500 образов для медитации на шагах пути к просветлению, занятие 76

[Speaker 1]
So, my goal was to teach the whole LAM RIM NON DRA LAG BCANG, which is called A Gift of Liberation Stuffed Into Your Hands. Like the Lama goes, take it, you know, here's Buddhahood, you know. So, that's the name of the book.

I think it's the greatest book ever written. It's about 500 pages, 400, 500? In the Tibetan.

And the goal, we had a goal of finishing it in 10 years. And we're on schedule. We're about eight years through, eight and a half, something like that.

We're not far from the end now. We're about two years from the end. It's been 29, this is the 29th retreat.

It's cool that we all survived and we're still going. So, we have about eight more classes. Then my strategy in the beginning was I taught the meditation section first.

I went to the end of the book and I taught the meditation section because we were going to meditate during all the LAM RIMs. So, those of you who were there in Prescott and Phoenix, we started at the end of the book and we did the meditation section. Then we went back to the beginning so you could use the meditation to meditate on the LAM RIM.

[Speaker 2]
But then I thought, when we get to the end and we reach the meditation section, which we already did, we'll skip the Tsongkhapa's LAM RIM. Because this LAM RIM doesn't spend much time on meditation on emptiness because Tsongkhapa spent half his book.

[Speaker 1]
Tsongkhapa has 500 pages on meditation and emptiness. So, my grand plan was teach the meditation section from the gift of liberation, then do the whole gift of the rest, and then at the end for dessert we do Tsongkhapa on shamatha and vipasyana, direct perception of emptiness. So, this book will take eight more retreats.

And then if we do dessert, that will take 20 more retreats. We have 28, we're halfway through. We finished 29, we have 28 to go.

Now, my idea is... The reason, one of the reasons I taught the LAM RIM was my teacher taught it to me three times. His teacher wrote it down.

His teacher's teacher gave the teaching. So, you are a direct lineage holder. You are a fourth generation.

So, it was taught by Pabongka Rinpoche. It was written down by Trijang Rinpoche who edited it for 20 years. And it's the greatest book in the Tibetan language.

And then my teacher taught it three times for 30 years. And now I'm teaching it. Next one is you.

You have to teach it. So, I have a plan. I have a new plan.

Since we have eight retreats left, I'm going to start reviewing the whole thing also. So, part of this week every class we'll start to review the whole thing. So, by the time you reach the end of the gift of liberation you will have reviewed the whole thing.

My motivation for reviewing it is I want you to teach it. And so far I didn't do homeworks and I didn't do examinations because to be honest I didn't have time because I'm so busy in Guangzhou and other places. So, my dream is to review it with you through a thing that I call idim.

You want to put up the first idim. Idim, I made a new word in English. Stanley and Allison came to me.

They said, we have to translate this reading, Geshe-la. What's idim? I said, idim is a new word.

I invented it. What's it mean? It's called idea image.

Idea image. So, it's a picture. Mnemonic?

Something that will trigger your memory of a subject, okay? So, I'm choosing pictures that will remind you of one of the great topics of the Lamrim. Here's the first one, okay?

So, that's the picture of the author who gave the teaching, Pabongka Rinpoche. And I want you to use the pictures as a study tool to become a teacher, okay? Lamrim teacher.

So, that's separate from a DCI teacher, for example, okay? Lamrim teacher is a different thing. And I want you to look at the picture and I'll review with you starting this week.

And we'll review for two years. We'll just review for two years. How many idims will there be?

Five hundred. Okay? There will be five hundred.

We have to finish sixty this week. You have eight more Lamrim retreats. We have to review sixty ideas this week if you're going to pass it on to the next generation, okay?

So, this is my way to test you.