500 образов для медитации на шагах пути к просветлению, занятие 68

[Speaker 1]
Okay, this lady is helping the old lady at the grocery store. You know, I like to talk about my trip to the prisons.

[Speaker 2]
We're teaching meditation in the prison, you know, and yoga.

[Speaker 1]
We have some beautiful photos. I don't think we have them. I don't have them there Nick, so don't stress about it.

But we go to the prisons where these guys are. They've been there, they're going to be there their whole life. They are very good students.

[Speaker 2]
They are very good meditators.

[Speaker 1]
There's no place to go. Their homeworks are always 20 pages long, you know. They have nothing else to do.

And you guys, DCI guys know, you know, I like to show these photos. I like to talk about my trips to the prison. But Nick knows the truth.

It was six years ago or something.

[Speaker 2]
I went like three times.

[Speaker 1]
But in my mind, I went a hundred times.

[Speaker 2]
And in my mind, I'm a very good person.

[Speaker 1]
So we tend ... this is a human tendency, you know.

[Speaker 2]
Are you a good person? Yeah, I go to the prison, you know.

[Speaker 1]
Oh Geshe Michael, when was your last trip? Six years ago. So, this picture, IDIM picture, she's helping that lady in the grocery store, right?

[Speaker 2]
But it was like three weeks ago, and she does it only once a month.

[Speaker 1]
When you do your calculation in your mind, am I a good person or a bad person?

[Speaker 2]
We tend to remember the small good things we did, and we forget all the times we yelled at Jigme about the different things.

[Speaker 1]
So, if you had a karma accountant who went around with you everywhere, and you asked them at the end of the day, how am I doing, you know, they'd say, oh the odds of you going to hell is like a hundred to one, okay? In Tibet there was a custom ...

[Speaker 2]
Tibet is similar to our retreat center Diamond Mountain.

[Speaker 1]
Somebody asked me, you know, what's the coolest thing about your retreat center?

[Speaker 2]
I said, we have rocks. We have lots of rocks. Millions of rocks.

People used to walk around Diamond Mountain retreat center and pick up rocks that look like hearts.

[Speaker 1]
They would bring them back to New Jersey, offer them to my teacher.

[Speaker 2]
You know, one day in the class, probably the Lam Rim class, he said, I have something to announce, you know.

[Speaker 1]
No more heart-shaped rocks, okay?

[Speaker 2]
No more heart-shaped rocks.

[Speaker 1]
Why am I talking about that?

[Speaker 2]
Tibet is the same, okay? Mostly rocks.

[Speaker 1]
So, it was a custom in Tibet to carry some white rocks and some black rocks.

[Speaker 2]
Tiny, little ones.

[Speaker 1]
And if you do something nice for somebody, you put a white rock in your pocket. And if you say something mean to Jigme, you put a black rock in your pocket. Then at the end of the day, before you sleep, you take out all the rocks.

And to see ... it's like a karma accountant, you know. And you're shocked, you know.

Oh look, I got 43 black rocks and two white rocks. I thought I was a better person than that, but this is ... what do you call it?

[Speaker 2]
Objectively, I'm not.

[Speaker 1]
So, this idim's name is not as good as I think I am.

[Speaker 2]
Not enough, okay?

[Speaker 1]
It's not enough if you're a fairly nice person.

[Speaker 2]
You have to try harder, okay? You have to be better than that, okay?