Открывая дверь к Алмазному Пути: Пять домов, курс 1 (2025, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
I didn't put that fourth picture there, and it looks a little disrespectful. I don't know, but I don't know where the sunglasses, you put the sunglasses on. Anyway, I was on Pabongka Rinpoche on the left, and yeah, that's better.

So, the thing is, those of you in Staircase House, you can say Pabongka Rinpoche, he was the great master of Lamrim. He wrote the greatest Lamrim, and his disciple, Chidam Rinpoche, in the middle, did all the work. He's the Rosa and the Anatole for Pabongka Rinpoche, and you need that.

You need people like that. So, he spent many years of his life helping to print and prepare his teachers' teachings. And Pabongka Rinpoche is famous for Vajrayogini.

He wrote the best commentary about Vajrayogini. I translated it. I've never published those translations.

I have three or four. I have about, I think it's about 20 or 30,000 pages of Diamond Way translations. But we, you shouldn't normally publish them.

You should give them to your student, okay? So, it's waiting for you, all right? There's about 20,000 pages, something like that.

And I worked hard on it. I worked for 10 years on it. And his book is the greatest.

His Diamond Way book is the greatest. We will study his book, okay? So, you should know the lineage that you are.

If people ask you, what's your lineage? Now, the coolest thing, and then I think, then we'll switch over to the angel for today. Let me see what I got out of it.

No, we'll keep going. Poor angel, always gets shortchanged. In my monastery, Seramay, there's 12 great houses, okay?

You got five, they got 12. And there are 12 great houses for over 500 years, okay? And my teacher is from Gyorong House, okay?

Say Gyorong. So, at Princeton, there used to be a sort of a house custom from your home state. So, I'm from Arizona.

When I went to Princeton, we meet with all the other kids from Arizona. And, you know, we do naughty things together. And it was really fun, and it was really dear, you know?

And we got very close to each other. Because we're in a foreign part of another state, we don't know all these people. They live, they're from the armpit.

We're from Arizona. We don't have any, it's very difficult to be friends with them. They have, they're New York, New York people.

They want to know about coffee. And we're like, it's difficult to be their friends. So, you have a house from your own state.

And in the same thing in the monastery, okay? So, people travel sometimes thousands of miles to come to study at the great three monasteries. And there's a house for Gyorong.

Gyorong means East, East Tibet, near like Chengdu area, okay? They have their own dialect. They have their own language.

So, but other people can go there. If you're from Arizona, and you're the first white guy in, in how many years? 600 years.

Then there's no Arizona house. So, they say you can join Gyorong house, because my teacher was from Gyorong house. And what I want to say is, why Gyorong house is the best house, is that Pabongka Rinpoche came from our house, okay?

The greatest teacher is Pabongka Rinpoche. So, my teacher and Pabongka Rinpoche came from Gyorong house. When your teacher comes from Gyorong house, you are part of Gyorong house, okay?

So, you are Gyorong house. You're also whatever house you are, staircase, whatever. But you should have some, you should be happy that you are part of Gyorong house.

And you can brag about it, you know. People say, what house you connected to? You can say, Gyorong.

And they say, what's Gyorong? I say, it's just the greatest writer in history, Pabongka Rinpoche. He was reborn.

He passed away in 1941, I think. And he was reborn. And that reborn Lama finished his geshe.

And then suddenly he died. And then he was reborn again. And so, the young Pabongka Rinpoche was my classmate.

And we had many good, I examined him for his geshe. I was the number one examiner. And it was cool.

And he's a great teacher now. He teaches all over the world. He's a good teacher.

Okay, these are in the beginning of the steps of the path, in the beginning of Diamond Way. To prepare for Diamond Way, we have to learn our teachers. And these are your teachers, okay.

And I'll tell you something. I don't care what country they came from. I'm not loyal to a particular country.

I'm not, to be honest, I'm not attracted to a lot of Tibetan culture. It's not something I'm interested in. If I give you the, shall I sing Tibetan?

It's very similar to Beijing opera, okay. And then I'm like, Then there's many things about, you know, I'm not attached to American culture. I'm probably the least American American you ever met.

And I'm not attached to a particular country or particular culture. I'm not trying to sell Tibet or China or Japan or, you know. I just feel like we're all one country, Russia.

I feel, that's how I feel about it. So I'm not trying to make you Tibetan or I'm not trying to sell you Chinese things. It's a way of thinking.

It's a way of living your life. And there's people in every country who follow it. And there's people in every country who don't follow it.

All the ones who follow it are in the same country. You see what I mean? They're in Lam Rim country.

And that's how I see it. That's just the way I see it. So I'm not trying to make you Tibetan.

I'm not trying to get you to wear this strange hat. You know, ask me how many times I wore my hat in Rimrock. A hundred times.

No. No, like I never wore it once. Because it's not appropriate.

It's not appropriate to wear it around Phoenix, Arizona or something. I wore my robes once in New York and this guy stopped me and he said, What are you? What are you?

Goddamn Moses? I'm like, peace man, peace. So I don't think it's so important what you wear or if you have a bell.

I don't think it's, personally I don't think it's so important. I think you dress to fit the people you're teaching. If you teach business people, you got that picture?

If you're going to a business talk, the one with the four teachers. If you're going to a business talk, you go in a nice car and you wear a nice suit. Really, seriously.

And then when you're in Diamond Mountain, you just wear your normal clothes. That's Lam Rim. Okay, that's Lam Rim.

So I'm not trying to sell something cultural to you. Buddhism is not a culture. Buddhism is a way of thinking.

Diamond Wear is a way of thinking. So in this text so far, we are bowing down to the teachers and I wanted to show a person bowing down successfully. Next picture.

Yeah. So I'm in, our company exploded. Our company doubled every 18 months.

We're the fastest growing company in the history of New York. Why? Just by accident.

And so I was desperate for workers, you know, and I put out the word, if anyone knows anyone who knows jewelry, if they know some jewelry skills, please let me know. And we were working like crazy hours. I was working until 2 every night.

And then I hired a lady from Barbados and then she's like 7 feet tall. And she said, I know somebody. And I'm like, okay, tell them to come in.

Two people came in. One was Uma Thurman. She came in, she needed a job.

She didn't get famous. She didn't get into the movies yet. And then I interviewed her and I said, do you really want to be a secretary in a diamond company?

And she said no. And I said, well, what do you really want to do? And she says, I want to be an actress.

And I said, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to hire you and you go be an actress, okay? And then I think two months later she got the role in Dangerous Lesson, something like that. And then she became, she's been on Vogue cover more than any other woman.

Her father always thanks me for not hiring her. And at the same time, this short black Barbados lady came in and I interviewed her and she said, she had some jewelry skills. And then I said, one thing, our company is tough.

We got to work till one o'clock, two o'clock. I mean, we're a crazy company. And so if I hire you, you're going to have to work when I tell you to work.

And she says, I don't do that. And I'm like, you know, I'm very, very busy. I'm in a huge company and here's this lady come in and say, I don't do that.

So I'm like, well, why did you come here? And she said, I need a job, you know, but I don't do that. And I said, what do you do?

And she says, I work when I want to work. And I'm like, I just looked at her, you know, and I looked at her friend who brought her. And I'm like, you know.

And then this word, yes, came out of my mouth. And I'm like, what? And so I hired her and she was trouble.

But she grew up in the company. Then she became a great diamond jewelry master. She became, she handled the largest account, which was $20 million account, something.

And she became really good at it, you know. And then, I don't know, I was sleeping in New York once a week because I have to open the vault. Somebody has to open the vault.

Only three people are allowed to know the secret numbers, you know, so I come in once a week. I sleep in New York and then I started teaching people in my hotel room on the bed because there's no place else. I sit on the desk and they sit on the bed.

And then it got more and more people and they're all trying to sit on the bed. And she heard about it and she said, can I come to your class someday? I'm like, you won't like it.

And she's like, no, let me try, you know. And then she came and then she really liked it. And then she studied, studied, studied.

And then she became a nun. My teacher made her a nun. And she and I started ACI together, okay.

And that was, how long ago? 30 years ago, okay. And then she came out to Diamond Mountain.

She did a three-year retreat. And she helped build this place. She built, we built this temple by our hands.

All the students carried the bricks and built the place. It was hard. And she's such a, she changed.

I never saw anyone change so much. She was a very difficult person. No.

And then she become this extremely happy person. And then we did a, we had a chance to do a second three-year retreat. And she's like, I'm up for it.

And she's the only person here, right Jonathan, who did two, she did six years of deep retreat. So pretty amazing. People don't know she had cancer the whole time.

She had cancer when I met her. And people didn't know. And we didn't tell anybody.

But she had bad cancer. And she just keep going, you know. And so finally she passed away.

And, but, you know, people always doing all these nice prostrations, you know, blah, blah. And I think if you want to prostrate to the lamas, like pick up a shovel and build a temple, you know. Do something, do something to help, you know.

That's all nice, you know. All these people hand me red envelope, you know, and they're like, oh, we love you. And I'm like, yeah, I got a shovel.

Yeah, I don't do that. So I think when you prostrate, you know, and when you bow to the lineage, think about this kind of prostration, okay. And it's just hard work, you know.

To build this place, just hard work. 20 years of hard work. Those stupid Chinese young people.

They're like, oh, we're doing the same thing. I'm like, yeah. I asked my wife, should I let them try?

And she's like, yeah, let them try. Because it's hard, it's really hard. It makes you strong, okay.

If you want to prostrate to the lamas, if you want to honor the lamas, then clean the toilet, you know, do something like that. That's the real prostration. It's not this, whoa.

Those are easy. Those things are easy, okay. Hard work.

If you want to honor the lineage, then hard work, okay. I'm going to do a little more, and then I'm going to take Q&A, okay. Especially about Diamond Way, but anything you want, okay.

So, I'll do about, I'll stop in about 15 minutes, and we'll do Q&A, okay. You should have some questions about how you continue with your Diamond Way practice and things like that, okay. Okay, last thing.

There's an unusual part of Gibson's book where they talk about, if you study lamrim, you get eyes, okay. And that's the next picture. Yeah, this is a famous stupa.

I think it's Bodhidharma in Nepal, in Kathmandu. And I think this is, some people say it's where Lord Buddha was born. But it's an unusual stupa.

It's famous because it has these strange eyes on it, and then it's Buddha's eyes. It's part of a huge, huge stupa. And when we finished this stupa, Dr. Wu told me, those are kind of mini stupas, aren't they?

And I'm like, what do you mean? And these are pure marble. You can't, you know, it's like pure diamond.

Like you can't, he's like, well, I was kind of thinking of Bodhidharma, which is like five stories high. I'm like, we also got, by the way, we have to respect the view. We can't ruin the desert.

We don't feel like we can put big Buddha statues and stuff like that. They have to fit into the mountain. We don't want to hurt the mountain.

We want to make the stupas quiet and elegant. Okay, so anyway, eyes are very important. And somebody said to Tsongkhapa, if you study Lamrim, you get the eyes to see the world, to really see the world.

And he got upset. And he said, that's not what the book says. That's not what it says.

And then they said, what do you mean? And he said, the Lamrim is the eyes. Okay, not that you study Lamrim and you get eyes.

Not like that. He said, Lamrim is the eyes. If you learn Lamrim, you have the eyes.

Okay, got it? What? For seeing messages, okay, in diamond way.

And by the way, the author, Choney Lama, right? He said, Tsongkhapa said, he told the story about Tsongkhapa and Tsongkhapa's eyes. And then I checked it in John Brady's database.

I checked it and I found it. And it's on the last page of the Lamrim Chomol. It's 1,000 pages into the Lamrim Chomol.

And it talks about the eyes. Lamrim is eyes. And if you have Lamrim, you have eyes.

And if you don't have Lamrim, you don't have eyes, okay? What's it mean for us? There's a very, very famous, very, very famous quotation from Lord Buddha.

And somebody asked him, which meditation posture is better? And he's like, what do you mean? And there's this big fight for 2,000 years.

Do you put your left hand down first? Or do you put your right hand down first? And do you cross your right leg first?

Or do you cross your left leg first? Big fight, okay? There's a big fight.

So somebody asked him, what position, what's your meditation, what's your favorite meditation position? And he said, I have three. Lord Buddha said, I have three.

And they said, what? And he said, I meditate when I'm flat on my bed. I meditate when I sit in a chair.

And I meditate when I stand up. That's all. Okay.

And so I wanted to give you a proposal. So classically, Lord Buddha said, there's three times you can focus on your meditation when you're a Buddha. It's whether you're laying down, sitting, or standing up, which is all the time.

I don't think there's any other choice. Word probably could come up with something. Flying?

Oh, no, I would count that as standing up, personally. But anyway, I propose that until we meet again in Mexico City, whether you're online in Mexico City or whether you come to Mexico City, I propose that we have a sort of a, that we all try to, when we're walking, when we're traveling somewhere, when we're going somewhere, in a car or walking, okay, when you're going somewhere, especially walking in a street in Shenzhen with your son, or flying somewhere, or in a car, okay, when you are moving to go somewhere. Got it? Walking, traveling in a car, flying in an airplane, okay?

When you're, I would like to make a deal among all of our, we're now a small Diamond Way group, right? Including the online guys. Until Mexico City, which is July 18th, right?

For four days, until then, when you travel, let's make a deal that you look for messages, okay? And, you know, you can sleep on your bed, you don't have to look for messages. And you can sit at your breakfast table, you don't have to look for messages.

But I propose that we all agree to look for messages when we're traveling, in a car, or on a plane, or walking to a city, okay? Lizal? Okay, agree?

Agree? That was three people, I think. Okay, okay.

Alright, cool. So remember, you know, what's your homework? Somebody asked you, what's your Diamond Way homework?

It's when I'm traveling, I'm supposed to see if there's any messages that were sent to me. Okay? And I get a lot of messages on airplanes.

I'm on airplanes a lot. I keep my ears open, you know. Somebody gives me a message.

I remember one lady was looking at her cell phone the whole way. Like, it said, how many hours to Japan? Eleven hours, you know.

And I think about ten hours, she was like this, you know. And I'm kind of like, irritated. I don't know why, I'm just irritated.

Somebody would look at their phone the whole way to Japan, you know. Then I kind of was curious what someone could look at for eleven hours. And I looked, you know, when you go to the toilet, you spy on people.

And I went to the toilet and I'm like, I just want to see what website she's looking at. And that's when I found out you can turn the camera around and look at yourself, you know. Hi, Dehi Michael.

And she was checking her makeup for eleven hours, you know. And I was like, wow. She's checking her makeup for eleven hours, you know.

I'm such a better person, you know. I don't even know how to do that. And that makes me a better person.

I would never just think about myself for eleven hours, you know. And then suddenly I'm like, it's a message. She's telling me I think about myself eleven hours out of eleven hours, you know.

And maybe she's Vajrayogini. Maybe she's an angel. Maybe she's a Buddha.

Maybe she's a Lady Buddha, you know. Maybe she's trying to get me to get this. Maybe if I would just figure it out, she could go to sleep.

But she has to sit there for eleven hours. That guy's so stupid. He didn't get it.

Keep trying. Okay. So, watch from— That's our homework, okay.

That's what I'd like to do together. As a group, as a team, when you're traveling, then look for messages, okay. And they can be unusual.

They can be really strange. What's a message when a scorpion crawls on your foot during Tujan Rinpoche? You'll never forget Tujan Rinpoche.

What's the message? We're looking for messages. And if I have to tell you what's the greatest Diamond Way practice, it's looking for messages.

I think it's one of the greatest. All right. Is it a message?

Was she sending me a message? Was she a Buddha sending me a message? I can't say she was, but I can't say she wasn't.

I can't say I know she was, but I can't say I know she wasn't. And that state of doubt between I can't say she was— I can't say I know she was, and I can't say I know she wasn't— that middle place of doubt is extremely powerful karma. Okay.

It's one of the most powerful karmas there is. If you want financial freedom, if you want to throw $100 bills at people all day, or you want to be happy, or you want to have the greatest wife in the world, or husband, this is the karma. It's an extremely powerful karma.

Everything you ever dreamed of will come. It's very unusual. It's very strange.

Got it? That doubt is one of the most powerful karmas there is. And it will produce weird things, like very, very successful life, very happy life.

And it's so cheap. It doesn't cost anything to be paranoid about the lady. You know?

It doesn't cost you anything. It's no effort at all. It takes like 10 seconds on the way to the toilet.

Huh, another message. Hi. Bye.

Do your toilet. I could tell you about— No. No.

We had an interesting flight from China. Speaking of toilets, I'm not going to make fun of my friend who was throwing up and diarrhea at the same time, and the airplane company closed the toilet. Anyway.

Buddy, it's a good way to lose weight. Okay, let's do Q&A. Okay, you got your homework, right?

We all—I have my homework. Okay. All right.

And we'll do— We'll finish Angel Devil sometime soon, Tim. Who's going to choose now? Tim, you choose.

Somebody choose. By the way, after class, I've got to go quick, okay? I'm— There's a lab waiting for me.

So, Geshe-la, thank you so much for the class. So, I'm just wondering, what is the message for us that we are here in the class and we see the Scorpio? And I'll say something about that, okay?

I think messages are tailor-made. It means I think messages are sent to you personally. So, I think it's part of this practice is it's not that Geshe-la decides the message.

You decide the message. Because I don't know your life. I don't know what's going on in your life.

I have many, many students. I don't know what's happening in their lives. You know what's happening in your life.

So, one thing about messages is they are created by the Buddhas to fit you personally, okay? And two people can get different messages from the same event, okay? Two people can get different messages from the Scorpio, you know?

And they're both true. Even if they're opposite, they're both true. And that's the cool thing about messages.

So, one thing about Diamond Way is that all this stuff is happening, was designed for you personally. It's a personal message for you from the Buddha, okay? And you can take it and you can use it.

And that's Diamond Way. That is Diamond Way. You asked me to teach Diamond Way.

I'm teaching you Diamond Way, okay? Alright, next question. You're such a cute teapot.

Okay, online. Malaysians. Congratulations on your new stupa, you Malaysian people.

Wen Di, Xie Shi Ma.

[Speaker 2]
Geshe-la, is it okay that I ask this question in Chinese? Sure. Hao Ma.

Hao Ma.

[Speaker 1]
Pei Chang Hao. Thank you. Thank you, teacher.

After listening to Diamond Way for two days, I feel that Diamond Way allows me to observe a lot of incredible and impossible things. For example, yesterday, the teacher said that in Diamond Way, you can observe that you are the Buddha. But I have to tell you that this is not possible at all.

Because I am not the Buddha. I am not the Buddha. So, how can I apply the teachings of Diamond Way to help me improve my mental state or how can I understand the greatness of Diamond Way?

[Speaker 2]
So, what can we do in the Diamond Way practice? If this visualization doesn't work for me, what are the practices that I can do to bring Diamond Way into my life? Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
Nice. Okay, cool. One thing that John Brady did in his database, so there's, I don't know, we are planning to input 300,000 books.

He is about 3% or 4% finished. It will take another 100 to 300 years to finish, okay? That's how long he has to stay.

And it's huge. It's unbelievable. It's 300,000 books.

The Western Classics, on which all Western universities are based, there's 500 books. Harvard University Classics Library has 500 books. That's all.

Asia has 300,000. And they are high quality. They're not silly books.

They're not cuneiform, Abyssinian. I said Babylonian. Somebody corrected me.

Sumerian. There's Sumerian. To be honest, I don't know the difference.

They're not some complaint about a guy's horse. They are extraordinary books. Every one of them can get you enlightened.

300,000 books. From all the ancient books, you heard about Sutra and Shastra yesterday, right? There's 990 Sutras and Tantras left from many thousands.

And there's 3,700 Shastras left. And there's about 285,000 commentaries, late commentaries. The ancient people divided all of those books into 12 categories in the Conger.

Something like that. The whole Conger has only 12 sections. 990 books.

The Tingir has something like 14 sections. Okay? John Brady's database has probably 1,000.

It's 1,000 different divisions. It's catalogued correctly. And it took many years.

It took 30 years to do it. So there's about 1,000 categories. Why do I mention that?

There's 160 Tantras in the database. Vajrayogini is one. Manjushri is one.

Amitabha is one. There's 160. John Brady's project has identified 160 Tantras.

Tantric systems with thousands of books in them. So it's unbelievable. Then each one, Vajrayogini is divided into many, many categories.

How to do retreat. How to do the fire. How to do the mantra.

How to do the meditation. How to die. How to teach it.

How to do the initiation. Many, many. Then I asked my teacher, I said, you're teaching us two or three Tantric traditions.

We get Yamantaka and we get Vajrayogini. We get two, basically. But there's 160.

And then all my friends who were studying with other teachers, they're like getting 10, 12, 50. I'm like, we only got two. I was kind of irritated.

He said, that's all that we practice in the Tantric monastery. The highest, there's only two in Tibet. There's thousands of monasteries.

There's only two Tantric monasteries. He's like, that's all I studied. That's all we studied.

We studied two. I'm like, wow. Why is that?

I said, why are all those Tantric, why do they exist? He said, everybody's different. Everybody needs a different teaching.

That's why there's five houses. Everybody's attracted to a different thing. It's the Veronica at the cowboy shop story.

My wife tried on 42 pairs of jeans. I counted. I had to stand up the whole time.

There's no chair. I was irritated. I wanted to go home.

And then she didn't buy any of them. Don't ever tell her this story. It means different people need different tantras.

There's 160 pairs of pants there. There's 160 holy beings. And probably there's thousands.

That survive in John's database, there's 160. So, you came to this one. And then if you tell me, if you tell your teacher, you know what, I don't really connect with Yamantaka.

And I'll be honest, I don't connect with him either. I'm like, it's scary. And it's kind of, you know.

And I'm like, I got any other choices here? And my teacher's like, I think you're a Vajrayogini person. I think you're a Vajrayogini type.

Which is like, you know. You know, and so my teacher's approach, my teacher's tradition in the ancient tradition, which is 2,000 years old. We give you basically several choices.

You can have the tough one, if you want. Or you can have the sweet angel one. And personally, I like the sweet angel one.

I connect with that. So, when you study Diamond Way, your teacher should give you a couple options. And basically, we give you Yamantaka option, or we give you Vajrayogini option.

And you don't need to know about it now. You don't have to worry about it now. You don't have to choose that house now.

Just sit, enjoy the Diamond Way classes. But the options are waiting for you. We have them.

So, if it doesn't feel like it fits very well right away, don't stress about it. You will change, or we'll offer you a different tantra, a different tradition. They're all the same in the end.

It's all Lord Buddha, just looking like different pairs of pants. It's one person who looks like 42 pairs of pants, 160 pairs of pants. In the end, it's the same person.

But I also believe that, as I mentioned before, you can go with the Vajrayogini who's more comfortable for you. You feel more attracted to a feminine Buddha, a female Buddha. You know, that's fine.

And then some people want a real authority figure president, we know who, you know, whose name cannot be named. You know, you can... It depends on what you feel comfortable with.

So, what's cool about Diamond Way practice, basically there's many, many options waiting for you. So, if it doesn't feel like it fits right away, there's two choices. Go for the other one, which fits more in this tradition.

We have other ones, if you like. But I'll tell you another option. I think I mentioned it the other day.

Out of the Geshe course, there's five great topics. There's Abhidharma, Vinaya, Logic, Lower Middle Way, Higher Middle Way, and then Mind Only is in there somewhere. And when I studied the Geshe course, when I got to the Logic, I hated it.

I really hated it. And I was like, I can't do this. I'm quitting.

I'm going to quit now. It's like, I could care less about... It wasn't major premise, minor premise.

You know, it's all BS to me. I don't care. I had real trouble with it.

And my teacher at that time couldn't speak English. So, he's like, you know, trouble with my English, I'm like, I don't understand anything. And then he tried to explain logic terms in elementary English, and I'm like, it's worse, you know.

And I'll tell you something, and I told this story many times. I was walking back to my room from his room, and he had just given me a logic class, and I was like, and I was sleeping on the floor of a garage. I was sleeping on a concrete floor in a sleeping bag.

That was my room. I didn't have enough money, or I didn't have any place, and there was no place. I'm sleeping on the floor of a garage with an old drunk who hid in the garage, and I'm always afraid he's going to kill me.

So, anyway, I'm on my way to my room, and I remember I stopped under a tree, and I was upset, because I said, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can learn this. And then this voice came to me, and it said, you kick ass on the logic.

You do the logic. It's something important, something you're supposed to do. Shut up, and learn it, and master it.

And I'm like, wow, I got a message. In that moment, under the tree, I think you can still see the tree. I said, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to. It's the thing I like. It's the thing I don't like the most.

It's the one subject I don't like the most, and somehow I got a message. It said, you're supposed to do the thing you don't like the most, because that's what you don't have yet. You understand?

That's the practice you don't have yet, and so that's the one you need. The one that you don't like the most is the one that's missing inside of you, and that's a very interesting idea. You can wait, and we'll give you other traditions.

John Brady, Connie, those guys, they will give you other lineages, other traditions. There's a lot of choices. You can wait until something comes which fits your unusual bottom.

You can wait, but you have this other option that maybe the one you're not attracted to is a message. Maybe it's what you are lacking that you need, and so I became good at logic. I'm the best.

It's extremely difficult, and I killed myself for many years, and now I know it, and it's wonderful. It's like the most valuable thing. Don't always think that the thing that's comfortable for you is the right thing for you.

Maybe the one that you're not attracted to is the one that you don't have. That's what you need. Sometimes in Buddhism, force yourself to do what you're not attracted to.

If you just keep doing what you're attracted to, you don't learn anything new. Okay? Understand?

Cool. Don't forget that one. All right.

How much time we got, Tim? Okay. Who's choosing?

Oh, go ahead.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you so much, Geshe-la, for teaching today. Yesterday, while I was reading a book by Lord Je Tsongkapa, I've seen a hummingbird in English. Am I right?

Hummingbird. It came to me while I was reading his book.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, nice.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, and I was so happy, and I shared this news with my karmic partner and my roommate, Olga, and next day, can you imagine, she saw hummingbird as well. And I've checked with Ayi, and Ayi told me that this is a sign of easy enlightenment. I thought, like, it's huge for me.

[Speaker 1]
Easy enlightenment? Easy enlightenment.

[Speaker 2]
Like, easy way to enlightenment.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, okay.

[Speaker 2]
Like, without suffering.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
So, I love it. And my question is, so yesterday, I saw, like, good sign, and if I... And if we see, like, let's say, everything comes from our karma, and deep, for example, I see, like, bad sign.

What should I do for powers?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. Okay, good question.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you so much. All right.

[Speaker 1]
Thank you so much. Yeah. My Lama said something about that.

I'm trying to remember. Oh, yeah. Okay, here's the answer.

So, I lived with my Lama because I was his driver, his toilet cleaner, his cook, his lawnmower. When you serve a Lama, then you get to hear everything they say. So, it's a dirty job for 25 years, but you learn a lot because you're always with them.

So, whatever they tell people, you hear it. So, here's what he said one day to somebody, and he said, they said, Oh, Rinpoche, you know, sometimes I have these beautiful signs in dreams. I have these wonderful dreams, you know, and I see the sky opening up, and I see Tsongkhapa coming out of the sky, and I have these extraordinary dreams, and so I want to ask you, first of all, what do those mean?

How do I interpret those dreams, you know? And then they said, and sometimes I have a nightmare, and sometimes terrible things come to me in the dream, and bad, seems like bad signs, but I don't know how to read them, you know, and I want to ask your advice, you know, and here's his answer. In the diamond way, when you have a beautiful dream, and something amazing happens, and you like meet a Buddha in a dream, or, you know, you're flying in a dream, or, you know, you become a female Buddha, or something like that, that's a true sign that you are making progress.

When the hummingbird comes to you, and you feel like this is guiding you to enlightenment, it's a good sign, and your practice is really going well. And he said, he said congratulations. I thought it was weird to congratulate the person for a dream.

You know, he's like, congratulations, and I'm like, yeah. And then the person said, the bad dreams? And what about the bad dreams, bad signs?

And he said, you ate something bad in the afternoon. Like you ate an old piece of pizza. Or, you know, what did you eat wrong?

I don't remember. You know, you ate a bad egg, or something, you know. And he said, that's how valid the bad messages are.

And basically he's saying, excuse me, but he's saying, fucker. You know, if you have a bad message, you have a bad sign, you know, a cloud goes over the sun, and everything turns dark, you could say, I had a bad lunch. That's all.

He said, don't give it any attention. Don't pay attention to it. He's like, you just think I ate something bad.

You know, something like that. It's just like having boobs. You know boobs?

You know, you ate something bad and you have boobs. It's like a vision, bad vision is a boob. And he said, just ignore it.

If you're, his advice was, attach to the great visions and pay a lot of time, spend a lot of time thinking about them. And then when some bad sign comes or something, just say, don't give them the honor. Don't give them respect.

Just say, go away. You know, I'm not even going to think about you. You know, some scorpion comes, you're like, no.

Okay? Seriously. I like that.

I like the pizza thing. All right. I think we got time for one more, Tim?

I don't know. No. Oh, okay.

And we have a POCO MÁS PORQUE TE VAS MI BIEN TAN DEPRISO NO GOZES MI AGONÍA SI LA NOCHES ESPERA TODO EL DÍA ESPERA TODO EL DÍA Okay, okay.

[Speaker 2]
So we have an online question. And it says, Hi, Grandpa. I have not answered.

You've mentioned in the past one has to finish Geshe course before learning the Diamond Way. What is the seed that allows us now to be able to learn Diamond Way without needing to complete Geshe course? How should we continue to reinvest these seeds?

[Speaker 1]
What was the last question?

[Speaker 2]
How do we continue to reinvest in these seeds?

[Speaker 1]
Reinvest?

[Speaker 2]
Reinvest.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay. Seeds. Okay.

My opinion is if you finish the 18 courses and then you do Diamond Way and you do the 18 Diamond Way courses, your practice will be more firm. teachers in the world right now of this thing, teachers of this kind of thing that we're talking about today are extremely rare. There's not enough.

There's a very bad shortage of teachers. I like to say it's like New York City. Imagine New York City or Singapore with two doctors or something because that's the way it is.

There's only a few people for every thousand people who understand these things. There's only a few people who can teach. All those people are suffering and there's no doctors.

There's a shortage of doctors. In my opinion, we have to do what we have to do to create more doctors as fast as we can safely. I mean, you don't give a person two weeks of training and give them a scalpel and say do heart surgery.

No, you're going to kill somebody. You're going to hurt somebody. We don't have much time.

I don't know how long you're going to live. I don't know how long I'm going to live. We don't know who will die first.

We have to get it done now. We have to take care of it now. I would say there will be requirements, Tim can tell you, for ACI people to learn Diamond Way, to teach Diamond Way.

There are requirements. It's better if you can do the 18 courses. It's better if you can do the 18 Diamond Way courses.

It's better. You will be a better doctor. There's an old kind of doctor called general practitioner, GP.

I have one. They're very rare. She's a female GP.

She's about my age. They stop making them. They don't make them anymore.

You go to a doctor and they say, what's wrong? You say, I got a headache. Oh, you got to go to a headache specialist.

And they send you to another doctor. Then you say, I got something with my toe. Oh, you got to go to a toe specialist.

It's a lot of money also, by the way. They keep sending you to specialists. It's very rare to find someone who's an old-fashioned GP, general practitioner, general doctor, who knows all the different problems pretty well.

I would like to create GPs. I would like ACI to create GPs. I would like you to master many things, many subjects.

Then when someone asks you a question about bad dreams or bad hummingbirds, you have an answer ready for them. You don't have to say, oh, go talk to Sophie in Tokyo. I don't know the answer.

You see what I mean? It's better if you can learn a lot. I think as a doctor, the best doctors I know, they never stop studying.

Even if they're 60 years old, 70 years old, you say, can I see you next week? They say no. And you say, why?

And they say, I'm taking a class. And I'm like, you're 60, 70 years old. Why are you taking a class?

I want to learn more. I want to be able to help more people. I respect that kind of doctor.

Then that kind of doctor, they're always learning the new techniques. My wife had a knee surgery. We got knee replacement.

And this guy has a new, what do you call it? He does the operation with a robot. So there's 20 doctors who can do it with their hands.

And there's one who can do it with a robot. And the robot is much more precise. And you heal faster.

And then she was, now she's fine. You can't tell which knee is operation. She's, both knees are wonderful.

So this person, he's already a great surgeon. He's already very famous. He can cut you up very well.

But he went on to learn the robot. He wanted to learn the robot also. And now he has the choice.

Some difficult operation needs a hand. And most of them are fine with the robot. And the robot is more precise.

And it doesn't make mistakes like human beings make. And I think it's good to know. I like the surgeon.

I like to go to the surgeon who knows both. And then I get, I can get which one is better for me. You see what I mean?

So I think as a teacher, I don't want you to come to me and say, should I take 14 courses or 15 courses? I say take all of them. And then take them again.

And then take them a third time. Don't ask me this irritating question. If I do 13 and a half, can I teach?

And don't ask me to make those decisions. Learn the robot and learn to do it by hand. And as soon as you can help somebody, start helping them.

You don't have to wait until you've mastered the robot. You can help people. Don't hurt people.

If you hand a steak knife to a kid and say do a heart operation, I'm like, you know, I think I'll wait a while. So it's a delicate question. We want people who don't hurt other people, who don't make mistakes teaching people, and we want, but we don't want to wait until you've had 50 years of experience because then you can only help a few people.

So it's kind of your, the answer, I stick with whatever Tim says, first of all. And then secondly, you can't stop learning. I mean, you should never stop learning.

You can study Diamond Wave for a hundred lifetimes. You will not master it. It's endless, okay?

But you have to, as soon as you can, do the hard work to learn as much as you can, and then you can help more people, okay? And if you want to know how many courses, blah, blah, blah, talk to Tim, okay? Thank you.

And if it's me, and if John, Brady, Connie, Ellie, those guys are giving courses, I know Peter and Marie are teaching Diamond Wave, if it's me, I'll try to go to all of them, okay?