Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 5: Простой путь к счастью (2012, Феникс), занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
So, this text, technically this text is a Mahamudra text. And Mahamudra has a lot of meanings. But in this case, it emphasizes the fact that you are focusing on your mind.

So this particular text is, in our tradition, the Dalai Lama's tradition, is considered the most important, one of the most important texts on Mahamudra, or watching the mind. And the same author wrote another text, which is the textbook on Mahamudra for our lineage. So I thought we would continue with four meditations that are found in this text.

And that's what I'd like to see you take home with you for the next month or so, until we meet again. We'll be meeting again in the first week of November, I think. And we'll be doing a ten-day program then.

So, I'd like to do the four meditations with you tonight. We'll maybe do two now, and then two later on in the evening, okay? So put down all your stuff, because you're going to have to be totally silent, which is a challenge.

So get settled however it is for you, however it's going to be for you, so that you don't move at all. Not even move your head or your shoulders or anything. Okay.

Can we cut the air for just a few minutes?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah? Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
So this is called the meditation on total stillness, complete stillness. And we're going to try to sit without moving anything. It means don't wrinkle your nose, don't wrinkle your forehead, don't move the corners of your mouth, don't make any noise at all.

See if you can sit in total physical stillness, even with your breath, okay? Don't even shift in your chair, because the chairs tend to squeak, okay? Slightly.

So you're going to balance on your chair. Even the mosquitoes have to sit still for a couple minutes, okay? Alright?

Okay, here we go. Total stillness. No sniffles, no coughs.

I'm sorry for the swallows. Now please focus on your breath. Come to your breath, and watch your breath coming in and out of your nose.

Place the mind at the tip of the nose, where the nostrils come out, and like a guard in a parking lot, watch the cars come and go. You are stationary at the opening of the nostrils, and you're watching the breath exit past you and enter past you. But keep your mind there.

Let it slide back and forth, the breath. Now try to count the breaths. The exhale is the first half of the breath.

The inhale is the second half of the breath. See if you can count to ten breaths, without thinking of something else. If you find yourself having a sustained thought about something else, then start over at one.

[Говорящий 2]
We'll do this for a few minutes. Now please shift the object of focus.

[Говорящий 1]
Now focus your mind on your thoughts. Try to observe your thoughts. Don't try to control them, just observe them.

[Говорящий 2]
Now try to observe how many thoughts are about the future, and how many thoughts are about the past, and how many thoughts are in the present moment. Slowly come back to your breath, and slowly you can open your eyes. Take a stretch.

That was nice. Thanks for being so quiet. That was pretty long.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, so I'm going to pick up at verse 93. It's in your playbill. Can somebody tell me what page?

Verse 93? 28? Okay.

I'd like to thank Tim. Tim mostly did the playbill, right? Where are you?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
That's not Tim. Oh, he's over there. Okay, hi.

ngāni bhūpa ché do ser, khyunī gompa ché pa yi, gomchen nam ni, di ta te, sem ni gompa ché de ser, ché do ser. Oh, once in a while someone will come saying they're a great meditator, saying they will contemplate you and throw me from the mind. I will contemplate, they say, the mind as it really is.

khe ché nga me je mi chö, khe ché chi me dun mi sö, tatha ché pa soma la, chö le me pa gompa di. They tell us never to revisit the moment that came before. They tell us not to anticipate the moment that comes after.

Meditate upon the mind as it's been forevermore. No complications, no additions. sem rang gom le, man de mö, de ni nga rang gompa yin.

In the end, we would have to agree. They are meditating on nothing more than the mind itself. They are meditating on me.

ngā dan dzin dang min gyal we, khyunī gompa min gyal shing, ngā na nöpa khalang gyal, der yang kyé kyi ma le po. The way they see things, then, in no way contradicts the way in which I see them. Thus, they cannot be meditating on you.

So, how could they do any damage to me? In fact, I can't recall that I've met you in a mind in this meditation. So, this is a very famous meditation.

There were thousands of meditations taught in Tibet over the last 12 centuries. This is one that got pretty famous. And its name is found in verse 94 in the Tibetan, which is, je mi chö, dun mi sö.

So, the last three syllables of the first two lines of 94 are the name of a famous meditation that was going on in the 16th century. Je mi chö, dun mi sö. Je mi chö means...

He says here, don't revisit your past, okay? Especially your last boyfriend or girlfriend, okay? There's a tendency to review it over and over, right?

Usually that. Dun mi sö means, don't anticipate what's going to come next week, or next month, or like that. Like, try to be in the present moment.

There's that one book called, Be Here Now. And, I don't know, the book was a little strange, but the name is fantastic, you know? Be Here Now is a really, really good name.

And that was the name of a meditation in Tibet. It was called Be Here Now, right? Je mi chö, dun mi sö.

Don't revisit the past, and don't anticipate the future. Just be in the moment. Be in the present moment, okay?

We call it present moment meditation, right? In this room, we call it present moment meditation. And we said this morning that it's not a real meditation.

It's only a preparation for meditation, okay? I don't know about you, but I saw a lot of the Olympics this year, because I was home for once, and I was having a lot of business meetings in restaurants, and they were playing it on the... I don't have a television, but they were...

You know, the restaurants around where I live have 24 televisions surrounding you. Anyway, it's really difficult. But anyway, it's the only place I can meet people.

So I saw a lot of the Olympics, right? And then you see them warming up. I was watching swimming by accident, because that's what they were playing.

And they go to a warm-up pool, and they swim around for a while. Then they go to the real pool, and they swim around for a while. Then they go back to the warm-up pool, and they do some stuff, and then they go do jumping jacks somewhere.

And that whole process takes a couple of hours, I think, for a two-minute race. They warm up for... It's a whole physical thing, where they start to warm up for maybe an hour or two hours.

Then they swim a two-minute race, okay? To mistake the warm-up for the Olympics is what it is to meditate on certain things, like the breath, okay? That's like...

That's like, I got a gold medal. In what? Warm-up.

You know? And then you're like, no, I'm not kidding. It's as ridiculous.

You see what I mean? To a person who's well-trained, you say, are you meditating? They say, yes.

You say, what are you meditating on? On my breath. And then you're like, that's just the warm-up, man.

You gotta run the race. And then they're like, but that's all you're supposed to meditate on, you know? That's a...

It seems as silly to a trained meditator as saying I got a gold medal in warm-up. You see what I mean? Like, it's just not meditation.

It's just meant to be warm-up, to warm up the mind, and to focus the mind. So, we're going to learn four meditations. We did three just now.

Those three are not meditation, okay? They don't have a meaningful object. The point of meditation is you become what you meditate on.

Okay? You become what you meditate on. If you meditate on your breath, you become your breath, okay?

I mean, it's not a... It's only a... It was taught in the 4th century by somebody named Vasubandhu.

It's in his book. It's called, Ugyungup. Say, Ugyungup.

Ugyungup. It got to Burma. Somebody did that and then didn't do anything else by accident.

And then they started teaching people to watch the breath for the rest of their life. You see what I mean? It's useful, but only like stretching before the Olympics.

You see what I mean? Like, it's good, but it's not the race. You see what I mean?

So, that's what he's describing here, okay? You are learning to be in the present moment. You are learning to keep the mind out of the future and out of the past, okay?

You are learning to keep the mind in this room. When I went to my lama, who I had lived with for 25 years in the same house, and I was about to go on a three-year retreat, and the last words I heard from him after 25 years, the last words as I'm walking out the door is, keep your mind in the room. You know?

Keep your mind in the room, in the three-year cabin. Keep your mind in the cabin. Then I said goodbye, and that was really a heart-rending moment to leave him after 25 years and say, what's your last word for me?

And he said, keep your mind in the meditation cabin. You know? And so, to keep your mind in the present moment, it's an important thing, but there's no content yet.

Just to keep your mind in a certain room is not going to get you enlightened. You see? It's a practice of staying in one place.

But then you have to... It's like saying, keep your microscope trained on a single thing, but then you don't train it on anything. You see what I mean?

It's like, keep the microscope still, and you say, okay, my microscope's still for an hour. What are you looking at with the microscope? Oh, was I supposed to look at something?

You see what I mean? It's like having a microscope that's still, or a telescope that's not moving. So, you got to have something in the telescope.

You see what I mean? Meditation is a tool, not a goal. Then you have to focus it on something, and you become what you focus it on.

The word for meditation in Sanskrit is bhavana, which means to become. The word be comes from that. bhū, bhū.

The root comes into English as to be, to become. The word for meditation in Sanskrit is to become. And you become what you meditate on.

So, if you just focus on your breath, you just get sort of spacey, okay? So, you should focus on an object, okay? On a meaningful, holy, sacred object, like that.

And then that will infect your mind. The sacredness of that object will infect your mind. You see?

So, even though we use those three meditations. What? Number one, the meditation on stillness.

Then we slide into the meditation on the breath. And then we go to observing the thoughts and trying to restrict them to the present moment, okay? Trying to be here now.

Those are just three warm-ups. Those are three very important warm-ups. And by the way, you can do them faster than we did them.

If you only have fifteen minutes before you have to go to work, then go through those three in maybe five minutes, okay? And then go to the real meditation, which we'll do later tonight, alright? Then go to the real meditation.

If you're able to be in the present moment, do you have focus? Yeah, you have focus. Focus is like a telescope or a microscope.

You have focus. But do you have meditation? No, because meditation assumes a meaningful object, okay?

Meditation assumes a meaningful object, okay? If you focused on your mind... Now, here's a big question, and it's in this verse.

If you focused on your mind, would you be meditating? No, okay? Just watching your thoughts, okay?

It's not meditation. It's focus, but it's not meditation, alright? You're watching something with concentration.

But there's no meaningful content to just watching your thoughts come and go. It doesn't improve your character or your heart to watch your thoughts come and go. It's good for focus.

It's good to develop that focus. But it doesn't change your character. It doesn't make you a better person, okay?

What would make you a better person, focusing on your thoughts, is to think about where are they coming from. Then it becomes an emptiness meditation, okay? Not that I'm saying your mind is empty, okay?

If you focused on your thoughts and you take it as an exercise to think where are these thoughts coming from, then that becomes Mahamudra. That becomes a high meditation, okay? That becomes a meditation on emptiness.

So, how would you do that, right? That's... And the devil here says, if someone just focuses on their thoughts, they are watching me, right?

Didn't he say that here somewhere? Yeah, 95. They are meditating on nothing more than the mind itself.

They are meditating on me, okay? To observe the mind and not ask the question of where those thoughts are coming from, is to sustain your suffering. To just watch the breath, or to just watch the thoughts, and then not wonder why they are there, or where they came from, is to sustain the pain in your life, okay?

It's not only not a meditation, it's a meditation that sustains your problems. Okay? It's very interesting.

And how many people are meditating? Not many. How many of those are meditating wrong?

Almost everybody. Okay? Alright?

It doesn't help you. So, Geshe-la, what would it mean to... How can I do a meaningful meditation on my thoughts?

Alright? And this gets into a very beautiful subject, alright? We talked about it a little bit this morning.

This morning I was describing some... I was a boy scout at All Saints Episcopal Church, it was Troop 107. And we went out every month for three days.

How the guys got three days off to help us, you know, my father and all those guys, it was really wonderful. Because they would drive us to some really wild mountains, like the Estrellas or the... you know, and we would go hike 20 miles and up on the top of a mesa and...

you know, it was awesome. How they did that every month, I don't... But every month for many years, they took us out for three days.

And the big rule was, when you got to the camping spot, which would be out in the middle of nowhere, you were supposed to look at it. And then you pitched your tent, and you, you know, fixed food, and you went on hikes, and... And then you closed up on Sunday afternoon and you were supposed to go home.

And you pack up everything, you put it in the cars, and then everybody had to go stand and look at the place and say, was it as wild as when we got here? Would somebody know we were here? You know?

And the idea was, it had to be more pristine after the... Before you left, it had to be more pristine than when you got there. It's really beautiful.

So, like, somebody else's garbage from 20 years ago, you had to clean that up. You know? And usually that was toilet paper, half buried in the sand and...

there were other things attached to it, but... but you had to clean up everything. And it had to be totally wild.

There had to be no trace of man... of man on that land, you know? So, the idea...

This is an interesting thing, okay? Get this about meditation. This is a big, big deal.

When you meditate, when you were just watching your mind, right? Did you hear thoughts going through your mind? Yes or no?

Yeah, you heard random thoughts, right? And they can be pretty disturbing, you know? People come to me and say, I heard a thought in my mind that I should kill my brother.

And I'm like, no, no, no, don't do that. And they're like, yeah, I know, but where did that thought come from, you know? Like, some people have really bad random thoughts running around in their mind, and they're like, that's not me, you know?

Or they... Some thought goes around in their mind, I'm just thinking about food all the time. You know, like, when's the next feeding?

When am I going to get, you know? And I'm like, dang, and that's not me. I mean, I don't think about food all the time.

And... So, you hear thoughts in your mind, right? There's a person listening, and there's a person talking.

And it's impossible that you could be both at the same time. Okay? And it's not possible that you could be uttering those thoughts and listening to them at the same time.

Buddhism says that the thoughts are uttered a millisecond before you hear them. Like the light from a star, right? There's this cool thing, right?

That it takes so many light years to get here. By the time the light of a star reaches your eye on earth, it's possible that that star has already burned out. You see what I mean?

Like, it's not there anymore. Most of the stars you see in the sky, many of them, have already burned out by the time the light reaches the earth. You see what I mean?

Thoughts are the same. Okay? When you hear a thought in your mind, the speaker of that thought has spoken that thought before you heard it.

Because it takes time to hear it. Okay? That means your thoughts are bubbling up out of karmic seeds created last week, or a month ago.

Okay? You are hearing ripples from events that happened a week or a month or a year ago. Okay?

You were thoughtful to someone a month ago, and now in your own mind you hear kind thoughts. Okay? But those are bubbling up out of karmic seeds that were planted a week or a month or a year ago.

Okay? You don't have control over them. By the time you hear them, they are past tense.

You cannot control something that happened yesterday. Okay? Control your mind, Geshe-la.

But my mind went off a millisecond ago. You want me to reach into the past and... You see what I mean?

By the time you hear it, it's already spoken, and you cannot change it. Ergo, nobody can meditate. You cannot meditate.

There's no such thing. You cannot control your thoughts.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
And you know that if you've ever had depression, or anger, or jealousy, and it takes over your mind, and you're like, I don't want to hear those thoughts, and you can't stop. I used to interview everybody who came to my courses in New York. And one day I interviewed this guy.

I used to take him out to lunch because I was working full time, and I would take him out to lunch, and I'd say, why do you want to come to my class? And there was one guy, he came to eat lunch with me in the village at the Thai place. You know?

He used to come to the Thai place. And then I said, well, gee, how did you hear about the class? And he said, I heard it from some friends.

And I said, well, what do you do for a living? He says, I steal things. And I'm like, oh really?

Then I said, why do you steal things? He says, I'm a heroin junkie. That's what I do for a living.

And I'm like, I'm like, gee, I was trying to think of something to say. I never met a heroin addict. Why do you do that?

Why would someone do that? And I never tried it, I'm just curious, what does it feel like, and why did you do it? And then he said, my mind is jabbering all day.

My mind is chattering all day. And it drives me crazy. I can't stand it.

It never stops. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then one day I took some heroin and it stopped for an hour, it stopped for two hours.

And that was it, I was addicted. Because just to hear that stop, the chattering stop, for an hour or half an hour, it's worth everything. And then I was sort of aware, we all have that.

The mind is talking all day. The profound thing is, it said what it said a millisecond ago. You can't control it.

You can't turn back the clock and say, I shouldn't be depressed, you know. I had a lama, depressed people used to come to our temple and they say, you know, Rinpoche, what should I do? I'm depressed.

And he would say, just be happy. And after they left, I'd be like, Rinpoche, how can you say that to someone who's had a heavy depression for a month? Just be happy.

If they could just be happy, they wouldn't be here asking you, you know, about depression. In Buddhist belief, it's called... by the way, those who care, it's called yikin nampa shepa, the consciousness of your thoughts.

The object of the consciousness of your thoughts, which is what? What's the object of the consciousness of your thoughts? What's the object of the awareness of your thoughts?

Your thoughts. Okay? That object is called dharmadhatu.

If you want to know what dharmadhatu is, that's Chökyi Kham, that's dharmadhatu. That thing is past tense. It's already happened by the time you hear those thoughts, they have already happened, okay?

It's like trying to stop the light from a star. It's too late. You see what I mean?

Therefore, it's not possible to meditate. You cannot direct the mind. The mind will go wherever your karmic seeds drive it.

And those seeds were planted last week. It's too late, today, during meditation, to control the mind. You cannot.

There is no such thing. Okay? So, if you want to meditate, what do you have to do?

Should you be super aware of your thoughts, and block any thought that goes to the future or past? Can you do that? You cannot.

I mean, all these pages, thousands of pages of meditation instructions, put a... use a big seat, use a small seat. Put your left hand down first.

No, put your right hand down first. Touch your thumbs. No, collapse your thumbs.

No, zin... What do you call? Chin mudra.

No, no, no. The hands down on your knees, you know? No, push them back so your chest comes out.

No, push them forward so your back... You know, all this stuff is just bullshit. Okay?

It's too late. It doesn't matter what pose you take. And you know that.

You can sit there for hours and struggle with your mind, and you... or for years, and it won't change. And then you should take heroin, because that's the only way to make the mind quiet.

You see what I mean? No, it's really... I'm not joking.

I'm saying, you must apply the principles of karma to meditation. Okay? Not just your personal relationships and your financial situation and your health.

Okay? Right? How do you get...

How do you pay off your credit cards? Help someone else to deal with their credit card problems. How do you make...

How do you... How do you do yoga poses that you could never do? Go to a hospital, find a sick person, take care of them, then go to yoga right afterwards.

I'm not kidding. Okay? That's the karma.

How do you find a partner? Help a lonely person. Find a lonely person.

Somebody says, I want to find a partner. Should I wear Lancôme or Estée Lauder? They come to me, Geshe-la, do a prediction.

Is it Lancôme or is it Estée Lauder? And I'll go, you know... It's nursing home.

Go to a nursing home. You see? Deal with everything according to the seeds.

Okay? Stop dealing with the externals. Should I wear pink?

Should I wear red? It doesn't matter. If you plant the seeds, you can throw them all out.

You can wear green or black. It doesn't matter. People will think you're different.

You know? Visit a lonely person. Then go to Sephora.

Close your eyes. Grab something. Take it home.

Use it. The boys will go wild. It's really funny.

It's because you help the lonely person. It's not the... The lipstick is the vehicle, not the cause.

Right? It's the means and not the cause. It's the instrument of the karma.

It's not the karma. Right? So, if we're in the mood of applying that to everything in our life, why not apply it to meditation?

Okay? What are the seeds to hear your own mind be quiet? Because you cannot fight your mind in the present moment.

It's not possible. Because those thoughts that you hear have gone off a millisecond before. You are...

You are a witness of those thoughts. You are the listener of the thoughts. Okay?

You are not the thoughts. The thoughts are... have gone off a moment before.

Out of karmic seeds in your hand, you don't have control over them. Any more than you have control over your finances. Okay?

You can make intelligent decisions on your finances. It doesn't matter at all. It just doesn't matter at all.

Help someone else who's having a financial problem. And then, then take the stock market listings and throw darts at it. No, I'm not kidding.

Because the cause is that you help someone else. It's... The instrument is the stock of this company or that company.

Okay? It's very interesting. So, how do you apply that to meditation?

What would be the karmic cause that you would have to do towards other people to hear your own mind be quiet? You would have to respect the peace of their mind. You see?

You would have to observe the condition of their mind constantly and do everything you could do to make sure it was left more quiet than when you met them. I'm going back to the Boy Scout thing, okay? We interact with people all day.

We encounter people all day. We have interactions with people all day. That's what we do, many of us, all day.

Those interactions take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
And then you part. It's the same with... Well, that's a long story.

But you come into contact with other people, you interact with them, and then you leave them and go on your day. Right? That's what a day is.

Like a Boy Scout in the wilderness, you should view other people's minds. There's some scriptures that say, look at another person's mind as if it were a crystal lake. And I like that.

I think that'd be a good name for a song or something. The crystal lake of another person's mind. Okay?

The scriptures talk about the crystal lake of another person's mind. You... And that lake can be disturbed or it can be still.

You see? Other people's feelings are like the surface of a lake. And when you come into contact with them, you have a meeting at three o'clock, you encounter another person's mind.

Right? Look through their skull and look into the lake of... the crystal lake of their mind and observe, is it still or is it ruffled?

What do you call? Rippled. Turbid.

Right? It could be tempestuous. It could be like a hurricane, you know, a typhoon.

Right? You meet people whose mind is a typhoon. It's all like this.

The mind is like... You know? Or you could meet them and their mind is slightly...

You know? What do you call it? Day-to-day mind.

It's not real upset and it's not real quiet. It's just like doing stuff. Right?

Or you might encounter someone who's meditating a lot and their mind is very like... What do you call? Flatline.

In a good way. It's like very quiet. You know?

You must... observe their condition of their mind when you meet them, when you first see them. And then you sit down and you have lunch together.

And when you stand up and you part from them, you should leave their mind more still than it was when you got there. That's the Boy Scout thing. Okay?

The condition of their mind after the interaction with you should be more still and peaceful than it was when you met them. Okay? The karma of that is that your own mind will sound quiet when you try to meditate.

Okay? Got it? Okay?

So, what's the real preparation for meditation? It's a week before. I'm going to meditate next Wednesday.

Okay? You got to think like that. I was taking Bikram yoga classes.

I kept getting really sick because I'm already too hard physically. And then... I always get really sick.

I get a headache for two days, you know? So, all my Bikram friends who are devoted to Bikram, they're like, drink lots of water, you know? Then I drank lots of water.

I still got these terrible two-day headaches. Then somebody told me, coconut milk is the secret. And I got four coconut milks and I went to the Bikram class and I was drinking the whole class, you know?

And then I had to lie down in my car afterwards for like an hour because I was so sick. My head was... I had such a headache.

Then Kendra heard about this on a tape or something. She's in a three-year retreat, right? So, I went to the three-year retreat.

I'm sitting with Ben and Kendra and she writes out this long thing. And she says, Geshe-la, start drinking coconut milk the night before. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me, you know?

I'm going to go to a yoga class at four in the afternoon on Wednesday, so I have to start drinking coconut milk on Tuesday night? I mean, that's a little too much, you know? But that's the way it is with meditation, okay?

I want to have a good meditation next Wednesday. So, what should I do? Should I buy a special seat with...

What do you call those things? Husks of... What is that?

Buckwheat husk is the only way to meditate. Or should I have a wooden little platform thing? Or should I cross my left foot first?

I had this serious debates in... in ashrams in India. They're like, why do you have your left leg up first?

I'm like, my lama taught me that. No, no, no, it's the right leg. You know?

And all this pranic stuff and... You know? It's all going to...

Or you put the wrong hand down, you'll never get to enlightenment. You know? No, I'm not kidding.

You'll hear that. And... It has nothing to do with it.

That's like saying, you can use Lancôme instead of Estée Lauder. Seriously. It doesn't matter.

That's not the point, right? A week before you want to meditate, do what? In your interactions with other people.

Be sweet. Be considerate. Watch their state of mind.

Make sure you leave it more peaceful than when you got there. And that plants the seeds, that the next week, when you're listening to your thoughts which are... What do you call it?

Popping out of your karmic seeds, that you can't... God cannot control that. Okay?

There's a joke in Tibet. God cannot prevent a thought from coming out of a seed if the conditions are correct. If you were...

If you upset someone else's mind last week, and then you try to meditate this week, you're going to have thoughts in your mind and your mind will be distracted. Your mind will be thinking about dinner or your girlfriend in sixth grade who hurt you, or things like that. You see, things you don't want to think about will come up in your mind because you don't have control over it.

It depends on how well you respected other people's peace of mind last week. Okay? It's very interesting.

Alright? To watch your own mind during a meditation and to reflect on the truth of that is Mahamudra. That becomes a high meditation.

Okay? Is it a high meditation to watch your breath? No.

Is it a high meditation to sit as quiet as you can? No. Is it a high meditation to watch how many thoughts are in the future and how many in the past?

No. Is it a high meditation to try to control those thoughts? No, because you can't.

Okay? Well, then what would be a high meditation? As you're watching your thoughts pop up out of your karmic seeds, reflect on how well you did last week on respecting other people's peace of mind.

Because that's where those thoughts are coming from. Okay? And that becomes an emptiness meditation.

That's an emptiness meditation. It's very cool, right? It's very cool.

That becomes the highest meditation. Alright? So, by doing three things that aren't meditation, you start to meditate.

Okay? What are the three? Sit as quiet as you can, for a while.

Then watch the breath for a while. Then watch where the thoughts are going for a while. Then you can reflect on why you can't...

there's nothing the heck you can do about the thoughts. You cannot control them. Alright?

Got it? And then you think about, well, maybe this week I'll be nicer to people and I will respect their peace of mind. And that becomes a very holy practice, okay?

Of all the people I meet this week, how many will I leave with their mind in a peaceful state? I will leave the lake, the crystal lake of their mind with a silent surface when I part from them. Okay?

And I won't say things that might upset them. Okay? I'm not talking about telling the truth to a person who's being bad or something like that.

That's okay. That's okay. Upsetting those people's mind is fine.

Okay? You should do that. That's a peaceful thing to do.

[Говорящий 2]
Alright?

[Говорящий 1]
Someone's angry at somebody, you should fight with that state of mind and you should talk them out of it. That's a different thing, right? Okay.

Alright. We finished yesterday's class. Okay?

Now you can do up to question six on your homework from yesterday. I wrote a new homework for today in Paradise Cafe this afternoon. So we'll just continue.

I'm gonna go for another ten minutes and then we'll take a break, okay? Refreshment break. And you will buy a cookie worth twenty dollars, because we used the money to send young people to my monastery, the Tibetan monastery.

And maybe they will sit up here in twenty years or less and teach younger people than them. See what I mean? That's the plan, the master plan.

But it takes what? Cookies. Okay.

Alright. So even if you're not gonna eat them, which you probably shouldn't, just buy a lot of them and pay some stupid... overpay for them.

Because really you're just sending someone to... to the monastery so they can sit up here in five or ten years. Okay?

Alright? That's a cool thing. Okay, here we go.

We're on verse ninety-seven. la la ye che kakpa ye ye la charme gongpa yod de dang nga nyidzin dang ni gyalwa me pe ngar min nu kye ni gongpa khalang gyur der yang kye kyi ma le po Ma le po means, I've never seen you there. Who's talking?

The devil in your mind, okay? What is the devil... What's the...

What would the devil think about meditation? Somebody describe to me, how the devil would advise you to meditate. Huh?

Try it, loud. Yeah, try to control your meditation. Okay?

If it starts to... If you start to think about lunch, fight your mind and bring it back to the present moment. Okay?

And that's meditate. That's what the devil would say. What would the angel say?

Huh? Tomorrow when you interact with people, try to leave their mind more peaceful than when you met them. And then, next week when you sit down, you will only hear peace in your own mind.

Okay? You will only hear peaceful thoughts in your own mind. Okay?

It's so much easier. It's parallel to how you find a partner, right? Don't go to the mall with your limited budget.

And struggle about what's the most attractive thing on you. Okay? It's useless.

It doesn't do anything. Okay? Go to a nursing home.

Help a lonely person once a week for an hour. Then go to the mall, close your eyes, walk in any store, grab the first thing off the hanger and buy it, and wear it. And the guys will go crazy.

Okay? Because the cause is helping a lonely person. The instrument is the cloth and the make-up and...

You got it? It's very interesting. What's the cause of good meditation?

Helping someone else. Watching other people's minds and leaving them more quiet when you leave them than when you met them. Okay?

That's all. That's all. Then you can use a buckwheat cushion or a wooden cushion, or you can use no cushion, or...

or you can sit on a chair, or... you can hold your hands like that, or you can hold your hands like that, or you can hold your hands like... like that, or you can hold your hands the other way, and...

it don't matter. It doesn't matter. Okay?

Got it? That's not the cause. Right?

All right. So, he's describing here silence in the mind. So, when you do the silence thing, the first of the four meditations, you can start to slow your mind down.

Okay? Will you be able? Are you always able?

Are you ever able? When something works sometimes and doesn't work sometimes, that's a sign that you haven't found the cause. Okay?

Got it? That's a sign. Okay?

That you should look somewhere else. Should you stick up for your rights when your husband criticizes you, or should you give him the silent treatment? Which is better?

It's a dumb question. Why? Sometimes when you stick up for your rights, he criticizes you more, and sometimes he criticizes you less.

Sometimes when you're silent, he gets it, and he criticizes you less. But sometimes when you're silent, he gets mad and criticizes you more. That's a sign that being bitterly silent and attacking him don't work.

And you should look someplace else for a solution. Got it? They're both wrong.

Both choices are wrong. Pink or red lipstick? Which is better?

Property investments or stock investments? You see, they're all like stupid questions. Help someone with financial trouble.

Then close your eyes and buy a property, and it's okay, you'll make money. Okay? It's very interesting.

So, here they're talking about... Can you stop the mind? Yes.

Can you, by force of will, stop the mind? Yes, if you were good last week. Is it will then?

I don't think so. But that... You can tell your mind to be quiet, and it will be quiet if you respected other people's minds last week.

Got it? Alright? You can choose the red lipstick if you visited a lonely person last week, and you will get a boy.

In that case, the red is better than the pink. Or is it? Okay.

Anyway. Okay, so that's a silence meditation. 97 is describing a silence meditation.

Let's go to 98. We have four more minutes before your cookie break. This is a reference to...

an old mistake in Tibet about emptiness. Okay? And I'll describe it to you briefly.

Emptiness is the absence of something which was never there. Alright? In the case of a critical husband, a husband who criticizes you, Buddhism says you shouldn't get angry at him because he's not under his own control.

He's not... We called it what? Self-propelling.

Okay? You are forcing him to say bad things to you by what you said last week. Okay?

He doesn't have a choice. He's your puppet. Okay?

He's running from your arm. It's like criticizing a puppet. You know?

Don't say that thing. You know? He's part of...

He's an extension of... No, the mind-only school says it this way. You know?

Like, I don't like what this puppet's saying to me. You know? You're controlling him.

No, no, no. He's controlling himself. Look.

He's talking. You see? It's your arm.

You know? He's just part of you. He's a part of a you.

You see? It's very interesting. No, they describe it like that in the scripture.

He's... You're running his mouth by what you did last week. Okay?

Then he's talking. Then to criticize him or to shoot him, right? You would shoot your own foot.

Something like that. To criticize your husband when he's being bad is to hurt yourself. Okay?

It's very interesting. So anyway, what's not there, that if you realize it's not there, you could be happier? In the case of a critical husband.

What's not there, that if you understood wasn't there, you would be happier? A husband who's criticizing you because he chooses to. Okay?

A self-propelling, critic-sizing husband. Okay? There's no such guy.

He's never was there. That's the irony of all our emotional problems. The thing that you're upset at, never existed.

That's an illusion, right? He's not there. The puppet who's running himself, there never was.

Okay? So, emptiness is the absence of a husband who was never there. Got it?

When Buddhists talk about emptiness, they're always talking about something that couldn't have been there anyway. It's not like something is there and you have to pretend it's not there. That's not the case.

Buddhism is talking about the absence of an irritating person who was never there. Okay? Why was he never there?

Is there an irritating person in front of you? Yes. Is he real?

Yes. Is he saying things to hurt you? Yes.

Does it hurt you? Yes. Does he come from himself?

No. Is there an irritating husband in front of you who's choosing to say things to you? No.

Is there an irritating husband in front of you? Yes. Is there an irritating husband in front of you who's coming from you?

Yes. Got it? So, there's only one husband who's not there.

That's the one who's coming from his own side, without you being irritating last week. That one was never there, and that one will never be there. Every irritating person you ever met was a mirror of your own behavior.

And there was never any other irritating person that you ever met. Okay? That's emptiness.

Emptiness means, an irritating person that you're not... that's not your fault. And there's no such thing.

You have never met an irritating person in your life who wasn't a direct reflection of your behavior last week. That's kind of depressing. If you need to cheer yourself up, you can think, there's no inspiring person you've ever met that wasn't a direct reflection of yourself.

And I prefer to dwell on that, personally. Okay? And you can do that.

When you feel down, you can think of people that you know, that you love, or respect, or admire, and reflect about how they're coming from you. Okay? That's...

that's a scriptural way to... to feel better. Okay?

Now, there's a school of Buddhism in Tibet that said, the emptiness of the mind is not the fact that there's no state of mind that doesn't come from how you acted last week. Okay, got it? I'll put it to you as a question.

Is your current state of mind happening as a result of last week's actions towards others? Yes. Is there a state of mind you could have now that you could control in the present?

Can you control your mood in the present? No. Not possible.

It's coming from forces that were set in motion last week. And no one in the world can stop those forces. Okay?

So, what is the emptiness of your own thoughts? It's the fact that they are not coming from anywhere except what I did to people last week. That's the emptiness of your thoughts.

My thoughts are not coming from any place else than how I treated people last week. Got it? That's the emptiness of your thoughts.

Your thoughts are not something... Hello. Your thoughts are not something physical.

They took something that the mind was not. Is it true that your mind is not physical? In Tibet they say, yeah.

It resides in the brain, but it is not the brain. Does your mind have a color? No.

Can you split the mind in two? No. Can you weigh the mind?

No. It's ineffable. Is that the mind's emptiness?

No. Is it something the mind is not? Yes.

But is the thing the mind is not, in that case, something that it generally exists or not? Okay. Does the mind have blueness?

Can the mind be weighed? Is weight or color an existing thing, generally? Yes.

Then the absence of that is not Buddhist emptiness. Because Buddhist emptiness is the absence of something which could never have been there, because it doesn't exist, and it never could have existed. Give me an example.

An irritating husband who is irritating without me being irritating in the past. That husband never existed, could not exist. Got it?

Buddhist emptiness is the absence of something that never could have been there. Okay? Now, is it the emptiness of the mind to say that it's not blue or it cannot be weighed?

No. Why? Weight and color exist.

The absence of them is not Buddhist emptiness. Got it? Because Buddhist emptiness is always the absence of something which could have never been there, because it can't exist.

Give me an example. The last irritating person you met. Okay?

Who you thought was irritating from their own side and was not your fault. That kind of irritating person never existed and could not. And the absence of that is Buddhist emptiness.

Got it? So for some school to come up and say the fact that your hand is not your leg is not emptiness. Okay?

Why? Your leg exists. Okay?

Got it? Buddhist emptiness has to be the absence of something which cannot exist. Like what?

An irritating husband who is not coming from you. Okay? He never existed.

The great tragedy and irony of human unhappiness is that it is directed at phantoms. It is directed at things which don't exist. You are unhappy about the people in your life who hurt you and those people you think are coming from somewhere other than you.

And people who hurt you who could come from anywhere else but you don't exist and never did and could not. The tragedy of human unhappiness is that it's directed at things that couldn't exist. Okay?

That's too bad, right? That's sad. It's sad to have unhappiness, but it's even sadder that it's directed at things that don't exist and couldn't exist.

Got it? It's the tragedy of human life, of unhappiness. And I'm talking every line of every face that you ever see is created by nothing, has been created by nothing.

Okay? Every glum look on a human face in history was directed at a thing that didn't exist. Okay?

That's really a tragic thing, right? The wrinkles on every human face on this planet have been caused by concern over things that didn't exist. Okay?

That's a tragedy, right? But you're going to fix it by eating a cookie. Okay, we'll take a break.

Let's come back around 8.50 or something. We'll go until 9.30. Okay? All right.

In case you weren't here this afternoon, Jeff is in charge of our prison project. Anybody in this room can go to the prison with us. You just need to fill out some forms and go through a training.

We will, right Jeff? We'll try to give you a training in November, the first week of November. That training, by the way, is valid in different states because the company that runs the prisons that we go to is all over the United States.

Okay? They are a private prison company. Okay?

So in fact, the prisoners that we deal with south of Phoenix are not from Arizona. They are from other states. They are imported from California and Hawaii.

therefore their family can't visit them very often. And they're more lonely than normal. So anyway, everybody can participate in that.

It's a lot of fun. I go... I don't go often, but I go regularly.

Does that make sense? And it's beautiful. It's just really, really beautiful.

And I'd like to thank Jeff again. And they've expanded to four prisons now, I think. Four sections of prisons, three.

And we're looking at one up near Christine, right? A woman's prison. So, okay.

Also, we did some work in Russia and a prisoner was released last week who was wrongly imprisoned and would have been in for 20 years. And I think just that one thing is awesome. Okay?

And DCI people did that. So anyway. Two announcements.

Two announcements. Some of us are going to... You know, some of us when we get together...

Like we like to get together and do a yoga date, which means you all go out to... Sometimes we sit and read a book like we did this afternoon. We'll sit and read that for a while and then we'll all go to a yoga class together.

And then we'll all go out for Mexican food to wear off the yoga class. And so, tomorrow we're going to go on a yoga date. If you'd like to go.

It's a very gentle yoga. It's called yin yoga. They burn candles and you just stay in one position for like, I don't know, 20, 30 breaths or something.

It's not like you're jumping around and stuff like that. You're just basically stretching. Like you're in a stretch for 30 breaths or something.

So, we're just going to go. If you want to come, you're welcome. It's at Urban Yoga, which is 3225 North Central Avenue, which is near Osborne.

It starts at 11.30 in the morning. And just a lot of us are going to go there and take a yoga class together. I don't know the teacher and I don't know the series.

It could be a disaster. But at least we can hang out a little bit. I think it's going to be gentle.

And I suggest that if you want to go, you sign up tonight because I think it's going to book out. So, I promise I'm going. And about, I don't know, ten of us are going, I think.

So, it's urbanyogaphoenix.com. urbanyogaphoenix.com I don't know the people there. I'm not trying to make money or anything.

I like the place. I think Johnny O is doing something there. He's teaching there.

He's playing music there and I think he was invited to teach a philosophy class or something like that. And then another group of people here have another project going on. We do a lot of our yoga dates in Flagstaff, which is only an hour from...

That's the nearest civilization to where a lot of us live. We live in the Verde Valley and there's nothing happening there at all. So, you got to drive an hour to get into a yoga class.

But we often go to Flagstaff for yoga dates. And then one of the teachers that we enjoy a lot is teaching yoga in the high schools and has 120 high school students doing yoga. And in a public high school, a poor one.

And then... So, we were really excited that she was doing that because apparently the pregnancy rate has dropped and the drug use rate has dropped and, you know, she's been successful and she's a nice person. She was trained as an English teacher in the high school and she worked as an English teacher for years and then they cut the budget and she started teaching them yoga.

And she teaches around Flagstaff. She's a young lady. But then one day she came into class and she was like crying and we were all like, what happened?

And she said, they cut me from the program. You know, they cut me from the budget. So, we were like, F them, you know.

How much do they want? How much would it cost to get it back? And she said, $6,000 a semester.

So, we said, okay, we'll raise it. And we paid the public school to hold the yoga program. And Anatole and Adriana raised the money, so I'd like to thank them.

So, we paid the high school, we paid a public high school to reinstate their own program. And, so anyway, we're stuck for next semester and if you'd like to make a donation, facebook.com HighSchoolYogaProject. Am I right?

HighSchoolYogaProject. According to our estimates, it costs $0.50 a class to have a high school student do a yoga class. It just costs $0.50. You know. And there's a box or something up there. Or talk to them. You want to raise your hand?

So, I just think like yoga is a very healthy thing and it could help a lot of at-risk young people if they were getting their yayas off in yoga class rather than out doing graffiti or something. And I think it's a wonderful thing. And she's a wonderful teacher and she really loves the students and they love her.

And to have it canceled for lack of money, for lack of a couple thousand bucks, it's just really stupid. And it has changed a lot of the high school students in Flagstaff. So, if you're interested, help out.

I gave a lot of money last semester. And YSI helped a lot. So, if you'd like to, give them some money.

Every $0.50 you give, it's a class for some kid. All right. And there's a nice picture of them.

Yeah. Jenny Pearl. And she's a student of Aaron Widman, who's a student of Darren Rhodes, who's a student of John Friend.

Okay. No, Darren was one of our teachers in Tucson. He's a very good Anasara teacher.

So, she's a great-grandchild of John Friend's program. Okay. And she's good.

She's a good teacher. She's young. She's very young.

So, I think it'll be a bright future for that program. Fenty? I'm crying or I'm blowing my nose?

Okay. Verse 99. We have about half an hour, okay?

I'll go over a little bit, because I was a little bit late, and I apologize for that. Lala said... You notice the last few verses have started with Lala.

Those of you who care about the Tibetan, the last three verses have all started with Lala. Lala doesn't mean Los Angeles. Lala land.

It means... some people say, okay? So, he's reporting different wrong ideas about meditation.

Lala says, and then Lala says, and then Lala says, okay? So, Lala. Lala sem ni ma chupa.

Lupa jenpa gompa yu. Dega sem rang gompa yin. Nga ni gom ne man de mu.

Nga ni gompa nga'i dro. Kyu ni gompar khalang gyur. Kyu kyi ma lep ngar mi nu.

Again, here's a meditation where you never appear at the same time that I'm there. When people are doing this meditation, I've never seen you there. Who's you?

The angel, ok? Why? How do you know the angel is in your mind?

When your husband is yelling, you are thinking, it's an extension of me, you know? He's just what I was doing last week, ok? When you think like that, the angel is in your mind, alright?

Then, that's a sign that the angel is in your mind. And the devil is admitting that he's never seen the angel in the mind of a person who's doing this kind of meditation. What is this kind of meditation?

They say, meditate on the untouched mind. Let go of the mind and see it naked or raw, ok? This was a meditation, a wrong meditation that developed in Tibet among some like yoga, yogis.

And they were like, just sit there and don't try to control your mind, just like relax and watch all those terrible thoughts come to your mind and don't worry about it, just be happy. Like that, ok? Do we say you can control the mind in the present moment?

No, we don't. But do we say you should just give up and watch terrible thoughts go through your mind? We don't say that.

Should you give up yoga if the cause of being healthy is helping sick people? No. No, you should help sick people, then go to yoga class and it will help you.

You need the instrument. You see what I mean? So, should you give up trying to control your mind because everything is coming out of karmic seeds?

No, try, and if you succeed, it's because you were nice to somebody last week. Got it? You still have to try.

You can't just sit there and watch thoughts go through your mind. There was a school that developed because they didn't understand emptiness and they said, just sit there and don't mess around with your mind. Just let it do what it wants to come.

And that's the naked mind. It's called jimba in Tibetan. Just watch the naked mind.

And they mistook that. They called that the primordial nature of the mind, ok? They called that the raw primal state of your mind is whatever is there when you just let go.

So, they got this big thing, let go. In meditation, just let go. And then, what comes in your mind and what floats around in your mind, just let go.

And that... and what you see then is the primordial nature of the mind. It's the ancient...

unbe... what do you call? It's the beginningless nature of the mind.

It's what you see when you don't mess with the mind in meditation, ok? We say, you're just watching seeds. You're just watching thoughts pop out of your past seeds.

Ok? And watching them is not going to get you enlightened. Ok?

You must reflect on how they got there. And that's the primordial nature of the mind. Got it?

Ok? Do you meet the primordial nature of the mind by just letting go into meditation and letting whatever is going to happen, happen? No.

Are you watching the mind? Yes. Are you watching a quality of the mind?

Yes. Is it the primordial nature of the mind? No.

Has it been there since forever? Yes. Does that make it primordial?

No. What makes it primordial? It is the deep nature of the mind.

It is the real nature of the mind. What's that? The thoughts you hear are popping out of how you treated people last week.

If you can concentrate, it's because you were nice to people last week. Ok? If you have trouble concentrating in your meditations and you can't focus your mind, what should you do?

Change your hands. Try to do a full lotus. It's that half lotus that's been the problem.

Right? No, I mean... Try to observe the effect that your behavior has on the mental peace of other people as you go through the day.

And if you become very observant of that and respectful of that, then the seeds of that is that you will hear your mind go to a new state of meditative realization. Got it? Your mind will go to states you've never dreamed of.

[Говорящий 2]
Ok?

[Говорящий 1]
And as usual, it's because you were nice to somebody else. Alright? That's this system.

This system depends on other people.

[Говорящий 2]
Ok?

[Говорящий 1]
You cannot meditate without other people, because you need somebody to be nice to. Ok? You need them.

You need other people, especially the irritating ones. Ok? Alright?

You need them, because by making their mind more peaceful, you plant seeds to hear your mind, then your mind will go to states of meditation you never imagined. Ok? It's not through effort.

In the current moment. Because that's not possible, because the stuff you're hearing is is popping out of seeds that opened a millisecond ago. Ok?

You have to be good to people this week, and then next week you'll hear a quiet mind. It's very cool. You want to go to some, you know, what is that guy in...

in that... Star Wars? Frodo?

No. Yoda. Yeah, yeah.

You... You want to be like Yoda? I mean...

Use this system of meditation. What is it? Look through other people's skulls as you encounter them during the day.

Observe the relative placidity of the surface of their mind. And then make sure you leave it more quiet than when you got there. Ok?

And that... Then when you meditate, you will see things you never even dreamed of.

[Говорящий 2]
Ok?

[Говорящий 1]
You're telling me that if I'm sweet to a person for 20 minutes in a chance encounter in the grocery market, that I'm going to break through to some level of reality that I've never seen before next week? It seems inappropriate. It seems like the breakthrough is much bigger than the 20 minutes in the grocery store.

That's the nature of seeds, of mental seeds. Ok? Small seeds create massive results.

Ok? The power of a seed. Even in the world, even in the normal world, an oak...

What do you call? An acorn weighs half a gram. An oak tree weighs 450 tons, 500 tons.

Ok? It's more in the mind. 20 minutes spent being nice to a stranger in the supermarket this week could create a breakthrough to another level of reality next week.

Because seeds grow wildly. Ok? Seeds grow wildly.

It's very interesting. If they are planted purposely, they grow... they grow wildly.

And you could see things in meditation that you never dreamed of. How? Be sweet to a person in the grocery market that you don't know for 20 minutes.

Ok? And then everybody is trying to, you know... They are standing on their head or they are taking ayahuasca or...

You know? It's all stupid. It can't do anything.

You know? It's not the cause. The cause is...

The cause is creating peace in other people's minds. Ok? Very beautiful.

Then you can see weird stuff that... You know, you can do the... What's his name?

Don Juan and... Was it Don Juan? Carlos Castaneda stuff.

You can have weird stuff happen. You can have miracles happen. You can watch the leaf float up and reattach itself to the tree.

That's how his last book ended, I think. Or something like that. It happens, that stuff.

But the way to see it is to be nice to people in the grocery market. Purposely. And say, that's for my meditation next week.

I put up with this lady telling me about this oatmeal. And I was nice to her. She laughed more happy than when I met her in aisle four.

And I dedicated it to my meditation. And then I... And then I was sitting and I saw a leaf float up and reattach to...

You know what I mean? That's where those things come from.

[Говорящий 2]
Ok?

[Говорящий 1]
Mystically... You want to have a mystical experience? It starts in aisle four.

Ok. So you can watch the mind, but that's not an important meditation. You have to watch the mind and reflect on where the thoughts are coming from.

And then it becomes Mahamudra. Ok? Then that's Mahamudra.

Why? Because then you'll be nice to the lady in aisle four. Got it?

Then it becomes real. It becomes something you can use. To watch the mind is impractical.

To watch the mind and wonder where it came from is practical. And you can use it in the store. Ok?

Got it? Alright. We got about...

I don't know, fifteen more minutes. Hang in there. I know you'd rather be at a nightclub, but...

it's Saturday night. Verse number one hundred. LALA RIGPA SANGS RTEL ZER NANG BA YID LA MI BYAS CING GOM PA YID LA MI BYAS GOM DE'I KHYANG NGA LA BRTEN MI NOD NGON DANG ZIN DANG RGYAL BA YID NYEN PO CHOG NANG MI DA NA KHYUN GNYIS GOM PAR GALANG GYUR DER YANG GYUR GYI LAS PA MED He repeats that I haven't seen you.

Who's you? Yeah, it's unfortunate, but the whole section we're studying this weekend, except for the first two verses, is who talking? The devil, ok?

The angel only talked for the first two verses. Sometimes the angel will give a long talk, a long monologue, but this weekend you got bad luck, it's the devil. But he's saying true things.

He's saying, I've never seen you in the mind of a person meditating like this. Meaning, those meditations don't hurt me. He keeps saying, there's not gonna hurt me.

The Tibetan word is NGON PA. They do me no harm, ok? If people sit and watch their breath for a couple hours, they do me no harm.

Who's me? The devil, ok? He's like, God bless you, keep meditating on your breath, you know?

Because it doesn't do to me, ok? Alright? Like, I'm quite happy.

I sit there in perfect security in the mind of a person who's meditating on their breath all day. Is it wrong to meditate on your breath? No.

Is it an important meditation? Yes. Is it very helpful?

Is it helpful to warm up before you run an Olympic race? It's not only helpful, it's necessary. Is it the race itself?

No. Ok? So, if all they do is warm up and they never go on the race, I love it, says the devil, you know?

I'm fine with that. Just watch your breath, man. Then I can be there in your head, safely, ok?

Securely, alright? But if you start thinking about where those thoughts came from, then you're pushing me out, you see? If you start wondering, why can't I concentrate when I meditate?

Why do I keep thinking about breakfast in my morning meditations, you know? Or why is my mind disturbed when I try to meditate? If you start asking questions, you are pushing the devil out of your mind.

Ok? If you start asking questions about why you can't concentrate, you are endangering his existence and he will get nervous, ok? And then he'll have someone fry some bacon in the next apartment and your mind will slide away from the meditation.

Ok. So, in verse 100, he describes a meditation where you try not to bring any image at all into the mind and you make no attempt at meditating, which for them is meditation, ok? Trying not to meditate, according to them is meditation, alright?

Try not to think, ok? Try to have no thoughts at all. And you hear that.

You hear people say that. Is it possible? It's not even possible, ok?

It's not possible to have no thoughts at all. You can suppress your thoughts and you can make them very quiet, but you can't stop them, ok? The consciousness requires an object.

When there is no object, there is no consciousness. It's like playing baseball without a ball or a bat. Perception is the...

is the interaction of subject and object. Without one or the other, you can't have perception. You couldn't be aware if there were no object.

It's like saying a mirror with nothing in it. It's not... The mind is like a mirror.

It only reflects what you put in front of it, and that is perception. That is awareness. To say there could be perception without an object, it's like saying you could have a mirror working with nothing in it.

You see what I mean? There is no such thing. In Sanskrit or in Tibetan, the word for object...

The word for subject is that which holds the object. Yul is object. Subject is Yulchen, meaning that which holds the object.

In Sanskrit, object is Desha, like Bangladesh, ok? Meaning a place. And then the mind is called Deshin, that which holds the object.

So, to say that the mind could not... To say that you could have a state of mind with no object is impossible, even in the language of the ancient scriptures. There is no such thing.

Because the name for a subject is that which holds the object. Got it? Because that's what it does.

So, you can't have a meditation on nothing.

[Говорящий 2]
Nothing, alright?

[Говорящий 1]
Ok. That's not how you make your mind quiet, to try to think about nothing. Ok, got it?

You can sit there all day and try to think about nothing, but then you're thinking. I mean, that's just the basic thing. Tibetan lamas love that.

They just wait for a student to come in. Oh, lama, I have a question. What's the question?

I've been meditating. What have you been meditating about? Emptiness.

What's emptiness? Thinking about nothing. What's meditation?

Thinking very hard. So, meditating on emptiness is thinking very hard about thinking about nothing. Right.

You're an idiot. Get out of my room. You know, it's very common exchange with a young monk.

He'll go and say, I meditate on emptiness. What's emptiness? Think about nothing.

What's meditation? Think very hard. So, meditation on emptiness is what?

Thinking very hard about thinking about nothing. Get out of here. It's very...

It's an old joke in the monastery. You can't think about nothing. If you hear a mind which is quiet and which seems to be thinking about total peace, that comes from being nice to the lady at the grocery store.

It doesn't come from trying to think about nothing. My Lama used to say, if you want to think about nothing, just have 12 beers real fast. Then, get out of here.

Don't bother me. If you want to do something stupid, do that. One guy told him, he said, but Rinpoche, I can't drink beer.

I'm a Buddhist. Then he said, okay. You see those 12 bananas right there?

There were 12 bananas on the table. He said, eat all of them right now. And this was some kind of weird guy, and he just did whatever his Lama said.

And he ate the 12 bananas, and he didn't get any realizations. THOS MED BSGOM PA PHAL CHEN NI We're on verse 101. THOS MED BSGOM PA PHAL CHEN NI SNGA PHRUL GRIG RIG YOD KHA MO TSIG NI SAB SAB DE KHAM CHEN BSGOM KHAR RANG DU YOD LAG KYANG NYAM PAR ZHAG NAS BSGOM TSA NA PHAL CHEN NGA NI BSGOM PA MANG NGA DANG YOD LA NGA DANG YOD LA KHYAD MA BYAS So he's just doing sort of a wrap-up about watching the mind, okay?

Watching the mind is focus, but it's not meditation. Observing, if you're thinking about the future or the past, is a warm-up, it's a kind of focus, but it's not content in itself. Content means examine why you're having those thoughts, and then do something about it for next time.

Got it? Okay, that's all. So, he's criticizing those people.

They seem incapable of distinguishing me from existence. They're mistaking the existence of the mind for... They're mistaking me for...

They can't divide me from the existence of the mind. When you look at your thoughts, what are you observing? The existence of the mind.

That's all. You're just observing the existence of the mind. And that's the devil.

To just do that is the devil. Because you're not asking where did these thoughts come from. Okay, I'm going to skip to...

Let's do a good luck, okay? It's the last thing. Good luck...

What's the most sacred number in Buddhism? 108. Let's go to verse 108.

Okay, we're going to jump ahead to next time for good luck. Just for good luck, alright? So, the devil is telling the angel, Look, unless you can...

Unless you can make some big change in things, could you please stop talking about kicking me out of this mind? Because unless some radical thing happens, I'm safe, you know? All of those kinds of meditation that people are doing, they don't threaten me at all.

They make me stronger, okay? They make ignorance stronger. All these meditations that people are doing...

First of all, 99% of human beings could care less about meditation. The 1% who wants to meditate, 99% of them are doing the wrong thing. And they're just making me stronger.

Okay, they are cementing their suffering for the future. Okay, like that. So he says, just...

Could you give up trying to talk about getting rid of me? Because it's not going to happen. Why?

You are an undumbara flower. This is a flower that blooms once every several thousand years, okay? It's a mythical flower in Buddhist scripture.

It's a kind of lotus that opens every couple thousand years. In fact, if one opens, it means a Buddha is about to come to this world. So you can say millions of years, okay?

This flower only opens as a harbinger of the appearance of an enlightened being, okay? So, he's calling the angel an undumbara flower. Meaning, for someone to seriously understand where the thoughts in their mind are coming from and why they can't meditate.

I mean, it happens once in a zillion years, that someone figures out that they have to be nice to the lady in aisle four, in front of the oatmeal, is the secret to meditation. You know, how many people get up and teach that in a meditation class? You know, nobody.

I'm safe. You're like a flower that blooms every million years. I'm not exactly feeling worried about you, okay?

So, stop talking about kicking me out of the mind, okay? Got it? In the very best of circumstances you might come but only once.

And even that requires that one spend an inconceivable number of eons amassing an unsurpassed power of virtuous deeds. For someone to grasp that what makes meditation good is to consciously try to create peace in other people's minds, right? Every time you meet someone during the day, try to leave their mind more peaceful than when you met it, right?

He says, for someone even to understand that requires that they have goodness for thousands of years. That they have been good for thousands of lifetimes. To hear those words and to get the vision or to grasp the picture of every person I meet tomorrow, may I leave their mind in more peace than when I met it.

Okay? For someone to want to do that itself requires thousands of years of good deeds. To get it requires thousands of years of good deeds, okay?

Alright? So, I'm safe. He's not worried that anyone's gonna learn his secret.

Then he answers a very profound question. How could you amass that much good karma? What's the only way you could get enough good karma to know how to make your meditation work?

And then what's the answer? Please the one who is your lama, okay? Please your teacher, your personal teacher, okay?

I'm a teacher of yours. I'm probably not your personal teacher, okay? Or I don't know who's your personal teacher.

But in your life you should find your personal teacher, you know? The one that you can give your heart to, you know? And do it slowly.

It's like worse than getting married, okay? Like, do it slowly. Don't jump, you know?

Like, study them. Study their students. See what kind of effect they've had on people.

And it doesn't have to be a formal teacher. It could be your mother. It could be your father.

It could be a school teacher. It could be a mentor at work. Find the one person in your life that you respect above all others, right?

And then give your heart to them. Ask them to teach you. And that's the only way to create enough good karma to meditate.

Got it? It's very beautiful, okay? So, if you want to learn to meditate well, you have to find this heart teacher, right?

How do you find a boyfriend? The trick is you don't find them, you plant them, okay? That's awesome, right?

Plant them. How? Visit a lonely person once a week, okay?

Visit a lonely person once a week. That will create a partner, a new partner, you know? A very beautiful partner.

Visit a lonely person once a week. Don't go looking for them. Don't go on some website, okay?

Visit the lonely person, then go on the website. You see what I mean? Visit a sick person, then go do yoga.

And the yoga will work, okay? So, how would you find your heart teacher? It's a bad question, right?

You should plant them, you know? Plant them. Don't leave it to chance.

Don't go looking around in India. I can save you two years of diarrhea, you know? You don't have to go to India.

Yay! Okay? You plant your heart teacher, okay?

How would you plant that kind of teacher? In small ways, you could share your heart knowledge, your heart wisdom, with friends who want to hear about it. Not with friends who don't want to hear about it, okay?

That's just bothering people, okay? But if you know someone, let's say someone's having a hard time with their husband, then you can say, let's go out to coffee, I'll tell you something I heard about last week. Your husband is an extension of your arm, you know, he's coming from you.

It's because you've been unkind to someone at work, that your husband is critical of you. Like that, okay? Like, what understanding you have so far, share it with others in the inappropriate times when they want to know.

Okay? And that's how you plant your heart teacher. Okay?

That's how you plant your heart teacher. Look for every opportunity you can to give other people comfort or make their lives easier by teaching them that stuff is coming from them. Okay?

And then, that plants a seed to have a heart teacher. And they will come, and they will appear. And they don't have to be dressed in a red suit or a black suit.

They could be a partner, they could be a relative, they could be a yoga teacher or a... what do you call? What do you call it?

Ballroom dance teacher. They could be any person of wisdom that you meet, because you create them. Okay?

It doesn't matter. If you create the seeds, it could be black or green lipstick, right? If you create the seeds, a teacher could appear anywhere.

Somebody told me the teacher was their dog and I believe it. You know, I believe that. So, plant the seeds for a heart teacher.

They will come to you. Then somebody in China asked me the question, how can I plant the seeds for a being who's going to teach me more than I know? It sounds like they were like very worried about it.

How... If I create a person to teach me, how can they teach me more than I know? Because I created them.

What's the answer? Seeds grow. Seeds grow wildly.

Okay? If you share what you've understood so far about seeds, then you will meet a master who teaches you things about seeds that you could never imagine. Okay?

You've got to create them. You plant them. How?

Share what you know. Without banging on doors and giving out pamphlets, okay? No, I mean, if you start looking for people who need help, you will find hundreds.

People who want to listen to what you have to say.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
If you start looking, the reason you haven't met them so far is that you haven't been looking. When you start looking, there turn out to be hundreds in your life, dozens of people in your life who would love to sit down with you over coffee, and you explain to them a new method of getting their husband to not be so mean. Something like that.

Okay? And then that's a seed for your teacher, to create a teacher, okay? Your heart teacher.

Then that teacher, with that teacher you can collect enough karma to what? To do what? Yeah, to meditate properly, and kick the devil out of your mind.

Okay? It's very cool. They cannot co-exist by the way.

They cannot stay in one mind. There ain't room in this town for both of us. Okay?

Either you got the devil in your mind, or you have the angel in your mind. They cannot co-exist. Either you believe that you fix your husband by being kinder to your kids, or you fight with your husband.

There's only those two choices. Okay? There's only those two choices.

Okay? Alright, this has been very fun, and very meaningful time, and a beautiful time for me. And I hope we can do more.

So, I'll see you in November. That's like ten days of... I never get a chance to teach a traditional Buddhist scripture, because I'm running around the world doing success trainings.

But four times a year, I do ten days straight of hardcore, you know, how to get enlightened from the greatest book ever written. So, if you like, come in November. I think it's November 2nd to the 11th, am I right?

And it's free, which is... My Lama, one day he got upset at us. He brought us up to his room and he said, these other Lamas, they're charging like two thousand dollars for initiation.

I don't charge anything, but nobody comes, because you don't tell them about it. You know, we're like, we're sorry Lama, you know, and he says, I should start charging, you know. Then people will come.

And then we're like, well, how much you're going to charge Rinpoche? And then he said, what do you mean charge? What are you going to charge for something that's priceless?

You stupid, get out of my room! You know, he's like... This was a conversation with Rinpoche.

You're like, but Rinpoche... No, no, don't put Rinpoche. It's priceless.

You know, when you put a price on it, you're spitting on it. You know, it's beyond price. You can't charge ten million dollars for...

for a sentence from that book, and you've undercharged. And it's an insult to the... to the book.

So, it's free, okay? We should be free. Alright?

Okay. And then if you can, come in January. Two?

Tequila! Did you get that? Yeah.

We were invited to speak... the ten-day teaching in January. A retreat will be in Mexico at a town called Tequila by...

It's just by accident, okay? We didn't... It just turned out that way.

It's a Catholic monastery in a town called Tequila, and it was just an accident, okay? You don't have to drink tequila or anything. Okay.

You ready? Gym day? Okay.

Thanks. By the way, if you don't know those prayers, and I know it's very frustrating when you walk into a place and they do some kind of prayers and you never heard of them, and... Talk to Jigme.

Where's Jigme? She's there. She can give you the stuff online or something.

It's a very beautiful prayer. It's to give away the good karma of what we just did towards making a perfect world, okay? Towards what they call mandala.

Mandala means perfect world, right? So, it's a... That's a mandala.

And you dedicate the good karma of our two days together to helping the world, creating a perfect world, okay? So, you should learn that prayer. It's like...

It's good luck to learn it. We do it in the original because it's just to honor our teachers, okay? Who came from Tibet.

All right, good night. See you next time. Thank you for coming.

Thank you for letting me teach. Okay, bye. Okay, achar.

Okay, good night.