Учения ретрита в молчании 3: Второе зрение (2001, Аризона), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
I haven't spoken for a long time, and if I have trouble, then Winston's here to help. Then, for all of us in retreat, on behalf of everyone in retreat, I'd like to thank you for coming here. It's a great blessing for us, and we feel really happy because we can feel you, even as you're planning to come.

It gets very loud. And some of our teachers are here, and we're very lucky to have them here. Then I think we could meditate for a few minutes first.

There's a story in my family, and I think it's true, that our grandfather, his name was Horatio Sawyer Earle, he had a business in the city where he did, he made tools and machines. And in the same city there was another tool company that was founded by my other grandfather, and that was called the Andrew Company. I think they were competitors.

One day a young man came to see my grandfather, Grandfather Earle, and he was asking for help. He wanted to start a new kind of business. And my grandfather Earle said, Well, what is it you want to do?

And the young man said, I want to make things a certain thing that almost no one has ever seen. And Grandfather said, Is that all? And then he said, No, I want to make it in a new way that no one has ever tried.

Then Grandfather said, Is that all? And he said, No. The third thing, this thing is going to cost almost a year's pay of a person, and I think everyone will want one.

My grandfather said, You want to make something that no one has seen much at all. You expect to make it in a new way, and you expect everyone to put out a year's salary to get one, and you think everyone will get one. And he said, That's right.

And Grandfather Earle said, You're crazy. And he sent him away without a penny. And then Henry Ford went to other people in Detroit and started the Ford Motor Company.

And the people in my family, we figured we lost about $500 million. I think it's true. Then being in retreat is the same.

We came to people and said, Will you help us? We want to try something. We want to try to reach something that no one has really seen much, especially in this country.

We hope that it would be mass produced later. We hope that everyone could have it in their garage or home or in their heart and mind. And so we tried to find people who would believe in something they couldn't even see and almost no one had ever seen.

And you are those people. We know that most of the people helping us are here. We know there's not that many.

We know your sacrifice. Some of you, much of your lives, and some of you, almost everything you've done to help us. We know we're not cheap like the old yogis in Tibet.

We know it's hard. We can hear it when the holy caretakers are struggling on a day. They came on the hottest days of the year.

I think it was 110, 115 day work. We could hear them making things for us and every day cooking, every day trying to find people to help. Every day bringing us things magically.

They just show up all for something no one can see. And then many people like them. We have teachers coming, holy teachers come to help us learn ways to meditate better, take care of ourselves.

People have sent beautiful things for altars, offerings, precious books, and all for something you can't see. And the retreatants here have worked very, very hard. They feel the pressure of others serving them.

They are afraid to waste their money. They never stop working all day, all week. And it's all for something that no one can even see.

Something that very few people have ever seen. And they are trying to reach it, to help others. Then you are all very special people.

You are very rare among the people in the world to commit your life to try to reach something that no one has seen much. To commit your life and time and your money and your family to help others reach something that no one has really seen. You are very special, all of you.

We are very lucky to be together. I used to work in the diamond business. There's a building called 580 Fifth.

It's on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 47th. It's about 40 stories high. It's a huge building.

It has hundreds and hundreds of offices, and all of them dealing diamonds and other precious stones. I think almost three quarters of the several billion dollars of diamonds that enter this country every year come through those offices. And I can remember we would go there to an office high up in the sky.

And the sky would be there on the eastern side, beautiful sky. And we would sit down and start a diamond deal. It's a lot of screaming and arguing and all sorts of pleading.

It's kind of fun and exhausting. Sometimes a big deal would go on for days. You would come back day after day.

Then finally, mazal. Mazal or brachar. I give my sacred word of honor to keep this deal.

There are no papers. There are no contracts. Millions of dollars of diamonds have been dealt on a handshake.

There are no lawyers allowed to deal in the diamond club because there are no disagreements. Then afterwards, everyone would relax back in their chairs, exhausted and happy. Each side thinking they had gotten a better deal.

And we would drink something together and feel like family. The Brazilians would pull out this thick coffee with more sugar in it. The Chinese would pull out this wonderful jasmine tea.

The Israelis would pull out a Diet Coke. And then the owner would lean back towards his vault, his safe. And he would say quietly, I have an important stone.

In the trade, important stone means a major stone. It could be a diamond of several hundred carats. Something that few people ever see.

I remember an Indian dealer. He opened his safe. There's a quiet that descends on the room.

He took out a white velvet box and he opened it. And we all clustered around silently. And it was a huge kashmiri sapphire.

I think 60 carats or more. And it's almost priceless. Then I remember, I can think looking out the window at the sky.

And I thought, honestly, the sky is more beautiful than this stone. It's a beautiful stone. But the sky has its own light.

The sky is blue with its own light. And it's free. All of us can see the sky.

It's so beautiful. I think if you spend a lot of time maybe meditating or maybe in a prison. Or maybe if you're about to die and you know it.

The sky becomes a very precious thing. Rare. Precious.

Free for everyone. Beautiful blue azure. The stars are the same.

This teaching is being held towards the new moon. You will be able to see unbelievable stars. In Antwerp, Belgium, we used to sit with really beautiful jean dealers.

One of them took me to his special room. There were sacks of raw diamonds piled everywhere. Huge sacks of diamonds.

And I looked at them and it was evening. And his office faced the north sky. It was dark and there were beautiful stars.

I thought the stars were more beautiful. Each with a little color. Each with their own fire.

We're very fortunate. We are very lucky. We are surrounded by intense beauty.

The mountain that you see in front of you as the sun goes down. Turns beautiful. Crimson.

Red. It's so beautiful to watch after a hard day. We can see these things.

Free. The sky. Stars.

Mountain. Sun. The ground you're sitting on is a kind of special gravel from millions of years of the once a year flood.

And when you touch it, you can feel the warmth that came from the sun. It's such a wonderful thing to hold the earth in your hands. In Mongolia, in the countryside.

In the torn down, ruined hermitages of the Buddhist meditators. You can still find a person or two. And they will share what they have with you.

And then after you've eaten, they will take a big smooth stone from the earth. And they will say, hold it. And it's deserved to just hold the earth.

And feel the warmth of fire. And it calms the heart. We can see all of these things.

They are free. And around us here, trees. Especially the old oaks.

They are teeming with life. Sometimes I imagine them like New York apartment buildings. Huge towers.

And on the top floor are all the blue jays. Crows. Sparrows.

Each with his own song. A little lower are all the crawling things. Praying mantises.

Lizards. A little lower are all the squirrel homes. And there are also holes for beautiful mice.

Different kinds. And then the majestic snakes which eat them. But they are full of life.

They don't look like it. And when you've been alone or meditating a long time, it's very precious to see life. They are not stupid.

They have sparks of intelligence. Kindness. If you live with the small creatures a long time, you start to see how they take care of each other.

The small sparrows, no bigger than your hand, they will come to eat the cookies you send us. And if they find a nice piece, they will run to the other sparrow and give it to them into their mouth. And you can hear their beautiful voices like a stream singing thank you.

To each other. The blue jays crowd around the water dish that we set out. And with great dignity and respect for each other, the elders go first and drink, and the others will stand and wait.

It's beautiful to see even the mother cows here. If you approach a group of them, the father will come forward and challenge you. He will protect his wife cow and children.

And the mother cow will take the children back away to a safe distance. They are like families. They cry for each other when they get separated.

The young ones love their parents. They hug them. Even the ants, if they find another ant dead, will, it seems, respectfully pick up the body and carry it to the side and set it down.

It seems with great compassion. We can see these precious things all around us. You drive down any street of a city or town in this country, you can see schools, beautiful, large schools with beautiful, large places for the children to play.

Free schools for children. This is a very precious thing. This has not existed in this world.

In the past, we are very lucky. Before, only wealthy people's children could have a book, could learn. We are living in special times.

You can see hospitals. This is unheard of in the violent history of our kind. Free care for poor people who need it.

A place where anyone can go with a little red tape and get care for their sickness. In the whole history of mankind, this is special. The sick were ignored or left to die unless they had clothes for them.

You can see special homes for elderly. They are not perfect. Sometimes they are dirty, noisy.

Crazy. But in the history of man on this planet, no one has taken care of old people like we try to. If you drive down any street, you can see different churches, temples, mosques.

And everyone is free to go where they like. Everyone is free to worship, to try to reach their own God. No one torturing you, beating you.

No one demanding that you follow their God. This is totally new on this planet. We can see these things.

We are unbelievably fortunate. We can walk down the streets of a city like New York and see 20, 30, 40 different countries, peoples, working together, taking care of each other, living in relative peace. This is unheard of in this world.

We take it for granted. It has never been that way. We have lived in peace.

But this particular country hasn't really been attacked in a hundred years. Our children don't know what it means to hide from a bomb coming down or what it means to be killed or raped by soldiers coming through your town. This is new in this world.

We are incredibly blessed. We can see all of these precious things from the sky to each other, each person here precious like a snowflake, each one with her or his own special skills, their own feelings, their own devotions. We can see the most amazing thing is each other.

We can see all of these things in this one moment, in this one holy moment that we travel in the present moment. We can enjoy all of these extraordinary, beautiful things. But if you think about it, we live only in a moment.

We travel around in a single instant of time. We are confined to a single instant, a single moment. We can only see these precious things in the present moment.

Time goes ahead of us like a river. Time goes behind us like a river. There's no end in either direction.

And we are confined to a moment. We can only see the moment we are in, the places where living beings live are infinite. They stretch out from the spot you're in, in all directions.

Countless worlds, countless realms. We can't even see a few of them. We are confined to a few yards of space.

We can only see what's around us. The things we see are precious, yes, but the things we can't see, worlds in the space around us, countless worlds, countless people striving, living, struggling on those worlds, beings we can't imagine in realms that run in the same place where you sit. We are surrounded by infinite places and wonderful creatures of different kinds.

We can't even see them. We are stuck in a small few yards. It's too much.

We are like a single point on a needle and there's infinite time ahead. We can't see any of it. I saw a retreatant.

She was walking. She lifted her foot. She froze.

I thought, what's wrong? I looked down. There was a large snake, poisonous, curled under her foot.

Why can't we see just a minute ahead? Why are we confined to a single moment? How many of you have been in an accident, hurt yourself badly, seen people die because we can't see one minute ahead into infinite time ahead of us?

We are handicapped. We are crippled. The present moment is nothing.

We have no idea where we came from. Be honest. People have different philosophies.

They all exist because no one knows. You don't know where you were a few minutes before you came into this world. You're not even sure if you were anywhere.

You can't see, but don't know how we came here, even while we're here. We don't know why we came here. Be honest.

Why is all this here? Why is the world like this? What are we supposed to be doing here?

Who sent us? What are we really meant to do? We don't know.

And think of all the people who died not knowing. You know them. You've had friends, family.

They died. They have died. But where did they go?

We have no idea. You have philosophies, religions. You have people guessing.

Can't see. We can see the sky. We can see the stars.

We can touch the ground. And we are locked in this tiny moment of time. And the only things that matter, where did we come from?

Why are we here? What are we supposed to do? Where did our loved ones go?

Where are we going? We can't see any of the things that really matter. We are blind to the only things that matter.

So, I would like in these four short days to talk about how to see these things yourself. How can you see what's going to happen to you in the long run? How can you learn to see it?

Because you can. You can see precisely and directly what you will be. And I would like to talk about learning to see all the places there are.

Because you can. The human mind has this capacity. You can see countless realms.

You can see every living creature living on those worlds. And you can see all that in a single moment. As you see this desert and sky now, you have the capacity.

You can meet holy, divine creatures, beings who live around you now directly. You can see higher reality than this. There is a higher one.

This is a very ordinary and plain reality. The moment that we are locked into, there is a divine reality. There is a higher one.

You can go there. You can see it. You can be part of it.

You have the capacity. I would like to talk about how to do it. But first you have to experience refreshments.

So please enjoy. Don't be shy. Enjoy.

People have worked hard to serve you. Enjoy it. Thank them.

And we'll start again after that. When Winston makes some noise.