«Дар освобождения», курс 43 «Современный бодхисаттва», занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
So we're going to start the actual Lam Rim, and I was working on it yesterday, and I was studying when did we start it, in case you're curious. I found a record, Rob. We started on the last day of 2010.

December 31st, 2010. Yeah, in Prescott. I actually, anyway, okay.

The first class was December 31st, and so there are 24 original days of teaching, in the original teaching, and we did 21st, 2nd, 3rd, and sorry, yeah, we did 21, 22, 23, 24. We finished the meditation part. We finished the emptiness part, and then we started at the beginning, and started to go through the Lam Rim, and we're about to hit the last day.

Okay, we're about to start the last day, which is like 22, or something like that. And we've done 46 retreats in 14, in 14 years, yeah. Cool.

And I was checking to see if if we went to Tsongkhapa's famous book on emptiness, instead of doing more Lam Rim on emptiness, I was checking to see if it would take much longer, and they're about the same length. Okay, so if we do emptiness from the Lam Rim Chenmo, the big Lam Rim, or we do emptiness from his famous teaching on Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti, it will take about the same time, which is nine years. Okay, so then I thought you could come to the nursing home and visit me.

It's about, yeah, I don't know, if you're up for it, I'm okay. Yeah, okay. That book is a commentary on Chandrakirti, who lived about 1,300 years ago, and he wrote a book called Entering the Middle Way, Entering the Middle Way, Lajjimakabhatara.

And in this case, Middle Way is a nickname for a book, yeah. It's the root text of Nagarjuna, and it's his most famous book, and sometimes it's just called Wisdom. And people have made the name longer, and I think Nagarjuna didn't want them to make the name longer.

He was very, he was like a rap artist or something, and no, his poetry is very, very beautiful, very short, and very mystical, and very deep. And we've been doing another commentary by Choney Lama in the fall. We've been reading Choney Lama's commentary to Nagarjuna.

So I thought we could just keep doing that kind of thing. It's like a potent, when you get cancer really bad, they start injecting stuff into you every morning, a mix of stuff, like you get cocaine, morphine, it's like that. So you'll get an injection every couple of times a year, and I think it'd be nice, so we can keep going through.

We're almost done with Choney Lama on the original root text of Nagarjuna, and then we'll do Chandrakirti. So his entering the Middle Way is entering Wisdom, the book called Wisdom. So when they say Middle Way, in that case, it means the book called Wisdom, Prajna, by Arya Nagarjuna, which is probably the greatest book on emptiness ever written.

Chandrakirti is the second greatest book, and Tsongkapa is the third greatest book. So you're going to get all three. And I think it's awesome.

I think it'd be fun, and I'd like to do that. So you actually don't have a choice. Okay, and we'll just see how far we get.

Okay, so I'm going to pick up in the Lam Rim of Pabongka Rinpoche. There's a deep connection with lojo. So Pabongka Rinpoche's, there's a person who was recording his teaching, and that was Trijang Rinpoche, Khyabje Trijang Rinpoche, who's the junior tutor of the Dalai Lama, and he's the teacher of my teacher.

So this book that we're studying now, I think it's the greatest book ever written in Tibetan, and Tibetan language has now been destroyed. So I don't think there will be any more books of this quality. The language has been destroyed.

So people, nobody speaks Tibetan anymore, except me. That's kind of funny. I was in, Geshe Lothar was doing a long life prayer for me here, and I got a gallbladder attack, and I was lying on the floor in great pain, and I said, Geshe Lothar, I've got to go to the hospital, which is two hours away, and he's like, just wait, I want to finish your long life prayer.

And I said, I'm going to be the first person in history to die during their long life prayer. It's really cute. Then I went to, they took me to the hospital, and I had an operation, and when I woke up from the, what do you call it?

The drugs, and I looked, and there's a Tibetan woman leaning over me, and I'm like, wow. And I said, what's your name? And she said, I'm Tsering, which means long life, and that's the name of the dog in the Halyoga works, right?

So I'm like, of course your name is Tsering. And then I said, who are you? And she said, I'm your doctor.

I said, of course, yeah. And I said, how many Tibetans are in Tucson? She said, two.

And I'm like, of course. So we were, you know, she was telling me, we started talking in Tibetan, and she says, you have a perfect plaza accent, and they don't exist anymore. Nobody can speak it anymore.

It's dead. You know, in some countries it sounds like one language, and in another country it sounds like a different language. But nobody speaks pure Tibetan anymore, and so that book you're studying today, it is the greatest book ever written in Tibetan, and it's probably the last one ever written in pure Tibetan.

So, it's a beautiful, the writing is extraordinary. So, if you're interested in Tibetan, it's a good book to learn Tibetan. And Wordsmith has been teaching some wonderful classes.

I don't know how he teaches Tibetan, but the people who study with him learn faster and better than my students. So, if you're interested, you know, these classes are free, a couple of times a week, and you can learn. It's beautiful.

I encourage people to read Tibetan. You can learn Sanskrit. I learned Sanskrit.

It took 12 years, with a great scholar, and I don't use it. I never use it, because 99% of the books were destroyed in India, around 800 AD. So, there's not, you can learn Sanskrit, but there's no Sanskrit to read.

It's mostly gone. We're studying a little bit in the mixed nuts, in the Shenzong Tower classes, if you're interested. Those are Seiji's new classes, on the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, which is a really good way to learn Sanskrit.

It's excellent Sanskrit by Shantideva. So, we do have that Sanskrit, and I've been teaching that Sanskrit. And Christina Kasica, where are you?

She's been leading a class in Sanskrit, after that, every week, I guess. Starting in June, of this year? Okay.

Okay. But she's Harvard-trained Sanskrit person, so, you know, not as good as Princeton, but it's okay. All right.

So, this is like the great, so I'm going to read the Tibetan, just to get it into your brain. We only have one more day out of the 24-day original teaching. I average two retreats per day.

So, we can finish probably this year, Tim? I don't know. And then we can go to Tsongkapa's book on emptiness, okay?

And then personally, as you may have noticed, I'm not in any big rush. I just enjoyed reading it together. So, just relax and enjoy.

The nice thing about lamrim, you don't have to study. You just have to be open, and it will get into you whether you want it or not. Okay.

And I'm going to use some idims. Idims are pictures to remember the ideas of the book. So, I have pictures that help you remember the points in the book, okay?

I call them idea images, which are an idim. Not idiot, idim. Okay, all right.

So, here we go. Tim, you guys got the Tibetan up there? Okay, good.

,BLA MA LA MOD DGOS DANG, ,BLO SBYONG LA BRAL BA DANG, ,PHYIR GYIS BSLOB BYA GSUM YANG PA MED PAR BYA, ,BLA MA LA MOD DGOS means keep up your affection for your teacher. Okay, and you know, I've been in the Dharma business for 50 years, and I've seen all kinds of students, thousands, and some are a pain in the ass, and they're always like, oh, Lama, Lama, you know, and then they don't know how to wash dishes. And then there's other students who are just like, hi Dishin Michael, let's do something cool, and they do wash dishes.

So, I kind of prefer that kind, and I think it's healthier than this, you know, super prostration thing. I'd much rather have my dishes washed than get another tired roast. Okay, but both are okay.

And no, you should, you should offer things, but small things. I don't need money. I don't need things, okay?

I got so many things in my house. I have, it's trouble for me to keep them out of my house. But serving at Dharma Mountain, helping here, that's great.

Stuff like that. That's great. Lama Lhagmo, so have a nice relationship with your teacher.

Fun relationship? The reason you have a teacher is you're bad. Okay?

So don't be disappointed if you, if you don't act nice to your teacher, okay? It's normal. Okay?

If you didn't act bad towards your teacher, you wouldn't need a teacher, you understand? So, don't, don't get all, it's one thing to be bad to your teacher. It's another thing to feel bad that you're bad.

And at least just feel good about it. You're okay. You're okay.

That's what, so no student can ever really serve their teacher properly, or else they wouldn't need a teacher, see what I mean? So just do your best and have fun, and you'll do a lot better, okay? Lojong Lar Drogpa, and by the way, everybody has a big mess up, can I say?

And don't worry about that either, okay? In their life, in their Dharma life, you will have two or three very special mess ups. And don't worry about that, and don't worry about that either, okay?

We all have had special mess ups, okay? And just, you can brag about it in the hell realms. My teacher was giving us Diamond Way Vows.

It was in Alexandria, Virginia, I remember, in this wealthy lady's house. First of all, the lady offered him the house, and he looked at me, and I'm like, and we can sell it, you know, and then he's like, no, you keep it, you know, I don't need a house. And then we were making dinner together, and cutting stuff, and vegetables, and then she said, so you're giving us Diamond Way Vows today?

And he said, yep, that's what we're doing. And she said, well, I heard something about that. And he said, what?

And she said, I heard if you break those vows, you go to the lowest hell. You know, and he said, that's true. And she says, well, wouldn't it be better to not take the vows and not go to the lowest hell?

And he says, oh, you're going to the lowest hell anyway. Everybody is, you know. And then she's like, she had this look on her face.

She was a professor somewhere. I won't say more, because you'll figure out who she is. Then she's like, and then he says, yeah, when you go to hell and you meet everybody else who's there, you can say, I'm not here just because I killed people or stole things.

I'm here because I broke my Diamond Way Vows. Anyway, so, have fun with the Lodro. DRAN ZHIG GI SLAB BYA GSUM means try to remember what you hear in the class.

It's nice here during retreat, because you can tell everyone's trying to control themselves after class. Like at the cafeteria, everybody's like, you take first. Then, you know, you get on the plane and you forget everything.

But try your best to take what you hear and then go use it in the cafeteria and see if it survives the drive to Tucson. SEMS SANG SNYAM PA MED PA BYA, so he says focus on these three things. Have fun with your Lama, enjoy the Lodro, and try to remember it when you get home.

Okay, that's all. Then he says, and did you show that picture of the lady, I guess? I don't know.

Yeah, that just means enjoy the meal. Enjoy the class. Enjoy the Lodro.

Enjoy the taste and don't get too serious on me. I've noticed the very serious people usually fail. Okay, so just relax.

If you can laugh at yourself, you're halfway there, okay? And you are funny. Okay.

All right, next picture, you guys. Yeah, this represents your three doors. What are they, you guys?

For zero dollars! Body, speech, and mind, yeah. I told Aldo he looked more wealthy this morning.

So, he's probably taking people out to dinner for the next couple of weeks in Guadalajara, right? He says, LUS SNGA'I YI GSUM BRAL BAR MA BZHAG PA RGYAS BA LA GOS, BRAL BAR MA BZHAG PA means you were given a body, a mouth, and a mind when you entered this life. Use them, okay?

Use them. And these are called the three doors. These are the only way you can express yourself, okay?

You can do things for other people with your hands. You can say things to other people with your mouth. And most importantly, you can think things about other people.

So, he says, BRAL BAR MA BZHAG PA, this is the BRAL that you find in DONGS ROR. What's that? Yeah, leisure and fortune.

So, BRAL here means leisurely, and it means don't let your body, speech, and mind just sit there. Use them. So, this BRAL doesn't quite mean the same as leisure and fortune, it means.

I'm slowing down translators. I can see you're stressed out, okay? That's a good idea to put them here in front of me.

Sorry about that. Yeah, BRAL BAR MA BZHAG PA means don't let them just sit there. Use them.

You were born with a body, and you were hands, and you were born with a mouth, and you were born with a brain, so use it. What? DGE BA LA KUL.

KUL means to take, did you ever work with donkeys? I mean real donkeys, not... So, I was a Boy Scout in Arizona, in the mountains like this, and we had mules, and we had to load them up and take them on five-day hikes and stuff, and they are really stubborn, and you can't stand behind them because they'll kick you, and break your leg, and they just won't move.

You whip them, you beat them, you yell at them, they're like, hmmm? Remind me of a lot of students I met. So, don't let your mind and body just sit there.

Say, come on, let's wash dishes this morning, and your body will be like, I don't know. KUL means, I don't know, get it to do something. Get the donkey to do something.

Okay? All right. LUS KYI DGE BA NI CHAG KOR SOGS KYANG PA MIN GYIS.

This is a beautiful sentence, and I don't know how long it took Chidjar Rinpoche to write this lecture down, and I'm not sure the lecture was as good as the writing, but it must have taken him 10 or 15 years, and that's why I think he was made the teacher of the Dalai Lama. That's why he was given that position, because it was so amazing. The book he wrote down was so amazing.

And here's a typical, you know, we call one-liner in English. It's like a single sentence that you can carry for the rest of your life. Okay?

LUS KYI DGE BA NI CHAG KOR SOGS KYANG PA MIN Physical good deeds with your body, it's not restricted to CHAG and KOR. CHAG RTZAL and GNAS BSTAN KHOR BA CHAG RTZAL means prostration, and KHOR BA means to walk around a holy place. Okay?

That's tradition. We should walk around these stupas. Okay?

People are like, what's a stupa for? I said, nothing. They're like, huh?

Well, you can walk around it. Okay? It's a good custom.

Okay, so he says good physical karma is not limited to prostrations and walking around holy places. Rather, KYI. Okay, Tim?

At the end of a phrase, it means but, or rather. Rather, LUS SDUG BSLUGS CHANG POR SONG BAR TSUN KYANG If you talk about virtue or good deeds of the first of your three doors of expression, which is your physical body, he says sitting up straight is a good deed of physical body, because your prana will move. Your prana will move better.

Okay? It's very interesting. Everybody's like...

I knew it was coming, so I sat up before. CHANG POR SONG, so CHANG POR SONG means just being mindful of how you sit, especially that you don't do this thing. I have a friend from Rimrock, a new friend from Rimrock who tends to sit like that.

You've got to keep your back straight. I like to sit on the edge of a chair. I don't like to sit like this.

And then it'll help your prana. And that helps your mind. Okay?

It keeps your mind more clear. So your practice will be better if your posture is good. He says you don't have to be prostrating to do a physical good deed.

You can just sit up straight, and that's a physical good karma, to sit up straight and remember to sit up straight and keep the prana moving smoothly, and then you can focus better. Okay? And it's healthier.

By the way, it's easier if you're not overweight. It's hard to sit up straight if you're overweight. We can talk about that sometime.

But there's easy ways to not get overweight, and then you can sit better. Okay? All right, SDUG BSLUGS CHANG POR SONG BA'I TSUN TSUN here, Tim, means TSUN means starting with that and then going higher.

Okay? Yeah, TSUN means start with that. LUS KYI DGE BA, that is a good karma, a physical body.

You don't have to give money. You don't have to, I don't know, save a person in a car accident. Sitting up straight, because you want your prana to flow smoothly, is already a good karma.

Okay, and you can make good karma just sitting there, which is, we need all the good karma we can get. So if you can make some extra good karma just by sitting straight, then let's go for it. Okay, all right.

Next picture, you guys. Yeah, and this is, I don't know, this part is really cool. He's heavy into lojong, and by the way, Chijang Rinpoche was big on lojong, and I was reading his biography.

He wrote a beautiful biography, and one of my teachers, Sharpa Rinpoche, who's in the Vajrayogini lineage, Tenzin Chinle, he translated it into English. So if you have time, it's a beautiful book. It's the biography of Chijang Rinpoche.

You can read it on, you can buy it on Amazon. He taught this lojong several times in his life. He did long, long teachings on the lojong of Seiji's book, The Crown of Knives.

There are beautiful comments about it. He made beautiful comments about it. He was in Tibet during the Red Guard time.

He saw a million people die. He was kind of in charge of the government, or he was one of the top people in the government, so he watched a million people die. He talks about it in lojong.

He says, you know, we have to apply lojong to this. We cannot hate other people. We have to practice lojong.

It's amazing that a person who went through that, who saw a million people die, I saw some of those people. It's amazing to think that he wrote this lojong. He wrote down, he was practicing it all day.

He was struggling not to hate people. It's very powerful. LO SBYONG CHE YUL DRA DANG NYAN ZHES RIGS SU BYED PA DANG He said, as soon as you distinguish between DRA and NYAN.

What's DRA CHUNG PA? Enemy destroyer. Enemy destroyer are hot, right?

So DRA means enemy, and NYAN means friend. He says, as soon as you distinguish between people you like and people you don't like, your lojong has failed. If you're in the lojong business, if you're in the lojong business, and you can say, I prefer this person to this person, you already flunked the lojong.

And you know, we all do that, and you can't help it, and I can't help it. But we have to try, right? We have to try.

That's lojong. That's training the mind. SEMS SBYONG, SEMS SBYONG So DRA DANG NYAN ZHES RIGS SU BYED PA means to, what do you call that?

Segregate or to, what do you call that? These are my friends. These are not my friends.

Bias. All kinds of bias. Prejudice is anti-lojong.

RIGS SU BYED PA and SEMS CAN DANG SEMS CAN MIN PA LA SOGS PA So sometimes SEMS CAN means living being. Sometimes SEMS CAN means suffering living being, meaning non-Buddha. And then sometimes in colloquial Tibetan, SEMS CAN means animal.

So what he's saying here is, it's also against the lojong if in your practice you distinguish between animals and humans. And that's very powerful. That's very powerful.

Nobody would think to go to the grocery store and ask for human fingers for hors d'oeuvres. But we consider the body parts of animals to be products. And he says that's a kind of bias.

Everybody who has a body is equal. In the lojong. It doesn't matter if they are animal or human.

We have to treat them. In the lojong, you have to treat them equally. You can't eat the fingers of one and not eat the fingers of others.

So it might be easier to just start eating human fingers. Okay. And I believe that in, I don't know, 10 years, 50 years, it'll be disgusting to order animal parts at a store.

People will be shocked if you mention it. It'd be like going to the grocery store and asking for somebody's fingers. PHYOG RIS MI BYAS PAR BYONG BA PHYOG RIS, don't, so don't be prejudiced between animals and not animals.

And don't be prejudiced between people who hurt you and people who help you. Lojong is for everybody. DE STE YUL THAMS CAD LA BSKYAB PAR LO SDUG NAS SBYONG BAR BYAS PA BYAS KA BA LTAR BSGOS YUL THAMS CAD LA BSKYAB PAR means your lojong practice has to be universal.

It has to cover all living things. SDUG NAS means from the bottom of your heart. NJONG is the verb.

Do your lojong. NJONG means jong it, jong it, get better at it, keep practicing. JONG by the way, lojong, jong, it implies two things.

Number one, you don't have it now. So you have to jong. Got it?

It means practice. So you don't have lojong naturally. People don't have lojong naturally.

It's something you have to develop and it's called developing the good heart, right? That's how we translate it in lojong. You can call it mental training.

I object to that translation. I think it sounds like a prison camp where they're trying to brainwash you. It sounds like brainwashing.

It means to develop a good heart. SBYONG BAR BYAS PA BYAS KA BA LTAR BSGOS BYAS KA BA He lived 1101 to 1175. He was a famous Geshe, old-time Geshe.

Nowadays Geshe is a degree title. In the old days it meant a great personal master of somebody. He's an interesting Geshe because about 400 years after lojong started, he let it out to the public.

He opened it to the public. The lojong dun dun ma, the seven-point lojong, which is what we're studying in this lam rim. Okay, and so he's special.

A special lojong practitioner. Why keep it secret? Peacocks.

Good answer. Who said that? Sometimes I don't make a bet.

And a person gives an answer that's worth a bet. So a hundred dollars. You can take me out to dinner on Tuesday.

Don't forget your teacher. Okay. Yeah, he's the one who let out the lojong.

Yeah, and if you... I like this peacock thing because because sometimes, sometimes I avoid trouble. Like there's a situation in the organizations.

We have 41 organizations. And there's always trouble somewhere sometime. The trouble rotates around to different organizations, especially financial.

And you know, grandpa follows the trouble. And I like to avoid it. I like to say, you know, give me a break already.

Give me six months off without fundraising. And I'm like... But if you're a peacock, you're supposed to look for trouble.

And you're supposed to follow it. So I don't know. It's kind of a curse.

If you get in the lojong business, you have to follow problems. And you have to look for problems. And you have to stand up whenever there's a problem.

And you have to say, I'm here. Okay? Okay.

Put some more fundraising on this old bald head. You know. And you got to look for problems.

And you got to step up. And those are the poison that the peacock eats. So if you're going to be a lojong, by the way, don't decide easily to be a lojong practitioner.

You might want to say, I'll do it next life. Okay? I promise, Geshe-la.

You know, look me up. but if you want to do it in this life, you got to be a peacock. And I think it's difficult.

It's hard. It's tiring. And every time you get on top of it, there's one more problem.

And then you say, hey, I learned how to deal with 300 people's problems. And then 301 shows up. And you're like, okay, just I'll take care of you too.

And then I think you have to understand emptiness to survive as a peacock. Okay? Which means you have to understand that every problem you ever encounter is coming from you.

Or you will break down. You won't be able to handle all the problems. We had a suicide yesterday in town here.

A young man that we were trying to help. And stuff happens. Do your best and you try hard and try to help people.

And I think if you don't understand that they are coming from you, you will break down. You won't be able to handle it. I think if you're going to be in the peacock business and you're trying to help all these people, then you have to understand the pen.

And you have to understand that this person came from you. And that it's a reflection of you. And if you understand that, then you can, then you don't run away from these problems.

It would be easy to ignore Bui. It's so eminently ignorable. It's hard to even notice it when you're trying to help.

If a lot of the buildings weren't burned down, you wouldn't notice it. And but a peacock has to pause and stop and say, what can I do? How can I help?

And then you don't always succeed, okay? And you can't give up being a peacock, okay? And the way to survive as a peacock is to understand that it's coming from you.

That's the only way. And if people haven't had that training about emptiness, you should keep the lojong secret. Keep secret from them.

You should not teach them lojong, because then they'll try to help too many people and they'll break down. And then they'll be the next victims, okay? The only way you can keep up the the demands of a peacock is to understand that this stuff is coming from you.

And therefore, it's much easier to fix. You don't have to fix all the messed up people in the world. You have to just fix up one messed up person.

Which is more doable. Okay. Let's see here.

There's a photo of the young man. Is he here? And if you'd like to pray for him, his name is Manny.

Okay. Next picture. Okay.

Dynamite. SKAD PAR BGRA LA GSOS PA SOGS SKYE BA SKYE DKA' BA DANG YOD NYAN PA LAM MA'I PHANG MA ZHAG ROG LTA BU LA GZUR DU KHO NA'I STING SBYONG BAR BSGOM SBYONG BAR BSGOM means I want you to practice your lojong, keep up your lojong practice. SKAD PAR means especially with BGRA, with enemies, okay?

What's the Sanskrit for BGRA? Ardi, yeah, Ardi. Who said Ardi?

I don't know if he's worth a hundred dollars. Okay, a hundred dollars. He usually takes people out to dinner pretty easily.

Yeah, Ardi means enemy in Sanskrit and hat comes from the verbal root han, which means to kill. So Ardi han or Ardi hat, arhat means enemy destroyer, okay? Han, hwan came into English as gun, in the word gun, okay?

Comes from the same root, hat, hat. Okay, so anyway, your lojong practice, you have to emphasize your enemies, which means, I mean, practicing lojong is kind of like schizophrenia. You're like, god, this person really irritates me.

Yeah, so I should spend more time around them. Oh, not again. You're like, can't we just do lojong next month, you know?

Do we have to? And then your heart is like, yeah, we have to. Lojong is for enemies, you know?

You can't practice lojong if you avoid your enemies. Okay, you have to sit next to them in the kitchen, I mean in the cafeteria. Now we're seeing who sits next to who.

I'm kidding. Just kidding. So it's difficult to be patient towards your enemies.

YUL NYAN PA Then he says people who are, so you have to be especially careful in lojong karmically with people you don't like, and then with people that you are close to. So your family members, people you're working with in whichever of the 41 organizations you're in, okay? People you're close to.

Then he says PA MA Yeah, mother and father. I won't repeat the famous exam I had. Okay, I was trying to learn Tibetan.

I was trying to get into a Tibetan class, and you had to do an oral interview to get into the class, and you had to know some Tibetan. And my lama, one of my teachers wanted me to get in. And I just started Tibetan like last week.

And he let me come into the exam, and there's this big, big geshe there, and my teacher said, okay, we're going to ask you some Tibetan words. If you can give them to us, you can join the class. The class was Shantideva, by the way, 50 years ago.

He said, you ready? And I said, yeah. And he said, PA MA.

And I'm like, dad and mom? He says, pass. So PA MA means your parents, okay?

They're important lojong objects, okay? Be careful around your parents. SHAG ROG means roommates, okay?

SHAG is the Tibetan word for, especially for a monk's quarters, okay? So roommates, people who are in the same group of monk cells in the monastery, okay? SHAG ROG LTA BU'I TSUR DU KUL TSUR DU KUL Tim, there's TSUR DU KUL.

Do you guys know TSUR DU KUL? TSUR DU KUL So, there's five great books in the Geshe course. They take 25 years total.

You spend the first 12 years in one book by a sangha, and that's the one that Tim's translating. His book is about, it's about 3,000 pages in Tibetan, which is 24,000 pages in English. And he'll be an old man by the time he finishes.

And those commentaries to Maitreya, Perfection of Wisdom, they are so huge that sometimes they have babies, and they have TSUR KUL. TSUR KUL means extracted topics. So you take special topics and you extract them.

One of those extracted topics is the Wheel of Life, for example. In the original text, it's only one line, okay? It's only a single line.

And then you take it out, and you make a whole 500 page book about it. So that's called TSUR KUL. And here you see it used colloquially, which is one of the great things about studying this book, okay?

You'll see TSUR KUL used in common language, okay? And you can go ahead and close that if you need. I know you have a bad cold.

If you want to, okay. So TSUR KUL means to take it out and treat it separately, okay? Here it says, treat your parents, treat your Lama, treat your roommates, treat your enemies with special care, okay?

Special. When you're doing LO SBYONG, these people get special treatment, okay? Take them out of the other people and they get special treatment, either because they are high karmic objects or because you hate them.

Hopefully there's nobody who's both. All right. All right, next picture you guys.

Tim, when do I have to shut up? Seven? Seven, one, five?

Seven, one, five. There's a countdown. Oh, duh.

Okay. All right, cool. We'll do Q&A the last 15 minutes, okay?

So we'll stop in about 15 minutes, okay? If you have any kind of question, I don't care. That's what the Geshe course is all about.

We learn to debate for four or five hours a day. So I like embarrassing difficult questions, okay? So feel free.

Okay, next picture. Yeah, this guy. DE YANG SRED DGOS SOGS THUN KHYEN MTSOMS MA MTSOMS NA MA THOD PAR BSGOM PA LAS Don't let your LO SBYONG practice be affected by your personal circumstances.

If you're broke that week, your LO SBYONG should be rich. If you're rich that week, although your LO SBYONG should be your LO SBYONG should be rich, okay? So your LO SBYONG is rich no matter, you know, you got money this week or you don't have money this week.

By the way, as an old man I'll tell you, as soon as you think you have money, it goes away. And every time you think you don't have money, some comes. So don't get too worried about it.

Just keep your LO SBYONG steady, okay? And don't worry, you know, either you die or you'll get some money. So either way, it doesn't matter.

Okay. Then he has a quotation. I love to find quotations.

I couldn't find it. It may be just some oral tradition or something. RDO SGRANG NYID MED DROD TSE SPYOD PA'I GZUGS SKYE NGAN THOB TU BABS TE THAMS MED BA ZHES PA LTA BU'I MA SONG BA RDO SGRANG means if your belly is full.

NYID MED DROD TSE means and when you're sitting in the sun on a cool day, it means when things are going well. Your belly's full and the sun comes out on a cloudy day. SPYOD PA'I GZUGS means you look like a practitioner.

SPYOD means dharma. SPYOD PA means practitioner. Okay, dharma person.

Then SKYE NGAN THOB TU BABS TE when some crap comes up in your life, suddenly, THAMS MED BA, you lose your spiritual appearance, and then you're like, ah, shit. He says don't be like that, okay? Don't be happy when stuff's going well, it never lasts.

And don't freak out when stuff messes up, because that doesn't last either. Okay? Just when you've been in the dharma business for 50 years, you'll figure it out.

You know. Bad times don't last forever. We had terrible times here.

And good times don't last forever. Just keep a steady, LO SBYONG means keep a steady attitude. Keep a steady, sweet attitude towards everybody, because the bad stuff will pass and the good stuff will pass.

So just stay steady. LTA BU'I MA SONG BAR BYA DA RES SKYE RGA LA DON CHE BA'I CHANG CHUB KYI SEMS BSGOM PA SOGS KYANG RANG BZHIN GYIS DON YID GRUB PA BYAS DU BYAS PA DGOS KYI TSE DI PA'I BYAS DU BYAMS PA MI RIGS TE He says the reason you are sitting here in a lamrim class is to learn something higher. And don't drag the dharma down to your daily business.

Like keep it higher. Let the dharma stay higher. Don't turn dharma into a business.

Don't turn it into a day-to-day thing. Let it stay high. Keep it high.

Use it to help people and don't use it for making money or lower purposes. It's not that it's a bad karma or something like that. It's just not, it's like putting the king in pink tennis shoes or something.

It's just not appropriate. It doesn't look nice. Okay, can you imagine King Charles in pink tennis shoes or something?

Well, maybe him. But, you know, don't use the high dharma in some kind of stupid, to make some money or something. It's not, it doesn't fit.

Okay? All right. Then he has a famous, there's a famous little in that box.

You guys, can you scroll up a little bit? Yeah. Next life rather than this one, dharma rather than the world, feeling towards others rather than the book.

Okay. This is a famous Lam Rim maxim. TSE'I MDIS LAS PHYI MA, RGYUS BSTAN LAS PHYIR, PHYIR ZHIG SGRUB GZHAN BYAS PA LA, BLO SBYONG DGONGS PA TSOR BA'I PHYIR DGOS PA YIN These are the three maxims of the Lojong practice.

Okay, number one, you won't have trouble using dharma for this life, like to make money or something. You won't have trouble with this problem if you don't think about this life. Okay?

If you're focused on your next life, if you're focused on what happens in the big picture, you won't sell dharma or something, because this life, money is for this life. Whatever money you happen to collect in this life is cancelled when you take your last breath. Okay, and it doesn't matter to anybody anymore.

Okay, so if your focus is on, is a bigger focus, you know, like I got a million lifetimes. I got to work. You know, I got to help people for a million lifetimes.

Then you're not going to be so worried about one little hundred year period. You know, you're not going to think so much about it, and then you, it won't even occur to you to try to collect money during this 50 years or 25 years you have left. You know, what's the point?

You know, you got billions of lifetimes to work on. So what's the point of trying to collect a few hundred dollars more all the way? No, I was kidding.

Next life. So if you're focused on all your lifetimes, you won't have this problem of taking money too seriously, because it's going to leave you anyway. There's a joke in Tibetan.

Yeah, the money will have to look for a new owner, you know. Oh, Stanley Dine, really? Where's his bank account going to go?

I don't know. He'll have to look for somebody else. You know, bank accounts are always losing their owners.

You don't think about it. Bank accounts are lonely people. They have to go look for new owners every couple of years, you know.

So, okay, so if your focus is on all your lifetimes, then you're not going to take it so seriously about the money in this life and stuff like that. Then you will not tend to corrupt the Dharma and use it for something in this life. Okay?

Secondly, Dharma rather than the world means if you're faced... I have this every morning, every morning I feel like a cute girl in high school. People attack my...

I don't want to say virginity, but people attack my time. People want my practice time. Really, seriously attack.

Like terrible attacks and not very nice sometimes. And they're like, you've got to meet with me right now. And I'm like, this is my practice time.

I'm sorry. I don't do anything till 11 o'clock. And then I get these vicious attacks on my time and I'm like, okay, you know, I don't care.

Pull out as many hairs as you want. At this point it doesn't matter. So, you got to protect your practice time.

And don't let people... You're not helping anybody when you give up your practice time. Keep your practice time.

I just tell people, 1101 my peacock door is open. You can come and ask me to fundraise and you can repeat your complaints about your partner for the 10,000th time and I'm open. But until then it's Dharma.

And I'm not open. So I think you got to be brave and stubborn and you got to protect your practice time. And I'm a hard-ass about it.

I really am. I don't see people before 11 unless they're dying and then I kind of flip a coin. No.

Okay, last one. He says Lam Rim and Lojong is not a book. It's a feeling.

Lam Rim is not in a book. Lojong is not in a book. It's a feeling in your heart.

So if you're looking for Lojong, it's not so much in a book. It's a feeling inside of your heart. That's a distance.

I still have time. SEMS SDI LAS PHYI MA LAS GYI RTEN NAS CHOS BZHED PA'I GRUB GZHAN CHOS PA LAS LOJONGS BSGOM PA TSOR BA'I CHA DGOS PA YIN GZIN Okay, we covered that. We're going back to the Lojong DUN DUN MA, which is the seven-point Lojong that was kept secret for at least 300 years, 400 years, and probably longer.

Some of the Lojong masters claimed that Lord Buddha started the Lojong and kept it secret. So that would make it two and a half thousand years old. But we're going back to the Lojong DUN DUN MA.

Okay, and he's giving little hints about how to practice Lojong for the rest of your life. We're like towards the end of the Lojong DUN DUN MA. Then we're going to start the six perfections, okay?

Now that we have bodhichitta, we can start the six perfections. Now that we have the wish for enlightenment, we can start the six perfections. Okay, so he says, GOLOG MI BYA.

Say GOLOG. GOLOG There's two GOLOGs. There's a GOLOG in Tibetan, which is a really weird warrior caste from East Tibet.

They talk, you want fun, they talk, they talk really funny. So there's an old warrior caste in East Tibet. But this GOLOG, different pronunciation, GOLOG means don't do ass backwards.

Ass backwards means totally opposite. Lojong is supposed to be funny and colloquial, so I can use bad language during Lojong. But I don't mind if you don't tell my wife.

So GOLOG means don't practice ass backwards. Don't get things backwards. Don't do it backwards.

That's Chekhawa's advice. Chekhawa didn't write it. He released it to the public.

Around 1100, something like that. GOLOG MI BYA Then he says GOLOG GRUG. What's TUN GRUG?

Six session yoga practice. So here GLOG GRUG means six ass backwards. Six ass backward practices.

There's six ways you can get it backwards. Six different ways. GOLOG MI BYA means here's six different ways I don't want you to get it backwards.

So here we go. This is where they snip out Geshe-la's talk when I say don't do this, do the opposite, and then they cut out the do the opposite part and they post it online. Geshe-la says, you know, don't mess around with your friend's wife, and then they cut out the don't.

Then I'm like, mess around with your friend's wife. Anyway. CHOS KYI BYA BA LA SNYING ROL GA BYAS MI GSOS PAR JI RTEN GYI BYA BA LA GA BYAS GSOS PA GSOS PA GOLOG Say GSOS PA GOLOG GSOS PA GOLOG What's GSOS PA mean?

Patience. Okay, patience. But it has a lot of other meanings.

So patience usually means not to get upset with somebody. But it also means to be able to do an extended task without getting frustrated. Right?

So be patient. It's going to be over next Monday. You'll be on the plane happy with refreshments.

Those massive refreshments they give you. So GSOS PA means GSOS PA means don't lose heart. Don't lose don't lose your spirit.

So GA BA means difficulty. When you have trouble with your lojong practice. In English you say grin and bear it.

It means Okay, hit me again. Hit me again. Hit me again.

And life keeps hitting you and you're like hit me again. So GA BA BYAS, it means be a tough guy. Be a tough guy.

Okay, life will keep hitting you and then you get a big smash in your face and you lose all your money in the morning and then you're like Okay, hit me again, you know, and then you get a bill for something that you didn't buy in the afternoon. In the morning you lose all your money. In the afternoon they hit you again with this bill.

And GA BA GSOS PA GO LOG means be a tough guy about the right things. Be a tough guy about the right things. So some people they'll be a tough guy about stupid stuff like fixing a car.

You know, I've fixed a car once for like eight months. And that's also called GSOS PA. That's also called putting up with it.

You put up with it for eight months fixing this stupid aluminum block Volkswagen botito. And that's a kind of GSOS PA. That's a kind of patience.

That's a kind of endurance. And he says that's GO LO. That's ask backwards.

That's not the endurance we're talking about. We're not talking about trying to fix a car for eight months. And that's not LO SBYONG.

That's not LO SBYONG endurance. LO SBYONG endurance is to, I don't know, not get angry at your wife or husband after eight months of abuse. And you're just like, okay.

Like that's LO SBYONG. That's real. That's GSOS PA.

Okay, that's patience. They hit you. I mean, verbally, they hit you and then bah, bah, bah.

You're like, okay, honey. Then bah, bah, bah. And you're like, okay, honey.

And in eight months of that, you're like, okay, honey. Wait, I didn't say anything. Okay, honey.

you know, that's LO SBYONG. It's not endurance when you're at work or something like that. It's endurance emotionally.

It's endurance of your love for other people and they keep attacking it and you keep responding with love. And that's real endurance. It's not endurance to do the accounting of ACI year after year.

It is a kind of endurance, but that's not LO SBYONG. Exactly. Okay.

Second, we had six, right? We're supposed to do six. Let's start the other five tomorrow.

I'm sorry, later today, right? Am I right? Two classes, right?

Okay. Q&A, we need that big box. Please don't hit anybody with the box.

I just, I get nervous when you guys throw it around.

[Говорящий 2]
Geshe-la, I have a question.

[Говорящий 1]
Good.

[Говорящий 2]
We were here in October and the second war started. We had already the first one. We are here in April.

The third war started.

[Говорящий 1]
Is there a third one? I don't know, but we'll keep our patience.

[Говорящий 2]
Iran attacked Israel, yes. This is for you. Does it work?

So, how we can use our time wisely? Maybe you have suggestions that we cannot think about.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, good. Yeah, I'll repeat it. It seems like every time we have a lam-rim retreat here and there's a new war breaks out, and what can we do?

Or how can we think about it? Like that, or something like that. I don't know.

I don't think, I don't think in this case that we are purifying our old bad karma because we're doing such a good thing. You see what I mean? Sometimes when you do something really good, it burns off the crap of some old bad thing you did.

So sometimes when you do a really good thing, it wakes up bad seeds from the past and some disaster happens to you. I don't think it's that kind of thing in this case. I think it's just generally that, I would say this, I mean, I grew up a hundred years ago.

My dad had served in World War II. And he was, he and my wife's father were alcoholics and messed up, really seriously messed up, and from the war. They saw war when they were 18, 19 years old, and they never got over it.

And that was a hundred million people died. A hundred million people died. So, I mean, if you're a Buddha looking over this planet right now, we have the potential to kill billions of people in the next few days or something.

It can happen. But in general, we're making some progress, and I think we don't think about it much. For example, with starvation, when I was a kid, it was a serious problem in India, for example.

And millions of people were dying. And now because of, partly because of computerization of distribution, there's almost no starvation, except for war. When there's a war, they can't get food to people.

But in general, the planet is holding steady, I think. And if you look at it from an old man's viewpoint, things are messed up, and there's a lot for us to do. But I think also you have to think about the progress, and the things have, the lojong still exists, the lam rim still exists.

There's a lot of beautiful things going on. So I think you have to be a peacock and you have to stick your nose into it. And I was tempted not to.

I was like, okay, all my Ukrainian friends need some help. I'm busy. So we brought two people, and it was hard.

It's really hard. Financially, it's hard. so, you know, stick your nose in it and help.

My brother went to Poland and made sandwiches. He made 300,000 sandwiches with the World Food Kitchen. And then his supervisor was killed last week in Gaza.

So, you know, if you're practicing lojong, do do, step up, do something. Help somebody. And if we all do that, we'll be okay.

And the problems are huge. You know, thousands and thousands of people dying. And I don't think, personally, I don't think it helps to try to think about how can I stop 10,000 people from dying or something like that.

Let me help one or two people. With my income and help them. And then if we all do that, I think we can improve things.

You know, there's a famous story, okay? Every billion years or so, this planet melts. Okay, every billion years or so, there's an atomic war on this particular planet.

And the whole earth is covered in fire and all human beings die. All life dies. then there's a, supposedly there's a god realm up above us.

You know, form realm, formless realm, desire realm gods. And the young ones, who are only 800,000 years old, they say, wow, look, the earth is burning, you know, it's covered in fire. And then the older daddies, the gods, they say, ah, they blow themselves up every billion years or so.

Don't worry about it. It just goes over and over again. So I think, when you get to my age, and you've seen it so many times, and you just quietly work against it.

And you can't get too freaked out. You can't let the fact that there's so much violence freak you out. You have to, I was in Vietnam.

I was supposed to fight in Vietnam. I went to jail. And when you go there now, Mr. Bin and the other people, so beautiful and friendly to us, and you know, things change, and life goes on. And so we just have to keep doing what we can do to help. But I think if you worry about the whole, you know, millions of people, don't go crazy about it, you know. LO SBYONG means start with the people around you, help.

Do what you can do. Do to the best of your ability. And don't get overwhelmed by...

The war in this planet is nothing compared to the war going on in a billion planet. So you can't, you can't let it get you down. You got to, you got to be a peacock today.

And if enough people stand up to be peacocks, it'll just be... I did a retreat in Flagstaff. Veronica found me a cabin, a nice cabin out in the woods.

And I sat down, you know, to do a three-week meru. And then there's this, and then like a thousand voices, and I'm like, what's that? You know, I asked the owner, what's that noise?

They said, they have a peacock farm next door. I'm like, I'm doing a three-week retreat here. I'm sorry, you can't tell the peacocks to shut up.

And so, anyway, you just do your retreat the best you can. The peacock, okay. All right, one more question.

Tim, is that one? So this is a question from online, and it says, dearest Geshe-la, too high. If I don't want to live billions and billions of years, I want to speed this up as fast as possible.

[Говорящий 2]
How can I best use lojong to do that?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, if I don't want to go through billions of years of suffering, how can I use lojong to get things resolved quickly? Again, I think it's like Ines' question. I think you have to deal with what's around you and what's close to you.

I think use lojong. He said in the text, focus your lojong on the high karmic objects around you, which means your teacher, your enemies, your close relatives, your roommates, people you work with every day. These are the peacock objects of your practice.

It's people you're around every day. They're not very exciting. It's not very glorious, and that's where you have to start.

You have to practice lojong with difficult people in your own life, and right around you. I think if you have an intention to overcome billions of years of trouble, you almost don't have a choice. You have to start with the people right around you, and start with the high karmic objects around you, and those are your people you don't like, and parents, teachers, roommates, and people you work with.

Okay, start with the people closest to you, and don't worry about billions. Start with four or five. And it, what do you call it?

There's repercussions in the billions of people. Deal with the ten people you're closest to, and then the billions will take care of it. When we do a fire offering, that's supposed to be the intention.

When the smoke comes off the fire, and that fire is blessed, then you have to, that night when we do the fire offering here, hopefully we don't offer the whole land on fire, then you think about the smoke going off into the sky, and sooner or later it will touch all people in this world. Sooner or later, the rice you throw on the fire is going to touch somebody in Gaza, and Ukraine, and wherever else. So that's a kind of motivation you can have when you are practicing lojong with the people close to you.

Sooner or later that smoke will touch all the people in the world, and that's the only way we can touch all the people in the world. So start with the people nearby.