Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 15: Шаг в наш следующий мир (2022, Аризона), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
All right, good morning, everybody. And let me check the schedule here. Hey, Tim, we go for 45 minutes, right?

[Speaker 2]
That's correct.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so that means 7 to 15, I will stop. Okay, and then we'll take a break. All right, welcome back to the Angel Debates the Devil.

So, if you know the story, oh, Tim, it's alternating translation, right?

[Speaker 2]
It's simultaneous, so it's in another translation channel. So just take your time, give breath, please.

[Speaker 1]
I'll take big breath. So, as you heard about in the announcement for this program, we started reading this, I started reading this with my teacher, Ken Rinpoche Geshe-Lo Tsantarchen, about, I don't know, it must've been about 35 years ago. And he said, I want to teach you guys this very unusual book, you know?

And I was like, well, you know, what's the book? And he said, well, it's a poem. And it was written about 350 years ago, or you could say, 375.

And it was written by His Holiness, the first Panchen Lama, whose name was Lo Tsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. And I love him very much. He's an amazing teacher.

And I taught about him for three years, about 20 years ago at Diamond Mountain. And he's a great, great poet. We translated his poetry, secret poetry.

And I translated a lot of it. And one of my students, John Stowell, who's a bad boy, he published it without asking me. So even though it's a secret poetry, probably you can find it somewhere.

And it's really beautiful poetry about his secret practice. And then he wrote great, great philosophy books. I love his explanation of how your body turns into living diamond if you succeed in this path.

And I don't think you can find it anywhere else. So it's written so clearly. And that's called the transformation of the five heaps, of the five parts of body and mind.

So maybe someday we can go through that together. He also, of course, wrote a very famous lamrim, which is called de lam, which means path to bliss. Or it can also mean the easy path to bliss.

And you can find it at the beginning. It's the first three of the 18 courses, the advanced courses of ACI. And Tim and me, we're talking about ways to teach those courses to more people.

And we'll be talking more about that. So I thought today we could just go through the poem. I started reading this poem 11 years ago.

I started translating it. And we had a program in Phoenix, Arizona. There's a beautiful arboretum there.

Arboretum means a tree garden, public tree garden. And you know, in Arizona, we don't have any rain. So the tree garden is mostly some cactus, but they are very beautiful.

And the garden allowed us to have the program there. So I started this teaching 11 years ago. And when my teacher taught me this book, we had some obstacles.

I'm hearing someone's microphone on with a bunch of kids. That's an obstacle. Well, my teacher had some obstacles to finish this book.

And actually, we never finished it together. And then he passed away. And I try to finish it, the whole thing, and translate it because it's so beautiful.

So let me tell you a little bit about the story. The angel in this case is our understanding of the pen. But in his book, in his poetry, the angel, I don't know, I feel like she's a very, very beautiful and wise being who is the good side of our mind.

So in the, I don't know about your country, but in my country, when we're growing up, they will show us pictures like you saw on the announcement for this program, where there's an angel on one side of your head and there's a devil on the other side of your head. And I don't know, my devil is always trying to get me to eat donuts. And my angel is always trying to get me to eat vegetables.

And they are fighting most of the day. I don't know, I'm always thinking about it. The devil says, oh, wouldn't it be nice to have a donut?

We didn't have a donut for two weeks, three weeks. I understand they're not so good for you, but it's one of life's pleasures. And if you have one once in a while, it's probably okay.

And then the angel will say, no, no, everything you eat becomes part of you. You are what you eat. And every time you eat something unhealthy, it becomes part of your body.

Yesterday, we were having an interesting teaching. We said, well, you are what you eat. This is a famous saying in English.

Because what you eat, your body becomes that. So actually my body today, it's a, oh, hang on. I'm making a soup for my wife, hang on.

We both got COVID this week and I recovered first. And she's still a little bit sick, so I'm cooking for her. Okay, so the devil will try to get you to eat a donut.

And the angel will say, no, no, let's have some vegetables. And then they will argue inside of your mind. And that's what's happening in this poem.

Except the angel is specifically my understanding of the pen. My understanding, and it's, every time I teach the pen, I want to reach into the Zoom call and grab your neck and say, come on, don't you get it? Don't you understand?

It's a proof, it's a total proof. If everybody in the world was logical, if we were completely logical, then after I explain the pen to you, look, when I hold this up, these pieces, I see a pen. And very, very simple.

When I show this to a dog, then they want to chew it, they don't see a pen. And it sounds like a child's story. It sounds like a story that you tell to your children when you put them to bed.

Maybe Tim can write a children's book called The Pen. It sounds like a children's story, but it's not. It's 100% proof.

If your mind is really pure and clean, you can see it. It's 100% proof already that things are coming from us. They are not coming from their own side.

Okay? And I know it sounds simple, and I read it a thousand times. I know probably you're tired to hear about the pen, but if you really understand it, then you know that you can change this whole world.

And we have this word in the Buddhist teaching called mandala, and it means a perfect world. There's no war, there's no sickness, there's no death, there's no sadness. If the pen is possible, if the pen is true, then the mandala is possible.

Then it is possible to change this world. And you heard about places like Amitabha's paradise, and heaven, and can we go there? Is there really such a thing?

I heard some foolish people told me, well, Geshe-la, heaven would be boring, and always the same thing. No fun. And then some foolish people said, you know, heaven cannot exist because we only know good things when we see bad things.

And I even heard some people explain, this is what dependent origination means. Only because of bad things, we can see good things. And that's completely, totally wrong.

And it's just stupid. That's like saying you can't have an apple unless you have a banana. It's not true.

You can eat an apple, it tastes great. Even you don't have a banana. So it is possible to, if the pen comes from me, then I can make a perfect world.

And we should do it, right? There's some places like Amitabha's paradise. Those guys already finished.

They had these classes a long time ago. By the way, they had the same class, okay? They are not so different from us.

We are all the same. And those Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, enlightened beings, they started out just like us. They're not different from us in the beginning.

I always think we are the student in the back of the class. We are that little bit slow student in the back of the class. And the students in the front of the class, you know, in America, the ones who raise their hand right away.

I know, I know. That's like Siddhartha, Maitreya, Manjushri, those guys already graduated. You know, and we are kind of the slow kids in the class.

But our world, we can catch up, okay? And this kind of teaching will help us to catch up. We will catch up, okay?

And you and me, we will live in a perfect world. I've seen those worlds. And then you can teach other people.

And it will be fun. To do it together is fun. And I love this format about the angel talking in your mind and the devil talking in the other side.

Because the whole day, you and me are like that. We have angel talking on one side, we have devil talking on the other side, whole day long. You know, in the ancient books, Abhidharma, they say that it is possible to read other people's minds.

And if you meditate well, you can learn to do it. If your prana is flowing well, if you do your yoga, for example, YSI, then you can learn to read other people's minds. But it's not so fun, okay?

You think it will be fun, but it's not very fun. It's kind of sad, you know, the argument inside of everybody's mind, the very turmoil, all of these thoughts inside of people's minds. If you could really read other people's mind, it wouldn't be very fun.

Because all of us, we have an angel and devil arguing in the mind all day. So let's start into this book. This is the 15th time I've taught it.

Tim and I checked ahead. I think we have about three more sessions. So three more times in the next, I don't know, two years, we should read this together.

And then we can finish it and we can publish it. Diamond Cutter Press, Venerable Udpala, Venerable Ali, Rosa, those guys can publish this book. I think it's going to need a commentary because it's a difficult book.

I forgot to say one more thing about this author. The story I like the most about him is that he was doing a retreat in a cave. And if you ever do a long retreat, you know that people have to cook for you.

You're not supposed to spend time cooking or buying groceries. You cannot go outside. So he had a guy doing his groceries, like every retreat person.

And the guy left a note. Usually they will communicate with notes. They try not to talk.

And the grocery shopper came to the cave and he left a note and he said, bad news, you're going to have to move here and retreat. You cannot finish in this cave. And the pension lama wrote back, well, why?

And the grocery shopper said, there's going to be a war in this valley below the cave. There's a war happening tomorrow. There's two armies coming here.

Two generals are leading two armies here. And there will be fighting, a lot of fighting. A lot of people will die.

And you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be in this cave. Then I guess you can imagine the first pension lama, he's kind of like us.

He's like, wow, that's pretty scary. I should run tonight. Tonight I should pack up my meditation cushion and my Buddha image and I should run.

I should run to another mountain. I think we will do the same thing. We will think the same thing.

Then he couldn't sleep. And he started thinking more and more, wow, if the people fight tomorrow in this valley, many people will die. That's not good.

I should do something. And I love that in the morning he broke his retreat and he wrote a note to his grocery shopper. He was already a pretty famous lama.

And he said, tomorrow, later in the day, bring me two bags of gold. Bring me some gold coins and let's try to stop this war. And when the armies were starting to come together to fight, he ran out of his cave and he ran down to the battlefield and he stood between the two armies.

And he said, he was already a famous teacher. He said, if you want to kill each other, then you have to kill me first. I'm not moving.

And so the armies had a lot of confusion. Both armies respect him. And then he said, let the two generals come here and let's have a conversation.

So the two generals came out to the battlefield and he said, let's sit down, let's sit down. They sat down. He said, I have a suggestion about this war.

And the two generals said, what's your suggestion? And he said, you know, I'm a pretty famous lama already. And actually I have people always offering me money, gold.

I have here two big bags of gold, gold coins. And my suggestion is I give one bag to this general and I will give one bag to this general. And then why don't you guys just go home and relax and don't have war?

And that two generals who were very happy to take the bag of gold and they went home and everybody lived happy. It's so simple how to solve the war, right? So I loved him.

He's so brave and he's so smart and he's such a beautiful thinker. So I'm going to read, let's go through his verses, okay? I don't know how far we can go.

Grandpa always tells stories and he doesn't teach very fast. Tim, I think in, we're going to try to have kind of short sessions and have question and answer. But do two sessions this morning, my time.

So in about 20 minutes, we will take question and answer. Okay, Tim, is that good? Is that right?

[Speaker 2]
That sounds good.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, and then we'll take a little break. I can finish Veronica's soup, making her soup and then we'll have another class. Okay, here we go.

By the way, I wanted to use this teaching to invite all of my friends in the Sedona, Arizona area to come together. And it's really fun when we come together for teaching at our college in Sedona. But I think I still may have, I still may be contagious from the COVID.

I had it this week and I feel great. I finished everything, but I don't want to spread it to other people. So we're going to do these two days at home and I'm sorry for that, but when it's safe, we can all sit together in the college.

Okay, here we go. Verse 241. ,LHA'I TSE DANG, ,DANG PHYIR SOGS, ,DU YIN DANG PAR GRUB NANG BA, ,DE NYID THOB MA MED PA NAS, ,KHOR RANG LTOS MED GRUB GRUB PA, ,RGYUR MA'I LTAG PAR BRDOD PA'I NA, ,CHI DANG TSE PO, ,GALA SRID Okay, and let's go through the pieces.

So in Buddhism, we say that when you die, if you have been very generous with your money and if you share, what's the first perfection? Some people say charity, some people say giving. I like this, the sharing, okay?

If you really like to share your money, your time, your wisdom with other people, then after you die, you will be born as a deva. And deva means, I don't know, when you see those Iron Man, Superman, Fantastic Four, those guys all look like deva, okay? And I think those movies are made by people who are remembering their past life.

So I think those people who make those movies, they are a little bit remembering their past life. So if we plant great seeds by sharing everything we have with other people, then after we die, we can go to temporary heaven. And of course, we think it's a little bit dangerous because even those people die after a while.

And they use up all their good karma. So we think it's not a very good place to go. Okay, LHA YIN TSE DANG, PHYANG CHO SO, DUS YIN BSTAN PA'I DUS NA BA So when we see those movies, we can't meet devas directly.

You and me, we don't have the power. We can watch a movie on Netflix, but we can't actually meet those real people. But they exist.

If you could meet them, it feels to us like their powers are like the pen. It feels like the powers that they have to fly in the sky or to fight with the very bad guys, those powers are coming from their side, like the pen. DE NYID MTHONG BA MED PA NAS DE'I DGOS RANG BSTAN MED DUG DUG PA And for our whole life and for countless lifetimes before, by the way, if you're alive now, if you're listening to me right now, then you had a past life.

Come on, okay? If something can happen once, it can happen twice. That's why if your computer's not working or if your car's not doing, sounding strange, you should get it fixed right away.

It doesn't get better, okay? If your car's making funny noise, if your phone or your computer's doing something, then you have to get it fixed now because if a problem happens one time, it can happen two times or a thousand times, okay? So don't be lazy, okay?

If you can be alive now, if you can be born here one time, come on, don't be stupid. If your car can give you trouble on Monday, then of course it's going to give you trouble after Tuesday, it's for sure. If you came to this world once, then it can happen again.

If it happened twice, then it can happen a billion times, okay? Because time is endless. So when we see this, when we read a story from a teacher that we believe that there are special people, they were very generous.

They shared everything they had. And then after they died, those seeds created deva realm. They are like a superhero, okay?

,'GYUR MED DAG PAR BSDOD PA'I NA CI DANG ZHES PO, ,GAL LA ZHES But then he says, if this deva is the way they seem, if the deva is coming from the dharma, like the pen is coming from the pen, then how can they die? And how can they finish that deva's life? And how can they go someplace else?

If this pen is coming from its own side, it cannot run out of ink, impossible. If the pen is coming from its own side, it cannot run out of ink. It's not possible, okay?

If a person is coming from their own side, then they cannot die and they cannot change. That's what the angel says, all right? So I like this today's class, tomorrow's class because sometimes the angel doesn't talk much.

I think she's a shy angel. Maybe lots of angels are shy, but she doesn't talk very much. In this section, she says, look, if the pen is coming from the pen, and if the person is coming from the person, then how can they die?

She don't say po, po means, you heard of po'a, and po'a means how can they die and go to their next birth? So this whole poetry that we talk about today and tomorrow, they're going to discuss, how does it happen when we die? What happens to us?

And it's a very strange thing. When I went to Princeton University, it's supposed to be one of the greatest universities in the world, and I think it is. And I spent four or five years there.

Nobody, there's no class there, how to die. It's very funny. In the whole university, their endowment is $36 billion.

They have $36 billion every year to play with. And there's no class about how to die. It's amazing because everybody has to die.

It's like building the whole university without a bathroom. Sooner or later, you have to go to the toilet. It's very stupid to build a big university that doesn't have a bathroom.

What, you couldn't think ahead for two hours or three hours that you're going to need a bathroom? Don't be stupid when you build a university. And by the way, we're building a new one in Japan.

When you build a university, you should put some toilets there. Think ahead. And if you're teaching people about life, then you should teach them about death, or you are not a complete university.

All right, so the angel says, look, if you come from your own side, how do you die? How can you die? And what happens to your po'a when you go to your next life?

What happens to you? And we should ask the question. We should be interested about that.

If somebody say, look, pack your bag, get your suitcase ready. Okay, it's ready. Where am I going?

I don't know, don't worry, you're going somewhere. And when am I going? In the next few years, okay?

Don't worry about it. But pack your suitcase, get ready. Then if you don't ask where you're going, if you don't ask where I'm supposed to go, why I have to pack a suitcase, you got to be crazy.

You must be crazy. This life, sure, this life finishes. Yesterday I was 25, today I'm 69, I can't believe it.

I'm like shocked, you know? And my hair also very air-conditioned now. And I'm like shocked.

And it will happen to everybody. You should get ready, you know? You should get ready.

You're not going to stay here. Someone's going to take you somewhere. Okay, what can I do at that time?

Okay, let's go to verse 242. CI DANG TSE PO'I SRID SEMS NA, RANG TUG PA'I RGYUR PA'I RGYUR BA MED PA'I DANG DUG DGEL Then the devil, he said, look, you know, everybody dies and everybody goes somewhere after they die. Why?

Because you came here from somewhere, duh. Okay, don't be so stupid, okay? No, no, when I die, I just disappear.

Well, look, last time you disappeared, you came back, okay? You are here. So don't be foolish.

Of course you're going to go somewhere. You came here. If something can happen once, it can happen twice.

Anybody can see that, you know? Okay, anybody should fix their car right away. First time, it makes a strange sound, okay?

So the devil says, no, no, people do die. People go on, you know? And then the angel says, no, no, you said the pen exists from its own side.

So you cannot die. If the pen exists from its own side, then you also exist from your own side. If you exist from your own side, then you can't change.

There's no reason you should change. And that's a difficult idea, okay? If the pen comes from its own side, like we think, then it should not change.

It should never run out of ink, okay? If the ink is in the pen, then it should never run out of ink. We have to prove that, okay?

It doesn't make sense right away. It doesn't make sense. I know it doesn't make sense.

Geshe-la, I just said the pen come from the factory. People made it from oil. You know, I bought it in the store.

I didn't say the pen cannot change. Of course it will change. That's why we have to go back to the store and buy another one, you know?

Like that, okay? Then Geshe-la said to you, look, if the pen came from the store, if the pen was made in the factory, then it cannot change. It cannot change.

And it should never run out of ink. Geshe-la, I never said that. Of course a pen is made in a factory.

When you write things, the ink comes out of the pen and goes on the paper. Then that pen runs out of ink. Then you have to buy another one.

I didn't say the pen couldn't change. Yeah, but you're thinking that because you're not asking where the pen came from. You're not asking, okay?

You are not asking, why did the pen come to me? And this is a big, big important thing. If you want to have a happy life and a successful death, okay?

That's a strange word, right? If you want to have a happy life and a successful death, then you have to ask, where did you come from? Not how you came to this world, but why you came to this world, okay?

If you tell me how the pen came to the store, oh look, Geshe-la, it's made in Japan. They sent the oil from Middle East to Japan on a ship. The factory got the oil.

The factory made a pen. This is where the pen come from, Geshe-la. But I say, no, you're telling me how the pen came to me.

You're not telling me why, okay? You have to try to understand the difference, okay? How the pen came to me.

Oh, they made it in a factory. They sent it on a ship to America. You got the pen, Geshe-la.

You bought it. No, no, I understand. That's how the pen came to me.

But why me? Why me and why this pen to me? Oh, Geshe-la, come on.

They make thousands of pens every day. Some question has no answer. That's why you lost your hair, Geshe-la.

You worry about these funny questions. But why this pen came to me? Don't worry about it, Geshe-la.

Just use it. But if you're a smart person, you should ask why your car broke today. Why are your cars making strange sounds?

Why are your computers acting funny? You know, not how. Not how.

Oh, I know. When I turn on the car and I go for a few miles, it starts to make a sound. That's a how.

The question is, why my car? Tim's car didn't break. Stanley's new car didn't break.

Seiji's beautiful new car didn't break. Why my car? So I say, if you're a smart person, world, you got to ask why me, you see?

Not how. How is easy. Oh, your engine broke.

The carburetor's dirty. That's why your cars are making noise. Don't tell me how.

Tell me why. Why my car got carburetor problem? And Tim's car didn't.

And Seiji's car didn't. Come on, you got to ask these questions, okay? It's important.

It's more important than what... I don't know what else you're planning to do today. I have to go to the college, film some more things.

Then I have to finish the soup for my wife. Stuff like that. Yeah, you think ahead how you're going to use this day.

But the day that you have to take a trip to die and go somewhere, that's for sure going to happen. I don't know if I can get to the college today. I don't know if the soup will burn or not.

But I know I have to die. I know that. That's for sure.

So yeah, we should get ready. And we have to ask why we die and not how we die. And that's what we're going to do in that next class.

All right, Uncle Tim, are you going to ask the questions? I think we're going to do 15 minutes of questions, right? Am I right?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, it's early on, but I think we have a couple of questions that came in.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, is this the schedule that we were going to do questions?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, we're going to do questions after 45 minutes.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, and then we do 15 minutes of questions and take a little soup making break or something like that?

[Speaker 2]
Yep.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. All right. Okay, go ahead.

Any questions you'd like. Let me turn my sharing off. Okay, all right.

Hey, Tim. Yes. All right.

Why bald people like Zoom?

[Speaker 2]
Because it cuts off the top of your head?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you see, you can sit like this.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. All right, first question, Geshe-la. By understanding this Penn story, we know that everything comes for us.

And it's fair that we can apply this to everyone, even children. But how do we think about this for, say, victims of domestic violence, people who are in deep sorrow or deep depression when we teach the Penn story and they're suffering so much?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a great question. So you guys know I lived in a Mongolian monastery for 25 years near New York, but the whole town is Mongolian town. And they are Buddhist.

And there were about 15 monks there, old, old Mongolian monks. And I studied there. I lived there for 25 years with my teacher.

And you know, I came from Princeton. I was supposed to be a Christian priest. I was accepted to the college after Princeton to be a Christian priest.

So I was very active in the church. And Princeton has a beautiful, beautiful cathedral. It's very similar to the Notre Dame in Paris.

They stole the plans from them. It's very beautiful. And the music is very beautiful.

And it's a quiet, beautiful place, you know, and very expensive, maybe a billion dollars. I don't know. Then I went to the small, from Princeton directly, I went to the small Mongolian temple.

And there were many beautiful statues there, Buddha statue, Tara statue, Maitreya statue. But there were also some terrible, terrible paintings, you know, like hell, paintings of hell. And the music was unbelievable.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, ka, ka, ka, psh, psh, psh, and I couldn't meditate. I couldn't, it sounded like World War II, you know. And I said to my teacher, you know, how can you have these terrible paintings of hell?

And the music here is so loud. And how can you meditate in a place like that? And he said, look, each culture has its own way, you know, in Mongolia, this is like a beautiful church, you know, this is their custom.

It's different. It's different from your Princeton custom, but it's beautiful. It's okay, you know.

Then on the throne, there's a teacher throne, and there's a swastika. There's a Nazi Germany swastika. These are the Nazi who killed six million people, who started a war that killed 130 million people.

Okay, so there's this swastika, but actually this sign come from India, ancient India. And it's a very beautiful sign. It means long life.

Swastika, swastika means long life. And we always put them on the teacher's chair for 2000 years before Hitler, before Nazis, you know. And he explained everything to me.

I said, okay, okay, that makes sense. Maybe Hitler took that sign. Then one day, Jewish people came to the temple.

Can we see the temple? Then I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be a problem. So it was my job because I'm the youngest monk.

I am the tourist guide. I am the tour guide. So I have to walk around the temple with them and explain everything.

And before they came, my teacher said, you know what, hide the swastika. Take it off, you know, put it under the chair. Don't show them.

And I said, why? And he said, they won't understand. They will think we are Nazi or something.

They will think we are bad people. So just hide it, you know, don't show them. I said, no, it's okay, I can explain it to them.

He said, no, no, some things it's too early to explain to people, you know, they're not ready. They saw this symbol their whole life. Even they listen to you, they won't really feel comfortable in our temple.

So I want you to hide it, you know, and I did. And we had a good time and they were happy. And then we put the swastika back on the throne, okay?

Why am I saying that? In Buddhism, we understand there's a time when the student is not ready. There's a time that we shouldn't talk about some things.

The student is not ready, okay? And I believe why children die in the car accident, they're covered in fire. Small children, you know, why people, so many people get abuse when they're kids, sexually, or other kinds of abuse, physical abuse, you know, beating.

Then why it happens, you know, what's the reason? And there should be a reason, okay? Everything has a cause.

There is nothing in the universe that doesn't have a cause. Everything has a cause. Everything has a why and not just a how.

Don't tell me how the kid was abused. Oh, they went someplace and some bad man caught them. They got abused.

That's how, you're telling me how. But tell me why, why this child and why not this child? And in Buddhism, we do have answers to those questions.

And that's why we're all here. That's why we are listening to this class today. We feel like we can find out the real answer, but there's a time when people are not ready for the answer.

There's a time when we should just show them compassion and show them love and show them emotional connection. Even Buddha didn't always answer directly if he thought the student is not ready. So there is a reason why children die in car accidents when they are two years old, in the fire.

There is a reason why some children are abused and some children are not abused. Of course, there's a reason. But mostly in our tradition, the great teachers will say, maybe the student's not ready to hear about that.

Maybe the student's not ready. Maybe the student needs a hug, or maybe the student needs some love. And you can explain later when they understand more.

You can explain about past lives. You can explain about seeds. You can explain why everything has a cause, but you have to choose the right time.

And when the parents are suffering, it's not the right time. You have to hide the swastika and it's time to give them a good hug. And make them some Zoom and make them feel better.

But of course, everything has a reason. Everything has a cause. I met some psychiatrists recently.

They said, oh, why children have trouble? In the womb, the mother ate a pizza with too much hot sauce. And that's why the child is unhappy.

Because they don't understand there should be a time before that. So they have to say this funny thing like, oh, this child, their whole life, their mind was a little bit crazy because the mom ate pizza when she was pregnant and she ate the wrong sauce, or something like that. And of course, it doesn't make sense.

So I think that Buddha always checked the student first. And my teacher, I believe was a Buddha, and he taught me, hide the swastika. You don't have to tell everything the first day.

Just help the student at their own level. And then later you can teach them more about why everything has a cause. Okay, Tim, you got another question?

[Speaker 2]
I do, Geshe-la. In the beginning, you told us a beautiful story about how the first Panchen Lama worked to stop a war. And a couple of questions have come in.

Some people are experiencing war in their own areas or the potential of war. And they want to know, based on that story as inspiration and other seeds, what can we do to help alleviate and reduce and not even experience war?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a great question. So when I was, you guys know the story. I was a student at Princeton.

It was during Vietnam War. And I was very disturbed by the war. And I fought against that war.

And I even went to jail for a short time because I was trying to close a, me and my friends tried to close a weapons factory in the town of Princeton. And we did a peaceful, we peacefully sat in front of the door and we didn't allow the workers to come in to make the bombs. And then the police arrested us.

And so I went to jail for a little bit. And I never forget that I went to a meeting of the students and we were all trying to stop the war. And there was a thousand students in the meeting.

And somebody said, let's bomb the university headquarter, the office. Let's bomb the president's office. We'll show them, we can stop them.

And I got shocked. And then I raised my hand. There's a thousand students there.

I said, no, I don't understand. It seems like you're doing the same thing. They are bombing Vietnam.

And now to fix it, you want to bomb the school. It seems like the same thing to me. I was very disturbed.

Then later I got discouraged. I thought, wow, I worked for four or five years constantly to stop the war. And it didn't really help much.

I felt like one person cannot do much. I'm 10,000 miles away from Vietnam and I don't know how I can stop the war. So I got discouraged and I didn't do much after that.

Then after I studied emptiness with my teacher and I studied how karma, how the seeds open, environmental result, environmental result. So my environment, my world is coming from me, just like the pen. My world where there's a conflict or there's could be very serious conflict, that's all coming from me.

And when I now I listen to the news, I was listening to the news last night about this problem when I was driving home from the classes. And you have to think, oh, this is coming from me. This problem is coming from me.

And because it's coming from me, I can help stop it. So you are never helpless. If the pen is correct, then you are never helpless.

You can always help. Everybody in the world can help to stop this conflict. Everybody can help.

We can all help. Geshe-la, ha, I'm just one person. It's thousands of miles away.

What can I do? But it's still like the pen, okay? There's tensions, very, very serious situations for everybody, for the whole world.

That's coming from each one of us, okay? Each one of us has planted the seeds for this tension. And we are seeing it in our world because it's coming from us.

And because it's coming from me, one person, I can do something. I don't have to blow up the school. I don't have to go to jail.

You know, I can help this situation. How? It's very, very simple.

So we are seeing people not talking to each other. They are being, actually, they are being selfish. Each side is not thinking about the other side, what they need, what they want.

And that's all because I planted seeds like that. I'm, whole day, I'm taking care of myself and I'm not taking care of other people. There are so many millions of people who don't have food today, millions.

And I have too much food, you know? So I can stop the war, I can do something if I just try to stop some small seeds in my life. Maybe I'm having an argument with somebody in my life.

Maybe there's someone in my life who feels threatened by me. I don't want to hurt other people, but maybe there are some people who need my love, they need my attention, they need me to comfort them. And so if I just reach out to some people who are having trouble in my own life, especially people who feel threatened by me, then I'm canceling the seeds to see the bigger tension.

So every person on this call, you do have power to stop this conflict. You can do something because it's coming from your seeds. So it's very exciting.

Today, call somebody you're having little trouble with or comfort somebody who's feeling that you are trying to hurt them and try to make it clear to them that you love them. And that will change the seeds to see the bigger conflict. And when we come back to the text, we'll see that even how your future life goes, what kind of tension is there in the future life, you can fix it now.

You can fix it in this life. If you can change a whole world, then it's easy to change a small tension. All right, grandpa's got to go check the soup, Tim.