Серия «Сутра Алмазного огранщика» — Мастер Камалашила: медитации на «Сутру Алмазного огранщика», часть первая (Аризона, 2016), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
Meditation, okay? Relax your mouth. Relax your hands.

Pull on your stomach a little bit. Then slowly come to your breath. And then count your breaths to ten, without thinking of something else.

And please bring your teacher to this place, in front of you, your personal teacher. So you are sitting knee to knee, and with your mind's eye look at them, and think about something you admire about them, and sit for a few minutes and enjoy that thing. It's a prostration in the mind.

Then make an offering to your teacher. The traditional offering is the sky filled with flowers. Another good offering is something good you've done in the last few days.

Then make a confession to your teacher, something negative you've done in the last day or so, that you're not happy about. You want to clean it, so you tell them. Then try to think of another thing that you did well yesterday, some good news to tell your teacher, or someone you saw do something very nice.

Then ask your teacher to teach you, and ask your teacher to stay with you. Then I'd like you to take a stretch, because we're going to start the real meditation. Okay, let's start our new start meditation.

This week I'd like to do some Samatha meditation, so we'll start with this one. So you have to get very settled. You guys are tougher than the last week's people, so we're going to meditate a little longer, okay?

So every meditation needs an object. The object of this meditation, first one, and it'll get more complicated as we go. The first one is your body.

And I would like you to meditate on just not moving your body, okay? So the object of this meditation is very basic. It's just your physical body.

You can move your chest to breathe, okay? And your diaphragm and all those things. But I'd like to see if you could not move any other part of your body, okay?

Okay? And we'll stay here for 15 minutes, okay? So it's a little bit long for this kind of meditation, so get comfortable as you can.

Like, if you have to make some adjustments, do them now. Okay. Are you ready?

Good. Please, please, please don't move your body, okay? Then we're in a group of people, and any person who moves, it's going to hurt everybody, okay?

Okay, so, just decide your body is like a stone. If something hurts, just ignore it, okay? Plaster falls on your head, just ignore it.

Okay, you ready? Okay, finish drinking your water, put it away. Okay.

Here we go. There'll be a little bell ring. 15 minutes, don't move your body.

Please don't move your body. There's no grand object of meditation, just your body. Every time you wonder what you're meditating about, come back to your body.

Am I moving my body? Even a slight bit, even the fingers slightly, smile. Okay, take three deep breaths.

Please don't move, three deep breaths. Focus on the exhale. Then you can stretch, open your eyes.

Open your eyes. Okay, everybody okay? All right then.

Last time I went to China, my students asked me, uh, could you teach something a little more difficult? And the Singaporeans and the Taiwanese and the Shanghai Ren, Beijing Ren, Guangzhou Ren, Xiamen Ren, So, uh, I was thinking, what is something hard to teach? Then, uh, there's, from ancient India, there are only two commentaries to the Jingan Jing, to the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

One is by Vasubandhu. And it's called the Seven Topics of the Diamond Cutter. And, uh, but it's very short.

It's like 25 pages long. And the text has problems. And, uh, then, uh, there's a commentary by Kamalashila, Master Kamalashila.

And, uh, that's a really cool one. It's very, very difficult. It didn't reach to China in the first, in Xuanzang's time, because, uh, they lived at the same time.

So, uh, it didn't reach to China. And, uh, the Sanskrit is lost. And so we only have the Tibetan translation.

And, uh, it's very difficult. The translation is very difficult. Uh, but I thought it would be fun for something difficult, you know.

So I started working on it. And, um, I taught it. I guess we did it once or twice in China.

In, uh, we call it VIP group. It means like a small luncheon or something. And then I was frustrated because, uh, I couldn't go very deep in a luncheon.

Uh, it's 130 pages long. And, uh, so then I thought, uh, my Taiwan students asked me, could you teach a Dharma class instead of a DCI class? So we did a...

I said, I'll do two days of free talks. And those were fun. It was like, what was it?

Like two hours each. And then, uh, we did one day at Lincoln Center in New York. We did Kamalashila, and that was really fun.

And, uh, and when we were in Taichung, which is the middle of Taiwan, one of my students, uh, owns a hotel. So he said, you can have the penthouse. And it's got like, uh, I don't know, how many bedrooms?

Like a couple of huge bedrooms and three bathrooms and a kitchen and a dining room. And it's all glass on the top floor. They had an earthquake there like two weeks after that.

But anyway, it was fun at the time. And, uh, so I thought, oh, this is like, what do you call it? Tsongkhapa's paradise up here.

And we should have a Dharma class. So I taught, uh, I taught the DCI organizers, about, I don't know, 30 of them, I guess, in this penthouse. And that was really nice, because it was like up in the clouds.

But the whole thing was frustrating because I couldn't go very deep. And, uh, so I thought, we just thought to add a week retreat after the Lamrim retreat and try to go deeper into Kamalashila. And, uh, my plan is to do the first quarter, you know, first quarter of the text.

Uh, that's about all we can do in a week. And then, uh, maybe we have to do it three more times, something like that. And, uh, it's a very beautiful commentary.

And, uh, he has meditations connected to the Diamond Cutter Sutra. So I wrote out, I think it's 25 of them. Uh, and we'll try to do five every day.

Okay? There's 25, yeah, in the first quarter of the text. Uh, so there are 25 sweet meditations.

So in the morning my plan was, uh, teach you the meditations and the text. And then, uh, the rest of the day you can either sleep or you can do those meditations. Or maybe both, I don't know.

I think it's nice. Some of us need a vacation. We're working pretty hard.

So you can kind of do both, I think. You can take some rest and take a pause in your life for a week. And, uh, and then do these meditations.

Okay? So let's start. And my plan is that I like morning time for, I think it's the clearest time for teaching and meditating.

So I thought I'd just do one monster session in the morning. So two and a half hours in the morning. Halfway through we'll take a break for pee-pee.

And, uh, I asked the Diamond Mountain director, Michael and Melissa, I'd like to welcome them, by the way, and thank them. I said, we should have fresh-creased orange juice and green drinks and ginger tea, hot ginger tea, fresh. And that'll be like something special that only Diamond Mountain does for you.

Uh, and they said, okay, we'll do it. So, are we going to do it over there or something? In here?

Outside? Okay. Okay, I'm sorry it's windy today.

The spirits in this place are kind of naughty. I don't know why I have to see naughty spirits. That's a new DCI joke.

I don't know why I have to see... Whatever. But, uh, yeah, so we'll take a break halfway through, okay, for your bladder and your...

I think in the morning it's good to just drink things and then you can eat when you get home, okay? All right. I like Kamalashila's name.

I mean, uh, it sounds cool, right? I don't know, it really attracts people. And, uh, so I thought I'd tell you a little bit about his name.

Kamala means a lotus flower. It's the pink lotus, the usual one. And, uh, shila means morality.

It's related to shita, which means cool, because if you tell the truth all the time, if you're nice to people all the time, if you don't steal things, you feel chill. Probably chill comes from shila. Probably.

So Kamalashila means morality of the lotus or something like that. And there's two meanings of that. One, you know this custom that the person who's very moral, they have a nice fragrance to their body.

And when they walk by you, you know when somebody walks close to you, by you, and you feel this little wind from them, breeze from them, and then it smells sweet. It just smells very, uh, dear, you know. There's some kind of strange smell.

I've had it with some high lamas. And, uh, so it means the scent of morality. The scent of a person who is, who is a very good person.

Kamalashila. But there are some translations into Tibetan that call him Peme Ngangtsul, which means the way of life of the lotus. Ngangtsul.

N-N-G-A-N-G-tsul. And that, so that has a different meaning. Uh, and you know that, you know that story that, uh, the first time I saw a big bunch of lotuses was outside of Bangalore city in India.

And I was going from the airport to the monastery. And, uh, the city is very big and broad. I think it's five million people.

And it's all flat. And, uh, on the way to Mysore, which is on the way to the monastery, then, uh, you hit these lakes right outside the city. And, uh, a tremendous stink.

It's the open sewage of the entire city. They just pump it onto the ground. And it makes these huge lakes.

And they're all pooping and peeing. Unbelievable. Like, I don't know, three, three miles long.

And, uh, it's just raw sewage. And, um, so during that part you have to just nagugab, nagugab. In Tibet we say nagugab.

And you just have to bear it, you know. And then, uh, so I was going through that part and I suddenly saw all these lotuses, you know, in the lake. And I said, oh, stop the car, you know.

I never saw so many lotuses. And then I got out of the car and said, I'm going to get some of those lotuses. They said, no, you don't want to do that.

They said, take 50 rupees, 50 paisa, 50 cents, give it to one of these village kids, he'll go get you one of them, you know. And then they go out in the poopoo and they pull out the lotuses. And, uh, so it's strange.

The only, the place that the lotuses like the best is poopoo. They like to grow in the poopoo and the peepee. And that's supposed to mean, uh, that, uh, spiritual people should seek, uh, difficult situations.

And, uh, they should seek out situations which are difficult, like refugee situations or things like that. Situations which are potentially dangerous. And then they should, they thrive in difficult situations where things are difficult and hard.

So, that's the second meaning of his name, Kamalashila, is the way of, the way that the lotus lives. Uh, and it means, uh, Buddhist people don't avoid difficult situations. They embrace them.

And they look for them. Because then we can do more good. Okay.

Uh, which is why DCI doesn't go to Paris. And we're going to Tashkent and, Tashkent and Samarkand and, what's the other one? Uh, I forget.

Lalita or something? Avdi. Okay.

That's our next, we're going there soon. Uh, then you go to hard places and you can help more people. Okay.

Uh, then he lived around 750 AD. And you know him, Dharam Mountain people know him because he's famous for writing Gomrim, which in Sanskrit is Bhavana Krama. And it means, uh, the stages of meditation.

And, uh, he wrote three books about the stages of meditation. And those became the foundation for all meditation in Tibet. And all schools use that.

And, um, there's a fourth one. There's four books in the Tengger by him, about meditation. And, um, they're not very long, and I thought if you're interested we'll try to do some this week also.

I'll teach you some of them. The three Gomrims. But there's a fourth one called the Yogi Gomrim.

Neonjo Gombe Rimba. Uh, so I thought you might like that one. So I'll throw in some of that.

Uh, when we started the Lamrim course, I think six years ago, uh, I thought it would take about ten years. And, uh, I thought that every time we did a Lamrim, there are many Lamrim meditations, right? Each, each Rimba is a meditation.

So, uh, I thought I should teach the Shamatha part of the Lamrim first, which normally goes at the end. And then I thought if we do Shamatha first, we can use it for all the Lamrims. Uh, and then I thought at the end of the Lamrim course I'll teach Shamatha from the Lamrim Chemo.

Because in there it's about, uh, 500 pages. Okay? In, in, uh, Pabongka Rinpoche's it's only about 50 pages.

Okay? I think he was deferring to Jetsun Kappa on the Shamatha and Vipasyana. So, so that was my plan.

Uh, but it took so long to get to the, we just started the Lamrim. We just started, this week we started the, the real Lamrim. We just got through the Georgehood.

You know, so, so I, I was thinking we should go back to the Shamatha section every once in a while and work on that. So, so this week I'll mix in, uh, the Shamatha teachings of, uh, of, of Kamalashila. So it's kind of auspicious that the person whose book we're studying also wrote the book on Shamatha.

Okay? So really this book is about emptiness, Vipasyana, and then the other part, his other book is about Shamatha, how to develop concentration. Okay?

So they go together. In the, some of the southern Buddhist countries like Burma, Sri Lanka or Thailand, uh, of the five great subjects of Buddhism only, only two reach those countries, uh, Vinaya and Abhidharma. They are Hinayana subjects.

And then the other three subjects, uh, lower middle way, uh, higher middle way, and logic, perceptual theory didn't reach those countries. So, so they have a little bit of a, they didn't get all the instructions on meditation. So, uh, so they took a piece called Vipassana, which is a corruption of Vipasyana.

Vipasyana means to see. Vi means special. Uh, and, uh, that became very popular.

It even reached China, I think, Vipassana, or Vipassana. But that's a, what do you call it? It's incomplete and it's corruption, it's corrupt.

Okay? Um, so I thought you would like to have the, you know, a real transmission of the Gomrim, the Bhavana Karma. And that poster that we see of the monkeys and the elephants, that's based on Kamalashila.

So, if you get some good Kamalashila, Samatha, with this Vipassana, then it's kind of very easy to see emptiness. Okay? So, uh, and he wrote a lot of other books in the tenure, and they're very beautiful.

He wrote a commentary on the Prajnaparamita. He wrote commentaries to sutras. He wrote a Tara practice.

He wrote a Vajrayogini practice. And he translated a lot of books, because he did go to Tibet. And he taught in Tibet.

His teacher was, do you know? Shantarakshita. Yeah.

Who is an important figure in both mind only and lower middle way schools. And so, um, you can get a lot of insight into the other schools also by studying Kamalashila. But he's very difficult.

That's why people don't study him. I think it'd be nice to translate his commentary, but it would take a while. I did most of it, but rough, because I don't have time, because I'm fundraising.

If somebody else could learn fundraising, I could do it. Okay. So, so we'll do a little bit, and then we'll take a pee-pee break and a fresh juice break.

I'm looking forward to it. The first thing he talks about and the first meditation that we'll do is, he asks the question, why do you call this the Diamond Cutter Sutra? Why is the name of this sutra the Diamond Cutter Sutra?

And then he puts, then he bases a meditation on it. And it's interesting, because the word diamond doesn't occur in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, and the word cutter doesn't occur in the Diamond Cutter Sutra. So, it's just in the title.

And it's tempting to think it was a mistake, because it has its own other title, which is the 300, the 300 lines, Chimshati. It's called Prajnaparamita Chimshati, which means 300 small sections, 300 small lines. There's 32 major sections in the Sanskrit, and 300 small sections.

So, the old name for the Diamond Cutter Sutra is the 300 small section, perfection of wisdom. Okay? But the Diamond Cutter is a very famous name, and it seems to be authentic.

So, he's like, he wants to know why they call it Diamond Cutter. Then he said, on one level, the obstacles you have to nirvana and omniscience are like diamonds. Okay?

They're like diamonds. They're very hard to crack. There's a place in his commentary where he talks about pomegranate seeds.

Why? They crack your teeth. They're like jawbreakers.

So, he says, our negativities are like diamonds, and this wisdom can break them. I like that, because nowadays, I've seen in Vietnam, some people just change the name to the Diamond Sutra, and it's incorrect. It's supposed to be the Diamond Cutter.

The Sanskrit name is Vajracchedaka. Vajra means diamond. Chedaka means to cut.

So, it's a mistake to call it the Diamond Sutra. The sutra is not the diamond. The sutra cuts the diamond.

Okay? Got it? The subject matter in the sutra cuts the diamond.

It means it's stronger than diamond. Okay? So, to call it the Diamond Sutra is a mistake.

Okay? Then he says, you know, but also, and I like this one. It took me a long time to figure out.

He says, also, if you think about it, the Buddhist path is shaped like a diamond. The Buddhist path is shaped like a diamond. Okay?

He says, you know, in the beginning, in the very beginning, you have billions of lifetimes of wandering around with no information. You know, just suffering. Billions of lifetimes.

Big number. Fat number. Then, later, somebody starts to explain emptiness to you in a DCI talk with a pen.

Don't worry, I'm not going to do that again. I'm not going to say, what is this? What is this?

Yeah, it's a pen. If a small dog came in here and I waved it in front of him, what would he do with it? Yeah, he'll buy it.

Does the dog see this as a... You should learn this. This is the easiest way to teach emptiness to normal people who are not Buddhist.

Okay? Then, does the dog see this as a pen? No, they see it as a...

chew toy. Who's correct, the human or the dog? Yeah, you can say both.

Why? It works for them, exactly. The dog enjoys it.

It's exactly true. The dog is having intense enjoyment from chewing the pen. I like to chew my pens also.

And the human is riding with it. And then some stupid human will say to the dog, Why are you ruining a good pen? But if the dog could talk, they'd say, Why are you missing such enjoyment?

It's so nice to chew, you know. So it's very... What do you call it?

Biased or prejudiced to yell at a dog because they're chewing on your pen. Okay? Because for them, it's very validly something to chew.

And they can enjoy it very much. Maybe they're getting more out of it than you are. Okay?

So both are correct. Now the next question, which is the crux of emptiness, okay? And it removes the wrong idea, three wrong ideas, famous wrong ideas.

Number one, emptiness is some kind of blackness that you see when you close your eyes. Number two, emptiness means just watch your thoughts and don't follow them and don't think about anything. And number three, nothing matters because life is an illusion, you know, empty.

Those are three famous stupid ideas about emptiness. Why are they stupid? They don't help you.

They don't get you anywhere. Okay? You can think about black for ten years and...

you know. There's a famous debate. Kamalashila was on the winning side.

The other monk was like, oh, just think about nothing, you know. And Kamalashila said, you know what happens to people who think about nothing all the time? They lose their keys all the time.

They're like this. They call it a senior moment. You're walking through the house very decisively and then you're like, what was I doing, you know?

What was I gonna get, you know? As you get older, like when you're packing for a trip like this, you put everything in the middle of the floor, you know, so you have to trip over it on the way out. I still left something at my house.

Okay, so the meditation on kind of just black just makes you forgetful or absent-minded. Rinpoche used to say, if that's meditating, then everyone should just drink six dosakis. Beer.

You should have six... what do you call it? Tsingtao.

Just drink a lot of Tsingtao and you don't have to... It's so easy. You don't have to work for twenty years.

This is so easy to teach people. You get them to this dog and... right?

Then you say, if I put this thing here and all the dogs leave this small chapel and all the humans leave and Michael Dunn is the last one out and he closes the door carefully and locks it and the room is empty and this thing is just sitting there, then at that time, is it a pen or is it a chew toy? Yeah, and then everybody in the world will do a coca... they'll do this.

Everybody in the world will go... Everybody. Every country.

It doesn't matter. Everybody will go... It's like nothing, okay?

That's emptiness. That's kongshun. It's no more complicated than that, okay?

You can make it complicated if you want. You know, sell more tickets or something, but... That's all there is.

That's all it is. It's just like, when there's no one there, it's not a pen and it's not a chew toy. It's just like a blank white screen, okay?

Some time ago it dawned on me that blank means what? White. Blank, blank, white screen.

It's just a white screen. And then there's this... You've got to get this emotion, this feeling that when someone walks...

Michael Dunn opens the door, Melissa's the first one in, she gets to about where Saraf Ni is sitting, and she glances at the seat over here, and she sees this object, and in that moment it becomes a... Okay? You've got to realize that, you know?

When Melissa went to the door, it wasn't a pen yet. When she reached halfway here and she glanced at it, it became a pen. So, I'm not going to tell you all this stuff, right?

So at that moment, when it becomes a pen, has that pen come from the pen, or has that pen come from her mind? Yeah, you just go like that, okay? It comes from her...

It must. It must. If the dog...

If Michael opened the door and the dog ran in first, like the mouse ran into Gelsei's porch last night, and I need a small live trap, okay? He didn't get into the inner sanctum of the kitchen, but he got in the porch. I know he's going to make his way in.

You've got to get me a live trap, okay? Anyway, so the dog runs in the door and reaches halfway and glances at this thing. Then what does that become?

Yeah, the same thing becomes a tutorial. You want to go deeper? What happens if Melissa runs after the dog and they both hit Sarakhni's place at the same time?

What does it become? Yeah, both. It becomes both again, okay?

Alright? Two realities are coexisting at the same time, okay? In the same room.

Then how does it become a pen when Melissa reaches Sarakhni's seat? What happens in her mind? A karma opens.

A karmic seed opens, okay? When... It's a...

What do you call it? A vasana, okay? Bhaktshak.

It's a cemental seed. And then it splits open. 65 per second, right?

It splits open. And a small image comes out. And if you meditate a lot, you can see these images.

And if you reach that point, you're almost at tonglam, okay? You're almost at the path of seeing. A small image comes out about this big.

You know? What do you call it? In dance, there's a thing called...

Perceptual... Kinesthetic... Kinesthetic misapprehension or something.

It feels like you're... You're doing yoga and it feels like your arms are equal. You know?

So it's... What it feels like to the mind is that when you see it for the first time in jorlam, it's about this big. It's a picture of a pen which is about a centimeter long, okay?

And it's luminous. When you see it, you'll know. It's like neon, okay?

And it's... That's what comes out of karma. That's what comes out of a karmic seed.

Little neon pictures come out of karmic seeds, okay? Or little sounds. And those are your thoughts.

You hear your thoughts. You are the listener. Thoughts pop out of karmic seeds and then you feel depressed.

I'm so unhappy. You hear it in your mind, okay? Those are like little sound pictures coming out of karmas, okay?

So that's how you see a pen on a blank white... Yeah, the light comes out into your mind and the mind places it on the white blank screen which is here, the red stick. And then the mind...

That's what Madhyamika means when they say impute or project or... It's not really anything going from your mind over to the table. It's just your mind puts an overlay.

We call those things the old projectors. Yeah. We call overhead projector transparent.

Your mind puts an overhead projector.

[Speaker 2]
So then when you perceive a pen, it's shiny?

[Speaker 1]
No. I'm just saying that the image in your mind when you see it... And it's complicated.

You can study it. But it's mayimbalayalokpa. It's the negation of a negation.

So it's a luminescence. Okay? It's the cancellation of the dark.

Okay? And then you see light. So it's very interesting.

When you catch yourself doing it, you're almost to the path of seeing. You're almost to see emptiness directly. Then...

How did that pen picture get put in your mind? Yeah, you're like... Okay, you ready?

So you hold your hand up, your wounded hand there. She was flirting with a javelin or something. No, I'm just kidding.

She burned herself. So the way I got the pen seed in my mind was when I... You know, someone needed a pen for really bad.

I had a pen. I like the pen. I don't want to give you the pen, but you really need a pen.

Then when I put it in her hand and when I open my hand, that image of my hand opening is communicated to my mind and it makes an impression on the mind. What's it called at that point in Sanskrit? Second wheel of...

Second limb of the wheel of life. Link. Sanskara.

See? At that point it's a sanskara. It's exactly like that.

It's an impression. The image of my hand opening goes into my, you know, visual optic nerve and it transmits to my mind and it makes an impression. And it...

In like... Within like five, six hours that sanskara becomes a vasana. It settles into the mind and becomes a seed.

And that becomes a karmic seed. Okay? So that's how you...

And by the way, technically that's link number ten in the wheel of life. So... The sanskara part is link number two.

It's the potter. The guy making a pot. Okay?

So... Okay. So that's how your whole reality is working.

Everybody you know, everybody is... Everything you see is coming from you. It's an exact reflection of your state of mind.

Unfortunately. There's a Diamond Mountain joke when somebody says, everybody around me is stupid, you know, and we go, mm-hmm. Yeah.

I would say so. Okay? So, for someone...

To explain that to you took about 15 minutes. Okay? Not much compared to the billions of lifetimes before that.

How long does Path of Seeing take? It's about 20 minutes. Okay?

To see emptiness, to see this Kongxing directly, takes about 20 minutes. It takes a billion years to get ready. It takes a billion years to collect the...

the sanskaras and the vasanas to do it. And then it takes about 20 minutes. Then, how long does it take to really process it?

What you saw. Seven lifetimes or less. Okay?

Seven lifetimes or less. Okay? And then after that you get enlightened.

You're a Buddha. Okay? So, Kamalashila says in his commentary, the reason they call this the Diamond Cutter Sutra is that the Buddhist path resembles a diamond.

There's a fat part, medium part, skinny part, medium part, and another fat part. After you become Buddha, that's... that's endless years.

Okay? Then I was busting my brains about it, you know. What's he talking about?

Because that's not how a diamond is shaped. But, this photo on your thing, this is called a Twin Diamond Crystal. So, a diamond crystal is shaped like what you see a diamond on a playing card is octahedron, perfect octahedron.

That's the standard. If there's no impurities in the lava when it forms, it will form a perfect eight-sided crystal, octahedron. But very commonly, they will inter...

they'll grow into each other and become a twin crystal. That's very, very common. Nothing in the world can cut a diamond across the grain.

Okay? Nothing in the universe can cut a diamond across the grain. Except now we have lasers, right?

But... but no physical... no other substance can cut a diamond across the grain.

Okay? And when you twin, when they twin, they grow into each other. So they're...

they're uncuttable. If you buy that stone and you're a diamond cutter, you have to throw it out. You can't use it.

Nothing in the universe can cut it. It will cut the wheel. It will destroy the diamond wheel.

It'll just destroy it. There'll just be two pieces left. You know?

And you can't do anything with them. So they sell them to oil well companies. And they put them in the head of a drill.

And they... they're what cuts through the rock. That's...

you gotta have diamonds impregnated into the alloy of the... of the tip of the oil well drill. So that...

they use the twin crystals for that. Okay? So anyway, that's a very typical natural diamond shape.

And it became a... vajra. Okay?

That's... Dorje means diamond, right? Diamond vajra.

So that's why the vajra is shaped like that. The reason I put the photo there is... Here's the...

Okay? This part of the vajra, here, is the billions of years before you heard the pen. Okay?

The big part. Then the next part, this... this ribs here, this second part here, not to the middle yet.

Halfway to the middle. There's another, like, joint here. That's the second of the five paths, which is what?

Joy-Long. Joy-Long. Path of Preparation.

What happens during the Path of Preparation? You get a good explanation of the pen. Okay?

What happens in the second path? You get an intellectual... a conceptual explanation of the pen from somebody.

And that's all. If you get a good explanation of the pen, you're on the second path. Okay?

Why is that significant? The second path has four parts to it. One of those parts is called kshanti, or sattva, which in this case doesn't mean patience, it means mastery.

When you reach that level, it's impossible to go to a lower birth after you die. Okay? So if someone just runs around the world paying people to listen to the pen thing...

I think in India, how much we spend per person? It was like... I think it was $80 a person who came to the talks.

We spent $80 a person to tell them about the pen. It was all free. We just spent the money.

And why would you do that? If they understand the pen well, they cannot be born in a lower birth after that. Okay?

That's cool. Okay. Well, we have to talk about it someday.

But... Anyway, it's a good start. Okay?

Okay? You can actually save them from a lower birth. If they apply it to their life fairly assiduously, they won't go to a lower birth.

Okay. Then this middle, what do you guess it is? Yeah, the path of seeing, 20 minutes.

Okay. Then seven lifetimes to process. It's called the path of processing.

Okay? The Sanskrit is Bhavana, which means meditation or can mean to get used to something. I think processing is a very clear word for what it really is.

You're processing what happens. Okay? And you're starting to use it in your real life.

Okay? In the way that Tsongkhapa just taught us. First you can use it for...

You know, get physical things you want in your life. And then you can use it for... health.

He says health is next. And then relationships. And then inner peace.

And then saving the world. So those are the five subjects of DCI. That's all we do in DCI, is those five subjects.

And you're supposed to do them in order. Even the Buddha. Okay.

Okay. And then why is this one big at the end? Fat.

Huh? No more learning. Yeah, path of no more learning.

That's the time you spend as a Buddha. And it's infinite. Okay?

So the first part is infinite. The second part is infinite. And then these two halfway points are, you know, between seven lifetimes and half an hour.

And then this middle one is twenty minutes. And according to Kamalashila, that's why it's called the Diamond Cutter Sutra. That's why it's called the Diamond Sutra.

The diamond means the Buddhist path. The five parts of a Buddhist career. Evolution.

Number one, suffer infinitely until you have so many disasters you get spiritual. Right? And then secondly, someone explains emptiness to you, correct me, with a pen.

And you know, it sounds to you so boring, you know, I heard that twenty times. I had a French guy, I told you, right? In Singapore.

He actually got angry at me for teaching the pen again in the class. but, it's extremely rare to have the karma to hear somebody explain it correctly. You know, it's like one person out of ten million or something gets to hear that.

And then, and then if they teach you shamatha, you can apply that in meditation and reach the path of seeing. Right? If you have that extra tool, shamatha.

And then, which is what we're doing this week. And then, you process what you saw. And then you get enlightened.

Okay? And you can help people. Okay?

So, we're going to do one meditation and then we're going to take a break. A fresh juice break. This is the first of the twenty-five kamalashila meditations.

Okay? And I'm, I'm going to really try hard to get through all of them this week, which is hard for me because I talk too much. Okay?

Okay. We're going to do the first meditation of kamalashila. And I, and at home today, you're going to do it for like fifteen minutes at a time, twenty minutes at a time.

And it's like an honest assessment of how far are you, where are you on that vajra? Okay? How far are you?

Are you past number one? You haven't had your big life disaster yet? Your mother didn't die on your arms?

Your brother didn't shoot himself in the head out back behind the house? Okay? Okay?

That's, that's like step number one. So, you can say, I'm still here. I'm still having a confusing life.

Okay? Or, did I reach to this second spoke here? You know, did I hear the pen?

Did I get a good explanation of the pen? Did I have the karma to have someone tell me where stuff is coming from? Or, or did I even have the path of seeing?

Direct perception. Okay? Or, am I processing what I saw when I was at the path of seeing?

And I can see, and I know how soon I will be a Buddha. I know where that Buddha will be. I know where that Buddha's name will be.

I know where they'll be doing their shtick. Okay? And then, Buddha, okay, where are you on this Vajra?

Okay? Okay? Just, just get it clear in your mind.

Okay? Ready? Here we go.

We'll do a short one. This is one of those five minute, five minute inside timer meditations. Those of you who weren't here this week, get this, get this thing.

Okay? Get this timer. It's a, it's a God-send.

Okay? Buddha-send. Okay, ready?

Here we go. Five minute meditation. Where am I on the Vajra?

Which, which place did I reach? Okay? Here we go.

Obviously, you still have to not move your body, because that's why we practice not moving your body. Three deep breaths. Long exhale.

Yawn is not exhale. Okay, can open your eyes. Stretch.

One question.

[Speaker 2]
The question is, why the habituation happens after seeing emptiness directly, because what we are doing right now is to learn emptiness and try to get used to it and evolve a habit of our life.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good question. Uh, we're also making habits on the second path. That's true.

Like, if we just heard about the pen, it's true. We are trying to make some good habits. The, the, the name of the fourth path, path of habituation, getting used to it, it means getting used to what I saw when I saw kongshing directly.

Okay? So, but it's true. Second path, we are also getting used to the idea of the pen.

We could call the second path habituation, but then we'd have to say habituation number one and habituation number two. So, we call it path of preparation because, because it gets you ready to see emptiness directly. Okay?

The pen gets you ready to see emptiness directly. Okay, we'll take a ten-minute pee-pee break. Uh, the next thing that happens in the sutra is they, they set the scene.

It's called lengshi in Tibetan. Uh, it means, let's set the scene. And they say that Lord Buddha was sitting in a garden near Shravasti.

So, Shravasti, in Tibetan it's called nyen yu. Uh, and I went to see Shravasti. Uh, that's a long story.

I went to see it on the millennium because they said the world was going to blow up. And I wanted to be sitting where the Buddha taught the diamond cutters. So I went, that day I went there and I, I sat where he taught the diamond cutter.

At midnight I was, I was on the rocks where he taught the diamond cutter. And nothing happened and I just went to bed. but, uh, Shravasti is a city, one of the reasons we found it was because of Xuanzang's excellent records.

Uh, he, he gives very precise uh, distances of where each great Buddhist city is from each other. So it was buried. And because of the record, the great Tang Dynasty records of his trip, we have, uh, people were able to find it and dig it out.

And you can go visit it. So outside of the city of Shravasti, uh, there's a garden where the Buddha taught the diamond cutter. Uh, then Kamalashila talks about Shravasti, okay?

And it comes from the word shru, which means to hear. Like shruti box or, it's a music box, right? And, uh, shruti means to, Kelsey, you gotta move just a little bit.

Someone's trying to get my, uh, Okay. So it comes from shru, which means to, to hear, to listen. And that's the first of the three Buddhist, uh, to some gum, right?

Uh, listen, contemplate, and then meditate. So shru, Shravasti means place of listening. But it also means famous, well heard.

Everybody heard about it. So Kamalashila says the reason the town was called Shravasti was that, uh, Lord Buddha was already famous. And that was his tine.

In Tibetan, tine means that was his hangout. That was his normal hangout. It's a beautiful word.

It means hangout. And, uh, his hangout was, uh, that city. So the city got well known because he was well known, okay?

So one reason the city is called Shravasti is that the well known person was living there. Uh, the other reason is that in time, because of the famous, because of the fame of the Diamond Cutter Sutra, uh, that place became famous retroactively, okay? Okay, so, so in a famous place called Shravasti, uh, Lord Buddha gave this teaching in a, in a garden called, uh, Jetavana, okay?

Jetavana. And vana means garden. And then jeta means, uh, the name of a prince, a very wealthy prince.

Uh, you could say like a politician, okay? And his name was Jeta. Uh, and, um, apparently he owned the land.

There's some confusion about it, but he owned this land outside of Shravasti which was a nice garden. Very nice, like Diamond Mountain. Uh, like kind of, uh, out in the, out in the boondocks.

And, um, and Buddha liked to hang out in that kind of place. Like, it was, uh, not in the city. He doesn't, he didn't like to live in the city.

So he would live in the forest outside of the Shravasti city in this place called Jetavana, okay? And, uh, the land was originally owned by, by Jeta, Prince Jeta. Uh, and then there was a famous lay person, a businessman, and his name was Anathapindada.

So, uh, a means not, right? And natha means protector. Like, uh, and I used to confuse it with natharaj, but it's not the same.

That natha is spelled differently. It's a retroflex, and it means to dance. Natha is classical dance.

But natha is protector, like Maitreya natha. Maitreya is often called the protector, jambgun. So, uh, anatha means no, no protector.

Pinda means, uh, food, soup kitchen. Pinda, okay, means food, any kind of food. And then the last da, that, that da, pinda is retroflex, pinda, with your tongue back.

Pinda, pinda, say pinda. If you want to talk good Indian, you got to turn your tongue back. Hello, how are you?

Very good. I thought you were having some kind of tea. Yes, thank you.

Pinda da. And then the da is just a flat tongue. Pinda da.

So, da means to give. Like, donation comes from that, data comes from that. Okay, so, pinda da means, uh, the name of that businessman was pinda da, anatha pinda da, because he gives food to those who don't have anyone to take care of them.

Anatha pinda da. Okay, so his name was the guy who likes to give food to the people who have nobody to take care of them, okay? So, anatha pinda da went to Prince Jedha and said, I want to buy this land for Lord Buddha, you know.

And Prince Jedha said, I'm not interested in selling it. And then the businessman, he said, I'll give you anything. Anything you ask for, I'll give you.

He said, okay. You see this big grassy area, you know, the main park? You cover it with so many diamonds that I cannot see the grass.

And that's the price. So, anatha pinda da did it. Some book says gold, but it was diamonds.

Rinchen, the book says Rinchen. So he did it. Anatha pinda da covered the park with jewels until you couldn't see the grass.

And that was the price, okay. By the way, the good news is later Prince Jedha became a fan of the Buddha and built all of the temples there and all of the... On the land, he built temples and he built places for Buddha's followers to stay.

He built all the cabins. Okay. So, later.

So, Kamalashila makes a big deal about, near the city called famous, you have a major business figure interacting with a major political figure to give Lord Buddha a place to hang out in a quiet, foresty place. Okay. And then he goes off on a long commentary on the importance of a balanced life.

He makes it a big deal. He says, nothing in this story is a mistake. Nothing is an accident.

There's a reason for everything. You know. There's a reason why a businessman is working with a politician to have a place for Lord Buddha to sit quiet away from the hustle and bustle of Shravasti.

Okay. So, he goes off on a long thing that this is no mistake. This is a message from Lord Buddha that we must balance our life.

Okay. You have to have a career. You have to make some kind of living.

You can't feed off of other people. You know. That's a very negative thing.

After a while, it gets very negative. Okay. You should have your own career.

You should make some honest money. Okay. And then you should balance that by going on retreats, doing lots of meditation.

And the reason Lord Buddha is sitting in a businessman's forest that was paid for from the politician and Lord Buddha is there quiet all the time. It's a message to us that our life should be the same kind of balance. That we have to find a balance between busy and quiet and city life and country life and in a few hours 1,250 monks and an unspecified number of great bodhisattvas are going to show up for a teaching.

Right. So, he says Lord Buddha is balancing this like DCI tour mentality with his quiet time. And he says you have to find that balance.

He says Master Kamalashila says that's why Lord Buddha chose this place. That's why he chose this businessman. He chose this politician.

And he chose that place to be. It's going to be a huge mass of people come for a teaching. And then they all go home and he's back to his meditative state.

You see. So, he says we have to be capable to balance our life the same way. He makes a big deal about there's a reason why Lord Buddha gave this teaching under those circumstances.

It was a message in itself. Okay. You ready to meditate on it?

Okay. And you're going to meditate on this today. How well am I doing?

You know. Am I overdoing the meditation and the quiet part? Or am I overdoing the busy part?

But a Mahayana Buddhist has to be able to do both. You know. You got to be able to go on a tour and be in front of 10,000 people.

And then you got to go to that mountain and do your retreats. And if you get out of balance the purpose of retreat is to learn how to serve people. Then you serve people.

Then you got to get back into retreat to charge yourself up and learn more about how to serve people. Okay. But one without the other doesn't make any sense.

Okay. Alright. Here we go.

How well am I doing my balance? And obviously the point of this week is if you meditate on that every day for 5, 6, 7 days you might come up with some kind of plan of action. Like maybe I should come to that mountain every 3 months and do a 10 day retreat.

You know or something. I should or you know lock my house and you know. You supposed to come up with some kind of plan to balance things.

It's not enough to just meditate about it. Okay. Ready?

So the plan can start forming in your mind today. And all week you should meditate. Okay.

And refine it. And then observe yourself. How do I feel after retreat?

How do I feel after a DCI tour? My experience is the DCI tour gives me the karma to have great retreat. You see.

And you'll find that. You know. Working on a DCI program is and then you come back here and you go into a retreat it's like dynamite.

Okay. Something like that. Or you teach a bunch of yoga classes and then you come here.

Okay. Alright. 5 minutes.

What is going on there? You made it more complicated. How well am I achieving the balance of the garden and the city that Lord Buddha wanted us to have according to Kamoshida?

Okay. Three deep breaths. In the Gomrim, Kamalashila and Pabongkha Rinpoche they get into when they talk about shamatha and how to develop shamatha they talk about it on three levels and we'll get into it.

Okay. The first level is karmic. You know.

What is the karmic level? What is the level of karma that would create shamatha? Because really whether or not you can focus your mind there's that famous letter by Tsongkhapa, right?

To his students about morality causes the karma to have shamatha. Okay. So, you can have the correct circumstances like a nice retreat cottage built by the three-year retreatants.

We have a lot of them here. Can you raise your hands if you're a three-year retreatant? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.

Yeah. And if you served the three-year retreat twelve, thirteen. I'd like to give them all a hand.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

They built the cabins knowing they would give them away. Okay. They spent all their money and more.

Some of them still have debt. They built the cabin just, they know after three years they're going to give it away for us to use forever. So, I think it's amazing.

And most of them don't have a house to stay in. They're just staying in different places, you know. So they gave up their house so we could have a retreat cabin.

I think it's pretty cool. I like it. Okay.

So, on a karmic level, this week we have to identify what are the karmas for shamatha. What do I have to do in November to have shamatha in December? You see what I mean?

And that doesn't have to do with how straight you sit or what kind of cushion you use. Right? Those are the second thing, which is circumstances, you know.

What kind of cushion should you have? How, you know, things like that. How should you sit?

What kind of place should you live in? Okay? Stuff like that.

What kind of job should you have? Those are more circumstances. And then there's technique, you know.

Like, if I feel subtle dullness coming up, how do I stop it? How do I identify subtle agitation in my meditation? You see what I mean?

Those are technique. So, karma is the foundation. So if you're doing DCI organizing in Guangzhou and it's a big headache all year, you know, for those five days and a couple thousand people come.

And then you say, Geshe-la, I didn't have time to meditate. But you are creating the cause for meditation, you see? If you don't do that and you just quit and you move to Diamond Mountain, you won't have enough karma to reach Samatha.

Okay? It's very interesting. You need the karma.

Because that peaceful state of mind is also opening out of karmic seeds the same as the one for the pen. It's the same, okay? The peaceful state of mind, Samatha, is opening out of seeds you planted a month ago, okay?

So if you don't plant the seeds and you come here and you get in the best cabin, Gyelse's cabin, and you have perfect hippie food and you know, and it's very quiet and you just think about internet or something, you know, something will happen. You don't have the karma. And you know that.

Those of you who tried to meditate, you know that. Everything is perfect and you can't get anywhere. So there's a karmic foundation and then there are conditions.

You have to learn what are the correct conditions, okay? Circumstances. Building, house, food, exercise, okay?

And then technique inside your mind, okay? How do you observe your mind? How do you fix problems in your meditation internally?

Okay? Those three levels. But the foundation is karma, which is the balance between the garden and the outside life, okay?

You can do the outside life here, doing maintenance on cabins and stuff.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Alright? Okay, so the next subject is the next thing that happens in Diamond Cutter Sutra is Lord Buddha, you know, gets up out of bed. He puts on his chugga, which is the outer robe, and he takes his lungse, which is his...

Rinpoche used to object to calling it beggar's bowl. He would call it wisdom bowl, you know. I went to Sri Lanka on a business trip like many years ago, and they found out I was a monk, and then they said, do you want to go hang out with the other monks?

I said, yeah, sure. I was buying, I don't know, rubies or something. Sapphires.

And then, I got to go with the monks to beg for food. Those bowls are like this big.

[Speaker 2]
Really.

[Speaker 1]
They're like this big. You know? And we went to somebody's house, and you're like...

And you put it down. And then they put all the food in at once. You know?

First they put in, I don't know, bread, then they put in rice, then they put in the dong, then they put in the salad, then it's all full. Then they had an ice cream cone. They put it on the top.

You know? I was like, I can't eat all this. It's like Diamond Mountain.

And... But it was cool to go asking for food. In my Thailand, my Bangkok office, people used to come late for work.

And I'd say, you know, you've got to come on time. And they said, no, no, no. The monks were late.

I was waiting for the monks. I had food to give to the monks, and they didn't come to my house. You know?

So... Anyway. Lord Buddha gets his bowl, and he walks to the town.

He walks to Shravasti. You see? He goes to Shravasti, and he asks for food.

And then... Master Kabbalah Shilla has a long discussion about why does Lord Buddha have to go looking for food if he has a diamond body? He doesn't need to eat.

You know? Why is he going for food? You know?

And he says one reason is that it gives him a chance to interact with normal people. You know? Not people who would come to a Dharma talk.

So, he gets a chance to meet normal people. In those days, women were not encouraged much to come to a Dharma talk. So, he gets to teach people at home, old people who couldn't walk to the garden, poor people, and sick people, and blind people.

And, you know, by the way, he says Buddha just heals a couple blind people every morning. You know? Because he goes to their house to ask for food.

And he's giving them a chance to get the karma to give him some food. You know? Then he makes a thing called...

What's it called? I think it's a Yubu, but... Maybe you've seen lamas do it.

When they're finished with breakfast, they take the last half a waffle, and they roll it up into a ball of flour, and then you grab it with your fingers like this. Okay? You put it here, and you grab it.

You make fingerprints on it. And then you press the top down like this. Okay?

There should be a little piece coming out here. We should do it tomorrow. Somebody bring some bread.

I'll make one for you. Okay. So you make it, and you press it down, and then you drop it on the floor.

You know? I used to have to clean up after that. All these monks are dropping them on the floor.

And that's a... And it's a long story. There was a preta woman with 500 kids, and each one gets a hundred.

A hundred kids get off of each section, and it's a long story. And then... But you can feed spirits with leftover offerings.

So Lord Buddha goes to get food so he can make these little cheongbus and offer them to the spirits. Then there's a long story in Kamalashiva's commentary about what kind of spirits, because you've got to be a really lucky spirit to get Lord Buddha's cheongbu. And there are powerful spirits who can eat it, and then the other spirits get sick a little bit if they try to eat it.

And if you're a powerful spirit and you get to eat Lord Buddha's cheongbu, then you suddenly have all these realizations, and you have these little bliss things going on. So he's explaining. And then the main thing is that according to Kamalashiva, a lot of what the Buddha did around his followers was to make them comfortable.

You know, Rinpoche used to watch TV a lot. And then one day I realized he wasn't looking at it. then I thought, why is he watching the TV?

Why does he have the TV on? And it was always for when the Westerners were in his room, then they felt more comfortable because the TV was on. It didn't feel like they're in Tibet or something.

They felt they're at home because there's a television going. So a lot of what Lord Buddha does, especially a lot of his followers were poor. They came from the lower caste.

So even in India today, there's a Buddhist movement, but they're all lower caste. So a lot of what he did was to make them comfortable. So they would feel comfortable to be around him.

If he let the politician and the businessman give him lots of money, and he has lots of servants, and he doesn't have to go beg for food, but they do. Then there gets sort of a class class division inside the Sangha. So he wants to create some harmony that he will live in poverty.

Like Gandhi or something. He will live in poverty, and then all his students are more comfortable. Then a very cool thing happens.

It says, Lord Buddha came back, ate the food, and then put the bowl away because he would not eat again that day. So this is a custom in the old Vinaya that a monk shouldn't eat after 12 o'clock. After 12 noon, a monk and nun shouldn't have any solid food.

When I went to Sri Lanka, it was really cute. I stayed in a government in a government bungalow in an arboretum in Kandy. very, very beautiful.

And there was an old caretaker there. We got there in the afternoon, and he's like, Oh, you're a monk. I said, Yeah.

He says, Come on in the kitchen. I got an idea. And he took all this food and he ground it up in a blender so it would pour.

He says, Once you can pour it, it's not food. It's not food. It's not legally food.

It's like JB's Green Jing. By the way, you have to give them a recipe today. I'd like a green drink tomorrow in the morning.

You should have a green drink like almond milk and greens and banana and berries and agave. For everybody. Because you're going to have to do yoga and you got to have some fuel in yourself.

And we'll get some real orange juicers. I'll raise the money. You just buy them.

There's two choices. You can get lots of those little ones and have a team on it. Or you can get one of those monster ones that takes the orange.

You decide. But try to get one in a day or two. I'll get the money.

Honey. Green drink. Green drink and real fresh orange juice.

That's good. Somebody has to teach them to make ginger tea. Xiaoping.

Teach them to make a real ginger tea. This is like Dai Jinba. What's Dai Jinba?

Horse pee pee. Like a real strong Chinese ginger tea. Wake you up.

Make you warm. Teach them. Give them recipe today.

So we're going to have three things tomorrow. Green drink, real orange juice. If we could get the machines today, I don't know.

That's a challenge, I know. They may not be in Wilcox. And some real hot ginger tea.

It tastes like honey in it or something like that. With real ginger. You teach them.

I think you put some chili in there or something. Okay. Then Lord Buddha came back.

It says, the sutra says, he ate his breakfast and washed the bowl and put it away because he would not be eating again. So the old custom is that monk shouldn't eat afternoon. When you become a monk in the Tibetan system, you can specify, I won't eat afternoon for so many weeks or something.

So I did it for 19 years or something. And it was great. It's really healthy.

You don't eat any solid food after 12 o'clock. My whole business career, I didn't eat solid food after noon. So I'd have like six pieces of pizza at lunch.

And it's really healthy. It makes you really healthy. When I started to do yoga in the morning, I couldn't eat in the morning either.

And that got difficult. So I started eating in the evening. Afternoon.

So you can switch it. It's okay. It doesn't matter.

You can not eat afternoon. Just green drinks or juices. And it's very good for your health.

So of the three causes of samatha, where would you put that? Is it karmic? Is it situational?

Or is it inner mental technique? Yeah, it's more like situation. Like you control your eating.

So Lord Buddha is already teaching us how to get samatha. Eat carefully. Eat well.

Eat well. Eat with great self-control. You can live on about half the food that people eat.

In America you can live on a quarter. A quarter. David Life used to tell me he's very healthy.

He said, leave a quarter of your stomach empty. And so you have a little edge. So Lord Buddha is teaching us already the causes of samatha.

And a big one is careful eating. A big one is careful eating. And people will give you all these instructions for samatha like put your left hand down.

Twist your right finger. You know it should be a quarter inch. And then they'll go eat sweet rolls and have coffee.

I read... I'm not criticizing, but maybe. Iyengar wrote a book called How to Do Pranayama.

And he said, you can check it out in the introduction it says, I just couldn't get it for 15 years. Every morning I would try to do pranayama. It just wouldn't come.

I would wake up. My wife would make me coffee. I'd have my coffee.

I'd sit down and meditate. It just wouldn't come. And I'm like, duh.

You can check it out. Light on pranayama. Light on pranayama.

He learned pranayama by spying on his teacher. His teacher refused to teach him pranayama. So he snuck in his house and watched him.

I don't know how good it came out. So, anyway. The next lesson, and you can meditate on it at home.

We're not going to do it here. Am I eating well? And it's not a small part of a spiritual life.

It's a big part. It took me a whole lifetime to understand that. It's a big thing to learn to eat well.

It's not like they have an eating class in school or college. At Princeton, there's no Eating 101. But it's a big part of a human life.

To learn to eat correctly is a big part of human life. And I think those of you who did three-year retreat, in my three-year retreat, I got this intense hunger for dark greens and almond milk and, you know, healthy things. So, your meditation is much, much better.

If you want to meditate, I don't know, at 11 o'clock in the morning, you have to plan it at 9 o'clock. You have to decide what you're going to eat at 9 o'clock. If you eat a heavy breakfast, you won't have a good meditation.

If you have a green drink, which I don't like, okay, it's like yoga. I don't like it. But I know if I have a green drink at 9 o'clock, I'll have a good meditation at 11.

So I just have a green drink most days. I just make a decision, you know, I'd rather have a good meditation at 11. So that you have to plan at 9 o'clock.

What you put in your body at 9 o'clock will decide how the meditation goes at 11. It's a big factor, okay? So learn to eat well.

Give up meat. Eventually give up dairy and eggs, okay? And you can learn to make your own milk from nuts and what do you call that?

Hemp milk. I have hemp milk, flax milk, almond milk. They're very nice, you know.

You don't need cow milk. The cows suffer very, very badly, you know. It's not innocent.

The butter, the milk, they are suffering very, very bad. And they kill them. When they don't make enough milk, they kill them, they make dog food out of them, okay?

They don't put them in a pasture and keep feeding them. They don't want to waste the money, okay? If you're a boy cow, you get killed right away.

That's why veal was invented. Veal means baby boy cow's meat. It's a special dish in Europe, okay?

It's called veal. The reason it exists is that boys don't make milk. You just need one boy to keep the other ladies pregnant all the time.

The woman who makes the milk has to be pregnant all the time. It's a kind of slavery. And it's very unpleasant to be pregnant all the time.

Guess what? I mean, morning sickness for 20 years, you know. To make milk, they have to be pregnant.

They suffer, they suffer. It's very bad, it's very suffering. Then if you drink it, then it's going to affect your meditation, okay?

Cheese and meat, meat especially, okay? The Tibetan monks are eating meat, some of them. And I used to get confused.

I say, you know, why are you eating meat? They say, well, I didn't kill it. And it still bothered me.

And then I'd say, I met this lama. I said, Rinpoche, you know, why do you eat meat? He said, I didn't kill it.

I just buy meat. I don't kill a cow, I just buy meat. I said, okay, so if somebody wants to sell me an iPhone, but I know it's stolen, is it okay to buy it?

He said, no, no, that's very bad. Then I said, okay, so you stole the cow's body. Now, okay, you didn't kill the cow, but are you buying stolen goods or not?

Did the cow agree to give their body or was it stolen from them? Oh, it was stolen. So are you just the same as buying a stolen iPhone?

It's the same thing. Okay, you're not killing a cow, but you're buying stolen things. Okay.

By the way, my monastery banned meat like five years ago. After 600 years, okay, they don't eat meat, officially. In the temple, they don't eat meat.

So, the next meditation you will do, which is on the second page, I like the photos, okay, learn the photos. I can do the 25 meditations with my eyes closed because I just bring up the next photo. I don't try to remember what it's about.

I just bring up the next photo. Okay, so it's like a video. The third photo is a kid with a bowl.

It means Lord Buddha put his bowl away and he took off his robe and he put it away. Why? Eating, feeding is done for the day.

Now I can practice, okay. And in the evening, have a big, you know, have a big, you know, green shank or something. Or in the morning, if you're doing yoga in the morning.

So, get Andriana and make you a nice shank. It's really fun. JB, as you get older, like me and JB, you keep throwing more stuff into your green shank.

It's like, oh, I got to have green, what do they call it? I got to have the lake algae. That's such a scam.

It's a whole lake full of algae and they charge you like $20 for it. They go scrape some off a rock and sell it to you. But it's, I don't know.

If you ask JB, he looks great. Somebody told me, a massage therapist told me he had the strongest body they ever saw in a human being. Now, at his age, 43, I think.

But, you can take care of your body and then your meditation is much better, okay. And that includes yoga, okay. Yoga was invented for meditation.

If your back is strong and you got good abs, you not only look sexy, but you meditate, it makes your meditation great. And I don't like yoga. I have to say that.

I don't like it. Every day is a struggle. I put on Bob Harper and I put on a DVD and I just do what he says.

I say, I hate you. Okay, the next hour is yours. Just beat me up.

And it's really good for your meditation. Okay, so some of the shamatha techniques we'll be doing this week depend on a strong abs and a strong back, okay. So if you don't, if your belly is like hanging out and your back is bent like that, you'll get tired.

Your meditation will get bad. So you have to have strong, if this is strong, the back is strong. And then you can sit for a long time.

That's why yoga was invented. That's why the name for the yoga poses is Asana. Which means helps you to sit.

As means to sit. Na means Ana means helps you to. Asana means helps you to sit.

You see, the name for yoga poses is helps you to sit, okay. I think as is related to us. Okay, the verb is as, to sit, okay.

The older verb is as, to be, okay. Asti means to be, okay. Okay, so you're going to do your third meditation and you're going to check your life.

Am I living a simple lifestyle, okay. Am I living a simple lifestyle? Do I eat light, healthy food, okay.

And then do I put my bowl away or do I have a... you know, do I sneak cookies for the rest of the day? Okay, that's a...

You're not allowed to... You'll see in the sutra it says he ate his meal in one sitting which is also a requirement in Vinaya. You can't go with that big bowl and then eat all day.

You have to eat your meal in one sitting. So sometimes the sitting is quite long. But...

You're supposed to finish and then don't snack all day, okay. Now some people have adrenal problems, some people have... The doctor will tell you to snack all day.

Doctor told Veronica to snack all day because of her adrenals are built that way. So if the doctor says you should snack all day then you should snack all day, okay. Little bit every few hours, okay.

Some people do better because if you just eat once a day you get this big spike and then you're depressed all evening, okay. So if you're that kind of personality you should eat a little bit all day. All right.

I'll do one more then we'll stop, okay. We got like five minutes. Then the Buddha washes his feet, okay.

And... Master Kamalashila says there's two reasons for that. Number one, you don't get toe jam on your meditation cushion.

Toe jam means the dirt that comes here. So he says, Lord Buddha doesn't want to get... It took me like two hours to figure out the Sanskrit word for toe jam.

He doesn't want to get toe jam on his meditation seat because it's not elegant. And then he says he's honoring people in India have a thing called snatu. Do you know what that is?

Snatu. It means ritual bathing. So they go to the Ganges River every morning and they throw water on their hand and they wash.

You can see it if you go to the Ganges. So they are doing this snatu. So Lord Buddha was living in a Hindu country.

He was a Hindu. He's like Jesus was a Jew. Okay.

So he was a Hindu. So he wanted to respect the customs of his country. So Master Kamalashila in his commentary, he makes a big deal about Lord Buddha's behavior is always trying to fit in with the locals.

And sometimes us Buddhist people, we want to show how Buddhist we are and we irritate everybody. Normal people. We look culty or we look weird to them.

And Kamalashila makes a big deal about Lord Buddha practices Buddhism quietly and without freaking out the natives. Okay. No, and it's a big lesson for us because we're in a country that's not Buddhist.

And we shouldn't do things that make people very uncomfortable if it's not completely necessary. If there's a way to fit in with the local people more comfortably then a Buddhist person should do it. Because by not upsetting their mind you create the karma for shamatha.

Okay. Because shamatha is a peaceful mind. So if you respect other people's feelings and don't insult them by doing some extreme Buddhist thing that you don't have to do in front of them, then you're collecting the karma to have shamatha.

Okay. So he's a big deal. He makes a big deal about why Lord Buddha washes his feet in the sutra.

I'm trying... Can we get a copy of the sutra and hand it out? Can you give it to me?

Or give it to Michael? We have it in four languages. I think Tibetan, Chinese, Sanskrit, and English.

She worked on it. So you can read the sutra. You can follow the sutra.

But in the sutra he washes his feet. After he sets his bowl aside he washes his feet. Then he goes into...

So the point of that is try to make local people comfortable. Try to make your family... Don't freak out your parents.

You know, what are you doing? I'm doing death meditation. You know?

First I see your body filled with flies. And then, you know... Try to...

A big part of Buddhist morality is just getting along with people around you. Not freaking them out. One day my 19 years of bus to and from New York, we broke down.

The only place nearby was a bar. You know? So I went in there.

I called my friend to come pick me up. And I went in the bar. It was like snowing.

And all these guys drinking in the bar like, hey man, where you at? I said, did you see a football game the other day, man? Did you see a guy kick that guy's ass?

They're like, yeah, man. And then, you gotta... You gotta get along with the people around you.

You should learn to fit in with the people. That's a Buddhist skill. You shouldn't insult the people around you.

I'm a Buddhist. You know? My parents offer me meat, I eat it.

With a smile. You know? Some Lama asked me to make momos, I make them.

I made a momo video, and then my friends tell me, you can't put that on on YouTube. How to cut the meat with a cleaver. It's a good video.

Because sometimes a Lama will ask you for momos. Then you make it. It's okay.

Okay? Try to get along with other people. It's more important than being a perfect Buddhist.

It is being a perfect Buddhist. Okay. Okay, last thing.

Which is your fourth meditation. Lord Buddha, then he sits down on his meditation cushion, and he goes into meditation. SEM NGUNG PA DUG PA BYAS PA And he collects his thoughts.

Okay? That's what the sutra says. So, uh, then Kamalashila has a lot to say about that.

And then we'll finish, okay? So he says, first of all, DANG POR SANG, the sutra says, Lord Buddha sat up straight. And he says, that's the eight part position of Vairagyana.

Like how to keep your body in meditation. How to keep your hands, how to keep your shoulders, how to keep your chin, how to keep your eyes, how to keep your back. In the sutra, it specifically says, he took the time to sit up correctly.

You know? And then, uh, the verb there is, uh, without kyowa, and without, if your chin goes down, you get sleepy. If the chin goes high, you get distracted.

Okay? So the chin is, they go into a big thing about the chin. Okay?

So Lord Buddha, even Lord Buddha, who has a diamond body, and his channels are perfect, right? He sits correctly. Okay?

If you have back problems, get the diamond wheel. I'll bring it tomorrow. You could just roll on it for a couple minutes, and then you can meditate for another half hour.

It's really cool. Okay? So, you gotta even out your vertebrae, and you have to even out the two channels that run along the spine.

They have to be fluid. They have to be open. So if you have...

There's a kind of yoga thing you can do to just, uh, keep those open, and keep them running nice. And then you won't have pain. You won't get pain in your back.

Then you can meditate for like two, three hours. Okay? Uh...

Whoop! Two last questions. Where did the meditation seat come from?

There's a big deal in Kamalashina. How did Lord Buddha's meditation seat, this one, how did it get there on the floor? Who put it there?

Do you know? Brahma and Chakra and Indra. Okay?

These high Hindu gods. Uh... Because they asked him to teach.

The humans weren't smart enough to ask him to teach. Nobody in Varanasi area or Bodhgaya, they didn't know anything. They didn't ask him to teach.

Lord Buddha was never asked by a human to teach. He was asked by the gods to teach. So who are those gods?

They are temporary gods. They die. They have problems.

Okay? They're in samsara. They're samsara gods.

But they are super powerful. They're like three Donald Trumps in one. Okay?

It means they can crush a planet with their fingers. Okay? There is such a being.

Okay? They can blow out a sun. They can blow out a star with their breath.

Okay? There are beings that big. Okay?

They exist. And it's a... The karma to get to be them we'll talk about later.

Okay? It's gonna come in the sutra. The karma to be Indra or Brahma and blow out stars like candles is doing wrong meditation.

So we have to learn what is that meditation. Okay? It's a mistake in your meditation.

And instead of becoming a Buddha, you become a very powerful mortal being. Yeah. Who suffers.

Okay? But you can... Because you meditated so well, you can crush planets and you can move around worlds.

Okay? Like that. So they put his cushion down.

While he was out asking for food, the three most powerful beings in the universe came and arranged his cushion. Okay? Okay.

Last thing. Dinkam Lashila says, Why should a big guy like Lord Buddha sit on the floor? Why do Buddhists sit on the floor when they meditate?

I don't like these chairs, by the way. I just wanted you to experience what Thay Rinpoche put us through for 30 years. In these really lousy folding chairs in New Jersey.

They're still there. So painful. Now, we decided, I think Michael and Melissa, we decided that we couldn't fit everybody if we put everybody on the floor.

There's not enough room. Right? If we did it that way, we'd have to tell some people they couldn't come to retreat.

Okay? So, sorry about the chairs. Maybe tomorrow you can leave some of your stuff outside.

Okay? If you're not going to use this stuff. Why do you think Lord Buddha sit on the floor?

I mean, Kamalashila asked the question. I always wondered about it. You know, why couldn't they make chairs in India?

It's partly to be in touch with the earth and it's partly humility. It's humility. Lord Buddha wants to make again, a lot of his disciples were from very poor families and they didn't have enough money to have a chair or furniture.

So they would sleep on the floor and they would sit on the floor. So he's trying to show solidarity with all of his students. And that's a good thing in a teacher.

If your students are going to suffer, you should suffer with them. Okay? Or take care of them and then take care of yourself.

Okay? But if your students have to go through something, you should go through it yourself. Okay?

Okay? Good? Alright, so please meditate on those four.

The schedule is there. You don't have to stick to the schedule. It's just a suggestion, but if we're all meditating at the same time in the valley, it makes sort of a union of our minds, you know.

So, I don't think you can stick to the schedule perfectly, but when you can, try to meditate at the same time as the rest of us. Okay? Does anybody not have a schedule?

Anybody need a schedule? You can just take a picture of it with your phone. I keep it on my phone.

Okay? And I'm very happy that we have so many of the three retreatants and thank you for coming. I haven't seen you guys for a while.

It's an honor to have you here. This building, you know, this is the highest part of the valley. so I don't know, someday, one day we decided to make a building here.

And then we found out, when we started digging, it's a solid rock. This is solid rock. This whole edge is solid rock.

So we were like, should we give it up? We said no. So we got, what do you call those things?

We got jackhammers. That they use for the streets. And like, people like Nick and, I don't know, there's people in here who spent two, three years, a cat with a jackhammer to dig out this, to dig out this foundation.

And then they built the dome. Cat designed the dome. And we built it out.

And I really like this building and I think we should use it more often. I think it's a very elevated place. It's a very holy place, I think.

I want to add a coffee shop. I'm not kidding. There's a place in Vienna I went to called, Peter took me there?

I think it's called Giulietta. And it's over, it's on the hill over Vienna. So when you sit in the coffee shop, you can see all of Vienna.

And on the other side is this blue, blue sky. And I said, I want to make the dome into the Giulietta coffee shop. So you could have, students could sit over here and have cappuccino and debate.

I think the American debating ground is a coffee shop. Really. So you could sit and talk about Kamashila.

Okay? So someday, this is the, this is my cottage adopter building. I'm helping with the monthly, although Dime Mountain didn't send me a bill, so I didn't pay it.

But I adopted part of this cottage. So, okay. We should make it nice.

Then people could do stargazing here. They could come out and have a hot cocoa and look at the stars. Allison could be here to explain each of the stars.

Just kidding. One Chinese lady asked me, after the first night she said, we had an astronomer here to teach them about the stars. And then at the end she said, will there be stars tomorrow?

Because you don't see them ever. But I think it would be a nice place to put a lot of glass and you can see the stars. Come up here in the evening and meditate and see the stars.

So thank you for building it. Thank you for all the hard work.