«Дар освобождения», курс 43 «Современный бодхисаттва», занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
I have bad news for you. We're going to meditate. So, please get ready.

So, because we will finish the lam rim in Kyoto, if we all live that long, we're going to start recording the 100 meditations for the lam rim, okay? And this is the first one, okay? So you can say I was there, okay?

All right. These are not called lam rim meditations. These are called bribery meditation.

Why we call it bribery meditation? If you join the 30-30-30 program, one dollar a day, okay? Anybody can do that, right?

You get the 100 videos as soon as they are made. You get them like the next day, right Tim? Or something like that.

Well, soon. Then if you're grumpy and you don't support this one dollar a day, we will send you the video by United States Post Office, which takes six weeks extra. Understand?

Understand? Okay? So, you know, I think you should try to get the 100 meditations, okay?

And it's just, it's a no-brainer. It's one dollar a day, okay? And if everybody helps, that means that ACI can be free forever for everybody, okay?

And then we don't have to keep asking you for ten dollars and, you know, kind of waste time, right? All right. You guys ready?

Yeah, so don't forget if you go, in this meditation, it'll last for a hundred years. Okay? We call ...

Me and my ... we were four brothers. We were really bad.

We call silent but deadly. Understand? You do quietly and everybody's like ...

Okay? Maybe your son does that, I don't know. Okay, you guys ready?

Seriously ready? Okay, this will be about ... It's supposed to be half an hour, but the ...

Tim, the first one will be 45, I think, okay? All right. Okay, here we go.

So, please get settled and get comfortable. When you meditate in a group, it's better to try to control yourself, okay? Clear your throat.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Small smile on your face.

[Speaker 1]
I like to tighten my lower stomach. It helps support your back.

[Speaker 2]
Try to relax your forehead and relax your hands.

[Speaker 1]
You can basically do any hand gesture you like, but make sure your hands are relaxed. Shoulders back a little bit.

[Speaker 2]
Shoulders level.

[Speaker 1]
Your eyes are looking straight ahead, but your eyelids are closed, okay? So your eyes are looking to the horizon, but your eyelids are closed. If you put your eyes down, your chin will go down, and then you'll get sleepy.

So keep your eyes ... If you open them, you're looking straight ahead. And we're going to count 100 breaths.

I know that we usually talk about 10 breaths. Personally, I find 100 breaths makes my mind peaceful. So we'll talk 100 breaths.

Exhale is the first half of the breath, and the inhale is the second half of the breath. And we'll do 100 breaths. You'll start to think about something else, and then please bring your mind back.

And don't get all upset, and don't be too rough on your mind. Treat your mind gently. Tell your mind, come on, we got to go back to the breath.

So you will think of other things, and when you catch yourself, come back to your breath. Exhale, inhale. 100, here we go.

[Speaker 2]
Keep your mouth soft.

[Speaker 1]
Now we'll do the 6 plus 1 preliminaries. And the first one, please think of someone that you really admire. It could be somebody in your life, now.

It doesn't have to be a religious person. It could be anyone that you really admire. Someone that you would like to be like them.

Maybe it's just one quality that you admire. Maybe not their whole life, but maybe they have a special ability to be patient, or maybe they have a special ability to be kind. So think of a person that you really admire, and invite them to come and meditate with you.

It could be a famous person from the past. I like to invite Arya Nagarjuna, or Je Tsongkapa, or it could even be somebody you haven't met yet. Maybe we all are looking forward to the day when we meet Buddhists directly, and maybe we could ask them to come now.

So past, present, or future. Someone you really admire. Maybe someone who does not have a certain problem that you have.

Like if right now, if you're feeling impatient with somebody, then maybe try to bring someone who you know is especially patient, and ask them to meditate with you. You can visualize them on the level of your forehead. You can picture them the size of your thumb, in mid-air in front of your third eye, in the air.

Maybe one foot, half a meter away from your head. Or I personally like to imagine them as a full-sized person, sitting together with me in a very relaxed way, like two friends who are meditating together. I enjoy being friends with this person, and just meditating together like friends.

So get that clear in your mind, and think about why you admire them. What is the quality that they have that you would like to have? Now imagine that you're making a gift to this person.

I enjoy Samantabhadra's offering, and basically you cover the sky. First I think of the blue sky, and I think of a day when there's no clouds in the sky, and the whole sky is blue. And then I cover the whole sky with, I like red roses or flowers.

Cover the whole sky with beautiful flowers, and offer this to this person, just to honor them. Then we do confession. Think of something you did in the last two, three days that you're not happy about.

Maybe you got upset at somebody. Maybe you felt jealous of someone. Think about some negative thing you did in the last two or three days.

Of course we did many negative things. It only takes a few seconds to make a negative mental karma. But the goal of this third preliminary is just to think of one or two of them and regret them.

And it's a good practice to tell somebody what happened. It's very, very healthy if we get in the habit of telling other people about our weaknesses or our mistakes and being honest with other people. So try to be honest with yourself and think of something like a bad mental habit and tell this person honestly, they are a nice person, they're a good person.

You can tell them and you will feel clean. So think of something in the last few days and tell this person, the one you're meditating with. Now tell them something you're happy about, something good that you did.

This morning we're meditating together at the end of a retreat at Diamond Mountain and I can feel your meditation is quite good. I can feel that you worked hard this week because I've meditated with so many people for so many years and I think you can be proud of your hard work this week and I can tell just from the meditation that you had a good week and you worked hard and you can tell this person about your week and be happy in an honest way, not prideful. Be happy that you made so much progress this week.

The next preliminary is to ask for teachings. I think most of the teachings we get are from personal interactions with other people. I think those teach us more than we learn in the class oftentimes.

So today and tomorrow, the next few days, especially going home from retreat, we're going to have many interactions with other people. Many of us will be traveling. Just make a prayer that in the next few days, not so much formal teachings, but as we interact with other people, as we have conversations with other people, make a prayer that people teach us.

Some of the things that people teach us are negative. We see someone acting in a bad way and we can think, I hope I don't have to see this again. I hope I don't do this myself.

So ask for teachings, good examples and bad examples. Ask that we recognize that someone's teaching us and ask that we learn something from it. The sixth preliminary, we are surrounded by really good people and I think sometimes we get used to it and we don't notice them.

So try to think of some of the good people in your life, the good examples in your life. They could be personal friends, they could be family members, they could be public figures, they could be historical figures, but the people around us are giving us an example all day, every day, and so they are teaching us. Ask your teachers to stay in your life.

Pray that you recognize your teachers and then ask them not to leave you. Ask them to stay. So after the first six preliminaries we do our meditation.

And today we're going to do a very, very short meditation. It's the first of the 100 lam rim meditations and I think to honor it's the first one. We'll do a very, very important one.

So we would like to, in our life, we would like to become a bodhisattva. And it's a good goal in a whole lifetime if we can become a bodhisattva. That would be so wonderful and we'd be so happy and we would make other people happy.

So to be a bodhisattva, it's very clear, very simple what we have to do. We can become a real bodhisattva if we have two different states of mind, two different attitudes. SEMS SBYONG SEMS SBYONG First one, I would say, well the second one, is that we would like to develop an understanding of where this world is coming from and where all the people are coming from and where this world is not coming from.

And that's the second bodhichitta, ultimate bodhichitta, understanding cause and effect, understanding mental seeds, understanding that everything around us is coming from us, from how we treat people. And to get to that second ultimate bodhichitta, there's a basic bodhichitta we need to develop first. And that's love and that's a concern or that's an understanding that other people want happiness just as much as I do.

My whole day, every minute of my day, I'm trying to be happy. I'm trying to make myself happy and that's good and that's a great hope in human life to be happy. And the first meditation we'll do today is think about one other person in your life.

It could be a friend, could be a co-worker, could be anybody, a family member. Choose one person. And the meditation is very short and the meditation is very simple.

Do they want to be happy in the same way I want to be happy? My whole day, I want nice things to happen. Every minute of the day, I'm hoping nice things will happen.

And now focus on this other person and just try to think, are they the same as me? Do they also want to be happy? Do they also hope every moment of the day, every minute?

Are they also hoping to be happy today, every minute? Is that inside of them also? It's inside of me for sure.

But do they also have this inside of them? Are they hoping every minute of today that good things will happen and they'll be happy? Just choose somebody and ask yourself, do they also want to be happy every minute today?

We'll stay here for a few minutes and then we'll wrap up the meditation. It's short, but it's extremely powerful and important and it's something you can do for the next few weeks if you want to. Okay, here we go.

Choose one person. Then we'll wrap up the meditation, we'll finish the meditation. We did a good job.

Meditation is short, but mental karma is much more powerful than physical karma or verbal karma. So just half an hour of meditation is extremely powerful karma. It's karma at the center of the mind, which is where the seeds are created.

So imagine those seeds that we created in this meditation. I like to imagine them in the center of my mind, like little golden seeds in the center of my mind. And then I like to imagine that I'm sharing those seeds with other people.

And I like to imagine that it's like a golden sunlight coming out of the center of my mind and spreading out past my body, like the rays of light around the Buddha, and then spreading out to the world around me and I like to let this golden sunlight spread first in my own neighborhood, and then in the town where I live. Everyone is being touched by this golden sunlight. I'm sharing my good seeds.

And then the state or the province where I live, everyone's getting a little taste of the golden sunlight of my good meditation. And then I like to spread it to the ocean, to the, in my country, the East Coast and the West Coast, the edge of the country. I like to think everybody in the whole country got some golden sunlight.

And then I spread it across the oceans to the other continents, other countries. And then the light bursts out from this planet and spreads across the space through many, many planets and whole universe. People are touched by the golden good seeds of the meditation I did today.

And everyone's a little bit happier. Then you can open your eyes slowly and I like to take a stretch. I like this thing you do with your hands, I don't know.

My Chinese friends taught me that your meditation is quite good. I've been helping people meditate here for 20 years? Yeah, we had an anniversary.

And that's one of the best groups I ever had. I can feel it. I can see it.

So I guess, I don't know who was leading meditation here, but you must have done a good job. Any questions before we take a... What time do we stop, Timothy?

7? 7.15. Okay. Any questions?

No? Okay. My teacher used to say, oh, you know everything.

Yes, Janice. Venerable Janice. Tinle.

You've got to practice her name. Tinle. Tinle.

Tinle. Okay. You could call her Tinle.

She'll look around like you're talking to somebody else. Thank you for the meditation. Thank you for all the teachings this week.

[Speaker 2]
And my question is, you know, it's really hard to just focus on one person that you want to help, so I just kind of stack one person in there and fill them up with a lot of other people. Is that okay?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I think it's wonderful. I think, personally I was doing, I wanted to do three, and I think that's fine. That's fine.

My advice in the, there's a meditation advice that it shouldn't be so basic that you get tired or bored, you know, but it shouldn't be so busy that you lose your concentration. So it's up to you to challenge your own mind. If it's too simple, you'll get sleepy.

And if it's too complicated, you'll lose the emotion of helping them. So I would say you have to judge your own balance. REN LOS The guitar string should not be too tight and not too loose.

Right, Ben? Okay. Yes, madam.

We need a box over here. Thank you Geshe-la for the beautiful meditation.

[Speaker 2]
I have a question about how seeds are ripening. So if every moment one-sixty-fifth of the finger snap, if every seed which is ripening creates me and you and everybody in this room, just one seed creates everything, and then next one and the next one, is my understanding correct?

[Speaker 1]
It's a good question. I would say this. We have direct experiences, like when I'm looking at your eyes right now, and then we have inferential experiences.

We have logical experiences. Like when I'm looking at you, I know there's people over there, but I can't see them right now because I'm looking at you. But I'm having an experience of them indirectly.

So I'm looking at you directly, but I'm aware, I think those people did not sneak out to have breakfast. Yeah, they're still there. So I can, at the same time, my seeds are creating a direct perception of you, and my seeds in between are creating inferential or logical perception of them.

So I'm perceiving a room full of people, but actually I'm just watching one directly, and I'm feeling the presence of the other people in the room. So that's called an indirect perception. So I'm having a direct perception.

Seeds are going off to perceive you directly, and then in between those seeds there's other indirect seeds going off, and then I have indirect seeds to feel that I'm on this planet, and there's many other people, and things like that. Those are happening sequentially. Those are happening one after another.

It's not that they're going on at the same time. A human mind, non-Buddha human mind, can only have one instant of perception, millisecond of perception at the same time. So I cannot, actually I cannot perceive you directly and at the same millisecond be aware of them.

It goes back and forth. The mind goes back and forth. But the direct object and the indirect objects are created by separate seeds, and they are happening sequentially, one after another, and it's very, very fast.

And actually, whether it's direct or indirect, it's all pictures coming out of my mind. So in that sense, there's no difference between direct and indirect. You see, a picture is making you.

A picture is coming out of my karmic seed. And that picture, by the way, is unchanging. That picture is in a moment.

So I have a picture, and then I have other pictures, indirect pictures. But they're all pictures. They're all the same pictures.

It's very, very fast. And it's incomplete. It's like you make one of those puzzles with pieces of puzzle, and you're always making one part and then the other part's not there.

And then you fill in that part and this part's not here. So actually our perception is very scattered. That's human being.

When you become a Buddha, it's all unified. Yeah. Stop throwing things.

Alright, okay. Yeah. Tracy.

[Speaker 2]
Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for that beautiful meditation.

My question is, if a seed never touches the tree, when it comes to correlations, if I want to get this, I'm going to do that. Well, how does that ever touch where I'm going with that? So can you help me to understand these correlations?

So my question is, why? How does that happen, Geshe-la?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good question. Certain questions are a logical consequence from thinking correctly. You see what I mean?

You should have certain questions after a while. And if you don't have them, it means you aren't thinking. You see what I mean?

So I'm happy when people ask a certain question, I know they're thinking. If you didn't think of this question, you should be, is what I mean to say. So if you have a pen and you are writing on a piece of paper, there's a strong, strong feeling of your ignorance or misunderstanding.

By the way, I don't like to call it ignorance nowadays. I would call it misunderstanding. It has to be mistaken.

Ignorance can imply lack of knowledge. Misunderstanding means crooked knowledge, and it's crooked knowledge. So, piece of paper, and you're writing with a pen, and it looks like the pen is making the marks on the paper.

And then you can think, ignorantly, sorry, misunderstandingly, you can think that the pen is making the marks on the paper. And that's a mistake. To think that is a mistake.

And it's natural to think that. And because it's natural, you stay in samsara. Because you think the pen writes on the paper, you suffer.

You stay in this world, suffering, because you believe that. You think cause and effect means the pen ink is making the mark on the paper. And you think that's cause and effect.

Therefore, you try to get more pens in your life. You work for money to get more pens. You think it's cause and effect.

But, what's really happening is pen seeds are opening. Pen seed, pen seed, pen seed, pen seed, paper seed, paper seed, paper seed, paper seed. Writing, writing, writing, writing.

Your mind is creating, your seeds are creating the paper. Then your seed creates a hand. Then your seed creates a pen.

Then your seed creates letters coming out of the pen, but the pen does not make the letters. The pen does not make the letters. And that's very difficult to understand.

It's very difficult to appreciate. So there is cause and effect when you're writing on a piece of paper, but none of it is between the pen and the paper. It's all your seeds in your mind laying things down there, one after another, in an apparent cause and effect, which is not a cause and effect.

Trying to make the apparent cause and effect happen over and over and over is the frustration of samsara. That is samsara. That is samsara.

Trying to collect more pens, trying to make sure other people don't get the pens. That's samsara. And then it's all, samsara is defeated by understanding pictures are coming out one after another.

It's all cause and effect from the mind. So in the case of a seed and a tree, there is a seed, there is a seed, there is a seed, there is water, there is sunlight, there is fertilizer, and then suddenly a tree appears. But it's not coming out of the seed.

The seed is coming out of your mental pictures. Mental picture seed, mental picture seed, mental picture seed, mental picture seed, mental picture tree, mental picture tree, mental... The cause and effect is all here.

The seed cannot create the tree. It's not physically possible. Because as you said, by the time the tree is there, the seed is gone.

So they never touch. They never make contact. The pen tip never touches the paper.

Never. And the seed, by definition, a seed cannot make contact with a tree. A tree can never be coming from a seed.

It's impossible. So something else has to be going on, which means your mind creates seed, your mind creates seed, your mind creates seed, your mind creates tree. Why then Geshe-la, I can see what Angelo is thinking already, why then do we bother to plant seeds in the spring if we want trees?

Those are called patterns. There are karmic patterns. There are patterns to samsara.

The seeds don't cause the plants. But if you don't plant the seeds, the plants won't grow. Because it's a pattern.

It's a karmic pattern. There are always, in this world, normally, there are seeds, physical seeds are planted before the tree comes up. And those are karmic patterns.

Those are patterns that hold true most of the time until you get more advanced. And you can make trees open without seeds. Okay?

Cool. I'm supposed to fundraise. I'm under big pressure to fundraise.

Okay, Ella, one more.

[Speaker 2]
Wait, wait, wait.

[Speaker 1]
Microphone. By the way, this is almond milk. You take a handful of almonds, soak them overnight, they get fat, then they're ready.

Rinse off the water, throw them in a blender, add a little water, blend it, and it will be smooth. And then add more water, blend that, and it will be smooth. Then throw in strawberries.

Okay? And make two of them. And generally I don't eat until noon, but I have two of these, two or three of these.

And then you don't gain weight. They don't have any carbohydrates. The almonds don't have any and the strawberries don't have any.

Then you can, so you can be, you can fit in your clothes permanently. Okay? And it's so simple.

It's so duh. You know, duh. Okay?

So it's a carbohydrate thing. And it's healthy, and it's cheap, and I can save time, and I don't have to cook. Okay?

Just suggesting. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you Geshe-la. Just for the second question, upon the, just now the question is, like for physical seeds it's understandable, but for mental seeds, how about, how about them? Is it the same pattern?

Or so for the correlations, can we, how can we fix?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. It's a good question. Her basic question is, I can appreciate the Tracy answer about pine trees and pine tree seeds, I understand that, but does that apply to mental seeds?

Is it the same? And the answer is yes, it's the same. A mental seed does not produce a mental picture.

The mental picture is not necessarily coming out of the seed. You perceive it coming out of the seed because you've always done that. And I'll give you an example from the Mind-Only School.

Okay? And this is why you should come to the Mixed Nuts translation classes. They're free.

It's the wisdom of 2,000 years. We time them to be convenient for you, they're not convenient for me. And if you keep going to those classes, all the questions will be answered.

All the questions you ever had will be answered. So, in the Mind-Only School, they say when you look at a pink color, you are actually, you are just looking at a pink color in your storehouse consciousness, alaya vijñāna. You're watching seeds open in your own mind.

There's no pink outside of you. Everything is in your mind. That's Mind-Only School, okay?

It's not Middle Way School, but it's useful. So, they believe that you are just watching part of your own mind. There's no cup this far away from Geshe-la's head.

My eyes over here, the colors over there. Then there's a big question in the Mind-Only School. Okay, so actually, when I see pink color, I'm actually just watching part of my own mind.

In the Mind-Only School, I'm just watching part of my own mind. Then the question comes up, why do I feel like it's outside? Why do I feel like that?

Why does it feel like it's half a meter, sorry, one meter away? Why does it feel like it's one meter? Where does that come from?

And the Mind-Only School says you have special seeds from the past that create the illusion of distance, that outside, there's an illusion of outside. There's a separate seed in your mind that's creating the feeling that the color is outside. Then the big question, then your question comes up, Ella's question.

Where did that seed start? And the answer is, it didn't. Okay, what's that mean?

It means, look, that seed's been going on forever. That seed's been going on forever. You can't point to the first day in your past life when you thought the cup was outside.

You cannot point to it, because that had to have a seed to cause it. So in your past life you thought the cup was outside. Why?

Because the life before that you thought the cup was on the outside. Why? Because the kind of...

And then Westerners, non-Buddhists, they have trouble with that. They're like, that's weird. Seed comes from an old seed and that came from an old, old seed and that came from an old, old, old seed.

That's weird. And then a real Buddhist would say, no, you're weird. It's weird to think there was a beginning.

That's weird. If you think about it, it's dumb to think there was a beginning, because then something came from nothing. Nothing comes from nothing.

Nothing ever could. So somewhere in my life or childhood I must have done something good. That's an old English song, Sound of Music, right?

Sound of Music? Yeah. Anyway, that's all.

So yeah, that seed came from the impression that mental seeds start and then create a mental picture and the impression that that's a pattern and that pattern has always been. I'm not avoiding the question when I say it's always been that way. It's the same thing your mom said.

Why can't I have candy all the time? Because that's the way it is.