Нагарджуна, курс 5 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 5: Будда Медицины и мудрость Нагарджуны (2023, Аризона), занятие 6

[Speaker 1]
So we're going to start with this image number 5.34. And this guy represents Medicine Buddha. And today we're going to talk about the question of how do you ask them for help, okay? How do you ask the Medicine Buddhas for help?

When you need help, how do you ask them for help? And then what is it about Medicine Buddha that can help you? What can really help you?

I think otherwise it just feels to me like superstition. If you can go to a statue and ask them for help, then you don't need classes. You just ask the statue for help, you don't need Geshe-la.

Then I can sleep, you can sleep. We don't have to get up so early, okay? So there must be some kind of special method or something we have to think about when we ask Medicine Buddha for help, okay?

Otherwise we could just talk to the statue. But I think we all know it doesn't work to just go to a temple and ask a statue for help. We wish that it helped.

And I also feel special when I go into the temple, and I lived in a temple for 25 years. You feel like you can almost talk to the statues, but it doesn't quite work that way. We need to understand something about Medicine Buddha when we ask them for help, okay?

So we're going to start on that today. We're taking the method recommended by Arya Nagarjuna. who lived about 2,000 years ago.

And he's the greatest emptiness teacher in history. So here we go. How do you ask a Medicine Buddha for help?

How does it work? Here's the actual prayers in the next section. We ask that you extend your holy deeds pure and wide to every corner of this universe.

We ask that you help each of the members of our spiritual community succeed in all their attempts to practice the Ten Good Deeds. We ask that you assist us to take this practice ever higher and ever further. $100.

Sinjar Ma, we do $100 bet in the morning to wake up the kids. $100 bet. What's the most important words here for getting Medicine Buddha to work?

Who's... I guess the box lady decides. Which one?

[Speaker 2]
Ask.

[Speaker 1]
No. Everybody asks. Some people don't get answers.

Jigme? Not Jigme. She's supposed to give the money.

It's okay, it's okay. Jigme? Not you teachers.

Lindsey? Lindsey, yeah, the box. Hit Rob with the box.

Is it that it's for everyone? Like each of the members assist us? Help others?

Say again? Is it that it's about everybody like helping each of the members? We ask that you assist us?

Like it's not just about... No. What makes the request work?

[Speaker 2]
Ten Good Deeds.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, $100.

[Speaker 2]
$100.

[Speaker 1]
We bought a car recently. Rob helped me for a month or six weeks. He bought two cars recently.

We bought one car for the Ukrainian ladies. Then he bought another car for my sister-in-law. Me and my wife sponsored a car for my sister-in-law.

So, you know, why we sent Rob is he's good at reading the small letters in the contract. And we actually canceled like three cars because the small letters said if it breaks, good luck, go away, don't bother us. So the small letter in this contract is we ask you to help us and from our side we will do the Ten Good Deeds.

So you have to do something. You have to know what to do. If you ask even Medicine Buddha for help, you better have some energy.

You better have some karma. You better have some good deeds. So it's kind of a contract.

This request is kind of like a contract. Please help my relatives to stay healthy. Please help my family to stay healthy.

Please help all the people. And from my side I will keep the Ten Good Deeds. Okay?

$100 for the Ten Good Deeds. No, I mean, who's going to give me the $10? $10 each deed.

By the way, I'm not giving $70 or $60. I want the whole $100. Okay, do it slow.

Do it slow. It's like number one.

[Speaker 2]
I'll say it from the positives, not the negatives.

[Speaker 1]
I like that. I prefer it.

[Speaker 2]
That's how you taught it.

[Speaker 1]
We didn't say help. It doesn't say help us in our attempts not to avoid the Ten Bad Deeds. It says help us in our attempts to practice the Ten Good Deeds.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, three of body. Okay. Protect life, number one.

[Speaker 1]
Yay, that's $10.

[Speaker 2]
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay. Number two, honor others' property.

[Speaker 1]
Good.

[Speaker 2]
Number three, maintain sexual purity.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, and honor other people's relationships.

[Speaker 2]
And then moving into speech. Speak truthfully.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, always tell the truth. Speak meaningfully. Not really.

Speak gently? Oh, speak in ways that bring other people together. Okay.

Do I get $5? Okay, okay. Third one?

[Speaker 2]
Speak gently.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, no bad words. Don't use harsh words. Stupid, idiot, all the things Rinpoche used to call me.

[Speaker 2]
They know. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Speak meaningfully, speak gently, speak in ways that bring other people together.

[Speaker 2]
Help me out. I'll lose the $10 for this.

[Speaker 1]
Help me out.

[Speaker 2]
Speak meaningfully.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, don't blah, blah. Don't gossip. Don't waste your breath.

Yeah, we finish speech. Slowly we finish speech. Sorry, I'm on the spot.

[Speaker 2]
Kind of early.

[Speaker 1]
Hello. Three for mind.

[Speaker 2]
When you see someone receive something they like, rejoice.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, don't be jealous. Don't be upset. When someone gets something they want, then celebrate.

By the way, it doesn't come out of you, right? It comes out of their seeds. It doesn't come...

The world is not a pizza. The world is not eight slices. It's not a zero-sum game.

The more you rejoice, the more slices there are. Second. When you see someone receive something they don't like, have empathy.

Yeah, don't be happy when people get hurt, even if they're your enemies. And third one.

[Speaker 2]
Maintain a worldview of karma and emptiness.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, just... Sugeng, carok is so dumba. Carok is so dumba.

It's like pulling teeth from a crow. They don't have teeth.

[Speaker 2]
Understand?

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Old expression. Alright.

Next picture you guys. I think it's number 36. Yeah.

Yeah, I like this one. There's a big question in the Medicine Buddha. By the way, we are covering a Medicine Buddha prayer, sadhana, 300 pages, written by the great fifth Dalai Lama.

It's the first time it's been translated. John Brady found the text. We are translating 100 pages each year.

So next year. We'll finish next year. We have 200 pages done.

And in this part they say something strange. They say, when you ask the Medicine Buddha for help, try to see that they are total peace. Try to see the Medicine Buddha is total peace.

That's what this guy is. He's in total peace. He's also lazy.

No, I'm just kidding. So you're supposed to see. By the way, you're not supposed to see that Medicine Buddha is peaceful.

You're supposed to see that they are peace. That's a big difference. It's not that they are happy and smiling.

You know the story of the statue? It's kind of nice. My wife and I went to dinner at a talakopaki in Sedona and there was a huge rainstorm just before we reached the restaurant.

We went to Rene and we had to duck into a shop and it was one of those cheap vortex crystal shops in Sedona. They charge you like $10 for a 10 cent crystal. We were like waiting for the rain to finish and this statue was way, way up on a shelf, all dusty.

I said, is that statue, are you selling that statue? They said, well, it's just up there. I said, well, can I see it?

We got a ladder and we got the statue. It is Medicine Buddha. Medicine Buddha is called Lapis Lazuli.

That's one of the Medicine Buddha's names. That's a big piece of Lapis Lazuli. Under the metal, there is a boulder of Lapis Lazuli.

If you pick it up, it's very heavy. You can see the stone from underneath. There is only one place to get Lapis is Afghanistan and it's very difficult to go there.

It's very, very dangerous and very difficult to go there. Somebody went there and found a serious piece of Lapis, which is very rare. Then they built the statue around the Lapis and then they carved the face and it's very beautiful.

We offered it to Dr. Wu. Me and my wife and our friends, we bought it and it took a lot of friends. We offered it to Dr. Wu and I'd like to thank Dr. Wu for his classes this week and teaching those classes and also for helping us so much with the stupas. We're supposed to see Medicine Buddha as total peace. Let's go to Nagarjuna's poetry and see what it means to see Medicine Buddha as total peace. This is called Three Spheres.

You can see it in the Lam Rim. You can see it almost 2,000 years later. You can see the teaching of the Three Spheres.

It means when there's an action, when a Medicine Buddha doctor, do you know there's a doctor? Anyway, and an iron woman. I saw you running yesterday.

It's unbelievable. It almost gave me a heart attack just to watch her running up and down the mountains. But she's also a mother and she's also a medical doctor, MD.

So anyway, when the doctor is helping you, it says here three things are going on. There's a holding by something, something holding, and a holder and something held. He gives four, but it comes down to three.

Sometimes they say three spheres, sometimes they say four spheres. There's a doctor. The doctor is one of the elements in an act of healing.

When you want to have an act of healing, when you want the doctor to help you, the first thing is the doctor. Second thing is the patient. You can't have a doctor without a patient.

So in the act of healing or the act of helping people medically, there should be a doctor. There should be a patient. Then there should be a...

Huh? You can say the act of healing has to go on. Sometimes you can add the medicine.

Sometimes you can add the medicine. What does the doctor give? So there has to be basically three things going on.

There has to be a doctor. There has to be a sick person. And something has to pass between them, which could be the action of treatment or the medicine which passes between them.

So we call it the three spheres. And here he says all three are total peace and so there is no holding. All three are total peace and so there is no holding.

The doctor, the patient, doctor is Medicine Buddha, patient which is us and then healing us or our family members is the action. And he says all three are total peace. All three are total peace.

$100 if you can tell me what total peace means here. Do I have enough? Okay.

What's total peace here? Okay. Loud.

Total peace means it's totally emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
It's not things which is not coming from our side.

[Speaker 1]
Good. Perfect. That's a $300 answer.

Because three spheres, right? I hope we have that much. You can just give her an IOU.

Good answer. Yeah, we say they are peaceful. Peace doesn't mean they are nice and they don't get upset or something like that.

It doesn't mean that. When we say they are at peace, what's the Sanskrit here? Upashanti.

When we say the Medicine Buddha is at peace, it means empty, emptiness. At peace here means emptiness. Emptiness is also how you get to peace, which is nirvana.

So the peace here is emptiness. What does it mean the doctor is empty, the Medicine Buddha is empty? Joy said they are coming from your seeds.

Who gave birth to Medicine Buddha? His mom? You didn't.

You created the Medicine Buddha. By the way, it doesn't mean you can just close your eyes or paint a Medicine Buddha and then ask it to cure your cancer or something like that. It doesn't work like that.

They are creation of your seeds. It doesn't mean they are fake. It doesn't mean they are artificial.

It doesn't mean you can paint them or make a sculpture from an expensive piece of lapis. And then that's Medicine Buddha. It doesn't mean that.

It means your karmic seeds from keeping the ten good deeds, from keeping the ten good deeds, you created Medicine Buddha. That's part of the three spheres. That's why Medicine Buddha is at peace.

Peace in this case means emptiness. So is peace dependent origination? So I'll say it again.

If they are coming from your seeds, if Medicine Buddha who you ask for help is coming from your seeds, that's not emptiness. That's dependent origination. That's what they call dependence.

Is there emptiness there? Don't answer. It's going to come later.

Okay. All right. It's going to come later.

But he is at peace. Medicine Buddha is at peace. Also the doctor is at peace and the patient is at peace.

So the patient is also coming from seeds. The patient is also coming from seeds. And the illness of the patient is coming from their own seeds.

The illness of the patient is coming from their own seeds. What makes a Medicine Buddha doctor so effective is that they see your seeds and they know how to treat you. They see how you're, they don't look at your blood pressure or your, what do you call it?

Sugar levels. They look at your karmic seed levels. Probably there's a cough you put on your thing.

They check your karmic seed levels. And that's how they treat you. And as I said before, I think one of the most beautiful things to think about when you're asking Medicine Buddha for help, Angelo, you asked me a question two days ago.

Here's the answer, all right? It usually comes in the class. Okay.

When you ask Medicine Buddha for help, you have to understand that they see, they are prescribing a medicine for you because at the moment that they prescribe it, they see how it's going to work two weeks from now. Okay. So this is a weird kind of doctor.

Most doctors, they give you a medicine and they go home and tell their wife, I hope it works. And Medicine Buddha just picks out a medicine and goes, and they look into the future two weeks from now, three weeks from now. And they say, nah, this one won't work.

And then they choose another one and they, oh yeah, take this one. You're going to get better in 13 days and four hours. They can see.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a doctor who could see the results? Angelo, your answer is in there somewhere, okay? If you keep the 10 good deeds with enough effort and keep working on them every day.

And by the way, there's two practices here. One is confession. One is celebration.

Confession and celebration. Guess which one I prefer. I got lots of things to confess.

I don't like confession. I don't know. It just makes me feel negative.

I'd rather focus on celebrating the good things I've done. And by the way, today we have, in the evening we have a wedding. And then we have rock and roll.

Because we have a visitor who will be here who's a rock and roll star, who's agreed to play for us. And then we'll do a fire offering. So, bring your dancing shoes, Sugoi.

So the medicine Buddha is at peace because the medicine Buddha is coming from your seeds. And the medicine Buddha patient is you. You're also coming from your own seeds.

And then third one, the treatment. The success of the treatment, whether the treatment's going to work or not, is also coming from your seeds. So, the doctor's coming from your seeds, the sickness was coming from your seeds, and the cure is coming from your seeds.

So maybe you should make some good seeds. That's the thing. Then they say at peace.

At peace. It means the emptiness of the medicine, the emptiness of the doctor, the emptiness of the patient. They're all at peace.

Why peace? It means a stopping. Peace here means a stopping.

The stopping of self-existence. There's nothing about the medicine Buddha which is coming from the medicine Buddha. It's all coming from you.

Well, Geshe-la, then I'll just be a nice person and forget who needs the medicine Buddha. It doesn't work like that either. You need to create a medicine Buddha who takes care of you.

It doesn't work like that. All right. Then there's a last line here.

There is no holding. In the Tibetan it says, dzinpa yelmay yin. In the Sanskrit it's graha.

Graha. Guess what English word comes from graha? Grab, grabbing.

Grab. So it means holding. We had a holding called dharani.

Dhar also means to hold. Dharma comes from that. The word dharma comes from that.

Dharma means, raggi ngo dzinpe na chod, definition of dharma. That thing which holds its own nature is dharma. That's the definition of dharma.

The word dharma comes from the word dur, which means holding. Tree comes from that. Truth comes from that.

They are solid, solid steady things. Trees in the ancient times were the steadiest thing around. So that's why they called them dur, tree, tree.

Then they came to be called tree. So dharma is holding. The mantra that we use for Medicine Buddha, the mantra that we use to ask for help, is called a dharani.

It's technically, it's not called a mantra. It's called a dharani. Dharani means held or holding.

It means it has a special nature. It holds a special nature, which is emptiness. Then you have to think about it and you have to understand that a mantra won't work.

That mantras are called holding, holders. Okay, all right. So he says here, you have to understand the peace of the doctor, the patient, and the medicine, or else there is no holding.

You can't, it won't work. The mantra won't work. All right then.

Next one. I think it's dominoes. Yeah.

Okay, you can sell those medicines later. If you sit in a Buddhist talk and cough, everyone's going to give you medicine. Then you can sell it later.

Say lung dok. Lung dok. Lung dok.

Sugen knows lung. You want to describe lung dok loudly? Reverse, reverse.

Backward, forward. Sorry. I'm trying to lung dok my sneezing.

Lung dok, lung min dok. Oh, going forward. Going forward.

Sorry. Lung jung means the wheel of life. When it goes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Oh, sorry. Lung dok means... The other way around.

This is how you stop the wheel of life. When Buchi gets here, who drew the wheel of life, the artist who did the first one is coming today. But normally that wheel goes one, two, three, four, five, up to 12.

Then that's called lung jung, which means how it starts. The process of how it starts. You okay?

I'm trying to catch my boogers. I thought there was some more money down there. No, it's okay, it's okay.

No, it's not that. It's not that. It's okay.

Yeah, it's okay. Lung jung means if you don't understand things that will trigger fresh karma and et cetera. One, two, three, four, 12.

Then lung dok means turning the wheel around. Turning the wheel around. Turning the wheel of life around.

I always thought it meant 12, 11, 10, nine, eight. It's not true. That's not what lung dok is.

What is lung dok? Yeah, stop one, stops two. Stop two, stop three.

Stop three, stop four. That's lung dok. If you stop the source of the problem, you stop the problem.

And that's where we're going to now. Thank you. Let's do the next one, Francisco.

I bow down to the conqueror, the one gone thus. Oops. Oops.

The defeater of the enemy, the pure and totally enlightened Buddha with the name of King of Glory, whose name is proclaimed to the corners of the universe. I make offerings to you and I take my shelter in you. We are starting the seven, what?

Preliminaries, again, for the second time in the sadhana. We had one general seven preliminaries at the beginning. And that was to get to know this lineage.

And again, this is a special lineage of Medicine Buddha. You are in a second lineage now. This is not the general Medicine Buddha lineage.

General Medicine Buddha lineage started 500 BC. This lineage started around, I don't know, 1500, with the Great Fifth. And supposed to be Medicine Buddha came to the Great Fifth and started this lineage.

And so the beginning of this sadhana, the beginning of this method of reaching Medicine Buddha, they teach you all the lineage, this new lineage. It's called the second lineage. This is the second lineage of Medicine Buddha.

So now you are in both lineages. I got both lineages in my life. From Tsong Rinpoche, who came to our temple.

Do you remember the lama with the beard? Long time ago. How many years ago?

50 years ago. And he was a great tantrica. And he gave us the Medicine Buddha practice.

Also, the Dalai Lama's teacher came and gave us that initiation. So anyway, this is prayers. We finished the seven preliminaries with the lineage.

And now we're doing the seven preliminaries over again to the eight Medicine Buddhas. To the gang of eight guys in the Medicine Buddha. People ask me, which Diamond Way practice do you do?

Which one do you enjoy? I'm Vajrayogini, forget it. I'm totally in love with Vajrayogini, which is a female Buddha.

And for me, it's a lot more, I feel a lot more connection to a female Buddha. But this is all guys. This is like a soccer team or something.

I mean a male soccer team. So I don't know, if it's more attractive to you, that's fine. And I'm looking forward to teaching more Vajrayogini.

But everybody has their own taste. Some people like cinnamon rolls. Some people like yotel.

And Diamond Way is a very personal thing. Maybe you're attracted to the eight guys. Maybe you're attracted to Vajrayogini.

Maybe you're attracted to Tara. It's very much a personal choice. Diamond Way should be a personal choice.

So my job is to give you a selection of candy. Your job is to choose which one you want to eat. Question, I hope it's good.

I only interrupted my teacher once in my life.

[Speaker 2]
Since they're enlightened beings, couldn't they appear in the female form of the Buddha? Since they're enlightened beings, could they not appear in the female form as well?

[Speaker 1]
They could appear any way they want. Whatever will help people. They have that power.

But they do it. But our seeds elicit. Our seeds draw out male or female from them.

And then we get to know them as a male or a female. It's our seeds that make Medicine Buddha look like a boy soccer team. And it's our seeds that make Vajrayogini look like Vajrayogini.

And that's okay. That's valid. Is it interchangeable?

Yes. Is it really one or the other? Yes.

Okay. All right, good. So what's happening in the sadhana now, when you reach this part, we're starting a second round of the seven preliminaries.

We're starting through the seven preliminaries again. And the fifth Dalai Lama, he mixes the first two. He puts them together.

I make offering to you and I take my shelter in you. So he's mixing the first two. I bow down to you and I make offering to you.

Shelter here means I bow down to you. So these are the first two of the preliminaries. And they're always together for the eight Buddhas.

And this is the first of the Buddhas. The Buddhas have long names, the Medicine Buddhas, and they have short names. Like this is the passport name.

And then there's the short name. What's the short name? Here's the long name.

You tell me the short name. For zero dollars. King of Glory, whose name is proclaimed to the corners of the universe.

[Speaker 2]
Good name.

[Speaker 1]
He's just called Mr. Good Name. So I like the short name. Personally, I like the short name.

I don't like the passport name. I like the friendly name. So anyway, we're starting Good Name.

And I felt kind of guilty because I didn't get through Good Name really. I spent the whole course on Good Name. Good Name made eight prayers.

This Buddha made eight famous prayers. And I would like to explore with you the emptiness of his eight prayers, which means we're never going to get to the second Buddha. Okay?

And I'm sorry for that. But we just have a lot of things to do. I love the, I kind of feel like we should just take our time and enjoy the trip.

And I'm not in a rush to get to the East Coast. Let's just enjoy the trip. And when we get there, we get there.

If we have to pick up next life, it's okay. Right? That's okay.

We'll meet again. Okay? All right.

So let's get to the next thing then. Here's the real lung do. I think it's, wait a minute, really?

Do you have a number 40? 5.40. There you go. Can you show the English?

Yeah, there you go. Okay, when you stop the mistake, misunderstanding stops. When you stop misunderstanding, fresh karma and the rest come to a stop as well.

And this refers to the Wheel of Life. Okay? This refers to the Wheel of Life.

Why you are sick in the first place, why you need Medicine Buddha, is the first link of the Wheel of Life, which is, again? Yeah, there's something you didn't understand. And by the way, if we can wake up Bucci, we're going to talk about that book.

These guys were there when we translated it the first time, 50 years ago or something. Okay? But when you stop the mistake, misunderstanding stops.

So, for example, with Medicine Buddha, what would be the mistake? Yeah, thinking Medicine Buddha comes from Medicine Buddha's son. Okay?

It's like the pen, right? It's like the dog with the pen, right? If you think Medicine Buddha comes from Medicine Buddha, you made a mistake.

That's that classic mistake. Tomorrow, we have our weekly translation class, Saturday translation class, and we're going to have Word Smith here. He's going to come, and I'm not making any bets tomorrow.

There's the one guy who always wins all the money. Yeah, he'll come here tomorrow, and we'll be going very deep about this mistake. Okay, his book is going to go very deep about the mistake that we make, and it's the mother book of the Mind-Only School.

It was written by Tsongkhapa, and it's an extraordinary book about the Mind-Only School. And we're going to talk about the mistake tomorrow. It's a big, big subject.

We are making some mistake. We go to the temple, we see Medicine Buddha statue, we pray to the Medicine Buddha statue, and the last thing you're thinking is that they are coming from you. In Christian religion, I grew up Christian, you kind of think you come from them.

You see what I mean? They made you, but in Buddhism, kind of you make them, like that. You created them, and if you don't think that, if you don't understand that, they don't work.

It doesn't work. If you don't understand where they're coming from, they cannot be your doctor. It won't be successful.

But Geshe-la, I mean, a doctor who comes from me is going to be a pretty terrible doctor. I'm not a great person. Like I have all my mistakes, I have all my bad habits.

I'm an okay person. I mean, I didn't blow up any cities or anything, but I'm not some Buddha. I'm just a normal person.

How can I create a Buddha? How can you say the Medicine Buddha came from me? And really, it is impossible, but you did it.

And there's many, many parts of the universe where there's no Medicine Buddha, because the people there haven't got the seeds to create a Medicine Buddha. So if you're in a world that has not one Medicine Buddha, but eight, it means you're a special person. It really does mean that you're a special person.

So one of the most difficult things as a teacher, which you guys will find out, is that people refuse to admit that they are good. People fight it. You say you're good, and they say, no, I'm bad.

You say, no, you're good. And they say, no, I'm bad. Then they say, well, if you think you're bad, then confess, I don't want to.

Okay? Anyway, you created the Medicine Buddha. You created all eight of them, okay?

And if you don't think so, they can't help you. If you don't understand where they're coming from, they can't help you. That's why we're having the Garjuna class with Medicine Buddha class.

I can teach you the prayers. We can do the mantra stanzas. We can sit together and go home and pray.

We hope that your cancer goes away or something like that. I mean, that's what 99% of people do, but it doesn't work. And here's what the Garjuna says.

It doesn't work. And by the way, the Garjuna, Stanley was with me, Stanley Nelson. We were in Lima, Peru.

We were in a little coffee shop. We were there for five hours, if I'm not mistaken. And I was working on Nagarjuna's books, like what did Nagarjuna write?

And most people know about his Umariksa Droga, six books. He wrote six famous books. And we did a study, Stanley Nelson was there.

We did a study on John Brady's database. We found 141 books by Nagarjuna. And they are amazing.

John Brady has... Most people, if you ask them, what did Nagarjuna write? They will say six books.

And then we used John Brady's database, which cost about $15 million so far. And it's now the 35th anniversary of the database. And it's free.

It's totally free. And if you use it, if you know how to use it, we found 141 books by Nagarjuna. So there's something for you guys to translate.

I'm leaving a few for you. All right. If you stop misunderstanding the Medicine Buddhas, you will stop fresh karma.

If you stop link number one, you stop link number two. For $50, what's the two pictures for link number one and link number two? And since Sugeng translated the book, he doesn't get to answer.

[Speaker 2]
Mariana. Here, here.

[Speaker 1]
I did hurry. All right. This is a blind person.

For? Link number one. Misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding and link number two is creating karma is a person who is making pots. Good. Okay, good.

$50. And again, there's LUNG DOG here. If you stop link number one, that stops link number two.

If you stop link number two, you stop link number three. There's a Jackie Chan movie. Good one.

The people who made it were really smart because they got the best Chinese actor and the best Indian actor and the best American actor so they could sell the movie in three markets. So I think the lady is from India and Jackie Chan is Jackie Chan. There's some Americans in there.

Anyway, there's a conveyor belt and the lady is stuck on it. And there's this knife that's going like this. And then Jackie Chan's running around.

Jackie Chan's fighting with some guy who's trying to stop him from pulling the lady off the conveyor belt. And then finally, he jams some kind of metal stick into the machinery. And I'll give $100 for that.

You ready? Got very quiet. When you're looking for the special place on the machine where you can stop it, if you push a piece of metal there, this whole machine will die.

It's the weak point of the machine. Give me the Sanskrit. Hey, she decides.

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, Marma Hatha. Say Marma Hatha. Marma comes from, it's Sanskrit.

And the root is mer, which means to die. The root is mer, which means to die. Amartya comes from that.

Amartya means don't die. Mortuary, murder, they all come from mer. Hatha comes from an ancient root, han, which means to strike.

What's the English word that came from that? Gun. Gun comes from han, comes from hat.

Marma Hatha means shoot the crucial point. Killing point. Shoot the killing point.

What's the killing point in the Wheel of Life? Yeah, link number one. That's the only place you can stop the machine.

If you don't know where the weak point in the machine is and you keep fighting the machine your whole life, you won't succeed. It won't stop. You got to know the killing point, Marma Hatha.

And there's two examples in Tantra. What are they? Do you remember?

There's two examples of Marma Hatha. I'll just tell you. One is when you want to kill a tree.

When I came to Rashi Gampaling, St. Germa's husband, Hangor, just finished the temple with Dorsha and the other guys. And they were, I don't know, there's this big, all the construction stuff was, I got there the day after they finished, which was good luck. But there was construction, piles of construction garbage, and there was a big tree, a big oak tree.

And my teacher, I don't know if you know this story. Can't remember if Jay told me, get rid of the oak trees. It was a stump.

They cut the tree, but the stump was there. And he was always trying to find work for me because I was a young man trying to be celibate. And so he's like, dig that tree out.

And I'm like, okay. It took me about three years to dig the tree out. And in Tantra, there's a famous example of Marmahatta.

There's a taproot. You know taproot? Taproot means it's the main channel that the water is carried from the roots to the branches.

There's a main channel, taproot. In a lot of trees, the taproot is in the bark. It's not in the middle of the tree.

In a lot of trees, the bark carries the water up to the limbs and the leaves. There's not some center of the tree or something. Angelo can tell you because he's a tree expert for a city in Canada.

He planted all the trees for the whole city. Yay. But if you want to know the name of the city, you have to catch a cold.

[Speaker 2]
Go.

[Speaker 1]
It's go.

[Speaker 2]
Go.

[Speaker 1]
I went there. They asked me to teach there. There's like 12 people in the town.

No, there's how many? I don't know. 50,000?

150,000. So that's when you find the taproot in a tree and you take a piece of wood, a spike, and you tap it into the... You block the water channel.

The tree will fall down on its own. It takes a while, but the tree... I had a tree like that.

I really wanted to have a carob tree in my house because this is where I met my wife, was under a carob tree. It's called carob. It's a special tree.

You want to know the whole story? Carob grows in the Mediterranean. It's a tree.

It has a long bean, and inside the bean there are special seeds. And no matter where that tree grows in the world, the seeds weigh the same. So the seeds are...

No matter where the tree grows, whether it gets water or it doesn't get water, fertilizer, no fertilizer, the seeds are the same weight exactly. So in ancient times, when they had to weigh something tiny, they developed carrots from the carob tree. Carrot is the seed of the carob tree.

So like a 14-carat diamond, a 14-carat gold, 18-carat gold, one-carat diamond. These are all carobs. Anyway, I met my wife under a carob tree.

So I wanted to have a carob tree in my backyard, but the truck can't go there because the toilet stuff's under the ground. So I hired a crane and they lifted it over the house and they put it in the backyard. It was kind of expensive, but they put the strap around the bark and they cut off one tiny circle of bark and it killed the tree.

Yeah, because there was no water. That was marmahata. Okay, got it?

That's the first example of marmahata. Second example is trukhor, which means yantra in Sanskrit, which is an ancient word for a secret mandala or something. Yantra.

It's similar to mantra, okay? And this is a killing machine that was used to guard the king's gold. And it was a huge wheel with ropes machine in ancient times, thousands of years ago.

And then they had statues of soldiers with swords. And if you go in there, it detects you coming in and then the machine starts to move and it cuts your head off. But there's a weak point in the machine.

If you like crawl in and you put a stick in it, the whole machine breaks. Got it? That's killing point.

That's marmahata, okay? So here they say when you go at the wheel of life, when you ask Medicine Buddha for help, it's not going to work if you don't know the killing point. You won't be able to stop cancer, heart attack, things like that, diabetes, if you don't know the killing point.

And the killing point is knowing where it comes from. The killing point is knowing that the cancer comes from you. And that's the only way Medicine Buddha can help you.

Medicine Buddha cannot help you if you don't understand the killing point yourself. There's a famous idiom, 20 bucks Stanley. Do you know these guys offered me 20 bucks for every American idiom I teach them?

And they never paid me. Just kidding. Next line.

Now I forgot the idiom. Yeah, anyhow, I'll tell you. Anyway, you have to know where to kill it.

You have to know where to hit, where to strike. You have to know where to strike the killing point. Medicine Buddha doesn't work if you don't know where to strike your disease.

If you don't know where to strike your disease, Medicine Buddha doesn't work. What's the place to strike your disease? Understand where it's coming from.

Understand where it's coming from. In the end, every disease you ever have is coming from you. That's kind of why I'm so impatient with doctors.

People always offering to send me to a doctor or something. I'm like, it's okay, I understand where it's coming from. I'll try to take care of it myself.

I'm not saying don't go to a doctor, but take care of the karma first, then go to a doctor. And that's Medicine Buddha practice. And that's what Nagarjuna is saying here.

And if you don't understand Nagarjuna, you cannot practice Medicine Buddha. You can do the mantras, nothing's going to happen. And that's what happened for most of the last 2,000 years.

All right, and we got a few minutes. We're going to take questions in three minutes. Am I right, Tim?

Yes, okay. I want to finish one more thing. Let me see here.

Yeah, I think you guys, it's 5.41. That's the lady who's sick, I think. Right? We are starting Chapter 24 of the book called Wisdom.

We are starting Chapter 24 of the book called Wisdom. The book has 27 chapters total. When we started this retreat, we had six chapters left to do.

And now we're on the third one. We did 22, 23, and now we're going to start 24. We will never finish 24.

I mean, hopefully by Sunday we can finish Chapter 24. We're going to work on it. Then next year we have to do 25, 26, and 27.

And then we'll be done. All right. So the first prayer of good name is what?

I'm not, I mean, I don't, if you asked me, I wouldn't know either. It happens to be for sick people. And, oh, hang on.

Let me see if I've heard a tree yet. Huh?

[Speaker 2]
You have a tree.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, wow. That is the tree. It's in a garden, if you ever saw that book.

Who took that? Wow, nice job. It's in a church garden.

Okay. Can you go back to 5.39, you guys? It's a quotation.

One more, I think. Go back. One more.

5.39. It should say, recite these lines. Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee. Come on, I put numbers on there.

5.39. It says, recite these lines. Okay. Anyway, it's traditional.

When you ask the medicine Buddhas for help, you have to repeat it seven times. And we'll be seeing that with each of the seven medicine Buddhas. Technically there's seven medicine Buddhas and then there's a tour manager called Shakyamuni and he brings them to us.

So, why you have to recite it seven times? Because in the sadhana you're going to have to recite these lines, not the whole sadhana, but each time you bow down and each time you ask for help, you're supposed to repeat it seven times. Well, there's seven medicine Buddhas.

That makes sense. I'll tell you my opinion. You won't remember that he's coming from you for seven times.

Like if you just say, I bow down to you, I take refuge in you, and you keep going, you won't remember that he's coming from your seeds. I think, in my opinion, the reason you repeat it seven times is it gives you time to remember they're coming from your seeds. It gives you time to remember they're coming from your seeds.

So, when you recite it seven times, don't waste your time. Don't pay attention to the first one and then just space out on the other things. Same with your mantras.

Same when you do your mantras in retreat. The reason you do a million mantras in a lay room is, and we did a thousand days, right? We did three-year retreat.

Each time you do the mantra, you have to think about why they're coming from you. If you don't think about that and you just do the mantra, it's a waste of time. You're just wasting your time.

Okay, cool. All right, questions. And I'm going to let, who's picking the questioner?

I'll leave it up to you guys. Talk loud and talk slow. How many languages we got, Tim?

We are translating into 12 languages. Okay, so, those poor translators, by the end of the week, they're like, ah, ah, ah. So, talk slow and take your time.

First question, Geshe-la. It comes from online.

[Speaker 2]
It's a why question.

[Speaker 1]
So, why should I bow down and ask for help from the Medicine Buddha if my true protection is the Ten Virtuous Deeds? Yeah, good, good question. Mm, this is the weird thing, okay?

If they're coming from me, why do I have to talk to them anyway? If they're coming from me, why do I have to talk to them anyway? And Nagarjuna would say, if they're not coming from you, why would you have to talk to them anyway?

Nagarjuna will answer the question with a question. If they're coming from me, why do I have to ask them for help? And Nagarjuna says, well, if they're not coming from you, then why do you have to ask them for help?

And that's Nagarjuna's famous answer to that first question. If a person's coming from me, then why do I even have to talk to them? And then Nagarjuna's answer is always the same.

How could you talk to them if they weren't coming from you? Answer me that, and then I'll answer your question. And we never get to the answer, right?

Because they are coming from me. Get over it, my teacher said, get over it. Get over it.

They're coming from me, right? Yes. And I still have to ask them for help?

Yes. Get over it. Yes, they're coming from you.

And you still have to ask them for help. And you still have to bow down to them. Why do I have to bow down to someone who's coming from me?

You still have to do it. And the only way you can bow down is if you understand where they're coming from. Otherwise, you're bowing down to the wrong person.

Got it? Okay. All right.

Next question. So another question from online. This is from Galena, and she's a big ACI volunteer.

Yay. She's everywhere. So thank you very much for all your help, Galena.

So here's a, this question is, if a doctor is constantly healing, why does he consistently see sick patients? Oh yeah, because the patients don't listen to the doctor. Okay, that's pretty easy.

So the doctor has the karma for the patients not to listen to them. That's true. Yeah.

So if the doctor changed that karma, then they would stop seeing sick patients? Yeah. Okay.

Alay. Yeah, yeah, that's why. Why, there's a, I'll tell you a famous thing, okay?

Did the, are the Buddhists, by the way, this is the opening lines of the Pramanavarttika. We had CHOG CHUG DE BYAS KYI BA YID, which is beginning formal logic study, but there's a preface. YONG RGYUR BDE NA DE NI GZHAN LA PHAN PA YIN ZHES SANGS PA'A MED SKYE BO PHAL CHOS PA'I LA CHAGS ZHIG ZHES RAB GSAL MED DE DAG LAS ZHES RNAMS SDUG BSNGAL MED NYUR KHOR NA MA ZAD DRAG PO RGYUR NI MTHONG DANG BAR YANG YONG RGYUR BDE NA DA LA DE NI GZHAN LA PHAN PA YIN ZHES SANGS PA'A MED SKYE BO PHAL CHOS PA'I LA CHAGS Most normal people are attracted to normal stuff.

SKYE BO PHAL CHOS PA'I LA CHAGS ZHIG ZHES RAB GSAL MED DE DAG And they don't have any wisdom. They don't have any quick wisdom. ZHES RAB GSAL MED DE DAG LAS ZHES RNAMS SDUG BSNGAL MED NYUR ZHES Therefore, they have absolutely no interest in my book.

SDUG BSNGAL MED NYUR KHOR NA MA ZAD Not only that, DRAG PO RGYUR NI MTHONG DANG BAR YANG They also very jealous when I write a book. DRAG PO RGYUR NI MTHONG DANG BAR YANG YONG RGYUR BDE NA Because of this situation, DA LA DE NI GZHAN LA PHAN PA YIN ZHES SANGS PA'A MED Therefore, I'm not claiming that my book's going to help anybody. And he said, I'm just writing this book to review it for myself.

That's the opening lines of one of the five greatest books in history. It's like, I know you guys don't care. I don't care.

I'm still going to write the book to help myself. What was the question? No, it means, look, the doctor knows the patient's not going to listen, but the doctor wants to get the method of the cure deeper into the doctor's mind, so the doctor can be cured.

So that's a common Buddhist question. Like, why should I teach if the students don't listen? Geshe-la, you're teaching for yourself.

You're teaching to improve yourself. You should be the first patient. The first patient should be the doctor.

Okay? Okay. Next question, Tim.

By the way, that's Dharmakirti. I love those lines. I love them.

[Speaker 2]
How about Tracy? Yay. Yay.

I work with a lot of people who've had a lot of traumas and a lot of PTSD, and a lot of children who haven't had resources that they needed. So my question is, I know it's my mirror, but when I see the self-compassion and self-love ignite within them, a lot of magic happens, but I also feel a lot of obstacles getting through it. So what can you share in regards to self-compassion and self-love that could be possibly beneficial to anybody that relates to this?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. Okay. So here's a little, I told you this story, but I'll tell you.

So I was asked to go to a house in California, and the mother asked me to go meet the child. And the child is severely autistic. And she said, is there anything you can do for the child?

And I'm like, helping someone improve their seeds, that process requires that the person you're helping make some effort to improve their seeds. So how do you convey to a seriously autistic child, how do you get them to improve their seeds? And we actually worked on it for a year.

Me and the mom, I went back home, I would write her, we would talk about it. And we came up with this thing. She would take the autistic child to the hospital.

She would buy presents for the other children's hospital. She would buy presents for the other children in the hospital. Then she would put her son next to the sick kids, and she'd put a gift in her son's hands, a toy.

And then she would hold his hands, and then we would move his hands to the other kid, and then we'd pull his hands off, and the gift would drop out in the other kid's lap. And he'd be like, you know. So we did this for a year.

And we figured that karma has four steps, right? ZHIS BSAM PA RGYUR BA THAR TU And there's no intention. He has no intention.

It's not his will to give a gift to the other child. But there's a THAR TU, which in Abhidharma means there is a completion of the action. He did complete the action.

He didn't intend to complete the action, but he completed the action. It's like when you drive your car and you kill insects. There's no motivation.

You don't say, I'm going to go out and kill some insects. You just drive to the store and you kill some insects. But there is completion.

There's no intention to kill the insects, but you do kill them. So there's not heavy karma because the main karma comes from your intention. But there is the karma of completion.

You call it the karma of completion. So that kid had the karma of completion, but no karma of intention, which is much, much less, but it works. It's a little bit.

It's a little bit. So we did this for a year. And then I came back.

She said, I was in teaching in California and she said, come to the house. I want to show you something. And I went back to the house and she said, sit down.

And the boy came in and he sat down at the piano and he played like a Beethoven sonata. Perfect. Because autistic kids have this attention.

They have a limited, but very powerful attention. And then now he plays music and he's a good musician. So I think when you have a problem like that, you kind of put the children into situations where they have to rejoice in their goodness and keep putting them in that situation artificially and then it will change their seeds.

You see what I mean? So keep putting them artificially into situations where they have to admit that they did something right and then those seeds will take over even when there's not much intention.