Серия «Сутра Алмазного огранщика» — Мастер Камалашила: медитации на «Сутру Алмазного огранщика», часть вторая (Аризона, 2016), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
You're sleepier than in the morning. Okay, let's start again. So, if you remember, Sabuddhi asked the Buddha a question, he said, in the days of dark ...

they're called Nyingma Nga. Let me see if I can find it for you. Yeah, in Buddhism, there's a thing called the days of dark, days of darkness, the end of the Buddha's teachings in this world.

And five things are happening during those times, they are called the five degenerations. And here's the first one. Thud Nyingma, Tsun Den, means ...

Tsun Den means ... a time of war and fighting, like we see in much of the world now. People tend to try to solve problems by fighting, okay?

I'm afraid Americans do this a lot, you know? So, they try to solve problems by fighting, okay? This is one of the signs of bad times, okay?

Secondly, Tsen Nyingmar Dukkhe Tsen ... Mar Dukkhe Tsen Lo Gyapa means ... in the beginning, people live for millions of years, their life span is millions of years, and then, because they do a lot of bad karma, the life span gets shorter and shorter and finally reaches ...

now it's called Tsen Lo Gyapa, means the times of a hundred years. People live about a hundred years, seventy years, sixty years, and we're very close to the bottom of huge cycles. So, kalpas, maha kalpas, great kalpas come in, huge cycles of millions of years, and we're at the ...

we're almost at the bottom of a cycle. Then people blow up this world and ... then it starts over again, okay?

In the Abhidharma they describe weapons that ... people use to fight with each other that burn the world. Okay?

Third degeneration is Tawa Nyingma Tsen Gyi Lo Gyur Kawa. People's viewpoint is very negative. They don't understand.

For example, the way they make money is to compete with each other rather than helping each other, okay? So, this viewpoint is very primitive and very negative, okay? I should fight with other people to make money instead of, I should share more and everyone will have more, okay?

Gyur Kawa is part of the third one, it means ... it's very difficult to change people's viewpoints in this time. You can teach them many many days, many years, and ...

it's very difficult for them to follow that idea, okay? Fourth degeneration is ... negative thoughts.

People's emotions are very violent. They are quick to get angry. Jealousy is very common.

And when they get angry or they feel jealousy, it goes on for a long time. Drakla Yul Ringwa means the emotions are very strong and they stay for a long time. The fifth one, SEMS CAN GNYIS MA RGYUD DANG DBANG PO'I GYUR KAWA means, in general, people are degenerate, okay?

They are difficult to make happy, and it's very difficult for them to control their mind and also their body, okay? They have trouble ... for example, in America, this is a very common problem of not being able to stop eating too much, you see?

So, it's difficult to change them. Their habits are negative and difficult to change, okay? So, so Subuddhi asked Lord Buddha, in these times, in these dark days, you know, at the end of the Buddha's teaching, will anyone ever understand the Diamond Cutter Sutra?

And Buddha says ... Yeah, yeah, before he says, of course, he says, don't ask this kind of question. This is a very ...

you know, stupid question. Very rarely in sutra does a Buddha criticize a student or correct a student directly, and in this case he's like, don't ask stupid things, okay? That's a really dumb question, and of course, there's going to be a big upsurge of interest in the Diamond Cutter Sutra and in these teachings, and everything's going to be great, okay?

So, I hope during your meditations you spent some time ... You know, usually when we get a ... a buffet of meditations, and some of the dishes are sweet, and some of the dishes are sour, we tend to go to the sour first.

You know, like ... these are the signs of a Buddha, and if you don't have them, you're a bad person, you know? So, I hope during your meditations you didn't sit and say, my hairline's not defined enough, or it's gone completely, or you know, okay?

It's not the purpose. You're supposed to think how lucky you are. You're already 99% Buddha's shape, okay?

From many millions of years of trying, you are very close to a Buddha's shape, okay? And then, besides that, Lord Buddha directly predicted you guys, okay? Lord Buddha said, these people are coming who will study the Diamond Cutter Sutra, and who will be interested in this path.

So, I hope you spent lots of time thinking about how lucky you are that someone two and a half thousand years ago, Mr. Know-it-all, said, these people will come, you know? And, I think it's cool, like, you are luckier than Tsongkapa's time, or Xuanzang's time, or Kamala Shila's time, you know? The Buddha wasn't talking about them.

The Buddha was talking about us, okay? Alright? So, I hope you think about that.

You are very lucky, very lucky to be here, okay? In the worst of times. Okay.

What's the next, what's the tenth photo in your book? It's some people in an airport. I don't know, I was sitting in my cottage and thinking, I haven't seen people in an airport for three or four days, and, so I got a photo.

Alright? At this point, Kamala Shila starts talking about Sangha Jewel, okay? Sangha Jewel.

Why? Why? Why?

Why does he start talking about Sangha Jewel here? Yeah. There's two Sangha Jewels, right?

There's a fake one and a real one, okay? There's a fake Sangha Jewel, and there's a real Sangha Jewel, okay? Fake one is, five or more monks, or five or more nuns, legally, in the Vinaya, is a Sangha, okay?

In English there's a word quorum, or it's enough monks or nuns to have a meeting and make decisions, okay? It's like a board of directors. So, in the Buddhism, basic meaning of Sangha is a group of enough monks or nuns to make decisions in a certain place, okay?

That's called Sangha. More broadly, the fake Sangha is anybody who's ordained, okay? Who has a full ordination, okay?

And, Kamalashila, here, at this point says, they're not the real Sangha. The real Sangha is the people, two and a half thousand years later, in the last five hundred years, who are studying diamond cutter, who meditate on emptiness, who go to Diamond Mountain as often as they can to stay in their cottage and see emptiness directly, okay? Those people are Sangha.

That's the Sangha Jewel, okay? Those people who saw emptiness directly is the genuine Sangha Jewel. Jenda Sangha Jewel, okay?

Those people are the real one, which is you, okay? It's you guys. You are very close to being the real Sangha.

So, Kamalashila is interesting, he's following the Lam Rim where we are right now, talking about the real Sangha Jewel, okay? So, now you've had real Buddha Jewel, real Dharma Jewel, and real Sangha Jewel, okay? I'll tell you something interesting here, okay?

I don't know, maybe John Brady can figure it out, or Word, or Annie, or somebody, okay? And I didn't put it in the pictures, okay? But it took me a long time to even start to understand it.

Kamalashila talks about the Dharma body, okay? Dharmakaya, Dharmakaya, okay? And he says there's a shepay chukwu and a tokpay chukwu, shepay chukwu and a tokpay chukwu, okay?

There's a Dharmakaya of explanations, and there's a Dharmakaya of understanding, okay? And why he talks about the Dharmakaya like that, because normally that's a division of the Dharma Jewel, okay? But he's talking about...

so he's mixing the three bodies and the... sorry, the four bodies and the three jewels, he's mixing them up somehow. He's making some cool connections, maybe John Brady can figure it out, I don't know.

But, he continues throughout his text to talk about the Dharmakaya which can be divided into... the Dharma body which can be divided into the explanations and the understandings, okay? So, you guys chew on that, okay?

Good luck. Maybe you can find some connection between the... okay, the Dharma Jewel and the Dharma body, some interesting new crossover, okay?

I'll leave that up to you. I didn't put it in the class, it's not part of the class, okay? Okay, now a question comes up.

And this is your next picture, okay? What's the next picture? It's somebody meditating, okay?

Somebody's meditating, alright? This comes from Kamalashila in the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Lord Buddha says, I say to you, O Sabuddhi, that in the future, in the days of the last five hundred, when the holy Dharma is approaching its final destruction, there will come Bodhisattvas who are great beings who possess, and then he mentions three things, they possess morality, they possess the fine quality, and they possess wisdom, okay?

He says they possess morality, they possess the fine quality, and they possess wisdom, okay? So then Kamalashila is trying to find out what's the fine quality, okay? Why does Buddha...

he almost seems to say the second one is the best one, okay? Like, they have morality, they have wisdom, and they have something cool. But he doesn't say what the cool is.

And of course Master Kamalashila wants to figure it out. Anybody have a guess? Yeah, good, okay?

Master Kamalashila agrees with you. He says Buddha is talking about the classical three trainings of a Buddhist, okay? The first one is...

treating other people nice, okay? Treating other people nice. Morality.

,GZHAN NUS ZHIG RANG BYAS PA LA'I, ,RDOG PA STE'ANG DNGOS NA LAS, ,GZUGS CAN YIN ZHIG RDUG PA DANG, Who said that? Definition of morality. ,GZHAN NUS ZHIG RANG BYAS PA LA'I, Avoid hurting other people, is morality.

,RDZOGS DKA' PA, Okay? That's his definition of morality. In ACI course...

What's the Vinaya one? I don't know. Huh?

Nine? Okay, good. I haven't looked at them for 30 years.

Okay, ,GZHAN NUS ZHIG RANG BYAS PA LA'I, By the way, I will be teaching ACI courses again first time in, I don't know... 20 years? 25 years?

In Sadhana, okay? During the teacher training, okay? Then I'll figure out which one is the Vinaya one.

So... I don't have time to go into it but... Kamalashila goes into a long section about the process of elimination.

How to decide... how to come to a conclusion by eliminating things which are not the conclusion, okay? This is a big topic in the logic scriptures of Dharmakirti, okay?

And if you're interested in it, someday we can study it. It will take about 12 years, okay? But...

he's talking about, you know, if you eliminate morality and wisdom, what do you got left? You see what I mean? Something like that.

He uses a famous example of cows and elephants, which I'm not gonna... you can worry about it yourself. Okay.

After he talks about... after Lord Buddha talks about the people who will come after two and a half thousand years, he says something kind of... Buddha often, when they talk, they don't seem to make sense.

They talk about one thing, then suddenly they talk about something else, okay? We all know people who do that. Some of them are geniuses, and some of them are just...

can't remember what they said before. Okay? Sometimes I'm not sure which one somebody is.

Okay. And Buddha says, those bodhisattvas who are great beings, which normally means who have seen emptiness, okay? Osabuddhi will not be ones who have paid honor to only a single Buddha.

They are people who have paid honor or showed gratitude to many hundreds of thousands of Buddhas. Okay? Alright?

So... That's the next photo you have. What's happening in the next photo?

What is it, number twelve? Twelve or eleven? What's happening?

Yeah, gratitude. So, in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, Buddha is frequently describing special people. In this case, people in the days of darkness who are going to be studying the Diamond Cutter Sutra on the airplane to China and they're not watching the movie.

Okay? So, these are very strange people. Very unusual people, okay?

Almost everybody on an airplane is watching the movie or they're playing... I see these businessmen playing... they're playing games on their phone, like kids games, things I used to do when I was in fifth grade.

They're like... in the business class, in the first... they're sitting there doing these stupid games that I did when I was a little kid, you know?

And... I'm kind of surprised, okay? So, you're...

you're going to be one of those one person on the whole plane who's trying to read the Diamond Cutter Sutra while everybody else is sleeping, okay? And then... Kamala Shila has this thing where he's always asking himself, where did these people come from?

You see? What made these people... Why in 2016 on a plane with 500 people on it, 499 are watching a movie or playing a fifth grade game and one is reading the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

What did they do to get here? You see? What made them different?

What kind of karma did they collect? And he says, that's why the Buddha says, these are the people who paid gratitude to their parents, to their teachers, to the Buddhas, okay? Who showed gratitude, okay?

So, it's kind of cool, okay? That's... he says, that's why Buddha skips to talking about where these people come from.

These people... what people? The people in the last 500 years, okay?

Who made these people so strange? And then Buddha says, these are people who showed gratitude to other people. That's what made them special.

Okay? That's what made them special. So, if you have problems understanding emptiness or...

When you do your death meditation, you fall asleep in the middle when it gets all dark and... Okay? Alright, when you have some problems, then you need a big stem cell injection of good karma.

And the best one is gratitude. Thank the people around you, okay? There's always somebody to thank around you, okay?

Probably your partner, or, you know, or your children, or your parents, or teachers, or people who hired you. Like, take a... Dharma stem cell break, and thank a bunch of people randomly around you.

And then suddenly, you'll get smart and bright again. Okay? Because the karma is...

That's the karma that makes people in the last 500 years, okay? According to Buddha. Because that's the next thing he says in the Dhammakara Sutra.

And Kamalashila says, you know, that's what makes you guys different from the people on the plane watching the movies. Is it bad to watch a movie? No.

Watch a nice one that's inspiring. You don't have to watch people shoot each other, or argue in their families, or, you know, have sex. If you want to watch people have sex, go to a zoo, you can watch monkeys.

They can't stop. And, okay, you can... Okay, watch a sweet movie, you know?

Or something nice. That's okay, that's not a problem. Movies are the same as a book, right?

If I had time, I would make a movie. Mr. Wu and I are going to make a movie sometime. When we have time.

Okay. Okay. Let's do...let me see, how long we've been...

Let's do some more, okay? Is that alright? I went crazy, I made 44 meditations or something, I'm sorry.

Okay. You can finish them in your next life. Okay.

Okay, next part of the... Then Lord Buddha starts telling Subhuti, any person who pulls out the Diamond Cutter Sutra... By the way, I'm working on a four-language Diamond Cutter Sutra.

Maybe Joanna, you can help me? Can you put the Chinese in? I'll give it to you.

Okay? You guys do it tomorrow? Next few days, okay?

I need the Chinese. I finished the Sanskrit, Tibetan, and English, but I need someone to put in the Chinese. I have the Chinese, but I don't know what it says.

I need someone to put it in. So, he says, suppose someone starts to have a single feeling of faith for this sutra. So, on the airplane, suppose they are reading this sutra, and they start to think, hey, this is pretty cool, okay?

Faith is... Faith is an old word, you know? Just think cool, okay?

I like how the German said it. Who's going to show me? Super cool?

Cool? No, but how do you say cool? Yeah, see?

Cool. Okay? Okay?

So, just think, if you think in your heart, oh, this book is super cool, you know? Then, what's going to happen to you, okay? If you're on the airplane, and you pull out this sutra, and you just look at it...

So, what I want to do is, I'm going to put the whole sutra in four languages, and put the meditations in the sutra. So, you can see where they come, okay? But I need help with the Chinese, okay?

And... I hope... I hope we can finish before Sunday.

I'm not sure. Not sure, okay? And then, Nicole's got to figure out how to send someone to Tucson and print it overnight, because it's got color and it's 50 pages each, okay?

It's too much to print here, I think. Good luck. I'm not even sure it'll be ready.

We'll see, we'll try. Me and the wu's, we'll try. It's almost ready.

Then, Sabuddhi asked, you know, Buddha, well, what happens if you're a person? What happens if you have that extraordinary good karma of a thought going through your mind that says, this is cool, okay? That's all.

That's called faith, okay? What will happen to you? He says, if a person reaches even just a single feeling of faith for the words of this sutra, the Buddha Sabuddhi knows that person, and they see that person, okay?

They know that person, and they see that person, okay? Then, Kamalashila, it bothers him. This thing bothers him.

Why? Yeah, Buddha's already Mr. Know-it-all. He saw you before you picked up the sutra, and he knows you before you pick up the sutra, okay?

What does it mean he sees you and he knows you, okay? Alright, what's the picture I chose? Avatar, why?

Why did I choose that one? Her? Yeah!

In their world, when you want to say I love you, you say I see you, V, or whatever, you know, I see you, okay? Don't forget the movie, okay? Otherwise, otherwise, you have to write it down somewhere for people a thousand years from now.

Why is this weird lady there? Okay, I see you. Then, first of all, Kamalashila tries to decide what's the difference between seeing somebody and knowing somebody, okay?

Seeing means they see your body, they see your physical form, okay? Buddhas see you on the plane as soon as you open up the Diamond Crest Sutra. If you watch a bad movie, they don't see you?

Okay? Then, Kamalashila says when the Buddha knows a person it means they know what you're thinking, and they know your name, okay? Elena, and they know what's in your mind, okay?

While you're on the plane opening the sutra, wishing you could watch a bad movie, they can see it, okay? So, when they say see you, they can see your body. When it says they know you, they know what you're thinking, and they also know your name, okay?

So, then it... what's it mean to say that... what's it mean when you say that someone who sees all things at all times suddenly sees you and knows you?

YONGS SU BZIN PA BSTAN TO YONGS SU BZIN PA BSTAN TO means they take you into their care, okay? You become a favorite? What do you call it?

Like my brother and my mother, okay? You become like a favorite child of theirs, okay? But every child is favorite child of theirs, okay?

And... in the end it just means you are closer to being a Buddha yourself, okay? You are closer to seeing emptiness, and the Buddhists take notice, okay?

A special notice of anyone who's close, okay? To seeing emptiness. Because when you see emptiness, when you enter the stream, you change, okay?

And then Buddhists can communicate with you more directly, okay? So, people are getting closer and it's easier for Buddha to see them. How's that?

Okay. Okay, next... we'll go a few minutes more and we'll take a break.

The next thing the Buddha says in the Diamond Cutter Sutra is that those people who think the sutra is cool, they produce a lot of good karma and they keep it safe inside of them. They produce a lot of good karma and they keep it safe within them, okay? And then, Karma Laśīlā wants to know, what's the difference, okay?

What's it mean to produce so much good karma no one could measure it? And what's it mean to, you know, keep it safe? Okay?

Then, he gives a few... he explains it, and I just wanted to... those of you who studied DCI 6, okay?

About... addiction. You studied the Wheel of Life, okay?

And... by the way, I always wanted to teach the Wheel of Life in detail. One of the first books we saved from Russia that we found from my monastery in Russia, St. Petersburg, was...

the book, two textbooks from my monastery about the Wheel of Life, okay? That were missing. And we found them in...

Leningradskaya Biblioteka Vostokovidene. And... I love, I love the Wheel of Life.

We could teach it for many, many days. I never have time. So...

I don't know, I think I told some of you guys, but... there's a mountain in Indonesia. Java?

Java? On the island of Java, there's a mountain, stone mountain, very similar to these mountains. And...

800, 900 years ago, some king decided to carve the whole mountain into a mandala. Okay? It's a beautiful, perfect mandala from the...

from an airplane, you can see, look down, thousand-year-old mandala, and it has, I think, 2,000 panels, the size of that wall. And each panel is carved into it some story from the life of the Buddha, okay? Or the great saints.

And... then that mountain was covered by the jungle. Uh...

Yeah, you can... maybe I... you want to just come up here and hold that up?

Kelly... Kelly has a... a picture of it.

The name is Borobudur, okay? Borobudur. Borobudur, okay?

And it's huge, it's unbelievable. And... the United Nations, somebody from the United Nations asked me to go there, while I was visiting Jakarta.

So, I said, I can't, I have to go to Singapore in the morning. They said, what time? I said 10.

They said, we'll fly you there at 9. You go at 5 a.m., you see the mountain, you get back on the plane at 7, and you can teach in Singapore at 10, you know? And I'm like, okay.

So, I went there. The reason the drawings are still clear is that there's a special piping system to put water behind the stone. It's a drainage system, because it rains there a lot, so the...

the picture should be gone by now. But there's a special drain system. And six years ago, a volcano blew up nearby, and the dust clogged the drain system.

So, the water is destroying the pictures, and they need to clean out the drain. So, I said I would raise money, foolishly. I said, I'll help you raise money.

And I said, I'll do a book about Wheel of Life, and I'll give it to you guys. You can sell it. You can make money.

You can clear out your drains. Then the Singapore people convinced me to go there in August, and just teach Wheel of Life for two days, without stopping, for dinner, okay? And then we'll try to go up on the mountain, because I found, when I was there, the panels that tell the story of the Wheel of Life, okay?

I found them. They didn't know what they were. And I can take you up there and show you who...where they made...

where Buddha made the Wheel of Life, okay? So, if you have time, you are welcome to come, okay? It's not very far from China, I think.

Okay. The weather will be wonderful in August in Indonesia. But...

So here, Buddha's making a distinction between the second link of the Wheel of Life, and the tenth link of the Wheel of Life. I'll give you a clue. In the second link, somebody's making...

pots. Not pot, pots. In the tenth link, there's a...

pregnant woman, okay? What's the difference? Huh?

Yeah, good, okay? In step number two in the Wheel of Life, when the guy's making pots, he's planting seeds in his mind, okay? He's planting seeds in his mind.

He's on the airplane, back to Beijing, everyone else is watching movies. What I do to feel righteous is I put the sutra in front of me, and I watch my friend's movie. Without the sound.

[Speaker 2]
Without the sound.

[Speaker 1]
Then, when I get home, Veronica's like, you want to go see this movie? Did you see this movie? I said, well...

I kind of saw the movie. Let's go, you know? Okay?

Okay? So... planting seed, making the pot, okay?

Then the seed gets pregnant, okay? Step number ten. What must have happened between step number two and step number ten?

Give me it in two words. I would show you, but I don't have any right now. Yeah.

Coffee meditation. Okay? It means...

before you go to bed, you know, before you go to sleep, think about all the good things you've been doing, okay? According to Lord Buddha, if you're alive in this time, and you're interested in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, you must have paid gratitude to one hundred thousand Buddhas. Maybe you could do coffee meditation about that.

Okay? Maybe you did a good thing, okay? He says it's proof that you showed gratitude to a hundred thousand Buddhas, or you wouldn't be interested in the Diamond Cutter Sutra right now.

You would be one of the 499 other people on the plane watching, you know, Joe kills Jack. Okay? Alright?

Got it? So, maybe you could do coffee meditation to lock in those seeds. Okay?

Make them firm. Gather them safely into you. Who said that?

Buddha. He just said it in the Diamond Cutter Sutra. What's the picture?

A young lady is watering her garden. What's the water? Coffee.

Café Ming Chang. Okay? Coffee meditation.

Okay? Makes the seeds pregnant. They go from number two to number ten.

Earl's not here, but if there's any other Sanskrit nerds in the house, what's the name of the second one? Link number two. Saṃskāra.

Saṃskāra. Don't say Sam-skāra. That's yoga teacher's Sanskrit.

Okay? Saṃskāra. Saṃskāra.

Sanskrit. Sanskrita. Sanskrit.

Sam-skrit. Okay? Now what's the tenth one?

You can say Vāsana. Okay? The technical name is Bhava, but that's okay.

Vāsana. So, in Buddhism we have two different words. Okay?

Saṃskāra means the seed was just planted. How? What'd this guy do?

Yeah, he told a hundred thousand Buddhists, thank you. Thanks. Okay?

Then he's gotta protect that karma. Okay? Protect that karma.

How? Be happy about it. Just be happy about it.

I'll never forget, and excuse me for criticizing Moscow, but I'll never forget, I gave a talk there, 800 people, this is many years ago, and two big guys, I mean big Russian guys, they came backstage after the talk, they said, you think Russians are stupid. I said, no, no, I don't. They said, yeah, you do.

I said, no, no, I don't. I really don't. He said, no, no, you always talk so simple.

You think we can't understand? I said, no, no, you can understand. They said, then why you tell us just be happy?

You know? You know? Can you teach us something more deep?

You know? I said, but that's the most powerful thing. Samaya moshni, moshnaya dhyāla.

That's the most powerful thing you can, kurukmaya, that's the coolest, most powerful thing you can do. Just be happy that you did something good, and then you can have anything, you can do anything, okay? And here Lord Buddha is repeating it, okay?

The way to make your seeds strong, protect them, is to be happy that you planted them, okay? And so, Lord Buddha makes the distinction. Don't forget, when you read the sutra, they produced seeds, sanskara, and they gathered them safely into themselves, vasana, okay?

By... being happy about that, putting water on them, okay? Got it?

I think that's a good place to take a break. Before we take a break, I have to talk to... Mr. and Mrs. Wu, can we sit here and talk? I have to give you the sutra. And then... Nick and Aaron, and...

if you are a Russian piano player, I have to talk to you, okay? Okay, so, take a break, come back in 10 minutes, okay? We'll do some questions after the break, so if you have any questions, let me know.

Let's do a little bit more. JB, what time is the... Chinsik?

Okay. What time, Michael Dunn, do you want to finish this class? Can we do 5.30?

Okay. Okay. Okay, so, let's do some questions and then we'll do some more Kamalashila.

Hero, you have a microphone? Thanks for all the work, Hero. Anybody have a question?

If not, we'll just do Kamalashila. And thank you all for being so generous. The German group paid for the floor last time, and...

lots of people paid for the new walls. Thank you for that. Alright.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la, for the possibility to ask and for teachings. And I want to understand a little bit deeper. What make the picture from my mind jump and cover the object?

Why I see smile on the face of the person? Why I don't see a table, for example? Why picture of smile is jumping?

Why picture of left part, of left part, of left part of the mouth is jumping? What is the trigger?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, good. Good question.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
When I see a smile on another person's face or I see the smile of the Buddha... By the way, we have a... you all got a third reading about the science.

Already, right? And... got it or didn't get it?

Got it. And you all got another two pages of meditations to do. Right?

But we didn't reach them yet. Did they get? Okay.

Third part of the meditations? Yeah. Okay.

By the way, Nicole told me there are some English and German copies left which means that not everybody picked up their English and their German, so... Where are they? They're at the front.

Okay. If you didn't get it, pick it up on the way out. So, her question is...

why picture of smile comes out of karma seed in my mind? And... why the left side of the smile, right side of the smile?

Why did these seeds open? Okay? And those of you who studied DCI, second level, there are four sets of four.

Okay? Tell me what they are. Yiyi wants to give me one.

Four steps how to plant karma. Give me another one. Four flowers, four ways that karma opens.

Four powers how to stop a negative karmic seed, and... four laws of karma. And...

recently I added a fifth set of four, so it's not four by four anymore, it's five by four. Those four are... priority.

Four priorities. What karma will open first? Okay?

If you have... you know, why does karma for smile open before karma for green drink? Okay?

Why does one karma open before another? Okay? So, that's the fifth set of four.

I hope Yiyi you remember, because I don't remember. What's the first one? Yeah, which is more serious will open first, okay?

If you kill somebody, or you took their car, the killing karma will open first, okay? What's the second one? Yeah, we call it close.

By the way, these are from Abhidharma Kosha by Vasubandhu, okay? Second one, if you are very close to your death, then... karmas you plant at that time might open before other karmas, okay?

So... it's very important not to upset somebody who's dying, and it's very important not to make a lot of noise, or cry, or...okay? Uh... Like, try to make it peaceful for them.

Temperature in the room should be normal. It shouldn't be cold or hot. Very important, okay?

Everyone should be calm. Thank them for good things. Remind them good things they did in their life, okay?

And... very important in the last few days, because karmas that you plant in the last few days of your life might open before other ones, okay? Third one, yi yi.

Yeah, things you do habitually. So, I don't know. If you were in the habit of telling the truth in your business, but then once you told a lie, then the truth seeds will open first, because it's your habit.

You have a habit, okay? And...what's the last one? Yeah, it's a counting system.

We call first in, first out. If everything else is equal, then the one you did first will open first, okay? Then...

So, the question about the smile is... why did this seed open now? Because in this four priority system, four sets of priorities, it was time for this seed to open, okay?

It was heavier than another one, it was collected closer to death, or you had a habit of doing it, or you did it earlier, but that's why one seed opens before another one, okay? And of course, the first law of karma is... what's the first law of karma?

Watermelons make watermelons, okay? So, if you're seeing a smile, you must have given a smile, okay? Tahiya has a burning question.

Wait, she needs a microphone. Wait, ladies first. Especially if she's choosing my bed next time.

[Speaker 2]
Sure. When you say serious, and you had a, like, killed somebody example, is it also like a very strong, powerful good seed would be considered a serious example?

[Speaker 1]
Exactly, yeah. Serious good or serious bad? Okay, Mr. Salustro. Well, the force be with you also.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you for taking my question, and not taking anything away from the wonderful donations from everyone. I had sort of a need to have some sort of idea of where this sangha is heading, because I've heard, as you announced, that the very expensive university in Sedona, the $4 million university, that to teach dharma, either DCI or ACI, we'd have to apply and pay a very high price for some courses there with a background check and a credit check before we would be allowed to teach dharma. And then the plans for something along the lines of Canyon Ranch Resort that I went to on Sunday, across the street for wealthy businessmen.

But I remember a time when the retreatants were still in the retreat valley, where we talked about bringing Diamond Mountain University to Diamond Mountain Retreat Center, and one of the things was to have young unwed mothers that we would help by having them have like a weekend, so maybe we could make their life a little easier. And at the time, we were talking about going to the prison, about doing work with homeless people, and actually going into the community and helping. But from my perception, it just seems that now it's a lot about money, it's a lot about wealth, privilege, but there's not really a lot of conversation about going into the community.

I'm alone, I'm the only person that I know of in our sangha in Phoenix, Sedona, that goes to the prison and goes to hospice. So I wanted to know really what the goal is and where we're heading. Fair enough?

With all due respect for everyone and all the donations and everything. Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
Cool. So, we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of ACI, okay? And so that's 20 years of teaching for free.

And the first seven years here, at Diamond Mountain, the classes were free. No charge for the classes. And it was extremely difficult for me and for many of us to live.

We didn't have any income. So, many people in this room taught, have been teaching for, I don't know, 40 years with no support. And we're happy to do that, and we're happy to keep doing it.

But it just makes it difficult to help a lot of people. I can't fly to China. You know, what do you call it?

China Air will not donate a ticket to China, and so I cannot go or I can fundraise to go. You see what I mean? And so I think...

the ACI courses have always been free. Three Jewels in New York is still free, but someone has to pay those bills. It costs...

Mrs. Chin is paying a lot of the rent now. It costs about $12,000 a month to give free classes. So, free classes are only free to the people who take them.

Somebody has to pay for... and you know, a lot of the teachers here don't have dental care, they don't have health insurance. You know, we have to take care of people.

Yeah, and I think the proper thing to do is a nice mix of free classes and then things that we charge for. And it's just... I think it's a nice compromise.

So, when I go to Taiwan, you know, then I go to Vietnam after that. Recently, I overcharged the Taiwan people. Then I thought I should be honest and tell them I'm overcharging them.

So, I got a football helmet. Just kidding. But I was scared to tell them, you know, I'm going to overcharge you so I can teach in Taiwan, or India, or Indonesia.

You know, someplace where people cannot pay. And they were... Do we have...

So, well, that's the one thing. We have to charge somebody to teach for free in the other places, or we have to get donations. Now, second question.

Is it that we are just focusing on privileged people who can pay a lot of money to come for classes and other people, we are not paying attention to the prisons, or to the poor, or to the homeless? I think there are many people here who taught in the prisons for many years, and taught, you know, poor people for many years. We had a center in Phoenix which I fundraised for, but we couldn't get teachers to teach, and we couldn't get anyone to stay there, and we closed it.

So, I'm up for it, you know. We are doing many projects for poor people. The ACIP project pays poor people to type in books.

It's about five million dollars of work, and we paid for it. The people in this room paid for it. And so, I think, I would say we do a lot of projects, and of course we can do more.

And I'm happy if anyone has a proposal or, you know. But I'll tell you, doing programs for people who can't pay requires a lead person, a lead bull, you know. I cannot sustain a program that someone else starts, and then after a year they come to me and say, you have to fundraise for it.

I can't, you know, it's too many projects. So, I think what I do is I watch to see who's committed to a project, and if they stay with it three, four, five, twenty years, then we help. But, you know, like, Vimala's doing a project for Syrian refugees, and I'm watching.

You figured that out yet? I don't know. You know, I'm just watching to see if they get bored after a couple of years or something.

And then if they're still there, those projects for poor people or refugees, you cannot start them and then leave after a year or two years, you know. So, the input work is 30 years old this year. And everyone else, all the refugee agencies, all the government agencies, they're gone 25 years ago.

You know, we're still going, but there's only so many I can personally get the money for, okay? So, if you're up for it, prove it, okay? And I'll watch you for a couple years and see.

And then if it's still going, I'll pitch in, okay? From experience. Okay, let's go.

Mmm... Now we get to a very strange part. Meditation 15.

And this is something that Buddha repeats a couple of times— thank you Shinji— in the teaching. He says, bodhisattvas who are great beings never slip into— oh, by the way, one more thing, this retreat center will always have two parts. One is the nice part, and one is the serious part.

So, there will always be, in my opinion, cottages here for people who want to do three-year retreat, one-year retreat, one-month retreat, and... and we'll support the people who want to come and... you know, the three-year retreat cost...

how much food money did the three-year retreatants pay? None. It was half a million dollars, okay?

There was no charge for the... to eat during the three-year retreat, you just have to build your cabin. But it will always be like that, and to be honest, we have cottages, we don't have people asking.

So, bring people, very happy to have homeless... what do you call them? Single mothers or...

but someone has to organize it, okay? Alright. Bodhisattvas who are great beings never slip into thinking of something as a self or a living being or as something alive or as a person.

Buddha uses four different words for people. It has confused translators for a thousand years, okay? Two thousand years.

Why? Then he repeats it two or three times, okay? So...

you know, if you ask a university scholar, why did Buddha repeat this weird section three or four times? They will say, somebody got drunk while they were copying out one day, and they copied the same part twice, or something like that, okay? Somebody like Kamala Shila will say, Buddha understood that you already forgot what he said before, okay?

So, he repeats it in the sutra. So, if anyone ever asks you, Michael and Melissa, you know, why did Buddha repeat himself in the Diamond Cutter Sutra? You can say, well, Kamala Shila says, in his opinion, people are so weak-minded that they forgot what he said two days after he said it, okay?

And he had to repeat it again, okay? Now, what's interesting to me is... Kamala Shila is one of the few people who tries to explain why does Buddha repeat the word for people four times, you know?

Why does he say bodhisattvas don't see people have a self, bodhisattvas don't see that they are living people, bodhisattvas don't see that they are alive, and bodhisattvas don't see person, okay? So, what's the difference? Then...

here's... here's his take on the four, okay? Here's Kamala Shila's take on the four, okay?

First one was self, okay? First one was self. That means that Michael is not me from his own side.

So, it refers to our self, person, like Kelly, or Jenny, or Joanna, okay? So, talking about Geshe Michael doesn't come from his own side. So, when I look at my arm, my seeds are opening in my mind, and they are making an arm from these five fingers, like that, okay?

My seeds are opening, making an arm. If those seeds run out, and different seeds wake up, I could see an animal leg, okay? Or if I worked very hard, I could see Buddha's arm, okay?

It's coming from me, okay? Got it? That's the first one.

Second one is when he says living being, the emptiness of living being, he means of my... my... my stuff, my...

my... Geshe Michael's things, okay? This is my cup, this is my hand, this is my shirt, okay?

So, that's the second one, okay? Third one is... the karma, sorry.

If you think about Geshe Michael from the time he was a kid up to now, okay? Geshe Michael over time. Geshe Michael from when he was born up to now, okay?

That also not coming from itself. My karma is gluing together Geshe Michael, Geshe Michael, Geshe Michael, Geshe Michael, Geshe Michael, okay? My seeds are gluing them together.

What metaphor did Kamalashila use for that last time? Cocoon, yeah, cocoon, okay? So, the third time Buddha mentions a different word for person, according to Kamalashila, he's referring to the karma that glues together Genny Wong from ten years ago up to now, over time, okay?

So, that Genny Wong last ten years Genny Wong doesn't come from Genny Wong, came from karma for ten years, okay? Made a cocoon, okay? Genny Wong over time, okay?

That's the third one. Fourth one, Geshe Michael who died last time and was born here. Geshe Michael who died last time and got born here, okay?

Who glued that one together? Okay? That's also seeds in my mind, okay?

Who connect Geshe Michael from last life to Geshe Michael in this life? Who connects them together? It's the same idea that we talked about this Buddha's face.

There's hands, there's face, there's head, there's legs, and something gluing them together, okay? Something is gluing them together over lifetimes, not last ten years, not since you were born, but since last life, okay? So, Buddha says in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, here, bodhisattvas don't slip into the mistake of thinking there's any self, okay?

What's that one mean? Michael, okay? There's no Michael.

Come from his own side. They don't slip into thinking there's a living being. What's that mean?

My stuff. Geshe Michael's hand, Geshe Michael's sitar, Geshe Michael's laptop, Geshe Michael's iPhone, okay? Mine, okay?

Bodhisattvas don't slip into thinking mine. Do they think mine? Do they think this is my cappuccino?

Yeah. MA LTAG MA BYAS PA Generally, of course, they do. If bodhisattvas didn't think this was mine, they couldn't have dinner, they would die after a few days, okay?

Of course, they think things are mine. But, do they think I got dinner from Diamond Mountain Kitchen because I paid for it? No, what do they think?

I got a dinner because I cooked a dinner for somebody, okay? And if you think like that, you will spend your time sharing your food, or cooking for other people, okay? Okay, third one.

Do they have a conception of themselves as being alive? What's it mean? Yeah, over the last ten years, over the last five years, okay?

Candy live for the last five years, candy live for the last ten years, okay? Do bodhisattvas think I was here last year? Do they think that?

Yeah, they do, okay? But why? They think, oh, this coming from my seeds, okay?

I made Diamond Mountain last year with dirt roads with big holes in them. And this year, I'm making a Diamond Mountain with paved roads. I must be...

I must be doing something good, okay? They don't... they look at the changes in Diamond Mountains from last year up to this year, and they realize it's coming from them, okay?

Diamond Mountain over time is coming from them, okay? Got it? And finally, bodhisattvas don't think...

you know? Do they think Geshe Michael came from last life? Do they think it?

Yeah, but they don't think it comes from his own side. They understand, last life Geshe Michael come from me, this life Geshe Michael come from me, and I made the connection, okay? I created the connection.

Okay? Got it? Just nod, if you don't understand, just nod.

If you do understand, nod. If you don't understand, nod. Okay.

Alright.