear teacher, Khen Rinpoche. And one day the toilet overflowed and all the poop came out on the river.

And he said, oh, it looks like DGO BA. And I said, what's DGO BA? He said, it's a leather bone in Tibet.

It looks exactly like that. And he said, clean it up. So I always remember DGO BA.

He says there was a DGO BA that was going to sink. PHANG CHEN is the ancient word for an important messenger. What's the other common word for messenger?

PHONG NYA which means your tantric partner. Messenger. PHANG CHEN is another word for the same thing.

PHANG CHEN PHANG CHEN PA And he sacrificed himself. He decided he will jump into the river and he will die so the DGO BA will get lighter and the other passengers will survive. So he volunteered.

He didn't tell anybody. He just jumped off. Immediately he jumped off the DGO BA and he died.

SEMS SANGS RGYAS DE CHUR CHUNG KYANG MA ZHIG BAR But he didn't die. He wanted to die so that the other people will survive. JAG SUG PA CHUNG BA And then a rainbow came and struck him.

CHUNG BA LTAR SEMS SANGS RGYAS PA CHEN CHANG CHOG GI SEMS CHUNG MA TSUN ZAD PA NA GNAS SANGS RGYAS PA THET SOGS MED And then he was taken off to a Buddha paradise. He jumped in the river to save the other passengers. And then this rainbow hit him and he disappeared from the rainbow.

This is a rainbow at Diamond Mountain. I just thought it was a nice rainbow. We have nice rainbows there.

You should come. If you don't learn to do some deep retreat in your life, you wasted your life. You can miss a few months of work.

You won't remember after six years or five years. But you got to do some retreat. You got to do some retreat.

Do some retreat. Very, very important. You miss a year of work or something or they don't choose you Vice President of the Year or something.

That's okay. That's not going to help you when you die. But the retreat will help you.

I gave up many positions to do my retreats and then they came anyway. It's like jumping in the water. Okay.

Then there's a... Okay, let's go to the next picture. Or let's go to the text.

You ready? Let's go to the text. NGA MTSO'I GZHIG DANG PHET Say GZHIG.

PHET PHET is a very strange word in Tibetan. There's no F in Tibetan. They don't have F.

But they have one. It's called PHET. It means like...

It's like another F word. You understand? Very strong word.

Like PHET. You go this mudra. PHET.

PHET. Then PHET means boom. There's a tradition.

In some Tibetan traditions, when you die, if you go PHET, PHET, PHET, PHET, you will go to a good place. It's called GZHIG. Then somehow you go to a holy place.

Do you think it will work? No, it's nothing to do with your motivation. You can kill somebody and say, Hick, hick, PHET, PHET.

The word is not going to take you to heaven. But there's some traditions in Tibet. Mistake.

It's mistaken. They say, just say PHET, PHET. If it's possible to go to a Buddha paradigm because you said PHET, PHET, then Buddha won't teach so many sutras.

We just have one sutra called the PHET sutra. PHET. It's funny.

And they say, oh, it's secret. Just say PHET, you will be born in Amitabha's paradise. So if that's true, why didn't Buddha teach everybody?

It doesn't make sense. Buddha wants everyone to go to paradise. If you can just say PHET, PHET, and it takes you to the paradise, then why come to Lam Rim?

Why there's 300,000 scriptures? If just everybody can learn Hick and PHET. It doesn't make sense.

It doesn't. It doesn't make sense. It's not true.

They're cheating people. It's like terrible, terrible. I call it selling fire extinguishers that don't work.

It's like if you're a very bad person and you have a fire extinguisher company and you know they don't work, but you sell them to everybody. And then when there's a fire, and then they die or it hurts them. You see what I mean?

To teach people, oh, just Hick, Hick, PHET, PHET. It's like selling a fire extinguisher that doesn't work. It's mean to tell people that it doesn't work.

All right. It's a little bit harder than that. PHET PHET SEMS BA'I PO LA RGANG PHYIR BYAS KYANG I know you guys are interested in the PHET PHET.

PO BA'I BDAG BRTZON PA LA RTZA PHYIR BAR And it's true that some people who did a lot of, picture, if you do a lot of yoga and you move your prana, sometimes you go PHET. The prana will move. It's like burping, really.

PHET, PHET. And he says, look, some people do yoga. Did it happen to you?

I don't know. When I stretch certain muscles, when I do my yoga and I stretch the back, did you see me, Rob, in the gym? I'm like burping.

If I stretch certain muscles, they open. And the wind comes. And I'm like, blah.

My wife doesn't like it. But that's just, that's just PHYI. That's just MUNG.

That's just prana. It's not some spiritual thing. It's just physical thing.

It's like your stomach, when you're hungry, it goes, wah, wah, wah. Here, PHET. Here, PHET.

It's not going to help you. Your stomach's not giving you secret mantra. It's just hungry.

It's just a natural sound that comes out of your body. And don't think it's something special. And it's not going to help you.

Don't waste your time. When you do yoga, you release prana. And sometimes you will burp, or you will fart, and that's very good for you.

The prana's moving. But it's not going to take you to heaven. You cannot reach heaven by farting.

Ask your wife. She'll let you know. Especially in the bed at night, right?

Sometimes it happens. HIG MANG DU BYANG NA CI RDZUS DU PO DAG MTHUN PA SOGS BYUNG BA DE LUNG GYI MTHUL YIN PA LUNG GYI MTHUL If you're interested in yoga, LUNG GYI MTHUL is a good example. Can you show that to them again?

LUNG means prana. MTHUL means movement of prana. What do you call it?

Adventitious movement of prana. It's just like a burp, or a fart, or something. The prana jerks.

It jerks, and it moves. It's called MTHUL. MTHUL KHOR is the ancient, ancient word for yoga asana.

It means machine. It means the machine of the body. Yantra in Sanskrit.

Yantra, not tantra, but yantra. It means the machine of the body. So MTHUL here means, look, there's going to be some spontaneous movement of the prana inside of you, but that's not an enlightened thing.

You're not going to heaven or something. It's the same as burping or farting. Which is, by the way, it's a healthy thing when you're doing yoga.

It's moving. Prana's moving. If you're in a group of yogis that you know them, and you know each other, it's fine.

Sweating, farting, burping, these are all healthy for your body during asana practice, during asana. When you sweat, a lot of poison comes out of your body. That's why you sweat.

If you sweat a lot, you're lucky. Sweat was invented by the body to carry toxins out of the body. So it's a good thing.

LUNG GI MTHUL But he says here, MTHUL, look, it's just a boop of the prana. Prana boop. Boop.

Don't get excited. If you really want to go to Amitabha's paradise after you die, the main way is to pray for other people when you die. The main way is to pray for other people when you die.

That's a trick about dying. Tim, what time do I go to? 5.15. Do I do Q&A? Okay. I'll start a Q&A in seven minutes. I always tell people you have three choices.

Number one, if you're a good person, you ask me something to do with this class. Secondly, if you're not such a good person, you can ask me any personal question. I don't care.

I heard every question in the universe. I didn't hear a new question for 20 years or something. Any terrible question about your personal life, we're all friends.

We all have the same problem, but we don't want to talk about it. You can ask me personal questions. I don't have any problem at all.

I'm fine. Any question is fine. If something's bothering you, or you have a personal challenge in your life, or your marriage, or your family, or something, I'm happy to talk about it.

And we don't talk about it outside the room. Am I right? We don't say, oh, Maria had this problem.

Did you know? Okay, agree? We don't talk about other people's problems.

Give people the freedom to ask a personal question. And then thirdly, if you want a philosophy question, I'm happy to answer a philosophy question. Personally, I like all questions.

So, I don't really care. So, it's fine to ask me about the class. Fine to ask me about your personal life.

Or it's fine to ask me about some weird emptiness question like Peter Murrow will ask. So, that's why he's a good teacher. Okay, NGOS RTZA CHE RGYUD MI He said, it's not a big deal if your body makes some weird noises.

When you're doing yoga and that's not connected to dying well. Next picture. We're going to talk about closing the door.

It's called NGAN SONG GI SKYE DGO'I KHYAD NGAN SONG means animal rebirth, hungry ghost rebirth, hell rebirth. Three lower rebirths. DGO'I KHYAD means to close the door or slam the door.

So, the picture, if I ask you tomorrow for $100, what's this picture you're going to say? Close the door to the lower realms as you die. As you die.

There's certain things you can use. There's certain ideas you can think about when you die and you cannot be born in the lower realms. The best one is the pen.

The best one is the pen. If you really understand the pen, and it doesn't matter if you're Buddhist or not Buddhist, it doesn't matter at all. If you really understand the pen, you cannot take a lower birth.

It's not possible. That's unbelievable. That's why grandpa teaches the pen everywhere.

Even you heard it before. Because I'm trying to close your door. I don't tell the DCI audiences, and you know that, but I never let them get away without the pen.

Because I'm trying to keep them out of the lower realms. If you understand the pen well, you cannot be born as an animal. You cannot go to the hells.

You cannot be a ghost. You will be born at least as a human. It's important.

The reason grandpa repeats it over and over again is not because I forgot. Some guy told me in Singapore, I'm sorry. He wasn't from Singapore.

He said, Geshe-la, can I get my money back? Why? You forgot.

You taught the pen last year. I'm like, no, I didn't forget. I taught the pen last year.

I'm trying to do something else for you. Okay. All right.

If you really want to help people, then teach them the pen over and over again. Just teach the pen over and over again. I teach it all the time.

I've got an airplane. I teach it to the person sitting next to me. They think I'm crazy.

They're like, I don't want to know about that. I'm like, I don't care. All right.

Now imagine you save someone from going to hell in two minutes on the airplane. That's pretty good. One lady sits down next to me.

I'm like, how can I teach her the pen? She has a book and she's staring at me. She showed me, it's the Diamond Cutter Business Book.

She pointed to my picture. She said, and I'm like, yeah. She says, I was just wondering if I ever can meet you in my life.

I said, you need to know about the pen. It was fun. It was in England.

It was cool. Okay. Closing the door.

LO SBYONG GI PHO BA LA HIG DANG PHET MED KYANG When you do your PHO BA, when you die with LO SBYONG, when you die with these instructions about how to be a good person, PHO BA LA MED KYANG you don't go, and you don't go phat. Okay. But SAB ZHOS SAB ZHOS means it's much more deep than those weird tantric things that some people teach.

Like, what do you call? Maha, what's it called? CHAGS KYA CHEN PO Mahamudra.

Stuff like that. Weird stuff. Mahamudra.

What's the other thing? RDZOGS CAN All that stuff, forget it. Just forget it.

Teach somebody to love other people. That's the best way to, that's the best tantric way to get to a good rebirth. Care about other people.

Take care of other people. Pray for other people as you die. It takes discipline.

You have to do it a lot. SAB ZHOS DI YIN PAS THO BA GZHAN NYAMS SU BLANGS KYANG CI GANG NGAN TZAM KHYAD DGOS KHAS MI KHAS THET TZAM YOD THET TZAM YOD KHAS MI KHAS THET TZAM YOD means if you do all those other things, hick, hick, hick, or phat, phat, phat, it's not sure whether you are closing the door to the lower realms or not. It's not certain that you will succeed with all those weird things like RDZOGS CAN and all these other things.

You don't need them. They are not going to help you. They might work and they might not work, so don't use it.

All right. DI RTOGS NGES DGOS NAS PO NA We want to try to die with the five powers. The next part of this book is called The Five Powers for Dying Well.

By the way, dying, you all look too serious. You are looking very serious. Oh, Geshe-la is teaching dying.

You should be happy. You should be like silly, like Sugeng. You should be like, I am going to die.

I am going to die so goddamn good. This is great. This is great stuff.

I am so happy he is not teaching DCI. We are learning how to die. Finally, somebody is teaching me how to die.

God bless. You should be happy and relaxed. If you know how to die, it is like not a big thing.

You can see where you are going. You know when you are going. You know where you are going afterwards.

You just relax about it. It is like taking a subway or something. You don't worry about it.

You don't get too serious about it. I had a doctor recently. You were there, I think.

The one in Flagstaff, she said, if this happens, if this happens, you are going to die like that. It is going to be terrible. I am like, okay.

She is like, she asked me, she doesn't know what I do. She doesn't know my occupation. She says, do you meditate?

I said, a little bit. She is like, hmm. You don't seem scared.

Okay. You should be relaxed and happy. If you don't learn how to die, you should be nervous.

If you learn how to die, you should be relaxed and have a good time before you go. Okay, I am going to go. I am taking the bus.

I know where it is going. I know what to do. I am okay.

Then just, you should not be so serious in this class. Okay? All right, questions.

I feel better if Tim chooses. Do you feel comfortable, Tim, to choose the questions? By the way, keep coming to Lam Rim, okay?

We will come to Keona as much as we can. But keep coming. It is good for you.

It is really important. We won't charge you. There is no charge for the class.

You make it here, you are okay. If Tim charges you, let me know. All right.

Okay. Welcome. Microphone is not working, I think.

Ivan. Yeah, that is okay. Yeah, good question.

Geshe-la, could you repeat the question please?

[Говорящий 2]
I am going to repeat the question.

[Говорящий 1]
Let's say I do do the right practice. Let's say I die with bodhichitta and I do go to a Buddha paradise. Well, what happens after that?

Normally, do you stay there until you become a Buddha or do you have to come back here and suffer some more and then go back to Buddha paradise and then learn some more and like that? Generally, if you die this way, you go to a Buddha paradise, you study with a Buddha or many Buddhas there and then you are finished and you get to stay there. You get to stay there permanently.

It is a good career move to go to that Buddha paradise. They will teach you until you become a Buddha. You don't have to come back here.

You can come if you want to, to help people, but you don't have to. It is beautiful to... By the way, you can see where you are going if you meditate a lot.

You can see what's next. If you see emptiness, you can see 500 years ahead. You can see where you are going.

Then it is much more comfortable. Maybe one person out of 100 million knows where they are going and they don't feel nervous and they don't feel scared. They are fine.

Everything is fine. You know where you are going. When you can see emptiness directly and then you die...

When you see emptiness directly, you see where you are going next. You even see who is going to take care of you when you are a kid. You can see the teachers.

You know who are the teachers. It is very relaxed. You are like, I know where I am going.

I know who is going to teach me. They are really nice people. Super nice people.

You meet them when you are just a baby. They will take care of you. You won't remember for about 15 years who you are.

They will take care of you. You make a karma that very, very good people will take care of you until you remember who you are. It is very beautiful.

You can see it directly. You are on an airplane and the plane starts going like this and everyone is like, ah, and you are like, yeah, okay. You know what is coming.

And it is a wonderful feeling to know where you are going and to be sure and to just relax. Then you can really enjoy life. I think most people cannot enjoy life because deep down they are scared.

I don't care if they are a great soldier or something. Everyone is scared to die. I don't care who you are.

People who commit suicide are super scared to die. They are so scared they kill themselves. If you can touch emptiness directly then you know where you are going.

You know how you are going to die and you can relax and the pressures are. And then you can really have fun in this life. I think only a person who knows how to die can have fun.

They can really have fun. Okay, Tim.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you. Thank you Geshe Michael for teaching us.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, it was so fun to be at your wedding.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
She looks so beautiful, oh my God.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you. I want to ask you about... Sometimes I help a cancer foundation and there are families who have kids with cancer and the parents and the kids are asking why I have this illness and why I have to be in a hospital.

And they are making a lot of questions but it's so hard to say where is this coming from because they are in a very deep pain. And what is the best way because we cannot say what is the cause but what is the best way to help them to have answers and practice to get better seats?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, good question. There's... Yesterday in the car from the airport I was translating something and I got an email from Aisha Scofilas, Anatole Nguyen's wife, and she's helping us find Sanskrit books.

I asked her, you know there's these caves in China in the edge of the Gobi Desert and they're called Dunhuang Caves and they found many books there in a secret wall, behind a secret wall. And they found over 3,000 books, right Stanley? Something more.

And I was curious what those books are. How good are the books there? I was curious, did the guy who put the books there 1,400 years ago, did he know what he's doing or not?

I was curious and I asked Aisha to make a list and it's very hard to find a list because all the books were stolen by different governments. The British government stole a lot, the French government stole a lot, the Russian government stole a lot, the American government stole a lot. And it's very hard to even find out the names of the books.

And she worked hard and she found almost all of them and she made a list. And I was checking the list and I was like, whoa, this guy knows what he's doing. I don't know who's this guy in the cave but he really knows what he's doing.

And there are eight levels of teaching there. I call it the eight languages. There's eight different Buddhist languages.

It's so nice to be able to say the word Buddhist in a talk. I'm always like, boom. So, there's eight different levels of Buddhism and six or seven of them are, what do you call it?

They're not the real answer. They're lower schools of Buddhism. All the eight schools of Buddhism or the eight languages of Buddhism and we're covering all of them in our translation team.

And they're all in Dunhuang. All of them are in Dunhuang, which to me means that guy knew what he's doing. But there's lower presentation and there's higher presentation, which means when you teach a group of people, any teacher who teaches a group of people, first you have to watch their faces.

If they go like this, then you have to change your language. You have to move down the language to a lower language. And then if they go like, or they fall asleep, you have to change the language again.

Every time Buddha taught, Buddha used one of eight different languages, depending on the students. Some students are super smart. They're like, you know, like Sugeng when I first met him.

I mean, he came to a talk with 1,500 people at the trade union auditorium in Singapore. I picked him out to Jenny Wong. Do you remember?

I said, go get that guy. He understands. He's like...

So you move up and down the language ladder. It's the same in the cancer ward for the children. How much can you tell the children?

How much can you tell the parents? You have to be a Buddha and you have to adjust your language. You have to try this language.

If they look confused or it's hurting them or something, then you go down. You go down, down, down, down until they look happy. Then you communicate on that level.

You communicate on that level for a while and then you move up to the next level and move up to the next level. It's constant for all teachers, all Buddhist teachers. Even if you're just a volunteer in a children's cancer hospital, you have to speak the language of your audience.

We have an example called Buddha. He's the example. Buddha gave us example.

I told my friend... I'll tell you a funny story. I used to take the bus to work because I don't want to spend the money to buy a car.

For 19 years, I do four hours every day on the bus. For 19 years, I take the bus because I want to give the money to the monastery. I didn't buy a car.

One night, the bus broke down. Two hours. The guy said, everybody get off.

We're like, what? He says, the next bus is coming in half an hour or one hour. They will stop.

We're like, it's cold. It's winter in New Jersey. I'm so glad I don't live in New Jersey anymore.

It's cold and it's terrible. There's just a bar there. There's a bar.

I'm like, oh man. Let's see, I want to stay cold or I want to go in the bar. It was a naughty bar.

There were some bad shows going on. I was like, it's really cold. I went in the bar.

Then I started teaching Dharma to these two guys in the bar. It was so fun. They're like, really?

I've got this pen. The woman's going like this. I'm like, yeah, this is a pen.

They're like, whoa. Then I thought, I have to drop down immediately to Abhidharma language. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Use the language that they can understand. I think it's very important. My teacher taught me you have to respect their parents' wishes.

You cannot teach them things that the parents don't want you to teach. You have to kind of check in with the parents and see what's the level of the parents. There's always something you can help.

There's always good things you can say. But I think it's respectful to ask the parents or to see what the parents' reaction is and adjust your language according to the parents' reaction. But my experience is kids can understand everything.

Kids can understand everything. So be bold also. Be bold with them.

Don't teach them something the parents don't want you to teach. But don't be scared to say deep things because kids are really smart. I think every year we add to our life, we get more stupid.

Kids are really smart. Kim, what's up? Half an hour break, you guys.

Relax, go pee pee. Have something to drink. It's not a great time of day to have a class.

It's difficult to focus in the evening. So have something to drink. See you in half an hour.