Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 8: Если Эйнштейн неправ, проблемы исчезают (2014, Феникс), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
So, we've been going through a text. There was a text that was in the monastery when I was there. I was there, I don't know, I first got there almost 40 years ago.

And there was a beautiful book that we studied sometimes. It was a poem. It was a very beautiful piece of poetry in Tibetan language and it was written by the first Panchen Lama.

Do you have his photo, Nymo? This is the first Panchen Lama. In Tibet there are two high lamas, a Panchen Lama and a Dalai Lama, and they alternate normally.

When the Panchen Lama is a baby, the Dalai Lama is an adult, and then they switch later on, and they sort of lead the country. So, the first Panchen Lama was an extraordinary leader, a great poet, a fantastic philosopher. He was unusual for his time because he lived into his 90s.

I think he passed away at 92. Tibetans usually say he lived to 100. I like him especially because he was an activist.

He was famous for actually stopping a war in Tibet. There was a war that was about to break out. He was in meditation in a cave, and he heard that a war was about to break out in the valley below, and he walked down and stood between the two armies and said, if you're going to fight, you're going to have to kill me first.

And everyone was afraid to kill him because he was so famous. So, they stopped the war. And he was just an extraordinary man, an extraordinary Lama.

And I really feel close to him. I love him very much. And he wrote a very beautiful piece.

He wrote many things, but there's a famous poem that he wrote called Dangzin Shangdep. Dangzin means our tendency to think that things are real, and we will talk about that tonight because it's not what it sounds like. So, shangdep means like a bitter argument between two sides of one person's mind.

So, I like to call it the angel versus the devil because we have this picture in the West of inside one person's mind. You know, the bad part is telling you, eat that chocolate. There's studies that say chocolate is good for you.

And then the angel is saying, yeah, but it's not really good for you. It's going to raise your cholesterol and get you sick, you know. And then your mind goes between the angel and the devil.

So, that's what's happening in this poem. And I think you can feel, as with all great religious leaders, you can feel that it was a reflection of his own mind. He was recording the argument going on in his own mind.

So, really it's an argument about the devil who says that things are as they seem, that reality is as we are taught when we are children in the school. And then the angel who is saying, no, no, reality is much more deep than that. And you can see into the very workings of reality.

And if you learn to do that, you can actually change your life. You can adjust your own reality. So, in the monastery, you know, we were trained.

The Geshe course is 25 years. And then in my case, they encouraged me to go out after the Geshe course and apply it in a real life situation. They suggested a business in Manhattan, which I wasn't interested in at all.

I didn't like New York at all. I came from Arizona. New York in the 70s was very dirty, 80s, very, very dangerous, very dirty.

And I didn't want to... My brother came to visit me there. He came off the bus in the Port Authority.

He came out to 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. And he turned around and got back on the bus and went back to Arizona. He didn't even stay for 10 minutes, you know.

And so, it was a rough place in those days. I said, I don't want to go there. I don't want to do that.

And they said, no, no, you have to... Let's see if you understand this thing about adjusting reality, tweaking reality. Like, I like to think of The Matrix, the movie The Matrix, and how, what's it, Keanu Reeves, what's his name?

Neo adjusts reality. And in the end, he stops the bullets and he finds the program that underlies reality. So, really, in Tibetan monasteries, we're taught to do that.

So, they gave me a... What do you call it? Homework was, can you start a large business to help the refugees using what you learned?

And I did. I helped to start a business. It reached $250 million a year.

Warren Buffett bought it in 2009. And we funded many projects for refugees and I kind of consider it a success. Like, the experiment was a success in trying to tweak reality.

So, this text will teach you how to tweak reality. And I go around the world. I give these talks there.

We just got back from China, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Shaolin, Jinan, Taipei, Taichung. And we teach it all over the world and we teach people how to become successful or how to become happy inside, inner peace, outer success, and success with your partner, success in your relationships. In fact, we're going to be giving a talk, I think, what is it?

Valentine's Day in Phoenix at Urban Yoga about that, if you want to come. But how do you apply these deep teachings on changing reality to adjusting your own life, your own relationships at home, or your own financial situation, or your own state of peace in your own mind? How do you use these teachings to become a happy person and to get the things you want in life?

So, we're in the middle of a raging debate. I think we've been doing this for three years, I don't know. I haven't been going so fast.

But I just feel like it's such a beautiful text. I'm in no rush to finish. It may take another five or six years, I don't know.

But it's a beautiful text. And right now, in the text, they are discussing different forms of meditation. So, in Tibetan, there are wonderful and deep teachings on meditation, very, very sophisticated teachings on meditation.

And in this particular part of the text, they are discussing what kind of meditation is useful for your life and what kind of meditation is not so useful for your life. So, the devil is, of course, wants us to meditate in a way which is sort of wasting our time. And the angel is fighting with the devil and saying, no, no, let's do it this way.

So, we're walking into the middle of an argument. Okay, ready? Here we go.

First it says, I bow down to my Lama, Angel of Angels. And in the Tibetan tradition, in the Buddhist tradition, the Lama is everything, the teacher is everything. I go to church.

I grew up in a church about two blocks from here, 50 years ago. And it was a wonderful church. It was a beautiful church.

And I always remembered that, you know, how Jesus' disciples are clustered around him the whole time and referring to him as a rebbe, which is a rabbi. And it's like a term of endearment. They're very affectionate together.

They hang out together. They travel the country together. They learn together.

They suffer together at the end. And for me, it's a very beautiful thing. And in Buddhism, that's the core of Buddhism, is your relationship to your own personal teacher.

So, of course, the first Panchen Lama, his teacher was very famous, very great teacher. He lived 450 years ago. So, first he bows to his teacher, which is just Buddhist tradition.

And I think it's a Christian tradition from in the old days, rebbe. You know, he bows to his rebbe. All right, then we're starting on verse 113.

We've already covered 112 verses. And I'll read you. It's the...

The demon is talking, the devil is talking. It's a conversation, it's going back and forth. If one were to find in a meditation that I was something that did not exist, then that would damage me, because I cannot be here.

I cannot, I can't not be here, and be here too. But until such time as a person reaches a meditation where they conclude that I'm not here, then their view of things and mind are not in contradiction, and they could never hurt me at all. So, the devil is giving a piece of truth.

He's saying something true, and he's saying, if you ever wanted to get negativity out of your mind, or a wrong view of the world out of your mind, then it's very interesting, he says, to get me out of a human mind, you just have to recognize that I don't exist. Okay? To get negativity out of the human mind, you just have to reach a place where you understand that that negativity was never there, and it did not exist, okay?

That's very subtle. We are not to fight an opponent who is there, we are to recognize that the opponent was never there, and that way we get him out of our mind. You see, it's very interesting, okay?

And what does that mean exactly? Okay, so, you've all heard the idea in Buddhism of emptiness. There are lots of strange ideas about it.

Before I went to the monastery, I also read all the books that are available in English about emptiness. Some of them said, close your eyes and everything's black. You'll notice that when you close your eyes, everything's black, you know, and that's emptiness.

And black, black, black is emptiness, you know. You know, that kind of attracted me at the age of 15 or something. I thought, that's kind of cool, you know, and I used to press on my eyeball to see if I could get it to change, you know.

You know, and so then I read some other books and they said, no, no, that's not emptiness. Emptiness means just sit there and let thoughts go through your mind and don't, don't, what do you call it? Don't attach to them, don't identify with them, just let them flow through your mind, you know.

I tried that for like, I don't know, months, you know, and it just made me kind of forgetful, like that absent-minded professor, I used to lose my keys and stuff. And then I decided that probably wasn't so useful. And then there was another version where everything's an illusion, nothing matters, somebody hits you, somebody kisses you, it's all the same.

And that didn't make much sense to me after I tried it for a while. The Buddhas in the paradises and Jesus, they don't seem to be just vegetables. They don't seem to just be, you know, don't care what happens to them.

They seem to be in a place of beauty and peace. And it didn't make sense to me that you should just be neutral about everything. That would make you sort of a strange person, just neutral about everything.

You probably wouldn't smile or scowl, you'd just have a straight line, you know, all the time, and that would be enlightenment. So these are wrong ideas about emptiness, and we are learning in this text, we are fighting about the correct idea of emptiness. So, I was struggling to find, you see, he says here, until you find a view of things which is in contradiction with mine, who's mine?

Who's me? The devil, yeah. Until you find a view of the world which is contradictory to my view of the world, you cannot get rid of me, okay?

You won't be able to get rid of me in the human mind. You must find a viewpoint which is directly opposed to my viewpoints, okay? So then I was trying to think of an example for you guys of opposing viewpoints, you know, and I have some, okay?

I had an idea, something came to me, which is the Western viewpoint of the universe, okay? Like the historical development of our understanding of the universe. So I was going to lay that trip on you.

Why? Because each succeeding generation in this world, in the West, has proposed certain ideas about where the world came from, or how the world works. And then we have moved on.

In each generation, we have rejected the old ideas and then we have come to new ideas. And that's a good way to learn emptiness. That's a good way to learn emptiness.

And I'm going to take the example of the earth, okay? The earth, the earth that you are sitting on. Okay?

So, in Buddhism, would we say that the earth exists? Anybody have idea? Yeah, we'd say, yeah, you can experience it directly right now.

If the earth didn't exist, you would fall through to China and we'd be speaking Chinese or something. You know, obviously there's an earth, it's holding up the church and that's holding up the pews and that's holding up your bottom. So the earth must exist.

So the earth, just the earth, it exists. We don't have to argue about that, okay? Now I have the earth, according to Aristotle.

Where are you, Mingbo? You got Aristotle there? Are we in order?

No, go back to Aristotle. There you go. So, this is Aristotle.

He lived 340 BC, okay? And he said, he was different from the people who went before him. The people who went before him said the earth was what shape?

Flat and round, okay? And that disc, the disc shape in Sanskrit is called what? Mandala, okay?

Mandala means flat disc. And Buddhists also thought in the early days that the earth was a flat disc. And if you traveled too far towards the edge of the disc, you would fall off.

In fact, Alexander the Great reached India around the time of Aristotle. He was a student of Aristotle's. And he turned back when they got to central India because he was convinced they would fall off the world, okay?

So, then Aristotle said, now, you know, watching how the ships, what do you call them, the masts disappear as they go further out to sea, I think the earth is round. And he actually estimated the diameter of the earth and he came pretty close, okay? So, not bad.

So, he was the first one to come up with the idea that the earth was round, okay? 300 B.C. He said, I think the earth is round, okay? So, what happened to the flat earth?

In Aristotle's mind, you see, that's what I'm trying to get you to. What happened to the flat earth? It just became zero.

It just disappeared, okay? In his mind, the minute he got a good picture in his mind of a round earth, then the flat earth in his mind became something that isn't there, okay? And that's emptiness, okay?

Try to get that feeling, okay? When you figure out that the earth is round, then the picture in your mind of a flat disc-shaped earth is cancelled, and that's the meaning of emptiness, okay? As you get more sophisticated in your understanding of the world, you cancel old ideas, and you cancel old pictures in your mind, and that cancellation is called emptiness, okay?

I have a question for you. If emptiness is the lack of something, if the emptiness is the absence of something, in this case, did that something exist or not? The flat earth, did it exist or not?

Didn't exist. Did the imagination of it exist? Yes.

The picture of it existed in people's minds before Aristotle, but it didn't exist, okay? Later they saw that earth was round, and nobody, that idea in people's minds was negated, and that's emptiness. So, we can say that emptiness is the absence of something you thought was there before.

And when you figure out it's not there, your life gets easier. That's the point. It's not just the exercise in philosophy, okay?

As your understanding becomes more sophisticated about how the world works, and as you cancel old ideas about the world, your life becomes more cool. You can make a $200 million company with no experience at all, okay? If you understand how stuff works.

So, cancel the flat earth, okay? So, Aristotle said, this is what he said, the earth is round and stationary, and the sun and the planets move around it, okay? Because we're the most important thing.

God created us, so we are the most important thing in the universe. Mankind, humankind is the most important thing in the world, so the earth is in the middle, and all the other planets rotate around us, because we are the most important stuff in the world. So, Aristotle got part of it right, right?

But then he came up with an earth which was the stationary center of the universe, okay? Not just the solar system, but the whole universe. We went to China, we came from China.

In China, they call China, the name for China is, do you know? The name in Chinese for China is Guangzhou. Guangzhou means the middle of the universe, the central land, okay?

And the language is Zhongwen, which is the language of the central land, okay? So, it's this idea that we are the center of the universe, okay? So, Aristotle said, the sun rotates around the moon, okay?

This is Aristotle. Then came Ptolemy, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, although he was Greek, you know, he was brought up in the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. And then he came with a new idea, and he said, the earth is stationary in the center of a bunch of spheres.

That's Ptolemy, okay? And this is his idea. The earth is the center of the universe, and then there are spheres wrapping the earth, and planets move in those spheres.

So, when you see, like, the sun is rotating around the earth, and that's why we have sunsets and sunrises, and then you see the moon come and go, and then the stars also rotate, and that's because the earth is in the center and there's these wrapping spheres around the earth. That's Ptolemy. And he lived in around 100 A.D., okay? 90 A.D. to 168 A.D., we believe, okay? So, up to about 200 years after Christ, okay? His system stayed in place for 14 centuries, okay?

People believed his system for 14 centuries, 1400 years, everybody accepted his idea, okay? Till the late 1500s, okay? Then along came who?

Galileo, okay? Galileo. So, Galileo is like, okay, the earth is the center of all things, all things rotate around the earth.

Then, just in Galileo's time, his 1564 to 1642, he got a hold of one of the first telescopes that was ever made, okay? And then he was checking out Jupiter, and he saw these things coming across the face of Jupiter, you know, and he's like, what's that, you know? And then he figured out, those are moons, you know?

Those are Jupiter's moons. It means there are heavenly bodies that are not circling the earth. They are circling Jupiter.

The earth is not the center of the universe, okay? Maybe something else is the center of the universe. Oh, by the way, in between there is Copernicus, who also said the same thing.

He said, maybe the sun is the center of the universe, and maybe the earth is circling the sun, okay? So, Galileo proved it, okay? He proved it with his telescope that not everything is circling the earth, okay?

And maybe the sun is the heliocentric idea. Maybe the sun is the center of the universe, and other things are turning around the sun. He confirmed Copernicus' ideas.

He published a paper in 1610 saying that the earth was rotating, orbiting around the sun. And then in 1633, what happened? Nyingbo, what's this?

He was called to the Pope's office, and he was excommunicated, and he was arrested, and he barely escaped execution, and then he was put under house arrest for the rest of his life. The Pope was his friend, and he, what do you call it, commuted his sentence, and he was just allowed to stay in his house for the rest of his life. He was not permitted to publish anymore, and he snuck out a manuscript which was printed just before he died, and he was a very devout Catholic, he was a very religious person, and he respected the Church, and he stayed under house arrest for the whole latter part of his life, because he questioned that the earth was the center of the universe, and that humans were the center of the universe.

He said, maybe the sun is the center. So now I have a question for you. Follow me.

I'm not just reading some stupid history thing. Sooner or later it's going to relate to your husband or your wife. Trust me.

Okay. What happened to the earth as the center of the universe in Galileo's mind? And I'm going to say, and earth, which is the center of the universe, what happened to it?

Galileo as a child had that in his mind. He had a picture in his mind of the earth as the center of the universe, and the sun circling around the earth. So after he saw Jupiter's moons in the telescope, right?

Something changed his mind. What happened? What happened to an earth, which is the center of the universe, in Galileo's mind, five minutes after he saw the moons of Jupiter?

What happened? It just got canceled, okay? It just got canceled.

It's like you're at work, and you don't like somebody, and then you see them talking to the boss, and then you're like, oh, they're trying to screw me. And then the boss calls you in, and you're like, what did they say to you? And the boss says, they said I should give you a raise.

I'm giving you a raise today. And then suddenly that image of them trying to screw you, right? It disappears.

It just disappears, and then they're like some kind of friend. You see? That happens all the time with us.

So in Galileo's mind, the earth as the center of the universe, just, get it? The person who's trying to screw him, it's the same thing. It just went poof.

I guess we could call it poof instead of emptiness. It went poof, and then there wasn't any such thing anymore. Got it?

Okay? Now there's a, now there's a, according to Galileo, now there's a, there's a sun which is the center of the universe and stationary. Okay?

Stationary. It doesn't move. It's the center of the universe, and the planets rotate around the sun.

He confirmed Copernicus' ideas. Okay? Then came along Isaac Newton.

You got Isaac Newton there? That's a nice portrait of him. There are lots of ones that are not so nice.

He was just a big cranky guy, and he wrote what's considered the greatest piece of science ever. So anyway, he lived 1643 to 1727, and he described what kept things circling around the sun. He described gravity.

He described the forces of gravity and the forces of motion, and he came up with laws, including his first law of motion that things are stationary. Things are, unless something happens to them, things are stationary, and if they're in motion and nothing happens to them, they remain in motion. So his first law of dynamics is, he described gravity, and he said gravity is what keeps things spinning around the sun.

So he got more sophisticated. His idea got more sophisticated. But, he said, so the planets aren't stationary, but the stars are.

Okay? The stars are stationary. Why?

Because gravity keeps them, they all have equal gravity force on each other, otherwise they would all smush into the middle. Okay? If gravity was, if the stars weren't equally distributed in the sky, then they would all smush together, because gravity would draw them into each other into one big star ball.

Okay? But we can see in the sky that they keep separate distances from each other like magnets. Okay?

Like they have a magnetic force between them, and they're all kept stationary. They're all like totally stationary. They don't move, because if they did move, they'd break out of their orbits and all the stars would smush together.

Okay? So this is Newton. Okay?

This is, I think, Newton. Then after him comes, I don't know, Edwin Hubble? Okay?

Hubble Telescope Hubble. Okay? He measured, he took measurements that he proved that everything is moving away from us.

All other planets, all other stars, all other heavenly bodies are moving away from us at a specific rate. And we're moving also. Okay?

We're moving also. Then that led into Einstein, and I'll talk about Heisenberg later, but that led into Einstein. Einstein saying, we are all in motion.

There is no center of the universe. There is no stationary center of the universe. Not only are we not the center of the universe, humans, but we're just another dirt cloud flying through space.

And there are countless dirt clouds flying through space. That's what he said. That's Hubble, Hubble measured it, and he said, that's the only explanation.

There was some kind of explosion somewhere 20 million years ago, and we are, we're just dirt clouds flying through space, and we're all flying away from each other. Okay? Like that.

So, what happened between Newton and Hubble? What happened to stars which are stationary in the sky, which are always in the same place relative to each other? What happened?

According to Newton's idea, they have to be. They cannot be moving, because then they'd all fall into each other. But what happened between Newton and Hubble?

Poof! Poof, okay? Yeah, good.

Poof, okay? Emptiness, alright? The idea of a stationary star, stationary planet, it just poof, okay?

Poof! Got it? That's emptiness, alright?

Is it the emptiness of something that existed, or is it the emptiness of something that never existed? It never existed. Try to feel it.

Okay? Try to... We're getting to your husband, we're getting closer and closer.

Okay? Try to sense it. Okay?

We're talking about something that's not there and was never there, even though everyone on the earth thought it was there, even Newton. Even Newton, okay? He thought it was there, but it's not there, and it never was there.

So, you just have a long string of emptinesses. There's one poof after another. It's like poof, poof, poof, poof, you know?

Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and then Hubble, okay? Now, so far Hubble sounds good, right? Hubble's moving stars sound pretty good.

You think so? Here we go. Okay.

Then Einstein comes. Okay, so Hubble says, you know, it's all just moving away in lines of direction, right? Like straight lines.

Everything blew up at the Big Bang and everything's moving away in straight lines. And then Einstein takes measurements and says, it's not. The presence of stars and planets twists space.

The gravitational pull of stars and planets twists the space in which they're moving, okay? Space is curved, okay? There are no direct lines.

There are no straight lines, okay? Things are moving in a curve. They're not only flying away from us, but everything's screwed up.

So, the universe is not a limitless infinite space. It's got curvature because things are so heavy. Planets are so heavy and eventually they came to the idea of black holes, okay?

Things have got so much mass that they are twisting space and they are twisting time. So we don't even live in straight time. Time doesn't move in a straight way and neither is space, okay?

You are living in a curved place, okay? You could theoretically come back to your childhood if you could go fast enough, okay? Like that, all right?

So, Hubble's idea. Hubble, okay? Things are moving away in a straight line.

That's wrong also. What happened to straight line? What happened to all planets and stars moving in straight lines away from a Big Bang?

What happened to it? Just say poof. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, just say poof.

Okay? Poof, okay? That dinosaur disappeared.

Now we get to Einstein, okay? Now we got to Einstein. No one has questioned Einstein yet, okay?

There are problems with what Einstein said. One of them was brought up by Werner Heisenberg in 1927 who said his basic idea was that the presence of an observer changed the object being observed, okay? The presence of a measurer changes the measurement of the velocity and the position of things.

So, the presence of somebody watching changes the reality. This is Heisenberg's. And it led to a thing called uncertainty.

So, it's not possible to say where a thing is if you're measuring its speed. And if you measure where it is, you lost its speed. So, it's always uncertain where a thing is, okay?

Basically, there is no fixed positions. So, here you come from where? Aristotle, who said we are the fixed center of the universe.

Now you come up to Einstein. Nothing is fixed, okay? Nothing.

Nothing is fixed. Heisenberg is saying nothing has a fixed location. Nothing.

Because when you're there to watch it, you change it. Your presence changes it, okay? So, nothing is fixed if you're watching it.

Once you're watching it, you're changing it. Your presence is changing it. Got it?

What happened to fixed things since Heisenberg? Poof! Nothing is fixed, okay?

Nothing. The presence of an observer changes all things, including your husband, or your wife, or your girlfriend, or your boyfriend, okay? We're reaching that.

We're going there, okay? Now comes along a guy named Je Tsongkapa, Tibetan, 1357-1419, right? And following the Buddha, he says, okay, get this, it's not that the presence of the observer changes the event.

It's that the event is coming from the observer. Okay? What the observer is observing, whether it's a planet or their husband, is flowing from the person's own mind.

Okay? So obviously their presence has to change it because their presence determines it. Their presence creates it.

So people say, well, why do you think that? What creates your husband, or what creates stars, or what creates planets, you know? And he says, how you treated people in the past.

He links it to morality. He links it to ethics, okay? He links it to kindness.

That's very radical, okay? The condition of the universe is created by how kind you are to others. Okay?

All universes which are not created by kindness go, poof. Einstein is wrong. Heisenberg is wrong.

Einstein's curved universe goes, poof. The general theory of relativity and the special theory of relativity go, poof. Okay?

Okay, got it? They're all wrong. Okay, what's-his-name is also wrong.

I wanted to tell him, but he... What's-his-name? Hawking.

Hawking, yeah. We're working towards a debate. Try to grasp that future generations will look back upon us and how we acted and the way we did things and say we were like the people who believed in a flat Earth.

They will say we were as crazy or as uninformed and that our actions were as meaningless and hopeless and useless as people who were afraid to fall off the Earth. You see? They will look back on our worldview, so sophisticated, Einstein's worldview, Heisenberg's worldview, Hawking's worldview, and they will say we were just deluded.

Okay? And they will say, why didn't they understand that the objects around them and the people around them, the buildings, the cities, the sky, the Earth, the people they met were all flowing from seeds in their mind that were planted there by their relative kindness to other people. Why didn't they get it?

How could they not get it? You see? And this is the Buddhist, this is the Tibetan approach.

Okay? And we can talk about it, we can study it at length, okay? But that means that all previous approaches are poop, okay?

They're empty. The objects they were describing didn't exist. A flat Earth doesn't exist.

An Earth which is the center of the universe doesn't exist. A stationary sun which is the center of the universe doesn't exist. A moving sun in a straight line which is part of a blow-up from the universe 20 million years ago also doesn't exist.

A curving universe which came out of that explosion because of the influence of gravity and radiation in the form of light doesn't exist. Okay? Got it?

An uncertain universe doesn't exist because it's not coming from you. Heisenberg's universe doesn't exist, okay? Got it?

Reject all those universes. That means that all, what do you call it? All human undertakings, everything done today on this planet by 7 billion people was mistaken.

7 billion people didn't know how to get what they want, okay? And the activities and the efforts of 7 billion people on this planet, as the sun crossed the surface of the globe, sunlight, and woke them up, and they all got up and did things, they were all wrong. They were all doing the wrong thing.

Okay? Got it? What's the implication?

If you could figure out what the right thing is, you could have a perfect relationship with your partner, and you could have financial security, you could have as much money as you want, or you could have a good health at an advanced age, okay? Like, or you could play musical instruments that you don't know how to play. Stuff like that.

Cool things, okay? If you figured out how stuff really works, okay? Got it?

That's what we're doing tonight. Okay, here we go. So the devil says, until you come up with a viewpoint which contradicts the way I see things, you can't get rid of me.

Okay. How does the devil see things? At its most fundamental level, the devil truly believes that stuff is not coming from him, from how he treats other people, okay?

The devil believes that stuff is coming from somewhere else. When the devil's husband is unkind to the devil, the devil blames the husband, okay? Because the devil doesn't understand that the husband is flowing from seeds in his mind, her mind, that she put there when she was unkind to other people.

Got it? The devil believes that all the irritating people they ever met in the world are irritating, but they're not. They're coming from you.

You were irritating last week, so that put a seed in your mind, and then out of your mind pops an irritating person, okay? What happens then to the irritating person who's not coming from you? Poof!

Okay? And that's cool, okay? There's no such thing as an irritating person who ain't coming from you and from what you did last week.

Now that can make you depressed, okay? All the irritating people I ever met were coming flowing from my mind. Oh, goddamn, you know, that's bad, you know?

But on the other hand, it means you have control over the future. You can eliminate all these irritating people without the use of a gun, you know? You can, you can just stop making those seeds, you see?

So, we have to learn how to do that. That's the point of this text. Okay.

Sorry. Okay. We were in Shanghai, the record worst pollution in history, and we all got something in our lungs.

I don't know what it was. Hopefully it will leave. Verse 114.

Okay, so here's a new idea. Do we have time? How's the time?

I need a clock, huh? 8.04. Oh, I do have a clock. Dang.

Let's go another ten minutes and I'll give you a break, okay? I'll give you a call. It's a little hot.

Do you feel hot? It's bad for keeping people awake. Can you guys work on it?

Can somebody work on it and try? I like freezing rooms because people can't fall asleep. Okay.

I'm going to read you the next verse. By the way, the whole point of the last verse was you can't get rid of your old viewpoints until you come up with a new viewpoint which contradicts it directly, and I gave you like eight examples, okay? And I gave you the grandmother viewpoint that contradicts all the other ones and wipes them out according to my idea.

Okay. Verse 114. Some other people reflect upon how there are no edges or middle to the emptiness of space.

This is in your book, by the way. What page is it on? Verse 114.

Forty-four? Twenty-four. Page 24.

If you want to follow the poetry. Some other people reflect upon how there are no edges or middle to the emptiness of space, and then they meditate on this mixed with the mind itself. And they think that this is the view where things are just like space.

They think that this is the meditation where things are just like space. So there's a very famous meditation in Buddhism, and it is claimed that if you can reach this meditation, you can reach enlightenment. This is called the direct perception of emptiness.

Another name for that is space-like meditation. It is similar to space. And then, of course, over the course of two and a half thousand years, people have misunderstood what it means to go into a meditation and experience something like space.

So he's criticizing some of those ideas, and I'll review some of them. Okay, here we go. The worst one, the dumbest one, I don't know, which you can see, okay, if you read books, if you read popular books on meditation, they say just let your mind, what do you call it, be expansive and peaceful and space-like.

Let it go infinite and reach a space, reach a place in your meditation where everything is just like space in the sense of peaceful and expansive and open, and that this will help you. This will make you, this will enlighten you, or this will bring you progress in your life. Things will get better in your life if you can reach a kind of meditation where you close your eyes and everything just gets big and wide and open and expansive like space.

So some, historically, hundreds of years ago, some people misunderstood when they said this meditation should be like space. They thought it should be a feeling or an emotion that feels very wide and very expansive. Okay, so that's not what was meant by space-like meditation.

They misunderstood. The question comes up, is it useful to think like that? Is it useful to have a meditation?

Do you have a picture? Yeah. Is it useful to do that kind of meditation?

And we would say yes. It's a baby step. If you reach that place where you reach some kind of relative calmness in your life, then you can go deeper.

Then you're in a position to go deeper. But if you're freaked out and you're nervous and you have anxiety all the time, and we call it in Tibetan, kusudopo. Say kusudopo.

It means narrow alleyway. Narrow alleyway state of mind. And it means a constricted state of mind, and it's not conducive to going deeper into what's better than Einstein.

If your mind is nervous or worried or busy or too much into Facebook and cell phones and laptops, if you live in an 8.5 by 11 screen most of the day, then your mind will get kusudopo. And nobody can escape that. You got to get out.

You got to walk. You got to look at nature. You got to look...

Get out of your computer at least a couple hours a day. Something strange is going to happen to you and your children. I'm not kidding.

I'm not kidding. A whole generation will be messed up. And we haven't seen it yet, but it will come.

And their mind is in a flat piece of silicon. And you got to get out and open up your mind. And you got to...

In Tibetan medicine, there are treatments for depression which consist of go up to a big mountain, lay on your back, stare at the sky, you know, four hours, that'll be $200. In the Tibetan medical texts there are treatments like... I translated for the Dalai Lama's doctor like, I don't know, 30 years ago.

And this is a medical treatment in Tibet. So, is it useful to do a meditation where you're just kind of like this? Yes.

Is it going to help you ultimately? No. It's just a warm-up.

It's just some kind of preparation. Okay? So, what's better than that?

What does space mean? We got to go deeper. Are you ready?

I say that in China and everybody goes, Wa-ha! Okay, but you're okay. You can just nod your head.

I say, you want to go deeper? And they all go, Wa-ha! You know, okay.

You want to go deeper? Yeah. Okay.

You can think of space as that, you know, the black stuff out there in which the planets and stars hang. Okay? When I say space, you know, the exploration of space, for example, then you think of the place between the planets which is kind of black, right?

Like, we're going to send, the Chinese just sent a lunar lander, right? Soft landing. First one in 35 years.

They had a soft landing of the Jade Rabbit, which is the name of their satellite on the moon, and it went to black space to get to the moon. Okay? So, when I say space, you often think of outer space, right?

I do. I mean, I think of a black thing that holds, and then the stars are sprinkled in there in the black stuff, and that's outer space. That is not what space meditation means.

Okay? So, cancel that one. Maybe this one has some, sorry, the last one.

You got it, Nyingma, the last one? Like, maybe that's useful somehow, to go up on a mountain and stare in the sky and close your eyes. But this thing of just thinking about black stuff is probably not so useful.

Okay? The next one, Nying. That's probably not so useful.

Okay? That concept of space is like a flat earth. Okay?

So, that's not what meditation, space meditation means. Okay? Now I'll give you one more.

You want to go deeper? Okay. Next.

Can you go to the next one first and come back to that? Okay. This is a cup of coffee.

I like the photo because I, I don't drink coffee, okay? I just want to make it clear. I just drink other people's coffee.

So, they know, like we're on a tour or something. I say, Scott, don't you want to order a coffee? He's like, why?

I don't feel like a coffee. I say, I feel like a coffee. So, I just like to take sips out of other people's coffee.

Sometimes I have this irresistible urge. I walk into a Starbucks and somebody I don't even know, I start towards their coffee and I have to stop myself. You know?

So, like, I can't drink a whole cup of coffee because it just does weird things to me. But I love to take sips of coffee. So, I love, I love a photo of a cup of coffee.

Okay? This coffee, this cup of coffee up here exists in space. It is occupying space.

That's getting much closer to the meditation on space. Okay? We're getting much, much closer to the real idea of space.

So, space doesn't mean stare out at the sky on sunset. Okay? Although that can be helpful.

And it doesn't mean think black stuff with white stars in it. It doesn't mean that. Here we're getting closer to the deeper meaning of space.

Space is what stuff occupies. Okay? Space is what stuff occupies.

The cup of coffee, the saucer, the cup and the coffee are occupying space and you can think of it as location. Okay? It's occupying a location.

It has a, what do you call? Latitude and longitude and... It's in a certain position in the universe.

Okay? It's occupying that position. Okay?

And, and in that position is a stuff which never blocks other things. And that stuff is called place or space. Space has place.

Space has location. Space has an opening which allows the presence of physical objects. Got it?

Okay? Now I have a question for you. I'm checking to see if you understand this new idea of space.

Okay? When the coffee cup enters that space, does the space go away? No.

It has to stay there. If the space went away then it would spit out the coffee cup. Got it?

Space is what allows the coffee cup place to be. That's the real definition of space. Okay?

It's that emptiness, availability which allows the coffee cup a place to be. And even when you push a coffee cup into it, it doesn't like, it isn't like the space has to spread out. The space stays there.

What happens when you withdraw the coffee cup? What happens to the space? It stays there.

It never moves. It never changes. So that in Buddhism there are very, very few things which are not in a state of constant flux.

Okay? Your, your body is falling apart right now. Sorry.

As we talk, your body is falling apart. Okay? And the world is falling apart.

And the sun is burning out. And, you know, all kinds of stuff is falling apart. But space doesn't change.

You can shift the planet Earth into a space and you can shift it out of that space and the space doesn't change. The space will always be there. Very few things in Buddhism are said to be unchanging.

But space is one of them. Okay? Next, Nyingpo, go back.

Say it, tokrek. If you say it, I'll give you refreshments. We'll do one tiny thing and then we'll go to the important part of the evening.

Say, tokrek. Kaktsam. Tokrek.

Kaktsam. The definition of space in Buddhism. Okay?

Tokrek, kaktsam. Tokrek means anything you could touch. Anything you could touch.

Kaktsam means the simple absence of anything you could touch. Availability. Openness.

Empty place where stuff could go in and stuff could go out and it's not going to spit it out. It's not going to say, the coffee cup can't come here because we already got a tokrek here. Okay?

There's no tokrek there ever and that's space. It's just the simple absence of something. Okay?

What is the absence of what? Stuff. Touchable stuff.

And why? Because you can put stuff in there and you can take stuff out there and it doesn't stop. It doesn't refuse it.

It doesn't block it. Okay? That's called tokrek, kaktsam.

Okay? Now, two qualities about that kind of space which are useful for your husband, for understanding your husband's behavior. Okay?

What are they? Number one, that space is unchanging. Okay?

That space is unchanging. You can move a coffee cup into it and you can take a coffee cup out of it. It doesn't change the place.

It doesn't change the space. Got it? That's number one.

What's number two? It's a simple absence of something. Kaktsam means simple negation or simple absence of something.

Simple, simply not there. Okay? Simply not there.

I'll give you an example, a classic example of emptiness. Okay? Is there an elephant rampaging through this room right now?

No. You can check under the pier if you want. But it's too small, right?

If they would be bigger than that. More subtle now. Sorry, Shanghai pollution.

Is there a purple two-headed elephant rampaging through the church right now? No. Nobody looked like, you know, nobody like glanced nervously over their shoulder.

Why not? Because there's no such thing. Okay?

There's no such thing. It's like the flat earth. It's like the earth which is the center of the universe.

It's like the stars which are stationary. It's like curvature of space which is not flowing from your mind. Einstein is also wrong.

Okay? Got it? An elephant which is, full-sized elephant which is purple, has two heads, is not here and never was here.

Can we say there's an emptiness of that elephant in this room? Yeah, the room is devoid of the elephant. Kaktsam.

Okay? Kaktsam. Langchen gi kaktsam.

There's an absence of elephant in this room. Is there an absence of elephant in this room? Yeah.

Okay? Especially an absence of a two-headed purple elephant because those don't exist. Is there an absence of a flat earth in this room?

Yeah. Is there an absence of a earth which is curved space according to Einstein in this room which is not flowing from you, from how you treated people last week? We say, yeah, there's simple absence of that.

It never was here. Okay, last thing, then we'll take a break. We must take these ideas to our real life.

We must apply these ideas to our real life. Buddhism is not meant to sit there and philosophize about where the world came from. Okay, it helps, but it's supposed to help with problems in your life.

Nirvana is defined as what? Getting rid of your negativities, never being angry or irritated again at your husband or your partner. Okay?

You got that? Oh, I don't know. It's further down.

You got that somewhere? Okay. This, I mean, if you haven't been there, leave the room.

Okay, now that we're on the same page, now it's just like you're friends with somebody or you're a couple, and then there just gets to be this day where you're just fed up with them, you know? And you're not even fighting, you see? She's not yelling particularly.

They're just like both fed up with each other. And they just had a fight. They probably just had a fight.

Now they're quiet. And if you ask the partner, are you mad? They say, no, I'm just being quiet today.

Sorry. So, you know. Now, look at the lady's face.

She's angry at her husband. She's upset at her partner, okay? Some words just went down.

He did something stupid probably. And she's angry at him. And question for you, you see?

An observation for you. And then we'll take a break. Because this is where we're going with these two nights of talks.

Did the husband who upset her come from her or from him? According to Buddhism, came from her. Why?

There's a seed in her mind. You can call it a karmic seed. Who put the seed there?

She did. When? Previously, we don't know when.

Could be a week, could be a month, could be a year. At some point in the past, she did something which was very similar to what her husband just did to upset her. And that's why she's seeing him.

He's flowing from her. He's not curvature of space. He's not a flat earth.

He's not the center of the universe which is immobile. He's flowing from her. Got it?

Okay. Where is the husband in the picture who is not her fault? There's no such husband.

Kaktsam. That's the same as a flat earth or an earth which is the center of the universe or an earth which is curved because of the forces of gravity and radiation. Got it?

Okay. There never was a husband who did something wrong. Got it?

So, all the upsetness that went down on the planet today was directed towards things which were never there, which weren't even there. Every person who got upset at any moment on this entire planet today was upset at a flat earth. Wasn't there.

It was never there. Got it? It's kind of depressing.

Okay. But we can imply it to ourselves. Okay.

What am I saying? When you get upset at someone, you cannot get upset if you realize they're flowing from you. If you realize that they're coming from something you did to someone last week.

You can't be upset at them. You might be upset at yourself, but not at them. Okay.

They're just coming from you. You can't blame them for them. They're coming from you.

Got it? Okay. Why are we talking about planets and stuff?

Say the right word, you get your refreshments. Poof. Okay.

Poof. The husband who did something wrong is? Poof.

The husband who hurt you is? Poof. The husband who upsets you is?

Poof. Okay. But you'll get mad at him during the break probably.

Okay. That's what I do. Okay.

Maybe we should call our movement poofists or something. Nah. Okay.

That got canceled. All right. Rebecca, any...

Am I supposed to tell them not to bring refreshments into the church or anything like that? I knew that. How did I know that?

Because the floor is so clean. Is that really? You can bring water in here.

Where do they eat their refreshments? Out... Go through that double door and keep the refreshments in there.

There's a bake sale going on. We sell junk food that's probably bad for you, but it tastes good. There's some healthy stuff there.

And we use the money to send young people to my monastery, Tibetan monastery. So every year in the fall we send... How many people?

Four or five people? This year we're trying to send ten people from Mexico who want to go and they want to study there for a month. So we pay for all their expenses and we pay for their flight.

And there's people from Mexico and Russia. Our groups in Mexico and Russia want to go, some young people. And it has a tremendous effect on their city and their friends and family.

They go to study for a month in a Tibetan monastery and they come back with really beautiful ideas and beautiful inspiration for other people. So I encourage you to buy a cookie for $20. I'm not kidding, okay?

I'll buy one for $50, okay? And then we just pay for them to go. That's how I got to...

40 years ago, that's how I went to the monastery. So let's do it for other people, let's do it for young people, okay? All right, I'll be here if you have any questions.

Yes? There are bathrooms out that door and to the right. Am I...

How... Out the double doors and go to the right. Those are the allowed bathrooms.

Okay. Can the ACI board please stand up? Phoenix ACI board please stand up.

Quick, quick. Okay, these people are on the board of ACI Phoenix. They have been studying these things for, I don't know, hundred years.

And... there's one more back there. If you have questions about your life, you know, if you're having a problem with a non-existent husband or...

if you have a health problem or... if you have some burning question, ask them, okay, during the break. They will be up here, towards the front.

They will stay up here. And just come up and ask them and say, how do I apply this stuff to... I have a thing going on right now in my own life, how do I apply this to that, okay?

And don't be shy and come and ask them, because it's a good chance, okay? She's a psychologist with, I don't know, a bunch of PhDs. Just got back from China today, I think.

Just taught 800 people in Beijing, 800 psychologists recently. And they're good. They're really good.

They're well trained and they can help you. So if you have questions, ask them. Okay, I'll be here also if you want to say hi.

And we'll come back in about 10 or 15 minutes. Okay, thank you. Okay, we'll start again.

I thought we'd do maybe 20 minutes more and then if you have some questions. And the way I do questions is like a free-for-all, and you can ask me any irrelevant question. And if it's really off the wall, I'll just twist my answer and talk what I want to talk about.

Okay, but think about any questions you might have and then maybe in about 20 minutes we'll go to questions. Okay. I'd like to start on verse 115, which is page, I'm guessing 25 or something?

24? Okay, I'm going to read the verse. I can't imagine why anyone would think that thinking that space has no edges and no middle would somehow be incompatible with my continued presence.

As far as the fact that the mind has no edges and no middle, the reason we see no edges there is simply because the mind is not a physical thing. So, he's still talking about people who misunderstood what space-like meditation means. Now you know what space-like meditation means.

Space is the simple absence of something which could have been there, and we're talking about doing space-like meditation on your partner, okay? And when you get upset at them. When you get upset at somebody, by the way, it's always...

By the way, there's two versions of every person in the world, okay? There's a version which is coming from them and there's a version which is coming from you. Every person in the world, everyone you ever met in your life, including yourself, there were two versions of them.

One was coming from you and one was not coming from you, okay? The one which you always get upset at is the one which is not coming from you, okay? If you understood they were coming from you, you wouldn't get upset at them, you'd get upset at yourself.

You see what I mean? If you understood that people who irritate you are irritating because you were irritating last week, you wouldn't be upset at them. You wouldn't have to get upset because you could just stop being irritating yourself and then you get rid of them.

You see? I did it, I had a company in New York, right? We had a large company, 12-story building, 800 people.

I worked on each person and I think... Okay, I won't tell you how many years, you want to know how many years? It took 19 years, but I got to where 800 people were very pleasant, okay?

There wasn't a single irritating person left in the building. It was like a paradise. It was really like a paradise.

It took that long, okay? But if they're coming from you, you can adjust them, you can tweak them, right? It's kind of cool.

You can start with the people right around you and then you just kind of move through life in this beautiful bubble and then you expand it to other people and then there are just beautiful people around you all the time, okay? So, what he's saying here is that... I'll ask you a question.

Later you get to ask me questions, okay? Does going up on a mountain, like, what is it? Squaw Mountain?

Squaw Mountain? Squaw Peak, yeah, yeah. We used to go up there and make out 40 years ago.

Yeah, so you go up there and you look at the city lights and, you know, it's all peaceful. It's expansive. It's space-like, you know?

Space-like meaning expansive, peaceful. Is that enough to stop serious problems with your partner? Is that kind of space-like meditation enough to stop serious problems with your partner?

You can feel better for a couple hours maybe. You can feel... You can come back to the relationship with more equanimity or more peaceful for a while and then it will break down again, okay?

We say that that kind of meditation is only temporary. It only makes you feel better for a while, okay? Now, what about space-like in the sense that what you thought was there wasn't there?

You see? The simple absence of something. Space has this simple absence of something.

Of what? A partner who's not coming from you, okay? The partner that you're irritated at who's not coming from you never existed, okay?

It's difficult to think about. But if you could get into that, right? If you could get into a space where...

space where you recognize that all the problems you see in your partner are coming because of your own... they're reflections of yourself and that you could change them, you could fix them. If you saw that there was no partner in your life who was coming from their side who had problems, would that fix your problems?

Yeah, okay? That kind of meditation fix your problems, okay? So, what am I supposed to meditate upon?

Close your eyes, think about the last irritating thing they did which was a few minutes ago probably, okay? And it's something that you've told them over and over that you don't like, right? You've negotiated with them, you've tried ignoring them, you've tried fighting, you've tried persuasion, you've tried reasoning, and still they do whatever it is that's bothering you, okay?

Then sit down, go into meditation and reflect on the fact that what you see is coming from how you act yourself. And if you shut off the valve of acting that way, the water would stop coming out of the tap. Got it?

That's Buddhism, right? That's the source of suffering, right? That's the whole idea of Buddhism.

Shut the source off and then the water stops coming out. Turn the... Stop thinking that they are irritating from their side, understand that you are seeing a reflection of yourself.

Change yourself, they will change automatically, okay? That's a space like meditation. Why?

Because there's a simple absence of somebody there in their body. Who? Someone who's not coming from you.

They were never there, they couldn't be there. Okay, you got to get into that. They are like what in the planetary theories we were discussing?

A flat earth, okay? Your partner who is irritating is a flat earth. They were never there.

You believed, mankind believed until 340 B.C. that the earth was flat, but everybody was wrong, okay? There was no such thing as a flat earth. You believed your whole life that the people who irritate you want to irritate you, but they don't.

They are just like a flat earth. They never were there. They are just flowing out of you how you are, okay?

It's very profound. It's as profound as a flat earth, okay? There never was such a thing.

You don't have to be mad at your partner because they don't exist. That one doesn't exist. Does your partner exist?

Does the earth exist? Yes. Does an earth which is flowing from your mind exist according to disbelief?

Yes. Does an earth which is not flowing from your mind exist? Does your partner exist?

Yeah. Does your partner who is coming from you exist? Yeah.

Does your partner who is irritating and who is not coming from you exist? Never did. Which one were you angry at?

The one which was never there. You are constantly running from a 18-foot purple-headed, two-headed elephant. You are constantly running from an elephant that was never there.

Your whole life, you are running from something that wasn't there. It's terrible. It's a tragedy.

Life is a tragedy. Sadness, unhappiness is a tragedy. It always comes from something that's not there.

If it were coming from something that was there, it'd be okay. But the irony of life is that it was never there. The people that make you sad or irritated or anger you, they were never there.

All the wrinkles on your face were useless. Then there'd be some big Buddhist debate, you know. Can a non-existent thing create a result?

Can a non-existent thing create a result? Can a non-existent thing do anything? No, it cannot.

So where did the wrinkles on your face come from? No, but those people you were angry at didn't exist because they were the people that weren't coming from you. Do the people that don't come from you exist?

Do the irritating people who don't come from you exist? Do they give you wrinkles? They do give you wrinkles.

What gives you wrinkles? Your belief in them. Got it?

Not them, they don't exist. Like kids can be scared that Santa Claus isn't coming and that can make them look bad, but Santa Claus was never there anyway. Got it?

But the belief makes them sad. Okay, got it? All the frown marks on your face came from something that didn't exist.

It's very sad, okay? And it's our life, okay? All right.

Now that I've depressed you. 1.16 And so I continue my delightful dance here within the mind. If you think that something can stop me when it cannot even touch me, then quite mistaken you are.

And Nyingpo is going to show a slide. Go! I think it's a hammer.

Okay? Is the hammer touching the nail? No.

Thus sitting on Squaw Peak, Mount, Mount Squaw, Squaw Peak. Thus sitting on Squaw Peak and looking at the city lights on a calm night. Stop your problems with your partner.

It doesn't, okay? Maybe for an hour or something, but ultimately, no. It cannot fix the problems, okay?

The peaceful feeling will go away, okay? It always does. The hammer never hits the nail.

Got it? Why? Sitting on Squaw Peak and thinking that the city is pretty doesn't stand in contradiction to the belief that your partner is irritating from their own side.

Copernicus stood in contradiction to Ptolemy and Aristotle. Einstein stood in contradiction to Newton and Tsongkapa stood in contradiction to Einstein, okay? But sitting and looking at a peaceful scene does not stand in contradiction to believing that your partner is coming from their own side.

And until you believe that they're coming from you, you can't deal with your partner. Something will break down. It will always break down.

You can go away for vacation, you can, what do you call it, get some space. That means your relationship is in trouble, right? I need to get some space.

Then you're like, oh God, she's going to be gone in six months, you know, I need to get some space. It doesn't work, okay? It doesn't work, because it doesn't address, it never touches the problem.

Try to grasp the picture here. The hammer never touches the nail, okay? Until your viewpoint contradicts whatever's causing your problem in your relationship, until there's some contact between them, until the hammer hits the nail, it can't help you.

It will never help you. You can be peaceful as much as you want, then you'll be fighting in a week or a day. It doesn't prevent it, you see?

It doesn't fix it. It just delays it. Okay, got it?

You have to come to a point, according to our belief, you must come to a point where you understand that the people who give you trouble are coming from you. And until you do, you'll never be happy. It's not possible.

You're just looking at the lights from Squaw Peak and it will break down, okay? Take a yoga class, you feel good. Get in the car, go out on the one-on-one in a bad traffic jam.

The yoga will wear off before you get home. Trust me. Okay, verse 117.

So, we're going on to another meditation, and we'll do that and then I'll stop for questions, okay? Fifteen minutes of questions. There was a meditation in Tibet.

Here's how it went. It was a wrong meditation. It was a misunderstanding, okay?

And there are many such meditations taught all over the world in yoga classes, etc. Here we go. Some people believe in yet another version of what it means to meditate upon the way things really are.

How are things really with your partner? Coming from me, okay? Some people have a...

they think they're meditating on that, but they're not. What do they say? They say that when a thought pops up, you should simply focus upon it.

Watch it as it makes its arrival. Stare at how it looks. Next verse.

And when this thought then slips away, all of its own accord, understand that this is nothing less than a Buddhist body of reality. Okay? That's a tough...

that's a tough thing, okay? They're talking about a kind of meditation, and I've heard it in America and other countries, where you watch your thoughts, okay? You just sit and you watch your thoughts, and that's supposed to help you, okay?

That's like watching the lights from Squaw Peak, okay? It's okay for a while. It calms you down for a while.

It doesn't fix. It doesn't fix the problem, okay? Because that viewpoint doesn't stand in contradiction to the old one, like Copernicus and Patain, okay?

There's no contradiction there. It will never touch it. Until there's contradiction, it will not touch it.

Whatever problem you've had with your partner will continue until you have a new viewpoint which doesn't allow that problem, okay? So, will it help problems in your family life, your office life, your work life, your life with your partner? Will it help to sit and watch the thoughts come up and dissolve in your mind?

And he says, no. Why? It doesn't fix anything because it doesn't contradict the way you've been living, okay?

To think that your partner is coming from you will fix your problems. But to just watch your thoughts come and go, it's not going to fix anything. It might make you more calm for a while, but it doesn't fix anything, okay?

Now, something deeper. You want to go deeper? Why not?

Why not? Uh... You got that video of the fountain?

Okay, go. This is some place in North Cumberland, England? Is it?

I guess it's famous. Okay. It took me like two hours to figure out how to get it off of YouTube.

Uh... So, there's water being spurred up from underneath, and it's sustaining a shape of a fountain, you see? But there's nothing in the fountain that's not moving.

It's not really one static picture. It's new water coming up from below and old water falling down. But for a while, as long as new water is coming up from below, there's a shape of a...

of a spout going on. And then when you cut the water flow from below, the thing collapses and there's no such thing. This is how thoughts come up in your mind.

Okay? This is how thoughts arise and die in the mind. And you should understand, okay?

Where... Where's your irritating partner coming from? You were irritating to someone last week.

You planted a seed in your mind. That seed opened this week, and you interpret your partner as irritating. They're not irritating, they're neutral.

Okay? They're not irritating and they're not beautiful. They're neutral.

You lay this thing on them because of how you were last week to somebody else. Okay? It's all coming from you.

It's very depressing. Okay? When you watch your thoughts in your own mind, where are they coming from?

They are also coming from seeds in your mind. Okay? How were those seeds planted?

They were planted by how you thought about people last week. Okay? So, if you hear your mind...

By the way, are you talking in your mind or are you listening to your thoughts? Which one are you? What do you think?

You can't be both. You can't listen and talk at the same time. You know that with your husband also.

You're either the listener or the talker, which one? By the time you hear it, by the way, the talker is gone. It's like light from a star.

Okay? By the time you see the light from a star, the star is often gone. Right?

It takes time for the words to come to you. Your husband is not the same person when they said the words as when the words hit your ear because time has passed. They're actually gone by then, technically.

They're past. They don't exist anymore. Okay?

So, you cannot be talking at the time that you're hearing your thoughts because they were spoken a millisecond before. You don't have... The bottom line is you don't have control over your thoughts.

Okay? So, if your mind says, I wish I could kill her, it's not your fault. So, don't feel so bad.

Okay? So, where are those thoughts come from? If I'm just a listener, where are those thoughts coming from?

They are popping out of karmic states in your mind that were planted there last week by how you treated other people. Okay? I'm depressed.

I have a problem with depression. What can I do about it? You can't do anything.

You're listening to your depression. The depression was spoken a few seconds before. You're stuck with it.

In the present, you're stuck with it. Can you plant new seeds? Yeah, you can plant new seeds and you will hear something different next week.

You can plant new seeds now. How? Cheer out people who are depressed.

Take a special interest in people who... The best cure for depression, according to this idea, the only cure for depression, according to this idea, is that you must do what depressed people can't do, which is to pay attention to someone else who needs you and help them. And then that plants new seeds in your mind and the water coming up will support a new shape in the fountain.

You see? Your thoughts are being sustained by seeds opening from second to second. Your thoughts are being sustained like a fountain and new seeds are opening every millisecond and they are sustaining your thoughts.

When you meditate on the mind, when you meditate on your thoughts arising and passing through the mind, you're just observing karmic seeds opening and finishing. They do their thing like a tree seed and then their power is lost because they... By growing the tree, the seed dies.

Okay? So, your thoughts are flowing from what you did last week. Also, your husband is flowing from what you did last week.

Got it? So, outside stuff is flowing from what you did last week. But so is your own thoughts, okay?

Your own thoughts are flowing from that, okay? Will that help you deal with your husband? To watch those thoughts.

Not really, okay? Not directly. You can watch the thoughts come and go, but it's not going to change how your husband is, okay?

It's not going to change your problems. Watching thoughts arise and subside in your mind like a fountain water, it's not going to... it's not going to help you understand that your husband is coming from you, okay?

Not directly. Does it help indirectly? And then I wanted to turn you on to something...

karma rabbe ma min nam gyu ma si bu chu bu dang mi la lo tang ten dra bu de tar chu nam de da ta du che chu nam de da ta What is that? Say again? It's the last words of the Diamond Cutter Sutra, okay?

So, Lord Buddha spoke... I don't know... 990 sutras survived.

Sutras and tantras from Lord Buddha survived in this world. One is called the Diamond Cutter Sutra. I think it's my favorite.

And it's the one we based our whole business on, for example. But it... the last lines are a poem, okay?

The last lines of the Diamond Cutter are a poem. And it was interesting, we taught it in China a couple weeks ago. I'll tell you the poem, okay?

Karma rabbe ma min nam Karma means stars in the sky, in the darkness of the sky. The light of stars in the darkness of the sky. Sky, karma.

Rabde means... what do you call that white stuff on your eyeball? It...

older people get it. Cataracts. Okay?

Stars, cataracts, karma rabbe ma min Candles, okay? Candles, karma rabbe ma min nam Gyuma. Gyuma means a mirage as you're driving through the desert.

Gyuma. Subur means the dew on the grass in the morning. Subur means bubbles, a bubble that opens and pops, chubur, chubur nam.

Milam lot. Milam means dreams that you dream. Lot means lightning.

And trin means clouds which form in the sky and then dissipate in the sky. Okay? What's in common with all these things?

I'll say them again. Stars, and the idea of the star here is that what happens to stars when the sun comes up? They just fade away.

Karma. Let's skip the cataract. Candle is like your light, like you're born and the candle's lit and then you burn down your whole life.

Gyuma, subur, dew on the grass. Yeah, the sun comes down and it just disappears. Subur, chubur, bubble.

It just pops. Dreams, forget dreams. Lot, lightning.

Vidyun in Sanskrit. It's gone quickly. It comes in a second and it's gone.

Our life is like a lightning, strike of lightning. Trin means clouds that form in the sky and then just... If you...

No one in America has enough time because of our time-saving devices. But if you ever... if your phone ever breaks, lay down on your back and watch clouds gather and dissipate.

Especially in Arizona, they don't last too long. And they just come together and then they dissipate. So all those examples in the Diamond Cutter Sutra are examples of what?

Impermanence, okay? Our life is fleeting. Our time on this earth is very sudden and it leaves.

This week, my stepfather died. My stepmother had a heart attack, and my brother had a stroke in one week, okay? And my old lady broke her hip, the one I take care of in Phoenix.

And it's like, it's like boom, you know? It's like lightning. And it comes in a single week, right?

And then life just passes. So those are all examples of that. But he throws in other examples.

Karma... Cataract. He throws in a cataract.

Karma... Karma... He throws in a mirage.

And he throws in a dream. He throws in a cataract, a mirage, and a dream. Those are not examples of impermanence.

Those are examples of what? Illusion. Those are examples of illusion.

Why am I talking about this? By the way, that's the Diamond Cutter. That's the oldest printed book in the world.

That's the Chinese edition. The first Chinese edition from Dunhuang. What did those impermanent things have in common with those illusory things?

And why am I talking about that? What were we talking about before I went off on that? We were talking about what?

Fountains. Thoughts coming up in your mind and then dissipating, right? Like what?

Clouds or lightning or candles. They come up and they disappear. They come up and they collapse, right?

What's that got to do with illusion? They seem like they're fixed and they're not, okay? What's that got to do with your husband when you're having a fight with him?

If you're a lower level Buddhist, we call lower level Buddhist, you can think, you can derive some comfort from this will be over in a couple days. He's leaving on a business trip or something. You know, I'll have some peace, you know, a couple days at least, okay?

A lower level Buddhism says everything is impermanent. Don't get too upset about anything. It will pass, okay?

Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't pass for 50 years or something. And you know that, okay? Higher level Buddhism says what?

He's coming from me. Moment by moment. That's the point.

There's a place where illusion and impermanence meet. And that's why the Buddha taught them together. There's a place where they meet.

There's a place where they meet, okay? Your husband is flowing from your mind at 65 frames per second according to Lord Buddha. 65 separate karmic seeds are opening.

His mouth is going, No, and each frame is coming from a separate karmic seed in your mind. He's impermanent. He's a flow of pictures coming from your mind.

And they're so fast, they look like, what do you call? Reality. They're happening so quickly after each other that they look like he's talking, but he's not, he's going up.

You know, and these are karmas opening in your mind at the rate of 65 per second. There's a place where impermanence meets illusion, got it? Why am I talking about that?

This guy was talking about a kind of a meditation which wouldn't really help you. What was it? Watch the thoughts come in your mind and flow out of your mind.

Could it help you? Yeah, if you understood this impermanence thing, you could realize your husband is the same as those thoughts. His mood swings.

The weird stuff he says, the unreasonable stuff he says, each word is flowing from you. Each word one by one is flowing from you. It's not that his conversation is irrational.

Each irrational word is flowing from you. And if you understand that, you're better equipped to be kind to him because he's coming from you. To be kind to him is to be kind to yourself.

Got it? So it's not a, none of these meditations that he's criticizing is useless. They all contribute towards a higher, a higher goal, a higher viewpoint.

Okay? Which is that he's coming from you, therefore you can fix him. If he, Buddhism says, if he wasn't coming from you, you could never fix him.

Because he's out there, you can't affect him. Okay? If he's flowing from how you treated people last week, you can fix him.

That's cool, right? It takes patience and it takes wisdom, but you can fix anybody in your life. Okay?

No one is beyond your ability. Alright, questions. Give me some questions.

Yes, please. Oh, let me give you a microphone and then everyone can hear the question. And don't be shy, give me tough questions.

We got a tough question coming here. Then a tougher question over there.

[Говорящий 2]
Does any of this karma, is that two lexicals? Oh. Does any of this karma come from past lives?

[Говорящий 1]
Good question. Okay. She said, does any of this karma come from past lives?

The Yoga Sutra, which we're going to teach at Urban Yoga on Valentine's Day and the day after, very famous. It says, it's, durstā durstā janma vedanyā. te paritāpapala te paritāpapala puññā puññā hetu dvāt.

Okay? durstā durstā janma vedanyā. Durstā means you can see it.

People in yoga classes mispronounce it as what? Drishti. Okay?

Durstā means seen. Adurstā means not seen. Janma means lifetime.

Vedanyā means it will be experienced. So what it means is what they call tong gyur gyi le or, it means you see it, the result in this life or you see it in the next life. There's three possibilities.

One is called tong gyur gyi le, you see the result in this life. One is called kene nyong gyur gyi le, you see it in the next life. And then, shenlan nyong gyur gyi le means in the second life or later.

So there are three possibilities. So anything you're experiencing in this life could have come from something you did in this life, could have something you did in the immediately preceding life, or could have come from zillions of lives before that. But, no matter where it came from, you can use deduction about what you must have done.

Okay? Like if your husband is not showing you affection, like he was very affectionate for the first three years and then suddenly he stopped wanting to give you hugs, right? We would say, you don't have to remember when you did it, but you must have stopped showing affection to someone.

And you can always fix that. You see, even if it was three lifetimes ago, according to this idea, if you understand that your husband's sudden loss of affection, your husband's sudden inability to give you an honest hug is coming from... if you stopped showing a lack of affection to someone in your life now, you could fix him.

Got it? You can fix old karmas with current actions. If you use logic, okay?

If I have a watermelon growing in my garden, there must have been a watermelon seed before. If my husband's showing me a lack of affection, I must have been showing a lack of affection. I don't remember when I did it, but I'm still not showing affection to everybody right now.

Let me fix that and my husband will change. That's cool. So it doesn't matter that it came from a zillion lifetimes ago or from last week.

A natural question that follows that in a positive way is how can I make seeds grow faster? Like, if I'm going to fix my husband's lack of affection and I plant a seed now, how can I make sure it doesn't take a zillion lifetimes for him to change? And that has to do with a lot of factors, but the main one, to make a seed grow faster, is very interesting.

In Buddhism, when you fall asleep, as you fall asleep, you take joy in the good things you're doing. Like, if I tried to show more affection to one of my children to fix my husband's lack of affection, then in order for that seed to grow quickly in the next few weeks, I just have to think about what I'm doing as I fall asleep, which is a very pleasant way to fall asleep. I'm showing more affection to my second child who I didn't show as much affection to in the past, because I want to fix my husband.

And if you think about those thoughts as you fall asleep, the seed opens within a month or something. It's like that. It's cool.

Because something happens in your mind as you're sleeping. You had a question? Oh, we need microphone?

Do you have? Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Culprits who actually performed the event in a criminal activity involving murder, theft of over a trillion dollars of gold, laundering money through the stock market, through the death of the stockbrokers who were in the World Trade Center by using their access codes to perform trillions of dollars of transactions at that time while they were dead.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. I was living in New York up to that time. Yeah.

Although I left just before that. And that's also, if you study the Yoga Sutra, which we'll be doing next month, right? There's a famous line in the Yoga Sutra called, ahimsa pratishthayam tatsa nidra vairatyaga.

And it's a very beautiful, beautiful, beautiful line. So, ahimsa, you know, means non-violence, not showing violence to other people. And pratishthayam means if you make it a way of life all the time.

Vairatyaga means you won't see conflict in your world. If you avoid violence or hurting others, then as a karmic result you will live in a world that doesn't have conflict. Does that mean that other people in that same world will not experience conflict?

They will see conflict. Okay. If they've been violent, they will see conflict in the same places you don't see conflict.

Okay. Who's right? Both.

Good, good answer. So, it's not like you're escaping with blinders. It's that for you it really doesn't exist, and for them it really does exist.

Okay. Ahimsa pratishthayam. Tatsa nidra means in your presence conflict will end.

Okay. Tatsa nidra. That's very important.

It means if you are, if you strictly adhere to not hurting other people, even in little ways, and I'm talking about when you walk through a door at Safeway you just hold it open and you don't let it, what do you call it? You don't let the door bang the next person. Like that's a very sophisticated observance of non-violence.

Like very, you try to put solar in your house because you don't want to commit violence to future generations who won't have oil. Like you are very sensitive to non-violence. If you are super sensitive about not harming others, then in your life those things can't happen.

9-11s won't happen anymore. Okay. If a 9-11 did happen in my life and if I was aware of it, then it means I must have done some, some smaller violence to others.

Okay. Because trees, big trees grow from small seeds. That you have to understand.

Did we create 9-11, all of us? Yes. Is it because we did some violence previous to that?

Yes. Was it the same level of violence? Not at all.

Tens of thousands of times smaller because seeds in the mind grow bigger. Okay. In the same way that tree seeds grow bigger.

Okay. Much bigger. So, we must have done some small violence.

If you want to stop major acts of violence in your world, then, then you have to stop small acts of violence at Seferi with the door. Okay. It's very interesting.

It's very cool. You can... Justice is different.

Justice is a very interesting question. You ready for that? You want to go to Ebert?

Okay, here we go. There is already an absolute justice in the universe. Anyone who hurts another person will be hurt.

You cannot stop it. You cannot avoid it. It will seek you out.

And if you do a kindness to another person, tiny kindness, if you hold the door open at Seferi for someone, great kindnesses will be done to you. So, there's already built into the world absolute justice. No one in this world ever experiences anything that they haven't done to someone else.

And no one... no kindness is ever lost. No small good thing you do to anyone is ever lost.

You will always have something beautiful happen. If you just do tiny little good things to other people. So, there is a justice built into the world already, okay?

Alright, one more, and then I get to go home in the back.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, I want to ask, what happens when you've committed an act of aggression or violence without knowing, due to ignorance or mindfulness, mindless, and you want to repair that. It was based on your ignorance. And now you want to repair that and that person has gone through a lot of pain and you feel responsible.

This is for my son. And I've engulfed in guilt, in self-condemnation because he's gone into a self-destructive mode and I've been wanting to rescue him and save him and redeem whatever I did, mistakes due to my ignorance.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, cool. Yeah, two answers, okay? First one, the power of a karma, of an action, lies 90% in the intention, okay?

So, for example, I met a woman recently from Germany who killed a person in her car. It was a foggy day and a man stepped out in front of her car and she killed him. And then she asked me, what's going to happen, you know?

And in this system, intention is 90%. Did she get in her car to go kill somebody? No, it was an accident.

So, does she get a full result, karmic result? We say no, she gets maybe 10%. Why does she get even 10%?

Because somebody died, okay? There was what we call completion, but there was no intention. So, it's like involuntary manslaughter or something.

The court systems are very much like karma, okay? The more intention there is, the more premeditation there is, the more cruelty there is, the more owning of an action after you do it, the less remorse you have, these all make a karma very powerful. So, it's very similar to court system or something like that, okay?

If you do an action with full intention, with planning beforehand, you know how much it's going to hurt the person, you do it with your own hands, you are glad afterwards, you own the deed afterwards, then the karma is very powerful. But if it's accidental, or you were not aware of what you were doing, or if things got out of hand and you didn't intend for that to happen, the karma is very small. The karmic power is very small, but there's still some power.

If an action led to a result, there's some karmic power there. So, then the second part of your question, how do you get rid of that? If I know I've done something and it's affecting somebody, can I turn the valve off?

Can I shut down that karma? And there's a very sophisticated process to do that in Buddhism, but the guts of it, it's called the Four Powers of how to stop an old karmic seed. So, you made a mistake when you were 16, which is when all of us make mistakes.

Okay, 17. And you did something, and it was almost by accident, it was definitely not intentional, or you didn't know fully what was going to happen, but you did something, and that karma hasn't opened yet, that result hasn't come to you yet, or it's already started. Is there a way to shut it down?

And we say, yes. And then the main thing that shuts down a karmic seed is to make a commitment not to repeat it. So, if you make a commitment not to repeat a mistake that you made before, it shuts down the karmic power of that mistake after the fact.

What do you call a morning-after pill? Okay? It's possible, it happens.

So, let's say for example, I don't know, I was involved in an abortion when I was in college. My school teachers, my people around me, they all said, it's okay, don't worry about it. And then I was involved in one, and then when I met my teachers, my Tibetan teachers, they said, oh no, that's a terrible thing, you did a terrible thing.

And I'm like, how can I fix it? How can I change the, can I fix the karma? And they said, yeah, no problem.

You can always fix the karma. So, I said, well, what do I have to do? They said, make a commitment not to do it again.

And that will change the karma, that will destroy the karma. So, then I became a monk. No, I just thought I'll do something that means I will never make that mistake again.

You see what I mean? And if you make a commitment not to make that mistake again, that destroys the power of the mistake. It's very beautiful.

Now, when they teach that, and that's the last thing we'll do, then we'll go home. When they teach that, they say, don't overcommit. Don't make a commitment that's beyond what you can keep.

So, in the case of an abortion, I can say I won't be involved in an abortion again. I won't even be involved in the causes of that. But what about, I got angry at my mom or something.

Can I make a promise? Can I commit to not getting angry at her again in my life? You say, no.

It would be foolish for me to commit to that because then I would have a new bad karma to work on in a couple weeks. So, they say make a commitment that you can keep. And that's enough.

And that's good enough. So, you can say, this was probably caused because I wasn't completely honest or something. And then, I pledge to be honest for a week.

I'll be totally, perfectly honest with everybody for a week. If somebody asks me, does this dress look good on me, I'll just cough and something. I won't say anything dishonest for a week.

Like that. And then that can destroy the karma. So, there's kind of a sophisticated system behind that, but that's the guts of it.

If you want to learn the whole process, if it's a big mistake that you made in your life and you want to clean it, then I suggest you talk to Nick. Where are you? He's here.

And he teaches in Glendale. And he's been trained in that. It's called the Four Powers.

Any old mistake you ever made, you can clean. And that's kind of cool. And then it just stops.

The whole suffering, all the problems that came from that, just stop. And it's very cool. It's a very cool system.

All right. We should go home.