«Дар освобождения», курс 43 «Современный бодхисаттва», занятие 4

[Говорящий 1]
All right. Oh, I wanted to show you guys something. You ready?

This is, so when I became a Geshe, my teacher completely ignored it. And I thought he wasn't going to say anything. And then, I don't know, like a month later, he said, I have a gift for you.

And this is the book that we're studying, the Lam Rim book by Pabongka Rinpoche. And it's original, my teacher's copy, in the Tibetan cloth. And the paper in Tibet was made from a bush, which I'm sure a cat can grow here.

And it's a little toxic, and bugs don't like it. And so, it's the preferred paper in Tibet. They don't have other kinds of paper.

And so it's rare now. And then, this book looks even older because my air conditioner leaked on it. And it kind of gave it an antique look.

So, to me, it's very precious. It has his notes, what do you call it? Highlighter?

Yellow, loud highlighter. If I put that on a scripture, he would yell at me. But he put it on his own scripture, I guess it's okay.

So I thought to pass it around. This is the book we're reading. We're on the last part this time.

And I think we can finish in Kyoto if we're lucky. But Geshe-la is kind of slow, he keeps telling stories and stuff. Anyway, I thought you might like to hold it and look at it.

You're welcome to look at it. You're not welcome to mix the pages up, because it takes a long time to put it back together. The backs don't have any page numbers.

So, please don't mess it up, okay? Alright, Rob's going to, you can hand it around, you can play with it, okay? It's okay if you mess it up, I don't care.

I can figure it out, okay? I think it's the most valuable thing he had, and he gave it to me. It's cool.

Alright, wait. Okay, you guys ready? DE LTAR CHEN NA 334B, yeah, good, nice.

Okay, he says DE LTAR CHEN NA means, and by the way, today I'm going to TAP GYU for $50. Somebody said it before that. So, $25 each.

Horse race. Horse race means the teacher has to go somewhere, or he needs to go to the bathroom. He's talking fast.

I did go to the bathroom, I just have to go somewhere. So, DE LTAR CHEN NA. That's a tricky thing.

It says, if you do it like that, and you have to read it carefully. What he just talked about was, don't expect people to thank you if you're going to follow Lojong. If you're going to be a Buddhist, if you really want to be a Buddhist, then just help people and don't worry about if they notice or if they thank you.

That's Buddhism. And by the way, in the beginning, people will not thank you. And then if you just shut up and keep helping people, they will start thanking you all the time.

They'll stand outside your car with roses and stuff like that. So, it just takes a while for the karma to ripen. So, don't expect thanks, but by the way, you will get a lot of thanks later.

After the trolls get done with you, people will thank you. All right. So, DE LTAR CHEN NA.

So, you can read it that way, but I'll take the DE LTAR CHEN NA as more general, which means, we just finished LHAB BYA. Say LHAB BYA. LHAB BYA was short little advices that came at the end of the seven-part Lojong.

So, we've been going so slow through the Lojong, through the text for developing a good heart. So, that's a separate book that he put inside this book. And it was written, I don't know, you can say it was written about a thousand years before him.

So, he's been teaching us Lojong to get us ready for the six perfections. Because you have to have bodhichitta before you study the six perfections. Which just means, the reason you're in this class is to help everybody in the universe.

And the scale of things, or the scope of things is that big. It's not even to help people on this planet. This is just one little planet.

By the way, this is a retarded planet. We're at the back of the planet class. But I'm not going to rag on you.

DE LTAR CHEN NA means, if you follow, so I would read it as LHAB BYA. If you follow the whole Lojong that I just taught you, okay? MTSA'I NYID MA SOGS NYID MA NGAG DO BA YANG Even though we are living in the worst of times, it means in history, supposedly these are supposed to be bad days, bad times.

Maybe just before the end of the world, something like that. Don't worry, it's not going to happen in your time. But it's supposed to be that these are hard days on this planet.

DO BA YANG KHYEN NGES BYANG CHUB KYI LAM DU RGYUR NUS If you study Lojong, the worse things get, the more stuff you have to practice with. So every time things get worse and worse, a bodhisattva is kind of more happy because there's more stuff to work with. It's like bodhisattva's job is to work with crap.

Can I say? Excuse me. My wife's not coming this time, so.

Bodhisattva's job is to work with the hard stuff, the poison stuff. So we're in lucky days now. We're in lucky times because times are bad in the world.

Then in traditional Buddhism, it's called NYID MA NGAG. Say NYID MA. NYID MA NGAG NYID means when you make tea with tea leaves and then there's junk on the bottom of the cup when you finish.

That's called NYID MA. Or there's a pond of water and the dirty water's at the bottom. So we're supposedly at the bottom of the dirty pond.

There's called five kinds of dirty. There's five kinds of dirty going on right now. So here's the five.

I took them. When you see something in red letters, it means I searched it in John Brady's database and I pulled it out for you. So, say NYID MA, NYON MONGS PA'I NYID MA, SEMS CAN GYI NYID MA, DUS KYI NYID MA, LTA BA'I NYID MA There are five.

Number one, say NYID MA means lifetimes are short. It used to be that people lived for thousands of years and we are at the bottom of the barrel. We're at the worst times.

People lived for 50 years, 100 years. It's considered bad times. First, the lifetimes are short.

Secondly, NYON MONGS NYID MA, people's minds are more messed up than they were 100 years ago or 1,000 years ago. SEMS CAN NYID MA, people are angry, people are violent. DUS KYI NYID MA, these are times when there's a lot of conflict.

And then LTA BA'I NYID MA means these are times when nobody's interested in Buddhism much. And it's just, you try to tell somebody about bodhichitta or lojong and they're like, did you see the football game yesterday? You want to tell somebody they're going to die and they're like, yeah, but I read this thing on my phone, it was so interesting.

People are just not interested. These are bad times. When you're in the bodhisattva business, bad times are good times.

It's like being an umbrella seller during the rainy season. Everyone else is unhappy and you're really happy. The more rain there is, the more umbrellas you can sell.

So these are good days for bodhisattvas. The more messed up the world is, the better it is for bodhisattvas and rock stars, Ben. MEN NGA'AGS DI He's here, I'm so happy.

I wanted to play music so bad. MEN NGA'AGS DI SER LING PA NAS RGYIS PA YIN LA PHYIR KHA BA RANG NYID KYIS SPYOD NYES SPYOD NYES PA'I ZHI YANG MI RGYUD This lojong that I've been teaching you guys says Pabongka Rinpoche, it came down through Serlingpa. Say Serlingpa.

Serling means, as I mentioned, Golden Island, and that's an old word for Indonesia or Sumatra. So the teacher, the big teacher from Sumatra who taught Atisha was called Golden Island teacher, Srivarnadvipa Guru. So these instructions came down from him.

After Phyir Khawa, he released them to the public, right? They were secret. And then about 900 years ago, Phyir Khawa released them to the public.

And then he said, these advices about being a bodhisattva in the bad days make me so happy that if I died today, I wouldn't have any regrets. So ZHI YANG means even if I die. MI RGYUD means I wouldn't have any regrets.

I got what I wanted in this life. I got the lojong. If I die today, I'm happy.

DE DAG GIS LTA BA'I KHOR NAS GZHAN ZHUGS BZIN LA There's a big question about the lojong's emphasis is bodhichitta. So the lojong's apparent emphasis is love or care for other people. And then the Geshe type of people, they're curious, what was the emptiness understanding of the lojong writers, the people who taught lojong?

How much did they understand about emptiness? And there are very interesting, really interesting discussions about it. Like, for example, Dharma Rakshita who taught Seiji's lojong to Lord Atisha, he was Abhidharma.

He was lower school. And then he had that experience of cutting off part of his leg to help somebody who was sick. And then he changed to mind only.

And Suvarna Dvipa Guru, one of the other teachers of Atisha in Indonesia, he was mind only, but he switched to middle way. His emptiness viewpoint went up to middle way. Atisha taught middle way.

Atisha wrote the first great lam rim in Tibet. It's about 400 pages in English translation. So there's a question, how much emptiness do you have to understand to practice lojong?

Where should your emptiness understanding be? And Tsongkapa has an interesting discussion that's not in here, but he says when people asked Atisha who followed the middle way, which teacher had been most kind to him, he said Dharma Rakshita who had mind only, who was mind only school. So that's really weird that the inventor of lam rim or one of the great people who started the lam rim, which always teaches middle way.

By the end of the book we always go through middle way. And he says, my greatest teacher was my mind only school teacher. And everybody's like, why?

And Tsongkapa was disturbed by that. He's like, why? Why would Atisha say his greatest teacher was his lower viewpoint teacher?

And then Tsongkapa says it's because he gave him compassion. And then he says, Tsongkapa says, if you really understand life, you will understand Atisha's statement. And he just leaves it like that.

If you really understand life, you will understand why Atisha was most grateful to the person who taught him compassion. And even though he couldn't explain emptiness in the highest way. You see what I mean?

And Tsongkapa says, there's something important there. You guys figure it out. Anyway, I think that's it.

So here's where Pabongka Rinpoche starts discussing, those Lojong guys, those Bodhisattva, Bodhicitta guys, what was their viewpoint about emptiness? And then he says, ,'DI RGYAL PA MANG POR, ,'NGAR RAB PA'I LTA BA LTA RGYI YIN, ,STANGS SO MED, STANGS SO is a very colloquial expression which means if you ask somebody what was the emptiness understanding of these Lojong guys, STANGS SO MED means we can't really say for sure. We can't really say for sure.

STANGS SO MED That was the opinion of a lot of Lojong commentators. They said, look, we read these guys' works. It's not clear where was their emptiness understanding.

We're going to do the eight verses on Saturday, and it's short. It's 48 seconds to recite it. ,LTAR NI SEMS CAN THAR BYED NA, ,YI ZHIG SNOG PA LAS LHAG PA'I, ,DU BYED DOR PA'I SANGS PA YIN, ,LTAR BYED PAR BRDZOD PA BYED NA, Like that.

But it has a full emptiness viewpoint in it. It's complete. It's highest middle way.

By the time you get to the eighth verse, 40 seconds later, it's number one emptiness. It's very cool. That's why I wanted to teach it on the 20th anniversary of Diamond Mountain.

,DI YIN GTANG SONG MED PAR ZHIG TU YOD LA, ,BLO SBYONG NYID MED YOD ZER NI, ,LTAR BA'I KHOR, So there's a Lojong called The Rays of the Light of the Sun. ,LTAR BA'I KHOR RNAMS DGOS MA THEONG RGYUR BA DANG, ,THUNG PAR YOD PA'I NA, As far as the presentation of emptiness in Lojongs like that, ,DGOS MA THEONG RGYUR BA, What's that mean? ,DGOS MA THEONG RGYUR BA, Highest middle way.

Highest middle way. Consequence school. ,THUNG PAR YOD PA'I NA, ,THEONG RGYUR BA'I LTAR BSAM DGOS, BSAM DGOS means I want you guys to have the opinion that the Lojong writers were all higher middle way.

And I don't care what people say. They were all higher middle way. They understood emptiness.

And I personally don't think you can eat the poison as a peacock if you don't understand emptiness. If you think that people are not coming from you, you won't be able to, you'll have a breakdown if you try to serve a lot of them. Unless you understand that people are coming from you, I don't think you can infinitely serve people.

I don't think it's possible. You will get tired or you'll break down. What's the opposite of that?

If you understand the pen really well, your capacity for service is unlimited. Because you're really just taking care of yourself. And it's similar to the famous rich guy's answer about ethics.

Right? Yeah, although I know. No, he said, what's a Buddhist ethic, Buddhist morality?

What's the definition of right and wrong? Yeah, if it hurts you, it's wrong. If it doesn't hurt you, if it helps you, it's right.

And then you're like, no, morality should be how do you treat other people? And they say, no. Real morality is to treat other people well because you know that you are treating yourself well if you do.

Which means you understand that other people are coming from you. They are you. Until you understand that other people are you, you cannot truly be moral.

Which means if you want to practice lojong well, you got to be what's cool. Higher middle way. You have to have a complete understanding of emptiness.

A complete understanding of emptiness means a complete understanding of dependent origination, which means everyone's coming from me. And there's nobody who's not coming from me. It's emptiness.

Got it? So it's not so complicated and it's not so philosophical. It just means everyone's coming from you, dependent origination, cause and effect, ingo.

And then there's nobody who doesn't come from you, is emptiness, and that's all. That's all you need to know. And that's highest middle way.

You can't really be compassionate until you understand that there's no difference between other people and you. And what you do to other people, you are doing to yourself. Then you can be compassionate.

Then you can have real compassion, which is really self-interest. It's just a bigger me. You thought you had weight problems before.

Now you're equal to the weight of all people. Anyway, we'll talk about carbohydrates. CHA LAS MI ZIN LAR MED MYAMS CI BYAS SKABS SEMS KYIS YIN MA STONG They meant, now there's a tradition in oral teachings in Buddhism at the beginning of a new day or the beginning of a new session especially, KYAR SHES, here it's called KYAR SHES.

KYAR SHES means repeat everything. Do a review of what you taught the day before. It slows down an oral teaching.

That's kind of what happened to our oral teaching for the last 14 years. If you have to review everything because not everybody comes every time, it slows things down. But there's a tradition in Buddhism that you should review something at least three times after you get the teaching.

In a new country or a Western country, it's good to review things when you start the class. He says, but when you're on the lower topics, before you reach the bodhisattva topics, I give you permission not to review. It's better to get through the bodhisattva stuff before you die.

If you don't review the lower things like death meditation and things like that, he says, it's okay with me because I just want to make sure you get through the bodhisattva stuff. When you get to the bodhisattva stuff, I expect you to repeat and review. But he's kind of giving us permission not to go over and over the lower points.

By the way, we will have a grand review of this entire 14-year teaching. We're going to... I'll teach you emptiness from the greatest book on emptiness, which will take about nine years.

I started this morning again. I'm halfway done with it. But I thought we should review what we did for the 14 years, but without spending much time.

So me and Tim have a plan to... I'll do a hundred... I'll teach you a hundred meditations from this Lam Rim.

Half hour meditations. I'll teach you a hundred different meditations that you can do for this book for the last 14 years. I'll start teaching you half hour meditations.

The first one, Tim, will be what day? Friday or Saturday. We'll start on Friday or Saturday and we'll go for...

It'll take a year or something. I'll teach you a hundred different meditations on the Lam Rim. Then we'll record them and you can have them on your app.

Tim's going to figure out how to make the app. And given the cause and effect relationship of fundraising with app, he's going to work on that, not me. No, I'll do a little bit.

So anyway, we'll do a hundred meditations and you can, for the rest of your life, you can have some fun. Ask your phone AI to give you a random meditation from the Lam Rim and it'll give you... Okay, we're working on that.

Okay. So we won't repeat the teaching. Now, good news.

Ta-da! Yeah, somebody went into town yesterday, Kat. Which town?

Bui? Dinara. Dinara and Kat went into town.

These are the guys that shoot the rattlesnakes. Anyway, they went to a clan member's house. By the way, they are nice guys and they did make our roads, for example.

So they must be nice guys. Anyway, there's a peacock hanging out there and I guess it was just a coincidence. Two peacocks.

That's a good one. That's like the best one I ever saw. In Bui.

That's something. That must have freaked you out, I don't know. You should have brought it over here.

Okay, maybe we can borrow them. So there's teaching, the whole teaching of this book, that yellow book that's going around, that's 24 days. The original teaching was 24 days.

My teacher was there at one of those extended teachings. He was the GON YER, which means NYER PA. He was the refreshment guy.

My teacher was the refreshment guy for like a thousand participants because my teacher at that time was a bad boy. His main interest was to spread thumbtacks at the door because the monks didn't wear shoes. You understand?

That's the kind of thing he was doing. He had no hope of being a Geshe. Pabongka Rinpoche came over to thank the refreshment people.

This happened to me. They announced that the Dalai Lama was coming to our temple. Everyone was excited and people asked me, are you going to be the translator?

I said, no, I'm going to be the momo cook. I won't even get to hear his talk. I said, mark my words, and that's exactly what happened.

My competitor was chosen as the translator and I was chosen as the momo cook. I made momos all day. I didn't even get to go to the teaching.

Then he went up to my teacher's room and like half an hour later he sent down word. He says, I want to meet the momo cook personally. I'm like...

He said, these are the best momos I ever had. I'm like... So I got to go up and meet them all in person, all these fat cows.

Pagma? So anyway, why am I talking about that? I don't remember.

Oh yeah, so, Ken Rinpoche was doing the refreshments and Pabongka Rinpoche insisted to come and meet the young refreshment guys. He came up to my teacher and he grabbed him by the head. He said, you're going to be a good one.

This is a good one. And he went... And then after that my teacher beat 15,000 geshes.

He was number one out of 15,000 monks. Okay? So, whoever's doing the refreshments.

So anyway, there was 24 days of teaching and we have finished now 23. After 14 years we finished 23 days. And right now we're going to start the 24th day, the last day.

So, here we go. This is not the last last day of the teaching because I taught you the last days first so you could meditate on the other days. So I taught meditation first.

But this is the last day that we will do. And here we go. It's kind of exciting to me.

I think we'll do half here if Geshe-la can get to the subject and we'll finish the other half in Kyoto in December. So try to come. Kyoto is unusual because it was transplanted from China of the Tang Dynasty like 1400 years ago.

The peak of Buddhism in the greatest empire in history. At that moment it was transplanted to Japan and then it died in China. So really the last great classical Buddhist city in the world is Kyoto.

It's a nice place to finish the Lam Rim. If you have a chance, then come. It'll be limited.

How many people can come is limited. It's also a small city. How many people, a million or something?

Less, I don't know. It's hard to find a big room. I think Tim got the biggest room there and he fought for it.

We got it. But still it's limited. All right.

NYIN GNYIS ZHUGS PAR means now we begin the 20th day. YIN RTEN RIN PO'I TSE SDUG PA LAS means I will teach something from the briefer presentation of the Jewel of All Good Qualities. This is a nickname for the short Borobuddha Maitreya, Prajñāpāramitā.

The shorter version. This is a nickname for him. He's going to quote the Buddha.

RGYAL BA DE DAG MA BYIN DA LTAR GANG ZHUGS PA KUN LAM BAR DO CHEN PO'I DE YIN GZHAN MA YIN All of the Buddhists of the past and the future and who are around nowadays, they all traveled only one path and that was the path of the six perfections. So this is a big, big moment in our 14 years. We're about to start the six perfections.

I personally have been waiting for 14 years to get to the six perfections. It's kind of frustrating. So yay, we reached the six perfections.

I always wanted a good explanation of them. You hear about them, but it'd be nice to have a really, really good explanation. This is the best explanation, anywhere, is in this book.

RGYAL BAR MDZAD NAS So the Lama, Pabongka, quoted that ancient perfection of wisdom sutra that says all the Buddhists walked the path of the six perfections. SANGS RGYAS RNAMS GANG NAS ZHIGS PA'I ZHIGS GZHUL BAR CAN GCOD KYI SPYOD PA LA MANG DU PA'I LAM BZHIN GDO RGYUD GANG NA'ANG MED PA SO I don't care if you're studying open teachings. I don't care if you're studying tantra.

If you want to go the way that all the Buddhists walked before, it's the six perfections. You have to learn the six perfections. BDENG DRA BA'I LAM DE YANG ZHUNG DI LTA BU LAS STON PA YIN PAS ZHES SOGS KYI BRAL MDZAD STE And then our teacher said, you're going to get a good explanation of those six.

DNGOS GRO KUN LONGS SPYOD PA DOR BDOD DANG Then he asked us to review our DNGOS GRO, preliminary practices, which you guys tortured. And KUN LONGS SPYOD PA. Say KUN LONGS.

KUN LONGS SPYOD PA KUN LONGS means your motivation for sitting here. SPYOD PA means you have to set it every day. When you get here, you have to set it.

People are dying. I keep getting messages from my brother. He's doing a death watch for my stepmother.

I get messages every day. And I'm leaving on Monday to help her die. Fix your motivation every day.

People are dying everywhere. Your parents are dying. Your friends are dying.

So he says fix your, KUN LONGS SPYOD PA means fix your motivation every day. Set your motivation. I'm trying to do something to help this world.

And really, it's just a world of death. You can talk about politics. You can talk about AI.

You can talk about the Samsung just passed Apple in cell phone sales this morning. But in the end, it's just everybody dying. So he said, fix your motivation.

BLO DE DANG SNGON CI LTAR SO BA'I SROB BYED KYIS BYANG TZAM BYAMS PA Then the teacher did a slight review, but not much, because he said we got to get on to the six perfections. SKYE NGAN BYANG CHUB KYI BSLANG DU RGYUR BA TSE GCIG GI NYAMS NA'I BRJOD BA'I BRTAN PA MAN LA RGYA SHES ZAD He did a little review of the Lojong topics that we have been studying. He did a quick review of the Lojong.

I like the words quick review of the Lojong. It means now we're finally going to leave the Lojong and go to the six perfections. DE'I BYANG CHUB CHOG TU SEMS SKYES PA'I BRTZOL SONG NAS NYID PA SEMS SKYES CHOG GYI BSRUNG BA BYAS SU SNANG RGYUD YIN ZHING BRJOG PA BRTZAD DE I have been teaching you guys how to get bodhichitta.

Then traditionally, also with Master Shantideva, after you learn the two types of bodhichitta, the second one is emptiness understanding. After you learn those, you should take your bodhisattva vows and you should commit to bodhichitta. Bodhisattva's way of life, formally, you should take those vows.

You should make that commitment in a ceremony. So at this point, if you don't have bodhisattva vows, you should take bodhisattva vows before you start the six perfections. All right.

They'll be offered tomorrow. What time? Ten o'clock?

Okay, cool. It's perfect timing. We're not really supposed to go to the six perfections.

Eight o'clock? That's too early to be a bodhisattva. All right, we'll make an exception.

BYANG SEMS KYI MED PAR SANGS RGYAS KYI KHO PO'ANG THOB ROL RE BA'I Yeah, he said some people think you can get to Buddhahood without bodhichitta and bodhisattva vows and they throw themselves into CHAGS RDZOGS, say CHAGS RDZOGS. CHAGS RDZOGS is an abbreviation for CHAGS CHEN and RDZOGS CHEN, which is two tantric practices that are emphasized in other traditions, but that kind of skip. Sometimes they can skip the bodhisattva teachings.

They say, oh, you don't need this bodhisattva vows. You don't need bodhichitta. You can go straight to meditating on the emptiness of your mind or something.

Okay, got it? Seriously. Now they're like, huh?

By the way, it's a bad habit. It stinks. It's a bad habit to think you should think about nothing because you will.

Understand? And then it becomes a habit. And then you never wash the dishes.

Okay, that's what happened to your kids. All right. Not everybody's kids.

So anyway, he says, don't even dream about doing tantra or higher philosophy if you don't do your bodhisattva vows first. He says, don't even think about it. If you're not in the business of taking care of everybody in the universe, then don't think about studying emptiness.

It's a waste of time. All right. GOMS KYANG SANGS RGYAS KYI SGOS PA LA CHUNG ZAD KYANG GNAS RUNG MIN SBRO You can do all those high, weird tantric practices, empty your mind, and you won't get any closer to Buddhism, Buddha, Buddhahood.

THEG CHEN GYI DGOR TSUL PA TZAM YANG MIN BYUN LA You will not even become a Buddhist. Okay, you won't even be a Buddhist. Just thinking of that, trying to think about nothing and ignoring your bodhisattva vows or learning the bodhisattva perfections, the six perfections, you won't even be a Buddhist.

You can go this exotic tantra thing, but in the end, you won't even be a Buddhist. DE NA SEMS DE LA THAMS CAD KYIS NYAMS NAN GYI MTHIL DU BYED DGOS STE NYAMS NAN GYI MTHIL means make it your heart practice. MTHIL means your palm of your hand.

Make it your palm practice, the one that's in your hand. SANGS RGYAS KYI RNAMS PA THAMS CAD KHYEN PA'I YOD ZHIG GIS BSKAL PA RMONG BAR ZIGS KYANG The Buddhas sat around for a zillion years thinking about what would be the best way to teach people. DE LAS LHAG PA'I THAB MED They said there's nothing better than the six perfections.

So somebody, all these Buddhists sat around for billions of years and thought, could we make it any shorter than six? And they're like, nope. DGOS GZHAN MA ZIG PA YIN MA ZIG PA means they didn't see any other way, cheaper way.

There's no shortcut to Buddhism. You have to learn the six perfections. Okay.

NYID PA SEMS KYIS NAS BYAS PA LA BLOB TSUL I think I found the only mistake in this whole carving. I love to find mistakes because it makes me feel smart. And as my students know, my translator students, but here's like the only mistake I ever saw in this carving.

He calls it number two, which is number three. But anyway, SEMS KYIS NAS BYAS PA LA BLOB TSUL LA Let's get on to the six perfections. SEMS KYIS PA'I OG TU DPER NA, SDIG NAS RGYAL GYUR DRO MI DE DRO BA'I BYAMS LA MAN ZHUGS If you want to go to India, there's no hope to get there if you don't know where the roads are.

This was a big thing in Tibet. They were yak herders. They didn't have even an alphabet.

Buddhist teachers started coming over the Himalayas into Tibet. I mean, for every successful one like Atisha, there was a hundred who died in the mountains. Then people got turned on.

The whole country got turned on. It became the most advanced spiritual culture in history. And there's 300,000 great books.

It's the greatest religious movement in history. And it was destroyed in 1959. So in the history of human beings, the Tibetan conversion to Buddhism was the greatest religious event in history.

So anyway, a lot of them wanted to go to India and study. But it was very, very difficult. It's like climbing down from Mount Everest or something.

It's extremely difficult. So he said, look, if someone doesn't tell you how to get to India, you would be a fool to walk south and just try to get there. Therefore, you should study the six perfections.

You should follow the path. DE YANG RGYAL BA'I CHOS GSUG GI GUS GNYIS THOB PAR BYAS PA LA SON NAM DANG NYES SHES KYI SONG RGYAL BA DE'I RGYAL BA KUN SON NAM DANG NYES SHES CHOS GSUG SHING This is a famous Nagarjuna verse. We say it at the end of every teaching traditionally.

And it means, by the karma of listening to this teaching, may I complete the collection of merit and the collection of wisdom. So there's two sets of causes you have to finish. One creates a Buddha's body, and one creates the Buddha's mind.

So you have to, there's two kinds of good karma you have to collect. One creates the Buddha's body, and one creates the Buddha's mind. So you got to, and you have to do both of them at the same time.

You got to collect the causes for a body which can travel to all planets, and you have to collect the causes for a mind which can see all things. YES SHES LA SLOB DGOS LA RGYAL ZAD KYI SPYOD PA The six perfections combine those things perfectly. The six perfections combine all the karmic seeds you need to get a physical body of a Buddha and a mental part of a Buddha.

DE'I THABS NI BAR CHEN DANG MO NGA DANG The first five perfections help you create your physical body of a Buddha, and the last perfection helps you create the mind of a Buddha. There's some discussion about that division into five and one. I would do it three, one, two.

Personally. First three perfections, body. Last two perfections, mind.

Fourth perfection, split. That's traditional, which you guys know. I don't know why he said it the other way, but must be something there.

DE NA GSUM PA SKYE NAS SEMS SKYE NI RGYAL ZAD KYI SPYOD PA LA SLOB TSUL Now he gives the proper number. So now I'm going to teach you guys the six perfections. I'm going to teach you how to be a bodhisattva.

He says, bodhisattva, for you to be a bodhisattva, you got to learn the six and the four. To be a bodhisattva, you got to learn the six, and then you got to learn the four. What's the six?

It's the six perfections. We'll be going through those now until we finish this book. Then for the last two perfections, we'll go deeper for nine years.

So Geshe-la, what's the four? So technically there's ten perfections. Technically there's ten perfections.

Six to become a Buddha, and four to attract students, to attract disciples. So if you're going to be a bodhisattva, and you learn the six perfections, and you become a... If you become a person who has some enlightenment in you, then you are a valuable resource for the whole world.

You are extremely valuable. Even just sit here for one week, you are extremely valuable in the world. You're like better than all those tennis stars and golf stars.

I saw a definition of sports. It was the... what was it?

The intelligence to learn it well and the stupidity to think it matters. I thought, wow, that's pretty good. The intelligence to learn it, the fine details of football, and the stupidity to think anyone cares about it or it's going to help anybody.

So anyway, if you know football well, you can get a job on TV. But if you know bodhisattva stuff well, you can help people. So just to sit here for one week, you're an extremely valuable person.

But if you don't know how to pass it on to other people, then the value is limited. If you don't know methods of attracting students and being a magnet for students, then you cannot help so many people. And it's not about becoming famous or something like that.

It's about helping people. So there are tricks to attract people in a good way, in a healthy way. Not that you get more money or you get more fame or something like that, but just to wake people up who are watching the football all day.

How to wake them up is a separate topic from the Six Perfections and it's called the Four... In DCI we call it the Four Magnets. Magnet, how to attract people.

How to... Okay, so you have something valuable, but the whole world doesn't know you have something valuable. How do you let the world know?

And you have a moral responsibility to let people know and to share. Once you understand anything in this room, you have a moral responsibility to share it. Get on the plane, go to Portugal, you know, okay?

You have a responsibility. You would be a strange person if you didn't care about other people. If you learned something so precious and you didn't try to share it with people, you would be weird, okay?

So there's Six Perfections and then there's four ways to share with other people in a good way. Not in a, what do you call? We don't bang on people's doors and did you hear the good news?

Take that book, flap it in people's eyes. We're not allowed to do that actually, okay? We used to have some guys come from one of those groups to our temple in New Jersey and we always had good debates.

We invite them in to have coffee and we had debates with them. My sister-in-law, yeah, my wife's sister, she had a very terrible disease and she lost the use of her arm. So the Mormon guys came four years ago and they still come every week to help her, like two young men.

I have a feeling that's more bodhisattva. So that's a great thing. That's a beautiful thing.

Okay, that's amazing. No Buddhist knocked on her door yet to help her. So, okay.

BAR CHEN DRUL LA SLOB SO GZHAN RGYUD MED PAR BYED PA SDUG BSNGAL PA'I GZHAN SLOB SO What time do I have to shut up, Tim? Don't say that. Be careful of what you wish for.

Okay. They do this thing, they say, Geshe-la, you're teaching for an hour, and then after an hour I'm like looking at breakfast, and they're like, oh, did we tell you about the Q&A? I'm like, no.

Okay. Okay, here's a picture. Here's my favorite picture of myself, actually.

Yeah. Some magazine was doing an article about 30 years ago about my jewelry business and my Buddhism. At the time I was learning how to cut diamonds, which was not part of my job, but I wanted to know.

So I did it at night. I studied at night, like from eight to midnight, I learned how to cut diamonds. So you can see the diamond between the fingers, that's a rough diamond.

It's very important for Buddhism. Anyway, DANG PO LA GSUM So here we go. Ta-da!

We're going to start the six perfections. RGYAL TSE KYI CHOS PO LA CI LA BSLOB GSOL I'll say something about Bodhisattva career in general, number one. Number two, I'm going to spend some extra time on the last two perfections, which is meditation and yeah, understanding emptiness.

So our extra time is going to be nine years in emptiness jail. Okay, all right. But he does spend some time on it, extra time.

Then he says, DOR BYED THEG PA LA BSLOB GSOL What's DOR BYED THEG PA? Yeah, where's the picture? Diamond Way.

There's a reason why Diamond Way is called Diamond Way. That's a long story. We'll have to talk about it.

What's cool about Lam Rim is that you get Diamond Way before the end of the Lam Rim. You do not get that in the Geshe course. You can spend 25 years in the monastery, you do not get Diamond Way.

In Lam Rim you get Diamond Way at the end. So it's cool. Whether Lojong has Diamond Way or not, I'll leave it up to you to debate.

Okay. Yeah, you should debate it. We used to have debate ground out here.

That's why we built this place back here. It's kind of all spider webby now. But if you're in the mood, you can go back there and argue.

You don't have to argue in the kitchen. You can argue out here. Okay.

But in Lam Rim, you do get Diamond Way by the end. You don't get initiation, but you get some teachings on it. I guess we'll have to do that.

Okay. Ta-da. Here's the six perfections.

DANG PO LA BRJEN PO TSUL KHRIMS SOGS PA BRTZON GRUB BSAM STAN ZHES RAB There are six perfections. In China they go like this. Right?

In America we go like... Okay. DZIN PA is...

I struggled with how to translate DZIN PA. I struggled with how to translate all these words for 50 years. But I think DZIN PA...

You can say generosity, but I think it's not quite the right English word. Giving is a nice word. Sometimes I like to say sharing nowadays.

Sharing what you have. I think that has a good feeling to it. You get some cinnamon rolls at Peace Tree Cafe, Mr. Boon. Share with other people. Giving. TSUL KHRIMS means ethical behavior.

Follow ethical behavior. There's an English word morality, but for those of us who grew up in America, it has a lot of other meanings that are kind of like... So, I don't know.

I think ethics. Ethical life. Something like that.

SOGS PA You can translate it as patience. I don't know if it's the same thing as not getting pissed off. Okay?

Not getting upset. I like not getting upset. It's a lot harder to not get upset than not get angry.

Okay? So nowadays I'm kind of feeling like not get upset would be a good word. BSOD GRUB means effort.

Joyful effort. To enjoy working hard. BSAM GTAN means meditation.

And SHES RAB means understanding emptiness, basically. Wisdom. Those are the six perfections.

Okay, we're about to start. This is a big deal. It's been 14 years.

We finally reached the six perfections at this moment. DANG PO LA DANG PO LA BRJEN PA means giving. Sharing.

Then he mentions, he's going to give a short definition of the first perfection. LUS LONGS SPYOD DGE TSAR BYED STONG DOD KYI SEMS PA BYIN PA'I NGO YIN The essence of the perfection of giving is the intention. That's the first thing he says.

The essence of the perfection of giving. The first thing he says is the intention. What?

Where you want to share what you have with other people. Okay? That's kind of his definition of the perfection of giving.

The intention. The state of mind where you want to share. LUS LONGS SPYOD DGE TSAR LUS means share your body.

It means your time. Body is easy. I'd rather cut my finger off than give you six hours.

Okay, so body. LONGS SPYOD means the things you possess. And then DGE TSAR means your virtues, your goodness.

Sharing those things. The desire to share those things is the definition of giving. YAS NA GSUM All giving can be divided into three types.

Number one, SANGS RIGS KYIS BYAS MA Say SANGS RIGS. SANGS RIGS means material stuff. Cars, food, money.

Those material stuff. BYAS BA LUS SOGS NAS BYUNG BA TZAM PA DUR MA GANG CING PA TSUN CING YIN He's not going to give you the other two kinds of giving yet. The first one is physical giving.

And we'll get to the rest later. And he says, look, the biggest kind of physical gifts you can give is your body. You can give away your body.

And people have done it. Sri Sena, right? Dharma Rakshita.

Give away your flesh. Give away your body. And then he says, where is it from?

TZAM PA Somebody gave me a bag of TZAM PA coming into the class. Yeah. Crushed barley.

Some guy sat there, went ding, ding, ding. But anyway, that's... So every monk has a TZAM PA bag tied to their belt.

And it's a little bag about this big. And you keep a couple of handfuls of TZAM PA powder. And you don't have to stop the Geshe activities for food.

Because this is an all-purpose food. It has everything in it. You can live on this for like a year.

You don't have to eat vegetables, for example. So all monks have a little bag of TZAM PA tied to their belt. And they take snacks during the day and they don't stop.

The Geshe, of course, doesn't stop to eat. So anyway, he says, give somebody a little pinch of your TZAM PA up to giving your body. This is giving.

TZAM PA TZAM PA means... THOR MA means one spoonful of TZAM PA. Then he's...

Do you guys got the next picture? This is like... Do you ever do that?

You sit around and try to figure out which bills you can pay? Like, if I don't pay this one they shut off the electricity. But the water people, they give you an extra week.

So you know, you're like juggling with your bills. So just keep that in mind, juggling your bills. STONG MI NUS NA NGON TZAM PA If you can't learn to share what you have, if you cannot learn to share what you have, listen, there have been times in your past birth when you were brahma or shakra.

These are two deities? Worldly deities. These guys use planets as marbles.

They're so powerful, they use planets. They play with planets. So try to imagine not the person who owns all the money on this planet.

Imagine somebody who has a thousand planets in a bag and plays marbles with them. I mean, that's how powerful. And they exist.

People like that exist. He says, therefore, you and I, we have been brahma and we have been shakra in our past lives. We have sat on the sun and played marbles with planets.

Forget having all the money on the planet. You played with the planets. You have been that.

GYUR SOGS KYI RAB PYANG CHOG RGYAL CHEN PO YOD KYANG But you didn't share. Therefore, where's that picture? You're trying to decide whether to pay the electricity bill or the water bill.

Look man, you used to play marbles with planets. Now you're sitting there like, should I pay the water bill or should I pay the electrical bill? You are evidence that you didn't do the first perfection.

Your life is evidence that you didn't do the six perfections. You were like them. You used to have that kind of money.

You didn't pay the electricity bill. You invented electricity. And then here you are.

Because you were cheap. When you had it, you didn't share it. And now look at you.

You're trying to pay your bills. He says, sad. RGYUR SOGS KYI RAB PYANG CHOG RGYAL CHEN PO YOD KYANG RGYIN PA MA STONG BA'I Because you didn't give away, because you did not share with others, SNYING PO GANG YANG MA RNAM PAR BRTAN BRTAN SANGS, KHA STAB, BDE DAG ZHIG TU GYUR TSUL KHA STAB means that's why you're in such a lousy situation of this.

You're trying to figure out which bill to pay. GYUR TSUL BSAM NAS Think about it. DA RES LEN DANG, RNAM NAS LA MI RE BAR STONG DGOS So open up your heart and open up your pocket and give to people.

Just keep giving. And I tell you, from 71 years old to all you young people, if you make it a habit to give away what you have, you will just get richer and richer and richer. The money will chase you around.

Okay? Really. Okay?

It's weird. It's really weird. I try to run away from money and I just keep, and I'm a, what do you call it?

I'm a real experiment of this principle. I used to sit there with my electrical bill and try to figure out how much I could pay and if you keep being generous with what you have, not with what you don't have, by the way, what you have, share what you have, as a habit, you will be super happy and you will be super successful in your business, for example. Okay?

And it's just true. I can tell you it's true. It takes a while to figure it out, but you'll figure it out after a while.

So just keep giving. Don't give more than you have. Do not get into debt.

Do not cause your family trouble because you're such a money hopper. Okay? But give what you can when you have it.

Never stop giving. Give something. Keep giving something and you will always have money, all the time.

Yesterday morning I got a, yesterday afternoon I got a, I got a funny text on my phone. I mean I could show it to you, but it says, I couldn't get your number right and I text the person back, what number? They said your credit card number.

And I'm like, in regard to what? And they say, the refrigerator we're going to buy with your credit card. And I'm like, which refrigerator?

And they're like, oh, it's $2,000, not bad. And I'm like, and we think we got your number wrong and we just need you to help us get it right. I swear.

I'll show it to you. And I'm like, well, I didn't know that I was buying your refrigerator, but I'm okay. Let's do it.

So I sent them the right number and they bought it. It's just, keep doing weird stuff like that and you'll have a, that was after the dentist wrote me that I had the wrong credit card number for the $8,000 tooth fixing I'm doing for somebody, somebody I met. So just keep doing weird stuff like that and it just comes back to you.

I mean, I hate to say it over and over again, but keep being generous. Not with what you have, okay? Not, if I didn't have $2,000, I wouldn't have done it.

I would have said, look, I only have $200, I can give you $100. But if you have it, just don't hesitate and give it. And I swear to God it comes back.

It just keeps coming back, more and more and more and more. And it's fun. It's fun to be, to try to be a bodhisattva.

It's fun, okay? And just keep trying, okay? We have some time to do Q&A.

I like one Q, maybe a Q and half an A, how's that? Anybody? Tim, you got that weird box?

Then I erased the message on my phone because I thought probably somebody could see it and get the real number that I didn't approve of.

[Говорящий 2]
Question. Thank you for answering questions today. I have a question about trolls.

Trolls. Let's say you have someone trolling you and you say, thank you for your troll, it's greatly appreciated, I'll put you on hold. Does ignoring them make them stop or is it just the fact that you're not responding with more unkindness?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, that's a good question. So if someone criticizes you online, it's kind of a, I've been the object of very heavy criticism online and it still hurts me. Sometimes it hurts me.

I don't know, I thought about it a lot and it's a new thing. For 10,000 years we developed in humanity ways to talk to each other. You don't say this to somebody but we don't have a system for civil behavior online.

We don't have it. We haven't, probably our children will have rules, hopefully, about how to behave online. But we don't have, it's new, it's a new thing.

So people can say things about, terrible things about you and you have no way to prove it's wrong. You have no way to answer it. You can't defend yourself.

And people who are semi-famous are often the victims of it. And even the news, the big news people and like that. And we found out, here we found out about it.

I don't know, my personal approach is to, I think it's valid to state the facts somewhere and say, here's what really happened or something like that. Put it online somewhere. I think that's okay.

But this kind of anger or, what do you call it? You feel invaded or you feel attacked? Unfairly, that feeling.

I think that takes a lot of management. It takes emotional management to deal with it successfully. And I didn't know about online stuff and I didn't know about news, what happens when the news really gets interested in you.

I didn't know about it and it's terrible. But I don't think, I think how you respond is the main thing. And I think you should respond with grace and you should respond with truth.

And then I think most importantly you should let it go. Because, it just went to 10 million people. So, I don't think there's much you can do practically.

I had companies come up, you pay us $50,000, we'll get it off the internet. Well, somebody I know used to do that in business. You just pay.

You pay a company and they erase everything and nobody knows you went bankrupt. And you can do that. And I know there's, I've been approached by companies like that, but I don't feel like it's the right thing to do.

I feel like the reason it's coming is that you criticized other people. So I think as a bodhisattva or as a Buddhist, you have to, the first reaction has to be, I must have done this to somebody else. That's always the first reaction has to be, I must have done this to somebody else.

Now I'm going to be really careful that I don't start rumors or something like that. And I think that's the, that's the way to handle it. And I think it's very hard not to feel upset.

And it's very hard not to get angry. And it's very hard not to be frustrated. But those are just more bad seeds.

So I think as a Buddhist, you just have to, anytime someone hurts you or criticizes you, your first reaction has to be, oh, I must have done this to somebody else. So let me control myself in the future. And that's basically Seiji's new book, that 800 page book.

The reason it's called The Crown of Knives is that they come back to cut you. What you do to other people comes back to cut you. So I think, and personally I have a lot of peace about it now, but it wasn't easy.

The first few years were very difficult because it was so unjust. And I thought it wasn't fair. But actually karma is the ultimate fairness.

You get exactly what you do. So a Buddhist cannot complain. You just have to shut up and stop doing it.

But emotionally it tears you apart. It's really hard. Like you've been trying to help people and then it just, people attacking you.

It means you didn't help people enough actually. As far as their karma or something like that, I think you can make some honest attempts to correct them and helpful and kind suggestions like, that's not nice or you're going to hurt yourself or something like that. But they don't listen.

So I think you can tell people, that hurts my feelings and it's not true. But I don't think you should go farther than that. I don't think there's not, they're not going to stop just because of that normally.

Then I look ahead at my life. I see how many days I have left on this world and I do not want to spend them thinking about those guys. So I'm like, yeah.

So I just like, I go on strike. Emotional on strike. Like I refuse to think about you.

I just want to, I want to use my time for something more beautiful than arguing with you. So I'm very, very strict with my mind. I don't allow myself to waste time because I don't have time and I don't want to spend it like that.

I don't want to get in the cesspool with somebody and slug it out. I want to fly somewhere. Okay?

All right.