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

[Speaker 1]
So we're going to discuss the offerings that we make to the Buddhas. And there's a bunch of questions. Olga had some good questions.

Can they see the offerings? Why do you have to offer it if they can see it all the time anyway? Stuff like that.

So here we go. The next verse, and we're still in the same chapter about... Yeah, negative emotions.

And here's the next part of the chapter. rupa shabda rasa sparsha, gandha dharmashcha krivala, gandharwa nagar narkara, marichi svapna samnibbha. Things to see, things to hear, things to taste and touch.

Things to smell and things there are, are simply what they are. They are like a city of illusion, a mirage, and like a dream. The Sanskrit words are...

Say gandharwa. Nagar, nagara. Or nagar.

Nagar is the Sanskrit word for city. So if you know India, there's lots of nagars like Bhavnagar. The main diamond cutting business is in Bhavnagar, for example.

And gandharwa is a strange word because it means divine musician, and it also means preta. It also means hungry ghost. So it's a strange word.

Gandharva means the musicians of the gods. And gandharva also can mean pisacak, which means preta, hungry ghost. And the idea is that as you approach the city of the hungry ghosts, where hungry ghosts live, it looks from a distance like there's a big city there.

And when you get there, it disappears. So it's similar to what happens with a hungry ghost when they see water or food from a distance, and then when they come up to it, it disappears. They have this, that's how they live.

You can say kind of the definition of a hungry ghost is a person who's chasing after their dreams, and then the dreams just keep disappearing. Every time they get close, the thing disappears. And we all have this experience.

We all have this kind of thing. So when you say Gandharva Nagar, it means, I translate it as city of illusion. From a distance, it looks like a city.

When you get close, it disappears. And that's like a mirage and like a dream. So now we're talking about in the Medicine Buddha practice, you're supposed to attract them with big plates of flowers and ding-dongs, little doughnuts or stuff, you know, yacht yo chow, churro, pon chik.

You're supposed to attract them with these offerings. So what's the nature of the offerings? And so again, we're trying to look at the Medicine Buddha practice with Nagarjuna's emptiness understanding.

We're trying to look at the Medicine Buddha practice with Nagarjuna's understanding. And I would say, if you don't understand Nagarjuna and you try to practice Medicine Buddha, it won't work. And you can do it.

I mean, you can do it out of blind faith and it will work a little bit, but not much. If you understand the emptiness of everything about the Medicine Buddha practice, if you keep thinking about the emptiness of it, then you'll be successful. You can cure people's illnesses with Medicine Buddha practice, but I would say only if you understand the emptiness of the practice and the illnesses.

All right. So even the offerings, the bribes that you offer to the Medicine Buddha, hey, look, I got all these things for you. Won't you help me out?

And you have to understand that those offerings themselves are coming from your seeds. You have to understand the nature of the offerings. He says, they are simply what they are.

They are like a mirage. They are like a dream. It looks like you bought the offerings at the Safeway.

Is it around here? In Wilcox? Safeway?

It looks like you bought them at the Safeway, but that's not true. Those offerings came into your hands because you shared what you had in the past. What if you were not allowed to eat a meal unless you served one to another person first?

Three meals a day or whatever, two and a half. What if you can only get a meal if you offer one to somebody else? What if the ratio is one to one?

What if you have to give away one meal to get one meal? It's actually worse than that. But like that.

When you look at the offerings, understand that they didn't come into your hands from the store. They came into your hands by sharing what you have with others. I had this big lifetime struggle with translation, how to translate things.

It's dana parmita, the perfection of... Some people say generosity. I don't like that word.

Generosity means you're not cheap. That doesn't fit the word dana. So first of all, forget generosity.

The perfection of generosity. Perfection of giving is nice, but nowadays my understanding of it is expanding into sharing. The perfection of sharing what you have.

And so when you are doing Medicine Buddha practice, and even if you're just offering an apple, kind of an old Wilcox apple, offering it on the altar of your Diamond Mountain cabin, try to think of how you got that apple, and then offer it. And that's a powerful apple offering. And in this Medicine Buddha practice, every time you do something small, like offering even one little piece of fruit, your feeling about where it came from has to be correct.

Like, I'll tell you a story. That's why you hired me, because I'm so old I have lots of stories. And I was in my teacher's class in New Jersey, 1977 or something, like long before Tina was born.

There's a joke in English. When you were just a twinkle in your father's eye, it means your father was just checking out your mom. And, okay, like that long ago.

So, and I'm sitting in this, we had this, I built my teacher's house myself, and it was a two-story house, and I built it. And it was hard. It was really hard to build.

My hands are messed up from that. And it was wintertime. So, and then we didn't have money, so we bought these folding chairs for people to sit in, and they were cheap, wooden folding chairs, and they were so uncomfortable.

And he was a traditional teacher, so you had to sit. You couldn't move around, especially you couldn't ask questions. Right, Olga?

You couldn't pester the lama with questions. Just kidding. Questions are good.

But it was very painful to sit through class, and you're not supposed to move him, and you're not supposed to interrupt him, ever. And he kept talking about the emptiness of things, and how they're empty. And I got impatient.

I finally got, he pushed me to the limit, and I'm like, then he, the house I built for him was connected to his old house. So he had a little house, and then he had a big house, and they connected. And I built a door, so he could go from his new house to his old house.

And that door was like a magic door, because the refreshments for class were on the other side of the door. And so the whole class, I built a classroom, and we're sitting there on these uncomfortable chairs, and we're just thinking about the other side of the door. There's lots, whole table full of refreshments.

He used to really enjoy feeding his students, and beautiful offerings, like all kinds of cookies and cakes. And it's just this white door prevent me from reaching them. And I'm sitting through the whole class, and I'm like thinking about this door, and going through the door, when he had a break time.

I was just, that was my focus, the whole class. And then I was impatient in class, and I said, he said, okay, let's take a break. I said, can I just ask one question first?

He said, what? And I said, according to you, I don't understand the door. Like when I look at the door, I don't understand the door.

According to you, I have ignorance or misunderstanding of the door all the time. But I'm sitting here, the door looks good to me, and it's a normal door. There's good stuff on the other side of the door.

And I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. And is the door not there somehow? And he said, no, the door is there.

And then I said, I don't understand. Just tell me what I'm doing wrong. Stop teaching philosophy and just tell me what I'm doing wrong, and I'll fix it.

And he said, you think the door's coming from the door, and that's your problem. The door is real, and the door is preventing you from your refreshments. The door is real, the door is wide, the door separates this room from that room.

The door is really there, it is there. That's not the problem. So I said, I don't understand the problem.

And he said, how do you feel about where the door came from is the problem. That's all, that's all. The door is real, the door is wide.

The door you open, the door you close. Everything's real, everything's okay. Everything's as it seems.

It's a door, it looks like a door. The function of the door is to keep you out of that room. It works.

But the way you feel about where it came from is wrong. That's your ignorance, that's your misunderstanding. Where did the door come from?

I said, I know where the door came from. I bought it at the lumber store. I went to the lumber store in Lakewood, New Jersey.

I picked it out, I got it on the truck, I drove the goddamn truck here. I took the door off the truck. I laid the door, I screwed the door.

Me and Hangor put the door up. I know where the door came from. He said, that's not where the door came from.

And that's your problem. You think the door came from the lumber store. The door didn't come from the lumber store.

And the offerings you make to Medicine Buddha are the same as the door. Okay, are they real? Yes.

Can you sneak some for quality control before you offer them? You don't want to offer unquality controlled offerings. I think it's your Buddhist responsibility to quality control the offerings.

I mean, the ding dong package might be broken. Anyway, yeah, they're real. Everything's fine.

But they did not come from the store. And if you feel like they came from the store, you're infecting your offerings to the Buddha. You're offering the Buddha something.

It's like offering them poo poo or something. A door which you think about the wrong way is a poo poo door. You invite the Buddhists for dinner and you think the food came from the store, you might as well offer them poo poo.

Because it's polluted, it's dirty. There's something wrong with the offering. Got it?

If you can keep, you don't have to sit there every two minutes during your sadhana and say, oh, the apple came from me, the apple came from me. It's going to interrupt your practice. But you have to have this emotion or this feeling that the reason I was able to offer an apple is because I gave an apple to a human being in the past.

The reason I can offer an apple to an enlightened being is I shared my apples with hungry people in the past. Then that apple is a good offering. That apple is a sweet offering.

If you get an apple from the store, from the seeds of serving apples to starving people in Africa or something, that's a real offering. And that apple came from the right place. Okay, got it?

Apples which you got by sharing are worthy to offer. Apples which you don't share are not worthy of offering. Okay, got it?

That's nidgarjuna. And then that's practicing Medicine Buddha with nidgarjuna. We're inviting nidgarjuna into the retreat room to do our Medicine Buddha practice.

And if he's not sitting next to you, you got a problem. If you think you bought the apples, you have a problem. Okay, got it?

If you're feeling about the door, that's wrong. It's not the door. The door is fine.

You did buy it at the lumber store. I mean, it was such a big event in my life when he said that. I'm like, ah, good.

I'm not supposed to pretend the door's not there. I'm not supposed to think the door is illusion. It says here illusion, right?

City of Illusion, Gandharva Nagara. The city of the hungry ghosts. That's not the point.

That's not what makes it illusory. It's illusory because it looks like you bought it, but you didn't. You had the money to buy it because you always share what you have with other people.

And that means, okay, you ready? That means hesitating to share is the stupidest thing in the world. I always make these ridiculous offerings.

When my wife comes to Diamond Mountain, the first half hour is always, honey, I'm sorry I gave away $10,000 to John Brady yesterday. She's like, what? No, she doesn't do that.

She's like, yay. Really, she is. But there's a hesitation, right?

Like maybe if I do that too much, I won't have any money. After that, I wrote to Ali. I said, do I have that much money?

Right? Didn't I? She's like, yeah.

So, that hesitation to present an offering means you don't understand where the offering came from in the first place. When you hesitate to be generous, it means you don't understand why you have the money in the first place. It came from, the reason you have $10,000 to give John Brady is because you offered money before.

Otherwise, you wouldn't have the money.

[Speaker 2]
Where's the medicine box? Where's the box? Can you please talk about, when we're making offerings to Medicine Buddha, or we're practicing the perfection of giving, the power of not being concerned with receiving a result.

And can you speak on that? Just the power of remaining in the act of giving or sharing and not being worried about, oh, I'm gonna get this. And how maybe that could be a form of grasping.

Worrying about, oh, I'm gonna get a Ferrari.

[Speaker 1]
A Mercedes Benz.

[Speaker 2]
Or a new house.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
It comes up in DCI. So, in DCI, we go on these tours to Kuala Lumpur in 2025 and Johor Bahru in Singapore, I hope. I mean, Orchard Road shopping with me and Jenny, right?

I think. We did make a deal for 2025. So, in DCI, we go around teaching people that your business will be successful if you understand the emptiness of the business.

And the emptiness of the business is that if you are generous with the money you get, your business will be more successful. Okay? Then the question is, isn't that a kind of attachment?

And doesn't that kind of mess up the process? If the reason you are generous to people is just because you want a new car, does that mess up the giving? And by the way, in the beginning of the Madhyamika Avatara, the great, great commentary to Nagarjuna by Chandrakirti, he asked our question.

He said, and it's a very interesting question. He says, if your generosity is polluted by self-interest, does it still work? And Chandrakirti, who's the greatest Nagarjuna after Nagarjuna, he says, of course it still works.

It's like, watch, okay? I'm thinking about giving John Brady more money, but Tim needs it worse. Okay, ready?

Did the rosary drop? Now I'm thinking about not giving either one anything. Now I'm thinking about how famous I'm going to get if I give him a lot of money.

Now I'm thinking I'll just do it without telling anybody. It still works. Gravity works no matter how you feel about it.

And giving, sharing with others, it works regardless of how you feel about it. Even if it's selfish, it still works. That's a very basic Buddhist question.

If your motivation is to get famous, if your motivation is to make more money for yourself, it still works. It still works. It doesn't work as well.

It's a lot slower. And it's a lot smaller than if you did it with your whole heart. But it still works.

Gravity works if you're in a good mood or a bad mood. Gravity doesn't care. So that's the answer to that.

It's okay to... And by the way, I mean, if I just say, I do not say you should give away what you have without thinking that you might get something. I do not say that.

I say it's fine. But you should say everybody should get a Mercedes. Why think small?

If I give this money to ACI so that they can survive next year, I hope I get a Mercedes and I hope everyone else does too. Then it's Buddhism. Then it's Buddhism.

You can have a Mercedes, it's okay. But you got to make sure everyone gets one. That's okay.

You can't... In English they say you can run, but you can't hide. If you're generous, the Mercedes are going to chase you.

I'm sorry. I keep giving away cars and then I keep getting more cars. It's the way it goes.

We gave the Ukrainian ladies a new car, better than my car. They have a hybrid 23 Toyota RAV4. If you want to trade cars, you let me know.

Okay, anyway, thank you for the sponsors who did that. And that was very sweet. The only problem is...

They read the wrong driver manual. And then they took the test. And every state is different, right?

So they read the Florida driver manual. In Florida, everything's backwards. But I'm sure next year they're going to drive here.

All right, okay. Don't smash my new car. All right.

And by the way, thank you to the sponsor who did that. That was really beautiful. Okay, next.

Next item is very beautiful. My photo agency that I buy the photos from, there's certain photos they don't sell. Like I tried to find a dead person.

They don't sell it. It's weird, right? I don't know what it is.

They won't sell you a picture of a dead person. I'm like, okay, I'll make one with my AI. Then the AI says, cannot make this picture.

Not acceptable picture, I think. But I found this one. And there's a big debate about offerings.

There's a big debate about offerings. We're talking about medicine Buddha practice. We are getting ready to do...

We're getting ready for the big moment in the sadhana when we tell the medicine Buddhas, put up or shut up. It means give me what you promised or get out of here. You made these big promises.

Each medicine Buddha made a promise. Four promises, eight promises. We're getting to the part in the sadhana where you say, okay, I'm ready.

Now do it, okay? And then they're like, well, I don't know if today's a good day. And you're like, wait, you promised.

Didn't you make a promise? And supposed to be, we're making these offerings. Nagarjuna says, will you offer the best offerings you can?

Should you offer tired old apples that feel like rubber? Or should you offer a really good quality apple? He says, does it matter?

Do they care? They don't care. You offer them an old apple or a new apple, they have total bliss.

They don't care. But you should care. They should be the best offerings you can.

And then Nagarjuna poses a question. Is a fresh apple only fresh if you have rotten apples in the same world? Is a beautiful, crisp, fresh apple only beautiful, crisp, and fresh in a world where you have also rotten apples?

Are offerings beautiful only by comparison? Is the world relative? Is it relative?

Is everything relative or not? By the way, Einstein talked about relativity. That's different.

And if you want a lecture on that, I'll give you one someday. But that's a different thing. Is it possible to perceive an apple as fresh and beautiful without ever seeing a rotten apple or an old apple?

Are things absolute? Is the quality of things absolute? Or can you only perceive beauty in a world where there's also ugliness?

That's a question. And Nagarjuna is going to answer it. It's a very beautiful question.

Can you only see a beautiful... Can you only see food as healthy and beautiful... Can you only see food as healthy and beautiful in a world...

Can you only see food as healthy and beautiful in a world where you have thrown up? Okay? Is it only people who have thrown up from bad food who can appreciate good food?

Is it relative? And I'll leave it open to discussion. I'll leave it open to discussion.

I'll give you a question. We're supposed to make the best and most beautiful offerings we can. And the practice will work better if we...

By the way, don't go to the grocery store with my teacher to buy offerings unless you want to spend four or five hours. Unbelievable. He handled every package of cookies in the store.

One by one he's like... And really, really. I mean, it drives me crazy.

I'm at the end of the counter. I'm going... And he's like, these cookies look like they might be older.

And I'm like, I don't... Check the date. And really, and he had certain...

Medicine Buddha liked certain cookies and Medicine Buddha doesn't like other cookies. How he knows, I don't know. But it's amazing.

So is it relative or not? What do you guys think? Can you only tell high quality cookies if you see lousy cookies?

Or can you tell high quality cookies without seeing lousy cookies? Is it relative or is it not relative? Is it absolute?

Is cookie quality absolute? Or is cookie quality relative? What do you guys think?

There's an answer back there. Watch the box. Careful, careful.

Tracy, watch... Make sure everybody is looking before you throw the box. Otherwise, somebody might achieve satori.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Wouldn't the offering be empty itself? It's just saying, depending on who's looking, it would be beautiful or not. So I can only know the apple is good because I see different apples as well.

But someone like a Buddha, probably put all the parts in a beautiful way to see everything beautiful.

[Speaker 1]
So I think your answer is, for a non-Buddha, it's relative. To tell that an apple is crisp and fresh, you have to have an experience of apples that are not crisp and fresh. But if you're a Buddha, since you're always going to see all the apples as crisp and fresh, even the ones that are not, it's absolute.

That's her answer. Other opinion? Wait, what's Alay's, either dancing or she's having some realizations?

Her boyfriend's name, Hakeem, you know? I'm just kidding.

[Speaker 2]
I think that we can experience something knowing you haven't seen something otherwise. But we cannot give the name to what we experience without having seen something different from that.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, okay, okay. So I think what you said was, we can experience an apple as crisp without meeting apples that are rubbery. But to name it crisp, we need to have the name rubbery to distinguish between them.

Something like that? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Anybody else?

[Speaker 2]
Loud. I think the apple, the taste, is good or bad, depends the person that see. That means if they taste the apple is a good taste, that means they offer some good food to somebody before.

If the taste, the apple is a bad taste, then they might give the bad food to someone before. So I think wherever the feeling depends, they offer things to someone before, then give the feeling to someone.

[Speaker 1]
So I'm going to add something to what you said. If that's true, then the beauty of the offerings is absolute. It's not relative.

You don't have to experience a lousy apple to experience a beautiful apple. That's how I understand what you're saying, and I agree with you. I agree with you.

If you have good seeds, you will have good apples to offer. If you have bad seeds, you will have bad apples to offer. But you don't have to experience bad apples to experience good apples.

If you have all these good seeds, you would always have good apples. And I would say that there's some things in the world that we have that are already that way, and we don't see the other side. We never experience the bad one.

You see what I mean? It's absolute. I say if it's coming from seeds, it's absolute, which implies you can have a heaven where there's no rotten apples.

Right?

[Speaker 2]
So I remember I heard this story from the very, very old grandpa from Israel. He lived in Israel. He was a wife of Holocaust.

So he always eat just very rotten food, and nobody can change anything. All of the relatives of his kids try to help him. But he told that when I was, like when it was World War II and I was Holocaust, this is the only food what we ate.

So for me, it's the best. And he cannot eat fresh or good food just because this is for him was real. And he never changed.

So he didn't know the other taste. Maybe he knew before, but then he like didn't.

[Speaker 1]
So you're in the absolute school. You're in the Jenny Wong, Michael Roach school.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
All right, let's keep, let's go on, okay? Now, let's see what Nagarjuna says. Okay, next, I think it's IDIM 5.31. Here's Nagarjuna. Being attractive is just a thing we attribute based on what is not attractive. Jenny, Nagarjuna is against us. Okay?

He says something like an attractive apple is just a name you make up based on an apple that's not attractive. If all apples were attractive, there wouldn't be a word attractive. So that's kind of, that's kind of what she said.

The words, if all apples were delicious, delicious, there wouldn't be a word delicious, right? If there's no such thing as bad taste word, then there's no word for delicious, right? If all the apples are the same, how would you tell it was delicious?

Anyway, he says, Nagarjuna says, being attractive is just a thing we attribute based on what is not attractive. Neither is the unattractive not something relative. Unattractive is also relative.

He says not absolute. Why? Because you can't tell something's unattractive if you don't know what's attractive.

You can't tell something's attractive. You can't call something a good apple if you never met a bad apple. And you can't call something a bad apple if you never met a good apple.

I don't believe it. I don't think that's what he's saying. I think if you have the seeds to eat, have delicious apples all the time, that's okay.

And I would say Buddhists, when you make an offering of a soggy apple to a medicine Buddha, they perceive it as a perfect apple. How's that? All right?

They don't have the karma to see a soggy apple. Okay, got it? My opinion.

Still, you should buy the best ones. And I think the great teachers like my teacher, it's not unimportant to them. It's very important to them.

He will go to the store for three, four hours. He sent me to the store for everything except his offerings. And then the offerings he has to buy.

I have to drive him to the store. He said, offerings, it's my department.

[Speaker 2]
You don't touch the offerings.

[Speaker 1]
That's my department. You can buy my food, but you can't buy the offerings. All right?

So take your time and make them beautiful. Take your time and make sure your offerings are awesome. It's not an unimportant thing.

It's a very important thing. I think also, in my opinion, a good offering is anonymous. Like there's a story about a Lama who used to buy soggy apples and offered them before he closed his retreat door.

So when his friends come to see the offerings, they don't look fancy. They look old. And then when they leave, he puts the real offerings on because he doesn't want to be influenced by pride.

He doesn't want to think I have the best apples or something like that. The best offering I ever made in my life was a diamond on an altar and I hid it on the altar and no one ever saw it except my Lama found it. Like within an hour.

Or 10 minutes. I mean, I hid it very carefully. And he's like, why'd you put that diamond on?

I'm like, what? So I think there's a beauty of an offering being anonymous and nobody knows you're making an offering. So that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful offering.

Jesus said something like that. What did he say? Don't advertise your spiritual practice.

If you're fasting today, one day fast, try not to look hungry. Like some of your friends will say, oh, Joy, why do you look so hungry? And you say, oh, I'm fasting.

I'm doing a one day vow. Like you're supposed to try to look normal.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned at the beginning that when we offer an apple, a good apple with a misunderstanding, it's just like a poo-poo to offer.

And then, so when we offer a poo-poo to... Yeah, I mean, just maybe my question may sound like not that thinking and offer a poo-poo with understanding, with good visualization, because every time we are living in a normal life, normal day, normal people, we poo, we eat, we do everything normal. But we need to turn this into practices.

So if I offer a poo-poo to someone with good intention, with understanding, and with a good visualization, yeah, so is it a good thing to offer to someone higher?

[Speaker 1]
It's possible. Yeah, it's possible. Well, I'll tell you a story, okay?

There's a famous story. There was a student who got a Diamond Way initiation and he got initiation into Bhairava practice. So some high tantric deity.

And his teacher gave him initiation. Then he said, RANG RGYAL SEL NANG, RANG RGYAL SEL NANG. What's that?

High, it's a high principle in tantra. RANG RGYAL SEL NANG. Say RANG RGYAL SEL NANG.

Very high teaching in tantra. RANG RGYAL means once you got that initiation, believe you are Bhairava. And nobody can shake your belief.

If your Lama say, I made a mistake, you're not Bhairava. You say, I'm sorry, it's too late. I'm already Bhairava.

Don't tell Bhairava he's not Bhairava, it's too late. RANG RGYAL means believe it. When you got an initiation and they made you Vajrayogini, nobody can take that back.

Nobody. The Lama who gave it to you cannot take it back. It's too late.

You're already Vajrayogini. What are you going to make Vajrayogini not Vajrayogini? It doesn't work.

So that's called, tantric practice has two high principles. One, RANG RGYAL. RANG RGYAL means I am Vajrayogini.

And I have people all the time telling me you're not. And I'm saying, I am, I'm sorry. You can tell me all day, you're just wasting your breath.

I got initiation. I am Vajrayogini. So the student got Bhairava.

I am Bhairava. And he got RANG RGYAL. SEL NANG is the other half.

SEL NANG means picture yourself that way in cool ways. Picture yourself that way in cool ways. So Vajrayogini likes to wear diamonds.

Then put little Vajrayogini stuff on your body. Maybe your underwear is red. Like don't tell anybody.

Do little things that remind you who you are. I had a friend, David Stumpf, right? Sarakni's husband.

He used to paint his fingernail red. And when he went to the grocery store, everybody's like... But he said, I want to remember who I am.

SEL NANG means the image. Keep the image in your mind. Something small.

Keep something small. Do something special. For example, always lead with your left.

When you get on an escalator or stairs or you step into a shop, always step with your left foot first. That's SEL NANG. SEL NANG means little physical signs that you are her and don't tell anybody.

Just don't... If you watch me step on here, it's always a left foot. Now I told you.

I might do right tomorrow, just to think of it. But that's called SEL NANG. Okay, little.

So there's a story that this disciple was practicing Bhairava really hard. He got the initiation. He's picturing himself as...

Believe. Self-identification? RANG RGYAL I am Bhairava.

I am Bhairava. The teacher said, you're not. He said, I am.

I am. You gave me initiation. After that moment, I'm Bhairava.

I'm sorry. You can't take it back. And that's true.

I am Bhairava. Then I have little things. I do things.

Left hand, I step with the left foot first. These are little signs of who I am. And they're beautiful signs.

And I spend my whole life like that. I have many, many little weird superstitions like that. Okay?

And I keep them. And I do them. So anyway.

Wait, I'm not done yet. Then the Gandhi, they beat the Gandhi. Gandhi is a big board, six feet long, two meters.

As long as the arm span of a large person, which is two meters. And you're supposed to... Sorry.

You're supposed to put the Gandhi stick on your left shoulder and then you hit it. And it has to be teak wood or hardwood. And this was before metal.

It was the belt for the monk's confession. Before metal. Before metal was common.

Before anybody had metal, like thousands of years ago, they had a stick. And you put it on your shoulder and you go, dang, dang. And that means come to confession.

SO SBYONG Try some. So anyway, the student was sitting there having breakfast with the teacher and they hit the Gandhi. They still do it at my monastery.

They still use a Gandhi. Nobody can hear it. We keep a good eye on our clubs.

So he hit the Gandhi and the teacher said, let's go. Time for SO SBYONG. The student said, Bhairava doesn't go to SO SBYONG.

Bhairava's perfect already. I'm sorry, I got nothing to confess. Bhairava don't need to go to SO SBYONG.

That teacher grabbed him by the ear and pulled him to SO SBYONG. He said, yes, you are goddamn Bhairava, but you're going to SO SBYONG. Understand?

In theory, you could offer poo-poo with enough motivation. In practice, probably your teacher going to pull you here. No, it's definitely possible.

And we have many offerings like that. There are such offerings. It's possible, but it takes a lot of practice.

That student was too young. He just got Bhairava this morning. Then he decided he don't have to go confess anything in the teacher.

So in theory, it's possible. In practice, it's very difficult. But it's a goal.

The goal is that. The goal is that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then everything becomes a great offering. So that's the goal. But it takes many years of practice and you still have to go to SO SBYONG.

Okay? All right, Tim, what's up? What's the schedule?

Oh my God. Okay, I was kind of leading everything up to now. Okay, let's do it.

Let me do up to, we'll do 15 minutes of Q&A. Is that okay? Is that good?

No. At 8.45, we'll do 15 minutes of Q&A. Is that right?

Am I right? Okay, all right. Next item, you guys, 5.32, Francisco. Yeah, I call this going deeper into the offerings. Like unwrapping the offerings and trying to understand them better. We're still on the subject of offerings.

What's coming up for the rest of the week? We're going to do the seven preliminaries again. This time just for the eight Medicine Buddha dudes.

And then we're going to start calling in their promises. Hey, you said if someone recites your name seven times, all the people in this world who are imprisoned right now, anywhere, in a house with a family or in a jail, they should start to be free. They should start to get freedom.

Like that. Okay, you promised. So that's where we're going.

We're going to those promises. And we're going to the emptiness of those promises. Because that's how they work.

Got it? But we got to finish this offering thing first. If the teacher's sneaky, they might teach you emptiness in the offerings.

Before you get to the promises. Okay, here we go. Next one.

Yesterday we had the four mudras. They're called the four seals. In English you call seal of approval.

Like the health department has to stamp the food, or especially medicine. If the medicine has a government approval, then you can take it. If not, you can't sell it.

In Buddhism, there's four seals of approval. And we talked about them yesterday. And the idea is, MI DAG SDUG BSNGAL RTOG PA DANG MED Something like that.

Those four qualities of a Buddhist, those four qualities that make words the word of the Buddha. We talked about them yesterday in Tim's class. There are four things that make words the word of the Buddha.

Do they teach emptiness? Do they teach suffering? Do they teach emptiness?

What's the fourth one? Do they teach about nirvana? Those are the four seals.

They're called mudra. Mudra means seal of approval. It's a stamp from the Buddha department.

Then that teaching is approved. And the tradition in Buddhism is, don't waste your time on a book or a teaching if it doesn't address these four. At least one of them.

It can be directly, or it can be indirectly. But if it doesn't talk about any of those things, don't waste your time because you don't have time. As I said yesterday, figure out the death thing first and then do the rest of the stuff.

Then get your Tesla. Don't figure out how to get a Tesla and then save the figuring out your death for later. Figure out your death first and then figure out how to get a Tesla.

Take care of the death thing first. And so he's talking here about the idea of impermanence or changing. If it is something wrong to look at something changing and call it rather unchanging.

He's talking about CING GI SLOB ZHIG. These are the four big mistakes. The four big mistakes.

The first one is to look at a body which is falling apart already and believe you're going to last for a while. To look at your body and say, I'm not as old as Geshe-la is, and think that you're going to last for a while is ignorance. Lots of young people die before old people.

To look at your body and say, I still have some time is a big mistake. That's like the first big mistake of Buddhism. To think you have some time left.

You didn't get cancer yet. Well, actually we don't know, do we? So he says, if it's wrong to look at a body which is constantly falling apart and feel like I still have some time, if that's a mistake, then would it be wrong to think that emptiness itself is never changing?

Because there's nothing changing about it. Isn't it a mistake when there's something changing about something to think of that thing as unchanging? I'll say it again.

Isn't it a mistake when there's something changing about your body to think that it's unchanging? Yeah, that's classic not Buddhist. They're like, oh, if I have green drinks, I'll live forever.

That's classic wrong idea in Buddhism. To think that you're going to last for a while is a classic wrong idea. Now, Nagarjuna says, is it wrong to think you're not changing when you're changing every second?

When your body's falling apart every day, when it's the nature of your body to fall apart and then you think you're going to last for a while, is that ignorance? Is that a bad attitude? Yeah, it's a bad attitude.

By the way, you're not supposed to get scared. It's not about that. You're not supposed to say, oh my God, I might have cancer, I can't tell.

You know people like that. They're always going to the doctor, do I have cancer or not? They're like, I don't know.

It could be one cell, we don't know. So it's a healthy understanding that your body is falling apart and use it for something cool and enjoy it while you have it. So it's not like, oh, I'm falling apart, I'm a bad person.

It's not like that. Are you falling apart? Yes.

Are you a beautiful person? Yes. Are you falling apart right now?

Yes. Are you the sexiest, most beautiful being in the universe? Uh-huh, yeah, okay.

That's Buddhism. That's really Buddhism. Yeah, you're falling apart.

Yeah, inside it's all poop. Scrape the supermodel skin, underneath it's all poop. But still, to have this body is super special.

You're on your way to Buddhahood. Like, nobody's going to stop you. So, you got some snot, it's okay.

It's beautiful. It's a beautiful, messed up body. All right?

So he says, but is it wrong to think your body's going to last for a while when it's not? Yes, that's wrong. Then he says it's the opposite truth.

Okay? Is it wrong to think that emptiness never changes because it doesn't? Do you have to think that everything in the universe is impermanent?

Is that one of the four mudras? Is it one of the four seals of a Buddhist teaching? That everything is impermanent?

Then, yeah, all-causing, good. Is emptiness impermanent? No.

Can you destroy emptiness? And by the way, you want subtle impermanence, here it is. You want subtle, subtle impermanence, here it is.

Okay? Somebody asked me, you want the normal explanation of subtle impermanence or you want the deeper one? I mean, our classes, we do the real one.

Okay? Normal, subtle impermanence, is called high school reunion. Okay?

And you go back, in America, 25 years after you graduate, you go back and have a meeting with your friends. What's the first thing you say? Oh, you look just the same.

And the reason you say that is they don't. No, you haven't changed a bit. And they're like, there's nothing up here.

I used to have hair, you don't remember? Oh, well, maybe that changed, yeah. So, there's this thing about subtle impermanence.

Gross impermanence, you notice every five years or something. My hair isn't what it used to be. But subtle impermanence is going on every millisecond.

The hair didn't get gray on the last day of the five years. The hair got gray every minute up to the end of the five years. It's like that.

Some people explain subtle impermanence that way. But if you want the deeper one, is emptiness impermanent or not? And that's where I have a problem with the word impermanent.

Is emptiness impermanent or not? This rosary is coming from the seeds in my mind, in your mind. This rosary is coming from the seeds in your mind.

What's the emptiness of it? It's not coming without the seeds. The emptiness of this rosary is you cannot be seeing this rosary if you don't have the seeds for it.

This rosary is not coming from seeds. This rosary is not coming from seeds. And that never changes, unchanging, constant.

It never changes. It's never true that this rosary is a little bit less coming from seeds today than yesterday. There's no such thing.

Either it's coming from your seeds or it's not coming from your seeds. There's no middle thing. You can't say, ah, today it's like 80% from seeds and 20% not from seeds.

That's how Buddhists live their life, by the way, with the people who irritate them. Are they coming from your seeds? Well, mostly.

Forget the well, mostly. They're a hundred percent. So the truth of this rosary is that it's not coming from your seeds.

Does that mean it can't be destroyed? Every real Buddhist, you want to know what a real retreater is? Someone who ran around their retreat cabin looking for 108 beads.

Usually didn't, right? The string breaks. They all go, then you're under all the furniture and you're like, I got 106.

You have that. You're like that. The rosary will finish.

It'll be broken. I'll lose a bead. And everybody who ever did long retreat, that's one of the activities, is looking for the beads after the string broke.

It's not permanent. It will go out of existence. Emptiness is unchanging.

Emptiness can go out of existence when the thing which has the emptiness goes out of existence. That's all. The emptiness of this rosary will go out of existence on the day that the string breaks and all the beads roll around.

You can't find them. The lamest, what do you call it? Kind of the weirdest thing in retreat is to try to put beads from one rosary on another rosary and it just looks weird.

So can this end? Yes. Can its emptiness end?

By the way, we never use the word ending. We use the word go out of existence. And that's subtle impermanence.

If you really want to understand subtle impermanence, and by the way, nobody else can teach it to you. I'll bet. And I'm not bragging, I'm just saying it's the way it is.

When you destroy the rosary, its emptiness goes out of existence. It is not destroyed. Destroyed means, bluuuuu.

And that's not how emptyness stops. Emptiness goes, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bop, gone. Emptiness doesn't get less empty and then die.

There's no such thing. We don't say end. We don't say wear out.

We say it goes out of, it blinks out of existence. When the rosary hits the bar, got it? And that's subtle impermanence.

And you've got to cook it. Go, box, who's got the box? And by the way, if you can understand, if you can think about that, it'll help you see emptiness through emptiness.

The beads can go, the beads can wear out. The beads can decay. The beads can get older and older and then die.

But the emptiness of the beads does not. It lasts until the last, it lasts until the millisecond that the string breaks. Okay, got it?

Go ahead.

[Speaker 2]
So does that mean that our Buddha nature, which is an emptiness, is the only permanent emptiness?

[Speaker 1]
That's a good question. Is anything, let's say everlasting. Is there anything everlasting in the universe besides emptiness?

And we say there are. There are some things. Empty space, for example.

Whether the empty space in which our present universe stands is filled by matter flying around from the Big Bang or whether that matter all reaches, what do you call it? Heat death. No more information processing.

The world, the atoms of the universe are now equally spaced throughout the universe and there's no movement. There's no longer any heat, which means there can no longer be information because there's no movement of particles. They're all equally spaced apart.

That's the end of this universe. But the background space in which those particles stand is unchanging. And if all those particles disappeared, the background location of them would never change.

So location doesn't ever change and cannot go out of existence. But emptiness can go out of existence because it's attached to a certain object.

[Speaker 2]
Right, but in this instance, the very specific instance of the emptiness of my mind.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that will never go out of existence.

[Speaker 2]
Because my mind has always been and will always be.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that emptiness will never go out of existence.

[Speaker 2]
Because the object it's attached to will never go out of existence. Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
We got a few more minutes for questions. Talk loud.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, so my question is, I tend to take things literally. So when I hear that everything comes from me, I question it. I still wonder, like the nuclear bombs and the wars and all the violence.

So five years ago, I was killed by one or two men in Jamaica. My sister was older than me. She's my only sister.

And she was always a very difficult person in my life. And she hated that I looked like the good girl and she looked like the bad girl. And after her, she died in November of 2018.

And I don't know much about the circumstances. And so I've really thought a lot about it. You know, I help people in grief.

That's my work. And I want to learn more about, did that come from me? I don't know.

I just, it's a struggle. It was a very violent death. It was suffocation and being bound and gagged and buried in the shallow grave.

And it's just been really a challenge for me to understand. After I realized that I really did love her and these teachings have helped me so much.

[Speaker 1]
Here's how I was taught to answer this question. And I lived with my teacher for 25 years. All day, every day.

I was the, you know, I took care of everything. Everything. So I was with him all day, except when I went to work or something like that.

So one of my jobs, because we lived at this Mongolian temple, people would come to visit the temple. And all kinds of people would come to visit the temple. And he was busy reading, translating.

He said, you take care of the people who are there. I'm like, okay. And people would come to visit.

And I found out quickly the kind of questions they would ask. And I asked him to help me. I would ask him, how should I answer this question?

One question is swastika. This symbol of swastika. Swastika means su-asti-ka.

Su-asti-ka. Su means goodness. Asti means is.

Ka means ness. Su-asti-ka. Swastika means goodness.

Permanent goodness. And we always put a swastika on the teacher's seat in Buddhism. And at our temple, we always had four swastikas on the teacher's seat.

It represents the long life of the teacher. It means the long, successful life of the teacher. We have to put a swastika, four swastikas on the teacher's seat.

And you will see, anytime you go to a real Buddhist temple, they should have four swastikas on the teacher's seat. So you can guess what happened. We lived next to a Jewish town.

We lived next to Lakewood, New Jersey. Lakewood, New Jersey is conservative Jewish town. It's all guys with the hats and these things.

What do you call them? Super Orthodox. And they would come to visit the temple and they would see the swastika there and, what's that?

And we're like, and then we'd have to explain to them what's a swastika. And they were okay with it. Very rarely someone would get angry.

We say, Hitler stole it from India. Don't worry about it. Long, 2,000 years before Hitler, we were making swastikas.

And he stole it, but it's a beautiful sign. And it means a good thing. And don't worry about it.

Then they would start asking about the Holocaust. Who killed all these people? Why were they killed?

What's your opinion? What's the Buddhist opinion? The real Buddhist opinion is you cannot be killed unless you have killed someone else.

That's the Buddhist opinion. You cannot be killed unless you killed someone else. It's not possible.

It's impossible. Then I saw the first Jewish group that came. I said, you can't be killed unless you killed someone before.

And they got really angry. And I was like, whoa. And I went and I asked my teacher.

I said, I told them what you told me, that you can't be killed unless you killed somebody. And he said, big mistake. He said, never talk like that to a Jewish group.

It's a very big mistake. Anytime they come here, you should say something about impermanence. I don't know, but never ever a mother's child dies in a car accident and you tell the mother that the child killed someone in their past life.

What kind of cruelty is that? What kind of terrible thoughtless thing to say to a mother that your child died because they killed someone in their past life. What a terrible thing to say.

You'll probably die in your past life. So, I mean, there's certain... That's why Buddha taught three turnings of the wheel.

That's why Lord Buddha softened his message depending on the audience. The whole Abhidharma is a softened message. He never taught emptiness in the first 30 years of his life.

He didn't teach anybody emptiness. What? He didn't remember?

He didn't want to hurt people. So when we think about why people died, when we talk about why people died, never forget what I learned as the temple tourist guide. I was the temple tourist guide.

And he taught me how to talk to people. And he said, you got to check out the people and you got to check out how they feel. And you have to teach to their level.

You cannot... There are certain things you cannot say to people that are hurt. You cannot say those things.

You have to understand when to say things and when not. There's an appropriate time to talk about death that way. And there's many, many appropriate times not to talk about death that way.

And you have to think about it. You have to think about it. It depends on how...

You have to judge the strength of the person. You have to judge the strength of the person. But here's one more suggestion when you're answering a question like that.

Karma doubles in power every 24 hours. Karma doubles in power every 24 hours. If you give $1 today with correct motivation, it's $2,000,000 in 30 days.

You give $1 to a poor person with the right motivation, you have just inserted $2,000,000 of seeds in your mind within 30 days. It has become $2,000,000.

[Speaker 2]
We'll come back to you.

[Speaker 1]
This is karma. And you can do the math. You can do it on your cell phone.

I do it sometimes when I forget the number. I go one times two, times two, times two, times two. So one hand, I go one, two, three, four.

I go up to 30. One times two, times two, times two, times two, times two. And I think it's $2,000,000.

You can check it out on your cell phone. You can check it out. But seeds double in power every 24 hours.

So what that means is that there's a very famous example in scripture. Why do monks do summer retreat? Varshana, why do they do summer retreat?

Yeah, traditionally monks were supposed to do a three-month retreat every summer so they wouldn't step on the bugs who come up in the summer. Because in the summer there's more bugs. So the tradition of summer retreat, which we still keep in the monastery, stay indoors for three months, don't walk around outside, because there's going to be more bugs that you will kill.

And that's called unaware killing. Unaware killing. You don't see every bug you step on.

But logically, you understand it's true. Did you walk home today from the temple? Yes.

Is it summer? Yes. Did you see all the bugs you stepped on?

To tell you the truth, I was looking at the stupor. I didn't pay attention how many ants I stepped on. But logically, do you think you might have killed some ants?

Yeah, logically I probably did. Those kinds of karma are called unaware karma. It's not premeditated.

You don't say, after lunch I'm going to see how many ants I can kill on the way home. Nobody says that. You don't get in your car and say, let's see how many bugs I can squash.

Nobody does that. But did you squash bugs? I don't know.

Probably I did. So that awareness is enough to plant the seeds. One seed, two seeds.

Then do the math on your phone. Kill one bug, times two, times two, times two, times two, times two. 30 days later, 200 million seeds.

To die. For me to die. You see what I mean?

So karma is pernicious. Karma is nasty stuff. Karma doubles every day.

You got to watch even small karmas. You got to watch even small karmas. And you have to confess even small karmas, even if you are butter.

You got to confess small karmas. By the way, the other side of that, which is extremely important, is rejoicing. You are required by Buddhism to celebrate the good stuff you do.

You are required. You're required to confess your mistakes and you are goddamn required to rejoice and celebrate the good stuff you do. And if you are prejudiced and you're always like, oh, I'm such a bad person.

I got stuff to confess. I'm like, do you got anything to tell me that's good? No, I can't think of anything.

Then you're not a Buddhist. A Buddhist has to give, you want to hear a story? One more story.

So my teacher got an invitation from the Catholic Church, the local Catholic Church. Can you come and give a talk? Because the Pope, like 40 years ago, made a decision that all Catholics should learn a little bit about other religions.

And so we got an invitation to go to this big cathedral. And they asked my teacher to come and talk. He said, sure, I'd be happy to talk about Buddhism.

And so we went there. And I had a little notebook in my pocket. When he had a good idea, I had to write it down.

So every time he had a good idea, he'd say, Mike, write this down. I'd do it with haggardy sore. He'd say, Mike, write this down.

So we went into the, the priest said, do you want to see the cathedral? And my teacher's like, sure. And we went in and we went halfway down the, we're going down the cathedral, long, big cathedral.

And my teacher's like, what's all those windows? Colored windows. There's people in the windows.

What's that? And we said, that's called stained glass window. And he said, who's the people?

And he says, they are the saints. And when people go to church, they can see the saints in the stained glass window. He says, Mike, take a note.

We need stained glass windows of Buddhist saints. I'm like, yeah, okay, I'm on it. We got it.

And he's like, hmm, what else you got here? Halfway down the, halfway down the aisle, long, long aisle, there was a little room on the right side. And as we were walking by, a priest in all the robes, he came in one door of the room and this foxy lady, she goes in the other door of the room.

And my teacher's like, and he says, what's going on? And the priest said, no, don't worry, don't worry. There's a divider.

They can't touch each other. And he said, well, what are you doing in there? He said, it's a confession booth.

The priest goes in, he sits, he waits. People come and they go on the other side of the window and they say, bless me, I have sinned. I made a mistake.

And he says, well, then what happens? And he said, the priest tells the person, do this many Hail Marys on your rosary. And my teacher goes, god damn, that's a good idea.

Write that down. Write the confession booth. We need a confession booth in our temple.

He says, oh, and the rosary thing, that's great for confession. Okay, I got it, yeah, yeah, okay. And then he goes to the priest, well, where's the other one?

And the priest is like, what? And he goes, where's the other room? Yeah, and he says, what do you call this thing?

It's a confessional. He says, where's the rejoicinal? And the priest is like, what?

And he's like, where's the rejoicinal? He says, what do you mean rejoicinal? Where's the little room where the priest comes in, and then you come in, and you tell the priest all the good stuff you did this week?

And the priest is like, let me make a note. So anyway, but it's human nature that we don't rejoice enough in our good deeds. We can't stop thinking about the mistakes we made, but it's human nature to ignore the good things you do.

So you got to work on that. You have a prejudice. You only think about the sins you did, and you don't think about all the sweet things you did.

Roughly, for everybody, it's 50-50. I got news for you. The best person on this planet and the worst person on this planet are 1% different.

Really. You don't get to come to this planet if you're a really good person. And you don't get to come to this planet if you're a really bad person.

The best person on this planet and the worst person on this planet are about 1% different. And we all make mistakes, almost equal number, and we all do good things, almost equal number. Every evil person in this world is doing a lot of sweet things also.

And you have to, you're required to sit in the rejoicing room. In this tradition, in this lineage, you are required to give it equal time. And you do not.

I promise you, you do not. So when you're sitting there doing Medicine Buddha practice, tell them all your mistakes and then say, hey, but I got some good stuff too. I did a lot of sweet stuff this week.

And as you do more and more rejoicinal, you will find more and more good stuff. You'll be shocked to find out what a nice person you are. So give it equal time.