Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 2: Как медитировать и как не медитировать (2011, Феникс), занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
We'll do a meditation, we'll do a... I didn't do yesterday, but I'll do with you one time today, the traditional warm-up for a meditation. It's like...

what do you call that? It's not Shavasana. Surya Namaskar.

Okay? It's like warming up for a meditation. We didn't do it yet together, but I'll do it once with you tonight.

You won't learn it tonight, but you can learn it from... from one of the teachers here, when you have time. So, get into meditation position.

Something you don't have to change for about ten minutes. So, don't do anything too complicated. The goal of meditation is to park your body.

The goal of meditation is to get your body in a position that you won't have to move. Alright? If you have to move, then you're gonna disturb all the people around you.

Okay? So, park your body, so you won't have to think about it. Don't do anything that's gonna hurt in five minutes.

Okay? Sit up straight. Start to relax your face.

Relax your forehead. Relax your eyelids. Relax the corners of your mouth.

Begin to bring your mind to your breath. Put your mind up against your breath. Make contact between your mind and your breath, and don't lose that contact.

Keep the mind on the breath. Then we'll start the traditional preparation for meditation. It has six steps.

The first step is to invite a holy being to come into the room with you. Think of yourself as being alone in this room. Think of the most beautiful, holy being you can imagine.

It's like you're a teacher, but you're like an angel. So, try to picture a very beautiful, beautiful being, enlightened being who comes to sit with you, sitting in front of you. Don't make the image a photograph.

Make them alive. They are breathing. You can feel their exhalations on your cheek.

You can sense the warmth of their body against your chest and your arms. Make them a beautiful, living, fragrant, holy being sitting in front of you. Wisdom being.

Your teacher. Your own heart teacher. The second step is namaskar, namaskar surya.

The namaskar part means I bow down, and bow down to your teacher. Why is this beautiful creature your teacher? What do you hope to learn from them?

What do you admire about them? Think of that and bow down to them, by thinking about what it is that's beautiful about your own personal teacher. That together is the first step.

The second step is to make them an offering. By tradition, we can offer them a flower or a fruit in your mind. You can offer the whole sky covered with flowers.

But the highest offering of all is your own practice. It could be your asana practice, it could be your meditation, it could be your study that you are doing, it could be your attempts to be patient with your mother. Offer your personal teacher some good thing you have done in your spiritual practice during this last few days.

Think of some kindness you've done to someone. And this is the offering which really pleases a teacher. Not money or things, but offer them the kindness you've done to someone else in the last few days.

The next warm-up for meditation, like warming up before you do asanas, difficult asanas, the next warm-up is to clear your conscience. You can't meditate if there's something on your conscience. So, review the last few days.

Think if there's anything you did which was unkind. Maybe you lost your temper with someone. Or you maybe inadvertently said something which hurt someone's feelings.

Search the past few days. Find something that you did that was negative. And tell your teacher, say it to your teacher in your mind.

And then that cleans the karma, and it cleans the obstacle to meditation. It makes your conscience clear, and then the meditation will be successful. So, just as you wouldn't attempt a difficult backbend without a proper warming up, surya namaskar or something, then you shouldn't attempt meditation without warming up your heart and your conscience.

So, think of... it could be also some big mistake you made two or three years ago. Maybe you really hurt someone.

Or you can choose something in the last few days that you did when you lost your temper, or you were jealous of someone. And be honest and tell your teacher in your mind. And then the next step in the process of warming up for meditation is to do the opposite.

Think of the nicest thing you've done in the last few days. Something kind. Something beautiful.

Maybe it's a big thing you did last year. But think of specifically some very beautiful thing that you are proud of in a healthy way, that you said something kind to someone, or you helped somebody, maybe an older person. And just be happy that you have this capacity in your heart to be good to someone else.

Tell your teacher the nice thing you did. The fifth step to prepare for a meditation is to imagine what you would like to be in one month. By the end of August say, is there something about yourself that you would like to change?

Is there something you would like to be different than what you are now by the time you reach this end of this August, this coming month? Try to picture clearly what you would like to be. How would you like to be different than you are now by the end of next month?

What is there about you that you would like to improve? And then step five is to ask your teacher to help you, guide you. You can't see them all the time.

Sometimes they are helping you invisibly. But ask your own personal teacher, your own heart teacher, to help you become the person you would like to be by the end of August. The sixth preliminary before meditation, the last one before meditation, is to ask your teacher to stay in your life.

We believe that your mind goes on after you die. And ask your teacher to never leave you. That your own like angel teacher, your personal heart teacher, could be a spirit being, could be somebody physical in your life, but ask them to stay with you and to guide you, even beyond this life, forever.

That's the traditional Surya Namaskar for your mind before you meditate. Those six steps prior to the meditation. And then we'll do one more after the meditation.

Now, move your mind to your breath. Bring your mind to your breath. Force your mind up against your breath, and don't lose contact with your breath.

It's like holding your toes or something. Keep the contact between your mind and your breath. Don't let it go.

Now we're going to start a short meditation, very short. I'd like you to step back, almost the physical sensation of stepping backwards from your mind, and place your mind on watching your own mind. Watch the thoughts as they rise and disappear within your own mind.

Don't try to control them. We're just watching. Where's my mind right now?

Listen carefully to your mind. Learn to step away. Take a part of your mind, step back from your mind, and watch the main part of your mind as it thinks its thoughts.

This is one of the most beautiful and important skills in meditation that you can ever develop. Even if you meditate for twenty, thirty years, if you can, at the beginning, learn to observe your own thoughts. It's as if you've been meditating for ten years already.

Just learn the one skill of stepping back and watching your own thoughts. Now place an invisible wall in front of you. Don't allow your thoughts to go to the future.

Don't leave this room and this time together. Don't think about anything after tonight. Don't think of anything tomorrow or any day after that.

Put an invisible wall in front of your mind, and refuse to let your mind think about something that's happening tomorrow or tonight. Block your mind. Keep your mind on this side of the future.

Don't allow it to go to tomorrow or the days after. Any thought that comes up about next week, or next month, stop it and bring it back to this room and this time. Feel almost a physical sensation of a wall in front of you.

Invisible force that prevents you from thinking of the future. No plans, no expectations, no hopes, no fears. Just here, in this room, now.

Now put another wall behind you. No thoughts about the past. No thoughts about last year, or last week, or this morning.

Trap your mind between two walls. One blocking future, one blocking the past. Stay here, in this room, in this moment.

And when the mind wanders to the past or the future, pull it back to this room, in this moment. Stay in this moment. Feel the pleasure and the relief of just being here in this moment.

No worries, no plans. You are safe in this moment, in this room. Now we'll do meditational shavasana.

There's a traditional way to wrap up a meditation, which is to think about all the goodness you have done by meditating. Your mind will become clear. You will think of beautiful things.

You will help others more. So dedicate the good karma of this meditation. That everyone we know, everyone in this city perhaps, could learn to have a clear and serene state of mind.

Send the power of this meditation to other people around us. Then you can start to move. Slowly come back and open your eyes.

So I'd like to thank you for coming. It's a pleasure. This is where I grew up, and I love Phoenix.

Even the city smells good to me. I don't know how it smells to you. But just the scent of the city, especially around sunset, for me it's like medicine.

Thank you. I'm going to review a little bit about what we talked about yesterday. We're reading a poem, that was written by like the Dante of Tibet, the first Panchen Lama.

I think his dates are, what, 1560? 1570 to 1662. And he wrote this beautiful poem about the inside of one person's mind, right?

And we get to hear a discussion going on inside of one person's mind. And the good side of his... It's like the picture you see of the angel and the devil sitting on the guy's shoulders.

And they're both whispering their side of the story into his ears. And the devil's saying, come on, there's nothing wrong with having a third chocolate chip cookie at Paradise Cafe. And then the angel's saying, yeah, but then we'll get all sleepy and lazy during the class.

We won't listen very well. And the devil's like, oh, come on, it's already a half hour away. You'll probably be able to digest it by then.

And then the other side is like, yeah, but remember last week when we ate three chocolate chip cookies? And we fell asleep in the class. Yeah, we hit my head on the wall.

And then there's this conversation going on in your mind. And what's cool is the Panchen Lama said, that's a healthy thing. That kind of, what do you call it?

Spiritual schizophrenia. It's a good thing. If your conscience is battling against your desires, that's a holy thing.

We say that karma of a fight between your conscience and your desires is better than the karma of being a nice person and never having the desires in the first place. You see what I mean? A person who...

The points you get for putting up a fight with your unreasonable desires are more than a person who never had them in the first place. Who's just a nice person. You see?

To fight with the negative side of your own mind is a glorious and beautiful spiritual thing. So, you know, I like to see my students wandering down the sidewalk, you know, like... You know, like...

You know, having an argument in their head. And you get a lot of karma for that, okay? A lot of good karma.

And it will improve you. So the goal of the first Panchen Lama is to introduce a dissenting voice into your head and start a fight. And the fight should go on until the day of your enlightenment, okay?

He wants a voice in your head saying, I don't think so. You know, I don't think a third chocolate chip cookie is so wise on a hot day like this. You know?

And then sometimes that voice is almost inaudible, right? Like a whisper, you know, I don't think I... Shut up!

You know? And sometimes he doesn't get to talk much. That angel, right?

But the goal of this kind of practice is to introduce into your mind the...what do you call it? The conflicting view. The other view, okay?

Of what we should be doing. You can call it almost like conscience, okay? And it's not a very popular idea nowadays, right?

I mean, the people you didn't get go to school and they give you a lecture on your conscience. You know? But for a yogi, conscience is a very beautiful thing.

Conscience is... is the most important part about you. Okay?

Is your conscience. And saying, I don't think so. I don't think this is the right thing to do right now.

Okay? It's a very beautiful thing. And then you feed your conscience and you develop your conscience like a muscle.

You know? Like you do your backbends and you do your twists and then you feed your conscience and make your conscience stronger and give them a voice in your head. You see?

It's not a popular thing to talk about, but it makes you very happy. Okay? I'm not talking about guilt, okay?

I'm not saying, oh, I'm a bad person or... you know... That's like saying, I can't do a headstand, I'm a bad person.

You know? It's not like that. It's like...

a well-developed conscience is something you can be proud about. It's the hesitation when you're about to hurt someone. And that's a...

that's a beauty. That's a kind of beauty that's more rare and more beautiful than outer beauty. Right?

A person who has a beautiful conscience is a truly beautiful thing to meet and to watch. You see? So, he's seeking to bring another voice into our mind.

Okay? To bring us up to date. This argument is going to go on for the next year, okay?

2011 is the year of this poem in Phoenix for me and for... if you'd like to come. So, we've been talking...

It will take a year to finish... maybe a program once a month. It will take a year to finish the whole poem.

We're about... I don't know... 30 pages into the poem, okay?

And it's never been translated before. You're the first guinea pigs in the West to hear this beautiful thing. It's a very beautiful thing.

And I heard it from my teacher who's... was a student of the Dalai Lama's teacher. So, we reached a part where there's a devil in the guy's head and there's an angel in the guy's head.

All right? And the devil is... is arguing with the angel, okay?

The angel entered the mind, which I hope it will enter your mind, and starts arguing with the devil. The devil has been resident for countless years, okay? The devil has been resident for countless years.

We say your mind has no beginning. We say mind cannot be produced from physical matter. The mind is not physical.

The mind is ineffable. Your mind can go right now home to your refrigerator and look inside. And it's too far to drive that fast.

Your mind is not physical. Your mind is mental. And it's...

you can't touch it, you can't weigh it, you can't split it, you can't locate it. Western scientists say it's in the brain. Tibetans always said it was in the heart chakra, okay?

They say, I think so. You know? And...

it... right now it's in your refrigerator at home, right? So...

you see what I mean? The mind is not like... it's not a physical thing, alright?

So... inside the mind there's a debate going on, raging, in our text, in our poem. And...

and the angel was saying, you know, maybe if we could... oh, the devil says... The angel's been telling the devil, you have to leave the mind, okay?

Because the way I want this guy to be, and the way you make him, are different, you know? And the devil says, come on, what chance do you have? I have been in his mind for countless...

billions of years, okay? Through many lifetimes I have controlled this person's mind, okay? Who are you?

To say, you know, it says... he calls him, he says, you are the cousin who drops in for a visit. You are a flash of lightning, you know, in a world of darkness, you know?

I am the ocean, never ending, never drying. I've been here always, you know? What does the devil do, okay?

The devil isn't like... I don't know, make you shoot people or, you know, make you bomb Scottsdale Mall or something, okay? That's not the devil, okay?

The devil misunderstands where the person who irritates you the most is coming from, okay? Nothing more glorious than that, alright? Think of the person in your life who most bugs you, okay?

Take ten seconds, choose between those six people, you know, have a vote, you know, like... Who is the most irritating person in your life right now? They kind of rotate, because it's hard to be the most irritating person in your life.

They seem to, like, take turns, you know? And so, you have one in mind right now, right? The devil says, that person is mean to you, they are hurting you, or they are irritating you, because they want to, okay?

They don't like you, they are not a good person, and they are trying to hurt you or bother you, okay? The devil says, believe this, and then you will be able to dislike them, okay? Even if you work on it, you can hate them, okay?

The devil says that. They could have said nice things to you, and they are not. It's because they don't like you, because they are bad people, okay?

That's the devil talking. That's all the devil does. The devil doesn't blow up bridges and stuff like that, okay?

The devil is making you miserable from moment to moment. It's much more pleasant for him than blowing up a bridge occasionally, okay? He is ruining your whole day, moment to moment, okay?

Then the angel is... the angel is whispering, we are trying to introduce an angel into your mind, I curse you with an angel in your head. I hereby curse you, okay?

Forever. Forever. I hereby put in your mind a little voice that says, maybe it's coming from me.

Okay? Maybe the person I most dislike is coming directly from me, from what I did to somebody last week. If the person is criticizing me, it's because I put a seed in my mind by criticizing someone else last week.

You have never met an irritating person in your life who was not a direct reflection of your own behavior towards other people. They are a mirror of yourself. The more irritating people you have in your life...

We are like... we have a university near Tucson, right? And I call it the school of half-finished sentences.

Because they are pretty well trained, you know? And then they'll say, you can't believe what happened today. And someone says, what?

And they say, God, I met the most irritating... And everybody is going... Because it's just a reflection of what you were doing the week before, you see?

And everyone is like, yeah, yeah, I believe. How many irritating people did you meet today? Because it's just a condemnation of yourself, you see?

It's a report of how you're doing. The more irritating people you can meet, the more unreasonable people you meet. It's a report of your own soul, the condition of your own soul.

Why? How? Very simple.

Understand karma. When you criticize somebody last week and you said some small critical thing which hurt them like I did this afternoon, that's a small seed is planted in your mind, like a small apple seed. That seed can ripen in a week or it can ripen in 500 years, okay?

In the mind. dṛṣṭā-dṛṣṭa-janma-vedanīya In the Yoga Sutra. It could ripen next week, it could ripen in 500 years.

When the tree comes out of the seed, it will be bigger than the seed. Duh! Okay?

All apple trees are somewhat larger than apple seeds. Alright? So, I looked it up on Google.

An acorn is half a gram. A good oak tree is 300 tons. Okay?

And that's the way it is. You criticize someone slightly on Friday, by Wednesday, you've got the most irritating person in your life. Okay?

And you put them there. You put them there. Okay?

Wisdom, the angel is saying to the devil in the guy's mind, come on, be honest. Tell the guy the truth, you know? Tell him every irritating person he ever met was coming directly from him, how he treated people last week.

And the devil doesn't want to hear it. The devil is like, you can't be saying that kind of stuff. If he starts believing you, I can't stay here.

I'll be homeless. Okay? I'll have to leave.

If he starts buying this idea that everything's... that there's a complete justice to the world, that you get exactly what you give, then I can't stay here. What, do you want me to be homeless?

You see, the devil is like very slick. Okay? Okay?

So, we got to a point where the devil says, look, it's Miss Angel, right? Look, Miss Angel, he calls her... what was it?

Miss Realize Everything's Coming From Me. It's hopeless, okay? Don't try to kick me out of this guy's head.

It's hopeless. Many people have tried. They all fail.

Okay? And the angel's like, who tried? And the devil's like, good, let me tell you.

These people, they call themselves, what is it? Meditators. Let me tell you about meditators.

The devil's saying to the angel, I had a couple of those fools show up. They were going to meditate me out of the mind. You should have seen it.

It was so funny, you know? And the angel's like, why? Why funny?

And he says, they like close their eyes, and they sit there with their legs crossed, and they undergo a certain intellectual exercise which strengthens me, you know? Makes me healthier in the mind. You know, they cross their legs, and they do this chin mudra thing, and they close their eyes, and then they go through this whole thing called meditation.

Kinds of meditation that make me stronger in their mind. Okay? Better than if they didn't meditate.

Okay? I love it. I love this meditation stuff, you know?

And then the devil starts to describe kinds of meditations that will make the devil healthier in your mind. Okay? Got it?

We just did one. Alright? We just did one.

What did we do? DUSUNG GYUDRU. We did a meditation called Stopping the Thoughts of the Three Times.

Okay? We did a meditation called Stopping the Thoughts of the Three Times. This is a famous meditation in ancient times.

You put an invisible wall in front of you, and you block your thoughts. First you have to step back from the mind, and then you watch your own mind, and you watch your thoughts, and you see if any of the thoughts are about tomorrow, or any day after that. Okay?

Then you block your mind from that. Your mind is going like, what's to... what are we going to do?

And then you're like, no, no, can't go there, can't go there. Yeah, but next... No.

No. But I got this plan... No.

Then you block the mind from going to the future. Then what does it do? My boyfriend, six months ago, you wouldn't...

You're like, no, no, we're going to put a wall back there too. Okay? Then it's like, yeah, but what are we going to do till...

No. Yeah, but then the boyfriend... You wouldn't believe...

Then you're like, no. Then you're like blocking the mind from going to tomorrow, and you're blocking the mind from going to yesterday, or the last boyfriend who hurt you, right? Stay in the present moment.

Just stay here. Don't think about... To stay in the present moment, you have to be able to step back from your mind, and stop your mind when it starts thinking about tomorrow.

And you have to be able to stop your mind when it starts thinking about your last boyfriend. Okay? And it is such a...

I almost said a bad word. My teacher told me not to. It is such a wonderful relief.

It's such a relief. Like, once you get it, once, just get it once. What?

Two steps. Number one, learn to withdraw your mind, part of your mind, back from your mind, and watch the rest of your mind. Okay?

It's a high spiritual skill. You can learn it in five minutes, or you can take five years. Try to do it now.

Okay? Try to do it tonight. Learn to take part of your mind, step back from your mind, and watch your thoughts.

And that's already half the battle. You already won half the battle. If you hear the angel and the devil arguing actively, if you're not in the argument, but you step back from the argument, and you listen to it going on, it's not going to be hard to know who to vote for.

You know? Just learn that one skill. Step back from the mind, and listen, what do you call it?

Witness the argument. Step back and watch the argument. Once you realize there's an argument going on, and you're not inside the argument, it's like when your parents used to argue.

You know, the least, the worst thing you want to do is get between them, right? You want to go to your room and listen through the wall. You know?

And so, you want to go to your room and watch the argument going on. Then you can... Then you can kind of control the argument later.

Right? Okay? But you have to get out of the argument.

You can't be in it. Learn to step back. First step.

Second step. Block the mind from thinking about tomorrow, and block the mind from thinking about the past, and force the mind into this room and into the present moment. Okay?

And it's... You will feel this intense relief, and this intense restfulness. It's almost like three hours of sleep or something.

You know? All your energy, all your mental energy, all your physical energy, because of prana, right? It's wasted and dissipated by thinking about things that might happen next week, and things that happened last week that you can't do anything about anymore.

And you spend so much time thinking about things that happened, bad things the boyfriend did to you last year. It's over. You won't remember in five years.

You won't remember his name in five years. I swear. I mean, I'm a little older.

I understand these things, okay? No, you sit near me, who was that girl who hurt me? What was her name?

Do you remember her name? And you're like, come on, you were like crushed. Yeah, I remember that, but I can't remember her name, you know?

It's all gonna pass, okay? Let it go. I mean, you might as well let it go now, and not worry about it for ten years.

Just like going now. What's the point? Save yourself ten years in trouble.

A lot of prana is wasted. You do yoga for two hours. You go to Anton's class.

You have a good class. He like kicks your butt. He turns on good music.

You're sweating all over the place. Then you got all this prana moving, right? And then you go home and you think about your old boyfriend, and all the prana is wasted.

It all flows out of your body. It's like you didn't do yoga at all. Really, okay?

If you want to ruin all your yoga, like, you know, you just paid a lot of money. You went to a hard class. You sweated.

You have to wash your clothes and everything. And then you think, you know, on the way home, you're thinking about your boyfriend and you lose all the prana. All the prana you collected is dissipated by worrying about something you can't change anymore, okay?

Or something that might happen next week. You don't know what's gonna happen next week. Anything could happen next week, you know?

Things happen like that, you know? So, put your mind in the present moment and you feel this intense relief, intense happiness. You might discover a thing called contentment, okay?

Which is like the most beautiful thing in the world, okay? You might discover the contentment of being in the present moment, okay? I'm not saying it's good moment.

I'm not saying it's a bad moment. I'm saying, just to be in the present moment and not wasting your time thinking about the past or worrying about the future is an intense relief. And you feel, you begin to cultivate a deep feeling of contentment and you just feel happy all the time, okay?

And I guess that's part of what we're supposed to do here. Okay? Like, you're supposed to be able to get into a handstand and touch your head with your feet.

That's one goal. And then you're supposed to eventually get contented in your life. Hopefully, right?

And that's enough, those two things. Okay? Okay?

You want to be... To be really contented is a wonderful thing. It's like the goal of a human life, to be truly happy in the present moment and to be present and happy and contented in the present moment, okay?

Now, you should be saying, Oh Geshe-la, what did you call this meditation? DUSUM GYUDRUL means what? Cutting off the three times.

It's called cutting off the flow of the three times. Gyu means flow, drul means here, cutting off. How many times we got so far?

We only got two, okay? Who noticed that? Somebody smart.

We cut the future and we cut the past, but we didn't do anything about the present, okay? Now we're going to go to a lady named, say, MA...CHIG...LABDUN. MA...CHIG...LABDUN. MA is the same in every language. MA means mom.

CHIG means the one and only. Like the city, they call New York the city, capital T. The mom is called MA...CHIG. And then LABDUN means like the golden lamp of wisdom or something. So, she was a yogi, yogini, right? Yogi who lived in Tibet. I wrote her dates down.

I think it's 1131, was it? Let me see. Nobody knows for sure, but they think she was...

She was born in 1031. Some traditions say she passed away in 1129, okay? So, she lived a thousand years ago.

And she said a beautiful thing about what we can do in the present moment, okay? So, what are we going to do about the present moment? The Panchen Lama said, it's not enough to cut off the future and the past and be in the present.

That's not enough. Why? You will pile up present moments and then you'll get old and die, okay?

Okay, be in the present in 2011. Then be in the present in 2012. And then be in the present in 2020.

And when you get to 2050, you're dead, okay? Like that. But you're still present, okay?

Like, it's not enough to be present, okay? Because time will pass. Your present moments will...

will lead to the edge of a cliff and you'll fall off and that's the end of your life, okay? You got to do something important with the present moments. You can't just be in them.

You got to use them. You got to do something in them. Hopefully, something that would change the condition of getting old and dying and stuff.

Hopefully, something that would bring peace to the world and stop hunger in the world and stop poverty in the world. Hopefully, you could do something while you're being in the present moment that would contribute to the happiness of the entire world, okay? That's a nice thing to do with the present moment.

That's an important thing to do with the present moment. She said... Say, shim...

ki... dim... la...

pho... ki... lo.

Okay, one more time. Shim... ki...

dim... la... pho...

ki... lo. Okay.

Okay. Shim... ki...

dim... la... pho...

ki... lo. It sounds like a loogie, right?

And it's very, very famous. I don't know, that may be the most famous thing she ever said. She lived a long time.

She was one of the greatest meditators of Tibetan history. And she was a great woman, a great yoga practitioner. She founded many great schools and monasteries.

And she was extraordinary meditator. Maybe one of the most famous meditators in history. Dim ki...

Sorry, shim... shim ki dim means... means...

How do you say? Concentrate the mind fiercely. Shim ki means fiercely.

Dim means concentrate the mind. Concentrate the mind fiercely. Shim ki dim.

La. And then, shim ki lo means... surrender into...

What do you call? Total relaxation. Surrender.

Concentrate fiercely. Surrender with peace. How about that?

Concentrate fiercely, then surrender into peace. Okay? Like that.

So, we're gonna talk about that. That's what she wants us to do with the present moment. Okay?

Now that we blocked thoughts about tomorrow, and we blocked thoughts about the past, which in itself will make you a happy person mostly, but you'll still die someday, okay? The Panchen Lama says, let's go further. The devil would like you to be in the present moment and just cruise.

The angel is saying, we got to do something with the present moment, that it's meaning for the world. Okay? It's not enough to be in the present.

It's good to be in the present. You need to be in the present to help the world. Learn to be in the present, and then learn how to help the world in the present moment.

Okay? Which is cool. Which makes you truly happy.

Okay? So, shim kyi drim means, concentrate fiercely on where stuff is coming from. Got it?

Concentrate fiercely on where stuff is coming from. Alright? Understand where stuff is coming from.

What do you mean? What example have we been using? The person who bugs you the most.

Alright? Don't ever forget them. You need them.

They are your teacher. Right? You have to meditate on them.

Bring to mind the person who bugs you the most, or the most serious problem in your life right now. Okay? It could be financial, it could be a relationship, it could be a health problem.

Okay? Bring to mind the person who most irritates you. Bring to mind the most serious challenge in your life right now.

Okay? Shim kyi, fiercely, drim, concentrate on that problem, and concentrate on that problem person. And try to figure out, for God's sake, where are they coming from.

Okay? Because they didn't come from nowhere. There's a logic to where they came from.

There's a reason why they showed up at this moment in your life. Nothing's random. Forget the Big Bang.

It's a boo-boo. Okay? Now I read in my science magazine, somebody ran to me with a science magazine, they said, Geshe-la, the scientists agreed with you after 20 years.

You know? And I'm like, what? They said, hey, you know what?

Since nothing happens without a cause, the Big Bang must have had a previous Big Bang. I'm like, duh. You know?

Congratulations. You know? The most important event in the universe had a cause?

You're so smart. You know? Anyway.

I'm going to write a better history of time. Figure out where the... It's not random.

Where the person who showed up in your life, who's challenging you the most right now, they understand, shim gyi dim, struggle to focus on them, think about them, struggle to understand that they are coming from how you yourself behaved in last week, and last month. On a smaller level, because your behavior was the apple seed, and their irritating behavior was the tree. So, the good news, as I said yesterday, is that they are about a thousand times more irritating than you were, because your behavior was the seed, and they are the result.

But the investigation of what to stop doing is made a little challenging. You see? They are irritating for three hours a day.

You must have been irritating for a couple minutes to somebody last week. Then you got to go find that. In your memory, you got to go back and find out who it is you're irritating.

Alright? On a smaller level, on an apple seed level. So, shim gyi dim means like fight with your mind.

Your mind doesn't want to think about it. Your mind doesn't want to take responsibility for the most irritating person in your life. The last thing you want to admit is that they are a reflection of you.

You know? The mind will do anything to get out of that. You know?

They'll say, oh, what did I do last week that would have caused such a... But why do they... why do they act so bad?

You know? And then, your mind will just avoid it. It's like a magnet, you know, with the opposite...

the same poles, right? Like you get close to admitting that it's you, and then your mind slides off somewhere else, you see? Your mind doesn't want to believe it.

Your mind... You can't hold that object. Shim gyi dim.

Shim gyi dim. Say, shim gyi... Shim gyi dim.

You know? Fight with your mind and say, no, look, this is important. Where did this person come from?

Because I could fix them. Okay? Because I could fix them.

If it's coming from me... You see, the goal of this thing is not that you all go home feeling guilty, right? The goal is that if they're coming from you, you can do something, you can fix them.

You see? Take out the apple seed. No more irritating people in your life.

That's incredible. You know? One by one, eliminate the irritating people in your life, purposely.

Pull out the seed for them. Watch them change. It's kind of lonely without any irritating people, okay?

Like, you feel like there's nothing left to do with your life, you know? Actually, it's quite pleasant. It's really pleasant.

There's a wrong view that you need to have something painful to understand pleasure. It's not true. It's completely wrong.

Okay? You don't need pain to understand pleasure. You can have pleasure all the time and not have pain.

It's not a matter of comparison. Pleasure feels good. Okay?

You don't have to cut your hand off to understand what it feels like to have your back rubbed. Okay? Just having your back rubbed your whole life is pretty cool.

Alright? So, you can do that. Okay?

You can clean up your life. One by one, you eliminate... I saw this movie.

What's it called? Eliminator? Where was the Schwarzenegger?

Yeah, Terminator. You can be the Terminator. One by one, you terminate the irritating people in your life.

And then you're just like happy all the time. And everybody around you is cool and interesting and creative and fun, you know? Okay.

You created them and you can uncreate them. Or you can change them. Okay?

Be careful not to be critical of other people. And then suddenly there's nobody in your life who's criticizing you and everybody's like, Geshe Michael, I love you so much. Here's some flowers, you know?

Do you want chocolate today or would you rather have almond milk? You know? And then your whole life is like that.

And they're like, people are sending you money in envelopes all the time, you know? Like Jigme is like handing me these deposit slips and I'm like, who's this person? She's like, I don't know.

Where'd the check come from? I don't know. Here, you got another one, you know?

It's cool. Then you don't have to worry and you can help other people. You see?

If you straighten out your own life and you become a happy person, then you can help other people. You see? So, that's shungudzhim.

Figure out where stuff is coming from and fix it. What was the second part? Shuky lo.

Say, shuky lo. Shuky lo. Shuky lo means like surrender into the peace.

Okay? Surrender into the peace. It means block future thoughts.

I'm talking now a meditation that we'll do when we get back from a break. Okay? We'll take a break.

But, I'm gonna set you up for the meditation. Okay? So, we're gonna block future thoughts.

Then we're gonna block past thoughts. And we're gonna be in the present moment. And then we're gonna focus on...

on where some challenge is coming from in our life. Okay? I'll allow you to slip back to the past long enough to remember how irritating they were.

Then you have to come back to the present and work on them. Okay? What did I do to cause them?

Alright? What am I doing that's the same? Okay?

Then we're gonna end with a little resolution. Like, I won't criticize anybody for three days. And let's see if they change.

We'll check out if this Geshe Michael's thing is right or not. Okay? Like, I will...

Just for three days I'll check it out. I will not criticize anyone for three days. And then I'll see if the person who bugs me the most changes.

If he doesn't change, I'll just go back to criticizing people. Okay? Alright?

Like, I'm not asking for much of a commitment. If it works, use it. If it doesn't work, you can go ahead and be a...

See, I almost said another bad word. But I caught it. You have to tell them, okay?

Then, once you figure it out and you made this resolution, I'm not gonna criticize that person. By the way, it's not the same person. You understand that, right?

You don't criticize somebody at work and then your husband stops criticizing you. Got it? Then I would...

Then in the meditation after the break, when we get to there, we will... We will surrender into a state of peace and contentment that all is well with the world. We have fixed the person who bothers us.

Okay? We have changed them. And then just be happy and park in the present moment, in the feeling of contentment that you have just learned how to adjust reality.

And you can make anything happen. Okay? You can make a quarter billion dollars in your free time.

You can have a four decades old most beautiful relationship in the universe. You could keep your body young. You could change the world.

You could stop war. You could stop hunger. Because you're controlling.

They're coming from you. Okay? Then Lhökyi Lö means, God, I found out how stuff works.

I could change the whole world. I could make everybody in the world healthy and happy. You know?

Then stay there in that feeling of how beautiful it feels to know you finally figured out how to help everybody in the world. And just stay there in the quiet, in the contentment of knowing how to make the world a good place. See what I mean?

That's Lhökyi Lö. So, we'll struggle for a few minutes with the person who bugs you. We'll figure out what we have to do to get rid of them.

And then we'll Lhökyi Lö. And we'll just park in the feeling of all is well with the world. Okay?

So, we'll do that after the refreshment. Am I supposed to announce anything? Because you better tell me now, because I...

I'll be here if anyone has a personal question. Okay? We'll come back in ten minutes.

They've been great friends and great help all the time that we've been in Phoenix. I'd like to thank Jen, Anton, and Vicky for... They sort of announced this class in their classes and I thank you for that.

If you do yoga and you need a good class in Phoenix, Anton said they have really good classes. Is the Phoenix that one? Life Power Scottsdale.

Life Power Scottsdale. Okay. And it's a nice studio and nice classes.

Okay? And I go to... Every time I'm here, I go to classes in Phoenix.

It's really nice. Okay? So, thank you for that.

So, we'll start a meditation. Okay? I'd like to do with you the Shreem Brzee Gym and the Shloki Lod.

Okay? Here we go. Sit up straight.

Begin to watch your breath. Place your mind on your breath. Step back from your mind.

Step behind your mind and start to watch your thoughts. Now try to put up a wall in front of you. Invisible wall, like a wall of power, force, that prevents you from thinking of anything past our moments together here.

Not thinking about what you're going to do at home tonight. Not thinking about tomorrow or next week. At least, keep your mind from the future.

Your full attention and your full focus is here. Put another wall behind you. Block the past.

No thoughts about last week, last year, last boyfriend. Keep the mind from going behind you to the past. Keep the mind from going ahead to the future.

Dönmi su. Dönmi chö. Feel the relief of being in the present moment.

Just being here. Bring to mind the one person who is the most challenged for you nowadays in the last few weeks. What's the one person who's been the most challenged in your life?

Extract the essence of the challenge. What is the one thing about them that is the biggest challenge for you? Is it that they criticize you?

Is it that they don't help you? Is it that they're hurting you in some way? Be very specific.

What's the essence of the problem with them? What are they doing that you... Out of all the things they do, what's the one thing that most hurts you or bothers you?

Get that clear in your mind, or else this exercise won't work. Shung gi drim. Make a small, quick, easy resolution in your mind that you will not, let's say for the next few days, engage in that kind of behavior yourself.

Whatever bothers you about them, whatever disturbs you about them, if they're critical, make a promise not to criticize anyone for the next few days. If they get angry at you, make a promise to yourself not to be angry in the next few days. Dedicate that action to changing them.

Imagine being kind and good to others in order to change them. Now let go of that whole conversation and relax in the knowledge that you will be doing some kindness that will change the world. Relax.

Feel happy. Feel contented. Shung gi le.

Something is right now in your life. You are responding to harm with kindness by changing yourself. Feel how fine that feels.

Feel how contented you feel to be doing the right thing. Shung gi le. Stay in that feeling of contentment in the present moment.

The effort is finished. You did the right thing. Then slowly, come back to this room.

And when you're ready, open your eyes. I promised you some time to answer questions. We have seven minutes.

Geshe Michael tends to talk too much. I'm going to answer one, then I'll catch you, okay? Someone asked me, they said, what is the most irritating person I know is myself?

Two people asked me that question. During the break, two people asked me the same question. It's all the same, okay?

It's not different. Learn to extract the essence of the problem. What is the most irritating thing about yourself?

Okay? What is it that's most irritating about yourself? Let's say in my example, I was taking Chinese classes on Skype from a lady who's from Shanghai.

And then I got lazy. And I feel bad, I'm irritated at myself for being lazy about my Chinese classes. And then, the way you can plant a seed to stop what is the essence of what is irritating about yourself to yourself is to help someone else change in that way.

So, I might look around in my life for someone who's trying to learn something new and then encourage them or help them to work harder, to learn something new that they want to learn. That will plant seeds in my mind that will cancel the old seeds of laziness. And then I won't feel irritated about myself, I'll feel proud of myself.

That's how seeds work in the mind. Very important. I didn't have time to cover the whole class.

I didn't cover the whole class. But try to appreciate, for next time, okay? When you step back from your mind and observe your mind, what you see is also coming from how you behave towards others in the past.

If you step back from your mind and you see sadness, okay? Are you having the thought or are you listening to the thought? Are you speaking the sadness or are you listening to the sadness?

Are you the listener or are you the feeler? Okay? And if you really go deep, you'll realize you don't have control over what you hear in your mind.

Okay? That's ripening from seeds that you planted before. In the same way that you planted your husband criticizing you, right?

You planted how you hear your own mind and you don't have control. You can't tell your mind, don't be angry right now or don't be sad right now. Okay?

Don't go crazy about it. Okay? If you hear your mind being sad, which is called depression.

Okay? Seriously. Just take some comfort in the fact that it's not you being depressed.

You are listening to someone else being depressed. Okay? Seeds are ripening in your mind because you made somebody else sad.

And if you don't want to hear sad thoughts in your mind, try to cheer up other people. The one universal quality of depression is that it is focused on myself. Okay?

And the only cure is to focus on someone else and try to help them with their sadness. Suddenly the seeds in your own mind will change. And you will hear thoughts of happiness going on.

You will step back from the mind and you'll observe great thoughts of happiness being thought by that guy called you. You see what I mean? Got it?

It's very beautiful. Okay? Okay.

What was your question? You have to sing a song before you ask a question. No, I'm just kidding.

[Говорящий 2]
If the person who is irritating me, if their characteristic is criticizing, so then my effort in the next three days is to not criticize. If I stop verbally criticizing but I'm still mentally criticizing, am I planting the seed?

[Говорящий 1]
Fourth chapter, Abhidharmakosha, 350 A.D. The classic presentation on karma. We are required in the monastery to memorize thousands of pages. I'm like a machine.

That's what we do. That's what dzogchen is. There are three forms of karma.

There are three ways to plant a seed. One is by what you do. One is by what you say.

But those both come from a deeper form of karma called what you think. So, karma is planted in the subconscious. Karma where you don't criticize someone verbally, but where you're still criticizing them mentally, is much stronger than verbal karma.

Because you are working close to the storehouse of the seeds. The seeds are stored in your mind. So, any mental action you do, mental karma, of criticizing them unspokenly, is much more powerful than...

You better say it. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. Better say it than to think it.

So, really, to be... to take good care of your karmic seeds is extremely difficult, because that involves controlling what your mind does. And that's hard.

But you got a head start with this kind of meditation. You get a head start, because you're going to get used to listening to your own thoughts. If you listen to your mind being critical for a few minutes with detachment, you see how gross it is.

You know, you're like, who wants this mind, you know? Let's be a little more cheerful, you know?

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Alright? Anything else? I'll take one more question, then we wanted to sing you one last song, okay?

Yes, please. Yeah. You guys ready with the...

One sit down. Okay, go ahead.

[Говорящий 2]
How do you tell the difference between effort and grasping?

[Говорящий 1]
Good. This is delicate, okay? Okay.

People ask me, do you know the Dalai Lama, you know? And I've known him for, I don't know, 30 years? I used to hang out in his house in India when I was your age, a hundred years ago.

So, I say, yeah, yeah, we're really tight, you know? And then they say, well, when's the last time you saw him? Well, I say, oh, it's in Washington D.C. We had dinner together, you know? And then they're like, man, how many other people were there? And I'm like, oh, like 400. And...

I was like 23 tables away, you know? I had this bird-watching binoculars, you know? And, you know, Harrison Ford was there and, you know, other people you won't remember.

And... my Lama jammed me with his elbow and he said, look, and I said, what? He says, I think that guy's a senator.

I said, no, no, he's not a senator, Rinpoche. Think more. He says, I got it.

I said, what? He says, it's Indiana Jones. So, anyway, I was watching His Holiness, like everybody else.

Nobody was eating. So, one guy was eating. That was His Holiness.

Everybody was watching His Holiness eat, you know? And... and they brought out the food.

They brought out this big plate of food, you know? Like, you know, it's piled with food and, you know. Everybody's thinking he's going to go, you know, and just be fed, you know?

And he takes a fork, and he takes a knife, and he goes, argh! And he's like, shoveling it in, you know, and we're all like, you know, and he's laughing, and he's like, we got more to stuff, you know, and he's... Then I realized, I had this moment of, you know, epiphany, which now justifies all my desires as far as food.

I said, he's enjoying himself more than anyone in the room, you know? He's enjoying dinner more than anybody in the room, you know? And he's eating it, you know?

So, then I... then, you know, when you see one of your lamas do something, you... you tend to eval...

you know, you change your evaluations of things, you know? It must be okay to have... to enjoy food, because he's doing that.

You see what I mean? You see your lama do something, and you think to yourself, it must be okay. So, then I'm like, it must be okay to enjoy food.

So, he must be enjoying, but not grasping. You see what I mean? There must be a distinction between enjoying and grasping.

Okay? Okay? And then...

those of you who know prana, I mean, we're talking... enjoyment travels in the sushumna, in the central channel, jongmai, and... grasping travels in the left-hand channel, the iddha, and it's an evil thing.

So, what's the difference between... how do you grasp a dinner and how do you enjoy a dinner? You see what I mean?

How do you enjoy a dinner without grasping a dinner? Okay? If you would...

if you would... what do you call it? Prevent someone else from having the food that you want in order that you should get it.

You see what I mean? If there was only one donut left for the table and you took it for yourself, rather than giving it to another person, that's grasping. Okay?

Why is it grasping? Because you won't get a donut. It's wrong way to get a donut.

If you like donuts, give them away. Okay? Got it?

The more you love something, give it away. Because you'll get more. You see?

And if you eat the last donut, that's it. No more donuts. You see?

Because you haven't planted any seed. You've used up the old seed. It's like dumb to take the last donut.

You know, we have these beautiful fights at the half-sentence university, where everyone's trying to give away the last donut. You know? Okay?

So, grasping means to misunderstand the thing you want and refuse to share it, because you want it. And then you won't get it. And enjoying is to share what you want, because that's the smartest way to get more of it.

Okay? And it also makes everybody else happy. Okay?

So, grasping is to want things in a way which refuses them in the future. And enjoying is to partake of them in such a way that you share. And that guarantees that you'll always have an endless supply.

It's really... I'm a donut master. You know?

I got all the donuts I ever... I got more donuts I can eat now. Okay.

I'd like to play you one last song, because in the last line of the part of the poem that you got, and we'll continue the poem in Phoenix, okay? Like, we'll send you an email and say, we're gonna do the next part of the poem. Okay?

Maybe in a month or two months or whatever. I'll try to do it once a month, okay? But at the end of this poem, the devil says, people who learn to watch their mind successfully are as common as a star which shines during the full day.

That's a joke in Tibet. Okay? Like, when was the last time you saw Orion come out in the day?

It means, not very common to find a person who's good at watching their mind. Then he says, people who are able to bring the angel into their mind are as common as an Udumbara flower. Udumbara flowers open once every thousand years.

It's a special like night-blooming lotus that opens once every thousand years, okay? And then he says, and even those who succeed in focus... even those who succeed in watching their own thoughts, and even those who bring themselves into the box of the present moment and figure out how to reach contentment by not doing what the irritating person is doing.

Got it? Even those people who are able to get into the present moment and do the right thing in the present moment can only do so through the blessing and the kindness of their heart teacher. That's his last sentence.

He says, only through the kindness of your heart teacher can you... can you reach the present moment and can you do the right thing in the present moment, okay? And heart teachers are like gloves, okay?

Everybody has to find their own. Everybody's hand is a little bit different, okay? But it's a...

it's a given in the yoga tradition of India and Tibet that you can't get anywhere without your heart teacher. It's not possible, okay? You must take it as a holy task until we meet again, you know?

Try to... try to find a heart teacher, you know? Try to think, who would be my heart teacher and how can I find them, okay?

This is the most important task in your life. You gotta find a heart teacher, okay? It could be your mom, could be your sister, could be your high school girlfriend, could be somebody in a red suit, could be somebody in a black suit, okay?

You don't know, but you have to find them. You have to find your personal heart teacher, okay? He says, you need that karma to get into the box of the present moment and break through to peace, to surrender into peace.

You need a heart teacher. You gotta find a heart teacher. So, maybe we'll talk about that process.

I think we're gonna talk about it in the fall, in the Lamrim course, okay? But there's this whole art of finding your heart teacher and making that connection, okay? And that's...

it makes you the happiest person in the world. You can't imagine what it's like to be in the care of a heart teacher. There's nothing more beautiful than that, you see?

You gotta do that. In your life you gotta do that, okay? Alright, so this song...

You ready? This song is about your heart teacher. It's a very famous song about heart teachers.

And then we'll stop. And I gotta leave and... Okay.

Sorry. You wanna sit here? Yeah, okay.

It's a weird mic, right? It's not that short. It's not that short.

Good night. See you next time. Thank you.