Круги света — «Руководство к образу жизни бодхисаттвы» Мастера Шантидевы: глава о посвящении силы добрых дел (2002, Аризона), занятие 4

[Говорящий 1]
So, if everyone here has got so many beautiful karmic seeds in their heart to send to others' hearts, then who to send them to exactly? This is what Master Shantideva's chapter is all about. It's like a Christmas list.

It's like Santa Claus's list of where to go. And it's a beautiful suggestion list of where to send your good karmas. Yesterday we spoke about the verses that mainly relate to people who are just entering a spiritual path.

Now, today, there'll be suggestions from this holy Master about where to send them for people who are already on a spiritual path. And I'd like to ask that one of those sweet people who's reading the verses read the first verse.

[Говорящий 2]
May places of spiritual learning thrive, filled with people reading sacred books and singing them out loud as well. May communities of spiritual practitioners live always in harmony, and may they achieve the high goals for which they live together.

[Говорящий 1]
In the first half of the verse, Master Shantideva is saying, send your good karmas to all the spiritual centers in the world. I think here especially you can see it as ripples going out from your heart. You drop your good karma of putting up with that person next to you this afternoon into your heart, and then it starts to spread.

First it hits all the sweet spiritual learning centers that we are close to. For example, Diamond Mountain Retreat Center, and you send it to the hearts of all who are working to create this place. And then a little bit wider, and you hit ACI New York, and pray for all the people who are working and studying there.

Send them your good karma. Send it to their hearts, especially the director. It's a hard job.

I'm glad he's the director. Then you can send it to Godstow Retreat Center, Connecticut. Then you can send it to the people working so hard to save the ancient books of Tibet, the Asian Classics Input Project people.

They are all over the world. Send some to their sweet director, the two or three close people who are working with you. There's a Geshe in Sara who has devoted much of his life to organizing the work there.

He needs a lot of good karma. It's a hard job. There are many refugees working, a large number of them poor women in Tibetan refugee villages.

And send them your good karma. There are young scholars working for that in Russia and Mongolia. They are often lonely.

They have a hard time in foreign countries. Send them your good karma. We pray for their success.

Of course we should send good karma to Holy Lama Ken Rinpoche's devoted students in New Jersey and Washington and other places who have devoted their whole lives to assure that the written lineage and spoken lineage and the practice in their own hearts will be spread. Then I think it's important to send it to centers like Vajrapani Institute or Land of Medicine Buddha or other many centers of Holy Lama Supa Rinpoche. Each one of these places is very very precious.

There are too few places in the world where you can learn these things. If it's true that they can save a human life, if it's true that they can prevent pain for millions of people, there are too few in the world. We have to send our good karma to all of the lineages of Buddhism in this country.

We tend to foolishly, stupidly, ignorantly, violently put down other centers of other traditions, other faiths. It's like demanding that there only be one hospital in Arizona. It's incredibly stupid and foolish.

Each hospital has a role. Each small medical center has a role. If one person who is hurt can go to that place, it should exist and we should send in our good wishes and good karma.

And so we must send our good karma not only to the Buddhist centers but all of the religious centers in our country and other countries. There is no church or synagogue or mosque or temple which exists. If someone doesn't benefit from it, they will just disappear and close.

Therefore, if they are open and people are going there, it's important that they stay open like a hospital. It's so foolish to wish that hospitals should be destroyed or that people should only come to our hospital. And so we should work as hard as we can to support the other spiritual centers in the world of every faith because they suit the needs of some sick person.

And as we said yesterday, in spiritual centers, especially of a new kind of religion in the country like here, you find groups of very stubborn people. You wouldn't be here if you weren't stubborn. And so naturally, we rub each other the wrong way sometimes.

And we have to try to send karma ahead to prevent those kinds of problems. Geshe Lama Dargye, holy Lama who has passed from this world, who blessed Australia and New Zealand with his teachings especially, he used to hold up a single pencil in the class in India and break it. And then he would take about 15 pencils and hold it up and ask if any student wished to come and try to break it together.

And he said, your spiritual life is like that. If you can find friends who have the same goals, you can stay close to each other, support each other. And so it's important that people should come together and work together.

It makes you stronger. Send your special wishes to communities of spiritual people who are working towards goals. I think it's especially important for all of us to send our good karma to the Tibetan monasteries and centers in Tibet and India.

The ones in Tibet are struggling. There's a grand revival happening. They have the special motivation of people who are endangered by the circumstances there.

The same in Mongolia. And I think it's especially important to send our good karmas to Sera Monastery and Sera Mae in particular, because of the incredible kindness she has given to us by sending us Holy Lama Ken Rinpoche. Those places will continue to produce people like Rinpoche for future generations.

We have to work very hard to help them physically and send them our good karmas. So please, very important, every church, every temple, every mosque in this world is contributing to the happiness of people. We have to pray that they stay for a long time.

It mentions studying books, reading them, and singing them. We have a choice. We can read 50 books, or you can get deeply into one book.

You can spend a year on 50 books, or you can spend a year on one special book. Maybe memorize that book, singing it out loud when you can. Master Shantideva is sending you a small suggestion.

I think it's a beautiful idea. Those of you who have a Dakye practice, sadhana, I think especially, he's encouraging you to memorize it. Put it in your mind.

If you die tomorrow, it will go with you. Next verse, please. May all those who have ever taken the vows of a monk come to master the arts of solitude, throwing off every kind of distraction, gradually refining their minds, learning perfect meditation.

Master Shantideva begins to pray for ordained people, but in our context, it refers to anyone who is trying to do a spiritual practice, not just monks or nuns, but anyone here, for example, who is struggling to keep a spiritual practice. He says, may they learn the arts of solitude. I know that you know there are two kinds of solitude.

One is physical. You give your credit card debt bills to the caretakers and the director, and you go stay in a yurt. Sorry.

And you achieve physical solitude. It's much more difficult to achieve inner solitude. All the scriptures say that.

If you could sit in an office in New York City and maintain your level of samadhi, your concentration, your pure heart in the midst of chaos, then you have real solitude. Physical solitude is fragile. It's hard to keep those perfect circumstances like we have.

But if you develop inner solitude, you can take it anywhere. I sometimes worry that some people seek physical solitude, and then they almost become weaker in their ability to maintain inner solitude under very difficult circumstances. I think those of you who are in difficult jobs, difficult family situations, that place difficult demands on you, have a great opportunity to develop inner solitude.

And it doesn't matter then where you go. But also, if you truly wish to see emptiness, if you truly wish to achieve high states of meditation, it's very useful occasionally, or often as you get older, to go into deep physical solitude. He says, may they be released from distractions.

And those are just mainly in Master Santideva. He's talking about the distraction of thinking about yourself and forgetting others. Then you can reach deep states of meditation.

It's a very beautiful thing that people in this group are doing so many deep retreats. We don't know precisely, but we have kinds of information that people are doing deep retreats. And this is a very wonderful thing.

I hope you will continue it. Okay, next verse. May nuns forever find support for their physical needs and live lives free of conflict or any outside threat.

May every person who's ever become ordained conduct themselves perfectly in their moral code. It's a special prayer for nuns, but it can refer to, I think, all of us. In ancient times, it was very difficult for nuns to find support.

I think it continues today. I'm very proud of the fact that almost all, or maybe all, the retreatants are women. It's a very great step.

I think it's a great example for the future. And I think it's great that so many people have given us support. Then Master Shantideva prays that they would live in harmony.

We mentioned yesterday women have to be even more stubborn to do deep spiritual practice because of the ancient prejudices of our world. And so there are even more stubborn people put together and more potential for disharmony. There are ancient books from India and Tibet on removing disharmony from groups.

I think that means there must have been disharmony. And it's a very terrible thing. Many lamas have mentioned to me that of all the things we should watch out for, the worst is disharmony within a group.

You have to set aside your personal wishes. You have to set aside your opinions. Sometimes when it's necessary to maintain harmony, there's nothing that turns off young students more than seeing disharmony of those people who have been trained so well.

Then Master Shantideva says, may the women practitioners be free from outside threats. It's been a tradition, a cruel tradition throughout history. If an army came to a country to attack the convents and the nunneries especially, they were vulnerable.

And it continues to happen in Tibet, for example. And so we pray that they not be hurt by outside threats. Then Master Shantideva sends his energy to all people with vows.

It's one thing to decide not to harm other people and animals, not to kill them, for example. It's much more powerful if you commit yourself not to do it formally before a High Lama like His Holiness or Khen Rinpoche. And Master Shantideva is saying, all those people who have made a commitment like that, I send them my good karma.

May they have the strength to keep those commitments they made. Next verse, please. And may any of those who may have ever broken this code regret what they've done, and always work to clean the karma.

May they then return to a higher birth, and in their new life never see their spiritual discipline fail again. It's more powerful to commit yourself not to do a wrong thing. And it's more powerful if you break that commitment than if you hadn't made that commitment.

There was a great Lama, Lord Atisha, who helped bring Buddhism to Tibet from India. He said, my vows are like the weather. My monk's vows I've only broken almost none of them, like a tiny drip from a faucet.

My bodhisattva vows, my vows to be kind to others, I break pretty frequently, like a steady soft rain. And my tantric vows, which you can break in a single instant of negative thoughts toward the holy being, I have broken like a wild thunderstorm. He used to carry around a small stupa, a small image, and stop all day long and pray that the bad karma of just thinking something wrong shouldn't grow.

And so, I think we are similar. I think we are fortunate to have had great Lamas. We understand our vows.

We are special in that way. But the mental ones especially are so hard to keep. And so, send your good karma.

And here I introduce a new idea. Those of you who have done tonglen, the practice of giving and taking with your breathing, you know that you can send energy ahead into the future to help yourself also. You can send your good karma to yourself tomorrow, next week, or next year.

And send your good karma ahead. Your good karma from maybe the first days of your spiritual life when you turned away from the pain of this world. And send it ahead to yourself and say, this is energy shipment from me now to me future.

I hope it helps you to keep your vows. Then Master Shantideva does what we call a mayingak in Buddhist logic. He makes one statement by saying something else.

He says, I hope they can come back to a higher life and keep their vows better in the future. He's saying that it's very dangerous to break your commitments. It can take you to terrible states of physical and mental misery.

And he's trying to send energy to those people who have broken their commitments. You have also learned carefully how to clean bad karma. And it's important to keep doing that practice, especially with the fire.

I think lastly, I'd like to tell you on this verse. Don't get your hopes up. We noticed something in our sojong rituals together.

Sojong ritual, if you don't know, is a group ritual to admit to each other the things we've done wrong openly, and to encourage and support each other to improve in the future. And so sometimes, what we've been doing when we meet, which is not the whole group, only during break months, we keep our book diary during the day. We stop six times during the day.

We check one of our vows and see if we have broken it, or if we've done very well with it. And then every two weeks, which was yesterday, for example, on the full moon, we take that diary and we snip out some of the hits and some of the, what do you call, disasters. And then we share them with each other.

And then at the end of the ritual, we burn them all. The good ones go up in smoke and send energy to the planet. The bad ones are destroyed.

But something interesting happened. We began to notice that some of us were confessing for others. We would share an entry from our diary, and it would say, I managed to stay patient while retreatant B was being such an asshole when they broke their vow so terribly.

And then retreatant B saw it and said, this is lucky you're doing my sojong for me. So I think it's important. The only person who can keep your vows is you.

And the only person who can keep other people's vows is them. We don't have to keep theirs for them. You know there are secret vows.

If there are secret vows that you know about, I think it's logical to assume there may be secret vows we don't know about, that we haven't heard about yet. And so we have to be very careful with this dedication, I believe. Send your good karma to those who seem to have broken their vows.

But never forget to say, seems like that to me. Because we never really know. And I think it's a tendency for all of us.

Okay, next. May every sage who lives in this world find the honor due to them, and always be offered the food and other necessities. May they always take care that their hearts are pure, and may they earn a good name that spreads to all.

This is a special dedication of good karma for sages. It could be yogis, or great meditators, or lamas. But at some point in a person's spiritual life, they may, I think you can call it, turn professional.

And there's a change in the way you live. Some teachers follow the path of dedicating their whole time to externally teaching others in an obvious way. And then they become dependent on the kindness of others for their support.

In ancient India, the word for monk was bhikshu. And bhiksh means to eat, but it also means to beg for your food. And so it's a prayer that those who have chosen that path will get all the support that they need.

And extending karma, you wouldn't guess how much, frankly, financial trouble great lamas have had, and have. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has tremendous debts, because he is supporting hundreds and hundreds of monks. He is, frankly, in very difficult financial situations, constantly.

Holy Lama Khen Rinpoche, we told him, don't worry, Rinpoche, we'll give you $115 a month. Six months out of the year, we couldn't do it. He never said a word.

He never complained. His refrigerator was often empty. I can remember a day when he said, go to the refrigerator, give the food, and make a tea for all the students.

I said, Rinpoche, there's nothing there. There's a quart of milk. He said, bring the quart of milk and make tea and give it to everyone.

Then he didn't have anything for himself. So we have to pray that people like that always have enough support. But when you begin to accept support from others, it comes with a heavy karmic responsibility.

This is very serious in the Vinaya. It's described, the karma of support which others have given you so you can practice is extremely dangerous. To waste another person's precious life by not using the support properly is very, very powerful bad karma.

And I also especially encourage the retreatants here. We can't waste a single drop of food. We can't demand anything that we don't desperately need.

We can't complain about any of the circumstances ever. It's extremely bad karma. And so Master Shantideva is saying, may these people who get support, like we are, conduct themselves in a way which would make the people proud who are supporting them.

Next verse, please. May none of these people ever again undergo the pain of the lower realms. In strength beyond the strength of God's, may they quickly win the state of a fully enlightened one without the slightest hardship.

Master Shantideva is praying, this is a sum up. All the people who are devoted to a spiritual path should have good physical and mental health for the whole time that they are reaching enlightenment. They should have strong, healthy bodies.

Strong, healthy minds until the day they reach enlightenment. So it's a sort of a summary verse. Next verse, please.

May every suffering being there is make offerings over and over again to every enlightened being there is.

[Говорящий 2]
And may the enlightened ones enjoy forever what we have offered them in infinite waves of bliss.

[Говорящий 1]
I have trouble with offering. I tell you honestly, I see lamas like Holy Lama Serpa Rinpoche or Ken Rinpoche set out extraordinary offerings all over their rooms. Sometimes thousands of offerings around the house.

And I have difficulty with that. I have trouble, I think, imagining that a Buddha will come down and drink a bowl of water or eat a cookie the way that Santa Claus would take the milk and the cookies. I have trouble with it mentally.

But I think it's important for us to understand that's not what happens when we make an offering. We offer physical objects to our teachers and to holy beings. If the teacher is a true yogi, practitioner, they have absolutely no need for almost anything we can offer them.

A real yogi, teacher, sees another possession in their room as a new enemy. It's just trouble. One more thing to disturb my meditation.

They get rid of it as soon as they can. There's a beautiful story you know. Student A goes to Lama Supa Rinpoche.

Gives them a priceless rosary. Goes and sits down in the reception room. Student B goes in for his blessing.

Student B comes out wearing the rosary. True story. Repeated over and over.

But the offering has been completed and the offering is perfect. You have offered to your Lama or holy beings something that means a lot to you. The minute you thought to offer it, it was offered.

The minute you thought about offering the water bowl or the piece of fruit or the flower on the altar. Countless Buddhas in countless parts of the universe were struck with countless waves of bliss. You should know that.

It's true. Don't be discouraged or think that offering is silly. I had students bitterly complain to me that they saw another student wearing a sweater they gave me.

It means you don't understand the offering. The minute you decide to give the minute you put out your arms to offer the thing. Countless enlightened beings are overwhelmed with extraordinary bliss and emptiness perceptions.

Does it mean they don't have bliss before? Of course not. Does it mean you gave them more bliss than they had before?

Of course not. It's for us. It's that we have triggered more bliss in them and it's an extraordinary good karma.

So Master Shantideva is saying whenever any single person in this room offers even a little bowl of water on their altar may every holy being be overcome by infinite waves of bliss and emptiness. Next verse. May every plan there is in the heart of every Bodhisattva to help every living being come true.

[Говорящий 2]
May everyone get every single thing that the enlightened ones who shelter us have in mind for us to get.

[Говорящий 1]
I was thinking about this verse this morning. I used to work for a carpenter in the summer times in college. He was a beautiful, extraordinary man named Otto.

He was very small and old. He smoked a pipe. He had an old Kansas hat on.

He was such a beautiful man. And he would come up and say Hey, you young feller. Take those two by fours there and nail them together like this.

And I'd nail them together. And I would break my watch off him because my aim was so poor. He told me one day, I can make a carpenter out of your brother Jeff but you're hopeless.

And he would just set me to the stupid work. And I'd nail a couple of boards together. And then three days later he'd say, where's them boards?

And I'd go get the boards and then he would adjust them and put them into the structure of this new house. And I had no idea what the house would look like. I didn't know what he was asking me to do.

He had the whole house in his mind. And he would, three days or four days ahead to make me busy, he would tell me to nail some things together. He has a vision of this whole house.

He knows every nail that's going to be going into this house. And I don't have the slightest clue. I just nail them together.

Bodhisattvas are like that. They are working on a totally different level. People can't even imagine what Bodhisattvas have in mind.

They can't imagine the extent of their vision. They are truly working on a universal level. They see things that will not happen for hundreds or thousands or perhaps even millions of years.

I'm not talking about Buddhists. I'm talking about a Bodhisattva who has seen emptiness. They have a special knowledge of the master plan.

They see the whole house. When they ask us to do a small thing, they nail their boards together. We have to do it.

They have a master plan. They have a plan that we can hardly... we could never imagine.

And so Master Shantideva said, I pray that whatever plans these Bodhisattvas have, they should come true. And people who are asked to contribute and nail boards together for the master house, they should try to do it happily and understand that a larger thing is happening. With Buddhas, it's even beyond that.

Future, past, for all time is compressed into a single point. They see everything that will ever happen and has ever happened everywhere in a single instance. And so it's very powerful to send them your good karma.

Can you imagine how big your seeds will get if you just make a simple little prayer? May the enlightened beings' wishes be fulfilled. Their plans for them a million years is nothing.

The world is reduced to a water, a rain puddle for them. So, in this verse, when you try to practice, send your good karma that the master plans of these beings be realized. Next verse, please.

May those who follow the lower paths of self-made awakened ones and listeners attain the happiness they seek. Those of you who know Buddhist philosophy, self-made Buddha is a code word for practitioners who are very advanced but who don't have compassion, ultimate compassion yet. And listeners is the same.

These are code words for high practitioners, very advanced yogis and meditators, but they don't yet grasp, they haven't directly experienced the extraordinary wish to act on a universal level for all beings. It's almost, if you notice, the verse is very short. Master Shantideva is making a frank put-down of these people.

He doesn't even give them a whole verse. He gives them half a verse. He says good luck, guys, but the very fact that it's such a short verse is a statement.

The fact that it's the only verse in the whole chapter which is cut into half is a half a verse is an implicit prayer that you and I should never fall into that kind of attitude. Next verse. And may we, through the kindness of gentle voice, remember in life after life who we are and what we practice, projecting the worldly way of life again and again until the day we reach the level called intense joy.

If you notice, this is the first verse where it changes to we. All the other verses almost have been them. Master Shantideva is saying take your good karmas and send them to your future self.

Take your good karmas and ship them to yourself. For what? To reach intense joy.

What's intense joy? Intense joy is a code word. It's the Sanskrit name, pramudita, for the first level of a bodhisattva.

This is the name of the first of the ten bodhisattva levels. You reach intense joy, the level called intense joy when you see emptiness for the first time. You step onto that level in the first millisecond that you have seen emptiness with the wish to help every single living creature in the universe in your heart and at that moment you see them all.

You see every one of them in a yogic perception, in a deep meditative direct perception of every living creature in the entire universe. Each of us, if you haven't come there already, you can reach that place. You have to try.

It's why we are here. It's why all of these teachings are going on. It's the purpose for their retreat.

It's the purpose for our very lives. All of us, if you haven't reached this place, must try. What can stop you from reaching this place?

The worst thing is if you forget why you should reach it. And that's because we have to serve others. I mentioned earlier today some of the terrible pain that I know has happened actually to people here.

You have to keep that in mind. You can't ever forget it. We are only here to stop that pain for every one of us.

And so send your good karma ahead into the future by the blessings of gentle voices, the name of Manjushri, the bodhisattva or the deity who represents the direct perception of emptiness. And may we never forget why we are here. It's the only reason we are all working so hard.

Everything we do is to reach the level of intense joy. Send your good karma ahead to yourself and others. If they haven't reached this level, then they should reach this intense joy.

Now you have an opportunity to reach the level of intense joy of refreshment. Please have another short break. We don't have much after that.