Нагарджуна, курс 5 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 5: Будда Медицины и мудрость Нагарджуны (2023, Аризона), занятие 8

[Speaker 1]
All right, welcome back. Yesterday, we had a wonderful ceremony. They asked me to go to the ceremony.

I'm like, I don't want to go to the ceremony. And they're like, please. And I'm like, can I just go for one minute?

And they're like, okay. And then I went to the ceremony and it was so much fun, I stayed. And I had a good time, which is unusual.

So, we opened the, we consecrated the first stupa yesterday. And we have some photos for you guys online. People read the whole, Good Name, I think, Good Name's Prayers, Eight Prayers.

Yeah, there's a lot. This was a little piece of stupa that everybody got. Yay.

And thank you to all the sponsors. And we had the two main people, which is Venerable Sunim and Hanli, were there yesterday, who worked for years to get the stupas done. They are pure marble, which is very, very difficult, very, very expensive.

The marble was fashioned in Portugal with lasers and only the Portuguese know how to do the marble right. And so they finished the first one and we consecrated it yesterday. We got six more to go, or seven?

Six more. And the biggest sponsor, who everybody knows, Dr. Wu, has asked me and the board if we could make the final stupa, we'd like to make the final stupa up above high. We'd like to make it about double height.

Double height, I can see, yeah. Three times higher. And it'll have a special room inside where you can meditate.

We think about, I think seven to 10 people can meditate inside the stupa. So that's this grand plan we have. So we'd like to thank everyone.

It's been a big expense. Sometimes I'm a little bit doubt that we should spend so much money. But these things last for centuries.

And I think all of us have visited great stupas in Indonesia or China, India, and they last way, way beyond our life. And they inspire people for many generations. And I think there will be blessings in these stupas, not just to have a place of, you know, where people worship, but where people learn the teachings also.

And so that's the goal of these stupas, that should last for thousands of years. But also the teachings connected with the stupas should last. So that's the goal.

And it was very, very beautiful yesterday. Thank you all the sponsors for this. And thank you the hard work of the Diamond Mountain staff, especially Cinnamon Hunley.

They had endless headaches. Endless headaches. The mine behind Diamond Mountain where the marble is taken out of, it hasn't been active for 100 years.

And they really opened it back up. And it's kind of a big blessing because that marble extends into Diamond Mountain. It goes about 2,000 feet deep.

So it's cool. All right, let's get to work. You guys ready?

Me and Francisco every morning were like, you got the same one that I do. Yeah, that's good. This is about the prayers of Good Name, whose stupa we opened yesterday.

He made prayers. He made eight prayers for people in the future. And he prayed that he could, that people's poverty, or problems with your finances, let's put it that way, that he made a prayer that if you say his name at least seven times a day or something, then you would be released from poverty.

And we started talking about it yesterday. We mentioned a book by Dharmakirti, Pramanavarttika, the root text on accurate perception. And in that book, they claim that the Buddhists have reached the perfection of other people's goals and their own goals.

And then there's a bitter debate in the monastery. I understand that the Buddha maybe has reached their own goals, but I don't see how you can say that they have perfected other people's goals. Because we can see there's lots of poor people left in the world.

How can you say the Buddha is perfect if there's still poor people in the world? How can you say their work is, how can you say they are a final Buddha if there's still poor people in the world? And that's a huge debate.

And we could debate it, and we debated it for a month in the monastery, like many, many hours. But the bottom line is they do destroy poverty because they destroy the misunderstanding which creates poverty. And that's a very, it's a sign of our own misunderstanding.

You say, do I have the first link of the wheel of life? We talked about it in words class, I think. Do I have the, do I possess the first link of the 12 links of the suffering wheel of life?

And there's a test you can do, self-test, like a self-COVID test or something. And you can do a test on yourself. And it's how willing are you to give?

How willing are you to give away what you have? Are you willing to give away what you have? And me, Rob Rossinger and his Seiji Noor, I called them before I came to Diamond Mountain.

I said, I'm going to Diamond Mountain. And they're like, yeah, we know. Because we take money out of the company.

We take money out of our company. And we donate it. And we try to, there's a bad word in English.

Can I say it? No. My wife doesn't like it.

Is there a better way to say that? It's like when you take a needle and you poke somebody in the butt and wake them up. I need the needle to poke the donations in the butt.

And that's the money that I bring here. So I'm like, do we have any extra money in the company? Can we kind of, what do you call it?

Blackmail people to donate? And then I get to a point where they say, yeah, you can do that, but it's going to be a hard year next year. You won't have any money next year.

Or the company will be short on money next year. And then the question, if you want to check your own level of misunderstanding, do you want to check if you have link number one in your heart or not? It's how much do you hesitate when it comes...

You know, it's easy to donate your extra money. And then it comes down to your real money. And then you're like, I don't know.

And that's a sign of link number one. If you want to know if you have link number one. Because that hesitation believes that if you give the last amount, you won't have anything.

And that's total ignorance. That's total ignorance. If you don't give the last amount, that's when you start having financial problems.

When you hesitate. You're hesitating to give. In my case, and I also hesitate.

I give away the extra that we have. But when you get down to the company, company money, I'm like, I don't know. That's a sign that you have link number one in your heart.

That hesitation. Because you believe you won't get it back. Or you don't believe you're going to get 10 times more.

So that's a sign that you don't understand the Dharma. If you had perfected giving, right? Sharing.

You give everything. Because you know you're just going to get more. You see, when you hesitate, you get back less.

When you don't hesitate, you get back more. By the way, if you don't hesitate and give and then hesitate later, that's a disaster. That cancels the whole positive samsara.

Okay, I'll say it again. If you decide to give, till it hurts, right? Because you understand this is how to make money.

But then you doubt three days later. You're like, man, Geshe-la is so persuasive. I gave all my last money and now, oh, stupid.

When you doubt at the end, then you hurt the karma. So if you're not ready, don't do it. But if you understand it, then do it and don't doubt it.

It'll come back more. I'm just saying, I'm not trying to get money out of you. I'm trying to talk to Geshe Michael.

A lot of my teaching is for Geshe Michael. He needs it. So I'm like, don't forget where your money comes from.

Come on, you can do it. If I had a lot of sleep, I believe him. And if I didn't have a lot of sleep, I don't believe him.

So stupid, right? Anyway, has the Buddha overcome poverty? Yes.

Does the world still have poor people? Yes. No contradiction, no contradiction.

What do they see the world? We don't know. Probably they don't see poor people.

And then there's another question that comes from that and I'm going to talk about it later. All right. Next slide, Francisco.

You're having a good day. Okay. And thank you again, all you TED guys.

You guys don't get to see them. I get to see them all day. It's really beautiful.

It's like the eight medicine Buddhas or something. I get to look at them all during the class. And they're cool people.

And they're very generous with their time. We should give them a hand. And some of them have been doing it for a long, long time.

Gina's been designing our books and all of our prayer books and stuff for many years. And thank you for that. Please live long life.

Okay. Here's a question from Nagarjuna. And we're still, when we started the program, we had six chapters left.

And Grandpa foolishly thought he's going to finish six chapters. And we're going to finish two chapters. And then I'm sorry, we have to keep going in the other program.

So we're covering this chapter. What is it? Last chapter was an investigation of Tathagata, the ones gone thus.

And this one is an investigation of negative emotions. We're still in that chapter. Chapter 24.

Then we still have 25, 26, 27 to do. So we're in 24. Say again?

Oh, I'm sorry. He miswrote in here. I think we, hang on one second.

I think we're in 24 now. I'm sorry. What is 24?

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, we're in 24, which is an investigation of the four higher truths. And now he says, if neither the Dharma nor the community exist, then how can the Buddha exist?

If you talk about emptiness the way you are, then you are hurting the whole idea of the Three Jewels. So I'd like to talk about the Three Jewels. I went to my teacher straight from Princeton.

I went directly on graduation. The day after graduation I went to my teacher. My professor handed me over to my Lama and said, take good care of him.

He drove me there. So anyway, I came out of a Christian background. I was living at the university.

The last year of the university I didn't have any money at all. I didn't have enough money to stay in the dormitory. So I had to find a room somewhere.

And I stayed in the Christian church. So I was friends with the priest. So they let me stay.

My religion was Episcopal. And the priest can marry, and they had kids. So I was a babysitter for the priest's kids.

They gave me a room in the church. So one day I'm in the Christian church sleeping there, and then the next day I'm at this Buddhist temple, Kalmyk Mongolians, and there's a lot of differences. There were a lot of differences.

And one of them was the Trinity. Where I grew up, in Christian religion, they say God has three parts. They say Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

So Father is like this invisible big guy somewhere, and Son is Jesus Christ, and then Holy Ghost is, I don't know. It's like the spirit of the whole thing. So I grew up with these three dudes.

Tres hombres. I'm comfortable with this idea. I grew up with that since I was a little kid.

And then I come to the next day, I'm in the Kalmyk Mongolian temple, and my teacher's like, it's three, okay? It's three guys. I'm like, good.

I can understand that. And he said, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. And I'm like, great, that fits.

And then slowly I realized they're not the same at all. Slowly I understand what's the three jewels. But I want to say, I think a lot of Buddhists think that the three jewels are like the Trinity, or the three parts of Christianity.

I think a lot of Buddhists think that the three jewels are three guys somewhere, and you have to be nice to them, or they won't be good to you. Because that's kind of what we learned in the Christian church. By the way, which I don't think is the essence of Christianity.

I think real Christians are practicing much deeper. But there's a common idea that there's three guys. And then in Buddhism, I think there's a common idea that there's three guys, and you have to be nice to them, or something like that.

And then in the Geshe course, one of the earliest topics, Abhisam Alankara, which is what Tim is translating. And by the way, we spent 12 years on it. The first 12 years of the Geshe course, half the Geshe course is one small book.

And that's the one that Tim is translating. And they talk about the three jewels. Who is the three jewels?

And what does it mean in Buddhism when you take refuge? Say, I go for refuge. BUD DAM SARGAM GACCHAMI DHAR MAM SARGAM GACCHAMI SANGAM SARGAM GACCHAMI This is ancient going for refuge in Sanskrit, or Pali.

These are, I go for refuge. So what does it mean to go for refuge to the three jewels? Who are the three jewels?

And I love that topic. I was blown away. I was so amazed when I read in the Geshe course when we studied the three guys.

I'm like, wow, that's completely different from what I was thinking. And I was so impressed, I made it ACI course number? Two, two or three?

Two, yeah. And I'll summarize it for you here because it comes in Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna's talking about it.

And he says, half the verses in his most famous book are the other guy talking. Half the verses in wisdom are criticism from the other guy. And sometimes it's hard to tell who's talking.

You're like, that sounds great. And then the commentator says, this is the stupid guy. And you're like, oh yeah, I knew that.

So he says, if the Dharma, so it's the other guy talking. This is a telangir. This is a prasangika.

This is a sarcasm from the other guy. Oh, so Dharma's empty? Yes.

Sangha's empty? Yes. Okay, then they don't exist.

Then how's their Buddha? That's the other guy talking. It's called a statement of consequence, prasangika.

It means, if you tell me a wrong thing, like the Dharma has no nature of its own and the sangha or the community has no nature of its own, then I say, well, okay, then there's no Buddha. That's a sarcastic response. If you don't know about it, get married.

Your wife will say, oh, so that means, we do, anyway. So this is the other guy talking. If there's no Dharma and if there's no sangha, then I guess there's no Buddha.

I'll give $100 if you can tell me what he's thinking. And it's not obvious. You have to think about it.

$100, I'll say it again. He says, if the first two jewels don't exist, well, sorry, if jewel number two and jewel number three don't exist, if there's no Dharma and there's no community, no sangha, then how can there be a Buddha? He said that.

Why is he thinking like that? What's the relationship between Buddha and the Dharma and the sangha? And don't say what you're thinking.

No, think deeper, think deeper.

[Speaker 2]
I think that this guy is thinking that nothing is real, but it is a consequence of misunderstanding. Therefore, he thinks that nothing exists at all, which is wrong, because there is Dharma, there is sangha, and there is Buddha.

[Speaker 1]
It's a good guess, and it's not the right one. I'll say it again. He says, his prasangika, his statement of consequence, he's like, if there's no Dharma and there's no community, then how can there be a Buddha?

That's his statement. I think this is one of the extremes of the Haya Middle Way. Say it again.

Nihilism. This is going into the nihilism side. It's going, I'm sorry.

What do you call it, nihilism? Nihilism. Oh, nihilism.

Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Oh, yeah, that's okay. But what I'm saying is, if you're going to give me a correct answer, I'll give you a clue.

He's saying there's a relationship between the Buddha and the Dharma and the sangha. And if these don't exist, then this one can't exist. What's he mean?

If there's no understanding of emptiness and there's no one who's seen emptiness directly, then I can't be the Buddha. Yeah, that's okay. I'll buy it.

Okay, okay. But I'll say it a little differently. If I was in my Christian days, right?

If I was in my Christian days, and by the way, I deeply follow both. I think they're very beautiful. I learned many good things in the church and I love them and I keep them.

But in that trinity, in that gang of three guys, in that model, Buddha made the Dharma and Sangha. You see what I mean? Buddha designed the Dharma and Sangha.

So if Dharma and Sangha don't exist, then what's the purpose of a Buddha that there's no need for Buddha? If there's no community and if there's no realizations or teachings, then why you need a Buddha? And Nagarjuna disagrees with me.

Nagarjuna says, don't think like that. Don't think like the Christian three. It's not like that.

He wants to flip it around. Nagarjuna wants to flip it. What's that?

If there's no Dharma and Sangha, how do you create a Buddha? You see what I mean? When you grow up in the Christian church, the model would be, Buddha worked hard and made a teaching and because of the teaching, a community exists.

Nagarjuna says, don't think like that. Dharma came, community came, and they created Buddhas. It's very interesting.

That's what you said, right, Rebecca? She's like... When he says here, if there's no Dharma and there's no community, then how can you have a Buddha?

It means the next Buddha. You see what I mean? If there's no teaching and there's no people that follow the teaching, how could you have a Buddha?

Now, who's talking? Who's asking the question? The other guy.

The other guy. He's attacking us. He's attacking us.

You said there's no Dharma. You said there's no Sangha. So how do you say you can get Buddhas?

Because they come from the Dharma and the Sangha. Who's talking? The other guy.

Then we should say, by the way, the answer to a statement of consequences, I never said there's no Dharma. I never said there's no Sangha. What are you talking about?

And he says, yes, it is. You did say that. You said they were empty.

You said the teachings were empty. You said the people practicing the teachings are empty. Therefore, there can be no Buddhas created by those two guys.

Because they're empty. Empty means they don't exist. And we're like, oi!

In the diamond business, diamond business is all Jewish. Everybody's like, oi! Oi, you're so stupid.

That's not how you make a Buddha. That's not what we mean when we say empty. We don't mean they don't exist.

We just mean they don't exist without my seeds. That's all. We never said there's no Dharma.

We never said there's no Sangha. We never said that. If we did say that, maybe you're right.

But you're not right. The other guy's never right. By the way, Sugeng knows this.

Now, I'll say the second half of the verse. You tell me who's talking. Who's talking?

If you talk about emptiness the way you're talking about emptiness, it hurts the whole idea of the Three Jewels. I don't know. It could be Nagarjuna.

It could be the other guy. Don't forget the other guy is saying, if Nagarjuna, if you keep insisting that everything is empty, you're going to destroy the Three Jewels. Because you're destroying the two that create the third.

You're destroying the two that create the third. Therefore, there could be no Three Jewels. When I had this breakthrough in the Geshe course, and they taught me what's really the Three Jewels, I was like, wow.

I was like, wow. Because every one of the Three Jewels is emptiness. I was like, it just blew me away.

I'm not supposed to go, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, please help me. I'm not supposed to say that. I'm supposed to say, Buddha is emptiness.

Dharma is emptiness. Sangha is emptiness. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 2]
Stuff like that.

[Speaker 1]
That's worship. That's religion in Buddhism. It's not go to the temple and make prostrations and things like that.

It's not stupas. That's not Buddhism. Buddhism is emptiness in three packages.

Buddhism is emptiness in three packages. Later you can quote me. You should put that in the book of Geshe Michael's.

Buddha is emptiness in three different packages. Now, I'll give a hundred bucks if somebody can tell me why. By the way, this is a test to see if you passed ACI course number two.

If you can tell me, why is the Three Jewels all connected with emptiness? Ines is going to take a shot. Talk loud and slow.

Don't forget you're being translated.

[Speaker 2]
We do not talk here about the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. We talk here about the jewel of the Buddha, the jewel of the Dharma, and the jewel of the Sangha. The jewel of the Buddha is emptiness of the Dharmakaya.

[Speaker 1]
Wow, excellent.

[Speaker 2]
Emptiness of the Buddha.

[Speaker 1]
Wait, say it again.

[Speaker 2]
The jewel of the Buddha is the emptiness of the Buddha. And this is the only thing that is common between us and them. So it's actually, we are feasible.

It's feasibility. We can become Buddhas. Second is the jewel of the Dharma is actually the realizations that we get from the past, meaning seeing emptiness directly, reaching nirvana and Buddhahood.

Whoa, hot. So it is actually the fact that we can reach something on the path. There is a path.

And the jewel of the Sangha is the realizations in the minds of the community, Aryas and realized beings. So it's actually from the other side, it confirms that the teachings do work.

[Speaker 1]
So I would say that's a $300 answer in total. Yeah, and you got to get used to it, okay? We don't build a stupa so you can go pray to it or something like that.

We're not praying to a piece of rock. No, and you have to be careful with stupas. You have to be careful with stupas.

You are not worshiping a stupa. There's lots of mountains here. They're much bigger, cheaper.

You can pray to them if you want. So when you pray to Buddha, you're actually praying to the emptiness of a Buddha. Nothing about the Buddha is coming from their own side.

When you meet a Buddha, they are coming from you. They are coming from you. And if you don't understand that, you are worshiping the Buddha the wrong way.

So I'd say in the history of Buddhism, there's probably very few people who were practicing Buddhism. There's very few people who understood that. I'm not bowing down to some guy.

I'm bowing down to the fact that he comes from me. That's very deep. I was so happy when I learned that.

Dharma then is the understanding that he's coming from me. That's the teaching. That's the real teaching.

You tend to think of Dharma as books or translations, and it's not. It's just to understand the pen is Dharma. People understand the pen are taking refuge in Dharma.

And only them, only them. And the millions and millions of other Buddhists don't know what the heck they're doing. They're not practicing Buddhism.

And then sangha, people who got it, people who understood about the pen. And classically, they should have seen emptiness directly. But then Buddhism becomes a very lonely thing.

So I think we can say anyone who understands about the pen, maybe we should call ourselves penists and not Buddhists. Are you a penist? Yeah.

Well, from Pennsylvania penist, you're P-E-N-I-S-T. Okay. Anyway, that's the big teaching here.

And Nagarjuna is like the seed for that idea that came for the next 2,000 years after him. He triggered this understanding of religion. That's Buddhism.

And to bow down to a statue or to walk around a stupa is not Buddhism. Unless you're thinking about seeds while you're walking. Unless you're thinking about seeds.

So hopefully, our stupas will attract penists and not superstition. The rest is superstition. And it leads to disappointment.

Why? They cannot help you. They cannot help you.

You can pray to Buddha all day, you won't make 10 cents. When you pray to them, they get very cheap. It doesn't work.

And then you get countless people living their whole life in doubt and disappointment. And it applies to Christianity and Buddhism. If you don't understand it, you're just going to see your family die off and you're going to see war and say, how can God allow this?

Why is Buddha allow this? Why is killing this morning in Gaza or Ukraine? Why?

Otherwise, you're going to give it up. You're going to give up so many people, millions of people give up religion because it doesn't make sense. Those are the smart ones.

Those are the ones, they really, they don't want to believe superstition. And they're like, this doesn't help anybody. Millions of people give it up because they don't understand it.

They don't understand this verse. Penism. Let's get a copyright on that right away.

Okay, next one. This is why we go so slow, Geshe-la. Yeah, 5.49, Francisco. By the way, this is a book I wrote in three-year retreat. You probably know about it. I was going to write a major commentary to the Yoga Sutra.

I got 800 pages finished. I sneaked it out of retreat to my publisher in New York and he sneaked me a letter back and said, it's too long, throw it out. And then I wrote this book.

And it's a short book about the Yoga Sutra. And the essence of the book, one of the themes of the book is that there's a young lady, a thousand years ago, who actually became a Geshe secretly. And she gets put into a prison wrongly.

She's accused of stealing a book. Because in those days, a woman shouldn't have a book. There's no reason, because they're not allowed to read.

So anyway, and then the whole, one of the themes of the book is that the inside of the prison becomes the outside of the prison. And it's only the people in the prison who are free. And if you're not in the jail, you are in jail.

If you are not in the jail, you are in jail. She creates freedom inside the jail. And all the people who didn't get to go to the jail are not free.

They don't have freedom. Why are we talking about that? Why is Geshe-la talking about that?

Does Geshe-la have ADD? Does Nagarjuna just skip from subject to subject? Why am I talking about jails?

In the prayers of good name. What? Yeah, it's one of his eight prayers.

One of his eight prayers. In the future, if somebody repeats my name seven times, at least seven times, probably seven million times, they should never stay in a jail. They should never have to stay in a jail.

So I like this prayer. I really like this prayer because we pray for poor people. We pray for sick people.

But if you have done work in a prison, if you have taught in a prison, that's unbelievable suffering there. Incredible suffering there. It's a special, special suffering.

And nobody thinks much about it because the people there are bad people. So we don't care. What's one of the saddest places in the whole world is inside the prison.

And then people, in their heart they say, that's okay, they killed somebody, they shouldn't suffer. Or they stole money, they should suffer. Like that.

We don't feel compassion about people in prison. We feel like, oh, they put themselves there. They should stay there.

But we had a group here and we taught in the prison near Tucson. And we taught for many years. I think we taught for 15 years there.

And it's quite an experience. You need a special training. The government train you to go into the prison.

And then you need a lot of security clearances. And there's many, many rules to teaching the prison, to go into the prison to teach. There's many rules.

So we did it. We got all the permission. We had all this training to go into.

Why the training? Just before our program, there was another program, actually by a Christian lady. And the prisoner, the handsome prisoner convinced her that he didn't do a crime and she should help him to escape.

So she's teaching in the prison and he's very handsome. And I think she fell in love with him. And she believed his story.

And the story is always the same in the prison. I was just standing there. The police grabbed me.

I didn't do anything. It's always the same story. Sometimes it's true.

Most of the time it's not true. She believed it. Then she brought him some clothes.

They tried to escape together. The prison people are not stupid. And she went to prison.

Anyway, it's very difficult to teach in the prison. Extremely difficult. It's very uncomfortable.

The prisoners are angry. They're violent. They work out all day.

They're strong. One day they told us, you're supposed to come next Tuesday, right? We're like, yeah.

And they said, don't come. We're like, what? And they said, do not come next Tuesday.

Stay home. And we're like, thanks. And the next Tuesday they had a riot and the prisoners took over the jail.

It happens like that. They planned it like six weeks ahead or something. So it's dangerous.

It's a dangerous place to be. For us, the reason we don't do it anymore is when we all moved to Sedona, it's a four hour drive one way. It's eight hours driving to go teach in the prison.

We just couldn't do it. We just couldn't keep it up. But I say one thing, when you come out of the prison from teaching prisoners and you smell the fresh air on the other side of the fence, you feel so happy.

When you teach prisoners, you feel extreme joy after you do it. You get out of the jail and they have to go through three gates. Three guys check you.

And then you go out and you're like, ah, I'm glad I don't live in there. And then you're like, I'm so glad I'm doing this. I'm so glad I'm helping prisoners.

And so if you have a chance, it's a great, great thing to do in your own country. It's pretty easy to make a course. It's pretty easy to get into the prison.

Make sure you can get out. And it's extremely happy feeling to help them because prisoners are the most unhappy people in the world. They are the most unhappy people in the world.

There's something very, very bad feeling when your society tells you, we hate you and we don't want to see you. You see what I mean? It's like 10 million people are telling you, I hate you.

I don't care if I never see you again. I'm going to put you in a room and I don't want to see you. And I'm going to forget about you.

In English they say, I'm going to throw away the key. It's such a terrible feeling to... War is very similar.

War is very, very similar. What is trauma in war? What is trauma?

It means somebody wants you gone from this earth. Somebody wants to take your life. Someone wants to kill you.

Someone hates you so much they want you to disappear from this world. And when you have that feeling for the first time, you really are a soldier and somebody tries to kill you and you're like, there's one person in this world who hates me so much they want me to disappear from this world forever. And that's what creates trauma in a war.

Someone wants me not to exist in this world and it's the worst feeling. It's the most terrible feeling. Someone doesn't want me to exist.

Someone wants a world without me. Someone would prefer a world without me. That's what trauma comes in a war.

It's when you finally... Someone shoots at you. I had someone shoot at me once and then you're like, wow, somebody doesn't want me to exist in this world.

And the feeling is the worst feeling. In prison it's very, very similar. Someone doesn't want to see me for 20 years or 30 years.

They want me to disappear from this world for 20 years. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible... Psychologically, it's a terrible feeling.

All the guys in the prison have this feeling. Everyone hates me. They don't even want to see me for 20 years.

It's a terrible, terrible suffering. So this Medicine Buddha, good name, I really like it that he's praying for people in prison. I love it.

It means he really understands suffering. It's one of the greatest sufferings in life when someone says, I would like to not see you for 20 years or I would like to kill you. It's a terrible, terrible suffering.

So I think this prayer, I love this prayer. We're going to look at the prayer. Are you ready Francisco?

There's the prayer, fifth prayer. There are those of us and other living beings as well who are kept in chains and beaten and thrown into prison and whose bodies are hurt by people with all kinds of different weapons until the day of their final enlightenment. May all of us be completely free of ever being chained or beaten or anything of the like.

May every sort of bodily abuse come to a complete end in this world. That's his fifth prayer. That's the fifth prayer, good name.

I just want to say, I think it's a good prayer to focus on. When you're doing Medicine Buddha practice, I don't know, there's so many prayers, dozens of prayers. This particular prayer is very attractive to me.

I love this prayer because to be put into prison is a special suffering. It's a special suffering. I went to prison briefly.

I was protesting against the Vietnam War and I got put into prison. It's a great suffering. So anyway, it's a great prayer, I think, to me.

Later the government contacted me and said, we made a mistake. I'm like, thanks. They said, we will remove your record.

I said, no, I'm proud of it. You can keep it. I'm keeping it.

I still have it. They tried to erase it and I said, no. I'm proud.

It's my good karma. I want to keep it. All right, 551 Francisco.

Lord Buddha says, if you want to help people in prison, use the two realities. If you want to help people in prison, use the two realities. So we're moving on to the two realities.

There's two different realities and we're going to talk about it. This is a very, very deep subject. Whose book it came up in?

Somebody's book. It's coming up this week. I think it's coming up in Nick's book.

I think. No? It's Kuntub Dhamma, Dundum Dhamma, Deceptive Reality and Ultimate Reality.

So Buddhism teaches that reality divides into two realities. It's called Kuntub Dhamma and Dundum Dhamma. Kuntub Dhamma means fake reality and Dundum Dhamma means real reality.

Ultimate reality. So Buddhism divides your world into two kinds, fake reality and real reality. You want to go deeper?

Fake reality has two parts. You ready? Correct fake reality and wrong fake reality.

So we're going to go there. So let's say it again. And by the way, this is not philosophical BS.

I didn't say the real word, okay? This is not just some philosophy. There's no philosophy in the translation classes, for example, that you cannot use in your real life.

There's nothing there. It's a joke. At the end of the class, is there anything here you could use in your real life?

It's a joke because it is the only thing you could use in your real life. The rest is bullshit, BS. Everything else you learn in the university or something, that's the BS.

This is not the BS. Everything you learn in the translation classes is the only thing that can help you. Forget those other courses.

All right, but anyway, I don't say that publicly. So there's two, I call it two and a half realities. And this is a deep subject.

I'll go for five minutes, then we'll take Q&A. Right, Tim? Am I right, or I go for another 20 minutes?

How's it work? Okay, so we'll do Q&A in about five minutes. And if I don't finish this topic, we'll finish it in the next class, okay?

Is that good, Timothy? Okay. Should I make a bet?

I don't know. I mean, my money's getting stretched. I should stop, right?

See, see, there it is. Let's take a bet. So there's ultimate reality, which is emptiness, okay, ultimate reality.

And then there's deceptive reality. And it's interesting, it's real. Both of them are real.

Both of them exist. Both of them are real. One is what it seems, and the other is not what it seems.

But they're both real, and they're both valid. There's two realities. One is ultimate reality, and the other is like relatively reality.

It's real, but it's not what it looks like, okay? Anything that, well, that's tricky. Ultimate reality is a double negative.

What's that mean? There's nothing that don't come from seeds. Yeah, okay, that's ultimate reality, okay?

There's nothing that doesn't come from seeds. That's ultimate reality, okay? You know, everybody says, I want to see emptiness, I want to see emptiness.

It's very simple. There's nothing that don't come from seeds. That's bad English, but it's funny.

There ain't nothing that don't come from seeds. There's nothing that doesn't come from seeds. That's emptiness, very simple.

Geshe-la, how am I going to use that? How am I going to use that? How do I use that in my real life?

Come on, it's the only thing you can use in your real life. Because what it means is, every irritating person you ever met was a mirror of you. And not partly a mirror, 100% mirror.

Not only every irritating person you ever met, every asshole you ever met was coming from you, okay? That doesn't say it well enough. Every asshole you ever met is a perfect reflection of you.

Every detail about them is you. Every little detail how they hurt you is coming from you. It's not that generally they're coming from you or something like that.

That's not true. Every single detail, the way they talk, the way they criticize you, the time they criticize you, the way they, everything is, every detail coming, exact reflection of you. And there's nothing else in the world.

That's emptiness. So don't tell me emptiness is hard to see. The world is full of irritating people.

They were sent to remind you about emptiness. They are the dharma, right? There was a famous joke here.

We had a visitor from, I don't know where. I think they wanted to be a volunteer here or something like that. They were having a rough time.

It's a hard place to be, by the way. These guys, the people you see who work here, help out here, it's extremely hard place to be. Karmically, it's intense karma to be here.

You got to be a real special person to survive here. Karmically. It's because the karma is so heavy.

The karma is so high. So anyway, this person was trying to be a volunteer. We had a class.

They were in the kitchen or something. We had a class and we were talking about this subject that emptiness means there's nothing that doesn't come from you. To put it dependent origination way, to put it the opposite way, everything you see is a reflection of you.

The emptiness way, nothing you see is not coming from you. The dependent origination way, everything you see is coming from you. That's dependent origination.

That's the relationship. So anyway, we finished the class. We talked about how everything's coming from you.

Every irritating person you ever met is directly coming from you. And then this lady came in and she was talking. We were all sitting around and she said, God, this Diamond Mountain place, jeez.

And we're like, what? And she says, I'm surrounded by idiots. And we're all like.

And we were like. Yeah, you're right. Completely right.

All right, any Q&A? Let's do Q&A. By the way, why we have these two books here, we'll come back to it in the next class.

There's a special message here. Maybe you remember. It was a long time ago, like two days ago.

Whose class was that? Allison's class, yeah. All right, Q&A maybe online, Tim?

You got anything interesting? I have a Q&A. I donated coffee for this program.

And this is not it. I think there's some corruption in selling the good coffee. Just kidding.

You can go first.

[Speaker 2]
Can you hear me? Related to that, what you were just saying about the person is, I'm surrounded by idiots. And so, sort of when you're in the throes of that, when you're sort of having this understanding that if you are surrounded by idiots, and you feel like it's coming from you, how do you deal with that sort of, in that time you feel like it's all on you, and there's like this pressure of like, oh my God, I've created every idiot in the world.

So how do I, in a practical way, deal with that? Yeah, good. Basically, kind of deploy it to your life.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I think what Rob's saying is, and it happens to me every day, if I'm thinking of why did somebody say something mean to me, or why did somebody do something mean to me? I don't know why. People think I have the nicest cabin.

I don't. It's a good cabin. But you got to walk to the outhouse, no matter how cold the weather is.

And then you got to sit, you got to put your bottom on a cold seat, like in the winter. That one moment is true suffering. So anyway, so I walk, and I don't know why, but I remember my Buddhism out there.

I don't know why. So somebody's giving me a hard time, and I'm grumpy all the way to the outhouse. I'm like grumpy, I'm like grr.

And then when I get that shock of the cold toilet seat, suddenly my mind clears. And I'm like, they're coming for me. And I'm like, they're coming for me.

And what Rob's saying is, I mean, that can be a very important time of the day. It's always an important time of the day, even if you don't have a cold seat. But the question is, what do you do with that?

Because then you feel really bad. Ukraine problem coming for me. Israel problem coming for me.

It's overwhelming. All these mean people coming for me. It's like too much.

What do you do with that? How do you handle that? How can you sustain that thought for more than a few minutes?

Because it's painful. It's really, really painful. And I agree.

For the first few seconds, until it warms up, I feel clear. Maybe it's the cold, but I'm clear. I'm like, okay, this person who complained to me, they come for me.

I understand that. And it makes my life easier for a minute. It makes my life easier.

I say, okay, so I can fix things. And mainly, I cannot blame them. And that freedom from blaming other people is so refreshing.

It's so nice. Like, okay, I can let go of disliking this person, because it's coming from me. I can let go of that.

There's a moment of clarity on the cold seat. And then it gets overwhelming. It feels like, God, that means every mean person in the world is coming for me.

All these murderers, all these people bombing people, they're all coming for me. It's too much. It just feels like too much.

So I think what Rob's saying is, how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that? And I think in my case, I try not to go there.

I back off. At that moment, I don't try to take responsibility for three million assholes. It's too much.

I back off and I say, okay, don't go there. Is every bad person in this world coming for me? Yes.

How does it feel? I feel really bad. Well, why don't we just stick to the one person?

Let's just work on the one person. So I think for Buddhist practice, don't try to solve the whole world at one time. It's too much.

You're just going to go crazy. It's too much. Deal with the one person who irritates you and work on them.

And then the rest, just be like, I'll take care of the rest of you assholes later. I'm focusing on one today. And just focus on that one person.

And I think it's a practical way. The second one is much easier. The third one is almost effortless.

You see what I mean? So start with one asshole and don't tell Veronica I used the word, okay? And then slowly, it's easier if you start with one and then do the rest.

But if you feel guilty for all the bad people in the world, you're just going to collapse. You're just going to feel depressed. You also require, don't forget you're required to do coffee meditation.

You also created every beautiful person in the world. And if you don't take credit for that, and if you don't give equal time to thinking about that, you have failed your Buddhism. It's not Buddhism anymore.

Then it's just self-punishment. So the contract with Lord Buddha is equal time. Did you create all the assholes in the world?

Yes. Did you create all the beautiful people in the world? Yes.

You got to give it equal time. Otherwise, you're not practicing. And it's very hard.

Okay, question.

[Speaker 2]
If I will start with one asshole like me, yes? With myself. I understand that it's me.

And I will start from me. And I will understand that I did a lot of stuff. Let's say like dangerous stuff, it's not paying taxes.

Like about confession, you don't go to IRS, yes? You do something else, you know? I mean like guiltiness, it's caused confession, correct?

So you have to confess your sins. And you like, okay, I don't pay taxes. I'm not going to IRS and tell them this because it's dangerous things.

But, okay, forget about this. I can do some charities, whatever. I can like think how I can return my taxes.

Different way. But what if I all the time feel guilty about being the worst mother in the world and raise my kids not right? Because I have to tell you, when you are a parent, number one, what you have for all entire life, guiltiness about you did a lot of mistakes since day one, since like minute your child was born.

And I have five kids. And I'm always struggling because I have one child. It's my stepdaughter.

I took my husband. He was a single father. And I delivered four kids.

We always hate each other with my oldest one because she was the only child for her father. And I actually married him. And we still hate each other.

And we cannot kind of go through it. My four kids, every day I see a lot of mistakes. And I always sit and cry hours in my car and ask how I can fix it.

I cannot. I cannot. It's done.

It's gone. They eat fast food. They play Roblox at 11 p.m. And I hate this, you know. They don't go to shower and brush their teeth and run to the school with no brushing teeth. And I text them, did you brush your teeth? Mom, I'm sorry.

I was late to my bus. And you know, actually it's kind of like, really this guiltiness, it goes to confession. Okay, I confess, but what have to, how can I fix it?

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Here's a basic thing, okay. Here's the thing to remember.

The best teachings are the short ones, right? The kid didn't brush their teeth and they went to the school. How did they go to the school?

They have things attached to their body called legs, okay. They have legs, all right. Why they have legs?

Why they have legs? You gave them the legs, okay. You gave them the legs.

We were talking about it in the parenting class. I believe the number's correct. The average expense of a kid in this state, which is one of the poorest states, is $30,000 a year.

The average income in this state, not where I live, where I live is 25% below that, but it's $30,000. I'll say it again. The average expense to have a child in this state is $30,000 a year.

The average income in the state of Arizona is $30,000 a year. It's impossible to be a parent, to be a mom, to be a dad in this state. Mathematically, it's impossible.

You are suffering. It's very, very, very difficult. You can say my kid didn't brush my teeth, their teeth, but who put the clothes on them?

Why they have a body? You fed them. How can you worry about their teeth?

You gave them teeth. If you don't give equal time to thinking about you gave them the teeth, you paid for the toothbrush. They are sleeping in your house because you paid for the house and you are working really hard.

It's a 20-year contract minimum. I have a friend, she's 69 now. Their mom's still paying for her stuff.

I mean 20 years if you're lucky. 69 years if you're not lucky. How can you say you're a bad mother?

How can you say that? The body they have exists because of your sweat and your hard work and you struggling to make some money. They're alive and they have a body.

Okay, they go to the school with dirty teeth, but they got teeth. They got a school and they got a house to go to the school. So I think you're being prejudiced.

You're being prejudiced. That's like, I don't like this person. His color is wrong.

Skin color is wrong. You're prejudiced against yourself. You're prejudiced to yourself.

You're thinking about the 1% that brushing the teeth and you're not thinking about the 99% of the teeth. So they exist. They have a body because of you and you gave them the first seed of their body and you risk your life to have a child.

I think you are prejudiced against yourself. All right, equal rights. Okay, equal rights.