Тим Ловенхопт — Книга 1: Совершенство мудрости, занятие 18

[Speaker 1]
All right, everyone. Good morning. All right.

Please turn on your cameras. I'd like to see your beautiful faces. There you go.

Look at all those beautiful faces. Yay. Hello.

Anna, you should be flying like now. Okay. All right.

Okay. Good morning. Good afternoon.

Give me your worst. Give me your best. And I'm glad Olga is translating because she always asks hard questions.

Hi, Lindsay. Hi, Ella. Hi, Isabel.

All right. Edmund. Okay.

Well, this is your show. This isn't my show. So please ask me your questions.

And then I will attempt to answer them. And we can have a little dialogue. So you can unmute or you can type in the chat.

All right, here we go. All right. I'm going to call on Anna just to get it started.

I know you have a question. Once you get one question going, everyone will start asking. So Anna, ask me a question.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. I have a question. I don't know how useful it is for others, or maybe it is.

I am very interested to understand how in my country, in Romania, we could plant as a group to create a powerful translation team, secondary translation team. And you already know that. Yeah.

But also, I think it's useful for the other languages. So I would like a set of advices on how to grow our team. And also, Vanessa had her hand up.

So that would be the next question.

[Speaker 1]
Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
I think that's a good place to start, right? I think it's a good place for us. Because we're all here in this class, these classes, in some way, because we understand the value of the words in the books, right?

Right. And, you know, we have, I was thinking about it this morning. I've been having some ALL, Asian Legacy Library, is having a summit this week.

All the main staff is here in Sedona, and they're having kind of a retreat-style event, where they're just, you know, talking about strategy, where they're going, what's important, what's not important. And they've invited all of us, all the worldview groups, in to talk about their organizations and what they're doing. You know, and today, I was there yesterday for about two hours, and then today, I give a presentation on ACI, right?

And I was thinking about, like, well, what's the most important thing, right? You know, what's the most important thing in the ALL database? You know, what's the most important thing about what we're doing, right?

Like, we're saving words, we're saving texts, you know, we're inputting them, right? And quite honestly, from what I know, there's no other group in the world that's doing this like this at all, right? You know, in the Buddhist tradition, or even in other spiritual traditions, or wisdom traditions, the kind of archiving, you know, and accessibility, and study, right?

And then on top of it is how are we modernizing it, not in the sense of, like, changing the ideas, but how are we making it relevant to our day-to-day life, right? You know, something that sticks around for that long probably has something interesting in it. And it's not just interesting for nerds, right?

Or like three historians who work in a university that no one reads their books, right? Except themselves, right? And those are all valuable things, right?

But, you know, what is the, I think the answer to your question is to plant the seeds is to understand what you believe the value is, right? Like, what is the value in those texts? What is the value in struggling, you know, for two weeks in these classes?

Or if you're, you are translating, like, for weeks and weeks afterwards, or having a group of people like Edmund, and Ella, and Roxanna, and calling you and being like, I want you, I want to learn your text. You know, I want to help you with your text, right? And now I'm like, damn, I have to teach it.

I'm like, shit, now it's not just Tim in his room, like translating, right? You know, with the cats, right? You know, sitting here, you know, doing that stuff.

Like now it's bigger than that. It's like other people want it. And I'm like, they don't want Tim, they want the text.

They want the wisdom, right? Right? It's not about Tim.

It's not about me. It's about who you can help, I think, right? And you are, you know, we're, how do I say this?

Yes, it goes through you, right? You know, but your work, your work is, it's for other people, right? So I think if you have that motivation, like, you know, when someone asks you to teach them, right?

It's kind of hard to say no. You know, it's really kind of hard, right? Because then you realize that it's not, you know, you could take it as, you know, the Nagel, right?

We were talking in the last class, like you could get prideful about it. Like, oh, I'm so awesome. Like, oh, how great am I, right?

Such a good speaker. People like me, right? And I hope, I hope you like me, right?

But that's not the point, right? I think the point is, you know, how will this help people? And when we were thinking, when we are thinking about ALL and what we're doing, we have to think in generations, right?

You know, this is what John Brady is doing. This is what Geshe-la is doing right now. You know, like, it's sad to think, and I don't want to think, you know, they're both 70 or close, or, you know, they're older, right?

And they look older, they seem older, right? And there have to be generations. There has to be generation, right?

So the work you're doing now is not for you. I mean, come on, 50 years for the Perfection of Wisdom Translation? That puts me at 94.

Like, can you see me in my rocking chair? Just like, I will get this done. My arthritis in my hands, you know, finishing the last colophon, right?

And then, you know, that's the end. Can you see me dying as I, you know, finish it, right? It's not even about me.

At that point, who the hell cares? I mean, how do I mean, like, I won't be here anymore, right? So you have to think about others and how it can help them, you know, and really, what can these texts do?

They're a gift of liberation, right? They can free you from suffering, they can free others from suffering, they can free you up into the idea of normal death, right? And if you hold that in mind, when you're doing anything, it'll just create a team of six people that come to you that say, Tim, I want to help you.

So now 50 years probably becomes 20 years because of the seeds, right? You see, those six people, sure, Svetlana, just send me an email. Those six people want to help.

So guess what? They're going to help and now it's going to be 20 years because the seeds, I'm trying to plant seeds to shorten time, right? You know, or expand time, excuse me, something like that, right?

Do more and less, which is one of my specialties. So that's a very good question. All right.

Let's see here. Next question. Who did you say had a question, Anna?

[Speaker 2]
Vanessa had her hand up and also Roxana posted something in the chat. Vanessa, do you want to ask your questions?

[Speaker 1]
Where are you? There you are. Yeah, go ahead, ask your question.

Hello. Hello. I say in Chinese.

That's fine. In Chinese is okay. All right.

[Speaker 2]
So her question is in Chinese and I'm going to translate that briefly. So her question is, because of spiritual practice, we know that we have to understand the emptiness, right? And then we learn we have to develop the bodhicitta, the wish.

And recently, because we learned that these are level six, we know that we have to keep morality. So actually, I wanted to ask what's the relationship between this three, which is keep morality, because we know that's very important. And also the bodhicitta, the wish and understanding the emptiness.

So what's relationship between this, those two, those three?

[Speaker 1]
Well, I think, thanks for the question. I think that's a really good place to be when you're trying to understand all these different ideas. And, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of how I want to answer it.

So they actually kind of, I would say that they, they are, I would say they're all different pieces of the same pie. Okay. Meaning, I think they're all, when we're trying to understand the elements.

Okay. So, all right, let me take a step back. In Sugeng's class today, we were talking about this idea of Abhi pride.

And I love this idea. I love this because I'm like, I'm like, yeah, the way that Tim sees the world is the right way. I'm only getting information through Tim senses, through my nose, through my eyes, through my ears, through touch, through taste, through my thoughts, right?

Through my interpretations of it, right? Even when I'm trying to pretend that I care about other people, right? Those are my senses interpreting what I think other people are experiencing.

Right? So even if I was, I was listening to class, I was walking down the street over here, getting the coffee and I was listening and I just started laughing. I'm like, wow, this is, this is hysterical and seemingly hysterically impossible, right?

The only access that I have through all of this, even the Dharma itself is through my senses. Okay. So here I am, the great Tim Dharma practitioner, right?

The great mixed nuts translator, right? The one who's going to save the world. Okay.

And I just, like, I almost like, I was laughing. Like there were a couple of people walking and they were just like, what's going on with this guy? Right.

And so we're trying to get out. We're trying to get, get out of all of this using something that's already broken. Okay.

Our senses, right? It's already broken. We are necessarily already misunderstanding things.

So then we take up, we get the parts, right? Okay. All right, here we go.

Let's go into the parts. You know, we kind of start understanding there's this thing called emptiness, right? Right.

And you start going, wow. Okay. I can think about things coming from me.

I can be like, well, look, the pen, do you have a pen here? I don't. All right.

The pen, right? I can understand the dog sees it differently. Great.

Okay, good. All right. So there's some kind of logical analysis, right?

Ooh, I got that. Maybe the things that I'm seeing aren't by nature, the way that I'm seeing them. Okay.

Like, oh, okay. That's kind of cool. So when you actually get to the implication of that idea, it should blow up your head, right?

It should be overwhelming because are you saying that everything I perceive is somehow coming from me? Yes. Right.

Even other people, right? Even the experience of other people who have their own separate seeds are coming from you, right? So then, you know, so then you can say, well, oh, crap.

Okay. So those people are coming from me, right? Well, then I have to take care of them because they are a part of me and my, my world, right?

They're part of there. There's something about them. That's like the pen.

And if it, therefore it's coming from me, it's my responsibility. I sound so guilty, right? Right.

But yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, that's coming from me too, them, right?

And then, and then the, then the real work starts, you know, what does that mean, Roxanna? Right. Exchanging yourself.

And I don't, I don't know if it's and, or for it's kind of ambiguous, like then all of a sudden you're the way that you behave. Right. You go, well, how would I treat the things that are coming from me?

Like if my body is this way, right. You know, I, I, you know, I, you know, I do a, you know, a massage in the morning to like get the dry skin off. I take a shower, I brush my teeth, I sleep, I put food inside.

Right. I go to the gym. I hang out on nature.

I do all these things. I take care of me. I get sick.

Right. But if all these things are coming from me, then you're coming from me. So then there's some choices.

I could be like, that's nice. Go to hell. Or if I really felt it, I would be like, I have no other choice.

But to take care of the things that I see. Right. And it's, and you have to think about it, you know, and that's why, you know, you could, you know, this is when people have very deep spiritual realizations, like an overwhelming, cause you go, oh my God, how do I like, this is overwhelming.

Right. How do I take care of my own projections? Right.

How do I take care of that? Right. And then that's where we get into like how we behave.

Right. Like if I'm talking to a, you know, if I'm talking to one of my staff members and I'm like, well, what is it like to be in front of, what is it like to be them looking back at me as the boss? Right.

What do, what, what, how do they see me and my actions and my words and my facial expressions and my feedbacks and my guidance? Right. So then all of a sudden I'm hyper aware of how other people are reacting to me.

Right. Because I know that the way that I behave becomes relevant to the things that I see and hear and taste and touch and think. Right.

You know, so, so that in a way, and then the thing is, if we had more time, you could start from the compassion side and do the same argument, or you could start from the ethical side and do the same thing and recognize that all three of them are just parts of the same pie together. Right. So that would be, I would suggest that be your homework is to think about, you know, what if, what, what if you're, what if you're not like, what if you're an emptiness person originally?

What if, what if you started with compassion first? Right. Like what if you just like popped into this world and you were like, you were already doing Dakshin Namje.

Right. Automatically. Right.

Right. Someone, you know, instead of showing you a pen, they were just like, yeah, you know what, from, from the time that you were born, you were just trained to think about how other people saw you and you had, and you behaved accordingly. Right.

Or something like that. Right. You know, or in some cases, maybe people pop into this world and the first thing they're taught are an ethical way of life, like the 10 commandments.

Right. A lot of people maybe went to Christian church and they were taught that first. Right.

And I would invite you to think about, well, if you were, if you popped in the world and were taught one of those things first, how you could get to all three. And in fact, my, my, I would suggest that you do. They all support each other and they all plant seeds for each other.

You start with compassion. You will get to emptiness. You start with an ethical way of life.

You will get the compassion and emptiness. You start with emptiness. You will get to compassion and an ethical way of life.

They're all, all paths go to the same goal. Are they one or many? Good question.

Very good question. All right. So we have a question here from Roxanna and would you like to ask it out loud, please?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. I was wondering why do emotions, not necessarily just mental afflictions, but both negative and positive emotions have such a powerful effect on the prana in our body or what is the connection between the two?

[Speaker 1]
Cause there seems to be one. So could you define for us what you mean by prana in case people don't know?

[Speaker 2]
The energy in your body. Not sure how to define it better than that.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. I think that's a really good question. So why do we do yoga?

Like why does Mixed Nuts have two yoga classes? Annoyingly so. I'm just kidding.

Why does Mixed Nuts have two yoga classes every day? Right. Part of it is exercise, right?

There is something very important about, you know, taking care of your body. You know, we went to Kyoto and every day, every day in Japan, we were doing something. We either went to the gym, went to the gym probably 10 times in the 15 days we were there, or we went on a walk around the city.

There was one day where I didn't go, but I got a massage, right? I was still doing body work, right? Okay.

So, you know, part of, you know, in the, there's different presentations of this, but there's different levels of our being, right? You know, and so quickly there's the, like, there's the, we call them the koshas, right? And if I mess it up, please correct me.

I think I got it all. The first one is like the physical body, right? Your physical body, your flesh, right?

Flesh and bones. The next one in is your breath. Okay.

The next one in is this thing we call prana, right? And what we mean by this, like physical breath is the second one. The third one is we call it a subtle energy that runs through the subtle body.

So it's like a subtle body. Okay. And, and this is where, like, if you were to ask me about science and be like, well, where is it, Tim?

I'd be like, well, it's not like you can cut your body open and find it. You know, but a lot of traditions, Chinese medicine has it, Tibetan medicine has it. Ayurveda has it.

So we call this, there's a subtle body, right? And then in yoga, we work at that level. We work at the level of, of the channels, the way that the prana moves, right?

And this is a much deeper teaching, but you can think of it as the energy, energy around which the physical body takes shape. And it's one of those things that, you know, in terms of evidence-based science, you know, the way you get there really is, you know, it's through direct experience, right? Claudia, is that your son?

Yeah. Hi. I've never met him before.

Hi. Or her. Oh, so cute.

So, so there's this, there's this, you know, energy in the body, you know, and the theory of yoga is that we're trying to get in touch with it. And we're trying to understand the way in which it can serve us and the ways in which it hurts us. Okay.

So when the body forms around that, if you've ever heard the word chakras, right? You know, if you come to Sedona, you can go get a chakra clearing. Okay.

Open your chakras, open your root chakra, open your root chakra, and like feel the divine connection with the, anyway, you could do that, right? But that's not what it is. Okay.

You know, there's these areas in the body around which the, the flow of the, of the prana kind of gets wrapped up and then, and around that wrapping up forms the physical body. Okay. And that wrapping up also then creates sort of like, if you take, if you ever took a hose and wrapped it up, and then the water started shooting out of it, right?

Those are what we would call like the various channels in the rest of the body, the way in which the prana goes to the rest of the body through this kind of like twisting up that happens. Okay. What's really cool is that they say that the heart chakra is three twistings.

Okay. And interestingly enough, when the heart is B is formed in a fetus, it's originally a flat structure. Okay.

And then the heart actually, the human heart folds on itself three times to form the four chambers. So there may be a connection, right? Okay.

So anyway, so there's another, so, so this is what's happening in the body. This is the reason we have bodies. And it's also the reason why the body dies.

Okay. Right. It's, it's the, it's the source.

It's one of the main sources of our suffering, right? Our karma ripens in such a way to create this body. And then this body begins and ends.

All right. So then there's another concept. It's, you know, we call it Luke, Sam, Luke, Luke, Luke, Sam, Jukpa, Jukpa, Jukpa, sorry.

Tibetans early. It means the prana and the thoughts in your body ride together. They move together.

All right. Thank you. Pure gold.

Luke, Sam, Jukpa, Jukpa. Thank you. Jukpa, it's Jukpa, not Jukpa, it's Jukpa.

There we go. She was just testing me. So they move together.

Okay. So let's, let's go a little deeper into that. All right.

Where do you, where do your thoughts happen in your body? Well, normally we think they happen in our head, in our brains, right? There's sometimes like a somatic experience that the thought is happening in the brain, right?

But if we think of thoughts, you know, you know, emotional states are kind of thoughts or mental functions as well. Like when you have a kind of thought or a kind of emotion, does it only live inside your brain? Does any, has anyone ever had an experience where they felt their emotion in their body?

Like, I don't know, someone gives you bad news and then all of a sudden your chest feels empty or you get angry and your throat starts tightening up or your, you know, or the bottom of your stomach feels like it's about to empty out because of an emotion, right? Like, where do you feel, like, where do you feel the thought? And, and, you know, people who are very somatic and body oriented, you know, body expressors, you know, are naturally more in tune with that, I think.

Right. So, so this concept of the thoughts and the prana riding together, like where the thoughts go, the prana goes, right? I want everyone to think about their left index finger.

Close your eyes and think about your left index finger. Hopefully you all have left index fingers. Now that you're thinking about it, feel your finger.

That's Luksamjupacipa. Okay. You're feeling your finger.

Your prana is in your finger and you're aware of your finger and you're thinking about your finger. Okay. That should be the answer to my question, to your question.

I'll say a little bit more. So once we become more aware of the movement of that in our body, right? Through yoga or through dance or through, you know, any kind of somatic practice, right?

Then you start becoming aware of how your prana moves, which also influences how you think, right? I had an argument with someone, the beginnings of an argument the other day, and my throat tightened up. My face got a little red, redder than it normally is.

Okay. Right. And then all of a sudden then my thoughts are like, I'm right and you're wrong and you're annoying me and you're not paying attention, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay. Now my thoughts are all about how this person's a stupid idiot. Okay.

Which came first, the thought or the prana? Okay. Don't get me into an engagement question.

All right. You have to think about it. But when you get the more aware you get of your thoughts, then you can start noticing how you, where you feel your thought in your body.

Okay. Then you can start becoming aware of afflictions or positive emotions, which also are afflictions if you don't understand them, understand their nature. You can notice, you can almost feel, it's possible to feel an emotion before you actually experience it.

That's a weird statement to say. You can feel the rumblings of your experience about to ripen before it ripens. That's the power of meditation, right?

Stage four or five. I can't remember off the top of my head. So I think it's around four into five of the nine stages.

It talks about, you know, five or six, somewhere around there. It's like there's ice on the water and there's just a little bit of movement underneath the ice, right? That little current, you feel that current before it even pops through the ice, right?

And as your meditation gets more and more stable, the ice gets thicker and thicker and those little rumblings just get, you're just like, you're like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Like that's getting you close to shamatha, right? But before that ice gets thick, you might just have a small clear lake or a little bit, but then you start feeling the stuff moving underneath of it, right?

And then you start recognizing the seeds that are ripening and then you start doing, thank you, subtle agitation. Then you start having the capacity to do something about it. Once you're angry, it is too effing late, right, Cat?

It's too late, right? It's too late. Cat and I talked about this the other day.

You know, we're just like, once the affliction is there, it's too late, right? But can you feel it beforehand? And the more you feel it, the more you're able to then start planting different seeds because then you can be like, nope, doing something different.

Nope, I'm not going to get angry with you. I'm ending this Zoom call. Goodbye, right?

Right? I'm going to walk away from this, you know, or I'm going to be like, or maybe a more mature response would be, I'm beginning to experience some anger right now. Can we pause, right?

If you want to build relationship, you know, hey, I'm having, I'm having an experience right now. It's a little uncomfortable. Let's take a pause, right?

Something like that. Okay. So now I'm going to go into the second question.

All right. What does this have to do with, what else can you do with this, right? We're not going to go there yet.

Let's go to a different question. But I think that's, I hope that helps, you know, you know, why, like any emotion in the body without, then you, okay, there's an, there's the last part. Where does it come from?

Right? Where does it come from? Right?

If you look at what Ana put in the, in the chat, the Kosha furthest in is seeds. Actually, there's a sixth one called emptiness. Okay.

Right. But change the seeds, change the thoughts, change the prana. I don't necessarily agree that four is deeper than three.

I think Lung, Sem, Jigpa Chepa actually might argue that they're kind of closer in a Kosha, different presentation. But, you know, change the seeds, change the world. Because if you change your prana, you change the outer world.

See? Because there's actually one after the physical. Seeds, thoughts, prana, breath, physical, outer world.

The other Kosha is the outer world. And don't think that you stop because your skin stops. That's where I'm going to stop there.

Next question. Let's see what you guys have here. Someone asked an interesting question, and I'm going to address it indirectly by addressing it directly.

Somebody has heard in this class, they've heard about Vajrayogini. What is the meaning of Vajrayogini? You know, in the ALL database, we have a tremendous amount of books, both Sutra and Vajrayana.

Okay. And I think if I remember the number, Roxanna, you and I talked about it, 136. I think we saw it the other day.

It was 136 Vajrayana categories. Okay. And of those 136, I'm making up the number.

It's somewhere around there. I'm sorry. I don't have it in front of me.

If anyone wants to go in a gopher and figure it out, someone will do it. Some nerd will do it for me. By the way, this is how I teach.

I make you guys do it. Of those 136 Vajrayana, Diamond Way texts, one of those texts, one of those categories is Vajrayogini. Okay.

So, and in the Vajrayogini lineage, there are a tremendous number and different subcategories. Okay. Nice.

So, what is the meaning of it? The meaning of it, I can't talk about. Okay.

Because it's something you have to discover on your own. But I can say that the more you study, the more you practice, the more you understand emptiness, deeply understand emptiness, deeply understand compassion, deeply understand the value of an ethical life. We gave vows last night, by the way.

It was so cool. Somebody, this is how cool some people are. A guy from Austria was in Chicago for work.

He studies with one of our teachers, flew to Sedona, just showed up. Well, I mean, there were some emails and discussions. He just didn't show up, but there were some requests made.

And then all of a sudden we were giving this guy vows. Okay. He gets it.

He understands. And I was sitting there and we all got a bunch of flower petals. We did the whole ceremony.

And then afterwards you throw the petals and make a big mess and celebrate and someone has to clean it up afterwards. And I was just thinking about like the emptiness of all of it. Like, here's all these people in this room and here's this person who I don't know, who none of us know.

No one has ever seen this person in our life. No one has ever seen this person in real life. Even their teacher, as far as I understand, it's only been through Zoom.

Okay. I asked the question, oh, ACI, I took some courses back in 1993 and I've been like, just the words that were used where I've been secretly following the courses. Okay.

All right. So here's this guy, taking the vows. We're sitting there and this is going on.

And I'm just thinking, wow, this person flew all the way across the world, essentially, to take five vows. No killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, and no intoxicants. Across the world.

Because he knows, he believes, he feels, he senses the importance and the weight of that. Right? So I was sitting there and I was thinking, and Geshe-la asked us, at the end of the ceremony, like in the Abhidharma, it talks about when you get a vow, you kind of get a halo, like an invisible halo around you that basically says, they kind of form in like, you have those vows until the day you die.

Right? And he said, I want all of you to help him form that halo around him. Right?

I'm like, oh, that's cool. Like the thing that doesn't exist, once you get out of Abhidharma, right? Right?

He's asking us to do. And I'm like, that's weird. Like, what is Geshe-la doing?

Right? And I'm like, okay, I'll help. Right?

And I started thinking about this individual's commitment to the vows. Right? And then I started thinking about, okay, well, the vows have emptiness.

Right? Now, if you're ever wondering what Tim's thinking, usually this is what he's thinking. Okay?

When he's sitting there not saying anything. Thinking, well, the vows are empty. Like, what does, you know, what's the power of them, if you understand where they're coming from?

Right? And then I started looking around the room, and we're all like, holding these flower petals, right? In our left hand.

And I was like, you know, who is this person? Who are the people that are sitting around me? Right?

It's like, oh, look, there's two people from Vietnam who showed up. There's some people from Austria. The whole ALL staff was there.

Geshe Michael was there. You know, whole groups of people, people, people, people were there. And I'm like, you know, people have emptiness too.

So then I'm like, all right, so people have emptiness too. Great. So are they people?

From their own side? I'm like, that's an interesting question. So I'm sitting there a little bit longer.

And then I'm thinking, well, you know, me, Tim, I have emptiness too. Right? Tim has emptiness.

Right? Tim is not the only, like, I'm not only a person in, you know, flesh and bones, you know, homo sapien, you know, in 2022, right? Like, am I that?

Am I this? Am I the thing that I think that I am? Right?

And then I started getting this, this suspicion, this interesting suspicion. I was like, I'm freaking tired. It is 9pm.

I've been up since 5am. And we're in, in Lama, excuse me, Holy Lama is asking us to take vows. I'm not taking vows.

He's taking vows. And I'm like, I just want to, part of me was like, I just want to go to bed, but I just submitted my, like, just be tired. Who cares?

Something cool is happening. So then I'm thinking, who are all these people? Who is Geshe Michael?

Who is this person? Who is this person? Who is Mark?

You know, are, are they who I think they are? And I'm like, well, my seeds are showing me that they're this, but they could be anything. They could be anything right now.

If I had different seeds, we could be in a burning hell realm right now, or more interestingly, they all could be enlightened beings in this room right now. And then, then, okay, Tim, you're just pretending because we know that when you hold up the pen, you can't just say the pen, you can't just close your eyes and wish the pen to be a diamond, right? You can't just wish it, right?

Oh, so Tim, are you just wishing that everyone were enlightened, but they're really just people? You have to think about it. Secondly, what about you?

What if I had different seeds? You know, we're talking about in words, my own mind only text, the developable part of you to turn you into an enlightened being, right? What if I could change my seeds, right?

What if I could change my seeds? And what if I could change them very quickly? Because I'm tired of this.

I'm tired of waking up every morning, and reading about people dying because someone come country is dropping bombs on them. I'm tired of this. It pains me, you know, I'm like, I don't even want to look.

Right? You know, I'm tired of being angry at people. I'm tired of getting mad and, and all these things, this, I'll be pride that I have, right?

This Nagya, this wrong Nagya. Now, what if, what if I could change those seeds? And then what if I started acting as though I already had those seeds.

And that's when we shift from Abhinagya to divine Nagya. That's when we shift to divine pride. And that after you think about it for a while is the you're getting.

Okay. Next question. You're all like, I say now.

All right. Next question. And if you study the mixed nuts for a very long time, and you serve other people, and you understand emptiness directly, those, that stuff just happens.

You don't have to try. You don't have to try. And it's not religious.

And it's not limiting. It is understanding karma and emptiness. All right.

We got time for one more question. Let's go. Don't waste the time.

Don't waste time, guys. Come on. Kat, that's interesting.

You asked a question. Okay. Here.

Okay. We have a question from Leia. Leia, like Princess Leia.

That's nice. I'm not sure I understand the question. At what level does the wheel take, turning the wheel take place?

I'm not sure what you mean by turning the wheel. Can someone translate, please? I see the question early.

Could you explain a little bit more? Translator? Does turning the wheel happening at which level?

[Speaker 2]
Well, actually, she wants to ask, because Geshe-la mentioned a lot of turning the dharma, or, you know, he mentioned about teaching, right? Three times of teaching. So I don't know, I'm wondering what's the relationship with this turning, turning the dharma, turning the wheel and emptiness.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, I understand. I'm going to do it quickly, since we only have a few minutes. So turning the wheel just means teaching.

Okay, it just means like, you're teaching dharma, you're teaching, right? So when you're a teacher, you know, when you're teaching the pen to anybody, you have to understand that not everybody understands emptiness as well as you do. I'll be pride.

Got it? Just kidding. I understand emptiness better, whatever.

So you have, as a teacher, you have to evaluate the person that you're talking to, in their capacity to understand or accept any discussion or any argument that you give about emptiness, right? So a lot of times, you know, I'm in these classes, and we're like, we're in like, upper middle way, lower middle way, we're like, tearing apart subtle points of the gotcha, right? And then I go to work.

And I'm like, the gotcha that that person has, is the only thing they can understand. And in fact, I have an employee who can't even understand this, that there could be two different perspectives in the same room. I have an employee who can't even understand that the way that they see things could be even slightly different than the way someone else sees it.

Do you know how annoying it is to work with this person? Do you know how many conflicts this person creates? This person creates, right?

So like, the only thing that I can teach this person is, well, you know, there might be something else going on. The story you created is quite elaborate, and mainly has nothing to do with reality, as well, which is the nature of all stories in our mind, right? So here's Badrigini telling me, I still have stories in my head.

Get it? So who's teaching emptiness to whom? So when you're sharing ideas of emptiness, you have to evaluate what the person is able to hear and accept.

Because if I start talking about something like that, they're not going to listen to me, or they might get upset with me, or, you know, all these different things, and they won't grow, right? It's not possible for them to hear it, right? So SIPA, patience.

Just keep trying, right? And that's why the Buddha taught different turnings for different levels of students, right? And you need to learn all of them, and you need to learn the value of all of them, because they make you a better teacher.

So the value of learning the turnings of the wheel is really about how you are going to help other people, right? That's why we do all of this. You know, we get into these small, small details of how we, how that gotcha is, like, how is something, how could something appear?

You have to understand how something could be self-existent in order to understand how it's not. And this is what we were talking about in Nick's text last night. If you understand how things appear wrongly, then all the rest is easy, but you have to first understand how it's wrong.

That's the hard part. Abhi Pride. I like this.

I'm going to start wearing a little, like, t-shirt. We should make a t-shirt and sell it. I have more Abhi Pride.

My Abhi is higher than yours, you know? My pride is, my, I have less Abhi Pride than you. That's even more of a, that's even Abhi-er than anything else.

My pride is less Abhi than yours. How insulting is that? Right?

I see that I'm more right than you. You know, you got to think about it. And lastly, you've got to just enjoy the idiocy and lunacy of your own mind.

Just freaking enjoy it. Okay? Walk down the street, listen to Mixed Nuts, laugh out loud at your own lunacy, right?

And then everyone kind of looks at you and you're like, yeah, I know I'm crazy. And you think I'm crazy, because I know that I'm crazy. And that's the first step.

That's the first step. And just enjoy it. And be grounded.

Be grounded in your world. Right? Don't float off into nothingness.

Right? Like, your world is still important. These ideas don't take you away from the world.

They help you engage it better. Right? That's the compassion side.

Don't get so lost in emptiness that you forget about other people. Cool. Yeah, Kat, something weird happened today, right?

Something weird happened today. So cool. Thank you all for asking such cool questions.

Keep asking. Make the questions hard. Push the teachers.

Push them. Right? Yeah.

So cheap plug, because I have your attention. Medicine Buddha Retreat is starting in three or four days. All right.

If you're able to come and you're in a place that allows you to come, and I'm sorry that not all places, we can be open to all places. But if you're in a place that you're allowed to, please come. Right?

So that's starting on Friday. And I'm sorry if you're not able to, but that's our seats, and I'm working on those seats. You know.

Cool. I hope you all have a great afternoon or morning or whatever time of day it is. Do your yoga and have some fun.

So I'll see you guys later. And thank you, translators. I know I talk too fast sometimes, but the prana moves, and I can't stop it.

All right. Thank you. Oh, yeah.

Gina. Did you get... Oh, something weird.

Oh, you have a thing. Did you get the note about what's happening at Diamond Mountain?