Нагарджуна, курс 5 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 5: Будда Медицины и мудрость Нагарджуны (2023, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
So we're going to continue with the Medicine Buddha. Yesterday we talked about how we had already covered the general practices for meditating, and we covered the seven preliminaries, which is a bad name because one of them is not a preliminary, but it's okay. And now we're going to cover the second part.

That's, preliminaries are kind of a preparation on the outside of yourself. And now we're going to do a preparation on the inside of yourself, okay? So we have idim 5.8, which is a lady going like this, okay, and that represents preparing on the inside for the Medicine Buddha practice, okay?

Why I show these pictures is that later I'm going to test you on the pictures. And if you can't tell me what a picture is, you have to give me back the $100, okay? So that's why I make a profit, okay?

Teddy's getting serious, okay? Okay, anyway, she's preparing on the inside, okay? And here's a list of things that we'll be doing during our retreat to prepare on the inside.

Next slide, you guys. Yeah, we're going to commit to the one-day vow. The main purpose of the one-day vow is dieting.

Many, many Buddhist people who are overweight change their life habit from doing the one-day vow. I'm just kidding. But it's true, okay?

And I saw it for many, many years, okay? My teacher used to give the one-day vows pretty frequently. And it breaks your eating habits, okay?

And it's a nice thing. The parts of the one-day vow, you're not supposed to eat afternoon or you're not supposed to do a lot of the things that you normally do, are just to remind you, okay? You feel hungry and you say, why do I feel hungry?

And then it's to remind you that you are especially keeping your morality that day very strictly, okay? The 10 good deeds especially, you are trying to keep them very strictly that day. So you're more careful not to exaggerate like Geshe Michael does, or, you know, on that day, you're more careful to be a good person and not to hurt other people.

Those vows are famous, the mainly eight different commitments, that they're very famous for the first level of Buddhist morality, which is not hurting other people. What's the second level? Second level is bodhisattva morality, where you actually try to help people.

So the first level of morality is, you know, minimum, please try not to hurt other people, okay? Don't lie, don't steal, like that. And then the second level of Buddhist morality is, try to do something to help other people.

And that's a higher level of morality, okay? Especially try to help them get to enlightenment. As I mentioned, my wife is late yesterday, because a friend of hers is dying in Tucson.

And I don't know if she died last night, but they, you know, it's a, what do you call it? It's poignant, it's sad. You know, they know she's dying, and they can't do anything.

Nobody can do anything. All they can do is try to guess what time she's going to die. And her children, she has young children, and she has a husband, and, you know, there's nothing to do for them.

Nobody, they did a, what do you call it? GoFundMe for the hospital expenses, which is like the only way most people can pay it. And nobody wrote me and said, can she stay alive, can you keep her alive?

And it's not, you cannot do that, right? So there's a higher, the second morality is higher because you're trying to save people from death, okay? And then I was teaching in Peru a couple of weeks ago.

Nice place, it's a business college called Essan. And they had 16, and I heard it was 1600 people. And the organizer had a dream that he should invite the military.

And I'm like, you sure? And he's like, yeah. And he invited the military.

And we had like 100 officers in white uniforms, and it was very beautiful. And they're all excited. They're asking us to come back next year.

The military wants us to do a program for 3,000 people or something. So we were giving that talk there. And the president of the university had us for breakfast, and he asked us, how do you describe Buddhist morality?

What's Buddhist ethics? And I said three levels. One, don't hurt other people, which is the one day vow.

It's supposed to be that. Secondly, try to help other people. And what's the third one?

Huh? Yeah, but what's the main, I mean, if we say don't hurt other people, help other people, and do it fast, okay? Do it fast, like help them within one life, okay?

So that's really the difference of the three kinds of morality. The one day vow emphasizes don't hurt other beings. Don't kill, don't steal, don't hurt other people's relationships.

Number two, try to help other people. And then number three, you break number three if you don't move as fast as you possibly can. You break your diamond way vows.

It's very interesting. So the thing about the third set of vows, it's all about doing it fast, trying to do it before you die, okay? And he was very cool.

He was very interested in it, and he asked us a lot of questions. I think Diamond Silk Entrepreneur University might have some programs with them. They were very interested about their university, and they want to work together.

Okay, so here's a list of things on the outside. Take your one day vow. Go for shelter.

What that technically means, and we studied in an ACA course, number two, and what it really means is make up your mind about what's going to help you and what's not going to help you. That's all. RGYAL BA LTOS PA'I SANGS means the whole essence of taking shelter is to make a decision about who can help you or not.

And that's the essence of taking shelter, or you can say going for refuge, right? It's making a decision about who can help you and who cannot help you. And I think you tend to, as you go through life, you eliminate shelters, right?

Like doctors, doctors are like, I don't know what's going on. You're like, yeah, thanks. But don't forget to pay.

So you start to narrow down who can help you, who can really help you. Okay, and that's shelter. That's taking refuge, okay?

Feeling the wish, which is the wish for enlightenment. I should become a Buddha. It's when you go to visit a person who's going to die tonight, and she's got small children, and the children are scared, and the husband is a young man, and he's scared.

And then you wish you could do something to really help them. And so that's the wish for enlightenment. Whenever you think of that wish, please remember planets, okay?

And stepping from planet to planet, okay? And that's mainly what differentiates it from other good wishes, is the scope. The scope is inconceivable.

The scope is unbelievable. The scope is literally walking from planet to planet, okay? And you have that ability right now, okay?

You already have that ability. It's in your mind. You just didn't unlock it.

You didn't open it, okay? Everybody in this room, if you haven't done that exercise, walking from planet to planet, which should be enough that we don't have to do yoga. Not really.

Just walking from planet to planet. It's something amazing, and you have the capacity now. You already have the capacity.

You just need to try, okay? You just need to really try. And then after you do it once, it's like virginity, okay?

Your whole life has changed. You're a different person. And you never go back.

You can never go back. And you can never forget it. And it's extremely beautiful.

It's extremely beautiful to walk around life with that memory in your heart of having walked from planet to planet to help people, okay? It's very, very... You can do it.

You can do it at Diamond Mountain. That's what Diamond Mountain is for, okay? You're too busy at home, all right?

So, try to do it while you're here, okay? All right. Then the Four Infinite Thoughts.

And there's a very famous... We were studying it. Were you there, Therianu, at Sivananda in Bahamas?

And they have a version of it, the Four Infinite Thoughts. And... SEMS CAN THAMS CAD NYES RIGS BYA STON DANG BRAL BA'I STON YONGS NA GNAS LA GCIGS MA NUS GNAS PA RGYUR CIG GNAS PA BDAG GIS BYA BA DE LTAR BYED NUS PAR LA MA LHAS BYIN GYI BSLAB TU GSOL May all living beings, THAMS CAD NYES RIGS BYA, be free of thoughts of...

What do you call it? Prejudice. People are normally prejudiced towards their children.

They will do anything to protect their own children. But if the neighbor's children are having trouble, they might call the police or they might not. If they're busy, they won't.

I've seen it many, many times. So, NYES RIGS BYA STON DANG BRAL BA'I STON YONGS NA GNAS LA GCIG MA RUNG May we learn to treat all people the same. And by the way, the classic Four Infinite Thoughts has four variations on each one.

And it's nice to know them. So, NYES RIGS BYA STON DANG BRAL BA'I STON YONGS NA GNAS LA GCIG MA RUNG Wouldn't it be nice if I could not be prejudiced? Wouldn't it be nice if I could treat everybody the same?

GNAS LA GCIG MA RUNG GNAS PAR GYUR CIG It should happen that everyone is free of this kind of prejudice. GNAS PAR BDAG GIS BYA'O I'll take responsibility. I'll try to help everybody to change.

DE LTAR BYED NUS PAR LA MA LHAS BYIN GYI BSLAB TU GSOL And I pray that my teacher will help me to do that. So there's the same formula for all the other ones. SEMS CAN THAMS CAD NYES RIGS BYA'O STON DANG BRAL BA'I GNAS LA GCIG MA RUNG Wouldn't it be nice if all people could be happy?

No. SDUG BSNGAL DANG SDUG BSNGAL GYI RGYUD DANG BRAL BA'I GCIG MA RUNG It would be nice if everyone could be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. Why did I say that?

Huh? Just easy. It's okay.

That box is kind of scary. It's to cover all the rich people who are naughty. All the powerful people, all the rich people who are behaving badly.

Okay. They don't have SDUG BSNGAL, but they have SDUG BSNGAL GYI RGYUD. They don't have suffering right now, but they have the cause of suffering.

So when we try to remove the suffering of all beings, we try to remove the cancer and then we try to remove the things that people got indicted for but not guilty yet. Okay. Like we try to remove the future problems that they're going to have because they haven't had those problems yet.

They've planted the seeds, but they haven't had the problems. The problems haven't ripened yet. So we try to take all of them away.

SDUG BSNGAL DANG BRAL NA BDAG GIS BYA'O Wouldn't it be nice if they could be free of all suffering? DE LTAR BYED NYID PAR BDAG GIS NA BYA'O DANG BRAL NA GCIG MA RUNG GNAS PA RGYUR CIG It should happen. It should happen.

GNAS PA BDAG GIS BYA'O I'll take care of it myself. And generally, the longer you're in the Dharma business, the more you realize you got to take care of things yourself. You can't wait for other people.

Just get over it. Don't sit there expecting other people to help. If the temple is messy, clean it up and don't wait for other people to help you, especially in a Dharma group.

I don't know why. They're the last people to come and help clean up. I cleaned up for 20 years at my teacher's place.

I just decided, okay, I'll do it. I won't wait for other people. BDAG GIS BYA'O DE LTAR BYED NYID PAR BSLANGS PA LAS SBYIN GYIS BSLAB TU SOGS I pray that my teachers will help me to have the power to help remove the suffering of people.

Now the third one. SNGAL DE BA DANG BRAL NA GCIG MA RUNG Why don't people all have some kind of happiness? Why don't people be happy?

They should. Wouldn't it be nice if they were happy? They should be happy.

Listen, I'll take care of it and you guys can go have breakfast. I'll take care of it. And that's a very beautiful attitude for your whole life.

Just get used to it. Stop complaining that other people are not helping you. It's an old man's secret.

Just take care of it yourself. And you don't have to be, what do you call it? Frustrated that nobody's helping you.

Just say, okay, if people help me, okay, that'd be nice, but I don't expect it. So GCIG MA RUNG. BDAG GIS BYA'O DE LTAR BYED NYID PAR BSLANGS PA LAS SBYIN GYIS BSLAB TU SOGS What's that?

I hope my... By the way, the wording says BSLANGS PA LAS. BSLANGS PA LAS.

May my angel, my Lama, may my Buddha, my Lama, help me. BYED LTAR BYED NYID PAR BSLANGS PA LAS SBYIN GYIS BSLAB TU SOGS Then what's the last one? LA LAS MED DE DE BA LEN DER NA GCIG MA RUNG LA LAS MED DE DE BA Unmatched happiness.

So number three is may everybody be happy. Number four is may everybody have super happy. That's easy, right?

Super happy. So number three is like, I hope everybody gets a good coffee. My stepson roast a coffee and bought it in Mexico or Ecuador or something.

Hope you like it. Okay. He's a coffee roaster, which is useful.

Okay. So the third one is I hope everyone's happy. The fourth one is I hope everyone has ultimate happiness.

Not just good coffee. Good coffee is in number three. Amrita coffee is in number four.

Deathlessness. Okay. Deathlessness.

What's the Greek for Amrita? Nectar. Nectar.

Nect means death. Tar means to be free. Tara, the goddess Tara means the one who frees you.

The Greek for freedom comes from Sanskrit. It's tar. And nec means death, like necrophilia or something like that.

So nectar means coffee from Ecuador. Or you can say Amrita. Deathlessness.

Okay. All right. Then it says a strange thing and I'll give $100.

Okay. You ready?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Me and Rob were desperately trying to find some more money this morning. And then the Vietnamese friends said, oh, we have a donation. We're like, yay.

Okay. So you have to thank the Vietnamese friends if you win it. It says here, do the four infinite thoughts from inside of emptiness, from inside of suchness.

Who can give a good explanation for $100? And I don't personally, the reason I'm asking is I don't have a good one in my mind right now. So I'm hoping you guys will.

Tim, you choose, okay?

[Speaker 2]
We choose the other person. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 1]
Ah, no.

[Speaker 2]
So I'll try to explain. First, we need to think that these thoughts are not coming from their own side. A knife, okay.

They are the seeds ripening also. And so by focusing on emptiness of these thoughts, these seeds become super powerful and infinite.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I like it. I mean, basically, when we say MI'I TSE RIGS DE CHEN CHEN RIGS and you're trying to help people who are not there, the prayer, the mantra is, may I help people who are not there. And that's what it means.

The people you're trying to help are not there. What's that mean? Of course they're there.

[Speaker 2]
They take your $100. Yes, the people are not there from their own side.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, nice. Hey, Tina, is that a $200 answer, $200? I think so.

All right. That's a $200 answer. First, we hand out the money and then we...

First, we hand out the money and then we fundraise for 9-1-1. All right. Next innam, you guys.

There's somebody going like this. Yeah, this means now that you have prepared the inside with the one-day vows, et cetera, it's time to prepare the outside, okay? And we already covered these parts last year, but I'm just reviewing them for you and for myself too, okay?

So preparing the outside has the following five steps. Next slide. Yeah, so I got these...

Who's a rhymal? Yeah, medicine Buddha gang. Okay, it's a gang.

It's eight Buddhas. Okay, all right. Okay.

Sometimes they say seven because they don't count our Buddha, Shakyamuni. But if you count our Buddha, then it's eight, okay? All right, good.

Number one, blessing the land. And we're kind of doing that with our protection markers. So you got...

Right, Tim? When are they making them? No?

Sorry. Anyway, normally we make protection markers. And...

When you do a retreat, it's good to put a special marker on your door, okay? And at the four directions of your retreat cottage, okay? So especially the door, but also the other three sides, okay?

And that's a whole ritual. It has a omahu. And this is a special blessing that will keep negative influences out of your cavern, okay?

So it's very good to do when you're on retreat. And again, I'll repeat from yesterday, I don't like superstition. I think it's very destructive in religion when people are superstitious.

I think it's a bad idea, but these are just practical. It's like wearing a mask for COVID. It works.

It's a real thing. And I tried doing retreat without it, and I found out, wow, it really does work. So I really encourage you to do it, okay?

I really encourage you to learn how to make a protection marker. We'll put them out to bless the whole property. This property is huge.

This property is 1,060 acres. How many hectares is that? It's about 300 hectares, I guess.

How many Moos is that? It's 2,000 Moos, I think, or something like that. I don't know.

Anyway, it's a lot. Okay, it's huge. It's several mountains here, and we protect the whole land.

We put protection markers out for the whole land, and it's a beautiful thing, and it works, okay? So bless the land, all right? Number two, bless the divine mansions.

Then you imagine a beautiful palace, and we're going to, your meditation cabin, whether it has hot water or not, is a, I'm just kidding. It represents a divine palace, okay? And you have to imagine that, that you're staying, you're not inviting Medicine Buddha gang to some economy cabin on Diamond Mountain, okay?

You're inviting them to a beautiful palace, okay? And you have to picture it that way. Some cabins need more picturing than other cabins.

By the way, these cabins were built with blood, sweat, and tears, okay? We didn't have any money, and everybody in the three-year retreat paid for their own cabin with their own money, and they built their own cabin. And they all said, all the retreaters, it was over 30 retreaters, they all said, we will build a cabin, and we'll donate it.

After the three-year retreat, we'll donate it. And it was so cute, people would be running in here and saying, you got a YouTube video on how to pour cement on the plumbing? And they're like, yeah, I got one.

And nobody knew how to build a cottage. And so it was all YouTube instruction. And I remember the cement, especially people were mixing cement on YouTube videos.

And somebody came over to me and said, my plumbing stopped working. My YouTube plumbing stopped working. And I'm like, didn't you do some cement work yesterday?

And they're like, yeah. And I said, where did you pour out the extra cement? And they're like, down the drain.

And I'm like, okay, so you've now protected that drain for the next hundred years. And people, it was a lot of courage, and a lot, a lot of hard work, and many disappointments, many hard times. And they did it, and they, I think we had two cottages on the last day before the retreat were not passed by the county inspector.

So we purposely invited the fattest one. Because these were the ones at the top of the hill. The dome.

And he came to the bottom of the hill and he goes, looks good. He never walked up there. And we passed, and we started the retreat the next day.

And that's why the domes got cracks and stuff. But people worked really, really hard. And you should thank them.

Who's here from the first three retreats? Yeah, United Parish. Thank you for that.

I'm staying in her cabin. It's quite nice. Thank you for that.

All right. Then arrange thrones. When they say throne, it doesn't mean a European king's throne.

It means a teaching platform like this one. So when you see the word throne, you could think a traditional teaching platform. And you arrange a nice platform for each of the eight Buddhas in your cabin.

Which means take some imagination because it has to be bigger. What's going to happen on the thrones, by the way? That's a $300 question.

Are we in trouble yet? I might have to go to the bank. Uh.

Why are we setting up thrones? What's supposed to happen? What?

What's going on? What are these prayers for?

[Speaker 2]
You are preparing the seats for your teachers, the Buddhas, to show up and teach you.

[Speaker 1]
It's a good start, but it's not 300 bucks. What are we doing with the Medicine Buddha Sadhana? What's the purpose?

[Speaker 2]
Calling their names. Huh?

[Speaker 1]
Calling their names. Calling their names. Calling their name is a big deal.

Calling their name is a big, big deal.

[Speaker 2]
What we're doing with the Medicine Buddha Sadhana is preparing to turn ourselves into the Medicine Buddha and then turning ourselves into the Medicine Buddha.

[Speaker 1]
I'm not satisfied yet. Online guys, online guys. 300 bucks online, yeah.

Less shipping charges. Somebody online. Why have we got these thrones going up?

What are we doing? You want me to go on in this room? Okay, sure.

I guess people online don't like money. Those Helsinki people, you only get one chance. Yeah, okay.

Olga.

[Speaker 2]
Sadhana.

[Speaker 1]
Wow, why are we here? What are we doing here?

[Speaker 2]
Understanding the emptiness of the Medicine Buddha practice by calling their names.

[Speaker 1]
Why?

[Speaker 2]
Can I say? We are saying their prayers. We are saying their prayers.

They made when they were bodhisattvas. So, and due to those prayers, they became Buddhas, and so we do the same.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, cancel the bed. Mariana, you want to try, Mariana?

[Speaker 2]
We remember them on their promises they made for us to help, to always come and help.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Okay, I'm not satisfied. They each made a promise to help living beings.

And the purpose of this week, the purpose to be here this week, the purpose of the sadhana and the content of the two sutras, the two Medicine Buddha sutras, the basic content is, please keep your four prayers, please keep your eight prayers, please keep your seven prayers. There's a certain number of prayers for each Buddha, right? And you say, please honor your prayers.

So, please take care of other people. That's all. Please take care of other people.

Keep your promise. You made so many prayers. Each one of you, most of them made four, some of them made more.

And you say, please keep your prayers for other people. That's the sutras. That's the structure of both sutras, okay?

This sadhana is different, okay? It's very interesting. This sadhana is different, okay?

And that's what I want you to be sensitive to in the first few days, before you go into your three days retreat. In general, the content of the sutras is, please help, please keep your promises for other people, okay? And in general, the content of this sadhana is, don't forget me, okay?

I also, and it's not selfish. It's just like, you know, the sutras are cool, but they don't put that much emphasis on me, you know? And this sadhana, as you will see as you read it, a lot of it is identifying problems in your own life.

Okay, identifying problems in your own life that their prayers cover, okay? So it's kind of like, you got to know what their prayers were, and then you have to say, by the way, I also have this problem, you know? I also have this problem, and please help me also, okay?

So the main emphasis this week, and the main emphasis of your three day retreat, you will say, please keep your commitments, your four prayers or your eight prayers. Please keep the promises that you made to others. But I also have these problems.

So there's a big emphasis in this second Medicine Buddha lineage. There's a big emphasis on, I also have these problems. And you try to identify how you have the problems that are listed in the sutras, okay?

So we go through the prayers again. In this sadhana, in the Fifth Dalai Lama's sadhana, we will go through the same prayers again. But you're supposed to slow down and say, I also have this problem, and please help me with that problem, okay?

All right, that's the main difference, okay? This sadhana, as you go through it, it's different from the sutras. The sutras are more general.

You're praying for everybody. And then this sadhana is going to be a lot of emphasis on, hey, I also have these problems, and help me, okay? All right, and not in a selfish way.

But just to recognize that these are not theoretical prayers for other people. They're also prayers for your own family, your own life. All right, then bless the offerings.

We went through that already. We bless offerings. You're like giving a few old oranges or strawberries, but you have to multiply them for, there's the eight guys, and then there's, they each have like 500 bodhisattvas with them.

It gets expensive, okay? Lots of offerings, okay? You can't possibly make offerings for all of them, but mentally you can do it, okay?

So the offerings have to be multiplied. We got bodhisattvas there, okay? We got special bodhisattvas in attendance, and you can read about them in the sutra, okay?

Okay, and then you get everything ready. So this outer, what's called the outer preparation, is they always say, as if you have an important guest coming to your home, as if you have an important guest coming to your home. We took over Stanley and Allison's house in Wimrot for the Mixed Nuts classes, and they didn't sleep the night before because they were trying to make the house nice.

So it's that kind of thing. I tried to give them the initiation into sloppy Dharma students who spill coffee on your couch and stuff. And then you discover the emptiness of your refrigerator after they leave.

And stuff like that, but they're going to, you're going to experience it. Don't be disappointed, okay? Just, you know, mom and dad don't kick out their kids when they make a mess, right?

I mean, they should, but they don't. All right, begging them to come. And then when everything's ready, you say, please come.

So the whole room is nice and everything's prepared, and then you say, please come. Then we finish the outer preparations. For fun, I want to show you a rock star who was singing in Asia recently.

He's from Shenzhen, China. He's a very popular singer. And this is the next step in our sadhana, okay?

You ready, Tim? No, there's a video. There was a video.

Sound. Not me. You.

[Speaker 2]
♪ I'm afraid to die ♪ Didn't realize that I could try ♪ Is everybody wrong ♪ Everybody's sad All of these tears, they come back to me And I'm afraid to live And it would be a lie if you said that I had these hands Because everybody knows And everybody has to say All of these tears, they come back to me That's a Dwayne Stanley song.

[Speaker 1]
That was Max Wu. That was his first, the first event he ever organized and 6,000 people came. So he's doing pretty good.

The point is, the next step, do you have Part D, you guys, the slide? There's a slide for Part D? Yeah, we call it the Convocation, okay?

And that's what's the next thing in the sadhana, okay? And I was trying to think of a Convocation and that's the, that's that stadium you saw, okay? And actually, Stanley was singing while they were doing this thing.

He was singing a famous Chinese rock song and I was supposed to sing with him and I chickened out and he had to do it on his own. And, but the word Convocation in English and in the sadhana, it should feel like that. And I wanted you to get the feeling.

It should feel like thousands of people are coming, okay? In your little meditation room, okay? It's going to take a lot of imagination to increase the capacity of the cabin, okay?

But in the sadhana, it's a Convocation. Convocation means try to think of all those seats and they're putting out 6,000 seats and they're getting ready for 6,000 people to come and try to imagine it like that, okay? It's big.

I want you to get the scale in your mind, okay? Each Buddha has a gang with them. Each Buddha has hundreds of attendants and helpers with them, okay?

People who have committed to help them. So, it shouldn't be the Retreat Valley is really overpopulated by the time you finish, okay? And don't be cheap, okay?

Like, make it big. It's a Convocation. It's a huge gathering, okay?

And that's part of this sadhana, all right? And those are basically a Dharma army. It's basically a Dharma army.

You're inviting a Dharma army to come to this world and help people stop their suffering, okay? So, don't be shy and don't be cheap, okay? Lots of seats, lots of refreshments, you know?

Probably extra bathrooms, you know? All right? This week, it has to be generous and it has to be beautiful and it has to be like a big party, okay?

Don't put like three Buddhas up on a folding chair and then go away, give up mentally. Not like that. It has to be a grand party.

We call it Convocation, okay? Work on it, okay? Work on making it.

Every person there is a Buddha or a bodhisattva, okay? Everybody in the audience is a Buddha or a bodhisattva. And these are the people who are going to help take away the suffering of this world and other worlds, okay?

So, they are like an army and you are like the general, okay? All right? So, you have to, it's a big job.

And don't be cheap and don't be small. Don't be small-minded, okay? Oh, Geshe-la, I can only fit two Buddhas in my room.

You know? Nah, come on. Be generous and be wide.

And by the way, it helps your meditation, okay? If your meditation is tight and small, you'll have all these long-term retreat problems. Nervous, low, you know, you'll be, you might get nervous or things like that.

If you've got this huge stadium and thousands of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, then it makes a big difference in your meditation. Your meditation will be more open and more free. And you won't get all these meditation obstacles that people get when they start to get a tight chest or they feel pain in their chest or in their knees or their back, okay?

You can't invite 6,000 people and Buddhas and bodhisattvas and feel like you're in a closet, okay? So it's all a trick by the Fifth Dalai Lama to open up your mind during the meditation so you don't get tight. So go for it and be generous.

It's a lot of fun, okay? If it goes, if you really work on it, it's really fun. It's like organizing.

I'm sure Max feels like that the day after. He feels like he had a big party and he did a great job. If you see him, you should thank him from Agong Ye Ye, okay?

All right, in Part D, in the sadhana, they also, they don't just honor the eight Buddhas and the bodhisattvas. They honor the entire lineage of the medicine Buddha practice in this world. And the Fifth Dalai Lama was very careful to identify each person in the lineage.

And it's a good piece of work. If you're interested in Buddhism in this planet, it's a very fine piece of work and a difficult piece of work. And he did a good job.

He basically identifies every teacher who passed on this practice. And all of their names are there. And it was very difficult to trace them from the beginning of Buddhism in West China, in Tibet, because of the, when Buddhism reached West China a thousand years ago, they didn't even have an alphabet.

They didn't have a written language. And they were just herding yaks and hunting. And they didn't grow a lot of crops.

It's too high. They were basically just hunters and yak herders. And so there's not very good records of who the early teachers were and what were they doing and what were their names.

And the Fifth Dalai Lama is very careful. And he traced the whole thing back. So it's a very beautiful list of all the people who passed on the medicine Buddha teaches.

And he did it. Somehow he figured it out. And it was hard even to translate because most of those people are long forgotten.

It's very beautiful. So appreciate the lineage there. All right.

Next, you know, something new is coming. We finished reviewing the first 100 pages of the sadhana. And now we're ready to acquaint you with the second 100 pages.

So we translate in another 100 pages. And then for next year, we'll translate the last 100 pages. So you've got two thirds of the sadhana now.

And I cut it at a logical place. We finished all the eight Buddhas. They arrived.

They start doing their thing. And then we stopped translating. And we just ran out of time.

I could have done more if I had time. I just didn't have time. All right.

Next idim. This is called preparing the insight deeper, going deeper on the preparation. And what do you notice here?

It seems like a repeat of the earlier one. Hey, we already did these seven preliminaries. By the way, there's only six here.

Why? The first one has two. We go back to the seven preliminaries.

Why do we go back to the seven preliminaries? If you study the sadhana, which I'm sure you will do in these three days, since you've saved so much time not looking at your phone, ever, in those three days. Just put it away.

They have this great custom in China, in Shenzhen, when we give a talk there, they ask the people to leave their phone outside. And there's a special phone holder. And it's a great invention.

And nobody in the room has a phone. And it's really nice. I don't know who started that, but it's really, really nice.

So anyway, now that you don't have a phone for three days at least, you can really focus on these preparations, on these seven preliminaries. And this time, there are not general prostrations and there are not general offerings. This time they are specifically to the eight Medicine Buddha gang.

Seven Buddhas of the Medicine Buddha, his six friends, and then our Buddha, who's kind of a talent manager, talent agent. And he brings the seven Medicine Buddha gang to your cabin. And he kind of organizes everything.

All right, then you're going to go through the normal steps of confessing. Confessing, try to find something. I like to find fresh bad deeds.

I don't like to dwell on old bad deeds that I did in university. Anything you did in university, you shouldn't have to think about, because you were wild in those days. So, they went to my university.

I don't know. I mean, you put four or 5,000 18-year-olds in a town, there's going to be some stuff that's going to happen, right? So, anyway, I like to confess things I've done recently in the last 24 hours.

I'd rather do a small mistake that I made in the last 24 hours than something big I did 20 years ago. You should have confessed those big ones 20 years ago by now. We don't want old material for confession.

We want fresh stuff. And that might mean something you thought about in class, or you were irritated at another student here, or something like that. There's plenty of people to be irritated at here.

You can confess something fresh. That's my advice. Something in the last two, three days.

If you think about what's going to hold you back, it's not those grand bad deeds you did once in your life. It's the little ones that you do every hour, that that's what holds you back. The big mistakes, you already confessed them, hopefully, but the little hour-to-hour mistakes, they just pile up.

So try to think of a couple that you did in the class, or something like that. Mistakes made in the class are especially irritating to the medicine Buddhists. Hey, you were supposed to have had class about us, and you were thinking about the person next to you and being irritated?

What's wrong with you? Okay, all right. Rejoicing, be happy.

Again, my experience is that people tend to not rejoice very well. I think almost every human being is, even the arrogant or the proud people, still people are shy to admit that they did something good. I think all of us and all of you have done very good things in your life.

You've taken care of many people. You've done very kind things in your life, and you continue to do kind things in your life, and you really have to work hard to think about it. And don't ignore it.

It's an important step in this retreat. If you try to be noble or something, modest, and you don't admit the good things you've done, it's a mistake. It's a serious mistake.

So, give it some real time. Give it some real thought. You're here.

It's hard to get here. It's expensive to get here. It's difficult.

Traveling like that is difficult. And you're here. Even if you're a terrible person, you're here.

So, you can rejoice about that. Like, I'm a really stupid person, but I made it here. And really, in my experience, I'm an old meditator, and I have done many, many years of retreat total.

And I think the problem is that people don't rejoice enough about the good things they're doing. And it's not pride. It's not pride.

To rejoice about your own spiritual work even if it's lousy and lazy, it's still great. It's still really, really great. And the Buddhas are really happy that you're here.

There's one serious retreat center in the whole United States to do this kind of retreat, and you're at it. And hopefully, if we're successful, there will be thousands of retreat centers like this. But so far, it hasn't happened.

And you're there, you made it. You made it at the beginning. So, in Tibet, and in China, there came to be thousands and thousands of retreat centers.

But we're just starting here. All right. If you're here, you must be special, or just in the wrong place.

I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Okay? And please rejoice. It will help your meditation a lot.

It's not just for pride or something like that. It'll open up your heart, and your retreat will be much more successful. I see families working on innovation retreats here, creativity retreats for artists or business people.

And I think that's a really vital training that new people who come here should be trained in rejoicing properly about the good things they've done. And that may be one of the most important things we can teach people when they get here, if they're going to do a... We're talking about doing innovation retreats or creativity retreats here.

Okay. And as I said yesterday, a lot of my business success, which was huge, I mean, I didn't know anything about business. I didn't like business.

I didn't want to do business. My teacher forced me to do business. Really, forced me.

And I did not want to do it. But the retreats were my secret weapon for my business. And it did become the largest company of its kind in the world.

And either that's just stupid good luck, or the retreats did something. And I think you should think about it. You can, in your own life, whatever you want to do, use your retreat time to think about what you want to do with your life and what you want to do when you get out of retreat.

Okay, don't waste your time here. Don't look at the calendar and hope that the three days goes fast, so you can get back to your honey, what's your honey pie? Your phone.

So just use the time. And ACIP, ALL was created in these retreat centers. Okay, the idea for the database, the idea for the search program, the design of the search program, all these translations, they came from these retreats.

Okay, so use the time. And you are very, very free during the three days to use your imagination about where do you want to take your life now. This is a pause in your life for three days.

And you don't get pauses in your life. Life tends to just go really fast. Suddenly you're old man, you know, whoa, what happened, you know?

And the retreat is a beautiful time. I remember Xiaoping said, she and Stanley came down here for 10 days. They said, we want to know, we want to think about our future Geshe-la.

I said, go to Diamond Mountain, do a 10 day retreat. And she came out and she said, I want to build a university. And I'm like, yeah, okay.

And she did. And it's a major project. It's like 20, $30 million project.

And she's doing it. And yeah, if I run short on handing out cash, I'll contact you. But use the time, don't waste your time, okay?

It's a pause in your life. It's a unique pause in your life. You never pause your life like this.

And three days is enough to have some real plans for your future. So listen, listen to the cosmic voice, right? It's the Medicine Buddha whispering to you, I think you should start a university.

And you're like, what? So keep your ears open and keep your heart open and don't think about your phone, okay? But I would say in my own case, and I know Xiaoping, other people, a lot of our inspiration for our whole life has come here at Diamond Mountain.

We've heard messages here that we were too busy to listen to them in Shenzhen or Rimrock. Okay, Rimrock's too big and busy, right? So keep your ears open for those three days and listen for suggestions about where to take your life.

And many, many people who did retreat here have had amazing life after that. So try to keep your ears open. And that's a practice of listening.

My wife says I have a problem with it, probably. She says I tend to talk all day and I don't listen much. But listen, during those three days, listen and see if you get any good suggestions for your life.

That's the purpose of retreat. Okay, Tim, what's the schedule? What am I supposed to be doing?

Is there a Q&A or? What time does this class end? In 10 minutes, let's do Q&A.

So that's all. I mean, we have discussed part of the Medicine Buddha practice. Actually, it's the warm-up and the invitation.

You are setting up this huge chairs and you're setting up this huge place and we just invited all the guests to come and now it's time for the main event and we'll talk about that next, okay? This sadhana is unique compared to the two sutras of Medicine Buddha in that instead of saying, please help all the people, you just change it slightly and you say, please help all the people, including me, okay? You know, like that, okay?

And this sadhana is very clear. It's very clear that the Fifth Dalai Lama wants you to ask for help directly. And we're going to go through the actual prayers of the Medicine Buddhas and see how each one applies to me, okay?

We're going to go through the prayers. Not all, we don't have time to do all of them, but we'll go through each of the classical Medicine Buddha prayers and we'll pray for personal help this way. Me too, me too.

All right, Tim, any Q&A from maybe online people? So, do you want a light question or do you want a hard question? I like hard questions.

Okay, all right, here we go. Geshe-la, this comes from someone named Elva. And they say, what is the difference between the nature of seeing emptiness directly and meditations like the four spaces and the lion's dance meditation?

Yeah, okay, good. Good question. What's the difference between meditation practice like the meditation on the four kinds of space or the lion's dance meditation?

And what's the difference between those two and say a direct perception of emptiness in meditation? There's a meditative platform called MI SBYO MED, SEMS BDEN DANG PO NYER DO MI SBYO MED. Say SEMS BDEN DANG PO NYER DO MI SBYO MED.

And that's a particular meditative level. It's where your mind goes deep enough to see emptiness. And it's an interesting thing.

If you don't go that deep, you won't see emptiness. I call it the platform. From that platform, that's the only meditation level from which you can see emptiness directly.

So if you don't get that deep, you'll never see emptiness because your mind is not deep enough. And if you go deeper, you won't see emptiness either. It's very interesting.

And we don't talk about that much. But 99% of people can't get that deep. They don't meditate enough.

And then 1%, 2%, they go too deep. And they stop thinking about anything. So it's kind of like a deep meditation, but where you can still think somehow.

And you don't want to go deeper than that. So you go to a certain level, you stop. And you can see emptiness at that level.

And you get used to going there. You have to get used to going there. There's a very, very big instruction.

You have to, to see emptiness directly, you have to be able to meditate for one hour without stopping and without distraction. And it's difficult. And I'm not talking about preliminaries.

My confession takes 59 minutes. I only have one minute. So, it's not like that.

After you finish the preliminaries, 60 minutes. And there's a very, very easy way to reach it. But it took me many years to figure it out.

And start with 10 minutes. Never. If you're not meditating daily, start with 10 minutes.

If you broke your meditation because you were really busy before you came to retreat, start again. Start over at 10 minutes. And don't be shy about it.

Be proud about it. I'm not a gukpa. What's gukpa?

Idiot. I'm not an idiot. I know I have to start over.

Why? Because I didn't meditate for three weeks before I got here. Or three months or three years.

Or whatever. So, be wise enough to start over. And that's 10 minutes.

So, 10 minutes of deep focus. And then once a week, add one minute. And if you go faster than that, you're wrong.

Something's wrong. You're not really meditating. If you try to increase two minutes a week or three minutes a week, you will fail.

I guarantee you will fail. Add one minute per week. And I'm not shy about it.

My wife says, are you going to meditate today? I say, I'm finished. And she says, well, you were only in there for 10 minutes.

I'm like, yeah, I'm starting over. That's how I do it all the time. And just do it that way.

There's 52 weeks in a year. 10 plus 52 is 62. You got two extra minutes.

In one year, you got two extra minutes. So, do it that way. And you'll be able...

So, those other meditations, the four-space meditation, you can do a 10-minute four-space meditation. You cannot do a direct perception emptiness meditation in 10 minutes. It has to be one hour.

If you never, ever reach an hour, you will never, ever see emptiness directly. It's up to you. It's up to you.

You basically get one chance every million years. You basically get a chance like this every million years. So, if you don't feel like it or your phone's too important, that's your decision.

You get a chance like this every million years or something. And actually, it's worse than that. So, that's how.

You can do a four-space meditation. You can do a lion's dance in 10 minutes. You cannot do a direct perception of emptiness in 10 minutes.

That's all. Cool. So, we have another question from Ryan.

I believe it's the Ryan who lives in California. And this, I think, is a cool question. So, up until this point, our lineage seems to emphasize, highly emphasize the study of logic.

All the lists, the five this, the seven that, part one of part three, you know, something like that. And then, at some point, when we start into the higher teachings, he says he feels like there's a shift away from logic and more of a focus on the body and the relationship of the energies in the body. So, he says he feels a shift away from wanting to practice logic and in practicing the way that emptiness affects his thoughts and energies in his body.

So, the question is, can you talk about this? And how can I trust what I'm experiencing in my body versus a logical understanding of things? Yeah, cool.

So, you have two tools at your disposal. You have two perceptual tools at your disposal. Number one is your direct perceptions.

Taste, see, smell, those direct perceptions. You have those tools. That's part of your toolkit.

And that can only be applied to gross physical objects. Your five senses. The Heart Sutra says, MIG MED NA BA MED NA MED BYED MED NUS MED You have five senses.

Your five senses, if you didn't have anything else, I think you would be kind of like a rabbit at Diamond Mountain. They have very well-developed sense powers. They survive by hearing coyotes sneaking up behind them.

So, their sense powers are very clear and sharp. But a sense power can only see a physical object. It cannot understand a concept.

Your five senses cannot understand a concept. They cannot. For that, you need logic.

All deeper concepts, all deeper truths, are at a different level of reality. And they can only be seen by logic. And I'm not talking about some German university where they talk about logic and they're extremely boring people.

I'm sorry. Just certain German universities. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about, is there a reasonable chance you're going to get a green drink this morning? You are calculating it in your mind. Calculation is logic.

All perceptions of deeper reality are dependent on logic. We don't call it logic. You don't think about it as logic.

But most of how you survive in the world is logic. You think about what's possible. You think about what can happen.

You think about what's the chances. And then you take an action. So, all obvious reality is perceived with your senses.

All deeper reality requires logic. And it doesn't mean that you sit there and, you know, oh, I'm going to be in my car. It's not like that.

It's deeper thinking. Call it deeper thinking. So, I would let go of the word logic.

The school that we talked about yesterday, and that was a unique class because you went to the first line of a 25-year study and you went to the last line of a 25-year study in one class. And nobody ever does that. So, you must develop those skills to see emptiness directly.

And to practice the higher teachings, Vajrayana, Diamond Way, completely impossible without logic. Totally impossible. Just the higher teachings are not more cinnamon rolls, although I wish they were.

They are deeper realities that you can only see with logic. So, the deeper you go in the higher teachings, the deeper you have to go in the study of logic. And it's fun, you know?

And it's incredibly satisfying. It's almost as good as a cinnamon roll from Peachtree Cafe, okay? It's a way of life.

It's not a, you don't study a logic book and stop, you know? You spend your whole life learning how to think. It's a study how to think.

And it's amazing. It's a miracle. And if you do it daily, if you have a little bit of, if you do a little bit of exercise every day about how to think, your thinking will get more and more powerful as you get older.

You reach 70 years old, your thinking is 10 times stronger than it was last year. And it's unbelievable. You can do unbelievable stuff.

It's really cool. It's really amazing. And I don't think you can understand tantra or higher teachings without it.

It's not possible. And nobody in the tradition would say that you could. So, it's, do you also add physical practices?

Yes. Yeah, pranayama, different kinds of pranayama, asana practice, all the kriyas that we taught in YSI classes, you do add, you add those. But a lot of the purpose of them is to increase your logic ability.

A lot of the purpose to do asana practice, pranayama practice, kriyas, is to increase your logic ability. The purpose of the physical practices is to increase your ability to think. Okay, cool.

All right.