500 образов для медитации на шагах пути к просветлению, занятие 7

[Speaker 1]
IDIM number seven is ... this is actually the ... do you know what this is?

No, not Bodhidharma. This is the Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya. This is the tree ...

the Buddha got enlightened under this tree. Okay, and what's the concept you're supposed to remember when you see this photo for the next 20 years? What's the idea from the Lam Rim that you're supposed to think about when you see this photo?

Yeah, the second quality of a good meditation place is that somebody blessed it by practicing hard there, which is really lucky because at Diamond Mountain we have about ... how many cabins? 27 loaded cabins because people have struggled through three-year retreat there, a hard three-year retreat, and so there's a lot of blessing in those cottages, okay?

But in general, when you're choosing a meditation place ... and by the way, these traditional Lam Rim presentations on a good meditation place were originally meant for a retreat place, you see? It's not talking about apartments, okay?

But we have to ... in the modern world we're talking about your apartment, and so, you know, in general if you can ... it's hard to buy an apartment of someone who did a three-year retreat because they usually can't afford apartments.

But anyway, any chance you get to meditate in a place where someone has blessed it by practicing before, then that's good, okay? And by the way, there's also a little side thing that if there's been some fight in that place, if someone's been murdered or there was a bad marriage and people were screaming at each other or ... in that apartment before you moved in, you should try to avoid that kind of place, okay?

If you're a good meditator, it's not going to stop you. But if you ... it could have bad vibrations, okay?

So you should avoid places with negative vibrations, okay? Okay, that's the second quality of the place. What was the first quality?

Yeah, safe and good resources. By the way, traditionally when they explain good resources, you know, obviously we can think of someone to bring you groceries, you know, the bears are not climbing through the window anymore. And, you know, you have someone to come fix your water pump when it breaks and things like that.

Someone to bring you propane. You have all those support systems, right? So that's ...

but there's a deeper support system in the scriptures, okay? Which is why we're going over these photographs together. And that's cultural, okay?

Does your culture support doing retreat? You know, when you tell your boss ... Like, I was ...

when I was in the diamond business, my boss asked me to open an office in Thailand, in Bangkok, to buy colored stuff. And I didn't know a single person there. And so I went ...

I went there, and I'm sitting in the hotel, I don't know what to do. I don't know anything about the laws. I don't know anything about business there.

And I went to the good hotel restaurant, and I watched which waitress can do 12 orders at once without getting stressed out. And then I offered them a job. And I got really good people.

And that office reached 20 million in about two years. But I had one problem. They would show up late to work every day.

And there was no pattern, you know? Like, somebody would be on time for four days, and then suddenly they're very late. And I'm like, finally I had a meeting.

And, you know, I'm like, what's going on, you know? They said, well, everybody in Thailand does that. And, you know, you've got to be careful when you're in a foreign country.

When my Israeli boss came to America, he said, is Gopher Day a big holiday? Am I supposed to give people off on, what's it called? Groundhog Day.

And we said, oh yeah. That's a big holiday. Everyone takes that day off.

That didn't last very long. So I was afraid they were going to do this to me because of karma. And I said, why are you guys late?

They said, we can't come to the office until the monks come to get breakfast. You see? So they prepare meal for the monks who come with their bull to the house.

And they said, we can't control it, you know? Sometimes they wake up early, sometimes they don't. And we can't leave the house until the monks come, you know?

So that's a culture that respects meditation, respects retreat. You can get sponsors. You can get help.

People will come and fix your pump for free. Stuff like that, okay? So in general, the first quality of the meditation place in the Lam Rim includes cultural support, emotional support from your culture, okay?

And we don't have it in the United States. I think in China, in Chinese-speaking countries, you have it more, okay? It'll grow here.

We have to grow it, okay?