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

[Говорящий 1]
Sometimes you don't see a friend of yours for maybe a few years and then the next time you see them, they look much older. But if you stayed with the same person from day to day, you don't notice it, and I think it's even harder to notice the changes in yourself because you're always with yourself. And so especially for people who are trying to wrought mighty changes in themselves, it can be frustrating because you're with yourself all the time.

You sometimes don't notice how much you've changed, and then it's easy to get discouraged. So I thought it would be good to say a little about where you are from the viewpoint of a person who's watching you. There are unfortunate people in the world who don't have enough money or food, and then there's the great, medium, middle class people who have enough, not a lot, but if they didn't have that, they wouldn't be alive, so they do have that.

Then among those few thousand people, there will be one or two who rise to great wealth, and among those, even a few people we can say are so wealthy, they don't even know exactly how much they have anymore. In the diamond business, we would meet people like that. They were so wealthy, they lost track of their wealth.

They couldn't even remember how many houses they had. But in the Abhidharma and other texts, there's an idea called leapfrogging, like jumping over something by intense karma, intense wishes and devotion. And you can go from a normal, medium person, financially, you can leapfrog over all the wealthy and super wealthy and beyond wealthy.

You do become an even more exclusive person who doesn't even notice what they have. They have contentment. In Sanskrit, santosha, they are just happy.

They don't remember how much money they have or don't have. Maybe they have a lot, maybe they don't have any. But they're happy.

And that's more rare than the very wealthy. And the people, especially the holy caretakers and other staff and director here, and the people in retreat, you should know, you should be proud and happy because you have leapfrogged over wealthy and super wealthy. And I'm not being poetic or metaphorical or sour grapes.

It's really true. You've gone in a short few years beyond super wealthy. There are only a few fortunate people on this planet who have reached the state of wealth that you have.

You should know it. You should appreciate how far you've gone. And I think it's important to say, never look back at the very wealthy or the wealthy or the well-off people with so-called security.

Because there is none. You have found the real security. So don't ever look back.

Try to stay where you've come to. The same applies to your home. Most of us have lived in small but nice places.

Some of us had a house. Others had apartments. And we've now leapfrogged over people who have beautiful large houses to the satisfaction of a hut.

And seriously, appreciate that if you are happy and contented with your hut, then you have just jumped over all those people with fancy houses on the seashore and people like that. And you are more rare than them. You have gone far beyond them.

Some people don't get much to eat. Other people, normal people, cook their food and go out to a restaurant once in a while. Some people get to go to very expensive restaurants and eat fine meals almost every night.

And you have leapfrogged over all of them. You get a small, simple, healthy meal and you are happy with it. And that's extremely rare.

Your karma has gone far beyond the other gourmets. Some people are not very well informed. They don't read much.

They live small lives. Other people read a newspaper fairly frequently and a few books every year. Other people are immersed in information.

They are locked in, linked into the web. Other places, they know exactly what's going on everywhere. You have leapfrogged over all of them.

You have one or two holiest written things in this planet and you live with them quietly. You should know how far you've come. You are extremely rare on this planet.

Some people have trouble speaking to others. Most people talk most of the day. Some people have great eloquence.

They can speak to huge numbers of people. You have jumped over all of them. You have reached silence.

That's more rare. The karma to be silent voluntarily is infinitely more rare than eloquence. Some people don't have many friends.

Some people have three or four friends. Some people are surrounded by admirers. You have jumped over all of them karmically.

You are surrounded by a few very devout, intense people who are trying to do the most meaningful thing there is. You should know how far you have come. You are not a strange person staying in the desert.

Your karma has created this place through thousands of lifetimes of holy effort. You are reaching the culmination of those efforts. Don't look back.

Don't think you haven't come very far. You're here. Today we might go a little late.

It's a custom here. Once every teaching we go a little late. I like to think it's in honor of the great debating programs at the great monasteries of Tibet.

They do a session in the winter debates. That's an all-night debate. We freeze.

We are tired and exhausted. We get to have a special porridge and some hot butter tea. Everyone looks forward to it.

That custom was from a monastery in Tibet called Jang. Holy Lama Rata Rinpoche in New York was the head of that monastery. It was known for its great debaters and logic.

Every winter the monks would go and debate for a month, pack up a sleeping bag. Pack a pack of food. Hundreds of monks would go to debate the great books on reasoning and perceptual ideas, theories.

That was started thousands of years ago. When Tibet was lost, this custom was crushed. Then it was brought back to life among the monks in India.

I think the first winter debates had 50 monks. Then a holy, beautiful, sacred lama in America, in New Jersey, put all his money in a trust. He paid for every monk to go.

Now the winter debates have about a thousand of the best monks in the world. So we honor them tonight. So far we spoke about all the beautiful things we can see.

We are honored. We are blessed to see this beautiful sky and stars at night. Especially here, you have to see them tonight after the moon sets.

We can see beautiful mountains. We can touch the warmth of this earth and see the life of the trees and creatures who live there. The kindness and the special warmth between beings, even animals, small animals even.

We can see each other. Really, I don't think people appreciate the kindness that is flowing on this earth between people already. I was sent to different factories around the world that make diamonds.

My boss made me study the economics of each factory, who could do the best work, which was best financed. It took a long time. I came back.

I went to meet him. I said, I've noticed something strange about companies all over the world. Your company too, and all the companies I've ever heard of in this country.

I showed him the numbers on the papers. I said, is it something strange? No one makes any money.

No one makes a profit. Every company I've looked at is producing things and selling them cheaper than it costs to make them. And the owners of these companies, the great capitalists, they don't make any money.

And they work all day, all night. They have heart attacks. They die.

They can't go home to see their children, families. I don't know what's happening. I don't understand it.

And then much later I realized, it's people want to be with each other. People want to make something and offer it to others. The owners of great companies and enterprises, no matter what they do, in the depth of their hearts, they just want to reach out to other people.

The roads in this world, which are something completely new and unmatched in history. The travel between places by car, independent of anything. The jet airplanes that take you to Serra in 24 hours, to the other side of the world.

Even the internet, the web. I don't think you appreciate what's happening. The borders between countries are finally falling down.

And it will never come back. Anyone who wants to give something to another person, which is what everyone wants to do, can do it directly. The middlemen will die.

People will order what they like from the person in the little village in Central America who made it. And all of these things are a sign. They are an expression of the great burning desire of every person to touch other people and serve other people.

Don't think it's anything else. We are driven to reach out and communicate and serve each other. It's our nature.

I think we should be proud of it. To see it is a great joy. But the things we can't see are much more important.

We spoke about them yesterday. The most important things we can't see at all. We have really, if you are honest, no idea where you came from.

You stopped thinking about it many years ago. You're not really sure why you're here, who made this world, what you're supposed to be doing here. You follow other people's examples from the past.

You act in a society of others in ways which your parents did. But you're not really sure what we're supposed to do here. And to be honest, very few people have ever seen on the other side of death.

Very, very few. Maybe only one or two in this whole world at this moment. The others are not sure what happened to the people they love to die.

They're not sure if they went on somehow or stopped. They're not sure if they're suffering or happy now. And so, really, almost everyone on this earth is locked into a tiny box.

It is exactly one second long. It is about six feet wide. And you spend your whole lives locked in a tiny box.

Most of your attention is focused throughout your entire life on an area about six feet square around you. A little bit bigger than yourself. And you can't see anything beyond these curtains.

I like to think of the space we live in as surrounded by four curtains. There's a curtain in front. There's a curtain to each side.

And a curtain behind. Sometimes I stare at what I can see in front of me and I imagine it's painted on a curtain. And it's just out of my reach.

And you live like that. We live in a small box. We are surrounded by four curtains as if we were living in a phone booth or a closet.

I imagine the edge of what I can see to be just beyond my reach. And then on the back of it is some kind of silver color like a waterfall. And then I imagine all of the time there is stretching out beyond that curtain.

So there's a curtain in front. And infinite time and events which will affect me and others because we will be in them. Stretch on forever.

Some silly people say, no, when I die I just stop. There are lots of arguments about why that's silly. I'll give you one.

In a large corporation you have an MIS department. You have a huge computer. You have terminals stretched out sometimes through many buildings.

Usually the MIS guys stay up all night and run the batch jobs for the next morning. Then sometimes there's a glitch and the machine makes a mistake. And if you're good at MIS, if you run a good computer department, then you just shut it down right away.

And you face the heat from the vice presidents in the next morning who don't have reports. Why? Because if you're good at MIS you know if a machine can make an error once given the same set of instructions it will do it again and again.

It's inevitable. If a computer which works on pure logic can logically take itself to a breakdown, then you have to find the path it took and stop it because it will always repeat itself. If you're traveling to Diamond Mountain, Hell Realm, oh no, on a hot day and you have a car and it broke down the day before, if you had trouble starting it again, you'd be a fool to make the drive.

You have to find out what happened. Anytime a car stalls once, the same conditions can make it stall again and you might be 10 miles from any water. So given infinite time, given that events have infinite time to repeat a certain series of instructions, it's just foolish to say we can't happen again.

It doesn't make any sense at all. Time is infinite. The odds are infinite.

Whatever series of events made you happen once will certainly happen again infinitely. That's a little argument. I think it's an undefeatable argument that you do have a future.

You will live on somehow. What I would like to talk about today is how to see it directly. I don't mean with some kind of logic.

I mean to see the events of the future as if they were happening two feet from your nose. Behind us, there's a curtain of the past. I like to think on the left side, I imagine the holy beings.

We have reports of them. Very few people will say directly that they have met them and spoken to them or lived with them. And those beings have a special essence.

Their way of being is special. The reason they are divine is that their very essence is a different kind of reality, a higher reality. It's called emptiness in Buddhism.

We'll talk about it later. Then I always like to think on my right side, behind the curtain, just beyond what I can see. Try to imagine countless worlds, planets strung out in lines.

And then each planet covered with beautiful sparks of light. Beautiful beings, some like you and me, some not. But each different person, special.

Each different person striving to be happy. And going on infinitely, countless worlds. You can learn to see them.

I'd like to tell you about a special practice. That I'd like you, if you like, if you want to, then try to practice it in the next few weeks or months. This special practice is called Chö Lam Gyi Neang Djor.

Chö Lam means something you do from hour to hour during the day. It means it's not a practice that you do only during your meditation or prayer time. It's a practice you do all day long.

Neang Djor means yoga. In this case, yoga means special practice, spiritual practice. There's a secret version of Chö Lam Gyi Neang Djor.

And I can't talk about it to a group. But there's an open practice of Chö Lam Gyi Neang Djor. And I'd like you to try it.

The way you do it is that every time you remember during the day, it could be every five minutes. It could be every half hour. If you have a busy day or a bad day, it might be six hours.

But try every 15, 20 minutes. Then, just for a minute, in the middle of your daily work, whether you are working in an office, whether you are driving somewhere, whether you are sitting at home, or even if you've already lied down to go to sleep, then you do Chö Lam Gyi Neang Djor. And you imagine a curtain to your right.

The front is painted with what you can see. The back is silver, like the color of a waterfall or light. And then you just put your hand out.

I think try now. Close your eyes. And then put your hand out to the right side of you, with the palm up.

And then you imagine somebody touching your hand, almost. You imagine that your hand is reaching through the curtain, like through a waterfall. And you imagine that there's another hand hovering just over your hand.

Just a tiny space between them, almost touching like Michelangelo's hand of Adam and God. And then you imagine that the person who has that hand is someone you know and love who is in trouble. Someone who is ill, or someone who is very unhappy.

Maybe already dead person, someone you used to know and love. You imagine their hand is almost touching you. And they are in grief.

They need someone. And you imagine that they can sense that you are reaching for them. And you imagine that they hear you.

You say, I will come. I will help you. I will be the person to come and help you.

From what? From their trouble. From hunger.

From death itself. I will come and help you. And then imagine that the other hand of that person is holding another person's hand.

And then another person, and another person. And try to see beyond the curtain that there are worlds upon worlds stretching out infinitely. And I always think of the beings as sitting cross-legged like me.

And they are holding hands. And the chain is infinite chain of people. Between every few thousand people is another planet.

There will come a time, if you learn what I will teach this weekend, that you will see them directly. You will have an experience of them directly. You will be able, in a single moment, to see every living, holy, beautiful, precious spark of life that exists in all of space, all of this universe.

If you do a good chirlam ki nyam dzong, you plant the seeds for that. You begin the process of drawing that vision to you. So it's very important, and it's a joy, it's fun, to do chirlam ki nyam dzong.

What could it hurt to imagine that you are comforting every living creature? So pretend, and later it will help it come true. You can open your eyes now.

If you are working in a busy office, and you are already having a problem with the boss, thinking you are strange, then you can do holy Lama Ken Rinpoche baseball chirlam niyam dzong. Holy Lama used to bring me up after work. I was exhausted.

I was cranky. I was hungry. And he would make me watch baseball.

It's very soothing. Nothing happens. On his TV.

And he loved the signs. People stand in the dugout. They communicate to the players by secret signs.

Very tantric. So the coach would stand up, if the batter was really a dangerous one, and he would stare at the pitcher, and the pitcher better glance at the dugout every pitch. And he would pull his right ear three times.

That's a neutral sign. That means, I'm trying to give you a sign. Then he would touch his chest and spit tobacco.

And those are false signs for the opposition. Every time he spits tobacco, they all think someone is going to hit a home run. Then he gives the real sign.

The fifth sign is always the real sign. Like he might touch his nose. And your Chulam Kenyanja should be like that.

Secret practices are much more powerful than the ones that you tell everybody. When you do something only because it's important to do, when you do something that no one will ever know that you did it, to help someone, it's much more powerful. I read that in Dear Abby.

If you do things for others secretly, then it's very powerful, she said. And other great texts say that. So, make a few secret signs for your Chulam Kenyanja.

Like, you can pretend you're just snapping your fingernail. Like you're nervous, maybe. Or you can just scratch behind your ear.

Or anything like that. And it's a statement to yourself and to all those suffering, holy creatures on the other side of the curtain. It's a sign.

You have to explain the signs in the locker room. When you go home tonight and you're by yourself, then you sit in front of an image of a holy being like Lord Buddha or Khen Rinpoche, and you say, I'm going to make a deal with you. Every time I touch my ear like that, it means I'm trying to help you.

I'm trying to come to help all those precious, holy creatures who live. It's important to say it out loud at least once. And you just make a promise like that.

When I remember, which may not be very often, if I'm very busy or distracted, but if you see me touch my ear like that, you beings, then you should know I'm thinking of you. I want to see you all. I want to see all the pain you have.

And I swear I will help you. And you can do this yoga anywhere, anytime. It's a very holy practice.

It plants extremely powerful seeds in your mind. It's the very first step to seeing those beings directly and being able to serve them, which is all we all really want to do. We just forgot a little.

So try tonight the first nyamdra. There will be four yogas, one for each curtain. Practice tonight.

Practice during this talk. You have to get used to this subtle interruption of your day for a few seconds and then going back to your work or your life. We'll practice it today.

I'd like it if you could have some refreshments now, relax and enjoy each other's company as we enjoy. We can feel you when you're here. We can't sleep much.

Everyone looks very tired before they put on their blindfolds. But it's a sweet feeling of not sleeping. It's feeling your happiness and the warmth of having you here.

So please have some refreshments.